Bitstream of Consciousness

Gargoyle's Quest II - Finished the Game

2009-06-15T00:36:00.005-06:00

Time: Monday 2:43am
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100, Gargoyles Quest II
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 3 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate, 1 Nantucket Nectars Lemonade, 1 Lo-Carb Monster Energy

The next level is some sort of Egyption-themed dungeon. You can't tell from the picture, but all that sand is moving which looks pretty impressive. Also, I realized that I hadn't taken a picture of any of the bosses yet. So I decided to take a picture of the next one and this boss is probably the most boring one there is. The rest are much more interesting, I promise!

The game has kind of a fun mechanic where vials you collect throughout the levels can be used as currency to buy extra lives. Because there are points in the overworld where you can fight a few enemies for vials, you can always grind them until you have a ton of lives and power through every level. Sort of a way to circumvent the difficulty. Oh, extra lives are called "The Power of the Maelstrom"

I like how "The Password" is sort of a mystical power in this land that can revive the fallen. Clever, Capcom.

This is a more interesting boss, but he's incredibly frustrating because once he moves near you, it's nearly impossible to avoid his projectiles. In general, that was my problem with this game. The level designs were, for the most part really well done and presented fun platforming challenges. And then you reach bosses that are tedious and frustrating because you have very little margin for error.

The big guy above is "Rushifell" who was probably meant to be Lucifer, but thanks to a rather awesome mistranslation of Japanese ended up with the r and l switched. I mean, he even looks like him. ("Rushifell" also appeared in the first Gargoyle's Quest).

Tragically, I lost many of the pictures I took, due to them coming out as blurry messes. But after an incredibly frustrating final boss fight (not only do you have to move in perfect precision, but there are instant death spikes below you and the moving platform in the final bosses room often throws you down toward them due to poor programming), I beat the game.

Yeah, I totally am. The other minion in the throne room here says, "You did very well." Just very well? I save the freakin' world!

The credits sequence is pretty cool as it shows you each of the bosses again and names them and then deisplays credits while the bosses do their thing. A nice touch.

"Capcom Presents: Thank you for playing"
This is almost as good as Ninja Gaiden's ending: "See you next Tecmo"

Overall, Gargoyle's Quest II was disappointing as it felt like a mediocre experience. I really think Capcom hastily slapped this together. The world design shows flashes of brilliance, but overall comes off as empty. The original game wasn't long, but everything felt tight and cohesive while in this game, it feels like there's something missing. Heck, there's a section where it talks about a guy named Dagon in the desert and getting his claw (supposed to be 'Dragon', perhaps?). I looked for him, but never found him and went I went on to the next section, I couldn't even return to look for them again. I think the level designer did a pretty good job, although I seem to remember that in the original, much better use was made of the special attacks you got that could also affect the environment (breaking walls, creating hold on spikes, etc.) So, this was mildly fun, but not as good as it could have been. Now I just want to play the original game again.

Gargoyle's Quest II - Obtained Candle of Darkness

2009-06-14T21:30:00.007-06:00

Time: Sunday 11:32pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100, Gargoyles Quest II
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate, 1 Nantucket Nectars Lemonade, 1 Lo-Carb Monster Energy

So the original Gargoyles Quest is one of my favorite games for the original Black and White Game Boy. It was the first game to really show the system was capable of full, engrossing games on its own and not just puzzle games and ports of NES games.

Upon starting the game, I am immediately struck by the difference in music between the Game Boy game and its NES sequel. While similar, and probably meant to be the same theme, the difference in sound chips of the two systems clearly changes the exactly quality of sound both can do. So far, I think I prefer the Game Boy versions of the songs.

I still can't get over the fact that this is in color! Whoo!

Ah, the days of 16 digit (or more!) passwords. At least this game uses all numbers so you're not stuck wondering whether something is an O or a 0 or a 1 or l or any other the other countless mistakes I made as a kid until I learned to quadruple check my passwords (and then I still would something not be able to tell if I wrote a 1 or an l...

There are a lot of empty houses and otherwise empty areas in the game. It really feels like they were originally going to fill the world with lots of things, but ran out of time and so there are a lot of structures (and outside map areas) with absolutely nothing in them. Weird.

Such scintillating dialog! Actually, the localization in this game is pretty bad. The translation is almost completely literal making the story a bit hard to follow and I've noticed some spelling and grammar mistake. I wonder if Lucifer is once again mistranslated as Rushifell?

This came out way more blurry than I had intended because I was originally going to comment on how beautiful this level was. Definitely has the graphical fidelity of a late-era NES game. This level is also the first time the game gets hard. Took me three tries to make it through.

And the winner is...

2009-06-14T17:26:00.003-06:00

Time: Sunday 7:32pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate, 1 Nantucket Nectars Lemonade, 1 Lo-Carb Monster Energy

While a bit disappointed in the turnout, there was a clear winner in this vote. Out of the eight votes cast, five of them went to Gargoyles Quest II. That makes some sense because it is probably the best game on the list (Take that, Sonic fans!). Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin did get two votes. I wonder if it had gotten more if I'd have mentioned just how horrific the animations are before and after the levels and how cheesy the early 90s rock song composed for the game was. Super Punch-Out!! got 3 votes, but there is some dispute as to how many of those votes were cast by canines.

Sorry Snake's Revenge, no one else likes you.

I will be delayed in playing this due to being a bit more social this evening than I thought. But fear not, I shall get through it!

Audience Participation - What should my last game be?

2009-06-14T14:08:00.003-06:00

Time: Sunday 4:15pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate

Okay, so I've gone through all the planned games for this weekend (apart from some Rock Band later) and need to pick out one last game to play to end tonight. I will present to you, dear readers, a list of games I am considering (and why) and you tell which you think I should play.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis) - Can I finally make it all the way through the game without getting bored?

The Amazing Spider-Man vs. The Kingpin (Sega CD) - This game took the linear Genesis Spider-Man game and attempted to make it more of an open world game. It failed pretty spectacularly, but it's still does a decent job of capturing Spider-Man's web slinging.

Super Punch-Out (SNES) - I have never managed to beat the first of the Bruiser brothers. I'd probably just start all over to help myself get back into it.

Snake's Revenge (NES) - The non-canonical sequel to the NES Metal Gear, this one isn't that bad as long as you're not in one of the awful side-scrolling sections. Otherwise, it gets the overhead sneaking parts pretty well done.

Gargoyle's Quest II (NES) - Recent Game Boy retrospectives have reminded me just how awesome the original Game Boy game of Gargoyle's Quest was. I've never managed to get very far in the NES sequel which seems to be largely the same (awesome) game but with color!

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES - Finished the game

2009-06-14T13:13:00.002-06:00

Time: Sunday 3:14pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100
Drinks Consumed: 2 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 2 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate

Ugh, I ended up staying up way too late to see all that this game has to offer.

I got to January 30th (the day before last) with my Yukari S-Link at level 9 with it telling me that my relationship could get stronger soon. Man, I really wanted to maximize that S-Link! So I reloaded a save from December 30th and just focused on nothing but doing that. It was worth the effort as it was pretty funny. Ah, sexing the ladies...

I also went ahead and saw what happened when you chose to kill Ryoji on December 30th. Interesting, but probably not worth it.

And then I finally got around to finishing the game. The final boss battle took forever, but I was pretty over-prepared as I was in no real danger of losing. Which is good, because having to redo a battle that took about a half hour would have totally sucked.

My favorite part of the ending was how it used all the people whose social links you had maximized. For me that was Yuko, Chihiro, Kazushi, Hidetoshi, Mamoru, Nozomi, Dying Man, The Monk, and Tanaka. I especially liked being able to explore the school after winning and see what everyone was up to.

Overall, I'm glad I finally finished the game. It was a good game. Not absolutely amazing as some would say, but it was unique and innovative and quite entertaining. Its flaws can definitely be overlooked given the experience it gave me.

Of course, I ended up staying up way to late to experience all of this and so it's only now at almost 3:30 that I am ready for a relatively open and free day today. More on that later!

1 vs 100 - First Experience

2009-06-13T19:58:00.006-06:00

Time: 10:04pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3, Textropolis, 1 vs 100
Drinks Consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster, 1 Guayaki Yerba Mate Nonsweetened Mate

So I took a break from Persona 3 to play the live beta of 1 vs 100 on Xbox Live.

I love trivia. I play it every night at a bar here with a group of friends. And this was fun too. Several of my Xbox live friends were on and it was great to see how idiotic the actual players were. I also learned that the lyrics to the LL Cool J song are "Mama said knock you up" and the lyrics to the Bon Jovi song are "Whoa, oh, sitting on a chair."

It was pretty fun, though I would have been much more bored if I wasn't chatting with Xbox live buddies. I imagine the chance to actually be part of the real mob (if not the one) was pretty miniscule.

Back to Persona 3. I'm on 1/25!

Textropolis - More Word Games

2009-06-13T17:16:00.002-06:00

Another break for dinner and dog walking and it gave me some time to play another recent iPhone obsession of mine - Textropolis. It's a pretty simple game where it gives you a city name and you have to form as many words of four or more letters as you can out of it. For each word you make, you get points (the population of the city increases) and at certain intervals, your city gets an additional star. Getting two stars unlocks the next city. It's a very simple game, but it's word games and I love 'em. Now to get a little more Persona 3 in.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES - 1/23

2009-06-13T15:23:00.001-06:00

Time: 5:23pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3
Drinks Consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster

So... an hour and a half later and I've progressed one day. But I think I've got all the fighting and fusing out of my System for now so hopefully this week should go quickly.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES - 1/22

2009-06-13T13:38:00.006-06:00

Time: Saturday 3:40pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom, Persona 3
Drinks Consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster

Ah, the Velvet Room music. I have heard this so many times, I'm surprised it hasn't driven me crazy. At least the Persona battle music stops and starts in between wandering around Tartarus. But the Velvet Room music just keeps going as I spend forever trying to figure out who to fuse with whom and to get just the right skills. I know my former roommates can still hum it from memory.

Anyway, my big push here is to get this game finished. January 31st is the final day (I think) and so I only have a little over a week in game time. I've already made it as far as I can go in Tartarus and have even opened up the doorway to the other realm by defeating death. So I don't really need to defeat any more monsters.

Of course, that's the first thing I did when I started up the game again just to re-familiarize myself with the game. And now I'll probably spend half an hour in the Velvet Room fusing more personae. But after that... all macking on girls until the end of the game!

Fathom - Finished the Game

2009-06-13T11:44:00.005-06:00

Time: Saturday 1:45pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa, Fathom
Drinks Consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Endurance, 1 Odwalla B Monster

Each weekend, the folks at Talking Time pick a free game out there and play and discuss it. This week was Fathom - an indy game with an art vibe (meaning that it is trying to convey some sort of message).

I got to a certain point in this game and then couldn't figure out what the hell to do. I had collected a ton of fish and done several other things but it just seemed that I couldn't continue at all. I asked for help, didn't get any, and was getting incredibly frustrated. I was about to give up, but then tried the game in a different browser. Turns out I must have hit upon a bug, because playing it in that browser everything happened as I expected and I was able to finish the game.

Despite my frustrations, I enjoyed it overall. The music is great, the aesthetics are nice and I really like how it subverts the tropes of video games. The game is mostly divided into two parts and the first part is well done, if not particularly creative. The second part is much more creative and sets a good mood even if playing it gets a little frustrating after awhile.

There's a larger discussion to be had here about whether games can really have a message. Can they express something through pure gameplay? Are they beholden having to be "fun to play" or can they use limitations on play control to express things? I think you can have "art games" much like "art films", though it's much harder to pull off a pure message game than say, a movie or book or painting.

But whatever. On to another game!

Quordy - Waking up the brain

2009-06-13T09:42:00.003-06:00

Time: 11:27am
Games played: Quordy, Klonoa
Drinks consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint

Amazing my dog let me sleep in until 11am today. I guess I must have kept him up late with all my cursing at the final levels of Klonoa. It's a bit later than I wanted, but I awake refreshed and ready to take on a new day.

It's still pretty nice (though hot) today, so I took him to the park in the morning and while he was running around, I woke up my brain with a nice game of Quordy. It's a good way to get myself going in the morning. Now I just need to grab a "breakfast" sandwich and then I'll be ready to go.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile - Finished the game

2009-06-13T01:51:00.004-06:00

Time: Saturday 3:56am
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa
Drinks consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull, 1 Guayakí Yerba Mate Pure Empower Mint

Man, Klonoa is supposed to be a dream or all a dream world or whatever, but some of that stuff will give me nightmares. There's some weird fever dream stuff in there.

I am a bad enough dude to rescue the president.

The game really is incredibly well defined, being a significant challenge by the last level. It may be my fatigue but the last level and then the last boss (and all his forms) had me cursing up a storm. There was also one puzzle that my brain just couldn't work out at this time in the morning that I had to resort to looking up (and felt like an idiot when I saw what the solution was). But I more or less loved this game. Pretty sure it will go on my (imaginary) list of best platformers.

I think the ending was a bit too built up for me. I'd heard it was bittersweet. And yeah, it isn't totally happy, but it still maintains the general feel of a children's story. Nice, but not really impressive.

I like this explanation of why the other characters in the game don't actually help you save the world.

So yeah, one game down.

I guess I can replay the levels now to get the characters I missed out on. And I unlock new things. I'll see how I feel in the morning because boy howdy do I need some rest. The drinks have failed me.

And what the hell does "for your phantomile..." mean? Oh this game!

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile - Vision 4-2

2009-06-12T21:53:00.005-06:00

Time: 11:53pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa
Drinks Consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine, 1 Sugar Free Red Bull

I still can't get over how fun the levels in this game are to play. I think I've just been playing a lot of more mediocre 2D platformers recently, but I love the subtle puzzle aspects in figuring out how to progress further and get the secret items.

I also want to point out how well Klonoa's character is done. In visual design, he somewhat resembles one of the many "attitude" mascot platform characters of the 16-bit generation. But his behavior in the game is of a more down-to-earth earnest character who was just out for a care free stroll when this whole adventure was thrust upon him. And the cute gibberish voices used for the character are a nice counterpoint to his "cool dude" design making him a much more deep and likable character than, say, Bubsy.

Also, Klonoa has a Pac Man on his hat. How cool is that?

The story has been pretty lighthearted so far. It has made me smile and once chuckle when I encountered a guard who talked like Yoda. I wish I'd gotten a picture of that.

After finishing the most recent level, things have become a bit more heavy. Klonoa's grandfather dies in his arms and reveals that saving the world is Klonoa's destiny. It doesn't quite work with the presentation that has come before it, but I'm willing to give it a pass to see how things develop.

I just took my dog for a walk and probably got scammed by some guy who was looking for money to buy drugs. But he seemed honest, had a complicated but believable story, and an effeminate lisp so I'm hoping he really is a hairdresser and I get a free haircut out of it.

Also, it is hot and late so my pants are now off. Just thought you should know.

Socialization Break #1

2009-06-12T19:34:00.003-06:00

Time: Friday 9:34pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa
Drinks consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar, 2 Glasses of White Wine

Man cannot live by video games alone. And besides these friends missed my recent 30th birthday festivities and were taking me out for drinks, so how could I say no? It was really great catching up with them as I hadn't talked to them in probably about six months. And it got me looking even more forward to playing some games.

On my way back to my place, I stopped by my local supermarket and two bodegas. I completely struck out in finding any of the recommended energy drinks. The supermarket was all out of anything Rockstar, and the bodegas seemed to only carry Red Bull of energy as energy drinks. Since the local MLS team is the Red Bulls and I had just been talking about them with my friends, I grabbed one of them so that I wouldn't have to break into the Yerba Mates too early.

Klonoa: Door to Phantomile - Vision 2-1

2009-06-12T16:05:00.003-06:00

Time: Friday 6:05pm
Games Played: Quordy, Klonoa
Drinks Consumed: 1 Sugar Free Rockstar

When I moved in December, my component cable for my PS2 finally bit the dust. It had never been quite right since moving to New York and it finally gave up the ghost. Because I am cheap, I waited until I had a significant amount of things I wanted from monoprice before I ordered a replacement. I finally got it on Monday. Because I am a graphics whore and wouldn't deign to play my PS2 without the best possible graphics, I hadn't played any PlayStation games since I moved (except to test them on an, ugh, composite cable). Klonoa is thus re-breaking in my PS2.

Klonoa was a recent fun club over at Talking Time. It also recently got a re-release for Wii. And it's truly great. Only having played through three levels so far, I can see what makes it so good: the level design.

Klonoa is, at heart, a 2D platformer. You play as some non-descript rodent-like animal that can jump and shoot. Though the game is basically 2D, it is rendered in a 3D engine with levels that rotate and turn as you move through them. Additionally, things come from the foreground and background and you occasionally interact with them.

I'm playing the PlayStation version and am really impressed at the graphics. 3D on the original PlayStation sometimes looks quite ugly, but this game is a treat. Extremely colorful without to many harsh angles or muddied textures. And detailed where necessary.

But it's the level design that really makes this game. There are basically only four things you can do (jump, shoot, throw enemies, and double-jump when you have an enemy) and each level portion is designed best to show how you need to use these to get past. So far it hasn't been too easy, but the penalties for failure also haven't been very extreme so it's almost like puzzling your way on how to advance in each situation. Through in bonus items that take even more to collect and background elements that spring you or blow you upwards and navigating the game is a treat.

Quordy - I rock

2009-06-12T14:43:00.004-06:00

Time: Friday 4:09pm
Games played: Quordy
Drinks Consumed: None

I decide to begin my game-playing extravaganza with a nice warm-up: Quordy for my iPhone. Quordy is basically Boggle, but renamed to avoid trademark infringement. It is also awesome (and better than the other high profile Boggle game for iPhone, Wurdle). It has a great interface and allows challenging friends and playing against them online. Until I started writing for The Tilt, I didn't bother putting any more games on my iPhone because Quordy was all I needed.

I also rock at it. I have an opponent who I play regularly, but my record against him is 84-34 so yeah. I'm pretty good at word games.

The weekend begins!

2009-06-12T14:35:00.004-06:00

As of now (well, technically 4:09) my weekend on pure video games has begun. I plan to devote as much time this weekend to playing games as possible. I'll break for food, bathroom, dog walking, and maybe a little socializing. We'll see. But here, dear reader, I plan to document everything that has gone on.

To keep me fueled for this weekend, I planned to pick up several energy drinks. My friend Paul is an expert on those and so I consulted him are what are the best varieties. According to him, Sobe Energy Drink (low carb) and Rockstar Energy Drink (low carb) are the two best with Rockstar providing more of a jolt. Of course, in the three drug stores/corner markets I visited between last night and now, I could find none of them. I grabbed a sugar-free Rockstar to get me started, but I'll have to make a stop at the nearby supermarket tonight.

Anyway, I plan to periodically blog about my experiences this weekend. Here goes!

Bit.Trip Beat - Second Song

2009-03-19T10:58:00.006-06:00

Synesthesia is a term that's been thrown around quite a bit in regards to video games lately. Near as I can figure, it is usually used to refer to a game where playing the game itself creates music. Not in the Guitar Hero sense, but in the sense that something seemingly unrelated, like a spaceship shooting down bad guys adding to the melody of a musical piece. It's... hard to describe.

Much as Bit.Trip Beat is.

As regards to how it plays, that's pretty simple. It's like Pong. Or Breakout. Or Arkanoid. Or any game where you have to hit a ball with a paddle. The controls are ridiculously simple - tilt the Wii remote forwards and backwards to move the paddle up and down.

Meanwhile, various balls or pellets or whatever come at your paddle and you have to hit them back. Some come along a straight line, some bob up and down, and some even come back at your paddle after you hit them. In a lot of ways, the game feels to me like a bullet hell shoot-em-up. The patterns of dots coming toward your paddle require split second thinking and reflexes or just plain memorization.

Did I mention that while this is going on, you've got some incredible chiptunes-inspired music (think bleeps and bloops with a driving beat) and flashy backgrounds and colors and all things happening? I imagine it is what it would be like to play Breakout during an acid trip.

The game at its heart is trying to evoke an Atari-age aesthetic. The graphics consist mainly of thick, blocky art and the animation even involves ghosting as if you were playing it on an older television set. The use of Pong to create music is especially effective when you are close to game over as the music stops, the graphics turn black and white, and the only sounds are "pings" that come from the Wii remote when your paddle hits a ball.

There's a lot more I could say about this game, but I think I'll save it for potential future blog posts.

One thing I will points out is that the level of concentration my eyeballs and brain require to play this game destroys my eyes. After staring at moving large pixels and colors for ten minutes, it practically hurts me to look at a static image again without resting my eyes.

Dragon Warrior - Why it was a pivotal moment for me

2009-03-19T10:52:00.003-06:00

Finally had some time to write another gamespite article. The theme of this issue was pivotal moments, so I talk about how Dragon Warrior was my first step on the road to playing RPGs.

Dragon Warrior

Punch-Out!! - Why is it so gol-dang great?

2008-07-06T21:35:00.003-06:00

I have never linked the gamespite article that I am most proud of writing. This needs to be rectified:

Punch-Out!!

The game is so good and stands up so well. Why is this? Read my article to find out.

Retro Game Master - A Review

2008-06-23T21:17:00.004-06:00

Retro Game Master is the English title of Game Master CX, a Japanese reality show featuring a man who challenges himself to play and finish old video games. On June 28 and 29, the New York Asian Film Festival screened two episodes of the localized version of the show. You can read the festival's description here.

Retro Game Master stars Shinya Arino as "the Kacho". The first show I watched implied that Kacho meant salaryman, but further research reveals that "middle manager" is probably a more accurate translation. The idea is that Arino is not an amazing video game player, but a guy like you or me with nostalgia for the video games of his youth. Each episode centers around one video game. The two that played at the film festival were Mystery of Atlantis (a game never released in the United States) and Ghosts 'n Goblins. The episodes chronicled the hours-long process of Arino receiving the game, beginning to play it, getting stuck somewhere, consulting the instruction booklet for help, trying again and not progressing much further, getting some help from his assistant, and then, finally, making it to the end.

The shows were preceded by a trailer that explained its premise and popularity in Japan. It had the vibe of a late night product commercial that prompts you to call its 1-800 number "in the next ten minutes!". Still, for those unfamiliar with the show it provided a good sense of context. The best part of the trailer was the end where you get to know who Shinya Arino is. He explains that he does this for all the video game loving children and all the middle-aged people who remember playing these games.

Following the trailer was an introduction by Arino himself. It was one of the most hilarious things I have ever seen. Arino speaks in a very heavily accented English, obviously reading the words phonetically off of cue cards. He boisterously and enthusiastically proclaims that he is the Retro Game Master and that everyone in Japan loves him. Although it could have come off as making fun of Arino, it was obvious that he was totally into the act and just hamming it up for the crowd and that made it even better.

The shows themselves succeed in triggering any latent nostalgia you have for old video games. If you remember going over to a friend's house when they got a new Nintendo game and taking turns playing it to see how far you could get, then the show will strike a chord with you. During the Mystery of Atlantis episode, I was specifically reminded of when I got Ninja Gaiden for my birthday and my friends and I took turns playing level 3, trying to get past the birds. The shows are also successful in their humor. Arino plays out his frustrations and bewilderment perfectly. He always has an appropriate quip about whatever ridiculously obtuse or aggravating situation the game has put him in. This also serves to endear him to the viewer. You really feel for him and want him to succeed. In both screenings, the audience held their breath as he faced a difficult encounter and barely escaped by the skin of his teeth. In the Mystery of Atlantis screening, people actually clapped when he finished the game.

Of the two episodes I saw, Mystery of Atlantis was the superior one. I think this is because Mystery of Atlantis has more variety as a game and is also incredibly inscrutable. Mystery of Atlantis features 99 levels, power-ups with unexplained properties, warps to different levels, warps hidden in bizarre ways like deaths or bottomless pits, and utterly ridiculous puzzles. This melange of characteristics provided significant humor and could maintain the viewer's interest. The Ghosts 'n Goblins episode was significantly different because Ghosts 'n Goblins is merely an incredibly difficult game. The episode showed Arino progressing a little bit, getting stuck for hours at one enemy, and then finally getting past it. This process repeated for the entire episode. With little surprises or variety, the episode had to focus on it just being a really hard game and that wasn't as successful in keeping my attention for thirty minutes. The drama was further lessened because people who hadn't following the show wouldn't realize what a landmark it was that this was the first game that it took two sessions to complete. I still enjoyed it and, despite knowing what was coming, shared in Arino's bewilderment and disappointment when he found out what happens at the end of Ghosts 'n Goblins.

My previous exposure to the show was watching it on youtube. I greatly enjoyed those clips despite them being wholly in Japanese because Arino's trials and frustrations were obvious and relatable no matter what language they were in. Still, the show is even better when you know what is going on. Everyone who appears live on the show is subtitled in these episodes and the significant amount of titles and voice overs are all redone in English. Understanding what is going on means that, in addition to empathizing with Arino as he struggles through a game, you also get his jokes and can comprehend the new strategies he employs to get through the games.

While the translation is appreciated, some of the localization choices seem a bit odd. Arino is always called "The Kacho" in the show. While this may be typical for Japanese tv shows, it was weird for me to get used to the constant use of his title. Similarly, his assistants are never called by their names, but rather the title "Assistant" and the first letter of their last name (so I saw Assistant T and Assistant S). The general style of the show seemed like it couldn't decide between being a more staid American reality show and a more out there Japanese reality show. This was in full evidence with the performance of the voice over announcer. The voice over, provided by Patrick Harlan, an American-born comedian in Japan, sometimes follows the American style and delivers a tension-building narrative before a commercial break and a quick recap of what is going on after one. But the announcer sometimes becomes very excited, sounding like the fate of the world depends on what the Kacho does or that the events in the video game are actually happening. It seems like he may have been trying to ape the Iron Chef style, but given the different content of this show didn't pull it off very well. For all I know, he was trying to be as true as possible to the original Japanese announcer, but to my ears it was a little off-putting.

Finally, as enjoyable as the shows were, there was also a noticeable lack of polish. I got the feeling these localized episodes were put together as concept trailers to use to sell the show to an American distributor. Talking to a representative from Stylejam (the company that distributes the DVDs in Japan) confirmed they were in talks with American studios to try and get Retro Game Master released in the US. In addition to these screenings lacking opening or closing sequences for the shows, there were also some misspellings in the titles. In the Mystery of Atlantis episode, one of the titles talked about the "climatic" moment of the game which was especially noticeable because Arino and his assistant had just been talking about the game's climax.

Game Center CX is an amazing show. Almost everyone who sees it, whether there is a language barrier or not, can identify with Arino and his struggle to finish a video game. I knew this going into the screenings. What I didn't expect is that the show could become so much better once I understood it. Despite some questions about the announcer they used and the localization style, I loved the show. After each episode, I wanted to watch another one. I hope Stylejam succeeds in finding a US distributor for the show so I can do just that.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter - Finished the game

2008-04-27T19:02:00.002-06:00

I like games that do things differently and as I've mentioned before, Dragon Quarter is quite different from your standard Japanese RPG. I mentioned the similarities to survival horror that the game has, but I don't think I mentioned that there are no inns or ways to heal yourself for free. Let that sink in. It means that every time you make it to a shop, you first have to spend the money to buy healing items just to restore your health. This makes the game incredibly tense. You can never really relax because you've just beaten a big boss since healing yourself afterwards will not be cheap. Resource management is key to the game.

As it turns out, I was really good at the resource management. Despite the fact that the game expects you to do at least one SOL Restart through the course of playing it, I never had to do that. I did get a game over about a half dozen times while playing it, but two of those were right in the beginning before even getting the dragon powers and all the rest were boss fights where I just handled the strategy wrong and had no problem with it the next time. It seems I stocked my inventory well as I always had just enough healing items to make it from shop to shop. My D-Counter was only at about 35% when I reached the final gauntlet of boss fights and so I was able to D-Dive each of the last three bosses.

Even though I D-Dived those bosses, I got the feeling that I could have beaten them with shrewd tactics with just regular attacks. That was a much better feeling than the one time I D-Dived before where I felt it was absolutely impossible to win without doing that.

This game did some things really well. The character customization system with weapons that have slots you can fill with different skills was great. The combat system was generally excellent, with strategic movement and combination attacks. The music is also a strong point of the game.

There are some rough edges too. Though combat is generally great because you always need to use strategy against even regular enemies and can't just mash on attack, it can become very tedious to employ whatever specific strategy you need to defeat each enemy. Tedium is generally the problem, as navigating the interface (all the menus to equip items and skills and especially manage the fairy colony) can take awhile. Reaching the shop again requires a significant break in the game while you buy the items to heal your characters, identify all unknown stuff and then decided what to keep and what to sell.

Overall, though it was a very enjoyable game and I'm glad I experienced it.

I'm actually tempted to play through it again. Whenever you do an SOL Restart (which can also be done after finishing the game), you may lower your D-Ratio which will unlock additional cut scenes during the playthrough. The story in the game is very minimal and I think that's appropriate for the playthrough, but I like the idea of filling in background information on a subsequent playthrough. Of course, I know the reality is that I have so many good games I haven't played yet, I probably won't play through it again. But maybe I'll at least do the beginning part.

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - Completed a Rescue

2008-04-21T21:53:00.003-06:00

Not only does this game challenge you to manage your resources and plan every move correctly, it also allows you to be a good samaritan.

Unlike most roguelikes, when you die in Shiren, your character and items are not necessarily lost for good. Three times per game, you can request a rescue attempt. You can generate a password or post a request on an online server. Then, another person with the game can make a trek down to the dungeon level you got to and revive your character.

A friend of mine recently got the game in a short period of time managed to make it to level 20... where he promptly died. So I undertook my first rescue attempt. It's, uh, significantly more difficult than a normal run. You can take stuff from the warehouse in the first village, but skip past all the other towns. This makes food management a lot more difficult (also because I'm used to starting with a riceball). Additionally, you never find any companions so it's a completely solo affair.

Shiren began his journey in a bad situation - a mini-monster house right where I started on the first level. Shiren fell twice before grabbing the Armor Ward +1 from the warehouse in order to start in a better situation. Good weapons were easy for Shiren to come by in the beginning - the problem, of course, was food. He lingered around the rice changers to get a couple of big riceballs. Everything seemed to be going fairly well for Shiren up through Table Mountain. He didn't have an incredibly powerful inventory, but probably had enough. However, he was nearly out of riceballs. Finding a shop, proved to be the difference. Along with the riceball in their, the pair of postpone staves picked up proved to be the key to handling the tough monsters inside table mountain.

On level 19, Shiren knew he had only one more level to go. He was also dangerously low on food. He had eaten his last rice ball and didn't even have any more herbs. He reached the stairs up to level 20 with a fullness of only 2. He began in a small room, but knew he would have to remove his Armor Ward. A few steps through the corridor, he reached the starving point. Each additional step would drain him of hit points. Four steps later, he reached the monster house containing the traveler in need o rescue. But what made his eyes really wide was that he was only two steps from an herb. Reading his scroll of confusion to give him some breathing room, he ran to and ate the herb. He pondered gathering some treasure in the monster house, but knew he would be pressing his luck and the monsters' confusion would not last forever. Instead, he ran up to the fallen comrade and delivered the revival, transporting him out of the dungeon.

Now he had the pride of both finding the golden condor and rescuing a fellow traveler.

Etrian Odyssey - Reached B5F

2008-04-17T17:56:00.002-06:00

This is the second old school-inspired game I've started playing recently. While Shiren was based on Rogue, Etrian Odyssey is based on other original computer RPG - Wizardry.

Wizardry was another of the original computer role-playing games and described a formula that many other early role-playing games would use. It was basically a dungeon crawl - start in a town to procure supplies and equipment and then head down into the dungeon. Each floor of the dungeon has its own unique layout and the deeper you go, the tougher the monsters get. The dungeons are presented to you in a first-person view and you move on a grid - going forward or backward one square with 90 degree turns. This formula inspired many classics like Might and Magic, The Bard's Tale, and Ultima.

One of the key meta-activities these games required was drawing map. Since all the corridors pretty much looked the same in these games, you had to play them with a piece of graph paper next to you, drawing in the walls as you saw them as well as any special features.

Obviously, requiring players to make their own maps, especially with a portable game just wouldn't fly in this day and age. But instead of having the game automatically create the map, the creators of Etrian Odyssey decided to make map-making part of the game. Taking advantage of the DS' touch screen, the game gives you virtual graph paper on the bottom of the screen where you can draw walls, and make notes of stairs, items, and powerful enemies.

This is all pretty awesome. Making the maps is completely easy to do and it feels really satisfying to be the cartographer.

There are two other aspects of this game that are causing me to enjoy it so far.

The first is that it has some great customization for your characters. You start with seven different classes with which to make up your party of five. Each class also has over a dozen skills and you have skill points with which to assign to these skills and configure your characters. These skill points are precious too, as you only get one additional skill point for each level that you gain. It's quite a deep system.

The second aspect is the sense of dread it gives you. In old school RPGs, you knew that if you stumbled into the wrong enemies, your game could be quickly over. You had to carefully preserve your health and resources and be sure to get back to town when injured. This game is a little easier with the standard enemies you can face, but it has special enemies called FOEs that are significantly more powerful than normal enemies you face. Most of the time, the first time you encounter an FOE it will completely own you. You need to serious strategy and strength in order to face an FOE. The thing that makes these super-enemies fair is that you can see them before encountering them and know when to avoid them. But the sense of dread when you know one is near and are low in resources and then it starts chasing you is great.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter - Defeated Modified Bosch

2008-04-12T20:47:00.002-06:00

I had to D-Dive for the first time in this battle. D-Diving is basically turning into your dragon form where you are a super bad-ass. The downside, of course, is that doing this raises your D-Counter. Once that reaches 100, it's game over. You lose your humanity or become some evil dragon or something like that (the game isn't exactly clear on that issue) and you're done.

I find the tension of whether to use your super ability delicious. In some games, not using a limited resource has no real consequence. It may make the game a little harder or be a little more frustrating, but it doesn't seriously change the game. In Dragon Quarter, it's at the heart of the game. The requirement to use limited resources is also present in the fact that there is never any automatic healing. The only way to heal is to use healing items and aside from the few you can find in the course of your adventure, you'll have to buy them at shops. The creates another tension in whether to use your money to upgrade your weapons and armor or use it to stock up on healing items.

All that said, I was a little disappointed because it seemed I had to D-Dive in order to win this battle. The boss regenerated a massive amount of health each turn and the amount of damage I could do it wasn't consistently high enough each turn to lower his health beyond what he would regenerate. I do feel a bit cheated in that respect, but since this is my first playthrough of the game, I suspect that I'm underpowered from what I could be and that if this were a later playthrough I could actually beat him without becoming a dragon.

Final Fantasy III - Finished the game

2008-04-10T21:36:00.002-06:00

At least I can say I've finished it, but the last couple of hours I put in were not very enjoyable.

It's tough to say why. I was enjoying the old school feeling and goodness in this game and then in the last section, the fun just kind of fell off a cliff. The game didn't change significantly, but I think the problem was, as I mentioned in my last entry, that there wasn't the promise of anything new to explore or any new gameplay mechanisms to unlock. I knew I would have to go through the final dungeon and beat the boss. Oh sure, I got a few new weapons and pieces of armor along the way, but it really felt like I had done all there was to do in this game and was now just going through the motions to get to its end.

One of the most interesting parts of playing this game was to examine it historically as it influenced later Final Fantasies. The job system is obviously the key innovation, but the little things like Chocobos, Summons, and Cid are there. But really, having played this, I can see how Final Fantasy IV is sort of a fan fiction of this game as all the characters in it have fixed jobs that pretty exactly map to the jobs of this game. And then Final Fantasy V came along and realized how lame it was to only be able to use on job's skills at a time and basically made the job system really fun.

Anyway, since the last portion of this game kind of ruined the interest I had in it, I'm mostly glad I finished now so I can say I've cleared one more game from my backlog. Now I can feel a little less guilty about starting new games.

Assorted Gamespite Articles

2008-04-08T18:09:00.002-06:00

As a new article of mine is soon to be published, I realized that I've neglected to post here letting any regular readers here (do I actually have any?) know about them. So here goes.

I wrote a series of articles on the MacVenture games that were ported to the NES. These were a series of point and click adventures created for the Mac that, thanks to not needing a keyboard, could now be played on home video consoles. Shadowgate, Déjà Vu, and Uninvited were the three titles that made it to the NES (in that order), and I think Déjà Vu is the only one that really holds up well.

Also, I wrote a virtual console review of Kid Icarus, exploring why nostalgia is so key for this game - it was really innovative when it came out but very much doesn't stand up well today.

As mentioned, I have another article that will be published on gamespite in the next few weeks and I'm pretty proud of it. I think it's the best writing I've done in awhile.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter - Reached the Industrial Area

2008-04-06T10:51:00.004-06:00

This game is difficult - at least when compared to modern RPGs. Generally, there's a bit of hand-holding and tutorial in the beginning to get you into them. In Dragon's Quarter, I just flat-out died in the first dungeon my first two times playing it.

My third time playing the game, I finally "got it". Everything about that combat system and how to correctly deal with monsters just clicked and I found myself really getting into this off-kilter RPG.

Breath of Fire has had four previous games in the series. I haven't looked into them, because they aren't supposed to be that different from their contemporary Japanese RPGs. Dragon Quarter is.

The main hook is that you aren't really expected to get through the game in one playthrough. It is certainly possible, but the game is designed in such a way that at a certain point you will realize that it isn't possible for you to get any further since you don't have any health restoring items and your character is about to die. At this point, the game gives you the option of doing a "Scenario Overlay" when you restart which basically means when you start over, you have all the skills your character previously had, along with any money you've put in the bank, progress you've made on the colony, and party xp (bonus experience you earn which can be given to the characters).

The other aspect that contributes to the need to restart is your D-Counter. Early on, you learn that your character can turn into a dragon - which is awesome! You become incredibly powerful and can quickly decimate foes. Each time you become a dragon and each time you use its abilities, your D-Counter number goes up. When it hits 100 you presumably lose control of yourself and lose your humanity - which is less awesome. That's another game over there. So, if you've had to use dragon abilities to get yourself out of some scrapes you may find it nearing 100% and have to restart.

In a strange coincidence, this game is pretty much a combination of the last two games I've been playing. The connection with Shiren is pretty obvious - they're both RPGs with turn-based tactical combat. They both expect you to die and restart, having learned something of the game from your previous run, but also allowing you to carry some things over from your previous run. Breath of Fire isn't nearly as unforgiving as Shiren since it does let you restore saved games as many times as you want. But... real save points are spaced far apart so a lot of your saving will be of the same "suspend" save variety that Shiren had - you can save your game anywhere, but when you come back to it, your save is immediately erased.

The saving aspect brings in one of the big connections the game has to Resident Evil - they are limited. If you want to save your game at one of the save points scattered throughout the game, you need a save token, much like Resident Evil required you to have ink ribbons to save at the typewriters. Save tokens are precious - you only find a few and can't buy more or store them so you have to be careful about using them up. The connection to survival horror becomes more apparent when you notice how little money and healing items the game gives you. The player must make the best use of their resources or they'll find themselves in an unwinnable situation and have to restart. I'm not the first to call this a Surival RPG, but I wholeheartedly support that appellation.

Having never played a Breath of Fire game before, I have no clue how innovative the combat in this one is, but I think it's incredibly well done. First of all, you can see enemies before battle and they take place right on the exploration screen, much like my favorite of games, Chrono Trigger. That you can see the enemies and know where you'll be fighting them is great. Additionally, the combat is very tactical. Characters have a certain number of action points, when it is their turn they can move and attack in almost any combination to use those. Maneuvering for position or to get just in range of an enemy is key - especially because several attacks can hit enemies in a line, rea, or cone. There is a wide variety of attacks for each character (and different weapons that you can specialize in different ways). Also, one character can place magical traps on the battle field and its a lot of fun to hold enemies off with these or coax them into them. The game also adds a bit of complexity in that there's a lot you can do pre-battle like set traps and hit the monster first to get a first strike turn, but I don't think those are as well implemented or interesting. Still, it's a pretty great system.

Finally, this game has the best cut scene system ever. Not only are they skippable (as it's a sin in this day and age to not have them be), but they are pauseable as well. Finally, I can go pee during some exposition and come back and not have missed it!

Resident Evil - Finished the game with Chris

2008-03-31T19:59:00.002-06:00

After quite enoying my playthrough of the remake of the original Resident Evil, I thought to myself, "Self, let's play through it again as the second character to extend the experience and get a little more of the story."

It wasn't worth it.

I felt like I was just going through the motions. The whole horror movie vibe that I had enjoyed the first time through didn't do anything for me because I knew what was coming. Zombie in this corner, dog in that hallway, ape men will chase after me here. It lacked the spark and the creepiness and genuinely positive feeling of my first playthrough.

And the additional story? Nonexistent. Clearly the story was written to be played through as Jill. There was about one new thing I learned about the universe.

Oh well, at least now I know I can put this game away and concentrate on some of those games I've started but haven't seen to fruition.

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - Released the Golden Condor

2008-03-26T08:09:00.005-06:00

Roguelike games lend themselves to stories. Sure, the games themselves have some sort of plot (retrieve the amulet of Yendor in Rogue, find the golden condor in this game), but since the levels, items, and enemies are randomly generated, each new game is a new story. Different things happen to your character each time you play and sometimes you have some narrow escapes and sometimes some spectacular failures. Nethack, one of the most famous of the genre, has created a trend of posting "ascension stories" of beating the game and YASD stories (Yet Another Stupid Death).

Last night, I finally made it through the main dungeon of the game and so, for those interested, here is my ascension story (my game save file is Gertrude, so I used that name for the story character):

Gertrude had made it to the Ravine of Illusions (level 26) on her last five journeys, twice getting beyond it only to die before reaching the Plains of the Sun. With two Big Riceballs in her pack, she began her new attempt. Things didn't look auspicious for her.

Right away, the fortune teller gave her a particularly grim fortune telling her that she would not get the help she needed. But who believed in those silly fortunes anyway, Gertrude thought. Ignoring the warning of Riva, the God of fate, she pressed on.

Despite finding all three companions, they all died prior to reaching the town of Cryptic Rock Valley. While feeling sad at their loss, she was sadder that her strategy would now be completely changed. She now wouldn't be able to send them off to take down enemies she didn't want to get near in the swamps. These enemies could confuse her, put her to sleep or rust her weapons. Especially because she had found precious few arrows up to this point, not having any companions would make things difficult.

She did manage to make it through the swamps relatively unscathed. All she lost was one item to a copter bird and a point of strength to a leech bug. She was lucky to always see purple slimes coming so she could unequip her stuff (pathetic as her Hide Shield +1 and Polearm +3 were) before taking them on.

Once in Table Mountain, without the help of any companions she took a lot of damage from the Great Hens and Chain Heads. She had found one Chiropractic Pot (which heals her) with 5 uses and it was quickly down to 2 after three dungeon levels. Due to her Hide Shield and plenty of rice balls found in her journey, she was able to use the tactic of hiding in a corridor and resting to restore hit points. Little did she know this would be her survival tactic from hereon out because she would never find another Chiropractic pot.

It took until floor 25 before she could upgrade her equipment. There she found a Master Sword +2 which she upgraded to +3 with an Air Bless Scroll. She now had that and (when she needed it) an Armor Ward +2 to help her out. Learning the lessons of previous adventures, she used a Power Up scroll immediately upon reaching the Ravine of Illusions and used a staff of postponement and eventually a dragon herb to take down the one Skull Wizard she saw. The Death Angels were slowed or shot at from afar to lessen their effect. The Armor Ward was now her default shield.

She progressed through floor 27, making judicious use of equipping the hide shield and waiting until her hit points were back over 100. Floor 28 was a huge monster house (is it always? it was the last time she made it there) She was relatively close to the exit so she decided running was the best option. A Death Angel would have gotten in her way, but she used a Switching Staff to switch places with it and made it to the next floor with 2/3 of her hit points.

On floor 29, she started in a room with five monsters and so used her last scroll of confusion. This allowed her to take down the monsters one by one. Every time she faced more than one enemy at once, she had to use an item like a Dragon Herb, a Staff of Postpone, or Bufu's Staff to even the adds. After every battle she needed to hide in a corridor and wait while she healed. She had a very close call when she was fighting a dragon and an Armor Knight came along and knocked off her sword and shield. She used two blasts of a Staff of Postponement to deal with the two of them.

Despite her lacking of healing items, she made it up the stairs to the plains of the sun! Where was the gold that was supposed to cover the city? Where was the Golden Condor that would grant wishes? She found markers left by the former inhabitants, explaining how a terrible evil had come and eaten the gold and trapped the condor. Exploring and heading into the final floor, she double-checked that she was ready. She took down the first two tigers she encountered with Dragon Herbs. Suddenly, she heard a clicking sound behind her and turned to find what must have taken down the Plains of the Sun - the tainted insect! When it got near her, she wasn't taking any chances and threw the Running Egg meat at it that she had picked up in Stream Village, turning it into a harmless egg with legs. Without that to worry about, she picked off the rest of the tigers before finishing the egg and ending the curse on the Golden condor.

Checking the back of the hall, she cleared the webs away and encountered the Golden Condor. On its back, she returned to Canyon Hamlet, looking down at the caves, woods, and villages she had passed along the way.

Now I'm really curious to change my Wi-Fi encryption so I can use my DS on it and see where I rank (I'd imagine not too high - I got about 1.5million points on that run)

Resident Evil - Finished the game with Jill

2008-03-17T13:21:00.004-06:00

I've always wanted to see what all the fuss was about. When Resident Evil was originally released in 1996, it was extremely popular, was hailed by critics, and basically defined the "Survival Horror" genre. It was also known for its tropes of extremely limited ammunition, limiting the amount of times you could save, possessing ridiculous puzzles, and having clumsy controls that make it much harder than it should be to shoot at or run away from the enemies. But the remake of the original game for the Gamecube was supposed to be well done and now that I have a Wii and can play Gamecube games, I might as well check it out.

The game is quite enjoyable.

I guess maybe I wasn't expecting that. I think I assumed that this game had a lot of fan nostalgia going for it, but that it wasn't actually that great. I think this was because I had played one of the many copycat series, Fear Effect, and found it decidedly mediocre. But I guess Resident Evil is such a popular franchise for a reason. This game gets it pretty much right.

What I found most interesting is that it wasn't exactly the gameplay that sold me on this game. As it has been since the original, you still control your character like a vehicle. And while being able to quickly turn around means this isn't so bad, the control scheme is by no means intuitive and can still be frustrating. The puzzles are fine. It takes you a bit out of element that a mansion would have such bizarre and convoluted locks and traps, but at least the puzzles themselves make sense and are all done "in-game".

What makes this game work is the atmosphere. It absolutely conveys the mood of being in a creepy mansion with zombies running amok. The fact that your character isn't a badass means that you do indeed feel very mortal. The ammunition is limited enough to make you worried that you'll run out and won't be able to defend yourself, but not so limited as to be frustrating. The sound, graphic, and gameplay design come together to make you feel like your in a horror movie.

Not just any horror movie either. I played Silent Hill for the first time two or three years ago and it was genuinely scary as well. But Silent Hill felt much more like a psychological horror movie with the monsters and the world playing on the characters' psyche and inner demons. Resident Evil falls more in line with the slasher tropes of monsters popping out of nowhere, sounds that mislead a character as to where the danger is, and "quick cuts". The thing is, it does all of those things really well creating a very satisfying mood.

I had originally thought I would just give this game a shot then go on the even more universally loved Resident Evil 4. Now, however, I'm thinking I might go through the entire main series on my way there. At the very least, I think I'll try playing through it as Chris.

Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer - Made it to level 20

2008-03-15T01:14:00.007-06:00

Rogue is one of the most venerable of computer games. Created back when computers (mainframes) didn't have any graphical capabilities, it relied entirely on the ascii character set to display its dungeon-crawling adventure. But the use of pure ascii text isn't necessarily what defines Rogue as a game. No, what is more important are the three main characteristics of the dungeons it generates: 1) They are randomly created every time. Their layout is never the same twice, nor are the monsters or items that populate them though you can generally count on the fact that tougher monsters and better items occur in lower dungeons. 2) Items found in the dungeons are not immediately identified. Weapons and armor are obvious in their application, but any curses or blessings they may have are not known. Wands and potions give less information - all you have from them is a descriptor such as brass or murky and their function can only be determined by magically identifying them or taking a risk and trying them out. 3) When you are dead, you are dead. You can save your game, but once you resume it your save is gone so you cannot go back to an old save. Once you die, you must begin again at the top floor of the dungeon at level one and with no items.

As brutal as this sounds, Rogue has spawned many imitators over the years (called roguelikes, naturally). Quite a few have been released for consoles and Shiren the Wanderer for the Japanese Super Famicon (SNES) is generally considered the best. It was recently re-released for the Nintendo DS and I snapped it up quickly.

I am totally digging this game. It is hard for me to describe it better than Jeremy Parish did in his review and blog post follow-up.

I've played several roguelikes in my time (mostly Nethack) and so far this is my favorite. The big problem I have with Nethack is one of its selling points - there is so much going on. Too much for me to wrap my head around and remember all the item interactions and resistances and monster traits, etc. Shiren, still has all the trappings of a roguelike, but it seems tractable to me. There are only eight different types of items and they each only have about eight different types within them so it all seems managable. Unlike in Nethack, I feel like I am actually making progress and learning what to do as I go.

That's really the key with roguelikes. The more you play them, the more you learn and master the mechanics. Parish made the analogy to Super Mario Bros. in that you refine your basic gameplay skills each time you play and each time you get a little further. Of course, here you can't memorize the level layout, but that's okay. You learn how to deal with each type of enemy, and when to use the right pots, wands, and herbs.

I also love the innovations this game adds to the roguelike genre. While your character starts anew each time he dies, the world is affected by his actions. You can cause new shops and rooms to open and new items to appear in the game by undertaking different actions. You can even help others and have them join you as companions.

I don't know if it is the cute graphics, the beautiful music, the deep but not overwhelming variety of objects and monsters, or a combination of all of them but this game has had me hooked since I picked it up a week and a half ago. I keep wanting to play thinking that next time I can finally make it to the golden condor at the top of Table Mountain.

Dark Castle - Beat the game on Beginner and Intermediate

2008-02-09T23:24:00.000-07:00

The Mac was never a gaming platform. It never had a large userbase and Apple was uniformly awful at courting game developers (and sometimes the developers themselves are a little unreasonable). But, despite having far fewer games than its early Commodore 64 and Apple ][ brethren and later the industry juggernaut PC, it did have some gems.

One of those gems was released early in the Mac's life in 1986 and was called Dark Castle. This game, like many early Mac games was fairly revolutionary for its time.

First, the animation was incredibly smooth and life-like. It was a pleasure to watch the protagonist, Duncan, run, jump, and fall. This was three years before Prince of Persia with its rotoscoped animation (but after Karateka which had similar animation principles). Duncan's walking, running and jumping animations were quite realistic, but the game also had a good sense of humor by adding cartoon-like "hovering over a pit, then looking down and falling" and "banging your head and getting dizzy and
spinning around" animations.

The second major innovation to this game was its control scheme. The game is a platformer and the character is moved around using the keyboard (with WASD as the default keys). The character's main attack is throwing rocks and this is accomplished by aiming with the mouse. Yes, that's right - moving with the keyboard and aiming with the mouse, the same control scheme used by all PC-based first-person shooters today was pioneered by this game back in 1986, almost ten years before the system was first used in a first person shooter (Marathon, which probably not coincidentally was also for the Mac).

So, the announcement that the third Dark Castle game, Return to Dark Castle is finally coming out (it has spent 7-8 years in development) inspired me to go back and replay this game.

It is still a lot of fun, but like many games of my youth, it is a lot harder than I remembered it. I seem to recall being very good at this game and having no problem beating it, but I must have only been playing it on Beginner difficulty. I jumped right back into this game on Advanced difficulty and got my ass-kicked hard. Humbled, I started back at Beginner and relearned the game. I was able to beat Beginner and then Intermediate modes without much difficulty. Advanced is still insane. It took me luck, using all of my ammunition and about 16 tries to finally get the shield. I then died while attempting to get the fireball.

Still, this game brings back great memories. The sound effects are ingrained in my brain - Duncan's grunt as he jumps, his "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wrmmmbrblblblblblb" when he smacks his head, the mutant's taunting, the raven's caw, and the wizard's mumble. Despite not having many games, the early Mac had some good and unique ones.

No More Heroes - Finished the game

2008-02-04T19:51:00.000-07:00

This game was an incredible experience. Someone said it best that this game is sort of like Blaster Master or Ninja Gaiden for the NES - games that weren't perfect but that were incredibly fun to play and everyone had to have. The difference is that both of them games had really compelling gameplay (okay, so Ninja Gaiden also sold itself on its story) to go with them. Here, the visceral feel of the gameplay is great, even if it isn't necessarily deep. But the story and game execution and details are what sells it.

I mentioned previously that the city of Santa Destroy feels lifeless. More than that, I share the opinion of other that is one of the worst level-select screens ever. While there are some neat details scattered around Santa Destroy (references to other games and punk music), having to drive in your bike from one location to the next is just tedious. Especially when you just want to earn some money at the side missions.

It is also probably a good think that the game doesn't try to pad itself out too much. The combat feels great. The graphics show your character performing all sorts of neat combos. The kills slice guys in twain and send blood splattering everywhere! You can mow down entire groups of enemies! You can send them to their doom with professional wrestling moves! Despite all that, the combat isn't very deep. There's high and low attacks and dodging and occasionally throws, but there isn't much meat there. You start feeling this a bit on the later bosses that have a ton of health where you just have to do the same thing over and over in order to defeat them.

All that said, I really enjoyed this game. Any adult who has a Wii and is more of a core gamer should check this out. The game is fully of crazy action and over-the-top entertainment. It is a send up of action movies and video games and just absolutely feels right. This is like one of those movies you start talking about immediately afterwards with your friends and say, "Did you see that? It was amazing!"

I usually don't hesitate to post spoilers because it is assumed here that I will be talking about my progress in a game which can include anything I have seen. But since so much of the enjoyment of No More Heroes is discovering the story and references in it, I feel I must put in this intermediate paragraph.

That said, there were so many great moments I experience in playing through this game and encountering all the bosses:

Destroyman was hilarious. A postal worker that thinks he's a superhero, complete with nipple guns and crotch rockets? And the way he makes Travis fall for his obvious tricks is a delight.

The death scene where Holly puts the grenade in her mouth and her head explodes is a classic 'oh my fucking god I can't believe that' moment.

The hilarious brain machine contraption in the next fight was just classic and sort of reminded me of Terry Gilliam or Jean-Pierre Jeunet. I knew that this fight would end before it started, but I figured Travis (or the machine itself) would be the one to do it.

Rank 4 might have been my favorite fight. Half the level is a dream sequence where your character is the space ship in a shoot 'em up sequence. And the boss fight was probably my favorite in the game (only Destroyman comes close). It is just staged so well. From the set up as a date at the theater between Travis and Sylvia to the boss performing an on-stage magical act and you acting like an actual member of the audience to the fight itself which involves the magician turning the screen upside down and includes an interlude where you are put into and escape from a magical trick box, to the cinema after defeating him. As I said, it is staged incredibly well.

My favorite answering machine message from the video store is the one where they say that instead of returning the porno you rented, you instead returned a copy that cuts off two minutes into it.

If I had my suspicions that the boss fights in this game were a send-up of Metal Gear Solid, the final boss fight confirmed it. First, the games finishes demolishing the fourth wall by having Jeane comment on how if she told you her story, it would increase the game's rating which could delay it... and then they might have to call the game No More Heroes Forever (a classic video game in joke). Then Travis says to just fast forward through it. So you literally get a fast forwarded scene through tons of expository dialogue where Jeane reveals a life of abuse, incest, whoring herself out, training to be a killer, and getting her revenge. It was great.

Then in the "real ending" after defeating Henry, Travis argues that he can't reveal new plot now since the game is over and they have a great conversation about how the game should end to some totally kick ass music.

As you can tell, I found No More Heroes to be a great experience.

Zelda vs Metroid vs Contra

2008-01-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine asked me very politely to do a post on my blog. His first two topics were things that I'm just not inspired to write about and similarly am not really inspired to play their games (except maybe a brief rant on how can New York suck so much in Double Dribble). But the third is definitely deserving of a topic:

What is your favorite between Metroid, Zelda and Contra? And why.

This is a great question. Especially because the answer changes depending on exactly how you look at the question.

All three of the original games are great and all made my list of Top 50 NES games when I made it way back when. That list would change now. Contra might move ahead of Zelda or it might not. You see, if the question were which of these games (NES originals) has the best memories for me, the answer is hands down, Zelda. I received Zelda with my NES for Hanukah of 1987 and that game was my world for many months and filled me with such joy and excitement. I played Contra at a friend's house and enjoyed it, but didn't actually own it for myself and play it through until 1997. Metroid I played a few times at friends houses, but didn't actually own that cartridge until 2002. So of the three original games, Zelda has my favorite memories.

If, though, the question is which of the original games is my favorite to play, then the answer is easily Contra (I'm talking about the NES games here as the Contra arcade game wasn't as good). Contra is the game of the three that has aged the best and is still a lot of fun to play today.

Metroid and Zelda were both revolutionary when they were released. Indeed, they both pioneered open-ended exploration and tantalizing glimpses of areas inaccessible without possession of the proper equipment. But they both have what, by today's standards, would be considered horrible design flaws. Metroid has a huge, open world that is easy to get lost in. Games back then did have automaps so this is somewhat forgivable. But unlike Zelda which also didn't automap the overworld (and did automap the dungeons and come with a mostly complete map in the box), the rooms and corridors weren't on an exact grid so mapping the game with graph paper or the like was and is extremely tedious. Of course, today you can just get a map off the internet, but that takes away from the exploration aspect of the game. Another flaw both the original Metroid and Zelda share is that they have no easy way to end the game and save your progress without dying (Zelda did have an undocumented way to do this, but it was roughly equivalent to dying except it didn't increase your death count). Unfortunately, when you died in Metroid you started back at the beginning with very low health and low missiles. Since there was no easy way to recharge these, you had to waste a lot of time not only backtracking, but also getting your health and items back to their correct status. In Zelda, this problem was mitigated by only having to restart at the beginning of dungeons when you died and by having less total health and enemies more generously dropping it. Zelda did suffer more from one problem than Metroid did: having to bomb random areas. Bombs were a limited resource in Zelda and many vital resources were located behind rocks that needed bombing. There were no clues as to where these bombable areas were so a player would have to randomly bomb places and then restock their bombs and then try again. Burnable areas were almost as bad if all a player had was the blue candle.

Contra, being in some regards a simpler game than either of the above, doesn't possess such flaws. It wasn't really revolutionary. There were certainly other platformers were you ran, jumped, and shot at things. But none were quite as polished as Contra (including its sequel). It is difficult, but features few cheap deaths and can be beaten without memorization. It is amazing that few run and guns even through to today have matched its balance. The fact that two players can play simultaneously makes it even better.

Okay, so question answered right? Well, the wording is kind of vague so maybe he means which is my favorite series of Zelda, Metroid, or Contra?

Well, Metroid is the series that has my favorite game to play of all the games in those three series: Super Metroid. Despite coming out on the SNES in 1993, the game holds up today as being nearly perfect. And that's not hyperbole as I only played it for the first time last year. Super Metroid gets free form exploration with new areas begging to be explored when you acquire a new item absolutely correct. It takes place in a world that seems natural and organic. It gives you a map and save points, but doesn't hold you by the hand instead gently nudging you in the right direction with level design. It's an amazing game and I would recommend it to everyone.

The other series have had great games. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening is my favorite in the series and there is a lot to recommend in Link to the Past as well. And I haven't even played any of the 3D Zeldas and I know many hold up Ocarina of Time to be one of the best games ever (of course they also tend to be at least five years younger than me). I'll get around to trying Ocarina at some point, but I highly doubt it can usurp Super Metroid. As to the Contra series, the first three games were all very good, but the original is probably still the best (granted, I haven't tried the recently released Contra 4) and I know it doesn't reach Super Metroid's level.

Finally, the question could be asking which series overall is my favorite?

There my answer once again goes to Zelda. With the exception of the CD-i games, every Zelda game has been good - at least at the time of its release. The first two Zeldas may not hold up, but every 2D Zelda since then has and Zelda made the transition to 3D very well. The series has always oozed quality and has what is probably the most quality and the most average quality of any series.

Metroid comes close to the Zelda series as all of its games are good except Metroid II which I think is only above average (though some think much less of it). Super Metroid is probably one of the best games of all time, but the original Metroid doesn't hold up, Metroid II barely does, and Fusion is fun, but flawed. Zero Mission is a great remake of the original game that is worth playing, but is also "merely" good. I have no experience with the 3D Metroids. All of them are supposed to be good, but not amazing and so while the Zelda series probably averages out to very good, the Metroid series only averages out to good.

The Contra series had three good to very good games and then unfortunately the PlayStation Contras came along which were awful. The PS2 Contras were good, though Shattered Soldier was ridiculously difficult and Neo Contra didn't feel like a Contra game. Contra 4 is by all accounts very good, but that still puts Contra at a notch below the other series.

So there you go, a very long-winded explanation of which among Zelda, Contra, and Metroid is my favorite and why.

No More Heroes - Ranked 7th

2008-01-27T10:47:00.001-07:00

Why did I get this game? Well the premise is that you play as an American anime nerd named Travis Touchdown who wins a real life light saber on eBay and decides to use it to become the world's best assassin. How can one not want to play that game? Additionally, the game play is supposed to be a mish-mash of Devil May Cry and Grand Theft Auto. All of this is presented in a neat cel-shaded aesthetic.

My overall impression of the game so far is that it's awesome despite having some flaws.

Some of the gameplay works very well. The swordplay mechanics are great. I love slashing at foes, attempting to kill one while avoiding others, and putting together combos of slashes and wrestling moves. The motion controls of the wii remote are very well used in this game. It probably would have been too error prone to attempt to determine whether the player was making a horizontal or vertical strike, so instead the A button slashes and whether it is horizontal or vertical depends on the position of the remote. Additionally, motion controls are used for winning battles of strength, wrestling moves, and finishing blows and they work perfectly for those.

Battles tend to be frenetic and intense - especially when you are taking on multiple thugs at once. You have to strike a balance between finishing off the foe you are attacking and dealing with the other foes surrounding you. After taking down one foe, you often need to immediately dodge out of the way to avoid the blow coming from the guy that ran up next to you while you were fighting. All this slashing, dodging, and waving the controllers around is amplified during boss fights. The boss fights are very well done with each boss having unique attacks and moves that you have to learn in order to defeat them.

Unfortunately, the gameplay mechanics aren't all roses. The camera in this game is pretty bad. You often have to move it as much as you move your character which is nearly always a bad sign. The fact that the camera doesn't move well with you character can absolutely wreck you when fighting a lot of enemies and especially in boss fights.

The game takes place in a fictional California town of Santa Destroy. While the game was compared to Grand Theft Auto in terms of freely roaming the city, this description isn't really apt as there is precious little to do in the city. While there is other traffic and pedestrians you see and can hit while walking around or riding your motorcycle, they never react to you, making the city feel pretty lifeless. Really, I think it is best to think of the city as more of a hub than the open cities of the GTA games. In the city you can go to various shops or take on side missions to make money before going to the fuller levels where you will fight the next ranked assassin.

For a game with such a bizarre premise, it is actually more subtly wacky than I would have thought. The game has a kind of internal logical consistency even if it wouldn't make any sense in the real world. The characters you meet all have bizarre philosophies about life, how to get ahead, and what to do, but they involve things like cleanliness, collecting balls, and using the force while avoiding the garden of madness. The dialogue is similarly just subtly bizarre. Kind of like a cross between David Lynch and Hideo Kojima. Seriously, the conversations you have with the bosses before and after you fight them have a very Metal Gear Solid feel to them. Characters wax philosophical when they should be killing each other and it doesn't really make sense. All this does make the plot a little opaque and hard to pick up. The background for the story was done in two lines and the fight with the 8th ranked assassin contained one or several plot points that made no sense to me.

Besides the poor camera and lifeless city, my other big complaint is how the side missions work. You need to go to one location to get them, then drive to wherever the mission is located, and then if you fail it, go all the way to where you got the job and then back on to the starting locating to try it again. Other minor complaints include odd graphical issues (textures and pop-in) and characters and especially your bike getting stuck on terrain and other obstacles.

Still, the game gets so many details right, that it is easy to overlook the big things it does wrong. Details include:

Travis' apartment being decked out with anime stuff. Posters on the walls, a giant gundam in one corner, toys on the shelves, anime woman pillows, his cat occasionally grabbing onto the fish hanging on his fan, and a tissue box by the tv chair.

The fact that to recharge your light-saber, you make a masturbating motion (and Travis acts like he is doing just that)

Wrestling references (predominantly Mexican wrestling references) peppered throughout the game including trading cards of wrestlers, and a mysterious acquaintance who leaves you notes and helps you remember moves.

Moai statues scattered throughout the city.

The fact that, during the loading scenes you can make the spinning "wait" star bounce and send it flying around.

After you kill each assassin there is a message on your answering machine from the video store about some adult video you ordered or that is overdue.

8-bit style victory screen after you kill an assassin and take their rank.

Customizable outfit of sunglasses, leather jacket, jeans, belt, and t-shirt (all of which can be bought, or for t-shirts, found in dumpsters).

Receiving cell phone calls where the Wii remote vibrates and then the person's voice comes out of the remote.

Dialogue such as "If challenge were a taste, you'd be quite delicious!"

Bitstream of Consciousness is back (hopefully)

2008-01-26T23:22:00.000-07:00

So moving across the country, starting a new job, dealing with New York hours - all of these things have conspired to prevent me from chronicling the video games that I'm playing. And I certainly have been playing games, including Planet Puzzle League, Final Fantasy Legend, Wii Sports, Excite Truck, Final Fantasy III, X-Com, and Guitar Hero Encore: Rocks the 80s.

Also, shortly before leaving Utah, I had an amazing party at my place: A night of old-school sports games. The ground rules were simple: 2-player games, winner stays, new challenger picks the game. We stuck to NES, and Genesis as our systems and it was awesome. For several hours we played games like Tecmo Super Bowl, Blades of Steel, NHL '94, Madden '96, NBA Jam, Double Dribble, and Super Dodge Ball. It was truly awesome. I hope to amass a good number of friends here in New York to repeat the performance.

Anyway, I hereby pledge more regular updates - at least when I'm playing games.

Sin and Punishment - Finished the game on Normal

2007-10-07T21:27:00.000-06:00

The other night, I finally managed to finish this game on Normal mode without seeing the game over screen. That means I continued probably about 15 times, but since you have to earn your continues, that definitely feels like an accomplishment.

This game really has some epic gameplay moments. The later levels really kick this game up a notch. The boss battles and stages at the beginning are good. But soon it just starts ratcheting up. You get a feeling of it when you are inside the ship and chasing the monster that has stolen Achi. You are then blown away when you get to the stage where you are on the flying platform zooming around all the battleships with planes and monsters flying at you. It is hard to describe in words, but the action is just exhilarating. After this level, the tone heads down a notch, though still remains well done while you are fighting through the subway train. Then the action shifts as the final stage is played more like a 2D side-scrolling game. This then takes you to one of the best final boss battles ever.

In the final battle, it is you against the planet earth - the evil planet earth. Once again, the focus of the action changes as you hardly need to worry about your health in this battle at all. Instead, you need to concentrate on protecting the good planet earth as the evil fires all sorts of projectiles at it. While you are defending, you also need to get your shots in at the evil planet. If you concentrate too much on attacking the projectiles, you will not do enough damage and either time will get you, or you will lose as the earth's health is slowly wittled away by the projectiles you miss. If you concentrate too much on just damaging the planet, it's stream of shrapnel will quickly decimate the earth and you will lose. You must strike just the right balance, knowing what you must destroy and what you can let through to finish this battle correctly.

I am undecided on whether I will attempt this game in hard mode. Given it is the end of the week and I've played this game a lot this week, I think not. But that is no reflection of my opinion of Sin and Punishment which I give a rating of 'totally awesome' to.

Sin and Punishment - Birth Model Ruffian on Long Island Subway on Normal

2007-10-04T16:34:00.000-06:00

This is the first game I have downloaded on my Wii's virtual console. Not because I don't think there haven't been other games worth downloading. The fact that I own most of the SNES and Genesis games on the virtual console dissuades me from them, but there are plenty of good TurboGrafx-16 games. It's just that I can't seem to justify to myself buying virtual games when I have plenty of real ones. Sin and Punishment is different.

Sin and Punishment is a game that was never released on the North American Nintendo 64. It was only ever released in Japan. Those who imported or emulated the game claimed that we in the United States missed out. The game was made by Treasure - renowned for making great action games. It was amazing and it never came here until now. Clearly I want to support Nintendo releasing never-before-seen games on the virtual conole so I downloaded this the day it came out. I wasn't disappointed.

The game is truly awesome. It's a bit like Space Harrier or Cabal or Panzer Dragoon. It isn't quite a first person shooter nor a shmup. Basically, your character is at the bottom of the screen and can only move right or left. You use the analog stick to aim the crosshairs anywhere on the screen and shoot there. Additionally you can jump and roll to avoid projectiles. Sometimes you move forward automatically and sometimes you are standing in one place. The action is fast and frenetic and relies on your reflexes to get you through every situation. The game is Treasure at its best and it really is a shame that it never made it across the pond.

The story is all kinds of bizarre and messed up. It is sort of like if Akira was made by a low budget studio and then really poorly translated when it came to the US. Apparently in the future (2007!) there are these monster creatures that are loose in Japan and a militia was formed to fight them. But the militia has started oppressing the people and a resistance was created to stop them. This group is led by Achi, a woman with mystical powers who compels everyone she helps to rise up and fight against the militia. In the game, you alternately control Saki and Airan, two members of the resistance. Achi shared her blood with Saki to help him and that gave him incredible strength.

In the course of the game, basically everyone except Saki and Airan turn out to be bad. The militia turns out to be studying and encouraging the monsters, not actually destroying them. Saki turns into a mech-looking monster. Achi turns out to have given her blood to the leader of the militia, giving him super-powers. He in turn has shared it with and experimented on others. Airan goes inside Saki's head and fights monsters in the future with her daughter to regain his humanity. Achi gave her blood to the militia commander so he would create a big army which the new monster-Saki could fight. This huge battle would allow her to totally remake the earth to save her purpose and the final battle of the game is you protecting the old earth as the new earth attacks it.

Wacky story aside, the game is great fun to play. I managed to make it all the way through easy mode without getting a game over. The way the game works is that you start with some number of continues (3, I think) and for every 100 enemies you kill, you get another. On easy mode, I continued several times, but still had about three or four left over when I finished the game. Normal mode is proving to be a lot more difficult. I can only get through about half the game without getting the game over screen. I'm going to keep trying throughout the rest of the week to finish the game on normal.

Contra III: The Alien Wars - Wall-walking boss in level 3

2007-10-02T19:52:00.000-06:00

I've been looking forward to playing this for awhile since the Contra games on the NES are definitely among my favorites. They are so well done in terms of level design and enemy placements and attack patterns. So I was excited to put this into my Super Nintendo. I was a bit disappointed.

It is enjoyable, but it just doesn't feel quite as good as the NES versions. I can't quite put my finger on what it is about it. Then again, Contra's sequel, Super C wasn't quite as good as the original either. And, at least for Super C I know that isn't nostalgia talking.

One really nice thing about this game is the weapons. The crush and homing missiles are very good additions to the Contra power-up arsenal and being able to have two different weapons and switch between them is great too. I would say that makes the game significantly easier, but then I've only gotten up to the third level. Still, all that is something I think the game does well.

What I think the game doesn't do as well is the platforming. The first two Contra games had different platforms that you could jump to, but it was rare that you had to constantly jump from place to place just in order to survive the environment. Contra III has that in the first level when the ground gets fire-bombed. There are various spews of fire and lava that you have to time your jumps to avoid and it just comes off as annoying. Contra's jumps were never meant to be as precise as those in Super Mario Bros.

The big addition to Contra III is the overhead stages that take advantage of the Super Nintendo's sprite-scaling mode 7 effects. Your character is centered on the screen and you use the L and R buttons to rotate the screen around you to effectively changed which way you are facing. It is certainly interesting and novel, but I don't think it is handled with as much care as the side-scrolling stages. I like that they are breaking up the action, but I think I prefer the behind-the-shoulder base stages from the original Contra.

I'm currently stuck on the wall-walker boss in level 3. I have to assume I'm just being dumb about it and next time I play, I'll be able to hit him while his eye is open without taking damage.

Zone of the Enders - Destroying the EPS generator

2007-10-02T15:51:00.000-06:00

My first impression of this game was that it was kind of a tech demo/experiment/half-formed game created by Hideo Kojima that largely served as a vehicle for the demo of Metal Gear Solid 2. I recently learned that there's a bit more to it than that. Yes, the game doesn't quite feel fully realized, but apparently it's a pretty good giant robot simulator that was improved upon and made truly good in its sequel.

Several nights ago, I couldn't sleep, felt like playing a game to settle myself down, and decided that I would start with this.

It really does a good job of making you feel like you are controlling a huge, mechanical, man-shaped robot. The two analog sticks allow you a good sense of movement in three-dimensions and the ability to lock on enemies ensures that you will always stay in the action. There are a wide variety of attacks, including both long range and melee attacks and there are also a variety of weapons and other upgrades you can get for your mech.

All that said, the game taxes your fingers on the controller as you often have to hold down three or four buttons or sticks in order to do what you want. For those who have played Metal Gear Solid 3, this will seem par for the course of any Kojima game. I'm not really sure how it could be improved, but it definitely takes awhile to get use to all the controls and what they do.

I'm also wondering about the strategy of the game. I can't remember whether I'm playing it on normal or hard mode, but so far pretty much all of the enemies can be defeated by using the same technique. While I know the game is short, I am very curious as to whether I will ever have to seriously adjust my tactics. Then again, given I stopped playing after some normal (but level 4) enemies were totally kicking my ass, I think I may have found the answer to that question.

Adventures of Lolo - Finished the Game

2007-09-30T21:52:00.001-06:00

My only complaint about Adventures of Lolo is that it was too short. It really had a great take on the moving on different tiles and pushing block puzzles on many other different games and even the few bits that rely on action and reflex are handled quite well. The ending to the game is truly epic with the best boss fight ever.

The other thing about this game that sets it apart from others is that you can take half-steps. That is, you can be half between one tile and another. This means that the solutions to many puzzles are different from other similar games and that you have to wrap your mind around new ways to do things. I must admit that it felt a little wrong every time I solved a puzzle using half-steps though I only had to do it about four times so maybe I just never got used to it.

Anyway, I'm quite surprised by how good this game is. Definitely recomended for logic puzzle fans.

Adventures of Lolo - Floor 9

2007-09-20T15:16:00.000-06:00

This was one of those series that always looked intriguing to me back when it came out on the NES, but that I never got into. I'm kind of glad I didn't, because at age nine, I don't think I would have appreciated it.

Adventures of Lolo is a puzzle game where on each level, the screen is divided into a grid. Your character, Lolo, starts on one square of the grid and the other squares are populated by environmental objects like trees, water, and desert, enemies of various sorts, and items like emerald framers, heart framers, and the treasure chest. On each level, you have to figure out how to collect all of the heart framers and the jewel from the chest without being killed by enemies or trapped by either enemies or the environmental objects. Since enemies always behave the same, the game requires logical thinking of how to block them in/avoid them so as to get everywhere you need to go. A lot of the game is block-pushing puzzles (like Sokoban), but the addition of the enemies adds a new and more interesting element.

I'm generally a huge fan of logic puzzles and this game is very fulfilling in that regard. The ramp up in difficulty is very nice. Each floor has five rooms and, once learning the pattern of how enemies work, I didn't really have much trouble until floor 6 or so. After several hours of play, I've managed to get up to floor 9 where I couldn't immediately solve a room and took a break.

In all, I'm really surprised at how awesome this game is. I guess it holds up well since the game is mostly puzzles, but this will definitely make it into my Top 50 NES games list whenever I decide to make a new iteration of that.

Chrono Trigger - Achieved all major endings

2007-09-17T22:27:00.000-06:00

I love Chrono Trigger. It may be my favorite RPG ever and it is definitely in my top ten all-time favorite games. I have fully replayed it from beginning to end four times now. It rocks.

I could go through all the reasons why it is so good. I could talk about the fact that there are no real random encounters. You usually see enemies before you fight them. Even better, when you fight enemies, you fight them on the same screen you were walking around on - no awkward transition to the battle screen. I could talk about how the game's battle sytem is great. It made the best use of Square's active time battle system by introducing dual and triple techniques - basically magic spells that require two or three characters to act in order to execute them. I could talk about how no grinding is required in the game yet the game is not too easy. The pacing is set up so that, as long as you don't run from/avoid every combat, you will never be overwhelmed by the boss battles but you will need to use the right characters and a good strategy to prevail. It also has a nice story with interesting characters and handles time travel and the mute protagonist cliche suprisingly well.

Anyway, I sadly do not own the SNES version of the game, but instead the Playstation version. Playing this on the original Playstation was supposed to suffer from horrid slowdown and be intolerable. I have only played it on my PS2 and there it is tolerable if not exactly good. The reason I bring this up is that the PlayStation version tracks which of the twelve major endings you get and unlocks various extras dependent on that. I have always wanted to check out the different endings of the game (I have only ever gotten the main one) and so having the Playstation version and this being the fun club RPG of the month inspired me to do so.

Some of the endings are short or just don't have much to them, but some of the alternate endings have a surprising amount of work put into them for things that are completely optional. The Oath, Dino Age, A Slide Show, and The Dream Project were all particularly memorable. Once again, I love this game.

Ice Hockey - Virtual Console Review

2007-09-17T16:19:00.001-06:00

Yet another Virtual Console review of mine has been posted at gamespite. This one is about the NES classic Ice Hockey that is still an incredibly fun two player experience today.

Ice Hockey

Super Mario World - Defeated Bowser with 96 Exits

2007-09-11T00:17:00.000-06:00

Well I have seen and done all that this game has to offer. I managed to find 93 exits on my own, only having to look for help on Chocolate Island 2, Valley of Bowser 2, and... Donut Ghost House. Yeah, I feel like a dolt for missing that last one.

The final battle was rather anticlimactic. The levels leading up to it in Valley of Bowser were fairly challenging. And most of Bowser's castle (the front door section) was tough as well. But Bowser? I guess I died the first time I got to him, but after that it was a piece of cake. I guess he wasn't that difficult in Super Mario Bros. 3 either, but in my mind he put up a little bit of a challenge there.

I'm really glad I finally made myself play this game. Even though I think I will put myself in the camp of people who say Super Mario Bros. 3 was the best in the series, it is hard to find much fault in this installation either. It is a lovingly crafted platformer with a great difficulty curve and a great variety of things to do. I think after stewing on this for a day or two I'll write up a review here. Thank you GameSpite fun club!

Final Fantasy III - Met the Earth Crystal

2007-09-11T00:08:00.000-06:00

I'm getting to the point in the game where going through it is starting to feel more like work and less like fun. It tends to happen to all older RPGs. Especially in ones that don't have interesting stories. You've pretty much explored everywhere there is to explore and so you know all the dungeons you will have to go through. It is just a matter of going through them all and the enemies there aren't exciting and aren't requiring anything significantly new in strategy.

This is one of the reasons that I skipped a little ahead of the proscribed path to get the earth crystal. I had just acquired the earth fang and I knew it would let me get beyond the statues, so instead of returning to Doga's mansion like I was supposed to, I decided to investigate to see what was beyond them. I encountered a dungeon and some enemies that seemed quite a bit beyond what I supposed supposed to be battling, but one room in I got to the crystal chamber. I now have access to all the jobs in the game (except Onion Knight).

I'm already contemplating what my final party will be. I'm thinking Dragoon, Knight, Devout, and Summoner. But I woud love to get a Ninja or Black Belt in there if I could.

Final Fantasy III - Traversed Cave of the Circle

2007-09-09T19:29:00.000-06:00

Man, this game is so old school in its story. Besides your main characters being the "prophesied warriors of light destined to save the world" basically you just go into each town, someone tells you their problems and you agree to help them defeat whatever evil is ailing them. It's kind of charming in how simple and cliche it is.

My current party conists of a thief (who has been kicking ass since arriving in Amur), a Knight, a White Mage, and a Bard who I am newly exerimenting with. I like how it seems like any party can work in this game. Though I had no problem dropping my scholar when he started seeming weak.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Virtual Console Review

2007-09-08T20:13:00.000-06:00

So another of my articles has been published over at gamespite, this one being a review of the NES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for the virtual console. The virtual console reviews are like regular reviews except that they take into account the modern status of the game - how it has held up today, how the save state capability of the virtual console affects it, and how it compares to other versions of the game that have been released (e.g., in compilations). Here's a spoiler for my review: not recommended.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Super Mario World - Defeated Larry's Castle

2007-09-07T12:49:00.001-06:00

Some levels can legitimately be said to have hard to find alternate exits. Forest of Illusion 3 is not one of them. I am just an idiot for not checking a pipe at the end.

The ramp up in difficulty in this game is very good. I think I may have died twice before I got to the Vanilla Dome. Then it gradually increased until, by Bowser's island, it was taking me about three tries to beat a level. That's just good game design.

I also took on all of the special courses. Clearly they are meant to be the ultimate Mario challenges, yet still be beatable by anyone with practice. Tubular, Way Cool, and Mondo (I think - the one with the pipes, the ice surface, and the forest level) were clearly the most difficulty. And then, once I finally completed them all the transition to fall and the enemies is a nice touch. Even though I find I prefer the original look - the gimmick of enemies that look similar to Mario has worn off.

My exit count is at 90 and looking at the map, I think I can see every area that I need to find the alternate exit for. This assumes beating Bowser's castle gives you one. Now finding all the rest of these exits without a FAQ will be a feat. Especially Chocolate Island 2 where it has something to do with my coins and time.

Super Mario World - Forest of Illusions 3

2007-09-06T21:02:00.000-06:00

I have a confession to make: I have never played Super Mario World before. That isn't completely true as I played a few levels of the Game Boy Advance version and also a few levels just to test the game when I picked up a SNES a few years ago. But I have never played a significant amount of this game. Certainly not much beyond the first area. My other secret shame is that I have never beaten the original Super Mario Bros..

So I finally got a chance to put some good play into this game and I it definitely live up to expectations. The game is so well made and so well put together. It is just amazing for a launch game and contributes to the Super Nintendo having the best launch in console history. The level designs have such thought and detail put into them with placement of blocks and koopa shells to placement of hidden exits to even background elements. Beyond just great level designs and tight play control, there are a lot of details that Super Mario World does very well. The way that the overworld changes and evolves when you beat levels is something I absolutely love. The relative non-linearity and sense of exploration is great too.

That said, I think I'm going to fall into the camp that Super Mario Bros. 3 was a more innovative game. Not that it's better. They are both very well done and near-perfectly executed platformers. But the raccoon tail and different suits in 3 seem a lot more exciting to me than the Cape and Yoshis of World. I do like that the cape has subtle flying controls, but I'm just not that into Yoshi. Both games have some great level design, but so far lack of giant world and Kuribo's shoe gives 3 the nod for me.

I decided to play through the game, attempting to get all the exits, without looking at a FAQ or anything. In a few hours the other night, I had gotten to Forest of Illusions 3, reached the Star Road, and unlocked the path to the Special World. I was having trouble finding the alternate exit to Forest of Illusions 3. I then got extremely frustrated attempting to reach the alternate exit of Cheese Bridge - I guess I need to master using the cape. I guess I could also take on Gnarly, but I want to save that for later.

You also may notice the fun club label at the bottom of this post. That is because Super Mario World is this week's alternate selection at the gamespite fun club. The point of fun club is to create a shared group experience of playing a game. Each week, Jeremy Parish picks a major game and an alternate selection. There is also a monthly RPG (which this month is the beyond awesome Chrono Trigger). Check it out!

Rebestar Tactical Command - Chapter 10: Rescue

2007-09-06T19:01:00.000-06:00

When I first heard about this game, I was very excited for it. It was described as being similar to X-Com which is one of my favorite computer games ever. As more details came out, I learned that it was only going to be like the battle portions of X-Com and not the base-building, research, and alien discovery parts. That was disappointing since, much like ActRaiser it was the combination of game types that really made the game special. Once the game came out, it got positive, if not glowing reviews, didn't do well commercially and quickly dropped in price. I eventually found it for $15 at Best Buy.

Now I've finally gotten a chance to try it and I regret not doing so earlier. It does pretty much steal the strategy combat from X-Com completely. This gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling inside as I have fond memories of X-Com. So far, the combat also seems like the more forgiving combat of the original X-Com rather than the brutal, pull-out-your-hair difficulty of Terror from the Deep. The interface obviously isn't as good with the D-Pad instead of a mouse, but it is serviceable. It actually seems like they could have improved the interface more. Instead of adding a big menu system, they could have made the A and B buttons equivalent to the left and right mouse buttons and having L and R cycle through menu options.

I am enjoying the game so far, but I can see that all the combat like this might get tiring after awhile without the other aspects of X-Com.

I almost fell into the trap of not considering this an RPG just because it lacked swords and sorcery. While the original X-Com did have characters increase their stats when they survived battles, this game specifically gives characters levels and has them earn experience for hurting and killing enemies. It also lets you specifically choose an ability the increment when the character gains a level. Anyway, this aspect plus named characters and story is enough for me to call it an RPG as well as a strategy game.

Bionic Commando: Elite Forces

2007-09-05T21:51:00.000-06:00

I love the original Bionic Commando. It is one of my favorite NES. Swinging around with the grappling hook is just so fun and it was done amazingly well in a game that came out in 1988. The game had a Game Boy sequel which I also have fond memories of, though that may be purely notalgia as I haven't played it in awhile. This then, is the third Bionic Commando game as is the only one developed by Nintendo (their American NST division) rather than Capcom. It is kind of an odd synchronicity since Capcom developed the Game Boy Color Zelda games.

I actually only ended up playing this game because I forgot to charge my DS the night before I left. Thus, it's battery light went red about 2/3 of the way through my trip. Fortunately, I had also brought my GBA with me and so I stuck in Bionic Commando: Elite Forces.

I had played this game about three years ago. I didn't get very far because the used copy I had picked up had the save glitch that many copies of Bionic Commando: Elite Forces are known to have. Basically, if you save the game then it will freeze up next time your helicopter encounters a truck. Because of that problem, I gave up on playing the game despite the fact that I still loved Bionic Commando. A few months ago, I found a complete in box copy of the game for super cheap so I grabbed that up.

I still didn't know if the new copy I had possessed the save glitch or not. So I decided to try to play through the game without saving. After all, there aren't that many stages and I'm a hardened old school gamer. I actually learned within the game that every time you do a truck encounter, you get an extra life at the end. So, much like the original, you never need to start over at the beginning. However, I didn't really feel like grinding out lives so I decided to test my chops and just see how far I coud get.

I managed to get up through level nine or ten or so before finally dying. I enjoyed my time, but I didn't feel eager to jump right back in. Some of that was surely reticence to repeat all the stages I had gone through before. But even so, part of the reticence is that the experience hadn't been that great.

It had been fine. Being able to choose between a male or female commando was a nice touch, but didn't make any difference as far as I could tell. While the game seemed like less of a straight port than the Game Boy version, most of the items, weapons, and concepts were the same.

The biggest issue was that the game just didn't seemed to be designed to the size of the screen. The Game Boy (and later Color) screen was not large and could handle significantly fewer pixels than the television. This meant that some games attempted to have as large sprites as on the television making the viewable area of the level much less. This appears to have happened here. The original Bionic Commando had a few leaps of faith, but even in these cases you usually had enough time to react with your bionic arm. In this game, many of the objects you need to grab onto are just off screen and so when you swing toward them and the screen finally scrolls so you can see them, you have a split second to grab on or you will miss your target. Fortunately, most of the levels have been designed so you don't die when this happens, but it often means you fall a great distance and have to begin a long ascent anew. And that's not too fun.

I did enjoy my time, just not greatly. I'm sure with a few more play sessions I can finish the game. Or even quicker if I dare test if the cartridge can save properly.

Boktai: The Sun is in Your Hand - Met the Solar Tree

2007-09-05T15:46:00.001-06:00

Boktai was a game marketed with a gimmick - the cartridge includes a solar sensor on it and the gameplay changes based on whether sunlight is hitting the solar sensor. That alone intrigued me enough to look into it. The fact that it was also billed as requiring stealth gameplay and was produced by Metal Gear Solid's Hideo Kojima further enticed me.

After playing the game for a couple hours, my reactions are mixed.

I liked the stealth gameplay. It took me awhile to get the hang of, but having to avoid or sneak up on enemies rather than all-out assaulting them is a great touch. The way the game encourages you to use stealth is by having your weapon do more damage to enemies if it hit them in the back than in the front. You can take down enemies with a straight on assault, but it will take longer and they will see you - meaning they will shoot at or rush at you. Once I got the whole stealth stuff down, I found myself greatly enjoying it.

The rest of the pure game mechanics work nice too. I like all the items and inventory management. I like the different attachments and settings for the gun. I like that you have to store up energy for the gun and can only recharge it in certain ways. I like the isometric way and the different weapons and the way they fire. I also like that there is an element of exploration to the game - you can move between different areas and will have to come back to some once you acquire new items.

As for the whole solar sensor thing, it really seems to make playing it a bit of a pain. Perhaps it is the way that the DS's screen is designed, but I found that when I had a decent amount of sunlight hitting the cartridge, it was hard to see the screen. If I held the DS at just the right angle, I could see the screen well enough and get sunlight onto the sensor, but it was not very comfortable. Actually, it was a lot easier to position the DS when I was outside although screen glare was still a problem. I do want to try playing it with my GBA as I think (or hope) that its screen is more viewable in direct sunlight.

I also decided I was an idiot because I have wanted to try this game for awhile, but kept waiting until I was on vacation in Nova Scotia where there would be plenty of sunlight. Well, not only did the year I finally play it involve only three days of sun while I was up there, but I also finally realized that Salt Lake gets a ton of sun and there is no reason not to play it there.

I do enjoy the gameplay quite a bit and hope to come back to it in the near future. Besides you get to destroy undead with the power of the sun. How cool is that?

Final Fantasy III - Exploring Goldor's Mansion

2007-09-05T14:36:00.000-06:00

I have recently returned from a two week vacation and in that time I did a lot of portable gaming. This was the game that I decided would be my main DS project and indeed it was the only DS game that was ever inside it during that time.

Final Fantasy III for the DS is a 3D remake of a game that was never before released in the US. Its advertising marketed it as a game never before on this shores that we had to wait over fifteen years for.

I was leary of them doing the whole 3D thing. I feared that the game would lose its charm. I feared that they would add too many modern RPG conventions. I worried that it just wouldn't be fun. Of course, I didn't really have any idea if the original game was fun. All I had played of it was a half-translated ROM ten years ago that I only got about ten minutes into before giving up over not being able to understand what was going on. So really I was just being a typical internet 'tard about how this game would be. I finally just looked at and read reviews, saw people liked it, and picked it up when Target was selling all DS games for $24 (Final Fantasy III being the most expensive DS game at $40).

Any fears that this older game would feel too modernized were allayed when I started playing. This game feels totally old school.

Despite 3D graphics (which, honestly, seem a bit unnecessary), a localization that is better than we would have gotten in 1990, and gameplay that feels a bit less grindy/super random encounter than what I might expect for an older game, I definitely feel like I'm playing an RPG that came out in the 8 or 16-bit era.

The plot is very simple. You are four warriors of light destined to restore balance to the world. So you go around to towns and kill bad guys. Really, the premise is the same as the first Final Fantasy game. That seems interesting because Final Fantasy II wasn't very good (and possibly not well-received) and so in its sequel they went back to the less story-driven style and also allowing you to pick your characters jobs.

Anyway, while the story isn't anything to praise and the gameplay is walk from town to dungeon to town, the gameplay mechanics are quite fun. Your characters get to take on different jobs such as Soldier, White Mage, and Thief. Unlike the first game, they can change these jobs at any time. The game definitely encourages staying in the same job for a bit because your attacks become much more effective the more you increase your job level (which is different from your character level). I am generally a big fan of such character customization and it totally works here. While you definitely get an advantage from training characters a lot in one job, there are parts of the game where you need a specific job or skills from a set of jobs so you will need to shuffle your jobs around. That works very well too.

I don't have much else to say except that I am quite enjoying myself. I didn't want a story-centric RPG, but rather a mechanics-based one and this totally fits the bill. It doesn't require too much grinding (I think I only once was not able to beat a boss the first time I encountered him) and it require a fair amount of battle strategy.

Currently I'm somewhat stuck because I can't figure out where to go in Goldor's Mansion. I'm sure there must be some false wall or something that I'm overlooking.

3 in Three - Review

2007-09-05T14:27:00.000-06:00

I've joined a motley crew over at gamespite.net, the website of 1up.com's Jeremy Parish. He has a vision to make the site a game encyclopedia. My first piece that I wrote for it was a review/retrospective of the Mac game 3 in Three. Anyway, I'll be linking from here to any piece I do there, so here goes:

3 In Three

For those who like numbers, I probably would have given it a 9 out of 10.

Guitar Hero - Complete all songs on hard difficulty

2007-08-02T16:50:00.000-06:00

Last weekend, I visited my nephew who is newly obsessed with Guitar Hero, having had the game for the week. He was still playing on medium difficulty, so to make it fair, I played against him on hard even though I hadn't fully gotten through hard mode on any version of the game. Despite that, I still managed to beat him about half the time. This inspired me to think that I was pretty good at the game and want to play more of it when I got back.

While I initially thought I would go through Guitar Hero II first because there were improvement to the play (easier hammer-ons and pull-offs) and the ability to practice specific sections of songs. But I have also heard than, in general, the songs in the first Guitar Hero are easier than those in the second. So I decided I'll try to get through this one first.

I started not having done any songs on hard mode and got through the first four tiers with little trouble. I think it was the fourth tier where I first failed to get five stars on a song. In the fifth tier, I got a three star or two and may have actually failed a song once. By the fifth tier, songs were kicking my ass. I think I got three stars on most of them. Cowboys from Hell and Bark at the Moon owned me for several times and I was only able to pass the both with judicious use of star power.

It is my eventual goal to five star every song on every level. I can't imagine ever getting five stars on the songs at the highest tier. It isn't like when I wondered whether I would ever be able to make the transition from medium to hard. There, I felt that with practice I could five star the medium songs, but I wondered if I would ever get decent enough at hard mode to regularly pass songs. Here, I think I can probably pass all the songs on expert difficulty, but I still don't have any faith I can get good enough to five star all the songs on hard (let alone expert). I seriously am not able to strum fast enough to hit all the notes in rhythm and when I try to do up and down strumming it just doesn't seem to be registering it correctly. I'll be curious to look back on this if I ever manage to master the songs well enough to five star them.

Starflight - Finished the game

2007-07-26T13:12:00.000-06:00

Well, this game is certainly short if you know what you are doing. I tried to play that way. I wouldn't go to a planet or area unless someone else told me about it. However, it is very early on that you can get information about the three items you need to win the game. I even played to get every possible (useful) artifact and it still didn't extend the game that long. The sense of exploration and discovery is much less when you play the game already knowing all there is out there. There really ends up only being so much to do. You can mine planets to get money to improve your ship, talk to aliens to learn the locations of artifacts on planets, and then go collect those artifacts. This is one area where Starflight 2 really improves on the original. Its expanded trade mechanism and... more interesting alien races and wider variety (even there are about as many spacefaring species) makes the game feel more epic.

One annoying thing that I forgot about this game was in regards to the Thrynn/Elowan conflict. I remembered that you couldn't have a member of the other species on your crew or they would be hostile to you. I also knew that if you became too friendly with one species the other would be hostile to you. I just didn't remember that "too friendly" meant talking to one before the other. I had about three conversations with the Elowan before talking to the Thrynn and basically lost all chance to get their conversations. So I had to start a new game and just get out to the Thrynn area so I could talk to them and get all the info they had to give before going back to my original game. It is really fascinating how game design like that was common back then.

I also encountered an apparent bug where, even upon returning their sacred artifact to them, the Veloxi weren't friendly enough with me to tell me where Sphexi was. That was the last location I had to go to before I destroyed the crystal planet, so it was pretty frustrating. I eventually looked it up and apparently they are supposed to tell you its location when you become friendly with them, but that never happened to me.

Another flaw of the game, not necessarily related to the Genesis port, is the complete absence of conflict. You never have to fight anything and are usually better off just running. A large part of the game is upgrading your ships' weapons and shields so this is a big let-down. Especially with the improved combat engine on the Genesis. Basically, the Uhlek are always too powerful for you to take on single-handedly, the Gazurtoid's immunity to missiles means you must fight up close with lasers so you will take a ton of damage, and with the Whining Orb (at least in the Genesis version), the Spemin will naturally be obsequious to you. Except for being attacked by whichever of the Thrynn/Elowan you don't befriend or the Veloxi after taking the Crystal Rod, you really never get into a fight that you shouldn't just run away from.

I'm being down on this game because it doesn't hold up as well, but its revolutionary nature still comes through. I still remember the great sense of exploration and discovery the game held when it first came out even if the universe feels small now. It set the tone for what a space exploration adventure should be, and though it wasn't perfect in its first incarnation, that is forgivable because of what it spawned. It is still a good game and I'm sure I would have had more fun if I had never played it before and knew none of the secrets. Still, it is dated, and the changes for the Genesis only helped a little bit (and hurt just as much).

Starflight - Exploring the axe constellation

2007-07-25T14:42:00.000-06:00

All the nostalgia brought up by playing Wing Commander inspired some nostalgia for additional older games I played. Through clicking around on some websites, I came upon a game that was near and dear to me in 8th grade: Starflight.

Technically I have the most nostalgia for Starflight 2. The second Starflight was the first one I played. I think I had just been flipping through a catalog of games for the Mac the paragraph on Starflight 2 really inrigued me. I remember I was debating between that and another game set in space and fortunately I chose this one. My Aunt and Uncle got that game for me for Channukah and I was immediately hooked. After finishing up Starflight 2, I pored through catalogs to find that the original game also got a Mac port and I think that was acquired for my birthday.

Starflight basically started a whole new genre of games. It more or less began the space exploration adventure genre that was pretty much realized to perfection in Star Control II (which I will say, without hyperbole, is one of the best games ever made.) The concept of Starflight was basically putting together a crew, outfitting your ship, exploring the galaxy, discovering new star systems and planets, collecting minerals, life forms, and artifacts, and interacting with new alien species. Starflight, its sequel, and then Star Control II just did such a great job of creating a great mood and atmosphere.

In Starflight, the four intelligent species on the planet Arth have recently discovered that they were seeded there by a colony ship from an old empire that was in danger of being destroyed by hostile alien races. This discovery also led to the rediscovery of faster than light travel and the construction of the first new faster than light ships. Interstel, a commercial organization, has agreed to provide you with a space ship and some intial capital so that you can explore the galaxy and bring back minerals and new life forms to further commercial and scientific interests on Arth. Shortly after your first voyage, scientists detect anomalies in Arth's sun and determine that in ten months, it will undergo a nova-like flare destroying all life in the system. Your mission now becomes determining the cause of this flare and finding a way to stop it. While doing this, you will encounter the alien species from the old empire and those that attacked it. You will discover the secret of the ancients, a species only known by its ruins, and their connection to endurium, the fuel used for faster than light travel.

Starflight succeeds largely because the exploration mechanic works so well. Each planet feels different, either in size, atmosphere, or biological or mineral content. In the course of exploration you meet aliens and must find the best way to (generally) befriend them and get information out of them. From these aliens, you get clues as to planets to search and locations as to where you can find new and wonderful artifacts to help your ship or your quest. The galaxy feels well-populated with planets and aliens and yet there is a key component of loneliness to the affair. You never encounter another ship from Arth (I think the instruction manual indicates that only about ten or so were sent out) so it really feels like it is you against the galaxy. Its vastness can be overwhelming, but by careful exploration and ingenious piecing together of clues, you can find all sorts of neat stuff.

This game was published by Electronic Arts back when they were interested in publishing unique and innovative games and when they became the Sega Genesis' largest third-party publisher, this game got a port. I was peripherally aware of the Genesis port because my friend Max told me about it and I knew that mining and combat were enhanced from the computer version. Upon acquiring a Genesis four years ago, it went on my list for games that I had to have. I was ecstatic when I managed to find a copy with box and instruction manual (although I didn't realize at the time, unfortunately without the map).

The Genesis version, so far, remains fairly true to the computer game original, although I was surprised to see that time hadn't treated the game as well as I had remembered. I was surprised since Star Control II is very similar and hold up fine to this day. I think the pacing, at least of the first Starflight, just isn't as great as I remembered it. A lot of time is spent going from system to system and planet to planet looking for minerals and there isn't a lot of reward for this. Star Control II starts out pretty much the same way, but there always seems to be something to buy with your mineral wealth or some more genuine improvements to make while in Starflight the improvements are fewer and less noticable. Also, the universe just seems to be emptier and a bit less interesting.

One thing the Genesis version definitely does improve upon from the original is the interface. After playing a bit of the Genesis version of Starflight and not finding it as fun as I had remembered, I thought maybe I would prefer Starflight 2 since I knew its story and aliens were better. Well, after playing with the DOS version for a little bit, I found I was fighting with the interface. You have to use the keyboard to select between different menus and are constantly hopping between menus for common things like maneuver, combat, land, and hail. I never realized how much superior the Mac ports of Starflight were with their mouse interface. Being able to click on the menus is so much easier. And it did away with the "maneuver" command, assuming that would be the default and you would always want to be maneuvering. The Genesis version does a similar thing in that you can always control your ship using the directional pad with no need to select maneuver in the menus. Also, the biggest improvement is that the game pauses when you bring up the menu. Getting attacked by aliens while trying to find raise shields or combat was always frustrating. The Genesis interface still isn't perfect as much of the commands can be streamlined away. This is evidence by Star Control II automatically communicating with a ship when encountered and then going straight into combat if that ship becomes hostile to you.

As I said earlier, the main enchancements in the genesis version (besides improved graphics) are in mining and combat. Planet landings in general are more interesting because you need to control the descent of your ship and you can move your main ship around the planet a bit without doing a full take-off and landing. You also now have a mineral scanner which can find underground deposits of minerals that your terrain vehicle can dig for. While the prettier planets and more maneuverability on them are nice, the extra mineral searching really doesn't add anything. I haven't experienced much combat, but the new variety of weapons and controls similar to Star Control II seem to make it much better.

One change that really bugs me in the Genesis version is that pretty much all the back story has been cut so someone going into the game will have little clue what is going on. There was never any elaborate back story immediately presented to you when you started the game, but the instruction booklet of Starflight laid everything out. It was presented as a briefing and gave you the history of the old empire as gleaned from the recent discoveries. You knew about why there were different species on Arth, how they got there, and a bit of what to expect outside. The Genesis Starflight booklet, while about as thick as its PC counterpart had all that backstory replaced by a short in-universe story by some science fiction writer. I mean, it's a good story, but it does nothing to motivate your exploration of the universe. Old-fogie rant: Why can't instruction booklets today have the same care and love as ones from even ten years ago?

There also appears to be some bug in the game as I have made the Mechans hostile to me and I have no clue how. I had a game saved just before an encounter with them. In the encounter, they were friendly and considered me to be the Noah 9 expedition. Every subsequent encounter with them has them attacking me with no chance to communicate.

So, this game isn't quite as good as I remember it, but the exploration and especially speaking with alien races is pretty damn fun. The game isn't that long if you know what you are doing. I'm playing as if I don't, but I've already discovered the three items I need to win the game. Now I just need to discover their locations or at least how to get to them.

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 07

2007-07-22T15:44:00.000-06:00

The golf portion of Wii Sports showed promise, but didn't really deliver. All swinging the remote measured was your power. Still, it presented a game that could be fun. And it got me interested in the Wii PGA Tour game. But games are expensive and despite positive reviews, I didn't see myself picking up a golf game any time soon. Fortunately, my friend Dan loves my Wii and loves a laid-back golf gaming experience so he picked it up for his "eventual Wii" and I get to hold it until he gets one.

It gets the golf experience very close to being accurate. It measures not only how hard you move the remote forward, but whether you angle it off to the left or right for a hook or a slice. This makes it feel like you have a lot more control over your shot. You also have the standard golf game aspects of changing clubs, shot types, and positioning shots. Putting is similar to actual shots, except it is more about lining up your shot while the actual shot mechanic is about being patient with your putt backswing.

To be honest, it is the gimmick of swinging your golf club with the Wii controller that makes the game. Especially multiplayer, because watching people line up and hit their shot is great. Golf, in general, is a sport that I think works a lot better as a video game. Mario Golf: Advance Tour was one of my favorite games for the Game Boy Advance. I think that this game is another solid addition to a multiplayer Wii library. It is a laidback game that all your friends can sit around and play. I also think that next year's edition could serve to really get the formula right. Still, I can see my friends and I playing many games of this.

Excite Truck - S Rank in all courses in Excite Mode

2007-07-22T14:04:00.000-06:00

There's something about this game that can totally suck me in. The mechanism to gain points are simple, yet there's a great give and take between gaining points in different ways and being able to control your vehicle and not crash. So, it may seem like you can gain easy points from tree runs, but you run the risk of crashing. Or easy points from drifting means you won't go as fast and won't get into first place. Or easy points from air means you want be getting any points from drift or tree runs.

And this game totally has the "just one more time" mentality. When you play a race and only get a B rank, you think that if you could just play it again you could do better... and you usually do. There's a sort of state you get into while racing where you are peripherally aware of the course and swerving this way and that and just trying to do what you could to stay in it and get the most points possible.

The multiplayer works very well too, especially once all people understand the mechanisms to get points. When I first started playing with my friends, it was always the case that the person that won the race was the one who won the match. Now, we are having races where the person who comes in second ends up winning because they have more points. This is just totally awesome because it means people can do well with different racing styles. Personally, I'm generally more concerned with coming in first rather than doing stunts to get points. But coming in first generally only gives me 15-20 points so it can be a risk if my opponent is very good at tricks to get points. Also, it helps that my friend Paul totally took to this game because it gives me some very stiff competition.

Wing Commander II: Special Operations 2 - Finished the game

2007-07-20T16:55:00.000-06:00

Whew. I have now gone through all of the original Wing Commander games in all their glory. From here on, I played the actual games. Ah, freshman year of college.

Once again, Special Operations 2 continues the story left off by the previous game - Special Operations 1 in this case. At the end of Special Operations, even if you successfully completed the last mission on the winning path, you find out that all you've done was just play into the Kilrathi distraction for they have now gotten a foothold into Deneb sector. Special Operations 2 sees the Concordia (your carrier) heading into Deneb sector to help with its defense. In the first mission, you get to escort the prison ship carrying Jazz to its rendezvous with another prison ship that will take him to earth to be executed. Jazz was the traitor that framed you for the destruction of the Tiger's Claw and got you stuck on a backwater space station for ten years before you finally managed to get another chance to prove yourself and clear your name. So Jazz escapes, of course. The other plot point is that your former shipmate Maniac comes aboard the Concordia with his squadron of test pilots flying the new prototype fighter the Morningstar. Eventually, the society of Mandarin (the group of human - excuse me Terran - traitors working with the Kilrathi) steals a morningstar and you have to track them down to get it back before it gets into the hands of the Kilrathi.

Special Operations 2 really starts to feel like more of the same. The story is a bit better than the first Special Operations and its always nice to see Maniac. His appearance here means he has appeared in every Wing Commander game. The missions aren't particularly special - mostly the same sort of stuff and none of them feel very epic. It is nice when you get to fly the new Morningstar and pretty fun when you use its nuke. Still, there isn't a ton of challenge and I almost felt like I was going through the motions.

The most interesting part of Special Operations 2 is that it ends like the first Special Operations. That is, even when you've gone down the winning path, prevented the Kilrathi from getting a Morningstar, destroyed the rebel base, and killed Jazz, the final scene in the game is the Emporer and his grandson talking about how not getting the Morningstar and the destruction of the rebel base were minor setbacks. They were able to distract the Concordia long enough so that it could not help in the defense of the Deneb sector. The Kilrathi were able to destroy the sixth fleet and the Concordia is forced to retreat. This all makes some sense because through the whole of Wing Commander III the humans - excuse me, Terrans - are losing the war.

So, what now? Playing through Wing Commander III and IV again might be fun, but that would require switching CDs, which last I checked doesn't work in Classic mode of OS X. Wing Commander Prophecy is now the only major series game I haven't played. It was never released on the Mac, but I do have the Game Boy Advance version and that version is mostly true to the original, even if changed to fit the small screen, slower processor, and less storage space. I could also play other games in the Wing Commander universe that I have never played - most prominently Privateer. Or I could play the series that was the biggest competitor for Wing Commander in the space flight sim genre: X-Wing/TIE Fighter. Or I could just move on to something else. We'll see.

Wing Commander II: Special Operations - Finished the game

2007-07-17T22:13:00.000-06:00

When I was young, I always thought that Special Operations was a much lamer name than Secret Missions. It was so much cooler to be undertaking secret missions than special operations. When I got older, I learned that Special Operations was the name of a unit. Now this unit certainly conducted special operations, but as a unit it became much cooler because obviously the missions the special operations unit undertakes are secret. Anyway...

Special Operations is kind of all over the place in its story. It takes place immediately after Wing Commander II ends, picking up right where that story left off. This is in contrast to Secret Missions 1 and 2 which are written so as to possibly take place in the middle of the Wing Commander campaign. Because you could install and play them no matter where you were in the main campaign, they were more or less written as side missions (though Secret Mission 2 was sort of meant to take place when the Tiger's Claw wasn't undertaking anything else.) Regardless of where it starts, there really isn't a coherent theme to the Special Operations story. You are to join Paladin's Special Operations unit. Before you can, you must deal with some renegade pilots. Once you finally get there, you start helping out some Kilrathi rebels, but there is an interlude where you encounter the Kilrathi prince Thrakkath and learn of the Kilrathi political machinations. Finally, you do end up saving the rebels. Wing Commander II's story wasn't great, but it was satisfactory for the game. Special Operations is all over the place and ultimately unsatisfying. It also ends by revealing that your victory was for naught as the Kilrathi attack you thwarted was just a diversion for the real Kilrathi attack on another sector. That attack succeeded. This is presumably where Special Operations 2 will start, so it is totally setting up for and urging you to get the next expansion pack.

All of my comments on the improved difficulty levels of Wing Commander II go out the window in the final mission of Special Operations. Not only must you defeat a wing of four of the toughest Kilrathi fighters, but you must also take down two capital ships: two Fralthra that have antimatter guns and know how to aim them. You are in a Saber so being hit by one bolt of antimatter does serious damage while a second will kill you. So, if you don't get torn to shreds by the fighters and (given the AI's unfortunate tendency to try to shoot through you) your wingmen, you will likely get killed by the capital ships. I can't recall the number of times I must have tried this mission. I finally went to the internet for help. FAQs and Guides didn't help any. Going to message boards, I find this is considered possibly the hardest mission in all of the Wing Commander series (the mission where you need to protect the Ralari in Wing Commander 1 being its only competitor.) I also found a sort of cheat - a glitch that will allow you to lock onto the capital ship much further than usual and with this I was finally able to complete the mission. Even knowing that exploit, it still took me a half dozen tries.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi - Finished the Game

2007-07-17T19:00:00.000-06:00

So Wing Commander II differs from the first game by having a cohesive story throughout, rather than just being a series of missions linked by a common theme. It isn't a great story. The hero is branded a traitor, or at least a coward by being framed for the destruction of the Tiger's Claw, his original carrier. The story is then that of his redemption by finally getting to fly pertinent missions again, reestablishing his reputation, clearing his name, and finding the real traitor. It all comes out as a tad cliche, but the plot would work for an action movie and this game is basically all about action. The Wing Commander III story wasn't that memorable either and, of the Wing Commander games I've played, only Wing Commander IV has one that stuck with me at all.

I last complained about how Spirit's voice actor in Super Wing Commander was just absolutely awful and killed the character. Well, Wing Commander II had a speech pack add-on and the version I am playing includes it. You fly with Spirit as your wingman and I am happy to report that her voice actor here is much better. She still has a Japanese accent, but it is believable here and her delivery seems much more natural. There isn't a lot of voice work in Wing Commander II, but it is all competent which is a far cry from that in Super Wing Commander.

Wing Commander II's difficulty is much more forgiving than its predecessor's. It isn't a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination, but each mission feels beatable. The biggest difficulty seems to be in getting through a mission without your wingmate ejecting. Maybe I'm just not protecting them as well as I should.

Anyway, Wing Commander II got the Wing Commander formula right, and the subsequent games just improved on the implementation of this formula with Wing Commander IV being the apex (granted I have not played Wing Commander Prophecy, but I have heard things). I really enjoyed playing through it and am glad I did. At least now I finally know why Jazz was such a bastard.

Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi - Destroyed supply depot in Novaya Kiev

2007-07-15T23:58:00.000-06:00

Wing Commander II is an obvious step in the evolution of the series. It didn't yet feature the full 3D spaceship models or FMV of Wing Commander III, but it did get it a good chunk of the way there. The combat engine is improved from the first one allowing for more interesting manuevers and intelligent behavior. In general, the artificial intelligence of both your wingmen and the enemy is improved. Capital ships now can't be taken down by small fighters, but require dedicated torpedo ships. The gameplay just feels smoothers. And the story...

The story now takes center stage as it will in all subsequent Wing Commander games. Instead of sort of learning what is going on by talking to the bartender and wingmates at the bar, there is a guaranteed story scene in between each mission where you learn something that genuinely moves the plot along or fleshes out a character. Even the typical talk, mission briefing, mission, debriefing sequence is improved. The mission briefings are more detailed than go here, do this, and have genuine dramatic moments to them. Story elements can actually occur during the missions - with you receiving transmissions or new things happening to affect the plot and change the mission requirements. And the debriefings have more personality than just whether you succeeded or not and how many ships you and your wingman shot down. Really, with this game they refined to game down to what they wanted it to be - a fun arcadey flight sim with an interesting story as your reward for completing the mission. And you can still see different areas and have different missions based on you success or failure in the missions.

I'm kind of bothered that they used the "partner who is retiring in a month gets killed" cliche, but I guess I can't expect too much from my video games. Fortunately, the Simpsons brilliantly parodied this cliche. (Remember when The Simpsons was good?)

Wing Commander The Secret Missions 2: Crusade - Finished the missions

2007-07-12T15:57:00.000-06:00

This post mosty contains two things that I meant to write in the previous post (or before that), but forgot to, but I guess it applies to all posts related to the original Wing Commander.

Secret Mission 2 is the first new Wing Commander content I have played. Super Wing Commander contained the same story and missions from Wing Commander and the first Secret Missions but then added a new story of tracking down and destroying the shipyards that created the Sivar instead of including Secret Missions 2 content. I really can't say why they did this and the internet provides no insight. Maybe they didn't want to do hi-res drawing/models of the bird-like Firekka. Whatever the reason, I think I prefer Secret Missions 2 to the extra missions in Super Wing Commander. They provide more of a change of pace (more escort, defense, and reconnaissance rather than all out attack) and set up the story for Wing Commander II better. More of a deal is made of the defecting Kilrathi named Ralgha nar Hhallas. Doomsday and Jazz are introduced better and the character portrait for Jazz makes him look decidedly evil which sets up better for his betrayal in Wing Commander II (When Max told me he was the traitor, I found it hard to believe as Jazz in Super Wing Commander seemed so inoffensive.

One reason why I didn't enjoy the original Wing Commander and Secret Missions as much as I could, besides their sometimes extreme difficulty, was that the awful voice acting in Super Wing Commander completely spoiled some of the characters and story for me. My friend Max redubbed the ship the TCS Morphine after hearing some of characters talk. Shotglass, Iceman, and Colonel Halcyon especially sound like they're on some super-downers and talk... so.... damn.... slow. Spirit is probably the worst of all because she sounds like they asked some American to affect a Japanese accent for her and it sounds so damn wrong and even borderline racist (Research revealed a woman named Christina Sauer did the voice.) Every time I read the dialogue that was given to the voice actors in Super Wing Commander, I can't help but hearing it in the awful voices and awful delivery and just die a bit inside. By not having actually heard any of the dialogue in Secret Mission 2, I can actually sort of appreciate it. It's refreshing.

Secret Missions 2 is also a lot less difficult than the first Secret Missions. There are still missions that I needed to try multiple times, but I always feel like I can get past it with skill, rather than luck. In fact, in Secret Missions, there are some missions where I feel I need good luck in order to get through it while in Secret Missions 2, it is more the case that when I fail I feel that it was bad luck. I actually would have thought that having to fly more patrol/escort missions would make the game harder since defending ships, especially transports, can be a pain, but the missions were all quite doable. One of the big innovations in Secret Missions 2 was that you get to fly a Kilrathi ship. The big let-down for me is that it was a Dralthi. Even upon first playing the game at Max's house, I thought they were the worse ships. Their shields and armor may be better than Salthi ships, but they are much less maneuverable and their pancake-like shape makes them a much bigger target. When Max told me you got to fly one in Secret Missions 2 I answered, "Why a Dralthi?" Anyway, despite still not liking them as a ship, it is a fun gimmick. The missions you fly in them can be difficult, but they are all doable. Definitely taking on two Rapiers (and three Dralthi) in a Dralthi was probably the hardest one, though it still didn't feel as hard as the mission from the first Secret Missions where you take on five of them in a Raptor.

One thing I have yet to mission is that, in my replaying of the Wing Commander series, I am finally playing them right. Well, I guess the most right way to play them would be with some sort of joystick, especially a flightstick-type one. But it seems you definitely want a more analog peripheral and my friend Max used the mouse so that is what I am finally using. When I first got Super Wing Commander, it ran very slowly on my Macintosh LC III and using the mouse just caused a lot of jumpiness. Plus, I probably still only had a one-button mouse at the time. So I used the keyboard so I could at least ensure that each keypress was a fine-grained movement. When I finally upgraded to a PowerPC, Super Wing Commander played fine but I was used to the keyboard so I kept at it. And I did the same thing for Wing Commander III and Wing Commander IV. Plus probably that whole one-button mouse thing. So now I finally am using the mouse to move my ship around the screen and while it isn't necessarily easier than the keyboard, it definitely feels more organic. Plus, it's a lot easier to plug a mouse into my laptop and play than a keyboard.

Now I have finally finished all the content in the first game of the series and it is time to move on to the true missing link that never came out in any form for the the Mac: Wing Commander II: Vengeance of the Kilrathi.

Wing Commander The Secret Missions - Destroyed the Sivar

2007-07-10T11:09:00.000-06:00

Did I complain about the difficulty yet? Yes, I did but it's worth doing again. These Secret Missions are even more difficult than some of the later levels of the regular Wing Commmander missions. Just when I think I'm doing alright, my wingman will die, or I'll catch sudden fire from enemy ships and die, or an enemy ship will turn how I don't expect so we will collide and I will die. And if that doesn't happen, then the game will freeze up and this always happens when landing on the carrier, so it is always after I have survived a long ordeal in the mission and think I've succeeded. Oh DosBox, when will you finally get to version 1.0?

I have to admit that the insane difficulty and length of time it took to complete The Secret Missions has made my enthusiasm wane a bit. Since I have basically already done these missions in Super Wing Commander, it hardly felt woth the effort. The cut scenes that show in these games are better than those in Super Wing Commander and I now have bragging rights that I've beaten the harder versions. Still, I am very much looking forward to Secret Missions 2 where I will be experiencing missions I have never seen before.

Oh well, the dreadnought super-weapon that destroyed Goddard colony is gone. Long live the Confederation!

Update: I wrote this stuff about game control in the post on Secret Misssions 2 that I really meant to put here.

Wing Commader - Finished the game

2007-07-01T23:06:00.000-06:00

You know what really makes this series? Besides the cinematics that show how you are doing, of course. The dogfighting. Getting a bead on an enemy ship, taking the right angle, shooting ahead of him so your shot gets there, firing the afterburners, and turning at just the right time to avoid a collision. One on one can be difficult enough, especially against a big gunship like a Gratha or Jalthi. But when there are two or three or even four other ships besides you and you can really only focus on one at a time, it's becomes a tense, teeth-clenched, white-knuckled moment. And I love it.

I don't necessarily love how much more difficult the original game is to the Super Wing Commander update that I played. Oh sure, that game made it too easy. I could complete nearly all of the missions solo. So I do appreciate that this game gives me a challenge, and I really don't mind redoing several missions over and over again. And if I were more willing to let my wingmate die or fail a mission, I would only redo the hardest missions once or twice. If you really want the best outcome - destroying the frigate or defending the ship with your wingman alive, it takes luck and skill. Well, except for the mission where you need to defend the Ralari. That mission is just impossible without cheating.

So, I managed to blow up the starbase that is the heart of the command for the Vega sector. I managed to do it without even any serious damage to my ship (even some armor damage). On the way, I destroyed a Fralthi and her escort of Krants. I destroyed the squadrons of Gratha, Salthi, and Jalthi before taking out the starbase. Okay, it helped that Hunter stuck around until the Jalthi squadron. Then I get back to the Tiger's Claw and Colonel Halcyon claims there is a ceremony for me above deck. And yet I don't even get the Terran Confederation Medal of Honor. Oh well, I'll have to be content with my three bronze stars, one silver star, and two gold stars.

On to the secret missions...

Wing Commander - Finished First Mission in Dakota

2007-06-30T09:16:00.000-06:00

Wing Commander holds many fond memories for. It takes me back to 8th grade and my friend Max. He had a high end 386 at his house and he introduced me to Wing Commander.

I was never much into flight simulators before then, and I'm still not, but there is something about Wing Commander that pulled me in. Wing Commander obviously took inspiration from Star Wars - specifically the idea of world war II in space. It presents an epic story of a conflict between humans and an alien race, taking place on the equivalent of an aircraft carrier. Wing Commander was crafted like a movie. Before each mission you can shoot the breeze with your fellow pilots, then the colonel gives a briefing and you are off flying in space. After the mission, you are debriefed, possibly given a medal or promotion or reassigned to another squadron on the ship. But what was really neat about the story is that your actions directly affected it. Successfully defeat a wing of fighters or defend the transport ship and your carrier would move into one system. Fail to destroy the enemy capital ship or have your escort get blown up and your carrier would move into another. This branching storyline even led to affecting the results of the war in the rest of the sector, and every so often you would see scenes of marines successfully (or unsuccessfully) storming an enemy base or a group of brave scientists thwarting (or being killed by) an enemy sneak attack.

The flying in Wing Commander appealed to me because it was fast, intense, and boiled down to the basics of what was needed to fly an attack craft. Basically, it took a very arcade approach to the flying. Still, the communication with your wingman, ordering him to break and attack, retreat, attack your target or whatever worked well to enhance a "you are there" feel of putting you in a war story. The fact that you could taunt and be taunted by enemy ships was a nice touch as well. The physics were always a little off. It was much more like you were flying in a gravity-less atmosphere than in space, but it worked fine and when you were dogfighting an enemy ship, maneuvering to get a good shot on him while avoiding his shots, you didn't notice it.

When I visited Max's house, I would only occasionally get a chance to fly. Most of the time was spent watching him fly and giving suggestions. The game was pretty difficult and I remember seeing him in the less successful systems, often flying desperate attempts to defend the carrier.

Having a Mac, I was disappointed that I could not get the game for my computer since it was so enthralling for me. Fortunately, an enhanced version of the game was released for the 3DO system and for whatever reason that version also got aport to the Mac. Super Wing Commander came on a CD, giving it better graphics and sound than the original, voices for all the characters, and included the first expansion Secret Missions and a new set of missions exclusive to it. It also ran at a speed approximating molasses on my LC III. But I didn't care because it was still the Wing Commander I loved. Despite the stuttering sound, the characters whose voice acting made them sound like they were on morphine, and game that played like, as my friend Max said when he saw, "a chess match" as you had plenty of time to plan your next move in between frames of animation, I loved it. I played through it again when I got a PowerPC that could actually run the game at an acceptable rate. I went on to play Wing Commander 3 and Wing Commander IV since they were released for the Mac and loved them.

A few days ago, I was reading about the new Wing Commander game set to be released for Xbox Live Arcade in a week or so and that gave me the itch. I had never played Wing Commander II before or its expansions. And, while Super Wing Commander had the same plot of the first game and its expansion, the second set of missions was different from the PC expansion. Not to mention that it was much easier - your ships had more missiles and the wingman AI was better. Thus, I decided that I had to play Wing Commander I and II and their associated Secret Missions and Special Operations.

I'm enjoying it just as I used to. For a PC game released in 1990, it is quite impressive. Sure the standard VGA graphics, especially the ship bitmaps don't look great now, but it is still a ton of fun. It is also a lot harder than Super Wing Commander, which makes it interesting. While I have made it further on the positive mission path (haven't failed any missions yet) than I remember my friend Max making it, some of the missions took a few tries. In Super Wing Commander I rarely had to redo a mission unless my wingman died.

And that brings me to the last mission I played. Knight and I were tasked with protecting two Drayman class transports. It was a brutally hard mission. A wing of Salthis and then a wing of Krants came after the first transport. Knight and I fought valiantly and I took a ton of damage, but we managed to see the Drayman off safely to its jump point. Then came the rendezvous with the next Drayman, this one carrying precious vaccines to help with the outbreak of a disease on a nearby human colony. Three Jalthi, the Kilrathi's heaviest fighters, came after it. I managed to lure one off and was dogfighting with it. Just as I finish it off, Knight radio's in that he's in trouble. I spin my ship around and fire on the afterburners to get back to him, but I'm too late. One of the Jalthi's finishes him off and he doesn't eject in time. Filled with rage, I pump the last of my missiles into one Jalthi and tear into the other from the rear with my guns. When I get back to the carrier, during the debriefing the Colonel laments Knight's passing and comments that it seems he just couldn't handle it out there. Bullshit! I retort that Knight gave all he could, including his life, to ensure that the transport made it in safely. But in the back of my head, I can't help but blame myself for his death. I had my Jalthi damaged. It was still a threat but not a great one and I knew Knight was tackling with two of them. I should have turned around quicker to help him, but instead I went for the kill. The extra 30 seconds it took to finish off the Jalthi are the time the other two needed to lay into Knight. A good man died, and I feel responsible.

That's why I love this game. No way am I reloading. I'm going to have to go through the game with that on my hands.

Mario Kart DS - Gold Trophy in all 50cc Races

2007-06-29T17:38:00.000-06:00

Man, you sure couldn't tell that my advisor being back in town has decreased the frequency of my game playing, could you?

Mario Kart is a game that I've had for nearly a year now, but haven't really played yet. There are a couple of reasons for this. The first is that I am not overly fond of racing games. I appreciate a well done one, but the ones that go for all the realism and car customization just aren't for me. I prefer my racers to be arcadey and fortunately Mario Kart fits that bill. The second is that, to me, Mario Kart is a multiplayer game. I have fond memories of summers and playing Super Mario Kart and later rousing games of Mario Kart 64 with friends (mostly battle on the latter). Several nights at college were spent schooling people and getting schooled in Mario Kart 64. But playing it by myself? It just seems wrong.

Still, that shouldn't be a problem. Mario Kart DS was the first DS game to feature online Wi-Fi play so I should always have an opponent. But I had heard of rampant abuse of "snaking" (whatever that was) and other things making the game less enjoyable so I had stayed away. My play time in Mario Kart DS, thus consisted of maybe a half hour of single cartridge wireless play against friends one night. But I was determined to fix this last Wednesday when some people on a board I frequent were going to play some online Mario Kart. I figured that playing with people I had some familiarity with would be okay and it would be a good learning experience. Sadly, a mostly dead DS battery and Comcast were against me that night and I never got an online game.

I was, however, inspired to practice single player. I had heard that Mario Kart DS was one of the best Mario Kart incarnations and I can believe it. The game plays very smooth, the controls are responsive, the AI opponent's seem realistic and fair, and you can see yourself learning the strategies as you play. The courses are also very well built. The original ones are very innovative and have plenty of interesting features in them and the classic courses taken from previous Mario Kart games are awesome.

In playing, I got a chance to practice my power slide and speed boost and thus learned what snaking was. I honestly can't understand getting too pissed off by it, but then maybe that's just because I can't really do it. Oh sure, getting the speed boosts on turns isn't a problem, but on straightaways it seems much more difficult to pull off and get a boost in the right direction. I'm sure people who have practiced the game and know the courses inside and out can probably pull it off without a problem, but I don't know that I really have an issue with people that put that much time into the game doing better. It certainly doesn't seem as complaint-worthy as what I've seen.

Once you complete a set of courses (A cup, like the Mushroom Cup), you are given a ranking beyond just what place you came in. The ranking definitely seems to make the game more hard core since it isn't that hard to place first in a cup, but the ranking depends not just on place, but also time to complete the tracks and mistakes made. The ranking go from E at the lowest to A, and then to star, double star, and triple star. The best I have done is a one star ranking and that's at 50cc, the easiest difficulty.

I still want to finish up Pokemon Diamond so I don't think this game will replace it in my DS, but it is definitely a game I will keep with me on a trip to play when I want something different.

Pokemon Diamond - Obtained the Icicle Gym Badge

2007-06-20T17:17:00.000-06:00

I have continued to play this game, on and off, for the past couple weeks. I'm really starting to have bouts of loving and hating the game now. Going through areas often feels like a grind - the cave on Iron island definitely felt that way. The game can move very slowly, especially with battle animations and switching Pokemon and everything like that. This can make the game a drudgery. And yet, the exploration of new areas and encountering new Pokemons seems great. So... I don't know. It held my attention long enough to spend an entire night going through the snowy area to reach the town at the end, which was good.

I still feel that my Pokemon are a bit underleveled. The Canalave gym didn't cause me much trouble, and the Snowpoint City one was only a little difficult (and had one of the coolest puzzles in it). I guess as long as I'm winning, it doesn't really matter.

I also guess I'm near the end of the game's story, since there aren't any many places on the map that I haven't visited. This is good, as I'm actually kind of looking forward to all the stuff that opens up when you beat the elite four at the end. People on forums I visit have been talking about raising different pokemon teams for different battle types and I think that sounds like a hoot. I also want to try to capture every Pokemon in the Sinnoh Pokedex, so this game definitely still has pull for me.

Excite Truck - S Rank in all Bronze courses in Excite Mode

2007-06-14T23:22:00.000-06:00

Wow, I'm not sure if I've ever gone so quickly from not getting a game to being totally addicted to it. I started playing this game when I got home from work today and didn't stop until just now, making about four hours of obsessively playing and racing.

I really just didn't get the game before. I had gone through the beginner tutorials, but that really wasn't enough to delve into what makes the game tick. I also sort of got the whole concept of long jumps and tree runs and other things like that giving you stunt points, but now I see where in the levels to look for these things, how to better achieve them, and the desire to push myself to do better stunts. The game also flows very well once you get into it. It totally drags you in.

The normal (Excite) races are lots of fun. Because you are ranked based on more than just where you place, you are encouraged to find all the best areas for jumps and tree runs and crushing others. This makes it so much more than just a racing game.

There are also Challenge races which I have tried in which you need to drive through gates or hit rings in the air. They each emphasize a different aspect of the skill needed to do well in the game. They are also fun and you feel like you could eventually S Rank all of them with enough practice (unlike, say the challeneges in ATV Offroad Fury 2 that just began to seem impossible.)

So yeah, I'm definitely keeping this game.

Excite Truck - Two Player, Nothing Unlocked

2007-06-14T14:59:00.000-06:00

This is the third of the multiplayer games I have tried with friends. My initial impression is that the game is okay.

I'm not sure why I feel that way, given that one of my friends thinks the game is the best we have played. It could be my general bias against driving games. I've just never been that enthralled by them. Or it could be the fact that, while the controls are good, they aren't great. Steering is very sensitive and you definitely have to adjust to that. It could also be that there aren't many tracks or vehicles unlocked.

I got three games (this, Wario Ware: Smooth Moves, and Super Paper Mario at a Buy 2 Get 1 Free sale at a GameStop about an hour from where I live (it was right near a friend's wedding). The woman there claimed I could return/exchange the games at any GameStop within seven days so tomorrow is basically my last day to do so. And I am seriously considering swapping this game for something like Rayman Raving Rabbids. But since I have until tomorrow, I'll try to unlock some more stuff and see if I enjoy it more.

Wii Play - Playing Two Player

2007-06-14T14:29:00.001-06:00

The reviews were fairly uniform: Wii Play isn't that great. It is more of a tech demo for what the Wii can do with motion sensing. Still, it is $50 for the game plus a remote while a remote by itself is $40. And everyone seemed to agree that paying $10 for the game is worth it. I'd agree with that.

When you first start up Wii Play, you have to start with the first game - the target shooting. Once you play that, you then move on to the rest of the games until you have played all ten. So basically, in a short period you "unlock" all of the games. I had to do this so that when my friends came over we could try any that we wanted.

In the course of doing this, I discovered that about half the games are worth playing: Shooting Range, Laser Hockey, Billiards, Charge!, and Tanks! Shooting Range gives you a crosshair where your remote points at the screen and you must shoot various objects that appear. It is enjoyable, but I am noticing that there doesn't appear to be much randomness to it. It seems to me that the same things appear in the same spots every time so that game may lose its luster after awhile. Billiards is a game of 9-Ball and works very well. It may be the best game on the disc. Charge! is a game of cow racing where you hold the remote horizontally and tilt it to turn and accelerate and can even quickly move it upwards to jump. While not as deep as Excite Truck, it works pretty well and the jumping gives it an added dimension. Tanks! is probably the best game on the disc. With the nunchuk attachment, you move a tank around the screen. A crosshair appear where the remote is pointing toward the screen and you can fire in that direction. Your shells will ricochet off a wall once so there is lots of strategy to planning your shots.

Laser Hockey, while not the best game on the disc, is the most interesting. Mostly because I really enjoyed it, but my friends did not. It took them awhile to figure it out and even then I'm not sure they totally did. The game is air hockey. Moving the remote up, down, left, and right does the same to the paddle. Twisting the remote clockwise or counter-clockwise rotates the (horizontal) paddle. I "got" this game the first time I played it, but others didn't. Regardless, I enjoy this game even if others don't.

Wii Sports - Playing two player

2007-06-13T20:30:00.000-06:00

So, I finally got my Wii last Sunday. My friends in Salt Lake are awesome and pooled their resources together to get me one for my birthday. Well, they put the money together to get me one. They weren't in stock when they were looking and it took a week before stores got in shipments again. Fortunately, people aren't crazy for them anymore so my friend and I got to Circuit City a few minutes after it opened and they still had about a half dozen left.

Wii Sports was the main game I played on Sunday and then ended up playing Monday and yesterday as well. Previously, I had tried it out at a friend's place and was very impressed by tennis and bowling. In fact, the quality of tennis and bowling is what inspired me to actually be interested in getting a Wii as soon as it had a few more good software titles (including virtual console downloads). So I knew Tennis and Bowling were good. I tried boxing and it was fun to watch and not bad to participate in against another player, but it couldn't say it was actually a good game. I'd heard baseball was pretty good too.

What surprised me was golf. No one I knew had talked positively about golf. There wasn't a ton of negative stuff said about it either, but it was never listed when people talked about the good games in Wii Sports. I can somewhat understand. It isn't very deep and it isn't really an accurate simulation of golf. It doesn't check the position of the remote when you would be hitting the ball and thus doesn't determine hook or slice that way. All it really measures is how quickly you move the remote forward. For all of this inaccuracy to actual golf, it is still a fun game. You still have to take wind, terrain, and slope into account when lining up your shot. Instead of having to press a button twice to determine power and accuracy*, you instead just swing the remote. If you put too much power on it, you will hook or slice. It is a very simple use of the Wii's motion sensing capabilities and yet it still really adds to the game. You can have a fun game of challenging a friend to several holes that requires moving about to determine your shots. It is entertaining to play, even alone, and lots of fun with friends. It certainly has made me consider looking into getting a Tiger Woods or other golf video game for the Wii that uses waggle.

Baseball is pretty nice too. You don't control fielding or base running, but for the most part I think that is fine. At first I thought it was all about batting, but the last game I played, my friend and I got into more of a pitcher's duel. The batting is pretty awesome, though. When I keep trying for home runs, I tend to fly out a lot more, just like in actual baseball.

So that makes four of the five games on Wii Sports being genuinely fun and I'd say that's a great ratio. Heck even boxing is fun when you have two players going at it and a bunch of people over.

*I know the modern golf games now use the analog stick(s) for power and accuracy, but the most recent golf game I've played was Mario Golf: Advance Tour for the Game Boy Advance so no analog stick. Before that, I think the last golf game I played was in 1993 or so.

Ninja Gaiden - Review

2007-06-07T00:13:00.000-06:00

The origins of this game are muddled. Most believe it was loosely based on the concept of the arcade game with the same name. The arcade Ninja Gaiden was a Beat 'em up brawler whose only real innovation was a button on the joystick that let you grab onto poles and bars. This game is a platformer, drastically different from the arcade game and seemed destined to be lumped in the category of "console games different from and superior to their arcade versions" like Bionic Commando and Contra. That's all well on good, but it is unclear whether the arcade game actually came out before the NES version. Even if it did, there wasn't much time, so the two games were likely developed concurrently. There are also those who postulate that the NES Ninja Gaiden ripped-off Castlevania. While it certainly borrowed the player/enemy life and power-ups in candles, those people are otherwise crazy.

Regardless of its origins, Ninja Gaiden stands as a classic NES game. People remember it to this day and have very fond memories of it. Generally, people remember four things about it: The story, the tight play control, the difficulty, and the music.

While there were certainly previous NES games that had a story and told you what was going on, Ninja Gaiden was one of the first to do it in movie style. Indeed, the game's main stages were labeled "Acts". Ninja Gaiden was a pioneer of the cut scene, or as it dubbed them, "cinema scenes". At the beginning, you are treated to a beautiful prologue, featuring two characters dueling in a field. One falls and you learn that this was the father of Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja of the Shinobi clan. Ryu finds his father dead and finds a letter left by his father saying that if he dies, Ryu should take the family's dragon sword and go to America seeking his father's archaeologist friend. All of this is told in beautfiul graphics accompanied by text and stirring music. As the story progresses, Ryu discovers his father's link to an ancient Amazonian temple, a madman intent on awakening a demon that has slept for 700 years, and the involvement of the CIA. While the story won't be winning any awards, it is written well, clever enough, and appropriate for an action game (as it would be in an action movie). Moreover, it is of appropriate length, whetting the player's appetite just enough between levels and serving as a reward for completing them, not a distraction from the actual game itself.

That is good, because the actual game is a delight to play. During the simple first level, you learn pretty much all of the platforming tricks. Ryu can jump a good height and has limited control of himself while in the air. Using his ninja training, he can grab onto any vertical surface and then jump off it in the opposite direction. This simple change to standard platforming really opens up a lot in terms of level design and is used very well throughout the game. By the end of the game, you will have mastered jumping onto a wall and then off it again to reach the desired platform. There is even one infamous series of jumps in level 5-2 that requires understanding of just how it works.

Beyond the platforming, Ryu generally uses his sword to attack the foes he comes across. His sword slashes out horizontally and he can do it in mid-air, so perhaps the similarities to Castlevania shouldn't be overlooked. Ryu adds to his arsenal by acquiring ninja arts which are located in the candles, birds, hummingbirds, spiders or various other small objects dotted throughout the stages. These ninja arts consist of basic throwing stars that shoot out horizontally, great flames that leap out diagonally, or slashing in 360 degrees in the air making you all but invincible. Each use of a ninja art depletes your ninja spirit level which is filled by finding power ups in the same object that ninja arts are found in.

All of these attacking techniques are used for the game's variety of enemies. Each enemy has a certain behavior it follows that must be taken into account. Basic warriors with swords or bats just move back and forth on one platform. More advanced boxers or crouching men lunge or jump at you when you come near. Other foes shoot or throw projectiles at you, some always facing you. And then there are the birds that home in on you. Those birds still give me nightmares. This variety and intelligence in enemy behaviors make getting through parts of stages almost a puzzle, requiring swift thinking to maneuver yourself into the right position and quick reflexes to slash your sword just when the enemy is in range. At the end of each act, you face a boss. Though big, colorful, and artistically designed, these bosses are generally not very difficult. They don't have interesting patterns that must be discovered and exploited, but rather simple ones that usually just require figuring when the right spot to repeated slash at them is. It isn't until the very end of the game that you face any truly interesting (in terms of challenge) boss fights.

Though the gameplay generally exudes polish, when you look close enough, chinks show in the armor. It is often possible to fall through platforms at the screen's edge. Worse, these platforms are often ones with ladders leading to the next area and so you may have to retry your jump several times before hitting it right (or worse, die in the attempt). The game also gets into trouble with too many sprites on the screen at a time, leading to flicker and difficulty in telling where you or the enemies are. Finally, and most frustratingly, the game sets certain points in a level for where enemies spawn. If you pass this point and then come back to it, the enemy will usually respawn - even if the first incarnation is still on the screen.

This is part of what makes the game so tough. If you are running away from an enemy to regroup and turn around to attack it, you will often now have a second one to deal with. Or if you finally figure out how to defeat an enemy on a precarious platform you need to jump to, you may find you've backed up too far and it will appear there again. The game gives you a health bar with sixteen slots in it, though certain enemies will do more than one unit of damage in a hit. When an enemy hits you, you are invincible for a temporary period, but you also are forced back and can't move for part of that which can lead to being knocked into a group of enemies and taking more hits, or worse being knocked into a pit. The pits are instant death and if you are in the air and are hit by an enemy of projectile, you have no control while you begin plummetting to your doom and have to hope you regain control of your character with enough time to maneuver onto a ledge or wall. But you probably won't.

Despite this challenge, people come back to this game because it feels tough, but fair. Much like the GnG series, when you die, it rarely feels cheap. It doesn't feel like you had no way to avoid the death, but rather if you were a little more careful or had reacted a little more quickly you could have been fine. Yes, the birds torment you with their dive-bombing, but once you learn how they react, you can dodge and attack and get them back. While memorizing levels helps and is probably the only way you will beat the game, unlike difficult games such as Battletoads, it is not required. If you move cautiously enough and react quickly enough, you can get through any situation. It is just very tough to do so.

Fortunately, while you are tearing your hair out over the game's difficulty, you will be listening to one of the best soundtracks on the NES. I'm sure the music is another reason people keep coming back to this game. Mega Man 2 has a great soundtrack too, but its lack of story means that its songs don't carry the same emotional impact. The music that plays during the prologue at the beginning is just what would play during the same sort of prologue in a movie. The music for Act 3, which is all about chasing someone feels fast and frenetic like a chase should. After being captured, mugged for the statue to reawaken the demon, and having your girl dragged off to be sacrificed, the music in level 5-1 carries the sense of desperation that Ryu Hayabusa would feel and in 5-3 the desperation twinged with hope that he might just get there in time.

The rest of the game is merely fine. The graphics for the levels and sprites are good, but not generally amazing. While there is some great background art for the level (which should be expected given the quality of art in the cinema scenes), it sometimes doesn't seem to have been checked with the sprites, so they can not be as visible as they should. The sprites themselves work, but aren't very special. They work, but don't stick out because of their detail or color. The same could be said of the sound effects. They are only used when they have to be - slashing your sword, an enemy dying, picking up and item, etc. The slicing/explosion sound when an enemy dies is the only memorable one, the rest are either beepy and bloopy or worse a bit muffled which is a problem when it is the one used to denote that you've hit a boss.

Whether this game is a great example of a game changing in the move from arcade to home console or a shamless crib of ideas from Castlevania, it stands up today. It is still incredibly fun to play despite the fact that better platformers have been made or other games have done stories better. I personally love this game, but I know that nostalgia clouds some of that. I like this game better than its sequel despite that fact that I think the sequel has more refined gameplay, more appropriate challenge, better music, and a better story. No matter how fun this game is to play, and just about everyone agrees on that, I have to concede that its relentless difficulty probably prevents it from being seen as great. I also have to remind myself that my rating system is supposed be both objective, and on a bell curve, so few games will rate at the extremes. Subjectively, this is one of the my top three favorite games for the NES. Objectively, it is a very good game that some flaws which are thrown more in the spotlight by how the sequel fixed many of them.

Rating: 8 / 10

Ninja Gaiden - One Life Challenge, beat the game

2007-06-06T23:31:00.000-06:00

So the official "One credit challenge" over at the (new, improved!) talking time forums is gone, but one member issued a challenge that I took personally. He managed to beat a game, not just on one credit, but on one life. It wasn't just any game - it was Ninja Gaiden.

This game has such amazing memories for me. I got it for my 10th birthday and loved it almost immediately. It just jumped out at me. This platformer featuring a ninja (during the late 80s/early 90s, ninjas were automatically awesome) totally did it for me. It played wonderfully, despite there being some glitches that showed through at the corners. The sticking to walls gave it its own unique feel. And the scenes in between levels (cinema scenes, the instruction booklet called them), gave the game a story as good as my ten year old mind would have hoped for. They made me identify so much more with the main character, Ryu Hayabusa. I used to play through the game, speaking all the dialogue in the cinema scenes, giving each character a different voice (Ryu's voice was my natural voice, of course).

To sum up, I love this game (and its sequels). I love it so much that used to play through it yearly (lately that has changed to bi- or tri-yearly). I love it so much that I use its seminal cinema scene as my avatar in any video game related forum I post to (see the picture in the upper left corner of the title of this blog).

When I heard someone else had done something that I had never done with this game - with my game! - I knew I could not let that stand. So I girded myself and played the game for the first time since 2004.

And I was rusty - It took me two tries to even beat it on one credit.

Finally having done that again, I knew there was one obstacle I would have to overcome in order to beat it on one life: beating Jacquio with no ninja art. You see, at the end of the game is a boss rush of sorts. After you get through stage 6-3, you face the Masked Devil, the Jacquio, and then the demon Jashin one right after another. Your health is restored after each battle, but after the first one, you lose your ninja art and all ninja magic power. So basically, if you want to beat the game on one life, you need to be able to beat the Jacquio and the demon with just your sword. I had beaten the demon with only a sword before, but never the Jacquio.

I tried several times on my own to come up with a strategy to beat him. I was getting a little further, but the best I was able to do was knock him down to half his health. Feeling slightly defeated, I decided to look up some FAQs to see if they could help. Getting a strategy from one of them, I attempted to put that to use. I failed, but I saw how it could be implemented to win. After two or three more tries, I had finally defeated Jacquio with just the dragon sword.

Now came the hard part of beating it in one life. You see, while I pretty much know the game inside and out, things can change slightly depending on what pixel you are on when you jump. And nobody is perfect. So I made many mistakes, dying in levels before the end. When I finally got to the end bosses, I had trouble with the demon and died there twice. Also, I decided if I were to attempt such a monumental task, I wanted to document it. I had my digital camera out and was snapping photographs to document my progress along the way. The need to do this interrupted my flow every so often and caused some death. Finally, though, I did it.

I beat Ninja Gaiden on one life.

I put together a pictorial essay to document it.

All is right in the world.

Guitar Hero - Completed all songs of medium difficulty at 5 stars

2007-06-06T23:07:00.000-06:00

I bought this game at full price - mistakenly since I thought I was getting an amazing deal on the Guitar Hero bundle. I meant to return it, but put it off too long and it was too late so I held onto it, thinking I might sell or trade it once I found a great deal on the original Guitar Hero bundle. I finally ended up getting a good deal on a plain controller so now this game once again had merit.

What prompted me to play it was talk of doing a video game party at some point and Guitar Hero is a great party game. But... at least in Guitar Hero II, you need to unlock some songs before they are available so I figured I should do that for the first game. I have now gotten as far in this game as I have in Guitar Hero II so I have some interested impressions on the differences between the two.

Guitar Hero II is definitely more of a polished game. The biggest issue is the control difference. The first Guitar Hero feels a bit more mushy in the controls. It's hard to explain - maybe just slightly less responsive or not handling the transitions between chords or strums as well? It definitely doesn't handle hammer-ons and pull-offs as well. There are little things too. Llike the way you progress between song tears and the fact that you get encores. Guitar Hero is still very fun, but I think they really got the formula right with the second game.

Some people (that I remember, those who do the Player One Podcast) have remarked that the song list in Guitar Hero is better than the one in Guitar Hero II. I'm just not seeing it, unless you are really into heavy metal. To me, they both have the about the same appeal in terms of songs. Each tier of songs has one song I really like, another song I think is good, one or two more that I have heard before, and one or two that I have never heard (or only heard in passing). This holds across both games. Guitar Hero II get some props because, though I am unfamiliar with the independent band bonus songs on each game, I do know the Trogdor song.

Because of its lack of practice mode and more difficult hammer-ons and pull-offs, this Guitar Hero seems like the more difficult one. Since I am just learning how to do hard mode in both games, I think it might be to my benefit to go through Guitar Hero II first before coming back to this one. We'll see.

Pokemon Diamond - Surfing around

2007-05-31T14:17:00.000-06:00

So I've been back to Pokemon for most of this week. The gradual pace of the game makes it difficult to decide when to write about it. Beating the Hearthome gym leader seems like an obvious spot, but I didn't really get much further then. It is only now, once I have been using the Surf technique and exploring new areas that I feel I've really kind of gotten somewhere - even though I haven't.

Rereading the previous paragraph, it seems to make little sense. The point I want to get across is that there don't seem to be major milestones in Pokemon. Beating the gym leaders are one of the few times that happens. But you always get a new technique after beating them so you open up more areas to explore - it is almost like Super Metroid in that aspect. The game is actually fairly linear in that you are supposed to progress from one town to another. It doesn't feel linear because each town opens up more stuff to do: try the global trade station, raise and breed pokemon in the daycare, explore the underground, so that as you get to each new area it seems like the game is opening up exponentially.

The battle with the Hearthome gym leader was my toughest so far. I ended it with only one of my six Pokemon left alive. This is despite knowing that all her Pokemon were weak to Dark attacks. I think, for the first time in the game, I was actually a bit underleveled. I've been concentrating on raising a core of 6-8 pokemon and so I guess my Pokemon are a few levels under where they could be if I was only worrying about 4-6. Anyway, the battle was tense, I was forced to use many potions and finally Mercury, my Vespiqueen, stood as the sole survivor.

And the surf technique is totally awesome. It opens up just a ton more areas.

Odin Sphere - Gwendolyn, Chapter 4

2007-05-24T16:00:00.001-06:00

This is definitely a game I probably would not have picked up if not for actively reading various game-related forums. I mean, I would have been aware of it, but would not have made an effort to pick it up the day it came out. While it is pretty readily available through online retailers right now, it definitely seems like this will be a game that is destined to become hard to find and command high eBay prices.

Even if not, this game is special because it is one of the very few games made for a home console that is done entirely in two-dimensions. I'm not even talking about a cel-shaded 2D look or 3D-rendered graphics on a 2D plane. This games features two-dimensional sprites that move on a two-dimensional plane, just like the way things were back before Bill Clinton was president.

And the two-dimensional graphics are gorgeous. It is obvious that a lot of time and effort was put into drawing them. They are large, colorful, and contain many moving parts. Apparently this game was something like ten years in development and I can believe it for all of the detail in the graphics. It actually took me awhile to get used to the way the graphics flow in the game. I am used to either modern 3D games that have many frames of movement animation for each character, or modern 2D games on portable sytems where the small size and lack of detail makes the fewer frames of animation less noticable. When I first started playing, it was a little jarring to see the character move, oftentimes without looking different every time. I've gotten used to it, and I can certainly understand that it wasn't worth the effort to draw fifteen separate sprites for every character's movement, but it is so different (and such a throwback) that it rattled me.

The gameplay is almost that of a 2D one plane, beat 'em up. You move left or right, enemies appear, and then you whack them in various combos with your sword. Everything happens on the same plane and there is no real platforming. There are enough varieties of attacks and responses to enemies that there is a good learning curve for each foe. Only the easiest ones can just be repeated whacked with your weapon. And even then, your character tires, so if you do nothing but pound on the square button without occasionally retreating, your character will stop to rest and you will get hit. I'm enjoying this, but I wonder how deep it really is. Will I be tired of the possible attacks by the end of the game?

The game has what most people would describe as "RPG elements" so I'll throw it in the action/RPG genre. Unlike most RPGs, you don't get experience and level up by defeating enemies. Your magic almost levels up in this way. When you defeat enemies, they release phozons. By absorbing these, you not only fill up any depleted magic points, but you also earn magic experience, and so when you have absorbed enough, your magic level rises. Your health is similar leveled up by eating food. So food both restores HP and earns food experience which will eventually increase your maximum. It is certainly novel.

My basic impression of the game is positive. I am enjoying it quite a bit right now. The graphics are outstanding. The music and sound is clever (and the English voice acting is above average as well). The gameplay is currently satisfying, but I have a nagging suspicion that it might get old before I've finished the game. We'll see.

Fire Emblem - Finished Lyn Hard Mode

2007-05-24T15:53:00.000-06:00

Well, I threatened to start playing this game over again and I did. I really learned a lot about proper strategies, leveling up and promoting characters, hw support works and what weapons and items to use through playing the game, so I feel I can definitely get something out of playing through again. Plus, there's more story revealed in Hector mode, which I went on to after finishing up Lyn's story.

I decided to try out Lyn's story in hard this time. It didn't really seem any harder, but then that could just be because I know much more about the game mechanics. The biggest difference is that you aren't forced to do the tutorial things and they aren't scripted. You don't have to attack guys with different weapons or promote Wallace. It was interesting, but as I said still pretty easy so I breezed through it.

I've started a little bit into Hector's story (normal, not hard - considering how difficult some of Eliwood's chapters were on normal, I don't want to be a masochist) and I like how you start out with a unique story of escaping from Ostia while assassins pursue you. I'm curious if I'll have any more insights into the game in my second playthrough.

Fire Emblem - Finished the Game

2007-05-17T17:17:00.000-06:00

After putting what was, according to the game timer, 45 hours into this game over the course of a year, I find myself quite satisfied. Yes, the later levels became frustrating because I insisted on getting through them without any characters dying, but eventually I came to accept that as part of the gameplay. The levels started feeling closer to puzzles where I had to figure out the right way to move my units across them so as to kill the enemy and not be too exposed. This game just really fulfilled my need for strategic gameplay with stats and item management. And I will admit that in the second part of the final stage, I just let Canas die so I wouldn't have to start part one over.

This game was made by the same people who did the Advance Wars and it shows. A lot of the mechanics and graphic styles are similar. It is more complex, involves more numbers, and has non-expendable units (when your characters die, they are dead for good). While I am generally all over fantasy role-playing stuff and strategy stuff, I think the game requires a bit too much for people like me who try to do 100% of what games have to offer. So, while I will not rave about this game the way I did Advance Wars 2, it is still an excellent game.

One sign of how much I have enjoyed this game is that I am tempted to play it again. Once beating the game, you open up additional modes of play, one of which adds new stages and slightly changes the story. I am all over that.

Pokemon Diamond - Obtained four gym badges

2007-05-14T13:47:00.000-06:00

For the first time in Pokemon, I am stuck. It isn't that I don't have things to do. I could explore the underground some more and get more interesting items like evolution stones. I could work on leveling up and evolving my pokemon. I could try to breed pokemon with interesting attacks. All these I can I do. What I cannot seem to figure out how to do is advance the story.

I like that, in Hearthome city, you can't immediately battle the trainer there. It is a nice way to set up for later. Also, this then exposes two possible paths to take. I ended up taking the one that heads North and thus encountered Veilstone city first. This was great because it allowed me to defeat the gym leader and use the Fly HM. Fly is equivalent to the Return spell in the Dragon Quest (Dragon Warrior) games. You can return to any town you have been to before. This makes doing things like checking the global trade station, picking berries you planted, and retrieving Pokemon in the day care much easier. It really seems like the designers went out of their way to take any tedium out of this game and just let the player do what he or she wants. The only thing left that sometimes annoys me is random encounters, but I haven't tried using the item that decreases them.

So I then headed to Pastoria city. I played around in the Safari zone. It is a neat concept - a new way to capture Pokemon. It can also be a bit frustrating if you are trying to catch the pokemon that are unique to it. When battling pokemon in the wild, you can get near assurance that you will be able to capture it. Since, in the Safari zone, there is no way to weaken or affect their status. All you can do is throw things at them. That makes them more likely to be caught, but also more likely to run away. Nevertheless, I caught just about all of the pokemon unique to the Safari zone (I'll get you some day, Azurill!)

Anyway, after defeating the Pastoria gym leader, I am stuck. I am sure I have to make use of the new Defog technique. I am also pretty sure I have to get past the Psyducks. But I cannot figure out how. It looks like I may have to consult an FAQ.

Pokemon Diamond - Reached Moo Moo Milk Cafe

2007-05-05T02:14:00.000-06:00

I haven't been updated in a while, but it isn't that I haven't been playing. I haven't had a lot of time, but I've still put about an hour or two into Pokemon Diamond most days. I just haven't passed any major milestones. Each time I play, I capture some Pokemon I don't have or I explore through a side cave and get a TM. So it just doesn't seem right to update.

I like that, since acquiring the bike, there are a ton of new places I can go. I had assumed that the game would continue its relative linearity and I would just find and fight the third gym boss in Hearthome. To my surprise (and delight) after exploring the city, you don't fight the trainer there yet and get to explore quite a bit more and see many more towns. I've been to like three different places and haven't even found a gym yet.

Granted, I also haven't found anything incredibly interesting. Just some new Pokemon and a few new items. Oh, and the day care is pretty cool. Still, I feel like I'm exploring which I love. And since Pokemon requires no grinding, I just get to explore and fight and it all feels natural and fun. There's just a lot to recommend to this game. I can go out and capture Pokemon I don't have (and give them clever names). Or I can go and level up my Pokemon to find new abilities. Or I can tool around the underground looking for new items. And I just get more options as the game progresses. I'm very impressed by this game.

Pokemon Diamon - Hearthome City

2007-04-30T12:33:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I totally don't get contests. I mean, I don't quite get the underground either, but at least I have an idea of what I can do and get there and what are strategies for getting the things. The contests just baffle me. I mean, the dancing one is just a rhythm game, so that's easy. The beauty contest where you have to dress up your Pokemon, I just have no idea about. I know it has something to do with the Pokemon's innate attributes and eating Poffin, and what accesories you put on it, but I'm fairly clueless. As for the acting competition, I just can't seem to figure out any strategy for doing particularly well. Maybe I just have to look at the movesets more.

Pokemon Diamond - Explored Cave North of Oreburgh

2007-04-29T12:58:00.000-06:00

My Pokemon gaming session last night was rather frustrating. Not only has no one taken me up on my offer to trade my Psyduck for a female Combee, but I also spent quite a lot of time wandering through a dark cave. I finally came upon some other trainers to fight and then a girl who I had to escort out back through the cave. Once I finally finish navigating the dark cave, what do I get? A word of thanks.

That's it. No super special item or Pokemon or anything tangible, just a digital character thanking me for getting her out of there. I'm all for philathropy in real life as a real person is getting a tangible benefit from it? In video games, it is all about me. She better appear later and give me something special.

Pokemon Diamond - Riding Around on the Bicycle

2007-04-28T12:53:00.000-06:00

So this game has totally hooked me. At first, I couldn't really see what all the hype was about, but after a week in, it totally has me. A large part of the reason is its open endedness. I haven't been at all in a hurry to move on to the next city and get the next badge or item. Instead, I've just been leisurely taking my time. I'm enjoying catching Pokemon and trying to get all the Pokemon I've encountered. I enjoy attempting to get them to evolve and all the hoops required in that. I enjoy trading them around. I feel like my Animal Crossing comparison is more and more apt (though my friend Rob prefers a Grand Theft Auto III comparison).

One thing I have taken advantage of is the apparent Japanese desire for Pokemon with English names. I first read about this phenomenon here. In the Japanese version of the game, you can only name Pokemon using Japanese characters. Likewise, in the English version you can only use English characters. However, you can trade Pokemon across different language versions of the game and they keep their name in its original language. English names are apparently cool in Japan and so Japanese players are trading hard to get Pokemon for very common ones with English names. I have done my part in this phenomenon by trading two low-level Pokemon named "Coca-Cola" and "McDonalds" for the other starter Pokemon. I figured, what could be cooler English name than internationally recognized American corporate brands?

I am feeling pumped this morning because last night I participated in my first battle against another person and won it. I figured that there would be all sorts of new strategies and ideas needed when battling against real people (much like there is a world of difference between fighting the computer and fighting a person in a first person shooter). However, my knowledge of Pokemon strengths and weaknesses and anticipation of my opponents' moves served me well and I triumphed despite the average level of his Pokemon being higher than mine.

The sign that I am playing this game too much? Last night I had a dream that my dog was a psychic Pokemon.

Pokemon Diamond - Got the second badge

2007-04-26T14:39:00.000-06:00

While this game still doesn't blow me away, I find myself becoming more and more attached to it. Yes, I think I have the fever that wants to catch all the possible Pokemon. This I will attempt to do. It is really kind of insidious how this game worms itself into you. I'm starting to memorize all the strengths and weaknesses and decide on which Pokemon are best to battle with.

I tried out the underground for the first time and it seems an interesting concept. It is almost a completely separate game from the normal Pokemon world. You search for treasure, avoid traps, and set up a secret base. You can also interact with other players through local Wi-Fi. So far, it seems kind of semi-formed. There is a good amount of stuff there, but there don't necessarily seem to be adequate rewards for doing it. I haven't tried everything yet, so I'll see.

I also played around with the global trade station for the first time. You basically put up your Pokemon for trade and anyone in the world that wants your Pokemon and has what you want can pull the trigger. It seems like a great idea. Right now, I am testing out the theory proposed that Japanese players will do anything for Pokemon with English names so I uploaded a relatively weak one asking for one of the starter Pokemon.

Needless to say, I will rarely run out of stuff to do in this game. Because, by the way, I advanced the story a bit by acquiring the second gym badge.

Pokemon Diamond - Got the first badge

2007-04-23T13:46:00.000-06:00

Before yesterday, I had never played a Pokemon game in my life.

I had seen the cartoon a few times. I had read countless articles mentioning the games and several positive reviews. I had played a demo of a spinoff, Pokemon Snap, at a kiosk in some store. I had spent the good portion of a train ride between Providence and Philadelphia overhearing a kid playing on of the original games on his Game Boy. Still, for the more than 10 years that Pokemon games have been in existence, I have never touched on until yesterday.

I'm not sure why. Just about every mention of them talks about how, even though they are built for kids, the battle system in them has a significant amount of strategy. I have heard of plenty of people my age and older that have greatly enjoyed the game. I often get obsessed over collecting everything in a game or doing everything to 100% and when I remarked on this to a friend once, he expressed incredulosity that I had not yet played Pokemon. So yeah, every piece of available evidence I had told me that they were good games and that I would enjoy them. With their first release on the DS being imminent and with a message board I frequent hyping it up and getting me excited, I took the plunge and bought the new pokemon the day of release and played it for about five hours.

It's pretty good.

It doesn't blow me away. It is kind of simple, but I think that it revels in its simplicity. You just walk around, talk to people, and encounter random pokemon in the wild. The battles in the game rarely get much more complicated than rock/paper/scissors. I really think the enjoyment of this game comes in what you put into it. You can get really into customizing the best battle team ever. You can craft Pokemon into fighting machines by choosing their attacks appropriately and giving them items and then assemble a team of six of them to take on all comers. You can attempt to collect them all. You can stalk through areas, looking for elusive rarer pokemon. You can jump through all the hoops required to get the rarest ones. I think it is in these sorts of things where the game really comes into its own.

In fact the game seems to pride itself on having a ton to do. While the ostensible goal is to get your Pokemon to beat up all the other major trainers' Pokemon, you can do things like enter fashion contests, explore the underworld, and really just make what you want of it. In a lot of ways, this series is almost aspiring to be Animal Crossing.

Also, in this version, you can finally use the internet to battle with your friends and trade with anyone.

So I'm enjoying this game, but it isn't blowing me away. It is totally hitting the obsessive part of me, and I can see myself attempting to "Catch 'em all".

Marathon - Sunbathing

2007-04-18T17:22:00.000-06:00

Another first (or at least one of the first) for Marthon was dual-wielding. And baby, let me tell you that it is fun.

I generally don't go in for first person shooters. It isn't that I dislike the genre totally, it is just that they all feel the same to me after awhile, so I don't want to play too many. Granted, I haven't played many (any?) of the top-tier such as Half-Life, System Shock, or Deus Ex. Still, I enjoy tooling around in well-built first person shooters and can definitely lose myself in them. It is just that the experience can become - unfulfilling. I think it may be something about never seeing my character.

Anyway, I definitely like that Marathon has a sense of exploration and cleverness to it. Doom is great mindless fun, but the level designs are nothing to write home about the and the key/switch puzzles feel perfunctory. Marathon has some great level design. You end up going up and down on various levels and crossing over where you were and looping back on yourself. The automap isn't strictly necessary, but can help a lot. Fortunately, the different areas in a level are noticably different and logically make some sort of sense for the level you are in. Really, I wonder where all this great level design skill went when Bungie made Halo.

The feeling of cleverness (or perhaps more accurately cerebralness) comes from two factors. One is that there are some decent puzzles in the game. Most have to do with switches, but the switches are so much more than door openers. They can activate elevators and other moving platforms and often have to be used in tandem or in the right order to reach the next area. The other aspect comes from the attack and fall back tactics that the game uses. There are no health packs to restore your health. Instead, health is restored at terminals placed on the wall (I guess it recharges the shield energy of your cyber-suit). Because of this, you often find yourself moving forward, defeating a group of enemies, then retreating back to the health terminal. Saving your game is also done at terminals and also encourages that type of gameplay.

I must say, I felt really bad when I got the "bad" ending to The Rose level because too many civilians had died. If I had been more judicious with my saves, I would have attempted it over again. Sadly, my first save from the level was already after a good number had died. Sorry, Bob.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - Review

2007-04-18T13:59:00.000-06:00

The movie Rocky is a timeless American classic. It is the story of a little guy - a nobody - who has nothing but a big heart and the desire to succeed. Against all odds, he trains, gets fit, gets a fight with the champ, and goes the full fifteen rounds with him. I want to say that Punch-Out was based on that story as the scrawny Little Mac faces boxer after boxer on his way to the dream fight. I won't say it, because it might be incorrect.

Nintendo released an arcade game named Punch-Out!! (no, I don't know why they used two excalamation points either) in the arcade in 1984, and followed it up with a sequel the next year called Super Punch-Out!! In both games, you played the role of a green boxer whose body was wireframe so you could see through him to the boxer you were fighting. These were among Nintendo's last dedicated arcade machines and were fairly popular so it naturally fell that a conversation for their new Nintendo Entertainment System was in order. The problem was the Nintendo didn't have the hardware to make a wireframe character or do any sort of transparency. Heck, they had to include a new chip in the game just to animate the large sprites of the opponents. So what to do? Shrink the main character and call him Little Mac. Now that he was a midget half the size of most opponents, his opponents could be easily seen. He may have had to jump to hit any of his opponent's in the face, but his small stature added to the game's charm.

Indeed, the game has a ton of charm. It distills boxing down to its essence. There is no maneuvering for position, just jabs, body blows, blocking, ducking, and dodging. No need to have the character move around the ring when the fun is in the punches. Indeed, the game was almost rhythmic in its fighting. Your opponent would wind up or show some other tell and that would be your cue to dodge and counter-punch (or even hit them before they got their combo off). This was the age when everyone liked sports games because they had more of an arcade feel and really concentrated on the meat of the gameplay. Tecmo Bowl is fondly remembered and even still popular among people despite, or perhaps because it doesn't have all the realism of the latest Madden.

The characters are also part of the charm for this game. Each is well-developed both in graphics and in character. Each is also an incredible ethnic stereotype: Glass Joe is an effete cowardly Frenchman, Great Tiger is a mystic Indian, Super Macho Man is a narcissistic well-tanned body-building Californian, and Soda Popinski the Russian? Let's just say in the arcade he was known as Vodka Drunkenski. In between rounds, they taunt you or complain about you. Piston Honda's panders to the camera ("Where's the NHK TV camera? Hello, Tokyo!"), Mr. Sandman makes puns on his name ("I think you're gonna have a nightmare tonight!") and Soda Popinski references his original alcoholism ("I drink to prepare for a fight. Tonight I am very prepared!") The characters are huge and cartoony, with many different facial expressions and moves that make them all feel unique. As mentioned before, Nintendo R&D3 team that developed this game created a special memory chip just to be able to animate the large boxers. It was only used in this game, but it paid off by making each of the boxers so memorable.

Finally, even though not explicitly spelled out, the underdog story in this game endears it with people and seems like an obvious nod to Rocky. Little Mac is literally a little guy - his opponent's gloves are twice or even three times as big as his head. Despite this, he manages to overcome odds and be a good boxer - one of the greatest depending on the player's skill. Through it all, his trainer, Doc Louis helps him out by keeping Little Mac jogging in a pink sweatsuit, and offering helpful advice like "Listen Mac! Dodge his punch then counter punch!" and "Join the Nintendo Fun Club today!"

The gameplay itself is largely all about reflexes and pattern memorization. When you see an opponent's tell that he is about to punch, you need to dodge and then punch back. Later opponents have special attacks that must be appropriately countered and responded to like Bald Bull's bull charge and Great Tiger's tiger punch. Some opponents can only be taken down by doing certain things like Bald Bull's second fight, King Hippo, and Mr. Sandman. The opponents get progressively harder as you move up the ranks, so the game has a really good learning curve. The final fight with Mike Tyson (or Mr. Dream is you have the version put out after Tyson's contract with Nintendo was up) is an order of magnitude more difficult than any of the other fights taking him down is a true test of gamer skill.

There really is little bad to say about Punch-Out!! It maybe could use a few more opponents, and there is really no challenge once you know how a boxer operates, but those are minor quibbles. The gameplay is fun, entertaining, and a definite test of skill. But my recurring theme through writing this is charm. This game exudes charm in its characters, gameplay, and stories. The fact that the original version stars a guy who went on to become an ear-biting rapist even adds to the charm. This game is a must for any NES collection.

Rating: 10 / 10

Marathon - Couch Fishing

2007-04-18T01:24:00.000-06:00

My father was an early adopter of the Macintosh. He got one in 1985 or so as a gift for some work he had done. Thanks to him, we became a Macintosh household. This meant that the computer games I played when growing up were generally a bit different from a lot of the other kids. The Mac had some fun games, but there were nowhere near as many as on the PC, and several gems from the PC just never made it onto the Mac. This was particularly true for first-person shooters. Wolfenstein 3D eventually made it over, but the computer required to run it was much more than the equivalent PC, so it wasn't an option for me. Doom was not ported over until after Doom II was (which was again quite some time after its PC release). What was a Mac user who wanted to play this new, burgeoning genre to do?

Enter Bungie Software.

You may recognize their name as being the developers of that Halo game, but that came later. In the 90s, they were crazy about the Mac and developed games for it. They also saw this new-fangled first person shooter thing and decided the Mac needed one. Their first creation was Pathways Into Darkness. That game was a first person shooter, but also included many adventure and exploration aspects. Inventory management and using the proper items at the proper time and conversations (with dead people) were all very important to advancing through the game. Jealous of my friend Max with Wolfenstein 3D, I begged my parents for that game and received it. It is a pretty good game and I definitely enjoyed it, but I also found it quite difficult.

Their next game, another first person shooter, this one clearly made to compete with Doom, was Marathon. Marathon was either first or one of the first games to do many things including operate on the Y-axis (you must aim your gun vertically as well as horizontally), mouse look (introduced in the sequel, but later retrofitted into the original), objective-based levels and levels with different physics or other game-changing characteristics, friendly non-player characters, and networked multiplayer. It is also known for its intricate story that is revealed through a series of computer terminals the player interacts with throughout the game.

Sadly, I had never played Marathon, despite being a Mac user. I'm not sure why. Maybe because I wasn't as bowled over with Pathways Into Darkness as I thought I might be. Maybe because I realized that first person shooters weren't my favorite genre, or maybe I thought Pathways Into Darkness ran a tad slowly on my LC III and couldn't imagine Marathon would run acceptably. Whatever the reason, I passed up this gem and had always intended to get around to playing it. Bungie had released the source code and eventually all the games in the trilogy for free online distribution. I actually toyed around with it two years ago, but I was on vacation, so having to play on my laptop without full-sized keyboard and mouse was a bit restrictive.

Last week's retronauts's podcast was about Marathon and really got me jonesing to give the game a go. I'm glad they did because I'm having a blast.

The game is very atmospheric, taking place in a space ship (the U.E.S.C. Marathon) boarded by aliens. Systems are damaged and power is not at full so many corridors are dark and lights are flickering. Your cybernetic suit is equipped with a motion detector so you can see when enemies are moving near (similarly, the aliens have motion detectors and will attempt to come toward you if you are moving near them). It borrows liberally from the Alien movies for its feel and it just totally works.

I'm also very much enjoying seeing the plot gradually unfold. Besides the aliens that have boarded the ship, one of the Marathon's artificial intelligence programs has "gone rampant". This means that it has become self aware basically and is affecting other systems because it has reached the anger portion of rampancy. I know that this AI, Durandal, plays a key role in the story (and sequels) and look forward to seeing it.

The levels also have "colorful" names, hence the level I am currently on is named "Couch Fishing".

Also, though originally released on the Macintosh and though I am playing it on a Macintosh, I am actually playing the Aleph One (Marathon open source) remake of the original Marathon, which is available for Windows and Linux as well. As long as I'm not just playing a game in an emulator, I'll put the actual platform I'm playing it on and not the original one.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - One Credit Challenge, 1:55 Round 2

2007-04-18T01:15:00.000-06:00

As a kid, I was convinced that I had read or heard from somewhere authoritative that it was impossible to knock out Mike Tyson in this game. You couldn't KO or TKO him, because hey, it was his game and why would he let you do that? He was supposed to be the ultimate boxer, so you couldn't take him down and the only way you could beat him was to win by decision after three rounds. About five years ago, I discovered I was wrong. Today I proved it.

Yesterday, I went through all of the boxers on my way to the top. I think for the Minor and Major circuits, I managed to finish all fights in the first round, or at least without being knocked down. Once in the world circuit, I was finally knocked down once or twice, but made it to Super Macho Man. He was finally able to defeat me, but after being ranked down to number three and then fighting up again, I beat him the next time. Mike Tyson then proceeded to wipe the floor with me. He did so several more times. He is just that much harder than all the other wrestlers (and Mr. Sandman and Super Macho Man are no pushovers).

Today, I just inputted the code to go straight to Tyson. After about a half dozen fights, I finally lasted through the third round and won by decision. After a half dozen more, I finally lived the dream of TKOing Mike Tyson. In Round 2 at 1:55.

I love this game. The cartoony characters are great. Great Tiger, King Hippo and Bald Bull were always my favorites, and Mr. Sandman just because he's from Philly. I'll definitely whip up a review of this in the next few days.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - One Credit Challenge

2007-04-17T11:57:00.000-06:00

This week's one credit challenge is one of my favorite NES games. Top 10 for sure.

It's such an ingenious concept. Fight against boxers with ridiculous tells that represent various ethnic stereotypes. You don't really move around the ring, but always face your opponent to dodge, dock, or block and then counter-punch. With the dodging and such in response to the opposing boxer's movements, it is almost a rhythm game. The game works because of the cartoony caricatures of opponents that all have their unique moves. It is just fun, the way that most old-school more arcadey sports games were.

Anyway, the challenge for this week is to knock out Mike Tyson (or Mr. Dream in the version of the game without the ear-biting rapist) in as little time as possible. Now, I did defeat him once in my younger years, but the only way I was able to do it was by decision (go all three rounds and then have 5000 points when it is over). I was never able to KO or TKO iron mike, so this will be difficult.

Trying it last night, I am definitely a bit out of practice. His super uppercuts that knock you down in one hit were destroying me and I never even managed to go three rounds. Oh well, I will persevere because this game is awesome.

Fire Emblem - Chapter 30

2007-04-17T11:54:00.000-06:00

This chapter teases me so badly. Just when I think I've found the right way to progress through it, one of my characters gets killed. If only I didn't care about that.

Super Metroid - Review

2007-04-14T13:19:00.000-06:00

The original Metroid was a grand experiment in making an open-ended, exploratory game. It had a huge world where you could go almost anywhere from the beginning. There was no direction given to you, you just wandered around, ocassionally discovering hidden passageways and different items. It felt wonderful - almost no game was quite like it. It was truly atmospheric.

It also had three major flaws. The first was that there was no automapping system and mapping by hand was an absolute pain. The corridors and passageways were of all different size, so typical graph paper wouldn't do. You had to figure out where rooms connected to each other, especially when there were secret passageways. Since so many of the corridors looked similar and it was hard to map (either on paper or in your head) it was easy to get lost and just wander around randomly in frustration. The second is that there was no way to save your progress. There was a password system which would have sufficed except for the fact that you only got one when you died. So when you started over, you had to not only start from the beginning, but also had to spend the time defeating enemies in order to refill your energy tanks (and possibly missile reserves). The third flaw was less prominent than the other two, but was just that some of the passages you needed to get to were a bit opaque - they were hard to get to or completely unobvious with no hint that there is even a passage there.

Metroid II: Return of Samus corrected some of these flaws, but made the way in which you progress defeating various Metroids and causing earthquakes that lowered lava/acid. So, pretty weird.

Super Metroid, though, gets it right. Absolutely.

Once again, you play Samus Aran, a bounty hunter on a strange planet - the same planet actually from the original game. You start off with just a blaster and limited energy. As the game goes on, you acquire new weapons and abilities. These weapons and abilities allow you to access new areas of the map. This is pretty much the way that all non-linear 2D platformers went and Super Metroid is the ultimate example of them. As you explore, you can see other areas, but you can't quite get to them because you don't have the right weapon or ability. You remember then and when you get a new ability you come back to see if you can now pass them. It really strikes the perfect balance in allowing free-form exploration around a large game world, but cordoning off certain areas that the player will have to return to.

The game world (which is fortunately and necessarily automapped for you) is massive and is divided into different areas. Even though you generally move fairly seamlessly from one area to another, each area has a distinctly different feel. Areas have enemies that are distinct to them. They also have a design aesthetic that is unique. One areas are lush with vegetation, another is cold and metallic, and a third is filled with lava and igneous rock. The finally have music that perfectly sets the mood for where you are. The music can be subtle - you often don't notice it, but it absolutely reflects where you are.

The new weapons and abilities you gain really add to the sense of who your character is. While the super missiles and super bombs are pretty much just upgrades on the regular ones, they also have their unique effects. Your weapon goes from just being a pea shooter to a charged up, wavy beam that splits into three, freezes enemies, and can go through enemies and walls. Most abilities from the original game, like morph ball, bombs, high jump, and varia suit are kept. The space jump and sping ball are brought over from Metroid II. Two new abilities absolutely shine, though. The speed boost allows you to reach hyper speed while running. With this, you can plow through enemies, certain walls, and store up the hyper energy in order to make amazing jumps. The grappling hook gives you all the fun of Bionic Commando, swinging from block to block and sometimes enemy to enemy.

Speaking of enemies, they feel as much a part of the environment and the blocks and platforms. This game is much more about exploration than shooting things and many enemies can just be ignored. They most just seem to be the natural denizens that inhabits the caverns and corridors you go through. Some do come after you, but rarely are the natural enemies you encounter very tough. The game wants to encourage you to explore and swarming you with enemies that kill you would inhibit that. This can sometimes make the boss encounters a little jarring as these guys will often kill you. Boss encounters are also generally long affairs with a kind of attack, counter-attack mentality between you and the big bad you are fighting.

Super Metroid makes me nervous at times. This is a good thing. Many games, even ones that are supposedly open-ended, lead you by the hand and show you where you need to go next to progress. Super Metroid never does this and so you need to figure out where to go on your own. When you take one door instead of another, you wonder if you made the right decision. When you take the passageway you found through bombing rather than the door, you wonder if this is the way to go to find the next item. When you go back to one area after acquiring a new item, you wonder if this is where you see more of the game or if it is the other area you remember that requires use of that item. Sometimes the lack of direction can be a bit frustrating - you turn back because you don't see an obvious way to progress and go to some area that uses the new item you acquired. Even when this happens, you always end up blaming yourself. You second-guessed yourself into going somewhere else and that was the wrong move.

All of the above is the heart of Super Metroid. The free-form exploration with new areas begging to be explored after acquiring something new. The world feels truly organic with everything adding to the level you are in. Many games that I enjoy have additional modes or different ways of beating the game after doing it once and I say to myself that I should do that. With this game I actually did. The Super Nintendo has a great library and I've played several games for it. I would probably even still put Chrono Trigger ahead of Super Metroid on my personal top SNES games list. But while I would hesitate before I recommended Chrono Trigger to anyone with a Super Nintendo, I would feel no such hesitation about recommending Super Metroid.

Rating: 10 / 10

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - Metropolis Zone, Act 3

2007-04-14T12:53:00.000-06:00

I think I've decided that I don't like Sonic the Hedgehog that much. Oh, I think the concept is really neat and speeding through levels through loops and twirling platforms is great fun. The issue is lack of control. In a platformer, I like to be able to control where I go and what I do. Because of the speed, Sonic gives you much less of this and it can just get you in trouble.

I have long believed that I enjoyed the first Sonic more than this one, and I think that still holds true. The original Sonic the Hedgehog may not have had as many innovative level features as this one, and certainly none of the levels in it lived up to what was shown in the Green Hill Zone level, but similarly you seemed to be less likely to be punished for speeding ahead, which is pretty much Sonic's raison d'etre. Far too many times in Sonic 2, I zoom along only to hit an enemy or maybe some spikes or occasionally fall into a pit. Getting hit by an enemy can largely be avoided by crouching into a ball, but then you have even less control of Sonic. It just gets frustrating at times.

Speaking of frustrating, I get really annoyed at the bonus stages in Sonic 2. The pseudo-3D effect is nice, but the way it is laid out you have very little warning when rings of mines appear. Tails is nearly useless because, though he can pick up stray rings and such, he also runs into mines just as frequently. If he stayed a little closer to Sonic, or maybe just to the right or left of him, he wouldn't have this problem, but as it stands you pretty much have to rely on getting to the ring total yourself and not counting on him having any rings for you. With enough practice, I'm sure I could probably beat all of the bonus stages (I can generally beat the first four), but it just seems that would require mind-numbing practice.

Shadow of the Colossus - Finished the game

2007-04-14T12:26:00.000-06:00

I must say, I'm a bit disappointed with Shadow of the Colossus after finishing it, but that may be just because I didn't want it to end.

The final colossus battle was epic. A huge tower that shot bolts of electricity at you, forcing you to duck and run from cover to cover until you finally got near it. Then the climb up this huge creation took place. Once you finally reached some unprotected body parts, you had to stab and swing and jump, making the creature move in various ways so you could continue your climb up to the top of it.

The ending was also well done. It showed the sacrifice you had made in order to attempt to bring your female companion back to life. It also let you control your character during parts of it, making it feel like you were truly a part of the scene. Finally, it also connected this game to Ico to the delight of people who had played through both games.

That said, the experience didn't get me in the same way that Ico did. Ico was a truly immersive experience. I could almost forget that I was playing a video game and really imagine myself as a boy attempting to navigate through a vast castle. That said, the gameplay experience of Ico had something missing that I can't quite put my finger on. I mean, I enjoyed it, but while I loved the experience of Ico, I can point out many better games that I've played.

Shadow of the Colossus was the opposite. The gameplay was great. Forgoing any sort of random foes to kill in lieu of making the colossus battles the experience was absolutely the right decision. Figuring out each colossus worked very well and I loved the fights. Still, I didn't get as involved with this game as I did with Ico. Partly, the minimalist story in Shadow of the Colossus wasn't as well done as the minimalist story in Ico. Ico had two protagonists and thus could do much better at creating a subtle relationship between them. While I could see what Wander (the protagonist of Shadow of the Colossus) was going through and feel somewhat melancholy at having to slay the magnificent beasts, it didn't work as well. The experience also wasn't nearly as immersive. Riding around to discover new areas where the colossi were generally worked quite well. The biggest problem is that this game required much more fighting with the camera in order to get the view you needed. And sometimes the colossus behavior was just frustrating and you felt that only by luck did you manage to get where you need to go.

I had always assumed that I would give this game a very high score. And I think I would probably still recommend it to anyone with a PlayStation 2. But... I don't know. I'll have to ruminate on my feelings for a bit.

Shadow of the Colossus - Defeated the fifteenth colossus

2007-04-12T23:48:00.001-06:00

I actually managed this feat on Tuesday night, but was tired and have been too busy to blog about it.

This is one of those games that gives you so much enjoyment that you can totally overlook its few flaws. I encountered one of them while fighting the fifteenth (and so second-to-last) colossus. I figured out how to defeat him long before I could actually pull it off.

Defeating each colossus, when properly done, is like a combination of action and puzzle solving. You have to figure out what you need to do to get to its week spot (or to even get it to reveal its weak spot). Once you have that figured out, you have to perform the correct actions needed to do this. Usually, it is not that difficult to perform to actions. It requires skill and reflex, but if you mess up, you can usually get it the next time. Some collosi are more action-oriented, but that has generally worked well; the sandworm colossus was largely about getting the timing of shooting him right while running away fast enough and that worked extremely well.

The fifteenth colossus had a decent puzzle solving aspect of figuring out how to get high enough so that you could jump onto him and be able to hold on. And it had a nice twist of having a second weak spot you had to find and hit to finish him. The problem is that getting to that second weak spot was so tedious. You needed to seemingly jump and move at the right time, but it wasn't at all obvious what the right time was. And then once you finally made it close enough, being able to grab on to stab the weak spot was frustrating because you could just jump and grab on. If you made any mistake while doing this, you feel to the ground and had to climb all the way up to the top of the building again.

Oh well, two (or maybe three) negative experiences out of fifteen so far isn't a bad ratio. Next time: The final colossus and the end of the game.

Fire Emblem - Chapter 29: Sands of Time

2007-04-10T21:50:00.000-06:00

After finishing Super Metroid, I was pretty sure that the next game I moved onto would be Final Fantasy Tactics. It was being discussed on a message board that I read and everyone was saying how much better it was than Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. While I thought that game had its flaws, I still considered it a good game, so I was curious to try the original.

The day I was to start playing Final Fantasy Tactics, I was talking to my friend at lunch. He has an Xbox, and mostly is into Madden, FIFA, and Street Fighter II, but every so often he gets the hankering to play a good single player game and solicits me for advice. Anyway, I mentioned to him that I was going to start playing a new game and he asked me if it was Shadow of the Colossus. He had recently seen the movie Reign Over Me which features the game. I rememberd how I loved Ico, how many good things I had heard about Shadow of the Colossus, and though "How can I dissapoint him?"

I still had an itch for a Strategy RPG and realized that I'm still in the middle of Fire Emblem. Which I still find awesome. I peeked at a walkthrough and realized that I am almost finished with the game so I will definitely be completing this before even touching Final Fantasy Tactics. Heck, maybe I should just wait for the PSP remake and play that. The localization should be vastly improved. Of course, that would require getting a PSP...