Retro Game Master - A Review

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.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Virtual Console Review

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

Ninja Gaiden - Review

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

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! - Review

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

Super Metroid - Review

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

Castlevania III - Review

Castlevania II attempted to expand the original Castlevania into a free-roaming non-linear game with RPG elements. It failed.

Not because the ideas themselves were bad, but because they were so poorly implemented. Regardless, after seeing the suck of the previous game, the Castlevania designers went back to the beginning and added tweaks there. Castlevania III is the first Castlevania with multiple characters, multiple possible paths through the game, and bigger and better levels and enemies.

And yet, I didn't love it especially more than the first game. The first game was pure and simple. You were in a castle fighting all sorts of horror movie villains. It didn't take itself too seriously, even offerring humorous film reel credits when you beat the game. By the second game, Konami had decided they had a series on their hands and made it all serious and... it kind of lost something. The third Castlevania also has this seriousness and since the gameplay mechanics are fairly similar, it isn't quite as cool.

Castlevania III takes place hundreds of years before the first game. You play as Simon Belmont's ancestor Trevor. Apparently people mistrust and shun the Belmont family because of their great strength. Dracula and his minions have been terrorizing the land and Trevor decides that he will use his powers to take him down. Along the way, he can encounter Grant DaNasty - a pirate whose family was killed by Dracula, Sypha Belnades - a vampire hunter who had been cursed by a mummy and turned to stone, or Alucard - the disaffected son of Dracula.

Trevor plays just like Simon did in the original game. The new characters are what is meant to add life to this game. Grant wields a dagger as his standard weapon. Its range is miniscule, but he can swing it much faster than any of the other characters can use their weapons. It is also equal in power to the leather whip. He can also acquire the dagger or axe as subweapons. His main special ability is the ability to break Castlevania. He jumps slightly higher than the other characters and most amazingly can change his trajectory and direction in mid-jump. He can also grab onto walls and ceiling and crawl along them to reach otherwise inaccessible places. He is weaker than Trevor and takes an additional bar of damage for each enemy that hits him. Sypha is weak as well and also takes additional damage like Grant. She wields a staff which seems about as long as Grant's dagger and does as much damage, but hits in an arc so it can hit more enemies around her. Sypha doesn't acquire traditional subweapons, but instead magic spells that are unique for her. These spells can be really powerful and make some sections of enemies and bosses much easier. Alucard has the weakest regular weapon of any of the characters. He shoots out a ball that moves horizontally forward about the length of the longest whip. Like Simon, his main weapon can be upgraded. The first upgrade adds a ball that shoots out diagonally upward and the second one that shoots out diagonally downward, but all these balls are weak in the strength. Alucard gets no subweapons, but has the ability to turn into a bat and fly around the screen, using hearts while he does so.

These new characters are nice and fun, but... ultimately don't add a lot because the game is designed to be played with Trevor. Most of the time you want to play as him because it is easier to kill enemies and if you get hit you take less damage. The other characters have their uses. Grant is great for platforming sections, especially those where you may need to quickly kill weak enemies (though the fact that he jumps higher than Trevor can get you in trouble). Sypha can be useful against tough gauntlets of enemies and can absolutely annihilate some bosses. Alucard will literally save your life when you turn him into a bat while about to fall to your death. Still, you only do these things occasionally. Having the extra characters is more like giving Trevor more powers rather than actually introducing new ways to play the game.

Oh, the other new level innovation is the ability to choose which levels to do. After completing certain levels, you get a choice of which path the take. The different paths lead to different levels and at the end of certain levels you meet up with the secondary characters. The addition of some non-linearity is nice and gives the game more replay value, but the levels don't feel so different or amazing that it really stands out.

The game is hard. The original Castlevania was also difficult, but this one is difficult in a slightly different way. I can't quite put my finger on what, though. There seems to be a bit more emphasis on platforming in this game. There are things like moving gears and conveyer belts, flipping platforms, moving spikes and all sorts of other new platform elements to worry about. There, in general, is much more reliance on jumping and moving around, but the platforms and such are well placed so you rarely feel cheated because you miss a jump. The enemy design is also significantly upgraded in this game. This game introduced the gargoyles the fly up and down the screen, the ghosts that require multiple hits, the red skeletons, and others that became mainstays in the series. The bosses in general are a mixed bag. Though there are quite a few re-treads from the original game, many do more interesting things. Frankenstein's Monster now throws blocks. The Grim Reaper now has sickles appear around the screen and come toward you. The early bosses aren't really very interesting, but the ones in the later stages of the game are very well done. Some bosses feel very cheap and you feel you only beat them because you got lucky. Others work much better because you feel more in control of whether you get hit or not.

The music, as is normal for the Castlevania, is awesome. It took me awhile to warm up to it, but I am now fully on board. There are some great tunes in this soundtrack and it even starts the tradition of reusing or doing remixes of tracks from earlier Castlevanias. The graphics are about on par with Castlevania II. There is much more use of color than the original game, and many of the levels feel a bit more organic. They are good quality, especially the large bosses.

This game is good, but it took me awhile to come around to that. For whatever reason, this game didn't do it for me in the same way that other games have. It was only when I reached the final level that it all came together and I could appreciate the style of this game. On subsequent replays, I could appreciate the music and gameplay more. I think the difficulty was a big sticking point with me. I don't mind difficult games where it feel like I can get better with practice, but sometimes during my first playthrough I didn't have this feeling. This game is good and features quite a few innovations beyond the original Castlevania, but I can't really say I liked it any better.

Rating: 8 / 10

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Review

The witness sits on the stand, giving his testimony. As he mentions the time at which he supposedly observed the murder, something seems off. You yell out "Hold it!" and press him on this issue. He flinches and mentions that he definitely heard the time so the television must have been on and he heard it spoken. You have him here - this is a clear contradiction with the facts. You pull out the power company records showing that the power was out at the time he says he heard the time on the television and yell "Objection!" into your DS microphone, startling your dog into getting up and coming over to see what is the matter.

Such is the life of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. As a defense attorney fresh out of law school and working for a small firm, Phoenix Wright must prove himself as a lawyer and starts out by taking on a murder case. In fact, all of his cases are murder cases - this guy doesn't get any easy stuff. As you progress from case to case, your reputation increases. You meet familiar, recurring characters and develop relationships with them. The game always takes a fairly lighthearted tone, even when dealing with serious things like murder and blackmail.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is an adventure game divided into two gameplay sections: Investigation and Trial.

During investigation, you check out various locations pertinent to the crime in order to gather evidence that will help your client be exonerated. You are given four options: Examine, Move, Talk, and Present. Examine lets you move a cursor around the screen (using the directional pad or the stylus) and check out objects there. Sometimes these objects are added to your "court record" (inventory) to be presented later. Other times, examining them triggers important story actions. The rest of the time, you get a description and a fun dialogue between characters about them. The move command lets you go to different locations. Sometimes you have to talk to people or acquire certain items before a new place is available to go to. The Talk and Present commands are used when there is a person present on the scene. The Talk command lets you ask them about various topics and the Present command lets you show them items you have.

The investigation portion is interesting at first, but you quickly realize that you cannot progress past it until you have acquired all the items needed for trial and heard all the important information. While it is interesting to see the case unfold and find out the new information, the lack of options for things you can do during investigation makes it feel less like the puzzle-solving typically present in adventure games and more like exhausting every possible option. Still, twists and surprise evidence for the trial are found during investigation so it is important and rewarding to pay attention, even if very little game playing goes on then.

The trial portion of the game is where it comes to life. The witnesses get up and the stand and give their testimony. Then, you get to crossexamine them. The point of crossexamination is to find a contradiction in the witness' testimony so that you can nullify anything negative they had to say about your client. During crossexamination, you see their testimony section by section. At each section, you can choose to press them on that to see if they might reveal a bit more. Once you come to the section of their testimony that you feel reveals a contradiction, you have to find the correct evidence in the court record that contradicts that and present it to them. As the trial progresses, you may be put on the spot to come up with theories as to why you think the witness is lying or other reasons Phoenix Wright gives for why the witnesses testimony is faulty. These are often presented as multiple choices options, but sometimes you are forced to present some evidence. Presenting the right evidence or choosing the right dialogue option moves the trial along, but performing the wrong action results in a penalty from the judge. Five penalties and the judge declares the trial over and your client guilty.

The DS version of the game (the original was released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance) adds a new fifth case that makes more use of the DS' features. You use the stylus to rotate objects, reassemble a broken jar, and even pause and rewind a video to find evidence. In the regular game, the stylus can be used to point to an object on the screen instead of using the directional pad. Also, instead of merely using a button, you can yell "Hold it!" or "Objection!" or "Take That!" into the DS' microphone when pressing a witness or presenting evidence.

The stories and characters in the game can best be described as whimsical. None of the stories in the cases are particularly moving or high literature, but they are well enough done that you could imagine them in an episode of Law and Order or a typical legal suspense movie, or even a John Grisham novel. The dialogue and text contains a fair amount of jokes and commentary, and they work well to amuse you while playing along. The localization effort is pretty good in the main cases (particularly the character who talks in l33t-speak), but is a bit shoddy in the fifth, added on case.

The game is quite logical and so the puzzle of figuring out what evidence to present when can almost always be worked out. While the investigation portion can sometimes feel frustrating because you are just exhausting every option, the trial portion is appropriate tense because of your limited chances to make mistakes. You get a sense of sweating over where to object to the witness' testimony and what evidence to present then. The ability to yell "Objection!" into the microphone when you think you have the witness nailed to a contradiction becomes incredibly satisfying. The fifth case is, again, not quite as well put together in terms of the logic of how and when to present evidence, but it doesn't detract much from the case.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is really and interactive legal novel. You follow Phoenix as he attempts to prove his clients' innocence. Along the way, you help him ask the right questions and examine the evidence carefully. In court, you let him master the trial and confound the rival prosecutor. The game is mostly reading text and honestly not a lot of game playing, but the game playing present, especially in the trial scenes, just feels great. For anyone interested in adventure games, Phoenix Wright gets it done.

Rating: 8 / 10

Super Castlevania IV - Review

Castlevania's first foray onto the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was a fascinating one. It was a remake of the original game. Well, remake may not be quite the right word, perhaps reimagining is more correct. There are several more levels and few follow the layout of the levels in the original. The bosses from the original are pretty much all there, but not on the same levels. The "story" as it is, is the same: Dracula is terrorizing the countryside and only Simon Belmont can take him on. The gameplay, though, is quite a bit difference due to one major change.

Since the story in Super Castlevania IV is nonexistant, the gameplay is what drives it. Like previous Castevania games, you jump and whip. Candles in the levels give you points, health, hearts, subweapons, and a few other goodies. The subweapons (knife, axe, holy water, cross, and stopwatch) are (with the exception of the stopwatch) all distance weapons that let you hit heart to reach enemies. They deplete your hearts (which are not health) when used.

The control innovations in this game over is predecessors are twofold: First, you have some some control over your jumps. You can turn around during them and have some influence on how far you jump after you are already in the air. Second, and most hugely, you can now whip in any of eight directions around you. For those who didn't realize how huge this is, previous Castlevanias only let you whip horizontally. Which meant that a good part of the challenge of the game was figuring out how to get next to enemies and hit them without getting hit/falling. In a way, the omnidirectional whipping makes the game much easier. You can take out foes above (and to some extent below) you without quite getting to their level. It really changes how levels and enemies can and should be designed. Along with the omnidirectional whipping, they decided to take a page out of Bionic Commando's book and provided certain hooks in the game that you can latch onto with your whip and swing from.

The levels you trek through are very reminiscent of older Castlevanias. The first few levels are outdoors as you work your way toward the castle. Then you head indoors and move through various parts of the castle. Finally, you climb the tower and approach the final battle with Dracula. The levels have the block platforms and stairs familiar to older veterans. Many levels, though, involve more organic elements. The ground you walk on and paths you tread aren't always discrete blocks. There are gears, conveyer belts, spiky mashers, decaying platforms, and flipping platforms that return from earlier games. There are new environmental hazards, like quicksand-like ground, falling rocks/spikes, and large moving portions of the levels. There are also the new hooks that you must whip onto and swing from and many levels have unique elements such as huge swinging chandeliers you cross, a spinning razor blade that chases you upwards, and a room that rotates around you.

The enemies generally show less innovation than the levels. The bats, skeletons, axe knights, and medusa heads all return from previous installments. There are some new enemies such as slimes, ghosts, and gargoyles. Since most enemies are dispatched by a crack or two of the whip and since you can whip in many directions, it is generally not difficult to defeat them. Still, there are quite a few sections that combine precise platforming and enemy killing that work very well, even if there is only so much inspiration in the enemies. The bosses, though, show great inspiration. The remakes of the original Castlevania bosses all have very nice touches added. Frankenstein's monster now hurls potions. The giant bat is now made of gold and gems. The new bosses are all very bright and colorful. Some are not much bigger than you and are just expert swordsmen or axemen. Some are huge, taking up a good portion of the screen. Some take advantage of SNES effects to grow and shrink or appear and disappear. Like many games of this ilk, the bosses are the highlight.

Largely because of the omnidirectional whipping, this game is much easier than its NES counterparts. I didn't really start to have any trouble until level 7. Level 8 is where the levels start being downright difficult and level B made me pull my hair out. Fortunately, despite the initial challenge, the game is quite fun. You feel accomplished when you are taking down enemies and jumping from platform to platform.

Part of what makes this game so entertaining is the amazing graphics and sound. The enemies are all crisp, clear, and detailed. The bosses especially so. The levels are crafted with care, with details and animation in both the foreground and background. The game makes great use of transparency in both enemies and backgrounds to achieve amazing effects. There is also plenty of Mode 7 (sprite scaling) used. To complement the beautiful graphics, the soundtrack is, as usual, wonderful. At first, I was a bit put off by the music. Not because it wasn't good, but because it wasn't the gothic style of the NES games. Many of the levels sounded like they would be dungeon or cave music in an RPG. They are extremely well done compositions and once I got used to them, I greatly appreciated them. The remixes of music from previous games at the end also worked well.

It really amazes me that this was one of the early releases for the Super Nintendo. Konami must have put all their programmers into figuring out how to get the most from the SNES. While the gameplay has its downsides, especially the uneven difficulty, the entire package of the game is quite impressive. Super Castlevania IV is still great to play today.

Rating 8 / 10

Elite Beat Agents - Review

A 17 year old girl has got her house to herself. Her parents are out of town and she's invited over the guy she's been dating, Don. He's a star receiver on the football team, but beyond his rugged jock exterior, he's really a sweet guy. He is definitely worth exclusivitiy and she wants to go steady. While Don is recounting last night's game and she is working up the courage to ask him, disaster strikes. The doorbell rings and it is one of the neighbors that she babysits for. Something has came up at work and she needs the girl to babysit her three kids for a few hours. Babysitting is the girl's primary source of income and she doesn't want to sully her reputation, nor does she want to leave her neighbor in the lurch. But what will Don think? He came over, thinking he would be with her. He certainly didn't expect to have to put up with three kids and deal with changing diapers, feeding them, and general rambunctiousness. How will she be able to handle looking after the kids and furthering her relationship with Don?

Fortunately, the Elite Beat Agents are here to help. Their commander has been monitoring the situation and sends these men in black out to give the girl the inspiration she needs to make it through the day. By dancing along to a song and cheering her on, these men will help her take care of the diapers, the food, and the noise. Because she is so motivated and professional about her job and because, quite frankly, he likes her, Don also helps out when he can. By the end of the day, the kids are calm and she is going steady with Don.

These are the types of scenarios one is presented with in Elite Beat Agents. On a map of the world, one sees various situations with people calling out for help. By completing these scenarios, more are opened up. The scenarios are almost always of a positive nature, such as helping a lost dog return to his home, helping a little girl deal with the grief of losing her father, and even at the end of the game literally saving the world through the power of song and dance. Portrayed as a series of panels, like a comic book, these scenarios work because of their believability and identifiability. Even when the scenario is far-fetched - like a fire golem attacking an amusement park - the people in it are not. You really feel for the former baseball star that lost his drive, feeling that saving the kids from the golem is his chance to redeem himself. There are two scenarios that ring a little hollow - one where you are helping obvious nods to Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie survive on a deserted island by wooing the animals into helping them and another where you are helping an oil tycoon who lost his money get rich again so he can once again be with the gold-digging wife who kicked him out of the house when he became poor. Despite these two missteps, the rest of the scenarios are utterly charming and really make you want to help the people. Some are even a bit emotional.

During these scenarios, you control the Elite Beat Agents as they dance along to whatever song is playing for that scenario. The songs are all, pretty much, US pop songs. They include such varied titles as Queen's I Was Born to Love You, Avril Lavigne's Sk8er Boi, David Bowie's Let's Dance, Sum 41's Makes no Difference, and Ashlee Simpsons's La La. Oftentimes, the songs are picked to go with the scenario, like Chicago's Your the Inspiration when helping the young girl cope with the death of her father and Madonna's Material Girl when helping the material girls on the deserted island. Many people are turned off by some of the artists included in this game. I was initially leary as well because no more than a third of the artists in this game would ever be in my album collection. What I found was, regardless of my opinion of the artist or song, it really worked well with the game. While I would never be caught dead voluntarily listening to Ashlee Simpson, I thought the use of her song in its scenario worked well. It also helps that people will know a lot of the songs which helps one to play the game. It should also be noted that all of the songs in the game are covers as it is much cheaper to obtain rights to perform the song than to obtain a recording of it. The covers are all fairly close to the original and the only song where I thought having a cover really detracted was the Jackson 5's ABC.

The way you control the dancing of the agents is by tapping on the screen in the rhythm of the song. Dots will appear on the screen as the song is playing. Hollow circles will also appear around these dots and gradually gets smaller. Once the hollowed circle completely encloses the dot, that is the right time to tap it. If you know the song, you will pretty much know by the rhthym or lyrics what time to tap it. Still, the visual of the shrinking circle generally works fine up until the harder difficulties when you have many dots to tap in rapid succession. Fortunately, the dots are usually numbered. A particular phrase or portion of the song will have dots in all the same color that are numbered sequentially. You get points for correctly tapping on a dot - more for how close to the rhythm you hit the dot. In addition to dots to tap, there are sliders that require you to drag the stylus on the screen following a ball as it moves between two dots. Once or twice a level you will get a spinner which just requires you to rapidly move the stylus around the screen in a circle. The spinners are the most annoying par of the gameplay as they are not related to the rhythm of the song and spinning fast enough can be very frustrating.

While you are progressing through the song, there is a health bar of sorts at the top of the screen. The health bar is constantly decreasing as the song progresses. Hitting the dots to the rhtyhm keeps the Elite Beat Agents dancing and increases the health bar, failing to properly hit the dots causes the agents to fall down and decreases the health bar. If the health bar is ever depleted, you fail the song, get to see a failure animation, and can choose to play the song again or try something else. When not depleted, the health bar has two states: "yes" and "no". Besides telling you that you are near failure all the health bar being in "no" means is that you get negative animations at various breaks in the song and the agents will look like they are about to collapse. Once you complete a song, you are given a score and a grade. Your score is based on how close you hit each dot to its beat. Hitting several dots in a row increases a multiplier for how many points you get for correct beats. You also get a rank which is based solely on percentage of beats hit perfectly, near perfectly, barely, and not at all.

The game has four difficulty levels, two of which are available at the start of the game. The other two must be unlocked by beating every song on the difficulty level below it. You can also unlock three songs. To do this, you must achieve a certain point total. The total points scored in all songs is your point total and upon achieving certain point totals, you achieve new ranks and at some ranks come new songs. The easiest difficulty level features songs with few dots that are on screen for a long time before you need to tap them. Also, the health bar decreases very slowly. As the difficulty increases, more dots appear on screen, the interval between needing to hit them is shorter and health bar decreases more rapidly. The easiest difficultly should be completable by just about anyone. Once you get to hard difficulty, there is much less margin for error. At the highest difficulty, the only way you can successfully complete a song is by hitting the dots near perfectly.

The game is incredibly addictive. It is one of the few game that I wanted to complete 100%. What makes it so addictive is the feeling that you can get better if you try just... one... more... time. You always feel like you are getting better. You do a little better at a song every time you try it. Once you complete a song, you want to see how well you can do at another one. Even once you know all the stories for the scenarios surrounding the songs, you still want to see if you can complete that song on the harder difficulty. Really, the only time I got frustrated and felt like I really wasn't getting any better at songs was for two songs on the hardest difficulty.

Elite Beat Agents has charming stories drawn in comic-style art that make you smile. It has gameplay that keeps you coming back for more. It has songs that, while you might not love them, are great choices to tap the rhythm too. Elite Beat Agents is the first game for the Nintendo DS that I would recommend to anyone, regardless of their general taste in games. At first, I was a bit surprised Nintendo made this part of their "Touch Generations" line of games which are intended to be games anyone in the family can pick up, play, and enjoy. After experiencing this game, I can fully agree with that decision.

Rating 9 / 10

Castlevania II - Review

I have yet to write a review of an actually bad game. This is probably because I tend to only pick up games that I have heard or good. But sometimes I'll pick up games just because I like other games in a series. And sometimes my opinion just differs from others.

Castlevania II is a direct sequel to the first NES game. You play as Simon Belmont after he has defeated Dracula. It seems that Simon has discovered that, just he died, Dracula placed a curse on him that would cause him to die early. In order to break this curse, Simon must collect all of Dracula's body parts, reassemble them, and then defeat Dracula once and for all. The story itself isn't presented much in the game except for villagers occasionally referring to Dracula and his minions.

Castlevania II also attempted several innovations over it predecessor. While the original Castlevania was a fairly straightforward level by level experience, Castlevania II allows you to roam freely throughout the game world. While the game is still a side-scrolling affair, leaving the edge of one area takes you to the next area. By doing this you can find new places, including towns with villagers to talk to and buy equipment from and mansions which house Dracula's body parts. Castlevania II gives you the ability to hold several different items and choose between which ones to use. You gain hearts by killing monsters and use these to buy items, and by killing enough monsters, you level up and gain more health/take less damage from monsters. Castlevania II also implements a Day/Night system where monsters get much tougher at night and start roaming in villages while many villagers go inside and lock their doors.

All of these innovations could be really interesting, if they were done well, but they generally are not. The fact that the game features quite a bit of exploration should generally be a good idea. You can pretty much go anywhere from the beginning of the game, although you will have trouble with the monsters in some areas. You can also, generally, tackle the mansions in any order although you may often need the right item to progress far. This is one of the big problems with the exploratory aspect of the game. In order to get certain items or progress in areas, you often have to do random things like kneeling in a certain place with a certain item. In most games of this sort, the villagers would give you clues to help you figure out what to do. In this game, the villagers often give you red herrings ("Get a silk bag from the Graveyard Duck to live longer"). You can be assured of getting truthful clues by finding the books in mansion, but these are often incredibly obscure ("A FLAME FLICKERS INSIDE THE RING OF FIRE.") I'd be amazed if anyone were able to finish this game without getting any outside help.

This game retains the play control of the original game. You whip horizontally in front of you. When you jump, you have a set height and distance and have no ability to change your trajectory in mid-air. These things basically worked in the first Castlevania because it was designed around them. Sure, it was frustrating to attempt to jump over a pit and have no way to kill the Medusa head about to hit you and drop you into it, but for the most part, that game didn't require mid-air acrobatics. The sequel focuses much more on platforming to its great detriment. There are several jumps in the game that require you to wait until the last second to jump in order to get maximum height and distance. If you make a mistake and jump too soon you are often dead. Dying because you are a pixel off makes the game feel cheap. The play control in regards to attacking feels pretty good and works well. It is a shame they made jumping so important.

There are a good variety of enemies in the game, at least in the outdoor portions. All sorts of skeletons, ghouls, wolves, spiders, and more make up a pretty good gallery of enemies. The enemies are never too tough so long as you have regularly been buying whip upgrades. Once inside the mansions, the enemy variety drops significantly. All the different mansions have basically the same enemies so you lose variety. Because of this lack of variety, you learn the enemies well and they cease to be too much of a challenge. Also, only two of the mansions have bosses at the end of them (three if you include Dracula at the end of the game) and the bosses are incredibly easy to defeat.

Challenge in general is a big issue in this game. In the first Castlevania, the challenge was largely on how to defeat the enemies without getting hurt yourself. Here, the enemies themselves are easy. The bosses are ridiculously easy - Dracula can famously be defeated before he has a chance to move. The challenge comes in figuring out what random item to use in what random place by deciphering clues or figuring out which of the villagers to listen to. It also comes in making incredibly precise jumps with an annoying jumping mechanic. So basically, the challenge comes from the unfun parts of the game, while the fun monster-killing stuff hardly presents any challenge.

Where this game somewhat redeems itself is in the graphics and sound department. The NES Castlevania series always had some very impressive artwork in the characters and backgrounds and this installment certainly lives up. The outside enemies are colorful and well detailed as are the forest, lake, and other areas you explore. Once inside the mansions, the color palette basically consists of grays, but at least the art is still very detailed, especially in the rooms with Dracula's body parts. The music is absolutely amazing. There is a reason that most video game cover bands do some Castlevania tracks. While the first game had some really good tracks, this game gets all it can out of the NES' 4-channel sound chip. The theme that plays while outside is just incredible and one I would happily have on my CD player.

So, in the end this just isn't a good game. Not because they changed the Castlevania format, but because it isn't well executed. Wandering through the outdoor areas and killing monsters can be fun, but the act of attempting to finish the game isn't. It is even worse than the random exploring required in The Legend of Zelda or Metroid because you are required to do more random things and may actually be led astray. Once you decide to just look up where to go and what to do, the game becomes incredibly easy save for frustrating jumping elements. In such a storied series, this version is definitely a mis-step. Fortunately, most of the of series' fans realize that.

Rating: 4 / 10

Indigo Prophecy - Review

Indigo Prophecy is in some sense a difficult game to review. It starts out seeming like an adventure game with action elements doing story scenes and ends up pretty exclusively as an interactive movie. It also starts out with an awesome and intriguing story and ends up completing falling all over itself in the end, losing its focus on the characters to try to make the plot world-encompassing.

The story "stars" Lucas Kane who regains consciousness in a restroom after having stabbed a man to death and carving strange symbols on his hands. He has no clue why he did this and has to cover his tracks and escape quickly before he is found out. I put "stars" in quotes there because right after this scene, you take control of police officers Carla Valenti and Tyler Mills who are investigating the murder that Lucas committed and attempting to find who might have done it. Seeing the story of the game from both sides works very well and really makes you feel for each character, even sometimes having to play against yourself. You want Lucas to succeed and find out what happened to him and what made him murder that man, but you also want the officers to solve the case and put the murderer away. The storytelling really works. It is just too bad that the story takes a rapid turn toward the end of the game from a well-told horror story into something bizarre that just tries too hard.

The gameplay consists of adventure sequences and action sequences, sometimes mixed in with each other. In the adventure sequences, you control one of the main characters. You can walk around and when you come upon an item you can do something with, icons appear at the top of the screen along with a diagram showing which direction to move the right analog stick in order to perform that action. For example, in the first part of the game you need to hide the evidence of your murder so that includes hiding the murder weapon and the body and cleaning up yourself and the floor. The adventure sequences are generally never too tough. Many times just wandering around until you find all the icons and apply them all (except ones that are obviously counterproductive) is enough. There are slightly more involved puzzles as well, but I'm generally not very good at traditional adventure games and I never had to consult an FAQ. Even if you don't solve every puzzle or find everything that generally doesn't stop your game, but may deplete your health (described below).

The action sequences are where the game plays like an interactive movie. Theses are pre-rendered sequences where you don't actually control your character, but instead must press buttons in a certain pattern. Sometimes, you may have to rapidly alternate between pressing the L1 and R1 buttons, much like the old Track and Field game. At other times, two circles appear on the screen superimposed on the action. These circles have their top, bottom, left and right quarters colored differently. As the sequence proceeds, the quarters will light up and you must quickly press the corresponding analog stick in that direction. It is all very similar to the toy Simon. Sometimes the action sequences are do or die - failing them ends the game and you must continue. At other times, failing them only decreases your health.

So there is health in the game, but it is actually conceived as mental health, not physical. The few physically threatening situations you are in are generally action sequences that result in your death if you fail. Your mental health, though, fluctuates throughout the game. At the highest level you are calm. You can fall to stressed, depressed, and devastated. Losing all mental health ends the game, either by going crazy in Lucas' case, or having to quite your job in the case of either of the police officers. Actions you take can have positive or negative mental health consequences. Getting yelled at by your boss or fighting with your girlfriend will lower your mental health. Sleeping, showering, eating, or having sex will generally raise it.

The game itself doesn't take very long to get through. No one part is incredibly hard and shouldn't take too long to complete. There are a couple "stealth" sequences and the first one anyway can be very annoying. Not only does it distract from the story, but it is also frustrating as it can be hard to tell exactly why you failed sometimes. Since the game is often a movie and a story, any additional gameplay would probably just feel like dragging it out. It is paced well. It is a shame that, while there are three endings to the game, only one is good and it is quite easy to choose between them right at the end of the game as opposed to earlier actions having lasting consequences.

The graphics are fair. I imagine they would look much better in the X-Box version of the game, but on the PS2 they look a little muddy and blocky. The characters animate pretty well, and usually there is no problem, but on occasion the lack of detail in the graphics actually detracted from the story. The voice acting is extremely well done and a pleasure to listen to. The music is another high point. It is appropriately moody and varied and spooky. The sound completely helps to put you into the story of the game.

Indigo Prophecy definitely has its flaws, perhaps the biggest being that if you bought it at full price, you wouldn't be getting a lot for your money. Ultimately, it is an interactive movie and movies can only last so long. Still, it is quite enjoyable while you are experiencing it. You really feel like you are moving the story along through the things you do and not just going through the motions. Indigo Prophecy is really more of a pleasant experience than a game. If you enjoy stories and ways of storytelling, it is quite fascinating for that.

Rating: 7 / 10

Kid Icarus - Review

I guess since I just played through Kid Icarus, I may as well put up a review of it. It was also recently released on the virtual console (which is a reason I was playing it), so my four or so readers may be wondering if it is worth getting for the virtual console.

Kid Icarus was released along with Metroid for the NES and it seems they were intended to be sister games. They both came in similar packaging, they both allowed you to resume your game where you left off (by password in the US, by saving on the Famicom Disk System that they original came out on), and they were both designed by Gunpei Yokoi (who would later go on to create the Game Boy and Virtual Boy). While Metroid introduced more revolutionary ideas like open-ended exploration and showing players areas they could not reach until they found a new item, Kid Icarus stuck a little closer to the platformer roots, but attempted to add a little more story and characterization with items that could be found and used along the way.

In Kid Icarus, you control the warrior Pit, a loyal servant to the Goddess Palutena. Palutena is kidnapped by Medusa and imprisoned in the Sky Tower. Pit escapes from his underworld prison and must traverse through the underworld, overworld, and skyworld to reclaim the three sacred treasures and becomes strong enough to take on Medusa. This plot is all from memory, so it may be slightly inaccurate. One of the interesting things attempted by Kid Icarus is story through gameplay. While some games had taken the approach of having characters talk to you between levels or otherwise in between action, in Kid Icarus, you see the story unfolding as you progress through the levels. Let me quote from alexb on the gamespite.net forums:

When the game starts, Pit has just broken out a prison at the bottom of the Underworld. So you make your way through three vertically-oriented stages. In the first level, everything's very dead and brown, but as you progress through these early levels, the surroundings gradually become more verdant, showing that you're getting closer to sunlight and the overworld.

After you beat the first fortress, you find yourself finally in the overworld, in a bright day scene. In contrast to the climbing underworld levels, these next three levels are completely horizontal. They're also longer, suggesting that you're traveling a very long distance. In fact, over the course of these three levels, the sky changes from day to night. The enemies here give you a lot more money than they did in the underworld and the rooms where you can receive upgrades are also more numerous. Now that Pit's broken out of prison, he's regrouping, regaining his strength. Reaching the end of the overworld, you've got another dungeon.

And then the sky, another set of vertically oriented levels. As you continue up, there are more and more Greek-style buildings, suggesting you're travelling back into Angel Land and nearing the Sky Palace. After taking out the final dungeon, you finally get the Sacred Treasures and become an armored, flying badass. This last level is basically a set piece level, one of the earliest I know of. You totally obliterate all opposition with your new toys. You then make short work of Medusa, and, depending on how well you played, are rewarded accordingly by Parthena, the goddess you've been fighting to save.

The gameplay of Kid Icarus is a platformer with some twists. It was the first NES game (well, again, concurrent with Metroid) to scroll veritically upwards. Basically, you move and jump to get to the top of the screen. The jumping in Kid Icarus takes a little getting used to. You don't have nearly as much in air control of your jumps as in typical platformers. Also, you have momentum, so you will take a step or two forward when you land. Pit is equipped with a bow and arrows with which he shoots enemies. You have a health bar and lose health by getting hit by enemies or certain environental hazards. Throughout the levels, you will find various chambers you can enter that may hold shops, treasure rooms, enemy rooms, and more.

Kid Icarus was one of the first platformers to have an inventory system and some RPG elements. You can collect bottles of life that will automatically restore a bar of your health if it goes to zero. You can collect feathers that will give you a short period of flight if you fall to the bottom of the screen. You generally get these items by buying them in the shops you come across throughout the levels. The currency in Angel Land is hearts, which are dropped by defeated enemies. The RPG elements comes into play because the game keeps track of how many and what types of enemies you have killed and if you do enough, you get health upgrades at the end of levels or can upgrade your arrow strength in certain rooms.

Most of the game takes place in scrolling levels, that scroll upwards in worlds 1 and 3 and horizontally in world 2. These levels are typical platforming affairs which you do while avoiding enemies that come at you. At first, you only face a few different types of enemies, but the variety gets much greater as the game goes on. The signature major enemies you face in world 1 are the grim reapers. These guys (possibly your jailors?) take many hits to kill and if they see you, they freak out and send the reapettes after you.

At the end of each world is a fortress. These are labyrinths of individuals rooms that take up the entire screen and do not scroll. You can pick up a map to help you find yourself through them, although you will have to purchase the torch and the pencil from the shopkeepers to make good use of it. Fortresses generally feature completely different enemies from the levels. The marquee enemy in the fortresses (besides the boss in the final room) is the eggplant wizard. These enemies are big and tough like the grim reapers. These guys fling eggplants from their staves and if you are hit, you turn into an eggplant with legs. You cannot fight while an eggplant, only run around and so you must seek out a nurse who can cure your condition. In the fortresses, you can also use the mallets you have acquired during your journey to free the centurions trapped in stone around the fortress. These centurions then come and help you during the boss battle.

Kid Icarus has quite a charming art style. It is more or less taken from Greek mythology, but a decidedly Japanese video game take on Greek mythology. The characters are certainly all present in Greek mythology, but their stories are completely ignored so as to basically mash them all up in one game. There is quite a bit of attention to detail in the background graphics of each level, plenty of which serves no practical purpose but to set the mood. While the sprites aren't as detailed as in later NES games, each one does have plenty of details, such as faces with expressions or other quirks. The metroids in world 3 are a nice touch.

The sound in this game is polarizing to many. All music was composed by Hip Tanaka who is well known for his Metroid tunes. Kid Icarus music is more experimental. There are some very interesting harmonies in the music and it is often chromatic. All that said, a lot of the sound is very high-pitched. Sometimes annoyingly so. Until a few days ago, I had forgotten how the title theme (which I love as a theme) is incredibly high-pitched in this game (which I don't love so much). If your ears are sensitive, this game can make you want to stab an ice pick into them.

Kid Icarus is good. It isn't great, and it isn't a game I would say every person who owns a NES should have. It is at least as good as the original Metroid and has stood the test of time better. I'll grant that I like my platformers to be challenging and Kid Icarus certainly lives up (though once you pass the first fortress, it becomes a lot easier). Kid Icarus shows the evolution of platformers and is interesting for that alone. Fortuantely, it is also a good game.

Rating: 7 / 10

Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode - Review

Golgo 13 was of those games that was released on the NES in America that was based on a Japanese manga - before anyone in the US had any idea what anime or manga or anything like that really was. It stars Golgo 13 (also known as Duke Togo), who is a super-spy in the mold of James Bond, but grittier and tougher. It translated pretty well (both literally and figuratively) to the US and gave us a game with a variety of gameplay modes that ended up pretty fun.

The story of Golgo 13: Top Secret Episode is that a CIA helicopter is shot down while carrying the experimental Cassandra-G virus. An M-16 shell (Golgo 13's weapon of choice) is found in the helicopter, making it look like Golgo 13 was responsible for its shooting. Wanting to clear his name and find this virus before it is used for nefarious purposes, Golgo 13 hears about the international spy group FIXER who believes not that the KGB or Golgo 13 are behind the attack, but another super-secret organization known as Drek is behind it. A man named Condor in East Berlin may be willing to help, so Golgo 13 travels there, meets up with a FIXER agent known as Cherry Grace and proceeds to embark on an adventure that will span the globe from Germany to Greece to the Amazon to Antarctica, meeting up with all sorts of people until finally confronting the head of Drek.

Golgo 13's story is very convoluted. I'm not sure if this is a fault of translation/localization or the way it was originally written. The thing is, despite it being hard to follow, it works. We are used to ridiculous plots from James Bond and this one isn't any more far-fetched. What the connection is between some of the agents and people you meet may be tenuous, but the game maintains the veneer of a spy story throughout and you can go with it. The translation actually seems pretty good as there is no glaring Engrish and what the characters say makes sense for what they are. The game also features a decent amount of violence and implied sex which is surprising given Nintendo of America's censorship policies at the time.

There are about six different gameplay modes in the game which helps keep the game fresh as only one of the modes is really well done. Throughout all of the modes you have both a life total (which goes down when you get hit) and a bullet total. The main mode is the side-scrolling levels where you walk left or right and can jump, shoot, and jump kick. In these levels, you explore the cities or other locations you are in, often being able to move to other areas by going all the way left or right or pressing up in front of a building or passage. These levels are rarely complicated. Occasionally there are two levels of platforms that you can jump up or down to, and there are occasionally pits (that don't kill you but send you back to the water), but platforming itself is not a significant portion of the game. Meanwhile, enemies will often come after you. At first they are fairly normal things like men wielding guns or guys on motorcycles. In later levels you face martial arts women with guns, guys with flame throwers, and men on hovering platforms that shoot odd triangles at you. These side-scrolling levels are also used in the underwater enemy bases. There are some issues with the play control in these scenes. When you shoot your gun, you have no control of Golgo 13 for a short period of time, making you pretty vulnerable. Also, the jumping is a little odd to control. Fortunately, enemies don't tend to do too much damage to you and you get health back when you kill them, so the awkward play control doesn't hurt you too much.

Some stages place underwater when you have scuba gear on. These parts are side-scrolling, but you have full 2D movement as you are in water. You can shoot straight ahead to defend yourself against enemies such as sharks, octopi, and other divers. There are also environmental hazards such as deadly seaweed and mines.

In other stages, you are in a helicopter and the stage plays out like a shoot 'em up. The screen automatically scrolls horizontally while enemies come at you from all sides. Again, there are only three enemy types here - fighter jets, bombers, and weird circular things with balls spinning around them. These levels are the smoothest in terms of play control. They feel really nice to play and I wish more of these stages and more varieties of enemy were present.

In any of the above three stages, at certain points you will experience a shot on screen and go into a first person shooting mode. In these, you control a crosshair with the directional pad and have to shoot at all the enemies that appear. These stages are somewhat reminiscent of Operation Wolf. You can scroll left or right in 360 degrees (very useful when underwater and divers are swimming toward or away from you). Enemies appear on the ground (soldiers, tanks, ships) or in the air (helicopters and fighters) or in the water all around you (divers and submarines). These scenes work pretty well, although the screen scrolls slowly so you will often take a hit before you see an enemy. Also, some enemies fly off the screen and can be hard to find. This is ameliorated somewhat by an arrow pointing you in the direction of the last enemy when there is only one left.

Another major part of the game are the labyrinths. These are first person sections where you move one section at a time and turn at ninety degree angles, similar to old RPGs like Wizardry. Occasionally an enemy will appear in front of you and you press A to make your crosshair appear then move it over the enemy and press A again to shoot. Walls sometimes drop down in front of you and you have to blow the open with a grenade. You start with three grenades and can replenish them by defeating enemies. One more hazard that sometimes presents itself are laser beams that shoot down from the ceiling. With infrared goggles you can see them and attempt to pass by when they are not firing, otherwise you will take damage when passing through them. The final obstacles are typical maze obstacles - pits that drop you to the level below and doors that may be locked and require finding a key. The first few (and surprisingly the last few) labyrinths you enter are pretty easy to navigate. Some will definitely require making a map (or checking the internet).

Finally, there are two sniping sections in the game. These just involve moving your scope until it is over the target then zooming in and firing.

Golgo 13 isn't an incredibly hard game. Once you learn enemy patterns, the side-scrolling sections aren't that difficult. The same can be said of the helicopter sequences. The first person shooting sequences can be tough if you don't kill some enemies right away as they involve several enemies shooting at you at once. Really, the only way you die is if you start a section with low health and get hit by enemies before you can kill them to regain more health. You have unlimited continues and you start over at the beginning of each section so you aren't set far back by dying (though you only have as many bullets as you had when you died). I died a little less than a dozen times before reaching the final boss. Once at the final boss, I died more than a dozen times. He is legitimately difficult and it took me a long time to devise a good strategy to beat him.

When you evaluate the total gameplay of Golgo 13, it probably is just about average. The graphics too, aren't anything special. They are servicable, and the backgrounds in the story scenes are well done even if a lot of work wasn't put into the characters. The sound effects are no great shakes. They are servicable and aren't too annoying. The gun shots sound about real, but all the other sound effects are fairly beepy and bloopy. The sound of the laser beams can be grating. The game doesn't have much music, but what is has is moody and fits well. There are even set moments when certain music plays giving it a sort of cinematic feel.

So, the gameplay is average, and the graphics and sound aren't anything special either, so is this game worth playing? Yes, I think so. It has a certain coolness factor that just makes you want to keep playing. It tells its spy story well, even breaking it down into acts with names like "The Moving Target" and "From Here to Eternity" and "And There Were None". The storytelling, done in a proto-Ninja Gaiden fashion, just works. You feel like a super spy and the sex with the ladies and fighting cyborg Hitler clones just add to the atmosphere. Style can go a long way with me and it pulls this game into fun territory.

Rating: 7 / 10

Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade - A Review

On Friday, I went to a screening at the Sundance film festival of the movie Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade. You can read a description of it here.

The movie is a documentary focuses on Twin Galaxies, an arcade located in the small town of Ottumwa Iowa, and the video game champions that came there in 1982. The men and boys that arrived were the best of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Berzerk, and many other classic arcade games. The movie follows their lives from the Life Magazine feature on them in 1982 to the present.

The movie mixes the historical and the personal. It briefly touches on how video games became popular and then focuses on the bigger games of the early 80s. It has interviews with the players that had high scores in those games and why they played them and what their strategies were. It also follows the huge events of the time, including Buckner and Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever", the 1982 Video Game world championship filmed by ABC's "That's Incredible", to the attempt to create a league of professional video game players, to the mass closing of arcades just a few years later.

The movie then focuses on several of the video game champions who were at Twin Galaxies in 1982. These people are asked what happened to them, how did being great at video games affect their lives, and what lessons did they learn. These characters are extremely colorful, such as Billy Mitchell, Rob Mruczek, and Roy Shildt. Perhaps most interesting is Walter Day, founder of Twin Galaxies. He definitely comes from the 1960s Berkeley culture, has had a variety of interests in hobbies in his life, and most impressively, after establishing Twin Galaxies as the authority in video game high scores has a keen insight into the importance of video game history and how it should be preserved.

Chasing Ghosts decides to take a very light approach to the subject matter. It plays up the fun, funny, and wacky side of video games and video gamers. It really takes you back to your childhood when you felt anything was possible and you could be an astronaut, or president, or a world famous video game player. This approach really works, because even though there are serious storylines touched on, the people in this film were doing it for their love of the game and that comes through. At one point in the movie, I was worried that the movie was focus too much on the bizarreness and social awkwardness of the characters, just playing on the easy stereotype that video game players are hopeless nerds. This feeling was soon allayed by showing that these people, despite any quirks, still have families that they love, friends that they cherish, and ideals they pursue.

The film was very well done and very well put together. The film mixed interviews, news footage, old photos, and computer-created rendering of the old video games to always have something on screen to catch your eye. The documentary created its stories well, did a good job of showing the impact of video games on these people and the world, and left you a little sad at the death of arcades.

While I consider myself fairly knowledgeable about the history of video games, I was born in 1979 and so I missed quite a lot of the arcade culture, only hitting the tail end of the classic arcade culture in my childhood before the tournament fighting games took over. Thus, I learned a lot about what arcades were like during the early 80s and gained a better appreciations for the video games I already loved like Ms. Pac-Man and Donkey Kong. I saw seven different movies at the Sundance Film Festival this year and, unlike most years, I enjoyed all of them. This one, though, is probably my favorite. No other movie kept me as rapt or as entertained as Chasing Ghosts and I would rate it a 4.5 out of 5. Anyone who appreciates a good historical and personal documentary will enjoy this film and for anyone who is interested in the history of video games it is a must see.

What made the experience even better is that the producer, director, editor, cinematographer, and Twin Galaxies founder Walter Day were there at the screening and stayed around afterwards to answer questions about the film. The people who made the film, while not hardcore gamers, really showed that they were eager to make this film. Mr. Day was a mini-celebrity and fielded many questions and handled them all well.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - Review

I had a disease and the only prescription was more Zelda. This game didn't disappoint. Since the Game Boy Color Oracle games, Nintendo has allowed Capcom to handle their portable Zeldas and Capcom has done an admirable job. Minish cap is a classic 2D top-down Zelda game that has almost all the spit-and-polish you could ask for.

The story tells of the legend of the Piccori (or Minish) - miniscule people who came to help Hyrule in its time of need by supplying it with the Piccori sword which the great hero used to defeat the monsters. On an anniversary commemorating this event, a wizard named Vaati wins the swordsmanship tournament for the right to touch the Piccori blade. Turns out, he is looking for the light force power used to destroy all the monsters in times past and ends up breaking the blade and releasing monsters back into the world. Princess Zelda is turned to stone and you, her friend Link, must seek out the Piccori to reforge the blade and bring peace back to Hyrule. Along the way you find Ezlo, a Minish wizard who was Vaati's mentor, but was turned into a hat when Vaati seized the power of the great wizard hat. He accompanies Link (on his head) as they seek out a way to defeat Vaati and lift the curse on Zelda, Ezlo, and Hyrule.

The story is fairly cliche and doesn't have much development, but it serves fine. It is most interesting because it doesn't mention Gannon or the Triforce. This, along with several other factors has led those who try to put all the Zelda games on a timeline to speculate that this is actually the first game, chronologically, in the Zelda timeline.

The gameplay is absolutely what you would expect for a 2D top-down Zelda game. You choose from your inventory of one object to assign to the A button and another to assign to the B button. You start with just your sword and your shield. You can swing your sword, keep it out in front of you, or hold it down to charge it up for a super-360 degree slash. You gain more techniques as the game goes one by training with different swordmasters and collecting elements from the dungeons. You also always have the ability to pick up and throw various rocks and pots and to do a quick roll. As the game goes on, you acquire other items like the gust jar, the roc cape, and the cane of Pacci. These items help both against monsters and environmentally. Your sword slices through grasses and trees, bombs blow up unstable rocks, the roc cape lets you jump over gaps.

The biggest addition to the traditional 2D Zelda formula is the ability to shrink down to the size of the Minish. At certain rocks trees, or pots, you can hop on and be shrunk down. You then navigate the world in a much different way. Grass and rubble that you could easily walk through at normal size become unpassable. Vines that would never hold you before and passages previously mouse-size are now new paths to take. Especially in the main town of Hyrule, this gives you the sense of their being and extra, smaller world.

The game world consists of a large overworld map with over a dozen distinct geographic areas. Each of those areas houses plenty of enemies and secrets to uncover. Indeed, like many Zelda games, much of this one consists of returning to areas you have been to with new items to uncover new secrets in them. The game is on the low side in terms of dungeons - there are only six in the game, but because there is so much to do in the overworld, it doesn't feel that short. The dungeons themselves are full of puzzles that must be solved, both with new items and old. They puzzles never get really difficult, but some require you to think outside the box a bit, especially in the later dungeons.

Though there is a Minish town, and a few other isolated people in houses, huts and caves, Hyrule town is where you do most of your interacting with people. Here lives the main swordsman who teaches you a good number of techniques. Here is the lady whose chickens have escaped who rewards you for returning them. Here is the man who makes figurines of people and monsters in Hyrule that you can win by gambling shells. Here is the main shop where you can replenish items. Hyrule town definitely feels like a bustling community with just a ton of stuff to do there.

Hyrule town is also where you learn about and do most of your kinstone fusions. Kinstones are colored, circular pieces of stone that are broken in half. You collect left halves and people in the game hold right halves. When you come to a person (and an occasional special stone in the wilderness), they will indicate that they have a kinstone to fuse. You can then pull up your screen of kinstones and if you have a left half to match their right half, fuse them together. This unlocks a secret suck as a new cave or passageway or monster of treasure chest somewhere else in the world. You are shown where on your map so that you can go and check it out. Finding and making all of the kinstone connections was one of my favorite parts of the game as I was always curious to see what secrets I uncovered.

The monsters in the game are colorful and varying as Zelda monsters should be. From the old-school octoroks, tektites, and leevers (I can't type that without thinking of this much beloved commercial for the original Zelda) to newer enemies and bugs and insects that assault you when you are Minish-sized. Many enemies cannot be beaten with your sword alone and require a special item (though often you have quite a bit of choice in which special item to use). At the end of dungeons you fight a large boss. These aren't very difficult until the later dungeons, but they are quite fun, especially the ones that are giant versions of regular enemies because you are fighting them while Minish-size (the giant octorok is probably my favorite).

The graphics are crisp and clear. They are full of bright colors and are almost cartoon-like while not being stylizes. The animation in the game is very smooth and it really seems like great detail was done to the make the game look gorgeous and take as much advantage of the Game Boy Advance as possible. The sounds also seem to push the Game Boy Advance speakers to their limit. While not known for quality, the clangs and cries and explosions are all very clear. The music is mostly retreads and variations of older Zelda tunes, but it is very well done and sounds great.

This game is certainly one of the most polished game that I have played for the Game Boy Advance. The graphics, sound, and gameplay are all very well done. The biggest complaint I have about the game is the lack of originality. It is a Zelda, and so you know what to expect, but they really didn't do a lot more than that. The story is also unmemorable, and while story in a Zelda game doesn't have to be important, it is another notch off of it. Ultimately I was pleased with this game and think it great, even if I had wished for something slightly more. That still doesn't prevent me from recommending it to anyone with a Game Boy Advance.

Rating: 9 / 10