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.

Fire Emblem - Chapter 26x: Night of Farewells

The Fire Emblem series (along with the Wars series) originally started on the Famicom (NES) in Japan. Like Advance Wars, it didn't make its first appearance in North America until the Game Boy Advance. After playing both the games, I can say without a doubt that we in North America were screwed. This game is awesome.

The game is more similar to Shining Force than Final Fantasy Tactics. Each character is highly specialized and has only a few things that they can do. The real trick in this game is putting your characters' strengths against the other enemies' weakness. Oh, and the biggest feature of the series is permanent death. Yes, if one of your characters dies, they are gone and there is no way to revive them. Gone for the rest of the game. Of course, if one of the three main characters dies, it is game over, so you have to redo the level. Otherwise, you just lose the use of the character which is cool because it changes aspects of the story.

I have a problem in that I can be a bit of an anal retentive perfectionist sometimes. In Fire Emblem, this means that I want to finish the game with every character that I recruited still alive. So if one dies during a mission, I have to restart that mission (there is no way to go back to an earlier point in a mission). Chapter 26x was long. I mean, really long. There were tons of enemies and they were strong. So, it took me a long time to complete this mission. Really long. I would get halfway through and then mistakenly leave a character out on his own. He would get swarmed by enemies and die. And I would have to restart. This must have happened over a dozen times. And it was very frustrating. I almost considered bending my rule and just letting a character die.

But no, I persevered and finally last night I completed the mission. I'm actually not sure if this rewarding of my obsessive behavior is a good thing.

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

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - Beat the Game

The final dungeon was much easier than I thought it would be. It took me three tries to beat Vaati, but he didn't seem all that hard. The ending was nice and the variation on the Zelda theme at the gave me shivers. I do find it lame that you get a special item to help you against enemies after you've beaten the game. What's up with that?

Those are my only comments. I just don't have much to say about this game.

Contact - Review

Contact was billed as a game that would bring a breath of fresh air to role-playing games. No more cliched plots, spiky-haired kids, or same old battle systems. This game would be different and special! Early screen shots showed an aesthetic that was similar to Earthbound, a cult classic for its humor and presentation on the Super Nintendo. Thus, I came to this game with high hopes, not even dashed by the luke-warm reviews it received.

Contact certainly is innovative, especially in the story department. It is post-modern in that it involves you, the guy pushing buttons on the DS, in the game. There is no fourth wall here. When the game starts, a professor has been sending out messages and makes contact with you. Your DS gives you the ability to communicate with him and you begin telling him about yourself. You two are interrupted when his spaceship is attacked by an unknown force and crashes on the nearest planet. While doing so, it picks up a local boy, Terry. Once the professor and Terry recover, the professor realizes that the energy source for his ship, cells of the mysterious element 117 are gone and scattered all over. Terry agrees to help the professor find his energy source. Then the professor has a private conversation with you where he tells you that you should control Terry and help him along and figure out where to go. As the game goes on, you find another group, the CosmoNOTs are also looking for element 117, and are responsible for crashing the professor's ship. Apparently they want to use it for some nefarious purpose.

As stories goes, the one in Contact definitely holds your interest because it seems to unfold like a mystery. You slowly learn more about the CosmoNOTs and their plans. It kept me going so I could see what happen. I was disappointed that, even at the end of the game, the motivations of the professor and the CosmoNOTs are still not clear. Certainly, neither is presented as purely good or evil at the end of the game, but I wasn't much closer to understanding what their eventual goals were.

While the story itself is fairly good, the localization of this game is amazing. Clearly, the guy from Atlus that localized this game put a lot of effort into making the characters understandable and sympathetic. Oh, and funny! There are a lot of great uses of language ("He put his eyes on the prize and used his thighs!") and plenty of inside jokes which admittedly may not stand up so well many years on ("Hit his weakpoint for MASSIVE DAMAGE!", "I wish a base like this belonged to us."). Still, when the text of a game that is very Japanese in origin makes me smile like this, I know it is doing something right. I mean, Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime also had a great and roughly equivalent localization, so for a much smaller market game like Contact, I am impressed.

The gameplay consists of you controlling Terry, either with the D-pad or the stylus. Occasionally you also use the stylus to interact with something on the bottom screen (such as shaking fruit off of trees). When you encounter an enemy, you can press B to go into combat mode where Terry will periodically whack the enemy with whatever weapon he has equipped. Because combat is real-time and there is no menu system to choose what to do, positioning Terry in battle and choosing special attacks at the right time is important. The game doesn't rely on reflexes so this isn't an action RPG, but it does make the game different from a more typical menu-based system.

Terry has a variety of statistics such as health, stamina, strength, wisdom, blade proficiency, blunt weapon proficiency, blade resistance, fire proficiency, fire resistance, courage, karma, cooking, fishing, and thieving. You raise these statistics by using them. So, attacking an enemy will raise strength, aim, and blade proficiency (if have a blade weapon equipped). Getting attacked increases agility, and if you get hit, health, stamina, and resistance to whatever kind of attacked hit you. Thus, Contact is different from the traditional RPG by eschewing the level system in favor of skill increases.

Throughout the game, you will acquire various costumes. The costumes you wear changes your stats in various ways and gives you special powers you only have available by wearing the costume. For example, the Knuckle Mole costume increases your hit points, slows you down (I think), and allows you to dig and make special earth-based attacks. The more you use these earth-based attacks (or weapons that include an earth component), the more your earth proficiency goes up and when it goes up enough you get new earth-based skills and attacks.

Besides being a costume for each level, there are three "job" costumes: Mr. Cuisine, Fisher King, and Shadow Thief. Mr. Cuisine allows you to cook. In the game, you restore health (and raise attributes) by eating various kinds of foods. These foods also fill your stomach to a certain extent and take a certain amount of time to digest, so you can't just keep eating. Cooking is the art of making one food into another. You may cook meat and turn it into tasty BBQ. Or cook lettuce and tomato to make a salad. Fisher King allows you to fish when you are near water. When fishing, you wait until a fish yanks down your bob then pull up. If you have enough fishing skill for the fish that bit your line, you will reel it in. To be honest, I never found fishing to be very useful. Finally, Shadow Thief allows you to pick locks. This gives you access to extra treasure chests or rooms.

The game also makes use of decals - stickers you can peel off and use. ? Decals are ones that boost Terry's stats. You will find them in treasure chests and monsters drop them. You then peel them off to find out what they do (such as +2 Strength and +1 Defense) and then choose whether to attack or discard it. There are also super decals that have special functions in the game. Some have utility like recovering a cell or returning to the ship, but most effect the enemies on screen in some way.

The game world is divided into a series of islands. The professor has attached his ship to an old galleon and you use it to sail around to the different islands to find the cells. Islands do not show up on your map until you have heard about them. Generally, you go around a new island talking to anyone on it, figure out where you are supposed to go, then trek through the "dungeon" of that island (the dungeon may be a pyramid or a military base or a huge store). There are quite a lot of people to talk to in the game and various side quests you can do involving them. The island dungeons themselves are put together well and fun to explore, though you generally won't get too far on your first time through. You'll trek through, raise some skills, then have to retreat. Eventually you'll be able to make it to the end, fight a boss, and then get a clue as to where the next cell is. The Habara dungeon is clearly the best of the game, putting Terry into 8-bit video game worlds.

The biggest problem with Contact is the tedium. RPGs have long since passed the day where you need to spend hours fighting and leveling up before progressing on to the next area. Some grinding can definitely be required, but it should not detract from the game. The game is very difficult early on and it can take 20 tries to finally get through the second dungeon. This necessity to sit and fight enemies instead of progressing seems intended to length the game as there are only six major dungeons in it. Beyond just fighting, plenty of other things seem to just serve to take time unnecessarily. If I want to fish while the ship is crossing the ocean, the time it takes to get from place to place is fine. But if I want to just get there, the only way to skip ahead is to save. And saving takes time because, after you actually save the game, you then have to play with Mochi (the professor's dog) for a period of time. Cooking, which becomes necessary later on to make the health items you'll need to survive in dungeons also has an unskippable animation. This may have been the first negative paragraph I have written in this review, but it is a huge issue. The game just ceases to be fun when you have to pound monsters for 10 minutes before progressing or wait forever when traversing between islands to complete a side quest.

The graphics in this game are quite nice. As mentioned, the graphics of the professor and Mochi in his spaceship are a nod to Earthbound. They have a very minimalist stylization. The rest of the graphics are a mixture of nice 2D art and 3D modeled-looking art. It works very well and makes the game colorful and detailed. The sound in the game consists mostly of the grunts and slashes of you or enemies attacking. Each type of person has their own sound they make when talking. Sound is used nicely in cut scenes, but otherwise in forgettable. The music is appropriate for each area you are in and helps set the mood. It isn't incredibly memorable as it took me awhile to remember anything besides the music in the professor's room.

I'm sure some people enjoy RPGs where you need to grind through enemies to raise your stats. I don't mind that as part or as a side quest in a game, but to me RPGs are about exploring new areas, interacting with people, and strategizing over how to beat new enemies. They are not about killing the same enemy a hundred times so you are powerful enough to move on (or at least they haven't been since Dragon Warrior). This game is very clever in parts and the costume system and stat raising system are fairly unique touches. The story kept me going so I could find out more about the characters (and I was disappointed I never did) and the localization kept me smiling. I didn't really have to force myself to play through this, but I was never looking forward to playing it either. If you want to try a quirky RPG, you might give it a try, but be prepared for some monotony.

Rating: 6 / 10

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - Completing Loose Ends

Sometimes I get obsessive over fully completing a game. Especially if it involves exploring everywhere to discover every last whatsit. As long as doing so doesn't make me tear my hair out in frustration, I am all for it. So, before I ventured into Dark Hyrule castle, I wanted to get all the things I could. I needed to do all the kinstone fusions, get all the pieces of heart, and collect every figurine.

I succeeded in this, but didn't do it all on my own. I was able to get down to 3 kinstone fusions left before I broke down and had to check where they all were. I got all but one heart container piece without having to look up where the last one was. As for the figurines, I had to read about and use the recurring 20 rupees to get enough shells to get the final 8 or so figurines.

The most frustrating thing was probably doing all the chicken rescues. Man, especially the last one was ridiculously hard. But I did it and now the woman has all her cuccos back.

Time to take on Vaati.

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap - Acquired the Wind Element

I am making this post, but I really don't have much more to say about the game than I said in my last one. You kind of know what to expect in a portable Zelda game and that's what you get here. It is well done, but it isn't amazing.

The wind palace up in the clouds definitely gave me one of my hardest times in the game, but part of that was me being stupid. For a long time, I just blocked on what the items in my inventory would do to get me past a certain area. And then in another part, I just completely could not see the solution to a puzzle. The solution was new and novel, so I give myself some slack since I never had to do it before, but it must have taken me a half hour of going back and forth through the level before I figured it out.

The kinstone system remains one of my favorite parts of the game. Tingle has told me I have five left to fuse, but unfortunately I don't see where those would be. I guess part of this game involves going back through previous areas and using new techniques or items, but I really feel like I have been everywhere and just have no clue where the remaining five could be if they aren't in Hyrule Castle.