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| December 31, 2009... New
Year, New Decade |
Well, that's it for Awesome NES.
Every licensed NES game released in the United
States is included on the list now, from A to Z and
beyond. I may move on to the small handful of
European exclusives or start posting Ross Wooddard's
unlicensed game reviews, but the bulk of my work is
over... and just in time for the 20th anniversary of the
moment when the system hit the peak of its
popularity!
With the end of Awesome NES comes the
end of the year, as well as an era of
gaming. Much has changed in the industry over the
last ten years. Internet compatibility has gone from a
quirky, rarely used novelty in the Dreamcast to an expected
and tightly integrated feature in nearly every game
console. Systems have grown vastly more powerful, with
development costs for high-profile games rising into the
stratosphere to take full advantage of that extra
horsepower. Industry fixtures
like Namco, Sega, and Sierra have merged with toy
manufacturers, casinos, and even other game companies to stay
afloat in an increasingly costly and competitive market.
Finally, brave new concepts from industry underdogs have
turned the medium on its head, leaving companies who've
grown dangerously complacent scrambling to offer their
own alternatives.
What will the next decade bring?
Will the motion control of the Wii push the industry toward
true virtual reality? Will the downfall of Tiger Woods
and the increasingly stagnant and exploitative
Madden series spell trouble for Electronic Arts? Or is
Activision's own golden goose cooked after releasing one too
many games packed with pricey plastic peripherals? Will
corporate consolidation leave us with just a half-dozen key
game developers, or will more rise from obscurity to take the
place of fallen giants like Acclaim and Data East?
Can we expect a longer shelf life from the
Playstation 3, Xbox 360, and Wii than their respective
predecessors? Most importantly, will we be much too old
to care about video games at all?
I guess we'll know the answers by
December 31, 2019.
| December 25, 2009... Holiday
Rush |
Oh man, I completely forgot
about Awesome NES!
There's going to be one heck of a rush to complete
the feature before the end of the year, but I do have three
pages of NES reviews ready for those interested. Some of
the games in this super-sized Christmas update include Toki
(soon to be released in updated form on the Xbox Live Arcade
service), Track & Field and its sophisticated sequel, the
considerably less sophisticated Tom & Jerry, and the
not sophisticated at all Total Recall.
All right gang, I guess I'd better jump
back into Assassin's Creed II. Knowing that game, I
probably won't so much jump back into it as jump off to the
side slightly and off a three story roof. This game is
so good in so many ways, but control is most assuredly not one
of them.
| December 22, 2009... Psycho
Santa, Ho Ho Ho! |
It's high time I unveiled
the Christmas banner for the site. There were two things
you could always count on from Data East... completely
ridiculous fighting games, and cameo appearances from the most
dangerously unstable Saint Nick this side of a Weird Al
Yankovic song. The Psycho Santas from Two Crude Dudes
are just straight up nasty, but this statue of the jolly old
elf, from the Christmas stage in Boogie Wings, rapidly
alternates between doling out gifts and delivering pain to
players, swapping faces with every violent mood swing.
When you sink that last bullet into his bowl full of jelly, he
explodes, leaving you with a headless clockwork Nick as the
real deal and his eight tiny reindeer fly past in the
distance. Yeah, it was that kind of
game.
| December 19,
2009... InHeinous |
Twenty five years ago, the
very idea of a game like Fable II would have been met with
skepticism and mockery. The kindest response you would
have received from gamers would have been, "Hmm, sounds
like an interesting text adventure." These days, the
far-reaching depth of Fable II is still not commonplace, but
happens often enough that the average player wouldn't bat an
eye over the ability to purchase and maintain a house, or wear
condoms to prevent a pregnancy. It shocks the hell out
of me, though.
I'll let you know what I think of the
game once I've finished the daunting manual and actually pop
the disc into my Xbox 360. In the meantime, let's have a
look at the two games I received earlier in the week, shall
we? First up is InFamous, from Sly Cooper creators
Sucker Punch. Quirky but endlessly playable video games
have been this team's calling card since the release of
Rocket: Robot on Wheels over ten years ago, but this time, I'm
only seeing the quirks. The animation is a real sore
spot for me... the techniques that Sucker Punch used to bring
talking raccoons and turtles to life don't work so well
for Infamous' cast of grim humans.
Gestures and expressions are uncomfortably stiff
or distractingly comical, but either way, they never
seem natural. It's obvious that Sucker Punch
had significantly more trouble making the
transition from silly to serious than its second party
peers Naughty Dog and Insomniac.
The action in inFamous
mirrors recent sandbox games Assassin's Creed II and
Prototype, with open environments and the ability to climb
towering skyscrapers with ease. The control doesn't have
the offputting slot car feel of Assassin's Creed II, but then
again, I don't remember getting shot in the back from long
distances in ACII either. This leads me to my second
complaint... the enemies here are the most aggressively,
annoyingly tenacious I've seen in a video game since the birds
and bats in the NES version of Ninja Gaiden. You'll
be constantly fired upon by the drug-addled, hood-veiled
Reapers, often from such distances that you'll never find
the source of the onslaught until the screen is splattered
with your blood (life bars, who needs 'em?). Even
when you do find your enemies, they're so
wily that it's damned near impossible to lock onto them with
your inaccurate bolts of lightning and wimpy, wimpy, wimpy
light grenades.
People often complain that my view of
gaming is too pessimistic, but it's really, really hard to see
the positives in this release. Even the cast of
characters is a downer, with the Clorox-gargling hero
accompanied by a bossy government agent, bitch-a-matic
ex-girlfriend, and a southern-fried sidekick so slimy and
opportunistic, it's a monumental test of your patience and
willpower to keep from putting a few volts in him.
Sorry, Sucker Punch, but maybe you ought to stick with Sly
Cooper sequels.
Fortunately, PURE's around to keep me
from ending this update on a sour note. You might be
tempted to dismiss this extreme racing game as a cheap Disney
cash-in, but you'd be oh-so-very wrong. First, Disney
owns ESPN2, so they have a little street cred with
the extreme sports crowd. Second, the game is actually
very well designed... perhaps a little too complicated for its
own good, but visually striking and at least as fun to play as
Excitetruck or Motorstorm.
There's a clever symbiosis between the
racing and tricks... a clean jump over a hill lets you perform
wild stunts, which fills up a boost meter that lets you streak
past competitors in the straightaways. Alternately, you
can hold onto this energy and use it to gain access to even
sweeter stunts, including a set of top-tier tricks that
excellent players can perform in perpetuity. Pulling off
tricks is never as smooth as it was in the early Tony Hawk
games (read: not RIDE), but it adds spice to an already solid
racer, and could blossom into something truly fantastic after
a couple sequels of refinement. However, since they were
giving this away with Xbox 360 systems and I bought mine for
about six bucks, maybe I shouldn't hold my breath for Extra
PURE...
| December 17, 2009... A Day
That Will Live in Infamy |
Infamous has arrived at
JessCREATIONS*, Co. Studios, along with the promising off-road
racing game PURE. It's not hard to figure out what I'll
be doing later this evening!
Come to think of it, I'll
have plenty of time for gaming now that
this semester is over. Maybe this will also result
in more content for the site, or perhaps even- dare I say it?-
a new video review after a year long hiatus. Hey,
anything's possible!
| December 14, 2009... The Heat
is On |
When Stevie
Wonder made the case on the VGA Awards that video
game designers should do more to accommodate the needs of
the disabled, many laughed. However, I see it as an
intriguing challenge. How would you adapt a medium
dependent on sight for those who do not possess
it?
The answer lies in "heat pixels."
Inventor Cesar Austudillo suggested this for an oven
of the future, using a matrix of hexagonal
heating elements coupled with a touch-sensitive stovetop for
even cooking regardless of the pan's size and shape.
It's a clever idea that could easily be adapted for a
sightless video game. Imagine if you will a blanket,
perhaps one square foot in size, with a matrix of tiny heating
elements woven through it. The blanket is worn on the
back, perhaps held in place with a specially designed shirt,
and the elements are warmed according to the position of
characters and objects in the game.
We'll use Pac-Man as an example.
As the most important character in the game,
Pac-Man would be the warmest heat pixel in the
blanket. As Pac-Man moves, the heat in one element is
shut off and an adjacent element is switched on.
Slightly cooler are the monsters, which patrol the maze in
search of our hungry hero. Cooler still are the walls of
the maze, and barely producing heat at all are the tiny dots
Pac-Man must gobble to finish the stage. There's enough
distinction between the heat levels for the player to
know the position of every important object in the game, and
wearing the blanket on the back means that
movement would correspond precisely to a standard game
controller, with no mirroring.
The applications of this "Virtual
Vision" heat panel could extend well beyond a simple game of
Pac-Man. It could also be used as a sort of radar for
games like the recently released Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
2, giving the player a sense of his onscreen position and his
proximity to enemies. Using the Pac-Man model, other
players could be panel hot spots, while the absence of heat
could indicate safe zones, places where the player can freely
walk. These tactile clues, coupled with a good surround
stereo system, could get a sight-deficient player through
the story mode and maybe even a few multiplayer
games.
There are some issues with the design,
of course. The intensity of the heating elements would
have to be adjusted at least thirty times a second to keep up
with the onscreen action, which may necessitate a switch to
Braille pins or tiny vibration motors. Also, it's hard
to say if even a blind individual's heightened sense of touch
would be enough to differentiate the levels of heat in the
elements. The pad may have to be worn as a glove around
the extremely sensitive skin of the palm for it to be
useful.
The concept's not perfect,
but accommodations for blind gamers are still in the
stone age, and practically anything would be an improvement
over what they've currently got. I'm going to run
this by Ben Heckendorn and see what he thinks of the
idea.
| December 10, 2009... Mega Man
10! (and oh yeah, some other
stuff) |
I'm sure you've heard the
news already, but a sequel to Mega Man 9 will
be released next year for Nintendo's WiiWare
service. Not much have been revealed about the
game, aside from the usual flimsy pretense for Mega Man's
latest skirmish with the nefarious Dr.
Wily (it's a robot virus this time... perhaps a
foreshadowing of the Mavericks in Mega Man X?) and a single
robot master, Sheep Man. The small handful of
screenshots printed in Nintendo Power already fill me
with dread... really, how are you supposed to survive
this?!
In other, less important news, NPD
projects that over 800,000 copies of Assassin's Creed II were
sold for the Xbox 360. That's very good news indeed...
after some initial frustration with the control, the game
really grew on me. Just as encouraging are the dismal
projected sales of Tony Hawk Ride and Band Hero. With
just 13,000 units of the former and 28,000 of the latter sold
in November, there's a good chance Activision will think long
and hard before releasing yet another game with a behemoth
plastic controller.
What else? Shadow Complex, the
merger of Metroid's play mechanics and modern day gaming
trends, will be available at a sharp discount during the
Christmas week. That makes me feel a little stupid for
purchasing the game a week ago, but for those of you who
haven't yet taken the plunge... score!
Also, the upcoming sequel to Mass Effect
will feature a cornucopia of classic cartoon voice
overs. This includes not only the magnificent Keith
David of Gargoyles fame, but Seth Green (Robot Chicken),
Michael Dorn (I. M. Weasel...?), and Jennifer Hale (name an
animated series, and she was probably in it) as well. I
never finished the first game, but perhaps I'll give it
another shot, taking care to pick the better of the two
Shepards this time. How was I supposed to know that the
guy was the lame one?
Well, that's it from me. Back to
the messy business of finishing this term
paper...
| December 5,
2009... Assassin's Creed II: A Tale of Near
Triumph |
The most agonizing video
game experiences don't come from purely awful games, but
rather those titles that come within inches of perfection,
only to let it slip through their grasp with some ill-advised
aspect of the design. Assassin's Creed II is the latest
example... this virtual recreation of renaissance Italy
has style, atmosphere, and personality to spare, but the
context-sensitive movement rips the control from the player's
hands and takes a few fingers in the process.
When I watched footage of
the game on YouTube and witnessed players make boneheaded
moves while in pursuit of their latest target, I
naturally assumed that their questionable skills were to
blame. That couldn't be further from the truth.
The reality is that these players were sabotaged by
the awkward control, which tries to fill in the blanks for you
and often misses the entire page. After the
absolute precision of Uncharted, I was expecting better from
Assassin's Creed II than unexpected plunges off three story
buildings and sluggish climbs up the sides of
buildings.
I haven't gotten very far yet, so
there's still plenty of time for me to adapt to the
control scheme. I'm just asking myself why I should have
to when Uncharted and Crackdown came so naturally to
me.
| December 2, 2009... The
Beginning of the End (of the
year) |
Christmas
has crept up on
us once again. Shocking how quickly it arrives every
year, isn't it? Either that or I'm getting older
and the world around me has sped up accordingly. The
strange thing is that even in bitterly cold Michigan, we still
have yet to see a flake of snow. We've got the freezing
winds, yes, but none of the white stuff.
Anyway, I just thought I'd mention that
a copy of Assassin's Creed II will be heading its way to
JessCREATIONS*, Co. Studios, thanks in large part to a
generous donation from Tips and Tricks editor Chris
Bieniek. I've been watching the videos on YouTube and
the game looks incredible... the only thing I'm not
sold on are the jarring transitions to a Holodeck evidently
designed by Steve Jobs. I have seen the future, ladies
and gentlemen, and it is whiter than a Klansman's laundry
basket.
Goozex also owes me a game, but I
haven't decided which one I'll take. I'm leaning toward
InFamous (and friends are pushing me in that direction), but
there's also Borderlands and Prototype and at least
a dozen Playstation 3 exclusives I missed. It
just seems wrong that we're four years into this console cycle
and I still haven't played any next generation
Ratchet and Clank games beyond the agonizingly brief
Quest for Booty.
There's one other thing worth mentioning
before I go. Apparently, Microsoft is selling avatar
pets for the not-so-low price of three
dollars. These capitalist critters include the
increasingly-popular-although-God-only-knows-why Chinese pug,
the Jerry Bruckheimer (and Richard Gere) approved guinea pig,
and a goldfish, for those of you who want your video game
persona to be as boring as you are in real life.
Personally, I'm considering the long-haired cat, since it
would go beautifully with my avatar's monocle and secret plans
for world domination. "No, Mr. Gates. This is the
part where you die..."
| November 30,
2009... Housecleaning |
Don't mind me, I'm just
adding some banners to the site. Not much else to say,
really.
| November 19,
2009... Die-A-Rama |
After countless months of
letting the site go to pot, I've written a full-sized game
review, and of a recent release, no less! Head over to
the freshly created Playstation 3 page to
check out my opinion of Demon's Souls, the hair-pullingly
frustrating action RPG from the guys who brought you, uh,
Spud's Adventure and Rockin' Kats. And if you're a
"hardcore" gamer who's about to tell me that I'm a "noob" and
that the game "pwned" me, please also feel free to visit the
complaint department, conveniently located in the Perineum
Mall between my asshole and nutsack.
| November 14,
2009... Take a Wild
Guess |
Word from the
grapevine is that there will be a Volume Zero of
SNK's Arcade Classics series, packed with
twenty games developed before the company released
its famed Neo-Geo arcade jukebox. Which games, you
ask? Only the extremely obscure Search and Rescue has
been confirmed, with the ESRB giving only vague hints about
the identities of the remaining titles. However, if the
collection will only contain arcade games (as opposed to NES
titles like Crystalis and Baseball Stars), it's probably safe
to assume that most of the following will be
included:
Alpha Mission: An
early vertically scrolling shooter that, along with the lesser
known HAL 21, was SNK's answer to the Japanese megahit
Xevious. What set Alpha Mission apart was a huge
assortment of impressive wing arms that the player could
assemble from pieces hidden in each stage. The game was
a minor success on the NES, but much more impressive in
arcades thanks to crisp graphics and faster acccess to the
auxillary weapons.
Athena: This early
SNK release borrowed heavily from Super Mario Bros., but
swapped the Mushroom Kingdom with a psychadelic Greek fantasy
motif, and piled on the power-ups. The lead character
could wear armor and wield weapons ranging from crude clubs to
the mighty morning star, which crushed enemies and turned
mountains into rubble. Unfortunately, SNK forgot to add
the fun, but the game's historical significance
(Athena would later become an important character in the King
of Fighters) practically guarantees that it will be included
in the collection.
Bermuda Triangle:
A distant cousin of Alpha Mission, which Alpha Mission would
probably like to keep as distant as possible. This game
suffers from all kinds of ill-advised play mechanics, like a
dial similar to the one in Ikari Warriors (fine there,
but not in a forced-scrolling shoot 'em up) and
a power up gauge that frequently transforms the
player's already oversized ship into a screen-filling
monstrocity. Nevertheless, this game was moderately
successful and has a pretty good chance of finding its way on
SNK Classics Collection Zero.
Fantasy: Also known as
Pioneer Balloon, this infuriating action game is split into
four different stages, each different from and even harder
than the last. The continue feature ensured that gamers
of the time would keep feeding quarters into the machine until
rescuing the damsel waiting in the final stage. The
graphics are more primitive than some cave paintings and the
gameplay is the stuff of shattered controllers and television
sets, but the game will be included anyway for the sake of
variety.
Fighting Golf:
The game will be stripped of its Lee Travino endorsement when
it's put on this collection, but everything else will remain
the same. That includes the split-screen view of the
course, caddies with names like "Super Mex," and of course,
the frustration of aiming for the green and winding up in a
sand trap or pond. Mark Twain was right... it really
is a good walk spoiled!
Gold Medalist: Similar
to Konami's Track 'n Field series, with the pudgy characters
replaced by more realistic and detailed athletes. This
was very nearly confirmed by the ESRB, which didn't refer to
it specifically but mentioned that an Olympic sports game was
one of the titles on the disc. I can't think of any
other world sporting event simulations released
by SNK in the 1980s, so this is probably the
one.
Guerrilla
War: This military shooter was faster and more
exciting than Ikari Warriors, but the storyline was a little
too hot for Americans to handle. Originally, the game
was called Guevara, and starred Cuban revolutionaries Che
Guavara and Fidel Castro battling to overthrow the Batista
empire. When the game arrived here on these shores, the
gameplay remained the same, but the backstory got a lot more
vague. Nobody even knew who these guys were supposed to
be until the 1990s, when the internet spilled the beans on
their identities.
Ikari Warriors: The
original, but no longer the best. Actually, it's not
even that original, since Taito's Front Line came first.
Ikari Warriors makes big improvements to the formula,
however... the bow-legged private from Taito's game is
replaced with a pair of buff soldiers, the weapons pack a lot
more punch, and there's more variety in both the enemies and
terrain. It didn't take long for SNK to eclipse Ikari
Warriors with spinoffs like the aforementioned Guerrilla War,
but strangely, the game is a lot more entertaining than the
two sequels that were released years later. It's for
this reason that I believe Ikari Warriors will be on this
collection, but the bizarre Victory Road and incredibly
awkward Ikari III will not.
Marvin's
Maze: Practically every game company has made a
Pac-Man clone, and SNK is no exception. However,
Marvin's Maze gives the concept a twist only MC Escher could
love... instead of a maze, the game takes place on scaffolding
seen from an isometric viewpoint. Geeky water droplet
Marvin must pick up pulsing dots while staying one step ahead
of the Robonoids patrolling the building. Like most
games with an isometric view, Marvin's Maze was impressive for
the time but incredibly awkward to play. Nevertheless,
this has a good chance of being on the collection because it's
so different from SNK's war-centric late 1980s
output.
Mad
Crasher: A futuristic take on racing games like
Spy Hunter and Bump 'n Jump, seen once again from an isometric
perspective. It seems SNK really seemed to dig that look
back in the early 1980s. Anyway, the object is to keep
your vehicle, evidently stolen from the impound lot of
the Master Control Program, on the road as long as possible,
gunning down other futuristic cars and launching off
ramps. You actually receive points for staying aloft as
long as possible after a ramp jump, giving the player added
incentive to time the leap just right. This is
a pretty clever game with a convincing sense of speed, which
will get it onto the collection in spite of its rough graphics
and slightly awkward
control.
Munchmobile: Here's a
game with so much potential for greatness, that blows it all
on terrible graphics and clumsy gameplay. You're an
animated car with a really long arm who grabs fruit, eats it,
then discards the cores in trash cans for bonus points.
The problem is that you're struggling to stay on the world's
thinnest road while doing all this. It's impossible to
maintain a balane between the two... either you'll break off
your painfully slow Dhalsim arm on the scenery or veer off
into the world's deadliest grass, leaving you a crumpled heap
on the side of the road. Mark my words, though... it'll
be in the collection, whether you want it there or
not.
P.O.W.: What happens when
you cross the military theme of Ikari Warriors with the
hard-hitting martial arts action of Double Dragon? You'd
probably get something like P.O.W., starring two soldiers
who've broken out of an enemy prison camp and must fight
tooth and nail to return to friendly territory. There
are more angry guerrillas here than a game of Donkey Kong, but
a solid punch to the jaw is all it takes to send them flying
across the screen. P.O.W. was never as good as Double
Dragon or Final Fight, but it gets credit for a unique setting
as well as the most satisfying fist-to-face sound effect ever
heard in a video game. It'd be hard to imagine SNK
Playmore leaving this out of this collection... but then
again, who would have guessed a year ago that King of Fighters
XII would suck so much?
Prehistoric Isle in
1930: This was one of the very last games SNK
released before putting its full weight behind the
Neo-Geo, although a sequel did appear on
the arcade jukebox nearly ten years later. Anyway,
in Prehistoric Isle, you'll pilot a biplane through a
Lost World filled with an anachronistic grab bag of
giant insects, dinosaurs, and
cavemen. Fortunately, you're armed with a rotating
cannon which fires different weapons depending on where
it's set. Position it diagonally and it will drop bombs,
set it straight down and it will spray your enemies with
sheets of napalm, or just put it ahead of you for good
old fashioned laser blasts! It's no classic, but there's
enough entertainment here to justify its inclusion in the
collection.
Psycho Soldier:
SNK's habit of ripping off Capcom started right here in Psycho
Soldier, a pretty blatant clone of Son Son with more
polished visuals and an incessant j-pop soundtrack.
That was pretty impressive for the time, yes, but pretty
obnoxious these days! Anyway, it'll be included
on the collection for its historical significance... after
all, Psycho Soldier stars both Athena and Kensou, who would
later be teamed up with a farting old fogey in the King of
Fighters series.
Sky Adventure:
One of the early releases by SNK subsidiary Alpha Denshi, this
vertically scrolling shooter pits you against a fiendish Nazi
commander and his considerable army, large enough to conquer
the world three times over. If you can cut a path
through the massive fleet of Axis aircraft, you'll
face off against Colonel Claud himself, who taunts you with
arrogant laughter and insults like "You fight like a
kid." Truth be told, this game isn't going to blow
anyone's mind... shooters have evolved so much in the years
since Sky Adventure was released that it will seem as much a
relic as the World War II-era ships you'll pilot.
Consider this filler.
Street
Smart: The predecessor to Fatal Fury, which
feels a bit more like Pit Fighter thanks to the elevated
side-view perspective and ability to take down opponents with
a friend. The physics are really strange in this
release... the player's tendency to slide forward with every
punch and kick makes each stage feel more like
a hockey rink than a sidewalk surrounded by cheering
fans. Most SNK fans will play this once to point out all
the ties to the South Town series, then move on with their
lives.
T.N.K. III: Also known as
Iron Tank, this takes the best part of Ikari Warriors
and expands it into a game of its own. Yes, instead
of crossing your fingers and hoping that an unoccupied tank is
just over the horizon, now you can drive around in an armored
vehicle from the very start, flattening soldiers under your
mighty treads and turning rival tanks into scrap metal with
cannon fire. Life just doesn't get any better than
this! If T.N.K. III doesn't make it onto this
collection, it'll be a grave oversight on the part of the
developers.
Time Soldiers:
Another Alpha Denshi release, which cribs from Ikari Warriors
but adds more anime-like characters and a time traveling
storyline that would later appear in Ninja Commando and the
World Heroes series. You'll fight your way through
history, rescuing fellow soldiers captured by a mysterious foe
named Gylend. This game manages to be even more
ludicrous than other military shooters, which is no small
feat... you'll discover marching trilobytes in the prehistoric
era, fight Ghidorah in ancient Rome, vaporize soldiers
from World War II with a shoulder mounted laser cannon,
and grow to twice your original size by swallowing radioactive
gel capsules the size of your head. There's so much
weirdness here that SNK practically has to add it to the
collection for the camp value alone.
Touchdown
Fever: It's a football game, with the added
"bonus" of SNK's dial joystick. Sure, it made sense in
Ikari Warriors, but why a football game? Anyway, the
game looks a lot better than its NES counterpart thanks to
more realistic players, but if you've already got a Madden
game (and there are like, a billion of them now), why
bother?
Vanguard: An early
shooter, not far removed from Konami's Super Cobra but with
both vertically and horizontally scrolling stages. Also,
instead of bullets and bombs, the player can fire lasers in
four different directions, giving him better protection
against the waves of ships, flying saucers, and alien snakes
(!) standing between him and the collosal cosmic force
Gond. Fun fact... this game was actually designed by
TOSE, responsible for Super Princess Peach and the Legend of
Starfy series!
Wow, I feel like I've reviewed the game
already, and it isn't even out yet! I can't guarantee
that all of these games will be included in Arcade
Classics Zero, but it's safe to assume that a significant
majority of them will be.
Before I go, I should probably mention
that the latest installment of Awesome NES is
finished and up for grabs at the usual place. This time,
the Tiny Toons get nearly half the page, with some space left
over for Times of Lore and Thundercade, two games that are
more whack than wacky.
| November 8, 2009... The
DS You Won't Find on
Nintendo |
Oh yeah, I'm supposed to be
updating a web site or something, aren't I? Sorry, I've
been playing Demon's Souls, and the time got away from
me. Demon's Souls is the latest from, uh, From Software,
the folks responsible for the long-running Armored Core and
King's Field series. While this hard-as-nails action/RPG
has been compared to the latter games, it's so far beyond them
visually that it would take days to describe all the
improvements. While even Eternal Ring for the
Playstation 2 was an endless expanse of blocky gray
walls, set on a flat brown texture and populated
with vaguely recognizable monsters, Demon's Souls
features picturesque environments, packed with exquisite
detail and creatures large enough to pick their teeth with the
player.
You can expect that to be a regular
occurance too, because this game is vicious.
Your character is quickly surrounded and easily dispatched by
the crazed residents of Boletaria, and the closest thing to an
Easy Mode you'll find is the option to play as a "Royal," with
rings that bestow abilities that were given to you by default
in Oblivion. This means you'll have to advance
cautiously through each mission, picking off dreglings one by
one while keeping your shield close at hand for those
unexpected moments, which happen with alarming
frequency. This place is filled with more booby traps
and nasty surprises than the Temple of Doom, and one false
step (be it in the path of a rolling boulder, on a
bridge guarded by a cranky dragon, or off the edge of a
spiralling flight of stairs) will send you right back to
game's hub, minus all of the souls you've gathered.
Souls are everything in this game, and being left with nothing
after thirty minutes of grueling gameplay can be
agonizing.
Demon's Souls further turns the screws
on players by getting harder with every loss.
It's an aspect of the game's design that seems needlessly
sadistic... it would be like going to the dentist for a root
canal, and getting a shot of IntensiPain™ stuck in
your jaw rather than the Novocaine you really wanted.
Abusive as the game can be, it's still pretty enjoyable once
you've learned the ropes. It's not as open-ended as
Oblivion, but there's enough stuff hidden in the nooks and
crannies to keep you exploring stages even after you've beaten
them. Also, the linearity and focus on action keeps
Demon's Souls from becoming as monotonous and plodding as
Oblivion could often be. I liked that game, but after
fifty hours of play without much to show for it I'm not sure
if I could ever go back...
I'd give Demon's Souls a reserved
recommendation. If you've got a short temper and are
prone to fits of disc-snapping, save your
money because it will only go to waste here.
However, if you don't mind taking a slow and steady path
through your games and don't take a humiliating challenge too
personally, you'll find much to like here.
Before I go, I should probably mention
that I've uploaded a new Awesome NES page. This time,
Tetris gets its chance to bask in the spotlight, along with
lesser known titles like Terra Cresta (best described as the
lovechild of Xevious and old episodes of Voltron) and The
Three Stooges. That's not the greatest license for a
video game, but the folks at Cinematronics and Activision
somehow made it work. More or less.
| November 2,
2009... Stick It to
'Em |
Earlier
today, I checked out some of the wares at an
independent bargain store on the verge of going out of
business. One of the items that caught my eye was a
Saitek controller very similar to the one you see
below.
Research on Amazon reveals
that the joystick was designed for flight simulators, but with
its intimidating array of buttons, dials, toggle switches, and
point of view hats, you start to think that it would be easier
to fly a real aircraft. There's even a plastic guard on
the top of the stick, covering an ominous red button.
Being the mischevious little imp I am, I just couldn't resist
pushing it, but it didn't launch any missiles at a rival
superpower or summon a bald Jewish comedian with a silver
briefcase tucked under his arm. Huh, I guess you've got
to connect it to a computer first!
Ultimately, I didn't purchase the stick,
but I did pick up a copy of Guitar Hero III at
a nearby Family Dollar, confirming my suspicions that the
series has hit its market saturation breaking
point. When they're selling the game and guitar
for just twenty bucks at a dollar store, you have to believe
that the music game fad has run its course. Yes, yes, I
realize that Guitar Hero III is long past its expiration date,
having been obsoleted twice over by sequels. However,
Electronic Arts has been just as desperate to unload its own
Rock Band, selling the original game and its sequel
and a guitar and a drum set and a
microphone all for eighty clams. Both games have been
incredibly successful over the past four years, but
I can't shake the feeling that it all goes downhill from
here.
Oh, before I go, I should probably point
out that I've put a brief Twitter feed in the sidebar.
That way, it'll look like I'm updating the site regularly even
when I'm not! Oh, automation... you truly are the
salvation of lazy website editors.
| October 28,
2009... Third Time's The Charm (the editor
fixes a Playstation 3) |
There's nothing more
satisfying to a penny-pinching hacker than to revive a broken
and discarded device he couldn't possibly afford to buy in
stores. That's just what I did yesterday with
a Playstation 3 I had purchased from eBay for about
$90. After determining that the problem with the
system's malfunctioning drive was mechanical, I ordered
replacement parts, and installed them as they arrived.
Weeks later, I had my very own working PS3, for nearly a third
of the price of a new system in stores!
I put the machine through its paces last
night, throwing nearly every type of disc I had its way, and
here are my first impressions.
* DVD PLAYBACK: It's
hard to tell without making a direct comparison, but I played
a couple episodes of Batman Beyond (Meltdown and the Justice
League Unlimited crossover Epilogue), and the picture seemed
crisper than it had on my Xbox 360 and dedicated DVD
player. It's not worth the price of admission, but it's
a nice bonus. On the downside, it's tough to access
specific functions using a Playstation controller, just
as it was with the previous system. You'll have a hell
of a time accessing the pop-up menu and its icons are as
vague and confusing as ever.
* CD PLAYBACK: Again,
this isn't a selling point for the system, but music
nevertheless sounds full and rich on the Playstation 3.
The built-in visualizer is more understated than the chaotic
kalidoscope on the Xbox 360, with a camera racing over a flat
land that changes its topography in time with the tunes you're
playing. Not too shabby, but my all-time favorite
remains the spaceship lazily floating through space on the
Sega Saturn.
* GAMING: I bought two
games for the PS3 in anticipation of its eventual
repair. The first, Motorstorm, was purchased to test the
hardware, but the other, Uncharted, was just for fun.
And what fun it is! It's the first game I've played in
years with photorealistic characters who aren't complete
tools. Seriously, think back to all the video games
you've played over the past three years. Were there any
with a human cast who you didn't want to throw over a
cliff? If your answer was "yes," then the next word
out of your mouth was probably "Uncharted." The
intuitive control, lush visuals, and intense gun fights
make this not only a charming game, but an excellent
one.
* BACKWARD
COMPATIBILITY: I have an eighty gig system, which
means that I'll never play a single PS2 game on my PS3.
Chalk that up to poor planning on my part. However, the
machine offers compatibility with the original
Playstation as a puzzling consolation prize. The system
runs these games about as well as the real thing, with options
to smooth and stretch the dated graphics, but it lacks the
Playstation 2's fast loading feature... an omission that's
greatly felt when you play golden oldies like Street Fighter
EX + Alpha. Characters also "stripe" when they dart
across the screen with the stretching option turned on, which
means that I didn't keep it on for very
long.
* USB PORTS: Unlike
some other game systems, the ports on the Playstation 3 really
are universal, accepting controllers that weren't
explicitly designed for the system. This includes
Sega's sublime USB Saturn controller, which makes old-school
gaming a lot more comfortable than it is on the Xbox
360. A search through the system's cross bar menu
reveals that the Playstation 3 can communicate with all kinds
of peripherals, from flash drives to... printers? That'd
come in handy for Linux, I suppose, but who uses their
Playstation 3 as a personal computer? (Nobody who owns
the slim model, that's for sure.)
* START UP SOUND:
Since the advent of disc-based media, every game system has
its own start up sound, a musical greeting that helps define
the console's identity. The Neo-Geo Pocket, for
instance, has a chirpy little tune that prepares the player
for the lighthearted fun of its games. The Saturn has
its cacaphony of gentle wind chimes, while the energy
spikes of the Western-designed Xbox are
considerably more threatening. As a long-time gamer,
I've heard dozens of these jingles, and the orchestral
warm-up that begins every Playstation 3 session is
easily the most insufferably pretentious of the
lot. It fits with Sony's marketing strategies and
general arrogance, but it's still obnoxious.
* HOME BUTTON:
Like the Xbox 360's Guide Button, the Home Button in the
center of the Dual Shock 3 lets you jump out of a game in
progress and return to the main menu, giving you total control
over your entertainment experience. However, what if you
don't have a Home button on your controller? Then you,
my friend, are screwed. There's no way to reset the
machine without it, so when you're done with a game, all you
can do is shut off the machine, switch it back on, then go
through the boot-up sequence, start up sound and all.
Did I mention that it's really obnoxious? Well, it's
worth mentioning twice.
Oh yes, there's one more thing... a new
Awesome NES
update. It's a little late, but not five months
late like the last one! This installment is dominated by
Tecmo sports titles (including a bizarre turn-based
soccer game) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles beat 'em
ups. There's not much variety, but the quality of the
selection is hard to dispute.
| October 21, 2009... Death
Doesn't Become You |
Recently, there's been an
epidemic of game systems dying well before their time.
The Xbox 360 is most famous (or rather, infamous)
for its red ring of death, but Playstation 3 owners are
starting to find that their once reliable systems have fallen
silent, flashing a yellow distress signal before shutting
down permanently. All of these malfunctions over the past
four years can be traced to the same source... the
lead-free solder used in the circuitry of today's game
systems. The low melting point of this solder isn't an
issue for the low-octane Wii, but the Playstation 3 and
Xbox 360 generate a great deal more heat to produce their
lifelike graphics, turning the metal on the motherboard into
soup and causing it to flow away from important
components.
All the fixes you've read
about online, like wrapping a towel around an Xbox 360 and
leaving it on overnight, or taking a heatgun to the
Playstation 3 circuit board, offer a temporary solution to
this problem; one that only lasts as long as the solder
remains solid. However, the only permanent fix
is for console manufacturers to return to the lead-based
solder that made systems from the 1970s and 1980s so
reliable. The environmentalists may squawk about
this, but they need to keep in mind that a single console
with a little lead inside does a lot less harm
to the planet than three in a
landfill.
All right, now that I've gotten that off
my chest, it's time for an Awesome NES
update. And it's only five months late! In this
installment, we catch a wave with T&C Surf Designs, hit
the skies of Cape Suzette with Talespin, and dabble in the
dark arts with Taboo: The Sixth Sense. The only mystery
greater than why this game was made is how it got past
Nintendo's notoriously stuffy content
restrictions...
| October 17, 2009... IGN Warms
Up The Crack Pipe |
It's a huge cliche to ask someone what they
were smoking after they come up with an
especially hairbrained idea. Fortunately, IGN has
made that question completely unnecessary with their recent
feature on the Top 100 games released for the Nintendo
Entertainment System. After reading the article,
anyone could see that their poison of preference is good old
fashioned crack, glazed in LSD and served with a side
order of hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Was that too harsh? Well, after you see the list,
maybe you'll think it wasn't harsh enough. I'll
spare you IGN's blather and the avalanche of ads that come
with it and just leave you with the hard numbers. The
extra crazy entries will be highlighted in red.
Conversely, the excellent games that by some
miracle found their way on this list but
weren't given enough credit will be marked in
blue... you know, like how I felt when I found this stupid
list.
| 100 |
Ice
Hockey |
75 |
The Goonies
II |
50 |
Shadowgate |
25 |
Castlevania II |
| 99 |
Rush 'n Attack |
74 |
Boy & His
Blob |
49 |
Kid Niki |
24 |
Blades of Steel |
| 98 |
TMNT
1 |
73 |
Spy
Hunter |
48 |
Tengen Tetris |
23 |
Bubble Bobble |
| 97 |
Astaynax |
72 |
Ikari
Warriors |
47 |
Vice: P. Doom |
22 |
Blaster Master |
| 96 |
DragonWarrior 3 |
71 |
Chip 'n Dale |
46 |
Metal Storm |
21 |
Zelda
II |
| 95 |
Mega Man 4 |
70 |
LegendaryWings |
45 |
Fester's Quest |
20 |
Kid
Icarus |
| 94 |
Kickle Cubicle |
69 |
TecmoWrestling |
44 |
Klax |
19 |
Castlevania |
| 93 |
Little Samson |
68 |
Little Nemo |
43 |
Ninja Gaiden II |
18 |
Super Mario
2 |
| 92 |
Skate or Die
2 |
67 |
Qix |
42 |
Crystalis |
17 |
Ninja Gaiden |
| 91 |
Mario
Bros. |
66 |
Cobra Triangle |
41 |
TMNT II |
16 |
Mega Man 3 |
| 90 |
Section Z |
65 |
Stinger |
40 |
Battletoads |
15 |
River City Rans. |
| 89 |
Willow |
64 |
Ironsword |
39 |
DragonWarrior4 |
14 |
Excitebike |
| 88 |
Zombie
Nation |
63 |
Gargoyles Q 2 |
38 |
Life Force |
13 |
R.C. Pro Am |
| 87 |
Guard'n Legend |
62 |
Kung Fu |
37 |
Jackal |
12 |
Contra |
| 86 |
Mickey
Mouse |
61 |
Maniac Mansion |
36 |
Faxanadu |
11 |
Final
Fantasy |
| 85 |
Lode Runner |
60 |
Super C |
35 |
StarTropics |
10 |
Duck Tales |
| 84 |
Mega Man 5 |
59 |
Rygar |
34 |
Gradius |
9 |
BionicCommando |
| 83 |
Double Dragon 2 |
58 |
Mega Man 6 |
33 |
Batman |
8 |
Drgn
Warrior |
| 82 |
Power Blade |
57 |
Rad Racer |
32 |
Snake Rattle... |
7 |
MT's Punch Out |
| 81 |
Journey to Silius |
56 |
Wiz. & Warriors |
31 |
Micro Machines |
6 |
Metroid |
| 80 |
Demon
Sword |
55 |
D. Dragon
3 |
30 |
Mega Man |
5 |
Castlevania III |
| 79 |
Ice
Climber |
54 |
G. 'n
Goblins |
29 |
Adv. Island
II |
4 |
Mega Man 2 |
| 78 |
Ring
King |
53 |
T. Super Bowl |
28 |
Baseball Stars |
3 |
Super Mario |
| 77 |
Duck Hunt |
52 |
Adv. of Lolo 3 |
27 |
Kirby's Adv. |
2 |
Leg'n of
Zelda |
| 76 |
Btoads/Ddragon |
51 |
Dr.
Mario |
26 |
Metal Gear |
1 |
Super Mario
3 |
Let's start at the bottom of the list and work toward the
top, shall we? I'll give Ice Hockey a pass... I've never
been a fan of sports games, but I remember my friends having a
ton of fun with this one back in high school. Rush 'n
Attack is a little sketchier, but it does improve on the
arcade version with hidden areas and a hard-hitting Konami
brand soundtrack.
The first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game and Astaynax,
however, are taking things much too far. "Crushing
disappointment" doesn't even begin to describe how I
felt after taking this home from a rental store and
popping it into my NES, expecting the same exhilaration that I
got from the coin-op. TMNT was the nadir of
Nintendo-ized arcade conversions; a game so bland and
formulaic that the backlash from fans forced Konami
to go back to the drawing board and release an honest
port. I don't have too many kind words for Nasty-Axe,
either... it's a stiff, frustrating side-scroller that
obsesses over the size of the characters while completely
forgetting about the quality of the gameplay. If "Sword
of Sodan" is the first thing to come to mind when you read
that description, you're on the right track.
Skate or Die 2 was worth exactly three minutes of your
time. You put in the cartridge, listened to the staticy
growl of "Skate or Die! Die die die die!" at the
title screen, watched the hilarious introduction, then
took it back to the rental store. Any attempt to
actually play the game was rewarded with boundless
frustration and the worst graphics this side of a Color Dreams
release. Mario Bros. was a little better, but
still lackluster enough to convince Nintendo to give the
European and Japanese markets an improved version of the game
years later.
IGN had the good sense to put The Guardian Legend on their
list, but its low position is an insult to fans of this
ingenious shooter/adventure hybrid. It's part Golvellius
and part Zanac... how can you go wrong with a combination like
that? Just below it is Zombie Nation, the utterly
horrible Meldac release starring a bloated samurai head that
takes more abuse than Bill Gates in a Linux forum.
The only explanation for its inclusion on the list is that the
IGN staff ran out of crack and tried snorting lines of Ajax
for a while. Just above The Guardian Legend is
Mickey Mousecapades, best described as Hudson's Adventure
Island with Disney characters stapled onto it. That's
every bit as appealing as it sounds, by the way.
One of the most perplexing entries in the list is Double
Dragon II. It deserves to be there, certainly,
but at number 83? Riding high in 55th
place, where Double Dragon II should have been,
is the miserable sequel, which was released for every game
console imaginable and stunk on all of them. Hell, even
the arcade game was terrible... not only was it outsourced to
a fly-by-night development team, but it forced players to
unlock new characters and power-ups by purchasing them with
quarters. Electronic Arts could take notes from these
guys.
On the heels of Double Dragon 2 are the craptastic combo of
Demon Sword, Ice Climber, and Ring King. Some
people may defend Ice Climber, but I've always hated
the characters' horizontally-impaired jumps and a mallet
that's not fit for breaking walnuts, let alone the hungry
yetis and polar bears patrolling each level. Flanking
Ice Climber are Demon Sword, the sequel to Legend of Kage that
nobody wanted, and Ring King, famous on the internet for its
depiction of post-fight fellatio and absolutely nothing
else.
Following close behind are another trio of "winners;" A Boy
and His Blob, Spy Hunter, and Ikari Warriors. A Boy and
His Blob has been given new life with the Wii remake by
Wayforward, but trust me, there was nothing special about the
original game on the NES. Its quirky physics and rough
graphics make it an anomaly among the more polished NES games
that received Nintendo's coveted seal of quality. Spy
Hunter was a lackluster port of an arcade game that didn't
lend itself well to home conversions... only the ColecoVision
seemed to get it right, and that was after making drastic
changes to the control of the player's car. Super Spy
Hunter would have been a much better choice, but it's nowhere
to be found on the list. Ikari Warriors is
there, however, which is... wow, people. Why not
Guerrilla War? Why not Iron Tank? Why not consider
rehab?
Qix is a little more reasonable, but it was kind of a fugly
port, with muddy textures replacing the sharp orange
and blue color fills from the arcade game. IGN would
have been better off choosing Galaga, which was as faithful an
arcade translation as the NES hardware could muster. I
can't even fathom how Cobra Triangle wound up in 66th place,
well behind other Rare releases like Battletoads, R.C. Pro-Am,
and... wait, Ironsword? You mean the same Ironsword that
had stage layouts straight out of an M.C.
Escher drawing? I think I'm going to need an
aspirin...
I don't even like the Contra series that much and
I wonder how Super C could have gotten such a subpar
score. The same goes for Gargoyle's Quest 2, a fun
spin-off of the murderously hard Ghouls 'n Ghosts series which
has taken a backseat to the first game in that series.
The arcade version of Ghosts 'n Goblins was all right, if
you're the masochistic type, but nobody's willing to endure
the kind of punishment the crappy NES conversion is eager to
dish out. That makes two Micronics/Pony Canyon titles
that made the list, which speaks volumes about its credibility
(or lack of it).
Oh yes, then there's Dr. Mario. The game received
some flack in an issue of Video Games & Computer
Entertainment... its editor Andy Eddy complained that it
could give small children the wrong idea about playing with
medication. I'm not sure if the game
was ultimately responsible for any tragic poisonings, but
I do know that it nearly bored me to death.
Thankfully, the list gets a lot more sane about halfway
through. IGN gives the Tengen version of Tetris its
rightfully earned props, along with the overlooked Vice:
Project Doom, Jackal, and Faxanadu. Still, there's the
matter of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II in 41st place,
and Kirby's Adventure in the 27th spot. The fact that
Kirby just barely edged out the competent but creatively
bankrupt Hudson's Adventure Island II leaves me scratching my
head so much that the friction could set my hair ablaze.
I take personal issue with Castlevania II: Simon's Quest,
the endlessly drawn out and dull adventure game that will
forever remain a blight on the good name of the
franchise. Zelda II and Kid Icarus almost seem included
by default, but neither of them are, how do I put this...
good? Zelda II has precious little in common with the
first game, and Kid Icarus is a total bait and switch.
Hopeful players went in expecting a sprawling
adventure in the vein of Gumpei Yokoi's other NES
hit Metroid, then came out scowling at the linear level
design and instantly fatal pits.
Excitebike wasn't terrible, but it was a launch
title without the scope of later NES games. I could very
easily see it being replaced with Eliminator Boat Duel, a rare
gem from Electrobrain with all the depth and variety that
Excitebike lacks in spades. The decision to put dull as
dirt Dragon Warrior ahead of Final flippin' Fantasy on this
list is just mystifying. Nintendo had to give
away copies of Dragon Warrior with a subscription to
Nintendo Power, because it was too boring to sell.
That's in contrast to Final Fantasy, which was loaded with
depth and gorgeous graphics.
Finally, there's the safe choice of Legend of Zelda for the
number two spot. It ain't safe from me,
though... I never found the game particularly compelling in
1988, and it's aged so very badly in the twenty plus years
since its release. The vague objectives and dearth of
dialog conspire to make this game frustratingly cryptic and
much, much longer than it had to be. Using
every item on every object in every
room stretches the game out to infinity, unless you've
got a strategy guide handy, or in the dark ages before the
internet, an open line to a Nintendo game counselor. I'm
not disputing that the game should be somewhere on the list,
but number two? No.
"What games should they have chosen instead?," I'll pretend
you asked. Well, how about Solomon's Key?
That was a brilliant puzzle game that borrowed heavily
from Super Mario Bros., yet managed to be entirely different
from its inspiration. There's also 1943, an enhanced
conversion of Capcom's World War II-themed shoot 'em
up, and Rollerball, the best game of pinball you're
likely to find on an 8-bit game system, and Clash at
Demonhead, the quirky blend of Metroid's vast playfields
and Mega Man's intense boss battles... the list goes on.
Heck, I would have been impressed if the editors had
made some daring choices, like Solstice. You either
loved this mammoth adventure game or you hated it, but
you couldn't criticize it for a lack of ambition or
originality. Instead, it just seems like the folks at
IGN covered all the usual bases for NES fans, then chose a
few titles based solely on name recognition to round
out the list. Or, to quote a member of the
GameSpite message board, this is "IGN's list of 100 NES
games they could actually think of."
| October 14, 2009... Hack 'n
Slash |
First the hack part...
there's a mod for the Xbox 360
that lets you raise the size of its hard drive to 120GB,
without spending big bucks on Microsoft's official
high-capacity drive. After being stuck with 20GB of
storage for over three years, I'm certainly considering
this option... but I want to get my Playstation 3 on its feet
first.
Now for the slashes; specifically, the
price slashes at both Toys 'R
Us and Amazon. For the
next few days, Amazon is offering a buy two, get one free deal
on certain games. TRU's deal is even more generous,
letting customers buy games, accessories, and even point cards
for the Wii and Xbox 360. If you were interested in
loading up for Christmas, now would be the
time!
| October 7, 2009... Three's
Company |
I'm chomping at the bit
waiting for my Playstation 3 to
arrive. Granted, since it can't play discs and I don't
have a proper internet connection for online gaming, I won't
be doing much ELSE with it, but hey, it's always fun to dink
with new hardware. Besides, since it's one of the old
George Foreman grills, I can always install Linux, the
preferred operating system of overweight, socially inept
nerds.
Anyway, down to business. These
past two weeks, my cup's runneth over with industry news that
even I find exciting. Where do I begin?
* ROCKET KNIGHT
RETURNS: After a fifteen year hiatus, everyone's favorite
opossum (no you boob, that's everyone's
LEAST favorite opossum!) is back in a new adventure.
This time, Sparkster's world is rendered in crisp, if not
especially impressive, 3D graphics that bring to mind the
later entries in Namco's Klonoa series. Some people have
taken offense to the Brit-tastic art direction, but I'm
personally more irritating by the fact that this release is
exclusive to the more powerful game consoles, without a Wii
release in sight. Trust me, I've seen the pictures, and
there ain't nothin' about this game that couldn't be
done on Nintendo's extremely popular yet extremely
undersupported system.
* JACK TRETTON
REVILES: The man who promised a $1200 bounty
for every unsold Playstation 3 is back, running his yap about
how the industry would be much better off with
Sony behind the wheel and its competitors getting crushed
under it. Yeah, we tried that in 2003, and I'm not
eager to go back. I much prefer walking into a store and
walking out with a game that doesn't have the words
"Grand Theft" in the title.
* DAVID BOWIE
RESURFACES: David Bowie's no stranger to video
games... he played a key role in a futuristic adventure title
for the Dreamcast called Omikron, and there was an NES game in
Japan based on the quickly forgotten film Labyrinth.
This time, the thin white duke adopts a pudgier, more
plasticine physique for the Electronic Arts release Lego
Rock Band, along with his good buddy Iggy Pop and other
music legends. I'm not sure if this bizarre hybrid
represents a shark-jumping moment for Rock Band or the Lego
gaming franchise...
* MICKEY
REIMAGINED: Let's face it, Mickey Mouse is old
news. He's almost as relevant in today's culture
as Betty Boop, but Disney Interactive is hoping to
change that with Epic Mickey. The developers
have redesigned the chipper rodent as an
ink-dripping shadow armed with a paintbrush, fighting his way
through the decayed ruins of Disneyland. Looks like it's
the crappiest place on Earth now! Happily, the concept
art for this game is anything but, with so much color and
intricate detail that it's hard to imagine how the developers
will pull it off on the humble Wii hardware.
* JESS RETHINKS:
You know, now that GORF is finished (for good this time,
seriously), I'm thinking about turning my attention toward
Awesome NES, which hasn't been updated in a dog's age.
I'm not sure what a dog's age is, exactly, but let's
say for the sake of argument that it's about four months and
some change. I also should look into keeping at least a
few of the promises I made earlier in the year. Since
this is 2009, just a hair's breadth away from the next decade,
there's really no point in procrastinating on an Assault of
the Invaders update. |
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