| September 29, 2009... Now That's
What I Call an Update! |
Now that I've got GORF out
of my system, it's time to cover the explosion of genuinely
exciting releases and news coming from the video game
industry, starting with...
* SUPER STREET FIGHTER IV (with
almonds!): Capcom has announced a follow up to the
latest Street Fighter game just months after it was
released. Whoo, nineties flashback! Anyway, here's
the early scoop on this supercharged sequel... the game will
include ten new characters, with two original creations (Tae
Kwon Do mast- er, mistress Juri and Saudi strongman
Hakan) and six fighters from different periods in the Street
Fighter timeline. Cody, Guy, and Adon represent the
sublime Street Fighter Alpha; T. Hawk and Dee Jay
are courtesy of Super Street Fighter II; and Dudley,
Ibuki, and Makoto are all culled from Street Fighter 3.
It's a pretty good selection of brawlers, with Guy, Dee Jay,
and Dudley standing out as highlights. Cody,
though? Bleech. Good thing the voice acting team
has been entirely recast... I don't think my ears could handle
more of his obnoxious, third rate Batman
villain laugh.
* SCRIBBLENAUTS:
I'm torn between this game's ingenious play mechanics and its
heinous control. In case you missed the memo,
Scribblenauts lets you create anything you can imagine by
writing its name on the touchscreen. Well, not
anything anything... you can't write "douchebag" (not
even if you write it really
neatly!) or summon a massive Abe Vigoda to
lay waste to everything that stands before you, but it handles
most common nouns, and even many uncommon nouns,
perfectly well. Sadly, one thing Scribblenauts gets
terribly, terribly wrong is the control of its
lead character Maxwell. It's all handled with the
DS touchscreen, and quite poorly, might I add... instead of
jumping or picking up objects, the little fashion victim
insists on running headlong into the jaws of death. Some
objects don't work quite like you'd expect, either... neither
cement mix nor gelatin mix has the intended effect of
hardening pools of water, and asking for a blizzard or
lightning nets you a puny cloud with almost no effect on its
surroundings. It's a shame this sleeper hit probably
won't get a sequel, because it really needs one to fix all the
flaws that make the game so damned frustrating.
* PROFESSOR LAYTON AND THE
DIABOLICAL BOX: The big mystery here is why the
game is called "Diabolical Box" here and "Pandora's Box"
everywhere else. Did Nintendo think we Americans were
too dumb to get the reference? Anyway, this one wasn't
really for me, but my mother, who devoured the original days
after I introduced it to her. It warmed my dark,
crater-filled heart when she turned on the sequel and
exclaimed that seeing Layton and Luke again was like
"reuniting with old friends." I haven't played much
of it personally, but from what I've seen it seems like the
status quo for the Sherlock Holmes-inspired detective and his
young ward. You know, talk to goofy townspeople, solve
puzzles ranging from stupidly easy to "where's my hammer"
hard, rinse and repeat.
* BLUE DRAGON: I
bought this a few days ago and still haven't tried it!
I'm a little worried that I'm going to be as disappointed with
it as I was with Batman: After You Play This You'll Need To Be
Checked Into Arkham Asylum. Then again, seven dollars'
worth of disappointment is a lot easier to swallow than
sixty. I'll work up the courage to try it eventually,
I'm sure, even though I'm not hearing flattering things about
the game from my bud Freakservo.
* PLAYSTATION 3:
Yes, I broke down and bought one after bitterly railing
against it. What, are you surprised? This is only
like the sixth time I've done this! Anyway, the machine
is a fixer-upper, and judging from past experience with a
broken PSP, I may never get it back on its
feet. For just ninety dollars, though, I'm willing to
try. It'll give me an extra sense of satisfaction if I
can bring it back from the dead, especially if the issues with
the system are relatively minor. Then again, if I can't
fix it, I'll end up with a really sleek ninety dollar
doorstop!
| September 25, 2009... The Ghost
with the Most |
I can't believe it's been four days since I've
updated! Anyway, I've updated GORF, giving the shields
that shimmery look they've been missing since the project
started two-odd months ago.
But enough about that! Have you
seen footage of Capcom's next Nintendo DS game Ghost
Trick? You
really should. It's hard to believe
animation that slick and artwork that sharp could come from
the system. Okamiden looks pretty promising as well... I
never finished the original but I wouldn't mind giving this
stubby sequel a
shot.
| September 21, 2009... Sweet
Release |
The first release candidate
for GORF is now available for download. Give it a spin
and see if you can find any bugs I might have
missed.
| September 18, 2009... Europa and
the Free Yet Not Pirated
Twins |
I don't post much news on
this site, but this was just too good to pass up. There's a
promotion in Europe- game-starved, exorbitantly overpriced
Europe!- where Wii owners can earn Nintendo points and even
free access to software by helping their friends access the
internet with Nintendo's popular system. Get one Wii
owner online and you get five hundred download points, enough
virtual scratch for an NES game. Help twenty Wii owners
find their way on the internet and you'll get a bounty of
ten thousand Nintendo points, plus a golden ticket to
download any Virtual Console game for any Nintendo system,
absolutely free. It's a goal that's likely as
insurmountable as earning a television set with Marlboro
points, or a bicycle by selling Grit subscriptions (don't you
love these timely and oh-so-relevant analogies?), but a
tempting one nevertheless. Now if only Europe would stop
banning video games, its citizens would actually have
something to download from the service!
Yet more news on the GORF
front. I've purged a few bugs from the previous build,
and it should (should) work with 3-in-1 cartridges
now. If you'd like to contribute to the project, I'd
appreciate a list of what works with the game and what
won't. Here's an early preliminary list, compiled from
player input on the AtariAge and Denial web sites. The
fix should resolve some of the issues people have had with
their hardware, but not all. As usual, if you play the
game on untested hardware, you do so at your own risk, but I'd
appreciate any testing and status reports you're willing to
provide.
WORKS LIKE
A CHARM
VISUAL BOY ADVANCE
1.7.2: Game works as intended.
M3
LITE: Game "loads fine." No other specifics
reported.
DINGOO A320: Dingoo...?
Anyway, the game functions on this unit, using an
emulator.
WORKS
FAIRLY WELL
SUPERCARD MINI
SD: Game works as intended. Some issues with game
saves and loads, possibly traced to dying save battery inside
the aging cartridge.
NO$GBA: Game works
with the header fixed (so the latest build should be fine
too).
BOYCOTT ADVANCE (OSX): Game
runs too quickly, about 20% speed gain. Reported in an early
beta build; may be resolved with new VBLANK
command.
PSP (WHAT EMULATOR?): Game runs
but slowdown is frequent, especially while voice
plays.
ISSUES
REPORTED
CYCLO DS & EZFLASH 3
in 1: Game hangs, permanent white screen after NOR
flash. Cyclo DS continues to work; EZFlash does not.
(behavior reported with pre-fix build)
VISUAL BOY
ADVANCE, EARLY BUILDS: Game runs too quickly, ship
repositions itself, other nasty business.
Recommendation? Update the software.
VB
ADVANCE FOR WII: Black screen of
death.
ACEKARD RPG & EZFLASH V:
Early builds will not function. The fix may resolve
this.
| September 16, 2009... Now With
Convenient Cardboard
Applicator |
You hear Activision
CEO Bobby Kotick's recent comments about being proud that
his series Guitar Hero finally cracked the Wii's $49.99 price
ceiling? I sure did.
| September 15, 2009... A Goliath
Return |
A hundred days ago, lying around,
watching YouTube clips, and doing barely any homework was the
rule. It was a time of idle contentment. It was an
age of wondering how those girls in the video could
do that thing with the cup. It was... my
life. Asleep by day, barely active by night, I was
betrayed by a bank account with too
many withdrawals and not enough deposits,
then frozen in dial-up for a
hundred days. But now here with Alltel 3G access, the
spell is broken, and I LIVE AGAIN!
(Ahem)
I guess what I'm trying to say is that
broadband internet access (of a kind) has returned to The
Gameroom Blitz. After finding out that I was too far out
in the boonies for cable, DSL, or even wireless internet
designed for rural areas, it was quite literally my
last option. I mean that, too... some people use
"literally" to describe things that aren't really true, but
I've done the research, and this was the last stop before
the worn down old train station to dial-up. So now
I have the heavy yoke of a hundred
dollar downpayment, sixty dollars per month service
fee, and a two year commitment around my neck, but at least I
have 3G for as long as I can afford it.
So far, it's been treating me pretty
well. It's not the speed demon that my Charter
internet had become shortly before I left the city, but it
gets the job done. It doesn't work with my netbook, and
probably won't until I install a more
full-featured build of Windows XP or find a
clever workaround, but the laptop seems to have adapted to it
quite nicely. Since the drivers built into the card are
written especially for computers, I have a hunch
that the Xbox 360 is not going to play nice with it,
which rules out Xbox Live for at least another couple of
months. However, if I've done without for this long, it's
not going to kill me to wait a little longer for an online
death match.
Anyway, enough of that! I just
wanted to tell you that the GameBoy Advance conversion of GORF
is very nearly finished. The ship's final explosion is
still pretty wimpy and there are a couple of bugs here and
there, but the latest beta won't be dramatically different
from the final release. Download it from the link at the
top of the page, and have fun! Be sure to check out the
Mission Matrix... there are tons of tough challenges waiting
for you there.
(Well, if each challenge were two
hundred pounds, that would technically be
true.)
(Not literally, though.)
| September 13, 2009... Ready For
The Loonie Bin |
Batman: Arkham Asylum is the first game
I purchased for my Xbox 360 in months. Now that I've
played it, I wish I would have waited even longer. The
release that critics are applauding as the first "good" Batman
game is burdened with all the tattered earmarks of 21st
century game design. You know, convoluted button
mapping, stealth dissatisfaction sequences, mindless
button-mashing combat, tons of cool features dropped behind a
brick wall of play requirements, and a brooding,
darker-than-the-inside-of-a-black-hole art direction from
developers entirely too desperate to prove that video games
can be a "mature" media. Call me an old crank, but it
gets a teeny bit tiresome when
every action/adventure game for the Xbox
360 fits this description.
The game is even a wash from the
perspective of a Batman: The Animated Series fan, since many
voices have been recast and others seem downright rusty
in the years since the Timmverse came to an end in the mid
2000s. Mark Hamill has made it clear for many years that
he's gotten too old to play the Joker, and after listening to
his off-kilter performance in Arkham Asylum, I'm starting to
believe him. The character sounds more like
Kevin Michael Richardson's Joker from the lackluster series
The Batman, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if he
actually sat in for Hamill during some takes.
Thankfully, Kevin Conroy is sublime as Batman, and Arleen
Sorkin puts in a pretty good performance as Harley Quinn, but
the new design for that character is an absolute fright.
They've stripped her of her traditional sleek wardrobe,
replacing it with a heinous loligoth dress that makes you want
to dig your eyes out with a spork. "How do you like my
new outfit?," she inquires with her nasally New
York accent during your first encounter. Uh, I
hope you kept the receipt.
Barbara Gordon's here too, playing a
behind-the-scenes role as Oracle (who...?) rather
than her usual hands-on sidekick Batgirl. Although
I'm pretty sure she's not voiced by Melissa Gilbert or Tara
Strong, the new voice sounds pleasant enough, and fits
the character like a glove. I can't say the same for
either Tom Kane or Steve Blum, who provide stale vocals that
have been worn paper-thin in hundreds of cartoons.
Seriously Blum, take a fucking vacation once in a while!
If there's anything to be thankful for in this game, it's that
he wasn't hired to play Batman himself.
Well, there is one other thing
I can appreciate. Although they're much too dark and
grimy for my tastes, the graphics in Batman: Arkham Asylum are
nevertheless incredible. I haven't played my Xbox 360 in
months, and completely forgot about the high calibur of its
visuals. You can't tell where the full-motion video
clips end and the cut scenes begin, or if there's any
full-motion video in the game at all, so the developers at
Rocksteady deserve recognition for that.
Unfortunately, the game buried under all
that gloss just isn't much fun. It's got the same issue
as other recent action titles, in that it's both
suffocatingly linear but makes even the simplest tasks
frustratingly obtuse. Batman controls sluggishly and the
player interface is needlessly awkward, with some
commands requiring button combinations. There are
thirteen keys on the Xbox 360 controller, and you're
still making me push face buttons and shoulder
buttons together? And I have to do this with guns
pointed at me from three different directions?
Really? Hey Rocksteady, call me when you pull your heads
from your asses and come up with a control scheme that
doesn't make me feel like I'm trying to prevent a
nuclear meltdown at Chernobyl.
Granted, I'm not too far into the game
yet, but with the stealth action of Splinter Cell, the
button pounding battles from God of War, and
the dreary, depressing color scheme of BioShock, it
already feels like I've played this a dozen times
before. Maybe I should have saved my money for
Scribblenauts instead. Maybe it's not as pretty as
Arkham Asylum, but it sure as hell isn't as
cliched.
| September 9, 2009... An All-Star
'Cast |
I suppose I had better say something on
this, the tenth anniversary of Sega's ill-fated
Dreamcast. So, uh... something.
Kidding, kidding. For two solid
years, Dreamcast WAS gaming to me. Sure, I'd play
some of the old Playstation titles I had missed in the late
1990s and try some obscure Atari 2600 titles on emulators, but
the bulk of my gaming was on this little white system.
Small wonder too, when those games included Soul Calibur,
Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and a sensational King of Fighters '99
port. Although they were admittedly the bulk of the
system's library, the Dreamcast had more to offer than just
awesome fighting games. There was also Samba de Amigo,
the best rhythm game around until Guitar Hero debuted in 2005,
Mars Matrix, an intense vertically scrolling shooter with
scores typically in the trillions, and Seaman, an innovative
virtual pet simulation which conclusively proved the
importance of a quality English localization.
So happy birthday to a game system that
achieved greatness in its tragically short life. Who
knows what great heights it could have reached with just a few
more years of support?
| September 7, 2009... Yes, It's
About GORF Again. Shut
Up. |
Just wanted to post a fresh beta for
GORF. This time, there's an options and credits screen
to go with all the other great stuff packed into the
game. I've started some preliminary work on the Mission
Matrix, but the effect I wanted to use when entering and
exiting the mode is proving more difficult to add than I
had hoped. You could probably imagine why after you see
this mock-up...
(Sorry for eating up your bandwidth, by
the way.)
Anyway, the Mission Matrix works a bit
like Bingo. Finish a mission (ranging from killing
everything BUT the Laser Ships in Laser Attack to polishing
off the Flagship with just six shots) and you're awarded some
artwork. Complete a row of challenges and you'll unlock
Frenzy Mode, which gives you one ship to finish a single stage
as many times as possible. Fill in a column and you
unlock options for the arcade mode. Finish all the
challenges and... well, I haven't gotten that far yet,
but we'll see what happens.
Nothing else to report. As I've
said before, if you want gaming news, Kotaku and Joystiq are over
there.
| September 4, 2009... Getting
There |
The latest beta is finished, and it's
beta than ever!
(Sorry.)
Seriously, there are all kinds of new
goodies in this release, including both a title screen and the
long-awaited art gallery. Now all that's left are some
minor tweaks to the core game, an options screen, and the
Mission Matrix mode, and the game is finito. I'm so glad
I started this... this has been a pretty rough week for me,
and working on GORF is the only thing that's kept me sane
through it all. Anyway, grab yourself a copy from the
link on the right and, as always, let me know what you think
of it.
As for gaming news... er, what
gaming news? I'm hearing great things about Arkham
Asylum, the latest Batman game, but past that all's been quiet
on both the Western and Eastern fronts. That's all
right, though... I'm sure things will heat up in a couple of
months, when the Christmas shopping season begins.
| August 28, 2009... Corruptive
Influence |
Well, that's embarrassing. I was
informed by a friend of mine that the last file I uploaded was
corrupt and wouldn't unzip. Maybe this will work a
little better... it's a more recent beta version of the game
with lives, six difficulty levels, and with any luck, files
you can actually access.
I'm also going to take the liberty of
adding a link to the sidebar for easy access... and so people
will realize that the game exists!
| August 27, 2009... Long Time,
No See! |
Holy crap, has it been that long since I
updated? Well, there's a perfectly valid reason for the
delay. Download this, play it in your
favorite GameBoy Advance emulator (I suspect that would be
VisualBoy Advance), and you'll understand.
Also... I really like that banner up
there. Maybe I'll keep it past
August...
| August 22, 2009... Halfway
There |
Not much to report on the gaming news
front, except for Microsoft's logical decision to cut the
price of its Xbox 360 Elite in response to the recent
Playstation 3 price drop. However, they haven't
introduced or even announced a more streamlined model of the
system, which isn't that much of a surprise considering
Microsoft's refusal to update the original, extra chunky
Xbox.
However, there's good news for those of
you following the GORF project. I've finished three
rounds, with just two left to go. There's actually a lot
of work left to do after the remaining stages
are completed... I still need to add collision detection for
the ship, a steady progression of difficulty for the other
five ranks, and of course the trademark synthesized voice from
the arcade game. Also, I'd like to go back and tweak the
Laser Attack stage, since it kind of stinks in its current
state. That's nothing a few hours of coding won't cure,
I assure you!
In light of the progress I've made so
far, I think I should have a beta ready to go by the end of
the month. While you're waiting, give this
alpha version a spin and let me know what
you think.
EDIT: I fixed many of the
problems with the earlier alpha. Sorry about that,
folks! The Laser Attack stage should be loads better
now.
| August 19, 2009... Rolling
Staaaaart! (also, PS3 price
drop) |
The Saturn version of Daytona USA may
look like crap by today's standards (or even 1995 standards),
but that soundtrack's going to seem cutting edge a thousand
years from now, when surly robots and clueless delivery
manboys roam the earth. Seriously, grab a copy of the
disc and pop it into your computer... the tunes are
fantastic! While you're at it, give Virtua Fighter 2 for
the same system a spin, too. The music in that game
holds up just as well, especially track two which remains one
of my all-time favorites.
All right, all right... I guess I can't
resist posting some video game news, since this is a
pretty monumental announcement. That slim Playstation 3
that's been rumored for the past couple of months? It's
the real deal, and it comes with a substantial price drop,
down to a reasonable three hundred dollars. The tech
specs are a mixed bag, however... power consumption has been
greatly reduced from the original model and the 120GB hard
drive offers plenty of storage for downloadable content and
game installations, but there's still no backward
compatibility with the Playstation 2 and the ability to run
Linux is history as well. That cut strikes me as a bit
odd, but since I'm more interested in playing games than
pulling my hair out over an obtuse operating system, I'm not
going to lose too much sleep over it.
In other news, the long-running
counterculture gaming site Insert Credit is closing up shop
after nearly a decade of publication. I'm of mixed minds
about this... while Insert Credit served up all the
wonderfully oddball news that the mainstream sites never
saw fit to print, it's seen so few updates in the past year
that its closure won't have as profound an effect on its
readers as, say, the Gaming Intelligence Agency's April Fools
Day prank back in 2002. For
those of you keeping score, the immensely popular site
was shut down on the first of April... and didn't come
back the following day. Yeah, that one hurt.
Also, to be frank, the Insert
Credit forum was packed to the rafters with colossal
douchebags; nerds so smug and caustic
they top even Sheldon from The Big Bang
Theory on my list of people I'd like to see crushed
by a meteorite. So the site will be missed, but that
message board, not so much.
Before I go, here's a quick update on
the GORF project. I was able to acquire the full version
of Dragon BASIC shortly after my post, so there should be no
further barriers to its development. Right now I'm
working on the second stage, Laser Attack, and its smarter
enemies and more complex animation have proven quite
challenging. I'm not giving up, though... I've come
too far to back down
now!
| August 17, 2009... Low
Overhead |
Well, that was unexpected. Shortly
after finishing the first stage of my GORF conversion, I
ran face first into a brick wall. The copy of
Dragon BASIC I downloaded was a trial version, limiting users
to just 128K for their programs. I used half of that
just for the introduction and Astro Battles, and once I
started adding sound samples I hit that glass ceiling pretty
quickly.
So I'll tell you what I'm gonna
do. I'll let you have a copy of the game in
its current unfinished state, while I hunt down
the ungimped version of this compiler. I thought
the developer had released Dragon BASIC to the
public domain, but the shareware nags leave me wondering if
Jeff Massung is holding onto a more robust version of the
software. Wait, Massung? Isn't that the wine Orson
Wells drank by the gallon in those old
commercials?
In video game industry news, things
happened, and I didn't care. What does this look like to
you, Joy fucking Stiq?
| August 13, 2009... Filled to
the Brim with Gorfish
Glee |
Oh man! I've finally finished the
introduction to my GameBoy Advance version of GORF. You've
got to see this... it looks terrific on the actual
hardware!
I just hope I have time to finish this
game. There's just a week and a half left
until classes
start...
| August 11, 2009... Slow
Ride |
Hey everybody, I'm back! Did you
miss me? Oh, you didn't even realize I was
gone. Anyway, I took my trusty netbook with me
while on my brief vacation, and made great strides in the
GameBoy Advance project mentioned in previous updates.
I've got three layers of graphics active in my latest program,
without the aggravation of flipped letters or scrambled
tiles. However, now I'm having trouble with the sprites,
as you can see from this picture. Yeah, barf brown
wasn't the color I had in mind for those letters, Dragon
BASIC.
There was one other aggravation I had to
deal with while taking a break from the site and from
civilization. It seems that the one constant in
emulation is that as time passes and technology improves, MAME
steadily gets slower. My Asus EEE, which was once powerful
enough to handle most of the older games in the MAME library
without breaking a sweat, is now starting to lag behind when
running oldies like Zoo Keeper and Gyruss. Overclocking the
processor with EEEctl solves the problem, but creates another
one... when it's switched to its maximum speed, the netbook
chugs power so quickly that I almost expect it to crush the
empty battery on its forehead once it's done!
Since the bulk of my gaming is
spent with emulators at this point, this raises an
uncomfortable question. Do I blow part of my college loan
money on a fresh netbook, or supplement MAME with arcade
emulators that aren't nearly as ambitious in scope, but run
the few dozen games they can play a whole lot faster?
Before I make a move, I'd like to know how improved the
new systems are over this launch model. There's been an
ongoing battle between Microsoft and manufacturers like Asus,
with Bill Gates' crumbling monopoly doing everything within
its power to keep netbooks wimpy, and the creator of the EEE
pushing for faster machines while working feverishly to break
its dependence on Windows. I'd like to know how much ground
Asus was able to gain in this tug of war before I drop a few
hundred dollars on a system I may not necessarily need or even
want.
I'm also thinking that after
years of getting by with a clearance-priced cell phone, it
might be time for an upgrade. The iPhone would be the obvious
choice, if not for its outrageous price (thank you Apple tax)
and a lengthy contract with AT+T that's double what I'm paying
my current provider. After considering my options, I'm leaning
toward the Helio Ocean. It's reasonably priced, full-featured,
favorably reviewed, and even has a small pool of third party
developers. An iPhone it's not, but I can always count on my
iPod Touch for my Rolando fix.
What's that? You wanted current
gaming news, rather than self-absorbed technobabble? Brother
did you come to the wrong place, but if you insist! Word on
the street is that Electronic Arts will be squeezing every
last dime from anyone who buys the 20th anniversary edition of
Madden, charging for cheats, power-ups, and practically
everything but the team jerseys. Remember when developers
tried pulling this crap with arcade games like Double Dragon
3, and gamers actively resisted this crass exploitation? Boy,
those were the good old days.
(Except for having to play
Double Dragon 3, I mean.)
| August 4, 2009... Get With
The Program (also, Midway splits into
bits) |
Sad to say, I'm still struggling
with my project for the GameBoy Advance. Thanks to some
kind souls at AtariAge (I don't know what I'd do without that
place!), I was able to figure out the difference between
character blocks and screen blocks. It turns out that
character blocks are where the actual graphics are stored, and
screen blocks are the codes associated with each chunk of
visual data. It works a little like one of those old
paint-by-numbers kits, with the numbers on each page telling
you which colors you should use. Simple enough, right? In
fact, it's so easy an effeminate, easily offended caveman
could do it!
However, now that I understand
how tile-based graphics work, I've run into an entirely
different problem... the limitations of the GameBoy Advance
hardware. When I started working with Dragon BASIC, I assumed
that there were four separate blocks of character data, and
thirty two blocks of screen data, with each block filling an
entire screen. That'd be plenty of room for most homebrew
projects, but after several frustrating hours I'm convinced
that the system's video RAM is not nearly as generous as I
first thought. If I put too many tiles in a program, they
start to overwrite each other, even when they're placed in
separate character and screen blocks. Fonts are flipped
upsidedown, letters appear where they don't belong, and
graphics lose both definition and color, forcing me to
drastically reduce the number of tiles loaded into memory to
keep the visuals from falling apart.
What I don't understand is how a
system powerful enough to handle an accurate conversion of
Street Fighter Alpha 3 and a trio of incredibly long
Castlevania games could struggle with something as trifling as
a cheesy Gorf clone. Either I'm doing something terribly wrong
(and I haven't ruled out that possibility) or it's the
compiler that's narrowing my horizons. Looking back through
the sample programs I've downloaded, I've noticed a trend that
suggests the latter is the case. Every one of them uses a tiny
tileset, with the bulk of the graphics invested in sprites.
However, the professionally designed games I've examined in
VisualBoy Advance seem to have several screens of tile data in
addition to the sprites. Either these games are constantly
accessing the cartridge for data (we're talking once every
sixtieth of a second here) or Dragon BASIC is severely limited
in scope. I may need to ask the folks at GBAdev.org to either
confirm or deny those suspicions.
All this talk of my homebrew
project and I completely forgot to mention this monumental
news from the video game industry. Media giant Time-Warner has
purchased Midway's intellectual properties, putting the
long-running Mortal Kombat series in its pocket and opening
the door to a whole lot of MK vs. DC Universe sequels.
However, I don't know if Time-Warner owns all of
Midway's software library, or if it just skimmed the most
lucrative franchises off the top and left the rest to the
vultures. It's been my opinion since Midway's bankruptcy that
the classic arcade games should return to Raw Thrills founder
and former Midway programmer Eugene Jarvis, but if he didn't
make a move during the company's liquidation, he'll never get
another shot at owning the profoundly influential games he
helped create. Sorry man, but you snooze, you lose!
While we're on the subject, I
wonder what will happen to Gorf, the Midway shooter that's
been hung up in legal limbo for countless years. Thanks to all
the content it "borrowed" from Space Invaders and Galaxian,
there's no telling who will own the game when the dust
settles from Midway's fire sale. Will it be Time-Warner, the
current owner of most Midway properties? Will it be
Namco-Bandai, which probably considers Gorf the first in a
long series of insults from a company which frequently mistook
its licensing agreement for a sales receipt? Or will it be
Taito (a division of Square-Enix... damn this market
consolidation!), the creator of Space Invaders and the company
responsible for starting the entire shoot 'em up genre? My gut
tells me that nothing will change because the cost of settling
the rights to this game will greatly outweigh any profits it
can generate, but I've been wrong before...
| August 2, 2009... At A Loss
For Words |
Once upon a time, I remember complaining to a
friend that he didn't send me letters often enough. He responded by
saying, "What am I supposed to do? Send you daily updates
about the most mundane details of my life? 'Just ascertained that
Michelina's Macaroni and Cheese is better than Kraft Mac and
Cheese. It was
cool and breezy today, with a chance of light showers. Gee, I sure hope
George Clooney comes back to ER...'"
Although the response was rather pointed, the
sentiment he expressed was nevertheless clear. It's tough to justify
writing when you don't have that much to discuss. I've had other friends
who could turn their most hum-drum daily activities into
spellbinding stories, but if you don't have that talent,
regular updates to a web site like this one just seem
forced.
It doesn't help matters that I just haven't been
particularly interested in playing video games... all my
systems rest quietly in hibernation, tucked inside a toolshed
on my parents' property, and the drought of games this summer
hasn't given me much incentive to rouse them from their
slumber. When the
highlight of the season has been a re-release of a game I
played to death in 2001, it's hard to muster up much
enthusiasm for either the Xbox 360 or the Wii.
I dunno... maybe when the college loans finally
arrive, I'll splurge and buy a copy of Wii Sports Resort. The Motion Control
Plus dongle included with the game is supposed to greatly
improve the precision of the Wiimote, letting the player move
more naturally when he hurls a bowling ball or carefully lines
up a putt.
Distressingly, the rumor is that the enhanced control
of the Motion Control Plus comes not from improved
accelerometer technology but added memory, making you wonder
why Nintendo didn't just put that extra RAM in the damned
controller before it hit the market. Seriously, memory's
been dirt cheap for years, even in 2006 when the Wii made its
debut. Tsk tsk,
Nintendo. As the
star of the unintentionally hilarious TurboDuo release Last
Alert might say, people will hate you if you're too...
stingie.
Maybe I'll grab a copy of King of Fighters XII
instead. I'm on
the fence about this one... the small cast of characters
doesn't bother me much (although no Bao and no Yamazaki make
Jess go something something), but the redrawn graphics really
get under my skin.
After all the hype about this game being hand-drawn, it
just seems like cheating for the artists to rotoscope
computer-rendered models. It makes the
characters seem artificial; just a little too good to be true,
if you catch my drift.
SNK tried this in the past with The Art of Fighting 3,
and back then, it was a pretty nifty novelty... but now, with
2D fighting games becoming an increasingly rare treat, I'd
like to be sure that they really are in two
dimensions.
Perhaps I'll forget about buying more games and
just keep plugging away at my own. I'm still working with
Dragon BASIC, but I've currently reached an empasse... I just
don't know how to use the commands for drawing tiles. There are screen
blocks, and character blocks, and background layers, and it's
all pretty confusing.
Just when I think I've figured it all out, I compile my
program, only to discover that the graphics are garbled beyond
recognition.
Frustrating?
Oh yeah.
And it's even worse when you stop and consider how
little documentation is available for this compiler. Believe me, I've
looked around, but even the official web site doesn't offer
much help, with broken links everywhere and a forum that's
impossible to access.
I'll keep working on this... most of the artwork is
finished, and it'd be a shame to drop the project when I've
made this much progress on it.
| July 30, 2009... Guess What
Fell Out Of A Virtual Richard
Gere? |
You'll find out later in this
post. First, it's time for a long overdue banner
swap! This time Capcom's Darkstalkers gets
a chance to shine on The Gameroom Blitz. I
personally prefer the sequel, but only the original has this
really cool group shot in the attract mode.
I've been pecking away at the GORF
translation, and I'm starting to wonder if I can
actually make this work. I've got large numbers of
characters moving around the screen at once, but the code's
far from airtight... after about thirty seconds,
the Space Invaders and Galaxians have a disconcerting
habit of pressing together like so many intergalactic
sardines. I'm also having trouble wrapping my head
around some of the game logic... the dive-bombing
Galaxians and swirling ships in the Space
Warp have proven especially vexing. I'll
keep plugging away at it... I won't have much else to do until
the next semester of college begins.
Well, enough of that. What's going
on in the video game industry? Well, there are the
release delays for Scribblenauts and the fabled Wii version of
Cave Story. I've already written off the latter game as
vaporware- seriously, didn't we get this run-around with the
phantom PSP version two years ago?- but I still have high
hopes for Scribblenauts. Word on the street is that this
incredibly ambitious vocabulary-enhanced platformer will have
support for English, Spanish, and French, making the power-up
possibilities even more endless.
As for games that actually were
released, there's Marvel vs. Capcom 2 for the Xbox 360, and a
big surprise... an early prototype version of Virtual Hamster,
the 32X game that was in development until everyone came to
the sudden realization that the 32X sucks. I haven't
downloaded it yet, but you'd better believe I'll get my
grubby little hands on a copy when I get a
chance.
| July 23, 2009... BASIC
Training |
Work continues on the GameBoy Advance
conversion of GORF, the early 1980s shooter best described as
Copyright Infringement: The Game. Thanks to Dragon
BASIC, I've got two independently moving objects on the
screen, along with sound effects straight from the arcade
game. You can test out my work in progress by
clicking this link.
However, I'm learning as I go along that
converting a video game that dates back to the early Reagan
administration may not be as easy as I first thought.
GORF may be very old, but it's also very advanced for its
time, with complicated enemy patterns and cutting-edge special
effects that are difficult to reproduce on the GameBoy Advance
hardware. I suppose I don't have to include the
clever distortion effect in some sprites and the shield in the
first stage, but there's no getting around the large swarm of
Galaxians in the third stage, or the madly spiralling foes in
the fourth stage, or the flagship that's torn apart by the
player's shots in the fifth stage.
I'm also held back by the peculiarities
of Dragon BASIC. It's a full-featured compiler, but the
problem is that some of those features just don't seem to
work. The LINE command that would have been handy for
the game's impressive flagship explosion just hangs the
system, and the WALLPAPER command that's supposed to stamp a
bitmapped image onto the background only garbles the
sprites beyond recognition. It's possible that I'm doing
something wrong, but I'm fairly convinced at this point that
these commands are just broken. If only there were still
a community of Dragon BASIC users around somewhere that could
verify this...
| July 20, 2009... When It
Groens, It Pours |
This is going to be the official
Simpsons and Futurama post for this site, since both shows
have been on my mind lately in light of recent events. In case
you missed the news, there's word that Futurama will return to
television with all new episodes. However, key members of the
voice cast may not be coming along for the ride, complaining
that they're not being fairly compensated for their work. The
gut instinct among Internet nerds is to side with them and
rally against billionaire tyrant Rupert Murdoch and the
executives at FOX, but the truth is that there are no good
guys in this battle. The actors are reportedly asking for
ten times the money they received when the show first
aired in 1999, a serious overestimation of their value when
you consider that the new episodes of Futurama will only air
on extended basic cable, and with a sharply reduced
budget.
Unwilling to meet the outrageous
salary demands of the original cast, the producers of the
series have started a casting call for replacements.
Predictably, other members of the voice acting community are
standing in solidarity with series regulars Katey Segal, John
DiMaggio, and Billy West. One fellow actor, Bob Bergen, even
went so far as to warn prospective scabs on his blog that
there would be karmic retribution for anyone who dared to
replace the old cast. It's funny he should mention that, since
Billy West eagerly stepped into the role of Ren when John
Kricfalusi was fired from The Ren and Stimpy Show back in
1992. West's excuse was simple and to the point... "I just
wanted the money."
I'm not willing to sympathize
with either FOX or the voice over cast, since both parties
seem equally willing to kill the Futurama franchise to line
their own pockets. A friend of mine, GameSpite's Jeremy
Parish, claimed that it was probably for the best, since the
series was already running on empty after the first couple of
straight-to-video movies. I'm slightly more optimistic,
however... I think Futurama still has legs, but only if
everyone involved in its creation is willing to put their egos
in check and make compromises for the good of the series. FOX,
loosen the pursestrings a bit. You're bringing the show back
because the fans demanded it... you might as well do things
right rather than wasting money on episodes nobody will watch.
John DiMaggio, you love Futurama as much as everyone else...
you've even said so in the audio commentaries! Do the right
thing and give us the real Bender, even if you have to wait a
couple of months to buy that yacht. If the show returns and
you're not in it, you'll regret it... maybe not today, maybe
not tomorrow, but the moment you see the crappy new
episodes.
Off that subject and onto a
related one, I've been playing the Simpsons arcade game, and
am surprised at how well it holds up after all these years.
Konami released this in 1991, which wasn't such a hot year for
the television series... the humor was pretty dry, with the
writers entirely too focused on the rather banal storylines.
Looking back, it was a lot like how King of the Hill or The
Goode Family is today. However, Konami had the good sense to
take the game in a different direction, adding more zany
slapstick than you'd find in even the later seasons of the
show. It doesn't accurately capture the spirit of the series,
yet somehow, it works. Maybe it's because the game remembers
what Matt Groening and his staff of writers all too frequently
forget... The Simpsons is a cartoon, and there's no reason to
be ashamed of that.
All right, one more point of
business before I end this update. After some contemplation,
I've decided to go with the GameBoy Advance and Dragon BASIC
for all my homebrew programming needs. My friend Brian Deuel
made a strong case for the Dreamcast and its own development
environment Fenix, but I think Dragon BASIC will be more
convenient for me. When I write a program for the GameBoy
Advance, I can give it a test run on an emulator, then copy it
to a flash cart for further testing on the actual hardware.
While there are Dreamcast emulators out there, they run slowly
and unreliably on my computers, forcing me to burn a whole lot
of discs in order to test my projects on an actual
Dreamcast. Frankly, I just don't want to waste the
plastic.
Anyway... here's my first
program. It's very simple, and it doesn't remotely
resemble a game, but it's a step in the right direction.
Download it, run it
in an emulator like Visual Boy Advance, and watch the
fireworks.
| July 15, 2009... Zoid, Minus
the Berg |
So... anyone know if Futurama co-creator
David X. Cohen's old Apple II game Zoid was finally dumped and
made available to the public? I know, it's a pretty thin
pretense for updating the web site, but I'm genuinely
interested in knowing this game's fate. I actually made
some software for the Apple II myself, since the machine was
commonplace in high schools during the late 1980s and
programming was a way to pass the time during study hall...
you know, as opposed to actually studying.
My own magnum opus for the system was a
crude adventure game called Arrowhead, which
featured a dashing elfen hero (a block) who fired arrows (more
blocks) at vicious monsters (painstakingly detailed creatures
with saliva dripping from their jaws. No wait, those
were blocks too). It wasn't going to win any awards, but
when you're fifteen and restricted by technology that's nearly
as old as you are, you have to celebrate even the small
victories.
All this talk of programming has got me
thinking about taking another stab at homebrew game
design. It's been nearly four years since I finished the
Atari 2600 release Solar Plexus, and I'd like to follow
it up with a better game on more advanced
hardware. Ideally, that hardware would be the Vectrex,
but it doesn't look like Martijn Wenting is ever going to
follow through on his promise of a BASIC compiler for that
system. Development tools do exist for the
ColecoVision, but the games have to be programmed in C, and
that language requires so many external libraries that it
feels like putting together IKEA furniture without the
instruction manual.
There are other options available, if
I'm willing to work with a more modern game console.
Irritating name aside, BasiEgaXorz seems to have promise,
offering a full-featured development environment for not only
the Sega Genesis, but the Sega CD and even the 32X (bleech) as
well. Then there's Dragon BASIC, created as a handy
beginner's tool for development on the GameBoy Advance.
This seems to have vanished from the Internet recently, but
I'm sure it's out there somewhere... I'd just have to
sharpen up my search engine skills and hunt it
down.
I suppose I've got a lot to think about
here. I'll keep you guys informed of any
decisions I make, and if anything fruitful comes from
them.
| July 05, 2009... Back With A
Bang (also, Go! Go!
Golvellius) |
It's been a while since I've updated,
but I believe you'll find this
new feature was worth the wait. All
two weeks of it.
While I was doing research for the
article, I stumbled on a Master System game called
Golvellius. Well, restumbled upon it,
really. I gave it a quick try in an emulator a few years
back and wasn't impressed, but after spending a little more
time with it, I've grown to appreciate it for the
not-really-Zelda-but-ya-gotta-give-it-credit-for-trying kind
of game it is.
Actually, it does have a couple of
advantages over The Legend of Zelda, including a superior
translation. Instead of nonsense like "Grumble grumble,"
you get useful hints from the cast of characters, along with a
welcome injection of humor. Refuse to buy an item
from one of the kindly old grandmothers running the
underground stores, and they'll rudely direct you to the door,
calling you a "pinhead" or a "moron of the highest
grade." The scatterbrained fairies are also good for a
few laughs, typically more interested in munching on snocones
than aiding you on your quest. On the rare occasion that
you can convince them to help you, you'll probably
wonder why you bothered to ask. While trying to find
the hidden entrance to the second boss, one of the
sprites offers this hint:
Sounds easy enough. Now I just
need to find that blue rock and...
Oh, you have GOT to be kidding me.
I swear, I'm going to hunt down that fairy and tear her stupid
little wings
off... |
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