Sorry it's been so long since the last
update, folks. In all honesty I feel like the site
has come to a crossroads... or perhaps just the end
of the road. My enthusiasm for video games just
isn't what it was when The Gameroom Blitz made its online
debut nearly fifteen years ago, and if this site is going
to continue, something will have to change. Either I'll
have to rediscover my love for the hobby or this site
will need to go in a different direction... and if that
happens, it could hardly be called The Gameroom
Blitz.
Also, I'm heinously, dangerously,
morbidly broke. If you've got any money to throw in my
tip jar, now would be the time. My deepest gratitude in
advance.
November 16, 2010... Stop Me
If You've Heard This One
Before...
Activision just took the axe to another
internal game studio, this time Bizarre Creations of Project
Gotham Racing and Geometry Wars fame. Naturally,
although the developer is dead, the games it created
will be kept clinging to life for the rest of eternity,
passed from one cut-rate design team to the next like a
joint in Eric Foreman's basement. Aren't these morons ever going to realize
that game design is a creatively driven process, and that
developers aren't interchangeable? That should have been
abundantly clear when they played musical chairs
with Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk... those two series
haven't been the same since.
In happier news, more information about
Marvel vs. Capcom 3 has been leaked to the press. At
this point, every member of the cast has been revealed, short
of a couple of possible surprises. Here's the run-down,
courtesy of the always juicy Joystiq:
CAPCOM
Akuma Albert
Wesker Amaterasu Arthur Chris
Redfield Chun-Li Dante Felicia Frank West/Chuck
Greene Hsien-Ko Jill Valentine M.
Bison Mega Man/Mega Man.EXE Mike
Hagger Morrigan Rad Spencer Red Arremer Roll Ryu
Hoshino Samanosuke Strider Hiryu Tessa Trish Viewtiful
Joe Zero Tron
Bonne ...?
MARVEL
Amatsu-Mikaboshi Captain
America Deadpool Dormamu Elektra Incredible
Hulk Iron Man/War Machine Iron Fist Hawkeye Juggernaut Magneto Misty
Knight MODOK She-Hulk Shuma-Gorath Spider-Man Spider-Woman Storm Super
Skrull Squirrel
Girl Taskmaster Thanos Thor Ultron Victor
Delacroix Wolverine X-23
It's probably worth mentioning that the
list is a little generous, with entries in red being
unconfirmed as characters. So while the roster is a
little Marvel-heavy at present, that could easily change if a
couple of these characters turn out to be wishful thinking on
the part of Joystiq's anonymous source. It's also
possible- actually, make that very likely- that some of
these characters will be offered as downloadable content after
the game is released. It's the way the industry works
these days, folks.
Capcom's side of the list has more
Resident Evil and Devil May Cry characters than I would have
preferred, with Albert Wesker, Chris Redfield, and Jill
Valentine representing Raccoon City, and Dante and Trish
running for DMC. (Sorry.) However, Capcom's thrown
a few crumbs to crusty old gamers like myself, including a
projectile-mad Arthur from Ghouls 'n Ghosts and several of the
ladies from Darkstalkers, who seem forever doomed to appear in
crossover games like this.
As for Marvel... wow, I feel totally
lost here. I'm not a huge comic book fan, and many
of these characters have had absolutely no television
exposure, even with several Marvel cartoons on basic
cable. Taskmaster? Victor Delacroix? Misty
Knight? Who are these guys? I wasn't even familiar
with Deadpool until Bea Arthur died a couple of years ago...
if you had showed me his picture before that, I probably
would have mistaken him for Slade on Teen Titans.
Much of the appeal of a game like
this comes from recognizing its stars, and from
the excitement of seeing them come fist to face
with popular characters from another universe. It's
why Marvel vs. Capcom and its sequel were so successful, and
why the Japan-centric Tatsunoko vs. Capcom was anything but in
the United States. I can't help but wonder if Marvel vs.
Capcom 3, with its roster of head-scratching
obscurities, will meet the same fate because of
this.
Nevertheless, I'll be paying close
attention to this game when it's finally released in
February. Obscure or not, these fighters have some
brilliant ways of laying the smackdown on their
opponents. Case in point: during one of her super
attacks, She-Hulk stops an oncoming car with her bare hands,
then flips it over her shoulder to her unlucky opponent, who's
flattened, then blown up in a cataclysmic explosion. If
the game is half as fun to play as it is to watch, I won't be
able to resist a purchase!
November 13, 2010... Return
to Duty
I'm back, and with a new review, no
less! Check it out here.
Hopefully future updates will be more
frequent now that Christmas is just around the corner. I
can't actually afford anything that's coming out, but
at least there will be plenty of news to cover... and I can
always fall back on Atari 2600 and Xbox Live Indie games,
should I feel inclined to write more reviews.
One game I've been playing a lot
lately is Juno First, which Konami released just
before the golden age of arcades came to a close. When I
first discovered it in the 1990s, I was quick to dismiss it as
a crass attempt by a Japanese developer to mimic the
distinctly American style of early game design, right down to
the cacaphonous sound effects and explosions that litter the
screen with scrapnel.
Years later, I'm more convinced than
ever that Juno First is Konami's best impersonation of
Eugene Jarvis... but just because it's shameless doesn't mean
it's not fun! The game is best described as equal parts
Beamrider and Defender, looking like the former with its grid
that stretches out into the horizon but playing like the
latter with a ship that lays down heavy laser fire and can
move forward and back. The tension mounts quickly
after you finish the first couple of stages, with
aliens crowding the grid and heat-seeking swarmers joining the
fray. When they get too close for comfort, you can tap
the warp button for a brief escape, or pick up a stray
astronaut to declare a temporary cease fire. Well, the
bad guys have to stop firing, but you
don't!
Juno First has become a personal
favorite of mine at the arcade a block from my house.
They've got several dozen games there counting the titles on
their two Multicades, but I keep coming back to this one
because it's a tantalizing challenge. Just cracking
six figures left me with a sense of accomplishment... I
can only imagine the thrill Tom Gibson must
have felt when he reached a score of
seventy-five million points.
All right, that's it for now! I'll
catch you all in a couple of days, after I finish my latest
exam.
October 29, 2010... Inafune
Devida, Baby
We interrupt this hiatus for some
shocking news... Keiji Inafune, leading developer at Capcom
and the creator of the venerable Mega Man series, has quit the
company, claiming that he's done all he can for the company
and that it's time to make a clean break. Well, a clean
break would be leaving after Mega Man Legends 3 was
finished, but we won't split hairs.
October 23, 2010... Drawing a
Blank
I've got to take a break from the site,
folks... the motivation just isn't there. Frankly,
I'm shocked that the Blitz has lasted as long as it
has. It feels like it's been running on fumes for years,
aside from occasional sparks of life like the Conan O'Brien
piece I'd written over the summer. I wish
I had the enthusiasm for writing that I did when I was a
teenager... that drive coupled with the skill gained from
eighteen years of experience would make me a juggernaut
among semi-professional game journalists!
Anyway, here's a new banner for you to
enjoy while I search for my muse. Also, here's a map should you be
foolish or brave enough to try to beat the game that inspired
it. By the time you actually reach the end, I might be
updating again!
October 19, 2010... The Mark
of Genius
First things first... Capcom has cooked
up a crossover so completely unexpected, it makes the Marvel
vs. Capcom series look like The Jetsons Meet The
Flintstones. Are you ready for a Professor Layton and
Phoenix Wright team up? You'd better be, because it's
happening whether you're prepared for it or not. I'm
skeptical that these two very divergent series will work
together, but Capcom's never been one to let a little thing
like logic stand in the way of corporate synergy!
So hey, Nintendo recently announced the
25th anniversary of its premiere game system. As Jeremy
Parish noted on his own site, nobody really knows for sure
when the NES first hit shelves in the States... it
was leaked out to a handful of test markets before
making its official American debut in the fall of 1985.
However, I'm willing to let
Nintendo fudge the numbers for the sake of their (and my)
convenience.
Parish also discussed the impact that
Super Mario Bros. 3 had on his childhood, but I'm going to go
back even further, to the first game in the
series. It seems hopelessly primitive by today's
standards... even Shigeru Miyamoto himself has
admitted that he's a little embarrassed by the awkwardly
drawn sprites in retrospect. However, in 1985,
Super Mario Bros. was a quantum leap ahead of what had
come before it.
Prior to its release, games had
typically restricted players to a single screen, mostly
because the hardware of the time didn't handle scrolling well
but also because the scope of games were typically limited to
two or three simple objectives. "Shoot these guys, avoid
their shots, and hit this guy with a bullet before he escapes
for bonus points" was the norm for a lot of video games in the
early 1980s. More daring titles like Adventure and the
Swordquest series tried to stretch those boundaries, but
hardware constraints left them frustratingly abstract and
obtuse. If you managed to figure out how to buy a shovel
in Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark without a
guide, you're either very lucky or very lying.
Super Mario Bros. not only tore down the
walls of early game design, but did it in a way that felt
natural to the player. You could figure it all out by
reading the half page of instructions printed on the arcade
game's control panel, or from five minutes of trial and error
in its less punishing NES counterpart. You're here, the
princess is over there... go save her. There are some
things you can touch, and others you shouldn't, but it's never
hard to tell the difference between them. New
concepts and techniques are introduced at just the right pace,
so you're never overwhelmed but never bored either.
There was room for improvement in Super
Mario Bros., as there always is with industry
trendsetters. It's pretty clear why the
graphics cause the Miyamoto of today such distress...
that stiffly drawn, big-nosed Mario
looks jarringly out of place in the Mushroom Kingdom, like a
G.I. Joe action figure that somehow stumbled into the land of
the Care Bears. Also, Mario's slow acceleration and
exaggerated momentum makes precise movement a challenge in all
the wrong ways. It's tough to inch him to the edge of a
platform, yet agonizingly easy to overshoot it once he's
built up some speed.
However, the design of Super
Mario Bros. is at its very core flawless.
It demonstrates a keen understanding of human behavior, and
taps into the need for positive reinforcement and the
curiosity of the unknown to make itself profoundly
compelling, even a quarter of a century later. More than Bowser, his turtle soldiers, or even
Mario himself, the most important character in Super Mario
Bros. is that flashing question block that beckons you to
punch it open and reveal its contents to the
world.
October 15, 2010... Krome
Alone
Wow, so much crazy stuff has happened
today that I can barely keep up with it all! From the
top...
* Fable II was recently made available
on the Xbox Live download service for the low,
low price of, uh, no price at all. There's been
speculation that this was intended to spark interest in
the upcoming sequel, but given the fact that there was no
promotion or advance notice of the giveaway, it's more likely
that Microsoft just screwed up. It's a happy
mistake for anyone who grabbed a copy before the price went
back to fifteen dollars, though!
* Namco celebrated the rescue of
Chile's trapped miners with crass promotion for its video
game Mr. Driller, starring a little excavator who's frequently
crushed by falling debris. The ever-dimwitted
readers of Joystiq didn't seem to see a problem with
this, claiming that everyone who complained was
being too sensitive. All right guys, let's seal
you in a dark cavern for three months and see if you
have a sense of humor about the situation when you finally get
out.
* Here's the biggie... after months of
struggling to keep its head above water, Krome Studios closed
its doors for good. It will likely spell doom for
Microsoft's Game Room, which was a promising idea that never
quite found its footing thanks to shaky emulation and limited
third party support. It also closes a chapter for the
video game industry... back when it was known as Beam
Software, the company was responsible for some of the best
(Super Smash TV) and worst (Dash Galaxy in the Alien Asylum)
games available in the early 1990s. Their work will be
missed. Well, some of their work will be
missed.
Special thanks to Joystiq and Tiny
Cartridge for the scoops. I love 'ya, Joystiq, but
seriously, your readers are some of the dumbest organisms
to ever draw breath.
October 12, 2010... Vanishing
Act
This has really been a
peculiar time for video games, hasn't it? Sega
recently announced the recall of
multiple titles, including all the lackluster entries in
the Sonic series (of which there have been many) and an Outrun
game originally available from the Xbox Live and PSN download
services. Outrun Online Arcade is getting the
axe due to an expired licensing
agreement with luxury car manufacturer Ferrari, but the Sonic
games are being taken back from stores in a desperate
attempt to salvage the brand name. Did I say
"desperate?" Let me squeeze "stupid" and "pointless" in
there somewhere too. The damage has already been done,
Sega. Most of those terrible Sonic games are several
years old now... you're not going to pull them off store
shelves when they've already migrated to clearance bins and
the homes of unfortunate fans. I swear, this is the kind
of Keystone Cops-style marketing that's given Sega-Sammy its
own dismal reputation...
October 10, 2010... Stones
and Sticks and Wolves That Are
Dicks
(Yes, rape is referenced in this
post. If this is a source of discomfort for you, I'd
suggest you sit this one out and enjoy the Dairy
Queen menu
instead.)
The recent events over at Penny
Arcade have left me thinking about
sensitivity, and the endless tug of war between preserving
one's own independence and showing empathy for others.
I'm sure nobody wants to be a bastard on purpose, but
people will often lash out when they feel their freedom of
expression is threatened.
Let's face it, there's a harsh climate of righteous
indignation in this country, and it seems like these days,
anything you say will offend someone.
So I can understand Gabe and Tycho's
reaction when someone called them out for posting "triggers"
that could aggravate post-traumatic stress disorder in some
readers. Frankly, I didn't know this was a thing... I
was aware of the condition's military cousin shell shock, but
didn't realize that PTSD was a serious issue off the
battlefield, or that a flashback could be sparked by the
description of an event similar to the one that caused the
trauma.
The trauma in question was
rape. Penny Arcade is known for making sport of
touchy topics like this... after all, this is the comic
where a robot regularly has its way with fruit and the two
lead characters have gruesomely killed each other at least a
dozen times in as many years. However, it seems
that for many afflicted with PTSD, there's
absolutely no room for humor in the subject of
rape.
Personally, I didn't find the comic
that started this controversy especially offensive; at least,
no more so than any other Penny Arcade comic.
Yet at the same time, I wonder when we as a society decided to
change rape from a subject reserved solely for therapists
to a source of entertainment.
There's a show on television that revolves exclusively around
sex crimes, and I just don't see the point of it.
I'm okay with frank discussions on rape; how the survivors can
deal with their pain and how such crimes can be
prevented. I'm just not sure that we should be using it
to exploit the base instincts of television viewers while
selling them insurance and luxury cars on the
side.
Anyway. I don't think Gabe and
Tycho were acting maliciously when they published this
comic, or even when they defended it. They just didn't
know it would affect some of their readers so severely.
I bet a lot of other people didn't, either. Now that
they do, will their behavior change? That's
going to be a better test of their judgment and character than
what happened during this controversy, when they had ignorance
as an excuse.
October 6, 2010... Bungle in
the Jungle
Here it is, folks... the Eyes arcade
game in all its semi-obscure glory. These machines
were actually pretty common in mid-Michigan (or
maybe it was just this cabinet that made a sneaky
migration to all my favorite arcade hotspots...) but few
outside this region remember it, and even fewer still remember
it fondly.
While it may not be up to
the standards of Pac-Man, or Dig Dug, or Mr. Do!, I
appreciate Eyes for bringing its own twist to the well-worn
genre of maze games. It's more aggressive than the usual
Pac-Man clone, with your fleshy hero weaving through corridors
and picking off the evil eyes roaming through each
stage. The best comparison I can make is to the tank
sub-game in Tron, except the cleaner cardinal firing in
Eyes lets you concentrate solely on survival in
the later stages, when the action gets intense and there's
a trigger-happy eye lurking around every
corner.
Now onto the news! It seems each
launch of a major portable game system brings with it at
least one also-ran hoping to trim some crust off the edge of
that pie. In 2005, it was the Gizmondo, and five years
later, it's this peculiar device. Panasonic's Jungle is
a high-performance portable designed especially for
online gamers... the specs are high enough to shame the
upcoming 3DS, but its dependence on Linux makes it
incompatible with the MMORPGs people play most.
It's hard to imagine this gadget gaining much traction in a
market already sewn up by Nintendo, Sony, and Apple, but at
least it'll be fun for hackers in a couple of
years, after the price of the Jungle drops through the
floor!
October 3, 2010... Still
Swingin'
You didn't think you could get rid of me
that easily, did you? Now that I've settled
into my new place, I've got plenty of time to update the site
on a regular basis. Now I just need the
motivation and I'll be set!
The apartment may be new to me, but
the surrounding town isn't... my brother and I used
to stop by occasionally when we were kids, usually
to enjoy a chicken basket at Dairy Queen or to read Uncle
Scrooge comics while our mother was getting an adjustment at
the local chiropractor. I've got to say,
it's surreal seeing all that's changed here, along with
everything that seems frozen in time. The Dairy
Queen's still there, but the building was completely
renovated, going through a growth spurt while my back was
turned. The supermarket is history, replaced with a
video store, a pizza place, and the requisite Family Dollar, a
business that springs up in vacated buildings like a weed that
grows only in urban decay. The railroad remains
intact, and reminds me of its presence daily with a locomotive
that seems to charge right through my living room.
Perhaps the most pleasant (and puzzling)
surprise is the existence of an arcade downtown. I
couldn't believe my ears when I was told about it, and now
that I've seen it for myself I'm still rubbing my
eyes in disbelief. It's not what you'd call a retro
gaming valhalla, with only a small assortment of obscure
titles and a couple of Ultracade cabinets added to fill in the
gaps. However, the fact that it's even there is
cause enough for celebration. There's just something
about sitting down to play Donkey Kong with a Led Zeppelin
poster hanging overhead and a Bally pinball machine tucked
away in the corner that feels right.
Oh yeah! Now that I've brought up
Donkey Kong, I should probably mention that someone plans to
swing by this humble little arcade in the near future to
defend his high score on the kooky Rock-Ola release
Eyes. I didn't catch his name during my last visit, but
Twin Galaxies identifies the man as "Roogie
Elliot." (I wonder if he hangs out with a talking Great
Dane and a bunch of groovy teenagers? Anyway...)
It also reveals that he scored twenty-three million
points in Eyes, blowing away all possible challengers in a
game that wasn't popular even back in the game-crazed early
1980s.
I don't know what Roogie means to
accomplish by reclaiming a crown nobody else wants...
unless Billy Mitchell plans to rob him of
his sole claim to fame just to be a dick.
However, if he's going to spend eight hours slaving in
front of a hot arcade cabinet, you'd better believe I'll be
covering the event. Hey, I don't have anything
better to do either.
