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| June 6, 2011... The
Continuation?! |
The Gameroom Blitz isn't back
back... I just felt like posting whatever video game crap I
wanted here because I was bored. Hey, it's just like
when the site was alive, but without the expectation
of anyone reading it!
Anyway, Sony just unveiled its next
handheld at E3. The Neo-Geo Pocket can finally have
its acronym back, because the official title of the NGP
is...
The Playstation
Vitameatavegamin!
No wait, it was the Playstation
Vita? Well, close enough.
Here's what we know about the
Playstation Vin Da Bona so far. First, thanks to careful
trimming of the hardware specs and good old fashioned hardware
dumping, the system will retail for $249, with a 3G-enabled
cousin available for $299. Of course, since the wireless
service will be exclusively supplied by AT&T,
you might as well forget the deluxe model exists.
Second, numerous sources (including my
old stomping grounds at Stage
Select) confirm that there are eighty
titles in development for the Playstation Vini Vidi Vici,
including heavy hitters like Uncharted, Modnation Racers, and
a special edition of Street Fighter X Tekken with Cole from
Infamous as a guest character. (What, no Sly
Cooper? C'mon, it's not like he'd be that out of place
in the nutty Tekken cast.) There may also be a
Bioshock game courtesy of 2K Games, but it's still extremely
early and nobody knows if it will be a release of the first
game or a spin-off of Bioshock Infinity.
So all right, I'll give Sony some credit
here. I didn't think they had the grapes to push the
Playstation Danny De Vito under the $250 price point, but
they made it happen. Also, the line-up of games
seems solid, aside from the occasional mystifying choice like
a yet-unnamed pool simulation. Does anyone even play
pool anymore? I mean, aside from middle aged guys with
"Fats" in their name and barflies whose livers have soaked up
ten times their weight in alcohol, and I'd wager that neither
are Sony's target audience.
Oh yeah, there was some other news from
E3 too, but no great shakes. Ubisoft is planning a new
Rayman game with lively cartoon graphics, Microsoft is
doubling up on its support for the Kinect, and Electronic Arts
has announced a release date for Mass Effect 3 (3-6-12... it's
three to the awesometh power!), but beyond that, it's the
usual sequels for familiar franchises. I suspect we
won't be getting the really good stuff until
Nintendo's press conference tomorrow.
COMMENTS
It's just as you feared from the two
week absence, folks. I'm dead.
No, wait... I mean the site is
dead! There, that's better.
I've been editing The Gameroom Blitz for
a decade and a half now, and it seems that as each year
passes, a little more of my enthusiasm for gaming goes with
it. It's not that I've outgrown games... it's more accurate to
say that they've left me behind. From my perspective, today's titles are
too overproduced, too complicated, and above all else,
much too long.
When I was growing up, you could get the
hang of the latest release just minutes after you dropped in
the quarter. When you were done fifteen minutes later,
you weren't just satisfied, but
exhilirated. These
days, everyone expects games to be at least ten hours
long, but how much of that is spent doing anything fun? It's
all stat building, inventory managing, and cut scene watching,
no doubt a by-product of the massively successful Final
Fantasy VII. I didn't like that game when it was
released, and I don't like the path it's forged for the
industry.
I briefly took refuge in the iPhone and
its return to a simpler time for the video game
industry. However, my
enthusiasm for the format sputtered out as well, the victim of general disinterest and hardware
that's three generations behind the latest releases.
That leads to my next point... I
can't afford to keep up with the hobby, and I can't even
afford to keep what I've got. Recently I had to sell a
dozen Saturn games just to pay a month of overdue bills. Many
of the games were acquired during my brief time in Arizona,
and they were all I had left from the experience.
It's bad enough that I have to give them up... it's even
worse that I get nothing out of the deal but some
fleeting relief from my creditors.
Unless my fortunes change, you're not
going to see a lot of activity here. I'll write the occasional
feature for 1UP as long as the management sees fit to keep me
around, but beyond that, I've got nothin'. My apologies to the
fans of The Gameroom Blitz who remained loyal through the
site's decline... I wish things could have been
different.
God how I wish things could have been
different.
COMMENTS
| May 7, 2011... When the Moon
Hits Your Eye, That's
Atari |
Remember those 2600 game reviews I
promised yesterday? Yo. This time,
Moon Patrol, Dig Dug, and the homebrew title Ladybug are up to
bat. They're all great games, but which one is the
best? Click here and find
out!
Seriously, right here.
Click
click click.
COMMENTS
| May 6, 2011... All You Do Is
Talk Talk |
I'm going to take a different approach
with this update. Instead of waiting for the writing bug
to bite (where the hell is he, anyway? Did
someone light a citronella candle?), I'll just pick
up a microphone and talk about anything
that comes to mind for seven minutes. Viva la
podcasting!
By the way, that was indeed me yakking away on 1UP's
Retronauts podcast earlier this evening. That scattered
jumble of thoughts should be available on the site in about a
week. New Atari 2600 game reviews should be available on
this site much, much sooner. I'd give it
another day or two tops.
Oh yeah! I'm sure you've already heard, but Guardian Heroes will
be making a comeback on the Xbox 360 in the near
future. I hope they actually mean that this
time... if I had held my breath for that port of Radiant
Silvergun, my lungs would have exploded by now.
COMMENTS
| May 1, 2011... Two Scoops of
News |
I was going to skip the update today
(like I did yesterday, and the day before...), but some pretty
big things are going down in the video game industry right
now. First, there's word that IGN and UGO, two rivaling
giants in the gaming press, are merging, with the
former distancing itself from its parent company News
Corporation. Anything that gets IGN away from Rupert
Murdoch is a good thing, but I'll admit I'm a little worried
about what it means for UGO properties, particularly
1UP. I write for these guys! I'd kind of like to
keep writing for them! I suppose I won't know
for sure what will happen to me until the deal goes through...
I just have to hope for the best.
Onto that other bit of information. Sony plans to
make up for its recent PSN
snafu with a free month of premium
service, a month of Qriocity (evidently a streaming media
service. Sorry, I've been out of the Sony loop for a
while), and various other goodies offered at no charge.
That's not likely to stem the time of class action lawsuits,
but it's a start. Frankly, given Sony's history, I was
expecting months of denials and veiled shots at the
competition.
There is one other thing... Osama
bin Laden is dead. I don't know what
that has to do with video games, but after a decade of
this rather unpleasant fellow being on the run, it
bears mentioning.
COMMENTS
| April 28,
2011... Station-Nary |
It's been several days since Sony
admitted that hackers infiltrated the PSN network and snuck
away with the credit card numbers of its members, roughly
seventy million in total. Nobody's happy about
this, but frankly, I'm not very surprised by it
either. It just seems like the latest punchline for
the Playstation 3, which has been a comedy of errors
from its 2006 premiere. It was ludicrously priced
at launch thanks to its Blu-Ray drive, continues to vex
publishers with its convoluted hardware, and has been hobbled
by an indecisive marketing campaign that changes with the
weather. First the PS3 was compatible with the past two
Playstations... until key components were removed from the
hardware as a cost-cutting measure, leaving Playstation
2 fans in the lurch. Then
it was open source... until Sony found that inconvenient,
and pulled Linux out from under the feet of players who went
to the considerable trouble of installing it.
Sony's unpopular decision to drop Linux may have snowballed
into the recent PSN fiasco. Anonymous, a group of
would-be terrorist nerds, promised an attack on
Sony's online properties in response to the
company's legal assault on hacker George Hotz. PC
Magazine reports that the
Primatine-huffing purvayors of online mischief distanced
themselves from the threats shortly after PSN went down... but
as well organized as Anonymous believes itself to be, the
attack on PSN could have been the result of an overly
enthusiastic member who forgot to read his E-mail that
day.
It's still not clear who was responsible for PSN's extended
downtime and the leak of its members' personal
information. However, Sony has to carry some of that
responsibility on its shoulders. It's not just
because the company's online service wasn't properly
protected from hackers, either.
Sony's wishy-washy support of Linux, along with an
antagonistic attitude toward gamers who still support the
operating system, practically invited this attack.
Instead of switching sides at its convenience, maybe Sony
should have picked a stance on open source
software and stuck with it.
COMMENTS
| April 24, 2011... Easterday
Night Fever |
I've been out of commission for a few
days so there's a lot to report. I hope you'll bear with
me!
Now to the first order of business. I've got
to tell you about a new blog devoted to vintage
gaming called Retro
Collect. It's what I hoped to
accomplish with the short-lived Re:Activator,
except this updates more frequently and looks about five
times better. I've added Retro Collect to the
links on the front page, and will be referencing it often in
the future.
The second bit of news is that there's a new consolized Neo-Geo MVS unit,
with a fine walnut finish and a price that matches its regal
appearance. Six hundred and forty nine dollars?!
Good lord, the original Neo-Geo cost that much back in the
technologically hamstrung early 1990s, when the closest you
could get to an immersive 3D experience was a Darth Vader
helmet plugged into a Dire Straights video. (Seriously,
check out what
passed for polygons back in those
days. You'll get a good laugh out of it.) Don't
get me wrong, I like the Neo-Geo. I just like
paying my rent and not getting evicted from my apartment
more.
Third on the docket? NBA
Jam for the iPhone. The price of
this slammin' update to the classic Midway arcade game is just
ninety-nine cents over Easter weekend, and if you've got any
brains in your head you'll pick up a copy right now.
It's silky smooth even on the oldest iPhone models, running
like a champ on my first generation iPod Touch, and the action
is even more outrageous than you remember, with two story slam
dunks and a quick-witted announcer who's got a sly remark for
every occasion. You bet your sweet potato casserole
that's worth a dollar!
Let's top it all off with a little personal
news. Fortune hath smiled upon me this Easter, as I now
have an official game to play on my PSP. I
bought a copy of Lumines II at a thrift store last
year, but since I didn't have the system at the
time, I completely forgot about it. Well, I
did, until it reminded me by turning up in the back
seat of my mother's old car. Score one for me!
Actually, score two for me, since someone will
be sending me a copy of Patapon in the mail
shortly. Between those two titles, dozens of Playstation
classics, and countless emulated games, I think there should
be enough to keep me glued to my PSP for months to come.
That's it, folks. Enjoy your Easter, and be sure to
pick up all that stringy green plastic stuff from your baskets
before you leave.
COMMENTS
| April 20,
2011... Handicapable vs. Handheld
Incapable |
Many apologies for the absence, mem
sahibs. Writer's block, blah blah blah.
So! Jeremy Parish recently posted an article
about Rapid Reload (the European version of Gunner's
Heaven) on his web site. That's a handy coincidence,
as it was one of the first games I installed on my
recently acquired PSP. GameSpite contributor Mike
Zeller hit the nail on the head when he described
the game as lacking "the unrestrained wildness of Gunstar
Heroes," but one thing he leaves unmentioned in his review is
that Rapid Reload is an impressive 2D showcase on
the allegedly deficient Playstation hardware. The
lush colors, abundance of sprites, and constant explosions in
this launch title give no indication of the Playstation's 2D
handicap, making me think the system was just faking
it to collect a social security check.
The often-criticized Playstation conversion of Darkstalkers
gives me the same impression. Sure, the animation isn't
arcade-quality, or even Saturn-quality, but it's a
more than adequate conversion that's undone only by the
existence of two vastly superior sequels. After playing
NightWarriors and Vampire Savior, going back to the original
game with its straightjacketed special meter and dearth of
moves is like building a five story mansion, then living in
the basement.
One more thing before I go. A year and a half
after its inauspicious debut, the PSP
Go is officially being put out to pasture
by Sony. Alas, tiny digital distribution-shackled
handheld, we hardly knew ye. Mostly because hardly
anyone owned ye.
COMMENTS
| April 15, 2011... Will Wii or
Won't Wii? |
This could be a big deal... or just more
grist for the rumor mill. (What the heck is grist,
anyway?) There's word that the original Wii will
drop to $150 in May, and that its successor will be
announced at this year's Electronic Entertainment
Expo. Here are some of the features of the rumored Wiiluxe, if the
system actually exists:
High performance hardware, more powerful than either the
Playstation 3 or Xbox 360
Developer-friendly system design
makes Xbox 360 conversions a cinch
Backward compatible with
both Wii and GameCube titles
Supports all Wii
peripherals
High-definition graphics (it's not clear if Wii
and GameCube games will be upscaled)
Compatible with
Blu-Ray media (unclear if it will run Blu-Ray movies like the
PS3)
New controller with a built-in touchscreen
display
An exclusive, undisclosed feature
It all sounds grand, but it also sounds expensive,
and Nintendo's not known for catering to an upscale
market. A controller with a touchscreen display?
With the current Wiimote Plus selling for forty dollars, it's
hard to imagine how they'd get the price of this new
controller under three figures. I don't doubt that
some of these features are accurate, but others just
seem too far-fetched to take seriously. At least people
have stopped talking about that silly holographic
projector...
COMMENTS
| April 13,
2011... Outrage |
Asphalt 6 for the
iPhone is ninety-nine cents right now! Are you
stoked? I'm totally stoked. Words cannot express
my stokage.
Some unfortunate news for fans of quality
games... both Marble Blast Ultra and the Streets of Rage
remake were taken off the internet as a
result of the copyright issues. I don't clearly
understand the circumstances surrounding MBU's removal from
Xbox Live, but the cease and desist against the Streets of
Rage fangame was a clear-cut case of Sega fighting to keep the
rights to a game they've neglected for over a decade.
It's less Kramer vs. Kramer and more Kramer vs.
Dahmer. They should have made an arrangement to
distribute the game themselves while giving the developers a
small cut of the profits, rather than forcing them to
abandon the project completely. That would have made
everyone happy, rather than the standard Sega modus operendi
of making nobody happy.
As for Marble Blast Ultra, well, it'll still
work on your Xbox 360 if you purchased it before the pull, and
you can even buy the upgrades if you'd like. Still, it
makes me think twice about building that trackball to play the
game it was meant to be played.
COMMENTS
| April 12, 2011... The Day the
Cartridge Died |
The Videocart cartridge
feature is an exclusive Fairchild option that allows
the
owner of our Video Entertainment System to continuously add to
a library
of Video games. - Fairchild Channel F (VES)
instruction manual
Jerry
Lawson, the engineering whiz who created
the Fairchild Channel F
in 1976, died last Saturday at the age of 71. This may
not seem like such a big deal to younger gamers, since the
Channel F doesn't make much of an impression with
its chunky pixels and a limited color palette.
However, the system broke important ground by
allowing the player to swap cartridges, rather than having
software hardwired into the unit like its competitors.
It was an idea so good that Nolan Bushnell borrowed
it for his Atari 2600... and it's been a crucial
part of the video game experience since. The format may
have changed, from solid-state cartridges to plastic discs,
but the principle of giving players the freedom to choose
their own games remains the same.
On a lesser note, the Fairchild Channel F was also the
inspiration for my own game Solar Plexus, released back
in 2005 for the Atari 2600. Digital Press praised it as
"a poor man's Solar Fox" (wait a minute, that's not praise at
all!), but the truth is that the gameplay was an eclectic
blend of both Solar Fox and Dodge It, one of
the Channel F's few standout titles. Maybe someone would
have stumbled upon the idea of interchangeable cartridges
if Jerry Lawson hadn't done it first, but I'm absolutely sure
Solar Plexus wouldn't have existed without his
paradigm-shifting genius. So thanks, Jer.
Before I go, I just wanted to mention that a good friend of
mine surprised me by giving me his old, yet remarkably
well-preserved PSP. It's an awesome gift and I deeply
appreciate the gesture, but it's been over two years since
I've actually owned one of these things and have no idea what
I've missed in that time. Are there any good (preferably
cheap!) PSP games released between 2009 and 2011 that I should
be playing right now? If the answer is "not really" or
"Monster Hunter" or "a big buttload of Japanese RPGs," I'll
just do with this PSP what I did
with my last one... load up a memory
stick with PSOne obscurities and call it a day.
It'll give me a chance to finally finish Einhander after all
these years!
COMMENTS
| April 9, 2011... The Third
Wrong |
And now a statement from Jack Tretton,
President of Sony Computer Entertainment of America, on
competing game consoles from Microsoft and
Nintendo.
"The great Sony empire will purge the world of the
inferiors! They are naught but
meaningless playthings, toys of the past which
have no place in the glorious new world order! Their
very presence is an affront to god and nature. There is
no 3D but that offered by Sony! There are no
handheld game systems but those touched by the genius of
Sony's engineers! We will make! We will
BELIEVE! Über Anal Allies! ÜBER ANAL
ALLIES!!!
COMMENTS
| April 7, 2011... Family
Reunion |
Sonic's back! No, that one never
left, as much as we all begged. I'm talking about the
original Sonic from the Genesis games, who will co-star in the
upcoming Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 title Sonic
Generations. Not much is known about the game
beyond the slick promotional film shown online, which
is... uh, what suckered us all into believing that Sonic
2006 was going to be a return to form for the series.
However, given the relative success of Sonic Colors on the
Wii, this one could be a keeper. I'm willing to keep an
open mind about it... just not an open wallet.
So, you remember those iPhone reviews I promised you
earlier? They're
heeeere...
COMMENTS
| April 5, 2011... On the
Rocks |
Rock Band 3, the grand experiment by
Harmonix to breathe new life into the stagnating rhythm
genre, recently had its price chopped to twenty dollars.
My inner miser is jumping for joy, but I'm also disappointed
that the game wasn't as successful as it should have
been. Its compatibility with real
instruments addressed the complaints critics had
about music games, and could have helped a new generation of
musicians get their start. If only people had given it a
chance!
New iPhone reviews are comin' up, folks. My apologies
for the delay... writer's block is a bitch!
COMMENTS
| April 2, 2011... May The Bio
Force Be With You |
My April Fool's joke this year? No
April Fool's joke at all! Oh man, you should have seen
the looks on your faces! I'm a comedic genius, ranking
right up there with Sinbad and Gallagher! Yes, both of
them. And Peter Gallagher too.
So, you've probably heard by now that Bio Force Ape, the
object of every NES gamer's desire for nearly four years, was
finally distributed online. I spent a good chunk of
yesterday playing it on my Nintendo DS with an emulator, and
although the game itself isn't what I'd call a classic, it's
built on the foundation of a very impressive
engine. The title character is pushed
through the levels at breakneck speeds, no small feat for
the pokey NES hardware, and the rotoscoped animation
is stunning. Bio frantically
windmills his arms as he falls, clings to platforms for
dear life as they zip across the screen, and dispatches
his enemies with finishing moves so spectacular they'd be
right at home in the next WWE Pay-Per-View event.
The gameplay is lovably surreal, as you'd
expect from an NES game by a small-time Japanese
developer. Most of your foes are mutated hybrids of
man and beast; less like the furries you've seen on the
internet and more like the twisted abominations in Full
Metal Alchemist. For instance, there's an alligator that
uses its jaws as a pair of legs and has a human face where
its, um, hindquarters should be. Battles with these
freakish fiends aren't especially deep, but Bio's wide
assortment of moves (including weak and strong variants for
all his attacks) lets you mix things up a bit as you pound
that angry wasp man into royal jelly.
Sadly, there are serious issues with Bio Force Ape, and I'm
not just talking about whatever personal issues the
character designers had when they dreamed up the game's
enemies. You only get one life with a small handful of
hit points, and recovering them is tough because power ups are
incredibly rare. I've only counted two during the entire
time I've played the game, versus the many opportunities
you'll have to lose energy to enemies and traps.
Once your hit points are gone, the game is over, and you'll
have to start from the beginning. It's always
aggravating when a game robs you of the progress you've
made, but it's utterly agonizing in Bio Force Ape
considering the size of its levels.
Maybe Seta would have fixed this in the final version...
then again, maybe not. It doesn't really matter, because
the vast majority of players who try Bio Force
Ape will muscle their way through it with save
states. With continues or without, it would
have been a welcome late addition to the NES library,
especially in 1991, when licensed disasters like Bart vs. The
Space Mutants were the norm. The design isn't entirely
successful, but Seta gets points for effort... and a lot
of effort was put into its design.
COMMENTS |
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