3/29/06
I have seen the bottom of the handheld mountain, brothers and sisters... and I call it the N-Gage.
For the right price, I was willing to give the system an honest chance. I finally had that opportunity when I spotted an N-Gage QD and three games on eBay for just under seventy bucks. I've spent more money on dumber things (like the gargantuan Tekken 5 controller that's gathering dust in my entertainment center), so I figured I'd take the plunge and add the system to my growing collection.
I just received my N-Gage in the mail today, and after spending some quality (?) time with the system, I'm starting to wonder why I didn't save that money for that other embarassing handheld blunder, the Gizmondo. Sure, the software selection is even worse, but it's a much more exciting conversation piece... what other game system can claim to be the product of a money laundering scheme by the Swedish mafia?
It's not the hardware that holds the N-Gage back... judging from the three games I own, and the time I spent with Pandemonium! at a mall kiosk several years ago, the system is about as powerful as a Playstation. That's as much as anyone can reasonably expect from a portable game system, especially one as small as the N-Gage QD. Games like Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Tomb Raider are faithful to their console counterparts, and look just a little sharper on an LCD screen.
So it's not the hardware that's the problem here, but the cumbersome shell wrapped around it. The N-Gage QD shares many of the flaws of other cell phones with hastily tacked on support for video games. There are way too many buttons (c'mon, Nokia, game systems with numeric keypads are soooo 1983), the joypad is stiff and unyielding, and even the power switch is more difficult to use than necessary, hidden under a rubber bumper on the side of the unit. It's as far from ergonomic as you can make a game system.
But wait, there's less! The screen is agonizingly small, about the size of a Game Boy Advance cartridge, and the interface borrows a little too heavily from other cell phones, with menus and context-sensitive buttons complicating its use. There are even load times which, while not as obnoxious as those on the PSP, shouldn't even be here at all when you consider that all the games are on cartridges. So yeah, the N-Gage experience isn't quite as awful as Penny Arcade made it out to be, but those guys exaggerate practically everything. It would have been impossible for Nokia to meet those outrageously low expectations without poison-tipped blades popping out of the sides of the N-Gage every time you turn it on.
So, now that you've got seventy dollars that you won't be spending on an N-Gage, where should that money go? Into the hands of the developers of Under Defeat, of course. Sega claims that this will be the last Dreamcast game... just like the last one, and the one before that. However, unlike all the iffy vertical shooters that came before it, Under Defeat is a real keeper, and the perfect way to top off your Dreamcast collection.
It not only offers the commercial-quality polish that Radilgy and Chaos Field lacked, but it's fun to play, with just the right amount of bullets and an aiming system straight out of the Capcom shooter Gun.smoke. The three-way cannon fire isn't as versatile as Zero Gunner's omni-directional aiming, but it's also not nearly as confusing! If this really is the last commercial Dreamcast release, the system will have gone out with the spectacular bang that it so richly deserves.
3/26/06
Recently, I interviewed several members of the homebrew gaming community for an article published on the 1UP web site. There was a lot of material I couldn't use in the feature, so after receiving permission from 1UP's editorial staff, I've decided to print the interviews in their entirety here on The Gameroom Blitz.
The first interview in this four-part series is with translator Neill Corlett, the man who brought Seiken Densetsu 3 (the TRUE sequel to Secret of Mana) to an entirely new audience. In later installments, we'll chat with Atari game developers Kirk Israel and Ron Lloyd, as well as Nathan Lazur of the promising but ultimately cancelled Chrono Resurrection project. If you're at all interested in the underground gaming scene, you'll want to stay tuned for all four interviews!
I'd like to thank everyone who participated, along with Jeremy Parish for giving me clearance to publish the interviews on The Gameroom Blitz. Kudos to you all!
3/22/06
It seems that the already crowded handheld market will have to make room for one more competitor next year. Microsoft's planning a portable game system of their own, and it's not the tablet PC Origami. Not much is known about the miniature Xbox at this point, but it's probably safe to assume the following...
* The hardware will be more powerful
than what's in the Nintendo DS.
* The hardware will be LESS
powerful than the 733MHz processor in the original Xbox.
* As
usual, Microsoft will "borrow" all of Sony's marketing strategies when
promoting the device in 2007.
* The portable Xbox will be designed with
convergence in mind (hey, just like Sony's PSP!).
* A handheld Halo
(the only thing that kept the Xbox alive during its freshman year) is
a certainty.
* Viva Pinata will most likely be another launch title,
even though the junior Xbox will be geared to adults.
* Microsoft's
perplexing support for the Nintendo DS will just as mysteriously vanish sometime
this year.
* Steve Ballmer will throw a fit at a stockholder's
meeting, loosening the bladders of everyone
there.
* The editor of The Gameroom Blitz will complain endlessly about
yet another handheld glutting the market.
3/16/06
Holy crap.
http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=15358
Between this announcement and the release of top-notch games like Pursuit Force and Mega Man: Powered Up, the future is looking a whole lot brighter for the PSP. So Nintendo, whatcha got planned in response?
3/11/06
And now, a quick round-up of the latest games I've purchased...
GOD OF WAR: Producer Dave Jaffe has taken a very cinematic approach to your typical action game... but I mean that in a good way. Rather than stalling the battles with endless cut-scenes, he uses the fast-paced and often brutal fighting to tell a story as the game progresses. Classic shooters like Gunstar Heroes, Metal Slug, and Gradius V scratched the surface of story-driven gaming, but I have yet to play a game that does it as effectively as God of War. Fights with major enemies often require Kratos, the burly hitman of the gods, to use the surrounding environment to his advantage, slamming the mythological beasts against walls and impaling them with the broken mast of a ship on the verge of sinking. If GOW's high retail price left you thinking twice about a purchase, there's good news... its new, lower price tag should make the decision a whole lot easier.
NINJA GAIDEN BLACK: This pumped-up, budget-priced version of the Xbox's only Japanese killer app mirrors the gameplay of God of War in some respects... most of the time, you'll be running from room to room, lopping off the heads of rival assassins. However, Ninja Gaiden's hero Ryu prefers speed and style to Kratos' brute force, running along walls and over water on his way to the next bloody confrontation. Ninja Gaiden Black's storyline isn't as well integrated or as entertaining as the one in God of War, and its vicious difficulty level makes the game less approachable than Sony's smash hit. On the other side of the coin, Ninja Gaiden Black's got sharp, vivid graphics and a generous helping of unlockable content, including all the previous titles in the Ninja Gaiden series. Yes, even that arcade game that nobody but myself liked.
PURSUIT FORCE: Oh man, was this ever worth the wait! I had high hopes for this outrageous racing game, and it has yet to disappoint me. Pursuit Force is packed with more adrenaline than a king-sized Snickers bar, Jimmy Carter, and the entire state of Georgia has peanuts, borrowing its best ideas from arcade favorites like Roadblasters, Hydra, Spy Hunter, and Chase HQ. It even takes inspiration from an unexpected source, Taito's underappreciated Wild Western. If you're close enough to a criminal's vehicle, you can take it from them by leaping from your own car onto theirs! The graphics are spectacular (moooove over, Burnout Legends!), and the sound is straight out of a campy buddy cop film. If there's anything wrong with Pursuit Force, it's that the gameplay is sometimes a little too mechanical... you can't draw your weapon unless you absolutely need to have it, and once you leap to another car, you just can't miss it... it's like you're magnetized to its roof. Nevertheless, it's doesn't matter how many racing games you've got for your PSP... there's still plenty of room for this one!
THE INCREDIBLE WIZARD: We're off to see the wizard, the wonderful wizard of Astrocade! Did I mention that I absolutely detest the new title of this conversion of Midway's Wizard of Wor? Well, it bears repeating. However, a rose by any other name still smells as sweet, and no rose- er, game- on the Astrocade has a fragrance this alluring. Don't let anyone tell you that this is a perfect port... the voices are absent, and so is that ominous percussion in the background that raised the tension of this heart-pounding action title through the stratosphere. The somewhat blocky enemies also seem to be a little stingy with their laser fire as well, holding it in until the sixth stage on the normal difficulty level. None of that matters, though, because the game is still the BEST conversion of Midway's classic you'll find on a home game console. Not even the emulation of Wizard of Wor on Midway Arcade Treasures 2 is as satisfying as this finely aged translation.
BANJO PILOT: What, you didn't think I'd like ALL of the games I've reviewed here, did you? Banjo Pilot sounds like a promising concept at first... after all, Diddy Kong Racing was one hell of an impressive Nintendo 64 release, once you got past those aggravating boss battles. Unfortunately, while Diddy Kong Racing was able to soar to the top of the N64 library, Banjo Pilot can barely get off the ground. It's not just the flat Mode 7 scaling, but the paint-by-numbers gameplay and incredibly lame Banjo-Kazooie cast that makes this one a big letdown after the exhilirating highs of Rare's last versus racing game.
3/9/06
I've got mixed feelings about my recent purchase of the Neo-Geo AES and its disc-spinning counterpart, the Neo-Geo CD. While I take great satisfaction in finally sinking my claws into the systems that I so desperately wanted as a teenager and young adult, both consoles were costly additions to my collection... and it's become clear to me that this was not a one-time investment. I'm starting to feel like I'm trapped in that film starring Tom Hanks and the snooty chick from Cheers...
It's no secret to collectors that Neo-Geo cartridges are jaw-droppingly expensive. The high production costs and state of the art technology used to make the carts resulted in high prices and low supply right out of the starting gate. Fifteen years later, many of these games have become more valuable... and costly! If you had told me back in 1993 that we'd be playing video games with Jurassic Park-quality computer rendering, carrying around full-color 32-bit handhelds no larger than my fist, and that Neo-Geo games would be selling for well over their original retail price of $200, I would have laughed in your face. Over a decade later, it looks like the joke's on me!
It's almost as funny that the Neo-Geo and its accessories aren't nearly as sturdy as their high price tags would lead you to believe. The Pro joystick that came with the system is exactly one half of a great controller... the stick itself is made from quality parts, but the plastic buttons are well below the standards of a genuine arcade machine, and even most sanely priced game consoles. The one I purchased from eBay was broken right out of the box... it turned out that a grounding wire had dislodged itself from the solder on one of the circuit boards. It was nothing that couldn't be repaired with a touch of a red-hot soldering iron, but even after the wire had been returned to its rightful place, the stick still wouldn't function properly. It was just a little LESS broken than before.
So there you have it. The Neo-Geo is unquestionably the most impressive game system of its time... but it's not going to win any stress tests from Morgan Von Webb.
3/7/06
I'm just wild about handhelds... and they're just wild about me! Pundits have been crowing that the future of video games lies in online interaction and distribution, but it seems clear to me the path of this industry will lead straight to our pockets.
Just look at the Game Boy Micro! When I first slapped down the hundred bucks for this system, I thought it was the dumbest gaming purchase I ever made. Months later, I've quickly come to realize that it was one of the smartest. Its tiny size means that there's no stopping you from taking the best games ever created anywhere, and when you couple it with a flash cart like the Supercard SD, the Game Boy Micro's already massive library grows even larger, including all my favorites on the NES, Game Gear, Master System, and ColecoVision.
Then there's the Nintendo DS, and the PSP, and this little bugger from GamePark (it's the second of the two systems shown). You might remember GamePark as the creators of the open-source handheld, the GP32. Apparently, the XGP mini will be the new model of this system, with all the power of the original but a lot less of the bulk. This is especially exciting news for PSP owners reluctant to upgrade their firmware... there are more emulators available for the GP32 and its tiny cousin than any other handheld, finally giving PSP fans the excuse they need to fully devote their system to official releases.
There's still room for the console market to grow, but in this writer's opinion, it will be far more exciting to watch handheld game systems evolve over the next ten years. We've already seen some pretty amazing advances since the original Game Boy debuted in 1989... battery life has improved by leaps and bounds, hardware has advanced to near-console levels of performance, and the color screens which were once considered impractical have become an industry standard.
You can't help but wonder... what's next? If technology continues to improve at its current rate, in another ten years we could find a handheld as powerful as the Game Boy Micro and as thin as a credit card at the bottom of a box of Fruit Loops.
3/2/06
Now, it's time for America's favorite game show, Manhandle That Handheld, where we void the warranties of popular portable game systems in the hopes of improving their functionality!
Here comes our latest contestant... introduce yourself, please!
"Hi, I'm Jess Ragan, and I'm a freelance writer and disgruntled PSP owner from the state of Michigan. My hobbies are playing video games, then writing smarmy reviews of them for my site, The Gameroom Blitz."
Thank you! Now, let's begin the game, shall we? In a valiant effort to improve his handheld experience, Jess has attempted to graft a new D-pad onto his Playstation Portable. He's taken the faceplate from an, ahem, "retired" system, then used a soldering iron to burn a hole through the left side of the plate, where the PSP's directional pad rests.
"Not one of my better ideas. I probably got fifteen kinds of cancer breathing in those plastic fumes..."
He may not play wisely, but he plays to win, folks! Jess then opened a Sega Arcade Pad, then pried off its D-pad and sanded down the shaft on its underside. Finally, he took a dab of Super Glue and set the shaft of the pad firmly in the center of the PSP's directional pad, holding it there for several minutes until it dried. After a good night's sleep, he put the system back together, and wound up with this...
"Yep! So, how'd I do?"
Not so good, I'm afraid. The D-pad is a bit more responsive, but not enough to justify the permanent damage done to the PSP's faceplate. Plus, your system's a whole lot uglier and a lot less portable, with the D-pad sticking up like a sore thumb hitching a ride to the nearest doctor's office!
"Aw, man! C'mon, I tried!"
Trying's not enough in this game, my friend! That's all right, though... we've got a lovely consolation prize for you. How's a year's supply of Rice-A-Roni sound to you?
"Sounds like I'll be eating seasoned rice for the next 365 days."
Stay tuned next week when our next contestant presses his luck and tries to replace the firmware on his Nintendo DS! He's putting his system in jeopardy for faster access to his flash cartridge... will the gamble pay off, or will he be left with a really dark, really expensive makeup mirror? Come back next week and find out!
