11/29/07

Before I begin, I should probably mention that I've added four reviews to the Nintendo DS page.  Yes, new reviews of new games for a new system!  Even I'm a little surprised!  Now that I've got that announcement out of the way, here's what I've been up to in the past eleven days...

 

 

Last week, I traded my copy of BioShock and a handful of other games for Super Mario Galaxy and Fire Pro Wrestling R.

 

Seven days later, I do not regret that choice.

 

I had my doubts about Super Mario Galaxy, even after I first started the game... but after collecting a few power stars, it all started to come into focus.  When people criticize Nintendo, complaints about the monotony of Mario games is the first thing to escape from their lips, and the gimmickry of the Wiimote follows close behind.  However, those criticisms fall apart the moment they reach Super Mario Galaxy.  This particular Mario title is like none that have come before it, toying with both perspective and gravity to create an experience with more dimension than the usual 3D game.  Running off the edge of a platform doesn't necessarily spell doom for the pudgy plumber... more often than not, the suspended land mass will just flip over, revealing hidden goodies like coins and star bits. 

 

So what the heck are star bits?  Well, that's another aspect of the gameplay that distances it from past Mario titles.  Star bits act as both ammunition and currency... once these colorful gems have been collected, they can be used to stun certain enemies, or feed friendly flames which unlock new areas.  The star bits are fired by pointing the Wiimote at the screen and squeezing a trigger, making Super Mario Galaxy the first Nintendo game to combine platforming and light gun action since 1986's Gumshoe.  Fortunately, it's a lot more enjoyable here.  Mario can also knock his enemies for a loop with a properly timed spin, or just stomp them into mushroom flapjacks.  Sometimes you'll have to combine the two attacks, like when you're dealing with steel-plated Goombas who can't be harmed with star bits.

 

You'd think that platforming with one controller while aiming with the other would be awkward, but it comes together pretty well after a few minutes of practice.  However, the mind-bending perspective is a bit more bewildering.  Many of the worlds in Super Mario Galaxy are spherical, and watching them roll under your feet as you run can be disorienting at first.  As a general rule, the game forces you to think in unorthodox ways.  Merely shooting star bits at what you think might be a weak point won't get the job done... you'll often have to trick the bad guys into hurting themselves to defeat them.  For instance, there's a fun boss battle that sets you on the head of a massive robot.  Its power source is guarded by a circular fence, and the only way to crack a hole in this protective barrier is to lure exploding Bullet Bills to it.  Brilliant ideas like this one aren't just reserved for the boss fights... they're all over the place, keeping you eagerly anticipating each new challenge.

 

I've spent so much time gushing about Super Mario Galaxy that I almost forgot about Fire Pro Wrestling Returns!  Well, aside from a frustratingly obtuse edit mode, this is as good as it gets for fans of the venerable series.  I was worried that the game would be a carbon copy of Fire Pro D, right down to the unforgiving grapple timing, but it's been tweaked to give less seasoned players a shot at getting in a few throws and holds.  There are also more modes, more moves, and more technique than in any past Fire Pro release, making it the sale of the century for just twenty bucks (or less, if you're a smart shopper!).  I just wish there was still a mock-WCW league available... along with a WCW to mock!  I tell you, wrestling just hasn't been the same since that fateful conversation between Rick Steiner and Chucky the killer doll...

11/18/07

First order of business... there's a new review on the YouTube page.  This time, it's Titan Warriors, an intense vertically scrolling shooter that Capcom left in limbo for twenty years.  I'd suggest you give it a look, and if you're interested in playing the game yourself, you can download a copy from the Lost Levels web site.  With that out of the way, it's time for my latest cranky rant!

A long time ago, in an age where the 16-bit game console was king and people not only watched The Simpsons, but enjoyed it, a rap group called 2 Live Crew was famous for pushing the envelope of good taste and infuriating parents' groups with songs like Fuck Martinez.  Fifteen years later, the haze of youth no longer hinders our vision, and it's easy to see 2 Live Crew for the talentless numbskulls they were.  However, there was still some small grain of wisdom in their profane ramblings, which immediately becomes clear when you read this review by GameSpot's Alex Navarro.

Yes, fuck Navarro.  Fuck him hard with a railroad spike, for he fails to recognize what should be clear to any gamer old enough to remember the 16-bit era.  That is, "2D graphics" and "Super NES graphics" are not interchangable terms.  The distinction is lost on today's game reviewers, who are eager to throw more dirt on a style of artistic presentation that (despite their best efforts) refuses to stay dead.

Despite their constant denial, there is a difference between the 2D graphics of the early 1990's and the sprite-based graphics of today.  Today's game systems are more powerful than anyone could have imagined fifteen years ago, capable of displaying enormous characters in razor-sharp resolutions, set against backgrounds so rich with color and detail they could be put on display in the Louvre.  It's foolish to assume that these features would only benefit games with polygonal graphics, as titles like Guilty Gear X and Odin Sphere clearly demonstrate. 

If the Super NES could barely handle Street Fighter Alpha 2, what chance would it possibly have to run either of these games?  The system's hardware is just too limited.  With a clock speed of 3.58MHz, an 8-bit onscreen color palatte, and sprites that max out at 64x64 pixels, a Super NES version of Guilty Gear X would be severely compromised... and a port of Odin Sphere would be asking far too much of the console.  There's no question that the Super NES was capable of pushing some very attractive graphics, but some things are just beyond its capabilities.

Things like Fire Pro Wrestling Returns.  From its humble beginnings on the Turbografx-16 and Sega Genesis, the series has never pushed the boundaries of its host systems visually.  However, there have been undeniable improvements made with each migration to a more powerful game console.  The wrestlers have tripled in size, the once stiff animation has become progressively smoother, and the playfields have gone from abstract diamonds in primary colors to faithful reproductions of real-life wrestling rings.  These pictures illustrate just how much Fire Pro has evolved in the past ten years...

If you honestly can't see the difference between these two games, you're either blind or stupid.  Either way, you've got no business making spurious claims that Fire Pro Returns, or indeed, any game with 2D graphics, looks like it belongs on the Super NES.  In fact, if your sense of perspective is so limited that you would compare a game like Capcom vs. SNK 2 to the output of a console from the early 1990's (Tommy...), maybe you shouldn't be reviewing games at all.

11/12/07

Well, it was fun while it lasted, but it certainly didn't last long enough.  After months of dedicated gameplay, my Atari 5200 has perished, evidently the victim of a power surge.  Did I mention that this was after installing a composite video mod and building a countless number of joystick adapters for the system?  That's important, because if you don't know that, you won't understand how furious I was when my 5200 showed its first (then second, then third...) blue screen of death.

Until I've got the cash for a replacement, I'll have to get by with all my other game systems.  You know, the Nintendo Wii, the Xbox 360, the Playstation 2, the Nintendo DS, both the fat and slim PSPs... poor me, huh? 

Speaking of that, I was actually thinking about selling off my silver PSP.  It hasn't been getting much of a workout, since I haven't been able to pull off the Pandora's Battery mod and since it doesn't appreciably speed up the painfully long load times in games like Me and My Katamari, even with the added memory buffer.  The TV out and more responsive D-pad just aren't enough to dispel my buyer's remorse... I sank two hundred dollars into this thing, and all it's done since I bought it is take up space in my closet along with that other ill-advised splurge purchase, the Nomad.  I'm thiiiis close to washing my hands of them both and sticking with my fat PSP for all my Genesis gaming needs!

And now for something completely different... some brief reviews of the latest television cartoons.  Ordinarily, I'd put these on the Frame by Frame page, but I've only watched an episode or two of these shows... less, in the case of the latest Scooby-Doo revival.  In fact, let's get that one out of the way so I can get to the good stuff...

SHAGGY AND SCOOBY-DOO GET A CLUE:  The only people without a clue here are the producers.  They should know after 1983's 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo that separating Shaggy and Scoob from the rest of the cast is a guaranteed recipe for disaster.  Yet that's exactly what they've done with this idiotic comedy series, which divorces the boy and his dog from the mysteries, the rubber-faced monsters, and everything else that made the original series so much fun for late-blooming baby boomers and the older members of Generation X.  Instead, they just hang out in a mansion, antagonizing some bionic boob who's undoubtedly the offspring of Don Knotts and a James Bond villain.  Even the artwork bears no resemblence to the Hanna-Barbera classic, looking like it was pulled from the crummy second season of Johnny Bravo.  This departure from the original formula was the most miserable idea to come from the franchise since Scrappy-Doo.  I'm confident that in ten years, Get A Clue will be regarded as the New Coke of Scooby-Doo shows... if it's remembered at all!

CARE BEARS:  Laugh all you want, but I have a soft spot for these brightly colored runts!  Like Get A Clue, the new Care Bears show goes to great lengths to distance itself from the past two series.  The cast has been abbreviated, with the few remaining characters swapping genders or changing personalities.  Also, there's a new green bear that serves as the comic relief, tripping over everything in his path, and a short-tempered steampunk villain who seems remarkably out of place.  Cyborgs in Care-A-Lot?  I have a funny feeling that this is going to be a hard one to swallow for the show's target audience.  This next-gen update lacks the carefully hidden subversive humor of Nelvana's Care Bears, but at the same time, it's not as slow and sappy as molasses, like the original DiC series.  The bottom line is that it's fun for kids, while being relatively easy for adults to tolerate.

SKUNK FU:  An elderly panda teaching furry, Flash-drawn animals martial arts?  Sure it's been done before, but it's been done BETTER in Skunk Fu.  Here's a show that somehow straddles the fence between ancient Eastern culture and Western cartoon slapstick, and makes it all work together.  Although none of the characters are especially endearing, the battles are fast-paced, clever, and dynamic; just like every Jackie Chan film made between Cannonball Run and The Tuxedo.  Moreover, the animation is fantastic for a Flash-based series... it's not stiff and artificial like Ying-Yang Yo!, yet never goes overboard with spastic gestures like Mucha Lucha!  Skunk Fu was developed by a small animation studio along with a handful of Canadian producers, so it may get ignored next to all the heavily hyped thirty-minute toy commercials on Saturday morning television.  However, even if Skunk Fu doesn't make waves on Kids' WB, I'm sure that the Cartoon Saloon's next series will be a smashing success.

EON KID:  Marty?  You're naming the hero of this computer rendered cartoon MARTY?  Look, that didn't work for the Japanese game system and it's not gonna work here.  The only person, place, or thing on Earth that should ever be named Marty is a cranky Jewish retiree on his way to Florida.  All right... with that out of the way, let's talk about this action series.  The dull, lifeless animation makes Eon Kid seem like it's been sitting around in a Korean film vault for a few years before it made its American debut, and the robots who menace Marty (snicker) were lifted straight out of early black and white episodes of Astro Boy.  So no, it's not what you'd call cutting-edge, but the show does have a few fresh ideas.  The title character is equipped with a hydraulic arm that can be used as a battering ram on its lowest setting, and transforms the wearer into a Mega Man-esque android when danger raises its armor-plated head.  The Eon Kid design is pretty awesome, enveloping Marty from head to toe in gleaming metal, but everything else about the show stinks like spoiled kimchee (and that crap stinks even when it's fresh!).

CHOWDER:  Last on the list is Chowder, the latest work from the mind of C.H. Greenblatt.  He's the guy who wrote all the best episodes of Spongebob Squarepants and The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, so you can imagine how fantastic a cartoon created entirely by the man would be.  It's not the kind of show that jumps out of the television and shakes you by the shirt collar like The Fairly Oddparents or Foster's Home For Imaginary Friends, but Chowder has its own dialed-down charm, along with an appealingly alien world and an art style that hearkens back to the good old days of Schoolhouse Rock.  Chowder also marks Dana "Master Shake" Snyder's first regular appearance in a G-rated cartoon, and he's a perfect fit as the slightly smarmy, marginally pathetic fruit stand manager Gazpacho.  If you like your cartoons loud and screamy, this one isn't for you, but if you're sick of the frantic antics of Foster's and need something to settle your nerves, Chowder is just the ticket.

Also, I don't know what the big deal was with the Grim Adventures of the Kids Next Door crossover.  After a week of non-stop hype, all Cartoon Network had to offer was a thirty-minute cartoon that was heavy on the KND and somehow made Mandy even more insufferable than usual.  The only thing about the show that was actually entertaining were the end credits, with still pictures of crossovers that would have been much more enjoyable than this one.  Hey, I'd watch Samurai Mac!

11/04/07

I'm taking a break from the site, because I don't have a damn thing to say.  Frankly, I'm having a great deal of difficulty caring about anything right now.