donkey kong landed

still on my sequels kick, so i played through the game boy game donkey kong land. i’d played and enjoyed donkey kong country last year and was in the mood for another mindless platformer.

DKL was released just about 6 months after DKC, and i was fully expecting DKL to be just a portable, fairly watered-down version of the original as many other game boy games are, such as operation c (a contra game), and ninja gaiden: shadow which i’ve previously reviewed. but i was surprised to find that the game actually has more than a few unique elements. true, there are a host of levels that are strongly tied to the original game, including jungle, snow, cave, and water levels. but there are entire sections that are completely new and feature some entirely unique game mechanics, including ship, cloud, and city levels. the ship levels seem to be a preview of the ship levels in donkey kong country 2 which would be released another 6 months later. needless to say, these additions were a welcome surprise and really made the game so much more worthwhile than i expected.

the graphics, of course, take a hit and there are some problems with the rendering of the sprites, but for the most part they do a good job and there aren’t any problems that are too distracting. despite the downgrade in graphics, in general the gameplay holds up. although the levels that are based on DKC levels feel like retreads more often than not, the secrets are much better integrated and less arbitrary. the map also now updates to show which levels are fully completed, although i was surprised you don’t have to get all four of the “KONG” letters in the levels for the stage to be marked completed. the biggest complaint that this reviewer at nintendojo had is that to save you have to find all four “KONG” letters in a level. it was rather annoying to not be able to save when you wanted to, but it ended up giving me an incentive to revisit earlier (and easier) levels that i’d previously completed but hadn’t found all the secrets in. i also disagreed with his complaint that the sky level where you have to jump to change the direction of the platform was annoying; it didn’t take too long to get used to it, and besides there was a similar mechanic in the classic SMB3.

so all in all this was a surprisingly decent little game boy game. it still amazes me how much developers were able to do on such a limited platform. the game’s a bit on the short side and definitely easier than the original, but it’s fun and has enough challenges and new elements to keep you interested and has definitely left me looking forward to seeing what surprises are in store for donkey kong country 2.

DK and diddy’s banana-colored links:
- entry at wikipedia
- text of the instruction manual
- a complete FAQ at gamefaqs

wario’s twisted wares

i’ve been in the mood for sequels lately, so for my second game of the year i played through the now classic warioware: twisted! for the GBA. this is the 3rd warioware game i’ve played so far, and the novelty hasn’t worn off yet (even despite the fact i’ve been playing them out of order). the series has stayed fresh in large part by the variety of physical mechanics they’ve incorporated: the original only utilized the D-pad and one button, whereas the DS and wii versions made full use of those systems’ capabilities. as you probably already know, twisted includes a gyroscope which instantly makes your GBA a completely new device, and this new mode of gameplay is immediately compelling. (although i’m not alone in recommending that you forego your GBA SP for this one, as the shape of the original GBA is much more suited to “twisting”.)

but on top of the unique mechanics, and what makes the game ultimately a more fun game than the original, is that the microgames themselves have more variety. after i’d unlocked all the microgames in twisted i actually went back and played through a fair amount of mega microgame$ (partly to make the comparison, but then largely because i realized i hadn’t unlocked all the microgames for it). revisiting mega microgame$ really showed up the fact that many of those microgames feel very similar, whereas in twisted i rarely felt like any of the microgames were repeats. this isn’t solely due to the addition of the gyroscope, but also b/c the variety of situations in twisted and the even wackier and more over-the-top presentation cleverly disguise any similarities in actual gameplay. this iteration is noticeably more difficult than the first game, and the inclusion of tons of unlockable “souvenirs”, including music tracks, virtual kaleidoscopes, musical instruments, gadgets, and mini-games, also definitely adds to the fun and replay value, despite the fact most are completely random, throwaway, and useless. but, like the microgames themselves, almost all of them will leave you smiling, shaking your head in disbelief, or chuckling to yourself like an idiot. oh, and yes, 9-volt’s retro nintendo fanboy games are still the best. haha.

all in all twisted is a clear winner, and one of many sequels that is a clear improvement upon the original. i wouldn’t rank it as “the #1 game boy advance game of all time” as craig harris did over at IGN in march of 2007, but it’s def. a classic. of the three warioware games i’ve played i’ve come to appreciate smooth moves for the wii more than i originally did due to the amount of actions you’ll be called on to perform, but, not surprisingly, twisted feels a bit fresher since it was earlier in the series. next i’ll probably tackle touched for the DS, which actually came out before twisted in the US. looking forward to it, although the general concensus seems to be that it’s easier and shorter than previous installments.

out of curiosity, and b/c i’m a big geek, i thought it would be interesting to compare review scores of the various warioware games (although of course the actual reviewer may not have been consistent for each review). i limited the table to just nintendo power, IGN, and 1up, and used the original japanese release dates. a list of the games in the warioware series can be found on wikipedia.

Game	Release	meta	NP	IGN	1up
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Microgame$! (GBA)	3/21/2003	89	92	90	N/A
WarioWare, Inc.: Mega Party Game$! (GCN)	10/17/2003	76	75	85	85
WarioWare: Twisted! (GBA)	10/14/2004	88	85	95	80
WarioWare: Touched! (DS)	12/2/2004	81	92	85	85
WarioWare: Smooth Moves (wii)	12/2/2006	83	90	82	80

wario’s twisted links (bwa ha ha ha ha!):
- entry at wikipedia
- PDF of instruction manual at replacementdocs.com
- FAQ on all of the microgames and a prizes FAQ at gamefaqs
- list of unlockables at IGN
- pretty good review at 1up
- wikipedia entry on the newest installment, for the DSi, utsutsu! (which means “reality”, as it uses the DSi’s camera). looks interesting, although it seems the controls may not work that well.

new year, not so new mario

i’d been itching to play a platformer after forcing myself not to play too many last year. even though there seem to be a ton of platformers out there, somehow i don’t get tired of the simple mechanics of running, jumping, defeating enemies, and collecting powerups and useless tokens and points. as a genre i find platformers to be gaming at its almost purest form in terms of the simple pleasure it provides. maybe my fondness for them is due to one of the first games i ever played (and mastered) which was the original super mario bros.

anyway, the game that i tackled was that juggernaut of the best-selling games charts, new super mario bros. for the DS. (yeah, i know i’m late to the party, but i had to catch up on all the other mario games i’d missed out on.) as someone who still finds mario 3 to be the pinnacle of platforming greatness my tastes may not completely coincide with the majority. it seems many people prefer super mario world on the SNES (which i played a year and a half ago and wasn’t bowled over by, although i did enjoy it). similarly, although i wasn’t wowed by NSMB, it’s a solid, enjoyable entry in the series, and considering it was released in the US in may of 2006, almost 15 full years after mario world was released in the US (august of 1991), it’s a great return for the bros. to classic 2D platforming.

it’s kind of hard to say what exactly i found lacking in NSMB. jeremy parish’s review, at the just recently reduced 1up.com, has some cogent remarks:

. . . Even the worlds themselves are practically cribbed directly from SMB3.

Unfortunately, that fidelity is also where it disappoints. Being so closely patterned after one of the greatest games ever, everything about NSMB is incredibly fun. The controls are tight, the levels are exquisitely designed, enemies are carefully placed to provide maximum challenge without excessive cheapness. But there’s a certain creative spark missing, a level of originality that the best Mario games offer freely. . . .

Nintendo has taken a weirdly conservative approach to NSMB . . .

i’m less forgiving than parish about the level design, which i found to be unsurprising more often than not (although the later levels definitely improved). but i think he’s right that the game feels more conservative than it needed to be. the new powerups were fun, but i got bored having to revisit levels to complete them just b/c i didn’t have a micro mushroom on hand. all the additions, whether it’s bouncing on platforms or travelling on a swimming dinosaur or a giant wiggler, felt more like variations on a theme than completely new elements. i also didn’t agree with parish’s comment that unlocking and collecting everything makes it “an unrelentingly tough game”. the extra challenges certainly make the game more worthwhile, but for me they didn’t redeem it that much or set it far enough apart from many other great past platformers. and i really hate to even think it, let alone admit it in electronic print, but i actually found myself enjoying the element of surprise and novelty the mini-games provided more than the actual game itself. which is disappointing, to say the least.

but i’m fairly sure we won’t have to wait another 15 years for the next iteration of super mario bros., so here’s hoping that the followup will take its inspiration from the creativity of games like SMB3, or dare i even think it, the too often neglected SMB2. we’ll just have to wait (impatiently!) and see.

new links for the new super mario bros.:
- PDF of the instruction manual
- guide at IGN
- nice FAQ at gamefaqs with a succinct list of the levels that have alternate exits. also include summaries of all the mini-games and a list of the enemies.
- list of unlockables at cheatmasters.com
- section at themushroomkingdom.net, including audio sound effects, screenshots of pre-release builds, and wallpapers