advancing wars

i’ve been playing advance wars 2: black hole rising for GBA off and on for ages, but i finally finished the normal campaign mode a couple of weeks ago. i’d been playing it for so long that i’ve forgotten what the game added compared to the original advance wars, which i’d played a while back. this review at cubed3.com has served as a good reminder; the main additions to the sequel were: super CO powers, a handful of new COs (each with their own unique powers), some new weapons including neotanks and missile silos, and some new enemy hazards including cannons and lasers. in terms of the structure the game has quite a different feel from the first game because instead of three COs that you use for the majority of the game, in the sequel you’re required to use a new group of COs after every few maps. i actually prefer a bit more continuity, but this change does mix things up a bit.

in some ways i enjoyed this game more than the original, partly because i knew more about what to expect so i wasn’t as fixated on the lack of a story or characterization (esp. as compared to my beloved fire emblem series), and partly because i didn’t have to go through all the work of learning how to play the game so this time i could just enjoy the game and its undiluted tactics from the very beginning. but although the changes weren’t insignificant, somehow all in all it just felt too similar. this makes the second sequel i’ve played recently that was more disappointing than not due to its lack of innovation (the other being metroid prime 2). i was starting to get worried that my interest in the advance wars series as a whole was on the decline, but i started the DS games and luckily they both look like they’re different enough to make them worth checking out. intel indicates that we may receive reports on that sooner than later …

advance! links against links on the battlefield!
- entry at wikipedia
- PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
- good FAQ at gamefaqs
- S-rank FAQ, also at gamefaqs
- guide at IGN

metroid prime hunters: last hunt

this is gonna be a short ‘un. for the most part i try to play games in a series in order, but it don’t always work out that way. case in point: i played through metroid prime hunters even though i hadn’t played the demo of the game that preceded it by more than a year. but i got my mitts on the demo soon after that, so i thought i would take it for a spin even though i was going about it all backwards.

needless to say there wasn’t much that the demo experience offered me, having played the actual game. playing through the three single-player modes was entertaining enough, and it was interesting to me that the modes were focused on getting score multipliers through continuous enemy kills. since you need two copies of the demo to play the three multiplayer stages (alas, there’s no vs computer mode like in the main release) i didn’t get to try them out, but one of these days i will. the game includes a control option where you tap the screen to shoot (apparently the original control scheme), but nothing else much worth noting. by this point hand cramps were definitely not a problem, though: either my hand muscles have strengthened from playing through metroid prime hunters or i’ve just adjusted the way i hold my DS when playing. either way it was fun to have to have this little closer to my metroid prime hunters experience. i doubt the big N’s planning a sequel to that game anytime soon, but i’d definitely be up for one. one can only hope and keep the flame alive.

roundin’ up the last of the first hunt links:
- thorough description of the demo at eurogamer.net
- entry at metroid.wikia.com
- PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
- a FAQ at IGN

goin’ down the alleyway

i rather enjoy game boy games in all their greeny grayscale glory, but since i never had one growing up there are so many that i’ve never played. i took a step back to the white plastic brick’s earliest days with alleyway which was actually one of the launch titles, way back in 1989. (that reminds me, a lot of places commemorated the game boy’s 20th anniversary with retrospectives. you can find gamespite’s series of articles here.)

alleyway seems to get universally panned and dismissed as a decidedly inferior clone of arkanoid which came out in the arcades in 1986 and on the NES a year later. in many ways this game seems like a huge step back as it doesn’t feature any powerups whatsoever, or even much level variety: each level repeats 3 times (with variations due to moving blocks). there are eight of these trios of levels, and each group is followed by a bonus board featuring a mario character, ending in a showdown against the king of the koopas, bowser himself. the game does get somewhat harder since the ball travels noticeably faster in later stages, but for the most part there’s not a whole lot to keep your attention. the sprites are small and undistinguished (much like its fellow launch title super mario land which i reviewed last year). even the physics seem a little stiff: according to wikipedia “the ball will only travel at 15°, 30° or 45° angles”. this leads to some extremely repetitive patterns, although “the ball cannot be locked in an infinite loop of ricochets. … the ball will travel at a slightly raised or lowered angle depending on its current trajectory, and will break out of the loop.” the game also includes different speeds for your paddle (faster if you hold the A button and slower if you hold the B button).

despite all of these shortcomings (i seem to say that phrase a lot), eventually i rewound my mind to the game boy’s early days and began to enjoy the game for what it is instead of what it isn’t. as a launch title it definitely had major limitations, but it provides enough entertainment and challenge to make it worth playing, and the mario cameos and variations within each set of levels provide just enough personality to distinguish it from similar games. i found it interesting to compare this not to arkanoid, but to atari’s arcade classic breakout from 1976 (which in turn was directly influenced by that granddaddy of them all pong from 1972). this video of the atari 2600 version of breakout made me think of alleyway as coming before arkanoid instead of after, which it didn’t, but given the technical limitations of games for the game boy at launch the comparison to breakout seems a bit fairer. in any case i’m looking forward to trying out more old-skool game boy games sooner than later.

psst. want some cheap alleyway links?
- gamefaqs has GIFs of all the levels
- text of the manual at world-of-nintendo.com
- this fan review at retrogamer.net will make you want to play the game. this review at meanmachinesmag.co.uk will do just the opposite.
- video of the less-than-thrilling ending
- yup, this is another one from nintendo R&D1
- the game had a cursory mention in nintendo’s game boy player’s guide, receiving scores of: graphics and sound: 3.3, play control: 3.9, challenge: 3.3, and theme and fun: 3.2. i’ve archived the scan here.
- the game also got a brief mention in nintendo power #9. scan archived here.
- the official nintendo page (in japanese) doesn’t have much info, but here’s the google translation if you’re interested.
- bit of trivia, also according to wikipedia: “Years later, the game’s designer Gunpei Yokoi would reuse much of Alleyway’s source code (such as paddle behavior and adapted physics engine) for the Game Boy game Kirby’s Block Ball while working with Shigeru Miyamoto’s team.”

goin’ for wii gold

i must be the only video game blogger who hasn’t yet reviewed the original wii sports. there are a few reasons i’ve put it off for so long. the main reason is that i wanted to delve into at least one area in some depth. but since i’m not into sports games that much in general, even though i’ve played the five games off and on since i first got it, it took me a while to get motivated to actually spend more concentrated amounts of time with it. similarly, even when i did think about playing it, when i get home from work i’m oftentimes just too lazy to be waving my arms around like a mad man, no matter how much fun it may be.

i finally got my 3rd gold in wii tennis recently, so i feel like now is a good time to reflect. without a doubt wii sports is a historical game that will long be remembered for revolutionizing the way video games are viewed (and played) all over the world. by now everyone’s heard hundreds of stories about how the wii has brought people into gaming for the first time, as well as bringing people back into gaming who hadn’t played since the NES days. as someone who’s experienced this phenomenon directly himself with his own family, it’s a great, amazing, fantastic thing that would be hard to overstate.

has it really already been 3 years since the wii was released? i remember the buzz that had been building about it, and, as a nintendo fanboy, being really worried about how people would react to it. that anticipation will be forever linked in my mind with wii sports, and more specifically wii sports as depicted in the first set of “wii experience” videos (put online before the wii was actually released). i found myself watching some of these videos over and over again, amazed at not only how magical playing wii looked, but also how real the reactions were. the videos feature an international cast including both genders and a range of ages, and oftentimes the immediate smiles of the players’ first reactions are soon followed by the furrowed brows of concentration.

so it was, and so it has continued in scores of wii games that have followed. but getting back to the point at hand, i ended up spending most of my time playing the tennis game. that game, as well as the whole package, runs a fine line between simplicity plus accessibility and a true, “hardcore” challenge, something that nintendo has and continues to openly struggle with. tennis seems to balance the two admirably well, perhaps the best balanced in those terms of the games in this collection, based on what i’ve played so far. getting gold medals in the tennis training mode was reasonably challenging, although i’m somewhat disheartened at even attempting to get the platinum medals. and although i became a wii tennis “pro” without too much trouble, maintaining my ranking and even improving it has definitely required more effort. also, as for how much the games mimic real life i can definitely say that with both tennis and bowling when i started off playing, real-life tendencies were accurately reflected in the games. now that i’ve improved i can’t help but wonder if my real-world game has improved as well, although i haven’t tested that yet.

despite not having much interest in sports games in general, i certainly enjoyed this collection. i’m definitely going to come back to tennis, and although i spent some time with baseball i became too bored with the pitching. so i may turn my attention to boxing next, although being the most physically demanding of all the wii sports games it’ll probably take even more motivation for me to get to it. either way i’m deeply grateful to nintendo for coming up with such a great console with a perfect pack-in.

gold-medal links:
- review at videogamecritic.net
- the entry at strategywiki.org includes the training mode medal requirements
- FAQ at gamefaqs. this one also includes info on the easter eggs.
- iwata asks feature. part 4 is particularly entertaining.
- according to one user, nintendo added some slight updates to the game when they added the update to show the wii remote jacket

metroid (metroid) echoes (echoes echoes echoes)

finally beat metroid prime 2: echoes this week. (here’s a good run-down of the game for anyone who hasn’t played it.) the game seems to be universally praised for being an expansion of the original metroid prime, but the consensus is that it doesn’t offer a whole lot that is new. some people feel that the game does everything that was in the original, but “better”. i was blown away by the original when i played it a few years ago, but much as i love the metroid series i found this entry to be somewhat tedious. the game not only lacks the freshness of the original, it just feels too similar, and its storyline of a threatened alien race feels incredibly stale.

among my complaints are that the game seems twice as long as the first one, and it seems to have a lot more backtracking in general. i’m always skeptical of games that create an “alternate world” in order to reuse much of their design, and like my opinion of final fantasy 3 (a.k.a. 6) the majority of the alternate world in MP2 feels like unnecessary padding. also, when first encountering the “dark” world of MP2 the environments are fittingly drab and somewhat difficult to navigate due to the monochromatic purple color palette. i did appreciate the different feel of the pacing in the dark world, which requires you to hop between the various safe havens of light that are spread out in each room, but by the game’s end the dark world’s galaxy of purple oppressiveness is just boring and dull, dull, dull.

people often mention the boss fights, and they are fun because they require you to actually strategize to determine each boss’s weakpoint; but they’re also somewhat annoying because each boss fight has multiple sections, all of which require some trial and error to master. this definitely gives the boss fights a very same-y feeling, which is unfortunate because for the most part they’re very well designed. the final boss fights are the most annoying of the game, and the game’s ending is pretty lame. i also had mixed feelings about the fact that the game only has three alternate endings: one for if you finish with less than 75% of the items, one for finishing with more than 75%, and one for finishing with 100%. lastly, i didn’t have anyone to try out the multiplayer with, but i checked out all the stages and it looked like it could be pretty fun. not sure why it gets dissed so much, but i’m guessing that’s probably just in comparison to other multiplayer FPS games.

despite all my complaints this was definitely a worthwhile entry in the series and i have a feeling it’s one of those games that’s much more fun the second time through. i’ve already dipped into the next game in the series, metroid prime hunters on DS, and have been quite enjoying the new interface. and i’m really looking forward to playing through metroid prime 3 on wii. and who knows? i may even finish those just in time for the new metroid: other M, due out sometime next year.

metroid (metroid) links (links links links):
- great site on the game at metroid recon, including screenshots, item guides, and a walkthrough
- as with the original metroid prime game, metroid2002.com has tons of information on sequence-breaking and glitches for the sequel
- video of the 100% ending. for all that effort you’ll be rewarded with a few seconds of extra video, yippee!
- guide at IGN

wario’s secret castle

finally played through pretty much all the levels in wario land II for game boy (which was also released a bit later as a colorized version for game boy color). i really wanted to like this game more than i did, because i had quite enjoyed the first two wario land games i had played (as recounted here and here). the first sequel, on the virtual boy, was extremely similar to the original wario land game, but this game offers a new twist. here wario, perhaps due to his brute strength, somehow acquires invincibility, and instead of hats his rasputin-like powers come from his ability to transcend death and other ailments. when he gets struck by a hammer, he becomes a spring; when he gets squished by a heavy weight he becomes as thin as paper; and during the course of his adventure he also survives getting burned and frozen and even eating too much cake. the powers aren’t really anything new and they’re generally underused, but the looney-tunes-cartoon-like aesthetic (carried over into the sound effects and music) is entertaining, and in his third solo outing wario is still a fun, greedy-yet-somehow-also-lovable, character.

so what was the problem? unfortunately, the game suffers from one huge design choice that i just couldn’t accept, which follows directly from the fact that wario is invincible. since nothing can hurt him, instead of losing life when wario gets hit by an enemy, most of the time he loses coins. this works out fairly well because each level includes two simple mini-games that cost coins to play and yield the game’s two types of useless collectibles. so the more money you have the easier it is to collect everything in the game. all that is fine and good, but the problem comes when, instead of losing money when you make a mistake, the game punishes you by forcing you into an area where you have to backtrack to where you just were. this particularly happens during boss fights (where in general you can’t get hit once, because otherwise you have to schlep your way back to the boss room), although it happens in other places as well where in other games there would have been a certain amount of “try and die” gameplay. this backtracking happens all too often and makes the game quite annoying and dully repetitive at times. i’m surprised the game seems to have gotten such a good reception given this huge limitation in the game design.

the other main problem is that many of the stages have “secrets”, such as the previously mentioned useless collectibles and also a handful of alternate exits and also just secret stashes of coins. some of the “secrets” are a simple matter of picking the right power to apply to the situation, but some of them are just trying wario’s various powers at every dead end in hopes of uncovering a hidden room. this reminded me far too much of the complaints people had about milon’s secret castle, and at many times finding the secrets in this game felt even more arbitrary (and tedious) than in that one.

all in all this was one of the more-disappointing first-party games i’ve played by my beloved nintendo. apparently WL3 is very similar to this one, and i’m sorely tempted to skip it. i played a bit of WL4 and it also feels pretty similar, so i may have to make an exception to my usual OCD habit of playing games sequentially and instead skip forward to other entries in the series. we’ll see.

wario’s secret links:
- good FAQ at gamefaqs.com
- nice history of wario (and waluigi) at kombo.com: part 1 and part 2.
- recent article at gamespite.net
- entry at wikipedia
- endings at vgmuseum.com
- PDF of manual at replacementdocs.com

tetris attacked — on the go

just a quick post. i know i said i was going to cut down on the sequels, but i had some games already in the pipeline to finish, one of which was the game boy version of tetris attack. i had played and thoroughly enjoyed the SNES version and was looking forward to trying out the various iterations the game has gone through since its original release in 1996.

puzzle games tend not to vary much, and the original game boy version of tetris attack has even less reason to as (according to the game’s page at wikipedia) it was released pretty much simultaneously with the SNES version. in terms of the trappings and modes the games are pretty much the same. the biggest difference is the size of the well [alert! alert! geek speak ahead. skip to the next paragraph to avoid!]: in the SNES version the well is 6 blocks across and 12 high, whereas in the GB version it’s 6 across and only 9 high. this definitely changes the rhythm of the game, and working your chains vertically becomes less feasible. the difference in the well size will probably require you to adjust your strategy if you were reliant on working in the middle of your stack to make chains like i was. also, perhaps as a way to compensate for the limitations on making chains, it feels like the game handles garbage blocks a bit differently than the SNES version. as in the SNES version, making a line next to a garbage block causes all the garbage blocks to turn into regular blocks, but in the GB version there seems to be a significantly bigger pause while the garbage blocks are popping; this makes it easier to rearrange blocks below the garbage blocks and set up chains based on what the garbage blocks have turned into. this change helps make the game more balanced overall, although it also makes it easier to rebound from getting a lot of garbage blocks. since i haven’t played the SNES version in a while i may be mistaken on that, but that was my impression.

since i hadn’t played any version of the game in a while i had a good time just getting back into it. even though i’d played the SNES version a fair amount i’m still far from being a chain master, so there was definitely plenty of worthwhile time spent just improving my tetris attack/panel de pon skillz. i cleared the regular mode on the hardest difficulty, which was rather on the easy side, before proceeding to the “vs COM” mode. on the hardest normal setting this was definitely more of a challenge, but the game gives you infinite continues so it doesn’t take too much effort. after beating bowser the game challenges you to beat bowser without any losses in the first 7 stages (in which you battle your “friends”, e.g. lakitu or poochy, who have supposedly been put under a spell) and with less than 7 continues in the final four stages (i.e. you can use each of the “friends” you’ve accrued as a continue). this is also more of a challenge and definitely kept me coming back for more.

all in all this was a nice portable alternative version to the SNES version. the graphics, music, and sound make the transition pretty much intact, and although the gameplay ends up having slight variations, it’s still the tetris attack you know and love and it’s very much worth checking out. especially if you’re a geek like me who gets into the minute differences between versions of the same game! lucky for me there are still plenty of iterations of the series to check out in the future. hahaha.

another attack of tetris attack links!
- linked to this before, but still worth noting: nice general PdP fansite
- themushroomkingdom.net has a comparison of the SNES tetris attack to the original, japanese-only panel de pon
- passwords at IGN
- entry at gaming.wikia.com with info on all the characters

100+ games and super mario still reigns

i had to set aside my resolution to tone down on the number of sequels i’ve been playing temporarily in order to commemorate the 100th game i’ve completed since i started keeping track of my renewed gameplaying obsession a few years ago. to mark the occasion i decided to play through probably the most iconic video game of all time, the original super mario bros. for the NES.

i’d squeezed in a quick playthrough a while back, but for this occasion i sat down and played through both “quests” without warping. i was also going to try to do it all without any continues and without using the extra lives cheat in 3-1, but in the end i had to use the continue cheat after all. although i have world 8 pretty much completely memorized, i haven’t played world 7 as much as the rest of the game; but i was pleasantly surprised to find that the game wasn’t going to just be a mindless nostalgia trip.

what’s there to say about the game that hasn’t already been said? the game has been rightfully universally praised, and it’s easily one of the top landmarks of video game history; it’s hard to imagine its influence will ever be underestimated. even after countless playthroughs there’s no doubt that this game absolutely holds up and is as much fun as ever. the characters, pacing, powerups, design, music, graphics, gameplay, everything is just fantastic, with each world offering up surprises. from our modern-day persective and hundreds of mario games later it’s easy to take all of its innovations and wacky creativity for granted, and it’s only when we stop to think about how crazy the whole setup is (plumbers in the mushroom kingdom?) that we get a glimpse of how sad and dark a world without mario and company would be.

even after all this time i’m still noticing little details in the game. for example, a while back the good folk at gonintendo linked to a post that pointed out that the bushes are just the clouds colored green, and this playthrough i noticed that the flagpoles are different colors depending on the stage. and i haven’t even gotten into all the dumb stuff that people have found out about the game since it was released that have added to the game’s appeal, like the infamous minus world glitch, the jumping over the flagpole glitch, and the dancing on the ivy trick. (and i’m sure i’m not the only one who still makes the mario face out of the bricks in that one bonus room.)

[as a side note, i happened to be reading an old issue of nintendo power (feb 2006, vol. 200) and in it kazuaki morita, one of the programmers of the game, mentions that when they first heard about the infinite lives cheat he and miyamoto "thought the call was a hoax", but that when they tested it out he had "a real scare". he concludes by saying, "Fortunately, very fortunately, the 'unlimited Mario' cheat had a ton of PR value as word spread, because I sweated bullets over what might happen!" haha. awesome.]

although i’m keeping this post short, there’s nothing small about my love for this game. in looking over the many, many games i’ve played over the years, somehow the original super mario bros. still tops my list of all-time favorites, even after all these years. the world is forever indebted to the genius that is mario creator shigeru miyamoto and all the good folk at nintendo who worked on SMB and continue to give us great gaming experiences even now, a quarter of a century later. it’s because of them that i am and will always be a nintendo fanboy. here’s to another quarter of a century (and more) of great nintendo games!

whoo hoo! mario (and ‘uigi’s) super links!
- nice nostalgic review of the game at videogamecritic.net
- themushroomkingdom.net has a great site on the game including the text of the instruction manual and tons of useless factoids, like the number of goombas in the game (142).

the holy grail of video games

although i’m cetainly a video game buff, i’m not a “collector” for the sake of collecting; i’m a collector only in terms of wanting to play original games in their original configuration (i.e. with the original hardware and peripherals, although sadly with arcade games i have to make do with the nearest console version). this has led me to some relatively expensive purchases, but nothing too extreme. given the mountain of great games i haven’t played, there isn’t too much need to really dive too deep into the realm of obscure but worthwhile but also pricey games.

nevertheless, i find video game collecting for the sake of collecting to be interesting. racketboy has a feature on “the holy grails of console gaming” that’s an interesting read. but the reason i’m mentioning all this now is that the guy who runs the essential videogamepricecharts.com (how did we ever live without it?), posted this week about his epic saga on acquiring the holy grail of console gaming, the nintendo world championships gold cartridge. it’s a great read (you’ll laugh! you’ll cry!), and here’s a hearty congratulations to the guy at VGPC for accomplishing what many people can only dream of.

mario (and luigi) karted again

i hadn’t really been that into super mario kart when i played it last year, but i found myself curious about its first sequel, mario kart 64. MK64 has the advantage of true 3-D graphics and as a result much more varied tracks, but it also offers up some great new items (triple green and red shells, the ghost item, the fake question block, and the dreaded blue shell). the biggest changes to the setup are that each cup consists of 4 tracks instead of 5, there are less laps, and you get unlimited retries. all those changes make the game much, much easier, something i found myself having mixed feelings about but in the end preferred.

because of the latter changes and also because the tracks were easier (it seemed like there were far fewer hairpin turns), in general i didn’t have much problem getting the golds all the way up to the 150cc mode using my man luigi (didn’t bother with mirror mode, though). like many sequels, MK64 feels like a leap forward, and i ended up enjoying it much more than SMK; in fact, it’s made me a convert to the series. the main complaints people continue to have about the series is that the AI opponents pull off superhuman feats and that the better items are given to those who are losing. in my playthrough of the solo mode i found the AI’s rubberbanding to be a bit annoying, but given that your computer opponents are usually relying on weaker weapons (e.g. banana peels) and pretty much never chuck a red shell at you i didn’t think it was too unfair. i also didn’t have much of a problem with the item distribution, and i actually really grew to like the fact that even if you make some mistakes you can still win a race thanks to some much-needed items when you’re lagging behind. racing games in general rely on perfection more than most, something i dislike in games in general, but the kart series helps alleviate those types of headaches. and even though the item distribution makes for a more casual experience, the game still requires more than blind luck to win each race. i can definitely see how the item randomness could be a big pain in a multiplayer game, though.

all in all, despite being a bit too easy this was a thoroughly enjoyable game, and despite some misgivings i decided to give it the benefit of the doubt since it’s just too much stupid fun and i officially inducted it into my “top games of all time” list. it doesn’t look like the series has evolved very much, but i’m looking forward to trying out the rest of the series (although it looks like the next entry, super circuit on the GBA is a bit of a step back).

kart links:
- a nice look at MK64 in the context of the series as a whole
- comparison of metacritic scores and sales of all the games in the series at wikipedia and a chart of the playable characters
- “The real Rainbow Round has been found!”: funny pic at gonintendo
- entry at wikipedia
- PDF of manual at replacementdocs.com
- random collection of cheats