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.”

hunting down the metroid prime hunters

oftentimes when i finish a game if i have the next in the series lying around i’ll try it out just to get a taster for how the series progresses. so even though i’d just finished playing metroid prime: echoes, i tried out the next in line, metroid prime: hunters for DS … and found myself totally hooked.

the first thing you notice is how great the game looks; it’s impossible not to be amazed at how much of the gamecube metroid prime games’ design they managed to fit onto the DS. the game includes movie cut-scenes that also look pretty good. the game does a pretty good job of making the most of the hardware and masking its limitations, except for a fair amount of enemy reuse (including the bosses, of which there are only two main ones that are repeated four times each, with variations) and too many places where rooms are overly symmetric or the room designs are reused too closely. the latter becomes apparent even from the first section of the game where there are three rooms in a row that are pretty much identical, making it too easy to get confused which room you’re in and which door you’re heading towards.

i definitely enjoyed the single-player “adventure” mode, although as people have noted the game is fairly linear. it’s divided into nine sections, two on each of 4 worlds and a final stage, although after all the backtracking of MP2 i found the rigid pacing (and warp portals) to be for the most part refreshing. there’s a clear emphasis on action over exploration, and the game highlights one-on-one battles with 6 spankin’-new rival “hunters”. the rival bounty hunters are pretty well designed and their unique abilities make the multiplayer mode entertaining (although i couldn’t really get into it; just not into FPS games enough i guess). the one drawback to the “formula” is that each of the 8 main sections of the game require you to “escape the planet” in a race against the clock, and having to deal with forced timed battles is just annoying. luckily, automatic temporary save points are fairly numerous. all these differences give the game quite a different feel from the usual metroid game, which is why i found that i wanted to continue playing (and ultimately finish) the game even though i’d just finished MP2.

another thing that people complain about often is the control scheme. the stylus mode is really the only viable option since the buttons-only mode doesn’t give nearly enough fine control, but the problem with that mode is that your hand gets cramped easily. however, i did find that after i’d played for a while i got used to it and my hand didn’t feel cramped so much. i’m really curious about trying the game out with a “thumb stylus”, which you can read about here and also here. the latter link is from a post at IGN about the original DS which came with an early demo version of MP:H, which i’m also curious about trying out.

among my other, more-minor complaints, are that the morph ball mechanics are less forgiving than the other prime games and that there are rather too many insta-death situations, both of which cause some really tedious sections of the game. the story is yet another rehash of the first prime story, and i beat the game without realizing that there’s something you’re supposed to do to get the actual ending which was also quite annoying.

at first as i played hunters i kept feeling like i really understood how mario fans must have felt when they first got to play super mario land: that having a portable mario game made up for any shortcomings. but in the end overall i found this game to be quite enjoyable, so much so that i’d actually give it the edge over MP2, which for me just dragged on. as i mentioned, i didn’t spend that much time with the multiplayer modes which was enjoyable enough against the computer but felt fairly repetitive, but i’ll come back to them at some point. meanwhile, i’m seriously itching to try out metroid prime 3. let’s see if i get sucked into that one as well …

huntin’ for bounty-ful links:
- the official site has a lot of video clips and wallpapers for each of the hunters
- if anyone’s interested, nintendo power’s coverage of the game included a preview of the multiplayer mode (march 2006, v. 201), a cover feature and a poster of the hunters (april 2006, v. 202), a review (may 2006, v. 203), and a guide to beating the final boss (june 2006, v. 204).
- great game site at metroid.retropixel.net
- the entry at strategywiki.org includes a lot of info on multiplayer strategy
- entry at metroid.wikia.com, which includes screenshots of the brawl trophies for all the hunters
- video of the ending
- a good FAQ at gamefaqs
- guide at IGN
- entry at wikipedia.org
- entry at metacritic.com

shake those wiimotes!

i was never really into sega growing up (nintendo fanboy that i am, even back then) and am only now slowly working my way through the backlog of great sega games. i’d been intrigued for a while by the wii-make of samba de amigo, which came out in the US last september (although it has yet to make an appearance in japan, oddly enough). usually i like to play earlier iterations of a game before later ones, but after spending a fair amount of time trying to find a pair of the original dreamcast maracas on ebay i gave up and decided to jump into the wii version, particularly since i’m planning on taking the game home to play with my family in a couple of weeks.

the game’s mechanics are immediately appealing, but i quickly ran into the problem that everyone complains about, which is the accuracy of the controls, particularly at the higher levels of difficulty. i was really curious if reviewers’ complaints were fair or not, and for a fair amount of time i was undecided. on easier levels the controls are pretty forgiving, but on harder levels i was definitely having a lot of trouble getting my movements to register. but i couldn’t believe that a powerhouse studio like sega would ship a product with broken controls, so instead of giving up and declaring the game faulty i tried a lot of different things.

eventually i figured out how to get the controls to work pretty much perfectly, and now the only thing that mystifies me is: 1) why so many reviewers (such as IGN’s; yet again, IGN proves to be a poor source of information and my interest in them continues to wane even further) didn’t bother spending the time figuring out how to make the controls work. granted, maybe these people were used to the dreamcast controllers, but it can’t be that hard to figure out the wii controls because, judging by the leaderboards, apparently tons of people other than i have independently figured out how to make them work; and 2) why sega didn’t include a tutorial on how to use the controls properly. because once you understand how the controls actually work, the game is an absolute blast.

in case you too need tips on how to use the controls, it’s really simple. there are three positions: high, medium, low. the game registers positions based on the tilt of the controllers, so for the high position hold the controllers straight up, and then to shake tilt them down (i.e. away from you). for the medium position, hold them flat in front of you and perpendicular to the floor, and to shake just tilt them down (towards the ground). and lastly, for the low position, hold the controllers straight down, and to shake just tilt them towards the wall behind you. to do crossovers (the remotes pointing in the same direction), your arms (and your wiimotes) should actually be crossed over for them to register correctly.

and that’s it! the controls work extremely well with this setup, although i’m really curious to see if others have come to the same conclusion. anyway, as i said, once i figured out the correct way to use the controls the game was (and continues to be) incredibly fun and addictive. as anyone who may have been reading this blog may have noticed, i don’t give out high praise that often, but this game is frickin’ awesome and is a great example of what the wii is all about. i’ve been getting really bored with guitar hero-style gameplay, so this was a real breath of fresh air. the wackiness of the design and the fact that you’re frickin’ shaking your wiimotes like maracas to spanish songs and random songs like “groove is in the heart” thrown in makes this classic, totally stupid fun. as a party game this is an absolute no-brainer, and the new “dance” moves added to this edition just add to the ridiculousness of it. and on my version of miyamoto’s “wife-o-meter” (i.e. the “bf-o-meter”) this was a definite win (and i have some embarassing photos to prove it!).

this is one time i’ve been tempted to buy a game’s downloadable content. at some point i probably will, but in the meantime i A-ranked about 1/3 of the songs on the hard level. but after playing the game day after day for hours on end my arms were getting frickin’ tired; this has got to be the biggest workout i’ve gotten from playing with my wii yet (hahaha). the one complaint i have about the game is that when you make one mistake you drop a rank, so getting an A rank is sometimes artificially hard since you pretty much have to get the last section perfect with no time to recover from even one mistake. but i suppose it’s all just part of the challenge. the fact that you can do crossovers on single notes to up your points adds even more depth to the game, but the game mechanics themselves are just fun, no matter what the level of difficulty. i’ve set the game aside for now, but this is one that i’m definitely looking forward to coming back to. samba!

shake to these samba links!
- entry at wikipedia including a table comparing the different songs in the different versions
- page at metacritic. it’s noteworthy that ye olde nintendo power gave the game the highest score (a 9 out of 10) and just goes to show that yet again NP and i are on the same wavelength.
- random blog post of someone who also came to the same conclusion that i did: “… the controls are great. Early reviewers were either: a) bad at the game, b) confused or c) lazy.” i’m voting for C on that one. he suggests experimenting with the calibration option, but i didn’t try messing around with that much.
- there’s an official site here. doesn’t have much, but includes some wallpapers, screenshots, and a video previewing the first download pack.

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).

majora unmasked

so the loooong game that was taking me forever to finish was the much-discussed the legend of zelda: majora’s mask. in a complete coincidence i finished the game after some marathon sessions shortly after the game was released this week to commemorate the 300th release on the virtual console.

due to the game’s release there’s been tons of discussion about it online these days. despite its reuse of much of the design of ocarina of time, the game is as much a black sheep of the zelda series as zelda II: the adventure of link was. the game is noted for being darker in tone than the rest of the series, with the disaster of the moon crashing into the earth always looming literally overhead. the central game mechanic, in which you replay the same three days over and over again, a la the classic movie groundhog day, is amazingly innovative, even almost 9 years later. the game hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as it deserves, perhaps partly because of its unusual mechanics, but also perhaps it was a bit ahead of its time. hopefully now it will reach a broader audience who can appreciate what a great game it is.

and what a great game it is! i’ve been enjoying my progression through the zelda series, but after i finished ocarina, zelda fatigue was threatening to set in. luckily this game provided a real breath of fresh air and in fact it’s joined my list of “favorite games of all time”. this isn’t to say it’s without its flaws, though. one of the main complaints people have about it is that the time limit sometimes makes you repeat extended sequences of actions, which can be frustrating to say the least. and even outside of the time limit there are some places where the game sets you up so that it’s highly likely that you’ll have to repeat a section because you didn’t complete it on the right day. in my case the problem with the repetitions was compounded by the fact that either my N64 or my expansion pak is buggy, because when i zipped through areas the way i usually do the game would freeze. once i got used to slowing down and letting the camera catch up with me i was usually fine, though, although there were still way too many occasions where i’d have to redo whole sections even beyond what a normal playthrough of the game would entail. extremely frustrating, but the game was definitely worth slogging through that issue and any other quibbles i might have with the game.

in addition to the completely absorbing and fresh central game mechanic, there’s also a more complex story than usual that unfolds well. it seems that the game’s designers made a conscious effort to make the characters come alive. in this interview from nintendo power tezuka, one of the supervisors of the game says:

There were a number of characters in Ocarina of Time that we wanted to describe more fully. We didn’t have the means to do it in Ocarina, but in Majora’s Mask we do because players have the opportunity to meet every character in the game and learn more about them.

in response to the question “Is there anything you weren’t able to accomplish in Ocarina of Time that you have included in Majora’s Mask?” miyamoto adds:

Yes. In fact, that is why we’ve decided to base the game on the three-day intervals. This allows gamers to see characters as they go through their daily routines in more detail. Depending on which time of day you visit a particular character, he or she will be doing different things.

one of the things i really appreciated about the game was how well the side quests are integrated into the game. a lot of the side quests involve the characters you’re constantly running into in the town, which serves as the home base. so while you’re preparing for the next part of the main quest, it’s almost impossible not to become curious about what’s going on with these other characters, and before you know it you’re deeply involved in trying to help them with their problems. also, because of the time mechanic there are many times where you’re forced to wait around for a particular time of day, so in those cases the side quests and the mini-games, like the shooting gallery, become ideal ways to pass the time (assuming that you don’t get sucked into them and lose track of time as i repeatedly did). in fact, because of the game’s design i ended up doing way more sidequests than i usually do. also, the sidequests where you have to find and collect useless tokens (in this game, as in ocarina, they’re golden skulltulas) are contained in two skulltula houses instead of scattered all over the game map, and i completed both of those as well.

well, not much else to say without getting into the details of the game and spoiling some of the surprises. but let it suffice to say that there hasn’t been a game that has sucked me in so completely in quite a while, as my significant other will attest. a flawed masterpiece, but one that i highly recommend every gamer should experience. (oh, and in case you were wondering, when you beat the game, the game automatically saves so that you keep anything you accomplished in the last 3-day time period you played.)

links unmasked!
- if you’re looking for additional basic info about the game here’s a good review at vc.nintendolife.com.
- there are tons of great zelda sites that have tons of info about the game. zeldadungeon.net is a good one and has tons of screenshots.
- the official site has a good bare-bones FAQ if you get stuck and want to minimize spoilers. if you’re looking for an in-depth walkthrough this one on gamefaqs is pretty good.
- text dump at zeldalegends.net
- video of some cool easter eggs on youtube. and here’s a cool reference to star fox in the game that someone noticed that may or may not have been intentional. also, zeldainformer.com has a pretty good succinct list of easter eggs.
- funny majora-related comic at brawl in the family
- just for fun, here’s a zelda 64 caramelldansen video featuring characters from ocarina and majora
- some majora wallpapers at zeldauniverse.net
- majora seems to inspire a fair amount of discussion and debate. zeldainformer.com has some interesting essays, including “The Tribe That Vanished from Legend” that speculates on the identity of the happy mask salesman, and “The Message of Majora’s Mask” that explores many aspects of the game that you may not have pondered very closely.
- this company first4figures.com was selling collectible figures of the skull kid and fierce deity link, but it looks like they’ve sold out (unsurprisingly).
- entry at wikipedia

now you’re playin’ with nintendo power

i’m still trying to finish a long game (not to mention two others that i’m halfway through), but i thought i’d throw up a quick post saying that finally, after years and years of waiting for the day to come, i’ve finally subscribed to nintendo power. i’ve been a long-time fan of the magazine ever since i got a sample copy of the very first issue waaaaaay back when, but i never could seem to bring myself to actually subscribe to it, especially in this day ‘n age when in terms of being up to date the printed form can’t even begin to compete with the speed of digital news. but NP has always been more than just news, and ever since i became a renewed nintendo fanboy with my own income i’d been thinking about subscribing. so yesterday when i saw that amazon was having a promotion on magazines it was just too much to resist. through the end of june it’s $10 off a subscription or renewal, which ends up being $10 for 1 year or $25 for two. here’s the link if anyone’s interested.

there’s a lot of good stuff to say about the magazine. for a while now i’ve been reading through stacks of back issues i’ve gotten off of ebay, some from the earliest NES days and some from as recently as last year, and the magazine has certainly evolved. in its current form it’s clearly as much geared to adult gamers (rather more so, actually) as to kids, as opposed to the original incarnation which had a humongous font. there’s a lot of retro love in the modern version as well, which is always appreciated. i’d been noticing on metacritic that the scores and reviews i tend to agee with most often are from NP, and the staff have been so on the same wavelength as i am in terms of being a nintendo fanboy but still able to be insightful in their criticisms of the big N that for me paying to read the full reviews in NP easily outweighs reading the reviews off of a site like IGN for free. they’re still close enough to nintendo that they get unique interviews/information, and i’ve been really enjoying such regular features as “power profiles” which are interviews with luminaries in video game history, and “playback” which spotlights lesser-known retro titles. i also have to say that i really enjoy the magazine as a medium: i really like being able to dip into the magazine at my leisure in various physical locations, all of which are far away from a computer screen. maybe the younger crowd lacks the appreciation of the non-digital world, but for this old-timer i’m glad i finally made the leap back to the realm of physical media. haha.

nintendo power-ful links:
- the official site which lately has been including the table of contents of the current issue and some excerpts
- i’ve come across a lot of great links to the older issue, including. this fan page that indexes games that have been featured in issues #1-100 and includes the top 5 games featured in the “power charts” for a lot of the issues.
- this index at retromags.com used to have a lot more information on the contents of individual issues, but it looks like a lot of it has been removed, perhaps to be added back in later. in any case it still has nice-sized scans of all the covers.
- retromags also has tons of downloads of old issues of NP (issues that are 10 years or older). sweeeeet.
- entry at wikipedia

balloon fightin’ kid to the rescue!

i’d played and quite enjoyed the classic balloon fight a while back, and at that time i’d already set my sights on playing through the only sequel the game ever got, which was balloon kid for the original game boy.

i have a big soft spot for early game boy games, which, being black and white and on a tiny screen, feel even more primitive than the original NES games. although not a classic for the ages, balloon kid is a nice alternative to the usual generic platformer. it doesn’t deviate much from the ballon trip mode of the original and your main goal is still to avoid hazards by using the game’s unique flying mechanics, although occasionally as the protagonist, alice, you’ll have to drop your balloons in order to do a bit of basic platforming or simplistic boss fighting.

i agree with this review at nintendojo that it’ll probably take you at least a few playthroughs before you get to the end of the game (which features a somewhat twisted epilogue), perhaps a bit more if you never played balloon fight. but finishing each stage perfectly by nabbing every single balloon would be much, much trickier. the last stage was a lot of fun due to the increased difficulty, and it made me think that a follow-up game, while not likely, would be more than welcome. the graphics are basic but have character, although the control felt fractionally looser to me than the original, especially when comparing the balloon trip mode that was included to complement the main modes of both games, but not enough to detract at all. all in all this is a thoroughly amiable game and due to its mechanics is more unique than the average generic platformer, and an enjoyable way to while away a few hours, especially for fans of the original balloon fight.

balloonin’ links:
- balloon kid didn’t get a lot of attention when it came out, but it was mentioned in nintendo power v. 16 (i’ve archived a scan here). it also received a blurb in the game boy nintendo player’s guide (scan archived here).
- official japanese site of the GBC remake including screenshots and unique official artwork. apparently along with color the game included a save function, map screen, and stage select screen.
- comparison of balloon kid and its reskin hello kitty world at youtube
- entry at wikipedia
- in IGN’s “smash it up!” character-prediction feature that lucas m. thompson wrote for IGN in the weeks leading up to the release of brawl, he claimed that balloon fighter was included in beta versions of smash bros. melee, but i find it hard to believe such information would have been leaked and he doesn’t cite a source. he mentioned both balloon fighter and alice as suggestions for the series. it would be pretty friggin’ awesome if either of them actually made it into future installments of the series, although coming up with a moveset that worked would be quite a challenge.

geometry revised

i meant to post this two page preview (1|2) of geometry wars: galaxies from nintendo power (aug 2007/V218) in my last post reviewing the wii version of the game. but i couldn’t find my scanner (long story), so i only just got around to scanning them today. i always find it interesting to compare beta and final versions of games, and although the article doesn’t include a whole lot of detail, it’s interesting to compare the differences, including the changes in the enemies. the image at the top of this post is from NP, and the second image is from IGN and appears in B&W in the game’s manual (click on either for a larger image). the preview mentions “parasites” which thankfully weren’t in the final release, because they “latch onto ships then hinder their abilities. you’ll need to shake the remote to lose them.” (ech!) the preview also says you’ll be able to “swap save data between the two systems” (i.e. the DS and wii versions), another feature that didn’t make the cut (and wasn’t missed at all). ah, where would we be without those old issues of NP to provide us with all of this cocktail trivia?

geometric galaxy wars

i picked up the wii version of geometry wars: galaxies kind of on a whim after reading a lot of good things about it being a pure, retro shooter. i hadn’t been familiar at all with the game, which began life as an extra in the xbox game project gotham racing 2 before getting more mainstream attention with updated releases on XBLA and PC. the game has received several sequels since then, although none of them seem to be as full an experience as the wii/DS versions, as far as i can tell (and both of those versions include the original XBLA retro evolved version as well). the basic core design has stayed pretty much true to its pure shooter roots throughout: guide your ship through a finite playing field (spanning a few screens at most) while shooting at the satisfyingly large variety of enemies that come your way. the original game takes a lot of its inspiration from other shooter classics, most notably defender, although the greatest design decision in this game is that the enemies don’t fire bullets. so instead of dodging hard-to-see bullets and getting cornered by waves of them, you’re focused on the enemies and their predictable behaviors, which leads to a very satisfying playing experience involving more strategizing; when you lose you feel it’s more your own fault than any cheapness from the AI.

in general i agree with the review at videogamecritic.net which praises the game for its core gameplay as well as its new features. there are several key differences in the wii/DS versions is terms of features compared to the other releases. the main addition is the campaign mode, which has you tackling planets with different characteristics, such as the kind and frequency of enemies that appear, the shape of the board, and the addition of various obstacles such as mines, corridors, and moving, impenetrable blocks. the second difference is the addition of an upgradable “drone” with various behaviors you can choose from, including the “defend” drone, which shoots behind you; “turret”, which takes a position and then shoots 360 degrees; and “collect” which collects “geoms”, the all-important point multipliers you get for defeating an enemy and can also earn you extra ships and bombs.

for the most part there’s a nice variety in both the planets and the drones, and for each planet there are bronze, silver, and gold medals (i.e. “achievements”) to earn for high scores. although it isn’t hard to get bronze medals on every board, gold medals are much more of a challenge and will require more strategizing, and there are times where you’ll find one drone works better for you on a particular board. fun as they are, though, in general most of the drones don’t feel particularly useful, even at their maximum upgrade, which makes that feature feel a bit superfluous. having to unlock the planets is palatable, but having to upgrade the drones seems a bit of a chore since getting a gold medal with a less-than-maximized drone doesn’t usually seem worth even attempting. also, getting the gold medal on every planet does get repetitive after a while, especially since oftentimes you’ll find you just end up relying on using the most basic drone, “attack”, which basically doubles your firepower. perhaps it would’ve been better to have specific tasks, such as “get a certain score on this planet using this drone at this level”. also, the pacing on a lot of the boards feels tedious, as too many times you have long periods of very slow action that ramp up to levels that are just too overwhelming too suddenly.

anyway, despite all the criticisms this is a highly enjoyable game and i’ll definitely be picking it up again to get more of the gold medals. be advised, though, that i, along with all the other reviews i’ve read, agree that using the wii remote to aim is unnatural and tiring; you’re much better off with the classic controller. at the time of its initial release bozon’s main complaint in his review of the wii version for IGN was that the game was overpriced at $40. it seems a bit unfair to say that since there were so many worthwhile additions, but in any case now that both the wii and DS versions are about $20 each there’s really no reason why fans of old-school shooters should hesitate in picking this one up.

geometric links:
- entry at wikipedia
- the wii version lets you beam a demo of the DS version to your DS. i tried it out, and the stylus control is much less awkward than aiming with the wii remote, although it could get tiring. although the galaxies are the same between both versions, if for some reason you don’t want to get the wii version the DS version should definitely be a viable alternative, and bozon at IGN gave it a similar score to the wii version. i’ll probably be getting the DS version at some point anyway b/c if you have both versions you can unlock some more stages.
- great drones strategy FAQ at gamefaqs
- FAQ with basic info on the scores for medals at gamefaqs
- 1up and IGN’s reviews of the latest game in the series, geometry wars: retro evolved 2, for XBLA
- and just for fun, in case you’ve forgotten where it all began, here’s a video on youtube of the game asteroids on atari

superior metroid

one more game to round out the year. i had played through metroid fusion earlier this year, but having read so much praise for its predecessor, super metroid, i was interested in how that game would compare. since i had played the two games out of order and the upgrades are almost exactly the same i was somewhat worried that my experience would be marred, but i’m glad to report that super metroid was a completely memorable experience and distinctly superior and worthy of its place among “the greatest games of all time”. in my review of fusion i mentioned that the pacing in that game seemed rushed and that it wasn’t until near the end that i felt there was the real sense of the exploration that was at the core of the original, but throughout all of super metroid the pace is pretty much perfect, with upgrades and areas opening up in a much more satisfying way. it’s amazing to see the difference between the two games: even though they both have virtually all the same gameplay mechanics, because of the superior map and level designs super metroid is an almost entirely different, and clearly superior, experience. it’s pretty amazing that nintendo is able to repeatedly create such memorable experiences with its core franchises, and i’m def. looking forward to working my way through the rest of the series. and here’s hoping another 2D metroid comes out before too long.

super metroidian links!
- fantastic fansite w/ great map and screenshots of each item’s location
- good game site at mdb.classicgaming.gamespy.com w/ maps, the nintendo power comic, instruction booklet, and more
- some metal versions of super metroid songs at metroidmetal.com
- retrospective of the series at ign.com