prescriptions filled with dr. mario online rx

the GB edition of dr. mario was so interchangeable with the NES version that i thought i would take a peek at another edition i had on hand, dr. mario online rx for wiiware (which, incidentally, is one of the few wiiware titles you can buy outside of nintendo’s eshop via amazon). in doing so i skipped over the SNES and N64 editions, but i was interested in checking out the new co-op and worldwide wi-fi vs. modes.

the review at nintendolife.com provides a run-down of the other modes, which are mostly what you’d expect so i won’t dwell on them too much here, although i appreciated the ability to do a “hard drop” (press up to make a pill drop to the bottom, as in the modern tetris games) and the game also allows you to see the next three pills instead of just the next one. another unique feature is that you can send a demo version to friends so you can battle over wi-fi. i haven’t tried it out yet, but will def. be making use of it. the game is bright and colorful and i appreciated that it doesn’t have the maddening cheapness at the highest levels of difficulty that i mentioned in my previous post and that the viruses are distributed in a reasonable fashion. i also enjoyed the two new-to-me tracks, called “cough” and “sneeze”, which apparently were introduced in the N64 game under different monikers.

the co-op mode is no doubt inspired by the version that appeared as a stylus-controlled bonus in brain age 2. like that version the game features two nice reworkings of the classic “fever” and “chill” tunes, but this game’s mode is designed to be much more fast-paced. the size of the playing field is significantly smaller than the normal modes, and each stage starts off with only one pill dropping down at a time. this quickly increases to two and then three pills at a time, and then things get really hectic. the levels are designed to be short, and i played with someone who actually knew what she was doing and so we ended up alternating turns until the inevitable mad scramble that resulted when three pieces start dropping down at once. this was a fun, if somewhat shallow, diversion and one that would be even more stupid fun with more people.

the wi-fi mode serves as yet another reminder that my video game skillz are sorely lacking when compared to the rest of the world. this shouldn’t be that surprising, since according to the nintendo channel data the average owner of the game has played it for more than 26 hours (now up to more than 27). as with the game boy game, this has motivated me to spend more time mastering the combo system, but i’m going to have to come back to that since for now i think i’ve had my fill of dr. mario madness.

prescriptions filled with these dr. mario online rx links:
- as with other games in the series there’s an ending after beating the highest difficulty at level 20, in this case the credits roll and you see viruses and mario floating around in what is presumably some sort of petri dish
- the reviews at metacritic seem a bit low, since this is probably the best version of the game yet
- the game was developed by arika, who’s been responsible for many a nintendo remake, including the 3-D classics series
- entry at mariowiki.com
- entry at wikipedia

10-year-old boy’s top picks for wii co-op and vs. gaming over wi-fi

i’ve been playing a couple of hours of wii over wi-fi with my currently-10-year-old nephew most weeks for the past couple of years (since he was about eight), and i’ve been meaning to post what his favorites have been. the options are fairly limited, but we haven’t been bored yet. my nephew’s much more of a social gamer than a solo one, and in general he’s very easygoing and not picky, but based on the frequency we play certain games he seems to prefer some games over others. here’s the run-down:

1) at the top of the list is mario kart wii. although i found the game to be more infuriating than fun at 150cc, the game has several advantages over the other wi-fi games on wii, the main one being that instead of just two-player matches against each other, we can play against up to 10 other random opponents. it’s a bit humbling to see how bad i am at the game compared to many others (although i wonder how much more time they’ve put into it, and i do have the disadvantage of always using the wii wheel), but both of us place high enough enough times that we don’t get too frustrated at how badly we’re getting beaten, despite our low overall ranking (measured by the VR score). it’s a little annoying that we usually can’t join each other’s current race right away, even if the other person hasn’t actually started racing yet, but aside from that the always changing competition and variety of tracks, karts, and characters keep this one pretty high on our list.

2) next up would have to be super smash bros. brawl. i’ve waxed poetic about the game several times already, but my nephew likes experimenting with the huge number of characters. the game was easy for him to get into, and his skills have continued to improve fairly steadily. we usually play a 2 vs. 2 team-up against the computer, but every once in a while we mix it up with a 1 vs. 1 match or a multi-man brawl. it would’ve been nice to have been able to have a 2 vs. 2 team match against random opponents, but it wouldn’t be as fun as mario kart wii‘s matchups anyway.

3) in third would probably be tatsunoko vs. capcom: ultimate all-stars. i got this for him this past christmas, but already we’ve had a lot of fun with it. it’s his first experience with the street fighter series, and the simplified single-wiimote control mechanism makes it almost as easy to get into as brawl. it’s still generally more complicated than brawl so it’ll be interesting to see which he ends up preferring, but there’s a nice variety with the characters (although we still haven’t really figured out why some characters seem so useless). i personally would rather play brawl, but i’m interested in spending more time with this game myself.

4) a more-distant fourth would be animal crossing: city folk. i personally would rather play this than some of the other wii wi-fi games, but i can see how a 10-year-old boy would prefer something with a bit more action and competition. we don’t play it that often, but whenever i do he’s always perfectly happy to do so and enthusiastically runs around shopping, fishing, and bug catching. i probably get more out of it than he does, and in part thanks to our sessions together i’ve reached some milestones since my post a year and a half ago including just a few weeks ago finally paying off the last of my mortgage and finally finding the last fossil (i’m still hunting for two more pieces of the robo series). it’s not his first choice, but he seems to fully enjoy it regardless.

5) rounding out the list is excitebike: world rally. the game is perfectly enjoyable, but as a wiiware title it just doesn’t have the depth that the other games do. part of why we don’t play it that much is that, despite holding it in extremely high regard, i lost interest in it after i got all the highest medals. but wi-fi matches against random players is fun (and it’s not difficult for us to get put into the same room), and my nephew gets caught up in playing more matches so that he can unlock the next color (not sure why he finds that so appealing, but he does). a perfectly good, albeit limited, alternative to the other games mentioned.

the number of wi-fi co-op games on wii has been a bit disappointing, but there are still games we haven’t spent much time with yet. we’ve played pokemon battle revolution a few times, but he’s not inclined to play it solo in order to unlock better pokemon. i also got him mario strikers charged for christmas, so we’ll probably be trying that out before too long

and to finish up, for some additional suggestions here’s a list of recommended wii wi-fi games that was the first hit i got from a search online.

stunted bonsai barber

we’ve had video games where you take on the role of a familiar occupation, such as a lawyer and a doctor, but wiiware’s bonsai barber is certainly unique. the game combines hair cutting and horticulture and makes good use of the wii’s capabilities, and it follows the pacing of games such as nintendogs by limiting the number of “hair” cuts you can give to only 5 a day. this easily fits within half an hour of gameplay, but as with nintendogs it does help stretch the fairly thin core gameplay.

in this case the long-term goals and accumulated experience are less compelling than other games with a similar pacing. although the game mechanics work well and haircuts do get somewhat more difficult by incorporating more rounded parts, the overall experience stays pretty much exactly the same throughout. the twelve customers are amusing but don’t have much personality aside from their appearance, and although the game keeps track of your highest score for all customers for all haircuts, it feels like there are several missed opportunities that would’ve been minor changes but made the overall gameplay a bit more interesting. the game throws in some obstacles, such as rainclouds that automatically cause leaves to regrow, but they are all too-easily dispelled. it includes a practice mode in which your best times are recorded per haircut, but there’s really no incentive to chase after this type of high score. also, only one of the twelve characters features a completely different branch structure than the others, making cutting his leaves require a different approach: another underutilized feature that if expanded would’ve helped provide more variety to the experience. the game also tries to play up the relationship between you and your clientele by having them give you gifts and send postcards when they go on holiday, but this is another half-baked distraction that doesn’t have any causality; aside from giving them a good haircut, there’s nothing to chart the progression of your relationships and none of the usual gossip and therapy one would expect from a barber or a beauty parlor. the game allows for minimal creative input by allowing you to paint some haircuts as you wish, but a “free cut” mode with saving and sharing capabilities would’ve been an easy and amusing addition.

all in all despite a unique premise the game feels stunted and underdeveloped. my interest in wiiware continues to lag behind other digital offerings such as DSiware, and unfortunately this game does nothing to change that.

not-so-stunted bonsai barber links:
- interview with director martin hollis at gamasutra.com. the club nintendo page on the game also includes an interview from GDC ’09.
- review at nintendolife
- although no one’s written a FAQ for the game this forum thread on gamefaqs covers the details of the camera achievements. apparently there are 3960 stars you can earn (66 haircuts * 12 customers * 5 star rating), and apparently someone out there has spent 56+ hours on the game!
- entry at wikipedia
- official press release for the game

gliding through nyxquest

been playing a lot of fluff, but i did finish my first steam download, nyxquest. i’d heard about the game when it was first released, on wiiware, and where it garnered fairly positive reviews (see the reviews at nintendolife and nintendo-gamer.net, although the review at ninendojo is less complimentary). since then it’s been ported to PC and mac and ipad. i opted for the steam version since it was on sale and i’m hoarding my wii points.

the consensus seems to be that the game is enjoyable, atmospheric, and looks great, but is on the short side. although i agree that the game is stylish and successfully depicts a barren wasteland setting, i personally found it to be fairly weak as far as platformers go. the game starts off focusing on jumping and gliding but soon shifts to more motion-controlled (or in this case, mouse-controlled) gameplay involving picking up and moving objects and, later in the game, drawing paths with the pointer. all familiar territory for people who have been playing wii and DS for years, and in general the gameplay offers very little in the way of surprises. as you progress the game’s look evolves nicely as the day turns to night (although it doesn’t give rise to any change in gameplay and i agree that the darkness makes platforms unnecessarily hard to see), but there’s not a lot of enemy variety and despite acquiring powers from the gods during the course of the game, the powers themselves don’t lend themselves to many unique gameplay ideas. also, i find mouse-and-keyboard controls to be a bit awkward in general, and i suspect that the game would play more naturally on wii or even the ipad.

not much more to say. the developers, over the top games, from spain, certainly deserve to be commended for the level of polish in their work, but in the end the core experience wasn’t unique enough to keep me engaged. hopefully they’re still continuing to develop games, though, and i’m definitely interested in seeing what they come up with next.

glide past these nyxquest links:
- official site
- postmortem with the developers, at gamasutra
- entry at wikipedia
- forum page for the game at steam
- entry for the wiiware version at nintendo.com

handy grilling with grill-off with ultra hand!

gave the club nintendo exclusive grill-off with ultra hand! for wiiware a spin this past week. grill-off is a simple arcade-style game which, despite its meat-centric focus (not a veggie burger in sight, sadly), is not without its charms. see the review at nintendolife.com for a typical response. as for my take, the motion controls get a little wearisome, but not prohibitively so, although i’m not sure why the designers chose to force you to hold the controllers up instead of horizontally as would be more natural for mimicking the actual ultra hand (speaking of which, it’s great to see this spotlight on a piece of nintendo history; gotta love the big N for continuing to give retro love to even their pre-video game products). the 1-hit-and-you’re-out mechanic is somewhat trying, but it’s appropriate for this type of game. the presentation is colorful without being grating and works well, and the gameplay is solid enough and involves just enough mental power (plus plenty of twitch action) to keep you engaged past the initial playthrough. the focus in the later levels (i got to level 5 by the way) is on predicting which piece of meat is going to be ready next; there are three sizes: shish kabobs, steaks, and whole chickens. although it’s easy to pick between the shish kebobs and steaks and i imagine that if you invested the time you could more easily pick among all three types which to target next, my interest waned before i got to that level of mastery. if it had included medals the game would not have felt out of place on a compilation like wii play, although as it is all in all i estimate that the average person can expect to spend about half an hour with this, and with a worthy opponent maybe another half hour or so on the multiplayer mode. not sure if that’s worth 80 club nintendo coins for most people, though.

some handy grill-off with ultra hand! links:
- official site which features an awesome video
- review at gonintendo: this guy has a high score that one can only dream of
- entries at wikipedia and nintendo.wikia.com

excitebike! world! rally!

i really enjoyed playing through the original excitebike earlier this year, and at that time based on my experience of the game i had said it “pretty much fixes all of the original’s minor issues and even improves upon it”. after having gotten S ranks in all 16 tracks i have to say my opinion holds true, and the game is so enjoyable that i would have to say that it actually makes my list of “greatest games of all time”.

the game is a great example of a long-awaited sequel that retains everything that made the original a classic and adds new features without destroying the source material. it helps, of course, that as in this case the motocrossin’ original was so solid and simple to begin with, but monster games, responsible for both excite truck and excitebots, deserves kudos for finding a great balance of nostalgia and novelty. the game incorporates motion controls well: the jumps and landings are controlled by the angle of the wii remote, and are also used for performing wheelies, which can help get you over hurdles, rough patches, and even other riders. the motion controls are enjoyable, but at the higher levels of difficulty the ability to revert to classic controls was much appreciated. the game also has a new feature where smooth landings give a small boost, and the feeling of sailing through a track perfectly is a distinct pleasure. there’s also a nice addition whereby your engine cools down if you trip up an opponent, which adds to the game’s strategy. the game also features dynamic parts of the track that change the terrain when you drive over an item and two optional isometric angles (and SPOILER: a behind-the-back 3rd-person view with “pro” motion controls if you S-rank every track) which give a nice new and unique feel to the game. the track editor is a fun diversion and the ability to actually save them is a definite improvement over the original. although it lacks a local two-player mode (which makes sense seeing as how squashed the playing field would have become), wi-fi is a blast and i haven’t had too much trouble finding anonymous matches to join.

it seems a bit churlish to criticize the game given the amount of enjoyment my nephew and i have both gotten out of it, but as my first wiiware title i was a bit surprised at how lo-fi the graphics and sound are. the variations in the locales are adequate but not very memorable, but given the limitations of wiiware and since monster games absolutely nailed everything else this is clearly just nitpicking. i’m not sure if the game has gotten the recognition it deserves, but if you’re a fan of the original there’s absolutely no reason not to pick this up. and while i impatiently wait for a sequel, i’ll definitely be going back and playing through the rest of the excite series.

excitebike! world! rally! links!
- good review at nintendolife.com
- 1up.com’s interview with the developers
- entry at wikipedia
- i remember when the game was first announced in a suprise exclusive reveal on wii’s nintendo week show
- typically barebones official site

excitin’ excitebike

i’ve had various versions of the NES classic excitebike for ages, but i hadn’t spent that much time with it. it’s long been on my list of games to “finish”, though, especially recently because i’ve been playing its only true sequel, excitebike: world rally for wiiware, over WFC with my nephew quite a bit. i had bought it for us since it seems to be one of the few WFC wiiware games and he’s into racing games in general.

more on that game later, but the original excitebike turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable. being an early NES release (apparently it was a US launch title), it does have some noteworthy drawbacks, including a limited number of tracks and the lack of the ability to save your track designs; but the core mechanics are rock solid, so much so that even after i had achieved my third-place victory (by the slimmest of margins) in the final and hardest track, going back and replaying the other tracks was still as much fun as ever. operating the bike is intuitive but the gameplay can still offer up a challenge, and like many of nintendo’s other titles just playing the game is as or even more fun than trying to “win” or accomplish some other intended goal. the visuals and limited music are also great (although the sound effects can get a bit grating), and i found it a nice touch that unlike other games, like the original wave race for game boy, when you lose your character still raises his arm up proudly even though he’s not on the podium, rather than turning his head away in shame with a big “YOU LOSE” on the screen to rub it in. we’re all winners here!

another unique twist is the way the game’s flow is set up. although there are five main tracks, there are also five “qualifying” tracks that have very similar layouts but are easier, due to having less obstacles. it’s interesting to see the differences between the two versions of the tracks, and if you lose one of the main races you only have to redo its corresponding qualifying track rather than having to start back at the very first track. also, since the qualifying and corresponding race tracks are so similar, the qualifying track actually does a good job of preparing you for the race track without overexposing it. the game’s second mode throws anonymous computer opponents into the mix who serve as additional obstacles as opposed to specific characters you have to try to beat. the times required to beat a track don’t seem to change with this addition which seems a bit unfair, and i didn’t find myself compelled to “beat” that mode. it’s quite satisfying to purposely trip up one of your opponents, though.

although i haven’t explored it fully yet, and without getting into it too much, i can already say that excitebike: world rally pretty much fixes all of the original’s minor issues and even improves upon it. not sure when i’ll get back to that game, but after the experience with the original i think i’ll be even more fully enjoying its successor, as well as the other titles in the series.

excitin’ excitebike links:
- entry at strategywiki.org
- entry at wikipedia
- review of VC release at nintendolife.com
- PDF of instruction manual at replacementdocs.com, including the guide to all the parts in the design mode
- info at mariowiki.com on the japanese-only mario kart-esque reworking of excitebike. here’s a video of some footage.

wario land 3‘s strong landing

the new year often sees me playing through sequels that i hadn’t gotten a chance to play through the previous year, and this year was no exception. i kicked things off with wario land 3 for game boy color. i’d enjoyed playing the first three games in the series (for those following along at home, recall that WL3 is actually the 4th game in the series due to the virtual boy entry in betwen WL1 and WL2), but i had been fairly disappointed in wario land II, so i wasn’t sure if i was going to skip over WL3 or not since i knew it was going to be very similar.

but in turns out that god is in the details, and although on the surface the two games are quite similar, in my opinion WL3 is by far the better game. maybe part of the reason i enjoyed it so much more is that since i already knew there would be a fair amount of backtracking (due to the fact that wario can’t die) that core design decision didn’t bother me nearly as much as before. either that or the backtracking was lessened somewhat in this game.

the biggest addition to the gameplay is that each level has four treasures to find. the first time through a level you’ll only be able to find one of the treasures, but as the game progresses the layout of the levels evolve and wario finds power upgrades so that completely new and distinct areas become accessible. the power upgrades aren’t anything too surprising for long-time fans of the series, but the ways the levels change makes returning to them multiple times thoroughly worthwhile instead of a chore (somewhat like what i believe happens in the wiiware game fluidity, although i’ve only played the preview of that game so far). instead of relying completely on artificial metroid-like hindrances like doors of a certain color (although there are a fair number of those kinds of obstacles), levels gain new features due to between-level events like water draining or beanstalks growing or snakes appearing. after a certain point the game becomes non-linear to a certain extent since you can choose to return to a previous stage that has changed or explore a new one, and you can beat the game with about half of the treasures. the game has several built-in mechanics to remind you where you can go next to find an accessible treasure you haven’t gotten yet, and after all four treasures in a level become accessible you can then try to find all 8 music coins, which definitely adds to the game’s depth and longevity.

although i enjoyed my time with wario land 3, when it came to ranking it i hesitated. there are definitely some things that were annoying about the game, such as the aforementioned backtracking, the golf mini-game that you have to play too many times in order to progress, and the occasional clunky boss battle. since wario’s transformations are dependent on enemies affecting him, it also gets to be annoying that the majority of the transformations require you to wait for them to wear off. but these complaints end up being significantly outweighed by what the game does right: it has so many of the things i’ve found to be key factors in really successful platformers, including colorful and varied locales, fun characters and powerups, tight controls, a smooth progression, and new elements introduced at virtually every turn but all in keeping with the game’s universe. wario’s looney-tunes-esque transformations are as enjoyable as the last game, and he continues to be an endearing anti-hero. in the end, after my somewhat curmudgeonly take on my past year of gaming i had to give this game the credit it deserves and give it a spot on my “greatest games of all time” list. a hearty cheer for wario land 3, and i’m looking forward to continuing on with this great series.

heh heh heh … wario’s treasure trove of wario land 3 links:
- loads of great info, screenshots, sprites, and official artwork at mariowiki.com
- entry at wikipedia
- ending at vgmuseum.com
- FAQ at gamefaqs
- overview of the wario land series at pressthebuttons.com

wii software stats: list fetishism at its finest

i have such a fetish for lists that it’s kind of ridiculous. i won’t go into a full confession here, but let it suffice to say that at the very least i maintain my personal list of games i’ve played and own with an almost religious fervour, not to mention the list of games i’m planning on getting.

so as you can imagine, for me the “wii software stats” feature on the wii section of MTV’s gaming blog has been like crack to a junkie. it first began as a one-off article for another site at the end of june, but has been a monthly feature since september (the links to the entries are here). the culprit behind all of it (i.e. my unknowing dealer) is stephen totilo, and he does a great job of not only compiling the numbers but also discussing the overall trends. it’s fascinating to me (and prob. to a lot of other video game geeks out there) to see how a game like brawl is still played months after its release, whereas single-player games like metroid prime get played, beaten, and then put aside. lately i’ve actually seen some of this in action, as i finally have a buddy to play brawl with and find myself not only putting in time replaying adventure mode and brawling one-on-one, but also getting back into it on my own and playing with characters i’d completely neglected (poor wario was sitting at the bottom of my # of brawls list, so i gave him some attention today haha. his final smash still sucks though).

there’s so much other fascinating stuff as well, like seeing the average amount of time people play a game, and comparing it to the average time it should take to finish the game (i.e. most people don’t finish games. no big surprise there, though). i’m really looking forward to seeing how the numbers for the VC and wiiware games shape up, and also games like wii fit and wii music. it’ll also be interesting to see how the holidays changes the numbers, as you have more people getting together to play games (myself included) and all the people getting new games.

… yes, i know i’m a geek. but i’m still jonesin’ for my next hit!

toki tori story

finished toki tori last week. although the game is a completely solid puzzle game in the same tradition as the classic the adventures of lolo, it had the bad timing of coming out so far at the end of the game boy color’s life cycle that it actually came out several months after the game boy advance was released. i’m not the only one glad the game’s gotten a new lease on life in the form of an “enhanced remake” that was released for the wii’s download service early this summer to good reviews.

there’s not a whole lot to say about the original game boy color version of the game that can’t be summed up in the statement that it’s an easy recommendation: if you liked lolo, you’ll love this. like lolo, toki tori is colorful; the design is cartoony but fun and belies the oftentimes quite clever and head-scratching puzzles (don’t be surprised if you find yourself stuck for more than an hour on one of the harder levels); and the progression of difficulty is for the most part spot on. unlike lolo, toki tori includes a whole arsenal of items which all take a bit of mastering and help the game feel fresh. the game feels a bit cramped on the GBC, though, and you end up having to spend a fair amount of time just scrolling around trying to make sense of the big picture, so i look forward to replaying the wii version of the game on a bigger screen. the game’s also quite a good length, and i enjoyed tackling the harder levels, but i was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t a special ending after beating all the hard levels. the game says to visit a special page on the toki tori website, but i guess the page is no longer up; either that or i remembered the URL wrong. in any case, if anyone knows what was on that page please let me know! so, all in all definitely recommended, and a hearty two chicken thumbs up on this one. here’s hoping we get more from two tribes in the near future.

toki tori’s eggy links:
- IGN’s craig harris’s review of the original GBC version and his wiiware review
- someone liked the game enough to make a fansite, with sprites and a fancomic. awesome. haha.
- here’s a complete FAQ (even though i didn’t use it, and neither should you!). but post-win it’s interesting to see some cases where there’s more than one strategy to beating a level.
- this FAQ has some excerpts from the instruction manual
- entry at wikipedia
- entry on the developer, two tribes, at wikipedia

and some links for the wiiware version:
- official website
- cute trailer on youtube along with some other related videos from two tribes
- two tribes interview and review at wiiware-world.com
- a review at nintendojo.com