GB dr. mario makes its case

it had been a few years since i’d played dr. mario on NES. the next entry in the series was the version on GB which was released just a couple of months after its older brother. when i’d played the NES version i’d been somewhat bored by how limited the combo system was compared to classics like puzzle league, but this time around i spent more time trying to make more-involved combos, in part because you get a familiar little bonus riff if you clear a certain number of pieces at once.

the combo system has turned out to be much more interesting than i’d originally thought, and i was more struck by the considerations of matching both horizontally and vertically than the first time around, although this rendition of the game itself didn’t grab me enough for me to want to invest a whole lot of time mastering the ins and outs of it. the presentation is perfectly fine for a game boy game, in terms of the graphics and sound, but the number of options is quite minimal, pretty much just your basic solo and vs. modes. i beat level 20 on the medium difficulty, but the higher levels of the high difficulty setting were incredibly cheap. i didn’t mention this in my previous post on the NES version, but as with that game at these levels the viruses are stacked so high that it really feels like it’s just a matter of luck whether or not you’ll be able to get the stack down to a point where you can actually just play the game instead of scrambling blindly. i don’t doubt that there are some dr. mario masters out there who can pwn even this level of difficulty, but for the average player it just feels unfair.

not much more to add. the game is a good portable version of the original NES classic, but with a host of modern alternatives this is a game that can be skipped over except by the most OCD of nintendo fans (like me) or those who have the nostalgia factor to contend with.

GB dr. mario makes its case for these links:
– as with the NES version there are little cut-scenes after levels 5, 10, 15, and 20 on high mode. instead of the viruses sitting in a tree and watching objects fly by, in this case they’re underwater and watching objects swim by. if you’re curious, here’s a video of the first three cut-scenes (the objects are a fish, crab, and flying fish) and a video of the final ending, which has an entertaining surprise twist
– review of 3DS VC release at nintendolife.com
– really trippy commercial from the 80’s
– entry at wikipedia
– apparently there was an operation-like board game

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radar mission detected

radar mission is an early game boy game (released about 6 months after that system’s launch) that was well on its way to fading into obscurity before the 3DS came along. since then the game has gotten renewed attention for two reasons: one, its “spiritual sequel”, steel diver, was one of the launch games for that system; and two, it was released on the 3DS’s virtual console just a few months after the 3DS debuted. the game had been on my radar well before then, though, because it was developed by nintendo R&D1, the group led by the legendary gunpei yokoi. yokoi and R&D1 were responsible for many of nintendo’s early games, including the first metroid and wario land games, and i’ve been slowly working my way through their entire output.

anyway, enough history, how’s the game? well, there’s a reason most people have never heard of it. the game consists of two distinct and pretty much completely unrelated parts. the first is simply the game known as battleship in which you place your ships on a grid and try to defeat your opponent by taking turns guessing where their ships have been hidden. the game adds some minor enhancements including an option to have near misses reported; this option makes the otherwise completely luck-based and dull game more palatable, but it still doesn’t make the game worthwhile and i quickly moved on to the second mode.

the second mode is much more entertaining. in it you take control of a submarine and in a first-person perspective you look out through your periscope, move through the water, fire torpedoes at ships, and evade enemies by ducking underwater. this mode in particular includes some impressive visuals and unusually good music, but, again, the gameplay is extremely limited and my interest in this mode was very short-lived.

not much more to say. the game only warranted a small amount of time, but it’s an interesting bit of nintendo history and it’ll be interesting to see how it compares to steel diver (although i have to admit i don’t really have high hopes about it based on my early experiences with that game). we’ll see.

radar mission links detected:
– review at nintendolife
– entry at wikipedia

don’t punish yourself by missing the original sin and punishment

the N64 game sin and punishment was fairly well known among nintendo devotees as a highlight of the system, even though it was only released in japan. the game received more attention when it was released on wii’s virtual console in october 2007 in north america, and a few months later when one of its main characters, saki, appeared as an assist trophy in super smash bros. brawl. both were probably in preparation for the release of a sequel to the game, sin and punishment: star successor, two years later (in june 2010 in north america).

phew. with that out of the way, although i had downloaded the original game ages ago i only recently got around to playing through it. although the original voice overs were in english, the new translation of the tutorial for the virtual console rerelease removes any possible remaining roadblocks. the game’s controls do take some getting used to, but the game includes several different control options, and they work quite well on the gamecube and classic controllers (and no doubt on the original N64 controller also).

my experience with run ‘n gun-type shooters has been limited to 2-D games, mostly focused on the contra series, but the game is immediately enjoyable. i started off on the normal mode, but realized it would be easier to learn the ins and outs of the game on easy mode first. finishing easy mode isn’t completely trivial, and the thrills come at a pretty constant rate thanks in large part to the extensive amount of boss battles. the highlight of the game is without a doubt level 2-1, in which you zoom around an aircraft carrier on a hovercraft, but there’s a lot to enjoy even outside of the boss battles.

there’s some cheapness and the second half of the game (including the side-scrolling stage near the end) is definitely not as brilliant as the first, and the story is completely nonsensical and impossible to follow. still, all in all this is an excellent game and ends up earning a place fairly high on my list of best N64 games. don’t be put off by people claiming that the game is too short. although there are only 7 stages including the prologue, beating the normal mode will definitely take more practice. i didn’t manage to beat all of the normal mode, but i left it for another day because i’m more eager to play through the sequel; the wii is absolutely ideal for this gameplay. by all accounts it sounds like the sequel improves on the original in every way, so given the amount i enjoyed this game i’m definitely looking forward to it.

punishing sin and punishment links:
– great FAQ at gamefaqs, including a translation of the background story so you have at least a clue about what’s going on
– entry at wikipedia
– entry on the series at hg1010
– wikipedia entry on the co-developer, treasure

wario party

i’ve developed into quite a fan of the warioware series, and despite having no video game buddies i decided to go back and give wario ware, inc.: mega party game$! a quick run-through. the game is a bit odd in that it’s an expansion of the original warioware game for GBA (my review of that game is here) with a focus on multiplayer rather than a true sequel.

the single-player mode is somewhat tedious since you have to play through every character’s games (usually 25) to progress rather than a subset as in the original. this mode doesn’t feature the fun cartoon intros and unlockable toys and games of the original either, or any new microgames, so it’s all pretty barebones. still, it was nice to revisit all the microgames, although playing through all of them did highlight the ones that are anomalously difficult and/or obtuse. there are a couple of new unlockables in the form of a “master” (i.e. marathon) mode in which you play through all 204 of the microgames (it doesn’t include the 9 boss battles) and see how many you can get, and two random minimalistic music videos (which can be seen here and here, lyrics at the bottom of this page). the most worthwhile single-player addition is a time attack mode where you try to complete 20, 40, or 60 microgames in the least amount of time (for every one you win the speed goes up and for every one you lose the speed goes down).

despite not having anyone to play with i also sampled all the multiplayer options. they’re pretty much all variations of “who can win the most microgames”, but there’s an entertaining 1-controller survival mode featuring a rainbow of tingle-esque suited characters, and an othello-based board game that requires a bit of strategy beyond just winning microgames. the entry at mariowiki.com has a good run-down of all the modes.

not having been able to play much of the multiplayer games leaves me not being too qualified to comment any further, but at some point i may come back to this. i’m not quite sure how much “pick up and play” gameplay this offers, however, since people who have played through the original or the single-player mode will be at a distinct advantage, but it was fun to see the games on the big screen and it’s whetted my appetite for the handful of warioware games left that i haven’t played yet.

wario’s mega party links!
– good FAQ at gamefaqs.com
– review at nintendojo.com
– the entry at mariowiki.com for the original GBA game has listings for every microgame. is it just me or does this guy look like jeff buckley??
– for a comparison of the various entries in the series, you can check out the listings at gamerankings.com
– entry at wikipedia

mike tyson’s tennis

i’ve been meaning to work my way through some of the earliest NES games, several of which are available in the gamecube version of animal crossing. (it’s been a while, but if anyone is interested the other two NES via animal crossing games i’ve played and reviewed previously are pinball and balloon fight.) in this particular case, the game was tennis, one of the US NES’s launch titles, but also one of the earliest releases for the original japanese famicom.

it took me quite a few attempts to get into the game enough to give it a fair chance, but my progression through the game was not unlike my experience with the original f-zero on SNES or the original punch-out!! (the mario as referee cameo apparently isn’t the only similarity between the two games). specifically, the game is perfectly amiable as it starts off, but soon gets brutally difficult. in the case of tennis the game starts off being somewhat hard to get into because at first it’s difficult to judge how far the ball is from the racket and where it’s going to land, but after a session i think most people would be able to master the basics. the controls are simple (the A button is for a regular shot and the B button is for a lob), and the difficulty is fairly smooth up to the third level (of five). levels 4 and 5, however, are pretty brutal.

the problem isn’t just that the AI is too good (which it is), but that at the higher levels you’ll have to do more than just return the ball to win. winning then requires a huge amount of trial and error and subsequently memorization in order to not only figure out how to make the computer opponent mess up, but how to master the intricacies of the gameplay. angling your returns becomes essential, but it’s easy to go out of bounds, an aspect of the real game that most other tennis video games don’t include. you’ll end up learning how to hit the ball extremely close to the boundaries of the court in order to win points. playing the net and hitting a volley (before the ball bounces) become more important as well, and the former becomes a real test of patience as hitting close to the net all too often results in hitting the ball into the net or out of bounds. the computer opponent, of course, is a master at playing the net, and will taunt you with his effortless, superhuman skill.

the majority of reviewers have taken the easy way out and just written off the game as being completely outdated, but at the lower levels the game is actually a lot of fun and i bet that if you put in the trial + error + memorize time to master the “advanced” moves the higher levels would be enjoyable as well. there is a definite sense of satisfaction when you do manage to execute a shot at the net and slam the ball past the computer opponent, imagining his dazed and befuddled look. the gamers of today wouldn’t have the patience, but as a predecessor to the similarly punishing punch-out!! there’s a lot to appreciate. the graphics, like the other early NES releases, are clean and attractive, and although there’s no music during the game, the pong-like sounds are effective. although it lacks a competitive mode the co-op mode is fun, but again, at higher difficulties i imagine it would be supremely frustrating, even if both players were masters of the single-player game.

this is actually only the second tennis video game i’ve spent much time with. the first was wii tennis which i quite enjoyed, and so i think i’m going to have to go back and try that game again to see how it compares. nintendo has regularly put out tennis video games for all of their platforms, so it shouldn’t be long before i get my mitts (or should i say, tennis gloves) on another one.

punch out these tennis links!
– good FAQ at gamefaqs.com
– video at thebitblock.com highlighting co-op play for this game along with vs play of two other early NES sports titles
– in the iwata asks interview about the 3DS eshop, the developers have some interesting comments about why they abandoned making a 3-D version of tennis
– typically dismissive review at nintendolife.com. that reviewer didn’t even put in the minimal amount of time required to master the basics, but the reader comments are much more worthwhile.
– entry at wikipedia

quick dip into qix

i don’t know where i heard about the game boy game qix (pronounced “kicks” apparently), but somehow i had gotten it into my head that it would be a fun old-school puzzle-type game. it is indeed one of the earliest GB games, but calling it a “puzzle” game would be fairly misleading: the game is, in fact, really an arcade type of game where you have a single screen and an icon that you move around to draw lines to block off sections of the board. (see the the article at wikipedia for more info on the game’s mechanics.)

i went through a funny progression with the game. when i first started i really couldn’t see the point of it, but once i got used to the premise i was rather enjoying myself, but then fairly soon after that my interest waned to the point where i had to put it aside. in terms of gameplay the central feature that’s so off-putting initially is the fact that you start with a completely empty rectangular board every stage, which makes it hard to feel like you’re making progress. and although the stages supposedly get more challenging as the enemies get faster and become more aggressive, the gameplay itself stays exactly the same and your tactics don’t change at all. of course this is generally true of all classic arcade games, but the main game element that sapped my interest is the fact that you only get the game’s biggest bonus if you “capture” 99% of the screen (75% is the minimum). it’s not too hard to get in the high 90’s every time, but waiting and trying to get 99% every time just gets tedious. it’s like the difference between playing pac-man and gobblin’ some ghosts, and playing pac-man and having to get every single ghost every time. but of course that analogy is only a casual one since in pac-man the difference in score between getting a few ghosts versus getting them all isn’t nearly as huge as the difference in qix between getting 98% of the board completed vs 99%. i’m sure there are many fans of the game out there who find that the thrill of chasing that 99% is central to the game’s fun and who are probably quite good at accomplishing it with the minimal amount of waiting, but i’m just too impatient a gamer to ever hope to join their ranks.

so all in all an entertaining-enough experience, if much more short-lived than i had anticipated. it turns out this is another nintendo R&D1 game, and incidentally it’s the nintendo game boy game that was released immediately after solar striker (well, in japan at least; not sure about elsewhere), which i also recently played. i actually only have a few more of their game boy games to play, so being the completist that i am i’ll probably try to track those down and give ’em a whirl sooner than later. it seems there have been a few qix remakes over the years, some of which may be worth checking out, so i’ll keep my eye out for those as well. maybe. in any case playing the game wasn’t a total loss as there were some highly entertaining mario cameos, including mario in a sombrero, as an african warrior, and as a matador. haha. 😉

quick qix links:
– entry at strategywiki of the game in general, with extensive strategies
– FAQ, also outlining strategies, at gamefaqs
– screenshots of four of the endings at themushroomkingdom.net featuring the aforementioned mario cameos. and here’s a youtube video of the best ending.
– on a related note, here’s a random sheet of the sprites
– PDF of instruction manual at replacementdocs.com
– hilarious commercial. first of all, it’s bizarre that they even made a commercial for such a non-action-packed game (although it seems that the game sold very well, perhaps riding on the tetris craze). and i like how the commercial gives you absolutely no idea how the game actually plays.
– scans of the box art at the game boy database
– official japanese site

not very struck by solar striker

among my many lists of games to play are all the ones by nintendo (hahaha). solar striker is an early game for the original game boy and is notable for several reasons. for one, it’s by nintendo R&D1 (the group that was headed by gunpei yokoi), and for another it still remains nintendo’s only foray into the shoot’-’em-up genre.

i haven’t played all that many shmups, but solar striker is pretty basic. as with my feelings of alleyway there’s a definite sense of the game being several steps behind its NES counterparts, not surprising since this was such an early game boy release. the game makes the most of the hardware, with catchy tunes, great graphics, interesting enemy designs and movement, a satisfying number of bosses and sub-bosses (although the latter are mindlessly easy to beat), decent variety in the level environments, and smooth play control with minimal slowdown.

there are several drawbacks though. since details on the game are scarce online, i’ll go into more detail than usual. first off, the powerup system is quite primitive: you start off only being able to shoot one stream of bullets; the first powerup doubles your number; after two more powerups you can shoot three at a time; and finally after two more powerups you get the best weapon which is twin lasers. there’s a definite sense of improved firepower with each upgrade, but it feels fairly basic. one major improvement, though, is that unlike gradius if you get killed you only get dropped down to your previous weapon instead of having to start from nothing.

1ups are fairly regular and come every 50,000 points, although again the scoring system is very basic and you don’t get any bonuses for hitting a certain number of enemies in a row, even if you defeat every enemy in a stage. enemy patterns are very regular and they’ll always appear at the same part of the screen. also, the pattern of the enemy waves is far too regular: they almost always spawn in columns down the left and right sides of the screen, either alternating or simultaneously. the patterns are so predictable that even though enemies have interesting movements the differences never really affect much of the actual gameplay since you can defeat them so easily.

my main problem with the game, though, is that there’s a sudden spike of difficulty, namely the boss at level 4. the lack of continues makes beating that boss a huge pain, but the rest of the game is pretty straightforward and the last boss is easy to beat. there are 6 stages total, and the game has a hard mode that you can access after you beat the game that as far as i can tell features the same waves of enemies just with more bullets. in most cases the boss fights feel the same in hard mode, although some are made only marginally more difficult. an interesting part of the game is that all (?) the bosses have a “safe zone”; if you position your ship there you’ll completely avoid getting hit. i’m not completely sure, but it looks like for the first three boss battles if you wait in that zone the boss will leave and you’ll be able to continue on to the next stage. it looks like in the fourth level even though there’s a safe zone you can’t skip past the boss, and i’m guessing the same is true for the fifth (and of course the last) stage as well.

all in all an interesting footnote in nintendo history, but a game that’s likely to “dwell in obscurity”, as they say. worth a quick runthrough, but unfortunately not a keeper.

somewhat striking solar striker links:
– entry at wikipedia
– good fan review at 1up
– ripped soundtrack
– guides at ehow.com and gamefaqs. i’m guessing the latter writer actually had the instruction manual because he refers to all the enemies by their actual names.
– game also featured in the game boy nintendo player’s guide
– official japanese site

wario’s wares … touched!

i seem to be repeating 2009 so far, having started with a new super mario bros. game this year and then following it up with a warioware game. i’ve been working my way through the warioware series, and playing through rhythm tengoku and part of rhythm heaven reminded me that i still have a few warioware games to play.

i wasn’t particularly looking forward to warioware: touched! for DS which seems to have gotten good but not great scores overall. the game was about what i expected, namely a warioware game that utilizes the new hardware well but that doesn’t really offer many surprises. it was one of the launch titles in japan and came out just a few months after the launch in the US, and at the time it was probably enough to just revel in the DS’s brand-new capabilities. but now, more than five years later, the game’s mechanics have been seen in many, many games since then, and the microgames themselves also feel overly familiar and the in-game toys much more throwaway. it also doesn’t help that the game is imo the easiest of the series either.

on the gonintendo boards one user described the series as becoming little more than a bunch of tech demos, and in some ways touched! does feel that way. i haven’t played snapped! yet, but i feel that smooth moves still keeps the fun factor even while showing off the wii remote’s capabilities. it’s been a while since i played it, though, so i’ll have to try it again now that i’ve had several more warioware games and many more wii games under my belt.

not much more to say. smooth moves and twisted! are my favorite warioware games so far and i don’t expect that to change anytime soon, but i will play through the remaining ones. i’m not a big fan of creating my own content in games, so there isn’t much about the forthcoming warioware D.I.Y. (due out in just a couple of months) that sparks my interest, but maybe i’m underestimating the potentially great user-generated content that will be available. i’ll try to keep an open mind anyway. for wario’s sake. bwahahahhaha!

getting in touch with wario’s links:
– FAQ and list of unlockables at gamefaqs
– entry at wikipedia

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 the 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.”

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 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