tuneful sonic CD

i played through the next entry in the sonic series, sonic the hedgehog CD orig. released for the sega CD (although i played it via the sonic gems collection on gamecube; apparently a PC version was also released way back when and nowadays you can also get a downloadable version that runs on more-modern versions of windows).

anyway, although i’d enjoyed sonic 2 a few years ago, this iteration was just too same-y compared to the previous two games. the locales are all pretty much the same as are the general aesthetics (although defeated enemies turn into flowers instead of cute litttle critters), and although the past/present/bad future/good future mechanic was interesting the game doesn’t really provide much incentive to try to get the best ending. the bonus stage was too hard, and aside from the soundtrack, which was noticeably better than most games, there wasn’t much that was memorable about the game. the main exceptions would be the traditional animation of the intro and epilogue, and the introduction of sonic series staple, amy rose (called “princess sally” in the original US release), and baddie metal sonic (although it was preceded by mecha sonic in sonic 2). the game also has a race sequence with sonic vs. metal sonic, although that was memorable more because of how frustrating it was than being a cool experience.

apparently the game was created in parallel to sonic 2, which perhaps explains their similarities. i’m hoping that sonic 3 (which was originally released just two-and-a-half months after sonic CD) will be a step forward, but at least i’m making some progress on getting caught up on the series.

tuneful sonic CD links:
– easter egg of what happens if sonic is left idle for three minutes
– entry at sonic.wikia.com, which includes sprites of the enemies and a run-down of all the bosses
– entry at wikipedia
– entry at howlongtobeat.com

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actual boredom playing virtua fighter remix

for my first game of 2012 i finished up my time with the sega saturn classic virtua fighter remix (although i did check out the original virtua fighter as well). i had gotten a sega saturn specifically to play historic games like this one, and i’ve also been trying to work my way through some of the major fighting franchises that i’ve ignored thus far. for a run-down of the gameplay and a comparison of the arcade and sega saturn releases, check out this article.

as most people know, virtua fighter is notable for being the first 3-d fighter. although it gets lauded for being “revolutionary”, as with the atari 2600’s adventure it feels like people are confusing “revolutionary” for “first of its kind”, although maybe it’s just the power of hindsight that makes the progression seem so inevitable. anyway, there’s clearly a lot of nostalgic love floating around for the game. this revisit at thunderboltgames.com seems fairly typical, and in 2006 EGM voted it as #20 in their list of “the greatest games for their time”. the entry at 1up’s similar 2004 list goes into greater detail about what was noteworthy about the game, namely the focus on realism.

with all the historical context out of the way, i have to say that i found that by modern standards the game feels incredibly dull. i don’t mind the large command lists of games such as soulcalibur too much in general, but the “difficulty” level of virtua fighter just wasn’t enjoyable. i’m not completely sure why that was; maybe it’s the overall slowness of the game. according to 1up the game relies “more on strategy and technique than memorization”, but even after playing through the arcade mode several times i still didn’t find much to interest me. for one thing, as with my experience with soul blade, i find the emphasis on following every attack that leaves your opponent on the ground with a follow-up attack (the latter of which does a disproportionate amount of damage compared to other attacks) to be a completely pointless combo. the ease with which you knock opponents out of the ring also doesn’t feel as fair as in the soulcalibur series. the focus on “realism” makes the game less flashy and eye-catching, but i think that was only a mild deterrent to me. i can’t help feeling that there’s something i’m missing in terms of enjoying the game, but i just couldn’t bring myself to suffer through the clunky gameplay any more even for the sake of video game history appreciation, and so i’ve set it aside for now and probably won’t be dipping into the rest of the series anytime soon. not the greatest start to 2012, but glad to be able to cross this one off the list.

some virtual virtua fighter links:
– entry at wikipedia
– thorough moves list at virtuafighter.com
– fairly barebones entry at virtuafighter.wikia.com; if anyone’s interested i spent most of my time playing as jacky. (yeah!)

bronze effort for mario & sonic at the olympic games

i’ve been playing an unusual amount of wii games this year for various reasons, one of which is that i’ve gotten some of them from the library just to try them out to see if i’d want to buy them. even though i haven’t really delved into the main exponents of the mario sports titles, i saw mario & sonic at the olympic games at the library and thought i’d go ahead and check it out. the timing wasn’t particularly great since i’d just been playing carnival games, another wii mini-game collection, but i thought it’d be interesting to see how the games compare.

although M&S did have a few instances where, like carnival games, the controls were a bit frustrating due to the difficulties of calibrating the strength and speed of a particular motion, for the most part the controls are responsive and work fine. that being the case, the focus turns to the quality of the mini-games themselves. the motion controls do a decent job of suggesting the real-life movements, such as pumping the wiimote and nunchuck up and down to run, rotating the wiimote in a circle to wind up for the hammer throw, and lifting the wiimote to jump for the triple jump. the best of these and the most immediately engaging mini-game is the trampoline event in which you press buttons on the remote and rotate it to simulate complex aerial maneuvers, and swimming, in which you mimick the various swimming strokes. the collection is fairly robust as a whole, and there really aren’t any complete duds and there’s not too much pointless “waggle”, although fencing is fairly dull. the creators have also done a pretty good job of varying the feel of events that are quite similar, such as the 100m vs 400m track events. in that particular case the latter event is more focused on maintaining your character’s stamina, as opposed to just continuously pumping your arms as fast as possible.

there are several downsides to the game as a whole, however. one of my main complaints is that since many of the games are over and done quite quickly, the longer ones really feel dragged out, such as archery and table tennis. also, skeet is annoying b/c even though the shooting in and of itself would have been reasonably challenging, there’s a frustrating mini-game before each round that affects how big your reticule is, which completely determines how difficult the subsequent shooting will be. the game also includes four “dream events” which are variations of the regular events but more in line with the mario sports games, with super moves and mario kart-style powerups. the more fantastical visual presentation of these events was nice to see, although i found the events themselves didn’t really add much to the overall package, esp. since generally the super moves are all pretty generic and lame. the game also groups events in mario kart-esque “cups”, which don’t really serve much purpose other than to require you to play through all the events in order to unlock new ones. there’s also a mission mode that requires you to play through events with slightly different objectives than normal, most of which are pointless and some of which are downright obnoxious.

my other complaints are fairly minor. the events use a wide range of motion controls, so you often have to read the instructions for each event, but b/c the movements feel natural they’re easy to remember, and they usually don’t take too much practice. the presentation is the usual mario sports variety, which is getting same-y, although it’s always nice to see series B-listers like walu and daisy. i wasn’t really familiar with many on the sonic side (who the heck is vector?), but those characters seemed to integrate with the mario sports universe fairly smoothly without any problems, although, unsurprisingly, the game in general skews to the mario series side in terms of its presentation. the game also includes some disposable mini-games that unlock useless olympics trivia and background music.

all in all, although this is a historic partnership of two of video gaming’s most famous mascots this wasn’t a game for the ages. it’s enjoyable enough despite its frustrations, especially given the fact that it’s essentially a mini-game collection, and it makes good use of its olympics theme, so much so that i found myself more interested in events that i never otherwise would have paid much attention to. and i liked the game enough to want to try out its sequel, mario & sonic at the olympic winter games. particularly b/c of the totally awesome special mii outifts you can apparently accrue in that game. rawesome.

go for the golden mario & sonic at the olympic games links!
– entry at mariowiki.com
– entry at wikipedia
– reviews at gamerankings.com
– advanced tips FAQ at gamefaqs

sonic + tails = sonic 2

i finally got myself motivated to play through the much-lauded sonic the hedgehog 2 for the first time. i’d enjoyed playing through the first game, and for this iteration i found myself reacting in similar ways to the core game mechanics: losing all your rings every time you get hit is still annoying; trying to get all the chaos emeralds is quite tedious; and the feeling of speed seems to be constantly stymied by backtracking to explore alternate paths and slower sections of regular platforming. the most annoying thing by far though is the final level which is incredibly cheap due to the fact you have to fight two bosses without getting hit once.

with those criticisms out of the way there was a lot i did enjoy. although many of the locales from the original reappear here there are quite a few new elements and some new and memorable game mechanics such as the seesaws in the hilltop zone. the pinball stages were as fun as ever, and it was great that sonic acquired a sidekick, miles “tails” prower (even though he doesn’t add anything to the gameplay), and a new “spin dash” ability. the 3-D bonus stages are impressive, although they require too much memorization, and the levels in general are large, even though i wasn’t that motivated to explore them fully. as with the first game, the music and visuals are uniformly great.

although i don’t think i’m going to become a sonic super fan anytime soon, i’m getting to be a fan of the sonic series. so far i’ve played through an enjoyable duo of solid platformers, and i won’t be surprised if i end up playing through sonic 3 before too long.

rev up for some sonic 2 links:
– entry at wikipedia
– review at vc.nintendolife.com
– great page of info on the game at fansite the green hill zone. includes a lot of screenshots and sprites of the enemies.
– maps at soniccenter.org
– PDF of the manual at replacementdocs.com
– screenshots of the endings at vgmuseum.com
– and just in case you need it, here’s the info on the the level select code

feelin’ the magic

[just a quick mention of e3 which nintendo completely rocked. really psyched for the 3DS now, and so psyched to see kid icarus back, FINALLY. this is going to be a pretty great next 12 months. now back to your previously scheduled program …]

apparently i was in a somewhat mindless mood because i picked up a game i’ve had lying around, feel the magic XY & XX by sonic team for DS. the game draws immediate comparisons with warioware: touched! which i reviewed at the beginning of this year, and in fact both games were launch games and released the same day as the DS in japan (although in north america feel the magic was released three months earlier than touched, although it doesn’t seem that it ended up stealing much of the latter’s thunder). both feature mini-games and show off the DS’s capabilities in similar ways, but both have suffered a bit, more than five years and many DS games later. now that the novelty has worn off the games have lost their element of surprise, but despite this and a setup almost too similar to the warioware games feel the magic stands as an enjoyable game in its own right.

it’s helped in no small part by the stylish and distinctive presentation by sonic team, and although it does feel based on the warioware concept it features its own brand of quirkiness. in many ways feel the magic feels like a sequel the warioware crew should have evolved ages ago, but while that series has stagnated this game offers a fresh spin on a now too familiar type of gameplay. although on metacritic touched averages an 81 to magic‘s 75, i’m going to have to side with the latter. it has more interesting games overall and a higher level of difficulty, and some surprisingly touching moments, like the mini-game where you have to try to hold your female love interest’s hand. although i enjoyed the game overall i can’t say i feel the need to rush out to play the sequel, but i certainly liked it enough to pick it up sometime in the future.

feelin’ some magical links:
– entry at wikipedia
– FAQ at gamefaqs
– entry at metacritic

cat and mouse MANIA

although my first foray into the sega dreamcast library was fairly random, there were several dreamcast-exclusives that were high on my list of games to check out. among them was the party puzzler chuchu rocket!, created by none other than the sonic team. i’m not exactly sure where i first heard about the game, but it looked like a colorful, quirky sega game, and although it’s not that well known those who do talk about it give it positive reviews.

the entry at wikipedia gives a good run-down of the space-mice-guiding, space-cat-avoiding gameplay (according to the manual chuchus are not mice; they’re space mice). i enjoyed the frantic pace of the multiplayer mode at first and definitely appreciated the style, well within the usual flashy-but-fun sega aesthetic, but i lost interest once i realized the game doesn’t require very much strategy: the outcome changes so quickly that winning involves more luck than skill. there are two other modes, stage mode in which you place arrows in real time to direct the space mice to their rocket, and puzzle mode where you’re given a limited number of arrows to position before setting the space mice and space cats loose on their fixed paths, rather like setting a rube goldberg contraption in motion. the former gets prohibitively difficult without another player to help out, but fortunately the puzzle mode is worthwhile enough that it makes up for the deficiencies of the other two modes. beating the stages in puzzle mode oftentimes ends up being a matter of trial and error, particularly for stages that are highly dependent on the movement speed of each space mouse or cat, but many of the stages are so ingenuous that the entertainment comes as much from finding the solution as just the act of setting the chuchu machine in motion and watching it chug along. the game apparently includes 100 of these puzzles and allowed users to submit levels online; apparently 2500 of them were included in the game boy advance release of the game. although i enjoyed beating a fair number of the puzzles in the dreamcast version, 2500 more seems like overkill. still, once i get through the dreamcast puzzles i’ll know where to head to next.

chuchu! make way for a rocket-full of space mice links!
– if you’re looking for wallpapers, the game disc actually includes some. rad!
– FAQ at gamefaqs
– list of unlockables at gamespy.com
– a review of the GBA game (apparently a launch title) at nintendojo.com

beasts altered

i finally got a dreamcast (just in time for its 10th birthday). continuing the trend, instead of starting off playing one of the classics i ended up playing something totally random, more specifically, one of the sega genesis games that appear on the sega smash pack compilation, the now-classic altered beast.

i’m pretty much a n00b when it comes to sega and its long and colorful history. the genesis version of altered beast was apparently the original pack-in game for the system in most areas outside of japan and is well known, although nowadays it seems to be among the many games that are universally panned (see poor milon’s secret castle as another example, which i recently reviewed). for a sample of modern-day reviews and people’s comments on altered beast, nintendolife.com has reviews of both the the original arcade version as well as the genesis version. both reviewers give the game the same score (3 out of 10), although the latter review seems to contain more nostalgic affection. for a run-down of the game itself, check out this page at i-mockery.com.

having no such nostalgia factor but having a much higher tolerance for old games and their limitations, i actually quite enjoyed this one. the “homoeroticism” is clearly just that peculiar brand of japanese humor that takes the form of extreme camp, which i found amusing, even more so when i contemplate the nations full of confused kids and their baffled parents that must have resulted. i was also entertained by the complete disregard for actual greek mythology (not unlike the classic kid icarus). the graphics are definitely impressive, keeping in mind this was almost exactly two years before super mario world was released for the SNES, and the character, enemy, and boss designs are all pretty well done. the enemies in particular are entertaining, with some classic japanese wackiness thrown in, e.g. the purple jump-kicking unicorns and yellow goats in the final level. i wasn’t bothered by the slowness of the gameplay, and although there’s not much variety in the main attacks they were still varied enough to make them worthwhile. the “altered beasts” and their attacks were the best part, and although i didn’t find the game to be overly repetitive, at five levels the game is definitely quite short; i would’ve definitely enjoyed another level with each of the beast forms. the ending is anticlimactic and the harder difficulties not much different than the normal mode, but the co-op was fun and the soundbites have added some classic quotes to my repertoire (the apparently much-appreciated “wise from your gwave!” as well as the baddie’s sinister “welcome to your doom!”).

i’ve settled on a few simple rubrics to help me rank games, including “would i want to play this again?” and “did i like this enough to check out some of the sequels?” for me the answer to both of those questions for this game is actually yes. and it turns out that there are a coupla sequels, and they’ve been catalogued by the good folk at hardcore gaming 101. sweeeeet. i mean, roooooaaaaarrrrr!!!

altered links:
– cheats at gamefaqs, including how to continue and select a level and difficulty
– screenshots of the ending at vgmuseum.com
– entry at wikipedia
– random page with sprites
– FAQ at gamefaqs (although no one probably really needs it)

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.

dead-ly house

i got a copy of the house of the dead 2 and 3 return completely randomly, and not being big on light-gun shooters in general i didn’t play the game for quite awhile. (in case you don’t know, the game’s a wiimake of two games that were apparently popular in the arcade but which i’d never encountered previously.) i was looking for a co-op game to play with the significant other, and so even though neither of us are even into zombies that much i thought it might be fun.

and actually, it was fun. at first we alternated between HotD2 and HotD3, but it didn’t take long to find out that HotD2 is significantly harder, so we ended up focusing on HotD3. the game is set up so that as you play the game more, you unlock settings that give you more continues and more life, as well as additional difficulty options. there’s a cap on the maximum number of continues you can choose (9), and continues are shared between the players. my SO, being a n00b, used up the majority of the continues so that even on “very easy” we had trouble getting to the end. a classic example of a game with a co-op mode that doesn’t take into account the players’ differing levels of ability, but when i beat the game twice on very easy on my own it unlocked unlimited continues for HotD3; so then we played through it one more time to beat it together. teamwork, awww.

i enjoyed HotD3 overall. the dialogue is intentionally cheesy and entertaining, and the enemies are amusing, and the graphics aren’t anything flashy and don’t feel too dated. the main problem i have with the gameplay is that the bulk of the game is fairly mindlessly easy, but the boss levels are suddenly much harder, even once you’ve learned the patterns. (even with all my playthroughs i was never able to fully master the sloth boss. alas.)

comparing it to HotD2, from my experience (and i think most people agree) the latter is definitely superior. the branching paths in HotD2 keep the game feeling fresh, and saving civilians adds to the gameplay’s variety. having to sit down and master all the boss fights made me reluctant to try to beat the game, though, so i didn’t bother. i did some of the training exercises for variety, which provided a nice change of pace. the wii version of HotD2 has a new mode to enhance the original arcade mode: in the new mode you can use a couple of powerups to compensate for the limited number of continues, but i didn’t end up exploring those options very much. the main complaint about the package as a whole seems to be that both games only offer up limited continues (for example, in this review at 1up), but i don’t have a problem with that, assuming that HotD2 provides the same mechanism to unlock unlimited continues, i.e. by beating the game a couple of times on any difficulty level, including very easy. the effort makes the victory that much sweeter. 😉 haha.

last thing: i tried the wii zapper, and i liked the stability it added to my aim, although i wasn’t completely satisfied with the weight of it, or the feel of the trigger. for light gun games that don’t use the nunchuk the wii zapper is certainly not ideal. at some point i’ll try nyko’s wii perfect shot gun, which seems to have gotten good reviews.

in any case, the house of the dead 2 and 3 return was a surprisingly good release and is certainly recommended, even though HotD3 is fairly shallow and mindless. the wii release has also gotten me interested in the series as a whole. not enough to run out and get the wii’s followup, the house of the dead: overkill, but i’m definitely going to pick up the pinball of the dead and i’m definitely going to track down a copy of the typing of the dead. eventually!

dead-ly links in da house:
– entry at wikipedia
– a glowing review at videogamecritic.net
– entry at metacritic

HotD3-specific links:
– FAQ of the xbox version: includes a fair number of the quotes from the game, including the classic, “a security guard? you gotta be kidding!”
– entry at wikipedia: has info on the four endings

super monkey bawlin’

i’ve been playing the original super monkey ball off and on for a while now, but i sat down and finished advanced mode and tackled expert mode … only to be completely waylaid by expert level 7. apparently this is one of the harder levels in the game, and although i was finally able to beat it in practice mode, i was so demoralized at the thought of having to beat it again and again and again that i set the game aside for now. but it should be noted that levels that i had trouble with in advanced mode became pretty easy after i played through them numerous times, so it’s likely that i’ll eventually master that level as well as the rest of the game given enough time.

aside from the painful level of difficulty there was a lot i enjoyed. first off, it’s always nice to see a new IP, and sega scored an immediate hit with their debut of the monkey ball series. the presentation has the same unique combination of stylish/cool/cute that sega has become known for. the difficulty can perhaps be attributed to sega as well, although it’s notable that amusement vision, a subsidiary of sega, also worked on the similarly painfully-difficult-but-fun-and-stylish f-zero GX, which i played a while back. this game is also known for including a slew of much-better-than-average party games, including monkey fight which i became somewhat addicted to (probably one of the few party games that i’ve gotten hooked on).

it’s also notable that this was a launch title for the gamecube, because the controls are so spot on and the graphics are pretty solid. i’m curious about how the versions on the other platforms fared, because the gamecube analog control stick proved to be nice and sensitive, although at times it felt a bit too large and thus awkward under my thumb. maybe i just have small hands. 😛 i also appreciated the fact that given enough playthroughs eventually you’ll unlock unlimited continues, making getting to the higher levels much less of a remote possibility (although to unlock everything you still have the challenge of making it through on one life or one continue). at times i felt that this game should’ve been called “a million and one ways to watch a monkey fall off of a cliff”, but in any case, i’ll definitely be coming back to this one and checking out the various sequels.

monkey bawlin’ links:
– FAQ at IGN with difficulty ratings for each level and one at gamefaqs with ASCII maps
– a monkey fight FAQ
– list of unlockables at IGN
– the game got a lot of great reviews, all acknowledging the huge difficulty. here are nintendojo’s and IGN’s.
– entry at wikipedia
– entry at metacritic