Harley Reynolds

2006-05-09T16:08:00.000-07:00

My E3 Picks, or, Things You Might Have Missed

It looks like all three companies have had a great pre-show showing, and are each living out their respective strategies to the fullest. Reggie always said that strategy is simple, you just pick a direction and implement like hell. Here are my favorite implementations:

Metal Gear Solid 4 Trailer. (You want "Trailer 2") Sony serves up a dark and moody trailer for something that promises to be one hell of a game. It's amazing that this game is directed by someone who says "games are not art"--this is art, through and through. It's also very emotional and deeply disturbing art, so you may want to take some deep breaths and stiffen your nerves before watching it.

(Also, most games seem to portray an exaggerated, hyperactive portrait of childhood, and instead, MGS4 seems to be a morose and bittersweet portrait of adulthood. I like that.)

Halo 3 Trailer. (Also on Xbox Live; if you have a 360, use that) In an earlier blog post, I suggested that Microsoft, for its E3 press conference, push its current games like hell and only drop a small hint of the Halo 3 bombshell to come. They didn't quite do that--I feel that they haven't pushed their 2006 lineup enough--but their short teaser trailer for Halo 3 definately hits the spot as far as teasers go. It's a crime that we're going to have to wait at least a year for this game. ...Actually, it's not, we have Wii to tide us over.

Also, it was extremely clever of Microsoft to deliver it in the way they did... they said that you could download the Halo 3 trailer on Xbox Live, right this moment, any time now. Do you have an Xbox 360? Don't follow that link! Go to your Xbox 360!

This picture. IGN's stealthy snoops have Metal Gear Solided their way onto the show floor and, against the wishes of the security staff, taken pictures of all the E3 booths. My favorite? This picture from within Sega's booth. It has to be seen to be believed.

Wii. Nintendo's new system is finally emerging from the wild fantasies of Internet forum fanboys and into the real world (it is, in fact, Bio-Emerging, through a Digital Field). Time has an exclusive write-up of their play with the system, Sega has announced a bold new Sonic game for it, GameSpot proudly delivers you Nintendo's entire E3 press conference (which is a sight to behold), and the official Wii site rounds up all the key points and has the videos that first announced many of Wii's key games, such as the new Super Mario.

I'd tell you my favorite Wii games, but all of them look suh-weet and I don't want to spoil the revelations. However, the ones I feel a kind of affinity, a kinship, in the way that a young girl hugs her same-sized giant pink fluffy pillow as though it were an actual person, are these two (highlight to read): Wii Sports and Disaster: Day of Crisis. It really looks like Nintendo's returning to its roots with these games whose titles and concepts seem pulled straight from the NES days. If this generation is going to be an all-new NES revolution, then color me excited. Wii looks like good times indeed.

(Oh, and IGN Wii has screens and artwork from many new Wii games. If that's the kind of thing you want, go check it out.)

DS Games. StarFox DS is the big announcement for DS, with Yoshi's Island 2 and Diddy Kong Racing bringing up the rear. Kirby is getting a new adventure, and we're going to get some Touch Generation titles here in the US that will appeal more to a US audience: Sudoku Gridmaster and Clubhouse Games, the latter being a hefty collection of everybody's favorite card, board, and parlor games. Chibi Robo is getting chibi-er in Chibi Robo: Park Patrol for DS, while Custom Robo (online!) and Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates brings some venerable Japanese franchises to the DS.

Here's what I'm looking forward to, though: Air DS puts a mini hardcore flight sim in your DS, while Elite Beat Agents takes the gameplay and style of Ouendan and gives it some distinctly American funk for a US release. Touch Detective has a lively and unique art style and promises a true detective adventure for DS.

But the big one for me is Hotel Dusk: Room 215. I never wrote up a full review of Trace Memory, despite the fact that I got unstuck about a month ago and have since beaten the game. In the review that was slowly formulating in my head, however, I remarked that the bottom line is, if Cing ever makes another game like this, I'll be sure to pick it up. They, after all, said that they might make another adventure mystery game if Trace Memory sells well enough.

Apparently, it did (I bought one!), and apparently, they are. Hotel Dusk: Room 215 is being developed by Cing and will be published by Nintendo, and it's an all-new interactive mystery game. Count me in!

Super Paper Mario. Don't count the 'Cube out yet; Intelligent Systems, the Advance Wars, Fire Emblem, Paper Mario, and General Awesomeness people, are working on an all-new 2D Mario platformer for the GameCube. Looks like hilarious fun, and a good reminder that it's the gameplay that counts in a good game. God bless the Wii and its backwards compatibility.

Agggh! This was supposed to be a brief write-up! With all the cool stuff being shown at E3, I lost track of time. Still, there's plenty more to be seen, as the show floor opens tomorrow. Get your hype shields up, because it will be coming at you fast and furious. Keep a fickle eye and a keen sense of groundedness about you as you survey the games we'll be playing from now until May next year.

2006-05-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

Who called it?

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

2006-05-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

Naka has Left the Building

It's official, Yuji Naka has quit Sega. This is the end of an era; Yuji Naka has been working at Sega ever since he finished high school. He's worked on Phantasy Star (1987), Sonic The Hedgehog (1991), NiGHTS (1996), Burning Rangers (1997), Sonic Adventure (1998), Samba de Amigo (1999), ChuChu Rocket (1999), Phantasy Star Online (2000), and a whole bunch of others.

Naka is forming his own studio, Prope, and Sega is providing ten percent of its startup capital (so, I imagine Sega will be publishing Prope's games). With Naka suitably insulated from the bloated Sega Sammy bureaucracy and back in the driver's seat as far as game development is concerned, I would imagine that Naka's best is yet to come. Get ready!

2006-05-04T19:11:00.000-07:00

What did I say?

Argh.

2006-05-03T19:04:00.000-07:00

Rated "WTF"

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is being re-rated (from T to M) by the ESRB because, if you use a third-party modification on the PC version, you can create topless characters. (The game will also carry an additional content discripter, "Nudity," on the back.) Also, the game has more blood and gore than the ESRB considered... when they first rated the game.

I'm always the first to defend the ESRB. It's become a fashionable idea in recent months to jettison them in favor of some kind of government agency (bad idea to the max), but I say, they've defended us (the game industry) for over ten years and it's time for us to defend them.

However, I can't seem to find it in my heart to defend this. You can create topless characters if you use a mod. That moves it from T to M? And what does the ESRB mean by "more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating?" That's not exactly hidden content. Didn't the ESRB already have the chance to consider this? Hasn't their window of opportunity already passed?

The Interactive Entertainment Merchant Association president Hal Halpin is already praising this move as a "testament to the effectiveness and commitment to the industry's self-regulatory efforts." I suppose that's the right spin; I would say it too, if I were him. But I like the idea less that GTA has opened the floodgates and now any ESRB rating, for any game, is completely fluid and changeable. The ESRB had its chance to rate the game, but now they're going back on it. Is every ESRB rating merely a work in progress? Could a copy of a game that is in my hands change ratings because of content that was not hidden, but merely went unconsidered? Will companies have to put huge neon signs in their games saying "LOOK HERE! DISMEMBERMENT!" in order to make sure that such content does not go unnoticed by ESRB staff that are, apparently, asleep at the wheel?

It's also embarrassing to have a "Janet Jackson" moment for our industry, where the entire industry is ablaze over a woman's breasts. It makes us look childish. But also, it should be noted that most game characters, as is my understanding, are naked beneath their clothes, they are simply not wont to remove them lest Wal-Mart not sell the game. If you are a modder you can go in and forcibly strip the characters of their virtual clothing (and end up with the equivalent of naked Barbie dolls in terms of anatomical accuracy), but that can hardly be considered in the game's rating. Is the ESRB now considering breasts that are not even shown as part of the game's rating? Do videogame characters now have to have bathing suits texture-mapped to their bodies in order to pass muster with the ratings board? What kind of God-forsaken crackdown is going to result at every game developer because of this? This goes deeper than Janet Jackson; this is like punishing her for having nipples.

So, I'm going to go ahead and rate this decision "RS," for Really Stupid. It's going to deal a huge blow to our industry as opportunist politicians jump up and down and say, "Look here! More proof that ESRB ratings mean nothing!" It's going to deal a bigger blow to the ESRB's credibility, now that's been established that they can change a rating over content that they had not yet "considered" (while most of the general public can't even get past the fact that the Hot Coffee content was hidden). It's going to move the ESRB one step closer to the chopping block and thus, move the games industry one step closer to the blight of government regulation. But, it hurts us most of all; we, the gamers, are made to look childish and stupid by this ready-made bad press. I can't wait to see the news articles that say that a game company is being rocked by allegations that a game character has breasts beneath her shirt.

2006-05-01T21:11:00.000-07:00

New Sega Games

Sega is halfway through their "Road to E3" feature, wherein they announce new games on their website up until E3 next week. Mostly, they've announced new versions of old franchises, with a new Monkey Ball for Wii, a new Sega Rally and a new Virtua Tennis for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and some kind of pool game for PS2 and PSP.

Post-restructuring, Sega's been focusing mainly on franchises that actually make them any money. For instance, I guarantee that one of these "Road to E3" announcements--perhaps the last one, after all that dramatic buildup--will be a Sonic game for Wii. However, I hope Sega has it in their hearts to give us (me) what we really want: new versions of Crazy Taxi and Jet Grind Radio! Sure, I know that Sega's been pursuing an "actually-making-money" strategy (also known as a "green ocean strategy") for the past few years, but with us all buying their products they should feel obligated to take one for the team. If I don't get to fight The Man or make some craaaazy money on the next-gen consoles, I'm going to shed a tear thinking about the alternate universe in which I am. That is why you should take notice, Sega; if you do not resurrect these classic franchises, I will pout.

Last week the four announcements were made on midnight at the beginning of Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, so I'm hoping they will do so again this week, giving us four more announcements to go. So, if this is the case, and if you also desire to see a next-gen Jet Grind Radio or Crazy Taxi, you can join me in spirit at midnight each night for the rest of this week, as we shake our fists and make the "big money, big money" expression as we press the reload button at 12:00am and hope for the best.

2006-04-30T14:55:00.000-07:00

Vaporwatch

Here, we feature my predictions for what vaporware we'll actually see someday and what is lost to time. Here we go:

Phantom. The Phantom Lapboard, a USB peripheral that combines a keyboard and a mouse on a surface that you can sit on your lap, will indeed see release. There's even a manufacturer signed up for it. However, the Phantom will remain the most aptly-named console of all time, that is, we'll never see it. Games-on-demand was a novel idea five years ago, and unless there's something that Infinium Labs can do that Microsoft and Sony can't, I'm ready to let Phantom pass beyond this mortal vale.

Duke Nukem Forever. I guarantee you, Duke Nukem Forever will see release. 2007 or 2008 is my prediction as to when, but, of course, don't blame me if it slips even further. The team at 3D Realms has been working on this game for nearly a decade; it's their baby. And even if all those years of work have turned this baby into a nasty, malfigured baby that's had its engine changed one too many times, they've still got to get it out. And when they do, they'll feel a tremendous sense of relief.

Duke Nukem Forever won't be half bad, either, I wager. Not exactly a Half-Life 2 killer (does it need to be?), but it will have its own charm, in its own way. I guess.

StarCraft: Ghost. This game has been indefinately shelved, just like Blizzard said. They switched developers midway through, so I imagine they weren't satisfied with either developer's work. The idea of a stealth-action title in the StarCraft world gave people such high expectations that I imagine Blizzard didn't want to risk their name on a game that wasn't stellar, especially since Blizzard's talents have never lied in first-person games. And with the next generation coming, Blizzard probably thought it was best to push this project aside and begin anew when, and if, they are ready to do so.

Kinda lame, though. I wanna fight Zerglings. Don't you wanna fight Zerglings?

2006-04-29T13:29:00.000-07:00

Ho-oh-oh-oh-oh-ah-oh-ohhhh... ah-ah-ahhhh... ah-oh-ah-ohhhh...

A lot of people are betting on Halo 3 at E3, but I would advise Microsoft to hold back the bomb. The success of the Xbox brand depends on having more key franchises than simply Halo, and Microsoft has a killer lineup this year (just take a look). They'll have to do without Halo, and Microsoft will have to position these new brands (Gears of War, Crackdown, Blue Dragon, et al) as this year's heavy hitters. Perhaps Microsoft could tease about the existence of Halo 3 ("2007" followed by a stylized 3 in a circle accompanied by the Halo "ho-oh-ah-oh-oh" theme), but all would depend on having it positioned as bringing up the rear rather than leading the charge. Anything more than a carefully positioned "2007" tease will make Halo look like Microsoft's only big gun, and since a lot of the Halo image depended on the fact that it used to run on the most powerful console (an edge it will lose come PS3), making the 360's success dependent on Halo 3 would be the 360's death knell.

I mean really, look at the lineup! Hot damn. It's a good year to own a 360. I now feel sorry for all the early adopters whose 360s have broken by now.

(I should mention that originally, I thought that Microsoft should not even tease about Halo 3, because they need to put that much of a push into this year's big titles in order to make the 360 brand successful. However, a carefully positioned "2007" tease for Halo 3, after a dramatic presentation on this year's 360 lineup, would do an important job: it would make people write off the PS3 instantly. It would be like smashing the PS3 hype with a steamroller and then paving it over. Microsoft, I sure hope you know what you're doing. Show us that you still know the moves.)

2006-04-28T21:51:00.000-07:00

Wii, Myself, and I

I've had a good night's sleep to let the Nintendo Wii announcement sink in, and I can tell you right now that I still think it's a bad idea. Nintendo keeps comparing it to other brands, like Google, Yahoo, or Napster, that seemed strange or otherworldly before becoming part of our everyday language. Wii, Nintendo thinks, has the potential to become the next Google, in terms of brand power.

The problem is, those brands are all more than one syllable. You can easily mention that you TiVod yesterday's episode of Popular Reality Show or that you Googled your blind date just now to make sure he's on the straight and narrow. Can you imagine somebody dropping the name Wii just as easily?

I think Nintendo is going to have a hard time marketing something people have a hard time saying. Every time I say Wii, I have to quantify it, making clear that I don't mean "we" or "oui" and that the phoneme I just dropped is actually the name of something. The final name should be something you're not afraid to say to your friends and family as you enthusiastically introduce them to your shiny new fun-box. By contrast, do you want to tell your friend that you just got a Wii?

2006-04-13T23:16:00.000-07:00

A, B, A, C, A, B, B

Word on the streets has it that Red Steel for the Revolution won't be so red after all. Ubisoft is eschewing the trend of more blood and gore for a friendlier, happier yakuza-themed urban shooter/slicer-and-dicer. You read it here first: no blood, and toned-down violence.

Let me be the first to say: Yippee!

If you do not know, Red Steel, details of which have been spilling over the Internet like the blood of the Genesis version of Mortal Kombat, is an upcoming Revolution launch title, developed by Ubisoft Paris, in which you wield the controller as though it were a gun, or a sword, depending on which you have armed. Set in modern-day Japan, you shoot and slash your way through thug after thug to rescue your fiancée from a giant, barrel-throwing ape or something. They lost me on that.

It sounded so cool, but I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to play is, as I, Harley Reynolds, have a weak stomach. I watched my friend play Resident Evil 4 for not long before I wanted to barf. Sure, the graphics are pretty, but how can you just watch somebody's head explode and know that you were the one who caused it?! I mean, ick. Ick.

So, props go to Ubisoft for realizing that you don't need to fill a game with blood-splattering violence for it to be good. Violence, they know, is a means to an end, and the game will have much broader appeal without gore for its own sake. I'm sure most of the Internet is up in arms about this--after all, who does Ubisoft think we are, babies?--but I'm pleased as punch that I'll be able to play this hot Revolution title without having to, as Coach Z might say, puke my pants.

2006-04-03T09:45:00.000-07:00

Sonic Riders

Once I took a class on "coping with stress." I needed health credits, and I thought this was the easiest credit I'd ever get. I got a C, actually, probably because one of the papers I turned in had an aside about Carmen Sandiego's secret lesbian love affair. I'm guessing that's not what he was thinking when he said "outside the box."

The teacher gave us some good advice, though: he told us we need to maintain an "internal locus of control." You see, an external locus of control is where you are merely the subject of your surroundings, manipulated by a million factors out of your control. But, if you focus, and focus on your own actions, you can maintain an internal locus of control, where you work proactively against the laws of nature, rather than let yourself be the victim of your circumstances.

I thought Sonic Riders would really be pretty cool. One of the problems of Sonic racing games of the past is that just didn't make a hell of a lot of sense. Sonic Drift, for the Game Gear, was a weak Mario Kart rip-off where the selling point--and the only difference between it and the stiff competition--was the ability for your car to "drift" by mashing the buttons together and turning Sonic's car purpendicular to the camera. And with the Game Gear's vague graphics you could almost approximate what this would be like in the real world. It was kind of like a text adventure, only much less descriptive.

Sonic Drift failed to answer the question on everybody's mind, which was: why does Sonic need a car if he can run faster than the speed of sound? The answer, of course, is that Sega is betting on Sonic being as versatile a franchise as his Italian plumber corporate rival (he wasn't), and Mario Kart needed to be followed up by a Sonic game that was the same thing, only without the fun. But, Sonic R for the Sega Saturn attempted to answer the big question a different way: Sonic and friends eschewed motor vehicles and took to the track on foot. This created two additional problems: how come Sonic doesn't simply win every time, being several orders of magnitude faster than his no-slowpoke friends? And why does Sonic still control like a racecar despite being a fully bipedal creature?

So, when I heard that they were making a Sonic racing game, where Sonic and his cohorts (affectionately called "blank-the-animal" by EGM) race on "air boards," I was psyched. Cars were never Sonic's style, but he's always taken to boards. Hell, he snowboarded in Sonic 3 before snowboarding games were all the rage. But also, Sonic spinoff titles have a long and consistent history of, well, sucking, mainly due to a conflict between the Sonic character and the style of gameplay offered. (For instance: Sonic Labyrinth for the Game Gear was a top-down adventure game where the plot was that Eggman had stolen Sonic's shoes and replaced them with boots that made him slow as molasses. Meanwhile, Sonic Shuffle for the Dreamcast was like Mario Party minus a few orders of fun and plus a confusing game-board mechanic and horrendous load times. And the 32X would have died a peaceful death without Knuckles Chaotix to drag it to a watery grave.) In contrast to these titles, a "boarding" game seemed to fit the Sonic style like a glove. Fast, furious, and stylish. Cool!

In Sonic Riders, the story is that Dr. Eggman has convened an "EX World Grand Prix" so that the fastest riders on the planet can face off, racing on air boards called "Extreme Gear." Sonic is already the fastest thing on two feet, but this time he'll have to contend with the Babylon Rogues, the world-famous board riders and underground thieves. Sonic will have to learn to use this strange new technology and must exert himself to maintain his title of "fastest thing alive." (The prize for winning the competition is the seven Chaos Emeralds. Had you any doubt?)

I was excited about Sonic Riders, because unlike Sonic Drift, this looked to be the REAL Sonic version of Mario Kart: not just Sonic in a car, but that style of gameplay specifically adapted to Sonic's personality and style of gameplay. This, I thought, could be something that would really blow Mario Kart out of the water, something that could organically grow out of Sonic The Hedgehog and "combat racing" and become some kind of super cool, franchise-devouring monster. Also, while Mario Kart uses random items to increase interaction between racers and make a more accessible racing game, Sonic Riders promised to use an interesting concept of "turbulence" where you can ride somebody's slipstream and do tricks to move faster and increase your "air meter." Good times.

In execution, though, the whole thing just falls apart. Remember what I said about an "internal" and an "external" locus of control? Well, if in Mario Kart, you have an "internal" locus of control--you are the master of your destiny, the control of the game begins with you and flows from the kart outward--than in Sonic Riders you absolutely have an "external" locus of control, where the level design and the track have you by the crotch. You'll spend most of your time combing the level for shortcuts, and then practicing them over and over again to make sure you have them down perfectly. What then? Well, it's kind of a hollow victory. Perhaps Sonic Riders should have been classified as "rhythm" rather than as "racing."

The first thing I noticed about Sonic Riders is that it's way less forgiving than Mario Kart. One of the most charming things about Riders's chief competition is that being sent back to eighth place is never the end of you; you're always given a chance to make that grand comeback. But in Sonic Riders, if you mess up and lose a whole lot of ground, that's it. That's the end. I'm not really sure why such a lack of magnanimosity is present in a "children's" racing game, or in one intended to have such mass appeal as a Sonic game (read: not for hardcore racing fanatics who buy $200 racing controllers), but there you have it.

And this game's mass appeal is not helped by the wonky controls and need for you to read the manual back-to-front. It'll take you a good long while to learn all the nooks and crannies of the game, and I'll recommend a good night's sleep before it will all coalesce in your head. I kind of wish Ulala were there to tell you, "okay, now slide, slide, let it go! Hold and jump and grind! Good!" so that the game would feel more like the dancing game that it actually is.

Oh, and speaking of voices, Omochao is the game's racing announcer. You might recognize the character more quickly if I say this: "Did you know that there are ten a-na-mals hidden in this stage?" Of course, back in those days (the good old days), Omochao was voiced by Lani Minella, the voice director. Of course, now, by Yuji Naka's decree, Minella's voice team (stellar voice team, by the way) has been jettisoned and replaced wholecloth with the guys and gals at 4Kids Entertainment, who do something on network TV about pirates who drink juice. So, Omochao is no longer the endearing and slightly annoying voice he once was: now he's a COMPLETELY annoying voice, brought to you (I'm positive) by the same actress who plays Téa on Yu-Gi-Oh!. That's the problem with 4Kids: you've heard all the actors before, playing similar roles on a thousand different shows. Since Knuckles sounds just like Yugi (same actor), and also present is the voice of Yugi's grandfather (same actress), I suppose they're one big happy family.

Téa-I-mean-Omochao's actress is a talented one, but you'll want to kill her after any amount of time spent with the game. She keeps informing you that "Sonic is gaining momentum!" but it took me a long time to figure that out. I thought she was saying "Sonic is losing the metal!" It reminded me of a rather memorable episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000: "Hear the engines roll now! Idiot control now! Hideous control now!" I also couldn't count the number of times that I was out of the gate in first place, only for her to say that "Sonic is off to a horrible start! Can he make up for lost time?" I'm usually pretty chaste with my language while playing videogames--I might insult the little men running around inside my GameCube--but you should have heard the swear words fly at the poor woman who was merely providing for the public good by punching up the action with at-times-accurate commentary. If you're reading this, actress of Téa-I-mean-Omochao, I'm sorry.

The problems with 4Kids run deeper than that, I'm afraid. It's not that the voice actors are bad; they are full of talent, Sonic sounds as cool and caustic as ever. It's that they have a really specific worldview when it comes to dubbing. Cartoon characters are comedic, and children must be talked down to. Young characters have scratchy voices. I almost cried when I heard the voice of Sonic's new rival, Jet; he's the same actor as Sonic, only with a throat full of gravel.

But, more than that, they simply don't understand how to dub a videogame. When you're dealing with videogame characters, the ability to identify with the character you're playing as is paramount. I was extremely sad when I found that Storm The Albatross--the muscle of the Babylon Rogues--was singled out by 4Kids as comic relief, and given an over-the-top, "doofy" voice to indicate what a lamebrain he was. When I saw art of him, I thought he was kind of cool, a very heavyset albatross with a giant gold pendant around his neck (kind of like Combo, from Jet Set Radio, with feathers). The story and dialogue indicate that Storm is something of a space case, and not the brightest bulb on the tree, but doing him as a simply stupid character sucks all the appeal out of him, and dashes any hopes Sega might have had of making this character an appropriate rival for the hard-headed Knuckles. Upon hearing the Japanese voice of the character, I found that he really has a touch of character to him, something that would really allow you to identify with him in the way we could all identify with Big The Cat and live his serene lifestyle in Sonic Adventure. But, it's hard to feel a connection--the all-important "link" between the player and character, as Shigeru Miyamoto once put it--when the well-intentioned but misguided voice actor is playing the part up for yuks. 4Kids needs to understand the difference between a cartoon and a videogame, and fast.

Props, however, go to the actors of Knuckles and Wave, as they are far and away the best of the bunch. Sonic's voice actor is quite good, too, even if his voice is still in the shadow of Ryan Drummond's brilliant performances in Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, and Sonic Heroes. And I still dislike the woman who plays Tails. What a cop-out.

Now, here's something that really bothers me about Sonic Riders. I rented the Xbox version, 'cause the rental place was out of the GameCube version, and as usual, the Xbox version allows you to get the Japanese voices by changing the language settings in the Xbox system menu. However, the only ways to play the game are in Japanese with Japanese subtitles, or English with English subtitles. That's right: there is no way to match Japanese voices with English text. What? I would have greatly preferred that option, after hearing the Japanese voice actors and noticing that they actually respect the children who consume their products rather than merely clown around the recording studio for a weekend. But, as it happens, Sonic Team couldn't be bothered to include the option. That's unconscionable. There are hard-core Sonic fans, and even though they're not Sega's target audience--we'll buy this stuff, outraged or not--they should have spent a second and a half catering to them with such a feature. It doesn't take a lot to keep fans happy, and an enthusiastic fan base is the stuff endless profits are made of.

Sonic Riders isn't, of course, made by Sonic Team proper. Yuji Naka is credited as an "executive producer." Sonic Team merged with Rez creators United Game Artists a few years back, draining UGA of its remaining creative energy and of its chief talent (Studio head Tetsuya Mizuguchi famously left to found Q, of Meteos, Lumines, and Ninety-Nine Nights fame). Sonic Riders is by what remains of the UGA team, and while their talent shows through in the creative game design, the fact that they feel like they're disposable talent toiling away at a giant game company--as opposed to the small, energetic, idealistic team that produced Rez--shows through in how much the game falls flat. Is this the future of games, for them to be produced by EA-style assembly lines? If Yuji Naka really does quit, then Sonic Team is doomed never again to be the studio that produced NiGHTS.

Sonic Riders is what we call "potential." Potential that was, appropriately enough, dashed. Rumors abound that Sega intends for Sonic Riders to be a bold new franchise, and that we'll be seeing new Sonic board-em-ups for the new crop of consoles. If that happens, I want UGA-I-mean-Sonic-Team to go back to the drawing board. Restore the internal locus of control. You should be able to feel the speed, not be perplexed by it. Riding somebody's slipstream should be a real advantage (as it is in Mario Kart DS, incidentally) and not just a gimmick. You should feel in control of your character and not just at the mercy of the level design.

But also, this is a game for children, primarily, so you've got to think like a child while designing it. As a child, you imagine a bold new world of possibilities just outside your house (and just outside your required amount of schooling). Sonic Riders, by comparison, has the worldview of one of those kids who were overly sheltered by their parents and so they drink until they faint during their first day of college. If Mario Kart represents a bold new world full of possibility, than Sonic Riders represents a depressing high-school college fair where representatives are on hand to tell you about all the wonderful opportunities available to you in the field of the custodial arts. If Mario Kart is a delicious popsicle, than Sonic Riders is the stick. ...You get the point.

There's plenty of time between now and then to rework Sonic Riders. But for now, I'm throwing it on the pile of Sonic spin-off games that just didn't make any sense. That's not too bad, though; it's been spared being thrown in the pile of Mario Kart rip-off mascot racers, because it isn't. It's just a concept in search of a game.

Gameplay: 4/10 Fun, cool, reasonably addictive. Too bad it doesn't hold up.
Graphics: 8/10 Excellent character models and well-rendered courses make up the bulk of the score. Lack of truly creative courses and the use of credibility-straining cartoon character effects make up the two missing points.
Sound: 6/10 Music is... good. Theme song is cool. Voices... could go either way.
Lasting Value: 7/10 Lots of characters and items to unlock make this game one that you can play for a while. Too bad your friends won't play it with you.

FINAL SCORE: 2/10

...on the basis that Sonic Team and UGA can and should do better.

2006-03-23T22:58:00.000-08:00

WAAAA-HOOOOOOOEEEEYYYYYYYY!!!

Satoru Iwata's GDC keynote

Iwata also announced partnerships with Sega and Hudson to offer downloadable access to their classic games via Revolution's Virtual Console. Revolution owners will be able to relive their past gaming glories from the Sega Genesis console by playing a "best of" selection from more than 1,000 Genesis titles, as well as games sold for the TurboGrafx console (a system jointly developed by NEC and Hudson). These games join Revolution's access to 20 years of fan-favorite Nintendo games from the NES, Super NES and Nintendo 64 eras.

Ohmanohmanohman. This is GREAT news! You see, I may hold a world record for the number of times buying the same few games (the original Sonics, if you need to ask), but Iwata just signed me up to buy them all once more. And besides, there are a lot of Genesis games I missed... and, uh, I've never played a TurboGrafx-16 in my life. This is a good deal.

Just think... Sonic The Hedgehog could be played with ONE hand! I, who was a staunch defender of Sonic's one-button play style on the elementary school playground, will finally recieve my comeuppance. Can you play Mario and eat pizza... at the same time? Of course not! Bwa ha ha!

Here's the full transcript. He also announced a new Zelda for DS, if that sort of thing interests you. GENESIS ON REVOLUTION! WAHOOOOOOOOOO

(Oh, and Iwata didn't say there would be 1,000 Genesis games available... I don't think there are even that many Genesis games, period, though I could be wrong. He was saying that the combined libraries of the Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx-16 include over 1,000 games, but that only the best would be on Virtual Console. I can understand that, since a flood of terrible games from the past would be exactly what would confound consumers and sink the Virtual Console. I just hope they aren't stingy with the honor, and that they go for undiscovered games, as I've always wanted to play Pulseman.)

2006-03-18T15:22:00.000-08:00

Naka to Walk-a?

If Next Generation's super secret sources are to be believed, then Sonic The Hedgehog co-creator and longtime series producer Yuji Naka may be planning to roll up into a ball and spin right out of Sega HQ. If that happens, Sega's chief talent will go and set up his very own studio (I suggest the name, "Nakaworks"), which may or may not have ties to Sega. Also, I would imagine that Takashi Iizuka, if he does not join Naka in this exodus, would take over as head of Sega's key studio, Sonic Team, while rising star Toshihiro Nagoshi (Super Monkey Ball, Yazuka, and the long-in-development Super Monkey Yakuza) would have to become Sega's lead personality, and Yu Suzuki would continue making the occasional good game to subsidize his Shenmue habit.

All this said, if Naka does throw in the Sonic towel and begin his plucky upstart, as is the rage among all disgruntled franchise creators (Naoto Ohshima at Artoon, Tetsuya Mizuguchi at Q, Hironobu Sakaguchi at Mistwalker), it would most likely be a good thing. Yuji Naka, after all, has recently been seen complaining to magazines about having to manage Sega's finances and other things his talents are egregiously unsuited for. I have always believed that, instead of diluting Naka's talent with many, many projects at once, Sega needs to lock him in a basement with forty artists and programmers for the next two years so that they can make a goddamn game. Apparently, if Sega won't take that initiative and still insists on him executive producing Sonic Eats Brussel Sprouts, then Naka will simply have to about-face and take the initiative himself. Hello, Nakaco.

The problem is, what will happen to poor Sonic Team? I can remember their heyday, defined as the period from Sonic The Hedgehog to Samba de Amigo, when I very nearly dyed my hair blue out of devotion to their talents (for your information, the hair dye didn't work, damn Manic Panic). Yuji Naka is now the last remaining person at Sonic Team from the original team; Takashi Iizuka, Naka's current no. 2 man, started with Sonic 3. (And Sonic designer Naoto Ohshima left the company just before Sonic Adventure, at which point Sonic Team was missing a certain Ohshima feeling.) Will the making of Sonic games simply become a manual process, created on an assembly line without the driving talents of the Sonic greats? Or will something get worked out between Sega and Naka Industries that will allow him to continue making his mark on the blue blur's legacy? Or is Yuji Naka simply sick of making Sonic games and would rather leave the franchise to his Sega successors? Or are Next Generation's super-secret "sources" currently chuckling to themselves about how American games publications will believe anything?

Time will tell. In any case, anything Naka & Company release will need a publisher, and I'm sure Sega would want to continue their working relationship with their star producer. Also, with the new Sonic The Hedgehog coming out later this year, I'm sure Naka will wait until that game is finished before giving his two weeks' notice, if he plans to quit at all. In the meantime, bless your copy of Samba de Amigo. Not a lot of developers have Naka's talent, or his deep pockets. A Yuji Naka-headed company would have a good chance of survival in the wild, and a great chance of releasing games that will take Naka's recent reputation of "meh" back to its former state of "holy %$@#!"

(Note: "Super Monkey Yakuza" does not actually exist. I just wanted to type that.)

2006-03-15T16:59:00.000-08:00

Can the 360 pull a 180, or will it be deep-sixed?

Microsoft has a fight ahead of itself.

Remember the Dreamcast? If you don't, here's a refresher course: The Dreamcast launched in 1999 with a stellar lineup of games including Sonic Adventure, Soul Calibur, and NFL 2K. It retailed for $200. By the time the PlayStation 2 launched in 2000, the Dreamcast retailed for $150. The PlayStation 2 launched with a comparitively weak line-up of games, and retailed for $300.

Both systems had similar hardware. The PS2 was barely more powerful than Dreamcast. But Sony had a powerful command of the public mind and peppered its new console with catchphrases that spread through the Internet like wildfire. Pretty soon, everyone was saying "Emotion Engine" and how the PS2 will display games that look like Toy Story. Of course, none of that happened, but what the PS2 had going for it was a promising new media format--DVD--that the competition did not have, and the strong public perception that it was eleventy billion times more powerful than its competition that had released a year earlier. Dreamcast gloated that it had a holiday season to itself, and that the PS2 shipping problems allowed them to gleam even more marketshare. It didn't gloat for long; PS2 handily defeated the Dreamcast in sales, after too many years of no profits, Sega pulled out of the hardware business and went third-party. Sonic was a huge success on the Nintendo GameCube, and the rest is history.

Microsoft gloats that the Xbox 360 came out a year ahead of the competition, and had a holiday season to itself. It has dazzling graphics and supposedly ushers in the "HD Era." According to developers, the difference in power between Xbox 360 and PS3 is negligible, and props go out to the brave soul at Sony Online Entertainment who was fired for saying that, in his experience, 360 is better. The gap closes further when you consider that, according to Gabe Newell at Valve, it will be a long time before developers can make good use of either system's multi-core architecture.

However close to the PS3 the 360 may be in power, what matters is public perception, and public perception is looking grim for Microsoft. The original Xbox's major selling point is that it was the most powerful of the three consoles, and had Halo. Everything about the casing and marketing reflected that. The Xbox 360 may have been thoroughly pimped as the next big thing by every major tech publication towards the end of 2005, but with its early launch, confused case design, and weaker (even if not much weaker) specifications compared to PS3, it doesn't have any of the selling points that made the Xbox a major competitor to PS2. Microsoft thinks that being first to market is going to be its winning move, but it may turn out to be a handicap as the public abandons thoughts of the 360 in search of the Next Next Big Thing.

Other websites have more thoroughly documented the eerie similarities between the Xbox 360 and Dreamcast, but what should worry Microsoft the most is that Dreamcast, like Xbox 360, came out a year earlier than its competition and had a significantly cheaper price tag, while Sony's competition will have nothing more but a higher price tag, a promising new media format, and technology only slightly more powerful but hyped up to the nines with lovable Sony buzzwords. If history repeats itself, 360 will never, ever be able to shake its reputation as the No. 2 console (or No. 3, if Nintendo's Revolution gamble pays off), and if history really repeats itself, the 360 will die off after two years (although that is unlikely, given the fact that the original Xbox was losing money every year of its life and Microsoft still didn't drop it like a hot potato).

Sony's buzzwords are already taking hold. You've heard everyone gushing about Sony's famed seven-core "Cell" processor that, supposedly, can move mountains and feed entire Third World countries, right? Well, if you read up on last night's PlayStation conference, you know that the PS3 can basically do all the things 360 can already do--well, only the things 360 can do--plus Blu-Ray playback, and, well, you'll have to read it for yourself:

At the PlayStation Business Briefing 2006, Ken Kutaragi has just added another infamous quote to his belt, this time stating that PS3 games are "live" and that the PS3 concept is "4D".

He claims that games have gone from 8-bit to 16-bit planes, to the "space" that you saw on the PS1/PS2, and now PS3 will be "live".

You read it here first: PlayStation 3 will play games in 4D.

That, of course, is a load of twaddle. What he's saying is that games have gone from existing in two dimensions, to three dimensions, and that PlayStation 3 games, by virtue of being online, will exist in "four dimensions" because they exist in time as well. Never mind that online games have a rich history on PC and a sizable history on consoles, repackaging old concepts with new buzzwords is what Sony does best. Just like Sega got everybody excited over Sonic 2's famed "Blast Processing" that meant precisely nothing, Sony got everyone's panties in a bunch over the "Emotion Engine" for the PlayStation 2 that also meant nothing but "gosh-darn fancy hardware."

Never mind that Xbox 360 launched with an online infastructure that had been around already for years on the original Xbox (which I will call, from now on, the "Xbox 180"). PlayStation 3 will be online, and games will be in 4D. Like, dude, whoa. 4D. I wonder what games in 5D will look like?

So, right now, things look grim--very, very grim--for Xbox 360. Here's some things that could change between now and the launch. Personally, I wonder if it would have worked better for 360 to go right up against PS3 this holiday season, so that 360 could have been spared the handicap of looking like the weaker system, but obviously that's out of the question now. So, I've divided my "Things That Could Make the 360, uhhh, Turn Around" list into two categories: things that Microsoft cannot control, and things that they can.

Things That Could Make the 360, uhhh, Turn Around
Part 1: Things Microsoft Cannot Control

1. "PS3 cannot be priced for households."

If Sony does reveal a sticker shock for PS3, it could be bad or good news for Microsoft. The good news is that 360 will look like a low-cost alternative. The bad news is that 360 will look like a low-cost alternative. Being half the price of PS2 didn't help the Dreamcast one (1) whit, and being a high-powered next-gen console cheaper than PS3 will put the 360 in an awkward position, market-wise, between Revolution and PS2. If you're saving up for a home entertainment powerhouse, why not just save up for the more expensive one with (a few) more features? The "middle ground" in consumer electronics is often a vast chasm from which no profits escape. But if PS3 does go on sale for $900 it would be a definite boon to Microsoft. At $500, it could still be a good deal for Microsoft, since the 360 already has established brand power. Get any lower than that and Bill Gates will need a new change of boxers.

But don't get your hopes up yet, House of Windows: Sony has always been one to do surprise low prices. When then-Sega of America head Tom Kalinske dramatically announced at E3 1995 that the Saturn was on sale right now and you could go buy one for $400 if you were as vain as to leave the conference hall in the middle of his speech, Sony's Steve Race countered with a swift punch in Sega's blue, furry gut: his keynote speech followed, and the entire speech was "two hundred and ninety-nine dollars." The crowd went nuts and Tom Kalinske was later seen crying into his pillow (unconfirmed). Later, when Sony was boasting about the power of the PlayStation 2 it caused analysts to predict that it would cost $500, before Sony announced that it would cost the same amount that the PS1 did at launch: $300. (Maybe being barely more powerful than Dreamcast had something to do with it.) And just last year, Sony's credit rating in Japan went from A+ to A to A- because nobody knew how exactly Sony was going to pay for the PSP, which sold to consumers for $250. Now that Sony is setting up us for a huge price--"it's going to be expensive," says Kutaragi, and "cannot be priced for households"--it's hard to know if they're being honest, or merely setting up us the bomb.

After all, the real battle for Sony is not PS3 vs. Xbox 360: it's Blu-Ray vs. HD-DVD. PS3 has long been intended to be a Trojan horse, getting Blu-Ray players into the homes of millions of unsuspecting Americans and leaning them towards Sony's format and away from HD-DVD, Toshiba's competing next-gen movie standard (after all, Sony needs something to console themselves with after Apple's iPod paved over their hold on the consumer electronics market). If Sony wins the HD movie format war, then they will get royalties on every movie sold on video through the next five years at least, and they can afford to lose a lot of money towards that end. But, the Trojan horse metaphor breaks down if the soldiers inside of the horse weigh it down so much that the Trojans don't feel like bringing the damn thing in the door. In other words, if Sony's going to sneak its player into millions of American homes, it's going to have to make sure PS3 is priced to move. Nobody's going to bring the thing into their homes if their jaws are still hanging open from the sticker shock.

2. PlayStation 3 launches with no game-to-own

Xbox 360, famously, launched with no Halo, literally or metaphorically. Call of Duty 2 did pretty well for itself and for the 360, but not having its own major franchise at launch hurt the 360 as much as lack of Sonic hurt the Saturn in its day. Next year, though, Epic's Gears of War gives the system a strong new IP, oh if only it had been there at launch. Meanwhile, we have no idea what PS3 will launch with. If it launches with the new Metal Gear Solid, than Sony will have cause to celebrate. If it does not, than Microsoft will be the one rush-ordering beer and chips.

Sonic The Hedgehog, of course, will probably launch with PS3. It will also come out simultaneously for Xbox 360. Whoever has the Sonic advantage here will be determined by what the public perception of each system is by the PS3's launch day. If the public perception is such that people will buy PS3 versions of a game, thinking it will be the "proper" one, over the 360 versions if they have the choice, than such would be bad news for Microsoft indeed. (And, getting back to Sonic, he's traditionally sold much better on PlayStation than Xbox anyway.)

3. PlayStation 3's marketing alienates its own market.

Let's play a game. Let's pretend that the average consumer does not want their videogame console to be a home server, an all-in-one superbox that will bake muffins and calculate their taxes. Let's pretend that all they want is a videogame system.

Last night, Sony announced that the PS3 will require (include?) a 60GB hard disk with Linux pre-installed (a far cry from Microsoft fighting tooth and nail to keep the penguin plague off of their system). According to Next Generation, Kutaragi said that (they're paraphrasing) "a hard drive-equipped PS3 is intended to be a sort of a central server for the home, allowing users to upload media from one peripheral and view it on another." Whether this will attract users remains to be seen. By positioning the PS2 as a DVD player that also plays games, Sony successfully brought the machine into 100 million homes. Will the same magic work twice, or is this a case of combining the wrong consumer electronics? Do consumers want a home server in their game console, or not? This could be the PS3's greatest strength, or its Achilles's heel.

Things That Could Make the 360, uhhh, Turn Around
Part 2: Things That Microsoft Can Control

1. Halo 3. This might or might not work. A steadily rising hype machine for a new Halo could bring 360 news from its current depths and begin overshadowing the PS3 launch. Or it could result in bringing down the franchise from its current heights; part of what makes Halo so special is that it only happens once every three years. Then again, Halo 2 left everyone starving for a new installment, and so much of what was planned for Halo 2 was shelved that you get the idea that a lot of its content was put on hold to be used in Halo 3. So, again, it could go both ways. It seems like a pretty good idea, though, unless it results in a rushed Halo, which would be bad news for the franchise.

2. Hype. Microsoft needs to keep the marketing machine going. The PlayStation 3 still has time before it reaches the public consciousness, so a steady diet of 360 marketing from now until May will do the system a world of good. People need to be saving their pennies for a 360 right now, and get their hearts set on one, before they change their mind and go for a PS3 instead. Once May comes, E3 happens, and save for the possibility an earth-shattering new Halo you know there's nothing Microsoft can do to overshadow Sony on the expo floor. In other words, Microsoft has from now until May to set in stone the public's image of an unbeatable Xbox 360.

3. The second wave. This November, PlayStation 3 will no doubt be in scarce supply. Worse, for Sony, it will be competing in a land where Xbox 360s are finally flowing freely through the streets. A second marketing push--in effect, a "second launch"--will set up, in the public image, an idea that 360 and PS3 are competitors on equal ground, crucial to the public image of the 360. Do everything you can, Microsoft, to counteract the idea that 360 has taken a technological penalty for being first to market. Subtly remind everyone of how much brand power the 360 has from last year's massive hype. Achieve Gates's dream of making 360 look like the real deal and making Sony look late to the party. The PlayStation's brand power cannot be measured in traditional units, so Microsoft must be aggressive and unwarranting.

(The traditional unit of measure for brand power is known as the kilofanboy.)

Between the Revolution and PS3 is an uncomfortable spot in the market to be in. Revolution is ultra-cheap and different, whereas the PS3 is expensive and high-end. Will 360 be the golden mean, or the path less traveled by because it takes you off a cliff at the bottom of which is a smattering of bloodthirsty, rabid alligators? Only time, and unpredictable market forces, will tell.

But remember, Microsoft, Blu-Ray is Sony's reason to fight and fight hard. Get ready.

2006-03-14T23:16:00.000-08:00

Big News

PS3, worldwide in November, pass it on...

2006-03-07T00:26:00.000-08:00

Backspace Metroid Deathmatch! A Wi-Fi Enabled Nintendo DS Multiplayer Event in Portland, OR

Attention, DS gamers! I'm organizing another DS event at Backspace. This time, it's to celebrate the release of Metroid Prime: Hunters and Tetris DS. The event is on Saturday, March 25th, at 6:00, and Backspace is at 115 NW 5th (5th and Davis). Please come, we've been getting more and more attendance each time we do this, and with the high profile of Metroid Prime: Hunters and the brisk sales of the Nintendo DS I'm sure we'll have enough people for quite a bit of satisfying fragging.

Backspace is a local net cafe and gaming center that also sells food and beverage, such as pizza, cookies, coffee cake, coffee w/o cake, tea, and hot cocoa to fuel your gaming drive. It's got a wonderful atmosphere and very nice staff. I would never have passed Chemistry 103 without having been able to do my homework there over hot cocoa. But, I digress.

Please come! We'll be playing plenty of different games, I'm sure, and it will be a chance to meet new people and play lots of this highly acclaimed and anticipated FPS. It will also be a good chance for you to increase your friends list from zero to approximately one gazillion. You will also be able to consume lots of good food and drink while you game. Isn't that what life is all about?

Backspace is at 115 NW 5th St., in downtown Portland, between streets Couch and Davis, right next to "Just Be Toys." It's a block and a half north of Burnside.

See you at Backspace.

2006-02-23T21:20:00.000-08:00

Six Degrees

The Guardian Gamesblog has a piece up by Alex Krotoski, arguing that if you want to get a job in game development, a degree in game design may not be your best choice. His main arguments are that the biggest successes and breakaway hits have come from developers who did not get game-related degrees in their education, and that game design requires every discipline, not just programming.

What his argument doesn't even get to is that the reason Will Wright and Keita Takahashi do not have degrees in videogame development is that those degrees weren't around back then. It was only beginning in the late nineties that anywhere you could get a videogame-related degree, and its only been in the past few years that the general public has been aware of them.

He scornfully says that your average game shop is filled with games of "hackneyed paradigms and established genres," and that only an education in disciplines other than game design will allow you to create a breakaway hit. He continues by saying that none of the people he knows that are employed in game design have game-related degrees, so obviously it can't be so useful. Moreover, he says, only people from outside the industry will be able to bring in a fresh perspective.

In essence, I think what he's saying is the old art student's excuse--I'm not going to go to art school, because it will stifle my creativity and will only teach me established ways of making art. This makes me want to cry, because if we take Krotoski's advice--not pursue an education in videogames because it will indoctrinate you in the evils of the established genres--we will be, every generation, reinventing the wheel.

I don't think there's anything wrong with current game developers, the vast majority of whom are self-taught, passing on their gained wisdom to the next generation, the first to have the amazing opportunity of getting an education in videogame design. Current game developers, the self-taught variety that Krotoski praises to the nines, had to hack it on their own to figure out how to develop a game. Now, with their gained wisdom, it's only their right--and our opportunity--to get to pass this information down to the new generation. If we don't, we'll only be turning a deaf ear to our forefathers, and we will only make the same mistakes they did, all over again, and re-learn how to make a videogame. This is not only disrespectful, it is bad advice.

The second prong to Krotoski's argument is that game development requires so many disciplines, a degree in Super Mario Bros. isn't going to cut the mustard in the harsh world of game development. I agree; that's why I hope every game development degree requires classes in every discipline required to make a game. That's mathematics (oh God the mathematics), psychology, art, animation, writing, literature, and business administration right up front, and philosophy, history, and film wouldn't hurt either.

Moreover, it falls flat when Krotoski argues that Keita Takahashi (creator of Katamari Damacy) and Will Wright (creator of SimCity and The Sims) did not get game design degrees, and then complains about the established genres and paradigms that plague our industry. The main thrust of his essay is that a videogame education will no doubt have you churning out hackneyed urban crime game clones and GBA kart racers once you get out, and that "a more lateral approach" is what will have you creating the Katamari Damacys of tomorrow. It's as though he's saying the creators of those sleazy knock-off games that clutter the shelves of EBGames obviously must have had degrees in game development, whereas Will Wright and Keita Takahashi must have hailed from the flowing green fields and wondrous blue oceans of traditional education (which will teach you so much about crunch time and multi-core threading). The reality is that almost the entire industry is self-taught, the people making the new, original games and the people who are making knockoff games. In fact, I would admit that there are probably more developers of knockoff games with game-related degrees than those of original games, because if you're making knockoff games, you're probably younger and went to school when they had these new-fangled game design degrees. If you're making highly original, breakaway games, chances are you are an industry veteran, and you didn't have the luxury of the opportunity to get an education in game development when you were in school.

And those veterans worked hard and stumbled a lot to get where they are, and I certainly hope they'd be sporting enough to pass their knowledge down to us young'uns. That's why I say, support game-related education. It's an opportunity we have that our forefathers did not, and it would be disrespectful and unecessarily stubborn to pass it up. It would be cruel and unnecessary indeed for every generation of game developers to have to reinvent the wheel, and make the same set of mistakes over and over again that their forefathers did.

Moreover... "established genres?" Yeah, there are established genres in video games. What's your point?

2006-02-22T20:57:00.000-08:00

The Call of Hooey (Big Red Con)

If you haven't heard, they've banned a Call of Duty 2 commercial in the UK for being misleading, in a move than industry analysts think will strike fear into the hearts of videogame marketers everywhere.

It shouldn't.

You can see the ad here. The complaint was that pre-rendered stock footage was presented as though it were footage from the game itself, thus making the ad misleading enough to be pulled from the airwaves. The British advertising regulators agreed, and the ad can no longer be seen on UK TV.

The concern is that, with this precedent, game companies will no longer be able to use computer-generated, non-gameplay footage in their ads, instead having to resort to using live-action skits that we all have horrible memories of from the 80s and 90s. After all, videogames are a medium directly related to computers and fantasy, wouldn't it be crippling if we could not advertise our games using our characters in their native element without resorting to live-action or machinima?

But, don't worry, move along, there's nothing to see here. Activision, you see, is guilty as charged. Watch the video. The prerendered footage is from a first-person perspective, from the heat of battle, and there is a gun directly below your viewpoint. At one point, the camera pans up to view a plane passing overhead. The entire thing would be unmistakable as in-game footage if it were. It looks exactly like the gameplay of an FPS game.

The graphics are near-photo-realistic, but this is on a game, and platform, both hailed and advertised as being near-photo-realistic. This is like if Nintendo decided to advertise Super Mario Bros. using contrived footage of a pixellated man walking to the right while jumping on turtles and hitting blocks with his head. This is, for that matter, like Fox advertising The Phantom Menace with footage from a science fiction movie that's actually any good. For that matter, it's like a car company producing two different models of car: one to sell to consumers, and one, significantly better, to use in advertisements for the first car. It's simply bad faith.

Moreover, there's just no reason why Activision couldn't have used actual in-game footage for that commercial. The commercial is damned short and the use of pre-rendered footage only serves to hoodwink potential customers. It's no wonder they got what was coming to them. What they have is an extremely elegant and well-produced commercial for a completely fake product. It's irritating that they treat us with so much contempt.

So, the moral of the story is, move along. There will be no crackdown and no chilling effect. If your commercial shows Sonic running at the camera and spouting catchphrases in lush, prerendered environments, you're probably in the clear. But if your commercial shows Sonic, from behind, running through lush, prerendered environments as a small element in a sequence rife with visual information, as Sonic hops and destroys small enemies one by one with a homing attack, while a secondary character annoyingly spouts a running commentary on the level, you show no actual gameplay to contrast this with, and continuous text captions strongly imply that this is the real game, you're probably going to recieve a call from the government.

Don't cheat. It's as bad in advertising as it is on Xbox Live.(TM)

2006-02-20T00:19:00.000-08:00

Smashing Dreams

I've heard some people talk about how the new Super Smash Bros. for Revolution will probably use the Revolution controller in some new and interesting way. STOP IT. Do you know what Super Smash Bros. with the special motion-sensor controller would be? It would be you, hitting your opponent, over the head, with a Revolution controller. You don't need a game to do that. You don't need a system to do that. All you need is the controller and somebody to hit upside the head with it.

I say, stick to the traditional controls for Smash Bros. It's a traditional kind of game, anyway. And don't do something stupid, like, have the controller do something when you swoop it around while playing. Only your grandmother does that.

However, I do think, with unshaking confidence, that if the next Super Smash Bros. had a "Sega vs. Nintendo" theme, it would be so awesome, it would have to take out a second mortgage to pay for all its awesomeness. See, people say Sonic should be in the next one, but no, you can't have just Sonic in there! That's like saying he's sold out. You gotta have, I think, the Ultimate Sega Lineup, which would be:

Sonic
Tails
Knuckles
Amy
Akira
Pai
Sarah
Amigo
NiGHTS

...with Shadow, Chaos, and Dural as secret characters. Just think, Sonic could be a light, lightning-fast character, Tails could focus on recoveries, Knuckles could be a boxer, Amy a master of the angry woman style (complete with magic hammer), Shadow a slower and more powerful Sonic, Akira and friends could have slightly exaggerated versions of their native fighting styles to fit the Smash Bros. theme, and Amigo, would, uh, shake maracas. Chaos would be a master of that cool stretchy arm thing that he does, while Dural, could, um, be an expertly balanced character, like Mario, but with a more reserved, realistic fighting style. NiGHTS would... um... what would NiGHTS do? Maybe it would be best not to have him in there, 'cause he never really stands, walks, or runs, thus removing him from the norm of Smash Bros. fighters. Perhaps he could fly just a bit above the platforms, and "jump" when requested by the player? And do his aerial acrobatics as his recovery moves? Oooooh...

On the Nintendo side, I'd like to see Max and Grit from Advance Wars added to the roster. Max likes to brawl up close and personal, whereas Grit likes to take snipes from the sidelines. They'd both be formidable and highly specialized characters. Wario and Waluigi would be cool, as slower, more powerful versions of their counterparts. But not Toad, I don't think he should be in there. What would his super attack be, the "Mega Inform-You-That-Your-Princess-is-Elsewhere?" Yeesh.

And, in the next Smash Bros., I'd like to see more players than just four. Sure, that's all the Revolution can support, but the Revolution has WiFi support and is super small and transport-able, so why not allow other Revolutions to act as hubs? I say, support twelve fighters in huge, complex arenas! You could play on teams and never feel alone again. C'mon, what's the point of online if you're limited to so few people?

2006-02-19T23:47:00.000-08:00

Shadow of a Doubt

Some spoilers from Shadow are below. Not story spoilers, that is, but spoilers for some of the secret stuff you get. You've been warned.

Here's the problem with Shadow The Hedgehog... it's easy.

There's just not a lot of thought to it. Any enemy, no matter how huge, can be brought down in relatively few laser blasts. Thus, being much, much larger than Shadow is no longer an advantage, if you're an enemy; in fact, it makes you an easier target. By far, the most annoying enemy in the game is the Beetle, the tiny, floating bugger that, if you fail to strike it point-blank within seconds of seeing it, will proceed to pummel you Dick Cheney-style with an endless spray of whatever ungodly weapon GUN decided to outfit this tiny, floating pod with. That, and the Beetles seem to want to hold my hand. Ick.

I'm writing this because I've finally cleaned out Shadow. Like Sonic Heroes before it, getting straight As (excuse me for a moment.... WOOO HOOO!) unlocks a "super hard" mode, a throwback to the old days, wherein you start at level one and then progress through every level of the game, in order, and if you run out of lives, you're done.

This extra hard mode is, well, harder, significantly, in a few places, with more treacherous placement of platforms and all helping hands removed (yes, there is no more running commentary on the levels; funny, I didn't miss having some squeaky-voiced marsupial commenting on every screen's worth of information). The problem is, if you've already completed every mission in Shadow with all As, then this extra mode is a breeze. Again, there are bigger, badder enemies that are more common and more deadly, but a larger enemy only means it's easier to hit. Shadow doesn't seem so outmached when you consider that he's the only guy who can jump, the only guy with a reasonable degree of intellegence. and the only guy whose tactical strategies involve more than standing in one place and shooting in one direction.

Moreover, though, Sonic was already running into a problem in 3D that he was just too powerful. Now that we have Shadow, and now that Shadow has a gun, there's not even a hint of difficulty to bringing down even the largest enemies. In fact, I think a lot of the fun of the game, for me, was studying the different weapon types. (Unfortunately, I cannot find an official source for the names of the weapons, so I just have to think of them as the rifle, the longer rifle, the longer rifle with the pump thingy, and the whoa mega badass huge long gun.) That said, it is fun to run through vast, beautiful worlds and unload your weapon upon hordes of alien fools (and the missions are very interesting, from diffusing twenty bombs in five minutes to destroying Eggman's heavily armored craft as it winds through the level), but, just ask any game design student and they'll tell you: it's hard to create empowerment in a game unless the player is constantly up against impossible odds. Where's the challenge in Shadow? I barely even used the continue function, and that's for a game whose story mode only lasts a few hours (since, you know, there are 326 possible routes through the story).

Anyway, back to the hard mode. I did, like a good gamer, horde extra lives because I knew that, even though everything I was doing was easier than a walk through Twinkle Park, at some point I might get to some area that's so insurmountably difficult that I will burn through extra lives until that one remaining life may concievably save my tail and prevent me from starting all over again. Trouble is, that never happened. ...Well, some extremely troubling platforms in Cosmic Fall caused me to lose about ten lives, forcing me to go from a colossal thirty lives to a merely staggering twenty. Other than that, though, nothin'. Thanks to my expert training through getting all A ranks, I breezed through this extra hard mode with lives and lives to spare. ...Again, lots more enemies don't really matter if their bulky appearance only serves to beg you to pop them in the metal breastplate a few times and get a heafty load of Hero or Dark points for destroying them.

I'm not sure what the new Sonic The Hedgehog will be like, but I hope they address this matter of difficulty. Sonic The Hedgehog, the original, was a very difficult game, by today's standards at least, and by the last level it was downright harrowing. As a child, I had to take breaks and focus on my breathing in order to keep from being too tense.

Oh, and Sonic Rush is also not very difficult at all, and the last level is downright dissappointing (usually, the last level is a place where you can showcase your mad skills, but not here). The focus on pure speed meant that levels are usually less than three minutes long, and almost never require you to show off real platforming prowess. It's almost not even a Sonic game, in that sense. It's a fairly good game, yes, but not a Sonic game, the way you'd think.

That said, the new Sonic The Hedgehog appears to be starting the series anew, with a fresh look and a clean slate. Old sins are forgiven. I can't wait to see Sonic reborn.

2006-02-19T22:10:00.000-08:00

How to Build a Sentence, Dawg

I'm sorry to report that this has nothing to do with videogames, I just saw it on Slashdot and got so infuriated I had to write something.

Here is Wired's copyeditor complaining that all of our fancy technology and lightning-fast communication is turning language into an impenetrable smog, a deluge of vernacular and shorthand from which no cohorent thought escapes. He's onto something, certainly, 'cause it's hard to tell what to do when you recieve a text message from a friend that appears to be random letters and numbers. But, I get off his train pretty quick.

For instance, what should we do about it? He doesn't say. Not one sentence of his rant (that's what it is, a rant, not an editorial, not an essay) is devoted to a solution.

It's sad because what he's addressing is a real problem. If you do not know, our language is falling apart. Proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling--and more importantly, the organization and statement of a clear and coherent thought--are not emphasized in school any more. Meanwhile, illiteracy in our businesses leads to communication breakdowns, where failure to form a clear and concise sentence has turned polite cooperation between two parties into bitter standoffs.

If you don't know, I'm something of a grammar Nazi, and I can proofread with the best of them. It's not because I don't think language can evolve and change; far from it, in fact, as I believe that the rules of language ought to be learned and respected, but occasionally bent in service of making a clear and concise thought. But not a day goes by (okay, not a week) that somebody will say "if it was" in a hypothetical sense (poor use of the subjunctive mood), or tell somebody "to not" do something (AUGH! split infinitive), and haven't the faintest idea that they've done something wrong. Apparently, not even pithy college students learn grammar any more. Teaching people to use language is not even the goal of the teacher, any more, it seems, it's relegated to the annoying Harley Reynolds who corrects _everybody_ when they form an atrocious sentence like, "can you tell me if it is raining outside?"

This may seem like nitpicking, but look at it this way: when foreigners come to America, or any other English-speaking country, they find a language that is an insurmountable soup of conflicting rules and dialects, a language that is so confusing they must think they should start by figuring out which end is up. I'm not saying we should replace English; not at all, because English is one of the richest, most descriptive languages we have in the world, and has a little touch of just about every language there is. I'm just saying that the, uh, "open-source" model of language, where nobody tries to manage everything and the language just mutates off in every concievable geographical direction, does not make a language better, it makes it worse. This may be the excuse of choice for people who speak horrendous English (you've heard it before, "oh, language is meant to evolve"), but it is merely a convenient shrugging-off of their duty to write and speak something that is coherent, managed, and communicable.

If you think language should evolve without restriction, should flow freely through the streets like water through Station Square, you might want to take a look at postwar Japan. Japan historically had poor national transportation, and as a result, nobody really spoke the same language. So, after World War II, Japan took it upon herself to educate her children in "standard Japanese," and as a result of that investment, the Japanese can communicate well enough within their borders to have become an economic powerhouse. I recognize that the concept of making a nationwide effort to teach children a standardized language probably scares the daylights out of the people who say that language should grow and change without restriction, but it was a large step in restoring Japan's national identity, dignity, and productivity. Now, all Japanese can speak standard Japanese.

However, what they did not do is eridicate the rich local dialects that had evolved, and this is where I part ways with Wired's copy editor. I've always felt that, no matter how much we should learn and practice our language so that we have it down like a martial art (and not the more popular Drunken Monkey Style English), when we're speaking colloquially, a lot of rules go out the window. For instance, you may have noticed that I very rarely swear on this blog; as far as I'm concerned, swearing is for bad writers. (I have used "*%^()@!" and such several times; it's 'cause I'm a bad writer.) It may surprise you to know that, in real life, I swear like a %^*@#)!in' sailor. (Speaking of which, do you know where I might find any?) It is good for people to practice the rules of language enough so that they have it down even in casual conversation, but nevertheless, when you're at the bar at 10:00pm you're not going to be Oscar Wilde.

The main point of this Wired article is that, through IM, online gaming, and other such means of instant communication, in the space of a mere decade we've evolved an entirely new vernacular tradition that bears little or no resemblance to standard English. I say, why is that a problem? I've always felt instant messages and cell-phone text messages are the written equivalent to the spoken vernacular, so why bother to police this brave new world of instant communications where most of the offending messages say merely things like, "w@" or "Im @ da bkstore"? How is this any more wrong than, when people speak out loud, they often fail to finish their sentences or will speak in sentence fragments?

And also, every country has its own rich vernacular traditions. Osaka, in Japan, I understand, has something similar to our famed New York dialect here in America, only richer and even more convoluted. Black English, or Ebonics, is a language all its own, with its own rules and governing traditions set in stone when black people were forcibly cut off by the white world through powerful and persistent racism. How is it wrong that we have a new language evolving here in the online space, with its own bizarre twists and turns, phrases like "for the win" and a strong tradition of, upon vanquishing your opponent, proclaiming to the heavens that "all your base are belong to us"?

Even more laughably, Wired's copy editor goes on to complain about Internet shorthand. Excuse me if "BTW" takes not as long to type as "by the way," or if a semicolon and a closing parenthesis forming a crude winking face is easier to type than "what I said was meant to be a note of ironic encouragement and should not be taken at face value?" I wouldn't write "FTW" in a scholarly paper, but I hardly see why it is wrong in an E-mail between friends.

Furthermore, I'm completely against the idea that the Internet, and instant, worldwide communication, is somehow destroying our language. Surely, it's strengthening it. Japanese became fragmented into many different languages because of poor transportation and lack of communication. Now, with greater education, communication, and transportation, Japanese is one of the most formulaic, standardized languages there is, without any of English's bizarre vernacular twinges and linguistic hodgepodges. Meanwhile, with so much of the world speaking English, it would be easy for them to break off according to geographic area and merely begin speaking their own bizarre variant of English, but that is not likely to happen so as long as people in Texas are IMing people in Liverpool every day, and the entire English-speaking world is connected through constant, instantaneous communication. It used to be that the language you were exposed to was merely the language you were physically surrounded by, and now, with the advent of the Internet, you are taught to speak your language not only by your immediate geographical neighbors but by speakers of your language all over the world. Perhaps this results in slang like "podcasting" and "Google bombing" rising to the surface and becoming common only in a matter of years, but slang aside, it also surely results in a more tight-knit, constant language that stays true to its roots, stays universal, and stays understood by all. After all, how other way would someone in Pennsylvania be able to IM someone in South Africa? Not very well, I'll tell you that.

But also, I see no reason why this IM slang, this rich vernacular all its own, can't be celebrated as the lovable stepchild of the Queen's English. There was a vacuum, and IM slang filled it. It's not for writing business E-mails, it's not for writing thesis papers, and as far as I know, it's not even for asking about when the party is and whether or not you should turn left at Popeyes to get there. It's for punching the fewest cell phone keys possible to inform your friend of your relative location, and for expressing your admiration for a deathmatch opponents skills while typing as few letters as possible so as not to get fragged while typing.

That said... he's right about something. There's really, really something to be said for writing good English online. You do indeed appear as a higher tier of person when you bother to capitalize the first letter of your sentence. Communication is the lifeblood of a functional society, and so when your quick, one-off messages consist of full sentences and transmit a full, coherent thought apiece, people treat you with more respect and flamewars are instantly averted. Nobody can see you online and nobody can tell what you really are thinking, so your only means of presenting yourself are verbal. It's not that you need to write like William Safire when asking your friend if the pizza place is still open at 2am, it's that "Hey, is the pizza place still open?" carries a lot more verbal weight and sounds a lot more friendly than "pizza place still open?"

Here's what I do what the Wired copy editor does not do: propose a solution. He's right: there's a war on our language, and the viral belief that language should be scattered to the four winds is spreading throughout our nation's schoolhouses and into the minds of America's elite. If instant messaging does indeed pose a threat to the English language, what we cannot do is fight the tide and smash the technology, as this fellow seems to want to do. What we need is a torrent of English instruction, a national push towards educating our children in the Queen's English. Slang is wonderful, Ebonics is wonderful, and language as a growing and changing thing is wonderful, but those things will happen without our intervention. What is needed is for a strong literary tradition to form in America, for our children to be strongly educated and indoctrinated in the proper structure and style of standard English, for them to grow up learning and habitually speaking English that befits an American citizen.

If new technology is poses a huge threat to our language, what we need is a buffer, a shield, to prevent this transition from dealing a crippling blow to the English language. Like it or not, what our children do is the future, and all we can do is prepare and equip our children to face this transition. There's no pushing back the tide; instead, it is better to understand it and figure out how we can pass on our old values to children immersed in new technologies.

There's something else. This Wired editorial also uses not one, but two vulgar and upsetting images for no particular reason, each of which are nothing more than the most vulgar of the IM slang he most constantly derides, only dressed up in Harvard language. But also, he opens an entirely different can of worms in the space of one sentence that is itself enclosed in parentheses, showing exactly how little he has been exposed to opposing viewpoints. That is, he says, "(calculators should not be allowed in a math class, ever)," to which I say this: (In a good math class, calculators are not introduced until the high school level, where students are already well-versed in how to solve math problems without a calculator, and the calculator is merely a basis for solving much more complicated problems that are beyond the scope of a calculator's functions. You can argue that calculators are introduced too early, or that they should not be introduced at all and students should be forced to learn AP calculus by hand; but please, don't include the hateful implication that today's math students are stupid because they use calculators. They don't use calculators because they are too stupid to do math without them, they use calculators because they have been asked to compute a very complicated problem that they could do by hand and reach an accurate answer, but doing so would be both cumbersome and a waste of time. But really, the bottom line is that if you remove calculators from math class, the end result will be that students will learn much less challenging material in the space of a year because of the handicap put on them by a bias against calculators. If they can do math quickly and accurately without a calculator, they should be allowed to move on to harder stuff.)

In closing, and in summary: d00d! this wured articl is teh sux0r.

2006-02-02T00:57:00.000-08:00

I'll Take Two, Please

Take Two stock is plummeting.

Here's the deal. Last year, we faced three big problems as an industry: Hot Coffee, conglomeration, and Jack Thompson. No, wait, I mean, the console transition. Take Two has faced the brunt of these three problems (and has been barely nicked by the one that doesn't count). According to their 10-K filing, they have gotten fat eating small developers, their Hot Coffee scandal has cost them $19 million in lost profits and caused them to be up to their ears in lawsuits. Meanwhile, the console transition has caused their sales to take a major hit, and analysts are telling you to jump ship on Take Two. That's right, analysts say Take Two's only hope is for their chairmen to reclaim their families' honor through ritual suicide. ...Not quite, but close.

I say, buy Take Two stock by the barrel. Who will miss it? Apparently you can get it dirt cheap right now, and two of their three big problems (the cost of buyouts, the console transition putting the squeeze on sales) are ones that only promise more profits down the road. I mean, they've bought the developers of 2K Sports and Civilization, among others! They've got a strong brand in Grand Theft Auto, one of the strongest in the industry! The console transition is about to unleash a tidal wave of profit-y goodness onto the barren wasteland of the gaming industry! EVERYTHING MUST GO!

So, anyway, I know that the cool thing to do is to buy stock in a tech company while it's peaking, and then sell when things start looking dreary. This is called "losing money," and it's the hip thing for hip investors to do hiply. Personally, I say buy low and sell high, but I'm not an investor, so what do I know? Every--and I mean every--analyst is telling you to sell Take Two stock like strings of colored lights on December 26th. "Buy low and sell high" means to buy when you have low self-esteem, and then sell when you're high.

It's up to you, dear readers: keep an eye on Take Two's stock. If I'm right, I won't make any money (remember, I'm not an investor, but I do have a scratched-up copy of Legend of Oasis that might interest you), but I will have the right to do the happy dance. Hey, I know at least one person is happy that Take Two stock is available on the cheap...

2006-01-22T21:34:00.000-08:00

Why Fight the Connection

Well, as I'm sure it made national news, the Reynolds household has recently gotten Wi-Fi set up. What does this mean? Well, for me, it means that I don't have to be shivering out in the cold when I play Mario Kart wirelessly. (That is, shivering, out in the cold, on the sidewalk in front of the house of a WEP-ignorant stranger. Lots of 'em in my neighborhood, I tell ya, and I've stolen bandwidth from them all.)

Playing Mario Kart online, inside, is a new experience for me, but what makes this important for you is that I can give more detailed impressions of playing Mario Kart online. First of all, yes, it's a blast, and I could do it forever if I didn't have a life to get back to. Second of all, no, it's not as deep as I imagine an online console game would be expected to be, but it's still boatloads of fun. Third...

Disconnecting. What I find is that, if I'm lucky enough to get a full three opponents in an online match, they will nevertheless drop like flies. Whoever gets last place seems to get miffed every damn time and disconnect. Then, surely someone's connection will die a mysterious and lonesome death, leaving me with only one opponent left to fight. And, if I'm unlucky enough to beat him, he will disconnect as well, just in time for it not to register as a win for me. It's like a Hemingway version of Mario Kart, to race, in the rain, alone.

I'm wondering if the inclusion of a "forfeit" option would have stemmed this problem a little. I can understand if you are losing badly and don't feel like you should finish a race you are destined to lose, although I kind of feel like you ought to take it on the chin 'cause losing is a part of the game (and if you were to look at my Wi-Fi Connection stats, you'll see that I've done more than my fair share of it). It's just, if we expect people not to be jerks, there should be a "forfeit" option so that one can quit without being a jerk.

You see, I am not a jerk, so I do not disconnect whenever I have found that somebody has taken my game-playing ability and left it out to dry/smeared its carcass all over the pavement (choose which image you like better). However, this is not my experience with some other people, _especially_ in one-on-one races. So, the effect is that my win/lose count is penalized on account of me not being a jerk. Oh well, that's life, I guess.

In other news, I badly want Animal Crossing. I'll tell you when I have it.

Oh, and I've discovered that Sonic Rush has an ungodly rank above "A." It's the "S" rank, and it stands for "Surely you were joking when you said this game skimped on replay value." In other words, I'll be playing this game for a long, long time...

2006-01-17T01:02:00.000-08:00

Game Journalism = Good

After weeks of opportunistic digs at the game journalism business, I really want to step in and say that it's not true what you read... game journalism is not in fact a dismal morass from which no hope escapes. Sure, sure, you go to the bookstore and pick up a game magazine and all you get is laudatory previews with screenshots that take up more of the page than actual writing, but that's the nature of the magazine industry (they make their money on hype). I'm just sick of reading posts on game blogs that essentially say "game journalism is bad. Game journalism is bad, bad. Game journalism is bad, bad, bad..." over and over until their article is wildly popular and linked to by Slashdot Games (must not fly into a jealous rage...)

Next Generation is an absolute godsend. They're strictly a cold, hard, videogames business reporting joint, and that means, no hype. They've even gotten this guy named Eric-Jon Rossel Waugh, who I really wish had a name easier to say and to spell, who writes a terrifically funny and astute column on each week's new releases. I truly wish more game websites were like Next Generation, but hey, as long as we have it, I'm cool. In fact, I've almost totally stopped reading IGN, my previous game journo joint of choice, except I still come back to read Matt Cassamassina's mailbag (cartoons = teh funny).

4 Color Rebellion is a troupe of Nintendo fanboys who write a very light and funny Nintendo blog that occasionally touches on other subjects, such as comic books. They definately eschew the vulgar or cynical trend of most game blogs, and you have no idea how happy that makes me. No, I do not read Kotaku or Joystiq, and for your information, I'm much happier that way.

Chris Morris, at CNN Money, writes a column called "Game Over" on the videogame industry. He only writes it once a week, if that, but it always offers astute commentary and analysis that stands head and shoulders above the lauding-anything-that-shines game journalism that the aforementioned snarky game blogs are always complaining about. Oh, and by way of his review of the N-Gage, he unintentionally instigated the phenomenon that is Side Talkin', and that makes him cool by default.

Nintendo Power may be a magazine that may be more intentionally titled, Nintendo Pravda (har har! I made a funny), as it is a magazine solely there to advise you on how to spend even more money on Nintendo products. That said, if you want hype, you might as well get it straight from the horse's mouth... and Nintendo Power, from the recent issues I've seen, is an extraordinarily well-written mag. Put it next to EGM and there's almost no comparison. If you're someone who already contributes lots of money to the Nintendo empire by way of buying all their products (as Nintendo Power will advise you to do), then you can't go wrong reading Nintendo Power's well-written commentary on all things Nintendo. Just don't go too overboard on the Nintendo devotion, fanboy.

That's all I can think of. Can you think of any more? Post a comment and tell us why the people who complain that game journalism is beyond repair are simply not looking in the right places. Set a course for good games journalism, and engage.

(Oh, and one more thing: why not start a blog, and do some of your own gaming commentary? Trust me, it cleanses the soul. But please, do not write a game blog that just complains about game journalists these days. We've got enough of those. And keep the swearing down... we're not junior high school students, you know.)

2006-01-16T18:29:00.000-08:00

Rushin' Roulette

That enormously clever title is such to indicate that Sonic Rush is a mixed bag.

Good God, the art is beautiful. Wonderful. Excellent. Fantastique. And for the first time ever, Sonic talks in a 2D platform game, and Jason Griffith supplies his voice to perfection, and it's a dead ringer for the dearly departed Ryan Drummond. The music is supplied by Hideki Naganuma (Jet Grind Radio), and it's amazing, and you'll wonder why more Sonic games haven't gone for hip-hop techno. The levels are quite large, the trick system is sophisticated, and the game is faster than ever before, truly living up to the name "Sonic Rush."

Of course, there are problems.

Namely, there's the problem that every portable Sonic game ever made has had... Sonic is too damn big. Or, should I say, the viewing area in front of him is too damn small. This was excusable in the days of the Game Gear and the Neo Geo Pocket Color where they were using only enough pixels to differentiate Sonic from a blue blob. With the beautifully detailed Sonic sprites in the Sonic Advance series, this excuse wore thin. And with the collossally amazing cel-shaded 3D Sonic model in Sonic Rush, the excuse is thinner than a starving supermodel.

This isn't helped by the fact that, in Sonic Rush, the Nintendo DS's two screens are combined essentially to form one very tall screen, a not altogether intuitive decision for a Sonic game, but it works all right. Sometimes you'll see enemies on the top screen and you'll have to dodge their bombs while on the bottom screen, or the second screen will enhance the sense of scale when climbing or descending a vertically-oriented area. But, overall, something that makes this kind of silly in practice is that you, arbitrarily, can see everything that's going on a great distance straight up or straight down from where you are, while you can see barely six or so Sonic-lengths in front of you.

And since this game, like no Sonic game before it, puts the emphasis on speed (I am not going to use the phrase "balls-out," sorry to dissappoint), it hurts the overall game design that Sonic is so nearsighted. I'm never going to be able to see the original Sonic games with objectivity, since I grew up with them and consider them to be almost as pure as the Holy Virgin Mother. But, if I remember (meedlo-meedlo-meedlo-meedlomeedlomeedlo), the original Sonic The Hedgehog struck a wonderful balance between speed and platforming. This one chucks the platforming and goes for pure speed, an interesting design decision, but be warned, it makes the game not as "retro" as you think.

Actually, the new concept in Sonic Rush of super-super-high-speed Sonic is actually pretty cool. Anyone who has played a 2D Sonic game before knows that, in such a game, you always want to stick to the highest route possible, because it will, in general, be the safest and fastest path through the level. Dimps has commendably put branching paths in all of its portable Sonic games (Sonic Pocket Adventure, Sonic Advance 1-3, and Sonic Rush, for the uninitiated), and starting with Sonic Advance 2, a trick system added a level of sophistication to the traditional Sonic branching path. Here's how it works: whenever you bounce off a spring or leap from a ramp, you can do tricks by pressing various buttons (try A, A, A, B, Up+R, A, A, A, B for one boatload of points). Most notably, holding up on the D-pad and tapping R will send Sonic flying upward for a little more air, and holding left or right and tapping R will send Sonic into a Jackie Chan flying kick that will destroy any enemy foolish enough to be in its path. Also, the grinding system is a masterstroke... hop on a rail and hold forward to gain speed, and press R to change grinds and do tricks (seeing Sonic grind a rail using his glove is a sight to see). Once the rail ends, Sonic is propelled upward and can do the aforementioned air tricks. Sweet!

What this means is that how well you do the tricks will determine the path you take through the level. Do the tricks right, hop on the right platforms, and generally go through the level looking cool as can be, and by the grace of God you'll be cruisin' along the level's highest-up and safest route. Mess up the tricks, get hit by enemies, or miss key platforms and you're a candidate for stumbling and ending up on a lower, more treacherous route. Mess up any more, fool, and you might find yourself falling off the level to your death. Ouch!

So, as you can see, Dimps's obsessive focus on speed is a novel idea somewhat hampered by the awkward screen layout and a few kinks in the level design. For instance, sometimes you'll be delivered directly from a "speed area" (in which you, were, say, racking up mad points while grinding a rail at Mach speed) to directly under a falling piston, giving you about a one in five chance of being crushed to your death by no fault of yours (it's one of the most jarring things I've ever experienced in a videogame, right next to the point in which I realized that the entire team behind Gunvalkyrie was asleep at the wheel). Also, sometimes enemies will be placed in your running path where you have no possible chance of having the Jedi reaction time required to attack them (as opposed to being hit by them and losing all your hard-earned rings and a good chunk of your dash meter), because, once again, the screen is too goddamn small or Sonic is too goddamn big. Oh, and you could just make a habit of rolling along those speed paths thus crushing all enemies in your way thanks to Sonic's spines, but THAT will cause you to miss some important pulley handles and fall off the level to your death. Yeah, that's what I thought.

It will make me cry to say this, but this game would have worked much better on the PSP--BWAAAAAAAHHH!!! (sob sob sob) The PSP's large, wide screen would have been a perfect (sniff) fit for this (BWAAAAAAAHHH!!!) game. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go blow my nose. (HONNNNNNNK)

Also, I would love to see this game on the PSP in 3D. The game's mechanics are essentially a cross between Jet Grind Radio and Sonic The Hedgehog... so why not do a colorful, 3D, portable Sonic game that's kind of a cross between Jet Grind Radio and Sonic Adventure? I'd buy that. Hell, I'd buy a PSP to buy that. In fact, all the heathens who don't like Sonic Adventure and its derivatives would probably buy that and then complain about "too many characters" or some nonsense.

Speaking of which... Blaze, Sonic's female co-star, is extremely weak. She's basically Sonic, slower, with an odd jetpack thingy. I cursed all the time I spent with Blaze. I wanted to be spending time with my good friend Sonic, but no, I'm a completist with Sonic games, I have to do the two stories concurrently. Bleh.

The story is pretty competently written, for what it's worth. In my opinion, it just doesn't belong... and I'm a big proponent of story in videogames (I'm definately not a press-start-to-skip-the-cutscene gamer).

If I had a choice for an "alternate character," I'd pick Amy, since she was the only non-Sonic character in the Sonic Advances that I had any interest in playing as. Tails and Knuckles where nigh invincible, with their abilities nullifying the multi-tiered level aspect of the games and the trick system. Amy, however, was a much different character from Sonic, substantially slower than Sonic and unable to use the Sonic Spin, but with a great big freakin' hammer to compensate. She was a much different hero than Sonic, more along the lines of a more traditional platformer, and that's what made her interesting. Blaze, though... she's Sonic without the appeal, or the fun. Remind me again why I have to play through her levels to get the ending?

(If anybody here remembers: Sonic & Knuckles for the Genesis had a much more competent "alternate character" system, where the much higher difficulty of Knuckles's levels, coupled with his lower speed and jump height, and the fact that a few places were COMPLETELY different from what Sonic went through, made Knuckles's quest a substantially different experience from Sonic's. Sonic Adventure kept the focus on Sonic's quest, with five other characters providing very interesting and fun side-quests that included fishing and shooting. Sonic Adventure 2 swapped frequently between three different gameplay modes, and I'm the only person on Earth, it seems, who liked that. From how it looks, the new Sonic The Hedgehog coming this year will be Sonic by himself, and it's probably about time they put the focus back on our blue buddy. Anyway, these are just examples of alternate-character schemes done much more competently than the whole Sonic/Blaze thingy in Sonic Rush.)

Well, my time is almost up, I suppose. Sonic Rush is a good game, very different from the old Sonics, but striking out in a bold new direction that could yield interesting consequences for the Sonic series. Final score: 8/10.

(A few other notes: Seven Chaos Emeralds to gather in very well-done Special Stages, along with a letter-grade system, expand this game's somewhat skimpy replay value. You go through the main game fast--this is Sonic, after all--but I'm still quaking with fury trying to get all A ranks, and I haven't even gotten through the third zone with 'em yet, so I'll probably still be playing this game for quite a while. Oh, and there's a two-player battle mode, also, which I have yet to try. Also, a friend can download one Act from the game, with either Sonic or Blaze, and try it for themselves. Isn't that nice?)

2006-01-12T12:01:00.000-08:00

Thompson Keeps Thalking

Jack Thompson opened his mouth again.

That guy makes me sad. He just... does. I feel bad for him. Look at him, he's telling us that we're living in an escapist fantasy world and he's broadcasting from reality. But, I digress.

Anyway, he issued a kind warning to gamers, that our choice of entertainment is "escapist" and "masturbatory." Now, that comment struck me as a little bit strange. I would think that most already knew these things about videogames (that's why we have a games website called The Escapist, after all). Personally, I was always disturbed by that enshrining of escapism in the name of a website... the fact that videogames are essentially escapist I always thought of as something cautionary rather than something to be celebrated (as in, please be sure to return to reality when you're done). But, of course, being "escapist" isn't something you can level at videogames alone... action movies and trashy romance novels appeal to the exact same centers of the brain.

But, what I find interesting is that he warns us that videogames are "masturbatory." This does not only indicate that Jack Thompson has a potty mouth (huh, huh, huh), but that he's completely clueless to our culture (not a surprise). Really, J.C. Herz made the same observation in her book, Joystick Nation, saying that single-player gaming is an essentially masturbatory experience. I'm not going to elaborate on that particular analogy, I imagine that your imagination can take it from there (and, once finished, you'll regret ever giving your imagination that much control over your cranium).

So, what Jack Thompson is giving us is advice. Limit your gaming to a couple of hours a day and be sure to keep checking up on the real world. The problem is, I don't think he realizes how much we already understand what he's saying. When done correctly, videogames are an inherently social experience. One of my friends formed an entire, vast circle of friends around playing DDR at the local arcade. Have you ever watched little kids hurry on home to play Zelda, so they can take turns with the controller (that is, one kid controls Link, and the other helms the peanut gallery)? (Children, of course, intuitively understand the concept of taking turns in videogames, something us "my precioussssss" adults could learn something from.) But also, have you ever gone to an arcade and got into a heated battle with someone you never knew? (Guy who I pulled victory out from under in the last second of a Virtual On match at Seattle GameWorks: I'm sorry.) And of course, any group of four bitten by the Smash Brothers bug never forgets it, and you can learn a lot about somebody by how they play Smash Brothers. (For instance, my cold, mysterious friend likes to play Link and use one heavy attack after another before you manage to collect your bearings and whack him with Peach's frying pan.) And, to wrap up this winding and unfocused paragraph... entire online communities have formed around the concept of teamwork, massive teamwork, in pursuit of a shared goal. Don't Camp plays team-based games of Battlefield 2 with the simple rules of "don't camp main spawns," "don't be a jerk," and "play as a team," while the Penny Arcade and PVP webcomics have organized warring World of WarCraft guilds whose maintainers emphasize team play and a mutual appreciation for each team's battle efforts. It's almost like gamers are regular, sociable people.

Ever since Roger Ebert opened his big mouth and gave two thumbs down to the concept of games as art, the whole Internet has been flooded with commentary on whether or not games are art. I think the correct answer (yes) is totally ^$*)(@!ing obvious but I'll get back to that in a moment.

Stephen Johnson wrote a whole book on how videogames and popular culture are actually good for you. He makes a mean argument (that the quality of popular culture, and the degree to which it is cognitively taxing, has been going up steadily since for-freaking-ever, and it's hard to argue with that), but the bottom line is that I have no need for people to regard videogames as being good for you. The hundreds of hours I've poured into Advance Wars has probably made me sharper, and has definately helped me with the basic process of decision making. But, more importantly, it's been fun, so I've never needed any other reason to participate in Advance Wars.

Hearing Jack Thompson level his "advice" toward gamers just reminded me how much, rather than having videogames lauded as "good for you" and high-minded online "magazines" named things like "The Escapist," I just want videogames regarded as a legitimate form of art and entertainment. Some people are really good at making videogames and can express themselves well in that medium. Videogames are difficult to make and require both art and craftsmanship for them to be any good. But also, yes it disturbs me that some people play Grand Theft Auto for ten hours a day. (Yes, I do not like Grand Theft Auto and absolutely think it hurts the industry and would much rather have it be swept under the rug then be lauded by game magazines as a shining example of the possibilities of the gaming medium.) But people who play Grand Theft Auto for ten hours a day are not a picture of gamers as a whole. I'm a respectable, kind, and intelligent person (if a bit arrogant and boastful, it seems), and I don't want my personhood to be nullified when people find out that I like Sonic The Hedgehog and therefore I must be one of those people who never go outside and do nothing but play videogames with their eyes glued to the screen every... single... day. I think videogames are fun, and that's the only excuse I need to play them.

In other words, heed Thompson's advice... but it's stuff most of us already know and already heed.

2006-01-03T08:04:00.000-08:00

All-New, All-Different

Well, that was a while, wasn't it? Sorry about that. I've kind of blacked out. Had a nervous breakdown and forgot all about my secret identity as Harley Reynolds. So... sorry about that.

I've not yet procured Animal Crossing, but by the Gods I will, because I've always wanted to play a game where I get to have a house and decorate it (my secret shame). However, I did get Sonic Rush for Christmas, and god damn was I happy about that. Warning: it ain't as "old-school" as everybody says it is... it's a Sonic game more focused on tricking, bouncing, and good, old-fashioned, F-Zero-has-nothing-on-it speed. However, it is fun. The limited space of the DS's screens makes me happily imagine what a 3D Sonic game would be like if it had this focus, you know, if you bred Sonic with Jet Grind Radio (apologies for the unpleasant image) and focused on pure speed rather than finding the eight collectible coins or discovering Shadow's hidden angst.

Speaking of which, I just found out... Shadow got dismal reviews. Fives across the board. That's actually a shocker, because mediocre franchise games tend to get sevens out of pity. However, I don't agree with this. I think Shadow was a barrel of fun. I think, for one, that the concept of a grittier Sonic actually works for a strange reason I haven't been able to figure out... perhaps it's just that blowing things up as a speedy black hedgehog activates a certain pleasing neurochemical in my Harley cortex (we'll call it "shadowmazine").

However, the whole thing about Shadow's angst and blah blah really grates on my nerves. The game opens with Shadow wondering about his past, and having to get the Chaos Emeralds in order to find out the truth. The thing is, we already know his past, because we played Sonic Adventure 2. Basically, a major component of the Shadow game is Shadow trying to figure out what the plot to SA2 was, which some of us can relate to, but not me. I have the whole thing indexed and cross-referenced in my Sonic The Hedgehog vault of knowledge that includes all kinds of obscure Sonic trivia such as what the birthmark on Shadow's left knee is shaped like. (Answer: Montana.)

So, yeah, sometimes the game wanders a little, sometimes you'll get stuck on a really annoying level where you're trying to find seven highly collectible objects and you'll be like, ENOUGH WITH THE HUNTING MISSIONS, SONIC TEAM, WE GET IT, and it is true that the vehicles in the game are as totally cool as they are (for the most part) totally useless (Shadow is a motorcycle is bitchin' until you realize that Shadow proper is faster and more maneuverable and, you know, better), and it's true that the game gives you two sets of conflicting missions and never really lets you let loose with the marsupial carnage. But, despite all this, and the fact that I just wrote an egregious run-on sentence, I think that Shadow is a fun game and if I were reviewing it, which I am, right now, I'd give it a solid seven out of ten.

And, you know, not one of those totally weak sevens that they give out at the game magazines, you know, "boy, this game sucks like you wouldn't believe but we're pansies so it gets seven out of ten," but a real seven out of ten. You know, like the game swung a hammer, hit the button of goodness and watched the mercury rise seven tenths of the way up the meter to reflect the fact that this game is seven-tenths perfect. In fact, I might even give it eight out of ten tomorrow, if I have a particularly good dream tonight about blowing things up as a speedy black hedgehog. I AM ALL I AM ALL I AM!!

Anyway, Happy New Year, everybody! For those of you who don't know, June 23 of this year will be Sonic's fifteenth aniversary, and so this year is the big release of the all-new, all-different Sonic The Hedgehog that I'm praying to the Sonic Team gods will be good. I mean, it looks real pretty, and the concept of going back to basics with the Sonic franchise is something that appeals to me like you wouldn't believe. But... how does it play? Believe me, though, I'm going to be saving up some bones (that is, you know, money) to buy either an Xbox 360 or a PlayStation 3 to play this new-fangled game on. Feel free to try and sway me towards either option... I'm not particularly attached either towards Xbox "Parade of Problems" 360 or PlayStation "Not a Game Machine" 3. In fact, the Nintendo "Sorry, No Pretty Graphics" Revolution sounds like a pretty tantalizing option, save for the fact that my family is thinking of getting an HDTV and hoo boy would I like to play Sonic in 1427 dpi or whatever the specification is. Or something.

I just had a vision where Sega came out with a new game console that looked like a pretty white rack and you would insert the competing consoles into its three slots and it would combine their power and capability to form the ultimate game console and would say, like, "by your powers combined, I am Sega Dreamcast!!" Or something. But, then I started thinking about cheese. Cheese...

Anyway, this long, rambling post was going to go somewhere, specifically, to my New Year's Resolution not to have these long, rambling posts any more, as they supposedly hurt my blog's chance of hitting the Big Time and achieving my dream of vanquishing all those vulgar and cynical game blogs that dominate the (ahem) "blogosphere." However, I feel that with the new year ought to come an all-new, all-different Harley Reynolds. That's right, starting as soon as Next Generation starts updating again, which is tomorrow, I'm going to stop it with these short bursts of long, nonsensical posts. I am a changed blogger! Instead, expect to see lots of short commentary on recent goings-on in the game world. I can't guarantee I won't have a nervous breakdown and black out for a month again, but you can expect me to say... things... about games.

I mean, so much has been going on in the past few weeks! The 360 launch is a disaster and all of Microsoft's hopes of dominating the industry depend on Sony making some big mistake with its launch. The anti-game laws that were breeding like bunnies earlier this year are now dropping like flies. Nintendo says that it will finally reveal the Revolution in May, the last known copy of Sonic X-Treme surfaces only to end up deep in the bowels of the dark world of videogame collectors, never to be seen again, and the DS is still outselling the PSP, nearly a year after the tech pundits were saying the PSP would stomp it flat (and back then I opined that the PSP would enjoy fleeting success and the DS would endure; not to toot my own horn, but TOOT! TOOT! TOOT!). And, in other news, Harley Reynolds sees the new Battlestar Galactica and finds it every bit as good as everybody says it is. Damn.

So, look forward to a bold new year in gaming, as I, Harley Reynolds, continue to opine and whine (that's going to be the new name of this blog, Harley Reynolds's Opine 'n' Whine) and hold your hand throughout what will surely be a tumultuous year of hardware launches, anti-game bloviating from arrogant politicians, endless fanboy wars on dark corners of the Internet, Peter Moore not shutting up about how great the 360 is, and the high-definition format war that may or may not reach its bloody climax in 2006. All in all, 2006 looks to be an exciting year, and with all the activity I am halfway tempted to stay in a bunker until I'm sure that the smoke has cleared. But that would be shirking my duty. I am Harley Reynolds. This is who I am.

2005-11-18T00:22:00.000-08:00

The Black Blur

I've got Shadow The Hedgehog. Here are my impressions from the first level.

It's a very intriguing game. First, a note. I have whined previously about the concept of a "grittier" Sonic, and about fears that Shadow would be a brainless anti-hero, a tale of carnage for its own sake. I also expressed a desire for Sonic Team to make good on the game's slogan--"hero or villain? you decide"--and have the player choose whether "their" Shadow would be good or evil.

As it turns out, I didn't know the half of it. They gave Shadow a good dose of Knights of the Old Republic this time; not only can you literally choose to be good or evil, but doing so is not, as in Sonic Adventure 2, relegated to selecting from a menu (what shall it be, sir?), you choose to be good or evil based on your actions and on on whose side you fight. Moreover, depending on which way you choose--once again called "hero" and "dark"--you will go a different way in the story. Not only that, but there's a StarFox-like map showing where you are in the story depending on which missions you've completed, the "good" or "evil" missions. Nice.

The gameplay is a bit... unfocused, so far, but I'm only in the first level. Lots of explosions and slowdown, but pretty graphics and physics nonetheless. On the gameplay side, what I mean by "unfocused" is that it's a little hard to figure out what to do, and I sort of have to choose between running and shooting due to the limitations of my feeble human brain, and the limitations of fighting for one side and choosing which enemies to defeat (a Sonic first). You can, of course, decide to cause some serious carnage by going savage and blowing up everybody with your piece, causing some pretty spectacular explosions, and that's actually disturbingly gratifying. (Another Grand Theft Auto moment is how you can, seriously, pick up a speed limit sign and whack people over the head with it.)

So far, as Shadow, I've had a little angel or devil over my shoulder the whole time. You see, the story begins with aliens attacking the city and claiming that you, Shadow, are one of their own (or at least strongly implying it, and claiming they know the secrets to your past), and the choice you have to make is which side to fight for. Do you defend Earth and the humans, or do you join the winning team and wipe them out? But what I mean by "angel and devil" is a bit more literal... Sonic, our hero, now voiced by Jason Griffith, runs around cheering you on to fight the aliens, while an evil alien with a raspy movie-preview voice ("in a world...") goads you to join the ranks of the aliens and destroy all who oppose you. It's a wonderful dichotomy and I'm glad they decided to have Sonic be a principal character and give him a large role to play.

So far I'm impressed. However, the gameplay has still escaped me somewhat and the graphics, despite the impressive detail and physics, have their slowdown issues. Also, the graphics, from the box cover on, trade in the usual Sonic saccharin-sweet color scheme for something much darker and more subdued, which, while appropriate, doesn't have enough contrast for you to appreciate what's going on or give you the usual videogame cues as to the level design. (I mean, look at the box! I can barely see Shadow's mug from behind all that... grit.)

Oh, and the weapons. I can't forget the weapons. The ring meter, for the first time in Sonic history, is relegated to the lower-left corner of the screen, with the rest of the screen filling you in on weapons and ammo and other such amusements. You probably know by now that Shadow carries a gun, but also, you can find new guns and other weapons, each with their own advantages and disadvantages, scattered throughout the level, such as in crates (...) and dropped by defeated foes. You'll detect some Halo influence here... I do believe the aliens give you stranger weapons than the humans' standard-issue bullet dispensers. You'll also find Halo influence in the presence of vehicles... hop in with the X button and take 'em for a ride, taking out all who oppose you. Great fun. You can also blow up all sorts of scenery with your piece, so be sure to target things that don't move, too.

Finally, the presence of Rings, loops, and Chaos Emeralds remind you that yes, this is a Sonic game (sorta). Run out of rings, and you're easy pickins for the enemies to bust your chops and deprive you of a hard-earned extra life. I assume one hundred rings grant you a one-up, but I haven't done that so far, as there are many explosions and enemies working hard to keep you from gathering too many rings. Remember, all it takes is one hit to make you drop every Ring you have, and you'd better get some back quick or else it's bye-bye Shadow. The Shield, the "super mushroom" allowing you to take one hit without losing your rings, is also back and it looks way cool. (Item boxes have been given a sweet redesign... now they look like capsules, or something.)

So, I'll play it through more and tell you what I think of the whole game. So far, it's Sonic meets Halo plus Knights of the Old Republic, which is a truly bizarre blend. Let us hope that director Takashi Iizuka has had what it takes to bring these three completely different game designs and make 'em dance.

(Oh, and one more thing: this game is grim. I didn't have to tell you that, though. It's just, those with weak stomachs may want to take some lunch-holding seminars before you see some of the stuff in the game... it didn't get E10+ for nothing.)

2005-11-18T00:07:00.000-08:00

LaserQuick is Not Boss, Big Town Hero is Quite Boss

I rescind my earlier statement regarding the downtown Portland LaserQuick and its relative bosshood. I tried connecting to the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection today while sitting on a bench outside the LaserQuick, and no dice. I never made it past track selection without it disconnecting on me. Those guys I was matched up with must have thought I was just being a jerk.

However, I engaged in a bit more warwalking (for fun and profit), and found that the Big Town Hero at 5th and Salmon has a Wi-Fi hotspot that is compatible with the DS, and so--showing my true love for videogames--I stood outside this sandwich shop, after it was closed, after dark, in the cold November weather, with no gloves, leaning against the shop window, for about an hour, as I played Mario Kart with people across the country. The fact that I was willing to do this is truly a testament to how much fun the game is. (The other testament is that the only reason I stopped is because my fingers were getting too cold to play the game; as I type this, they are slowly defrosting, and it is still difficult to type.)

I do want to note one problem with Wi-Fi Mario Kart; four players is a bit slim. If you don't know, Mario Kart has a wonderful tradition of adding some more interaction to a racing game... hard-core racing fanatics can look elsewhere, as Mario Kart gives plenty of ways for somebody in last get back up to first, or for somebody in first to screw up and wind up in fourth (but with a chance back at first). But, with only four people, the line of players is short, and it's a little ridiculous how easy it is to get from last place to first (since the tradition of giving the player in last place better items is upheld). For instance, once, at the very tail end of a race, I got a pack of three mushrooms from an item box, and dashed ahead to the very front of the race... and just as I was at the finish line, a blue shell came and knocked me back to last. I'm not complaning about losing that race in particular--last place is, after all, where I was before I got that nifty item--I just want to demonstrate how it's a little too easy to make it from last place to first, or from first to last, with such a short line up of players. This, unfortunately, is something we can expect to be the norm... I was crushed to read, at the official website of the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection, that Metroid Prime: Hunters online will support only four players in a game at a time. Dammit! My dreams of an FPS with considerable depth on the Nintendo WFC have been dashed. I hope that, at least, we get eight players for local wireless play, so I can have some hope of four-on-four capture the flag.

That said, something we really need is some kind of directory, perhaps a wiki, where people can post which hotspots in which cities have been tested by fans and are known to work with the Nintendo DS. It was a pain in the ass finding the two hotspots I've found so far, and still they aren't very satisfactory (one isn't reliable, and the other requires you either to go in and buy something or stand outside and hope nobody catches you as you lean against the shop window and get your Mario Kart on). I should try Noah's Bagels; I love that place. Do they have Wi-Fi?

2005-11-17T00:13:00.000-08:00

LaserQuick is Boss

I have Mario Kart. Great fun. A bit shallow, but it's the best of its kind. I do hope some deeper games come out for the Nintendo WFC, but hey, it's just getting started, and Mario Kart is a blast and a very addictive game.

I gave this post such a strange title because today I engaged in a bit of, you might say, warwalking. You may recall that I live in Portland, Oregon. Well, I wanted to visit Backspace, downtown, but I was over on Hawthorne Blvd., which, for those of you who do not live in Portland, is across the river that runs through Portland (read: a long way away). So, I warwalked!

Warwalking, or, um, wardriving, is the practice of scanning your surroundings constantly for unsecured WiFi hotspots. And there are a bunch of them. I went from somewhere around 10th and Hawthorne down the Hawthorne Bridge, to the heart of downtown (well, 5th St., which is at the hub of Portland's public transportation). Then I walked down 5th St. and walked all the way down to Backspace, which is over in the Pearl District, Portland's artsy district.

This all has a point. I discovered something about the Nintendo Wi-Fi connection... hmmmm... how to say.... don't count on it. Unless you make daily trips to McDonalds, or have luck that significantly differs from mine, you won't have much luck finding WiFi hotspots to play on regularly. From the section of Portland that I covered, which took about one hour to traverse, I found plenty of unsecured connections, but very few of them even passed the "connection test," and one of them--but one--actually let me connect to the Internet to play Mario Kart. That's pathetic! Well, it wouldn't be so bad except the ones that didn't work include Pioneer Square and Backspace, about the two places any DS gamer (such as me) would plan to use the Nintendo WFC at. (Backspace's Wi-Fi router not working also kind of puts a damper on my Mario Kart event--the focus of it was always, always on local multiplayer, so that won't be a problem so much, except for the fact that I printed up flyers and stuff saying "Wi-Fi Enabled" and pounding into people's heads how cool this would be. Maybe I should rush-order a USB Nintendo WFC adaptor. What do you think?)

The interface, of course, is excellent, and it nicely includes WEP encryption for those of us who don't like to leave their connections insecure and accessible to any Harley Reynolds walking down the street with a DS. But functionality is the big thing, and I'm crushed to see how hard it has been for me to find a compatible hotspot in Portland. (I also tried the Red and Black Café on Division, yesterday, and even though it passed the test it couldn't connect to the Nintendo WFC, but it gave the clear impression that the problem this time was on Nintendo's end, an explanation made more plausible when the website read that the service was experiencing "intermittent problems." So, it might work if I go there again.) Later on I'll see if I can try some more places, like the public library, but don't count on anything earth-shaking happening.

However, it would be a sad ending if I didn't find something that worked. And I did; LaserQuick, the generic copy shop down on 5th and Madison, indeed allowed me to connect to the Nintendo WFC, and there was a bench I could sit on while I played. You besta believe that I'll come back, and that I'm hoping they won't ever discover me freeloading their Internet connection to play Mario Kart. If you want to play a game, you know where to find me. So I've played the game online, and it is indeed a blast. Sometimes, people would abruptly disconnect, and that made me really annoyed, and I really wish the game would devise some kind of punishment for that, such as dipping the offending player in a vat of molten lava. But, the connection was seamless, the gameplay fast and furious, the interface useful and intuitive... it was all very well thought-out. It looks like Tony Hawk has more features to its Wi-Fi ability, but Mario Kart is a great start.

Hmmmm... what else. Mario Kart is hard to put down. I'm serious; it's like a drug. At some point, I'm worried the single-player mode will run out of merit, but multiplayer and online should keep the experience going. Oh, and memo to Blizzard: now that the DS has an online setup going, you have no excuse--none--not to bring us StarCraft. And don't water it down or some nonsense. Give us the real deal.

Oh, and the EB downtown doesn't have Shadow The Hedgehog in yet. Grrr! I'll tell you how it is when I actually get it. They say they'll call me. Whatever.

2005-11-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

BioWare + Pandemic = OMGWTFBBQ

So, you've all heard by now that BioWare and Pandemic have done the nasty. I've got no problem with this; at first, I was skeptical, what with the dark spectre of conglomeration that has loomed over the games business since time immemorial. But now, I see what the point is. BioWare and Pandemic will remain seperate operations, with investing group Elevation (featuring Sonny Bono) at the helm of the joint venture. It sounds like this is a good measure to keep themselves competitive and avoid both companies being swallowed up by an EA. BioWare's and Pandemic's skills lie not in being businesspeople, but in being game developers, so I'm happy to see them utilizing some degree of business acumen both to protect themselves against the rigors of the industry, and to allow some people who really are businessmen to help them sail the industry's treacherous waters. Sounds to me like we'll be getting stellar BioWare adventures for a long time.

For the record, I never got very far in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. The battle system confused me and the game didn't appeal to me. But people really like BioWare and their games, and we're consistently confronted with the sad fact that a stellar and beloved back catalog does not a successful game developer make (see Cyan, Sierra), and something like this, that keeps them alive and kicking without giving them bloated corporate overlords nor strong creative shackles (see Origin), while still making them competitive in the business, I think, is excellent. Feel free to slice and dice that run-on sentence with your +2 Grammatical Scimitar all you want.

My question, however, is this: why in hell is a company called BioWare merging with a company called Pandemic?! I mean, the new company will, I am not kidding, be called "BioWare Pandemic." Gaaaaahhh!! It's like one of those jokes were you say, "oh, if so-and-so married so-and-so, he'd be such-and-such," except it's real. People are going to think that BioWare Pandemic are a bunch of freaky evil scientists trying to take over the world with game boxes actually filled with anthrax. Gghhhghhhhghhh.

2005-10-28T00:57:00.000-07:00

Ys of Use

Hey, it's Ys Strategy! A Japanese RTS with beautiful artwork and a thrilling story, part of a series popular with the hardcore, for the Nintendo DS. I might really enjoy this game.

Ys Strategy at Magic Box

However, as much as I love games that occupy my whole brain (Advance Wars, and with any luck, this), I'd like to play a game that really roped my heart into the matter. I don't think I've played a game yet where I've had an emotional yearning to open up my DS and find out what happens next. Marrying RPG with strategy might have done that for me, as I have not played the FF Tactics, Nippon Ichi, or Fire Emblem games yet (though I'd very much like to). Maybe I'll be able to redeem myself with this Ys Strategy thingy. If anything, I'm delighted that the bottom screen is the main screen and--lo and behold--the top screen is used for useful information and not for an all-night jengajam.

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There are two things I should add to this post:

1. Ys is pronounced "Eess," I believe
2. My backlog of Games I Shoulda Bought does indeed include Fire Emblem, as well as Sacred Stones, as well as Path of Radiance as soon as that comes out and I weep over my lack of funds to buy it with. (You see, I was going to buy Fire Emblem once I finished Advance Wars 2, and by the time I finished that there was not only a sequel to Fire Emblem out, but there was another Advance Wars coming out, so I bought that, and I'm still working on the hard mode, but I've taken a break to play 4-player with the computer on the multiplayer maps, which is a lot of fun... blah blah blah...) My backlog also includes Beyond Good and Evil and Eternal Darkness, two GameCube games that, I understand, I should be ashamed of myself for not buying as they, like Jet Grind Radio, were critically acclaimed duds. My backlog goes on to include Metroid: Zero Mission, Zelda: Link to the Past for GBA (I never owned an SNES), the last two Mario Advance games (believe it or not, I've never played all the way through SMB3 or Yoshi's Island... but I might just wait for Revolution's download service), Rebelstar: Tactical Command, I should probably rent Mark Ecko's Getting Up to see if it's as good as the last graffiti game I've played... and if I ever cave in and buy a PlayStation series console, I need to buy some PS1&2 games like the Nippon Ichi games, classics like Final Fantasy VII, and if I ever track it down on eBay... the obscure PS1 release, Puyo Puyo Box, which is, as I understand, the best Puyo Puyo game ever made. Oh, and maybe I should track down Samba de Amigo ver. 2000, since I did spring for those maracas in the first place. Oh, beautiful maracas... may you see life again as a pair of Revolution controllers.

2005-10-27T23:03:00.000-07:00

And it Feels like Rein

Mark Rein is right.

Oh, sure. You may have concluded that I, Harley Reynolds, am something of a Nintendo devotee. That's not really true... I haven't played a game that I've really treasured and loved and slept with under my pillow since Jet Grind Radio, and I still haven't played the game that I will love and cuddle and use to define my identity (although ah SWEARS it's coming). So, much as I love and appreciate Metroid Prime, and think the Nintendo DS is one of the best hardware designs I've seen in my life, I haven't really played anything of Nintendo's since Ocarina of Time that I thought was incredibly and irrevocably... swell. You know? Non-underwhelming. And perhaps my standards are just too high, but that's how I feel.

Basically, Mark Rein is saying that the Xbox 360 controller is fine and an excellent controller for first-person shooter games. I agree. I have not yet gotten my hands on a 360 controller, but by all appearances it looks to me like the best "traditional" controller design... by a longshot. Sure, Sony can go make a controller that looks like a banana (maybe they're trying to downplay its image as a "game machine" by giving it a controller that nobody would ever want to play with), and Nintendo can make a GameCube controller that looks like a lot of bad ideas got together and had a party, but the 360 thrillingly goes for a conservative controller design that merely--get this--applies the best-functioning and most well-worn concepts from previous controller designs, rather than try to implement revolutionary new hippo-shaped controller technology with a special Yuz button. This is a great relief for those of us, such as me, who have to use these controllers to play games with and not just to hold and smile for photographs.

So, Mark Rein says, where does Nintendo get off trying to reinvent the controller, a design that nobody has as of yet considered to be broken? Rein continues to say that the Revolution console will play host to a deluge of me-too gimmicky designs; and if the DS is any indication, we'll see third-parties hosting a plague of moronic missing-the-point game designs that never get to the core of Revolution's potential. But, most damningly, Rein emphasizes that a novelty controller does not make a console.

Don't get me wrong; I love the Revolution controller. I really do, and I'll get to it in future posts. But, as of yet, I think I'll go in a year before I buy a Revolution. Potential does not equal potential realized, and if Rein is right, and the Revolution does play host to an onslaught of Pac-Pixes, Feel the Magics, and Meteoses^*, I'll wait until Revolution gets its Ocarina of Time that defines the system for the masses. I love the idea of playing games for Revolution that really use the controller's full functionality, but the controller is really only what developers make of it, and with most developers going to PS3 and Xbox 360 and thinking of Revolution as a silly side project, Nintendo's in deep trouble.

^*Games which were, let's admit it, shallow and short-lived.

Remember "touch-screen minigames?" Many early DS games had those as an excuse for not using the touch-screen for anything else because these early DS games were mere ports. We're going to see a lot of wand-waving minigames for the Revolution's early years. We're going to see a lot of companies not understanding that the Revolution controller will be ghastily frustrating for anything using the traditional controller layout, and that your design will only be successful if it's designed specifically for either the "classic" controller shell or the Revolution's unique wand controller.

But also, I'm going to go out on a limb and tell Iwata to STOP IT WITH THE NUNCHAKU THING. The nunchaku add-on, I'm sorry to say, could very well kill the Revolution right then and there. You put the analog stick thingy in there, and what do you get? Suddenly the controller goes from resembling absolutely anything from a gun to a wand to a sword to a shield to a baseball bat to a golf club, to resembling some odd device, a combination of a handle, a wire, and a giant plastic sperm, and when I see someone holding it it makes me think of holding a fireman's hose. Somebody at IGN commented that you would, with the Revolution, actually BE Link by moving yourself around with the analog stick and swinging your sword with the wand controller. Uh, no. You would be Link with his sword attached by a short wire to a giant plastic sperm that he uses to move himself around. Not exactly immersive, Iwata.

Basically, the gist of the problem is this: The controller is going to be wonderful until you stick that moronic nunchaku thing in. I would be totally comfortable playing Metroid Prime one-handed (who needs analog movement when analog aiming is all that's really important in an FPS?), because I would feel as though I were aiming my gun at a TV with the level of precision usually only afforded by a light-gun game. With that sperm thing attached to my controller, I'd... feel like I'm using an analog stick tethered to a PowerPoint pointer. It wouldn't feel natural at all. It would call attention to the fact that my hand hurts from holding up this stupid pointer thing. And the worst part is that I guarantee the sperm thingy will be used to rope in the "hardcore" crowd. Uhhhh, thanks. No, I think the casual and the hardcore loathe these kinds of designs.

And its sad, because I really do want to see a Zelda game where you can switch items and suddenly your wand controller becomes a sword or a shield or a bow-and-arrow or a bomb, but if any of those items are tethered to my analog stick, then it's not going to be immersive and it will turn me off the game entirely.

Besides, that cord is SHORT. Damn short. How much freedom of movement do I get from that? It really makes me sad because what makes me happy about the Revolution controller is that it breaks free from the tyranny of buttons that plagues your average game series, that you will finally be able to swing your sword rather than merely press the A button and watch your character swing his sword in a predefined way. Look at the poor Zelda series, constantly trying to do more and more with so little (specifically, I'm thinking of the "counter" moves from Wind Waker). Now, going one-on-one with a Stalfos will actually take skill, and a duel with one of those giant armored guys will take more than waiting for the appropriate time to press "A." But with that stupid nunchaku thingy, I'm constantly going to be tethered to my control device, and I'm not going to achieve any freedom of movement.

You see, developers will not be brave enough to go it alone with just the D-pad (which would be absolutely fine for a next-generation Zelda, if you had an FPS-like "look" ability with the wand control). Developers instinctively need to use EVERY available feature and fill up every button. Just look at Trace Memory. They could have gone with a simple, intuitive, Myst-like interface with the touchscreen--something that would be a revolution in adventure game design--but NO, the system has two screens, so they've gotta fill them both up with the most twisted, most counterintuitive, most confoundingly bungled game design I've ever seen. What does it take to screw up a touchscreen adventure game design? It seems to take a second screen and your average game developer's uncontrollable desire to take advantage of every single feature in a game system. Just like developers hafta hafta HAFTA put something on that second screen that is neither helpful nor intuitive (but IS as critical to controlling the game as the first screen), developers will have an uncontrollable, sexual desire to milk the nunchaku thing as much as they possibly can with their Revolution game designs. People would hate playing with it, because half of their controller would have a "wing" shape and half of it would have a "stick" shape, and they'd be moving a stick on the first half while moving the whole of the second half to control a game, and they'd be tethered by a wire and it would be an experience not unlike operating complicated machinery or signaling using semaphore. Believe me, I want to be playing with the Revolution controller, but if it's going to require using that nunchaku thing, count me out.

And the risk that Nintendo is running here is that Sony's next system, after the PS3, will have a wand controller, and that this controller will have its analog stick on a wireless pod rather than on a "nunchaku"-style device, or forego the nunchaku altogether and stick with the D-pad and motion/tilt detection. What if the nunchaku device sinks the Revolution? I don't want to see that happen.

So, Nintendo, chuck the nunchuks. Link's sword is not held in place by a short cable, and the Revolution controller does not need an analog stick to work. I do not want to be controlling two seperate halves of my controller two seperate ways. If anything, I'd like to be using two different controllers--imagine Link's sword and shield--if I need something in both hands. If I need a traditional game style, like for a Tony Hawk game, I'll use the "classic" controller shell.

Mark Rein is right. Nintendo has an uphill battle with Revolution, and they're going to have a hard time proving that their controller can stop Nintendo's gradual slide out of the hardware business. They need to have brilliant teams making brilliant games, and when all they have to show so far is a demo of Metroid Prime 2 (?) running on Revolution to show off the controller design, they're in big trouble. They need to prove to me that I should buy this console.

2005-10-22T02:40:00.000-07:00

Backspace Rally! A Wi-Fi Enabled Nintendo DS Multiplayer Event in Portland, Oregon

Come one, come all! It's the third Nintendo DS multiplayer event at Backspace, everyone's favorite downtown Portland net café, only this time, it's online. That's right! With the online capabilities of Mario Kart DS and Tony Hawk's American Sk8land, and the Internet access that flows freely through Backspace's airspace (thanks to Personal Telco Project), not only will you be competing with people right next to you, but you'll be competing with gamers all over the world. Sweet!

So where do you show up? Come to Backspace on Saturday, November 19, at 6:00. Backspace is at 115 NW 5th Ave., between Couch and Davis, right next to "Just Be Toys." Practically every bus line goes near there, or right to there. I'll be waiting for you right inside, and with any luck, so will my posse of DS-carrying gamers.

So, please come! I do hope to amass a large group of DS-playing gamers for these events, and in our numbers, we shall conquer the world.

Backspace, by the way, has all kinds of beverages and snacks to satisfy your gaming needs. Elliptical pizza from Hot Lips, cookies, coffee cake, coffee w/o cake, tea, hot cocoa, soda, it's all there. Be sure to fuel your Mario Kart impulse on some munchies, y'hear? Studies show that food and drink at Backspace will improve your gaming abilities by as much as a really big number percent! (Besides, don't you want to be gaming while drinking... hot coffee?)

So, get going! You wouldn't want to miss a chance to take Harley Reynolds to school in Mario Kart, would you? Of course not! See ya there!

(Hey, and while you're waiting in anticipation of this awesome night of kart-on-kart carnage, why not print out some of these flyers and post 'em around town? You can use the display poster or the small handbills, and feel free to print the poster in black and white if you need to save ink. And be sure to tell your friends about this event! The more, the merrier!)

2005-10-21T20:34:00.000-07:00

Rated A for Ain't Broke

One government-contractor-hopeful David seeks to unseat the videogame ratings Goliath. Why they should not

The PSVratings company is on a crusade to replace the Entertainment Software Ratings Board's national videogame ratings for California. They are an independent company who boast of no ties to the Entertainment Software Association. (Then where, exactly, does your credibility begin?) They do not understand two things: that the ESRB was tricked when it wrongfully gave the initial version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas a "Mature 17+" rating (rather than "Adults Only"), and that the obtuse PSV ratings system is less informative than the ESRB ratings and not more.

Let's begin with the first one. If you do not know, there was hidden sexual content (now nicknamed "Hot Coffee") in the already graphically violent Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. This content was not intended to be seen or played and was thoroughly closed off in the game's code. Grand Theft Auto series developer Rockstar (and publisher Take Two) submitted the game to the ESRB without informing them of this hidden content. After the greater part of a year, and after the game had already been picked apart thoroughly by many a GTA hacker, one hacker in particular found the hidden sexual content, a rythym-based mini-game in which you pleasure a woman while under the sheets; GameSpot described it as being visually at about the level of Sex and the City.

Chaos ensued. Politicians everywhere were saying that the ESRB, and the industry at large, cannot be trusted. Hillary Clinton called for an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission. But also, the ESRB did the right thing and revoked San Andreas's rating--an unprecedented move--and re-rated the game "Adults Only," effectively pulling the game from store shelves. Take-Two's profit forecasts were slashed by up to $45 million, and San Andreas's popularity and hype plummeted to subterranean levels now that you could not find the game in stores.

Now, the PSVratings company is using this example to say that the ESRB obviously has no objectivity when rating games, since they are a part of the Entertainment Software Association, the industry lobby. Now, this ignores that the movie ratings are given by the Motion Picture Association of America, and that "Parental Advisory: Explicit Lyrics" labels are given out by the Recording Industry Association of America. But it also ignores that the ESRB was tricked when they rated San Andreas "Mature 17+."

The PSVratings company claims that they will go through games with a fine-toothed comb when they rate them. Good for them; this ignores the fact that the vast majority of developers accurately represent the games that they are submitting to the ESRB, since running afoul of the ESRB gives the steep punishment of a revoked rating. But also, you could have run through San Andreas with the finest-toothed comb in America and you still wouldn't have found the Hot Coffee content. It was just too well hidden.

Some say that the ESRB should give steeper reprimands to Rockstar then the revoked rating. I sympathize with that viewpoint, since what Rockstar did has put the whole industry in the jackpot. But what the ESRB did do cost Take Two $45 million and removed their best-selling title from store shelves for a month (until Take Two was able to release a "fixed" version). They branded San Andreas with the stigma of an "Adults Only" rating. They brought down the hammer, and even if you believe they hadn't brought it down hard enough, if they were just a shill for the industry they would not have ruled so harshly against Rockstar and Take Two.

The other issue at hand is the PSVratings themselves. If you do not know, the ESRB issues one of six ratings for each game: "eC" for Early Childhood, "E" for Everyone, "E10+" for Everyone 10+, "T" for Teen, "M" for Mature 17+, and "AO" for Adults Only. These are prominently displayed on the front of a box (you really have to hunt around on the back of the box to see a movie rating). Then, on the back of the box, you will see a series of descriptors describing the game's content. They are very descriptive, such as "Fantasy Violence," "Cartoon Violence," "Intense Violence," "Suggestive Themes," "Mature Sexual Themes," "Strong Lyrics," "Crude Humor," and "Use of Drugs," "Tobacco," and "Alcohol." (And that's just the tip of the iceberg: go here for the full list.)

That's a lot, right? The PSVratings people don't think so. "The lack of detailed information in the ESRB system leaves retailers defenseless because their ratings do not provide an objective, reliable and quantifiable standard," says PSVratings president David Kinney. So they propose a new system: each game will carry three letters, "P," "S," and "V," standing for profanity, sex, and violence, and each will be colored traffic-light-style to reflect how strongly the content appears, with green meaning little, yellow meaning moderate, and red meaning extreme. (Gray means none at all.) This will be displayed, under their proposal, on the front of the box, replacing the ESRB letter rating. (I would imagine the back of the box would provide an explanation for how this works.)

Why are they doing this? Well, California passed a law recently saying that retailers who sell egregiously violent games to minors will be fined $1,000; the law, unlike other such laws being signed around the nation in the wake of Hot Coffee, does not provide any objective standard as to what an egregiously violent game is. Enter PSVratings, which boasts that it is an independent company and, for a modest fee, it will be the arbiter of what kind of content should get what kind of rating. A "red" violence rating, I imagine, would activate the $1,000 fine if you sell it to a minor, under their plan.

The problem is that they say that their system is more informative and less confusing, and they are wrong on both counts. On the front of the box, there is very little visual real estate for a rating (especially when the rating is competing with loud promotional artwork and many logos), so something that is simple, easy to understand and easy to read is critical. The ESRB is not interested in providing a detailed description of all the game's content on the front of the box for this reason; it will only be noticed if it's in a simple, understandable format such as "Everyone 10+" or "Mature 17+." Then, you can look at the back of the box for a detailed account of what merited this particular rating.

The PSV rating is bizarre and foreign at first glance. Few parents will bother to learn what "P," "S," and "V" stand for, or what the colors mean. Sure, it's simple once you get it; but no matter how many Tiger Woods marketing blitzes you go on, most parents won't. By contrast, "Everyone," "Teen," and "Mature 17+" are familiar and self-explanatory, and if you want more information you can look at the back and get an extremely detailed account of the game's content, one that eclipses the "traffic light" ratings system provided by the PSV ratings.

For instance, even if I'm aware--and a majority of parents will not be--that the "V" stands for "violence," how do I know exactly what "green," "yellow," or "red" violence is? I can get a vague sense of what those are, but not nearly as much as with the pinpoint accuracy of "cartoon violence," "fantasy violence," "intense violence," and "sexual violence," the ESRB descriptors for different kinds of violence. The PSV ratings do not distinguish between vulgarity in language, in lyrics, or in humor. The PSV ratings do not account for use of drugs, tobacco, or alcohol. And what exactly is "green"-rated sex? Is that implied sex, or, as the ESRB would put it, "suggestive themes?" Or is it actual sex that is just awfully vanilla? Is actual intercourse "yellow" or "red?" Does "red" signify "Mature," or "Adults Only" content? If there's sexual violence, how will I know beyond there being red ratings for "sex" and "violence," when sexual violence is something so horrible that it far surpasses anything that would have otherwise merited those ratings?

There's something else I want to establish. The PSVratings company does not consist of enlightened moral guardians on an altruistic mission to protect California's children. They are entrepreneurs in search of a lucrative government contract. They themselves admit that their methods for rating games will be more expensive than the ESRB's, but they do not realize that the ESRB uses industry money; the PSVratings would use money coming from the government.

California should reject this cynical grab at taxpayer money at a time that their system of higher education is crumbling. The PSV ratings are less effective and less informative than the ESRB ratings. They are redundant and a poor use of limited government resources. The Californian government needs to establish an objective standard for these games, such as the ESRB "Mature 17+" or "Adults Only" ratings, but the objective standards should not be left in the hands of an independent company with no credibility and a ridiculous ratings scheme.

2005-10-20T00:14:00.000-07:00

Sega Buys Sonic X Animators

It's the truth.

Sega now owns the people who make the new Sonic cartoon.

No wonder they changed up the voice actors. Man! Why didn't they use the opportunity to put Ryan Drummond in the cartoon instead of the other way around? I know recognizability is important, but doesn't quality count for anything? (And you know, Sega... you did spend five years getting kids used to Sonic's voice in the videogames... and establishing him as the voice of the Sonic brand... remember?)

Of course, Sega is also opening up a 3D animation studio. (Sorry, no link, Next Generation's system of archiving just sucks that badly.) Could a Sonic movie be that far off? Of course, if I have to hear Jason Griffith's... average... Sonic voice, then I might even pass it up. Grrr.

I'm going to invite a torrent of flames from Sonic fans when I say this, but Jason Burke, who did the voice of Sonic for the 1996 video movie, gave Sonic an entertaining voice that I rather liked. In short: Sonic had a European accent that you just couldn't place... "Hey, Tails, are you sure you can trust that thing? After all, it was built by Robohtnik. It could be a boomb or samething!" I don't know, I think it adds a bit of character for Sonic to sound like a renegade British upperclassman. Like Bertrand Russell might have sounded like. It's certainly better than the Generic Cool that most Sonic actors go for (although Ryan Drummond does "cool" extremely well by giving Sonic a voice that's full of energy).

(My favorite actor for Sonic happens to be his Japan voice, Jun-ichi Kanemaru, an accomplished anime actor whose roles include Ryo Akiyama from Digimon. However, if, off the top of my head, I were to pick who I would imagine to be the best Sonic actor ever for the English TV show and games, just perfect for the role, I would say... I don't know, someone who can do light and happy and hyper but then express a broad range of emotions, because Sonic is something of a loose cannon. That's why I have a big problem with the changing of the guard of the Sonic voice team... 4Kids hires actors out of necessity, they won't do the kind of talent search that a character like Sonic would really require to be believable. Of course, I guess the kids don't care... hell, I grew up with Steve Urkel as the voice of Sonic...)

(Who, for the record, was a very good voice of Sonic and even quite close to Jun-ichi Kanemaru's much later rendition.)

(For some reason, while trying to place Sonic's Perfect Actor, I came up with Kirby Morrow. What?)

2005-10-19T16:36:00.000-07:00

Jack Nosedives

You probably read it somewhere else, but just in case you didn't: our good friend Jack Thompson has made fast friends with the pavement. You can read about it here, here, here (You'll notice that Jack Thompson says that gamers are obviously not cultured enough to get the Jonathan Swift reference in his proposal. That's funny... Kotaku got it right away), here (entry three on down), and here. Read those in order from left to right. However, for your convenience, I have organized the information in TV-show recap format:

Previously on stuff that matters!

NATIONAL INSTITUTE ON MEDIA AND THE FAMILY: Jack, immediately stop using our name. You make it sound like we are affiliated with you. We actually find your methods reprehensible and you smell bad.
JACK: I'm too cool for you.
NIMF: Believe what you want to believe.
(jump-cut)
JACK: I will donate $10,000 to Paul Eibeler's favorite charity if somebody makes my repulsive game idea a reality! (See post below.)
GTA MODDERS: Done.
JACK: Sorry, I was joking.
STARVING CHILDREN IN SOUTHEAST ASIA: Hilarious!
PENNY ARCADE: Screw you, Jack. We did what you could not.
JACK: WHAT?! Continued campaign of harrassment! I'm calling the cops!
PAVEMENT: Jack, I know you like me a lot, but the timing just isn't right...

Will Jack Thompson succeed in his campaign to rid the world of violent games forever? In a word... No! But stay tuned anyway for Harley Reynolds, and our next exciting episode, which will most certainly not be about our favorite Miami lawyer!

2005-10-12T20:20:00.000-07:00

You Don't Know Jack

Ah, Jack Thompson. How I adore thee.

No, actually, I don't. I think you're kind of weird. But there IS something admirable in a guy whose name is not Uwe Boll that can generate the amount of spontaneous flamage that Jack Thompson can just from one utterance of his name in a web forum. In fact, let me try it out.

(goes and finds a random videogame web forum, and shouts "JACK THOMPSON!")

(web forum goes up in flames)

See what I mean?

So why do I find this man so heartbreakingly amusing? Well, if you've heard his seminal interview with Chatterbox, you'll learn a lot about him. In short: he's not as crazy as you think he is. But, he's still pretty goddamn crazy.

For those who do not know (yeah, all two of you), Jack Thompson runs a website called Stopkill.com. He is a Miami lawyer obsessed with violent videogames. "Now Harley," you say, sipping a strawberry milkshake, "isn't everybody with a tangential relationship to the federal government crying foul at Rockstar Games in a transparent grab at power, since Hot Coffee has opened the gates for hordes of wannabe bigshot politicians to try and ride the wave of opportunism into higher office?" Oh, you see, that would be too reasonable. Like Hexadecimal and Mr. Mxyzptlk before him, Jack Thompson lives off of randomness and disorder. Chaos. Insanity! He is a creature of the night, stalking game executives into dark alleyways before transforming into a giant, ugly monster and opening his massive maw and swallowing the hapless executive whole. Before you get mad at me for calling this esteemed lawyer such a bizarre and long-winded insult, keep in mind that such is not actually the case; that's how he fancies himself. He would consider that a compliment.

"I am out to destroy Rockstar," he says to Chatterbox, in the one chance he had to square himself with the game industry (squandered when he decided to accuse Wil Wright, WIL FREAKIN' WRIGHT, of being a porn peddler). He doesn't just want Rockstar punished, he... well... wants to... oh, it's too graphic. Too graphic. I'll let the press release speak for itself. (Note: the following press release is easily well outside this website's usual content standards. Read at your own risk.)

"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." The Golden Rule

This writer has been saying for seven years that violent video games can be "murder simulators" that incite as well as train some obsessive teen players to be violent.

I've been on 60 Minutes and in Reader's Digest this year explaining how an Alabama teen, with no criminal record, shot two policemen and a dispatcher in their heads and fled in a police car--a scenario he rehearsed for hundreds of hours on Take-Two/Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto video games.

I have sat with boys in jail cells, their lives over because of murder convictions, after they, with no history of violence, have killed innocents while in a dreamlike state. Said one cop who investigated such a murder in Grand Rapids, Michigan: "The killing was like an extension of the game."

The video game industry, through its lawyers, its spokesmen, and its head lobbyist, Doug Lowenstein, the president of the Entertainment Software Association, all say it is utter nonsense to suggest that what is dumped into a kid's head hour after hour, day after day, year after year, could possibly have behavioral consequences. Cigarette ads can persuade kids to smoke, but interactive simulators in which these same kids punch, hack, bludgeon, and maim affect not a wit their attitudes and behaviors, notwithstanding the findings of the American Psychological Association, published in August 2005.

The video game industry says Sticks and stones can break my bones, but games can never hurt me. Fine. I have a modest proposal for the video game industry. I'll write a check for $10,000 to the favorite charity of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc's chairman, Paul Eibeler - a man Bernard Goldberg ranks as #43 in his book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - if any video game company will create, manufacture, distribute, and sell a video game in 2006 like the following:

Osaki Kim is the father of a high school boy beaten to death with a baseball bat by a 14-year-old gamer. The killer obsessively played a violent video game in which one of the favored ways of killing is with a bat. The opening scene, before the interactive game play begins, is the Los Angeles courtroom in which the killer is sentenced "only" to life in prison after the judge and the jury have heard experts explain the connection between the game and the murder.

Osaki Kim (O.K.) exits the courtroom swearing revenge upon the video game industry whom he is convinced contributed to his son's murder. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay" he says. And boy, is O.K. not kidding.

O.K. is provided in his virtual reality playpen a panoply of weapons: machetes, Uzis, revolvers, shotguns, sniper rifles, Molotov cocktails, you name it. Even baseball bats. Especially baseball bats.

O.K. first hops a plane from LAX to New York to reach the Long Island home of the CEO of the company (Take This) that made the murder simulator on which his son's killer trained. O.K. gets "justice" by taking out this female CEO, whose name is Paula Eibel, along with her husband and kids. "An eye for an eye," says O.K., as he urinates onto the severed brain stems of the Eibel family victims, just as you do on the decapitated cops in the real video game Postal2.

O.K. then works his way, methodically back to LA by car, but on his way makes a stop at the Philadelphia law firm of Blank, Stare and goes floor by floor to wipe out the lawyers who protect Take This in its wrongful death law suits. "So sue me" O.K. spits, with singer Jackson Brown's 1980's hit Lawyers in Love blaring.

With the FBI now after him, O.K. keeps moving westward, shooting up high-tech video arcades called GameWerks. "Game over," O.K. laughs.

Of course, O.K. makes the obligatory runs to virtual versions of brick and mortar retailers Best Buy, Circuit City, Target, and Wal-Mart to steal supplies and bludgeon store managers and cash register clerks. "You should have checked kids' IDs!"

O.K. pushes on to Los Angeles. He must get there by May 10, 2006. That is the beginning of "E3" -- the Electronic Entertainment Expo -- the Super Bowl of the video game industry. O.K. must get to E3 to massacre all the video game industry execs with one final, monstrously delicious rampage.

How about it, video game industry? I've got the check and you've got the tech. It's all a fantasy, right? No harm can come from such a game, right? Go ahead, video game moguls. Target yourselves as you target others. I dare you.

Jack Thompson is a Miami lawyer who has for 18 years been involved in efforts to stop the marketing of adult entertainment to minors.

...

You know, you have to admit, it's a clever gambit. Once you're through shivering while contemplating the fact that Jack Thompson's violent fantasy is an E3 killing spree (I really, really, really hope that guy is not credentialed for E3 2006), you have to admire the proposal... in the way that you might admire the unintentional artistry of a vat of steaming animal entrails.

Apparently, game execs find it funny to create games where you slaughter innocents, right? So, why not challenge them to make a game where you run around slaughtering innocent videogame executives? I mean, he's got a pretty well-fleshed-out concept there. You've got the game industry executives, you've got the forgetful clerks ("you should've checked their IDs!" blamblamblamblamblam), you've even got videogame central, E3... which, for those who have not observed the madness, has so many people that they seem to be unable to fit inside the convention hall. If you would want to kill off the entire game industry at once, E3 would be the place to do it. It would also be an available target for anyone who aspires to be a mass murderer (uh, like Thompson, apparently).

I guess good ol' Jack's excuse is that, well, a lot of these violent games seem to have you revel in wholesale slaughter, so why not have a game where you slaughter gamers and game executives? What he doesn't understand is that it costs way more than $10,000 to make a game--I'm pretty sure $2 million is considered the minimum--and if they started now, they wouldn't have it done by next year, because a typical game takes at least eighteen months to make. If Take-Two or EA really wanted to get money to a charity, they'd just write a check. It would be much more cost-effective just to give $10,000 to a charity anyway, and they'd make Jack look pretty damn silly.

Anyway, what I was trying to get to at the beginning of this post was that Jack Thompson has different motivations than most opportunists. Oh, believe me, the man makes money off of these lawsuits against game companies; he makes a living off of it. But there's much more at work in that man's brain. Sometimes, when he talks a lot (and he does talk a lot), he lets a little bit show. Consider:

Once, I believe, he said something like, "tell that to my client whose family member was killed by one of your 'gamers!'" (That was terrifying; "gamer" up until now has been but a playful, self-ascribed nickname.) And of course, above, he talks about sitting in jail cells with teenagers who had gone on murderous rampages and were now serving life sentences. So, it's obvious that Mr. Jacko has seen a lot of right crazy stuff.

And if you're going to make me be honest about it, I'd say Jack Thompson is trying to reconcile all this in his head. He's trying to make it make sense. He's trying to figure it out. Do you remember that Play-Doh masher you had when you were a kid, where you shoved the Play-Doh in one end, turned the crank, and it came out the other end as crude Play-Doh spaghetti? Well, imagine you're Jack Thompson. You look around America and seeing kids playing disturbing games and doing disturbing things. (Disclaimer: youth violence has been on the decline since the fifties, but don't tell Jack that.) He's a lawyer who represents clients in cases where violent videogames are involved, so he watches kids who play Grand Theft Auto over and over and over again, and one day, they snap and recreate the scene in real life. He sees family members weeping over deaths that are random, unnecessary, and in his mind, linked directly to Take-Two. He sits with teenagers who are about to be put away for the rest of their natural lives because they decided to take the skills they've learned from videogames and use them in the real world.

So you're Jack Thompson and you've just had this massive payload of PlayDoh in your cranial Play-Doh masher in your head, and you're trying, trying, to turn that there crank and have this preposterously implausible scenarios come out the other end as rational, empirical statements of fact. What he wants are explanations. But he can't. There's just too much Play-Doh for the masher to handle and that plastic crank just won't turn. He tries and tries and tries and barely ekes out slivers of Play-Doh. He pushes and pushes and tries and tries to come up with a rational explanation for why his client has blood on his hands at fourteen. He tries and tries and he can't think of why this family's child had to die to put money in Take-Two's pockets. He pushes and pushes and it still doesn't make any sense. He's just recieved too much Play-Doh for any one human to handle.

So he goes on a rampage. He can't figure it out, so he'll MAKE it figure-out-able. He'll go after the companies. The companies! They made this child die! They convinced this child to kill! The ESA in your way? Go after president Doug Lowenstein! Call him a thug who's worse than Saddam Hussein! Did Rockstar pull one over on ESRB? Say the ESRB is a useless shill and should be dismantled! Did Matt Cassamassina (who, by the way, I love) say that Killer 7's "M" rating was meaningful because the game was so violent? ...Send a letter to the ESRB saying that, if they do not revoke the game's rating, he will "kick off" a massive "scandal" that will ultimately result in the ESRB being disbanded and replaced with something that's run by the government and will doubtlessly be a muddled bureaucracy and a waste of taxpayer money (I say that, and I'm a liberal!). Do absolutely everything you can to "stop kill" (uh, Jack, you may want to improve your grammatical parsing skills), and perhaps, one day, that giant mound of Play-Doh, those bizarre, horrific, and tragic incidents can come out of the other end as crude Play-Doh spaghetti of reasonable, rationalistic explanation.

Because the only reasonable explanation that Jack Thompson can come up with is, "it's all Take-Two's fault."

And you got to see it from his perspective. He's been driven crazy--nuts--by the things he's seen. He's genuinely afraid of the power Rockstar has. He's not affiliated with Hilary Clinton or Joseph Lieberman. He's a complete wild card. He will do everything and anything it takes to get these games off of the market.

For the record, I agree with him. ...On one thing. GTA should be rated Adults Only. Come on, think about it. It would raise the age by all of one year, but the game creators would be free to do whatever they wanted with the game, with no limits. Sex would now be okay; hey, it's part of the spectrum of human experience. But also, when the ESRB rerated the game... let's just say that (ahem)

If a game allows you to beat somebody to a bloody pulp and gets rated "M," but turns out to allow you to have sex with a lady and gets re-rated "AO," there's, uh, a problem. A big one. Mainly, a disturbing cultural indicator that we consider violence to be less harmful than sex, which is strange because nobody was ever born from violence. But, let's get back to the point.

However, Jack Thompson misses something important, besides the fact that Wil Wright is actually a nice guy who believes in non-violent ideals for the game industry. He misses that violent videogames are only a piece to the puzzle, a much larger puzzle. The example I like to use is the case of Devin Moore, a 20-year-old who shot two police officers and a 911 dispatcher (ohhh, he's going to hell for that). CBS News did a wonderful article on the case, which you can read here (and do), but while you're here I'll give you the relevant rundown. Kudos to CBS News for doing their journalism thang by actually seeking this guy out and actually asking him the relevant questions.

David Walsh, a child psychologist who’s co-authored a study connecting violent video games to physical aggression, says the link can be explained in part by pioneering brain research recently done at the National Institutes of Health -- which shows that the teenage brain is not fully developed.

Does repeated exposure to violent video games have more of an impact on a teenager than it does on an adult?

"It does. And that's largely because the teenage brain is different from the adult brain. The impulse control center of the brain, the part of the brain that enables us to think ahead, consider consequences, manage urges -- that's the part of the brain right behind our forehead called the prefrontal cortex," says Walsh. "That's under construction during the teenage years. In fact, the wiring of that is not completed until the early 20s."

Walsh says this diminished impulse control becomes heightened in a person who has additional risk factors for criminal behavior. Moore had a profoundly troubled upbringing, bouncing back and forth between a broken home and a handful of foster families.

"And so when a young man with a developing brain, already angry, spends hours and hours and hours rehearsing violent acts, and then, and he's put in this situation of emotional stress, there's a likelihood that he will literally go to that familiar pattern that's been wired repeatedly, perhaps thousands and thousands of times," says Walsh.

"You've got probably millions of kids out there playing violent games like Grand Theft Auto and other violent games, who never hurt a fly," says Bradley. "So what does that do to your theory?"

"You know, not every kid that plays a violent video game is gonna turn to violence. And that's because they don't have all of those other risk factors going on," says Walsh. "It's a combination of risk factors, which come together in a tragic outcome."

Ahh, so it's a combination of factors.

So is Jack Thompson guilty of being a complete lunatic? Yes, well, no. Sort of. His whole tirade against The Sims was a bit bizarre. But are Doug Lowenstein and the corporate hierarchy of Take-Two and Rockstar guilty of being irresponsible, manaical, bloodthirsty demons who stand atop the bodies of dead family members while holding massive piles of money and cackling? ...Uh, well, no.

But, more importantly (I use that parenthetical phrase too often), is the situation more complicated then "violent games are perfectly harmless and Jack Thompson is an overindulgent douchebag who is going to ruin our fun?" Yes. And is the situation more complicated than "Jack Thompson is the valiant crusader against the scum-beriddled game industry and their pack of immature, deranged fans?" Yes. (Jack himself, of course, is not only convinced of the second fantasy, but demonstrates by his consistent use of the word "successes" to describe his, uh, efforts that, in his mind, he's "winning the war." Terrifying. I'm so glad I'm not Jack Thompson! Tra la la...)

Basically, game companies need to take responsibility for what they do. As our child psychologist friend described up there, games do have an effect on the nascent behavioral patterns of young children. Parents, let's face it, vastly have no idea that "Bloody Murder & Mayhem III" is probably not the best purchase for their 6-year-old. Let's bump the rating of GTA up to AO. (Note that I do not mean we should shift the whole scheme forward; far from it, since I think most game ratings are appropriate as they are. Keep Halo and friends at M, thank you very much.) Let's keep the government out of it--the First Amendment is more than a liberal catchphrase--and shame the videogame merchant's union into strict ID-checking standards (You should've checked their IDs! blamblamblamblamblam). (Sorry, I think that's funny.)

But also, let's take care of those other pieces of the puzzle. Let's stop advertising wars on major news networks as though they were football games. Let's treat our children with honor and respect so that they will grow up to do the same. Our culture is awash in violence, and we blame violent videogames to take the blame off of our President invading foreign lands in the name of peace and off of a news media that cynically exploits our lust for sensationalism rather than being an effective vessel of socialization and communication to the people. Our schools are falling apart at the seams and the states blame the federal government and the federal government says "What, me worry?" Without adequate school, childcare, healthcare, and after-school activities, children are going to grow up to be cold-hearted no matter how little GTA they play. If we want to fight negative examples for children, we need to create positive ones instead of focusing on tearing down negative ones, and right now, kids must think us adults are complete idiots.

But also, don't hate Jack. He's doing his job. He's doing what he's good at. If it weren't him, it'd be somebody else. So let him get it out of his system. Remember, every time he opens his mouth, his credibility takes a nosedive, so just keep waiting and eventually he'll fade like a bad dream.

Also, in today's wacky news stories, we have THIS wonderful item from Next Generation!

You see, I'm sure you've heard that Ah-nud signed that lovely California law that says that people who work at game shops can now get arrested if they sell particularly violent games to minors. Now, you see, this law doesn't go by the ESRB's "M" rating, or their "realistic violence" or "sexual violence" descriptor, any other established standard of violence; that would make too much sense! Instead, it uses a subjective standard, which I'm sure defense lawyers will be doing cartwheels over.

You see, let's say my name is Harley Gamestoreclerk. You walk into my store, which happens to be called HarleyCo and is owned by GameStop. You are 17. You want to buy "Hot New Game of Ambiguous Violence and Borderline Mayhem." I say, "okay, well, it seems a bit violent, but you're seventeen, it's no big deal. Sold."

So, then, your parents sue me. You see, their child can't be playing such games of vague cruelty and possible heinousness. The case goes to a jury. And the jury decides if the game is too violent or not.

The jury. Any jury! Any twelve people who could reasonably be considered a diverse assortment of "my peers." They suddenly play ESRB and decide whether or not the game is violent. They may, for all I know, decide that Math Blaster contains heinous cruelty to numbers. (Don't forget Oregon Trail's controversial hunting scenes.) No, seriously; if I make a judgment call at any time while selling games at my store, and the jury makes a different judgment call, I'll get slapped with a $1,000 fine. That's sick, and even though it'll get overturned before you can say "holy First Amendment protections, Batman," can you imagine the people who are going to be fined wrongly over this? Game retail employees are not an affluent demographic; what will happen when a GameStop employee, a paycheck away from homelessness, gets slapped with a $1000 fine for selling a teenager Enter The Matrix?

So, enter the "PSVratings." They are probably going to be friends of Jack Thompson's pretty soon (before Jack Thompson dismisses them as sissies for not wanting Take-Two's CEO ritualistically impaled on a stake). They're here to appeal Ah-nud to let THEM be the arbitrators of this new law. They are an independent ratings board that, they hope, will get to decide what is and what isn't too violent for the underage gaming public.

David Kinney, president of PSVratings said in a statement today "I applaud the governor's efforts to work to make sure young people in California are not exposed to harmful video game content," said PSVratings's Kinney. "Unfortunately, the current video game ratings that you see on the video game boxes themselves may leave retailers and parents confused and defenseless when it comes to figuring out which games kids are not allowed to buy."

Now, I have to agree with them on one grievance; the ESRB does not, in fact, play the games they rate. They, instead, watch footage sent to them from the developer, which could contain old episodes of Green Acres for all the ESRB knows. But what he said above really sent me into orbit. Are the current game ratings really all that confusing? In fact, I flipped off the computer monitor in frustration when I saw that.

You see, it's a common maxim of the anti-gaming crowd that the ESRB ratings are "too confusing." Never mind that you can look at a box and it will say "Early Childhood," "Everyone," "Everyone 10+," "Teen," "Mature 17+," or "Adults Only," prominently in the lower-right corner every single time. (For a movie, you have to seek out the rating studiously.) Never mind that you can then look at the back of the box and read a set of well-refined descriptors describing exactly what kind of violence takes place and what other heinous acts the games describe. Never mind that this system has been evolving in depth and breadth since its inception in 1994. Never mind that Senator Lieberman (who you may remember for his early nineties attempts to ban all violent games) has called the ESRB's ratings scheme a model for ratings schemes in other industries.

No, children, the ESRB ratings scheme is just too damn confusing.

I mean really. I go to the store. I look at Halo 2. It's got a big ol' M in the corner, saying "Mature 17+" below that. I look at the back of the box, in the same place. It says, and I quote, "Mature, 17+. Blood and Gore. Violence. Language. ESRB content rating www.esrb.org." I look at Enter the Matrix. On the front it says "T, Teen." On the back it says, "Teen, 13+. Mild Language. Suggestive Themes. Violence." I look at Sonic Heroes. "E, Everyone." "Everyone, 6+. Cartoon Violence." Ah! Now if I were a parent, I would say "that's the one."

But apparently, this guy thinks that, as a hypothetical parent, I'm a dumb shit. Frankly, I find that insulting. I can read the ratings and I've seen the Tiger Woods TV ad, the ratings are there to help me and I'm invested enough in the emotional security of my hypothetical child that I'm going to take ten goddamn seconds to say, "oh, well, junior, this game is rated M for Mature, and golly, the back of the box says 'blood and gore, violence' on it! No, maybe you'd like Zelda better." Even though he'd whine that "but Toby at school has parents that let him play Grand Theft Auto!" I would hold my ground and say "yes, dearest hypothetical child, but Toby's parents have shit for brains." Then we'd move on to the aisle with Zelda on it.

Okay, but here's what gets me. This guy says the ESRB ratings are too confusing, leaving parents hopeless and powerless to fight an onslaught of mislabeled, violent games, right? Well, let's take a look at his brilliant solution.

Okay, first, here's the ESRB system. (Read all about it here.)

And here's this wonderful new non-confusing system of ratings:

Yeah. What I thought.

Way to go on constructing a wonderfully non-confusing system of videogame ratings, pal. I mean, that's... positively transparent. Intuitive. I feel like I've known this game my whole life.

...

Yeah.

Incidentally, I've constructed the wonderful new Harley Reynolds System of Ratings. I made a concept sketch of it, in fact, which you can see here:

Yeah, see? Great. I'm gonna tell Ah-nud he just needs to adopt my game ratings system, because the ESRB is leaving parents, uh, powerless with their totally confusing game ratings. That's right.

But, back to the subject of Jack Thompson. He's asked us a very important question as an industry with this proposal of his. He's asking, do we as an industry have the courage to take what we dish out? All I have for him is one question in response.

Can I make it in ZZT?

2005-10-10T19:34:00.000-07:00

The Images in This Essay Have Nothing To Do With The Essay Itself

I had a dream once.

I was playing Shenmue. We can get into this later, but I think Shenmue is a game that fell short--vastly--of its intended goals. (Sometimes I get really pissy, go further, and say it was a terrible game, or call it something REALLY mean like "the best classic arcade two-pack I've ever seen.") I do have some fond memories of exploring the overworld, admiring the scenery, and buying cat food at the hundred-yen store, but all around it was a weak game with a weak story and weak characters wrapped in pretty graphics and so much detail. It's a work of art, I must say, a world I would want to get lost in and play in, and it was also kind of neat to see small-town Japan represented to such a degree of realism.

But Shenmue the GAME--ah, there's the problem. There's no game here! There is, in fact, one gameplay dynamic: go around talking to everybody until somebody gives you some information. Repeat. Endlessly. Get angry. Smash disc. Ask Sega for a replacement. Get mad at yourself when Sega won't replace your broken game. Cry. Play Jet Grind Radio instead.

So, in my dream, things were different. Sure, the trade-off that my dream-Shenmue made--good gameplay for a somewhat hackeneyed story--is somewhat egregious, but we'll let it slide. (Besides, the real Shenmue story was about as intriguing as a Richard Simmons video.) So, yes, we were fighting aliens. I was fighting aliens in a food court and shopping center. You see, our only hope was to keep fighting and maybe establish an outpost that we can use to help drive the aliens off of the Earth itself. It was a risky proposition, but it was doable.

With the Shenmue heritage brought realism. You see, I did have guns--a machine gun and a pistol, I think--but they were both spent, or they had only one or two bullets left or something. If I wanted more bullets, I had to buy them, and I'm not talking Counter-Strike-style where you beam them directly from the Enterprise. I had to go up to one of those stands in the shopping center and buy some goddamn bullets.

I had my partner with me. She was beautiful, short, somewhat plump, with brown hair. Her guns were spent, too, so I decided to be a good partner and go get some ammo for her. I asked her for her guns, and she gave them to me. However, something disturbing happened while I was standing in line for more ammo; the customer in front of me tried to pull a gun and hold the clerk hostage. With faith in my game character abilities and my Ryo Hazuki martial arts, I wrestled the gun from him and held him in place. It turns out the clerk didn't need the help; she had a shotgun trained on his head from the moment the man looked suspicious. She was a Special Forces agent, and after I bought ammo from her I tried to find some way to tell her that, uh, maybe we'd see each other again sometime. She said nothing. Oh well.

But really, it was the teamwork between me and my partner that made this game shine. When aliens came after us, we fought to the death, tooth and nail to keep our land from being taken. More importantly, though, we watched each others' backs. Whenever she needed help, I obliged, but more than that, I was always on the lookout for something she needed that I could provide. We knew that we worked better as one mind, constantly compensating or each other's defenciencies, and as a result, we were unstoppable. The dining hall was safe for another day.

On the way back to our barracks, which were more like a summer camp, with a row of cabins along a coastline, I met a little kid from my school who looks up to me. He asked me why my partner and I get along so well, what works about us, what makes us such an effective team. I said, well, I guess it's that we're always looking out for each other, trying to figure out what the other needs, communicating, making plans, and storming the enemy base. He looked at me, puzzled. His partner was a boy his age, and he said that most of the time, they just argued about who got to be the leader. I was taken aback a little bit. No, no, that doesn't have anything to do with it at all, I told him. There were only two of us. Leadership doesn't factor into it.

But what I thought most, while my partner and I were walking back to our home base after protecting the dining hall, is that, you know, there's going to be a lot of downtime between now and our next fight, and that will be pretty boring. Maybe, since my partner and I, well, we're kind of like a married couple, right? So maybe we'll just go back to our barracks and have hot sex for a really long time. I wasn't going to bring it up, though; my partner and I were strictly professional, our communication and our bond were strictly weapons against the aliens. Still, it was a thought.

However, I realized something bad. I had left my sketchbook and pencil up at the dining hall; that would have been a nice way to pass the time between now and our next battle. I told my partner, hey, I'll be up at the dining hall, and if I'm not back in five minutes, worry. I strolled up the hill to the dining hall, while a concerned teammate--another little kid from my school--gave me a walkie-talkie as I went in. With one hand on my walkie-talkie and another on my cell phone (I'm always armed with a cell phone in my dreams), I was pretty confident that I would be able to walk in and out with no complications, and if there were, I could call for help immediately.

However, I was stopped before I got to the door, by another concerned teammate, a girl my age. She told me to get down and I saw what was inside the door; imposing silhouettes with gravelly voices. Oh, shit, I thought, the aliens had taken the dining hall.

All of us ran back to the barracks and crammed ourselves in like sardines, so the aliens would not see us. We had to think of a plan.

The conventional wisdom about first-person shooter games is that the reason they are so big right now is because they have gut-splattering violence. ...That's part of it. But, I think the major part of it is that, if you are an experienced gamer, a first-person shooter can be immersive in the way that few other game genres can be. With a two-stick or a keyboard-and-mouse setup, you have complete control over where you move and where you aim, and defeating an opponent ideally comes down to good aim and good tactics. There are a thousand ways you can win and a thousand ways you can lose. In Super Mario 64, good as that game was, you only had one option for defeating a Goomba: stomping on its head. Okay, you could also punch it, or throw a block at it, or walk into it while Metal, but the way most people would do it is just to walk over to it and give it a good bop on the noggin, requiring only a brief motion of the stick and a jump. In a first-person shooter, that requires sufficient ammo, good aim, and good tactics.

But I have a problem with first-person shooters, and that's that it feels oddly like following a script. I walk into a room, I get killed by a boatload of aliens. I respawn. I walk into the same room. It happens again! Only when I learn that you are supposed to paste the first guy with a grenade, so that he runs back and blows up some other guys, and then you should snipe the guy on the girder with your beam gun so that he won't get you first, and then you should twirl around the Hunter seven times so that he gets dizzy, preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit, machine wash, like colors only, and then recite it all backwards before getting to the next checkpoint and THEN getting killed by ANOTHER boatload of aliens. Honestly, most of the reason I even bought Halo 2 was because I loved the story of Halo, and unfortunately Halo 2's story isn't quite as good; and the fun I had playing I Love Bees vastly eclipses the fun I had playing Halo 2 (granted, I don't own Xbox Live, I'd rather not be on the recieving end of a barrage of racial epithets from an opponent in fifth grade).

So that's what really seems intriguing about Perfect Dark Zero. Rare, who you will remember for their work on GoldenEye 007 and the original Perfect Dark (and a gazillion, totally forgettable other titles) seems to be focusing on multiplayer this time around, which I applaud. But really, they're working on making multiplayer fun. You now respawn in a "spawn room" in your team's base, so, no more spawncamping (the practice of bumping off an opponent before he has a chance to collect his bearings and/or weapons). Team play is now the focus, so there is no proximity-based chat with opponents, only teammate chat over the headset, cutting down on moronic trashtalk and emphasizing team communication. (However, it should be noted that muting an opponent has always been a feature of Xbox Live that Microsoft encourages you to use if your opponent is being a jerk.) I'm pleased to see that Rare is focusing on what really counts in an FPS for Perfect Dark Zero, rather than just giving it a flashier feature list.

So, they've announced some things at Nintendo, among them that Metroid Prime: Hunters will be online (there is a God) and that Revolution will have a super-sexy pointer controller thingy. Now, of course, maybe I'm naive to think that MP:H's multiplayer will extend farther than simple deathmatches, or that the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection infastructure can handle more than four players at once. But when many, including myself, feel that team play or capture-the-flag is the only real way to play a first person shooter, what excuse would Nintendo have for not including it in the new Metroid? When FPSs supposedly own the market, why should Nintendo shy away from their own entries in the FPS genre when they're such a capable development house? (Indeed, I greatly appreciate MP:H's style of multiplayer action, that is, how MP:H eschews the overblown emphasis on instant kills that most American FPSs have. I consider MP:H to be the Mario Kart of first-person shooters, that is, they put in more of what's fun and took out what's not.)

I don't know what Metroid Prime: Hunters's multiplayer capabilities will be like (indeed, deathmatches in the First Hunt demo are already a blast), and I don't know what kind of multiplayer functions will be in Metroid Prime 3 (but if it does not have online play, I'll send a letter to Satoru Iwata asking him to reclaim his honor through ritual suicide). But Nintendo is traditionally an overly modest company without a clear idea of where their comparative advantages lie. Even though I'm thrilled about Metroid Prime: Hunters having online play, and thrilled about the idea of playing multiplayer MP:H games during study breaks or while at Pioneer Square, I have a sinking feeling that Nintendo or developer NST will say, "well, we thought about team play, but the time wasn't right, you know, it's not you, it's me..." and squirm in their seats and order another drink. This would be an easy way for Nintendo to commit commercial suicide in the Western world.

Nintendo has one "next-generation" system out right now, if you can call it that, and it's the Nintendo DS. Their true next-gen entry will be out next year, and it's the Nintendo "Still a Codename" Revolution. So, soon next year, Nintendo will have two systems out that are each absolutely ideal for FPS games, with DS's stylus control (a godsend; don't listen to the thumb strap heathens) and the Revolution's wand thingy. Am I confident that Nintendo will recognize this opportunity to wrestle away the US game market from Microsoft and Sony? Of course not! They'll probably say, "oh yes, but you see, FPS games are only for hardcore gamers, and our company is more focused on 11-year-old girls and eighty-year-olds with Alzheimers" and I'll cry and say "Screw you, Nintendo! You never liked me, anyway! I miss the old Nintendo! On the cutting edge of gaming! Aaaaauuughhh!" (bwhonnnnnnk) and then I'll mope and draw circles on the floor with my finger and complain about how wanting to play FPS capture-the-flag games does not make me an antisocial, murderous lunatic... in fact, I think those games encourage bonding and team play... oh, the pain... I think I might have to go to a coffee shop and write morose poetry...

So you see, the whole reason I wrote up that dream at the very beginning of my post was not so that you could all get a window into my subconscious (there lies madness), but because I truly think that such would be the ideal videogame experience. I always whine and complain about games not getting any new concepts and how we're basically rehashing concepts from the NES days (not really a problem, since nobody complains that we're just making movies in the same genres as in Hollywood's golden age, or that we're writing books that haven't added a genre since Mary Shelly's Frankenstein), or that I'm getting older and crankier and jaded and I haven't played a game that really made me happy in such a long time... I always fold my arms and say "meh" and refuse to believe a word that any company press release ever says, ever, even if the PR people are practically bulging at their veins trying to tell me how new and revolutionary and better-than-sex their brand new game franchise is. Instead, I sit and tap away at Advance Wars and reminisce how great games used to be, when I was five years old and the whole thing was still new to me.

But if I got to play the game like the game described above, an online game with no canned story, a game about teamwork and cooperation and infiltration, a game where I really did get to bond with a partner and watcher her back and constantly make sure she's safe or our partnership will fall apart faster than an Infinium Labs press release under scrutiny, then all that cynicism will melt away and I'll be like that little kid I once was, tapping away at my Sega Genesis with the clear idea that I was saving the world.

2005-10-02T16:46:00.000-07:00

This post does get to discussing the basic story of Trace Memory

I am now 100% stuck on a puzzle in Trace Memory.

So, forget everything I said about these puzzles being easy. It's just gotten very, very hard.

(Although, there's a danger, and that's that if the puzzles are too hard, I'll just stop caring about the story. If my dad really had any faith in me, he would have met me outside the mansion. If he's hiding in the deepest, darkest room of the mansion beneath layers and layers of puzzles and locked doors and foreboding corridors, eventually I just feel like saying "fine, be like that" and just want to take a boat back to Seattle. But, the captain that took me to the island is now gone. Nuts.)

2005-10-01T00:41:00.000-07:00

Serenity

Uh, whoa.

2005-09-30T00:03:00.000-07:00

Blood Edward Island

Hello! I got to play a good amount of Trace Memory yesterday, so I ought to tell you what I think of it.

...Meh. I know my reception for most DS games has been lukewarm as of right now, but there are things about Trace Memory that are just bizarrely underwhelming.

First of all, the interface. Now, Trace Memory is something of a cross between Myst and Final Fantasy, you might say. So, you'd think that, on a system with a touch screen, a Myst-ish adventure puzzle game would be super easy, right? Well, no. You see, it is a rule of thumb that, in a world where pompous gaming intellectuals cry big ol' crocodile tears about how "no DS games really USE the two screens" (oh, and Metroid does not?), it seems to be a hard and fast rule for developers new to the DS that you've got to use the two screens for something really friggin' silly. I say that dual screen games should not split the gamers' attention between two screens, and that the second screen should generally be used only for reference (and that I'm generally really really happy when it is, such as in Advance Wars), but do they listen? No! It's always, "let's put selectable special moves there" this, and "let's have a Harvest Sprite with a bleached afro" that... it's really... really... annoying...

So, Trace Memory. Yes, it splits your attention between the two screens. How? Well, it shows you a top-down view of the world on the touch screen, and you can move Ashely around with the D-pad or (more effectively) the stylus. That's pretty neat. What else? You can see a Myst-style view, from Ashley's perspective, on the top screen. This, for lack of a better descriptive phrase, is clear as mud.

Well, at first I thought it was cool. I mean, you could stand out on the dock on Blood Edward Island, look up at the top screen, and see the beautiful view. Wow! That's kinda neat. But soon... it grew sour.

You see, Trace Memory, at its heart, is an adventure game, and adventure games live or die on whether or not they are immersive. So, on the DS, you would imagine an adventure game could reach new heights of immersivity (no wonder a fan project has ported the LucasArts adventure game engine to the DS), since you're directly touching the environment, or so you'd imagine. Well, after a bit of Trace Memory--not very much of Trace Memory, in fact--I kind of wish that they just used the touch screen exclusively for the main game, and then used the top screen as the menu (in fact, if the D-pad and L button were used for the menu, then you'd never have to pause to access it, or even change the position of your hands). Also, instead of having that wacky two-screen setup for the main action, you would only be concerned with the bottom screen, which would show the Myst-like overworld.

"Now Harley," you say with curiosity, "why, all of a sudden, do you want to return to 1995 Power Mac technology? Why wouldn't you want a game that played like Final Fantasy and Myst having red hot sex in the back room?" Well, perverted gamer, mainly because, with Trace Memory's setup, its extremely hard to have any kind of a sense of direction, let alone immersivity. If I were playing exclusively with the bottom screen, then I would start to know my way around, just like in a Zelda game. And, of course, with some work I could get to know my surroundings in a first-person, click-click-click Myst environment, and getting to know those surroundings well enough to have a sense of direction is extremely rewarding in a fantasy-adventure game. But if I'm looking at the bottom screen and top screen, constantly alternating between them, seeing both Ashley from above and the view from Ashley's eyes, and one of the two views is static, it's positively bizarre and there's no way for me to have a sense of direction, let alone become immersed in the game world.

But also, just because the top screen is in first person, don't expect anything even close to Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt; another impediment to any sense of direction is that, while the first-person view is subjective (obviously), the third-person view is not, and so "left" or "right" on the top screen could be any of the cardinal directions in bottom-screen terms.

I suppose what I need to do, to be a good Trace Memory player, is to teach myself to stop and look instead of run everywhere like a madman (as I'm used to in action games). Just like during that contemplative moment on the dock, I should teach myself to stop, on the bottom screen, and take a look at the view from Ashley's eyes on the top screen. This actually might be positively enchanting. I need to play the game more.

And then, the puzzles. Ah, the puzzles. You see, a lot of the reason I got this game is because the concept strongly reminded me of PC classic The Neverhood, a Myst-style adventure puzzle game, so I hoped the puzzles would live up to my grade-school memories of The Neverhood's puzzles. So far, Trace Memory's puzzles that I've played have been sort of "practice" puzzles, to get you used to the interface, and that's not a bad thing because I'm not very far into the game.

However, the interface is damn clumsy. Here's one other thing that prevents you from really getting into the game: the text. Good God the text. There is more unwarranted and unjustified text in the interface to Trace Memory's puzzles, that I've seen so far, than in all of the 2001 homeland security bill's pork amendments combined. For instance, there is a puzzle where you have a plaque with words on it, but the plaque is rusted, and Ashley cannot scrape the rust off with her hand. So, when you see the plaque, Ashley intelligently says that it has too much rust, and she needs something else to scrape it off with. Well, there's a toolbox nearby with a metal scraper. "It's a metal scraper," she says. "I wonder if I can use it for something?"

The problem with her stating the obvious like this so often is that it takes you out of the game and out of the puzzle-solving process. Any good teacher will tell you that, if you want somebody to learn something, you shouldn't drag them around by a leash. If you learn it yourself, you'll never forget. So if the game simply establishes that the plate has too much rust on it to read the words, and then establishes (when you pick up the nearby metal scraper) that you've picked up a metal scraper, you'll probably make the logical connection that this scraper is used for scraping off the rust.

But also, the interface is clumsy in the way you control it directly. You go up to an object and then press the "inspect" icon to bring the first-person view down to the bottom screen. Then, you further inspect the scene by double-tapping any interesting objects with your stylus. Again, a simpler, more Myst-like interface would have helped here, but whatever. After reading boatloads of text whenever anything happens, you may find yourself in the possession of a new item, or with a new piece of information. Finally, if a puzzle comes up, the screen will do a tacky swirl transition to signify that the touch screen now interacts with the current puzzle.

This brings me to another problem... the transitions. Whenever the top screen switches from one "card" to another (because Ashley has moved into a different area), it will do a black "sweep" transition as the new view slides into place. Since this happens constantly during the game, it's incredibly distracting and a simpler transition would have worked much better. But then, it uses the silly swirl transition whenever you find a puzzle, which is irritating because it takes you out of the moment quite effectively. In fact, just about everything about the Trace Memory interface works to take you out of the moment, preventing it from working as, you know, an adventure game interface. I sort of thought that an adventure game interface must be the absolute easiest kind to design, but I guess I'm wrong.

So far, none of the puzzles that have involved touching have been terribly interesting, but I've just started out and so I imagine it only wants to show me the ropes. One very nice feature of the game is the ability to take pictures, letting you reference things you've seen earlier, which is very effective and does really add to the atmosphere (there's a great "shutter" effect when you do this).

I know I'm being really negative in my early impressions, but I generally am, as they are early impressions. Don't worry; Trace Memory has the most beautiful art I've seen in a game in a while (right down to the box cover), and a compelling story that really breaks the RPG mold and you really care about the characters. Even if I'm not yet happy with the interface decisions, what I've seen is a strong start, and I have a good feeling this game will go from "what the hell" to "keeper" in not very long. I'll keep you posted, so keep reading, same Harley Reynolds time, same Harley Reynolds channel.

By the way, I'm turning word verification on. The last straw was when someone posted a comment here about penis enlargement. From now on, if you want to post a comment here, you will have to prove that you're not a spambot by typing a nonsense word such as "hrglewrx," "jmplejms," or "micropayments."

2005-09-26T09:39:00.000-07:00

Trace Memory

Just a quick note: I'll be picking up Trace Memory tomorrow, so I'll let you know how it is. Oh, and Lost in Blue also comes out this week, and I'm considering breaking my usual tradition of fiscal responsibility and picking it up with money not budgeted for gaming because it looks so cool. I don't think I've seen a videogame like it before... then again, it's been a long time since we've seen an adventure/mystery game like Trace Memory, and we've never seen anything like in on a handheld. This week is a good week for offbeat, high-concept DS games.

I will, incidentally, spend as much of Tuesday as possible searching for traces of my past on mysterious Blood Edward Island. After that, I'll try to search for vestiges of my history on enigmatic Pus Joe Island, and after that, I think I'll search for remnants of my previous engagements on peculiar Saliva Derek Island. I'll let you know how it goes.

2005-09-16T06:10:00.000-07:00

Dear Yuji Naka

Hey, Mr. Naka. You're my hero. At your peak, you cranked out some titles that were pure genius. Sonic The Hedgehog, NiGHTS, ChuChu Rocket, and Samba de Amigo were all games that redefined their respective genres and each are high-water marks in those areas. So when I write to you with criticism, or suggestion, it's merely because my brain is exploding with why your genius has not yet grasped these concepts.

However, two of these are merely conjecture, so if I'm right, and I really hope I am, you already have your designers fervently concocting concept sketches while you lay back in your lawn chair and dream up fantastic new game experiences that pertain to these ideas. So, without further ado...

1. Listen to the performances of Ryan Drummond and David Humphrey.

Ryan Drummond is going to become the Sean Connery of Sonic. The original actor, the one that defined the character for the English-speaking world, the one for whom every person to come after him will be merely a follower. More over, his performance is stellar, and gamers all over the world have taken to heart his energetic and playful voice as that of their favorite blue hedgehog; and with Sonic Heroes, they've come to see that only Drummond could provide the heretofore-unheard voice of the fan-favorite villain, Metal Sonic. Likewise for David Humphrey; his is the voice that gamers the world over identify as the cold and creepy voice of Shadow, that intriguing, soulful-yet demonic droll that defines his character. If people play Shadow The Hedgehog and don't hear Humphrey's performance, they're going to be mightily dissappointed.

Moreover, don't let 4Kids Entertainment call the shots for you. With all due respect to their actors, they're a dubbing company, and dubbing companies hire out of necessity. They need actors in the New York area, for one thing, but also, whenever possible they will reuse actors to save money. This is why Jason Griffith is the voice of Sonic and Shadow for Sonic X. That right there should tell you why you shouldn't import their actors one and all. (Sure, Rachel Lillis has given voice to Jigglypuff in the relevant American version of Nintendo games... but that's because 4Kids broke tradition and actually hired good actors to do the principal characters of Pokémon.)

If you want product continuity, you need to dictate the terms to them. Shuffle up the entire rest of the Sonic cast, I don't care; just keep Drummond and Humphrey. Both of their performances are stellar, definitive, and would be sorely missed. I urge you to change your mind on this matter... and begin telling 4Kids that you're the boss.

2. Shaking

Dance Dance Revolution is neat, but I know there's a better game out there; one that got neither the exposure nor the marketing push that Konami could afford for DDR. It was a franchise that was sadly forgotten but critically acclaimed, one that always recurs in every listing of your grandest accomplishments as a game developer. It was simple, but addictive, and it provided more fun than most games with astronomically higher budgets. It involved nothing but a pair of maracas and a charming, dancing monkey named Amigo.

Samba de Amigo, if you ask the few people who own it and the maracas (I'm proudly one of them), is easily one of the greatest games of this generation... and with the Revolution's new controller, which is orgasmically fantastic, two controllers could easily serve as a pair of maracas, removing the cost barrier that kept most gamers from playing the first Amigo shake-em-up. I mean, during his keynote speech at the Tokyo Game Show, Iwata even took the time to say that two Revolution controllers could easily be used as musical instruments... and then he showed a picture of a guy playing pantomime drums, but you know, you KNOW, he was thinking of you and your classic rhythm game. But, I hear that you may already be hip to this idea; when a journalist mentioned to Mr. Miyamoto that this controller would be perfect for a Samba de Amigo game, he said that you have seen this controller and like it very much. So, what are you waiting for? Now that various game companies are lining up their "DDR killers," show them all up--along with Konami themselves--by giving Samba de Amigo the glory day it has always deserved.

I'll see you when a "Samba de Amigo" club has formed in my hometown.

3. That one franchise.

Yeah, you know what I'm talking about. The one that you get asked about in every interview, bar none. You even once told IGN's Brandon Justice that Jar Jar Binks would be appearing in the long-awaited sequel ("oh God no!" he replied), just to tease him. The franchise that the fans are constantly clamoring to see return. The one that you say you feel is finished--you got it right the first time--and, like a Hayao Miyazaki film, needs no sequel.

Well, you see, one of the Revolution controller demos involved flying a plane around Mario's Isle Delfino. Journalists raved about how easy it was, about how they were pulling off difficult tricks instantly, without the need of memorizing complicated controls or for developers to put in additional barriers to gameplay. It was simple, intuitive, and fun... and pretty soon, these journalists were guiding their plane through rings with ease.

Sound familiar?

I know that this is a franchise dear to your heart. I know that this is something you'd rather not dig up out of the distant past. I know that the amount of clamoring that the fans make for this game seems to be inversely proportional to the chances of you making it. But hey, your very own Takashi Iizuka says that as long as he's at Sonic Team, the sequel will see the light of day; and since he was the "main designer" on the original game, he might be on to something.

But, if you've been sitting on this game for this long with a real, understandable purpose--and I imagine that you are, as you, as I do, do not wish to see this industry succumb to sequel-after-sequel madness--if you've been waiting for just the right time to bring back this game, for just the right medium where you could truly express a new vision for this dated action title, for just the right moment to spring this game upon an unsuspecting populace... then dig out the design docs and call up Sega P.R., it's time to get this surreal, Jungian sequel a-rollin'.

You heard me right. The time is now--it's time to bring back NiGHTS.

2005-09-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

Sonic The Hedgehog

That's it. That's its name.

I'm speaking, of course, of the confoundingly amazing Sonic The Hedgehog game for next-gen systems that, in true fanboy fashion, I am absolutely drooling over after only having seen a few crisp screenshots and laudatory comments from the game's creator, who of course has no objective sense of how his game is coming along. This is also in spite of the fact that such a monumental game really should be three years in development and not be announced just a year before coming out, because I'd really like to see a Sonic game recieve that degree of polish.

BUT!

Look at it. I mean, look at it. REALLY look at it. You aren't lookin' at it! Look at it, dammit! Look at it!

That, my friends, is what the new Sonic game looks like.

To be fair, it doesn't, as I understand, look substantially different from comparable next-gen titles... and to be really fair, a lot of Super Hot PS3 Demos, so I've heard, have later turned out to be almost certainly fakes. For instance, these screenshots were previously seen in blurry video form that you can find here, and it's an amazing video; but the speaker boasts that "all this is being controlled in real-time." Bullshit. "Really," I would ask, "is that the reason for the cinematic camera angles and jump cuts? Sounds like a hell of a way to play a game." Of course, she could have meant that the demo was merely a real-time demo running on Xbox 360 hardware--I'd believe that--but when you say "being controlled in real-time" as though Takashi Iizuka were under the table with a controller, it just casts doubt on everything you're saying.

However, there are three amazing things about this new Sonic title.

1. The team.

For the uninitiated, there are three reasons why Sonic is the best thing ever made. The first is Yuji Naka. The second is Naoto Ohshima. The third is Hirokazu Yasuhara. Yuji Naka's programming and management skills, as well as his gift for gameplay and all around genius-hood, has fueled successful Sonic Team projects time and again from Sonic The Hedgehog to NiGHTS to Samba de Amigo to Oh My God This Game Is So Amazing I Just Wet Myself. So if Yuji Naka is the father of Sonic--as he most rightfully is--then Naoto Ohshima earns his contrasexual nickname of being Sonic's mother. Ohshima was the character designer on Sonic 1, making him the artist who designed the look and feel of our favorite hedgehog hero, which I imagine goes right down to the irritated toe-tapping when you fail to push any buttons for a while. Ohshima also brought Sonic's world to life with his trademark visual style, which was even more present in such classics as Sonic CD and NiGHTS. Hirokazu Yasuhara, meanwhile, designed the levels that we all played again and again back on the Genesis.

According to Naka, Yasuhara did nothing for Sega after Sonic & Knuckles and was later let go (he now works on the Jak series at Sony). (Naka infamously said in a Sonic Heroes interview that Yasuhara "was quite useless at Sega," which broke mah heart because the guy was such a critical talent to the original Sonic games.) And as Yuji Uekawa became the art director for Sonic Adventure and all Sonic games following, redesigning Sonic with leaner, meaner, and more nuanced look, Ohshima had less of an influence on Sonic (I believe in Sonic Adventure he was credited as "CGI movie director" or something similarly and blasphemously petty). Ohshima then left to form his own company, Artoon, responsible for Pinobee and Pinobee 2 for GBA, Blinx and Blinx 2 for Xbox, and Yoshi Topsy-Turvy for GBA... all reputed to be beautiful and totally mediocre games.

So, if Ohshima's post-Sonic-Team endeavors have been missing a little, I don't know... NAKA, then Naka's endeavors have certainly been missing some Ohshima. After he left, the art style became a lot more utilitarian, more bright colors but less nuance to the game world. It felt like everything was coming totally out of Naka's brain, which is okay because the man and his team are gameplay geniuses, and it needed that Ohshima breath of life to really bring it out of visual okay-ness.

So, you hopefully understand why I nearly barfed with shock--and then nearly barfed with joy--when IGN reported (and this had BETTER be accurate, since it was so offhand) that our man Ohshima is back on board for the new Sonic The Hedgehog.

As always, Sonic guru Yuji Naka will be heading up the brand new project with special assistance by original series character designer Naoto Ohshima.

(sniff sniff) It's true! Naka and Ohshima have kissed and made up! See, Naka has such a reputation for being tempermental (he once chewed out Lani Minella, the Sonic English-language voice director, for her choice of casting), I was all afraid that Naka and Ohshima must have had some monstrous falling out and now they don't return each others' calls or send each other Christmas cards. So... either that didn't happen, or Mr. Naka hauled his handsome arrogance to a people-skills seminar, and then stood on Ohshima's doorstep in the rain to deliver a heartfelt apology and a tear-jerking hug. (sniff sniff) It's... so... beautiful!

So now that Naka and Ohshima are back together, hands on each others' shoulders and singing drinking songs, all we need is for Hirokazu Yasuhara to design the levels, and for Masato Nakamura to do the music, and I would be so happy that I would die, and then come back from the dead just to play the game. (Either that, or I'd start a union in Heaven to demand that we get videogames in the lounge along with HDTVs.) Oh, Sonic The Hedgehog-playing bliss.

(For comparison, Ohshima coming back to do Sonic again would be like Steve Ditko returning to Spider-Man. Yeah.)

2. The concept.

...the new polygon-pushing platformer was announced as a re-imagining of the franchise with its inspiration being drawn from the original series.

(sniff sniff) Yes! That's a perfect idea for a new Sonic game! You know, that's the way I always thought remakes should be... you go back to the beginning, figure out what the franchise absolutely needs to retain its wonderful glow, its iridescent it-ness, and then chuck the rest. Chiaki J. Konaka did this when he created Digimon season 3 (Digimon Tamers). Roger Damon Price did this when he created the 90's version of The Tomorrow People. Tezuka Productions did this when they created the new Astro Boy. This "way of the remake" is why the new Sonic screenshots just show Sonic in his natural element... running through the forest, fighting robots, and just looking cool. As much respect as I have for the director of the recent Sonic games, Takashi Iizuka (Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow The Hedgehog), his attempts tend to strike me as throwing a whole lot of Sonic at the wall and seeing what sticks. Sonic's needed to cut the fat and return back to basics for a long time (although I must say, Sonic Adventure 2's fast-paced story scenes were a wonderful addition to Sonic that I never want to let go of).

There's a problem with new version of classic franchises... specifically, those made during the audience's childhood. You see people demanding that Superman get in increasingly complicated situations with greater degree of moral and damatic depth... and you forget that the Superman you grew up with was just fighting evil people with easy access to them green stones. It's like, it's hard to show adults the same kind of wonderment that they had with the series when they were kids, because when they were kids, their standards were a lot lower and they didn't need all this fancy-dancy mip-mapping and Z-buffering to satisfy their gaming tastes. Iizuka has said before that he does not wish to get into that trap; Sonic games, he says, will always be for children, or with children in mind, because now Sonic fans have grown up and had their own children who are Sonic fans, and he does not want to ruin that cycle. I'm glad he recognizes that; but at the same time, if they increase the depth and adventure of Sonic a hundredfold the way they say they're doing (look at that landscape... do I actually get to run around in that?), I think it will easily satisfy my adult tastes as well. That is, I hope it will. Damn... if this keeps up, I may one day play Sonic games along with my children. That is the happiest, fuzziest vision of the future I could possibly have.

3. The name.

What goes along with the design philosophy of this new Sonic game? The working title. Behold, here is the working title of the new Sonic game:

Sonic The Hedgehog

What you say?! Just Sonic The Hedgehog? Not Sonic The Hedgehog's Best Game Ever? Not Sonic The Hedgehog Adventure Plus DX 2X Turbo Hyperfighting? Not Sonic The Hedgehog Could Kick Your Ass With One Gloved Hand Behind His Back? Not Sonic The Hedgehog: He's Really Excellent and You Should Buy This Game? Not even Sonic The Hedgehog Folllowed By A Numeral?!

That's right. Just Sonic The Hedgehog. That's only the working title, and it's subject to change, but I really hope they keep it. It only makes the design philosophy, and the coincidental occasion--Sonic's 15th anniversary--all the more poetic. If I go to the game shop for the first time in fifteen years to pick up a game called Sonic The Hedgehog for a totally new and totally cool system, I may just burst into tears right then and there.

Naka, if you're reading this... continue your Making-Nice Tour of 2005 and go visit Yasuhara and Nakamura's houses. Bring boquets of flowers. Please.

Now, there's one caveat to all this: the game has been announced for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. If you recall, PlayStation 3 is the system that causes Ken Kutaragi to say things like "it cannot be priced for households" and "all I can say is that it will be expensive." Meanwhile, the 360 is the console that will cost you $300, or $340-400 if you want to save your game. Dear me. Meanwhile, Nintendo's "Revolution"--otherwise known as the Nintendo "We Really Promise It'll Be Innovative or Something"--gets left out in the cold, mainly because Nintendo hasn't said a damn thing about its specifications. Now, since Revo, at this point, does not support HDTVs, and since it is not likely that I will own an HDTV between now and a long time from now, I would not mind if Sega put out a version of Sonic The Hedgehog (ooh-hoo-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! I love saying that) for Revolution that was "optimized" (you know, watered-down) for normal TVs. I'll bet you anything that the gulf in power between Revolution and PS3 will be apparent only on an HDTV, and while such a gulf in power would still be extremely significant, it would be heinous for third-parties not to release normal-TV versions of their next-gen games on Revolution. Think of it... with the inevitably enormous gulf in price between Revolution and its competitors, Revolution owners will be a whole new market, specifically a market that Sonic appeals to greatly. That's a lot of money... especially beacuse Sonic has always sold best on GameCube.

So please, Sega, once Iwata actually pulls the damn curtain off the machine and tells us what we've been waiting for... change your tune and put this game on Revolution. As someone who does not plan on buying an HDTV, barring the event of a giant pile of money falling from the sky in front of my house, and who is not interested in many games for PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 (although Perfect Dark Zero and Halo 3 sound pretty neat) but is always looking forward to the next big Nintendo release that compliments the next big Sega release oh-so-perfectly... I would really, greatly appreciate a Revolution version of Sonic The Hedgehog. Please, Sega. Please, please, please.

Or, as Sonic might put it... I'm waaaaiting!

(Later: Here's a bit of bad news just to put a damper on things: Yuji Naka wants to establish continuity between the games and the show, in respect to the different voice actors. When I first read that, I thought "Yes!" because I imagined this meant that 4Kids Entertainment, who do the U.S. version of the Sonic X TV series and arrogantly never offered the U.S. game voice cast the chance even to audition for the parts, were repenting for their sins and hiring the official Sonic voice cast to do their cartoon. Not so; it's the other way around, making 4Kids Entertainment's Jason Griffith Sega's new voice of Sonic and Shadow. Now, Jason's not a _bad_ voice of Sonic or Shadow, but Ryan Drummond's performances as Sonic and Metal Sonic and David Humphry's performance as Shadow were both so legendary that to lose both of them at the same time, after growing up with them for five years, is heartbreaking. Damn... I braced myself for losing the voice of Eggman upon the news of Deem Bristow's death, but I had no idea we'd be losing the whole Sonic dub cast... It just makes me want to cry that Humphry won't get his big break as the voice of the title character of Shadow The Hedgehog. Griffith's a good actor, but can he really replace two excellent and substantially different voices? The only good news in all of this is that Dan Green, the voice of Yugi and the second voice of Mewtwo, will be the game voice of Knuckles... and as far as I'm concerned, he's the only great voice that Knuckles has ever had, even if his performance sometimes makes me expect him to start jabbering about the Heart of the Cards or something.)

2005-09-05T02:23:00.000-07:00

Advance Wars: Dual Strike

I'm most of the way through the game, so it's about time for me to tell you about what I think so far.

First of all, I don't like the whole "Dual Strike" selling point. Tag-team COs may make no sense, but the Dual Strike super moves are an abomination. If you manage to fill up both COs' Super meters, then they can each perform their Super moves in a double turn. Waaay broken. This can indeed turn the tide of the battle, as Nintendo has boasted; however, that's a problem. Super moves should rarely decide a battle, and yet, I've been bested by an opponent before simply because she used a Dual Strike at not even a particularly opportune time, just as soon as she got it.

The other part of the "Dual Strike" concept is the dual-screen battles. These can be fairly interesting. You have the main front, and your A.I. partner has the secondary front on the top screen. Now, you can turn off A.I. and control the second front yourself, which Intelligent Systems should have realized everybody would do. This way, you attack on the main front, your opponent attacks on the main front, the screens switch, you attack on the secondary front, the screens flip again, your opponent attacks on the secondary front... it's really disorienting and I really wish the screens would flip back only when your opponent were finished attacking on the second front. Anyway, if you win, then you will have two COs against your opponent's one, allowing you to use Tag Moves exclusively. This is actually a good part of the strategy... you have to gauge how important the secondary front is, because you can't build new units there, you can only send units up from the main front.

The campaign is shorter than in Advance Wars 2, and significantly easier, as most of it seems to focus on introducing wacky new units and buildings. I don't even want to go into them, they just make me want to cry for Advance Wars's lost sense of balance. Still, some are interesting... stealth planes are more expensive than fighters or bombers, but can attack units both in the air and below, but neither as well as those specialized units can (and stealth planes are pants against fighters). Com towers make your units more powerful if you capture them, which I think means too much of a watershed for a battle. Finally, the new Megatank is obscenely powerful and can take out a Md. Tank in one hit, but it can only move four spaces at a time and has the asking price of a battleship. I don't like it, because it really wears at the Advance Wars ethic that no unit should be that powerful, or that no matter how powerful a unit is, there's something that can take it down... however, a Rocket unit deals only 25% damage against a Megatank. Weak.

(Just to give you an example of what I'm talking about, in Advance Wars 2, they introduced the Neotank, which cost as much as a bomber but was significantly more powerful than an Md. Tank. However, an Md. Tank could still best it in battle, but only--only--if the Md. Tank attacked first. I'm not sure if I even like the Neotank, but it really pushed a theme in Advance Wars that, all the time, you have to defeat armies that are way more powerful than you... and if you keep your wits about you, you have a chance of doing it. However, the only way I've managed to stick it to a Megatank is by using another Megatank, which again, only moves four spaces at a time... or by using Rachel's proposterously broken Super move.)

There are more new units than these, but they're mostly just tacky novelties.

The new COs have bizarre Super moves. Kindle, the lovely villain who is themed after city nightlife, deals three damage to all units on cities... and that's her normal power. That's downright merciful compared to Rachel's Super move, where she launches missles--ostensibly from Orange Star HQ--three of them--devastating your opponent's army. I'd like to find whoever thought that was a good idea and beat him/her silly. Finally, Javier doubles (normal) or triples (Super) the already large effect of Com towers, which is a bit absurd but whatever. I'm not even going to talk about it anymore. (Javier also speaks nonsense and has an ugly moustache, kind of like Homsar with an ugly moustache.)

Combat mode is fun, a bit arcade-ey, kind of like the Macintosh game Bolo if anybody remembers that. Too bad it isn't as customizable as the main mode... I can't, for instance, create my own maps for it. However, you can send the entire Combat game (including the versus mode capability) over to anyone with a DS, in the form of a demo that stays on the recipient's machine until he/she turns it off. This is a nice treat, but it's sad that it's where the download play functions in AWDS begin and end. I can't, for instance, play the main, turn-based game against someone who doesn't have the cartridge. This was in AW1 and AW2 and I have no flipping idea why it's not in AWDS... and since download play was in Super Mario 64 DS, I have a hard time believing any possible excuse for why download play in AWDS couldn't have been every bit as sophisticated as AWDS's cartridge-based multiplayer.

And, of course, AWDS still shines in multiplayer. You can play by passing the system around or by playing over a wireless connection. You can play a dual-screen battle by selecting any map to be used as the main front, and then selecting any map to be used as the secondary front. Nice. However, Internet play would have been nice, especially because Advance Wars is just about the least bandwidth-intensive game there is, and it only would have taken a month or two to implement Net play (and even then, only a bit longer if they wanted it to launch after or simultaneously with Mario Kart DS). Just look at the standard set by Advance Wars by Web. And again, there's no download play for the main mode... why?

(Regarding the lack of download play for the main, turn-based game: Before you say "just pass the system around," know that I was crushed by the lack of download play for the main mode because I had themed this entire multiplayer event at Backspace around Advance Wars and download play... and I know that everybody in the event would have been thrilled to play turn-based Advance Wars and we would have been playing it for a long time, except there are only 4 players for the turn-based game--none more than in AW2--and the prospect of passing around one DS between four people did not appeal to the people there. Believe me, we would have had fun with turn-based download play; instead, we played the Combat mode for a bit, until everybody got totally confused by the unfamiliar, unintuitive gameplay and quit. That's sad, because Combat mode is fun, and because the turn-based game is even more fun, and can be grasped within minutes.)

Survival mode is silly. It's very frustrating, but I imagine, just as rewarding when you complete it. Basically, you have to clear a long set of levels with a set amount of money, turns, or time. Complete those, and you have access to harder ones; but, I have not been able to clear those, as they are incredibly stressful and I haven't gotten very far. However, since I have not gotten very far, I will withhold judgement, especially because Survival mode is a rather novel idea.

The character art is beautiful. It may be painted, as the box art is; in any case, the character art is even better than it was in AW2, which, in turn, had much better character art than in AW1. Sadly, the beautiful paintings that were displayed following a victory in the campaign in AW2 are now gone... there's a festive "victory!" screen with intricate stats that weren't in the GBA games, but no lovely painting. Shoot.

There's also the map editor, and stylus control makes it much more intuitive than it was last time. However, just like last time, there are only three slots to save maps in... I kind of wish they had used the two extra campaign mode slots for the map editor instead, since they supported those extra campaign mode saves so poorly.

I've had this game for less than two weeks, so don't take my word as the truth. However, my fears are actively being confirmed; Advance Wars 2 may well be remembered as the best Nintendo "Wars" game ever, before the series went sour, and it's for this reason...

I read an interview once where Intelligent Systems said something like, "we heard you on Advance Wars 2, that it wasn't different enough, it was more like Advance Wars 1.5. So with Advance Wars DS, you'll play it, and think to yourself, this isn't Advance Wars 3, it's more like Advance Wars 4." Because of this, I would like to find every haughty game reviewer who said that not enough about AW2 was different and give them a stern talking-to. In my opinion, the people at Intelligent Systems have taken their perfect formula and messed it up... badly. They showed reserve with AW2, that's why it was such a good game. They haven't showed reserve this time around, and I'm worried those freaking game reviewers were at fault.

Grr.

(Images from Nintendo.com)
Edited for grammar and clarity.

2005-09-03T18:39:00.000-07:00

Round 1 results!

I won round 1. Hooray! (I'm the orange team.) Be sure to send me candy and flowers.

I'm shaking in my boots in anticipation of round 2. With half the players getting knocked out each round... that must mean each round is twice as hard as the previous one. Looks like I'll have to roll up my sleeves and pull out the whole bag of Advance Wars tricks if I'm gonna have a shot at the semi-semifinals.

2005-09-03T18:04:00.000-07:00

Advance Wars Tournament

Hello! Just a note to say that I am participating in the 4 Color Rebellion Advance Wars By Web tournament that's going on right now. Currently, I'm playing against Carpet, alias TriQuad, and you can go here to watch the action as it happens. It's a tough battle, and it's daunting to imagine it getting any tougher if I move on to the next round.

I'll update you of any wins or losses by yours truly, and I'll inform you of whoever wins the final round. With any luck, it'll be me (and by "any luck" I mean 1:28 odds plus whatever my mad skills can muster).

2005-08-24T01:21:00.000-07:00

Like Wars and Dogs

Hey! Uh, I'm sure it's still Tuesday in some parts of the world, so I'm not really late with my impressions of Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

First off... the team's use of the DS's dual screens is very nice. Gameplay is on the bottom, unit and terrain information is on the top, everything can be done with either the D-pad and buttons or the stylus... very classy. The graphics are totally redone, and look a bit silly with the new "perspective," but it does look very nice and the viewing area is bigger than in AW2.

The two big surprises for me so far are 1) multiple save slots, so that my brother can play along, and that 2) all the War Room maps from AW2 are back. This is important, because AW2, in turn, had all of the War Room maps from the original Advance Wars. That means hundreds of hours of playtime. Hooray!

There's one caveat to the multiple save slots, though, something I'm rather dissappointed in Intelligent Systems for... the "points" used to buy items in the shop are common between the save slots. This means that that the points that I earn go into the same "account" as the points that my brother earns, and that when I buy something from the shop, it will apply to both of us. Weak! That means, effectively, that we'll each earn a salary from the battles we fight, but to buy something for both of us it will still cost the same as for only one of us. This, I imagine, will make it hopelessly easy to unlock new items, what with up to three incomes going into the pot. I really wish developers would take the time to make these kinds of things seperate between the players. It really drives me bananas.

(I wouldn't let other people play my copy of Sonic Advance, because I didn't want to earn Rings off of the labor of others... it wounds my pride and makes it too easy for me to get new stuff. It's just frustrating. I'm happy enough that my brother is now playing Advance Wars that I'm trying to look on the bright side, you know, think of it as a collaborative effort to get new items... but it's still just lazy on the part of Intelligent Systems not to give the whole game some kind of "profiles" make-over like Halo 2 has. I want it to be a challenge to get new stuff, and I don't want to turn on my system to find that I have more points just because my brother was playing it last night and beat like a jillion levels.)

Oh, I also got Nintendogs. Much fun. It's very cute and pretty sophisticated. You can even take your dog to a park or a gym while on a walk, which are good places to practice for competitions, where you can earn money to buy more dogs.

All right, that's all for today. See you later.

2005-08-21T19:21:00.000-07:00

Violence in Games (Plus: Anatomy of a Speedy Blue Hedgehog)

I remember that, before Halo 2 came out, a cohort of mine predicted that there would have to be somebody in Halo 2, a Covenant, who came around to the side of good, or at least showed himself to be able to do a good deed for the universe. I thought he was totally wrong; if there were even one Covenant soldier who became an ally, it would throw the entire game into doubt. How would you, Master Chief, be able to live with yourself if you knew that this Covenant soldier who plays a pivotal role of the story could have been any of the hordes of Covies you've slaughtered on the way to the top? If even one Covenant turned out to be good, then any of them could have been good.

Of course, I was wrong. Halo 2 indeed had a bad guy who turned out to be good; not only that, he was a Covenant Elite who was (behind the scenes) the general who led the Covenant army on Halo. You know that if you had seen him in a dark hallway in Halo 1, you would have stuck him with a Plasma Grenade and stood back, no questions asked.

I was thinking about Shadow The Hedgehog, and how much I'm looking forward to it, which you'd think I might not; Shadow, after all, is something of a grittier version of the Sonic games, and if Sonic has "attitude" then Shadow must have something called "baditude," something that's spreading throughout the game industry like a plague. And yet, something about it appeals to me, being able to take out hordes of Badniks with Shadow's gun while running at the speed of sound on Shadow's killer rocket shoes.

I started to figure out why I like Shadow, given that I consider "edginess" to be something highly overrated and something that's strangling our favorite franchises (see Jet Set Radio Future), and that Sonic is my favorite franchise and something that should never fall into the comic-book trap of trying to be darker and more mature until the audience suddenly wakes up and says, "wait a minute! This is a blue, upright standing, talking blue hedgehog we're talking about here! Why are we expecting Sin City?!"

I felt it was this: the tagline of Shadow The Hedgehog is "Hero or villain? You decide." I thought the "you decide" part was important; that, to me, means I can make Shadow be a hero (or at least decide he's a hero, so as long as the game does not force me to do villainous things). There's something else that's important: from what I've seen, he only shoots robots, supplied by military contractor GUN. Sure, if I were forced to shoot a human being, or any other living creature, over the course of the game, I would take the game back to EB before you can say "Holy Gratuitous Dismemberment, Batman!" (And if he did it and sneered like a badass, I would burn the game ritualistically and buy 150,000 copies of Hello Kitty: Roller Rescue in protest.) I felt that, since he's only shooting robots--not only that, but military robots, cold and calculating programmed killers--it's all okay, I can decide that my Shadow The Hedgehog is an unlikely hero and not a "hero gone bad."

(Antiheroes have been done to death, by the way. Is it just me, or can I not walk into a comic shop, or watch a show on TV, without being forced to buy a comic or watch a show with a hero who kills people? It's like, all the big heroes have hung up their no-killing rules and declared open season on anybody vaguely villainous.)

However, here's the issue: Sonic kills robots one at a time, Shadow kills robots, apparently, by the truckload. Shadow carries a gun, I hate guns, but he only shoots robots. However, if even one of those robots turns good... shouldn't I be concerned that any of them could have been innocent, any of the robots I've burned through as Sonic or Shadow?

Now, there's a difference... Dr. Eggman's robots, the ones that Sonic has been destroying since the beginning of time, contain animals trapped inside them... and it's never been made explicit what their role is, but the animal inside at least influences the cold, robot machine. This was demonstrated by E-102 Gamma, the robot in Sonic Adventure who developed a conscience... the one robot who turned good.

However, GUN's robots (Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow The Hedgehog) are powered by Chaos Drives, not helpless animals... and in Sonic Heroes, not even Eggman's robots have animals inside them any more, as Sonic Team decided against including a Chao Garden and thought that having animals jumping out of destroyed robots would confuse gamers.

So, should I feel remorse for the truckloads of robots I've burned through as Sonic or Shadow? Should I be disgusted that the next Sonic game is, for all intents and purposes, a killfest? Should I be concerned that it's difficult to find a game these days whose premise is not "take out an endless swarm of meanies?"

However, there's good. Here are the games I'm planning on buying this year...

Advance Wars: Dual Strike -- Okay, it's about war, and I hate war. But it's a thinking game, and thinking games tend to cultivate sportsmanship more than games where you paste each other with rockets.
Nintendogs -- No more needs to be said.
Trace Memory -- "Find the traces of your past on mysterious Blood Edward Island."
Metroid Prime: Hunters -- As an intergalactic bounty hunter, you kill things such as non-sentient annoying alien blobs and very sentient Space Pirates.
Animal Crossing DS -- You buy a house. You decorate a house. Ummm...
Mario Kart DS -- You race cars.
Shadow The Hedgehog -- You kill robots, any of which could have turned good.

See what I'm saying? Out of seven games, only three involve violence of any sort, and only two are straight-up killfests. There's more than one way to do a game, and it doesn't have to be padded with constant "minion enemy" battles (and I'm lumping Halo in this category along with Final Fantasy) in order to be fun. The way I see it, violence in a game, be it violence against humanoids or violence against Goombas, is a hook, an in, but in general... something only a bad game designer needs to use. Can it work? Yes. Does it work? It has. But is it necessary? ...It depends on the kind of game you're making. But if you think the only game you can make involves going from left to right and killing things, you are sorely mistaken, friend... and there are better ways to make an "in" that don't involve the slaughtering of innocents (I'm lookin' at you, Grand Theft Auto).

In the meantime, let me think of the most successful game concepts I've ever seen. For action games, hands-down the best-concieved and best-executed concepts I've seen so far are Jet Grind Radio (Sega Smilebit, tricking/graffiti-spraying) and Crazy Taxi (Sega Hitmaker, taxi driving/doing crazy stunts to shave off precious seconds from your time). Those games have a special place in my heart, and a special place in my bedroom, which is to say, under my pillow (not really, but I wouldn't put it past myself). Not that I don't enjoy games like Sonic Adventure 2, but...

Besides, what did I enjoy most about Sonic Adventure 2? It was the tricking, the timing, the getting everything just right so that I can take off more seconds off my time so that I can get a goddamn "A" rank and earn that prestigious Chao egg. The enemies were a means to an end... they were only as important as the rails and platforms and jumps... the rings, springs, and loop-the-loops that form a Sonic game's bread and butter. That's what I'd like the next Sonic game to be... not something where you go right to left and push buttons (what it feels like, too often, especially in Sonic Heroes where your heroes can do practically anything without an ounce of finesse). I'd like it to be more like Crazy Taxi, where it took minutes to learn but hours and hours to get used to... and months of playtime to master.

How did Crazy Taxi do that? It supported different levels of play ability... you learned the basic controls, and then you started doing tricks, and then you started learning the city's layout and discovering all the shortcuts and soon you're planning out all your routes in your head and you've printed all the maps out and pasted them to pieces of cardstock and you're annoying your family by constantly talking about Crazy Taxi (okay, that was just me at the end). That's how good the game was, the game expanded as you got better, as you kept discovering new things; and the game was about pure, unadulturated speed, the same way Sonic games are.

When I try to think of a modern anologue to the original Sonic games, unfortunately, I don't think Sonic Adventure, good as that game was. The real anologue is something like Tony Hawk, where your goal is to tear up the level. The goal is to get as much continuous speed going by landing jumps and performing tricks in succession without bailing out. The goal is to beat the level. Sonic doesn't have that any more; the platform challenges are easy, there's no room for expansion in terms of speed (besides the Doing of Constant Spin-Dashes), and "speed up" pads have you going instantly at top speed. It's no wonder that, by far, my favorite level in Sonic Adventure 2 is the one dominated by rails; it's the one level where the platforming is both really difficult and really rewarding... and it's hard, but eminently possible, to maintain Sonic speed. That not only makes a good Sonic game, but a good Hawk, a good Crazy Taxi, a good Jet Grind Radio... and a good game, period.

(Rails have three bonuses: they are difficult to land and thus present a platforming challenge, they allow you to do tricks off of them, providing an opportunity for advancement, and if you land enough rails you can get going disturbingly fast. It's a wonderful rush and something that complements the Sonic experience perfectly. It's too bad the rails in Sonic Heroes were basically endless means of transportation, and not the high-speed means of precision platforming that they were in Sonic Adventure 2.)

The other thing that adds to the Sonic experience are enemies... not because I have something against robots and want to eliminate hordes of them for my perverse pleasure while cackling, but because, as I said, they are a means to an end... and destroying a difficult enemy (and moreso, destroying a difficult enemy in such a fashion as to keep your speed going) can be very rewarding, so as long as the difficult enemy is not endlessly repeated (Vietiful Joe, where the hell did you get all those accolades from?!). A good pattern of rails, platforms, springs, and enemies, organized in such a fashion as to give you a rush if you complete the level effectively (and more of a rush if you do so very well, and even more of a rush of you do it while moving really quickly and looking very cool) makes a Sonic game what it is. That's the Sonic experience I know.

I know you will all moan at this, but it might be kind of neat to see a more free-roaming Sonic, in the style of Mario 64 or any of the aforementioned action games. It would be cool if, like in Crazy Taxi, advancement would not only be based around getting from one end of the level to the other, but from getting from an arbitrary point A to an arbitrary point B and doing it really, really fast... and forcing you to do many in succession without having the slightest clue beforehand what you're doing. That would require serious improvisation and would force you to take whatever route is the fastest... I'm not just saying this to be a snob, but I'm saying it because I've played Crazy Taxi and I know that kind of gameplay to be an absolute blast.

Of course, Sonic isn't Crazy Taxi, and probably belongs in the left-to-right (or back-to-forward) school of platform gaming. But the rules still stand: Sega, in your next Sonic game, please make it hard to do really well, just like in Crazy Taxi. That's the essence of Sonic, and the essence of a good game.

Yuji Naka reveals the next big proper Sonic title at the Tokyo Game Show, so we'll see then. But remember... enemies are a means to an end. You don't need violence, nor an onslaught of eminently slaughterable enemies, to pad your game. The old "go from left to right while killing things" has gotten boring. Extreme violence, more often then not, is there to cover for a bad game. Give us new types of games... or potential future gamers (not us, not the hardcore crowd) will take their money elsewhere.

2005-08-20T16:47:00.000-07:00

Lara Croft: Bra-Burning Radical? (Plus: Celebrating Grammar)

I read this article on N-Philes, saying that, while Samus is generally cited as the most positively feminist videogame hero (you know, wearing a full suit of armor rather than sporting a tiny skirt and portruding nipples), she is lacking; whenever you finish a Metroid game with a high ranking, you see that she is actually a skinny blonde woman in a sports bra and hotpants.

I was surprised when I saw those hotpants shots of Samus... I had always imagined Samus as being a rather chunky woman, with her long, flowing blonde locks accentuating her musculature rather than her dainty figure. I know a woman like this, in fact (who I secretly suspect to be Samus out-of-suit), who served in the military, plays rugby, and has long, blonde hair around her thick shoulders. I think she would be a perfect model for Samus as she is both visibly tough and breathtakingly beautiful. I also sorely want to sleep with her but that is beside the point.

While I'm on the subject, the new Lara Croft is absolutely ridiculous, a step up from the absurd and comical Lara Croft model of the original games, but a miniscule step up. In fact, it's more of a ridge than a step. A ridge up, you might say. I can't believe game bloggers everywhere were praising the new Lara Croft model as though she had visibly become a bra-burning feminist. She still has boobs each the size of her skull, and she still has a waistline the size of a drinking straw. It's infuriating.

This is a sore spot for me because I know that the real story of Lara Croft is a lot more interesting then the one put forth by nefarious Eidos marketers... that Toby Gard created Lara Croft to run counter to the stereotypes of a videogame hero, being a female British archeologist and a member of the aristocracy, a woman who is tough, mysterious, and unattainable... Toby Gard even admits that people tell him he subconsciously based her off of his own sister (which is really pretty sweet, to communicate to your sister that that's how much you look up to her).

Eidos, of course, had other plans, turning making Lara synonymous with the digital prostitute faster than you can say "holy appearance in Playboy, Batman!" That's why Toby Gard left Tomb Raider developer Core three months after the first Tomb Raider came out, frustrated that they had turned his prized creation into a sexpot. Core proceeded to release five more Tomb Raider games, each one worse than the previous one, until they were clearly beating a horse that had already decomposed.

Of course, it wasn't totally Core's fault, as Eidos had them on a short leash, making them develop one game a year (ensuring that the games would suck), before giving them more time on the sixth game, Angel of Darkness, but pulling the plug in the middle of development.. releasing a half-finished game that met dismal (and I mean dismal) review scores.

Because Angel of Darkness met such pathetic critical response, Eidos pulled Core away from Tomb Raider duty, and gave the franchise to Crystal Dynamics, which did something worthy of much praise as their first move... they re-hired the creator, Toby Gard, to have him once again at the helm of the Tomb Raider franchise.

So why did such a good story with such a monumental ending result in... this?

Toby Gard, please explain.

In other news, Monday, the ship date of Advance Wars DS and Nintendogs, is also National Punctuation Day! So, celebrate your allegiance to the period, comma, apostrophe, colon, and semicolon while explaining to the masses why poor English education is causing the English language to take a nosedive. So, take a moment to learn some rules like:

What do you call the Power Suit that Samus wears? Why, it's Samus's Power Suit! Yes! You do, in fact, add 's to names that end in s. You only omit the s if the word you're making possessive is plural and ends in s: "the Chozos' Power Suit." If the word is plural but does not end in s, then keep the 's: "that is the Pokémon's park." And, yes, "Samus's" is pronounced something like "samusziz."

Do not, under any circumstances (except one), use an apostrophe to pluralize something. For instance, "Sonic got fifty ring's" should be "Sonic got fifty rings." However, you do have to mind your p's and q's... but you can own multiple DSs. Confused? Pluralized lowercase letters get the apostrophe, but capital letters and numbers do not. And yes, if you grew up with the Transformers, than you are a "child of the 80s."

Do not use a comma to seperate two independent sentences: "Sonic entered the Special Stage, he got fifty rings." You could say "Sonic entered the Special Stage and then he got fifty rings," but that's a bit wordy.

The comma cannot seperate two sentences, that is the job of the period, or the mighty semicolon. "Sonic entered the Special Stage; he got fifty rings" is perfectly fine. "Sonic entered the Special Stage, where ge got fifty rings," is also A-OK. Finally, if it's a really long sentence with a comma splice, like "Sonic The Hedgehog, cold and hungry, trudged on into Act 3 to fight Dr. Eggman, he emerged victorious but sorely in need of a place to rest," just stick a period in that sucker (after "Eggman") and split it into two sentences, STAT. (On second thought, a semicolon would work, too.)

You can also have a run-on sentence, like "Dr. Eggman's uniform, gaily adorned with the finest regal accoutrements, was fantastic but at the same time an eyesore, with its grandious proclamations of the wearer's greatness, akin to the pompous grandstanding of Napoleon III," which is gramatically correct but annoying to read, so you might consider rewriting it to make it more than one sentence.

Remember, joining two sentences with a comma is cruel and unusual... it's called a "comma splice" and is banned in seven countries.

This doesn't have to do with punctuation, but it's a pet peeve of mine: "was" is used for something that is or may be true, whereas "were" is used for something that is not true. When the Indigo Girls sing "what if God was one of us," they are speaking blasphemy, as they should be singing "what if God were one of us." However, if you are making conjecture on something that might be true, you would still use "was": "what if the Harleysaurus was a plant eater?" People misuse this every day, and it drives me bananas. It's called the "subjunctive mood," and if it leaves our language because of poor language education I'm never going to forgive you all.

("Were," is of course, also used for plurals: "the first six Mega Man games were for NES." Also, please note that the hypothetical speaker said "plant eater" and not "plant-eater," because you would only use a hyphen if it were to avoid confusion. This is demonstrated by the sentence, "The Harleysaurus was a formidable plant-eater." See, without the hyphen, you might have thought that this mythical dinosaur was an eater of formidable plants.)

Oh, and watch your use of "ironic."

(To learn more about the wonders of English grammar, read William Safire's "Fumblerules: A Light-Hearted Guide to Grammar and Good Usage." It's short, it's easy to read, and Safire takes a calm, reasonable approach to grammar, emphasizing that it's okay to break the rules as long as you know them and apply them well.)

2005-08-19T16:46:00.000-07:00

Wherefore Art Thou, Advance Wars

According to the guy behind the counter at EB (always a eminently trustworthy source), Advance Wars DS (and, by extension, Nintendogs) actually ships Sunday... meaning it should arrive this Monday! Of course, that was conjecture based upon the fact that Advance Wars DS was missing from his release list. He told me that means it must ship on Sunday. I'm not quite sure what his paranormal powers detect that indicate that the game will ship Sunday based upon the fact that it's no longer on his release list today... but okay! Any news indicating that I'll get Advance Wars one day earlier than I expected is good news.

And if I get up early and wait outside EB for an hour just to be first in line for Advance Wars DS, and it turns out I'm a day early, then I trust that you all, my faithful readers (all two of you), will come to my house to console me for 24 hours as I pine hopelessly for my Advance Wars fix.

By the way, I really like the guys behind the counter at my EB. They're very friendly, and they always put me in a good mood. I trust you won't let them know I was talking about them so fruitily.

2005-08-17T13:51:00.000-07:00

Zelda Delayed

And I don't give a damn.

This may be sacriligious to say, but I, at first, wasn't interested in picking up the new Zelda. Wind Waker had artistic merits, but it was, well... totally boring in execution (note: Wind Waker's overworld concept was accomplished with much greater success in Sega's seminal work, Skies of Arcadia, which you can pick up for $20 for GameCube at your local game store or I will hurt you). Zelda: Twilight Princess showed promise in being a totally different game from Wind Waker, what with More Realistic Graphics and such, but with Shadow The Hedgehog and Fire Emblem coming out this year (must must must must must must get), along with a slew of DS games like Advance Wars DS, Nintendogs, Metroid Prime: Hunters, Mario Kart DS, Animal Crossing DS, Ultimate Brain Games DS, This DS, That DS... Zelda just didn't interest me. Maybe I'll wait a year and pick it up from the used bin for $20, I thought.

How wrong I was.

This is going to sound silly, but this delay means that my position on Zelda is taking a complete 180. Zelda: OOT having gotten delays out the wazoo resulted in it being Shigeru Miyamoto's magnum opus (and thems some big words), and Lord knows Wind Waker could have used a delay or seventy. But now that Zelda: Twilight Princess is being moved from the hectic holiday 2005 schedule to the calmer early 2006... I'm at peace. I'm happy! Now I'll actually have money to buy the new Zelda with, and the desire to now that I know that the team is taking its time to make this game the most spectacular Zelda ever. I feel like I'm floating on a warm, bubbly, pink cloud of Zelda. Ahhhh...

(zzzzz...)

(...)

So I correct myself; I do give a damn that Zelda is delayed, but not in the way you'd think. Now that it's been delayed, I actually want it, Miyamoto be praised.

Anyway, Advance Wars: Dual Strike ships this Monday (or does it release Monday? I'm not sure), so I'll have it in my hands and have posted some first impressions no later than Tuesday. I also can't wait for it, and wake up every morning thinking how wonderful it is that, now that I have slept one full night, Advance Wars is one day closer to being in my grubby mitts. Oh yes. Come home to Harley, Advance Wars DS cartridge, I'm gonna take good care of you...

UPDATE: According to Next Generation, Xbox 360 will launch with a two-teared pricing system: one tear for how much money you spent on the machine, and another tear for how much you spent on the hard drive or memory card.

2005-08-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

Super Mario 64 DS

Hey, paisanos! I thought I should start reviewing some of them games I bought. You'll see more of these in the future. For now, enjoy my review of Super Mario 64 DS, now packed in with your DS at participating retailers!

Here we have the Nintendo DS, the weirdest, most astoundingly unusual game system in recent memory (or, well, memory that is not repressed, unlike Virtual Boy). Satoru Iwata, Nintendo's prez and head idealist, claims that this will revolutionize the way we play games, and incidentally, I'm really hoping it will. So, what is Nintendo going to launch their highly inventive and "revolutionary" system with, to show how new and different and sophisticated this new machine is?
Why, a port of a seven-year-old Mario game, of course!

Still, if you've never played Super Mario 64, this game is just as much a blast now as it was back then, when 3D gaming was a bold new horizon and not the order of the day.. and of course, new characters, special short courses, new Stars, and a fun multiplayer distraction make this Mario one-up the old version. But if you already have played through Super Mario 64, gotten every Star, and tried every whacked-out programming glitch trick on the Nintendo 64... there ain't a lot to see, and this game alone is certainly not enough to make the dubious buy a Nintendo DS. However, like I said, if you (like me) never owned SM64 to begin with... you're in for a treat, my friend.

The game works like this: You're Mario, a plumber with unusual powers such as running, jumping, punching through bricks, leaping over vast chasms, and going to sleep when the player leaves you alone (sadly, Mario no longer does his "aaaah, spaghetti..." routine from the N64 version). The Princess, as she is wont to do, has been captured by the evil King Bowser Koopa, and if you want to get her back, you have to defeat hideous monsters, collect Power Stars, leap into paintings containing magical Mario worlds, and even do a bit of interaction with the townsfolk who might challenge you to a race or something. Anyway, Mario 64 laid the groundwork for a generation of 3D platformers, and to this day nobody's managed to best Mario's original outing (not even Mario himself, see Sunshine comma Super Mario). It's just a hell of a lot of fun, and nobody understands gameplay like Miyamoto and his crew.

Gameplay is retained from the original Mario games, but instead of going straight forward, jumping over pits and squashing enemies, like you did in the NES originals, Mario 64 wants you to explore the 3D levels and find Power Stars that will allow you to access new levels, as you work your way up the castle and eventually to Bowser himself. It's a fun way to do platforming, and you're challenged each level to find all the various ways you can collect Stars to help you save the Princess. Now, in the DS version, you are also challenged to find the other characters--in fact, you don't even have Mario at first, you start the game as Yoshi--who are imprisoned in the castle along with the Princess, and you must complete new (if shorter and more straightforward) challenges in order to rescue Mario, Luigi, and Wario. Once you've freed them over the course of the game, you can play as them, which is necessary if you want to get all 150 Stars.

150 Stars? That's right, there are thirty more than in the original game. However, don't get your hopes up... while this does translate to one new star each level (the original had 6 stars in each level, the new one has 7), as well as fifteen new "Castle Secret Stars" that are found hidden in the hub level and in the new short courses, most of the new stars that are hidden in the levels are rather dissappointing. About half of them are "Switch Stars," where you must step on a switch and then run like the dickens to a distant star that will dissappear after too long. While this is fun in the Bowser Courses, which are fraught with peril making the path difficult to traverse, it's just a cop-out in the main stages, where a hop, skip, and a jump will often get you straight to where you need to go to get a shiny new Star. Since few of the Star values have changed in the DS version (that is, there are more Stars, but you only need the same number of Stars in most cases to open a new level), this makes the game, sadly, easier. The other half of the new Stars that are hidden in levels are "Silver Star" challenges where you must get five Silver Stars in order to nab a new Power Star... the only catch is that if you get hit, you lose a hard-earned Silver Star and it hops around the level until you can get it back, just like the five Stars in the multiplayer mode. Since Mario 64 is already loaded with Collect the Five/Eight Doohidgies challenges, this is really unnecessary... especially in one shameful instance in the game in which the five Silver Stars are not static at first, but they bounce around the level from the beginning, and you just have to wait at the bottom for the Silver Stars to make their way down to you. Sick.

The new Castle Secret Stars, however, are more fun. For instance, some are hidden in the new short courses, and they're pretty difficult to obtain. Again, there are Switch Stars added to the Bowser courses, which are fun because it is actually quite hard to get from point A to point B in a Bowser course. There are new Stars that are hidden in the castle (the hub level) that are difficult to find, and the new multiplayer stages are hidden in the Castle as Silver Star challenges. So, there is fun to be had with the thirty new Stars, even if it isn't in the main levels.
Which is all right, because the main levels are fun on their own. You'll find a lot of variety here, from the subtly eerie Hazy Maze Cave to the platforming-intensive Lethal Lava Land to the deceptively serene Jolly Roger Bay... and the nightmare-inducing Big Boo's Haunt, one of the most memorable game levels I can think of. Finally, the boss stages ("Bowser Courses") will test you on everything you've learned before you go mano-a-koopa-o with the big dino lord himself. The levels are as fresh now as they were seven years ago, and many of the main levels will have you searching endlessly for their well-hidden seven stars each.

In Super Mario 64 DS, you can get up to four characters to play with over the course of the game... you start out with lovable dino Yoshi, who retains his ability to eat enemies, lay eggs, throw eggs and enemies, and do the Flutter Jump from previous games with Yoshi. Soon, you can rescue Mario, followed by Luigi and Wario. Mario is a great all-rounder, and what's more, his Wall Jump from the N64 original is exclusive to him. Luigi is more of a jumping kinda guy, with his impressively high jumps and his faster speed, but he's kind of stringy and not very powerful, especially in a multiplayer battle. Wario is one bad dude, presumably helping Mario only in hopes of scoring with the to-be-rescued Princess, and his strong punches and his ability to break things that other characters can't more than make up for his slow speed and pitiful jumps.

Also, Wario is now the only guy who can turn to metal. Why is that? Because the Cap abilities from the original game have been distributed among the characters. The Wing Cap, allowing Mario to fly, is still there... it's a feather, and only Mario can get it. Then there's the Power Flower, turning Mario into a big ol' balloon, giving Yoshi the ability to breathe fire, turning Luigi invisible and allowing him to pass through enemies and weak walls (like the original game's Vanish Cap), and turning Wario into a man made of metal, making him even stronger and letting him walk on the bottom of a lake (like the original game's Metal Cap). Mario's balloon power is a bit cheap, but the idea that each character has unique activatable powers really helps along the new version of the game, which requires you to get all four characters open if you want to get all the Stars.

There are problems with the Mario 64 design... for one, the gameplay is a bit unfocused, and can feel like you're performing rote challenges at the behest of the game, which will give you vague hints ("Mario Wings it to the Sky," "Big Penguin Race," "Into the Volcano," etc.) as to what you're supposed to do. Also, the enemies can be sidestepped a little too often, making them not terribly threatening. Mario may have a good amount of moves in him, but he's basically limited to running and jumping, and sometimes the gameplay can get a bit boring as soon as you learn the basics of platform hopping. Also, some levels do employ lengthy platforming challenges that really do test your limits, but the fact that there are seven Stars per level (six that actually matter) mean that the level design can be unfocused and not attune to testing your true gaming might. Finally, there's no real bonus for getting all 150 stars... just the prestige of telling your friends that you did it. The original game had a charming hidden secret for getting all 120 stars, but the new game... almost nada. (I was sort of hoping Waluigi would show up and say, "Hi! I'm angry! Do you know why I'm angry? Because I wasn't in this game!")

The real reward in this game, however, is exploration. The levels, while not "vast" in a Prince of Persia sense, are pretty big, even if the new bottom-screen map makes them look small... and it can be very rewarding to make it to the top of a large tower, or to stake out the inside of a volcano, just to get that one Star. Additionally, there are some hidden mini challenges that are quite fun. Also, there are hidden touch-screen mini-games that must be obtained by catching rabbits that are running about the level, and these mini-games are great. They include using a slingshot to take out besieging Bob-ombs on parachutes, to drawing trampolines directly onto the screen for a troupe of Marios to bounce on (much, much harder than it sounds). The fact that a few of these minigames (the notable ones) are quite a lot of fun makes up for the fact that having rabbits running around the castle constantly is a bit annoying.

The multiplayer mode is a blast. I haven't played it with four people yet, but it's a good concept put to good use. You choose one of four levels and race to get the most Stars. Everybody plays as Yoshi, but you can collect caps that will turn your Yoshi into Mario, Luigi, or Wario, each with their distinct advantages and disadvantages. Fortunately, you can punch caps and Stars out of other players... say, if I wanted your Wario cap, I could punch you and take it from you if I were quick enough... but maybe I'm not, and you punch me and take my Star instead. Damn! As you can imagine, it's quite fun, and it's very impressive that the multiplayer mode only needs one copy of the game for up to four players.

A common complaint about Super Mario 64 DS is its controls... and I think those complaints are damn silly. Here's what you do: you attach the included wrist strap to the back of your Nintendo DS, as the DS manual instructs. Then, you switch the Super Mario 64 DS controls to "touch mode." Now, slip your thumb into the wrist strap's thumb stylus, and slide it around the touch screen to make Mario walk or run. Rejoice and be glad! It takes a little bit of getting used to, but it's very effective and more portable than an analog stick would be. (Contrary to popular belief, this control setup is terrible for Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt, and people who say it works need to be given white coats and put in padded rooms.) The only problem is that it scratched my DS bottom screen to high heaven, but then again, so did Feel the Magic, and I think I need to get my DS replaced because it has a defectively weak touch screen. (Nintendo, thankfully, lets you return a DS that was scratched up by the included peripherals up to one year from the time you bought it. 'Tis very nice.)

So, overall, should you buy this game? ....Ehhh. It depends. If you want a wondrous platforming experience, it doesn't get any better than this; the legendary Rayman 2 has been ported to the DS, but it's a weak port with sloppy controls. However, if you're not big into platformers, or don't need a 3D game just yet, you might want to skip it... especially if you've already beaten Super Mario 64 on N64. However, bear in mind that this is probably going to be the last 3D platformer for the DS in a while... and maybe the last good DS 3D platformer, period. The multiplayer mode is a lot of fun, but since everyone and their mom seems to own this game, if you know 3 DS owners you will almost certainly have a Mario cartridge between the four of you, so the only reason you'd need a cartridge for multiplayer is to practice on your own and get better at it. Also, New Super Mario Bros., the first new Mario game in the classic tradition in a jillion years, comes out soon; and if you would rather have a more purist Mario, or at least a brand-new one, you might want to save your pennies for that (or, for that matter, Sonic Rush, a DS platformer from the creators of the Sonic Advance series). However, right now, if you buy a DS "at participating retailers" you'll score a free copy of Super Mario 64 DS anyway... so this whole review might be totally moot if you're thinking of buying a DS right now (unless you'd rather wait for a price drop... which I doubt will happen this year, what with the big holiday lineup to support DS against the competition).

So, in closing, Super Mario 64 DS is pure old-timey fun in the vein of the Super Mario Advance series, and is worth a purchase if you're looking for an elaborte and masterful platforming experience... and if you've never played or owned the original version, you should probably pick the new one up right now. Again, however, consider skipping it if you're not interested or if you've already played through the original... but be warned: this could be the last great DS 3D platformer in a long while.

Gameplay: Fun, if a bit boring at times. Try your hand at numerous platforming challenges while exploring vast, colorful stages. 7/10
Graphics: Most excellent. Better than on N64. 9/10
Music: A great score from the veteran Mario composer whose name I forgot, but it's a bit sparse. 6/10
Lasting Value: Collect the 150 Stars! Play multiplayer! It's more lasting than most. 8/10

FINAL SCORE (obtained by throwing chicken bones in a bowl): 7/10
Consider Buying!

2005-07-24T18:11:00.000-07:00

Sega's online DS game: what will it be?

As I've said before... I'm a Sega kid, and I mourn the much-too-early passing of my beloved Dreamcast. So you can imagine, when Reggie showed that big list of developers who are currently working on online DS games, and I saw that Sega was on there, I nearly exploded with joy. You see, Sega's online strategy for Dreamcast never really panned out... the very day of the US release of Phantasy Star Online (their first big online DC game), they announced they were pulling out of the hardware business for good and going multiplatform. It was probably the best idea, as there wouldn't be much room for DC in the next generation and Sega is now, finally, in the black again, but it still made me sad to see a system with so much potential and so many good games see its demise so soon after its birth.

But now, with DS, Sega has the chance to start its online strategy anew, on a console that, like Dreamcast, puts good gameplay and online capability front and center. With a backlog of popular franchises and plenty of experience in the online arena, it wouldn't take Stephen Hawking to understand that Sega would be a natural fit for DS online. The only question is... which game first?

Given that they are working on at least one, I am going to bet that the game they are working on right now is...

1. ChuChu Rocket!
2. Phantasy Star Online
3. Super Monkey Ball

Why ChuChu, the obscure DS and GBA multiplayer action-puzzle franchise? Because it fits the DS like a glove, of course! In this game, you had to move a cursor about the screen with the D-pad and place arrows to guide the onscreen cats and mice in various directions... and the game was a hoot to play, but the use of a D-pad meant a huge barrier for gameplay. On the DS, however, you would only have to hold a direction on the D-pad (or one of the face buttons, if you're left-handed) and place the arrow anywhere with the stylus. Perfect! Before you knew it, you'd be knee-deep in cat-and-mouse chaos.

But, more importantly, ChuChu Rocket! was Sega's very first online game, and it worked perfectly for that, as you could get in four-player multiplayer matches with anybody in the world, but with one problem: lag. This was the year 2000, back when broadband was the major exception, and dial-up was the order of the day. They tried their best to shoehorn lag into the gameplay and make it work, and for what it's worth, they did pretty well, but it still meant one more large barrier to the gameplay and something that prevented you from losing yourself in the chaos and achieving ChuChu Zen.

Of course, when ChuChu Rocket! came to the GBA, they had to forgo online play (although the game included a most amusing "web site" that contained information and would be "updated" as you got further into the game)... but no more! With DS, they could make the gameplay smoother, bring back the online play that made it a hit to begin with, and, most importantly... the ubiquituity (izzat a word?) of broadband would make lag a thing of the past. As Mario must have put it as soon as he found out he would be sharing a system with Sonic: Wahoo!

So, Sega, please please please make ChuChu Rocket! for DS as your first online title... it would make too much damned sense, all right? Too much sense.

In second place in the probability contest, of course, is Phantasy Star Online, as it is a very successful Sega franchise and popular among the DS demographic. PSO can be played offline, with four local players, or online, where you meet in lobbies and assemble a four-person team from there, so there's fun to be had collecting items and getting new weapons even if you don't have the money for a Hunter's License (that is, a paid subscription). Plus, the DS touchscreen would work nicely for communication (an onscreen keyboard and instant PictoChat would really kick the llama's ass), as well as quick weapon/item select if you held a shoulder button or something. (Voice chat, don't forget voice chat...) Come to think of it, this kind of a game would be incredibly cool, possibly even cool enough to make me want to buy one of those Hunter's License thingies...

So, that brings me to my question. What do you think Sega's online game will be, or what do you think it should be? Answer away! (I also posted this on NDSart, but with a poll, because I'm an arrogant bastard.)

(Also, Puyo Pop online would cause me to die and go to heaven.)

2005-07-20T20:00:00.000-07:00

Backspace Wars! A Nintendo DS Multiplayer Event in Portland, Oregon

Attention all DS-loving denizens of Portland, Oregon! Come to Backspace, the Pearl District's hottest net café (115 NW 5th), on Saturday, August 27th at 6:00 for a night of all-out multiplayer madness. Eat stuff, drink stuff, play stuff! Sound like a deal? Bring your friends and introduce them to the inebrating wonder that is DS multiplay!

As you may have noticed, the 27th of August is the Saturday after the release of two big games... Advance Wars: Dual Strike and Nintendogs! So, come celebrate their release while meeting other DS-playing gamers and playing DS games. I'll bring a clipboard and start a mailing list while we're there so that I can organize for future meetups... I'm thinking the releases of Metroid Prime: Hunters, Animal Crossing DS, and Mario Kart DS. (But, don't feel pressure to buy any of these games before coming to the event... I'm determined to have this be an event where we'll play many different games, and considering how many DS games, including Advance Wars, support download play, that should not be a problem.)

This event is being organized by your humble host... and supported by our friends at Backspace, so be sure to buy a beverage or something while you're there (they've got coffee, tea, hot cocoa, coffee cake, pizza, and other stuff). Backspace is at 115 NW 5th Avenue, between Couch and Davis, just a block and a half past Burnside, and right next to "Just Be Toys."

Tell your friends, and please, spread the flyer far and wide! (And, I'd be very grateful if somebody posted this to the DS Livejournal...)

UPDATE: I put up a slightly different version of the flyer, adding Nintendogs to the copy. Also, here are some nice handbills that you can print out and cut out and place in coffee shops and comic shops and such. Go nuts!

2005-07-20T17:49:00.000-07:00

Tony Hawk DS: Argh! (Plus: The Heretofore Untold Origin of the Nintendo DS)

When Reggie announced Tony Hawk: American Wasteland for Nintendo DS as an online game, I was ecstatic. Generally, everything Reggie says makes me ecstatic. He could say, "here at Nintendo, we believe that videogames really aren't as good as brussell sprouts" and I would still be convulsing over how awesome what he just said was (my usual response is "oh, Reggie, say it again, but slower," but I wouldn't admit to that in public).

However, something has brought me down from the high that resulted from the announcement. You see, one thing that Reggie said at Nintendo's E3 press conference, besides "Harley, will you marry me?" (oops, sorry, just my imagination), was that "with the touchscreen, tricking has never been easier."

What you say?! Tricking... with the touchscreen? Excellent! Fantastic! Superb! Unprecented! You see, with one thumb on the D-pad and an index finger on the L button, you would move your dude forward and backward using up and down and you would have him turn by pressing left and right... and with the stylus in your other hand, you would rub the screen in certain ways to make him do tricks. Brilliant! I was nearly orgasming with joy, imagining myself going "tra la laaaa" and moving my dude about with the digital controls and making him do all the cool stuff using the stylus.

You see, as weird as that sounds on paper, when you imagine it, it seems incredibly intuitive to me (fulfilling one of Iwata's "four Is," which really ought to be on courthouse doors instead of the Ten Commandments). Just think: I could make my dude turn with left and right, and then swipe the stylus upward to make him ollie. Or, maybe that would make him speed up, and L would ollie. I don't know. And then, maybe you would double-tap and then make slight movements left and right to do a manual, and do something similar atop a rail to grind. And, when you're in the air after going off a halfpipe, you'll want to make circles on the touchscreen to make your guy do flips... but be sure to right yourself in time lest you splatter poor Tony's blood all over the skatepark. Gross!

So you see, this, plus the character creator (something would also be a joy with the touchscreen) combined with the online mode (much rejoicing) made me imagine that this game would be the game that would make me so happy, it would delay the muderous rampage I've been holding in for years after Jet Grind Radio saw poor sales worldwide (resulting in only one sequel that was totally mediocre, while Tony Hawk gets sequel after sequel after AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGHH). However, it was not to be. As they say, if something sounds too good to be true... it is.

Remember my last rant? Yes, I believe I was saying something along the lines of...

Nintendo's taking a big risk with the DS, and they know it. That, I'm convinced, is the big reason why they didn't brand it "Game Boy;" they didn't want to risk their invincible Game Boy brand on something so... experimental. (And in my experimental film, which nobody knows about but me...) The other reason is, I imagine, so that they could have the DS and GBA running side-by-side, figuring that the GBA was so enormously successful that their market could support Nintendo having a lower-end and a higher-end portable, similar to what Apple does with its products.

Anyway, they were convinced that, despite its unorthodox design, the Nintendo DS would win the hearts and minds of gamers and usher in a new era of portable gaming. I imagine the situation went something like this...

(Deep in the Nintendo Super-Secret Underground Bunker)

REGGIE: It has come to my attention that, for three straight years, Nintendo has missed it's ass-kicking goal by about 3,000 asses and 25,000 names. Our stockholders are breathing down our necks about this, and if we can't generate 40,000 kicked asses and names taken by the end of the quarter, they'll have our heads.
IWATA: I believe this situation calls for a salt bath in a hot spring.
REGGIE: Iwata...
IWATA: Reggie, Reggie, you must understand. My installation of a salt bath in our strategically-placed underground bunker, conveniently located below a hot spring, will allow us to experience the future of heightened awareness and will grat us unprecented managerial strength that will make you say--
KAPLAN: I say this situation calls for flowers and bunnies and lots of SUGAR!
REGGIE: Calm down, everybody.
ARAKAWA: I think we need to be more ruthless.
REGGIE: Yes, Mr. Arakawa?
ARAKAWA: I think we should feast on the flesh of our competitors and leave only their bones remaining to be feasted upon by our legion of cute mascot characters. Then, we will put their heads on stakes as a warning to--
REGGIE: That's very nice. Now, you--
ARAKAWA: And then, just when Kaz Hirai thinks the pain is over, I'll push the red button and--
REGGIE: That's nice. Now,
ARAKAWA: And if he asks for a lawyer--
REGGIE: Mr. Yamauchi, do you have any ideas?
YAMAUCHI: I'm old.
REGGIE: Thank you. Now--
YAMAUCHI: Don't we make playing cards?
REGGIE: Thank you very much. Now, listen, if we can't come up with something amazing soon, we'll have to--
IWATA: Ahhh! Ahhh!
REGGIE: What is it?
IWATA: Sweet Mercy! The Goddess has appeared before me in the form of a videogame machine!
REGGIE: That's very nice. Now--
IWATA: No, no! She's so warm and beautiful!
REGGIE: (clears throat)
IWATA: I feel tingly all over!
REGGIE: (taps fingers on table)
IWATA: I've seen the perfect videogame system... and she has a touch screen!
REGGIE: I don't understand. A touch screen?
ARAKAWA: I have a touch screen... in my pants.
REGGIE: But... wouldn't a touch screen mean the screen would be obscured by your hand? How could you play a game like that?
KAPLAN: Touch screen! Touch screen! They're SO soft and cuddly!
REGGIE: Ms. Kaplan...
KAPLAN: Touch screens are the future of gaming! Tee hee!
IWATA: No, you have to understand... she has TWO of them!
(Everyone, even Kaplan, are suddenly paying unwavering attention to Iwata.)
IWATA: Two screens!
(Everybody sits back down.)
IWATA: With two screens... you can use one screen for input and one screen for display! It's wonderful! I... I'm rubbing her right now!
ARAKAWA: Iwata, would you mind giving me some of whatever you're taking?
IWATA: I'm playing a Metroid game... and I'm using the stylus for precise aiming!
REGGIE: That's very nice, Iwata. Um, security?
IWATA: No! No! You understand! I'm speaking to these puppies right now... and I'm petting them! With my stylus!
REGGIE: (points out Iwata to the security men)
IWATA: (being dragged away) It's the future of portable gaming! The futurrrrrrrre!!
REGGIE: (clears throat) Now, back to business. If we don't--
KAPLAN: What a brilliant idea! It's the essence of cool!
REGGIE: Now, if we don't--
KAPLAN: Essence of cool! Essence of cool! Tee hee!
REGGIE: Now, if we don't--
NAKA: I'm Yuji Naka and I snuck into this super-secret bunker and you'd better let me make a game for your system... OR ELSE!
REGGIE: Now, you must understand--
YAMAUCHI: We could make a Brain-Traning game!
KAPLAN: Or a happy flowers and bunnies game!
ARAKAWA: Or a game where you get to tear apart your opponents with your bare hands!
REGGIE: Please, everyone...
KAPLAN: I would certainly play this system in a train! On a plane! In the rain!
ARAKAWA: I would play this system after drinking the blood of my enemies!
YAMAUCHI: I would sure enjoy playing this donut, I mean system!
REGGIE: Okay, it's confirmed! You're all nuts! Meeting adjourned! I'm going home!
(Reggie takes everybody's names.)
REGGIE: And you're not getting your names back until you stop acting nuts!
????????: Who am I?

So you see, gentle reader, the DS was actually meant to be a highly intuitive game-playing device, not the gimmicky monster than unexperienced and, frankly, downright stupid DS developers have bastardized the poor baby into. (developers besides Nintendo that have not done so include Q Entertainment, Hudson, and... somebody...) But, all hope was not lost! Enter Activision, who, as I was convinces, would NOT screw this up and NOT decide that Tony Hawk DS would, say, have you tap onscreen buttons with the stylus in order to do tricks.

Say it ain't so, Tony.

Though many of the DS-specific features still need to be implemented, we got a glimpse of a few cool functions. Players will obviously be able to track their whereabouts on the DS system's lower touch-screen with an overhead map. The touch screen will also be used for specific touch-screen specials that players will pull off by tapping the on-screen icons at the proper time.

Weak. %(&)$@!ing weak. Using the D-pad to move around and then tapping onscreen buttons with the stylus to do tricks? That's what the physical buttons are there for, you morons. Using the D-pad the move and onscreen buttons to do tricks is about as immersive as a knee-high pile of sludge on a Detroit freeway, and about as useful.

Why would anybody think Nintendo would even create the Nintendo DS if the only purpose of the touch screen were to do this moronic novelties that nobody, but NOBODY, enjoys? There's a reason that Penny Arcade, way back when, called the DS a "useless novelty factory" and I don't blame them, even if hearing somebody insult the DS is something that makes me cry. The DS fan over at dot dot dot described his dream portable and said that it would forgo a touch screen because, for one thing, he wouldn't want to "force developers to use it." I don't blame him, either, since most developers seem to think "okay, we'll do something fun for Cube, PS2, Xbox, and PSP, and something that's just %^*)#&!ing weird for DS."

And it hurts me because I want the DS to succeed because it's the only chance this dual-screen setup has to stick and stay around for the next generation of portables, rather than get squished flat like Nintendo's last dual-screened "innovation" (which, contrary to DS, deserved its dismal fate). If people take advantage of the touchscreen for things that actually make sense, games like Metroid Prime: Hunters where the top screen is for viewing and the bottom screen is for impressively accurate aiming, or games like Shogun Warriors, where you command your troops by drawing circles around them to select them and drawing lines to have them attack in that direction, then the Nintendo DS's excellent design may see life in the next iteration of the Game Boy, or even the PSP. If people keep coming up with stupid %(^)@! like "use the touchscreen to select a special move to assign to the R button, because we're too lazy to give this game good controls" or "do tricks with an onscreen menu because we've decided that Tony Hawk is actually an RPG and we want to make you as aware of your system as possible," then the DS is destined for Davy Jones's locker, the resting place of the R.O.B. and every other "technological innovation" that, what do you know, was about as much fun as having teeth pulled.

Shame on you, Activision. Shame on you.

Here are some examples of good uses of the touch screen: Q's Meteos is a puzzle game that uses the touch screen for direct interaction with the playfield; you can play it using the buttons, but it's about one one hundredth as easy as it with the touch screen. Nintendogs uses the touch screen and microphone to interact with your puppies; the game was originally planned for GameCube, but was moved to DS because it seemed much more like the ideal platform for it. Kirby: Canvas Curse could not possibly be done with the D-pad and buttons, because you must draw a path directly onto the game world, which Kirby uses to traverse (I don't own the game, but I hear it's a barrel of fun). Trace Memory (Another Code) uses the touchscreen to move your character about the world, and to solve the many puzzles along her way. Super Mario 64 DS, like Metroid, uses the bottom screen both as a map and as a means of control (which I think is something the could and should be applied to many "traditional" games), and you can slide the thumb pad around the touch screen to move Mario about, something allowing more freedom and portability than an analog stick would. Finally, Blizzard is considering porting StarCraft to DS, and this would be such a perfect fit that I absolutely implore you write a letter to Blizzard (P.O. Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623) and tell them that, were there a DS version of StarCraft, you would hunt it down to the ends of the earth to play it (I'm certainly going to send them such a letter).

In fact, I think a good rule might be... if this game wouldn't work better with just the D-pad and buttons, then why use the touch screen at all? Why not just put a map there? It would make certain self-styled gaming intellectuals bitch and moan not to see the second screen used for something heart-breakingly original, but a map is very useful and certainly suits many game franchises. Besides that, I think the the Super Mario 64 DS/Metroid Prime: Hunters setup, where the touch screen is a combination map and input device, would work for a lot of games ported from other systems, whether the preferred method of input is the thumb pad (Super Mario 64 DS) or the stylus (Metroid Prime: Hunters, and my Tony Hawk dream game described above). This way, we could have good games that use established play styles achieve a greater level of accuracy and intuitiveness on the DS (rather than mess them up with asinine gimmicks like in Tony Hawk), as well as new kinds of games that haven't been done before (at least not to near this degree of success), such as Nintendogs.

Eventually, tech journalists around the world will discover that they were wrong and that the DS actually makes sense, but only if the developers make games for it that aren't completely asinine. In other words, the future of portable gaming depends on it. Please, Activision, come around. If I get to do ollies and flips and manuals with my stylus, I will forgive you in no time flat.

2005-07-16T17:35:00.000-07:00

(Written in March, so you will find corrections and updates at the end.)

Let's get one thing straight: I hate the PSP.

I hate it, hate it, hate it with the burning passion of a thousand suns. Nothing about it I find attractive. ...Okay, it has a very nice screen, a very slick design, an analog stick... but still! It's got the cursed emblem on it... the mark of the Beast, who's name is PS.

I hate the PSP not because it has a library of washed-up PS2 ports. I hate it not because it has the battery life of a fruit fly. I don't even hate it because of the prospect of accidentally killing somebody with the flying UMD "feature" (Bond, it looks like a game machine, but secretly, it shoots discs at people).

I hate it, you guessed it, because of childhood trauma. I hate it because it gives me flashbacks to the loss of an old friend, the only game system that ever loved me. Not the DS, but the DC.

The Sega Dreamcast was poised, I was convinced, to outlast its forty-gazillion-pound competitor. Armed to the teeth with a stellar holiday lineup and the only recognition of online console gaming around, I knew that the sleek Dreamcast would beat out its ugly, twice-the-price competitor, the new kid on the block, the PlayStation 2.

The Dreamcast, in that one year, had Skies of Arcadia, Jet Grind Radio, Samba de Amigo, Crazy Taxi, ChuChu Rocket, Grandia II, Shenmue, and had Sonic Adventure 2 as well as the online games Phantasy Star Online, Quake 3 Arena, Unreal Tournament, and Alien Front Online on the way for the year after. The PlayStation 2 had nothing but a bunch of barely-improved sequels with (wait for it) unimpressive graphics (ha! ha! ha!) that, as IGNDC skillfully demonstrated, didn't even come close to the Dreamcast game-for-game. I reclined in my game-room chair, confident that my Dreamcast would stick around until the next holiday season, and the next, for such announced games as Jet Grind Radio 2 (...) and Samba de Amigo ver. 2000.

Disaster struck. PS2, despite a hardware shortage, was selling like hotcakes. How could this be?! Could Tekken Jag Tournament and Ridged Racer (sorry, old, non-funny joke) really be outselling the critically acclaimed greatness of Jet Grind Radio and Skies of Arcadia? And, to my added horror, the machine was selling along the lines of the arguments given to me by my nonbelieving classmates.

"It plays DVDs!" they would all say, practically an unending stream of sheep praising to the nines a feature in the PS2 that has nothing to do with games. Yeah, I know it plays DVDs. Who gives a $%^*()!! For the asking price of $300, you could buy a Dreamcast and a DVD player (even then). But that was the consistent, clear argument. It plays DVDs. I know, I know, so does a DVD player, a game machine is meant to play games, but that's all the PS2-devoted seem to care about. It plays DVDs, so it's better than the Dreamcast, quality lineup or not. I was dumbstruck. In fact, I supported my conviction that the Dreamcast would overtake the PS2 in time to the very day that Sega announced they were dropping out of the hardware business.

And do you know why the PS2 sold while Dreamcasts sat collecting dust in shop corners? Part of it has to do with EB employees, who were, at the time, instructed to say that the PlayStation 2 would be the best system ever made (EB employees are also genetically predisposed to saying that Sony is God and will crush anything in its path). (They also like to drown babies and cause major famines and earthquakes.) But the major component was DVD playback.

By playing DVDs, the system was no longer a game machine, and that was exactly the point. When Ken Kutaragi boldly said that Sony Computer Entertainment is not a games company, but an entertainment company, I was gooey-eyed when then-CEO of Sega of America Peter Moore said "That's great. We're a videogame company." However, DVD playback made the PS2 into a family machine. It was no longer tainted with the uncomfortable stigma of buying a machine solely for the diversion, of buying a machine whose principal method of input is an array of sticks and buttons designed to manipulate an onscreen character and make him complete prescribed goals, so that you make take in the reward of completing a challenge like a rat munching on pellets in a scientific experiment. No, no, people who did not see themselves as gamers, or even as casual gamers, now had an excuse to buy a PlayStation 2 and find out what Final Fantasy was all about.

(The other feature that had me laying eggs in fury was "backwards compatibility;" in my words, "why would you want a new system to play games for the system you already have?" For the record, I still think it's stupid.)

But, more importantly, by playing DVDs, families could invest in a PS2. If you have a PS2 in the living room, then Mom and Dad can watch their favorite romantic comedies while Junior (and occasionally Mom and Dad, too) can tear it up in SSX Tricky. Suddenly, everybody liked the PS2. And that's exactly why it sold; not because it had a solid lineup of software (because it didn't), but because it could play DVDs and PlayStation 1 games. Excuse me while I barf.

But it happened, even as I plugged my ears and closed my eyes and sang "la la laaaaa" and continued to preach the Gospel According to Sonic. Sega took a huge gamble in lowering the price of the DC to $150, and I was convinced that, being at half the price of the PS2, it would be the system of choice in the holiday season. I was wrong; without DVD playback, the DC wouldn't stand a chance of looking like a lower-priced alternative to the PlayStation 2.

(By the way, for you people who said, back then, "sure, I already have a DVD player, but once I have a PS2, I can have a DVD player in the den, too!" consider yourself dragged out into the street and shot.)

And so, the price of the Dreamcast dropped to $100, to $80, and finally to $50, as Sega got rid of their remaining stock and jumped ship to the "next-generation" consoles. Slowly, but surely, the quirky company that made original, revolutionary titles like Jet Grind Radio and Samba de Amigo started churning out Sonic sequels and B-grade zombie killfests. Slowly, but surely, they began to turn a profit for the first time since the time of Sonic's debut system, the Sega Genesis. They became conservative, staying within the envelope, within the realm of tried-and-true formulas and previously successful franchises. They company I knew and loved as a child was no more; in fact, they were bought out by Sammy, the pachinko manufacturer, for eighty cents and a Snickers bar, and Sammy proceeded to consolidate all of Sega's independent studios and make them one big company again, to assure creative dilution and bureaucracy. Sonic Team, once the house of Sonic, NiGHTS, Burning Rangers, ChuChu Rocket, and Samba de Amigo, became bloated, working on many titles at once and going from consistently stellar to disturbingly mediocre. Sonic-creator-genius Yuji Naka climbed the ranks at Sega to become another middle-management paper-pusher, and Naoto Ohshima, the visually artistic soul of Sonic and NiGHTS, left Sonic Team to form his own company, Artoon, and churn out mediocre games of his own. Sega was no longer the company we remember; but they were, at long last, in the black.

(However, Sega did have one thing going for them; before releasing the Dreamcast, they bought a small, unheard-of studio called Visual Concepts, known previously for their unremarkable Clay Fighter series, to do Sega's NBA and NFL games. Even while Madden topped the charts again and again, the undisputed quality of Sega's NFL games gave the "Sega Sports" brand a sizable following. Sega was constantly neck-and-neck with Madden, in a race for each company to make their games bigger and better each year. Sega made a last-ditch effort to bring gamers to their camp when they bought the license to make ESPN-branded games and then slashed their holiday-2004 lineup to $20, and it worked until EA dropped the bomb that it had bought the exclusive lisence to the NFL and ESPN, effectively ending Sega's best-selling NFL series and making gamers of the next holiday season think they are buying the sequel to Sega's game when, in fact, they are buying the next Madden. Having lost so much money in that effort to oust EA from the NFL throne, Sega sold its sports division to Take Two, went into the corner and sulked.)

(Not to mention that EA steadfastly refused to develop anything for Dreamcast, back in the day, despite the fact that they built their success on the Sega Genesis, developed games for PC and the Apple Macintosh, and would come to make games for Xbox and GameCube. Had EA been willing to port their games to Dreamcast, and, what do you know, make money, the Dreamcast might still be around. EA, screw you and all your children.)

Now, the comparison between DC vs. PS2 and DS vs. PSP is tenuous, but still plausible enough to induce nightmares in this author. However, there are major differences. PSP, just like PS2, is launching with a slew of titles we've already seen before, but DS, unlike the Dreamcast, is characterized by having a draught of titles instead of a stellar lineup. And, don't get me wrong, I'm very excited about the DS's lineup this year--"Nintendo is T3H D00MED" fanboys/journalists (you've seen them, writing for every freakin' major publication on the planet) conveniently ignore the DS's great lineup for this holiday season--but unlike Dreamcast, it isn't a lineup of original games. The big titles Nintendo has announced are Animal Crossing, Advance Wars, Mario Kart, Metroid Prime: Hunters, and on and on and on like a broken record. (Addmittedly, Metroid Prime: Hunters is a wonderful experience and the most "rethought" of the bunch, and Animal Crossing looks to outshine its GameCube counterpart by leaps and bounds by its inclusion of online play, but it doesn't change the fact that Nintendo has been returning to its popular franchises like a drug addict to his hidden stash.) Meanwhile, from third parties, the mags are looking forward to Sonic DS, Castlevania DS, a port of the NES Final Fantasy III (Square, what the hell are you thinking?!)... To their credit, Nintendo has released a completely original game in Japan in the critically acclaimed Another Code, which I am greatly looking forward to (particularly because the hero is just an ordinary teenage girl in a red and white shirt), but a US release has merely been alluded to and no date has been put forth. (Update: it will be called Trace Memory and ships Sept. 26.)

Meanwhile (while I'm busy slamming my system of choice), the feature that I bought the DS primarily for--the simplicity in gaming that I hoped would be brought by the touch-screen--has been totally trampled upon. I was enchanted when I heard that Advance Wars would be on the DS, because I looked forward to controlling my troops with the touch screen, and then using the upper screen to look at their stats. Instead, land battles take place on the bottom screen, air battles on the top, which is hard to get yourself excited about when depth in simplicity is the hallmark of the Advance Wars series, something that gets eroded with each installment's selling point. (I don't remember who said this, so stand up if it's you, but I remember some columnist writing that the people on Star Trek must know that their bizarre 3D variant of chess, with its three boards and pivoting squares, still isn't as good as the old-fashioned kind.) Meanwhile, I was happy to hear that Harvest Moon would be coming to the DS; using the stylus to plant your seeds and interact with the game world sounded heavenly. Nope, sorry; the subtitle is "Colobockle Station" (their "Colobockle" is our "Harvest Sprite"), because the bottom screen features a Harvest Sprite with a bleached afro who is a DJ running a radio station. To use a common message board colloquialism... WTF?

When I first played Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt and Super Mario 64 DS, I was very happy because I finally discovered what made the DS great, and why it has two screens: you use one screen for control, one screen for display. Use one screen to tell Samus where to look, or Mario where to run, and use the other screen to see what you're doing. I found this more portable than an analog stick, and in the case of Metroid Prime: Hunters, much more accurate. I looked forward to all the new types of games that would be made possible on a handheld using this technology. Unfortunately, my dreams of elegant simplicity were crushed when I heard of the gimmicky uses for the two screens put forth by Advance Wars and Harvest Moon. At the very least, Majesco is putting Age of Empires on the system; let me give a hearty "hooray" to one developer who actually sees the potential of the DS's touch screen to be used for games that were never thought marketable on a "console" device. However, if they announce that Age of Empires will use the top screen for control and the bottom screen for an all-night Egyptian cave rave, I'm trading in my DS for a PSP (believe it). No pair of eyes can use two screens at once for anything more than reference and interaction, and the DS development community would do well to have that beaten into their heads.

Here's what I would like to see on DS: a game that is fun and totally non-revolutionary. A game that uses the touch-screen for entirely simple, intuitive purposes that you wish you had thought of. When EA showed that Fight Night used one stick for each fist, magazines (appropriately, for once) raved about how good a use this was for the two sticks. Think of how well it would have gone over if you used one stick to rotate your guy on each axis and you could click the other stick to call for help from Thomas the Fairy, the selling point of "Fight Night: Thomas the Fairy Kicks Ass," and you would twirl yourself around and shout "Let's get ready to rumble!" into the included microphone and you would wiggle your toes to will your fairy man towards your opponent and then give birth to an alien baby in order to get him to punch. Ick.

What a "revolution" in game design should do is make you forget about your input device, to bring your close to the game world and give you a more intuitive, rewarding experience playing a game. The Legend of Zelda, way back in the eighties, had a huge amount of items to collect and puzzles to solve using them, to the degree that Nintendo of America was concerned that the game might not sell in the States because it was too confusing and gamers might get lost. No worries: in the pause menu, the game would allow you to assign your collected, useful items to either button, and that is how you collected each item and made it your own. If I wanted to use my bow-and-arrow, I would bring up the pause menu, assign my bow to my button of choice, and then press the button to fire. Icons at the bottom of the screen show you what items you have assigned to each button, for reference. This way, items that seemed confusing and remote become familiar and usable. Likewise, in Shigeru Miyamoto's opus, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, the A button becomes ambiguous, with an icon telling you what it does at a particular time. This sounds obtuse, but in practice, you just use the A button whenever you need to open a door, or lift a vase, or do anything that doesn't require a special item, and it becomes second nature in no time. Likewise, Nintendo EAD thought that targeting an enemy with a weapon would be difficult in third-person 3D, so they give gamers a choice; by pressing the assigned button to bring up, say, the bow-and-arrow, you'll stay in one place and be able to fire from a first-person perspective. However, the preferred method is the lock-on system, which allows you to use the L trigger to focus on a particular enemy, allowing you to keep your third-person view and attack the monster with either a direct or a long-range weapon. Additionally, when you are locked on, you can use the movement stick to strafe, and the A button to dodge. Perfectly elegant, intuitive, and fun. These three innovations (assigning items to buttons, the context-sensitive action button, and the lock-on feature) have not only become staples in the Zelda series, but in the game world in general. In Zelda, they've allowed a relatively simple NES game concept (that Miyamoto must be tickled pink to have thought of) to grow into a series of remarkably complex and intricate games while retaining their intuitive nature and elegantly simple controls all the way from the NES original. Miyamoto, give yourself a pat on the back; you've done the game community proud.

The problem is, this message is lost to most DS developers. However, there is hope: Touch! Kirby and the Magic Paintbrush shows a new kind of game that could not have been done on any other system (not even on PC!), in which you control Kirby, trapped in ball form, by drawing a path for him with a sylus, or by touching him to make him dash, or by touching enemies to make them stunned so that Kirby can take them out like bowling pins. It's a bit shallow, but it's new. (Update: Nintendogs, which is eating the Japanese sales charts for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, uses the touch screen and microphone as its primary methods of input, to allow you to interact with your pooch on a one-to-one level. Perfect. Meanwhile, Kirby has showed up in the US as Kirby: Canvas Curse and can be found at your local branch of EBGameFuncoStopBabbages.)

So, why do I hate the PSP? I hate it because I see history repeating itself. However, there is a major difference between the PS2 and PSP launches; the PS2's selling point was DVD playback, whereas the PSP's secondary features, despite being touted as the "Walkman of the future," are pathetically limited. If you want to play a movie on the PSP, you have to buy the movie in a proprietary format (UMD) for $20. That's right, a movie that cannot be played on anything but your system the size of a soda can. (It worked for Game Boy Advance Video, selling episodes of Dora the Explorer on GBA cartridges; GBA Video cartridges are selling like hotcakes at the moment to parents who want their kids right distracted while they're in the car. However, you are an adult, and have neither the hands-free time nor the gullibility to buy something so obscenely gimmicky.) Meanwhile, if you want to play music on the thing, you have to use Sony's proprietary, unpopular Memory Stick medium, which is both expensive and limited. Memo to Sony: allow the PlayStation 3 to play UMD movies, and your stock will soar. That's all I have to say.

That's right, the principal selling point of the PSP is not its stellar lineup (Lumines and nothing else) nor its limited, proprietary media functions (will Sony ever, ever learn?), but sheer power. The power of the PS2 was marginally better than that of the Dreamcast, but magazines still praised its "Emotion Engine" (read: blast processing) to the heavens, even when the first-generation PS2 titles came out jagged and unimpressive, whimpering before the DC's graphical prowess (Shenmue). However, while the DS's technology, in terms of traditional measures of technical ability, are slightly better than that of the Nintendo 64, the PSP not only has a wide, beautiful screen but the ability to make you think you're playing a PlayStation 2. That's a whole generation removed, something that will stick in Nintendo's craw for a long time.

So what do I think Ninty did wrong? The DS was released too early. Sure, it got a holiday season to itself in the States, but the Game Boy Advance SP is still selling like crazy and Nintendo does not need a "third pillar" just yet. Had they released it during the holiday season of 2005, it would have launched with a crazy number of stellar titles in stark contrast to the PSP's unimpressive lineup. The DS would not have to use a playable demo as its flagship title. Nintendo would have been able to give the DS more memory, allowing it to expand beyond its current capacity to support games and avoid growing pains when it comes time to move past N64 ports. Nintendo would have been able to support WiFi at launch (when you don't have online play from the beginning, it's very hard to get support for it in the end, as Sega and Microsoft have learned bitterly). Nintendo would have been able to brand it "Game Boy," having been able to ride out the GBA SP's success for one last year. Moreover, the device would catch on quickly; instead of going "huh?" at gimmicky games like Feel the Magic and WarioWare Touched, gamers would go, "oh, yeah!" at intuitive, innovative games like Metroid Prime: Hunters and Age of Empires (neither really new, but new for a handheld, and Metroid is a joy to play with the stylus). Nintendo would have been able to hype the system properly, support the system properly, and not leave gamers with fears of another 32X or Virtual Boy, systems that were expensive and yet seemed like the future until their respective manufacturers dropped them like hot coals. The stylus control would seem natural rather than bizarre.

So what do I see for the future of videogaming? If you allow me to be optimistic (as a DS owner who does not intend to buy a PSP), the PSP will have fleeting success and the DS will endure. The Blackberry and the iPod, as Nintendo marketing veep Reggie was quick to point out, are very successful, "hip" systems, but they each had to be out for years before they caught on. Sony's machine, the PSP, beyond its sleek design, has all the elegance of a deer hit by a truck. Sony is banking entirely on the system's sheer power to carry it along, with neither new methods of control nor an inviting multimedia capability to help it along. Only people who are already hardcore gamers are going to buy the PSP, and that's a limited market. The PSP is no PS2 in that regard.

On the DS side of the camp, however, things are different. While magazines rave about the stunning new development of the PSP and all its migs and megs and memories, consumers who don't play videogames much are delighted by the DS's two screens, touch screen, microphone, and WiFi support and are chilled by the PSP's high cost of entry. The PSP is a system for the hardcore, and the DS is a system for the consumer, and while both will be successful in each regard the DS will outlast its highly-priced competitor. Iwata was right on the money when he said that, as videogame companies and projects have gotten bigger and bigger, companies have gotten smaller in what they are willing to do, and have failed to bring new gamers into the market. Iwata's vision, if you'll forgive a bit of fan-worship, is that videogames as we know them is just one planet in a vast, unexplored universe, and the secret to success in the new age of videogames is not to preach to the converted but to seek out new gamers in new markets and show them the way of Mario. The DS, with it's low price tag, inviting interface, and all-around cuteness is a perfect way to do that, especially with pick-up-and-play games like Jam with the Band, WarioWare Touched, and Nintendogs. Sony may have the corporate purchasing power of a Mack truck, but the DS has the potential to be a meme, a fad, spreading from person to person like a virus. The Nintendogs commercial in Japan exhibits this well; our hero, Japanese pop star Hikaru Utada, comes home after a long day of work and, at the end of a dramatic thirty seconds, sits down and plays with her Nintendogs to unwind. In the end, the average person is going to want to play a game that is just plain fun.

I'm not counting out the PSP. I think it has many great uses, such as as a doorstop, and as a way to annoy your little brother with a flying UMD. (Also, I hear its clickety square button allows you to use two PSPs as really great castanets.) But I have joined the DS camp, because even while I like to go gooey-eyed over fancy tech demos, the age when graphics alone can make a game is over. Satoru Iwata is right when he says we need to seek out new kinds of games and new kinds of gamers, and a new system with new games, like the DS, is a great way to do that. You people in the PSP camp can have your obscenely powerful system and your PS2 ports that you'd rather play on a PS2 anyway; I'm going to play games like Animal Crossing and Another Code that would be an absolute thrill to play on a bus. Rez creator Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who left Sega because he felt the company had gotten too conservative with its approach to games, has now formed his own company, Q Entertainment, and its first game, Lumines, is a hit with PSP gamers not because it has fancy graphics or a 40-hour story, but because it's extremely addictive and fun to play; exactly the kind of game that the DS stands for. Isn't it ironic that you bought a system for obscenely impressive graphics and instead turned to a game that's just plain fun? I think that's exactly why I bought a DS, and why you should, too.

Additionally, I'd like to address a common question posed to us, well, Sony haters, because it's a fair and honest question that doesn't get answered enough. "Why do you hate Sony so much?" Really, our (my) hatred of Sony is an irrational, destructive hatred, like the way you curse the name of the paperboy when he throws your morning paper into your rose bush, rather than calling up the newspaper company and asking them to tell him to stop that. After all, Nintendo has a lot to learn from Sony; when Sony lost its biggest franchises, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon, because their respective developers decided to take those franchises to multiple platforms, Sony invested in the creation of new platforming heroes like Sly Cooper and Jak and Daxter to sell its system to a new generation of gamers. Nintendo, however, is shy to introduce new franchises even when its last such investment, Pokémon, was the company's biggest break since Donkey Kong. (Pokémon, as Iwata pointed out, is also a good example of addictive gameplay built on unimpressive hardware, showing how a good gameplay concept can outlast all other factors. No wonder the franchise's next installments, Daimond and Pearl, are slated for release on the DS.)

However, to answer the question, it's hard not to see Sony's approach to gaming as anything but an arrogant belief that they can simply buy the videogame industry. The PlayStation succeeded first of all because it was a well designed system with solid first-party support, but second of all because Nintendo and Sega, the competitors, each made royal screw-ups at about the same time (Nintendo leaving Sony to partner with Phillips on awful, forgettable Zelda games, and then launching a cartridge-based N64 and driving away Squaresoft, and then just about everything Sega did around that time). The elegant simplicity of the PlayStation faded away with the $300 monster that was the PlayStation 2 (the PS1 launched at $300 as well, but remember, it was competing against a $400 Saturn and an $800 Jaguar, rather than a $150 Dreamcast and an upcoming $200 GameCube), as well as the PSP, each intended to put everything and the kitchen sink into a videogame console without bringing in anything new. We, Sony proudly proclaimed, are an entertainment company, not a videogame company. Magazine publications praised every one of Sony's consoles as being revolutionary simply because they were very, very powerful. (Village idiot Trip Hawkins took the cake when he said that the PS2 was as revolutionary a development as the invention of the printing press. Yeah, well, say that to Gutenberg's face, Mr. 3DO.) However, Sony gradually learned the ropes and began funding new projects and new franchises, which did greatly increase the quality of life for contemporary gamers. Microsoft is still learning, as it sinks boatloads of money into the Xbox that it will never make up with Halo as its only key franchise.

So, why do I hate the PSP? I hate it beacuse I was scarred as a child by a company that did not value gameplay as a key asset. I hate it because I see a company that can sink endless amounts of money into the videogame industry with out improving it at all. I hate the PSP because when I see videogame publications waxing poetic over its sheer power, I have flashbacks to the Dreamcast days when a horde of stellar titles could not complete with the sheer masturbation factor of a shiny new PlayStation 2. But really, I think the PSP is okay. It sounds like a good system. Like the PS2, it'll have good games, eventually. But the DS represents my ideals for the videogame industry. Games that are for everyone. Games that are fun. Games that are simple diversions and not investments. Games that are immersing because of their solid design and creativity. Games where the brilliance of the developer can show through. Games that we've never seen before. That is represented by the DS's simple design, new interface, and low price, as well as sheer portability with it's clamshell design. So much can be accomplished by the touchscreen, as we can have games that until now have only been possible (crudely) on a PC and never on a console.

I, personally, want the DS to win, because I want to see a future that admires innovation more than brute strength. If you don't like the DS, you're welcome to by the PSP, but please, please give the touch-screen a chance. If you don't like WarioWare, there's Metroid Prime: Hunters, and if you don't like Metroid Prime: Hunters, there's Nintendogs, and if you don't like that there's Animal Crossing, and if you don't like that, there's Another Code and Mario Kart and Age of Empires and Shogun Warriors and many, many other games that have never been done before on a handheld. Each uses the touchscreen for a new, integral, enjoyable function and each demonstrates the power of the DS platform well, and each is certainly worth your money.

(This was written back in March, and things have changed since then. Sony, apparently, has made it clear that they don't want PS2 ports to clog the PSP's library, and as a result, we have novel, original titles like Mercury and Infected coming to the system. Now that the DS it outselling every other piece of game hardware in Japan, including PS2, thanks to games like Nintendogs and DS Training for Adults, game and tech journalists are admitting that perhaps they were a bit brash in their original "DS: Failure, or Roadkill?" appraisal. Advance Wars: Dual Strike will use the whole land/air gimmick as an exception and not the rule, and my blood pressure dropped greatly with relief upon finding this out; however, the real selling point gimmick will the be confoundingly stupid "tag-team generals," a feature I have wailed upon in another entry. Majesco's DS version of Age of Empires will indeed use the touch screen as the main display and the top screen for extra info, and as a result, I want to have Majesco's babies for recognizing that the touch screen can actually be used as a primary method of input [imagine that!]. However, the DS version of AOE will be turn-based, as opposed to the real-time PC games. Trip Hawkins has boldly predicted that Nintendo will be in Microsoft's pocket by 2010, a prediction which I am laminating and mounting until then. Contrary to my above prediction, EA's Madden 2006 will indeed be called Madden 2006, and they've extended their deal with John Madden for several more years. It seems that EA didn't buy the exclusive license to the ESPN so that they could use it, but so that Sega could not. Jerks. Finally, the price point for this holiday season's big DS titles seems to be 35 dollars a pop, a great deal less than what you'd be paying for PSP titles. Hah!)

2005-07-13T16:06:00.000-07:00

Now, Less Balanced! (Plus: In Defense of Macropayments)

Today's post, featuring Advance Wars: Dual Strike.

I love Advance Wars. I eat, sleep, breathe, and other various vital body functions Advance Wars. It is easily one of my favorite games of all time. Many videogames I have dreamt about (just ask me about the nightmares I had as a young kid about Big Boo), but Advance Wars is the only game in which I knew, right when I woke up, that the dream I just had (about the X-Men, incidentally) was a metaphor for Advance Wars and contained the winning strategy right in the dream. (Unfortunately, the strategy was a bust, but the metaphor was plain as day.) Advance Wars is the reason to own a GBA, the reason to live, the reason that God invented the liquid crystal display. In short, Advance Wars is your mom.

Of course, I never played the original Advance Wars... I was too much of a wimp to take such a chance on such an obscure series of titles ("Wars" games, in Japan, date back to the NES). Boy, was I wrong, as I discovered when I picked up Advance Wars 2, which I regarded as my "second chance" to try this series (yeah, I'm a slave to large corporations). However, one thing disturbed me about it: selling points.

You see, reviewers around this great Intarweb of ours were saying that Advance Wars 2 was a dissappointment because it was, by and large, an expansion pack... a new campaign (with unlockable hard mode!), new War Room maps, new COs, a newfangled "Neotank" that looks like someone bred a horse and an octopus, but no great new changes made to the series. In fact, once I did a bored Google search for "Advance Wars 3," and mostly found things like, "The only thing I'd like to see in an Advance Wars 3 is the ability for COs to shower their opponents in napalm-tapioca pudding and for certain units to be able to shout 'CHEESE' and rain destruction upon the less fortunate." No, really, thems were crazy ideas being thrown around, like the ability to build cities and units exclusive to certain COs... the point of either I'm still trying to ascertain. But, this is off the subject.

You see, what I'm afraid will easily kill the wonderful Advance Wars series is "selling points." There needs to be something to sell the game, right? Nobody, besides me, will buy a new Advance Wars game that's just new maps and maybe a new unit or two. So, in Advance Wars 2, they added "Super CO Powers," an extension of the feature in the first Advance Wars where your commanding officer was given a "limit break" ability where, after a certain amount of carnage has transpired, they can gain extra powers for just one turn. For instance, if you're playing as Andy, you can use this ability to heal your units (repair is his specialty), or, if you're Max, you can give them a direct combat power boost (direct combat is his specialty), but only for one turn.

A bit implausible, militarily, since I can hardly imagine a commanding officer scurrying about the battlefield and managing to do significant repairs on every unit on the field in just one day and still manage to command his troops. But, suspension of disbelief is the order of the day on the Game Boy Advance, and besides, it gives an added bit of strategy to decide which turn to use it on (but, more often than not, you need to use it on the first turn you get it.) Consider it a dash of Mario Kart (but only a dash-- too much Mario Kart and you've got a verifiable unstable compound that will explode and get the goo of a tarnished game on your nice white pants), adding a small, but significant, element of unpredictability to an otherwise completely mechanical game.

All that changed with Super CO Powers.

Andy can now heal every one of his units for up to five points of damage--half a unit's hit points!--extend their movement by one space, and give them a firepower boost. That's insane. Eagle, the air combat specialist, gets a firepower boost and an extra turn; if he has a bomber at his command, he can easily, as Martin Luther King might put it, break the backbone of your power (and as he might not put it), thus owning you and your mom in an instant. Olaf can unleash the wonderfully implausible "Winter Fury" upon his opponents, dealing every enemy unit two points of damage and covering the battlefield in snow, which severly limits his opposing units' movement but does not so much as inconvenience his units, who are magically impervious to it (snowshoes?). It's madness, I tell you, madness!

And the worst part is, you can fit about three of these in one game. Yes, it still takes skill to win the game, but, like Amy Rose in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle, it is possible to maintain your dominance entirely through broken special moves like these. Because they qualify as a "nuisance" rather than a game-killer isn't the point: imagine if, in chess, after you got a certain number of pieces captured or after you got a certain number of your own pieces captured, you could unleash a devastating super move that allowed your bishops to sweep the chessboard and mow down the opposing pieces, while the whole board became covered in sticky tar that allowed your opponents to do nothing but wiggle in place like a bugged-out platforming hero stuck on a ledge. ICK.

And the worst part (well, worse worst part) is... they're doing this again. Gotta have something to sell the DS version, right? Here's what IGNDS had to say...

The subtitle "Dual Strike" is more than just a clever play on the DS abbreviations. It also refers to the fact that in many missions, you'll have control over two CO characters this time around instead of just one. This means that as you work your way across the map and defeat enemy troops, you'll be powering up two different COs that can affect the overall world with their abilities. Working together, they can even pull off a combined super move that can absolutely devastate the opposition.

Daaaamn. They just wrote the rest of this post for me. SICK!

I would say something pissy, like "Advance Wars is not a 'dude I totally just blew his head off' game, it is not a game where the main selling point should be the devastating amount of damage you can deal in one turn. Advance Wars, like all good games, is a game about balance. Go was invented by a Chinese monarch intending to instill the values of balance into his son so that he would be a good ruler; imagine if, instead, he had invented Go so that his son could have a game to take out his frustrations on and to allow him to unleash his violent fantasies of leaving piles of dead black playing pieces rotting in the streets," but you knew I was going to say that. Instead, I'm going to leave you all on a better example of an attempt to fix something that wasn't broke, thus ruining the game for those who considered it to be a deep and engrossing experience worthy of the Nobel Prize:

Puyo Pop Fever.

Harley out.

P.S. This is a new blog, if you haven't noticed. Be sure to send me lots of love through my E-mail address, which I will set up soon. Oh, and by the way, micropayments are stupid. Just stupid. Not a day goes by that I don't hear some self-styled gaming intellectual waxing poetic about how episodic content will save the industry. Ever buy a book in sections? Ever watch a movie scene-by-scene? Remember all those late nights you stayed up, as a kid, playing Mega Man so that you could finish just this one level so that you could finally get to the screen that says "Congratulations! Now wait three months for the next level!" If so, then you might want to immerse yourself in this wonderfully non-existent trend before it totally (but totally) changes the way we play videogames, using my seven easy steps.

1. Rent a game from Blockbuster.

2. Play the first three levels.

3. Take the game back to Blockbuster.

4. Wait six months.

5. Get the game out again.

6. Play the next three levels.

7. Repeat until you are dawned on by the totally inebrating joy of micropayments.

I don't know about you, but when I buy a game, I want to own the game. The whole damn game. I want to pay fifty bucks and, as the late Mitch Hedberg might put it, "that is the end of the transaction!" Imagine if, in Advance Wars, instead of gaining points by winning battles in order to buy new maps from Hachi's shop, instead, you had to feed REAL money into your Game Boy, where it is immediately beamed through cyberspace to Satoru Iwata's mansion so that he can fund his super-secret weekly excursions with Princess Peach. SICK.