Nintendo has finally come to their senses and decided to integrate the Wii Motion Plus into the default Wiimote. Before you would have to buy a little doggle thing that plugged into the bottom of your controller to get the full effect of what the Wii was suppose to do when it launched but didn't.
I haven't had a lot of experience with the Wii Motion Plus but what little I have had I thought the controller was a little weird to hold with it sticking off the end. I always felt as though the doggle was going to fall off if I did anything really waggley. Personally I would be very cautious about buying a Wii Motion Plus for this very reason but buying a controller with the same default size as the regular Wii Mote with the Motion Plua added is right up my alley.
I do think Nintendo should of put this new model of Wii Mote out instead of the doggle but at least they're making the change to this and for that I applaud them.
Showing posts with label Nintendo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nintendo. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Nintendo 3DS = $300...
Today Nintendo announced the release date for the 3DS in Japan. That date is February 26th with a North American and European release sometime in March. They also announced the price, 25000 yen or around 300 U.S. dollars.
The idea of a hand held costing 300 dollars especially one from Nintendo who in the past have always kept the price of their various hand held machines pretty low.
I know they're putting a ton of features into the 3DS and it does look to be an amazing machine but when you price your hand held higher than your current console it just kind of bugs me. I'm sure the 3DS will sell like crazy and I hope to pick one up myself but I will 100 percent be waiting for a price drop.
The one feature they're really showing off is the Gameboy and Gameboy Color virtual console that will be available on the 3DS. This will not include Gameboy Advance games at first but could in the future. Now in theory that's an amazing thing but looking at the state of the Wii's virutal console and seeing the wasteland of nothingness it has become I can only be skeptical of the new one. I mean we have major Nintendo releases that haven't been put out on the virtual console but we're seeing garbage like Aero The Acrobat 2 on the service when Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island isn't out yet. I just hope they actually continue support on the hand held VC after it launches but I have little hope of that.
Overall the games for the 3DS look sweet especially what I've seen of Super Street Fighter 4, it looks like the console version which I think is pretty impressive and if the 3D effects for it actually work I think it could be a fantastic way to play SSF4. I think the 3DS will do well and have good games but I also think Nintendo will need a little bit to get all the services and such in order and they need to support what they offer beyond the first few months.
(Yeah I repeated myself near the end, deal with it!)
The idea of a hand held costing 300 dollars especially one from Nintendo who in the past have always kept the price of their various hand held machines pretty low.
I know they're putting a ton of features into the 3DS and it does look to be an amazing machine but when you price your hand held higher than your current console it just kind of bugs me. I'm sure the 3DS will sell like crazy and I hope to pick one up myself but I will 100 percent be waiting for a price drop.
The one feature they're really showing off is the Gameboy and Gameboy Color virtual console that will be available on the 3DS. This will not include Gameboy Advance games at first but could in the future. Now in theory that's an amazing thing but looking at the state of the Wii's virutal console and seeing the wasteland of nothingness it has become I can only be skeptical of the new one. I mean we have major Nintendo releases that haven't been put out on the virtual console but we're seeing garbage like Aero The Acrobat 2 on the service when Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island isn't out yet. I just hope they actually continue support on the hand held VC after it launches but I have little hope of that.
Overall the games for the 3DS look sweet especially what I've seen of Super Street Fighter 4, it looks like the console version which I think is pretty impressive and if the 3D effects for it actually work I think it could be a fantastic way to play SSF4. I think the 3DS will do well and have good games but I also think Nintendo will need a little bit to get all the services and such in order and they need to support what they offer beyond the first few months.
(Yeah I repeated myself near the end, deal with it!)
Monday, July 19, 2010
Standing the Test of Time
The Second Look I just posted about Mario 64 had me thinking about something that's been on my mind for awhile now. I strongly believe that newer games just do not stand the test of time. With 3D graphics and polygons being introduced into gaming we've become jaded by what makes a game fun. One of the first things anyone notices about a game is the way it looks and this can skew people's opinions of a game. If it isn't all nice and shiny people will ignore it in favor of the new hotness with all the graphical bells and whistles. I'm guilty of this as well one of the first thing that hit me when I played Halo 3 for the first time was it didn't look that great and I thought that the big flagship title for the 360 should of been the best looking game on the system but it was still a fun game to play even though it looked like a first Xbox game. It's rare lately to play a game that just seems like a classic something you'll remember 20 years from now fondly and could still pick up and play all the way through.
With that being said I think gaming peaked in the 16-bit era. The Super Nintendo was dominating with the Genesis in a very close second and you had the underdog Turbo Graphx 16 trying to keep up and the PC leading it's own followers down a different path that would lead most of the innovation we see in console games today. All the different systems had different games with exclusives that stayed exclusives and actually gave you a reason to own all the gaming machines that were out then. While a lot of these games had good graphics for the time they had to have interesting art styles to separate them from the other. You can look at a Mario game and tell it's not Sonic. Final Fantasy did not look like Dragon Quest and so on. Today the endless streams of military shooters all look the same or you're in space shooting the same guys with the same laser and while these games can be fun they just don't stand apart except in name.
I strongly believe that when you discuss truly "classic" games you need to stick to the 16 bit or earlier era. Mention Gears of War 2 me and yeah I loved playing that game it was a ton of fun but is it a classic? No it's not something will come along and do Gears of War better then the Gears franchise will be forgotten not just by me but everyone. Even my beloved God of War I don't think is a classic. Another game by the same group of people that does the fighting and camera better with some slight tweaks to the game play can make God of War seem unplayable and broken. But a game like Super Mario World? It's just classic almost platforming perfection. The controls are responsive the game is beautiful even by today's standards it still holds up. The first two Sonic games do too, they're just fun to play with very very interesting zones, remember the first time you played the Casino Zone? Yeah I do and I'll never forget it but ask me about a part in Halo 3 and I may not be sure and need to go look online to refresh my memory.
Another thing from the past that I miss is that games were just different. Even though Mario and Sonic were both platformers they were completely different games. Today with the saturation of FPS games they all look the same shooting miscellaneous middle eastern guys with you're m-16 with a holographic site on it. With not a whole lot if anything at all different with them in a brown and grey world why use these advanced graphics engines to make bright bold colors when they do brown so well? I know these wars are in the desert but even the games that are in space are all grey and metal looking. Even as fantastic as Killzone 2 looked it was all brown and grey. DOOM took place in space and then Hell but it had some color to it bright colors we need to bring this back.
Most modern games you play them and forget I do have a few that have stood out to me and could very well be considered a classic, Demon's Souls is one and you can read why a few articles back. Another one that came out that I really really and I mean really enjoyed was Borderlands it did something different with the current FPS model and even though it took place in a desert waste land it was still colorful and looked amazing. Lately I've been more into the indie 2D games that are around, Cave Story, La-Mulana and all that kind of stuff. I remember more about Cave Story than I do most of the games I played last year.
I'm not saying I don't like new games because I do. A lot of them are fantastic but the overall "me too" system of copying is getting old and I don't see it going away anytime soon. Games need to be like the old school and not try to imitate but innovate and really do we need so many sequels so fast? Make us wait from a bit before we get the next game, but that's for another time.
With that being said I think gaming peaked in the 16-bit era. The Super Nintendo was dominating with the Genesis in a very close second and you had the underdog Turbo Graphx 16 trying to keep up and the PC leading it's own followers down a different path that would lead most of the innovation we see in console games today. All the different systems had different games with exclusives that stayed exclusives and actually gave you a reason to own all the gaming machines that were out then. While a lot of these games had good graphics for the time they had to have interesting art styles to separate them from the other. You can look at a Mario game and tell it's not Sonic. Final Fantasy did not look like Dragon Quest and so on. Today the endless streams of military shooters all look the same or you're in space shooting the same guys with the same laser and while these games can be fun they just don't stand apart except in name.
I strongly believe that when you discuss truly "classic" games you need to stick to the 16 bit or earlier era. Mention Gears of War 2 me and yeah I loved playing that game it was a ton of fun but is it a classic? No it's not something will come along and do Gears of War better then the Gears franchise will be forgotten not just by me but everyone. Even my beloved God of War I don't think is a classic. Another game by the same group of people that does the fighting and camera better with some slight tweaks to the game play can make God of War seem unplayable and broken. But a game like Super Mario World? It's just classic almost platforming perfection. The controls are responsive the game is beautiful even by today's standards it still holds up. The first two Sonic games do too, they're just fun to play with very very interesting zones, remember the first time you played the Casino Zone? Yeah I do and I'll never forget it but ask me about a part in Halo 3 and I may not be sure and need to go look online to refresh my memory.
Another thing from the past that I miss is that games were just different. Even though Mario and Sonic were both platformers they were completely different games. Today with the saturation of FPS games they all look the same shooting miscellaneous middle eastern guys with you're m-16 with a holographic site on it. With not a whole lot if anything at all different with them in a brown and grey world why use these advanced graphics engines to make bright bold colors when they do brown so well? I know these wars are in the desert but even the games that are in space are all grey and metal looking. Even as fantastic as Killzone 2 looked it was all brown and grey. DOOM took place in space and then Hell but it had some color to it bright colors we need to bring this back.
Most modern games you play them and forget I do have a few that have stood out to me and could very well be considered a classic, Demon's Souls is one and you can read why a few articles back. Another one that came out that I really really and I mean really enjoyed was Borderlands it did something different with the current FPS model and even though it took place in a desert waste land it was still colorful and looked amazing. Lately I've been more into the indie 2D games that are around, Cave Story, La-Mulana and all that kind of stuff. I remember more about Cave Story than I do most of the games I played last year.
I'm not saying I don't like new games because I do. A lot of them are fantastic but the overall "me too" system of copying is getting old and I don't see it going away anytime soon. Games need to be like the old school and not try to imitate but innovate and really do we need so many sequels so fast? Make us wait from a bit before we get the next game, but that's for another time.
Second look at an old game - Mario 64
I like many people played Mario 64 when it first came out, it was the one game that had to be bought with a Nintendo 64 at launch. From the first time I saw the game on an import N64 in a Software Etc store I was amazed by everything it did. For the longest time for me at least this was 3D platforming perfection, I even considered it my favorite game of all time. I remember playing through this game 4 times in a row getting all 120 stars each time until all the save slots were filled with perfect runs. After that my Nintendo 64 eventually faded into the realm of not being played in favor of other systems and I eventually packed it away and never thought about it again.
Well a couple weeks ago as I was preparing to move I came across my N64 and some of my games. I decided to hook it up and try some of them out to see what I thought now. The one game I knew I had to play was Mario 64. I popped it in started a new game and went to battle Bowser for the first time in a long time. Well let me tell you this, this game Mario 64 does not stand the test of time. I played it for about 30 minutes and it has so many things wrong with it I can't even begin to list them all. I'll briefly go over some points starting with the camera. Yeah we all know that era of gaming 3D movement was new and the camera was almost always an issue and still to this day it's a tricky thing to get right. But using those yellow C buttons to move the camera is just so clunky. It wasn't great back then but Nintendo had the best camera system in place out of all those early 3D games but playing it now it's just garbage. The movement isn't anything to write home about either, Mario is very unresponsive at times and more often than not the weak jumping gets you into a near death situation that you cannot get out of which results in death. The worlds are bland and unattractive from a graphics stand point. I know the N64 wasn't known to have the sharpest clearest graphics with all that fuzz and blurriness in most games but even with the way it looks Mario 64 is still the best looking game on that machine. I think it's because they kept it simple and didn't try to have a super detailed world. I know that may sound like a contradiction but I feel both ways about the way Mario 64 looks.
In the end I should of never put Mario 64 back in that old Nintendo 64 and just lived with the memory of it being a great game that I loved instead of soiling that memory with the crap that is contained in that cartridge.
And a side note the game I consider my favorite of all time now is Super Mario Bros 3
Well a couple weeks ago as I was preparing to move I came across my N64 and some of my games. I decided to hook it up and try some of them out to see what I thought now. The one game I knew I had to play was Mario 64. I popped it in started a new game and went to battle Bowser for the first time in a long time. Well let me tell you this, this game Mario 64 does not stand the test of time. I played it for about 30 minutes and it has so many things wrong with it I can't even begin to list them all. I'll briefly go over some points starting with the camera. Yeah we all know that era of gaming 3D movement was new and the camera was almost always an issue and still to this day it's a tricky thing to get right. But using those yellow C buttons to move the camera is just so clunky. It wasn't great back then but Nintendo had the best camera system in place out of all those early 3D games but playing it now it's just garbage. The movement isn't anything to write home about either, Mario is very unresponsive at times and more often than not the weak jumping gets you into a near death situation that you cannot get out of which results in death. The worlds are bland and unattractive from a graphics stand point. I know the N64 wasn't known to have the sharpest clearest graphics with all that fuzz and blurriness in most games but even with the way it looks Mario 64 is still the best looking game on that machine. I think it's because they kept it simple and didn't try to have a super detailed world. I know that may sound like a contradiction but I feel both ways about the way Mario 64 looks.
In the end I should of never put Mario 64 back in that old Nintendo 64 and just lived with the memory of it being a great game that I loved instead of soiling that memory with the crap that is contained in that cartridge.
And a side note the game I consider my favorite of all time now is Super Mario Bros 3
Friday, July 9, 2010
My gaming History. Parts 1 and 2!
I've been playing video games along time, most of my life. I was probably about 3 or 4 when I played my first video game. It was either Robotron or Defender, a 7-11 down the street from the family home had both of those machines in it. I had to be held up by my dad so I could reach the machine to play it and I was hooked. I did a good amount of my playing at the 7-11 for awhile until we got the Atari 2600. We got one of those I believe right after it came out I can't remember exactly. I played the living hell out of that thing. My dad and I would play Combat for hours it was probably the most played game on that system. But then tragedy struck, the 2600's insides fried and it stopped working but to my extreme dissapointment it would not be replaced. Sometime passed and I had no actual system in the house. Arcades would be hit on occasion but I was hungry for more. Eventually I was given a Colecovision which I was quite fond of. It had one of my favorite games ever on it, Frenzy. Frenzy was a sequel to Bezerk and followed the basic same formula of that game. I kind of gloss over this section because I was really young and I don't remember a lot of the games I had for these systems, Combat and Frenzy for me were the stand outs on the respective machines. This is probably how I handle each section, talk about the systems I got in order and you can assume I had the big games for each. Then I'll mention one or two games that I think not a lot of people played or are just special to me.
Then came the NES, one of the greatest things ever made. I had played Super Mario Bros. in the arcade in one of those Nintendo arcade cabinets. It was SMB and I think Hogan's Alley again in a 7-11. I got the NES with ROB the Robot and the Zapper. That came with Gyromite and Duck Hunt. I also was given SMB and The Legend of Zelda. SMB I was familiar with having played it in the arcades and at a firend's house. But Zelda, holy crap I was floored by it. You could save, a game that was so big you had to quit and come back to it later. I didn't have any experience with PC games at this time so the whole idea of saving was strange and wonderful to me. Basicly I had all the big NES games. All the Mario games, both Zeldas, Mega Man, and Metroid plus tons of others. Metroid was another game that just completely blew me away. It was so impressive to me I would probably have to say it's my all time favorite NES game. Another game on the NES that I don't think a whole lot of people have heard of is The Guardian Legend. It was a top shooter combined with a Zelda type exploring sections. You would play as a spaceship and blast your way into a base then as you explored as a female robot you'd unlock ways to bosses and those were fought in the top down space shooter stages. Just a fantastic game. The NES kept me happy for a long time. I was still working well into the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era until it gave up the ghost and stopped working while I was playing Castlevania 3.
Backing up again. The next system to join my NES was a Turbo Graphx 16. I chose between this and a Genesis. Some may say I made a mistake but I quite enjoyed my TG16. One of the features I really liked were the controllers having built in turbo buttons. The TG16 had a lot of really good games and I miss having it because I'd love to rock some of these games again. Blazing Lazers was one of these. A very good verticle shooter. One thing I really dig about schmups are the ones that have crazy rediculous weapons and this had them in spades. You be a screen clearing power house just destroying everything in your path. It wasn't a bullet hell type shooter but it could be kind of crazy. Another favorite of mine was Neutopia, which was a complete Zelda ripoff but it was a fantastic Zelda ripoff. So good to me that I think if they had just called it Zelda something it would of been a classic game spoken in the same sentence as Zelda 1 and 3. I also had the CD add on for the TG16. There was a game on the CD format call JB Harold Murder Club. It was basicly a slide show that had a detective story along with it. You were trying to solve a murder but it was done like this. You'd go to a location a picture of a person would pop up and you'd ask them questions and show them evidence. If you did things right you'd eventually find the killer. If you screwed up you could know yourself who the killer was but not be able to prove it because you asked a qrong question somewhere and you would need to start over. It took me forever to beat that game, I would site there yelling at the TV, "I know who did it!" to no avail because I screwed up somewhere. The game that made me so glad to have a TG16CD was Y's Book 1&2. At the time I was big on RPG's so this was right up my alley. It also had talking instead of just text screens. I was floored by this, you could hear the characters, amazing. It was an overhead view run around kill stuff kind of like Hydlide but really good. It's on the Wii Virtual Console if you've never played or you can check out a few Lets Plays on Youtube.
Next up is what I consider the all time greatest console of al time. I still play games today but really it's kind of like just going through the motions because there will never be a machine that had the range and amazing number of good quality games on it. What could I be talking about? The freaking Super Nintendo. Damn, it was amazing. Super Mario World, Zelda 3, Final Fantasy 2 (4) and 3 (6), Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Home verions of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 2, Star Fox, Contra 3. The list goes on and on. Out of all the games on the SNES Final Fantasy 3 (6) was probably played the most except for Street Fighter 2. When I got Street Fighter 2 at home it was a wrap I mastered every character knew all the ends and outs it was crazy. I'm sure I'm leaving some games out but that's only because there was so many excellent games theyre just rushing through my head right now and I can't just seem to single out titles. But if you had a SNES you know what I mean, you may not agree with my statement about it being the best but I just think it's where games peaked and we're probably going downhill now. Very, very slowly but I think there may be a decline.
I had a 3DO sometime after the SNES but the games I had were crap and that system was a waste of money. One game on the machine was called D&D Slayer. It was a first person action RPG. I've heard it was on the PC and called Dungeon Hack but I haven't looked into it. It was a fun game and I spent some time playing it but in the end the 3DO was crap and I'm sorry I ever had one. It's really the only "failed" console I ever owned. I saw a Jaguar in a Kaybee toys for 20 bucks one time and I was going to grab it but I didn't have 20 on me and I never went back. I never had a CDI, a 32x, Virtual Boy or any other I may be leaving out.
After this I had a Genesis that I picked up for cheap. Not a lot to say about it. I know it was great but I got it late in it's life cycle and I didn't own a lot of games for it. I had played a bunch at friends which Phantasy Star 2 was the stand out. Of the games I owned I really liked Rocket Knight Adventures and Strider. My favorite game on the system was Gunstar Heroes, a Contra clone that was so much more fun. I don't think I need to say anything more about it. I'm not dogging the Genesis by not going into more detail but it wasn't that important of a system to me. I grew up a Nintendo kid and didn't own any Sega Consoles for a long length of time. I had a Saturn for a bit but it was awhile after it came out. I still have my Dreamcast but I'll get into that later. But I am listening to Genesis the band as I type this so I think that's cool.
I'm going to call this part one right now. I'm getting tired and I don't know if I can just save this as a draft or not. I'll either do a part 2 tomorrow or edit this and finish.
Part 2
With part two of this I'm going to talk about the later stages of gaming. Pretty much all the machines that have come out since the game format has gone disc based. I'm not going to go into as much detail about these systems because I didn't spend a lot of time with each one. The main reason was a got my first real PC Between my SNES and my PS1. After I got my hands on a real PC I pretty much forgot about console games. I had many years of PC gaming to catch up on so I spent my days playing through dirt cheap old PC games. Old Sierra games, Some of the early FPS games, whatever I could get. The PC in question was a Packard Bell, 75hz Pentium with a whopping 4 MEGS of RAM and at the time a massive 1.2 gigabyte hard drive. I ended up upgrading the ram to 8 MEGS (OMG!) so I could run Quake a little better. I had played lots of PC games at friends houses but never owned one myself. I would say at that time Quake was the most important game I'd played because it introduced me to online play. I would sit up at nights and play Quake over my super fast 56k modem, it ran like mud but I had a blast. That turned into an obsession with Red Alert online later in the year. But eventually the hard drive in that PC died and I was unable to afford to replace it so my PC gaming went into hibernation.
I got the PS1 the year it came out but it only got a little love as I was playing the PC. Resident Evil 1 and 2 were the stand out titles for me. My absolute favorite game on the PS1 was Castlevania Symphony of the Night, definately in my top ten of all time it was so good. Taking the best parts about Castlevania and adding what I loved about Metroid but anyone reading this already knows that. I played Final Fantasy which I'm sure anyone with a PS1 at the time played that one. Speaking of Square at that time this was when they started to release more than FInal Fantasy games in the US. Einhander was one of those games. With my love of Shmups be it verticle scrolling or sidescrolling this game was near perfection for that genre. Everything about it melded together in a way that was just borderline perfection. With all the PS1 classics being released on the PS3 I'm sad this has not been put on the PSN yet. Freaking Final Fantasy 8 is on there and it wasn't that good a game. But I digress, basicly I played all the big name games on it but some of the lesser known titles slipped by due to my PC gaming.
With a new job at this time I picked up a Japanese Dreamcast with Soul Caliber and Sonic Adventure. I didn't have a lot of import games for the Dreamcast but I did get the US release when it came out. I had Ready 2 Rumble and Blue Stinger which was okay but had some really bad crap about it gameplay wise. Everything in life grinded to a hault when I picked up Phantasy Star Online. That was like crack, I was addicted like you wouldn't believe. I was only getting a couple hours of sleep a night because I stayed up so late just playing that game grinding for the next rare item. After my addiction to PSO came to a close I decided I wanted to try a real MMO. With my new PC which I had played Half Life and other games of that time on I decided to play Everquest. I couldn't get into it. I was looking for something closer to PSO but Everquest was a more complicated game. The first Dungeon Siege was a game on the PC I really enjoyed I blew through it in a three day weekend with very little sleep. I think in those 3 days I only slept about 5 hours.
I eventually got a PS2/Gamecube/Xbox but this was a generation I passed by for the most part. I played GTA 3 on the PS2, KOTOR on the Xbox and Metroid Prime on the Gamecube and not much else. I ended up getting Star Wars Galaxies when it launched and the next year was spent playing that. I love Star Wars and this game while not being really Star Wars-ey was just enough to scratch that Star Wars itch. I really enjoyed the game and I was not a fan of the giant overhaul they did to it over time. The only two breaks I took from playing it were to play KOTOR and Jedi Academy. After I stopped playing SWG I played a couple different games on the consoles I owned but one by one those were sold to upgrade PC parts. Eventually I got into World of Warcraft and that was it, I don't need to go into detail about this but it was more consuming than SWG. It would be the only thing I played for 2-3 years.
So now I sit here typing on my PC, with a PS3, a 360 and a Wii sitting next to my TV. I haven't played the Wii in months, Madworld was the last game I played on that. I've been through some games on the 360 but the RROD crap has burned me on the system, I'm on my fourth 360. The PS3 is my go to console for the moment but if the game is on the PC I play it on that. Because no matter what I own or what I play I will really be a PC gamer for life. It's just what I enjoy the most but I like all the platforms out there for some reason or another and that's really all I have to say about that.
So that's a brief history of my gaming stuff. I glossed over some stuff but I'm pretty sure I hit the important parts. I just wanted to share some things about how I've enjoyed the hobby I've had for almost my entire life.
Then came the NES, one of the greatest things ever made. I had played Super Mario Bros. in the arcade in one of those Nintendo arcade cabinets. It was SMB and I think Hogan's Alley again in a 7-11. I got the NES with ROB the Robot and the Zapper. That came with Gyromite and Duck Hunt. I also was given SMB and The Legend of Zelda. SMB I was familiar with having played it in the arcades and at a firend's house. But Zelda, holy crap I was floored by it. You could save, a game that was so big you had to quit and come back to it later. I didn't have any experience with PC games at this time so the whole idea of saving was strange and wonderful to me. Basicly I had all the big NES games. All the Mario games, both Zeldas, Mega Man, and Metroid plus tons of others. Metroid was another game that just completely blew me away. It was so impressive to me I would probably have to say it's my all time favorite NES game. Another game on the NES that I don't think a whole lot of people have heard of is The Guardian Legend. It was a top shooter combined with a Zelda type exploring sections. You would play as a spaceship and blast your way into a base then as you explored as a female robot you'd unlock ways to bosses and those were fought in the top down space shooter stages. Just a fantastic game. The NES kept me happy for a long time. I was still working well into the PS2/Xbox/Gamecube era until it gave up the ghost and stopped working while I was playing Castlevania 3.
Backing up again. The next system to join my NES was a Turbo Graphx 16. I chose between this and a Genesis. Some may say I made a mistake but I quite enjoyed my TG16. One of the features I really liked were the controllers having built in turbo buttons. The TG16 had a lot of really good games and I miss having it because I'd love to rock some of these games again. Blazing Lazers was one of these. A very good verticle shooter. One thing I really dig about schmups are the ones that have crazy rediculous weapons and this had them in spades. You be a screen clearing power house just destroying everything in your path. It wasn't a bullet hell type shooter but it could be kind of crazy. Another favorite of mine was Neutopia, which was a complete Zelda ripoff but it was a fantastic Zelda ripoff. So good to me that I think if they had just called it Zelda something it would of been a classic game spoken in the same sentence as Zelda 1 and 3. I also had the CD add on for the TG16. There was a game on the CD format call JB Harold Murder Club. It was basicly a slide show that had a detective story along with it. You were trying to solve a murder but it was done like this. You'd go to a location a picture of a person would pop up and you'd ask them questions and show them evidence. If you did things right you'd eventually find the killer. If you screwed up you could know yourself who the killer was but not be able to prove it because you asked a qrong question somewhere and you would need to start over. It took me forever to beat that game, I would site there yelling at the TV, "I know who did it!" to no avail because I screwed up somewhere. The game that made me so glad to have a TG16CD was Y's Book 1&2. At the time I was big on RPG's so this was right up my alley. It also had talking instead of just text screens. I was floored by this, you could hear the characters, amazing. It was an overhead view run around kill stuff kind of like Hydlide but really good. It's on the Wii Virtual Console if you've never played or you can check out a few Lets Plays on Youtube.
Next up is what I consider the all time greatest console of al time. I still play games today but really it's kind of like just going through the motions because there will never be a machine that had the range and amazing number of good quality games on it. What could I be talking about? The freaking Super Nintendo. Damn, it was amazing. Super Mario World, Zelda 3, Final Fantasy 2 (4) and 3 (6), Super Metroid, Chrono Trigger, Home verions of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat 2, Star Fox, Contra 3. The list goes on and on. Out of all the games on the SNES Final Fantasy 3 (6) was probably played the most except for Street Fighter 2. When I got Street Fighter 2 at home it was a wrap I mastered every character knew all the ends and outs it was crazy. I'm sure I'm leaving some games out but that's only because there was so many excellent games theyre just rushing through my head right now and I can't just seem to single out titles. But if you had a SNES you know what I mean, you may not agree with my statement about it being the best but I just think it's where games peaked and we're probably going downhill now. Very, very slowly but I think there may be a decline.
I had a 3DO sometime after the SNES but the games I had were crap and that system was a waste of money. One game on the machine was called D&D Slayer. It was a first person action RPG. I've heard it was on the PC and called Dungeon Hack but I haven't looked into it. It was a fun game and I spent some time playing it but in the end the 3DO was crap and I'm sorry I ever had one. It's really the only "failed" console I ever owned. I saw a Jaguar in a Kaybee toys for 20 bucks one time and I was going to grab it but I didn't have 20 on me and I never went back. I never had a CDI, a 32x, Virtual Boy or any other I may be leaving out.
After this I had a Genesis that I picked up for cheap. Not a lot to say about it. I know it was great but I got it late in it's life cycle and I didn't own a lot of games for it. I had played a bunch at friends which Phantasy Star 2 was the stand out. Of the games I owned I really liked Rocket Knight Adventures and Strider. My favorite game on the system was Gunstar Heroes, a Contra clone that was so much more fun. I don't think I need to say anything more about it. I'm not dogging the Genesis by not going into more detail but it wasn't that important of a system to me. I grew up a Nintendo kid and didn't own any Sega Consoles for a long length of time. I had a Saturn for a bit but it was awhile after it came out. I still have my Dreamcast but I'll get into that later. But I am listening to Genesis the band as I type this so I think that's cool.
I'm going to call this part one right now. I'm getting tired and I don't know if I can just save this as a draft or not. I'll either do a part 2 tomorrow or edit this and finish.
Part 2
With part two of this I'm going to talk about the later stages of gaming. Pretty much all the machines that have come out since the game format has gone disc based. I'm not going to go into as much detail about these systems because I didn't spend a lot of time with each one. The main reason was a got my first real PC Between my SNES and my PS1. After I got my hands on a real PC I pretty much forgot about console games. I had many years of PC gaming to catch up on so I spent my days playing through dirt cheap old PC games. Old Sierra games, Some of the early FPS games, whatever I could get. The PC in question was a Packard Bell, 75hz Pentium with a whopping 4 MEGS of RAM and at the time a massive 1.2 gigabyte hard drive. I ended up upgrading the ram to 8 MEGS (OMG!) so I could run Quake a little better. I had played lots of PC games at friends houses but never owned one myself. I would say at that time Quake was the most important game I'd played because it introduced me to online play. I would sit up at nights and play Quake over my super fast 56k modem, it ran like mud but I had a blast. That turned into an obsession with Red Alert online later in the year. But eventually the hard drive in that PC died and I was unable to afford to replace it so my PC gaming went into hibernation.
I got the PS1 the year it came out but it only got a little love as I was playing the PC. Resident Evil 1 and 2 were the stand out titles for me. My absolute favorite game on the PS1 was Castlevania Symphony of the Night, definately in my top ten of all time it was so good. Taking the best parts about Castlevania and adding what I loved about Metroid but anyone reading this already knows that. I played Final Fantasy which I'm sure anyone with a PS1 at the time played that one. Speaking of Square at that time this was when they started to release more than FInal Fantasy games in the US. Einhander was one of those games. With my love of Shmups be it verticle scrolling or sidescrolling this game was near perfection for that genre. Everything about it melded together in a way that was just borderline perfection. With all the PS1 classics being released on the PS3 I'm sad this has not been put on the PSN yet. Freaking Final Fantasy 8 is on there and it wasn't that good a game. But I digress, basicly I played all the big name games on it but some of the lesser known titles slipped by due to my PC gaming.
With a new job at this time I picked up a Japanese Dreamcast with Soul Caliber and Sonic Adventure. I didn't have a lot of import games for the Dreamcast but I did get the US release when it came out. I had Ready 2 Rumble and Blue Stinger which was okay but had some really bad crap about it gameplay wise. Everything in life grinded to a hault when I picked up Phantasy Star Online. That was like crack, I was addicted like you wouldn't believe. I was only getting a couple hours of sleep a night because I stayed up so late just playing that game grinding for the next rare item. After my addiction to PSO came to a close I decided I wanted to try a real MMO. With my new PC which I had played Half Life and other games of that time on I decided to play Everquest. I couldn't get into it. I was looking for something closer to PSO but Everquest was a more complicated game. The first Dungeon Siege was a game on the PC I really enjoyed I blew through it in a three day weekend with very little sleep. I think in those 3 days I only slept about 5 hours.
I eventually got a PS2/Gamecube/Xbox but this was a generation I passed by for the most part. I played GTA 3 on the PS2, KOTOR on the Xbox and Metroid Prime on the Gamecube and not much else. I ended up getting Star Wars Galaxies when it launched and the next year was spent playing that. I love Star Wars and this game while not being really Star Wars-ey was just enough to scratch that Star Wars itch. I really enjoyed the game and I was not a fan of the giant overhaul they did to it over time. The only two breaks I took from playing it were to play KOTOR and Jedi Academy. After I stopped playing SWG I played a couple different games on the consoles I owned but one by one those were sold to upgrade PC parts. Eventually I got into World of Warcraft and that was it, I don't need to go into detail about this but it was more consuming than SWG. It would be the only thing I played for 2-3 years.
So now I sit here typing on my PC, with a PS3, a 360 and a Wii sitting next to my TV. I haven't played the Wii in months, Madworld was the last game I played on that. I've been through some games on the 360 but the RROD crap has burned me on the system, I'm on my fourth 360. The PS3 is my go to console for the moment but if the game is on the PC I play it on that. Because no matter what I own or what I play I will really be a PC gamer for life. It's just what I enjoy the most but I like all the platforms out there for some reason or another and that's really all I have to say about that.
So that's a brief history of my gaming stuff. I glossed over some stuff but I'm pretty sure I hit the important parts. I just wanted to share some things about how I've enjoyed the hobby I've had for almost my entire life.
Wii! Wait, why?
So like many people I own a Wii. I did the whole hunt one down for months after it was released and finally on that fateful day I was able to buy one. What did I do with it when I got it home? I set the box down and just went back to playing the game I was playing through at the time (Turok) I hadn’t even bought a game for the Wii. So after I finished up Turok I went to the store and picked up a copy of Zelda: Twilight Princess and guess what? Even though it’s the same game we’ve seen for years I had a lot of fun playing through it. I’ve bought a few more Wii games since then but it is the neglected system in my gaming collection. I’ve only finished two of the games I bought for it (Zelda and No More Heroes) with interest in a bunch of others but when it comes time to buy a new game I just get a PC or PS3 game instead. It’s just the way it is right now.
So let me just flat out say this right now, I do not like motion controls they’re not really all that great. I have not played a game with them where it made the experience more enjoyable or made me feel like I’m in the game anymore then when I’m holding a regular controller. As much as I liked Zelda: TP having to swing the Wiimote to swing the sword for 40 hours became a chore and I was wishing for an alternative about 10 hours in. After playing No More Heroes I like what they did. The A button swings your sword and the waggle is saved for finisher moves. You also had to use the controller in a jerk off motion to charge the battery of the beam katana which was fun. I thought these were both good uses of the Wii motion controls but it didn’t really add anything to the game, I would of enjoyed NMH just as much without the waggle.
The big thing waggle was suppose to improve was the FPS genre and guess what? It didn’t really do that. A couple games or really just Metroid Prime 3 use it in a playable manner but the other games like the COD games or the Conduit don’t really play that great. Trying them out all I wished was that I had a mouse and keyboard or a dual stick controller, and I thought that even with MP3. The big problem are the FPS games that make you move the cursor to the side of the screen to turn. You have to big of a chance to just aim off screen and stop moving instead of turning. I guess they could use the analog stick to turn but then you lose strafing, I don’t know it just doesn’t work.
Lately games on the Wii don’t make you use the waggle at all or they give you the option to use the waggle or the classic controller which I think Nintendo should of been doing from the start. They wouldn’t of alienated their “hardcore” audience if the games gave you an option. I do believe they’re slowly winning people back with fan wanted games like the newest Punch Out and Kid Icarus on the upcoming 3DS but we will see.
While I don’t really play my Wii or plan to anytime soon I do support the games that are coming out right now. We’re seeing some obscure Japanese games like Shirin the Wanderer which I’m extremely interested in but will probably never play. Muramasa: the Demon Blade by the makers of Odin Sphere looks great too. The art style really fits with what the Wii can do, I want to see more games like it out here. The new Sin and Punishment just came out here when the first game never saw an official US release and that game looks badass and looks to use the motion aiming really well because you don’t control the turning as the game handles that in an on rails way. I also know the Monster Hunter series is extremely popular in Japan and kind of a cult thing here in the US but we get the latest game, Monster Hunter Tri here and with it we see the release of the Classic Controller Pro, finally a real controller for the Wii and I hope with it out more people start releasing games that fit into this Wii centric not really mainstream game that use this controller instead of the Wiimote.
When I was in a store last night and saw Coldstone Creamery the game for the Wii I was disgusted, shit like that is why I hate the Wii with a passion and hate what it has done to gaming. But the things mentioned in the last paragraph are why I like it. I’ll never 100 percent think it was ever a good thing for the gaming world but I’ve learned to accept it.
So let me just flat out say this right now, I do not like motion controls they’re not really all that great. I have not played a game with them where it made the experience more enjoyable or made me feel like I’m in the game anymore then when I’m holding a regular controller. As much as I liked Zelda: TP having to swing the Wiimote to swing the sword for 40 hours became a chore and I was wishing for an alternative about 10 hours in. After playing No More Heroes I like what they did. The A button swings your sword and the waggle is saved for finisher moves. You also had to use the controller in a jerk off motion to charge the battery of the beam katana which was fun. I thought these were both good uses of the Wii motion controls but it didn’t really add anything to the game, I would of enjoyed NMH just as much without the waggle.
The big thing waggle was suppose to improve was the FPS genre and guess what? It didn’t really do that. A couple games or really just Metroid Prime 3 use it in a playable manner but the other games like the COD games or the Conduit don’t really play that great. Trying them out all I wished was that I had a mouse and keyboard or a dual stick controller, and I thought that even with MP3. The big problem are the FPS games that make you move the cursor to the side of the screen to turn. You have to big of a chance to just aim off screen and stop moving instead of turning. I guess they could use the analog stick to turn but then you lose strafing, I don’t know it just doesn’t work.
Lately games on the Wii don’t make you use the waggle at all or they give you the option to use the waggle or the classic controller which I think Nintendo should of been doing from the start. They wouldn’t of alienated their “hardcore” audience if the games gave you an option. I do believe they’re slowly winning people back with fan wanted games like the newest Punch Out and Kid Icarus on the upcoming 3DS but we will see.
While I don’t really play my Wii or plan to anytime soon I do support the games that are coming out right now. We’re seeing some obscure Japanese games like Shirin the Wanderer which I’m extremely interested in but will probably never play. Muramasa: the Demon Blade by the makers of Odin Sphere looks great too. The art style really fits with what the Wii can do, I want to see more games like it out here. The new Sin and Punishment just came out here when the first game never saw an official US release and that game looks badass and looks to use the motion aiming really well because you don’t control the turning as the game handles that in an on rails way. I also know the Monster Hunter series is extremely popular in Japan and kind of a cult thing here in the US but we get the latest game, Monster Hunter Tri here and with it we see the release of the Classic Controller Pro, finally a real controller for the Wii and I hope with it out more people start releasing games that fit into this Wii centric not really mainstream game that use this controller instead of the Wiimote.
When I was in a store last night and saw Coldstone Creamery the game for the Wii I was disgusted, shit like that is why I hate the Wii with a passion and hate what it has done to gaming. But the things mentioned in the last paragraph are why I like it. I’ll never 100 percent think it was ever a good thing for the gaming world but I’ve learned to accept it.
PC Gaming in a Console World
Like many people my age I started playing games on an Atari 2600. My dad and I would play the living hell out of Combat until the 2600 eventually died on us. As I got a little older I played in arcades until they just vanished from existence. Eventually the NES came into the house and that was it I was hooked. Well I had the Nintendo consoles of the time, NES to a SNES and so on. When I was around 16 I got my first PC. It was a Pentium 75hz with 4 megs of ram. I’d played various PC games before I owned one, Doom, the Sierra adventure games and some D&D stuff. After I got my hands on my own PC that was it, I still played consoles but my main gaming platform was the PC and I would only touch my console for console specific stuff. PC had these great FPS games and I just fell in love with the RTS games. Overall it was just a more complicated set of games at a time when just getting the game to run was a game in itself. Well that went on for a few years and I eventually let my PC get a little outdated and instead of upgrading I went with a Xbox 360 as my primary console, four of those later and I was with my PS3. One thing though I did own the original Xbox, PS1/2, Gamecube and all that crap but I rarely played them. Once the new console glimmer went away they sat for long times, eventually going on Ebay to sell for PC parts. Well with my choice to go to the console for this current generation of games I was met with frustration. The 360 we all know is just a cluster fuck and I like my PS3 but it can be a pain to deal with too. So about two years ago I made a decision to get back into PC gaming. I ordered the parts and slapped together a rig that could run modern games. I had some catching up to do. Of coarse I played Crysis and got into a series that’s one of my all time favorites, STALKER. I knew my choice was a wise one and I’m never looking back.
One thing I noticed when I came back into the PC fold was the amount of console to PC ports that were out there. I remember it wasn’t like it is now and the PC version was usually a crap port that had trouble running and when it did it ran like ass. But today most of these ports run fine sometimes look way better than the console version and can benefit from the mods people make. It’s great to see when a developer lets the fans make changes to their games, sometimes for the better. STALKER:SOC is a good example of this right now. I’m currently as of this writing trying out the LURK mod for it and it’s interesting playing a game I love with the same setting and story but the game play is a lot different. I just think that is the best thing about PC gaming, well that and the graphics not that graphics make a game but I like to see the best I can.
I know people say the PC market is dying and not worth putting the games out for the platform anymore but look at something like Steam. Valve has found a way to make buying games an addiction. I see a game on Steam for 5 bucks and I don’t usually care what it is or if I own it on disc already, being able to just play without a disc and not keep that stuff around is good enough reason for me.
The consoles are slowly catching up in terms of features and what they can output it’s almost as if you have a little PC sitting next to your TV. I think in the future we will not have a Sony or Microsoft gaming machines but just TV side PC’s that a lot of companies make that all play the same format of game. When digital distribution is the plan of the day and you don’t walk into a Gamestop or Best Buy to get a game is when I think this will take hold and the whole industry will be nothing but “PC” games.
One thing I noticed when I came back into the PC fold was the amount of console to PC ports that were out there. I remember it wasn’t like it is now and the PC version was usually a crap port that had trouble running and when it did it ran like ass. But today most of these ports run fine sometimes look way better than the console version and can benefit from the mods people make. It’s great to see when a developer lets the fans make changes to their games, sometimes for the better. STALKER:SOC is a good example of this right now. I’m currently as of this writing trying out the LURK mod for it and it’s interesting playing a game I love with the same setting and story but the game play is a lot different. I just think that is the best thing about PC gaming, well that and the graphics not that graphics make a game but I like to see the best I can.
I know people say the PC market is dying and not worth putting the games out for the platform anymore but look at something like Steam. Valve has found a way to make buying games an addiction. I see a game on Steam for 5 bucks and I don’t usually care what it is or if I own it on disc already, being able to just play without a disc and not keep that stuff around is good enough reason for me.
The consoles are slowly catching up in terms of features and what they can output it’s almost as if you have a little PC sitting next to your TV. I think in the future we will not have a Sony or Microsoft gaming machines but just TV side PC’s that a lot of companies make that all play the same format of game. When digital distribution is the plan of the day and you don’t walk into a Gamestop or Best Buy to get a game is when I think this will take hold and the whole industry will be nothing but “PC” games.
3D Games!
When I first heard about the new wave of 3D games I couldn’t help but think about the “3D” games of the past. I remember playing an arcade version of Wolfenstein 3D that was the old PC game played on a sit down arcade cabinet with a pair of “3D” goggles. All it was was the 2D game in goggles nothing special. Another time the arcade near me had these two virtual reality pods you stood in and again wore goggles but it was in somewhat 3D view. It was okay but nothing great to play. I know the Virtua Boy was suppose to be some kind of 3D thing but I never played one because 3D or not it looked stupid and I was never interested. So besides a few small experiences with 3D in gaming I never gave it much thought.
I guess it started last year I started to hear about the new wave of 3D. It started in movies and or course it’s flowed into gaming. Sony just gave the PS3 it’s 3D update in Japan along with new 3D updates for a few games. Nintendo has the 3DS coming out sometime in the future, so I figure Microsoft will follow along and all three consoles will be in 3D. 3D is the new hotness in gaming, motion controls didn’t exactly set the world on fire and for some reason Sony and MS are diving into the world of motion control to grab the Wii market and I think it’s a little to late because that ship has sailed.
Now back to 3D, the other day I was able to try out one of Nvidia’s 3D setups in a Fry’s store. Before seeing this I was 100 percent against 3D in games. While I enjoy a game that really lets you loose yourself in it’s world I still like to feel the disconnect from it. I don’t want to be completely lost in it. But I saw this setup from Nvidia and I admit it looks really cool. It wasn’t anything playable but the field of depth from the 3D just worked. While it looks neat I don’t think I would want to play all my games like that. First off on the PC I saw you had to wear glasses which were tinted and made the whole game seem darker. I don’t know if this was because of the lighting in the store and they did it like that to make the 3D better or not but at the time I didn’t like it. I’ve never been motion sick in real life or while playing a game but I could see this giving me a headache after awhile which would lead to vomit. So for just looking at it for a few minutes it looks cool in the long run probably not for me.
Then you have the 3DS which will not need glasses to give a 3D effect. Right out of the gate Nintendo was saying you don’t have to play the games in 3D which led me to believe it won’t work. Much like how I think Nintendo letting you control their games now with a Wii Mote waggle or with another method usually a classic controller is kind of like them saying okay yeah this motion control stuff didn’t work as planned. Anyway I have not seen a 3DS in person but everything I’ve read from E3 says it’s works and looks awesome. I think it was Warren Spector who said it changed his life to see it in action. I have heard it must be held at a certain angle to get the best picture but that’s expected in the first 3D hand held we see. Maybe when Nintendo puts out the 3DS Lite or something they’ll get it with a wider viewing angle. But if they have this working as advertised without glasses I think it will be pretty freaking awesome. Again I think this could cause headaches so I’m glad the option to play in 2D is there. The gamer should always be given that choice and having that choice makes me interested in the system. I know Nintendo has always been the best at making games on their new “innovation” and I hope they have some killer stuff lined up for this besides all the old game redone in 3D. Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 643D, and I’m sure we’ll see a ton of other games being re-released in 3D on this thing and I do not like that. How about a new Star Fox? I know they have that new Zelda on the Wii coming out but how about a new Zelda on the 3DS?
I wonder how long until we hear about a PSP3D or a MS 3D add on for the 360 or a whole new Xbox? the Xbox 3D! It only uses Natal (Kinect is a stupid name) and comes with Halo 3D not to be confused with Halo 3 3D which would be downloadable.
But 3D isn’t even hear yet and personally while I think it might not be for me I think it has the potential to be really awesome unless some one (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) really screw the pooch on it and make crap games that use it in crap ways.
I guess it started last year I started to hear about the new wave of 3D. It started in movies and or course it’s flowed into gaming. Sony just gave the PS3 it’s 3D update in Japan along with new 3D updates for a few games. Nintendo has the 3DS coming out sometime in the future, so I figure Microsoft will follow along and all three consoles will be in 3D. 3D is the new hotness in gaming, motion controls didn’t exactly set the world on fire and for some reason Sony and MS are diving into the world of motion control to grab the Wii market and I think it’s a little to late because that ship has sailed.
Now back to 3D, the other day I was able to try out one of Nvidia’s 3D setups in a Fry’s store. Before seeing this I was 100 percent against 3D in games. While I enjoy a game that really lets you loose yourself in it’s world I still like to feel the disconnect from it. I don’t want to be completely lost in it. But I saw this setup from Nvidia and I admit it looks really cool. It wasn’t anything playable but the field of depth from the 3D just worked. While it looks neat I don’t think I would want to play all my games like that. First off on the PC I saw you had to wear glasses which were tinted and made the whole game seem darker. I don’t know if this was because of the lighting in the store and they did it like that to make the 3D better or not but at the time I didn’t like it. I’ve never been motion sick in real life or while playing a game but I could see this giving me a headache after awhile which would lead to vomit. So for just looking at it for a few minutes it looks cool in the long run probably not for me.
Then you have the 3DS which will not need glasses to give a 3D effect. Right out of the gate Nintendo was saying you don’t have to play the games in 3D which led me to believe it won’t work. Much like how I think Nintendo letting you control their games now with a Wii Mote waggle or with another method usually a classic controller is kind of like them saying okay yeah this motion control stuff didn’t work as planned. Anyway I have not seen a 3DS in person but everything I’ve read from E3 says it’s works and looks awesome. I think it was Warren Spector who said it changed his life to see it in action. I have heard it must be held at a certain angle to get the best picture but that’s expected in the first 3D hand held we see. Maybe when Nintendo puts out the 3DS Lite or something they’ll get it with a wider viewing angle. But if they have this working as advertised without glasses I think it will be pretty freaking awesome. Again I think this could cause headaches so I’m glad the option to play in 2D is there. The gamer should always be given that choice and having that choice makes me interested in the system. I know Nintendo has always been the best at making games on their new “innovation” and I hope they have some killer stuff lined up for this besides all the old game redone in 3D. Ocarina of Time and Star Fox 643D, and I’m sure we’ll see a ton of other games being re-released in 3D on this thing and I do not like that. How about a new Star Fox? I know they have that new Zelda on the Wii coming out but how about a new Zelda on the 3DS?
I wonder how long until we hear about a PSP3D or a MS 3D add on for the 360 or a whole new Xbox? the Xbox 3D! It only uses Natal (Kinect is a stupid name) and comes with Halo 3D not to be confused with Halo 3 3D which would be downloadable.
But 3D isn’t even hear yet and personally while I think it might not be for me I think it has the potential to be really awesome unless some one (Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft) really screw the pooch on it and make crap games that use it in crap ways.
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