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• Brainstorm: What Happened to Connectivity?

  When Nintendo launched their limited campaign of GameCube/Game Boy Advance connectivity, I was an English-majoring undergrad (AKA "that dude with too much free time") with two friends who were nerdy enough to also have GBAs, link cables, and a high tolerance for gimmicky hardware tricks. Our time was limited to the three main games playable for this sick intercourse between console and portable gaming systems: Pac-Man Vs., Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, and The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures. The first two titles gave us our share of fun, but the last one marks one of the best (though brief) multiplayer experiences I've ever had in my life. Read More... Posted Apr 16 2009, 12:00 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: the legend of zelda, gamecube, game boy advance, bob mackey, the legend of zelda: four swords adventures, connectivity

• Mother 3's Soundtrack Disassembled

  The Game Boy Advance never had much of a problem matching up to the SNES graphically. As for audio, well, that was another matter. GBA remakes of SNES classics like Final Fantasy IV and especially Final Fantasy VI tried really hard to ship the games' epic soundtracks. The end result got an A for Effort, but it was like listening to a favourite singer belt out a classic song with a wad of cotton stuffed in each cheek. Something about the whole affair felt off. I can recall only two instances where I was genuinely impressed by the soundtrack in a GBA game: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Mother 3. You wouldn't accept a flimsy soundtrack from a Castlevania game (least of all one that has the stones to feature a subtitle with “Aria” in it), but Mother 3's soundtrack is an integral part of the title's gameplay because the player performs “combos” by tapping the attack button in tune to the game's battle themes. These combos make all the difference between an easy battle and a difficult one, not to mention the difference between taking an active part in the fight or sitting on the sidelines, dejected and bored, possibly with rainwater streaming down your face. Mother 3 has a pretty huge roster of battle themes, but it's no sweat. Once you memorise the rhythm for a song, you have it in a lock for the rest of the game, right? Sixteen-hit combo city! ”WRONG!” Harmonix employee Dan Bruno recently analysed Mother 3's soundtrack down to the last note—no, really, he has sheet music written out—and lays out the staggering amount of work that went into Mother 3's battle tunes. Read More... Posted Feb 10 2009, 11:28 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: mother 3, game music, harmonix, gba, game boy advance, nadia oxford, castlevania aria of sorrow

• WTFriday: The Great Final Fantasy VI Breast Challenge

  I hope that Mackey will find it in his heart to forgive me for borrowing a “WTFriday” from him, but I'm afraid there is no other suitable phylum for that which I have recently...experienced. I admire people who set goals for themselves and follow through, as long as those goals don't involve killing, maiming, raping, or smashing kneecaps with a roque mallet. But I admit my ol' brain shuffled through a deck of mightily confused emotions when an Internet friend (the best kind of friend) told me about an online artist's recent project. See, this artist aims to draw every Final Fantasy VI boss character—male, female, neuter, and mechanical—with a plump pair of breasts. S/he has an admirable head start. Master Typhon? That's Mistress Typhon, you insolent pup. Death Gaze? Of course. How else is s/he going to keep that Bahamut magicite shard warm while gliding through frigid, blood-tinted skies? Phantom Train? Why the fuck not? The most humiliating aspect of this project lies not with the ambitious artist, but with me. My friend wasn't able to provide a name or web address, so I've been desperately looking for this project's home base. If I'm ever pulled in for a heinous crime, the Mounties are going to find the following Google searches on my computer: final fantasy vi+breasts final fantasy vi+tits final fantasy vi+tits+bosses final fantasy vi+project tits Read More... Posted Feb 06 2009, 09:56 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: snes, final fantasy vi, retro, art, breasts, fan stuff, game boy advance, nadia oxford, boobs, bosses

• Some Games Nadia Played In 2008 Instead of Working: Mother--Awwww...

  Mackey stole my big idea to declare Mother 3 one of my favourite games of the year--if not my very favourite of the year--despite it being a two-year-old Game Boy Advance title. I was going to be a rebel. I was going to spit out of the side of my mouth and tell you I don’t give a rat’s ass about your opinion on my taste in games, see? Oh well, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one who thinks Mother 3 deserves recognition amongst this year‘s shiny big-budget games. Mackey and I need to stop putting things off, get married and name our twins Lucas and Claus regardless of whether or not they’re male. All right, time to stop saying stupid things for the sake of being funny. I’m going to be serious and stupid, now. Mother 3 is the kind of game that reinforces my love for the pastime. When I finished it, I said, “God damn I am so glad I experienced that. I’m happy I’m a gamer.” Mackey and I already have about twenty thousand Mother 3 essays between us that covers everything from the game’s emotion-driven story to the rhythm based battle system that involves you in every fight; no more turbo-mashing the “A” button while simultaneously trying to please your girlfriend with the other hand. Mild spoilers follow the jump. Read More... Posted Dec 23 2008, 10:17 PM by Nadia Oxford with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: earthbound, mother 3, game boy advance, nadia oxford, top 10, game stories

• Games We Will Never Get to Play: Mega Man Mania AKA Game Boy Anniversary Collection

  Now, technically speaking, it is very possible that we will one day get to play this game, or rather, games. We could go to Ebay and drop the $100+ on all of the original carts and fire ‘em up on whatever hardware we may have available to play original Game Boy games (Super Game Boy, Game Boy Player, Game Boy Advance, hell, why not Gunpei Yokoi’s glorious grey brick from 1989 if we’re feeling especially devoted to an authentic experience.) We could download one of them fancy emulators and five ROMs. We could just go ahead and wait for the inevitable, when the DS Ware store gets a little Capcom love and we all drop fifteen dollars on all five games. But we will never, ever get to pop a Game Boy Advance cart into a machine, hit power, and play the aborted Mega Man Anniversary Collection. Read More... Posted Nov 07 2008, 02:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, nintendo ds, game boy, mega man, mega man iii, mega man iv, mega man ii, mega man v, mega man anniversary collection, game boy advance, games we will never get to play, mega man I, dr wily’s revenge, super game boy, game boy player, rockman world

• Game Compilations: The Good, the Bad, and the Fugly

  Time was, I thought game compilations, museum, and anniversary collections, and anything else you’d want to call them were the cat’s meow. Greatest thing since sliced bread. The *ahem* tits. Then The Mega Man Anniversary Collection for Gamecube came out back in 2004. Fifty simoleons for all eight console Mega Man games plus an opportunity to finally play Mega Man: The Power Battle and Power Fighters? Sounds like a dream come true. Then I found out that instead of the A button making the little blue fella shoot and the B button making him jump, the buttons were reversed for the compilation. There is no way to change this control scheme. It turns playing Mega Man 1 through 6 into a personalized hell, the place where cheat code users go when they die. Compilations are dangerous business because, more often than not, the publisher puts no effort whatsoever into them and people buy them anyway. That’s how you end up with Mega Man’s jumping and shooting getting reversed, how Sega releases not one, but two Sonic the Hedgehog collections with fantastic unlockables that are almost impossible to unlock, and how Namco can release the same damn Galaga/Dig Dug/Pac-man collection nine-hundred times. Of course, they really can be a treat. Despite all the load times and inaccessible unlockables, the Sonic Mega Collection is still a great way to play Sonic at his best. Occasionally, budget numbers like the Capcom Classics Mini Mix, a no-frills GBA collection with Bionic Commando NES, Strider NES, and Mighty Final Fight, can come along and introduce you to games you’ve never ever heard of. (Seriously, Mighty Final Fight? When did that happen? It’s got mini Haggar!) They are a more palatable alternative to Virtual Console-style downloads too, as far as price is concerned. Sega’s just-announced Sonic’s Ultimate Genesis Collection for PS3 and Xbox 360 comes with forty games, and for thirty bucks you get what Nintendo would charge $120 for on Wii. Plus, they wouldn’t even all fit on the Wii’s memory! But again, the production values are highly questionable. Read More... Posted Nov 06 2008, 05:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, pac-man, street fighter, capcom, bionic commando, nes, sega, mega man, sonic the hedgehog, strider, mighty final fight, game boy advance, virtual console, dig dug, Capcom classics collection, Capcom mini mix, galaga

• The Reason Why Mother 3 Never Came to America

  None. There is no good reason why Mother 3 never came to America. Oh, there are a couple of valid reasons why we never officially received Earthbound's follow-up, but they're not necessarily good. The easiest blame can be laid on finances. We are elbow-deep in the era of the Nintendo DS right now and the heyday of the Game Boy Advance is long over. Nintendo might get away with releasing all three Mother games in a DS collection, but that's obviously not going to happen in a grand hurry. By now, the universe knows that the original Earthbound bombed on the Super Nintendo. Nintendo did a beautiful, loving job with the packaging and translation, but dropped the marketing ball hard enough to cannonball clear to China. Earthbound was marketed as a cheesy science fiction game brimming with toilet humour, which it wasn't. Alas, a mass-mailing of scratch-and-sniff stickers made to smell like rancid pizza will do a lot to kill an appetite for game. Besides, after experiencing the majesty of Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, why would anyone want to fight against giant piles of barf? I sure didn't. Earthbound tanked, Nintendo made up their mind about American tastes and Mother 3 never had a chance at a ticket to America. Since the release of the translation patch, however, more than one person has claimed that maybe Nintendo's fear of another financial disaster wasn't the only thing keeping Mother 3 from the States. There was suddenly talk about in-game content being inappropriate for American audiences: the dark story, the characters (oh, the characters) and whatnot. God knows Japan has thousands of little quirks that only those born under its flag can truly appreciate, but I don't see how Mother 3 is one of them. Read More... Posted Oct 27 2008, 05:35 AM by Nadia Oxford with | with 3 comment(s) Filed under: snes, earthbound, mother 3, super nintendo, retail, censorship, game boy advance, nadia oxford, profits

• Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Emulate?

  I am a console gamer. It’s not something I’m proud of, not a badge I wear to mark myself or somehow justify the way I view the medium as a whole. It does, however, define what I’m drawn to play, what genres I return to year after year, and just what I’ve had the opportunity to play since I was four years-old. Only playing games on devices that fit in my pocket or plug into a television has, by turns, given me an incredibly imbalanced game-literacy. Deep, respected play experiences bound to personal computers are things I’m familiar with by name only. Space Quest? Fallout? Oh, yeah, sure, I’ve heard of those. Great games, right? Call me a nerd with a seriously warped perspective, but I’m actually embarrassed, that guy sitting in a circle of academics discussing James Joyce and having to admit that the last book I read was Harry Potter. My console crutch hasn’t just kept me away from keyboard-and-mouse-only fare either; there are literal hundreds of classic console games I’ve never played, and will never have the spare cash or access to the actual cartridges or discs, waiting at my fingertips via emulation. Read More... Posted Oct 24 2008, 06:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: john constantine, snes, PC, final fight, mother 3, game boy advance, question of the day, fallout, Space quest

• The Mother 3 Translation is Coming (For Real This Time)!

  It may be hard to believe; and yes, I know I've posted about it before. But the Mother 3 (AKA the sequel to Earthbound) translation is actually coming out at the end of this week!  Could this news possibly be correct? After all the heartbreaking delays by the dedicated Mother 3 Translation Project, how do I know that they're just not yanking my chain, as so many Earthbound-based promises have yanked it before? Rest assured that the evidence is stacked in our favor. A simple message, posted yesterday on the translation team's blog, says a lot in just a handful of words: The patch will be out at the end of this week. I can barely contain myself, and you should honestly feel the same way; if you're an Earthbound fan like me, then you've probably been eternally dicked over. Not only did we have to wait eleven years for a true sequel, we also had to suffer the anguish of knowing a game that we wanted to play existed in a language most of us were too lazy to achieve complete fluency in. Now, thanks to the kind folks in the translation scene--the same subculture that wrangled an officially-translated prototype of the first Mother over a decade ago--our dreams will finally come true. All that's left is to wait just a few more agonizing days. I think we can make it. Read More... Posted Oct 14 2008, 11:30 AM by Bob Mackey with | with 13 comment(s) Filed under: earthbound, mother 3, translation, game boy advance, bob mackey, rom hacks

• Games to Play While You Poop

  What is it about the bathroom that makes it the perfect place for sitting, reading, thinking and gaming? I've done my share of all these activities while doing...other activities; in fact, the lousy screen of the original Game boy Advance ensured that I spent at least half of my day in the perfect lighting conditions of my parent's bathroom. People didn't see much of me between the years of 2001 to 2003. Even when backlighting on handhelds became standard, my habits still continued. In fact, bathroom gaming might have saved my life; in 2007 I was stuck in such a boring, depressing temp job that I had no choice but to sit on a toilet and play a shitty cell phone version of Mr. Driller for most of my eight-hour shift. Luckily for me, I was not trained or monitored--and even though I worked in a bank, I feel I am in no way responsible for our current economic meltdown. Read More... Posted Oct 08 2008, 12:30 PM by Bob Mackey with | with 8 comment(s) Filed under: game boy advance, bob mackey, pooping, peggle, portable gaming, mr. driller, gaming habits

• Are We Ready for a New DS?

  Get ready for trade-in values to drop; a shocking weekend news post from Wired's Game|Life revealed that Nintendo may be in the mood for another renovation to their popular platform. Game|Life head honcho Chris Kohler breaks it down for all of us who are unfortunate enough to lack fluency in Japanese: Nikkei Net, the online arm of Japan's foremost economic newspaper, reports that the new model will launch this year in Japan and include a camera and music playback. Nikkei's take on the new machine is that Nintendo is moving outside the boundaries of the "game industry" and attempting to create a device that will compete with more general electronics like cell phones. Nikkei does point out that the camera function of DS could be integrated with gameplay, by allowing games to use the photos taken with the hardware. There's no doubt that the DS' 2006 remodel was a much-needed change; it made the system smaller, brighter, and look remarkably less like a toy. I'm one of many who handed down their fat DS to a loved one or stranger for the benefit of a much sleeker handheld--and the DS Lite has been so awesome that I feel no resentment for Nintendo. The changes to this supposed new model aren't quite as drastic as what would be in the DS2 (or whatever Nintendo decides to call it), though they're pretty big nonetheless. But will Americans really fall for a third model of the same product? Read More... Posted Sep 29 2008, 11:00 AM by Bob Mackey with | with 2 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo, ds, game boy advance, hardware

• I Wish I Had Bought Tetrisphere.

  Tetris, who isn't familiar with Tetris? I owned the original Game Boy once upon a time so naturally I had the game that started the craze. But I have a secret to share. I wasn't really a fan. It was okay, but I seemed utterly immune to its spell. Really, I'm not much of a puzzle game fan. Oh sure, I like puzzles that are worked into other games, like platforming games or adventures and such, but pure puzzle games have never attracted me that much. But I really do wish I'd bought Tetrisphere. Read More... Posted Aug 29 2008, 11:00 AM by Amber Ahlborn with | with 4 comment(s) Filed under: nintendo, amber ahlborn, n64, tetris, game boy advance, virtual console, retro game, tetrisphere

• Alternate Soundtrack: Orbital vs. The Notwist

  Orbital was one of the seven bit Generations games released in Japan for the Game Boy Advance in 2006. The bit Generations series was intended to demonstrate the artistic side of games by using graphics and sound that were simplified to the state of retro-stylish and controls that were basic yet compelling. Developed by skip ltd, Orbital has often been described as "Katamari Damacy in space" and that is not an entirely bad description. As the smallest object in a solar system, you must collect other small moons, planets, stars and whatnot in order to increase your own mass and gravitational pull until the galaxy's own sun orbits you. The challenge, though, comes from the fact that you do not directly control your movements but rather the charge of your gravitational field, either pulling you towards or away from nearby stars. Brilliant in its simplicity and so thoroughly addictive. Read More... Posted Aug 19 2008, 11:00 AM by Derrick Sanskrit with | with 1 comment(s) Filed under: alternate soundtrack, derrick sanskrit, skip, bit generations, the notwist, game boy advance, orbital