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You’re Doing it Wrong: Excitebots Should Be Super Smash Bros. Kart

I don’t know about you, but I thought Excite Truck was a hell of a game. Not just as a launch game either. Its terrain deformation, ridiculous stunts, enormous jumps, and speed were good fun. It wasn’t as demanding as its grandpappy Excitebike, but that suited its loose motion controls nicely. It flopped hard though, failing to break into the top selling games the month it came out. In fairness, it deserved to flop. Who puts out a racing game at launch and doesn’t include multiplayer? Appalling. More than that though, there was no aesthetic hook to sell Excite Truck to Nintendo’s audience. Its beefy trucks and muddy trails milieu might have played back in 1987, or even ’97, but those days were long gone for Nintendo by the time the Wii released.

Now, Monster Games is back with Excitebots: Trick Racing. It looks like a lot of fun. Excite Truck but with wacky animal-robot-cars, more stunts, power-ups that involve driving into giant sandwiches, and, most importantly, multiplayer. I’m excited to play it. I’m also mystified by Nintendo’s decision to send this poor game out to pasture, just like Excite Truck. Animal-robots or not, there’s nothing here to grab up the massive Nintendo audience. There’s an easy way to make Excitebots into a multi-million seller instead of a ten-thousand seller. You make it a Smash Bros. game.

Posted Mar 10 2009, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: john constantine, nintendo, wii, mario kart, zelda, mario kart wii, excitebots, monster games, excite truck, Excitebike, super smash bros.

Brave New Wi-Fi World: Square-Enix Might Just Change the Way We Play Nintendo Games

I was a little miffed when Square-Enix announced Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time. More Crystal Chronicles is certainly a good thing, especially when it’s new Crystal Chronicles that promises online and an opportunity to improve on Ring of Fates’ flaws (no story mode co-op is not cool, guys.) I was just sad because this meant the first Crystal Chronicles announced for Wii, The Crystal Bearers, looked even more likely like a candidate for the vaporware hall of fame. I’m getting over the sour grapes though. A game that can be played cooperatively on either a Wii or a DS is the connectivity dream realized, a grand delivery on the promise of Gamecube’s Crystal Chronicles and even Miyamoto and Toru Iwatani’s Pac-man Vs. Graphics be damned, this is the future of co-op.

The news is already racing around the internet that Square-Enix might be giving Dragon Quest IX the Echoes of Time treatment. EGM’s classic rumor monger Quartermann says DQIX might hit both of Nintendo’s consoles, ensuring that it will sell a billion copies instead of just half a billion. If this turns out to be true, and both Echoes of Time and DQIX play well over Nintendo Wi-Fi, Nintendo’s sickly online strategy may finally have its first bonafide hook.

Posted Dec 03 2008, 07:00 PM by John Constantine with | with 2 comment(s)

Filed under: nintendo, nintendo ds, wii, final fantasy, animal crossing, square-enix, mario kart wii, dragon quest ix, new super mario bros, echoes of time, animal crossing wild world, animal crossing city folk, crystal bearers, new super mario bros 2, mario kart ds, crystal chronicles, ring of fates, pac-man vs

Game Rage

Video games can be relaxing. They can be stimulating or relieve stress. They can also be utterly rage inducing and that's what this post is all about: The Rage.

Posted Aug 26 2008, 10:00 AM by Amber Ahlborn with | with 5 comment(s)

Filed under: wii, final fantasy, amber ahlborn, mario kart wii, zack and wiki

The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 3

And now, the bad...

Metroid: Zero Mission (Game Boy Advance)

Is Metroid: Zero Mission a terrible game? By no means. On its own terms, it's rather good. But as a reconception of one of the greatest, most influential games ever made, it's a disaster, taking everything that made Metroid spooky and replacing it with a thick layer of corn. Metroid was heavily influenced by Alien. Remember the petrified extraterrestrial skeleton in Alien? What if that bastard had gotten up and started bombarding Sigourney Weaver with some hack's idea of ancient wisdom? Wouldn't that have pretty much thrown the movie's chilly austerity out the window? Like so many latter-day games, Zero Mission thinks comic-book jibber-jabber is cooler than eerie silence. This lack of subtlety is echoed in the gameplay itself, which, while it controls a lot better than Metroid, is chock-full of egregious hand-holding and advice-giving — pretty much the exact opposite of the original's sprawling openendedness. Metroid is practically Lovecraftian in the way it makes you feel tiny and alone in a vast and hostile universe. Don't look for that feeling in Zero Mission. Oh, and it also mangles the most immortal climax in videogame history — the truly unsettling slaughter of a shrieking brain in a jar, followed by a hair-raising escape sequence — by tacking on a (sigh) stealth section. — PS

Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:02 PM by Peter Smith with | with 17 comment(s)

The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 2

Final Fantasy (WonderSwan Color)

The first in a vast battalion of Final Fantasy rereleases, the Wonderswan remake actually gets it righter than any that were to come. Sure, the Playstation version has FMV intros (whoo-hoo?), the GBA version has some mostly extraneous new dungeons, and the PSP version has sharper graphics. But the Wonderswan version gave the NES original a beautiful visual makeover that later ports would simply poach, and more importantly, it corrected some of the original game's antiquated design quirks in a totally optional fashion. In the NES game, if two characters attack one enemy and the first one kills it, the second character's attack will be ineffective. This is annoying, but it also forces you to plan; it adds some strategy to the essentially one-dimensional battle system. You could really argue for or against the feature, and the Wonderswan port gives you a choice. The same goes for a number of other idiosyncracies we cranky old-timers like to keep in our enhanced remakes; subsequent rereleases dumbed the game down until you could grind through it with a rubber band around the A button. — PS

Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:01 PM by Peter Smith with | with 1 comment(s)

The Five Greatest Enhanced Remakes - And Five That Weren't So Great, Part 1

Well, having burned through our annual pants-replacement fund on the announcement of Chrono Trigger DS, we here at 61FPS now find ourselves surprisingly ambivalent about this remake (or is it just a rerelease?) of the greatest game Square ever made. Sure, it could be handsome and polished. But it could be sloppy and buggy, too. It could add new gameplay elements, or it could dumb down those that were already there. Chrono Trigger's a delicate thing! Be careful with that priceless art item, you sausage-fingered renovators! And here to guide you on a righteous path are five enhanced remakes that got it right — and five that didn't. — Peter Smith

FIVE GREAT REMAKES

Tomb Raider Anniversary (PlayStation 2)

Most games simply do not need to be remade. As beautiful and ambitious as Square's impending Final Fantasy IV DS is, its voiced dialogue, new script, and three-dimensional overhaul are icing on a cake that was already delicious despite its simplicity. The original Tomb Raider, however, is a once-revolutionary title ravaged by the passage of time and the growth of technology. Forget how Lara's 1996 debut looks. Just think about trying to play a fully-3D game that requires precision platforming using only a d-pad. Crystal Dynamics' full remake of Tomb Raider put the engine from Lara's rebirth, the decent Tomb Raider: Legend, to great use, re-introducing the world to the game and, most importantly, preserving it in a way so people can actually play it in the years to come. Plus, grappling hooks are awesome. — John Constantine

Posted Jul 03 2008, 05:00 PM by Peter Smith with | with no comments

about the blogger

John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.