61 Frames Per Second : snes

Unsolicited Scares: St Eva from Breath of Fire II Loves You Thiiis Much

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:02:00 GMT

Circumstances beyond my control got me thinking the other day about Breath of Fire II, Capcom's SNES RPG for totally buff men (unless the US box art is lying to me). Breath of Fire II was my first experience with a God-slaying JRPG, and it stuck with me for a few reasons. Reason one: it nearly made me crap my pants.

Every good Messiah hunt includes a foray into the Master's den of cultists, and Breath of Fire predictably sends the hero Ryu and his pals into the heart of St Eva's town towards the end of the game. St Eva is God, but he's not benevolent. What a twist!

The story makes it obvious that St Eva stinks of corruption and rancid food (flowing robes are catch-alls for cheese and salsa drippings), so Ryu is a bit put off when he walks into St Eva's town and finds it a bustling, happy place. Revelers comment on the beautiful weather, the lame can walk, the blind can see, and every dog has a wagging tail.

Ryu thinks, “Well, maybe I had this Eva fellow pegged wrong,” and decides he needs to reconsider his options. He exits the town--

--and finds himself back inside the town gates.

Suddenly, the warm air is icy, and the friendly townspeople have transformed into cackling, shambling husks. I'm making the event sound especially chilly because it had a personal effect on me. See, there was this time I was in a death cult, and—just kidding. But there is a specific reason I never, ever forgot my trip to St Eva's Land.

I'm a very vivid dreamer. Said dreams don't always take me to pleasant places, but I'm used to them by now:

“How did you sleep?”

“Had a dream about dead puppies covered in flies, but all right otherwise.”

So I'm used to waking up, saying “Ugh, okay,” and getting on with my life. But there are still specific dreams that I classify as nightmares. Namely, I fight to get out of a terrible place, burst out of the exit into the fresh air—and find myself back in the house, cave, etc, with some kind of unidentifiable horror right behind me. I usually wake up in a cold sweat.

No doubt everyone has experienced the same dream at some point, likely throughout all their lives. I played Breath of Fire II nearly 14 years ago, but even then St Eva's trap was enough to give me the chills.

Then I smashed St Eva with the Kaiser Dragon transformation. That'll teach him for taking advantage of my psychological weaknesses.

Related Links:

Unsolicited Scares: Threed, Zombie Central
Unsolicited Scares: Terranigma and the Desert
The White Whale: Terranigma and Ahab Gaming

Actraiser Is Overdue for a Resurrection

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:49:00 GMT

We live in an age where game developers see fit to upgrade old classics. Some gamers think they've gone to hell for their sins, but I think we're chin-deep in good times. If nothing else, I can hold on to a slim hope that Square-Enix will revise Actraiser for modern consoles and put it up for sale on XLBA or WiiWare.

Why Actraiser? Good God, why the hell not. I was playing it just last month (my husband had never seen it) and it was such a comfortable, refreshing experience. The frequent switches between action stages and the development of civilisation keep any one thing about the game from getting stale. The graphics are good—that ice wyvern boss is still impressive—and the music is sublime.

Also, you are God. Take that, '90s furry mascots of the game world.

The basic concepts of Actraiser are fun to work through, and they're ripe for adding-onto. Most obviously, there should be more chaotic worlds to cultivate: beat up the monsters with sharp sticks and send them packing so that humans may till the soil. Beyond that, more control over the growth of the cities would be ideal, though admittedly there's something pleasantly uncomplicated about directing the people of Actraiser. Their wild sex orgies and subsequent population growth are merely a means to pump up God's power, but I'd still like to zoom in on one particular mortal, coddle him, praise him, them crush him like Job.

Some gameplay tweaks wouldn't be amiss, either. For someone who's supposed to know everything about human physiology, God is a pretty clunky guy. He holds his sword like a baseball bat and swings like a girl. Nobody corrects his stance though, because you generally don't want to contradict a being who can cast you into an eternal furnace.

God should also be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine.

Actually, if a remake was ever considered for Actraiser, one rule would make it a success: “Do the opposite of everything Actraiser 2 tried to do.”

Related Links:

Actraiser III! Maybe!
OST: Soulblazer
Let The Mega Man 9 Speedruns Continue

Why Were Game Magazines So Cruel to Earthbound?

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 03:20:00 GMT

Earthbound Central has been collecting old magazine reviews for Earthbound, circa Summer 1995. Thus far, the stable includes Gamepro, Game Players, EGM, and most recently, Video Games & Computer Entertainment.

I recently blamed Gamepro for destroying any interest my fifteen-year-old self had in Earthbound, as I well should: their review was wretched. But having looked back at Earthbound Central's library of horror, I've come to realise that Gamepro is not exclusively to blame for turning me off to Ness' adventure. American reviewers despised this poor game.

EGM's John Gurka reserved a coveted place beside the Throne of God for mentioning that the storyline rivals that of Final Fantasy VI, but even he can't resist sniffing at the “Nintendo-era graphics.” Every other review sneers at the very same, berating Earthbound's lovingly put-together world as “childish,” “cutesy,” and “McDonald's Playland meets Bobby's World.”

(So, which ultimately endeared itself to the world? Earthbound or Bobby's World?)

Earthbound is looked upon as one of gaming history's least appreciated games. The farts-n-pizza ad campaign didn't help, but the reviewers of olde probably didn't have them in mind when they snapped off the game and started banging on the keyboard. Why did Earthbound get shafted in the first place?

Though the JRPG genre didn't hit mainstream American culture until Final Fantasy VII, 16-bit era RPGs raised the heads of a few gamers who discovered the joy of an in-depth story. EGM wasn't off the mark when it compared Earthbound's story to Final Fantasy VI's—but there are obvious differences between the two games, not only in themes and narrative, but the delivery of said narrative as well.

Final Fantasy VI delivers its character development to the player, though sometimes those gab sessions take a little bit of searching (Sabin and Edgar, for instance, won't relay their past unless they're both in the party while visiting Figaro Castle). Earthbound, by comparison, scatters clues for the player to put together so they can draw their own conclusions. We learn a lot about Ness through the flashes of memory he experiences at his Sanctuary locations.

Both games tell a lovely story in very different ways. Japan, obviously long used to the nuances of JRPG storytelling by 1995, embraced Mother 2. America, still fresh from being hammered over the head with sex, betrayal, suicide, and everything else Final Fantasy VI offered us for the first time, understandably thought that epic RPG stories were meant to be fed to them intravenously.

In other words, America needed time to get tired of JRPGs ramming words down our throats. Now, over ten years later, we look back and see what a friend we had in Earthbound. Alas...

Related Links:

Abandon All Hope: No Earthbound for the Virtual Console
The Mother 3 Translation: We're Not Worthy!
Whatcha Listening To: The Earthbound Soundtrack

Give Super Punch-Out a Chance

Bob Mackey — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 23:00:00 GMT

I've been talking about Punch-Out a lot this week, from blogging about the new Wii update yesterday to gabbing about it on the Stand Under the Don't Tree and Riddle Me This podcast on Tuesday (episode release forthcoming). In fact, I've had so much Punch-Out on the brain that I happened to overlook the fact that one of my favorite games of all time, Super Punch-Out, saw a Virtual Console release this Monday. And now that I no longer have to play Sophie's Choice when it's time to decide which Wii Channel needs to die for the sake of a new download, you can bet I was beating the living snot out of large, cartoonish boxers as soon as humanly possible.

I've come to observe that Super Punch-Out is mostly unknown and unloved, especially when compared to its iconic little brother--a cultural touchstone for anyone growing up in the 80s (I guess we all wanted to beat up Mike Tyson). But when you strip away the nostalgia, Super Punch-Out is actually a much better game. Regrettably, it lacks a bit of the character that made the first one so memorable--there's no Doc, NYC jogging vignettes, or mid-round chatter--but Super Punch-Out is still a perfection and expansion of all the things that made the original game so great. And you get to beat up a clown--the deepest, darkest desire of any normal human being.

I'll admit that I overlooked Super Punch-Out back during the game's original 1994 release--after all, what more could you do with such a limited premise? But when I played it years later through the magic of emulation, I discovered it was everything I loved about the original game, but better: Little Mac had a few new moves to play around with, but some new power punches were nothing compared to what his 16 opponents (no repeat boxers here) could do. And, just like the original, SPO is a real showcase of Nintendo first-party polish; the characters are huge, well-animated, and still impressive today--and the realistic sound effects are contrastingly brutal for such a cartoony game.

Rather than reimagining old franchises, the best games of the 16-bit era perfected them; and Super Punch-Out--along with Super Metroid, Super Mario World, and A Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past--is a fine example of this trend. Don't miss out on this great game a second time.

Related Links:

The Problem with Punch-Out
Warning: Wii Punch-Out!! Might Just Kill You
The Erotic Adventure of Little Mac

Game Endings Out of Left Field: Chrono Trigger and the Dream Project

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 03:32:00 GMT

I bought Chrono Trigger for the SNES from a game store merchant who called it “The game that never ends.” If only. There eventually came a time when I had in fact seen everything the game had to offer, and all that was left was to gnaw on its bones in a future search for Schala.

Still, the beauty thing about Chrono Trigger is its lack of a cemented beginning, middle and end. Sure, it's a fairly linear adventure the first time you play through...but after you've taken in your fill of the Moonlight Parade, you're encouraged to slip away and explore Crono's world from as many angles as possible. Even making the tiniest changes in the time stream before taking down Lavos could result in a whole new game ending. Go up against Lavos before you're scheduled to fight Magus, and Frog will fight him one-on-one. Visit the spiky bastard after unlocking the door to the Mammon Machine, and listen to Marle and Lucca make lewd comments about Men Through The Ages.

Then there's my personal favourite: finish the game before it even starts, and visit the development staff.

Discovering this ending for the first time helped me realise that my favourite games were not in fact programmed by super robots from Mars: they were written, planned and programmed by human beings with families and tight schedules. I've likewise since come to realise that the good-natured jokes about losing weight and getting grey hairs probably weren't hyperbole.

The Dream Project ending in Chrono Trigger DS differs slightly. Did Manabu Daishima always wag his finger at rented and borrowed games?

Yuji Horii says, "Wow, the years sure do fly by! This game was first released in 1995!" Square-Enix left out, "Got your money again, suckas!"

The “adjusted” credits screen still makes me laugh.

Related Links:

Game Endings Out Of Left Field: Pilotwings

Licensing Tragedies: The Donkey Kong Country Cartoon

Nadia Oxford — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 23:39:00 GMT

Nine out of ten platformer fans with two working eyes agree that the computer-rendered sprites used in Donkey Kong Country were a bit more impressive fourteen years ago. Even so, Donkey Kong Country's visuals still succeed in its portrayal of certain key environments: lush (if flat) jungle foliage, colourful coral, atmospheric snowstorms, and rich orange-and-red sunsets. Additionally, the series' characters were likable until Donkey Kong 64 dragged each simian into monkey hell.

The Kong clan may have been slain by the DK Rap, but I maintain that 1996's French Canadian Donkey Kong Country cartoon helped engineer the gallows. The two disasters are not necessarily connected, except by name, but both can be accused of bland presentation and a noticeable lack of humour and fun.

I will admit that I am criticising a pile of alphabet blocks, here: the Donkey Kong Country cartoon was meant for very young audiences, and it was the family-oriented showpiece for the launch of Teletoon, Canada's animation channel. It was no surprise Nelvana saw fit to give Donkey Kong a vocabulary beyond “Ook ook grunt,” and a story beyond “Beat up reptiles for bananas.” Even so, the crew rarely did anything except thwart King K Rool's attempts to grab Donkey's, uh, “Crystal Coconut” episode after episode. Also, there was a prophecy about Donkey Kong ruling the island or something. Hooray, life under a gorilla regime.

The animation was kind of bad. Again, Donkey Kong Country didn't age well visually, but at least the level settings sometimes went far beyond the jungle. Donkey Kong Country 2 got particularly awesome with its beehives, amusement parks, and bramble mazes.

The cartoon also had musical interludes. Oh boy, did it love its musical interludes. I hate and fear singing animals, but even I have to give a nod to some of Donkey Kong Country's songs. Here is an alligator pirate with breasts singing about treasure. He is A-OK.

Surprisingly, this show had a pretty big following in Japan. It's kind of hilarious to imagine, because it was released around the time North American anime fans were especially obnoxious about the superiority of Japanese animation versus North America's commercial slop.

Related Links:

Licensing Tragedies Malibu's Street Fighter Comic
The Capcom Cartoon Crossover You Never Knew About
Mega Man is a Dick

Game Endings Out Of Left Field: Pilotwings

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 03:01:00 GMT

Today on the Gamespite forum, there was a lull in between the ritual sacrifice and the summoning of the Dark One, so the members got to talking about game endings. Specifically, the game endings that “Made you go 'bwuh?'”

Endings that make you go “bwuh?” are not really the same as endings that make you go “Hey..HEY!” or goad you into a homicidal rampage. These are the endings that gently mystify you, perhaps in a manner that stays with you for a long, long time.

I shifted through my inner catalogue, flipping through the game-related memories I've stored in lieu of remembering how to do long division. I quickly found a game ending that made me scratch my head the first time I saw it: the finale for the pioneer SNES flight simulator, Pilotwings.

Earning the right to view the Pilotwings ending is rough. It's not an easy game, and you have to finish it on regular and “Expert” before you learn of your true destiny.

That's right. You thought you signed up for some froo-froo flight school, but guess what? Your co-pilot is destiny.

It turns out this Nintendo flight academy is actually a front/recruitment centre for a military organisation. When you prove that you can fly a plane, open a parachute, and maneuver a jetpack without fricasseeing your own buttocks, your instructors ask you if you'll do them a favour and fly an Apache helicopter to rescue some agents from from bad people.

So you do. And you're recruited as thanks.

Pilotwings' ending isn't bad by any means. Heck, video games need more crazy story twists. I never loved Pilotwings 64 nearly as much as the original, and to this day I think it's because nobody in the game asked me to go kick some terrorist ass.

Related Links:

Surf the Globe with the Wii Balance Board
The End Has No End
The Best Chrono Trigger Ending

Behold The Half-Assed Review That Steered Me Away From Earthbound

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 03:31:00 GMT

Gather around, ladies and gentlemen. It's time to share my secret shame. Come for the story, stay for the punch, the pie, and a chance to wallow in the lingering stink of failure.

When I was young enough to believe in honesty, I relied on game magazine reviews to tell me whether or not a game was worth a purchase. I've already gone over how many Great Canadian Funbux typically went into the purchase of one cartridge game, so you can probably forgive me for doing my research.

Unfortunately, I kind of put myself at a disadvantage by taking to heart the opinions of only one magazine: Gamepro. To be fair, I have to admit that I wasn't steered wrong too often. If not for the rave review I read in the November 1994 issue of the magazine, I would have bypassed the majesty of Final Fantasy VI.

But it was my faith in Gamepro that made me turn up my nose at Earthbound until just last year. While bypassing Earthbound because of a magazine review was a big mistake on my part, it wasn't like I'd boiled a puppy or cast an unforgivable curse on a baby. Earthbound's genius was snubbed by a lot of SNES owners; that's why the fandom has since been driven half-mad with regret.

No, my problem is that Earthbound Central has scanned and archived the review that kept me away from Itoi's masterpiece...and I can't believe that I was swayed by such an impotent clump of...assumptions.

The review appeared in Gamepro's July 1995 issue. I think by then, editors and readers alike were starting to look over their shoulders at previews for the N64, Saturn and Playstation. 16-bit RPGs like Earthbound got a quick glance before everyone ran off the other way, like Milhouse writing “MILPOOL” on Bart's cast before diving into the family's swimming pool. I can't fault an editor for being distracted by a new era shining on the horizon, but this 300-word bluff might have held up better with plausible criticisms instead of, “All the main characters look the same, except for differently-colored hair.” If I were Paula, I'd be pissed.

Also hilarious: "Lack of a convincing storyline," "Unintentionally hilarious humor," "Psychic Dog" (who's with you for the whole game, apparently), "Threet," "Big Footprint," and "This one is bound to fall to Earth soon." God knows I've been stuck for closing lines in reviews, etc, but I'm not sure what that means.

My favourite flub in the review: The “Beginner” brand in the score bar. Ha ha! No.

At least the Protips were as fresh and useful as ever. “Because you have such a limited amount of space in your backpack, eat everything you can to pump up your life bar.”

(“Then sit on Giygas.”)

Related Links:

Abandon All Hope: No Earthbound for the Virtual Console
The Mother 3 Translation: We're Not Worthy!
Earthbound's Secret Evil

Retro Horror: Canadian Game Prices

Nadia Oxford — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:22:00 GMT

The reign of the SNES was a troubling time for me. The deluge of great games was seemingly never-ending, but I wasn't quite old enough to buy my own crack (that would come with the next generation of systems).

With my family, video games were very much a Sometimes treat. Here's the main reason why:

The Canadian dollar has never been a strongman—except for a brief stretch of time last year when the US dollar finally tanked entirely and the Loonie vaulted over the Greenback. The US dollar has since recovered (and I've put away the noose I wove for myself; most of my employers are American, and my bank thought I was the butt of a cruel joke), but it's not as powerful as it was in 1995.

So I dished out a lot of money for SNES games. God look back on the day when Nintendo announced it was sticking to cartridges for the N64, and have pity on my broken soul.

The 16-bit game purchase that stands out most in my mind is Final Fantasy VI. I scratched together my quarters and nickels for months, though I fell behind a few times when my brother discovered my stash and “borrowed” money for smokes.

I remember the purchase well because my father remembers it for me. When I got the dosh together, he picked up the game at Canadian Tire because I was busy.

The total, with tax: $115.00 CDN.

The clerk packed up the game and said, “This must be for a very special person.”

My dad said, “Nah.”

He also kept the Canadian Tire Money. There was a lot.

(Image courtesy of RetroJunk)

Comfort Through Gaming: Super Metroid's Dark Tunnels

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:12:00 GMT

I've been fighting a mutant cold all week, which means I just don't have the energy to tackle my shiny pile of virgin games. Yes, I am an example of humanity at its laziest and most spoiled. Any further down the ladder and I'll be a quivering puddle of goo that manipulates game controllers with an oozing pseudopod.

Surely you can relate, though. Mr Cole Stryker recently spoke of “relaxing games;” in the same vein, I have my stash of “comfort games.” Digital chicken soup. Something to turn to when I'm just not up to slogging through a ten-hour tutorial.

Games that don't make me work. Or even games with one special trait that brings me inner peace.

One such game is Super Metroid, fresh-picked from the Virtual Console. Super Metroid hovers near the top of everyone's list of favourite action games, and I'm no exception. But for me, the title really shines (somehow ironically, I suppose) because of its dark atmosphere.

Taken on their own, Super Metroid's backgrounds aren't very impressive. Combined with the moody music and the game's setting (deeper and deeper underground until Samus touches Norfair's molten core), they do a brilliant job. Though I really enjoyed Metroid Zero Mission and Metroid ~~Talking~~ Fusion, the detailed, colourful backgrounds in those games stood out like exclamations in the sombre simplicity of a temple. I don't want to be shouted at when I'm sick. I want to swaddle myself in thick, warming shades of dark purple and red.

I suppose simplicity just suits Samus well.

Related Links:

Metroid Prime Trilogy Retrospective: Part One
Rebuttal Rebuttal: I Stand With Metroid
Metroid: Wishful Thinking

Question of the Day: Ogre Battle and How Much Tutorial is Too Much?

John Constantine — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 22:00:00 GMT

Ogre Battle: The March of the Black Queen hit Wii’s Virtual Console today. This is good for a variety of reasons. Quality Virtual Console releases are a rarity here in the far flung future of 2009. Ogre Battle is rare itself; its two English releases tend to fetch a pretty penny on Ebay. I’ve never played Yasumi Matsuno’s first foray into dense fantasy opera, so I’m looking forward to checking it out on the cheap.

My history with the Ogre series is confined to Ogre Battle 64. OB64 was one of the only N64 games I ever owned and I spent many, many hours playing it in the spring of 2001. I had almost no idea what I was doing. OB64 throws you into the deep end as soon you start, burying you under a mountain of circuitous cutscenes and leaving you to figure out its blend of TRPG and RTS play on your own. I was pretty proud of myself for getting thirty hours into OB64 without a guide. That is, until I read a FAQ and found out about the nearly endless number of stats you have to consider if you want to actually see the game’s ending. Nothing in the game tells you about party loyalty or how to measure a unit’s leadership potential. Nothing in the game even indicates that these are things you’re supposed to account for.

I love it when a game trusts me to learn how to play. I think that’s why people have responded so well to Retro Game Challenge. Even beyond its Famicom devotionals, the games trust you to learn their rules through play. Nothing is more frustrating than turning on a game and having to sit through an hour of tutorials, forcing you to plod through poorly acted scenes of someone telling you to press X to jump. By the same token, games like Ogre Battle are so complex that you need to have an in-game guide to teach you their rules by example. It’s very difficult to incorporate a successful guide. Make it all text, and you risk the player not retaining any of the information. Make it all cutscene or real-time lesson based, and you risk boring the hell out of your audience.

How much tutorial is too much? How much should a game teach you about the way it works while you play? Should games always leave the player to fend for themselves, foraging for success through trial and error? Let me know, dear reader.

Related links:

Populous: Text Based Tutorials Need to Die In A Fire
Games You Keep Coming Back To
Question of the Day: How Do You Make a Horror Game Horrifying?
Question of the Day: Yu-Gi-Oh! And Card-Based Videogames?
Question of the Day: Your Ideal Controller?
Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Emulate?

Chrono Trigger's Box Art Still Makes My Head Buzz

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 03:07:00 GMT

I've never been a big fan of Chrono Trigger's box art. I love the game to pieces. I love its story, its music and its character designs. “Akira Toriyama” will be the last words to burst from my mouth in a bubble of blood when Mouseketeer revolutionaries, seeking to empower western animation, unsuccessfully try to force me to renounce my love for the manga-ka.

But I just don't dig on Chrono Trigger's cover illustration. It certainly doesn't rank anywhere in Mega Man's Hall of Box Art Horrors, but it's too busy, there's an inflated sense of intensity, and it was a jarring change from the quiet RPG labels I was used to in the 16-bit era. The boxes for Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy III on the SNES weren't as stylish as their Super Famicom counterparts, but they were recognisable. The “T” styled as a sword in the American Final FantTasy logo, though not especially creative, was iconic. Square RPGs outside of Final Fantasy still featured calm box art that carried a hint of mystery about the contents within. Secret of Mana, for instance.

Chrono Trigger's box art, on the other hand, is bold and loud. Though it's obviously a finished piece of work, it feels like a piece of concept art that was randomly selected to represent the entire game. I look at it and I'm helpless to stop my mind from wandering into Geekville.

I start thinking, “Why is Heckran on Death Peak? Why is Crono alive on Death Peak? Wait, maybe that's 12,000,000 BC? Those winter clothes are actually kind of badass, but we never see anything like them. Why would Frog even bother to look for a contact lens that's buried in two feet of snow?” (I know, I know, it's the Arc Impulse Triple Tech—for which Marle is incorrectly casting a Fire spell).

Thirteen years later, my thoughts still stumble all over one another crying “But--but--but--!”, when I see the cover for Chrono Trigger. It makes the inside of my head feel like a car crash.

Everyone on the box also looks uncharacteristically snarly. I wouldn't laugh off a threat from a giant thorn-lizard that will only succumb to magic spells (*%&$&#!!!!!), but poor gentle Crono comes off as a spiky-haired Rambo. It just ain't right.

Related Links:

The Weakest Link: Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross
The End of Time and the Beginning of Fan Drama
WTFriday: The Chrono Trigger Anime

The White Whale: Terranigma and Ahab Gaming

John Constantine — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 01:00:00 GMT

I sympathized with Nadia’s post last week about the pants wetting nature of Terranigma’s “Desert” theme. That eerie swath of SNES atmospherics by Miyoko Kobayashi and Masanori Hikichi is still fresh in my memory, and not just from following the link in Madame Oxford’s piece. Three weeks ago, after some ten years of hunting, I finally sat down and played Terranigma in one day-long marathon session. This was both the realization of a long-standing desire to play Quintet’s final Super Nintendo entry in their Heaven and Earth saga and also part of a grand gaming journey I’ve undertaken here in 2009. The quest, as it were, is to track down three games from the past two decades that represent significant gaps in my experience: The One That Got Away, The Second Chance, and The White Whale. My goal is to finally see, after building up each game that fits these descriptions for me in my brain, how they live up long after their respective primes.

Given my inexplicable aversion to emulation, the English version of Terranigma has always been my white whale, the cartridge I’ve hunted for and that I’ve constantly sought for an actual way to play. An Australian copy of the game isn’t terribly rare, but it tends to fetch a high price, and then there’s the hurdle of getting it to run on a non-PAL Super Nintendo. That hurdle’s especially high since Terranigma, being one of the last Super Nintendo games, is fitted with a particularly finicky region-lockout chip. Even a Fami-clone that can play PAL carts like the Retro Duo won’t boot Terranigma. There are only two options for intrepid (and legitimately insane) gamers like myself. First, you can mod your SNES with 50/60 Hz region lockout switches. Fearing that I’d end up soldering my hand to the console, I opted out of this. The only other option is to find an incredibly rare version of the Pro Action Replay cheat device. Only three models will work, Mk2.P, 2.T, and 3, all of which only released in Europe in limited quantities. After trolling the net since last summer, I finally found one at the beginning of January. So, in spite of these barriers, in spite of my psychoses, I finally played and finished my white whale.

Was it worth the wait? Did Terranigma live up to a decade of expectation? It did and, unlike Ahab, I lived through the hunt. Terranigma is a lovingly crafted game and is, in many ways, the fullest expression of Quintet’s ambitions with the Heaven and Earth trilogy. It expands on Soul Blazer’s world building, goes far beyond Illusion of Gaia’s narrative and environmental scope, and perfects the metered combat they’d developed in both. It is a grand game, but somewhat schizophrenic as a result. In 2009, Terranigma stumbles in its storytelling, shuffling back and forth between explicit, driven plot and more subtle impressionism. Terranigma aims to be a Jack of all trades and ends up a master of none. But that doesn’t diminish the impact of its physical adventure, nor does it impeach its flawless presentation. If nothing else, I’m glad I played it.

That’s one step of three out of the way. Next up? The One That Got Away: Arc the Lad. See you next time, after I’ve abused my brain with Working Designs’ undoubtedly witty translation of Sony’s very first Playstation RPG.

Related links:

Time For Terranigma! Right?
Unsolicited Scares: Terranigma and the Desert
OST: Soul Blazer

Unsolicited Scares: Threed, Zombie Central

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 22:26:00 GMT

All this talk about Earthbound and related disappointments made me hungry for a Skip Sandwich DX. I ate the sandwich with a mayo packet and began remembering what parts of Earthbound I liked best.

Earthbound is an unsettling game for a number of reasons. First, the party consists entirely of kids, and even though kids have a deserved reputation for never shutting up, Ness and his pals are quiet, stoic and very much focused on the task at hand. Second, the threat they're up against is ethereal, but Giygas' influence on the grown-up world is unmistakable: adults' greed is amplified, corruption amongst authorities is rampant, and there's that one town with the whole cult thing going on.

The third and possibly most potent reason for Earthbound's dark humour is its masterful blending of innocent colour and mood-setting music. If something bad is going down in a scenario, the sound will tell you before the visuals do. Any game that starts you off investigating an unidentified falling object in the dead of night with disjointed alien percussion as background music is a game that's not going to deliver warm fuzzies if it doesn't bloody well feel like it.

Obviously, Earthbound isn't meant to make your heart stop at any one moment—final battle excluded, maybe—but I've come to think of the party's visit to the town of Threed as Resident Evil Crayola.. Zombies and ghosts have taken over the city, but they're pretty goofy looking critters (less so with Handsome Tom and Smilin' Sam; sorry, I hate puppets). Even so, the darkness surrounding the town is oppressive, and the background music hardly indicates that Ness and Paula are attending a kids' Halloween party.

What's more, it quickly becomes apparent that the citizens are fighting a losing battle. Everyone who's left is slowly being herded into the centre of town; the outskirts are crawling with the undead. They're closing in, slithering around the broken-down circus paraphernalia litters the town's greenery. The “haunted circus” angle is an oldie, but it's definitely a goodie. As was stated earlier, Earthbound is all about mixing innocence with corruption—but whereas most games and movies make sure said innocent themes are trampled into the ground by the adult world's stinking grown-up realities, Earthbound lets innocence triumph. After all, it's shy and quiet Jeff who saves Paula and Ness in their greatest time of need.

Until that moment, though, Threed belongs to the dead.

Related Links:

Unsolicited Scares: Terranigma and the Desert
Abandon All Hope: No Earthbound for the Virtual Console
Earthbound in 3D

The Earthbound Legal Conundrum In-Depth

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 04:13:00 GMT

The recent news about Earthbound never coming to the Virtual Console because of legal reasons has struck up a chorus of “But--” and “How come--”. People are understandably upset that Ness's adventure is going to remain in eBay Hell forever, and they want solid answers about why this wretched thing is happening.

There still aren't any solid answers, but the good man in charge of Mother 3's recent fan translation, Tomato, has put together an incredibly in-depth list of reasons why Nintendo is erring on the side of caution. Put in simplest terms, the Internet has made it easier than ever to conjure reasons for an IP lawsuit, and Nintendo already has numerous lawsuits hanging off it at any one time like parasitic fish on the belly of a whale. Even a company like Capcom likely doesn't see half the number of lawsuits Nintendo does, thus explaining why it shrugged off the release of Mega Man and Mega Man 2 on the Virtual Console, despite numerous musical “tributes” in both games.

As Tomato put it:

To avoid crap lawsuits, Nintendo has a team of legal people who have to go through everything Nintendo plans to release and look for anything that can cause potential lawsuits. Then these things are fixed if necessary.

The point is: they’re trying to avoid lawsuits in the first place. It doesn’t matter if they could clearly successfully win lawsuits brought against them; they’d still lose money in the process. Having this team of legal people is cheaper than putting up with every lawsuit that every crazy money-hungry company hits them with.

Remember Star Tropics, an 8-bit RPG by Nintendo? When we were kids, Mike pelted his enemies with a Yo-Yo. On the Virtual Console, his Yo-Yo became a “Star” because some Canadian company owns the rights to the Yo-Yo name. Likely said Canadians are too busy drinking and racing moose to care about an old Nintendo game, but Nintendo figures, why take the risk?

“So why is this all a problem now?” asks the Internet collective. “Why wasn't it a problem when Earthbound first came out for the SNES?”

There were copyright problems, and as Tomato notes, they were addressed. The awesomely-named “Grateful Dead Valley” became “Peaceful Rest Valley.” The Red Cross that marked in-game hospitals was removed, because sure enough the Red Cross will pitch a fit over logo copyrights otherwise. Dr Andonuts' “Sky Walker” craft became the “Sky Runner,” and the logo on the vaguely Coke-ish looking trucks was changed to something generic.

(The “Coke” logo was better off altered, anyway: the trucks in Mother 2 feature a suggestive white line under the word “Come.”)

So is this the very end, my friends? Is a VC release for Earthbound utterly hopeless? Tomato paints a pretty convincing argument, but like the UFO people often say, I want to believe. It's a funny old world out there, and it's full of just as many happy surprises as it is soul-crushing disappointments. Maybe all the lawyers in the world will simultaneously learn how to love again and Earthbound will show them the way.

Related Links:

Abandon All Hope: No Earthbound for the Virtual Console
Whatcha Listening To: The Earthbound Soundtrack
Earthbound and Back Again

Abandon All Hope: No Earthbound for the Virtual Console

Nadia Oxford — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 04:14:00 GMT

The Mother/Earthbound fandom is the loudest on the Internet. It's also the unluckiest. Earthbound was a commercial failure on the SNES. Mother 3 just ain't never gonna doggy-paddle its way here (officially). The first Mother game was dressed up for America, but was pulled at the last minute. And now it's looking like Earthbound won't be granted its long-awaited heroes' rest on the Virtual Console.

“Oh God. What now?”

The problem is beautiful in its irony: because it's such a thorough, loving tribute to the best and most creative bits of pop culture, Earthbound is also a fat target for copyright lawyers, IP theft paranoia and the bureaucracy bred by the same culture (that's irony, right? Right?). Earthbound's soundtrack alone uses a lot of samples from other songs, from The Who to the Monty Python theme.

Shigesato Itoi makes no secret about his love for the Beatles, with John Lennon's “Mother” being not only the series' namesake, but its very foundations. Unfortunately, Apple Corps' sense of humour is about as sharp and attractive as a wet dish rag. Every IP lawyer in the world carries a list in his or her pocket that's titled, “I'm Just Not Going To Fuck With This,” and Apple Corps is on the top of each list.

Interestingly, the sometimes-emotional Earthbound supersite Starmen.net is looking at the situation from a very logical point of view:

You might be thinking, "sampling/references aren't enough to bring a lawsuit", and you'd be right. But it's also true that not everything in EarthBound is simply sampled/referenced, and even if the game was technically legal, that doesn't mean lawyers will be comfortable with it. They get paid to avoid lawsuits entirely, not to get sued and then say "here's why this lawsuit is stupid".

Starmen.net also notes that someone, somewhere, didn't want to “play ball” with proposed alterations to the game. Nintendo of America's lawyers apparently offered suggestions on how Earthbound could be made into a “safe” release, but Nintendo Japan wasn't interested in the changes for some undisclosed reason. It's not even known if Itoi was involved somewhere, somehow.

Maybe a clearer reason will be forthcoming, but for now I guess there's not much to do about the fate of Earthbound except cry many Mr Saturn-scented tears.

Related Links:

The Mother 3 Translation: We're Not Worthy!
Earthbound's Secret Evil
Earthbound's Other Secret Evil

A SNES Story

Amber Ahlborn — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

The year was 1991, I was in 7th grade and the digital bomb had been dropped. The Super Nintendo Entertainment System had been released. For months prior I'd been drooling over the glossy spreads in Nintendo Power magazine featuring this baby. Little green dinosaurs and caped Marios frolicked in my imagination. I wanted this game console badly and I could have it, if I bought it myself. Otherwise I would have to wait a year for the holiday season to roll around again and hope I got lucky. Like many a game junkie, I just couldn't wait that long. I needed money.

How many of you lucky sods got an allowance growing up? I sure the heck never did, and there's just not much of a market for lawn mowing or lemonade stands in the Midwest's winter months. I did already have close to a hundred bucks I'd saved up but I needed to make another hundred plus to afford that shiny new SNES. Being an opportunist (and a light eater) I took advantage of my one source of regular income: my lunch money. My school had what they called an ala carte lunch program, where you could choose from a limited menu if you didn't want to get the regular hot meal. By subsisting on milk and the occasional pizza slice, I managed to save the bulk of my lunch money.

It took many weeks, but I finally had the cash and an exuberant shopping trip later, that SNES was mine. But now what did I do with it? Upon opening the box, I saw that there was no cable hook up. I had a TV in my bedroom but it was an ancient beast with a dial that only went up to 12 or 13 channels. It certainly didn't have any new fangled audio/visual ports.

My parent's TV, however, was brand new. I honestly don't remember how I managed to convince my mom to let me, but I hooked my SNES up in my parent's bedroom. It actually worked out okay since I had the house to myself for a couple hours after school every day. I spent that time in utter bliss, mauling my way through Super Mario World.

Mario, of course, was only the start. Even though I had an NES, I didn't play it that much. Most of the series I ultimately fell in love with were introduced to me on the SNES. It was there that I discovered Metroid and Zelda and Mega Man, and played my first RPG. Those were golden days. Alas, my beloved SNES saw a little too much use.

When I babysat the neighbor's kids, my SNES was an invaluable pacification tool. I didn't read them story books, I narrated Chrono Trigger. Unfortunately, all of that traveling and unhooking of cables had its toll on the system's connections. Eventually it simply stopped working and I bid farewell to my old friend. I did not go SNESless for long though, thanks to the SNES' new compact design. The very first console I ever bought with my own money, I bought twice.

Related Links:

We Have Fury: Pieces of Gaming History End Up In Recycle Bins

Nifty Nostalgia: Super Game Boy

Faux-Nostalgia: The Old Glory of Matt Hazard

Nifty Nostalgia: Super Game Boy

Amber Ahlborn — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 03:30:00 GMT

I have a Gamecube connected to my TV. It sits right next to my Wii. Why have the Gamecube, since the Wii plays GC games you ask? To play GB/GBA games of course! As much as I enjoy the games released for my portable systems, I have never liked the portables themselves. I don't like the tiny screens or the cramped way I have to hold them (and I have small hands). So really, it's no wonder I thought the Super Game Boy was The Best Thing Ever back in the SNES days.

The Super Game Boy, in all its chunky glory, kept an entire library of portable games from ever occupying my neglected Game Boy. Aside from allowing me to play GB games on my TV, there was one other neat little thing that I loved about the Super Game Boy, indeed, something that absolutely fascinated me when I discovered it: the animated borders.

When the SGB displayed games on the TV, it always placed a frame around them. There were a variety to choose, and Nintendo being Nintendo, they went the extra mile to actually hide clever little animations in these frames. If you left the system idle long enough, something special was bound to happen. Check out some videos of my favorites after the jump.

This is the border that I first saw animate.

As much as I love my GBA Player, it does disappoint in that its borders lack the clever animations that its predecessors had.

Hat tip to GoNintendo.com for reminding me these things existed.

Related Links:

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

This Functional Game Boy Costume Will Show Us the Way

Nostalgia and Game Association

WTFriday: The Great Final Fantasy VI Breast Challenge

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 02:56:00 GMT

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

Alas, I turned up no name, and I've only made myself look like a deviant in the process. Join me by viewing a couple more completed pieces. And if you're the artist, uh, stop in and take a bow, I guess?

My First Banned Game: Double Dragon

Nadia Oxford — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:16:00 GMT

Screw Attack has a video retrospective on Battletoads & Double Dragon for the Super Nintendo. It's good for a quick nostalgia fix, and it contains 200% of the daily recommended intake of fart and tit jokes in case you haven't been meeting your quota lately (that happens in the winter).

I never played Battletoads & Double Dragon. Watching the video reminded me of the reason why: my taste in games was slightly above that of a blind burrowing animal who sleeps in its own excrement. Seriously though, I never played Battletoads & Double Dragon because Double Dragon was the first verboten series in my house. My mother took note of what I was playing long before the Mortal Kombat scare, and she didn't approve of games that let you grab women by the hair and knee them in the face. I guess.

It's not to say I grew up in an ultra-Puritan house where the only permitted video games came in telltale baby-blue cartridges, or were games about barn raising. I was allowed to play most anything, and my mom even played a bit, even if she could never get past the first boss in any given Castlevania game (but damned if she didn't try over and over). But after bringing home Double Dragon for the NES, she noted that Billy and Jimmy Lee could vent their masculine frustrations on thug women, and she deemed that uncool.

Interestingly, we owned Double Dragon on the Game Boy, and the violence-against-women issue never came up. Handheld gaming tends to be more private, I suppose, and Game Boy sprites lacked anything like gender-defining shapes or colours. Anyway, our portable copy of Double Dragon got stolen long before we brought home the NES version, so that eliminated the need for disposal.

I had friends who thought that my mother's philosophy was weird. I suppose I ought to have been angry over the fact that she didn't trust me to separate fantasy from reality. I think there's more to the situation than that, though. I'm a pretty big fan of game ratings, even though the ESRB isn't perfect by far. There is nothing wrong with telling a kid, “You know what? This is just a bit old for you. Wait a while.” I doubt I'll make my kids wait until they're seventeen to play Devil May Cry 19, but it won't kill any of us for them to learn some restraint and earn a bit of maturity.

Would kicking some chicks around in Double Dragon have infused me with a desire to go on the street and start randomly punching women in the boobs? Obviously not. I didn't appreciate being told to put Double Dragon away for good. But thinking about it now, it was good to have a parent who gave a shat about my hobby, and was reasonable about it—not just knee-jerk frightened.

Oh, and I played plenty of Double Dragon at friends' houses, of course. I was fascinated by Double Dragon II. I even told my mother about it.

“Guess what? In Double Dragon II, you don't punch women anymore.”

“Well, that's good.”

“Nah, now you whip them with morning stars.”

Related Links:

Double Dragon Double Dragon Double Dragon!!
Double Dragon in the Flesh: The Naked Flesh
Up All Night: Bad Dudes

True Tales of Multiplayer: Fights, Tricks, and Fights!

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 23:00:00 GMT

Lately I've found myself chilling with my homeboys Dan and Ryan, playing old video games that most of our friends don't remember or never heard of at all hours of day and night. It started when Dan found an old cartridge of the Jaleco's SNES beat-em-up The Peace Keepers. I was impressed by the ability to recolor any of the game's sprites however you wanted, but otherwise the game was an all-around stunningly frustrating experience.

Things picked up for the next round, however, when I popped in my favorite SNES "sports" game, DMA Designs' Uniracers. I've gushed about Uniracers before, how it paved the way for trick-based games like Tony Hawk Pro Skater and DMA's next big hit Grand Theft Auto. The bright colors and self-aware living unicycles scared and confused my friends at first, but once we hit the Bowl course, where players pull off the craziest tricks they can in a set period of time for a higher score, suddenly it was an intense competition. Hours were spent rolling back and forth in the bowl , flipping, rolling, twisting, z-flipping, pulling off tabletops and head bounces, scoring Tubulars and Gnarlys and the coveted I Hate Races. Heated battles ensued with eyes locked on the scores. Rounds regularly ended with last minute reversals thanks to 60-point mega-chains. There were upsets and supreme victories all around.

Time for a change of pace, Ryan popped his all-time favorite into the Playstation, a 1997 Konami brawler I'd never heard of called Poy Poy. A 3D four-player arena fighting game, Poy Poy plays and looks a lot like both Power Stone and Super Smash Bros, only it came out a good solid year-and-a-half before either of those more recognizable titles. Cartoon polygon people run around colorful and vibrant enviroments picking up rocks and logs and bombs, or even each other, and throw them. Get hit, get hurt. Last man standing gets the most points. Upgradable gloves gave each character powerful special moves. The game was simple enough for me to learn within only a couple of ass-beatings yet clearly compelling enough for Ryan to love unconditionally for eleven years so far. The one true downside to Poy Poy when compared to Power Stone and Super Smash Bros is that the Playstation was only designed with two controller ports, so four-player games required a multi-tap accessory.

Three forgotten games from over a decade ago, all completely addictive and fun with good company and messy tacos. I'm sure these game sessions will become a regular occurrance, with Uniracers and Poy Poy bound to see repeat performances along with plenty more semi-obscure games to come.

What are your favorite forgotten gems, readers? What do your late-night multiplayer sessions involve?

Related Articles:
Mourning the End of Jaleco
Up All Night
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Swell Maps

John Constantine — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 21:30:00 GMT

A few years back, I picked up an issue of British gaming rag NGamer because a) it had the Nights sequel on the cover — Nights is awesome — and b) it came with a poster. A lot of game magazines come with posters, but this one was particularly sweet. One side was a complete map of Hyrule, exactly as it appears in A Link to the Past, and on the other, a complete map of Zebes from Super Metroid. These weren’t artist’s interpretations, these were the actual games printed on paper. Super Metroid was especially beautiful. Anyone familiar with the game could lean in and pick out particular rooms, places where the game itself is especially thrilling or well-constructed. But seeing the game as a whole was eye-opening.

After years of looking at game maps in strategy guides, I’d gotten numb to how they can give you a far greater appreciation and understanding of a game’s design than when you’re actually playing it. You can see just how carefully timed each obstacle in Sonic & Knuckles is or how vast Strider’s levels are despite being short to play through. The map also let’s you appreciate a game by transforming it into something you can’t have in the game itself. Taken as a whole, the map changed Super Metroid into something else entirely from the game I was so familiar with: an intricate, beautiful work of visual art as alluring in the macro as it was nuanced in the micro.

revolvingdork’s new laptop is another example of how a sidescroller is transformed when seen all at once. He had all of Super Mario Land laser-etched into his computer and the result is dramatic. It’s in paragraph form, starting in the upper left corner and ending in the bottom right, and retains the game’s linearity as a result. It also shows off just how dense and layered Super Mario Land is. Not too shabby for a black and white launch title. Follow the link to get a look.

(Link: Geekologie via GameLife. Image provided by Gavin Ward)

Related links:

Metroid Prime Trilogy Retrospective
Fun Fact: Metroid Meets Metronome
Metroid: Wishful Thinking
For Love of the Game: Metroid II Remakes
What's in my MP3 Player: Super Metroid “Jade Catacombs”

What's in my MP3 Player: Super Mario RPG - “Flubber Mountain”

Amber Ahlborn — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 03:30:00 GMT

Sometimes I run across a piece of music that I just can't categorize and this is one of those times. Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars, aside from being a really great SNES game was also the second RPG I ever played/owned (I was ushered into the genre by Chrono Trigger). One of the most memorable aspects of Mario RPG was its music, which perfectly matched the zany vibrancy of the game's look, play, plot and well, everything else about it. This remix by Mazedude over at OCR captures that quirkiness flawlessly.

"Holy timpani Batman" was probably my first reaction listening to “Flubber Mountain” but even though the drums are dominant there's a lot of other crazy fun stuff going on. I don't know what official genre Mazedude's effort might be placed in; I just call it music to smile to. Go check it out, it's lots of fun.

Related Links:

61FPS Q&A: David Lloyd and Larry Oji of OC ReMix on the Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix Soundtrack (Part 1)

Bad Games With Good Music: Tales of Legendia

What's in my MP3 Player: Shadow's Theme

Crono: My First Aeris Gainsborough

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 05:01:00 GMT

You remember Aeris' death in Final Fantasy VII, right? Sephiroth dropped from the sky, brandishing his very big sword, and he spit Aeris like a piece of sacrificial lamb on a shishkabob. Cloud broke out the pitas, Cid stirred up the hummus and—no, wait, that didn't happen. Aeris died in Cloud's arms and it was very sad. There, that's what happened.

Aeris's death, though curiously dry (not a drop of blood was spilled—what kind of impotent Jesus stand-in was she?), was a stunning event for the gaming world. Until the moment Sephiroth fell on her as neatly as a dart flying to a pub's board, it seemed unfathomable that a game character could die. Forever. No take-backs.

Unfathomable for some. Not so much for others.

I'd been there a couple years prior. Crono from Chrono Trigger was my first Aeris.

“But you can bring Crono back to life! His death's wasn't traumatic, you big attention whore!”

But reviving Crono isn't as easy as sprinkling him with phoenix down. It's actually an emotional investment, and when I played Chrono Trigger on the DS, I was surprised at how powerfully it still hit me.

Aeris got a sword through her gut, and admittedly that's a pretty bad way to go. But at least her body was laid to rest. Crono, on the other hand, throws himself at the deadly light Lavos generates and his body simply...dissolves. One second he's a boy on a quest; the next falls apart in a smear, like a stick of charcoal left in the rain.

After the party bumbles around lost for a while, they're given the opportunity to climb Death Peak and revive Crono using a special item that's also the game's namesake. Death Peak is a pretty unique locale, as far as Chrono Trigger goes. The snow-covered mountain lords over the far-flung future, but it has a sinisterly ancient feel to it; it was thrown up when Lavos erupted from the ground in 1999. Journeying through the future usually means visiting factories and crumbling ruins, but Death Peak feels like it's encased in a bubble that's separate from the rest of time.

It's on Death Peak we get an unsettling glimpse of his Lavos' spawn, a quiet prophesy of what's to come. A perpetual, gentle snowfall makes the mountain eerily peaceful. And at the top of the mountain...well, that's a special experience.

The teamwork Crono's friends use to bring him back to life strengthens their bonds and speaks of their characters. Crono's death would also have been an easy opportunity to give “depth” to the cast through mourning: “A-bloo-bloo-bloo, our hero is gone, Zeal will pay,” and whatnot.

When Crono first dies, Marle is confident he's alive. It's a little saddening to see her so adamant about an impossibility, but her resolve makes it hard to resist the Crono-Jesus sub-quest. You are part of the experience, not just an outsider viewing a cutscene.

Related Links:

The Weakest Link: Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross
WTFriday: The Chrono Trigger Anime
China Trigger

Nintendo’s New Year’s Resolution

John Constantine — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:30:00 GMT

Hell yeah! I love that new year smell. It’s a heady blend of desperation, manic behavior, stale cookies, and endless possibility! You can practically taste it on the air: the tang of freshly printed gym membership cards, the musk of old car models being discounted. This is the time when we wide-eyed lovers of videogames stare forward, ready for anything that may come. We take our last looks at 2008 and get to predicting what’s on the horizon. In the spirit of embracing new opportunities, I would like to recommend one New Year’s resolution for each gaming console maker as well as a select few third-party publishers. We’ll start with your friend and mine, Nintendo.

Nintendo? You resolve to release Star Fox 2 on WiiWare in 2009.

There’s no shortage of exciting stuff coming out for the Wii in the next twelve months, but actually releasing this forgotten and ignored gem could be an event. An unreleased SNES game in a beloved-but-bedraggled franchise? Solid gold! Not to mention the game is, thanks to the work of some intrepid fans, literally finished and playable at this point. Bring in Dylan Cuthbert and the Q-Games crew, have them polish it up, and put it out at twenty dollars. You can’t go wrong!

Come on. Everyone reading would play the hell out of this, right? Course you would.

(Bet you thought I was going to say release Mother 3 commercially. Nope. That will never, ever happen.)

Related links:

Fun Fact: Dylan Cuthbert - The Genre Masher
Why Am I Playing This: Star Fox Assault
The Ten Most Adventurous Sequels in Gaming History, Part 3
Industry Predictions for 2009: Doom and Gloom Edition

Picking Chrono Trigger Clean

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 01:00:00 GMT

Mackey just reminded me of something. Well, Mackey reminds me of a lot of things, primarily of when I was a sexy leopardess who drove across Canada, solving cold murder cases. Let's keep this in the context of games, though. Mackey's post reminded me of a different age of gaming, when we used to pull apart games like so much shredded pork in hopes of squeezing just ten more minutes of gameplay from the battered cartridge.

Oh, to find one more secret. Oh, to tie up that loose end.

The Internet in 1995 was polluted with gaming "secrets" like the exact rain dance you needed to perform in order to resurrect General Leo in Final Fantasy VI. And Schala could be revived in Chrono Trigger, of course. All you had to do was the hokey pokey while waving a chicken over your head.

I performed a lot of these crazy rituals. I was desperate to find Schala. I thought the key lay in the Last Village--more specifically, in Janus' chatty purple cat, Alfador. I thought Alfador could lead me to the answers. He didn't, and I was very sad.

Why were we so desperate to make these connections back then? Granted, the race to find Schala in Chrono Trigger could partially be blamed on a mistranslated line that made it seem as if she was alive and suffering in the bowels of the Mammon Machine. Which, in turn, lay in the bowels of the ocean (I'll grab any excuse to write the word 'bowels').

Even so, it should have quickly become obvious that Schala would not re-appear until Chrono Cross. What else drove us to do crazy in-game shit?

I think part of our insanity could be credited to the infrequent release of Square's games back then. Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI were, for many of us, early instances of quality storytelling in games. For some reason, we could accept loopholes and unanswered questions in books, but we refused to accept as much in video games until we licked every last pixel for clues.

Price may have been a factor as well. I remember dishing out near a hundred bucks each for Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger. I needed to get everything out of them, partially because a quality RPG experience was such a rarity in those days and partially because I refused to believe a that a hundred dollar game like Chrono Trigger would dare leave such an important plot point unresolved.

Well, now it looks as if Chrono Trigger DS has tied up that loose end. Now all that remains is to go back in time and tell my fifteen year-old-self to chill out.

Related Links:

The Best Chrono Trigger Ending
The Weakest Link: Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross
WTFriday: The Chrono Trigger Anime

Super Street Fighter HD Turbo HD Remix C-C-Combo Makers

Nadia Oxford — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 03:09:00 GMT

Super Street Fighter II holds a place near and dear to my heart. Somewhere near the left ventricle, I'd wager. I'm very fond of Street Fighter in general. I spent two summers honing my Hadokens. The first summer, I'd had surgery and spent a lot of time bumming around indoors. The second summer, I worked in an amusement park with several arcades and let's just say those big shady boxes of joyful noise were a great place to hide during the hottest part of the day.

I'm kind of skeptical about how well Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix will work out for the average Street Fighter fan--by the way, this is a good time to stop and assure you that I'm a competent player but I still get annihilated in the arcades and would burn to a cinder if I went within twenty feet of a tournament--but I'm really looking forward to it. The endings, at least, should be fun. Let's all watch Guile crawl back to his wife from his failed gay military relationship in glorious HD.

Here's a video of insane combos performed in Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (I'm getting tired of typing all that, God have mercy on the reviewers). The video also offers some glimpses of the redone backgrounds. I always dug the dragons in Fei Long's stage, and now I can see the whites of their reptilian eyes. Eeeek.

Related Links:

Street Fighter IV's Fighting Spirit in Painstaking Detail
Street Fighter IV Boxart: A Warning of Things to Come
Street Fighter HD Makes Me Freak Out

Our Emulation Habits

Bob Mackey — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:30:00 GMT

A long, long time ago (actually, it was just this past Friday) fellow blogger and 61FPS boss-man pined over his inability to emulate. I'm afraid that I'm a bit less romantic than John, even though my feelings about emulation have changed slightly over the years. But when I first started emulating--man oh man--it was like some sort of amazing technology I dreamed about but never thought would exist. As is the case with most people who caught onto emulation, I got hooked on NESticle back in 1997, and spent the copious amounts of free time I had (I was a dork in high school, after all) downloading all the games from my past I was dying to play again.

If I'm not mistaken, I think this was also the year that SNES emulators--a baffling proposition at the time--first started to support sound. I remember downloading a .wav file of the Chrono Trigger opening song as played through the soon-to-be released SNES9X and sitting there completely awestruck. Yes, even then I realized how nerdy I was.

Really, the late 90s-early 00s were a very fruitful time for emulation, and during this short span of years we saw some of the most notable translations: Final Fantasy V, Seiken Densetsu 3, and even a ROM dump of Nintendo's own aborted attempt at releasing the first Mother game. If emulation has served me any good, it's come from being able to play games I would've never been able to play otherwise. The translation scene is much quieter these days, but every once in a while there's a huge release, like the PSX version of Tales of Phantasia or Mother 3, which we can't stop blogging about.

Really, the inauthenticity of emulation really doesn't get to me, because the differences from the real hardware are--in my eyes--imperceptible; and I'd rather play something great with minor imperfections than not play anything at all. The only trap I've ever fallen into has been the dreaded "emulation fatigue," which happens when you have a lot of ROMs but not a lot of patience. It's easy to judge and dismiss a game in moments when you've got hundreds more sitting on your hard drive; most people suffering from this disorder try out games for roughly eight seconds before deciding to never play them again. But I've found that if I actually pay money for emulation, usually via the Wii's Virtual Console, this problem disappears entirely. I still have a bunch of games I've never finished sitting on my Wii, but I feel compelled to go back to them because they actually have a dollar value. Not sure if that makes me a hypocrite, but that's my typical behavior.

So I'm going to go ahead and say "Huzzah for emulation!" as long as it isn't hurting anyone. I honestly don't see the point in ethical hand-wringing over games we'll probably never see on any platform again; sure, Capcom may not see a dime from you downloading a DuckTales ROM, but the great money chain for that game was broken about 18 years ago. That doesn't make you entitled to play it, but in the end, who the hell cares?

Related Links:

Question of the Day: Why Can’t I Emulate?
THE MOTHER 3 TRANSLATION IS OUT
The End of Time and the Beginning of Fan Drama

The Reason Why Mother 3 Never Came to America

Nadia Oxford — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:35:00 GMT

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.

Mother 3 is certainly unorthodox. Much like big brother Earthbound, it adheres to basic JRPG battle rules, but its heart and soul are wholly unique. The game ladels endless charm over the player, but at the same time, the story is unapologetically sad and says a lot about our tendency to listen to shit-disturbers disguised as charmers instead of making our own sane judgements.

American gamers could do with a story as raw as Mother 3's. It's not what we're used to, but that shouldn't matter. Before I inevitably die under a falling safe, I want to see game stories earn recognition as true literature. Unless games like Mother 3 reach a wide audience--games that have stories worth listening to--that's not going to happen.

Mother 3's other damning trait, the townspeople say, is its questionable content. The strongest example cited thus far are the magypsies, an immortal, all-knowing and all-powerful troupe of...er, transvestites who aid Lucas and his friends in saving the world. This makes for interesting times. Lucas, for instance (PSSST, MILD SPOILERS), has his PSI powers awakened through a questionable encounter with a naked magypsy in a hot tub.

Even this particular scene isn't close to explicit. It certainly implies that black-screen hot tub shenanigans went on between Lucas and the magypsy, but only in that coy, joking way that happens all the time in anime, games and manga. When the picture comes into focus again, it becomes obvious Lucas' head was being held underwater to awaken latent powers vital to his survival--also an extremely common occurrence in anime and manga. The entire scene wouldn't be too difficult to censor, though it would be unfortunate.

(End spoilers, babe.)

Now, I'm probably just talking out of my proud, firm buttocks because I'm only about halfway through the game. But so far, I'm comfortable saying that Nintendo never released Mother 3 because they're still throwing a profit sulk. They could take a chance on Mother 3, which could easily get away with a Teen rating, but they're a business and must step carefully. If game companies didn't have to think about profits and made games solely to lighten the hearts of fans, we would have had Mega Man Legends 3 by now.

It's a shame, because the whole world deserves Mother 3.

(And now we have it either way. Heh heh.)

Related Links:

Mother 3 Makes Me Feel Human Again
What I'm Playing This Weekend: Mother 3. Doi.
The Mother 3 Strategy Guide: Fandom Done Right

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

John Constantine — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 22:00:00 GMT

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.

I have never played a Sega Master System game. I want to, and I know I could, but I don’t. I’d love to try out Final Fight 3, but I don’t have fifty bucks to drop on a stray cartridge and, somehow, Google searching a ROM feels wrong. It’s not the piracy issue. The vast majority of silver age games will never, ever be commercially re-released. It’s that I feel like I’m missing out on the actual experience of the game by not engaging the physical artifact it was originally presented as. Crazy, I know. But it’s undeniable that there’s something vital and intangible in an “authentic” experience. Standing in front of Monet’s Vétheuil in the Fog, being able to see the physical cracks in the paint, is fundamentally different than looking at a print. There’s a difference between playing the English edition of Terranigma on my laptop and actually putting the cartridge, with its art flaking from the badly cared for label, into an SNES and holding that controller in my hand. The recent translation of Mother 3 is monumentally exciting but it doesn’t change the fact that I want to play this game on a bonafide Game Boy Advance.

So, tell me, dear reader: am I just completely batshit crazy, an overthinking rube with pretentious ideas about legitimacy? Or is there something to be said for an original experience of a game? Let me know.

Related links:

Question of the Day: How Do You Make a Horror Game Horrifying?
Question of the Day: Has the HD Revolution Happened and Does It Matter For Games?
Screen Test: Fallout 3
Whatcha Playing: Fallout (Metaphorically Speaking)
Mother 3 Makes Me Feel Human Again
THE MOTHER 3 TRANSLATION IS OUT
Earthbound and Back Again