61 Frames Per Second : wiiware

Whatcha Playing: Earth Day Edition

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 20:30:00 GMT

April 22nd, the day we all take off from work and gather at our local mosques and synagogues to solemnly pay respects to our mother Earth on the anniversary of her creation... or something. So do your part and take your game time today away from blasting zombies and chainsawing aliens in half, instead playing games all about helping mother Earth. Here are the four games that I'm playing for Earth Day:

Chibi-Robo: Park Patrol for Nintendo DS

Rather than cleaning up a house and helping with domestic troubles, this Chibi-Robo has been tasked with turning a barren field of sand into a lush flourishing public park. Like SimCity, you get to design your own world, laying paths and streams, rocks and hills, even benches, fountains, clock towers, statues, and mini-games to your liking. The nicer your park, the more visitors it gets each day. You also have to befriend local toys (including Molly Mapletree, seen above) to help you build up your park and battle smoglings who aim to pollute all the beautiful nature you've brought to the park, but the majority of gameplay is planting flowers. It's actually a lot more fun than it sounds, thanks to the charm and playfulness found in all Skip-developed Nintendo games.

Flower for Playstation 3

Nature is so relaxing for those first few levels, but the final stage really flaunts the nature vs. man-made-atrocities vibe. It's vindicating to smash your trail of flower petals straight through scaffolding and watch a child's swing-set color itself and start swinging in the wind. My only problem with this for Earth Day is that it romanticizes the wind more than the flowers. Playing Flower makes me want to go ride a bike, not water a tree. Still, at least it's prompting me to go outside.

Bonsai Barber for Nintendo Wii

This WiiWare title asks you to be kind to nature in a very different way, by playing the neighborhood barber in a village of anthropomorphic plants. Yes, it's a cute and quirky little topiary simulation. The adorable factor in this game is fairly high without ever becoming sugary sweet, and seeing your shrubbery clientele bristle with joy when you've completed their new 'dos might just make you want to go outside and trim those hedges.

Pixeljunk Eden for Sony Playstation 3

If the above games are a bit too casual and cutesy for you, though, here's a true hardcore platformer. While a bit more abstract, the main focus of the game is pollinating flowers. You essentially play as a spider who thinks it's a bee who has done some psychadelic drugs in the garden. Through the techno and bright colors, the message is clear: more flowers = more awesome.

Related articles:
Ecco the Dolphin: Was This Game Ever Considered Fun?
Comfort Through Gaming: Accomplishing Anything in SimEarth
Chiptune Friday: Spring Into Spring with Sonic

Silent Hill, Killer 7 and Not Having Fun With Great Games

John Constantine — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 02:00:00 GMT

I am less than taken with Bit.Trip Beat. Subsequent playings have not improved my opinion of the game. As I’ve gotten further into it, the fundamental flaws in its design I spotted at the beginning have been born out later in the game. Some people love it. I don’t. They think it’s fun. I don’t. C’est la vie.

As I mentioned in my article about Bit.Trip, though, I don’t think that games need to be fun in order for them to be good. I was pretty vague in making my point though. 61FPS reader Kit wrote me an email last week to ask just what the hell I was talking about. How can a game be good if it isn’t fun to play? Isn’t fun implicit in the very act of playing?

When’s a game good but not much fun?

Some games aren't fun in a traditional, visceral sense but are still substantive, engaging, and well designed. The two best examples of this are Silent Hill and Suda 51's Killer 7. Silent Hill games, particularly 1 and 2, are frustrating as hell. It's hard to see where you're going and your character is difficult to control even by survival horror standards. Beyond your basic interaction though, the games fill you with dread; they are never pleasant to play. The story, world, and actual play (moving your character, fighting enemies) are designed to make you feel uncomfortable. It doesn't matter. Silent Hill 2 is a good game because it taps primal emotions, like fear, at the same time as deeper, social emotions like guilt in the player. (David Cage from Quantic Dream actually gave a talk on the difference between social and primitive emotion in games last summer, and I haven't been able to get it out of my head since. If you're curious, check it out.)

Suda's Killer 7 is a little different, less about emotion than it is about dispassionately confusing the player. It discomfits with a dense narrative that is confusing and full of emotionally distant characters, strange noises, and weird camera angles. It also intentionally limits your range of movement and your perspective; you have to explore to succeed, but the game is constantly forcing you down rigidly defined paths. You cannot freely move through the environment. You have to stay on set path. Killer 7 isn't fun. It is artful. It's about challenging its player's perception. (What does it mean, does it mean anything at all, etc.) It's rare for a game to ask its player to think beyond solving a puzzle.

Neither game is what I'd consider fun in the way that say Super Mario Bros. 3 is fun, but they are nonetheless great.

What do you say, reader? Am I nuts? Or does a game have to be fun in order to be good?

Thanks again, Kit!

Related links:

The New Graphics Whores: Bit.Trip Beat is Gorgeous, But Retro Style Does Not Equate Quality
Interview Round Up: Suda 51, Shinji Mikami, and Mikami’s Replacements on Resident Evil
Ceci N'Est Pas Une 1-Up: The Surrealist Future of Postpunk Gaming
10 Years Ago This Week: Silent Hill

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

The Problem With Episodes: Where is LostWinds Chapter 2?

John Constantine — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 21:00:00 GMT

Looking at the game design zeitgeist through the lens of GDC, you can start to get a clearer image of what videogames are going to be like in the next decade. More small games, more downloadable games, more mobile/iPhone games, more user generated content. This is the way of the future. It isn’t a future unique to GDC 2009, though. These have been the trends dominating futurist industry discussion for five years running. We know it’s the future, dag nab it! Enough. Let us talk of the past.

One design trend that everyone and their Commodore 64-programming uncle was talking about just three years ago was episodic content. Episodes! This is how big games will be delivered from here on out! Wave of the future, by gum. Gabe Newell and Valve were the poster children of the episodic games movement. They’re also the poster children of how well that movement has worked out. Almost two full years on from Half-Life 2 Episode 2’s release and Episode 3 is nowhere insight, and this trend has been emblematic of episodic gaming as a strategy across the industry. Telltale Games have managed to create multiple episodic series, namely Sam & Max and Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People, but they’re the sole developer to deliver true episodic content and not larger games supported with smaller downloadable appendixes.

David Braben’s Frontier Developments never billed LostWinds, WiiWare’s finest offering to date, as an episodic franchise, but they may as well have. The game, for all its quality, is very brief and can be finished in three hours or less if the player doesn’t get lost in its maze of a world. It also ends with an explicit “To Be Continued” screen promising that a second chapter in Toku’s adventure soon. Eleven months after LostWinds release, Frontier hasn’t even mentioned its continuation. Whether its because of business concerns or some other reason, it’s very strange that there hasn’t been so much as a peep out of Frontier concerning its development. What gives? I thought the idea of bite-sized, downloadable, sequential-narrative based games was that they came out quickly!

I admit it. I’m just impatient.

Previously on Where Is?:

Shadow Hearts
SSX
The PSP
Hydrophobia
Prototype
Shuichi Sakurazaki, Creator of Ninja Gaiden
Yasunori Mitsuda

The New Graphics Whores: Bit.Trip Beat is Gorgeous, But Retro Style Does Not Equate Quality

John Constantine — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 22:30:00 GMT

A strange thing happened to me between downloading Bit.Trip Beat and beating its first boss. While delighting in its vivid color, laughing at its signature character leaving rainbows in his wake across digital space, and letting its infectious chiptune beats colonize my brain, I realized that I wasn’t having any fun. That’s fine — I’m a firm believer in the fact that a game doesn’t need to be fun to be good — but I was expecting to have fun. I wanted to have fun. I was engaged by it, but not in a good way. I found the game to be overbearing and stressful. Then it hit me: Bit.Trip Beat is a bad game.

Its presentation is immaculate and the idea behind its play is sound; a horizontal shooter that has you deflecting objects instead of projecting them, making ammunition and enemy one and the same — Pong + Arkanoid + Gradius = Bit.Trip Beat — is a great foundation. The game is broken though. The motion controls are adequate but far too sensitive, and the game doesn’t allow you to adjust the sensitivity. It also doesn’t offer d-pad control, so you’re stuck. As you chain together hits in rhythm to the music, your combo meter rises and the visual effects start to intensify. They intensify so much that the color and flashes of light make it impossible to follow the action. It should be challenging to play at a high level, of course, but it should come from the speed and layout of the game’s obstacles, not because it’s hard to see. Most problematic though is that there is no respite throughout Bit.Trip’s long levels. Scrolling shooters necessitate moments of peace that allow you to refocus and rest before the next series of challenges. You need chances to blink. Without them, the game becomes exhausting. Bit.Trip is oppressive, necessitating that you pay attention constantly, or fail as a result. In spite of these game breaking problems, Bit.Trip’s scoring very well in reviews. Why?

I worry that Bit.Trip Beat’s critical success is a case of the Emperor getting a new wardrobe. Game critics, fans, and casual players are all enamored with the retro-styled games trend. Games with chic visual and aural designs that recall gaming’s NES, Atari, and early-arcade heyday are in high demand right now and I think that some people might be willing to praise a game based solely on its aesthetics. They're new graphics whores for a nostalgia-obsessed age, drunk on the promise of limited technology instead of high-end graphical feats. I’m one of them. I laud Mega Man 9, Space Invaders Extreme, and Edge for their old school looks and sounds. Those are three very well made games underneath their attractive façades though. I expect great things out of Bit.Trip Beat's creators, Gaijin. They’re clearly a very talented team of developers. Before they make Bit.Trip Volume 2, I hope they learn from their first game’s mistakes, no matter how well their first game was received.

Related links:

BIT.TRIP BEAT is Hella Sweet
Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat
Design Resurrection: How Capcom Finally Proved That It’s Game and Not Graphics That Matters
The Commander's Out Of The Bag, And I Couldn't Be More Excited

Why I'm Excited For What WiiWare Could Soon Become

Derrick Sanskrit — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 14:00:00 GMT

Even though it was a firmware update that pretty much everybody called well over a year ago, it was still pretty exciting to see that SD Card channel go live on the Wii yesterday. Almost everyone who has downloaded more than one game from the Wii Shop Channel has felt the aggravation of having to "clean out the fridge" at some point, and with the twenty minutes of rearranging necessary for me to download the long-awaited Bit.Trip Beat last week, I was pretty much pissed at my favorite little white box. Getting home from work yesterday to see its inviting blue glow, I just wanted to hug the Wii and tell it that everything was going to be alright now.

First, I could happily move my Virtual Console and WiiWare games to the SD card without worrying about forgetting them forever. Then I could reinstall the Nintendo Channel and the Wii Fit channel I had to delete to make room for World of Goo. Ooh, and then I could finally install that Mario Kart Wii channel I'd been putting off. And then I can finish that game of Paper Mario I had to remove from the Wii when I downloaded Tetris Party!

Having access to these games without taking up precious system memory was not only liberating but a revelation. I'd been putting off or flat-out ignoring all but the most-desired WiiWare and Virtual Console games specifically to avoid having to delete old games, but now everything's changed! It's time to revisit the Wii Shop. Time to finally play LostWinds, Space Invaders Get Even and (yes, I'm terrible) Mega Man 9! I can actually look forward to upcoming WiiWare without having to worry, which is great because there are tons of great games coming out soon like Cave Story, Eduardo the Samurai Toaster, Cube Gardens of Zen, Super Meat Boy and Night Game. Oh, and Hudson's upcoming "first person soaker" Water Warfare. That may just be the first deathmatch shooter game I genuinely want to play.

Then, of course, I start dreaming about the potential...

Couldn't we get DEMOS now? I've downloaded plenty of demos on PSN. Some convinced me to buy the full game, some did not. Apple's app store has tons of Lite versions of games that serve as free demos (in fact I just downloaded one for Sway) and those have only proven to raise interest and ultimately sales of the finished products. Demos work in this day and age of downloadable distribution. I was perfectly willing to accept before that demos were impractical on the Wii because of memory limitations, but with hard drive space opened like this it should be no problem. The most Nintendo would need to do is add a page to the Wii Shop channel for demos specifically. I imagine the extra work for the developers to make a demo to stand beside the finished game would be negligible in most instances as long as Nintendo doesn't restrict file sizes any more than they would for the finished product. Think about it: not sure about Bit.Trip Beat? Try the first level. Think High Voltage Hot Rod Show might be for you? Here's one course to race around for free. Of course, these would not be mandatory and entirely up to the developer, but it seems like a fantastic idea to me, and one that would make users significantly more likely to try and maybe even buy otherwise unheard of games.

WiiWare should be the feather in the Wii's already fancy cap. As stated before, retail Wii games can not be updated once they're released, unlike PS3 and Xbox 360 games, but WiiWare can (I distinctly remember there being a Dr. Mario Online RX update at one point). The SD card solution released this week has made me exponentially more excited by the prospect of WiiWare and I already have plans to fork over more of my hard-earned money to the Wii Shop as a result. Take this momentum, Nintendo, and run with it. Make WiiWare great.

Related articles:
Everything You Need To Know About The Wii Storage Solution
Style Over Substance: Why I'm In Love With WiiWare's "Art Style"
WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Ain't Working Out
Whatcha Playing: Lost Winds

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years is Coming, and Cecil is a Clod

Nadia Oxford — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 01:09:00 GMT

A strange thing happened to me when I heard that Final Fantasy IV is coming to Virtual Console: I didn't care. I think I burned out on the title with the swift finality of a doused candle flame. I can't imagine why. I've only played and completed Final Fantasy II (SNES), Final Fantasy IV (Playstation), Final Fantasy IV Advance, Final Fantasy IV DS and innumerable fan translations.

I am, however, pretty excited about Final Fantasy IV: The After Years for WiiWare, despite the cringe-inducing title. I guess I'm happy enough to slay the same monsters and abide by the same archaic menus if it means glancing at Kain's bum from a whole new angle.

I also think it's going to be kind of cool playing as Cecil's son. Bonus points if the boy has to earn his place as a hero. One of my favourite kids' books is “Mattimeo” by Brian Jacques. The story is a sequel to “Redwall,” and the running theme involves the maturation of the spoiled son of Matthias the Warrior.

But I'm already facepalming over the name “Ceodore.” Cecil's brand for his first-born son is a perfect example of the moon warrior's boring tendency to flip-flop. Obviously, he decided he was going to name his boy after his lost brother, Golbez. To avoid making Ceodore the playground's bitch, he used Golbez's real name: Theodore.

Naming your child after a family member, alive, MIA or otherwise, is one of the greatest honours you can bestow upon that relation. Cecil's final act of forgiveness towards his brother is touching. Too bad he created a monster-name by crazy gluing part of his own name onto “Theodore.”

Really, Cecil. Could you not wait for the next child? Or did something deplorable go down on the wedding night, something so unspeakably disappointing that Rosa locked her chastity belt and threw the key into Baron's moat?

Chin up, you white-haired emo kid. I'm just playing with you. Sure, Ceodore is a deep, meaningful name. And you will have lots of babies with Rosa, no doubt. By a strange coincidence, one baby, or maybe two, may jump really high upon exiting the womb. Be prepared to catch, okay?

Related Links:

Gaming on a Train: Final Fantasy IV
Know Your Final Fantasy IV Trivia. It Could Save Your Life
Final Fantasy IV the After: Will America Land On the Moon Again?

Everything You Need to Know About the Wii Storage Solution

Joe Keiser — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 17:50:00 GMT

As we’ve said, one of Nintendo’s big reveals at GDC today is the long, long awaited solution to the Wii’s storage woes. It's so obvious it's not even worthy of a condescending drum roll: it’s just the ability to load Virtual Console and WiiWare games off an SD card. Could someone please explain to me why this took two years to roll out?

From today’s Nintendo GDC keynote, we know that this solution adds 32GB SDHC card support and is implemented via an SD card menu that looks a lot like the Wii menu. But I’ve been playing with it, and so have all the extra little details after the jump. This might be rather fine data for something as pedestrian as a storage solution, but don’t blame me: Nintendo has given me way too long to think about what I want from this.

Here’s the breakdown:

There’s load time. The Wii still can’t actually load games in-place off the SD card; instead it has to copy them to system memory temporarily, and then load it. This means you will be twiddling your thumbs while the copy takes place, and on a big game like Sin & Punishment this load can be nearly twenty seconds long.
It recognizes all previously backed-up VC and WiiWare games. Imagine my surprise and buyer’s remorse when I opened up the SD card menu for the first time and found Solomon’s Key, a launch VC title I hadn’t played since 2006. If your SD card is where your ill-conceived late-night VC purchases have been buried, get ready to be slapped by a bunch of history.
The Wii Shop can only sort of use the SD card. While you can download from the Shop onto the SD card just fine, once the game gets there the shop can’t see it right away (ie: it flags the game as “downloadable” instead of “downloaded”). Only if you try to download the game to the SD card again will it figure out you already have it and give you an error. If you’re like me, you have WiiWare junk all over the place, and this update isn’t going to help you get more organized.
Don’t move your save games. If they didn’t work off SD card before, they still won’t now. This is a VC/WiiWare solution only.
It doesn’t break The Homebrew Channel. If you already have it installed you can still use it after the update, so don’t worry about that half-finished game of Beneath a Steel Sky you were playing in ScummVM.

BIT.TRIP BEAT is Hella Sweet

Bob Mackey — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 16:00:00 GMT

What makes Nintendo's complete neglect in promoting WiiWare so tragic is that legitimately awesome titles worthy of attention are sometimes released for the console's digital download service. Take BIT.TRIP BEAT, for example; it's a completely unique Rez-like take on the rhythm genre, yet you're probably finding out about for the first time by reading this blog post. Don't feel too bad; I just discovered the game today by reading a post about it on a message board. And that's a real shame, because BIT.TRIP BEAT is a Playstation Network-y little game that would definitely give WiiWare the same credibility that titles like Noby Noby Boy and Flower lend to the PS3. The game itself essentially plays like an advanced version of pong mixed with a horizontally-scrolling shooter; you control a paddle and hit incoming "balls" to the rhythm of some rockin' old school chiptunes.

Of course, a YouTube video is really the only thing that'll do the premise of BIT.TRIP BEAT any justice, so go ahead and take a gander at the game's trailer:

At only 600 points, BIT.TRIP BEAT is definitely worth looking into--especially if you're interesting in seeing similar titles come to the Wii's oft-ignored platform.

Related Links:

Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat
Style Over Substance: Why I'm In Love With WiiWare's "Art Style"
The Best News In Sixteen Thousand Years: Cave Story Coming to WiiWare
WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn’t Working Out

Let's Hitchike! - Another Weird Downloadable Game I Desire

Derrick Sanskrit — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 20:00:00 GMT

It has been well-established on this blog that I enjoy some of the wackier, more experimental games that are available as console downloads these days: Tiny creatures swinging from silk threads across psychadelic plants – Sentient planets absorbing smaller planets in the same galaxy – Rainbow worms stretching around architecture and wildlife – Trance rhythm pong – a hi-def wind simulator. Last week, Nippon Ichi announced their new WiiWare title Let's Hitchhike and, from what little we know, I am all about it.

Nippon Ichi, for those unaware, are most well-known for their Disgaea series of tactical RPGs. In fact, the overwhelming majority of Nippon Ichi's games are role-playing games, a genre I avoid like the plague. An RPG of hitchhiking, though, this is not, as hours of grinding your thumb-sticking-out abilities would add layers of tedium known only to people who have played every single version of Street Fighter or watched every single episode of Lost several times looking for clues. No, Let's Hitchhike is set up as a board game not unlike Mario Party. You know, the kind of game that's only fun when friends are over to all play together. The story of Let's Hitchhike is simple: you are being chased by a butcher who is out to get you and your family. Ready? Aaaaaaaaaand... HITCHHIKE!

Point the Wii remote to select oncoming cars, then hold the remote vertically and mimic the onscreen movements to attract the driver's attention, and from the look of these promo photos, watching your friends attempt to hitch a ride should be rather hilarious:

Though it hasn't been stated anywhere, I can only assume that if you fail to hitch a ride for long enough, you will totally be massacred by that butcher. What's the point of introducing a menacing antagonist if you're not going to use it? Might as well just say they're hitchhiking to Burning Man or something. Seriously, though, with the focus on multiplayer and posing wildly, this has the potential to win over group gaming sessions in the same way WarioWare: Smooth Moves did. WarioWare, though, did it's multiplayer in a pass-the-pad single controller manner. Unless all the players need to be doing something at the same time, Let's Hitchhike should really do this too, allowing for bigger hitchhiking parties than just four. We'll see. Let's Hitchhike hits Japanese WiiWare at the end of the month. I hope it's great and that it gets a North American release not too long after.

Related articles:
Yuusha 30 and Wario's Micro Game Legacy
WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Ain't Working Out
Style Over Substance: Why I'm in Love with WiiWare's "Art Style"
The Best News in Sixteen Thousand Years: Cave Story is Coming to WiiWare

Chiptune Friday: Trip to the Beat

Derrick Sanskrit — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 01:00:00 GMT

I already posted this song last week, but my enthusiasm for BIT.TRIP BEAT compounds each and every day and I can simply no longer contain it, so here's another burst of retro rhythm awesome:

BEAT, the first game in the BIT.TRIP series from indie developer Gaijin Games, is hitting the internet hype machine pretty hard, so I would expect it to drop on WiiWare within the next couple of months. So much buzz has been generating about the inspired new design that Game Music 4 All ran an interview today with designer Alex Neuse all about the game's soundtrack and his love of chiptune. Alex namedrops some of our faves like Nullsleep and Bubblyfish, even revealing that the main menu and credits will feature music from Bit Shifter and that Gaijin Games would love to be a part of Blip Festival 2009. I've still yet to play the game, but I know that's an event I'd love to be in on. Alex, if you're reading this, I'm sure working with Bit Shifter gives you more of an "in" than I do, but I could probably help in organizing said shindig if you felt so inclined.

Also since last week the game's first official trailer has been released. Check out this wonder and amazement right here:

Previously:
The Commander's Out Of The Bag, And I Couldn't Be More Excited
Blip Festival 2008 Primer Part 1 - Part 2
Chiptune Friday: Nullsleep vs. Depeche Mode
Chiptune Friday: Bit Shifter's "Reformat The Planet"

Pole’s Big Adventure: Sega Rides the Retro Train, Takes Advantage of You

John Constantine — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:30:00 GMT

A couple of weeks back, Sega Japan launched a countdown website sporting a peculiarly recognizable icon: a pixilated mushroom. Instead of the spotted red or green associated with the company’s one-time rivals, this mushroom was purple with yellow spots. It was an ugly little blighter and fueled all sorts of speculation as to what would be shown at the end of the countdown. An 8-bit style Sonic & Mario platformer where Robotnik has poisoned all the mushrooms! An 8-bit style game where Alexx Kidd and Mario open a day spa and compete for Birdo, Athena, and Dig Dug’s affections!

Okay. Fair enough. I am the only man who thought Sega might be making either of those games. The 8-bit part was spot on though. The game turned out to be Pole’s Big Adventure, an WiiWare original aping early Famicom games in the spirit of Retro Game Challenge. The funky looking mushroom’s a big hint as to what Pole’s Big Adventure is all about, namely messing with preconceived notions based on Super Mario Bros. You don’t break bricks with your fist, you break them by shooting them, and the same goes for getting treats out of question boxes. Go down a pipe, immediately pop back up covered in… goo? The video isn’t clear on what you’re covered in. And when you do find that mushroom out there, it will make you grow until you die. Pretty clever there, Sega.

Pole’s Big Adventure isn’t the most brilliant parody, but it’s a noteworthy change from the usual vintage gaming send up. Playing on the most recognizable tropes in gaming history is a unique hook amidst the recent 8-bit design renaissance. Bionic Commando Rearmed and Legend of Kage 2 are expert examinations on old play models, but none of them are concerned with subverting a players nostalgia-born familiarity. It’ll be worth playing Pole’s Big Adventure solely to find out how far it goes in subverting that familiarity. And unlike most parodies, Pole’s is a full game.

Head over to Siliconera to check out another video, featuring pipe goo goodness.

Related Links:

Design Resurrection: How Capcom Finally Proved That It’s Game and Not Graphics That Matters
Don’t Call It Retro: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection
Follow Up: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection Part 2
More Downloadable Remakes! More, Says I!

The Commander's Out Of The Bag, And I Couldn't Be More Excited

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:00:00 GMT

I'm going to skip past the whole aspect of the cryptic viral campaign hyping Gaijin Games' first-ever release and its subsequent press leak last week and cut straight to why I'm super-excited for it.

If, for some reason, you're still enjoying the CommanderVideo viral stuff and would rather stay in the dark (assuming they bother keeping that going at this point, the viral site even posted the revealed game's logo), stop reading here, because the rest of this post will discuss the few details about said project.

Right, so Nintendo Power revealed a bit of info on Gaijin's BIT.TRIP: BEAT, a sort of trance-retro styled rhythm Pong coming to WiiWare in the coming months. Why is this interesting at all? Because we've got an independant developer (from what I can tell on Gaijin's blog, a three-man team) making their own ART STYLE/bitGenerations line, and that, my friends, is awesome. I've written before on my undying love for skip's ART STYLE/bitGenerations line of games, but it always struck me as odd that only a select few studios were putting their energy into these simple-yet-amazingly-fantastic games (the other noteworthy studio being Dylan Cuthbert's Q Games). And it is a line of games, as Nintendo Power points out that Gaijin has plans to follow BEAT with five more releases under the BIT.TRIP moniker.

While we've seen no full video of BEAT yet, the few screens and description (and about half a second of footage in the viral video) given make it seem not unlike Space Invaders Extreme in its presentation, which is a very, very good thing. Most promising, though, is that Gaijin Games' founder Alex Neuse has a list of favorite games in his bio, including "bitGenerations game: dotstream". Any game developer who feels the need to specify which of the bitGenerations games is their favorite is clearly in the right place to be designing new ones (for the record, mine is Coloris, with Orbital and dotstream right behind). For added "cred", here are his other favorites:

2600 game: Stampede
Metroid game: Super Metroid
Survival Horror game: Silent Hill 2
Homo-erotic shooter: Cho-Aniki
Music game: Rez
Game ending: Conker’s Bad Fur Day

Yeah, I feel like we can trust Mr. Neuse's taste level to deliver something satisfying. From this information alone, BEAT shows a great deal more potential than the seemingly dozens of uninteresting puzzle and arcade games on WiiWare. The fact that this is the first release from a studio formed well over a year ago leads me to assume that they've been planning their own line of bitGenerations-inspired WiiWare games for a while, and were probably pretty annoyed when Nintendo beat them to it with their ART STYLE trilogy this past autumn (though I also assume they were just as happy to get a brand-new bitGenerations game in Cubello).

So, rhythm pong with intense boss battles and four-player co-op from an indie developer who loves bitGenerations, Rez, and Cho-Aniki? I'm there. First in a new series of bitGenerations-inspired games? Even better.

Plus, check out this sweet track hidden on the CommanderVideo website. Safe money's on this being part of BEAT's delicious chip-soundtrack:

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

Style Over Substance: Why I'm In Love With WiiWare's "Art Style"

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

There was a communal quandry of "huh...what?" last month when Nintendo quietly unveiled the Art Style brand of WiiWare titles with Art Style: Orbient. Some immediately recognized the game as a hi-def update of the late Gameboy Advance genre-breaker Orbital (previously loved by me here) and asserted that Art Style is a WiiWare rebranding of the bitGenerations series. This theory was reinforced when it was confirmed that skip Ltd. would be developing the Art Style games (they developed six of the seven bitGenerations titles) and that two more Art Style titles would hit WiiWare by the end of October.

Let's take a quick step back here. For those unfamiliar, bitGenerations was an experimental series of Gameboy Advance games released only in Japan that favored style over substance. With smaller iconic packaging, minimal graphics and sound, and simple controls, these games almost all hid impressively deep gameplay. Much like Sony's PixelJunk series (developed by Q Games, who uncoincidentally developed DigiDrive, the seventh bitGenerations title). The games were never released outside of Japan due to the release of the Nintendo DS and unlikelihood that anyone would buy intentionally simplistic games with no corporate mascots attached, regardless of their low price point and critical acclaim.

Two years later, digital distribution has finally taken off as a means of selling "experimental" games. XBox Live Arcade's Braid and Playstation Networks aforementioned PixelJunk series would arguably have no success whatsoever in retail stores, but at the low price of a download direct to your console they are finding the gamers they so very much derserve, and now the Wii has a series of inexpensive, unique, and beautifully stylish downloadbale games to call its own. Orbient was a great start to the series, offering the same great "Katamari Damacy in space" experience as the original with improved graphics.The titles Cubello and Rotohex were revealed as the two upcoming Art Style releases for October and immediately gamers assumed these would be higher-def updates of bitGenerations' tile-coloring puzzler Coloris tile-rotating puzzler Dialhex. Imagine our surprise two weeks ago when Cubello was released and revealed to be a whole new game!

That's right, not an update or a remake but a 100% original brand new puzzle-shooter. Sure, there was still the color-matching element of Coloris, and even sound effects very reminiscent of Chibi-Robo, but the entire game was designed and built from the ground up to use the Wii controls in a way that none of the previous Gameboy Advance titles could. Launching colored blocks at a floating assemblage of similar bricks is incredibly intuitive thanks to the Wii's infrared sensor, but the added dynamic of the assembled mass rotating in space relative to where you hit it with a new block added a whole new level of complexity and strategy that knocked Cubello right over the line from "novel puzzler" to "compelling experience".

As today is the last Monday of October, it is very likely that today will see the release of the third WiiWare title, teased to be Rotohex. Having seen how well the update from Orbital to Orbient came along, I'm sure any other bitGenerations update will be a fantastic addition to the WiiWare library, but I would be lying if I didn't admit I'd rather another brand-new experience like Cubello. Still, skip and Nintendo have won me over yet again. Whatever they release under the Art Style brand, I am there with Wii Points waiting.

Related Articles:

Jonathan Blow Your Mind
Yahtzee Says, Support Your Local Independany Developer (He's Right)
Fun Fact: Dylan Cuthbert - The Genre Masher
Far Out, Man (PixelJunk Eden)
Alternate Soundtrack: Orbital vs The Notwist
Easy Access (bitGenerations Soundvoyager)

Watcha Playing: World of Goo

Amber Ahlborn — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

Have you ever become aware of a game that other people talked about enthusiastically but it just didn't interest you, only to play it and fall in love? I'm not a puzzle game fan. I like some action in my games. I like interesting characters and adventure. Puzzle games tend to be, at best, rentals for me. There are exceptions of course, individual games that were so addictively enjoyable that I would play them obsessively. Tetrisphere was one puzzle game that I loved, and regret not buying. Now, around a decade later, another puzzle game has taken over my life. Welcome to the World of Goo.

I downloaded the game on Thursday, started playing Friday night, and finished sometime on Saturday. It's not a particularly short game, you certainly get your money's worth, but when I sink my teeth into something I really like I tend to go full bore into marathon mode. Well, what else is a weekend good for?

World of Goo isn't the easiest game to describe. Sure, I could just say it's a physics based puzzler but that hardly gets across how fun and weird and intriguing the experience is. It certainly doesn't draw enough attention to the art and music which play such an important role towards setting the game's mood. Yeah, this puzzle game definitely has a mood. The superb music, along with the polished visuals set up an odd mix of whimsy, melancholy, and even dread, with a little programmer savvy humor sprinkled in. Aside from being fun to play, World of Goo is an excellent case study for how art and music can be used to evoke the senses.

Out on the computer and as Wiiware on the Nintendo Wii, World of Goo is a game that shouldn't be missed.

Related Links:

Watcha Playing: Fantastic Contraption

The Best News In Sixteen Thousand Years: Cave Story Coming to WiiWare

World of Goo: The Art,The Design, The Anticipation!

Watcha Playing: DDR and Helix

Amber Ahlborn — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 14:00:00 GMT

These days where it's easy to put on extra weight but the in vogue body type is just left of emaciated, it's easy to have a poor body image of yourself and think you need to drop a few pounds for aesthetic purposes. Frankly, I think this is a bum deal and a lousy reason to exercise. I'm neither fat nor thin and could not care less about how much I weigh, but I do care about my health. I'd also like to have more energy than I typically do. Unfortunately, I lead a very sedentary life. My art requires I sit down at a drawing table, my writing has me sitting at my computer, and my favorite pastimes of reading and gaming have me planted on my butt too.

A while ago I decided that some how, some way, I was going to squeeze exercise into my schedule and stick to it. Of course, I've made such promises to myself before. So, what's a gamer to do? Why, whip out the Wii of course!

When most people add video games plus exercise, Wii Fit is probably what comes to mind. I don't own Wii Fit myself and decided to mix games and fitness together before it even came out. My first pick for aerobic exercise was Dance Dance Revolution: Hottest Party. This is actually my first DDR game as the series has never really interested me before. I would not call my staggering around the dance mat anything approaching dancing. Also, if I ever meet the announcer guy in real life, I swear I'm going to make him eat his own testicles. Regardless of my skill (or lack thereof), it is great exercise and I've definitely worked up a sweat by the end of my regimen. However, DDR mostly works the legs. To exercise my upper body and arms I turned to a different game.

Helix can be found on the Wii Shop Channel as WiiWare. It's an interesting little rhythm game that employs a Simon Says mechanic: mimic what the funky character on the screen does. Time it right to earn points. Check out my embedded video to get the gist and definitely cruise YouTube for videos showing people playing this game. I'm actually enjoying my sessions with Helix more than DDR, but then, I'm a lot more coordinated in my arms than I am on my feet.

Oh yeah, and if you think me waving around a couple plastic Wii-motes is too tame for a proper workout, think again. I wear wrist weights (and I've got ankle weights waiting for the day I become competent at DDR).

Related Links:

Watcha Playing: Castlevania - Portrait of Ruin

The 61FPS Review: Wii Fit Part 1

Whatcha Playing: A Little Singin’, a Little Dancin’

The Mathematical Guide to Mega Man

Bob Mackey — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 19:30:00 GMT

If you've even thought about getting all of Mega Man 9's in-game achievements, then you're either a robot, or just plain crazy; and I commend you, you magnificent bastard. Unfortunately, I lack the fortitude to push myself through these optional challenges--and the time it would take me to train for them could be better spent learning another language or painting tiny things on grains of rice.

Since the achievements of Mega Man 9 are practically built for being filmed and upoloaded to the Internet, I'm anticipating the hundreds of speed/challenge runs that will inevitably end up on YouTube (if they're not already there). And if you're interested in shaving hundredths of a second off of your final time, then boy have I got a website for you. TASvideos, a tool-assisted speedrun page, has a special section on the NES Mega Man games that provides more information than you'd ever want to know. Here's an example:

In many platform games, you don’t need to be exactly positioned to grab a ladder. You can stand about 10 pixels beside the ladder and when you press up (or down), you’ll immediately grab the ladder.

In Mega Man games, this means that by walking or jumping past a ladder you can grab the ladder for 1 frame and immediately release it in order to gain extra movement very quickly. Walking across the ladder would take about 12 frames, but by grabbing it from distance and releasing it you can shorten it to about 8 frames.

I'm not sure how much of this material is compatible with Mega Man 9, but some brave soul out there has to have the free time and social disorder necessary to find out. Let's wait and watch.

Related Links:

Ulillillia is the Rain Man of Bubsy 3D
Mega Man 9 Goes Back To Your Roots. Way Back.
The Ten Greatest Classic Mega Man Levels, Part 1

My Last Mega Man 9 Post, I Swear

Bob Mackey — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Mega Man 9 is currently kicking my ass and making me rethink my status as a gamer; after a little over an hour of play, I've only seen a few robot bosses and nearly beat Splash Woman. Needless to say, this is a time of crisis, and I need my friends more than ever. So before you lose all respect for me and never read any of my posts again, I have a few substantive things to say about the game. Thanks for your support.

I'd like to begin by saying that, thanks to a self-imposed media blackout, I knew practically nothing about Mega Man 9 before I sat down to play it. Only later, after I had my fill of cursing at spikes, I sat down to read 1UP scribe and Mega Man fanatic Jeremy Parish's excellent review; it was the first source to inform me that Mega Man's slide and charge shot--established from the third and fourth entries in the series, respectively--were both missing from 9. This came as a bit of a shock, since I'd played the game for a while and hadn't even noticed. Could this have been some very boring episode of The Twilight Zone?

The answer is actually simple: Mega Man 9 is a return to the mechanics that made Mega Man 2 such a fan favorite. I'll let Jeremy Parish explain more:

...MM9 apes a very specific slice of 8-bit design: namely, Mega Man 2. Though it employs only a moderate amount of sprite recycling (most of which is primarily seen in recurring characters and a handful of familiar enemies), the game is a determined effort to create the ultimate 1988-vintage run-and-gun, twenty years after the fact. It eschews a great many of the later technical innovations of its own series -- much ado has been made about Mega Man's lack of sliding and charged shots, but there are more subtle absences as well. Backgrounds are much less detailed than they were in, say, Mega Man 6, Rush has been downgraded to his Mega Man 3 forms, and the overall sense of animation is on par with NES games running on the MMC3 chip.

You'll have to excuse me for the freakout over old news, but this is making me rethink my choice in the dread battle of Mega Man 2 vs. Mega Man 3. Sure, Rush is in 9, but is my beloved Mega Man slide--which I claimed was one of the reasons I prefer 3 to 2--really all that beneficial if I never even tried to use it in the new game? This is a time of great thought and regret, and I think only the refreshing powers of several afternoon naps will get me through this Sophie's Choice of gaming. Please pray for me.

Related Links:

Mega Man 2 Vs. Mega Man 3: The Eternal Battle for Everlasting Peace
Mega Man 9 Goes Back To Your Roots. Way Back.
What I'm Playing This Weekend: Mega Man Anniversary Collection

Nintendo Fred's Sweet Revenge

Nadia Oxford — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 22:16:00 GMT

I have no idea who specifically makes the decisions about when certain games are released on the Virtual Console and WiiWare. For the purposes of this blog play, I'll refer to this entity as "Nintendo Fred."

Likewise, I have no idea who's in charge over at Bplus studios. For the purposes of this blog play, I'll refer to him as Bplus Phil, since "Phil" is a proud Austrian name.

Earlier today when I was sniffing around the Wii Shop Channel for my birthright, Mega Man 9, a drama played out in my head. It went a little like this.

Setting: Bplus game development studios, June 2008. The room is close and dark. We see a single telephone on a desk, surrounded by a glass forest of empty whiskey bottles. It rings. It is answered by BPLUS PHIL, a timid, pale man whose neck is hunched down into his shoulders. He holds the phone with a sweaty palm.

BPLUS PHIL: "H-Hello?"

On the other line is a booming voice: NINTENDO FRED.

NINTENDO FRED: "Bplus Phil! How the hell are ya? It took me forever to find you, you slippery bastard."

BPLUS PHIL: "Uh--oh, N-Nintendo Fred? Uh--Oh God, are you tracing this call so you can mail me that box full of vipers whose fangs are full of bees instead of venom?"

NINTENDO FRED: "Nah, that's all done with. Water under the bridge."

BPLUS PHIL: "Really? Y-you swore on your mother's grave and everything."

NINTENDO FRED: "Life's too short for petty grudges friend. In fact, I called you because I have a peace offering."

BPLUS PHIL wipes his bloodshot eyes and scratches at three days' stubble growth.

BPLUS PHIL: "What? But I--I ran over your dog when you rejected my proposal for Plättchen Twist 'n' Paint."

NINTENDO FRED: "Oh, I remember."

BPLUS PHIL: "And I shot your son."

NINTENDO FRED: "Regardless--"

BPLUS PHIL: "After I stuffed him down your mother's throat."

NINTENDO FRED: "Shut up and listen. I've seen the error of my ways. I like the idea behind Plättchen Twist 'n' Paint. No, I'm madly in love with it. I want to marry it. Please accept my offer to sell Plättchen Twist 'n' Paint on WiiWare."

BPLUS PHIL: "! You mean it?"

NINTENDO FRED: "With all my heart."

BPLUS PHIL begins to weep with joy. He wipes his nose on the back of his sleeve.

BPLUS PHIL: "This...this is truly a new start to my life. The gaming world will experience my dream, share in my vision. God bless you, Nintendo Fred. When can we release Plättchen Twist 'n' Paint?

NINTENDO FRED: "Oh shucks, I don't know. How about this September? The 12th will be fine for Europe, but I think great recognition waits for you in America, so we need a really special date. How about the 22nd? Plättchen Twist 'n' Paint should get top billing that day; nothing else important is coming out."

BPLUS PHIL: "Of course, of course! Thank you, Nintendo Fred. I love you. I will not fail you."

NINTENDO FRED: "Let's not get carried away. Goodbye, Bplus Phil. I'm happy we could resolve our conflict peacefully."

Epilogue: September 23, 2008. A stormy, wind-whipped day outside. We see an ominous silhouette hanging from a beam, creaking back and forth in the draft. In the background, we faintly hear an orchestra of tinny 8-bit Nintendo music. A whiskey bottle rolls off the desk, shatters. THE END...?

Related Links:

WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn't Working Out
Watcha Playing: Lost Winds
It's My Tetris Party and I Can Waggle If I Want To

Mega Man 9: IT'S OUT NOW

Bob Mackey — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 15:00:00 GMT

Barring some sort of life-altering world crisis, Mega Man 9 should be available on the Wii's Shopping Channel at this very moment. That's right; a new official Mega Man game now exists in the universe. What did you do to deserve this? Probably nothing; but I'm sure you have 10 bucks, and that certainly makes up for all of the karma.

If you don't own a Wii, you're going to have to wait a few excruciating and interminable days before you can download Mega Man 9 on your XBox 360 or PS3. But if you really think about it, the Wii is the best platform for Mega Man 9--and this has absolutely nothing to do with the typical snide commentary about the comparatively lackluster graphics of Nintendo's console. Out of the big three home systems, only the Wii has a controller befitting of Mega Man's 2-D legacy.

To be fair, both Microsoft and Sony are kind of hamstrung by Nintendo's patent on the cross-shaped directional-pad. Sony came up with a functional and creative solution to this problem, but it still pales into comparison to Nintendo's standby. And as for Microsoft, the 360's d-pad looks like someone melted two grey gummy bears onto the controller; this made Bionic Commando: Rearmed much more irritating than the developers intended. I'm desperately trying not to sound like a shill here, but there's still nothing better for 2-D gaming than Nintendo's d-pad.

Achievement Whores may be tempted to wait until the XBox Live Arcade release, which is exactly why Mega Man 9 is an acid test for Achievement Whoredom. If you desperately want to increase your gamerscore, you're going to have to wait until October 1st. October. That's an entirely different month. And just look at these achievements. Is this what you want to do with your life?

In closing, I wish to thank you for showing enough restraint to sit and read this entire blog post. Now go off and buy Mega Man 9 like the excitable little monkeys you are.

Related Links:

Mega Man 2 Vs. Mega Man 3: The Eternal Battle for Everlasting Peace
Mega Man 9 Goes Back To Your Roots. Way Back.
Mega Man 9 Bosses Look Like Mega Man Bosses

Whatcha Playing: The Thirst For Adventure, Pointing At Things, and Not Knowing What to Say

John Constantine — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:49:00 GMT

Amidst the cavalcade of blockbusters, handheld eccentricities, and Rock Band I’ve been indulging in over the summer, a grand season now a mere two weeks from being officially dead, I’ve been getting a crash course in one of gaming’s most respected and forbidding forms: the adventure game. Though I started playing games during the genre’s heyday, I’ve always been somewhat less than literate when it comes to the many point-and-click and text-commanded classics crafted by Sierra and Lucasarts. My only real experiences came from visiting my aunt Donna. At the ripe age of seven years-old, she introduced me to the wonders of Kings Quest and, er, Leisure Suit Larry. Yeah. It’s not that I didn’t have fun with these eye-openers – they certainly expanded my vocabulary – I was just more interested in walking from left to right, jumping, and shooting when it came to videogames. I always knew that I was missing out on something, listening to friends chortle over playing Space Quest and even later, as a teenager, looking at lush screens of Grim Fandango. I’ve only gotten around to them recently thanks to three conditions working in concert. One is that there are new, easy to access (read: on Wii) point-and-clickers being released with regularity by folks like Telltale Games. Two and three regard vintage software: Nerve is equipped with numerous PCs capable of running things machines in my home twenty years ago could not, but also (and most importantly) I have a guide.

It’s easy to approach Telltale’s Strong Bad games because they move at a brisk pace and they work on a very simplified version of classic point-and-click language: see something, point at it to interact with it. Got an item? Point at it, click, then point the item at what you want to use it on. Repeat playings of King’s Quest V left me acclimated to both the process and the occasionally obtuse logic at work in these sorts of games, so it’s been a painless process and a reminder of the genre’s charms. Playing through the first two episodes of Strong Bad’s Cool Game For Attractive People (more on Episode 2 when I’m allowed to talk about it) has, however, made it abundantly clear that adventure games are not inherently relaxing in comparison to more action oriented fare. Nothing on earth is more frustrating than wandering around not knowing what the hell you’re supposed to do. In a platformer, if you keep losing, you know it’s because the challenge is a difficult one, tasking your reflexes and timing. If you keep dying in a shooter, it’s because you aren’t shooting the things shooting you fast enough. When you get lost in an adventure game, you’re just plain missing something and, unlike when you lose your keys or you forget what you’re doing when you walk into a room, the answer isn’t always right in front of you. You are at the whim of a designer’s train of thought, your agency stripped away. The problem is even worse in older adventures where you literally have to talk to the game.

This is why I’ve needed a guide. Pointing and clicking are fine for me, but when it comes to text interfaces, my illiteracy becomes a barrier too high to overcome. Pete Smith urged along my education in adventure, insisting I start with Conquests of Camelot and Quest for Glory. I played Quest for Glory for about twenty minutes before quitting. I spent the majority of this time swearing at everything I could interact with (hey, it worked in Leisure Suit Larry.) But even when I tried to get going, I couldn’t figure out what words the game wanted me to use to accomplish anything. I watched the Quest for Glory and Conquests of Camelot played instead of playing them myself and, now, I feel that I could comfortably tackle an adventure game with a text interface again. But if I hadn’t had someone playing the whole thing in front of me, explaining how to actually play the game at every step, I just wouldn’t have taken the time.

That inability to progress has got me thinking about what happens when you try to go back and play vintage games. Gaming has aged to the point where a modern player isn’t equipped with the language and experience to even play a lot of older software. I see my experience with Quest for Glory mirrored in the online testimonials of people playing Bionic Commando Rearmed, staggered by its difficulty and the demands that type of game makes of players. While games are finally entering an era of preservation through services like Gametap and the Wii’s Virtual Console, how do players get around this sort of cognitive dissonance? Let me know your theories in the comments.

(Yeah, I know. FAQs. But who wants to use a FAQ?)

Related links:

WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn’t Working Out
Quickies: Homestar Ruiner
Unsolved Crimes and the New Setting
Lucasarts Classics on Nintendo DS?

WiiWare: Nintendo, Babe, It Just Isn’t Working Out

John Constantine — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:00:00 GMT

Nintendo has been on my mind over the past few days. Not as a corporation in the business of making video games. More like a singular anthropomorphic entity. This is how Nintendo exists in my head these days, so when I see them making business decisions, my psychosis interprets those decisions as being made by an individual. You know, as an affront against me personally. For example, I look at the abject madness that is Skip’s Captain Rainbow and then I remember that it will never come out in the US. Sure, WarioWare comes out, but do we get Mother 3? Tingle’s Rosy Rupee Land, a game that’s actually available in English? Nintendo doesn’t bring their weird games here, so Captain Rainbow, with its legion of obscure, z-list Nintendo characters, will flounder away on an island nation half the world away. Nintendo does things like this to spite me. Like my first experiences with WiiWare this past weekend.

On Saturday morning, I decided that, given my overwhelmingly positive experiences with original content on PSN and Xbox Live Arcade in recent weeks, it was time to give WiiWare’s offerings a shot. I loaded twenty dollars worth of Wii points onto my account and went to download Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People and David Braben’s Lost Winds. I was then promptly informed that there was not enough space on my Wii to download either title. My Wii does not get frequent use, so this was the first time I had to “clean out my fridge”. At first, I figured I would back up my Virtual Console titles to the SD Card I purchased two years back, but after fifteen minutes and only backing up five VC classics, it hit me that backing up everything was going to take up most of the day. I had to delete most everything to make space for just two WiiWare titles. It took over half an hour before I could even play them. Strong Bad and Lost Winds turned out to be okay, fun but fairly insubstantial after spending five hours total to complete both. The whole experience was, for lack of a better word, annoying.

When things like this happen between Nintendo I start to feel like the Big N is an ex-girlfriend with whom I had a messy break up but am now trying to be friends with. We're polite to one another and able to be at social functions at the same time but there's a smoldering bubble of bitterness under the pleasant small talk. Sometimes that bitterness boils to the surface.

“Well, if you would broaden your horizons we'd still be together! Try Wii Play or try not downloading so many things!”

"Well, maybe if you didn't start making such subpar software, maybe if you actually released your more interesting games in a language I can understand, and actually kept your word sometimes, I wouldn't have had to leave! Why don’t you support USB hard drives!"

“I don’t even know why I bother talking to you!”

“Go make another crappy Zelda or some Brain Training crap!”

*Door slams*

Okay, well, maybe that got a little weird. WiiWare is a chore to use and needs better games. Probably could have just said that.

Related articles:

Where is Wii's Disaster: Day of Crisis?
Trailer Review: Captain Rainbow
Many Colors in the Hardcore Rainbow
This Week in Shrieking Annoyances
Quickies: Homestar Ruiner
Whatcha Playing: Lost Winds

Quickies: Homestar Ruiner

Derrick Sanskrit — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:00:00 GMT

While we were all ridiculously pumped for Bionic Commando: Rearmed last week, there was another highly-anticipated downloadable game to tide us over for the first half of the week: Telltale Games' point-and-click WiiWare adventure Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People Episode One: Homestar Ruiner. Odds are good that if you're on the internet you're already somewhat familiar with the world of Homstar Runner and its brash luchador masked star Strong Bad, and, if you're anything like me, you were with them from fhqwhgads and quit right around Cheat Commandos. A quick glance through the Toons section of the site shows that, like The Simpsons and Family Guy, I'm probably better off for having missed the past few years of redundancy. How does this bode for the first official H*R video game?

The good news is the game is really funny. Much like their past efforts with Sam & Max and Bone, the team at Telltale Games has really paid close attention to their source material and delivered easily the funniest and most thoughtful Homestar Runner cartoon in years. The bad news is that this is a game, not a cartoon, and all the parts where you're not just kicking back watching the characters be incredibly rude to each other are... well... less than fun. In traditional point-and-click tradition, you, as Strong Bad, must collect all sorts of objects around town which you will use elsewhere to solve puzzles and progress the story or otherwise goof off. The entire game (episode 1 of 5) takes about two hours to play through, and much of that is wandering about trying collected items on different objects in the chance that it will cause something to happen. That's not to say there aren't a few fun sections of actual gameplay. I was particularly smitten with the goofy "stealth" section, and "The Race To The End Of The Race" was a pleasant blend of problem solving and action minigame, still, there is not much to justify Homstar Ruiner's existance as a game rather than a really well-produced cartoon.

Perhaps what is most troubling is the cost of the game. PC users, Telltale's primary demographic, can pick up each episode for $8US or subscribe to the full season of five for only $35 while Wii owners pay $10 for each episode, though I didn't notice much Wiimote integration. Buying all five will cost the same as a brand-new copy of Mario Kart Wii, Super Smash Bros Brawl or most any other AAA Wii title except without any of the fancy packaging to show it off. Additionally, SBCG4APE1HR takes up more space in the Wii's internal memory than any other WiiWare game to date. Add to this the fact that several players have reported a game-freezing glitch and that I myself noticed numerous graphical glitches and this does not feel worth the price. A $10 downloadable console game these days is Bionic Commando: Rearmed, PixelJunk Eden or Paper Mario. In the past, Telltale has been nice enough to produce a disc version of their Sam & Max seasons for customers who purchased all of the individual episodes and I would feel more inclined to continue supporting this series if I knew SBCG4AP would get a similar treatment for Wii since I'm paying full price already. It's certainly more fun so far than Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law, which itself was little more than an animated movie with occassional breaks for pointing and clicking. It's a shame that none of these new point-and-click Wii adventures are nearly as engaging as Zack & Wiki...

Related articles:
Bionic Commando is Love: Bionic Commando Rearmed is Out. It Matters.
Unsolved Crimes and the New Setting
LucasArts Classics on Nintendo DS?

It's My Tetris Party And I Can Waggle If I Want To

Derrick Sanskrit — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 20:00:00 GMT

Named by Entertainment Weekly as the number 1 "new classic" video game of the past twenty-five years (almost all of video game history), it was never a question of if Tetris would grace Nintendo's wildly popular WiiWare digital distribution service, but when. While we still don't have a precise date, Official Nintendo Magazine has confirmed that the Hudson Soft developed Tetris Party will be released this autumn with a slew of Wii-specific features.

Obviously, Mii integration is a must. They make parents and children happy and were an absolutely charming addition to Dr. Mario Online RX. Wi-Fi multiplayer? Of course, but we had that in Tetris DS. We all love Tetris and will play it forever, but what makes this version new? Why, ten never-before-seen modes of play, naturally! These modes will include IR pointing-and-shooting support for the Wii Balance Board (seen implemented above, apparently).

A new Tetris on the Wii is bound to be a huge hit with the casual mom-and-pop crowd, assuming they can figure out how to download WiiWare. While many would look at the new game modes and argue "if it ain't broke...", and while 99% of Tetris players will never play any mode other than traditional "clear the stack", I must admit that I rather enjoyed all of the alternate takes on Tetris presented in Tetris DS. From the "Push" versus mode where two players took either side of a single stack and tried to push it towards the opponent to the "Catch" mode where the player rotated and navigated a single satellite as it collected floating Tetris blocks in space, these modes took the familiar Tetris formula and introduced new twists and mechanics that kept the experience fresh and exciting for those looking for a new challenge. While I have no idea how much fun shooting or balancing Tetris blocks will be in practice, I'm certainly willing to give it a shot when Tetris Party hits WiiWare this autumn.

Related articles:
It's Dangerous To Go Alone
Whatcha Playing: Lost Winds

Watcha Playing: Lost Winds

Amber Ahlborn — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Lost Winds is my first and presently only WiiWare title, but it has already set the bar pretty high. When I first booted up this lovely little game and started playing with the wind, I was immediately put in mind of Okami. Directing the wind is a lot like drawing with the Celestial Brush, except the wind works in real time, rather than pausing the game while I draw. Lost Winds is a whimsical title and a promising start for WiiWare.

The game itself focuses on environmental puzzles and wind assisted two dimensional platforming. Toku, the main character, can only run and climb up small ledges. Luckily, he's a small boy and can easily be carried by Enril, the Wind Spirit. The wind is controlled via simple lines drawn with the remote's pointer. With easy gestures, I can use the wind to move Toku, flatten enemies, and knock the hero silly with boulders if I'm not careful. All of the action takes place in a beautifully realized world.

As an artist myself I take a keen interest in the art styles used in video games and I really like what's been done in Lost Winds. The visuals are colorful and fanciful without being sugary sweet. The geometric designs and story stills put me in mind of native South American art though I also note a lot of oriental influences in the setting. It's always nice to see an original style standing out from the current pack of games attempting realism. It's a standout title that has received quite a bit of appreciation from gamers.

Lost Winds has already garnered a lot of review praise along with one oft repeated criticism. It's too short. I disagree. The game thus far will only take a few hours, perfect for an evening of relaxed gaming. It's priced to match and ends with a “to be continued”. I've enjoyed what I've played thus far and am looking forward to the next chapter.