Posted on December 25, 2011
What a haul!
The utter lack of updates can be attributed to the organized chaos that comes with the Holiday season. It’s become a pretty consumer-tastic time of year, but growing up, I always felt truly appreciative of what I got. Same goes for this year, even though I probably got way too much, and bought way too much.
As years went by, many different games were recieved as gifts… when I’m not posting from an iPod as I currently am, I’ll be recounting the memorable video game hauls from X-mases gone by!
Posted on December 18, 2011
I have been converted!
No longer do I believe GameSpot to be the better resource for all things video games. At least, not the more trustworthy one.
There was the whole situation with Jeff Gertsmann, who reviewed games for the site forever and was canned for giving an honest (in other words, “bad”) review of Kane and Lynch: Dead Men. The game happened to be a sponsor for the site in the weeks leading up to its release, and it was more than just a coincidence he was “let go” after giving the game a low score.
I let that one slide, even though it didn’t really seem fair. After all, I’m tracking my entire video game collection on GameSpot, something I can’t seem to do anywhere else.
Anyhow, a glitch was recently uncovered in the new Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword that would make the game un-finishable. By that, I mean that if a specific sequence of events occurs within the game (by trying to complete the game “out of order” from the storyline), Link won’t be able to proceed to the next objective. The player would then have no choice but to restart the game entirely
A full (mostly negative) article was posted at GameSpot, basically stating “not sure how this could happen in this day and age, but Nintendo says ‘don’t worry about it'”.
About five years ago, a slightly more aggravating glitch reared its ugly head in Zelda: Twilight Princess. I won’t delve into details, as the video below describes it pretty well!
This was a pretty serious muck-up, but I never saw a thing about it at GameSpot. Being concerned about it at the time, I looked it up elsewhere on the interwebs, and found a few websites confirming what was happening. It never affected what I ended up thinking about the game when I bought it a month or two later, but I did make sure to avoid the glitch.
The site’s sponsor for a week or two back in ’06 before its release? Twilight Princess.
Interesting… Skyrim, which I have almost no interest in, but somehow keep hearing about, has almost crippling graphical issues on the PS3 edition, yet that gets no coverage. Skyward Sword gets lampooned for a glitch that only shows up if you do a specific sequence of events.
What was GameSpot sponsored by for a few weeks last month?
Ahh, right. Skyrim. Not Zelda… I see a pattern.
I have converted to IGN-ism.
I will return to video game memories very soon! Worry not!
Posted on December 11, 2011
Note to self!
Don’t get too angry in the post looking back on your current GoldenEye playthrough. It’s still a fantastic game, despite your current frustration with it…
Posted on November 30, 2011
The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX (Game Boy Color)
Aside from being the other Game Boy Color title in my friend Antoine’s library (see my very first game post back in August), Link’s Awakening DX was actually already in my collection on that old grey brick… only not in fantastic, full-colour mode.
As mentioned in the Super Mario Bros. Deluxe post, Antoine was nice enough to let me try his Game Boy Color one morning before school. It’s strange, but playing a game in colour in the palm of my hands just felt incredible. Here was Super Mario Bros., a game I’ve played through over and over again since childhood, and I was playing in the school hallway. Amazing! When he popped in Link’s Awakening DX, it was somewhat like visiting an old friend in the hospital, recuperating from colourful shots of botox to the face.
I say it felt like a hospital, mostly due to the white halls at our school… anyway. It makes sense to me.
In any case, it was strange. I had owned a Sega Game Gear since I was young, but it didn’t quite feel like it was the ultimate hand held gaming experience. Maybe if they had waited before releasing it, and made it sleeker or something. I dunno.
What I remember most about playing the original Link’s Awakening was discovering two things in particular…
Who is Roc, anyway? First he leaves his invisibility cape in a Hyrule cave (in A Link to the Past), and now he leaves a magical jumping feather in a dungeon on Koholint Island. Who forgets or misplaces two awesome things like that?? Roc, that’s who.
The lady next door came over to visit my mom, and I sat quietly at the kitchen table while I played Zelda. I remember having to position myself correctly in relation to the power outlet, and have my somewhat bulky battery pack perched on the table in a way I wouldn’t yank it off in a moment of sheer gaming excitement.
The second thing was mentioned in a Nintendo Power “Classified Information” section, which some might consider to be a “cheat”. In reality, it was actually a glitch! Performing it was simple, and allowed early access to areas you’d otherwise have to wait to be able to get to.
(Skip ahead to about the 0:55 mark for the glitch demonstration…)
If you pressed Select at the exact moment you crossed over to a new screen, it would launch you way over to the opposite side of the screen you were entering. Walls, pits or bodies of water were no longer an obstacle! It was fun to see where you could get to, but if you weren’t careful, you could easily screw the game up a bit, or possibly even get stuck “in” a wall.
The obvious choice to make a movie with was the DX version. It had Game Boy Camera support (remember that thing???), which meant that a few of Link’s exploits were captured by a photographer in the game, and displayed in nice color images. You could even print them (in black and white) on the Game Boy Printer!!!
Those were two strange experiments I definitely had no interest in buying into.
Anyway, I thought the images helped break up the monotony of reading everything.
Posted on November 22, 2011
Mega Man 4 (NES)
Some considered Mega Man 4 to be the beginning of the end of the love affair gamers had with the series. Honestly, I didn’t find that happened until several years later with the countless Battle Network games that changed the formula altogether.
It came out a couple months after the Super NES was released, but the Nintendo Power Pak Watch previews had me quite excited. Why not? Mega Man 3 was (as far as I’m concerned) the best game in the series, and the sky was the limit for 4. They were adding a few things, such as a Mega Blaster you could charge and unleash for maximum damage, and Fliptop, a tin-can robot who would help you out on certain levels with random items.
I wanted there to be a “Super Mega Man” pretty badly, but I supposed it would show up eventually. Mega Man 4 would just have to suffice for a while.
I remember renting the game and having that boss selection music stuck in my head, and humming it while at my seat in the school cafeteria.
Mega Man 4 was indeed a fantastic game, but that initial wow factor that had come with 3 was almost non-existant. It was more of the same with a few additions, but even as a young kid I couldn’t help but just lose interest and explore other games, especially considering the fact that the Super NES had been out for a little while. 16 bit graphics were just too pretty to look at to be ignored.
It was worth a few rentals, but it has yet to make it into my NES collection; aside from being a part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection, which I own for GameCube.
Speaking of which, I don’t usually go on a tangent from game to game in a single post, but it’s Mega-related to what I’m talking about.
When Anniversary Collection was announced, the only logical choice for me was to buy the game for the Nintendo GameCube. Yeah, the PlayStation 2 controller would have been decent to play with, but I really couldn’t see myself playing a Mega Man NES game on anything but a Nintendo console. Every other option seemed like blasphemy!
Somehow, the controls have been seriously messed with. B is jump, and A is shoot. Considering the positioning of the buttons on the GameCube’s controller, how could this be messed up so badly? You can’t even change the button configuration, which is really unfortunate.
Oh, but I found a way around that.
Pressing Y performs a rapid triple-shot, which works better than even pressing B on an NES controller super-fast. You’d think the messed-up position my hand is in would make it cramp up after a while, but it really doesn’t.
Game on!
This was the first Mega Man title to have a proper introduction to the game’s storyline. I mean, yeah, Mega Man 2‘s was classic, and the music just made it so great perfect. It wasn’t an actual cutscene with detailed images, however, so that made this one start off a bit better than the first two.
Playing through this one again made me regret not having the chance to play it that much as a kid. Like I said earlier, these games may have all followed the same formula, but they’re still a hoot today.
Posted on November 17, 2011
What a… stinkin’, no-good… burgerfricckle!!
In going back to play old games, I’m finding that some of them are real stinkers. Games that were once cherished are actually big steaming piles of gaming poo. I’ve watched a fair amount of Angry Video Game Nerd episodes in the last few weeks, and honestly, I’m holding back from a profanity-laced tirade on a game I once thought to be awesome!
Since this is a family friendly blog….. I think….. I’ll refrain from saying anything too vulgar.
The Adventures of Bayou Billy isn’t on my list of “Must Play Through Games”. At least, not anymore. I remember renting it from our Co-Op store when I was little, mostly because my friend next door thought it was an awesome game. I got some enjoyment out of it, I guess. You could pick up weapons like knives and bats to attack your enemies with, and the jungle\swamp setting seemed pretty cool.
For cryin’ out loud, the first level had you punching out alligators until roasted chicken (health) came flying out! How is that not awesome?!
The other night, I re-played it. Not only does it take abnormally precise positioning to land your hits, but when you do manage to connect, it takes a good five or six punches to kill the first few bad guys you encounter in the game. It definitely didn’t take long to clue in why I never played it much as a kid… you needed the NES Zapper for level two, which I didn’t own then, and nor do I own it now.
So much for a playthrough. Not that I’d necessarily want to put myself through the pain and personal anguish of taking (what feels like) two or three minutes to kill each enemy I came across.
I will give the game this, however… that distinctive Konami music is friggin’ amazing. Here’s a short piece played at the beginning of the game, where the bad guy says “I HAVE YOUR SCANTILY CLAD GIRLFRIEND!!” It just seems so… southern bayou, gonna eat some cajun crawfish gumbo, 8-bit YEEHAW.