Posted on March 8, 2013
My Top 100: #11 – Half-Life 2
2004 – Valve (PC, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Mac)
Gordon Freeman can’t catch a break, can he?
He miraculously repels an alien invasion by himself in the first game, and all he gets is a lousy “re-assignment” after 20 years in stasis. He comes back to life in time for the events in the second game, in a world where humans are now friends with the same aliens he just did away with?? What??
All he wanted to do was show up for work, theorize the hell out of some physics, then go home. Bailing the world out twice was not a part of his itinerary!
Half-Life 2 isn’t all that different than the first one in terms of gameplay. You still start with next to nothing in your inventory, solve physics-based puzzles to proceed, working your way through one big, interconnected area that brings you to all corners of the game world.
City 17 seems to have been inspired by post-Chernobyl Pripyat, except not nearly as abandoned. In fact, I’d even go so far as to say that the area surrounding the Citadel is one of the most alive and life-like environments we’ve ever seen in gaming.
I don’t talk about graphics much on this blog, because they’ve never really been all that important to me. Still, the graphics in this game blew my mind. The lighting is just right, and it manages to complement the characters’ fear and anxiety quite nicely. Whether I was fending off hordes of Combine forces in broad daylight or taking a hovercraft ride at sunset, I was always awestruck at how good the game looked. Even on the original Xbox, which was my first experience with the game, it looked amazing.
The game has some pretty epic gunfights, but the true beauty of Half-Life 2 lies in the puzzles it throws at you. Though you can use the Gravity Gun to pick up almost anything to use as a weapon, it also helps you through some of the predicaments Gordon finds himself in. Near the end of the game, it becomes even more powerful, and you can really wreak some havoc within the walls of the Citadel.
I can’t sit here and describe everything that makes Half-Life 2 and its two episodic sequels so great. All I can do is encourage anyone and everyone to go out and play it. The Orange Box has all three Half-Life 2 games, along with Portal and Team Fortress 2 on one disc! Do it up!
No stories about vomiting this time around… sorry.
I technically got this game for PC in April of ’04, a full seven months before it was even released. Unfortunately, I had no way of playing it! It wasn’t until its release for Xbox in November of ’05 that I finally got to play Half-Life 2 for the first time.
In early 2004, I went looking for a high-end video card before I even owned a PC to install it in. I didn’t have much expertise in looking around online for that sort of thing, but my friend Tyler directed me to a site called NCIX.com, which had an insane amount of video cards to choose from. Naturally, I chose the beefiest-looking one of the bunch, the 256MB ATI Radeon 9800XT.
Of course, it was also the most expensive one on the entire site, so I had to own it. $700 later, it was on its way!
I eventually bought a PC to put it in, and since I didn’t really know how to get the video card all hooked up, I got one of my sister’s more computer savvy friends to do it. I might have been able to figure it out, but I figured I’d leave it up to someone who knew what they were doing.
Greg… or was it Craig? It was one of those situations where, no matter how many times we asked the guy’s name, we just could not remember it. To this day, we’re still not sure what his name is.
Anyway, Greg\Craig hooked up my video card, and he was evidently jealous at the awesomeness of it. He kept talking games with me, and had taken the liberty of installing Soldier of Fortune II and the first Call of Duty game. They were cool, I guess, but I really bought the PC to play some racing games, as well as Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. The other two, I’d probably be deleting pretty soon!
Greg\Craig also mentioned that the video card came with a voucher to download Half-Life 2 on Valve’s brand new gaming service called Steam. Whoa. That was an amazing idea, but… damn. I only had a 56k modem to work with at home, and there was no way a 2GB download would work on a connection that slow. I would still be able to enjoy games the only way I ever knew how, which was to buy it and install it with the software provided in the box. Anything I’d ever really want to play would probably eventually be released for consoles anyway.
I was fine with that, because streaming games online was a bad idea. It’d never work!
Silly Greg\Craig…
Expensive, but it lasted quite a while.
I definitely got my money’s worth before it started melting on me.
Posted on March 7, 2013
My Top 100: #12 – Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
1987 – Nintendo (NES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, eShop)
Wait… so… that guy you control isn’t named Zelda?
Similar to me not realizing Super Mario Bros. 2 was set in a dream world, I didn’t quite grasp the fact that Link was actually the name of the young man in The Legend of Zelda. Like I said before, I wasn’t that good at reading English yet, and I’d say that had something to do with it… but check this out; the following text is from the intro to the first Zelda game, before it was re-written for later releases.
The translation was pretty bad, so I’m not really surprised that last sentence’s significance was lost on me.
Adventure of Link has a reputation for being a black sheep in the franchise. Most casual Zelda fans don’t care for it, and for the longest time, I didn’t appreciate the game all that much, either. In fact, had I made this countdown two or three years ago, it might not have even made the list!
Unfortunately, I didn’t really play the game the way it was meant to be played when I was younger. As I mentioned in a post a while back, my friend’s father owned the game, and I got to borrow it on a few occasions. I played it a fair amount, but when it came to one of the more interesting tweaks to the formula – being able to level up your Attack, Magic and Life attributes – I didn’t even know what it did! I mean, yeah, they all “get better” as you accumulate experience points, but I never cared about points! I’m going to turn it off eventually anyway, and they all reset to zero when you do that. Who cares about stinkin’ points, anyway?
Obviously, I was way, WAY wrong about that one. For years, that level-up screen would pop up, and I’d press Start just to get it off the screen, not really caring about how it worked. I knew it was all relevant to the gameplay, but didn’t much care for the game enough to really take a look at how you could use it to your advantage.
I was watching a speed run a few years ago, and the person flying through the game beefed up his Attack stats quite a bit before upgrading his Magic and Life. I knew you could pick and choose what to improve and when, or that you could keep your experience points for whatever the next upgrade was that you were looking for. As a kid though, I just had no interest in experimenting with that whatsoever.
So, on top of the fantastic swordplay, the countless NPC’s you can interact with, and incredibly satisfying difficulty (as opposed to the rage-inducing kind found in Battletoads), you have this wonderfully simple and intuitive system that lets you play the game however you want to play it… and I only recently came to appreciate how awesome that made the game.
For many years, I neglected it because I thought it simply didn’t like me, or that it was too different to even be called a Zelda game. That was a mistake on my part, and I’ve been making up for it by playing it quite a bit over these last few years!
I don’t necessarily have any one specific memory about this game. Whenever I see the box art or the really shiny gold cartridge in my collection (which sticks out like a sore thumb), I can’t help but think of my friend’s father, who ended up one day giving me his copy of Zelda II. He passed away a few years ago, and that made me realize just how fast time had flown by since we were little.
I spoke to my wife, and apparently, not everyone has that friend of the opposite sex when growing up… you know, the kind that you play “house” with? The kind that, no matter what anyone says, you’ll be married some day? Little Katie next door was that friend for me, and though she eventually moved away, I always look back quite fondly on all those times we had fun when we were little. I have so many random memories from our time as kids, some of it good, some of it hilarious, some of it sad, and some of it just plain weird.
There was the time Katie and I were having a picnic – which was actually just lunch on the back deck – where we were having fish sticks and fries. I didn’t use a lot of ketchup that had been dabbed onto my plate, and when I finished up my meal with a fair amount of it left, Katie said “you better eat your ketchup, or else Mom will be upset!”
I thought, “how am I supposed to eat the ketchup, if I have nothing left to dip into it, and all I have is a fork?”
So, for the rest of the meal, I just dabbed my fork into the ketchup, wincing as I licked the ketchup off of it… it was kinda gross, and it was obviously memorable enough for me to remember it for this long. Ketchup goes great WITH stuff, but is quite strange on its own.
Then, there was the ottoman in the basement where the TV was. I always used to go over on Sunday evenings to watch a few shows, namely Rescue 9-1-1 and America’s Funniest Home Videos. They had an orange ottoman that could spin around and around, kinda like an office chair.
During the commercial breaks, I’d lay on my stomach on the ottoman, and Katie would sit on my back. I’d start spinning it around as fast as I possibly could, and we would both laugh insanely hard. It was a fun little thing we’d do to break up the monotony of commercials, and thankfully, her parents let us do it… until the night I spun around so quickly she puked.
I, uh… didn’t like that. We didn’t spin on the ottoman anymore, after that.
In any case, playing Adventure of Link reminds me of her and her dad, and all the things you did and lessons you learned as a kid. She got married late last year, and my wife and I were quite happy to be able to attend the ceremony.
Good times.
This wasn’t the exact ottoman, but this is basically what it looked like.
*WheeeeeeeeePUKE*
Posted on March 5, 2013
My Top 100: #13 – Super Mario Bros. 2
1988 – Nintendo (NES, Virtual Console, eShop)
It could have been the look on Mario’s face on the cover, zooming through the air, ready to take on all enemies with nothing but a turnip in his hand. It could have been the TV commercial, which had real life sets and props made to look like the game. It could have even been the Nintendo Fun Club News issue that gave hints about its development, or even the cover story on that first issue of Nintendo Power. Unfortunately, I didn’t see any of those things until the game was released, and didn’t even know those magazines even existed.
My sister worked at the convenience store around the corner from our house, and she had heard through the grapevine that it was coming soon. Even then, she thought it would be a great surprise to have me wait until I actually saw Super Mario Bros. 2 on the shelf, with my own eyes, to see that it was even a thing… and you know what? It was awesome, and totally unexpected. The best non-Christmas-or-birthday surprise of all time. OF ALL TIME.
She must have called dibs on that first copy, because we excitedly walked back home to play it. What could we expect, though? I had no idea what to think, just because I wasn’t sure if the idea was to experience more of the same, or change the mechanics altogether. The idea of a video game sequel was a new one to me, so I was cautiously optimistic.
The differences were quite obvious, right off the bat. The overworld theme was completely different, you could play as any of four characters (one of them being the Princess – whhaaaaattt), and jumping on enemies did absolutely nothing. You could pick them up and throw them by pressing B, or simply ride on them for a while, which brought quite a change in strategy. Time it right, and you could even take out a few enemies at once with a well-placed turnip or POW block.
None of the baddies from the first Super Mario Bros. were around this time. Instead of Goombas, Koopa Troopas and Bullet Bills, we had ShyGuys, Ninjis, and Bob-Omb’s running after us. Instead of the “dragon” Bowser, we got a frog named Wart who hated vegetables – he was definitely my kind of bad guy! A few times while eating supper, my parents were subjected to the excuse “I can’t eat vegetables, or else I’ll die like Wart!”
To end a level, there was no flagpole to jump on. You walked into the gaping mouth of a hawk, and was rewarded with a casino-like slot game to earn extra lives. Makes sense, right? Whoo, logic!
Secret doors, alternate routes, and hard-to-reach areas encouraged exploration. Bringing potions much further away than where you found them usually rewarded you with a health bonus, extra coins, or perhaps even a warp zone. Every boss required a different strategy, even when they came around for a second battle.
To top it all off, the game ends, and it’s all just a dream! I mean, yeah, anyone who knew SubCon was an abbreviation of “subconscious” would have been able to figure it out, but I was about five years old. Even though I “read” the story in the instruction manual, my English wasn’t all that good yet. The idea of what SubCon was supposed to mean was completely lost on me. Needless to say, the end of the game was quite a surprise!
The game was just so weird, so different, so colourful and quirky that I couldn’t help but fall in love with it.
The one thing I think about when I remember my days with SMB2 is that it was my mom’s favourite game to watch. I made her sit through a TON of gaming when I was little. I don’t know what it was in particular that made her like this particular game more than any other, but she would always tell me that it was her favourite. More than any other Mario game, or anything else I played back in the day.
I’m also reminded of that first weekend I rented it, playing on my NES-dedicated TV in the basement. This was the day after, because we had gone to the store to rent it not long before my bed time rolled around. On my first real playthrough, I had managed to get to the second level. At the very end of the stage was a pyramid with a door, so I went in, and saw this.
This was quite obviously a dead end… what was I supposed to do? Was there something back outside of the pyramid that I needed to accomplish in order to clear the path? I looked and looked, and nothing was glaringly obvious to me… I even got Mom to come downstairs and help me out, and she couldn’t figure it out, either.
I looked for clues for about a half-hour before lunch time finally rolled around. I turned it off in frustration, and headed up for chicken nuggets and fries, with a side of plum sauce for dipping… now, I don’t know for sure if that’s what I had for lunch that day, but that was my favourite thing to eat. Chances are pretty good that that’s what I had.
In any case, it was during lunch that it dawned on me; of all the things I had tried, pressing the B button was not one of them. You pressed B to pick up and throw plants or enemies, so why didn’t I try doing that with the sand?? The thought hit me like a ton of bricks, and I immediately felt kinda dumb. Sure enough, after I was done eating, I went back downstairs, tried it, and that did the trick.
Damn. Of all the things we tried that day, we didn’t try pressing a button less than a centimetre away. Brutal.
Mom and I still have a good laugh about that today, actually. So it’s not all bad, right?
This guy still gives me the heebie-jeebies.
Posted on March 4, 2013
My Top 100: #14 – DuckTales
1989 – Capcom (Nintendo, Game Boy)
Sorry for the delay, but I had to take a week to disconnect from the world, recharge my batteries and get stuff taken care of… now, where the heck was I?
Ah yes, DuckTales. As I’ve said before, Capcom handled the Disney franchise pretty damn well. From Mickey’s Mousecapade all the way through to Darkwing Duck (and a few games afterwards), I rented and enjoyed them all quite a bit, except TaleSpin. I didn’t like the show all that much, so I never bothered renting the game. I’m sure it was great, though.
I was already a big fan of the DuckTales TV show by the time the game rolled around. I liked how it would always put its characters in the weirdest predicaments. McDuck and his nephews would go to great lengths to find treasure, and it brought them all around the world, and even into space a time or two. It didn’t matter how much sense it made; I thought it was great.
I’ve always wanted to dive into a pool filled with pennies, and swim around like it was water… that would obviously never be possible in real life, but the show’s intro made it seem like such a fun thing to try.
DuckTales for NES was developed by the same folks who helped Mega Man and its sequels become so popular, and the two games play quite similarly. For instance, the controls are nice and tight, even when bouncing around wildly on the pogo stick. You can navigate the five levels in any order, and can even revisit completed levels to unlock paths and treasures found in other levels. As a gamer who loved to explore and look around for secrets, that was pretty awesome.
Finally, the music is among the best the NES has to offer. People seem to go crazy whenever they hear the Moon level music, and though it is indeed an amazing chiptune, it’s easy to forget that the game also has one of the best boss themes in gaming history. The rest of the levels all have great themes as well, and all of them are good enough to be on my iPod.
An awesome soundtrack for an awesome game. Plain and simple!
Before owning the game, I rented it I don’t know how many times, exactly… but it was a lot. Among the many places we rented games from, the local Co-Op was one of the more convenient stores. While my mom would do groceries, I’d be picking out what game I wanted. We didn’t have to make a special trip in any direction – we were already there, so why not? Easy as pie.
One time after renting DuckTales, the young female cashier noticed what game it was, and made a comment about her own experience with the game.
“I can never figure out how to jump on the pogo stick!!”
………
“Seriously? You just hold A and B. How bad do you have to be to not be able to pogo jump your way through an entire level?”
Of course, I didn’t actually say it out loud, but I most certainly thought it. Mom told her I had it all figured out, and that I was really good at it. Maybe she knew that saying such a thing would inflate my ego, and keep my mouth shut about the cashier’s inability to jump with the pogo stick. In any case, I walked away from the cash to wait for Mom at the exit, just baffled at the idea that someone could be so bad at video games.
Now, at the Co-Op, there was an enclosed exit area adjacent to where you entered the building, and where shopping carts were located. The area in between served as a loading area of sorts, where cars could back up and have their groceries loaded into the trunk. That’s where I waited.
As I waited for Mom, I heard this kid crying from across the loading area. I went from thinking “what the hell is that kid’s problem?” to thinking “OH MY GOD HE’S PUKING, I’M GONNA PUKE TOO!”
Anyone who knows me, knows that I can usually deal with the goriest, most disturbing movies out there. Make a character puke on screen, though, and I can barely watch. The scene where Neo “pops” after learning what the Matrix is? Gross. That restaurant scene from Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life? Forget it. Can’t do it!
I know that most people will understand where I’m coming from, and it’s quite obvious that vomiting is an unpleasant experience (duh), but that’s just the one thing that I can’t watch.
Anyway, I walked away from that exit and back to the cashier as quickly as possible, trying to erase the memory of seeing that kid throw up, and crying so violently while doing it. I managed to keep my cookies down, but I kept thinking “man, that looked like fruit salad”. You know, the kind that comes in a cup?
Guess what I’ve never eaten since? Fruit cups. Can’t do it.
I can’t go to the Co-Op without thinking about it.
For real.
Posted on February 21, 2013
My Top 100: #15 – Conker’s Bad Fur Day
2001 – Rare (Nintendo 64, Xbox)
It wasn’t the homage to A Clockwork Orange in the intro that got me thinking Conker’s Bad Fur Day was going to be something quite different. It wasn’t the fact that the story was about a cute, cuddly little squirrel with a massive hangover who just wanted to get home. It wasn’t even the constant barrage of foul language, or the suggestion that a male bee would only be interested in pollinating a sunflower because she had (*ahem*) “big stigmas”.
It was when I saw the warning labels written all over the box, and when the clerk at Blockbuster Video asked “You’re 18 years old, right?”
Never in my life had I tried renting a game only to be asked that particular question. Silent Hill, Turok games, Perfect Dark, Mortal Kombat II all the way through to 4, and not once was I ever carded for renting any of these violent games. Good thing, because I didn’t turn 18 until September of ’01, about eight months after trying to rent Conker.
“Yep, I am 18 for sure, man!”
The guy behind the counter had come to know my face from my countless lunch trips to that mini-mall, and though he could have easily assumed I wasn’t quite 18 yet, he let me walk out of the store with it.
I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the game, though. I hadn’t bought any EGM‘s for a while, and my Nintendo Power subscription had run out a year earlier, so I knew nothing of its existence. The game was made by Rare, and although I hadn’t played Banjo Kazooie (or Tooie), that’s pretty much what it looked like from the back of the box. I wasn’t sure if I’d like it all that much, but it was worth a shot!
I popped it in, turned it on, and I was plopped into a world of fairytales and talking animals, all of which might be inspired by stories from our childhood. After a quick explanation of the game’s context-sensitive controls from the intoxicated scarecrow named Birdy, I grabbed my trusty frying pan and set off on an epic adventure.
One of the things that makes Bad Fur Day so great is the way the world is structured. You start off in a cave at the mouth of a waterfall, and after you get accustomed to the controls a bit and exit the area, you’re brought to this game’s version of Peach’s Castle in Super Mario 64. From this main area, there’s a door that leads to every single level in the game, even though they’re not all accessible right away (which makes sense).
The world is so vividly colourful that you can’t help but explore every corner of it. “What’s over here? Oooh! Why is there barbed wire here? What if I climb up this narrow path with vicious worms attacking me? Why does that sign say ‘Don’t go this way’?” If you explore enough, progressing in the game will just sort of take care of itself.
For example, after helping a sobbing Queen Bee retrieve her nest that’s been stolen, you travel on down the path a bit further to find easily aggravated dung beetles, guarding their mountain of poo. A door opens, you explore some more, make new friends, help them out, beat a boss, come back to the main area, explore some more, find areas that are now accessible, repeat… it’s that simple.
The context-sensitive controls come into play when you stand on a “B” platform (self-explanatory, really), and it pretty much lays it all out on the line for you, right there – “here’s a weapon, and we’re pointing you in the direction of potential targets… figure it out!” Some of the later levels pay homage to zombie and Dracula flicks, Saving Private Ryan, The Matrix, and Aliens, so at around the half-way point, the game switches its focus on action rather than platforming.
The game itself is incredibly fun, because you just never know what Conker’s going to find himself doing next. Whether you’re throwing toilet paper into the mouth of an opera-singing poo monster, getting drunk and urinating on lizards made of fire, or chasing down cavemen thieves on your rocket-propelled surfboard, chances are pretty good that you’ll be having a good time doing it.
2005’s Conker: Live and Reloaded for Xbox gave the graphics and some of the controls an overhaul, as well as a few new multiplayer modes. The writing and humour were back, but there was a catch; unfortunately, the game was censored a fair amount for this release, which is strange… you’d think that, with more recent games of the time pushing the envelope quite a bit, Microsoft wouldn’t mind allowing Rare to get more vulgar than they did for a Nintendo 64 exclusive. I guess not!
If ever you find either version of the game, though, PICK IT UP! You won’t regret it!
That weekend I rented Conker for the first time, I couldn’t dedicate quite as much time to it as I wanted to. The ESApalooza\Battle of the Bands at my school was coming up, and my guitarist friend Tom and I had a jam session scheduled the day after renting the game. We were in the process of trying to find a drummer, so I wasn’t really in a position to skip this in favour of playing a video game.
I was in the same class as the drummer guy’s sister, and when she first mentioned that he played drums, I jumped at the opportunity to jam with him. I didn’t know him all that well, but with nothing to lose, Tom and I packed up our amps and headed out to his place.
The room he had his drums set up in wasn’t that big. It smelled like garbage, and we had to keep our shoes on because the floor was so cold. Tom and I didn’t really have a list of songs to jam, but he and I knew what songs we could both play. Unfortunately, the drummer guy didn’t really know any of the songs we knew, and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was the only song we could all jam together, without any issues.
Although he was a pretty nice kid, and not the worst drummer I had ever heard, we left his place pretty discouraged. Time was running out on finding a drummer before the show, and we wanted enough time to be able to get to know the person, and have fun with the whole process of practicing and getting ready.
We moseyed on back to Tom’s place, and when I called Mom up to see if we needed anything in town, she informed me that the power had been out there for quite some time. For the next few hours, Tom and I surfed around iMesh and Napster to see what tunes would be fun to play at the show. We had no clue if we were even going to find a drummer in time, but we at least wanted to be prepared in the event that we did!
In the end, I was able to join a band with two friends I didn’t even know played music. With Justin and Max (and backup guitarist Tom), No Complaints hit up ESApalooza 2001 with a vengeance! Yeahhhh, buddy! What a fantastic night that was!
From left to right;
Tom, me (in Austin Powers costume), Maxime (behind me) and Justin.
Posted on February 20, 2013
My Top 100: #16 – Mega Man 2
1989 – Capcom (NES, iOS, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, Virtual Console)
This debate will undoubtedly rage on forever; Mega Man 2 vs. Mega Man 3… which is the better game?
Video games are what you make of them, or, at least made special because of what you take away from them. So technically, there is no wrong answer. You could even say, “I hate both games, and think Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing is the greatest game of all time!” I’d be awfully intrigued if you ever said that, but there must be some reason for you to be saying it, as crazy and it may sound to me. Right?
Right.
Mega Man 2 was the first Mega Man game I played. It’s the one that started the obsession, and got me hooked to the series for years and years to come. And really, that has to count for something!
We all know about the rock-paper-scissors gameplay, so let’s start with the music. The developers probably could have made a much more inferior game, slapped these chiptunes on top of it, and it might still make my Top 100 countdown. They’re just that good. It sets the mood even better than the widely known Super Mario Bros. over-and-underworld themes.
Without even looking at a screenshot and simply listening to the music, you could probably guess that Flash Man’s level is filled with slippery ice traps. The hectic Heat Man theme compliments your sweaty palms nicely as you jump from one disappearing block to another, while Quick Man’s music has those little “buzzing beeps” (not sure what else to call them) that give you that sense of urgency when rushing to avoid those massive death lasers. Bubble Man’s level was the first one I ever chose when playing the game, and that music just fit so perfectly as a “water theme”… one of my favourite game tunes of all time, for sure.
On top of that, you’ve got an amazing game that has been perfected from the last time around. The first Mega Man was great, but the slight tweaks to the formula for MM2 just hit it out of the park. Energy Tanks, three distinct weapon add-ons, eight bosses instead of six, more freedom in choosing the boss order, and an actual map for Dr. Wily’s Castle… they were only minor changes that ended up making the world of a difference. The jump in quality between the first and second games is quite astounding.
I know people on both sides of the Mega Man 2\Mega Man 3 argument, and really, there’s no reason for heated debates. To each their own, I say!
I’ve already elaborated on some of the memories I have associated with this game in this post, so the only other ones I have left are not that interesting. Not that all the other stories I share are mesmerizing, or anything, but you know… I guess they can’t all be winners.
Anyway, I remember renting this one time and staying at my sister’s apartment overnight. It was the mid-90’s, and there were a bunch of Mega Man games that had come out since then, but I wanted to play MM2. The next morning after waking up, I played for a while, and got up to the fourth Wily stage… the one with the repetitive music, everything is purple, there are fake floors everywhere, and has that unforgiving and awful boss at the end of it. I remember turning the console off in anger, because I just couldn’t beat it that day.
We moseyed around town during the afternoon, because my folks were coming over to her place for supper that evening. There are two things about that night that stick out in my mind…
1. Pepsi had come out with a sleeker logo and different-looking cans a couple years prior. I remember staring at a can, observing the differences from the old one, and wondering what in the world they needed to do that for. Coke hadn’t changed their look all that much, and now the Pepsi writing was on the can vertically… it made no sense, and it truly had me perplexed that night.
2. Before the meal (lasagna!), we were watching TV when Entertainment Tonight came on. John Tesh and Mary Hart started the show with the news that John Candy had passed away after suffering a heart-attack. Everyone I know liked John Candy; he was hilarious, and always played the super nice guy you couldn’t help but feel bad for. It was really quite a bummer when we learned he had died!
That’s it! That’s all I’ve got for today.
Cheers!
Ahhh memories…
Posted on February 18, 2013
My Top 100: #17 – Super Mario World
1991 – Nintendo (Super NES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console)
I wouldn’t call the Super Mario Bros. series stale, but the last few games haven’t exactly been the most revolutionary of the bunch. The first New game was incredible, mostly because it went back to the basics of what made Mario games awesome in the first place. There was no flying, just normal jumps and wall jumps. The Mega Mushroom and Blue Shell power-ups were fun because they were quite different from the norm, and that was nice to see.
These days, we have White Raccoon Mario, and Power Squirrel Mario. We’ve gone from struggling to finish the games to finishing them quite easily, all while Nintendo adds all sorts of little things to make the journey just a bit different than it was the last time around.
Don’t get me wrong! New Super Mario Bros. 2 had so many coins in it that it made the concept of the 1-Up pretty much irrelevant, but it was still pretty satisfying to go on coin-collecting rampages. New Super Mario Bros. U takes the infuritating multiplayer from the Wii edition, tones down the “co-opetition” a bit, and makes it much more fun for you to play through with a friend. It looks pretty damn great, as well.
So, it’s not all bad, I guess. It’s safe to say that, when it comes to the majority of games released in the last few years, there’s very little innovation to be seen. Games like Journey or Minecraft come along and blow our minds, simply because we haven’t seen anything like them before. I guess that’s partly why I’m a retro gamer at heart, and like to remember the days when almost everything felt new and awesome.
Having to follow Super Mario Bros. 3 must have been a daunting task, but Nintendo really pulled it off with Super Mario World. Besides bringing back a lot of the elements from SMB3, they also added a bit of SMB2 in the mix. There were lots of enemies for you to pick up, and the old “carry the key across the level to unlock a door on the other end” makes a comeback… minus the threat of Phantos chasing you, though.
The game also had a completely different setting this time around. Instead of the familiar-looking Mushroom Kingdom, players were introduced to the vastly different landscape of Dinosaur Land. This change brought with it tons of new enemies, a colourful new look, as well as the introduction of haunted houses to the land map. Every Mario game since has had a spooky Boo-infested level of some kind, and it was quite a treat to see what kind of secrets could be found. It was also the first Mario game to have alternate exits in certain levels, which made exploration that much more fun.
In the end, although I didn’t play it as thoroughly as I did other Mario games (i.e. the ones yet to appear on my countdown), it was an incredible game to help to ring in the era of the Super NES – my favourite console of all time.
I’m not sure how it went for everyone else, but whenever I played a new game or console, there was always one person I was looking forward to talking about it with. For me, it was my best friend Josh.
He and his family lived across the street from us since we were toddlers, until they started moving around a bit. They never moved out of town, but whenever they relocated, it always seemed to take a few months to re-establish communication with them. I’m not sure if it was because we just didn’t know where they lived, or what! I just have this memory of going months at a time without seeing my best friend. It wasn’t the end of the world to me, or anything, just strange.
I was in the midst of one of these communication blackouts when I had gotten my Super NES. I was psyched beyond belief about my first console upgrade, but for whatever reason, Josh wasn’t really around for me to talk about it with. No big deal, I guess!
The following March at Michael’s birthday party (my other friend across the street), there was a bunch of stuff to do. Organized games, an air hockey table, pizza and cake… there was lots of noise, lots of kids slightly older than I was, but I was still having fun. A while after the party had started, there was a knock on the door. It was Josh! FINALLY, someone at the party who was a bit younger, who I could relate to a bit easier.
I can close my eyes and picture it now – Josh didn’t even have his boots off, and here I was at the top of the stairs, excitedly yelling “JOSH I GOT A SUPER NINTENDO WITH SUPER MARIO WORLD AND IT’S AWESOME THE MUSIC IS COOL AND I’M PLAYING THROUGH IT A SECOND TIME AND I’M AT THE VANILLA DOME AND ITS AWESOME.”
Sorry about the caps, but that’s pretty much how the exchange went. It’s funny, because my niece gets similarly pumped up when describing to us toys or games she’s recently gotten.
Anyway, the rest of the party ended up being pretty awesome. Mike’s mom worked in the clothing department at a store in town, and she managed to get really awesome NHL team hats for everyone at the party. It was chosen at random, but I was pretty thrilled when I ended up getting the San Jose Sharks hat!
A new NHL team with one of my favourite colours in it! Whoo, teal!
The topic of conversation between Josh and I for the rest of the party wasn’t hats or hockey at all. It was mostly about the Super NES, and what games we thought would be awesome on the new console. Contra, Mega Man, Adventure Island… the next few years were sure to be amazing.
This was on my Facebook feed this morning…
It knows me a bit too well.
Posted on February 15, 2013
My Top 100: #18 – Mortal Kombat II
1993 – Midway (Arcade, Super NES, Genesis, 32X, Game Boy, Game Gear, PlayStation, Saturn, Amiga, PC, PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, XBLA, PlayStation Network, PlayStation Portable)
I never had time to “mentally prepare” myself for Mortal Kombat before it came out. There were plenty of other fighting games with realistic digitized graphics, and none of them looked particularly great to me. There was no use getting excited about it coming out, because it would just be like all the others.
Of course, when I ended up playing it, I didn’t think that at all. The characters were fascinating, and even in the censored Super NES version, the finishing moves were enough to spook the hell out of me. Not to the point where I didn’t want to play it, of course! The violence and brutality in the game didn’t change my temperament, either, but I was so curious to see just how far the game would go.
So, when rumors started flying about what would be included in Mortal Kombat II, I couldn’t help but be enthralled. Would you really be able to play as Shang Tsung, or maybe even Goro? Would there be more Fatalities? Would it push the envelope even more?
The answer to all those questions was an emphatic “yes”… except the Goro part.
MKII wasn’t released all that long after the first game, so when I saw it pop up in arcades, I was a bit surprised to see it so soon. I could barely see over the shoulders of the older kids playing it at the arcade that day, but what I saw blew my friggin’ mind.
Shang Tsung was now much younger, and though he looked completely different, you could indeed play as him in this game. The bad guy was some dude in a skull-helmet of some kind, definitely hopped up on steroids, or something. The coolest part, though, was that guy in the razor blade hat… who the hell was he, anyway?? You could barely see his face, but even then, I thought he’d be giving Scorpion a run for his money in the “most played character” department.
I don’t know where we were going that night, but I remember being in the car with Josh and his mom on the way into town. I was telling Josh everything I had seen earlier that day, but I couldn’t quite piece it all together to explain what I thought was going on. When I mentioned the guy in the hat, and that his name started with a “K”, he suggested that it might have been Kano. Maybe, but why did I see Kano and Sonya chained to posts in the background in one of the levels?
It all just seemed so odd.
In any case, I got to play Mortal Kombat II quite a few times not long after that, and also got to learn much more about the characters and moves in various magazines. The wait for a home console release was going to feel like forever, especially after hearing that Nintendo wouldn’t be censoring it this time around. All the Fatalities, Friendships and Babalities would be available from the comfort of your living room!
It was only the second game in the series, but you’d hear rumors about being able to do the whackiest stuff in the game. Because we were all so gullible, and had no idea how far Boon and Tobias would go, it was up to us to figure out if these rumors were true or not. I mean, yeah, the game was great because of how easily the combat flowed, and how you could do any one of four finishing moves at the end of the match.
But really, all I ever wanted to do was find secrets. Noob Saibot, Smoke, and Jade were cool and all, but it was the Fergality from the Genesis version that had me intrigued. There was rumblings that you could actually pull off another, much less kid-friendly finishing move, which most definitely piqued my interest at the time. There was also the “Error Macro” screen from the first game that made everyone think there was an unlockable character named Ermac, or that you could play as another Shaolin Monk named Hornbuckle.
That dude on fire in the background of the Pit II level? Hornbuckle was supposedly the guy standing next to him; a palette-swapped and more-powerful Liu Kang with green pants… now, as bland as that may seem now, the idea was enough for me to rent the game for the twentieth time, just to see if I could somehow figure out how to play as him!
The game itself was great, but it was the word-of-mouth thing that really had me hooked to Mortal Kombat II. Ed Boon is still turning rampant fan rumors into actual gameplay elements, and because of that (and many other reasons), I’ll always have a soft spot for Mortal Kombat games… even the bad ones.
In the Mega Man X post, I talked about an awesome birthday party that I was supposed to go to the night after some bad weather hit. My friend Ryan was turning 11, and he had invited his friends over to his place for some pizza, then to the arcades for a whole bunch of gaming. Here was the crazy part – every kid got 20 bucks, and was given the freedom of playing whatever game they wanted!
To a kid, 20 bucks was a fair amount of money! Not only that, but even the expensive arcade titles (like the driving and shooting ones) only cost you two quarters per credit. From what I can remember, it felt like we were playing arcade games for hours and hours… might not have been quite that long, but you get the point.
There were two games that were taking up most of my attention that day – Super Street Fighter II was still relatively new, and I enjoyed Street Fighter games quite a bit at the time, but it was Mortal Kombat II that I spent more time playing than any other. There were a bunch of other cool games at that arcade; Splatterhouse, After Burner with the huge cockpit, Samurai Shodown, Turtles in Time… but I just couldn’t stay away from MKII. The loud, booming audio that came from the cabinet’s speakers was mezmerizing, and I felt like a hero every time I pulled off a Fatality the other kids had never seen before.
That birthday party was definitely one of the highlights of my childhood… what a day!
The other memory I have about the game is the day it came out on consoles. We got pretty damn lucky at Blockbuster that day, and we were able to rent it. Thankfully, my mom had no qualms about renting it, even while my dad had expressed concern that it was a bit too violent. That wasn’t surprising, since he had been a cop for 25 years. He was allowed to think that, so long as it didn’t interfere with my gaming!
When we were about 5 minutes from home, we came to a dead stop in traffic. We could see that cars were backed up for quite a distance, and that it might take a while before we got home, whatever was happening up front. This was quite strange, since this was 15 minutes out of town, and it was usually an easy drive home unless there was construction.
The traffic was moving agonizingly slow, but when we finally saw the reason for it all, my mom and I were quite shocked to see an 18-wheeler way off the side of the road. The cab was smashed pretty badly and sitting upside-down, while its load of lumber was all over the front yard of one of the houses nearby.
I had never seen that sort of accident up close before, so the adrenaline was pumping by the time we eventually got home. I even completely forgot about having rented MKII! For some reason, the first thing I thought of was to call Josh, and be all like “AW MAN, I SAW AN 18-WHEELER ON ITS ROOF, STUFF WAS EVERYWHERE!” I told him all the details I knew, hung up, and then eventually called him back to tell him “oh, by the way, I rented Mortal Kombat II for Super NES, and it looks and plays perfectly”.
I found out the next morning that the truck driver had lost his life in the crash. They eventually re-did that part of the highway, because the corner was deemed a bit too sharp for the speed limits posted in the area. Every time I drive through that corner on the way to Mom’s place, I think of that 18-wheeler in shambles on the side of the road, and those who lost a family member that day.
I own this, but I’ve never played it before.
Can’t wait to see how terrible it is!
Posted on February 13, 2013
My Top 100: #19 – Star Wars: Rogue Squadron II – Rogue Leader
2001 – LucasArts (GameCube)
The first Rogue Squadron game definitely came around at the right time for me. I was in the midst of reading the series of novels based on Rogue Squadron pilots beyond Episode VI, and the game actually helped me get a visual on the description of the dogfights in the books. Granted, all the missions in the game were completely new to me (except the Death Star and Hoth bonus missions), so I was left wanting more of the battles I had seen in the movies. Yavin, Hoth, Endor… that sort of thing.
Not long before the GameCube came out, I read an article in Nintendo Power stating that Nintendo had inked some sort of deal with LucasArts. This meant that the next three Star Wars games released would be exclusively for Nintendo consoles. From the look of the little screen shot in the article (a B-Wing flying behind the massive engines of a Star Destroyer), the first one of these games would be a follow-up to Rogue Squadron. Awesome!
When it finally came out, there weren’t many retailers around Fredericton that had GameCube demos. Toys R Us did, however, and I got to give Rogue Squadron II a try one evening in November of ’01.
I remember it well… my sister picked me up after class, and we went to the mall. On the way home, Pink’s new song “Get the Party Started” played on the radio. My sister cranked it, while I sat in the passenger seat, wincing from the disgust that came from listening to the song.
Anyway, long story short, Rogue Leader was on a very short list of “must have ASAP” games when I finally got my GameCube in 2003. Not only did the graphics look just as good as the visuals in the original trilogy’s Special Editions, but the missions in the game were nearly perfect representations of what we saw in the movies.
For example, the Battle of Yavin starts with an assault on turret towers on the surface, before heading into the trench. The lighting is amazing, what with every red and green energy beam flying through space lighting up the space around it. It really gives you the feeling that you’re experiencing the events in the movie, in real-time. The trench run in the first game was cool and all, but limitations from back in the day really changed the feel of the level. It clearly didn’t look and feel… you know, like the real Death Star trench, like Rogue Leader‘s did.
The Hoth and Endor battles are also spectacular, as are the missions in between. Whether you’re flying a speeder through a maze of canyons en route to stealing the space shuttle Tyderium (the Lambda-class shuttle from Return of the Jedi) or protecting Tibanna Gas platforms on Bespin, it’s those familiar settings that add to the awesomeness that is Rogue Leader.
I bought my GameCube in the spring of 2003, and by the fall, I wasn’t too sure what I was going to be doing with my life. I had just ended a relationship that wasn’t really going anywhere, I was taking a year off from STU to work whatever hours I could, and things felt like they were “winding down”. I knew change was in the air, and that change was coming, but looking back, things just felt a little odd.
My sister was pregnant with my niece at the time, so yeah, things were definitely going to be changing soon!
Not long after my relationship ended, I bought a new TV to help my mood a bit. I wasn’t necessarily down in the dumps about the breakup, or anything, because it didn’t last long enough for that. It must have just been one of those feelings that came with fall – leaves changing colour, temperatures getting cooler, and most important of all, the NASCAR race season coming to an end. I guess I just wanted a bit of retail therapy!
That, and a bigger TV in my room would kick some serious ass.
My sister and I went to the local Co-Op store to pick out a new TV. After finding a pretty good deal on a 27-inch flat-screen (not flat-panel), I paid for it, and my sister pulled around to the back of the store to pick it up. Unfortunately, the box wouldn’t fit in the car OR the trunk! We had to unbox the TV, and then wedge it sideways into the back seat. In my infinite wisdom, I thought it would be a great idea to put a seatbelt around it!
Can’t hurt, right?? Satisfied, we headed home.
Somewhere on the drive home, the topic of me some day driving a manual-transmission car came up. I had never driven a standard, and beyond going back and forth in our driveway a few years earlier, I never really had a chance to practice.
“Let’s do it now!”, my sister said. “Once you get going, you can just drive the rest of the way home. It’s quite normal once you’re on the highway.”
I was feeling confident, and I agreed. She pulled into the parking lot of the New Maryland Pharmacy, and we changed seats. I tried a few times to go back and forth, just to get used to it… I wasn’t smooth, but I wasn’t popping the clutch or stalling the car, or anything. Good to go!
As I put it in gear and went to leave the parking lot, THAT’s when I popped the clutch. The car shook violently, and the big-assed TV in the backseat lurched forward and hit the passenger seat where she was sitting. Though it didn’t quite hit her hard enough to hurt her or damage the TV, it did have me re-thinking the idea of driving home.
I had just bought this TV, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to take a chance on it breaking before I even got it home!
We swapped seats again, and she drove the rest of the way… I honestly don’t think I’ve tried practicing with a manual transmission since that day. I mean, I do it in NASCAR simulators all the time, with the steering wheel and clutch pedal and everything, but that doesn’t count!
Anyhow, when we got home, we had the worst time just getting the TV up the stairs, and then finding (and lifting) a TV stand it could actually fit on, and put it in my bedroom. After all that work of getting it set up, all I wanted to do was chill out and play games.
I had a few games to choose from – Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike had just come out, and I had the recently released NASCAR Thunder 2004 for Xbox that I could try… but no.
I went back to old faithful Rogue Leader, and hit it up with the Battle of Endor levels. Hot damn, did it ever look amazing!
The ol’ beast of a TV is still hooked up, working great!
Posted on February 12, 2013
My Top 100: #20 – The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay
2004 – Vivendi Games (Xbox, PC, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3)
During the Summer of 2000, there were lots of movies I wanted to see in theatres, but just never got around to it. Mission Impossible 2, Mission to Mars and Final Destination all seemed like movies I’d enjoy, so when I eventually got a PlayStation 2, one of the first things I did was rent those DVD’s. I didn’t own any games or memory cards yet, so what else was I going to do in the meantime?
Among the other movies I had wanted to see in theatres was Pitch Black. My good friend Mel was always fun to go see movies with, but she wasn’t big into sci-fi, and wasn’t too keen on that suggestion. I can’t recall what we ended up seeing that night I called her up wanting to see it, but it sure as hell wasn’t Pitch Black!
In any case, that was the first movie I ever watched on DVD, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. The jump in quality from VHS to DVD was amazing!
The Riddick game looked cool, but it wasn’t really a must-buy for me. It was only when Josh bought the game that I got to see just how awesome it really was. The graphics looked better than anything I had seen in that generation of consoles, and the gameplay was somewhere between Half-Life and Splinter Cell. Not only that, but you also had Vin Diesel’s gruff voice narrating the whole thing. It was as immersive as a game based on a movie could get, really.
Escape from Butcher Bay is a prequel to Pitch Black, and it sets up two major elements of David Twohy’s space saga. Our good bounty hunter friend William Johns (a role reprised by Cole Hauser) plays a prominent part in the game’s story, and his connection to Riddick is explained. You also learn how Riddick got his trademark “eyeshine” and night vision, which was one of the things from the movie I thought would be cool to see.
Though you start in a modest cell with nothing but your wits and a toilet at your disposal, you need to fight, pay off, and con your way through the game. You encounter a ton of crazy inmates and crooked prison guards along the way (including one voiced by Xzibit, dawg), from the bowels of the prison complex, all the way to the very top, where you pay a “visit” to the warden himself. All of this leads into the events of the first movie rather well.
That sense that you get from starting with so little at the bottom of the food chain, then proving yourself as the king of all badasses by finally escaping, is really quite satisfying.
It makes sense that this game reminds me of a movie. What doesn’t make sense, however, is that it reminds me of the time I saw Spider-Man 2 in theatres.
Bear with me!
Plans to see Spidey 2 kinda came together at the last minute. I was running the show at work one night, and it wasn’t until about a half-hour before closing time that we decided to go see it. I was still relatively new to the closing process, but I was pretty sure that I’d be able to get everything done quickly, drive to New Maryland, pick up Josh, the drive back to the movie theatres, get tickets, and get to our seats before show time. I still had to be mindful of not making any mistakes, so getting it all done in a hurry was going to be a challenge!
It was pretty damn close, but I pulled it off. We sat down just as the trailers were starting! Not too shabby!
The first trailer shown was for The Chronicles of Riddick movie. I had learned about it when reading an article about the game, but I didn’t really think it’d be all-out sci-fi epic like this. I mean, Pitch Black was a fun, almost indie horror flick set in space, and didn’t have that big a budget. Chronicles looked to be the polar opposite of that… and it looked awesome!
After seeing that trailer, I knew I’d at least have to give the game a try. Once Josh got it, it was on from there!
Assault on Dark Athena was a decent sequel, but I was just as happy about Escape From Butcher Bay also being included on the disc!