Sometimes I miss wired controllers

I had hoped ever since the Gameboy Advance SP that one day we would start putting lithium batteries in our wireless controllers. The PS3 was the only one to really answer this call as far as I'm concerned while at least M$ decided to sell a kit to do the same thing. The Wii however will always need batteries and since I seem to use mine the most, I'm spending all kinds of frivolous money on the dumb things. Actually, I only need to buy batteries once every three months or so, but when I run out, it's almost as if I had only boughten them the day before. It's times like these where I have to prioritize and decide which console i'm going to be using more and plan accordingly.

Batteries Suck

Curse the day they invented Quarto Puppets

I'm at the point in Final Fantasy IV:The After Years that all the tales are complete and I'm just playing the old waiting game. In the meantime, I found out that two of the characters that you lose in Rydia's tale are recruitable for endgame if you find three items. The first of which you find in a pot during the last dungeon and the last two are drops from some rather rare monsters.

To even find these monsters, you need to be in a specific room during the Waxing phase of the moon, this means that your black magic is weakened leaving you with pretty much physical attacks. These enemies are much tougher than anything you find in the dungeon and come in pairs. If you get back attacked, you're essentially screwed unless you can manage to escape.

The item drops are to my knowledge 1/32 chance and a 1/128. I figured that it would be nothing compared to getting stuff like getting the Sword of Kings in Earthbound: I was ready for the grind. After my third fight, I had the mythril bolt(the 1/32 chance item) and I had already figured that it was going to be easy. Three hours later, I hadn't even gotten another mythril bolt let alone the mythril nut that I was seeking. I wasn't very happy but I was willing to give it a little bit more time.

Now before I go any further in my description of the events, I think I should go through a few details about the characters that I wanted to save for endgame use. I'm referring to Calca and Brina from the first game. You get these dolls to use in battle and all they can really do is dance(which gives a random white magic spell) or jive(same only with blue magic). While you can get lucky and get something like a death spell or reflect on your whole party, the odds of getting them are so low that it's basically just a desparation tactic in battles. They do have an interesting band though, if you have them band together, they'll summon the big Calcabrina boss to do a random attack. These are usually elemental damage to all enemies, a physical attack to one enemy, a curaga type spell for your party, or if you get really lucky or unlucky, it'll self destruct. These are essentially novelty characters, they can be good at times, bu the odds of them doing anything good don't really amount to much.

Back to my story about the horrible grinding, another two hours had gone by and I had somehow broken the game to the point where I got 12 more mythril bolts in near succession. I thought it was kind of funny after having none drop for the previous hours. It was about 4 in the morning when I decided to quit for the night. I returned the next morning and booted up my quicksave to discover that the first enemy group I found dropped what I needed.

Sometimes I hate random number generators...

(by the by, I borrowed the Calcabrina picture from another blogspot, the lastest post involving game names and whatnot. It's an interesting read and I felt it only right to link to him since I borrowed the picture without permission. Sorry man, I hope the extra viewer or two will make it up to you.)

http://kidicarus222.blogspot.com/2009/06/its-secret-to-everybody.html

Return to castle Shadowgate

Not really all that much to talk about today, really wasn't all that eventful other than a family adventure through the dreadlord's castle. Me and my little sisters decided it would be fun to try and play through Shadowgate. About an hour later, we had racked up twelve game over screens and got to the point where I was stuck and out of torches. Some of these puzzles are a little too much for me, I'd be shocked if I made it through as a kid.

Blah blah blah blah blah

Trying to break a Zebesian record

Super Metroid is one of those few perfect gems that have arrived since the golden age of videogames. I personally don't believe there is a perfect videogame, but with the depth and the sheer playability, it is probably the closest thing a developer can create to pure, undistilled delight. It's one of those games that's both accessable to those unfamiliar with it's gameplay style and one the rewards the more skilled gamers for thinking outside the box. It controls like any other shooter/platformer hybrid while secretly giving you advanced moves that are hardly ever even hinted at. The only two advanced tricks that I really can think of that are telegraphed to you are the shinespark from falling into the Dachora pit and the walljump from the Etecoon's trap. Those two tools plus the ability to bomb jump open up the gameworld in a variety of different ways. From the moment you can get the bombs, around 75% of the power ups are obtainable without fighting another boss. Sure, the average player will only be able to get about 15 missiles before fighting Spore Spawn, but the advanced played can skip that boss entirely with no punishment at all.

I grew up with the game personally, so I have very fond memories of the game and I can honestly say that those memories are growing with speedruns, lowball runs and rom hacks. I'll get into rom hacks at another time, probably after this friday since that's the release date of Super Metroid Eris. Anyways, I didn't really have a whole lot to talk about this time around, so I thought I would post some of my speedrun attempts. Neither of these two runs are really relevant to the world of Super Metroid speedrunning today, but back in the day, these would have blown my friend's minds.

http://www.youtube.com/user/numberings#play/user/B5D7F949E600FB50

Late to the party; 'Splosion Man

Man do I ever feel silly, posting about a game that came out five days ago. Truth be told, I had no idea that 'Splosion Man was already out. According to 1up.com, the Turtles in Time remake was supposed to come out last Wednesday and I didn't really have much interest in it. I first found out about 'Splosion Man the same way I found out about Shatter, through 1up's gamenight about a month back. I was in awe of the difficult gameplay and the overall character of the game.
For those of you who aren't quite in the know, 'Splosion Man is a puzzle platformer that puts a heavy emphasis on speed. You can take your time, but in a way, it sort of takes away from the fun of just rushing through the stages. Basically, the main gimmick in the game is that you can combust at will and use it as a jump, an attack and a tool to interact with the environment. Now that can anything from breaking glass to hitting switches to sending metal barrels flailing across the room. The game looks overly difficult at times but the whole 'splode mechanic works so well and intuitively that even if you find something that will get you stuck, you can usually just change your timing and get it right the next time around. You have infinite lives aswell, so that makes the game tolerable to those who don't quite have a taste for the oldschool. The funniest thing I've encountered so far would probably be the coward's way. If you die a certain number of times on one particular obstacle, the game gives you an option to skip the stage altogether but at the cost of being forced to wear a dress on the next level. It's a great game and definately worth the 800M$ points. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Megaman 9 and poorly written out thoughts

I'm sure it's fairly easy to tell that I'm a gamer with older sensibilities. All I seem to write about is the old, most likely due to the fact that I view it in a way similar to archeology. There's always something to discover, always wondering what kind of feelings these old games provoked from the player and how they impacted the gamer's lives. These things had a profound effect on the way I look at things and I'm sure I'm not the only ones.

The Mega Man series was one of those that I experienced secondhand. My older cousin's always played them and I envied them for it. I continuously asked for a Mega man game for my birthday or Christmas for years and years, but it wasn't until Mega Man X that I actually got my hands on one of them. It was blissful and left me wanting for more. Once the emulation age hit, I played through all of them and enjoyed them for what they were. The classic series and the X series are some of my most beloved games.
I was pretty jazzed about Mega Man 9 last year and really enjoyed it. It brought the old school sensibilies to the advanced stage design that only 20 years of failure can pave. One thing that didn't hit me until recently was just how good the soundtrack was. Mega Man 2 was always my favorite when it came to the tunes, but the sound design is just so well thought out.

I'm kind of having a hard time writing out my thoughts right now so rather than ramble, I'll just post one of the best youtube videos out there.

Shatter and the Breakanoids

Around 6PM today, I decided to check out the old PSN and found a variety of goodies that I didn't know about including Wildarms 2 and the newest variation on the Breakout concept, Shatter. These kind of games have been around forever but still seem to be popular in bars. At the old bar I used to frequent, there was always someone on the Arkanoid machine pumping quarters in over and over until he staggered out the doors broke. The games are good on the fundamental level but adding anything to them has been nearly trivial.
Breakout was the original version that stemmed the dozens of clones, and for good reason. This game was essentially one player Pong and got progressively more difficult as time went by. Before this, if you wanted to play Pong by yourself, you'd either completely stomp the nonexistent player two or learn to play with your feet and play with yourself in ways no one really wants to think about. It was a good game, you just chip away at the wall until it's gone and then you get to do the same with a slightly stronger wall.

Arkanoid was probably the most successful Breakout clone to come out to date. It brought a few neat little things like power ups and decorativly placed wallpanels to spruce things up. It also brought upon us the concept of enemies and bosses in this style of game where they really serve no real purpose other than annoyance. The only way you could really die in Arkanoid was if you miss your ball, so the enemies were distracting and they also got in the way. We've all been there with only one block left and the ball refusing to go to it and more than once I've had enemies spawn in the way of what would have been the successful shot. Interestingly enough, it also added Doh as the end boss who was a large Moai head almost out of the blue. The thing that got me is that the Moai has always been one of Konami's trademark devices for their arcade game, yet Taito either neglected to play their competition's games or just didn't care. Anyways, Arkanoid was a good game apart from the unneccesary enemies.
This brings us to Shatter, although I'm sure there are other Breakout clones I could ramble on about. Shatter flips the whole concept of of the subgenre on it's knees and just does everything a little better than it's predecessors. As a modern game in an era of realism, the developers brought in the physics and gravity of these more complicated games and threw them into what was once a cutting edge game. As you throw out your ball or balls, you can impact the gravity in the arena by sucking everything towards you or blowing it away. This fixes the "last panel" situation of all it's peers in a way that we should have thought of years ago. As you destroy panels, you collect tiny "S"s that slowly power your paddle up to the point where if you should wish, you can either blast the bricks or enemies with a hail of lasers or use it to power a shield to block any stray panels coming to knock you off the rails. The game switches perspective level to level going from horizontal to vertical to an almost tubular fashion akin to Gyruss. At the end of each episode, you "fight" a boss who will try andmake you miss your ball while you shoot for it's weak point. I find this to be a bit more satisfying than the Arkanoid approach where the enemy just floats around up top as more of an obstacle than a danger. There's more I could probably talk about in this game, but I honestly haven't played enough to say whether it's a watershed moment in arcade minded games or if it's just a nice experience.

Leisure Suit Larry's first indecent exposure♦

Being the ripe young age of 21, I find that I completely missed out a lot of the classic adventure games of the 80's and 90's. When someone mentions the name "Sierra" my mind immediately jumps to Half-life which I'm told is wrong. See, before I could even read, Sierra was one of the major creators of the Adventure game genre that I missed out on. Since I feel like they all passed me by, I think I'm going to go ahead and play through some of them.

The first game on my list is the first Leisure Suit Larry game as I'm sure you've probably gathered by the screen posted about an inch above this. Actually, this isn't going to be the first place I start. In 1981, a game by the name of Softporn Adventure came out and it served as pretty much the backbone of the original Larry. This game was completely text based and started you out in a seedy bar with nothing around but the bartender and a curtain with a button next to it. First thing I did as any good man of age should do was order myself a shot of whiskey. Apparently, the virtual version of myself doesn't have the same taste for the stuff that the legit version does, so simply took it with me out the door. Outside I found a drunkard in the hallway lousing it out and making all kinds of noise. I figured he would probably enjoy the whiskey more than I would, so I gave it to him and proceeded to the bathroom. After dealing with a bout of the constipation blues, I read some of the graffiti in the stalls and found the message "Password Bellybutton". After finding that detail out, I proceeded back into the bar and pressed the button next to the curtain. An eerie voice came out towards me and asked "Password?". Luckily for me, I cleaned out my system and found out that bellybutton was in fact the password for the "button". I'm curious as to whether or not the button was some sort of pun, I'll just assume that it is. Anyways, I went into a room and went up the stairs and found a seedy looking hooker. It was here that I got stuck and couldn't figure out what to do. I tried to kill myself, but I didn't have a knife. It was an interesting little diversion but I found myself frustrated that the game didn't give you a list of phrases to try out.
Anyways, on to Larry, the game starts out asking your age to determine whether or not you should even be playing a risque game like this in the first place. Once again, being 21, I found that I should in theory be able to play the game since I could pretty much go to any sexshop in town and buy a DVD. The game itself didn't think so however, I'll let the screenshots tell the story this time around.I decided to see what would happen to a curious yet honest minor when they tried to play the game.Well, now that I know the game will end itself here, let's proceed.
My first attempt to pass through the trivia wasn't a successful one. My inner fratboy says that I should have probably known the answer to this question, but I guess he had a hangoverOkay, enough fun and games.
The actual game itself is pretty much the same as Softporn Adventure, you go around and try to progress through a series of odd, contrived puzzles and try to score. This time though, you get the benefit to see crude pixel art of whatever you're trying to do. Movement is now handled by the arrow keys instead of using compass directionals; it's a whole lot flashier, but takes up more time. If you stick around long enough, a dog will come up and prance around the place. I kinda wanted to see if I could use a "pet" command but I ended up getting run over by a car.


At this point I decided I was done with Larry for the night, we'll have to see if I continue through the game and if I decide to go through it's many sequels. Keep tuned to see for yourself.

Wizard of OZ jRPG?

The Wizard of OZ was probably the biggest watershed moment in the film industry to my estimation. This was the first movie to take the audience on an adventure into a land of merryment and odyssey. We got gorgeous backdrops, interesting and unique characters and one of the most heartfelt stories of the time. Although it wasn't the first of it's kind, it brought the industry to a world of color and seemingly set the standard early. Keep in mind I'm only in my twenties, so I have a stinted view on things.

Anyways, color me surprised when today, Xseed games announced that they would be bringing over Riz-Zoawd under the title " The Wizard of Oz:Beyond the Yellow Brick Road" to the US. Before today I had never even heard of this game, but now that i've seen footage, I think I may enjoy it. Oz seemingly is all stylus controlled unlike most current DS rpgs. The game looks like it has a battlesystem akin to the Dragon Quests of the world; you basically just tap whatever you want your strawman to do. Movement is made by running your stylus over a virtual track ball. If you hit the trackball hard, you run fast, go slow and you walk at a snail's pace. This looks fairly creative, but without the game in front of me, I'm just a little skeptical.The character design seems a little intruiging aswell. It seems to have taken a note from the Return of Oz film that came out in the 80's. Out are the nostalgic images that come to mind when we think of the Tin Man and in it's place, we get highly stylized characters. It may not be as dark as that film, but it was certainly the first thing that popped into my mind before the 1939 movie. We'll see how it goes eventually, but for now I think I may hunt down a copy of Return to Oz.

Twin moons and the son of the Holy King

Well, it only took me around four and a half hours to complete the first chapter of The After Years and I'm not completely sure what to make of it. The game starts out with a simply fetch quest in the guise of a knight's trial and quickly escalates to an all out war with an unknown woman. The new characters are fairly likable but the storyline itself didn't really go all that far. I guess that's to be expected since this was only roughly about an eighth of the game. Although the story seems kind of meshed up in it's ideas, I can at least say that the dialogue shifts from being solid to being overwhelmingly campy; I like it. Something about the whole fanfiction angle that the story has presented me with along with a familiar environment and solid gameplay has just managed to hit the right spot with me.

I'm about to start Rydia's tale and I'm hoping that it will at least answer some of the questions presented thus far.

Impressions of a new moon

When I had originally heard about the cell phone sequel to Final Fantasy IV, I found myself scoffing it's mere existence and passed it off as a cash grab by the lovely people of Square-Enix. Slowly, over the pass of a few months, I had found some screen shots and found myself amazed that it actually attempted something new. The sprites where redrawn for the most part and I noticed what looked like certain abilities being notched up and down implying that they actually mixed things up a bit with the gameplay. By this point I had gone from absolute disgust at the idea to secretly wishing that it would somehow make it stateside. These were empty dreams however as the cellphone game industry is nearly nonexistent compared to the Nipon.
I wasn't abandoned by Square however, as they shortly thereafter announced that Matrix Software would be following up their successful remake of Final Fantasy III with the much superior successor. When it came time for me to finally get the game, I found that it was actually a large improvement over the forms we had gotten in the past. Beforehand, the Gameboy Advance version was probably the best as it added the ability to take any group to the endgame and added a labyrinthine dungeon for each of the characters to go through upon completion. This DS remake took these abilities out but replaced them with the ability to customize your party with your former accomplices techniques and also added the most balanced gameplay seen in any version. Enemies actually got stronger and moved faster to compensate with your ability to change your tactics in new and unheard of fashions; this was a very good thing. The touched up 3d graphics of the DS were nice and the sound quality was infinitely better than the GBA, but those things are just icing on the cake to me.

Just like any other Final Fantasy game, the game sold like a roaring wild fire in the dried out mountains of southern California. It was a tremendous success and further backed up Matrix Software's credentials in the Final Fantasy series. Because of this, it is my assumption that they decided to port The After Years to Wiiware to take advantage of the remake's success. Needless to say I was a wee bit giddy.It's been a few months since it premiered here in the states and I just recently obtained access to the game for various ridiculous reasons. I had heard since it's release that the storyline was poor and recycled a lot of assets from the original version; when I started playing it however, I found that it only added to the experience. The story in the original was uninspired at best, but it was the best we had at the time. Something sort of compels me to actually prefer the minimalism of the old days, needless to say these old tropes still fit the grooves of my likability. As far as the reused music, I find that any other music would leave me with a feeling of wanting similar to way Yoshi's Island DS' score underwhelmed to every degree. The tiles that were supposedly lifted look like they were redrawn yet again adding a layer of polish that I wasn't quite expecting. Enemy sprites look like they were uprezzed, but it doesn't look bad miraculously enough.

The gameplay itself isn't as balanced as the DS version, but it's at least on par with the Super Famicom version. The mobs are soft and squishy but the bosses force you to find a strategy comparable to the situation. The battles got two major additions; combo attacks akin to Chrono Trigger and fluctuating attack and magic based on the phases of the moon. The combos work simply by selecting the "Band" option on the side and choosing a comrade to share it with. I haven't seen many other than one presented in a tutorial battle and the Holy Sword ability started by the union of Cecil and Rosa. These attacks seem to be more powerful than the combined attacks of the two but come at the cost of mana points. The moon phases are fairly simple in their function; whenever a tent is used, the moon will wax and wane and depending on the position it's at, different results will be seen. For example, when the moon is full, the attack power of your party and of the enemy will be halved and black magic will receive a large boost. These things add just enough depth to create a few bonuses to the aged battle system to make it both somewhat new yet familiar.

My opinions and observations may not be entirely accurate as I tried to keep most of the details away from me during the wait to make it seem a little fresher. I'm enjoying myself and I truly hope the game keeps impressing me.

(My apologies to IGN for lifting a few of your screenshots)

My first few days of a Dragon Quest

On November 1st, 2001, I went to my local target and picked up a game merely by chance on it's release date. That game was Dragon Warrior 7 and I can honestly say that it had a profound impact on the way I see the world and how much I adore anything and everything nostalgic.

The game brought me to an ancient and forgotten temple made by an innocent people in a barren world that consisted of nothing but a single island. You play as a child who has a penchant for exploring with his buddies and you just so happen to unlock the secrets to restoring the world to what it was before time forgot it. You and your merry men journey through both time and space battling everything from slimes to the devil. This was no short journey either as the average span of the game was easily 100 hours.

The game enforced the morals and values that we've all had bestowed upon us as children and presented us with stories of other people's folly. When one town spit in god's face or became too greedy, they would get decimated by an inferior army or turned to stone. That's my kind of heavenly punishment in a game. This world gave me exactly what I wished for in this world; an adventure that I could call all my own and play my own way.










Fast forward 8 years and I find myself a cynical adult with a stinted way of viewing the world and then suddenly from nowhere, a Slime attacks. I procured a copy of the newest remake in the Dragon Quest series and I find myself lulled back into the childish way I used to view the world. One might think this would be a bad thing, but I haven't enjoyed a game like this in quite a while.

It's kind of late at the moment so I'm almost at a loss of words as far as portraying exactly how this makes me feel. I'll just say it's leaving me giddy for now.

An Introduction of Sorts

I'm just a fool with an interest in both writing and video games. I'd like to be a professional game journalist and I'm currently in school to pursue that hope. After playing games for nearly twenty years starting from the twilight years of the Nintendo Entertainment System to the fourth generation of console wars. I enjoy the homebrew scene a lot and I tend to try and get all my old consoles capable of import games. My sentence structure is often odd and in most cases, I've been told that isn't a good thing. I type in a mirror image of how I speak, So it's fairly obvious that I'm just a tad awkward.

No one is going to be seeing this right away as this is mostly just to practice my writing skills and possibly build up a portfolio.