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A great audio piece from the New Yorker that I wanted to share. A non-gamer, novelist finally picks up a controller and talks about the bonding experience between himself and his kid. he also discusses the beauty of the games (the movie aspect) and the impressiveness of the story-lines. Just a really cool piece that I wanted to share:
http://www.newyorker.com/...8/09/100809on_audio_baker
Some of you may instantly recognize the title of this post, others of you may be curiously scratching your heads. If you don't recognize the quote, those are the immortal words uttered by the in-game announcer at the start of every race in the very first Ridge Racer game for the Sony Playstation, one of the system's ten launch titles and one of its best known racers. Many things can and have been written about the Ridge Racer series of games published by Namco, but they are interesting for this blog because five of the eleven games in the series have been in a console launch lineup. The launch titles were:
This five part series of blog entries will look at each launch title in the Ridge Racer series and what, if anything, they did to showcase the new capabilities of each system.
Ridge Racer - Sony Playstation
The Playstation's U.S. launch in September of 1995 featured only one game that had also been released when the system premiered in Japan the prior December: Ridge Racer. In fact, Ridge Racer was the only launch game featured in all three major game markets (JPN/NA/EUR ). It seemed clear from the start that Sony was banking on Namco's arcade hit to help sell systems.
In the U.S., Ridge Racer was one of two racing games that new console buyers could choose from when entering their favorite game or electronics store on that Saturday morning in September. The other, ESPN Extreme Games, featured an assortment of X-Games events such as street luge and mountain biking. Only Ridge Racer provided a traditional automobile racing game. So, new buyers looking to take the arcade racing experience home were faced with little choice but to buy it on launch day. As it turns out, they couldn't have done much better: Ridge Racer is an absolute gem of a racing game that accomplished many technical feats fifteen years ago and holds up well to this day.
Arcades in the U.S. were still doing quite well in 1994 and 1995, and though the focus for many players had shifted from fighting games to racing games, there was a lot to choose from in coin-ops around the country in the mid-90s. Increasingly, the best arcade games were seeing high profile ports for home consoles. During the period of time that the Saturn, Playstation, and N64 were released (between May 1995 and September 1996) each console had a racing game associated with it, a game that promised to push the limits of the console. For Nintendo, that game was Cruisn' USA (though the game didn't make the N64 launch). For Sega, the game was Daytona USA. For Sony, it was Ridge Racer.
At the time, I was a die-hard Sega fan and insanely jealous of my friends who were able to enjoy their copies of Daytona USA at home. Sure, the Daytona USA port didn't look arcade perfect, but it seemed close and impressed me nonetheless. When I couldn't play on a friends' Saturn, I would still frequently pump quarters into the Daytona USA arcade machine as my home racing was limited to Virtua Racing for the Genesis for several more years (an excellent game in its own right). By the time I finally joined the 32-bit generation and picked up a Playstation in late 1996 (skipping the Saturn altogether!), I was anticipating the release of new racing games for the PS1 (most notably Gran Turismo) and passed on picking up Ridge Racer. I'd had my fill of racing with Daytona and Crusin' and decided to pick up games for other genres in the interim.
So, I only recently acquired the classic PS1 launch game, and now wish I had done so a decade ago.
 Early PS1 games didn't feature many of the icons on the back indicating compatibility with memory cards, number of discs, etc.
As a launch title, the game is significant for several reasons:
The graphics. There's no denying that an important draw for purchasers on launch day is graphics horsepower. The graphics put out in the PS1 port of Ridge Racer are simply better than they were for the Saturn port of Daytona USA. The polygons are less blocky, the sense of speed is faster, and the scenery is more diverse. There are usually more things happening on the screen at any given time, and aside from the poorly designed menus, the interface is quite polished. Daytona may have been better in the arcades, but if these racing games were meant to show off what the system could do, Ridge Racer was an early harbinger of the doom of the Saturn. Ridge Racer's graphics are bright, pop in is quite good for a first-gen title, and the scale of the landscape surrounding the courses is impressive.
It allowed you to choose your own music. Once the game was loaded and a race started, you could swap out the Ridge Racer CD for your own favorite disc. The game would then randomly select tracks on your CD to play while you raced and navigated menus. Since Daytona USA was a frequent point of comparison at the time this game came out, I should note that I also prefer Ridge Racers original music over Daaaaay-tohhhhhhh-nah's ( especially given the "classic" nature of the latter's songs). That said, nothing beats choosing your own musical selection. In playing the game again for this post, I chose the era-appropriate Beck album "Mellow Gold." Hearing track 11 playing over the credits was a sweet bit of randomness. In an age where CD sales were really catching on, this was a nice way for the Playstation to showcase its versatility.
 Place this in the CD drive to make Ridge Racer unplayable.
It featured a mini-game with a generous reward during the only loading screen. Popping Ridge Racer into a console usually meant a few resets until all the enemies in this one screen version of Galaxian were cleared. Clearing all the enemies in the limited time granted you access to three times the number of cars that would be available otherwise. Not only did you have more options, but many of these were better cars. Furthermore, the game only loads once at the very beginning, a welcome change from the frequent and frustrating waits experienced by owners of many other CD-based consoles at the time. The fact that the loading screen is a game itself was icing.
The game featured a hefty amount of unlocakbles. There were certainly games with unlockables in the previous generations, but Ridge Racer was one of the first CD-based games to offer multiple versions of tracks to unlock, cars that could be won, and other goodies for the devoted player to discover. The ease of saving data on a memory card (times, unlocked tracks, etc.) meant that you could take these unlocked items with you, one of the key selling points for Sony's console.
 The back of the manual provided alternate cover art.
Taken as a package, it is easy to see why Sony pushed for Ridge Racer to see a release in every major region on launch day. Better racing games would eventually come, but compared to racers on other consoles that preceded Ridge Racer, Sony clearly had the upper hand and could better capitalize on the ongoing arcade craze. The game is far from perfect; it is single player, some of the drifting feels too loose, the various tracks are all variations of one main track, the announcer voice is annoying, and the difficulty ramps up considerably in later stages. However, the game is still worth playing today despite these weaknesses, if only to appreciate how different it was compared to what had come before. The game would go on to see huge sales and win numerous awards in the next year. It would also become Sony's first pack-in game.
Ridge Racer spawned over 10 sequels. We will revisit some of those games in future installments.
Next Up: an "end game"
Regular readers of the Game Boy Player Land blog surely know that I'm an active member of the Together Retro game club at http://www.racketboy.com. This month's game is the legendary NBA Jam, a game that I loved in its SNES incarnation. However, something recently piqued my interest: the fact that Acclaim attempted to bring NBA Jam to a Game Boy cartridge not once, but five times since the birth of the classic franchise. That's a lot of ports, but are any of them any good? Well luckily for you, I played them so you don't have to. Let's take a look...
 
The original NBA Jam was ported to Game Boy in 1994, and it does a surprisingly decent job of bringing the original game's feel with it. Of course there are important omissions. There's obviously no "he's on fire!" commentary for instance. But the game does offer up an acceptable two-on-two arcade basketball experience. The biggest problem with the game (which we'll see across the board) is the logistics of the controls. The START button is the Turbo button on the Game Boy port, which was incredibly awkward on the original hardware. Luckily if you're playing this cart on the Game Boy Player then the Gamecube's proprietary controller actually makes this a more comfortable layout to utilize. In fact, this could be one of the only Game Boy games I can think of where I'll opt to use the Gamecube controller instead of the Hori pad.
 
NBA Jam: Tournament Edition was released a year later. Unfortunately it wasn't the upgrade that SNES and Genesis received. Those games were flooded with new features and mountains of Easter Eggs. To be honest, I'm really not sure what the differences are in the Game Boy port of T.E.. In fact, I've heard that the original NBA Jam Game Boy game did in include some hidden characters (though I've never found them myself), while all sources I can find on the subject say that T.E. (and all subsequent Game Boy series releases for that matter) removed hidden characters altogether.
 
NBA Jam 99 made the jump to the Game Boy Color and it was completely anticlimactic. Sure it's nice to see some colorized sprites, but somehow this game looked less like an NBA Jam title than the earlier Game Boy releases. Really, this game could be any old two-on-two basketball game. Though in fairness, it plays about the same as the Game Boy titles, so if you're really against black and white graphics then this could at least be an option to you.
 
Much like the subtle (or pointless) upgrade from NBA Jam to Tournament Edition on the Game Boy, the release of NBA Jam 2001 was really a bit of a head-scratcher. Other than the slight roster update that would come from two years of drafts, really there wasn't much to make this a noticeable upgrade. Same old non-impressive graphics. Same old gameplay from the 1994 Game Boy edition.
 
If ever there was a system that should have an NBA Jam port it was the Game Boy Advance. Indeed, many of us GBA enthusiasts tend to lovingly think of our handhelds as a portable SNES. And why not? The GBA was technically capable of 32-bit games (or so Nintendo bragged), so handling an eight year old 16-bit title should have been no problem, right?
How sad it is then that NBA Jam 2002 is actually the absolute worst game that the franchise has ever released. Yes, that's right. I'm actually telling you that the original GB game with it's awkward control scheme is a far better game than this.
First of all NBA Jam 2002 was able to utilize the GBA's hardware to at least alleviate the difficult control issues of earlier GB titles. But that might be its only strong point. You see it looks terrible considering the hardware it's running on. And though they were smart enough to bring an announcer back, he will annoy you within about 60 seconds with his limited array of voice clips (none of which include "he's on fire!" if you're wondering). The graphics are horrible. Indeed even when the ball goes through the hoop, it sure doesn't look like it. I really can't tell if I made a basket or not without keeping a close eye on the score. And the gameplay is just as terrible. Dunks are missed often, while three-pointers from the other end of the court are a breeze. And for some reason professional basketball players have a really hard time inbounding the ball without causing four or five turnovers in the process. I could go on, but I think you should just trust me when I say that this game is just really bad. No matter how good you know it should be.
 
Apparently Acclaim also had plans to bring an updated NBA Jam title to the Gamecube in 2004, but that never materialized. A part of me thinks this could have been amazing if it was going to be anything like the retro-fitted Wii game that's set to be released in October. But from the preview screens, it's hard to say how it would have actually panned out (see above).
At any rate, it's funny to think that there are five versions of this game available for the Game Boy line, and yet all I can do is wonder just how good SNES emulation is on GBA hardware. Yikes!
It's been a while, hasn't it? I didn't realize until just now that I didn't do a single one of these in July. But, there is a reason for my absence. You see, with that last big haul, I simply had to take a break from hunting. I didn't have room to sort any new treasure and really didn't have any money to buy new treasure anyway. While I still need to work on the money part of it, I have made enough room to start buying again, so I started going to garage sales again this weekend. I went for a full day Friday, but couldn't this Saturday because I had a family reunion to go to. Anyway, on to the treasures.
Continue reading Treasure Hunt Chronicles 2010 - #7
So i managed to gain access to one of my 4 old HDDs. Luckily the one i got into was where i stored much of my RFGen/Hardcore Gaming(who sadly went offline. The URL is in use again but it is not the site i once loved) I managed to recover this review as well as a around 1k scans(all of which i believe i uploaded ~5 years ago :-/) and other RFGen related materials.
I started this review (+/-)5 years ago. It is mostly completed and i have edited it ever so slightly (capitalized the I's, fixed some typos, added Max Payne comparison, etc) from the condition i recently recovered it in. I was originally going to finish it up right away since i knew it was incomplete but i realized i remember very little about the game off hand and would have to either play it for a couple minutes or look at some game play footage to put myself back through the lackluster and mostly forgettable experience that was this game.
So onto the review. Feel free to be critical of this as i do intend to finish it and submit it to the DB.... also i hope all the HTML works.
Well what do we have here? Is this a GTA/Max Payne clone/hybrid?
Well at first glance it may seem so. But because it is a free roaming game it will automatically be compared to that series, which in my opinion is much better.
Oh yes and before I begin right from the start I have to be honest. The back of the box only told you a half truth. While you never repeat the same mission twice you will be doing one of these things every mission; fighting a handful of enemies, shooting dozens of enemies, stealth fighting enemies or "maintaining a safe distance".
True Crime: Streets of L.A. is a very mediocre game. It seemed like rather than picking one genre and making it good they tried to incorporate 3 of them into a decent title.
The fighting is OK, but glitchy. Sometimes you will hit an enemy and knock them through a wall or impassable object and have to try and attack them through said wall and hope they are knocked back onto the side you are on. There were also at least two instances where the person I was fighting dissapeared completely only to reappear a second or two later.
There isn't much to do with the attacking anyways. There isn't a very complex move set so it is pretty much you continuosly hitting A, X and Y and running to you opponant. You can use B to grapple in a fight but since it takes so long 98% of the time you will get attacked, 1.5% of the time of the time you end up getting it reversed or headbutted, etc and .5% of the time you will actually "successfully" grapple someone
The shooting was acceptable though. The aiming system is pretty weak but it does improve over time... or maybe you just get use to it over time...). There is a decent array of weaponry and it is always fun to dual wield AK-47's, sawed-off and double barrel shotguns. There are a few other guns, Magnums and I believe Mac10s, but those are really the only ones worth mentioning and they are the ones you will encounter for the most part.
The driving in the game can be glitchy with the vehicles you jack from citizens. Sometimes they will not accelerate properly or will decelerate slightly for no reason or worst of all will just move very very slowly. One of the worst parts is the camera will not adjust it's angle to accommodate for vehicle size. So if you want to steal a bus to wreak havoc or take it off some sweet jumps don't bother. You won't be seeing much of what your actually doing.
There is some stealth. Nothing much to comment on. Walk around really slow. Wait for a guy to turn around, knock him out or break his neck. You have a tranq gun with 3 rounds for those tricky situations. But it has no auto aim and no reticule, pretty much get them in the center of the screen and shoot and you should hit your mark though.
One of the more original parts of this game is the good cop bad cop mechanic. But even this has already been used more effectively in games(Fable). Kill a citizen you get 1 bad point. Kill a perp you get a bad point. Snap a dudes neck on a stealth mission you get a bad point. Beat the crap out of a perp and cuff him you get a good point. Knock out a dude in a stealth mission you get a good point. It is much easier(and more fun) to get bad points than it is to get good points. But unfortunately if you are not a good cop you will run into the problem of not being able to progress till you get yourself out of the negative.
A couple final jabs at this game:
Story line is pretty weak. The game probably would have been better if you just were assigned a mission and did it. They made the cutscenes unnecessarily long considering the story is so short.
SPOILER!The game COMPLETELY goes over the deep end. You go from being a normal LA cop to killing zombies and an ancient Chinese dragon. It just is thrown at you out from nowhere(!) and if memory serves it happened near the end of the game./SPOILER!
RF Generation Review Score
65%
(Also why do i have insufficient privileges to post spoilers in the blogs?)
In November of 2002, something big released into the gaming world. Something that has had a ripple effect, forever changing the landscape of interactive entertainment. Something that may outlast motion control, 3D, and other previous innovations that were further enhanced and repackaged for our newer consoles. Its scope rivals the development of online play, and as long as games continue to develop with online features, it may never go away. It is something that its own developers would likely never truly understood the impact, nor the millions of gamers that now refuse to live without it. A new form of gamer identity.
Xbox Live released in November 2002, and while the network fought terrible bouts of lag, the voice chat rarely worked as promised, and the game support itself started slow, Microsoft also implanted something of which took years to see the true effects . As part of the design to separate paid Live accounts, you had to create a gamertag, a sign-on, an account by which all your save games and settings would be remembered.
You created your gamer identity.
Now before I get called out as a Xbot fanboy and all of the other colorful terms used to describe myself, family, and dog, hear me out.
In the beginning, God created the Arcade. And it was good. We plunked in a few quarters, got mauled, came back for more. And as our skills grew, we saw those high score initials pop up, a silent challenge by those strange three letter signatures. Most of us probably just shook our heads and walked away, but others, we took that challenge, and would play game after game, wordlessly making a bet to ourselves and that stranger that our own three letters would surpass them. It spurred us on, and when our name made it to the top, we were the king of the world- or at least, the block that machine was in. Our initials on a high score board was the first step toward claiming our gamer identity, letting others see us, if just locally, putting our stamp on the digital domain. It may seem like a huge jump, but decades later having your name imprinted on a computer moved beyond game competitions, and would develop into Facebook, MySpace, and a whole list of methods by which we use to write our digital signatures, our virtual identities. But back to the more important subject: Games.
While high score tables grew into the home video game market, it would take a few more years and more complex role playing and adventure games before you were able to put more content and progress behind a saved name. The original Legend of Zelda, a console game breakthrough in many regards, allowed you to put in your name at the beginning, and all subsequent progress, every heart container found and every dungeon conquered, was saved under your own name. It was a mark of pride, of identity, to see that progress listed under whatever name you gave your file.
And then things didn't change much for a few decades. Super Nintendo, Playstation, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Playstation 2, Virtual boy, 3DO, Jaguar CD, even PC. Sure, more games let you name your own proof of progress to show others, and virtual worlds became open and big enough that you could alter something permanently and then call it your own, but gamer identity stayed private, impersonal, isolated from one game to another. Attempts were made to connect who you are to the game you played, but nothing really progressed.
Then comes the Xbox. Using the ubiquitous computer method of logging into a user ID for personalized content was the first subtle transition. Combined with Xbox Live's cross-game connection with your gamertag, a whole new realm of gamer identity opened. Now, if EnderBuggerKiller7 passed you in MotoGP, a day later you might be popping EnderBuggerKiller7 with a PPC in MechAssault, and it was the same guy! The importance of cross-game connectivity was more than mere novelty; for the first time, you could keep a name, a unique identifier, through every online game, and it would stay consistent. Get to the leaderboard in one game, and people would check their own favorite game's leaderboard and see if you were in their turf too, another silent challenge from a name on a table that we mostly phased out of since the glory days of the arcade. With voice chat, the challenge didn't even have to stay silent anymore- you could send a message or talk in-game, egging each other on or discussing strategies.
But if cross-game consistency opened the door for the future of gamer identity, it was kicked off its hinges with the invention of the gamerscore. The true expansion of the idea of global leaderboards, now your entire current-gen gaming career materialized, open and visible, and with it a new sense of progress and identity. Now, you could compare not just a high score in an individual game, but how many games you had completed, conquered, squandered, or wasted time with. You could look up to see if someone had found a secret you missed, ask them for help through voice chat, or just play together. In its ideal form, Xbox Live is designed for community and competition. That it sometimes seems to mostly consist of tweens with infinite amount of time to master a game and a dialect almost entirely comprised of racial epithets and sexual slang (with video chat to match!) is unfortunate, but expected when you hand the keys to the Ferrari over to your little siblings. It's just a matter of time before they crash it and take out a few innocents on the road with them.
It might seem like I'm giving Xbox Live too much credit for not much of a big deal. But the effects of these developments have exploded into every aspect of our gaming. Nintendo, not ready or willing to break out into the online scene just yet, creates Miis; virtual representations of your identity. The Mii represents the same creation as the Gamertag, a virtual identity through which all of your gaming progress is tracked. Instead of universal achievements, you get an entire calender with notes that represent the progress you have made. Not just in games, but almost all activity on the Wii. A look at the calender notes on the Wii reads like a different format for the 360's data tracking, with the same intent; to give you a sense of identity, of accomplishment, of easily tracking your activity. Microsoft would famously copy the Mii idea with a nearly identical Avatar system, attaching you yet again to your digital self. Xbox 360 even imported the Windows method of a small picture, user chosen, attached to the gamertag. Further Avatar customization has become its own marketable, profitable expansion.
Even Sony got into the act, with a profile crossbar system that debuted on the PSX DVR, and then on the PSP and PS3. Now, it's not as simple as putting a game in and just playing- you pick your Profile/Mii/Gamertag, the representation of your global gaming identity, the some of all of your gaming progress on that system. Sony's Home, a derivative of Second Life (which itself is, like MMOs, is a form of expanded digital identity on a wide social network) takes the concept a step further and removes the gaming aspect as a necessary item, allowing a social or exploratory side of digital identity.
While the concept of these unifying systems may seem like a natural progression from our early gaming days, the impact it has on our gaming cannot be understated. It shows no sign of ever going away. We now prefer a game for our PS3 or 360 because we want the trophies/achievements. We feel a sense of loss if we play a game together and can't log on to our own accounts for the representation of our presence. As long as trophies and gamerscores carry over to the next console generation (and they assuredly will,) gamers will buy a system just to keep their numbers growing. I remember playing a DS game and feeling disappointed that I put several hours into the game and would not get anything for my gamerscore out of it! (I'm over it now, as well as buying crappy games to boost my gamerscore. Now I just buy crappy games cheap to boost the collection  ) Many of us try to avoid Miis and Avatars altogether, but they have proven to be so popular that a new incarnation of them will likely stay with us on future gaming systems.
You may not care about trophies or gamerscores. You may just click past the Miis to get to the game. You may never get online, and you may care less about a gamer identity. But the industry has spoken. The methods may change up a bit, but the infusion of gamer identity has fully integrated into our industry. And with the advent of digital downloads and add-on content for even single player gaming, there is now a more justifiable monetary reason to keep track of your digital self. It may never recede.
It is now practically unthinkable that we would buy a new console and not have some type of identity system we log on to, that keeps track of all our private save games, features the name people identify as who we are, and unifies our identity, online or off. The days of just finding your save-game, unattached to any profile, on your PSX/PS2/Dreamcast/Neo Geo memory card is long gone. Now, with the exception of a few portables, we either log on to a virtual identity, or we don't play.
Is it a good or bad thing? Both. Recently, when Blizzard Entertainment suggested the idea of posting the real identities of users inside forums, a sudden and powerful backlash resulted in the company nixing the idea. The privacy element of keeping our virtual identities separate from our real identities will grow more and more important. While there are dangers with any medium that allows role-play, it must be noted that these issues were not the same as when two kids popped in Super Mario Bros. As our electronic entertainment yields more complex, interactive universes, so too will players yield greater personal investment.
We will all feel different about the methodology. Yet our industry moves ever onward. From Combat to Modern Warfare, from Tetris to Peggle, we will continue finding ways to fulfill our wishes of living out an identity that is just outside our own. However, as with any entertainment, the impetus to stay responsible with our identity is on us, the players.
Habitual readers of the Game Boy Player Land blog are well aware of my affiliation with http://www.racketboy.com and the Together Retro game club. July's game was Ecco The Dolphin, a game I had never played until now. Though I had a Genesis at the time of its release, I remember thinking that it was a kids' game. And to be honest, I had never really thought about the game since. So when the game was announced for the game club, I looked forward to it. The concept of exploring the vast oceans in a game that was known more for puzzle-solving than violence seemed like a wonderful change of pace to me. How naive I was.
 
When I first fired up the game courtesy of the Sega Smash Pack available on the GBA, I found myself in the kind of open-water level that I imagined. The music was ambient, and although slightly creepy it was indeed relaxing. I was amazed at the wonderful graphics. My understanding is that the GBA port is based a bit more on the Sega CD version than the Genesis version, which was apparently a bit easier. However, the GBA version has a few less levels than the Sega CD version, so it's not a straight up port either.
I breezed through the first level without much problem, and felt like I was really going to enjoy the game for the month. But here's my actual notes that I kept while playing the game since it utilized a password feature rather than any battery saves:
Ecco The Dolphin
KRMCSRDK - Undercaves - 7/1
YJ.TFNFF - The Vents - 7/10
N-VSZKKY - The Lagoon - 7/11
And that's it. Perhaps you're wondering what happened to my momentum? Well, let me try to recap. I spent about a week in the stupid Undercaves. As it turns out, this game is horribly hard. And I'm not the type to shy away from a hard game. I mean, I can get knocked around in Ghosts N Goblins and actually have a good time. No big deal. But this game is just a total jerk. Apparently everything hurts dolphins! And if you try to swim away from whatever hit you, it will hit you three more times as you clumsily try to get away.
 
To be honest, I would have just left Ecco in the Undercaves to rot if it wasn't for the fact that I really wanted to see the Octopus for myself. So I stuck with it, and made it past the Octopus. And then for a glorious two-days I made some progress. And then I just plain stopped playing. I just couldn't face the game anymore. It just stopped feeling fun to me, and there were so many more levels ahead. I wanted to stick with it, because I've always really tried to do my best with the Together Retro games. But playing Ecco just felt like I was being punished.
I will however end on by saying something positive about the game: it features some of the most beautiful 16-bit graphics you'll ever see. For instance, this has been my desktop wallpaper all month...
So I am an avid videogamer, retrogamer specifically, but I was first and will always be a boardgamer. I started playing boardgames with my family at a very young age. My grandfather taught me how to play cards like he learned in the Navy during WWII and one of my uncles had several titles in the Avalon Hill Bookcase line, including Acquire (think Monopoly for grownups), Civilization, and Kingmaker. Many days of my childhood were spent slugging through dungeons, building empires, and trying to apply glass cannon tactics to the Patton's Third Army. This is not to say that I did not play videogames, I did grow up in the 80s, but boardgaming is a hobby of mine that is simply cathartic.
Some gamers prefer to play Catan on their 360, others prefer to actually roll the dice. I dont know how to explain it, something about the smell of the paper, seeing your opponents, and actually rolling the dice, makes boardgaming impossible to replicate in a videogame for me. Luckily in highschool I met some people who thought the same way and they introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons. Now a whole subset of RPGs kinda took off in my life. In college this led me to meet other gamers who played a lot of boardgames and RPGs but some never videogames, and this kinda irked me.
Now I am fairly openminded when it comes to hobbies and collections. I mean I have friends who spin their own yarn, blow glass, and some who are trapeze artists. But I have never met a more stubborn group of people than gamers. Some gamers will not branch out from their path at all. I have dealt with a lot of RPGers who call all videogames kiddy or simple games and I have dealt with videogamers who say worse things about RPGers. Well since I sit in the middle of all of these, like I am sure some of yall reading this do, and since I can never keep my mouth shut, I started to do something about it.
I first started with RPGs and couldnt find footing. So I asked a friend of mine for help. That friend was Gary Gygax and when I asked him about it and a truncated form of his response was:
The CRPG captures vividly most of the essential features of the true RPGexploration, problem solving, combat, acquisition. What is missing is the inter-personal role-playing and the vast range of possibilities provided by the game master.
Furthermore he suggested that when I brought up CRPGs (Computer RPGs) with RPGers I should present them as interactive movies instead of RPG games. He also said it probably wouldnt work, which ofcourse he was right. As I was asked to leave one of the groups I was gaming with after trying to bring it up.
So I decided to shelve the idea. Years later one of my friends asked if I knew any games like Final Fantasy Tactics. I named off a handful I knew off the top of my head that he could get at a Gamestop at the time: Tactics Ogre Knights of Lodis, Zone of the Enders Fist of Mars, Front Mission 3, and Xcom (Since I knew he had a GBA and a PSX). He surprised me and said that he loved Ogrebattle on the PSX and did not know that there was a sequel. As I was talking to him I had the idea come back into my head. I asked him when was the last time he played a boardgame. He responded with boardgames are for children. I asked him if he would humor me and try playing a few. He was hesitant so I bucked the tiger and made a deal with him. I said that if he would humor me and try two boardgames and if he did not like either I would give him a copy of Tactics Ogre on the GBA (I had two copies from when we use to battle a lot in it at work). He said fine and he was going to come over that Saturday.
I had one chance to make this work and decided on the two games to try based on that conversation we had. Since he liked Ogre Battle I decided on the most Ogre Battle like game I had Titan. And since he liked SRPGs we went with the simplest SRPG like game Heroscape. I know what some of yall are thinking right now: Heroscape that sounds familiar well it should, it is in every big box store you go to. From Frys to Walmart, and has been seen at some Riteaids. Bear with me and youll see where I am going with this.
So Saturday came around and several of my friends came over to play boardgames. There were four of us total so we started with Heroscape.
Heroscape is a very simple miniatures wargame created by Hasbro in 2004. It was targeted at the 8-16 ages and the rules reflect that. The game comes with two rulesets, simple and advance, and a whole mess of options. This is important since you can play the game with most anyone and have a pretty fulfilling experience. The game itself takes characters from all over history and fantasy and drops them into battlefields fighting for dominance for their avatar (the Viking in Valhalla who brought them to the battlefield). So your team might have part of a Roman legion, an Elf, and a team of Robots and that is normal. But there are two very big draws to Heroscape:
1. Customizable hexagon terrain
2. Pre painted miniatures
So every time you play the game should be different.
Gameplay utilizes a fairly simple IGOUGO (I go You go) mechanic. You have a card that represents each type of figure you have on the battlefield. So your Elf has an Elf card, your Legionnaires a Legionaries card, etc. And you are given four little shields that have the numbers 1,2,3 and an X. You put the shields down on your units cards to signify what round you want to move them, the X is obviously a decoy. Whoevers turn it is moves and then the person to their right, etcetera until the all three rounds are complete and the turn is over.
Combat is achieved by rolling fistfuls of specialized dice. Each unit has an attack number which equates to how many dice you roll. Each die has Skulls, Shields, and blank spaces. When you are attacking all that matters is skulls, defending needs shields. If the attacker rolls more skulls than the defender rolls shields, the unit hit looses wounds. Once the wounds are gone the character dies. There are special abilities, combinations, and a variety of other elements that make the game more complicated, but we do not need to go into those here.
Very simple to learn, very elegant in execution, and almost infinitely customizable. The game has had numerous expansions, some of which go for lots of money, and still draws large crowds at conventions and tournaments.
I cannot tell you too much about the game we played, I do remember using one of my ghosts to take over one of the other guys Orc riding a Tyrannosaurs and then ran him back into his own men, but other than that I dont remember that much. I do know that despite my ghosts being on point, I ended up losing the match. The newbie enjoyed himself but thought it did not have enough meat for him to really buy into it, or care to play it again. So that is when we switched gears to the behemoth.
Titan is, for lack of a better word, a pain of a boardgame. It is complicated, takes a long time to play, expensive (fixed with the rerelease but at the time of this playing a copy went for $200+), and is confusing. The first time I played it I read through the rulebook a dozen times and played with people who had played before and still had no real idea of what I was doing. But lets see if I can explain it anyway.
The goal of Titan is to defeat the enemies Titans. To do this you send your armies around the map recruiting other units, upgrading said units, and trying to avoid your enemies. When your stack of units runs into another stack, they are revealed and ushered to a battle board on the sidetable to duke it out. These battle boards are small hexagon boards with terrain on them based on what square the battle commenced on the main board. In battle you move your units, they move theirs, and you roll D6s based on your units statistics. Your Titans can upgrade and if you play your cards right you might be rolling a whole fistful of dice by endgame (the Serpent unit rolls 18 when it attacks).
Now Ill be honest, despite playing the game on and off for fifteen years, I am no where near as versed in the rules of Titan as I should be Blame Advance Squad Leader and TFC. But that has little to do with the event, more to do with the writeup. We did play with one house rule: Game is played until one person is eliminated. Then you figure out who won via various scoring methods. This way the game does not end up taking up all day the average game of normal titan can last upwards of eight hours.
Our newbie was the one who lost, by pure chance to he ran his Titans army into another players just by bad luck and he happened to have a dragon and his Titan in it. However this was after several battles and about three hours. His verdict was that it was some of the most fun he has ever had and wanted to buy a copy.
So in six hours I had taken a diehard videogamer and made him interested in boardgames. And since that time his collection has grown to dwarf my own. Slowly I will corrupt all of my friends to other types of games. As seen in this next story.
With the accomplishment of the first friend I was riding high and thought I could do it again (or that is the story I am going to tell you. In reality it was about a year later). So I called up a buddy of mine from middle school who I use to try and play Magic Realm with (a very complicated fantasy boardgame). I called him because I knew he lived in town, and that he hated videogames. I knew this was going to be a challenge but figured it was worth a shot. So we got together with some others to play Twilight Imperium (a 4x boardgame think if Masters of Orion was a boardgame). About halfway through the game, the board was destroyed by a cat when we were taking a break so we all just gave up. After we packed it up were sitting around talking, so I made my move. I had one of my laptops in the car and they had one of the Gateway 2000 32inch CRT monitors as their tv. So I hooked up the laptop and fired up Civilization 2.
We started playing it as a lark and my mark was not enthused so he stood, grabbed his book, and started to leave the room. I called him out and asked him to atleast stay and talk. He reluctantly agreed. We had played for about an hour just taking out barbarians and the Americans and then I heard a suggestion that I never thought I would. My mark had grabbed the manual and tech tree out of my bag told us exactly what to research because it would be the fastest way to dominate the seas, therefore giving us the world. He had worked it out on a piece of paper and just handed it to me. I was just dumbstruck. Here was the guy who had told me that I was a child for playing videogames, with a breakdown of the weapons in Civilization 2.
Turns out, later that night he went and bought a copy of Civ2 for himself. Last I talked to him he had just bought a copy of Alpha Centauri and was about to move to the other side of the country. I havent talked to him since, but I know I made a videogamer out of him.
What was the point of all this? Well if you have a friend who is a gamer of some kind, but is stubborn, just try finding a game that fits. In these examples, both gamers were of above average intelligence and it was easy to convince them to play a complicated game of the other type, this gets shakier with other types of gamers. You should also try to not be pushy. Take your time, plan the best time to try, and give it a good shot. If it works, it works, if not dont worry too much about it. There are always other potential gamers out there. But I know how painful it can be to have three friends to play a game with when you really need four. Patience is key, as always.
Next time lets talk about something lighter. Like custom arcade sticks, why I own five Gamecubes, or point and click adventures.
When A Link To The Past was ported to the GBA in 2002, it was a pretty big deal. Especially to me, since -- if hard pressed -- I would concede that my favorite game of all time would be A Link To The Past. It is to me the finest example of what makes a Zelda game a Zelda game and more importantly, what makes 16-bit gaming untouchable. There's such a perfect balance between limitations and technological mastery found in that cart. It's probably the one game I've replayed more than any other. So when it was ported the GBA I was more than thrilled to now have a portable version. And when the Game Boy Player was released it meant that I could start a dungeon sitting on my porch, and finish it in front of my TV. And other than some added (and maybe annoying) vocal clips, it was a pretty perfect port of the SNES classic.
 
To me, a great port of A Link To The Past was a good enough reason to pick up the GBA cart. But to others there was a far more exciting selling point: Four Swords, a bonus game that allowed you and three friends to chain together your GBA's and help each other through a short quest, each of you as a different colored Link. Unfortunately, I didn't get to try that one past the intro screens. You see, it's not available in a single player mode. And I'm a loner, Dottie... a rebel.
Now surely you'll tell me that a single player mode would have defeated the purpose of Four Swords. We've already played a single sword adventure! you'll yell. And that's all fine and good. But multiplayer requires each Link to have his own GBA as well as his own copy of the game, and I don't have any gamer friends "in real life" as they say. Sure I come on and here and post my little rants, but my actual gaming is generally spent by myself only after work, dinner, and real life responsibilities have been fulfilled. It's relaxing time for me. It's not party time. And like I said, unless they make GBA link cables that can reach interstate, I don't even know anybody who could play Four Swords with me.
Which leads me to the point of this post: Four Swords Adventures, a Gamecube exclusive that I pretty much never notice anybody mentioning when discussing the Zelda cannon. Which is strange to me because it's actually a very unique, and awesome game.
 
When Four Swords Adventures is mentioned, the emphasis is always on the multiplayer potential of the game. And surely that's understandable. After all, it is the game's major selling point. It was also one of the first games to successfully integrate the Gamecube/GBA connectability. Four Swords Adventures is meant to be played using the TV as the "main screen" but with each player using a GBA as their own private screen so that they can split up from the party without interrupting anybody else. It's certainly an ingenious approach. There's no denying that.
For a long time I avoided the game, assuming that much like the GBA side-game this would be a multplayer-ONLY affair. But once I discovered that there was a single player mode, the game became must-own for me.
 
One thing that never seems to be mentioned is that the single player campaign in Four Swords Adventures is actually a lot of fun. Certainly it's lacking the same exploration that's found in most Zelda games -- as the quest is actually quite linear, but it's still a great game.
Upon its release many critics seemed to put the game down for reusing 2D sprites that didn't show off the Gamecube's potential. Be that as it may, the 2D sprites are a selling point as far as I'm concerned. Here we have an amazingly presented Gamecube quest that goes back to basics and delivers a game based on the classic Link To The Past or Link's Awakening style. As far as I'm concerned, I'd be happy if the series never stopped using these sprites. I like what I like. And I like this. Likewise, much of the music is pulled from the SNES classic -- a point that most critics blasted, while I applauded. Really, what's so wrong with embracing perfection?
Admittedly Four Swords Adventures will not last you nearly as long as A Link To The Past. As I previously mentioned, it's a linear quest which means there's a lot less guess work of the "where do I go next" variety. But at the same time, it's filled with some rather clever puzzles, excellent controls -- which is needed when you're in charge of four characters at once, and some truly awesome boss battles which thrills me to experience in the 16-bit style. If you've been avoiding this one because you thought a single player quest in a multiplayer game would be worthless, please do yourself a favor and add this to your collection now.
Just snapped a quick pic of my new temporary anime shelf. Sure, its only a cardboard cutout featuring some unknown indie game that will likely stay obscure, but I kinda like it.
Value is a topic that comes up a lot in video gaming nowadays.
Recent Xbox Live and Playstation Network game pricing seems to be the argument du jour, with indie favorites Braid and the recent Limbo under fire for disproportionate playtime vs. price. The last few years have also given us both Modern Warfares, a few Halos, both Gears of War, and other AAA titles with campaigns lasting six hours or under (depending on difficulty setting and other factors, of course.) Indeed, the last two console generations have seen a serious rise in critique over game lengths, with the most recent high definition consoles' higher priced games leading the charge that we as gamers often just aren't getting our money's worth anymore.
But what gives something value? Is it the length of the game? The graphics, sound, and gameplay? The quality of the experience? The presence of tubby Italian plumbers that, despite their claimed occupation, are more often observed playing various sports and throwing parties rather than doing anything even vaguely plumbing related?
Value is usually balanced on the scales of public opinion, but here's the most interesting fact about it: it is completely subjective. I cannot force my sense of a value on anyone else, and their concept of value will be different than my own. I may persuade, I may cheapen, I can present cases for and against all day long. At the end of the day, I may convince some gamers that my Neo Geo AES and games are worth the money spent, but that guy with every Neo Geo game on his modded PSP or XBox will never see it as such. Value is an extension of opinion. And as we all know, opinions are like crazy, conspiracy-spewing, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing uncles: everyone has one, and they are all wrong.
One thing that has spoiled our gaming masses for far too long is the typical price-point of our systems and accessories. I believe we gamers often have a very unrealistic expectation when it comes to prices in our hobby, born of price stagnation outside of inflation. Dsheinem's detailed article on the Atari 2600 VCS mentions that some launch games were within the $20 to $30 price point range- and that adjusted for inflation, gamers were putting down between $70 to over $100 back in the late 70's.
In '92, I bought Axelay at my local KB Toys for 79.99. (I remember very clearly saving $50 and then having to borrow an extra $30 from my mom to make up the difference.) That's a twenty buck premium over our current standard pricing structure- until inflation kicks in, which puts my pricey purchase over $120 in our current futureland.
Speaking of Axelay, I can finish it at least three times over in the amount of time it took to finish Limbo. If I were using cost-per-minute as a value indicator, comparatively Limbo might as well be an MMO. Or a Shin Megami Tensei.
How many of us 'old-school' gamers paid well over fifty bucks for the original Phantasy Star, the old NES/SNES RPGs, or even older PC games like Wizardry or Ultima? Price adjusted, these games were worse than Halo 3: Cat Helmet addition.
But were they worth it?
Well, considering how fondly these games are often remembered, I rarely if ever hear complaints over their original price, unless it was about convincing our parents or saving up to buy them. Even those lore stories tend to be recalled as worthy sacrifices, the trials we endured to partake of gaming's greatest. Unless you bought 7th Saga for seventy bucks. Then you just got ripped off. ()
I find it interesting that most gamers seem to be willing to defend their beloved hobby as art, yet cry out in near unison over not getting enough 'bang for the buck' with their game purchases. If we believe that there is true merit to the interactive experiences we enjoy, why are we not defending these products based on what we receive from our personal experience with it?
I paid more for a new TMNT IV: Turtles in Time (SNES) than the cost of a new Wii game. Moreover, I've traded it and bought it again a few times over. I even bought the XBLA remake. I can finish that game on the hardest difficulty in under twenty minutes. I still think I've gotten my money's worth.
By the way, in the year I bought that copy of Turtles, a number 3 two McCheeseburger combo meal at McDonalds cost $2.99. Now, the same meal is $4.97. That's an increase of over 65% in less than twenty years. How many decades did we expect to be able to pay around $40 to $50 for a new game and completely ignore the rates of inflation?
But expectations are different now. We're seventh generation, baby! We don't buy Space Invaders for a hundred bucks: a dollar is too much to pay for an updated version on my iPhone. We're in a recession. We demand an unnecessary multiplayer component that feels forced and will remain untouched after being scrounged for a few gamerpoints or trophies. We know that despite the millions spent making and marketing a new blockbuster title, we are being overcharged for our games. EA and Activision are evil, corporate monsters who don't deserve $60 for a cut and paste sequel to what we liked before, and what indie developer is so pretentious as to think that a few years and their life savings are worth ten more bucks than we want to spend?
Here is the problem as I see it; we, as a gaming public, have grown up with games. What was once luxury is now viewed as necessity. We feel we not only have the right, but the requirement to be elitist, even snobbish, over gaming. Long ago, one or two games at most were produced a month, and we salivated over them, shared them, experienced them. Now we buy two and get one free, without care, to grind out achievements and trophies and brag that we 'beat' them so we can move on.
Nothing is inherently wrong with more games, achievements, trophies, or 'beating' games. But are we still having fun? I spent a long time and lots of money in Final Fantasy XI before I realized I did not enjoy the experience. Some love the game, and that's great for them. But it took me a while to see that I was playing simply to be playing: gaming as a requirement, not for fun. The treadmill is only entertaining while you are actually being entertained; after that, its just more work.
If you like burning through games as fast as possible and still enjoy each one, that's great. But I think that the larger our industry gets, the more we have to come to respect everyone else under the gaming umbrella. I hear plenty of complaints about short games. What I rarely hear is the opposite complaint: this game is not a good value for me because it is just too long.
I have a wife, three kids, an imaginary Rabbid and a ton of housework. They all need my time. (Except the Rabbid, I just give him imaginary time.) If every game I want to play is twenty or more hours long, I either neglect my responsibilities or I don't finish many games. A game with a campaign that is more than eight to ten hours long is not a good value for me if I want to play other games. I just don't have the time, and I will want to play other things. If I am going to spend $50 to $60 on a game I intend to finish, I want it to fit my constraints, otherwise it is not a good value to me.
Portal comes to mind. Though there are detractors over the game's length, many critics and gamers have stated that its four or five hour run time was about perfect. It told a story, invented interesting gameplay mechanics, and stayed just long enough to not wear out its welcome. Unless the pacing and mechanics were radically altered, a longer experience with Portal would have likely began feeling more drawn out and even dull. There are timing challenges, speed runs, and mods for those wanting to stretch it out further, and even a sequel that promises to expand the formula into something that supports a longer, expanded game. But arguably, Portal 2's greatest challenge will be to match the superb pacing of the original.
I don't want every game to be done in a few hours. I just want developers to know and gamers to respect that we are all different, and remember that just because a game takes a long time to complete doesn't mean it is a better game. If the game I want to finish is a quality experience, and the pacing, momentum, and flow are well realized, I want to be able to get to the end! Stretching it out does not make it better or more valuable, it just means I am less likely to complete it before moving on. According to developer Remedy, only 30% of players finish a game they start. If I buy a Big Gulp because the pricing means I get more Mello Yello per penny, and take two sips before tossing it aside, was it a better deal than the small cup that had less drink, but the correct amount I wanted?
The Playstation 3's launch is another perfect example. Touted as the next gaming need, it provided Blu-Ray, HD graphics, a hard drive, HDMI output, USB ports for your USB supported hair dryer, and the weight of a Mini Cooper. The early adopters bragged that it was well worth the cost for the Blu-Ray player alone, and that for everything it offered, it was an exceptional value.
But that mentality assumes way too many things, including:
1. Do I have an HD TV?
2. Do I intend on starting a Blu-Ray collection right now? (versus waiting a few years?)
3. Are there any PS3 games out now or in the next month that I consider must-have, day one purchases?
If the answer to these are no, is $600 a good value? What price would be? The answer is left up to the individual, as any question of value is.
Collectors are in yet another level of comparative worth. Stadium Events for tens of thousands of dollars? Your 99 cent copy of World Class Track Meet is identical, save for a title screen and label. Should WCTM cost more? Stadium Events less? All in the eye of the beholder. If it is worth more or less to you, congratulations: you have an opinion. Is a BMW worth tens of thousands? To some, yes. My Subaru does just fine by me. Am I wrong, or is the BMW owner? Neither and both. To many people, my Panzer Dragoon Saga is not worth even the cost of a current new game, much less what it goes for now. But it was worth every penny to me, and to argue against that is to simply admit it is not worth that price for you.
I would like to end with the admonition that yes, gaming can be expensive. Most gamers have very limited budgets for gaming. Of course we want our money's worth. That's why we research to find out what is worthwhile to us individually. Millions of fans bought maps for Modern Warefare 2 that are worthless to me, yet cost the same as the entire game of Limbo. But the few hours I put into Limbo was worth more to me than all the hours I put into Final Fantasy XI or the recent Resonance of Fate. It won't be worth as much to many others. But to say a game is not worth a certain price, period, end of story, is insulting everyone who disagrees. Over an idea of worth that is completely subjective in the first place. For example:
If you took a million dollars of our paper currency back three hundred years, it becomes worthless; three hundred years from now it will likely become worthless again. That same million dollars today would set me up for life; for Bill Gates or Bill Clinton, it wouldn't even change their taxes. More valuable to some, less to others.
Let's not pretend any of us are universally correct over gaming value. Let's just vote with our dollars to get the things of worth for us.
And, of course, check CAG for sales.
The title Kunio-kun may not immediately ring any bells, but the chances are good that you've played one of his games. The series is incredibly long-running in Japan, but sadly few titles have been brought over to the US. And in many cases the ones that have been were completed remade to lose their very specific art-style and charm. But trust me, you've played (and most likely loved) some of these games; among them are NES cult-classics such as Renegade, Super Dodge Ball, and River City Ransom. But of course our interest involves which of the 30 or so titles made their way across the pond and landed on a Game Boy system.
  
  
The Game Boy version of Double Dragon II actually has nothing to do with the Double Dragon series at all. It was originally released in Japan under the title Nekketsu Tough Guy Kunio: The Further Brawls and was basically a portable River City Ransom sequel. However, when Acclaim brought the game to the US, they decided to completely Americanize it by replacing all the awesome Kunio characters with sprites from the first Game Boy Double Dragon and replacing Kunio cutscenes with some nonsense about Jimmy and Billy Lee.
Sadly pretty much everybody loses. As a Double Dragon game, it's pretty boring. The controls are wonky and the levels leave a lot to be desired, especially when compared to the NES game of the same title, which is arguably the greatest Double Dragon game ever released. On the flipside, the original Kunio sprites probably would have made the game at least slightly more interesting with it's cutesy style that fans of the series are accustomed to.
  
I am personally not a fan of soccer at all. And I'm not much of a fan of soccer video games. But yet Nintendo World Cup is addicting. Why? Because like the best Kunio-kun sports games it contains the classic Kunio character sprites, and more importantly it allows you to beat the hell out of your opponents. Simply put, this is a fantastic game. Though it does suffer from a bit of slow-down now and again where there is too much action taking place on the screen, it really does an admirable job of including a full team roster and the aforementioned beating the hell out of your opponents. Highly recommended!
 
River City Ransom EX is THEE must-own Kunio game if you have a Game Boy Advance. The remake was helmed by Atlus, who you may know as being incredibly awesome. The game sticks very closely to the original NES version, but adds a lot of really great extras such as lack of slow-down caused by the NES' inferior hardware. The graphics are incredible, the story is well-translated, and the save feature will allow you to pick up and play your adventure anywhere you go. Trust me on this one: get this game!
As a weird side-note, there was a downside to this release. When Atlus announced the game it caused the end of another game that was in process by an indie developer. There was actually a River City Ransom 2 being worked on for the Game Boy Advance, but ultimately it seemed that Atlus' release would overshadow the unknown sequel and it sadly never materialized.
 
Atlus also released a port of Super Dodge Ball on the Game Boy Advance. Much like their port of River City Ransom the cover art completely sucks. The gameplay on the other hand is fabulous. Luckily Super Dodge Ball Advance supports multi-player gameplay, which fans of the original game know is a necessity. The graphics are all really impressive, although for some strange reason Atlus decided to completely remove the Kunio sprites and opted for a decidedly more American looking game. But fear not, at its heart this is still a very polished remake of a fan favorite. Definitely worth tracking down.
Much like I had hinted at in the Double Dragon II description, there are also an incredible amount of Game Boy and GBA Kunio games released in Japan. Almost every sport has been given the Kunio treatment for instance. However, the full game list is a bit out of the scope of this blog post. But if you've played any of those, I'd love to hear your thoughts on which are great and which are not.
Easily the most popular early cartridge based system, the Atari Video Computer System (a.k.a. Atari 2600) would forever change entertainment in the home. This entry takes a quick look at what gamers encountered when picking up the system almost 33 years ago.
The VCS launch itself was a delayed event, held up due to some legal issues between Atari and Magnavox. Magnavox (makers of the Odyssey 1 and 2) owned the rights to publish Atari games through June of 1977, and so even though a working version of the VCS was ready in 1976, Atari waited until that contract was over so they could publish their games for their own system. In June of 1977 the contract expired and Atari brought the VCS to the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago (which, incidentally, was the same show that introduced VHS to North America).
A few months later, on October 14, 1977, the console was released for $199 (or $249, depending on which source you read) in the United States. This initial VCS unit (later nicknamed the Heavy Sixer for its weight and number of switches) launched with nine titles. Surprisingly, the system had trouble maintaining sales, failing to sell all units shipped in 1977 or 1978 (it wasnt until a home port of Space Invaders hit in 1980 that the system really started moving off shelves).
The nine games released for the VCS at launch were Air-Sea Battle, Basic Math, Black Jack, Combat (as a pack-in game), Indy 500 (with driver controllers packed in to a big box), Star Ship, Street Racer, Surround, and Video Olympics. Customers browsing store shelves on launch day that October had these titles to choose from:
Launch games were sold in gatefold boxes (they open up like a book, similar to Odyseey2 boxes), a packaging style which was discontinued after the first year of (relatively poor) sales for the system.
I had some difficulty tracking down prices for new games, but based on what I found $20-$30 seems like a reasonable guess. Adjusted for inflation, that is $70-$105 a pop today! Purchasers could console themselves with the fact that they got multiple games, or modes, per purchase. With the exception of Blackjack, each game offered between 8 and 50 different games in each package, with the number displayed prominently on the box.
I plan to look more closely at some of these games in future installments of the blog, but there are really only a few titles that seemed to have much staying power through the life of the console or today. Combat is the obvious gem, but Indy 500 and Video Olympics both made this informal poll of AtariAge readers Top 100 2600 games of all time . Past those three however, the rest of the launch games are a mixed bag. Air-Sea Battle and Star Ship both offer some fun shooting, and the latter actually shows off some interesting graphics for a launch game. Surround is more or less a Tron cycle style game, and Blackjack is, well, blackjack (a very tough version played with a paddle controller). Woe to the poor kid whose parents brought home Basic Math or Street Racer, both of which were low points in fun for the launch lineup.
If you wanted to pick up four titles with your new system, you would be looking to spend about $300-$350 in 1977, or about $1000-$1200 today. By comparison, a 60GB PS3 at launch with four games and an extra controller would have cost about $900.
A few things stand out about the system launch.
For one, the titles of most of the games were very basic and descriptive, a strategy also used by Nintendo when they launched their NES in the U.S. some seven years later (with titles like Tennis, Kung Fu, Baseball, Golf, Pinball, Duck Hunt, etc.). This simple naming practice, paired with what continues to be some of the most imaginative box art ever produced , allowed for shoppers to easily identify what kind of game they were buying.
Also notable is the lack of any well known arcade games, games based on movies, or any other connections to popular culture of the mid-late 1970s (the first arcade port would be the aforementioned Space Invaders a few years later). Atari basically had to launch a system featuring games with no known properties, something that has not been done since.
The inclusion of a pack-in game, a practice that has fallen out of favor with many of the more recent system launches, is significant. Not only did it give purchasers the illusion of extra value at the register, but unlike pack in games for some other systems (Super Mario Bros., Altered Beast, etc.) Combat doesn't have a single player mode. This sent the message to consumers that the VCS was meant to be played with others and that multiplayer gaming was the foundation for the console. This message was reinforced by the inclusion of two joysticks, another practice that has unfortunately dropped out of most system launches.
Indy 500, which was released with the driver controllers in a bog box, is also an important title for its inclusion of accessories. While pricing information is scarce and unreliable, Indy 500 most certainly would have cost more than a standard game because of its inclusion of these controllers. Like modern console manufacturers, it seems Atari recognized that money could be made selling additional hardware, controllers, cables, and other add-ons for their system (the 2600 would see many accessories over the years). Starting customers out on launch day with some extra hardware made good fiscal sense.
As a whole, it seems that the launch of one of the most successful game consoles in history did some things right (pack-ins) and some things wrong (no known IPs). Fortunately for Atari, they did enough right to sustain the VCS for a few years until it really became popular with the addition of licensed titles. Tracking down the original launch games and the Heavy Sixer itself in the original boxes would be quite a daunting task today (the Heavy Sixer alone fetches a hefty premium over the other models on eBay), but I'd love to hear from anyone who has done so or who remembers the launch itself.
Transformers vs. Transformers 
Whoa. Put on the breaks, there. The best ever? How many Transformer themed games had he played? One: Beast Wars (2000, PSOne). Now, I really hate playing the role of the elitist, and I really hate slagging on new games in favor of older ones, but I needed to set the record straight. I wont say that I didn't slip my thumb behind my bracers and rocked back on my heals as I lectured, but I did get up on a box (it was a shoebox) to tell him about what I had considered the best Transformers game. I am of course speaking of Transformers (2004, Atari) for the PS2. I picked it up at the Gamestop sale a week ago (along with quite a few others) and had a chance to relive some of fun, and while it did show some signs of aging (it did not look good on my 40" widescreen), there is still a strong element of fun there. As I preached the virtues of the game to my brother, (I could actually hear his eyes rolling in their sockets), I thought to myself: What if hes right? That's when I decided to compare them once and for all.
Transformers (2004)
What you'll love about this game:
- The explosions: when you blast Decepticlones, they burst into a miniature lightning storm. Its very satisfying.
- The openness: Okay, so this depends on whether or not you consider a well designed, open environment a boon or bane to the gameplay. Its not truly open world, but rather you select a level, and there are a number of things to do while you are here. There are mini-cons to collect (they give your Autobot powers), as well as extras like art and music to pick up and sift through later. While you move around (there is usually a cinematic direction the first time you travel each level) you encounter roving bands of Decepticlones to blast. The game also operates on the of you can see it, you can go there principle, though its not taken to any great extremes (such as in the early PS2 GTA games).
-Transforming: You can transform at will, and there is very little that is more satisfying than driving at full speed over a jump, transforming just as you leave the ground and blasting foes as your Autobot smashes into the ground. Great fun.
- Giant Robots FTW: Tidal Wave. Youtube it and enjoy. Even when you know whats coming it is still a bit of a shock at the size of him.
-Mini-cons: While not totally old school, these little guys give the game a lot of diversity. While mostly weapon based, they will allow you to gain a shield and even glide. As they have to be mapped to one of the trigger buttons and certain mini-cons require different amounts of slots, there is a bit of strategy here.
What you'll hate about this game:
- The graphics: It is a nasty shock when you realize how much PS2 titles have aged. I'm not saying that they look as bad as a PSOne game, but I can guarantee that you will do a double take in disbelief if you played it over five years ago. This game was once thought of as one of the best looking of the generation. It was even compared to Xbox (the first one) for its graphical beauty. While you can still see the shadow of what it once was, it is still just a shadow. Not unplayable, but no longer pretty. If you can play it on the PS2 emulator for PC (and you have a rig meaty enough to run it) it might look better
- The Autobots: There are only three to choose from, and none of them look close enough to the originals. There is a slight resemblance, but not enough to tickle the fancy of a fanboy, I think.
- The Decepticons: While there are Decepticons to fight (see Tidal Wave above), they are usually reserved for boss encounters. What you will be blasting for 9/10s of the game are Decepticlones. No need to even explain the name on that one. But they at least blow up nice.
- The controls: This one may not bother you. While they will take a few minutes to get used to (especially for taking cover and closing in for melee attacks), you will likely get used to them eventually. Or stop playing the game because of them. One of them for sure.
Transformers: War for Cybertron
What you'll love about this game:
- Visual appeal: This game looks great. From the environments to the Transformers themselves, everything in this game stinks of this-generation polish.
-Old school appeal: This game was designed to tickle the fancy of fans of the original cartoon series (generally known as G1). Many of the Transformers are recognizable on sight (in their robot forms, not the vehicle forms), and they even got a hold of Peter Cullen, the original voice of Optimus Prime. Even the transforming sound is the same. The story follows the events that happened up to the G1 cartoon, so anyone with a serious jones for original G1 story arcs (as each version of Transformers seems to have a different arc) can get it here.
-Transforming: It can pretty much be done anywhere, though there will be sections that you will do one or the other.
-The Transformers: not only do you get to play the Autobots, but also the Decepticons. So wicked.
-Giant robots: there are two giant robots in this game that you will fight. On the Autobots side is Omega Supreme (remember the one who changes into a city?), and on the Decepticon side there is Tripticon (I don't remember this one). While not as big as Tidal Wave (in my opinion), they are satisfying nonetheless, and make for better fights.
What you'll hate about this game:
-The explosions: This is purely personal. After watching every enemy in the previously mentioned game go up in a lightning storm of fury, it sucks to see them just, well explode. Not a big deal for many I expect, but still an annoyance to me.
-The ammo: There is ammo in this game, in the form of energon. You will run out of it and in turn have to resort to melee. This means that you will get shot at a lot and there is nothing you can do about it. Not bad, but not as good as it could have been.
-Old school appeal: If you love the new Transformers movies and hate the old stuff, you will loath this game. But then again, you likely have no soul either.
-Generic robots: Yes, you'll be spending most of your time fighting generic robots, though you will face actual Transformers more frequently than in the other Transformers game.
The verdict: Well I have to admit, some of my brothers hype was well placed. While nothing will ever replace the love I feel for the first great Transformers game, there is no doubt that the newest is a great title and should be sought out by all serious Transformers gamers. Once the price drops, that is.
It has been compared favorably and otherwise to everything from Braid to Ico. In truth, Limbo is a sum of several familiar gameplay components, wrapped in a dark, morbid, and mysteriously surreal narrative. What it is not, is for the faint of heart. Or wallet.
Gameplay consists of platforming, with only a jump and a contextual interaction button adding to the standard left and right movement. The sensitivity of the left analog stick determines walking, running, or creeping along, and that's it. No ducking, looking around, or direct combat. This streamline approach, rather than confining the experience, focuses the player on the two biggest features of Limbo: the environmental puzzles and the atmosphere. Oh, the atmosphere.
Limbo's palette is black, white, and grays, and nothing else. Instead of using this refined spectrum to construct high resolution and detail, the designers use the opposite extreme to grand effect. The visual filters and muted shades paint a dreamlike visual experience that is unique and immersing. Background and foregrounds are at a constant haze. Environments feature sparse lines and sharp angles that just barely convey a sense of open woods, labyrinthian underground tunnels, and complex industrial areas. Indeed, the world of Limbo only roughly sketches its home, then hands the pencil to the player's mind to draw the rest of the details. Where this could be easily viewed as pretentious or even lazy on the developer's part, the design is definitely purposeful, as the rest of the tools are clearly in the iron grasp of talent.
The animation is top notch, with subtle particle effects and little details emphasizing every action. Many clues are given for gameplay as well as narrative in the smallest of touches. The audio wisely follows the consistency of the visual design; sparse, light overtones occasionally punctuated by dramatic flair, and effects that will make the player much more squeamish than the persistent visual violence. I began playing with two friends watching, but before the hour mark I was alone. This brings me to an important point:
Limbo's content is not for everyone.
There is implied murder, torture, gore, drowning, dismemberment, and very dark themes. Without giving away spoilers, some actions will likely stun you in their graphic nature. This is not Mario. It is not Braid. It is a game designed around a certain theme, and that theme is played out fully. In the same manner that South Park may appear to target a young audience but is designed for adults, the same could be said for Limbo.
Though I personally feel games should always be based on their own merit, and there are flavorful and unique elements to the experience that is Limbo, everyone will compare titles. As mentioned before, Limbo imbues a desolate and lonely aura likened to the PS2 classics Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, comparative indie vibes to Braid (also an 'artsy' title criticized as derivative and overpriced), along with gameplay similarities to PC/PSX's Heart of Darkness.
And if the biggest sell for Limbo is the original atmosphere (and it most certainly is), the other is gameplay. Physics based puzzles and platforming challenges make up the bulk of the experience, with exploration and attentive observation yielding literal eggs for completion and achievements. A chapter select allows for easy access, and the game respawns the character only moments before each mistake, again putting the emphasis on puzzle solving and atmosphere. Some of the timing elements of the game are, true to the genre, mostly trial and error, and the designers were wise to avoid any life count or continuing limitations, allowing the player to simply keep at it until done.
Which brings out Limbo's only real 'fault' making the rounds of the critic circles at large. At fifteen bucks, is a game that can be completed in only a few hours worth such a premium? Limbo would certainly not survive the current expectations of boxed retail, and as a Live arcade download only title it is expected to compete with cheaper games containing more longevity. The almighty Castle Crashers, Braid, and even Ikaruga have fielded the same complaints, and review scores are bashed in light of perceived value.
I intend to write an article on the perception of entertainment value later. As for now, it comes down to this:
Limbo is original. Limbo is exceptionally well made. Limbo is, for a certain audience, wonderful. Limbo is fairly short, even abrupt by today's gaming standards. If you are interested, play the demo. It will tell you all you want to know: do I want more of this? Will the experience be worth the money to me, individually? Will I feel at a loss for paying this much for a few hours?
I know I, personally, have no regrets about purchasing Limbo. Indeed, I consider it a gaming experience to rival my top ten. But if you play the demo and are still not sure, Limbo probably is not for you, fifteen bucks or otherwise.
As an end note, I feel that the narrative played out in Limbo is terrifically realized, despite forum debates passed to and fro over the subjective nature of the story and its details. I thought it was rather clear in its intentions, and if it is not painfully obvious by now, I also feel it was a masterfully well done experience. If you are curious about my thoughts on the particulars of the story, feel free to PM me: I don't want to ruin or cheapen the experience for the curious by posting said thoughts in a forum.
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