Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video Games. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Billy's Favorite (Comic Book!) Retro Games! (Part 8 of 200)
It's Watchmen week and this video game dork must don the comic book geek hat to bring you some fave retro games...with a TWIST! Comic book related games! Today? Perennial favorite Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game!That's right. Not the arcade original, the NES port of the arcade game. When I was a kid I and all my TMNT/video game obsessed chums thought that this game really WAS a sequel to the awful first NES game. Of course it's not. The arcade game was made by a different team within Ultra Games/Konami and came out in the arcades a little bit later than TMNT.
As kids we spent many quarters on the arcade cabinet whenever we saw it. It fun and had beautiful graphics. For kids weened on the Nintendo Entertainment System, TMNT: The Arcade Game was like a dream. Our favorite cartoon come to video game life.
So, of course when we heard that the game was being ported to the NES we were ecstatic. Many, many things could go wrong porting such a vibrant game to the 8-bit system and to be honest, the graphics did take a big hit.
It went from THIS:
To This:
For an NES game it doesn't look too bad, but comparatively... whoo boy. What a difference.
Now, Donatello looks super lonely in the NES photo and one of the reasons for that is another arcade-to-NES tradeoff. The arcade version had four player co-operative game play. The NES didn't. I know, sucks, right. But don't fret, the game still included two player simultaneous gameplay.
It's not all bad news for the NES version. One of the best reasons to play the home console version is that nearly all of the levels were lengthened for the NES. Yes, Konami was polite enough to make the game longer! Not to mention the addition of an entirely new level: Snowfield
Apparently Shredder took time out of his plan to kidnap Master Splinter and created a weather control device and for one level he freezes New York City and yep, that's a mutant polar bear wearing a leather jacket. That ALONE makes this game worth playing. Man, things were so cool in the late 80s/early 90s.
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Friday, February 27, 2009
Billy's Favorite Retro Games! (Part 7 of 200)
The Oscars are still fresh in my mind, what with Mickey Roarke being nominated(but denied the win by Sean Penn) for his turn as Randy "The Ram" in the movie The Wrestler. There's a great scene in the middle of the film where Randy plays a fictional old-school NES brawler, Wrestle Jam, starring The Ram himself(Also mentioned in the scene is Call of Duty 4 which, considering how long it will probably take me to reach 200, will be a featured retro game sometime in the next decade). This "game" was very reminiscent of one of my absolute FAVORITE retro games: PRO WRESTLING!Pro Wrestling was one of Nintendo's NES original sports titles like Ice Hockey, Tennis, and Golf. And much like those games it followed the most unoriginal naming scheme ever. Thankfully that's a small concern about this game as it has some crazy surreal things that can happen in it. You start by choosing your favorite wrestler. This is standard operating procedure in any fighting game. This game seems to capture the 80s WWF feel wonderfully with it's eclectic(and in some cases mildly racist) roster of pugilists.
Kin Corn Karn, King Slender, and my favorite Starman. Not to be confused with either the comic book or movie of the same name, Starman gets his name from the fact that he wears a pink jumpsuit and mask with a giant purple star on it. You might think that Starman would be a big puss, but he is totally bad ass. Using his pink tights as a way to lure unsuspecting wrestlers to their doom!
The only other wrestler who can potentially match up to the awesomeness of Starman is The Amazon. Why? Well, because The Amazon is...uh, well, he's the creature from the black lagoon, actually. I don't know if this guy is wearing a costume or not, but one of his special moves is to bite the fuck out of his opponent's face. If he's wearing a costume, that's dedication.
Being an NES game it's got a limited move set that consists mostly of punch and kick. You can jump off the turnstile and bounce on the ropes as well as leave the ring. Don't expect any crazy weapons though(well, aside from The Amazon's pearly whites), this was the early NES days, I'm surprised that they had space on the cartridge for spectators let alone extra kilobytes for a folding chair.Now, one of the things that this game is famous(or infamous, rather) for, aside from Starman being awesome like a possum, is the horribly great Engrish translation. Win the big championship match and you get this:
A winner is you. It's certainly up there in the annals of bad translations. It's not quite an "I feel asleep" or "All your base" but it's enough to endear me to this horrible, horrible, awesome game.
You my boy Starman! You my boy!
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Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Best Time You'll Have On A...Er, Hog...
The modern 3D Grand Theft Auto games have always been packed full of things to see and do, but there is inevitably places in the city maps that the games just don't have the time nor inclination to visit for a mission. It's just something that fans of the series have come to understand. Why can't I do a mission in that small town near San Fierro? What about the military base in Vice City? How about the amusement park in Liberty City. Well, thankfully with the advent of current-gen game systems network capabilities Rockstar Games, developers of GTA, can rectify this issue with the release of the first Xbox 360 downloadable content pack: The Lost and Damned. Can you do something in the amusement park? Sadly, no. At least not yet. But you will explore the mostly neglected island of Alderney. Even without the amusement park this pack is still a joy to behold and just as Rockstar sets the standard high for other developers with their games, they redefine what DLC means to Xbox 360 owners.
The Lost and Damned introduces us to Johnny Klebitz, vice president of the titular biker gang "The Lost"(and before you ask, there is no gang called The Damned, it's a metaphor, meathead). Johnny has been running things while gang president Billy was cooling his heels in the can. Billy gets paroled and Johnny has to give up the autonomy he had before. It doesn't help that Billy is a total hop-head and seems to want to start a massive gang war in Liberty City.
The first thing you must realize is that The Lost and Damned is practically a full length game. Hell, it took me less time to beat Mirror's Edge than it did to finished TLAD. It's easy to balk at the $19.99 price and feel like you will be slighted by purchasing it, but trust me, this DLC's main story will easily take you 9-10 hours to complete. I pretty much rushed through it and it took me ten hours. The price is much easier to swallow when you consider all the things that this expansion offers.
More than twenty main story missions, twelve bike races(in the vein of seminal fave Road Rash), twenty-five gang wars, side missions, more birds to find, new weapons, new vehicles and new mini-games are most of the additions that this DLC provides.
One caveat, the additions in TLAD cannot be traded up to Niko's story in GTAIV. So, no grenade launcher or arm wrestling in the main storyline. Sorry, folks. The good news, however, is that like previous GTA games, once completing the campaign in TLAD you can still continue playing as Johnny as long as you like.
The good news here is that most of TLAD is fantastic. The story, while not as moving as GTAIV protagonist Niko Bellic's, is top notch. Johnny's story is handled fairly well in the short time that it has to present itself. You will get to know the members of The Lost fairly well, with only a few main characters being slighted(Brian the wheelchair bound ex-bike being the biggest example). The ending does seem to come too abruptly, and unfortunately like GTAIV it wades into the cliched mafia story towards the end. Unlike GTAIV these missions are few and come mostly towards the end.
Rockstar has implemented a mid-mission re-try feature, which allows you to restart any mission you fail from the last cut scene you are shown. While this is a much needed feature, it tends to make the game slightly easy. Rockstar seemingly tries to balance this easiness by making any ammo you expend(not to mention money spent at the hospital after you die and before you restart) not respawn during the re-try. It feels like cheap way to punish players for re-trying the missions and after I realized the game did this I quit using the replay "feature."
Using motorcycles has been refined, and unlike Niko, Johnny is an ace cyclist. No longer will you fly off the bikes with a slight tap, it takes quite a wallop to knock Johnny over the handlebars. The handling has been tweaked as well, most of the choppers are a joy to drive now, and you probably won't want to pilot Johnny in anything else(unless like me you take to the skies in every mission that lets you do so). Some of the time when you are riding with the gang to or from missions a The Lost insignia will appear, holding position over it will recover armor and activate dialog. While this is a cool feature, it is lost in the shuffle of the story and disappears after about a third of the game making it somewhat pointless overall.
The new mini-games are pretty worthless and not worth touching more than once. Air hockey sounds great in theory but the controls are spotty. High Card, Low Card is interesting but doesn't have much depth. Arm wrestling asks you to slam the right analog stick back and forth violently, I cherish my controllers enough to not destroy them on something so trivial.
Friend Lost gang members are usually available by phone to give assistance in missions, provide weapons or bring bikes to you. Unlike Niko's slacker pals, these guys will provide their assistance right away without being taken on a man-date. Though it's nice to have access to these perks rather early, it makes some of the collecting of money rather pointless as you don't need to waste it on weapons. The Lost member who provides paid weapons in his van charges entirely too much for some of the high end firepower making him fairly useless until later in the game and by then you probably won't need to buy anything from him. It's nice to have the option however.
The main selling point of this package is the connections to GTAIV. Rockstar promised that TLAD would fill in mysteries from GTAIV, and while I couldn't think of anything mysterious to be filled in TLAD does mesh with the main story wonderfully.
Without going into any spoiler specifics, something happens late in the game that is upsetting but happens off screen. I got really upset that I wasn't allowed to see an important story scene. Later while cruising the city a news report came on the radio describing the situation I didn't witness. I then realized that I witnessed the scene in question from Niko's point of view in GTAIV. I literally got chills from that. The last time I felt that kind of astonishment from a game was Bioshock's big twist. It's not quite on par with that classic twist, but it's rare that a GTA provokes those kinds of feelings.
Despite the high price tag Grand Theft Auto: The Lost and Damned comes highly recommended for it's intriguing story and new bike controls. Beware, this expansion is strictly for those of you who have already completed GTAIV. For the rest of you, what the hell are you waiting for?!
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Thursday, February 12, 2009
Billy's Favorite Retro Games! (Part 6 of 200)
The Magic Kingdom? Happiest place on earthTM, right? Yeah, sure, if you've never played Adventures in the Magic Kingdom before.
That's right, a NES cart from 1990 can easily substitute a trip to DisneyWorld...
Adventures in the Magic Kingdom is a Nintendo Entertainment System game developed by Capcom that follows the exploits of...well...YOU! Provided your name is less than eight letters long(sorry Archibald!) and you aren't female. It was the 8-bit era, so I suspect that it was considered too difficult or space intensive to program a female avatar, but they could have dropped some of those name letters to save some space! Come on, only three letters are needed, everyone knows you always brand your character and highscores in games with the classic three letter combo A-S-S.
Anyways, the goal of the game is to save the Magic Kingdom from missing the bi-hourly main street parade. It seems that Mickey in his infinite wisdom has forgotten the main gate key in Cinderalla Castle. Well, Gawrsh, Mickey. Just go get the damn key. Not so fast, apparently Cinderella Castle has more security than Guantanamo Bay. Mickey informs you that there are SIX keys needed to open the castle door.
Mickey, being the twisted monarch of the DisneyWorld, commands you to find a retrieve the keys. What he does not tell you to do is wear an outfit made entirely of khaki, but sadly you have no choice in the matter. Your character looks like Indiana Jones on laundry day with a big ass fedora.So how does the heroic ASS save the Magic Kingdom from the shame of NO THREE O'CLOCK PARADE?! Well, by riding the rides of course! Autopia(or whatever the hell Disney is calling it these days) becomes a Bump 'N Jump clone, The Haunted Mansion and Pirates of the Caribbean become totally awesome(and hard as balls) action platformers, Big Thunder becomes a multi-track runaway train and Space Mountain? It becomes a GODDAMNED TEN MINUTE QUICK TIME EVENT! If you think those QTE's are annoying now, just imagine them in the awesome low-fidelity of the NES.
And check out this totally badass virtual representation of the Magic Kingdom.
Green grass everywhere! Who knew Disney were such conservationists!
Imagine my surprise when I actually finally made it to the illustrious Magic Kingdom some years after playing this game and there were no actual pirates holding wenches hostage and the ghosts were cheesy holograms. Don't even get me started on Autopia.
Thankfully despite these disappointments until someone creates EPCOT Center Virtual Beers Around The World DisneyWorld still wins in the end.
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Saturday, January 31, 2009
Billy's Favorite Retro Games! (Part 3 of 200)
Originally written 9/3/06
This is presented here for completion.
Today's edition is a perennial favorite among gamers. One which has been with us since the very beginning of the NES era. It's a classic for it's pick up and play quality, but that's not to say it's a great game...
So what is it? Well, it's none other than...Duck Hunt!
Yes, Duck Hunt. For many of us, it was the other game that came with Super Mario Bros. No one bought an NES for Duck Hunt. It was just...
there.
And so we played it.Well,
playing
isn't exactly true in my case. I figure that playing Duck Hunt the way it was MEANT to be played would mean sitting a nice distance from the TV and actually taking the game seriously. I don't know about anyone else, but my sister and I (in a completely uncharacteristically friendly moment between us) would play this fucking game as close to the TV as possible, thereby removing all traces of challenge.And despite the fact that the game is called
Duck fucking Hunt, I spent ninety percent of my time playing in
the Clay Shooting mode. Even though it isn't called
clay pigeon shooting, I still was baffled as to why the clay discs were called pigeons. But the main reason I played the Clay Shoot (And this was, I believe, one of my finest moments as a five-year-old. It ranks just behind the time I mixed all stuff in the medicine cabinet to create a "concoction." Which I then spilled on my bedroom floor) was to shoot the pigeons just as they passed in front of the mountains.I did this because the score for that pigeon would pop up on the side of that green mountain and my five-year-old self formulated a wondrous story about the groundskeeper at this shooting range, and how he loved to mow the score for the pigeons into the side of the mountain just for
ME!
I am totally serious here...
And that is why I love Duck Hunt.
But of course, there is something about Duck Hunt that I hate. Something that I hate and that I'm fairly certain everyone else hates too. Someone--some snickering little prick...
Yeah, you remember this little guy, right? Who could forget him? Judging, laughing, watching...thanks to you I have a crippling anxiety disorder. Screw you, dog!
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Thursday, January 29, 2009
Billy's Favorite Retro Games (Part 2 of 200)
Billy's Favorite Retro Games (Part 2 of 200)Originally written 9/1/06
This is presented here for completion.
1985 has GOT to be one of my favorite years. Just think about it: Mr Belvedere, Nintendo, Back to the friggin' Future, Macgyver, Rambo: First Blood Part 2 (the greatest fucking movie title of the 80s), Rocky 4 and most importantly... The Goonies (ok, maybe not MOST importantly, but most importantly to THIS post).
So, once we all got our hands on the majesty of the NES, us Goonies fanatics were of course interested in playin
g the game adaptation of our beloved movie. Konami was there of course to show us all why liscensed video games are usually crap with Goonies 2. Now, it didn't take a genius to realize that we had not gotten to play original Goonies game, hell even the explanation that the game was a sequel to the movie doesn't really hold any water because I don't recall Mikey befriending a mermaid in the fucking movie. No...we just...got the shaft. "The Shaft" is defined as the feeling we Western Gamers get whenever we hear of something really cool in Japan, it's true look it up.So flash forward to 2004, I was checking out a CD I had acquired from a disreputable fellow employee which included nearly every NES game produced. Lo and behold...the elusive NES Goonies was on this disc!
I could not wait to play it, and play it I did. The first thing, and let's be honest here, the only reason this game is on this list is because of one simple reason: Cyndi Lauper's The Goonies R Good Enough in MIDI ! Don't believe me? Hit that link and listen for yourself. Don't worry, I'll wait.
...
Now tell me that wasn't badass. Shut up, it totally was!
The gameplay is basic platforming from the 80s, you play as Mikey who decides to take "his time, his time down here" to save his friends from the Fratelli's. Apparently the Fratelli clan is much larger than the movie makes them appear because everytime you kill one of these bastards they keep coming back. In addition to evil mobsters you also have to confront mice and ghosts. I don't recall mice or ghosts in the movie, but those tunnels were littered with dead pirates, so who knows.
So...Yes. I love the Goonies game. I love digital synthesized versions of Cyndi Lauper, and I LOVE good (or is that bad) Engrish...
Congratulation indeed.
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Tuesday, January 27, 2009
He's Not Just Any Kind Of Commando...
Originally written 9/1/06
This is presented here for completion.
Billy's Favorite Retro Games (Part 1 of 200)
It's got guns, bionic arms and Nazis (only in Japan); It's Bionic Commando!
And it's one of my all time favorite games. In the American version you play as Radd Spencer who is the first American Bionic Commando. Which means he has a robot arm and a nifty green jumpsuit. The world is in peril and the United States greatest hero Super Joe has gone missing (Super Joe was the hero of the much less cool Capcom game Commando), and the evil Badds are behind it. So, Radd must kick some Badds ass and stop them from reviving their leader Master-D.
Despite the heavy censorship by Nintendo of America, Bionic Commando still kicks alot of ass. So what if Hitler's name is changed to Master-D (I simply pretend that Hitler decided to join an 80s hip hop group in addition to ... you know...destroying the world and kidnapping Super Joe), and the Nazis are now Badds.
The arcade version of this game was released in 1987. While on vacation with my parents in around that time at Put-in Bay I noticed this game in a local Arcade. Nearly twenty years later I finally got a chance to play this game as part of the Capcom Classics line for the Playstation Portable...It sucked. Thankfully Capcom is finally embracing this wonderful game with the recent Xbox Live and Playstation Network remake Bionic Commando Rearmed and the soon to be released next-gen sequel.
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