Ah, passwords. The bane of many a child with sloppy handwriting and impatience. I can’t remember when I first saw the game Kid Icarus, but I think my friend Paul had it. It was a weird looking game. Really colorful monsters with a pitch black background. And that’s all I remember seeing. It always felt like one of those games Nintendo wanted you to like but no one was sure if they did. Pit, the protagonist, was in the Captain N show. I also remember reading about the game in Nintendo Power several times, so it isn’t as if the game wasn’t pushed. I didn’t have it, though, and my aforementioned friend was the only person I remember having it.

Pit and his game felt like a bastard child that no one wanted. The game never became a series and drifted off into oblivion until Pit was brought back for Super Smash Brothers Brawl and now for one of the first Nintendo 3DS games as we have recently learned. Which, to be fair, looks pretty dang cool. Almost like Sin & Punishment but with angels and limited flying. I’ll probably get it with my 3DS if it’s a launch title.

But what of the original game?

From what I know about the NES version of the Kid Icarus, the above password is one that lets you jump ahead to the final boss fight completely powered up. The Japanese version of Kid Icarus, known as The Mirror of Palutena, was a Famicom Disk System game, meaning it had no need for passwords or confusing button presses to continue after death¹. This is the version I played², so did not get the average experience that most Western gamers did. I also got it about 20 years later, but let’s not be too picky on the details here.

That said, I went into the game knowing many people hated it and left loving the little bastard. It’s a weird game, but a fun one. The challenge is balanced in a way that it actually feels like you are really becoming stronger as you proceed. This sounds like a given for any game, but in this case it really feels like you go from a complete weakling to a crusher of the damned. Honestly, I’m not sure if that the later levels are actually easier or if it’s just because of the power-ups gained along the way, but I’d wager it’s a combination of the two. It’s just a really pronounced feeling in this game.

It’s such a mash up of other game types that I can’t help but think this is what polarized a lot of folk against the game. Horizontal and vertical scrolling levels with fiendish jumps, particularly in the vertical levels are combined with dungeon levels to explore every four stages comes off as a sweet combination. The shooting requires a good deal of precision especially considering your shots do not go very far and usually pack not much of a punch. And the aforementioned exploration levels add a nice change of pace. They do, however, contain one thing that can only be described as pure terror.

This one thing, something that every gamer from this game’s generation should know even if they didn’t play the game, is the Eggplant Wizard. These assholes toss eggplants which, if strike you, turn you into an eggplant. It is perhaps one of the most annoying status aliments I have ever experienced in a game. You cannot attack. Your only option is to find the hospital where a kind lady will remove the curse. This may not sound that bad, but when you are exploring a dungeon and suddenly walk into a room and an eggplant flies into your face a sense of terror unlike any other sets in. Only one thing goes through your mind.

I must avoid this vegetable.

Failing to do so, you may as well restart the stage right then and there. Sure, you could hop around and make your way to a hospital. But you’re an eggplants. It’s embarrassing. The music that plays while you are inflicted brings even more shame. It really is degrading. Nothing is as satisfying as successfully dodging the barrage of eggplants and getting the necessary shots at the wizards to take them out and continue your journey.

I mentioned prior that it is a short game. And it is. In total there are 13 stages, none of them particularly long. But learning the way the game plays and being able to make it through these stages does take some time. Time that feels well rewarded once you finally make it to the end of the stage.

Despite playing it many, many years past its original release date, I found Kid Icarus to be a great game. Quirky to be sure, but a fun game well worth the time spent.

1. Actually, there’s no reason the NES version had this. But let’s pretend this is the reason.
2. Via the Wii’s Virtual Console.

Welcome to my currently in progress play diary or Last Ranker!

Finished? If your answer is “Video games, the 80s and Japan” then congratulations! Go play Game Center CX Arino’s Challenge right now. It was released in the states as “Retro Game Challenge.” Last year saw the release of the sequel, which has unfortunately not gotten a localization just yet. But the sequel is just as awesome as the original, rest assured.

Game Center CX is a Japanese television program about various video game related thingamabobs, but the most interesting segments are the challenges performed by the host Shinya Arino. These challenges are generally to complete older video games. Since Arino isn’t the best gamer ever, rather than watching someone completely dominate a game, we are presented with an average gamer trying his best to complete games. The results are often hilarious and always entertaining. The show coupled up with Bandai-Namco to produce these two games based on this premise, and they are awesome.

You, the main character of these games, are transported back in time and are forced to play old video games to free yourself. You’re helped along the way by magazine hints and tips and the occasional wise-crack from a young Arino. Unlike the show, the challenges aren’t to beat the games¹ but rather perform certain tasks or get to a certain point in the game. While not the most elaborate challenges, why the game really shines is because of how amazing the games made for these games are.

Although the show features classics, the games feature games made specifically for them. GCCX2 starts off with a Pac-Man clone, and then features a wide variety of games including a Kung-Fu clone, Tetris-clone, text adventure, RPG, platformer and more. The best part is that these games do not simply replicate the experience, but often add new ideas that make them fantastic games in their own right, games that I would have likely bought on their own were they released back in the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. To have these games all together in one place is quite a marvelous thing.

That said, it’s not without some problems. You have to the challenges in order and complete all challenges in one game before you can play the next. Were they to give you a few games at once with challenges that could be done in any order I believe they would have captured the feeling they were going for in a much more efficient way. It’s easy to get stuck in one game and loose a bit of motivation to keep playing the game since there is only one way to proceed. This ended up being less of an issue for me in the GCCX2 as it felt like the first one, although I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was being used to the pattern from the first game.

All in all that ends up being a minor issue because the games are so fun that I didn’t really mind pushing through to complete the challenges. Were we to get a third game in the series, I would hope they opened it up a little more like I suggested, but were it to be similar to its predecessors, as long as it had quality games in it, I would be pleased.

1. Although such a challenge does exist at the end.

And people would love to take away that chance from you¹.

I just played Portal last month for the first time. Truth be told, I already knew that “the cake is a lie” and that “something” happened. So when the big twist occurred in the game I couldn’t help but not be as shocked as the players who got to the game day one. Nonetheless, it was quite an interesting move. Until someone told me, I had no idea Portal was just billed as a simple puzzle game.

Simple may not be the correct word, but at its core the game is quite simple. In the game there are two types of portals. Blue and orange². Enter the
blue portal and come out of the orange. Enter the orange and come out of the blue. What can go through the portals is not just limited to the player character, though. Energy bullets, boxes, even melodramatic gun turrets³ can be sent through. So simple, yet these kind of simple rules always allow for complex puzzles to be created. Since gravity matters, all sorts of extravagant jumps had to be made. Since you eventually had the ability to create both portals on most surfaces, accuracy was required to guide those energy bullets to their proper energy bullet receiving container. So Portal was definitely more than just a puzzle game, although the action bits were minimal at best.

I didn’t find any of the puzzles particularly challenging in the sense of figuring out what to do. Doing it, although, could often be quite the pickle. Being able to time my jumps or creation of the portals was not the norm in the later half of the game and I found myself having to try again and again. This, although, did not diminish my fun. What did, although, was the pacing of the game. Portal is short. I think it took me about four hours logged, and I’m not sure if that counts the time lost when replaying after death. But for a short game, it felt like it took too long to get going. It introduced the various gameplay mechanics bit by bit, which is great for learning, but for the first quarter, if not more, of the game my interest was diminishing puzzle after puzzle. Finally with the introduction of the aforementioned turrets did my interest start to pick up again. And truthfully, it was just in time. Whether or not this was a design choice by Valve is a mystery to me.

My last complaint is the end of the game. After going through this game solving puzzles the entire time to have a “boss fight” at the end felt like a bit of a cheat. Out of place. Sure, this boss fight was a bit like a puzzle in its own right, but still a bit too action based for my taste. It didn’t feel right. That’s not to say I have the answer to what would feel right. Ending the game after a puzzle like the ones prior to it may not have been as satisfying as destroying a boss, especially considering what the boss was in terms of the game world. So perhaps in terms of what Portal was going after, the end was proper. I just felt like something was a bit off about it.

So, they’re making Portal 2, I hear. This has a great chance of being fun, I’ll grant it that. But being anywhere near Portal in terms of taking the experience and giving a twist seems like a task only the brave or stupid would take. Valve will probably not manage to entertain people in the way they expect to be entertained after the first one. But then again, given that the first Portal used its twist to give exactly the opposite of what was expected, maybe that is entirely the point here.

1. The irony here is that I’m going to potentially spoils some of you. Such is life!
2. Red?
3. Yeah, it kinda freaked me out when they started talking.

Why?

Final Fantasy 13 is one kind of RPG that I’ve always wanted.

To me, some of the most fun in the Final Fantasy games have been the bosses. They tend to feature a pattern, almost like a musical rhythm, that repeats over and over. Your job is to get in sync with this rhythm and stay in sync. Doing so will allow you to deplete the boss’s health points before it brings you to the game over screen. FF13 managed to make every battle like this. Basically, a boss rush RPG. I’d had the thought before and was quite shocked when I realized Square-Enix gave it to me.

What is wrapped around this system is a set of multimedia that ranges from average to excellent. The graphics and music are quite splendid and I’ll leave that at that. The story I could take or leave, but it at least managed to pique my curiosity enough to want to see the ending which is all I really ask. The characters were a tricky part. They are all well known and defined stereotypes, but they played off each other so well. Character types I disliked were treated by character types I liked the exact way I wanted to see them behave. So while it was not a unique blend of character flavors, the orchestration was quite marvelous.

The game proceeds in quite a linear fashion. In story and character progression. Only near the end of both parts of the game do you get some wiggle room. This is where I can understand some great frustration from players of the game. If Final Fantasy 10′s linearity in both game and character progression didn’t please you then FF13′s would do no better, I’d think. But for me, the path that they gave felt so natural, so inclined, that I didn’t feel restricted at all. Had I freedom this would have been the path I’d taken anyway. I never wanted to stop and smell the roses in this game. When given the chance to explore I only wanted to press onwards. When given the chance to branch my characters out, I wanted them to stay on the path they had been given from the start. This natural feeling smoothed over any negative feelings I might have had in any other game with such a rigid progression system.

What really won me over is the game’s fast paced battle system that let me feel like I had exactly the amount of control I wanted. When trying to get into that aforementioned rhythm, being able to select my commands and set up my party member’s AI to help me was entirely painless. While this led to the occasional sense of being overwhelmed, it was being able to keep myself right on the edge of being overwhelmed that gave me the most joy.

If I had a complaint it would be that the game was a bit too slow in unveiling all of the many layers to its battle system, but this had a benefit. While proceeding with the game it often gave you a predetermined party of characters who at that point had a limited selection of classes to choose from. What this meant was that you were forced to work within very finely defined rules to proceed. The key point, though, is that the player is forced to try out many different character and class combinations that I’m confident I would never have bothered with had I complete freedom from the start. By easing me into the system by the time I had freedom to choose my own characters and classes I felt more than comfortable with the game.

So while I was surprised with what Square-Enix actually did with Final Fantasy and how much I liked it, what really threw me for a loop was how difficult the game was. I cannot recall any other game in the Final Fantasy series where I perished as much as this one. Getting to that rhythm was extremely important because being unable to meant my quick doom. Sometimes it felt as if the game was too difficult or unfair, but with a bit of thought to those combinations the game forced me to try previously led to my victory. And I loved it.

Sadly, all was not perfect with this game. They decided to not give money for battles which meant you had to rely on what was given in treasure chests or selling items for your cash. This wouldn’t have been an issue were it not for an overly complex weapon and accessory upgrade system. I won’t bother getting into it, but not being a fan of item creation systems to begin with, this clunky system was easily my least favorite part of the game. Thankfully, I was able to ignore it until the end where I had to use it to give me a boost to do the damage needed for the final boss.

Final Fantasy 13 will never be listed as my favorite Final Fantasy game. But it managed to give a unique experience that I’m glad I had. Would I want the next game in the series¹ to be exactly like 13? No, I’d actually like to see them try something else. Maybe work the Final Fantasy 12 formula into something else that I’d enjoy. But with this game I’m glad to see different things being tried with a series that by all means could quite easily just be phoning it in.

1. That’s not an MMO… Damn FF14

Video gamers being the general unfit lot that we are, have not in general responded well to Nintendo Wii¹. While a smash success, Nintendo’s sales stride with the Wii appears to be on a potential decline and this year is the clutch year for Sony or Microsoft to lynchpin their own ass-shaking devices into the market. Last year we heard about Natal, Microsoft’s awkwardly birth-related sounded camera device which Peter Molyneux told us would be the advent in being able to simulate interactions with little boys. I’m scared already.

Not having a cool project code name to change into a penis related moniker² Microsoft apparently wanted to follow Nintendo’s lead again by picking a word and spelling it funny. They chose Kinect, which almost sounds like connect but not quite. This seems to go hand in hand with the actual product seeming like a good idea, but not quite.

If you thought you looked like an ass playing the Wii, just wait until you check out Kinect! Moving your entire body has never been so awkward looking. I could link to images and photoshops of people looking goofy as hell using Kinect all day, but I won’t. Thankfully, Microsoft is making this sound like the next coming of Gamer Jesus, so you won’t have to worry about my skepticism when Kinect releases and I am eternally punished in Microsoft’s own version of hell. I believe Windows ME gets installed into your colon in layer four of that particular hell.

One of the first games show is Kinecticmals, which apparently lets you handle some pussy cats and make you vaguely feel like you’ve been sold some new age calorie counting device. You’ve then got your Kinects Sports and Dance Like You Mean It³ to round out the copying Nintendo technique. We’ve also apparently been promised games from Lucas Arts and Disney to let us swing light sabers as Mickey Mouse or have a tea party with Darth Vader. I may have missed some of the exact details here.

All in all, I think Microsoft missed the point. Wii Sports was the big boy in showing the whole motion gaming thing to the world, with people acting out their sports moves excessively for massive fun. Kinect seems to have that down, and for your whole body, but what then? The Wiiremote’s ability to function with games where you didn’t have to move around entirely is where the device’s true form began to show. Hell, you can play Wii Sports sitting down. It’s not as much fun, but it’s possible. That flexibility is to me the Wii’s strongpoint. Will Kinect allow such flexibility?

What is Kinect’s groove? What need is it trying to fill other than “me too”ing off the back of Nintendo? The extra device to be used just for these particular games? I guess. Even if you’re not concerned with looking like an ass while playing video games, and I know I’m not, Microsoft just hasn’t shown that Kinect is worth it at this point. We’re going to get similar experiences to before with a slightly different control mechanism, which basically has been done before with the Playstation EyeToy. This seems to be the more powerful, more sophisticated version of that, but didn’t this generation show us that more power and more sophistication of an idea people have already gotten used to isn’t necessarily the winning strike?

I’ll happily try out Kinect when I have a chance, but I’m not quite interested just yet. Microsoft needs more than Cirque du Solei and old men talking about simulating with little boys to get me interested.

1. Well, so says the quote unquote hardcore.
2. The Wii’s codename was Revolution.
3. Possibly not the real name of the game.

So! Last month I wrote about how a simple commercial made me want to play two games that I never got to. Well, until now. After finishing The Battle of Olympus I jumped into Guardic Gaiden, better known to the English speaking world as “The Guardian Legend.”

If I have a forte when it comes to gaming, shooters are not it. It took me far too long to beat just the opening stage. But what is quite brilliant about this game, and I’m sure would be even more so for it was one of those games I just got as a child without any rhyme or reason to the purchase. Why? Well, because if I didn’t really know much about the game going into it, beating the first shooting stage and being taken into the entirely different top-down Zelda-like world would probably have blown my young mind.

And the Zelda-like gameplay segments were awe inspiring. Starting with a simple gun and access to only a few areas, I slowly opened up access to the world by completing more shooting stages for keys and more powerful weapons. The world is quite haunting, only inhabited by enemies and these blue ball things called Landers who serve as shop keeps and the occasional hint giver. But the majority of the hints needed to proceed in the game are in the form of electronic notes left behind by someone. Who that is is never revealed, and honestly not that important, but what it manages to do is create a completely haunting feeling. Whoever left these notes had either attempted this task before and failed, or knew someone would have to do it one day and left these messages as a final form of communication. Really gives a lonely feeling.

Basically that task is to destroy this spaceship planet¹ via the destruction of the aforementioned corridors. Switching between the two forms of action really kept the game exciting for me as the challenge grew in two extremely different ways at once. The shooting stages had a continuous difficulty increase that became quite infuriating at times, but I was able to make my way through.

Getting to this game years and years past my original interest was quite worth it. It had a wonderful atmosphere and managed to make a delicious blend of two genres that I really still have trouble believing actually worked together that well. It’s a piece of gaming art and if you’ve got the opportunity, I highly recommend it.

1. Or something like that.

This one was at least finished within a couple of months of me getting it. I actually got it because a good friend of mine bought it for me for Christmas. Now while I loved Super Mario Galaxy to death, I was a bit wary of New Super Mario Brothers Wii because the DS iteration of this series didn’t do much at all for me. I remember beating NSMB, but not being overly impressed. This is not at all the case with NSMBWii.

What’s the difference? I really can’t say. They didn’t feel too different, but NSMBWii definitely felt a bit more challenging, even though I don’t know if I would catagorize the game as “hard”. While this game seemed to have focused on the multiplayer aspect, that did not at all ruin the game for me who played it almost entirely single player¹.

The boss fights did feel really good. I honestly can’t remember if the DS game had the Koopa Kids², but having them back in this game felt really nice. Battling them twice, once in the world’s mid level and then again in the final level, added a nice flair to the game, being that the battle’s difficulty was increased for the second fight.

The Bowser fight itself was a surprise twice, and while I’d rather not spoil it, I’d like to say that I was pleasently surprised by the way it was handled. I believe it took me thirty lives in total to beat him, but doshgarnit if it didn’t feel amazing afterwards.

It’s a shame that I haven’t had the chance to deeply delve into the multiplayer nor the ambition to clear the bonus levels, but even ignoring all that meaty availability in the game, I’m astonished by how enjoyable it was. With the release of Super Mario Galaxy 2 this month I can’t help but feel that a majority of my gaming time will soon be Mario based once again.

1. My wife joined in for a few levels but it didn’t catch on for her.
2. Research tells me no.

In my style of finishing a game as soon as possible, I finally checked off Mega Man 9 this month¹. Sure, I took a long time, but not without good reason. I found this game to be quite a challenge.

If you flashback to the long, long ago of 2008, you may recall that MM9 was a bundle of too much hope. If this game was a roaring success, why, every company would add a “retro” sequel to their popular series. This means more 2D FF! And Contra! And something! But it never really happened on a grand scale. Sure, there have been some games, and Mega Man 10 is now out in glorious 8-bit stylings, but the trend didn’t explode as some people would have hoped. That said, Mega Man 9 still delivered what it was obliged to and nothing more. A good, fun game.

The boss names in the Mega Man series had become sort of a joke, and MM9 doesn’t really help nor damage this reputation much. Having the first female boss robot in Splash Woman was a bit of an interesting twist, and Galaxy Man’s design is quite unique for the series. Still, we’re left with some utterly generic stuff like Magma Man and Jewel Man. Not to forget the just plain bizarre in the forms of Hornet Man and Plug Man. I mean, what the hell is supposed to be weak to hornets? And what is the galaxy weak to? The logic, it is failing me!

So it may not be obvious that hornets beat Splash Woman and jewels beat Plug Man, but without having a solid feel for the ordering I just got to experiment and experience the stages again and again² To me, that was the shortest part of the challenge, though. It took me a few months of off and on playing, but conquering Wily’s stages this time was a monstrous challenge for me. Especially the first stage. The lava-like beams that required a timed hit of concrete, early enough so it doesn’t kill you, but late enough that you can jump on top of it to proceed. Took me a few weeks of trying to get the pattern down. Once that happened, the rest slowly began to fall into place over a few weeks time.

Eventually, I got to Wily and managed to beat him my first try. That’s always kind of astounded me that I have so much trouble with the stages in these games yet so little with the bosses. Maybe they make them a good deal easier for the psychological boost of beating the stage and the boss. Maybe I’m just good at boss fights³. Who can say for sure? But finally conquering Wily’s stages and Wily himself was a thrill. The ending was a tad cliched and predictable, but that’s not what I play these games for. The game, as a whole though, has me pumped to grab 10 as soon as I’ve got a little extra cash to blow.

1. Release Date: September 22, 2008
2. And again. Especially Tornado Man’s stage.
3. Maybe it’s the stocking up on the 9 energy tanks

So, let’s roll back years and think about old video game commercials, shall we? There was one commercial that featured two (2!) games in it at once. This compression of advertising blew my young mind and made me feel like I needed two video games at the same time¹. Scouring the vast land of YouTube, I have sadly been unable to find this old commercial.

But!

My memory fails me at times yet I do remember the two games it advertised. The Guardian Legend and The Battle of Olympus. Both published in the US by Brøderbund, better known for their publishing of edutainment software and their funny slash-o, my young mind just figured the games were made by them. I mean, who reads the small print, anyway? Fact is, two entirely different groups of people were behind them, Compile for The Guardian Legend and The Battle of Olympus was by Infinity. Infinity seems to have worked on the Populous games and a slew of 1999 released PC games, which, let’s assume are not pornography.

I digress.

So these two games were featured in one commercial and they looked awesome. Why? Well they both look like they took features of the first tow Legend of Zelda games and went crazy as hell with them. Aliens and spaceships meet Zelda 1 in The Guardian Legend and Zelda 2 goes to Ancient Greece in The Battle for Olympus. With my love for the Zelda games, I had to have these games!

I never did though.

And that’s okay. I hold no resentment or hatred towards my parents for never buying me these games. I had plenty of others anyway! But I always wanted to play them. And now I’ve finally gotten a chance to. I’m working on The Guardian Legend as of this writing, so I’ll focus on The Battle of Olympus for now.

So, yeah. Zelda 2 meets Ancient Greece. That’s just awesome, and you know it. I mean, the tales of Greek gods were probably the most awesome in elementary school literature class. At least, I enjoyed the hell out of them. They painted a world that felt so different from the other tales about roller skates with keys² and babysitters freaking out after children get bloody lips from wrestling with stuffed turtles³. They featured bad ass adventures with morals. And now, I got a chance to play that in video game form. Radical!

So what did I learn about Greek history and culture thanks to The Battle of Olympus?

• Prometheus can teach you to shoot fire out of a stick.
• Circe makes salamander skin shields.
• Dolphins and Pegasi will let you ride them if you have the appropriate instrument.
• Hermes likes giving his shoes to people.
• Ares is an asshole and will take Hermes’s shoes from you if you don’t have enough olives to buy a bracelet.
• The gods really like selling things for olives.
• Seriously, you never have enough goddamned olives.
• You cannot hear the word of the gods⁴ if the gods want you to buy something from them via olives.
• Bats are jerks.

All in all valuable lessons to be learned.

The game plays wonderfully and the music is also blissful. My only main issue is how much of a mess the latter dungeons are in terms of being evil, evil mazes. That said, the game isn’t impossible as much as it is occasionally frustrating. But the side scrolling adventure gameplay is a real treat and the Ancient Greece background gives it a flavor that, while of course not entirely historically accurate, isn’t found all that often in video games⁵. If you’re a fan of Zelda II and never got the chance to give this game a shot, I heartily recommend it. Having finished it myself, I now want to find more of these side scrolling adventure games to spend my time with.

But first, The Guardian Legend!

1. Little did I know years later I would be told by my wife that I look ridiculous trying to play two video games at the same time!
2. I distinctly remember my teacher having to explain that roller skates used to have keys. And this was the late 80s, mind you!
3. I nearly vomited after reading this story in class and learned that day I have a weakness towards blood. Yay!
4. Your password
5. Yes, I’m are of God of War. But really, what else is there?