Nights into Dreams (HD remake) Windows
This game helped make me a pariah in high school. The N64 was soooo much cooler and had better graphics because it was SIXTY FOUR BITS according to the one other kid lame enough to try holding conversations about videogames. On days when I didn't mind being laughed at for supporting a huge flop like the Saturn, I would attempt to counter with the fact that Nights. . . had better art direction and more unique gameplay than even the mighty Mario64. Problem was I didn't understand the game at all. For a good 6 years before my brother took the console and moved out, I would just glide around aimlessly then get to Puffy, have polygons shit out all over the place, and run out of time. BUT GOD DAMN IT! SHIT WAS FREAKING AWESOME!
Now a good decade later, I got my hands on the port and confirmed that I was, in many ways, an idiot as a teenager. The gameplay of this one is astoundingly simple: collect blue balls to earn back the orbs taken from you at the start of each level and try to earn the best score possible so you can access the final world. I was spot on about the art direction though. Even in Saturn mode, the bitch is gorgeous. Part of me thinks that my gawking at things had a lot to do with previous failures. Even in non-HD Saturn-faithful mode, this bitch is gorgeous. When other games went to dreamland, you could totally tell because there were clouds and stuff. Here, there's some thought put into things and I for one would love to be flying through that dreamscape with the purple Jester-y type dude. Focus less on the plot and more on just enjoying the ride and this game is fantastic.
My only real issue with the remake is the presentation of Christmas Nights. I waited 15+ years to play the thing. So not being able to play as Sonic really cheesed me off. Even if I did find a way to do that, I'm not entirely sure it's possible to swap over to the Saturn style graphics. I come from the videogame mascot era, back before the success of the PS1 despite the lameness of Crash Bandicoot proved a console could thrive without one. I used to play Sonic Jam and drool over the possibilities of X-treme and think maybe I wept openly when Sonic Adventure II made clear what was to come. So I wanted to run around as Sonic then bop that boss recolored to simulate Robotnik. This was true of the PS2 remake as well so I'm not shocked but still. Why not make dropping obscene coin on what's basically a one level demo even dumber and include the full experience?
All in all, a nice port of a great title. The HD version smooth things out and retains the charm of the original nicely. Plus, the main game features a Saturn mode that's pretty close to the original. It seems a bit less prone to polygon drop out than my original. However, that would prove very handy against Puffy as she wasn't really playable on my console (which is apparently a freak thing). Buy it on Steam or I'll uhhh shit. I don't have readers to threaten much less a threat to hold over them. Maybe I'll not pet the cat next to me and tell her it was your fault? Shit. I'm going to bed and hoping for a dream half as awesome as this game.
Klonoa Wii
Of all the $15.00 games at my local Gamestop, this one is probably my favorite. It's apparently a jump-for-jump remake of a PS1 game I missed. It might be a good thing we didn't meet back then as I got obsessed easily and now have a previously unknown franchise to explore at some point. The game falls into that awkward sounding "2.5 D" platformer category. Graphics are polygonal. You run along a fairly fixed path and don't really go exploring. As a twist, you can take aim at some things in the fore/background. That combined with the need to run around and re-explore territory sporadically helps add a bit of light puzzling to things. Controls are intuitive and of the directional + 2 buttons variety. Another thing that differentiates this from Sonic or Mario clones is that you grab enemies to use them as projectiles to progress or a means of defense instead of just jumping on shit a lot.
My only complaint with it was the fact they redesigned the character from his PS1 days to look more like a Sonic Adventure reject that anything else. It's mostly in the eyes. The voice sounds similar as well. I just wish they'd thought things through and maintained distance from the blue dude. Klonoa doesn't need more things to resemble Sonic. The plot is fairly wafer thin, a skill I wish Sonic Team learned after S. A. instead of flooding the market with crap games. Go buy this. Now.
The Combatribes Arcade via MAME
Side scrolling beat em ups started to get repetitive after awhile. Don't get me wrong I still love playing through Streets of Rage II in a quest to try and use Max's kneedrop move on every boss. However, the same dudes keep running at you with the same attack patterns in levels where variety comes from going left instead of right, travelling up an elevator, or having maybe three possible endings caused by really basic choices. Combatribes is one of the weirder variations on that theme. There are some very tiny areas populated by a single gang. Your purely Technos designed character pounds the crap out of them with some downright brutal moves, gets charged at by a themed boss, and brutalizes them. I've always stuck to the arcade version because grafting a coherent plot onto this blatant quarter muncher seems stupid. It's all about style, brutality, and having fun. Who cares if the story amounts to "there were bad people. Good people who you could tell apart from the bad people because they responded to your joystick beat the crap out of them. There were no more bad people." Just grab a friend, pump in some quarters, and enjoy.
Muramasa: The Demon Blade Wii
I seem to keep on playing variants on the old side-scrolling-beat-em-up formula. This one uses swords and has its fairly linear plot structure imposed upon a non-linear version of feudal Japan. There's a bit more strategy than some of the traditional, more straight forward hack n slash type games. You build up stats as you go through and forge new, better swords. Then you need to choose which ones come along, what items to carry, etc. based on what obstacles you see yourself needing to overcome. As a further bonus, the art direction in the game is utterly fantastic. During a few of the more over the top boss battles, I didn't mind getting my ass kicked because the enemy doing it was so pleasant to look at. It's a good thing that the boss battles are so lovely as the "run down this road from that creepy forest to that field to that garden then across the creepy mountain tops as some combo of six or seven types of enemies jump at you" formula starts to get severely repetitive after awhile. Still, there's just enough strategy to keep proceedings engaging. Plus I found when I was really starting to feel the sameness, the final boss battle started. If anything else irked me, it was the Wiimote control scheme. I couldn't stop accidentally jumping until swapping to the classic controller. Muramasa . . . looks lovely, drags a smidge, and has a good old-school beat-em-up feel to it. I dig the hell out of it but will probably lose interest once my Saturn is running Guardian Heroes again. Maybe a multiplayer option might help it win that battle, provided it went online so I could play with my brother? I kind of doubt it as GH is that much closer to perfection and comparing the two is a total dick move. Thank fuck I don't need to have journalistic standards!
retro-bit extension cable for Sega Dreamcast
Pre-reliable wireless controllers, I was a big fan of extension cables. Leaving consoles in the middle of the floor posed undue risk to hardware. As a bonus, going with 3rd party cables of questionable quality wasn't as risky as compromising on memory cards. That is unless of course you're dealing with a Dreamcast where said memory units are seated within the controller. These were about 1/2 the cost of a single legit one for a 2 pack and it showed fairly early on. My initial connection was so bad that my first party VMU tweeted a lot to protest connection loss. My supra defuxe 3rd party 4x capacity card with serial port flat out died until I strategically thwacked it. After evaluating things a bit, I determined the issue had to do with a fidgety connection point. Basically, I'm used to my originals which would do click into place perfectly with no pressure on every attempt. With these, one needs to double check for security and be ready to have a dashing kitten sever the connection. Time will ultimately tell when it comes to build quality but for the price, I expected worse.
Performance Super Pad 8 for Sega Saturn
One thing I didn't like about the Saturn were the default controllers. They didn't sit comfortably in my hands and the XYZ buttons were too small for my ample digits. So figuring that Interact's Eclipse Pad was kind of awesome, I opted to grab their Performance brand "equivalent" for my sporadic-at-best second player. Slow-mo comes courtesy of a poorly positioned switch on the back which my fingers tend to rest on top of. The build quality is so flimsy I figure that will snap off after a week's worth of normal use and possibly take the housing with it. My favorite aspect, however, is the fact that one must enable auto-fire to use anything other than the D-pad or start button. I am in awe of how poorly made this thing is and highly recommend pointing at one and laughing.
Chu-Chu Rocket Sega Dreamcast
I remember this one coming out. OMG ONLINE MULTIPLAYER! ON A CONSOLE! HOLY SHIT! WOW! That would all be irrelevant if the game sucked. Luckily for me, it doesn't. The primary condition for my acquiring a Dreamcast with 4 VMUs, 2 controllers, and 80 games free was not bitching about the fact the broadband adapter was sold to recoup losses after Sega murdered the console. So since I'm not ambitious enough to track down a dialup ISP or simulate on via a PC/DC server my Chu-Chu Rocket experience is strictly offline. Gameplay consists of escorting space mice to their rocket ships by dropping some directional tabs and avoiding a variety of obstacles in the course of your duties. It's one of those things you need to play to understand its appeal/charm. Ideally one could do so via local multiplayer but attempts to draw the wife in have thus far failed. That's really a shame as it's one of those fairly intuitive addictive puzzlers that everybody should play every once in awhile.
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