Grad school is supposed to be about shattering your perceptions of learning and intelligence, pushing your personal and academic limits and achieving more than you ever thought possible. For me it was like that, I guess, but it was also about sneaking video games into the equation whenever I could. I'm not talking about playing a few levels of Duke Nukem 3D or Street Fighter 4 before bed or even a few rounds of Tetris in between classes; I'm talking about fusing gaming and academics. If you've seen my "Learning Game" posts in this blog, you know that I was able to reach that goal - if I do say so myself - by doing research and citing valid sources like educational theorist James Gee.
And then there was the How-To assignment I received one afternoon for my Teaching with Technology class. I was supposed to explain how to do something using only pictures - no words of any kind except on the title card and the end card of the PowerPoint presentation. I grabbed my camera and whipped up this little number called "Setting Up a Nintendo Game."
The song playing in the background is "Super Mario Bros. Gypsy Jazz" by Adrian Holovaty. You need to download it from ocremix.org as soon as possible.
The original version of this project began with me turning on a Wii, making an annoyed face, thinking for a moment and then smiling and reaching for an NES controller. Then it continued almost exactly as in the above video. I was implying that the Wii is boring and 8-bit Nintendo is more fun, or possibly that the Wii is too complicated so I went for something less difficult.
When they saw it, the entire class (all graduate students with GPAs of 3.0 or higher) had no idea why I started the project like that. They also had no clue why I would take the old cartridge out of the system before putting a new one in, but that's not important right now.
The project they all liked better was "How to Tie a Necktie." It was five frames of a guy tying a necktie onto a statue, but every frame had the same cartoon rabbit photoshopped into the picture. My classmates commented that the author must be a computer genius to grace us with such photo-wizardry. I smiled and slowly grinded my teeth into a fine powder.
Yes, it was almost a year ago. Yes, it's petty of me to make an entire blog post about an incident that has no bearing on the quality of my life. And yes, I'm still ticked off about it.
Necktie Bunny, if I ever find you hanging around my tie rack, I'm going to smite you so hard with Nintendo cartridges that you'll wish you were never copied and pasted into existence five times over.
In the late ‘90s, Nintendo Power, the one-time leader in gaming magazines, slid from its sky high alter, just as its parent company began its mighty decent past the upstart newcomer to the console market, Sony. The early days of Nintendo Power were a love letter to the industry, sparkling with a childlike innocence and the love of the game. By 1997 however, NP had grown up a bit, and like a teenager, it was suddenly all about the attitude. “Play it Loud!” exclaimed Nintendo’s new marketing campaign as longhaired Nirvana groupies graced the grunged-out pages of NP. Nintendo had turned into everything they used to stand against – they had become just like early ‘90s Sega. But by then, the “extreme” shtick had already been done to death by a certain blue hedgehog.
Play it loud? “Played Out!” was more like it. The Silver Age of gaming had officially come to an end.
I quietly allowed my subscription to Nintendo Power to expire. It was a lot like euthanizing a terminally ill family pet: Even though it hurt, it was the right thing to do for everyone involved. It was finally over.
But not before this little gem found its way into my mailbox:
Ta-da!
If you were a subscriber to Nintendo Power in 1997, you came home one day from school or work to find a curious VHS tape in the mail spotlighting the upcoming Star Fox 64 for the Nintendo 64 console. But this wasn't just any preview – the damage it caused to the viewer’s psyche was going to require hours of therapy to overcome.
The tape begins with a man in an orange flight suit parachuting into the parking lot of the Nintendo of America building in Redmond, Washington, so it was pretty much a normal day at Nintendo HQ. A creepy bald man who looks like he ought to be working at an adult video store instead of wearing a Sony sweatshirt watches intently from a “Diaper Service” truck across the street. He then radios to another man in a red Sega sweatshirt, informing him that “the eagle has landed.” As Sony distracts flight suit man, Sega comes up from behind and USES A CHLOROFORM RAG ON HIM.
Evil laughter ensued. Note the dead guy at the bottom.
While I was watching this for the first time, I wondered, “What does this have to do with Star F- HOLY CRAP HE JUST KILLED THAT GUY!”
Cut to the evil lair (read: abandoned warehouse) of the deadly Sega-Sony alliance! Flight suit man, whose name is apparently Peter, is tied up in a wooden kitchen chair obtained from the side of the road in a quiet Midwestern community. Sony is screaming at him though a bullhorn, demanding information about Star Fox 64 while Sega looks on devilishly. It’s a lot like my eighth birthday party, only it had less to do with Nintendo games and more to do with the money I owed to the Mob.
At first Peter’s iron will and sophomoric attitude seem to have Bulk and Skull, er, Sony and Sega on the ropes, but then the duo’s second captive is revealed: A Super Mario doll with its stupid plastic head in a vice grip! As Sony and Sega start SQUASHING MARIO’S HEAD, Peter spills the beans about Star Fox 64. Watching the gameplay footage, everyone knows it would have looked and sounded better on a PlayStation (as well as taking a scant 6 hours to load), but no one says anything about it.
Also, for some reason, Sega sounds like Sarah Palin. Apparently in the ‘90s, Sega of America was located in beautiful downtown Alaska and didn’t know much about foreign policy.
For a company that previously on X-Men wouldn’t allow a for so much as a sing drop of blood in its games, this is a pretty huge turnaround. Here’s where that attitude thing I was talking about earlier comes into play: Nintendo was trying so hard to be edgy and cool that they were seemingly willing to shed the family-friendly image they had worked so hard to achieve for the last 12 years.
Here's Peter, ratting his friends out.
When Peter stupidly reveals that Bob, Nintendo’s chief scientist (?), knows more about Star Fox 64 than he does, Sony and Sega dress up like mentally challenged pizza delivery guys, knock Bob out with a pizza box filled with death gas (??), and abduct him from what appears to be either Nintendo’s secret underground stronghold or Michael Jackson’s old bedroom at the Neverland Ranch (???). How these two know the location of either is beyond me.
Either Sega is really angry, or he has to use the men's room RIGHT NOW.
Back at the warehouse they’ve only got one chair, so while Peter chows down on the pizza that eight seconds before was revealed to be pink knockout gas, Sony and Sega grill Bob like an unfortunate shrimp at an Australian cookout. While an entirely mobile Peter does nothing to rescue his comrade, Bob reveals… The Rumble Pak!
OH CRAP! I just told you about the mighty Rumble Pak!
But Bob’s not going to leak any more sensitive information which at that point was common gaming knowledge, so Sony and Sega POUR THOUSANDS OF VOLTS OF ELECTRICITY THROUGH MARIO’S EARS VIA JUMPER CABLES AND A CAR BATTERY. The little Mario doll even convulses while they do it, just like in real life.
Mario, nooooooooooooo!
Okay Nintendo, that’s messed up. Remember how the cover of Nintendo Power issue #2 gave kids nightmares because it had Simon Belmont holding Dracula’s severed head? This is 100 times worse and it’s totally not what you should be teaching kids to do. Yet on the flipside, it’s kind of awesome. But I wonder what Nintendo of America’s Video Game Content Guidelines would have to say about all this.
To stop the torture, Bob whips out a Rumble Pak, which he just happens to have in his lab coat which Sony and Sega neglected to search.
“Hook it up. I want to feel this myself,” says Sony creepily. While a cheap “Teen Spirit” rip-off song plays in the background, they leave Bob tied up and Sega, Sony and Peter play some Star Fox 64. Then Sony is way, way too happy about the rumble feature for way, way too long.
“Whoa! I actually felt it!” says Sony. “This is incredible!”
We’ve got four guys in an abandoned warehouse with ropes, a couch and something that vibrates wildly when Peter asks, “Well what do you say, guys? You into a little multiplayer action?”
I... are you coming on to me? Even Sega is scared!
That’s where I stopped the video in 1997, because even at 15 years old, I could guess where a setup like that was going. Up until then, I had respected the Big N and thought of the company as a sort of paragon of video virtue, but after the kidnappings and murder attempts featured in this movie, I figured there was only way to top it. But recently, I screwed up my courage and decided to watch the rest of the video in the name of gaming knowledge, this blog post, and a strange new interest in hanging out with lots of men at once. However, my fears were allayed when Bob exclaimed, “Gentleman, welcome to versus mode!”
OH THANK GOD
After seeing Star Fox 64’s four player capabilities and getting an eyeful of Nintendo’s line up for the future, including games like Golden Eye and Zelda 64, Sega says, “We just can’t beat you guys!” A more accurate statement would have been, “We just can’t beat you guys, unless you count the entire 1993 fiscal year when Sega products outsold and outperformed everything you came up with.” Then Sony should have chimed in with, “We’re beating the pants off of you RIGHT NOW with our CD format and will continue to do so through approximately 2007, and a single game about flying furries can’t do a thing to stop it.”
With Sony and Sega “defeated,” Peter and Bob jump up and, gloating, say some of the greatest lines in video game commercial history:
“Thanks for the pizza, GUYS!” Bob yells.
“See you later, BOYS!” Peter adds flamboyantly.
Hmm, where have I heard something like that before…
To Recap – Things I learned about Star Fox 64 from the 1997 Nintendo Power preview video:
1. It’s okay to knock someone out with chloroform and abduct them if you need information about a video game.
2. Kidnapping, restraints and torture are acceptable (and preferable) forms of persuasion.
3. All pizza men work for Sony and/or Sega.
4. Connecting one’s ears to a car battery is a fun and inventive new passtime.
5. The Rumble Pak is more fun than an adult toy.
6. “Thanks for the pizza, GUYS!”
7. Star Fox 64 is not nearly as entertaining as this preview video.
If you would like to subject yourself to this movie, here it is. I’ll understand if you don’t feel like watching it, but please, do yourself a favor and fast forward to the last minute. That pizza line is priceless.
If you’re a regular here at Wordsmith VG, you might remember the letter that I sent to Brøderbund Software last month in reference to their much-belittled Nintendo Entertainment System dungeon crawl, Deadly Towers. It took me 24 years to contact the company with my suggestions for improvements to the original game or its possible (probable!) sequel, so I really didn’t expect a quick reply. However, it’s more than five weeks later, and I’ve heard not a peep from Brøderbund or their parent company, Navarre Corporation. This means one of three – or thee and a half, depending on how you look at it – things:
1. Brøderbund Software is diligently working on a re-release or sequel to DT, implementing all of my suggestions, and is simply too busy counting the millions of dollars they stand to make in the near future to send me a thank you card/check.
2. They never received my letter because some underpaid and overworked postal worker “delivered” it deep into his pantaloons.
3a. All Brøderbund Software employees are being abducted by aliens.
3b. All Brøderbund Software employees ARE aliens.
Whatever the case, all this waiting is starting to affect me in odd ways. First of all, I’ve been peeing purple for the past week, but I’m pretty sure that has less to do with Deadly Towers and more to do with me brutally murdering Barney the Dinosaur and feasting on his stupid foam carcass. But more importantly, things are getting tense between me and my Deadly Towers cartridge, Wilson. He said he was cool with us discussing his flaws, but I think he took offense to some of the things I said in that letter. I barely see him when he comes home from work and breakfast has turned into a series of awkward, stalled conversations.
Me: Good morning, Wilson! How are you feeling this morning?
Wilson: I'm fine.
*short pause*
Me: Are you all set for a day of mind-numbing gameplay and murdering the player’s character an astronomical amount of times in the first minute or so?
Wilson: I guess.
*longer, more stressful pause*
Me: Uh… did you hear anything back from Brøderbund Software about your sequel?
Wilson: I… listen. I have to tell you something. I’m… I’m late for work, okay? Prince Myer should have stabbed the first enemy at least 800 times by now. I’ll see you later.
Me: Oh, okay. Well, I’ll see you tonight I guess. I love you!
Wilson: Yeah. See you later.
Although his warrantee ended about 23 years and nine months ago, I looked up Wilson’s manual for details anyway, and this kind of behavior isn’t covered at all. In fact, I can’t find any information about his wierd attitude anywhere, not even in old issues of Gamepro or on those little cards that came with new games telling you to buy Nintendo Power for $15 a year.
I’m planning on sending a copy of the original letter to the Navarre Corporation in hopes that they might give me some sort of reply. I’ll keep you guys posted. In the meantime, I’m going to go watch I Love Lucy and wonder where Wilson and I went wrong.
I never want to play Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance again.
It’s not the moderately outdated fighting mechanics, the unexplainably chunky blood splatters or even the bowel-stimulatingly dumb fatalities like Quan Chi’s “Neck Stretch” that have me wanting to lob this game at the nearest handicapable youngster. No, it was my own obsessive-compulsive nature that rammed that last nail through my heart and into my koffin.
The three PlayStation 2 era Mortal Kombat titles – Deadly Alliance, Deception and Armageddon – share a similar way of awarding extras: The Krypt. The Krypt holds literally hundreds of unlockables, with kontent ranging from new characters and battlegrounds to the gaming equivalent of those asbestos-lined gumball machine prizes you used to beg your mother for as she checked out at Shoprite. Using the kurrency he or she earns in battle, it’s up to the player to purchase as much krap as possible. It’s sort of like Pokémon and its “Gotta Catch ‘em All!” tagline, only what you’re catching are shattered bone fragments and pieces of Kano’s shameful spleen.
Worst. Fatality. Ever.
Sensing that the Mortal Kombat database in my head needed updating when I didn’t recognize about 25 characters from the lazy-yet-brilliant hodgepodge that is MK: Armageddon, I chopped a bloody trail through MK4, MK: Deadly Alliance and MK: Deception until I had thoroughly explored all three titles. I cleaned out all the koffins Deception’s Krypt, but of the 626 koffins in Deadly Alliance, I only opened about 400.
Those 400 koffins didn’t come easy: For days all I did was earn kurrency for the Krypt or try to dream up ways to get more. My friends started disowning me, I almost got fired from my journalism gig and Saint Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of missing persons and lost things, called my cell phone and threatened to have me excommunicated if I didn’t put down the controller. So one day I told the game that I was taking it out to clean it, then before I lost my nerve, I shoved it back in the case and left it on my shelf. For awhile I was free of the kall of the Krypt.
Worst. Caption. Ever.
Kut to about three weeks ago when my hard-hittin’, girlfriend-ranglin’, N-Sync lovin’ cousin came over and we started kombatting it up with MK1, MK2 and UMK3. All it took was a little Southern Comfort and his innocent suggestion that we play Deadly Alliance to set me off again, but worse this time. It was like quitting smoking only to take up licking tar directly off the sun-baked road.
I must have slogged through Deadly Alliance’s single player mode at least 20 times over the course of the next week before going through the ultra boring Konquest mode again. Then I started making dummy profiles with names like “Strawman” and (at the suggestion of my cousin) “Asshats,” kopping some easy koins, then fighting endless two-player battles with myself to “win” all the currency on my real profile. My cousin walked in at one point while I was sleeping, but I still had the controller in my hands and was attempting to do Sub-Zero’s fatality mid-round.
“This is sad,” he said.
“Mumble, mumble Kano wins,” I am told I replied.
With most addictions, it’s up to the afflicted individual to realize that he or she is stronger than their habit and consciously push it away in the name of a better life. My MK:DA Krypt addiction came to an end when I opened that last Godforsaken tomb one morning as the sun was just peeking through the clouds and over the horizon. The camera twisted around to a side view, as it always does, and the lid slammed down on the floor. An evil laugh reverberated in the chamber. Through the dust these words appeared on my screen:
EMPTY KOFFIN.
I know there’s a metaphor here, but I kan’t quite put my finger on it.
Back before Resident Evil, Silent Hill and even Sweet Home were around to give us restless dreams; before Alone in the Dark kept PC gamers up at night; and before terrifying gamers was a good business model; there was Friday the 13th on the NES. It’s not too surprising that this game is actually scarier than the cheesy movies – after all, they were less about genuine scares and more about watching a mentally challenged zombie in a hockey mask off camp counselors in creative and sometimes decorative ways. But this frightful NES game actually puts you in the shoes of an unfortunate group of would-be victims out to destroy Jason – if they can. The other reason it’s so scary is that it’s one of the worst games ever made. It’s frustrating, ugly and boring. And yet, I adore it. Go figure.
Lovingly thrown together in a single afternoon by LJN, the one-time leader in crappy movie-based video games, Friday the 13th is often berated for its repetitive gameplay, unclear objectives and face-melting difficulty. These are all valid criticisms; but what most half-hearted, bash-fest reviewers don’t care to admit is that once you get the hang of things, Friday the 13th for Nintendo becomes a horrifying search-and-destroy mission that’s likely to leave players cowering under their beds in broad daylight.
The story is simple: Jason’s angry and murdering children again, because that’s what he does best, and it’s up to six similarly-dressed camp counselors to rescue the camp’s 54 children and annihilate the man behind the mask. Friday the 13th was the first true survivor horror game: The only goal, aside from trashing Jason, is to make it out alive. Encounters with Jason leave you paranoid because you’re always terrified that he’ll jump out at you in the woods and kill your character. It’s a game of cat and mouse, only the player is never really sure whether they’re the cat or the mouse.
The nine-second tunes that play over and over again in the field, in the cabins and at the character select screen are unnecessarily repetitive even for NES standards. But there’s more than meets the ear going on here: LJN must have spent millions researching how to convert tension into musical form, and the seconds-long riffs that populate the F13 world are the malicious fruit of that labor of hundreds of mad scientists and psychotic dentists. The music is one of the key factors in making Friday the 13th as scary as it is. For those of us who played it as children, this game still provides the soundtrack for our deepest nightmares to this day.
Take on Friday the 13th if you think you can handle it (and its crappy gameplay). Look at it this way, either you’ll defeat Jason, or, to quote the game:
Remember Deadly Towers for the NES? Most people think it’s one of the worst games ever, and for good reason: Endless dungeons, hours of aimless wandering and a weakling main character do not a good game make. But you know what? I see potential in good (bad?) ol’ DT, so I decided to mail a letter to Brøderbund Software, the people who brought us Deadly Towers 24 years ago, and urge them to release some sort of sequel or upgrade to the original game. Here’s what I sent in its entirety.
Aug. 9, 2010
To Whom It May Concern,
It didn’t have to be this way, Brøderbund Software. Deadly Towers (1986) could have been one of the best early offerings on the Nintendo Entertainment System. Instead, it’s been the butt of every half-hearted reviewer’s jokes since Al Gore invented the internet. Now that you’re a part of Navarre Corp. and therefore pulling in millions from FUNimation Entertainment’s sloppy anime dubs, I think it’s about time that Brøderbund remade Deadly Towers.
Here are a few suggestions:
- Purchase the rights to the next Metal Gear Solid title and rename it Neo Deadly Towers. I know this would be nearly impossible, not to mention immoral, but imagine how satisfying it would be to see a Deadly Towers game getting near perfect scores from all the major gaming publications.
- Let’s say you go the less expensive, more rational route and make your own game. A few simple changes to the original’s mechanics could make Deadly Towers great. Firstly, no one likes being killed in the first 13 seconds every time they play. Perhaps giving the main character, Prince Myer, more hit points than a naked old man brandishing a respirator would make Deadly Towers a more enjoyable experience.
- On the subject of hit points, Prince Myer should begin each game with full health instead of just the default 100 HP. Deadly Towers is not Metroid; no one wants to put up with refilling their life whenever they play.
- One time when I was playing Dragon Warrior, I unequipped my sword and tried to take down the game’s penultimate villain, the DragonLord. Each blow I dealt him resulted in almost no damage. That’s how it feels whenever I hit the attack button while playing Deadly Towers. To counteract this, increase Prince Myer’s strength to the point where he can take down weak enemies in one or two hits, not one or two thousand.
- “Secret” entrances to a huge, pointless dungeon randomly placed throughout the game world don’t look like they were planned; they look like programming errors. Make a door sprite and label it “Huge Pointless Dungeon.” Use it on top of every dungeon entrance.
- On a similar note, put something useful in the dungeon beyond some old dude who sells you worthless stuff for all your cash. Maybe more than one set of armor would be in order, or at least a sexy 8-bit chick surrounded with health, items and money. And whisky. Add whisky.
- Finally, if all else fails, make the next Deadly Towers game a World War II-based first person shooter compatible with Xbox live. The 12- to 16-year-old crowd will flock to it and play hours of death matches, because real combat isn’t a tragedy, it’s hella fun!
I hope my suggestions will help you to improve upon your original Deadly Towers formula, and perhaps a rebalanced version of the game could be made available on your web site. I have faith in Brøderbund Software, and perhaps against my better judgment, I have faith in the Deadly Towers franchise. I wouldn’t have spent my time sending this letter if I didn’t. Show the world that after nearly 25 years, Deadly Towers is nothing to laugh at.*
*Unless you mess it up again.
Sincerely,
Lifelong Video Gamer
If I receive a reply of any sort, you can bet that I’ll post it here!
What happens when programmers attempt to upgrade a mediocre fighting game and re-release it on a new system? Well, besides a terribly cliché lead sentence, you’re likely to get something along the lines of Brutal: Above the Claw for the 32X, Gametek’s final attempt to cash in on the one-on-one craze of the ‘90s with their furry fighting franchise.
The core gameplay hasn’t changed from the previous titles. Players still take control of a fuzzy fighter and battle their way to the Dali Llama, Kendo Coyote is still slower than grandpa wearing cement undershorts and Foxy Roxy is still hot in the kind of way that makes you ashamed you noticed. What’s so frustrating here is that Gametek had the chance to make the 32X version of Brutal a great game by fixing the imperfections of the previous ports and expanding on the best features. Instead they gave us two useless new characters. In fact, little else has been added to this “upgrade,” which turns out to be Above the Claw’s most fundamental flaw.
On the plus side, the graphics are better than ever. The characters are animated well, and they’re a joy to watch in battle and the lush, detailed environments help add some much-needed flair to the experience. However, many locales are missing some of the clever touches found in the original Brutal game, Paws of Fury. Take, for example, Leon the lion’s old bridge stage, where players can fall off the edge mid-battle if they aren’t careful. For some reason, this and other fun details were removed from Above the Claw. Also, the music that was such a draw for the Sega CD game has been ill-treated to say the least. The new jams have still got that Brutal-ish jungle beat, but there are only three or four tracks in the entire game. Each lasts approximately six seconds and is looped indefinitely, so don’t be surprised if you find yourself reaching for the mute button on your TV set a few minutes after plugging in the game.
The sounds don’t fare much better. All the characters make the same yelps and “hy-yahs,” leading to a very generic aural experience. In another small but annoying omission, Leon no longer plays his guitar riff during his Power Chord attack, killing the move’s humor.
Also gone is the pensive, meditative atmosphere of the PC and Sega CD offerings. The Sega CD version in particular feels like the player has been sucked into a martial arts film, with engrossing story screens detailing what vanquished fighters do after being disqualified from the tournament, philosophical jargon about the true nature of the warrior and a nifty intro sequence to pump you up before game time. This is not the case on the 32X cart, which plays like a watered-down arcade game. The polished presentation of the Sega CD title keeps players interested and helps them forgive the slightly dull fighting sequences in favor of the “feel” of the game. Without the awesome ambiance of the CD version, there’s nothing left to distract you from the tedious gameplay. The two new characters, a bite-sized cat in boxer shorts named Psycho Kitty and possibly the lamest dragon ever, Chung Poe, do little to remedy the situation.
There are six different attack buttons – three kicks and three punches – but they often produce the same punch or kick animation, just faster or slower depending on the strength of the button pressed. There’s little reason to use anything but the most damaging attacks, making the Street Fighter style controller layout unnecessary.
The special move system only adds to the problem. Like in many real martial arts, your character starts out as a white belt. As he wins battles, he’s rewarded with special attacks. Why, then, is it almost as difficult for a lowly yellow belt to defeat the Dali Llama as it is for a black belt? Because the special moves the player acquires are almost always useless. Often, these silly maneuvers send your character careening across the screen, recklessly swinging his or her fists. All your opponent has to do to put a stop to the onslaught is jump over you, turn around, and kick you in the face. I suppose special moves that aid your opponent are a pretty innovative idea, but in practice, they’re far from fun.
As far as the two player mode goes, there’s not much too it. With only 12 selectable characters (and seven that are any good), the two player battles don’t stay fresh for long. As a sort of counter to this, the programmers added Island Conquest, a board-game like mode that has both players battling for the supremacy of Brutal Island. It’s a nice addition, but ultimately, it isn’t much different than the standard versus mode.
Despite its problems though, some fun can be had with Brutal: Above the Claw, if only because the concept of anthromorphs beating the tar out of each other is undeniably cool. But the fun quickly wears off, and players are left with a shallow, button masher’s dream of a game. If you were hardcore (or crazy) enough to get a 32X, there’s a good chance you own a Sega CD unit as well. If this is the case, do yourself a favor and seek a copy of the superior Brutal CD; it’s defiantly a cut above the others. Regardless, Brutal: Above the Claw is more entertaining than the Genesis and SNES ports, and is a fine game to fill an afternoon, but that’s about it. If you see it for a few bucks, pick it up and daydream about the awesome game it could have been.
Like that lame kid down the street who has no idea he’s a dork, Hard Drivin’ for the Sega Genesis really thinks that it’s providing players with an awesome driving simulation unlike any other. That’s true; Hard Drivin’ really is unlike any other driving sim, but for all the wrong reasons.
If you’ve played the arcade version of Hard Drivin’, the first thing you’ll notice is that the graphics took a huge hit during the port to the Genesis. While it’s impressive to see the Genny pushing polygons without any fancy chips built into the cart like in Virtua Racer, the game looks like a cheap ‘80s film version of what awesome games would be like in the future. The buildings appear to be made entirely of legos and the animation lacks the fluidity needed to make the player feel like he’s at the wheel of a high-powered auto.
Hard Drivin’ offers a single track with two routes: The standard speed track and the stunt track, which has the player doing crazy loop-de-loops and high-flying jumps. There isn’t anything here that won’t get dull after 15 minutes. The entire game – easy, normal and hard modes – can be defeated by a decent player in one sitting. Even dropping roof-first to the ground from a poorly executed loop-de-loop or ramming into the game’s lone cow loses its charm all too quickly.
There are a total of three songs in Hard Drivin’, including the one at the title screen and another when you win. But the only song that matters is the third, an absurdly dramatic piece that accompanies the instant replays of the player’s crashes. It multiplies the hilarity of mistiming a jump or zooming into the grill of a semi by at least 100 times and is, in fact, the best part of the game.
This game is a quarter cruncher through and through, a fact made obvious by its lack of gameplay options and the reality that most of the ROM space went to the visuals. When Hard Drivin’ was in the arcades, a quarter per play was perfectly acceptable. Take away the steering wheel and the wow factor of the graphics and you’ve lost most of the appeal of the game. Hard Drivin’ on the Genesis feels more like a tech demo than a full-fledged game and it really isn’t worth more than two dollars and an hour of your time. Even if you manage to come across it in some woefully understocked arcade, do yourself a favor and don’t dump more than a few quarters in it.
But be cool and don’t tell Hard Drivin’ I said any of this. If you see it at a used game shop, tell it that it’s badass and that everyone loves it. Just like the well-meaning dork down the street, there’s no reason to be mean to something that tries so hard to be awesome.
I’m honestly not sure why Bandai’s first generation Super NES game, Ultraman: Towards the Future is so universally despised. The graphics are serviceable if not majestic like some of the early SNES offerings such as ActRaiser, Super Castlevania IV, and F-Zero. The music fared much better. It was based directly on the series that spawned the game, and some tracks still rock my socks nearly 20 years later.
The gameplay was hardly what I’d have called groundbreaking, but that doesn’t stop people from salivating over the newest Madden game every year. It’s up to the player to take control of Japanese juggernaut Ultraman and slug it out with nine of the toughest baddies Earth, or any other planet, has ever seen. One on one a la Street Fighter II, Ultraman tangles with the galactic giants until either he or they fall. After using a final shot of his Burning Plasma super move to finish off his adversary, Ultraman leaps into the sky towards his next challenge with a battle cry that sounds kind of like he’s sick to his stomach. Then again, maybe I would be sick too if I just blew up a 58,000 ton brain-creature named Gudis and had to clean his guts off my boots.
Nice graphics, awesome sound and passable gameplay all adds up to a decent game, right? So why does Ultraman: Towards the Future land sliver-face first onto every YouTube list of the worst games of all time? I think after playing masterpieces like Super Mario World, a lot of people were expecting more out of Nintendo’s classy gray box than what could have been an NES game with enhanced audiovisuals. Also, the Ultraman license has always been lukewarm in the United States, so a lot of gamers unfamiliar with the content probably dismissed Bandai’s SNES offering without a second thought.
It’s no Chrono Trigger, but Ultraman: Towards the Future deserves a hell of a lot more credit that it’s received in the last two decades. If you’re looking for a respectable way to kill 45 minutes or so, take Ultraman out for a spin.
PRO TIP: When the monster’s lifebar says “Finish,” shoot him with a level 4 special move to kill him off. That little bit of information, if it had been properly distributed, might have saved more than a few Ultraman carts from the trash heap.
I knew before I even loaded it up that the PS3 “social network” – PlayStation Home – is a colossal waste of time. But I’ve discovered over the last few weeks that if you’re not careful, Home will consume your every free moment like a bear eating a honey-drenched child, whether you like it or not.
The first time I used PlayStation Home, I fashioned my avatar after my real life appearance: an obese, four foot tall vampire child with an impeccable mullet. I found my way to the CentralPlaza where hundreds of tweens just like me were talking about lol, wtf, and of course, stfu. No one understood what I was saying because I occasionally spoke in full sentences, so I signed off after about three minutes. Add that to the time it takes the software to load, and my first Home experience only lasted about 45 minutes.
But one dark day several months later, while I was waiting for my girlfriend to finish eating her dinner, I fired up PlayStation Home on her PS3. She had made the same mistake I did by modeling her avatar after her real life appearance. Not six seconds after materializing in the CentralPlaza, a man with a bucket on his head, trousers of gray steel and horrifying lobster claws barreled up to me and informed me that he wanted to “lick [my] pepperoni nipples."
That’s when I knew it was time for a virtual sex change.
Back on my own PS3, I did my best to create a respectable woman to represent me online. After witnessing a cavalcade of scantily clad women populating the PlayStation Home world, it was my attempt counteract thousands of years of chauvinism and female repression. Then I spent the first 20 minutes trying to look up my own skirt. Sure enough, as a woman I met all manner of wierdos, with a good 20 percent of them trying to get into my virtual pantaloons. I’m really not sure what the point is of hitting on people via a crappy, sometimes creepy PS3 application, but then again, I’m not a freaky eyeball man with a grass skirt and a drinking problem.
But even with Playstation Home’s violently dressed, war criminal avatars like these, talking to people online hasn’t been fun since the novelty wore off around 1998. I realized that the only real way to have fun with PlayStation Home is to become a good ol’ fashioned troll. For example, think of all the fun you’d have in the following scenario:
“Hello,” you say to a random male avatar. You make your video vixen stand as sexfully as possible by using the “coy” expression.
“hay baby,” they reply, very slowly.
“Anus,” you say. While he’s dumbfounded and searching for a response, you run away while yelling “Goodbye.” It’s a bit sophomoric, but it’s still funnier than anything Larry the Cable Guy has come up with.
Another of my favorites is to tell people I’m “magic” and ask them if they want to see a trick. When they inevitably say yes, I change from a pretty young redhead to a fat old man. Then I begin grinding on their avatars via the woefully abusable “casual dance” option.
Despite acting like a sucrose-addled seven-year-old virtually every chance I get, I still receive random friend requests and, even better, messages touting the sturdiness of another user’s wang. For example: “i have a cam if you want to see my c*ck.”
I typed up the following reply: “I have a cam too if you want to see MINE.” Then I thought better of sending it for obvious reasons.
The more time you spend using PlayStation Home, the more you’ll wonder if it was coded by a group of Midwestern third graders as some sort of class project. I’ve already alluded to the fact that you could go play a quick game of Monopoly while waiting for it to load, but there’s also a host of weird bugs, especially in the content offered by third party companies. Consider RedBullBeach, where levitation isn’t just a way of life, but also a great way to be accosted by flying terrible slug women. There’s also a bunch of clipping problems that children love to take advantage of at when mom and dad aren’t looking. Not even InFAMOUS guy knows what to do with this one.
The entire PlayStation Home experience can be summed up by an interaction I had once with someone Sony hired to help new users get into the game. I walked up to her, getting ready to turn into a fat old man while yelling “anus,” but then she asked me if I needed any help. I asked her if there were some way to set PlayStation Home to “fun” on the options screen.
“I don’t understand what you mean,” she replied. “What options screen?” Then she told me to buy a keyboard so I could get the most out of PlayStation Home.
The second I read that, I realized my odd infatuation had finally been drained dry.
