Most-Played Nintendo Games: 2011

One of the most awesome things about new Nintendo systems is the fact that it records how long you play every game on your system. With that in mind, every year we're going to give a rundown of our most-played games on the Wii and 3DS. Note: Some PAL games, such as Xenoblade Chronicles, will not appear in this list.
Wii:

MLB Power Pros 2008: 87:04
Super Mario Galaxy: 75:23
Super Smash Bros. Brawl: 64:08
Mario Kart Wii: 44:32
Wii Sports: 42:28
Beatles: Rock Band: 35:57
Rock Band 2: 30:01
Metroid Prime Trilogy: 27:47
Wii Fit Plus: 22:22
Little King's Story: 20:34

First of all, I'm super embarrassed that MLB Power Pros is up there as high as it is. I don't know what happened, I really don't. Also, if Xenoblade Chronicles would be counted in this number, it would probably be right above Wii Sports. My saved game is about 40 hours long, so there's that.

Downloadable Games:

Zelda: Ocarina of Time: 14:08
Secret of Mana: 12:12
Super Mario RPG: 11:55
Super Mario Bros. 3: 8:04
Super Mario World: 7:24
Cave Story: 6:40
Zelda: Link to the Past: 5:56
Dr. Mario Online RX: 5:37
Super Metroid: 5:30
Kirby's Adventure: 5:16

Super Nintendo games dominate this list. Also, for some reason Chrono Trigger doesn't tally up properly, but if it did, it would probably clock in right above Super Mario 3.

3DS:

Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D: 26:34
Super Mario 3D Land: 14:37
Ghost Recon Shadow Wars: 13:00
Mario Kart 7: 10:48
Professor Layton and the Last Specter: 10:45
Kirby Mass Attack: 10:12
Star Fox 64 3D: 5:06
Rayman 3D: 2:46
Super Street Fighter IV: 0:27

Some notes: I hate Street Fighter games. I hate hate hate them, but I got Street Fighter IV with the 3DS so I figured, "Why not try it? Maybe I haven't given them a fair shake." I still hate them. Can't put my finger on why, either.

Also, you may be asking, "Why only 9 games in this list? Well, that's all I've played on the 3DS this year. Next year should be a little nicer, I hope.

Downloadable Games:

Zelda: Link's Awakening DX: 8:13
AlphaBounce: 7:43
Donkey Kong: 5:17
Alleyway: 2:25
Super Mario Land: 2:03
Super Mario Land 2: 1:55
Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3: 1:48
3D Classics: Kirby's Adventure: 1:45
Dark Void Zero: 1:17
The Legend of Zelda: 1:08

You might be seeing AlphaBounce up there and wondering why I've played so long. I'll tell you why: There were no good games for a very long stretch and that's all I had to play. I'm not bitter, though. Not me.

Your Song For Today

William Shatner's rendition of "Common People." Enjoy.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 9

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6, part 7 and part 8.

Super NES

History: The NES was a juggernaut, but toward the end of its lifespan it was vulnerable. New games were barely trickling out, and other hardware bypassed it. Sega's MegaDrive, or Genesis, marketed itself as the cooler alternative to Nintendo's fuddy-duddy NES, and they quickly started to take over in Europe.

What would Nintendo do? They couldn't stick with the NES forever, no matter how successful it was.

1991 saw the release of the Super Nintendo. Whereas the Sega Genesis could display 512 colors, the Super Nintendo could display 32,768. The Genesis had 136 KB of total memory, while the Super NES had 256 KB. The Genesis' audio had six channels, and the Super Nintendo had 8. This led to some of the richest sound and graphics of the generation.

Results: Nintendo won the battle once again, selling almost 50 million units compared to the MegaDrive/Genesis' 25 million.

That's not the only reason the Super NES was Nintendo's best system, though. In the past,
developers had used the NES as an experimental ground, learning what worked and what didn't in games. Now that they had several years of design under their belts and had made their mistakes, they were able to create masterpieces that still hold up remarkably well today.

With the Super NES, we were finally able to see what games could do, and it was glorious.

What Went Right: Nintendo was at the height of their powers during the Super NES years. They opened up with Super Mario World and never let up, with SimCity, F-Zero, Pilotwings, Zelda: A Link to the Past and Super Mario Kart coming one right after the other.

Third parties also made the Super Nintendo great. Street Fighter II, Super Castlevania IV, Contra 3, Secret of Mana and others launched almost immediately, with many, many more great games to follow. Even middling offerings showed promise, like The Lost Vikings and Joe & Mac.

Of special note were the offerings by Square. RPGs were popular in Japan, but were still very primitive during the NES years, with lackluster stories and little characterization. In essence, they were level-up simulators, with little depth. It wasn't until the Super Nintendo era that RPGs finally came in to their own, and Square was at the forefront of this new movement. Finally they could tell honest-to-goodness stories, and with the shackles off, games like Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger and others could spin amazing stories with deep characterization and amazing music that sticks in your head for years.

The graphics were also unparalled. When Donkey Kong Country was released, there was shock that such a detailed game was being released on a 16-bit system. It was that sort of thing that led Sega down the path of addons as they desperately tried to keep up with Nintendo, but they simply couldn't. The Super Nintendo, with transparent layers and seamless colors, just plain outclassed Sega's Genesis in every way.

The hardware was also solid. Super Nintendo consoles still work 20 years later, no matter what abuse they've dealt with. The gamepads hold up remarkably well, too, due to their ergonomic feel and having just enough buttons so as not to overwhelm new players.

We haven't even gotten to the murderer's row released by Nintendo in the system's waning days, with two excellent Donkey Kong Country games, a sequel/prequel to Super Mario World, Kirby Super Star, Super Mario RPG, and a raft of other games exploding onto the scene right before the system gave way to the Nintendo 64.

Plus, it had Super Metroid, only one of the best games of all time. Seriously, just about any game you're looking for was on the Super Nintendo.

What Went Wrong: There was no rating system in place during these years, which became a problem with the release of Mortal Kombat. Nintendo didn't want to release a violent game like Mortal Kombat with no rating or warning, since games were still primarily purchased by parents for children. To that end, all blood in the game was replaced with "sweat" and fatalities were removed. Sega came up with their own rating system, relieving them of responsibility. They released Mortal Kombat virtually intact with the inclusion of a "blood code" to unlock every fatality.

That sealed the deal for Nintendo's status as a "kiddie" company. As the advertising tagline went, Sega did what Nintendidn't, and that's an accusation that's dogged Nintendo for years. Even in 2010, it was major news when Nintendo released Zangeki no Reginleiv in Japan, since it was a game with honest-to-goodness blood.

Never mind that Nintendo had perfectly good reasons for not releasing Mortal Kombat intact, and when a rating system was adopted shortly thereafter, Nintendo indeed allowed Acclaim to release Mortal Kombat II whole. Nope, Nintendo is a kiddie company, and forever it shall stay in the eyes of many gamers.

The Super Nintendo's processor also wasn't quite as past as the Sega Genesis, clocking in at 3 Mhz instead of the Genesis' 7 Mhz. That affected sports games, primarily, meaning that faster sports games were on the Genesis. This hurt the SNES at the time, but in retrospect the only sports game anyone seems to remember is NHL '94, while the rest have become a blur.

Lessons Learned: Once again, Nintendo had it pounded into their head that their advantage lay not in the hardware they produced, but in the games they created. If they continued to release quality games at a good clip, no one could stop them.

However, they also got too big for their britches. As stated in the article about the Nintendo 64, instead of teaming up with Sony for the next step in gaming, they assumed they knew more than anyone else about consoles. They kept their heads firmly planted up their butts until it was almost too late.

Fortunately for all of us, Nintendo has realized their mistakes of the Nintendo 64 and Gamecube years, and the future appears bright. Here's to 100 more years, Nintendo.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 8

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5, part 6 and part 7.


NES

History: Console gaming was on the ropes in 1985. The console crash of 1983 had almost taken out gaming as we know it. It was so bad that retailers didn't want to stock videogame systems anymore, lest they be stuck with inventory they couldn't move and couldn't send back due to the company folding.

Into this breach walked Nintendo. While we may look back at Nintendo's run of success in the last thirty years and view it as inevitable, it's hard to forget that there was no guarantee that they would be able to pull off a console. Nintendo had never made a home console, cutting its teeth on arcade machines and Game & Watch handhelds.

Would Nintendo be able to make a successful game console in a time when retailers didn't like them, consumers were sick of them, and the country was in a recession?

Results: The NES was an instant success, selling 60 million units. It revived the fortunes of the video game industry, released several classic video games, and became a staple of households all over.

They did this by basically tricking stores into selling it. Remember, after the crash of 1983, no one wanted to stock video game systems. Nintendo called their system the "Nintendo Entertainment System," downplaying its video game roots. The console was a "Control Deck," and the game pad was a "Control Pad." It shipped with a toy robot, so it would be confused for a toy.

The ploy worked as people bought the system for its toy roots, then realized that it was a pretty awesome video game system too. For many (including this writer) the NES was the first system they ever played.

What Went Right: Nintendo launched with one of the best launch games of all time in Super Mario Bros. Reading interviews about the making of Super Mario Bros., it's amazing to see how much thought was actually put in to things we take for granted. Nintendo knew they weren't just making an introduction to the NES, but also to video games as well.

Nintendo laid down the pattern for multiple franchises during this period with games like like The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, Kirby's Adventure and Tetris. Once the NES became popular, other companies leaped into the fray and started pushing out games like Mega Man 1-5 (we won't talk about Mega Man 6), Metal Gear, Tecmo Bowl, Bases Loaded, Blades of Steel, Castlevania, Contra, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior (released as Dragon Quest in Japan) and on and on.

Nintendo also pioneered the control pad. Most previous systems used wonky joysticks that could break, and some used weird remotes that needed plastic overlays over the keys. Nintendo laid down the template for the Control Pad that almost every single controller has followed.

While some houses might have had an Atari or a system like it, video game systems weren't a need until the NES. The NES made video games a part of the culture. It didn't take long until every video game system became a "Nintendo" to moms and clueless grandparents. The console industry revved up in 1985 and never looked back.

What Went Wrong: Look, let's be honest. We all love the NES. We do. We have fond memories of blowing on cartridges and renting games from the local video store, and the first time we played Super Mario Bros. We were entranced.

But it's time to face the facts: A lot of these games were only good because we didn't know any better.

We were mostly dumb kids who had never picked up a controller, so we would play literally any game just because it was a game. Kids are stupid like that, and game companies took advantage of that fact, pumping out poorly-made licensed games by the truckload.

Not only that, but a lot of the "great" games are horribly primitive by modern standards. Now, I know that's like judging cave paintings by the standards of the Renaissance, but we need to be honest here. For example, Final Fantasy is a boring grind-fest. It's monotonous battle after monotonous battle. Same with Dragon Quest. Metroid isn't very good. Ditto Kid Icarus. Metal Gear is laughably primitive ("I FEEL ASLEEP!").

There are several games that still hold up. Mario 3 works, as well as almost all of the Mega Man series. Tecmo Bowl holds up too. Of course, Super Mario Bros. is still one of the best gateway games of all time.

Still, if we're totally frank, we only liked the NES because it's inextricably linked to a time and place, memories of giant tube TVs, shag carpeting, sleepovers with your friends, poring over strategy guides, arguments on the playground about doing the hair-pull kick in Double Dragon, waiting for that issue of Nintendo Power to come in the mail, having your mom turn off the system so that you'll "go outside and get fresh air," and getting completely lost in a virtual world for the first time ever and realizing that you'd like to do this for the rest of your life.

Nintendo also had issues with the 72-pin connectors in the NES. How the cartridge system works is like this: A cartridge gets inserted into the connector. The pins on either side of the 72-pin connector separate slightly to allow the game in. When a game with a slightly larger size gets pushed in to the connector, that widens them ever so slightly, making it harder for them to snap back in place.

So which game had a slightly wider size? Only one of the most popular games for the system, Super Mario Bros. 2. That, in turn, led to the infamous "blinking NES syndrome," where your screen would blink blue and black instead of playing a game. And, no, no amount of blowing on the cartridge could help you.

Lessons Learned: First all, Nintendo found out that people would be playing their systems for a long, long time. To that end, future systems had to be durable, more durable than the NES. Every system that Nintendo released after the NES pretty much works as well today as it did when it launched. I've used a Super NES that I had to clean dried cat vomit off of, and it still powered up like a champ.

Most importantly, though, Nintendo's advantage during the NES years didn't come from superior hardware or sound. It came because Nintendo understood what people wanted to play. Their games were just plain better than everyone else's, and that's what made Nintendo into the juggernaut that they became.

They took that to heart. No matter how good your hardware is, it needs good games or else it won't sell. In the years since, Nintendo has hammered that home, which is what's made them the best and most consistent gaming company in the last 25 years.

GOG.com Replay: Arcanum: Of Magick and Steamworks Obscura

Each month, we'll review a game from GOG.com's copious collection of games and provide you with a rundown of how good it is. At the end, we'll tell you to "Buy It," "Ignore It," or "Think About It." This month's entry is Arcanum, developed by Troika and released by Sierra Entertainment.

What Is It?

Think of what would happen if the world of Lord of the Rings had an Industrial Revolution, and that's the setting of Arcanum in a nutshell. You're the sole survivor of a zeppelin crash, and an old man hands you a ring, asking you to bring it to "the boy." Thus begins a quest that will determine the fate of the land of Arcanum.

The Context:

Arcanum was one of the last great 2D isometric RPGs, coming after the Baldur's Gate and Fallout series, and it was made by some of the same people behind those classics: Troika Games, a group of ex-patriates from the famed Black Isle Studios.

Expectations were high, but by the time Arcanum was released in 2001, it already looked outdated. The graphics were worse than Baldur's Gate 2, released a few months prior. Game-stopping bugs were all over the place, demonstrating the (cough) attention to detail that Troika Games would demonstrate with further games. When Troika disbanded in 2005, the team (as well as their game-killing bugs) traveled to Obsidian Entertainment.

That's not to say it's a bad game, by any stretch of the imagination, just instantly dated. Most reviewers gave Arcanum a grade in the B-/C+ range, except for PC Gamer, which liked Arcanum so much that it called it its RPG of the year for 2001.

Other Games Released in 2001:

Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec
Max Payne
Grand Theft Auto III

What Holds Up:

Most RPGs will opt for bombastic themes that sound like an Rob Liefeld drawing looks. Arcanum took a different tack, using achingly beautiful music played by a string quartet. It was a brilliant choice that instantly separates Arcanum from other RPGs.

There's also a lot to do in the world. It's kind of like the Elder Scrolls games: If you stick to the main quest, you miss the coolest stuff. There are mysteries to unravel, cabins in the woods that harbor secrets, all sorts of cool stuff to find.

It’s also pretty cool deciding whether or not to make your character a magic user, a user of technology, or to straddle the line between the two. It’s a choice you don’t get to make in a lot of games.

What’s Doesn’t Hold Up:

Like we’ve said before, the graphics were bad even for 2001. It hasn’t gotten any better over the years. It’s like this: You can walk through the world endlessly, but a lot of it looks boring. It’s better to use an FAQ in order to find the cool stuff.

However, using an FAQ reveals Arcanum’s dirty secret: It’s horribly unbalanced. If you complete a few early quests, you’ll quickly find yourself outclassing every single enemy in the game, using the best equipment and having the strongest magic. I say “magic” because it doesn’t make any sense to use technology. The magic is so much stronger than the tech. It’s not even close.

And those bugs we talked about earlier? They almost kill the game. There’s a quest in one of the main cities where you kill rats in a building. As soon as combat begins, the game locks up endlessly. No one can make a move. You can’t drop out of the game. You have to end it manually by opening up Task Manager somehow.

In another case, I was dropped in to an arena and had to fight my out. Since my character was outrageously overpowered, I kept taking on bigger and bigger challenges. I had to save and quit for the day, so I saved and left the game. When I came back, the entire game had glitched. My save game was hopelessly ruined, and that was the last I could play of Arcanum unless I wanted to start from the beginning.

That doesn’t mean it’s hopeless. Modders have fixed most of the broken quests and have rebalanced Arcanum. In other words, vanilla Arcanum, while fun, is almost hopelessly flawed. Modded Arcanum, on the other hand, is definitely worth playing.

Final Verdict:

Vanilla Arcanum: Skip It
Modded Arcanum: Play It

The GBA Ambassador List Revealed?

We may have the full list of Ambassador Games! According this article from Kotaku, it appears that the GBA games are launching on December 16th, at least in Japan. Here's the possible (completely unconfirmed) list:


F-Zero Maximum Velocity
Super Mario Advance 3
The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap
Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Kirby and the Amazing Mirror
Mario Kart Advance
Mario vs. Donkey Kong
Metroid Fusion
Wario Land 4
Wario Ware, Inc. Mega Microgame$

First, let me say, I was wrong on my suggestions. I did say that Minish Cap would be there, so point for me. I was off on all my other calls, including Mario Advance 4 (super bummed about that), Golden Sun, Mario & Luigi, and WarioWare Twisted.

That being said, this isn't a bad group. A Fire Emblem game for free (albeit the inferior one of the two)? Score! Wario Land 4? Sweet! No Mario Pinball Land? Score!

In these ten games, there's over 100 hours of gameplay. No lie. And for free. I just hope that Nintendo has figured out an intelligent way for 3DS owners to download them instead of making us jump through hoops like last time.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 7

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 and part 6.

Nintendo DS

History: All gamers wanted was a Game Boy Advance with better graphics.

That was the general consensus after the Nintendo DS was announced in 2004. Nintendo was shooting themselves in the foot bylaunching a system that wasn't as powerful as the upcoming Sony PSP. Besides, with two screens and a touchscreen, it looked absolutely ridiculous.

Nintendo even backed off carefully from the system, stating that it would be a "third pillar," not something that would entirely eclipse the Game Boy Advance. The internet responded with "Yeah, right," and continued deriding the DS for having a weird shape, for being underpowered, and for using a touchscreen, which no one ever asked for in the first place.

Results: The DS series was Nintendo's most successful system ever, pound for pound. From its launch in 2004, 149 million units have been sold. That's over 21 million units per year.

To put that in perspective, the Game Boy series, including the Advance, sold 199 million units from the launch of the original model in 1989 to the end of the Advance line in 2005, at a rate of 16 million units per year, give or take.

In fact, the touchscreen idea worked so well that it became the de facto standard for all handheld devices, including iOS and Android devices. Even the newest Sony portable will include one. Clearly, Nintendo knew what they were doing.

What Went Right: Nintendo knew there was a huge market out there for handheld gaming after seeing how quickly the market had grown since the launch of the Game Boy. The one market that hadn't been touched, though, were non-gamers.

It seemed silly. If someone doesn't like to play video games, why would you try and and sell them video games? However, Nintendo instead asked the question, "If someone doesn't like to play video games, why don't they?" After researching the question carefully, they released games like Brain Age, which went on to sell over 17 million units worldwide, and Nintendogs, which sold over 21 million copies worldwide.

Nintendo also laid down the template for how to make an engaging touchscreen game with Kirby: Canvas Curse, then launched Mario Kart DS and New Super Mario Bros. and made the DS a must-have.

Since the DS sold like crazy to non-gamers and gamers alike, other companies decided that it was now safe to create games for the system as well. That led to some of the best third-party support for a handheld ever. RPGs, a normally disregarded category among handhelds, called the DS their home. There were wildly ambitious RPGs, like the space opera Infinite Space. There were real-time strategy RPGs, like Knights in the Nightmare. There were puzzle RPGs, action RPGs, platformer RPGs, Rogue-like RPGs, any type of RPG you could ask for.

The DS ended up, all told, with one of the deepest libraries of any handheld gaming system, and frankly, one of the deepest libraries of any system ever. We're going to be seeing articles unpacking the many pleasures of the DS for years to come.

After a well-received redesign brought about the DS Lite, Nintendo made even more money. Battery life for the DS Lite was as good or better as the GBA. The screen was bigger and brighter. While Sony's supposedly superior PSP faltered and became a niche product, the DS continued to establish itself as the premier destination for all handheld gaming.

What Went Wrong: The original DS and the DS Lite were both painfully easy to pirate, and Nintendo had no way to stop it. They couldn't release a firmware update to combat the piracy, since the DS and Lite didn't have that capability. Developers put in code that would make pirated games lock up, but the pirates always found a way around it.

That almost killed the DS' library for a time. Developers got really concerned that their games weren't going to sell, and for good reason. That led some to take their talents to iOS and Android devices, others to create more complex lockout systems to try and disable pirated games.

Nintendo launched the DSi in an attempt to combat the growing problem of piracy and also to make an "App Store" of sorts for the DS. In both fields, they failed. The flashcarts continued being made, although this time for the DSi. DSiWare never took off due to a poorly organized online store and lackluster selections. (Who wants a Mario calculator? Anyone?)

Lessons Learned: Nintendo took to heart several of the criticisms of the DS. For one, they made piracy much more difficult with regular firmware updates that add substantial upgrades to the system.

For instance, one new update allows developers access to more system resources. Imagine if you've been building a flashcart for the old firmware. Now this new update comes along, which means that you may have to start all over from scratch in order to pirate any recent games. I'm sure that those who make flashcarts will find a way, but it's going to be a tough row to hoe.

Nintendo also learned from some of their mistakes with DSiWare. The new eShop for the 3DS is easier to use, allows people to rate games (along with showing how many ratings there are for any given game), has demos, decent games, and more.

However, Nintendo seemed to have forgotten a few lessons as well during the launch of the 3DS. It was priced too high. There were virtually no games to play. Still, in recent months they've recuperated and brought the 3DS closer to the principles laid down by the Game Boy Advance and DS.

Read This: African Americans and the Civil War

If the Civil War interests you, you should read this article by Ta-Nehisi Coates: Why do so few blacks study the Civil War? It's a really sobering article that reminds us why it was fought.

Amazing work, man.

Pujols to the Angels!

Wow! So the Cardinals have lost Albert Pujols to the Anaheim Angels!

So are they going to make an effort to sign Prince Fielder now? Who knows! I can't wait to see what happens!

I also can't stop using exclamation points!!!!!

Another Reminder Why Smartphones Aren't Going To Kill Other Handheld Gaming Devices

It's time for another segment in our ongoing series, "Why smartphone gaming isn't going to destroy standalone handheld gaming, part who-knows-what of infinity."

The story is that Rockstar Games decided to release Grand Theft Auto 3 for smartphones, including iOS and Android devices. However, ArsTechnica has a screenshot and a very good point:

Take a look at the screenshot included in this story. Just look at it. The virtual buttons added to touchscreen devices when traditional games are ported tend to be hard to use and easy to miss, and the mess that's on the screen in that shot makes it hard to get excited about this release. I know Apple isn't keen on releasing a physical controller for iOS devices, but c'mon guys, something has to be done.

I agree, the screenshot looks absolutely terrible. I can't imagine playing a game like this and having a good time.

So we have someone who makes this comment:

I would have to imagine this is unplayable using on screen controls. I can't play super mario brothers in an emulator using touch screen controls - this has to be ridiculous. And there are way to many overlays there, you are bound to screw up and hit the wrong one since the screens aren't very big (speaking from a phone perspective really).

Agreed. But then we have this opposing view:

The same argument is made every time a new console franchise is ported to smartphones. [...] The most telling aspects of media coverage such as this is that it it nearly always, if not always, conducted by non-iOS-focused tech sites. And the posters who chime in and agree are very often non-iOS or non-Android gamers.

He then proceeds to list a bunch of games that are great on iOS/Android.

OK, let's get this straight: No one is saying that touchscreen controls are bad. They work very well for a certain type of game. The games that the previous commenter mentions are games that transition very well to a click/drag interface.

However, most games simply do not. They don't. You can't bend them or stretch them to do so. In many ways, touchscreens simply cannot replicate the precision necessary for a fast platformer like, say, Super Mario 3D Land or a driving simulator like GTA, where one crash can mean death. It's not elitism or being a backward-looking fool. It's just a fact. Making this sort of straight port just hammers the point home. You simply can't take a game that uses a controller with four face buttons, four shoulder buttons, two control sticks and a D-pad and make that transition easily over to a touchscreen.

iOS/Android gaming is pretty cool, and it's amazing how quickly it's grown, but once again, standalone handheld gaming devices aren't going away for quite a while, and it's nice to have reminders every once in a while.

One Problem With Super Mario 3D Land

I'm pretty much done with Super Mario 3D Land. I have 297 Star Coins, I've gold-flagged most of the courses and have three stars by my save file. All in all, a pretty good effort.

So where does Super Mario 3D Land sit in comparison to other Mario games? Well, 3D Land is a combination of two things: Some of the best pure mechanics in a Mario game and some of the worst flow in a Mario game.

Each level by itself is a discrete accomplishment. Every level is incredibly fun, with depth and charm out the wazoo, along with great mechanics and tons of fun. The 3D effect makes it one of the best platformers ever from a pure gameplay standpoint.

However, the difference is that previous games had levels that felt like parts of a whole, as if all the levels in the game occupied the same universe. Even Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2, with their wild, out-there locations felt like they all inhabited the same general areas, as if there was a common theme tying the levels together.

Super Mario 3D Land, by comparison, feels like a collection of levels with the only uniting factor being that they happen to be in 3D. It's almost like a Nintendo "best-of" compilation.

There's very little flow from level to level, especially in the Special Worlds. A snow world sits alongside one of Bowser's castles, alongside a desert level, alongside a level of blocks floating in midair. There's no feel that these levels are part of a larger world, since they really aren't. They're just levels without a theme.

I want to stress that this is not to be viewed as a harsh criticism by any means. Super Mario 3D Land is still one of the best handheld games ever made, perfect for playing in short bursts and yet deep enough to play for marathons. It's the best demonstration yet that the 3DS can provide something completely new and unique, and that gaming shouldn't be relegated to the 99-cent App Store bin.

Still, that lack of cohesiveness prevents Super Mario 3D Land from reaching some of the lofty heights of previous entries in the Mario universe, like Super Mario Galaxy. It's still pretty great, though.

Xenoblade Chronicles? USA Release?

Kotaku is reporting via NeoGAF that Nintendo might be releasing Xenoblade Chronicles stateside via a Gamestop exclusive!

It's about time. NoA updated their Facebook page with Xenoblade Chronicles screenshots too. Congrats, folks, especially you Project Rainfall guys. Take it all in.

Removing Joomla Footer Links

Informational article! Anyone who doesn't care about Joomla! should look away now.

I've been having an issue doing a Joomla! install. I found a very nice free template, but with one major problem. Buried in the bottom of the code was this chestnut, with the offending parties URLs replaced with 'zzzz'.

zzzz by Party Poker bonus

Now, I have no problem providing attribution to people for a job well done, but I absolutely refuse to serve as someone's SEO crutch. After removing the URLs, my site was replaced by this message:

"This free theme is released under creative commons license,therefore all links in the footer must remain intact. You have downloaded this theme for free and all we ask is one link back."

What to do? Personally, I feel that someone has lost their moral high ground when they're trying to con someone else in to advertising for their poker sites. I would love to provide attribution and credit where it's due, but I'm not going to provide you a link back to your crappy offshore gambling ring.

After experimentation, here's what I found as an answer. I'm sharing this to help people remove hazardous or harmful links that could hurt your site. Don't use it to strip attribution for someone's good work.

First, look in your root folder of the Joomla! template. I found a file called 'functions.php.' At the bottom of this file, I found a pile of gibberish that looked like this:

eval(str_rot13('shap
<<--snip-->>
onpx.\';qvr;}}purpx_sbbgre();'));function artxReplaceButtons($content)
    {
        $re = artxReplaceButtonsRegex();
    }

This is the garbled and encrypted text that's used as a check against the text and URL. You can tell it's evaluating ('eval') against the string ('str') that it goes ahead and defines with some encryption.

I removed those lines of code, saved my file and re-uploaded the template. Afterwards I was able to change whatever I needed to change without getting that popup.

I know there's a paucity of information online on how to fix this, so that might give you a push in the right direction. Please use it for good and not for evil.

Edit: Glad this has helped out so many people! I'm happy to be of service!

Criminally Overlooked Games: No One Lives Forever

Here's the real travesty in gaming right now: Companies are raking in money on Call of Duty derivatives, and first-person shooters are blowing up. Yet, with all that cash, no one attempts to do anything different.

In the late 90's/early 00's, the template for first-person shooters wasn't quite as well-defined as it is now, which led to some really cool experimentation. For example, in 1999, The Wheel Of Time was a first-person shooter with a female protagonist based off of a series of Robert Jordan books that used magic as ammo. Good luck sneaking that past Bobby Kotick now.

Part of this was because companies were afraid to make shooters after 1998's Half-Life out of fear that they would suffer in comparison. Everything about Half-Life was just plain better than any other FPS in existence up until that point: The AI, the graphics, the gameplay, the setpieces, everything. If you wanted to compete against Half-Life, you had to do your best not to draw direct comparisons to it.

This brings us to Monolith. Monolith made its name with games like Blood and Shogo: Mobile Armor Division. They had demonstrated a propensity for trying new things in shooters, but most of what they made up until 2001 had more potential than results.

Enter No One Lives Forever. Released in 2001, it was a shooter with a female protagonist set during the swinging go-go 60's that included stealth elements and a healthy dose of humor, along with a weak multiplayer element. In other words, it was everything that modern audiences don't want in a shooter, but it was still awesome nonetheless.

You play as Cate Archer, an agent of UNITY. She's the last spy standing after several colleagues turn up dead by the hands of a mysterious assassin with a glorious moustache. The assassin, Dmitri Volkov, is working for HARM. Who is behind HARM's nefarious plan? Will you need to leap out of an airplane and steal someone's parachute on the way down to find out? Will it require you to electrocute a large opera singer in full valkyrie regalia? Will you have to disable a rocket while the engineers bicker over the loudspeaker?

No One Lives Forever plays extremely well, with the controls being tight and entertaining. The AI is surprisingly good for a game in 2001, with enemies tipping over tables to create cover and doing their best not to charge your position randomly.

Here's something else that blew my mind back in the day: In the years before ragdoll physics, if an enemy died on an incline, their body laid flat on the incline/staircase, jutting out as if rigor mortis took hold suddenly. Sometimes their body parts would be stuck in the incline, too. It looked stupid, but it was surprisingly common.

No One Lives Forever solved this by determining whether or not the enemy died on top of an incline. If they did, the enemy would fall forward and roll down the stairs. Yes, it was a scripted enemy animation, but it went a long way to making the game seem more realistic.

Dynamic music was also pretty new to shooters. Since No One Lives Forever was a stealth/shooter hybrid, having either a constant stream of bombastic fighting music or constant stealth music wouldn't have worked. No One Lives Forever wasn't the first to change musical themes depending on what was happening in-game, but it certainly did a great job at it.

However, what really separates No One Lives Forever from other games is the humor. A few early stabs are a little lame, but when it gets rolling, it gets rolling.

Examples: If you shoot a monkey near the beginning of the game, your game ends with an explanation of "Unacceptable Simian Casualties!" During one area where you end up in a sewer, you'll see a sign bolted to the wall that says "Mandatory FPS Sewer." When you're given a knockout gas weapon, you're instructed to use it on a scientist who's been working too hard and refuses to go to sleep. You come across a man whispering sweet nothings to a goat. You run into a large, drunk man nursing a martini repeatedly throughout the course of the entire game, even on the moon.

That's the kind of game this is: It just plain doesn't care. Its only objective is to entertain you. That's it. If that means you're going to be treated to a sequence where you have to use really bad pick-up lines as codewords with fellow spies, so be it.

That's missing in modern shooters: A sense of fun. Underneath all the grit and grime of today's brown-colored shooters, there's no real sense of joy. I suppose people don't want that in a shooter anymore, but there's room for it, if it's done right.

Of course, all the humor in the world doesn't help if your game isn't very good. Fortunately, No One Lives Forever is incredibly fun to play, made some major leaps forward for shooters in general, has some extremely memorable sequences, tells a good story. It struggled at retail and is largely forgotten today, but it doesn't deserve to be. If you can find a copy, go ahead and play it. You'll see why No One Lives Forever is Criminally Overlooked.

Metroid 2 Today on the 3DS Virtual Console

Hey, Metroid 2: The Return of Samus is on the Virtual Console today! In case you're on the fence, just remember, it's a Criminally Overlooked Game. That might count for something. Plus, it's cheap.

Rumor: Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy VII headed to 3DS?

If this is true, it would be awesome.

I hope it would be Final Fantasy VII for obvious reasons, but I can see a strong case made for Dragon Quest instead. Still, an FF7 remake would sell a lot of units, and I'm sure Nintendo and Square know this.

Publishing Intermittently Until Dec. 15th

I'm buying a house and doing all sorts of work-related things within the next few weeks, so I'm going to be absolutely swamped. I'm probably not going to have a whole lot of time to write or even think about things in the interim, so we're going to be backing off on posts for the time being.

Don't worry, we're not going anywhere permanently, and this won't be a super-long hiatus. I'll still have some articles up, and I'll try and have a Criminally Overlooked Game and the Nintendo series complete and scheduled.

Thanks for reading, folks!

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 6

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 and part 5.

Game Boy Advance

History: As the long-in-the-tooth Game Boy series wound down, Nintendo needed a successor. They unleashed the Advance, which was, at the time, the most powerful handheld system ever seen. The original incarnation had some issues, so Nintendo revised it with the Game Boy Advance SP.

Results: The Game Boy Advance sold over 100 million units during its lifespan and propped up Nintendo during the lean Gamecube years. Great games came out at a furious clip, the likes of which no one had seen up to that point. It served to further help legitimize handheld gaming.

What Went Right: Nintendo had previously experimented with downwards compatibility with the Game Boy Color, allowing users to play original Game Boy games with the system. Now, with the Advance, they truly unleashed its power.

When the Advance launched, not only did it have Super Mario Advance ready to go along with a stable of other quality games, but the entire library of the Game Boy at its back. Combined with the cheap price of the Advance, it just made sense to get one.

Because it leaped out to such an early lead, game after game came out for it. We saw platformers, sports games, RPGs, action games, you name it. And here's the thing: Because there was money to be made, most of these games were actually really good.

Nintendo kept up the onslaught as well, with the Advance Wars and Golden Sun series both making a splash, as well as the Fire Emblem series seeing release in the States for the first time. We even saw a new Metroid game in Metroid Fusion, which was glorious.

They also set to work re-releasing a lot of their old favorites, with the Super Mario Bros. games all getting released as the Super Mario Advance series, as well as the original Metroid getting remade and released as Metroid: Zero Mission.

What Went Wrong: The original hardware was poor. The screen wasn't backlit, so it made it hard to play in all but the brightest light. This led to a company, Afterburner, selling a backlighting solution that relied upon opening up your GBA and soldering in a light. It wasn't for the faint of heart.

In 2003, Nintendo fixed those problems with the GBA SP, which was a clamshell design that included a rechargable battery. It's one of the best hardware redesigns Nintendo's ever done and fixed the vast majority of the GBA's issues.

They tried one more redesign of the GBA toward the end of its lifespan with the GBA Micro. It was a really small system, but it didn't sell very well. The GBA SP was just that good that most people didn't feel the need to replace it with a different model.

One issue that lingered, though, was the remake issue. While it was great to be able to play Super Mario World on a handheld for the first time, game after game was re-mastered and re-released for the GBA. Sure, it was nice, but it was a little excessive. Still, being able to play Final Fantasy III on the go was worth it.

Lessons Learned: Nintendo kept themselves alive during their rough patch with the Gamecube. If it wouldn't have been for the GBA, who knows what would have happened?

Nintendo used the GBA SP redesign principles when designing the followup to the GBA, the Nintendo DS. The clamshell design has stayed permanently for their handhelds, as well as the rechargable battery.

They also were reminded that the principles they learned during the making of the Game Boy would hold true through all their handhelds: Keep the price down, keep battery life reasonable and provide good games and consumers will beat a path to your door.

Review: Alleyway

Has anyone ever not played Breakout? I mean, it came out in 1976. If you haven't played Breakout or a Breakout clone, you must be a time traveler. If that's the case, congratulations, time traveler, strange visitor from Earth's past! You are wasting your time reading the internet, just like the rest of us in the future!
If you have played Breakout, then you've played Alleyway. It's Breakout with Mario, except for the fact that you barely ever see Mario and could be excused for not thinking he's in this game at first glance.

I don't know what else to say but this game controls easily and has the typical monochromatic graphics you would expect from a Game Boy game. Some levels are kind of annoying when there's only one block left that you can't reach somehow, but that's Breakout.

Anyway, if you're dying for a Breakout clone to play on your 3DS, this is serviceable and cheap. If you're not, look elsewhere.

Final Grade: D+

Review: Super Mario 3D Land

Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo

Years from now, when we're writing the history of the 3DS, we'll probably touch on its lackluster launch and how it appeared that all hope was lost after the first few months. We'll probably talk about the sudden price drop and the attendant fear of the 3DS going the way of the Virtual Boy.

Then we'll begin the true story of the 3DS with Super Mario 3D Land.
That's how big a deal Super Mario 3D Land is to the fortunes of the 3DS. This is the first important game built from the ground up for 3D, and it demonstrates what Nintendo saw in the 3DS in the first place. It's the next major step in Mario games, and it makes a strong case that 3D platform games should never, ever be released on normal 2D screens again.

Super Mario 3D Land plays like a cross between New Super Mario Bros., with its two-dimensional focus on pinpoint, precision jumping, and Super Mario Galaxy, with its focus on a wide world of possibility. They took the best from both games and combined it in to one brilliant mix.

As usual for a Mario game, the plot for Super Mario 3D Land is minimal. Bowser kidnaps Peach, Mario goes to get her. Tanooki leaves get spread everywhere, including onto enemies. Once again, it's not that complicated of a story. It's all in the execution.

If you decide to play the game in 2D, it's excellent by itself. The graphics are great, and it controls handily. However, it isn't until you play in 3D that you realize what's been missing in 3D platformers: Depth.

See, jumping in most 3D platformers can be difficult. You can kind of tell where you're going to land, but frustration can still set in easily when you misjudge your jumps. Nintendo realized this way back during the Nintendo 64 years, which is why Mario’s primary form of attack in Super Mario 64 wasn’t jumping on enemies, but throwing punches. Without that sense of depth, it's very difficult to tell where you're going to land, which makes jumping an exercise in futility.

In the past, we spoke of Rayman 3D as being good if only as a proof-of-concept, demonstrating that the 3DS is going to usher in a new generation of 3D platformers. Super Mario 3D Land proves that fact. It's easy to aim your jumps onto enemies or jump over to a platform because you tell where it is at a glance, without needing a whole lot of artificial markers to tell you where you'll need to land.

The most amazing thing about the 3D in Super Mario 3D Land is how unobtrusive it is. You could play the majority of the game in 2D and never realize that it's supposed to be in 3D. It's not a game that's constantly throwing things at the screen to get your attention, or resorting to cheap 3D gimmicks in order to justify its usage. It’s just remarkably confident in the fact that 3D makes the experience that much better.

For example, in one level, there are two lava spouts underneath a metal grate. When one goes away, one starts bubbling to the surface from deep down below. It looks good in 2D. It looks amazing in 3D, and it makes me jump every single time.

Because of the 3D, Super Mario 3D Land can attempt things that other 3D platformers can't. There are levels where Mario walks on a series of tightropes. In 2D, you can't quite tell how far back or forward a tightrope is, being that they’re only straight lines. In 3D mode, it's incredibly simple to pinpoint where the tightrope is in relation to your character.

At one point I turned off the 3D and played through a level. It felt like I was playing blind. I couldn't hit my jumps with the precision I liked. I couldn't time my enemy attacks. I just ran through the level, terrified about the lack of control. I escaped the level intact, but barely.

That's the difference here. 2D renders the game good and playable. 3D renders the game exceptional.

There's a lot more to Super Mario 3D Land than just the phenomenal 3D. The level design is incredibly tight and incredibly fun. Levels reference past Mario games and even other Nintendo series. They're short enough to complete in two or three minutes at a time, and usually have plenty of hidden secrets to unearth and discover. In every level, there are three Star Coins you can find, and they usually require some level of skill to get to. You'll need them in order to unlock some of the later levels.

In that sense, it reminds me of games like Angry Birds. In Angry Birds, you can usually breeze through a level by the skin of your teeth, but it takes planning and skill to master the level. Similarly, in Super Mario 3D Land, you might be able to slide through a level while missing all of the coins and still complete it, but you haven't mastered it until you find all of those coins.

The learning curve is amazing. While you might find yourself blowing through the early levels easily, it certainly doesn’t stay that way throughout. By the end of the first 8 worlds, you'll be surprised at what you're able to do and what Super Mario 3D Land expects you to do.

However, once you complete World 8, the real game begins. Beating World 8 opens up a "Mario Master Quest" of sorts, where you're able to play through remixed and brand-new levels. That's where all the challenge of old-school Mario games finally gets unleashed, and they'll put all of your skills to the test.

I'd also like to point out the music. I love it when Nintendo reuses old musical themes will still integrating new works, and that's what Super Mario 3D Land does. The main theme is bouncy and fun, and, if I might add, better than New Super Mario Bros. main theme by a mile. You'll hear music incorporated from Super Mario 3, Super Mario World, Super Mario 64, and Super Mario Galaxy. It's a great treat for people who are old-school Mario fans.

I'm hard-pressed to find a flaw in Super Mario 3D Land. Maybe you won't like it if you issues with 3D gaming, or maybe if you just don't like platformers in any way, shape or form. If that's the case, I would still suggest you play Super Mario 3D Land, if only to prove that 3D is more than a fad. It's a definitive way to improve gaming permanently.

Final Grade: A

Two More Playoff Teams Added to Baseball... Too Many?

MLB has announced today that two more wild card playoff teams will be added starting in 2013 and quite possibly 2012. That brings the total amount up to 10 teams.

Is that too many teams? Baseball purists may seem to think so. After all, baseball has historically had very high standards for playoff teams. You usually had to win your division in order to be in the playoffs in years gone by. The wild card is a recent invention for the game, only showing up in 1994. Is it too soon to add another wrinkle? Are two more playoff teams two too many?
First, let's consider how many playoff teams get in to the playoffs in the other major sports.

In the NFL, with 32 teams, each division winner and two wild card teams per conference make it in, for a total of 12 teams. That's 37.5% of the total teams.

In the NBA, with 30 teams, eight teams per conference make it in, for a total of 16. That's 53.3%.

In the NHL, with 30 teams, eight teams from each conference end up in the playoffs. Once again, 53.3% of teams are in the playoffs.

With MLB's old rules, only four teams per league ended up in the playoffs. That's eight total out of 30 teams. That's 26.6% of the league.

If we add two more teams total, that brings our total of playoff teams to ten. That's 33.3% of the league will end up in the playoffs.

In comparison to the other major sports here in the US, baseball will still have some high standards for who gets to go to the playoffs, higher than all the other major sports.

Second, it won't hurt the sport that badly. We don't know how the rules will shake out, so we can't sort out what the matchups would have been exactly. Still, consider: This year, the Red Sox and the Braves, two very large markets, would have been in the playoffs. In 2010, the Red Sox and San Diego Padres would have been in. In 2009, the Detroit Tigers and the San Francisco Giants would have been in, and so on. These are all decent teams, honestly.

So it wouldn't kill baseball to add two more teams. It wouldn't water down competition, and it's still far better than most other major sports leagues.

Edit: Deadspin likes it as well:

We've known this was coming for a while, but it's worth emphasizing if only because it's so rare that baseball does something clever. The purists will complain about playoff creep, but in a single stroke, the league ensured that a larger share of teams have an incentive to compete until the end of the season (whether it's the division leaders who don't want to slip into the uncertainty of the one-game wild card playoff, or the middling teams for whom a handful of additional wins might mean a playoff run). That's good for fans, and that's good for baseball's revenue streams. It's rare that those two things line up.

Kirby's Adventure! 3D Classic! TODAY!

Nintendo's Weekly Download includes Kirby's Adventure as a 3D Classic!

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 5

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4.

History: The Gamecube was a harsh lesson for Nintendo, which made them rethink what they knew about consoles. They realized they couldn't keep going after the same market that everyone else was going after or they would go the way of Sega. They needed something different.

Nintendo had always experimented with motion controls, with peripherals like the Power Pad and Power Glove representing early (and terrible) forays. Now, though, the technology caught up to the dream, and in 2006 the Wii was unleashed.

Results: The Wii was a runaway success. 89 million units have shipped worldwide, and during the beginning of the Wii's lifespan, it was frequently sold out or unavailable.

Other companies, which derided the Wii's motion controls as a fad and a gimmick, found themselves scrambling to make their own solution. Sony made the Move, which is almost identical to Nintendo's Wii-mote + Nunchuk, and yet more expensive. Microsoft released Kinect, which is actually a surprisingly revolutionary device on its own.

What Went Right: The amazing thing about the Wii is still how simple it is to control. Baseball feels like baseball. Tennis feels like tennis. Golf feels like golf. That alone led to millions of people buying Wiis within the first two years of its existence. It was easy to pick up, understand, and play.

Nintendo also opened up with a flurry of excellent games. Within two years of launch, Zelda: Twilight Princess, Wii Sports, Rayman Raving Rabbids, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn, Guitar Hero 3, Mario Strikers Charged, No More Heroes, Super Paper Mario, Zack & Wiki, Mario Kart Wii, Rock Band 2, Okami, Mario Super Sluggers, and Super Smash Bros. Brawl all landed. That's not to mention one of the finest games of the generation, Super Mario Galaxy.

The Wii wasn't as powerful as the Playstation 3 or the XBox 360, but that didn't matter at launch. Only about 30% of homes had HDTVs at launch, so the HD boost that the other systems promised was negligible. For most people, the Wii looked good enough, and that's all that mattered.

Nintendo also started selling classic games through the Wii using the Virtual Console. Finally, gamers could play games that they knew and loved from the past, like Super Mario Bros., Sonic the Hedgehog (for the first time on a Nintendo system!), and Super Metroid. It was a fantastic service that reminded people how much they loved Nintendo in the past and rekindled that old flame. Everything seemed to be going great.

What Went Wrong: Nintendo released a game called Wii Play, which had some silly minigames and an extra controller. It sold like hotcakes. Other companies saw this and wanted in. Instead of realizing that the high sales were due to the extra controller included with each purchase, other companies churned out title after title of crappy minigame collections with names like Game Party and Carnival Games.

The problem was that these games sold well, since the people buying the Wii were generally first-time console buyers and didn't know any better. Once the first few collections started selling well, other companies hopped on the minigame bandwagon, and soon everyone was putting out crappy minigame collections for the Wii.

Nintendo didn't help matters, either. After the release of Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart Wii in successive months during early 2008, they released almost nothing for a solid year aside from Wii Fit and Wii Music. That left the system entirely in the hands of minigame makers for a solid year, and they did what budget minigame makers will do: Release games until there are no more games to release.

Once Nintendo snapped out of its yearlong funk, the releases continued flowing, but the damage was already done. HDTV adoption made the Wii look like a dinosaur, publishers didn't want to make real games for the system because the audience wasn't there, and without viable options to keep them playing, consumers quickly moved on from the Wii.

It's a shame that Nintendo was caught sleeping on the Wii. One wonders how it would have fared if they would have made some better choices early on.

Lessons Learned: The successor to the Wii, the Wii U, promises to have better graphics while still incorporating the motion controls that made the Wii popular. They're also continuing a history of controller innovation with the Wii U's amazing tablet controller.

Nintendo also learned that while it's important to have buzz around their systems and an exciting hook for consumers, it's also important to release games for it. That's what people buy gaming systems for, after all. They started rectifying this for the Wii with a great lineup of titles, from Punch-Out to New Super Mario Bros. Wii and beyond, although the damage is mostly done.

Still, we won't rightly know what lessons, if any, Nintendo will have learned from the Wii until much further down the road. While they may have sold copious amounts of units and made piles of money, one can only ask the question, "At what cost?"

GOG.com Replay: MDK

Each month, we'll review a game from GOG.com's copious collection of games and provide you with a rundown of how good it is. At the end, we'll tell you to "Buy It," "Ignore It," or "Think About It." This month's entry is MDK, developed by Shiny and released by Interplay.

What Is It?

In MDK, you play as Kurt, the janitor to the insane Dr. Hawkins. The good doctor built a space station called the Jim Dandy, and not a moment too soon. Minecrawlers are stripping the earth’s resources, and Kurt is sent by Dr. Hawkins to destroy them. He’s been outfitted with the Coil Suit, which repels bullets, a hand mounted chaingun, a sniper helmet, a ribbon parachute, and really, really weird weapons like “The World’s Most Interesting Bomb.”

MDK is supposed to stand for “Murder, Death, Kill,” but the developer, Shiny, thought the name sounded too violent for the press. Instead, they claimed that it stood for whatever you wanted it to stand for, like “Madonna Dates Kylie” or “Mother’s Day Kisses.”

The Context:

Shiny Entertainment made their name on the Earthworm Jim series, which was absolutely insane and tons of fun, if frustratingly uneven at times. MDK was Shiny’s first 3D game, and they knew they needed to somehow marry their odd sensibility with the finest technology they could use. To that end, MDK required a Pentium processor, which was a big deal in those days.

Also, sniping in games was kind of crappy up to this point. It was really hard to have a far draw distance without putting up a wall of fog (hello, Superman 64) or having significant draw-in. MDK managed to pull it off, allowing you to switch from sniping mode to regular mode seamlessly whenever you wanted to.

Other games released in 1997:

Final Fantasy VII
Quake 2
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

What holds up:

Surprisingly for a 14-year-old game, the graphics hold up remarkably well. Shiny used all sorts of tricks to get things to look otherworldly, such as faux-reflective surfaces and solid-colored polygons. It’s really quite an impressive feat. While they’re at a pretty low resolution, you won’t find yourself cringing too much.

In each level, you’ll be doing a variety of tasks. For instance, in just the first level, you’ll learn sniping, drop bombs on soldiers from a slow-moving plane, drop mortar shells on enemies using your sniper helmet, fight tanks, and end up in a sniper battle with a guy in a control room. That’s just the first level. In later levels, you’ll be sliding down ramps, using cannons to blast through a wall, snowboarding to James Bond music, and feeding snacks to a hungry boss.

The humor is also great. While they couldn’t fit in as many gags as the Earthworm Jim series, MDK is more coherent, and most of the gags come from the ridiculous weapons and situations you find yourself in. It’s rare to find a game that’s trying to be funny that’s actually funny, and MDK is.

What doesn’t hold up:

Who likes 3D platforming? Don’t all raise your hands at once! Yes, 3D platform jumping is here, and some of the jumps are supremely frustrating. You’ll think you timed your jump just right, only to find your character helplessly falling and having to start the jump sequence all over again. These sequences are also kind of frequent, which adds to the frustration.

There are also NO in-level saves. Since each level can take 20 minutes or longer if you take your time, it gets really frustrating to get far and then die. Add the fact there are no extra lives, and you have a recipe for extreme frustration. I don’t know how this game went out the door like that. There’s an easy mode available, but you’ll still die in easy mode.

The Final Verdict:

MDK is a great game with tons of ideas, lots of funny sequences, and really fun action. Too bad it’s marred by a frustrating difficulty level and some odd controls. Still, if you don’t mind working your way around those issues, you’ll have a great time.

Think About It

The Difference Between the New Kirby and Mario Games

I've spent about five hours with Super Mario 3D Land, and I'd like to explain what makes it so great so far, especially in comparison to the drab Kirby's Return To Dreamland. In order to do so, we're going to look back at this article.
If you haven't read it, here's the theory I put forth. In every game, there need to be three things in order to make the game work well:

1. Good controls.
2. Challenging yet attainable goal achievement.
3. Anticipation of what comes next.

That's the holy triumvirate of game design. If the game is missing all three, it's awful. If a game has one out of three, it's bland. If it has two out of three, it's OK. If it has all three, it's fantastic.

Kirby's Return to Dreamland had solid controls, and that was about it. Beating levels was easy, and the supposed "secrets" were painfully easy to find. There was minor anticipation, since you knew you weren't going to find more special powers as you played. That made Kirby's Return to Dreamland bland.

Super Mario 3D Land, on the other hand, has phenomenal controls. It's challenging yet fair. Every level is slightly different or has something you didn't expect to see, including the remixed special levels that you get to play after you've beaten the first quest.

In essence, everything that you could want from a platformer is in Super Mario 3D Land. That's the difference between an OK game and a great game. Good job, Nintendo.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 4

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Click to read part 1, part 2 and part 3.


6. Game Boy / Game Boy Color

History: Handheld games have been around for a while. Mattel made a football game as early as 1978, and Nintendo got in on the action in 1980 with their long-running Game & Watch series. These LCD handheld games were cheap games, usually only costing about $20. I was the proud owner of several of them myself, such as Super Mario Bros., Mega Man 2, Ironman Off Road and, embarassingly, Bugs Bunny.

In retrospect, they kind of sucked. They were black images superimposed over an LCD screen, they had no sound to speak of aside from squeaks and squawks, and all you had to do in order to see ALL of the graphics was press the "Reset" button and it would display every available graphic. In short, they were a good stopgap solution, but they had their problems.

Enter the Game Boy, a lightning bolt out of the blue when it released in 1989. We may look back at its green, blurry screen and roll our eyes, but the Game Boy was a definite upgrade over what we had to play at the time. With the Game Boy, you could play bona-fide real games on a portable system wherever you wanted, swap out cartridges and play new games, and have real sound instead of weird blip noises.

Results: The Game Boy series sold 118 million units over ten years before giving way to the Game Boy Advance, which sold another 81 million. To put that in perspective, other companies saw how much money Nintendo was raking in and wanted a share of the handheld market. All of them died quick deaths.

First came the Atari Lynx. It launched in 1989, sold five million units and died. There was the NEC TurboExpress, launched in 1990, which sold 1 million units and died. The most successful challenger to the Game Boy was the Sega Game Gear, which launched in 1990 and sold 11 million units, then finally succumbed in 1997.

What Went Right: Nintendo leaped out to this early and commanding lead in part because of Tetris, the now-famous puzzle game. Tetris was incredibly addicting, easy to play, hard to put down and almost perfect for simple pick-up-and-play sessions, which made it the ideal launch game for the Game Boy. No other handheld system had anything close to it.

The low cost of the system worked in its favor too. While, yes, the screen was subpar and the graphics monochromatic, if it meant you only had to pay $89 for a fully-realized handheld gaming system it was worth it. Because it was using underpowered components, that also meant that battery life was amazing, in the range of 10-20 hours.

The Game Boy survived almost entirely because it was the only game in town that would stay well-supported. While other systems didn’t have recognizable mascots or anything worth playing long-term, Nintendo had Mario, Zelda, Donkey Kong and Kirby to keep people’s interest, and they leveraged them repeatedly. There were three Super Mario Land games in the span of 4 years. Link’s Awakening hit in 1993. Kirby had two entries. Donkey Kong came back, triumphantly, in 1994.

Still, it took a while for the full potential of the Game Boy to be unfurled. The Game Boy finally had its killer app in 1996, when Pokemon launched in Japan. It didn’t require you to have a link cable and other friends to share Pokemon with, but if you did you could level up your Pokemon faster and have a lot more fun, which made it one of the first social games. It brought an excitement to the Game Boy that had been missing up until that point and all but guaranteed that other handheld makers would have a hard row to hoe in order to compete.

Nintendo released the Game Boy Color in 1998, which finally brought colors to a Nintendo handheld and kept the fires lit at Nintendo for another three years until the Game Boy Advance could launch. There wasn’t much to talk about with it. They released remastered versions of games like Link’s Awakening, but a lot of the plans they had for it fell through, as Nintendo shifted its focus to the upcoming (and much more promising) Advance.

What Went Wrong: Handheld games simply weren't very good for the most part. There were a lot of crappy ports of bigger console games out there, and what few original games that didn't have "Nintendo" stamped on them were pretty lame. and though the games were still below-average,

The poor library combined with the lame screen meant that the demise of the Game Boy was prophesied repeatedly and emphatically. I had a copy of a EGM from back in 1993 that rated all of the video game systems on a scale of 1-10. Even back then, EGM was saying that the Game Boy only rated a 4 and that it was destined to be discontinued in the coming year. They weren't alone in that assertion, as it seemed that there was only so much more mileage Nintendo could squeak out of the handheld.

I thought of separating the original Game Boy and the Color, but there wasn't much difference between the two. Yes, the Color had color games, but most of those games worked on the original Game Boy as well. The Color did introduce new Game Boy models that had different colored shells, but aside from that the systems were virtually identical. Think of the Game Boy Color as version 1.1 of the Game Boy.

Besides, the games for the Game Boy Color were mostly the same. There were a few bright spots, like the Pokemon series and Metal Gear Solid, but mostly the Game Boy Color was a great system with a mediocre library that survived because it was the most reliable game in town.

Lessons Learned: The key takeaway from the Game Boy was affordability. Nintendo handhelds have never been graphical powerhouses, but they were always cheap to make, which meant more money in Nintendo's pocket. They would take that lesson with them through the creation of the Advance and the Nintendo DS and then, somewhat inexplicably, forget the lesson with the 3DS.

They also were reminded once again of their distinct advantage: Their stable of mascots. The most successful games on the Game Boy were Mario games, Zelda games, Kirby games, Donkey Kong games and the like. That was an advantage that Atari and NEC didn't have, and it was an advantage that Sega exploited excessively to their detriment.

Nintendo also learned that it was important not to listen to the hardware critics. Hardware critics were bashing the Game Boy's green screen since the day it launched and wondering how on earth anyone would want to use such an inferior piece of hardware. However, the market clearly stated that they had no problem with the hardware, so Nintendo could safely ignore the naysayers. As long as consumers were on the side of Nintendo, they knew they would be all right.

Review: Kirby's Return to Dreamland

Developer: HAL Laboratory

Publisher: Nintendo

Kirby games are generally viewed as "easy" or "kiddie" games, but they're usually pretty radical. For example, Kirby's Dream Land 3 used a really cool graphical style when it wasn't popular to do so. Kirby 64 helped lead to the "2D sidescroller in 3D" idea that's in vogue right now.

Kirby Canvas Curse showed developers how to use the DS' touchscreen to maximum effect. Kirby's Epic Yarn looked surprisingly tactile and was still incredibly fun. Kirby Mass Attack was a platformer/RTS hybrid, a rarity.

That willingness to try new ideas is what keeps Kirby fresh. It's no surprise that the most recent traditional Kirby game, Kirby Squeak Squad, was a middling effort. Now, here's Kirby's Return to Dreamland. Will it mix the best of traditional Kirby games with some of their most outlandish creations, or will it be just another Kirby game?


First of all, Kirby's Return to Dreamland looks very nice. It's clean, sharp and colorful, so you'll never wonder if something is part of the background or foreground. It's obvious that lots of care was put in to the construction of Return to Dreamland's looks.

Other parts of the game weren't so lucky. First, let's talk about the sound. The music is just not interesting. I played this game for 10 hours and couldn't recall one solitary theme. There are only a few snippets of music from older Kirby games, which is an absolute shame. The music could have recalled the best of Kirby games past and present, but instead just ended up being... there.

The level design displays a similar blandness. Barely anything exciting ever happens. You move from one side of the level to the other, picking up powers as needed and continuing onward. Surprises are few. Challenges even less so.

Now, I'm all for easy games. I like easy games. I like being able to finish games quickly without struggling. However, I like my easy games to at least give me something to look forward to.

For example, Kirby's Epic Yarn, while easy to play, always had something new to show you. Whether it was unspooling yarn, snow that looked like cotton balls, or just an adorably silly level transition, you never knew what you were going to see next.

In Return to Dreamland, you're going to see about 20 different powers. By the time you've played through the second or third world, you've seen them all. You've seen all of the special super powers. The bosses don't look threatening or interesting. The levels are all going to consist of moving from one direction to the other.

The only really interesting thing I can remember from Return to Dreamland was the time I used the giant sword ability to slice a volcano in half. I thought that looked really cool. Aside from that? I can't remember much of it. Even parts of the final boss are recycled. The way he dies looks exactly like the final boss's death in Kirby's Adventure. Once again, nothing new was thrown into the mix.

There was one thing that almost fooled me into thinking Return to Dreamland was going to be awesome. There are parts where Kirby gets to play in a black-and-white world while frantically avoiding a barrier that threatens to gobble him up. It looks really awesome the first time you see it, and I was so excited I could hardly contain myself.

By the time you've seen it 20 times, it gets pretty tiring.

Here's what I would have liked to see: The first world's special areas in black-and-white, the next world's special areas looking like the NES world. The third one looking like Kirby 3's world, the fourth like Super Star and so on. It would have been an awesome way of calling attention to the past while keeping one foot planted in the future.

Instead, Return to Dreamland refuses to acknowledge past Kirby games in any shape or form. It refuses to show us anything new, either. It stubbornly believes that we like Kirby games just because of Kirby himself. While we do like Kirby, his games endure because Kirby games try. We like them because they use the little pink puffball as a canvas upon which to hang really interesting ideas. In this case, the only thing that HAL threw on the table was multiplayer platforming, which has been done in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, Donkey Kong Country Returns, and Kirby's Epic Yarn.

I want to be clear: Kirby's Return to Dreamland is not a bad game. It's competent. It plays solidly. It looks great. If you've never played a Kirby game, it's a great place to begin. It's just not that exciting. It's average, so it deserves an average grade.

Final Grade: C

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 3

We continue our look at Nintendo's best and worst systems. Part 1 and part 2 can be found here.

7. Nintendo 64

History: Nintendo and Sony were flirting quite a bit during the Super Nintendo years. It got serious enough that Nintendo started wearing Sony's class ring, and Sony even got to third base with Nintendo this one time at a party. Nintendo abruptly called off the relationship when Sony started getting a little too handsy. The rest was history. Sony went off to make their disc-based Playstation, which launched to rave reviews. Nintendo had to make due with the cartridge-based Nintendo 64.

Results: Nintendo started strong, but ended up stumbling to the finish line at the end of the generation. Sony ended up selling 100 million Playstations, while Nintendo finished with 30 million Nintendo 64s. That was still good for second place compared to the limp Sega Saturn, but not what Nintendo was hoping for.

What Went Right: While other companies were fumbling around with 3D games, Nintendo had it figured out right from the get-go. Super Mario 64 still plays and looks great 15 years later. Other companies struggled for years afterwards with camera placement and movement, while Nintendo had it perfected with Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

The Nintendo 64 also became a party console pretty quickly, due to having four controller inputs and a crapload of great multiplayer games. Goldeneye was the first great console shooter, Mario Kart 64's battle mode still gets play years later, and Mario Party showed people what's it's like to get raped by a computer.

They also took the lead on adding force-feedback rumble to controllers. It's now to the point that if a controller doesn't have rumble, we laugh at it. It's that integral to the gaming experience.

What Went Wrong: Nintendo was absolutely terrified of piracy and was terrified that the coming wave of CD burners would make their system a free-for-all. Releasing a cartridge-based system made sense to them at the time, but it hurt them in the long run.

Cartridge technology had a few benefits over discs, such as minimal loading times and a much more difficult copying process, but they were far more expensive to make and produce. That meant that Sony could drop prices on their games after a fashion, while Nintendo was stuck selling their cartridges for the same prices permanently.

Game sizes quickly became bigger and bigger too, and cartridges, with their limited storage capacity, couldn’t handle it. Companies such as Square simply walked away from developing for Nintendo and ran to the open arms of Sony. In turn, that meant that one of the flashpoint games of the generation, Final Fantasy VII, never touched a Nintendo console and became a Sony exclusive. It was arguably that game that made Sony's Playstation into a monster hit, and Nintendo could have had it had they not stubbornly insisted on using cartridges over discs.

Besides, Nintendo 64 emulators quickly caught up. UltraHLE hit in 1999 and quickly brought Nintendo 64 emulation to computers. To reiterate: Before the Nintendo 64's lifespan was over, there was a Nintendo 64 emulator capable of playing these games on any computer with a halfway-decent graphics card, despite Nintendo's best efforts to stave off piracy.

In fact, what made piracy so attractive at the time was the small size of the cartridge ROMs. Mario 64's ROM was only 8MB in size. Even over a dialup connection, that's something you can download with ease. Compare that to the 650 MB held on a CD-ROM, and it's clear that Nintendo made entirely the wrong call by going with cartridges.

The quality of games for the Nintendo 64 was beyond reproach. The quantity of them was another matter. Owing to the high cost of making cartridges, games were few and far between. It came to the point that there was one high-profile release every six months, and the rest of the time there was nothing. Quite literally, nothing.

That's not exaggeration, either. The Nintendo 64 had 287 games released in all regions during their 7 year history. The Playstation had 2,418. So while the Playstation had a steady stream of decent-to-great games to keep gamers interested, the N64 had about 20 games total in their 7 year history that were worth playing at all. But when the games were good, the games were capital-G Good.

Lessons Learned: Nintendo knew they had to back away from cartridges for their next system, but they also wanted to continue avoiding piracy. They selected a disc-based system using minidiscs that were difficult to copy but still provided the benefits of a disc-based system.

They also knew they had to reach out to third-parties more in order to keep a steady stream of gamers interested. They brought companies like Capcom back in to the fold and encouraged Square to make games for their new system.

It also made sense to keep Nintendo’s consoles as multiplayer havens, so Nintendo kept the four-controller layout for the Gamecube. However, as we discussed in the previous article, it wasn’t enough. Even with the harsh lessons they learned, they couldn't quite capitalize. The lessons Nintendo learned wouldn't quite be fully realized for another generation.