Review: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars

Developer: Ubisoft Sofia
Publisher: Ubisoft

It's time to give Julian Gollop more money.

Julian Gollop, maker of X-Com: UFO Defense and Laser Squad: Nemesis, has never been one of the sexy names in game development even though his games are extremely well-designed. On top of that, turn-based strategy games have never been a particularly exciting genre for most. Yet, somehow, Gollop and Ubisoft have made the best game currently available for the 3DS.


Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is set in Russia in the near future. You have six soldiers that each have different skills and have to use them to finish a whole lot of missions. Duke is the leader, Haze is a sniper, Saffron is the medic, Mint is the engineer, Banshee is the scout and Richter is the minigun-toting tank of the crew. In order to accomplish your missions, you'll need to deploy each of these effectively.

If you've played games like Fire Emblem, Advance Wars or Shining Force, you'll know how this game will play out. You take a turn and try to kill their dudes, and the enemy takes a turn and tries to kill your dudes. Being a Ghost Recon game, this is obviously modern combat with guns, grenades and rocket launchers.

Terrain matters. If you have higher ground than your opponent, you'll cause more damage to them. If you have the low ground, you'll take more damage. If you're in a bush, you'll have a little bit of cover. If you're behind a fence, you'll have a little bit of cover from the front but not from the side or back. If you're in a building, you'll take far less damage.

The characters are a ton of fun to use. For example, Mint can deploy a turret. If you know you have to defend a position, you can deploy the turret to provide you what amounts to another helper, albeit one that doesn't move. Banshee is especially fun to use, as she is unable to be attacked by enemy units as long as there isn't a unit directly next to her. She also has a backstab move that can either kill or take the majority of an enemy's health, which requires you to gamble a little bit. Move her in close and go for the kill, or have peck away at opponents from afar?

Missions are pretty varied. For example, one mission has you rescuing friendly soldiers from a building. Then, you have to defuse a bomb on a ship. You race across the map to a control tower to open up a pathway to the ship and then defuse the bomb. In the meantime, of course, you're taking fire from enemies and have to hold off as many as you can.

In another mission, you navigate the corridors of an enemy base and plant bombs. Then, you track down the last position of an enemy leader to gather intel, defend Mint for a few turns and escape before you get inundated with enemy soldiers that pour in.

It's surprising that the missions don't seem to repeat themselves, considering that there are so many of them. I'm 12 hours into the game, and according to the save screen, only about 20% complete. It's not like I dawdle through the missions, either, as I would guesstimate I've completed about 25 or more of them. With that in mind, there's a lot of variety here that will keep you entertained for a really long time.

The 3D also goes a long way toward making a humdrum-looking game in 2D look like a great in 3D. You can see what terrain is higher. You can tell what areas are traversible by your crew and which ones aren't. You don't need some sort of artificial marker to tell you what is what because the 3D effect handles that effortlessly.

Shadow Wars is by no means perfect. I would have liked if line-of-sight was better implemented. For example, let's say two enemies are standing, one in front of the other. Both can take a shot at me. Realistically, the one in back would shoot his friend on accident, but not in this game. I suppose they left it that way to make it easier to use for newbies or people not generally disposed to play turn-based strategy, but I ask you: Would a person who doesn't like turn-based strategy pick up a turn-based strategy game? Watering it down just makes those who want real strategy frustrated.

The sound is very blah. Characters will grunt when they take damage, but those sounds aren't uniform. A character can get hit three times in a row and use three different voices to grunt in pain. That's weird to me. The music is a little disposable as well, but it's not bad.

There's something else odd: Your characters are bullet sponges. They can get hit repeatedly, make their odd-sounding grunts, and keep on moving. However, when one of them dies, the mission is completely over. It doesn't matter if you've spent half an hour on the mission. Shadow Wars doesn't care. The mission is failed and you must start over.

It explains why everyone (including the medic) can take ridiculous amounts of damage, but it's also a little annoying when all of your progress is wiped out because someone gets bushwhacked. How about this for the next game: If your character dies, you have two turns to get your medic over to them and revive them. Maybe they would only revive with half of their hit points and can't have their normal allotment back until the next mission. I don't know. I'm not the designer. Just figure it out for next time, OK?

Also, Banshee can be overpowered if you do it right. For example, I learned the sneak-attack move with her and also gained the ability to gain a crazy amount of Action Points, which enable you to do super-charged attacks. In one mission, I had her running around behind enemy lines and systematically murdering almost half of the opposing force with backstabs and good timing. It was hilarious, but almost game-breaking.

Plus, the AI will do hilariously stupid things. They'll charge past soft targets and go for tougher characters. They won't coordinate attacks. They'll charge a bad position and get mowed down. It would be great to take this game to multiplayer, but the only multiplayer option is local hotseat multiplayer. This is the kind of game that's BEGGING for internet multiplayer. Make it happen in the sequel, Ubisoft.

There's a big backstory involved in this game, but the best thing I can say about the story is that it exists. It's convoluted and pretty much only exists to further the gameplay. There's a guy who wants to take control in Russia, and some other guys who... I dunno. I lost track after about 10 missions. You don't need to follow it in order to enjoy the game.

Even though I have some gripes, Ghost Recon: Shadow Wars is a very solid turn-based strategy game. I'm also sad that a turn-based strategy game is currently the best game on a Nintendo system. That's the sort of thing I would expect from the N-Gage or PSP, not from a system created by Nintendo. Come on, get it together, Big N.

Final Grade: B+

Etch-A-Sketch Tech Support

I work in tech support, and sometimes we get so frustrated with customer that we wish we could just give them an Etch-A-Sketch. However, I'm not sure that would help most of them. I suspect it would go a little like this:

Representative: Thank you for calling , how can I help you?

Customer: My thing is broken.

R: OK, let's see what we can do. How is it broken?

C: It doesn't work.

R: How so?

C: Well, the line... it... doesn't go... One second. (quiet) Darlene! What's this thing doing again? (pause) Uh-huh? (pause) Uh-huh? (pause) OK. It doesn't go left or right, only up and down. Now, you should know I'm not "Etch-A-Sketch literate," so none of your technical talk, okay?

R: We'll do what we can. Let's see if we can help. Have you tried moving the left dial?

C: Left dial?

R: Yes, the left dial.

C: I don't see that. I don't think I have one.

R: It should be there.

C: I don't have one.

R: It's on every one of these. I want you to put your finger at the upper-left corner of the device.

C: I'm telling you, it's not there.

R: Just put your finger there and move it straight down and you should find it.

C: It's not there. I don't see it. I don't have one. It's not there. It's- Oh, there it is.

R: OK, now twist the dial back and forth.

C: OK, one second. (pause) I can't.

R: How are you twisting it?

C: I didn't twist it, I pulled it.

R: Pulling it won't do anything, and you might break the dial instead, so don't pull on the dial.

C: Pull on the dial? That's what I'm doing and it doesn't work.

R: No, no, DON'T pull on the dial. Twist it from left to right.

C: OK. (pause) Nothing happened.

R: Walk me through what you just did.

C: I took the Etch-A-Sketch and turned it from left to right.

R: The whole thing?

C: Yeah, you told me to twist it from left to right.

R: No, leave the Etch-A-Sketch where it is and just twist the dial left to right.

C: Now, my son works at the Etch-A-Sketch place and he says you shouldn't have to do this.

R: What does he do there?

C: He works in the lunch room. He's very smart, and he says I shouldn't have to do this. He says that I only need one dial and I don't have to twist it at all.

R: Well, that's not exactly correct. You need both dials to do anything.

C: I don't see how twisting it will work! My son says-

R: Just give it a try.

C: (grumbling) Oh! It worked! (yelling) Hey Darlene! It works! (back on phone) OK, good. Now, one more question: How do I make it go... not left, or right, or up or down, but like... a mix of those?

R: Like, diagonal?

C: Now, I said I don't know about these things, so I don't want any of that mumbo-jumbo.

R: No, that's the name of that kind of line. It's a diagonal line.

C: Well, how do I make it go di-gagnal?

R: This is a lot less complicated than you think. Move both dials at the same time gently.

C: You can do that?

R: Yep.

C: Geez, these things are so complicated now. I'm going to give it a try. (pause) Ohhhh. Ohhhh! That's really neat! I can make it- Oops.

R: What happened?

C: I made a long up-and-down line on accident just now. Can I erase it?

R: No.

C: Why not?

R: They're just not built that way. You can shake it upside-down though and start over.

C: (shaking) Wow, what will they think of next?

Opening Daaaaaay

It's opening day! And already the Brewers have hit two home runs off Edinson Volquez, who, by the way, has the look in his team photo like someone totally freaked out.

So Long, Guitar Hero

I predicted that Guitar Hero was going to collapse, and verily, it came to pass.

Here's what a few people are saying:

“You can have an IP that you lovingly care for and release every so often that can last forever, or one you ride hard into the ground.” - Cliffy B

Sing it, Cliff.

Activision sez:

"Although we did well with the core gamer in 2010, we felt the effects of changing consumer demand for peripheral-based and mid-tier titles, which performed well below our expectations.

After two years of steeply declining sales, we’ve made the decision to close our Guitar Hero business unit and discontinue development on our previously playing Guitar Hero title for 2011.

Despite a remarkable 92 rating on DJ Hero 2, a widely well-regarded Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, as well as the 90-plus rated release from our most direct competitor, demand for peripheral-based music games declined at a dramatic pace."

It appears that Activision learned the wrong lesson here. Instead of placing the blame on peripheral oversaturation, as yours truly talked about back in 2009 and everyone could see coming from a mile away, they said that demand decreased dramatically. In other words, it was completely out of their hands and just a market fluctuation.

When Guitar Hero came out, it was a revelation. It was fun, easy to learn, and just plain brilliant. You could tell that it had a limited shelf life, but there were ways to stretch that shelf life considerably. By metering out carefully the releases, Activision could have kept Guitar Hero viable for several years.

Don't believe me? Think of this: What if they would have ONLY released Guitar Hero 3 and Guitar Hero: World Tour this generation? They could bide their time, wait a a few years, and then release the next Guitar Hero with cool new features. They might even wait a generation for the next one. Can you imagine the demand for the next game? Instead, they pummeled the tar out of Guitar Hero so badly that no one wanted anything to do with it.

They also learned the wrong lesson from Guitar Hero in a different sense. Instead of understanding that the appeal wasn't in the motion or the peripheral but rather the gameplay, they started pounding out peripherals like mad. Here's the thing: No one liked the extra cost involved with the peripherals. They used them because the games they were attached to were fun.

What a concept! Instead of peripherals driving purchases, people actually would buy good games in SPITE of the extra expense BECAUSE they were good! WOW!

I've hammered Activision on this point repeatedly, but don't be surprised if they go the way of 90's Sega. They have no idea what they're doing. So why aren't we having this conversation about Call of Duty instead? We'll discuss that a different time.

Sony's Bad Month

Sony's attempts at stopping their piracy problem has hit a snag: The new firmware they released to stop piracy also stops people from upgrading their hard drives.

They're already fixing the issue, but this has just been a bad month for them. The PSP is totally compromised and the PS3 is compromised. The NGP looks cool, but, to quote Penny Arcade, if it was going to be $249 or less they would have been crowing about it already and screaming "In your FACE, Nintendo!" from the mountaintops.

The sad thing is Sony was really getting momentum gathered. Think about it: If their systems wouldn't have been compromised, they would be sitting on a solid PS3, a PSP that was going to soon be replaced by the really awesome-looking NGP, and they'd be ready to go.

Instead, they have their two flagship systems in tatters, they have to divert funds from R&D over to patching up the screwed-up systems and try and rush both the NGP and possibly the PS4 to market if they want to slow the bleeding.

However, they do have another option. They tried tons of firmware upgrades to the PSP, and it did nothing. They tried releasing PSP revisions, and it did nothing. They wasted valuable company resources on ideas that didn't work and ended up possibly kneecapping the PS3. I mean, think about it: One standard encryption key for EVERYTHING on the PS3? Doesn't that sound like a rush job to you?

I suggest that they take this approach: Put up a bit of a fight. Right now, when  everyone is talking about PS3 hacking, make it a little difficult to hack with these annoying firmware updates. Then, once the furor has died down, stop fighting it and refocus your efforts.

Also, remember that some people are just plain going to try and steal your crap. There's nothing you can do to stop all of them, so just stop the people who are using the most obvious exploits.

To give you an example, I installed the Wii Homebrew Channel a while ago just because there was an easy way to do it using the BannerBomb exploit. Then they upgraded the firmware, which nuked the exploit for the time being. I haven't tried since. It's just not worth the effort. I suppose I could do it again, but why?

At this point, that's really all Sony can do. Just scare away the people who want to steal things come hell or high water. Don't worry about everyone, since you won't stop everyone. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Then cross your fingers and pray like crazy.

A Warning For Activision

Activision had best watch itself.

I'm not saying this because of recent controversies or even because Bobby Kotick, the current CEO, is a jerk. I'm saying this because of history.


I recently purchased Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection, a collection of the Sega Genesis' astounding murderer's row of games. There are 40 games in the collection, mostly released within eight years of each other, between 1988-96, and 8 more unlockable games. Some of the games are great games that I've never played (Bonanza Bros.) and some of them are horrible games that suck (Super Thunder Blade).

However, this got me thinking. 40 games in 8 years? That's nuts! That's at a clip of 5 games per year, and many of them were very solid games! That was some amazing work by Sega! How did they not continue to compete with that sort of capability? What happened?

Let's take a closer look at what they really did. Of the games in this collection, there are 2 Ecco the Dolphin games. There are 5 main Sonic series games (Sonic 1, 2, 3, Knuckles and Sonic 3D Blast), 3 Golden Axe games, 3 Streets of Rage games, 2 Shining Force games, 3 Phantasy Star games, and 2 Vectorman games. They also have Shinobi 3 in this collection, although there are no other Shinobi games. The first sequel in this group was Golden Axe 2 in 1991. The last sequel was Vectorman 2 in 1995.

Let's do the math. In a span of five years, Sega pumped out 15 sequels to their hits, at a clip of three per year. I'm not counting handheld games in this number, as a steady library of games was necessary to attempt to establish a handheld presence.

Are some of these games excellent? You bet! Sonic 2 is the best of the Sonic series, Shining Force 2 is amazing, and the Phantasy Star games were great too. But what did Sega accomplish by making so many sequels in such a short period of time? They watered down their franchises to the point that no one was interested in them anymore, and what's worse, they blew all of their great ideas in such a hurry that no more great ideas existed.

Let's compare this with Nintendo. During this time frame of 1991 to 1995, Nintendo also released sequels. They released 10 of them in Japan, and only 8 in the United States. Of this group, there were three Fire Emblem games, Super Metroid, Super Mario World (in the US it was released in 1991, Japan 1990) and Super Mario World 2, Donkey Kong Country 2 and Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past as well as Kirby's Adventure and Star Tropics 2 for the NES. I'm also not counting handheld games in this number, as Nintendo was trying to build up the library of the GameBoy.

In most of these cases, Nintendo went back to the well in order to do things they couldn't do previously. For example, Yoshi was created during the making of Super Mario Bros. 3, but they couldn't include him due to system limitations. Instead, they held on to the idea until they could do it in Super Mario World. Kirby's Adventure built on concepts they couldn't accomplish in Game Boy iterations of the game. Super Metroid became one of the greatest games ever made, and so on. The only series that was really run into the ground by excessive sequels was the Donkey Kong Country series, which started strong with the first two installments and had a miserable third game.

Therein lies Sega's problem. For example, what does Streets of Rage 3 add to Streets of Rage? What did Golden Axe 3 add to the Golden Axe formula? Sure, they added new characters and continued the story, but no one was dying for either of those series to continue. In those cases, the property was run into the ground by repeated trips to the same well.

Take Vectorman. Vectorman was Sega's response to Nintendo's CGI characters in Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario RPG. Vectorman was a fun, if slightly unpolished game. The music was tremendous, and the level design was good. Vectorman 2 looks and plays like a cheap cash-in. It's boring and repetitive.

Sonic also suffered. Sonic 2 was great. Sonic 3 was good. Sonic and Knuckles was OK. Sonic 3D Blast was hideous. The downtick in quality is striking.

Now, let's say that Sega held off on developing these properties. Let's say that they instead waited on Sonic 2, integrating the Sonic 3 save system, the fantastic Angel Island level, and the different elemental shields into Sonic 2. Wouldn't you say that it would make one of the best games ever? Instead, some of the ideas had to wait for the inferior Sonic 3.

Sega probably thought they were doing the right thing. It would make sense to strike while the characters are hot, right? I mean, Nintendo was taking their sweet time making sequels, so pumping out sequels would distract from what Nintendo was doing and make the Genesis the more viable system, right?

That's almost exactly what happened, too. The Genesis overtook the SNES in Europe and made Nintendo look like out-of-touch old fogeys in the States. They opened the door for a new core audience that wanted more adult games, and if they had been able to keep their momentum going, they could have become the dominant company.

I'm going to bring another thread into this discussion, so keep up. A long time ago, I made a webcomic. Don't bother asking about it: It was awful. I never put it online because I started running out of ideas. Instead of creating situations with the characters I had made, I just started adding more characters to create more situations. It was totally unsustainable, and I'm glad it never came to fruition.

Sega made the same mistake, especially with the Sonic series. They blasted through all their great ideas in the first 5 games they made and ended up sitting on a great character with no gameplay ideas. What to do? Add characters!

They're still doing it, too. Instead of stopping with Sonic games, look what they've done in the last few years. Starting in 2001, we've had Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Sonic the Hedgehog (again), Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic Unleashed, Sonic and the Black Knight, and Sonic Colors. That's an average of about one Sonic game on a console per year.

Now compare Mario's main offerings since 2001. We have Super Mario Sunshine, Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros. Wii and Super Mario Galaxy 2. That's it. Since they spaced out their releases, Mario is still a big deal. Most every Mario game sells quite a few copies because it's still a big deal.

Heck, let's throw Zelda games into the mix. Since 2001, we've had Wind Waker and Twilight Princess on consoles. Once again, that's it. Heck, throwing in handhelds, we have Minish Cap, Phantom Hourglass, and Spirit Tracks. That's still fewer games than Sonic.

OK, so what does this all mean? Let's look at the facts.

1) Sega watered down their franchises to the point that they are unusable. They can't revive them either, because nobody cares about them (see Golden Axe: Beast Rider).
2) They got some quick gains in their market by creating tons of games based off their franchises, but quickly lost ground to Nintendo, they of the "slow and steady wins the race" attitude.
3) While they did make some poor decisions with their management (i.e. the early termination of the Sega Saturn, among others), a game company is all about the games, and if the quality drops, they can't expect to stay in business for very long.

All right, so let's circle back to Activision. Activision has three major licenses that they keep trying to exploit: Guitar Hero, Tony Hawk, and Call of Duty. Blizzard's licenses are independent of Activision, so World of Warcraft and Starcraft remain untouched. Activision has made piles of money off of these, and is one of the most powerful companies in gaming.

However, of the three major licenses that Activision attempts to exploit, Guitar Hero and Tony Hawk are almost dead. Guitar Hero has been exploited so often their name is on milk cartons. Tony Hawk has been lapped by other, more superior games that don't require ridiculous and expensive peripherals. Call of Duty is showing signs of collapse, as the latest Call of Duty has been marred with issues, although it still sells mightily.

Activision hasn't really developed any new licenses. They brought in Bungie to work for them recently, but there aren't any projects ready to see the light of day, not for a while.
So, we can see that they're doing something similar to what Sega did in the 90's. They've watered down their franchises so much that they've killed not only their OWN franchise but also OTHER similar franchises, like Rock Band. They've made astounding monetary gains, but at what cost?

If things start going south at Activision, how long would it take for them to start raiding the coffers of Blizzard and demanding more product from them? They could end up not only killing their own franchises, but also Blizzard's venerable franchises too.

Plus, bad management decisions happen every day. When a company is going along fine, these decisions can usually be smoothed over by other departments or solved carefully. When a company is in trouble, those decisions can create a ripple effect throughout the organization, eventually sapping companies of manpower and the ability to innovate. For instance, Sega withstood the poor Sega CD and 32X add-ons because they were healthy. They could not, however, withstand the failure of the Saturn.

So, too, if Activision finds themselves in a dangerous spot, how much faith do you have that they'll make the right decision? Right now they're fine, so when Kotick opens his fat mouth or tries pushing Tony Hawk: Shred on a public that doesn't want anything to do with it, they survive. When, say, Call of Duty collapses, will they have the ability to recover from those poor decisions?

Time will tell. But Activision would be wise to heed the warning of Sega: Over-exploit your properties at your own risk.

Why The Super Mario Bros. Collection Makes Me Angry

The Onion’s AV Club reviewed the 25th Anniversary Super Mario Bros. Collection today. Spoiler warning: They gave it an F.

This is where you would expect the Nintendo fanboy in me to start screaming and howling about how the AV Club is not being fair to Nintendo, and they’re forgetting about the BEAUTY of these games. If that’s what you came here to read, I’m sorry to have wasted your time.

The fact of the matter is, Nintendo has dropped the ball with regards to the Anniversary Collection. I can’t even begin to describe how badly Nintendo dropped the ball. They didn’t just drop the ball, they dropped it down a storm drain and then drowned trying to go get it back, and then badgers ate the body.

Here’s what you get when you drop $30 on this anniversary collection:

1. A warmed-over ROM of Super Mario All-Stars
2. A booklet
3. A music CD
4. Regret

First of all, Super Mario All-Stars was a really fun game... in 1993 when no one EVER released games for the previous system on the new system. It was amazing to be able to play Mario 1, 2, 3 and the Lost Levels for the first time in glorious 16-bit color and sound. Those of us in the US had never even played the Lost Levels, so it was an extra treat. Plus, you could save your game! Rock ON!

That was 17 years ago. These things are now passe. For example, we’ve seen Super Mario 1 redone so many times that we’re bored by it. We’ve seen Super Mario Advance and Super Mario Advance 4, which redid Mario 2 & 3 with way more enhancements. The Lost Levels, having now been “found,” are no longer a huge draw.

On top of that, you can purchase all of these games via the Virtual Console service for $21 total. Twenty-one dollars! Let’s do the math:

$21 < $30

Via this complex mathematical formula, I have extrapolated that $21 is, in fact, LESS than their asking price for the Anniversary Collection.

“But, Mr. Blogger Nerd Rage Man, these are ENHANCED GRAPHICS! SAVE SLOTS! Not only that, but there’s a booklet and music CD! That has to be worth $9 more, right?”

You could make the argument that those additions add up to $9 worth of extras, except for two things:

1. Nobody really likes the enhanced graphics or music. What will draw a bigger crowd, the original Super Mario Brothers music, or the “improved” Super Nintendo music? What about the “improved” graphics? What’s the bigger nostalgia trip? Essentially, Nintendo is charging you extra for something you don’t want, didn’t ask for, and don’t really like.
2. Save slots aren’t that important anymore. Using the Virtual Console, you can easily stop your in-progress game and move on to a different game. In the NES and Super Nintendo days, there was no way to do so. Your only option was leaving the system on overnight, which could damage it or cause it to overheat. It was a Big Deal to have save slots. Now, not so much.
3. The booklet and music CD are flimsy at best. Quick, where can you find information on the making of Super Mario Brothers? TRY EVERYWHERE. Where can you listen to the original music of the game? HEY LOOK, YOUTUBE. There is absolutely nothing here that you can’t find free elsewhere, and in many cases, better quality.
4. Where the &#$^ is Super Mario World? For a time, they were releasing cartridges with Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario World together. What happened? Why did they decide not to include it?

Here’s what really gets me. What did Nintendo do with this collection? They quite literally slapped a Mario All-Stars ROM on a disc and sent it off to printing. The ROM itself is maybe 8 megabytes large. What did they fill up the rest of the disc with? Pictures of their moms and dads? Vacation memories? The unabridged Oxford Dictionary? It’s quite possibly the laziest collection I have ever seen.

Let’s compare this collection to the Mega Man Anniversary Collections. The Mega Man Anniversary Collection has 8 Mega Man games on it, two unlockable Mega Man arcade games, unlockable galleries and more. The Mega Man X Anniversary Collection has 6 Mega Man games on it, an unlockable kart-racing game, and galleries. This is from Capcom, a company that has far less money than Nintendo.

Now, imagine if Nintendo had gone that extra mile. Imagine if this collection had Mario 1, 2, 3, the Lost Levels AND Super Mario World AND allowed you to unlock, say, Super Mario Land 1 and 2 and maybe Donkey Kong. I would have been happy with that. That would have been amazing. As it is, they handed out poop in a box.

Here’s the sad part: If they would have released this five years ago as a 20-year anniversary collection, it would have been amazing. Playing the Mario games on your Gamecube and using the music CD at a time when we still used CDs would have been awesome. As it is, the Super Mario Bros. Anniversary Collection was a giant missed opportunity and one of the most pathetic collections I’ve ever seen.