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.

Review: Professor Layton and the Last Specter

Developer: Level-5
Publisher: Nintendo

The Professor Layton series has been very successful, and with good reason. The Layton games usually wrap an unusual and intelligent narrative around a series of mind-bending puzzles. They're fun games, and easy to get into.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter is the fourth game in the series and the last to be released for the DS while also being a prequel to the previous trilogy. If you've played a previous game in the series, will you like this one? If you haven't played the Layton games, is this a good one to start with?

In Last Specter, Professor Layton receives a letter from his friend Clark, the mayor of the small town of Misthallery, saying that a strange specter is destroying their town. Layton and his new assistant Emmy venture to the town of Misthallery, where they meet Luke Triton, the boy who becomes Layton's apprentice.

Professor Layton games are a combination of point-and-click adventure games and those "101 Puzzle" books you may have seen when you were a kid. The formula is this: Talk to person, answer a puzzle. Touch an object, answer a puzzle. Move the narrative forward, answer a puzzle. That's been the formula since the first game, and the Layton universe's bizarre obsession with puzzles hasn't abated in Last Specter. If you don't like the formula, tough. If you're looking for any major curveballs or changes to the formula, there aren't any changes here.

After four games, you would expect the formula to start looking a little long in the tooth, but it's still OK. You're not playing a Professor Layton game for platforming, after all. I still believe that the Layton series works excellently as a gateway game for people who are otherwise disinclined toward narrative games.

My problem isn't with the puzzles, although a few of them could be a little clearer to understand. My problem, instead, lies with the narrative. I'm not going to give too much away, but Last Specter aims for a really emotional ending, much like the other entries in the series. It comes so close to packing a punch, except for the fact that the characters that are involved in the ending are cursory characters for most of the story, and one character isn't even introduced until the last hour of the game.

Plus, there is definitely a villain problem in Last Specter. The villain of Last Specter is a completely out-of-left-field character who, once again, isn't revealed until the last half-hour of the game. That makes it difficult to care about any of the proceedings, and an otherwise interesting story falls flat at the end.

The inclusion of the RPG London Life is neat, though. It's fun and deep, although if it were sold as a standalone project I suspect it wouldn't be quite so well-liked. In some ways, it feels like "Sidequest Quest," as you're mostly doing favors for people and just noodling around in the Professor Layton universe, but I've had a good amount of fun with it.

Last Specter is a decent game. It's funny and smart and all the other things you would expect from a Professor Layton game. Still, I'm glad this is the last outing for the DS. Maybe moving to the 3DS will help refresh the series a bit.

Final Grade: B-

AM2R Demo Out Now

Remember AM2R, the Metroid 2 remake I talked about a long, long time ago? I even interviewed the guy who made it. Seriously, you don't remember that?

Well, anyway, they released a demo. I'm excited about it, and I'll see if I have some time to look it over.

6,000 Pageviews!

I don't view post count as a very reliable metric. Some of my posts are small and unsubstantial, and I've also removed some posts I didn't like or that didn't really match up with the way I wanted to write anymore, like an embarrassing post about No One Lives Forever I would rather forget.

However, pageviews is indeed more reliable because it tells me how many people actually read what I write. Since this blog started keep records about a year ago, I'm up to 6,000 pageviews! I know that doesn't sound like much, but it's exciting for me.

Just thought I'd share. Some day, I might look back on this "milestone" and laugh, but for now, just let me enjoy the moment, OK?

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 2

We continue our ranking of Nintendo's systems. Part One is right here.


8. Gamecube

History: The Nintendo 64 limped to the finish line toward the end of the last millennium, and Nintendo needed a jolt in order to remain viable in the home market. To that end, Nintendo announced the Gamecube and promised improved third-party support and lots more games. Instead of using cartridges, they got with the program and started making games on discs. For the Gamecube, Nintendo thought they were going to give everyone exactly what they were clamoring for.

Results: The Gamecube only sold 20 million units during its lifespan. To put that in perspective, we're in the worst recession in 30 years right now. People have less money than ever before. And yet, all three major consoles have managed to sell more units than the Gamecube ever did. The widely-maligned 3DS, in less than a year, has managed to sell six million units, about a third of the entire amount that the Gamecube sold over their entire six-year lifespan.

What Went Right: Some of the games were absolutely amazing. Metroid Prime is one of the best games of their generation. Zelda: Wind Waker is fantastic. Super Smash Bros. Melee is still a multiplayer standby. Plus, for all of the Gamecube's problems, it was a profitable system for Nintendo. That has to count for something.

What Went Wrong: The problem was that the Gamecube did a lot of things OK without excelling at anything in particular. For example, the graphics on the Gamecube were great, even better than the dominant Playstation 2. The XBox had better graphics, though. The multiplayer was well supported, with Mario Kart Double Dash and Super Smash Bros. Melee leading the charge. However, the XBox introduced unified online multiplayer with XBox Live and negated that advantage.

Nintendo still hadn’t figured out modern controllers. After the bizarre three-handed controller of the Nintendo 64, the Gamecube controller further convinced people that Nintendo had lost their minds. The controller was a byzantine mess of buttons that befuddled newcomers, although, in all fairness, it made perfect sense once you started using it.

Since the Gamecube never gained traction in the marketplace, third-party developers started moving their business elsewhere. That meant that earth-shattering games like Grand Theft Auto III never made it to Nintendo's console, which rendered Nintendo's claims of third-party support moot. The type of third-party support they received was a steady diet of sports games and licensed games, which probably wasn’t what Nintendo had in mind.

Plus, the other systems of the time had DVD capability, which Nintendo refused to offer. That doesn't sound like much now, but at the time it was huge advantage for both Microsoft and Sony. DVD players by themselves were $300, so buying a video game system that could handle both DVDs and games gave those other companies an advantage that Nintendo couldn’t claim.

Even Nintendo's vaunted stable of characters wasn't enough to eke out a lead. While there were a few amazing games, the Playstation 2 had a far deeper stable of quality hits and was developing mascots of its own. Their old standby Mario wasn't even pulling his weight, as Super Mario Sunshine was a subpar outing.

In other words, Nintendo tried fighting an arms race with other console manufacturers while skimping on the things that consumers cared about. They ended up alienating people who were casual console buyers, chasing away people who were in to Nintendo games, and pleasing no one.

Lessons Learned: Clearly, Nintendo had to make some major adjustments. They started by changing everything they knew about consoles. They realized they could either compete on graphics or compete on originality, but not both at the same time. Since competing on graphics was expensive and a losing battle, it made sense to compete on originality.

Their crazy controller with 12 buttons and two control sticks was replaced with the Wii-mote, which had exactly 6 buttons and a D-pad. If you added a Nunchuk, you had just two more buttons and an extra control stick. It was much more manageable for newcomers, who enjoyed the low barrier for entry.

They also learned that their strength lies not with how powerful their hardware is, but the strength of their tentpole franchises. No longer would franchises such as Mario lie in mothballs, waiting interminably for a release that never came.

Whether or not you think these are good lessons is entirely up to you.

VGA Game of the Year Nominees: This Is Stupid

Here's the nominees for Game Of The Year in the upcoming Video Game Awards. Tell me how this works:

Zelda: Skyward Sword, a game that's not released yet and hasn't been played by the majority of players is up for Game of the Year. Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is also there.

Since an award show processes the ballots before the announcements are made, that means that the ballots probably went out about a month ago to give everyone time to fill it out.

One month ago, only one of those games (Portal 2) was currently released.

The other four games weren't released yet. Since many times a game is not released until it is complete, some of these games were "reviewed" in an incomplete state, where they were christened nominees for Game of the Year in that state.

Here's the kicker: Is anyone surprised by the list? Is there any game on this list that surprises you? Or, is it correct to say that the games you thought would be on the list are there, more or less?

And we wonder why people have problems with video game criticism.

Ranking Nintendo's Systems: Part 1

Nintendo has a longer history than any of the major players in the industry right now. They've released five console systems and four handheld systems, have sold millions of games and have the most recognizable mascots is all of gaming. Recent struggles aside, they're gaming's most consistent company, with high marks for quality across the board.

For as long as they’ve been in the video game business, there have been really, really highs and some tremendous lows. We're going to count down all of their systems from worst to first and see what lessons they learned from each system. We'll exclude the 3DS, since there's not enough data on it yet to be able to rank it properly. Here are the systems we'll cover:

Portables:
Game Boy/Game Boy Color, Virtual Boy, Game Boy Advance, DS

Consoles:
Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Gamecube, Wii

Let us begin!

9. Virtual Boy

History: Nintendo struck gold in 1989 with the Game Boy, but six years later it was time to put it out to pasture and usher in a new portable system. It's hard to remember now, but in the 90's, people were obsessed with virtual reality. It was going to be the next big thing, and Nintendo wanted to be there first.

So, after carefully considering all of their options and ingesting large quantities of peyote, Nintendo created the Virtual Boy. They figured that gamers will gladly pay upwards of $150 to play a system that has to sit on a stand with a separate controller and play monochromatic 3D games that gave gamers headaches after extended play sessions.

Results: Needless to say, gamers did not bite, and only 800,000 units were shipped. The creator of the system, the venerable Gunpei Yokoi, was fired from Nintendo even though it wasn't entirely his fault. I mean, inventors make wacky stuff all the time. That's what they do. Unless Yokoi physically forced Hiroshi Yamauchi to sign off on this project by holding the president's daughter hostage, this one should have been stopped before it got out the door.

What Went Right: Not much. I mean, Wario Land was a cool game, I guess. The 3D effect, contrary to popular belief, actually looked pretty good. I can say this with authority since I actually played a Virtual Boy several times when it launched and thought it looked promising, aside from the weird red tint for everything.

What Went Wrong: Oh geez, where do we begin? The high price? The monochromatic blazing red display? The way the system was too big to actually wear without propping it up on a headstand, making it too big for a handheld and too useless for a console?

Here's what I don't get. How can this system even get out of product-testing? How can you put a system like this through QA, have people complain of headaches and neck pain, and then rubber-stamp this for shipping? Who looked at this and said, "Yes, this is exactly what the public is clamoring for"?

Lessons Learned: Some might say that Nintendo didn't learn their lesson from the Virtual Boy when releasing the 3DS, but that's not true. The Virtual Boy's problem was never the 3D. The 3D effect was the best thing about the Virtual Boy.

No, the problem is that the system wasn't mainstream enough. If you didn't want to stick your head in a visor, you weren't going to play the Virtual Boy. Since most people didn't want to stick their heads in a visor, that left out a huge chunk of Nintendo's potential audience.

Also, while the idea of a system that could do 3D was good, the technology simply wasn't there yet to make it work right. Nintendo learned that just because something is a cool idea doesn't mean it's a good idea for mass production.

These lessons revealed themselves in the Wii and the DS. The Wii and DS had multiple ways to play and mostly gave the gamer the option of playing the way they want to play. They also didn't cram those systems full of the latest technology, but stayed just a step or two behind. That kept the cost down for the consumer and manufacturer while still providing the consumer with something "new."

For part 2 of this series, click here.

NYANNYAN :3

Nyan Cat the Movie by blakerobinson

You Are Not So Smart

I'm sure other people are more aware of this site, but I just found out about You Are Not So Smart and it's AWESOME. I'm going to be reading this for a while, I think.

Criminally Overlooked Games: Seiken Densetsu 3

There are a few injustices in this world that must be rectified: poverty, global warming, the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor, and the fact that Seiken Densetsu 3 has never made it to American shores.

"What is Seiken Densetsu 3?" you might ask. Well, remember how great Secret of Mana was? Remember the multiplayer combat and the cool music and all the exploration in the game? Remember how much fun you had? Imagine a sequel with better music, better combat and more character customization. Imagine better graphics and better world navigation, as well as a longer game. That's Seiken Densetsu 3.
Seiken Densetsu was a series of three games that was released here in North America. You might know that Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy (remade as Sword of Mana) was the first of the trilogy and that Secret of Mana was the second. Well, they made a sequel to Secret of Mana and we never got to play it over here for whatever reason. This needs to be fixed NOW.

Here's a rundown of the game: There are six different main characters you can choose from. There's Duran, the sword fighter and easiest to use. There's Angela, the sorcerer who casts offensive magic. Hawk, the thief, who strikes twice for each attack. Lise, who uses a spear in combat. Carlie, the priestess who uses recovery magic. Finally, Kevin is a beastman who turns into a werewolf at night. Each character plays slightly different, and you'll be able to pick two other ones to accompany you. As the game goes on, you'll meet up with all the characters as their stories weave around yours, but only the two extra ones you've selected will join you on your quest.

Next up, when your characters reach levels 17 and 37, they'll be able to change their class. You can pick to go with either a "light" class or a "dark" class. "Light" classes open up more recovery magic, while "dark" classes open you up to the strongest of attack magics. That means that you can have three pummeling tanks in your party, or you can try and focus on magic, or have two tanks and a healer or whatever you would like to do. The flexibility of the system makes for a ton of fun.

There are more improvements to the "Mana" formula as well. For instance, when flying around in your white dragon, they'll actually point you toward your objectives on the main map. No more wandering aimlessly like in Secret of Mana! There's more variety in locations, like a seriously creepy ghost ship full of zombies, jungles full of dark priests, ice caves with ambulatory fish, and eventually the Mana Holyland. On top of that, the characters are all interesting and not just "insert generic hero motivation" characters like the characters from Secret of Mana.

For me, the most important improvement is the improved battle system. They did away with the constant weapon switching from Secret of Mana, and it streamlines combat considerably. Also, whereas before, enemies would appear almost at random, now enemies appear when you walk into a section. You fight them, and it declares you the winner while showing you how much XP you gained from them, leaving you to explore the area once you're done with the battle. This divides the world up a little better and lets you explore without worrying about things jumping out at you that you thought you had killed. It makes backtracking and exploring a little easier.

During each combat portion, you have a meter at the bottom of the screen. The more attacks you land against your enemies, the more your meter your builds until you're able to unleash some seriously cool special attacks. This meter also gets upgraded as the game goes on, and your special attacks can change depending on your class. That means that you have a reason to go back and play as different characters.

Finally, as good as the sound and music was in Secret of Mana, Seiken Densetsu 3 tops it in many areas. The five years that Squaresoft spent coaxing excellent music out of the SNES sound chip don't go to waste, and almost every track is a winner.

In comparison to Secret of Mana, everything in Seiken Densetsu 3 is just all-around better. Please, Square Enix. I don't ask for much. All I ask is that you give Seiken Densetsu 3 the re-release it so richly deserves. You did it for Chrono Trigger. Why not give SD3 the same treatment? That's all I ask.