Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island (SNES and Gameboy Advanced)

Once upon a time a stork was carrying a pair of very special twins to their parents to be. On his way he was ambushed by a koopa wizard by the name of Kamek, “THE BABIES ARE MINE,” He screeched. Kamek stole one of the infants but the other fell onto the island below. He fell onto the back of a Yoshi, this Yoshi brought it back to his tribe and Baby Mario’s twin’s intuition tells him where his brother is and he points the Yoshis in the right direction. (Wait, how does Baby Mario know that the Yoshi’s have to go to the darkside of Yoshi’s island by travelling through the moon? Eh, screw it.) Play as the Yoshi tribe as they hand Baby Mario off. Run, jump, flutter-kick, swim, transform into vehicles, eat your enemies, turn them into eggs, hurl your egg-based offspring at other enemies…. now I’m just really curious about the anatomy and reproductive cycles of Yoshis….

“What’s up nerd? Yeah, I just felt like turning into a helicopter. Nothing wrong with that.” 

The whole gang is here and MORE! See even more new enemies! A few of which will be ignored in Mario canon after this.

Development

Not a lot to talk about when it comes to the story of the development of Yoshi’s island. No hilarious stories, no real crises. It had four director’s though, and I’m not sure it they’re sequential or simultaneous. Unlike other Mario games, Shigeru Miyamoto, the series creator, was not among the directors. Miyamoto created Super Mario Bros, the original Donkey Kong game for the arcade, and The Legend of Zelda but when it came to the Super Nintendo he took on the role of Producer. He did this both with Super Mario World and Yoshi’s island. The one big thing about Yoshi’s Island is that it was released eight months after Donkey Kong Country. Donkey Kong Country had a way of rendering sprites in game by pre-rendering them, creating a very unique style. Miyamoto was told to take things in this direction which lead to the, similarly unique style, of a child’s drawing.

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island was released on August 15th, 1995. It was up against Earthbound, Chrono Trigger, Heroes of Might and Magic, and Comix Zone.

From the mountains with smiling faces to the poorly shaded clouds, the backgrounds look like they’re fuzzied by a child’s memory’s.

Nostalgia

This game and me go way back. I don’t remember when I first played it, I couldn’t have been older than ten. I must have had my parents rent it from Taylor Brook video 30 times. The first time I rented it I ended up so sick the next day that I couldn’t got to school, I thought I had won big. But when I tried to play the game I got so motion sick that I couldn’t continue. I was so upset, I had gotten a taste of it and would be denied the rest. When I did get around to playing it, I’ll admit, I was pretty bad. I still didn’t understand how sequels worked, so I thought that I would just find a mushroom or a feather to fly. I thought that I could jump on enemies to destroy them, and it does, but unless Yoshi eats them then they’ll come back when he returns to where they spawn. I didn’t understand how to throw eggs or what I could use them for. At this point in my career I wasn’t even aware that the controller had buttons on their shoulder areas. But I eventually figured it out fighting the first boss, Burt the Bashful. I ended up so frustrated that I hit every button and touching every part of the controller until I realized that there were shoulder buttons and that these allowed me to throw the eggs. Projectile weapons, what a novel idea. I also never figured out that I could use items from the pause menu, when I figured this out I opened up all the other saves and wasted their items (Kids can be so cruel).

It was quite a trek getting through this game. I got stuck on a bunch of levels, maze levels, locked door fortresses, ice levels, levels that scroll (I still dislike areas like this today), and levels surrounded by bottomless pits. But I did eventually get through them, I was always willing to give them another try (Or go farm some lives and come back for fear of the dreaded GAME OVER. I seriously thought that it would delete my game save [On the topic of game saves, I always felt bad when I had to delete one. I thought the kid with that save would find me and beat me up]). I got all the way to Kamek’s fortress only to find that it’s not Kamek’s! It’s Baby Bowser’s! This blew my goddam mind when I was a kid.This is one of the first games that I got to the end and couldn’t beat. I loved the game so much that I didn’t even care though. I went back to old levels and old bosses and had fun just beating them again (I still go fight Tap-Tap the Red Nosed on my Gameboy Advanced copy every year or so.)

You and me, round 124 or whatever. This fight has everything, it’s got a pit of lava for goodness sake!

Now, an aside on Baby Bowser. The first part is great, it’s fine. It’s the second part that gets me.

This scared me silly when I was a kid. I would panic and die every time I faced him. I didn’t even know what to do. I saw the giant eggs  float by and I just thought, “That’s it. This game ends with Yoshi and Mario getting horrifically crushed by a monolithic infantile turtle monarch.”

The Gush

Dear sweet lord I still love this game. Koji Kondo outdid himself with the composition of this game, I’m still humming the tunes at work every once and awhile. From the fun loving mid-boss theme, to the more serious world boss theme, to the pants-wettingly terrifying Baby Bowser fight theme, to the silly and happy-go-lucky-rag-timey tunes, I think they’re all great (It took me forever to notice that the stage select theme gets more instruments the more worlds I had beaten. I always thought, “When did that change?”). The visuals are stunning and have amazing details, like the way the moon has stitches like a baseball or how Raphael the Raven’s eyebrows get angrier the more hits you land on him. That being said, the game does a lot of things to make it less scary. The bat enemies have little dotted lines trailing behind them and the larger enemies are usually shown being unable to reach Yoshi for some reason, Blarggs being bound to bodies of water and such.

The Kvetch

My only complaint is that it’s difficult to understand how Yoshi’s flutter-kick works. It’s a frustrating exercise to spatially comprehend, with my 9 year old brain, whether I’m gaining altitude or losing it when Yoshi kicks his little legs to try to gain more altitude (I was also shocked that it worked at all, even when I was nine). I could imagine it leading to a lot of deaths until it clicks in the player’s head, and I don’t know another way the game teaches it satisfyingly. There are also a lot of indestructible enemies, there are the kung-fu performing fellows that usually attack in pairs and can’t be destroyed. I always remember forgetting this and wasting my time trying to figure out how to destroy them (Actually, I think I do remember destroying them… aw crap…. It’s an infinite cycle.), and that’s super frustrating especially for a kid.

Oh god, I almost forgot. I blocked it out. When Yoshi gets hit he drops Baby Mario and when he does Baby Mario cries. Oh god, does he cry. It’s one of the most annoying thing in all of videogaming history and I think I try to forget it because it’s not just the worst thing in this game, it’s part of my top 100 worst things ever. (Seriously https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0nYKgkFvMM put this on a loop and see how long you can deal with this wailing, it’s awful)

Did I also mention that Bowser lives in the night Yoshi’s Island in the middle of the void?! I always missed seeing the light world.

The Verdict

I’m totally blinded by nostalgia on this one. Either it’s a great game or I just can’t see its faults. I might venture as far to say that it’s both. I still play this game on long trips on my Gameboy Advanced. I do wish that there had been someone there to tell me how to beat Baby Bowser or something, then again that’s part of the learning experience I suppose. I love this game and I can’t recommend it enough. This game is actually the least selling Mario game, with only 4 million sales and I don’t know why. I don’t know why it’s not as well known as the other titles, I blame the Baby Mario screaming.

Next Week’s game is: Donkey Kong Country.

Sponsored Post Sponsored Post Menu More Info Learn from the experts: Create a successful blog with our brand new courseThe WordPress.com Blog

WordPress.com is excited to announce our newest offering: a course just for beginning bloggers where you’ll learn everything you need to know about blogging from the most trusted experts in the industry. We have helped millions of blogs get up and running, we know what works, and we want you to to know everything we know. This course provides all the fundamental skills and inspiration you need to get your blog started, an interactive community forum, and content updated annually.

Register now

Shadowrun (Genesis version)

Introduction

In a world of awakening magic and rapid technological advances the worlds of spirit and circuitry meet. The planet has become privatized, between the Mega Corps and Dragons there are few things that are not owned by. Massive urban sprawls clash with wilds that grow more untameable with every newly rediscovered magical monstrosity. Humans are being born as elves, dwarves, orcs, and trolls. In this world, crime is a necessity. To fight corporate control people of exceptional ability work in the shadows cast by these Mega Corps. We follow the story of Joshua. His brother was a high class shadowrunner and was killed in a run that was so important that it made national news. Now, Josh has to figure out who killed his brother.

That’s just a solid title screen. Skulls, computers, sweet fonts, that’s just everything 16 year old me could want.

Development

Not unlike the Speed Racer post, I couldn’t find any developmental information about the game. In lieu, I’ll be writing about its source material.

Shadowrun was published as a roleplaying setting in 1989 by the FASA Corporation. FASA was founded by Jordan Weisman and L. Ross Babcock in 1980 with 350 $. Jordan’s father, Mort, was able to generate more capital by selling his book publishing company, although the experience of owning such an enterprise would be invaluable later on. It got its start producing supplements for the Game Designer’s Workshop such as Shadowrun and Battletech.

Battletech, founded in 1984, would more commonly be known as MechWarrior and involves people getting in giant battle suits and shooting rockets at each other. It was originally released as a board game and would later be expanded into a table top war game. It would then go on to be represented in computer games, bringing the stunning visuals to life.

Shadowrun has had four editions over the years, each keeping to the same basics and back story. But the main difference being an advancement of technology to keep it ahead, or at least in line, with the modern day. In 1989 hooking up someone’s brain to the internet (Decking) was a piece of science fiction and today we don’t have to because of the existence of hand-held devices that do the same thing, thus 4^th edition introduced wireless decking. The plot of these advancements being spurred forward by the videogame adaptations and a series of novels.

The series met with disaster with the 2007 release, which forwent all of the interesting world building and character development, and turned the series into a first person shooter. This spurred Jordan Weisman to take the reins with his own, Kickstarter funded, project, Shadowrun Returns. As the title implies, it brought the series back to its roleplaying driven, combat spiced, storytelling. Shadowrun Returns has extensive developer tools which allow anyone and their friends to try to make a campaign for the rest of the world to play. Although most of these aren’t very well constructed, there are a few that have seen a lot of effort put into their creation. The next project for Shadowrun is Shadowrun Online, an MMO.

Shadowrun was released for the Sega Genesis in 1994 going up against Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for the Sega Genesis and Final Fantasy VI for the Super Nintendo.

When is the internet going to be like this?

The Nostalgia

My cousin Zach and I would play this game for hours. I would go over to his house in the winter just to play it. We were taken in by the hyper technological world filled with magic and its crazy lingo. Vernacular that any 16 year old could grab a-hold of instantly, curses and compliments that just make sense. It was a single player game so we would take turns with different playthroughs. He took save slot 2 because it was easy to accidentally overwrite save 1 which would be mine. My got overwritten so many times, but I didn’t even care (Alright, I got fired up a few times). It was his game and he was free to do what he wanted with it.

He would play as the Street Samurai archetype because he was the bigger and stronger between us and I would play the Decker because I was more technically inclined. We were playing the same game with the same story but there was so much to do and so many different decisions to make in every moment. There were small encounters in every area, women getting pulled into alleys, astrally projecting mages that are getting mugged, people taking your picture, injured men in the streets, men offering cheap grenades. Do you try to rescue the woman? She might be on the wrong side of a police investigation, that you have now gotten dragged into. Save the mage? Get ready for a fight. Help the man? Might not be a man, might be a creature waiting for you to get close. Those grenades might be cheap but is the price too good? I never knew what the outcome would be and I was always psyched to see the next weird thing.

We never got very far in the game. We got a quest to find a “feathered serpent” and neither of us ever did find it. We would just go on the craziest run or see who could survive the longest getting attacked by corporate security (Seriously, we got pocket watches out for that one). I was so taken in by The Matrix (the internet in the game) and trying to figure out how exactly it worked. This game didn’t come with a manual so it was pretty tricky trying to figure out how everything worked. Zach loved how all the skills were so useful in the game, he liked how there was always a different option for problems. Is there a locked door ahead, blow it off the hinges (thank goodness you bought those grenades from that creepy guy in the alley) or use your keen electronics skill to screw with the lock, or use your hacking skill to break into the computer and unlock all the doors. I love talking to all the characters in the game. All of the other runners I met had interesting backstories. My favorite runner was Winston Marrs, he’s a giant troll that salutes you (if he likes you) and talks about how life would be so much better if he could only shoot more bullets at the same time (When fans of the game talk about Winston they say, ‘beware the god of war’).

Marrs at the bar and Mortimer Reed in the corner. The Big Rhino is my kind of bar.

The Gush

I love this game and if you disagree then slot off frag face (Actually, I respect your disagreement). I play it from time to time nowadays, but it’s definitely not the same. Expecially considering I already know all the twists and turns the game takes me on. That was the big driving factor, anything could happen, anyone could die. Nothing is safe from the reach of corporations. That being said, the mechanics are enough to carry the game on their shoulder. I’m still challenged by activity in the matrix (I still don’t know how to contend with a Tar Pit Program).

I prefer this game over the Super Nintendo version because I reached a point in the SNES version where I couldn’t continue. The character has a time limit to get a bomb out of his head and I never figured out where to go. I had to look up a walkthrough to figure out where to go and although I had to do the same to find the Feathered Serpent there was so much more to do in the Genesis world (and if I failed to find the Feathered Serpent my head didn’t explode). I also think that the free roaming adventure and auto-aiming served the game better than the point and click aiming of the SNES game. Yes, I said point and click, the game requires the played to activate aiming mode and move the cursor to the target while they’re getting shot all the time.

My major complaint with the game is that there’s no real character growth. The main character levels up and gets stronger but he’s still the same person at the end that he is at the beginning. He doesn’t actually grow or change. The player can, he can create additional motivations for the character, but there’s nothing there.

 

Auto-targetting is awesome, at least in games where it works (Like this one).

The Verdict

This game is has held up really well. It can be a little grindy but the types of missions open up the longer the game goes. It’s important though to get through the whole game in one short period of time because the plot twists are interesting but aren’t interesting twice.

Next week: Super Mario World 2, Yoshi’s Island.

Super Mario World

Introduction

After Mario, our portly italian plumber, defeated the mighty Bowser and rescued the Princess Toadstool (For the second time). Our hero has decided to take a vacation on Dinosaur Island. Bowser has capture the princess and Mario has to save her by finding his castle and defeating the large, armored, turtle, man, thing. Marvel as Mario jumps on enemies and… jumps to avoid other enemies and obstacles. (Jumping is kind of his thing, but when I think of it Mario seems like a man with a hammer to whom all problems are nails.)

I never really considered how difficult it is to describe what this guy looks like. He’s sort of a turtle… but not.

Development

I was able to find shockingly little amounts of information about the development of Nintendo’s signature charactered launch title for their new system. I can say that it was lead and produced by Shigeru Miyamoto, the creator of the Mario series and The Legend of Zelda games. It took him three years to make the game with a team of only 16 people. (Even with studios having small dev teams, this team feels really small to me.) This was the first game to include Mario’s faithful steed, the dinosaur Yoshi. It was impossible for Yoshi to be rendered satisfyingly or for the mechanics to function on the NES. Miyamoto said, “We were finally able to get Yoshi of the drawing board with the SNES.” Miyamoto’s other words on the work as a whole were, “The game is incomplete, and got rushed a little at the end,” hoping that the system would allow more story and emotional connection with the player, but more on that later.

 

Super Mario World was released on November 21^st of 1990 against F-Zero, Mega Man 3 for NES, and Ultima VI: The False Prophet for PC.

It seems so alone with nothing near it in the great ocean. I now notice that it’s only got 5 colors or so.

Nostalgia

This game was the common denomenator for all of the kids that owned a SNES or knew someone that owned an SNES because it came with the system. I played this game with my father, with my cousin Zack, and any friend that stopped by and wanted to. I could go to school and ask anyone whether they preferred the flying and gliding power of the cape or the fireball shooting powers of the fire flower and they’d know what I was talking about. This sparked a debate with my father that was so strong, he preferred the cape and I prefered the fire flower (It was only because I couldn’t figure out how to glide right, but I wasn’t willing to tell him that.)

My grandmother even played this game! Hell, she’s the one that told me how to find the Top Secret Area, a place with ever spawning mushrooms, capes, flowers, and Yoshi. I never asked her how she found it and I still don’t know. Although, now that I think about it, she may have purchased it to coax the grand children into being more eager to visit her home in the middle of the country. We may not have been the best grand children.

I really like the music in this game. When I figured out that it was all the same melody but performed in different styles it blew my mind! The ghost house music scared me so badly that I had to have a parent in the room when I played those levels.

This was the first game that I 100% completed. I found every single level and beat the secret stages hidden on the star road. (A feat that I can’t accomplish today. Hell, I still can’t find the Green Switch Palace for some reason). And I was able to do it all by the seed of my own wit and with some playground hearsay (Alright, I admit. My father helped me out sometimes. Even if it was just a “check out that part of the map.”). When the color pallette and character sprites changed cemented in my mind that I must have done it all. I think this was the first experience that if I did all the things then I got cool stuff. Which would lead me down a road of trying to do everything in a game to see what cool (Now irrelevant, considering that I had done everything) stuff I would get.

That being said, I don’t really have any moments of supreme triumph besides that. I don’t remember jumping off the couch when I beat Bowser for the first time. I don’t remember being low on lives and super stoked to have taken out a boss. I don’t remember feeling really clever that I had found the hidden area in the middle of the ocean. I don’t have this sort of report with the game and I feel like I should.

And then when I put all the areas together and see all the enemies I realize, this place is really weird.

The Gush

I can see what Miyamoto meant when he said that the game lacked story and emotion though. It doesn’t really improve on the “Bowser captures the Princess” plot that Super Mario Brothers 1 and 3 had. I still don’t know more about the Princess or Bowser as characters. I don’t know why he keeps kidnapping her and I don’t know why Mario feels obliged to save her. (Wait, I know. He’s doing it all for all those sweet pecks on the cheek!)

When I was five years old I was content to jump around and swim and explore and even though I can’t remember where all the stuff is I’m not compelled to look for it again. I’ve tried playing it through to completion since and I just can’t continue. I beat the second boss and then I’m just done. I can’t find it in me to continue. There’s no spark of childlike joy.

Maybe it’s because I beat the game 100%, I already know that I did it. I know that I’ve done everything in the game, or close enough to it for my liking. Maybe it’s the simplicity of the gameplay, I’m an older player and I’m looking for something new and/or interesting. Jumping just isn’t enough any more. Maybe it’s because the bosses aren’t very memorable, I remember Bowser and the first boss and that’s it. (I remember Reznor as well. But come on, you fight those guys four times or something).

That’s a really small planet. No wonder Mario can jump so high, less gravity.

The Verdict

Super Mario World is a classic. It’s got tons of secrets and a great variety of gameplay. But I can’t bring myself to play it any more. I’ve got my fuzzy (Both fun and distant) memories and I can’t yearn for more from it. The game is good, but simple. So simple that it’s sort of lost my interest.

 

Next Week: Shadowrun, for the Sega Genesis.

Speed Racer: My Most Dangerous Adventures

Speed Racer: My Most Dangerous Adventures

I have no idea what’s going on here. Spike wall? Car in Lava? None of this happens in the game anyway.

 

Introduction

Speed Racer is a race car driver and he… races cars. With his trusty (and totally unfairly tooled up) vehicle, the Mach 5, he races because… that’s what he does. It’s in his name! He’s a racer with speed! What do you want from me!?

 

See! It’s in the title screen! Everything we need to know!

 

Development

There’s a weird thing when it comes to old games that didn’t survive the test of time, it’s really hard to find information about their development. Either no one cared to record it in detail or someone swept this under the rug. That being said, Speed Racer MMDA was developed by Accolade in 1994. And that’s it. I can say that it was before the downturn of most Accolade titles but I’m really at a loss to say more about the development of the game. So I’m going to talk about the show instead.

Speed Racer was originally a Japanese manga/anime that was about Speed’s pursuits to win vehicle races and prevent things that might jeopardize his family or vehicle. It was localized in 1967 and required major dubbing and heavy rewrites for the story to make much sense. Most of the voice acting was performed by the producer of the project, Peter Fernandez. One of the larger issues facing the localization was trying to fit all the dialogue into the limited amount of lip movement leading to some ridiculously funny fast deliveries. Speed’s major rivals are the aptly named Captain Terror and Racer X. Racer X is actually Speed’s older brother that was thought to be dead but keeps an eye on his family. (Why does he hide his identity? That’s a very good question)

Speed Racer: My Most Dangerous Adventures was released in November 1994. It was up against Donkey Kong Country and King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride.

 

Pop Racer (on the far left) never appears in the game. And what is wrong with that monkey, looks spooky to me.

 

Nostalgia

My exposure to the show was a single Racer X comic that my cousin owned. Racer X’s vehicle, The Shooting Star, is parked in a dusty old way station. Racer X is leaning against the vehicle holding a revolver looking all bad-ass. There wasn’t much racing, there was a lot of fighting and gun-play. This is what I was expecting from a Speed Racer game. This is not what I got. There was fighting, no gun-play. And a lot of racing in between me and the little combat I could find. My father loved racing games, F-Zero was one of his favorite titles. So I would ask him to play through the racing sections and I would play through the platforming and combat sections. I’m not sure which of us got the rawer deal.

This game was so hard. Unfair levels are hard. Everything was trying to kill Speed, mice, other drivers, toxic sewer waste, spear throwing tribal people (Only mildly racist), and snow. I eventually got stuck chasing Captain Terror up to the peak of Mt. Doom to save Speed’s girlfriend. I could barely see through the blizzard overlay. The controls were so slippery that I kept falling off of platforms, often to my immediate death, but sometimes just do heavy damage because Speed suffers from falling damage (Accolade likes their falling damage, first Bubsy now this). One night, when I was screwing around with the password screen, I sent the password to the Mt. Doom level and the usually cinematic was replaced with Racer X telling Speed, “I’ll take care of this.” I was so pumped. This time I would beat the level because I was fucking Racer X! No more of this dying shit, I’m too cool for that. I played for four hours and even considered leaving the system on overnight in order to keep playing as Racer X, who I believed gave me a considerable advantage. I was wrong however, as far as I can tell there’s no mechanical difference.

Despite the difficulty, I really liked this game. There was finally a game that my father and I could really play together. The music was made of pure ear-worms, tracks are still stuck in my head.

 

Check out these stunning visuals!

The Gush

So, I tried playing through this game again a few days ago. The introduction is unskippable, so much for speed. The music doesn’t match up with it and the music overall hasn’t aged well. There’s only one track for the racing sections and it’s sort of lackluster. The whole racing section overall is really hastily done and just plain hard. It doesn’t look good and all too often Speed ends up in second because the first place driver can only be passed if the Mach 5 pops a turbo boost (At least I wasn’t able to).

I was able to finally scale Mt. Doom on this return to the game. The music for the platforming fighting stages is actually really good. Unfortunately the controls and the mechanics are awful. Speed literally slides after he finishes running which will more than likely cause him to fall off of platforms. His punch attack is so ridiculously slow that it’s impossible to hit enemies with it. His kick attack is so fast that it doesn’t even have frames of animation, his leg goes from at his side to straight out. That might sound powerful but Speed gets damaged by anything, enemies will sometimes just run into Speed and can drain all his health before he can throw a kick. To top this all off Speed makes the stupidest noise I’ve ever heard every time he gets hit.

I feel like such a chump because Mt Doom is the penultimate stage and I was so close to the end so many times. And at the very end Trixie is tied to a pole with a winter hat on and says, “Just in time Speed, I was starting to get cold up here.” This brought to mind how impractical it is for Speed to be climbing the mountain with nothing but a blazer.

I gave the final race a shot. The first time I tried to play it the game glitched so hard that there were just vehicles driving around in black space. I had no idea where I was or what was going on. The second time I played through it Captain Terror got passed by one of his own henchmen. That’s what a final boss does, lose to his underlings. The race seemed really unfair. There are all these very small jumps that prevent the Mach 5 from turning so it will often careen off the track with very little ability to return to course.

 

There are 4 colors on this game over screen. Whatever, It’ll get seen a lot.

Verdict

This game is worse than I remember. There are so many obstacles in the driving and the platforming, that come out of nowhere and can’t be avoided. They have to be memorized and that’s just unfair to the player. The visuals aren’t compelling or interesting most of the time and the whole presentation is just unimpressive (I’m looking at you unsynced introduction).

 

Next Week: Super Mario World

Mega Man X

Intro 

The year is 21XX and the world is in disaray. The brilliant Dr. Cain discovered the mysterious robot, Megaman X, in the ruins of a century old laboratory. Having activated this shockingly sophisticated machine he replicates the technology to make new robots. These robots however begin to disobey orders and start hurting humans. Dubbed Mavericks, these renegade robots have to be destroyed by Maverick Hunters.

 

The moody lighting and the perpetual frowns of the enemies set the scene.

 

Development

When the Super Nintendo was released, it was a common practice to create upgrades and new spins for old series. This typically involved putting the word ‘Super’ in front of the title of the game (Super Castlevania, Super Mario World, Super Turrican, or Super Robot Taisen Gaiden – Masou Kishin – The Lord of Elemental). Megaman X was the new game for Super Nintendo meant to reboot the Mega Man series and it’s got an ‘X’ in the title, so you know it’s got to be cool (So cool it doesn’t even need ‘super’ in the name). The jump to the SNES was not seemless. The new powerful technology left Capcom a little lost. The new sound chip allowed more advanced compositions and the artists were shocked with the much more advanced and diverse pallet at their disposal. The increase in technology was almost paralyzing.

The main name associated with the development of the the Mega Man series is Keiji Inafune. He is the most vocal of the Megaman team but he is only the lead artist, not a programer or designer. There was a lot of debate on what to do with the Megaman X series. Roleplaying games were getting big but Keiji wanted the game to stick to its action game roots. That being said, Keiji wanted to create a giant difference in the main character of the game, thus Zero was created. Zero was originally meant to be the main protagonist, his red toned armor being a stark contrast to the original Megaman’s blue armor. After some thought however Keiji decided not to rock the boat so much and made him a very important side character instead.

This is Zero. He doesn’t use that sword until the 3rd game for some reason.(What’s the hair for?)

The villain in this game is also completely different from Dr. Wily, the villain in the original series. Wily has a quality that makes him difficult to hate, he’s cowardly and bumbling at times. He turns to dirty tricks instead of true ingenuity. Sigma on the other hand was not going to be like this. He was designed to be bitterly evil, vicious in combat, brutal in tactics, conniving in strategy, and utterly undying. Wily surrenders when he’s cornered, Sigma persists when he is “destroyed”. Sigma was also able to be destroyed because he’s not a human and as we all know, if it doesn’t have flesh then it’s not really violent.

Megaman X was released in December of 1994 against Heretic for the PC, Master of Magic for the PC, and Donkey Kong Country for the SNES.

Nostalgia

Holy hell, this game was a huge part of my childhood. When I started it and couldn’t get past the first level for a few days. I had a difficult time figuring out how to jump up a wall. When I first played I figured that these were men in robot suits, so I didn’t figure that wall jumping was possible. I was so amazed that I had learned this skill all on my own. The opening fight with Vile and his giant robot suit. I was so terrified. He moves so fast and hits so hard, I had no idea how to defeat him. I died 3 times before I got caught by his stunning net and the game continued. I remember seeing Zero blow off the arm of Vile’s suit and jet in to the rescue. I saw Zero’s blond hair streaming through the air and thought, “That’s the character I want to be. How do I play as that guy?” I played through the introduction a few more times trying to defeat Vile’s giant robot suit but it’s an impossible fight (Litterally impossible, X is supposed to lose).

This game was pretty tough, so tough that I used to ask my father to help me with it sometimes. He was the one that taught me that certain bosses were weak to other boss’ attacks. He called out, “Use the boomerangs on the Chameleon there.” That blew my mind! I thought that the weapons were just useful for hitting certain targets, not for completely wiping out bosses. My father and I would also look around, trying to find all the secrets, all of the health increases and Emergency Tanks. I would bring him in to read some of the words that I didn’t understand, like the weapon names (I get how Shotgun Ice is a weapon but Chamelon Sting still eludes me) and the uprgrade dialogues. We journeyed together, defeating all 8 bosses and getting to Sigma’s lair. I remember watching Zero’s death but I was in such denial that I thought he had “teleporter out” as opposed to fading away. But it was around this time that my father got a little out of his league, so was I for that matter. I remember reaching Sigma once at that age and then I got trashed by Sigma’s dog no less (My friends and I agree though, that dog is the hardest part of that fight). I would pick it up occasionally but I never thought about getting to the end, I never thought about beating the game. I had been defeated by his dog, not even Sigma himself. I thought I just wasn’t good enough.

I gave it another shot though when I was about 14. I was nearly twice as old and more than twice as skilled. I remembered so many thing I’d thought I had forgotten, armor locations, health power ups, boss weakness, they all came flooding back. I had all the passwords in the manual but I played through the game anyway. I got to Sigma’s tower again and this time I was old enough to read the dialogue and understand what was going on. Zero was dead and I got mad. I realized that I couldn’t let this stand, that I had to destroy the villain responsible. Back to Sigma’s chamber I went. I fought the dog, I beat the dog. I fought Sigma, he pulled out a lightsaber, I thought my brain was going to explode from the sheer awesome of destroying a robot jedi. The sheer awesome got knocked out of my head after I died two or three (five or six) times. When I finished him off I used my last emergency tank of health just to make sure that I’d finish him. But it wasn’t over yet. His head rises into a giant machine that fills the whole background and I called bullshit. I proceeded to get horrifically destroyed. It was one of my first gaming failures, it was one of the first times I got to the very final fight and then gave up because it was too tough. I didn’t get vengeance and I wouldn’t until I was 18 or so when I gave it another chance.

 

Storm Eagle’s stage opens up after the fight inside tears the ship apart.

The Gush

There’s so much cool stuff in this game. The fact that shooting down Storm Eagle’s jet causes it to fall and destroy a lot of the damaging environments in Spark Mandrill’s power plant was such an interesting idea to me. Finally beating this game created such a huge rush in me. I felt like I had conquered a part of my past, a part of myself that was weaker. It tells me that I’m better than I used to be. And that’s the point of the game really. It’s all about X becoming stronger and that’s sort of what it means to me too.

This game is amazing. Sometimes I take a Sunday to myself and beat it. I’ve got the boss order down, the armor pieces, the health pieces, the E-Tanks. I’ve got everything in my head. I look back on those days when I was defeated by Sigma and laugh. I crush him beneath my boot and see how far I’ve come as a gamer and then I remember that I’ve got a blog entry to write and a job to go to tomorrow and wonder why I stayed up until 10 playing this game when I should have gone to bed an hour ago. This game has a way of making the player to want to beat it. X’s story is one of rising in strength to defeat his opponents and it really brings the player along for the ride.

But this game is hard, it’s unpleasantly difficult at times. It took me three stages of my life to beat it. It also took me weeks to find all the armor, health, and energy tanks when I was a kid. Maybe that means that I suck at videogames but it seems more like it just takes more effort than its really worth.

This is what a thematic hook looks like. See Egoraptor’s Sequelitis series for more. 

The Verdict

This game is incredible. It was great when I was a kid and it’s still good now. I’m not being blinded by nostalgia at all when I go back to play and beat this classic.

 

Next Week: Speed Racer for the Super Nintendo.

Super Mario Brothers 2

Introduction 

This is gonna take some telling. I’m going to explain this like no one ever played it. Mario is an italian plumber who, with the help of his brother Luigi, saves the Princess Toadstool and her legions of mushroom people from the insidious giant dinosaur, turtle, wizard Bowser (Usually called Toads). The game begins with Mario falling out of a door in the sky. Forget all that other stuff. This time Mario, Luigi, Toad, and Toadstool are working together to save a dream world from a giant frog tyrant by the name of Wart. Use Luigi’s totally busted jumping powers, Toad’s speed and ability to pick things up real fast, Toadstool’s ability to float, and Mario’s powers of mediocrity to throw vegetables and enemies at other enemies and save the land of Subcon. (Get all that? No? Neither did I. This game is so messed up, but that’s a story for…. right now)

Yeah, it’s basically like this.

 

Development

In Japan, Super Mario Brothers 2 is a similar game to Super Mario Brothers 1. Mario runs, jumps, gets mushrooms, almost everything between the two games is the same. But the game is a lot more difficult. The levels are more harshly designed even some of the mushrooms damage Mario instead of giving him the power to take an extra hit. Nintendo of America found the game to be frustratingly difficult. And so it was never released in the United States until the Super Mario All-Stars Super Nintendo pack was released, where it was known as Super Mario Brothers: The Lost Levels. Super Mario Brothers 2 was released in Japan in 1986.

Yume Koujou: Doki Doki Panic was developed by Kensuki Tanabe and was originally created as a prototype for Mario Brothers 2 and involved a lot of vertical platforming and picking up objects and enemies to destroy other enemies (Apparently the game was originally supposed to be 2 player, allowing players to throw the other player). Yume Koujou: Doki Doki Panic was released in Japan on July 10, 1987. When Super Mario Brothers: The Lost Levels wasn’t to be released in the states Nintendo turned Doki Doki Panic back into the Mario game that it began as and released it in the United States October 10, 1988.

 

Super Mario Brothers 2…

…Doki Doki Panic. I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.

 

Nostalgia

I originally played this game on the Super Mario All Stars pack and I was shocked and amazed at how different it was from the original Mario Brothers. I didn’t understand why jumping on enemies didn’t destroy them, I didn’t understand why there weren’t any coins, I didn’t understand why I was throwing vegetables at birds or why giant birds were spitting giant eggs at me. I also didn’t care much. I learned very quickly how the game worked. Some of the deeper systems like heart generation and Invincibility Star appearances worked but that didn’t matter.

I usually played as Luigi because he jumped the highest. I liked jumping high, I liked bouncing around, so this was the guy for me. It was playing this game where the idea that Luigi was my prefered brother came into play. He was taller than Mario and he could jump way higher, so much higher that he can reach hidden areas. Why was Mario the hero? I just didn’t get it.

This game also taught me the meaning of fear. This guy here is Phanto. I’d pick up his key and his eyes would burn a most sinister red. He’ll chase the hell out of you if you pick up a key. He’ll chase Luigi to the ends of the earth until he drops that key and decides to come quietly. It also can’t be destroyed, I remember getting so upset that I couldn’t throw the key at it or anything.

Oh god, it’s back. It never left. It will never leave. Take all my keys! Just go!

The only reason I beat this game is because I found a bunch of level skipping pipes and skipped myself to the final world. In order to warp I have to find a potion from a vegetable patch, throw it to make a door, pray that the pipe I make the door next to is a warp pipe, open the door, enter negative world, see if the pipe is a warp pipe (Did I mention that this game was weird?). It took me weeks to find all of the warp pipe locations. I remember staying up until 9, passed my bedtime when I was 8 or so, in order to beat the game. Frantically running through Wart’s castle, getting totally trashed by everything. But Wart was embarrasing easily. I didn’t care though, I was so psyched.

 

Original graphics

All Stars graphics

 

The Gush

This game is so unlike the original Mario game. There are no coin boxes, mushrooms are acquired by using potions to create magic doors in the right location on the stage. The mushrooms are all in predetermined locations. If I knew where the mushroom was then that was cool but that was almost never the case. It became a giant game of memorization. There’s no real rhyme or reason to where they’re placed. You just have to get lucky and I think that’s lame.

One of the complaints that’s usually leveled against the game is that there are only 4 bosses and they get reused again and again. Nearly every level ends with the player fighting Birdo, he/she shoots eggs and you pick up the eggs as they fly through the air and hit him/her with it. That’s only so compelling so many times, like once or twice. I ended up using so many warps that I don’t even remember these boss enemies. I remember fighting a hydra that spit fire, I think.

Two words: Ice physics. I hate the ice worlds in this game, especially as Luigi. His jumping controls are already really slippery so he gets put on ice and things go completely out of control. I usually ended up switching to Toad so that I wouldn’t have to be in constant anxiety everytime I walked or jumped (So… did anything really).

The only way to get more lives in this game is by playing a slot machine game at the end of levels. It took me forever to figure out how to get coins to play the game. If I grab a door potion and throw it near some vegetables then plucking those vegetables in negative land will produce coins instead of vegetables, who thought this was a good idea? Something like lives shouldn’t be a gamble, or at least not a difficult one. If I’ve got 30 coins or something then that’s fine but I’m usually lucky to get 5 or 10. Keep me in false suspense because with that many tries I’ll get enough lives to continue. But the coins are never where the mushrooms are so I feel like I’m trading between lives to continue the game and hits to continue the level. It’s just frustrating.

This is Wart. Phanto is yards more menacing than this guy.

The Verdict

The Gush for this game is really short. There aren’t any real moments that stick out in my head. This game can be beaten by speed runners in 9 minutes and that’s ridiculous. I’m not nearly that fast, but between all the warps that I used and all the deaths I amassed it couldn’t have taken me more than an hour when I hit my stride.

There’s nothing that really stands out for me, except that slot machine thing. The only prominent memory was arguing with my father over which character was better (He always played Mario and I kept saying that Luigi’s ridiculous jumping powers made him better).

The nostalgia in this game is strange for me. I was super pumped when I was a kid, but I can’t harken back to it really. When I look back on Super Mario Brothers 2 I don’t really remember what was so great about it. It’s weird, it introduced a lot of elements and characters, and it’s decently fun at points but it just doesn’t stick out for me

 

Next Week: Megaman X

Bubsy: Claws Encounters of the Furred Kind

Introduction

Cats love yarnballs and Bubsy is a bobcat, so he’s got to as well. A fabric loving alien race known as the woolies have come to earth and taken all of our planet’s yarn! Help Bubsy get his yarn hoard back and save the fabric of the world itself. Run, jump, glide, and get dead repeatedly to help Bubsy reach his enemies and destroy them. (Not that you would know the things about aliens or the plot without the manual.)

Development

Bubsy was published by the Accolade company. Accolade started in 1984 making games for systems like the Commodore 64, Apple 2, Amiga, PC, the Atari 400, and the Atari 800. Accolade is most well known for Star Control II. A game, which today, is considered a classic. They have a very diverse library of games, from science fiction to sports games. Bubsy, Star Control II, and Test Drive 4 are probably their greates hits. In 1996 however, the company began producing less than stellar games until the release of the Test Drive series. In 1999 Accolade was purchased by Infogrames.

Funny story, Sonic the Hedgehog was created when Yuji Naka when he played through the opening level of Super Mario Brothers until he was able to go through it as quickly as possible. Bubsy was developed by Michael Berlyn. At the time he had only worked on adventure games so Bubsy was a completely new beast to him. After burning out on adventure games he played Sonic the Hedgehog for 14 hours a day for a week in order to find the right way to make it his own.

Bubsy was released in May of 1992 for the Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, and PC. It went up against Wolfenstein 3D, Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss, and Kirby’s Dreamland.

You’re standard level for Bubsy. (BTW that gumball machine can kill you)

Nostalgia

I loved this game when I was younger. I purchased it solely because there was a cat on the box. I adore cats, I play as a cat in the game, this sounds like the best game my 9 year old head can wrap itself around. It was so hard, but I figured that I started the game with nine lives and so it would be easy (I did think the nine lives joke was pretty funny). But how wrong I was. The big issue is that everything kills Bubsy in one hit, enemies, thumbtacks (which cause him to pop like a balloon and fly around the screen), water (But not water slides. The game is filled with water slides that lead Bubsy to new places and sometimes death. I always really liked going down water slides until I hit a few dead ends and then I didn’t trust them enough to take them again), and falling (But more on that later).

Bubsy can pick up speed and start running ridiculously fast. But the adventure will probably get brought to a screetching halt by running into a wall, which have Bubsy seeing birds (which he will then try to grab and eat) or into something that will kill him. The fact that everything that can hurt Bubsy kills him in one hit (except ice cream, just gives him a brain freeze. I was so shocked that I wasn’t dead that I kept running into it just to see Bubsy get a headache again and again) didn’t really hit me as a bizarre mechanic for this kind of game. In addition to running, Bubsy can glide. Boy can he glide, he glides as fast as he was when he was running. But there’s not delay in changing directions so sometimes after jumping over an enemy that gets in the way I’ll try gliding back to where I was to jump on it and destroy it but I’ll glide so fast that I can’t control my descent. I thought it was so fun to get as high up as I could and see how far I could glide.

I was pretty impressed with the areas of the game. There was a carnival zones that didn’t have any creepy clowns in it (Blasphemy in old videogames) and a Wild West area with killer tumble weeds and land sharks. I never beat this game when I was a kid. I would get to the 4^th chapter, Canada (seriously. A super racially insensitive version of Canada. Filled to the brim with beavers and plaid.) and would run out of lives. I could never remember the passwords and even when I did I always felt shortchanged because the game starts off on that stage with nine lives. Not how ever many lives I had been able to get, but just nine. So I’d end up playing through the game every time to get more lives to see if I could get through Canada.

Doesn’t this image just amp you up to play the game?

The Gush

When I was 22 I decided that I couldn’t let Bubsy go unconquered. I had to beat it, I needed to know what was after Canada. The answer was overall disappointment. I got really frustrated with dying all the time. I didn’t have the muscle memory and area memory I had of the game when I was playing it constantly. So instead of struggling against game overs I decided to cheat a little. I got an emulator for the game and used the emulators ability to save in any location to keep the game going. I did only use them at game check points, so I was basically playing with infinite lives. It was still frustrating as hell but there was no way I would get pushed back to the beginning of the game. It didn’t help much.

The reason Sonic the Hedgehog is the better of the two games is simpley because nothing kills Sonic in one hit. As long as he has rings then they just pop out of his body and he’s able to continue and take more hits if he gets more rings, not the case with Bubsy. I think it was a very bad design decision. The game has powerups to protect Bubsy in the form of shirts. (Speaking of shirts, my college roommate and I played the game and wondered why Bubsy could glide, or talk and run on two legs for that matter. We thought that it would make more sense if Bubsy’s shirt was mechanical. There are worse game plots out there). The dark shirt makes Bubsy invincible and the invincible shirt also makes Bubsy invincible, but the game has different themes for the effects.

If Bubsy falls too far the he dies, but he can glide to prevent the death. The issue is that the gliding controls can be really slippery if Bubsy was going really fast so I usually end up dying anyway. I just don’t understand what the design decision or benefit of falling damage did to the game. Add another way to die? To crush the player’s spirit?

The games have secret passages in sewers and other underground areas. But some of them just lead to pools of water that result in instant death bor our dear bobcat. So there’s no incentive to search them because they might bring the game to a grinding halt. I never found anything good enough down them to justify the risk.

I did end up beating the game and Canada was by far the hardest level. The game takes Bubsy to a jungle and the to the Woolie space ship in space and Canada is the hardest area. The game ends with the whole thing being a film that they’re making. But then the limo driver is a Woolie and I have no idea what’s supposed to be happening now. I thought it would set me up for Bubsy II but that’s not the case.

The water slides were still fun as hell though.

The Verdict

I may have loved this game as a kid but I guess I didn’t know any better. The unfairness of its secret areas, fall damage, and the instant lethality of every object or enemy really turned me off to the game. I cherish the memories I had with the game but I have no idea why they formed. The only thing this game has brought me at this age is the knowledge that I did eventually beat it. I was able to face its difficulty (even if I did have to cheat a little).

Next week: Super Mario Brothers 2

Secret of Mana

Introduction

Secret of Mana is an adventure RPG for the Super Nintendo in which *dun dun dun* (voiceover): Long ago, Mana was a powerful force on the planet. Humans harnessed its power and made the Mana Fortress, a great machine to harvest Mana more easily than they had been able to previously. Mana, however, is a finite thing, so in Mana’s desperation, it summoned the Mana Beast to destroy the Fortress and purge the world. A hero wielding the Mana Sword destroyed the fortress and the beast. Mana seemed to disappear and so did the sword. But these events will occur again, but differently! This time the hero and his allies, a young and feisty girl, an amnesiac sprite, and the eight spirits of Mana must restore the Mana Sword and prepare to save what they hold most dear and eventually the world! (Mana appears so many times in this introduction it barely registers as a word any more.)

  

I’m sure this pristine moment will last forever… forever… yup.

Development

Secret of Mana was developed by Squaresoft and designed by Koichi Ishii. It was the sequel to Final Fantasy Adventure for the Game Boy, which was also designed by Koichi Ishii. Koichi Ishii has designed all the games in the “Mana” series and is responsible for the Chocobo and Moogle creatures. It was originally planned to be released for the Super Nintendo’s CD add on platform but when that project fell through they had to try and cram the game onto a cartridge.

The game was localized in only 30 days. It is suspected that this happened because Squaresoft wanted to release it for the holiday season. Compared to Earthbound’s year of localization, it’s plain to see why translator Ted Woolsey had his hands full with the project. The translation is marred by its censorship and strange word choice. The changes had to be made due to the size limitations of the cartridge and the strange font choice for the American version, which only allows 2 lines of text in each text box. That’s enough room for one sentence, or two very short ones. This means the conversations in the English version are cut to their bare bones as translators try to cram sentences into as few words as possible. (These days, this issue can be fixed with a patch of the ROM file if you’re using a SNES emulator. It’s called the FUSOYA enhanced version, so named for the internet personality that made it. If you play this game then I highly recommend that you use this enhanced version. The emulator and the ROM file are legal if you own a copy of the cartridge, so keep that in mind.)

It was scored by Hiroki Kikuta (the first game that he ever scored) and he felt at odds with the technology, trying to overcome the limitations of the Super Nintendo. He wanted to make a soundtrack “which would be neither pop music nor standard game music,” so instead of using pre-made MIDI samples, he made his own so that he would know exactly what they would sound like on the SNES. The title track, “Fear of the Heavens”, and the whale calls preceding it, were meant to  try to “more deeply connect” with the player. Its music was so good that it released a soundtrack later that year.

The game released against Sonic and Knuckles, Warcraft, Donkey Kong Country, and King’s Quest VII. It sold very well in Japan but when it was released in the US, rushed and translated hastily, it wasn’t advertised or hyped to the American audience which lead to great reviews but less than stellar sales.

Nostalgia

My aunt owned this game, I still don’t know why she owned it (One of life’s little mysteries). I remember that I would always want to go and see her so that I’d have a chance to play it. It’s a two player game—three player with the multitap—so we’d both be able to play. It was a sort of revelation for me at the time, the first game that I’d ever played that allowed two players to play cooperatively. There were so many sports game, fighting games, and games where two players took turns, but none where both players were playing at the same time. I liked playing the sprite because he was the smallest and had all of attack magic. I’d give him the spear because I liked seeing the smallest guy with the biggest weapon.

My aunt usually didn’t want to play it because she wanted to do something with her nephew besides playing videogames, so I asked her if I could borrow it. It took a lot of convincing and a little growing up before she trusted me with it, but I finally took it home when I was about ten-years-old. She also had the strategy guide with full color pages for the bosses and I’d look at them and think, “I want to fight that.” I didn’t have many friends growing up, and none that wanted to play the game anyway, so I usually played it alone. I’d try to make sense of the translation, curse my AI companions, and die a lot.

This translation is really bad, but I know it’s not Woolsey’s fault. I knew just enough of where I needed to go and barely knew what I needed to do when I got there. The companion AI is usually pretty good but sometimes they’ll get caught on walls and the terrain. There are tricks to get them unstuck, but it took me a long frustrating while to figure them out. When I didn’t know what equipment was, or how to use it, I got knocked around. (I remember going to all of the lower leveled areas and grinding magic levels on the weak monsters and seeing the ridiculous amounts of damage add up.)

When I was a kid, a lot of the bosses scared me. There are giant monsters that take up most of the screen, casting dangerous spells and unleashing attacks [that could cover the screen]. But I was able to push through them. I fought zombies, vampires, walls trying to crush me to death, giant razor taloned chickens, plain giants, lightning giants, oozes, and finally I met the second to last boss.

There are scarier bosses out there but not many.

I’d seen his entry in the strategy guide, but when his music hit I froze up. And I didn’t think I was going to make it—and sure enough I didn’t. Then I had to go back, and fight through the enemies just for another chance to fight this guy. I looked through his entry in the guide and it said he had “??????” health, so I just knew that I had to keep whaling on him until the fight was over. When I beat him I was so stoked, I was convinced that it was done. Alas, there’s a twist…which I won’t reveal because I’d hate to deprive anyone of such a heart string puller.

I eventually returned it to my aunt, but every once in a while, I’d borrow it again. When I got older though, I realized that the game’s ending wasn’t so happy. In the end, Mana is destroyed, as described in the legend at the beginning of the game. It’s such a sad ending. No longer would the people of the world know about the magical places and beings of the world. I imagined the Hero in a tavern, deep in his cups, where someone would say, “Didn’t you save the world? You’re a hero!” and the hero would start crying.

When I got into college I played through it with my girlfriend at the time—I played the hero and she played the sprite. She had so much fun blasting enemies with spells. When I got to the end I went to explain why the ending was so sad, but I realized that I forgot more pieces to the story. I forgot that at the end of the legend, Mana returned to the land; I just thought that the people in that story would have to use Mana more responsibly that time around.

The Gush

I love this game, I love it to death. There are three characters and eight weapons, it’s all about what weapons the player wants to use for which character. I really like the monster design and was always waiting to see what the next enemy was. Playing the game with the bare-bones plot kept me going but when I got the expanded script, I was able to see parts of the story that were only hinted at.

The poor translation can really sour the game.When the game begins there’s a knight in town for some reason and he’s very helpful. The continued translation informs the player that he was looking for the Mana Sword and now he feels like he should help you because you have it. Without that added information, his presence in the village makes no sense in the story. The badness doubles down in the AI control menu. It took me a long while to figure out how it was supposed to work and I doubt that the word choice made that better. (The menu icon is named ACT. That obviously means AI control.)

The music in this game is phenomenal. It completely deserved to have its own soundtrack. The music can be pulse-poundingly terrifying, moody and atmospheric, inquisitive and playful, or can highlight the blissful and happy townsfolk. The music does whatever is best for the actions it accompanies. I was humming and whistling these tunes for years, and still do sometimes. When I went to piano lessons, it was music from this game that I wanted to learn.

I will say thought that I feel like I’m done with the game. Unless a friend wants me to play it with them, I don’t think I’ll be taking this title for a whirl. There’s only so much a guy can do after he levels up all the characters, levels up all the magic, and discovers a few of the hidden weapons.

And this picture encapsulates my feelings for the game.

The Verdict

It’s a game that has its flaws. Between the frustrating AI and the frustrating translation, the gameplay can get seriously marred. These flaws have their fixes—the translation can be patched and the game can be played multiplayer to overcome the wonky AI—but they’re still there. The player shouldn’t have to overcome this sort of thing to get to the fun part.  But behind those flaws is a game with great art, fun gameplay, visually satisfying special attacks and magic, and a simply wonderful adventure.

Next week’s game is Bubsy for the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis.

Earthbound

 Introduction 

Earthbound is an RPG for the Super Nintendo in which 4 ten year olds, 3 boys and a girl, must journey across Eagleland (Totally not the US) in order to defeat a cosmic evil entity, Giygas, that will destroy the Earth in 10 years. These youths must use their strength, intelligence, and completely unexplained psychic powers to traverse a world filled with eccentric individuals and overcome strange, but dangerous, enemies. 

Our Eager Heroes: Poo, Jeff, Ness, and Paula from left to right.

Earthbound Development

In order to talk about Earthbound we need to begin at the mind that began it, the mind of Shigesato Itoi. Itoi is a writer/comedian/celebrity/jack-of-all-trades in his native Japan. He made the precursor to Earthbound, Mother, in 1989. It was a harrowing experience for Itoi. He expressed his frustration for the project in the final area, named Mt. Itoi perfectly enough. By the time the team was making the area their attitude was “When we got to fine-tuning the difficulty there, I was like, ‘Whatever!'” The enemies there weren’t properly tested and they were far more powerful than the enemies in previous zones leaving players very frustrated. The localization was completed in 1990 but by that time the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was in the pipeline. The localization producer, Phil Sandhop, said, “I believe that the marketing execs just decided that the game would be too expensive to produce and unsuccessful without marketing, and that’s why it fell into oblivion.”

Itoi Himself

Itoi began working on Mother 2 immediately after Mother 1 was finished, planned to be released on the Super Nintendo. To keep the narrative voice and flow consistent Itoi would write every line of dialogue, to the smallest NPC’s quip, every word is his. His tenuous grasp on the english language and his inexperience with computers forced him to dictate the dialogue to staff member Matchan Miura, gauging the quality of the line on his reactions. Itoi would spend some nights sleeping at the office on a series of lined up chairs so that he wouldn’t have to travel to and from the office. Development dragged on for years, it looked like the project wouldn’t be finished but Hal Laboratory’s “genius programmer”, Satoru Iwata, was able to put his coding expertise to work and push the game to completion.

The American advertising policy was a little strange to say the least. The tag line for the game was “This game stinks!” and Nintendo Power magazines were outfitted with scratch and sniff tiles meant to emulate smells that the player would encounter in the game. The campaign was almost disastrous. Earthbound would be released in August, 1994 competing with Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, Super Metroid, and Illusion of Gaia as it’s competition, games that are classics today.

It released with a larger than normal box and the pricy 80$ price tag, the standard price being around 50$ for other games. The boxes had to be large to contain the strategy guide that came with every copy of the game, most games having an instruction manual. These increased expenses raised the price to match, but the consumer wasn’t so willing to purchase such an expensive product. The guide included tips and hints for the game as well as humorous anecdotes about locations in the game like, “Deep Darkness has 4,000,603 Mosquitoes,” and “ In Dusty Dunes Desert, there are 2,000,001 Cacti, and 5 people living there.”

A good game manual can dazzle the player…

…Or give them a bunch of useless information.

Nostalgia and The Game Itself

 When it comes to classic games like Earthbound, that I played in my childhood, it’s easy to look back fondly on the times of yesteryear. When things were simple and life was carefree, I was only a boy of 10 when I played this title. I remember when the “War Against Giygas” title card showed up it would scare me so much that I had to skip past it or shut the television off until it had passed. I’ll admit, I was a scaredy cat when I was younger.

And then the screen starts flashing and the music gets really intense… it was scary okay!

When it comes to Earthbound it’s not just a matter of whether nostalgia is blinding my perceptions of the game, it’s a matter of when the nostalgia begins blinding my perceptions of the game. The game’s big hook is nostalgia itself. When Ness reaches a “Your Sanctuary point” he experiences a happy memory from a moment in the past. Not necessarily his past such as when, “Ness has a short vision of seeing his mother when she was young, ” at the Pink Cloud Sanctuary. These memories and the memory of the adventure fill Ness when he faces his Nightmare in the dark reaches of his own mind. These happy fuzzy memories are Ness’ strength. But even this strength is not powerful enough to defeat Giygas, the final boss, the embodiment of evil itself. He can’t be defeated with psychic power or mortal weapons, it takes the power of raw nostalgia itself. In order to defeat Giygas the player has to draw on all the powerful and happy feelings from all the people that the character’s have helped in the adventure. Each of them in return hopes that the kids are doing alright. This culminates in the player themself, called by the game itself, remembering all the times and experiences that they’ve had and doing a massive amount of damage. The credits even includes a montage of photos take by a traveling photographer so that the player can point at the screen and say, “I remember when that happened”.

Giygas can be a little scary.

There’s not a lot else to hook the player in a classical sense. It’s not about the protagonist, Ness is a blank slate. All of his aspects are added by the player, he doesn’t speak, and doesn’t take any actions without the players input. When I played I named Ness after myself and pretended that I was him, that’s just how I assumed that games worked when I was ten (We were even the same age). There weren’t many that I played where I was playing a preconceived character, I knew that I wasn’t Mario, but when I looked at Ness I saw someone that resembled myself. I don’t remember if I started to wear hats when I played this game or if my dalliance with caps was affirmed by Ness’ appearance. I chose my favorite food and my favorite thing. I named Paula after my cat, Jeff after my best friend at the time, and Poo after my grandfather, I think. So this was my adventure, I considered anything that happened to me in the game as happening to me. Every SMASH hit was mine, every game over that I persevered through was something that was actually happening. I felt like I went to those places. I tried to feel like I was in the game. Of course I’m going to look back fondly on a rousing adventure like that. I feel like it was my success. I get to that photography album and I’m filled with memory and a few months or years later I want to play through it again to feel those memories as I felt them then. But that’s not possible, I can only remember a new memory and it’s still just as great.

The Gush

There are so many mechanics in this game that were innovative for the time. If the strategy guide that came with the game wasn’t enough there’s a guy in every town with a stand or a sign labled, “Hints!”. Living up to his name, he’ll give the player a hint for the modest fee of 50$ in game. It was an RPG without random battles, the monsters are walking around the overworld. Some of them run away from you, some of them charge forward with reckless abandon. If they player sneaks up on them then they get a free round to fight, but if the enemy attacks the player from behind then the monsters get a surprise round. The monsters also weren’t monsters. There’s the typical fair of robots and strange creatures but some of the enemies are Mole’s Playing Rough or Unassuming Local Guys.

The dialogue in this game is usually played for laughs but there are a lot of lines and moments that hit me right in the feels. I like the way Paula refers to all of the characters that she psychically contacts as “Friends she hasn’t met yet.” One of the Your Sanctuary locations has a guy trying to see what’s over the wall surrounding it and he says, “This isn’t my place, I know that. Maybe it’s yours,” an attitude that I’ve tried to adopt.The Game Over screen isn’t just a “Continue? Or Give up?” question, there’s a whole conversation about whether Ness wants to go on. If the player chooses to continue the game proudly proclaims that, “Ness decided to return after summoning all the courage and energy he had,” and that makes me feel like he’s a human with flaws. But that is as human as he gets.

The music is some of the best music in a Super Nintendo game, it’s also very diverse. It was my first experience listening to something sort of metal in the track Pokey Means Business and I was blown away. There are musical easter eggs all over the place too, the song for the Flying Men, the embodiments of Ness’ courage, is a sped up version of the Game Over Theme. This further symbolizes, for me, the courage of the protagonist.

I love this game even though I feel like I’ve outgrown it a little. I remember the day when I started the game over after I beat it just so that I could try to go through it all again. But as the game feels more familiar I play it less and less. These days I go back to it once a year, to a year and a half. I feel like Mother 3, it’s sequel, is a more mature, modern, and feeling game but that’s another game for another day.

The Verdict

Although the game is musically fit, it’s writing is humorous and even touching at times, and it’s mechanically advanced for the time the plot is shallow and the reason I keep coming back is to feel the way I did when I was young. To try to feel my youth through and in the youth of the characters and my experience playing the game. Earthbound is a good game but I keep coming back for nostalgia more than anything, so naturally, I recommend it.

Next week’s game is Secret of Mana.

What’re we Even Doing Here?

When does hobby cross into obsession? How do we define a game? How should a game be measured? How many games is too many games?

I’m Renald Lefebvre, I’m a working stiff in New England and I own a collection of video games that might be described as too many. I’m working on getting a Let’s Play Youtube channel up and I figure it’ll be nice to go over the finer points of the game here instead of trying to cram it all into the video and commentary. Or maybe you don’t want to hear my silly voice on the Youtubes and just get into the meat of the matter. This is going to be a blog about video games, what makes them fun and what can really ruin them. I’m a little technologically behind right now so I’ll be sticking to older games. I’m thinking that I’ll start somewhere simple, something that’s not too fast paced. With those aspects in mind the first game for discussion is Earthbound.

I might also stray into movies and board games or something, the sky is the limit at Approximately Too Many Games!