Tim Curry: This Man WILL Betray You

 I thought it was time for a little change of pace here on Approximately Too Many Games, and something popped into my head. I can’t think of a game in which Tim Curry does not betray the player. Spoiler warnings, I will be talking about the circumstances of these betrayals.

This is Tim Curry. He’s been acting since the 70s and is best known for his roles in Rocky Horror Picture Show (His breakout role), Legend (As Satan no less. It says “Darkness” but he looks like Satan, pics to come), Congo, Muppet Treasure Island, Stephen King’s It, and a bunch of small and large roles in cartoons through the years. He’s got a very distinctive and wonderfully melodious voice, so it makes perfect sense for him to voice cartoon characters and videogame characters. But there’s something strange about his game appearances. I’ve played three games, of the 17 he’s voice acted for, and in each of them his character has betrayed mine. Maybe I just unlucky for those 3 games, but that’s still 1/6th of his game career and his other voice credits aren’t too promising (Especially considering one of those characters is Satan… again).

They probably couldn’t have said it in a kids movie, but this is fucking Satan. He even “reprises” his role in the game “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”.

The Betrayers

Stratos from the PC Real Time Strategy game Sacrifice.

The god of air on a world with four other deities that have been vying for control and dominance for millenia. His absolutely bizarre appearance is offset by the strange placidity in his voice. (http://youtu.be/b1AFOkCcW6U?t=1m32s) The troops he employ don’t use brute force on the battlefield but control enemy movement and use various forms of deception to get the upper hand. He allies himself in two competing alliances, showing his true colors at the end when it turns out he was working for himself the whole time. He’s betraying the whole planet here as well. To give himself the edge he needed he summoned a demon of such immense power that it threatens to consume the whole world. That’s some betrayal right there.

Premier Anatoly Cherdenko from Command and Conquer: Red Alert III

This is one of the funniest roles I’ve ever seen Tim Curry in. Just listen to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yMy7JuGpJM . Everything about it is brilliantly funny, Curry can’t even stop himself from cracking a smile through most of it (I swear that the 20 second mark that he’s about to burst out laughing and can only continue by shouting SPACE at the top of his fool lungs.) I’m not totally sure if he betrays the player (That clip seems to insinuate) but at the very least he betrays his partner in time crime. The game takes place in a world where the Cold War became a very hot one. It begins with Cherdenko losing but he uses a time machine to go back in time, with one General Krukov, and kill Albert Einstein to prevent him from inventing weapons that aid the Allied effort. Believing that General Krukov knows too much about all this time travel nonsense, he has you destroy him during one of the missions. Then it seems like he betrays you, I mean you should have seen it coming. If he’ll betray using you, he’ll betray on you.

And last but not least, Arl Howe from Dragon Age: Origins.

As soon as I heard Tim Curry’s suave voice come out of this guy’s mouth saying “My troops are running a bit late” I knew fucking well that this guy was going to betray me and try to kill my stupid, non-Tim-Curry-voice-recognizing face. I didn’t know when and it didn’t matter how but it was going to happen. Shocking me, it happens before the end of the prologue. His betrayal is the catalyst for the human noble’s call to glory. His men show up and kill everyone in your little castle before you can say, “Oh no, my poor defenseless family.”

Why does Tim Curry’s voice a sign of impending betrayal? Because it sounds so good doing it! It’s calm and calculated, even in the most ridiculous of examples (SPACE). He’s got a voice that just oozes with villainy and cruel wit. It’s sort of sad though that he’s been doing it for so long that I can see it coming from so far away. Even so, he’ll create a character that the player will love to hate. A bad guy so vile that I’ll do anything to stop him, even become a villain myself. So, bully for you Tim Curry, you keep doing that voodoo you do so well.

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.

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.