Support the Little Guys

Out with my sister today, we happened upon a little hole-in-the-wall videogame and DVD shop. This kind of shop reminds me why EB Games/GameStop aren't perfect for me: little shops buy and sell almost anything for any system, often at reasonable prices. Today I picked up Prince of Persia: Arabian Nights for the Dreamcast and BurgerTime for the NES for a grand total of $7. They may not be the greatest games, but I'd been looking for them and hadn't seen a good deal on them in ages. My sister picked up DVDs of My Cousin Vinny and Sideways, also at good prices.

Which brings me to a recent experience at a local GameStop. They've stopped stocking games for certain systems, like GameBoy, GameBoy Color, and the PSOne. Given the focus on the Nintendo DS, the first two are understandable, but the PSOne?

So when my brother wanted a copy of Metal Gear Solid for the PSOne for Christmas, I was out of luck at the big chains. I visited a local independent shop across the street, one that still has a pile of Atari 2600 games in a bin along with a big wall of NES games, and found a Metal Gear Solid complete with manual and case, all in excellent condition. I'd have easily paid twice as much going through mail order, not necessarily been guaranteed a manual and good condition discs, and on top of it paid for some outrageous shipping costs.

And while the guys in independent stores tend to be a bit less polished on presentation, most of the time they are knowledgeable and appear honest. I should test out my "does the SNES use the same cable as the GameCube and N64?" question in a few and see what reaction I get. I bet it'll be better than that poor GameStop schmuck who told me the SNES definitely didn't use the same cable as the N64 or GameCube and he had a broken SNES to prove it.

The big chains serve a purpose: they feed piles of new games into the system. But for long-term players like me, they can't supply me with the older games I occasionally need to find.

So next time you're out game shopping, consider tossing some dough to the little guys. They're good to have around.

--jvm at 23:07

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Most/Least Fun 2005

Since I don't play just new games, this won't read like a release list of 2005 titles. If you want to read about how Resident Evil 4 was game of the year, I'm sure some big sites will be happy to fill that need for you. Moving on...

Most fun I've had playing videogames this year:

• Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater for PlayStation 2 - How action movies should be played.
• Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time for PlayStation 2 - What Tomb Raider should have been years ago. Best use of time travel in a game ending.
• Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee for PlayStation Portable - Simple and fun.
• Ace Combat 2 for PSOne - Fun enough that I'll forgive it for having a hidden good ending.
• Castlevania IV for SNES - Konami, please forget 3D and try being this good again in 2D.
• Ridge Racer for PlayStation Portable - Filter out all the crap from a decade of medicore Ridge Racer games and you have something worth playing.

Disappointments, i.e. games I wanted to like but couldn't:

• Ace Combat 5 for PlayStation 2 - Puts me to sleep.
• Lumines for PlayStation Portable - This was considered addictive? Booooring.
• War of the Monsters for PlayStation 2 - I waited years for this game to drop below $25, even for a used copy. When I finally got it brand new for $12, I felt profoundly ripped off. Do not expect to have fun with it.
  
• Castlevania 64 and Castlevania: Legacy of Darkness for Nintendo 64 - The first and second gigantic fricking clues that 3D doesn't work for this series.
• Parappa the Rapper 2 for PlayStation 2 - Dog poop.
• Out of This World for SNES - This is not fun. Really.

I spent most of my time from January to July with my PlayStation 2. From July to December, I split my time evenly between the GameBoy Advance and the PlayStation Portable, with the edge going to the PSP with the arrival of Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories.

Note: I have enough reservations about GTA:LCS that I can't say it's as fun as Hot Shots or Ridge Racer. In fact, I'd recommend those other two over GTA:LCS, if you just want to have fun with your PSP.

That's my year. How was yours?

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 23:47

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The Need for Illegal ROMs

One justification for downloading arcade ROMs is that you can't get the games anywhere else. If the lists at KLOV are to be believed, then this seems like a weaker argument than I had previously thought.

First, you should go look at the lists.

Now, in the Top 10 Most Popular Games we actually have 11 titles, because of a tie at 10th place. Of those eleven, only Donkey Kong and TRON haven't received real emulation rereleases. Still there are many, many ports of Donkey Kong which are worth playing. (I tend to favor the NES version.) Which means only one game, TRON, isn't available legally. That's a shame, and I have doubts that it will ever be emulated legally somwhere.

Update: As Alex notes in the comments below, TRON 2.0: Killer App for the GameBoy Advance has both the original TRON and Discs of TRON as bonus games. Certainly not emulation, but quite possibly good ports. I'm going to pick this up as soon as I can to see how it works.

Of the Top 10 Collected Games, all except Donkey Kong are emulated somewhere.

Now, if we look at the Top 100 Video Games (as selected by the KLOV staff), there are many notable games not emulated:

1. Computer Space
2. Pong
3. Tank
4. BiPlane
5. Death Race
6. Sea Wolf
7. Lunar Lander
8. Berzerk
9. Eagle
10. Star Castle
11. Donkey Kong
12. Gorf
13. Mousetrap
14. Qix
15. Donkey Kong Jr.
16. Pengo
17. Q*bert
18. Space Duel
19. Tron
20. Dragon's Lair
21. Track and Field
22. Punchout
23. Choplifter
24. Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom
25. Arkanoid
26. Outrun
27. Double Dragon
28. Street Fighter
29. Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja
30. Cyberball
31. Tetris
32. Golden Axe
33. Golden Tee Golf
34. Raiden
35. Captain America and the Avengers
36. King of Monsters
37. Terminator 2: Judgement Day
38. X-Men
39. Lethal Enforcers
40. NBA Jam
41. Daytona USA
42. Area 51
43. Soul Edge
44. San Francisco Rush
45. House of Dead
46. NFL Blitz
47. Gauntlet Legends
48. House of Dead 2
49. Time Crisis II
50. Carnevil
51. Ferrari F355 Challenge
52. 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker
53. Gauntlet Dark Legacy
54. Ridge Racer V

Of these 54 games, many have ports that I'd think sufficient.

Sure, there are lots of games that aren't here. Hundreds of games are not available in legal emulated form, and for each game there is someone who wants to play it. But doesn't the list of legally emulated games cover what most people want to play? And beyond that, don't accurate ports further lessen the need for illegal ROM use?

--jvm at 22:17

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The Year of Emulation Collections

In 1995 the first Williams Arcade Classics appeared for DOS with just six games. Now in 2005 I have counted eight different collections offering well over 100 emulated arcade games and more than a dozen console games. What a difference ten years has made!

In the mid-1990s, your only legal options for playing older arcade games were to find a real arcade or buy the games yourself. But a gaming public with an appetite for classic games has fueled the rise of commercial emulation specialists like Digital Eclipse and the community-developed MAME. Sensing a profit, Turner Broadcasting's GameTap is offering many emulated classic games through its monthly service, including some you won't find elsewhere, like Zaxxon. Although it hasn't lived up to expectations, StarROMs is pretty much still the only service that offers arcade ROMs as legal downloads.

A few quick points:

• How important has copyright infringement, namely illegal distribution of ROMs, been to the rise of this industry? If people hadn't been trying out ROMs with MAME, or at least reading about MAME on forums and newsgroups, would the market for the Namco and Midway collections been quite as robust?
  
  For my own part, I know I was downloading ROMs to use with emulators long before I bought a legal emulation package. It started with Colecovision and Atari 2600 ROMs and eventually included Commodore 64 and Apple ][ disk images. Now, when I can, I try to buy the originals, and I do not download ROMs for which I don't own the original game.
  
  But that's me, and I know my view isn't the normal one. If I had to guess, I'd say that Digital Eclipse has grown its own market more than it has been helped by the likes of MAME. Anyone who's going to be a hardcore MAME user isn't very likely to buy a collection for $20 - $50, especially when each collection has traditionally had fewer than 15 games.
• I like the trend we're seeing toward more games for a lower price. Look at the recent Taito and Capcom collections, which have 29 and 22 games respectively, both selling for $20. Last year's Atari Anthology had over 80 games, and I think retailed for $20 as well.
• We still aren't seeing definitive collections, however. Where is the definitive Namco Museum or definitive Midway Arcade Treasures that has all the games in one place?
  
  Instead we see Namco Museum 50th Anniversary (GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Windows) and Namco Museum Battle Collection (PlayStation Portable) with exclusives. So if you want Dig Dug II you'll have to pick up the PSP version and if you want Galaga '88 you'll have to pick up a console version. For a completist like me, that means getting both.
  
  Similarly, the otherwise well-stocked Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for the PSP is missing Robotron: 2084, making it a non-starter for me. When most reviews said the collection was overall quite poor, I happily marked it off my want-list.
• It is interesting that most of this year's emulation collections have been developed by one company: Digital Eclipse. Even Namco, which I presume developed their previous Namco Museum for the PSOne in-house, has hired Digital Eclipse for the latest iteration of that series. Only Tecmo and Taito seem to be doing their own stuff, although I suppose it is possible they are licensing some technology from Digital Eclipse.
  
  Is that really a one-company market? Given the concerns I've read about the quality of some of the latest work by Digital Eclipse, I think we'd all be better off with a little competition.
  

Just for the record, this was the only legal arcade emulation option in 1995. I've linked everything up so you can check out the games easily.

Williams Arcade Classics for DOS

1. Bubbles
   
2. Defender
3. Defender II
4. Joust
5. Robotron: 2084
6. Sinistar
   

Now here are the eight collections I've seen released in 2005, covering about 115 games. I've linked these game titles as well, for easy reference.

Taito Legends for Xbox, PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Windows

1. Battle Shark
2. Bubble Bobble
3. Colony 7
   
4. Continental Circuit (Continental Circus)
   
5. Electric Yo-Yo, The
   
6. Elevator Action
7. Exzisus
8. Gladiator
9. Great Swordsman
10. Jungle Hunt
11. New Zealand Story, The
12. Ninja Kids
13. Operation Thunderbolt
14. Operation Wolf
15. Phoenix
16. Plotting
17. Plump Pop
18. Rainbow Islands
19. Rastan
20. Return of the Invaders
21. Space Gun
22. Space Invaders
23. Space Invaders Part II
24. Super Qix
25. Thunder Fox
26. Tokio
27. Tube-It
28. Volfied
29. Zoo Keeper

Sonic Gems Collection for GameCube (and PlayStation 2 in Japan)

1. Sonic CD - SegaCD
2. Sonic Drift 2 - GameGear
3. Sonic R - PC
4. Sonic Spinball - GameGear
5. Sonic the Fighters - Arcade
6. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 - GameGear
7. Sonic the Hedgehog Triple Trouble - GameGear
8. Tails Adventures - GameGear
9. Tails' Skypatrol - GameGear
10. Vectorman - Genesis
11. Vectorman 2 - Genesis

Tecmo Classic Arcade for Xbox

1. Bomb Jack
2. Pinball Action
3. Pleiades
4. Rygar
   
5. Senjyo
6. Solomon's Key
7. Star Force
8. Strato Fighter
9. Swimmer
10. Tecmo Bowl
11. Tecmo Cup (Tehkan World Cup)

Capcom Classics Collection for PlayStation 2 and Xbox

1. 1942
2. 1943
3. 1943 Kai
4. Bionic Commando
   
5. Commando
   
6. Exed Exes
7. Final Fight
   
8. Forgotten Worlds
   
9. Ghosts 'n Goblins
10. Ghouls 'n Ghosts
11. Gun.Smoke
12. Legendary Wings
    
13. Mercs
    
14. Pirate Ship Higemaru
15. Section Z
    
16. Son Son
    
17. Street Fighter II
18. Street Fighter II Champion Edition
    
19. Street Fighter II Hyper Fighting
20. Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts (SNES)
21. Trojan
    
22. Vulgus

Midway Arcade Treasures 3 for GameCube, PlayStation 2, and Xbox

1. Badlands
2. Hydro Thunder
3. Off Road Thunder: Mud, Sweat, 'n Gears
   
4. Race Drivin'
5. S.T.U.N. Runner
6. San Francisco Rush 2049 (Dreacmast version)
   
7. San Francisco Rush the Rock: Alcatraz Edition
   
8. Super Off Road

Namco Museum 50th Anniversary for GameCube, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and Microsoft Windows
Namco Museum Battle Collection for PlayStation Portable

1. Bosconian
   
2. Dig Dug
3. Dig Dug II¹
   
4. Dragon Buster¹
5. Dragon Spirit²
6. Galaga
7. Galaga '88²
8. Galaxian
9. Grobda¹
10. King & Balloon¹
    
11. Mappy
12. Motos¹
    
13. Ms. Pac-Man
14. New Rally-X¹
    
15. Pac-Man
16. Pac-Mania²
17. Pole Position²
18. Pole Position II²
19. Rally-X
20. Rolling Thunder
21. Sky Kid²
22. Tower of Druaga, The¹
    
23. Xevious
    

¹ - only on Namco Museum Battle Collection for PSP
² - only on Namco Museum 50th Anniversary for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube, and Microsoft Windows

Midway Arcade Treasures: Extended Play for PlayStation Portable

1. 720 Degrees
2. Arch Rivals
3. Championship Sprint
4. Cyberball 2072
5. Defender
6. Gauntlet
7. Joust
8. Klax
9. Marble Madness
10. Mortal Kombat
11. Mortal Kombat II
12. Mortal Kombat 3
13. Paperboy
14. Rampage
15. Rampart
16. Sinistar
17. Spy Hunter
18. Toobin'
19. Wizard of Wor
20. Xenophobe
21. Xybots

--jvm at 18:56

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Taito Legends 2

Apparently there will be a Taito Legends 2, with 40 games. Crazy. I've only heard of three of them: Qix, Puzzle Bobble 2, and Frontline. I doubt this will make it out over here in North America, which is a shame. I'd like to try it out, since I'll never see these games any other way.

I found this while browsing the Taito Legends website. See this post on their forums pointing to the press release.

Here's the full list. The ordering in the press release was difficult to discern, so I alphabetized, for easier scanning.

1. Alpine Ski
2. Arabian Magic
3. Balloon Bomber
4. Bonze Adventure
5. Cameltry
6. Chack'n' Pop
7. Cleopatra Fortune
8. Crazy Balloon
9. Darius Gaiden
10. Don Doko Don
11. Dungeon Magic
12. Elevator Action Returns
13. The Fairyland Story
14. Football Champ (Hat-Trick Hero)
15. Frontline
16. G Darius
17. Gekirindan
18. Grid Seeker: Project Storm Hammer
19. Growl
20. Gun Frontier
21. Insector X
22. KiKi KaiKai
23. Kuri Kinton
24. Legend of Kage
25. Liquid Kids
26. Lunar Rescue
27. Metal Black
28. Puchi Carat
29. PuLiRuLa
30. Puzzle Bobble 2
31. Qix
32. Raimais
33. Rastan 2
34. Ray Storm
35. Space Invaders 95
36. Space Invaders DX
37. Super Space Invaders 91
38. Syvalion
39. Violence Fight
40. Wild Western

--jvm at 14:30

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Xmas Curmudgeon

Merry Christmas, everyone.

We had a great morning, with lots of fun surprises for everyone. I ended up getting 29 games under our Christmas tree. Ok, that's a little lie: I got Taito Legends, an emulation package with 29 old arcade games, including the Curmudgeon Gamer favorite Bubble Bobble.

It looks like my wife isn't interested in the copy of Katamari Damacy that I got her, so I guess I'll play it for her. And it appears that my son is too young to play his new copy of Resident Evil 4, so I'll check it out for him and be ready to help him play through it in, say, a decade when he hits his teens.

If you have a story to tell, let's hear it.

--jvm at 10:53

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Double Dragon Advance Exploit

While playing Double Dragon Advance I've noticed:

• You get extra men at 20000 points and again at 50000 points. I think at every 50000 after that, too.
• You can use the whip to hit many enemies, like the big one pictured here, almost indefinitely. The trick is to let him recover from his recoil after each hit. They just don't die. This gets you 300 points for each hit. After enough hits, you can hit him twice to put him down for good, if you need to.
• If you exploit the game this way, you can get 4500 points in 10 seconds of game clock. When you've got over 20 seconds, you can easily get 10000 points for a modest amount of work.
  

Together you can use these to get at least two, maybe three extra men early in the game when the enemies are fewer and easier. Even later in the game, if you have plenty of time on the clock and a big guy by himself, you can get yourself an extra man when it's quite useful.

--jvm at 23:28

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Two Unrelated Complaints

Going to do my annual viewing of Die Hard in a minute, but I had to get these two things off my chest:

• Dying laptops are the worst. Fortunately, my wife has a Windows laptop that I can slum on until the Powerbook returns.
• Let's say you design a game, an otherwise fun game, that involves buying guns at a gun shop. And let's say that you make the Exit Buying Guns Mode Button the same as the Fire Shiny New Weapon Button. What do you think happens?
  
  I'll tell you what happens, buster. The freaking virtual gun shop owner takes you out with his gigantic freaking shotgun when you accidentally fire a single freaking bullet in his general direction! Can't he see it was a mistake?! Honest!

Anyway, if you're exiting the gun store in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, let me recommend using the triangle button instead of the circle button as listed on the screen.

And back up your data.

--jvm at 22:33

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Bloggers Invade Next-Gen

Check out The Year in Media by Kyle Orland of VGMWatch and Politics at the Fore in 2005 by Dennis McCauley of Game Politics. Along with my own Gaffes 2005 bit, Next Generation has been letting some videogame bloggers headline this past week.

I don't claim to understand why Next Generation would give bloggers this kind of space, but I like it. Perhaps we're just easy marks, since we'll be writing our stuff anyway.

Veering off tangentially, it's probably no secret to anyone who talks with me more than five minutes that I read a lot of blogs. Most of what I read has nothing to do with videogames but with American politics. Reading all the time has led me to form an idea of what good bloggers do: practice being an informed, thoughtful citizen.

That is, you read, you understand, you form your own ideas, and then you tell others your take on it all. By doing so, you take part in the public discourse that's essential in politics. (Or, if you're cynical, this discourse is essential to making citizens feel they're included in the political process, whether they are or not.)

We've seen the American political structure begin to absorb political blogs, traditionally made of outsiders. Perhaps Next Generation is doing something similar by giving room for voices from the outside?

--jvm at 14:45

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Gaming Gaffes of 2005

For the past two years I've written end-of-year summaries of what didn't go well in the gaming industry. This year, I've written another, but someone else is hosting it. You can read it here at Next Generation.

Previous years are here: 2003, 2004.

Thanks go out to Colin Campbell, Editor in Chief, for the opportunity to write for Next Generation. Also to my online friends for giving my writing a well-deserved open-handed slap across the mouth during that last minute rush.

The comments are open for your flames. Thanks.

--jvm at 14:23

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Critical...but not TOO critical!

If you've got a fat connection, check out Dubious Honors of 2005 from GameSpot. Sounds good, doesn't it? Look out! Real criticism ahead!

In particular, wander over to Most Aggravating Framerate / Best Slideshow where you'll quickly discover that you can only see the winners by watching a video. Nice, eh?

Anyway, there's something funny about that video. What could it be? Oh, yeah, the framerates look decent on every game! I mean, I've seen some awful framerates in my time. I actually downloaded and played through the notorious 3DNow!-enhanced Trespasser demo, for crying out loud. That was a slideshow, kids. Back then, we would have killed for framerates of the kind I'm seeing in this video.

Does this mean that framerates that would have been considered great six years ago are now considered slideshows? Probably not. If I had to guess, GameSpot just couldn't be bothered to show places where these games really slow down to a crawl. I wonder why.

Oh, and the winner is Quake 4 on Xbox 360. Just so you know.

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 22:50

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New Dreamcast Emulator: NesterDC SE

If you own a Dreamcast that will boot CD-Rs and are interested in a NES emulator, then I want to recommend the new NesterDC SE with some caveats.

The positive:

• Easy-to-use disc builder - You just point it at your ROMs directory and it builds everything.
  
• Burning is easy - Note that I own and use Nero Burning Rom 5, which has traditionally been good for making Dreamcast discs. If you don't own Nero 5, then your mileage may vary.
• Good emulator interface - Attractive and understandable.
• Reasonable compatibility - NesterDC was already pretty good. This isn't any worse. Paperboy and Track & Field now work correctly, whereas they were troublesome in NesterDC 7.1.
  
• Nice video features - Scaling and image filtering are options.

The negative:

• Dependent on web - If the main site goes down or you don't have network access, it isn't clear you can build images with it.
• Incompatibilities - Examples: Elite (corrupted graphics, unplayable), Gauntlet 2 (minor graphic glitch, playable), Gyruss (serious graphics corruptions, somewhat playable), Marble Madness (minor graphics corruption, playable), NES Play Action Football (corrupted graphics, unplayable).
• Downloads copyrighted material - The default behavior of the disc builder is to download screenshots, manual scans, FAQs, Game Genie codes, and NSF (music tracks) for the games found in your ROMs directory.

Most people won't care about that last point, but I think it should be pointed out. The screenshots and codes seem pretty innocuous. The FAQs at first seem murky, but I suppose are fine. It is certainly true that all of the FAQs are all on GameFAQs and can be downloaded individually by the user and this just streamlines that process.

But the manual scans are bothersome. If I own a real physical copy of a manual, I don't see a big deal with having a digital copy available inside the emulator. But if I don't, then I don't feel entitled to a digital copy of copyrighted material that I don't own in any other form. And while this NesterDC SE disc builder obviously tries to sidestep the issue of people downloading ROMs illegally, it is facilitating the infringement of copyrighted manuals. Why pretend to abide by the law in one case and flout it in the other?

But, like I said, most people won't care.

--jvm at 23:53

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Remembering 3dfx

Most of you are probably too young to remember The Great Video Card Wars. I, on the other hand, remember the joy of seeing transparency in the GLQuake console for the first time using a 3dfx Voodoo2. Pretty fricking awesome, I tell you.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting that a lot of the T-buffer effects 3dfx pushed right before it died have turned out to be pretty important:

• Soft shadows
• Depth of field
• Antialiasing
• Texture compression

Sure, these were also being pushed by ATI and NVIDIA -- eventually. My non-game-developer gut feeling that the image quality features pushed by 3dfx are ultimately more important than the transform and lighting (T&L) chips that were pushed by NVIDIA.

This isn't to absolve 3dfx. They should have dropped GLIDE earlier. They should have developed a real OpenGL driver. They should have had 32-bit textures and textures larger than 256x256 earlier. If they'd lined those ducks up first and then worked on T-buffer effects, we might still have them around.

Incidentally, if someone still has those demo movies showing the T-buffer effects, I'd sure like to have them for history's sake. I haven't been able to track them down.

--jvm at 22:42

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Bogus Opening Sentence

The recent GameSpot review of Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones opens with this line:

The Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy has always been known for its tight controls and satisfying environmental puzzles set in beautiful levels.

Am I miscounting here? When was there a Sands of Time trilogy before the game this dude is reviewing that could be known for its tight controls?

(And, yes, I realize there were Prince of Persia games before this one. The author is clearly starting from the more recent Sands of Time game.)

--jvm at 08:14

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Target Arcade Machine = Crap

I'm stuck out of town waiting for an ice storm to pass, but on a trip to pick up an ethernet cable from Target I saw the Midway Home Use Arcade and spent a few minutes on Robotron: 2084.

Let's just say, based on that one trip, I wouldn't spend money on it.

The screen wasn't as big as I'd hoped. And it had lots of space around it, which meant they could have used a larger screen in that cabinet. Moreover, the screen image wasn't centered (couldn't see bottom of Robotron playfield) and wasn't calibrated to show the correct colors. Now, perhaps it could be centered and the colors made right if someone tweaked it, but it shouldn't have that problem this young.

Also, the joysticks squeaked like mad! It was like a constantly creaking door inside that thing. If this is what happens after a few weeks of use in a store, I can only imagine what would happen if I played Robotron: 2084 every night before bed!

Anyway, the price is back up to $500 (after dropping down to $400 for a while) and they're back in stock. But I wouldn't waste my money on one, if I were you.

--jvm at 23:38

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Woohoo! I'm on a ROMz site!:

Missile Demo (1998) (Ruffin Bailey) (PD)
IMAGE HOCHLADEN
Beschreibung: Hinzufuegen...
Land / Sprache: Public Domain
Zusatz / Rominfos: Checksumme gesetzt
Groesse: 0 MB | [566] bytes

With all that's on the net, it's hard to believe the Java version of the Stella Atari 2600 emulator is at least temporarily misplaced.

--rufbo at 22:54

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Still in the Combat Era?

I was wondering while taking a walk today if we aren't still in the Combat era, you know, where if you want a truly formidable opponent, you have to play against another person (in RL, folk). Anybody can eventually learn to beat up on the NPCs of Quake or Metal Gear Solid. Resident Evil even has a cute workaround so that its NPCs can be mindless, for the most part. In World of Warcraft, there's a pretty clear distinction between the mindless NPCs and any time you find yourself getting attacked by another player. This inability to become human requires games compensate in a number of ways, from bots to bosses to sheer numbers -- one substituting complex decision-making algorithms and the others a simple case of the box cheating to stay competitive.

For what it's worth, I did have an interesting Ruting test happen to me unexpectedly in WoW several months ago. I'd accidentally set off my "Player versus Player" flag by attacking the wrong NPC, making myself vulnerable to attack without realizing it. When something a couple of levels above me started attacking, I naturally returned the favor. After a few seconds trading blows, though, I started thinking this fellow from the new land I'd just entered was awfully well AI'd. The beast was weaving well, making it hard to land a melee attack, and was being awfully creative in its attempts to plaster me. Blizzard had really upped the ante without any warning, it appeared.

After I finally started winning decisively, he morphed into a cheetah and started running, and not that squirrel in a road zig-zag, but a true sprint in a straight line to escape. I couldn't believe the game was so danged smart, and my beliefs were on the money. Just before I gave up the chase, I noticed the PvP icon on his character's icon, and then saw the one on my own. I'd been dueling another mind and, surprisingly with my track record, had even been winning.

From Quake to Madden to Second Life, we're still a long ways away from true NPC interactivity and we're still substituting another Homo sapiens when we want a good battle. We need a human to get anywhere close to passing the Turing test, and even then it takes a while to have suspicions raised (thus the Ruting pun, above, in case you missed it). Has gaming really gone all that far from chess boards and Combat? Not really, no matter how clever the bots have become.

I will admit, as a sort of addendum, that I've been able to "see" MGS's creator a few times when the fourth wall was cleverly stripped away, and I very clearly felt he was puppet mastering my experience, which *is* spooky in a way somewhat similar to when I finally passed the Ruting test, above. Still, MGS is a string of pretty mindless NPCs cyclically capped off by just as mindless but much more powerful NPC bosses.

--rufbo at 19:45

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Most Memorable Line

There's a line in Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories I'll never forget.

Tony Cipriani (the player) walks in on Donald Love eating dinner. A red chunk of meat and bones sits on the table. Love says of it:

"It's delicious. [...] It tastes just like chicken only more ... sentient."

The implications are sinister, of course, given what we know ends up in some butcher shops of Liberty City. But Donald Love seems so oblivious to morality anyway that it's morbidly fascinating. He's the Cigarette Smoking Man of the GTA series.

--jvm at 07:13

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Nostalgia Ain't Worth It

On Kotaku we have Kyle Orland weeping over his used games. His lesson: keep your beloved games or pay dearly when nostalgia hits.

Here's a better idea: Tell people to resist nostalgia. The past just ain't what it used to be.

Over the past couple of years I've learned that most games I'm nostalgic for aren't worth a pitcher of warm spit. I'd be better off now having sold them all and bought new ones. Those games in my past were good only because I didn't know any better. Now I do.

Even though I might not want to admit it, there is a trend of improvement in games, even today. Slight improvement, but improvement nonetheless. And every step forward makes the past all the less appealing.

Now, you might well look at my list of games and ask "Why the heck are you keeping all that stuff?" Good question, the answer to which is: I'm not keeping just what I like -- I'm building a personal library. That way when I want to write about how awful a game is, I can fire it up and see for myself. That's just my way.

So forget nostalgia. Forget about yesterday. Live for today. Hope for tomorrow. Sell your games with abandon.

And let me know when you're done so I can buy them on the cheap. Thanks.

--jvm at 15:08

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High culture gaming

Okay, maybe "culture" is too strong, but wow, have you seen what it costs to play Quake IV in style recently? If you weren't born with a silver spoon in your mouth, don't apply.

I picked up an inexpensive board with integrated video (I got this one, not refuburished, but it looks like this might be the newer model) and AMD processor recently to get back into the WinPC gaming world about a year ago, I suppose, and was looking around for what I should add to finally make it a real gamer. And when I say real, I just mean move from "integrated video" to "budget". A quick trip to Tom's Hardware pointed out the current overclocker's value video card (warning; link doesn't seem stable). Nearly two bills ($175 at newegg.com)!

Head over to Mushkin to see how much 2 gig sticks of RAM will cost me, as I copped out for the 512 meg Circuit City special last year and boy does it hurt. My iBook plays WoW better than my PC most days, mostly because of the 5/4 gig of RAM it's got. Looks like about $135 plus shipping!

Admittedly, that doesn't seem like too much for a boatload of RAM, but that's another $300 bucks on video and memory, essentially as much as I paid for the whole box (reusing drives) in the first place. PC gaming is not a poor human's hobby. And if you think PCs are expensive, well, you ain't seen nothing yet.

All this overhead makes me wonder if we're just converging on arcades again. I've seen a few places that sell access on ph4t boxen by the hour that really are fun places to play. Seeing WoW on a fully loaded WinPC for the first time after playing exclusively on my iBook was a real eye-opener, and I am getting by with my $320 white box from six months ago. Perhaps relatively high-end gaming is becoming so specialized it's not realistic to expect to play it in our home offices any more.

Alternately, of course, we have consoles converging on gaming rigs, what with hard drives and their own boats o' RAM. Still, it's going to be a while before a console can keep up, year in year out, with modular towers. I just wish there was an inexpensive way in without paying $15 a month and driving to the local PC "arcade".

Rant over. Was also interesting to note that the video card Tom's Hardware recommended had 112 or so reviews on newegg where most of the other brands of the same card had 2 or 3. Just a little power in the whitebox world wielded by ole Tom.

--rufbo at 18:07

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Good Trailer Music: Ace Combat Zero

I just saw this trailer for Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War and was reminded of how music sells me on games, especially great music in trailers. Three cases:

• Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories - If you go to the official Liberty City Stories site and browse to the trailers section, check out Trailer 1, "The Friends You'll Make". That music is "A Dark March" by Danger Mouse, the title track for LCS, and it's pitch perfect for this style game. In addition to music, seeing the characters from GTA3, especially Donald Love, made me even more eager to get the game.
  
• Silent Hill 2 - One trailer sold me on the game. The only place I know to get it is on this GameSpot page. Having played the game through twice, I can confirm that this trailer evokes perfectly the game's eerie atmosphere, and the music is key. I think it's essentially the opening cinema for Silent Hill 2, but I don't recall if it's precisely the same.
• Soul Blade (Soul Edge) - Not precisely a trailer, but early on I saw someone's rip of the PSOne port's opening cinema. I was sold. Great music and interesting characters made me want this game. I ended up renting, falling in love, and buying it. I don't have any idea where you can see it online.

Back to that Ace Combat Zero: The Belkan War trailer. The music struck me as particularly good. Sure, I'm an Ace Combat junkie, so I was predisposed to buy it. But Ace Combat 5: The Unsung War doesn't rise above mediocre, including the forgettable music. Compared to Ace Combat 04, which had one of the most haunting soundtracks this side of Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2, Ace Combat 5 is quite poor.

If Ace Combat Zero has a story that shows the same level of care that I see in this trailer, both for music and editing, then I think it'll turn out ok. After all, I'm not playing these games just for the unique gameplay: you fly and you shoot, just like the last five games. (Fortunately, they know how to make that part fun.) Therefore a good story, well told and set to the right music, can make all the difference.

--jvm at 22:25

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Costco's Arcade Machine, Target OOS

Now we're talking! Check out this unit from Costco. That's 81 games, two joysticks, six buttons per player, and 19" monitor for $2300. Too bad it's still intended for the vertically challenged at only 5 feet tall. It also costs a good bit less than Target's machines.

Games of interest:

Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Bagman, Battlezone, Berzerk, Centipede, Commando, Ghosts N' Goblins, Ghouls N' Ghosts, Hat Trick, Karate Champ, Major Havoc, Millipede, Missile Command, Mr. Do!, Mr. Do's Castle, Mr. Do's Wild Ride, Side Arms Hyper Dyne, Tempest, and Warlords

Not a bad list, eh? Some of these still aren't available in emulation collections for home systems, like Bagman and Hat Trick.

(Thanks to jmro for the link.)

Now, as for Target's machines, please check out JohnT's comment on trying out the machine. Also, when I checked yesterday there were two things of interest on the $500 machine: it's out of stock and it's marked down to $397. Check it out.

I wonder if that's a good sign or a bad sign for having these systems in stock in the future.

--jvm at 16:20

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What I Hate About Liberty City Stories

Remember the end of Metal Gear Solid when Meryl (or Otacon, you wimps) drove the jeep and you shot at Liquid Snake? That was fun wasn't it? No?

Oh, right. That was pretty bad. After spending the whole game learning to control the situation through stealth and combat, Kojima throws that out the window and gives you what amounts to Hogan's Alley starring Solid Snake! Makes me wonder why Kojima did it again in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater where, shockingly, it still wasn't fun.

But, today I'm not here to complain about Metal Gear games. Rather, I'm here to complain about the shooting-while-NPC-drives sections of GTA: Liberty City Stories, of which I've now encountered two. One is in a boat and the other in a car. The controls are so unwieldy that I feel like I'm trying to shoot left-handed with an anvil tied to the muzzle of the gun. Yes, I know about using the L trigger for fine-tuned aim -- it's still no fun!

Sure, I enjoyed spending my weekend getting my favorite GTA character, Donald Love, elected to public office. Give me more fun missions like that and no shooter-on-rails missions.

--jvm at 01:10

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Double Dragon Advance, Take Two

You might recall that the last time I bought Double Dragon Advance I ended up with a pirate cart, complete with intro screen designed by the pirates. Well, I tried buying another one, and this time the cart appears to be legit. At least it doesn't have a pirate brag when I fire it up.

It's a great little brawler, and I love playing it. But it's missing something. You see, even when I'm at the top of my game, it still takes 30 minutes to plow through the first four levels. There are something like 7 or 8 in all, and I usually don't have a full hour to put toward the full game.

You can't choose a level to start on. It doesn't have any way to save the game. It doesn't have passwords. Jeepers, people, it doesn't even have any cheat codes to skip levels. What kind of sadists wrote this game?

Quick question, the answer to which I'm far too lazy to look up. I've been told you can put a Nintendo DS to sleep similar to how my PSP will go to sleep when I need to stop. Can I do that when I'm using a GameBoy Advance game on the DS? If so, then there's one point definitely in favor of getting a DS.

Maybe sometime in 2006 I'll have enough time in one sitting to actually finish Double Dragon Advance. At least I'm already horribly efficient at the first three levels...

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 22:44

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Seen on minivan: XBOX 360 4SALE

While out running an errand today, I ended up behind a nondescript minivan. Well, mostly nondescript, because across each side window and then again on the back window the owner had scrawled:

XBOX 360
4SALE
555-1234

I remember the initial PlayStation 2 shortage being a fairly big deal. In fact, I called Ruffin from my local Best Buy sometime in December 2000 (or was it January 2001) when they actually had PS2s on the shelf, and no one else in town did. But I never saw anything like this minivan.

This Xbox 360 shortage is a really big deal, apparently.

Labels: microsoft, xbox360

--jvm at 15:48

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Can anyone explain this to me?

It's deja vu all over again: Aspyr Media is bringing Civilization III to the Mac, years after MacSoft's conversion of the game. What's different in this release is that Aspyr has ported Civilization III: Complete, which includes the game's expansion packs and multiplayer Play the World expansion, which didn't make it to the Macintosh the first time around. Because of the weird way these things work, the game had to be ported to the Mac from the ground up (again), but, oddly, the same Mac programmer (Brad Oliver) who worked on the original is doing this version too.

Someone tell me this is an issue of licensing, because past that I'm horribly confused. The same coder can't manage to add a couple of additions to his existing code? And it's worth it to recode Civ3 to add a couple of expansion features and it's not worth porting a new game *coughcoughfinish up Half-Lifecoughcough*?
(emph mine, of course)

Confusing.

--rufbo at 13:01

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The Addled Old Father of Videogames

Was reading Kotaku talking about some speech that Nolan Bushnell gave. I'll give the man some credit for doing ok with Atari back in the 1970s. But let's be honest: fathers are rarely responsible for the accomplishments of their enterprising kids. And like lots of old folks, fathers will frequently look fondly to the past, longing for the good ol' days.

And so, we find Bushnell talking about how the games market today is a mere wisp of its former self:

In 1982, he tells us, there were 44 million gamers. Today, there are 18 million. Where'd they all go? "Complexity lost the casual gamer," he says. "Violence lost the woman gamer."

What's he talking about? Does he mean just in the U.S.? That can't be right. Sony just reported that they'd sold 100 million PlayStation 2 systems, and 40 million of those were in the U.S. That doesn't count the millions of GameCubes and Xboxes that people have, and the millions more GameBoy Advances and Nintendo DSes and Sony PSPs. And then there's the whole PC market.

Complexity? With games like Tetris and Lumines and Bejeweled so popular, I understand his point. But then you've got 1.5 million subscribers to World of Warcraft. I'm sorry, I'm just not buying it.

I know the Atari 2600 was great and arcades were wonderful back in the early 1980s. But 44 million gamers then and only 18 million today? That's grandpa telling us how great things were back when he wore an onion on his belt, because it was the fashion at the time...

He goes on:

"The 3D controller that Nintendo is on to is a very good idea," he says. "If you look at today's controller with triangles, Xs, squares and circles, it's scary. It's like a keyboard. People are interface phobic."

You know what else people are scared of? Looking like total idiots in front of their friends and family by waving a white wand at the TV to make a plumber chase a monkey or a sword-toting boy in green chat with his fairy friend, Tingle. That's what the Revolution is all about, people.

Whereas Sony has now put out three hardware platforms with similar controllers (PSOne, PS2, and PSP) and actually overcome interface phobia, Nintendo has come up with a new controller for every console: NES, SNES, N64, and now GameCube. (I could toss the Virtual Boy in there, but why kick them while they're down?) Just because they've got something new this time doesn't mean it's easier to use, if history is any guide.

Then there's this:

All I could read was "machinma." Bushnell skips the slide before I even have a chance to register the rest of it. "This isn't very interesting," he says. Instead, he finishes up his speech with a slide of his latest business venture: uWink. The Father of Gaming is getting in the dating industry. ... "I guarantee you if I can help guys meet girls, I will make a lot of money," he says.

So he skips right past machinima and pimps his dating bar business? According to Wikipedia he's started over 20 businesses. Other than Atari and Chuck E. Cheese, who remembers any of the others? That's what I thought.

Why are people listening to this guy again?

Labels: nintendo

--jvm at 00:59

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MMORPGs: Never Say It!

Tonight NPR's All Things Considered's weekly troll of their inbox yielded some good videogame-related snickers. A listener complained about this story which discussed the interplay between virtual MMORPG money and real U.S. dollars.

The first chuckle was the pronunciation of MMORPGs, which they said MORE-PEGS. In my head, when I see that word, I've always pronounced it EM-EM-OH-AR-PEE-GEEZ. I'm sure I just don't travel in the right circles and in fact millions of people call them MORE-PEGS, but for me it managed to make them sound even more dorky than they already are. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

The second chuckle came when Robert Siegel identified the complainer as "Philip C. Bernstein aka Gorvanak the Armsman, Yorga the Vampire, Vestbla the Healer, Billeg the Warrior, and Lady Coldstrike". Whew. Perhaps it's just hearing Siegel give these names with his best straight delivery. What a great sign-off, Phillip...I mean Billeg.

Anyway, you can listen for yourself.

--jvm at 19:56

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Story vs. Choice in Konami Games (Part 2)

This is part 2 of the piece I started yesterday. The idea is to examine how games balance storytelling with player choice. Today's games are Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and, the most interesting example, Silent Hill.

Castlevania: Old School

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night has a straightforward structure: there are essentially two paths, each of which splits exactly once to provide four endings. See the structure in this diagram. In keeping with the terminology used for Silent Hill's endings, I've called them Good+, Good, Bad+, and Bad.

The endings all have clearly delineated criteria.

• If you miss an important item, the Holy Glasses, and therefore kill the apparent final enemy, Richter Belmont, then the game ends there with what is considered the worst ending, Bad.
  
• If you find the glasses but don't realize (or chooses to ignore) their importance and still kill Richter, then you get a slightly better ending, Bad+.
  
• If you find the glasses and use them to see that Richter is being controlled by the evil priest Shaft, then that battle actually marks the midpoint of the game and there is a second castle, as large as the first, to explore after that point. If you subsequently get to the final battle with Dracula with less than 196% of the entire game explored (each castle counts as 100%) then you get a Good ending.
• If you do reach Dracula with 196% or more then you get the best ending, Good+.

Compared to Metal Gear Solid and Silent Hill (discussed below), this is a rather daring design decision. A player could miss half of the full game and not realize it, ending the story at a point distinctly earlier than two of the other endings. In fact, I do not believe that the Bad or Bad+ game conclusions make explicit that there are other alternatives.

That is, the player determines the outcome of the game, but not necessarily by explicit choices. One of the endings may be reached out of ignorance in Castlevania, whereas Metal Gear Solid informed the player that a choice would be made. Whether the player chooses to believe that Ocelot will kill Meryl is an angle that I've chosen to neglect.

Castlevania also betrays its old school platform game roots by relying on map exploration percentage as a determining factor in the game's ending. A player who completes the game with more than 100% but less than 196% need not know that there is better ending; likewise a player who never finishes with less than 196% need not know that a worse ending exists. This criterion is wholly artificial, with no importance within the game's narrative.

Within the gameplay, the player has a great deal of freedom. Once parts of the castle are accessed, they may be revisited at any subsequent time. The player may dress and arm the character, Alucard, as desired and even purchase items from a store. With the exception of obtaining and wearing the Holy Glasses, however, this gameplay has no effect on the final outcome of the game.

Silent Hill: Real Choices

Silent Hill is by far the most interesting of these Konami games. It has more branches in its choice diagram, seen here, than any of the other games, although it only has four meaningful endings just as Castlevania does. (There is a hidden fifth ending, the UFO ending, which does not fit into this discussion. Silent Hill purists might disagree.) The endings are typically called Good+, Good, Bad+, and Bad.

• If you obtain a liquid from the motorcycle tank during the game, then you will obtain one of the Good endings.
• If you do not obtain the liquid from the motorcycle tank, then you will get one of the Bad endings.
• If you obtain a different liquid from the hospital and you use it on Cybil in your battle with her, then you get a Good+ or Bad+ ending (depending on the motorcycle liquid choice).
  
• If you either fail to find the liquid in the hospital or you find it and don't use it on Cybil, then you get the Good or Bad ending (depending on the motorcycle liquid choice).

One important point: the liquid in the hospital is found before the liquid in the motorcycle, so the choice diagram (seen here) is does not reflect the order of events in the game itself. However, this is the simplest structure for the diagram, making obvious the two Good/Bad paths through the game, with the Good+ and Bad+ as refinements of that key decision.

There are several interesting points about this structure. First, two endings (Good and Bad) can be reached by more than one path. Also, the ending scripts don't necessarily indicate that there are other endings possible. Furthermore, the game itself doesn't require the player to find the items required for the Good, Good+ or Bad+ endings, nor does it necessarily make explicit how to use them. If this were Resident Evil, the game would require you to find and use every important item.

This last point is important, I think: What appear to be inconsequential choices (or omissions) throughout the game gravely affect the game's ending.

If Castlevania was daring for letting the player miss half of the game, I think Silent Hill's design is even more unusual. Despite the somewhat contrived device of finding these magic liquids, the designers did create four logical endings of the story. To get an appreciation for the full scope of the game, it must be completed more than once; this is very likely to happen since the unaided player may well miss the details required to finish it with the Good+ ending the first time through.

In one way this design is rewarding: it shows that player choice is important. It is also frustrating, in the way real life is frustrating, as we often don't know how important our small choices will be until a great time has passed.

While experiencing Silent Hill, the gameplay and environment are actually rather limited. Artificial walls and gateways restrict the player's movement and the number and types of environment interactions are very limited. This simplicity belies the game's sophistication.

It is interesting to point out that Silent Hill's sequel, Silent Hill 2, continued to develop the idea of player choice. The endings are not necessarily considered as Good or Bad, but are simply alternatives to each other. The player is left to assign value to the endings. For example, in one ending, simply called "Water", describes the protagonist committing suicide, ostensibly to end the unhappiness that brought him to the town of Silent Hill. Moreover, how an individual game's ending is determined appears to depend in some part on cumulative action and fuzzy criteria. If you look at a knife in your inventory and allow yourself to be injured often, then the "Water" ending is likely, but not guaranteed. This heuristic evaluation of a player's behavior is an interesting twist.

More Thoughts

There are many games that I've not discussed. For example, there are surely role-playing games which have a richer array of choices. One example that's been mentioned before to me is Knights of the Old Republic, but I have not played this game and I have no means to do so at this time. Online games like Worlds of Warcraft don't have overarching narratives, but if we view levels of player stature as endings, then clearly the player has nearly unlimited freedom in achieving those ends.

--jvm at 11:05

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