Curmudgeon Gamer
01 May 2008
Video game canons and flesh colored band-aids
I was obviously asleep when the announcement was made that this stab at a video game canon was announced last year:
Mr. Lowood and the four members of his committee — the game designers Warren Spector and Steve Meretzky; Matteo Bittanti, an academic researcher; and Christopher Grant, a game journalist — announced their list of the 10 most important video games of all time:
Okay, I can pick at the list. Anybody can pick out a list. Did they screw up? Sure. Where's KABOOM!? (kidding on that one -- for now)
What concerns me is that these guys are, well, just that. All white guys. Sure, it's a pretty good crosssection of dark haired white guys. There's a short one. One that's not ashamed of his poor vision. Two -- no, on second glance, three -- major facial hair decisions. Still, as humans go, it's a pretty diversity challenged group on its face, har har.
What else unites the Superfriends of Ludological Canonization? That they all decided not to make their rationalizations for picking these ten easily Googleable [by me].
In any event, even if white guys too largely made the games and white guys too largely play/ed the games, is that really a good reason that white guys should pick the games? I imagine these guys would likely find my dimestore critique here uncontroverstial, but then why not branch out before announcing your list at the Game Developers' Conference and posing for the NY Freakin' Register of the US Times?
Insert smilie.
Labels: classic, culture, ethics, hype, marketing, peer pressure, pretension, retro
--ruffin at 11:46
Comment
[ 6 ]
16 May 2007
VC Curmudgeon: Battle Lode Runner, Castlevania, Ninja Gaiden
Note: the rating system has changed. As Mordrak suggested last time, more curmudgeon-heads should imply a worse game. Five heads means awful, none means great.
Also note: I'm dispensing with the rate-the-most-recent format. I'll just offer a dip into the VC archives each time, as personal knowledge and/or interest merits.
Battle Lode Runner
Produced and released by Hudson. Originally for the PC Engine.
Rating:
Lode Runner, Broderbund's ancient action-puzzle platformer, has a long and storied history. One of the first real hits of the 8-bit computer age, with ports for most contemporary systems, it featured 150 levels, an editor, and a whole lot of hurt. This is an incredibly difficult game, and it requires complete mastery of the game world's physics and enemy AI to finish it.
Broderbund only released the original computer versions of the game, but licensors in Japan kept the the series going for much longer, up to the N64/PSX era. Battle Lode Runner comes from that branch of the series. All editions are brutally hard puzzle games, and this one assumes players have some past experience, so it gets taxing for newcomers in the first ten levels (of 101), and hard for experienced players within the first 40. You will be stumped frequently, but genuine puzzle game fans wouldn't have it any other way. (Others are directed to GameFAQs, which has an obtuse, but excellent, resource on the game.)
Battle Lode Runner's main attraction is supposed to be its battle mode, which indeed is cool and takes inspiration from Bomberman, right down to offering cameos by the Black Bomber, but for true classic gaming fans puzzle mode is the real draw here... if they can put up with the soul-crushing difficulty and extreme trickiness. For professionals only.
Castlevania
Produced and released by Konami. Originally for the NES.
Rating:
As Curmudgeon Gamer readers probably can remember, some of us have considerable fondness for the Castlevania games. While I enjoy most of them, if I had to choose my taste would lean more towards the old-school, level-based platformers more than the recent "Metroidvanias." Of them all, my favorite remains this one, the original Castlevania, a game that has been much cursed and loved over the years since its release.
Lots of people dump on Castlevania now. They react with dismay that you can't change your jump direction in midair, how enemies frequently kill you with one knock into a bottomless pit, how you can be screwed over instantly just by picking up the wrong subweapon. I even agree with them on that last bit; I've lost Holy Water too many times because a random monster decided to drop a Dagger on the pixel just in front of me.
But for those who watch for these things, there is a kind of perfection here. Simon Belmont has a peculiar mixture of weakness and strength. His basic attack has a nice, long range, but terrible vertical reach. In order to attack airborne foes or candles, the player must learn the timing to jump and whip just after launching, so the strike comes at the top of the jump.
Once that move is mastered, the game's addictive rhythm begins to be felt, and the player starts noticing that the enemies have their own rhythms. Medusa heads come flying out in a sine wave at regular intervals. Skeleton throwers release their projectiles on a set schedule. Bone pillars fire fireballs over a three-second count. This combines with Simon's steady pace to produce a game with a definite flow, and once you get into it (which can take a while), it's possible to finish whole levels without taking a hit.
But that's when you get into it, and until then, you will die, die, die. Most bosses can be defeated absurdly easily if you get to them with the Holy Water weapon, but if you lack it then the odds are against you, even if you're at full health. Castlevania will probably come as a rude shock to players used to the likes of Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night, but it shows admirably the difficulty and production values that make NES-era Konami so adored by retro gamers.
A note about the game: I actually own the NES Classics rerelease of this game in addition to the recent VC game, and I noticed that the ROMs used in the two are not identical, either with each other or the original NES game! There is a scoring bug in the NES version for when players defeat five or more enemies with one subweapon that can be used to reap many thousands of points, and multiple extra lives on the first level. It has been fixed in both later releases. Further, the Virtual Console keeps the original game's joke credits (all the monsters are played by actors with punny names), but the GBA release sloppily removes them. These are interesting edit decisions, indeed....
Ninja Gaiden
Produced and released by Tecmo. Originally for the NES.
Rating:
In a way Ninja Gaiden it is a spiritual brother to Castlevania, featuring similarly limited weapons, a nearly identical subweapon system, an obvious analogue to CV's heart weapon-use system, and copious background objects to be destroyed for items. Like Castlevania, there is a subweapon (the buzzsaw-like spin move) that can make short work of bosses, but isn't well-suited to non-boss use. Yet Ninja Gaiden isn't nearly as fun.
Back in the day, everyone loved Ninja Gaiden. It transformed a company known for quirky puzzle-like games (like the awesome Solomon's Key) to the talk of the playground. Ninja Gaiden was maybe not the first game to give us cinema scenes, but it was the first to do it with panache. I like to imagine that the developers, noticing that many anime productions are composed with a relatively small number of flat animation frames, realized that the technique was perfectly suited to the NES' graphics hardware.
But the game hasn't aged well. Castlevania's weighty, striding protagonist keeps the flow of that game reasonable and provides it with a pace, but Ninja Gaiden's Ryu streaks across the scene and gets knocked around almost before the player can react. And the game doesn't keep track of which foes you killed in an area, so if you scroll past a location where you killed a foe and return to it, he will have returned. And while Ryu can be controlled in mid-air, this doesn't apply if an enemy hits him, so pits here are nearly as bad as Castlevania's. Add in a wall jump with twitchy timing, annoying jumping puzzles, and a primary weapon with way too short a reach relative to enemy speed, and most players will get frustrated fast.
This isn't to say that Castlevanis isn't frustrating too. But that game rarely gives you the feeling like you have had no time to react, while Ninja Gaiden gives this impression constantly, and its constant stream of reappearing, tiny foes with two-step walk animations stand in contrast with the slick cutscene graphics.
It is possible to like Ninja Gaiden. We all did once. But we also once liked the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, and Transformers. Despite what Michael Bay seems to think, it seems that childhood fondness can only take you so far.
EDIT: Title changed to something slightly more appropriate.
Also note: I'm dispensing with the rate-the-most-recent format. I'll just offer a dip into the VC archives each time, as personal knowledge and/or interest merits.
Battle Lode Runner
Produced and released by Hudson. Originally for the PC Engine.
Rating:
Lode Runner, Broderbund's ancient action-puzzle platformer, has a long and storied history. One of the first real hits of the 8-bit computer age, with ports for most contemporary systems, it featured 150 levels, an editor, and a whole lot of hurt. This is an incredibly difficult game, and it requires complete mastery of the game world's physics and enemy AI to finish it.
Broderbund only released the original computer versions of the game, but licensors in Japan kept the the series going for much longer, up to the N64/PSX era. Battle Lode Runner comes from that branch of the series. All editions are brutally hard puzzle games, and this one assumes players have some past experience, so it gets taxing for newcomers in the first ten levels (of 101), and hard for experienced players within the first 40. You will be stumped frequently, but genuine puzzle game fans wouldn't have it any other way. (Others are directed to GameFAQs, which has an obtuse, but excellent, resource on the game.)
Battle Lode Runner's main attraction is supposed to be its battle mode, which indeed is cool and takes inspiration from Bomberman, right down to offering cameos by the Black Bomber, but for true classic gaming fans puzzle mode is the real draw here... if they can put up with the soul-crushing difficulty and extreme trickiness. For professionals only.
Castlevania
Produced and released by Konami. Originally for the NES.
Rating:
As Curmudgeon Gamer readers probably can remember, some of us have considerable fondness for the Castlevania games. While I enjoy most of them, if I had to choose my taste would lean more towards the old-school, level-based platformers more than the recent "Metroidvanias." Of them all, my favorite remains this one, the original Castlevania, a game that has been much cursed and loved over the years since its release.
Lots of people dump on Castlevania now. They react with dismay that you can't change your jump direction in midair, how enemies frequently kill you with one knock into a bottomless pit, how you can be screwed over instantly just by picking up the wrong subweapon. I even agree with them on that last bit; I've lost Holy Water too many times because a random monster decided to drop a Dagger on the pixel just in front of me.
But for those who watch for these things, there is a kind of perfection here. Simon Belmont has a peculiar mixture of weakness and strength. His basic attack has a nice, long range, but terrible vertical reach. In order to attack airborne foes or candles, the player must learn the timing to jump and whip just after launching, so the strike comes at the top of the jump.
Once that move is mastered, the game's addictive rhythm begins to be felt, and the player starts noticing that the enemies have their own rhythms. Medusa heads come flying out in a sine wave at regular intervals. Skeleton throwers release their projectiles on a set schedule. Bone pillars fire fireballs over a three-second count. This combines with Simon's steady pace to produce a game with a definite flow, and once you get into it (which can take a while), it's possible to finish whole levels without taking a hit.
But that's when you get into it, and until then, you will die, die, die. Most bosses can be defeated absurdly easily if you get to them with the Holy Water weapon, but if you lack it then the odds are against you, even if you're at full health. Castlevania will probably come as a rude shock to players used to the likes of Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night, but it shows admirably the difficulty and production values that make NES-era Konami so adored by retro gamers.
A note about the game: I actually own the NES Classics rerelease of this game in addition to the recent VC game, and I noticed that the ROMs used in the two are not identical, either with each other or the original NES game! There is a scoring bug in the NES version for when players defeat five or more enemies with one subweapon that can be used to reap many thousands of points, and multiple extra lives on the first level. It has been fixed in both later releases. Further, the Virtual Console keeps the original game's joke credits (all the monsters are played by actors with punny names), but the GBA release sloppily removes them. These are interesting edit decisions, indeed....
Ninja Gaiden
Produced and released by Tecmo. Originally for the NES.
Rating:
In a way Ninja Gaiden it is a spiritual brother to Castlevania, featuring similarly limited weapons, a nearly identical subweapon system, an obvious analogue to CV's heart weapon-use system, and copious background objects to be destroyed for items. Like Castlevania, there is a subweapon (the buzzsaw-like spin move) that can make short work of bosses, but isn't well-suited to non-boss use. Yet Ninja Gaiden isn't nearly as fun.
Back in the day, everyone loved Ninja Gaiden. It transformed a company known for quirky puzzle-like games (like the awesome Solomon's Key) to the talk of the playground. Ninja Gaiden was maybe not the first game to give us cinema scenes, but it was the first to do it with panache. I like to imagine that the developers, noticing that many anime productions are composed with a relatively small number of flat animation frames, realized that the technique was perfectly suited to the NES' graphics hardware.
But the game hasn't aged well. Castlevania's weighty, striding protagonist keeps the flow of that game reasonable and provides it with a pace, but Ninja Gaiden's Ryu streaks across the scene and gets knocked around almost before the player can react. And the game doesn't keep track of which foes you killed in an area, so if you scroll past a location where you killed a foe and return to it, he will have returned. And while Ryu can be controlled in mid-air, this doesn't apply if an enemy hits him, so pits here are nearly as bad as Castlevania's. Add in a wall jump with twitchy timing, annoying jumping puzzles, and a primary weapon with way too short a reach relative to enemy speed, and most players will get frustrated fast.
This isn't to say that Castlevanis isn't frustrating too. But that game rarely gives you the feeling like you have had no time to react, while Ninja Gaiden gives this impression constantly, and its constant stream of reappearing, tiny foes with two-step walk animations stand in contrast with the slick cutscene graphics.
It is possible to like Ninja Gaiden. We all did once. But we also once liked the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, G.I. Joe, and Transformers. Despite what Michael Bay seems to think, it seems that childhood fondness can only take you so far.
EDIT: Title changed to something slightly more appropriate.
Labels: battleloderunner, classic, loderunner, nes, pcengine, retro, tg16, vc, virtualconsole, wii
--JohnH at 21:19
Comment
[ 6 ]
03 April 2007
Virtual Console Curmudgeon: Starfox 64, TMNT, Dragon's Curse
I usually end up reviewing new Virtual Console releases on whatever random website I read about them first, so I figured I'd just go ahead and start discussing them here, in a suitably curmudgeony style if the game merits it. Which is to say, often.
Starfox 64
Released by Nintendo. Originally for the Nintendo 64.
Rating:
Notable differences: Likely does not support controller rumble. Ordinarily this would be a minor point, except, if you'll think back, you'll remember that Starfox 64 was the original "Rumble Pak" game. Its exclusion seems very odd because of that, although not as bad as Ocarina of Time, in which arguably rumble is an important feature.
Hard to believe there's only really been two "real" StarFox games, isn't it? This is the second of the two, also only the second Starfox game ever, so it seems strange that they rebooted the story right off.
For an on-rails shooter, this is about as cool as you can get. While not as controller-smashing difficult as the original (which I never did finish on its hardest route) it is quite challenging, there is a nice variety of areas to visit, as well as secret missions to complete, branching paths to explore, hidden warp levels to find, "all range" areas where you can fly freely, dogfights with enemy fighters, a tank level and an underwater level, and a blisteringly-difficult gold medal to earn in each and every stage. And once you've done it all: Expert Mode! Argh! (I know all this because I've done all those things. Yeah, I be bad at N64 Starfox. I challenge you guys to beat my high score BTW, just shy of 1,800 points.)
For all these reasons, Starfox 64 is arguably the high point in the series. The SNES game was challenging but looks primitive now, and its framerate is difficult to put up with now. The less said about the first Gamecube game the better, and both Armada (GC) and Assault (DS) mix up the formula too much to seem really Starfoxy.
A great moment from the N64 game: Played properly, you can get an instant win against the boss on the tank level, worth an absurd point bonus. Once done the first time, it never feels "right" beating the boss the normal way again.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Released by Konami. Originally for the NES.
Rating:
It's back in the news for two reasons. First, there seems to be a movie floating around somewhere about its title characters. Second, it was the focus of an unusually rancorous Angry Nintendo Nerd video where he soundly trashed the game.
Folks, I'm hear to tell you he's 100% correct. For all his hyperbole and (probably facetious) posturing, the Nerd usually knows his games. The game has a lot of features, is very long, and a very very high level of challenge, but ultimately it's just not worth it. The turtles jump like they're underwater, the actual underwater level is frustrating beyond the realm of mere obnoxiousness, and if Donatello buys the farm, good luck getting anywhere else in the game.
But for the record I have beaten this one. I will save you all the trouble of fighting through these six levels of young, genetically-flawed, amphibious Eastern hell by spoiling the ending: Turtlephile April O'Neil, in a text box, offers to take the shelled warriors out for pizza. Ho! Ha! Ho!
But, if you do want to smash your head against something unforgivably unyielding, the game is here for you. I did beat it once upon a time, so there must be something there. If you happen to be an obsessive-compulsive, socially awkward teenager like I was, maybe you can find whatever it was that compelled me to finish it. If you are not, please, please, pass.
Dragon's Curse
Released by NEC (probably developed by Hudson Soft). Originally for the Turbo-Grafx 16.
Rating (provisional):
Notable differences: The Wii's reputedly-inaccurate TG-16 sound emulation would apply to this game.
Being a TG16 game, I didn't get the chance to try this at all when it came out. The lore around the game is that it's actually a port of a later sequel to Wonder Boy, a game of which the licensing issues surrounding it are the stuff of fanboy legend. (For more on the games, and the issues check out the excellent Hardcore Gaming 101 article.) Suffice to say the game is extremely similar, as in containing the same levels, to the Genesis game Wonder Boy in Monster Land. Similar enough that, if you've played one, apparently you need not play the other.
But oddly, it doesn't turn out to be a bad game, at least from a first-gen Genesis perspective.
You can see that Metroid's lessons were learned well, although they take rather a different form than usual. In Metroid games, you explore and beat bosses to find powerups, which you then use to explore new areas. In Dragon's Curse, when you beat a boss you get turned into a new form with an entirely different set of movement options, advantages and disadvantages as before. So it seems that you actually lose the ability to go to some places as you proceed (if I undertand correctly), which may make it important to search a well as you can for secret stuff before fighting bosses.
I'm finding it to be an interesting, inoffensive game, with simple graphics but decent challenge. It's not really non-linear, since while technically you can go wherever you can, that is arranged, your characters exploration ability, like in Metroid games, is strictly limited to stop you from going where you're not supposed to be. Since this is the TG16 version, it costs only $6 to get, instead of $8 as the Genesis version would, and that may be a better deal.
According to the Hardcore Gaming 101 article linked-to above, this game actually pulls off a Symphony of the Night at the start: the first level of this game is the last level of the previous game, with a character so powerful that he has no real chance of losing. Nice to see where that little idea got its start.
EDIT: Fixed formatting, added whitespace. (Also, last night I fixed the ANN link.)
Starfox 64
Released by Nintendo. Originally for the Nintendo 64.
Rating:
Notable differences: Likely does not support controller rumble. Ordinarily this would be a minor point, except, if you'll think back, you'll remember that Starfox 64 was the original "Rumble Pak" game. Its exclusion seems very odd because of that, although not as bad as Ocarina of Time, in which arguably rumble is an important feature.
Hard to believe there's only really been two "real" StarFox games, isn't it? This is the second of the two, also only the second Starfox game ever, so it seems strange that they rebooted the story right off.
For an on-rails shooter, this is about as cool as you can get. While not as controller-smashing difficult as the original (which I never did finish on its hardest route) it is quite challenging, there is a nice variety of areas to visit, as well as secret missions to complete, branching paths to explore, hidden warp levels to find, "all range" areas where you can fly freely, dogfights with enemy fighters, a tank level and an underwater level, and a blisteringly-difficult gold medal to earn in each and every stage. And once you've done it all: Expert Mode! Argh! (I know all this because I've done all those things. Yeah, I be bad at N64 Starfox. I challenge you guys to beat my high score BTW, just shy of 1,800 points.)
For all these reasons, Starfox 64 is arguably the high point in the series. The SNES game was challenging but looks primitive now, and its framerate is difficult to put up with now. The less said about the first Gamecube game the better, and both Armada (GC) and Assault (DS) mix up the formula too much to seem really Starfoxy.
A great moment from the N64 game: Played properly, you can get an instant win against the boss on the tank level, worth an absurd point bonus. Once done the first time, it never feels "right" beating the boss the normal way again.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Released by Konami. Originally for the NES.
Rating:
It's back in the news for two reasons. First, there seems to be a movie floating around somewhere about its title characters. Second, it was the focus of an unusually rancorous Angry Nintendo Nerd video where he soundly trashed the game.
Folks, I'm hear to tell you he's 100% correct. For all his hyperbole and (probably facetious) posturing, the Nerd usually knows his games. The game has a lot of features, is very long, and a very very high level of challenge, but ultimately it's just not worth it. The turtles jump like they're underwater, the actual underwater level is frustrating beyond the realm of mere obnoxiousness, and if Donatello buys the farm, good luck getting anywhere else in the game.
But for the record I have beaten this one. I will save you all the trouble of fighting through these six levels of young, genetically-flawed, amphibious Eastern hell by spoiling the ending: Turtlephile April O'Neil, in a text box, offers to take the shelled warriors out for pizza. Ho! Ha! Ho!
But, if you do want to smash your head against something unforgivably unyielding, the game is here for you. I did beat it once upon a time, so there must be something there. If you happen to be an obsessive-compulsive, socially awkward teenager like I was, maybe you can find whatever it was that compelled me to finish it. If you are not, please, please, pass.
Dragon's Curse
Released by NEC (probably developed by Hudson Soft). Originally for the Turbo-Grafx 16.
Rating (provisional):
Notable differences: The Wii's reputedly-inaccurate TG-16 sound emulation would apply to this game.
Being a TG16 game, I didn't get the chance to try this at all when it came out. The lore around the game is that it's actually a port of a later sequel to Wonder Boy, a game of which the licensing issues surrounding it are the stuff of fanboy legend. (For more on the games, and the issues check out the excellent Hardcore Gaming 101 article.) Suffice to say the game is extremely similar, as in containing the same levels, to the Genesis game Wonder Boy in Monster Land. Similar enough that, if you've played one, apparently you need not play the other.
But oddly, it doesn't turn out to be a bad game, at least from a first-gen Genesis perspective.
You can see that Metroid's lessons were learned well, although they take rather a different form than usual. In Metroid games, you explore and beat bosses to find powerups, which you then use to explore new areas. In Dragon's Curse, when you beat a boss you get turned into a new form with an entirely different set of movement options, advantages and disadvantages as before. So it seems that you actually lose the ability to go to some places as you proceed (if I undertand correctly), which may make it important to search a well as you can for secret stuff before fighting bosses.
I'm finding it to be an interesting, inoffensive game, with simple graphics but decent challenge. It's not really non-linear, since while technically you can go wherever you can, that is arranged, your characters exploration ability, like in Metroid games, is strictly limited to stop you from going where you're not supposed to be. Since this is the TG16 version, it costs only $6 to get, instead of $8 as the Genesis version would, and that may be a better deal.
According to the Hardcore Gaming 101 article linked-to above, this game actually pulls off a Symphony of the Night at the start: the first level of this game is the last level of the previous game, with a character so powerful that he has no real chance of losing. Nice to see where that little idea got its start.
EDIT: Fixed formatting, added whitespace. (Also, last night I fixed the ANN link.)
Labels: classic, dragonscurse, ninjaturtles, retro, starfox, starfox64, tmnt, virtualconsole, wii
--JohnH at 02:57
Comment
[ 11 ]
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