Thanks to Junk Loen‘s excellent reply to episode eight of our podcast, I figured it might be worth our while to explain our completely unscientific Top 10 decision process. Those of you who tuned in to the live stream before the episode got a little sneak-peak at it, but for the rest of you, here goes…!
Well before recording, I ask each individual host and guest to bring their own well-thought-out Top 10 list to the table. The games on the list are to be placed in order of preference. I may request that people bring more than just ten on a list, especially in the case of the first list we ever did (since the eligible games were ridiculously numerous). Number 1 gets ten points, number 2 gets nine points, and so on. Each of us reads the list while someone tallies up the titles and the points. Once every game and point is accounted for, we count them all up and order them based on the cumulative totals.
This is how a game like the first arcade version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles can make the number three slot on our mutual list without necessarily being in any individual person’s top ten, and how Virtua Tennis can end up as our number one Dreamcast game without it necessarily being everyone’s number one Dreamcast game. The Top 10 lists represent the groups as a whole, rather than the single viewpoint of any particular host. Sure, it’s a completely unscientific method (and we make it entirely un-open to debate and shifting around after the numbers are totaled), but it’s more about the fun and collaboration than anything else.
Get the bunch of us together, put both Virtua Tennis and Rez in front of us… and it would appear that we’re collectively more likely to play Virtua Tennis.
Also, it’s really fun making you all squirm in your seats and type up responses.
Look for some more regular blog posts coming soon…!
Everyone else will be doing that same thing, but that’s OK… we don’t aim to be different; we aim to be us.
We will be recording our next podcast episode (yeah, fancy that!) this coming Saturday evening. We might even broadcast it live on Stickam! Stay tuned to my personal Twitter for details, but in the meantime, we want your stories.
Were you there for the biggest launch in entertainment history back on 9/9/99? What was your favorite game? Did you ever browse the web on your TV? Did you sink tons of hours into a console-based MMO? Did you scratch your GD-ROMs (as it was so easy to do) and never get to play a certain game ever again? Did you import the European version of a particular game so you could play it in English on the system it was actually developed for?
Give us your Dreamcast stories. Keep them relatively short and easily digestible so we can share them on the show. Write them out and e-mail them over to us at feedback (-at-) vgconvos *D*O*T* (-com-), or just leave a comment here on the post. Send them in soon, since we are recording on Saturday. The plan is to have the episode our for the ten-year anniversary on 9/9/09, especially since that specific evening we will all be busy playing The Beatles: Rock Band.
The first two Zelda games on NES were natural Virtual Console purchases for me. I play through the first game, usually over the course of one or two days, every couple years (on the NES itself, the Gamecube “Collector’s Edition” disc, and sometimes emulated, but now mostly on Virtual Console). The second game was one I never actually beat as a kid (I managed to get to Thunderbird and always died), but it was a game that I would “re-start” again and again since my youth and its original release. I typically never make it beyond the second palace before either getting bored, frustrated, or just moving along to something else as I tend to do with my Gaming A.D.D.™.
I’ve had a save file on my Virtual Console version set right after a completion of the first palace probably since first downloading the game when it came out back in June 2007. Maybe a month or so ago I was showing Andrew the NES setup down in our basement (along with Sesame Street ABC/123, one of the creepiest games of all time, which I will write about at some point when I come out from under the covers), and played through the first palace in Zelda II, yet again, this time on the ol’ cartridge. I was shocked to see that the save file of my childhood friend (“MIKE C.”), was still there on the game, complete with the little Triforce next to the icon to show he had beaten the game. That excitement reminded me of the Virtual Console version upstairs, so I decided to pick the game up again one day and see how far I would get before the same trend of boredom and/or frustration and/or Gaming A.D.D.™ took place.
Right now I am in the middle of the third palace (got the raft but have not gone to the boss), and have also ventured over to the eastern continent to save the child, learn two new magic spells, and learn the upward-thrust sword technique. As expected, the most difficult part so far was getting the hammer; if you make it past that point in the game, you are typically going to keep playing for at least a little while longer. With the hammer in tow (and not yet bored), I decided that I would keep playing the game until it frustrated me to the point that it was no longer fun. I especially wanted to get myself over to that eastern continent, something I probably hadn’t seen since I was a kid playing through the game for the first time.
Now that I am there, I find myself asking strange questions… like, do I actually… ya’ know… like this game…?
While I had played the first Legend of Zelda rather extensively through trades with friends and rentals, I actually owned my own personal copy of the second game before I owned the first. I was only six years old when it first came out in 1988, and while I do not remember exactly when I got the game, it couldn’t have been all that long after that (maybe within a year?). At that point in a child’s life, they can’t exactly “save up” allowance money to purchase new games or convince their parents to get the latest game, so it was an instance where you (“you” being “I”) got a game and played the ever living Hell out of it, since it was all I had (beyond what I received with the system, which was a collection of Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros. 2, and Sesame Street ABC/123, which was more for my sister than me… but, hey…).
But here I am, nearly twenty years after first playing the game. I have barely touched it since then, and yet still remember where everything is located (like jumping down the chimney in Darunia to learn the upward-thrust technique from the swordsman). If I can barely manage to play more than a single palace each time I try to play, do I actually like the game?
Let’s break it down almost review-style –
GAMEPLAY:
One of the criticisms people like to toss at Zelda II is that it plays so differently from the other games. I have seen the following response before, but I think it makes a whole lot of sense — there had only been one game so far, so how on Earth do you compare it to “all” the “other” games? Of course, this is a perspective being taken years later looking back on the game, but for the time, it seemed like a natural extension of the gameplay seen in the first game. You are still Link with a sword and shield; you are still wandering around a massive world free to go anywhere you want with the items available to you so far; you unlock new areas to explore with new items; you can venture in and out of levels/palaces without finishing them if you really want to; etc. Of course, the concepts of experience points, magic, and especially “lives” were incredibly different from the first game, but again… for the time, it seemed like a logical expansion on the original. Another point I have seen many times before is that the side-scrolling sections in Link’s Awakening appear to be nods to Zelda II, even with their Mario-enemy cameos; they feel like single-screen Zelda II palaces with elevators, jumps, and especially the “Skull” enemy (itself reminiscent of the “Bubble” foes from the first game’s dungeons).
This is still all hindsight, though. How about the controls, as in how Link actually moves and responds to you…? Back then and today I still feel that Link moves realistically and reacts appropriately for who he is. Quite frankly, once you obtain the downward-thrust sword technique, pro players can make Link look almost graceful in the way he hops and bounces off of foes, acting like a skipping-stone through caves and palace corridors.
Link’s jumping ability in Ocarina of Time seems to be an exact copy of his Zelda II technique, albeit no longer manually-controlled. Unlike Mario, Link does not and cannot jump three or four times his own height. There is a certain “weight” to him that grounds him in reality, no matter how unrealistic and fantastic the scenario is. It still feels a little “stiff” like many of the early NES games, but was a clear mid-way point between the first generation of games and the masterpieces of technological wonder that were the system’s swan songs.
GRAPHICS:
While the first game by no means features an overly-saturated, lush landscape… the second game does feel like it has a more subdued, muted color palette. With the exception of the green forests and grass on the overworld, this section of Hyrule seems to be a rather dull place.
Palaces are entirely single-color, caves are either dark or lit up in orange… heck, the most colorful things in the game are probably the enemies! This may have been a conscious decision to set them apart from their backgrounds, now that I step back to look at it more closely. Even Link’s outfit is a somewhat-desaturated version of what we (now) traditionally think of as his green tunic when placed upon the various backgrounds. Sure, it was partially a limitation of the console and the number of colors it can display, but it all comes together to form “Link” in a very special way.
The game absolutely has its own aesthetic, one that was later used as “inspiration” for plenty of other games. The overworld was sparse and its enemy icons looked ridiculous, and as mentioned the colors were somewhat dull… but at the time, nothing else looked like it. Even today, it retains its own individual look, and one that seems to have been referenced and expanded upon in style by games like Ocarina of Time.
MUSIC:
Despite the score being composed by Akito Nakatsuka (rather than veteran Koji Kondo), few people will claim that Zelda II has “bad” music. While the first game’s main melody is only briefly hinted at with the beginning of the overworld theme, this approach would return with Ocarina of Time… and it seemed to work out pretty OK there, too. The true testament to Zelda II‘s score is the inclusion of the palace music in Super Smash Bros. Melee, and a medley of the normal and final palace songs in Brawl. This one haunting piece seems to have survived the test of time more so than any other element from the game, and for good reason. Folks tend to overlook the rest of the game’s score, however; the town music laid the groundwork for later songs like the Kakariko Village theme in its simplicity and tone, while the cave music got you on the edge of your seat in anticipation of whether or not another Daria was going to come swinging with some flying axes.
Needless to say, the score is phenomenal, and near-universally enjoyed. It contributes quite a bit to the overall enjoyment of the game.
DIFFICULTY:
This is not an easy game. Even as an NES-generation child, I could not defeat Thunderbird in the final palace. Perhaps the first clue you get about the game’s difficulty is when you wander into the northern desert cave before getting the candle; if you somehow manage to jump past the bats and fire pits, that Goriya is nailing you with his boomerang.
As I mentioned earlier, the true test of might is simply obtaining the hammer sometime after beating the first palace. If you can make your way past that one, final, red Daria… chances are you have the chops to continue. Even after that, though, the game does not hold back. The Ironknuckles are particularly difficult to deal with if you do not play defensively (something you rarely had to do in the first game), and choosing the wrong path in the third palace without first confronting that blue Ironknuckle trapped inside the blocks means you’re going to be battling a red one in front of you while the blue one throws knives at you from behind. Hitting a little, floating bubble while jumping across a pit invariably means you are falling to your death. Not grinding up a little magic-meter extension means you probably will not have enough magic points to cast that “Life” or even “Shield” spell when confronting the palace boss.
The game is unforgiving, but mostly fair. Some of the enemies move rather unpredictably, and the Mace Thrower can be difficult to get some inside-range on, but perseverance means you will ultimately learn the general gameplay patterns and move forward.
LEVEL DESIGN:
I have recently been playing through Retro Game Challenge on the DS. The final game, Robot Ninja Haggle Man 3, is a game in the vein of something like Metroid mashed up with some later Castlevania and a little old-school Ninja Gaiden or Shinobi; you are free to explore the world in the standard side-scrolling, action-game view with your sword, shuriken, jumps, etc. You can upgrade your abilities by purchasing “gears”, which grant you higher jumps, floating, powered-up shuriken blasts, and more. I have only barely played a couple minutes into the first Metroid game, and I have only played Castlevania games pre-Symphony of the Night. I have relatively little experience in the open-world “Metroidvania” style of games, and yet I find myself absolutely in love. There is no doubt in my mind that my PS3 & PSP will soon have a copy of Symphony of the Night on them, and I am even more excited to play Super Metroid.
How does this all relate to Zelda II, though?
You could make a somewhat-solid argument that Zelda II falls in line with this style of game. In fact, Jeremy Parish has done so. The palaces in Zelda II have some degree of “open-world” to them, albeit on a much smaller scale. The “standard” (again, only the second game here…) Zelda tropes of keys to open locked doors remain in your path, but upgraded magic spells like “Jump” and the glove which allows you to break blocks are what lead you to new areas in these palaces. Again, you are free to wander in and out of palaces as you choose; if all you want to do is grab that palace’s special item and move on without defeating the boss, feel free (similar to how you can play the first game). You will eventually have to come back to defeat him to place the crystal at the end of the level if you want to open up the final palace, but it is all left up to you to decide how and in what kind of order.
In this respect, Zelda II almost seems like a “Metroidvania LITE” gameplay experience. Perhaps it acting as the basis for any familiarity I have with that type of gameplay and level design is what now has me interested in going back and checking out some of these major hits that I somehow missed over the years.
HILARITY:
Who can forget “I AM ERROR.“…? Even when accurate to the original Japanese script (as Error was), the half-translated nature of the game combined with the lack of character space to get across the necessary information certainly led to an unparalleled experience. Between Link actually “speaking” aloud for what may be the only time in the franchise’s history (“I FOUND A MIRROR UNDER THE TABLE.“), the in-retrospect pondering about what exactly goes on inside that lady’s house when Link’s health is restored, and the oft-seen “GAME OVER RETURN OF GANON” (brought about by sprinkling your blood on the big boss’ remains, mind you)… few games come close to the written-text experience of Zelda II.
SO DO I LIKE THE DARN THING?!
That’s a tough call. It is incredibly difficult to look back on your own personal history and familiarity with something and try to understand if you genuinely like it, or only think you like it due to that familiarity. Then again, if I am able to look back on things like He-Man and wonder how on Earth I ever liked it, I suppose I could do the same with video games and take a slightly-more objective look.
With that in mind, I think I do like Zelda II. I like it more than just a historical snapshot in a series that contains two of my favorite games of all-time (the original and Link’s Awakening), but I also appreciate it on that level of timely-significance. I like it more than just a piece of my childhood gaming adventures. I appreciate many of the artistic choices made in its development. The level design continues to intrigue me. The enemies become more and more frightening as the game progresses, certainly keeping me on the edge of my seat. The game is difficult, but not impossible (Hello, there, other game from my youth called Battletoads), which provides an incredible sense of accomplishment.
It is constantly called the “black sheep” of the franchise (typically with Majora’s Mask not far behind), but this should not be taken pejoratively. Many of its elements have stood the test of time to resurface in other games (the temple music, Dark Link), proving their historical significance and underlying genius. The fact that the game itself has been re-released an appropriate, but not overwhelming, number of times (GBA, Gamecube “Collector’s Edition” disc, Virtual Console) also speaks volumes.
Zelda II is a good game… it might even be great. I think I like it.
Meri is digging through some old X-Men comic issues right now, and showed me a hilarious advertisement for Sears, and specifically their Nintendo inventory. Check this out from The Uncanny X-Men issue 247 from 1989:
The first thing we noticed was the swapped screenshots for Zelda II and Castlevania II. It also lists Super Mario Bros. II and shows a screenshot from the first game (and clearly from 1-1 of SMB1, and not the Japanese SMB2).
What really got me though was the representation of Bowser, King of the Koopas. Take another look at him:
He is really freakin’ scary, there. The thing is, it’s not all that far removed from how he is actually represented in the first Super Mario Bros.:
He was very clearly more “dinosaur”-inspired in the 1980s, and a rather frightening turtle-dinosaur-monster-man-thing at that. To today’s crowd, he’s almost unrecognizable in this original form. Bowser has become a rather sympathetic character over the years. Between his bumbling ways in the American cartoons, his constant team-ups in the Mario RPG series, collaborative sports events with the heroes… even when he is being evil, he’s a very lovable evil monster. Take a look at a modern representation of Bowser from Super Smash Bros. Brawl:
He is much more rounded-off, has more color to him (remember, “bright” = “nice”, and “dark” = “evil”…!), smiles a lot more… you just want to reach over and hug him!
As you can tell, I do not have a whole lot of commentary to add; I mostly just find it fascinating how characters change and evolve over time (both in- and out-of game), and wanted to share!
I’m pretty sure that on episode seven of the podcast we mentioned playing You’re In The Movies on the Xbox 360. It took me forever to re-borrow the game (and then its camera, because you can’t even get to the main menu without it) from Andrew, but I have finally exported and uploaded our masterpiece.
Starring Jeff as the evil overlord, and also Andrew, Meri, and Bryce as… well… whatever it is they are.
Yeeeeeeep. Sorry about the page-breaking with the embed.
Hey, we should record another podcast episode at some point in the near future.
It is certainly a fair question to ask why I would need to own three PS2s in the same house. What kind of setup could possibly require this? We certainly never intended to have three, but our logic for doing so may be sounder than even I originally thought.
It started out with the original PS2. While I did not get it immediately after launch, it was soon enough into its lifespan that it is the original launch model. This has been one of the most-used consoles in my lifetime, with a gaming library (both in terms of global releases and my own personal collection) that exceeds anything that has come before.
Since I had little interest in modding my system to play Japanese games (and genuinely having zero interest in bootlegging or “playing backups”), I opted to go with a genuine Japanese PS2 to supplement the American one. I ended up getting a Hell of a deal on one (yet another launch model) from a fellow staff member at AnimeNEXT many years back, just in time for the Japanese release of DragonBall Z 3 (“Budokai 3″). It served me quite well over the years, allowing me to play my precious DBZ games with both their Japanese voices and music… not to mention cheap, English-language “Asian versions” of games (Tekken 5), and plenty of other fighting games that either never came out here, or came out years later (Neo-Geo Fighting Coliseum, Virtua Fighter 2 [Sega Ages version]), etc.
So here we are in the present-day. At the end of last March I asked you all whether or not the PS2′s $99 price drop affected you in any way. Would you get a new system to replace a broken one? Supplement the first one for use in a different room of the house? Maybe even get your first PS2 ever? The comments seemed to run the gamut of all those scenarios, but none of them really applied to me at the time.
Here I am in the new house, though, with plenty of rooms, plenty of TVs, plenty of newer systems and games… and yet a desire to still play some PS2 games from time to time, both classics that we also break out to play, as well as games I just never got around to playing.
Originally, I set it up so that the two PS2s (American and Japanese) were hooked up to my old TV via component up in our loft. This was an easy and convenient way to still let me play some PS2 games since our PS3 model (the 40 GB mass market one) does not have backwards compatibility.
However, as convenient as this was, it posed a few problems. For starters, it would now be impossible to play Dance Dance Revolution. While there might be enough room up in the loft… really, no-one needs to be stomping around up here. Also, while it’s nice and comfy up here with a couch, it is not quite the same as wirelessly playing games down on the new HDTV in the living room. We enjoy playing some old favorites when company is over (namely Capcom vs SNK 2, Street Fighter Alpha 3, etc.)… and while we do have newer games available to us that will eventually become staples, it really isn’t that much fun to say “Forget the nice, big TV with surround sound… let’s go play up in the loft.”
When we received our entire security deposit back from the apartment folks (which we did not anticipate at all due to the cats taking a loving to picking at several areas of carpet and molding), we quickly decided that getting a slim PS2 to hook up to the HDTV in the living room was no longer “overboard”. Here is the current PS2 setup we have throughout the house:
The Japanese PS2 remains in the same place. The majority of play-time the system sees is typically single-player DBZ games on my own, so there is no problem just crashing up on the couch in the loft with it on the old SDTV. It is still hooked up via component, so it looks the best it is going to look on an old tube TV.
The new “slim” PS2 is hooked up to the new HDTV (also via component) down in the living room. It hangs out with its other fellow small system, the Wii, in a door in the cabinet. Thanks to suggestions from folks on Twitter when asked, we decided to go with the Logitech wireless PS2 controller to keep things tidy. It was a great recommendation, and is a fairly sturdy-feeling replacement for an actual wired PS2 controller. Should we need to get some two-player action going on, the wired controller it came with lives in the drawer above this door.
The most interesting of the bunch is the original American PS2, which has been moved down into the basement. One of the reasons we choose this house over a couple others in this development was its finished basement. The colors are… well, they are certainly “finished basement” colors rather than “rest of the house” colors… but that is neither here nor there. The old system has essentially been transformed back into a DDR-only machine on a crappy old TV. Hooked up via old fashioned composite cables, high-quality audio and video are nowhere in our mind when we want to bust out the old Red Octane Ignition 2.0 pads (seen in the reflection of my highly-artistic photography) for some DDR. In case we want to play some of the Japanese PS1 games, the original PS1 and its Pro Action Replay patiently wait in silence. Once we crash after playing for a while, the NES is just a switch away.
This all comes full-circle to those questions I posed back in March: why would you purchase a PS2 at this point in time? I read all of your responses, and now you have read my own. This past May, sales of the PS2 were down 32%… but they still sold 117,000 PS2s.
It doesn’t take much more than a good coupon to drive me into game-buying-mode. When I came across Gamestop’s 20%-off coupon for used Gamecube games over at Cheap Ass Gamer, I was all over that. What would I get? Luigi’s Mansion? Maybe another Resident Evil? I kept thinking to myself what some cheap games would be to fill in some embarrassing-gaming-holes on the Cube, but decided I would just go and peruse to see what was there without much in the way of specific targets.
I had totally forgotten that a couple years ago I picked up a boxed copy of Donkey Kong Jungle Beat and its included “DK Bongos”. Gamestop had a floor full of them for ~$20 (and extra bongos for about the same price), some time ahead of the deluge of upcoming, additional, crazy amounts of fake plastic instruments.
I pretty much picked up Jungle Beat and its “perphs” with the intention of eventually grabbing the Konga games. Up until this weekend I had not seen them sitting around on the used game shelves… either that, or since I had forgotten I was looking for them, I didn’t see them even if they happened to be in hidden in plain view. Much to my surprise and delight, I saw copies of both domestic Donkey Konga games on the “Used” shelves this weekend! It was $9.99, so with the 20%-off coupon, we’re talking about $8 for the game.
After a quick scroll-through of the song lists in the games on the iPhone (thank you, mobile ‘net access!) I decided that the first game was the clear winner of the song-list-battle. The Mario and Zelda themes? The dub Pokemon theme? Oh, c’mon. Sold.
I’ve played a little bit of Taiko Drum Master (import and domestic) on the PS2 courtesy of Andrew, so I had a pretty good idea of what I was getting into in terms of gameplay. While I was not smashing fake plastic drums with fake wooden drum sticks, I was at least hitting fake plastic drums with my hands. Hit the left drum, hit the right drum, hit them both at the same time… easy enough. The one gameplay aspect I had to look up online was the blue/white sparkly icon on the timeline. While my copy of the game came with its cover and generic insert, it did not come with the actual instruction book. Turns out I have to clap my hands on those icons (having totally missed the little microphone/clap sensor on top in between the drum heads). Once I figured out what I was doing, it was clear sailing.
I decided to play on the Gamecube itself (as opposed to via the Wii) hooked up to an old tube TV due to the fact that it was a rhythm-based game, and I’ve had it up to here with lag (also correctly assuming that Nintendo would have nothing built into the game to compensate for said lag on newer A/V setups). I had a pretty good time in the 30-45 minutes I spent with the game last night (having already played R.B.I. 3 on the NES in the basement, and FFIV: The After Years on the Wii in the living room, now playing on the Gamecube up in the loft). My hands had enough of the smashing and clapping after about that much time, though I expect I could have easily played for an hour had I not already spent an entire day doing various activities around the house.
The “licensed” songs that I did play were probably the best of the bunch (“All the Small Things“, “The Impression That I Get“, “Right Here, Right Now“), and I can’t see myself visiting some of the more juvenile ones all that often (“The Loco-Motion“, “Campfire Medley“). The Nintendo-specific songs were all a blast to play, especially the bongo-ified version of the main Zelda theme.
As you complete songs (on either its equivalent of the “easy” and “medium” single-player difficulties available by default), you accumulate coins to spend in its in-game store. Yes, it’s another coin-collect-athon in the traditional Nintendo sense, and it fits right in with the rhythm game unlock system of the day; think of spending money to unlock songs in Guitar Hero II or playing a certain number of songs in DDR to unlock new courses.
While you can spend the coins on “expert” levels of songs (as I did for the dub Pokemon theme song, which playing will accumulate a higher number of coins), you can also spend coins on new sound effects for the bongos. You have standard bongo sounds and NES-style beeps available at the start, and I decided that I would spend some cash on Zelda-inspired sound effects to complement the default ones. After selecting a song, banging the bongos to the left and right allows you to select these custom sound effects, so now I am banging out heart-collecting sounds and Link yelps. These custom sound effects cost significantly more than “expert” versions of songs, so you’ll have to decide on your own which kinds of unlockables you want to shoot for first.
I certainly enjoyed what I have played so far, and see myself having another couple rounds with the game in the near future. More so than either of the North American Donkey Konga releases, though, I have found myself incredibly enthralled by the prospect of importing Donkey Konga 3. Its track list is impressive from both a gamer perspective (a song from Katamary Damacy, plenty of Famicom remixes) and an anime perspective (“CHA-LA HEAD-CHA-LA” from DragonBall Z, “Mezase Pokemon Master” from Pokemon, “Re-write” from Fullmetal Alchemist). The going price on eBay seems to be $25-40, which is pretty fair considering it’s no longer available new on sites like Play-Asia.
Of course, here’s my biggest problem:
Since unpacking the DK Bongos, I have even more fake plastic instruments sitting around on my floor with no real place to appropriately store them.
(I also picked up XIII on the Gamecube for about $3. I know nothing about it other than that it’s rated “M” and was $3 + 20% off).
As a follow-up to some material covered in episode seven of our podcast, here are a couple quick bits of information and reading:
- At E3, Microsoft announced that they had one more title to bring over to “Xbox Originals”… and then it’s done. We can probably safely assume that no more software updates will be coming to the 360 to allow for additional disc-based backwards compatibility. (Link: IGN)
- Sony officially unveiled the PSP Go at E3 to no-one’s surprise. The UMD slot is indeed gone, and no official statement has been given with regards to how consumers with existing UMD-based games will be able to possibly transfer them to their new hardware. Current rumors involve kiosks set up at stores, or a trade-in program. Additionally, the PSP Go is completely incompatible with all existing PSP accessories (including mini-USB cables) due to a new multifuction port. (Link: Engadget)
- No “Portable Virtual Console” was announced by Nintendo for the DSi. Do you think it’s still coming?
- We didn’t get a chance to cover every single last thing about video game consoles and online connectivity, so if you’re up for a little more reading, CNet has covered a little bit more. While it’s not the best in terms of breadth of information covered or even straight-up writing style, you’ll probably find something of interest. I definitely need to do some kind of “Fond Memories…!” segment or something regarding Sega Channel (much to Andrew’s chagrin, I’m sure).
I never finished either New Super Mario Bros. (DS) or Super Mario Galaxy (Wii). Both came with extreme excitement and anticipation on my end, but something about them just didn’t click with me. I may not be able to put my finger on it with Galaxy, but the DS game? I can tell you exactly what it was and why that caused me to never finish the game, despite starting it up twice:
The save system.
For those who don’t know, you cannot save whenever you want in New Super Mario Bros. You can save when you clear a castle (mid-stage or end-boss), just like you were able to in Super Mario World. If you want to save at any other point in the game, you had to spend special coins that you collected throughout regular gameplay; three of these coins were hidden away in each stage. Despite this actually being an expansion on the save system from World, this was a major deterrent to completion (and even overall enjoyment) for me. From my perspective, if I am playing a portable game, I do not necessarily know how long I have to play before I need to do something else. The whole point is that the game is portable and can conform to my busy schedule. If I have to schedule my saving around the game rather than myself, I should just be at home playing a console game. It did not even matter that I always had plenty of coins to spare, and was probably coming up on a castle, anyway… it was the principle of the matter, to me.
This is what concerns and intrigues me about New Super Mario Bros. Wii. If you take a look at the E3 trailer, you can clearly see Mario collecting what appears to be large coins, and a special slot on the left that fills up as you collect these three coins:
My question to myself is this: if it was so much of a problem on DS, will the (apparent, but not confirmed) same save system in the new console version provide the same frustration? Or, like the older versions, will the fact that it is on a console with (presumably) more time to dedicate to it end up with it not even mattering?
How about you all? Did the DS version’s save system drive you away, or did it not even matter? Any concerns or thoughts about the new one?
Not wanting to seem entirely biased in one direction (though it’s mostly true), it looks like I have to cough up a little disappointment due to the fact that in-game content and DLC for The Beatles: Rock Band will be incompatible with other versions of Rock Band, which extends to not being able to export from one game to the other.
This, of course, comes after I snarkily turn my nose up at the Guitar Hero franchise and its lack of compatibility between games from the very get-go of Activision’s take-over.
I will give Harmonix somewhat of a pass, since with the inclusion of new features like three-part harmonies, it might be rather difficult to process back into the single-vocal-track for the standard Rock Band games. I guess I was holding out hope that it would simply strip out the harmony parts and bring just the lead vocals over. If anyone could make that work, it would have been Harmonix.
I’m still waiting to hear whether or not Guitar Hero 5 is going to offer compatibility with World Tour DLC and especially its on-disc songs (since I personally haven’t purchased any DLC for it). As much as I don’t want to fall for Activision’s shenanigans again, the on-disc artist list is getting a little too difficult for me to ignore. Thrice, Brand New, Sunny Day Real Estate… graaaaaaaar! If I can bring my World Tour on-disc songs into 5, I might consider picking it up. Harmonix set the bar on this one, and I don’t know if Activision can ignore that yet again.
Was a podcast recorded last weekend? I dunno. Maybe.
Conversation 009: Shooting the Shit and E-mails: (Download MP3)
About "Video Game Conversations"
We are just another blog and podcast about video games. What makes us different, though? We are not 12 years old, do not necessarily have the same "gamer interests" most people think of, do not even necessarily have the time to be playing these games in the first place... but have a ton of fun doing it, anyway.
