Mario's Wacky Worlds and the Zelda CD-I games

I got a new toy yesterday - something I had passed up a few years back (presumably because these babys were really really expensive and didn't offer much bang for the buck). I just got a shiny almost new Philips CD-I player. This was one of those multi-media systems that came out around the same time as the Playstation, Saturn, 3DO and the Jaguar and touted itself as a "multi-media" device. It played music CDs, Video CDs and special CD-I (I for "Interactive") discs, some of which qualified as video games. When I caught wind of a lost Mario game that was fabled to exist for the system, I dug and dug until I found a copy of it on the net. Since there aren't any actually working emulators for the CD-I system, I was forced to purchase one in order to play this Mario game that never was. I was surprised to discover a small but rather dedicated fan following for this platform.

The lost Mario game was about what you can expect from a very early alpha prototype. The levels are there but there is no continuity between them. The code for Mario dying doesn't exist yet so he can't be hurt - there are no bottomless pits. The system has to be reset to get back to the menu because there is not in-game menu or way to exit the stage. The stages themselves would have been impressive if released back in 1993. And the control is surprisingly close to the the real Super Mario World, which, based on what I've read is really impressive. It's beyond the base capabilities of the CD-I system. If this game had been completed, it may have actually saved the CD-I format. It makes me wonder about how many other little gems like this were just washed away into obscurity by money troubles.

This platform is also host to an infamous trio of games (I use the term loosely) based on the Legend of Zelda series. These were the fallout from a deal that Nintendo made with Philips back when the company had been commissioned to provide the CD-ROM add-on for the Super Famicom/Super Nintendo (around 1992). I also acquired this trio of games and I have to say after having played them first hand that they're not horribly scar-you-for-life bad like everyone likes to say. True, they don't come close to measuring up to the standard set by the real thing, but if there had been a competent artist/animator working on them, they wouldn't have been so craptacular. It looks very much like someone was trying to storyboard everything to get the syncing and voice acting done with every intention of going back with a proper artist and re-animating everything. The games Link: Faces of Evil and Zelda: Wand of Gamelon were animated and voiced with intentional humor. The animation itself was surprisingly fluid, albiet still badly drawn, but these games weren't even trying to be serious Zelda games. Once you get past the animation sequences, there's actually a halfway passable platform game underneath, in the vein of Zelda II. I think the biggest shortcomming of these two games has to be the fact that the animation and dialogue were clearly aimed at younger children, but the difficulty is so high that I doubt many young children would enjoy playing them. The third game, Zelda's adventure was probably the worst of the lot. I was actually surprised by this because I had heard from several sources that it was the best. While the game actually makes a stab at being a proper RPG (it actually has an equipment menu), everything in the game is a digitized bitmap (ala Mortal Kombat and Pit Fighter) which means that there was no art direction whatsoever. The acting and plot are laughable, largely because they are attempting to be so serious. Frame rate wasn't something that we used to think about back in the days of 2D gaming, but it actually becomes an issue here.

In conclusion, I agree that these are clearly the worst Zelda games ever made, but given the standard set by Zelda games in general they're aren't absolutely horrible.

Why I Am a Console Junkie

I've been a die-hard Nintendo fanboy for as long as I've known what Nintendo was. When I first saw the NES and what it did, some magical switch clicked in my head and I've been hooked ever since. I remember getting into arguments that nearly led to blows with Sega fans. Silly? Sure, but I was a kid and what is childhood but a chance to be serious when you're being silly?

Flash forward over a dozen years, and I find myself still having arguments with other games over platform preference, but now the argment isn't Nintendo vs. Sega, it's Console vs. PC.

Now the arguments in favor of PC gaming have always been the following:

• The keyboard and mouse setup offers the ultimate precise control
• PC's are modular and can be way more powerful than consoles
• PC's are useful for a lot more than just playing games - Teamspeak, for example.

These are the points that I find myself debating with PC enthusiasts, and here are my rebuttals:

• Although I freely admit that mouse control allows quicker, more precise targeting than joystick control, it is ergonomically unsound and inferior for traversing game environments.
  
• Although PC's can have higher technical specs than consoles, they are very seldom actually superior because PC hardware is general use and not specialized like a console (in other words, consoles can do more with less because they were made with a specific purpose in mind), this also makes PC's more expensive than a console of comparable power, and much less compatible. PC games tend to have a large number of bugs simply owing to the fact that the game makers have to account for such a diverse variety of possible configurations. This has led to a tendancy of game makers to knowingly release deeply flawed games with the itention of maybe releasing a patch later when they work out what's wrong. Consoles, on the other hand, generally have a static configuration so the game makers only have to make it work on one platform to know that it will play properly for everyone who buys it.
• PC's are useful for other things, but that's not what this debate is about. This debate is about whether PC's are better game machines and they are not.

I will sum up my whole reason for being a console junkie: In 1998 I purchased a copy of Final Fantasy VII for the PC. My present computer, which is well over 15 times as powerful as the Playstation in every conceivable respect, will not play it. The game was designed for Windows 95 and will not run properly on XP, and the manufacturer has absolutely no intention of correcting this problem. So, if I want to play Final Fantasy VII, I have to go back to the Playstation. Of the very few PC titles I have purchased, most of them will not play on my current PC. One could argue that if I had kept all of the old hardware like I kept my console hardware that I'd still be able to play those old games, but my PS2 still plays them fine and if Sony is to be believed, my PS3 will as well.

Oblivion - some chinks in the horse armor

I've now been playing Oblivion for about 50 hours and I have a few more things to say. The game is still phenominal, has yet to become boring or repetitive, and I'm sure I'm only about a third of the way through with it. Some of the newness has worn off, however. I'm up to 14 complete XBOX 360 lockups. I'm not really surprised by this, evidently this is hallmark of Bethesda games. Nor am I really annoyed with it. With a game as rich and complex as this, my programmer's mind is telling me that these are acceptable losses. There were a couple of things that I do take issue with, however. I've run into at least three quests where I had to revert to a previous save and begin all over to complete because glitches or poor design made them unfinishable - one of which was part of the core story! Bethesda ought to worry about correcting these snafus, not charging people extra money for horse armor.

And while I'm on that subject, I have to say that Bethesda ought to be ashamed of themselves for trying to profit from something so frivolous and stupid. Expansion packs are one thing, but charging someone for horse armor is downright petty. I hope the whole concept dies a short but painful DIVX-like death. I, for one, will never be so stupid as to spend real money on special game items. It is my hope that gamers will never fall into this trap that Microsoft and Sony are hoping to trap us in where everything is virtual, and you spend money on intangable things.

Microsoft envisions a future where all game content is downloaded from the Internet. While this may seem more convienent, it is a very bad thing. For starters, it destroys any real value that your games have. You won't be able to sell your used games because there won't be anything to sell. You won't be able to let friends borrow your games because Microsoft will not let you - I can say with absolute certaintly that their opinion on the matter will be that if your friend wants to play the game, he/she can come to your house to do it, or buy a copy his/her self. The publishers will have complete control over what you can play and when you can play it. And if that wasn't bad enough, the bargain bins and used game shops which allow so many people to enjoy games without dropping tons of cash will be done away with. So I urge you to resist this trend - don't pay to download games from XBOX Live! and whatever you do, don't waste money on virtual items and cheats.

24 The Game and the progressive scan easter egg

I recently picked up 24 the game for $35 at a local EB. Being an avid fan of the show, I thought it'd be interesting to see how good (or bad) it was. From a story perspective, it's just like the show - in fact it seems to be the remains of the original 3rd season - that is to say chronologically it takes place between season 2 and 3 and features a lot of interesting "oh, that's when that happned" moments. The herkey-jerkey camera bobs just like the show's action sequences giving you a feeling of urgency, and although PS2 graphics are really feeling their age at this point, it manages to pull off a passable in that category. The inane and wildly inaccurate techno-babble is here too - for example they show a picture of what is clearly an encrypted code generator used by banks and the like, but inaccurately describe it as a PDA, and the stereotypical nerdy guy has to try to decrypt its "hard drive" to get at the info (neither PDAs nor code generators have hard drives). I've only played through the first 8 hours or so, and I've been stuck wondering what to do or where to go at least twice - my little guide arrows were either gone, or pointing me somewhere I couldn't go. The level design needed a bit more tweaking, but I've played worse. At the same time, the game is entertaining. The interrogation sequences are clever if repetitive. All in all I'd give it a 7 out of 10.

There was one point of much frustration that I hope to save you from. The game supports progressive scan (which is a big plus in my book) but good luck finding instructions for turning it on. After reading through the manual and coming up with zilch, I called 2k games for support and the scottish guy who answered the phone scratched his head, told me it was my TV, then said that the game actually performs some sort of magical evaluation and evidently decided that my TV wasn't worthy of progressive scan. When I explained the absurdity and technological impossibility of that to him (it's pretty much a one-way street, the Playstation might be able to tell that the cables were connected, but there is no return signal for evaluating the capabilities of the TV it's plugged into), he thought it might be that my Playstation was too old, and then told me (it sounded like he might have been reading this somewhere) that PS2's before model 50000 weren't capable of outputting in progressive scan. When I explained that I have several games that seem to have ignored that limitation and display in progressive scan anyway, then maybe it was only available in the UK/PAL version of the game. When I asked him why the back of the box clearly stated progressive scan as a feature, more head scratching ensued. Remembering the way that games like Star Ocean III and Radiata Stories require you to hold down X and (triangle) as the game starts up to access the progressive scan menu, I tried that and lo and behold it brought up the secret progressive scan menu. The 2k games support guy was very relieved to hear that I wouldn't be grilling him any longer. He was a nice enough fellow, but 2k games ought to at least give these guys some technical manuals for these games if they're paying for me to call all the way to the UK to talk to them.

Laser Tag

Growing up in the 80's I have vague recollections of Laser Tag and it's rival product Photon (at least I think that's what it's called). I never played it when I was little but I always wanted to. So when I was at my nephew's 6^th birthday party this weekend and was invited to play “Lazer Tag” with him and a bunch of his 6-8 year-old friends, I wasn't sure what I was in for. I'm fairly certain that the Laser Tag of the 80's was never quite like what I experienced. For starters, the equipment, a gun shaped like a UPC scanner, and vest with glowing target areas, made everyone look vaguely like a Wal-Mart employee going to war. With the soundtrack from the N64 Goldeneye and the movie Mortal Kombat blasting in the background, a dark maze with strobe lights flashing, blacklights giving everything an ethereal glow, and 7 other people running around trying to shoot you with lasers, it was just like an FPS - the most tiring one I've ever played. After 15 minutes of that, my feet felt like lead and my lungs felt like they had been scraped out with a wire brush (I'm still coughing crap up that I swear has been there since middle school, but I guess that's what happens when you weigh in at nearly 300lb and don't exercise, then suddenly run around like you're seven years old again). That was the best “multi-player” fun I've ever had. Just goes to show you, despite FPS Doug's insistence to the contrary, RL is waay better than FPS.