Monday, March 4, 2024

Thirty Six Years

 

You'll immediately act to protect
the rights to your games, but when it
comes to actually selling those games
to your customers, you never
seem to be in much of a rush.
Why is that, Nintendo?
(image from Electronic Fun)
(this was from 1982. Yes, Nintendo
has always been like this.)

 

The Switch emulator Yuzu was recently taken offline, after a legal battle with Nintendo that Yuzu's creators Tropic Haze realized they couldn't possibly win. I'm ambivalent about the news. Generally, I'm reluctant to emulate games for a system that's still actively supported... with digital game prices as low as they are, and with hardware demands as high as they are for emulating recent game systems, it's kind of pointless. 

However, the Switch isn't going to be supported by Nintendo forever. Then what? What happens to those games when the system gets orphaned?  What happens when the servers holding the games are shut down and you can no longer download them? What happens when the systems themselves begin to deteriorate and can no longer play games without extensive repair work... work that Nintendo itself won't do, and the average user cannot do?

Nintendo's solution for customers is to just wait for Nintendo to release the games again on a more modern system. And wait we do, for years or even decades, until those coveted titles are released at Nintendo's leisure, for its own hardware, on its own terms. If you're lucky, maybe you'll be able to buy the game you wanted twenty years after its debut. If you're less fortunate, maybe Nintendo will let you borrow the game from its online service, as long as you keep paying the subscription fee. If you're not lucky at all, you won't get it at all... as fans of the Mother/Earthbound series will attest.

The lion's share of Donkey Kong
ports back in the day sucked big
Donkey DONG. The Intellivision port
is an especially tragic example.
(image from My Brain on Games)

 

Everybody's been a victim of Nintendo's fickle and arrogant nature at some point. Personally, I had to wait thirty-six years for Nintendo to put its seal of approval on a worthwhile home version of the arcade game Donkey Kong. Yes, there were home versions including one for the NES, but thanks to the limitations of consumer technology in the early 1980s, none of these were arcade perfect... and very few came anywhere near that standard. Even the Donkey Kong port for Nintendo's own game system came up lacking. (That sure is a funny way to celebrate the game that built your brand, by pissing out a conversion with a quarter of the content removed.)

Eventually, after spin-offs on the Game Boy and shiny CGI platformers on the Super NES and god knows how many regurgitations of NES Donkey Kong on other systems, Nintendo finally got around to giving us the actual arcade version of Donkey Kong, with no compromises and no annoying strings attached.* This took them thirty-six years. I was a child when Donkey Kong debuted in arcades. I was a bitter forty-something by the time I could legally enjoy that experience at home. I went from freckles to liver spots in the time it took Nintendo to give us a Donkey Kong that actually was Donkey Kong.

For the sake of game preservation, some people just won't wait for Nintendo to part the clouds and shine its digital blessings down upon the world. Recently, there was a Virtual Boy emulator released for the Nintendo 3DS, the only system with a realistic chance of replicating the Virtual Boy's unique 3D display. For the record, Red Viper recreates the experience quite well... but the record must also state that for the nine years it was actively supported, the 3DS was never given an official Virtual Boy emulator. 

Nintendo had a golden opportunity to preserve that moment in gaming history for future generations. Because it wasn't an especially flattering moment for them, they simply ignored it... and we're supposed to do the same for the sake of respecting copyright law? If Nintendo won't give its customers fair and reasonable access to its past work, someone else must.

* There's a port of the arcade Donkey Kong in Donkey Kong 64, but the steps for unlocking it reads like the twelve labors of Hercules. Just... just give me the damn thing. What the hell, Rare?

** It was twenty! Twenty years since Ninja 5-0 was released! That comedian on YouTube was right; time sucks.


Sunday, February 25, 2024

Virtual Virtual Boy

Someone just released a Virtual Boy emulator for the Nintendo 3DS, the system where it makes the most sense. I just tested it out earlier today, and let me tell you, it's GOOD. Okay, the touch-based file menu really stinks, but the games run at full speed and adapt themselves extremely well to the system's 3D hardware. Why Nintendo didn't officially give us Virtual Boy games on this hardware is a complete mystery. Talk about a missed opportunity.

Friday, February 9, 2024

The Party's Over, and the Third Party Begins

 

"Oh no, Xbox Series!"

Poor, poor Microsoft. All the money in the world and you still couldn't buy a clue. Anything Phil Spencer says in next week's press conference will only serve to confirm gamers' suspicions that the Xbox brand has been dead in the water for years, since Don Mattrick's fateful decision in 2013 to turn the Xbox One into a consumer-hostile Pandora's Box of DRM and surveillance nightmares. 

No game system could recover from that, and although the Xbox Series is certainly a better console than what had come before it, it was doomed by its manufacturer's past mistakes and hubris, just as Sega's Dreamcast was in 2001, and Nintendo's Wii U was in 2017. Yet again, I'm stuck with an abandoned game system, an underdog of the console wars that was run over by its competitors, then scraped off the road and deposited into a shallow grave by its owner.

You'd think I would learn by now. At least I'll have the foresight to scoop up all the heavily discounted Xbox Series accessories I couldn't afford when the system was still actively supported. And I could always segue into PC gaming, where your fate as a gamer is not so heavily dependent on brand loyalty. If I buy the wrong video card, I lose a little performance... no big deal. If I buy the wrong game system, I lose key exclusives, and depending on how badly the machine sells, may not play much of anything for a couple of years. (And let me tell you, the Saturn and Dreamcast were some dry, dry years.)

I'll live. I'll just have to adapt, and right now, PC gaming seems like the right path to take. (Besides, all the home game systems are barely disguised computers anyway.)

Friday, January 26, 2024

Just for the record...

 

Imagine dragons. With Swedish accents.
(from Fandom. Skyrim's fandom, I guess.)




I know video games don't come with instruction manuals anymore (hell, if the rumors are true, video games won't have physical anything in another year...), but I've been playing Skyrim on the Switch, and that game is too damn meaty to not have one. I feel like it should have come with an operator's guide thick enough to be in Knight Rider's glove compartment. Mechanically, this game is as encumbered as your character will be after picking up everything you see on your Nordic-tracked adventures. "Troll fat? Sure, you never know when you'll need it. Wouldn't want to be left empty-handed at a sudden troll barbecue."

I'm enjoying it, though. I'm enjoying it a lot more for the ten dollars I paid at a pawn shop than I would have if I paid the full retail price of sixty bucks. For Skyrim. Yes, it's a good game with nearly infinite playability, and it suffers very little from the problems that often plague demanding titles on the Switch (see also Mortal Kombat 1 and that Batman Arkham collection), but dude, it's thirteen years old. Damn, Bethesda, stop milking it. And don't make me pay no sixteen dollars- the sale price!- for the Anniversary Edition that steps up the graphics. It's a Switch. Half the caves are too dark to see anything. I'm not slipping you sixteen skins for high-definition cave darkness.

Wednesday, December 20, 2023

Yooka-Laylee and the Lightning that Can Never Return to the Bottle

Man, I don't even know what to do with this dusty old blog anymore. I don't think I updated at all on November, and nearly ignored the blog this month as well. However, it felt right to post something before the end of the year, so here it is. Don't expect anything too organized... I'm just going to prattle on about a handful of games I've been playing lately.

First on the menu is Yooka-Laylee. I grabbed a copy of this for the Switch when the price dropped to three dollars, and it certainly is... a game I've been playing. From the mismatched power couple who serve as the heroes to the inanimate objects with buggy eyes to the referential jokes with all the subtlety of a lead pipe to the back of the skull, Yooka-Laylee's intentions are clear. It wants to bring back the vibe of the European platformers popular on the Nintendo 64 in the late 1990s, but it concentrates way too much on window dressing while leaving the core of the gameplay unrefined. 

And there are minecart races, because you
DEFINITELY wanted to relive those little
nightmares.
(image from New Game Network)

 
Almost from the moment you walk through the doors of the Hivory Towers, Yooka-Laylee reveals itself as cryptic and unfocused. Stages are gigantic, without the benefit of a map to help guide you through them, timed challenges are given ruthless time limits, and obtuse puzzles are frequently presented without apparent solutions. Why won't those plants talk to me? What do I do with this giggling bush? How the hell do I get through this door? Talking to the sexual innuendo snake hidden in each world and buying his moves chips away at the brick walls of confusion the game insists on dropping in front of you, but I still can't fathom how anybody could finish this game without a strategy guide. 

You'll get your three dollars' worth out of Yooka-Laylee just from bumbling through the stages and collecting hidden whatzits, but this is the Switch. There's no end of top-tier platformers on this system, and playing this clumsy 1990s throwback feels like slumming when you've got Kirby and the Forgotten Land and a million Mario games at your fingertips.

Speaking of Kirby and the Forgotten Land, I picked that up in a recent sale, and was quite pleased with it. There was a lot of early hype about this being an open world game, but calling it "open world" is as much of a stretch as Kirby trying to get his mouth around a rusty Volkswagen. The stages are typically wide hallways, granting the pink puffball some lateral movement but little room to explore the environment. You'll find the occasional fork in the road or a path hidden behind some debris, but beyond that Forgotten Land is only slightly less linear than a traditional Kirby game. (Not that I'm complaining after playing Yooka-Laylee.)

The enemies d'jour in Forgotten Land are
Woofos, corgis at their most adorably
deadly.
(image from Nintendo EVERYTHING!!!)


Each recent Kirby title comes with its own signature gimmick, from the all-consuming Hypernova fruits in Triple Deluxe to the mighty mechs in Planet Robobot. Forgotten Land introduces the Mouthful, which lets Kirby partially consume and adopt the characteristics of objects too large for him to swallow outright. Suck up an abandoned car and Kirby becomes the car, letting him crash into walls and soar over ramps. Eat a traffic cone and Kirby turns into a pointy pylon, letting him break through cracks in the floor and impale enemies. It's not one of the most memorable tricks up Kirby's proverbial sleeve, but it does bring variety and simple puzzle solving to the action.

Beyond the faintly open world gameplay and the most optimistic post-apocalyptic setting you've ever seen in a video game, it's business as usual for the Kirby series. Forgotten Land offers a perfect balance between light, breezy fun and a wealth of content... there are tons of goodies to collect and an abundance of distinct stages to visit, but there's never so much on your plate that you feel overwhelmed, and everything's clear enough that you're rarely left feeling confused and frustrated (looking at you, Yooka-Laylee).

Finally, there's Street Fighter 6. Capcom bunted with the last Street Fighter game, but this feels like a swing for the fences, with a story mode that feels like a game in and of itself, rather than a bunch of versus matches sandwiched between exposition (sorry, Mortal Kombat 11). Plenty of reviewers have compared the World Tour to Sega's Yakuza series, and it's hard not to notice the similarities when you're hoofing it through Metro City, finishing silly fetch quests and scrounging money and items from any thug stupid enough to cross paths with you. 

Street Fighter 6 not only makes tons of
references to past Capcom games, but
builds on Final Fight and Street Fighter
lore in unexpected ways. You can fight
pretty much anyone in this game if you'd
like. Starting fights with strangers in
Metro City is just a way to introduce
yourself, like shaking hands, or dogs
sniffing each others' butts.
(image from Tom's Guide)
 


The big difference is that while Yakuza's combat mechanics were only pretty good, Street Fighter 6's fights play like a standard game of Street Fighter, which makes them damn near perfect. As you advance, you'll meet Street Fighter legends and learn both their stances and signature moves, eventually turning your character into a patchwork quilt of martial arts mastery. It's frustratingly limited when the game starts and you're stuck with the move set of the aggressively generic Luke, but the range of your abilities expands as you visit new countries and meet the fighters who live there. Pretty soon you'll have a terrifying Frankenstein's monster of a fighter, sewn together from the body parts of past Street Fighter champions.

And oh yeah, the actual versus fights are spiffy too, although they practically feel like bonus content next to the meaty story mode. Street Fighter 6 dumps the V modes of Street Fighter 5 into the trash where they belong, and replaces them with the vastly superior drive gauge. The drive gauge works a bit like stamina in a Dark Souls game... it's a bar that depletes when you use special techniques like boosting the power of a special move, but refills when you leave it alone. Use it too much and you could drain it completely, leaving you vulnerable and potentially helpless. It's up to you to use the drive gauge effectively but S-P-A-R-I-N-G-L-Y, so you're shattering turtles with the block-breaking Drive Impacts and doling out bonus damage, but not exhausting yourself and getting caught with your pants down. It's a compelling play mechanic and one of the most monumental we've seen in a Street Fighter game since the supers in Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Don't be surprised if the Drive Gauge sticks with the Street Fighter series for a few sequels.

A playing card reject with an unhealthy
addiction to steroids. Just what I always
wanted in a Street Fighter game!
(image from Capcom)
There are new characters, and as expected from Dimps-era Street Fighter, they're hit or miss. One of the highlights is Kimberly, who carries the teenage schoolgirl ninja torch first lit by Ibuki, but zests it up with graffiti and a street smart attitude. On the downside, you've got gladiator giantess Marisa (ME WANT SNU-SNU!!!) and JP, an elderly man in a top hat* who's almost as exciting as Capcom's last dud Necalli. Maybe you guys should stop serving up fresh cowpies like El Fuerte, F.A.N.G., and Rufus, and just steal ideas from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and Bloodsport again. Just sayin'.

It has become apparent that I'm entirely too high to finish the rest of this review, so I'll just conclude by saying that Street Fighter 6 is the very best Street Fighter has been in years. Years! Kudos, Capcom. Way to catch up to Mortal Kombat after nearly a decade of eating its dust.

* Okay, so I mixed him up with the other guy from Street Fighter 5, another lame-tastic lamie from the land of lame fighting game characters. Shit, you might as well bring back Angus from Kasumi Ninja, complete with great balls of fire that erupt from his lifted kilt.

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Microsoft Can Stick It (or, One Giant Leap)

Attention, fighting game fans! Evidently, these are the new rules for playing video games on the Xbox, effective November 12th.

(image from Rabbits Full of Magic)
(also, that's Kerri Hoskins)
(yes, Sonya Blade from the early MK games)


 

It's not what you agreed to when you bought your Xbox Series, but Bill Gates has altered the agreement. Pray he doesn't alter it any further. 

Needless to say, I'm pretty cheesed off at this development. Look, I've got a ton of game controllers for various consoles. Many of these have USB cables, and many of them can be used on Xbox systems with the aid of an adapter, like the ones manufactured by Mayflash. This gives me the freedom to play any Xbox game with any controller I please, be it a six button Saturn joypad best suited for fighting games or a perfectly functional arcade joystick whose sole fault is being designed for the orphaned Xbox 360. When this new rule and the firmware update that enforces it goes into effect on the 12th, I'm going to lose a lot of that flexibility, and will be expected to shell out hundreds of dollars for licensed controllers, just to get some of it back. 

(Some. Not all. I've got a clicky stick Neo-Geo controller coming in the mail that will be useless on the Xbox in two weeks. Frankly, it's doubtful that 8BitDo will pay a licensing fee to make that controller specifically for a machine that's already laid down its arms in the console wars of the 2020s. They're third place in a three man race. You know what that makes them? Last place. Sorry Microsoft, but nobody in last place gets their own game controller.)

Poorly played, Microsoft. You can't just cram the controller genie back in the bottle after letting it roam free for years. By your own admission, the Xbox Series is well behind its competitors in this console generation, and this move will not go over well with the few fans you have left. What's the point of buying every game publisher you can get your filthy, blood-stained claws on if you're going to chase away Xbox owners with draconian policies like this?

Now it plays your favorite Supervision
games! I can't wait for the update that
opens the doors to the exciting HyperScan library!

Hmph. In more open source news, fans of the Data Frog SF2000 were given a massively expanded software library, thanks to a Multicore firmware developed by Adcockm and his team of hackers. Officially, the SF2000 can run games for the NES, Genesis, Super NES, and three flavors of Game Boy, but unofficially, with the aid of this firmware, the system can handle Sega CD, TurboDuo, Atari 2600, ColecoVision, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, and Neo-Geo Pocket games as well. 

I've said in the past that the SF2000 is the king of el cheapo handhelds, and this only strengthens that opinion. Say what you will about emulation, especially on a handheld you might find at the bottom of a cereal box, but I owned an Atari Lynx years ago, and Data Frog's system is every bit as good a Lynx as an actual Lynx. Heck, it's better, because you've got save states handy for longer games like Slime World, and aren't risking your vision trying to make out details on the washed out Lynx screen. 

And that's just the Atari Lynx! The Data Frog can do a pretty convincing imitation of a Neo-Geo Pocket, a TurboExpress, a Supervision (for those of you, ahem, into that sort of thing...) and even a couple of CD-based systems you wouldn't have dared imagine playing on the go in 1993. It may be only twenty dollars, but the SF2000 is punching so far above its weight class it could send Mike Tyson into orbit.

Friday, October 13, 2023

Lucky Number Thirteen

These blog updates are getting pretty slim, aren't they? I guess I just don't have much to talk about lately. One thing that does bear mentioning is that after two years of battling regulators, Microsoft has finally laid claim to Activision, the world's first third party game publisher. This of course means that Activision no longer is one, although it's likely they'll still publish games for the Nintendo Switch. The Switch is regarded as something of an industry neutral zone, even if Sony has shown little interest in publishing games for the system.

Microsoft will still be obligated to make Call of Duty games for the Playstation 5 as part of the terms they agreed to honor with both Sony and government regulators, but that's hardly a concern for me. First person shooters aren't my bag, baby... I can't even play a boomer shooter like Doom without getting hopelessly confused as to where I should go next. I need a red keycard to get to the end of the stage? But it's guarded by a series of crushing walls that I can't seem to dodge? Lovely. By the time I've reached that keycard, I won't even need it... I'll be flat enough to slide under all the doors.

In other slightly worrying merger news, there are reports that Disney's CEO is being pressured by investors to purchase Electronic Arts. Bob Iger has claimed in the past that Disney's never had much success in the video game industry, and indeed, their stab at the toys to life market in the 2010s ultimately didn't amount to much. However, Disney has never given up on video games completely, as evidenced by the upcoming remaster of the old Gargoyles game for the Genesis. Personally, I'd suggest resurrecting the LucasFilm Games label (yanno, the brand they already own) or investing in long time partner Capcom instead, but hey, it's not MY billions and billions of dollars they're spending.