Gen-Assist

Oh boy! It's the last post of the year! It's the last post of the DECADE! 

Before I begin, there's a Twitter post you may have already seen from Cinemassacre regular and professional coat tail surfer Mike Matei, which reads as follows:

Retweet if you agree: If you use the “rewind feature” that’s now standard on many NES and SNES games available on Switch, you DID NOT by any stretch of the imagination beat the god damn game.

First, I don't personally use rewind in games. Not because of any silly moral objection, but because it's slightly disorienting and I find myself hitting the button by accident until I turn it off completely in the options screen. However, I do use save states, loudly and proudly, and you'll have to pry those from my cold, dead hands.

See, here's the thing. I'm not as young as I used to be. I'm not as patient as I used to be either, and I don't feel a pressing urge to torture myself for hours on end just to prove my worth as a gamer. It's a video game. I don't have to prove a damn thing to it... it's there to entertain me. If save states are necessary to wring all the enjoyment I can out of a game, I'm using them. If I need an outlet for misplaced bravado, there are achievements and trophies for that.

Second, look at the balls on this Matei guy! Mr. "No Shortcuts Allowed" has been nursing from The Angry Video Game Nerd's jewel-encrusted teat for years. He's been playing his entire YouTube career on easy mode! As far as I'm concerned, my success at Punch-Out!! is exactly as legitimate as his success as an internet celebrity. My own foray into YouTube may have been met with all the enthusiasm of a school of hungry candiru, but at least I earned that failure. 

Anyway. There was something important I wanted to tell all of you. Project Lunar, the hotly anticipated hack for the Sega Genesis Mini, has arrived! Here's an installation tutorial from Restalgia if you want to try it yourself. Trust me, you do.

In way of warning, there isn't enough internal storage in the Genesis Mini to hold the entire Genesis library. A few games don't work with the M2ENGAGE emulator, and tons of games for the system are best left forgotten anyway. Why bother with Back to the Future III when you can just watch the movie? Why play Bart vs. The Space Mutants when you can just watch old episodes of The Simpsons? Why spend time with Dark Castle when you can roll around naked in a bed full of mouse traps? Eh, you get the idea. Upload only the games you want to play, and you'll be happy. If you're having trouble deciding, maybe I'll make some suggestions in a later post.

The Bestivus Awards, 2010-2019

He's trying so hard to be gracious about it.
(image from IFC)

One of the most memorable moments of the Pee-Wee Herman Christmas Special (which should still be fresh in your mind, I hope) is that everyone who visits the playhouse, from regal cow puppets to camp icons like Charro, brings Pee-Wee a fruitcake as a gift. Does he want them? Of course not, but he accepts the rock-hard pastries with all the grace of a grown man with Peter Pan syndrome and an unwillingness to use his indoor voice.

So in that grand tradition, here's another gift you've already been given at least a dozen times... a best of the decade awards list! If it makes you feel any better, this one's been written from a different perspective than the others you've already seen. Instead of lumping together games from two generations of consoles, I'm picking one personal favorite for each of the dozen systems on this list. It seems more fair that way, since there's a pretty wide performance gap between, say, a PSP and an Xbox One.

If it doesn't make you feel better, just accept this present with gritted teeth and a weak smile, then use all the best of decade lists you've collected as bricks to build an extra room for your house. Hey, it worked for Pee-Wee. 

CURRENT GENERATION AWARDS

PLAYSTATION 4
Horizon Zero Dawn

There's no shortage of sprawling action-adventure games on the Playstation 4, but out of the ones I've played, I liked this one best. Mind you, I had to stick with it for a while, but once I got past the introduction and a hunting competition that doubled as a tutorial, Horizon Zero Dawn stole my heart... and a lot of my free time. 

It's one of those games where you could progress the storyline about humanity's fall from the top of the food chain, if you weren't too busy hiking from one end of the continent to the other, using arrows to break the fuel canisters of robot deer and picking fights with metal dinosaurs twenty times your size. Who would be stupid enough to take on a fire-breathing monster the length of a football field? You would, because it's tons of fun and you get to brag to your friends about it if you somehow survive. Plus you can use the scrap metal left behind to power up your- eh, who am I kidding? I don't care about the power ups... I'm just here to set traps and launch explosives at giant robot bears. Look, you'd understand if you had Zoids when you were a kid.

XBOX ONE
Killer Instinct

History won't look back fondly on the Xbox One. Customer-hostile decisions by former Microsoft Interactive chief Don Mattrick hobbled the system's reputation months before it was launched, and compromised hardware meant that it couldn't stand on equal footing with the Playstation 4. Even the user interface lags slightly, occasionally taking a couple of seconds for the onscreen cursor to jump from one menu option to the next.

Look, Microsoft owns the Battletoads. They had
to find SOME use for them.
(image from VG247)

Nevertheless, the Xbox One had its moments. Re-Code was a diverting blend of the post-apocalyptic setting of Horizon Zero Dawn and the dash-focused play mechanics of Mega Man X. Forza Horizon 3 sent players to Australia for a racing festival with hundreds of challenges and countless customization options. Want to tune your cars to enhance their performance, or even paint the sides with the cast of Animaniacs? Hey, if you don't tell Warner Bros., I won't.

Then you've got Killer Instinct, the game that convinced me to buy an Xbox One in the first place. This reboot of the flashy 1990s fighter buries the original with more accommodating gameplay and a wealth of content, including a Shadow Lords mode which sends up to three heroes around the world to battle the minions of Gargos, collecting helpful items and healing their wounds from previous battles. Maybe it's not better than the Playstation 4 exclusive Street Fighter V, but it feels like a lot more effort went into it.

WII U
Splatoon

I hate online gaming. Nintendo seems to hate online gaming too, which makes it all the more surprising that they managed to make a game that makes me hate online gaming just a little less.

In simple terms, Splatoon is a third-person, player vs. player shooter. That doesn't really do it justice, though... it's more accurate to say that Splatoon is a little like Counter-Strike, but a whole lot more like a day at Nickelodeon Studios, complete with cartoon sea life and rivers of Gak. Your goal is to tag as much territory as possible with your team's color of slime before time runs out. Your Inkling (a fashion-forward preteen squid) can hide from opponents and fill her slime tank by diving into puddles of the same color. However, contact with slime from the other team slows the Inkling down and can even "pop" her, forcing her to return to the starting point on the map.

There are other play styles, generally in the ranked mode, but I found Turf Wars to be the most enjoyable of the bunch. It's easy to learn, fun to play, and you leave each match refreshed and eager for more, rather than frustrated and discouraged. The Wii U didn't live up to my expectations, but Splatoon was one of those rare games for the system that left me with no regrets.

PREVIOUS GENERATION AWARDS

XBOX 360
Mass Effect 2

I bought an Xbox 360 in its freshman year, just months after its late 2005 launch. I own dozens of its games on disc, and at least a hundred of them digitally. It's my favorite system of its console generation, even with the red ring of death that forced me to get another one (and a later model, just in case). So when I say that Mass Effect 2 is the best game on the Xbox 360, that means something.

It just doesn't get any better than this.
Seriously, ask anyone.
(image from VG247's YouTube page)

I wanted to like the first Mass Effect, but the maze-like level structure and the wonky, luck-based combat system soured me on the game. The sequel keeps the compelling lore, complex characters, and branching dialog of the original, but keeps the stages streamlined and introduces fast-paced gun fights similar to those in Gears of War. The difference is that you're given enough time to swap weapons, issue commands to your squad members, and oh yes, breathe, keeping you from feeling overwhelmed. Also, you can use biotics to hold your enemies in mid-air, then fill them with holes as they helplessly dangle in front of you. Is it sporting? Nah. Is it sadistic? Sure. But is it fun? Ooooh yeah.

What I'm saying is that Mass Effect 2 is good. It's so good you'll want to buy all the DLC missions. It's so good you'll even do the boring stuff to make it last, like searching for minerals on distant planets while making the ship's computer reluctantly say "probing Uranus." It's so good that it... was better than the sequel and the hapless spin-off Mass Effect Andromeda. Maybe Mass Effect 2 was a little too good for its own good.

PLAYSTATION 3
Blur

Merging the competitive racing of Mario Kart with the more realistic settings and vehicles of Need for Speed isn't a "two great things that taste great together" combination. It's a "two great things that shouldn't taste great together yet somehow do" situation, like dipping fries into your Frosty or eating a bag of salted caramel Bugles. It works, but you're just not sure how.

Blur indeed works. In fact, it works better than most of the violent racing games released in the wake of Burnout 3: Takedown. Unlike Full Auto, it remains fun even after the sheen of the polished graphics and the thrill of charging down a city street with a machine gun lose their novelty. Unlike Split/Second, you can attack the other racers directly, rather than starting an earthquake somewhere on the track and hoping for the best. Blur even has an edge over Mario Kart in that its attacks pack a meaningful punch, and that there's no blue shell which flips the outcome of the race on its head. Instead you get a Shock, three land mines with a wide detonation radius that are difficult, but not impossible, to dodge.

Blur isn't exclusive to the Playstation 3, and it may not even be the best game released for the system after 2010, but it's some of the most fun I've had with this console. 

WII
Super Mario Galaxy 2

That must be the Super Mario world
I've heard so much about.
(image from VideoGamesBlogger)

There was really only one choice for this honor. The highlights of the Wii library were top loaded, with most being released between the system's 2006 launch and the end of 2009. That rules out the pack-in Wii Sports, Zack and Wiki, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and Punch Out!, among others. The later games on the Wii I either didn't play (Kirby's Epic Yarn, Skyward Sword) or didn't like (Xenoblade Chronicles, Rhythm Heaven Fever), so what else is left?

Well, Kirby's Return to Dreamland is a solid if predictable entry in that series, and The Last Story is fine if you like inscrutable action RPGs, but I'm going with Super Mario Galaxy 2. I honestly don't remember much of it beyond a planet shaped like Mario's head, but I did love the previous game from start to finish, and this was more of it. You really can't go wrong with a second helping of Super Mario Galaxy.

HANDHELD AWARDS

NINTENDO 3DS
Super Smash Bros. 4

It took a while for me to understand the appeal of Super Smash Bros., but thanks to this handheld extension of the long-running series, I finally get it. It's as full-featured as any of the previous Smash games, yet approachable in a way they weren't. If you want to get in some quick practice, just flip open the 3DS, start the game, and you're brawling in twenty seconds. Alternately, you can play one of Smash 4's mini games, fun diversions that also teach you the basics of combat along with the unique abilities of each character.

However, the headliner for this version of Smash Bros. (and a feature painfully absent from its Wii U counterpart) is Smash Run. Stuff the levels from Brawl's Subspace Emissary into a sack, smack them a few times with a hammer, and spill the pieces onto a table, and you've got a random jumble of gaming goodness that emphasizes the platforming aspects of the series. As an added bonus, it also lets you punch a bunch of creatures from at least two dozen other video games. What self-respecting nerd would want to miss out on a chance to sink their fists into a Pooka from Dig Dug?

PLAYSTATION VITA
Axiom Verge

Some games elicit oohs and aahs.
The reactions to Axiom Verge are
closer to "Ewws!" and "Aughs!"
(image from Engadget)

Axiom Verge is many things. It's creepy, weird, pretentious, discordant, and ugly, but it's also the best damn Metroidvania of the decade... no small feat as there's been so many of them. Paradoxically, Axiom Verge's success comes not only from how faithful it is to the first Metroid, but all the ways it breaks tradition with the games that have followed in its footsteps. Take for instance the double jump. There isn't one in Axiom Verge. Gaps between platforms are cleared by launching a drone over the chasm, then swapping places with it as it lands. Abilities like this demand unconventional thinking, but after a hundred or so of these search action games, unconventional thinking is exactly what this well-worn genre needs.

Glitching is the most important of Axiom Verge's out-of-left-field play mechanics. The lead character can alter reality with a glitch gun, turning once fearsome enemies into harmless clusters of graphic tiles and pulling platforms out of thin air. You could argue that making progress through Axiom Verge by tugging at its loose threads and unraveling it is a fascinating deconstruction of video games. Even if you don't want to dig too deeply into the philosophical underpinnings of the glitch gun, you've got to admit it's a damn cool concept.

PLAYSTATION PORTABLE
Grand Knights History

The PSP was near the end of its lifespan in 2011, leaning on a cane with one wrinkled hand while waiting to pass its baton to the Vita with the other. While the system was largely forsaken in America by this point, the Japanese weren't yet willing to let it go, releasing games for the PSP in 2011 and beyond. Not just the usual mediocrities designed to cash in on the latest cartoon, but good games! Games rivaling the best you'll find in the PSP library! Games like Grand Knights History.

Designed by Vanillaware and featuring the company's gorgeous hand-drawn artwork, Grand Knights History is a role-playing title where you assemble a team of young warriors, archers, and wizards, and take them on a series of scouting missions across a vast continent ruled by three kingdoms. Your goal is to give these squires enough training to serve your kingdom as knights. Eight years ago, there was an online component where you could pit your best fighters against those of other players, but even without it, there's enough in Grand Knights History to keep you engaged... and dazzled. When you're not staring gape-jawed at the graphics, you'll battle gangs of monsters in turn-based combat, with you and your enemies trading blows on a grid-like battlefield. Imagine a cross between tennis and chess with the usual RPG trappings, and you've got the right idea.

MOBILE
Forget-Me-Not

Smartphone games generally don't hold your attention for long, and they generally don't have the restraint to charge you once for the experience, opting instead to periodically halt your progress and demand micro-transactions if you wish to continue. I suspect the frequent tolls are why people don't play smartphone games for very long, and I'm also sure that the lack of them in Forget-Me-Not is why I've kept playing it long after its 2011 debut.

You pay for Forget-Me-Not once (or not at all on iOS devices), and you get millions of randomly generated levels and hours of Pac-Manly fun for the price of admission. You'll eat flowers, quaff strength-boosting potions, blast abstract monsters with an unending stream of lasers, gobble the fruit prizes they leave behind, and get blown to bits by kamikaze bomb creatures. And you'll keep doing all that, not only because the action is perversely compulsive, but because it won't cost you a cent beyond the initial download fee.

REALLY FRICKIN' OLD STUFF AWARDS

ATARI 2600
Galagon

The Atari 2600 wasn't supposed to amount to much; basically, it was designed as an evolution of the Pong machines Atari released in the mid 1970s. It had very little RAM, no video RAM at all, and its early cartridges topped out at around 4K, just enough for simple player versus player challenges like Combat. Nobody expected it to survive into the 1980s and beyond, yet it did just that, getting the Legend of Zelda inspired Secret Quest in 1989 and the puzzle game Acid Drop in 1992.

I don't get how it is, but here it is!

Forty years after its launch, software is still being released for the Atari 2600, albeit in an unofficial capacity by fans. The best of these games are seemingly impossible arcade ports by programmer John W. Champeau, and the best of those is Galagon, which faithfully reproduces the gameplay of Namco's Galaga while adding the option to play with a friend. Together, at the same time. Not even the arcade game let you do this! Whether you play it alone or with a buddy, Galagon runs more smoothly than the port of Galaga on the Atari 7800, making you wonder how Champeau managed to make this game run on the humble 2600 without it catching on fire and burning down his house.

ATARI 7800
Rikki and Vikki

Truth told, this puzzle/platform hybrid has issues. The control is a little sluggish, and because the lead characters crumple in a single hit, boss fights are unreasonably difficult. I was lucky to get past the mole in the first level, but the last level- reachable only with a second player- demands not just perfection, but perfection in stereo.

Having said that, the stunning presentation in Rikki and Vikki goes a long way toward smoothing over the game's flaws. Few games on the Atari 7800 look as good as this one does, and absolutely no games sound this good, not even the small handful of official releases with a POKEY chip built into the cartridge. The catchy soundtrack and expressive cartoon artwork lend a sense of professionalism to Rikki and Vikki that too many Atari 7800 games lack. Just don't expect the joys this title has to offer to come easily.

SEGA GENESIS
Darius

The last two years have been pretty good to the Genesis. Not only did it finally get a worthwhile mini console to make up for all those duds by AtGames, it's seen a handful of high quality homebrews as well. There's been Tanglewood, and Xenocrisis, and of course Darius, which was included as a bonus on the aforementioned Sega Genesis Mini.

Details like these close-ups of the Silver Hawk
ships would have wound up on the cutting room
floor of a eight megabit port of Darius.

At first, I thought Darius was a pointless addition to the Mini. Didn't we get a pretty good Genesis port of the sequel already? Twenty-eight years after Sagaia, why take a step backward? Two reasons, actually. The first is that Darius is held in fond regard by the Japanese. The game's been ported to a half dozen game consoles, handhelds, and home computers. Hell, there were two recent fan conversions of Darius for the Sega Genesis, designed independently of each other! The point is, Darius is big in Japan. Sagaia, maybe not so much.

The second reason is that it's a really good conversion of Darius, four times the size of the Genesis port of Sagaia and noticeably less compromised. Seeing what was done here makes you wonder what might have been possible on the Genesis if cartridge space hadn't been so tight back in the early 1990s.

Dick Dick Goose

I'd better squeeze in a few more posts to hit that magic sixty-nine for the year, huh? Fortunately, I've got just the thing to discuss... House House's Untitled Goose Game. Imagine if you will a flat-shaded world that's one katamari away from being flung into space. Now imagine you're a waterfowl that lives to annoy the residents of a little town in this world. You'll steal bras from a clothesline, trap people in their garages, raid vegetable gardens, and do whatever it takes to scratch off items on a lengthy to-do list. You'll have to think like a goose to pull off these pranks, dragging items behind you with your bill and distracting the townsfolk with a well-timed honk.

Yep, that's pretty much the whole game in a nutshell.
(image from Steam)

What's nice about Untitled Goose Game is that while it's definitely got stealth elements, the gameplay is decidedly low stakes, making it possible for even a klutz like myself to finish it. If you get spotted while taking an item, you get chased away and the item is returned, giving you another chance to snatch it once the character's back is turned. It's a refreshing change from the status quo of this often punishing genre... if Kojima had made this, you'd be shot by the citizens of the town on sight and served for Christmas dinner. (Either that or you'd be carrying fifty pounds of cargo on your back and an artificial egg on your hip. "Do geese even have hips?" Shut up, you're ruining the analogy.)

People are already including Untitled Goose Game in their top ten games of the year, and even their games of the decade, lists. I'm not quite that impressed with it, but the game is nevertheless fun and relaxing and more charmingly British than an army of Hugh Grants. If you've got Xbox Game Pass, or fifteen dollars to spare, definitely give it a spin.

Two GameCubes Duct-Taped Together

image from GameSpot

Microsoft recently announced its successor to the Xbox One, and it's this thing. I would say that it's ripe for parody, but everyone else took all the good jokes already. Really, there's nothin' left. So I'll just say that if the Xbox Series X is going to have full backward compatibility instead of the carrot and string backward compatibility of the Xbox One, I could forgive its lesser qualities. (Well, not the name. Between this and all the other similarly named Xbox systems, it's an Abbott and Costello sketch just waiting to happen.)

Also, could we please, please have faster response time in the user interface? It's no fun having a cursor that moves to the next available option three seconds after you press a direction on your controller.

Single Use Case

If you've ever watched the show Good Eats with Alton Brown, you may know that the host utterly detests cooking utensils that can't multitask. You can't blame him, really... if you've got a potato peeler, and that's its sole function, it's just going to use up valuable countertop space when you're not peeling potatoes. And unless you're Gomer Pyle USMC, it's safe to say that you're not going to spend much time out of the day stripping spuds.

image from Hyperkin

I suspect that if Alton Brown was a gamer, he'd be as dismayed by the Hyperkin Hyper Blaster HD as I am. The Hyper Blaster plays one specific game, the Duck Hunt half of Duck Hunt/Super Mario Bros., on one specific system, the top loading Nintendo Entertainment System that was released late in the console's lifespan. It's designed to let you play that one game on that one system while using an HD television set, but the top-loading NES isn't designed to work with high-definition televisions. Heck, it doesn't even have composite jacks like the original NES... it's designed for RF output, which can technically be displayed on modern televisions, but looks dreadful on them.

Right away you'll have several questions. Some of the more polite ones include "Why not just use a CRT instead?" or "Why not hack a Wii, run an NES emulator, and play light gun games with the Wiimote?" I won't repeat the less polite ones, but they involve the excess consumption of alcohol and parents who are also cousins.

A more useful third party gaming peripheral is the Retro-Bit eight button Genesis controller. It not only makes the Genesis Mini more pleasant to use, but is compatible with a half-dozen other game systems, either natively or through the use of an adapter. Most of my Sega-style joypads wouldn't work with the Mayflash Ultimate Adapter, but it recognizes the Retro-Bit... you just have to hold down and start for a few seconds to get the right key configuration. Retro-Bit's controller feels like the official Sega Arcade Pad and grants you instant access to the menu screen on the Genesis Mini, making it worth the twenty dollars even if you don't plan to use it with anything else.

Old enough for a learner's permit, along with
hair in awkward places.
(image from Amazon)

One other thing before I go... the Playstation Portable is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary today. I had mixed feelings about the system at launch, but thanks to the tighter control and sharper display of the 3000 model, it's become one of my all-time favorite handhelds, rivaled only by its successor the PS Vita. It's also- in keeping with the theme of this blog entry- extremely versatile, with the ability to run its own substantial library, plus the lion's share of games for the original Playstation, plus hundreds of other console and arcade titles thanks to the magic of emulation. If you don't already own one, now's a pretty good time to fix that oversight.

Parti Trop Tôt

Sometimes celebrity deaths prompt a shrug and a sigh, but others feel like you've lost a member of your own family, filling you with anger and disbelief. That was my reaction to the passing of actor René Auberjonois. He had the biggest impact on pop culture as the cynical, shape-shifting security officer Odo on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but René had starred in countless television shows, films, and cartoons prior to that series' 1993 debut. He was the skeleton desperate for wine in The Last Unicorn, Darkseid's scheming servant Desaad in Super Friends, a villain who made Gargamel seem like an angel in the Smurfs Christmas Special... I could go on and on, but the point is that he did a lot of work in his lifetime. He even segued into video games after DS9 was cancelled, playing Janos Audron in the Legacy of Kain series and Mr. House in Fallout: New Vegas. 

Despite his talent and his massive body of work, René made time for his fans, meeting them at conventions and talking to them on his Twitter page. I got a few responses to my own questions about his past roles, an honor which I deeply appreciate, and regret that I'll never experience again. René Auberjonois is a man who will not only be remembered for his contributions to film, television, and interactive entertainment, but remembered fondly by those who knew him, or even knew of him.

Tall, Grande, Venti

Running a little low on energy? Well, here's a Sega Genesis triple shot, featuring the AtGames Genesis Flashback on the left, the real deal from 1989 on the right (minus the cartridge cover), and the Genesis Mini in the center.

Just like the Playstation Classic before it, the Genesis Mini is just so gosh-darned tiny and cute you'll want to hug it. The big difference is that you'll still feel that way about Sega's system after you start using it. 

Admittedly, I do have some gripes. The included three button controllers feel like you're gripping a monster truck bumper after thirty years of increasingly ergonomic joypads, and alternatives are limited to controllers made by Retro-Bit. I've got at least a dozen USB pads lying around the house, but sure, what's one more to add to the pile? Input seems a little touchy in the menu screen, and there may be a slight delay between actions and sound effects in some titles. It's honestly hard to tell without a slow-motion camera replay, unlike AtGames' Genesis where the imperfections were more glaringly obvious.

With all that said, the Genesis Mini is still pretty nifty. The case design is extremely faithful to the original in spite of its size, and the forty included games accurately reflect the Genesis library as a whole and are done justice by the system's strong emulation. The sound is so crisp that you start to notice subtleties in the soundtracks that were obscured on a real Genesis, and the graphics in each game shine when not held back by the original system's crummy composite output. However, most of the games aren't enhanced beyond what HDMI output can provide. For instance, Street Fighter II Special Champion Edition was recently given an improved color palette and cleaner sound samples by hackers, but what you're getting here is what you got in 1993, with all the rough edges intact.

There are a few exceptions. Mega Man: The Wily Wars, the decidedly lackluster Genesis port of the first three Mega Man games, runs a little faster and feels a little tighter than it had before. Not enough to make it preferable to the NES games, but it's a more pleasant experience than it must have been on the Sega Channel. The Genesis prototype of Tetris that was scrapped after a legal battle with Nintendo was also retooled, but perhaps not enough, with barebones gameplay and grungy digitized graphics that make it feel like a leftover from the Mega Drive's bungled Japanese launch. Finally there's Darius, which was written from scratch by a fan of the series and actually does feel like a bonus, rather than a booby prize. I was always a fan of its sequel, Sagaia, but this may actually be better. At four times the size of the Genesis version of Sagaia, it's at least a more complete arcade conversion.

The Genesis Mini is a solid micro console that Sega should have released a lot sooner. There are tons of these products in 2019, including several which can play the entire Genesis library with ten minutes of hacking. It doesn't help that the Genesis Mini was preceded by ten years of AtGames consoles which played many of the same games, albeit poorly. I imagine you'd have to be a rabid fan of the Genesis to fully appreciate its palm-sized counterpart, but with a generous selection of games, emulation provided by the always capable M2, and a slick if slightly cumbersome interface, they should be quite happy with the Genesis Mini. I know I'm satisfied with it... or will be, once that six button controller finally arrives in the mail.

Dick York (or, Leggo My Legumes)

Who names a kid "Peppermint Patty," anyway?

I just wanted to mention something, since we're going to be inundated with holiday specials very soon and the topic of Peanuts has been trending on Twitter. People have noticed from last week's Thanksgiving special that the Peppermint Patty character is kind of a jerk (you just noticed this? Really?) and seem convinced that an online shaming campaign will take care of this problem. Yeah, good luck with that. I'm pretty sure fifty year old cartoons are immune to your cancel culture.

Honestly, I wasn't a huge fan of Peppermint Patty growing up. She wasn't as bad as Lucy Van Pelt, because nobody could be as bad as Lucy Van Pelt, but she was coarse and tactless and her relationship with the long-suffering Marcy struck me as controlling, perhaps even abusive. (Who refers to their classmate as "sir," anyway? Someone who's gotten one too many swirlies from said classmate, I suspect.)

That's kind of the beauty of Peanuts, though. Charles Schulz freely acknowledged that people aren't perfect, and illustrated this through his cast of characters. Charlie Brown is morose and easily discouraged. His sister Sally is selfish, asking Santa for enough toys to turn her letters into queen-sized pillows. Linus is quietly insightful, but sanctimonious and insecure enough to carry a blanket with him wherever he goes. Even the dog is demanding, quick to anger, and a hopeless daydreamer.

The warts and all approach to character design is refreshing in a Christmas special, really. While other shows around this time of year shove object lessons and merchandising in your face, Peanuts offers a bunch of simply drawn cartoon kids who are sincerely flawed, sincerely quirky, and sincerely human. Peppermint Patty can't possibly be a pleasant person to be around, and she barged into that Thanksgiving dinner uninvited, but you can't tell me you've never had someone like that at one of your own holiday parties.

Oh yeah, this is a gaming blog, isn't it? Well, I broke down and bought that Genesis Mini, because of course I did. I'm hoping there will be a hack available that opens the system up to a wider selection of games, but until that happens, I suppose forty and some change will do. Also, I grabbed a cheap copy of Forza Horizon 3, and you can too if you follow this link.

Rage Stoker's Dracula

They say patience comes with age, but as I play through the games in the Castlevania Anniversary Collection, I find that I have far less of that virtue than I did when I was a teenager. As I struggle in vain to keep the lead-footed Trevor Belmont safe from an onslaught of heat-seeking ravens and frustratingly elusive skeleton fencers, I find that my best weapon isn't the boomerang cross or the arcing axe or that crappy dagger the game constantly drops in your lap, but save states... lots and lots of save states. How I beat Dracula's Curse without them is anyone's guess. Don't even get me started on The Castlevania Adventure for the original Game Boy... it's amazing what you were willing to put up with thirty years ago when handheld game systems were new and you were too young to know any better.

Anyway. I'm sure you already know this by now, but the Sega Genesis Mini is currently fifty dollars at most stores, and will stay that way until December 7th. I couldn't bring myself to spend eighty bucks on one of these, but for nearly half the price I'm taking the purchase a lot more seriously. Is it possible that the price will drop even more in 2020, like the Playstation Classic had the year before? Sure, but considering the quality of the system and the likelihood of a hack by the end of the year, I think it's worth taking the plunge now. Just in way of warning, it's got a Castlevania game too, and you're... probably not as good at this sort of thing as you used to be.

Just What I Needed

Pokemon Sword and Shield was released for the Nintendo Switch, in spite of the bitter complaints and death threats of thousands who refused to be satisfied by anything less than every monster from the past twenty-three years of games. I have my own beefs with Nintendo, but it's nice to finally see a game company that refuses to knuckle under to petulant, unrealistic demands. 

Besides, we all know those characters will be coming back, probably in an expansion pack that fixes all the other issues with the previous games. Maybe they'll call it Pokemon Armor, but I call it another sixty dollars sucked out of the pockets of poke-marks.

Now this is more my speed.
(image from Game Informer)

Honestly, I'm not all that concerned about Pokemon. What does interest me is the reboot of Samurai Shodown, released early this summer. I bought that a couple of weeks ago during an Xbox Live sale, and I'm been pretty happy with it so far. EGM writer Mollie Patterson describes it as the authentic sword dueling experience envisioned by the original design team a quarter of a century ago, and I'm inclined to agree. It offers some of the features of the fourth game (background dodging, rage explosions, and lightning strikes) without letting them clutter up the defense-oriented core of the gameplay. You can get hit five, maybe six times in a round. Get careless or greedy and you'll get sliced into lunch meat.

Critics have complained that the story mode is lacking compared to offerings from Bandai-Namco and Netherrealm Studios, but all the dross in Soul Calibur VI and Injustice 2 doesn't necessarily enhance the experience for me... it just complicates it. I'm not here for angsty, convoluted plotlines and I'm not here to play dress up with Superman... I just want to fight. The new Samurai Shodown gets that, and gets straight to the point. There are several styles of gameplay, including a welcome wealth of offline options, but there's a katana-sharp focus on combat in all of them, as it should be. Recently, there's been an alarming amount of bloat in video games in an effort to broaden the experience and boost replay value, but if all that fishing, dating, and bowling comes at a cost to the core of the game, well... what's the point?

Before I go, I should mention that John Champeau of Champ Games managed the impossible (again) and released a port of Galaga for the Atari 2600. The game, rechristened Galagon, is arguably closer to the arcade game than the conversion released for the Atari 7800, marred only by flicker and the system's prehistoric sound chip. I'm just sour that I didn't know about this sooner, because AtariAge seems to have a stranglehold on classic gaming news, and I gave up on that place when its forum turned into a cross between Fox News and this.

Life in the Fast Lane... and Bits of Egg

This is a good news/bad news kind of update, I'm afraid. The bad news is that after seven years of entertaining game reviews, the author of VGJunk has put his blog into retirement. Evidently he had started the popular site to work through a difficult time in his life, and I can certainly relate... depression is what inspired me to work on my Game Boy Advance conversion of GORF ten years ago. It's funny how creativity can become a lifeline when all hope seems lost, huh?

Anyway, things have improved for VGJunk over the last year. Rather than the endless, thankless drudgery of home care, he's got a full-time job... which is good! But that also means he doesn't have the time or motivation for his blog, which is... not so good. I'm happy for him, though. He deserved a break. Besides, there are so many articles in the VGJunk archive that it might take seven more years to run out of things to read on the site! Seriously, look at this list. I'd recommend starting with the withering ALF review... that game really had it coming.

Okay, okay, now onto the good news. After years of frustration, hacker Davee found a way to install permanent firmware on later models of the PSP, specifically the PSP Go and its cheaply made European cousin, the PSP Street. Technically, you could install Infinity on the PSP Go, but you'd lose the pause/resume feature that lets you return to games from the moment you quit them. With Infinity 2.0, that's no longer the case, a blessing for PSP owners with ball-busters like Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero? and its sequel. Permanent firmware used to brick the PSP Street outright, but Infinity 2.0 is safe to install on this late addition to Sony's line of handhelds.

Between Infinity 2.0 and HENkaku, every portable game system Sony ever made can now be jailbroken... which is good, because we might get another one in the near future. They'll never beat Nintendo in the handheld market, but heaven help 'em, Sony will just keep trying.

Fail to the King

So, I had a rare opportunity to visit Sierra Vista to do some thrift store shopping. Here's how that went.

From left to right, we have Kingdom Hearts III, Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, Chromehounds, Hyrule Warriors, Midway Arcade Treasures 3, and Kinectimals: Now with Bears! Not shown is the Logitech computer cooler, which will come in handy for my other laptops.

Earlier this year, I said I probably wasn't going to buy Kingdom Hearts III. As you can see, I was probably wrong, but the five dollar price tag went a long way toward changing my mind. Then I played it, and realized why I originally told myself that I wasn't going to buy another Kingdom Hearts game. It starts with an excessively long, largely hands-off prologue, and continues with large chunks of dialog occasionally broken up by exploration and chaotic, slightly awkward combat. Casting magic is done by selecting commands from a drop down menu... while the imp-like Heartless scatter in all directions. It quickly gets to the point where you abandon the spells entirely and stick to whacking the little creeps with your Keyblade.

The combat is tolerable, but what really sours the experience for me is the game watering down what everyone likes about Disney characters while cranking up the aggressive product placement. The first level you visit is ancient Greece, home of Hercules. He quickly offers his assistance to your party, but while he says what you'd expect him to say and does things you'd expect him to do, it feels predictable and, for lack of a better word, heartless. The writing isn't just below the standards set by the Hercules movie, but by the more modest yet surprisingly clever television series it spawned a couple years later. 

A Kingdom Hearts comic panel, found by reader
John Harris. If this twaddle doesn't make much
sense to read, imagine hearing it in Donald
Duck's voice. Your ears would grow hands,
grab a couple of knives, and cut themselves
off your head.

Some actors make the most of the lines they're given (James Woods and Jim Cummings aren't great people, but at least they're dedicated to their craft) and others are clearly there for the paycheck (Tate Donovan), but even the best actors can only do so much to keep a limp script afloat... and this one's as buoyant as a sack of pennies. It reminds me of Warner Bros's Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers, except while that was a deliberate parody of how lame the Looney Tunes characters had become, there's no satire to be found here... just contrived attempts to merge the many, many properties owned by the Walt Disney Company.

Oh yes, I can't forget about the synergy. The lead character Sora eventually gains access to more powerful (and thankfully, more readily accessible) forms of magic, with the most potent of these attacks being theme park rides. You know, just in case you forgot Disney owned some theme parks. This not-so-subtle product placement tends to have the opposite of the intended effect on me... for instance, when you plaster the screen with ads for Chupa-Chups candy in Zool, it just gives me an appetite for Tootsie Pops, or Dum Dums, or anything Chupa-Chups doesn't make. I suspect that by the time I'm done with Kingdom Hearts III, I'll have bought a lifetime pass to Cedar Point.

I didn't spend much time with the other games I bought... in fact, I wouldn't have purchased Chromehounds and Dark Souls II at all if they hadn't been two dollars each, and Saint Vincent dePaul hadn't enforced a five dollar minimum. I wanted that copy of Hyrule Warriors for the Wii U badly enough that I was willing to make that (negligible) sacrifice. Midway Arcade Treasures 3 cost a dollar at another store, and this grab bag of racing games has proven itself to be worth at least that much, even if the emulation of Race Drivin' and STUN Runner could be charitably described as a flaming wreck.

As for Kinectimals: Now with Bears!, I hope I don't need to explain that.

Mi Arcade es Su Arcade

Hand-burger.

Heck, at the current price, My Arcade can be just about anyone's arcade! Wal-Mart is selling the Micro Player series of tiny arcade cabinets for as little as five dollars each, and while the hardware is nothing special, you can't argue with the price. Better yet, some models of the Micro Player can be modified to play six different games. Take home a Dig Dug and with roughly an hour of work, it can become a Galaxian, a Pac-Man, or even a Rolling Thunder. (Good luck playing that with just one action button, though.)

I won't lie... these teeny weeny arcade machinies aren't perfect. All of them are built with a combination joystick/d-pad that's awkward to use, and the Burgertime cabinet in particular is a mess, with off-key sound effects, fidgety control, and hamburger patties with a stomach-turning green pallor. The Data East games in general are a pass; hapless NES conversions of arcade titles that look about as appealing in 2019 as those old, cold, and so very full of mold Burgertime patties. But the Namco games, yeah, I'd take home one of those. In fact, I did, and will likely get another if I can figure out how to hack it.

While at Wal-Mart, I also grabbed an Atari Flashback 9 for eleven dollars. It's more economical than buying a real Atari 2600 and hooking that up to your modern television set, but the Flashback's price is reflected in its build quality. The joysticks are especially frustrating, adding unwanted challenge to the outer space battles in Yar's Revenge. It would be swell if you could replace the sticks with a Sega Genesis gamepad, but despite having the same 9-pin connectors, you can't... the system ignores most of that controller's input. Like how AtGames ignores the pleas of its quality assurance testers.

You can't even use the paddles designed for an Atari 2600 because the ohm values are different, forcing you to open the Flashback 9 and replace the resistors inside it to achieve the compatibility that should have been there in the first place. You bought a game system, but you took home an electronics project! Better warm up that soldering iron!

You've gotta hand it to AtGames. They're selling an eleven dollar game system that still makes you feel like you didn't get your money's worth.

Unquantifiable

So! I thought it might be fun to try playing the Atari game Quantum with a touchscreen. Unfortunately, MAME disagreed. Try as I might, I couldn't force the arcade-only fork of this emulator to recognize my Fujitsu's display as an input device, dashing my plans. Yes, I tried changing settings, both inside and outside the emulator. No dice.

It's aggravating because Quantum is for all intents and purposes a touchscreen game... it just doesn't realize it. Just look at this footage! You're capturing particles by drawing lines around them. The only thing that keeps this from being a smartphone game is the fact that it was released twenty five years before we had smartphones. Why Atari hasn't capitalized on this with a sequel is a complete mystery. Hell, lots of things Atari has done lately are puzzling, like making a new VCS that's more expensive (and somehow uglier) than the old one was in 1977.

Bloodstained in the Membrane

Sorry I haven't posted in (looks at watch) uh, forever. My life's been kind of a mess, but at least I've found something to keep my mind off the rough stuff. Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night was recently made available on Microsoft's Game Pass service, and it's the first game in a very long time that I've felt compelled to play to the end. Heck, I even finished some of the optional quests to keep the excitement alive for just a little longer!

Bloodstained, for those who may have missed it, is a spiritual successor to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. It's got a new (flimsy) plot and a fresh cast of characters, but the core experience is a re-branded SOTN with polygonal graphics. And it's pretty much the revival people hoped Mighty Number 9 would be, nailing the feel of the original so closely that it's a wonder Konami didn't respond with a lawsuit. I mean, come on, one of the hidden bosses is an undead Simon Belmont! There's still a librarian, but this time, he's Alucard from Symphony of the Night, with a different name but the same voice. Instead of a second inverted castle, you can flip the castle you're already in with a command learned late in the game. It's blatant, is what I'm saying. If you don't have a taste for leftovers, you may not like it, but isn't that what 98% of video games serve up these days?

Anyway. Bloodstained. Extremely familiar, and extremely grindy, but extremely awesome, and you can play it for free if you've got Game Pass. You can't beat that with a flame whip.

Liminal Advertising

Do you, by chance, remember Rolento's stage in Street Fighter Alpha 2? That's the one where you're hoisted to the top of a skyscraper on a wide metal platform. As you're sent upward, you notice screen-filling billboards of a half-dressed Statue of Liberty proudly holding a Fujitsu computer, instead of freedom's torch.

It's not subtle advertising, like, at all, but it definitely achieved the intended effect. Behold!

Yes, I bought a Fujitsu Lifebook T732 from eBay, then used a vectorized version of that very image as its desktop wallpaper. It's not the only reason I bought this computer- I'm hoping its tablet features will spur me into drawing again- but it was nevertheless a strong catalyst for this purchase. Congratulations Fujitsu, that shameless product placement has earned you a new customer. (Albeit twenty-three years late.)

Anyway, enough of that. Much has happened in the video game industry since my last blog entry, and it's my nerdly duty to report on these events. First, professional Hearthstone player Chung Ng Wai was stripped of his title, his prize money, and a chance to appear in the swimsuit competition after expressing his solidarity with the people of Hong Kong. 

Some background on all this. Hearthstone is a card battle game, similar to Yu-Gi-Oh! or SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighter's Clash, and tangentially related to the World of Warcraft series. Hong Kong has been struggling to keep its autonomy since China gained control of the country from Great Britain in 1996. Activision-Blizzard makes the Hearthstone game and does big business in China, which is why they felt the need to do the country's dirty work for it, and put the hammer down on Chung Ng Wai for the scandalous opinion that Hong Kong shouldn't have jackbooted thugs and face-identifying cameras on every street corner.

Okay, now that you're caught up, I can continue. Chung Ng Wai lost seven thousand dollars for his outburst, but Activision and its CEO Bobby Kotick stand to lose a whole lot more from their decision to defrock the Hearthstone champion. There's already talk of a Hearthstone boycott, along with a push to make Mei from Activision's other game Overwatch the face of the Hong Kong protests, making the lucrative game more difficult to market in mainland China. Members of Congress are even scolding Activision for its knuckling under to the Chinese government, which will likely mean bad press for the company and, if we're really lucky, an ulcer for Kotick.

What was the other thing I needed to mention? Oh yes, the Playstation 5 has officially been announced by Sony and will be launched late next year. In addition to the nearly instantaneous load times for Playstation 4 games, the new system will have a controller with variable resistance on its trigger buttons and haptic feedback, known on Nintendo systems as "HD Rumble." Guns in first-person shooters will have more realistic recoil, roads in driving games will have discernible textures, flight sims will have turbulence you'll have to fight against to stay aloft... you kind of see where this is going. 

I'm not eager to upgrade my Playstation 4 and Xbox One just yet, but at the same time, I'll admit that this console generation has been a little dull. The promise of a more tactile and immersive experience coupled with the backward compatibility that the PS4 was lacking makes me cautiously optimistic for the future.

Tender Viccles

As long-time readers know, my first video game system was the Odyssey2, but my first home computer was Commodore's VIC-20, given to me by an uncle in the tech industry. It was a modest machine even by the standards of the early 1980s, with less than 4K of RAM, harsh four channel sound, and a resolution so chunky you could spread it on celery sticks, but as a makeshift game system it more than made up for the Odyssey2's shortcomings. VIC-20 games were both plentiful and cheap during Commodore's transition to the more powerful Commodore 64, and life for this young nerd in training was good.

Fast-forward to... uh, now. Yeah, now works. The VIC-20 is ancient history in this era of high capacity hard drives, infinitely accommodating USB ports, and high definition flat-screen displays, but I still get the urge to dig up some of its games. Unfortunately, the system that was described as "the user friendly computer" in 1981 is anything but over thirty five years later. Only a handful of VIC emulators exist, with most of those getting orphaned by their designers years ago, and cartridge games are typically split into two files, forcing the user to guess which files go where, and which mode is required to run them, before the game will start. A000? 6000? What is this crazy moon language, anyway? It makes you nostalgic for the convenience of the VIC-20's grabby cartridge slot. Sure, you might not get the cartridge back out once it's in there, but at least it works.

That was the grim reality of playing VIC-20 games in VICE... until the emulator broadened its support to include the Mega Cart. This multicart by Anders Carlsson offers nearly every VIC-20 cartridge and a substantial chunk of VIC-20 tapes in one ROM. Want to play a different game? Just press ALT+R on your keyboard and you're sent back to a handy menu. There are even brief descriptions of each game that remind you of what you'll need to do to begin, if the software you've chosen doesn't start with a touch of the fire button. Now that's user friendly.

And these are a few of the games available for the system. I've chosen a random assortment of VIC-20 titles from high-profile arcade ports to easily overlooked indie releases, covering the good, the bad... and whatever the hell Parker Bros. was making. (Look guys, I know you were a board game manufacturer before Hasbro swooped in and swallowed half the toy industry whole, but video games need animation. Ask anybody.)

ROBOTRON: 2084
AtariSoft
"Guided by their infallible logic, the Robotrons conclude: The VIC-20 is too wimpy, and will be overburdened."

AtariSoft's VIC-20 games could go one of two ways. Either they were incredibly faithful to their arcade counterparts in spite of the VIC-20's handicaps, or they were incredibly too faithful to their arcade counterparts for the VIC-20 to realistically handle. Robotron: 2084, an overreaching conversion of the Williams arcade classic, fits squarely into the latter category. 

In its defense, it's a complete arcade port. You get the strobing title screen, which makes a strong case for why video game instruction manuals have epilepsy warnings on the first page. You get eight way firing, although it's a lot clumsier without a second controller port on the VIC-20. You get all the deadly robots and every member of the last human family, important details that could have been omitted.

However, this conversion of Robotron feels like someone at Atari stuck the arcade game into a shoebox, and stomped on it with their foot until they could put the lid back on it. It's cramped and slow, and the VIC's coarse resolution makes all the sprites too large and uncomfortably abstract. While it's easy enough to tell Mommy from the hordes of androids chasing her, she's got the shoulders of a linebacker and the pointy hair of a supporting character from the Dilbert comic.

It's not for lack of effort on the parts of the designers... they worked as hard as they could to get Robotron: 2084 on this system, common sense be damned. Unfortunately, like the game's killer robots, this is something that should have gone unmade. C

MOUNTAIN KING
CBS Software
"Beat on the bat, beat on the bat, beat on the bat with a baseball bat..."

Here's another overachiever on the VIC-20 hardware; a port of Mountain King that's nearly on par with the Atari 5200 version. The massive playfield that proved too much for the ColecoVision to handle scrolls smoothly in all directions here, and your hero's flashlight reveals hidden treasures and the dancing flame spirit as silhouettes, a nifty special effect. There are some weird quirks, like an invisible spider lurking at the bottom of the screen and pressing down to climb up to the crown in the inner chamber. However, everything you loved about Mountain King is present and accounted for... along with that one thing you hated.

Yes, it's the bat. The stupid bat that flits across the screen at regular intervals, snatching the crown off your head and forcing you to start your quest from the beginning. You have no defense against this maddening creature, and the tight corridors leading to the top of the mountain make it tough to avoid it. Generally, you'll get trapped in a long thin cave, and the leather-winged creep will meet you at the opening to take your crown and replace it with a steaming pile of guano. This is an issue with every version of Mountain King, but it somehow seems even worse on the VIC-20, because you have to press up to jump and it's harder to climb and dismount ladders than it should have been.

This is still one of the better ways to play this action game, which remains refreshingly unique after all these years. It's just a pity that when the bat appears, you can't swap the flashlight for a butcher knife, or a flamethrower, or an anti-tank missile... B

GARDEN WARS
Commodore
"Brought to you by Depends."

You flick the power switch on your VIC-20. A bomb angrily hums, then explodes, violently shaking the screen. You haven't even started this game yet and you already know you're in trouble.

Maybe you got the wrong impression from the title, or the cute mouse pulling back a bow on the front of the box. Let's clear up those misconceptions right now... there's nothing cute or peaceful about this game. It's relentlessly loud, hostile, and chaotic, in the tradition of the best arcade games of the early 1980s. Bugs swarm the maze-like playfield, dropping instantly fatal bombs and eggs. Fail to catch the eggs in time and they hatch into yellow spiders. Fail to kill the yellow spiders and they grow into bullet-resistant blue ones. Let them mutate into black spiders and your death is assured.

The only way to save yourself and move onto the next stage is to kill all the snails and caterpillars spawning eggs, but it can be hard to focus on that goal when the screen is choked with distractions. It's not just the roaming bugs, but the bonus items, strange random shapes which litter the playfield and pulse madly, threatening to send you into a state of sensory overload. If any game deserves the title of the urban legend Polybius, it's this one.

Garden Wars is likely the most intimidating game in the VIC-20 library, but it's got a lot of issues beyond the psychological trauma it might inflict on players. The control isn't as tight as it ought to be, and both the objective and the blocky graphics are unclear. All of these issues could be fixed in a remake, and while that's not likely to happen, it's fun to imagine the utter terror it could bring to today's players. Five Nights At Freddie's, eat your heart out. C+ 

ATLANTIS
Imagic
"Water we do now? We die."

As the legend goes, Imagic spread itself too thin in 1983, publishing its library of titles for more game systems and computers than it could realistically support. Without an adequate reserve of money or a plan of retreat from the declining video game industry, the company was doomed, officially going out of business in 1986.

Maybe it wasn't wise for Imagic to publish games for the VIC-20, but anyone who owned the system wasn't about to correct them! Their ports of Atlantis, Demon Attack, and Dragonfire were among the highlights of the VIC-20 library; easily as good as their Atari 2600 counterparts.

Atlantis makes an unexpected swerve from the original, however. Instead of giving the player three cannons to defend the fabled underwater city from a steadily advancing fleet of ships, they have just two. These cannons are fixed at an angle, making it a challenge to aim and adding to the tension when the ships get close. However, the player gets one smart bomb for each stage... if an enemy slips through your cannon fire, just let 'er rip with the fire button and every onscreen enemy is obliterated. Satisfying!

Beyond that, it's the same game as it was on the 2600. The ships makes an ominous droning noise as they cut through the night sky, stopping only to fire laser beams down on your cities and power generators. The ocean gently laps against the shore and all the sprites are built with layers of colors. It's a real treat for the eyes and ears, making up for the fairly simplistic gameplay. B

CAPTURE THE FLAG
Sirius Software
"You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like."

This one's impressive on two counts. The first is that Capture the Flag and its predecessor, Wayout, were first-person video games designed well before Doom, Wolfenstein 3D, or even MIDI Maze and Faceball 2000, typically considered the foundations of this genre. Capture the Flag doesn't use the lame 90 degree turns that were so common on 8-bit and 16-bit game systems either, but a real-time 3D viewpoint, with walls drawn at various angles. They're plainly drawn, looking more like cubicle partitions than the towering metal and stone walls in Doom, but hey, you've gotta start somewhere.

The second is that this is running on a VIC-20. The Atari line of computers got a version of Capture the Flag too, and it's more impressive than this one, but the fact that they got this running at all on Commodore's budget computer is worthy of applause. There are two separate 3D views, one for the player and the other for the computer, an overhead view of the maze that's mapped out as you explore it, and a catchy film noir soundtrack that adds suspense to the action. Designer Paul Edelstein aimed high with this one, and it shows.

As a demonstration of the VIC-20's full potential, Capture the Flag is bested only by the demoscene programs released much later. As a game, it's plodding and a little confusing. Where do you go? What do you do? Where is that flag, anyway? None of that matters... just fire up the cartridge and drink in the sights and sounds. B-

AE
Broderbund
"Bombs bursting in air, fish guts everywhere..."

Tired of being regarded as the dopey, harmless cousins of the shark, stingrays have revolted, flying through the air in mesmerizing patterns while dumping bombs on the world below. Your only defense is a cannon armed with concussive missiles. Keep the fire button held down to send the missile upward, then release it to trigger an explosion which will turn any nearby rays into cat food.

AE was developed by a Japanese team named Programmers-3. Nobody really knows who that is... some have speculated that they went on to form Compile, while others insist that the team became SystemSoft, the creators of the Master of Monsters series. What we can ascertain from AE is that Programmers-3 were big fans of the challenging stages from Galaga, as this plays a whole lot like them. The big difference is the concussive missile, which demands strategy from the player. You can't fire directly at the stingrays... you've got to instead anticipate their movement and set a trap in their paths.

It's kind of clever, but is it fun? Eh, not really. The missile explosions are too small to be effective... the stingrays have to be in the dead center of the blast to be, uh, dead. It doesn't help that the rays are really small and blend in with the white parts of the background, sometimes zipping behind buildings and planets to evade your shots. AE is one of those games that's technically sound but conceptually broken, offering a twist to the Galaga style of gameplay that nobody really wanted. C

LUNAR LEEPER
Sierra On-Line
"Nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."

It's worth noting that the Leeper in the game's title became the star of Learning with Leeper, an edutainment title for pre-schoolers. It's also worth noting that Leeper is an eyeball monster with a pair of stilt-like legs, which it uses to lunge for spacecraft, and a pair of pincer-like jaws, which it uses to force the spacecraft into its mouth. There is no part of Leeper that should be educating your children. You would be better off hiring a rhinoceros with a short temper and a criminal record as your babysitter.

Anyway. (Ahem.) Lunar Leeper is a shooter that's a bit like Defender and a bit like the Atari 2600 obscurity Cosmic Commuter. You're in a flying saucer, and it's up to you to collect stranded astronauts and drop them off at a safe point at the start of the stage. Leepers wander the surface of this forbidden planet, and will attempt to snatch the astronauts out from under your ship as you fly over them. It's possible to shoot the aliens while they're in the air, but if they manage to catch you, you'll be treated to an animation of the Leeper folding your ship into its mouth, swallowing it whole, and belching. The scene is played up for laughs, but it puts the Leeper near the top of my list of most terrifying space creatures. I'm just saying, even the xenos in Aliens don't grab you out of the air and devour you in one gulp.

Save all the astronauts (or more likely, watch the Leepers eat half of them) and you're whisked off to a bonus stage, where you navigate a cramped cavern. A giant eyeball waits at the end of this level, which I have to imagine is the Queen Leeper and which I also imagine deserves the worst death possible for bringing these wretched creatures into existence. Too bad you'll have to settle for a laser blast in the pupil. It's not a pleasant death, but it could have been so much worse...

Lunar Leeper isn't a bad game by any means... your ship has slightly too much inertia and the Leepers are too smart to actually let themselves get shot (damn it), but it's animated well and the play mechanics work. I just can't fathom why Sierra thought this... thing was mascot material. Go to hell, Leeper. C+

DONKEY KONG
AtariSoft
"Hail to the Kong, baby."

AtariSoft was a confusing chapter in Atari's history. The company took its sizable library of licensed arcade games and brought them to competing home computers and video game systems. However, unlike Mattel and Coleco, the games often wound up being better than what was available on Atari's own machines! In way of illustration, here's Galaxian on the ColecoVision, and here's the same game on the Atari 5200. You've got to be pretty arrogant, or pretty desperate, to not only take your star attractions to the competition, but improve them on the way there.

Donkey Kong on the VIC-20 wasn't better than the Atari computer version, but it nevertheless illustrates the hard work AtariSoft put into its games... for systems not made by Atari. (Maybe it was the cocaine. People did a lot of cocaine in the 1980s, right?) It's got all four stages from the arcade game, while other ports offered three or even two. It's got the intermissions and the "How high can you get?" stage transitions from the arcade game... the ColecoVision port had none of these. It even feels more like the arcade game than other ports thanks to more onscreen barrels and proper scoring for when you leap over several at once.

That's not to say the VIC-20 version of Donkey Kong is a perfect arcade port. Thanks to the computer's low resolution and color output, it looks like someone ran over it a few times with a monster truck. Mario climbs ladders sideways, and Donkey Kong flashes blue buck teeth when he's angry, making him look like a radioactive David Letterman. It's also worth mentioning that jumping is a little odd. Unlike the arcade game, Mario can be controlled in mid-air, so you'll have to lean hard on the joystick if you want to clear that barrel rolling your way.

Still, this is a very good conversion of Donkey Kong... better than Atari had to make it. It might even be better than they should have made it, all things considered. A-