Take it Easy

It's probably not a popular opinion to have given the enduring popularity of the Dark Souls series, but you know what? I appreciate the current trend of putting "casual" modes in video games. It's not only handy for those of us whose reflexes have dulled with age, but it makes games that were impenetrable even back in the old days more approachable, and fun. 

Take for instance Mega Man X Legacy Collection. There's a Rookie mode which not only lowers each game's difficulty, but removes some of the frustration of starting at a disadvantage. Unlike games in the classic Mega Man series, where the title character begins and ends his adventure with the same amount of health, X starts off with a minuscule life bar and a basic move set, without the abilities he needs to ultimately beat Sigma. 

You've got to improve X by collecting items and discovering capsules hidden in every stage. This adds depth to the gameplay but has the unfortunate side effect of making the game tough for newcomers, rather than easing them into the action and slowly turning up the challenge as they improve. 

Why Capcom thought dropping a brick wall in front of first-timers was a good idea (or why Mega Man fans are okay with this reverse difficulty slope) is a mystery, but in the Rookie mode, it's no longer a problem. You'll still have to earn those heart tanks and armor pieces, but with the damage turned down to a reasonable level, less battle hardened players have an honest shot at finding them, and at beating the bosses at the end of each stage. I didn't enjoy Mega Man X when it first debuted on the Super NES, but thanks to the Rookie mode, I'm enjoying it now.

The absence of a casual mode is deeply felt in another classic collection for the Switch, Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun: Retro Brawler Bundle. The Double Dragon games for the NES were tough, to the point where the first game wouldn't let you continue at all and the second forced players to enter increasingly complicated codes to resume their progress. (The third game let you continue if you could reach the fourth stage, but good luck getting that far.)

The collection does let you make a suspend save at any point, but it's tedious to frequently have to reload it, and it doesn't address the flaws in the games that a casual mode would have. The original Double Dragon is full of questionable design decisions that are tolerable at the start but quickly snowball into obnoxious by the third mission. The holes that the Abobos leave behind after they burst through a wall- holes that led to nothing in the first level of the arcade game- are now portals to the second half of the stage. Walk past them and you'll have to finish the stage again, with a lot less time to spare.

If you do go through that hole, the game decides that this whole "beating up guys" thing is boring and that it wants to be a platformer instead, with your hero dodging stalactites and awkwardly leaping onto metal lifts. Is brawny Billy Lee fast enough to avoid that rain of spikes? Not really. Does pressing A and B together feel like a natural way to jump in a game that suddenly demands precision jumping? Not really. If you fall from that lift and tumble into a fiery pit, will you have enough lives to finish the game? You guessed it... not really.

Some of the games in the Double Dragon and Kunio-Kun collection have what's called "quality up" versions which fix flaws in the originals, but it's pretty clear that Arc System Works didn't address the flaws that needed fixing the most. Infinite continues in the Double Dragon games would have been a good start. More forgiving platform segments in games that don't really need platform segments would have been even better. 

We were willing to put up with these flaws in our teens, when we didn't know any better, but that was over thirty years ago. We do know better now, and the game companies should too. Casual modes are designed to not only make games easier for players who may no longer be as skilled or as patient as they were when they were fourteen, but to smooth over rough patches that may have been honest mistakes by the programmers, or intentionally left there to nudge players renting the game into a purchase. 

Capcom realized this when they put casual modes in their Mega Man collections. Namco understood this too when they finally brought Mr. Driller Drill Land to the United States, offering a mode that accommodates both less skilled players, and content tourists who want to experience the subterranean fun of Mr. Driller without the frustration. Other developers, and Arc System Works in particular, need to follow in their lead. "Git gud" may be an acceptable response to players frustrated with Dark Souls, but it's not appropriate for thirty year old games that may not have been that "gud" in the first place.

Super Splash Bros

So, you've probably heard by now that Disney will be changing Splash Mountain (aka the flume ride that makes you look like you wet your pants) so that it includes the stars of The Princess and the Frog, rather than the stars of that other Disney film nobody likes to discuss. Suits me just fine... I've never been to any of the Disney parks, and I don't have much attachment to a problematic film from the 1940s the company's kept buried for at least thirty years. 

(I do have The Princess and the Frog on Blu-Ray, and found it to be pleasant enough, especially the part where the guy who looks like Arsenio Hall and sounds like Goliath from Gargoyles gets dragged down to hell. In his defense, I probably would have squashed that annoying lightning bug, too. But I digress.)

What was my point? Oh yes. My only request for the new and improved Splash Mountain is that they keep letting people mug for the camera that takes their snapshot at the end of the ride. We've seen some memorable hijinx from Disney's treasured guests in the past, including this quartet of gamers who just couldn't wait to get back to their hotel room to play Smash Bros.

And Smash Bros. Melee, no less!
Talk about a wave dash.
(image from... IGN? Well, whatever.)

Now that I think about it, Universal has its own theme park, which will be getting a Super Nintendo Land exhibit sometime in the future. Maybe they could make their own flume ride called Smash Mountain, and install playable Switches into every log. Waterproofed ones, naturally.

Thrift Me Up

It might be time to break out the hyperventilating Fry GIF again.

So I went thrift shopping in Sierra Vista a few days ago... that probably wasn't the smartest thing to do considering the hot new virus that's been sweeping the nation. However, I took a face mask with me, because I'm not a total jerk. Besides, they won't let you into Goodwill without one.

The take at that Goodwill, and several of the other places I visited, was fairly modest. I got a bunch of DVDs, including most of the early episodes of Spongebob Squarepants (back when the show was actually good), the Garfield's Nine Lives special, and Kentucky Fried Movie, an early effort by the team who later gave us the Naked Gun trilogy. But my luck improved in a big way after I went to the bookstore that was a stone's throw from Goodwill. Behold!

When I found a copy of Mario Kart: Double Dash for two dollars, I gasped. When I found five other GameCube games next to it for the same price, I nearly had to bite my lip to keep from screaming. I couldn't fit Resident Evil 4 into the frame, but you can see Fire Emblem, Baten Kaitos Origins, Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, and Twilight Princess in this picture. As games, they're all pretty good... Baten Kaitos Origins is said to play like Steamworld Quest, which I adored on the Switch, and Path of Radiance is supposed to be one of the better games in the Fire Emblem series, with 3D battles replacing the tiny sprites in the Game Boy Advance title that preceded it. Twilight Princess I already had on the Wii, but this version puts the sword back in Link's left hand where it belongs and takes away the frantic Wiimote waggling players have come to despise.

As collector's items, yowza. Fire Emblem sells for well over a hundred dollars on eBay, with Baten Kaitos Origins trailing closely behind in value. I'd like to hold onto the latter game, but the fact that I never got very far in Awakenings for the 3DS suggests that the former may end up on the discard pile if (more like when) I get desperate for cash. As for Mario Kart Double Dash, that's a game I'll be clutching as tightly as a steering wheel around a hairpin turn... I don't care how valuable that one gets!

I also grabbed a copy of Crash Nitro Kart for the Xbox from the same bookstore, but... that had no disc inside. You can't win 'em all, but I'd say I was 98% victorious in this case.

Your Number's Up, Chuck

Chuck E. Cheese has gone through many transformations in his forty year lifetime, going from a sleazy back alley rat to an extreme skateboarder to a more realistically sized mouse. If the rumors of his company's mounting debt and impending closure are true, Chuck may take on the same role as Geoffrey the Giraffe and the nameless clown from KB Toys... as another face in the unemployment line.

I have fond memories of Chuck E. Cheese... not so much in its current incarnation, but as it was originally envisioned in the late 1970s, as a way for former Atari CEO Nolan Bushnell to remain in the video game industry without violating his non-compete agreement with Warner Brothers (and we'll get to them later; there's important news on that front too). It was ostensibly a pizza restaurant, but nobody went to Chuck E. Cheese for the food... or those creepy animatronic robots.

The 1980s Chuck E. Cheese experience, portrayed
with distressing accuracy by The Simpsons. Look,
it was a different time. A stranger, more disturbing
time. But at least we didn't have COVID-19
back then, no sir!
(image from Frinkiac)

No, it was all about the dimly lit arcade, chock full of your favorite video games and even a few you never knew existed. I was lucky enough to be invited to a Chuck E. Cheese for a friend's birthday party, and it was a defining childhood experience. Who could forget the glorious sensory overload of well over a dozen arcade cabinets, strobing their screens to catch your attention and singing out in a chaotic yet alluring digital cacophony? (And oh yeah, occasionally getting whacked in the face with the tail of a disgruntled employee in a rat suit, but we won't get into that part of the experience.)

That Chuck E. Cheese has been dead for a while now... the restaurant switched to rides and redemption machines in the 1990s, and more recently phased out its robot animal performers, turning them into a bitter memory (and the basis for the appropriately haunting Five Nights at Freddy's video game series). However, the news of the company's financial peril suggests that there may be no Chuck E. Cheese of any kind in the near future. Looks like kids will have to be kids at the halloween stores and Hobby Lobbies that will sprout up in their place.

Scorpion's idea of a long-distance connection,
prior to AT&T's purchase of Warner Games.
(image from the Monster Wiki)

Oh yes, I mentioned Warner Bros. earlier. The former owner of Atari and the current owner of its arcade division may be done with video games entirely, if parent company AT&T has its say. It's currently looking to unload Warner Games on another publisher, to relieve some of the debt from its purchase of the movie studio. How much debt, exactly? $165 billion, according to Eurogamer. How much is Warner Games actually worth? $4 billion, according to the same source. I'm not a finance whiz here, but AT&T's math needs a little work.

What am I Writing FOOOOR?!

Sorry I haven't been around in a while... I'm kind of dealing with an existential crisis. What is my place in the gaming community? Do I even have one, or is peoples' grim tolerance of me starting to slide into contempt? Is anyone actually reading this shit, or am I just talking to myself? Am I really a good writer, or have I just been deluding myself into believing that for the last eight years? And on and on it goes. I'll spare you further drama, but I'm going to have to find some answers to these questions before I can fully commit myself to a blog that may ultimately be wasted effort.

Anyway. The Playstation 5 was recently revealed by Sony. It looks like a futuristic vagina. Nintendo is holding a sale on hundreds of games for the Switch and 3DS. You should probably get some of them while they're reasonably priced. Itch.io is selling a bundle with over a thousand games, and you should get that, because it's cheap and it's for a good cause. That is all.

Insane in the Keychain

image of size-slashed Game Gears from SlashGear

After weeks of Sega teasing us with a big announcement, what we're actually getting from them is not big at all... and frankly, not a big deal, either. The Game Gear is back... and in pog size! I'm sure the folks who thought Sega was returning as a console manufacturer are overjoyed. (Really people, just let it go already. It's been nearly twenty years.)

On the down side, the Game Gear Micro is too small to be practical as a handheld. If you thought the Switch Lite screen was small, you ain't seen nothin' yet! (In fact, you might not see it at all unless you squint.) On the plus side, this would be pretty nifty as a keychain. I used to have a "Puyolin" keychain that played a simple but nevertheless faithful game of Puyo Puyo. I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that the Game Gear Micro will play a much better one, at nearly the same size. 

Don't expect to play much else, though. Each Game Gear Micro contains only four games, with each color offering a different set of titles. At forty* dollars US for each Game Gear Micro, you're not getting a lot of bang for the buck... certainly not compared to the Neo-Geo Mini, which costs as little as $30 and contains forty much, much, muuuuch more impressive games. Thanks to SlashGear and countless other sources for the scoop.

* Fifty! It was fifty dollars each! Ho ho, Sega, you're some kind of nuts. I hate to be that guy, but you can get a Raspberry Pi for that price. You could get a Switch Lite for the price of all of these.