Leather and Lace (and Space-Age Polymers)

Since I re-subscribed to Xbox Game Pass earlier in the month, I figured I might as well get around to trying that Nier Automata game everyone was crowing about a couple of years ago. The quality put into this was obvious, but it feels like there might be too much game (and too many kinds of games) in Nier for its own good. The prologue alone switches from the styles of Radiant Silvergun to Devil May Cry to Robotron: 2084 to StarFox, and while the constant shift from one genre to the next is exhilarating, it's also confusing. Could you give me a little time to learn which of the many buttons on the Xbox controller does what before- okay, I'm surrounded by robots, all taking their anger out on me for their unfortunate resemblance to a park garbage can. Fine, I'll wing it.

Hey, don't get mad at me!
I didn't design you!
(image from Home Depot)

What came to me much more readily is The Messenger, a game from Quebec which does its best to rekindle the long-cold Ninja Gaiden flame. It's better than Ninja Gaiden, as far as I'm concerned... the gameplay is unmistakably similar, but there's less of that being tackled into bottomless pits nonsense, and your empty-headed hero has powers Ryu Hayabusa would have given his left ninja nut to possess. A wingsuit that lets you catch blasts of wind and glide safely down to nearby platforms, rather than leaping for solid ground and hoping you reach it before an eagle reaches you? Yes, please.

Sounds like that gum with the
gooey stuff in the middle.
(image from Steam)

On the Switch side of things (and returning to the subject of robots), there's Mighty Gunvolt Burst, a revisiting of the critically panned Mighty No. 9 with 8-bit graphics and redesigned levels. There are two other things worth noting... the first is that the "burst" in the title happens when you kill enemies at point blank range. This is normally not wise in a game like this, but you get bonus points at the end of the stage if you keep giving robots a colonoscopy with your arm cannon. The other thing is that instead of giving you pre-made weapons, the game scatters parts in each stage, which can be used to put together your own. Want five bullets onscreen instead of three? Want to angle your shots instead of having them follow a straight line? The world is your cyb-oyster, as long as you have the "cost points" to spare.

Cost points can also be used to augment your hero, letting them jump in mid-air, dash away from danger, and most importantly, increasing their defense so they're not crumpled like a piece of paper by the bosses. I absolutely hated this game until I understood how the customization system worked, and found enough parts to make good use of it. It's a lot like Mega Man X in that the game starts out brutally difficult, but eases up on its chokehold after you've found enough power-ups. Actually, that inverse difficulty slope is a lot more pronounced in Mighty Gunvolt Burst, because once you get all the items and the cost points to use them, the action that started out infuriating becomes utterly trivial. 

The only thing stopping you from turning your character into Mecha-Godzilla is your pride (nope, sorry, fresh out) and the bonus points you receive at the end of the stage if you keep him wimpy. You can play the game that way if you want, and it does seem tailored to speedrunners and point-scummers, but nah, I'm quite happy with the handicaps. I just wish I'd gotten them sooner... it would have saved a lot of wear and tear on my throat.

The Eyes Have (Had) It

If you'd like to know what my Switch Lite experience has been like lately, here's a visual aid, courtesy of the fine folks at Frinkiac.

I'm not going to spend much time with my negative first impression of Rock of Ages II: Bigger and Boulder. It's probably the first time in a long time that I've enjoyed the cut scenes in a video game more than the game itself. Like all good nerds, I'm a fan of Monty Python, and the exquisitely drawn, stiffly animated, and thoroughly ridiculous cast of characters satisfies that craving for absurd European humor nicely. But then the game starts, and... uh... what am I even doing here? I get that I'm supposed to break open the gate of the enemy castle with a boulder, but defending my own castle has been an exercise in futility. I've been able to finish the tutorial, and that's pretty much it.

It doesn't help matters that the fonts in the game are so damn small. The tools you use to defend your castle each come with a brief description, explaining how they work and when they should be used, but how the hell am I supposed to read THIS?

No, this is not literally the Switch Lite's native resolution, but this is how the game actually looks on the modestly sized Switch Lite screen. It's abundantly clear that games like Rock of Ages II were designed for television sets, but this is not how millions of Switch owners are playing their games!

It goes back to what I was saying earlier about Nintendo wanting it both ways, but not making the necessary effort to ensure that the Switch can actually work as both a home console and a handheld. It doesn't. The only way it could is if every Switch game was designed with a handheld mode that increases the size and clarity of onscreen text, and game designers just don't want to bother. 

Hell, it's not even an issue exclusive to the Switch... Final Fantasy XV for the Playstation 4 was difficult to play even on high definition television sets, because the design team insisted on using tiny typesets. Sure, it let them squeeze more information on the screen, but what good is that if you can't read any of it?

Look, all I'm saying is that gamers like myself are getting older and less eagle-eyed than they used to be. Just because you can read those ant trails on the screen doesn't mean everyone else can. Just because you have no interest in the Switch Lite doesn't mean that your games don't need accommodations for the millions who own them. The next time you want to make something in your game bigger and bolder, why not start with the text?

Zeni to the Max

By now I'm sure you've heard the news.

image from Throwbacks

Well yeah, the Animaniacs are making a comeback on Hulu, but that's not what I meant. Microsoft just purchased Zenimax, and by proxy, Bethesda Softworks, for the sum of seven and a half billion dollars. That's more money than I'll ever see in twenty lifetimes. 

Microsoft is now in charge of a lot of franchises that were big in the 1990s and 2000s. Doom! Quake! The Elder Scrolls! Fallout! Gamers who were originally going to cast their lot with the Playstation 5 are now understandably worried that their system of choice will not be getting these titles. It certainly explains Microsoft's recent platform inclusive tweets, which suggested that Santa Claus left 34th Street and took up a job as the company's social media spokesman. You see, Microsoft was never really worried that players would abandon the Xbox for another game console... they knew that as long as they held the keys to the next Doom sequel, they couldn't.

Anyway! I wanted to mention that I'm finally making some headway on Squirrel Burger Cookout, the Neo-Geo ports book. Here's a sample chapter, if you'd like to check it out. Previously, I had been beating my head on other word processors and desktop publishers, but Kurt Kalata from Hardcore Gaming 101 recommended that I try Affinity Publisher instead, and it. is. BRILLIANT. It does 90% of what I want with little struggle, and the other ten percent just requires a bit of online research. It's intuitive like Microsoft Publisher, yet powerful like Scribus! It's the total package!

The proposed layout for the book is a little plain at the moment, but it gets the job done. I'd be satisfied with it looking like this, if not deliriously happy. I'm talking to Kurt now to see what he would recommend... hopefully he'll get back to me in a week or so. That ought to give me enough time to scrape together the cash to buy the full version of Affinity Publisher and really go to town on this project...

Hindsight is Always Three Dimensional

Quick, name a product with a 3D focus that's no longer in production!

Image from Columbia.EDU

Well, there's that too. But I was thinking of something with less nacho dust.

Image from eBay

Yeah, that. After a bungled launch and nine moderately successful years on the market, the 3DS has been retired by Nintendo. Yes, that includes the more recent deluxe and budget models. It's not to say that you can't still find good uses for a 3DS... the New model with the upgraded processor has a quartet of homebrew console emulators that are more user friendly and run better than anything you'll find on the Playstation Vita, the system's hapless rival. If you're waiting for officially licensed 3DS software, though, you might be waiting a while. Perhaps billions of years, if there's any truth to the theory of a cyclical timeline.

The 3DS was fun while it lasted, though... and it lasted quite a while! I still have a lot of memories tied to this system, like how badly I wanted it after it launched. The technological shortcomings of the standard DS were starting to chafe, and the promise of a handheld with near-GameCube quality graphics had me licking my lips like a hyena that stumbled upon an elephant graveyard. Sadly, the 3DS proved elusive until two years later, when an acquaintance gifted me one after he upgraded to one of the XL models.

It looks a little rough now, but yanno, 2011.
(image from Amazon)

An equal measure of fun and frustration soon followed. I put a lot of time into the system's star attraction, Super Street Fighter IV... it obviously didn't look as nice as its console counterparts, but it had nearly all the content (plus an odd gachapon mode where you could collect figurines of all the characters) and it played pretty well, with the touchscreen making up for the system's lack of face buttons. 

On the downside, there was Kid Icarus Uprising... its graphics were downright breathtaking by handheld standards, with Pit gliding over vast cityscapes and battling enormous (yet often silly) monsters, but its visual luster couldn't disguise the ugliness of the control. Thanks to the lack of a second analog stick, I felt like I needed all the hands of a legendary Greek monster just to play it. The torturous grind to unlock new weapons didn't help its appeal much either. Sure there are tons of clubs, wands, and swords to collect and combine, but I would have been happier with just one weapon that did a reasonable amount of damage...

You're still a dink, rabbit.

Soon afterward, I moved to Arizona, and found not only a 3DS XL of my own, but a love for Nintendo's daring but distressingly short-lived social media experiment Miiverse. More of my 3DS time was spent scratching out black and white pictures and posting them to the service than actually playing games. I also developed an equally passionate hatred for the Arcade Bunny, the annoyingly chipper, occasionally schizophrenic rabbit who wanted real cash for chances to win simulated enamel pins you could put on your system's home page. I'm embarrassed to admit that I gave more of my money to the bunny than any rational adult should. I'm not at all embarrassed to admit that I heaped abuse on him in Miiverse whenever the opportunity presented itself.

The New 3DS was a worthy follow up to
the original model, but I still question the
wisdom of that stubby second stick.

A few years later, the 3DS XL was retired to a drawer and replaced with the New 3DS XL. They were selling them for half the suggested retail price at K-Mart, but since our local store was in the process of shutting down, I had to request a price match from a nearby Wal-Mart. At the time, the New 3DS XL seemed like a pointless, extravagant purchase, but in hindsight, its added horsepower really did improve the overall experience. Miiverse loaded faster, games ran slightly better, and the 3D that was so spotty on previous models was greatly improved with a head tracking sensor. That faint red LED looks creepy in low light conditions, like your system was possessed by the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey, but you can't argue with the results!

It's been three years, but I never really
got over this.

After the death of Miiverse in late 2017, my enthusiasm for the 3DS, and Nintendo in general, sputtered out. The Vita became my handheld of choice, although I really wasn't doing much with it beyond playing PSP titles I bought on Sony's online store and old arcade games in Final Burn Alpha. I'd pick up the 3DS occasionally to play a round of Kirby: Planet Robobot, but reading news posts made it clear that the system was running out of fresh releases... and running out of time. I purchased a Switch Lite last April, in anticipation of the 3DS's inevitable demise... and now the dual screen handheld is officially history.

Would I say the 3DS was a better system than the Switch? Not really. People complain about the quality of games on the Switch eShop, but the 3DS eShop was far, far worse, loaded with shovelware that demanded the extra power of the New 3DS, yet would have been underwhelming on the decades-old NES. The hardware suffered from shortsighted design (why make a handheld with a single analog stick six years after everybody complained about the single stick on the PSP?), and promising services like Miiverse, Swapnote, and Nintendo Video were ended prematurely, frustrating the system's owners.

Steve, aka OkayGreyOwl, drew this image
as a farewell gift to everyone he met on
Miiverse. That's my bear alter ego on the left.

Despite all that, I got a lot of emotional mileage out of the 3DS. I still remember running off to McDonald's with system in hand to catch a few stray puzzle pieces from other users, so I could finish that interactive diorama of Kirby, or Mario, or that goofy mutt who wanted to sell me mini-games. I recall all the time I spent on Miiverse, not only posting doodles but admiring the work of others, which frequently pushed the boundaries of a tiny, monochrome digital canvas. I remember scooping up cheap software at game stores and pawn shops and Humble Bundles, and having a lot of fun with everything I found. (Well, maybe not Asphalt 3D.) I fondly look back at the dozens of hours I spent playing Smash Run, and slowly developing an appreciation for the Smash Bros. series after years of shunning it. I remember settling my nerves during hospital visits by watching episodes of Bravest Warriors on Nintendo Video. This thing is just packed with memories, and I'm sure I'm missing some important ones.

Wait, there's this one. Wayne Brady from
Let's Make a Deal totally helped save me
from a monster once. Let's see your
fancy-schmancy Switch do that.

There will never be a gaming experience quite like the 3DS, and it's not likely to be forgotten by the millions who owned it.

Half-Measures

image from The Verge
(and before you ask, no, that's not a speaker)

I'll be honest with you, the current plan for the Xbox Series, er... series of consoles is a little confusing to me. So we've got a five hundred dollar system that plays games in 4K, and a three hundred dollar system that in some ways is actually less powerful than the deluxe model of the previous generation Xbox One. You get less RAM and fewer teraflops in the Xbox Series S than you would in 2017's Xbox One X, which leaves me perplexed... and not just because I'm not entirely clear what a "teraflop" is and how it relates to system performance.

Some folks aren't all that worried, like EGM's Mollie Patterson, who feels that the Xbox Series S will offer more than enough performance for older 1080p television sets. I personally question the wisdom of splintering the user base and potentially leaving cash-strapped customers out in the cold, but maybe this won't be a repeat of the accursed 32X. After all, we're not living in 1995 anymore. Video game hardware has evolved to the point where further advancements provide only modest enhancements to the gaming experience, rather than completely transforming it. We may need a seismic shift on the level of last century's polygonal graphics before the video game industry needs significant hardware upgrades.

Anyway. The Scott Pilgrim game everyone wet themselves over is making a comeback ten years after its Xbox 360 debut. As you may have gathered from the previous sentence, I did not enjoy this game, which heavily leeches from River City Ransom while somehow leaving out the fun. However, if you did like it, here's your chance to play it again without having to dig through the closet for your last generation console first. Bring along some Huggies just in case.

You'll Be Rooked by the Brothers

Oh man, there's some recent news about a Switch game that I've just got to report! That's right, Pix the Cat is being sold for just ninety-nine cents until the 14th of September! If you're a fan of Pac-Man, Snake, puzzle games, or sleek blue-tinted neon graphics, it's definitely something you'll want in your collection.

Wait, no, there was something else. Nintendo is celebrating the 35th anniversary of Super Mario Bros. by offering a collection of 3D games in the franchise. Except the games are only modestly enhanced from the originals on the Nintendo 64, GameCube, and Wii. And you won't get Super Mario Galaxy 2, regarded as a high point in the often disappointing Wii library. And, uh, it's only going to be available until March of the following year? 

That's right, Super Mario All-Stars 3D will be a limited edition release, despite being sold in both digital and physical forms. What the heck is accomplished by doing this, aside from sowing customer resentment? I mean, they might force some gamers into making the purchase early, but I have to believe that selling a product for several years would be preferable to turning off the tap and covering it with cement after six months.

Image from Nintendo Life

The news that piqued my interest was the announcement of a Game and Watch that plays Super Mario Bros. Like, the full-fledged NES game, squeezed into the same credit card form factor as much simpler G&W titles like Ball (which this system also plays). Is it kind of pointless? Yes, but it looks a lot more high class than Sega's miniature Game Gear thanks to that shiny brass front plate, to say nothing of more comfortable to hold.

I'm almost jealous, because this is what passed for a Super Mario Bros. Game and Watch back in 1989, when I was a teenager...

Image from Worthpoint

I mean, it was recognizable as Super Mario Bros., but I'd describe it as a demake... the blocks were reduced to segmented lines, Mario choppily jumped from one point on the screen to the next, and power ups were largely absent... I think there was a 1UP and a star, and that was pretty much it. It got the job done thirty years ago, but I suspect this new model will be a lot more satisfying.

What else did Nintendo announce... an augmented reality Super Mario Kart game with real RC cars? Feh! How the hell am I going to play that in a trailer? I mean, that might work for the average house, but a track in here is going to make Baby Park look like the Paris to Dakar rally. I'll be sitting that one out.