Switch's Brew

I don't have much to say game-wise (or anything-wise, honestly), but I wanted to get in one more blog post before Halloween. So here, have a look at this.

Tito from Macho Nacho Productions took an ordinary Game Boy Advance and gave it Switch-like features, including compatibility with Joy Cons and the ability to output video to a television set. This is one of his more creative mods, but Tito does consistently good work on all his projects, as well as the videos which showcase them. If you're not watching his channel already, now is a good time to start.

Castlevania: Regurgitation of Despair

Recently, I played a stage in Psychonauts 2 where you're tasked with cooking gourmet meals for a trio of sock puppet goats. (It makes more sense in the context of the game. Well, as much as that scenario could, anyway.) Once you're finished, the goats who are really footwear but who are really figments of a disturbed man's imagination vomit up what you've served them, and demand that you make them more delicacies with the chunks of what they've already partially digested. That goes about as well as you'd expect, and to put it bluntly, it goes a lot like Castlevania: Harmony of Despair.

Why in the hell would you want to see the
entire castle in a Castlevania game all at once?
Furthermore, why is this the default view?
I feel like I'm fighting demons in a Petri dish!
(image from Castlevania Wiki)

As you may have already gathered, Harmony of Despair is repurposed vomit. Konami took elements from the Castlevania series, stitched them together, and sold the tattered quilt, precariously held together with spools of dime-store thread and the occasional staple, to desperate fans. "Here's an all-new Metroidvania game!," they said. "And this time, you can play it with your friends!" What they DIDN'T tell you is that the new level designs don't make much sense, or that there's now a timer which adds to the frustration of hitting dead ends, or... much of anything, really. If you want to re-equip weapons and items, you have to find books hidden in each level, then make your selections while the timer continues to count down. If you want to actually see where you are, you'll have to click the right analog thumbstick to change the camera view from Outer Space Vision™ to the room where you're currently standing. If you actually want to enjoy yourself, I'd suggest turning off your Xbox and playing one of the games in the Castlevania Advance Collection instead. Not Harmony of Dissonance... somehow games in this series with "Harmony" in the title uncannily end up being the crappiest ones. Call it Dracula's Curse, or more accurately, Kozuki's Curse.

Maybe this game would be better with multiple players, which seemed to be Konami's intention. Then again, maybe a slower paced, more methodical action title with RPG trappings like a Metroidvania isn't well suited as a party game. Maybe the critics were right when they dismissed Harmony of Despair as a lazy, incongruent jumble of past ideas, swept off the floor and stuck together with generous squirts of Elmer's glue. Maybe there's a damn good reason Konami had to give it away as part of Microsoft's Xbox Live Gold program. It was either this or scrape the whole mess into an air sickness bag.

Simply the Best

image from IC14259379/TinkerCAD

I'd like to offer a late but nevertheless heartfelt toast to Hiroshi Ono, who recently died of unspecified causes. Known affectionately in his native Japan as "Mr. Dot-Man," Ono created the bulk of the sprites in Namco's most memorable arcade games. Who gave the world Goro and the Mewkies, the gang of felonious felines from Mappy? Ono did! Who drew each frame of your ship spinning wildly as it's caught by the enemy forces in Galaga, without the benefit of hardware scaling or rotation? Ono did! Who faithfully recreated the cast of the Hanna-Barbera cartoon Pac-Man in the side-scrolling action game Pac-Land? Ono did! Who used a mirror to project video game spirits inside a toy mansion, resulting in the hauntingly tangible light gun shooter Golly! Ghost!? You'd better believe it was Hiroshi Ono, shown here dressed in his best Rick Sanchez cosplay.

image from Playstation Lifestyle

Ono's sprite work ranks up there as some of the absolute best from the arcade industry's 8-bit era. Only Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto was as talented, but he was nowhere near as prolific. As you'll note from this memorial on Retronauts, Ono did the artwork for a dozen different arcade titles... really important arcade releases like Pole Position and Xevious and Dig Dug, that were the keystones for Namco's long-term success as a video game developer. 

The polished artwork that reached beyond the limitations of early 1980s technology was a huge part of the appeal of these games, and it's doubtful that they'd be as captivating without their fiery explosions, their screen-filling, bullet-spewing battleships, and the endearing way those subterranean monsters get flattened under rocks, or filled to bursting with an air hose. (I don't know how he managed this, but those Pookas and Fygars just die so adorably.)

So I guess what I'm saying is this... thank you, Hiroshi Ono, for forty years of putting your dots in all the right places.

Nintend-no

We finally know the price of Nintendo's extended online service. You'll get access to Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64 games, and some DLC for your copy of Animal Crossing, alongside the expected option to challenge your friends across the world in Nintendo games, for the yearly sum of... fifty dollars. That's more than double the price of the standard Nintendo online service, for Genesis games you've doubtlessly already purchased elsewhere, a handful of games for one of Nintendo's least memorable systems, and extra content for a Switch game you might not even have. Sorry, that a "no" from me, dawg.

Nintendo's defenders are already coming out of the woodwork, saying "Oh, it really doesn't cost THAT much!" Well, if you can squeeze that extra expense into your budget, fine, but my money is already stretched pretty thin, as this comic from Andrew W. Dickman illustrates...

stop complaining, it's not that much pic.twitter.com/StRjaGgLoi

— And-boo! D💜C (@AWDtwit) October 15, 2021

The Robot Master designed during Dr. Wiley's bi-curious years is right... you've only got so much disposable income available to you each month, and there are so many subscription services available that you've got to make difficult choices to ensure you're getting the maximum entertainment for your dollar. 

However, Nintendo's deluxe online service offers so little bang for the buck that it's not a tough decision at all. Amazon Prime gets me free shipping on purchases and a modest video streaming service. Paramount Plus offers a steady drip of The Price is Right and Let's Make a Deal, along with the occasional hit of nostalgia from Nickelodeon cartoons. Xbox Ultimate Game Pass grants access to a hundred recent games, along with the option to play them online. 

What does Nintendo's premium subscription service give me? Considering the bottom-scraping quality of the company's online services, and the fact that you can find most of its included Genesis games on practically every 21st century format in existence, not very damn much.

Over the Moon

Castles are always most beautiful during a
sunrise, aren't they? Especially when they're
about to crumble into dust.

It took twenty years (yikes), but thanks to the recently released Castlevania Advance Collection, I've finally beaten Circle of the Moon. What took me so long? Aside from misplacing my copy and a bunch of other Game Boy Advance games in a Detroit airport fifteen years ago, I dunno... I guess I just lost interest. Repeatedly. There's more than one way to play Circle of the Moon, of course, but I found that regardless of the format, I'd get about halfway through the game, tire of grinding for spell cards and items, and move on to something else. I'm fickle like that.

Not THIS time, though! I vowed that I would play the game from beginning to end, and after roughly twelve hours of exploring Casa Del Vania, endlessly whipping Arch Demons for their rarely relinquished bounty and shuffling a handful of magic cards, I finally reached Dracula. A dozen Thunderbird summons later, Vlad went down for another century-long nap, and I could finally move on to something else, without carrying around the residual guilt of unfinished business.

I'm talking like finishing Circle of the Moon was a dreadful obligation, and while that was true some of the time, I honestly enjoyed the overall experience. Is it the best game in the Castlevania series? No, not really. Is it the best game in the subgenre of Metroidvanias? Not that either. Is it the best of the three Metroidvanias on the Game Boy Advance? Er, no... but it sure beats the crap out of the tinny, dayglo nightmare that was Harmony of Dissonance! There, score one for Circle and me not wasting my time.

Anyway, I had a few stray observations after beating Circle of the Moon. The first is this... why are all the health ups in the form of a pitcher of Kool-Aid?

(image from Junk Food Betty)
(Junk Food Betty, wham the bam)

When you put it that way, it makes much more sense. Oh yeah.

Secondly, this game has a big thing for furries. It's not just the Robin Hood-looking Fox Hunters scattered throughout the machine tower, but entire corridors stocked with Hyenas, Werewolves, Were-Panthers, and Were-Bears, offering threats ranging from "eh, that'll heal" to "that frickin' punch took HOW MUCH damage?!" You start to think about halfway through your adventure that Dracula's castle doubles as the hotel for the Romanian branch of Anthrocon.

What else? I recently learned from the game's strategy Wiki (an invaluable resource, by the way) that Konami doesn't even consider Circle of the Moon part of the official Castlevania timeline. That seems a little harsh... sure, it's a little lacking compared to Symphony of the Night or the later Sorrow games, but in the distant, technologically-impaired year of 2001, Circle of the Moon blew minds and melted faces. Listen to that crisp digitized sound! Look at those detailed graphics! Wait wait, let me get this lamp closer to the screen... okay, NOW look at those detailed graphics!

It's hard to overestimate the impact of hearing the title screen music from the cutting edge Symphony of the Night, on a handheld game system, a year after quality-challenged Game Boy Color titles were the depressing norm. Frankly, no portable game system was punching at that weight... not the Wonderswan, not the Neo-Geo Pocket, and not even 16-bit systems turned into handhelds, like the Nomad and TurboExpress. Circle of the Moon has its problems, some stemming from being a freshman effort and others being inherent in the Metroidvania formula, but considering its advancements over past handheld Castlevanias, and the direction it paved for future titles on the GBA and Nintendo DS, it's hard to justify blotting it out of series canon.

Then again, retconning Circle means bitchy-ass Hugh Baldwin never existed, so maybe it's not that bad.

Pretty Sneaky, Sony

Remember when Sony planned to shutter its digital storefronts for the PS3 and Vita, leaving owners of those systems without a quick and convenient way to buy games for those machines? Luckily, consumers called Sony on its crap, and the company retreated from its original plan of... uh, planned obsolescence. The stores for both systems remained open (at least on those systems... they've been purged from the web store accessible from your computer), and fans breathed a sigh of relief.

Don't get too comfortable, though. Sony still wants to wean gamers from their legacy systems... they're just being craftier about it. Video Games Chronicle reports that starting on October 27th, if you want games for the Playstation 3 and Vita, your payment options will be drastically limited. You won't be able to buy them with PayPal or credit cards... just whatever credit happens to be in your Playstation account's wallet. Sure, you can buy credit online or from brick and mortar stores, but it will make future legacy purchases more inconvenient... and might give Sony an excuse to retire the PS3 and Vita's respective digital stores for good. And people wonder why I've shifted my allegiance to the Xbox. 

(Note: People actually don't give a damn about that, but if they actually were wondering, that's the reason.)

In non-Sony-is-full-of-douchebags news, the final fighter has been announced for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and it's...

That looks like a gas station logo.
(image from Smashpedia)

Er, no. That's the company that makes Super Smash Bros. Let me try that again...

image from Amazon

Yeah, the little dork from Kingdom Hearts, with the key-shaped sword and shoes Bozo might wear while going out for a morning jog. Any connections Sora has to Disney properties will be cut loose in his Smash Bros. appearance, which is odd as that's his whole raison d'etre. Without Mickey, Goofy, and Donald at his side, what's he got going for him? It sure ain't his fashion sense, or his Gordion-knotted storylines.

Speaking of confusion, the three mainline games in the Kingdom Hearts series will be coming to the Switch... except they'll be cloud-based and won't play on the system without an online connection. Look, I get that the Switch is a little underpowered, but it's also a handheld game system, and thus not always near an adequate wi-fi signal. Maybe Square-Enix should have made the visual compromises expected of Switch ports, rather than having the system dial out for an experience that's likely to be even less satisfying to players without Gigabit internet access.

One other thing. Nickelodeon's own platform fighter, All-Star Brawl, has just been released. So far, it's got just twenty fighters, a small fraction of what's available in Smash Bros. However, hackers have been nosing through the code, and discovered clues that strongly suggest there will be DLC characters in the future. Shredder's a candidate for inclusion, along with Garfield, but the most promising addition would have to be XJ-9, aka Jenny Wakeman from My Life as a Teenage Robot. If you've never seen that show, imagine all three Powerpuff Girls aged up a decade and welded into a tin can in a skirt, and you've got the right idea.