Technical Difficulties

Well, this kind of bites. I recently bought a PSP-2000 for a reasonable price, on the understanding that the screen was slightly buggered up and needed to be replaced. The problem is, while I did manage to remove the screen, I also managed to remove the tiny latch that holds the backlight cable in place. When I mean tiny, I mean it's literally a square that's a couple of millimeters high and wide. So when that replacement screen (finally) arrives, I'll have to make like MacGyver and glue the backlight cable, also rather small, in place so it doesn't jostle around after the system is reassembled. Cue groan of frustration.

Let me just state for the record that I kind of hate hardware mods. Software mods, those aren't a problem... I rarely screw these up, because it's just a matter of having the right equipment and following instructions. Hardware mods, though, that's a different story. They require the sight of a hawk and the dexterity of a neurosurgeon, and I have neither. With electronics being as small as they are in 2022 (and in the case of that PSP, well before that), you start to feel like Godzilla, trying his damnedest to not step on anyone or break any buildings as he wades through the streets of Tokyo. There's a reason he's had more luck as a force of nature than a hero.

What the radioactive dinosaur said.
(image from The Oatmeal, a web site which you
should already know about by now)

It's really a shame, too, because there are all kinds of situations where modding a game system at the microscopic level would be a handy skill. Take, for instance, my late model GameCube, which could have a digital out port grafted onto it if I had the skill. (I likely don't.) Or the MC2SIO, which lets the Playstation 2 run games straight from an SD card if I had the steady hands to do the wiring. (See previous parantheses.) There's a wealth of exciting possibilities, all well beyond my clumsy grasp.

Act 4: He Files for Divorce

It seems the honeymoon, and indeed, the whole marriage, is over between Pac-Man and his wife. Because AtGames currently holds some of the rights to the Ms. Pac-Man character, and because Namco was never really thrilled with her existence in the first place, they're purging her from other Pac-Man games, including the recently released Switch version of Pac-Land. Now, you'll find Pac-Mom at the end of every level, who looks like something Namco pulled out of their butts at the last minute. 

"Hi honey, I'm- who the hell are you people?!" 
(image from Ars Technica)

Namco did promise retribution after AtGames snuck off with the rights to Ms. Pac-Man, claiming that they would make the purchase useless. It seems this hasty Pac-ectomy is the first step toward keeping that promise, and with Pac-Man Museum Plus coming out in a couple of months, it's likely there will be more historical revisionism in the future.

By the way, Pac-Man's had another family on the side in Japan for years. This includes not only Pac-Mom, but Pac-Marie, Pac-Girl, and Pac Little as well. Pac Little isn't much different from Jr. Pac-Man, but Pac-Marie... well, just look at her. 

image from the Pac-Man Wiki

She lacks the glamour and maturity of Ms. Pac-Man, looking instead like the sweet, naïve girl next door type. Namco implied that she actually was Ms. Pac-Man in the past, but considering the current situation, they're probably going to backpedal on those suggestions in a hurry.

More importantly, what will happen to the Ms. Pac-Man game? For the moment, you can still buy it on the Xbox Marketplace, but until Namco and AtGames come to an agreement (and Namco doesn't seem in an agreeable mood at the moment), you probably won't be finding it on any future game systems. That's unfortunate, as it's widely regarded to be better than the original Pac-Man, with brighter colors, more variety, and those bedeviled bouncing fruits which always seem just out of reach. 

With the exception of Pac-Man Arrangement, none of the other Pac-Man sequels and spin-offs could hold a candle to Ms. Pac-Man, whether they were Midway's legally dubious extensions of the franchise (Jr. Pac-Man, Baby Pac-Man, Professor Pac-Man) or Namco's official creations (Super Pac-Man, Pac and Pal, Pac-Mania). With this in mind, one hopes that Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man's separation will not be a permanent one. Somehow I doubt gamers are going to be satisfied with Exciting New! Pac-Man Plus as a substitute.

Switching Sides

Seems City Connection isn't done with its shiny new Zebra Engine just yet. The proprietary Sega Saturn emulator for the Switch, previously used in three obscure games by Success, will be making its encore in the upcoming S-Tribute line, featuring a handful of 1990s arcade titles by Taito. 

The games offered in S-Tribute include Puzzle Bobble 2x and 3, Cleopatra Fortune, Metal Black, Layer Section, and most tantalizing of all, Elevator Action Returns. Not many people have played this one, but you'd be hard pressed to find someone who has and didn't enjoy it... even the irascible Angry Video Game Nerd heaped on the praise for this sleek action title in his review of the two Taito Legends collections for Xbox and Playstation 2.

There are just two problems. The first is that the Zebra Engine brought significant lag to the first three games that used it. Luckily, that seems to have been smoothed out in Layer Section, if early YouTube reviews of the Japanese demo are any indication. The second issue is that these games aren't scheduled for release in America, and may never officially arrive on these shores. You can always circumvent this with a Japanese Switch account, but a native release in English would be a lot more convenient.

Whatever happens, it's fantastic that the Switch library is bursting at the seams with arcade hits, with more coming this late in the system's life. Like the GameBoy and 3DS before it, it looks like the Switch will be sticking around for a while, to my wallet's great relief.

Putting the EEE! in Enix

I was looking up something or other on Google Images, and this abstract figure presumed to be Enix's first mascot appeared. Is it a crudely drawn robot brought to life in a shareware paint program? A discarded drawing from Hungarian animation studio Klasky-Csupo? A random background character in a Dire Straights video? I'm still not sure, but since I had to see it, now so do you.

image from Giant Bomb

I asked around on the Talking Time forums, and one member insisted that it was part of a promotion to encourage hobbyist programmers to submit their games to Enix. Another guessed that it was a digital man inside your computer who handles all the calculations; a sort of number-crunching ghost in the machine which makes your games come to life. Finally, someone observed that whatever it was, it looked like it was caught in the middle of a bowel movement. Come to think of it, it does look like it's squatting, and that circle it's clutching in its spindly pixel arm could be an extra large roll of toilet paper...

Whatever this thing is or happens to be doing, Enix's corporate successor Square-Enix isn't eager to discuss it. Actually, there's a lot of stuff Enix did back in the 1980s that Square-Enix would like to pretend never happened, including the computer game Lolita Syndrome. I'll let the Wikipedia entry explain that one for me, but whatever you're already thinking, it's worse than that.

Only One of these Turtles is Played by Clorey Feld- Cory- Uh, Cloris Leachman

What they said.
(image from Turtlepedia)

Hey, I remembered that thing I wanted to bring up earlier! It's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection, coming to every major game console in... uh, sometime this year. I can't find a solid release date, but whenever that is, I want it. It's got thirteen video games from the good old days, when both the heroes in a half-shell and Konami as a game developer were way radical and not a total bummer. That includes the Turtles arcade game, the sequel to the Turtles arcade game, the home version of the sequel of the Turtles arcade game, the NES exclusive sequel to the home version of the sequel to the Turtles arcade game, and Hyperstone Heist for the Genesis, which was almost but not quite a home version of the sequel of the Turtles arcade game. 

(Phew.)

Other highlights include all of the Tournament Fighters games (but particularly the Super NES version, which was better than the other two), all three GameBoy Turtles games, and that despicable side-scrolling platformer with the nigh impossible underwater stages. If that wasn't enough, the most popular games have online support, to reproduce that arcade experience in the comfort of your own home. You can also play the Japanese versions, a feature that was very much appreciated on the Sega Genesis Mini where some games were markedly different depending on the region you selected. You're getting a pretty comprehensive package, and it's being handled by Digital Eclipse, so you know the emulation will be good. 

The price of admission is $39.99, which is acceptable when you consider that this puts each game in the package at just over three dollars. Who am I kidding... Konami pretty much had me from "hello" with this one.

It Was Effect, The Droste Effect

Yikes. It's been just a little too long since I've posted to this blog. There was something I wanted to cover here shortly after the last post, but I forgot what that was, and I just lost interest. I'm pretty sure it was important, which is why it's so galling that it slipped my mind.

Anyway! Rolling Thunder is set to be released for the Switch- again- courtesy of Hamster's Arcade Archives. Is there any point to buying Rolling Thunder when the game was already released twice for this system, including in a collection of arcade hits that quite often costs less than Rolling Thunder on its own? Probably not, but it's there if you want it. For the third time.

image from some guy on Reddit

So, in St. Patrick's Day news, I've been playing Tunic on the Xbox One, which stars a little fox who thinks he's Link from The Legend of Zelda, trapped in an isometric world with a stubbornly immobile camera and various creatures who hunger for verdant vulpine flesh. You will get confused by the perspective, and you will die frequently, complete with an off-putting "REE REE REE" noise seemingly robbed from the old Hercules television series. No, really, I don't want to hear this a half dozen times over the span of fifteen minutes. I keep thinking Hera is sneaking up behind me with a knife.

Yet for all my frustration with the game, I keep coming back to Tunic, for both those tiny morsels of progress I make after hours of struggling (typically dropping a bridge or unfurling a rope to connect two distant areas), and for its occasional moments of genius. Take for instance the dark cavern which can only be explored with a lantern, and which is chock full of gargoyle busts with targeting lasers set in every direction. The trick is to break each sculpture in the proper order, so the lasers from the heads in the back remain blocked and you don't get blasted into Swiss cheese. Having to collect pages from an NES-style instruction manual is also a nice touch, and reminds me of importing Saturn games in the 1990s, trying to decipher each page of the included manuals in a language I could barely understand.

I CAN'T READ THIS CRAZY MOON LANGUAGE!
(image from Game Informer)

There was something else I felt like mentioning. The Sega Genesis homebrew train just keeps chuggin' along thanks to Brazilians dedicated to this thirty-four year old system, because they realistically don't have other options. (For more information, watch Stop Skeletons From Fighting's review of the Zeebo. Basically, if you live in Brazil, you either play the Sega Genesis, or shell out two months' pay for a ten year old console.)

The latest Genesis homebrew to come from the land of towering Jesus statues and green-furred feral men is Space Invaders, a port of the decades old arcade game. Is it as good as Space Invaders '91 for the same system? Ha ha! No. Is it even as good as that weird Super Game Boy cartridge that had a Super Nintendo version of Space Invaders hidden on it? Not really... the color limitations of the Genesis add unwelcome dithering to the lunar background which looked just fine on the Super NES. 

Still, it's a strong conversion in its own right, as you can see from the link above. At forty three years old, the arcade version of Space Invaders is a little crusty, but for Brazilians, retro gaming is an inescapable way of life. If you're not willing to play older video games in that country, chances are you won't be playing anything.

Do the Mar10

Good news for all you penny-pinching gamers out there... Nintendo has dropped the price of several of its most popular Switch games in anticipation of March 10th, recognized by the company as Mario Day. Usually I roll my eyes at such fabricated, corporate-sponsored holidays (don't even get me started on May the 4th...), but for twenty dollars off games that almost never see such hefty discounts, I'm willing to play along just this once. Games on sale include Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, Luigi's Mansion 3, and Super Mario 3D World, the latter of which I grabbed for myself. You'll find more games right here on Nintendo's sales and deals page, and there are rumors that even more titles will see price cuts on the tenth of the month.

Speaking of recent deals, there are two different bundles on Itch.io (just say that name and try not to scratch something in response!) raising money for the war-torn country of Ukraine. One bundle is a bit more humble than the other, with fewer games, but it's also less expensive, with a five dollar minimum. Buy one or buy them both... whatever you decide, it's for a good cause.

The warmly received Genesis port of
Ghouls 'n Ghosts had a lot of detail removed to
squeeze the game into a smaller cartridge.
This WIP hack by aMaru puts a lot of it back.
Note the roots bursting through the rock
formations and the more smoothly sloping hills.

What else? Oh yes. Thanks to the Sega Genesis Development Kit, especially devoted fans of the system are fixing arcade ports that missed the mark when they were first released, either due to small cartridge sizes or publisher indifference (cough cough Acclaim cough). Of special note are Ghouls 'n Ghosts and Sunset Riders. The former is getting a facelift, with tons of details added to the foreground and background, and the latter is being redesigned from scratch, since Konami's shaky port was frankly beyond help. Is all of this necessary now that we have a half dozen ways to play the real arcade games at home? Not really. Is it fun to see what the Genesis can do without ROM constraints holding it back? Oh yes, definitely. Special thanks to the always helpful Master Linkuei for spilling the tea on these projects.