Spin It to Win It

I gotta hand it to the video game industry. I've been involved with this hobby for forty years, yet after all this time, it still hasn't lost its capacity for weirdness.

image from the Hollywood Reporter

I'm referring specifically to the Play Date, a handheld game system with black and white graphics and, well... a crank. Now it's not completely unusual for home electronics to have a crank to charge them in case of emergencies, but this crank isn't meant for that. No, it's actually a rotary input device, similar to the paddles and spinners of old. It sounds ridiculous, but maybe that's why it's attracting famously weird game designers like Katamari Damacy's Keita Takahashi and Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy's, uh, Bennett Foddy. They've both pledged to support the Play Date, with Takahashi already hard at work on Crankin's Time Travel Adventure. You can find a little footage of the game and more information about the system that will play it on Slash Gear. The Play Date will cost a kingly one hundred and fifty dollars when it's released next year. Better start saving your pennies.

So in short, the Play Date is unreasonably expensive, completely bizarre conceptually, and has a crank on the side for rotary input. How much you wanna bet Jeff Minter's going to want in on this?

The Haul of It All

Every once in a while, you find some really good stuff in the free bin at the local thrift store. Stuff like this!

Sadly, I couldn't find the disc for Super Paper Mario, but everything else was in the case... sometimes in the wrong case, but hey, it was free. I was most excited about Super Mario Maker for the Wii U, because I was always curious about that game, but never curious enough to pay sixty dollars for it.

Everyone's going nuts about the recent announcement of a sequel, which will offer new skins and features along with a multiplayer mode. I'm just happy to get in on the ground floor with the original, and while I haven't spent much time making stages, I've sure spent time playing them. The game starts you out with an eight stage "10 Mario Challenge," which offers familiar levels with unexpected and increasingly peculiar twists. It was quite a mind screw to dive into the open pipe in World 1-1 of Super Mario Bros., only to discover that the underground cache of coins had become a discotheque, complete with pulsing music, dancing lights, and a shower of currency from two spinning cannons. "What is this I don't even" describes the experience pretty well.

I'm enjoying this game, but I really didn't need to be
reminded of Miiverse's demise. Believe me, Nintendo,
I haven't forgotten... it's why I haven't bought a Switch.

The other games are just gravy (diaper gravy in the case of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, if the reviews are to be believed). I already owned Super Smash Bros. Brawl, but it's nice to have a case to go along with it. Super Mario Sluggers I've never played before, but the Mario cast in a baseball game seems like a solid concept. Wii Play didn't get great reviews, but it may provide me with some fleeting entertainment. Then there are the two GameCube games, Mario Party 4 and Wario Ware. I can't imagine getting too much use out of the former, but I had the latter game in Michigan and it's comforting to have it close at hand again.

Oh! Before I go, I should probably mention that Sega has announced the next ten games that will be included with the Sega Genesis Mini. You'll find the details on Polygon, but the Cliff Notes is that there will be a lot of Capcom games in the final product, including Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Street Fighter 2: Special Championship Edition, and Mega Man: The Wily Wars. (Are you ready for a Genesis collection of the first three Mega Man games which somehow aren't as good as the NES originals? Too bad, you're getting it anyway.) Some other goodies include Phantasy Star IV, Wonder Boy in Monster World, and Beyond Oasis. Some baddies include Alex Kidd in the Enchanted Castle and Sonic Spinball, just in case you needed a little kusoge in your retro gaming diet.

Two other things! I've finished seven chapters of the Neo-Geo ports book, and just installed a 128GB SD card in my Playstation Vita. Sony's proprietary cards always left the system at a loss for storage, but with this monster in place, my Vita will never go hungry again!

Last Exit

There's a new hack out for the Playstation Vita... and it's likely to be the last. Hacker TheFlow released Trinity a few days ago... it's an exploit that lets you run the VitaShell file browser and some unlicensed applications. Unlike Henkaku and Henkaku Enso, this one's not easy to use, requiring you to download a PSP game, send it to your computer with QCMA (an altered version of Sony's content manager), decrypt it, insert a file, re-encrypt it, and send it back to your PSP. It's a rather involved process.

The creator of the hack recommends that once you've installed Trinity, you use it to roll back your Vita to an earlier firmware, then install Henkaku Enso for more reliable and user-friendly access to homebrew apps. On the down side, you'll lose access to the Playstation Store, but on the plus side, there won't be too many more games released for the Vita anyway. Just back up everything you've already purchased to your computer before running the hack and you should be set.

One fun thing you can do with your Vita after you've installed Henkaku Enso is change the splash screen that comes up when you first power it on. Courtesy of Talking Time user Tegan Robichoud, here's Danny De-Vita!

If you want a taste of this kind of fun, you'd better act quickly. Sony usually seals off these back doors with a security patch shortly after they're discovered, and with TheFlow retiring from Vita hacking and general interest in the console dwindling, you probably won't see another jailbreak for the system again.

One other thing... I've got four chapters of the SNK book finished, and started a fifth one last night. If things continue to move at this pace, I'll have the whole thing done in just a few months!

SNK-o de Mayo

Whoops! Looks like I forgot to post on May the 4th. Well you knew what I was gonna say already... Star Wars fans are obsessed nerds, etc. etc. Here, I'll just let Triumph the Insult Comic Dog do it for me.

So we'll just jump to a legitimate holiday, Cinco de Mayo. I celebrated the occasion by picking up the SNK 40th Anniversary Collection... the connection to Mexico's day of independence is tenuous at best, but it was cheaper than the retail price, and I don't have anything else to discuss. So there. 

The purchase seemed like a good idea at the time, but now I'm having second thoughts. Would the thirty dollars have been better spent on a copy of Nier Automata: Become As Gods Edition? The time I spent with anti-classics like Bermuda Triangle, Munch Mobile, and Vanguard suggests that yes, it would have, and yes, I was a dumbass for picking door number two. It's too late for regrets, so I'll just dump cherry pits into an approaching garbage can while you save a ravaged planet Earth from mechanical monsters.

Anyone care to explain what's going
on here? Because I don't have the figgiest.
(image from Wikipedia)

On the bright side, this is the Xbox One version, with all the games already included (no extra downloads are necessary), plus the NES version of Baseball Stars as a bonus. I spent a fair amount of time playing Baseball Stars as a teenager, building teams, playing games, and firing the dead weight, so that definitely adds to the value of the collection. 

On top of that, it's always fun to p'sharktank soldiers across the screen in P.O.W., listen to an early version of Fatal Fury's South Beach theme in Street Smart, and gun your way through the various anachronisms in Time Soldiers, best described as a prequel to Alpha's Ninja Commando without the Street Fighter influence. So I'll live. I mean, how good could Nier be, anyway? (Don't answer that.)

Pining for the Fjords (and an announcement!)

Nintendo hasn't made it official yet, but it seems the Nintendo 3DS has reached the end of its life after eight mostly successful but occasionally tumultuous years. Kotaku reports that there are no first party games in development for the system, and almost nothing from licensees. (Oh dear me, how will I ever go on without a steady flow of classics from RCMADIAX?)

This is where I'd grumble about the system getting axed before reaching its full potential, but honestly, it's been eight years. Now that we've got the Switch, and now that Miiverse is history, what else is left for the 3DS? I rarely crack open mine these days, and when I do, it's to play games for systems like the Super NES and Genesis which have been cold in the ground for decades. I'm ready for the 3DS to follow them to the grave.

(I'm not ready to buy a Switch, though. Nuts to that.)

There was one other thing I wanted to mention before I go...

There was an advertisement many years ago which proclaimed that the Neo-Geo was a premium game system, with specs far above those of the competing Super NES, Genesis, and Turbografx-16. Those machines were dismissed as "squirrel burgers" next to the Neo-Geo's sumptuous Prime Rib... yet SNK wasn't above farming out their biggest arcade hits to its rivals.

Some of these home ports were surprisingly good, and others less so, but I thought they would all make a great subject for an eBook. I've already written one chapter, with fourteen more to go. Systems from the 16-bit era of gaming would be the focus, particularly the aforementioned Super NES, Genesis, and Turbografx-16, along with the CD add-ons for the latter two machines.

I'd also like to add a bonus chapter about the Nettou series; Neo-Geo games ported to the original Game Boy. Yes, that seemed like a good idea to someone, and yes, I'm masochistic enough to actually cover them.

The book is tentatively titled "Squirrel Burger Cookout," and I'll be offering updates on its progress and perhaps a few excerpts right here over the next six months. With any luck the book will be published in time for the Neo-Geo's thirtieth anniversary, and oh lord I just realized I really am that old. Anyway, I hope you'll be looking forward to it!

Weekend Update

"Why should I bother posting? I don't have anything to say that's worth reading anyway!"
"Hey, you told yourself when you started this blog that you weren't gunning for a Pulitzer... it was just so you could write whatever came to mind, even if it wasn't important and even if nobody was going to read it! So get your mopey ass in there and WRITE SOMETHING!"
"Ugh. FINE."

So here I am, folks. My enthusiasm is almost palpable.

There is definitely one thing worth mentioning... Sega's announced another ten games for its Sega Genesis Mini, and there are some pretty surprising selections. Two Disney-themed games will be offered in the machine, including Castle of Illusion and the sequel World of Illusion. This is a pretty big deal, not only because these were two exceptionally well made Genesis releases, but because Sega's got the cooperation of a major film studio. It's not something you often see in these mini consoles, which generally stick to IP held by either the manufacturer or one of its third party developers.

Sega's got two more game reveals planned for the Genesis Mini, with the first coming in about a month and the final one scheduled just before E3. Will one of these announcements include more games from Disney or one of its subsidiaries? If that's the case, I hope they pass on that X-Men game where you had to press reset on the console to make progress. And Fantasia, which felt like cold water to the face after the euphoria of Castle of Illusion. And Bart vs. The Space Mutants, which Disney now owns thanks to the Fox deal but sucked on pretty much everything. Er, maybe Sega should just stick with the two games by Illusion Shot Productions.

What else? I purchased my first 8BitDo controller, the M30, earlier in the month. What's nifty about this very Sega Genesis-like joypad is that it can be used wirelessly with Bluetooth compatible devices, or by connecting it directly to the system of your choice with a cable. It'll even work with the Xbox One if you plug it into the Mayflash Universal Adapter. The Bluetooth pairing process is more complicated than I would have liked (I suppose "plug and play" doesn't apply when you're not actually plugging it into anything...) and the D-pad feels slightly rough on the thumb after extended use, but I'm happy with it overall. It's just nice having a Sega Genesis style gamepad that works with nearly everything you've got, including a tight budget.

Okay, I updated. Now can I go back to bed and sulk?

His Body Is Ready (for retirement)

So I played ("played") my first console Kingdom Hearts game. Here's how that went.

I feel kind of bad for Haley Joel Osment. Every time he starts a conversation with somebody, they instinctively shout back, "Just shut up and let me play the game already!" You couldn't stop yourself... after playing a few hours of Kingdom Hearts, it would just jump right out of your mouth.

Needless to say, I probably won't be getting Kingdom Hearts III. That unique blend of Square-Enix's worst game design impulses and Disney's twee characters and aggressive self-promotion just doesn't appeal to me.

In less self-indulgent news, Nintendo of America president Reginald Fils-Aime is set to retire from the company, replaced with Doug (looks through notes)... Bowser? Wow Nintendo, that's a little on the nose, isn't it? 

Anyway. I've had big disagreements with Reggie in the past. Years ago, he suggested that indie games (like Cave Story, Undertale, Read Only Memories, etc.) were beneath Nintendo's notice, comparing them to American Idol contestants. These days, indie games are the new industry darling thanks to their fresh ideas and low production costs, while AAA titles by big studios have an odd habit of re-materializing in the budget bins of dollar stores. Looks like you made the wrong call on that one, Reg.

Nevertheless, as corporate mouthpieces go, Reginald Fils-Aimes was one of the better ones. With his rallying cry of "I'm about kicking ass and taking names, and Nintendo is about making games," he did more to make Nintendo relevant to Americans in the 21st century than anyone else at the company. Plus he was always a good sport about Nintendo's zany promotions, playing a ruthless robot in one E3 sketch and a Muppet in another. 

Reginald Fils-Aime left an indelible mark on the company, and he'll be missed. Maybe not as much as the late Satoru Iwata, but his absence will be hard to ignore.