The Man with the Goldeneye (finally)

They left us waiting a while, but Nintendo and Microsoft finally released Goldeneye 007 for their respective consoles. The two releases come with some caveats... the Switch version requires Nintendo's online service and the expansion pack, you can't play the Xbox version online, and no matter where you play it, it's got what you might charitably call "vintage" graphics. Pierce Brosnan and most of the thugs you blow away look like stretched out Minecraft characters, which is disappointing considering that the project started with much higher ambitions.

007, now with polygons so sharp and angular
they could pierce your brosnan.
(image from Eurogamer)

Despite the creaky look, Goldeneye is surprisingly entertaining. I was never a big Nintendo 64 fan and I'm sure I never bought this particular game, but it's not hard to figure out why fans of the system were so fond of it. It plays well and sounds terrific, with a catchy remixed 007 theme in the first stage and a small but effective arsenal at your disposal. Pop the first Russian soldier with your trademark Walther PPK and you can pilfer his machine gun... climb to the top of the watchtower and kill the man standing guard there and you'll get his sniper rifle, invaluable for picking off enemies in the distance.

The whole affair feels like a caveman ancestor to TimeSplitters and its sequels... which makes sense, as members of Rare left the company to work on those games. The life bar is even the same, a segmented orange half circle that only appears when you've been injured or you've paused the action. Hey, why mess with what works?

First-person shooters aren't really my bag, but I played a few on the Saturn and Playstation (Alien Trilogy, Tunnel B-1, Powerslave), and Goldeneye strikes me as more advanced than any of them. The stages feel like tangible locations, in a way the flat texture mapped walls and floors of Doom don't. There are also fresh objectives in each stage that fit the espionage theme, instead of the boring status quo of hunting for keycards to crack open locked doors. 

I wouldn't recommend it over TimeSplitters: Future Perfect or even TimeSplitters 2, but compared to what console gamers were getting in the late 1990s, Goldeneye is the high watermark... the gold standard, if you will.

This is what the world is watching!

So yeah. I got a bunch of emulators running on my Xbox Series S, and it's suddenly gone from "exactly what I had before, just faster" to "exactly what I wanted in a game console." It plays Xbox games dating back to 2001! It plays pretty much the entire Xbox One library plus next generation games, whenever those happen! But thanks to some clever hackers, it also plays Dreamcast games, and Playstation 2 games, and PSP games, and possibly GameCube games when I can figure out how that works. So I'm pretty happy about that. I tend to be a pretty happy camper when I can play Capcom vs. SNK 2 without having to dig a twenty plus year old system out of the closet first.

So it's official, then.

The Xbox Series is the worst name ever given to a video game console. It is and shall remain unparalleled in its utter craptitude for many years to come. 

Look, I've been playing video games for a while, and I've heard all the dumb console names. The Gamate. The Wonderswan. The FM Towns Marty. The Pippen. None of these are brilliant, but the Xbox Series does the customer the added disservice of naming itself after a quantity of products, without telling you what that product is, or which product in the series it is.

Microsoft tried to give the Series an air of sophistication and enticing mystery, while just confusing the hell out of their target audience. It's like one of those damn Avant Garde commercials from the 1980s, which presents an avalanche of cryptic visual information to the viewer without explaining how any of it ties together. You think you're so clever, but my good sir, you've only outsmarted yourself!

You're going to have to give us just a bit more insight about your product than this, Microsoft. Can I buy a vowel or something? I just want to know what you're selling, because when you name it the Series, it could be anything in the upper-middle price range. An electric car! A premium razor blade! A whiskey that goes down smooth! But a video game system? In particular, the cheapest next generation video game system you can currently buy?

I don't get it. This thing plays Pac-Man and several varieties of game where the world's sexiest swamp creature battles a Frankenstein's monster, named Victor just to twist the nipples of pedants. This is not a damn Lexus.

The Xbox Series: Three hundred percent more exactly the same as the last generation console!

That was a pleasant surprise! My Xbox Series S arrived days before I expected it, so now I've got time to share my experiences in one last post before the door slams on this... unenviable year.

And my current impression is... uh, bewilderment. This is a next generation console, right? Then why is the interface a carbon copy of what I was already using on the Xbox One? Please tell me Microsoft doesn't think Metro is the apex of interactive menu design and that nothing needs to be changed!

It's faster than the interface on the Xbox One, but aside from the speed, so much about the Series feels like the previous generation console that it feels like I paid $240 for a system I already had. I'm sorry, but when I step up to a new game console, I need visual assurance that what I'm getting is better than what came before it. 

What I'm seeing here is exactly the same thing as the console I bought four years ago. It's like the opposite of the Wii, which was functionally a GameCube on spinach but became unrecognizable as such thanks to its completely redesigned, motion-dependent interface. Microsoft didn't find a way to elevate or evolve the user experience; they just served up a big steaming ladle of Metro brand porridge and messily poured it into a fancy new cup. Please sir, can I have no more?

What can I tell you, guys?

All the gamers are posting their Best of 2022 Awards, but the only games that interested me much this year were collections. Yes, games first released thirty years ago, partially digested by new developers, then vomited back into my mouth as a highly nutritious sludge. What can I say? They're immediately accessible (set up time for modern games can be so laboriously long, am I right, people?), they're familiar, and they're often cheaper than modern AAA titles.

I just got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection for Christmas, and let me tell you something, Jack. You're getting a baker's dozen of games that represent Konami's finest years as a publisher, and they're well emulated, and there's a bunch of omake which isn't really why I buy these collections but does add a welcome flourish to the overall package. The people who make these collections- Digital Eclipse and Code Mystics, specifically- treat these games like fine china, and do whatever they can to not only ensure they function as well as they did on native hardware, but that they're sufficiently padded with bonus content.

So yeah, all I want for Christmas are games I already played thirty Christmases ago. I'm not sure if this makes any sense at all, but that's where I am right now. So if you're listening, game companies, I will happily be your baby bird. Just keep puking those leftovers down my throat, so their warmed over goodness can sustain me.

Arcade Games, Without Cereals or Fillers!

(image from MLSchelps,
with some creative editing)

I'm not totally on board with the Nintendo Switch, but there's one thing I do very much appreciate about this system. It's given us a whole lot of obscure arcade games through Hamster's Arcade Archives line, which previously had been restricted to primitive early 1980s game consoles, or not ported to anything at all. And they're emulations, duplicating the arcade version almost perfectly, without compromises or creative liberties.

How long's it been since we could play Mario Bros. on a modern game system? I mean, the real arcade one, not that silly mini-game in Game Boy Advance games where they pretty up the graphics and turn the turtles into Spinies, just so you don't think you can jump on them like you can in Super Mario Bros. There's also all three Donkey Kongs (better than the NES versions, much better than the ColecoVision versions), and Crazy Climber, and Galaga's red-headed stepchild Gaplus, and Kangaroo, and Exerion, and freakin' Moon Patrol, and Scramble, and golly gosh who knows what else? I think even Guzzler by Tekhan and Pop Flamer by Jaleco are offered on Arcade Archives, which is one hell of a deep dive. While I saw Guzzler in a pizza place once or twice, I can't remember ever playing Pop Flamer before the emulation boom of the mid 1990s.

Most of these arcade games straight up vanished in the NES age, or were given inferior ports on game systems with no hope of bringing their excitement home. The supposed "perfect" conversion of Donkey Kong on the ColecoVision was anything but, chock full of unwelcome simplifications to the play mechanics, and even Defender II for the NES was far removed from its arcade counterpart mechanically. After all these years, it's nice to actually have all these ancient arcade hits in one place, on one game system, without being pared down to nothing on the way there, and without having to mess with creaky hardware that looks terrible on a modern television set.

Are they overpriced? Yes. Nobody should have to pay eight dollars (or any dollars) for Phozon. Could Hamster do more to preserve the arcade hits of the past? Yes. We've got some big names attached to the program already- Namco, Taito, Konami, and even Nintendo themselves- but Arcade Archives is sorely lacking representation from Robotron: 2084 creators Williams and Universal, the makers of the Mr. Do! series. Nevertheless, this is the most comprehensive selection of arcade oldies we've seen on a game console since Wii Virtual Console, and elder nerds such as myself appreciate the effort.

I'm unreasonably excited about this.

I'm gonna sneak in this quick post before December, but this one's meaningful to me, for several reasons. I just wanted to let all of y'all know that the lead architect of the Fairchild Channel F, Jerry Lawson was honored as today's Google doodle. And it's a playable game! And it's basically Super Mario Maker!

I had one of these once! I mean, in the grand scheme of things, it wasn't fantastic, but it came out way before the Atari 2600 and was even capable of playing Pac-Man. I mean, it's a rather rough looking Pac-Man, with maybe six onscreen colors, but it definitely feels like the real deal, more so than Atari's game. Plus the marketing for this console is weirdly endearing, with Peter Max/Sesame Street minimalism for the game art and various dorky people grimacing and grinning while playing Fairchild games on the front of the console box. 

It's a very, very, very 1970s game system, is what I'm trying to express. It looks like the video game cousin of an 8-Track player. Its controllers look like personal massagers from Sweden. The Tic-Tac-Toe game calls you a "turkey" when you lose. And of course it's sheer woodgrain along the sides. It might as well have come with a pair of bell bottom pants and a lighter for burning your bra.

EDIT: Here's a direct link to the doodle and the game, for those interested.