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.
(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 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.
The trailer for the Super Mario Bros. movie is out, and it's... kind of promising. Gotta admit, I was not expecting that! It's very colorful, the way a Mario movie should be (and the way the first film by Disney wasn't), and it's playfully self-aware. For instance, when held captive by Bowser, Luigi insists that he doesn't know any other men in colorful overalls... with bushy mustaches... and their first initials embroidered on their hats. It's gotta be one great big coincidence, right? Uh, you're not buying that.
I would watch this. I would not regret spending the sawbuck to watch this, even if it's disappointing, because I had zero expectations for this movie, and the trailer has already far surpassed them.
Ooh ooh OW OW OW! (image from Arcade Club UK)
Speaking of Nintendo, there's a sale on a whole bunch of their old arcade games on the Switch eShop. Arcade Archives sales rarely happen, and even when they do, it's never Nintendo's own games, so if you're interested, I suggest jumping on those discounts before they end on the fifth of December. I've personally got my eye on Vs. Super Mario Bros. (the Super Mario Bros. we all know and love, with stages from The Lost Levels that we all know but don't love quite so much), Donkey Kong 3 (Galaga, but the object is to give a gorilla rectal cancer), and at least one of the Punch Out!!s.
Several other Switch titles (not by Nintendo, but nevertheless offered at tantalizing discounts) have piqued my interest, including TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection ($28), the Pocky and Rocky revival ($21), and Elevator Action Returns ($13). Plus there's the Atari 50th Anniversary collection, which is a hefty forty dollars but is nevertheless alluring due to the promise of rock solid Atari Jaguar emulation, something that's been tough to achieve on home computers and was until now unfathomable on the lowly Switch hardware. Something tells me this is going to be a very costly holiday season for old school gamers like myself.
By the way, for those interested, I'm shifting from Twitter to other social networks, including the scrappy up and comer Cohost. I recently posted a retrospective on the Mattel/INTV Intellivision there, which I think is worth a look. Before smart TVs and a game console that was thinking, Mattel promised the world "intelligent television," but how bright was the Intellivision, really? This Cohost-exclusive article holds the answer.
You may have noticed that I no longer have a presence on Twitter. I put the blame solely on family jewels fondler and hair plugs enthusiast Elon "The Worst Life-Savers Ever" Musk. As you may already know, he recently purchased the social network for $44 billion dollars, then immediately went to work insulting users, firing key staff, making sweet love to himself, and kissing the ample posterior of the guy who was banned from Twitter for, uh... (leafs through notes) attempting to overthrow the United States government. I mean, it was only one government! It wasn't like he was trying to take over the WORLD, right?
One is a stable genius, the other nearly got hanged. (image from AllMovie)
Now look, I'm sure people are going to tell me that Elon Musk did me a favor, chasing me out of a site that's been steadily going downhill for the last six years. The thing is, I was on Twitter for fourteen years, and still have fond memories of the place. Where else could you talk directly to famous actors, politicians, and even writers from The Simpsons without being served a restraining order? It was also a fantastic source of breaking news, at least until the little Dutch boy came along to plug that flow of useful information with the finger he previously had lodged in his ass. Just look at the front page now! It's wall to wall Elon Musk! He's turned the place into a $44 billion dollar fan site!
So I'm done with Twitter, at least until it gets fumigated for self-worshipping billionaires. Either that or the whole house of cards collapses under the crushing weight of Captain Apartheid's ego, which is more likely. "Gee, I thought the site was supposed to fall apart a couple weeks after I bought it!," Elon sneered mockingly. Just give it some time, you termite. You've fired so many engineers and scared away so many advertisers with your childish behavior that this hollowed out husk of a social media giant is probably being held together with Scotch tape, exploited immigrant labor, and crossed fingers.
Where can you find me instead? Well, right here on Blogger, same as always. I also have a presence at Cohost, and may re-open my Tumblr account if I get desperate for interaction. Sticking to your principles is noble, but it doesn't help much when the pangs of social media withdrawal leave you chewing your nails down to the quick.
Also, in case I was too subtle about this earlier, fuck Elon Musk. Like, a whole lot.
Sometimes it feels like the drama going on behind the scenes in the video game industry is more exciting than the games themselves. Like that time the Swedish mafia launched a handheld game console as a convoluted long con, before its leader sliced a sports car in half during a joyride through the California countryside. Or that time when Sonic co-creator Yuji Naka was arrested for insider trading at Square-Enix, because he sure as hell wasn't going to make any money from Balan Wonderworld. That just happened, by the way. For all I know Naka could be in prison right now, calling his lawyer and wishing he'd never took that job at Square. (I'm sure everyone who bought Balan Wonderworld feels the same way.)
Unfortunately, I haven't been getting terribly excited about video games as of late, which is why you haven't heard much from me this month. Kiblitzing isn't dead... it's just currently in a state of boredom-induced torpor. It's not that I don't have tons, and tons, and tons of video games to play... my backlog is currently longer than Santa's naughty list. What's missing is motivation. Everything is just too much bother, especially those big-ass eighty hour long epics that all the game companies insist on releasing. You guys know I'm going to lose interest a quarter of the way through, right? It's telling that the only games I care to play these days are thirty year old Neo-Geo titles like League Bowling that can be wrapped up in a matter of minutes.
Chronic depression and a recent attraction to marijuana probably aren't helping matters much. The latter helps with the former, but it certainly doesn't help with what remains of my creative ambition. I just don't want to DO anything anymore, and this chronically neglected blog reflects that. My apologies to anyone who comes here hoping for new content, only to find indifference.
Been a little out of sorts this month, but I do want to drop a brief post to let you know what I've been doing game-wise. The most important of these is that after months of going without, I finally bought the latest title in the King of Fighters series, and aside from some aggressive trimming of the cast, I'm thrilled with it. KOF XV is the best damn game in the series since 2002 UM, in my opinion. Even the announcer is loads better, interacting with the fight in the same way the Capcom vs. SNK 2 did, and offering color commentary on the captain of your opponent's team when the fight begins. Battles are swift and satisfying, with massive combo potential for those into high level play, and the DJ Station offers not only a vast selection of excellent tunes, but lets you unlock music from pretty much every King of Fighters release, and even games SNK released before the Neo-Geo existed.
Thanks to the infinite possibilities of the Multiverse, Ash Crimson has survived his brush with the time paradox that should have ended his very existence. Gee, lucky me. (Image from Steam)
In short, it's really good. My only beef is that while its predecessor offered too many characters, KOF XV goes in the opposite direction, paring down the selection of fighters to about forty. Nobody's going to miss the likes of Alice, Mui Mui, and Ruby Love Heart, but the likeable South American team, comprised of a slick afro-Brazilian ninja, an optimistic gymnast with a toucan sidekick, and a boxer with a metal arm that could shatter concrete, has also opted to sit this one out, with no indication that they'll be back in a DLC pack. What we get instead are a second flavor of the New Face team (uhh...) and three heroes from the Samurai Shodown series, which don't fit in King of Fighters for so many reasons. Nevertheless, KOF fans are going to be quite happy with the overall package here. I've been playing this series since its wonky beginnings in 1994, and XV is as good as King of Fighters gets.
Oh yeah, I also picked up a handful of clearance priced titles from Wal-Mart, because I'm cheap like that. The biggest surprise was Biomutant, a game that was coldly received by critics but I found to be rather entertaining, in its own charmingly odd way. When the dastardly Toxenol corporation leaves the Earth an irradiated mess, new species of furry whatzits rise to fill the ecological niche of humans, and fight among themselves to either save the world from destruction, or hasten its demise.
Biomutant comes with a free, extra-challenging bonus game, "What the Fuck is It?" Even the designers at Experiment 101 don't know for sure! (image from PCGamesN)
Like the fuzzy but not quite adorable creatures alluded to in the title, Biomutant is something of a misshapen freak itself, going in several vastly different directions at once. Sometimes it's The Matrix, with your hero leaping through the air in slow motion, slicing through hordes of rival tribesmen and emptying clips of ammo into monsters many times his size. Sometimes it's Fallout, with your character navigating the post-apocalyptic landscape and speaking to the eccentric locals. Sometimes Biomutant even takes a sharp swerve into Winnie the Pooh territory, with a friendly British narrator providing translation for the game's cast of freaky fauna, and occasionally poking you in the ribs to remind you that you're dangerously low on health.
What else? AtGames just released a firmware update for its Legends line of home arcade devices. Now if you want to play your own ROMs, you can just do that, without having to ask AtGames for permission every five times. You don't even have to be online at all, a boon for anyone who has their cabinet tucked away in the corner of a concrete basement. Sega also released the sequel to the Sega Genesis Mini, and it's been getting expectedly positive reviews, with one highlight of the package being a more smoothly scrolling version of Space Harrier II. It's hard to overstate just how impressive it is to see a passable imitation of the SuperScaler technology on a Sega Genesis, and just smoothing out the animation goes a long way toward making Space Harrier II a respectable entry in the series, rather than the early embarrassment the original game was when it launched with the Mega Drive in late 1988.
Look, it's really, really good scaling. Maybe you
had to be there, but if I'd seen this as a teenager,
I would have wet my pants. Wet at a minimum.
Yes, there's excessive flicker, and yes, the number of onscreen objects are kept low to reduce the burden on the system, but this is a Sega Genesis we're talking about here. There's no room for Mode 7 at this inn. Its previous high watermark for dynamic 3D environments was Road Rash 2. Conventional wisdom suggests that Space Harrier shouldn't look anywhere near as good as it does here, yet here we are! Props go to M2 for once again wringing the impossible out of the Sega Genesis hardware.
