Saturday, May 26, 2007

 

They're On To Me

Picross DS is coming to America. Not only will it feature downloadable puzzles, but it'll have a function for creating a picross puzzle out of any picture that you draw.

On the one hand, I'll believe it when I see it. On the other hand, it may be time to invest in a good tin foil hat, because these people are clearly in my brain.

Labels:


Sunday, May 20, 2007

 

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!

Like many American gamers, I've had a long-standing, deeply painful envy of Japanese gamers. They get all the cool stuff. The cooler something is, the less likely it'll ever see the light of day in America. Sure, we were lucky enough to get Samba de Amigo, but we ran out of maracas awfully quick and we never got version 2000. We got stiffed on the Dreamcast version of Shenmue II. It took years for Pokemon to make the leap. Pokemon! The game series that practically saved Nintendo's ass in the late nineties came to America a good, what, three years after its inception?! And Gyakuten Saiban, better known to westerners as Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney. That was a Game Boy Advance game for years in Japan. And they wouldn't even think of releasing Ouendan in America without a severe paint job. And Animal Crossing? Yeah, that was a Nintendo 64 game in Japan. And Nintendo actually had the guts to release Cubivore under their own name. And don't get me started about how many more Famicom Mini releases there were.

I could go on, but you get my point. From America, the Japanese video game market looks like a crazy party overflowing with forbidden treats and delights. Staring across the Pacific Ocean, I pray (often in vain) to see even a small sliver of that magic on my native shore. Importing is always an option, but... well, I'm a lazy, lazy man. I don't know that I want to learn an entire language just to play a video game.

And that's why I was crushed -- crushed -- when I found out about Doctor Kawashima's experiment in cerebrel development through video games. It was a brilliant idea -- a video game filled with exercises that were shown to strengthen the performance of your brain. But everything about it screamed Japan-only, from the lengthy text that accompanied the Reading Aloud exercise to the ever so delicious natural handwriting interface. Deriving the intended benefit from this software would require more than just a menu translation FAQ -- an importer would be required to read, write, and speak Japanese.

So imagine my shock -- and unending delight -- when the game was announced for America.

Better than Carmen Sandiego

Educational video games are traditionally created with good intentions at best and lazy cynicism at worst.

None of them work.

It's sad, but it's true. The function of a game is not to teach, but to practice and apply what you already know. As much as I loved me some Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego, the only thing I came away from it with was a kick-ass set of encyclopedia browsing skills. I retained the information I found just long enough to make the next time jump. It's more wholesome than Grand Theft Auto, but you might as well try to teach your kids calculus by sitting them in front of Super Mario Brothers.

So Brain Age takes a different tactic. The objective isn't to teach you anything new, but to make your brain work in a very specific way. If the work of Dr. Ryuta Kawashima can be trusted, the exercises in Brain Age will strengthen the parts of your brain dedicated to memory and critical thinking.

Is the science behind it sound? Well, the instruction manual has pictures of brains with parts colored red, that's good enough for me.

And that's the first point Brain Age has in its favor. Whether it works or not, there's clearly some sort of basis to it.

Making Math Problems Fun and Addictive

So really, this game is nothing more than a collection of mental exercises, mostly having to do with reading, memory, and simple arithmetic. What makes this so engaging?

First of all, you have to hold your DS sideways to play it. I mean, come on, any video game that requires you to do something unusual to play it is already going to have your attention, right? That's why everyone wanted to play those arcade games with the giant cockpit controls, why everyone was gaga over that one XBox mech game. Turning your game system sideways seems like small potatoes in comparison, but how many games let you do it? And maybe it's just me, but there's just something about the screens that looks different, like the screens were designed to be seen from a certain angle, and the light catches your eye differently when you see it from this new angle.

Anyway.

Second of all is the input. Natural handwriting and natural voice. The recognition system isn't perfect, of course, but it's much, much better than some of the earlier efforts it has been my displeasure to try and manipulate. There's just something unbelievably cool about playing a game by talking and writing. Yes, it really is the small things that make it worthwhile sometimes. I find myself craving a session with this game just for the sheer joy of seeing a computer recognize when I write the number four.

The presentation is perfect for the subject matter. It's formal without being sterile, minimalist yet friendly. The vast majority of the visuals in the game are simple text, yet the game is undeniably pleasant and comfortable to look at. Doctor Kawashima's stylized 3D head is the perfect guide for the software -- surreal and fun, but not cartoony. The music is understated and calming. This isn't a game that's trying to catch the eyes of the little kids with exploding cartoon colors and zany soundtracks. It's software that adults won't feel embarassed to play with, yet it never feels dull or tedious.

And, of course, there's the graphs. The game tracks your progress day after day (using the DS's built-in clock, naturally) and records the first score you earn at every activity. Every time you finish an activity, you're shown the graph so you can track your progress week by week or month by month. So while you may be picking up Brain Age just to give your brain its daily stimulation, there's an undeniable feeling of satisfaction for cracking your high scores, watching your graph data climb, filling up your calendar with daily completion stamps, unlocking new activities and difficulty levels, and showing Kawashima that you have the brain of a sexy, sexy 22 year old.

(Almost) The Best Sudoku Ever

Although it will never unseat Picross as my favorite logic game of all time, Sudoku is a pretty good game in its own right. Brain Age has a version of Sudoku included as a side game, and it works marvelously. The pen functions -- zooming in and out of the puzzle, filling in boxes and making pencil marks -- are fluid, intuitive, and perfect. There are three difficulty levels, and the Advanced puzzles are delicious.

There's only one small problem.

There are only 100 Sudoku puzzles included. That's a mighty number and everything, but once you've played them all, you can't reset your progress without also destroying your Daily Training data. I mean... I don't mind replaying the puzzles, it's not like I'll remember the solutions or anything. It'd just be nice if there were some sort of mechanism to have them appear in some sort of random order, the better to keep from accidentally replaying the same puzzle too often.

Often Imitated, Never Duplicated

I am thankful, every time I slot this game into my DS, that Brain Age found its way into my grubby little hands in a format that I can understand and interact with. It's such a rare and precious joy to see such a niche game that requires so much localization work actually make the leap into foreign markets. But one thing bothers me.

The proliferation of "me too!" brain training games.

I mean, yes, I love the idea. I'd like to see it grow as a genre. But on the other hand, none of these bandwagon jumpers seem to realize why the original is such a success on so many levels. Even Nintendo themselves have released Big Brain Academy, a comparatively cheapy and uninspired effort. And then you get games like Point Blank DS tacking on a "brain massage" mode.

There are two recurring problems with these so-called brain games:

1) Many of them (particularly Big Brain Academy) lack the scientific basis for their activities. Hooray for puzzle games and everything, but it's dishonest to market them as brain-boosting software if you don't have any proof to your assertions. Brain Age had a neuroscientist working intimately with its creation and testing the effectiveness of the activities in a laboratory setting. What do you have?

2) They don't have the same heart. They try too hard to make things look goofy and fun, and they end up looking stupid.

I have to confess one thing though. I never keep up with my brain training. I'll play every day for a month at most, and then I'll drop it. There aren't enough hours in a day, unfortunately, and even a half an hour for brain training can be too much for me to manage.

But I've come back again and again. The promise of self-improvement and the thrill of scribbling through arithmetic problems has kept me intrigued enough to keep the game in my library. And I'm sure it will stay there for a very, very long time.

Labels:


Thursday, May 17, 2007

 

Graphics Versus Gameplay Steel Cage DEATHMATCH

OH NOES! People who work for Nintendo said the Wii is "Gamecube 1.5 with some added memory"! SHIT! The seven million people who own a Wii are DOOMED!

But wait, here they come! It's the Nintendo fanboys to the rescue! "Graphics don't matter (unless the current-generation Nintendo system is more powerful than its competitors)! It's all about TEH GREAT GAMEPLAY!!!!!"

Blah blah blah. Why are we still having this conversation?

There's this long, tedious non-debate that gamers seem to get off on perpetuating regarding how powerful game systems are, and the relative value of subjective quantities called "graphics" and "gameplay".

And I get kind of sick of it. I get sick of seeing the perception of my fellow consumers being swayed over stuff like this.

So, once and for all (unless I feel like doing it again), I just want to weigh in on how I feel about this whole mess with a few inalienable truths:

A Good Game Needs to Look Good

There are people -- presumably real, human people -- who will argue that a video game doesn't have to look good as long as it plays good. It's like arguing that a car doesn't need to have wheels as long as the motor runs well.

Video games have a visual component to them. That's why they're called video games and not audio games. If it's painful to watch the game, then how the hell are you going to play it?

You want to argue? I'll give you two Atari 2600 games. One of them has great gameplay, but the game sprites flash like strobe lights because the hardware is limited to how many sprites it can display on each television scanline. The other has mediocre gameplay, but it doesn't make your eyes bleed while you play it. (Understand, of course, that if you pick the flashing game, I'll have to turn you in to the proper authorities for being an alien under human guise. Just so you know.)

You can't just discount visual appeal like it's a perk, something optional that the player can live without.

Most Games Look Good

The NES was probably the last system where developers had an excuse for making their games look like crap. Starting with the Genesis and the Super NES (and hell, I'll even throw the Master System in there for grins), developers had the raw power at their fingertips, available for the asking. Games became less a matter of what the developers were capable of squeezing out of a system's shortcomings and more a matter of what they actually wanted to display.

And yeah, we're always going to have developers who try to overreach the capabilities of the current generation's systems. That's probably a good thing. But flashing sprites and clashing colors have effectively become a thing of the past. Even the problems of the first generation of 3D systems have been washed away. Remember them? Remember the days of fog? Remember those low-polygon models that looked like living chainsaw sculptures?

No, of course you don't, because you're busy bitching about bumpmapping or some crap like that.

I'll never forget all of the ravings about how gorgeous Zelda 64 supposedly was even though it didn't look appreciably better than any other Nintendo 64 game. Are the people who wrote those reviews nitpicking about the Wii's graphics even now? (Of course not, most of them are still Nintendo fanboys.)

BUT I DIGRESS.

The point is, hardware has gotten to the point where developers no longer have an excuse for making an ugly game. And as a matter of fact, not many games are ugly anymore.

Of course, it's quite possible that there are a lot of games that are created with a visual style that you, personally, don't enjoy. This is understandable, because you're an idiot. But there's a difference between going for a visual style that people don't like and completely botching the way a game looks.

Every Console Has Good Games

It's a fact. I have sampled at least a dozen video gaming systems, from the Atari 2600 to the Nintendo DS, and I have yet to encounter a system that offered exactly zero entertainment value. Yeah, even the Virtual Boy came with Mario's Tennis.

So don't give me that line about how your system of choice is "all about gameplay" and the other ones aren't. Don't tell me that developers will always try harder to make their games fun when they're dealing with a more limited game system. Bullpies. Every system is all about gameplay. Every system has something fun going for it. If you can't find something entertaining in any given video game system's library, then maybe it's time you found a new hobby, because you're never going to be happy at that rate.

If You Only Own One Console, You're Not Going To Miss Much

As much as the gaming companies try to distinguish themselves from each other, video gaming as a whole is becoming ever more homogeneous. During any given generation of game systems, you're not going to see much appreciable difference between the libraries of the competing game systems.

The first reason, of course, is because the biggest titles on any game system tend to be extensions of an established genre. Adventure, first person shooter, platformer, sports, whatever. You may not see a particular game from a given genre, but chances are good that the one system you have will see something sufficient in that genre.

And when a genre-busting game becomes successful, it usually isn't long before it becomes an established genre, and you start to see variations on the familiar theme popping up on the other systems. Maybe the Gamecube didn't get a Grand Theft Auto game, but it got a fair share of games in a similar vein.

So what's the conclusion here? If every system is capable of making a game that looks all right and every system has fun games available for it, then there are a few questions we should be asking ourselves. On what should we base our decision to purchase one console as opposed to any other? Why do we need multiple consoles from the same generation? Why, indeed, do we need to buy a new generation of consoles?

I think these are some good questions that we should all be asking ourselves.

But "what's more important: graphics or gameplay"? It's a moot point.

Labels:


Wednesday, May 09, 2007

 

Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords

I wasn't sure if I was going to write a full review of Puzzle Quest. My in-depth impressions of the PC demo tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the game.

Or do they?

The Puzzle Quest System

There's something epic about Puzzle Quest as a package. I'm not sure exactly how to describe it. Tycho comes close: "They seem to be gesturing at the broad outline of a vast genre here, one whose sensual contours entice."

When I play most video game RPGs, I get the feeling that the entire game system was built from scratch just for the purposes of that particular game. I can't imagine, for example, Final Fantasy VI being made into a generic tabletop RPG system -- everything about it, from the character classes to the monsters you encounter, feels like it was custom tailored for that exact campaign. Even the game system behind Pokemon, that Holy Grail of "transfer your party into the next iteration of the series" goodness, gets tweaked with every new generation -- when you're allowed to move a Pokemon from a previous incarnation into a later one, it often comes with a new set of game rules, skill sets, and what-not.

Not that this is necessarily a bad thing. It's just... Puzzle Quest feels a little different.

It feels like an interactive rulebook for a tabletop RPG system. It has a modest bestiary of classic RPG monsters -- goblins, orcs, minotaurs, undead, dragons -- as well as a system to scale their abilities to make them appropriate opponents for any experience level. It has four character classes to choose from, complete with a wide variety of skills to learn. And it has a wealth of rule systems that are completely optional and even unrelated to the included single-player campaign. There are rules for laying seige to neighboring cities, collecting tithes and supressing rebellion. There are rules for capturing monsters and training them as mounts or researching the spells that they cast. There are rules for forging new weapons and magical items. There are rules for improving your skills beyond your experience level.

The core of the game is completely portable. It's a generic framework that could probably be very easily adapted to suit any number of different game campaigns. It feels like they created the game world first, then thought of what could happen in it afterward. The locations that you visit only cover about half of the world map -- they designed half a continent and a number of islands just to give the game world a feeling of completeness, to give you the feeling that you've only scratched the surface of its true scope.

As if to underline how portable the game system is, you can get a complete experience without ever even playing the main quest. You can, if you wish, simply select a character class and battle hordes of random monsters in Instant Action mode. As you rise in experience, more opponents become available. You'll earn hoards of gold that you can use to buy yourself new weapons and items. The best stuff is earned through the main quest, of course, but the possibility is there.

And I like that.

This Is Not a Perfect Game

Ask around about the difficulty, and you're likely to find people in two camps. There are those who think the game is too hard, and those who think it's too easy. These are, roughly, the people who haven't figured out how to exploit imbalances in the game system versus the people who have.

Me, I'm in the happy medium somewhere in between. I'm aware that, in a game setting where the player is given the freedom to steal spells that his opponents cast, and to cook up hundreds of possible magical items, the possibility is bound to exist for imbalance. I'm just smart enough that I'm able to leverage this to my advantage, but not so smart that I was able to figure out the recipe for a one-kit KO against the final boss.

So yeah, the game system isn't perfectly balanced. Which is why I'm glad that there isn't an online multiplayer option. Online play would be dominated by the people who knew how to turn their skill set into pure rape. We'd see a backlash that would make the snaking in Mario Kart DS look like SOMETHING THAT'S MUCH LESS SIGNIFICANT THAN PEOPLE MADE IT OUT TO BE.

A lot of people say the AI cheats. I prefer to think of it as they suck. Yes, the AI is ruthless, yes, there's more than a little luck involved. But if I, a prissy little wimp who has ended every game of Risk that I have ever played in shameful tears, can play this game from beginning to end, anyone can.

And there's any number of little details that could stand to be polished up. The graphics glitch up here and there. The puzzle board configurations aren't random enough for my tastes -- every time you turn the game on, you get the same initial board setup, and I'm going to make the educated guess that the pieces that drop are also somehow predetermined. And, most disappointing of all -- four character classes, but two save slots. Ouch.

But these problems can be overcome, and the player will cope with them for a very simple reason: the game is fun and addictive. Whatever its problems, it'll keep you glued to the screen for hours on end as you rake in the time-released rewards for matching up gems. And in the end, that's what's really important.

Labels:


Saturday, May 05, 2007

 

Well That Went Nowhere

So in an attempt to prove my theory that starting a game over will increase one's interest in it, I restarted all of my Pokemon games.

Surprisingly, the experiment was a complete failure. I got past Brock in Pokemon Red and promptly stopped caring.

What's the conclusion I can draw from this? Maybe sometimes you just get sick of something you own, and there's really nothing you can do about it. Maybe I'll get interested in Pokemon again. Maybe I won't. I'm keeping all of the stuff, just in case.

On the other side of the coin, I've found renewed interest in some of the older games that I own. I'm playing through Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door again for the first time since it came out and revelling in its artistic majesty. On the go, I'm usually packing Elite Beat Agents, Cooking Mama, or Puzzle Quest. I've been dipping in and out of Donkey Kong '94. I've got a hankering for some New Super Mario Brothers. When was the last time I played Super Smash Brothers Melee or Rampage Total Destruction? How many missions to I still need to play in Pilotwings 64?

And I've succumbed to temptation. I bought a VG Pocket Caplet. It should have been just an impulse buy, but the unit's had me captivated. Stuffed with short, cheapy original games and generic knockoffs of such legendary puzzle games as Bejeweled, Tetris, Columns, and yes even the very recent Magnetica, it fulfills the promise on the box -- fast-acting relief for video game cravings.

My head's busting with stuff I want to write about. Might bang out a lot more reviews this month.

But I'm not going to sweat it. No more crazy theories. No more trying to psych myself out over what I want to play. Not for a while, anyway.

Labels:


Thursday, May 03, 2007

 

Game & Watch Diaries

It was late in the Game Boy's life. I could look up the year, but I can't be bothered. It was a time when I would regularly browse the shelves at the local K-Mart, trying to find something -- anything -- new to play.

And a box caught my eye, a game I'd never seen before. Game & Watch Gallery. "Four games in one!" the box promised, complete with colorful pictures of Mario and friends engaged in intriguing-looking adventures. Enticed, I looked at the back of the box and found...

A screenshot of stencilled, LCD characters, like the kind you found in those crappy portable games that they used to make before the Game Boy came out.

My hopes turned into an ugly sneer. Yeah. I'm going to pay thirty bucks so I can play four crappy LCD games on my Game Boy. I don't think so. I figured it'd be bargain bin stuffing by the end of the month.

Funny thing was, it wasn't. This, of course, only made me more resentful. No way this collection of "video games" could be worth full retail price. LCD games are awful! Everyone knows that!

Time passed. The Game Boy Color came out. And one of the only original launch titles that Nintendo offered was Game & Watch Gallery 2.

Ha! How funny is that? Nintendo finally produces a handheld with a color screen, and they're going to showcase it with another collection of black and white LCD games?

I was in college by this point. And I had discovered the internet. It didn't take me long to discover video game fan sites, including the dearly departed Game Boy Color Dojo (which later became Game Boy Station before succumbing to a sad, quiet death).

One day, they posted a review of Game & Watch Gallery 2. I decided to peek in on it just for grins.

And to my complete shock, I found that... it had a positive review. The reviewer laid out a rather convincing case for the package, heralding it as an oasis of twitch-action gaming.

And I had to admit to myself -- I was curious. And I owned a Game Boy Color that didn't have especially many good games that were designed for it.

I bought into it, and my paradigms were shifted.

Once I had the second one, I knew I had to get the first one.

The first one was a solid foundation for the series, laying out the groundwork for what was to come. You could choose between Classic, where each game is presented as close to original format as the hardware would allow, and Modern, where fully-animated Mushroom Kingdom folk replace the Mr. Game & Watches, and there's often a cool little twist on the original gameplay. Scoring high would earn you stars and open up the Gallery Corner, where you could see non-interactive Game & Watches on display.

Gallery 2 built on the idea with more games, including Ball as a fully-playable bonus game with several unlockable Modern variations. Gallery 3 boasted five unlockable bonus games (Classic version only), and a nifty recreation of a version of Fire that was made with a manufacturing error. The series moved to Game Boy Advance for its final installment to date, Gallery 4, which featured a monstrous 20 titles -- six games at the outset, five unlockable games with Modern variations, and nine unlockable Classic-only games.

I admit, when I first started out with the series, I was more interested in the Modern versions than the originals. I had to ease into the idea of watching static black stencil figures leap from position to position across the screen as my Game Boy clicked and chirped and buzzed along. But the more comfortable I got with the Game & Watch experience, the more I came to appreciate these little low-tech wonders in their original format. It's remarkable how much gameplay and personality the creators were able to cram into a unit with such deadly limitations. I thought Tiger Electronics was the king of the handheld LCD game, but no, the only thing they had going for them was big-name licenses. Nintendo was the company that truly turned the format's limitations into strengths.

Most Game & Watches were tiny arcade-style games with very little name recognition, although there were a few attempts to convert popular arcade and home console games. The series is very heavy on the simple action games, but if you look hard, you'll find a puzzle game like Bombsweeper, a platformer like Climber, or even an adventure game like Zelda.

I don't have enough to say about any particular game to give it a full-length review, but there are more than a couple titles that caught and held my attention for years on end. And I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge them. My ten favorite classic Game & Watches, in no particular order:

Fire

Fire was an early favorite for me. It's the quintessential Game & Watch game, an example of the most widely imitated Game & Watch format in existance: guide a hero left and right through three possible positions to either catch or avoid objects approaching from the top of the screen. Only Parachute beats out Fire for simplest gameplay.

There's a burning building on the left side of the screen, and people are jumping out the windows. Guiding two characters with a rescue net, you have to catch the jumpers as they fall. They'll bounce up, arc slightly, and reach the second position, where you'll have to catch them again. They'll bounce again to the third position, and if you catch them there, they'll land safely in the ambulance, ready to be treated for their injuries, if any. And it's simple enough when it's one person at a time, but it doesn't take long before the air is thick with flying people, and you're scrambling back and forth as fast as you can to try and Catch 'Em All! (tm)

This game sticks out in my mind partly because of its incidental similarity to a Circus Atari clone that I rather liked and partly because the game is just so damned hard. There's no easy way to score points, no safe place to take a quick breather when the going gets tough, and a lot of split second timing involved. This is edge-of-your-seat stuff, especially when you start to get up to the 700 or 800 point mark. One wrong move, one slight delay, and CRACK! You feel it when someone hits the pavement. Whenever I want to get my blood pumping, I bust out Fire.

One interesting thing that I didn't notice until it was pointed out to me -- in the version that appears in Game & Watch Gallery 1 and 4, when you miss a jumper, there's a cute little animation that shows him getting up and walking away, apparently annoyed by the quality of his rescue experience. This doesn't appear in the original unit, and it couldn't -- the walking figure overlaps locations occupied by other characters on the screen, a big no-no for real-world Game & Watches. I didn't notice this when I played it in Gallery 1, I didn't notice this when I played it in Gallery 4 (which shows shadows of unlit characters on the screen), and I didn't notice this when I bought a Fire keychain. Shows how much I'm paying attention.

Manhole

I think Manhole and Vermin are the only two games that I enjoy in Classic format despite the fact that I don't really care for their Modern counterparts. I didn't click with Manhole right away, and when I did, it was for a rather surprising reason.

The premise is bizarre. There are two roads on the screen, one above the other. Each road has two gaps in it. Pedestrians cross the two roads, right to left on the upper road and left to right on the lower road. They'll walk blindly right into a gap, and if they do, they'll fall. You have a single manhole cover that you can use to support the pedestrians as they cross the gaps. All you have to do is pop between the four possible locations at exactly the right time so that no one has to interrupt their walk with a plummet into the sewers.

I didn't get into it at first because the entire arrangement is just plain baffling. The original unit had four directional buttons on it, one for each possible position, so you were always exactly one button press away from the next hole you had to be at. Since the Game Boy's controls couldn't quite emulate this properly, Nintendo compromised by letting you move to the next gap up, down, left, or right from your current position using the control pad, and to the gap diagonal with the A button.

Took me freaking forever to wrap my head around that one. Then combine it with the fact that the timing is weird. A pedestrian will only fall into the sewers if there's no manhole cover at the exact moment that they step onto a gap -- it's not immediately obvious that you can safely move away (and leave them hanging in midair) once you hear that "beep" of a safe landing.

But I took the time to get into it. I eventually got the feel for the pacing of the game, the patterns of the pedestrians, the rhythm of it...

And one day it clicked with me. Manhole is a freaking rhythm game.

Okay, so there's not much of a "song" to it -- just a minimalist techno ditty that I call "Click Click BEEP BEEP" -- but sliding into the groove in Manhole gives you exactly the same feeling that you get when you slide into a DDR groove. It's weird, and I can't possibly explain it better than that, but that's the impression I get from it.

I got really freaking fantastic at the version in Gallery 1 -- rolled the high score several times over on Hard mode. I was pretty confident in my Manhole mastery until the e-Reader came along and the freebie Manhole card that came with the system completely schooled me. Same thing with the unlockable version in Gallery 4. It occurred to me that possibly the original Game Boy hardware prevented them from creating a version of the game that's actually as difficult as the original units.

Now the version on Gallery 4 is my version of choice. Because it's just so satisfying to get through a tough pattern.

Ball

My first experience with Ball was on the Game Boy Camera. At first, I played it simply because it was, in my opinion, the best use of the camera's Game Face feature. But when the novelty of seeing my head grafted onto Mr. Game & Watch's torso wore thin, I began to see that the juggling game was actually relatively engaging.

This was the original Game & Watch. There's a definate Pong vibe going on when you play it. Not that the games are at all similar, you understand, but... it just has a feeling of genesis, like it's the first timid glimpse at a world of as yet untapped potential. It's definately a step backwards if you're used to later Game & Watches. Animation is minimal, and the artwork is particularly crude. You only get one miss -- drop a single ball, and the game is all over.

The premise is rather simple. You have to juggle two or three balls (depending on the difficulty level). Each ball follows one of three arcs from your character's left hand to his right hand and then back again. Your hands move left and right across the three positions, and all you have to do to stay in the game is make sure that the correct hand is lined up with each ball as it reaches either end of its arc. The twist is, both hands move at once, and you sometimes have to manage balls flying on both sides of the screen simultaneously.

Even though it's Nintendo's first attempt at the genre, it still stands out as a charming and loveable gem. If only it appeared in Game & Watch Gallery 4, the collection would have been complete.

Mario Brothers

Hey, finally some big name star power! No attempt was made to base this Game & Watch on the arcade game of the same name, and thank God for that, because the original Mario Brothers is crap. YEAH I WENT THERE

Instead, this game is about Mario and Luigi at one of the part time factory jobs they used to work before they starting eating mushrooms and spitting fireballs. You control Mario and Luigi simultaneously as they move up and down ladders to operate a complicated three-story conveyor-driven machine. Parts (Modern mode identifies them as cakes, which might not be the truth, but it's as good a suggestion as any) arrive at the bottom of the factory, and Mario has to be there to catch them and put them on the first conveyor. It rides along to the other side of the screen, where Luigi has to be there to catch it and put it on the second conveyor. Mario has to hop up to the next floor to catch it and sent it back, etc, until it's bundled up and shipped off by an anonymous trucker.

The original unit had up and down controls for both Mario and Luigi. On the Game Boy, Luigi still moves up and down using the control pad, and Mario moves up with A and down with B. It's a surprisingly intuitive accomodation, works magnificently.

I love this game partly because I'm super good at it despite how hectic it can be. Generally, the cakes arrive in such a way that you'll only really need to pay attention to one brother at a time, but the potential for situations where you have to pay attention to both sides of the screen at once makes it screaming mad fun. The animation and art is fantastic by Game & Watch standards -- one of the few Classic games that I consider to be just as easy on the eyes as its Modern component. And in Classic mode, you actually get cool animations that you'd miss out on in Modern mode -- things like watching Mario and Luigi taking a breather every time a shipment is filled or getting chewed out by the foreman whenever a cake falls. It's just a class act all around.

And there's a neat, unadvertised feature to this game: play it two-player, Wario Ware Inc. style! One player grabs the control pad, the other grabs the A and B buttons, and both players work together to keep the cake factory running smoothly. It makes the game a hell of a lot easier, and it's more fun than it really should be.

Donkey Kong II

I actually owned a real Donkey Kong Junior Game & Watch when I was in grade school. I thought it was cute, but ultimately it wasn't a very good translation of the original game.

But Donkey Kong II? Now we're talking! This is easily the most exciting of all the Game & Watch Donkey Kong games. And it's a dual screen!

On the bottom screen, Junior jumps and climbs to avoid snapping traps and electric shocks. The top screen looks like the final level of Donkey Kong Junior, with four vines to climb and flying birds to avoid. Get all four keys, and you'll let daddy go.

It's a shame that the "official" Donkey Kong Junior got more attention than this version. I'd much rather have seen this one on Gallery 4, and a Modern version would have been great.

Rainshower

Here's a classic bit of logic from Game & Watch Land. You've just hung your laundry outside on the clothesline. Suddenly, the sky turns dark and it starts to rain. What do you do? Take in your clothes and run them to the nearest coin-operated clothesdrier? Nope! You get out there and pull the clothesline back and forth and weave your clothes between the raindrops!

Considering there are only four locations on the screen that your character can occupy, there's a lot going on in this game. You've got four clotheslines to manage, two on the left and two on the right, divided into two stories. Two lines have two shirts, two have one shirt. And it's a constant, mad scramble to make sure your shirts are lined up to dodge the giant raindrops pouring down from the sky. And in Game B, you have to worry about two pesky crows fiddling with your lines when you're not looking.

But despite the busier setup (or perhaps to counteract it), the pacing is a lot slower. You have time to judge the pattern of the raindrops as they fall and figure out how to adjust the pattern of your laundry accordingly. It's much more of a mental game compared to the "REACT! REACT! REACT!" pacing of Game & Watches like Fire.

Mario's Cement Factory

And speaking of slower pacing -- wow. I dunno if it's just the versions I've played, but this has got to be the slowest-moving Game & Watch game in the entire library. There are stretches of multiple seconds at a time where you're just hunkered down waiting for something to happen. Very atypical of the Game & Watch series.

Still, this one got its hooks in me. You're in a two-level cement factory, each level divided into Left and Right. A conveyor drops off cement into the holding tanks on either side of the top floor, and each tank can hold three loads. It's your job to hit the lever that drains the upper tanks into the lower tanks, then go to the lower level and drain those tanks into the waiting cement trucks.

The challenge comes from the fact that the elevators were designed by a madman.

The two sides of the screen are divided by an elevator shaft with one column of elevators going down and one column going up. There are a lot of gaps between the individual platforms, and if you carelessly step into a spot where there isn't a platform, you fall all the way to your death. (This is another game from the days before Mario could sustain a five-story drop without injury.) So there's this gauntlet that you have to run through not only when you want to switch levels, but also when you want to move from one side of the screen to the other. It's not difficult; you just have to move cautiously.

And that's really what this game is all about -- taking your time, and moving cautiously, but not so cautiously that you let the next load of cement spill over the top of the holding tank. No, no, relax, it won't be there for another minute, I'm just saying, you don't have all day, even though it seems like it. My attraction to Cement Factory seems to stem mostly from my love of anything with moving elevators in it and my love of moving liquids around.

Bombsweeper

Bombsweeper is probably the Holy Grail of no-name Game & Watches. (Although I'll admit, I haven't had the pleasure of playing Goldcliff). There's no relationship to Minesweeper, although they are both puzzle games.

But get this -- this is a dual-screen Game & Watch where the upper screen is used just for cinematic animation. There are cute cutscenes that take place before and after each set of levels (and whenever you die), telling the story of a madman who's planting bombs in the city sewers and a daring police chief who fearlessly directs his underlings to get down after him and defuse those bombs. This is practically Final Fantasy VII by Game & Watch standards.

Actual gameplay takes place on the lower screen, where you have to weave your character between a maze of moveable walls to try and reach a bomb that's sitting at the edge of the screen. Some levels have more than one bomb. You only need to reach one -- the others are decoys to try and throw you off. After a certain number of levels, you have to play an easy automatic-scrolling maze to reach one last bomb.

As far as pushing-block mazes go, this is a pretty decent one, with sometimes clever level design and a lot of different levels to get through. I wouldn't be surprised if it was based on some other, lesser-known video game; the concept is just too cool to be limited to a one-off Game & Watch.

Climber

I would like Ice Climber a lot more if the controls didn't suck. Which is probably why I like Climber. The similarities between the two games are obvious, but a few token changes were made to the graphics to keep Nintendo from suing itself over intellectual property theft.

It's all there. Scale and smash your way up the platforms, avoid birds and weird enemies that are constantly filling in the bricks above your head, get to the top, and try and grab onto a giant bird. It's a little too easy to be a truly great game, but I'll get the itch to pick this one up every now and then.

Zelda

Because the Nintendo Fanboy Code states that all Top Ten lists must finish with something Zelda-related. This game's not "The Legend of Zelda", mind you, just "Zelda". And you're not likely to find a better adventure-oriented Game & Watch from any company.

The game takes place in eight dungeons (actually four dungeons that are repeated with a harder variation, but who's counting). The object is to fight your way through to the dragon at the end of each dungeon and in this manner recover the eight pieces of the Triforce that are needed to rescue Princess Zelda, who's being held captive in the corner of the upper screen. And there's a hell of a lot going on in this game.

First of all, the lower screen shows you one room of the dungeon from a 2-D side perspective, just like Link's Adventure. Link himself stands on a platform with four possible positions. He usually holds his shield in front of himself, but if you press the sword button, he'll hold it behind himself to deflect attacks from the rear.

On the right side of the screen, there's a Moblin standing on a platform. He can move back and forth between two positions. This is the only enemy in the room that you can attack, and you must slay him to clear the room. Most of the time, you can only hit him if you're on the far right side of your platform and he's on the far left side of his. He usually waits for you to be close enough to do a direct attack, but sometimes he'll throw a dagger at you.

Beneath Link's platform, you'll find between one and four Stalfos. Some of them stay in one place, some of them move back and forth to try and get under you. Both kinds will slowly lift their daggers into the air to try and stab you from beneath. So in addition to attacking the Moblin on the right, you have to skip back and forth out of the way of the daggers coming up at your feet.

And sometimes there'll be a ghost on the left side of the screen. From time to time, he'll pop up and spit arrows at you, which you'll have to deflect by holding down the sword button (which moves your shield to your rear).

So you're dancing between dangers and slowly whittling away the hit points of the Moblin on the right side of the screen. When you kill him, you can move on to the next room. Many rooms will give you a choice of where you want to go next, up and to the left or up and to the right. All paths eventually lead to the boss, but you have to plan your exploration carefully, or you'll miss out on the chance to collect special items along the way.

Did I mention those? Yeah, when you beat a Moblin, you'll usually get some sort of item. There's hearts, which add one to your life meter. There's the map, which will fill in a display on the upper screen, showing you the basic layout of the dungeon you're in. There's the Water of Life, which can be used at any time to max out your life meter or to automatically revive you at perfect health if you happen to carelessly die. And there's the tomahawk (?!), which you can only use in the boss battle, but will deal out lots of extra damage. You can keep the Water of Life for as long as you like, but you have to find a new map and tomahawk in each dungeon.

And when you get to the end of each dungeon, Link moves to the upper screen to fight the boss, a big fire-breathing dragon. You stand on a platform with two available positions, and you have to dodge dragonfire raining from above and a swinging tail that can hit you from the right position. You can only hit the dragon when you're standing on the right, but if you can slice away all of his hit points, you win a fragment of the Triforce. The upper screen also contains your subscreen -- which displays the map of the current dungeon, your items on hand, and the Triforce pieces you've recovered -- and enough space to show a cute little cinema of Link rescuing Zelda when you finally get the whole Triforce back together.

It's an excellent experience all around, as epic as Game & Watch can get. But this is a long, long game -- I don't know how people managed to finish this one in the days before automatic save, even with unlimited continues.

So that's my Game & Watch experience. Nintendo hasn't made any new titles for quite some time, but if you check the racks at your local Toys R Us, chances are pretty good you'll find some of the keychains based on the Nintendo originals. (Why, just last Christmas I found my very own Zelda keychain!) And, of course, there are any number of knock-offs and imitations still floating around.

They can be charming games, but it's hard to justify buying an entire unit that can only play one game. I've got a number of the keychains, but I never use them anymore. I would have liked to see the Game & Watch e-Reader cards get a North American debut, and I'm still holding out hope for a definitive Game & Watch gallery on the DS (just think -- all of the dual screen games with 100% faithful graphics!), but a revival of the actual Game & Watch units? I'm really not sure I'm up for that.

I mean, LCD games are awful. Everyone knows that.

Labels:


This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?