- Posted March 31, 2007 - 3:15PM

The one thing I hate about myself is that when I'm arguing in text, I tend to start off well, but get far too wrapped up by the end. Because of that, my language tends to get much more harsh and insulting than it needs be or, more importantly, than I intended it to be. So anyone who's reading this little N64 debate from the outside, just know that Mike and I are just messing around. At least I am.

So anyway, time to dissect Mike's happy little PSX list.

• Metal Gear Solid
  I didn't count it because I never played it on the PSX. I played the ever-so-slightly superior PC version, which came with the VR Missions at bargain bin pricing.

• Final Fantasy Tactics
  No real argument. I love strategy games like this. Translation is absolute shit though. We're talking Capcom-level translation here.

• Crono Cross
  It was on my list. One of the few 32-bit era Squaresoft RPGs that I like.

• Resident Evil
  I never played the original, so it didn't make my list. It's a good game, but the DS port and GC remake far outclass the original.

• Resident Evil 2
  I said ported games don't count, and this was on the N64, though the video was grainy as Hell. So if you count this, it's on the N64 list as well.

• Resident Evil 3
  Who could object?

• Final Fantasy 7, 8, and 9
  Sure, they're great for retards, but for people with good taste? Not so much. The only reason I listed 9 is because I liked the weapon/ability system and Chocobo's treasure hunting.

• Vagrant Story
  Never played it, but it's a Squaresoft RPG, so I have very strong doubts about it.

• Legend of Dragoon
  That one's just outright crappy. And a chick game.

• Silent Hill
  I feel bad that I forgot this one. I love Silent Hill with all my heart.

• Harvest Moon: Back to Nature
  This is a very weaksauce effort as far as Harvest Moons go. 64 was a hojillion times better, and didn't feature horrible time-devouring map design.

• Tekken 3
  With the exceptions of Super Smash Bros/Melee and Soul Calibur 2, good 3D fighting games do not exist. It's all about the sprites.

• GTA/2
  While I do prefer the originals (and 3 to some extent) to the slop that are Vice City and San Andreas, I still don't think the series deserves nearly as much praise as it gets.

• Tony Hawk's Pro Skater/2
  The music may have been cut short, but both THPS games were on the N64 as well, and just as playable. So chalk up two more points for the N64 as well if you're going to include these ones.

• Crash Bandicoot series
  The only Crash game I could really get behind was Crash Team Racing. The platformers' appeal wore of after level 2.

• Some Spyro games
  You're kidding, right? Spyro sucked balls.

You know, based on the data collected in this little spat, I think I've pinpointed the exact reason me and Mike disagree so much. I think it might have something to do with brand loyalty (that one's me, just so you know) and Sony's brainwashing propaganda, but there seems to be a distinct game choice difference here. I like adventure games and spit upon most RPGs, while Mike would rather navigate menus than worlds. The one thing everyone can agree on though? Violence. Hooray violence! Bringing gamers together since probably like forever or something.

- Posted March 29, 2007 - 11:42PM

Because dropping the gloves with your buddies is fun now and then, especially when it's arguing about video games over the internet like complete goofballs, I decided to find an official list of Nintendo 64 games that rock (also I have a lot of spare time). It doesn't take rocket appliances to see that the N64 was a great console, so find one I did, and from the person with the best knowledge in the world about this kind of thing to boot (me). So without further ado, let's get down to business. I even ordered the list alphabetically by developer and release order (again, lots of spare time). Multiplatform (between N64/PSX) games aren't considered.

• Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (Acclaim '97)
• Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (Acclaim '98)
• Snowboard kids (Atlus '97)
• Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (Eurocom '99)
• Super Smash Bros (HAL '99)
• Kirby 64: The Crystal Shards (HAL '00)
• Mario Party (Hudson '99)
• Paper Mario (Intelligent Systems '01)
• Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (LucasArts '98)
• Star Wars: Episode 1 Racer (LucasArts '99)
• Cruis'n USA (Midway '96)
• Cruis'n World (Midway '98)
• Harvest Moon 64 (Natsume '99)
• Super Mario 64 (Nintendo '96)
• Mario Kart 64 (Nintendo '97)
• Star Fox 64 (Nintendo '97)
• 1080 Snowboarding (Nintendo '98)
• F-Zero X (Nintendo '98)
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (Nintendo '98)
• The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (Nintendo '00)
• Beetle Adventure Racing (Paradigm '99)
• Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (Quest '00)
• Blast Corps (Rare '98)
• Goldeneye 007 (Rare '98)
• Banjo-Kazooie (Rare '98)
• Jet Force Gemini (Rare '99)
• Donkey Kong 64 (Rare '99)
• Perfect Dark (Rare '00)
• Banjo-Tooie (Rare '00)
• Conker's Bad Fur Day (Rare '01)
• Space Station Silicon Valley (Rockstar '98)
• Mischief Makers (Treasure '97)
• Winback: Covert Operations (W-Force '99)

In the interest of fairness, here's a list of Playstation games that were good enough for me to have spent more than an hour total playing (without regret). Though these are organized in no way. As with the above list, mulitplatform games don't count.

• MegaMan Legends 2
• Final Fantasy 9
• Parasite Eve
• Parasite Eve 2
• Crono Cross
• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Resident Evil 3

I think that should be evidence enough for anyone. And if not, then how can you explain why three of the top rated games ever (Numbers one, five, and six) are from the N64? Only one is from the Playstation, and it's gay-tastic Tekken. In conclusion, saying the N64 was only good for a couple shooters and wrestling games is like saying the Eagles are only good for "Hotel California", a statement which shows an astronomic amount of ignorance.

- Posted March 24, 2007 - 1:05PM

I don't know if you've been paying attention or anything, but the TMNT games were released a few days ago. While eight different platforms were graced with the newest Turtles game and I own seven of them (all eight soon enough), I only picked up the Wii and DS versions. To secure my title as a true TMNT fanboy, I probably should have gotten all of them, but I don't hate money that much. Anyway, short reviews...

The Wii version, which is probably identical to the PS2, PSP, 360, GC, and PC verions of the game, is pretty kickass. Ubisoft stole the rights to the game from Konami, and that alone fills me with hope (though to their credit, I did enjoy all the Konami produced Turtles games). Thankfully, Ubisoft took what they knew best and applied it directly to the TMNT video game. The game plays like a faster brother of the recent Prince of Persia games, which means it's essentially sweet acrobatics interspersed with some fighting here and there. The game mostly takes place on rooftops and in alleyways and sewers, as the Turtles aren't exactly the most welcome creatures in New York. Jumping around the city and running up and along walls feels great, and as a PoP vet, I caught on really quickly and kicked ass right from the start. Fighting is pretty simple and doesn't occur overly often, which is okay, because just jamming around town is more than enough fun on its own. What I really like about the game are the levels where you can hotswap between all four brothers. Each turtle has his own acrobatic move, and swapping turtles on the fly to get past stuff feels awesome and has the potential to impress viewers. Team moves are also really neat, while kind of limited. Also, the game is a bit easy, because you just can't die. The only real challenge is getting good ranks at the end of each level, which can be rough.

The DS version is the same, but completely different. It's again all about jumping around wherever in teh city, but rather than the regular one button jump and control pad to move around, you've got set jump points. See, you get a little free movement on wide rooftops or bridge beams or whatever, but most of the time, the jumps are semi-automatic. Your top three face buttons each make you jump in different directions, (Y is left, X is straight, A is right), and your job is to see where the next target markers are and hit the right button at the right time. It's not a really difficult game, but learning to time jumps together and speed through levels without missing a step is entertaining enough in itself. There's some fighting in this one too, but I won't mince words: it's crap. Luckily it doesn't happen very often. Boss fights are terrible too, as you can just pin the boss against a wall and wail on it, and you've essentially won. While I do enjoy both games (particularly the Wii version), I think it's safe to assume that they're going to get bashed by critics. Some bullshit about "not being enough of a game" or some kind of crap like that. And you know, maybe they're right, but this is essentially what I'm looking for in a game. The DS game is a completely original concept, and the Wii version is quite swanky with just enough challenge so that I have to try, but won't get frustrated with it (ahem Sonic).

In the end though, neither game even compares to HOW AWESOME THE MOVIE WAS! HOLY CRAP! Yeah caps whatever. I'm just really excited. TMNT was everything I was hoping for and more. The human characters look a little wierd, as apparently in CG land, for every fat guy there are 700 anorexic people, but that's a minor complaint. The one real complaint I have was that Karai and her foot ninja were not nearly central enough to the story. But that's apparently not going to be a problem in the sequel, which they did not just leave a door open for, but rather explicitly hinted at. With new VAs for every character, Karai actually had a real asian accent, as opposed to the shitty fake one they gave her in the cartoon. Also awesome was that Patrck Stewart was in it. And Splinter's trophy case at the end, that was a totally sweet nod to fans of the show. I could really go on forever, but you know, I think saying that it's fickin' awesome is enough. I was ready to go see it again right after I left the theater, but decided that I'd rather not, since I had run out of gift cards, and I just wasn't ready to spend fourteen actual dollars.

- Posted March 19, 2007 - 8:55AM

I logged onto the Wii shop channel this morning in hopes that maybe Nintendo uploaded the weekly bunch of VC games early. That's realy the highlight of my Mondays, so I was really hoping to get some classic goodness before I had to head off to work. When I got into the shop though, somethign was decidedly wrong.

Looks as though for a little while, the Wii Shop just went all crazy bat shit. As you can see, all the graphics went nuts, and nothing was clickable. I don't know if it just loaded improperly (when I tried again five minutes later, it was all fixed), or if Nintendo was updating it (hopefully to add a new console) and let the code get mucked up a bit along the way. Here's hoping it's the second one. Either way, today's new games aren't up yet. I'm actually hoping against anything good this week, because like I said yesterday, I've got quite a lot of comic to work on, so having StarFox 64 accessible to me would just screw that over completely.

- Posted March 18, 2007 - 3:46PM

Why haven't I posted anything in the last week? I dunno. I guess nothing's really happened lately that I care to mention. Also, I've been working hard on leading Denver to the Super Bowl in Tecmo Bowl, which I downloaded to my Wii on Moday. I'm a few games into the season, and quite frankly, I forgot how cheap NES games could be. Passing success starts at about 40% and gets worse as you go on, and the opposing players don't get smarter, they just get faster while your guys get slower. Frankly, I don't think the Broncos will make it this year. At least two player is still a blast eighteen years later.

Um, yeah. So I guess I did have a little something to say. Oh well. I'll make some sort of post later this week, but probably not until Thursday at the earliest. I've got a tall comic order to fill this week.

- Posted March 11, 2007 - 4:38AM

So I spent the better part of yesterday playing a couple Nintendo 64 games. Why? mostly because I felt like reminiscing and enjoying some really great titles (despite what some may want you to believe, the 64 had a ton of killer games). Also, my friends and I were chatting briefly about Kirby 64, and the topic of how round things shouldn't be made of polygons (or some such thing) came up. That note made me curious about how well exactly they made that work back in the day. The answer, I'll get to in a sec. That's actually one of the main reasons I'm making this post.

Now, I was mostly playing games that came out near the end of the 64's lifespan, and I've got to say that the graphics are startlingly adequate. Sure, there have been huge leaps in graphical quality in the last two generations, but were they really that necessary? Just take a look at two choice titles: Pokémon Stadium 2 and Kirby 64. If you boot up either of those games, you'll probably be surprised at how nice they look. Pokémon Stadium 2 in particular has some very impressive character models, which look like they could have come out of a lower-end GC game. And the Kirby issue? Quite frankly, Kirby is impressively round, considering he's made out of decidedly not-round polygons. I'm pretty sure most of the round enemies are just made of rotating 2D circles (I forget what that's called, or if it even has a name), but Kirby is the real deal, and he looks (and moves) great.

Given, both of those games are pretty easy on the system otherwise, so I suppose grahpic quality could possibly have been optimized because of that. But then again, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Donkey Kong 64 both had huge environments and a lot going on, as well as fantastic (for the hardware) visuals, so I guess that's a bit of a moot point.

I'm not sure where I was going to go with this, but it seems like I'm trying to say something along the lines of how I was more than satisfied with where graphics were at around seven years ago. Yeah, smoother textures and higher poly counts are nice and all, but we haven't seen a single Kirby game since the 64 era where you can mix powers, so what's up with that? Oh man, and if you could mix powers and have more than one attack per power? That would kick so much ass that my head hurts thinking about it. Come on Nintendo, I know you're cooking up a Kirby game for the Wii. Indulge me! Or at least release Kirby 64 on the Virtual Console so I don't have to play it on these shitty, shitty emulators... Also, classic Game Boy games would be nice too.

Oh right, and jus'ta let ya'll know, Wario: Master of Disguise? Not so great. Parish was a little harder on it than I would say needed be, but it most certainly does not live up to the majesty that is Wario Land 2 (best classic GB game EVAR), or even 3 for that matter, which I found was the weakest of the series.

This post took me exactly half an hour to write.

- Posted March 10, 2007 - 7:38PM

Yesterday sucked in all the wrong ways, but you've heard enough crap out of me already for the whole year, so I'll skip the complaining and get to it.

After a good twoish months, I've finally published a new article. It's just one of those dumb video game reviews though, so don't act all happy about it or anything. I've also created an archive page for the news from February 07. I realize it's been months since I noted a news archive update, but whatever.

- Posted March 9, 2007 - 4:48PM

Ba-ba-ba-band of the Month time, everyone! It doesn't get any more half-assed than this one, either, so look out world!

I dunno. I guess stellastarr* is a pretty good band. They're an alternative punk group, and their lead singer has a really distinctive voice and style. While it's not the greatest act to ever grace this page, I think they've got an original sound and I like 'em.

Short story on this one. They've got a song on Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam. It's called "Jenny" and I quite enjoy it. For more reasons than one, I had to go and download the song immediately. In the end, I scooped up the whole CD it's featured on, and I've gotta say I liked what I got. I'd totally pick it up legit if I ever saw it at the Best Buy or something, because it's a darn good CD. Not something that everyone's gonna like, and I really emphasize that this time, but I'd suggest you give them a chance. It's different and I like it. "Nuff said.

I guess I should probably have researched the band a little more before I did this thing, but I just stared listening to 'em this week, and I usually pick up on band info slowly as time goes by. If you really wanna know more, go check out their Wikipedia page. For samples, head on over to

I'm not capable of love