Page 92 – Burning the midnight oil at noon

Year of N64 – July – Gauntlet Legends

Unlike the last few Year of N64 games, Gauntlet Legends is one that I spent a ton of time with back in my youth. Or, at least I think that I did. Having played it through again, I’m not sure if it is quite as much of a timesink as I remembered it being.

Gauntlet Legends is essentially a reboot of the Gauntlet franchise long before reboots were a thing. The previous game, Gauntlet III: The Final Quest, came out in 1991, and Legends hit the arcades in 1998. The N64 port didn’t show up until the next year. I’ve only ever dabbled in “classic” Gauntlet games, so I don’t know how much Legends changes the formula, but it brought the franchise into the world of polygons, so that’s a big enough leap for me.

If you’ve never played Gauntlet anything, you’re missing out on a fairly entertaining multiplayer arcade experience. The game has you set up a character from a small roster of classes, then sends you on your way through a couple dozen stages, where you will collect cash and slaughter countless numbers of monsters. The goal of the game is more or less to survive and make your way to the end of each stage, but Gauntlet offers a little more than that.

Enter the “dreaded” RPG elements. You choose your character class, give them a name, and then they gain experience and level up as you play. Level ups increase your stats, and when you hit certain milestones, your character will gain special upgrades, like fancier weapons and a familiar that tags along and adds to your firepower. Each player also has their own inventory for stockpiling items, and can spend their accumulated gold on either items or stat boosts. Items can be useful, but I found that their true value was just selling them at the store so that I could buy the stat boosts instead.

The stages come in four colourful flavours: the mountain, the castle, the town, and the ice domain. Defeating the bosses of each world will unlock a pseudo-final stage in the cathedral, and when you beat that, you unlock the battlefield world. Finally, you will descend into the very depths of the underworld for the final showdown.

So there’s a fairly good variety of levels on display here. Even stages within the same world vary greatly, rather than simply having one default look and a handful of different layouts for example, the mountain world has you start at the lush base of the mountain, then as you ascend, it becomes more barren and rocky. Eventually you find your way inside and have to work your way through a cave, culminating in a stage that takes place on a set of rocky platforms and catwalks suspended above a massive pool of lava.

The stage layouts are usually fairly good too. Almost all of them have twists and turns everywhere, but the critical path is usually not too difficult to follow. It wasn’t until the ice world that the levels started to get annoyingly complex and I found myself wishing that they were about half as long. Most of the stages are huge, and the amount of enemies that populate them is staggering; it’s a wonder that this game didn’t cause the Nintendo 64 to simply melt down. As it is though, there’s not even very much lag considering how many moving objects can end up on screen at once.

While most of the items you find during your adventure are power-ups of varying effectiveness, there are three important collectibles that you need to keep your eyes open for. There are plenty of hints to their locations, but actually sussing them out can sometimes be a hassle. Obelisks are scattered around the first three worlds, and you need to find all of them in one world to unlock the next. There are a total of thirteen Rune Stones to find, and without them all, you can’t enter the final showdown.

Lastly are the boss weapons, one in each of the four main worlds. These are not strictly necessary to complete the game, but they give you a slight advantage in the boss fights. And if you’re playing solo (as I did), you need all the advantages you can find. The bosses are brutal, and when they’re focusing all of their attacks on you, the fights generally just boil down to whose HP depletes first. They aren’t fun, and a solo player will have to grind his or her butt off before they even stand a chance against a boss. This stands in stark contrast to the regular stages, where you’ll generally never have to grind levels to progress.

The final boss, however, is a bit of an exception. You have to fight him twice, and the first time, he is just as bad as the rest. It’s a very difficult fight, but he drops four superweapons when he’s defeated. If you keep one of those weapons until your second fight with him, using it will make the final battle exceedingly easy. If you don’t, it’s basically impossible to win alone. I wanted to do it the normal way at first, so I leveled up to 90 and maxed out my defense stat through the shop. Still I died. So I used the cheap way, because nuts to that.

I should mention that grinding up to level 90 did not take very long. I burned through this game in a week, and it didn’t really seem to overstay its welcome. I remember having maxed out several characters back in the day, and I suppose that it would have been much less tedious because I was actually able to play with other people. I wanted to do this playthrough with my wife, but the fact of the matter is that the control sticks on my spare N64 controllers are almost completely limp, and I really didn’t care enough to buy a new one or attempt a repair.

So there you have it. It’s not a very deep experience, but I still have a pretty strong appreciation for Gauntlet Legends. So much so, that I kind of want to track down a copy of the incredibly buggy sequel (expansion?), Gauntlet: Dark Legacy, to give that a quick playthough. I also sort of want to try out the oft-maligned Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows, but it seems to be so different that it might not be worth the investment. Anyway, Gauntlet Legends was a bunch of fun while it lasted, and I can only imagine that it would go down even smoother with a friend or three to share it with.

Smash Speculation: Yarn Kirby/Prince Fluff

Masahiro Sakurai, the director of Super Smash Bros, is also creator of Kirby and was the director of many of the earlier games in the Kirby series. Kirby has been a fighter in Smash since the start, and each sequel seems to take a few more cues from Kirby games than the last. Smash has no shortage of love for Kirby, so why not introduce a second Kirby into the fray?

~ Yarn Kirby ~

There are already two Links in Smash after all: regular Link and Toon Link. Both even have the same abilities, though with a few slight differences in speed, weight, and what have you. Yarn Kirby here would be a completely different character from Kirby. Kirby’s Epic Yarn just plays so differently from any other Kirby game, it’d be hard to argue that Yarn Kirby doesn’t deserve a spot. Of course, if you really can’t stand the thought of having two Kirbys, Yarn Kirby could just as easily be swapped out with Prince Fluff, who is the second-player character in Kirby’s Epic Yarn.

The biggest difficulty in implementing Yarn Kirby would be in the fact that he’s a mostly see-through character, and that might make it very easy to lose track of him in a game like Smash, where there can be a lot going on on the screen at any time. The image above shows Kirby and Fluff on patches, but in the game proper, they don’t have that backing to them. The best solution I can come up with for this problem would be to make their yarn outlines a little thicker. Maybe there’s a more creative way to do it, or maybe the best way is to just pop ’em in as they are and let the players sort it out.

Yarn Kirby’s main method of attacking in Epic Yarn is a yarn whip that extends from his body. This would likely figure into many of his regular attacks. Maybe the whip would factor in more to Yarn Kirby’s smash attacks instead, and he’d have a more standard set of fighting moves as normal attacks. If nothing else, it would definitely work as a tethered grab attack, like Link’s hookshot or Samus’ grapple beam.

Smash attacks, as with Classic Wario, would make use of Yarn Kirby’s many transformations. However, I’d give him something a little different for his neutral special: bead toss. Kirby’s Epic Yarn has you gathering piles upon piles of beads, and I think that having Yarn Kirby chuck them as a projectile weapon would be a good basic special attack. Beads come in all shapes and sizes in Epic Yarn, and in Smash, the bigger beads would do more damage, and a star-shaped bead might have a stronger knockback effect.

Yarn Kirby transforms into an adorable little car when he runs in Kirby’s Epic Yarn, and that should definitely remain a trait of his Smash character. He also has a monster truck transformation, and I think that would make a pretty cool side special. I’m not sure what kind of special properties this special move would have, but maybe it doesn’t need any. It could just be a really big hit, not unlike regular Kirby’s hammer special.

The up special would obviously be Yarn Kirby’s rocket transformation. It would take a second to charge up, then create a big poof of smoke as it blasts off, damaging anyone it rams into. The flames coming out of the thrusters would obviously burn anyone who touches them. The rocket should be able to be directed left or right after it takes off, but always maintain a vertical course. The original rocket shoots stars, but that might be unnecessary for Smash.

Finally, Yarn Kirby’s down special would be the weight. Just like regular Kirby’s stone attack, it would simply drop down and smoosh anyone below it. No frills, just a straight-up butt slam attack, but cuter. If you need to mix it up, I don’t know, maybe have him turn into the surfing penguin thing and do a wave attack like Squirtle’s surf. Maybe on the ground, it’d produce a small wave and crash into enemies that are straight ahead, while airborne it could ride a wave at a downward angle. I’m thinking watery version of the Falcon Kick, here.

Final smash seems obvious: Tankbot. I’m worried that it would end up being a little too much like another Landmaster, so let’s try something different, okay? UFO! Now, the UFO in Epic Yarn works a little differently than the standard UFO copy ability, which I don’t think would work overly well in Smash. So let’s have the Yarn UFO with Copy UFO’s beams and such, yes? Yarn UFO would be able to fly around the screen freely, blasting opponents with its high-powered beam. The UFO’s armor is strong enough to withstand any attacks, giving Yarn Kirby a short period of invincibility. It’s a little bit like Super Dragon Yoshi again, but at least it’s not another Landmaster.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn wasn’t one of the Kirby games that Masahiro Sakurai had a hand in personally, but it is a beloved entry, and quite possibly the more adorable video game ever made. Seeing Kirby get an alternate representation based on his yarn form would be great, and subbing in Prince Fluff to diversify the character roster further would be just as good. I’ve got no beef with Fluff. Hopefully one of these characters makes the cut; it’ll make Smash feel that much more like pants.

Previous: Classic Wario

Next: Chibi-Robo

Smash Speculation: Wario

Okay, so for week one of this project, I’m going to cheat and choose an existing character. Sort of. Phoning it in right out of the gate; is there any other style which is so unquestionably mine?

~ CLASSIC WARIO ~

Yeah, so Wario made his big Smash Bros debut in Brawl, but he wasn’t really Wario. At least, he wasn’t Wario the way I know him. Perhaps to give him a more unique flavour, Wario came to Smash dressed up in his biker duds from the Wario Ware Inc series. Along with this came a bunch of weird attacks, like biting his opponents and blasting out deadly farts. This is all well and good, and I have no intent to suggest that Biker Wario should be kicked out, but I think that there should be an alternate Classic Wario to choose from.

In Brawl, it’s possible to change Wario’s costume from his biker gear to his familiar purple overalls. This doesn’t change how he plays, but I think that it should. Classic Wario would, for one, move less erratically than Biker Wario. The current character shuffles around in alternating poses, giving the impression of old sprite animation, not unlike how Mr. Game & Watch moves. Classic Wario would move smoothly, like the rest of the cast.

Classic Wario has a pretty deep pool of moves to choose from, making it hard to narrow down exactly what should go where. I’d suggest that his smash attacks make use of his various hats from the first Wario Land game. Up smash would shoot out the bull horns, maybe even getting your opponent stuck to them to perform a throw or follow-up attack. Side smash would have him charge forward with the Jet Hat, and the burner in the back would hurt anyone who touches it. Down smash would use the Dragon Hat to have Wario lay a flame across the ground around him. It’s kind of hard to describe, but imagine Samus’ up smash, but along the ground.

Classic Wario’s special moves would be a little harder to pin down. I’d imagine that they’d use a number of his transformations from the later Wario Land games. Up+B, I think, would make use of Vampire Wario’s bat mode. Obviously, this would have him poof into a bat and fly upward. I don’t know if the bat would cause damage, but maybe you’d just be able to fly around as the bat for a few seconds instead of making it an actual attack.

Down+B is the really hard one. The best fit I can come up with is Fat Wario. Like so many other characters, it’d be a butt-slam type move. I guess it’d work a little like Bowser’s Down+B while on the ground, propelling Wario slightly forward before the stomp. The move would probably have a little lag, as Wario would have to chomp down on an apple or a donut before bulking up and doing the slam. Of course, you could also just give him a standard butt slam, but it’d make more sense to wedge a transformation in there.

The side and neutral specials have many options, but a lot of them are fairly similar. Frozen Wario would fit well as Side+B, turning Wario to ice and having him slide along the floor. Any opponents hit have a chance of being frozen, though I’m not sure exactly how Wario would be unfrozen. To keep the move useful, Wario would probably be able to jump/break out after a certain distance. Staying true to the games would only cancel the move when Wario hits a wall, but that would make it a very suicidal move.

Finally, the neutral special would be Flaming Wario, igniting Wario’s butt and causing him to run forward in a panic. The player could control Wario’s direction and jump, and burn anyone he comes in contact with. After being on fire for a couple seconds, he’d be completely consumed by the flame, and his mobility would be reduced. A couple seconds later, the fire would go out and Wario wold shake off the ash. Any contact with the big flame would cause increased damage.

For the sake of laziness, they could probably keep Wario Man as Classic Wario’s final smash. If you want me to really stretch, maybe give him the King Dragon hat from Virtual Boy Wario Land. Giving Wario the ability to fly and shoot fire, it would probably be very similar to Yoshi’s final smash. Or instead, it could cover the screen in a red and black Virtual Boy-esque overlay, and have Wario jump onto a foreground platform while something damages all the fighters left on the main playfield.

The model for Classic Wario already exists in Smash, all they have to do is give him his own set of moves to make him a unique character. Of course, that is the most complicated part, but I think it would be worth the effort. The current Wario just doesn’t feel like Wario, you know?

Previous: Overview

Next: Yarn Kirby

On Brothers who might Smash

The days are very slowly creeping by as I wait for the release of the newest Smash Bros games. Of course, the wait is made all the worse by it actually being two waits: one to the 3DS version on October 3rd, and the other to some undetermined time in December for the Wii U version. Truth be told, I’m not totally keen on playing Smash on my 3DS, but I’m sure my mind will change once the game is in my hands.

Information has been trickling out bit by bit through Nintendo Directs and via Masahiro Sakurai’s Miiverse posts. Much like Brawl’s Dojo website, each weekday, a new screenshot is posted on Miiverse, showing off a game element such as moves, items, or stages. Sometimes it’s just a little thing like a certain stage hazard, but on occasion, entire characters have been revealed through Miiverse.

Just yesterday, three characters were revealed in this fashion: Lucina and Robin from Fire Emblem: Awakening, along with the return of Captain Falcon. Now, I don’t know anything about the Fire Emblem series, but Ike managed to quickly become one of my favourite fighters in Brawl, so I’m not going to write these two off even though they’re not immediately interesting to me. Lucina seems to be a clone of Marth, which is ho-hum, but Robin is both a mage and a swordsman, and looks like he (or she, as the character can be gender-flipped) could be a really neat character to play.

All of that is besides the point though. What I want to do here is come up with a bunch of characters that I’d like to see introduced in this edition of Smash Bros. Partly because I’m a giddy fanboy, and partly because it’ll help me pass the time until I can actually play the game and learn the complete character roster.

I don’t have quite enough solid ideas to make up a weekly feature that’ll last until the game’s release, so I won’t promise to post regular updates (because I’m sure you care so much), but I am going to try to make this the new weekly feature. Starting tomorrow. I don’t quite have my ducks in a row even for my first post yet, so check back tomorrow, and every following Wednesday until September 24th if you want to see the depths of my insanity as reflected through Super Smash Bros.

(Keeping in mind that the game releases on Sept 13th in Japan, so any “speculation” made after that is pretty moot, but I’ll be avoiding spoilers until I actually have the game.)

Next: Classic Wario

Vacation time and a new baby

Last week was my first week-long vacation since September, and man, when you wait that long between vacations, it feels good to be off for so long. Especially when you don’t do anything with that week besides catching up on your video games and Netflix backlogs. Many years ago, a vacation week would have been put to good use with comic drawing and writing for this blog, but I didn’t even think about touching my PC until Saturday night. To say that I accomplished nothing of value would be an understatement.

Actually, I did mow my lawn and tidied up my basement a little, so I suppose that technically I did get a few things done. Though I likely would have done those on a not-vacation week anyway. And I spent a few mornings sitting out in the sun with a book, so there’s an activity that I guess isn’t a complete waste of time. Why reading is considered a more legitimate hobby than any other type of media consumption is a mystery to me.

Oh, also I began recording a new set of Pop-Tarts Reviews, so you can look forward to those at some undetermined point in the future.

The big news of the week is that my entertainment unit is now home to a Playstation 3. Heresy, I know! But it came at the low, low price of $9, as my brother had recently moved up to an Xbox One, and all I had to do to adopt his PS3 was to buy a new power cable for it. The poor thing had been living between the bed of his truck and my parents’ shed for the last few months, so I’m happy to be able to give it a loving home.

Alas, now that I’ve got the thing, it seems like there are far fewer exclusive titles for it that interest me than I had thought. Currently the only games that I have on it are Tokyo Jungle, which I love with all of my heart, and a handful of PSOne Classics that I’d previously purchased on my PSP. Literally the only other games for it that I really want are Valkyria Chronicles and Drakengard 3. It’s pretty likely that I’ll be buying the HD Kingdom Hearts collections at some point, and probably Tales of Symphonia Chronicles, but I wouldn’t place those as sure bets.

I’m trying to resist the HD port of Shadow of the Colossus, but I think we all know that it is my destiny to buy it and play it over and over forever. It’s funny how a game that I didn’t like very much at first has become one of my all-time favourite video games. Favourite PS2 game, at the very least.

Dark Souls: Return to Anor Londo

Previously on Dark Souls: Morgan spun her wheels in the forest for a little while, slaughtering mushroom-men and big, ugly cats. Also there was some sort of tragedy involving a dog.

Having explored the entirety of the forest, I had only three things left unchecked on my to-do list: a) Fight the hydra, B) Explore deeper into the Catacombs, or C) Go back to Anor Londo.

I really wasn’t interested in any of these options, but apparently my nebulous objective resided in Anor Londo, so it was time for me to stop putting it off and try my hand at getting into that castle again.

I traveled back up through Darkroot Garden and Sen’s Fortress, eventually meeting up with the bat-demons that would carry me over the walls into the city of giants. As we came up over the wall, I could feel a sense of dread wash over me, remembering all of those deaths at the hands of those damnable archers. Would this time be any different? All I could do was hope.

I ran past the sentinels into the alcove with the bonfire. I rested to mark my progress, and dashed down to the bridge. At the other end, I weaved under a sentinel’s legs and fought the demons on the ledge behind him. I stared down the buttress to the tower where things could go wrong so quickly.

I inched down, and baited the demons out from around their corners. I ran back up to the ledge, and one of the demons jumped off the side of the tower at me, plummeting to its doom. From there, it was simply a matter of patiently striking the remaining demon until it collapsed.

Standing behind the wall that separated me from the archers and their massive bolts, I breathed in deeply. I ran. I could feel the air warp around me as the arrows flew by me. Made it to the centre tower. I waited for the hail of arrows to stop before I dashed around to the other side and almost leaped up the final buttress.

I stood on the ledge, facing one of the archers. For the moment, the second one couldn’t see me, but he’d figure out to move a few feet over soon enough. I raised my shield to deflect the nearby archer’s continued volley as I slowly pressed forward. He gave up as I drew closer and exchanged bow for blade. He struck me quickly and fiercely, but his sword came in contact with the centre of my shield, and the force of the rebound knocked him backwards, clear off the ledge.

I don’t know how long I stood there, staring down into the void below, shouting unintelligibly in relief. It wasn’t until an arrow from the second archer clashed into the wall beside my head that my mind snapped back. I clambered around the side of the castle wall, nearly losing my footing to a mix of panic and excitement. Just around the corner, the ledge dropped off and below lied a small balcony. There was no way back up, but there was nothing for me back there anyway, so I jumped.

The balcony led into a resplendent hallway of ivory and marble. There were doors to either side of me, and a huge spiraling staircase directly in front. I decided to try my luck with the door on the left. I let out a massive sigh of relief to see that the room contained a bonfire, and sitting by that bonfire was my good friend Solaire. I took a seat next to him, and he offered me some words of encouragement as I rested.

Taking my leave, I began exploring the rest of the castle. It was a nightmarish place, brimming with mimics and highly skilled silver knights. These knights were more than a cut above any enemy I’d previously faced. They were fast, and able to anticipate and block my attacks with unprecedented accuracy. I thought that perhaps this was a good time to recall my fencing training and practice my parrying.

It was a long, drawn-out process, and I saw the words You Died many, many times as I traversed the castle interior. The silver knights did not goof around; the ones carrying spears were more manageable than their sword-bearing brothers, but none went down without a fight. Eventually I reached the rooftop, which only led me to more archers, though they were considerably easier to deal with on an open playing field.

I circled back and forth through the hallways and rooms of the castle, eventually finding myself on a ledge above the main hall. Below I could see two dressed-up sentinels patiently waiting to swat intruders. At the far end was the massive castle door, in the opposite was a Fog Wall. I did what any sane fellow would do, and followed the ledge up to the far end of the room, where I noticed a missing panel in a beautiful stained glass window.

Poking my head out, I could see goodies lined up on a series of ledges outside the window. I hopped out eagerly to retrieve them, and only then did I notice that I wasn’t able to pull myself back inside. I hopped down to a lower ledge, suspended right behind the gate sentinels, and climbed down behind the gate opposite of the one that led to the archer buttress. I unlocked the gate to make a shortcut for myself, but didn’t notice the horde of demons creeping up behind me as I did so. You Died.

Tune in next time for Part 27: TITS!

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: June 2014

June, much like May, was a month where I played far too many games, and as such, ended up with a lot of half-finished stuff on my plate. Most of the games that I did finish were either short new games or short replays. My goal for the year was to clear out some of my backlog, not to clog it up even more.

Doesn’t help that I’ve got a few drawn-out and/or notoriously difficult games on the go here. I really need to remember in the future to only be playing one RPG at a time.

~ Now Playing ~

Mario Kart 8 (WiiU) – I wanted to skip this one, as I felt that I was done with Mario Kart. But it’s like, the one game that the wife wanted, so we got it. And then I ended up loving it. Stupid Mario Kart, being so fun.

Shovel Knight (WiiU) – Sweet Jesus God, I had no idea how amazing this game was going to be. I mean, I pledged towards the Kickstarter campaign, so I had faith in it, but it’s even better than I could have ever hoped. I did beat it already, but I’m playing again in New Game+, and probably another couple times for some cheevos. I really love this game.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PSP) – I always wonder, when a movie or game or TV series starts to expand, if the writers had the whole plot laid out from the very beginning, or if they’re just flying by the seat of their pants the whole time. The Kingdom Hearts series, I’m convinced, falls into the latter category. When even the prequel -which should probably be the one with the simplest plot- is a big confusing mess, you get the feeling that they’re likely just using a plot dartboard. At least they’re pretty fun to play, and I especially like the skill system in this one. I’ve finished one and a half of the three story paths.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (NES) – Sometimes, you’ve just gotta go back and finish a game that you’ve never beaten without rampant cheating. If you think save states are cheating, then yes, I’m still going through the game dishonestly, but at least I’m not an invincible god with unlimited magic and moon jumps. Also, I really wish Zelda II were a better game.

Chrono Trigger (DS) – One of my goals for the year is to earn all 13 endings in Chrono Trigger. So far I’ve gotten three. The second playthrough is going pretty quickly though. If I wasn’t spreading my gaming time around so liberally, I’d probably be finished this little endeavour by this point.

Costume Quest (PC) – One of my other goals is to start playing through the hundreds of games I’ve bought in Humble Bundles and Steam sales over the last couple years (all aboard the Steam Train~), and Costume Quest fits nicely into the center of the “short” and “runs on my PC” venn diagram. Too bad it’s not very fun.

Rage of the Gladiator (3DS) – Still picking away at this one, but the hardest difficulty (which awards the true ending) is, well, hard. Suddenly the enemies who were total jokes before can kill me before I get one hit in. Wonderful.

Super Smash Bros Brawl (Wii) – Didn’t really have a goal here, just spent a whole afternoon playing Smash Bros to see if I could still spend a whole afternoon playing Smash Bros. Completed the boss rush with a few guys, and failed to win All-Star mode with Link nearly a dozen times. I think I may suck at Smash.

Papers, Please (PC) – Started this up on a whim and got hooked right away. Played for about two hours, and had I not been dragged away and imprisoned for doing my job too well (ending #3), I probably could have kept going on through the night. I’m definitely going to keep playing for more endings.

Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES) – I played the crap out of DKCs 1 and 3 back when they were current, but never really got into 2. Can’t say why for sure, I suppose it came out at a time when there were more attractive games to rent? Anyway, the end is nigh for this one, and it has been a brutal trip. I want to go for the best ending, but will I have the drive to find all of those dastardly DK Coins?

Golden Sun (GBA) – You know, if I played this more than once every few weekends, I’d probably be done by now. I don’t know how I feel about it. It’s got the nice nostalgia value, and I likethe puzzles, but the battles are awfully tedious. And the dialogue! Oh my goodness, shut up!

Final Fantasy IV DS (DS) – I think that this game is only taking so long to beat because I’m afraid of how hard the final boss will be. So afraid, in fact, that I even took the time to fight all the optional bosses before I tackled the final dungeon. It’s… really hard to get through the final dungeon too, when even the more common random battles can wipe your party in a matter of seconds.

~ Game Over ~

Ittle Dew (Wii U) – At first it looks a lot like somebody made a Legend of Zelda game that looks like Scott Pilgrim, and that is actually fairly accurate. Only the gameplay leans very, very heavily on block-pushing puzzles. Sometimes there are also block-teleporting puzzles. Or a mix of the two! And then some really misplaced boss fights. Ah well, it was good fun.

Abyss (Wii U) – A game about navigating mazes while trying to control your little eyeball-squid-monster’s propulsion. I thought it was a completely different kind of game before I bought it, but I ended up liking it anyway, so that’s $2 well spent. Hooray!

Mega Man Xtreme 2 (GBC) – Technically, I guess it’s better than the first one, but it’s just didn’t grab me the way I thought it would. Then again, I think the only reason I was so excited to play Xtreme 1 was because of nostalgia. Xtreme 2 has no such advantage.

Doom 64 (N64) – As much as I love Doom, this game is just so different from what Doom was before that I couldn’t really get into it. Still way better than Doom 3, though.

~ Re-Runs ~

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (360) – It’s not the worst brawler, but it’s pretty darn bad. I played through the game in Time Attack mode to round up the last few achievements. Fortunately, it’s pretty easy to burn through the game the second time around.

Klonoa: Empire of Dreams (GBA) – I know that I did rent this game when it first came out, and that I spent a lot of time playing it in class, but I can’t recall for the life of me if I beat it or not. It was highly unusual for Young Ryan to leave a game unfinished though, so we’ll call my playthough of it on the Wii U Virtaul console a re-run.

Super Mario Bros (NES) – I beat 8-3 in a single life, without taking a hit! It was the most amazing thing I’ve ever done!

I Love Katamari (iOS) – Occasionally, to kill time, I attempt to play video games on my phone. Most of those games end up being terrible, and this one is just barely an exception. I’m not saying it’s good, but I’ve seen tilt-control games go horribly awry, and I Love Katamari at least works. Still, it’s a shabby cash-in that only wishes it could be as engaging as its big brothers. Anyway, I just poked around on this one for a bit to complete the item collection and get the final cheevo.

Year of N64 – June – DOOM 64

My frame of reference for the DOOM series (I’m just going to capitalize the D from now on) exists in a time somewhere between 1994 and 2000. Doom II was one of the few full-version computer games we had back then that I was keenly interested in, and I played it was the only one. Of course, at some point, my taste for Doom and similar games (Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem 3D, etc) waned and I moved on to newer, fancier computer games.

Doom 64 doesn’t have the greatest reputation. It’s not particularly hated or anything, but the internet’s collective opinion is that the original games are better. In the interest of finding out for sure, I made sure to play through the entirety of the Xbox port of Doom so that I could have more than faded memories to make a comparison to.

The original Doom is fantastic. It’s a simplistic game that doesn’t even let you look along the vertical axis, but it felt much more satisfying to play than most modern first-person shooters. The first two chapters are breezy fun, the third dials it up to push your abilities, and the fourth (an add-on scenario) is simply there to beat you into the ground. What’s most remarkable is that Doom feels really great to play with a controller, as opposed to the keyboard controls (sans-mouse) that I was shackled to in my youth.

Having completed the entirety of Doom for the very first time, and having enjoyed roughly 95% of it (there are some really cheap traps later on), I was riding high and expecting Doom 64 to be a similar experience.

But then it turns out that Doom 64 is poop from a butt.

My very first mistake was playing on a difficulty level that was too much for me. I had chosen “Hurt Me Plenty” on Doom, which is the default setting and equates to what the “Normal” setting would be in other games. Doom 64 phrases it differently, where the equivalent is “I Own Doom.” Sure, it’s the default difficulty, and also a statement of fact. Why would I choose any other setting?

Assuming that it is, in fact, the average difficulty setting, Doom 64 is a brutal game. I was killed twice before I was able to finish the first stage. Secret doors containing monsters open silently behind you. The Average Joe Zombie has a very accurate shot. Rooms are filled with up to eight monsters.

None of this is helped by that fact that playing similar games on an Xbox 360 controller and then an N64 controller is like going from a fork to chopsticks. I figured that all my N64 playing over the last few months would have eased me into the controller, but it turned out to be a massive source of woes for me. I blame it entirely no having used the vastly superior 360 controller immediately beforehand, and it really shows how difficult it can be to adapt to different controllers.

I need to make it very clear though, that Doom 64 lets you customize your controls any damn way you like. Every function is remappable, and you can make changes to your control scheme at any point. It’s a really handy feature, as the default control setup is kinda weird. The only downside is that custom setups aren’t saved, and you have to remap all your buttons each time you power on.

The next big gripe about Doom 64 is the general atmosphere. the graphics, for one, are much darker and more bland than in the PC games. This is to accommodate a generally more horror-focused aesthetic. Doom has always been “scary” in that it incorporates monsters and gore, but the first two PC games were more about stright-up action than trying to frighten you. Doom 64 has this all backwards. The PC games have interesting, colourful visuals, while Doom 64 is awash in browns and grays.

I do appreciate that the team tried to make the graphics more detailed (which they are!), but they killed a lot of the character in the sprites by removing most of their colours.

The sound design has also gone entirely to pot. Doom’s characteristic heavy metal MIDIs have been replaced with subdues, spooky ambiance tracks. This is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. More importantly though, the monsters barely make any sounds unless they’re attacking you. Being able to hear monsters lurking about was a very important part of Doom; you would usually know when a monster was lurking about by the hisses and growls echoing through the halls. Now, pretty much every encounter is a surprise, and monsters will be able to sneak up behind you with no problem at all.

So after having painfully made my way through one and a half stages, I quit, took a week-long breather, and started up again on the next rung down the difficulty ladder, “Bring It On!”

Let me also take an aside here to mention that Doom 64 does not save your game. It uses passwords, which is kinda bonkers. The nice thing is that the passwords save your state (health, armor, guns/ammo) as well as which level you’re on, which is nice. If they only saved your level, it would be a massive pain in the hiney to tackle later levels with only a pistol. No saving is still a big pain though, as mid-stage saves saved me a lot of time when going through the original game. Having to restart a level from the beginning after each death is a little disheartening. I hate sounding like a spoiled brat, but that’s what I am.

Not everything about Doom 64 is bad, though. I really like a lot of the level designs, they feel a lot bigger and more ambitious than in the older games. I suppose that stands to reason though. It’s not like a lot of games get smaller and humbler with each sequel. It’s really just too bad that the designers didn’t seem to have many good ideas for traps. It seems like they decided early on that having enemies appear out of thin air behind you was going to be their bread and butter. Still, the actual architecture of the stages is usually impressive, and I enjoyed navigating and solving them.

Doom 64 features the usual Doom weaponry, including Doom II’s super (double-barreled) shotgun and the totally sweet double chainsaw. It also has a new weapon that’s unique to only this game: the Unmaker. It’s an alien-tech laser gun, which doesn’t seem all that impressive at first. However, if you take the trouble to find the secret stages, each one contains a collectible artifact that adds to the Unmaker’s power. The first one speeds up its fire rate, and the second and third give it double and triple beams respectively. Even if you only find the one artifact, the sped-up Unmaker is a pretty awesome gun, burning through even Barons of Hell like a hot knife through butter. It’s pretty great.

The monsters in Doom 64 may at fist appear to be new, but really, they’re mostly your old favourites with fancy makeovers. Some are pretty familiar, like the standard zombies and the pinkies, but you probably won’t recognize Doom 64’s imp as an imp until you’re already choking down fireballs. Cacodemons and pain elementals have likewise gotten new sprites that barely resemble their older incarnations. The one new monster is barely new at all. Nightmare imps are just translucent blue imps, with purple fireballs that fly quite a bit faster than the standard imp’s. Doom 64 does have a unique final boss, the Mother Demon. She’s ugly and can tear you apart in record time (that also works the other way around with a powered-up Unmaker), but she looks pretty dumb. Kinda like a big, fleshy bug, if you ask me.

In the end, Doom 64 is caught in a weird place. On one hand, I really like a lot of the levels. On the other hand, pretty much everything else is different in a bad way. It’s reminiscent of Doom, but it doesn’t really feel like Doom, if that makes any sense at all. There really isn’t any reason to play Doom 64. Regardless of whether you’re looking to play a Doom game or an N64 shooter, there are a handful of better choices out there. Even if you’re intent on playing through the entire Doom canon, you might be better off trying one of the fan-made PC ports. Poor Doom 64 just isn’t quite the game it should be.

When a stone’s not a stone

WARNING: The following post concerns icky body stuff. Maybe skip it if you can’t handle that kind of stuff.

Sometimes weird stuff happens in our bodies. Actually, weird stuff happens in our bodies all the time, but plenty of it goes completely unnoticed. One of the weird things that is totally noticeable is the mysterious tonsillolith.

Colloquially known as tonsil stones, tonsilloliths are gooey little bits that pop into your mouth from time to time (in fact, I referred to them as “bits” before I actually looked them up). I never thought much about them until recently, when I watched an episode of Game Grumps where Arin hacked one up and Danny freaked right out at it, having never seen one before.

Maybe you’ve never seen one before either. If you haven’t, you’re either really lucky, or you’ve had your tonsils removed. See, a tonsil stone is a buildup of calcium and bacteria and other bits of stuff that collects in your tonsil cavities. They’re white/yellow chunks, and are generally pretty tiny. Despite being called stones, tonsilloliths are actually very soft and sticky. On occasion, they’ll fall out, possibly because of a cough or other throat-rattling activity. They’re fairly common, although since many people have tonsillectomies, they’re not quite common knowledge.

I used to have tiny little ones show up in my mouth all the time. Despite being known for having an awful smell, I never smelled or tasted anything when they showed up. Mostly I’d just spit ’em out and think nothing of it. And then they stopped. I didn’t even notice that I wasn’t getting them anymore until one day when I just randomly thought about it. don’t know what spurred the thought in my mind, but I shrugged, realized that I hadn’t seen one in what felt like years, and moved on with my life. I hadn’t made any major changes in my diet or lifestyle, so I have no idea why they went away.

Over the last few months, I’ve been getting them again. Just like when they stopped, I haven’t made any changes in my life, so I have no idea what brought them back. But now, they’re back with a vengeance, being bigger than ever before, clinging just on the edge of my tonsil cavities for hours before falling out, and carrying a noticeable (though faint) odor. Someone suggested that my mouth is dirty and gross, but my oral hygeine regiment is more thorough than ever, so I know that’s not the case. Unless my Listerine is actually causing them, as they started showing up again around the time I started using mouthwash daily.

Like I said, they’re really lingering just inside my tonsils now, and they’re quite annoying to feel sticking around back there. I’ve taken to poking stuff in there to scoop them out, and I’m actually starting to get really good at it, so much so that I’m able to pry open the tonsil cavity and fish out the deeper ones. All this poking around in the back of my throat has also dulled my gag reflex, which is kinda neat, but ultimately useless because I only like girls.

So what’s the point of this story? Nothing, really. Partly to educate (a lot of people don’t know tonsil stones exist), and partly just to keep a short log of my battles against tonsilloliths. I have an upcoming physical, so I’m going to ask my doctor if there’s a way to prevent the little buggers, but the internet hasn’t offered much on that front, so I’m fully prepared for the possibility of having to live with them forever. It’s a very minor inconvenience, but one I’d like to nip in the bud if I can.

Can you dig it?

The new Smash Bros and Captain Toad game are still a ways off, but my knee-jerk reaction here is that Shovel Knight is going to be my 2014 Game of the Year. The fates have conspired to keep me from spending too much time with it over the past two days, but after playing the first three levels, I’m pretty sure that I’m in love. This is exactly what a retro-styled game should be.

If you own a current Nintendo system or a PC, this is required playing. It will figure quite heavily onto your final exam.