Mega Man – Page 11

Droppin’ addendums

I have a couple things to add to previous posts from this week, and no better time to do it because I don’t really have anything else to say today.

Firstly, and most importantly, you can quick turn in MegaMan Legends! While not as intuitive as the quick turn in Resident Evil games (pressing down+run), it offers more fexibility by letting you quick turn in any direction! I say less intuitive because in RE games you’re always pressing the run button anyway, but the circle button in MML is for talking to people and opening doors/chests. Now that I think about it though, MML doesn’t have a run button and the next most logical choice is the context sensitive button. So forget everything I typed here except for the “I was wrong there is quick turn” bit.

I don’t know which one it is, but I’m sure somewhere there’s a game where the quick turn is pressing both shoulder buttons? Maybe I dreamed it?

Secondly, I tallied up the amounts of songs that I like in Rock Band 2 and LEGO Rock Band. Just because I didn’t feel comfortable rounding up the amount of crappy songs in LRB to “about half.” And what I came up with is that I like 19 of the 45 songs, which means that in reality, 58% percent of the songs in LEGO Rock Band are crappy. Not really enough of a difference to justify the time it took to do the math. Whatever.

I did the same count for Rock Band 2, and amazingly I like 63% of the songs on that disc. Which is surprising to me, because when I think about RB2’s setlist, I can only think of the boring-ass garbage on it like “Float On,” “PDA” and “Feel the Pain”. So I guess if you’ve heard me dissing on RB2’s setlist, just disregard it because I apparently like it quite a bit more than I thought.

P.S. I like roughly 30% of the tracks in Band Hero. And that’s being generous.

Holder of Legends

My family was down in the States last week, and I’d given them a short list of things to pick up for me while they were down there. It was mostly Peanut Butter Crunch and Mountain Dew Throwback, but at the very end, I snuck a note on there asking them to check out the used game shops for either MegaMan Legends game. I wasn’t expecting much, because I’ve been prowling the local shops for years now. Lo and behold, the ol’ family came through for me.

So now I’m the proud owner of a legitimate copy of MegaMan Legends. It doesn’t have the proper jewel case, but I can fake that if it ever starts to bother me. It’s been a few years since I played it in earnest, so I’d forgotten just how strange the control scheme is. I was a little worried about how MegaMan Legends 3 would control on the 3DS, but my fears have been assuaged now that I know they certainly couldn’t have gotten any less functional. It’s all moot though, because that game was cancelled.

I think the most jarring thing to me is that there is no quick-turn button/button combination. I don’t think it was introduced into the Resident Evil series until the GameCube remake, but I have lingering memories of there being such a technique in MML. Maybe I’m thinking about the sequel? Maybe there is a quick turn and I don’t know how because I don’t have the manual? It would be really handy though. S’all I’m sayin’.

On the other hand, I’ve been doing pretty well for myself so far. Near the beginning of the game, there’s a huge robot boss whose weaponry can destroy the surrounding buildings. One of the sub-quests later in the game is to grind up the money to donate towards rebuilding the city. Usually the costs are pretty high, but I managed to end up losing only two of the smaller buildings on this run, which is significantly better than I remember doing on any previous playthroughs. So, I guess I’m getting the hang of the funky controls again.

There’s a second phase in the Northern section of the city that works the same way. Only this time there are a handful of smaller robots which are far more interested in demolition than self-preservation, and three of which fly around and spawn new robots. Also the buildings are spread out a bit more, forcing you to run back and forth across the map in a vain attempt to save what you can. Needless to say, that part never works out too well for me.

It’s a great joy to drop back into the MegaMan Legends world though. Kattleox Island is such a vibrant place, with little flourishes all over the place to keep explorers happy. Maybe they’re as simple as a poster with a pig and chicks on it that says “Don’t kick us!” (which ties into Legends 2), or as unexpected as a lone Servbot hanging out on a roof. And the characters! The voice acting doesn’t exactly shine, but it certainly has the same memorable quality as the original Resident Evil does, just without most of the cheesiness. At worst, Capcom had programmers/translators who wanted to do voice acting do it this time around.

In the end, I think it’s mostly the fact that I can appreciate this game for what it was in its time. Mechanically, it doesn’t hold up as well as I’d like to say, but it certainly makes up for that lack with a compelling game and story underneath those outdated levers and pulleys. I still love the game, and I’m relishing the chance to really get into it again.

Gimme the honky tonk blues

MegaMan Legends 3 was cancelled yesterday. This is absolutely heart-wrenching news for me for a lot of reasons. Obviously, because I’m a MegaMan fanboy (though I’ve been somewhat less vocal about that recently), but also because that’s the 3DS game I was waiting for. I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s the reason I bought my 3DS, but it would likely have been reason #2 if I had an enumerated list of reasons why I bought the machine.

It’s also sad because the Legends series is far and away my favourite incarnation of MegaMan. The platformers are great and all, but not one classic MegaMan game had the charm and personality that Legends exuded. MegaMan Powered Up! certainly tried, but even with its cutesy style, it still lacked the pure soul that makes Legends so unique.

While the graphics in the Legends games are blocky, they still look damn spiffy for PS1 games. Hell, these games are partly defined by their colourful palettes and Miyazaki-esque art direction. There wasn’t exactly a great wealth of PS1 games that made such good use of so few polygons. Not to mention that the characters’ faces were all fully animated in cutscenes. It’s not so impressive today, but was definitely a Big Deal in 1997. The only other game I can think of that had complex facial animations (defined here as more than a hinged jaw) in that generation was Turok 3, and that was in 2000. I’m sure there were more, but those are the only two that spring to mind.

Moreso than the graphical prowess though, the characters and worlds really popped and brought the games to life. Every major character in MegaMan Legends (the first) is lovable. I could go on to describe all that in great detail here, but why do so when there is a perfectly good article already written about the same subject?

Point is, Capcom may have figured it was a lost cause because all that matters is profit, but I think it would have been a fantastic game. The people working on it were committed to the project, and there was a fairly huge community surrounding and supporting it. It likely wouldn’t have been a million-seller, but maybe it would have been the 3DS game to own. Now we’ll never know. And we’ll never have closure to that cliffhanger ending in MegaMan Legends 2. Goddammit.

We’ve got a line in the sky

The past 24 hours have both strained and bolstered my love for Nintendo. Not equally, but we’ll get there. For now, let’s just focus on the worst of it, and then end on a positive note.

Yesterday we were promised a system update for the 3DS that enabled, among other things, the eShop. This is a feature that should have been included at the release of the hardware, but I can understand that they wanted to make sure it was as good as it could be, and delays are always better than half-assed product. But then the update was pushed back and back again up to yesterday. And then I got a message saying it would be available in the evening. I waited all damn day, and when did the update go live? 11:40. PM. If not for the fact that I love my system update, I might still be a little bitter about that one.

The eShop, however, is the glorious ship upon which all my hopes and dreams ride. See, ever since before the original Wii (more on that later) launched, I’ve been dreaming of a time where classic GameBoy games would be provided via some sort of download service. And now they are! Yeah, maybe the only ones worth a look are Link’s Awakening DX (still my favourite Zelda ever) and Super Mario Land (debatable), but some day Pokémons in all colours of the rainbow will be available, and maybe more importantly, the Wario Land series. And Donkey Kong ’94! Oh, and the Kirby’s Dream Land and Final Fantasy Legend series! And Metal Gear Solid! …I could go on like this all day. For now I’ll just revel in my favouritest Zelda and the fact that I actually really like Super Mario Land.

And now, about today’s overload of Nintendo goodness. Where to even start? To put it simply, I think the 3DS is about to really come into its own. The first-party lineup alone is more than I need, nevermind the love Capcom’s showing: two Resident Evils and the all-important MegaMan Legends 3. But that Wii U? I am ever so excited about it! With the first Wii, I admit, I was just as skeptical as everyone else, but I have no doubts that Wii U will deliver on every count. USB hard drive compatibility? Check. Awesome new tablet controller? Check. Some decent horsepower? Check. Console that’s an adorable cross of Wii and 360? Check and double check.

Let’s just get one thing straight; I think that the name Wii U is so, so terrible. That is not the name of a game console, that’s the sound a fire truck makes!

But on the plus side, we’re going to have a plethora of great games to play! Think about it this way: Four Swords could get a real revival! And not like I’ll play any of them (Arkham City being the only possible exception), but there are a buttload of “core” games headed to Wii U too, which nearly knocked me off my seat. Anyway, I should go and actually watch that press conference now. Following like five live blogs of it was all well and good, but I’d like to see some of this stuff in action.

Now I’m fine

Huh, it turns out that I almost get more hits when I don’t post. Take a look at this graph of site traffic over the last four months.

Crazy stuff, there. Anyway, back to the task at hand. Remember last June, when I posted links to a handful of my favourite articles on the site? No? Refresh your memory then. I had planned on making a second list of favorites, but it never really panned out. Like most of the things I try to do. But here I am, almost a year later, come to finally post the rest of my choices. Of course, I’d long since lost the list I had selected, but I think these ones are particularly memorable, even if I’m the only one who does.

Cap’n Crunch’s Choco Donuts – Present me loves the Cap’n cereals more than anything, but for some reason back in the day I guess I was inferring that he was a pedophile? Regardless, this was the first article that a lot of my friends complimented me on, so it sticks out pretty prominently in my memory.

Top 12 Reasons MegaMan Rules – My goodness, was I really this bad? I realize now that basically every word I typed here makes me look like a retarded fanboy now, but I suppose at that point I was. Oh well. I remember working really hard on this one, especially on the (now obviously) shitty, shitty banners.

The Squirrel Game – Board game fan fiction. For most people that’s enough reason to leave the site entirely, but I refute that that’s exactly why you should read this article. If only to get a good grasp on why I spend most of my writing time blogging and reviewing as opposed to creative fiction.

The Cup – It’s not about bras, or their contents, sadly. It is about a drinking cup, which is adorable. And speaking of adorable, look at 18-year-old me! He’s pretty hot! And young. Oh, how I wish I could be so young and carefree again…

Hachiemon – I really don’t know how to explain this one. There’s a huge language and cultural gap separating me and the understanding of this game. But I like the article! It kind of makes me want to go back and actually play Hachiemon. At least for a couple levels.

I Hate Socks – Sho ’nuff.

The Ramen Fiasco – It’s hardly a fiasco, but I have a soft spot for any articles I’d written about food. This one is short, but I think it chronicles my cooking prowess pretty well. On an interesting side note, said cooking skills have not developed at all in the 5 years since I wrote this!

Parallel Lines : Guitar Hero + MegaMan Battle Network

Quite often in the world of television games, there are set standards that will always ring true. Licensed games (based on movies, TV shows, toy lines, etc) will almost always be unplayably bad. Japanese RPGs will require hours and hours of level grinding. Madden 20XX will sell like hotcakes. Japanese and western developers will have exactly the opposite ideas of how games should be. And that last one is the important one here, because recently I’ve noticed that two completely different game series have evolved in almost the exact same pattern, and not only is one American-born and the other of Japanese heritage, but they’re of nearly opposite genres as well and come almost exclusively on different platforms.

Our first series is the “illustrious” MegaMan Battle Network. A stiflingly brilliant mash up of action and RPG, the Battle Network series was the first standout RPG series on the GameBoy Advance. It reinvented MegaMan and his world, and even cut him down to co-star, forced to share the spotlight with a rather vanilla human hero. Then we have Guitar Hero, which blew up the music game genre, and made the world embrace the art of playing a pretend guitar. Both series have come a long way, and coincidentally have shared many of the same steps along their separate paths.

MegaMan Battle Network took the idea of making MegaMan into a portable-friendly RPG, and then twisted it to make it feel like the action games that the plucky blue robot was known for. The world was re-imagined as a place where anything and everything was connected to the internet and the titular hero was but a program that answered to the back and call of the other main character, Lan Hikari. While Lan would run about around the world talking to ridiculous caricatures and completing tedious fetch quests, MegaMan’s portions were puzzle solving and virus busting. The gameplay made great use of MegaMan’s penchant for acquiring a wide array of secondary weapons, which were represented by battle chips that you could carry 20 of with you at any time. These were weapons that came in a nearly infinite variety, from shotguns to gigantic wooden spikes to flamethrowers to time bombs. They made the Mega Buster look absolutely useless in comparison, and gave the game a great deal of depth. You could battle in as many ways as you could come up with. Maybe you only wanted to use sword weapons. Maybe you’d rely mostly on using Navi chips, which summoned powerful allies to deal huge damage. Maybe you’d build a chip deck that took advantage of a special element. It was absolutely the most original MegaMan game made in years, despite the fact that there were a lot of recycled ideas from the MegaMan “continuity.”

Guitar Hero, on the other hand, was one of the PS2’s last breakout hits, and more than likely it’s best selling specialty controller game. The music genre was more or less just DDR in North America at that point, with very few music games escaping Japan, and even fewer that you’d actually hear about. But Guitar Hero was a game tailor-made for American gamers and music lovers. It took our most beloved instrument, turned it into a plastic toy, and made it so much more accessible than the real deal. The game featured 30 songs that ranged from legendary rockers to upstart Gen-Y groups, and then 17 more by bands that you’d never heard of. They were all covers, and 30 doesn’t really seem like a lot these days (the latest ones are pushing 100 on-disc tracks), but God damn the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll was alive here. You had songs by Queen, Boston, Judas Priest, Megadeth, Jimi Hendrix and the Ramones. It was challenging to learn too, but ultimately extremely satisfying to finally pull off incredible feats like a five-star performance on “Cowboys From Hell.” Guitar Hero was definitely a sleeper hit, as finding a copy of the game and guitar set within the first few months of the game’s release was like trying to find a Sasquatch; maybe you thought you saw one once, but really it was just a display box set there to fake you out.

Both games were exceptional, standout titles that represented their respective genres wonderfully. Battle Network gave people something truly entertaining to play on their GBAs besides the Mario Bros. pack-in that came with Super Mario Advance. Guitar Hero showed people that playing games for the fun of rocking out and getting high scores was just as (if not way more) fun as mindlessly running people over all day in GTA: Whatever City. And both games had their faults too. MMBN was a Japanese RPG, meaning that it would be chock full of tedious running around, and its plot was sufficiently goofy. Worming your way around the it-all-looks-the-same internet was annoying and most of the puzzles were either stupid or totally opaque. Guitar Hero couldn’t be played on a HDTV because it features no lag calibration, and even that tiny bit of lag can totally ruin the flow of a game built around the precision of the player’s input. Said input was a little unrefined too, with hammer-ons and pull-offs (HOPOs) being very difficult to execute reliably, and a rather lackluster multiplayer option. Also, Franz Ferdinand. Blech.

Capcom (who develop the MegaMan games, for those out of the loop) has a well known tradition of always making the second game in each series the absolute pinnacle. This was no different with MegaMan Battle Network 2. It was essentially the same game, but beefed up to be so much more awesome. New character customization options, nearly twice as many battle chips, a slightly less stupid plot, and even cooler boss enemies. Little did I know that Guitar Hero 2 would follow this exact same trend; bigger (and somehow even better) setlist, more unlockables, improved HOPOs, and a practice mode. Both games even got a multiplayer upgrade; GH2 now lets players play the entire song in face-off and includes a co-operative mode, while MMBN2 got a two-player net battle mode added onto the original’s somewhat pitiful trading-only multiplayer option. It should be known that the second installment in both series remains my favourite.

The third Battle Network game was equally as good as the second, much like in the original MegaMan series, but something was off. There were more chips and bosses and post-game content than ever, but the magic was starting to fade. It was starting to get the feeling of the same thing over and over again. It felt like Capcom was just going through the motions. And maybe there was even too much. The Navi customizer easily gave you the ability to tweak your playing style even more, but it also introduced a whole new set of baubles to roam around searching for. It even pushed the multiplayer envelope even farther by releasing two slightly different versions of the game, each with a few exclusive elements that made you get together with a friend to trade for.

Guitar Hero 3 upped the multiplayer ante too, but in a much more legitimate way, by including the option of online play. It was easily the best feature of the game, as the series had shifted developers, and its new handlers, Neversoft (the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater guys) tried way too hard to take Guitar Hero and make it more extreme. They put in cutscenes and changed the HUD and spoiled the selection of unlockable tracks and gave Judy Nails a very unmistakable boob job. Also they cut Pandora, my favourite character. The main set list was still of a fairly solid selection, but the rest of the package was getting to be too much. The obnoxious and loud presentation wasn’t anywhere near as lovable as the notebook-and-doodles aesthetic of the previous entries in the series. Neversoft was taking Guitar Hero way too seriously, and while the core experience -playing great rock tunes with a plastic guitar- was as good as ever, it was starting to smell of the same been-there-done-that odor that had settled upon Battle Network 3. And it was way too hard, to boot. “Raining Blood” makes this game sooooo much less fun.

In both cases, where the fourth game in the series is concerned, the less said, the better. At this point in both series lifespans, the developers had openly admitted to wanting to milk their respective series for as much cash as they could while the games were at the peaks of their popularity. Battle Network 4 was a disaster. Not only was the main plot device a lame battle tournament, but you had to complete the asinine story three times to get everything. Each time you would play on the next difficulty, and unlock a new rank of chips and gear each time. It was awful, and I don’t believe I cared enough to make it through my second run, even though I’d stuck with both BN2 and 3 all the way to 100% completions. You don’t even get to see all the boss enemies until you’ve played through all three time. But that’s not so awful as it could be, because the bosses were starting to seem less like souped-up versions of classic MegaMan enemies, and more like big goofballs. The only nice thing I have to say is that at least here they gave the two versions very distinct differences, with a completely different set of bosses and transformations for MegaMan. It would have made playing both versions worthwhile if the game hadn’t been completely broken. And speaking of broken, I’m not even going to get into that whole Dark Chip mess.

Guitar Hero: World Tour was also a horrible abortion of a game, and hopefully remain the black sheep of the family forever. I dread the idea of a worse Guitar Hero game. Oh, no wait, that was Band Hero. But that’s not the point. World Tour was Neversoft’s attempt at competing with the stellar Rock Band. Adding vocals and drums wouldn’t have been so bad, but that was the point where the directors said that people weren’t crazy enough about Guitar Hero and figured they should branch out with the kinds of music they’d put in the game. What resulted was a overall tepid and unexciting set list that left me wishing I hadn’t wasted $60 bucks on it. Seriously, there are like six good songs in the game. And I know the selection was less than perfect in GH3, but cutting out the unlockable songs altogether? Criminals! Unlocking those tracks (as arbitrary a content block as it might have been) was always special, and that feeling was completely void in this game. The upside is that I kind of like the slider parts, as it makes sequences that I’m nowhere near good enough to play possible. And what’s the deal with making me play a whole set at a time? I never liked that part of Rock Band and I surely don’t like it here. I like to have the option, but I don’t want it forced on me.

Both Battle Network 5 and Guitar Hero 5 seemed to bring redemption to their respective franchises, at least that’s what all the pre-release media led us to believe. To say they restored their families’ good names would be a bit much, but they were certainly a step back in the right direction. Guitar Hero 5 accomplished this mainly by making a much better set list. Not only does it contain “Under Pressure” (goes up a whole letter grade for that alone), but it has two Tom Petty songs and Megadeth is back! Plus Rush! How could I be mad at a game that includes Rush? The ability to play with any combination of instruments is a monumental improvement too. The guy who gets stuck on drums is always disappointed, and eight times out of ten, people will choose not to play over having to sing, so allowing everyone to play guitar together makes the game so much more party-friendly. Speaking of which, there’s all those party modes in there too, but as someone who mostly plays solo, I really haven’t tried any of them, and I doubt they would enhance my multiplayer experience (I prefer to play co-op). And switching up the gameplay by using challenges to unlock extra content is nice, but it also kind of sucks for those of us that don’t own a drum kit and are exempt from certain challenges. It’s still saddled with some truly awful tunes (Coldplay again? Fuck guys, learn! Coldplay sucks!), and it doesn’t quite have that true Guitar Hero feel yet, but I’m much less ashamed to own this than World Tour.

Battle Network 5 on the other hand, changes things up by *SHOCK!* changing the gameplay itself. 80% of the game is still traditional Battle Network fare, alternating between running around as Lan and blasting viruses as MegaMan, but then there’s a new twist. Not only can MegaMan assume the style and powers of his ally NetNavis, but you can actually play as them in certain parts of the game! Also, there’s a cool new strategy-style game mode that shakes things up a bit. It’s a little jarring to have something so different in a game franchise that prides itself on being the same thing over and over again with minimal changes, but it’s actually a pretty sweet sub-game. It actually requires quite a bit of planning and strategy, and the later instances can get incredibly hard, though it never feels like an unfair fight. They also dropped the lame “play it three times!” schtick, which in itself is a major improvement. The overarching plot is actually kind of good too, even if it has the usual MegaMan stupidness and plot holes mixed in. The ally characters aren’t really the coolest ones they could have chosen, but it’s nice to see some fresh faces in Mega’s place. And this one takes the version split even farther, developing two parallel but very different stories.

Battle Network 6 scaled itself back down a bit in terms of ambition and diversity, but it was the closest the series has come to trumping BN2. The version split isn’t quite as huge as in the last two games, but each still contains a unique set of ally characters. And MegaMan’s transformation powers have been tweaked to be so much greater than ever, giving him his allies’ forms without time limits, a super-powerful standard Beast transformation, and nearly unstoppable Beast versions of each of the other forms. While BN6 drops the strategy sub-game, it allows you to play as the ally characters much more freely and all but removes the horrible, game-breaking Dark Chips. The story ends here, officially putting the series to bed, and I honestly was happy that it ended on such a good note. Had Battle Network 4 been the last one, it would have left a bad taste in my mouth that might have fouled my love for the older games in the series. But things got much better from there on in, and while 4 is best avoided and 5 is skippable, Battle Network 6 is definitely a chapter in the series that fans will enjoy. I know I was very pleased that I enjoyed the game to stick with it long enough to almost hit %100 completion again. I let a few of the higher-class chips go, but I essentially saw all that the game had to offer, and that’s way more than I got from 4 and 5.

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock is still about a month away from release, but eveyrthing that has been said about it to this point shows that Neversoft is finally going back to what made Guitar Hero so great in the first place. The track list is looking to be about 90% metal and rock ‘n’ roll, with the other 10% made up of punk and alternative music. This is great. They finally understand that we play Guitar Hero because we love guitar songs, not just to play popular music. Rush is basically the face band for the game, and if I was ecstatic that GH5 had one Rush song in it, imagine how I felt when Neversoft announced that the entire “2112” suite will be in Warriors of Rock. The fact that Dave Mustaine and Gene Simmons are both involved in the game also boosts its rock credibility quite a bit. Say what you want about how refined Rock Band is getting, but it most certainly lacks the star power that Guitar Hero boasts. I like that the “quest mode” is focused on completing challenges again, but I hope this time they level the playing field for the rest of us and allow all content to be unlocked by one person on guitar. I don’t want to be exempt from parts of my game because I don’t know three other people who play at Expert level. Still, it looks like it’s going to be a fantastic game, and I have a good feeling that it’s going to bring back that love I felt for the Guitar Hero franchise way back in GH2.

While the MegaMan Battle Network series is technically dead (the MegaMan Star Force games were flashy sequels masquerading as a new series), Guitar Hero lives on, but is going to be developed by a new team after Warriors of Rock, so who knows what’s in store for it. But if you look at the parallels between the two, we can see that the next Guitar Hero will parade around under a flimsy mask pretending it’s a new series, when it’s really just a sequel with fancier graphics and less interesting gameplay. After that it will spawn two sequels and then Activision will finally realize than nobody really cares about it anymore and then remake the first game with some extra content culled from the “new series” but nobody will care because they’re content to play GH2 and Warriors of Rock until the end of time. It’s a bold prediction, but look at the signs, man!

Cleaning the Closet – A Blarticle

The other day I had some free time, and I started going through all my video games and picking out ones I no longer liked or was sure that I’d never play again. Honestly, it was very hard. I’m a pack rat by nature, and it’s incredibly hard to look at a game and admit to myself that I’ll never actually play it again. God knows that most of the ones I kept will only continue to collect dust until my girlfriend (or possibly even my mom, she would love to clean my room) gets rid of them, but I ended up with some incredibly large piles. 32 games ended up on the chopping block, and when I mentioned it to my mother, she recommended I hit my Nintendo Power collection next.

While I’ve stopped getting them over the last couple years, I had subscribed to Nintendo Power magazine for at least ten years, and had a nice collection of really old ones from my uncle. They were eating up a sizeable portion of my closet, and I decided it was time to free up that space. Issues 92 (Shadows of the Empire, and coincidentally, the number of this article) through 198 were lined up neatly on a shelf and were an easy purge. It was just a matter of grabbing a handful and tossing them in the recycling bin. Everything I owned that came before #92 was a little more complicated. These issues were left in a milk crate in the corner of my closet, and due to their poor location, were mostly torn and ripped far past the point of me feeling they were worth keeping. A small stack of these ones is pictured below.

Getting rid of all these magazines was a terribly nostalgic ordeal. The shelf issues were in such pristine condition that I could barely bear to part with them, and looking at just the covers was like a trip backwards through my entire life. In retrospect, it’s perhaps a little distressing that I could take any point in my life and define it with an issue of Nintendo Power. Every time I grabbed a new stack, my heartstrings tugged a little harder as I remembered all those games and all the good times I had. I have at least one story (short and trivial though some may be) to go with every issue, but that’s not why I’m writing today.

What’s truly interesting was the crate pile. Or moreover, what was mixed into the crate pile. Among the torn, raggedy, old relic magazines was all sorts of neat junk that inspired just as much (if not more in some instances) nostalgia as the Nintendo Powers themselves. Old drawings, writing, other kinds of literature, and even a bunch of exclusive promotional junk that came into my possession through my subscription to Nintendo Power. This may be a terribly boring article to most, not unlike my tribute to the cottage (which is yet to receive its due second part), but to me it’s a wellspring of memories and cuddly feelings of simpler days gone by. This is my tribute to what basically amounts to a pile of junk.

The first (excluding the small forest’s worth of magazines) thing I noticed was this wonderful little booklet of looseleaf. It’s entitles “The Guinness Book of Freaks” and is essentially a time capsule of how broken my sense of humour was nearing the end of grade seven. Things were so hard back then, I still had no idea who I was as a person, I was trying so hard to fit in with anybody, and my usual material (stick men being killed in decreasingly creative ways) was starting to dry out. So I guess it was time to parody a record book? Isn’t that the logical next step? I don’t know.

Looking back at this “book” of about 3 pages, I start to wonder exactly what went through my head back in those days. I mean, yes, gross and weird. I get it, just like most young boys. But this book is really bad. And I don’t mean disturbing or anything like that, but rather that it just shows a complete lack of imagination or originality. The best entries held within include “World’s Fattest Man” and “World’s Hairiest Woman”. I’m fairly confident that at that age I still had an imagination, so I have no idea what happened to it here. Guess it was just a stinker. Those happened every once in a while. It’s not even finished, with more than half the book’s pages completely untouched.

And no, I’m not scanning any of the pages. The mere description should be more than enough. It’s just really bad material, though fairly interesting in that it’s not often that I find something I did almost a decade ago and don’t look at it with even a bit of nostalgic fondness. This just sucks. F minus minus.

Now this bunch of old drawings, I was very happy to find. It’s not nearly as old as the Book of Freaks, but it’s at least a billionty times better. Most of this pile is comprised of the original pencil drawings for Coozy For Hire comics. A good portion of them come from the time before the tablet, some even from before I started colouring them in! We’ve only been running CFH for three and a half years, but already I look at these like they’re some kind of long-lost relics.

Even better than old rough comics, is that there’s a veritable wealth of unused material stashed away in here! And it comes in all kinds: unused comic ideas (albeit they were never used because they’re terrible), hordes of doodles, character galleries, etc etc etc. Granted, most of it will never see the light of day as anything more than filler, but I love that it’s there to be filler. The well was runnin’ dry, you see, and now I’m good to shirk off my comicing duties for ages to come! (But not really.)

Also hidden inside this slimy little pile is a script for a short play (possibly short enough to be referred to as a “skit”) that I co-wrote for grade 10 drama class. Yeah. If you hadn’t heard, I took drama class in grade 10. It was cool. Anyway, it’s a story about… well, I won’t say too much about it, because I may turn it into a feature-length comic one day (as inapproprite for that medium as the story is), but I like it. It was fun to write my character, and actually doing the play was a gas too. Second best play I’ve ever been in, hands down. The best one only wins out because I got to drop my pants in it.

Hmmm. Seems I owe junior high a shitty holocaust book.

Grade eight, I believe. English class, we were doing the inevitable yearly holocaust/WW2 unit (seriously, do they have to teach it every goddamn year from 6-12? I got the friggin’ point after two years; Hitler bad, Vandals good.) It’s a terribly generic story about a girl who gets magically transported from her passover supper or whatever to a concentration camp and then has to survive to get back. I don’t remember the details, but I don’t care. I’ll probably burn this book for being a smack in the face to all the people who had to suffer through that horror.

Ah, this one is great. Sort of. It’s great for what it represents, not so much the finished product. Of course I use the word “finished” very lightly, as what is contained in the notebook pictured above is an unpublished article. I find it amazing that at one point in time I actually loved writing for this website so much that I would take a notebook places and work on articles in my away-from-the-computer spare time. Of course, this is the only one I ever actually completed writing, but it’s not the only one I ever worked on.

And what is the lost article about? Well, actually, it’s about porn. Yeah. One of two articles about adult-related media that never got published because I didn’t really want to smut up the site like that. This one was actually about my dissatisfaction with pornography on the whole, though it focused more on film than anything else. It’s not worth typing out and putting up, because it’s short and crappy (er, crappier than my usual crap anyway), and I really don’t like it. I guess I probably didn’t like it by the time I got around to typing it up, because it never came to fruition.

The other porn-related article I was going to write was about a game called 3D Striptease that, after a little searching, no longer exists outside a demo. The article then, obviously, was a review of that demo, as the full game was still in development at the time and I wasn’t going to pay money for something so garbage anyway. It was opposite the article in the book, however, as I had all the pictures and article structure ready, I just needed to sit down and write the thing. The game was supposed to be released in summer 2004, so I’m assuming the article in the notebook is at least as old if not older. Maybe someday I’ll dig up the demo and then write about the greatest stripper FPS that never was.

This notebook is only marginally more interesting. The first page is a continuation of the Spare! comics I wrote throughout high school. Only high school was over so I had no more material, since Spare! was based on actual events. I actually coloured and posted the first strip on this page on the blog many years back. It’s much better than the other two, which at best serve to set up the “I’m not in high school anymore so no more reality-based comics” premise of what I assume would have been called “New Spare!”.

I never made another attempt at new Spare! comics in either high school or after high school format. The only other use this book has served over time is as a stand-in for our old printer that never worked. In it, I copied down every single alchemy recipe for Dragon Quest VIII. I was pretty into that game, and of course I would have to complete the alchemy book. I’m obsessive-compulsive like that. Ironically, I never beat the game proper, as the last boss is too Goddamn hard and I totally fucked myself by putting skill points in all weapon types for my characters, rather than focusing on one or two.

There’s also a map to every hidden Sorcerer’s Scanner item in Tales of Legendia, which I did collect all of in the end, but really, Legendia wasn’t that good. And that’s coming from a pretty loyal Tales fan. Maybe I just need to play it again? I dunno. I’d rather just play Tales of Vesperia a fourth time.

Here’s a pile of Nintendo Power-related goodies, the one which I’m most excited about being the Nintendo Power Club challenge cards. See, back when NP was awesome and I read every single page (even about games I’d never care about in a million years), they put in little punch-out cars in the back of the mag that you could collect. I had tons of them, and I thought they’d been lost to the ether many, many years ago. But alas! It seems that there were a couple issues from which I did not remove the cards, and forsooth, I have a small number of them in my possession. Kinda shitty when you have a collectible that you can no longer collect though.

There’s more to these cards though! While they may seem like cheap eye candy or collector fodder at best, the back sides also have a couple challenges for each game. The MegaMan X card, for example, challenges you to beat certain stages using only the X-Buster. This is a joke because today I can finish the entire game with only the X-Buster, while asleep! But they were hard back in the day! They also give a short summary of the games’ plots, and some practical data, such as genre, number of players, and the date the game was released. You may also notice that the cards are color-coded; purple cards are Game Boy games, red are NES games, and green are Super NES – the same color-coding Nintendo Power used for page themes.

There are a couple Nintendo Power Supplies catalogues in here, but I definitely want to review those separately, and the big “confidential information” file folder look-alike is a promotional brochure for Goldeneye 007. I haven’t leafed through it very thoroughly, but I’m thinking it’s also worthy of its own article, so I’ll let it sit and collect dust for a few more years before I get around to it. Plus, it’ll be way more retro by then. Hopefully retro will still be cool.

I’ve always loved super heroes and comics. Every Saturday morning for most of the 90’s I would get up early and watch FOX’s morning cartoon line-up, which included X-Men, Spider-Man, and… well, I can’t remember what else. But I watched the shit out of X-Men and Spider-Man. Ask any male and they’ll tell you that those were some awesome shows. Hulk’s cartoon was nowhere near as popular and was never in the Saturday morning lineup, but he managed to make himself my favourite super hero with his pure awesomeness. I’ve been interested in super heroes as long as I can remember, I’ve read up a ton on them, and when I was younger, even had most of the toys.

I’ve also always been a huge fan of comics. Admittedly, they only had Archie and ALF (with a few Heathcliffs and Richie Riches thrown in for good measure), but my grandparents had a magnificent stack of old comics at the cottage, and over many years, I read them all. My fondest memories involve ads where Batman is selling twinkies. And these days (though admittedly less often than usual) I read at least five webcomics, and I even draw my own comic! It’s amazing! You’d think this obsession with comics would equate to me having a good collection of my own.

Not the case. Pictured above is every single comic book that I own. Yeah. Just over twenty. There’s a pretty wide variety, from Batman to Spider-Man to KISS to Star Wars, but it’s still a bit tiny and embarrassing. Though there is a Marvel art book in there called “Marvel Masterpieces 2” which is amazing and has some truly fantastic portraits in it. It’s the gem of my collection and is the only one in pristine condition. The rest range from okay to have-the-cover-ripped-off. It’s actually probably the only one I’m going to keep. I may not have many comics, but I’ve read them over many times each, so I don’t really feel much sorrow parting with them. It was fun, but I guess when it comes down to it, I’m just not a comic person.

This is just a bunch of window decals that I took from work before the Wii launch. It was a great time to work at TRU, because there was so much promotional Wii crap that I could swipe and enjoy for myself. Other than that, I’d say it’s no more enjoyable than most other jobs. Friendly crew, but that’s about it.

I would love to type “Ahh, the piece de resistance” at this point, but as cool as this book is, it’s not some kind of amazing article-finisher. It’s just a standard unlicensed Nintendo strategy guide. In pocket book form.

Edwin gave this to me a few years back. I forget where he found it, but I believe there was some sort of intent to see it on the website. Maybe not, I don’t know. It was ages (three years) ago. All I can think of when I look at this book is that I know I’ve read it before, but a glance at the index of games covered assures me that I have not. I’m certain that the book I read covered Monster Party, Friday the 13th and maybe a Choplifter game. But that was all the way back in grade five, so I may be off on a couple titles. Googling it, I couldn’t find a game index for any of the three follow-up books, but I’m pretty sure it was one of them. The cover just looks so familiar.

On the other hand, I looked up Jeff Rovin on Wikipedia, and while he’s a pretty prolific novelist and biographer, he’s also pretty big on movie novelizations. Which is not too bad, since he’s done a ton of original work, which makes up for the movie novelization’s inherent lack of imagination, but he novelized Mortal Kombat. Why? Why would you bother? “Read the book based on the mediocre movie based on the crappy game!” That would be the pitch. What a terrible idea…

And that’s about that. I should mention that while the article is titled “Cleaning the Closet”, we’re only talking about approximately 5% of the closet’s space, so it’s a little misleading. If I were to dig out all the old nostalgic junk from the entirety of my closet, this article would never end. And that would be more than even I could take.

She’s a helluva thrill

Okay, video game soundtrack time. I guess you can all just leave the room now since nobody cares.

Yep. Megaman 9 official soundtrack. I was totally psyched for this one. Had it pre-ordered and everything. And it rocks. Like, for real, not just for the sake of the pun. Inticreates had a lot of extra processing power to work with for this game, but kept it down to NES-styled graphics. The best part is that they kept the music consistent with those graphics, and you get a disc full of wonderful 8-bit techno to rock out to with this one.

Honestly, there isn’t a lot else for me to say here. I want to talk on and on about it, but if you’ve played any of the NES Megaman games, you pretty much know what you’re signing up for here. I’d say it’s on par with the original game’s soundtrack as far as quality goes, and that’s pretty good. No song will ever trump the theme to Bubble Man’s stage, but the stage anthems are great contenders. The intro music is pretty rad too.

What else do I have to say? I love it. If you like chiptunes, then you’ll probably get a kick out of it. Just make sure you import it, and don’t get it through Amazon or the like, or else it’ll cost you like double. That’s a bad thing.

‘Till the day I die

Well, I have both victories and losses under my belt today, and neither is overly surprising, but I figure I might as well share. And before I start, it was Magma Man, not Volcano Man. Oops.

As I was mentioning in the last post, Mega Man 9 is friggin’ hard. The day after I made my little blog post there, I went back to the game with a stronger resolve and a good feeling. It got me pretty far, through five more bosses in fact, but Tornado Man and Hornet Man had still eluded my iron grip. But yester day I went back and made my play for total dominance. Tornado Man’s level was a bitch, and that’s all that was holding me back from the green-plated robot master. After dying over and over at his stupid revolving lifts (see video below), I decided I’d just cheese my way through with the Rush Jet. It worked wonders, but things only got worse from there on. Somehow I was able to scrape through to the end on my last life, and I slaughtered Tornado Man with little trouble. Hornet Man was much less offensive, as his level wasn’t too bad, but there’s a mini boss that will take you the fuck out many many times before you’re able to stomp it into robo-dust. But this time, I had the Tornado Blow on my side, and it wrecked him pretty bad. Hornet Man never saw it coming after that.

Of course, I got my ass handed to me on the first Wily level, and I felt that that was enough beatings for one day. But then I went and shelled out the necessary Wii Points for the extra DLC, and I’m pretty happy with what I got. The Challenge mode is pretty cool, and I think it’ll quickly evolve into an obsession. ProtoMan more is the star that really shines though. Not only can Blues slide, charge his buster, and block shots, but the Proto Whistle plays at the beginning of each level! It’s amazing! Really, it’s not a lot easier than Mega’s game, but it is the first real Mega Man game that allows you to play as ProtoMan (for $2).

And now for something completely different: would you be surprised if I told you I didn’t own Rock Band 2? Probably pretty shocked, right? But actually it’s a lie. I went out to Wal-Mart to buy candy last night, and meandered casually into the electronics department, and guess what was sitting there, ready to break my will into tiny little bits. Yeah, I think the only reason I hadn’t picked it up is because I hadn’t seen a copy available to be purchsed until then, not because I had a strong sense of not needing it. But I broke, and it’s great. The best part? That you can make standby band memers and assign them to empty spots on your roster so you don’t have the totally lame stock characters messing up your band’s image. Also, paying $60 for 100 tracks is a sweet deal after shelling out $1-$2 each for single tracks over the last 9 months.

Shakes all over

It’s been out since Monday, but only yesterday did I finally put aside some time to download and play Megaman 9. Actually, it wasn’t so much that I put aside the time, but rather I let my girlfriend try out Wii Fit and once she was worn out I decided to take the opporunity to not only start to show her what digital distribution was all about, but also try to get her into my favourite video game series.

Turns out it was kind of a bad idea. I had no idea just how hard it was going to be, and all the woman got to see of my supposed “mad platforming skillz” was me being murdered over and over before I could even reach a checkpoint. Seriously. It’s fucking brutal. But the nice thing is that it’s all in good taste, by which I mean once you know it’s coming you can learn to avoid it. There’s no randomization to anything, and should you posess the proper skills, you’ll be able to learn and master each level in no time. I, on the other hand, can’t play it for shit. Nope.

After many feeble attempts and even more gruesome deaths (however that math adds up), I was finally able to overcome Galaxy Man or whatever the UFO-shaped one that dances around like a fruitcake is called. Outside of that, I made it to the fire-based boss (Volcano Man I think?) and got toasted, and haven’t seen any of the other bossed yet. On the upside, Dancing-UFO-Weirdo Man gives up a totally sweet weapon called the Black Hole Bomb. It’s a slow moving ball that turns into a black hole when you trigger it and sucks in anything that gets too close. It didn’t do shit to Volcano Man, so it was kind of a bust in that regard, but really fun to play with otherwise.

So yeah, Megaman 9 rules and I can’t believe it took me two whole days to get it. In my defense, if I’d had the Wii points available on my console it would have happened as soon as I got home from work, but I had to go all the way to Best Buy to find some. The moral of the story is that that I needs me a credit card, I guess.

As for what my girlfriend thought of it? She fell asleep. 🙁