Mega Man – Page 12

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. 🙁

Mass Review Time – Fargo ’08

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It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these mass review articles (usually they’re just blogged). More importantly, it’s been a while since I’ve done an article at all. Much to my own dismay, a cheap mass review is not way to worm my way back into the game, but it’s all I’ve really got the gumption to work on at the moment. It’s not that I don’t want to write articles anymore, it’s just that there are so many other things I want to do more. And even more things I need to be doing.

But I digress. Blabbing about why I’m no longer writing full-length pieces is not today’s topic! But rather I’m here to discuss money well spent? I decided to end that sentence with a question mark because at this point I still can’t gauge the actual quality of most of the products below. I just bought most of them through good word-of-mouth and personal tastes. In fact, I’m pretty sure that at least a couple would be considered complete garbage by the general population, but we’ll see!

So the bonus theme here is that I picked up all this stuff when my girlfriend and I went away to Fargo(, North Dakota) for the weekend. I did a little photo gallery with commentary of last year’s trip south of the border (see sidebar), so maybe you’ll prefer that one if you’re looking for an article with a little more meat on its bones. Also, certainty. This here article, as of this writing, is pretty much all assumptions. It’s built on the hopes and dreams of millions! …Or maybe just me.

• Item #1

Tesla – Five Man Acoustical Jam

Okay, I know said it was all assumptions from here on in, but I’m starting with something I know is awesome: Tesla. I’ve been listening to Tesla for many, many years now, and sadly, I’ve only ever been able to find one of their CDs in any local stores. Thus, I often take it upon myself to scour the multimedia-type shops south of the border for anything I can find by them. This time I got real lucky, finding the two Tesla discs I was really gunning for. Five Man Acoustical Jam is obviously enough, a recording of a live acoustic show. It’s one of very few Tesla albums that I haven’t downloaded, so jackpot!

In other news, it’s completely awesome. Tesla is a great band, and they made their name through their acoustic prowess, so the only logical conclusion is that this album must rule. And rule it does. Don’t know what else there is to say other than I love it. Score: A

• Item #2

Tesla – The Great Radio Controversy

I know it seems silly that I only bought two Tesla CDs while I was down there, and now that I really think about it, I probably am really silly for it. I mean, I probably could have completed the full discography, but I stopped looking after I picked up these two.

Unlike its lovably live cousin above, The Great Radio Controversy is a studio album, but that means little. The Tesla-loving community largely believes this to be their finest work, and I’m not one to argue. It’s everything that makes Tesla great (minus the “awesome live performers” bit), and while it may not rock quite as hard as Psychotic Supper, it rocks just as well or better. Two thumbs up. Score: A

• Item #3

Mega Man Star Force 2

Yeah, I know you’re groaning right now and about to skip this paragraph, but that’s quite alright. You put up with more than enough of my Mega Man nonsense that you deserve a break from it if you can find one here or there. So go ahead and move on to the next item if you’ve gotten sick of hearing me rave about Mega Man.

For those that care, Star Force is the dual-screened big brother to the MegaMan Battle Network games. It seems like it’ll be following the same “new chapter every summer” release schedule that Battle Network had. I played the first one almost to completion last summer (I didn’t beat the final optional boss), and I was surprised to see this one in stores because honestly, I had no idea it was out. so I picked it up, and I’ve got to say, it’s most certainly not as big a step up from the first as Battle Network 2 was to its predecessor. I mean, I’m enjoying the game, but it hasn’t offered anything that improves on the first game. Well, not enough to make it feel exciting and new anyway. Score: C+

• Item #4

Etrian Odyssey 2: Heroes of Lagaard

As soon as I’d finally stopped flip-flopping on whether I wanted the first Etrian Odyssey or not, it had long since become impossible to find at retail. I was afraid EO2 would see a similar fate (despite being a new release), but after searching each and every store that sells video games in Fargo, I gave up and checked GameStop. As much as I generally loathe the GameStop/EB chain, it has to be said that they do actually carry Atlus games, and as a fan of Atlus’ niche titles, that scores some decent points in my book.

Anyway, I haven’t actually had a chance to plug it in and start playing yet (probably because I’m awasting all sorts of time writing about shit I buy), but I’ve read more than enough on the subject to be more or less familiar with what I’m getting into. The Youngest One bought it too (before I had a chance to advise him otherwise), probably because he thought “Ooh, an RPG. I should buy it”, and promptly got his ass whupped and put it right down. I doubt he’ll be spending too much time on this one, but someday when I’m in the middle of fewer games, I’ll crack this one open and spend a little quality time with it.

Edit : Decided I’d just forego finishing some other games so I could sink my teeth into this one. I’m not regretting it. Etrian Odyssey II is even better than I’d imagined. This is a real horror game, because you’re always on the edge of your seat, wondering if you’ll be able to survive the next fight. Also, even the slightest progress feels like you’ve made a huge accomplishment, so yeah. props to that. Love it. Score: A

• Item #5

Day of the Dead

No, it’s not Romero’s classic with a new cover. It’s one of those horrid “re-imaginings”, or so I assume. At least on the back cover it said it’s inspired by Romero’s Day of the Dead, so we can hope it at least pays a little homage to the original. In any case, it’s a zombie movie, so it most definitely belongs in my collection.

I should let you know that I fully expect this to be completely awful. That’s how these movies are. The characters are stupid and unlikable, the plot makes little to no sense and there’s buckets and buckets of gore. Yeah it sounds like a disaster, but that’s exactly what I’m looking for. I enjoy a good zombie movie, but I love a zombie movie that makes you want to root for the zombies. It’s brainless (in a manner of speaking) fun, and that’s really what I want in movies. So despite the fact that it’s defacing a classic, I have high-ish hopes for this one.

Edit : Yeah. So I watched it, and it’s not so great. It has almost nothing in common with the original, though if you concentrate real hard you can find a couple loose parallels between the two. But yeah, it’s not even a fun gore-fest. Just low-grade zombie schlock. When Nick Cannon is the best part of a movie, you know that you’ve got a bit of a train wreck on your hands. I’m a little let down by this one, honestly. Score: D+

• Item #6

The Dead Pit

As I was perusing the horror section at Fargo’s Best Buy (why doesn’t our Best Buy sort movies by genre? It’s so much easier…), and I saw that Day of the Dead remake thing, and then right beside it, The Dead Pit caught my eye. The cover didn’t really get the idea of zombies across to me, but reading the synopsis on the back confirmed my suspicions: zombies!

Much to my delight, this is one of those 80’s zombie flicks that pretends to have a cohesive plot. By that of course, I mean it’s more than “OMG zombiez. Let’s try to survive!” Something about a mad scientist attacking a mental ward with a horde of zombies? I dunno and I’m too lazy to go check the case, but it sounded like a riot at the time. I honestly think this could be as unpredictably lovable as Hellraiser. Score: B (pending)

• Item #7

Chucky: The Killer DVD Collection

I’ll level with ya, I’ve only ever seen the first Child’s Play movie, and even then, I was still a little squeamish at the time and covered my eyes a lot. I did like the movie though, and I’ve always wanted to at least see the first two sequels. Bride of Chucky isn’t exactly a priority, and Seed of Chucky seems like they’re just taking it too far. Alas.

I’ve been putting off buying this collection for a while now because I knew that not having the first one would drive me bonkers (OCD, you see), but it actually hasn’t been grating on my nerves too much. It’s not like the movie isn’t on DVD or anything either, I just can’t find the damn thing anywhere. Oh well. I’m sure some day I’ll be in the right place at the right time, and it will be mine. Or I’ll have forgotten my wallet and smack myself in the forehead. Score: B+ (pending)

• Item #8

Bruce and Lloyd: Out of Control

I’ll say this now, because it’s the most important note here: I was promised a lot more Patrick Warburton than I got from this purchase, and it makes me ever so slightly disappointed. Other than that, good times!

If you haven’t seen Get Smart yet, you’re really missing out on something. I loved it so much, I ran out an bought this straight-to-DVD supplemental material without even reading a review first. Fortunately, it’s not nearly as awful as most straight-to-DVD stuff, but it’s still nowhere near as great as the main movie. Then again, I never expected it to be. I’m just confused as to why exactly Steve Carell couldn’t make at least a cameo. Anne Hathaway shows up in one scene, so why do we get no Steve Carell? Ah well. If Get Smart was at the “hilarious” level, I’d probably only rate this one as “silly” at best, but it’s still worth a look if you liked the source material. Score: B

Also, I should mention that I bought some other stuff, like shorts and foodstuffs, but I decided to cut them out because clothes are boring (do not tell my girlfriend I said that, she bought clothes almost exclusively) and junk food isn’t something that really needs to be logged into the annals of internet history. At least, not any of the food I bought. It was all pretty much run-of-the-mill junk food that a) isn’t available in Canada or b) is ridiculously expensive in Canada. So yeah. That’s the end then. Good night.

Two lovers in love, we was lovin’ a lot

Not as though I’d be doing too much blogging anyhow, but for the next couple days we’re heading down to Fargo to celebrate… well, not working for like four days? I dunno. Going down to the States to celebrate Canada Day seems a little dumb, but there really isn’t any other occasion. I suppose it’s just for the sake of shopping and getting away. Yeah.

So how about that Mega Man 9 news? Pretty damn awesome, I’d say. This is exactly what digital distribution is all about. I suppose that means that Capcom will finally be putting all the old Mega Man games on the Virtual Console then? I have the Anniversary Collection, so I wouldn’t be buying them, but it would be nice to know that they’re there.

Two Rockman Arrange albums, reviewed

We all know that I love video games. I’ve made no attempt to cover that up at any point in my life. I’ve downplayed it a lot, but never outright hidden the fact that my number one hobby is spending hours with a controller in my hands. It’s not a glamorous hobby, and most certainly not one that wins me any points with the fairer sex, but it’s what I do, and there’s no point in trying to deny who I am. Given, I spend a lot less time with video games than even a year ago, but it’s still a fairly prominent part of my life, and where a huge portion of my personal funds are directed.

So how could this inherently geeky hobby get any geekier? Well, it doesn’t help that I listen to lots and lots of video game music, and have shelled out many hard-earned dollars importing huge game soundtrack collections. You’ve heard me go on many times about how I’m absolutely fanatical about Yoko Shimomura and Motoi Sakuraba’s works, and how I nearly messed my pants in excitement when my copy of the Okami soundtrack arrived, but I never really talk about any of the music that relates to my most deep-rooted video game obsession: MegaMan.

It’s sad but true, I never really blog about how deeply I love the music from the many hundreds of MegaMan games out there. I may have mentioned it in passing many years ago when I wrote that article about why I’m such a Mega-fanboy, but other than that, I’ve never really touched on it for more than maybe a short paragraph once every God-knows-how-long. Today, I shall begin to remedy this situation though, as I have not one, but two discs worth of shimmery remixed Mega-goodness. Enter the 20th Anniversary Rockman 1-6 Arrange albums.

Left: Wily. Right: “Mr. X” (Spoiler: It’s Wily in disguise!)

I recently purchased these two arrange albums from Play-Asia, and have been listening to them maybe not quite as often as my fanboyism might lead you to believe, but more than enough. I’m sure that there are still people out there who would be shocked to learn that people produce and pay for soundtracks to video games, and possibly even more shocked to learn that I fall into the latter category. It’s no surprise to long-time readers, but the last time I mentioned that I collected video game soundtracks, there was an obvious air of confusion afterward. My parents even, who I’ve explained it to many times, are still dumbfounded whenever I receive a new one in the mail. I can understand that it’s a very niche genre, yes, but how is it so hard to understand? But I digress.

As the whole “Rockman 1-6” part up there might have clued you in on, these two CDs specialize specifically in music from the original run of MegaMan/Rockman (I’ll be using Rockman from now on. First-timers, they’re the same thing) games on the NES. Depending on your knowledge of all things Rockman, you may not be surprised by this fact, but overall the CDs weight very heavily in the favour of material from Rockman 2, whilst the first, fourth, and fifth games are all represented very sparingly, with only one dedicated track per disc. Yes, I know and agree that Rockman 2 was completely epic in every respect, especially as far as music goes, but you’ve gotta give the underdogs a little more credit. On the upside, my personal favourite tracks are the medleys, and every game gets its respects (due or not) in those tracks.

The ROCK CD, which was the first one I got, is obviously more oriented towards rock-style remixes. In that respect, it does not disappoint. The albums opens with the most killer “Boss Mix Medley”, which alone is reason enough to look into this disc. It is an impeccable track that combines a handful of what are essentially throwaway pieces (boss music is usually a 30-second loop at best) into a hard-rocking six-and-a-half-minute tour-de-force that will melt your face right off. It is simply awesome. Its follow-up track, “Cutman Mix”, does it perfect justice, as it takes the already stellar Cutman theme, changes the pacing a little, and makes the whole thing a wonderful sequence of guitars hammering out the verses and screaming solos like they’re going out of style.

At this point the CD goes up and down. I can’t fully appreciate their new spin on the MetalMan theme, but the infamous Dr. Wily theme from Rockman 2 comes out in full force with a wailing guitar duet that just won’t quit. Shadowman’s theme is nice, but is somewhat lost on me, and I honestly cannot believe that they managed to pull a whole 3:30 of non-repetitive material out of a “get weapon” theme for the “Get A Weapon (Rockman 3)” track. The Dr. Cossack theme was never my favourite track from Rockman 4 (though they mixed it quite nicely), and I can’t say the second Wily theme on the disc is overly impressive. “Yamatoman Mix” features an instrument that I’m not smart enough to identify (I may be a moron and it may very well just be an acoustic guitar) which plays a tune in the background of the entire song, and hits the foreground at the beginning, the end, and whenever the electric guitars take a breather between verses. It’s definitely makes the song stand out, and gives it a nice Asian vibe. “Tomahawkman Mix” has what might be the fastest solo on the album, though it could have been so much more epic if it had lasted even ten seconds longer. Like “Boss Mix Medley” before it, “Title Mix Medley” takes all the title screen themes and blends them together into a track that can only be described as awesome. It won’t blow you away quite as handily as the former, but if you’ve got a thing for fancy guitar work, you’ll love it to death.

After getting and playing the snot out the ROCK disc, I decided to go ahead and reunite it with its peppy twin brother, TECHNO. I’ll admit that I’m not a huge techno fan, but I’ve got at least a dozen various other Rockman remix albums on my PC that are mostly techno-centric (which I do quite enjoy), so it was a risk I was more than willing to take. TECHNO opens with a fairly competent “Stage Select Mix Medley”, which like the boss medley, takes a bunch of throwaway tracks and makes them into something worth far more than the sum of its parts. The ROCK disc was all about the screaming guitars and blistering solos, and the TECHNO disc comes right out the gate with pulsing synthesizers and heavy percussion that let you know that it’s going to be living up to its name. Elecman’s theme is next on the chopping block, and it’s slowed down considerably, though unlike another particular mix, does not invoke the feeling that you might be listening to a rip-off of Journey’s “Faithfully”. The constant thump of the bass drums and the peppy synth contrasts the slower tempo and floaty choruses to make sure that you’re grooving and not mellowing out. After that, we see the return of Rockman 2’s first Wily theme, and to tell the truth, I don’t think anyone has ever done a bad remix of this track. Regardless of genre, speed, or instruments used, this is just an overall wonderful piece, and Capcom’s skilled sound crew certainly put it through its paces here. The rock version does it justice with fiery guitar leads, and the techno version will storm you and make you want get up and move move move with its high-speed thump thump thump.

Sadly, those three tracks set far too great a precedent for the following pieces, as they’re simply mediocre in comparison. On it’s own though, “Quickman Mix” has a wonderful metallic vibe going for it, and as much as I want to praise the great, punctuated chorus-type bit, the song relies far too much on the main tune to really be a kickass techno track. “Airman Mix” has an airy (no pun intended) lead-in that lasts far too long, but once it gets going you’ll be able to feel that beat coursing through you. Oddly enough, I feel that this one makes too little use of the base tune, only bringing it in for short bits at a time. “Heatman Mix” doesn’t really do anything for me personally, but I can’t get over how much I love the “Snakeman Mix”. The high tempo and the bridges (which I can only think of as “carnival-esque”) really work for me, and the original tune is peppy enough to inspire at least a little bopping along. The revised Magnetman theme is another one that I consider entirely missable, and the second Wily track on this disc doesn’t exactly inspire me to create a Facebook group dedicated to it. Honestly, the less said about “Starman Mix”, the better. It has a nice spacey sound, but otherwise alls flat on the grounds of impressing me. “Flameman Mix” fares a little better, but only because I really like the original song. Unfortunately, the techno disc does not end on another wonderful medley, which officially makes me a very sad panda, but I won’t dwell on it because it’s a techno CD and I didn’t exactly expect to be blown away by it to begin with.

Besides the fact that they both feature mixes of the “Dr. Wily 1” track from Rockman 2, the two CDs have but one thing in common. That would be that they both contain short versions of all the original tunes used in the mixes. You may look at the track listing and see a robust 20/21 tracks on each, but then you’ll notice that half of them are just the original 8-bit chiptunes directly from the NES games. And that’s not an entirely bad thing, say if you’re trying to educate someone who liked the mixes on the background of the music, but a much better way to do that would be to have them actually play the original Rockman games. Or to play the games and have them watch, because seriously, someone who has never played one of the old Rockman games by this point likely won’t be playing any video games other than Wii Sports anytime soon.

Overall, I’d say that these are two very solid albums, and make a very good case of representing Rockman’s 20-plus-year legacy, regardless of how niche it’s become over the ages. I’d recommend both albums to diehard Rockman fans, but only the ROCK disc to the general populace, as the mixes are a little more interesting on that one. If you’re interested in owning them legitimately (and God knows you aren’t), I most definitely recommend procuring them through Play-Asia.com, as I snagged them both for a debatably reasonable price of about $30 each, whereas Amazon is charging $42.99 for the ROCK disc and a whopping $72.99 for the TECHNO CD. It’s not cheap either way (retail game soundtracks never are), but at least your wallet won’t get completely raped if you order from Play-Asia. Of course, if you’re up to searching for a better price, I won’t stop you.

Remembering the Cottage: Part 1

My fondest memories can more or less be summed up in three categories: “Shopping at Toys ‘R’ Us”, “Holidays/Trips”, and “The Cottage”. The first two categories can still potentially be added to, but sadly, the third is now sealed away as only memories.

I’ve mentioned many a time on this website (most often in the blog) my many visits to my grandparents’ house, which just happened to be a sweet cottage out on the Winnipeg River. The thing is, I never described many events in detail, or took any pictures while I was out there. to nearly everyone, this mysterious cottage could have just as well been a well-constructed myth. To me though, it was very real, and it was the essence of my summers. I spent at least two weeks out there during the summer months for as long as I can remember, and there were quite often other trips out there for such events as Spring Break, Christmas, Thanksgiving, family reunions, long weekends, and many more. It was a great place, and while I may not have appreciated it quite as much in my older years, it was still a place I loved being very much.

Imagine my heartbreak when I first heard that my grandparents were thinking about selling. As if enough bad mojo wasn’t surrounding me in the year 2007, but now my beloved cottage was going to be taken away? Yeah, it sucks balls. The place was actually sold right at the end of August, and on my last weekend out there, I decided I would take a few pictures so I could put them on a webpage laced with wonderful stories of the time I’d spent there. This is that page, and it’s definitely more for my own sake than for anyone else to read, but feel free to sift through it. There are a lot of memories and strong emotions here, so don’t expect even an attempt at humour.

The TV Room

Overview: Ah, the TV room. I probably spent more hours here than anywhere else, but there are a couple catches that help to make that seem less like I was glued to the TV for all the time I was at the cottage. The most obvious one would be that for a couple years I used one of the couches as my bed, so that racks up the hours pretty quickly. If I regret anything in my lifetime, it’s that I didn’t spend nearly enough time out on the balcony that extends from this room. Don’t know why, but it just never seemed like the place I should be hanging out.

Atari: I guess the earliest thing I can remember this room for is that it’s where we had out Atari. Long before I got hooked on video games, my dad left his Atari system out here, only to be dug up many years later so he could show me the kind of games that were around before the NES. I spent many many hours playing Kangaroo, Pitfall, and Pac-Man. Even back when I was only but a wee lad, I could recognize that ET was the worst game ever made. The biggest mystery about the whole thing though, was that we had a manual for Donkey Kong, but there was nary a cartridge to go with it. Oh, how I burned to play Donkey Kong.

Simpsons & Bonding time: My younger cousin would often come in to visit at the same time we did in the summers, and it worked out well because he’s very much like me, so myself and The Youngest One would often spend a lot of time hanging out in here with him and playing whatever handheld game was in at the time. Or just whatever the most recent Pokémon game was. Those two are even more into Pokémon than I am, and I would always get into it when we came out to the cottage, because the young ones just wouldn’t shut up about it, and that would drag me into it. The Tall One and I were also deeply entrenched in the MegaMan Battle Network series, and it was pretty much a summertime tradition to buy the games just before we went out the cottage and simply play the Hell out of them while we were there. Both series of games brought me not only the regular pleasure of playing video games, but also a lot of valuable bonding time with my brothers and cousin. Sure, I can still play with them at home, but it’s just not the same. Also, my grandparents got satellite TV a few years back, and it seemed like that on any given evening that we were there, the Simpsons would always be on at least one channel, so we generally always had that on in the background. Good times, they were. Good times.

Movie night: Back in the day, my grandpa would often borrow a bunch of movies from a neighbour so we had something to watch while we were out there (this was before the satellite, and we were restricted to like three fuzzy channels). This is notable because it’s the first place I ever saw Kindergarten Cop, which remains my favourite Schwarzenegger film, and is near the top of my overall favourites. Many other times, while my grandparents were staying in the city, my family would come out for the weekend and basically binge on junk food and watch movies. Most of them were stinkers like RV and Epic Movie (to name some of the most recent), but it was still cherished time spent with my family and many, many cookies.

Random thoughts: It was a great place to hang out, and of course we often brought more in the way of video games than handhelds, as Atari was fun, but never quite enough. We fought over which console we would bring each time almost as much as we fought over who got to sit in that big reclining chair you can see in the second picture. I played a lot of Donkey Kong 64 out here, and that particular week at the cottage remains one of the most memorable for many reasons. I’ll always carry in my heart the memories of the first time I caught all the legendary birds in Pokémon Blue, as they were all while I was out at the cottage. I spent many subsequent trips out there playing through the game again and again, always reliving my triumphs over Zapdos, Articuno and Moltres with a smile on my face, often in the middle of the night when I should have been long asleep.

Guest Bedrooms

Overview: Only one is pictures, but there were actually two bedrooms upstairs. While I suppose they weren’t technically guest bedrooms, nobody used them but guests, so there you have it. Until the shed outside was turned into a mini-cottage of sorts (more on that later), we would often sleep in these rooms. For a handful of years I slept in the TV Room, as I mentioned before, but these were where we stayed the majority of the time.

Bedtime: The room you see pictured is actually the final phase of that room’s series of redecorations. Initially it had two huge beds lined against the window wall and the wall opposite the shelving. And when I say huge, I mean huge enough to play underneath with plenty of room to spare. I guess they were more high up than anything else, but while they were in there, I was still small enough to think they were gigantic. Until The Youngest One was born, the older two and I would sleep in this room together, a crib or mattress was placed in the empty floor when needed, and I moved onto the second bedroom room when The Youngest One came along and three beds weren’t enough to satisfy the four of us. But until that time, we spent many nights staying up “late” (back when 10:30 was late) and telling stories and jokes in the dark. Being all boys, there was plenty of roughhousing after bedtime too, and I really miss those times.

Bedtime 2: Eventually, when I moved onto the second upstairs bedroom, I was on my own and free to do whatever I pleased instead of sleeping. Obviously, I used that time alone to play GameBoy, listen to music, and read (most memorably the Final Fantasy VIII strategy guide, because that was another completely kickass summer) all through the night. Once the boys started sleeping outside (in the aforementioned shed) I took over the original room for myself again, and at that point it had been rearranged into the room you see in the picture above.

Comics: You can see the shelving in the picture, but hidden behind the pile of assorted sheets and whatnot is a huge collection of comics. They consisted mostly of Archie, Alf, Heathcliff, and Richie Rich. While those aren’t exactly my first choices in comics nowadays, I was pleased as punch to spend countless afternoons leafing through them. And though it took me a couple years to get the job done, I did eventually read through them all. Taking note of my love of comics, my grandpa started saving me the Sunday comics from the Free Press every week, and every time I went out to the cottage he’d always have a stack of funnies for me to peruse. He still saves them for me to this day, and I haven’t put any time aside to read through them for a while now, so I’ve got a rather large pile in my closet just waiting to be read or thrown out.

Horsin’ Around: Back when we were young, and the huge beds were still in the room, my brothers and I spent a lot of time playing in there, often concluding in someone being injured, however slightly. The number one game would be “Lava Monster”, which I know is not exclusive to us, because I’ve seen characters on TV playing it. But in case you have no idea, basically one person would be the Lava Monster and have to stay on the floor, and anyone else would be trying to stay on the beds while the Lava Monster tried to pull them down “into the lava”. The limited playfield may seem like an issue when I describe it, but it was more than enough when we were just lil’ guys. Plus, we’d always get any other visiting children to join in too, so sometimes the Lava Monsters would amount to more than one, depending on rules (either “Tag” or “Last Man Standing”).

Random Thoughts: Now that I think about it, I guess probably the thing I miss most about the cottage (and childhood in general) was playing with the older two of my brothers. While we still hang out and play video games together now and then, we don’t spend nearly as much time together as we did when we went to the cottage. Back when we were kids, we fought a lot (like, seriously, a lot) at home, but as soon as we got to the cottage, we were like best friends. It’s weird to say because I still see them every day, but I kinda miss my brothers. The Youngest One, I still find plenty of time to hang out with though, so at least I’ve got that. For now.

The Kitchen / Dining Room

Overview: Honestly, the living room, dining room, and kitchen are pretty much all the same room. But that’s hardly the point here. Being the glutton that I am, this area of the house holds just as many lovely memories for me as any other room. My grandma is a wonderful cook, and even the simplest dishes meant a lot, just because. I’ll certainly miss the couple weeks each year where I was guaranteed to have three square meals a day.

Breakfast time: Where to start? I suppose breakfast would be the obvious one. I’m not a big breakfast eater. I adore the meal, but very rarely to I have enough motivation or time to partake. The nice thing about the cottage is that breakfast was always a sure thing (with the exception of the later years where I would stay up too late and sleep right through breakfast time). Most of the time it would be a simple cereal/toast/fruit affair, but that was okay. My grandpa would always have the paper completely read by the time I got up, so when I was eating breakfast, he’d have the comics and puzzles pulled out and ready for me. Eating cereal is twice as awesome when you’ve got a crossword laid out for you and someone to chat with. On the best mornings, my grandma would make pancakes. Oh, those were mornings to really treasure. Until later on when grandma didn’t feel like making tons of them, my brothers and I would always compete to see who could scarf down the most. Good times were had by everyone, but our bellies were probably the happiest of all. Lazy mornings are probably my absolute most favourite thing in the world, and at the cottage, they were all that much better.

Lunch: I never looked quite as forward to lunch as much as I did breakfast, but I still like to revel in the nostalgia of noon-related meals. Most of all, would be when I was between eight and twelve or so, and we would often get the boat out and go fishing with my grandpa in the mornings. We’d always get bored pretty quickly and just resort to fooling around on the boat, but going home was a payoff in more than just getting back on dry land. My grandma would generally have lunch ready by that time, and it was awesome. Coming home to a big plate of sandwiches, veggies, cheese, cookies, and all sorts of etc was just superb after a long morning of fishing. Of course, lunch was great on other days, but those are the ones I remember the most. Looking back on this, I guess maybe it all sounds a bit mundane, but you really had to be there. Being pre-adolescent would help too.

Dinner: This is where grandma’s cooking really comes into play. You’re not going to do anything too fancy for lunch, but dinner is a different story. Grandpa often joked that he ate like a king whenever we were over, and I suppose maybe it’s not too far from the truth. I’m a notoriously picky eater, so I would often pick at some things, but most of the time I ate really well. Hams were especially common, and my family seems to be imbued with the power of making wicked awesome mashed potatoes. Going to the cottage on special occasions was great too, because that meant my grandma would make an extra huge and extra delicious dinner, which was always something to look forward to, even for one with as particular eating habits as me. In fact, I actually wrote about one particularly wonderful Easter dinner on the blog. Turns out it would be the last Easter diner we ever ate there….

Elsewhere…

Overview: While it’s true that being at the cottage was in itself the high point of going to the cottage, there were plenty of other cool places nearby to spend time. Most were great for adventuring while we were little, and some offered more than a simple thrill of an excursion into the unknown. All of them though, played a vital role in making trips to the cottage as memorable as the were.

Town: The cottage was about a five minute drive from the nearest town, Lac du Bonnet. I never cared too much for it while younger, but as I grew, I started to realize that it was more than just a grocery store and a beach. Annual Canada Day parades, while officially boring as Hell, would become an important family tradition, and the fireworks afterward only seem to get better each year. It was also home to the only dollar store where I’d ever seen the infamous Nintendo Surprise. It has since closed down and moved to a much larger building, and the goods within have become only slightly less magical. When Subway moved in, it was all we talked about for ages. The only chain restaurant that had been in the town until then was Chicken Chef, and that’s not the kind of place you just go on a whim. Nope, after Subway moved in, I don’t think there was one trip to the cottage where we didn’t partake.

Town 2: Pinawa is a little farther away, and we visited less often, but always for good reason. Firstly, I would like to mention that if it weren’t for my need to shop compulsively for various electronic media, this is exactly the kind of place I would like to live in. It’s small, but not tiny, and most if not all of the houses are quite nice. I’ve always entertained the thought of living in a small town, and Pinawa has always romanticized that idea. Anyhow, the main attraction here is The Burger Boat & Ice Cream Barge. It’s not the best ice cream place I’ve ever gone, but there’s something special about getting your ice cream from a boat. Always a special occasion, going to The Burger Boat was something to really get excited about. Seriously! On a boat! Turns out they even have their own web page. Neat!

The Boat Launch: A short hike away from the cottage, there’s a boat launch that I’ve never seen anyone use for boats. We’d go swimming or fishing off it, but never any boats. Probably because nearly everyone with a boat in the area has their own boat launch, but that’s besides the point. In any case, over the years, it became more of a point just for me to travel out to just to get some alone/thinking time. There were better spots for such things, but they were all farther away, and I’m lazy. The hike there was worth mentioning too, as there was always a bunch of stuff on the way. Mostly bodies of water to skip rocks in and bales of hay to climb on, but they meant a lot back in the day.

The Rocks: Along Tower Road was, that’s right, a tower. To this day I’m not sure exactly what kind of tower it was. Maybe a broadcasting tower of some sort? No idea, but that’s not what we ventured over there for. All around the mysterious tower were what seemed like endless miles of rocks perfectly fit for climbing. Heading out there at least once per summer, we’d make entire days of climbing around, searching for something, but not quite knowing what that something was. Maybe we were looking for anything at all? To me, it always seemed like the formations had changed, but I guess that’s dumb to say. I know they couldn’t have, but I guess my mental mapping skills weren’t entirely developed by then. We did, on occasion, find a small pile of rocks that signified that someone else had been wandering around there too, and we’d often set up our own little rock piles, with the intent of showing both other people and ourselves that we’d been there already. I haven’t been out there since I was about fifteen, and many times I’ve considered just making a trip out there to visit both Lac du Bonnet and Pinawa, and to spend the rest of the day climbing around on the rocks I so loved as a young’un. Maybe I’ll get around to it one of these summers.

More!: Yeah. There’s still more here. Hell, I could go on nearly forever with stories of my youth in any of these categories. It just so happens that the ones that take place outside sound infinitely less boring to everyone else. There were a lot of other places we’d head out to see what we could see, often against our wills. The Pinawa Dam was close enough that we didn’t mind going, but there still wasn’t much of interest. Point Du Bois was much farther away, and while it held a bunch of great memories for my grandparents and dad, there’s like nothing there that’s even remotely interesting to anyone who never lived/spent summers there. There were all sorts of other landmarks that my grandparents liked to take us to, like a big ol’ suspension bridge, and yet another dam. All were pretty boring and mosquito-filled, but in the end, I appreciate them taking us, because as lackluster as they are, they still count as good memories.

Woof. Considering that I haven’t tapped even half the pictures I took, this article could very well go on forever. We certainly don’t want that, now do we? No. So, keeping everyone’s best interest in mind, I’ll stop here for the moment and call it Part One. How many more will there be? Who knows! It’ll likely only be a two-parter, but if I’m as verbose with ther rest of the pictures as I’ve been with the ones I’ve posted so far, we’ll likely be seeing a Part Three as well. But that’ll be the absolute limit. Even if I tried, there’s no way I could justify doing this in a four-part series. I guess you can’t really put a limit on your memories, but the honest truth is that most of the events that I found significant and still dream happily about would be viewed as horribly mundane by pretty much anyone else. So keep an eye out for number two. Given how long it took me to finish this one, we should be seeing it by the second half of 2011.

It’s bringin’ me to my knees

When The Tall One turned 18, he got himself a new cell phone and one of them fancy-pants plans. That left his pay-as-you-go phone out in the cold. Over the next couple months money was passed under the table and blood was spilt, and phones changed hands all over the place. In the end, I ended up with a free cell phone. It’s a third-gen hand-me-down, but hey, it’s not like I ever planned to use the thing. I had no intent of getting a cell phone ever, but I accepted and it’s actually bailed me out of a couple sticky situations.

In any case, as I am wont to do, I quickly started browsing for games to play on the thing. Yeah, I know pretty much all mobile games except Bejeweled suck, but it was something I needed to see with my own eyes. And that’s why I have the mobile version of MegaMan 2.

Ya heard me. I downloaded MegaMan 2 for my cell phone. It was a horrible idea and overexpensive, but I stand by my decision, because really, it’s not as bad as you might assume.

Don’t get me wrong, shit doesn’t even match up to the legendary NES version, even though it’s almost exactly the same. The level layouts mimic the original perfectly, from each enemy to every power-up item. All the bosses are present, and they all follow the exact same patterns they did almost 20 years ago. In this respect, it’s a perfect port. Oh, except for the disappearing blocks. Those are all gone. But personally, I consider that a plus. I fucking hate the disappearing blocks.

However, there’s more than just content to worry about, most importanly being how the game plays. Maybe it works better on more powerful mobiles, but on my phone, MegaMan 2 runs at about half speed. This alone makes the game unabashedly easy. Remember how you could never get past QuickMan’s stage because of those Godforsaken lasers? Yeah, at half speed, they’re totally nerfed. I flew by the entire stage without even thinking about using the Time Stopper. Also, Mega jumps about 1.5 times his regualr jump height, and you can imagine that that makes things a lot easier too. If you put the game speed back to normal, the extra jumping power alone would be enough to see you through some of the most difficult parts of the game.

But there’s gotta be other downsides to the game besides being too easy, right? Oh totally. The original music is all there, and it’s decent quality too. The issue is that all the tracks are about half their original length, and do not loop well at all. For the first time in the history of ever, playing MegaMan 2 with the sound off is actually a good idea. Also, the stage backgrounds are missing, but that’s a problem that I can easily see past. I actually didn’t even notice they were gone until I got to FlashMan’s stage, so yeah.

Do I recommend MegaMan 2 mobile? Honestly, no. It’s playable, but it’s still a complete butchery of the best MegaMan game ever. I can say all the good things I want about it, but you just can’t match up to dusting off your NES and ricking the original. Capcom probably hasn’t made a MegaMan Powered Up! 2 because they know that no matter how much they improve it, MegaMan fans will likely shun it as a bastardization of their holy grail. I’d sure like it though. But don’t get the mobile one. Unless you totally suck at platformers and want to see the end. Even then you’re better off just trying to find a Game Genie.