Retro Gaming – Page 21

Year of N64 Bonus Round Q2 – Pokémon Snap

It might surprise you to learn that I wasn’t overly kind to Pokémon Snap back in its day. I played the game obsessively to completion, and then dumped all over it for being too short and too easy if anyone asked. Of course, this was my professional Stupid Teenage Gamer opinion, trotted out mostly to save face in a harsh middle school world. Deep down inside, I knew that Pokémon Snap was something special. Something magical.

Pokémon Snap is a short game. There are six courses, which take around 5-8 minutes to traverse, and one shorter special course to cap it off. I dragged my wife along for the ride this time, and while the five hours it took us to clear the game 100% seemed like a leisurely afternoon gaming session to me, she was chomping at the bit to get moving onto something else at around the three-and-a-half hour mark. She did stick it out to the end for me, and the experience was all the more special to me for it. That’s why I love her!

So! Pokémon Snap. What is it? It’s a photography game, which is an unusual kind of game to make, but that’s kind of what Nintendo is all about. You choose a course (unless you’re just starting out) and then you’re plopped into a weird vehicle which guides you along the stage. Pokémon litter the environments, and your job is to take the best darn picture you can of each and every one of ’em.

What makes this more interesting is the way that you can interact with the pokémon. At first, you can’t do anything but take pictures, and you’re at the whims of the game to find opportunities for good shots. As you progress though, you’ll be given a few different items. Apples will draw the attention of pokémon, who will gravitate over to any apples thrown in their vicinity. Usually they’ll just eat the apple, but some pokémon may do a little happy dance afterward, or perhaps even fight over the foodstuffs. You can even throw apples right at pokémon to bonk them and provoke different reactions.

Pester balls are basically the opposite of apples. You toss one at a pokémon and it’ll run away or get angry at you. They probably do other things too, but I can’t be bothered to remember what. The poké flute is exactly what it sounds like, and when you play a tune on it, nearby pokémon will start dancing. As a reference to Pokémon Red and Blue, it also wakes up sleeping pokémon. The poké flute plays several different tunes, but I never experimented with them to see if they got different results.

Stages are all preset, and your movement through them is automatic. If you don’t throw anything at them, pokémon will always play out the same actions every time you visit a stage. The final item, the motor, increases the speed of your vehicle so that maybe you can see what pokémon are doing before you’re supposed to arrive at their point. It’s not overly useful, but it’s nice if you’re returning to a stage for a single pokémon and just want to zip past the rest.

Only 63 of the 151 original pokémon are featured in the game, and not all of them are just sitting around waiting to get their pictures taken. You’ll have to take full advantage of all the tools at your disposal if you want to snap ’em all. Some are easy enough to coax out of hiding, but some of the methods for making certain pokémon appear are totally inscrutable without a guide. You’ll probably make Starmie appear eventually if you keep playing the Valley course, but you’ll never guess what it was that triggered it.

It’s not a particularly beefy game, but what is there is really worth playing. It won’t take you too long to get to the end, but you’ll need to be clever and resourceful if you want to complete the pokémon report. Of course, hours upon hours can be added on if you enjoy trying to take the highest scoring pictures of every monster. Pokémon Snap is a great game, and the perfect way to spend a lazy weekend afternoon.

(If you’re interested, I wrote a thing about the Virtual Console release of Pokémon Snap a few years ago.)

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: July 2014

I touched on it briefly last month, but as you’ll see if you keep reading, I’m really getting into the swing of my personal Steam Train. It’s time to start actually playing some of the 150+ games registered on my Steam account! Also I had a week of vacation early in the month, so I had a lot of extra time for gaming this month and this may be the longest MVGW to date.

I would like to direct your attention to the banner below, which was uploaded and visible when this post went live, as opposed to a few days later. Maybe I’m actually starting to clean up my act here?

~ Now Playing ~

Tokyo Jungle (PS3) – One of the two PS3-exclusive games that I have any interest in, I’d say that Tokyo Jungle is worth owning the console for. For me, at least. It gets awfully repetitive, but there is enough randomization and a huge roster of animals (50ish, then even more as DLC), so it’s stayed fresh enough for me to pour a good number of hours into it. I’ve still only started unlocking the cooler animals though, so there’s lots and lots of game left for me to experience.

Toki Tori 2+ (PC) – Working to scratch more games off my PC to-do list, I booted up Toki Tori 2+, and it’s quite a unique game! It’s a puzzle platformer, but every puzzle has to be solved with a only two actions and the way those actions affect the environment and other animals. It’s pretty fun, and some of the puzzles are downright devious. I’ve gotten myself stuck though, and I think that I might like this game enough that I’m not willing to consult a FAQ just so that I can move on. I feel like this one is worth solving on my own. But nuts to gathering all the collectibles. That’s a fool’s errand if I’ve ever seen one.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: July 2014

Year of N64 – July – Gauntlet Legends

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: June 2014

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

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

~ Now Playing ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ Game Over ~

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

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

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

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

~ Re-Runs ~

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

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

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

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

Year of N64 – June – DOOM 64

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: May 2014

May came in like a lion and… well, it was pretty heavy on games I wanted to play throughout. A stark contrast to an April that saw almost no new games and gave me ample time to work on my enormous backlog. Luckily, most of May’s releases were cheap Virtual Console Mega Man games, so I didn’t have to choose between video games or paying the bills.

But yeah, May 1st saw one of the best eShop updates in a long time, and then the new Kirby and Mario Golf came out on the second. Also there was that massive Humble Store spring sale. Needless to say, I’ve been keeping very busy, which is great because the wait for Smash Bros would be killing me if my 3DS (and PC, I guess) weren’t so jam packed with games I want to play.

~ Now Playing ~

Mario Golf: World Tour (3DS) – I never got into Mario Golf on N64, but I played the stuffing out of the GameCube entry. I waited very impatiently through several delays for this one, and it was so worth it. The Castle Club “story” mode is a bit confusing and overcomplicated, but a free play mode exists, so ignoring that business is pretty easy.

Continue reading Monthend Video Game Wrap-Up: May 2014

Year of N64 – May: Quest 64

Here’s the thing. I didn’t read much in the way of games journalism back in 1998. I read Nintendo Power. Sometimes I may have seen an article or preview in a friend’s EGM or something, but the internet was still new to me. All I knew is was a place where you could find cheats and FAQs for video games, outrageous Flash cartoons on Newgrounds, and pictures of naked ladies. I didn’t really know about message boards. I didn’t read online reviews.

I know Quest 64 has a bad reputation, and I’ve read bits and pieces about it over the years. But really, the most I can tell you about why people dislike it is simply speculation, because I wasn’t there when it happened, and I might be the only person in the world who has written a retrospecitve on friggin’ Quest 64.

Continue reading Year of N64 – May: Quest 64

An errant wrench

The Year of Nintendo 64 is going well, and I’m staying rather interested in it, much to my surprise. So far, I’ve finished at least one N64 game a month, with good times and bad times along the way. It’s been fun, and also a learning experience.

Recently, I learned a very troubling thing.

I booted up Quest 64, my chosen game for May, and was surprised to see a notice immediately pop up that informed me that I’d need a controller pak (N64’s equivalent to a memory card) to save my game. No problem, I had a few of those back in the day. At least one had to be kicking around in my big gaming chest.

I found a controller pak, conveniently inserted into another controller, so I yanked it out and slapped it into the controller I was using. Another notice came on-screen, telling me that the data was corrupt and that I’d need to initialize the card before I could use it. Whatever. I don’t recall ever owning a game that saved to the controller pak, so all I’d be losing was corrupt data from rented games.

I formatted the card and started up the game. After about half an hour, it dawned on me that I should probably save and reset the game before I got too far, to see if the controller pak was still capable of saving data. I saved, reset, and loaded my game without fault. Good, so the formatting worked. I played for another couple hours and made substantial progress, getting at least a third of the way through the game.

I decided to play a little more a couple nights later, and was devastated (but not totally surprised) when the “Your data is corrupt. Please initialize the controller pak.” screen came up. All that time wasted. A quick search in the back of my third N64 controller came up empty. I haven’t done a thorough search for another pak yet, but I fear that the dead one might be the only one I own.

If I don’t possess a working controller pak, I’m still split on whether I want to go out and try to purchase one, or if it’s a better idea to just try to power through the game in a single sitting. Like I said, I made it pretty far in only a couple hours, and I think I could manage it. I’m not necessarily looking forward to such an endeavour, but I like Quest 64 enough that I don’t want to write it off, either.

The good news is that Quest 64 is (apparently) one of only two games that save to the controller pak exclusively, and I don’t own the other one, so this ~~won’t~~ shouldn’t be an issue in the future. I’ve got my fingers crossed. This has been quite the unexpected wrinkle in my grand scheme.

Year of N64 – April: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

I have two vivid memories in relation to Star Wars: Rogue Squadron.

The first is the Easter that came after I got the game. I don’t remember the circumstances under which I received the game proper (it was likely a Christmas gift), but I do remember that on that Easter, I got the Official Nintendo Player’s Guide for it as a gift. We also went to the Royal Fork Buffet for Easter dinner that year, and I brought the guide along with me so that I could study the game and how to earn the gold medals and unlockable ships. It was also the last time I can recall enjoying the Royal Fork Buffet. Maybe the food there used to be better, maybe I just didn’t know better becaue I was a child. We may never know the truth. Also we got the PC versions of Rayman and Earthworm Jim, but I was much less interested in those.

I want to say I chose to play Rogue Squadron in April because it and Easter have a permanent link in my mind, but really I’m not that clever. It’s April’s game of the month because that’s just how things rolled out. Pure coincidence.

Continue reading Year of N64 – April: Star Wars: Rogue Squadron

The Easter Candy Parade 2014

Let’s not shilly-shally around today. I like doing three-paragraph intros to my articles, but this one is the shallowest, most originality-free thing I’ve written in forever, so it doesn’t deserve an intro like that. Today, we’re talking about Easter.

Specifically, the absolute truckload of Easter-type goodies that my parents and in-laws gave us. Being creaky, old, mortgage-paying adults, we’re not really the kind of people you’d think would get so many Easter goodies, but our parents spoil the crap out of us and I’m thankful for that every day. Hooray!

You know, now that I think of it, I’m pretty sure that the last two Easters, when I’ve been moved out of my parents’ house, have been the most lucrative Easters since I turned 18. I can’t recall the Easters between then and marriage at all, so they must have been pretty tame.

See? Two bags full of chocolate and candy. We (and by “we” I mean “I” because I’m a big fatty) don’t need this many sweets at all, but we certainly won’t turn away a bunch of free candy. That would be stupid. If properly rationed, this could last us halfway through summer. It likely won’t, but it could.

Continue reading The Easter Candy Parade 2014