My 10 Favourite Things About Kirby Super Star

One of my most favoritest games, and indeed the Super Nintendo game I’ve gone back to the most often (with Super Mario World coming in close second), is Kirby Super Star. If you aren’t from North America, you may know it as “Kirby’s Fun Pak” or maybe even “Hoshi no Kirby Super Deluxe”, but it’s always been Kirby Super Star to me.

Released in 1996, I absorbed as much of the game as possible through Nintendo Power, and made damn sure that my parents knew that I had to own this game. It was featured in the August ’96 issue (#87), and I’m pretty sure that was the most excruciating month of my parents’ lives, because I was nothing short of obsessed with the game and the idea of getting it for my birthday. Unfortunately, being nine years old, I probably didn’t understand the concept of release dates, and it actually released almost two weeks after my birthday. I don’t recall exactly how or when I finally obtained it, but I’ll assume that I saved all the birthday money I got that year for it.

Anyway, I have a frothing love for this game that will never be quelled, and even though I have the updated DS port, Kirby Super Star Ultra, I’ve only ever played through it once and always go back to the SNES original to get my fix. Why? I don’t know. The remake is absolutely better, and even more jam-packed with Kirby goodness, but the original has a strange, nostalgic appeal that I simply cannot deny.

The greatest tragedy of this website here is that in the 10+ years I’ve been running it, I’ve never played proper tribute to the game. So that’s what I intend to do. I could simply go the modern route and do a video Let’s Play of it, but I’m kind of tired of doing those at the moment. Also I’ve lent my PS2 controller to a friend and would have to play with the keyboard. And you don’t want to hear me bangin’ on the keys throughout a whole video series, now do you? (I’ll probably do it one day but that day is not today.)

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One Hit Knock Out

It’s been a while since I uploaded any Let’s Play videos, and there are good reasons for that, but they’re not happy things so let’s skip to the point. During my hiatus, I decided to start up a new format. It’s not terribly original, but I’m going to do entire runs of smaller games in one video, and I’ve titled the project OHKO because it’s the most topical thing I could come up with that’s even sort of clever.

The first game in this series is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan, which is embedded below. So if you’ve got half an hour to kill and want to see me crawl my way to the end of the most pathetic Turtles game, it’s there for you. I’m really hoping the sequel is at least a little better.

How long will this project last? Who knows? Some things I start last for years, and some explode horrifically before they’ve even left the launch pad. But there’s one entry, and I’ve got another recorded and ready to go in the near future some time. And it’s not TMNT: Back From the Sewers. But that’s probably on the way at some point. What I’ve got ready to go is much more… ROM hacky.

Home Again

Talking Time regular Loki started up an Earthbound Let’s Play back in January. I was very excited about it because Earthbound (yes, that’s a reason), and because I couldn’t stand to wait the months between updates, I decided to take things into my own hands and just play the damn game myself.

It’s been some time since I last played Earthbound, and it’s one of those games that gets better every time I go back to it. This time around, it’s mostly because I’ve figured the game out. In all my previous runs, I always had a ton of trouble making any progress. It would always end with me grinding for levels because the enemies were too strong. Only now do I realize that it was only so hard because I was playing the wrong way; I never used to make good use of my character’s non-physical attacks.

The way I used to play, I would simply horde all my PP for bosses, which made the areas leading up to those bosses super-tough. The secret is apparently that if you just play through the game making liberal use of magic psychic powers, you’ll pretty much always be at the level you need to be, and while it can still be tough, it’s so much easier than trying to get by with just the Bash/Shoot command. Buying bottle rockets and bombs for Jeff is also a great strategy, and a perfect use for all the extra money that will pile up when you’re not constantly staying at hotels to heal up.

There’s another thing that’s really struck me about Earthbound this time around though, and it something a lot more subtle: Ness’ homesickness. If you spend too much time in-game without returning to Ness’ house or calling his mom, he will contract an invisible status effect which will cause him to waste turns in battle. It’s not something that’s ever announced at all; there’s no message and Ness’ sprite doesn’t change. You won’t know until Ness starts spending his turns in battle reminiscing about home.

Now, this might sound like a horrible thing to put in a video game. And you know, there was a time when I might have agreed with you. But now I can truly understand that it’s another essential thread woven into the beautiful tapestry celebrating life, love, and humanity that is Earthbound. See, I’ve been a little down over the past month, and I’ve really had no idea why. Life has had its ups and downs, but I like to think that I’m a pretty well-adjusted person and I’ve long since learned how to cope with the hardships that life can throw your way. Growing up and moving out hasn’t been easy, but I’m managing and I’m happy to be starting my own life. So when I spend a whole weekend laying on the couch feeling down and not doing any of the things I like, I kinda start to wonder what’s getting to me.

When Ness gets homesick in Earthbound, the quick fix is to use a chick (the baby bird kind) on him. Now, a chick is not an item you’re likely to have in your inventory. It’s one of the few time-sensitive items in the game, and if you carry one around for too long it will grow up into a fairly useless chicken. The chick will only stave off homesickness for a while though; to fully cure the condition, Ness has to talk to his mom. Whether by calling her on the phone or traveling all the way back home, talking to Ness’ mom will remove the homesickness, or reset the counter if Ness hasn’t actually become homesick yet.

I’ll be the first one to stand up and say that I don’t talk to my parents enough. There have been stretches since I moved out where I haven’t even talked to them on the phone for roughly two weeks. My mom talks to her mother almost every single day. When I lived at home, I thought that was crazy, and I knew that wasn’t a thing I was going to do. But I kinda get it now. Because I have been homesick. I never thought a video game status condition could imitate real life so closely, but when I was in the darkest of my days, just calling my mom immediately made me feel better. Spending the day at my parents’ house was even more comforting.

Of course, in real life homesickness doesn’t just have an =false state, so it’s been an ongoing battle for a while now. I’d never been homesick before I moved out, so it wasn’t something I’d ever considered that I could be, mostly because it just seems like something made up to write songs about and simulate humanity in fictional characters. But it’s real, and it’s a lot more affecting than I ever would have thought. In Earthbound, if you talk to a doctor when Ness is homesick, he says “What a sad look in your eyes… you, the boy in a red cap. You must be homesick. That’s nothing you need to be ashamed of. Anybody who is on a long trip will miss home. In this case, the best thing to do is to call home and hear your mom’s voice.” It’s advice that I never thought much of when I was nine years old, but I find it especially poignant now.

In the end, I think it’s good that I’ve had this experience though. The most obvious benefit is that it has taught me to make sure to keep my family close. It’s also nice to know that Earthbound has helped me to learn a little bit about myself, and that I’ve been able to forge an even deeper connection with one of my favourite video games. Maybe that sounds weird, but Earthbound is more than just a game. It’s an experience. It’s a whirlwind of emotion and nostalgia. It’s a reminder that sometimes the most important thing in the world can be the sound of your mother’s voice.

I sing in this video

Yes, that’s right. There is an audio recording of me singing in the video embedded below. You’ve been warned. Twice.

It’s been a long time since I’ve uploaded an FFV: The Ancient Cave video, and in that time I’ve pretty much forgotten what little I knew about the game. That leads to me almost being wiped on the first floor. I don’t know how long I’m going to continue banging my head against this one, but I’m not going to give up so easily!

In reality though, I mostly just recorded this because I felt like I should at least try to tie up some loose ends before I start up a new long-running series. I’ve been bitten by the Minecraft bug, and I feel like I should be documenting my attempts to defeat the Enderdragon on hardcore mode. So that’s going to happen eventually, but there’s going to be some more FFVAC before that comes around. Maybe even a little something else…

TE’s Top 12 Video Games of 2012

Another year has come and gone, and a big ol’ stack of videogames with it. I made a point in April to keep a list of every game I played throughout the year, and by the time July or so rolled around, I had decided to make up this list of the Top 12 Games of 2012. There are a few rules I decided to put in place for this list, though I ended up breaking them. Heck, there somehow managed to be 14 games in my top 12. Obviously the rules are more like suggestions.

Going in, I had decided that the games which would populate this list would have to be games that I started and finished in the year 2012. They would also have to be games that I’d never played previously. While most of the list fits this rule easily because they were released in 2012, I did make a couple exceptions. Technically there is one game that I did not beat on the list. However, I am right at the end of it, and I haven’t pulled the trigger on the ending sequence because there is more that I want to accomplish and I’ve heard whispers that ending the game ends the game for reals. Justified. The other exception is a pretty major one: a collection. I couldn’t help but add it because 2012 is the Year of the Video Game Collection and it’s by and large the best one I’ve seen so far. Also I did play through two of the games included on it this year. Good enough.

I think that earlier on in the selection process I had another stipulation on what could qualify, but I’m pretty sure that I broke it so many times that I can’t even remember what it was. Probably would have cut down the eligible games to under a dozen anyway. That said, let’s take a quick peek at the honorable mentions. These are games that either didn’t quite make the cut, or games that I really liked but didn’t even come close to finishing. They all deserve to have words written about them, but this is neither the time nor place. So let us look at their boxarts and dream about what could have been.

Now that we’ve got those losers out of the way, you can go ahead and check out what games earned the most of my affection and/or time last year. The list is exactly as Nintendo-centric as you might expect, but there are a couple games on here that will probably come as surprises. I’ll warn you now though, the total word count goes ever so slightly over 10,000 words, so if you’re in, be ready for the long haul. Maybe go get yourself a sandwich or a drink before you get started.

Continue reading TE’s Top 12 Video Games of 2012

The unpossible adventure

So despite taking myself out of the game for a while there, and having two unfinished series, I’ve started a new Let’s Play. This one stars Mickey Mouse and is about learning the alphabet.

Currently only the first video is up. I’m not sure what the update schedule is going to be like for this one. One a week seems like a little too long to drag this on for. Maybe one every couple of days.

100% completion

I bought the final issue of Nintendo Power this week, and began flipping through it an hour ago. You know how they say that when you die, your whole life flashes before your eyes? Well, I had a feeling that I can only describe like that: going through the pages, looking at the features on the history of Nintendo Power, scanning the included poster that features the cover of every issue, it was like looking back through a summary of my entire life. It was beautiful and chilling at the same time.

Is it sad that I can trace my life through a series of 285 magazines? I haven’t even read them all, but you could pick almost any point in my life and I could tell you what I was reading about in Nintendo Power at that time, within roughly two months. I haven’t been a subscriber for a few years now, but I always made a point to pick up an issue every few months for the sake of tradition, if nothing else. the worst part of it all is that a couple years ago I actually offloaded my entire NP collection, and now that the nostalgia bug is biting, it’s killing me that I don’t have them to go back to and reminisce with. I’d kill for a complete set, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t think it would be the same if it wasn’t my collection. Sure, pretty much every issue I had before volume 92 (Yes, I know that specifically. It’s the Shadows of the Empire issue. I got the Dash Rendar cover.) was in tatters, but I guess that’s part of what made them so special to me, weird as it may be. All the articles would be the same, but it just wouldn’t be the same. You know what I mean?

And now that I’m thinking about it, I actually have Amazon open in another tab, seeing how much people are charging for their old issues. As long as you’re not looking for mint copies, the average asking price seems to be around $3, which would cost me roughly… $855. Before Shipping. Yeah, I need to get away from Amazon. Now. Not to mention the time it would take to order each one individually… Also issue #1 doesn’t go for any less than $200. Drat. I certainly don’t have that kind of cash.

Anyway, reading this magazine has simultaneously made me sad and filled me with warm fuzzies. I kind of hate nostalgia because it affects me so strongly. I’m going to be mopey about the loss of Nintendo Power for weeks now. The worst part is that recent Nintendo Power hasn’t really been the Nintendo Power that I grew up with. It’s a completely different magazine than it was even midway through its run, but I still loved it dearly. Checking the mail every single day when a new month rolled around. Absorbing each and every word printed between the covers -twice- the day it finally arrived. Reading that three-part Secret of Mana feature over and over and over again. Poring over the maps and strategies so that I knew games inside and out before even playing them. There are a handful of games to this day that I’ve never played but vividly remember because I soaked in so much information about them via the pages of Nintendo Power. It was a huge part of my childhood life, but I suppose all good things have to come to an end eventually.

I’m just glad that they did up one final Nester comic for the last issue. It’s the best sendoff the magazine could have hoped for.

I’ve got a friend, her name is Boxcar

Guys, Wii U. Oh man, Wii U.

For a thing I wasn’t entirely sold on before launch, it has very handily dominated the last week-plus of my life. And I’m okay with that, because man is it ever fun. I’m not even talking about the games there! The system is just fun to play with. It’s a little on the slow side; everything takes a good five to ten seconds to load, but I don’t find it nearly as annoying as some. Just sitting on the main menu, with all the Miis milling about, it’s kinda hypnotizing. And then the Miiverse posts start popping up.

Miiverse is… What’s the best way to describe it? I finally get how people can get addicted to Twitter. It’s like Nintentwitter: made up of tens of thousands of Nintendo Power envelope artist wannabes and infinitely easier to parse than actual Twitter. It’s plenty of fun to sift through Miiverse posts to look at the funny screenshots and beautiful drawings that people have posted to it, and it’s very fulfilling to help people out who have posted about how they’re stuck somewhere in a game. Currently only Nintendo Land and New Super Mario Bros U are completely integrated, but once more developers make their games with it in mind, I think that Miiverse is going to be a real game-changer. I’ve been on Facebook for years now, but have never enjoyed the experience as much as I have with the last week with Miiverse.

Also of note is that the Wii U internet browser is excellent. Nothing beats an actual computer for surfing the webs, but as far as game console/handhelds go, the Wii U’s internets browser is leaps and bounds beyond the rest. The YouTube app that comes installed on the system is nowhere near as good as simply using the browser for your YouTubing. This comes as a great relief to me, as my TV’s YouTube app is garbage, and only really usable when linked up with my iPhone. Now I just boot up the Wii U and I’ve got a perfect YouTube experience on my gigantic television. There are fewer things that could make me happier.

Where the games are concerned… Mario U is pretty damn great. People have been referring to it as New Super Mario World, but it’s not quite that good. If you’re in it for the single-player experience, Super Mario World or even Super Talking Time Bros 2 will leave you more fulfilled. Fortunately, Mario U features a multiplayer experience that is almost completely unique and an absolute blast. Yes, it’s essentially the same as New Super Mario Bros Wii, but it’s bigger, better, and in glorious HD.

I haven’t given Darksiders 2 a spin yet, because I intend to complete ZombiU first. ZombiU is an intricate game that deserves a whole post to itself, so that’s what I’m going to do somewhere down the line.

Nintendo Land may be is the best pack-in game ever. In a completely unexpected twist, it’s the game I’ve spent the most time with by far. It’s not at all the tired mini-game collection I assumed it would be. It’s an essential party game for Nintendo fans, and has an impressively robust single-player experience tucked away in there to boot. It’s already provided two weekends of riotous three-player fun, and I look forward to spending much more time in Nintendo Land, the new Funnest Place on Earth. Full review to follow on this one, because there’s so much there!

I only got to play a little bit of Sonic and All-Stars Racing Transformed, but my brother stands firm that it’s better than Mario Kart. Not as strong a statement as it might have been years ago, because Mario Kart is starting to get a little long in the tooth, but a pretty clear indication of quality no less. I liked what I saw, and the inclusion of Wreck-It Ralph as a playable character is simultaneously pleasing and perplexing. Ralph is the only element of his movie in the game, despite the fact that he never really drove in the movie. Oh well. It seems like a solid game, and an excellent candidate for an Xmas gift.

For some reason that I cannot explain, Little Inferno has wiggled its way into my head and won’t get out. I don’t think it’d be something I would get a lot of use out of, and the $15 price tag is awfully steep for a creepy fireplace simulator. Oh well. I’m sure I’ll get over it eventually. As soon as a more enticing eShop game comes along, I think. Hopefully there’s some new software available this Thursday. It was nice that Wii U launched with a shop at all, but it’s nowhere as great as the bounty of Virtual Console games that OG Wii had available on launch day.

I guess that’s all for today. I really think I’d get more enjoyment from actually playing with my new toy than writing about it, so I’mma go do that now. Ciao.