Articles – Page 12

Top 7: Virtual Console Wishlist

It’s now nearing the end of November, and snow has finally hit the ground in ol’ Winnipeg, and that means that over here at Torrential Equilibrium, we’re starting to get into the Christmas mood. It’s always a wonderful time of year, filled with delicious feasts and candy, hours upon hours spent dreaming about gifts, and just generally hanging out with family and friends and having a good time.

During the last couple years, we’ve been on the fence about the whole secularization of Christmas deal, but spending two holiday seasons in retail has proven that while people talk an admirable game when it comes to what they think Christmas is all about, it’s really just about consumerism in the end. And to that end, we’ve decided just to accept it, as one little website can’t even hope to make even the slightest ripple of change. But it’s okay. Sometimes going along for the ride has its benefits. Like being able to write articles about stuff one hopes to acquire during the season.

This particular list has a very specific focus: what Virtual Console games we’d like to see by the end of the year. Last year, Christmas fell on a Monday, and Nintendo offered a delicious bounty of AAA titles (Super Mario Bros, Super Castlevania IV, Street Fighter II, ToeJam & Earl, and R-Type) for the Virtual Console. The odds that they can top that lineup in one week are slim, so rather than say it’s a list of games we want to see on Christmas Eve, we’re saying it’s a list of what we want by 2008.

Now that our mission is stated, we’ll take a second to explain a couple generalities of our picks. First off, we’ve picked three NES games and two games each from the Super NES and N64. Genesis, TG16 and NeoGeo were omitted because frankly, we haven’t played many – if any at all – games for those consoles outside what’s already been offered on the Virtual Console service. Secondly, they may not all be super high quality, but they’ve all got a certain flair that makes them appealing to us, at least. Sometimes it’s a franchise bias, sometimes it’s a company bias, but mostly it’s rosy nostalgia glasses. Lastly, we’re only choosing from games released in North America to help keep the list down to seven titles. If we were to delve into imports, this list could go on forever and a day.

GI JOE

GI Joe is a game that we spent many, many hours on in our youth. In fact, it’s probably within our top ten NES games where time played is the deciding factor. We still quite enjoy booting this one up in an emulator now and then, just to see if we can finally get past that stupid desert level. It hasn’t happened yet.

In any case, we still really enjoy this game, even though the difficulty level is particularly brutal. It’s usually pretty fair though, and cheap deaths aren’t as common as in, say, the Legend of Kage. GI Joe is a particularly solid platform shooter, and is one of the earliest games we can recall where your character choice makes a difference. There were five Joes to choose from, Duke, Rock ‘n Roll, Blizzard, Captain Grid-Iron, and Snake-Eyes. Each mission starts by selecting a team of three, but really, it was just a matter of which other two Joes you’d be teaming up with Snake-Eyes. Who wouldn’t pick Snake-Eyes?

Levels were pretty straightforward, generally consisting of getting the Joes from point A to point B, and then facing a soul-crushingly difficult boss. On occasion, there are a couple levels where there are a set number of bombs to find and diffuse before exiting the area to face the boss. These were often far more difficult than the regular stages, because the stages were huge, and littered with secret paths, some that had to be found to get to a bomb. Some may call it cheap, but if we recall correctly, the hidden paths that led to bombs were usually more obvious than the ones that just hid power-ups.

The last thing we feel we need to note is that the Joes can commandeer several Cobra vehicles. The Cobra Copter was found early in the game and obviously, provided the ability to fly and shoot the crap out of everything. The Cobra Buzz Boar was… a big buzzsaw. It rode along walls, and all we really remember it for is that one boss consisted of a battle against three of these mofos. It was a very common point of frustration. And then there was the cobra Pogo, which we frankly don’t remember using much. But it bounced real well and had a triple shot, so we suppose it was probably quite useful. Perhaps it’s just that we never got that far very often.

To say that GI Joe will definitely show up on the Virtual Console is a little premature. Whoever has the licensing rights to the new Sigma 6 cartoon obviously hates GI Joe (read: Sigma 6 is really bad), so it’s hard to say whether they’d let this quality NES game see the light of digital distribution. We can only hope, though, as we firmly believe that this game is still good, and it’s not just our fond memories for the title talking. We just hope Nintendo doesn’t shaft us with the comparably weaksauce Capcom title GI Joe: The Atlantis Factor.

Vice: Project Doom

Another one of the few NES games we spent many an hour on back in the day. Vice: Project Doom is a game that as far as we can tell, went largely unnoticed by the general public. We received it as a random gift, back in the days when we didn’t know which games to ask for so our parents just bought whichever ones caught their eye. There were a couple stinkers, but Vice was a huge winner.

First off, Vice: Project Doom is your standard side-scroller, very similar to Ninja Gaiden. The major difference in the side-scrolling gameplay is that you’ve got three weapons to choose from at any time; a sword, a gun and grenades. Oh, and also there are driving levels that play like a souped-up Spy Hunter. The game actually starts with one of these. And before we forget, there are a couple of first-person shooting levels. We never enjoyed these levels much, but the rest of the game is totally solid. There’s even cutscenes and a complicated story, though it’s not told very well, and we stopped trying to make sense of it after level two.

As opposed to GI Joe, it’s not an incredibly difficult game. There are some tough jumps (particularly in the jungle level), and the shooting levels are sometimes a little too full of enemies, but overall it’s very beatable. Which is sad because we’ve never actually gotten to the end. Made it to the last boss fight once recently, but couldn’t manage to win. We can’t quite remember if there are unlimited continues or not, but considering that fact that we usually made it pretty far into the game, and we remember dying a lot, there must have been. Games without unlimited continues are cruel.

So is there a chance of Vice showing up on the Virtual Console? We think sure, why not? In fact, Mark Bozon, an editor at IGN, also remembers and loves this game, and has been doing everything in his power to convince Sega and Nintendo to get it out there on the VC. We think that despite the fact that the last time we heard about the campaign (April), Nintendo wasn’t intending to bring it out, that it’s got a pretty good chance. It’s an excellent platformer, and highly competent Spy Hunter clone and shooter. There are certainly far more obscure titles on the service as we write this, so it’s not unlikely at all. As with pretty much any Virtual Console release, it’s just a matter of time.

Nightshade

While the rest of the world was enjoying the secret of Monkey Island, its sequel, and all sorts of other wonderful PC adventure games, this is the closest we got to the genre until we were introduced to Space Quest IV a couple years later. Nightshade isn’t exactly the greatest of adventure games (the lack of a mouse in a point-and-click being the most obvious issue), it was enough to get us into the genre, and by the time we started playing PC adventures, we had a pretty good idea what was going on.

Nightshade is the best and only adventure game we’ve played on the NES. Though given how much we still enjoy it, we’re tempted to say that it would still be our favourite even if we had played any others. The story is light, being about a crime boss taking over Metro City and one guy going out to stop him, but unlike other games in the genre, the story is actually the least interesting part of the game. Basic adventure gameplay rules apply, essentially checking stuff, finding items, and using those items on other things. The adventuring part is much like Sam & Max in that it’s only really difficult because the items are often used in places you’d never expect. There are timed puzzles too, like at the beginning of the game, Nightshade tied up in a chair with a bomb ticking at his feet, and these help to liven up the pace of the game.

The only part of that game that really hits a sour note is that there is combat. Combat that isn’t executed overly well. We can’t think of anything in particular to liken it to, but we’ve never found that the fighting system worked too well. Or maybe the developers just made the enemies too hard, we’re not sure. In any case, it’s probably the only reason we’ve never made it to the end of the game. There are plenty of enemies, though the bulk of them are avoidable, with the exception of the bosses, of course.

As with most great adventure games, or at least, every one we’ve ever enjoyed, Nightshade is full of humour. The story takes kind of a back seat, but the writing is still actually really impressive for a NES game. Most of the citizens have multiple lines of dialogue, and a lot of those lines are one-liners. Being that there aren’t a ton of people to converse with, Nightshade also spews out plenty of wit when examining objects or using things. Why any games strive to be serious when comedy is so enjoyable is far beyond out grasp.

Seeing Nightshade on the Virtual Console seems like all but a pipe dream. It was never popular, but again, obscurity shouldn’t be too much of a factor. More likely to impede its induction is that fact that it isn’t really a niche title either. Vice: Project Doom actually has a small following, but we don’t think anyone outside one guy we hung out with as a kid and the dude who wrote up the Wikipedia page even knows this game exists. Licensing issues shouldn’t be too bad, as Beam Software does still exist as Krome Studios Melboure. However, it’s probably not going to happen. If games like Shadowgate and Déjà Vu start showing up on the VC, then our hopes will be lifted, but until then, all we can do is emulate illegally.

Earthbound

Be honest now, who didn’t see this one coming? Obviously Earthbound is one of the games with huge demand of Virtual Console representation. The only problem with it? Nintendo of America hates Earthbound fans. We won’t complain too much though, because Nintendo of Europe hates Earthbound fans even more.

The original game in the series, Mother was released on the NES many ages ago, translated for North American release, but then scrapped at the last moment. Earthbound was eventually released over here, but sold far less than expected, and never made it to Europe. The most recent game in the series, Mother 3 (on the Game Boy Advance), hasn’t even been considered for release outside of Japan. Nintendo of America has even flat-out said “Nope, we ain’t doin’ it. Fuck you guys.” That may be paraphrased, but the idea is the same.

Anywho, there’s more to Earthbound than the fact that it’s the only game in a wonderful series we’ve ever gotten out of Nintendo. First off, it’s an RPG by Nintendo, which in itself is exceptionally rare. And while it may play exactly like Dragon Quest, it’s still got plenty of unique features to stand on. First off, it’s set in modern times instead of the usual bland medieval fantasy setting. This alone is refreshing enough, but it’s also got a thick coat of humour, and as we made clear when talking about Nightshade, we love humour. Everything about the game is charmingly oddball, and it’s just a shame we never got to see the rest of the Mother games.

From the blue-loving Happy Happy cultists to the fact that one of the main characters is named Poo, everything about Earthbound is wonderful. But as great as it is, it’s also a bit confusing at times. It’s one of those games where you actually have to pay attention to what people are saying. Yeah, one of those titles that was made before companies started highlighting the important words with different colours. To tat end, the game originally came packaged with the official Nintendo player’s guide. When we rented the game, Blockbuster courteously made sure to provide said guide as well, but that obviously won’t be so easy when it comes to the Virtual Console.

So what can Nintendo do? The Wii doesn’t currently have any multitasking abilities, so it’s not like they can put the guide on a separate channel. They could provide a digitized version instead of the half-assed manual they stick with every game, and since it’s accessible in-game, it’s totally possible. We don’t expect to see that level of devotion though. For any other game series, maybe, but to reiterate, Nintendo hates Earthbound fans. The game will be released on Virtual Console eventually though, that much is guaranteed. We just hope that NoA decides to put it on there before the year 2011.

Secret of Evermore

Secret of Evermore is a huge anomaly in the world of video games. Probably for the best though. It’s a game by Squaresoft that was never released in Japan. Yeah. totally nuts. But that part aside, we really enjoyed the game. Apparently a spin-off of the Secret of Mana series, the game play essentially the same, with a similar combat system, and Mana’s ring menus. The big differences between Evermore and Mana are in the settings and the magic system.

Most RPGS, traditional, action or otherwise, are set in similar worlds. They’re always placed in a kind of generic fantasy setting. Earthbound was a nice departure from that mold, and Secret of Evermore also changes things up a bit. The story is based on time travel, and since the opening sequence is specifically set in the USA, the game obviously draws its inspiration for locations from human history. In all, there are four time periods; a caveman world, a Rome-/Egypt-based world, a medieval world, and a future world. Not really the most unique locales, but they certainly add a level of variety you don’t often get in this kind of game.

The magic system is even better, possibly because it’s not magic at all. Instead of some mystical force with which your character uses to light enemies on fire and whatnot, you’re granted the power of alchemy. So instead of leveling up and learning new spells, the main chracter learns new alchemy recipes from people and books. Instead of a given number of magic points to use, he has to forage the landscape (with the help of his dog) for materials to use for each recipe. Some materials can also be bought from shops scattered throughout the lands. It all sounds a bit more complex than necessary, but in reality, it works very well and provides a great number of abilities and choices to the main character, as opposed to a meager list of less than a dozen spells.

Being a Secret of Mana clone, as far as basic gameplay goes, Secret of Evermore works really well. This was of course, back in the day when the Mana series didn’t get a little worse with each installment. The basic combat systems are very similar if not the exact same, and the only real step back is that it’s only a single player game. We’ve spent a lot of good time playing Secret of Mana with others, and it’s just a shame that the fun can’t really be shared in Evermore. The plot only calls for one main character though, so it is an understandable loss. A second player could conceivably control the boy’s dog, but the two must be used separately at times, and having to wait for another player to finish a solo part of the game could really kill the multiplayer energy. And having to sniff out everything for the other player would be tedious as Hell.

Square-Enix hasn’t put forth a lot of support for the Virtual Console yet, but the fact that their first game on the service was Actraiser and not a Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest title really speaks to Evermore’s chances of being added. Actraiser was in the exact same boat: not extremely popular, but an undeniably solid game that has enough of a fanbase to make the company some money. We know Evermore doesn’t have the following of SE’s bigger franchises, but it’s still a high quality game and should not be overlooked.

Super Smash Bros

Super Smash Bros Brawl is wihtout a doubt the most anticipated Wii game there has been since its announcement. It will probably be the best selling game on the Wii, much like Melee is for the GameCube. Nintendo went and broke our hearts when they pushed the release date back from December 4th to February 10th. To make up for this injustice (besides making sure Brawl is the best game it can be), Nintendo should give us the original Smash Bros to make up for it.

By this point, everyone must have an idea of what Super Smash Bros is all about. It’s probably not quite as far-reaching as Guitar Hero, but it has most certainly garnered a gigantic fanbase. Very few gamers will deny the majesty that is the Smash Bros series, and the ones who do simply hate fun. Also they murder puppies.

For the few who don’t know what Smash is, it’s a fighting game that stars a handful of Nintendo’s most popular mascot characters, from Mario to Pikachu to Fox McCloud. The difference between Smash and other fighters is that Smash is totally accessible to anyone. Players don’t need to learn complex button combinations or figure out the best way to chain attack together. Combos are mostly nonexistent and special moves can all be performed with a single button. It’s this simplicity that draws in the casual crowd, and the fact that it’s incredibly fun that brings in the core gamers.

But with Melee in pretty much every home that has a Wii or GameCube and Brawl on the way, do people really want to play the bare-bones original? Why not? The game itself holds up very well, and being able to play it with a GC controller instead of the N64 monstrosity would brighten more than a few people’s days. Frankly, we’re looking forward to it because despite all the other additions, we vastly prefer the original stages to those in Melee. Don’t know why, but that’s just the way it is. Also, we feel that the first game’s version of the single-player “Classic Mode” is a little more satisfying than Melee’s.

Super Smash Bros is definitely going to show up on the Virtual Console soon. Ideally, we’ll see this on December 3rd to fill in for the delayed Super Smash Bros Brawl, but it’s more likely that Nintendo will hold onto it until the end of January to hype the release of Brawl. It’s coming either way, but here’s hoping that we get it sooner than later. If it were released now, we’d be playing it for two and a half months to come, but if they put it out right before Brawl, we’ll all forget about it come the new game’s release. But Nintendo doesn’t care, because either way, they’ll be making money hand over fist. We’re just saying it would make a nice Christmas gift is all.

Banjo-Kazooie

The last game on our list is probably the most controversial. The bulk of the other games that people wouldn’t ask for are that way because they’re obscure and most wouldn’t even know what they are. Banjo-Kazooie, on the other hand, has a very polarizing effect on people. Half the gaming population love it, finding it to be a fantastic adventure with plenty to do, a hilarious cast of characters, and a wonderful soundtrack. The other half see it as a dreadful collect-a-thon. The fact of the matter, is that both sides are right.

Banjo-Kazooie is the first in a long line of Super Mario 64 imitators, only instead of challenging, gameplay related objectives, the majority of the game revolves around collecting various widgets. Or, at least, that’s what the nay-sayers would tell you. They’re right, there is a lot of collecting, but most of it does require a bit of skill, and let’s not forget that it encourages exploring. Searching every corner or a map just to search every corner of the map is all well and good, but having something there to find, be it a major item or just some ammo, certainly makes the trip more worth it.

The nice thing about Banjo-Kazooie is that it’s not as bad as people say. Banjo-Tooie and spiritual sequel Donkey Kong 64 were both far more mini-game oriented as far as challenges go, but Banjo-Kazooie’s rewards are more dedicated to the explorers and the platformers. It features a lot more actual gameplay without substituting mini-games where the developers couldn’t think up any more level-based challenges. This isn’t to say that there isn’t the odd mini-game, but they’re far more spread out, and feel less tedious as a result.

Being a Rare game, there’s also a good amount of humour in Banjo-Kazooie. for the most part, it’s rather blunt, with characters blatantly making fun of each other, but there are a few points where the game can produce a LOL or two. Another attribute that was very common in Rare games at the time was that some female characters were, well, vigorously endowed. It’s not really a point that will make anyone sway either way, but while it’s not overly apparent in BK, in later titles it just gets shameless. All of that pretty much culminates into Conker’s Bad Fur Day, which is another game we’d like to see on the VC, but that’s just not going to happen.

Banjo-Kazooie itself is very questionable as far as whether it will ever be a Virtual Console club member. The obvious roadblock is that Microsoft now owns Rare, and most companies won’t help to make games available for the competition’s systems. The only reason we even suggest it is because despite this little issue, Rare has been and is continuing to support Nintendo’s handheld scene. If Banjo-Kazooie were to show up on Virtual Console, Rare would just be raking in free money, as there’s obviously not much work going into these releases other than the lame manuals and making sure the emulation works right. At $10 a pop, any of those minor costs would be recouped within a day’s time.

Elebits – Game review on the half-ass

When the Wii Remote was first unveiled, people mostly reacted with disgust, myself included. Of course, it grew on me rather quickly, but other people needed more convincing. Now, a few months after the console made its debut, the masses have clearly warmed up to the “Wiimote” and its unusual method of game playing. The Wii has been a smashing success, and a big part of that is due to the simple and effective controller.

So what’s the magic behind the Wii Remote that makes it more desirable than a regular controller, much like a delicious, fresh chocolate cake is more desirable than week-old brussels sprouts? I’m thinking for most people that it’s because they can play tennis and bowling without the need to remember sixteen-plus buttons. Yeah, that sounds about right. But today, I’m interested in a feature of the Remote that’s more of a draw to real gamers than the people that only pick up a controller when everyone else is doing it. I’m talking about its awesome ability to play first-person shooters.

The Wii launched with at least two FPS games, and a couple more were released not too long after. Three months later, I’d still never tried one, despite the fact that I really wanted to see how well the Wii Remote actually worked with shooters. Not long ago, my youngest brother suggested renting the quirky Konami title, Elebits, and wanting to give it a spin myself, I figured that it couldn’t possibly hurt. So I rented it, and the rest is history. History what is about to be explained!

Now I guess the review of Elebits is really the main focus here, but I really want to get to this pointer thing right away, because it really knocked my socks off. Like I said in the last paragraph there, I’d never really played a Wii shooter. Sure, Rayman Raving Rabbids has shooting levels, but they’re on-rails, and you never do much more than aim. They’re fun, but you can’t even turn the camera, so you don’t get the feel of truly playing a shooter. Even though the Wiimote’s pointing capabilities were really touted for Zelda: Twilight Princess, and you do a lot of arrow-shooting in that particular entry in the series, it still didn’t play like an FPS would.

With all that said, when my brother and I arrived home, we popped in the Elebits disc and went right into it. It didn’t strike me right away, but I didn’t even have to figure out the intricacies of the controls. It just happened. Moving, aiming, turning; it was all so natural that I was kicking major ass right from the start. Every other controller, from the N64 beast to the Dualshock to the XBox controller, even mouse and keyboard, required some kind of learning curve when it came to FPS games. With the Wii Remote though, I pretty much turned on the game and was playing flawlessly. I didn’t even realize that I had hopped in so seamlessly until I’d taken the game back, and that was when I started getting really excited about Metroid Prime 3.

And that pretty much takes care of the section of the review that explains how well the controls work. But what about the game itself? What is Elebits all about? Is it any good? Did I waste my time and money on the venture? Continue reading to find all those answers and more! By the way, that was a pretty damned good intro, don’t you think?

So Elebits. If you’ve been on the internet and looked it up even just a little, you’ve probably seen that it’s gotten really mixed reactions from the public. And I can definitely see why. It’s a rather odd game, and the common comparison is that it’s like a shooter version of Katamari Damacy. Now that right there is gonna confuse the fuck out of anyone who’s never so much as heard more than the title of the game, so I guess I owe an explaination.Both games are about collecting things. You travel around a small area and pick up stuff, and once you’ve filled a certain quota, the area expands and you can continue collecting more junk in new places. The big difference is that in Katamari Damacy, you collect everything with a really sticky ball, and in Elebits, you’re hunting down tiny little creatures and sucking them up into an energy gun. Because it’s so overdone (see every other Elebits review), I’ll try to refrain from making comparisons to Katamari where possible. Sometimes it just makes sense.

The game’s plot is a bit dumb and rather unnecessary (unlike that in Katamari, which is extremely dumb, and irrefutably necessary), with the little elebits being the source of all power on the planet. One day a really big bolt of lightning hits and the Elebits go nuts, causing a worldwide blackout. Your job is to round up as many as you can in hopes of restoring power to whateverland. Yeah, I’d rather just play the game than hear an explanation of why I’m playing.

SO! Now that we’ve got a task, how is it accomplished? After some malarkey about the Capture Gun, you’re dropped into level one, which just happens to be your room. Of course, it’s not your room per se, but rather your character’s room. But I guess you’d probably figured out that much. If the Wii was magical enough to replicate your room in a game on it’s own, I think it would have been that machine people were getting shot over instead of the PS3 (Which is still confusing. Why would you want that overpriced hunk of scrap?).

The idea of the game is to find elebits. Obviously. But it’s not so simple. Whilst some elly-bits are in fact just taking a nap out in the open, the most of them are hiding in or behind the various objects scattered around the environment. That’s where your capture gun’s secondary function as a junk-mover come in handy. Just aim the gun at an object, and BAM you can lift it into the air with a magical beam of death. Or magic perhaps. Anyway, from that point, you can do what you wish with the object. Flip it around some, smash it against other stuff (physics!), or toss it across the room. Either way, you’ll likely have found some elebits in or behind it. Once you shoot enough of the little bastards (and thus increase your “wattage”), the lights will turn on, and after picking up even more, you’ll have cleared the stage.

But of course it’s not just that easy. No, of course not. As you may have expected, on each and every stage, you’re saddled with a time limit, no matter how outrageous the wattage requirement may be. And really, that’s not a big problem. Most stages give you more than ample time to find enough elebits to reach your target, but then the letter grades come into play. Yep, after every stage, you get a rank, from C to S (maybe there’s lower, but I never scored that poorly). And you just know that passing stages by the hair in your nose won’t rake in those magnificent S ranks. Nope, you gotta reach your target real quick-like and go far above and beyond it. But it’s all worth it when you see those shiny golden esses smiling back at you.

The time limit isn’t even the biggest obstacle to overcome. Remember how I said you can lift stuff with your gun-beam dealie? Well turns out it can only lift so much without a li’l boost. So you need to collect special power elebits to increase its lifty power. But those elebits are hiding in appliances what must be turned on! And let’s remember for a second here that the whole whatever is blacked out. Yup. So the basic rigamarole in a stage goes like this: get normal elebits for watts, enough watts activate appliances, use appliances to flush out power elebits, power up gun by getting those power elebits, repeat. The best part is that some appliances are more tricky to use than just pressing the “ON” switch. The oven, for example, requires you to put in a frozen chicken and then let said chicken cook before the little ele-bastards pop out all over the place.

The first few levels are easy, and even quite fun with these simple rules, and if the game stayed the same until the end, then I may have finished it. But of course, in the interest of “keeping it fresh” new problems are introduced regularly. First you get this horrible restriction on breaking things. It’s annoying, but easy enough to get around, because you just have to make sure to set breakable things down gingerly instead of flinging them into the nearest wall. The second limit they impose on you is the really stupid noise restriction. It’s an even worse problem, because the game decides what is and isn’t noisy quite arbitrarily, and you’ll often get docked points for dropping a tissue, while pushing over a bookshelf and all its contents may not even register on the meter. Pain in the ass is all it is. I’ve unjustly failed many a mission because of it.

There are a wide variety of elebits to capture. As I mentioned, you’ve got the regular elebits who come in different colors and have different abilities, like being able to warp around or fly. The power elebits don’t really require more explanation than I gave earlier. Then you’ve got the pain-in-the-ass black elebits, who can’t be captured, and are just there to screw you over and break your capture gun. There are even huge black ones that show up when you’ve made too much of a mess, and they actively seek you out to punish you for your slovenly ways. Pink elebits come three to a level, two are hidden and one appears if you clear a certain requirement, and if you get them, you’ll open up new game modes for each level (Score Attack, Eternal, and Challenge modes).

Worst of all are the boss elebits. I mean, I only got far enough to have to face off with one of them, but he was a real jerk, so I assume the rest are no better. In any case, the one boss I fought would split into smaller versions of himself, which would hide away. Once you found one, you’d blast it to destroy a barrier around it, and then it would zoom right the fuck away. Of course, as you do better, the little copies get smaller, faster, and harder to shoot, and it really becomes troublesome. It wasn’t really hard, but it was rather annoying.

Other than the main game, there are lots of neat little things to dick around with that would have sold the game to me if the rules didn’t get so dumb in the story mode. For one, you’ve got plenty of collections to gawk at, an elebit room and object viewer to just scratch the surface. There’s also some game modifiers that you can enable once you clear enough challenge missions, but the ones I saw just make the game harder and more annoying, so they weren’t really a desirable bonus. Of course, there’s multiplayer too, and it’s essentially just playing the regular stages with more than one player, but rather than trying to pass the stage, it’s just a race to see who can get the most elebits. It’s kind of neat that everyone plays on one screen, and the camera control is either designated to one player, or will switch around to different players randomly. At least, it works well with only two people. I imagine that a four-player game might get a little cluttered.

What might be the most notable facet of Elebits is that it’s the first actual game to make use of the WiiConnect24 feature. You can modify any stage you’ve completed and then anyone on your friends list can give the stage a download and vice versa. You can also share screenshots (which you can take in-game) with others, and I think there’s some other use for them, but nobody on my friends list has either played Elebits or created any levels, so I didn’t really get a chance to make use of the feature. I didn’t really even bother creating any of my own stages, to tell the truth.

The graphics and sound don’t really stick out at all, but then again, why would they? Elebits is a first-generation Wii game, so it’s obviously not gonna use all the console’s power. There’s also the fact that the graphics are relatively simple (maybe not Katamari simple), so it’s not like they really could have improved without completely changing the art direction. The music is peppy but ultimately forgettable, though the various elebit squeaks are always endearing. I don’t think I need to explain again how awesomely the controls work. Any real issues (like doors that won’t stay open) are with the game itself, and not at all at the fault of the control configuration.

Overall, Elebits is a solid game. For the most part anyway. It brings a good idea to the table, but it quickly gets bogged down by irritating rules and way too much clutter (the game is essentially about making a big mess, after all). I can’t say that I wholeheartedly recommend it. At least not for full price. After a year or so, when it’s hopefully gone down to maybe like $20, then I could see picking it up. As it stands though, Elebits is really just a renter. Maybe twice if you really want to get everything you can from it. There’s a lot of crap to collect (though to be fair, it’s all entirely optional). I guess if I need to letter grade it for you guys too lazy to read the whole review, I’s say it’s probably a C+ at best. And a high one at that. I just can’t justify a B of any sort for this one, because I didn’t even play halfway through the game, and that alone should say enough.

The 2007 Christmas Gift Roundup

You might not have ever noticed, but back in January of last year, I never actually posted a big ol’ rundown of all the assorted junk I got for Christmas. I guess the main reason is that I felt a little bad about the sheer volume of stuff I receive for the holiday, despite the fact that I’m getting into my adult years. A 20-year old probably shouldn’t get quite as much as I did that year, and it seemed wrong for me to go and show off everything.

This year I had originally planned to keep the once-yearly feature buried, but then I saw Matt’s gift roundup on the X-Entertainment blog, and the fact that he got way more stuff than I did made me think that oh, maybe I’m not quite as spoiled as I thought. Given, I don’t have like a hundred siblings, but the point stands. My parents also had a little extra scratch this year, and besides renovating half the house, they also used it to shower us and themseves in Christmas gifts. And that’s basically why I’m running this feature right now, as late as it my be.

Now that the whole semi-related intro groundwork business is laid out I suppose it’s time we get to the down and dirty of this article here: the goodies. Though I’d like to remind you that while I use the term “good”, I can predict that some will groan at at least a few entries on the list. Oh, also like the X-E rundown, this will be somewhat more abbreviated than lists of years past. These kinds of things don’t really deserve two pages.

Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker : One of my fondest memories of classic Game Boy games is the original Dragon Quest Monsters. I spent weeks worth of time playing that games, and still didn’t even come close to finishing it. It was a hard freakin’ game, what can I say? I skipped the second (and third, apparently) installment of the series, but I figured that when they announced a DS sequel that I’d give it a spin, and it’s nearly exactly how I remember it. The idea of the game is obviously a mix between Pokémon and Dragon Quest, and I really can’t decide what franchise I prefer. Pokémon is 90% strategy-based, while DQM is pretty much an “accept button” masher, but offers a far more obsessive-compulsive breeding system. Though with the default battle option being autobattle, it’s nice to sit back and watch your team just massacre everyone. In any case, while it’s very DQ in the way that it demands a lot of level-grinding, I still love it.

Silent Hill Origins : Quite possibly my most longed-for PSP game ever, Silent Hill Origins is a bit of a mixed bag. I haven’t played too far into it as of yet (I’m saving it for when I finish with DQM), but I really like what I’ve played through. On the positive side, the atmosphere is perfect, being completely creepy and one of the the few horror-based franchises that actually frightens me. The less positive being that every weapon you pick up is breakable. And they break fast. It’s not a huge issue, because punching enemies to death works just fine (it just takes a little longer), and if you’re up against more than one enemy at a time, it doesn’t matter what kind of weapon you’re carrying: you will be murdered. Also, Harry would breathe heavily after running for a while in the original Silent Hill, which was a neat touch, but protagonist-man-whose-name-I’ve- currently-forgotten can actually only run for a while before he needs to breathe out or down an energy drink. I hate realism in games because it’s almost always inconvenient. All in all though, it delivers more than enough to be worth it, and I think I’ll really enjoy it once I sit down and give it more than an hour.

Futurama: Bender’s Big Score : Time has done well to Futurama. It may not be exactly what I was hoping for in a fifth season, but the first of however many of these “movies” they’re making sets a pretty good standard. I’ve watched it twice now, which is a lot, considering that I’ve almost never seen a movie twice in such a short span of time. The plot deals with a lot of time travel, which can cause some pretty perplexing plot holes, but as far as I care, the writing staff did a great job avoiding that kind of stuff and workied it out pretty well. One thing I noticed about Futurama over the course of it’s life is that it went from being just about funny to being funny and really fleshing out the characters and their relationships with each other. Bender’s Big Score continues down that road, albeit maybe not as much as the fourth season did, but there’s a good amount of sincerity along with the humour. The only thing I didn’t like is that they referenced like 95% of the old episodes, which is maybe a little too much. Self-referential humour is good and all, but freshness is good too.

Superbad : I saw a brief bit of this movie shortly after it came to DVD (“Do you know how many foods are shaped like dicks? All the good ones!”), and I knew that I had to own it. I do not regret this decision, but I also disagree with all the hype surrounding it. Maybe I just missed something, but I don’t think it’s quite as holy as the general consensus would like you to think. It’s a great movie, yes. It’s hilarious, no doubt. I just don’t really think it’s going to redefine any genres. Then again, I have yet to break into the second disc, which contains extras that might shine some light on exactly why I should think it’s pure genius. So we’ll leave the final word open for now, but it is totally worth buying.

Killswitch Engage – The End of Heartache : I was introduced to Killswitch Engage back in… 04 maybe? Anyway, they had a song on the Resident Evil: Apocalypse soundtrack, and it was one of the standout tracks on the disc (though most of them are pretty good). I downloaded like two more songs to see more of what they were like, and I was kinda apathetic about it all. Their latest single, “My Curse”, in in Guitar Hero 3, and that’s when I decided to give them another shot. I got The End of Heartache for Christmas, and I’m thinking maybe I should go and pick up their two other CDs. I’m not much of a metal connoisseur, so I can’t really say much about them, but I like Killswitch Engage.

HIM – Venus Doom : Yeah, I’m still listening to HIM. A lot of bands I’ll listen to obsessively for a while and then kind of forget about, but HIM is one of the groups with staying power. Their latest offering is quite good. I’ve only had it on in the background while I play video games, so I haven’t really sat down just to listen to it and absorb it, but I do realy like it. Maybe even a bit more than Dark Light, which I was ever so slightly disappointed with. I guess the reason is that I was drawn into the Dark Light hype, so maybe I was expeting too much, I don’t know. In contrast, I didn’t even know about Venus Doom until like a week before Christmas, so I was just excited that there was a new HIM CD.

Dethklok – The Dethalbum : Honestly, what haven’t I said about The Dethalbum already? I downloaded it the day before it was released, and I’ve listened to it probably about 50 times. Now, I own it. The Tall One had to venture to a mall on the other end of the city to find the stupid thing, but it was a trek well worth it. We’re both huge Metalocalypse fans, so either of us probably would have gone even farther to procure it. I’m just slightly disappointed that there weren’t any copies of the special edition available. The bonus disc is short, but the songs on it are totally worth however much extra money they charge for it. Conclusion: wicked CD.

Beetlejuice : I’ve seen this movie on TV so goddamned many times that I really don’t need to own it, but it’s a great addition to my collection anyway. Why wouldn’t you want to watch Beetlejuice? I wouldn’t buy the cartoon series though. It’s one of the few shows I loved in my childhood that I just can’t really get into anymore. Ah well. At least the toys were cool.

Trailer Park Boys Christmas Special : When this first came out maybe two years ago, I skipped it because I figured it would be included on one of the season DVD sets. I was dead wrong. Now I don’t have a Conky finger puppet because I waited, but I guess I’ll find a way to manage without.

Wii Points : Wii Points are a precious resource to me. I can never have enough, and I’m ever so slightly iffed that I only got one card for Christmas. Oh well. The Youngest One decided he would gift me a Virtual Console game as his present, but there was nothing I didn’t already own that I wanted on the service, so he gave me a raincheck. It’s been three weeks since Christmas and I still have that raincheck. Where are all the good VC games?

Nunchuck attachment : “But Ryan,” you say “when did you get a second Wii Remote?” the fact of the matter is that I did not. I just wanted a second nunchuck so that I could have one just to leave in the Zapper. Honestly, I back-and-forth with the thing a lot, and locking in and winding up the nunchuck, then undoing it all when I’m done is a pain in the ass. The annoyance of the process has on more than one occasion stopped me from playing anything at all, so you can see how Goddamned lazy I really am. Actually, I probably should pick up a second Wiimote just to leave in the Les Paul…

Lost season 3 : The thing between me and TV is that I don’t watch things on purpose. I can never remember when shit is on, or what channel it’s on, so when I find a show I like, I generally just go out and buy the DVDs to save myself the trouble. I don’t usually blaze through DVD sets so quickly, but I’ve already watched every episode from this particular season, and have started hacking away at the bonus features disc. I guess I wouldn’t really call myself a Lost junkie, because I’m not completely fanatical about it, but it is without a doubt my favourite show on TV right now. Season 4 is supposed to the be the end, and it makes me sad, but given the way 3 ended, I guess dragging it on any longer would seem forced. So yeah. I thoroughly enjoy Lost.

The Godzilla Collection : I’ll be honest here, I haven’t seen any classic Godzilla movies in their entirety. I’ve tried to watch a couple over the years, but since they were always on TV quite late, and I was much younger then, I always ended up falling asleep. It’s a lore I’ve always been very interested in though. I’ve played a lot of the Godzilla-based video games, and read up plenty on the subject on the ol’ Wikipedia. When I saw this box, my eyes bugged out and I knew that it had to be mine. And now it is. I still haven’t set aside time to crack it open yet, because I want to marathon it, but I fully intend to sometime within the next week or two. It contains seven movies: the original, and the six Showa series films. I know somewhere out there there’s a box of the Heisei series films, but I just haven’t found it yet. When I do though…

The Doors : This was kind of an odd one. My mom was looking for things for The Tall One, and she pointed this out. I surmised that he probably didn’t listen to the Doors, but that I did, though not really showing much interest. Christmas morning: BAM! You know what? Maybe it’s not something I would pursue under my own power, but it sounds like an interesting movie. I’m pretty sure it’ll be awesome. Because I think the Doors are pretty awesome. Now all I have to do is put aside some spare time in which to watch it. Maybe I’ll do that once I’m done with this stupid article.

Jerry Seinfeld Live on Broadway : It’s Seinfeld. It was a stocking stuffer. Again, not something I would really even give a second look, but ends up being right up my alley. Again, haven’t watched it yet, but fully intend to. If the standup bits on the show were representative of what his real acts are like, then I’m assuming that this will have me busting a gut, so to speak.

Trauma Center: New Blood : You know what’s pretty cool? The Wii Zapper works quite nicely with the Trauma Center games. Never would have thought so, would you? Okay, it hasn’t made a huge difference, but the little bit of extra steadiness helps. In any case, I only started this one up last night. I’m not quite sure if I ever finished the first one, but that’s besides the point. So far, the game is… well, exactly the same. The production values have gone up considerably, though I think the new TV does have a small role to play there. The fact that the entire game is voice-acted is great, because the VAs do a terrific job for the most part. It may not be anything particularly fresh, but hey, Trauma Center is wicked fun.

Whiskey : In the toe of my stocking, rather than finding the traditional orange (which, coincidentally, I’ve never gotten in my stocking), there was a small bottle of Crown Royal. Also, a shot glass with a Santa face on it. Huzzah. Both remain unopened because, quite frankly, I very rarely find myself in a situation where I require alcohol. Mostly because I spend my Friday/Saturday nights alone in my room. I’m not complaining, I’m just sayin’.

Sudoku TV : I’ll admit it, I’m hooked on Sudoku. I blame Brain Age entirely for this. So anyhow, I saw this gizmo at Wal-Mart one night while Christmas shopping with the “fam”, and decided to pick it up because I thought it would be good for a review at the very least. My mom said she’d buy it and told me to act surprised. So on Christmas morning I was treated to a huge box full of plug-n-play Sudoku. And you know what? It’s crap. I mean, it didn’t promise anything that it doens’t deliver, but the buttons are crappy and insensitive, the controls for playing Sudoku on the TV is completely asinine, and the little LCD screen just doesn’t suit the game very well. And I’m not even going to get into the other games that are packed into it. Ugh. It’s usable, but just barely. I will have to go in-depth with it though. It’s just that hilariously bad.

Gift Card Mania!!! : Every year I see more of these little things and it’s like: why don’t you just give me money? They’re not even all in the picture. I mean, I guess the only one I’d be unlikely to use is the one for Blockbuster, because I almost never rent anything, but still. And what’s with the two movie passes? Are you trying to say something? Are you that unsatisfied with me being single? I won five bucks on the Set For Life ticket though. Which is good becaue now I can go get another one, but bad because I know how addicting lottery tickets can be. I already spend way too much money, I don’t need those dumb things nickel-and-diming my bank account down even more.

And that about wraps that up. There are some other assorted thingers that I neglected to mention, mostly clothes and stocking stuffers, but those aren’t interesting in the least. That’s not to say that anything pictured is, but I’m not too concerned about showing the world a new pair of jeans or a pack of gum, you know? Yeah, so that’s the end then. I’m not sure exatly how to cut this off properly. I guess a clean break after the gift card paragraph would have been the best way to do it, but I’ve committed myself to this paragraph and I’m damn well going to see it through. To the end. Which is now.

Top Ten: Greatest Games of 2006

Really, I don’t know what to write as an intro. I’ve done this twice before, so go back and read those intros if you really need a preface. Just a couple notes before we begin:

1. I broke down. While I was compiling my list, I kind of forgot that I wasn’t supposed to have ports on it, but they were there, and I just love the included games so much that I couldn’t boot them. Oh well.

2.There are three special awards mixed in between the regular list, just so you don’t get confused. I was going to have them all before the actual list, but that’s so dumb. My way is spicier!

3. I think the 10th-4th place trophies are hilarious. If you don’t agree, I am terminating our friendship right now.

Well, that should be all. So let’s get it on!

Before we really get rolling, I just want to give out some special props like I did last year. I think I’m going to include a couple special awards every year from now on. What they might be each year is impossible to say, but I know I’ll keep the “Special Mention” (the award for the game I wanted to play most, but never got a chance to) award kicking around. It’s a good award.

2006’s “Special Mention” goes without a doubt to Final Fantasy XII. Because there were so many other games that I had planned on purchasing (and when I set my mind to something, I never go back), I never got around to playing FFXII. It just came out at a really bad time. Had it been released in the summer lull, I would have definitely picked it up right away. Sadly, Square-Enix didn’t have it ready until November, and that month was just so chock-full of games that were higher on the priority list that it got passed by.

The reason I put it here is because I do have a genuine interest in it. It’s the first Final Fantasy since IX that I’ve cared at all about (and even that was only because at that time I was still a Squaresoft sheep), and I really do hope to get around to playing it someday. The way the game plays, with it’s neat little character programming system interests me to no ends, and even the story, which I usually have zero interest in, fascinates me. And let’s not forget that so many reviewers are saying that it’s the best FF to grace a console since God-knows-when. And that’s a pretty strong point, because let’s face it, most of the gaming world thinks FFVII is good.

So in conclusion, I declare Final Fantasy XII to be the best game I never played last year. However much sense that makes.

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Hey, what can I say? I’ve been waiting for a new Mario side-scroller for a while now. God knows why Nintendo didn’t make one on the GBA. Oh, right. They had all those old games to rehash. Must have saved them a ton on, you know, work. Can’t win ’em all though, am I right?

Past grievances aside, I really enjoyed New Super Mario Bros. Like everyone else on the damn planet, I flew through it pretty quickly because it was real easy, but it was impressively fun. I even played through it a second time right away. Of course, while getting to the end of the game presented little more than a suggestion of difficulty, clearing the game 100% did require a bit of skill. The big coins, finding all the extra paths and warp cannons, that kind of stuff. It wasn’t as tricky as some of SMW’s rough bits, but all the extras really helped to flesh out the game. The new power-ups were pretty unnecessary too. Unless they were needed for getting somewhere, I much preferred good ol’ Firey Mario. Why did they axe fireballs in the 3D games? Firey Mario would have been so much totally better than FLUDD. Maybe.

I don’t know. NSMB was such a big deal that everyone and their mom wrote about it, and everyone’s read something about it too. I doubt I could add anything original at this point. I guess if there’s anything that really stuck out for me, it was the final boss fight. It wasn’t terribly difficult or long, but it was pretty epic. For a Mario game. Hey! You know what would have been great? If there had been some Yoshi. Yeah. Especially if he had all his Koopa shell powers like in SMW. And there should have been a Top Secret Zone where you could go after every level to gather power-ups. Sigh. It’s going to be quite a feat if Nintendo ever expects to outdo Super Mario World. That’s pretty much the definition of a perfect platformer. But New Super Mario Bros was easily good enough. Just barely good enough to beat out Rayman Raving Rabbids out of the #10 spot, but good enough no less.

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I’ll be the first to point out that technically, I’m breaking my “no ports” policy, but I have many good reasons to back this up. First of all, there is a good deal of extra content. For every so many operations you finish on the main storyline, you unlock operations for a different story featuring a different doctor. Secondly, while the main story is almost a word-for-word copy of the DS game (with prettier graphics), the completely different control methods make the game seem totally new. Sure, you know what to do, but now doing it is a whole new experience in itself. Also, a couple levels have changed dramatically, specifically the bomb level.

So the game then? Well, it’s neat. The premise is that you’re a doctor (by the name of Derek Stiles) who just completed his whatevers and is getting into the real world of surgery. It starts off like any old medical drama you’d see on TV, with the new guy being uneasy and having to overcome personal obstacles and crap, and then bio-terrorism enters the picture and everything goes to shit. It’s an incredibly story-heavy game, to say the least. Some chapters don’t even contain an operation and are just really long dialogues sequences. Fortunately, it’s all skippable for those who couldn’t give two shits an’ just want to cut people open and toy with their insides. Which is awesome. The game starts you off with easy things, like suturing up cuts, removing shards of glass, and lazering the crap out of polyps. It slowly ramps up to tougher things like excising bigger tumors and removing thrombi. Less than halfway through, though, the video game part starts to come into play and you have to start removing various types of (fictional) parasites (known as GUILT), which can be real pains in the ass. Unlike the original game, however, there is a difficulty option, so getting to the end of this one isn’t such an impossible feat; you can just choose to play on easy mode!

The operations in the side-story abandon the GUILT for more traditional surgery. Though the game throws in a few new things and some curveballs like fixing broken bones, excising super tumors (which grow right back if you don’t get them all out within seconds of each other), and working in the dark with only a camera’s flash to help you see. The extra story, while much more brief than the main one, is also pretty interesting, though it’s even more obvious that it was thought up by those crazy Japanese.

All in all, even though it’s essentially a beefed-up port, Trauma Center: Second Opinion is very much its own game. While playing with the Wii Remote is slightly less accurate than the DS’ touch screen, the control scheme is very intuitive and great for switching tools fast. It’s still as challenging as the original though, so don’t expect any pulled punches, even on the easy difficulty level. While it’s no epic adventure, I still think TC:SO is a spectacular launch title for the Wii, and were it not a port, I may have even put it up closer to the top spot on the list. As it is though, number nine will have to suffice.

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What’s with all the DS games, you ask? They’re pretty good man. You should invest in one. It’s definitely the greatest portable gaming thingamijig ever. Hell, I play my DS more than my GameCube and PS2 combined. We’ll have to wait a year or so to accurately measure how the little Wii does. But there are games to be ranted about! On I go! Holy crap I think I’m getting worse at writing!

So Elite Beat Agents, huh? Surely you’ve heard of the import hit Osu! Tatake! Ouendan!. Surely. I never bothered to import it (I got Jump Superstars instead), but when I heard they were making a version (sequel?) for North America, I was ready to jump all over it. And jump I did. EBA is a rhythm game, much like DDR or Guitar Hero, only instead of some cockadoodie $50 peripheral device that only works with one game, you just use the touch screen. As the music goes, beats appear on the screen. Most of the time, you just tap them with the correct timing to get by. But sometimes, you have to drag a ball across a path which spices things up a little. Well, maybe not. There’s also a spinner that you’ve gotta, well, spin. That one only shows up on the rarest of occasions though. All this happens while zany situations play out in the background, as the idea of the game is that the Elite Beat Agents motivate people through song to help get them through tough times. Well, there’s actually one scenario that’s quite sad rather than zany, and ashamed as I am to admit it, it had me weeping like a little girl. Seriously. If you can play the “You’re The Inspiration” level without shedding at least one tear, you’re made of stone, man. Fucking stone.

Like many of those other rhythm games out there, Elite Beat Agents out there is hellishly difficult. Which is odd because Nintendo stuck it in with the “Touch Generations” games, which are supposedly accessible to everyone. I guess most people could get by okay on Breezin’ (easy mode), up until the last song, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” (a snazzy fast version too), which is like 50 times harder than all the other songs. And while I’m on the song note, the soundtrack is definitely there not for any single niche, but rather a hodegpodge of crap from all over. On the awesome hand, you’ve got kickass bands (well, covers of kickass bands) like Deep Purple (“Highway Star” FTW) and The Stray Cats, but then you’ve also gotta suffer through dreck like Cher and Goddamned “YMCA”. I mean, personally, I don’t mind too much, but I know that’s more than enough to turn off some people. And that’s sad, because EBA is a frickin’ awesome game. My only complaint is that they cut like a minute off of Hoobastank’s “Without A Fight”, wich is a stellar song.

If you’re looking for a distraction, maybe go play Magical Starsign or something. If you pick up Elite Beat Agents, you’ll likely get sucked in and lose hours upon hours trying to beat “Canned Heat”, assuming you’re as bad at this game as I am. But yes, this is a sweet game. I really shouldn’t have to say that, what with it being eighth on my list of the ten best games that came out last year and all.

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Our second special award this year is the “Most Improved” award. We always had one of these back in junior high back when they still gave out little trophies and medals to all the smartest kids, so I thought it would be a neat one to have here. The “Most Improved” award is for exactly what the name implies; a game that vastly improves over the previous entry(/entries) in that series. Whether it’s because the previous game(s) stunk like ass, or the sequel is just that much better, we don’t care as long as it beats out it’s predecessor(s).

MegaMan Battle Network 6 is not here because it’s a great game. It’s not ground-breaking, it doesn’t deliver a compelling story, even the gameplay is pretty much unchanged from the first game in the series. What does make it special is that it’s the only MMBN game that’s really been worth playing since 2. And I mean that quite literally. I got into the series at 2, and I loved the game to death. I explored every nook and cranny of it, and I got everything there was to get. 3 was okay, and while I did finish it 100%, my whole heart wasn’t in it. 4 flat-out sucked, and 5 was mediocre at best. Needless to say, I didn’t come anywhere close to finishing those two. Then 6 came along, and I felt the same spark I did for 2. And I played the snap out of it.

So what makes it better than the abysmal 4 and 5? I’m not too sure. It’s basically just the same thing over again. Look at any MegaMan series, and that’s the way it is. But there are a few little tweaks that propel it above the rest. Capcom changed the power-up system just enough so that it made the game fun, and not a hassle. In the two previous chapters, your battle power-ups (Soul Unison) would only last three turns, and they were kind of useless. There were also these horrid “dark chips” that completely broke the game unless you ignored them completely. In 6, the power-ups (Cross Change) are now virtually unlimited, and most of the Crosses are useful and/or fun to use. The dark chips have pretty much been tossed away altogether as well.

Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you as an outsider, and it isn’t entirely clear to me either, but MegaMan Battle Network 6 is somehow a much better game than the last few in the series. Best of all, it’s the last game in the series, so you don’t have to hear any more about it, and I don’t have to worry about it going down the shitter again. Definitely the most improvement in a sequel I’ve seen in a while.

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Yeah yeah. More MegaMan. I know, I’m weak. But this one is actually a seriously kickass game, and not just on here because of my insane fanboyism. It plays like a stronger, faster, more intense version of the MegaMan Zero games, two of which hit the chart in the past two years, so it’s really no surprise that ZX showed up.

The game is actually pretty far removed from MegaMan though. It’s MegaMan only in name, really. I mean, there are a few references to past MegaMan storylines, but aside from that, you could essentially put a different name on it and nobody would know. But it is MegaMan, and with that comes the promise of top-notch side-scrolling action. Like I said, it plays like the Zero series, so it’s fast and rather intense. The difficulty level has been toned down a bit, but most of the bosses and certain parts of the game will still give you a good run for your money. Adding to the greatness of it all, it plays like a Metroidvania title, in that the game is one big world for you to explore, rather than being cut up into levels. Of course, you can only access certain areas once you’ve got the right items, but unlike Metroid and Castlevania, those end up being more on the end of card keys rather than power-ups.

When you do get power-ups, they take form as different suits of armor for your character to wear. The game revolves around Biometals, which are basically rocks which hold the essence of various MegaMan characters. Once you gain a certain Biometal, you can use it and gain the powers of whichever robot it represents. Such powers include increased dash abilities, hovering, better water mobility, and being able to break select few walls. Half of them are pretty useless for regular combat, but there’s a secret Biometal you can earn which kicks complete and total ass. Still, playing the entire game as only the default MegaMan should be more than enough to please fans. The extra powers are just kind of for fun and finding secret stuff.

One of the coolest things about the game is that bosses regenerate themselves, so you can go back and fight any of them whenever you feel, without having to start a new game. You can even insert MegaMan Zero 3 and 4 into the GBA slot to pick fights with a few bosses from each of those games. I don’t really know what else to write about. The game is all about action, and dueling the multitude of boss robots is about as awesome as it gets. For anyone who thinks the MegaMan name should have died long ago, MegaMan ZX makes all those years of crappy X and Battle Network sequels totally worth it.

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Ever taken the time to dig up the StarFox 2 ROM? Well you’d be pleasantly surprised if you haven’t already, because StarFox 2 is totally great. It’s radically different from the original, but still maintains the StarFox feel and manages to rock all over the place. StarFox Command, as I would find out, is basically an extension of the wonder of technology that is StarFox 2.

I won’t dance around the fence here, there aren’t any on-rails flying levels in StarFox Command. It’s all all-range enemy hunts. And those are the butter to the game’s bread of strategic map-conquering. Sounds awfully sketchy, I know. That’s exactly what I thought. But, because I just can’t say no to StarFox, I picked up the game anyway. It couldn’t be any worse than StarFox Adventures, anyway. Long story short, the game is awesome and I feel awful for ever doubting it. The franchise has had some rough times, but if Command is any indication of where it’s going, then the outlook is pretty damn good.

So what’s this strategy business I mentioned? Simply put, each mission takes place on a map of whatever planet/area of space you may be currently flying around. The aim is either to destroy all the enemy fighters while defending the Great Fox from attack. Sounds simple, and it really is. But things get tricky once stuff like missiles and fog of war get involved. Yeah, that’s right. Fog of War. In StarFox. it’s weird, I know, but it works. Keeps things interesting, and you on your toes. So encountering an enemy or an enemy base on the map will initiate a dogfight, where your objective is to destroy all the listed bogeys within the time limit. Yep, there’s a time limit too, but trust me when I say all the game mechanics work perfectly well together. And speaking of which, the whole game is played with the touch screen. All the buttons on the DS do are fire your blasters, except the start button, which does the usual pause. Barrel rolls, loops, bombs, it’s all touch-activated. And it’s all good.

The only complaint I have with the game is actually with the series as a whole. I hate that the fact that they continually age the characters. At this rate, two games from now, Fox McCloud won’t even be in the games anymore. That or he’ll be an old fogey handing out advice, rather than blasting space monsters and whatnot. But aside from that little complaint, the game is stellar. Tons of story paths to choose from (though the story[ies?] isn’t particularly strong), great strategy and action gameplay, and good local multiplayer (sadly, WiFi multi is kind of disappointing). This isn’t the highest-ranked DS game on the list, but it’s probably the one I’d recommend the most. I just love it to death.

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Durr, more DS loving, coming right up. Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow was granted a spot on last year’s list (#9), and now that I think about it, I really think I should have placed it higher. But it’s too late for that, so let’s just forget it and move on to this year’s contribution to the Castlevania franchise.

For everything Dawn of Sorrow did right, Portrait of Ruin comes and does it even better. Mostly. I mean, the games play essentially the same, but Portrait of Ruin is so much more refined, with so much more to it. Firstly, you get to play with two characters, Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Auldin, at the same time in PoR, which turns out really well. You have the choice to either just swap out between the two, or have the non-player character follow you around and help you out (using your MP bar as a life gauge). Either way you choose to do it, the system is great, and allows for a lot of choice in how to get around different enemies. Dawn’s Tactical Soul system is gone, replaced by subweapons and spells for Jonathan and Charlotte, respectively. While the Tactical Soul system was really great for customization purposes, I really like just having the basic subweapon/magic instead. Also, only some of your subweapons/spells are held by enemies, basically meaning you don’t have to grind every enemy in the game to have access to your full arsenal. That, and the Shuriken subweapon is insanely cheap once it’s mastered.

The castle is scaled down a bit on PoR, but that’s because there are nine other maps to explore! While the bulk of there are pretty small, it’s still the biggest Castlevania yet, as far as raw acreage goes. Sadly, the second set of four “levels” just feel like remapped copies of the first set with harder enemies. The castle itself is as great as ever though, and the ninth (optional) level is a very sweet colosseum-esque stage with some horrifically challenging battles inside. And speaking of horrifically difficult things, the bosses in PoR are crazy hard. The bulk of them will slaughter you pretty quickly on the normal difficulty. Needless to say, I’m a bit afraid to start a hard game. The final boss battle isn’t quite as rough as some of those leading up to it, but it’s quite a spectacular fight. Seriously. Fuck you, I’m spoiling it. You have to fight Dracula and Death. At the same time. And then they fuse. It’s awesome. If you look up the word “Awesome” in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of PoR’s final boss fight.

And speaking of awesome stuff, there’s a ton to accomplish in Portrait of Ruin. Firstly, you’ve got the main game with it’s hugely long main quest, plus all the fun of fleshing out complete maps, completing all the quests, getting (and mastering) all the subweapons and spells, getting all the enemy drops and filling out the item collection. That alone took me over 25 hours. Then you unlock a whole whackload of shit. Not only one, but three bonus game modes, plus a hard mode for all four games. Then there are three Boss Rush mini-games to play (because there are just that many bosses in PoR). To top it all off, there’s a nice little WiFi option in which you can either buy/sell items from/to other players, or join up with someone else to play a co-op Boss Rush. The co-op mode doesn’t offer much of a challenge, really, but competing for top times is always fun, and the Shop Mode is decent if you have a bunch of rare drops and need to make a little extra coin.

Holy smokes. This is going to be like the longest article ever. By me. In any case, Castlevania rules. If you still haven’t waded into the series, I would highly recommend now to do it. It’s really not going to get much better than this. Konami’s set a very high standard for themselves, and the only way to really improve upon Protrait of Ruin would be some more diverse level design, and to go back to artwork that doesn’t look like it came out of a crappy Saturday morning anime. Seriously. Dracula looks like crap in this one. Normally he looks awesome and evil, but here he just looks like Uninspired Anime Villain #43. Don’t even get me started on Death. Eeeeeewww. Fuck, Konami. We know you have talented artists. Why did you not use them?

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“Wait. What?” you ask, “I could have sworn that game was for PSP.”

It’s true. I’ve been hiding a horrible, horrible secret from everyone: I broke down a bought a PSP a while ago. Under most circumstances, I’d feel pretty bad about it, but MegaMan Maverick Hunter X is just so damn awesome that I don’t care. It was worth every penny to be able to play this remake of one of my favourite games ever. As I’ve stated many times before, I’m quite a MegaMan fanboy. It’s a tough lot in life, but it’s the road I chose. And this road has led me to play nearly every MegaMan game in existence; some good, some bad, some utterly repulsive. But through it all, one thing has remained constant: my love for the original MegaMan X. I don’t know why I love it so, but that’s the way it is, and I doubt it’s ever going to change.

Maverick Hunter X is a full overhaul of MegaMan X, much like how Capcom redid Resident Evil for the GameCube. It keeps everything that made the original X great, and makes it better: the superb music, the harrowing storyline, the highway stage. Everything. Sure, they moved most of the power-ups around to throw off vets, but that’s quite alright. Incentive to fully explore the stages again is a good thing. Most of the stages do retain their original layout, but the Sigma palace levels are all completely mixed up, with some bits moved around, and some entirely new parts. It’s great. Even the transition to 3D graphics worked marvelously, beautifying the levels, and making some of the bosses look more like the animals they were modeled after (Spark Mandrill, anyone?).

Best part of the game? Hard to say. Firstly, they’ve included a 30-minute movie detailing to origin of the original Maverick outbreak, which is an absolutely awesome bonus feature. Second, you get a Hard difficulty level to play on once you’ve slaughtered the game completely, and hard it is. Bosses get new attacks, you get less life, all that good stuff. Third, Vile is a playable character! Once you’ve finished the game once with X, you can play through as Vile, who plays completely differently than X and adds a whole new layer of strategy to the game. And Vile’s game is nail-bitingly tough on the normal difficulty to boot. Hard mode with Vile is nigh impossible.

So in conclusion, this game is more than enough to warrant the purchase of a PSP for me, no matter how outrageously expensive it was. As such, MegaMan Maverick Hunter X gets the award for Best Port. Quite frankly, I wanted to place this game at Number 5 on the list, and while it does contain a gigantic deal of new and altered content, I just couldn’t bear myself to put two ports on the list. So why did Trauma Center make it? Because quite frankly, all new content aside, the core gameplay in MHX doesn’t change much at all, while Trauma Center’s is radically different from that of the original game. Still, I give Maverick Hunter X a great big recommendation, because it’s a really, really sweet game.

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While Okami certainly deserves a place in the top three, I’m afraid there are just other games that I have far too much brand loyalty to to say no to. But hey, if it’s the fourth best game I’ve played all year, that’s still putting in a pretty damn good word for it.

Ever since Clover Studios (now defunct) opened their website, which had a preview page for Okami, I’d been following the game from a distance. It wasn’t something I was anxious about, but it was on my radar. Then September came around and poof! there it was, and it was getting spectacular reviews. The good reviews coupled with Clover’s high standing in my mind and the beautiful art style were more than enough reason to rush out to the store and pick it up. And pick it up I did. Okami was more than I ever expected it to be. I was thinking it would be some sort of run-of-the-mill 3D adventure starring an animal, but it turns out it’s essentially Zelda for PS2. Seriously. At first, I was kind of on the fence about how much it resembled Zelda, but then I got to the first dungeon and I couldn’t help shaking the feeling that I was retreading the Forbidden Woods level from The Wind Waker, only as a wolf. There’s even a postman who, aside from attire, I would swear is the same as the one from Ocarina Of Time.

So what makes Okami original? Well, for one, you play as a wolf. Oh, right. Twilight Princess. To tell the truth though, now that I’ve played both, I can confidently say that I much prefer the wolf play in Okami. It just feels so much more natural. There’s also the fact that half the game is based around drawing stuff. Yep. Your special power as a God-in-wolf’s-clothing is to be able to paint stuff to make things happen. Over the course to the game you’ll learn many different brush techniques, letting you do many things ranging from slicing trees to making wind blow to creating bombs out of thin air. It’s awesome and works incredibly well, no matter how odd it sounds. Even though the game pauses for you to draw, it doesn’t really mess up the pacing of the game. It’s really not that fast-paced a game anyway, aside from battles. And those are pretty nuts. The boss enemies in particular are really impressive and require some tricky brush maneuvers to defeat. It’s also worth mentioning that they’re much more difficult than any of Twilight Princess’ bosses, no matter how gargantuan those may be.

One of the neat points of Okami is the focus of the game. I’m not a big fan of nature, but since this game is influenced so much by Japanese history and lore, most of the game revolves around saving nature and using your powers to help people and restore their faith in the Gods. Leveling up is actually done not by battling, but by gaining faith by helping people, animals, and plants. It’s a very refreshing change from the usual game that takes itself too seriously and focuses on saving the world from utter destruction. Playing Okami is like taking a beautiful, relaxing vacation from normal video games, in the same way The Wind Waker was from other Zeldas. It’s just so pretty and stylish that you could just roam about and enjoy watching the scenery go by.

There’s much more to be mentioned, but there’s a better way than listening to me ramble about it: go out and buy the game. Trust me on this one. It’s fantastic. Fifty dollars is a bargain for such a fine piece of art. The only thing that really makes me wonder is why this wasn’t a DS project. I mean, it’s all about drawing after all. And Tony Hawk proved last year that cel-shading looks pretty good on the little handheld that could. Even a sequel (on either platform) would be fantastic, but I doubt that we’re going to see one, what with Clover being broken up and all. Worst decision ever, Capcom. And you’ve make some pretty big fuck-ups. Anyway, I know you own a PS2, everyone does. Go out and buy Okami. You’ll be doing yourself a huge favour.

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If you read my blog, you can pretty much skip this. You already know how much I loooove Guitar Hero. Best peripheral/music game ever. And the sequel only makes everything better. Well, as better as it can get.

First off, we’ve obviously got ourselves a new soundtrack. It’s quite a bit longer than the original too. Boasting 17 more songs than the first game, Guitar Hero 2 comes full of bands that I love (though the regular songs are all covers) like Cheap Trick, KISS, The Stray Cats, and Rush. Fucking RUSH. That alone is enough to boot the game up to the top of the list. Anything that features Rush must be good. It’s science. Some other bands/artists that I’m happy to see include The Police, Dick Dale, and (the return of) Megadeth. GH2 is also a helluva lot harder than its predecessor. I’m not saying Guitar Hero was easy, but some of the songs on this one seem like they were put in there just to break even the most confident players. You ever heard All That Remains’ “Six”? Or how about Buckethead’s “Jordan”? Incidentally, while “Freebird” is the final song, it’s not nearly as bad as it might seem by ear. I’ve actually gotten rather good at it. “Thunderhorse” on the other hand, continues to wipe the floor with my sorry ass.

On the gameplay side of things, it’s exactly the same. hammer-ons and pull-offs were changed just a leetle bit to make life easier, assuming you’ve the ability to put the techniques to use. I’m learning slowly, and surprisingly enough they’re actually helping a bit, and making my game all that more impressive to passers-by. There are a couple new characters to choose from, including the frightening and poorly proportioned Lars Umlaut. All the default characters also have a second costume that you can unlock. Also, the range of guitars you can buy and use has increased exponentially, and there are plenty of different finishes for each style to boot. There are even secret guitars that can be unlocked by beating and five-starring each song on each difficulty level. Obviously, the best ones are the hardest to unlock. Finally, the unlockable songs (some mentioned above) are mostly better than the last game’s offering. A lot of awesome bands return, including Freezepop (<3 Freezepop), Drist, and the Acro-Brats. Made In Mexico still sucks though. And then there’s great new bands like The Last Vegas, Bang Camaro, and That Handsome Devil. On a related note, I’ve actually seen Every Time I Die in concert, which is kind of neat.

The new training mode, I assume, is rather useful. I’ve used it very little, but it has helped me improve a few rough spots and pass a couple songs on the expert difficulty. I might get really good at the game if I were to make better use of it, but as it is, I prefer just to play a song over and over to learn the ins and outs, even though practicing parts of a song at slower speeds sounds like a much more practical way to do it. Multiplayer is vastly improved, with better competitive options, and a spankin’ cooperative mode. Add the fact that on co-op you each play a different guitar part (lead, rhythm, bass), and you’ve got some wicked shredding going down.

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It was impossible for me to decide between Tales of the Abyss and Guitar Hero 2 for second place, so I had to tie them. It’s a reasonable compromise, don’t you think? I just adore both games so much, how could I put one over the other?

If you’ll recall, I named Tales of Symphonia the best game I’d played in 2004. And Abyss doesn’t fall far from that tree. But wait, there were two Tales games released this year, and Tales of Legendia isn’t even on the list! So what gives? Quite frankly, for all the things I liked about Legendia, I could just never get into it. I found the characters lovable, the story great, and the battle system fun, but literally I had to force myself to put the game disc in and muscle through it after the first half of the game. I don’t know what it was, but somewhere the attraction waned. Fortunately, Tales of the Abyss came along a short few month later to make everything better. It might even hold a higher place in my heard than Symphonia, if it weren’t for Symphonia’s exquisite character design and writing.

If you want a basic review of Tales of the Abyss, go find the Tales of Symphonia review on the September 2004 page in the blog archive. All the great things about that game translate directly onto this one, with only a handful of real changes. Obviously, the story and characters are different, but the overall feel of the game is essentially the same. The soundtrack is (mostly) once again by genius Motoi Sakuraba, which means it’s good enough to purchase twice. The battle system is almost exactly the same as that in Symphonia, the only real differences being that you can run around freely (after acquiring a certain skill), and a slightly altered magic system. Really, if you’ve played any previous Tales game, you should have a good idea what to expect: RPG battles that play out almost like Super Smash Bros.

One of the big changes are the various stat/ability-altering systems. Capacity Cores will add to your stat increases during level-ups, allowing you to super-power your characters in whatever field(s) you have a Capacity Core for. Fon Slot Chambers allow you to attach an FSC to each of your spells/skills to add different effects, depending on the skill and FSC colour. For example, a red FSC on most skills will increase attack/healing power, while a green FSC will usually decrease TP consumption. Lastly, we’ve got Additional Skills. Your characters will all gain AD skills when they reach certain levels or increase a stat to a certain number. Some are pretty basic, like moving faster in battle, while others have awesome effects like being able to use Over Limit attacks and avoid status effects. All three systems add a far deeper level of character customization than even Symphonia did with its wacky Exsphere business.

Tales of the Abyss doesn’t stray much from the Tales mold (except for they’ve been cutting out the Summon Spirits completely lately…), and that’s exactly why I think of it as lovingly as I do. Namco has a real winning formula here, if only the general populace would free themselves from the shackles of Final Fantasy and realize that there are fun RPGs out there, the world would be a happier place for all. Again, it’s science.

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It’s fucking Zelda.

Yeah I’m leaving it at that. Sometimes the point is best made with few words. In any case, I know this list might be a little harder for some to agree with than previous lists, in which I ahd a slightly higher percentage of popular games, but meh. These are the kinds of things I like to play. If you don’t like it, go back to whatever overhyped garbage you think is good. Also, blow it out your ass.

Steambot Chronicles: The Good and the Bad

It’s a little known fact that I have what most people might refer to as a really weird taste in video games. My GameCube game list is relatively normal, with a striking amount of Capcom thrown in. But my Playstation (1 and 2) collection reads more like a B-Movie list, punctuated by Katamaris and Tales of this and that. I basically exist to play the really niche games, like any MegaMan after X2 and Brave Fencer Musashi. And now that I’ve established that I like to be adventurous with my games, I can move on to the topic at hand.

If you pay attention to the gaming media (and why would you be reading this if you didn’t?), you probably heard somebody say something about a “Bumpy Trot” somewhere along the line and just dismissed it because it sounded dumb. And you know, maybe that was for the best. But not me. No, when I heard about Bumpy Trot – or Steambot Chronicles as it was renamed when it came over to North American shores – the writer in question said that it was the closest we’re ever going to get to a MegaMan Legends 3. Being a huuuuuuge (u’s for emphasis) Legends fan, I put my foot down and said that I must own the game!

I’ll make a side note here that people are very split on MegaMan Legends. A handful of people like it, and they like it a lot. The rest of the world thinks it’s crap. Hence why Capcom only made one sequel. Armed with that knowledge, you may very well dismiss the rest of this review of some stupid kid writing about a shitty game. And yeah, I’m not going to lie, most of the Playstation 2 userbase will not like this game. There isn’t a dragon to be seen, it doesn’t have any footballs, and there are no foul-mouthed black men. Just mechs. Mechs that look like cars.

Being the fair and totally unbiased man that I am, I’ve decided that today I’ll try a new approach at the video game review. Because let’s face it, normal game review are best left to the professionals. I, however, have taken it upon myself to make a short list comprised of the best things and the worst things about Steambot Chronicles. And you as an interweb reader have no power to choose not to read it, because you cannot resist the list. Nobody can.

the good

#1 – Trotmobiles

As the title may imply, the game has a lot to do with steambots. Or maybe not. It’s actually about trotmobiles. But what is a trotmobile? I’m glad you probably don’t know, because I’d love to explain it.

A trotmobile is basically this game’s evolution of the car. As the backstory goes, people had invented the car, but since they didn’t have a whole lot of roads outside of the towns, it was a little impractical. So many years were spent researching ways to improve upon the car, and eventually they came up with the bipeal “robot” design known as the trotmobile. Why it’s called a trotmobile when the title of the game is Steambot Chronicles is a mystery, but I don’t care enough to solve it. Bad translation? No. Definitely not (as we’ll see later).

At the beginning of the game, the main character, Vanilla, wakes up on a beach with no recollection of who he is. a young girl named Connie finds him and during a search for clues, they come across a rusty old trotmobile. During about half of the time you spend playing the game, you will be in the driver’s seat of that trotmobile, and you’ll learn to love it. The controls take a little learning, as the trotmobile moves similarly to a katamari, but they work out really well because they’re laid out very efficiently. Your trot is controlled entirely with the L and R buttons (including the analog sticks), with the face buttons being relegated to more generic tasks such as menus and talking.

So now that you’ve gone through Trotmobile 101, it’s time to find out what these machines can do! The answer: pretty much everything! While they’re mainly used as transportation for people, trotmobiles can be rigged up for numerous tasks. Some will haul goods back and forth, making a pretty penny along the way. Some will outfit their trot with weapons and take it to the various arenas in hopes of winning fortune and fame. Others will go spelunking in deep, dangerous caves, searching out treasures of civilizations past. Some people may even aspire to find a way to make their trot fly! The possibilities are nigh endless!

Not only can you find plenty to do with your new trotmobile, but you can also customize it to your very liking. You can swap out a multitude of parts – called “frames” – and equip your trotmobile for any occasion. The trotmobile has six main parts; two arms, a leg frame, a body frame, a grill, a windshield, and a back frame for carrying cargo. There are many frames for each part, and while there is a weight limit, you can customize your trot any way you like. you can even change the colours and the license plate if you get tired of them.

#2 – Lots to do!

Steambot Chronicles is not a small game. In fact, it is quite a large game. While the areas may not be as elaborate as a Grand Theft Auto title, there is plenty of terrain to cover, and lots to do. If you stick to it, the main story will breeze by quite quickly, possibly leaving you a little worried that the game is over, but fear not! Steambot Chronicles is what they call a “sandbox game,” and as such, you’re usually able to go out on your own and do whatever you please. You don’t have to follow the story if you don’t feel like it, and even if you do, you can still play on as long as you wish in the post-game mode.

So what is there to do in the world of Steambot Chronicles? I suppose we should cover the basics first. Number one would be the arena. There are three arenas across the country, one in each major city. Each of these arenas is host to a number of trot riders, all looking for a good fight. Winning in the arena will lead you to a wealth of victory medals, which can be exchanged for prizes, which consist of valuable trotmobile parts. Not a fighter, but still want to get a piece of that action? If you’re not the bravest of trot riders, you can still make a killing betting on trot fights. Not the fastest or most reliable way to increase your net worth, but the option’s there if you want it.

If you’d rather keep away from the roughnecks, yet still have that itch for mucho dinero, there are alternatives. The quick way is to invest in the stock markets. Since you can help out businesses with your patronage, you can kinda fudge the stocks and earn a wealth in a few week’s time. The most reliable way to earn cash, however, is to play trucker. You can buy goods from many people all over the place, and then sell it elsewhere to line your pockets nicely. Just make sure you’re selling for more than you bought for! If that doesn’t work out, you could always get into the transportation business and ferry people to and fro. They don’t always pay too well though, so if you’re looking for quick cash, you may want to take one of the aforementioned alternatives. Keep in mind that this just scratches the surface of all the ways you can earn a living.

There are lots of people all over the place who need your help. Museum curators, lovebirds, mechanics, bandits, movie enthusiasts. Pretty much every kind of person you can think of. With each of these people comes a side-quest. And why would you do these sidequests? Well, usually you get money, items, or trot frames. A good percentage of the time, you get a collectible license plate for your trotmobile as well. Getting all 30 plates is no easy task. If you think you’re up to it, go ahead. I can tell you right now that you’re gonna need a FAQ though.

now that you’re rich, what are you going to do with the cash? Pimp out your trot? Buy out all the local stores? I suggest maybe finding yourself a bachelor pad. There are realtors in every major city willing to rent you a place, and all you have to do is find ’em and fork out the dough. Decorating your room with furniture (available at the local furniture store, obviously) and relics (found in caverns and whatnot) is always a fun way to spent the afternoon! Maybe you can even invite that girl you’ve got your eye on over to your place and see where it goes…

#3 – Hot cocoa!

Honestly, I really just like the dating part of the game because I find the best outcome of the dates to be rather hilarious. Especially when it’s Connie who you’re gunning for. Hell, even initiating the event is chuckle-worthy. But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. Let’s start at the start.

You see, once you’re renting an apartment, you can start dating one of three women in the game. There’s Connie the main female character, Savory the alternate choice, and Ciboulette the pirate. Hot. All of the girls can and will succumb to your masculine wiles after a certain point in the game, and it’s not necessary to exercise your power, but it’s definitely entertaining. The only problem is that your apartment has to be in the same town that the object of your affection is in. No town-hopping for these ladies.

So you’ve got your apartment all prettied up with the 50-year-old newspaper floor mat, and you’ve progressed far enough in the story. You can now ask a girl to come over to your place. Once she comes over (assuming you decide to let her in), the dating mini-game starts. You get a number of hearts, which you can spend on various date actions, like talking and giving gifts. You can replenish hearts by giving the right gifts, and each girl has different tastes. After you’ve gotten enough hearts and have performed the proper actions, you can “make your move,” as the game so inconspicuously puts it.

But alas! There is one step I forgot! To initiate this process, you have to own a Lil’ Swabby. “WTF?” you ask. Yeah, you need to buy a cotton swab from a local shop to complete the dating ritual. If you’ve got the Lil’ Swabby and play your cards right, you’ll be having the girl of your choice over for a little “hot cocoa” in no time.

#4 – Good vs. Evil

While it’s not the first game to do so, Steambot Chronicles gives you the opportunity to follow either a good or evil path. The choice first comes up about halfway through, and you can change your mind at almost anytime. Heck, I think you have to go evil and then back to get everything, but I’m not entirely sure.

There are a long list of bandit groups in Steambot Chronicles, and a handful of them play large roles in your adventure, but only one truly stands out: the Bloody Mantis. If you play the good guys, you’re going to end up fighting against them and their plan for… well, I won’t spoil that much. Somewhere midway through your adventure, the Bloody Mantis recruiter will approach you and offer you to join up with them. should you choose the comply, the rest of the game will not be spent thwarting evil, but rather being the new errand-boy for the Mantis. You’ll cause plenty of havoc, and more than likely end up making all your previously established friends hate your guts. But hey, life of crime, right?

Obviously, both paths branch out very differently from that point, and you’ll get separate endings for each. That should be more than enough reason to play through the game twice. Though you’ll probably end up having to do that anyway if you play through sans-FAQ and hope to unlock everything. That’s pretty much my situation. On the upside, this, along with the billions of things to do, presents plenty of replay value, as the game has the capacity to be entirely different every time you play through it.

#5 – The manual. Wait, what?

No, I’m totally serious. The manual for Steambot Chronicles rules. It’s not like the usual manual that assumes you can’t tell your ass from a hole in the ground. It’s written very cleverly, with jokes and sarcasm and everything. But how could this come to be? And why?

The answer is a single man – Tomm Hulett. He’s a translator for Atlus, and was the one who did the Steambot manual (and was the project lead on the translation of the game itself). He even included a couple paragraphs at the back about how Atlus got the project, how they decided on the North American title, his localization philosophy, and making sure the voice acting was top-notch. A man who truly knows how to please the fans.

Imagine my surprise when I learned that Tomm was a regular commenter on ToastyFrog, spreading news of all his latest localization projects. The man has a sense of humor (Contact scandal, anyone?), and it shows. I mean, really, the game’s translation job on the whole is excellent, with plenty of humor and drama and whatnot, but the manual really stood out for me. After all, manuals are usually pretty drab.

I really hate to rip on the game, but I’m going to be completely honest here – it’s got its good share of flaws. Some big, some small, all contributing in some way to make the elitist (in their own minds) jerks who think Final Fantasy is the shit hate this game. Like I said before, I exist to fill niches, and this game is definitely niche. So, I guess we’re going to have to tread into that place I only like to go when reviewing food – negative territory. Bad things ho!

the bad

#1 – Oh God my ears!

I’ll put it to you straight: this is a really good game to turn the sound off and turn on your own music. I really ahte when I have to say it, but it’s entirely true. Well, perhaps not entirely.

The truth is, the sound and voice acting in the game is superb. Stellar, even. The regular game music isn’t too offensive either. It’s generic RPG-ish music for the most part, but it isn’t so generic that it warrants a bad reputation. Hell, the town music is actually kinda catchy; I often find myself whistling or humming along.

The real trouble comes in the form of the Garland Globetrotters. See, they’re this band who, in the game, everybody just loves. Connie is the lead vocalist, and if you play on the good side you can choose to join them. The thing is, they make terrible, terrible music. It’s bad, man. Real bad. And won’t you be surprised when I tell you it gets worse. The singing is absolutely atrocious. Like, makes-the-music-seem-great atrocious. It’s not really that the singer has a really bad voice, but the lyrics are just so impossibly bad, and she doesn’t handle them very well. The lack of any rhyming or proper song structure just make the songs a physical pain to listen to.

Later on in the game, you can even jam with a second band after you complete a certain sub-quest. This is even worse, with a poor male vocalist and the same horrid songwriting that the Globetrotters’ songs fall victim to. It’s supposed to be rock ‘n’ roll too, and the flagrant disregard for respect for the genre makes me die a little on the inside.

#2 – Loading…

I’m not kidding when I say there’s loading everywhere in this game. And it really gets in the way too. And it’s like ten seconds per load screen, which really drives the point home.

Now, I know that the areas are large, but there isn’t a whole lot going on in most of them. A few enemies, maybe some environmental effects and some people passing through. Not that much. Again, I have to compare it to Grand Theft Auto. It’s got even bigger ares with tons going on, and San Andreas only loads once when you start it up (and when you start a mission, but that doesn’t count). Steambot has noticeably better visuals than any GTA game, but that’s no excuse. Shadow of the Colossus is one of the most beautiful and expansive PS2 games going and it never has to load. Yeah, it suffers very heavily from lag, but it still never has to load. Steambot lags every once in a while too. Tell me why you had to have so damn many long load screens, Irem!

Probably the worst part of it all is once you enter a city. The field areas are nigh empty and they have to load on every new map. The cities are full of moving people, and cars. It gets really ugly, to say the least. Not only do you have extended load screens when you enter the cities, but they’re sliced up (invisibly, there aren’t walls or anything) into districts, and you have to wait for a regular load screen each time you move to a new one. Getting across town should take twenty seconds. Instead it takes about a whole minute. It doesn’t help that while in town, your trotmobile moves automatically and observes all the rules of the road, even red lights.

#3 – OMG I win!

There isn’t much to say about it, but I really hate the fact that Steambot Chronicles is so easy. I mean, the way the game works, if it were any harder, it would immediately cross the line into frustrating town, but I’d like a little challenge.

To be fair, the game isn’t a total cakewalk. Some arena-dwelling trot riders are skilled at their trade and took me down a couple times, but it was nothing a huge steel trident couldn’t fix. The “boss” robots, on the other hand, are complete jokes. They’re gigantic, elaborate trotmobiles that look nothing like standard trots. Most of them are covered in turrets and/or spikes. None of them ever had a chance. Once you identify their weapon and how to avoid it, they’re just big piles of scrap metal. It’s even worse if you’ve got ranged weapons equipped, because then you don’t even have to worry about those, as you can just sit back and fire away to victory.

I think maybe the problem is that if you understand the game and it’s mechanics, you’ll always end up having the proper frames for the job. Some enemies are near impossible to defeat without the right weapons, but it doesn’t take long to figure out just where each enemy’s weaknesses are. Not that they have actual weak points (to which you would be able to cause massive damage), but there’s always a hole in their strategy somewhere. Strong enemies are usually slow, and you just run behind them, smack ’em and repeat. Smaller enemies don’t often pose a huge threat as far as attack power goes, so you can run in and ruin their shit before they can get a move in. Like I said, the only enemies that come hard are the trot riders you face in the arenas, and even then it’s just a matter of figuring out their gimmick and stamping it out.

#4 – Little things

Having to have an apartment in the same city as the girl you want to date
Oh, the lag!
Stupid “Vanilla remembers who he is” sequence
Basil and Marjoram are annoying
Can only play the tournament once
Most CPU players are too good at the billiards minigame
Flying makes your trot suck
They should have removed the trotmobile weight limit after beating the game or doing all the sub-quests or something.
Trotmobile colour editing is very limited
The sequel is taking too long.

Well, I tried, but I can’t come up with any more bad points. At least nothing bad enough that it could be drawn out over a couple paragraphs. We’re just gonna have to face it, Steambot Chronicles just isn’t that bad a game. It’s actually quite enjoying and relaxing. It’s kind of like Harvest Moon meets Animal Crossing meets Hulk: Ultimate Destruction meets Robot Alchemic Drive. Now you think it sounds pretty neat, don’t you? Yeah. It is a pretty neat game. I know I couldn’t recommend it to just anybody, but there is a respectable fanbase behind it, so it’s not like I’m the only one.

Like I said, it’s pretty relaxing, which basically means slow=paced, so if you’re an action freak, maybe steer clear. But if you like something you can just pop in and play at your own pace, then Steambot Chronicles could be just for you. If you liked sailing in the Wind Waker, you’ll probably enjoy this one, because there’s a lot of back-and-forth over long stretches. Of course, there’s more in between destinations in Steambot than there is on WW’s ocean, but I’m just saying, there’s a lot of traveling involved.

In conclusion, since I could think up more [pertinent] good points than bad, I guess I like Steambot Chronicles. Even if it does sound like it’s about steamboats if you’re not paying attention. If I were ranking it with a school-type letter grade, I guess it’d be a C+. It’s definitely passable and meeting my expectations, but it could most certainly try harder. Assuming Irem fixes, at the very least, all that loading, I think Bumpy Trot 2 could be a real contender. I know I’m looking forward to it, and maybe you should try out the first one while I wait.

TE is on… Super Smash TV!

[Editor’s Note: This was riginally written as a guest article. I changed some obvious phrases, but it something doens’t make sense, just keep that in mind]

Now it’s a bit odd, but I decided that I m posting an article here when it was intended to be a guest article for another site. Weird, no? Well that’s the way it’s going to be, and you’re going to have to deal with it. I ran out of time, and it’s the only backup I had left. Sure this contains very little of the brilliance of my regular articles, but it shall be something to read nonetheless. The pictures are as well low-budget, as I don’t want to take the time to take screenshots if I’m not even doing this seriously, so I just stole them from a Google image search.

This review is obviously (as long as you took the time to read the link and the title) about the game Super Smash TV. It’s a game that I really enjoy, and was playing a lot for a while back in October. The game is very simplistic, as it is derived from an arcade game of a similar name. While the arcade version might have a few extra scenes and (slightly) better looking models (I think, I only glanced at one screenshot. In the console version, they look like ugly men.), there probably isn’t a whole lot of difference between the two.

The game is basically you and possibly a friend running around a maze, killing hordes of enemies and picking up a bunch of prizes along the way. It’s set up as some sort of futuristic game show, and I think it’s pretty accurate, as with the current trend of violence-loving and reality TV, a real life Smash TV might not be far off. But that sad, sad fact aside, the game is pretty fun. It’s also pretty hard, and I can’t get too far without cheating. There are tons of enemies, way more than in any Gauntlet game, even. And the bosses have tons of life and really enjoy killing you.

Even though it’s almost always the same thing over and over, I find that the game doesn’t get too boring after playing it a lot. The only real different rooms are the cash rooms and bosses. The only annoying part of the game is at the end of a level, when your points are tallied up. It’s fine if you do badly, but if you get a lot of stuff, it can take a long time to add up all your points. And the worst part is that you can’t skip it, you have to sit for 1 to 3 minutes waiting for the points to count up.

Now like I said, you basically just go around shooting stuff. Enemies constantly flood out of each side of the room, and you just can’t stop them. Fortunately, there are a whole bunch of power-ups to help take the gaggles of goons out. A bunch of weapons are at your disposal, like machine guns, rocket launchers, and spread shots. Then there are other things like the speed-up, invincibility, and a shield. The only thing is that the rooms last a long time, and the power-up don’t last nearly long enough to be of maximum use. But they do appear quite often, so it sort of balances out.

The bosses, on the other hand, are incredibly hard to beat if you’re not cheating. They’re pretty big, have a lot of weapons, and are slightly faster than yourself. Not only that, but they take forever to kill, and most of the time, your forced to use special weapons because normal guns don’t work at all. So not only are they very hard to not get killed by, but they take forever to beat, too. If there is an upside, it’s that the third one (I think) looks just like the announcer guy, and I thought that was pretty funny.

Now that I’m done with the summary, here’s my point tally.

Graphics:
They look fine for the SNES, and I think they’re mostly the same as the arcade version. The only real downside is that the game show babes are beastly. The greatest thing is that there can be about 40 things moving on the screen at the same time with no slowdown whatsoever. Or at least none that I can recall. 8

Sound & music
I can’t really remember there being any music. I guess it was all drowned out by the shooting and the dying. There are a few voice samples for the announcer, and they’re pretty good compared to most voice samples in game of that time. And by that, I mean that you can tell what he’s saying. 6

Controls
This is where the game really shines. You control your guy with the d-pad, and which way he shoots with the face buttons, so you can move and shoot in different directions. If you’re playing the ROM and have a dual-analog gamepad, try setting movement to one stick and shooting to the other. I couldn’t get it to work, but I imagine it would work very nicely. 10

Fun
It’s good fun, and is just as good with two players. It can really get competitive if you’re both obsessed with getting all the loot, so it really adds to the fun of the game. It loses a few points because the bosses take way too long to kill and the game is just too damn hard to get very far. 8

Overall
I enjoy the game, but not in extended periods of time. I might beat a few rooms one day, save state, play a few rooms the next day, and so on. The lack of notable/memorable music is a real downer for me, but that just means I can turn off the sound and pop in one of my CDs without feeling cheated out of awesome music. It’s games like this that are the foundation of what an arcade should be. We need less of those damned shooting and fighting games and more of the old-school adventureish games like this or that Ninja Turtles arcade game. Overall, I’ll give it a 7.

So that’s about it. I do feel a little low for posting this on my site, it’s not exactly up to my general standards. But what can I say, it took me about an hour to write, including the time it took me to figure out what I’d write about, get the pictures, and write the thing. So I guess the last little note I should tack on here is that if you’ve got a friends nearby and a couple of PC gamepads, go download this ROM now, or buy one of the many classic arcade compilations that have this game on it. It’s a game worth trying out, and as I’ve said for many a game before this, it’s great for killing time.

Makin’ Pancakes! – Guest starring ShadowMan

Once again, I’ve been up to some cooking mischief. And this time when I say mischief, I really mean mischief. Normally when I go to make something I stick pretty close to the recipe, as most novice chefs do. I mean, there’s no way I anywhere near qualified to add my own little “touches” to any dish, especially when I’m actually making something (as opposed to preparing a pre-made meal). But rules are mean to be broken and all that jazz. So I took it upon myself (with some slight inspiration from Scary-Crayon and I-Mockery) to create a dish best served… well, probably best not served at all.

But this time I won’t be alone in my rantings! As you may have guessed by that portrait to the right there, I’ll be joined in my culinary adventure by ShadowMan of MegaMan 3 fame. You know, since he’s not up to much these days. I mean, the last work he had was in Rockman Battle & Chase, and that was almost a whole decade ago. Now he’s reduced to co-starring in crappy articles on websites that nobody reads. Poor, poor ShadowMan.

Ryan : Okay, so I’ve got the plan set out here ShadowMan. I’ve woken up early, and I need something to do with my morning. I’ve chosen to try my hand at making pancakes.

ShadowMan : Pancakes? Well I suppose that since it is 7:30 in the morning, that’s appropriate enough. But what in the world makes you think you have the skills necessary to make pancakes?

Ryan : Believe it or not, my pixelated friend, I have successfully created pancakes in the past.

ShadowMan : I choose not to believe that.

Ryan : Fine then. But it’s true. At least one of my brothers can attest to this. He was there and he ate some. Sure, they turned out looking like crap because I did a very poor flipping job, but they tasted okay. Except for they tasted like crap because I decided it would be a good idea to use both chocolate and butterscotch chips.

ShadowMan : Butterscotch? What the flip were you thinking?

Ryan : Probably something along the lines of “Hey! This might be a good idea!”

ShadowMan : You fail to surprise me.

Ryan : I wasn’t trying, my friend. I wasn’t trying. So anyway, let’s move on to the pancakes.

ShadowMan : I’m not your friend.

Ryan : The first logical step would be to round up the tools I’m gonna need. Based on my limited knowledge of cooking and what I remember of the last time I made pancakes, I’m going to need a pan, a mixer, a small bowl, a large bowl, a spatula, measuring cups, and a mixing spoon.

ShadowMan : Dude… What’s with all the colour swapping? It’s giving me a damn seizure.

Ryan : Key items. When someone mentions a key item, place, or person, the word is always highlighted in a different colour.

ShadowMan : Yeah, whatever. Stop being a douche and type in one colour. I’m sure anyone else who reads this is going to get mighty annoyed by it as well.

Ryan : Well sorry. I didn’t know it bothered you so much. But while you were so busy complaining about text colour, I managed to find all the tools we need, except a pan and a spatula. The only suitable ones are in the dishwasher right now.

ShadowMan : Well what about that pan pictured above?

Ryan : It’s too round. I can’t very well cook round pancakes can I?

ShadowMan : Just use the damn thing. You can make smaller pancakes in the middle if you’re so damn worried about the roundness of it all. Besides, I already greased it up, so you have to use it or you’re wasting a dish.

Ryan : But I didn’t get out the cooking spray… How did you grease it?

ShadowMan : I’m going to keep that information between me and the pan.

Ryan : And now, the secret to my success! The cookbook!

ShadowMan : Wow. Great secret. Totally blows my mind. But seriously, this thing looks like it’s older than you.

Ryan : Well I’m not even 20 yet. It very well could be.

ShadowMan : Well then don’t you think that maybe the pancake recipe has, you know, improved over the last couple decades? That handy internet thing is bound to have a recipe for pancakes somewhere.

Ryan : You know, now that I think of it, you’re actually younger than me. Let’s see.. MegaMan 3 came out in ’91, so you’re… 15?

ShadowMan : Hey! Don’t try to change the topic! And for the record, I’m from the future. 20XX to be precise.

Ryan : Oh psssh. You’re 15. Now how the Hell did you manage to get away with driving in Battle & Chase? There’s no way you were old enough to have a driver’s license back then.

ShadowMan : Robot Masters don’t need driver’s licenses. And you’re not really one to talk, now are you, Mr. Almost-20-And-Can’t-Drive?

Ryan : Aw shut up. Let’s just make the stupid pancakes.

ShadowMan : That’s the spirit. Or lack thereof, perhaps. What does your cookbook say we need?

Ryan : It says we need flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, milk, an egg, and butter.

ShadowMan : This will be easy. I’ll go grab the stuff in the pantry, you get the goods from the fridge.

ShadowMan : And just what do you think you’re gonna be doing with that?

Ryan : I just had the wildest idea. Let’s replace the milk with chocolate milk!

ShadowMan : No no no. Killing hookers is a wild idea. Using chocolate milk in baking is just stupid. Do you really think that’s a good idea?

Ryan : No. Not at all. Experience has taught me on many occasions that substituting chocolate milk for real milk is a terrible idea. But let’s do it anyway!

ShadowMan : *Sigh* Fine. Whatever. I won’t be eating these things anyway, so put whatever you damn well please in there.

Ryan : Horray! Okay, so first we’ve gotta put the flour, salt, sugar, and baking powder into the big bowl. That’s done, so then we have to put the egg, milk, and butter into a smaller bowl and mix it up.

ShadowMan : Nothing about that looks right.

Ryan : Hey, at least I didn’t get any eggshell in it.

ShadowMan : I guess I owe you a little credit for that one. I certainly expected most of it to end up in there. But… weren’t you supposed to melt the butter first?

Ryan : Aw shat. No problem, I’ll just pop it in the microwave for a minute.

ShadowMan : I have a bad feeling about this.

Ryan : It’ll be just fine. You’ll see. So while we’re waiting, what’s it like not having any female Robot Masters around. It’s gotta get a little frustrating, if you know what I mean.

ShadowMan : No, not really. We weren’t programmed with a sex drive. And besides, there’s always Roll.

Ryan : Yeah, that’s true. But there are also 54 Wily-series Robot Masters. Roll’s gotta be a little… worn out by now.

ShadowMan : I wouldn’t know, and I don’t really want to. But word on the street is that RingMan and HardMan… you know, bat for the other team. So it’s not like we don’t have options.

Ryan : That’s none of my business.

ShadowMan : I was kidding man. Lighten up.

Microwave : Ding!

Ryan : See, it worked. Now all I have to do is mix this crap up with the mixer. I love this part. My mom never lets me play with this thing, so now that everyone’s gone out for the day and I have the kitchen to myself, it’s mixer time!

ShadowMan : There’s an odd sensation going down my spine. Is this what fear feels like?

Ryan : Oh pah. I know how to use this thing. See, look! It’s all mixed up and nobody lost any appendages.

ShadowMan : So then pour it into the powdery junk.

Ryan : Hold on, they’re about to reveal the secret ingredient!

ShadowMan : Secret wha…? Oh Jesus no.

Ryan : Oh Jesus yes! I got the idea when I read in the cookbook that you can add blueberries to the pancakes. But we don’t have blueberries, so this Nesquik Strawberry-Banana Smoothie mix should do the trick!

ShadowMan : It won’t do any tricks! Stop this insanity! The chocolate milk was bad enough but this is waaaaay over the line!

Ryan : But you told me to put whatever I wanted in it…

ShadowMan : Ughh… Well, I suppose that people do put bananas and strawberries in pancakes, so I guess adding in a syrupy crap that tastes vaguely like both won’t necessarily be horrible. But you know what, I kind of hope it does. You clearly need to learn some sort of lesson here, and if having to choke down the Worst Pancakes Ever will get that lesson across, then so be it.

Ryan : What were you saying? I stopped listening at… Well, when you started talking.

ShadowMan : I hate you.

Ryan : Aww, you’re my best friend too.

ShadowMan : Just put your death goop in the big bowl with the rest of the stuff already.

Ryan : It looks like syphilis.

ShadowMan : Is that an educated comparison?

Ryan : I blame the internet.

ShadowMan : Please just mix it. I think it gave me a dirty look.

Ryan : Okay. I’ll do that.

ShadowMan : Oh dear lord, It’s just getting worse.

Ryan : Actually, I think it smells rather pleasant. Like cookies!

ShadowMan : Stop touting your olfactory organ, meatbag. Just because I can’t smell doesn’t mean you’re better than me. I know 27 ways to kill you with my little finger!!

Ryan : Meatbag?

ShadowMan : Yeah. Meatbag.

Ryan : I thought you hated Futurama for its “racist representation of robots.”

ShadowMan : Bender isn’t the only robot who refers to humans as meatbags, you know. Didn’t you ever play KOTOR?

Ryan : Now now, nobody wants to talk about the XBox. I’m done mixing anyway.

ShadowMan : …It’s on PC too… Oh cripes! That stuff is way too thick! There’s no way in Hell that’s going to turn into pancakes.

Ryan : Well then what do I do?

ShadowMan : Okay, I’m clearly modeled to be a ninja, not a chef. How in the crap am I going to know what to do?

Ryan : Oh hey, what if I put more chocolate milk in there? That might even it out.

ShadowMan : That actually sounds rather reasonable. I suppose the only way to find out is to try it, but if it doesn’t work, I think these pancakes are going to be a big, messy write-off.

Ryan : Yaaaah! Go, chocolate milk! Fix this horrid batter!

ShadowMan : Did you really need to make it 25 seconds long? I mean, I think you’d driven the point home by five.

Ryan : Hey, it’s my first YouTube thingy. It needs to be grand! Also I forgot which button on my camera stops video recording. But hey, at least the batter turned out alright.

ShadowMan : Yes, it does look shockingly like pancake batter. Though it’s a little darker than usual. But of course we’ve got the chocolate milk to blame for that.

Ryan : Okay, so now that the batter is all ready, we just need to shape it into pancakes! But we’re going to need a spatula before I start slopping this junk into the pan.

ShadowMan : Whee! Jumping across perilous ledges is really fun! I’m starting to understand why that retard MegaMan is doing it all the time!

Ryan : Quit fooling around. The spatula is clearly not there. I already told you it’s in the dishwasher.

ShadowMan : So just use one of these things.

Ryan : I’m pretty sure none of those could act as a spatula. Not in the slightest.

ShadowMan : Pish posh, this fellow here could get the job done! He’s hard worker, and since he comes from Mexico, he’ll work for pennies a day! He doesn’t even fight back when I pelt him with shuriken!

Ryan : Ah. A shot at the Mexicans. Just what this article needed.

ShadowMan : Exactly. So how about it? Give it a try?

Ryan : No, I think I’ll just go with a fork. I may have to pay him the minimum wage, but at least he doesn’t stink the place up.

ShadowMan : You know, I think we’d better stop before this goes into “racist” territory.

Ryan : I think it’s too late. In fact, I’m pretty sure some left-wing jerkoff out there thinks you’re some sort of racist stereotype.

ShadowMan : No, you’ve got me confused with TomahawkMan. Also, I wasn’t created by Sony.

Ryan : Ooh. Low blow. Is there anyone else we need to take a shot at?

ShadowMan : No, I’m pretty sure by this point, we’ve made at least one comment to piss everyone off.

Ryan : Good good. So these things are turning out pretty well, no?

ShadowMan : How the Hell should I know? You haven’t been taking any pictures.

Ryan : Oops. Well, yeah, they are doing pretty well. My flipping skill has certainly increased, as I haven’t messed a single one up yet. Though that damned pan sticks up too much and I keep burning myself on it.

ShadowMan : So then put on some oven mitts, you little baby.

Ryan : That’s some pretty tough talk coming from the guy who’s weakness is the goddamned Top Spin.

ShadowMan : Hey! Hey! That’s not my fault! I was born that way!

Ryan : Yeah, whatever, ya big wuss.

Ryan : Dude…

ShadowMan : What?

Ryan : The cookbook said that the recipe would make 8-9 pancakes. I got friggin’ 12.

ShadowMan : Well, you did make a few pretty small. That might have something to do with it. Or also the fact that when you probably should’ve added another half-cup of chocolate milk to even out the batter, you threw in like a cup and a half.

Ryan : Are you blaming me?

ShadowMan : Yes.

Ryan : Well, you’re probably right. But seeing as how there are so many here, I think you’re gonna have to help me eat these things.

ShadowMan : Oh no you don’t! My contract states that I only have to be here to provide colour commentary and appear in a few pictures. It says nowhere that I actually have to ingest this crap.

Ryan : Well they still smell alright. I don’t think they’re going to be too bad.

ShadowMan : Shampoo smells pretty good too, but do you eat that?

Ryan : That’s completely different!

ShadowMan : Is it really?

ShadowMan : To your credit, I will admit that they are rather nice and fluffy. I could sleep on these things.

Ryan : I think you’d be surprised at how good they taste. Wait. Let me rephrase that. I think you’d be surprised at how awful they aren’t.

ShadowMan : Your point does not make up for horrid grammar. It burns me to the soul. But they’re actually good?

Ryan : I rephrased for a reason. They don’t taste good, but they certainly aren’t putrid. I would willingly put more of these in my mouth.

ShadowMan : Um. You’re not really getting the idea across. You’re going to need to be more specific.

Ryan : Okay, fine. They taste… like pancakes. Not very good pancakes, but pancakes no less. You can just barely make out the strawberry-banana flavour, despite the fact that they’re radiant pink.

ShadowMan : Despite the fact that you can’t tell how pink they are in the photos.

Ryan : Correct. The chocolate milk seems to have had no effect on them whatsoever, possibly made them a little darker. They’re chewier than regular pancakes, but not by much. It’s almost as if you’re eating McDonald’s hotcakes without taking them out of the styrofoam container. Except it doesn’t taste like styrofoam.

ShadowMan : Well damn it. I guess I owe TenguMan a 20-spot.

Ryan : What? Why?

ShadowMan : I bet him that your pancakes would turn out worse than Jessica Simpson’s marriage.

Ryan : Ouch. And what’s worse is TenguMan’s a total jackass, so you know he’s gonna be rubbing it in your face as much as he can.

ShadowMan : You don’t have to tell me.

ShadowMan : Giving up already?

Ryan : Ugh… They’re more filling than they appear. I got six down though. That’s not so bad.

ShadowMan : Only six? That’s pathetic! Why don’t you just go down to the repossession office and hand in your balls? And then you can go home and cry to your boyfriend.

Ryan : Shut up.

ShadowMan : Ha. Do you see that, do you see what I did there? I made it seem as though you were a homosexual… That’s funny to me.

Ryan : Who’s the one that was talking about having his options open to plow HardMan?

ShadowMan : Touché.

And that essentially concludes… that. I don’t know. Do I really need a conclusion? I thought that I summed it up pretty well. But then again, those shurikens would be slightly less necessary if there weren’t a conclusion to separate from the body text. Yeah.

I pretty much expected those pancakes to kill me, however slowly. But they turned out pretty damn well, all things considered. I’d normally fake disgust for comedic effect, but I don’t really feel like it. I already had to write a whole dialogue, that should be enough. What more do you want from me? Besides, I’m sure someone out there would stumble in here and be stupid enough to actually try it, and then call me out for outright lying about how they ended up. Wow. How badly do I need to chill out?

Remember the good old days when I used to separate my intros and conclusions from the body text? Yeah, those were the days. I’ll admit, I kind of like the new fancy-banner all-in-one article layout, but nostalgia is something I just can’t escape. And it gets worse and worse every day… Well, I shouldn’t be rambling so much here. That’s what the blog is for! Good night, folks!

TE Reviews 6 Indie PC Games

Here we go again. More Goddamned video games. You must be getting pretty damned sick of these things by now. Well that’s too ding-dong bad for you, because I’m gonna be doing video game reviews until Torrential Equilibrium goes belly up!

That little foreplay all said and done, there’s a small twist to today’s video game review. This review is actually six reviews. Six reviews of six different independently-developed PC games. These aren’t your regular PC games like Doom or The Sims. No, these were made by students, tiny companies, and dudes with nothing better to do. All have garnered at least a little internet fame, so you know they’re gonna be good. Maybe. A couple are really out there, and I can’t guarantee you’ll like them all, but make sure to give ’em all a try, at least. Because I like them all. After all, how many articles are written about things I don’t like. The answer is: More than I care to count, but I’m pretty sure it’s less than ten.

Oh yeah, and I’m not entirely sure if “indie” is the proper word to be using here, but there isn’t really any better word to use, so imma run with it.

Our first game comes courtesy of Studio Pixel. To be completely honest, I actually found out about this company on Last.FM. Odd, no?

Anyhow, this game is called “Glasses” and is about as complex as a Game & Watch title (on the surface…). As the little man, your job is to catch the falling glasses with your face. The better aligned the glasses are with your giant head, the more points you score. You even get a bonus point if you get a jump catch. It works in three “heats,” so to speak. Each time, the pair of glasses falls a little quicker, and at the end, your points are totaled and you get a comment based on how well you do.

And that’s pretty much the extent of the game. It literally takes about a minute to play. So why do I choose it to review? Maybe because I don’t have to exert any effort to get it done? Nope! I choose it because as simple as it is, I found it damn addictive. Seriously. If you’re anything like me, you’ll play it over and over again until you have a perfect score, and then keep playing it over and over again because it’s rather fun for a game that doesn’t really amount to anything more than a minor distraction. And I do recommend that you keep playing until you get a perfect score (or at least 30 of a possible 33), not only because some of the comments are slightly funny, but also because there’s a little something for those talented enough to do really well… I won’t spoil it, but it is pretty wicked sweet.

High recommendation for this one, not only because it’s a fun little distraction, but also because the music is just as kickass as the gameplay. Possibly even moreso. You can find the English version on this page (god knows there isn’t much to translate) or since it’s so damned small, download it directly from me.

The second game on my list is another less-than-complicated title called Seiklus. I’d made by some dude who goes by the name of clysm. I found this one thanks to the “101 free games” article that 1up.com ran some time ago.

Seiklus is a very simple game. You play as a little white guy, and you pretty much jump and climb around the world. There aren’t any real enemies to deal with, and obstacles don’t hurt you or anything, so you don’t really have to worry about anything. The game is really just based around exploring and adventure.

So what purpose does the adventuring serve? Well, there’s a small cutscene at the beginning, in which your little guy gets knocked off his star(?) and separated from his supposed girlfriend. He then lands in a grassy field, and so begins the quest. So I’m assuming that your objective is to return to the star. But there’s a snag. You’ve gotta collect these multi-coloured bubbles to open a door, which I assume leads home. I haven’t been able to find all the bubbles yet, so I’m not entirely sure. There’s a second door as well, but I have no idea what that one’s for. There are also a handful of little “artifacts” scattered all over the place, which seem to have special effects of some sort.

Overall, the game has a very peaceful way about it, just letting you explore where you want when you want. It doesn’t really force you to do anything, and the map is pretty huge, with many different paths to take. The places you wind up are pretty varied, and the few events that take place are kinda neat. Plus, since I haven’t finished it yet, you can tell that it’s not as easy as it is laid-back. Sure, I’ve only logged in about three hours max, but people have flown through Metroid Prime in two hours. There’s some kind of logic in there somewhere, but I can’t be bothered to try to explain it.

the graphics are rather plain, but I doubt the game would be as charming with any more detail. Besides, there are some neat little effects here and there. The music also fits it to a tee, working very well with each area. I think the best way to describe it is “Earthbound meets Relentless.” But then again, I doubt many of you have ever played the awesome game that is Relentless. I’d review it, but I don’t have a computer old enough to run it…

Like Glasses, I totally recommend this one. You’ll need a little more free time to fully enjoy this one, but there’s a handy save feature, so you don’t have to get it all done in one run. Though you likely will if you’ve got the time to spare. This one can really suck you in. Download it here.

I learned about the next game from one of my new favourite blogs. While he was more talking about the game that will be included with Half-Life Episode 2, Portal, he linked to a similar game called Narbacular Drop, which was apparently the base idea for Portal. Obviously, I downloaded.

Simply put, I very much liked what I got. While Narbacular Drop is a DigiPen student project, meaning it’s rather short, it’s an incredible game. Hell, it’s an incredible experience.

So what’s the game all about? You play as a princess who’s been captured by a demon. With the help of some Mountain God or something, you can create doors in the walls of a room that link to each other. It’s a little hard to explain, but I’ll try. Assume you put one door on the north wall of a room, and one on the south. If you were to walk into one, you would come out the other. Well, maybe that wasn’t so hard after all. It’s pretty simple, but it’s enough to keep you entertained for a long time. Just the idea of being able to bend space is pretty enticing, I think. The ways that the level designers used the ability in the various rooms is pretty good, and there are a good handful of traps to avoid and puzzles to solve before you escape the dungeon.

The graphics are clearly the best of any game in this feature, not quite current-gen quality, but definitely a few steps above the N64/PS1 era. Textures are nicely done and put Super Mario Sunshine to shame, but the lava is unconvincing to say the least. There’s only like two music tracks in the whole game, and I can’t say that I can recall whether they were any good or not. But that’s not the point! Defying the laws of the universe is more than enough to satisfy me!

so yeah. Narbacular Drop pretty much rocks, and you can bet that I’ll be getting me some Half-Life Episode 2 just for Portal. You can check out the ND website and download the game here. High recommendation in this corner.

I was aiming to get games from five different sources, but that seems impossible now. Game number four is another Studio Pixel effort, and easily their most popular offering. Play it and you’ll see just why.

Cave Story is very much the same as Glasses in some ways, and very different in other ways. The main similarities would be the graphics and music. The game is drawn in a style that resembles maybe a GameBoy Colour at best, but exudes enough personality and charm that it really doesn’t need to look any better. The music is also pretty aged, but entirely awesome. There’s even a little jingle when you pick up power-ups that will bring back memories of Metroid.

And speaking of Metroid, Cave Story is not quite, but very close to being Metroidvania. (For the uninformed, “Metroidvania” refers to a game with open-ended exploration, where gaining power-ups gives you access to new areas. Like the Metroid series or any of the more recent Castlevania games, hence Metroidvania.) This is where it differs ever so greatly from Glasses. You’ve got a whole world to explore, treasures to find, secrets to uncover, and a plot to follow. And the best part of all, you play as an adorable little robot!

So basically what we’ve got here is run, jump and shoot. But as far as I’m concerned, that’s the best kind of game. As I mentioned, you’re a little robot, and you wind up having to stop some demented Doctor. HOLD TEH FONE IS MEGAMANS! Well, not quite. I won’t spoil the story or anything though. Along the way, you’ll acquire a sizeable collection of weapons and power-ups, navigate many, many tunnels, and go up against some monstrous bosses.

I don’t have much else to say. I could start rambling and go into heavy detail about everything, but I think we’d all prefer if I didn’t. the final word though, is that Cave Story is a very sweet game, and God damn you’re missing out if you’re wasting your time reading this instead of playing it. Go download it right now. Or maybe later, when you’ve got some free time. Either way is fine with me, really.

Ooh! And one last little tip for if you do actually go play it. Once you find the machine gun, get it to level 3, then jump and shoot downwards. You’ll never have to worry about anything again!

Another game that was brought to my attention by 1up‘s “101 Free games” article, Akuji the Demon is another great little title that you’ll find looming around on the internet. I have no idea who this comes from, as I have no understanding of crazy-speak (Japanese), but that matters very little in the long run.

I talked about Cave Story fitting more or less into the Metroidvania sub-genre, and Akuji the Demon is a definite Metroidvania title. It’s all about exploring the game world, searching for your next power-up/ability. The only real difference is that you collect a number of crystal skulls to increase your life, rather than simple energy tanks or the like. Now I love Metroidvania titles more than pretty much anything, so I’m very happy with this title. The graphics are pixely, colourful and cute, and are rather entertaining. Just look at little Akuji! Whee! The music sounds like they just stole some midis from RPG Maker ’95, which is sad, but it’s something I got over pretty quickly.

I have little to no idea what the game is about, since it’s all in symbol-babble and I didn’t bother to find the translation patch (though it does exist out there somewhere). This was kind of a good thing, because I had to experiment every time I got a new item because I couldn’t read the help signs which would tell me what to do.

While the gameplay is pretty spectacular, there are some huge issues with the game. And when I say huge, I mean “you’ll get frustrated a little by them.” Firstly, you can’t change direction while jumping. This is a pain in the ass, especially if you’ve got a tendency to overshoot smaller platforms like I do. Secondly, the game is real short. To be fair, all of the games in this article are rather short, but you kind of expect more than an hour of gameplay from a game like Akuji. At least Cave Story takes between two and three.

In the end, though, Akuji the Demon is a darn fine game, and I recommend giving it a go. It’s not quite as awesome as Cave Story or as novel as Narbacular Drop, but it should do the trick. Go here and hit the second download link to, well, download it. You might also want to do a search for the translation patch, as I’m damn well not going to go find it for you.

I feel like kind of a sellout adding a Flash game onto this list, but we’ll consider it a special consideration, for reasons I don’t feel like explaining. In any case, I’m very, very hooked on Motherload. It’s no surprise either, because it comes from the same team that made Defend Your Castle (My all-time favourite Flash game), XGen Studios.

Simply put, the game is about mining for treasure. You’re a little digging… thing… on the surface of (what they call) Mars, and your task is to dig into the planet and unearth its precious minerals. Like so many games in this article, it’s simple. It’s damned addictive too. You know why? Because they put in little “cut-scenes” when you get so far down, and if you’re like me, you just have to know what happens at the next target depth.

But getting down there isn’t as easy as holding the down key. Nope, you’ve got fuel, armour, and a treasure hold to deal with, as well as about a half-dozen different hazards. When you bring minerals back to the surface, you get cash rewards depending on how valuable the goods are. With this cash, you refuel, fix up your hull, and… wait for it… BUY UPGRADES! Yes, that’s right. You get to buy upgrades for your little digger. Now you know exactly why I’ve been playing this game obsessively for the last week. If there are upgrades to be bought, I will buy them. That’s precisely why I don’t play MMORPGs.

Anyway, assuming you manage to play long enough to save up for all the best upgrades (which takes for-friggin’-ever) and reach the max depth (there’s got to be one, right?) you’ll probably quit playing. I can’t imagine you’d want to put yourself through that a second time. The first time isn’t overly fun, really, it’s just the burning desire to collect the best everything that’ll keep you going after about ten minutes. I hate speaking against it, but the truth must be told. It just doesn’t have anywhere near as much raw fun power as Defend Your Castle.

Besides that little hiccup, I still suggest you try it out. If you’ve got the lust for power-ups, you’ll love it. If not, well, ten minutes. Max. Maybe twenty if you’re bored. Luckily, it does have a save feature if you do end up going back, so as long as you don’t destroy your cookies or that junk, you won’t lose your hard work. Also, since it’s a Flash game, there’s no need to download it! Lucky!

And that pretty much sums it all up. I know there are tons more games out there on the net, and maybe some are more deserving of being seen here (I can list a couple), but I’ve made my choices. I’m sticking with ’em, too. If you didn’t know, I had the first five reviews up on the blog, so sticking them in article form is a little redundant since I keep all my blog archives. Of course, there’s no reason you shouldn’t know that. Unless it’s like 2007 and you just stumbled onto this site and haven’t read the blog archives. Then it’s okay not to know. End.

TE’s Hat Collection!

I’m not really one for the world of fashion. Hell, most straight men aren’t. I usually don’t bother with much other than a t-shirt and jeans, but there is one type of accessory that I simply adore. Hats. Yes, hats. I’ve always been quite fond of wearing hats of all shapes and sizes. Sadly, my head is gigantic, so most of the time I look silly with a hat on. So I took that to my advantage, and now I’ve become quite an avid collector of silly hats.

Well, maybe not so much a collector, but I do have a penchant for acquiring unusual headwear.

You know who else wears a wide variety of hats? Kirby. And there are even more similarities than that between me and the little pink marshmallow. See, when Kirby puts on a new hat, it bestows him a power that is somehow represented by that hat. My hats have similar qualities, only slightly less fantastic. My hats don’t make me a master swordsman or allow me to breathe fire. No, those abilities are constant.

That’s far more than enough of a preface, don’t you think? Yes, I’ve rambled a bit too much, so let’s get on to the hats already!

The cowboy hat

The first hat is the cowboy hat. This cowboy hat actually used to belong to my dad, but it was handed down to me a couple years ago after I expressed how much I enjoyed wearing it. Sadly, it spends the bulk of its time as a decoration rather than as a hat.

The cowboy hat not only gives me the skill to wrangle various types of cattle and ride bulls with the best of them, but it also does an excellent job of bringing out my inner shirtless hunky cowboy. This trait is key in scoring with hot models and your mom.

The plastic top hat

I’ve always wanted a top hat. I’ve made it clear to everyone I’ve come in contact with in my whole life ever at least once. While I’ve yet to get my hands on a real top hat, a couple years ago my mom decided that it would be funny to get me a plastic top hat for New Year’s. The thought was appreciated, but the plastic top hat was thrown to the wayside soon after the event. Now it is used mainly as a bucket that holds my bank statements and crayons.

The plastic top hat is a favourite of Party Ryan, though it is still only used on very drunk occasions. It provides me with the power to be funny and to ring in the new year with a plastic hat. Then again, the funny might just be a side effect of the booze.

The novelty pimp hat

This hat is probably the least original of the bunch, being a dime a dozen. Or… 24 dollars a dozen, given the fact that the carnival games that you win these hats cost like two bucks a play. At any given carnival/amusement park, you’ll likely see folks young and old sporting these hats en masse.

This hat affords me no extra ability, as my pimpin’ skillz are as top notch as they’re gonna get.

The adventure hat

Also known as “the fedora” and “the Indiana Jones hat”, the adventure hat has a very special place in my heart. I bought it during my latest trip to Walt Disney World, and it is the only hat I wear day-to-day. While a fedora is usually reserved for old men, I think it suits me quite well, and it matches with my sweet suede jacket.

The adventure hat’s effect is a little more subtle than most. It enhances my adventuring and relic-finding skills to near god-like levels. Like the cowboy hat, it also adds to my innate studliness, though the effect is slightly less than that of the cowboy hat.

Bonus!

As a neat little extra, apply aviator glasses and a goatee to the mix and BAM! you’re Adam Savage. The illusion is seamless.

The reindeer antlers

Alright, I’ll level with you; the antlers aren’t really mine. We bought them for my dogs to wear, but they turned out to be too big for the dogs’ tiny little noggins. Obviously, it was a big small to get around my enormous cranium.

As the antlers aren’t mine, nor are they even intended for human use, they don’t induce any special effects.

The horns

Okay smartasses, make your greenhorn jokes now and get it over with. The horns were purchased before one Halloween because I had no costume ideas and I was pretty much picking up anything I could to make a hodgepodge of novelty items.

The horns don’t do a whole lot, really. Their main use is making small children afraid and cry. Everything else is simply aesthetic.

The X-Buster

It was ten bucks okay. You know I’ll buy anything with MegaMan stamped on it.

The X-buster, to sum it up quickly, doesn’t do a whole lot when placed on my head. It most certainly doesn’t summon seagulls like I hoped it would. When placed on my hand, however, it allows me to fire small foam darts with almost no accuracy or power.

The mask

A treasured construction toy of my past, I discovered that I still had my bucket of ZAKS only a scant few years ago. While fooling aroud with them, I also discovered that most of the manual was intact. And what was the coolest thing in the manual? The ZAKS mask of course. It looks kind of like a gorilla head from the right angle.

The ZAKS mask, like the horns, does an excellent job scaring small children. Other effects include making people think I’m really smart because I was able to fashion an entire helmet (including a removable neck protector) out of triangles and squares.

The Dallas Cowboys cap

This hat actually used to/might still belong to my dad, but I do wear it from time to time, when the adventure hat seems like a little too much. I’m pretty sure it’s mine though, because he has another hat and never wears this one.

This hat grants me the special ability to look like I play far more sports than I do. It’s useful for getting into the pants of those girls who only like jocks. When paired with sunglasses, it also allows me look a lot older, possibly even enabling me to pass for a slightly shorter version of my dad. These abilities do wonders for camouflauge in populated areas.

The Bomber Bolts

The foam novelty accessories are a staple of sporting events, and I’m not the kind to not jump on every bandwagon that passes by. The cliché giant foam hand was my first pick, but since it wans’t available, I had to go with the headpiece. Unfortunately, I’d outgrown it long ago, and now I can’t get it on my head without fear of tearing it in half.

The main effect of the bolts is making me holler like an animal while watching the game. Also notable is that they change people’s opinion of you based on how well the Bombers are doing in the current season.

The Conan

So it’s not a hat. Big deal. I’m including it and there’s nothing you can do about it. It’s not a perfect replica of the Conan, but it’s as close as my hair is ever gonna get. It’s pretty similar to “the Steve” as well, it’s just parted differently.

While sporting this “do”, I don’t gain the daywalker traits of Conan O’Brien, but it certainly does attract attention.

And that concludes the list of my hats and the various abilities I gain while wearing them. Maybe one day when I’ve collected more hats, I shall show those off as well, but for now this is all.

Juiced Up Power Pigs!

I love candy. That should be obvious. I mean, who doesn’t like candy? Squares, that who. And those squares are one day going to make something of themselves unless we stop them while we can. They don’t deserve any better. Damned candy-hating squares. They’re probably the same morons who think animals don’t deserve to be eaten. If animals weren’t meant to be eaten, then they’d be the ones eating us. But you know what, I bet those stupid hippies would probably like that. “If the animals enjoy eating me, then it’s worth being eaten” they’d say. It’s called the food chain, you idiots! That’s just how it works! Are you going to start going after lions and tigers because they eat other animals too? No? Then you’re hypocrites as well as stupid hippies! So ha!

That was quick. Usually it takes me a couple paragraphs to start rambling about something totally different than where I was intending to go. So to get back on topic, I was talking about candy. Yes, delicious candy. While parents all over the world generally discourage mass consumption of the sugary bliss, it’s certainly the high point of the food world. Well, right below pastries anyhow. So what am I talking about candy for? Check this out:

Yes, that’s right. I came here to tell you about pig-shaped candy. To those out of the loop, it may seem a little silly, but the rest of you who’ve eaten these things know exactly where I’m coming from. These things are so good that I couldn’t justify not writing an article about them. Yes. That good. Their shapes may be a little misleading, as they don’t taste at all like bacon (which I refer to as nature’s candy), but that’s probably a good thing. No, these little oinkers are strawberry-flavoured, as it says there on the bag. They also come in three sub-flavours, which I will get to in a bit.

There, that should be a little clearer. Strawberry pigs and awesome ear flavours and what-have-you. Though I didn’t realize that they made this candy before the ear flavours came into the picture. Guess I’ve learned something from this. That makes this my most educational article yet. To top that off, after a little research, I learned that not only did the pigs come in strawberry-only, but there are other “Juiced Up” species such as bulldogs and worms. Astounding!

Ah yes, you should also take notice of the little warning on the side. It’s at a bad angle, but it says “Warning: May contain pig butts,” or as the French call them, “derrières de porc.” I think the French term sounds a little less offensive, and without that offensiveness, the joke isn’t nearly as good. But aside from that, there isn’t a whole lot of interesting on the front of the package.

NOTE: While the package makes claims of “power pigs” this candy has no tie-in with the mediocre SNES platformer “Power Piggs of the Dark Ages.”

Here’s the only part of the back of the package that bears any interest at all, the small corner devoted to the ear flavours. They come in apple, watermelon and orange, but to tell the truth, the ear flavours are almost negligible. You barely notice them at all unless you go right ahead and gnaw off the ears. I wouldn’t really count that as a strike against the candy though, as the strawberry flavour alone is more than enough to win my love. I like that they even went the extra distance to give the little guys names. The only thing more satisfying that eating something that had eyes is eating something that someone cared about enough to name. I’m a monster.

Behold the power pigs in all their sugary glory! Even more impressive than the fact that they all have names is the fact that they’re molded really well. Just look at how close they are to the package art. Sure, the colour is a bit runny, but it varies from pig to pig, and wouldn’t be a big enough issue to detract from the experience. Speaking of which, why else are the piggies so good? For one, they taste like awesome. And let me tell you, awesome tastes pretty good. I’d put them right on up there with the Charleston Chew on the candy scale. There’s also the fact that they have the most perfect consistency ever crafted by man. They’re thick and chewy like a gummi should be, but they don’t stick to your teeth at all. Come to think of it, the consistency is at a level I doubt man could achieve, and these were probably produced by some sort of otherworlders or an elite race of super candymen created by the government that the public has no idea about.

So yeah. That’s that. The basic idea behind this article is that Juiced Up Supercochonnets are the greatest gummis I’ve had the privelige to chew on. You should go out and get a pack right now. Unless you’re a hot chick (preferably with no self-esteem), then I have something even better than candy for you. Just gimme a holler and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.

PS: Fortunately (I think?) there were no pig butts present in this particular bag.