Blogging While Paused

Picture this for a second: a set of graphics distinctly exclusive for video games, a simple set of two buttons, title screens that come up in a second without lengthy intros, and more variety than you can fit in six feet of sandwich. That’s right, I’m talking about the glory days of a system we now know as the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Games released for the NES boasted simple design schemes, unnecessary uses for the Select button, ambiguous mysteries with single solutions and few clues, passwords, and instruction books you were actually expected (but not required) to read. As you can well guess, it was brilliantly put together. Choosing a set of five best here is not an easy task, and if any of you ingrates actually know five games from this time, feel free to formulate a top five of your own. As for this old monkey, I’ve chosen Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 3, The Legend of Zelda, and Kirby’s Adventure.

Hm? What’s that familiar sound? Oh, yes. I believe I hear complaining. Let’s see what we’re looking at. “That’s the last straw! Cranky’s a Metroid hater!” Okay, first off, weren’t the actual Metroids the bad guys? But anyway, cool your heels. It’s different this time. As far as NES games go, this one’s a pretty good play. Very difficult. The problem this time is simply what happens when you finish quickly enough. Finish in 3 hours, and Samus takes off her suit to reveal a one-piece bathing suit. Finish in less than one, and the little lady shows off a two-piece ensemble. Either way, you can play again using her in a swim suit. I don’t care if it was 8-bit; it’s the idea that counts. Games didn’t need to pass this kind of thing off then, and they don’t need to deal with it now. If the game took place on a beach, maaaaybe this would be okay. But does this game look like any beach you’ve ever been to? And who the heck is Justin Bailey?!

What else am I hearing? “…Gah! Donkey Kong didn’t make the list! Cranky starred in Donkey Kong!” Both those statements are true, but my true masterpiece was not a title for the NES. Rather, it was an upright arcade game, and you lucky players can experience it for free in Donkey Kong 64. Yes, even these developers do something right, now and then. “What about that Contra game?” For those of you who don’t know about this one, there are a handful of players who think this game is the best thing since sliced cheese. It’s not. It’s nothing but a fast-action shooter with cut scenes ripped out and almost no plot. Your reward for clearing this harder-than-homework game is the word “Congratulations!”. Even the fans complain about that. “Why is Mario getting so much attention?!” Try naming five NES games that everyone will recognize that don’t include Mario. Even some that no one knows (such as Golf) are about Mario!

I have a feeling a number of you are familiar with the Mario titles. Even if you don’t know it, you may have seen (not Super) Mario Bros. It’s in Super Mario Bros. 3, they’re including it in a number of Gameboy Advance releases, and if they’re smart, they’ll put it in the next Smash Bros game. It’s all about racking up your score. While you might be more inclined just to beat it, Super Mario Bros. can be pretty enjoyable with that goal, too. Ever tried completing it without seeing “Game Over” or using a warp zone? Your score can be pretty high. I’d bet you’d also be surprised to find out just how many games make references all the way back to this title. The game we call Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels never made it to the U.S. NES, so I’m not including it here, and Super Mario Bros. 2 was completely different; I’m not even going into it. Super Mario Bros. 3 is where complexity started to really come in. Intricate maps, collectable items, and some nice secrets that are pretty different from what you normally see today make this a pretty memorable title. Here’s the one thing that confuses me: this game was easy enough for kids to pick up, but they haven’t made another one with quite the same style (particularly the flurry of items you could collect and hold). Why do you suppose that is? I don’t even see laziness as a reason for this one.

Well, with Mario out of the way, let’s look at something Mario might have heard of once: The Legend of Zelda. Get out your thinking cap for this one, because this game is packed both with secrets that are and aren’t revealed in the game. How good you are can really influence how this game comes out, because you don’t have to visit the dungeons in order, although you do have to finish the first eight to enter the ninth, provided you can find the blasted thing! Okay, I’ll give you a hint: you need a bomb. Notice, by the way, that there are eight dungeons and a final, rather than seven and a final. Kind of interesting.

That leaves us with Kirby’s Adventure. Here’s another one that’s easy enough for anyone to figure out. It’s also got a few secrets tucked away; no world is complete until it’s a uniform shape, and a door goes white once you’ve found everything. If you’re spoiling for a fight, more challenging versions of the mini-bosses are available, and once you’ve finished, you can try taking them all in a row with a single life. Sound familiar? This is where that one came from. There are few (if any) places that actually require an ability from you, so pick your favorite and go!

That’s what old Iron-Memory Cranky offers on this set of golden oldies. The good news is that of the games mentioned throughout this ramble, all the good ones are on the Wii Virtual Console at five bucks a pop. It might look like it adds up quickly if you’re after a bunch, but if you compare it to how much you spend on the high-tech games or the number of quarters you’d use at an arcade, it’s really not so bad. Of course, everything’s more expensive than I would want it. You know how many games fifty dollars would’ve gotten you when I was a kid? That’s right—zero. There were no games that early on.

Well, save for some bizarre twist of fate, this will be my last “Top 5” critique. But you know me—I can always find something to complain about. For now, I’m turning in; I haven’t slept in days.

Link… Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link, Link… Link, my dear friend… You are much too hard on the boy. There are many good points to the Earthbound series. For starters, playing as a little kid isn’t that bad now and again. I seem to recall a certain someone who spent much of his most recent hit running around collecting bugs. Doesn’t that sound like something a child should be doing? And yes, it may be true that your dad you never see anymore keeps calling you and telling you to stop playing, but he makes up for it by depositing bundles of borrowed cash into your bank account! And who said calling you was a bad thing anyway? And Giygas? That’s the best villain name I’ve ever heard! A lot better than “Bowser”. I mean what is he, a dog? “Heeeere, Bowser! Come get the stick!” Seriously.

Of course, I’m always looking out for the kids’ best interests. That’s why I came up with the idea to thinly veil the Donkey Kong 64 footage and music. This way, the light of hope does not vanish, and when the veil is removed, it’s not too disappointing because they get exactly what they were promised!

Of course, to be perfectly honest, Earthbound already has a franchise. It has a prequel and a sequel, although neither is available outside Japan. I’ve seen the merchandise too: Earthbound plush, Earthbound controllers, Earthbound action figures, Earthbound coffee mugs, Earthbound pencils, Ness baseball bats, Ness baseball bat bats (don’t ask), and Earthbound PSP (that is, a PSP with an Earthbound skin). See? That’s a kid on his way to success! His franchise is already more successful than Star Fox’s, am I right?

I say we let the boy have his U.S. sequel to his sequel! Surely it’ll be better than some of those Zelda games they never released! There is of course, just one point I must disagree with. “I say it’s time to chop off Mario—” I’ve heard enough! Right there! If I get cut down, Nintendo’s going down with me! After all, I AM Nintendo! No, child, I think that instead of me stepping aside for you, we should put a Nintendo 64 in your room with a fully playable version of Super Mario 64 in it. That’ll really attract the fans! Oh, but the rest of the sentence was fine.

Well, I’d have had my suspicions if you told me this eight years ago, but I’d probably have believed you anyway: I’m actually MORE disgusted with the games they’re putting out now than the ones they came up with back then. Bright colors, smooth graphics, streaming media that plays orchestrated music, in-depth stories—it all just looks so unnecessary to me. I’ll never be swayed from my opinion that the older the game, the better it is (except of course that Donkey Kong is probably the best one of all time). Space Invaders and Jetpac are old favorites, and Sabre Wulf is about as high tech as this old monkey cares to get. However, even I have to admit that some of the old N64 games were better than this new generation that uses controls no scientist could figure out.

I’m going to name what I believe are the best five N64 games out there, and what some of you might think are the best five ever. Now I’m aware there’s a number of those awful and confusing shooting games that are supposed to make you feel like you’re seeing it through your “hero’s” eyes, but luckily for me the opinions on those are so scattered it’s not worth trying to name one. The N64 was also incongruously short-changed when it came to role-playing games, which also were supposed to make you feel like you were whatever character you were playing, and none of them were any good anyway, so there aren’t any nominations there. And of course, there was no Metroid game, so that’s definitely not going to come back to bother me. Now I’m still going with the older the game the better, so that leaves us with this list of five: Super Mario 64, Star Fox 64, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, and Donkey Kong 64 (not necessarily in that order). Nothing quite like this set has come before or since.

Now before I continue, let me attempt to quell the rioters out there. You say there were sequels to these games? Not the same sequels that were originally planned. Ever heard of the Disk Drive? Went over like a lead balloon in Japan and was never released in the U.S. Worst mistake they ever made. Ah, but more on that in a minute. You say these games aren’t perfect? Well, no one ever accused them of it! A game’s only as good as the folks who program it. So, all you want, you can say to yourself, “You should be able to save!”, “Cranky should have kept his rocking chair!”, and “Luigi should be easier to find!” (Star Fox 64, Donkey Kong 64, and Banjo-Kazooie, respectively). I’m betting you’re still pretty satisfied with these games. “Oh, Cranky! Craaanky! What about Super Smash Brothers?” It has a sequel that most folks like better, and possibly another one coming out in February. …What’s that you say? Oh. Apparently due to some bubble-gum related incident, it’s coming out in March. At any rate, it might be the best N64 game ever, but it’s been trumped and not many folks play it as often as these ones.

But anyway, my list stands with those five mediocre games as the best this old new system has to offer. Now then, let me give you your opinion and tell you exactly what it is you like about these games so much. Super Mario 64 was the first game of its kind, and they must have done something right, because even if you’ve finished it with all those stars, you can just start it up, play, and have fun. I’d bet it’s because the levels are very large, but also easy to navigate quickly. Because of this, you don’t need an objective always in front of you. You can just make it up and play. Any game that captures this aspect means virtually endless hours of play. Banjo-Kazooie had a similar play style, although when you got the collectable things, you couldn’t set them back up. Still, it was just quick-paced enough that you could start over whenever you wanted. Plus, they built cheats right in, so you don’t have to pull out some third party piece of hardware when you get stuck! And the board game at the end was marvelous, revolutionary even! Donkey Kong 64 falls in this category too, although the levels were perhaps a touch more confined when it comes to navigation. Still, we gave you so much to find, so many critters to bash, so many mini-games, and even an appearance from me AND a Donkey Kong arcade game, you can’t help but love it. You could also earn cheats here, not by finding everything, but just by finding all those fairies. Unfortunately I broke my system trying to install that expansion thing they gave you with it. Very annoying.

Star Fox 64 and Zelda are in their own categories, I suppose. Let’s start with the easy one. Star Fox 64 defined replay value. The instruction book told you what you need to do to unlock harder paths, but your first time through you probably weren’t good enough to do it. Even so, you were able to finish the game, weren’t you? As you get better, the challenges become easier, and soon enough you’re setting up your own confusing matrix of stages you’ll be visiting. Plus, you get to bill the fella who hired you at the end. And they don’t expect you to read anything—they read it all for you!

So… Zelda, huh? Well, I’ll tell you this: as far as advertising VS delivery goes, this is the only Zelda game they’ve done right. Sure, they announced working on it two years early, but they didn’t really start advertising it until one year before its release. After this one it’s always three years in advance, so long you’ve lost interest by the time it comes out, and then it doesn’t have all the thrill of the original. What made Ocarina of Time so good? It couldn’t have been the fairy… Sure wasn’t the owl… Let’s see here—dungeons, easy to navigate world maps, side quests, mini-bosses, gear that tends to be used in only one or two places, a story (sort of), the fact that you could go anywhere you wanted again—hmm, this all looks like standard stuff. Wait, could it be? Yes! This game didn’t follow these standards, it set them! Not only that, but it made playing through all of it fun! Of course it had its own quirks, too. Surely you’ve all seen giant versions of those sand worm things, but how about a giant nighttime skeleton kid? Or a giant crow? They’re in there. The one thing I will complain about is I nearly doubled my age trying to get all those gold spiders (which turned out not to be a rip-off after all!).

Now let me ask you this: Wouldn’t you be excited if you heard—now or back then—that Super Mario 64 II was in the works? Or another Zelda like that one? That’s what the Disk Drive was going to accomplish. It would attach to the bottom, and you would put a game in the N64 and another cartridge (different shape) in the Disk Drive. The result would be a new game using the first one as a sort of basis. That means all the old worlds are there, but anything could be changed about them, and all kinds of new ones could be there too. If my studies are correct, they’d be able to release these just 2 years after the original, instead of going crazy, redesigning the entire thing, and releasing their “sequel” five years later. Two years is enough time for you to finish the game, get excited about the advertising, and get “all revved up” to play it when it comes out.

They actually finished the Zelda sequel, but never released it. That is, not until that “Master Quest” bonus disc thing. And not on the U.S. version. You heard me: somewhere right now, a little Japanese kid is pointing at the U.S. on a map and laughing his head off playing the real Master Quest. What kind of changes might there be? They didn’t tell me. But looking at the evidence, I’d say you get that Triforce, melt that frozen kingdom, go on some kind of mask side quest, and… something to do with Arwings.

Banjo-Tooie was going to be a Disk Drive game too. The version they finally settled on doesn’t quite make use of the super secret collectables of Banjo-Kazooie the way the original would have, but overall it’s not terribly disappointing. A Disk Drive version would mean you could go to the old worlds, collect the things, do new stuff, then go to the new part of the game and use the things. The sequel that exists is perhaps not as much fun as the original, but it does deserve an honorable mention here.

Those old games are looking pretty appealing right now, huh?

Join me next week, when I visit the top five Super Nintendo games!

Ness, I think the reason you have completely failed as a franchise has several reasons. First, you are like, 8 years old. No one want’s to play as an 8 year old kid when they could play as a dashing and handsome young adult with a sword and a horse. I mean, how can you pass up someone as good looking as me?

But I think more importantly than that, your plotline is so stereotypical it can’t get much lamer.

“When the chosen boy reaches the point, he will find the light. The passing of time will shatter the nightmare rock and will reveal thee path of light.”

Whoop-de-do. You are the chosen one. If you’re not one of the first people to the table with this idea, you’re seen as passe. I managed to get in before the door shut, but banging your head against the door won’t open it again.

“Giygas”

Sorry, but the main villain needs a better name. And it can’t start with a ‘G’. Too many people have villains starting with the letter g. Why not try using “Levarithan” or “Opoluthon” or even “Kevin” for goodness sake.

“Three things are of the utmost importance: wisdom, courage, and friendship.”

3 Things. You need 3 things, what do you want? A freaking triforce? Please! Surely you can come up with something better than copying me. (Or… maybe you can’t…)

Then one last thing, tell your Dad to stop telling off the gamers. The last thing gamers need is a phone call every two hours tell them they should stop playing. You know what? THEY DID STOP. And they NEVER GAME BACK. Your Dad is probably the sole reason that you never caught on as a franchise. If gamers want to play for 12 hours straight that’s entirely their call, they don’t need your Dad to yell at them and tell them to stop.

So I was out golfing the other day and apparently people are saying that my whole “Kidnap the Princess” gig is getting old. It’s not fun anymore, it’s not funny. It’s not politically correct. I don’t know. I don’t know if I trust Donkey Kong and Yoshi as great sources, but every now and then they get something right.

To be honest, I love the gig. I think it’s freaking hilarious to see the look on Mario’s face when he realizes… “oh not again.” I mean, my timing is perfect. It’s just like the punch line of a joke. Just when he’s about to go spend some quality time with Peach, BAM! I’m there, and I make him jump through somewhere between 38 and 120 hoops before he can see her.

I also love the Toadstools.  They rush around like caffeinated chickens with their heads cut off. It’s really funny. I’m not going to lie, I spend hours on YouTube just watching the Toadstools run around in circles like the world is going to end.

I mean, the kidnapping is usually all in good fun. Mario and I know how to get along, somedays I’m just in a really bad mood and really just want to make someone angry. But maybe the next day I’m over it and the two of us go out and play a round or two of tennis. It’s no big deal. It’s just the way I do things. I’m sure you understand.

So really, I don’t care if anyone thinks my gig is getting old. It’s usually the most fun thing I do. Nothing relieves stress like kidnapping a princess, let me tell you that. So hey, don’t look for me to stop. It’s kinda like Charlie Brown. He’d always run to the football and Lucy always pulls it away. Every time Mario gets close to Peach, I’m going to pull her away. Why? It’s fun and that’s all there is to it.

Dear Diary:

Today was exciting. We were attacked by a horde of undead forces that killed our soldiers and burned our buildings. They were so big and powerful that they killed everyone, except for a small band of 3 survivors. Myself, along with a foot soldier and another peasant headed away into the woods to hide from the onslaught.

Unfortunately the foot soldier died when we were attacked by some creatures guarding a gold mine. We finally killed the creatures, but now it’s just us two peasants. Looks like we’ll have to start from scratch.

Tomorrow should be fun.

Okay folks, I need to set some stuff straight. After my last post I have been flooded with email asking me if I am depressed, offering moral support, giving me yellow ribbon cards and trying to sell me watches. I’m not suicidal, I’m not sick of life, I was just a bit lonely.

I like my job, I really do! I got around to sitting and listening the other day and I have come to the conclusion that the best part of my life, is the music. The music I get to listen to on a day to day basis, is absolutely amazing. It’s incredible. Even the pause music is so great that I could listen to it for hours. (Okay, so maybe I have no choice but to listen to the pause music for hours, but that doesn’t make it any less good!)

Music is a big part of my life and I bet it’s a big part of your life too! Music is one thing that really keeps me going. The theme to Talon Overworld, I was paused in Talon Overworld for 3 and a half hours yesterday. I got so lost in that music that I felt like I was only paused for 15 minutes. I’m totally serious, it’s amazing.

Now, granted, when I’m sitting here in the original Metroid and I have been paused for 45 minutes, well it’s getting a bit long. Not a whole lot to listen too, and even the music that might be accessible, repeats ever 21 seconds.

Oooh! Looks like Jr. is coming back, time to go fight some baddies! Catch you laters!

Hey ya’ll! Sonic here.

Not really one for blogging myself, but when news reached me about Captain Slow-Poke’s post, I needed to correct a few issues.

First off, Captain Falcon is not the fastest person on the planet. As a matter of fact, he doesn’t even drive the fastest car on the planet. Anybody can out race Captain Falcon, some of us can even do it on foot.

The thing about racing in cars, is that anyone can do it. You get in and put your foot on the gas petal. Doesn’t sound that hard to me. That’s why there are so many characters to choose from in F-Zero. Get a clue Captain! Anybody could take your place with a weeks worth of training.

You want speed? The only way to truly have speed is to train up for it and have it yourself. I’ll take you up on your offer. Let’s go to a track, you and me. First one to 300 laps wins.You know what? I’ll even run the outside lane, and let you run the inside lane. I’ll still be done long before you will be.

The only person capable of matching my speed is Shadow. And on most days I can beat him, but it’s not always easy.

So kids, if you are looking for speed, don’t be taken in by some cheap marketing and hat tricks, stick with the true blue, go Sonic!