A Closer Look at Uncanny X-men for the NES

A Closer Look at Uncanny X-men for the NES

Yes, so here we are again, in a place I never expected to be, much less twice.  Coming to the defense of an LJN game isn’t easy, but once again my eyes have been opened to a game that at first blush appears to be a steaming pile, but upon closer inspection turns out not to suck as much as I thought.  Heck, with the game in question, I’d even be so bold as to now admit that I like the game a lot.  The previous sentences are ones I would have never expected to write about X-men for the NES, but here we are.It all started over on NintendoAge, a fellow website devoted to all things Nintendo, where we are discussing “impossible” to beat NES games and I threw out X-men as a candidate. My previous experience with the game indicated that it was pretty much unplayable. Another poster replied that not only was X-men beatable, but there were people out there who could do it in short order and that once you learned the intricacies of the game, it was actually quite playable.  Certain that I had missed something, and being a big Marvel Comics fan who was sorely disappointed by this title back in the 80’s, I set out to find if this poster was indeed correct.

Step One:  Read the freaking Instruction Manual.  This should be a disclaimer for all video games made before the PSX.  It should be second nature to old schoolers like me, but I’ve been spoiled by the in-game tutorial that is a staple of modern games.  That doesn’t dismiss the fact that I obviously played this as a kid without reading the manual, but it was probably a rental and those never had a manuals, so leave me alone!  Anyway, read the damn manual if you want a shot at playing this game and understanding what is going on.

Step Two:  Play cautiously, learn the game.  The biggest mistake I made was thinking that this game was a standard dungeon crawler like Gauntlet and ran in guns a-blazing.  That will not work with X-men.  You have to play carefully, at least until you are familiar with the game play and level design.  Take your time.
If you follow those two steps you just might be able to salvage your opinion of this game.  And if you are really crazy, like me, you just might find you actually like it, a lot.  What the hell.

So how do you go from completely dismissing a game to playing it for hours on end?  Sheer will power.  If someone else had possessed the wherewithal to actually beat this game, then there must be something to it.  I’ve never let a game best me and I wasn’t about to let X-men be the first! So I started playing and kept playing and playing.  Here is what I discovered.  In all honesty, X-men feels like a sloppily made dungeon crawler that was pretty much already programmed when someone from LJN got a hold of the X-men license and started shopping around what they could do for an X-men themed game.  Somebody pulled out this program and said they could change the sprites to look like the heroes from the comic and minutes later this game appeared on toy store shelves across America.  I kid you not.  The game is only loosely based on the comic books, despite the aforementioned, very well themed Instruction Manual.

The Unstoppable Shooting Juggernaut!

Take the bosses for example: Sabretooth, White Queen, Juggernaut and Boomerang.  Boomerang?  Since when is he an X-men villain?  Dude fights the Hulk and Spider-man and maybe like Daredevil.  He has no beef with mutants that I am aware of.  Why is he in here instead of Blob or Pyro?  Also, Juggernaut, the character known for being “unstoppable” has decided to forgo his usual MO of ramming people into pulp in favor of shooting some kind of electric beams at you.  And while we’re at it, the White Queen acts more like Mystique since she takes your form and attacks you as you.  Heck the sprite even looks like Mystique!  Oh and Sabretooth jumps a lot.  Now you tell me this game was designed with a working knowledge of the X-men and their rogues’ gallery…

Anyway, if we look past the half-heartedly applied theming, what we are left with is an average or below average dungeon crawler that is tricky to learn, but once it has been learned, it proves to be simple and even fun.   For an added kick, once you learn the game, you can reapply the theming and ignore some obvious mistakes and enjoy the game at its fullest.  By no means am I suggesting that X-men is a classic, but it may not suck as much as you or I originally thought.  The key is to be patient and learn its ins and outs.  The remainder of this article is designed as a guide to getting some enjoyment out of this game and to redeem what is otherwise a dismal, comic-based video game.  Having finally beaten X-men, I can say with some authority that X-men for the NES isn’t as bad as its reputation, but isn’t as good as it should have been.

But enough defending LJN games, next month I’ll take a Closer Look at something that we have unknowingly allowed to happen over the past 30 years, and we are worse for it…


TIPS AND TRICKS

Ranged vs. Melee Heroes.  Your team is split into two types of characters: ranged and melee.  My first instinct was that ranged was the way to go, but I soon discovered the advantage of the melee type.  Ranged characters are great because they can attack from a distance and hit multiple enemies at once.  Where they come up short is defense.  A few good hits means curtains for them and if an enemy spawns under them, it’s goodnight Gracie (George Burns, look it up).  Melee characters have to get up close and personal to take down bad guys, but they have more HP and defense to make up for this fact.  I prefer the melee guys for this very reason.  If you are going to use ranged heroes, pick up every, and I mean every, Energy and Invincibility power-up you see.  This is a good strategy in general (see below), but for ranged characters this is not optional.  Iceman can have full health one minute and be seconds from death the next.  Do not risk it.

Colossus is the best character in the game.  Why?  Durability.  He has the most HP and he packs the biggest punch.  I believe you can beat the game with him alone if you have to.  Sure he’s slow, but so what?  That really only comes into play in the Robot Factory and even then you can work around his speed.
Storm and Nightcrawler are useless.  Useless.  Both have the resilience of a paper hat in the rain.  They will die instantly upon contact with an enemy and their attack power is not sufficient to make up for their lack of fortitude.  These two are expendable.  Do not use either as your main character unless you just really want a challenge.
Wolverine, Cyclops and Iceman are all good middle of the road characters.  Wolverine is a lot like Colossus, but with a little less durability.  He can go a long way, but sometimes needs some help.  Cyclops and Iceman are the best ranged attackers, but they can’t take too many hits, so use carefully.  Other than the fact that Iceman can fly (?) they are virtually identical.

MINI-WALKTHROUGH

My strategy is to start with Colossus and Storm in the Underground Sewers level.  Storm will fold like a chair at the civic center pretty much as soon as the level starts, so get that out of the way.  Colossus is best to fight Sabretooth since Toothy tends to jump a lot and Colossus can just stand there and wail on him.  Plus Sabretooth tends to work in an “L” shaped pattern so he will just keep running into Colossus’ fists.  Next I take Cyclops and Nightcrawler to the Future City Street Fight.  Once again, Nightcrawler lasts about as long as a bag of cookies at my overweight aunt’s house, so he’ll be out quick.  Cyclops is pretty fast and has powerful optic blasts so he can mow through bad guys pretty easily.  Iceman is equally reliable, and if Cyclops goes down, Bobby is my back-up.  Next I take Cyclops (or Iceman) to the Robot Factory along with Wolverine; sorry Logan you’re not going to make it.  Again, Cyclops is great against Juggernaut because he can wail on him from a distance (see below about Bosses that Shoot).  Finally, I take Cyclops and Iceman, one of them must die sadly, to the Living Alien Ship and run amok in there.  The White Queen is an easy kill.  Then I load everybody back up into the station wagon and head for Magneto’s house, where we all get soundly trounced and I get to try it all over again… (see below about Getting to Magneto)  You may find it strange that despite my previous adoration for Colossus, I only used him once in this mini-walkthrough.  That is because he is my go-to.  If everyone else gets slaughtered in a mission for some reason, I know with reasonable certainty that I can put Colossus in there and get us through the mission.  Thus, I never put him on the front line unless I have to (like in the Sewers).

Laser gates are instant death.  I don’t care if Colossus has full health; he cannot make it through a laser gate without dying should the gate close on him.  Oh sure, you might make it once, but I promise you the odds are against you.  What’s worse, there is no real rhyme or reason to when they open or close.  It appears to be totally at random.  The only way I have found to get through these gates is to kill baddies until one drops an invincibility power-up.  Grab the power-up and run like hell through the gate.  It may take a minute for one to drop, but I promise the alternative is 99% certain death.


Power-ups:  There are two power-ups you should ALWAYS pick up: Invincibility and Energy.  Dying in this game is easy, very easy.  Stupid very easy.  To stave off the grave, pick up these two power-ups every, and I mean every, time they appear.  The Invincibility is great for obvious reasons and the Energy will refill your entire HP every time.  Picking these up every time is a no-brainer. Avoid the Magnet Mines like they were the plague.  If you are playing with a weaker character, these are instant death anyway, and they can be just as fatal for good characters.  The Time Stop and All Kill are good, but I wouldn’t risk anything going for them.  Use as you see fit.

Defeating Bosses that Shoot:  For some reason Boomerang is a boss in this game and he throws boomerangs at you (shoots).  Also the Juggernaut shoots at you, despite that being contrary to his very nature.  When dealing with bosses that shoot, for any reason, your best bet is to avoid being on the same level (line) as they are.  When you share a level (line) with them, their shots can hit you, otherwise they cannot.  Position yourself just below their level or just to the side if working vertically, and then wail on them with melee attacks or blast them with range attacks.  If they move to your level, adjust and repeat.  They will continuously try to walk to your level so if you are careful and time it right, you can often bounce them back and forth into your attack until they are vanquished.

Look before you leap.  Until you know the levels inside and out, walk carefully.  The levels are littered with poisonous floors, traps, spike pits and other pitfalls that look nothing like those kinds of things.  If you are walking and you hear the noise that indicates you are taking damage, check where you are, chances are good you are standing on a trap or other floor hazard.  Get off of there quick.  Weaker characters will be pretty much instantly killed by these, so mark them well and avoid.

Violence is NOT the answer.  Most of the time, the bad guys in this game are not really out to get you as much as they are just meandering about.  Thus, for several of the levels, you can clear entire areas with little to no violence at all.  Just run past everything.  Why is this a good idea?  Killing an enemy causes it to respawn and sometimes that happens right under where you are standing resulting in a quick death if you are not careful.  If killing them causes this, why do it?  Plus if you don’t stop to kill everything that shows up, you cannot get surrounded and blitzed from all sides. Play around and see which levels/areas you can clear with a minimum of conflict.  It may save you in the long run!

A note about escaping the Robot Factory.  On your way out of the boss room, you are going to pass through an area where the walls close off part of the room.  RUN.  Fast.  If you get stuck between these walls all you can do is sit and wait for the bomb to go off and kill you.  It is in your best interest to learn this room and its three closing walls well.  At the start, grab an Invincibility power-up if you can and then make a run for it.  If you get closed off before passing the first wall, you can always go back out the teleporter pad and come back in and the wall will be open again.  I have actually gotten stuck in the wall before as it closed on me, however I was able to wiggle free by repeatedly pressing the A and B button and pausing and unpausing the game.  Not sure if this will work every time, but it got me out once.  Also, occasionally picking up the Time Stop power-up will give you a speed boost, not sure what governs when and if this happens.  You can also use this to increase your speed and escape the closing walls. If you are playing as Colossus, this strategy is a must.
 
FINDING MAGNETO
Ok are you sitting down?  Are you ready for this?  There is absolutely nothing in the game that tells you how to access the final level against Magneto.  There is nothing in the instruction manual that tells you how to access the final level against Magneto.  The only thing that even hints at how to do this is printed in extremely small print at toward the bottom of the label on the game cartridge itself.  Not only that, but the hint that they give you on that label is WRONG.  You heard me.  If you beat all four regular levels, the game appears to be over, as you can only access the PRACTICE level.  However, once you have completed the four main levels, on the stage select screen, you press UP + B+ SELECT + START and it will take you to the character select screen where you pick the two heroes you want to take on Magneto and then it will whisk you off to the final level.  How totally messed up is that crap?

Now, before you race off to fight the bastard, spend at least one round in the PRACTICE level.  Why?  Doing so grants you access to all of your heroes again, even the dead ones – creepy, huh?– for use in the final level.  So killing off Iceman on the last level isn’t so bad after all.  And trust me, you are going to need them, Magneto’s lair is way tougher than the previous four levels!  Actually, you can do this after successful completion of any level, and that might be good for you as you practice, but don’t rely on it as a crutch, play the game!
Be careful!  Magneto’s lair is bigger than any of the previous levels and is a perilous maze.  Many of the passages lead to dead ends and the floors are riddled with traps.  The enemies move faster, spawn quicker and hit for more damage.  Once you get to Magento, he’ll act a lot like a Boss that Can Shoot, so use those strategies.  The only real difference is that the battle area is smaller, so watch your step.  Also, if he hits you with his magnetic beam, your controls will be temporarily reversed.  That is not good.  Your best bet is to try and trap him in the upper right corner of the screen and give him what for!

Hopefully, the above tips and strategies will help you get more out of this game than you did the first time you made a go at playing it.  Heck, if you are stupid like me, you might even like the game, but I’m not making any promises!

Twelve Months, Sixty Dollars, and a Playstation 2: February

Prologue
Okay, so my favorite local second hand, MUST HAVE MUSIC AND MORE, has a slew of Playstation 2 games and recently I discovered that a great number of them are being sold for the low, low price of $4.95.  For those of you who have been following along at home, this is how I came across Pryzm , Chapter One: The Last Unicorn, that little gem that I alone made famous last year!  As I was browsing through the stacks the other day I saw a good number of these $5 games that looked at the very least interesting, if not potential diamonds in the rough.  After thinking it over I came to a conclusion:  The PS2 has a vast library and very few catch the attention of the popular culture, but lots and lots of games get released. Somewhere in those stacks of discarded, unloved games must be some really great games just looking for someone to play them and at the risk of five dollars a go, I think it’s worth finding just what is out there.  The result is this on-going experiment, a journey that you and I are going to take through the unwanted library of the PS2.  So strap in, kiddies, we’ve got twelve months, sixty dollars, and a Playstation2 and we’re about to discover what we’ve been missing!

February

ROBOTECH: Battlecry
TDK

When I was a kid, ROBOTECH was that super awesome cartoon that was unlike anything else I had seen because it was like a regular action cartoon, but the story kept going from episode to episode and the characters actually developed over the course of the series.  This was revolutionary in a world of GI JOE, He-man and Transformers.  So naturally, I developed a fascination with ROBOTECH and all things related.
The point being, when I was wandering through my local second hand last month and I saw ROBOTECH: Battlecry on the shelf I was drawn to it.  A chance to take command of the Veritech forces was too good to pass up, and for $5 no less! 

Fortunately, the game does not disappoint.  You take command of a Veritech fighter in numerous battles that more or less span the storylines from the cartoon.  During each battle you can switch between Fighter, Guardian, and Battloid modes as the mission parameters or personal preferences dictate.  Missions range from space dogfights to search-and-destroy ground missions and everything in-between.  The action is fast-paced and the missions are diverse enough to maintain your interest throughout the various chapters of the game.

Graphically, the game is beautiful.  The cell-shading is used to great advantage translating the feel of the cartoon into an interactive environment.  The cut scenes are cartoon stills that appear to be created specifically for the game.  As mentioned above, the story roughly follows the storyline of the cartoons and features characters from the same.  However, to knit everything together, some of the cut scenes are surprisingly long.

ROBOTECH: Battlecry is a lot of fun to play.  The quick and responsive controls are simple to learn and get you right into the action.  The playfields are expansive and although not infinite, the borders are seamless and do not feel like matte paintings framing a playable area.  But be forewarned, the game is hard, at least for me.  Perhaps it demands more strategy than I have time to devote to it right now, or perhaps it assumes intuitions I do not possess, but the game is rather challenging.  It took me several tries just to complete the first chapter of the game, particularly due to a tough boss fight at the end of the third level.  At this point I am into the second chapter and am stuck on a level that wants you to protect a civilian structure that is under attack.  Needless to say, the bad guys are getting there and pounding the crap out of the building before I can fend them off.  More than anything, I’d say the game takes practice and wants you to master its idiosyncratic skills in order to succeed.  Not a challenge that I am incapable of, but one that is currently demanding more time and attention than I can really give the game.  The game has enough appeal, however, for me to take a longer look at it in the future.
 
So is ROBOTECH: Battlecry worth $5?  Most definitely, particularly for fans of the series.  How this game ends up with a $5 price tag is really a mystery to me.  It should at least be fetching upwards of $12 on a regular basis.  Perhaps its age (2002 release) is partly to blame, perhaps it was extremely popular in its day, but for whatever reason this game is now available for the more than reasonable sum of five American dollars.  Whatever the case, it would appear that I have once again found a possible classic among the discards of the PS2 library! If you happen across it and don’t have it, pick it up!
  
What’s coming next month?  I really have no idea, I haven’t had a chance to make it over to the second hand.  Maybe this week…

A Closer Look at Downloadble Content: Is it Really Good for Gaming?

A Closer Look at Downloadable Content: Is it Really Good for Gaming?

Oh sure it’s all the rage, from WiiWare, to Madden NFL roster updates on your 360, downloadable content is the new vogue in modern gaming.  But caveat emptor, my friend, downloadable content is seductive and chic, but it might leave you high and dry in the morning and it will never, ever call you the next day.  Don’t be fooled.


For me, it all started back in the heyday of the original Playstation.  Final Fantasy IX came out and it was awesome! I scrambled to get it.  After playing the peerless FFVII and the so-so FFVIII, I knew I had to have the latest installment of the Final Fantasy franchise.  Also, thanks to my knowledge of the previous games, I knew a good strategy guide would ensure that I would be able to ferret out every last secret from a game known for having some of the best kept hidden treasures in the gaming universe.  So, like a good consumer I rushed right out and picked up the Brady Games Official Strategy Guide to Final Fantasy IX.  I had bought both guides for FFVII and they were exceptional, so of course I expected the same from this publication.  Boy was I in for a surprise!  Much to my chagrin the guide contained no actual tips, secrets or, get ready, strategies.  No, if you wanted that kind of in depth information you would have to go online, following the links provided in the “guide,” to PlayOnline.com.  Sounds fair.  I paid twenty dollars for a book to tell me to go online for free and get the information I am seeking.  Never mind the fact that this is back in the days of dial-up and my internet access was the equivalent of shouting across a canyon to a deaf-mute.


All of those things aside, this was not the most egregious part of the deal.  Oh no, that would come years later, when I decide to play through FFIX again, this time armed with a high speed internet connection.  Finally I could eke out a little satisfaction from that horrid “strategy guide” I paid for all those years ago.  So I go to PlayOnline.com and what do I see, absolutely nothing about FFIX.  Everything was all up FFXII’s butt, and it was as if FFIX never existed.  After some digging I discovered that when the newer games came out, all online support for FFIX was discarded.  So not only did I waste twenty dollars all those years ago, but my waste was compounded by insult when the company that initially ripped me off, ripped me off all over again by removing support for a product they had produced.  Little did I realize that this annoying incident would lay the foundation for something that would change the face of video gaming and collecting and not necessarily for the better.  Downloadable content was coming on fast, and it wasn’t all good news.

Now, let me jump ahead a bit and tell you that I absolutely love Mega Man 9, Castlevania Adventure Rebirth, and I am extremely excited about the new Blaster Master game that is available via WiiWare.  That’s right, I am guilty of partaking in the very thing I am about to rail against.  However, I am partaking with full knowledge of what I am doing and the implications thereof.  I wonder if my fellow consumers are doing the same.  If not, then it is the purpose of this missive to enlighten and warn the modern gamer/ collector that downloadable content may be the hottest new craze, but it is fraught with potential peril!  Brace yourselves, you’re probably not going to like or agree with where this is about to go…

Mega Man 9 goes in this empty spot

Downloadable content has caught on like wildfire and is only getting hotter.  Whether it is something small like unlockable online content, massive online multiplayer experiences, or something huge like an entire game obtained solely via download, this latest gaming fix is absolutely wonderful for gamers, but absolutely disastrous for collectors.  Take me for example.  As previously stated, I love the new Mega Man 9.  I have played it for hours and hours and hours.  It is great.  But guess what, it is also temporary.  Don’t get me wrong, I bought it, I downloaded it, I even saved it on an SD card (or at least that is what the wife tells me happened), but I have no real anything to prove that I have it.  I have nothing to put on a shelf, I have no documentation, instruction manual, warranty, or anything to prove that I own this game or that it exists.  Maybe I am old school, but there is something comforting about the shelves of NES, VCS, PS2, and so on, games that I have stacked up in my game room.  They ain’t goin’ nowhere.  But all of this new downloadable content?  I’m not so sure about it.
Sure I’m a gamer.  I love playing video games, so this new downloadable content is great, it comes right to my house and I don’t have to do much to obtain it.  The games are fun and appealing and they seem to know exactly what to release to get me in a buying mood.  But I’m also a collector.  I like having stockpiles of games on my shelves that I can pull out and play anytime I want.  I like inventorying them and basking in their nerdy glory.  I like the fact that I can go to my favorite second hand and pick up a SNES game I missed out on twenty years ago and experience like it was new.  I like that I can add it to my collection and sell it later or trade it or whatever.  So as I move into the 21st century, I wonder how Mega Man 9 fits into that aspect of my gaming life.  What would happen if I didn’t download Mega Man 9 right away?  What happens if it came out, I never managed to get it downloaded and then it is gone?  Am I going to miss out on a great game forever?  And what happens to my Mega Man 9 if something horrible happens to my Wii 15 years from now and I lose that data, or the SD thing gets corrupted (like all of those old 3.5 floppy disks that now sit in my filing cabinet mocking me) and the game is lost?  I know that bit rot and all of that can still happen to my Atari 2600 games (my Burgertime has been acting a bit scooters…), but if that should happen I can always find another copy at a flea market or something.  I’m not convinced that the same will be true for all of this new downloadable stuff.


And I know I have cause to worry.  If the FFIX strategy guide wasn’t historical proof enough, just last month Micro$oft announced that: “on April 15, 2010 Microsoft will discontinue Xbox LIVE service for original Xbox consoles and games, including Xbox games playable on Xbox 360. Our first step in this process will be to turn off auto-renewals for those members who only use Xbox LIVE on a v1 Xbox. While I can’t comment on the specifics, this change will allow us to continue evolving the LIVE service with new features and experiences that fully harness the power of Xbox 360 and the Xbox LIVE community. We did not make this decision lightly, but after careful consideration and review we realize that this decision will allow us unprecedented flexibility for future features.”  (source).  With so many games nowadays have HUGE online game play appeal an announcement like this is shocking and disturbing.   Particularly for those who cannot afford an XBOX360 and still enjoy their original XBOX.  What will be the quality and value of these largely online content based games once their support has run out?  Will HALO be as fun when there is no way to play it online?  HALO has been heralded as a modern classic and a triumph in gaming, but will those accolades hold true fifteen years from now when the support is gone and only the base game remains?

The lesson here is obvious:  the video game gods can giveth, and they can certainly taketh away.  Quickly.  This is what worries me as a gamer/collector heading into the future.  With so much downloadable content pouring forth from companies, how much of it can we really expect to hold on to as the years roll on?  The great thing about classic gaming is that it is a material commodity.  Not only do we get to play the games, we get to keep them and keep playing them for years.  Will this same thing be applicable to modern downloadable games 25 years into the future?  Will Mega Man 9 be lost forever to the annals of time and memory because someone failed to download it in 2009? How am I supposed to go to a video game convention in 10 years and pick up a copy of Mega Man 9 if I missed it?  These are my concerns.  Are we so enamored with the ready availability of downloadable content that we fail to see the pitfalls and longer reaching implications? Or am I just being overly dramatic and downloadable content is a fad that we should just embrace and damn the consequences?  Is downloadable content the future of gaming?  And if so does this mean the demise of the collector?

GameCon 2025: Not a Mega Man 9 to be found!

I think all of these things are definite concerns that the gaming community faces as we rush headlong into the latest, greatest offerings in the world of video gaming.  The gamer part of me is loving it, right now, in the moment, but the collector part of me is nervous.  Therefore, I cannot full condemn downloadable content as I would like to, but I can be wary of it. Downloadable content is a lot like the girl you love to date but can never marry.  As we move forward and consume more and more downloadable content and spend countless dollars, maybe it is also time to ponder some of these implications.  You can be sure I’ll be thinking about and lamenting that empty space on my NES shelf…


Join me next month when I’ll come to the defense of yet another LJN game and show you how I took a game that I deemed unplayable and turned it into one of my favorites!

Twelve Months, Sixty Dollars, and a Playstation 2: January

Prologue
Okay, so my favorite local second hand, MUST HAVE MUSIC AND MORE, has a slew of Playstation 2 games and recently I discovered that a great number of them are being sold for the low, low price of $4.95.  For those of you who have been following along at home, this is how I came across Pryzm , Chapter One: The Last Unicorn, that little gem that I alone made famous last year!  As I was browsing through the stacks the other day I saw a good number of these $5 games that looked at the very least interesting, if not potential diamonds in the rough.  After thinking it over I came to a conclusion:  The PS2 has a vast library and very few catch the attention of the popular culture, but lots and lots of games get released. Somewhere in those stacks of discarded, unloved games must be some really great games just looking for someone to play them and at the risk of five dollars a go, I think it’s worth finding just what is out there.  The result is this on-going experiment, a journey that you and I are going to take through the unwanted library of the PS2.  So strap in, kiddies, we’ve got twelve months, sixty dollars, and a Playstation2 and we’re about to discover what we’ve been missing!

January

Brave: the Search for Spirit Dancer
Evolved Games

Our journey begins with the little game that could: could have been better if it had been more challenging and a little deeper.  Brave: the Search for Spirit Dancer is much like a “my first adventure game” for 10-12 year olds.  There is plenty of action, but only a mild level of difficulty. The story is simple and the quest straightforward.  There are things to discover and areas to explore, but not terribly much to find.  The game follows the tale of a young Indian brave, aptly named, who sets out in search of the great Shaman Spirit Dancer to help save his tribal lands from the evil Wendigo.  Brave’s quest is one of personal growth as he learns who his true father is (I’ll let you guess…) and discovers his own potential.
The game isn’t bad, as a matter of fact it is very fun and the story and characters are engaging despite lacking depth.  The game’s biggest weakness is its lack of challenge.  Some parts of the game are tough, beating the rock monsters in the Volcano level, but any part of the game can be overcome with a couple of tries.  Sometimes levels seem impossibly short when a much larger, deeper level would be extremely welcome.  Conversely, the game’s greatest strength is its great variety of level design.  Some levels are straightforward adventuring, some have you guiding an out of control canoe down rushing rapids, others have your soaring on the back of a giant eagle dropping boulders on enemies or plucking them off the back of stampeding buffalo.  Like I said, there is a variety of things to do.  And best of all, the levels are fun to play; heck they’re even fun to replay, which is good because the game doesn’t have too much else in the way of replay value.  The game boasts hidden totems in each level to seek out and find, but the only thing you unlock by finding them is concept art, and that’s really a hit and miss kind of reward.  That said, I’ll probably play through the game again at some point to find them all, because that’s what I do.  The final battle with the Wendigo is pretty awesome as are many of the action sequences, but there just isn’t as much game here as there should and could be.  It took me a little over 5 hours to beat it on the first try. Not really want you want from a modern game that probably retailed at no less than $30.

Graphically, the game is pretty sound.  The environments are lush and the colors are vibrant.  I cannot decide if the character renderings are slightly racist or just highly stylized, but all in all they are harmless and sometimes bigger social hang-ups are only really there if you want them to be, so I’m going to assume that they are just stylized and whimsical and be happy with that.  The music is very cool and moody and fits the game perfectly.  And for once a game features voice acting that, while a bit cartoonish, isn’t the most painful thing I have ever heard.

But the big question remains, is Brave: the Search for Spirit Dancer worth the Lincoln I sacrificed to obtain it?  Absolutely.  There are far worse ways to spend $5 on a video game, heck there are far worse games to spend ten times that on.  Brave isn’t going to be the next Castlevania, despite the recent Wii release entitled Brave: A Warrior’s Tale which by all reports is the same game with a few extra levels, but it is certainly a game worth playing, and doubly so if you have smaller kids who are looking for something fun to play without having to resort to games about gang violence or WWII.  I would venture to say that my first foray into the $5 world of the PS2 was met with moderate success. 

Next month I’ll be spending my allowance on ROBOTECH: Battlecry, is it worth $5?

A Closer Look at Spider-man for the PSX

As most of you probably know, I am a HUGE Spider-Man fan.  HUGE.  I have an entire upstairs filled with Spider-man comics, toys, posters, plastic banks, toothpaste, cereal, even pillows.  Spider-man was my hero when I was a kid.  To this day I have a slavish, idealistic vision of Stan Lee’s greatest creation.  Even though the comics aren’t as good as they used to be, I still buy Amazing Spider-Man every month; I feel I owe it to the wall-crawler after all he has given me.  I have mental problems.  That notwithstanding I am a HUGE Spider-Man fan.

When I was a kid playing the Atari 2600, I made an incredible discovery: Parker Bros. had granted me the opportunity of a lifetime, I could be Spider-Man.  Around 1982, Parker Bros. released a Spider-Man game for the VCS and I had to have it.  Sure, the game wasn’t much, climbing a building, snagging some bad guys and avoiding the Green Goblin, but it was Spider-Man, alive and under my control!  Thus began my love, and hate, affair with Spider-Man video games.
Later offerings would fail to wow me the way this initial foray into the pixilated Marvelverse did.  LJN released an entirely unspectacular Spider-Man game for the NES.  The premise was perfect: Spider-Man vs. the Sinister Six, six of his greatest foes, but thanks to the half-hearted efforts of the programmers at LJN the game turned out to be virtually unplayable.  Don’t think I didn’t try.  The Gameboy proved to be a bit more successful in bringing the web-head to life, but the original game was a little tricky to control and rather short.  On the Super Nintendo and Genesis Spider-Man games showed more promise with better controls, bright, colorful graphics and increased depth.  However, the games quickly revealed themselves to be repetitive side-scrolling fighting games that weren’t different enough from the thousands of other similar games that flooded those systems.  The addition of new and playable characters like Venom and the close tie-ins to the contemporary comic book storylines were a big plus, but they turned out to be really nice set dressing on what could have been a Double Dragon or Batman game.

Then it came. The promise of Spider-Man action like it had never been before.  Controlling Spider-Man in a completely wide-open three dimensional world, the ability to web-swing between skyscrapers,  fighting Spidey’s rogue’s gallery and saving the city, it was all going to be a reality and it was going to happen on the Playstation.  I owned a Playstation!  The math is really rather simple.  Anticipation was high and rumors flew regarding who was going to be in the game and what it was really going to be like.  Then, the game arrived…and it was amazing!  It was everything it promised.  Oh sure, there were little things to nitpick: the “mysterious” grey fog that enveloped the lower half of the city (very convenient Neversoft, very), the tunnel-vision story line that allowed for some exploration, but ultimately never strayed too far from the track, the camera angles were at times abysmal, but overall this game delivered everything it promised.  Packed with tons of bag guys, dynamic fighting controls, a dedication to the creative use of Spidey’s web shooters, a variety of level designs and goals, and boatloads of unlockables and hidden areas, Spider-Man for the PSX delivered in a big, big way.  I should know, I played the game through about a dozen times, at least once with every unlockable costume, and I explored every, and I mean every, inch of the playable areas.

And clearly, I was not alone in my estimation of just how good this game was.  Subsequent Spider-Man games for advancing modern systems all seem to take their cue from the ground that was broken by this game.  From its sequel, Spider-Man 2 Enter: Electro to even the most recent Spider-Man movie games, Spider-Man game play has evolved from the primordial ooze that is Spider-Man on the PSX.  So the question remains, when a game sets the stage for the future development of its franchise, can the original possibly stand the test of time?  (Last month I wrote an entire article analyzing this phenomenon, good reading) There is only one way to find out: fire up the Playstation!

And I did.  It was very difficult to resist the urge to just re-up one of my old save files and play as the Amazing Bag-man, or Spider-Man 2099. (The invincible allure of playing as Captain Universe Spidey still gnaws at me…)  But resist I did.  If I was going to give the game an honest shot, it needed to come from playing it through again as if it were new. 
It takes a few seconds to readjust to the controls, what I imagine it would be like were someone from today to revert to driving a car without power steering, but once I got used to the moderately jerky nature of Spidey’s turns, I was off and swinging.  The first level is really just a tutorial, as is to be expected, but there is plenty of webslinging to do and lots of bad guys to web up and punch out.  It’s nice that this sort of thing is here, because while not as tricky as learning the controls the first time around, it is helpful to have a low pressure area to regain your bearings (no matter how many times Spidey reminds me that I have to use his Spidey-compass to find the bank.  You’d think he might already know where the bank is, being the spider-about-town that he is. And furthermore, “Spidey-compass???”  But I digress…).

Who lives here, I wonder?

The levels progress from there in good order, some require you to liberate hostages all stealthily-like lest the terrorist shoot them point blank (and oh hell yes they will, too!);  some have you making a mad dash across the city either to save J. Jonah Jameson from the Scorpion or follow Venom to his hide-out to save Mary Jane.  Intermixed are plenty of good old fashioned 3-D explore-and-fight levels where you have to find this or that, destroy a certain something, or make your way to the end of a given area.  There is one particularly maddening level where you must ride atop a subway train whilst fending off scores (and I mean scores) of lizardmen without falling to your doom.  That level is a menace, even for experienced gamers.  Another very cool level has you deep in the sewers, where, if you poke around a bit, you might just stumble into the hidden lair of the Lizard! Interspersed amongst the various levels are some engaging boss battles against classic Spider-man villains like the Rhino and Mysterio.  The boss battles require a nice blend of brute strength and brains (ala luring Rhino into electrical conduits to stun him so you can bash him with oil drums) and are tough without being tedious.

The story is remarkably deep with several plot twists and comic book style character plotting.  There are cameos galore from nearly all of Marvel’s heavy hitters of the era (curiously absent is Wolverine, unless you count that billboard…).   The game feels like playing a Spider-man comic from the 1990’s which is pretty much exactly what you want from a game like this.

Goodies Galore!

I was truly surprised at how well the game has stood the test of time.  The gameplay graphics are solid, not great, but solid.   The level design is dynamic and holds mostly true to its promise of being a free-roaming, if a bit limited, three dimensional adventure.  The combat is dynamic as well: bad guys can be defeated a number of ways, fisticuffs, webbing, a combination of the two, tossing them off the side of a building, you get the idea.  The web swinging is a lot of fun and you can swing just about any way you want, even zip from surface to surface on webline!  Spidey is also able to crawl on virtually any surface, wall or ceiling, something I honestly wouldn’t have expected from an early attempt at a game like this. There are plenty of power-ups, secret areas to explore, and hidden unlockables to seek out that give the game enormous replay value.  (I really cannot describe fully just how much stuff there is to find and unlock and how many times you are going to want to replay this game) This game also harkens from a nearly bygone era where once the game is beaten you can give it another go on HARD mode.
Of course, it isn’t all sunshine and roses.  The game is dated in a number of ways.  The cut-scene graphics are just plain terrible.  As I recall, even for the time they were pretty bad, and time has not been their friend.  The characters are very blocky and their movements are reminiscent of those puppets on strings that are so damn creepy I will find them and kill them…DIE YOU HORRIBLE PUPPETS!  DIE! (Sorry, got stuck on a thing there…)  The game also suffers from miserable voice acting, but I’ve long since given up on getting good voice acting from a video game.  Beyond that there are some of the long aforementioned minor quibbles.  Occasionally the camera will get stuck behind something and make a jump nearly impossible.  You don’t get to go street level and explore the entire city (we’ll have to wait until the Ultimate Spider-Man game to go there), but considering what you do get, this is a minor point.  And perhaps the biggest drawback:  the game is quite short.  I realize I am playing this again after having worn it out ten years ago, but it only took me about 8 hours to get back through the game.  I had forgotten a great number of the levels, but still managed to work it out in fairly short order.  This is where the replay value saves the day. You see, beating the game on normal level unlocks the Black Costume Spider-Man, and I defy you not to play the game again with that costume on.  It cannot be done.  But that said, the game can be completed pretty quickly even if you are figuring things out for the first time.
 
Final Look
Quibbles notwithstanding, I would have to say that overall, Spider-Man for the Playstation has successfully stood the test of time and while a bit dated, is just as much fun today as it was when I first spun the disc way back when.  As a matter of fact, after I finish typing this, I’m going to have to get some screenshots and chances are good that is going to result in me playing through the game again, at least one more time!  Maybe it’s just the Spidey fan in me, but I still love this game!  If you are looking for a nice trip down memory lane or just want to see how your favorite modern Spider-Man game got where it is, I still highly recommend Spider-Man for the PSX.

Spidey may be gone, but stick around for Tips & Tricks!

Join me next month because I’m going to stir the pot a bit and probably make a few people mad or at the very least scratch their heads.  You’ll never disagree with me more than you will after next month’s Closer Look!


TIPS AND TRICKS

SPOILER ALERT!!  This section may contain plot information or reveal aspects of the game better left to discovery.  Proceed with caution.

Explore, explore, explore.  Except for the levels where time is of the essence (i.e. chasing Venom or the Scorpion), take your time and crawl over every building and swing to every ledge.  Sure, your Spidey-Compass, and Spidey himself, will nag you incessantly about getting to wherever it is you are supposed to go, but you can ignore that all you want.  You’ll have to cover every corner of the playable area if you are to find all the unlockable comics and costumes, etc.  Also, there are some real treats for Spider-man fans like myself.  Some of the hidden areas are just too cool to miss.  I’ll not ruin them for you by listing them here, although there are plenty of good Walkthroughs out there that can point you to them if you like.
Some locations and objects will generate context specific dialogue from ol’ Spidey.  Swing over to the Baxter Building (Four Freedoms Plaza depending on the era, I forget) in level one, for example.


Remember, you are SPIDER-MAN, and one of your key abilities is being able to stick to any surface.  You can save yourself a lot of headaches if you spend as much time on ceilings and walls as you do walking around on foot.
Remember, you are SPIDER-MAN, and another of your key abilities is to web swing.  You can quickly span great distances or zip from a wall-to-wall or wall-to-ceiling using your web shooters.  This can help you avoid tedious enemies, dodge attacks, or find hidden passages.  Just be sure you watch your web fluid.

When fighting the Scorpion, keep your distance.  Scorpy’s tail is quick and almost always knocks you down.  Your best strategy is to attack from afar by tossing office equipment at him to get his attention, then when quarters get close, give him a few kicks to the carapace and then haul ass out of there.  Repeat.
Boss levels almost always contain a hidden comic book.  If there is no urgency to defeat the boss, take a second to look around, break some things and see what is what.

Impact webbing will be your best friend later in the game.  It is the only way to defeat Mysterio and it takes down Lizardmen from a safe distance.

When taking on the Rhino, you obviously have to ram him into the electrical generators, but if you are careful, while he is still recovering from the jolt you can use that opportunity to heave an oil drum at him and take him out in short order.  If you cannot get the timing right, then a few trips into the barrels matador-style after he has exhausted the generators should do the trick.  Just jump straight up when he charges at you (and, you know, be sure you are standing in front of some oil drums…)

On the subway ride, stick to the middle of the car (unless you really need a power-up) and use a combination of kicks, impact webbing and web shields to keep the lizardmen at bay.

When battling Venom, both times, use impact webbing and stay the hell away from him.  If you get close enough to punch, he can level you with one good smack, or worse he can snag you with the symbiote and initiate some truly dreadful voice acting that you’ll get sick of really fast.  Impact webbing does a ton of damage and will take him out in short order.
Be very careful when saving Mary Jane.  Venom can activate any of four different switches to fill the tank she in dangling in with water.  What is worse, so can you! And you probably will a million times if Venom jumps out of your way as you fire impact webbing at him.  Close quarters fighting is even worse as multiple punches can toggle the switch off and on repeatedly, causing MJ to freak completely out and whine like there is no tomorrow.  Keep your distance, use the impact webbing and keep an eye on the tank.  If you see water starting to fill, find out which switch is responsible and turn it off fast.  If you miss Venom and hit the switch yourself, be sure you turn it back off immediately before trying to find Venom again.

Fire webbing is essential against the symbiote spawn.  It is the only thing that can take them down with any speed.  Hand-to-hand is a sure way to get your Spidey-butt kicked, so keep your distance and shoot the Fire webbing at them.

In the fight with Carnage, you have to trap him in the Sonic Bubble and hold him there so the sound waves can take him out.  Once in the bubble, well timed impact webbing can keep him there until he expires.   If you have a moment, take a good look outside the windows as Carnage is getting his due…




Escaping from the final level is a trial and error learning experience.  Expect to die a few times before you get out.  Once you know the layout of the route, web-swing to dramatically increase the distance between you and Monster Ock.  You can also zip-line up and immediately web-swing over when you ascend to a new level.  There is some generous lead time, but Monster Ock will catch you if you dally too long.

All this time, Doc Ock just needed a good hug!  Who knew?!

RUN.  I'm not even kidding.

Once you think you’ve seen and done everything this game has to offer you, enter the following code: GBHSRSPM.  I promise you a very good time on this run through of the game.

As you encounter different characters you will unlock their profiles in the extras section. Like these lovely, if mightily polygonal, ladies.

Or this curious fellow...

A Closer Look at Going Home Again in the World of Video Games

A Closer Look at Going Home Again in the World of Video Games

Thomas Wolfe broke the bad news to us about thirty years before Pac-man gobbled his first dot, “You can’t go home again.” Wolfe wasn’t writing about video games at the time, but his themes of change both personal and environmental extend even into our modern technological age and yes even to video games.  I have experienced this phenomenon numerous times in my long love affair with the pixilated media, but it became even more salient recently upon purchasing Mario Kart Wii.

Allow me to start by saying that Mario Kart Wii is perhaps the greatest kart racing game I think I have ever played (and that puts it up there with Crash Team Racing for the PSX).  The game is ground-breaking in terms of innovation and game play.  One of the coolest features in the game is the ability to play older tracks from previous incarnations of the Mario Kart franchise.  It was this that sent me down the inevitable road to disappointment.  So enamored was I with the sleek controls and bright colors of Mario Kart Wii that I was prompted to revisit the previous best Mario Kart racer I had ever played: Mario Kart 64.  Mario Kart Wii features a couple of tracks from that blast from the recent past and playing those gave me a longing for those days of yore.  Thus, back to the N64 went I.  And therein lays my mistake.  Thanks Thomas Wolfe.

As the video game industry becomes more and more advanced and modern games get deeper and their complexity increases, the merits and faults of classic games are becoming glaringly obvious.  One of the consequences of our rush toward into the future of gaming is the difficulty of returning to classics we once loved.  This difficulty is multiplied when the classics we are revisiting have been updated in more modern versions of the game.  Hence my disappointment upon plugging Mario Kart 64 into my console.

It’s not just the fact that Mario Kart Wii implements a new, unique and innovative control scheme, although that does make going back to a D-pad or analog stick a bit mundane.  But Mario Kart Wii is such a leap forward in terms of graphics and game play that going back to Mario Kart 64 is very difficult.  Mario Kart 64’s graphics were awesome for their time, but when held up against the bright, detailed tracks of Mario Kart Wii, they seem cardboard cut-outs in a 3-D world.  What’s more, the kart dynamics are sluggish and awkward next to the seemingly flawless kart mechanics of Mario Kart Wii. In the Wii version the karts (and motorcycles) are a seamless part of the environment and they move and interact with the other karts and background elements naturally.  In my revisit of Mario Kart 64, the karts felt clunky and looked like they had been pasted onto the background, as if you took the background away and they would just keep on going through space without need of a playfield.  The game still played pretty well, though not as smooth as the Wii version and the fun was there, but somehow diminished.  It didn’t take very long for the 64 version to go back on the shelf and the Wii to get fired back up.  Thanks again, Thomas Wolfe.

Sadly, this isn’t the first time this has happened to me.  Now that I think about it, there have been several times in my gaming history that I have attempted to revisit older games that have had more modern updates and found the older games wanting. Rogue Squadron and Rogue Leader present another example of this phenomenon.  I loved Rogue Squadron for the N64 and played it to death, but after moving on up to Rogue Leader on the Gamecube, trying to play Rogue Squadron is like trying to wear great looking pants that are three sizes too small.  No matter how badly I wanted to run those missions again, the controls were just too clumsy and awkward.

Nice, shiny, and slick!

Still nice, but a bit clumsy

Even Spidey knows these two are worlds apart!

And the phenomenon isn’t just limited to games; genres can undergo this as well.  Fighting and sports games are perfect examples of how modern games can render older games completely obsolete.  Soulcalibur and Soulcalibur II changed the face of fighting games forever, particularly 3D fighters.  Even great older fighting games like Tekken do not hold a candle to the majesty of Soulcalibur, which when released was actually better than its arcade counterpart!  If Tekken cannot hold up, lesser fighters are reduced to an unplayable mess.  Don’t believe me? Try playing Star Wars: Masters of Tera Kasi.  Similarly, the constant evolution of the Madden football franchise is practically geared toward outdating its previous incarnations.  With each new year a newer and flashier version of Madden Football is released with more whistle and bells, online support, updated player rosters and the previous year’s game is forever lost in the discount bin of the local second hand video game store.  Hell, you can build a house out of unwanted, outdated sports games for the N64 alone!  I personally own Madden '93, 2000, 2001 and 2008 and have played them only during the year in which they were released with the exception of Madden '93 which still rocks!).  For kicks, I once put Madden ’00 in my PS2 just to see what would happen.  First and foremost, this happens to be one of the games that is not backwards compatible with the PS2, so that was interesting enough, but second, the game was practically unrecognizable when compared with more recent versions, even next generation versions for the PS2 (even when played on an original Playstation)!
 

The phenomenon isn’t limited to video game consoles either.  Perhaps one of the most glaring examples of games being outpaced by their modern counterparts can be found on the PC.  Computer technology is obsolete by the time it hits the market and I cannot tell you how many times I have purchased a new PC one year and a new game the next only to find that my computer isn’t powerful enough to run the damn thing.  That quibble aside, computer games possess a special vulnerability to this phenomenon due to the very nature of their medium. My wife loves, and I mean loves in that very unnatural way, the Sims games for the PC.  She owns practically all of the expansion packs and other accoutrement for the original game and a healthy compliment of add-ons for sequel offering Sims2.  While the original Sims still holds a special place in her heart, she simply cannot play it very long anymore, not after playing Sims2.  According to her, Sims2 provides a much fuller gaming experience, filling in gaps in the original game and building upon its foundation.  These new additions and enhancements create a rich experience that satisfies in a way that the original no longer can.  In my own experience I can attest that I found similar difficulties with Roller Coaster Tycoon.  Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 is for all intents and purposes almost exactly like the original Roller Coaster Tycoon with some crucial upgrades and improvements.  Graphically, the games are nearly identical.  The game play is foundationally the same.  Yet there is enough of an improvement that it is very hard to play the first Roller Coaster Tycoon again.  The coaster building and landscaping interfaces are much improved.  The new kinds of attractions and amusement park themes are rich and diverse.  And these things are just enough to make it hard to return within the confines of the original game.  Damn you Thomas Wolfe!

In studying this phenomenon there appears to be at least a semblance of reason to it.  It seems there are some games that are immune to the syndrome, some games that are particularly vulnerable to it, and some games that float in the middle.  The games that seem the most vulnerable are those mentioned above including but not limited to racing games, fighting games, and sports games.  These games tend to get outdated by improvements in their next iteration.  There may be some appeal to the earlier versions, but chances are good the improvements make dull the luster from the older game.  Sometimes this is due to a new level of depth or complexity that is made possible by later versions; Gran Turismo certainly takes a beating from this.  Sometimes it is due to game play improvements that a more powerful gaming platform allows; hence my aforementioned trouble playing Rogue Squadron.   And sometimes, as with sports games, it is just the nature of the game to have the newest version outpace the older ones, as with Madden and other sports titles.

Whatever the cause, there are certainly types of games that suffer from being outmoded by their latter counterparts.  The interesting thing to me is that graphics are rarely the determining factor.  Sure, nearly 99% of the time, the newer game is going to look better than its older cousins, but that is not generally enough to render an older game obsolete.  My wife makes a hard case for the original Tomb Raider succumbing to this phenomenon due to its incredibly blocky graphics, especially when compared to more recent releases such as the Anniversary version for the Wii or other modern systems.  Being a die-hard fan of the early series, I contest this, but I can see her point to some extent.  Still I maintain that the original game is fun enough on its game play merits that I can look past the polygons and still enjoy the ride.  That example notwithstanding, it seems that graphics are a minor player in this particular phenomenon.

I did notice one interesting exception to this phenomenon, however, directly related to my Mario Kart experience: sometimes if you go back far enough, you can in fact go home again.  While I was not able to recapture the magic of Mario Kart 64 after playing Mario Kart Wii, I did find that I was still able to enjoy Super Mario Kart for the SNES.  So perhaps some games are able to skirt the phenomenon if their history is rich enough and if the most recent game is sufficiently removed from the original offering.  I would like to try to make the same case for the Madden NFL series.  As mentioned above, I still have Madden ’93 for the SEGA Genesis and I still play it and it is still fun.   As long as you are not too wrapped up in using fifteen year old players and viciously limited playcalling, the game still has much of its original appeal.  Since nearly all of the players featured are retired and the divisional alignments are no longer valid, the game is almost like playing an even earlier football game like Tecmo Bowl, where teams and players really had no bearing on the game play at all.  So while I cannot plug Madden ’01 into my PSX and relive the magic, I can dig a little deeper and get back to a place where the earlier versions still retain some of what made them great.  This unique situation may also shed some light on why some games are immune to this phenomenon.

And thankfully, there are a whole slew of games out there that appear to be immune to this “can’t go home again” syndrome and interestingly enough these games are predominately adventure/RPG games.  No matter what year it is, I can always plug The Legend of Zelda into my NES and get the same charge out of it I did back in 1988.  The same goes for Castlevania, Metroid, Pitfall II, Super Mario Bros., Final Fantasy VII, and a host of others.  These games do not seem to diminish at all from having newer chapters added to their lineage.  In some cases the mystique and charm is actually increased by the addition of the newer games. And the determining factor seems to be story.  Most of the games I have mentioned either are rooted in a specific story or are a chapter in a larger story that has unfolded as more games are added to the series.  This is definitely true for the Zelda and Metroid series.  The fact that the game develops as a story also develops makes each game unique and doesn’t ask it to stack up against later games in the series.  Of course Link to the Past isn’t going to be the same as Phantom Hourglass, they are two totally different games with totally different stories that ask you to do totally different things, all the while preserving the flavor and character of the overall series.  As long as the games are well made and the game play is good, chances are they are going to stand the test of time and the release of bigger and better games in the series.

The other games I mentioned, Super Mario Bros., Pitfall, Castlevania, survive for an entirely different reason.  While those games may part of a larger story or world, subsequent editions in the series function more like extensions or supplements to the original game.  Super Mario Bros. 3 is just as much fun as Super Mario Bros. despite SMB3’s obvious superiority because the games don’t really compete for the same spotlight the way their kart racer cousins do.  Furthermore, Super Mario Galaxy can be just as fun as either of those two older games, because it has taken the basic concept and applied it in a way that neither of the earlier games could even attempt.  It’s still platforming fun, but it is sufficiently different without outdating its predecessors. Take that Thomas Wolfe!

The defining factor seems to be related to application of the theme.  If the theme is kept true, but re-imagined in unique and different way, then there is a good chance you’ll be able to go home again.  However, if the theme is kept true and the execution of that theme is maintained without significant change, but the primary adjustments are to peripherals like game play, controls, options, or graphics, then chances are going home again is going to be difficult and perhaps disappointing.  Preservation of the theme is vital to the success of any game series (look what happened when they tried to re-invent Lara Croft…).  The theme can undergo evolutions and changes, but it rarely survives a complete overhaul.  Even when the Castlevania series shifted from strict platforming to a non-linear exploration game, they kept the theme by remaining true the existing story and adapting the original platforming design to accommodate the new direction they were taking the series.  The same can be said for Metroid when they changed to a first person shooter perspective, the exploration that made the initial games such a success were maintained while the gaming style was diversified.  However, preserving the theme and updating the set dressing without evolving the theme in some way can quickly render an earlier version obsolete.  And in cases like the Sims and Roller Coaster Tycoon, evolving the theme can even be dangerous if doing so doesn’t change enough about the theme to make both the newer and older versions uniquely appealing.

It is a tricky thing going home again in video games.  Sure, you may have great memories of you and buddy staying up all night for one more game of Wrestlemania on the NES, but that may not mean that Wrestlemania is still as good as you remember, especially if you’ve played anything more recent.  Games that are modern versions of older classics that have updated the peripherals, controls, graphics, etc., but not changed the fundamental game play are going to make it hard to enjoy those original games.  Going home again is a function of gaming’s evolution as we move toward sometimes better, always more powerful games.  The true test of a game’s staying power is directly related to its development over time.  Games that develop naturally and grow beyond their beginnings manage to maintain their charm and appeal, no matter how much better the games in the series get. So, Thomas Wolfe, you can go home again, but you have to be careful which home you are going to.

Pitfall Harry says, "Thomas Wolfe is a punk."

 Join me next month, when I’ll take a Closer Look at the Spider-man game that ushered in a whole new era of web-slinging and see how time has treated it.