Girl on Girl Games: Style Savvy

Once upon a time, your humble contributor (me) was just a little girl. Actually, I was this girl:

Adorable, yes?

But, as time went on, and my mom stopped doing my hair and picking my clothes, I turned into this girl:

I'm the one on the left.

And now I'm reviewing a fashion game.

All jests aside, I really do enjoy fashion. I read InStyle on airplanes just like anyone else; I have whiled away many a rainy Saturday watching marathons of What Not To Wear. When the occasion arises, I have no problem putting together an outfit that doesn't make me look like a mental patient. Now, I don't have a ton of money to blow on clothing, so I don't get a lot of practice at looking fantastic.

Luckily for me, there's Style Savvy.

 The game is simple. You are a young fashionista on the go, and you've taken a sales job at one of the hottest boutiques in town. You work your way up to the top, get your own store, and the rest is history. Well, actually, the rest is just serving customers, managing inventory, and competing in fashion contests.

You start in your apartment, your launchpad to fashion stardom. You apparently get to keep all the vendor samples (and you apparently fit into vendor samples ...ahem...) and so you are able to make outfits for yourself out of anything you've bought for your store. You can do your make up, also. And, like all apartments, it is from here that you can adjust your identity and volume level.

A very metro-girl apartment. I feel like I'm in Ikea...

 In case you're wondering, here's me:

Faaantastic.
(keep reading, fools!)

A Closer Look at the Karate Kid for the NES

 It has been far too long since I have sat down and written a good ol' Closer Look on a NES game.  Long time masochists will recall that is how this whole thing got started.  However, a few weeks ago I broke down and bought the Karate Kid for the NES.  With LJN's reputation for crap games (some of it earned and some of it unjust, but that is a tale for another time) and my fear of ruining a childhood admiration for the Pat Morita classic film, I have passed over this game many, many times in the past.  However, like the daft fool I am, I have the delusion that I can one day own all of the NES games made (for North America anyway...), so it is inevitable that this was going to be in my collection at some point anyway, so much like Ezal, I saw an open window...

To be honest, I expected the six dollars I chucked down for Karate Kid to have gone the way of the six dollars I spent on Total Recall, Wayne's World, and so many other movie-based games in the past.  But damn it, I just keep playing it!  And it's not like the game is exceedingly long or difficult, but I keep playing it!  I beat it like last week and yet I keep playing it.  I checked, it was released by LJN.  So what is going on?  How is this possible?  This, my friends is why the Karate Kid for the NES is getting a Closer Look (and now that I think about it, Back to the Future, the first game to get a Closer Look is also an LJN title, I think someone is spiking my Shasta...).

So what is is about this game that makes me keep playing it?  Is it the adaptation of the story?  Not even close.  And by "not even close" I mean the adaptation is not even close.  One might go so far as to say that this game has been entirely mis-titled, and not in that "tossing bowling balls and Guidos" kind of way that Back to the Future is mis-titled, but in that "hey, this game is actually the sequel" kind of way.  You know the type.  I'm not kidding.  The "plot" for the NES Karate Kid game is actually the plot of the film, the Karate Kid Part II!!  What the what?  Exactly.  And here's the kicker, it is actually very, very faithful to that plot.
You start the game at the pivotal tournament from the climax of the first film.  From there you travel to Okinawa where you do battle with Sato's thugs outside the Miyagi dojo.  Then the typhoon hits and you must battle your way through the storm to save the child atop the bell post (shocking level of detail!).  Finally, you must make your way to the festival where your new girlfriend is being menaced by Chozen.  Defeat Chozen and keep Kumiko from killing herself (more on this in a minute), and Miyagi will honor you with great praise (perhaps too great?).  See, pretty much just like the second film.

So why is this game, for all intents and purposes the Karate Kid Part II, in a Karate Kid case?  I have no idea.  Logic says maybe they felt odd about releasing a "sequel game" for something that had no foundational title, but that didn't stop Konami for hitting us with Goonies II.  Maybe there was a Japanese release of a game based on the original film and this was the sequel game, but we only get the sequel game because back then America only got a portion of the kick ass games from Japan?  Honestly, I have no idea, and the research that could confirm that last one really stretches outside the scope of this article, so I am happy to chock this one up to a mystery. Either way, the curious mismatch of title and game content is not the reason I keep playing this game.  It is however a really nice bit of icing on an otherwise unexpectedly moist and delicious cake.

Perhaps what makes this game so much fun is its sheer simplicity.  As previously stated the game isn't terribly long.  Four total levels and only three of those are actual platforming levels.  The first part of the game is the tournament where you face off against four opponents in single elimination bouts.  Four fights, that's it, and to top it off they are easy, really really easy.  The remaining levels are of moderate length, but all in all the game only takes about 20 minutes to complete.  Yet I keep playing it, and here's the biggest shocker, particularly for you younger audience members for whom the next statement may have little meaning at all:  I'm playing for score!  Yeah, that's right.  If you have ever asked yourself who the loser is who has been beating Karate Kid for the NES at least once a day for score, the answer is this guy:

Me

Now the question to ask is why?  Why would anyone do such a thing?  I own a shameful amount of NES games, and this is how I spend my time?  Something must be wrong with me or very right with the Karate Kid.  The answer might be a little of column A and a little of column B (see picture above).
My personal idiosyncrasies aside, there are some very right things about the Karate Kid.  It's not without its faults: comparatively short levels, unfair stuck points where the enemies can drain your health to zero in seconds, fairly uninspired level design, but it manages to overcome those things with an almost ridiculously simple formula of uncomplicated game play, short play time, charming theming, and just enough challenge to keep things interesting. Not surprisingly, this is the exact same formula that makes Jackie Chan's Action Kung-Fu a sleeper hit of the Konami library (the only real difference in the games is the theming and game length, JCAKU takes almost an hour to beat).
(Dude, I go on FOREVER about this game, but keep reading, I promise it is worth it...)

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a GBA: March

Spyro: Season of Ice
by Universal Interactive

STEAL ALERT!  3 months in and we already have our first steal alert!  Spyro: Season of Ice for the GBA is a definite steal at a measly five dollars!  The game is lots of fun, pretty deep, and challenging enough to keep you coming back for more!



I don't really know that much about Spyro.  Up to this point my exposure to the little purple dragon had been a demo CD for the PSX oh so many years ago.  I was familiar with the game's cutesy main character and its roaming 3D platformer set-up, but I had never really invested any time into the games.  That said, as an introductory game, Spyro: Season of Ice is an exceptional ambassador for the franchise!

The storyline centers around our hero as he tries to free fairies who have been frozen in ice by some evil dudes that are some kind of rhinoceroses (not rhinoceri as I would have thought and preferred).  It is your job as Spyro to hunt down all 100 fairies and save them before the big bad guy, who has mistakenly given himself two heads through some nefarious mischief of his own, brutally slaughters the fairies and uses their wings to fix his self-inflicted condition (no indication how that works exactly...).  The game doesn't say "brutally slaughters," but I mean come on, it's a two-headed rhino-monster, those fairies aren't going to go quietly...

In any event, Spyro must travel to four different fairy kingdoms and free the frozen fairies either by simply finding them or by completing other tasks that will help subvert the evil rhino plot.  The good news is, you'll not have to go it alone.  Apparently, and this is where my ignorance of all things Spyro kicks in, Spyro has a dragonfly companion who goes along with him in his adventures and seemingly takes the brunt of the damage for him. (to wit, the fly represents your hit points).  In addition to being Spyro's simulacrum, the dragonfly also gets to have adventures of his own.  In each area there is a special dragonfly level that is more akin to a top-down shooter than a platformer.  These additional levels can be pretty tough and add a nice break from the platforming action.

Light all of the Jack o' Lanterns in the Autumn World and you'll free a fairy!

The majority of the game, however, is pretty standard platforming.  In each level Spyro must navigate the playfield, defeating foes and avoiding perilous pitfalls.  There are obvious fairies to find, as well as "go get this" missions from NPC's populating the levels, and other similar "mini-quests" that will ultimately reveal the captive pixies.  Level to level the basic quests change only superficially, but that doesn't discount the fun and challenge each level presents.  To give you a break from the platforming, in addition to the aforementioned dragonfly levels, each area also features a flying obstacle course that you can tackle.  These courses present the game's greatest challenge and are the only things I have not completed as of this writing.  You can free two fairies by running the course through on both the normal and hard settings.  Normal is hard enough, and hard is just stupid.  That said, it is nice to be able to take a break from a particularly frustrating level and do something else for a minute.

My one gripe with the game is the controls.  There are some levels that want precision jumping that is not really facilitated by the control set up.  Spyro's default moves are based on the standard cardinal directions, but he can also work diagonally. The problem comes when a jump needs to be aligned in just such a way, but making the diagonal work on the D-pad isn't as smooth or consistent as it needs to be.  The result is Spyro heading off in the wrong direction and ultimately dropping off the playfield.  This can make some levels more frustrating than they need to be.  Other than that, there is little to quibble about with this game, unless you just don't like whimsical platformers.

From Mermaid beaches to Time Travel Laboratories, Spyro: Season of Ice is a light-hearted, action platformer with a lot to offer, especially for only a modest Lincoln.  This game earns its Steal Alert status and is well worth half its original MSRP on the second hand market.  If you enjoy platforming games and don't mind a bit of whimsy, then don't pass up Spyro: Season of Ice!

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a Gameboy Advance: February

Pac-Man Collection
by NAMCO

When I think of handheld games, the first thing I think of are games that travel well.  My first experiences with the original Gameboy were playing it on car rides and after school waiting for various extracurriculars (mostly nerdy stuff).  I have fond memories of the first Spider-man game, Megan Man game, and of course Tetris.  So one of the things I look for in a good handheld game is transportability.  This month's selection was selected with that very thought in mind.  This month, our five dollar selection is the Pac-man Collection.

How can you really go wrong with Pac-man.  Well, I guess the Atari 2600 answered that question, but fortunately technology has advanced considerably since those days and the result is much more satisfactory.  Pac-man Collection for the GBA is partially what you might expect and partially something else.  Personally, I expected a collection of Pac-man games, you know, Pac-man, Super Pac-man, Jr. Pac-man, etc.  What I got was a collection of Pac-man games: Pac-man, Pac-Attack, and Pac-mania.  I'll be honest, I had never heard of those last two.  And to be honest, next month when I move on to a new game, I'll probably forget all about them as well.

The real draw of the Pac-man Collection is Pac-man and the version included here is pretty good.  There are two ways to play: full screen or scrolling.  Older eyes (as mine get daily) may struggle with the full screen, so the scrolling is a nice option, but Pac-man is made to be played with the whole maze in view.  Otherwise, it is very easy for a ghost to get the drop on you.  That said, the actual emulation of the original arcade is pretty good.  The ghost AI is different, but people just seeking a good game of Pac-man won't sweat that too much.

The other games are alright.  What I suppose should be considered the "main game:" Pac-man Arrangement, presents no challenge whatsoever.  With unlimited continues and no penalty for dying, the game will pretty much play itself out if you let it.  It does feature some fun power-ups and game play variety, but some challenge would have been appreciated.  For those, like me, not familiar with Pac-Attack (originally released for the Genesis and SNES, see I do my research!), Pac-Attack is a tetris clone that features Pac-men (Pac-mans?) and ghosts that help you clear lines.  The game play is fun, but if I want to play Tetris, nothing beats, you know, Tetris.
Finally, Pac-Mania, originally released for a variety of late 80's platforms, is a quasi-3D interpretation of classic Pac-man game play, but with different mazes and the ability to jump.  Yes, to jump.  Why?  I have no idea.  It makes the game a little easier, except in later levels when they add enough ghosts to clog just about any through-way in the game, but overall it adds little to the game play.  Mildly entertaining, but mostly forgettable.

On the whole, the real value of the Pac-man Collection for the GBA is having a decent translation of classic Pac-man that you can take with you.  The other games are suitable distractions, but they only hold interest for a few minutes.  The game is definitely worth the $5 I spent on it, maybe a little more, and the next time I travel it will find its way into the travel case with other Gameboy games.

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a Gameboy Advance: January

Ultimate Alliace
from Barking Lizards


Perhaps this wasn't the best game to start with, but with limited time I figured if I grabbed something I was familiar with I could still make the deadline.  I was half right, the deadline would be met, however I would quickly discover this wasn't quite a game I knew.

I loved Ultimate Alliance for the Wii when it came out six years ago, and I still think it is one of the best Marvel Super-hero games I have played.  I knew a version had been made for the Gameboy Advance, but at that time, I wasn't really much on handhelds or their watered down versions of superior console games.  While my interest in handheld systems has certainly increased, I cannot say that my experience with Ultimate Alliance has left my impression of their ports much improved.

It's not that UA is a bad game.  As games go, it's fairly average, but when held up against its bigger, better Wii brother, it comes up ridiculously short.  I realize this is comparing apples and orangutans, but the comparison is inevitable nonetheless.  With that in mind, I will try to limit such analysis to a single paragraph.

In a way I set myself up for failure because I was totally blown away by Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the Wii.  The game was huge, the missions were epic, and there was a host of great Marvel characters at your command.  You led a team of four characters of which you could alternate control.  Each character had a body of special attacks and gained new abilities and skills as they gained experience.  The missions took place all over the Marvel Universe and featured a veritable who's who of Marvel bad guys.  The game was amazing.

Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the GBA is just like that, except with all of the extra-special parts boiled out.  You get ten Marvel characters to command and an additional six that you can call upon for a super-attack a limited number of times per mission.  You do not play with a team of four all at once, but instead rotate through the three you build your team out of, plus the super-attack character.  Characters do not possess a bevy of special attacks, but instead have a punch, a kick, a combo attack, and a special attack.  The combo and special attacks are limited and are used up pretty quickly.
These condensations alone would not be all that terrible, but they are compounded by extremely short, uninspired missions littered with repetitious, bland enemies.  There are roughly six kinds of enemies and they appear in every level in groups of no more than three.  Levels are mostly straightforward affairs that run, at most, five minutes long.
The result is a game that says, "system limitations should have prevented me from existing." A game like Ultimate Alliance is probably better suited to the DS than the GBA.  The game you get is decent for what it is, but it is almost a misrepresentation of the game it has been derived from.  On its own, the game is a very simple, side scrolling smash 'em up with Marvel characters.  The plot is minimal and not terribly fluid, but the base action is decent enough, if controls are a bit sluggish at times.  A few more special abilities would have been nice, even at the cost of the special characters. Graphics are decent, the characters look like who they are supposed to, and the game play music is forgettable at best.  The biggest problem lies in the length of the game: it is incredibly short.  As a complete novice, I was able to complete the game in just over two hours.  I highly suspect that the brevity of the game is the result of the effort to pack as much into the game as possible.  Sadly the result is an overall less than amazing experience.


At the end of the day, Marvel Ultimate Alliance for the GBA is certainly worth the $5 I paid for it, however I would say that paying much more for it would be fairly disappointing.  If you see this game cheap, you like Marvel Super-heroes, and want a quick beat 'em-up, then go for it.  If you want a port of Ultimate Alliance for a handheld system, give this one a pass.

See you next month!

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a Gameboy Advance: Introduction

Well,  last year I had a really good time finding out just how many great games you could blindly stumble upon for measly $5.  The game was simple: every month I would go down to my favorite second hand store, Must Have Music and More, with a crisp five dollar bill and select a PS2 game from their shelves.  From there the game was played and reviewed and judgment, my judgment was passed on the actual value of the game.  Was it a hidden gem worth far more than its meager price tag?  Or was it a pile of pixelated garbage that insulted Abraham Lincoln himself?

 The results were mixed, but on the whole I would wager that I made out pretty good considering the investment versus the quantity of decent games I came away with.  Whilst browsing the shelves at Must Have, I also noticed a sizeable collection of Gameboy Advance games also priced at five dollars or below, some even as low as three dollars.  Come on now.  The GBA has a vast library, it was a much beloved system.  The games originally retailed for thirty dollars or more.  Can these prices be serious?  Can these games be this bad, that they are now only worth a tenth of their original MSRP?  If my experience with the Playstation 2 is any indication, then there have to be some pretty decent games out there for these ridiculously low prices.




So, if you are ready and willing, and I haven't bored you to tears yet, let's set sail on another voyage of discount video game grab bags.  Back in couple of weeks with our first game: Marvel Ultimate Alliance!!

Will it live up to its $5 price tag???

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a PS2: Year in Review

So a year has passed and the PS2 project has come to a close.  If you've been playing along with me at home, then you know we've had an interesting year of highs and lows, great games and some real headshakers.  So I felt it only appropriate that we spend a few moments here at the end of the project to take a look back at the journey as a whole and see if we have learned anything.

This whole project began with a simple observation: amongst the myriad of games on the shelf at my favorite second hand (Must Have Music and More, shameless plug!), were a lot of Playstation 2 games stamped with the lowly price of $4.95.  And I'm not talking outdated sports games like Madden NFL 05, I mean actual games that appear to have had a legitimate release and at least some life before they found their way into the lower caste of second hand games.  It was a game not in this project, Pryzm: the Last Unicorn, that sparked this entire thing off.  For $5 the game ending up being a huge value and despite its somewhat bizarre plot it was a great deal of fun.  And that got me to thinking, that if a game as much fun as Pryzm is sitting out there for $5 at the local second hand, who knows what other diamonds in the rough might also be lurking on the shelf.

The project started off on a good foot with Brave: The Search for Spirit Dancer, a fun little platformer that would be great for younger players and still has enough teeth for seasoned gamers.  Brave would give me hope that this entire adventure was going to be worth the whopping $60 I had agreed to invest.  And that hope with pay off several times over the course of the year.  Amongst the incredible gems I discovered are absolutely amazing games like Red Ninja, Gladius and Scooby-Doo: Night of 100 Frights.  These three games exemplify just how lucky you can get when you cast your net into the $5 ocean.  All three games are worth far more than their five dollar price tag and could easily give many contemporary games a run for their money.  Red Ninja, you will recall, is a spectacular stealth platformer that casts you in the role of a scantily clan female Ninja out for revenge against those left her for dead.  The gameplay is smooth, the level design is complex, and the challenge is high.  I look forward to more adventures with Kuranei in the future!  On the other end of the spectrum is Gladius, a deep and involved tactical battle simulation game that pits you as a Roman Gladiator or Barbarian Warlord leading your battle school against rival schools in tournaments across the land.  Gladius is the kind of game you can spend days and days playing and only scratch the surface of all it has to offer.  A real thinking game, this is another I look forward to devoting more time to.  Finally, Scooby-Doo: Night of a 100 Frights harkens back to the days of great platformers like Mario and Donkey Kong Country.  The perfect blend of fun game play and smartly executed nostalgic thematic elements, Scooby-Doo is a welcome addition to my PS2 library.

But the year wasn't all value and good times.  There were some pretty low points as well.  I can't say that I was overjoyed when playing Alfa Romeo Racing Italiano, One Piece: Pirate's Carnival, or Godzilla Unleashed.  These three games perfectly demonstrate the reason why the $5 game exists.  Had I paid retail price for any of these piles when they were first released, I am pretty sure I would have written their respective companies and demanded full refunds.  Alfa Romeo Racing Italiano purported itself to be a racing RPG, but was so hard to control and lacked any real fun factor, that I never really got a chance to see if it could deliver on its promises.  On the other hand, One Piece: Pirate's Carnival, was plenty playable, however, exactly what i was playing was consistently up for grabs.  In an attempt to replicate the fun of games like Mario Party, One Piece layers manga themes over a fairly standard board game concept.  The failure comes from the incomprehensible anime characters and themes that are forced upon the game.  While the game is clearly intended for fans of the anime, I do not think that having a target audience should limit the ability for anyone to have fun with it.  Sadly in One Piece's case, it does.  From the playable, but incomprehensible, to the nearly unplayable, we find Godzilla Unleashed.  What should have been a fun monster mash-em-up is completely stifled by sluggish, uninspired controls that foster an environment of boredom rather than thrills.  If the Ultimate Nullifier were activated against these three games, no one would ever be the worse for it.  If you see them on the shelf, run, don't walk, away.
 
The rest of the lot are pretty general fare.  Nothing absolutely terribly, but nothing you couldn't live without.  That being said, when you consider that most of these games probably retailed for upwards of fifty dollars, getting any of them for ten percent of their original price is a pretty good deal.

All in all, this was a very interesting project and I think that on the whole it was worth the risk of sixty American dollars to net seven or eight decent games for a system that only recently stopped game production.  In an age of rapidly and cheaply produced shovelware, it can be hard to risk thirty dollars or more on a new game for a modern system, particularly if you are like me and eschew much of the reviews available in print and online (just don't trust a lot of them for a variety of reasons).  If anything, this project proves that due to the accelerated transitional nature of the contemporary video game market and culture, a little bit of patience can net you some pretty damn good games for significantly less than you might pay for them new, particularly if you are not picky about used games in the second hand market.

It has been a very interesting year and I hope you have had as much fun playing along at home as I have had plumbing the depths of the second hand shelves!  Suffice to say, our journey will not completely end here.  True, our PS2 quest has come to a close, both the year and the money has been exhausted, but from the ashes of this experiment comes the next great adventure!  If there are this many great games floating around out there for the PS2, just how many might be out there for the Gameboy Advance?  Much like the PS2, the GBA boasts a vast library of titles, and much like the PS2, the Gameboy Advance was wildly poplar in its day.  The result is a dearth of games now being collected in the bins and on the shelves of second hands everywhere as the Nintendo DS has supplanted its predecessor.  You realize what this means of course...

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a PS2: December

Reign of Fire
bam!

I wanted to go out on a high note.  I really did and I want you to know that before we start.  And you cannot blame me, from all appearances this game promised a fantastic finish to this awesome project.  I mean, come on, its dragons vs. tanks, that can't possibly go wrong. Right?

Oh boy.

Turns out Reign of Fire, the game, is based on Reign of Fire, the movie.  Reign of Fire, the movie, was apparently a film from 2002 starring none other than Christian Bale, that's right, freakin' Batman, Matthew McConaughey (Time to Kill), and Gerard Butler from your silly Spartan movie.  It had to be a hit, right?  Well, if you've heard of it, then yeah, I guess it was, otherwise, this bad boy was direct to DVD.  The movie told the tale of hold-out humans struggling to survive against newly revived dragons that have scorched the Earth.  Why, why I ask you was this not a hit.  Move over Godfather!  Get out of town Rocky.  Back of the bus, Air Bud.  Reign of Fire is here!

So if the movie was that good, the game had to be a equally awesome, right?  Right.  It's dragons vs. tanks!  What better premise for a video game?  The back of the case clearly shows a dragon running down a tank, this is the game for us.  Only it's not.

Reign of Fire is basically a tactical simulator along the lines of Rogue Leader only you trade the Galactic Empire and TIE Fighters for dragons and velociraptors, oh and toss out the fun while you are at it.  The game starts with you as a human resistance fighter recruited to help in the defense of the human stronghold.  You begin by commanding a souped up jeep mounted with a machine gun and missile launcher.  It is my understanding that from there you will upgrade to tanks and other awesome killing machines.  It is also my understanding that eventually you can unlock dragon missions where you get to turn the tables on the insipid humans.  I say "it is my understanding" because I never got past level 3.

I won't say it is because the game is hard.  Sure, there are some difficult parts and the game requires some skill to succeed, but the main roadblock is that Reign of Fire just isn't very fun.  I managed the first two levels pretty well, but when it came to taking on the dragons themselves, I was toast.   First of all, the game controls are miserable.  There are two control schemes, one simple and one advanced, but neither one makes the game terribly engaging to play.  I stuck with the simpler scheme just to keep the frustration low, however it also makes tracking the dragons next to impossible and you pretty much end up getting fried when the heat is on.  The alternate controls are no better, since you are so busy trying to take down the mighty beasts that you fail to pay attention to where you are driving and you end up stuck somewhere or running into enemy fire.  The control scheme is strike one against this game.

The second strike comes from the uninspired level design.  If you have played either Rogue Leader or Rogue Squadron, you have already played these missions and they were more fun.  There are only so many "escort the convoy" missions you can play before it becomes a snore-fest.  Move to checkpoint A, defend convoy, move to checkpoint B, defend convoy, and so on. Ugh.

The final nail in the coffin is the clunky playfields.  I got stuck behind a barricade in the very first level and could not get unstuck and thus had to restart the level.  Mind you this happened during the tutorial, before I left the home base.  The other levels I played featured similar problems including hills that you could climb in your jeep, but you could only climb them at snail's pace and once you started up, turning around and going back down was hopeless.  Every level seemed to have "stuck" points that resulted in mission restarts.

Reign of Fire fails to execute on every level and ultimately provides a watered-down version of many similar games in the genre that are done much better.  The game came and went as quietly as the movie it was based on, and that is, perhaps, for the best.

I'll be back mid-month for a Final Look at this fantastic PS2 project and I'll also let you in on this year's new project!  See you then!

A Closer Look at Smurf’s Village app for the iPhone and iPad

 UPDATE!
This article is still great, but the NEWLY REVISED Poor Smurfer's Almanac for 2012 just hit with all new information about the Dreamy Smurf update, all new crops and more! Check it out today!


  I know what you are saying: “Stan, you have to be smurfing me here!  Are you smurfing serious?”  Yes.  I’m not smurfing your leg.  Trust me, I never would have imagined that this would be something I would ever pay attention to, much less devote my precious time, and yours, to. (watch that preposition dangle!)  But two weeks ago, a friend of mine on that devilish social networking timesuck posted that there was a Smurfs app for the iPhone and better yet, it was a game.  Now, I am a child of the 80’s, two things are very dear to me: Pee Wee Herman, and the Smurfs.  I will always love both with a bizarre and clinical unconditional love that can really only be understood by twins and those who have climbed Mt. Everest.  So when you tell me there is a Smurf game for my phone (which, let’s be honest isn’t really a phone anymore), you have to know I’m going to give it a look.

The Smurf’s Village app, for all intents and purposes, is basically a pretty skin for the already epidemic Farmville or Frontiersville or Petsville or any of those other horrid social networking games developed by Zynga. Well, almost.  There are some important differences and I’ll get to those in a minute.  But first let me tell you how asinine I find those social games like Farmville.  Perhaps the most obnoxious thing since spam emails, these social network “games” are thinly disguised marketing tools used to monitor network activity and promote online interaction to increase the potential to exploit the bottomless resource that is the internet.  Games like Farmville seem to be built not around playing a game that is fun, but in asking your friends for supplies and otherwise cluttering the pages of everyone you know with insightful messages like “Stan, I need 4 nails to finish my fence,” or “Pam just stole a pig from your pen, click here to see what else is going on in Farmville.”  And you get these wonderful missives regardless of whether you partake in the madness or not.  I do not.  Worst of all, Farmville, and its cohorts, entice you to spend REAL MONEY, not video game money, rupees or gil, but REAL MONEY to buy things to speed up the progress of your farm.  And most of the things you spend your REAL MONEY on can be acquired by playing the game, it just takes more time.  So, much like the real Capitalist system, if you don’t want to earn your achievements, you can just buy them.  I pretty much hate everything about these kinds of games.

So how? How can I advocate Smurf’s Village?  My defense is shoddy and rests mainly on the phrase, “but dude, they are smurfs.”  However, I will tell you why I am sinking hours of valuable game time that could be going toward Kirby’s Epic Yarn or EA NFL Training Camp into this stupid little app, and I’ll try to make it sound convincing.

First of all, Smurf’s Village differs from its extremely obnoxious cousins in some very important ways.  Most importantly amongst these ways is that the game play is much more passive than something like Farmville.  There are no pushy messages from friends (even though the game is linked through facebook to your network) to give them things or to harvest their crops.  You can give gifts to your friends, but no one ever contacts you, and if you never connect to the social network, no big deal, the game plays on.  So, right off the bat, SV is not as self-effacing as its predecessors.

Second, the game is simple and fun.  If you are not familiar with these kinds of games, they are basically micro-management games reminiscent of SimCity, Roller Coaster Tycoon, or the Sims.  The premise is minimal: Gargamel found the Smurf village and destroyed it, scattering smurfs far and wide (and apparently spawning multiple clones of distinctive smurfs like Papa, Hefty and Smurfette, since each new village has one…).  Your job is to rebuild a new smurf village and make it flourish so that the smurfs will have a new haven to call home.  This reclamation project requires you to build mushroom houses for the smurfs and then put them to work farming in order to generate more revenue to keep the revitalization going.  Apparently, Papa Smurf is able to sell the produce generated by the farming to an undisclosed outside buyer who will in turn give the smurfs money (not REAL MONEY, let’s get that straight) with which they can buy building supplies, tufts of grass, and moss covered rocks.  Why you have to buy such things is really beyond me.  But those are the tools you use to beautify and enhance your new smurf village.  As you progress in the game, you will gain access to more and more décor items like colored fences, flower patches, and even different kinds of mushroom houses.  The game goes on like this at least up the level 25, the last level in which it is indicated that you can unlock new items.  If you like micro-management games (and I tend to) and the Smurfs (see above), then this game is a fun little diversion.

But you have to maintain that perspective.  See, it’s not all sunshine and roses.  The Smurf’s Village app is absolutely 100% free, but as you well know, you don’t get something for nothing, that’s not the American way.  And this is where shades of Farmville creep into your otherwise smurfy world.  You see, some of the best stuff you can buy: Smurfette’s house, Hefty Smurf’s House, friendly snails and caterpillars (which grant lots of XP daily) cost not in-game money, but smurfberries.  Smurfberries are a rare commodity in the game and you only earn a small amount per day (1 per level early on, after level 10, 2 per level and so on).  No big deal, right? It’s all part of the game.  Wrong.  You see, those great things that cost smurfberries, don’t just cost 5 or 6 berries, they cost 25 or more.  Thus, it could take months just to add Painter Smurf and Farmer Smurf to your village.  It could, but it doesn’t have to.  You can always spend REAL MONEY (again, let’s be clear), and BUY smurfberries from the game.  See the shades?  You don’t have to wait; you can have all of the best things right now, for a price.  Now to be fair, the smurfberries are pretty reasonably priced, if we abandon the idea that paying for video game content is unreasonable to begin with.  Fifty smurfberries only cost five REAL DOLLARS. And fifty smurfberries can net you at least Smurfette’s and Painter’s houses (with a little help from the berries you’ve accumulated along the way).  To make matters worse, smurfberries aren’t just for buying the rare stuff, you can also spend them to speed up the harvest, shorten build time for mushroom houses, or instantly increase your population.  And therein lies the trap.  If you can restrict your smurfberry usage to just those rarities and not things you can get just by being patient, the impact of this otherwise exploitative option is greatly minimized.  If the villages of my friends are any indication, the lure of instant villages is too great.  For some of my friends this appears to sing to the tune of upward of twenty or thirty dollars or more. Guilty admission, I spent $5 to obtain Smurfette’s and Painter’s houses, and I may break down and spend five more REAL DOLLARS for Hefty and Farmer, but after that I will probably be done spending REAL MONEY on video game content for my iPhone.  I justify it by emphasizing how little I am really spending and that I am spending it on having fun like I would if I were going to a rock concert or live theatre.  I justify it with just a twinge of shame. (see my rant about downloadable content from several months ago for a full understanding of my cause for shame)

Honestly, though, the game is fun.  It is fun running the little smurfs around, having them farm and build fences, growing the village and adding new décor elements.  It is fun, plain and simple.  I like micro-management games and this one manages to find a soft, nostalgic spot in my heart.  The game is limited in several important ways, however and I am hopeful that since this is fluid software those issues will be addressed.  Most pressing is the fact that the game is quite limited in scope at this time.  As I stated before, the game stops giving you things to unlock after level 25.  I’ve been playing for about a week and half at this point and I am already nearly level 17.  If they do not release updates or expansions soon, my time with the game will be smurfed.  There is also a lack of diversity in things to do.  Once you have all of your smurfs busy farming and you’ve built everything you can build, there isn’t much else to do.  Sure, there are mini-games to play like Papa Smurf’s Potion Mixing Game or Greedy Smurf’s Baking Challenge, but these are only available for credit (XP) once per day and the games only last about 45 seconds.  The game simply needs other things for you and your smurfs to do.  There are some plot (very loosely understood here) driven tasks to undertake (as in “grow some tomatoes to rid the village of skunk stench”), but the later you get in the game, the more scarce those become.  It can become really easy to lose interest if there aren’t more things to do in the village as the game progresses. I guess I cannot complain too much, however the damn thing is free after all.


FINAL LOOK
So if you are looking for something fun to waste some time with while you wait in line at the DMV or are on a long car trip, Smurfs Village can be a fun way to accomplish just that, but you’ll need to keep things in perspective lest you get seduced into blowing your hard earned cash on something as ephemeral as video game content.


The Poor Smurfer’s Almanac
How to get the best productivity out of your village

Planting Schedules and Yields:
Know your crops!  By planting the right crops at the right time you can maximize your productivity.  Planting certain crops will enable you to generate large sums of coinage or experience in shorter amounts of time.  Not all crops are created equal and planting the wrong crops can several retard the growth of your village.  The chart below details which crops give you the best yields respective to whether you are looking to harvest $ or XP. 

Best Quick Growing Crops (grow time of 1 hour or less)
XP Yield                    $ Yield                      All Purpose
Cucumber (120)         Blueberry (120)         Blueberry
Blueberry (120)          Raspberry (36)          Raspberry
Currants (120*)          Blackberry (12)         Currants
Raspberry (96)           Currants (10*)           Blackberry
Blackberry (60)          Strawberry (9)           Cucumber
Strawberry (45)          Cucumber (8)             Strawberry

Best Mid-Level Crops (grow time of 2-6hours)
Brussels Sprouts (37.5XP  $7.5)
Peas (25XP  $5)
Carrots (16XP  $3.6)
Tomato (13XP  $2.6)

Best Long Term Crops (grow time of 9-24 hours)
XP Yield                      $ Yield                      All Purpose
Onion (14.5)                Corn (15.4)               Artichoke
Artichoke (13)             Sarsaparilla (6.25*)   Sarsaparilla*
Sarsaparilla (12.5*)     Artichoke (2.6)          Watermelon
Watermelon (10)         Watermelon (2)          Pumpkin
Pumpkin (10)               Pumpkin (2)              Corn
Potato (6.25)               Potato (1.25)             Onion
Corn (4.4)                   Onion (0.8)                Potato

XP and $ amounts are calculated on average yield per hour.  The amount of $ is calculated to reflect net profit (gross profit minus seed cost).  (Example: Brussels Sprouts yield 75XP and $20 in 2 hours growth, hence they yield and average of 37.5 XP per hour and $7.5, $15 gross profit minus $5 seed cost)

*The amounts for Currants are averaged up to reflect 2 yields per hour even though they can only be harvested every 40 mins.  This is for simplicity sake, adjust your planting accordingly.
*The amounts for Sarsaparilla are not reflective of their steep 1 Smurfberry seed cost.  Since there is no in-game monetary equivalent for Smurfberries, there is no reasonable way to evaluate seed cost.  You will have to decide the value of this cost and its overall effect on the profitability of planting this crop.

Plant smartly.  A well organized farm can accumulate a great deal of coinage and XP every day.  Depending on when you have time to play, figure out how to harvest the most crops in a day.  If you have a routine sleeping pattern, plant crops just before you go to sleep that will be ready to harvest immediately upon your waking up.  Maximize your grow time the same way for the rest of your day.  Make your farm work for you when you cannot work it.

It is strongly recommended against planting Potatoes, Strawberries, and Tomatoes.  These are the worst of the respective groups and will not accelerate your growth.  Also, with a seed cost of 1 Smurfberry, Sarsaparilla is a poor investment unless you have REAL MONEY to burn.

If you have the time, Blueberries are VERY lucrative!

Once your village is up and running, start populating it with snails and caterpillars.  Both generate a lot of XP daily if you check in on them.  Smurfette is good in the same capacity, but snails and caterpillars are much better and you can have multiples of them.  Plus, with a productive village you can add 2 snails or 1 caterpillar each day. This will help you advance in level much faster than with crops alone.

Later in the game, after you have built your village to your satisfaction and have nothing new to build, you can put your money to use buying XP by buying scenery and then deleting it.  Sure, this is a bit unethical, but it can turn money you are not using into valuable XP.

Design your village smartly.  You may want to consider dividing up your field into sections.  One section should be devoted to generating XP and the other coins.  Or simply design two separate fields and dedicate each to a task.

Unless you just have lots of REAL MONEY to burn, don’t waste Smurfberries on instantly growing crops or building houses.  Save your Smurfberries for things like the special smurfs or rare items.

Farmer Smurf is very important.  He can increase the yield on crops grown in fields that touch the perimeter of his house by 50%.  This means that up to 8 fields can see significant yield increases due to his presence.  He should be the first smurf you spend Smurfberries on.  You can arrange it so that he influences a full 8 fields, if you stagger your fields correctly.

Build bridges as soon as possible.  They greatly increase the size of your village and thus the arable land available.

Upgrade Smurf houses regularly to increase your population.  There are limits to the number of houses you can have per level, so this will help grow your village and get around this limitation.

Thanks for taking a look and have a smurfy time giving these hapless smurfs a new home!  Enjoy the smurf out of this fun little game!

12 Months, Sixty Dollars and a PS2: November

Godzilla Unleashed
From Atari (sadly)

Ok, so not every game has to have a riveting story, at least it’s fun to play, right?  Ok, so not every game can be really, really fun to play, but at least it’s smoothly executed, right?  Ok, so not every game can be smoothly executed, but at least it looks good, right? Well, maybe.
And that’s what I got for five dollars this month, a game that mostly looks good and does little else.  So I’ll start with that.  The monsters in Godzilla Unleashed look really, really cool.  Pretty much exactly what you would want the classic Godzilla monsters to look like!  They’re big, they’re bad, and they look like they could really tear up town!
Too bad they’ll never get the chance, not really.  Because that is where the greatness of Godzilla Unleashed ends.  The game itself is an otherwise clunky mess.  The plot is honestly below mention and after the second “cut scene” I pretty much skipped the remainder of it, so let’s not waste your time and mine and move on to more disappointing fare.  How much story do you want a Godzilla game to have anyway?  The biggest letdown comes from the lackluster game play.  This is a game that should be nothing but all out action.  Filled with lots of things to crush, military vehicles to chomp, and buildings to demolish, this game should be non-stop fun.  And it is not.  What you get instead is something that feels like a Playstation engine dressed up for the PS2.  Don’t believe me? check out the load times.  The “levels” are ridiculously small and there are only a dozen or so cities to battle in, yet it takes several minutes to load each scenario.  And if you think the load times are slow, check out the responsiveness of the controls.  I think Masters of Tera-Kasi was more fluid.  While we are at it, shouldn’t Godzilla have some really kick ass moves with which to combat Mothra and Rodan?  Well, he ain’t got ‘em here.  Instead you get a kick that would make Pele cry, a standard grapple move, a ducking action, a blocking action, a jump, and a tail swipe.  The only move worth doing is the fire breathing attack, and it is cool, but one out of eight don’t cut it.  Oh, the manual says there is a “special attack” using L2 and R2, but it never seemed to work for me.  So I guess you can kick and swipe your way to victory, or you can spew fire repeatedly and throw in the occasional building toss until your foe relents…or not.

You see that is the most baffling part of this game: it doesn’t seem to matter if you win or lose.  As a matter of fact, there doesn’t appear to be any obvious goal to the game at all.  If you beat your enemies or if they beat you, no big deal, you’ll still progress to the next level and fight again.  I guess you are meant to defeat the other monsters in each scenario, but there doesn’t appear to be any real incentive to do so.  Oh sure, you get points for the monsters you defeat, as well as the destruction you cause, but those points are pretty much only there to unlock other monsters.  And since the game is so much fun, I can’t imagine wanting to suffer through it all again, but this time with Gigan.

And speaking of destruction, shouldn’t this game be packed with it?  Sorry, not here.  Oh sure you can topple buildings, but they just fade away and disappear.  And you can pick up buildings, but only the smallest ones, and when you throw them, they also disappear.  There are tanks to squash and helicopters to swat at, but they are tiny, hard to see, and ultimately not worth the effort to seek out and destroy.  Where are the fires, the crumbling ruins, the screaming civilians? Sigh.

So I beat the game in about 45 minutes, I think I had no choice, the game just kept advancing me, so I figured I would see it through.  I’d like Atari to give me those 45 minutes and my five dollars back because Godzilla Unleashed was probably the biggest disappointment I’ve encountered during this project.  What should be an amazing monster smash ‘em up, is a slow, lumbering brute that inspires no awe and should forever rot in the bottom of the bin.

Only one more to go….where did the time go?

A Closer Look at My French Coach for the Nintendo DS

Bonjour!  C’est moi, votre bon ami Stan!  Aujourd’hui, j’etudie Francais avec My French Coach pour le Nintendo DS.  Je sais déjà un peu Francais, mais je voudrais apprendre plus.  My French Coach est bon pour beaucoup des choses, mais pauvre pour plusieurs tres important choses que vous avez besoin de parler francais bien.


The above paragraph was made possible entirely by working with My French Coach for the Nintendo DS.  But don’t cash in those lottery tickets for a plane ride to Marseille just yet!  As I state above (for you non-francophones out there), the “game” is good for a great many things, but it comes up short in some very important areas that are fundamental to communication in a foreign language.  As you might have garnered (nothing gets past you!), today we’ll be taking a Closer Look at My French Coach and just how it fares as a poor(er) man’s Rosetta Stone.

Before we delve too deeply into the program itself, a short history is appropriate if we are to understand my perspective on this particular subject.  In the interest of full disclosure, I feel obligated to tell you that I already knew a pretty decent amount of French when I started playing this game.  I took two years of French in high school (mostly staring at Mrs. Wilborn our buxom French teacher, sorry Mrs. Wilborn, but its true…) and following that I tutored French in college for two years (tutoring mostly 19 year old ladies’ tennis and volleyball players, again a distracting experience).  In order to obtain my MA, I was forced (you heard me) to pass a French fluency exam that consisted of translating a body of text from French to English.  I failed…the first time. (naturally I blame women!) But the second time I passed it and believe me it took many hours of study to get it right.  So, you can see that going into this “game” I was armed with a fragmented understanding of the language.  I believe overall, that puts me in a good position to judge just how well My French Coach prepares the uninitiated for their first foray into a foreign language.

One additional brief caveat before we get our hands dirty. I’m not entire sure what to call this thing.  You may have noticed my attempt at neutral language in the preceding paragraphs.  I am hesitant to call this a “game” when it is more of a learning tool, but calling it a learning tool sort of de-emphasizes the approach that the program takes in order to teach the language.  Furthermore, to simply call it a program is rather vague and muddies the water conversationally.  Therefore, I think we are going to agree that this is still a video “game,” even though it a special kind of “game” that can be used as learning tool as part of its primary function.  So you’ll have to bear with me if the language is transitory during the following dissertation.

Now, if I recall correctly, this is supposed to be a Closer Look at a video game, so let’s get back to the task at hand.  My French Coach for the Nintendo DS is part of a line of video games aimed at teaching novices how to speak and otherwise navigate a foreign language.  To date, the line consists of games for Spanish, English, Japanese, and Chinese.  What is taking so long for Italian and German, I have no idea.  The line seems to have some momentum and perhaps for good reason.

My French Coach consists of a series of “lessons” designed to provide a basic introduction to the French language.  You are given an instructor as guide, and oh what a fine instructor she is, to the lessons and are able to select the lesson of your choice from a list; hence you can revisit old lessons to refresh as you need to.  When getting started, you will be asked to take a “placement” exam of sorts to determine where in the lesson plan you should begin.  This is basically just to see how familiar you are with the language to avoid time-wasting repetition of known material and also to keep rookies from getting in too deep too soon.  The game placed me at Lesson 9 based on my test results and while that may have been a little simpler than I feel I was knowledgeable of, it never hurts to refresh.

Once you get going, the game is divided into three sections: Learning, Games, and Reference.  The Learning section is basically the “main game” where you progress through the lessons opening new harder challenges upon earning a certain number of points that are meant to indicate mastery of the material.  There are 50 lessons in all and beyond that you may continue learning under what is called the “Open Plan.”  This area is basically vocabulary drills and games that build upon the fundamentals already covered.  You will not obtain any new grammar rules or sentence structure beyond this point.  The Games section let’s you play any of the learning games you have unlocked up to that point.  There are eight games in all and although two of the games are very similar there is enough variety to keep this section fun.  You’ll even be ranked by grade level (i.e. I am a “5th Grader” at the time of this writing) depending on how well you perform in the games overall.

The Reference section might very well be considered an entirely separate section of the game, even though you can certainly use it as part of your learning experience.  The Reference section contains a place to view your progress as well as all of the unlockables in the game and how you are doing with individual words and concepts.  There is a Dictionary which is basically an abridged “French/English translation consisting of all of the terms used in the Learning section. Finally perhaps the most useful section in the whole game is the Phrasebook.  A concise compilation of helpful phrases you may have need of should you find yourself on the Rue Biscarra and desperately need to know how to get to Le Maya on Rue Vernier or if you happen to run into someone from Fiji (Tu es des Fidji?) You know, because it happens.  The Phrasebook has a lot of useful phrases and will even speak them for you if you are too embarrassed to bust out with “Ils vont marcher jusqu’au parc” on your first go.  At the end of the day, the Reference Section may be the most valuable part of this whole game.

The main section, however, is probably why most people buy this game.  Chances are good if you are considering purchasing My French Coach you have at least a passing interest in learning, or relearning like me!, French.  Thus most of your time is going to be initially spent in the Learning section.  The big question is, just how much can you expect to learn from the lessons to be found in this game?  The answer is mixed.  As I said in the intro: “My French Coach est bon pour beaucoup des choses, mais pauvre pour plusieurs tres important choses que vous avez besoin de parler francais bien.”  Translation:  The game is very good at many things, but comes up short in some vital areas if you hope to speak French proficiently.

The lessons start off with elementary vocabulary and phrases and progress to incorporate slightly compound sentence building and expanding word sets.  These things the game gets right 99% of the time.  There are some things it teaches that are odd or on the rare occasion outright incorrect, but for the most part the elementary education is solid.  You’ll learn basic noun-verb agreement and simple and inverted sentence structure.  You’ll pick up the fundamentals and by the time you get to the 50th and final real lesson, you should have a pretty good handle on elementary French.  Unfortunately, that is where the game will leave you.  After the 50th lesson, you will be shuffled off to what is called “Open Plan” which is basically just a series of vocabulary drills that add new terms to your inner dictionary.  You’ll not pick up any more grammar rules or be introduced to any new concepts, but you will be deluged with new words to learn.  Not that increasing your vocabulary isn’t valuable, but you’ll hit this wall pretty fast if you are ambitious and get into the game, and that can be a buzzkill for the hungry student.

Your best bet once the “Open Plan” is unlocked is to back out of the “Learning” section of the game and moving to “Games.”  You’ll still accrue points and unlock new levels and new vocabulary, but you’ll be free of the structure of the “Learning” section, which becomes a list of words followed by a random game, each and every time.  Under the Games section you’ll be able to set the parameters for each game and you’ll be able to include all of the material you have learned thus far as well as mix in the new stuff.  This will help you avoid the inevitable, repetitious conjugation game that can occur when playing the Random Game in the Learning section.  Plus, you’ll probably get more of a challenge out of playing the Games with expanded parameters and the inclusion of the all the material you had learned.  If you want a real challenge, try tackling “Spelltastic” with Open and Hard settings. Wow!

It's Whack-a-French-Mole-Word-Thing-Game...

The only real let down with My French Coach is the early and limited ceiling of what you will learn with the game.  While the game does a good job giving you a foundation for the language, it leaves out some really important stuff, like how to form a negative phrase.  Unless you plan to go to France and have everything happen just right, chances are good you are going to want to say something in the negative.  Thus, it would be nice to be able to negate something, but you’ll not get that lesson from My French Coach. (If you look back, you will see I did not use a single negative in that opening passage) You’ll also not be introduced to more than a couple of irregular verbs, and trust me, in French, some of the best verbs are irregular.  The game even plays dirty with you by introducing you to semi-irregular verbs and asking you to conjugate them in the Open Plan levels (verbs like “distraire”).  The game takes you only so far, and for me, it simply isn’t far enough.  In addition to negation, where are the reflexive verbs, where are the past and future tenses?  These things are still basics of the language and would be extremely useful for someone trying to be functional with it.  I’m not suggesting that the game make you fluent in fifty easy steps, but I do think that it could have gone a little deeper than it did. Beyond that, the game executes pretty well. Despite a few odd glitches in a few of the games (nothing major, just a few mechanics that get stuck here and there), you’ll be off and learning French in no time.

Oh my dear lord. I promise I will learn whatever this foxy little tomato is teaching...

Final Look:
My French Coach for the Nintendo DS is a pretty good French primer and will serve you well as an introduction to the French language.  It is not, nor should it ever be confused with, a replacement for the fine language learning tool known as Rosetta Stone (the makers of which may feel free to send me a free discretionary copy at their leisure).  My French Coach is fun and it helps getting into a foreign language accessible, but know going in that it is only going to take you so far, and depending on how far you want to go, that may or may not be enough.  For serious students and those who really get into learning French, you can certainly have a good time with My French Coach, but ultimately you are going to want a lot more than this game is going to offer. For those with a more casual interest in foreign languages, this game and its companions are a fun way to play around and maybe pick up a few things along the way.

Next time
I honestly have no idea, the holidays are coming up and I'm stupid busy, but I promise I'll take a look at something between now and then. I just picked up Quest 64 and I've been playing a lot of video game golf...