Snippet

Playing through Streets Of Rage 2 on my Megadrive emulator just now, I noticed some great Engrish in the background of one of the stages:

"Do Base Ball!" enthuses a sign hanging on a fence.

"It's like Boo!" says another.

Ah, good times.

Mega Drive vs Super Nintendo....FIGHT!

Back in the early nineties, I was a total Sega fanboy. This devotion was based on little more than the fact that I was the proud owner of a Sega Mega Drive. This 16bit black beast was the envy of the gaming world at the time, and owning one made me the coolest kid in school...well, okay, maybe the coolest kid on my street.

When the Super Nintendo was released, I remember feeling very defensive and threatened in my own childish fashion. I read all about its amazing specs, and this new fangled "Mode 7" gimmick, and about how its graphics could choose from an amazing array 32,768 colours ( compared to the Mega Drive's paltry 512 ). And then Super Mario World came out, and despite the fact that it was one of the first games to be released on the SNES it looked better than anything that had come out on Mega Drive, which by this point had been out for a couple of years.

How did I react to this attack on my beloved console? Well, I did what any self respecting immature boy of 12 years old would do...I denied the obvious. I staunchly defended my console, and totally bought into Sega's marketing spin about the Mega Drive's hidden technical power which meant that it could still slug it out against the newer SNES. All this despite the fact that only a few years earlier I had been the proud owner of Nintendo's first generation machine, the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Whenever a game was released on both the Mega Drive and SNES, for example Street Fighter 2, I would pore over my favourite games magazines for who came out on top in terms of graphics ( it all came down to graphics for me back then ). Invariably it was the SNES

I actually hired a SNES out from a video store back in the day. If memory serves me correctly, the game I got with it was Super Mario World. Despite its obvious greatness, I managed to convince myself that it wasn't any great shakes. By this point, I was the proud owner of Sonic the Hedgehog 2 on my Mega Drive so I actually had a definite high water mark to compare Mario to.

In the Mega Drive's later years it had a few last hurrahs. Particularly impressive technically was Gunstar Heroes. The ending had already been written however, and the ol' black box was discontinued in 1997. This meant little to me by that point, however, as I had already moved on to the Sony Playstation. Ah, the fickle nature of the fanboy-ism.

Due to the wonders of emulation, I have since had the opportunity to experience the Super Nintendo with a more level headed attitude. My verdict? Super Nintendo, FUCK YEAH! There are so many great games to play on this machine. SNES owners certainly seemed to be spoiled for choice when it came to RPGs, in particular. At the moment, I'm rather addicted to Chrono Trigger. This game is brilliant. Can somebody please tell me why every RPG since this game hasn't done away with random battles? The only RPG I can think of recently that followed this early ancestor's advice is Final Fantasy XII. I'm sure there's been others, but that's the only one that I've played anyway.

In the end, the war between the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo wasn't really won or lost based on who had the better machine. It was won due to the quality of the games. And now that I'm older and wiser, I can honestly admit that overall the Super Nintendo simply had better games...but the Mega Drive was still cooler.

Old timer

After making the post about the Commodore 64 earlier this week, I've been thinking about all those old time games. Oh, and buying the latest issue of Retro Gamer didn't help, either.

So, this morning I decided to download some emulators of old home computers. The Amiga 500 emulator I downloaded, WinUae, was really rather tricky to set up, but I got there in the end. Unfortunately, a lot of the roms I downloaded turned out to be corrupted...or maybe it's just not that compatible with Vista.

Frustrated, I decided to go even older and download a Commodore 64 emulator, CSS64. This was a dream to set up, and before I even had time to say "Old School!", I was happily playing the classic game Barbarian, and lopping my opponent's head off with impunity.

I then decided to face my childhood demons, and play Archon. As you will have read in my C64 post earlier, I have a rather traumatic memory relating to this game from when I was a child. I bravely forged ahead, however, and I'm so glad I did. Playing this game again was a truly nostalgic experience. The title screen music, which I thought I had totally forgotten, came back to me strongly as it played. I also found that as I was playing the game, each character's attack animations suddenly flashed into my head just before I performed them. This was noticed most strongly with the Phoenix ( who kicks just as much ass as I remember ). Its burst of flame as it vanquished its foes brought back so many memories.

Unfortunately, I got my ass well and truly kicked. Oh well, it was still a great trip down memory lane.

Video games are addictive?!

So, I just read this article about video game addiction in which it's mentioned that the American Medical Association (AMA) is going to formally recognise video game addiction as a mental disorder in 2012.

How do I feel about being told, basically, that I have a mental disorder? It's teh awesomes, I'm mental! Seriously, though, I just hope that findings such as this don't further fuel the anti-video game stance that a lot of politicians seem to take. We've got enough problems with them getting all up in our grill about violence in games.

Honestly, I can't believe it's taken this long for video game addiction to be recognised ( or even that it's still not going to be formally recognised until 2012 ). I could have told them all about video game addiction back when I played EverQuest for three plus hours a day ( sometimes doing an all-nighter for twelve hours or more ) for almost three years straight, 2000 - 2003.

As is mentioned in the article, those who are most at risk of falling prey to video game addiction are those who play MMORPGs, and I can totally see the truth in this. Online RPGs are tailor made to keep you playing...and playing...and playing. Quite often the grind of levelling isn't even actually any fun, but the hook of just wanting to reach that next level or get that next bit of loot is impossible to resist. I look back on my time playing EverQuest and can clearly see how unhealthy it was to play that game, or any game for that matter, as much as I did. I remember quite a few times when I would actually forgo social occasions with friends just so I could stay home and play EQ, which is really pretty sad. In the end, that's actually one of the reasons that I stopped playing. When I looked at the amount of time I'd been playing my main character ( Smoove Grooves, the kick-ass bard ) and saw that it was over 40 days real time, that's more than 40 x 24 hour periods of me sitting on my ass in front of a computer screen, I realised enough was enough.

The other big reason that I quit? Because I was spending so much time playing EQ, I felt like I was missing out on playing other games! Yes, I was so addicted to one game that I felt like I was ignoring other games and needed to spread my addiction around.

I don't play games as much as I used to, that's for sure. So would I still consider myself addicted? At certain times, yes. It depends on the game. Most recently, it was S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl. Considering this is a 30+ hour game to finish, and I clocked it in a couple of weeks, you could definitely say that I was well and truly hooked.

In regards to MMORPGs, even though I freely admit to being totally addicted to EQ and that I wasted far too much time on the game, I honestly don't regret it. I have so many great memories from that game, in fact one in particular is probably my greatest gaming memory ever ( I imagine I'll make a post about it soon, now that I think about it ). Since EQ, I have played a number of other MMORPGs: Saga Of Ryzom, EverQuest 2, Guild Wars, World Of Warcraft, and most recently Lord Of The Rings Online. With all of these games I have managed to keep my addiction in check, never reverting to the heights of my EQ addiction. In fact, normally around the one or two month mark I tend to stop playing altogether. I think my brain has this built-in failsafe now where it says "You know Pete, I think you're spending a bit too much time playing this game. Maybe you should stop now, and go outside and enjoy the sunshine...or maybe just play a different game. Actually, that copy of Final Fantasy XII is feeling a bit ignored. How about popping it into the PS2 for a spin?".....or something else along those lines.

At the moment I'm going through a bit of downtime with video games. Since I finished S.T.A.L.K.E.R I haven't actually played any other games on my PC. The only game that I've been playing recently is Super Mario Galaxy, and despite how awesome it is I'm definitely not addicted to it.

What's the next game that I think will get me addicted? Once I get around to trying it out, probably Age Of Conan: Hyborian Adventures. Well, at least for a couple of months until my failsafe device kicks in.

Commodore 64: My Early Days of Gaming

Ahhh, the Commodore 64. Anybody over the age of about 25 should hopefully remember that name with fondness. When I was about five or six years old this was the computer which first introduced me to the wonders of technology, and how far we'd advanced since the early days of hitting rocks against other rocks to make sparks for our entertainment. Utilising the awesome power of an 8 Bit processor, 64k of Ram, able to display 16 colors, and containing the first sound synthesizer chip to be built into a personal computer, the C64 was an absolute beast.

My older brother, Bruce, was the person in our family who originally had a C64. I was incredibly envious, and used to eagerly watch the screen from beside him as he played. He was very generous, however ( or he simply got sick of my gawking ), and let me play games on it regularly. He'd always have to boot it up though, because I was only little and didn't have a clue how to input the DOS commands to get games to load...I still don't, actually. Ohhhhhh, and what games they were! The C64 had an absolute plethora of fun, deceptively simple games to play. Literally thousands of games. Sure, a lot of them were total shovelware, but there were so many diamonds amongst all the crap. Being the cool guy that my brother is, he and his friends would get all their games pirated and share them around amongst one another. You have to remember that this was in the mid 80s when pirating was running rampant like some sort of demented....pirate.

I have such clear, fond memories of playing games on the C64. Sure, by todays standards the games look like something a chimp programmed using a stick and a calculator, but it was the substance and fun of the games that counted. We also have to remember that this really was one of the most powerful machines of its time, and the games that came out on it were, for a brief period at least, at the cutting edge of game design. Most of these games were pure joy. I'll now do an overview of a few of my faves:

World Games



Probably my all time favourite game on the C64. Containing such fun events as bull riding, cliff diving, sumo wrestling and other strange things, this game was challenging and fun. Alot of the events involved insane button bashing and joy stick waggling, which i'm good at because I have a bizarre shaking ability that i've had since I was a baby. I've looked into it on the net, and I think it's called "Essential Tremors". As long as it never gets any worse, and allows me to kick ass on games such as this, then it's all good!

Gremlins



A straightforward text adventure at heart, this game also contained some very evocative and spooky graphics. Based upon the movie of the same name, of course, this game was very challenging. Whether it was challenging by purpose or design flaw, I can't actually remember. I'll always have a place in my heart for text adventures and this one ranks right up there. I remember there was one spot I could never get past. I can't remember exactly where I got stuck, but I think I eventually gave up on the game. Hmmm, strange that I remember it so fondly.

Monty On The Run



A colourful, and rather deviously hard platformer. Monty mole had a couple of games on the C64, this one being his second I think. Basically he was a mole who got in trouble alot, and thus had to run. So you get 'Monty On The Run'. The clearest memories I have of this game are the bright graphics and the catchy music.

Archon



Basically Chess, but with mythological characters and wizards and the like, this game was brilliant. Whenever you attempted to take a piece the screen would change to a one on one battle, an example of which you'll see in the picture above where a phoenix is battling a goblin. The phoenix was the best character, hands down. In fact, I was so attached to the phoenix that I distinctly remember one occasion where my sister made me cry when she defeated my phoenix. Screw Aerith dying, my mighty phoenix being taken down was by far the most traumatic experience I think I've had in gaming.

Eventually my brother got rid of his C64 and upgraded to an Amiga 500. While this was a very cool machine, it could never really replace the good ol' grey box C64. But all was not lost. A few years after this, my sister bought a C64 with some birthday money she had recieved. This was the best thing she'd ever decided to do, in my opinion. We still had the hundreds of games that my brother had for his C64, so we had a ready made back catalogue of favourites for us to play. Although something I didn't take into account was that, because it was my sister's computer, I might not be able to play it as much as I'd like to. Sadly, this turned out to be the case. She kept it in her room, and understandably enough she didn't want her whiny little brother in there all the time playing games. But she was magnanimous enough to let me play it occasionally, and this gave me my C64 fix. But was this enough? The answer: Yes. And by yes, I mean no.

A couple of years after this, I bought my first home games console in the form of the 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment System. Sadly, this spelled the end of my love affair with the Commodore 64. I still find myself thinking about it fondly, however, and was very excited when I read that Commodore have resurrected themselves ( kind of like my beloved Phoenix...*sob* ) and are now making high-end enthusiast gaming computers.


It is now my sole purpose in life to own one of these machines...

Nintendo Wii and various other stories

My girlfriend and I bought a Wii a couple of months ago, after planning to for ages. She was just as keen on the idea as I was. In fact, I think that she may have actually been the one to originally suggest it long before we even moved to Melbourne. This in itself shows just how brilliantly Nintendo has designed and marketed the Wii. My girlfriend has little to no interest in either the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but she was genuinely excited about getting a hold of a Wii since she first tried Wii Sports at Harvey Norman while working there back in New Zealand. Best. Girlfriend. Ever. Oh, and nice one, Nintendo! :)

Up until actually trying to buy a Wii console, I thought all the talk of Nintendo not being able to manufacture enough consoles to keep up with demand was just marketing spin. However, after about three weeks of casually looking through sold out stores, I realised the truth. Sure, I could have put one on back-order, but for some reason I have a strange reluctance to put my name down for anything. I always have. I'm actually sitting here trying to figure out just why I have this strange aversion to placing back-orders on things, and I honestly don't know why...hmmmm.

Anyway, so we eventually lucked out and wandered into an EB Games just after they'd received a shipment of about 40 Wii consoles. We snapped one up immediately. Rather than buying a game at the time of purchase we figured that the bundled Wii Sports, and the Wii Play that came with our extra Wii Remote, would satiate our initial hunger for hot Wii action.

After I quickly set the console up back home ( while my girlfriend set up a nice duvet that we also bought on our shopping expedition ) I went through the easy process of creating a Mii that looked just like...well, me. At least, I think it does. My girlfriend says it looks more like my friend Mark back in New Zealand.

Now that I had my cute, smiling little avatar, I loaded up Wii Sports and got my first taste of playing an actual Wii game. That's right. Up until that point, I had never actually played on a Wii console. This is pretty shocking, really, considering that it's been out for about a year and a half now. There were always plans back in New Zealand to have Wii parties at a friend's place but they never panned out. I could have hired one, but apart from a couple of occasions as a child when I hired out a Mega CD and 32X for my Mega Drive from the now defunct Allstar Video in Sydenham, I've never really been one for the renting out of consoles. This is mainly due to the fact that they're really fucking expensive to hire, and the video stores tend to make you put a big-ass bond down in case you accidentally spill Fanta all over the console. When all is said and done, however, I suppose I was content enough with my PS2 and my beloved gaming PC to really worry too much about giving the Wii a shot, even though I had read and heard all about how great it was.

But now...now I was finally trying it out. And I've gotta say, it was quite a revelation just how intuitive and user friendly it is. It's one thing to hear about motion sensing controls, and quite another to actually use them. The first game I tried was Bowling, and it picked up every little flick of my wrist, allowing me to put some wicked spin on the ball. Gina and I went through every game, and apart from Boxing ( which devolves into frantically thrusting the Wii Remote and attached Nunchuk back and forth ), they all have a lot of fun to offer. We then gave Wii Play a go. A lot of the mini games on offer really didn't interest me beyond the initial playthrough, but the Laser Hockey game has become a firm favourite in our apartment.


Gina and I have had some very heated Laser Hockey battles. In fact, this simple little game has provided me with some of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I've had for a long time. A lot of this has to do with Gina, I think. She gets so incredibly involved in the game, and her massive reactions to every goal consistently crack me up. She even headbutted me in the chest once after she very narrowly lost a game.

And this, I think, touches upon what I really love about the Wii: The fact that both myself and my girlfriend can play on the console, and both get just as much out of it as the other. This is a huge thing for me. Gaming is a very large part of my life, and I honestly think the gaming experiences I've had, since I first picked up a joystick to play on my brother's Commodore 64 at the age of five or six, have had a major contribution towards making me into the person I am today. To share this wonderful obsession with my partner Gina, the love of my life, is something truly amazing. Any previous attempts to combine gaming with relationships have ended in failure. I have a couple of embarassing gaming memories, as they relate to ex-girlfriends. I distinctly remember buying a PS2 back in the day, along with a copy of Metal Gear Solid 2, and when my then-girlfriend came over to hang out one day I excitedly loaded it up to try and impress her with the lengthy opening cinematic.


As it came to an end and Snake stood up on the deck of the rain soaked tanker, Harry Gregson-Williams' epic orchestral score swelling in the background, I glanced over to see a look of what can only be described as pity on her face as she regarded me. Needless to say, I never again tried to involve her in my gaming habits.

I also got into an argument with a different ex-girlfriend over my Nintendo Gamecube. I had purchased it, along with a copy of Resident Evil, while heading over to her place to hang out. I went through the motions of paying attention to her, but the entire time I was thinking about that cute little purple console. After about an hour, I told her I was heading home to set it up. She was less than impressed. I tried explaining the situation to her, but she simply didn't understand my excitement at having a new console. I was determined, however, and headed off home. But the withering look she gave me as I walked down her driveway stays with me to this day...

So, to have finally found this combination of the perfect girl and the console that we both love is truly something special. I suppose it says a lot about how awesome my girlfriend is, but it also says something about the Wii. Thank you, Nintendo, for finally allowing me to bring my two great loves together.