The Closeout Warrior

I like to think that I’m no longer lured into playing a game simply because it has good graphics, or comparatively good graphics, rather. In just about every magazine I could get my hands on, Equinox looked pretty, and just about every other word in the previews and reviews were about how great the game was, how similar it was to Solstice for the NES (which I’ve still never played), and how awesome of a game that was. So when I found it in my local game rental store, I had to give it a try.

It turns out that the hero of the first game has been kidnapped by an evil wizard of some sort, and you, as his son, have to solve a series of puzzles in various wells to save him. I tend to begin wondering if all wizards are this obtuse, but we can have discuss that another time.

Inside each well is a series of rooms, filled with monsters, blocks, and sharp things. Your goal is to, I think, go through the rooms and find some tokens. Find all the tokens and you fight the boss character for that particular dungeon-well. Clear all the dungeon-wells and you win! I guess.

I can only guess at that because I didn’t make much progress in this game. It’s presented in this isometric pseudo-3d perspective, which looks pretty good, given the hardware. The problem I ran into was that I have a really hard time figuring out where things are in relation to each other in the fake 3d space. I frequently couldn’t tell if the Spiky Ball of Doom was floating above my head and one space away or if it was just two spaces away. This led to a lot of missed jumps, and a lot of ouchies for my little shirtless guy.

I played this game for a couple of hours the weekend I rented it, but just kept failing at jumps that I thought I should be making thanks to the wonky perspective. Frustration usually doesn’t make a particularly fun game, so I took it back to the rental store. And while I’d love to say that from that moment on I decided to never again be swayed by good graphics, my personal history would argue otherwise.

Sometimes I’ll be sitting around and I’ll happen to think of a game that I played some off time on rental or some such. I won’t really be able to remember the name of it, just a little about it, like what the screen looked like, or what you did in the game. For example, it came to me that I had played a game in which you ran around killing things and in doing so you rescued the souls. Then the souls went back to the towns and rebuilt it somehow. There was also this mechanic where you enter the dreams of some of the more reticent townsfolk and figure out their deepest, darkest secrets.

It turns out that the game I was thinking of was Soul Blazer.

It turns out that in this game you take on the part of an angel, sent to the planet in human form to rid the world of some kind of evil. This evil force has imprisoned the souls of the creatures of the planet into bodies of monsters, which you have kill. Kill the monsters and people spontaneously reappear in towns. Those people (or plants or mermaids or whatever) will open the ways to more areas to explore, so you go there to free more souls. And on it goes.

There’s nothing too tough about this game, it’s relatively straightforward. But it’s oddly compelling. It’s kind of interesting to see the cities slowly reform themselves as you repopulate them. And the dialog was reasonably well-written, and though it wouldn’t win any awards it was still entertaining.

The only problem I had with this game is that after one rental, starting the game one evening and having to have it back by the next evening, I managed to get all the way to the final encounter. I had absolutely no trouble getting to the last guy, but then, somehow, the game ramped up in difficulty so sharply that I couldn’t even come close to beating him. I didn’t think that wasting another few dollars just to fight a last boss was a wise use of my dollars… and I also didn’t have the dollars to use. So I took the game back, and never actually managed to finish it.

Of course, along with the person who pooled money to rent the game, we gave the main character the same name as Navin Johnson’s dog (no, not “Lifesaver”). So any time a ‘responsible adult’ walked into the room, we had to make sure that there wasn’t any dialog on the screen. And since that television was in the living room, that was a bit of a chore.

Or, like I like to think of it, a ‘mini game’.

Sometime late in the Super Nintendo’s life I got a video talking about some new Donkey Kong game. This was pretty significant to me since I hadn’t seen a Donkey Kong game in quite some time, (except that one). But this one was completely different from any Donkey Kong game that I had ever played.

This time, see, Donkey Kong is the protagonist. It turns out that his horde of bananas has been stolen by a group of alligator-like creatures (kremlings) and their buddies for reasons that are unknown to me. It’s worth noting that the Donkey Kong in this game isn’t the same Donkey Kong that was in the original games. That Donkey Kong is in this game as Cranky Kong, and is the ancestor of the Donkey Kong in this game.

Just try to not think about it too much.

Another thing to note is that this game was made with a (then) new technique of making graphics in full 3D and then taking what amounts to 2D pictures of them doing their various animations. This has a net benefit of making the game look fully 3D without actually needing to have a bleeding-edge system to pull it off. Pretty slick.

This game managed to greatly expand the Donkey Kong universe with some memorable characters and give the series a bit of a ‘reboot’ if you will. One that was, thankfully, reasonably well done and actually stuck.

A bit after the game was released, there were two video game competitions held at Blockbuster with Nintendo’s help. The games that they featured were Star Fox and Donkey Kong Country. After those contests were over, Nintendo collected some of the cartridges and made them available to subscribers via their Nintendo Power catalog. I wasn’t ever able to get my hands on the Star Fox cartridge, but I was able to snag one of the super-rare copies of Donkey Kong Country. It’s pretty much the same as the other game with the a few exceptions. It’s timed, and your goal is to rack up a huge point total in the allotted time. It’s a lot more challenging than the original game since you’re just making a mad dash through the levels to get a high score.

But still, even though I don’t own a copy of the whole game, I wouldn’t trade the competition cartridge for very many things.

Sorry about that.

I was kind of a big fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation the TV series while growing up. This was probably because I had spent years watching the original series after school at the behest of my mom. It was ‘her’ sci-fi series of choice from when she was growing up. So when the new series came about it was like I got a whole new series just for me.

Eventually, at its peak of popularity, video games were made. And I felt this overwhelming urge to play them. So a friend and I rented the TNG offering for the Super NES and gave it a whirl.

One of the things that we noticed was that the game had built into it a large database of Star Trek universe minutiae in the form of data files of some sort on the computer. We spent literally hours poring over the info, learning all about phasers and shield harmonics and Class Y planets and lots of other completely useless information.

Then we took it back to the game rental store.

It would appear that we never actually got around to playing the ‘game’ part of the game. I assume that it had something to do with sailing around interstellar space, fighting Romulans, forming away teams, and occasionally visiting a star base… but I don’t actually know.

I don’t consider my rental fee wasted, though. I think I got at least that few dollars’ worth of enjoyment out of the game.

There have been lots of games based on The Simpsons, and most of them are borderline sadistic in their difficulty. Krusty’s isn’t much different. It’s a whole lot like Lemmings… except without all the variety.

See, Krusty’s Fun House has been overrun by mice, and you have to take control of Krusty to clear out the vermin. The mice just kind of randomly mill around, turning around only when they hit something, and Krusty has to use various implements to lead them on to their eventual demise. Kind of like a Pied Piper without the flute or the tight pants. Though the mice don’t scatter or even acknowledge your presence, so why you can’t direct Krusty to just pick up the mice is beyond me.

For some reason I really wanted to play this game when it was new. I guess I just fell victim to the endless ads and the spread in Nintendo Power. When I finally got my hands on it I realized that the game isn’t all that fun, and even a little tedious. Most of the levels can only be solved one way, and if you aren’t quick about it the mice will go completely out of position rendering the level unsolvable.

I’m really happy that I only wasted a rental on it instead of the full purchase price.

I’ve heard it said that the folks who worked on KGJPMLB, being based in England and all, had virtually no knowledge of baseball. Which, given the end product, is pretty interesting.

As you might expect, this game is based on major league baseball, which, here in the States, is the lifeblood of about 3/4 of the population. It simulates everything that you might expect in a baseball game: hits, pitches, fielding… bases. It lets you take your team on a complete 162 game season and all that.

The only officially licensed character in this game is Ken Griffey. The rest of the players in the MLB are in the game, but they have odd names. But! You have the ability to change their names, so if you have enough time and the ambition, you can have the complete roster from the year this game was created. Sneaky.

I didn’t really play this game too much, mostly because I was really bad at it. After a game you get to see a sports page of a newspaper detailing the results. Mine showed that I was ‘whipped’ by my opponent. Fairly disappointing.

It is worth noting that this game was compatible with the Xband modem. I only managed to play one game before I got exceptionally bored with the whole thing. A game could take upwards of 45 minutes or so, which isn’t exactly the quick action that I liked to see on the network.

I also hated getting by head handed to me in a protracted game. I can take losing in small doses. Losing a sub 5-minute match somehow hurts less than being down twenty runs in the fourth inning (with 5 more to go!).

I don’t really know why, but I like games that make you navigate a marble through a maze. Cameltry is a little different from those other games, though.

Trying to explain Cameltry is a little tough, but the gist is that you have a marble in a maze and you have to guide the marble to the end. But you don’t control the marble directly, you control the maze. In fact, the only control you have is to rotate the maze clockwise and counterclockwise. Gravity always pulls the marble toward the bottom of the screen, but is a little more lethargic than the gravity that I’m used to. At any rate, it’s easier to show how this game is played rather than tell.

I only played this game one time, on a rental, and never could find it again afterward. The video rental store I got it from went out of business and the game went out of print right about the same time. I don’t know what any of that means, except that I’ve not played this game in several years, and that gives me a sad face.

Star Fox was the first 3-d cockpit-shooting game that I ever played. What that means is that you fly around in a plane (or a space ship in this case), and it’s all done in 3-d. Pretty impressive since this game came out on the Super NES, a system that had no 3-d capabilities to speak of. I won’t bother going into the technicals on how it was pulled off, but just know that at the time, this was simply amazing.

The story is pretty typical stuff. A hotshot team of a fox, a rabbit, a frog, and a falcon under orders from a dog have to save the solar system from the evil scientist monkey-guy. You do this by flying in alternating stages: planets and the space between the planets, fighting ludicrous amounts of ships, enemy creatures, and the occasional building.

You technically have three wingmen… er… wing-animals… wingamals? Anyway, your flight mates are supposed to help you out, but all they do is hang out behind you, occasionally getting chased by an enemy of some sort and yelling at you to save them, like you don’t have enough to contend with. But that’s a minor nuisance. The rest of the game is pretty good, heck, even the little extras sprinkled throughout the game are good. I played with the little model viewer on the ‘continue’ screen for hours.

I’m easily amused by little shiny things. Shininess optional.