The book I’d just finished was very good, so I decided to try another one from the same author. Fortunately for me, Doctorow makes all his books (legally!) available as free eBook downloads on his website. This time I chose “For the Win.”

I highly recommend that anyone with an interest in economics, freedom, videogaming, MMOs and/or gold-farming give this a read. It’s set in what I think is the vaguely-near-future. Three of the world’s 20 largest economies are within MMOs run by Coca-Cola Games. Gold-farmers work across the globe in various games to turn their skills into real money so that they can feed themselves and their families. In some cases, these farmers are working in factories in China. Other players are employed by the game as “Mechanical Turks,” whose job it is to interact with the players as NPCs where pre-scripted content falls short. Yet more players are employed by independent organisations, whose motive may or may not be unknown, to work as bounty hunters, killing specific players within the game for real-world money.

Many of these people find that their working conditions are sub-standard, and that they are not being paid enough. What do most people do in that situation? Form a union. How do you form a union, made of workers from an industry that spans the globe, some in countries that do not recognise or allow unions, across language barriers and many times in cases where the employees are working within an organisation that technically falls outside the scope of the rules of the game (e.g. gold-farming)?

Using the Internet, and within the games of course.

From the “For the Win” website:

At any hour of the day or night, millions of people around the globe are engrossed in multiplayer online games, questing and battling to win virtual “gold,” jewels, and precious artifacts. Meanwhile, others seek to exploit this vast shadow economy, running electronic sweatshops in the world’s poorest countries, where countless “gold farmers,” bound to their work by abusive contracts and physical threats, harvest virtual treasure for their employers to sell to First World gamers who are willing to spend real money to skip straight to higher-level gameplay.

Mala is a brilliant 15-year-old from rural India whose leadership skills in virtual combat have earned her the title of “General Robotwalla.” In Shenzen, the heart of China’s industrial boom, Matthew is defying his former bosses to build his own successful gold-farming team. Leonard, who calls himself Wei-Dong, lives in Southern California, but spends his nights fighting virtual battles alongside his buddies in Asia, a world away. All of these young people, and more, will become entangled with the mysterious young woman called Big Sister Nor, who will use her experience, her knowledge of history, and her connections with real-world organizers to build them into a movement that can challenge the status quo.

The ruthless forces arrayed against them are willing to use any means to protect their power—including blackmail, extortion, infiltration, violence, and even murder. To survive, Big Sister’s people must out-think the system. This will lead them to devise a plan to crash the economy of every virtual world at once—a Ponzi scheme combined with a brilliant hack that ends up being the biggest, funnest game of all.

The book tells the story from a variety of perspectives—the gold farmers, the players, the hired guns, factory workers—even from the perspective of employees of Cola-Cola Games. It provides interesting insight into how the future of these games may work, sprinkled with the occasional chapter of economic discussion.

Some of the games also sounded quite cool. I’m rather disappointed that they don’t actually exist—particularly the “Mushroom Kingdom” MMO by Nintendo. A Mario-based MMO with Mario-side-characters and Bowser-side-characters as players? I’d play that! C’mon Nintendo!

On a loosely-related note to a Mario-based MMO, I was looking
for an image to put here and found this one, which apparently
is a screen-cap from a Mario area of SecondLife. Dunno much
about it, as I haven’t checked it out yet, but it sounds cool. Here’s the link.

Furthermore, because of Doctorow’s rather unique views on copyright (which you’ll find a couple of paragraphs on at the beginning of his books), the books are available for free as eBooks on the website’s download page, in traditional dead-tree format or as audiobooks.

Poor Ashley. If I were you, I’d have stopped giving two shits about my father a long time ago. He hasn’t been there for you at all. He came back and promised to stay with you, and you believed him, you poor sap. Then he gallivanted off somewhere else and left you all alone, again. I’d ditch that idiot and move to England.

Melodrama! Something akin to the story of Imagine: Your Dad Sucks, or something. Trust me; Another Code R—the sequel to Another Code, which was released in America-land as Trace Memory—is super-duper. You should buy this game without hesitation, assuming you can. Too bad Nintendo hasn’t published it in America or Australia, naturally because they want to alienate as many gamers as they possibly can (a side effect of Nintendo’s president making game consoles for old ladies). Ninty, if you want me to retract that, buy Cing and hire their members so they don’t have to claim bankruptcy no more.

Now that Ashley Robbins and her father, Richard Robbins, have discovered the person who killed Ashley’s mom, can they finally put it behind them and be a normal family again? No, of course they can’t. Richard Robbins thinks that there is more to his wife’s death, and buggers off to find the answer. Well, Ashley, looks like he really doesn’t care for you.

Despite having played only about half of the original Another Code, I was still able to follow the story of this game perfectly. The animosity between Ashley and Richard takes up most of the storyline, so if you’re a lover of science and not a big fan of parental drama, then most of this game will be lost on you.

You can interact with and examine objects whilst looking for clues.

Characters and story go hand-in-hand like a psychiatric patient and his unicorn friend, and if there is a main character worth talking about, it’s Ashley Mizuki Robbins. Ashley is the cutest girl I have ever seen, ever. If the character designer hadn’t sat down with the word “innocent” in mind, then I’d be thoroughly surprised. I’d never before met a character who stirs up such emotion in me; I just want to give her a cuddle and tell her everything’s going to be all right.

Over the course of the game, she matures greatly. She discovers memories locked away in the far reaches of her past. And we’re with her every step of the way. There are times when she acts like a completely spoiled brat and argues with her father, but eventually she learns to forgive him for his wrong-doings and to love him as her father.

There are a lot of new characters, ranging from aspiring musicians to scientists and their daughters. Not a single character lacks charisma or depth, and they retain the same “Cing style” that anyone who has played Another Code or Hotel Dusk will recognize. The animations could do with a little bit of work (they don’t seem as expressive as the drawn animations from the DS titles), but I still connected with the characters on an emotional level, which I find myself unable to do when reading novels.

I once did an experiment like this at school, but we used paper, not a solution.

Another Code R is an adventure game in the same vein as Hotel Dusk—you’ve got people to find, questions to ask, and things to do. Sometimes you need to help someone out with their errand before they’ll even consider helping you out with yours, a courtesy that isn’t always reciprocated by the other characters. Ashley is still a parrot, repeating everything that’s said but adding a question mark to the end of it, instead of forming it into a proper question like Kyle Hyde had no problems doing in Hotel Dusk. When a character says something in green, it inevitably becomes a question that Ashley will happily repeat.

What do you mean by ”happily repeat”?

I mean that you’ll take something that doesn’t appear to have much story importance and repeat it. This justifies the proposed theory that asking questions is your only purpose in life.

At times, she’ll come to the correct answer to a problem by asking four different questions, when one simple question would have sufficed. Also, she’ll ask what a normal everyday thing like a mortar and pestle is, and she’ll speak in idiom-riddled speech such as “I’ve already had the third degree.”

Also, the character she’s talking to tends to stop speaking right after saying something in green, giving her the opportunity to select her question, when it would have made more sense for her to just ask it automatically. She is a silly, silly girl.

You think I’m silly?

Yes.

The buttons on this box resemble the buttons on the Wii-Mote.

The developer, Cing, is well-known with adventure gamers, specifically those who own a Nintendo DS. Another Code and Hotel Dusk were well received, particularly for their clever integration of touch-screen features. The puzzles are an important part of those two games, but they’re not as integral as one would hope in Another Code R. There is a lot more dialog than in the last game (which left you alone with little human interaction).

Another Code R’s puzzles have one little problem, and that is the Wii-mote. The hardware oftentimes disagrees with the player. I’ve never known a single Wii game to feel truly innovative because the motions that the controller can perform are fairly limited. Another Code R is trying to be creative, and some of the puzzles definitely are, but the cursor jumps around the screen, and puzzles that require precise motion are very hard to clear without making a few mistakes.

Despite the incongruence between the motions you make and those that the Wii picks up, the puzzles still remain fairly playable and interesting, ranging from simple turning puzzles to more complex dragging puzzles. When you reach JC Valley Laboratories (in about the last quarter of the game), the puzzles come thick and fast, and all of them are very, very clever. One puzzle involves using the Wii Home Menu (the one that comes up when you press the Home button) to discover the answer. There is also a very, very interesting use for the Nunchuk. I’d hate to spoil it for you.

When you access the Home Menu, you get the answer.

This game is beautiful. It utilizes a pop-up storybook style when loading rooms and open areas, similar to Yoshi’s Story. The areas themselves strongly resemble a watercolor painting. In addition, there’s some cel-shading around the characters: enough so that it makes them stand out, but not so much that it becomes a “style-decision” like with No More Heroes or Killer 7. There is a strong impact from the look and feel of this game.

It also has a serious message, about forgiving others no matter what they’ve done. I can understand the moral of the story, but if I were Richard Robbins at the end of the game, I definitely would not have hesitated to fire that pistol; that’s for sure. It also has a fair share of other morals: Don’t give up on your dream. Recycle all the empty soda cans you can find. Don’t let Cing leave the gaming gig. Release Last Window in PAL and NTSC-U territories.

Cing. If you truly have bit the dust, then what a game to go out on. But there’s life in this monster yet.

What do you mean by “what a game to go out on”?

…sigh. You ruin it when you open your pretty mouth, Ashley.

I guess they have a point.

Unfortunately, this left us in a hole, as our people page was our number one source for new growth, in terms of readership. We needed a replacement, and we needed it stat. (I’m assuming that means fast.) So we turned to the aforementioned totally ignored fan page.

But how to get new people to “like” our Facebook page?

The GameCola Board of Directors had a meeting (this was actually just me talking to my collection of Phoenix Wright dollies), and we decided that the best way to promote our Facebook page would be to make a turn-of-the-century-style silent film all about how, if you don’t “like” our Facebook page, you’ll be sad forever.

What follows is that video.

Enjoy!

No, wait, I’m thinking of ”Captain Eric’s Super Thumb Feature Presentation.” That’s a totally different column. This column is “Fabricated News,” the one where I talk about random things for no reason. In an unprecedented turn of events, however, I am actually going to talk about videogame news this week. That’s right! No more pseudo-news about Justin Bieber, just honest-to-goodness videogame news.

The first news story today reports that Justin Bieber will be starring in the upcoming Back to the Future remake, and, wait, I promised I would NOT talk about Justin Bieber! Darn. That promise didn’t last long. Anyway, the rumor was quickly proven false. Justin Bieber will star as Marty McFly in the upcoming Back to the Future videogame, whereas the upcoming movie, Back to the Future Part IV, will star Shia LaBeouf as Marty’s previously-unknown son. Rumor has it that the movie takes place seven years after the third one, when Marty has lost his lawyer’s badge and has become a drunken piano bum.

The second news story comes straight from staff writer David Donovan, who tells me that Metroid: Other M is being released this week, over two months after June 27th, the launch date we reported in our March preview. Why was the game delayed? Presumably, it’s because the game’s developers decided to remove the game’s motion controls at the last minute, after hearing the GameCola Podcast crew talk about how they dislike motion controls. Metroid: Other M will be played with the Wii-mote turned on its side, just like in Mega Man 10.

The third news story is that I have been fired for including too many links in my articles.

And finally, Amazon.com’s mailing robot tells me that they have to change my order for the upcoming Zelda Wii game, because The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword has been delayed! Surprise! Surprise! Honestly, I don’t know why Amazon thought the game was coming out so soon.

The original release date was listed as the last day of next year.

Clearly, the tentative release date of “eighteen months from now” that Amazon originally posted was far too optimistic. Now, the Amazon page for Zelda Wii has no release date listed. Oh well. I guess we’ll have to wait until 2012 before an official release date is confirmed.

Some like it hot; others like it hottest. I like it when dancing games improve instead of being shoveled out to meet demands. I’m always skeptical when waiting for the latest DDR game, but also ready to lap it up like the sad little fanboy I am. I love Dance Dance Revolution and I love the music in the series. FACT.

DDR: Hottest Party 3 is the third Dance Dance Revolution game I’ve reviewed here, so I’m not going into gameplay detail. It’s been around for ten years, so if you don’t know the basics, you’re bloody slow.

Time and time again, home releases of DDR have offered sub-par soundtracks and song lists, ignoring the classic Konami songs in favor of licensed songs by well-known artists. Hottest Party 3 is no exception. You probably like dancing to songs you recognize from the Top 100 Billboard Charts, whereas I prefer dancing to what fans refer to as “Konami Originals.” (Once upon a time I preferred licensed songs over the Konami Originals; I guess I just grew up and wanted harder step-charts.) As well, covers have plagued DDR since the early days, and I feel they’ve really been a big problem since Pegasus totally slaughtered Linkin Park’s “Faint” for Supernova 2. While licensed songs may be here to stay, you’ll be happy to know that covers have hitchhiked with an axe murderer and will never be heard from again (hopefully).

She’s no Emi, but newcomer Jun is very cute.

Catching up with the PlayStation and Xbox versions (which have been doing this for years now), Hottest Party 3 shows music videos for the majority of its licensed song selection, altered to fit the 1.5 to 2 minute song cuts that the series is known for. Even “Pork and Beans” by Weezer makes an appearance with its associated Internet memes video.

The other licensed songs worth note are:

• “Just Dance” (Lady Gaga)
  • The song that invented the word “Doot-n.” Not to be confused with programmer favorite, Lady Java.
• “Boogie Wonderland” (Earth, Wind & Fire)
  • If you don’t know this one, your parents probably do, and did a shit job raising you.
• “Never Gonna Give You Up” (Rick Astley)
  • “Never Gonna Give You Up” has become an Internet anthem. I’m kinda sick of Rick Ashtray being the cigarette butt of everyone’s jokes.
• “Viva La Vida” (Coldplay)
  • I like Coldplay. Honestly.

Seeing as “Pork and Beans” and “Never Gonna Give You Up” are in this game, I think it is safe to assume that someone involved in the process of picking the songs is a fan of Internet memes. It’s too big a thing to be a coincidence, really.

This always makes me chuckle and miss a step, and it happens twice in the video.

Moving on from the songs, let’s talk accessibility. I was interested in jumping straight into the game, because when you’ve got a dance mat controller and a Nintendo Wii, you just want to dance. Also, you want the game to be easy to navigate. This one is, unlike the three prior.

The Free-Play mode allows you to jump straight into gameplay on any difficulty you wish, and now by default, the gimmicks are off. Also, the Wii-mote shakes have finally been removed from the main game. They didn’t work anyway and spoiled my perfect combos. They’re still available in Hypermove mode, which is not all that good…

My favorite songs, the Konami Originals, are fewer in this game than I’d hoped. This time, a lot of them are unlocked by earning DDR Points; the songs become available as you reach certain milestones. This means beating songs over and over again. The unlocks come perhaps a bit too slowly but they’re constant nonetheless. I would have liked something akin to the PS2 version of Supernova, where you could buy what you wanted to with the DDR Points, but that system was flawed too.

So far, this game sounds an awful lot like the first two installments of Hottest Party, so I’m going to clear things up now. The interface has vastly improved since Hottest Party 2, which recycled the first game’s menus, engine, and everything. The menus in Hottest Party 3 are clearer and simpler to navigate. When selecting songs, you now see the album art, something likely inspired by Rock Band 2. It is a lot easier to just jump in and play. Konami hasn’t simply dropped songs into the old engine; they’ve actually built a new one—one that works so much better.

Jun is very, very cute.

Hottest Party got off on its “max combo challenge” idea that wasn’t exactly cool to begin with, but with Hottest Party 3, this feature has finally been altered and rejigged to make you feel much more like you’ve achieved something. As you establish and then maintain a perfect combo, your combo count turns green and then blue. When you’re playing a song that doesn’t have a music video, the onscreen dancers will make character-specific motions based on your combo, resulting in a close-up and a big wide smile if you hit a perfect “Full Combo Finish!!”

Also, Dance Battles take center stage this time. Every few songs you play in Free Play, a boss character will appear and challenge you on a rock hard song, like with the “Max Combo Challenges” in Hottest Party 1 and 2. You’ll get them on whatever difficulty you’re playing, so if you’re a Basic and Beginner person, expect to unlock boss songs quicker. Merely passing a “boss song” isn’t enough, as you have to beat the computer player in order to unlock the song. The songs in Dance Battle are very difficult, and if you feel you’ve bumbled-through one, then you’ve lost, guaranteed.

There is also a Training Mode, but you can only play songs you’ve unlocked, so you cannot practice the offending “Pluto the First” before being thrust headfirst into it.

Hottest Party 3 also has your usual adventure mode that unlocks songs, and a “DDR School” for “all you first-time players,” apparently. I don’t see the need, because the Lesson by DJ songs are in this game, and they teach you the DDR basics just fine. They explain the ordering of steps and the association to left and right feet, as well as the gimmicks in the game, something even I picked up a few hints from.

It looks much better than Hottest Party and the sequel, even though the style is the same. Maybe that’s because the whole game has undergone a notable graphical overhaul. This is one of the many things KidzWorld was too blind to notice when they wrote their review like it’s the gospel truth.

There’s also all the other stuff you’d expect thrown in—the usual Work-Out mode and support for Classic Controller, if you’re too lazy to dance with your feet. Wait, didn’t I review a game for people like you? There’s also a Relaxed mode for players who just want to groove without having to score anything—which I think removes the need for owning the game. If you buy Hottest Party 3 for the Relaxed mode, you’ve obviously never heard of “dancing to the radio.”

If you’re a Wii owner, and you’re looking for the “hottest” Hottest Party, it’s Hottest Party 3. I heard a rumor that you cannot get it solus in America, but I’m sure Konami wouldn’t pull a move like that without having considerably thought it through; I got it solus in the UK just fine. It’s missing a Mission mode, but I’m glad they included a Training mode after I moaned about the one in iPhone DDR being useless. A hard week of playing this game and I still haven’t discovered everything. I see myself playing this for another month, easily. If you’re just wheeling it out for parties, then I’m sure the appeal won’t wear off. Especially if you love Rick Astley.

…and I could have just said, “Like the first two, but actually good.”

Monday, August 30
Cosmos X2 (DS)
Ghost Pirates of Vooju Island (PC)
TNT Racers (X360, PS3, Wii)

Tuesday, August 31
Ace Combat: Joint Assault (PC)
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Ultimate Edition (X360, PS3)
BioShock 2: Minerva’s Den (XBLA)
Camp Rock: The Final Jam (DS)
Castle Crashers (PSN)
Cthulhu Saves the World (XBLA)
Dead Rising 2: Case Zero (XBLA)
Guardians of Graxia (PC)
Little Bears (DS)
Metroid: Other M (Wii)
Sam & Max: The Devil’s Playhouse 5: The City That Dares Not Sleep (PS3, Mac, PC)
Valkyria Chronicles II (PSP)

Wednesday, September 1
Ferrari: The Race Experience (Wii)
Mumbo Jumbo 6 Pack 2nd Edition (PC)
Prison Tycoon: Alcatraz (PC)

In an early episode of

Videogames have long been considered a form of escapism, a way for us nerds to (pretend to) leave our couch, put on a pair of pants, and leave our tedious lives behind so we can instead wander around a desert for hours and hours and hours in search of a goddamn save point, because we seriously just want to go to bed, but we can’t, because WHERE’S THE SAVE POINT?! It’s been HOURS since we last saved and we don’t want to leave our system on all night, because who KNOWS what could happen then, so we keep playing and playing and FINALLY! Look! There’s a save point! Only, before we can access it, we’re forced into a boss battle and DIE because the stupid boss is IMPOSSIBLE to beat, and then we have to go to our last save point, which was so long ago that we don’t even remember it!

AND THAT’S WHY VIDEOGAMES ARE STUPID. THE END.

…

*ahem* Sorry about that. I’ve been playing some Infinite Undiscovery lately.

Anyway. Videogames, and escapism. Where was I going with this? Videogames let us do things we’d never be able to do in real life, such as play football with our favorite team in the NFL (that’s the football one, right?), burn innocent red-shelled turtles to death with fireballs, and take poops on the people we don’t like (thank you, Deathspank), and it’s because of this that a new genre has recently emerged within the Xbox Live Indie Games service. One that allows nerds to finally do the one thing they’ve always fantasized of doing in real life. No, I’m not talking about killing people who type poorly; I’m talking about: interacting with girls.

Yes, this is a thing. A whole bunch of new games have come out recently whose sole purpose is to let depressingly lonely guys pretend that they’re having conversations with actual girls. There’s enough of them that I feel justified in coining a new term: “girl-sim.” Which is a horribly disturbing term.

As a gamer who’s been on multiple dates with girls, I’m both unnerved and insulted by this trend, but people must be buying them, because we keep getting games like:

8-bit Girlfriend

I think this game’s name gives a false impression. To me, it sounds like this is an 8-bit-styled life-sim wherein you have to keep your girlfriend happy by taking her out to dinner, feeding her chocolates, and bringing her flowers when you’ve said something stupid to her. (Such stereotypes are what the developers of girl-sims tend to rely on, because the only experience they have with females is from watching reruns of Home Improvement.) But this game isn’t about maintaining your eight-bit girlfriend; rather, it’s about trying to woo said pixen in the first place.

In 8-bit Girlfriend, you play as a super studly…bear thing (he was called “Sir Maximus Hardwood” in my game, and boy, was he ever!) who has to navigate a series of dialogue menus in order to survive his interaction with a girl. I’m serious—each menu has one “correct” choice that allows you to continue talking to the girl, and 1-2 “incorrect” choices that almost invariably lead to your death. I like to think that this is how nerds imagine interacting with real-life girls generally works.

Now, to be fair, I really shouldn’t rag on 8-bit Girlfriend for being a girl-sim, because it’s actually more of a girl-sim parody than anything else—and a functional, comical one at that. But the fact that we’ve gotten to the point where not only is girl-sim a thing, but girl-sim parody is a thing, makes me wonder if we all need to spend a little more time outside.

And speaking of going outside…

Ranger

I can’t believe this game was made by Silver Dollar Games. Silver Dollar Games. They’re like THE girl-sim developer; their entire MO is that they make games incorporating actual footage of human females talking about how much they want to have sex with you. This game, Ranger, in contrast, isn’t anything like that. There’s nary a full-motion boob in sight. Instead, it’s a game about shooting goblins and dinosaurs in the neck with magical arrows.

…Which doesn’t sound that exciting, but it’s a worthwhile distraction from our lonely existence of dreaming of what it’d be like to one day feel the touch of a woman. In Ranger, you stand almost perfectly still (which is absolutely what I’d be doing if rampaging goblins and dinosaurs were coming my way), shifting only your upper body in order to fling arrows toward the coming horde. Meanwhile, various spheres fall from the sky, which you can also hit with your arrows in order to enact special magical effects, such as zapping your enemies with lightning, turning your arrows into gigantic ninja stars, or flinging giant electric ninja stars of DOOM at your enemies! K-YAH! TAKE THAT, T-REX! Bet you’re feeling more like a dinoSORE, now!

Also, sometimes, if you push the left bumper on your controller, a dragon shows up and eats everything on the screen. It’s more than a little bad-ass.

And speaking of ass…

Bloody Death

Bloody Death is…wait…did I even play this game? Which one was Bloody Death? Oh, now I remember—it’s the one with so little interactivity that it makes Final Fantasy XIII look like a videogame. In Bloody Death, you watch a D-level horror movie about naked co-eds trying not to get stabbed to death by a psychopathic serial killer. Every now and again, while you’re watching the video, the game asks you to input a button combination. If you hit A instead of X, or Y instead of B, your naked co-ed is DOOMED to an eternity of making titles for Silver Dollar Games. I mean dead.

…At least, that’s what I assume happens. This game’s demo is pretty bloody empty. I don’t think I was able to play it for more than a full minute before the trial ended and the game asked me to fork over some pretend Microsoft money. In fact, I’m pretty sure there was a grand total of one interaction in this entire demo. (Which I won—K-YAH!)

It looks like it might be fun if you miss the era of Sega CD FMV games—and who doesn’t—but I can’t be sure, because the demo was about as long as Wart’s career as a top Mario villain.

And speaking of dream worlds…

Sleepwalker

Does anyone else remember a cartoon—I’m thinking it’s from Looney Tunes, or one of those older cartoons that Nickelodeon used to run when I was little—in which a sleepwalking man comically makes his way through a world that’s trying very hard not to kill him? That happened, right? I didn’t make that up, did I?

Assuming I didn’t, that’s pretty much exactly the premise of Sleepwalker here: it’s a puzzely side-scrollerly game with a sleepwalking man whom you have to guide back to his bed.

You have one button you can push—you can make the man turn around and start sleepwalking in the other direction. You have to use your one button to guide him away from deathtraps, utilizing trampolines, ramps, and teeter-totters to move him away from certain doom and into the warm covers of his bed, which is located—where else?—in the middle of a construction zone.

Neat idea and neat execution, with hints of both Lemmings and The Incredible Machine. I particularly enjoyed the part where it wasn’t about me trying to talk to a girl.

And speaking of my youth…

Adventures of Sid

Adventures of Sid is about a hipster tomato armed with a machine gun who must collect coins and jump on platforms and destroy snails and YES! I don’t really care what this game’s actually about. I’m a tomato, and I get to jump around and shoot stuff! I’m in. The only thing that could possibly make this premise better is if Sid had a double-jump, and YIPPIE, HE DOES!

The game kind of reminds me of early 90s freeware Windows 3.1 platformers–the kind that come installed free on your computer, or the kind you’d find in a CD-ROM collection in the bargain bin of Comp USA. It’s just like that, only it’s on your Xbox 360, and you can’t copy your friend’s floppy to get it.

(Side-note: “Floppy disks”? We might as well have called them “penis disks.” Couldn’t we have come up with something a little less innuendo-sounding than “floppy”?)

Also, when you die? UH-OH! “Tomato Juice!” That’s what it says. I LOVE IT! This game is like coming back to your parents’ house for a home-cooked meatloaf. I mean, you get to blast snails with your flame-thrower! K-YAH! TAKE THAT SNAILS! And he has grenades, too?! Holy shit! I’m not a tomato, I’m TO-RAMB-O! Splat City!

…Maybe I’m just really easy to please.

See, there’s a videogame company in San Francisco named Zynga. After checking my sources (aka Wikipedia), I have determined that they made FarmVille and a number of other successful Facebook games that made the company $270 million due to their extreme popularity and (surprise!) illegal advertising methods. Their newest game is Mafia Wars: Las Vegas, which I’m guessing is based off the ending to Deja Vu II: Lost in Las Vegas.

The advertising plan they came up with to promote this game involved hiring Snoop Dogg to blow up an armored truck in Nevada. No, that is not fabricated news; they actually hired Snoop Dogg to blow up an armored truck with dynamite. Needless to say, Zynga is not known for its intelligent marketing decisions. This is apparent if you consider their advertising plan for San Francisco, which involved distributing flyers for the game in the shape of $25,000 bills. And by “distributing,” I mean “gluing to the ground.”

I imagine the advertising meeting for the idea went like this:

Marketer 1: People like money, right? Let’s make flyers that are shaped like money!
Marketer 2: But won’t the flyers blow away really easily?
Marketer 1: Not if we glue them to the ground!
Marketer 2: Brilliant! I can’t see any way that plan could possibly backfire!

No one was able to actually pick up any of the fliers in question, because, duh, they were glued to the ground. In fact, the city of San Francisco had to send a steam cleaner in to get the flyers off the ground and into the trash where they belong. The San Francisco City Attorney office is planning on taking legal action against Zynga and has already demanded full documentation from their marketing department. No charges have been filed yet, but I imagine they’ll be sued for defacing public property, counterfeiting, and littering.

Zynga responded with a prompt apology, offering to pay for all the city’s damages, and ha ha ha, I am joking. They are blaming a company called Davis Elen Advertising for the whole affair, because clearly, Zynga has nothing to do with advertising their own games. No one is sure what Zynga will do next during this legal drama, but given their track record, it will probably involve Snoop Dogg and a truck full of dynamite.

Over 8 million people purchased Halo 3. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas sold a whopping 12 million. And Nintendo can’t defecate out Pokémon and “Wii Insert Random Thing To Do Here” games fast enough to completely satisfy the masses. But with all these amazing successes, there have been numerous games and even complete series that have fallen to the wayside. Remember: for every Super Mario Bros., there’s a Shutokou Battle 2: Drift King Keichii Tsuchiya & Masaaki Bandoh. As a proud gamer, I feel that it is my privilege—nay, my duty—to take some time and offer a brief glimpse at many of the games that disappeared into bargain bins and trash bins alike due to overshadowing from more prominent titles, as well as titles that will forever remain sequestered within one region of the world. You’d better be prepared to be educated a little, because there is much that you haven’t seen.

AUGUST 2010: Tetsuwan Atom (Famicom)

UGH… THIS AGAIN…

That’s right! It’s time for another edition of “Gamera Obscura,” where we uncover strange and somewhat obscure games. And this month, I have something fun to show you.

MAKE IT QUICK. I DON’T HAVE AIR CONDITIONING RIGHT NOW.

Wow, you must feel like you’re living in the Stone Age. Anyway, instead of raving on with derogatory banter that is unconstructive…

WHICH IS PRETTY MUCH THE ONLY REASON WHY I EVEN BOTHER TO SHOW UP…

…I’ll just give you the heads up. You may have looked at the title of this article and, if you are relatively well-informed, scoffed at me and said, “Why are you covering Tetsuwan Atom, better known as Astro Boy? We know who Astro Boy is. He just had several games on the Game Boy Advance, the DS, the PlayStation 2, the Wii…” Yes, yes, you would be correct. But he didn’t just swing into popularity this past decade, no. Astro Boy…nay, Tetsuwan Atom (or “Mighty Atom”) has been around since 1952, though only in comic book form—or manga, if the fanboys prefer.

PFFF. FANBOYS.

Yes, fanboys. Boys who are fans of things. Well, the Tetsuwan Atom franchise certainly predates the great home videogame craze by over 20 years, so there wouldn’t have been a tie-in title then. Luckily, a worldwide revival of interest in the series emerged in the 1980s, around the same time as the popularity of the NES! How convenient, says I. So naturally, a developer would not have to think twice about cashing in. Enter Konami, almighty lover of vampire whips, dancing like an idiot in arcades, and games with penguins, to finish the job. In 1988, out came Tetsuwan Atom for the Famicom. Yup, Japan only.

SO YOU ONLY CONSIDER IT OBSCURE BECAUSE IT STAYED IN JAPAN, UNLIKE MANY OF THE OTHER ASTRO BOY GAMES.

Yeah, pretty much. I guess I could say that the Astro Boy character isn’t quite universally known, making the game obscure to, say, 2-year-olds and the elderly.

GRADE-A BULLPLOP, MY ASSOCIATE. NOW TELL US ABOUT THIS GAME. NO MORE HISTORY!

All right, all right. Well, basically, Professor Ochanomizu’s laboratory has been burglarized and some crazy folks have stolen his funding. Damn, now we’ll never see his next work of mechanical art, Tetsuwan Atom 2: Electric Boogaloo. So Astro Boy/Tetsuwan Atom (ah, hell, I’m just going to call him Astro Boy from now on) has to rescue that loot. Now then…if you don’t have any prior knowledge about the series, much of the game will not make much sense. For example, I had a hunch that Astro Boy can fly, but I had no idea that he needs to run left or right and jump three times to get up there. Without knowing that’s how he does it in his manga and anime series, I’d consider that to be lousy controls. Actually, it IS anyway, even for a robot. As well, the concept of health being expressed in terms of uranium points, rather than just health in its own sense, is unusual.

Other than that, it’s a standard platformer with no major strengths or areas for improvement—just jump and punch your way through enemies, collect dropped cash, and buy upgrades with it as you progress through 10 levels of merriment and uninteresting graphics.

OK, WELL, LET’S GET DOWN TO THE CORE OF THE MATTER: SHOULD I TRACK THIS ONE DOWN?

Do you ever track games down that I recommend?

NO.

Then I guess it doesn’t really matter, does it? Well, for Astro Boy enthusiasts, I’d say go for it, but beware: this game has a raunchy difficulty level. As in pretty much all games, Astro Boy is a weak little girl and falls apart after one hit. Luckily, the Professor can help to reheal you, but without continues and some control over the difficulty, you’d better be a little hardcore to figure this one out. I didn’t get past Stage 3 because the game was being a pain.

Well, I’m outta here. Catch you next month when I shall bring you news of fine obscure goods.

Mario hurries to her castle, but when he shows up, he sees his arch-nemesis, Bowser. Bowser has somehow grown so humongous that he is larger than the castle himself. Bowser then kidnaps the princess and flies off into outer space. It’s up to Mario to stop Bowser, save his girlfriend, protect the universe, and GET THAT CAKE!

That’s the premise of Super Mario Galaxy 2, the improved sequel to Super Mario Galaxy. If you’ve played Super Mario Galaxy, you’re probably scratching your head right now, trying to think of any way it could be improved. Here are a few improvements that stand out to me:

1. The game comes with a built-in GameFAQs.com. That is, if you ever lose a level ten or so times, Rosalina from the first game appears, and you have the option of letting her take control of Mario and finishing the level for you. You still get a star, but it’s bronze-colored to indicate that you didn’t get it on your own.

2. Yoshi is in this game. I was worried this would be a gimmick, like in Super Mario Sunshine, where Yoshi was pretty much the same thing as FLUDD. And you know, I didn’t enjoy FLUDD at all. Well, fear not! Yoshi is not a gimmick in this game. He is actually fun to control.

3. The game comes with 40% more Luigi.

I’m sincerely hoping that Nintendo makes a Super Mario Galaxy 3 which improves upon the first two games. Remember how Super Mario Bros. 3 built upon the two games that came before it and ended up being the best-selling game of all time? If Super Mario Galaxy 3 could duplicate that feat, it would make gamers’ dreams come true.

You can see the pain on Bowser's face as he contemplates the cake that could have been.

But for all the talk of improvements, Super Mario Galaxy 2 is basically a continuation of Super Mario Galaxy. It has the same visuals, controls, audio and overall setup, which is not too surprising, given that SMG2 was originally planned to be a remake of the first game. All of the items in the first game appear once or twice, and there are several new items (such as the surprisingly-useful Cloud Mario suit) that appear three or four times. Needless to say, the items and the levels are all more fun than a barrel of monkeys, and many of them could easily be developed further into some great DLC, which is never going to happen because Nintendo doesn’t know the Internet exists.

The main criticism I’ve heard is that this game is too hard. I’m not sure I agree. True, some of the special challenges are tough, but that’s supposed to be the case. That’s why they’re called special challenges, not regular level, totally easy, come on in and have a milkshake! challenges. Difficulty aside, I found that my frustration levels rarely went past “I’m going to solve this challenge if it kills me!” to “This is too hard; I’m going to give up.” Like I said earlier, the game comes with a built-in guide that will automatically get the star for you if you’re having too much trouble, so don’t worry about SMG2 having an insurmountable difficulty level.

IGN hired me to make a video walkthrough that shows how to get all 120 stars, which was a really fun summer project. However, I have just found out that the game isn’t over yet. Getting all 120 stars and beating Bowser unlocks the 120 bonus stars. Now I have to replay all the levels, looking for the stars that are hidden in non-obvious places, such as in the corner of the level, where you have to change the camera angle in order to see it. So all in all, this game has about 240 stars, which makes it absolutely jam-packed with gaming fun.

And at the very end of the game…

Mario finally gets his cake.