This month, I’m discussing Sonic 3 & Knuckles. You know, when it comes to fans of the classic Sonic the Hedgehog games, they usually pick either this or Sonic the Hedgehog 2 as their favorite. Does this game deserve that title? I’m not sure. It’s not flawless, but then again, not every game can be perfect like Shatterhand. So without further ado, here’s something I’ve always wanted to say… Onto the ten reasons!

Reasons Why I Like Sonic 3 & Knuckles

1. Knuckles

Unlike Sonic, he don’t chuckle; he’d rather flex his muscles.

Knuckles the Echidna is RED, which is one of my favorite colors. RED signifies danger! RED means destruction, domination, flame, desire, pain and trauma! Knuckles the Dominator.

He’s got two claws that will pummel you into next week. His physical strength is truly unmatched. What makes Knuckles so damn awesome is that he does what he thinks is right…even if it is all part of being fooled by an egg-shaped evil dictator.

Although he does some pretty nasty things to you, he turns to your side and shows his true colors by helping you defeat Dr. Eggman and put an end to all the tyranny. It’s a true friendship, and it almost brings (manly) tears to my eyes.

Also, he sports that cheeky, Muttley-esque grin. Sonic has attitude—Knuckles has charisma. 

2. Spinning Signpost

Watch out below—it’s a spinning bloody signpost. How cool is that?!

So you beat one of the awesome minibosses in Sonic 3 & Knuckles (more on those in a moment), and then all of a sudden—phwoosh! A signpost comes spinning down from the air, outta nowhere. It’s like Christmas, your birthday and Hanukkah all at once!

Although I’ve never given thought as to how or why, on some occasions, the signpost spawns monitors when it collides with the ground! It’s amazing. The most fun part is keeping the spinning signpost floating in the air for massive points (OK, that’s a lie; it’s pretty sad if you spend thirty minutes doing that.).

It’s like—”Well, we just made them fight a giant stone Golem outside a frickin’ pyramid, so let’s go one better and make the signpost bloomin’ drop outta thin air!” “Great idea, Sega Man #1.” “Thanks, Sega Man #2!” 

3. Minibosses

Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 had end-of-zone run-of-the-mill Eggman encounters. Dr. Eggman turns up with some wacky machine and attempts to clobber Sonic the Hedgehog & Co., forgetting that his new gimmick creates a brand-new weak spot and attack pattern. So, he tried something new:

While he obviously hasn’t learned his lesson (and battles are still as formulaic as ever), Dr. Eggman has now made each first Act host to one of his new non-piloted robot bosses, usually zone themed. They are awesome. …Wait, I’ve said “awesome” a lot in this article, haven’t I? I’ll think of a different word next time.

This may look like a staring match, but it isn’t. Knuckles totally wouldn’t lose a staring match either, because he’s so awesome…great (see Reason #1). This robot, shaped like an Egg Capsule (like the one at the end of a zone), grows arms and tries to hit you. Inflicting damage on this invincible behemoth is so cool; you have to get him to hit himself! That’ll serve him right. It is such an ingenious idea for a boss battle.

All the minibosses are inventive in their own way. Some are fairly easy, others are pretty frustrating, but they’re all very different from the Eggman bouts, and that’s why I love them so much. A little freshness that the prior games were missing, I think. 

4. Super Secret, Uh, Secrets

Where would a platformer be if it didn’t have cool super-hidden secrets? BORING PLATFORMER TOWN, that’s where. What about the crazy points bonus at the start of Mr Gimmick, or the hidden exit in the first level of James Pond II? Learn from the best when you’re making platformers; the secrets are half the fun of playing. Sonic 3 & Knuckles has a load of secrets stuffed inside (OK, very few really, but they’re really cool and well worth noting).

I mean, seriously, this is incredibly well hidden, right? What do you mean, “this one is obvious”? I didn’t know about this secret for over a decade. Does that make me dumb, or does it make you clever?

Little secrets are the reason I still play the oldies. Oh, and to help me vent after playing that total log of a game Sonic the Hedgehog 4.

5. The King of Pop/Soundtrack

Michael Jackson died a while ago now, and he was a good man. Jokes about his favorite after-dinner mints aside, he was the greatest musician to have ever lived, and I’m sure I speak for everyone when I say that his music is the best to grace the ears of anyone, ever. Exaggeration (because we all know Chris Clouse is the best musician ever), but it helps move this point along.

It is rumored confirmed by Brad Buxer that Michael Jackson lent his musical genius to this game, under a few pseudonyms. Why pseudonyms? Well, because once allegations arose about Michael and small perky bottoms, Sega cut him from the production team.

So Michael Jackson was Cut From The Team after having composed several tracks for the game. So there is the reason why is Ice Cap’s music is so reminiscent of “Who Is It” and “Smooth Criminal.” The hard evidence is the Sonic 3 credits theme, which is identical to “Stranger In Moscow.”

We also can’t ignore Jun Senoue and Howard Drossin’s inputs for the soundtrack, which are totally bodacious.

6. Extreme Sports

Skateboarding, surfing and snowboarding are so brilliant! Sonic being the radical and, dare I say it, “awesome” hedgehog he is, he must obviously be a fan of extreme sports! And although his surfing intro was half-cut from Sonic 3 due to time constraints, he still manages a spot of EXTREME SNOWBOARDING ON AN ICE MOUNTAIN TO THE MUSIC OF MICHAEL JACKSON.

As this sequences requires the Genesis to totally outdo itself, it’s definitely the coolest thing to hit the whole system, and it’s super duper awesome.

In retrospect, if I had been developing this game, I’d have made this section longer, or added another one mid-way through Act 2.

If Sonic 3 & Knuckles were an action movie, this would be the bit that appears in all the trailers. No wonder Sega re-used it for Sonic Adventure! Oh yeah, they tend to recycle a lot, don’t they? *cough* Sonic 4 *cough*

Reasons Why I Dislike Sonic 3 & Knuckles

7. Character Imbalance

OK, Tails can fly. Pretty cool, huh? Not when that puts him at a total disadvantage. Cue slide:

This boss is a curse for Tails. When you’re Sonic, it’s as simple as jumping at Eggman—but for Tails, let’s just say you gotta hit him in the right place with your rotating tails. You gotta hit a small pin-point of an area whilst trying to move, but then you gotta drop straight away or you fly up into him and get hurt. There are many more other places where Tails is rubbish, too.

Seriously, who likes Tails? There’s two kinds of people in this world:

1. People who hate Tails
2. Liars

For a fox with two tails (therefore with an advantage over his ground-bound hedgehog friend), he can’t even attack the Marble Garden Zone boss. What is he, an alcoholic? Probably.

8. Recycling

Sega is very well known for recycling things these days. Just earlier I noted that Sonic Adventure recycled the Ice Cap snowboarding sequence (and indeed the zone itself)! Well, Sega was already at the recycling stage with Sonic & Knuckles, and this thoroughly upsets me.

It’s the Metal Sonic boss that is the prime offender in Sonic & Knuckles. I’m fine with the recycling of the Metal Sonic idea (from Sonic CD and “Silver Sonic” from Sonic 2), but I’m not happy with the blatant boss recycling.

Part 1 of the boss battle sees the original “Ball & Chain” boss bout from Sonic 1.

“So long as they don’t keep this up, it’ll be fine.”

Then Part 2 sees the boss from Metropolis Zone in Sonic 2, with the fake balloons.

“At least they can’t recycle a third boss battle, surely.”

Then Part 3 is the same move-set from the Silver Sonic battle in Sonic 2. So this boss is a complete recycle of earlier bosses. Glad we’ve got that covered now.

9. The Totally and Unnecessarily Haunted Pyramid

Why-why-why-why—what the hell are those!? Ghosts, presumably. Ghosts that are a right menace. It’s true that you can almost entirely avoid them getting to this state, but that isn’t an argument justifying their existence. They are the worst enemies in any videogame ever!

Worse than the Sun! Worse than King K.Rool! Worse than…the despicable CRYSTAL DANTE! At least those three can actually be killed.

What makes this level so frustrating is not just these ghosts, mind—the layout is horrible, the background art is boring and the scorpion badniks make the whole thing a chore. And then, the boss of the zone itself is just…weird.

It’s a really scary level. Even now I still get the chills. Suspense and fear are all very good, but this zone isn’t. The only zone in Sonic & Knuckles where a Time Out is actually feasible.

10. Lock-On “Technology”

I am so at the end of my tether when it comes to this. When I was younger, all I had was Sonic & Knuckles, which is only “half” of this game—to get the full game, you have to lock Sonic 3 onto Sonic & Knuckles.

Why did Sega do this? There are many theories:

• Maybe Sonic 3 wasn’t going to be finished in time, so they halved the project.
• Perhaps the Michael Jackson issues may have caused the game development to get slowed down.
• Games are stupidly expensive, so it doesn’t take much to assume that Sega just wanted double profits.

I look at the Lock-On technology and I can imagine the good ideas they could have employed with it, but it also just reeks of money making. True there’s a neat engine in Sonic & Knuckles just waiting to have another expansion pack, but Sega never got that idea. Would have been great to have a further Sonic the Hedgehog game using this engine, other than Sonic Jam.

Sonic the Hedgehog 4 would have been a much better game if it had used the Sonic & Knuckles engine. Also, who likes crappy 3D graphics, anyway? Back in my day, if we had 16-bits, we were ecstatic! You had to be rich to afford that. 

So that’s my ten reasons why Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles is a videogame.

Wait, what!?

For those of you who can’t read minds through an electronic medium, I’m talking about Space Quest, the ridiculous sci-fi adventure game series that—in terms of hilarity and clever puzzles—gives Monkey Island a run for its booty. Er, money. After a few premature and incomplete Space Quest compilations put most of the  games together in one box, the Space Quest Collection put nearly all of the series in one place, and that’s good enough for now.

If you need a general introduction to the exploits of space janitor Roger Wilco and his patented Dumb Luck™, check out my delightful introduction to Space Quest. If you need an unnecessarily detailed analysis of each game in the series, check out my reviews of the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth Space Quest games. If you recognize that I’m doing everything in my power to make sure you’re up to speed on this tragically overlooked franchise, then you’re completely missing the part where I’m a lazy shill who’s been linking you to old material from other websites for two paragraphs.

Anydroid, because the Space Quest Collection adds absolutely no new content to the Space Quest games it collects (aside from a menu that gives you ABSOLUTE CONTROL over which game you play), you can mentally replace “Space Quest Collection” with “Space Quest series” any time it appears here. Except when it’s followed by the word “dinosaur.” Watch for it.

Yes, this compilation leaves out the original EGA text parser version of SQI in favor of the point-and-click VGA remake, but let’s pretend we’ve hacked the menu to let us play that one, too.

Reasons Why I Like

the Space Quest Collection

1. References, Parodies, and Cameos

There’s a Dalek for sale at the local “Droids-B-Us,” the evil bad guy’s minions are straight out of Planet of the Apes, the protagonist of King’s Quest is getting carried away by a condor in the background, the intergalactic coordinates of the next planet are 90210, and the movie theater on the corner is playing Tango & Cash XXVII: The Sequel.

The Space Quest Collection is filled to the nacelles with spoofs, special appearances, and mentions of anything from Blade Runner to Looney Tunes. Sometimes it’s subtle, and sometimes it beats you over the head (or blows you to smithereens, or turns you inside-out), but you’re guaranteed to at least crack a smile while that Terminator knockoff is wringing you out like a wet towel.

2. Good Reasons to Try Absolutely Everything

So you’re playing a point-and-click adventure game with Talk and Taste commands, strolling through an intergalactic shopping mall—naturally, your first inclination is to talk to the food and taste the customers. Or perhaps you’re playing with a text parser interface that accepts any command in its vocabulary—how many things can you think of doing to that corpse over there?

The developers anticipated that their players would be a bunch of weirdos, which is why some of the funniest and most creative parts of the series are found when you try doing things that nobody would ever do. Especially rational people. Sometimes the best rewards for ridiculous exploration come in the form of…

3. Hysterical Death Messages

So you tried to Taste that pool of green acid, or you got shredded to ribbons by a Labion Terror Beast, or you made the brilliant command decision to “just wait it out” when an enemy ship was firing death at you. Well done, bozo.

If the sight gags don’t get you, then the scathingly sarcastic commentary will. Losing is far less frustrating when you get a good laugh out of your own demise, and it’s not unusual to want to go out of your way to cause a self-destructive time paradox, beam yourself into deep space, or be devoured by a dreaded Cave Squid. Furthermore, the replay value shoots through the roof when you realize that nearly every screen contains at least one clever, sadistic method of offing poor Roger Wilco. You horrible, horrible person.

4. Narration by Gary Owens

Though he only voices the narrator in SQIV and SQ6, Gary Owens—whom you may recall as the voice of the original Space Ghost, the narrator for both Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In and Garfield & Friends, and the immortal Dirk Niblick—has left an indelible mark on the Space Quest series. While you’re looking up the word “indelible,” I’ll be thinking fondly of Owens’ deadpan and usually spot-on comedic delivery.

5. Stellar Soundtracks

From the triumphant Space Quest theme to the fabricated digital stylings of ZZ Top, the tunes in the Space Quest Collection are eminently hummable, perfectly atmospheric, and/or mostly forgettable (nice one, SQ6). This is the music your computer’s internal speaker has always wanted to play, and MIDI has seldom sounded so good.

If you put your ear against the screen, you might be able to hear them. It’s worth a shot.

6. Clever Instruction Manuals

Not only are the Space Quest instruction manuals informative and necessary, but they’re also hilariously written. Whether it’s a copy of Space Piston magazine, Popular Janitronics, or Galactic Enquirer, the instruction manuals are combination hint book, copy protection, collector’s item, MAD Magazine, and instruction manual. Of course, the Space Quest Collection Dinosaur only includes the manual for SQ6, condensing all the most important (read: dull) information from SQI-V into a mundane instruction manual borrowed from a previous Space Quest compilation. Which renders this Sixth Reason mostly irrelevant.

7. Easter Eggs

Who could forget about playing SQ6 on Halloween, when Circuit Sydney’s disembodied android head will follow you around the room? Or using the “CHEAT” command in SQII to jump straight to the end of the game, where a specially crafted congratulatory message waits with extra snark for cheaters like you? Or blindly punching in a specific code in SQIV’s time machine and ending up on Ortega, SQIII’s volcanic planet that’s not so friendly to meltable humanoids?

The view from the windows at GameCola HQ.

It’s secrets like these that let you know the designers really cared about maximizing the fun in their games…or else they were total slackers who goofed around all day long.

Reasons Why I Don’t Like

the Space Quest Collection

8. Puzzles Gone Too Far

So you’ve got a vile jungle plant with deadly roots that form a twisting maze that covers most of the screen. Something interesting is probably on the other side, and you’ve got nothing better to do, so it looks like you’ll need to reduce the game speed and navigate the maze. If you’re off by so much as a few pixels, Roger will trip over a root and get absorbed and digested by the plant. Even at the slowest speed, this happens roughly every 5-10 seconds, so you must save and be ready to reload your game after every few steps. If you need a frame of reference, this is like transcribing two pages of Shakespeare, slightly tipsy, and restarting your word processing software every time you make a typo.

Then you need to go out the same way you came in.

YEEAAAARRRGGGHHH!!!!

::ahem::

So you’ve got a pocketful of Buckazoids, and you need a whole lot more to buy a spaceship and blast yourself off this desert planet and INTO ADVENTURE! The only way to gain that much coin is to win big at the slot machines. The slot machines that drain your money most of the time and actually disintegrate you for losing the rest of the time. Save. Lose. Reload. Save. Lose. Reload. Save. Win. Forget to save. Lose. Cry. Reload. Repeat.

Only about a hundred bajillion more times until you’ve won! Oh, but spoiler alert, you could break the machine and win instantly if you had just picked up that five-pixel-large widget that wasn’t even a discernible part of the scenery from the fifth room of the game.

You haven’t been in the fifth room of the game since just after the fourth room of the game, and you’re well beyond the fourth room of the game, and you can never return without restarting the whole thing. You are also very upset. Grrrr! How upset you are!

There’s a certain amount of backtracking, tedious repetition, and unforgiving realism that’s acceptable in a game. But Roger ain’t picking up Missile Expansions or bashing forest ponies until he turns into a mightier Light Warrior, and the closest thing to heavy rain is the irritatingly deadly acid falling from that cavern ceiling. Which you’ll need to navigate through TWO MORE TIMES if you have to restart the game to get that widget. And that’s three times too many.

9. Traumatizing Death Sequences

I suppose it’s payback for being such a terrible person that I can laugh at Roger Wilco when I stick unstable explosives in his pants and make him go jumping into methane-filled sewers, but a few of the death sequences in these games have scarred me for life. I don’t watch enough horror movies or play enough terrifying videogames to give me that much nightmare fodder, but all the Alien and Predator movies and the entire Half-Life series combined haven’t caused me to lose as much sleep as Space Quest.

Perhaps it’s the sudden appearance of gore in an otherwise family-friendly game. Perhaps my total control over Roger Wilco equates in my head to an immersive experience where I am Roger. Perhaps I was surprised by a Toxic-Avengery mutant in an abandoned greenhouse at a young age and wound up dead before I had any idea how to react. Even when some of the deaths are supposed to be the gross kind of funny, I find myself tensing up if there’s a chance I’ll trigger one.

This was supposed to be a screenshot of a traumatizing death, but I chickened out in the first three minutes.

It’s not fair. Space Quest is one of my all-time favorite videogame series, but there’s something about some of the death sequences that makes me reluctant to replay any of the games. Yet, my incessant drive to try everything, just to do it all again when sharing these games with others, has permanently imprinted these terrible things on my brain. Thanks to Space Quest, I have an ongoing phobia of mutants, greenhouses, slime, “hocking a loogie,” cyborg zombies, my computer’s internal speaker, glass display cases, slow-dripping liquids, the word “puke,” and the color green.

10. Disappointing Conclusion

SQI establishes the universe, SQII introduces some key plot elements to the series, SQIII picks up where its predecessor left off, SQIV starts to tie everything together, and SQV wraps it all up. Each of these five games is a self-contained adventure that leaves room for a sequel, but never requires a sequel. Then SQ6 happens, and the ending makes it very clear that the designers were hoping for a sequel so they could figure out where they were going with the plot.

This virtually empty room is a metaphor describing my feelings about the ending of Space Quest 6.

Let me say this first: I’m happy for the opportunity to play just one more Space Quest game, and I like a lot of what SQ6 has to offer. But when Space Quest VII was given the axe—and when corporate bigwigs put the kibosh on a fan-developed SQVII that was nearing completion—Space Quest 6 became the series finale, capping off with an inconsistently fun gameplay experience (thanks to the game’s troubled development) and leaving bigger unanswered questions than any game before it. Such as, how on Xenon did I just effectively review six different full-length games in less than half the number of words it took me to review the tiny download that was Mega Man 10?

Oh, well. No time to ponder such things. You and I both have other things to do, I’m sure.

Those of you who are Mega Man fans (in other words, staff writer Nathaniel Hoover) may want to re-read my ten reasons for Mega Man and Mega Man 2 for some GameCola-style Mega Man fun that is not longer than the US Constitution.

Reasons Why I Like Mega Man 3

1. Mega Girl

This game introduces a brand new mysterious enemy: Mega Girl. She has a fancy ponytail and a pink outfit that looks like his. Clearly, she’s Mega Man’s evil twin sister, and I think that’s cool. A lot of videogames have an evil doppleganger character for your hero to fight, such as Dark Link or Dark Samus or Shadow Mario, but I haven’t seen any that contain a doppleganger of the opposite gender beside Mega Man 3.

Mega Girl’s backstory is kind of confusing because all her cutscenes were removed from the game, but she is the most brilliant addition to the Mega Man canon since…wait, what?

Whoops. I have just been informed that the official name of this character is, in fact, Break Man. And/or Proto Man. Well, that certainly clears up the whole misunderstanding!

Well, even if the character in this game isn’t Mega Girl, Mega Girl is still my favorite character in this game. Girl power!

2. Mystery Stages

Halfway through the game, you have to go through four mystery stages before fighting Dr. Wily. In these mystery stages, you fight the eight robot bosses from Mega Man 2, which is a really good idea. Having mystery stages? Having old bosses return? What a fun idea!

…OK, so it was probably a mixture of laziness and rushed production that caused them to re-use old stages and bosses, but still. It works well.

3. Super Mario Bros.-style Pipes

Dr. Wily’s underground lair has Mario pipes. It’s the crossover that was meant to be. Remember how Fire Man’s lair in Mega Man is based off Bowser’s castle? It’s sort of like that.

4. Robot Wily

When you beat Wily, it is revealed that you have actually been fighting ROBOT WILY. That’s right, the game’s evil villain made a robot copy of himself!

There’s no official backstory to the Robot Wily, but I imagine it goes something like this: Dr. Wily is in his underground lair, sleeping in his metallic bed. The alarm clock rings, and Dr. Wily gets up and yawns. Scratching his back, he says, “I don’t really feel like trying to take over the world today. I think I’ll send the Wily-bot to do it instead.” Then he goes back to sleep.

In fact, I’m guessing this is how Dr. Wily pays for everything. Think about it. Dr. Wily gets a job at a McDonald’s somewhere, then he sends a Wily-bot to do all the work while he collects the paycheck. If he did this with, say, 100 Wily-bots, it would explain how he’s able to fund his evil empire without a large government grant.

One thing bugs me, however. Why did Dr. Wily program his robot to get down on its knees and beg for mercy after it’s defeated? Did he expect his robot would get killed by Mega Man, or what?

5. Rush

Rush is Mega Man’s robot dog, and he is in this game! Rush is a cool platform tool that you can use to fly to any part of the screen, which is super useful. Especially when you ride him across the top of the screen where there are no enemies. It’s not cheating! It’s fun!

Also, I think I sang the “Riding on My Robot Dog” song three times while playing this game.

6. Evil Kitty

At one point in the game, you fight an evil robot cat. It tries to attack you with balls of yarn and robot fleas, and overall, it is a well-designed enemy. I like the “large robot animals” theme that runs through the Mega Man series. Speaking of which…

7. Robot Penguins

There are robot penguins! And they attack you with…robot penguins! Go penguins!

8. Repeat Bosses

This game reuses two boss battles from Mega Man, but they are slightly modified here. For example, in the first game, there was one clone boss to fight. In this game, there are three.

It’s a delicate balance, to be sure. On one hand, the battles have been changed to the point where they count as new boss battles and not repeats. On the other hand, they are similar enough to the original fights that you still get a sense of mini-nostalgia. Not that anyone has any fond memories of the original Yellow Devil fight, but still. It’s the thought that counts.

Reasons Why I Don’t Like Mega Man 3

9. The Power Slide

In this game, Mega Man gets the new sliding ability, which is super-popular. In fact, it is so popular that every review of Mega Man 9 contains complaints about how that game has no sliding ability. I’m serious. The reviews of Mega Man 9 look like this:

I hate how they took away the slide move. Not cool! I want to slide! Sliding is fun! Ever since I was a little boy and Mommy took me to the park to play, I’ve loved slides. Mega Man 9 does not have a slide, so I think it is the worst game of all time.

I played the GameCube version of Mega Man 3, which has controls that are so bad, they actively try to prevent you from winning the game. For example, the Start button does double duty as the “leave the energy selection screen” button and the “use an energy tank” button. So, naturally, when you try to leave the energy selection screen by pressing Start, the game thinks you pressed Start to use an energy tank and will probably waste three energy tanks in a row. Grrrr!

So the power slide was not a useful ability for me. I’d get in a situation where an enemy was above me, and I had to slide to get out of danger, so I pressed the slide buttons, only Mega Man would jump right into the enemy instead of sliding because the controls are awful. After the first few times this happened, I vowed never to slide unless it was absolutely necessary.

10. Top Man

All Mega Man 3 players are legally required to dislike Top Man for being the worst robot ever. Nobody likes Top Man, his stage, or his weapon.

OK, that’s not exactly true. I think the Top Spin is an awesome-looking weapon. After all, it involves killing enemies by twisting/twirling into them. Defeating bad guys with killer dance moves? Way to go, Top Spin!

Top Man himself is still uncool, however.

Amazingly enough, however, Part Two of Final Fantasy VI Advance is totally different! Sure, you still have to fight through 1,000 identical battles, but now there’s actual plot and character development! And dramatic cutscenes and overall good gameplay! I definitely enjoyed it. I mean, take how bad the first part of the game is, then invert it, and you’ve got how good part two is.

In my mind, this begs the question, “Why did they wait until Part Two before putting in good material? Why do they force you to trudge through 8-10 hours of pure drek before bringing out something that’s actually fun to play?”

I have no idea. Anyway, here are the ten reasons!

Reasons Why I Like Final Fantasy VI Advance (Part Two)

1. Major Relationship Drama

Paul Franzen would like to remind everyone that this is his favorite pairing of the game.

At one point in the game, we take a break from all the world-saving action in order to watch a major soap opera. Two girls, Celes and Terra, are both in love with the same man. Celes doesn’t know if he can love her, because she’s secretly a traitor (or IS she? Dun dun dun!). Terra doesn’t know if he can love her, because she’s half-human and half-alien (or something like that). Meanwhile, the man in the love triangle doesn’t know if he can ever love anyone again, because he’s still not over the tragic death of his last girlfriend.

Can our heroes find love, or will they end up being as two-dimensional as their sprites? Why are they putting major relationship drama into a game that has nothing to do with relationships? When did this RPG turn into Days of our Lives? I don’t know, but I like it!

Seriously, Days of our Lives is probably my favorite TV show ever. Max Brady is back on the show, and it just got renewed for another season! Coincidence? I think not.

2. Opera House

At one point, our heroes have to perform in an opera, which is a pretty creative and interesting challenge. Sing along with the music correctly! Don’t mess up your cues! Stand in the right spot at the right time!

It’s a fun little challenge, and a well-needed break from 40 hours of RPG battles.

The plotline, however, runs completely out of control at this point. If you haven’t played the game before, here’s what happens:

There is a popular opera star named Maria, who happens to be the doppleganger of our heroine Celes. Because learning an entire opera overnight is super-easy, Celes replaces Maria in the opera, in hopes that she will be kidnapped mid-performance by a man named Alka-Seltzer. Apparently, Seltzer has a track record of kidnapping the girls that he likes, and this is the easiest way to get in contact with him. Anyweird, the plan goes smoothly, until an evil talking octopus with a grudge against Maria attacks our heroine, and a huge fight ensues.

Why is it that multiple people feel the need to attack Maria mid-opera? Why is it that we never see Maria herself in the game? Why do our heroes immediately accept Seltzer into the party when he is clearly a man without morals? I dunno. It was still a fun part of the game, though.

Reasons Why I Don’t Like Final Fantasy VI Advance (Part Two)

3. The Confusing Plot

OK, so I just got finished saying that Part Two of FFVI is good because it has a plot. That’s only half-true, I guess. While having an actual/interesting plot is definitely a good thing, the plot in this part of the game really confuses me at some points.

I imagine that quite a few logical-minded people were asking questions like, “Wait, if there’s only one airship in the world, why do the bad guys have a defensive air fleet larger than England’s?” Or maybe, “So this is, what, the tenth time Celes has turned out to be a traitor? Why does everyone trust her, again?” My personal favorite—Illogical Plot Point #23—is ”the main villain is destroying the world now. Why are our heroes leaving the Floating Continent instead of, I dunno, trying to stop the villain from destroying the world?“

It doesn’t help that the game doesn’t try to explain anything at all. Like espers. What are espers? In Part One, espers are glowing rocks that bad guys want to harvest. That is, the first half-hour of the game is all about how villains are trying to get the esper rock out of the mines of Narshe. But here in Part Two, espers are weird alien creatures that can talk. And they live in some sort of magic dimension parallel to ours. That’s the sort of thing the game should have explained at some point or another.

I mean, sure, if you’ve played the game before, you know what espers are. But the first time you play through the game, it makes no sense whatsoever, and you can’t understand why Part Two is directly contradicting what Part One said about espers. Eventually, I had to give up trying to make sense out of the game and just agree with whatever new information it said about espers.

In retrospect, however, the video of me trying to make sense of the “Terra turns into an esper” cutscene is rather amusing, because I have no idea what’s going on.

In conclusion, confusing plots are bad, but I’m going to give this game the benefit of the doubt and guess that the plot makes a lot more sense during a second playthrough.

4. The Thought of Kefka and Celes Having Children

Paul Franzen would like to remind everyone that this is NOT his favorite pairing of the game.

Near the end of this part, Lord Voldemort (who looks more like Dumbledore for some reason) kind of orders Celes to have children with Kefka.

This is a very, very disturbing thought. *shudder*

5. Ultros the Talking Octopus Appears Like Fifty Times

OK, seriously, Final Fantasy VI. Who the heck is Ultros the Talking Octopus, and when did he suddenly become a main character? I demand that you explain who this character is and why he hates our heroes so much, because not telling the player anything at all about a recurring boss is super-lame.

Same thing goes for the King Bulbin boss in Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

6. Strago and Relm

Really late into the game, they introduce new characters: Strago and Relm. By “really late,” I’m pretty sure it’s something like 20 hours into the game.

The new characters get a minor subplot, but they really should have left it out of the game, because it’s boring and pointless. Something about a house being on fire? It has nothing to do with the main plot of the game at all; it’s just a transparent excuse to introduce the new characters and try to trick you into caring about them.

I never ended up using Strago and Relm. Ever. I’ve been using the same party for 20 hours, why should I change it now to accommodate some new, underleveled characters that require expensive equipment nobody but them can use? Besides, you can only use four characters at once, and I already have eight. More characters are unnecessary.

7. Totally Abandoning Terra in the Town of Zozo

Part Two begins with our heroes trying to find Terra. Terra just turned into a Purple Super Saiyan Three…I mean, Purple Flying Thing—and flew off for some reason. She’s our friend, as well as the game’s main character, so our heroes set off to find her and learn what’s going on.

They find her lying unconscious in the Town of Zozo. Zozo is a dangerous, monster-infested town. In fact, it’s the only town in the game to feature random encounters. Clearly, this is not a good place for Terra to be, as she is so weak that she can’t even stand up.

So what do our heroes do?

A) Wait for their friend to wake up
B) Take her to safety
C) Totally abandon her in favor of moving forward with the next plot point.

If you guessed “C,” congratulations! You guessed correctly. You also are the worst possible friend Terra could have.

8. Shopping

I’m a little hesitant to complain about the shop interface because I complained about it already in Part One, but a new problem with it arises in Part Two.

To be fair, the shopping isn’t all bad. I particularly like shopping in this game, because when you look at an item in a shop, it tells you who can equip that particular item. This is a major improvement over Final Fantasy I. Am I the only one who continually spent all his money on weapons that none of the characters could equip? Because I know I’m not the only one who had problems equipping items in that game.

But the problem with shopping in Part Two is that the game has the nasty habit of de-equipping characters who are not in your party at the moment, such as when Terra is completely abandoned in Zozo (see Reason #7). Because she has no weapons equipped, the shop tells you that every weapon increases her attack power, which is no help whatsoever. You’ll probably end up spending a lot of money on unnecessary equipment because of this. That’s kind of a pain.

9. Showing off the Graphics

There are a few scenes in which the game does a slow pan over various areas in order to show off its fancy graphics.

Maybe the graphics were impressive on the original SNES version of the game, but for the GBA release, they’re quite ugly, like the above picture from the “escape on a minecart” sequence. That entire sequence was offensively ugly. Maybe they just overlooked that part of the game when redoing the graphics for the re-release?

In any case, it’s quite appalling to see those few sequences in the middle of game which otherwise looks great.

10. Banon’s Bad Plan

OK, so this game is really predictable at times. Whether we’re talking about Terra’s Amnesia of Plot Convenience™, Emperor Gestahl’s Obviously-Fake-Truce (”I’m toootally not evil any more! So would you pretty-please let your guard down now?”) or Kefka destroying the world (”If someone moves the Warring Triad statues, the world is destroyed! Boy, I sure hope the bad guys who are going to steal the statues don’t touch them!”), you’re going to see a lot of things coming from a mile away.

The worst offender is Banon, who is the leader of the Resistance, and apparently, a total idiot. Here are the facts of the matter:

1. Lord Voldemort needs espers to take over the world.
2. Only our heroes can open the gate to the esper world.

After thinking it over for approximately zero seconds, Banon decides that the best thing to do is open the gate to the esper world! Oh, sure, that plan can’t possibly backfire! The main villain needs espers to take over the world; let’s give him access to all the espers he needs!

Banon, you should be fired from your job as leader of the resistance.

Everything after this Part will be awesome.

See you later, everyone.

[Editor's note: Michael originally wrote this article last summer, though this is the first time it's being published.]

Reasons Why I Like Mega Man 2

1. The Opening Cutscene

The game starts off with an awesome cutscene in which the game’s story is described while the camera does a slow pan to the top of a building, where Mega Man is standing, his hair waving in the wind, looking like he’s a studly cover model for Wired magazine. That’s basically all there is to the cutscene, but it’s still very cool-looking, and it comes complete with great music.

Although, it’s kind of creepy that the opening cutscene says the game takes place in 200X. It’s 2009 now, so either these events already failed to happen, or Dr. Wily is going to attempt to take over the world soon. Will Dr. Light’s robotic technology soon make headlines? Is this something that many other people have already pointed out? Only time will tell.

Note from 2010 Michael: Apparently, time tells us that it’s 2010 now, and Mega Man 2 should have already happened. Oh no!

2. Mini Animals

If there’s one thing that says “Mega Man game” to me, it’s “giant robot animals,” whether it’s hippos, cats,  penguins or cows. Actually, no, not cows. I don’t think they used cows in any Mega Man games yet. That would be an odd choice for an enemy. Then again, so was Top Man. I guess that means Cow Man is always a possible enemy for Mega Man 10.

Another Note from 2010 Michael: I was joking about Cow Man, but Sheep Man has been confirmed as a boss for Mega Man 10. The world is a very strange place sometimes. Especially when robot animals are involved.

Anyway, the robot animals in this game that take the cake are the robot frogs and robot birds. They both come with the unique ability to make mini-versions of themselves. You’d think this would be a gimmicky attack that doesn’t work or make sense, but it does. The frogs spit out mini-frogs, which makes perfect sense because frogs have large gullets. The birds drop eggs containing mini-birds, which makes perfect sense because birds come from eggs. So it’s a creative idea that works well. Great!

Also, Nathaniel Hoover informed me that holding down the A button when picking a boss causes a flock of birds to appear during the enemy introduction scene, which is a fun little extra.

3. Plot!

Complimenting the cool opening scene is a cool plot! Dr. Light calls Mega Man in this game to give him special weapons, the creatively-named Item 1, Item 2, and Item 3.

…OK, so that’s all there is to the plot, but I like it nonetheless. It’s good to see that, while you’re going through the stages, Dr. Light is busy at work making new items for Mega Man to use. So that’s what he’s doing when he’s not onscreen. Good to know. I mean, haven’t you ever wondered what the characters in a game are doing when they’re not onscreen? Like, in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, does Link TALK when you’re not playing the game? He has to, right? That’s how everyone knows his name—he told them his name when I had the game turned off. Gosh, maybe Link secretly dislikes me, because I take away his ability to speak, on top of taking control of his entire body, sending him into dangerous locations and (occasionally) killing him. Man, now I feel like a jerk. Sorry about that, Link old buddy!

4. Flash Man’s Level

I’m told that the floors are slippery in this level because Flash Man has a time-based weapon, and time keeps on slippin’, slippin’, slippin’ into the future.

The graphics in Flash Man’s level are really good—the above screenshot doesn’t do the game justice because it doesn’t show off the fact that the background flashes. Yes, those crystal platforms change colors, and it looks cool. Overall, a really good level design.

Speaking of flashy, have you seen the video advertisements on YouTube lately? Have you noticed that they’re bigger than the actual videos onYouTube? What’s up with that?

It’s not just YouTube, either. All other websites with playable videos, like NBC.com, have video ads that are bigger and higher quality than the videos themselves. And, of course, the advertisements play with no delay whatsoever. It takes five minutes of “buffering” to play the video you want to see, but there’s no buffering at all for the ad that nobody wants to see.

Which doesn’t make sense! If the ads are bigger/higher quality than the videos, it should take longer for them to load! But instead, they’re always the fastest things that load on any website, no matter what their size. It’s like…websites don’t need to buffer, but they just fake it to give you more time to look at ads. It’s a conspiracy, I tell you! Advertising is trying to rule our lives!

5. Gorillas

I mentioned robot animals earlier, but for some reason, I decided to list the gorillas in Wood Man’s level separately. They jump up from the bottom of the screen, swing back and forth on the platforms, and when you get too close, they swing up ONTO the platforms and attack.

Talk about going the extra mile when it comes to enemy animation. Frankly, I was impressed by the idea of enemies popping up from the bottom of the screen to land on a platform above. Seeing that idea go further is icing on the cake.

Man, cake is delicious. To be honest, I’d rather eat cake than play Mega Man 2.

6. Alien Boss

The final boss of the game is an alien that spins around the room. This is a good boss fight, and it works particularly well because it uses the star background that you saw eight times before in this game, every time when you selected a level.

No, it’s not being lazy and re-using backgrounds—it’s taking the background that was just a pretty effect earlier on and making it relevant to the game. It’s a great idea to incorporate the level selection screen into the actual game. Plus, it ties into the fact that Dr. Wily flies around in an alien UFO. All in all, a good idea.

7. Changes from Mega Man

There were a lot of changes made between Mega Man and Mega Man 2, and I think they resulted in a better game. One of the improvements was the addition of two bosses, a tradition continued in all further NES Mega Man games. Another tradition that got continued was the inclusion of E-tanks—items that you could collect and use to fill up Mega Man’s life whenever you wanted, which is so incredibly useful.

However, the change I enjoy the most is the tweaking of the “fight all the bosses a second time” challenge from the first game. Now, you fight all the bosses in a row via a room with eight teleports, and you get a full energy pellet whenever a boss is defeated so you actually stand a chance of getting through the challenge alive. It’s only a small change from the first game’s challenge, but it stands out as perhaps the best variation of the challenge, one that gets used over and over again in later games.

Reasons Why I Dislike Mega Man 2

8. Cheez Whiz of Doom

Quick Man’s stage has an absolutely vile challenge where the Cheez Whiz of Doom comes squirting in from the side of the room. You goal is to get through the room without being hit by the Cheez Whiz, which is difficult in itself, but made about ten times more difficult by having multiple Cheez Whiz rooms in a row, so you have to the memorize the pattern for nine different rooms. Not that memorizing the pattern is too much help—you will probably lose the challenge even IF you have the correct route memorized.

Did I mention that the Cheez Whiz is a one-hit kill? Yeah, if it touches you, you die instantly. There is no room for forgiveness in this challenge.

And, of course, because you have to memorize nine rooms, you will probably die more than nine times, because there’s no way to memorize the room layout ahead of time. Overall, it’s a really, really hard challenge.

9. Crash Bomb Boss

My least favorite boss in the game is this boss, for the following four reasons:

1) You need to have perfect aim. You cannot miss a single shot, or else you will die.
2) The close quarters make it hard to dodge.
3) The jump to reach the platform Mega Man is standing on in the above screenshot is very tricky.
4) There is so much sprite flicker in this fight that you cannot see what you are doing.

It’s like they were purposely trying to make a boss that’s near-impossible to kill. It’s hard to dodge, you can’t miss a shot, it involves tricky jumps AND you can’t see what’s going on in the fight. All it would take is just one more challenge to up the difficulty factor, and I would never play this game again. Something like…I dunno, an evil cow that chases you the whole time so you can never stand still in one place. Yeah. Add a challenge like that to this boss fight, and you’ll have one dissatisfied gamer.

10. Heat Man Jumping Challenge

Heat Man’s stage is mostly made up of jumping challenges where you make a series of jumps across platforms, and if you make a mistake, you fall into the lava of instant death. This is combined with the disappearing block challenge, where you can’t see the platform you want to jump to ahead of time, so you have to memorize where the blocks appear.

This would be fine and dandy, but there’s a section where you have about twenty of the disappearing blocks all in a row, which involves far too much for me. There’s no challenge to the section; it’s just route memorization, which is boring.

2000

In 2000, The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask and Banjo-Tooie were released for the N64.  Normally, this would make it a banner year, but everyone ignored it because it was “too late” in the lifetime of the N64, and everyone bought the brand new PlayStation 2 instead.

Too late?  Too LATE?  If they released Banjo-Threeie for the N64 today, I would still buy a copy!

So, basically, this was the year that two of the greatest N64 games ever were widely ignored.  Not a good year.  We should have let Y2K take this one.

2001

In 2001, a bunch of new systems were released, including the GameCube, Xbox and GameBoy Advance.  You’d think I would have a lot to say about this, but you’d be wrong. For the first time ever, I am on top of the console race, with my personal copy of Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, which is still a great game.

2002

Several good games came out in 2002, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at the best-seller lists.  In fact, the best-seller lists this year was dominated by Spider-Man.  Yes, a licensed game outsold Kingdom Hearts, Halo and Super Mario Sunshine.  What were we thinking back then?

This is also the year where Microsoft purchased Rare.  Nintendo fanboys made a major stink about this, because Rare made pretty much made all the best N64 games, and without any games from Rare,  the GameCube might fail to have a decent game collection.  Looking back on these arguments, I think we can safely say that the Nintendo fanboys were 100% correct.

2003

2003 was one of the best years of the decade. Just look at the list of games that were released this year, if you don’t believe me. There are classics like Beyond Good and Evil, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Splinter Cell, Fire Emblem, Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, WarioWare, Metroid Fusion, Call of Duty, Pokemon Ruby and Sapphire, Mario Kart: Double Dash, Devil May Cry 2 and, of course, Nancy Drew: The Haunted Carousel.

This is also the year Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker is released.  This is the first of six Cartoon Zelda games that get released in this decade.  I think we can safely say that the cliff-hanger at the end of Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask will never be resolved.

2004

2004 had a hard time standing up to 2003, as most of the games that were released this year were sequels, like Pikmin 2.  Oh well.

Also, the Nintendo DS was released.  This definitely helps set the stage for what happens in…

2005

Game development took a backseat as the focus shifted to new consoles.  This is reflected by the fact that the top ten best-sellers list contains three Star Wars games and five sports games.  The Wii, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 went through heavy development this year, and Microsoft wins the console race hands-down by releasing the Xbox 360, long before any of the other companies release their consoles.

2006

Perhaps Microsoft released the Xbox 360 a tad early, seeing as it was outsold by the GameCube during the first quarter.  Ouch.  But at the end of the year, the DS Lite, Wii and PlayStation 3 were released. The biggest games this year are Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess and Wii Sports.

2007

2007 was another great year for videogames, especially the Wii, what with Super Mario Galaxy, Super Paper Mario, Fire Emblem Wii and Metroid Prime 3.  A new trailer for Duke Nukem Forever was released, and I joined the GameCola staff.

In handheld news, the first and second Professor Layton games hit Japan.  Also, the second and third Phoenix Wright games hit the non-Japanese countries.  Multiple entries for popular handheld series in the same year?  Ah, those were the days!

2008

In 2008, the Wii grabbed onto the market and refused to let go. The best-selling non-Wii game was Grand Theft Auto IV, which had to take 5th place overall, coming after Wii Play, which is a game I hadn’t heard of until now.  Apparently, it’s a repackaged version of Wii Sports…and it outsold Grand Theft Auto IV.

2009

In 2009, the best games were mostly a complete surprise.  In May, there were surpise announcements about a number of games, including Tales of Monkey Island, Super Mario Bros. Wii and Professor Layton 2, all of which were released this year and got great reviews.  Meanwhile, many of the big games that we did know were in development got delayed to 2010.

So that’s “The Ten Reasons: Decade Edition.”  If the 2010s are anything like the 2000s, I’ll have to go through high school and college again. *shudder* Let’s hope the new decade isn’t just like the old one.

Welcome to “The Ten Reasons,” where I discuss ten reasons why I like or dislike a game. This month, I’m talking about Final Fantasy VI Advance, Part One. I say “Part One” because I’ve done a video walkthrough for this game, and the game is about a zillion hours long, so I have to divide it upsomehow.  Part One was over five hours long, so that’s more than enough gameplay to get a column out of.

Longtime GameCola fans will remember that I gave Final Fantasy VI a bad review. And this article will have more of the same—there are eight reasons for why I don’t like Part One of this game. Consider yourself warned.

In an effort to be fair, however, I will let all the Final Fantasy Fans take out their anger on me, starting…now. Come on, everyone, hit me with your best blitz techniques.

Incorrect blitz technique input? Well, try again.

Incorrect blitz technique input? Again?

Incorrect blitz technique input? Gaaaah! These controls suck! STUPID GAME!

Reasons Why I Like Final Fantasy VI Advance

(Part One)

1. My Ending to the Game

My favorite part of the game so far? The part where I stopped playing.

Uh oh, I can hear the Final Fantasy Fans booing already! Let me clarify: I liked making up a fake ending to the game. It was loads of fun to predict what happens to all the characters. And I also got to sing. Thumbs up all around.

2. The Phantom Train Sequence

There’s a long interlude in this game where our heroes climb aboard the Phantom Train. This is probably the best section of the game so far—instead of being forced to wander around randomly, you’re forced to go left to the train’s engine, so you actually know where you’re supposed to go. Also, the fights in this area are (mostly) OPTIONAL—if you don’t want to fight Identical Battle #433, you can simply not talk to the ghosts and avoid it. Optional battles are something Final Fantasy games need, yes?

So, basically, I like the segment that deviates the most from the standard Final Fantasy Formula. The somewhat-better gameplay and the cool train atmosphere combine to make this one of the better sequences of the game. Even though the mythology here is ridiculously shoddy.¹

I especially like how, in the picture above, the ghosts make reference to the Animorphs TV show. Sing along with them! Nowhere to run! Nowhere to hide! No one to help you be your guide! It’s only u-u-u-ussssss!

Reasons Why I Dislike Final Fantasy VI Advance

(Part One)

3. Training Hall—Too Late

The fighting system in this game sucks. You have to wait ten seconds in between every single attack, for every single battle. And, of course, there’s no tutorial at all, which is the game’s way of saying, “If you don’t know what Runic does, too bad. I won’t tell you.”

Now, I know some people really hate tutorial characters like Navi in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. But if I’m given the option of having a character explain the gameplay mechanics, or being forced to blunder through the game with no tutorial at all, I’m going to take the tutorial character. I don’t care if the character will annoy me when I replay the game; I can live with that. I’d prefer it if you had the option to turn tutorials on/off like in the Fire Emblem games, but still, I’d pick mandatory tutorial over no tutorial at all any day.

Well, this game has no real tutorial, except for a not-very-helpful training hall that shows up an hour into the game. That’s right—the game forces you to fight enemies for an hour, then it teaches you how to fight. That is a prime example of really bad and really stupid tutorial timing.

And then there’s the fact that the tutorial school doesn’t really teach you how to fight all that well. A few hours later, I was still discovering things I didn’t know about, such as Row or Runic, whatever those are. So not only does the tutorial appear way too late, but it also doesn’t teach you very well. Just peachy.

4. Multi-Party Controls

Out of nowhere, Hello Kitty shows up to help you fight guards and a bad control system. It’s the weirdest cameo ever.

And boy, does the control system suck at this point in the game. You’re supposed to be controlling three parties at once, but it turns out that you can only move one party at once. Plus, it takes 1-2 seconds to switch between the three parties, 1-2 seconds in which all the enemies keep moving while your characters stand still, thus making it impossible for you to strategize. You’d like to make a killer strategy like “I’ll send Party A here, and Party B here, thus opening up room for Party C to sneak in on the left and attack the boss,” but such strategies won’t work because the enemies keep attacking you when you try to switch parties, due to the long delay in switching amongst parties.

So all in all, it’s a really ineffective control scheme here. The idea is that you’re supposed to be able to avoid the enemies and get to the boss at the bottom of the screen, but the control scheme is just so bad that you’re practically forced to fight all the enemies before you can reach the boss, thus changing what should be a simple “avoid the enemies” challenge to a half-hour “fight a dozen and a half battles in a row without dying” challenge.

And, of course, the game doesn’t let you buy items or level up before this challenge, so if you’re underleveled, you’re basically screwed, because this game won’t let you avoid the enemies like it’s supposed to.

5. Shopping

The shopping scheme in this game is not very good. As you can see, it tells you whether or not an item increases your character’s attack level, but it doesn’t tell you how much the attack level is increased. So if there are five items in a shop that increase your attack level, you pretty much have to pick at random and hope you found the one that increases your attack level the most. Granted, it’s probably a fair bet that the most expensive item increases your attack level the most, but since when has Final Fantasy been known as the epitome of fairness? I still remember the first game, where you were forced to spend all your money on equipment, only to find out later that your characters couldn’t equip anything because you bought katanas and, whoops, only thieves can equip katanas.

Now, the game tries to remedy the “how do you know how much attack power an item has without buying it?” problem by giving you an in-depth item information screen whenever you select an item, but it doesn’t work. I mean, look at the in-depth item information screen. Up, +10? Down -10? What kind of statistics are those? How do they help you determine what item to purchase? I have absolutely no idea how it works.

Gee, maybe Final Fantasy VI needs an item shop tutorial. I’m guessing I’ll find one another six hours into the game.

6. Enemies

The Final Fantasy series is known for having great, creative enemies, and this game is no exception.

I’m lying, of course. The series is known for having five or six enemies, then just palette-swapping them and hoping everyone is tricked into thinking they’re totally new enemies, just like every other RPG. Although, I’ve noticed that, sometimes in this game, they don’t even bother with the palette swap; they just give the enemy a new name (as in the Wererat becoming a Wild Rat), which is really lazy.

Now, normally I’m pretty mellow about the enemies you have to fight in an RPG, but fighting bunnies and kitties is where I draw the line. Getting pwned by bunny rabbits is something no gamer should be forced to endure.

7. Hidden Walkways

There’s a section where you play as Ridges the thief. Or Locke, as the game wants you to call him, but let’s face it—our thief buddy does not support the tabula rasa philosophy.

In this section, you have to find about five or so hidden walkways where you can’t see where your character is. Look at the picture—it contains two hidden walkways and my character. Can you see them? No, because they’re all hidden.

This is a ridiculously hard challenge. It’s not fun having to walk everywhere, trying to find the hidden place where you’re supposed to go. It’d be annoying if you only had to do it once, but doing it five times in a row is really pushing it. Thank goodness for the Internet, or I’d probably still be stuck at that part of the game.

8. Crescent Moon

Speaking of hidden places, at one point in the game, our heroes journey to find Crescent Moon Island Mountain Whatever The Official Name Is. This should be an easy journey, right? After all, there’s a map that points out all the locations in the game.

Well, it turns out that Crescent Mountain is NOT ON THE MAP.

Grrr!!! What’s the point of even having a map if it doesn’t tell you where to go? Final Fantasy VI, you pretend that you’ll cut down on random wandering around by giving the players a map, but it ends up being a BIG FAT LIE.

Ugh, now I need to mellow out with some music that mentions crescent moons but is less depressing than the Final Fantasy VI version.

9. It’s The Last Month of GameCola’s Monthly Issue Format

Darn, and I was only one month away from re-papering my wall…

What’s left to complain about? The control scheme? Already did that. Too much random wandering around? Already did that. Every battle is exactly the same? Already did that. Well, gee, I guess that’s everything except…

10. Not Funny

See 9:15.

There are a few cutscenes in this game starring Meteo/Sabin. They all star him in “hilarious” situations, such as jumping off a cliff, jumping off a cliff again, and getting mad at Alex/Gau. Even someone like me, who was playing the game for the first time, could see them coming from a mile away.

You know what? Maybe the Mid-Boss is right. Maybe there is no such thing as videogame humour.

Well, that’s it from me for Final Fantasy VI Advance. For now, anyway. See you on the new GameCola, everyone!

Make sure to read Part One and Part Two of the discussion.

Reasons Why I Like Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

1. The Return of the Koopalings

Remember the Koopalings? The bad guys from Super Mario Bros. 3? They finally make their long-awaited return in this game, showing up as eight difficult bosses.

Go Koopalings!

2. The Town is Destroyed Again

The town of [Note to Editor: Find out the name of this town and put it in here] gets destroyed in the beginning of the game. It gets rebuilt as the game goes on, and it ends up being a pretty good town.

Then the town gets destroyed again. At first it shocked me, then it made me laugh. I mean, this town gets constantly destroyed for no real reason! Why do the bad guys decide to trash that town? Why do the people still live there if bad guys destroy the town every few weeks?

I guess the reason the town gets destroyed so often is because it’s the only town in the entire country, so the bad guys have no other options when it comes to town-destroying. Don’t you just love how RPGs never have more than five towns?

3. Fat Mario

A couple times in this game, you have to make Mario fat. Really fat. It’s so funny to see Mario as a fat guy that I constantly did this move over and over. Hee hee hee! Fat Mario.

4. No One Knows Who Luigi Is

Luigi takes a lot of abuse in this game, because Mario is world-famous for going on adventures, but Luigi never does much of anything. And so, in this game, everyone recognizes Mario as a celebrity, but they just get confused when they see Luigi.

Somehow the joke doesn’t get old, even the tenth or so time it gets used. Poor Luigi!

5. The Solo Luigi Segments

But even though Luigi gets abused, he finally gets the chance to be the hero and shine on his own! (Luigi’s Mansion doesn’t count as a Luigi game because it was only played by two people.) A few times in this game, you get to run around as Luigi and defeat all the evil bad guys, without any help from Mario. Go Luigi!

Luigi gets an unfair amount of neglect. He’s a Mario brother, too, and–wait a second. If Luigi is a Mario brother, does that mean his name is “Luigi Mario”? And Mario’s name is “Mario Mario”? Woah…weird.

You know, the way I write this column is by watching a playthrough of the entire game, and making a note of everything worth talking about. When I did that for this game, I ended up with a list of 26 things, so I had to make up four random reasons in order to make an even 30.

This is one of the four random reasons. The guards in this game are there for comic effect—all they do is say funny things that make Mario and Luigi fall flat on their faces. They’re pretty good for what they do.

7. Thunder….

Boy, I’m sure writing a lot about Luigi this month, aren’t I? Anyway, another reason I like this game is that when Luigi uses the Thunderhand move, he says, “Thunder….”

Luigi trills the “r” when he says this, so it sounds more like “Thunderrrr….” It’s just really cool-sounding; that’s all. Gosh, why don’t they use full voice acting in these games? That Charles Martinet guy does a freaking GREAT job with the voices of Mario and Luigi. Do they think he’d screw up if he said more than a few words at a time? Sheesh!

Reasons Why I Dislike Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

8. Bowser’s Side View

The game’s graphics are good, with one glaring exception: When Bowser looks to the side.

I mean, look at it. EW! That looks awful and nasty! It’s like a third-grader drew it, and it certainly doesn’t look like the Bowser I’ve come to know and hate!

9. Chuckola Cola Jokes

The guards in the game are supposed to tell funny jokes, and the Chuckola Cola guy is the same way. Only, you know what? The Chuckola Cola guy doesnot tell funny jokes. He tells jokes that are stupid and painful. Who does he think he is? Jimmy Fallon?

10. The Impossible Jumping Challenge

No Mario game is complete without a challenge that takes about fifty tries to beat. This jumping challenge involves jumping at the right time to hit moving blocks. Mario hits the M blocks, and Luigi hits the L blocks.

The tough part? Mario’s and Luigi’s blocks are moving at completely different speeds. You have to somehow focus on both Mario and Luigi and make them do different things at the same time. This requires a level of concentration that I cannot muster—and I’m the guy who wrote a hundred-page guide forThe Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess.

This challenge is impossible to do alone, without superhuman concentration powers. The way to beat it is with a friend’s help; let your friend focus on Luigi while you focus on Mario.

That’s it for this month! I’m serious about the jumping challenge being impossible, by the way. I learned about that in piano class—it’s almost impossible to make your hands do two different things at the same time. Don’t believe me? Try it now. You’re on the computer, right? Try typing “mop” with your right hand, while at the same time typing “dared” with your left hand. Try it! You can’t do it, can you?

See you next time, folks!

Welcome to “The Ten Reasons,” where I discuss ten reasons why I like or dislike a game. This month, it’s Part Two of my three-part discussion of Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga for the GBA. This is probably the best trilogy that’s been created since that stupid Lord of the Rings trilogy. Who cares about oddly platonic hobbits throwing rings into volcanoes? Not me, that’s who.

Oh, and don’t forget to check out Part One of my discussion, if you haven’t already.

Reasons Why I Like Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

1. Prince Peasley

Prince Peasley is one of the heroes of the game. He always shows up, says some heroic dialogue, then lets his long hair flow in the wind.

Yeah, that’s right. His long hair flows in the wind. Much better than Mario’s hair, which, by the way, comes straight from a salon. Think about it: Mario has brown hair on his head, but his mustache is all black? Sounds like somebody has a dye job!

2. Sound Bytes

About halfway through the game, Princess Peach talks for the first time. But unlike the rest of the game’s dialogue, you actually get to hear Peach say, “Mario! Luigi!”

They may be cheap, low-quality sound bytes, but it’s totally amazing. It blew my mind that all of Peach’s dialogue is spoken, just like it is in Super Mario 64. Awesome!

3. We Should Be Together

This reason has been deleted to make the column more family-friendly. In its place, feel free to enjoy some classic Shirley Temple fun.

4. Cackletta’s Demented Face

Something else I like about this game is Cackletta. She’s a really freaky-looking character, isn’t she? The game image designers did a good job on that picture.

Unknown Reason

5. The Combat System

In response to last month’s column, Michael Ridgaway said that I have to mention the combat system. Specifically, he said, “You forgot to mention the combat system! Superstar Saga was the first RPG in a while that made me feel like an active participant in the battle, what with the ability to augment your attacks by hitting the button at the right time and being able to dodge enemy attacks.”

But then Paul Franzen said, “No way! That’s a reason to DISlike the game! I hate timed attacks…I always screw them up, and then I can’t get anywhere in a game because I can’t do them.” Checking the last question on a speedrunner Q and A of the game, I have to admit that Paul has a valid point about the timed attacks in this game being ridiculously hard to perform correctly.

So I listed this reason as “unknown,” because I don’t know if I should like it or not.

Reasons Why I Dislike Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

6. Zach Rich

This will probably be mentioned somewhere else in this issue, but Zach Rich took over my column as an April Fools’ Day joke last month. And while other people took offense at what he said, I’m offended that he used my column to do it.¹ Why couldn’t he have used another column, like The Gates of Life? Or Digital Championship Wrestling starring him versus the GameCola staff? That could have worked for Zach just as well, without having to hurt my poor baby of a column.

I understand that you feel overshadowed by your more successful older brother Richie, but please leave your family problems at home, Mr. Rich.

Oh, and Zach Rich’s momma is so dumb…

…She makes him look smart.

7. The Bean System

This game has something called The Bean System, which increases your stats. Collect a certain kind of bean, and you can increase your strength by six. Collect another kind, and you can increase your defense, and so on. It’s a great system for upgrading your stats.

Here’s the problem, though: There’s no good system in place for collecting beans. All you do is pull a bean out of the ground if you see an X. There’s no challenge. There’s no fun. There’s no way to try to find the particular beans that you want, because it’s all random.

So even though the system of turning beans into stats is good, the system of finding beans—which is so random that it doesn’t even deserve to be called a system—sucks. Ergo, I hate the game’s bean system. Quod est demonstrandum.

8. The Carts Minigame

The carts minigame involves riding carts in the dark. Press A to make Mario jump and press B to make Luigi jump. Jump to grab diamonds and batteries for your flashlight, so you can see where you’re going. Somehow, it’s all just really, really boring.

9. Skeleton Sailors Again

In this game, you have to board a land-locked ship that’s crewed by pirate skeletons. Sound familiar? Yep, it’s basically a scenario copy/pasted from The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons.

Come on, Nintendo. You can do better than that.

10. Swimming

Is there any videogame that has swimming in it that doesn’t suck? I mean, seriously. Every game I’ve played with swimming in it has been totally boring.² EITHER MAKE SWIMMING FUN, OR STOP PUTTING SWIMMING IN VIDEOGAMES.

1. Well, my column and Paul’s.

2. The Zora mask in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask might be an exception to this general rule.

Reasons Why I Like Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

1. Luigi Brings the Funny

You know, I was excited about this game because Luigi stars in it. For one of Nintendo’s main characters, Luigi gets no credit whatsoever. He constantly gets pushed to the side in games, having been demoted from “Mario’s equal” to “easily forgettable comedic relief.”

So needless to say, I was excited about the idea of seeing Luigi come into his own for once. Sadly, even though you play as Luigi for 90% of the game, he is still second fiddle to Mario, serving mainly as the comedic relief.

But, hey. You know what that means? The main character is comedic relief! That means hours and hours of Luigi-based comedy. Luigi does a whole bunch of crazy, funny things in this game, such as get hypnotized, make and immediately lose a fortune, and disguise himself as Princess Peach, only to have his mustache give him away. It’s loads of fun.

2. Luigi the Surfboard

…Or maybe it’s just something weird the game developers thought up. Either way, thumbs up.

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3. Spin Attack

Right, the spin attack. Um, sorry, I don’t think the spin attack is really cool, but I needed another reason to make an even ten, so I just threw this one in here.

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4. Queen Bean Fight

I like the Queen Bean boss fight, because it’s the first fight in the game that’s actually tough. People like to complain about how games are way too easy nowdays, and it’s good to see that Mario isn’t following that trend.

Although, you know, it’s really annoying to have to restart your game five times because you keep dying on one particular challenge, and the Mario games are FULL of that crap. Maybe I should have put this in the reasons why I dislike the game. Oh well.

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5. Yoshi

Holy crap! There are Yoshis in this game! They only make a brief cameo, but who cares? Yoshis are awesome. When are they going to have a 3D Yoshi game? Or at least a 3D Toad game. Come on, Nintendo, pick up the pace! I demand games for every minor Mario character!

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6. Birdo

Birdo looks nothing like a bird, by the way.

Speaking of minor Mario characters, Birdo makes a few appearances in this game. Remember Birdo? The first boss you met in Super Mario Bros. 2? The one that shot eggs out its mouth? That boss was awesome.

Anyway, that boss makes a reappearance in this game, and she uses an egg-based attack to hurt Mario and Luigi. See, now that’s good. It’s nice to see them use Birdo as a boss again. It gets boring to have to fight Bowser in every single game, and it’s good to see them break the monotony every once in a while.

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Reasons Why I Dislike Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga

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7. Fawful

One of the bad guys in this game is Fawful, who is a stereotypical 1940s Japanese person. He has a large overbite and nerdy glasses and is of the talking with horrible accent.

It is really one of the most horribly racist characters ever seen in a Mario game, but since the game comes from Japan, nobody worries about it, just like how nobody worries when black rappers use the n-word 50 times per song. But still. Did they really expect to get away with such a blatantly racist character in a children’s game? Imagine what it’d be like if Mario games continued this trend and included more stereotypes in future games:

Peach: Like, oh my God! Like, like, like Bowser is like, oh my God!
Bowser: Yo yo yo! I pity the fool! Yo!
Mario: It’s-a me, Mario! I wanta eata some pasta!

Um, never mind. Racism is bad, folks!

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8. Petey Piranha

I hate this boss fight, because it’s ridiculously unfair. Listen up, game developers! It’s OK if a boss fight involves beating more than one enemy, but for the love of God, DON’T give the enemies the ability to regenerate! All that does is make the boss fight last forever!

Let me explain how it works, in case you don’t get it. Once you kill Boss #1, you start killing Boss #2. While you do this, Boss #1 comes back to life. When you try to kill Boss #1 again, Boss #2 comes back to life. So you can never kill both Bosses #1 and #2, because as soon as you kill one boss, it comes back to life while you’re attacking the other boss. Meanwhile, Boss #3 attacks you the whole time. DO YOU SEE WHAT I MEAN? IF THE ENEMIES CAN REGENERATE, THE FIGHT NEVER ENDS!

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9. Hermit Crab Fight

How thupid.

Speaking of boss fights that last too long, the Hermit Crab fight is a pain in my butt. The problem isn’t that it’s difficult; the problem is that it’s boring. You have to perform the same attacks around thirty times in a row to kill the boss, and that gets boring fast. The fight takes about twice as long as it needs to, because the boss can, ha ha, heal itself as often as it wants.

The fight also sucks because there’s a two-minute cutscene before it. And while the cutscene is OK, it is really annoying to have to go through the cutscene more than once. Which, of course, you have to do because it takes three or four tries to kill the boss. So in reality, you’re going to be performing the same moves on the boss about 100 times in a row, unless you get lucky and kill him on your first try.

This fight is a good reminder of why it’s important to rage against the mundane.

10. Chuckola Bounce

One of the minigames you play is Chuckola Bounce. While it’s not boring or difficult, it’s disappointing because it feels like no effort whatsoever was put into making the minigame. The entire thing is kind of random, and the controls are somewhat awkward. All in all, it feels like something that got made in ten minutes. Really kind of a disappointment.