Hijinks Inc.

Meet Tony and Jeff.  They’re a couple of video game characters. Supporting characters.  Tony is enrolled in a boarding school, and Zero is, well, a robot.  The above image is a very old comic by yours truly (although since the copyright doesn’t include a date we don’t know how old, but I digress), in which I was expressing my frustration at people on the internet postulating theories about these characters’ lifestyle preferences.  It’s so old that it predates Shigesato Itoi, the creator of the game EarthBound (which Tony is from) pretty much saying in an interview that, yeah, Tony subscribes to an alternative lifestyle.

What’s my point? Continue reading »

Hey there, New Guy #2 coming at you by the name of David, er, of the Graham variety. I’ll probably be quite a bit less “tech” than Jared, and a bit more video game/random oriented, if you’d like a rough approximation of what to expect from me. In fact, this post here, should give you a good indication of what to expect, so without further ado, let’s hit it!

I want to look at the perennial little brother today, the man in green, Luigi Mario. Oh yeah, but first-

SPOILER WARNING! I’ll be talking about several games featuring Luigi, old and new, so if your paranoid about learning something you’d rather not, this is your last warning. So there. Continue reading »

After selling eleven of my games on eBay this week I spent some quality time with an old standby: namely Crisis Core. Zack and company have taken up the bulk of my time, along with some browser based goodness in the form of Travian.

Super Mario 64 DS. I’m up to 12 stars, and I beat Bowser for the first time.  And now I can play Mario without trying to find his hat on some goomba. I’m still enjoying the game, granted my playtime has been severely limited.

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII. Once I beat God of War: Chains of Olympus I jumped right back into Crisis Core and I’ve been sucked into it ever since. I’ve been powering through every mission I can possibly beat. It’s gotten to the point where the enemies are so far above me if they hit me once I die.  I like it, its more exciting this way.

World of Warcraft. Nil playtime this week. The WoW subscription is hovering on the edge of cancelation.

Maybe I spoke to soon! Yesterday I posted about the presidential candidates and how they have put a damper on the pride that is being an American citizen. Well this story from the AP lets me know that the American people know where it’s at:

With fears of a recession growing, many Americans are cutting back on recreation — planning shorter vacations, eating out less often, staying home instead of going to the movies.

But they haven’t stopped buying video games: Sales jumped 57 percent in March compared with the same month last year.

“You’d never know that the U.S. economy was under distress by looking at the video games industry sales figures,” said analyst Anita Frazier of the NPD Group, the research firm that compiles those numbers.

Nintendo once again led the way, selling 2.7 million copies of “Super Smash Bros. Brawl.” And sales of Nintendo’s Wii jumped, as the company finally seemed able to get an adequate supply of the console into stores.

With Nintendo’s “Mario Kart Wii” and Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto IV” still coming in April, analysts expect players to keep spending. And if consumer spending is the engine that drives the economy, gamers may be the engineers who keep the whole thing from derailing.

That’s right, gas is either nearing or surpassed it’s all time high (depending on where you’re located), and everything else seems to be going downhill… but never let us forget the importance that is gaming!! This is just one extra reminder that I have just 1 more week until GTA is released, followed by the many hours of eye numbing madness that will ensue! Can’t wait!

Pros: The pretty colors and shapes make it into this port of the indie classic.

Cons: Nearly impossible to play anything but the easiest levels. Lacks the music and polish of the actual game.

Developer: Original game: Kenta Cho. Ported by: Lazrhog.

Version Reviewed: 1.0

Platform: iPod Touch and iPhone

Noiz2sa is a Kenta Cho game.  If this means nothing to you, you’re not alone. Kenta Cho isn’t exactly a household name for most people. He is a, and prehaps the, premier indie shooter developer.  A quick look at his website reveals an extensive library of his games (mostly vertical shooters).  From a design standpoint, I like his games. He captures that colorfully eclectic style that seems to be all the rage in Japan, and keeps the gameplay simple and fun.
Why then did I give it a 2 out of 5? Because either by design or by mistake in Lazrhog’s translation this game is impossibly hard to play. No amount of finger sliding can keep me alive for longer then 30 seconds. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Gameplay in Noiz2sa revolves around shooting brightly colored squares that revolve around bigger squares over a vector graphic cityscape. Shooting them causes them to explode, releasing a small spinning blocks of four grey squares. Collecting these segmented blocks is how you score points and how you stay alive. For every block you collect you get a certain number of points and +10 to your shield to a maximum of 1000. Theoretically, if you could continue to collect blocks faster then you’re getting hit. This theory gets blown to bits almost as fast as you do in this game.  Projectiles seem to hit for anywhere between 200-800 points, and in the harder stages its just flat out impossible to stay alive.
Accepted design philosophy would dictate that you should create a game that people want to keep playing. After a few minutes of watching “Game Over” pop up every 30 seconds I was ready to quit and go back to playing Pool.

I had a pretty good time playing level 1. I could dodge the projectiles and keep my shields up while enjoying the cool landscape I was flying over. By level 5 it was a lost cause. On the ‘Endless Hard’, ‘Endless Extreme’, ‘Endless Insane’ stages I’m lucky to stay alive 20 seconds.

Out of curiosity I downloaded the actual game from Kenta Cho’s website and played that for the purpose of comparison.  I’m glad I did, because it’s definitely not the same game. For one thing, the music is fantastic and adds a lot to the experience (no music in this port).  It’s still not easy, but it makes me feel like I’m playing a game and not some LSD junkie’s fantasy gone horribly wrong. I say that to make one thing clear: Noiz2sa is a great indie shooter. This port to the iPhone and the Touch is not.

If there was a problem I never thought I’d have, it would be having too many games to play. Turns out that impulse spending on eBay for two weeks in a row will fill up your game shelf pretty dang quick.  I think it was Garnett Lee of 1UP Yours fame who coined the term ‘Pile of Shame’. Its the pile of games that you bought with the honest desire to play…then just didn’t have time. My problem is that I had (and have) this list of games in my head that I knew were good and that I’d enjoy playing…and when I saw them on eBay for a good price I couldn’t help myself.

Anyhow, here’s the list.

Nintendo DS

• Advance Wars: Days of Ruin (Started on it, then quit)
• Advance Wars: Duel Strike (ditto)
• Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow
• Harvest Moon DS
• Lunar Knights
• Metroid Prime Hunters
• Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice For All
• Starfox Command
• Lego Star Wars II

PSP

• Final Fantasy Tactics
• Jeanne D’Arc
• Patapon
• X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse

That’s thirteen games that I need to play. Moral of the story? Fred needs to stop looking at eBay.