If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich (Mission Impossible, Monopoly)

I put this off for far too long. Turns out there was a reason for that. Due to wanting to hit a naming theme of three next time, we only have two games today. Neither of them were that good. Mission Impossible sure does live up to its name. We were six years away from the Tom Cruise vehicle with the guy getting crushed by the elevator and that real tense hacking sequence and blowing up a helicopter with exploding gum and shit. Instead we get this. Blah blah accept your mission, message self-destructs. I begin the game, walk forward, and shoot the first person I see... prompting a helicopter to arrest me for killing an unarmed civilian. Lesson learned. I switch to a black guy who punches things and don't punch that person as I move forward. A car comes and sends me flying. The third person is a guy with boomerangs. He accidentally kills a civilian. Game over. Back to start. Okay, so then I explore, get a tip to go into an alley, and... keep exploring. Nonlinear levels. Ah, good. Aimless wandering and unsureness of what to do. Molotov cocktails that drain your health. Men with riot shields in sewers who push you into the water and kill you. Great. This is just great. It lives up to its name alright. I wasn't fond of it.

Nor was I all that fond of Monopoly on NES. I feel obligated to waffle a bit about it, considering that I've made Lady Capitalism into A Thing here and this is a board game all about capitalism and the free market and bankrupting everyone else to win at capitalism. It's what I thought M.U.L.E. was. Why does this need to exist? Game show adaptations I understand, but this? You can play this game at home, on a table, and the price of entry is far less than the electronic video game version. Okay, you lose out on being able to play Monopoly by yourself... but was that a high demand? I played Monopoly tonight with a CPU. It wasn't as fun as playing with a real person. I do have memory of the board game, of course. Snow days with my young niece. Frigid winter days stuck in the house with no school, and she demanded to play Monopoly. Ours was the Canadian edition with Canadian street names and railroads, but it was the same game. Newfoundland was represented by the cheap purple squares. Come to think of it, I just remembered another Monopoly game we had. The CD-ROM version. That one had fancy 3D graphics for moving across the board, and you could play over the Internet. There's a reason to buy the game version; bankrupting some silly son of a bitch from Iowa, in the comfort of your own home. Not this one. Even if it was legitimized by Howard and Nester. We lost. They won. Arthur the machine mind out-capitalized me after 15 minutes and made all the money and net worth. Lady Capitalism sings his praises... for now. She's underestimated me, and all the other hard game beaters out there who suffer through the things her acolytes create via microchip alchemy, in order to make her monopoly of video gaming.

We're monsters.

Use The Shrink Potion On The Glove But Beware Of Bugs (Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Millipede, Milon's Secret Castle)

Well, we've got another whopper here tonight. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out. What could have been another licensed disaster, saved by the first party. Everyone loves Punch-Out! Oh boy, video boxing! This is quite the good NES game and it's beloved by many. I think it's pretty good. Now to continue waffling about it for a paragraph. Unlike the other usual licensed adventures we've dealt with, this one is more of a direct challenge. Look no further than the commercial. Iron Mike is laughing at you! The world heavyweight champion boxer of two realms, he is! Both our planet, and that weirdo Nintendo land where mushrooms sing and fairies dance. The WVBA needs an underdog to rise up. Little Mac has become his own character, but he's basically a character expy here in 1987. He is You. Hell, the arcade original just had a wireframe man. Little Mac is you, and you're facing gigantic hulking boxer brutes created from the finest microchip alchemy that nonexistant lands have to offer. Appropriately enough, when I played for the blog tonight I made it to Soda Popinski before getting floored. The Cold War's not ready to end in 1987, but one might make it to Mike Tyson. God help you if you do, because he's tough. I've never done it. Daniel Sexbang's never done it. Mike Matei's done it! How in the hell does Iron Mike not make it on the top of hardest video games list? Forget the Turbo Tunnel, forget beating Ghosts n Goblins twice, forget goddamn Silver Surfer. This is the shit right here. Perfect reflexes and split-second timing are required. Iron Mike was a tough champ in 1987, and he's a tough champ here. Life imitates art; Mike Tyson is a son of a bitch to beat in the ring.

Then in 1990 they took him out for a white guy named Mr. Dream. Valya's champion boxer packs just as much of a punch. Everything else is exact. What's next? Bugs.

I've spoken a lot about tabletop gaming in some of the off posts. It's relevant here because of Incompetence Quest, one of the campaigns I'm involved in. A nice fellow is playing an evil cleric whose loyalty lies with the god of death (not Peko, but Nerull). His favorite trick is summoning gigantic monstrous centipedes to distract the enemy forces and take care of them. Stelle would be right at home in Millipede. Another Williams arcade port from Hal Labs. Millipede is fun! The dread beast GREED's lumbering specter really only rears its head in the later days of the arcade, when the games actually ended. Millipede is bottomless. It was created to suck up quarters and eat away time at pizza parlors. Its main form of control, the trackball, is lacking here. Funny enough, it isn't even the millipede that causes death frequently here; it's those goddamned spiders. They like to crash into you. Little bastards. The dread beast doesn't know when to just let you have a good time. I checked. Millipede's high score is over 10 million points. I didn't even get to 150k. Oh well. I still had fun!

Then we come to Milon's Secret Castle. How lovely. Once again we're haunted by the Nerd. This is the sort of game that thrived in Japan, but Japan was not our shores in the late 80's. It is a nonintuitive adventuring platformer where the goal is to discover all the required hidden nonsense the creators stashed away in nondescript blocks. It also appears to require an exact order to go about things and purchase items, barring continue codes or some way to exit levels. I am willing to blame my mild dislike of Milon here on a culture shock. Someone like Shinya Arino can do it, and has. He seemed to enjoy it, while over here our western nerd yelled about its cryptic nature. Here I stand, in the middle. Milon is not the best, but is not the worst. Were I younger, and had the head start of discovering that things could be broken and blocks could be shoved, I could see myself dredging up the hidden goodies in this one. Maybe I'll get at it someday. Maybe I won't. Who knows? We've got a lot of Nintendo games to play.

Seems like an impossible mission, don't it?

Saturday French Toast (August 2nd, 2014)

August! It's the birth month of the new Nintendo Project! In just two weeks, this ridiculous idea of reviving an abandoned blog from a better writer than me will be a year old! Here are some things I have been doing in my off time.

-The Maximo games! I beat the first one and am about halfway through the second. It's an interesting attempt at putting Ghosts n Goblins into 3D except not really because there's only about two things in these games that feel like classic Ghosts n Goblins. The rest... well, they can get kind of obnoxious. The first game has limited camera control, tricky jumps, and obnoxious enemies... along with a save system you have to pay in-game money for. That meant a chunk of my time was spent replaying level 1 to grind out lives and cash. The second game has camera control and free saving! It also added a mechanic where you grip a platform's edge with your sword! Sadly, it feels like putting that ability gave the developers carte blanche to put in very wide "pixel jumps", or it feels that way.

-The Cornetto trilogy! I'm finally going to sit down and watch all three of these since I've not seen The World's End. I viewed Shaun Of The Dead last night, and it's still great. I remember seeing this movie in theaters during the start of my second year of university. That was 10 years ago. I am officially Old As Fuck. It's a great film though. Today's agenda is Hot Fuzz, and maybe The World's End tonight.

-Time And... The... Rani...? I had this on the computer last night at 12:45 and I wanted to ensure I fell asleep. So I threw on a piece of classic Doctor Who that not many people like. It's the only McCoy story I've not gone through. Let me tell you, my experience with this sort of matched the Doctor's own. He regenerates and wakes up as a confused Scottish man in a tacky coat. I fell asleep and woke up to Bonnie Langford screaming as a monster held her in place, while the Doctor was hooked to a machine and his thoughts were being transferred to... a giant purple brain. W-what?

Alright, comments section is officially a free-for-all. Talk about anything you like. Back on Monday.

I'm Still Here

Sorry about going dark for a week. I've got a friend visiting, and he's only here once a year. Hence I prioritized hanging about with him over esoteric writeups of Nintendo games and pretend gods I invented to sound smarter than I really am.

I may need to take another week, if only to focus on a handful of writing projects that I really should focus on. Nothing major here. So... I'll come back in another week. Look forward to it! There'll be talk about Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! Already the creative ideas are flowing. See you soon.

Might Makes Right (Might And Magic, Mighty Bomb Jack, Mighty Final Fight)

As we've said before, the grey box was powerful. Mighty, if you will. We've got three games with similar names here, let's run with the thing. Nintendo, the makers of the box... now they were mighty. They still are mighty, with their black box and tablet picking up steam. The tiny red rectangle I bought from them 16 months ago is equally as mighty. Our three games today, in a sense, are almost Dickensian ghosts of sheer might. Let's start with Might and Magic on NES, itself an adaptation of a computer RPG. It's younger than I thought; the original version only came out in 1986. This console port is post-dated 1990. The end of the Wall and the end of the War, but you wouldn't know it. I've played the original PC version of Might and Magic. Well, attempted to play. It is brutal and unforgiving, a throwback to the old days. I talked about this in one of the off day posts a while back, but it has a computer DM who doesn't have a care about anything besides beating you down. Might and Magic fits like a glove when it comes to that. I never got out of the first town in my PC attempts. There was a lot of trying to survive one fight without half the party dying. To the NES version's credit, it only took two fights before someone kicked the bucket. Then we checked a leather satchel and spikes jutted out. TPK. There's might here, alright... a might that's too strong for any atrophied RPG fan in 2014 to survive. I'm sure it lit up the world in the days when we shook our fists at the Soviet Union, but not today. Not now.


Mighty Bomb Jack is the "present" of the Famicom, then. It's a very unique sort of game with lots of hidden mechanics and secrets and things buried deep within. Bombs are a sort of might, when you think about it. An explosion created by alchemical might. Our hero, Bomb Jack... is he a master of them? He collects them like a wild hoarder, and some bonus or good thing happens if you collect lit bombs in a specific order. Look, I didn't get very far in Mighty Bomb Jack. It's decent, but what I really remember it for are the Game Center CX episodes about it. Shinya Arino, the tenacious hero of lands that now exist, facing down some of the toughest dread beasts that video games could come up with in the name of alchemy and Lady Capitalism. It was a struggle that lasted several episodes, and culminated with a final battle in front of a captivated audience of fans. Like a Spirit Bomb feeding positive energy to a Hard Game Beater. Japan. You gotta love it. You gotta love Arino. Mighty Bomb Jack is okay and it's even on the Virtual Console. I think you can even download it on your red rectangle.

Mighty Final Fight. 1993 now. So everything's dying. Capcom actually cared to publish this one here instead of handing it off to Nintendo, so there's that! We also face the problem we had with Mario Is Missing. A Super Nintendo game has bled into the world of our little grey box, and filled it with more power than it can handle. Mind, it is the best game we're looking at today. I've beaten it. Short, but a lot of fun and not obnoxious like most other beat-em-ups. Even when it's dying, especially when it's dying, in fact... the NES has more power than we can comprehend. Enough to exorcise the dread beast GREED, whose arcade hooks gave birth to Final Fight in the first place. The hyper-realistic supersprites of quarter insertion are smoothed out, giving way to cute and colorful graphics. This is the age of Kirby and his Adventure, and the grace of the Goddess Valya brightens everything up. Here, then, we learn the secret of the NES. No matter how much bad was made for it, there's still good in there. Still power. Even to its last breaths in a year of dynamite heads, lock-on technology, and final fantasies, the little grey box fights back with everything it's got.

Now that's what might is.

Saturday French Toast (July 19th, 2014)

Missed Friday again. Wasn't feeling it. I'll make it up to you all, probably, if I'm not too busy this week. I've got a friend dropping in to visit. He is a madman to such a degree that he makes THIS madman into the straight man in the comedy act that is our friendship.

Seriously. We do co-op Let's Plays together whenever we're both around, and this week will be no exception. Oh, how I have plans for that fellow. Decisively tricky ones. I'll leave you with a Youtube playlist of our antics so far.

Also a question: Do you like Let's Plays?

Game Boy Color Grab Bag

I don't really have a lot to yell about today. For your enjoyment, an assortment of things I've been experiencing and enjoying.

-Shantae! A friend of mine got me the Director's Cut of Shantae: Risky's Revenge on Steam. I played a bit of it and it was nice, but now I've decided to hold off on it until I actually clear the original Game Boy Color release. Shantae's quite lovely, really. It's everything I love about games like Castlevania II and Zelda II, but without the naggling flaws and black sheep status that makes those other games punchlines on the Internet. Hell, I gave Wayforward 12 Kickstarter dollars last year for the new Shantae, and I get that when it drops. That's the whole genie trilogy right there. I'm glad the series is an actual series now, and not just a very rare technical wonder for Game Boy Color. Here's a secret: I adore the Game Boy Color. Which leads us to...

-Ghosts 'n Goblins on Game Boy Color. This game has well and truly kidnapped my heart and soul, and god help me if I've not succumbed to Stockholm Syndrome. I even recorded a Let's Play of it. Stages 1 and 2 last night, Stages 3 to 6 this morning. Then I realized I fucked up the footage of the latter batch... and redid them. Also this morning. I'm surprised. So many people called this one of the hardest video games ever. The NES version is trickier than the GBC one, but... I don't see it. I see something different. GnG is just insidious. Parts of its design near the end of the game feel built out of proper malice towards the player. This can't even be attributed to its arcade roots, as some of the insidious elements were added TO the Famicom version by Micronics. Ridiculous and brutal... but by god, it has a charm. I love it more than the NES version.

-Club Nintendo put out their Elite rewards yesterday. There has been some complaining about the lack of quality titles. My rebuttal is as follows: They are giving away Earthbound for free. They are giving away Earthbound. For free. How you can claim this promotion is a flop is beyond me. Even the gold awards are pretty good. Zelda II! Metroid! Kid Icarus! All adventurous spaces we've explored before on the blog! A shame that Kid Icarus is the NES original on Wii U, as opposed to the superior 3D Classics version... but hey, the price is right! I grabbed Super Mario Land 2 for myself, and I'm pleased with that. I did better last year, as I was able to snag Link's Awakening DX. That turned out to be one of the best goddamn Zelda games ever. I just realized all these points have to do with the Game Boy Color. I may be a bit of a fan of that thing. On the bright side, I know what to waffle about next Tuesday!

See you tomorrow for Mighty games.