Break Time

Might as well come out and say it, while I'm here. We've stalled. We've hit hiatus. Lost adrift outside the letter J. Unfortunate, but it's where we are. Why? Because I am a bit of a lazy fellow. Also as I alluded to in the last post, I was working on a book. I finished it a week or two ago... but another is coming up. National Novel Writing Month, the test of a writer's steel. 30 days. 50,000 words. A coherent plot. Many and tried and many have failed, but I usually have succeeded. I've got books that I want to get out of my head, and I have to focus my writing time on it. Ideally I should be doing both, but I'm a simple man with hobbies and junk. I am deciding to prioritize the book over Nintendo game blog.

So I guess we'll see you in December or something. I really do want to finish this. I kind of understand why Phil Sandifer bowed out of the game now. Most of these games are unremarkable, and the remarkable ones have been talked about since they came out. What the hell am I gonna add to Mario or Zelda? We'll find out should we ever get there. Fingers crossed, 'cause I had neat ideas for those posts.

I'll see ya when we come back. If we come back...

This Post Sponsored By FreezingInferno (Ivan "Ironman" Stewart, Jack Nicklaus, Jackal)

I said I had renewed interest and spark in this thing. That was a month ago. I'm sorry, I really am. I went through some shit, and I've been trying to finish the Camp Nanowrimo book I started. In July. I gotta finish that thing by the end of the month... because November 1st is the honest-to-god Nanowrimo. So if updates are a bit... sporadic around here, that's why. While we're here talking about the blog, do feel free to comment on
the thing because I am a fragile little human being who thrives on attention. Talk about old Nintendo games with me. Alright then, enough waffling. We're going to finish our course through the I system. What have we seen, exactly? The futility of war. The insatible hunger of the dread beast GREED. I'm sorry to say we didn't get out of that one untainted. In the furthest reaches we have Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off Road. Now, do you have any idea who that is? I don't. This fellow is another unperson lurking within the secret history. Presumably he made a lot of money by licensing his name to this video game. Normally this would spell disaster, but we're in luck! Rare Limited is behind this one and it's actually quite fun. Another system's gravity affects us, as this game reminds me a lot of RC Pro Am. Except with big monster trucks and a top down perspective. Still, I had a good time with this one. A realization hit me as I played, though. I raced and raced, and the more races I won the more in-game money I got. Not a useless pretend currency like Hollywood Squares, but a useable commodity to upgrade my truck into a racing king unlike any other. Then it hit me. I kept playing to win more money. I had become the dread beast GREED. That's what happens when you tangle with a devil. You awaken the darkness within you. Well, let's get our monster truck out of here and go to the world of the J.

Another sponsored game. Jack Nicklaus Championship Golf or some such nonsense. Hoo boy. There are quite a lot of golf games. Some were already covered by the original Nintendo Project. There are still plenty left for us to tackle. I'm curious to finally play Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf, just to see if that title has much action in it. This is not one of the better golf video games I have played. From the first hole, you are faced with a large lake on the south of the course. The ball goes into that thing every time. Try to hit to the side and you go out of bounds. I accept that I am not very good at it. I also accept that I don't have the patience to get good at it. Jack Nicklaus, it seems, has embraced the corruption of the dread beast GREED in full. At least I was horrified to find myself becoming a greed machine. A poor start to the J's, but I have hope for the next game. I've heard good things.

The good things were right. Jackal is a Konami game. A Konami game adapted from an arcade title. Normally this would fill us with fear. A hateful spite-filled experience would await, to siphon our fake quarters and laugh at us for daring to want more than three minutes of entertainment. That's what I've come to expect, but Jackal is an adaptation. Somewhere along the line, they learned. They exorcised the dread beast GREED, or maybe he was out whispering sweet nothings into the ear of Jack Nicklaus. Either way, Jackal is a damn fine video game. It's what Ikari Warriors should have been; fun. We're in a motor vehicle again; did our souped-up truck follow us through the void? You blow up soldiers and turrets and tanks and you save people. It's a video game. It's fun. It's what playing Nintendo games SHOULD be. Not a wasted opportunity. Not a cheap cash-in. A fun electronic video game. God, I missed these things.