Gaming Pathology

433,000 New Games

I already have hundreds of games stockpiled. But that’s not good enough, oh goodness, no. I had to go and by 433,000 new games. Would you believe these new acquisitions?

First, there’s a CD-ROM (it’s actually 3) that alleges to contain 100,000 games. Not satisfied with that, the very same companies (jewel cases both list Viva Media and Selectsoft) released a DVD-ROM claiming 333,000 games.

So what’s the wager? Do you really think the games contain so many games? Or do you think it’s another situation like the 1997-in-1 game handheld unit that actually contained 14 unique games but hundreds of “levels” for each? What does Occam’s Razor have to say about the situation?

Yeah, there is just a handful of games with thousands of uninspired “levels” for each. I tried a few of the games on the first (of 3) CD-ROMs covering the 100,000 games title but most of them are of a quality level that would have been embarrassing 15 years ago (the 100,000 games box lists a copyright of 2008; the 333,000 games DVD lists 2009).

Thankfully, someone has already entered the 333,000 games DVD into MobyGames, absolving me of the responsibility.

In a way, I felt relieved to learn that there weren’t 333,000 unique games on the DVD. I have my doubts that so many unique games have yet to exist in the history of computer gaming. Still, confronted with so many choices, I feel absolutely daunted. I wouldn’t even know where to begin to play a game. Similarly, I have over 180 game demos downloaded onto my PlayStation 3; in those rare situations that I feel inspired to sit down and try a game, I can’t decide what to play. I suspect this is a familiar situation that leads to “500 channels and nothing’s on” sort of mentality.

Posted by Multimedia Mike under Puzzle Games,Windows Games | Comments (0)

NES Achievements

It’s amazing that game consoles track your achievements automatically in this day and age. Why, back in my day, I had to document every one of my achievements by hand. And you’d better believe I liked it that way!

I was really proud when I won my first NES game (though I probably shouldn’t have been — it was Konami’s Life Force while using the notorious Konami code). No matter, I still remember it as the first game I ever won. When I had gone on to win my first 10 games, I had no trouble recalling their titles and the order in which I completed them. After about 10, it got harder to keep the list straight in my head, so I started to record the titles on these little yellow pieces of paper and hang them on the wall near my NES.

I recently came across the list neatly rolled up in a box. It’s time to photograph it, post it, and then let the physical item go.

Here are few achievements that stand out now, especially since I have spent the last decade or so reading internet reviews about how ridiculously difficult certain games were (a.k.a. games that were Nintendo Hard):

• The Adventures of Bayou Billy
• Battletoads
• Ninja Gaiden
• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I have read no shortage of retro-reviews indicating that anyone who claims to have won these games is a filthy liar. Well, I did win each one fair and square, back in the day. Never used a Game Genie, although I did often have Nintendo Power advising me. I’m not saying the games weren’t difficult. In fact, Battletoads had me downright stressed one summer as I was determined to win it and rented it 3 times in a row to achieve that goal. Afterwards, I wrote a letter to Nintendo Power with some tips and strategies I discovered along the way and they actually wrote a letter back, congratulating me for finishing Battletoads!

Another achievement I must mention is that I once made it to level 63 in Duck Hunt. Trust me, that’s the kind of accomplishment that comes from a hot summer afternoon of total boredom and nothing else to play. I wouldn’t recommend trying to beat that record.

On the flip side, I thought Mike Tyson was remarkably difficult to beat in Punch-Out!! Here’s a situation where most people I knew claimed they beat him on their very first try. Not me; I worked for weeks to beat him and I was briefed on all his tells and strategies well in advance.

Anyway, here are my achievements: 100+ games completed, mostly during a period of 3 years. Note that I counted the second quest of The Legend of Zelda as a separate game (#4 in this list). That’s controversial. It was certainly different enough to be a separate title.

Read more…

Posted by Multimedia Mike under Gaming Memories | Comments (0)

Letting Go

I recently unloaded a large swath of my personal video game collection. I gave the items to friends and to video game museums, free of charge. As is my custom, I took photos of everything I gave away, just for sentimental effect. I thought I’d post the photos in order to give readers ample opportunity to exclaim “OMG! You should have tried to sell whatever presumably rare item on eBay for hundreds of dollars!” It’s out of my hands now. Don’t worry, though. I didn’t give away all of my video games yet. I basically got rid of everything that’s not on optical media. Here is my complete game collection and I still have around 700 DOS/Windows games.

Click on any image for a much higher resolution photograph.

NES Console Lot

• Official NES top loader: The SNES-style NES control deck; it still has the $99.95 price tag on it which is what I paid for it used. Hey, it was worth it. I bought it in (I think) 2002 and the thing was far more reliable than any standard front-loaders that I still owned at the time (all since discarded).
• RetroUSB’s NES PowerPak: I was one of the first people to buy one of these. It took me about 3 years to finally get around to trying to use it and I couldn’t make it work. I didn’t try very hard, though, and I didn’t care enough to try harder. I hope the new owner has better luck.
• 2 new style controllers; 1 old style controller
• 1 Light Zapper Gun (in the original grey styling; purchased 1989)

NES Cartridge Lot #1
Dragon Warrior II is certainly the most valuable of this lot.

Read more…

Posted by Multimedia Mike under Gaming Memories,NES Games,SNES Games | Comments (1)

Quest For The Code

Captain Novolin was a notorious SNES title about a diabetic superhero who fought off sugary snacks. If Seanbaby’s review of the game is to be believed, that’s about all there was to this (probably) well-meaning game that only wanted to educate children about certain health problems but has nonetheless gone down in video game history as a silly joke.

On that note, I present Starbright’s Quest for the Code, a star-studded video game assembled to teach kids about asthma. Actually, the game isn’t geared towards kids in general but rather is targeted specifically towards kids suffering from asthma. I have no idea if this game was ever marketed or intended to turn any kind of profit. The still shrink-wrapped copy I procured for a dollar in a spent shop stipulated that it was not to be sold but should be freely given to an asthmatic child.

Here’s the story: Diane Sawyer — lending her newscasting talent to this charitable cause — breaks a story about a giant machine that has just landed in town and is threatening to release all manner of asthma triggers. The machine is run by one Mucus Airgon, someone who apparently really has it in for asthmatics and has a gang of 7 henchvillains creatively named “The Evil Seven”. So you know that 7 levels are going to be involved somehow. I should clarify at this point that the main thrust of the game is to educate asthmatic children how to live with asthma and that it does not have to be debilitating. It seems that Airgon’s grand plan is simply to demoralize asthmatic children. The gap between that and the “Profit!!” step remains a smidge hazy but I’m certain I have seen stranger premises in other games during this Gaming Pathology project.

The title of the game refers to the acquisition of 7 pieces of a code which will be used to destroy Airgon’s asthma-triggering machine. Or some such.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. plays the guide, Cyrus and shows up, Matrix-style (as in, he mysteriously contacts you through your computer). He leads you first through a lung simulator to teach you how the human respiratory system operates and how asthma and its triggers act upon the system. I had a sinking feeling about the game play aspect of the proceedings as soon as I saw the first activity — cleaning up snot in the nose.

Now, I’ve put up with a lot of outlandishly silly game play concepts for this blog (measuring and cutting drapes continues to stand out in my mind). But how creatively bankrupt does your premise need to be before cleaning up snot becomes a viable game play mechanic?

I hate to dwell too much on this point since this is most likely a kind-hearted charity effort. The game has 3 main types of game play, at least during the levels that I played, and not counting the cursory snot cleanup. The first type involves the player dragging different types of asthma triggers over areas of a room where that type of trigger can occur. The game then challenges the player about a good course of action for mitigating that trigger. This is seen above. The second type of game play, encountered after the player has finished auditing a room, is a simple point and click pixel hunt to determine the location of a member of the Evil Seven. After locating the dreaded villain, there is a trivia round where the player must answer a number of asthma-related trivia questions correctly in order to clear the level.

There is at least one other type of game play on offer– after clearing the first 2 levels, the player gets to shoot mucus in an Asteroids clone. There is likely to be another minigame after the next 4 villains, based on the way the villains are grouped in the stage select screen.

As mentioned, a lot of famous people lent their voice talent to their game. Here’s the full list:

• Cuba Gooding, Jr. as your guide, Cyrus
• Diane Sawyer as “The Newscaster”
• Kelsey Grammer as Mucus Airgon, leader of the Evil Seven
• General H. Norman Schwarzkoff as Robo-Roach
• Whoopi Goldberg as Moldy
• Funkmaster Flex as Mold Mob game announcer
• Jeff Goldblum as Alex Dander
• Shaquille O’Neal as The Fuminator
• Glenn Close as Chalktisha
• Gwyneth Paltrow as Perfuma
• Minnie Driver as Smokita

I would enjoy learning more about how this game was produced. The credits are quite extensive and a lot of work and talent went into it. Maybe one day I’ll put together a highlight reel of some of the villains from this largely Smacker-based game.

Posted by Multimedia Mike under Action Games,Childrens Games,Trivia Games,Windows Games | Comments (1)

Halloween Special

It’s Halloween and I decided to do some MobyGames screenshot recon on two appropriately themed games. Inspired by Benj Edwards’ recent vintage scan, I decided to try out an entry in the Splatterhouse series. Further, I sprung for the iPhone version of Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition, the most expensive iPhone app I have purchased to date (a whopping US$7).

First up is Splatterhouse for the NEC TurboGrafx-16. For the uninitiated, this series revolves around a slight modification of the classic slasher horror movie formula– the hero of the game (Rick, apparently, though the game itself doesn’t see fit to name him) is actually the machete-wielding, hockey mask-wearing, nigh-unstoppable killing machine. His target is not a camp full of teens but rather a house filled with ungodly abominations in which his girlfriend is being held captive. The graphics are decent for the early 16-bit video gaming area. There are a few rooms with many mirrors and I think you know what that translates to in a supernatural action game:

Yeah, that reflection is going to jump out of the mirror, many times over.

Rick’s weapon of choice is a large stick that happens to be laying around in most levels, which is a good thing because this big burly dude is unable to carry the stick while climbing up ladders to different levels. Different levels seem to have signature weapons that are highlighted in the level card, like shotgun, spears, and machetes. Even though he’s only the stage 3 boss, this chainsaw-handed monstrosity is easily the most menacing thing I saw in the game. The fact that Rick is facing off with him using a shotgun makes it perhaps the most badass scene in the entire game, even if the chainsaw sound effects were lacking.

In fact, many of the boss battles are quite creative, especially in level 2 when Rick fights a haunted room in what I dubbed The Ikea Nightmare:

You have to dodge falling debris, then fight a floating chair, 3 floating knives, and finally the painting. Oh, and don’t be standing under the chandelier because that will fall before it’s all over. Several boss battles have a “One more thing…” moment, so you have to be on your toes while the game still gives you control of the character.

While the game sticks well to a haunted / gory mansion motif, the decor grows incongruous at the end of stage 4 as I thought the character had just stumbled into Dracula’s castle. In this seemingly interminable hallway, Rick finds a golden machete as well as a gaggle of disembodied heads revolving around an inverted cross.

This confused me somewhat — is the inverted cross supposed to be an evil symbol? After a little digging, apparently, it’s construed to be an evil symbol to some. But compared to the rest of the horrors in the mansion, if you have to explain why this one particular artifact is evil, it’s probably not doing its job. Though I’m thinking that having the heads revolve around the number “666″, or worse yet, fighting a bunch of flying “6″s would have seemed ultimately hokey (not unlike fighting the giant Decepticon symbol in the Japanese Transformers NES game).

All in all, this was a lot of fun. It was a lot of trial and error in the classic side-scroller sense, but still enjoyable. Then again, remember what I’m used to doing for the sake of this blog — playing forgotten, obscure, or just plain bad games that no one else wants to bother with, all in order to fill gaps in the database. It’s nice to play a more famous and generally better game every now and then.

Then there’s Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition. I’m a fairly big fan of the Resident Evil series in general and I qualify the 4th installment as one of my very favorite action games. And I have to give credit where credit is due — RE4:ME on the iPhone is quite the technical achievement and will wow disbelievers who doubt what the iPhone can do in the graphical department. (This illustrative screenshot is just a prerendered cinematic, though.)

All that said, I really don’t like RE4:ME. The game allegedly follows the primary flow of the original game, only dumbed down slightly given the limited input facilities of the iPhone. And those limited input facilities are really the rub here.

Honestly, I have had this same problem with a lot of iPhone games. Sure, you can touch the screen and you can tilt or shake the unit, but that doesn’t necessarily help with many different types of games. Such as this. Here, the player must use the touch-directional pad on the left to move and then use the context buttons on the right to switch to different modes (aiming vs. moving vs. using knife). Manually reloading the weapon is performed by shaking the unit which is a nice touch once you get used to it.

The beginning of the game starts Leon in an enclosed village area reminiscent of the original village from RE4. First, Leon can practice blasting the possessed Spaniards, slashing item boxes, and picking up items. After knocking off enough enemies, the first chainsaw dude appears. Even though I had already collected the shotgun, I couldn’t take him down. This was exacerbated by the fact that there are still many other enemies coming at the player at the same time as Mr. Chainsaw. It’s not effective use of the 6 shotgun shells to use them on the lower level goons and it’s unwieldy to constantly switch between weapons.

Plus, the very detailed graphics are on a very small screen and it’s quite difficult to focus on them for extended periods without growing fatigued or suffering from a headache.

See Also:

• Bonus mission in Resident Evil 4 GameCube version

At the Apple App Store:

• Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition

At MobyGames:

• Splatterhouse
• Resident Evil 4: Mobile Edition

Posted by Multimedia Mike under Action Games,TurboGrafx-16 Games,iPhone Games | Comments (0)

Hello Kitty Bubblegum Girlfriends

Oh look, another Hello Kitty video game that isn’t in MobyGames yet. Dang it. All right, let’s just get this over with.

Really, I shouldn’t have a foul attitude about this. My last outing with a Hello Kitty game — Hello Kitty Dream Carnival — was actually quite the delightful romp. Hello Kitty Bubblegum Girlfriends is more of the same — colorful, simple, and actually very fun. I’m impressed that, even though Dream Carnival and Bubblegum Girlfriends were developed by different houses, they both carry a very consistent style. This probably goes to show that Sanrio exercises tight control over its licensees.

This game, like the other one, is a series of 8 rather well-engineered minigames. Here are the ones I found the most interesting.

First, I was all over Sky Bubble Popper, which is a variation of the Puzz Loop formula of which I have become a large fan thanks to Luxor and StoneLoops:

I always love a good Breakout clone and Cupcake Trampoline delivers while being the most exploitative minigame on offer:

Hello Kitty and her bunny friend use a trampoline to keep the squirrel in play grabbing ice cream cones and cupcakes. I hope the squirrel at least gets a cut of the spoils for her role.

I absolutely could not figure out what was going on with Bubble Gum Taxi which has something to do with picking up Tetris-looking pieces from the conveyor belt and placing them on a puzzle:

Crazy Cookie Race eventually shaped up to be my favorite game and it had many pieces:

Place cookies from the bottom shelf onto the light outlines moving on the conveyor belts (first and third from the top). Those cookies come out baked and decorated on the second and fourth belts where they must be manually picked up and placed into the appropriate boxes on top before they reach the end of the belt. You’re going through a lot of ingredients but Hello Kitty’s friends have many more for you to use. You just need to click on them when they arrive with the ingredients and they will cheerfully drop them into the cauldron.

Interesting tech trivia: The credits for the game give a shout out to the Lua programming language, implying that it must be used in the game somehow.

See Also:

• Hello Kitty Dream Carnival
• Luxor (and a few other casual games)

At MobyGames:

• Hello Kitty Bubblegum Girlfriends
• StoneLoops! of Jurassica
• Puzz Loop variants
• Breakout variants
• Games that use Lua

Posted by Multimedia Mike under Action Games,Childrens Games,Windows Games | Comments (0)