The Intersection Of Automatons and Breakfast Pastries

Posted on October 14, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

In last night’s post, I alluded to breakfast cereal promotions. I decided to tackle that this evening. First up was a disc procured at a garage sale many years ago called 13 Days Of Halloween: Rhythm & Boos. It pertains to Count Chokula cereal. Imagine my disappointment to learn that it is not a game, but an audio CD. I had a similar experience once when investigating a Scooby-Doo disc only to learn it was a video DVD rather than a game. On the plus side, the Rhythm & Boos CD does have a nice 17-minute track of Halloween-type sounds.

No matter, because I still have two representative specimens of a trilogy of promotional discs for the movie Robots from 2005. These games were distributed in specially marked boxes of Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts. I never saw the movie but I claim that this robot is considerably more terrifying than any model of Terminator robot:

Pop-Tarts Presents Rachet and Madame Gasket’s Sweeper Zone

The title Sweeper Zone implied to me that this would be a Minesweeper clone. Actually, no. Your robot’s job is to maneuver into traffic and clean up scrap metal. He can only collect one piece at a time and then return it to the salvage point. It’s not especially difficult and it gets boring very, very quickly. Fortunately, Pop-Tarts cross-promotion shows up so that I can claim that this is a breakfast food tie-in game:

Pop-Tarts Presents Rachet and Madame Gasket’s Sweeper Zone — gameplay

Confusingly, each disc has 2 distinct games (along with a robot building factory activity, and Robots movie promotional material). The second game, which does not receive billing on the CD-ROM, is Chop Shop:

Pop-Tarts Presents Rachet and Madame Gasket’s Sweeper Zone — Chop Shop

Ratchet must catch the falling junk in his box. Catching the Pop-Tarts logo makes the box wider. It feels like something from an Atari 2600 game and frankly gives a bad name to promotional tie-in games.

The second disc is Rescue The Rusties. Again, this disc actually has 2 games. The one that gets mentioned in the title is quite challenging. The object is to navigate the maze and, well, rescue the Rusties, as well as any imperiled Pop-Tarts logos:

There are malicious robots out to get you but you can slow their pursuit by secreting oil slicks.

The second game is Pick-A-Part, a match-3 game! Yes! I’ll have you know that I am well on my way to becoming a grandmaster at this type of game thanks to my continuing practice at Magic Match. The goal of this game is to keep the gears away from he roving robot at the bottom of the screen.

Pop-Tarts Presents Rescue The Rusties — Pick-A-Part game

Even with my considerable skill, I couldn’t complete the second level at this game. Back to Magic Match, I suppose. It should be noted that Pop-Tarts logos were absent from this last game.

The other game in the series is Rodney Copperbottom And The Robot City Heroes. And I think you know that I am willing to expend considerable effort (well, I’ll frequent thrift shops and eBay anyway) in order to obtain it, along with the other prized Gap Kids game.

See Also:

Snow Day: The GapKids Quest — a promo game done well
Taco Bell Tek Kids games — promo games done reasonably well

At MobyGames:

Wendy’s Arthur

Posted on October 13, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

I picked up Arthur’s Wilderness Rescue at my favorite thrift shop, still shrink-wrapped. While originally published in 2000, this was distributed as part of a nutritious Wendy’s kids meal earlier this year. I really need a better way to keep on top of these fast food/video game promotions. I honestly don’t want to be eating at all the popular fast food restaurants on a regular monthly rotation just to be able to catch these. And don’t even get me started on the breakfast cereal promotions.

Moving right along, this is my first experience with the Arthur series, of which I already have several other titles. Only 2 Arthur games are presently in MobyGames, so guess who gets to fill in the rest of the series? This, like the insufferable Mr. Men and Little Miss series, are aimed at a very young set. Ordinarily, that would bother me. Thankfully, this game can be made to move along a little more quickly with extra mouse clicks.

Arthur’s Wilderness Rescue — teacher breaks a leg

So Arthur’s teacher, Mr. Ratburn, takes Arthur and his various anthropomorphic classmates on an educational camping trip to scenic Mt. Rockslide. The hands-on learning begins in earnest when old man Ratburn trips over a log and becomes incapacitated. Arthur is the one in the big glasses. You might be tormented as I was at the question of what animal Arthur was supposed to be– sort of a Goofy-type conundrum. In turns out he is supposed to be an aardvark.

Anyway, the schoolchildren, perhaps not fully understanding the peril of their situation, nonchalantly put their heads together and come up with 3 separate ideas for how they might possibly alert the outside world of their predicament. The player gets to select one of the ideas and then carry it out, exploring the wilderness to try to piece together the plan and accomplish a number of secondary goals along the way.

Arthur’s Wilderness Rescue — wild berries are obviously safe

Meanwhile, there is learning afoot. The above screenshot depicts Arthur and his bunny pal Buster finding a bush of wild berries. Apparently, it’s quite safe to eat wild berries, and delicious to boot (for the record, not where I grew up). For our next lesson, we’re going to go over the cliff clearly marked with a rockslide warning sign:

Arthur’s Wilderness Rescue — rockslides are a blast!

Whee! Such fun, remark the children at the bottom. Later, Arthur and Buster find a shack that has a fallen tree in front of it. After procuring a saw that happened to be laying about in the wilderness, they remove the tree, enter the shack and practice the time-honored “finders-keepers” ethos:

Arthur’s Wilderness Rescue — breaking, entering, and theft

Do breaking, entering, and theft count as separate merit badges, or are they combined into one? It’s interesting to note that you don’t actually need all the junk on offer. I surmise that if I try to approach the game using another solution, other items in the shack would be applicable.

Irresponsible wilderness lessons aside, I have to give the game credit for its marvelous art style. Look carefully– all of the scenery is crafted to appear as watercolor paintings. There is also a trove of information to be unearthed as you photograph the sundry flora and fauna. After doing so, the game regales the player with trivia regarding the subject of the photograph.

Magic Match

Posted on October 5, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

Casual games are big business these days. It’s important to differentiate your casual game from all the other thrown-together dreck out there. To that end, Magic Match specifically bills itself as a “Premium Casual Game”. I must admit that it lives up to that lofty claim.

Magic Match is primarily a “match 3” game. I suspect that there are many games just like this out there (though this is the first one I have ever played). There are a bunch of pieces scattered about a puzzle board and you have to link chains of 3 or more pieces in order to make them vanish.

This game is remarkably elaborate for a simple puzzle game. The graphics, the animation, the music, the soundtrack (using Ogg Vorbis files! alert the Xiph wiki!) that sings the game’s instructions and story to you– oh yeah, and the story. There is one. Something about you questing through 6 stages with many, many puzzle-stops along the way. The game copy lists that there are 126 puzzles among the 6 stages.

There is an assistant imp who helps you along the way. There are dozens of powerups and other items that appear along the way which he kindly explains as they become available. He also describes new obstacles on the board, which would be plain confusing and tedious if the player were to have to consult a manual. Periodically, the imp helper (Giggles) gets to participate in a bonus game which is just a Pac-Man knock-off but with a pair of really unmotivated ghosts for adversaries:

Bottom line: the game works. I.e., I would rather be playing it than writing up this entry about it (which, you should know by now, does not happen often). Back to it…

At MobyGames:

Magic Match: Journey to the Lands of Arcane

Multiplayer Tabletop Educational Game

Posted on September 6, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

Try this on for size: A 4-player, tabletop, educational video game:

Monterey Bay Aquarium — Tabletop educational game

Click for larger image

I visited the Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California, USA today. This was one of the many exhibits. My friend (on the right side of the picture in the white jacket) played while I marveled at how many tech spec boxes I could check in a MobyGames database record, if only I could figure a way to get the platform approved. The object of the tabletop game was to navigate a pair of colored feet around the large game map using your joystick. Then, it was possible to interact with the environment and take pictures by using your local touch screen.

They also had a mission control-themed exhibit. This room rotated through a few films playing on a big screen about some phenomenon relating to marine biology and technological advances that were being made to study it more carefully. Meanwhile, there were a 1/2 dozen terminals up front that had a brief game at the same time that the related film was playing. One film described investigating sunken whales:

Monterey Bay Aquarium — Investigating Sunken Whales

Click for larger image

In this game, a bunch of creatures were coming to feast on the carcass of a dead whale (how about that– not all deceased aquatic creatures float to the surface). Your goal is to photograph as many as possible in the time allotted by pressing on the creature using the touch screen.

RE4: Assignment Ada

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

Back in June, I resolved to try to actually play a game that I could enjoy, a known quantity like Resident Evil 4 on the GameCube. This past weekend, I finally made good on that resolution.

I completed RE4 nearly 2 years ago and then swiftly moved on to something else in my life. When I powered on the game this past weekend, I saw some new menu options that I vaguely recall being unlocked after winning the game. One of the bonus options is called Assignment Ada wherein the player assumes the role of a supporting character named Ada Wong who is tasked with a subquest of collecting 5 MacGuffins.

This <10min quick play on YouTube has me thinking that I worked entirely too hard to clear the Assignment Ada bonus game:

This speed run is predicated on the fact that the enemies in the game are famously slow on the uptake and don’t react quick enough while the player sprints right past them.

The first time I reached the boss of the assignment, I thought he might have been impossible to beat. Much of the battle seemed to consist of so-called quicktime events where failure to press a random pair of buttons at the precise moment when prompted results in immediate death. RE4 is generally a quite popular and accomplished title, which makes it that much more ironic that it has 2 big features that receive so much criticism, including these quicktime events (the other point of contention is the escort mission, which I am probably alone in enjoying). These event junctures instantly transform a game of skill into a game of chance.

I quit in frustration the first night and gave it another go the next night. This time, I mostly honed my combat technique and studied the most efficient and, more importantly, stylized methods for dispatching foes. When I made it to the boss, I was extremely well-equipped with both weapons and health items. With enough practice I finally took him down.

And then I watched the above video and figured out that there was a much quicker way to take care of him. Figures. Reminds me of a certain boss in Resident Evil: Code Veronica (this guy, the Nosferatu)– first time around, he finally succumbed after I threw every single weapon in my cache at him. The second time through the game, I finally noticed the remarkably useful, specialized weapon nearby that the game was doing everything it could to nudge me towards.

Anyway, the good news is that Resident Evil 4 is still fun.

See Also:

Reliving Resident Evil for the GameCube

At MobyGames:

Resident Evil 4

Disney’s Lion King Hot Shots

Posted on August 11, 2008 by Multimedia Mike

My new favorite thrift shop had a whole bunch of games from a series called Disney’s Hot Shots. Figuring that MobyGames already has decent Disney game coverage, I conservatively picked up a pair that were only a dollar apiece. I should have snatched every one that they had since none are in the database yet (at least not with the “Disney’s Hot Shots” prefix). These games come from that most conducive of genres for getting easy MobyGames points: the casual game. These 2 casual games are based on The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride from 1998.

The first of the pair is Swampberry Sling. I guess you could classify this as a Disney-themed first person shooter. Defend your position with swampberries against snakes, crocodiles, fish, vultures, frogs, and other threats. But don’t hit the babysitters Timon and Pumbaa, who frequently wander through the warzone on bicycles and windsurf boards:

Hey, it’s every bit as fun as the jewel case copy promises. The second game is Cub Chase and is an obvious Pac-Man homage. Instead of eating pellets, the cubs work to leave their paw prints all over the maze. Timon, Pumbaa, and Zazu stand in as the ghost metaphors (babysitters in this story arc), and there are ways to neutralize the babysisters such as a hyena mask or a log with tasty bugs. This is the hyena mask in action, paralyzing Timon with mortal terror:

Here’s hoping that no one else bothered to pick up any of the other Hot Shots titles at the thrift shop so that they will still be there next week when I’m in the neighborhood.

See Also:

At MobyGames:

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Author: Multimedia Mike

Wendy’s Arthur

Magic Match

Multiplayer Tabletop Educational Game

RE4: Assignment Ada

Disney’s Lion King Hot Shots