Actual Video Games

Posted on December 25, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I put my iPod on random play recently and out of the thousands of songs loaded, “Jump” by Kris Kross came up. I construe this as a supernatural sign that I can no longer avoid my duty of playing the notorious Kris Kross Sega CD game and entering it into MobyGames. This is something I have been putting off since I first started in with the Sega CD titles for this experiment last March.

Kris Kross Gonna Make Ya Wanna… Jump! Jump!

I have long dreaded this day. But I recognize that if I can nail down just one of the games, the other ones should be fairly simple to write up and enter in the database. I can’t quite articulate why these games give me such pause. I mean, I’ve suffered through some real stinkers this year. But perhaps it’s the fact that I once tried to wrap my head around these so-called Make My Video games well before this experiment began, and I knew what was in store, trying to articulate this game for the sake of the database.

It’s not uncommon to hear jaded game geeks clamor for new, innovative types of gameplay. Be careful what you wish for. When CD-based games first hit the market, developers weren’t quite sure how best to use the capacity (I wager that there are similar growing pains right now surrounding the new Nintendo Wii controller scheme).

Maybe I should just get to the point. There was a series of 4 games called “Make My Video” released for the Sega CD system. Each one starred a different musical act popular at the time (circa 1992). The gameplay revolved around intense, real-time video editing. The four different games technically do qualify as games since there are goals to achieve. The goal takes the shape of editing together a video according to varying specifications.

The four acts in the different games are Kris Kross, Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, INXS, and C+C Music Factory. That latter one went by a slightly different title than the rest, Power Factory Featuring C+C Music Factory, which has thankfully already been entered into the database. I thought it was an unrelated title until I did a deeper investigation today and recognized that it’s part of the same series.

Seth Green stars in Marky Mark’s Make My Video

I started with the Marky Mark title since I actually have the manual for that title. It doesn’t matter. The game, or rather the gameplay, makes so little sense that I would find it a wonder if any player ever succeeded in any of these video editing missions. Each game has some setup, some raison d’être for the task at hand. In this episode, teenage siblings (the brother played by Seth Green) argue about the ideal contents of a Marky Mark video. After much heated debate, they enlist the help of a boxer and his trainer, a trio of airheaded teenage girls, a garage band, and their own parents, all for advice on a perfect Marky Mark video.

Marky Mark Make My Video — Video editing

Once you select a song from among 3 Marky Mark smash hits and have solicited specifications, you are thrust into the editing screen seen above. There are 3 video channels playing– one is the original music video and the other is random footage that, as Seanbaby hypothesized, is most likely public domain stock footage. You switch between the 3 channels using the A, B, and C controller buttons. The control pad allows you to select among various effects, such as color filters, blocking filters, strobes, freezes, lyric subtitles, and others.

Marky Mark Make My Video — Final product

The “level”, such as it is, lasts as long as the video does (4 1/2 minutes for “Good Vibrations”). When finished, the game torments you with the fruits of your own labor by playing the final product back for you. At the end, the girls have the audacity to criticize me, almost as if they’re forgetting that they’re the ones who custom-ordered a Marky Mark music video.

One down and 2 to go, but oooooooowwwwwwwwww, does this hurt! Christmas Day was not meant for this kind of misery. The setup in the Kris Kross game is that a radio disc jockey is hosting a radio program in which callers are helpfully offering advice about their ideal Kris Kross video. One woman essentially wants a version of their video for “I Missed The Bus” but without all the shots of alarm clocks because she disapproves of the devices. I must concede that this title offered a marginal improvement over the last since if I fail to deliver a video up to spec, the DJ refuses to play it back for me.

Kris Kross Make My Video — Playback denied

Is that supposed to be a punishment for me? Okay, getting close. I just need to listen to Michael Hutchence of INXS crooning about how he needs me tonight and I’ll be done. The setup for the INXS one is that 2 obnoxious women in a bar are monopolizing the pool table. Alternately slack-jawed and nerdy guys are trying to pick them up and some tough, leather-clad chicks are trying to earn the privilege to play their Megadeth videos on the bar’s TV (their Megadeth VHS tape looks so quaint these days). So the pool ladies do what comes naturally and challenge all comers to create superior INXS videos.

And as a point of fact, “Need You Tonight” is not one of the three videos available for editing here. For reference:

Make My Video: Marky Mark: “Good Vibrations”, “I Need Money”, “You Gotta Believe”
Make My Video: Kris Kross: “Jump”, “Warm It Up”, “I Missed The Bus”
Make My Video: INXS: “Heaven Sent”, “Not Enough Time”, “Baby Don’t Cry”
Power Factory Featuring C+C Music Factory: “Gonna Make You Sweat”, “Here We Go”, “Things That Make You Go Hmmm”

The INXS selections make sense in light of the fact that the game was published in 1992, and the songs come from the 1992 album Welcome To Wherever You Are. In fact, that album’s cover art graces an early screen of the game.

Note that you don’t have to play in the competitive mode — called EditChallenge — where you create videos to spec (of course, you don’t have to play the games at all, ever, or even acknowledge that they even existed). There is also the U-Direct mode where you can just flex your editing skills as you see fit. Otherwise, the EditChallenges usually seem to consist of around 5 specifications — either types of footage to either include or omit, or different filter requests.

All in all, I have to give the game programmer credit (it appears to just be one programmer who wrote the engine that drives all 4 titles) for the types of effects he was able to pull off on such limited video hardware.

Kudos also to one Mark Wahlberg who exhibited the humility to actually shoot special scenes for his title:

None of the other artists made special appearances for their games. Of the subjects of all 4 games, I ask you: Who has the biggest career to this day?

At MobyGames:

The entire “Make My Video” series

Hunt Or Be Hunted

Posted on December 24, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Actually, the title of this game is merely Hunt, which will make it annoying to search for when it gets into MobyGames soon. It’s of the “casual game” genre, or must be, because not only did I pick it up in the budget software section where I found My Fantasy Wedding and Bratz: Rock Angelz, but also because it was on clearance. It’s a curious genre cross between a first person shooter and a hunting game.

First, there is the section where you go out into the haunted or perhaps radioactive forest, armed with 4 different weapons, and mow down aggressive animals like bears and boars (later levels apparently have rabbits too):

When you reach the flagstaff, you have the opportunity to switch to a more traditional hunting scene in a more serene setting.

There’s a bear in that picture, but it’s a little far off. It’s easier when the random bear encounter occurs closer to you.

And that’s all I really feel like writing on Christmas Eve.

Blackhole Assault

Posted on December 23, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Blackhole Assault for the Sega CD is another in a long line of games that I would have liked to like. I’m just a sucker for good looking graphics of the 16-bit console era, such as this space station against the backdrop of a Jovian moon:

In the next scene, the camera angle changes and moves slowly up the station, giving a feeling of depth to the lunar backdrop:

Unfortunately, the graphic style of the story scenes is perhaps the only redeeming quality of the experience. I had no idea what kind of game to expect going into this. It turns out that it’s a pure 1-on-1 fighting game. It seems that in the 22nd century, earthlings are trying to excavate resources from the rest of the solar system. Exploratory missions are disappearing “one bye [sic] one”, however, and at least one military commander is calling it like he sees it. “How can those fools say these are accidents when they’re obviously alien attacks?” I can relate– I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve said the same thing in the course of my daily affairs. But earth has a powerful weapon to deal with these alleged alien attacks: Cybernetic Anthropomorphic Machines or C.A.M.s for short. And these C.A.M.s have to take on powerful alien robots one-on-one at scenic locations throughout the solar system.

Above is the Phobos level. Like I said, the game is pretty. I just can’t abide the poor, clunky gameplay, even if we are just dealing with giant robots. Fortunately, the game features an exhibition mode which allows players to customize matchups with any of the available robots and any of the game’s 10 backdrops. Further, this mode can be configured for computer vs. computer, which allowed me to cycle through all 10 backdrops for screenshot purposes.

One more pretty screenshot– this one is called ‘Asteroid’. The backdrops really do work better in motion, though.

At MobyGames:

Blackhole Assault

The Vanna White Edition

Posted on December 23, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Let’s begin with an 8-bit representation of the inimitable Vanna White, if only to needlessly gain a bunch of unrelated Google image search traffic:

There were 4 different NES games based on the Wheel of Fortune game show license and 4 more based on the Jeopardy! license. At the time of this writing, MobyGames has 3 of the Jeopardy! games (Jeopardy!, Jeopardy! Junior Edition, Jeopardy! 25th Anniversary Edition) and only 1 of the Wheel of Fortune games. So I made it a goal to slog through the remaining games for the sake of completeness.

So what’s up with all the different versions of these games? There were 4 different WoF games: the standard one, Junior Edition, Family Edition, and the version featuring Vanna White. Perhaps a table is in order:

	Standard Edition	Junior Edition	Family Edition	Vanna White Edition
Release Date	September, 1988	October, 1989	March, 1990	January, 1992
Player characters	None	None	None	Yes, stupid-looking
Wheel animation	Decent	Decent	Decent	Regressed, lame
Letter-flipping sprite

As an elitist gamer — or even a passive, casual gamer — you might be snorting at the fact that there were so many of these games. Frankly, those release dates tell me something — that this license moved cartridges. My first impression upon playing through the series was that the first 3 were developed concurrently and published at the same time (after all, the only changes were the specific puzzles as well as the palette of Vanna’s dress). But, no — the games’ releases were spaced out quite a bit.

The first 3 games are more or less clones of each other. Here’s a representative screenshot:

The player basically gets to look at that same game screen the entire time, broken only by the wheel animation. The games can be played against human players or against computer opponents, and at three different difficulty levels. I selected the ‘hard’ level, which I’m pretty sure is the “No Mercy” level– if the computer gets a turn, it doesn’t lose.

What’s special about the Vanna White edition? Well, it’s the first edition that specifically mentions her by name. Presumably, the earlier 3 games didn’t actually use her likeness (can you tell?). Further, the V.W. edition offers actual player graphics. Stupid player graphics, but player graphics, nonetheless.

The tradeoff here is that the wheel animation is not as interesting as in the previous games.

As mentioned, Jeopardy! has a much better representation in the database thus far. Only Super Jeopardy! is missing. The progression of the Jeopardy titles seems to parallel that of the WoF titles. The Super title was the final one. There can be up to four players participating (unlike standard Jeopardy! where there are but 3 players). All 4 of the games have player avatars, but the ones featured in this game were a departure from the previous ones seen in the series, but bore an eerie similarity to another game I played today:

Indiana Jetson

Posted on December 23, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

I scanned the big list of missing NES games and found 2 licensed titles that came later in the NES’ lifetime (i.e., after the release of the SNES). Titles from this era were generally quite well done by NES standards, even if they were overshadowed by the SNES.

Young Indiana Jones Chronicles — First boss

The first is The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, based on the TV show that aired in the early- to mid-1990s. As the title implies, a young Indy travels the globe, collects treasures, fights for what’s right, and rescues hot babes. Actually, I’m just guessing on that last one– the opening for stage 1 implies that there’s a damsel, but the trial and error tedium of the first level became too much for me before I finish off the boss. It’s side-scrolling action where Indy actually has a fairly realistically brief jump — a feature that always makes a gamer curse the times they have called for more realistic games. You don’t have much power in this game, but you can collect trademark Indy hats. If you get hit, you lose the hat, but that’s better than losing your weapon, which is what happens if you get hit without a hat. Back to the fist until you can find another weapon. If you get hit without a weapon or a hat, then you die.

Speaking of weapons, this game has an impressive range– whips, pistols, rifles, grenades, throwing knives, little bouncing rocks. Unfortunately, you can only pick up one weapon at a time and you lose it you sustain a hit.

Throughout the adventure, Indy collects gold. I am not sure what this achieves– it probably has some significance at the end of a level, where I never got to. The gold counter never seems to reset, even after a continue. And the strangest thing about the gold counter is that it wraps around after 99:

Before collecting the icon worth 3 gold points…
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles — Gold counter, before

After collecting the icon…
Young Indiana Jones Chronicles — Gold counter, after

Still, it is likely that Young Indy makes for a better gameplay experience than the Temple of Doom for the NES.

Next up is a Jetsons property– The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper, to be specific. Take a look at this screenshot and tell me what’s wrong:

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper– Non-canon Astro

Come on– you all watched The Jetsons sometime in your life, you know exactly what’s wrong with that screenshot: there is no way that Astro the Dog is that articulate. It’s well known that Astro pronounced George as “Reorge”.

Putting aside such blatant cartoon canon violations, this game features a curious premise– George Jetson’s employer, Mr. Spacely, has learned that his corporate rival, Cogswell, is oppressing alien workers in order to get ahead in the industry. What’s the best course of action to compete with this threat? How about tasking his laziest and most incompetent employee, one George Jetson, with committing acts of corporate sabotage? Sounds like we have a premise for a game.

So George bumbles through multiple levels of side-scrolling action to achieve this goal, lest he be dinged on his annual performance review. I hesitate to call this a run and jump game because George is too lazy to jump. Instead, he uses a jet pack in short bursts to elevate himself. The offensive action reminds me mightily of Chip ‘N Dale: Rescue Rangers in that George picks up the copious boxes and other items that litter the landscape and tosses them at enemies.

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper– Botannical gardens

There are also lots of switches in this futuristic game, switches that activate all kinds of machinery (and Rosie the Robot is on hand to tutor you in how to use the switch). A common switch is the gravity reversal switch that causes you to walk on the ceiling for a brief period. I must give the game credit for its internal consistency here:

The Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper– Gravity consistency

George is walking along the ceiling. If George walks off the edge, it will have the same effect as walking into a pit.

The Rocketeer

Posted on December 10, 2007 by Multimedia Mike

Let’s try some free association. What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when viewing this NES screenshot?

The Rocketeer is one more movie-based NES game that somehow escaped notice during my previous efforts to flush all such titles from the list of unentered NES titles. It wasn’t until I read this Cracked.com article about 5 awesome sci-fi inventions that would actually suck, which happens to illustrate jet packs with a still from the 1991 Rocketeer movie, that I recalled seeing an adaptation in Nintendo Power.

Strangely, this Disney license was sold to Bandai rather than Capcom, the usual Disney partner in video gaming during that period.

All I remember about the movie is that I don’t remember anything about it. According to plot synopses on the internet — which the game follows faithfully in the intro — a crazy inventor develops a jet pack and a benevolent guy uses it to become a hero and save the world, or at least keep the technology out of the hands of Nazis.

The game starts off as a standard run and jump affair as I try to figure out if I’m supposed to be able to fly. I quickly comprehend that I have 6 offensive options at my disposal — fist, pistol, tommygun, spread gun, grenade, and bazooka — all from the get-go, provided that I have enough ammo points collected. The fist is free, the bazooka requires 20 ammo points. Everything else takes some amount in between. This is a nifty feature, save for the fact that it can be cumbersome to constantly cycle through all 6 options during the action (no cycling when paused).

Finally, I stumble upon a gas can powerup that extends a new power meter. This finally allows me to fly in wildly uncontrolled bursts. The game’s flight capability is a bit oversold. I’m guessing that it’s necessary to use both the jet pack and some fierce firepower to take down the first boss, which I was unable to do.

Here’s a curious feature about the game. Above is the opening shot (apparently, some of the movie’s story takes place against a movie industry backdrop). Note that the sign reads “Hollywoodland”. Next, look at some of the exposition text:

The text reads plain “Hollywood”. Do you know why that is? The answer comes courtesy of a Taco Bell placemat that I read some years ago during one of their many contests. The busy disposable placemat showed the Hollywood logo, probably to showcase a trip to Hollywood as a grand prize. Reading the fine print of the placemat revealed that the famed Hollywood logo in the hills is a registered trademark of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Gaming Pathology

Piles Of Games, Copious Free Time, No Standards

Author: Multimedia Mike

Actual Video Games

Hunt Or Be Hunted

Blackhole Assault

The Vanna White Edition

Indiana Jetson

The Rocketeer