Category Archives: Gaming

Dreamcast Party

Yesterday was my Dreamcast party, and I had a blast. I started the day by playing Sonic Adventure by myself. I love how beautiful the game looks even today. When I first saw it, I was amazed. It was Sega’s blue skies at their best! I played up to the point where Sonic finds Tails. I just love that first love, complete with loops and a whale that chases Sonic.
Soon after the guests began to arrive. There were eleven people at the party counting myself – Gemma, William, Edward, Pat, Tony, James, Antonio, Linh-Nam, Collin, Duncan, and myself. We had chili dogs in honor of Sonic and cupcakes with Dreamcast swirls on them. We also had a variety of soda, juice, chips, and dip.

 
We started the multiplayer with Power Stone 2. It’s definitely my favorite 3D fighter, and one my favorite fighters in fact. Then we played some Samba de Amigo, which Pat brought. That game’s fantastic! I played the Wii sequel, but the maracas work so much better on the Dreamcast. There’s mat that you put down with a sensor bar that attaches via velcro. It plugs into the Dreamcast, and the two maracas attach to the bar. It senses the height of the two maracas, and the maracas have one button each. It was fun, and now I’m borrowing it from Pat. Thanks!
We also played Chu Chu Rocket, one of my all-time favorite games. It was great to bring that game back out of my closet. Some guests played Crazy Taxi 2 while I took care of food. Then we played San Francisco Rush 2049. That game’s crazy. It was hysterical, but I think it’d be pretty boring in single player. What got crazy was the wings that the cars have. When you’re airborne after driving off a ramp, pressing a particular button causes wings to extend. I’m sure they do something useful, but for me, they just seemed to cause me to spiral out of control before exploding. Every time you run into anything, your car explodes. Crazy, but fun.
Ooga Booga, a game designed to be a party game, was strange and not that fun. After only a few minutes we moved to the next game. Bust-A-Move 4 was fun, but I’m sure no one was surprised. I think we’re all familiar with Bust-A-Move. The guests played Looney Tunes Space Race and Armada while I did other things, neither of which seemed very interesting. They also played King of Fighters for a bit.
Then it was time for KISS Psycho Circus! This game was ridiculous! You play as a member of a KISS tribute band. Apparently the members of the tribute back one day have super powers for some reason. It seemed like a bad Hexen or Heretic clone. The coolest thing about this game was the enemy known as the Arachnoclown, part spider, part clown. Picture a centaur. Now replace the horse part with spider. Now picture the human part very overweight, wearing a stupid shirt and clown make-up. Ta da! Arachnoclown!
Then we played 4×4 Evolution, which to our surprise featured a variety of real cars. I played against William in a pitch black match with rain, although for some reason we couldn’t really see any rain. It was a bit buggy, and for a while William was dragged slowly around the track after driving too far out and getting stuck. After something similar happened to me and he was teleported back on the track, he was able to win.
We tried some Alien Front Online, which allowed us to blow up the Capitol. That game wasn’t that great, but I remember enjoying it when it came out. Then in Ready 2 Rumble Round 2 we tried beating on each other for a while. The character models were pretty strange, and I never really figured out any strategy. It seemed like whichever character had the greater reach would win.
Finally we played Sonic Shuffle. I bought it three years ago and never had the chance to play it until now. It definitely feels very similar to Mario Party, but was still different and fun. By this time the only people left at the party were Collin, Duncan, and William. We played for a while before William had to leave, and then we switched his character to computer controlled. The map was a train level, and different cars of the train would disconnect or reconnect. At one point, the car with Knuckles, the computer player, disconnected and stupid Knuckles was trapped for a while. There’s a helicopter space that can be landed on which causes a helicopter to pick you up and take you somewhere else. Unfortunately for Knuckles, it dropped him back on the same car the first time he tried to use it. Eventually I won, but I was pretty surprised that actually. I hope we get a chance to play it again. Unlike Mario Party’s dice system, Sonic Shuffle uses cards. Each player is dealt a hand of cards, and you pick a card and move the number of spaces corresponding to which card you pick. You can see your own cards and now your opponents, and you can pick anyone’s card. This means you might want to try to remember what cards they have, although they can shuffle their hands so you don’t know which card is where. I’m going to try and unlock some new characters, but I don’t know how much fun single player will be.
The party was a lot of fun, and it was great to honor the Dreamcast. Hopefully everyone who came had a good time. Thanks for coming!

Happy Birthday

Happy 10th birthday Dreamcast! I look forward to celebrating with you today!
I’m also looking forward to hitting 1000 hours played on Devee in World of Warcraft and playing bob’s game!

Disney Buys Marvel

Disney is purchasing Marvel for $4 billion. Disney is obviously larger and has more money, which could be good, but it’s not like Marvel really needed bigger budgets. Both Joystiq and the OC Register wondered about Disneyland rides featuring Marvel properties. I doubt these possible new rides would even be that out of place. The Pixar characters already have a vastly different feel than the classic Disney movie characters or the Disney characters such as Mickey and Donald, my favorites.
Disney already owns a few movie studios whose movies definitely aren’t all aimed at children. However, Marvel could easily be refocused at children. Children already love many Marvel franchises despite the containment of mature themes. I wouldn’t want Disney to focus Marvel exclusively on a younger audience, but I don’t think they will. Maybe we’ll see Spider-Man dancing on a float, and maybe we’ll see some more Marvel cartoons on ABC or Disney Channel.

 
Both Disney and Marvel also suffer from a similar history in gaming. Occasionally they’ll release a good game, but most of their games aren’t worth playing. Disney hit their peak on the NES, and Marvel… well, Marvel made Maximum Carnage on the SNES, which was awesome, and Marvel Ultimate Alliance was mildly fun. I guess this can’t hurt Marvel games! Maybe we’ll even see a game featuring characters from both Disney and Marvel, although I’d prefer an action game to an RPG like Kingdom Hearts. We’ll see.
On a side note, the OC Register’s entry in their RSS feed about this was titled “Disney buys Marvel and Spider-Man for $4 billion.” Marvel and Spider-Man? What a stupid thing to say.
Sources: Joystiq, OC Register

Phoenix Wright Musical Clip

Capcom-Unity recently embedded a clip of the Phoenix Wright musical from YouTube, including English subtitles. I still can’t get over how strange it is that Phoenix Wright became a musical. I hope that the DVD gets released here or that there’s some other way for Americans to watch the Japanese release. It’s also amusing that Capcom-Unity found this via Kotaku.
Source: Ashcraft, Brian. “Japanese Phoenix Wright Musical In English!” Kotaku. 8/31/09.
Via: “We Do Not Object to These English Subtitled Ace Attorney Musical Videos.” Capcom-Unity Blog. 8/31/09.

Greatest TI-83 Games

GamesRadar decides to talk about “one of the most criminally overlooked gaming platforms,” the TI-83 in an article by Carolyn Gudmundson, The best TI-83 RPGs ever.” After a brief introduction, Gudmundson lists what she considers the best five RPGs on the calculator. Some are individual games while others are actually series, and one, Drug Wars, seems more like a strategy game than an RPG to me. She includes descriptions and download links to all games as well as video embeds for four of the five. I’ve played one of the games on the list, Dying Eyes. I can’t say much about it because it was a long time ago, but I remember enjoying it! I definitely agree that the TI-83 is overlooked as a gaming platform. After reading the story, I’m a little excited at the idea of finding my TI and trying some games on it, but honestly, even in high school I carried a Game Boy, so I’m not sure it would be anything more than novelty. However, I do find playing games on usual platforms fantasizing. Take a look!
Sources:
Gudmundson, Carolyn. “The best TI-83 RPGs ever.” GamesRadar. 8/13/09.
Sheffield, Brandon. “Best TI-83 RPGs.” InsertCredit. 8/13/09.

LittleBigPlanet PSP Loses Depth, Floatiness, and Multiplayer

Here’s another bit of news from Joystiq courtesy of EuroGamer: LittleBigPlanet for PSP will not feature multiplayer, will have only two planes rather than three, and will fix the floaty jumping from the original. Joystiq writer James Ransom-Wiley seems to have a big problem with the removal of the multiplayer, and I’m sure he’s not the only one, but honestly, I’m not sure it’s that big of a deal. On the PS3 version I’ve had fun playing with a single other person both while attempting to get closer to 100% completion in the main game or having fun in new levels. However, attempting to play with the full four people is always a headache. I don’t want to play online with strangers, and I also don’t want to call up a friend and arrange to meet online to play LBP. Even if it was easy to do so, I prefer to play in person. However, without splitscreen people end up killing each other by moving too far off screen. In addition, trying to access the four player areas always leaves me feeling frustrated at the group’s inability to coordinate. Maybe I need to be playing with people who play more platformers, but my friends who are really into gaming are also not so interested in LittleBigPlanet.

 
Back to the PSP version, I do think multiplayer is an important feature, and I’m sad it’s not going to be in the game, but I just want to point out that LittleBigPlanet can be a lot of fun without it. The three planes of depth (characters can be in the background, foreground, or middle) in the original was just annoying and added very little “depth” to the gameplay while adding needless depth in the more literal sense. In fact, it was a big complaint of mine, so I can’t see how reducing it to two could matters worse. I was actually a lot happier before I clicked through to Joystiq’s source at EuroGamer; Ransom-Wiley wrote that there would only be one plane, but the source clearly says two. Too bad! A single plane would have been terrific! The jumping also felt imprecise,and for a game that touted its physics engine, it sure seemed like gravity was hardly effecting Sack Boy. Come to think of it, maybe this was to emphasize that Sack Boy was a stuffed person, presumably stuffed with some sort of very light fluff. Still, I’d like Sack Boy to feel heavier; hopefully LittleBigPlanet PSP’s revised jumping will fix this. On the other hand, jumping might feel bad for some other reason.
All things considered, this announcement only makes me more excited for LittleBigPlanet PSP. Not having multiplayer is a loss, yes, but I never thought I’d be playing it multiplayer regardless, and the jump mechanic should hopefully improve things. I do have to say that I’m very saddened that there are still two planes rather than three. I first wrote this article under the impression that there was only one, but before publishing I realized that Ransom-Wiley read his source incorrectly. Bummer! One plane with fixed jumping had me so excited! Still, I think LittleBigPlanet PSP will be fun.
Bramwell, Tom. No multiplayer in LittleBigPlanet PSP. EuroGamer. 8/19/09.
Ransom-Wiley, James. LittleBigPlanet PSP loses multiplayer, and maybe its soul. Joystiq. 8/19/09.

Universal Game Launching in Home

Joystiq reports from the PlayStation.Blog that in an upcoming version of Home, users will be able to launch any game from Home. I really don’t understand why this is needed at all. On some Street Fighter IV night I decided I would try out Home and getting into a game but had no luck. If I want to play SF4, shouldn’t I just go find a match in SF4? Because not everyone else in Home is looking for a SF4 match, it seems like walking around in a virtual environment looking for a game of SF4 isn’t the best idea.
Sony really missed the mark with Home. Home itself is just a large, 3D interface for game lobbies, watching videos, and chatting. Game launching in Home is redundant when games can be launched, not surprisingly, from the XMB itself. Similarly, Sony could integrate some sort of section of the XMB under Video specifically for streaming videos from Sony and achieve the same effect without the clutter of an ugly 3D interface reminiscent of the 80s idea of future “cyber space.”

 
Of course, Home does have an additional feature – chatting and socializing. Again, isn’t there a simpler way to achieve this than through a horrible clone of Second Life? Besides the fact that there’s a browser built in to the system, how about adding an IRC client that defaults to a Sony server or simply adding a forum specifically designed for use on the PS3? While a forum could be viewed from the web browser, it could be nice for Sony to integrate one that wouldn’t need the clutter of a browser window around it.
To be clear, Sony has anounced other features of the Home update, such as taking photos, but I just don’t feel the need to address them. None of them are interesting to me. Additionally, it’s not that the features are bad, it’s that the whole system is needless.
Sources:
Locust_Star. PlayStation Home v1.3 Coming This September. PlayStation.Blog. 8/19/09.
Yoon, Andrew. Take pictures and launch any game you want in Home 1.3, coming this fall. Joystiq. 8/19/09.

What have I played…

…this week?
I’ve been playing a lot more WoW now that 3.2 hit. I think most people who read this knows already, but this patch allows characters to disable all experience gain. This allows them to go after better gear without leveling so that they can stay in the current PVP bracket yet still become stronger. I went to Northrend and have been getting a lot of cool gear. I have a lot of haste gear now, which I’m looking forward to trying out. After getting a new belt and wand I’ll have all new gear besides rings and trinkets. I also got a flying mount for the first time. Pretty fun!

 
I had some awesome games of Team Fortress 2! I found all the sniper weapons, which is pretty cool. Using the bow is weird though. I also managed to get the “With Friends Like These” achievement for playing with seven friends. It was hard to coordinate, plus the match has to actually end with seven friends playing. I played with Collin, Andy, William, gem, Linh-Nam, Jon, and James. It was one of the coolest nights of gaming ever.
As for console games, I haven’t played much. I played inFAMOUS and enjoyed it so far. I don’t think it’s as amazing as the hype, but it’s pretty good. I also played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled on XBLA with gem, William, and Collin. It was a lot of fun! It was based on the arcade game, not SNES game, so it was a little different than what Collin and William expected. gem and I didn’t notice at all anyways. Like a lot of cooperative four-player games, I lost track of my character at times, but overall it was a ton of fun.
I also managed to finish the first episode of Wolfenstein 3D Classic on the iPhone. I had died on the last level, and I only respawn with a pistol. I had no idea how to defeat the boss with only a pistol, but as it turns out, there’s a secret room in the level with a chain gun. The boss was easy with a chain gun!
Lastly I’ve been playing Pokemon Platinum! I managed to pick up my third badge recently. Also, my Ralts evolved into Kirlia, and my shiny Magikarp finally became a shiny Gyrados!