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Showing posts from 2011

Super Mario 3D Land Review

Nintendo didn't do itself any favors launching the 3 DS without a Mario game available. In the current gaming world, it is important for Nintendo to "bring out the big guns" right at launch, every time. That being said, Mario is here now, with the fantastic Super Mario 3D Land for the Nintendo 3 DS . Yes, I am a "Nintendo Fanboy ". But my review is still honest. The plot is the familiar "Princess Peach gets kidnapped by Bowser and Mario has to rescue her". And why not, that's what goes on in Mario's world. This is Mario's first outing on the 3 DS , so sticking to the basics makes perfect sense. And stick to the basics is what this games does. For the most part the big, open worlds are gone. These worlds or levels are smaller. But let's make no mistake, it's still very challenging. There were times when I grumbled and even yelled at my mistakes (as though they were Mario's), or did the same when I lost a suit or was killed. B...

Bring Back the Space Channel 5 Franchise, Sega!

Space Channel 5 debuted on the Sega Dreamcast in 2000 and had ports to PS2 and even Game Boy Advance in Japan. Recently Space Channel 5 Part 2 made it on to a compilation disk of Sega Dreamcast games for Xbox 360. The game was a music game where the player must match dance steps with a series of button pushes at just the right time, to the beat. In the game you are Ulala , a "space reporter" with her own " Swingin ' Report Show". The game is funky, fresh, and downright lovable, especially to any Otaku who truly understands the concept of MOE. Ulala (Age:22) is cute and sexy, and can really "get down with her boogie parts". But this is not a review of the game or the short-lived franchise. This is more of a lament. What happened to the franchise? One can say it was replaced by more sophisticated music games, like Guitar Hero or Rock band. But those games are all but dead. Why not bring back Ulala and SC5? In 2007 an "online petition" wen...

Nintendo 3DS Price Drop Fixes Problem, But Has Nintendo Learned Anything?

Too expensive, Nintendo. The 3 DS launched at $249.99 in this country. The new machine is a hardware upgrade from the DS hardware, and this goes for more than screen. In Layman's Terms let's just say the DS had roughly the graphics capabilities of a Nintendo 64. The 3 DS has roughly the graphics capabilities of a Gamecube . So it is a "Next-Gen" handheld from Nintendo. Then of course the quite fantastic 3D screen. The ability to take 3D photos. Downloadable games, the fairly useless Nintendo Video, other various apps available and more on the way. The machine didn't launch with the Nintendo Store, but it is there now, and we knew it was coming. Nope, none of that mattered. The machine launched at $249.99, fell on it's face, then immediately took off when Nintendo cut the price to $169.99. Now, we have to ask, "Why the hell didn't Nintendo just launch the thing at $169.99 in the first place?" And our question would be a really, really good ...

Downloadable Content, Downloadable... Consoles??

With the advent of devices like smart-phones and tablets came the concept of gaming content via download only. As Nintendo continued to feed physical cards into bays on their handhelds and Sony brought the doomed-from-the-start UMD format to it's device, smart-phones and tablet devices grabbed 5% of the handheld gaming market in about a year. Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo all provided gaming content via download for their home consoles. Stopping to assess this area of my collection, I noticed something. I actually have more downloaded games for each of the current-generation consoles than I do store-bought games. We all know it, it's happening right under our noses... the days of walking into a store to buy a video game are fading. But will they ever completely fade? Certainly there will always be a percentage of gamers who will not want or be able to connect their machine to the internet . Perhaps they just can't afford it, or perhaps they don't like the idea of th...

Steve Jobs Changed the World

Recorded history has been around for approximately 7,000 years. Modern man has only been around for a brief time in the grand scheme of things. In our history there has been much bloodshed, disease, famine, and the like. Mankind's progress, for the most part, has been slow. We are resistant to change. We are scared of new things. But every now and then a person or group of people come along that are head-and-shoulders above the rest of the population. They have an idea or a technology that changes the world. The Industrial Revolution changed the world. The combustible engine changed the world. Flight and space flight changed the world. And computers changed the world. It was a group of people from Silicon Valley in the 1970s that changed the world. One of those men was Steve Jobs. Steve was actually one of those at the front if not the very tip itself. A genius with a vision, and in America that kind of thing is regarded with a sense of awe. Certainly it has been said about men wh...

Review: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for Nintendo 3DS

These days we've been hearing the debate about video games getting easier. I'm not going to get into this debate here, perhaps another time, or perhaps never. It's not an issue that bothers me, trends are trends, and modern hard-core gamers expect more of an interactive movie than a game of repetitive action, seeking, finding, puzzle-solving, and the like. It comes with the technology. But let's just quickly compare something like Uncharted or Batman: Arkham Asylum with... The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. That's right, just like I said. I have played and beaten all three of these (actually 4, I didn't indicate WHICH Uncharted, there are currently 2 titles). The one I beat most recently was... The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time, a.k.a. "Zelda 3D". You see I never finished it back in the Nintendo 64 days, it was just too damned confusing. You would have to be a MENSA-level genius to complete this game without a walk-through (or at least a serious ...

Arcades of Old -or- Pac in the Day

I am going to pretend I'm getting old. Actually, there isn't much to pretend. I'm middle-aged, and today I look around at young people with their modern consoles, sitting in front of their flat-screen High-Definition televisions jamming on their controllers or flailing around with motion controls. They are lucky. They will live further into the future than I, and they will see devices I can only imagine. But I, too, am lucky. You see, I was there for the Glory Days of the video game arcades. I bore witness to the birth of an industry. I share much in common with the first folks who got to see television for the first time. Those early adopters of the television must have been dazzled by the new wonder machine that brought video right into their homes, just as my generation was dazzled by the wonder machines that brought video gaming into our homes. But that will have to wait for another post. First, let's be honest. Those early consoles, at the beginning, did a mediocre...

Nintendo 3DS versus Playstation Vita? Not Really...

The Nintendo DS firmly and soundly beat the Sony PSP in the "last generation" of portable handhelds . Now we prepare for a new handheld battle, between the Nintendo 3 DS and the Sony Playstation Vita. And... that's it? No, that's not it... the portable gaming market has been changed by the arrival of the smart-phone, the iPod Touch and the tablet. I said "arrival" because these devices have been "coming" for some time now. Serious phone gaming was first really attempted by Nokia in 2004 with the N-Gage, a cell phone with a little card bay design similar to the current DS card bay that played games stored on cards. Of course this thing was a flop, but hey, it was a first attempt. Nokia , and others, saw a day coming when cell phones would be the hand-held gaming device of choice. While Nokia may have made all the wrong moves with their N-Gage, their general idea was correct. I believe the N-Gage would be considered a "2G" phone, ...

Will the PS3 Actually Last For 10 Years?

Sony designed the PS3 with a proprietary processing technology known as the "Cell Processor". This technology amounts to 7 cores running at 3.2 GHz . (It is true that there are 8 cores, but one is always off or on "standby".) This is my understanding of it, and while the details of the thing can be debated, the focus here is on Sony's proposed 10-year life cycle for it's PS3. This is something that, since the beginning of the PS3's life, I personally have doubted and seen as moot. First, let's look at what Sony meant when they were talking about the PS3's proposed 10 year life cycle. Did they mean that the PS3 should be in it's 10t h year before the PS4 is released? Or did they merely mean that they would support the PS3 for 10 years? First let us examine the latter: There are several consoles that have already been supported for 10 years. Sony's own PS1 and PS2 had support for at least 10 years each. Before that, Nintendo's NES h...

Tomb Raider Re-boot Coming Soon

I've been a fan of Tomb Raider since there's been Tomb Raider. I remember Laura Croft gracing cover after cover of the video game magazines. I remember playing the first game, coming almost to the end but being out of the damned little save diamonds. Then Tomb Raider II and III came along, more of the same, but still interesting enough. After that the series fell deep into a hole of it's own with The Last Revelation and Chronicles, finally hitting the bottom of the chasm with Angel of Darkness. Legend, Anniversary, and Underworld followed, certainly superior to Angel of Darkness but still it had lost it's flavor. Certainly this kind of action-adventure genre was evolving with the likes of the amazing Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Re-boots are springing up these days. The old Mortal Kombat series has re-emerged with a smashing re-boot: Mortal Kombat . The Devil May Cry series is going to get a re-boot. So will other games as this trend will probably continue. I love...

All-In-One? No, All-FOR-One!

I use a Tracfone . It's the LG 500G model, it does cheesy mobile web, has a camera for video and still shots, supports up to 4 gigabyte micro-SD, has a full QWERTY keypad and Bluetooth . I buy prepaid cards and use them for minutes, mobile-web with Facebook , and a few cheesy games. The phone itself cost me $30. Many opt for the all-in-one smart phones, with the 4G and the touch screen and the monthly bill that I find just too damned expensive. I'm sorry, I do. But there are reasons why I take this position. The most obvious is the cost, the monthly bill. The $70 I'd be paying for a decent, meaningful tier of service could be better spent on video games, past or present. But the other reasons extend from the cost. You see I cannot justify it because I never embraced the "all-in-one" mentality that drives smart phone sales. It is true many like the handheld entertainment and communication device that is a smart phone, but I have always held fast to the logic that y...

Wii U, and the Near Future of Consoles

Former Activision executive Robin Kaminsky has recently been quoted in an op-ed article for Industry Gamers saying, "The industry cannot afford either more years of the same consoles and basically the same games or a new cycle with consoles and games that deliver more of the same just bigger. In an industry where new, innovative and fun is key there is no future in more of the same." Kaminsky mentioned console sales decline over two years and an increase in smart-phone and tablet gaming, as well as gaming on Facebook where people are "already connected." That being said, I now focus a bit on Nintendo's upcoming Wii U as well as surmise what Sony and Microsoft may bring to the table. It has been proven that graphics and realism are not the biggest selling-points for games anymore. Kaminsky's statements and the information behind them are a stark reality. The Wii launched with last-generation graphics (essentially) and it took a commanding lead over t...

Review: Alice: Madness Returns

American McGee's Alice first graced the PC in October 2000, and was not available on any console. The game itself looked quite good, but the game play left something to be desired. Flash forward 11 years to Alice: Madness Returns, and we see a drastically improved game with drastically improved control. True it could have been even better, and there were times when finer-tuned control would have helped, but overall the control response is more than adequate. The story and dialogue, while not yet ready for a prime-time mini-series, is also interesting enough to hold the gamer's interest. The graphics are pure eye-candy, with grotesque caricatures of every character and extra. The only "pretty" character in the game is Alice herself, who finds herself in several different dresses throughout the game. The worlds and backgrounds are hideous abominations carrying a paradox of being so damned beautiful. So what a world to play in. The action is straight-forward 3D hop-a...

Thoughts on Retro Gaming Part 1

The data is out there. Jump online and "Google" this: "Retro gaming becoming popular". You will find many articles and opinion pieces that explain how the consoles of yesteryear are now making a comeback, and have been for quite some time. Whether it is here to stay or a passing fad is debatable. But it is certainly happening now and certainly will be for some time. I remember in the mid-1980s, just after the so-called "Atari debacle". The 2600 was showing up at yard sales and flea markets and it was not uncommon to be able to get one with 20 or so games for about $10. The system was a dead system, you see, and the video game fad was over. People just wanted to get that "junk" out of their home. Then Nintendo came along and revived the industry. Sony expanded it. Years went by. Then something happened: The kids who had grown up on these machines, who had graduated to more advanced machines and more advanced gaming started to yearn for their more...

Sony- It Only Does What Someone Else Innovates

We have seen much from Sony over the past 16 years that has come to revolutionize gaming. It is true that they expanded the industry from a kids' toy market to include a more sophisticated adult market. Many will give them credit for innovation, but has the innovation actually come from Sony? Were the ideas theirs? Or could it be that these ideas, one by one, have come from other companies, and Sony merely copies and improves them? "Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you!" In 1993 the 3DO Interactive Multiplayer was introduced to the public. The philosophy behind the machine was simple: children who had grown up with NES , Genesis, and Super NES were now young adults and were ready to "graduate" to a more sophisticated system that had more mature content. 3D graphics, Dolby stereo sound, more intense action. "If you build it they will come." Oddly enough Sony also had this same scheme with the Playstation . Sony rel...