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  • Who Here Has Beaten Super Mario Bros “Lost Levels”?



    A speed run video for Super Mario Bros. Lost Levels has been making the rounds and I just wanted to ask, how many of you out there have beaten this game yourselves? I have. It's evil, Nintendo Hard, and not terribly fun. That's okay, games don't have to be fun to offer a good experience (the topic of a forthcoming post actually).

    I bought Super Mario All Stars for my SNES and battled my way through every Mario title on it. Super Mario Bros. 2 was actually the first Mario game I owned, and it took me half a year to beat it. Years later it didn't take me as long to beat Lost Levels (I'd gotten to be a lot better gamer y'see) and finishing that sucker was incredibly satisfying. Someday, when I'm feeling just slightly masochistic, I'll play it again.

    Also, don't forget to Vote!

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  • Happy Endings With House of the Dead: Overkill



    Happy Endings is a new, semi-regular feature on 61FPS that highlights some of gaming’s most memorable climaxes. Most games end badly. These games sum it all up in style. It goes without saying that Happy Endings is spoiler heavy so beware before you proceed.

    House of the Dead: Overkill could have been an astounding failure. Headstrong Games had a decent pedigree, and there was little doubt that they could make a solid, entertaining rail shooter that stood next to the very best in Sega’s franchise, but humor is hard to implement in any game. Styling Overkill as a 1970s grindhouse feature was a brilliant move in theory, but making something that looks and sounds cool is a far cry from making something smart and legitimately funny. Headstrong pulled it off though. From the guffaw-worthy banter between Detective Washington and Agent G, to the waving American flag that adorns your health bar after stringing together thirty consecutive kills (yes, that combo is called a “Goregasm”), Overkill pulled off the impossible: it was a good game that was also funny.

    But none of its cheese, ultra violence, or winking nods to classic exploitation prepared me for this dialog at the end.

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  • My Night At DJ School With Rhythm Heaven

    I've written about Nintendo's Rhythm Heaven and its predecessor Rhythm Tengoku a couple of times before. I love them, they are my ideal games. Nintendo did not need to do anything fancy to get me excited about the game's long-awaited western release, and yet they were kind enough to invite me to their DJ School event hosted at Scratch DJ Academy last week. You guys are so good to me sometimes.

    A decidedly casual affair outside of the hors d'ouevre, most of the people I talked to there were from local community meet-ups and hip-hop discussion groups, a welcome change from the depressingly stereotypical otaku at most of the Nintendo events I've attended. DS kiosks glowed on the dancefloor, surrounded on all sides by turntables, and everyone seemed to be having a good time playing around with both.

    Describing the night's activity is kind of futile, though, so here's a video I shot to give you all a better idea of how it went down:

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  • 8-Bit Love: The Ten Greatest Vintage Game Songs to Have Sex To, part 2

    Cyriaque Lamar is a New York-based writer with a New Jersey-bred weltanschauung. He’s had original work published at Cracked.com and performed at The New York International Fringe Festival. Cyriaque is thrilled to contribute to 61FPS, as it brings him one step closer to his childhood dream of living on the set of Nick Arcade.

    5.) Final Fight CD – “Walk In the Park (Bay Area)”



    System: Sega CD (1993)
    Sounds Like: A sweaty nooner with Don Johnson.
    I always loved the premise of Final Fight. The idea of a city’s mayor stripping down to his underjohns and beating the shit out of unemployed people in order to stimulate job growth was really ahead of its time. Wait? Mike Haggar was actually fighting to save his daughter from an evil street gang? And here I thought the game was some kind of radical Objectivist propaganda. This Bay Area theme is classic whatever console you play Final Fight on, but the Sega CD version pushes it to the limit with gale-force porno guitars. Seriously, these riffs are like an F4 on the Fujita Scale. In my mind’s eye, the person who would get the most out of this track wears a ton of sea foam green and frequents Fort Lauderdale whorehouses. Sometimes, you just gotta be that person. When it comes to the Sega CD, the only thing sleazier is Night Trap.

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  • 8-Bit Love: The Ten Greatest Vintage Game Songs to Have Sex To, part 1

    Cyriaque Lamar is a New York-based writer with a New Jersey-bred weltanschauung. He’s had original work published at Cracked.com and performed at The New York International Fringe Festival. Cyriaque is thrilled to contribute to 61FPS, as it brings him one step closer to his childhood dream of living on the set of Nick Arcade.

    There are three reasons this list exists. First, I felt obliged to highlight 61FPS’s distinction as the gaming apparatchik of an internet sex publication. Second, I wished to showcase the unsung virtuosos of yesteryear who made masterworks using a limited palette of sounds. Finally, I intend to rebut those critics who still dismiss video games as low culture. Using the below examples, I intend to reclaim the carnal legacy of video games by evincing how early console music illustrated the gamut of human sexuality, from atavistic, heteronormative modes of eroticism to polymorphous perversity as delineated by Freud.

    Plus, the thought of people sticking penises into vaginas to Nintendo music is funny.

    10.) Radical Dreamers – “The Girl Who Stole the Stars”



    System: Super Famicom Satellaview (1996)
    Sounds Like: Koyaanisqatsi composed on Mario Paint.
    Since roughly 95% of all human lovemaking involves someone with a XX chromosome pairing, I thought it necessary to seek out my female associates’ thoughts on which game music best applies to amore. The suggestions I received were few yet incisive — responses ranged from “the Kid Icarus theme” to “Who the eff effs to video games?” Ultimately though, I deferred to my own instincts and picked this pan-pipe jam from the Japan-exclusive, text-based sequel to Chrono Trigger. Composed by the legendary Yasunori Mitsuda, “The Girl Who Stole the Stars” is easily the most romantic theme on our list.

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  • Your April Mission, If You Choose to Accept It

    I am going to use a few phrases right now that I find unsavory. It’s best to take the band-aid approach in these situations, get it all that pain out of the way in one quick, nasty motion. *Breath*. Gamer community. Blogosphere. Trend. *GASP* Ow. That sucked.

    Anyway, the point. April hasn’t been short of news or goings on in the gaming world – the DSi came out last Sunday, there a new Jak and Daxter coming, lots of savory news to satisfy the fanatic soul – but there’s a strong air of discontent across the gaming community blogosphere this week.

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  • Dragon Quest X and the Wii Lifetime Equation

    It didn’t hit me until today just how long the Wii is going to stick around. Forget the fact that Nintendo have sold millions upon millions of consoles in record time or that the box continues to sell in vast quantities on a monthly basis. The real metric is Dragon Quest.

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  • Namco, Your Klonoa Commercial is Dangerously Misleading

    Spoiler Warning. Giant, story-ruining, spoiler warning. Knock, knock. Who’s there? Spoiler Warning.



    You know what, Namco, I’m getting a little tired of having to have these talks with you. I know you’re tired of it too. If you paid attention, this wouldn’t be happening. You’ve been doing a lot of good lately, and I want you to know I’m proud of you for it. Not only did you decide to remake Klonoa: Door to Phantomile on the game’s tenth anniversary, you brought back much of the Klonoa Works team to make it. Director Hideo Yoshizawa, artist Yoshihiko Arai, and composer Kanako Kakino. Wise, Namco, wise. You even decided against that atrocious redesign of Klonoa you were batting around last year.

    This commercial, though, Namco. I don’t know if this is a very smart choice. It’s a little… misleading.

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  • Friend Codes from an Outsider's Perspective

    If you're a hardcore Nintendo gamer, you've undoubtedly run into the problem of friend codes. For the most part, the unintuitive nature of Nintendo's online service (quick, tell me how to find your Wii's friend code) has been aggravating to those of us used to the user-friendly ways of XBox Live and PSN, as well any pedophiles out there looking to snag a pre-teen's digits--though I guess we shouldn't feel too bad for the latter group.

    The topic of friend code frustration came up on the always-entertaining Drunken Gamer Radio this week, when one of the hosts talked about the impossibility of explaining the friend code system to a casual gamer eager to hop online with a Nintendo title. I experienced the very same thing a few weeks ago, when my girlfriend picked up a DS along with Animal Crossing; she planned on checking out the online features of the game, and asked me--an Animal Crossing veteran--how to do such a thing. At this point, I poured a big, sweaty glass of scotch and muttered, "Sit down. This is going to take a while."

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  • There Is Significance Behind Super Mario's Cosplay

    Life isn't much good at being fair, and it's terrible at baking cookies. But it's great with lessons on perspective, and Lord knows it excels at making you feel old.

    I thought I had young gamers figured out. I would sometimes stand in the Arrivals lobby of the airport and wait for a travel-weary grandma to shuffle in with outstretched arms. Once her grandson or granddaughter shrieked with recognition and charged, I'd stand between the two with a large poster of Mario. One hundred percent of the time, grandma was abandoned for a hug with the Mario poster.

    I conducted this experiment to determine how recognisable Mario actually is, and also because I like making grandmothers cry. In conclusion, Mario is easily pointed out by the very young and the very old, and everyone in between—but not every aspect of Mario's character is acknowledged universally.

    When we think of Mario, we think of a fat Italian guy who wears a hat and loves to bounce around saying, “Woo-hooo!” But Mario is more than a long-time Princess rescuer: he's also a master of shape-shifting. Every new adventure gives him some kind of alterform: a frog, a raccoon, a ghost, a Superman, etcetera, etcetera. Knowledge of these disguises and a twenty-second elevator ride taught me that just because Mario is so easy to point it in a crowd, it doesn't mean his image has remained consistent among gamers of all ages.

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  • Jet Grind Television: WiiSpray

    Last summer, Martin Lihs finished his thesis project at Bauhaus-University. Amidst the ocean of Wii remote mods created in the past three years, Lihs’ is especially cool. The WiiSpray is a plastic spray paint can with the motion sensing guts of your average Wiimote. Today, the WiiSpray has its own functioning interface and it lives up the homebrew peripheral’s promise. Utilizing the Wii’s internal tech and flash, Lihs has created a marvelous slick interface that recreates the look of Earth’s best urban vandalism. There are even stencils!

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  • Give Super Punch-Out a Chance

    I've been talking about Punch-Out a lot this week, from blogging about the new Wii update yesterday to gabbing about it on the Stand Under the Don't Tree and Riddle Me This podcast on Tuesday (episode release forthcoming). In fact, I've had so much Punch-Out on the brain that I happened to overlook the fact that one of my favorite games of all time, Super Punch-Out, saw a Virtual Console release this Monday. And now that I no longer have to play Sophie's Choice when it's time to decide which Wii Channel needs to die for the sake of a new download, you can bet I was beating the living snot out of large, cartoonish boxers as soon as humanly possible.

    I've come to observe that Super Punch-Out is mostly unknown and unloved, especially when compared to its iconic little brother--a cultural touchstone for anyone growing up in the 80s (I guess we all wanted to beat up Mike Tyson). But when you strip away the nostalgia, Super Punch-Out is actually a much better game.

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  • Donkey Kong II’s Revisionist History Rights Old Wrongs

    Am I the only person on the internet who didn’t know this existed? Jeff Kulczycki, proprietor of Jeff’s Romhack, made a full on sequel to Donkey Kong entitled Donkey Kong II: Jumpman Returns. The game has a little something for everybody. For the folks out there who just love the original Donkey Kong and don’t love Donkey Kong ’94, Jeff’s made four brand new levels for you to play. For the people who still consider Donkey Kong Jr’s vilification of Mario to be a grave injustice, here’s your chance to engage in soothing revisionist history. If you want to get try out Donkey Kong II, you can head over to the infamous Funspot Arcade in New Hampshire to try and earn a killscreen of your very own. If you actually happen to own a Donkey Kong cabinet, you can actually purchase a ROM upgrade and soup that baby up. If you’re merely curious, here’s a full playthrough.

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  • The Problem with Punch-Out

    Hardcore Nintendo fans have been grumbling this generation, and most would say rightfully so; the Wii updates to beloved franchises like Super Mario Kart, Animal Crossing, and Super Smash Bros. have been rehashes--and sometimes downgrades--of games seen last generation. Even The Legend of Zelda: Twlight Princess wasn't much more than a prettier Ocarina of Time. But Nintendo knows what bones to throw to the hardcore, and they throw them well. Take the upcoming Punch-Out, for example; old-school Nintendo fanboys have been heralding it as the Wii equivalent of The Second Coming, despite the fact that it's merely a pretty remake of a game they played 20 years ago. For Nintendo, this is a win-win situation--after all, they can keep the most vocal minority of their fanbase happy while appealing to the casuals who will no doubt buy this game en masse. But to the impartial observer, the freak-out over this long-awaited sequel calls into question just how much we're willing to forgive when something repeatedly jabs at our nostalgia Hooksexup.

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  • The New Graphics Whores: Bit.Trip Beat is Gorgeous, But Retro Style Does Not Equate Quality



    A strange thing happened to me between downloading Bit.Trip Beat and beating its first boss. While delighting in its vivid color, laughing at its signature character leaving rainbows in his wake across digital space, and letting its infectious chiptune beats colonize my brain, I realized that I wasn’t having any fun. That’s fine — I’m a firm believer in the fact that a game doesn’t need to be fun to be good — but I was expecting to have fun. I wanted to have fun. I was engaged by it, but not in a good way. I found the game to be overbearing and stressful. Then it hit me: Bit.Trip Beat is a bad game.

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  • Games You Can Never Go Back To: Animal Crossing

    As a member of the nerd illuminati (also known as the gaming press), it's my job to get people hooked on video games, if only to make myself look less nerdy in comparison. Friends, family members, loved ones; all have been infected by a love of gaming--with me being the main carrier of this virus. So, when my girlfriend expressed a desire to get back into gaming with the purchase of a DS, I was as helpful and overbearing as anyone in my position could be.

    And when it came to getting a game to go with this system, there was only one answer: Animal Crossing. While I prefer the GameCube version out of all the others (you can't beat free NES games), someone who's never played Animal Crossing has absolutely no idea what they're getting into; I was the same way back in the Fall of 2002, when this cutesy little underhyped Nintendo game charmed and surprised the pants off of me. But, as I watch my girlfriend become delighted by the antics involved with being enslaved by a shop-owning raccoon, I'm brought back to that old saying: you can't go home again.

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  • Why I'm Excited For What WiiWare Could Soon Become

    Even though it was a firmware update that pretty much everybody called well over a year ago, it was still pretty exciting to see that SD Card channel go live on the Wii yesterday. Almost everyone who has downloaded more than one game from the Wii Shop Channel has felt the aggravation of having to "clean out the fridge" at some point, and with the twenty minutes of rearranging necessary for me to download the long-awaited Bit.Trip Beat last week, I was pretty much pissed at my favorite little white box. Getting home from work yesterday to see its inviting blue glow, I just wanted to hug the Wii and tell it that everything was going to be alright now.

    First, I could happily move my Virtual Console and WiiWare games to the SD card without worrying about forgetting them forever. Then I could reinstall the Nintendo Channel and the Wii Fit channel I had to delete to make room for World of Goo. Ooh, and then I could finally install that Mario Kart Wii channel I'd been putting off. And then I can finish that game of Paper Mario I had to remove from the Wii when I downloaded Tetris Party!

    Having access to these games without taking up precious system memory was not only liberating but a revelation.

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  • Trailer Review: The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks

    If the concept behind The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks tells us anything, it's that humans and Hylians likely share a similar transportation history, from beast domestication to the age of iron and steam. Apparently, both our races got tired of getting our heads stomped in by irate horses, and decided that challenging billions of tonnes of angry water while riding a thin wooden shell is for the birds. Bending iron to our will is the only way to ride.

    In The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks, Link has stepped away from the filth of the stable (have you seen what goes into breeding horses?) and barrels across Hyrule as the conductor of a train. Dignity, Yes!

    The trailer for Spirit Tracks stirs up conflicting emotions. I love the idea of trains in the Zelda series. Trains are my preferred method of transportation, and it's exciting to watch the trailer and speculate what might be. Will Link get to determine where tracks are laid down? Will he be able to somehow design stations? Will he pick up passengers? Why didn't Old West trains install pirate ship-style canons to protect against bandits?

    Then there's the gameplay, which registers as a little less spectacular, at least in my picky heart.

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  • Reminder: Nintendo of Japan Still Gets All the Nicest Things

    Nintendo president Satoru Iwata's keynote today was actually pretty nice. We got the long-awaited Wii storage solution, confirmation and reveals of a bunch of downloadable titles, the reveal of a new DS Zelda game, and some insight into just how creepy Shigeru Miyamoto really is to work with. As ecstatic as I am to see Nintendo committed to promoting Rhythm Heaven in America (my early pick for "game of the year"), it's still hard not to envy Japanese Nintendo fans. Of course they get many of the best games we never do (Captain Rainbow) or get very late (Professor Layton...still waiting on either of the sequels), and there are a few times when the tables are turned (Japan will likely never get MadWorld), but Nintendo of Japan just gets to do things that Nintendo of America would never dream of. Japanese Wiis can control television browsing and order business cards with your Mii on them. Nintendo of Japan even sponsors an annual student game developing seminar, 10 months of programming, sound and graphic design training for forty lucky applicants, with the best of the final student games distributed at Nintendo download centers. Not only do we in the west not get a program like this, we don't even get to enjoy the fruits of their awesome labors.

    Just take a look at Fufu Kirarin, one of the games made available from the class of 2008

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  • GDC News: Wii Storage Solution Confirmed

    If you're a fan of the Wii's Virtual Console and WiiWare digital download services, you've undoubtedly encountered one of the console's biggest setbacks: its meager amount of storage space. The company's had many glib answers for angry fans demanding a solution to the Wii's lack of a hard drive, but we've only heard rumors and Nintendo's whole "just move your games to an SD card" line since the grumbling began. And who can forget the infamous and disingenuous fridge analogy that was spouted by a Nintendo PR rep in the Fall of '07 and repeated millions of times throughout the Internet to this day? Yes, we clean out our fridge when food goes bad, but downloaded ROMs are in no danger of rotting--okay, maybe the Alex Kidd games.

    However, with Nintendo President Satoru Iwata's 2009 GDC keynote speech comes exciting news that addresses the concerns of hardcore Nintendo nerds. Thanks to the liveblogging efforts of Joystiq, we now have confirmation of a new SD Card Channel for the Wii, which will let owners of Nintendo's popular console run games straight from their SD cards.

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  • Respect the Pokeymans

    Confession: Pokemon frightens me. It's nothing to do with the dead eyes of Jinx or Psyduck, either (okay, maybe a little). The truth is, Pokemon is intimidating. It's a sprawling franchise that sucks you in waist-deep after two steps.

    A skeptic who spares naught but a quick glance at Pokemon sees a bunch of cash-in kids' games that merely scotch tapes a few new Muppets to its roster with each new installment. So untrue. Oh, so untrue.

    I was a self-proclaimed Pokemon Master through 1998-1999. No ten-year-old had a chance against my Nidoking, “AAAAAA” (“I choose you! AAAAAA!”). No job supervisor could tear me away from my heated matches for dominance—because I knew all the best places to hide.

    I ran out of slacker friends to play Pokemon with, and I took a long sabbatical. A friend of mine bought me a copy of Pokemon Pearl, and I decided it was time to whup preschoolers again.

    I quickly came to realise that the audience for Pokemon has grown up—and not all its fanbase dropped away as the franchise aged. Nintendo is well aware that there is a well-seasoned adult fanbase that is far beyond coddling Pikachu and drinking punch with Charmander in the shade of a big tree.

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  • Shigeru Miyamoto and Blasphemy, A Match Made in Heaven

    Every time I think of the happy American families playing Wii Play and Wii Sports, I smile a little inside. I love it that everyone’s playing videogames. It means there will be more of them. I have to laugh a little too, particularly when USA Today or some other milquetoast news outlet does a write up on Nintendo’s family friendliness. Nintendogs! Well we can all enjoy that right? Sure we can.

    In another world, Nintendo wouldn’t have stayed in business in the United States past 1984. Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Mario Bros. would be their only legacy in the land of the free. One day that year, I imagine the following dialogue took place between Mr. Miyamoto and Nameless Nintendo of America Head:

    NNOAH: “"Hey Shigeru, I hear ya gots the latest follow up to Donkey Kong ready! Whatcha got to make us rich, kid?"

    Shigeru Miyamoto: “It’s a maze game! We’re going to make some of that proverbial Pac-man cash!”

    NNOAH: “Genius! Tell me more.”

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  • Warning: Wii Punch-Out!! Might Just Kill You



    Last week, I came down with a flu like sickness. It was bad. I was sent home from the office twice because, apparently, I sounded like I was coughing whole parts of my insides out of my body. Today I am a well man and it’s all thanks to the power of rest and Mythbusters. Let it be known that, provided you are horribly sick, own an Xbox 360, and are a Netflix subscriber, you too can watch Mythbusters until you are fit, or fitter, than a well-made fiddle. Dr. John Constantine prescribes it! During one particularly awesome episode, Adam Savage was isolating ingredients from Diet Coke to determine which of them causes Diet Coke-Mentos-Explosions. While testing caffeine, Savage mixed a solution while commenting, “This is a lot of caffeine. Enough to kill you.” This blew my bed-ridden mind. Caffeine can kill you? Of course it can, all stimulants can! I’d just never considered it. This revelation, in turn, reminded me how dangerous Nintendo can be.

    Case in point: the new Wii Punch-Out!!. Like caffeine and stimulants of all stripes, fan service can kill a person depending on its purity and provided they have enough of it. Watch this trailer for an example of what a just-under-lethal dose looks like.

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  • WTFriday: A Serial Killer's Ideas for Wii Games

    The Internet is good because it lets talented cartoonists like Chris Onstad of Achewood put together comics about serial killers penning their own ideas for Wii games. Gamer humour isn't absent from the syndicated newspaper slurry we're fed every morning, but you can't really expect the jokes to go beyond, “Ha ha, my wacky husband plays video games more than my kids (Also, Mary Worth keeps meddling in my life)!”

    Achewood's Nice Pete is the most eccentric member of a bizarre cast: he's a mass murderer—it's implied he might in fact be a child murderer—but Onstad never asks the reader to pass judgment on him. Pete's proposal for “Cereal Pro 5000,” complete with its own Protip, is one of several quick glimpses we're given into a past composed of a broken family, rusted screen doors and hungry, limping dogs. The drunken father that Pete obviously had to work around on “bad” days is the same father he aims to make proud by designing Wii games. Wii games that he evidently believes everyone can relate to.

    It's impossible to feel just one emotion at the end of an Achewood cartoon.

    Related Links:

    WTFriday: Mario Versus Airman
    WTFriday: Mega Man A Cappella
    WTFriday: The Splash Woman Rap

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  • Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 and the Second Chance



    There’s just something about a re-release. Not a remake mind you, I mean a game being released a second time, possibly ported to another system, with a few ancillary new features thrown in to entice previous owners to cough up more cash. Sometimes they just get me angry. Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime on Wii with new controls? Why?! You can buy perfectly good versions of those games for half the price and play ‘em the way they were supposed to be played! Grumble mumble whyioughta. That’s just the idiot inside, the natural born fanboy hungry to defend an allegiance, doesn’t matter to what or who. He’s easy to ignore, but hard to suppress. Most of the time, I love a good re-release. Resident Evil 4 and Metroid Prime on Wii with new controls? Excellent! Those are great games that more people should play, glad they’re getting a new lease on life.

    It is too much to ask that a game be better than it was the first time around.

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  • Chiptune Friday: Spring Is In the Air With Okami



    Two truths. Today is March 13th. It will not be spring for another eight days. Also, the original soundtrack to Okami is not chiptune. At all. In fact, it is fully orchestrated and entrenched in traditional Japanese composition, a far cry from the heavy metal and pop roots of the blissed-out blip songs composed on the NES or similar consoles.

    Have you gone outside though? It is freaking gorgeous out there. It may rain, it may be cloudy, but the bitter miasma of late winter has lifted, washed away as if by… a celestial brush! Given, it’s likely that the fine weather is a result of the Earth’s natural solar orbit and axial spin, but I like to think that there’s a sun goddess wolf out there making it nice outside. I’m going to find her. We’ll go to the park and play fetch. Beautiful women will be all, “Oh your dog is beautiful!” And I’ll be all, “Check dis.” Then Amaterasu will make a bushel of fragrant botanicals grow at our feet.

    Here are three selections from the Okami soundtrack. Listen, be in bloom, and grab your DS or PSP. Go play outside today!

    The Great Goddess Amaterasu’s Revival




    Hit the jump for more fresh goodness.

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  • Gradius ReBirth and The Joy of Sisyphean Gaming



    Every few years, I get the itch. I’ll be reading a book or sitting in café, enjoying the air and taking in some company, when my conscious mind will simply shut off. My eyes glaze over, I drool a bit, and whoever I happen to be with at the time starts to worry. They wonder if they’ll regret not bringing a tranq gun by the end of the day. It’d probably be wise for me to start wearing a medical bracelet. It should read: “John Constantine. Irregular shmup addiction. Administer either space/terrestrial, horizontal/vertical shooter immediately. Contact Dr. Vic Viper at Up, Down, Left, Right, B, A, Select, Start.” At the very least, it would ensure that no one gets hurt.

    While Derrick’s been having a renaissance with the genre and Joe’s all but abandoned it, my predilection for shoot ‘em ups has been constant over the past two decades. As I said, it isn’t regular. It just comes out of nowhere. It starts with having to track one down, preferably horizontal, with a killer soundtrack, and bright color. Then I go for weeks without playing anything except for stray, half hour sessions with them, games like Einhander, Life Force, or R-Type Final. Thing of it is, I’ve never gotten good at any of them. I wouldn’t say that I’m terrible. I can usually get through the first level of a shooter without dying or, in extreme cases, continuing on the first try. But I’ve never beaten one without cheating and I’m usually struggling to keep up just a few levels in. I love the ebb and flow of a great shmup, the movement from speed and escape to the sluggish crawl that almost always precedes some giant conflict against a screen filling boss. When I die, I smile, and start over. Bullet hell or Konami standard, I take immense satisfaction in pushing the rock uphill and letting it tumble back over me.

    Which, when you get down to it, flies in the face of what we expect to be a satisfying experience, right? When we judge games, the most damning thing you can say about it is that it’s frustrating, the highest praise that it challenges us in a way that makes us want to persevere, to master it. If you aren’t good at it and you don’t get better, what’s the point?

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  • Trailer Review: Muramasa – The Demon Blade



    What can I say that hasn’t been said about Vanillaware’s two-dimensional skills. Undoubtedly, they can pay the bills. They are gorgeous. They are vivid. They are blinding in the extent of their flowing beauty, a realization of hand drawn gaming’s promise, a vision of the most fantastic landscapes while still evocative of the world’s natural beauty. Adjectives, adjectives, adjectives. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is good looking, god damn it. See what I mean?

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  • The Angry Video Game Nerd's House of Nintendo Horrors

    There's been a noticeable lull in publicised Angry Video Game Nerd rants. Apparently, Rolfe is waiting for his contract renewal with ScrewAttack, and he's forbidden to yell until the people who sign his paycheques say it's okay. Man, I've been there.

    To tide over the masses, the Nerd has published a short YouTube video showing off his NES game collection. How many Nintendo games do you think he owns? Times 'a lot' by a skillion and you'll get an idea.

    Actually, I got more out of this video than I thought I would. The Nerd shows us his legitimate games, but in spite of Nintendo's best efforts, the NES had a lot of titles that weren't anywhere close to legitimate. Tengen's “illegal” version of Tetris was only the Purgatory of a twisted plastic hell. Deeper in the forbidden depths, you will see atrocities like cartridges bandaged together with sticky “Sale!” stickers, and cartridges with connectors poking out of their misbegotten heads.

    Come one, come all. Two bits a gander.

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  • You’re Doing it Wrong: Excitebots Should Be Super Smash Bros. Kart

    I don’t know about you, but I thought Excite Truck was a hell of a game. Not just as a launch game either. Its terrain deformation, ridiculous stunts, enormous jumps, and speed were good fun. It wasn’t as demanding as its grandpappy Excitebike, but that suited its loose motion controls nicely. It flopped hard though, failing to break into the top selling games the month it came out. In fairness, it deserved to flop. Who puts out a racing game at launch and doesn’t include multiplayer? Appalling. More than that though, there was no aesthetic hook to sell Excite Truck to Nintendo’s audience. Its beefy trucks and muddy trails milieu might have played back in 1987, or even ’97, but those days were long gone for Nintendo by the time the Wii released.

    Now, Monster Games is back with Excitebots: Trick Racing. It looks like a lot of fun. Excite Truck but with wacky animal-robot-cars, more stunts, power-ups that involve driving into giant sandwiches, and, most importantly, multiplayer. I’m excited to play it. I’m also mystified by Nintendo’s decision to send this poor game out to pasture, just like Excite Truck. Animal-robots or not, there’s nothing here to grab up the massive Nintendo audience. There’s an easy way to make Excitebots into a multi-million seller instead of a ten-thousand seller. You make it a Smash Bros. game.

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John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.

Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.

Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.

Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.

Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.

Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.

Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.

Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.


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