May Games and Collecting Things

There are more bad games about Pac-Man than there are good. Like, a lot. Trust me, stick with the classics, Pac-Pix (which shouldn't even be a Pac-Man game), Pac-Man Championship Edition and the four-player, arcade hit, Battle Royale. Does anyone care about how Pac-Man is doing with the "challenges of being a teenager"?

I've been playing a lot of Batman: Arkham City the last few weeks, in the very spare moments that I have between house work, child rearing and spending time with my wife. Now that it's summer, we are outdoors a little more, coping with the "challenges of being" allergic to nature with a four year old.

I might still say that this is the best comic book based super hero game of all time. Besides that, this game has it's hooks in me for collecting items and unlocking content that I really don't even care about. Only Crackdown can compete for time with all it's tiny orbs floating around the city. I must have them all in these games. If someone ever figures out DLC that's just fresh locations for collecting stuff, I might be a little less likely to stop at 7-11 for an eclair as often as I do. Seriously, someone just go back Halo or Gears of War and drop some artifacts, dog tags or little pretty flowers in the maps and I might have my games planned out for the rest of the summer.

Stick Man Golf 2 is also competing on iOS with You Don't Know Jack for the winner of the award for Game Most Played At Work While SOL Testing Is Going On. Standards testing for technology support staff is a huge game of sit and wait. You're bored out of your mind and want something to do, but you just hope it doesn't have to do anything with testing the overly tested kids and stressed out teachers.

My son is in love with the Wii U Nintendo Land and Warioland: Shake It. He's quite good at playing the Pikmin game in Nintendoland and loves repeating one level over and over again. Sometimes he even asks me to play because it's so fun. Now we just need a full on Wii U game for it and we'll both have fun playing that one together. And of course I'll need extra time to make his dinner, clean up a bit and catch a breath. I really don't know how people with WoW accounts and two kids make anything happen in their lives. More power to you all.

A Story of Two Gameboys

My awfully nice cousin decided that he had the need and the ability to further my slight video game collecting disease by sending me his Gameboy that he's had since he was a little kid. Normally I don't want things that I also didn't have as a kid, but I do make exceptions for retro-geeky things. And, since my wife had a Gameboy and a few games but can't actually find the console, I was happy to oblige.

But sadly, the Gameboy didn't have a fully working screen. I'm not so much a completist for collecting as I am, what a t-shirt I own says, a prefectionist. So I had to start hunting down a working display for the Gameboy and see if I could 1) actually find one and 2) repair it myself. This proves much harder to Google than I had thought. I'm still working on that one.

In the mean time, I figured why not look up what Gameboys are going for and maybe buy another one. Then I thought, why not get a better one. The first Gameboy I owned was a Gameboy Advance in college. It was a little too new for this retro bug my cousin had forced upon me and I wanted to play original Gameboy games. On the other hand, I just couldn't force myself to buy another green-screen-mess that those consoles ended up being to anyone but the eyes of a 7 year old boy. So after a little research I found the Gameboy Pocket, Nintendo's "second generation" of Gameboy. They were smaller and sleeker, ran on two fewer batteries and had a new black and white lcd display. I found one on eBay for $10 in new perfect condition and now it's sitting on my desk along with a rechargeable battery back that came with it.

Now I plan on playing Pokemon Red, Super Mario Land and Tetris all before realizing that old video games suck and go back to playing Legend of Zelda on my DS.

WiiWare: You, Me & The Cubes

This looks like a very interesting physics-based game that's going to be downloadable for the Wii.



There are quite a few WiiWare games being shown at E3.

• PictureBook Games: Pop-Up Pursuit
• You, Me & the Cubes
• Final Fantasy IV: The After Years
• BIT.TRIP.CORE
• Icarian: Kindred Spirits
• Sword & Soldiers
• Military Madness: Nectaris
• Cave Story

E3: The Big Three Wrap Up

Now that Nintendo and Sony have their E3 press conferences over and done with, I'd like to take a stab at evaluating the whole deal.

In short: Microsoft has a nice handful big hits returning, Nintendo plays it safe and fixes their WiiMote and Sony floods the shelves with titles. Microsoft and Sony pull up chairs to Nintendo's motion control table. Nintendo focuses on WiiMotion plus. Microsoft gets more social with Facebook/Twitter support. Sony grossly overcharges for the PSP Go.

Microsoft is coming back this year with sequels their biggest titles. Halo: ODST, Left 4 Dead 2, Dirt 2 and Forza 3 are all on my to-do list. I wasn't excited about them going into the motion capturing camera to control games. When it's your main control scheme, like Nintendo, developers have to make it work to sell games, but when it's an add-on, your developers are going to phone in the coding and muck it up. Microsoft might get one or two wide-audience titles in that hard-core gamers pick up for fun, but I don't see it getting much more play than that. And I could care less about Facebook, Twitter and Last.FM support. I'm actually going to tell myself not to use them because of how ridiculous it is to use a home entertainment center for those. It's exactly why I never use the Opera browser on my Wii.

Nintendo is fixing their Wiimote controller with the clip on WiiMotion Plus, finally bringing one-to-one movement to their controller instead of counting on gestures to control games. Tennis and golfing games are going to get a great benefit from this new tech, as well as all the swashbuckling sword lovers out there. I do plan on getting Wii Sports Resort and possibly Red Steel 2. Also, the four player New Super Mario Brothers Wii and Metroid: Other M have peaked my Nintendoing interests as well. Personally, the WiiMotion Plus should be a free upgrade or only add $10 to the price of the games it's bundled with. We'll see how that goes when the games come out.

Sony I'm a little rough on. I don't own a PS3 or a PSP, so I have to approach all their products as if I'm looking to buy a game + a $300 system. That's really hard to do when you have a library of unfinished 360 and Wii and DS games at your disposal. The franchises that I used to love from Sony are replaced from equally good 360 games, and if they aren't exclusive titles, then I REALLY don't care about Sony. I do, however, like to read about the new Gran Turismo and Ico/Shadow of the Colossus follow-up, The Last Guardian. I'm sorry Sony, your just not in the cards for me this generation. Neither is your $250 PSP Go. I'd rather have a 16GB iPod Touch. But you slap in some decent support for media (without requiring Windows!) and a nice app store and I might have to get my people to call your people (read: My wife and my bank account).

E3: Nintendo

Well today's Nintendo press conference at E3 was kind of disappointing. I added some news bits in the sidebar though, most notable (again, to me) are Grand Theft Auto coming to the Nintendo DS, the new, improved motion sensitive controller add-on for Wii controllers (lightsaber duels, please!), a new Wii Sports game called Resort, and a Shaun White snowboard game to play with the Wii Fit board.

Some other news dropping today are a $400 80GB PS3, which signals to me that soon I will own a $350-ish PS3/BluRay player in about a year. I don't really care about the PS3, but a BluRay player that plays PS3 games I'm all in for.

The new Bionic Commando game is getting some decent play reviews. I want to like it, but classic remakes usually don't fair well. Especially if they are remakes from the 80s. I have absolutely no data to back that statement up. :)

Also, The Who's album "Live at Leeds" just hit Rock Band. I'm going to have to see if there are any songs worth a purchase. I've never listened to them. Maybe having the album to play in the game will make me like them just like Boston's Rock Band offerings did.

Nintendo Wii on eBay

So this year I thought I would take an opportunity to use our annual visit to New York to visit the Nintendo World Store and pick up a Wii to sell on eBay. It seems that they are still hard to find over a year after they've been on sale in stores and Christmas is only making things worse.

So I decided to look up the current going rate on eBay that the ripoff sellers are getting and, actually, it's not that much.

Most consoles are being sold with 5 games or 14 games and two Wii controllers. This is obviously either the basic package box with the Wii Play game (5 mini games) or the basic box with Wii Play (9 mini games and a controller, $40 more in stores). The average markup is about $100 right now, which figures around $350 + $40 shipping. I think that's pretty reasonable for getting your kid a Wii for Christams.

There are some auctions for some reason that are getting $200+, but even the "14 game" auctions are only making about $130 on average.

Of course the big question is, what will the auctions be like after Christmas? What will they be like Christmas Eve?

I will go to the Nintendo store at Rockefeller like I always do (and not buy any awesome merchandise, again), but it will probably be a last minute decision on whether I try to make an easy buck on eBay with it.

I might just get one for my parents, who always ask about it when I talk to them on the phone. That would be the good-son thing to do, righ?

2 Hour Review: Super Mario Galaxy

In short? Meh.

Since Mario went 3-D, Super Mario games have followed a pattern: collect stars (7 in each level) to gain access to new areas, all while keeping levels entertaining and fun. Defeat three-hits-to-win bosses. Save the princess.

Mario 64 was the first game. It was such a change from 2-D Super Mario World. It revolutionized platform gaming.

The second 3-D Mario game, Sunshine, added a water pack to shoot things with and shoot yourself off the ground. It was an interesting change that fans didn't like. It didn't change the game much, but at least it was a change. I liked it. I just didn't like the return to collecting 7 stars in each level. There wasn't anything new. But two games of the same title on the same console usually are pretty similar.

So when Galaxy came out, I was expecting something different. What I knew: tiny planets to run around 360 degrees on, collecting tiny "star bits" to shoot at enemies by pointing at the screen with the Wii-mote. So far, this sounds really cool. The only thing I didn't know was how the game was supposed to progress.

Suprise! Collect stars to gain access to knew areas. The thing I was getting tired of.

In all fairness, I'm only 8 stars into the 100 possible stars game (though you apparently don't need them all, like other games). I'm going to play the whole game through because, well, it's a Mario game. Their fun. They are good challenges for hand/eye coordination. The levels are usually very creative, inventive, and beautiful. Their classic without even trying.

So far, the 360-degree levels are a lot to deal with. Hopefully, as I get used to it, the game will keep throwing me new things to do and ways to do them. I guess only time will tell.

How the Wii Won

Nintendo is certainly selling more consoles than anyone else right now. And hand over fist they are raking in the dough.

But has Nintendo won the console war? I think it has, and here's why.

It sort of has something to do with why I feel like I'm the only person not to 'get' Pokemon. There is a sea of average people out there, and though I may have thought it before, I am not in that ocean. I'm a gamer. I want games. I read about games. I almost ended up making games for a living. I read tech gadget blogs. I have wireless internet at home and a 37" HDTV entertainment center. We own four computers, three normal televisions, two motorcycles and don't have any kids.

I'm pretty sure that's not average.

Nope. I am one of a handful of people that want slick, pretty, speedy, complex, integrated things. If you compare me to my older sister of five years, we are opposite ends of the spectrum. She has two kids, a largely used 27" tubevision, and about 10 minutes in her spare time. Her family, not mine, is in the bigger pool of potential customers of Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo. My parents will never pick up a 360 controller and don a headset to go on Live. Nor will they ever walk around Sony's virtual Home and oogle their friends awards trophies.

But they will pick up a Wii controller and swing at baseballs and tennis balls. They don't care about having online friends and downloading HD movies. They don't want to chat with people on Messenger. Their non-existent PSP doesn't have to connect to their non-existent PS3.

Microsoft and Sony are doing well at going after the Gen X'ers and Y'ers and TXTers. But Nintendo is better going after all of their parents, their parent's parents and younger siblings. My mom stood next to my 5 year-old-neice and got out-bowled. It was fun because bowling is fun, not because she didn't get shown up by a 5-year-old that knew more about the game.

So what people, which I mean to say 'gamers', have to ask themselves is this: When you go to Wal-Mart to shop for games, who is in the electronics section? 16-25-year-olds or mom and pops with kids in tow. And don't think this is just a flash in the pan. Nintendo is going to succeed like it has since it started making playing cards (and not the Pokemon ones). Appealing to the mass market by making games the majority of the people like to play.

We should really just consider ourselves lucky for Zelda, Metroid, and Mario. They are the expensive icing on the made from a box cake.

It All Takes a Back Seat

All that talk about Crackdown and Halo 3 betas and Lost Planet have all
been moved to the back of the bus. Why should such potentially time
draining games be so suddenly removed from my playlist for the next month
or, quite possibly, two?

Because I just went out and picked up The Legend of Zelda: Twilight
Princess.

Call me or email me occasionally and remind me to eat, sleep and go to
work.