DAY 32 / GAME 32 F-Zero

DAY 32 / GAME 32

F-Zero

             I just recently received F-Zero for my Wii-U virtual console free from Club Nintendo.  I don't have a copy of this for my SNES, but I remember playing this quite a bit.  I can't remember if I did own a copy now or not.  One way or another I have some fond memories of playing this game back in the day.  

            

             F-Zero used the same Mode-7 system they used system wide on the SNES to push sprite rendering to do some crazy things.  It's the same look created in Super Mario Kart, only this time it's a super high speed track full of rocket powered racers instead of go karts putting around the Mushroom Kingdom.  It was very fast, ran super smooth and unlike other racing titles from the same time you couldn't curse and blame the game for your mistakes because all the controls reacted perfectly.  It really was a solid, timeless racer from a time when you couldn't really achieve realism, so you may as well have crafted something that was fun, unique and responsive.  

The 4 racer choices each with different attributes.

             I remember when F-Zero came out, I was in 5th or 6th grade and it was announced alongside a few other launch titles.  (If my memory serves me correctly.)  And I remember that it just really looked like a Nintendo game.  Super Nintendo titles all seemed to have this particular look.  It was something about the colour palettes and the big chunky sprites.  Maybe it was all due to one particular art director at the time, or perhaps a more technical reason but it meant a lot of games like this that would otherwise have a darker punkier future look instead have a more friendly charm.  When I boot this game up now I've found that one of the benefits of these common designs is that it's creates a more timeless game that is easier to decipher visually.
            I'm super glad I have this again to play on the Wii-U gamepad.  If anyone missed out on this in the past and want to try a nice piece of the past this is quick, cheap and easy to jump into.  And if you have a Club Nintendo account, it's only 200 points right now, enjoy!

DAY 31 / GAME 31 Silent Hill

DAY 31 / GAME 31

Silent Hill

           
             I'm not sure when I first really got into horror games.  I'm one of those kids who used to love renting old horror flicks with my brother when we were young and I guess that love kind of transferred over to video games as they became more and more available.  I remember Alien 3 for the Genesis was pretty scary.  There was also The Immortal, which was horrifying and Splatterhouse, Darkseed, Doom, Heretic..  But the horror genre never really took off I think until the PS1 came out and with it games like ClockTower, Resident Evil, Alone in the Dark and of course; Silent Hill.

             Silent Hill was yet another great PS1 game that my brother bought.  I have no idea where he had heard of it, but it was a great call on his part.  This was one of those games that I never actually played much of myself, but instead sat and watched the majority of it while my brother played it.  There were a few games I had enjoyed like this and I kinda miss it.  I really love the idea of cooperatively trudging through a game together with someone.  It gives you the opportunity to sit back and enjoy some elements of the game that you may otherwise miss because of where your focus lies.  Notable games for me include Bioshock with my old friend Jesse, RE: Code Veronica with my old roomate in college, and Final Fantasy 7 with my brother.

              Silent Hill is amazing right from the get-go.  The first bit where you loose your daughter in the foggy town is absolutely terrifying, especially the first time around.  You follow her into an alley, the camera starts to skew, you start to see very out of place items like hospital gurneys in the alley as the sky darkens and you have to continue by the light of your zippo.  Somewhere an air-raid siren starts up as you start to realise everything around you has changed, bodies are tangled up in the chainlink fence and little demons start to back you into a corner.  Then you wake up in a diner and it's like something from Twin Peaks.  (Which had heavy influence in the game.)

              Silent Hill 1 wasn't my favorite title in the series, but it's special because of what it started.  Silent Hill is an amazing horror game series, the second and third were incredible.  The series itself was definitely a big influence on modern horror film makers as well as game designers.  This first title was also nice because it had it's quirks while still trying to gain footing.  It featured an oddball pre-rendered cinematic at the ending that had some of the town's characters (some of whom met their fate through the game) all dancing and apparently creating a tribute of Twin Peaks.  It had multiple endings, including a UFO ending which I have never seen and some obscure unlockables.  And it had some of the best b-movie voice acting you could ask for.  On top of it all, Akira Yamaoka created an amazing soundtrack for this game.  Not the best of the bunch, but you can see where his footing for the next games.  The series has some incredible music in it that really stands on it's own.  They even used all the existing score for the live action movie.

               Silent Hill:  Shattered Memories is supposed to be a remake of this game.  And although in and of itself it was amazing, I still would really love to see this game remade shot-for-shot on a newer system.  I'm sure it would do quite well.

DAY 30 / GAME 30 Tokyo Xtreme Racer

DAY 30 / GAME 30

Tokyo Xtreme Racer

             Back when I got my Dreamcast, I got all kinds of oddball games.  I can't quite remember where I heard about Tokyo Xtreme Racer, but I'm certainly glad I did.  TXR was a racing game where you perpetually roam a looping stretch of highway in Japan, searching out other 'gang' members to race.  The cool thing is you don't ever stop.  When you find someone to race, you flash your high-beams at them and a race starts from a rolling start.  You each have 'life meters' at the top of the screen and whoever stays in front of the other car until the life meter drops to zero, wins.  Then, you keep rolling to the next race.  Or just keep driving in circles around the highway, forever.

            I remember when I first got it, I was pretty disappointed upon discovering there was only one track.  Albeit, as you progress, you can unlock a little more of the track, but the location was all the same.  My disappointment lasted about as long as it took to circle the track once or twice; because by the time I had, I realised I had purchased one of the most zen racing games ever.  Turns out, there's something so very relaxing about simply driving around on the highway in your choice of tuned import at night as the lights of the streetlamps and buildings around you wiz by.  I could seriously just play this game all night long and not even bother racing.  I absolutely loved it.  TXR had a great selection of cars, all Japanese I think and all with fake names so they didn't need to purchase licenses.  But you could tell exactly what they were from the models.  You could upgrade them for performance, but also for style, adding better looking hoods, bumpers, side skirts, etc.  Even in this screen, your car is on the highway, rolling as the camera rotates around it.  

             Sure, the controls were stiff as hell and there was only really one track, but this was one of my favorite racing games ever.  Someone needs to build a up-to-date sequel on a current platform.  Maybe I'm the only one who would buy it, but they did make 3 other sequels to this game in the past.  So it must appeal to someone other than myself.  I'm actually a little surprised that they didn't merge this game with the Fast and the Furious property.  The two would go together quite well and I would love to see some American muscle cars added to the list.

DAY 29 / GAME 29 Panzer Dragoon

DAY 29 / GAME 29

Panzer Dragoon


             Panzer Dragoon was one of those gems that I picked up for my Sega Saturn back in the day, based purely on concept.  In fact, in the days before youtube videos, proper game trailers and downloadable demos, paying good money for a game was so often a crapshoot.  But this turned out well, Panzer Dragoon was pretty much exactly how I had imagined it.  

            You see, right around this time, ReBoot had started to air.  ReBoot had all these great concepts for games that you wouldn't have really been able to create until these new systems came along.  In one clip, they are riding these dragons, shooting fireballs.  All of me thought that was the coolest idea ever, right down to my socks.  So naturally, when I first saw a screenshot of Panzer Dragoon, I was already mentally prepared for this kind of awesome.
            Panzer Dragoon, for those who haven't played it, is a shooter along the lines of StarFox.  It's 3D, and it appears to be free-roam, but it's all on rails.  You have enough control to move about the screen and dodge oncoming attacks while shooting the enemy, but your travel is all predetermined.  Now, just like in StarFox, this really didn't take away from the game at all.  In retrospect, I've realized this is technically the next step in the evolution of the classic shoot-em-up game, (Gradius, R-Type, etc).  The principles are the same, you take on waves of enemies, upgrade your weapons and fight huge bosses at the end.

           Like a lot of games at the time, Panzer Dragoon benefited from the fact that it really was a blank slate out there in terms of game development.  Systems that could run these full 3D games had just come out and so game ideas were really just limited to the imagination of the developer.  And so the gamers as well were seeing all these great ideas that they had only ever imagined.  I mean, it's gotta be harder to impress people now than it was back then with game designs.  And yet, Panzer Dragoon, with it's simple controls and easy to drop into game design is quite timeless.  The soundtrack was another one of these absolute gems that really took advantage of this game being on a CD.  A full orchestral  soundtrack that was available to play in your cd player if you popped the game disc into it.  And even though I do adore the old 8 and 16-bit chip-tune soundtracks now, having this kind of soundtrack back then was just incredible.

             Since Panzer Dragoon came out in 1995, there have been two sequels released on the Sega Saturn, one on the original Xbox, and one just recently released on the windows phone platform and (just the other day) one of the new Xbox One.  They've all been great (Except the phone version, which is a pay to play game, which just kills the fun.) and really kept the style and design true to the original.

 I just loaded up the soundtrack again as I was finishing writing this and man, it's absolutely epic.

DAY 28 / GAME 28 Dead Space 3

DAY 28 / GAME 28

Dead Space 3


             I really wasn't sure where to start in this series.  I really really love Dead Space.  The second and third I found were more polished in all aspects, but I'm not sure which I liked better.  2 was scarier, but 3 just had this great feel to it.  And I just love a game that takes place in the snow. 

              Dead Space games have always come out almost right on my birthday.  So it feels like a present just for me.  Which is great, because I absolutely love them.  It's got all my favourite sci-fi elements.  A dark dirty future with a nice taste of horror.  And Visceral Games does it just right.  Their attention to detail is beautiful and they really show that horror game or not, they are going to make it as much a work of art as any other game.  Dead Space 3 proved that they made a smart move giving the main character a voice in the second game.  The first game kept Issac Clarke a 'silent protagonist' only really showing his face at the very end.  But they really needed him to speak in order to sell the whole story and let you connect properly with his character.  Not to mention, Dead Space 3, especially the DLC story add-on had some great dialogue between Issac Clarke and John Carver.  Heck, I'd recommend the DLC simply for their back and forth banter.

                 The Dead Space series always had so many great 'wow' moments.  Moments that wish you had other people playing with you at the time to share them with.  Dead Space 3 has a co-op online multiplayer that I haven't had a chance to try out yet, which I bet would have been a blast the first time around.  
                  Dead Space 3 also had a terrific score.  They brought in an additional composer to score tracks alongside the series' songwriter from the previous two games.  I found this really freshened things up a bit.  The new tracks stood out to me as being a little more like a they belonged in a film score.  Some of them sounded right out of Ridley Scott's Alien.  I thought it really helped overall as I was honestly finding Jason Graves' stuff getting repetitive and formulaic. 

                 I'm having a hard time writing just a bit about Dead Space 3.  This is seriously one of my favorite games ever.  I love the suit designs, the ship designs, the weapon/tool designs, the way the developers talked about their design process and the love that went into it.  The game is so atmospheric; space walks have this deadened sound, ships feel like real ships and the suits look like they should work in space.  There's all these perfectly scripted action moments, terrifying horror moments and amazing reveals.

                 Basically Dead Space 3 is one of the best things ever. 
 Maybe one day Ricky will actually play it with me online, since I bought the PS3 version just for that reason..

DAY 27 / GAME 27 Gran Turismo

DAY 27 / GAME 27

Gran Turismo

             My brother and I picked this up back when it came out for PS1 along with one of Sony's new analog controllers.  It really was the first of its kind.  Racing games had always been very arcade oriented with over the top physics and fantasy cars.  Gran Turismo however was true to its title of "the real driving simulator".

             Racing required you to pass testing and becoming a licensed driver.  The tests acted like tutorials, showing you the basics of proper racing and how to handle the car in various track situations.  You couldn't just power through races like in other games; you had to ride a proper racing line, brake and throttle at appropriate times and generally put a lot of thought into your use of the tracks.  Tracks were based off real tracks (some) and cars were based off of real cars.  I learned a lot about different cars and car components and I'm certain that all that virtual practice helped me read a track better to this day.

            I remember the replays looked amazing. They had some great tech for the cameras that made it look that much more realistic than it was.  I'd almost always watch an entire replay after completing a race, especially if I managed to get more than one wheel at a time off the ground, which was not easy.  The car selection was great.  There was something special about being able to drive real cars; especially cars that I would be able to actually drive in real life one day.  Down the road, I was always impressed when a game would have a car I owned in it.  Forza was good for that, I've had the chance to virtually race my Honda Civic, Acura RSX-S, BMW 128i and my Honda 600RR in various racing games.  It's a neat thing.  

            Gran Turismo really started the whole racing simulator thing for me.  I love racing games; a lot.  I enjoy a whole range of them; everything from Forza to Burnout to Wipeout.  Racing can be relaxing, fun and very skill testing.  And for the most part, it's my only chance to ever get behind the wheel of cars I may never even see in person in my lifetime.  Which is part of the appeal of the racing simulator game like Gran Turismo.  Everything is becoming modeled so close to reality you really do feel like you're in a Bugatti Veyron or BMW Z4.  Heck, in Need For Speed: Shift 2, the interiors are modeled so well, the BMW 1 series is exactly the same as my own.  I love it.  

          Maybe one day I'll put the money into a proper racing rig, what with the steering wheel, pedals and seat and all.

DAY 26 / GAME 26 Tomb Raider

DAY 26 / GAME 26

Tomb Raider

             I remember playing the demo for Tomb Raider on my PC back when it first came out in the mid-90's.  I remember it kinda felt like a tech-demo; I didn't really care too much about completing it and it didn't seem to want me to either.  I was really just happy running around, swan-diving off of ledges, holstering and un-holstering my twin pistols.  But I did have some serious fun with it.

             Eventually, when it came out I grabbed a copy for my Sega Saturn.  This was a big mistake.  Simply because I never did get a save cartridge for it and so everytime played I had to start from the beginning again.  So needless to say, I never beat this game.  I did get pretty far I though, considering I always had to do it in a single run.  If I remember correctly, there were 4 major levels (each quite large) and I had made it into the second one.

                  I really enjoyed this game.  It was definitely one of my favourite 'next-gen' games at the time.  It was a terrific new property.  I was a huge Indiana Jones fan at the time and it was great to see something with a similar but modern feel.  Lara Croft felt like Indy with guns, but didn't feel as shallow as someone just adding guns and boobs to Indiana Jones either.  It was all it's own, and Lara's character was solid and definitely went places as the sequels moved on.  I loved all the esthetics; everything from the design of the item screen to the design of Lara herself.  
                      But man, this game was tough.  It had a real Prince of Persia style of level layout which required you to make sure you hit your runs and jumps perfectly or find yourself plummeting to the bottom of a 40 meter climb you just spent the last 15 minutes scaling.  I also remember helping my uncle pass a few puzzle sections on his copy for the PC.  I also remember there was a part where you found yourself fighting a Tyrannosaurus Rex.  (For real.)  And my uncle had found a section of the level where it couldn't touch you, so he had placed a book on the fire key, and walked away for an hour only to return to a dead T-Rex.  (I can't remember if you were actually supposed to kill him or not.)  I hadn't thought of something like that since I used to use my foot to play second player on Forgotten Worlds for Genesis.

                  The series has had a long run so far.  Still putting out sequels for almost 20 years now.  I'm always a little amazed that such a good game came out of that case.  I mean, that design (those boobs) really looks like it's covering up for a real budget game.  But turns out it's an awesome game with an unfortunate character design that had dragged on from the early years of gaming and it's designed-for-boys-and-men ideals.  I'm glad to see they've really modernised and cleaned up the character as well as the game.  I've heard the most recent installment of the series is terrific and I have no real idea why I haven't tried it yet.  (Oh right, I have about 20 other games to play still.) 

DAY 25 / GAME 25 Alan Wake

DAY 25 / GAME 25

Alan Wake

              I can't seem to ever convince anyone else to play this game.  Heck, I gave a copy to a friend of mine and he hasn't redeemed the Steam code yet.  I'm not sure if Alan Wake sold well or not and I've never checked to see if it ever got good reviews, but this was one of my absolute favourite last-gen games.  Then again, I think that's how I feel about every game I toss into the disc tray lately.  

       Nonetheless, Alan Wake felt like a refreshing story with some unique game mechanics.  The whole game really felt to me like it could have easily been Stephen King: the video game.  Alan Wake being a famous writer who ends up becoming wrapped up in his own supernatural story.  During a stress relieving getaway in the small town of Bright Falls, Washington, you fight the 'taken'; locals whole are taken over by a shadowy force.  All the while you are trying to rescue your wife who went missing after you both got into a car crash.  
           The primary game mechanic works by forcing you to clear a shield of darkness away from the enemy using a light source, usually a flashlight.  You are then free to shoot them dead.  There are some combination weapons that do both, like flare guns and flash bangs and some other fun toys like flares.  I've had some awesome moments, like when a flock of crows attacked me and I lit a flare just in time, sending them all spiralling away in little balls of flames.  Light being an important force in the game is well reinforced.  One of my favourite little bits of this is how single streetlights in the distance serve as save points.  It such a perfect visual metaphor. 

              On top of it all, Alan Wake is an absolutely beautiful looking game.  With brilliant looking volumetric lighting effects and a creepy looking smokey darkness effect that feels like a character itself overtop of the characters.  It's eerie and scary at times, spooky and beautiful.  It's got these great live action 'twilight zone' episodes that play on the tvs throughout the town.  They even have some great sequences that include the actor they used to model for the Alan wake character and the standees advertising his book in-game use the actor instead of the in game model.  Little things like this just really added to the charm of the game.

              I can't recommend this game enough.  It's cheap and easy to find.  On PC or Xbox and it's still a very graphically relevant game.  They also released a piece of standalone DLC called American Nightmare if you just can't get enough of this game, like I did.  
              Writing this reminds me how I get so much more excited about games than any other medium.  I never dwell on a movie or a book or an album quite like I do when the memories surface of a great game I played.  

DAY 24 / GAME 24 the 7th Guest

DAY 24 / GAME 24

the 7th Guest

              The 7th Guest was an odd purchase.  I would have never heard of it if it weren't for a news report on tv discussing how it was a game, but it wasn't intended for children.  (Can you tell this was the 90's yet?)  It had a 18+ rating or similar.  Of course, the guy at the counter of Futureshop didn't even look twice before selling it to me.  (I was like, 15 at the time I think.)  A horror game that was so scary it had an 18+ rating AND was on the news?  Sounded like it was perfect.

               Turned out it was a pretty cool game.  A Myst-style puzzle game set inside a creepy mansion with a story driven by bits of live action video masked into the setting.  And man was that acting campy.  Good for the genre though, and good for the times.  Plus, I remember really enjoying the super b-movie acting (and voice acting) in the games of the late 90's as silly as that sounds.  The 7th Guest did a good job with what tech it had though.  It ran fairly smooth on my old PC, though some of the full-screen video was a little choppy, but it was never story or puzzle critical video.  It would just be transitional video as you move from one area of the house to the next.  

The story was like some evil game of Clue.

             Traversing the house was inventive.  You discovered new puzzles by unlocking access to new areas through other puzzles.  Sometimes you'd flow through a drain into a basement room or the like and it really gave it a neat fly-on-the-wall feel to the adventure.  The house was pre-rendered in 3D, so it was all created for the game's puzzles and was designed quite well.  I remember getting inspired to draw a ton from the setting and puzzles in this game, especially the cover art.

              Considering how I never saw this game advertised, I'm surprised a lot of people know about this game.  Then again, there wasn't much of game advertising until after the mid 90's.  Anyone who hasn't can still try it out as it was recently released on iOS for free I think and it's a great adaptation that plays quite well on the touch screen.

DAY 23 / GAME 23 Parasite Eve

DAY 23 / GAME 23

Parasite Eve

              Back in the PS1 days Squaresoft really seemed to be dipping it's feet in a bunch of genres.  Some attempts were better than others, but one game they did that I absolutely loved was Parasite Eve.  Labeled a 'cinematic RPG', Parasite Eve featured some amazing (at the time) pre-rendered 'full-motion-video' cinematics that really helped sell the story.  It was a quick, easy to get into RPG for someone like myself who, at the time, found traditional RPG games slow and boring.  

            Man, I know it's really dated now, but at the time that whole cinematic introduction really sold it for me.  But even more than that, I remember getting really excited about working in 3D and perhaps making something that good some day.  Parasite Eve used a technique that was common around that time.  Placing a 3D character overtop of pre-rendered background in order to achieve more complex and detailed settings than you normally would if it were realtime.  Same as in Resident Evil, FF7 and Grim Fandango.  Only trouble with that is that it's not scaleable.    So, it may have looked good at the time, but an HD remake doesn't mean porting the game into a better system;  You'd have to go back with the original resources and re-render all the backgrounds.  Which is a lot more to ask of a publisher.  Which is too bad really, because I would absolutely love a rebuild of this game.  Partly for graphical reasons, but also because it had terrible load time and even worse controls.  Some of the levels were even hard to navigate because of the low resolution. 

            Still, I loved this game.  I even rebought it on the PlayStation Store so I could have a copy to play on my PSP.  The music was amazing, and having an RPG that wasn't fantasy based really appealed to me.  This is one of those games I never did beat.  I got really far in it but one of the discs started acting up near the end.  And when I bought the downloadable version, I got stuck somewhere near the beginning.  Undoubtedly I'll play this again sometime.  If I'm lucky, it'll be an HD version.

DAY 22 / GAME 22 Broken Age (Act 1)

DAY 22 / GAME 22

Broken Age (Act 1)


              It almost seems silly to talk about Broken Age, but I just have to, it's too good.  If the heart and soul of LucasArts adventure games was reborn for modern gaming, we'd get this.  As far as I am concerned, Tim Schafer truly delivered what the set out to do with this game.  Of course, half of this project is the documentary that was intended to go alongside it, but that's something for another time and another outlet.

           I had set some seriously high expectations for Broken Age, so part of me really expected to be disappointed.

           As soon as I launched the game, all of that went away.  I was immediately charmed by it all, even the title screen;  Broken Age is a thing of beauty.  The game jumps right into the important stuff.  There's no tutorials getting in your way and no need for a lengthy cutscene to get you into the story.  The art instantly grabs you, everything looks like a beautiful painting.  And when you aren't busy taking in the scenery, you're absorbed by the dialogue.  I couldn't help but find myself chuckling out loud at the lines delivered by Elijah Wood and Jack Black (among others).  It's got all the terrific humor you'd expect out of Tim Schafer and Double Fine.  I honestly can't say enough good things.  And of course, there's the soundtrack.  Peter McConnell proved once again that he can put together music for any genre of game; scoring an excellent soundtrack which really makes the whole game feel like it has a much bigger budget than it did.

Vella in the beautiful cloud world of Merriloft.

            I knew as soon as I started playing it that Leia would enjoy this game too.  Then again, I really couldn't imagine otherwise.  She keeps asking to play the game about the 'boy and the girl' and the 'barfing tree'.  She was really into it, and when I wasn't at the keyboard she instantly knew how to play.  I guess it's just natural to enjoy a good adventure game.

            Broken Age fits perfect alongside all the other greatest adventure games.  Tim Schafer has proven again that he is a flawless game-genie, no, game-god.  Ok, I exaggerate.  But seriously, as far as I am concerned, Broken Age is another game for me that reinforces my faith in his works and the works of Double Fine.  A Double Fine purchase for me is always well worth it's penny.

"Beware the trees!" - Curtis

DAY 21 / GAME 21 Wipeout XL

DAY 21 / GAME 21

Wipeout XL


                Back when my brother and I finally got a Sony PlayStation, it had already been out for a bit.  Not too long, but I think it was probably about 2 years after it was released in North America.  So there were a few titles that had already made their rounds and were now releasing sequels.  And so a ton of our favourite titles were sequels.  This was the case with Wipeout XL.  I think we rented Wipeout 2097 once, and saw that it was pretty similar but without the polish, so I really didn't bother playing it much.  

            Wipeout XL however was a very fine future-racing game.  To this day this is one of my absolute favorite games.  I find a lot of Playstation 1 era games don't quite have the timelessness of either newer or older titles.  They suffered one way or another due to messy graphics, poor controls, or ridiculous load times.  (Load for every new room Resident Evil?  Really?)  This was all because full 3D games like these we're still pretty new and the tech really seemed to be finding it's legs.  Wipeout skirted around this.  Load times weren't great, but same as most modern racing games and restarting the track didn't require a re-load.  The designs were perfect for the low-poly requirements and the levels didn't require too much detail.  It was very fast and had an amazing soundtrack.  

            Wipeout XL got me into electronic music the same way Brutal Legend got me into heavy metal.  The bonus with this game of course was that the soundtrack was actual audio CD tracks on the disc, so you could play it in a regular CD player.  The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Orbital, Cold Storage; it was terrific.  I think it was even the Prodigy that used footage in their music video.
            Wipeout XL just had a really solid style.  It nailed it for the whole future racing genre.  Rollcage was good, but I think Extreme G was the only other one that even game close.  This game, along with Gran Turismo, is one of those games that I didn't care if I lost my savegame at all.  I'd still pick it up a year later and play through it all from the start.  If anything, quicker and better than the first time around.  And considering most racing game rely on high-end graphics to sell themselves, I'm always surprised about how easily I'll pick this one up and play it again for fun even after playing though the latest version.  I guess it was just that good.

DAY 20 / GAME 20 Quackshot

DAY 20 / GAME 20

Quackshot

             So, I recently busted out my Sega Genesis.  I think it had been almost 10 years since I had it last hooked up.   The majority of the titles I own I have copies of that play on a newer system,  but there are a few titles I haven't managed to replace that I've been itching to play.  Road Rash, Ghostbusters, the Immortal, Mickey Mania and of course, Quackshot.  



             While everyone else was playing Ducktails for the NES, I had Quackshot, starring Donald Duck.  After playing both recently, (the rebuild version of Ducktails) Quackshot was, in my opinion, a better game.  It really was a solid title.  It had a terrific soundtrack and there were some really nice looking levels with a variety of locations and a puzzle-like need to return to different levels as you collect items that allows you to progress further.  You weapons are a collection of gun-fired plungers, newer ones allow you to access further areas by allowing you to create new ledges or handholds.  The best mechanic in the whole game though, is Donald's special attack.  You see, littered throughout the levels are these hot chili peppers.  Collecting one adds a notch to your 'temper' gauge and the second you pick up the last one you need to fill the gauge Donald has, what I can only describe as a spaz attack where he flails his arms and runs full speed screen right knocking anyone out of his way.  It's the most Donald thing I've ever seen in a Disney game.

              Back when I was in grade 5 and I was looking at getting this game,  friend of mine at school started telling me all about it.  He went on and on and everything he told me made it sound like the best game ever.  Turns out when I finally got it, he had made every word of it up.  He had clearly never played the game.  So at first I was super disappointed, you see I had built up this game in my mind, the most perfect game.  So it took me a while to warm up to it.  I ended up loving it nonetheless.  At the time, Disney had a lot of great properties geared to my age.  There was Tailspin, Ducktails, Bonkers, etc, and they were all very solid.  So this was right up my alley.  I'd say I'd love to see a remake of this game, but to be honest it's super solid as it is.  I'd be happy with a emulated version, or a copy for my 3DS.

              It is for note as well, the Genesis barely worked when I first fired it up.  It took a bit of time, letting it warm up, before it started to run without locking up before the title screen or mid game.  I haven't had this trouble with my SNES.  At the same time, it's always been in use since I've had it.  The Sega however, although hasn't seem much use lately, had seen a LOT of use in the past.

Apparently in Japan this game was titled:  I Love Donald Duck.  

I find that hilarious.

DAY 19 / GAME 19 Shadows of the Empire

DAY 19 / GAME 19

Shadows of the Empire



               How amazing was this game?  If your answer isn't something along the lines of 'it was the best game ever' than I don't know you.  Seriously though, I'm super excited just thinking about it again.  Shadows of the Empire was one of the best Star Wars games ever made.  This game alone is reason enough to buy a Nintendo 64. 

            Shadows had a great side-story to the trilogy, visited a ton of familiar locations and let you do all kinds of things you've always wanted to in a game about Star Wars.  You got to take part in the Battle of Hoth, roping AT-ATs in a snowspeeder.  You got to ride a speeder bike, fly a ship similar to the Millennium Falcon and take part in a space battle like in Return of the Jedi.  It also had a fantastic musical score which I have no idea how they fit on a cartridge.  I mean, I remember there was trouble fitting a proper soundtrack into Wipeout 64 so it ended up with a gimped version of what you got on the PS1.  But it was perfect, it used some of the best bits from the trilogy and added mostly original tracks by Joel McNeely which blended perfectly.

           Shadows of the Empire did another thing as well.  You see, for myself at least, one of the things that really made Star Wars for me were the ships.  The ships were characters themselves, each one with personality and uniqueness.  People remember the Millennium Falcon and the Slave 1 as much as Han Solo and Boba Fett.  So when Dash Rendar's Outrider was introduced they created another ship as memorable, if not more so, than their new hero.  They even added the Outrider into shots of the original trilogy during the re-releases.  (Not that something like that is very far-fetched.)

           The only trouble with the N64 is that this was one of the consoles my brother bought and subsequently lost over time.  So I don't have access to one to go back and play.  I'll have to see if I can get a hold one one.  Though, I would at least be happy if Nintendo would put this up for sale as a Wii-U VC game.

 Damn you Nintendo!  Get with it already!  We'd all buy these games three times over if you'd let us..

DAY 18 / GAME 18 Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

DAY 18 / GAME 18

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

             Man, I don't know what kids do these days without this game.  This was truly educational gaming at it's finest.  A game that was really a game; both fun and engaging, yet truly educational.  Now, I suppose there are updated versions, but I'm not sure this game would really work well now that we have the internet.  Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? forced you to do research in order to complete the puzzles.  Where nowadays you could just Google search the question and get your answer; this game required you look up the answer in a World Almanac.  So you learned the valuable skill of researching things in a book, as well as the facts you looked up and ended up memorizing.

          Carmen Sandiego was timed just right for my generation.  Released in 1985, it was one of the few games we owned when my dad got us a 286 PC for the house back when I was in grade 5.  Being that there wasn't much else to play, we found the fun in this game, even though we really didn't have to.  It was engaging and rewarding to play and all the little nuances, like having stuff print up on a dot matrix printer, all the little maps and the midi-audio tracks of all the countries' anthems; really gave it it's charm.

DAY 17 / GAME 17 Full Throttle

DAY 17 / GAME 17

Full Throttle



                Full Throttle was another one of those games that was genuinely picked from the mind of Tim Schafer.  An adventure title from LucasArts that featured comic humor yet oozed heavy metal style.  

I'm using this picture again.  On the right is my copy of the Adventurer signed by Tim Schafer!

             I'm actually playing through this again right now.  And for anyone who wants to play old SCUMM games you can get for free the SCUMMVM (virtual machine) for play on pc or mac.  (Even if the original copy is PC).  Low resolution or not, games like this age so well.  Point-and-click isn't very clunky, and some of these newer titles had really refined the whole inventory and verb interface.  Part of Full Throttle's charm was the sweet tattoo verb/inventory widget.  You click the eyes of the skull for the 'look' verb, the gloved hand for the 'grab/touch' verb, the foot for 'kick' and the mouth/tongue for the 'talk' verb.  The talk verb which responded with 'I'm not putting my lips on that' if you decided to 'talk' to an inanimate object.  

             The whole Ben character was a great departure from the usual silly heros of LucasArts; Guybrush, Hoagie, Lavern, Bernard and more of a step toward the humorous but strong protagonist we see a lot of now.  Characters like Eddie Riggs from Brutal Legend and Manny Calavera from Grim Fandango.  But in the end he still embodies a proper solid protagonist that holds a solid story together.  The story of saving the Polecats (your biker gang) and stopping an evil man from turning Corley Motors (Read: Harley Davidson) into a minivan producing boredom factory.

              Apparently there was a sequel and an animated series planned to accompany this game; neither of which got made, sadly.  I'd really love to see what they could do with Ben and his story today, especially after seeing how honest Broken Age handles a classic gaming style with modern technology.  But I'm happy in the end knowing that this game may have really been more of a stepping stone for Tim and others to bring us some of the best games we have today.

"Some joker took my keys.  I don't like that."  - Ben

DAY 16 / GAME 16 The Dig

DAY 16 / GAME 16

The Dig

               The Dig was very important.  This was the first game ever where you had to saw your own arm off to continue the story.  


            But truly, The Dig was one of LucasArts' first adventure games that was of a more serious nature.  It looked like it borrowed a bit from Full Throttle, in both visuals and tech; using some pre-rendered CG elements mixed in with the usual 2D stuff.  The story follows a group of astronauts who, after discovering an ancient relic on a nearby asteroid, find themselves transported to an alien world.
            It was really nice to play something different.  The Dig was dark, a little scary; like I said, at one point you get your arm crushed under a rock and are forced to saw it off yourself.  I don't think I've had to do that again until Heavy Rain.  As you explore the ancient alien world you discover more and more about the previous inhabitants, not unlike the final levels in the hidden alien temples of Dead Space 3.  

            As usual, LucasArts excelled with this title.  It looked great, sounded great.  Featured some terrific voice acting.  Remember, at the time, good voice acting in games was hard to come across.  We all know about Resident Evil and Silent Hill.  Like the rest of the adventure game collection from that studio, these really belong in a special place apart from other games where story is king.

Strong female characters were the norm for LucasArts.