I was never very heavily into games, because I could never afford them. My parents didn't spoil me, so I was left with the few choice video games I did have, and I came to appreciate them. On the rare occasion that I obtained a new game for keeps, I would play the living daylights out of it until I found absolutely everything, no matter how long it took. Donkey Kong Country 3 was a constant source of enjoyment for at least ten months when I was 11 and 12, if I recall correctly. As is with all games, I would beat it, keep that one file for my 100% attempt, and then start a fresh file. Every once in a while, I would find something in my new game, whether it was another DK coin or hidden Bonus barrel, that i couldn't remember seeing before. I would then proceed to see if I'd ever found it in my original game, and usually, I wouldn't have found it. Slow and steady progression finally reached its climax when the fourty-first DK coin was found, the secret submarine exposed and the Mother Banana Bird freed. 103%, over a course of an ungodly amount of hours.
I share this anecdote not because DKC3 was hard (fun, yes, but not "hard," not in the common sense of it), but because it's the clearest memory I have of finishing a game entirely by myself. No "handbooks," no Nintendo Power cheats, no internet walkthroughs, just me and the brat also known as my little sister. I finished the game in 1997, which was a landmark year, because it was the first year that the "big business" of games I talked about earlier started to show. And the one that stood out above all the others was Final Fantasy VII, which has time and time again been called the greatest game ever made. Whether it is or not is up for debate, but I doubt I'll ever truly know, because unbelievably, I missed that party, as well as many others, because I was narrow-minded at the time and thought it was a choice between only Nintendo and death. But that's in the past.
The next year, 1998, saw the release of the Nintendo 64's best game, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I didn't even own a Nintendo 64 at the time it came out, but everyone else I knew seemed to own it, so in an ironic twist, I looked up things about the game on the internet so I'd know what they were talking about, and to maybe tell one of them something he didn't know. I actually got the game the following February, and coupled with my past memories of A Link to the Past and Link's Awakening, I dove headfirst into LoZ's new world, hardly reemerging for some time. However, I started to get stuck in some places, and lo and behold, I used what I remembered from the internet to figure some things out. Finally, I reached the Water Temple, and that inevitable missing key, and that was after all the other headaches, mostly having to do with the water levels and rooms uncovered by them. I did something I thought was exciting at the time: I logged onto the internet and found a rather low-quality FAQ (by today's standards), but it got me to where I wanted to get. However, this almost backfired, as I also read a strategy on how to beat Morpha, the temple's boss, and I beat it, only to die afterwards without saving. I panicked, because I was afraid to fight him again without consulting the walkthrough, which I hadn't saved. However, since I was still using a phone line at the time, and I wasn't allowed to tie up the phone, I fought Morpha without help. I beat it and moved on; crisis averted.
My realization that I'd become a chump was three years later, when the Zelda Oracle games came out for GBC. Sure enough, I wouldn't even play Seasons unless I had that stupid issue of Nintendo Power in front of me, guiding me. It stopped after level 4, so I continued on my own, warily. Constantly, I looked up strategy on the Internet for all sorts of reasons, ranging from I couldn't find the animal flute to I couldn't find my way through a forest. Somehow, I reached Seasons's end, and linked my game to Ages. Ages was a lot different, and somehow, I got through it more easily, but there was still way too many usages of the old Temple of 4 Seasons web site to figure out what I was missing. I cared way too much, and placed way too much importance on doing all the things Shdwrlm3 and AstroBlue did. And what did it get me? A game experience I found disappointingly lacking by the end. I'd become such a patsy to the free advice of the internet, two of the greatest GBC games lost their meaning on me.
And what did the big game companies begin realizing? They realized that the entire game world was filled with tools like myself who'd somehow been dumbed down, but more importantly, who weren't going to buy their games if they weren't easy enough. I'm at a loss when it comes to many of the games that were like this, because to be honest, I never experienced most of them, but I know they're out there. I'm actually taking liberty with this subject, because for all I know, I'm in a very small minority here. But I think my becoming a stooge in games is widespread; whether people realize it or not is something I don't know. We'll now skip ahead in time again to early 2003, to the reason I foolishly continue to hold on to only Nintendo.
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, along with its Ocarina of Time & Master Quest bonus disc, was enough to get me to shell out for a Gamecube. Well, in actuality, it was my mother who did that. I'd buy my games with what little money I had from jobs that never lasted more than days. The Wind Waker became the latest victim to my toolness. I'd go maybe an hour at a time, or to get stuck and give up rather than keep looking for the answer. I'd developed the mentality of a scared little cretin. "Well, if I can't do it as well as the best players, there's no point." Man, I'd love to solve the problem of time travel so I could slap myself two years ago. Anyway, there were points in TWW when I didn't care about the halfwits on the internet and I just kept playing, and that felt so incredible because I didn't care. When the game finally started to feel like Zeldas of the past, I couldn't stop. After the point in the game when you find out Tetra is really Zelda, the only time I used an FAQ again was only for a couple of two-character dungeon puzzles and the trading sequence. But despite my desparation to love it like Ocarina of Time, The Wind Waker holds much less for me, in part because again, I didn't do it on my own.
I also decided to buy all the Resident Evils, and those didn't give me that problem, mostly because I played those games with friends and collectively we knew where to go without any outside aid. (Resident Evil REmake remains possibly my favorite Cube game.) I then got a job I was able to hold on to, so my buying of game because more frequent, and so did The Problem.
Eternal Darkness, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and Beyond Good & Evil were all games that scored very well, and I bought them based solely on that, not because I had any interest in them, so it shouldn't come as any surprise that I still haven't finished any of them as well. I truly want to, but I can't delve into any of them. No, my delving was reserved for two games I bought two days after Christmas in 2003: Metroid Prime and Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell.
The geopolitical intrigue of Splinter Cell kept me entertained for the next month and a half, when I wasn't in school or playing NHL 2004. Once I finally reached the end and killed Nikoladze, the appreciation I had for it was something I hadn't felt in years, because it was done all by myself. Maybe it was because I felt I had a reason for continuing, and I didn't feel any "pressure" because the game had been out for months and everyone had already beaten it. It was at this time that the first glimmer of the idea that we'd all become suckers was dawning upon me. It would take me a year to actually realize where I'd gone oh so wrong.
T-Prime Blog
Easier games and the internet are turning us into tools, Part 1
by T-Prime on Comments
It's true, and you all know it. If you're already offended by the above headline, you're either too far gone to admit you suck at most games, or you're one of the few gamers left who remembers what a hard game is really like and knows what "hard" really means. There are a few games that bring this subject to my mind, so I'll start out with the one I've got the most experience with: Ikaruga.
Now, when I say "experience," I really mean "getting blasted to s*** over and over." For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Ikaruga is a space shooter done in the style of an old arcade game, in which you're a ship and you simply blast enemies to the end of the level. The thing than makes Ikaruga unique is that there are two types of enemies: black and white. Your ship can switch between these two "polarities," because white is better against black, and vice-versa, Your ship can even absorb enemey energy of the same color to gain strength, but opposite energy can kill you. As a friend of mine put it, Ikaruga gives you no mercy, not even for a second. It's like there are points in video games where you see a situation and feel like the creators added or changed something to it because they thought it would be too difficult otherwise. Well, in Ikaruga they see these points and then ponder how they can take them and f--- you over even more, just barely keeping it from being impossible. For instance, level four is flooded with kamikaze enemies that seek you out and do their damndest to ram into you. At the same time, both vertical and horizontal sides of the screen are full of white and black enemies that all fire continuous beams of their respective color in such a manner that they overlap each other so you have to perfectly time your switches in the midst of the rammers. Level Four is notorious for being a level you can't seem to beat (never mind the fifth one), but I personally wouldn't know, because I've never made it past level two.
Ikaruga was a wake-up call of sorts, because I used to be a stupid little punk, saying I was so great at all games and being able to beat people in all of them. That resolve had wavered quite a bit in the past few years, but Ikaruga finished if off entirely. They actually had a guy from Treasure come over to my house, rip off my ass, and hand it to me when I couldn't get any further. Okay, I'm just kidding, but they might as well have. If I'd played this game seven or eight years ago, I'm willing to bet I would've been a lot better at it. And yes, I know it didn't exist then, that's just an example.
When I was a kid, in the days of Super Nintendo and Game Boy, it was just me and the game. I had no other resources: I couldn't afford Player's Guides, and there was no real Internet I could connect to for help. I would just continously press onward in a game I was playing, sometimes to to brink of utter frustration, but I'd always keep going, because what else was I gonna do? These days, I am still extremely good at those few games, like Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, NBA Jam, and Donkey Kong Country 3. I had my games, my friends had theirs. And then, we hit the 64-bit era, which colided head-on with the start of the Information Age.
When games like Super Mario 64, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy VII and Zelda: Ocarina of Time got a lot of us stuck, we started doing the "new thing:" looking up help online. Couldn't figure out where the missing key in the Water Temple was? Had trouble beating Diamond Weapon? Searched aimlessly for the Green Cap Switch? Now there was a better way, a way other than asking your friends (and usually they didn't know either), shelling out for the player's guide or the agonizing feeling of being lost. Now, these people were still the minority at the time: most players still trudged their way through games and attained that feeling of satisfaction by the end. The way I played most of my games back in the day was that both me and my younger sister would play the same game on different files, and we'd help each other. I would usually go through the bulk of a game, but she would find a lot of hidden things I'd miss. Our 120-star file in Super Mario 64 was the pinnacle in our sibling gaming.
However, that generation was when video games started being taken much more seriously business-wise with the entrance of Sony into the market. Game designers weren't quite as free to make a game as before, because now there was more riding on a game's success. So what did companies start doing? They started watering games down to make them easier to play, and therefore more likely the consumers would buy them.
This practice has spawned the legions of casual gamers that exist today. Now, there really isn't anything wrong with a "casual" gamer: they see something cool and buy it because of whatever reason. However, this has really smacked the rest of us hard, because a lot of games can be breezed through with minimal effort. And as a result guess what happenes when a game gets a bit too hard for someone these days? They won't press on and try to solve the problem like it used to be. Instead, they'll put the game down and look up the answer on the internet, and then go back to the game and not remember the answer to the problem later on.
I hate this because it has happened to me.
Now, when I say "experience," I really mean "getting blasted to s*** over and over." For those of you unfamiliar with the game, Ikaruga is a space shooter done in the style of an old arcade game, in which you're a ship and you simply blast enemies to the end of the level. The thing than makes Ikaruga unique is that there are two types of enemies: black and white. Your ship can switch between these two "polarities," because white is better against black, and vice-versa, Your ship can even absorb enemey energy of the same color to gain strength, but opposite energy can kill you. As a friend of mine put it, Ikaruga gives you no mercy, not even for a second. It's like there are points in video games where you see a situation and feel like the creators added or changed something to it because they thought it would be too difficult otherwise. Well, in Ikaruga they see these points and then ponder how they can take them and f--- you over even more, just barely keeping it from being impossible. For instance, level four is flooded with kamikaze enemies that seek you out and do their damndest to ram into you. At the same time, both vertical and horizontal sides of the screen are full of white and black enemies that all fire continuous beams of their respective color in such a manner that they overlap each other so you have to perfectly time your switches in the midst of the rammers. Level Four is notorious for being a level you can't seem to beat (never mind the fifth one), but I personally wouldn't know, because I've never made it past level two.
Ikaruga was a wake-up call of sorts, because I used to be a stupid little punk, saying I was so great at all games and being able to beat people in all of them. That resolve had wavered quite a bit in the past few years, but Ikaruga finished if off entirely. They actually had a guy from Treasure come over to my house, rip off my ass, and hand it to me when I couldn't get any further. Okay, I'm just kidding, but they might as well have. If I'd played this game seven or eight years ago, I'm willing to bet I would've been a lot better at it. And yes, I know it didn't exist then, that's just an example.
When I was a kid, in the days of Super Nintendo and Game Boy, it was just me and the game. I had no other resources: I couldn't afford Player's Guides, and there was no real Internet I could connect to for help. I would just continously press onward in a game I was playing, sometimes to to brink of utter frustration, but I'd always keep going, because what else was I gonna do? These days, I am still extremely good at those few games, like Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Stars, NBA Jam, and Donkey Kong Country 3. I had my games, my friends had theirs. And then, we hit the 64-bit era, which colided head-on with the start of the Information Age.
When games like Super Mario 64, Resident Evil, Final Fantasy VII and Zelda: Ocarina of Time got a lot of us stuck, we started doing the "new thing:" looking up help online. Couldn't figure out where the missing key in the Water Temple was? Had trouble beating Diamond Weapon? Searched aimlessly for the Green Cap Switch? Now there was a better way, a way other than asking your friends (and usually they didn't know either), shelling out for the player's guide or the agonizing feeling of being lost. Now, these people were still the minority at the time: most players still trudged their way through games and attained that feeling of satisfaction by the end. The way I played most of my games back in the day was that both me and my younger sister would play the same game on different files, and we'd help each other. I would usually go through the bulk of a game, but she would find a lot of hidden things I'd miss. Our 120-star file in Super Mario 64 was the pinnacle in our sibling gaming.
However, that generation was when video games started being taken much more seriously business-wise with the entrance of Sony into the market. Game designers weren't quite as free to make a game as before, because now there was more riding on a game's success. So what did companies start doing? They started watering games down to make them easier to play, and therefore more likely the consumers would buy them.
This practice has spawned the legions of casual gamers that exist today. Now, there really isn't anything wrong with a "casual" gamer: they see something cool and buy it because of whatever reason. However, this has really smacked the rest of us hard, because a lot of games can be breezed through with minimal effort. And as a result guess what happenes when a game gets a bit too hard for someone these days? They won't press on and try to solve the problem like it used to be. Instead, they'll put the game down and look up the answer on the internet, and then go back to the game and not remember the answer to the problem later on.
I hate this because it has happened to me.
Amazing
by T-Prime on Comments
It's my first journal entry that's actually like a journal entry, and not a long-winded rant or article of some type! I highly enjoy writing those, and they will never stop, but I figured "Why not use this rather cool feature as many times as I can?"
So what can I say? I'm still on break from school, and I'm currently writing four reviews, but I'm using the GameFAQs guideline. In other words, at GF, the more reviews a game has, the longer yours has to be to be submitted, so that's what I'm doing. I'm seriously fleshing them all out. GS has no problem with letting in a 100-word review for a game with 300 others, but GF requires an insane amount of words. They don't allow just anybody to write these. I like Gamespot's system, it lets lesser reviewers just write what they think, but I've been using the GF way for a while. Watch, by this upcoming weekend, I'll have only one that isn't done. **crosses fingers***
I just uploaded the soundtracks from Metroid Prime & MP2: Echoes onto my iPod, as well as Zelda Sound & Drama, a collection of remixes from A Link to the Past that came out in Japan over a decade ago. It's amazing how you can miss how good game music is if you don't stop and listen to it without having enemies all around you or something. Kudos to Retro Studios and Kenshi Yamamoto for their games' music.
Oh, and for the record, about the Metroid soundtracks:
Prime > Echoes
So what can I say? I'm still on break from school, and I'm currently writing four reviews, but I'm using the GameFAQs guideline. In other words, at GF, the more reviews a game has, the longer yours has to be to be submitted, so that's what I'm doing. I'm seriously fleshing them all out. GS has no problem with letting in a 100-word review for a game with 300 others, but GF requires an insane amount of words. They don't allow just anybody to write these. I like Gamespot's system, it lets lesser reviewers just write what they think, but I've been using the GF way for a while. Watch, by this upcoming weekend, I'll have only one that isn't done. **crosses fingers***
I just uploaded the soundtracks from Metroid Prime & MP2: Echoes onto my iPod, as well as Zelda Sound & Drama, a collection of remixes from A Link to the Past that came out in Japan over a decade ago. It's amazing how you can miss how good game music is if you don't stop and listen to it without having enemies all around you or something. Kudos to Retro Studios and Kenshi Yamamoto for their games' music.
Oh, and for the record, about the Metroid soundtracks:
Prime > Echoes
Hunters hacked already? Jeez, I hate ROMs and those who make them
by T-Prime on Comments
Metroid Prime Hunters: First Hunt has been hacked by an undergroud group of hackers. These people never cease to amaze me, but for all the wrong reasons (to them, anyway). Forget that there's no DS emulators and that ROMs are illegal (not that that's stopped a lot of people), why the hell would I want to play a ROM of a freaking demo?? This is a screenshot from Samus.co.uk:
What a crackerjack group of f***ers, huh? I swear, they do it just because they freaking can. And I thought it was bad when a ROM of Metroid Zero Mission was online a week before it's official release, not to mention all the people who didn't bother waiting for NOA to move their ass with The Minish Cap and downloaded the European version two months early. Although, Nintendo was kinda asking for it, giving us all this info on how cool it'd be, then waiting until early 2005 to give it to us while giving it to someone else first. Then again, on the other hand, how much of a problem is that in Europe? Ouch. But I digress...
ROMs. There's always at least two sides on the subject of them, one about how "the games belong to the world, no one should pay for them, and we're so f---ing great because we're smart enough to decode them," and the other side, "you shouldn't do that, the programmers put a lot of work into them, plus we're too scared to say anything bad about the companies, lest they put our names on a list or something."
God I hate ROMs. The only time I ever used one for more than ten minutes was when I downloaded Pokemon Red almost six years ago, and by then, Nintendo had sold so many copies of Red & Blue I really didn't think they'd miss one more. I don't fall into either of the above groups, I fall into the "I'd use ROMs if I could, except THEY SUCK" category. Seriously, they do. So let me get this straight. ROM programmers? I have to have a great system to run your lousy emulator programs, not to mention your games are hard to find and can only run as well as on the actual system they're intended for if my specs are even greater? Gee, that sounds great, but I think I'll just spend the $30 on the actual game and save myself one massive and unneccesary headache!!
If you play ROMs because you need to feel rebellious, good, keep going, delude yourself that you're "sticking it" to someone. If you don't because you're afraid some company will catch you, snap out of it, I'm not sure Cold War politics wa that paranoid. If you're like me, and realize ROMs are stupid and pointless, welcome to the minority of regular-minded people. We're a strange and thinning breed, it would seem. We actually pay for games, or if we can't afford them, WE WAIT UNTIL WE CAN.
The moral of this story: Don't use ROMS not because they're illegal, but because they're dumb. End of question.
What a crackerjack group of f***ers, huh? I swear, they do it just because they freaking can. And I thought it was bad when a ROM of Metroid Zero Mission was online a week before it's official release, not to mention all the people who didn't bother waiting for NOA to move their ass with The Minish Cap and downloaded the European version two months early. Although, Nintendo was kinda asking for it, giving us all this info on how cool it'd be, then waiting until early 2005 to give it to us while giving it to someone else first. Then again, on the other hand, how much of a problem is that in Europe? Ouch. But I digress...
ROMs. There's always at least two sides on the subject of them, one about how "the games belong to the world, no one should pay for them, and we're so f---ing great because we're smart enough to decode them," and the other side, "you shouldn't do that, the programmers put a lot of work into them, plus we're too scared to say anything bad about the companies, lest they put our names on a list or something."
God I hate ROMs. The only time I ever used one for more than ten minutes was when I downloaded Pokemon Red almost six years ago, and by then, Nintendo had sold so many copies of Red & Blue I really didn't think they'd miss one more. I don't fall into either of the above groups, I fall into the "I'd use ROMs if I could, except THEY SUCK" category. Seriously, they do. So let me get this straight. ROM programmers? I have to have a great system to run your lousy emulator programs, not to mention your games are hard to find and can only run as well as on the actual system they're intended for if my specs are even greater? Gee, that sounds great, but I think I'll just spend the $30 on the actual game and save myself one massive and unneccesary headache!!
If you play ROMs because you need to feel rebellious, good, keep going, delude yourself that you're "sticking it" to someone. If you don't because you're afraid some company will catch you, snap out of it, I'm not sure Cold War politics wa that paranoid. If you're like me, and realize ROMs are stupid and pointless, welcome to the minority of regular-minded people. We're a strange and thinning breed, it would seem. We actually pay for games, or if we can't afford them, WE WAIT UNTIL WE CAN.
The moral of this story: Don't use ROMS not because they're illegal, but because they're dumb. End of question.
A near-violent reminder why cartridges are no longer used for games
by T-Prime on Comments
It took Nintendo 16 years, but they finally started using disks to store games with Gamecube in 2001. However, the game cartridge (or "pak," as they liked to say) continues to live on, whether it be with the Game Boy Advance, or on the classic systems if you happened to hang on to any of them. Anyone who has been around for a while was surely amazed at how much game programmers can cram onto those little GBA paks, when less could go onto the huge SNES ones (and that's not even mentioning how on earth they fit an expanded Super Mario 64 onto something the size of certain coins).
Anyway, I've had my share of memory card horror stories from my friends and the fine people in the GSC. "My last five year's worth of Final Fantasy data was erased!" "I had all the cars in GT3, and it's gone!" "I was at 93 hours in Kingdom Hearts, and it's dissappeared!" Nothing this bad's happened to me; the worst that's happened was my REmake game with all costumes, all modes and the infinite weapons got erased by accident (I meant to copy it). But I remember problems from years ago with my SNES and Game Boy with data mysteriously erasing. However, in hindsight, I realize that I would always do things like play for too long, and turn a game off and on constantly, which as a nine year old, I didn't think anything of, but I now know can cause games to mess up. However, there was always a couple of incidents that I could never figure out, which I chalked up to the game cartridges simply being flawed. This week, like the empire, the cartridges struck back.
First, it was my Super Nintendo twice. For years now, I've kept one file on Zelda: A Link to the Past that has everything - all items, upgrades and Heart Pieces. I keep it so I can show people that I did indeed find everything. I know that if a game pak isn't used for too long, it might delete itself, so I always pull out the SNES occasionally and play through some of my games, which is why MY PERFECT GAME GETTING DELETED perplexes me. However, it's not such a huge deal, because everyone I know has already seen it. Still, it was great to have. Next, it was Super Metroid. I'd never played this game up until a few months ago. I got it in a trade for a Star Wars game, and after Metroids Fusion and Zero Mission, it felt weird playing a 2D Metroid with a SNES gamepad. I played it every once in a while, and I was told I was close to the end, and, it too GOT DELETED, and I don't know why. When I turned that game on, and saw the three files blank, I almost went nuts. I managed to harness some anger management tips I read, took some deep breaths, and simply turned off the game and put the SNES back into my closet before I did something I'd not look bad kindly on.
The last straw came just today. The aforementioned Metroid Zero Mission is possibly my favorite GBA game, and I've played through it six or seven times. When a friend of mine got it (MightyNeonFraa, why aren't you ever around?), we started going for the unlockables and special endings which require you to do certain things, like beat the game on hard, in under 2 hours, with a 15% completion rate, and with a 100% completion rate. I had four endings (Easy, Normal -2 hrs, Hard +2 hrs and Normal 15%) and was close to getting +2 hrs with 100%. I had only to finally get the last Energy Tank and beat Robot Ridley, and take a guess what happened? That 99% game was done without a guide, too, and now I have to remember everything. Maybe I should do Hard 15% first, just to get it out of the way. (Brace yourself, T-Prime, brace yourself.)
Disks are the way of the future. Carts are probably just as reliable these days, with GBA and all, but I must just get all the hard luck sometimes. At least I'm not the angry kid I once was, or I would've broken something by now. *sigh*
"Who is it?" "Goons!" "Who?" "Hired goons!" "Hired goons? -YAAA!!"
Anyway, I've had my share of memory card horror stories from my friends and the fine people in the GSC. "My last five year's worth of Final Fantasy data was erased!" "I had all the cars in GT3, and it's gone!" "I was at 93 hours in Kingdom Hearts, and it's dissappeared!" Nothing this bad's happened to me; the worst that's happened was my REmake game with all costumes, all modes and the infinite weapons got erased by accident (I meant to copy it). But I remember problems from years ago with my SNES and Game Boy with data mysteriously erasing. However, in hindsight, I realize that I would always do things like play for too long, and turn a game off and on constantly, which as a nine year old, I didn't think anything of, but I now know can cause games to mess up. However, there was always a couple of incidents that I could never figure out, which I chalked up to the game cartridges simply being flawed. This week, like the empire, the cartridges struck back.
First, it was my Super Nintendo twice. For years now, I've kept one file on Zelda: A Link to the Past that has everything - all items, upgrades and Heart Pieces. I keep it so I can show people that I did indeed find everything. I know that if a game pak isn't used for too long, it might delete itself, so I always pull out the SNES occasionally and play through some of my games, which is why MY PERFECT GAME GETTING DELETED perplexes me. However, it's not such a huge deal, because everyone I know has already seen it. Still, it was great to have. Next, it was Super Metroid. I'd never played this game up until a few months ago. I got it in a trade for a Star Wars game, and after Metroids Fusion and Zero Mission, it felt weird playing a 2D Metroid with a SNES gamepad. I played it every once in a while, and I was told I was close to the end, and, it too GOT DELETED, and I don't know why. When I turned that game on, and saw the three files blank, I almost went nuts. I managed to harness some anger management tips I read, took some deep breaths, and simply turned off the game and put the SNES back into my closet before I did something I'd not look bad kindly on.
The last straw came just today. The aforementioned Metroid Zero Mission is possibly my favorite GBA game, and I've played through it six or seven times. When a friend of mine got it (MightyNeonFraa, why aren't you ever around?), we started going for the unlockables and special endings which require you to do certain things, like beat the game on hard, in under 2 hours, with a 15% completion rate, and with a 100% completion rate. I had four endings (Easy, Normal -2 hrs, Hard +2 hrs and Normal 15%) and was close to getting +2 hrs with 100%. I had only to finally get the last Energy Tank and beat Robot Ridley, and take a guess what happened? That 99% game was done without a guide, too, and now I have to remember everything. Maybe I should do Hard 15% first, just to get it out of the way. (Brace yourself, T-Prime, brace yourself.)
Disks are the way of the future. Carts are probably just as reliable these days, with GBA and all, but I must just get all the hard luck sometimes. At least I'm not the angry kid I once was, or I would've broken something by now. *sigh*
"Who is it?" "Goons!" "Who?" "Hired goons!" "Hired goons? -YAAA!!"
To Satoru Iwata: Screw You
by T-Prime on Comments
http://cube.ign.com/articles/593/593733p1.html
No more. That does it, just no more.
:evil:
Every time I hear a story like this, I want to be holding a Gamecube so I can drop it, and it dramatically smashes, and then I begin screaming obscenities at whoever at Nintendo is making these bull**** desicions, like I was in a movie. I am so sick of their "innovation" speak that I wish they open up their eyes and realize they're f***ing themselves with their slow alienation of Nintendo nation. (aaah! unintended rhymn!) I don't give a **** about what they think gamers are "hungry for" or anything so stupid. Iwata says that "[the next-gen] consoles can appeal to people who are not the avid game fans of today." I'm sorry, but on subject of the Revolution, he's just damn wrong! There is NOTHING WRONG with how games are played today. Nintendo has been twidling their thumbs for so long, and not implementing things that could get them ahead, such as full online support and more choice of titles, that they've succeeded in deluding themselves into thinking that they aren't doing any of that because it's not the "right direction." I say, they can suck it if they go ahead with these ideas, without ever having attempted the ideas that actually work in the first place. Nintendo's doing this because they want to distinguish themselves. They can do that much more easily by listening to and giving to those of us who actually care about their systems, instead of "trying to do such a different thing"!
My name is T-Prime and I support this rant.
No more. That does it, just no more.
:evil:
Every time I hear a story like this, I want to be holding a Gamecube so I can drop it, and it dramatically smashes, and then I begin screaming obscenities at whoever at Nintendo is making these bull**** desicions, like I was in a movie. I am so sick of their "innovation" speak that I wish they open up their eyes and realize they're f***ing themselves with their slow alienation of Nintendo nation. (aaah! unintended rhymn!) I don't give a **** about what they think gamers are "hungry for" or anything so stupid. Iwata says that "[the next-gen] consoles can appeal to people who are not the avid game fans of today." I'm sorry, but on subject of the Revolution, he's just damn wrong! There is NOTHING WRONG with how games are played today. Nintendo has been twidling their thumbs for so long, and not implementing things that could get them ahead, such as full online support and more choice of titles, that they've succeeded in deluding themselves into thinking that they aren't doing any of that because it's not the "right direction." I say, they can suck it if they go ahead with these ideas, without ever having attempted the ideas that actually work in the first place. Nintendo's doing this because they want to distinguish themselves. They can do that much more easily by listening to and giving to those of us who actually care about their systems, instead of "trying to do such a different thing"!
My name is T-Prime and I support this rant.
TV and games: addicted to just one is hard enough
by T-Prime on Comments
I recently convinced a friend of mine to let me borrow his Playstation 2 so I could finally play Metal Gear Solid 3. I played through The Twin Snakes when it came out last year, and all I could think was that I was sorry I'd never owned a Playstation 1 so I could've seen the MGS series in the beginning. I promptly borrowed the same friend's PS2 along with his copy of MGS2, which, playing a few hours each day, I managed to beat in four days. I then had to play it again to fully understand what the hell happened at the end. I think I finally do, but never ask me any questions about it just in case.
Anyway, I'd seen another friend of mine play partway through Snake Eater when it came out. He'd mostly play, but I'd play for some parts that seemed reasonably story-free. When I got my hands on Snake Eater this time, I played only up to the end of the Virtuous Mission before a three-hour Law & Order marathon started on NBC. I didn't really watch the Super Bowl, but I did tune in to see The Simpsons and American Dad after the game. At this point, it was almost midnight, but instead of resuming Snake Eater, I turned on my Gamecube for some Resident Evil 4. BTW, the Mercenaries mode isn't exactly the easiest extra I've ever played.
Since I ended college, my days have been like this: wake up around 1 or 2 PM, go hang out at the local comic and card-gaming store for a few hours, then come back home. I always have the idea that I'll play a certain part in a certain game, but my other love always beckons to me, the thing that is so much more than just a monitor for games and DVDs: my television.
Every night, there is always something on TV that I feel I want to watch, and almost always more than one thing at once. Look at this lineup I deal with on Mondays, the day I finally figured out why I don't play games very often -
9:00 - 24 (FOX, CH)
9:00 - Medium (CTV)
10:00 - CSI: Miami (CBS, CTV)
10:00 - Medium (NBC)
11:00 - Everwood (Fox44)
Twice, two shows are on at once! I know one of them is on twice, but it's always a guess as to which time I'll watch it or record it.
Tuesday isn't so weird. It's "NCIS" on CBS at 8, "House" on FOX at 9 and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" on NBC at 10. Wednesday, however, is possibly the most hectic.
8:00 - American Dreams (NBC) (starting in March. less strain on Sundays now)
-I used to watch Lost, but I missed a few episodes and gave up on it. I'll see the whole thing when the DVD comes out
9:00 - Alias (ABC)
Not too bad, but here's the kicker:
10:00 - Law & Order (NBC)
10:00 - CSI: NY (CBS)
10:00 - Smallville (Fox44)
Three shows at once! Even though I record two and watch one, I never realized until now how much that actually is. For clarification, where I live, there's no local The WB station, so the local FOX station, Fox44, gets dibs on The WB's programming after their own schedule is over.
Thursday's more tame. I watch "The O.C." at 8 on FOX, then "CSI" and "Without a Trace" on CBS from 9 to 11. There's another three hours eaten up. Friday just recently got heavier with CBS debuting "Numb3rs" at 10:00, in addition to "Medical Investigation" on NBC. I wouldn't even watch "Numb3rs" except I caught it on CBS after the AFC Championship game, and knew I had to continue watching it. I never watch either when they're on because Friday is also Anime Night for me and my friends, when YTV (the Canadian cartoon & young adult channel) airs Gundam Seed, Inuyasha and Witch Hunter Robbin from 9:30 to 11:00. Saturday, when I'm not anywhere else, I may play games, but I'll usually watch some things I've taped from earlier in the week, and then watch "America's Most Wanted" at 9 on FOX.
After 10 on Saturday is usually the best time in the week to game. The last three games I finished (Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 2, Tales of Symphonia) were at this time of week, and I was playing with other people watching all three times. Then on Sunday, the cycle repeats itself. At 8, "Cold Case" is on CBS along with "American Dreams" on NBC (but as I said above, AD's being moved to Wednesdays), followed by "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" at 9. "Alias" also had the 9 timeslot last year, but thankfully ABC moved it this season.
There was still gaming room here and there, but then I got digital cable. Now, I'm incredibly apprehensive to play games because I always think there's something on I could be watching on all those other channels I get now. It kills me, because I know I could've finished or replayed all the the games I want to play when I'm watching something like "Cold Case Files" or "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." That's not a knock on those shows, but jeez, even after I've realized my addiction I'm still tormenting myself.
My game backlog is entirely a product of this avid TV viewing. Prince of Persia: TSoT, Eternal Darkness, Mario & Luigi, Beyond Good & Evil, and now Snake Eater have become "victims," so to speak. Tonight, I focred myself not to turn on Leno, Letterman or Stewart after primetime ended and instead played Snake Eater for three hours, getting all the way to The Fury from the warehouse where you can kill The End early. Still, the backlog remains, the games sit there unbeaten, and other games that deserve to be played over and over again have been gone through once, maybe twice, and never again, such as The Wind Waker. It's such a great game, but I think I've only played through it two or three times since I got it, and not at all in maybe six months.
Gaming, my most memorable passion, versus television, my first and largest passion. Who will come out on top? Hopefully, I can dramatically balance this situation out, before I end up hating one of them because I do too much of the other.
Anyway, I'd seen another friend of mine play partway through Snake Eater when it came out. He'd mostly play, but I'd play for some parts that seemed reasonably story-free. When I got my hands on Snake Eater this time, I played only up to the end of the Virtuous Mission before a three-hour Law & Order marathon started on NBC. I didn't really watch the Super Bowl, but I did tune in to see The Simpsons and American Dad after the game. At this point, it was almost midnight, but instead of resuming Snake Eater, I turned on my Gamecube for some Resident Evil 4. BTW, the Mercenaries mode isn't exactly the easiest extra I've ever played.
Since I ended college, my days have been like this: wake up around 1 or 2 PM, go hang out at the local comic and card-gaming store for a few hours, then come back home. I always have the idea that I'll play a certain part in a certain game, but my other love always beckons to me, the thing that is so much more than just a monitor for games and DVDs: my television.
Every night, there is always something on TV that I feel I want to watch, and almost always more than one thing at once. Look at this lineup I deal with on Mondays, the day I finally figured out why I don't play games very often -
9:00 - 24 (FOX, CH)
9:00 - Medium (CTV)
10:00 - CSI: Miami (CBS, CTV)
10:00 - Medium (NBC)
11:00 - Everwood (Fox44)
Twice, two shows are on at once! I know one of them is on twice, but it's always a guess as to which time I'll watch it or record it.
Tuesday isn't so weird. It's "NCIS" on CBS at 8, "House" on FOX at 9 and "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" on NBC at 10. Wednesday, however, is possibly the most hectic.
8:00 - American Dreams (NBC) (starting in March. less strain on Sundays now)
-I used to watch Lost, but I missed a few episodes and gave up on it. I'll see the whole thing when the DVD comes out
9:00 - Alias (ABC)
Not too bad, but here's the kicker:
10:00 - Law & Order (NBC)
10:00 - CSI: NY (CBS)
10:00 - Smallville (Fox44)
Three shows at once! Even though I record two and watch one, I never realized until now how much that actually is. For clarification, where I live, there's no local The WB station, so the local FOX station, Fox44, gets dibs on The WB's programming after their own schedule is over.
Thursday's more tame. I watch "The O.C." at 8 on FOX, then "CSI" and "Without a Trace" on CBS from 9 to 11. There's another three hours eaten up. Friday just recently got heavier with CBS debuting "Numb3rs" at 10:00, in addition to "Medical Investigation" on NBC. I wouldn't even watch "Numb3rs" except I caught it on CBS after the AFC Championship game, and knew I had to continue watching it. I never watch either when they're on because Friday is also Anime Night for me and my friends, when YTV (the Canadian cartoon & young adult channel) airs Gundam Seed, Inuyasha and Witch Hunter Robbin from 9:30 to 11:00. Saturday, when I'm not anywhere else, I may play games, but I'll usually watch some things I've taped from earlier in the week, and then watch "America's Most Wanted" at 9 on FOX.
After 10 on Saturday is usually the best time in the week to game. The last three games I finished (Resident Evil 4, Metroid Prime 2, Tales of Symphonia) were at this time of week, and I was playing with other people watching all three times. Then on Sunday, the cycle repeats itself. At 8, "Cold Case" is on CBS along with "American Dreams" on NBC (but as I said above, AD's being moved to Wednesdays), followed by "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" at 9. "Alias" also had the 9 timeslot last year, but thankfully ABC moved it this season.
There was still gaming room here and there, but then I got digital cable. Now, I'm incredibly apprehensive to play games because I always think there's something on I could be watching on all those other channels I get now. It kills me, because I know I could've finished or replayed all the the games I want to play when I'm watching something like "Cold Case Files" or "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." That's not a knock on those shows, but jeez, even after I've realized my addiction I'm still tormenting myself.
My game backlog is entirely a product of this avid TV viewing. Prince of Persia: TSoT, Eternal Darkness, Mario & Luigi, Beyond Good & Evil, and now Snake Eater have become "victims," so to speak. Tonight, I focred myself not to turn on Leno, Letterman or Stewart after primetime ended and instead played Snake Eater for three hours, getting all the way to The Fury from the warehouse where you can kill The End early. Still, the backlog remains, the games sit there unbeaten, and other games that deserve to be played over and over again have been gone through once, maybe twice, and never again, such as The Wind Waker. It's such a great game, but I think I've only played through it two or three times since I got it, and not at all in maybe six months.
Gaming, my most memorable passion, versus television, my first and largest passion. Who will come out on top? Hopefully, I can dramatically balance this situation out, before I end up hating one of them because I do too much of the other.
Fragmentation (Featuring Metroid and RE4)
by T-Prime on Comments
I've begun to realize why I don't like as many games I have now as I'd like to or thought I would: I don't play any of them for enough time at a time. My poor attention span doesn't seem to let me play something for very long until I feel like turning it off and doing something else, whether it be watching TV, going out or walking across the room and going onto my computer.
The games I play are always "fragmented" in my head; that is, I play in such small pieces, that the big picture is so hard to see. Take my most recent completed example, Metroid Prime 2. I got on Nov. 16, and since my college semester was coming to an end, I didn't play as often as I would've liked. Even when I didn't have work, I didn't feel like playing for long, but I did have a couple of stretches of several hours. I finally reached the end about five days before Christmas, and this was after ten days of looking for the nine Sky Temple keys. I finished with a 68%, and felt like selling the game, I felt so disappointed.
Then it hit me. I'd forgotten why the hell I was playing.
I did something crazy, but hopefully it was gonna work: I downloaded an FAQ from GameFAQs onto my laptop so I could read it on my couch in front of my TV, and sat down and started the game over, going line by line, doing everything in the game in two days. It was so compressed, but I had so much fun doing it. I then played the original Prime over, this time without a guide, because I knew where everything was, and likewise did it all, 100%, in two days. I finally remembered why I rated Prime and Echoes 9.7 and 9.6, respectively.
Now I seem to having the same "problem" with Resident Evil 4. The day I got it, the 12th, everyone I knew who wanted to see it gathered at my house around 4 PM. There were six of us, including me, and with me playing and the others watching, and offering suggestions and telling me stuff I missed and so on, I got pretty far. It was immense fun, and some of the others tried some parts I got stuck at, especially El Giganto(sp?), which we referred to as "the cave troll". (My Halo-savvy friend was the one who finally beat him the first time, although we both concur that strafing could've helped.) After I think 4 1/2 hours of gameplay over six hours, which included a break for some food and some Echoes multiplayer, I called it a night. Since then, over an entire week, I haven't progressed more than another 4 1/2. I play in little pieces of never more then 30 minutes, and never feel like continuing when I die, despite the fact I must have died 20 times the first day, and continued every time.
Maybe I have to play for an audience to be good, or I desperately want to remember why I like a game in the first place. Playing a game in too many pieces ruins the experience, and I can't stand that anymore. Hopefully, there's much more adventure in store (my file says 08:57:24, and I only just saw Luis die and played as Ashley), so maybe there's hope yet to remember why I've waited about two years for this game.
The games I play are always "fragmented" in my head; that is, I play in such small pieces, that the big picture is so hard to see. Take my most recent completed example, Metroid Prime 2. I got on Nov. 16, and since my college semester was coming to an end, I didn't play as often as I would've liked. Even when I didn't have work, I didn't feel like playing for long, but I did have a couple of stretches of several hours. I finally reached the end about five days before Christmas, and this was after ten days of looking for the nine Sky Temple keys. I finished with a 68%, and felt like selling the game, I felt so disappointed.
Then it hit me. I'd forgotten why the hell I was playing.
I did something crazy, but hopefully it was gonna work: I downloaded an FAQ from GameFAQs onto my laptop so I could read it on my couch in front of my TV, and sat down and started the game over, going line by line, doing everything in the game in two days. It was so compressed, but I had so much fun doing it. I then played the original Prime over, this time without a guide, because I knew where everything was, and likewise did it all, 100%, in two days. I finally remembered why I rated Prime and Echoes 9.7 and 9.6, respectively.
Now I seem to having the same "problem" with Resident Evil 4. The day I got it, the 12th, everyone I knew who wanted to see it gathered at my house around 4 PM. There were six of us, including me, and with me playing and the others watching, and offering suggestions and telling me stuff I missed and so on, I got pretty far. It was immense fun, and some of the others tried some parts I got stuck at, especially El Giganto(sp?), which we referred to as "the cave troll". (My Halo-savvy friend was the one who finally beat him the first time, although we both concur that strafing could've helped.) After I think 4 1/2 hours of gameplay over six hours, which included a break for some food and some Echoes multiplayer, I called it a night. Since then, over an entire week, I haven't progressed more than another 4 1/2. I play in little pieces of never more then 30 minutes, and never feel like continuing when I die, despite the fact I must have died 20 times the first day, and continued every time.
Maybe I have to play for an audience to be good, or I desperately want to remember why I like a game in the first place. Playing a game in too many pieces ruins the experience, and I can't stand that anymore. Hopefully, there's much more adventure in store (my file says 08:57:24, and I only just saw Luis die and played as Ashley), so maybe there's hope yet to remember why I've waited about two years for this game.
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