Jump to content

Areala

Retromags Curator
 View Profile  See their activity

  • Posts

    11,148

  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    145

 Content Type 

Blog Entries posted by Areala

  1. Areala
    While unpacking some boxes of my magazines today, I ran across an issue of Dungeon magazine (number 116 to be precise, November 2004) that made me stop what I was doing and filled me with a desire to read the article advertised on the front cover. As a 30th anniversary celebration for Dungeons and Dragons, this issue listed the 30 greatest adventures of all time to appear under the D&D ruleset, any version. The list was chosen by the editors as well as a team comprised of some of the biggest names in adventure creation over the history of TSR and Wizards of the Coast, including Ed Greenwood (creator of Forgotten Realms) and Bruce R. Cordell (author of Return to the Tomb of Horrors, which incidentally is one of my favorite adventures of all time and got #10 on the list). While the editorial team didn't include adventures printed in Dungeon magazine (which existed to publish adventures submitted to them by fans) in their top 30, they did see fit to include a sidebar featuring their top 10 favorite Dungeon-printed adventures/scenarios. One of my favorites, "Siege of Kratys Freehold" from issue #33, made it to the 10-spot. My absolute favorite Dungeon adventure, however, failed to materialize on their list. This is a shame, because it is one of the few pre-written adventures I have ever had the pleasure of using to scare the bejeezus out of another player.
    "Jacob's Well" is an innocuous title for such an adventure. It's written specifically to be run as a one-on-one scenario, with one DM and one PC anywhere from levels 2 - 4. This makes it ideal for those times when you only have time for a short session and one other person to play with. But while it's meant for one player, it is by no means easy, and it works even better when the player doesn't know what the devil he or she is trying to deal with.
    The plot of the adventure revolves around the lone PC either getting separated from the rest of the party by some means (last person standing after an adventure, sent ahead to scout out the area, etc...) or just setting out on his or her own to find something exciting. The problem is that there's a terrible winter storm closing in on the character's heels, and the PC is going to have to find some place to hole up and ride out the weather or suffer the wrath of Mother Nature. Fortunately, just as all hope seems lost, the character finds a small outpost where a fire's burning, the food is being prepared, and a room is still available. This is "Jacob's Well," the property of a surly half-orc (named Jacob, naturally) and built around the deep well in the center of the outpost. A number of travellers have all found their way to Jacob's Well today: a trio of fur trappers, three barbarians, a ranger, a young mage, an orc chieftain and his two bodyguards. One of them has unwittingly brought something with them to the outpost, and in a few hours, with the storm raging overhead and dumping snow on the entire region, there will be a terror unleashed that will stalk the inhabitants of Jacob's Well relentlessly.
    Author Randy Maxwell took the best themes from "Alien" and John Carpenter's "The Thing" (being cut off from the rest of the world and facing a horror that seems impossible to fight) and combined them to create this scarefest that runs the creep factor off the charts, rewards players who can make tough decisions quickly, and punishes players who try and hide or wait out the horror by slowly increasing the strength of the enemy while depleting the number of people at the Well who can help. In addition, the enemy faced by the player, while not a genius, is still very cunning and intelligent - it attacks when potential victims are alone and avoids taking on large groups, it seeks hiding places that are difficult or impossible for others to find, and even uses its resources to destroy parts of the outpost to limit the options of its food sources.
    If you feel I'm being deliberately vague, it's for a good reason - I don't want players who have no experience with Jacob's Well to have the experience spoiled for them if they encounter it (I have D&D-playing friends who read this blog on occasion, and one of them is bound to get hit with this adventure by me sooner or later). Perhaps the best thing about the adventure though is one that the author points out in his own introduction: the best adventures are just plain fun to read. Jacob's Well is no exception to this, as it is written out as a sequence of events that take place, instead of the normal way (a list of encounters tied to areas of the map). This gives the adventure itself the sense of a short story format, but with enough details that a DM can respond to a player's tactics in any number of ways without railroading that player down the path into a no-win scenario.
    Technically speaking, AD&D 1st edition is about as "retro" as you can get in terms of tabletop RPGs. I grew up playing it, and still play (and DM) every version up to v3.5 to this day. And while the adventures listed in Dungeon #116 are good, leaving "Jacob's Well" off the list was a major mistake that I felt the need to correct. It's AD&D horror done to perfection by putting the player between the proverbial rock and hard place, forcing him or her to become the R.J. MacReady or the Ellen Ripley of his or her own personal nightmare. Done right, it's a session that neither a player nor a DM will forget for a long, long time.
  2. Areala
    In the days before the Internet started shoving a cruel, pointed stake into the hearts of video game magazines, we had no choice but to trust the reviewers who got paid to do what we all wished we could get paid to do: play lots of video games and then write about it.
    The guys and gals of the gaming journalism world were supposed to be our lifelines, making sure we didn't buy the crap and didn't miss the gold. Usually they were on the money. But sometimes...well, deadlines can do strange things to writers. Sometimes they drop the ball.
    Golden example: everybody open the image to your left, taken from the January 1998 issue of GamePro. Try not to scream.
    Yeah, that's an effective 9.75 out of 10 score for none other than Star Wars: Masters of Teräs Käsi, one of the absolute worst Star Wars games ever released.
    Minor Trivia: MoTK is incorrectly named, as the only actual practitioner of the Teräs Käsi combat form is Arden Lyn. The game's proper name, as shown in the opening story credit crawl, is really 'A Master of Teräs Käsi.' When you can't even get the name of the game correct on your own packaging...*sigh*
    Now I'm all for believing that everyone is entitled to her own opinion, and maybe Scary Larry (err, sorry, 'Scary Skywalker') just really, really thought MoTK was the bomb. But I also believe in balance. Surely he wasn't the only editor in the GamePro offices playing this title, even if he was the one who got to write the review. Was no one else consulted on this? Was the build of the game he played somehow substantially better than the finalized version? We may never know.
    Just to compare, here are the scores from a number of other contemporary review sites and magazines (scores converted to a 10-point scale for sake of comparison):
    EGM - 6.75 out of 10
    Gamespot - 4.4 out of 10
    IGN - 4 out of 10
    Next Generation - 4 out of 10
    OPM - 6 out of 10
    PSM - 6 out of 10
    Notice what all of these reviews have in common? They all rank Teräs Käsi as a "poor to average" title, which is even more generous than I'd be with this steaming pile of Bantha poodoo, but none of them is in the same galaxy far, far away as Larry.
    Now if the review actually backed up those numbers, I'd say that's just the way the cookie crumbles. But Larry's own review serves to render his numerical ratings completely meaningless.
    Graphics are such a personal choice that rating them alone is almost meaningless. Teräs Käsi looks fine for a PS1 game; it's not a 5/5 for me, but hey, different strokes (Larry himself acknowledges they don't break any new ground). Doesn't affect the gameplay one bit really, so I don't care. Likewise, you know a CD-based Star Wars game is going to have awesome audio since it's got the full backing of John Williams' iconic score and Ben Burtt's instantly-recognizable sound design for blasters, lightsabers and TIE fighters. So go ahead, let's just give it the benefit of the doubt and give it those 10 easy points.
    Because the next rating is Control, and Larry, I feel the conflict within you. You give it a 4.5, but then say this: "Slowdown during heated matches also hampers the controls." OK, that's it, cut in the sub-light engines. Everybody, out of the Y-Wing. Sometimes you can live with a modicum of slowdown here or there, but one genre above all others requires an ABSOLUTELY steady frame rate at all times, and that's the one-on-one fighting game. In a fighting game, slowdown equals death, pure and simple. When "slowdown [...] hampers the controls" of a fighting game that's it. Game over. You don't get a near-perfect score for control. You don't get a 4, or a 3, or a 2, or a 1, or even a .5. You get a ZERO. You're Porkins at the Battle of Yavin. Thanks for nothing, airman.
    Which brings us to Fun Factor. Once again, when "slowdown [...] hampers the controls" of a fighting game, you don't get a perfect score for Fun Factor. You get a big fat zilch. You're Admiral Ozzel at the Battle of Hoth, as clumsy as you are stupid. Larry's correct when he writes "Masters of Teräs Käsi should entice a wide variety of gamers." Unfortunately it enticed them to let the hate flow through them, which probably isn't what he meant.
    So, what did Scary Larry leave out of this review? How about lightsabers that behave more like Gaffi sticks, blasters that need time to charge up before firing, small fighting stages that make cheap "Ring Out" victories more common than actual KOs, AI that waffles between amazingly competent (busting out 7-8 hit combos with no problem) and amazingly stupid (running a circle around behind your character only to fall off the stage and hand you a win), terrible character balance (Jedi and Sith stomp all over their mundane opponents which makes sense, but doesn't make for a very compelling reason to play Han or Chewie), a storyline that makes no sense even within the Expanded Universe canon (so the Emperor sends Darth Vader, Arden Lyn, Mara Jade, Boba Fett, a Stormtrooper, a Tusken Raider[WTF?] and a Gamorrean Guard[WTF?!] to hunt down Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia [both in a bikini and bounty hunter costume because shut up, that's why!], Han Solo, Chewbacca and a random bounty hunter named Jodo Kast...but it takes place between A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back, so there's no reason for them to be fighting on Endor, Cloud City, Dagobah, Jabba's palace, the Emperor's throne room, or Hoth; Leia won't be disguised as a bounty hunter or enslaved to Jabba for another three years; Luke hasn't built his green lightsaber, trained as a Jedi or lost his hand to Vader yet but he's in his one-gloved RotJ costume...sorry, I can't go on), zero reward for beating the game (expect a 3-second video clip at best...some characters like the poor Stormtrooper don't even have endings) except for some unlockable characters for doing it on Jedi difficulty with particular fighters.
    Which game was he playing, exactly?
    Thankfully I experienced Teräs Käsi as a rental at someone else's house and thus never made the horrifying discovery that I'd bought a turd. I can only assume there were GamePro readers who didn't share my luck.
    Have you ever been misled by a game magazine's review into purchasing something that turned out to be a dud (or on the other hand, ever been led away from a game given a bad review only to discover years later that you actually enjoyed it?) I'd like to hear about it either in the comments section or on the forums.
  3. Areala
    It's been a while since my last one of these, and I find myself desiring to get back on the horse, so let's get this party started up again, shall we? Hold on to your seats boys and girls, and LET'S READ!!
    Hot damn, this issue brings back memories. Aside from the first issue, this is the earliest issue of the magazine that I still own in physical print format (I had issue #9 a long time ago, but it met with a gruesome accident involving Kool-Aid that I'm still not willing to discuss). In any case, this one was quite timely as Batman fever swept the nation and Nintendo raced to capitalize on the Michael Keaton/Jack Nicholson film by authorizing the release of a Batman video game. Sunsoft to the rescue! And let's not forget, we've still got Super Mario 3, Shadowgate and Double Dragon II, along with that double bonus Tetris tip book (which a sidebar in the table of contents reminds you NOT TO REMOVE!) and World of Nintendo catalogue. Rip open those covers, time's a-waistin'!
    Mail Bag opens the issue with a rumour that Mario's had some 'cosmetic work' done to improve/change his nose over the years (screenshots provided!). We also learn that Game Counselors not only have to be awesome at video games but also require a high school diploma along with excellent writing and telephone skills (not to mention a Redmond, Washington address). Nintendo Power only wants to review games that are out or close to being released at this stage in the game, so they're not talking about pre-releases and such the way their competitors do. Also, they read and respond to every letter they receive even if said letters don't get printed in the magazine. How in the name of Gannon did they do this (the editors report they receive thousands of submissions every month) without going batshit crazy?
    Three players get on the coveted Video Spotlight this time around. The first two are pretty run-of-the-mill, being a college student who uses the NES to take a break from the reality of chemistry labs and research papers, and an 11-year old who enjoys helping out the other kids in the neighborhood with their gaming woes. Number three though manages to go all-out in terms of shark jumping, including a photo of himself at age 16, standing beside his Nintendo shrine (complete with R.O.B. off to the side and posters for Mega Man II and Blaster Master on the walls), and admitting his schoolmates call him "Nintendoman" (wonder if he puts that on his resume these days?). Ah, Jeff Gilkey, we salute your nerdity. Hail, hail!
    Right, on to the meat and potatoes of the issue. There's a new caped crusder in town. He's Batman and there's six pages' worth of info, including maps for the first three full levels of the game and a plethora of tips for beating both the average joes populating the various levels and the mean bosses that lord over everything. Also, "Killer Moth flys over Gotham City Hall" (emphasis mine). Really, editors? *sigh*
    All is forgiven though as we move on to the six-page Shadowgate feature. This is one of Nintendo's earliest forays into what is considered traditional adventure gaming, with them even calling it a "PC-type mystery adventure" (accuracy fail, Nintendo: Shadowgate was released for the Macintosh first). Nevertheless, Shadowgate is a freakin' merciless game and Nintendo provides enough of a walkthrough to let players with no prior adventure experience learn the ropes of puzzle solving before quitting in frustration. I freely admit to abusing the hell out of their little map and and every other tip they provided as I was trying to solve this one.
    The Making of Super Mario Bros. 3 bored the hell out of me when I was a kid, but re-reading it as an adult it's absolutely fascinating! The pictures alone are worth the entry fee, as they showcase designer notes, character sketches, and level designs all planned out meticulously on a grid-style system. Miyamoto passes off information about where he got the ideas (the Chain Chomps, for instance, were inspired by a bad experience he had with a dog as a youngster), and why certain elements of the game (like the raccoon tail) came out the way they did. There's also a look at the CGCAD hardware designers use to create sprites for the NES hardware, and a full-fledged profile of a (VERY young looking) Miyamoto-san towards the end. Perhaps the most amazing thing the article divulges though is that Super Mario 3, one of the most complex games created for the NES, was the end result of two years' work done by a staff of "over ten people". Miyamoto's profile also makes reference to games he was currently working on for the NES (including Super Mario Bros. 4 and Zelda 3, both of which would be released on the SNES), and alludes to his work with designer Shigesato Itoi on a modern-day RPG (presumably this is "Mother" or one of its sequels) which sadly never sees the light of day in the US. This article is a total gem of historical win, well worth reading even today.
    Following that, we have six more pages devoted to Willow. This basically picks up where the last Willow feature left off, with a bunch of useful maps and tips that take you right up to the endgame (let's face it, any walkthrough that leaves you with the most powerful weapon, shield and magic before the final battle has to be useful). Willow's a very good NES game as I've mentioned before, one of the best licensed movie-to-game conversions ever made. If you haven't played it, the terrorists have already won.
    Revenge! It's on everybody's mind these days, especially Billy and Jimmy Lee. Previously seen feuding over Billy's girlfriend Marian, the Black Shadow Warriors have done the unthinkable and united the twins by violating the 9th rule of Fight Club ("Don't fucking shoot Billy Lee's girlfriend. We're serious about this one!"). Oh yeah: shit just got real in six pages' worth of Double Dragon II: The Revenge. I love this game, and still remember the day my brother and I conquered it on the Supreme Master difficulty. The feature showcases a few of the moves available to the Lee brothers and gives the low-down on how to breeze through the first five missions. The maps are cool to see, but since the game is so linear it's not like you can get lost it's not like they're terribly important. The first five missions are essentially preschool mode, so leaving gamers to dangle just when the going gets tough is pretty cruel on Nintendo's part, but nobody said they had to be nice all the time.
    After the heavy stuff, we drop it down a notch for a look at Super Spike V'Ball. Ordinarily, sports games rank somewhere around "average" to "meh" on my scale of interest, but the fact this one's more arcade than simulation and the ability to use the Satellite to get four players around the TV at once for some serious two-on-two makes this one more exciting. Cameos from Billy and Jimmy Lee as the street-tough "defensive-style" team only make it better. At only two pages it's a short feature but then again, how much really is there to be said about beach volleyball?
    Clash at Demonhead! That's right, before it was a band in the Scott Pilgrim comic series, it was a pretty darn fun action/adventure game. OK, so Nintendo's translators butchered the daylights out of the storyline (really, the main character's name is Billy "Big Bang" Blitz? REALLY, Nintendo? Ya sure ya wanna go there?). That doesn't mean the game's crap. Even so, I'm of mixed feelings about this feature. It's four pages, which is fine, but even reading it several times you'd have difficulty grasping exactly what the game's all about if you hadn't played it before. The first-person narrative feels a bit too forced as well. Crappy feature, great game.
    Of course, turning the page all is instantly and forever forgiven as River City Ransom cracks its knuckles and prepares to throw down. This feature of sheer badassery is a Cliffs Notes for Gamers that takes players straight through River City High School and leaves off just before the encounter with Simon at the end of the game. RCR as many of you already know is one of my favorite video games of all time, so I'm naturally going to be biased, but I don't care. This game rules, and I'll take six pages about it over twenty pages about virtually any other game in the NES library any day of the week. This was when I knew Nintendo Power liked me. Really, really liked me.
    Great greased shellbacks, what on earth happened to the Top 30? We've got Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles flying up to the top of the charts from the #5 position last issue (beating out Zelda 2 at the second spot by more than three thousand points), Mega Man II falling to the #6 spot from it's high-flying appearance at #1, and Super Mario 2 slipping another rung to the third spot. Metal Gear and Marble Madness make their debut on the charts. In an amusing error, Contra is colour-coded as being a hot mover despite losing eight positions from last issue, and Strider is listed as a new entry to the charts despite the fact it held the #9 position two months before. Super Mario 3 shows up at #13 despite the fact it's not available in the US, and there's a ton of new games replacing older ones at the bottom of the charts. It's madness, I tell you!
    As if the River City Ransom article isn't awesome enough, we also get the best poster so far distributed with the magazine. On one side, there's a killer Dinowarz art piece. On the reverse though, we get the full shop information for River City Ransom. This thing reveals the effects of every single buyable item in the game (with the exception of the goodies from the hidden shop) making it almost mandatory for anybody who's trying to beef up their characters without wasting cash on useless stuff. This poster got more use than some full issues of the magazine around my house. I love RCR.
    Time for some portable power with a simple four-page feature on some upcoming titles for the Game Boy. Golf gets a full page (*yawn*), then puzzle games Boxxle and Kwirk share the second (slightly more interesting). Then it's a half-page on Solar Striker (woo!) and half-page of previews for titles that may or may not be coming soon. Boomer's name is corrected (it's not "Bronty" as previously reported), and there's a preview for an RPG called "Selection" that makes it to US shores under the title "Sword of Hope" a year or so later, which is a much better title all around.
    Previews, previews, we want previews! Here comes four pages on Super Mario Bros. 3 showing off Mario's new costumes, power-ups and level features. Just enough to whet your appetite until it gets released in a few months (and admit it, you were all salivating at this point). Burai Fighter, a scrolling shooter made by now long-defunct studio Taxan, gets a couple pages to show the map of stage 1 and some hints for using your eight-way firing skills to waste the enemy. It gets a sequel in 1991 for the Game Boy (Burai Fighter Deluxe), but not long afterwards, the studio folds. Pity...they were decent shooters. Astyanax's two pages don't leave much room for anything but a look at the cinema sequences, a very small (VERY SMALL!) map of the first stage, and some discussion of pick-ups and the storyline. I never cared for this game, but my brother loved it...I think I'm in the minority. A pair of pages devoted to Dinowarz follows...it's a nifty game sort of like a cousin to Blaster Master where you play half of the game as your normal human self (Professor Proteus) and the other half is spent piloting your giant golden Godzilla knockoff against the forces of evil (in this case, Dr. Branius). Being a preview, there's only a one-stage map and some info on your special attacks and powerups. I think this gets a full-fledged review in another few issues.
    Dragon Warrior strikes again, this time in the form of Howard & Nester. Nester seeks the Stones of Sunlight beneath Tantegel castle, but as is his way, is determined to do so the hardest way possible instead of Howard's suggested easier route. Hilarity (sort of) ensues. Funnier for younger kids, though the bunnies made me smile.
    Counselor's Corner gets mobbed with questions about Who Framed Roger Rabbit? this issue. Where are the magical buildings (we'll give you directions), how do I get past the warehouse guard (the baseball bat he's holding is a pretty big hint, don't ya think?), and where can I find all four pieces of the will (we'll tell you where they are in general, but you have to work for a living). Counselors also explain how to beat the fourth guardian in Legacy of the Wizard, the way to get past the dancing zombies in Monster Party, where the Ring of Dwarf can be found in Faxanadu, the trick to beating level 7-3 in Adventures of Lolo, how to find the hidden town of Ambrosia and the Shrine of Dexterity in Ultima: Exodus, and the key to escaping Level 6 alive in Air Fortress. While you're there, check out the killer pink shirt and mullet sported by game counselor Jeff Hazard whose favorite game is Amagon. Righteous, dude...totally righteous.
    Everybody's favorite section of the magazine comes next! That's right, it's Classified Corner, where we tell you all sorts of shit you shouldn't even know about! Like how to turn the stars on the enemy robot's background into little chickens in Mega Man II! OK, bad example. How about the now-classic ICARUS FIGHTS MEDUSA ANGELS password for Kid Icarus and the TGL password for Guardian Legend? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about!! Some other Guardian Legend trickery involves buying out an entire shop with Slow Motion activated, but I could never get this to work on my game. Some passwords for Godzilla, the charge-up punch from Bad Dudes, a continue code for Kung Fu Heroes, a way to abuse 1-ups and coin collecting in Super Mario Land, and a password for Rambo that grants the buff one unlimited energy. Also at the end of the game you can turn Murdock into a frog, but we're not going to tell you how, so nyah. What the hell, NP? A rather obvious trick involving killing a bunch of enemies repeatedly to milk items for Faxanadu is lame. Unlimited continues in Robocop is better, and the stage select cheat for Bubble Bobble is extremely helpful. The convoluted trick for power players in Baseball Stars is pretty cool, as is the 21-life code for P.O.W. (it's a shame the game is such a P.O.S...). A scoring trick for Gyruss is useful for those trying to rank in the magazine. Finally, there's a trio of tricks for Duck Tales that involve swatting certain items for extra treasure, how to get to the bonus stages, and a way to exploit the game to get unlimited lives. All in all, not a bad haul.
    I'm having trouble figuring out the major difference between the Previews section and New Games, since they're both short features on upcoming titles. In any case, this issue we have one page each devoted to helicopter sim Interceptor, retro board gaming sim The Chessmaster, and the dual-cart Power Pad dud Short Order/Eggsplode (though the article on it is written in a rhyme scheme that sounds awesomely bad if you rap it out with a friend).
    Video Shorts has no shortage of mini-previews this time: Archon (ported from the PC market), All-Pro Basketball, arcade hit Roadblasters, historical sim Genghis Khan, action/shooter Cybernoid (hands down one of the hardest NES games ever made IMHO), Dig Dug II, Championship Bowling, and Twin Cobra all get mentioned.
    Once again, NES Achievers is back showing off the talents of gamers spending too much time on the system and not enough time on their homework (I kid because I'm jealous, guys...) Girl power shout-outs to Elsie Anderson for finishing Dragon Warrior, Norma McQuaid for finishing Faxanadu, Karen Spignese for a high score on Adventure Island, Nicole Oppedisano for maxing the score on Kid Icarus, Janet Myers and Ann Wargowsky for completing Legacy of the Wizard, Jennifer Feliciano, Nadia Hogg and Connie Warley for beating Adventures of Lolo, and Kelly Maher and Barbara Renteria for maxing out Super Mario Bros.!
    Some great history here in NES Journal. First we get pictures of the Players' Poll winners from the July/August issue as they get to tour Nintendo HQ in Seattle, meet and swap gaming trivia with Howard Phillips over breakfast, listen in on game counselor calls at the pro center, tour downtown Seattle with a bunch of guides, take in a Seahawks game at the King Dome, and preview the likes of Super Mario Bros. 3, River City Ransom, Super Spike V'Ball and Batman. Every kid's dream back then, I tell you what... Then we had the Super Dodge Ball Cup World Finals, where the best of the best at the make-believe sport got to show the world who was boss in head-to-head competition, with Nelson Tam bringing home the gold ultimately. Every finalist got some nifty Nintendo swag including a customized Super Dodge Ball jacket, an award plaque, and "audio equipment" (a bit vague here...are we talking a stereo, a CD player, a Walkman, what?). They also got to meet Howard Phillips, tour Nintendo Headquarters, and even say hello to president Arikawa-san. What an awesome prize!
    Ah, but then...Nintendo turns to the dark side with an ad for their brand new Captain Nintendo 900 number (for non-US readers, a 900-number is a phone call charged to your bill usually at a very high per-minute rate). In this case, it's pretty steep: the two minute call will run you a buck-fifty each time you dial it, and the message changes weekly. Six bucks a month could easily wipe out the allowance of your average kid back then. Dirty, Nintendo, very dirty.
    Also, buy the official Nintendo Cleaning Kit (for only $9.95) since it's a lot cheaper and faster than shipping your deck off to Nintendo for fixing! And just in case that won't work, Nintendo's in the process of opening up authorized Nintendo repair facilities like the ones already in California in many other areas around the country, so maybe one will be open near you soon. AND! The 1990 Nintendo World Championships are coming (er...already came...um...will be coming in the future but since this is the future they left already and...God, this is confusing!) Surprisingly enough, they actually showed up for a few days in Indiana though I didn't get to go. I'm not bitter though. It was just a simple, once-in-a-lifetime thing, you know. We could have visited my cousins any time. Just sayin'...
    This month's Celebrity Profileis the awesome Stephen Furst, who rocketed to fame as the lovable "Flounder" in the classic frat comedy Animal House, played a doctor on the soap opera St. Elsewhere, and a priest on the short-lived cable TV series Have Faith. The interview references an upcoming collaboration between him and Howie Mandel called Howie & Rose, but as luck would have it the pilot never gets picked up so the project ends where it began. Too bad. But he has fun, talking about playing Nintendo with his kids and how much better at it they are, despite the fact that he sometimes gets in as much as four hours a day of practice.
    More previews, previews, previews in Pak Watch! We've got warnings about the coming of Super C, Remote Control, Wrath of the Black Manta, Snake, Rattle 'n Roll, Adventures of Lolo 2, and Wall Street Kid. In addtion, there's some gossip (some of it juicy, some not so much) flying around: LJN's gonna scare you silly with Nightmare on Elm Street! Arcade hit Heavy Barrel's coming to the NES! Acclaim's pulling a cash grab with a license for Total Recall (we all know how this steaming turd turned out...), and they've also got a port of NARC coming down the pipes. Absolute's throwing down the snowboarding gauntlet with Heavy Shreddin'. Mad Max is on the way courtesy of Mindscape (boo, hiss!). FCI, who brought you Ultima: Exodus (yay!) and Hydlide (BOOO!) have an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game on the way. Yes, this is the infamous Heroes of the Lance which nearly wrecks the franchise for console gamers. In another head-meet-desk announcement, they're making a sequel to Metal Gear called Snake's Revenge. Why they didn't port the real Metal Gear II from the MSX in lieu of this unofficial abomination is beyond me. And Play Action Football won't make it out until the 1990 season due to programming delays (no great loss there).
    Howard Phillips writes his closing letter to all the fans again after missing out last issue due to space constraints. He's excited for the upcoming CES, but since the Nintendo Fun Club no longer exists, he's been making more personal appearances and rating/reviewing more games for the company instead. They're now calling him "Game Master" and he wants to know what we think. I don't know about the rest of you, but as far as I'm concerned, that title's just fine, Mr. Phillips.
    Finally, the Player's Poll Contest this month is for a chance to see an exclusive sneak preview of the upcoming Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film. In fact, you're allowed to bring up to 25 friends so you could instantly become the most popular kid in your class (or alternately the most hated if you chose to go alone). If you don't win the grand prize though, there's plenty of second-place winners...fifteen, to be exact. But I seriously have to question what the hell Nintendo was smoking to come up with a prize like this. In following the whole "movie" theme for this contest, they're giving away one licensed NES game pak as well as a copy of the film it was based on, with choices drawn at random from Batman, Friday the 13th, Ghostbusters, Godzilla, Karate Kid, Nightmare on Elm Street, Platoon, Predator, Rambo, Robocop, Superman, The Three Stooges, Top Gun, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Willow. I count half a dozen R-rated films in that list. The average age of your readers at this point is 12, Nintendo. All you cheerleaders out there: gimme an F, gimme an A, gimme an I, gimme an L! What's that spell? "FAIL!"
  4. Areala
    I always thought somebody should make some kind of board game based on the Aliens universe. They've made plenty of video games based on the property after all, on everything from the 2600 to the modern-day consoles with the pending release of Aliens: Colonial Marines. There was also a fun "Aliens vs. Predator" collectable card game released in the 90s. Surely somebody somewhere thought about a board game, right?
    Well, they did. It was called "Alien", it was released in 1979 as a board game tie-in to the film, and...well, let's just say video games aren't the only crap produced by licensing agreements. Your mission was to use YOUR alien to kill the other players while trying to stay alive long enough to get to the escape pod and screw everyone else out of life. You know, just like what DIDN'T happen on screen. *sigh* OK, so any other bright ideas?
    Turns out there was. Called "Intruder", it came out in 1980 and while it's not officially part of the Alien mythos, it does a damn sight better job of portraying the isolation, horror and teamwork aspects of the film than the official version. Best of all, it's built for solo play. After I found out about this, I had to track down a copy (thanks, Craigslist!). Here's the rundown on why you might want a copy for your own.
    "Intruder" doesn't try to copy the Alien film exactly; it plays a lot faster and looser with the storyline than purists will be comfortable with. But that doesn't matter. It replicates all the important parts though and manages to create a fairly tense atmosphere through the use of mystery.
    At the start of the game, you have your crew (an assortment of command types, scientists and engineers) all working in different sections of the Prometheus, a scientific research station, when something goes wrong. An alert plays over the intercom and one of the specimens (known as the Intruder) escapes from its holding pen, upsetting a number of other research animal cages along the way. All of them scatter throughout the station, and it's up to the crew to find and destroy the Intruder before it kills them all. Face down, all the critters and the Intruder get mixed up and distributed across the map. Now you don't know what's a harmless puppy or a zealous xenomorph. Great.
    Your crew now have to decide what tactics they're going to use to defeat the Intruder: do they set out at once with a bunch of cages to try and catch as many lab animals as they can to eliminate confusion, or do they try to manufacture some makeshift weapons (like shock prods or flame units) and wait for it to come to them? Do they try to tranquilize it with some sleep darts and re-cage it? Lure it into the freezer to put it on ice? Bust into the armoury and grab some gas grenades and blaster pistols? Lure it to the outer deck and blow it out the airlock? Panic, set the self-destruct system and get to the escape shuttles? A combination of all of the above?
    Well, who wants to be a hero, right? Unfortunately, time is not on your side. So while you can spend time breaking out the heavy weapons or researching makeshift weapons, any time you're not spending trying to catch the Intruder is working against you. Because just like the movie, as time goes by, the Intruder gets stronger. It starts at Life Stage 1 (facehugger) where it's relatively weak but still deadly enough to kill the unwary. At this point, it's still possible to get it into a fresh cage by force alone. But leave it to its own devices long enough and it'll mutate. At stage 2 and each subsequent stage, it gains new powers and your options for dealing with it diminish: it might develop an immunity to fire, making those flame units worthless; it could grow strong enough that no cage can hold it; God forbid, it might even develop the ability to clone itself (and then you're REALLY screwed). Leave it alone too long and you can wind up with a creature immune to vacuum which shrugs off blaster fire and poison gas like mosquito bites and lays eggs everywhere. Hence, the self-destruct option.
    What follows is usually a mad scramble of personnel to cobble together some cattle prods while a few brave souls venture out with portable cages and try to pick up a few of the distractions and maybe tranquilize the Intruder if they're lucky (and it's not immune). The Intruder (and all the hidden markers) move randomly via die roll, and the game map has all potential exits from each room marked with numbers so it's kind of self-running. The element of luck is also invoked when fighting the creature, trying to catch/cage an animal, and when the Intruder mutates and gains new powers. Finally, the Intruder gets a nice dose of indirect help each time it kills a crew member: this sends the rest of the humans on the ship into a panic and forces them to reconvene in the Command Module at the center of the ship to decide what to do next. In an amusing instance, killing an Intruder (if there's more than one on board) also triggers this, but as a "Yay, we got it!" celebration instead of a panic. Then the noises start coming through the air vents again...the designers clearly understood the horror film tropes.
    At the end of the game, you're rated on victory points based on how well/poorly you did: speedily dispatching the creature gives you bonuses, while losing members of your team results in penalties. The game can also end in a draw condition if you are forced into the "least attractive" options available, like self-destructing the ship or blowing an Intruder with the 'immune to vacuum' attribute out the airlock. Nobody said it was gonna be easy...
    While the rules for Intruder read like they were produced by a group of lawyer computer programmers, with sections, subsections, and sub-subsections galore, they're actually very easy to follow despite being pretty dense. There are a lot of state-based rules set up to account for various actions (such as under what conditions an escape shuttle can be launched, how the self-destruct sequence can be set, when the door to the freezer can be opened, what happens when caged animals are dropped in panic, etc...), so learning them all can take a while. Consulting them in conjunction with playing several games seems to be the easiest way.
    Depending on factors of luck, the game can be over in a matter of a few turns or drag out over 30 minutes or more. There are rules in place for multiple players, so it's not strictly a solo venture (though it works best in this capacity, I think), and it plays fast enough that you can get in several games over the course of a few hours.
    I really like Intruder, and I recommend it for anyone who's a fan of the Alien movies and enjoys playing games with healthy doses of randomness and suspense.
  5. Areala
    Let's Read: Nintendo Power #5



    Ninjas didn't just suddenly become popular with the arrival of Robert Hamburger's "Real Ultimate Power" website, that was more just the icing on the cake. For the real birth of the ninja power lovefest in the western world, you have to go back to the 1980s, when ninjas were sort of like the Nazis of film and video games. You could have them commit all sorts of heinous crimes (like kidnapping presidents or hijacking arms shipments) without anyone in the world batting an eyelash over improper stereotyping, and you could massacre them by the hundreds on-screen without anyone raising a single word of objection. Well, there was the problem of the BBFC over in the UK deciding that "ninja" was a dirty word and banning it from public usage (which is why TMNT was known as "Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles"), but aside from the Brits, ninjas were pretty much everywhere and fair game for anyone or anything to use as they saw fit. Enter Tecmo, who made an arcade game called Ninja Gaiden. They decided to translate it for the home market, and completely revamped the whole storyline into what has become one of the best-known and most-difficult NES games to ever roll off the conveyor belts. And that's the cover story for issue number 5 of Nintendo Power!
    While last issue might have stuck Mail Box towards the back of the mag, this month's issue brings it straight to the front again, where we hear about the NES being used as a means of bribery...er...incentive...for three boys to get good grades in school and perform their chores in a timely fashion. We've also got a picture of a woman showing off a Zelda box from the top of the Great Wall of China, an 83-year old man at a retirement home who bought the NES and started his own gaming club there (how freakin' cool is that!), some clay artwork with a Super Mario 2 theme, and a teacher who is concerned that Nintendo games aren't helping kids learn more than just hand-eye coordination, but goes on to defend both Zelda titles as great learning experiences. Okay...
    Picking up from where Issue 4 left off, there's another seven-page Zelda II feature that shows how to navigate and beat the fifth and sixth palaces, and the sequence required to enter the seventh and final palace. Anybody who hadn't slaughtered the game by this point was now well-equipped to do so.
    Before there was E3, there was the Consumer Electronics Show (or CES)! Nintendo's own Nester takes us behind the scenes in a four-page tour of the Winter show, including preview reports showing that Mega Man 2 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, among other games, are on their way. The fifth page of the feature is a combination ad for the Power Glove and an entry form for a contest to win a trip to the Summer CES. Howard Phillips is there to whet everyone's appetite in a little cartoon where he offers the idea that a little title called Super Mario Bros. 3 might, just might, be revealed there. Talk about incentives to cut up a magazine...
    After that excitement, it's time for the meaty cover story: Ninja Gaiden is here! This eleven-page feature gives you a run-through of the first half of the game, as well as teasers for what to expect in the last three Acts. The between-level cinema sequences are highlighted as one of the strong-points for this title, giving the game a way of telling a story that would eventually evolve into the FMV that we all recognize from games today. There's also a discussion of some ninja tools of the trade and special training that ninjas went through in order to become the feared foes of the day, and Real Ultimate Power would be proud to learn about the ninja's ability to set entire mountains on fire to cover his escape.
    Hudson's Adventure Island gets a short review next, with a four-page write-up of the first stage, and a fold-out poster that gives the full map of all four areas of the first stage. The back of the poster features some excellent Strider artwork by Kazunori Aihara, showing the protagonist in the act of "beaming down" to Earth at the start of a mission.
    The poster segues nicely into the brand new Previews section, which showcases not only Strider, but Cobra Triangle, The Adventures of Bayou Billy, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as well. Strider gets a three-page feature, including a map of stage one. Cobra Triangle gets a two-page, hand-drawn map of the first stage and a plethora of screenshots. Bayou Billy really comes out ahead of all the rest, with a six-page feature that not only gives previews of the first seven stages, but also manages to put a spoiler image from the credit roll right on the first page of the feature (thanks a lot, Nintendo Power...)! The four bad boys of shell get four pages devoted to their quest to stop Shredder, including maps of the game's first two areas as well as a map of the underwater sequence in Area 2, where the Tutles have to disarm eight bombs, that shows where all the explosives are placed; a fabulously useful little thing for anyone who was every frustrated by this sequence.
    It's on to Counselors' Corner to provide frustrated gamers with some much-needed assistance for the likes of Bionic Commando (finding the machine gun, bypassing the barriers at the start of certain stages, and finding the helmet), Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (how to get to Brahms mansion, and where the daggers can be found), Blaster Master (beating the bosses of Stages 3 and 4), Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (because apparently two features in the last two issues of Nintendo Power aren't enough to tell you how to do everything), and Mickey Mousecapade (how to get out of the infernal woods area of the game by finding the secret door). Brian Ullrich, one of Nintendo Power's own editors, gets his picture at the end of the section as well.
    Howard & NESTER manages to be fairly amusing this issue, with Nester venturing into a library in search of a book to help him write a report, then getting thrown out of the building when Howard turns up in his daydream to ruin his Zelda fantasy. Yes, it's formula, but it works.
    Classified Information gets eight full pages this issue, with hints on bionic arm usage and level building in Bionic Commando, a stage select code for Golgo-13, a continue code for Milon's Secret Castle, some bonus stage and continue information on Hudson's Adventure Island, tips for getting a larger financial reward from the President at the end of Operation Wolf, a full-power code for Spy Hunter, a stage select code for Zanac, a glitch in Wizards & Warriors that lets you rescue the princess without actually killing the evil wizard, a way to glitch the weapons in Double Dragon so you can retain them even when the game thinks you shouldn't get to keep them, a couple strategies for dealing with Ironknuckle in Zelda II and a way to transfer thousands of experience points to a newly-created character once you've beaten the game, the trick to making the invisible platform appear in Berkeley Mansion in Castlevania II (as well as a plea for information on how the different endings are obtained), a quick tip on turning strong enemies into weaker ones for Legend of Zelda, some hints and strategies for Skate or Die, and finally some extra shortcuts one can take during a game of Super Mario Bros. 2. Whew!
    Welcome now to the Top 30 where all kinds of moving and shaking have been happening. Super Mario 2 is still on top by a huge margin (over 22,500 points vs. the measley 5,600 points that Zelda II earned in the #2 spot). Contra, Castlevania II, and Bionic Commando all raid their way up the charts, and Metroid clings tenaciously to the #10 position. New on the charts this month include Blades of Steel (with a #8 debut), Blaster Master, Rampage, Mega Man II, Paperboy, and Bubble Bobble.
    The Power Pad Playoffs '89 showcases a real match between two teams: the red-clad Power Pros, and the yellow-clothed Nintendo Nuts (I'm not making this up...). The competition starts off with World Class Track Meet, where the teams end in deadlock after four events. They move on Dance Aerobics, where the Red team inches out a victory to put them ahead. Finally, in the event to decide it all, Super Team Games gets a rollout, and despite some tough competition from the Nintendo Nuts, the Power Pros wind up taking the gold. Of course, this is Nintendo Power, so there's the obligatory reminder that everyone is a winner with the Power Pad.
    Video Shorts starts off simple with California Games, then moves into the bizarre with Taboo: The Sixth Sense. Both Nobunaga's Ambition and Desert Commander get tapped for strategy games, Mappyland and Flying Dragon get some attention in terms of action-style games, and of course, what's a good game preview without some licensed titles? Airwolf and Predator fill that particular mold, with the latter getting just one screenshot. Those of you who actually played the game no doubt are aware that the Predator license was just dumped into a nearly-completed side-scrolling game that Activision was working on at the time, which resulted in a game that made nearly no sense (Predator ghosts? Military badasses who don't have any guns and run around punching spiders? Seriously, WTF Activision?).
    But for taking the cake, there's just no topping this month's NES Journal feature, which reported on the development of Nintendo's own A.F.D. Reality Game System for the NES. These games would feature real-life situations, such as bathing dogs or job training simulations, including the outlandish Home Ninja Workshop which purports to teach people how to scale walls without ladders, conceal themselves under furniture, and other ninja-worthy skills. If the clues dropped throughout the article weren't enough to register on your radar, though, Nintendo gives up the gag by revealing what the A.F.D. really stands for: April Fools' Day. Good one, Nintendo! This is followed by some more tomfoolery involving a trivia quiz which is obviously a joke, a celebrity player profile of Shalane McCall (whom you will probably never have heard of if you didn't watch "Dallas" back in the 1980s), and a chance for all to see just how satanic Legend of Zelda really is with a quiz page featuring Link holding a shield with an inverted cross on it! (Don't tell Jack Thompson...)
    Nintendo starts what will be an annual contest in the pages of this issue as well, with the Nintendo Power Awards '88. All told, there are 8 categories: Best Graphics & Sound, Best Challenge, Best Theme & Fun, Best Play Control, Best Character, Best Ending, Best Player vs. Player, and finally, Best Overall. The number of choices varies by category: most have 5 options, but Best Theme & Fun has six, Best Overall has 9, and Best Character has a whopping 10 options. Following all this is a feature that easily wins the "Should Have Been In The First Issue" award, the Rating System. This breaks down the different categories that Nintendo uses to rate games for Nintendo Power, and explains what each one means. While this may be a no-brainer for adults, for younger children this would have been a considerable help. There's also an ad for back-issues of the magazine available only to Nintendo Power subscribers that lets you acquire them for their cover price ($3.50) plus a buck for shipping, which isn't a bad deal at all.
    Ahh, Video Spotlight...how we love to rag on you for showcasing the full frontal nerdity of the world. The vote is still out on whether or not being featured in this issue helped Brian Michaels of Rockford, IL get a date to his prom, but that's nothing compared to father Vance Evans admitting to the world that he named his son "Kelly." And no, he isn't confused about the gender...he enclosed a picture of his son to prove he really is a boy. Good on you, Mr. Evans...you have not only doomed your son to a life of ridicule but admitted it publically in the pages of a nationally-syndicated magazine. You, sir, are made of fail.
    Pak Watch drops some tidbits about Capcom continuing its run with Disney properties, some whispered rumours about Bandai making an NES game out of the Star Trek V property (they're correct, but the game is cancelled before completion), the Power Pad only games Street Cop (which was released in Japan the year before as Family Trainer: Manhattan Police) and Athletic World (likewise released as a Family Trainer program in Japan earlier), some news about Chessmaster and Batman, four arcade games that are coming home (Bad Dudes, Super Dodge Ball, Guerilla War, and Thundercade), "junior" game versions of Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy aimed at a younger crowd, and Stealth Eagle which is to be the first flight sim on the NES. Oh yes, and Dragon Warrior is coming really soon, we promise, and a ton of other titles like Guardian Legend and John Elway's Quarterback have likewise been delayed.
    Next Issue wraps everything up by getting gamers stoked for more on TMNT, more on Ninja Gaiden, and...wait for it...Mega Man II! Sadly, there's no letter from Howard Phillips this issue because they had to finish printing out the names of everyone who won the Nov/Dec issue contest. Maybe next time?
  6. Areala

    Letter to My Past Self

    By Areala,

    Akira Yamaoka, for the Silent Hill 3 soundtrack, composed a song entitled "Letter - from the lost days". Sung by Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, it's the narration of the present-day protagonist directed to herself some years in the future, expressing her hopes, dreams, and fears. It's a hauntingly beautiful track:





     
    But while flipping through a book of inspirational writing ideas yesterday, one in particular caught my eye. The suggestion was to write a letter to yourself in the past. Amidst the traditional 'creative' suggestions like "Write the ad copy for a product you'd like to see manufactured," or "Re-write the ending to the last story you read so it conveys the opposite emotion (make a happy ending into a sad one, or turn a hopeless ending into one that offers a glimmer of inspiration)," this one struck me as being particularly relevant. We all have things we wish we could have told our younger selves with the benefit of a few more years on our side. With that in mind, this is the letter I would write to deliver to myself at age sixteen:
     
    Dear Sarah,
     
    It's been a long time, hasn't it? Nineteen years to be exact. At least from my perspective. As you no doubt are aware, a lot of things can happen between where you are now and where I am today. A lot of things already did. Maybe reading this will help you come to terms with what you have yet to come to terms. Confused? Maybe I am too.
     
    I want you to know that right now, at age sixteen, you will never, ever feel emotions with the intensity that you do now again. You've yet to learn how to build those barriers, so every success sends you soaring like an eagle, and every defeat and every rejection crushes you like a monster truck tire rolling over a rose. You love, you hurt, you laugh, you cry, you experience every emotional high and low in between. That's not a curse, it's a blessing. It'll give you something magical to look back on once the benefit of a few years' passage have graced your life.
     
    College is different. High school sucks, but you're almost done. I know it's depressing to think about. You want so badly to be an adult, and honey let me tell you, in another year, you're gonna get the height, the hips and the chest that will define you for the rest of your life. You're pretty now, but next summer you're gonna bloom into "beautiful" and take that with you wherever you go. It comes late, too late to get that date to the prom or anything else that you're silently wishing will happen, but high school is transitory and in another few years you won't remember most of your classmates and they probably won't remember you so don't let it get you down. Things work out fine.
     
    I know you won't want to hear it, especially at your age, especially at this time, especially at a Christian prep school, but the simple fact is that there's nothing wrong with you not finding guys attractive. They'll make good friends through the years, and in fact once you get to college one of them will SEEM like he's Mister Right, but you won't love him. You think you will, but that's only because you haven't come to terms with the fact that you like other girls and there's nothing wrong with that. Right now, that idea is scary as all hell to you; so scary in fact that you can't even conceive of it because "gay people" just don't exist as far as you're concerned and the church drummed it into you years ago that if you don't get married to a guy because of THAT reason, there's something wrong with you. A few years from now, you'll meet the girl who makes you realize it's THEY who got it wrong and not you, and you'll give back that engagement ring. You'll cry like you never cried before, and you won't be able to tell anybody why for a long, long time, but when you're still with that same girl in the twilight days of 2011 you'll know you made the right choice. And that first kiss? Hoooo boy, it's a doozy!
     
    Remember all that time you spent in the computer lab or the library at school, writing your silly little stories on the computer? Remember all the hours you spend pouring over notebook paper in that binder you always keep close to you because it contains the poems that no one else but you know exist? Yes, even the ones that would be considered too Emo to be cool today? Those are important. Keep them close to your heart...closer even, if you can, because that's your gift. You were born to write, born to create, and though you'll have your period of ups and downs, you won't believe the number of e-mails you'll start getting from fans all over the world when you start writing your Tomb Raider stories. Yeah, stories. Plural. You'll get lots of practice learning how to structure plot lines, write dialogue, and most important of all take criticism (the good and the not-so-good kinds). You know Barry Lyga, the guy who wrote that Warrior Nun Areala story that made you cry? You'll get a really nice letter from him in a few years, telling you how nice it was to hear that someone felt as passionate about that story as you did. (By the way, your idea of using "Areala" for your internet nickname? It's a good one. Don't ignore it.)
     
    In a couple years' time, your aunt is going to sit down with your mom and record some stories on tape about what her life was like growing up with your father. For God's sake, don't just put 'em in a box somewhere. I can't begin to tell you how much you'll wish you hadn't lost track of them when 2008 rolls around. Just for the record, you're really going to hate 2008, more than any other year save maybe 1982. Thank God for you, that's a long time off.
     
    All those letters you get from friends and family when you go through Confirmation at your church next year, keep them too. Read them whenever you need a pick-me-up. That highlighted Bible verse is a good one, even if in another twenty years you won't consider yourself a practicing Catholic. You can be a good person to others while still searching for the truth wherever you want to look.
     
    Getting that 4.0 GPA will pay off huge dividends when you get that nearly-full-ride scholarship to attend Ball State. Even though you'll get letters of acceptance to several other schools, trust your heart and go to BSU. If you don't, you'll miss out on the single most important event of your entire life and there's a good chance I wouldn't be writing you this letter today. Don't fret about what will look best to your employer, because you're not trying to become a lawyer or a doctor. You're working in a bookstore right now, just like you have been for the past twelve years, and you love every day of it. They won't care that you flubbed that one Chemistry test, believe me, and you'll get enough extra credit with your AP classes to gloss that over. Oh yeah, those SAT scores? In exactly two years' time, they won't mean anything to anybody, so quit worrying about it. You know your stuff, and anything you don't know won't matter. Just ace the English portion and Math will take care of itself.
     
    Most of all though, just try your best to forgive and let go of all that anger. Dad didn't die on purpose. The world isn't out to get you (though it sure seems like it now, but that's how everybody feels in high school). When "Mortal Kombat" comes out in theatres, go see it to laugh. When "Titanic" comes out in theatres, go see it to cry. Most importantly, when that book by Richard Laymon catches your eye at the library, check it out. The other one by him too. Don't stop until you've read all of them (though this will take you the next twenty years).
     
    Finally, remember that you are you. You have a right to be you. And no one else will ever be you. Live life, laugh, sing, dance, cry, and celebrate. Especially celebrate the rainy days. When that one particular rainy day happens, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. And you may as well resign yourself to the fact that you're going to be a night owl well into your thirties.
     
    Thanks for taking the time to read this, my younger, wilder, darker, more passionate, vibrant, moody and depressed self. You owe it to yourself to own these years as dearly as you'll own the nineteen that are yet to come. I can't promise everything will turn out perfectly, but they'll be good enough I'll feel the desire to write this letter to you after all.
     
    As ever, I remain yours truly,
    Sarah
     
    P.S. - Newspaper doesn't sop up paint on carpeting. If you only acknowledge one piece of advice from this letter, please let it be this one.
  7. Areala
    I've attempted to introduce a few real-life friends to Retromags, both through visits to the site in general and trips to my blog in particular. Several of them were quite excited by the prospect of leafing through old Nintendo Powers, especially those who are, like me, now in their early to mid thirties and remember trading cheats out of the Classified Information column on the playground or trying to figure out a way to beat Warmech in Final Fantasy. Others, though, scoffed at the idea of a site dedicated to preserving magazines that have been out of date for at least a decade. "Why would I care about that?" I sometimes hear. "Read magazines from 1990? I barely have enough time to try and keep up with stuff being released today. Who would give a crap about stuff that happened twenty years ago? Do you go back and read old issues of Newsweek and Time too? Why do you even care?"
    And the answer I always give is, "Because it's something that interests me." But at the heart of it, that's really not a reason at all. Lots of things interest me besides video games. I enjoy horror films, but I'm not obsessed with collecting back issues of Fangoria or Rue Morgue magazine. I enjoy Star Trek, but I've never subscribed to any of the official magazines or unofficial fanzines that have been around since the 1960s. Star Wars is good too, but I don't jump to read every new novel that comes out. Yet when it comes to old gaming magazines, there's something inside me that says, "This is important. This is worth preserving." When someone else asks me why, though, I can never formulate an answer that satisfies both the person who asks and myself as well. That is the purpose of tonight's blog posting: can I answer this question for myself, and thus prepare for the next time I am asked, "Why?"
    Sitting here and thinking about it, the first answer I can come up with is that unlike many other fields or hobbies I have an interest in, video games and computers have been in my life from a very early age. I didn't get into Dungeons & Dragons until I was about ten years old. My interest in horror films, anime and music didn't develop until I was in high school. I didn't start to perform on stage and sing until I was in college. But I was three years old when my dad brought home our first computer, a TRS-80 Color Computer, plugged in the joystick, and inserted the "Space Assault" cartridge. Voila: a video game. In later years, I would come to experience pinball and arcade machines. It's safe to say I grew up in the arcade era, that period of the 1980s where "arcade" was almost a dirty word, synonymous with "places where older teens hung out, smoking cigarettes and wasting money" in the eyes of the media. Being a child, I never saw it that way though. I just thought it was great that I could put a coin in the slot and drive a car around a race track, or navigate a maze, or shoot at aliens.
    Still, why magazines? If all my memories are about playing video games, then why not just use an emulator such as MAME to play the old games instead of just reading about them? Why not go downstairs and play Super Mario World on my 50" TV with my Super NES controller in hand instead of looking at screenshots of it in the pages of Nintendo Power? Simple: reading takes me beyond the game. In my mind, reading an old gaming magazine takes me into the "Special Features" disc of a DVD, where you learn all the things that you don't get from just watching the feature film. It's a director's (well, developer's) commentary track, behind-the-scenes footage, "Making of" montage, and evolutionary track all rolled into a few pages. Nobody looks at film buffs cross-eyed when they mention that they watched the little bonus featurette on Orson Welles after viewing "Citizen Kane" again, so why should someone think me crazy for wanting to read up a bit on a classic (or even a not-so-classic) title?
    Perhaps more important than that, though, is the desire to preserve a historical legacy that is getting increasingly difficult to preserve. Yes, you can find all the general data you want on virtually any video game these days with a quick trip to a site like MobyGames or IGN. Even GameFAQs has a database of information on their titles that includes release dates, developer credits, and other bits of ephemera. When it comes to concrete facts, we are in little danger of losing that information. What could be lost, however, is the story behind the story. MobyGames can tell us that Tomb Raider was originally released for the PC and the Playstation in the US on October 31st, 1996, but their database is ill-equipped to inform us as to why it was heralded as such an amazing title upon release. Today, Lara Croft is one of the most recognizable gaming icons in the world with millions of fans, games spanning three full generations of consoles, and one transfer from Core Design to Crystal Dynamics. Thirteen years ago, nobody had heard of her and she had yet to impact our culture the way she has. To capture the full effect of what it was like to live in a world just introduced to the freshly-minted up-and-coming First Lady of gaming, we have to turn to the publications of the day. And this means the gaming press.
    The problem with the gaming industry is that it is only now discovering that people are actually interested in its history. Nintendo's Wii with its ability to download and play classic titles showed the other modern-day consoles that despite being "dead" for twenty years, old games could still be worth some serious money. It didn't take Microsoft and Sony long to begin to follow suit, and that's why you find the likes of Resident Evil and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night available on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. This interest has always been there, and some companies were quicker than others to jump on the bandwagon - witness Midway with their "Treasures" lineup, Capcom with their "Classics" discs, and Taito's "Legends" offerings of older arcade games. Backwards compatibility was an enormous selling point for the PS2, and Nintendo has offered it with successive versions of their Game Boy hardware starting with the GB Color. What they are failing to offer, though, is a reason for gamers who aren't nostalgic about the titles to want to spend money on downloading something with comparably inferior graphics. Put a screenshot of "A Link to the Past" side by side with one from "Twilight Princess" and ask your average teenaged gamer which one he or she would prefer to play; I guarantee that "Twilight Princess" will blow "Link to the Past" out of the water each and every time. Screenshots alone cannot showcase the importance of "Link to the Past" in the video game timeline, but the magazine writers of the day can put things in perspective for modern-day readers. I was not alive the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, so a simple recitation of the facts concerning his death will do little to move me. But listen to the newscasters of the day as they struggle to inform the American people as best they can as scant information, rumours, and half-truths continue to swarm into the newsroom in the hours following the shooting and you will understand much better what it meant to be alive on the day a president was killed. Read a memorial article in Life magazine or Time, and you will see what was important to the culture of the day. There's a power in that immediacy, and as history rolls on, it slowly will get condensed into soundbytes, news snippets, and a few paragraphs destined to fill a textbook prior to the information that Lyndon Johnson was sworn in as President in the aftermath.
    Are video games as important as the death of a true historical figure? Probably not. But does that doom them to remain forever a victim of an increasingly faster-moving world that cares only for reporting on the next big graphical advancement, the next epic storyline, the next big technological leap, and bestows the greatest accolades on a title only to laugh at those achievements in two years' time when the sequel is released? More importantly, should video games be reduced to this and nothing else? I, and the many people who contribute to sites dedicated to preserving these snippets of our past have answered with a firm "No!" Others may not understand or share our thirst for knowledge, our desire to preserve, or our interest in how this entertainment medium evolved, just as some people buy a DVD and only watch the feature film while ignoring all the extra goodies available to them. But just because others don't share our passion does not mean it is not valid.
    It seems a shame it is only now, some three decades since video games entered world culture and created an entirely new medium for entertainment, that there has been any serious interest in preserving these important pieces of our own history. For many people, obviously, it is no concern to them how characters like Mario, Sonic and Lara Croft have developed over the years into the icons they are today; they will play the game, enjoy it, and then wait for the next entry. But for a sizable number of us, the history of video games is a slice of our own history. We can look back on an issue of EGM and remember where we were the first time we heard about Street Fighter II, we can page through an old issue of Nintendo Power and remember the frustration of renting games that did not come with instruction manuals, we can read GamePro and recall the days when cheat codes came from magazines and there was no such thing as gaming websites to fulfill our desires to get the most out of our games. Gaming magazines are our own pieces of history, written by people who were watching the changes coming and commenting on what was yet to be. They hold information that is sometimes inaccurate, sometimes wildly off-key, filled with crazy speculations and bizarre observations about the current state of the industry. Sometimes they serve a much-needed notice that not every video game journalist belonged in the field and occasionally jog our memories to remind us about games that were supposed to be and yet never were or wound up as something else.
    Equally as important for history is the fact that digital archiving allows people from various parts of the world to experience games from a different cultural viewpoint than the one that he or she grew up with. As a US gamer, there is plenty to enjoy when reading (or flipping through in the case of non-english publications that I cannot read proficiently) the archives from other countries to see what was hot, what was exciting, what was controversial, and what got censored from region to region.
    We are a segment that begs desperately for our own professional historians to dissect the field, unearth new information, and tell us more and more about our hobby. This is no different from amateur Civil War buffs, armchair quarterbacks, or gun enthusiasts who all avidly devour the histories of the Union and Confederacy, the histories of their favorite football teams, or the histories of their favorite firearm manufacturers. In order to remind us of forgotten events, to put together pieces of puzzles that have remained incomplete, and continue to entertain and enlighten, these historians must have a record to pull from: treasures of correspondence are unearthed in attics, old newspaper archives are scoured in libraries, and ancient documents are collected and collated by museums waiting to be discovered anew by researchers. Without these resources being available, though, so much of what we know about our history would be lost to time. And while it is unlikely that the video game press will ever leave behind a document as significant as Anne Frank's diary, it is equally as unlikely that no one would ever be excited to read the words of Miyamoto, Wright, Kojima, or other significant figures in the evolution of video games when they are no longer with us.
    Why care about old issues of game magazines? Because they are a part of my history, my passion, my life. They allow me to travel in time and remember what it was like to witness the birth of the CD-ROM as a gaming medium, the growth of the personal computer, the days when a great adventure game read just like a well-written fantasy novel. You don't need to agree with my reasons; you may have reasons of your own for caring about them, or you might think I'm an idiot for not devoting my time and energy to something more "important". But this is my culture, a desired area of study in the ever-evolving school that is my life. I cannot change that any more than I can change the fact that I am not the person I was ten years ago. "You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door." Reading that simple sentence still sends a shiver of joy up my spine. Why wouldn't I want to do my best to preserve that feeling for future generations?
  8. Areala
    If you've been online at all in the last few months, no matter where you live, you've doubtless heard of SOPA and PIPA, the two bills that were set to become laws in the US and that were soundly defeated just a few days ago by the voice of opposition, ie: the massive public outcry that led to the bills' main sponsors pulling their support. That's good. We won. But we only won a very small battle, and there's no time to celebrate.
    We need to rethink how we, as Netizens, respond to attacks on our online freedoms because the way it has played out in the past isn't good enough. So what's the problem? Well, we tend to ignore an awful lot of potential legislation until the people sponsoring it try and take something away from us. Then there's a huge public outcry, the petitions circulate, the calls pour in, the sponsors of the bill pull it back and they say, "OK, we'll compromise." And we fall silent, because we beat the big ol' fire-breathing dragon, and compared to that, an orc or goblin isn't so bad.
    This is the slope to failure. Because we don't want compromise. We don't want to have our rights stripped away one at a time as opposed to all at once. We don't want our rights stripped away AT ALL. But once we win the big battle, we shrug our shoulders and say, "We won, back to business as usual." And in a few months, we get SOPA-lite or PIPA 2.0, which aren't nearly as bad and maybe don't affect us quite the way the originals would. There's no outcry, they win another small battle, and another right bites the dust.
    It's time to stop that right in its tracks. Instead of resting on our laurels, we need to actively bring our interests to the forefront of the debate, because losing by compromise is the death of 1,000 cuts. It's time to get right up in the faces of the MPAA, the RIAA, and anybody else who wants to control how we, as end users, use the products we rightfully pay money for, and push them back. Make them waste every last ounce of political clout and goodwill they've built up in the Senate and House over the years by making them fight on OUR turf from now on.
    How can we do this? Simple: we start pushing for things that are the opposite extremes of what they want and force THEM to compromise in our direction for once. Let's lobby for a system where the loser in patent and copyright infringement cases is burdened with the entirety of the bill for the lawsuit, thus making companies think twice about willy-nilly throwing around their might and saying, "We know we'll win because we have a legal budget and you're just a 40-hour workweek drone without the money to hire a lawyer, so how about we settle instead?" Screw you: the burden of proof is back on the accuser, right where it belongs.
    Let's push for a rollback of the current copyright laws so that they're not so long-lasting and draconian. In the digital age, copyright as it stands now is more or less a joke. Copyright was intended to give artists and creators the ability to be the sole profiteers from their works for a period of time before the information was released to the public, it wasn't meant to allow the creation of multi-national dynasties and families who ride the coat-tails of work done by relatives who are long-dead. Life plus seventy-five years? Let's try ten to fifteen years and then it's public domain. If you're that creative, you'll be just fine creating additional works that will also have the benefit of 10-15 years of protection. If you're a one-trick pony, then you get paid for your trick and make way for someone else in a few years' time. Seems fair to me.
    While we're at it, let's push for the death of software patents all together. Open source projects have shown time and again that creative contributions from large groups of individuals are faster, more efficient, and more agile than the limited releases from giant software companies. We push for death, they compromise with "No, no, but how about 5 years on software patents?" and we win by compromise again.
    We need to reinforce and buff up the First Amendment on freedom of speech. Merely linking to something online is not a violation of anybody's rights, just like it's hardly against the law for me to mention Disney, Coca-Cola, Federal Express, or any other company name in my post despite the fact that I don't work for or own any of them. If I link to a YouTube video that contains copyrighted content, that's simple freedom of speech. Period. Paragraph. Go ahead: TRY and compromise with the public on "Congress shall make no law..." I dare you.
    So there it is. They pushed, we compromised, and in a few months we'll lose ground we fought so hard to secure in the first place. Now it's our turn. We're going to push, and push, and push, and keep pushing until they're the ones performing a strategic withdraw and yielding back the rights they tried to take away.
    Keep writing. Keep calling. When people sponsor, co-sponsor, or rise in favour of legislation that besmirches your rights, flood their offices with reminders that you vote and would like nothing more than to see them ousted from office if they continue to behave in this fashion.
    We CAN do this. There are hundreds of millions if us, and only a few hundred of them. Talk with your wallets, talk with your internet connections, talk at the voting booths, and if you live outside the US but have friends there, talk to those friends and pass the message along. The fight isn't over, and it never will be over until we understand that when we compromise on these grounds, we lose. And losing isn't acceptable.
  9. Areala
    Following up on my previous blog entry, I decided I would make this concept more than a one-time deal. So this time, instead of NES titles, we'll look at my top 10 casual SNES games. Remember, this isn't about long, drawn-out games that take hours of levelling or days of practice to complete. This is about games you can pick up, play for a little while, and then put down again when you don't have very long to sit in front of your TV.
    10 - Super Tennis
    As noted in the previous blog, there are lots of people who think that all sports titles are essentially casual games, but this isn't often so. Super Tennis, however, isn't meant to be a 100% accurate simulation of the Wimbledon cup. It's just a couple people getting together and batting a ball across a net for a little while. The selection of players (and genders) means that there's literally someone for everyone to get behind, and sometimes a couple matches of tennis can go a long way towards scratching that gaming itch. Really, almost any of the Super line of sports could go in here as well, including Super Soccer and Super Bowling, or even the likes of Super Tecmo Bowl. Tennis was just the first one to cross my mind.
    9 - SimCity
    SimCity sold bucketloads of copies simply because it was serious gaming in a casual format, and not much is different for the SNES version. Whether you want to play a preconstructed scenario about recovering from a major disaster, or just take on the construction of your own burgeoning metropolis one block at a time, SimCity makes it easy to sit down, play for a few game-years, and then save and quit. And unlike its cousin Populous, it's essentially a non-competitive game. Just you against the little Sims of your City. Sometimes they must perish in the awful fires, precious...sometimes yes...
    8 - Super R-Type
    R-Type probably isn't the first thing you think of when someone talks about a "casual" game, and you're probably right. R-Type is hard. Like, Nintendo-hard. But that doesn't change the fact that it's easy enough to pick up and play for a little while, and let's face it: blowing stuff up in outer space never gets old, which is why it's a theme that has survived in video games for three decades. You could probably put any scrolling shooter in this slot (Gradius III, E.V.O., Phalanx, etc...) and you'd be OK. Again, Super R-Type was the first one to cross my mind.
    7 - Super Bomberman
    With multiple players, this becomes an outright fragfest of explosions and expletives, especially if you've got four people going at it all at once. As a single-player experience, though, it's a lot more Zen. BE the bomb. BE the Bomberman. Blast the bricks. It's all you. And that's something to smile about.
    6 - Stunt Race FX
    A very nice use of the FX chip that we've also seen in Starfox, this is a casual, pick-up-and-play racer that is perfect for gamers who are pressed for time. Race a few tracks, lap a few cars, and walk away from it a better person. Or at least a happier person for making the AI eat your exhaust. Those who like a bit more combat in their driving experience could put Super Mario Kart or Rock 'n Roll Racing in here instead. Those who don't like the FX chip look but still want their driving experiences "pure" could substitute F-Zero as well.
    5 - Street Fighter II (series)
    Really, any of the games in this series will do, though Super Street Fighter II is probably the best given the number of options for setting the speed, selecting a difficulty level, and the total number of fighters available to pick from. If you've got a knack for the button presses, nothing says casual entertainment than some one-on-one combat that you can rock for a few rounds without worrying about your online rankings or other statistics. Your co-workers don't even need to know that Zangief got you twice in the last round with that spinning piledriver.
    4 - Super Mario All-Stars
    This one was sort of a cheat, as it's four games in one, but hey, it's Mario. As long as you ignore The Lost Levels (which is nothing more than a sadistic exercise in frustration), you really can't go wrong with your adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom or Subcon. Plus, all the graphics are pretty 16-bit upgrades of the NES sprites. Double bonus!
    3 - TMNT IV: Turtles in Time
    Side-scrolling beat 'em ups are the perfect way to waste an hour or so while letting off steam in the process, and just as TMNT II: The Arcade Game got a mention on the NES list, so too does its big brother for the SNES. The variety of moves and ways to dispatch your enemies ensures that nothing gets boring. Plus, let's face it - throwing that Foot Clan robot towards the screen and watching the Mode-7 effect is still awesome even after you've seen it half a million times.
    2 - Pilotwings
    Flight simulators in general are pretty casual gaming experiences, but Pilotwings on the SNES does it perfectly. It's just you and the craft, whether you're driving a plane, swooping a glider, or even throwing on a jetpack and bouncing around. Pilotwings is one of those games that is so insanely simple and addictive while including so much variety that you can't go wrong with it.
    1 - Tetris & Dr. Mario
    Let's see...we'll take one of the best-selling, most addictive puzzle games of all time, pair it up with Nintendo's own take on the "throwing bits down the well" genre, pretty up the presentation, and unleash it upon the world. And we will dominate forever. I imagine that's what Nintendo's marketing department must have been thinking when they offered this double-whammy of casual gaming goodness on a single cartridge. Is there any way that this could fail to top the list of casual Super Nintendo games for anybody? Areala thinks not, but of course, you are free to disagree with her in the comments field down below, or heap praise upon her instead if you feel the urge.
  10. Areala
    The first time I read "Zod Wallop," I had just graduated from high school and was working away the summer before my transition to freshman status at Ball State at the local public library. I saw it on the shelf, mentally asked, "What the hell is this?", took it home, and read through it in two days. After I returned it, I never saw a copy come through again, and for a while I had forgotten about it.



    Then, several years ago while working at the bookstore, a paperback with an odd title caught my eye. "Resume With Monsters." The author? One William Browning Spencer. I knew that name from somewhere...a quick Internet search identified him as the guy who wrote "Zod Wallop" and the flames of my desire to read this book again were fanned with the literary equivalent of a blacksmith's bellows. God, did I want me some "Zod Wallop."
    The universe, of course, said "screw you" and left me utterly Zod-Wallopless for years. On Monday of this past week, I found a copy of it and began reading again. I wasn't disappointed, and "Zod Wallop" was well worth the wait.
    I know I've got you intrigued already. With a title like that, who wouldn't be? WTF is a Zod Wallop anyway, and why would anyone write a book about one? This is a perfectly normal reaction. Allow me to assuage all your fears.
    Zod Wallop is the title of a book. Yes, I know "Zod Wallop" is the title of the book, but in this case I'm not being facetious. Harry Gainesborough wrote and published the very successful childrens' book "Zod Wallop" in the aftermath of the worst tragedy of his life. What no one except he knows is that there is another version of Zod Wallop, a darker, more disturbing "author's cut" if you will. Written while he was a patient at Harwood Mental Hospital on the advice of one of his therapists, the original Zod Wallop is anything but a book for kids. Harry penned it in an effort to assuage the personal demons that were plaguing him after his daughter Amy drowned in a tragic accident, and by the end of the book, everyone is dead and the world is in ruins. Upon his release from the hospital, he published the critically-acclaimed version that his agent is begging him to sell the film rights for so that he can get his name back into the public's eye. Harry isn't interested; despite the fact that his books are as popular as Rowling's "Harry Potter" series is in this reality, all he wants to do is spend his days in a drunken stupor and do his best to forget the worst day of his life.
    Reality has other plans, and chief among them is Raymond Story.
    Raymond is middle-aged, slightly-overweight, and the very definition of a man-child (think Zach Galifianakis with a moustache instead of a full beard) who has trouble distinguishing fantasy from reality. Raymond spent some time with Harry during his stay at Harwood, and unfortunately for Harry (and pretty much everybody else in the world), Raymond has also read Zod Wallop. The real Zod Wallop. The version no one else was meant to read. In fact, he's got the only copy of it in his possession. He's noticed that many of the characters are patterned on himself and several of his fellow inmates, and he's managed to convince not only himself but a few other patients (and his pet monkey) that Zod Wallop is more than just a book. For Raymond Story, Zod Wallop is a Bible, an instruction manual from the prophet himself (in the form of Harry Gainesborough) telling them just what to do in order to prevent a dark force of evil from coming to power and taking over the world. Now that they're all seeing visions of nightmarish creatures and signs of the dark intrusion breaking into their reality, Raymond and his crew have broken out of the hospital and are headed on a cross-country trip to find Harry so that together they can unite their powers and stop the evil Lord Draining from taking over Florida, the rest of the United States, and eventually the world.
    Harry would swear that Raymond, Rene, Allen and Lord Arbus (the aforementioned trained monkey) are all insane, until he too starts to witness things that seem to indicate that the fabric of reality is coming apart. Before long, he begins to understand that he has to use his knowledge of the original Zod Wallop to help Raymond on his mad(?) quest. And he also starts to suspect that Raymond's new wife Emily, a wheelchair-bound and badly brain-damaged inmate of the asylum who can't even feed herself without assistance, might be the most important member of the whole fellowship. On the other side of the coin, there are some members of a couple of pharmaceutical firms who are very interested in getting their hands on Harry, Raymond and the rest of the gang because they were the unwitting test subjects of some powerful drugs during their stay at Harwood, and it's time for them to collect some samples and test results. Psychosis, after all, was one of the potential side-effects...
    Honestly, "Zod Wallop" is just a bad-ass example of what a true mindscrew the fantasy genre can be. Forget your cliched dragons and wizards and elves: Zod Wallop eats them for breakfast by presenting an utterly compelling story set in the real world with characters who are larger than life (even if all of them might be certifiably insane). Spencer writes great, convincing dialogue, especially for Raymond who firmly believes that he is the hero in the epic mythology unfolding all around him and is in the unenviable position of having to convince Harry of the same thing. Spencer also has a commanding grasp of comic absurdity and timing in much the same way that Douglas Adams did. From the opening scene of Raymond's wedding (which takes place in the middle of a tremendous downpour and is crashed by the staff of Harwood since nobody exactly got permission to leave the hospital) to the events that unfold and develop as the motley group makes their life-changing road trip to Florida, Spencer makes the absurd seem perfectly acceptable while tinging everything with the right amount of paranoia, darkness, and reversals of fortune to keep readers guessing right up until the very end.
    I loved "Zod Wallop." I loved the premise, the doubts, the distractions, the red-herrings, the dialogue, the characters, the absurdities, and the questions it raised. If anything, I loved it more reading it some fifteen years later than I did the first time, and that's truly saying something. No matter what, "Zod Wallop" leaves an impression with you that you won't be able to shake for days or (in my case) even years.
    But don't take my word for it. See for yourself. Just do it before the Ralewings get you...
  11. Areala
    So, I'm sick and tired of politics. I have had it up to here with stupid people making stupid statements that they have no intention of honouring once they get into office. We're now involved in three different military actions directly, God only knows how many indirectly, and it's just getting ridiculous. How zarking hard it is for any of you bozos in politics to just tell the freaking truth?
    Republican, Democrat, Libertarian, Independent, Green, Tea Partier, Blue Dog, Conservative, Liberal, I don't care WHAT party you're with. Come this next election cycle, every last one of you who is in office is getting voted out and replaced. Republican Senator? Your seat will soon be filled by a Democrat. Democrat Representative? Prepare to be replaced by a Libertarian. Conservatives shall be met with Liberalism and Liberalism with Conservatism, and this cycle will continue to happen every two years with you people being replaced by your direct opposites until the lot of you get your acts together and start behaving like adults!
    That's the idea behind the Lemon Party. Lemon Laws exist to protect consumers - if you buy a product and it turns out to be defective (aka: a lemon), you are allowed to return it and get a replacement. Well, guess what - Congress, the Executive Branch, state and local government: you're ALL defective. And it is now my sworn, solemn duty to ensure that every last one of you loses your job in 2012 and gets replaced by an incoming freshman.
    If anybody else wants to join me in this venture, if you want graphics you can use for signs and banners, if you want to join their e-mail list to find local Lemon Party gatherings in your area or if you're interested in starting up your own chapter of the Lemon Party in your state or province, then head on over to http://www.lemonparty.org and get signed up.
    The Lemon Party: Change Is Good™!
  12. Areala
    You want to know something? Jack Kilborn isn't right in the head. They say you've got to be a little off upstairs to write horror stories in the first place, but...sweet mother of pearl, somebody dropped Kilborn on his skull five or six times then fed his psyche into a Veg-O-Matic for shits and giggles just to see what would come out on the other end ("It slices...it dices...it warps fragile little minds..."). The most likely culprit? Joe Konrath, the real live writer behind Kilborn's pseudonym.



    Pseudonyms make authors do strange things sometimes. Everybody now knows that King was Bachman, and about the nicest thing a person can say about Bachman's novels is that it's Stephen King writing without the help of his own conscience. Kilborn takes much the same route, eschewing Konrath's lighter, more humourous detective fare in favour of a carnivorous rampaging beast of gore-strewn typeset pages chemically treated with water-soluble adrenaline. Because, dammit, if you pick this thing up and don't finish it in one sitting, then you're either a weenie or you were wearing gloves.
    "Afraid" is an apt title. Simple, six characters, one word. It's alarming how much meaning one can cram into such a small word, but it's exactly what everybody in a small Wisconsin town of fewer than 1,000 people is about to feel over the course of one night's rampage. Kilborn's idea isn't new: serial killer novels have been around for decades. Kilborn's take on it, however, puts him quite plainly in the ranks with Jack Ketchum, Richard Laymon, and Dean Koontz at their most over-the-top, bizarre and deranged.
    The military spends billions of dollars every year in the effort to turn regular soldiers into hardened killers. What would happen if someone decided that maybe they were going about it in the wrong fashion? Instead of trying to teach men to ignore their conscience, suppose they decided to simply take a bunch of sociopaths and run them through Special Forces training? Not because of the damage they could do on the battlefield, but rather what they could do off of it. Murder, torture, rape, nothing is off the boards when it comes to waging war in the 21st century.
    There's only one teeny-tiny little problem: a team of these remorseless Rambo/Hannibal Lector crossbreeds has gotten loose in backwoods Wisconsin, in a little town named "Safe Haven". They're all looking for one person in particular, and they'll rip the entire town apart, finger by finger, arm by arm, throat by throat, in order to find him.
    The government's serious about stopping them--they've cordoned off the entire area, sent in a dozen Green Berets and a scientist who knows a lot more than he's telling about the group. Maybe they should have been a little more serious, as the Green Berets get turned into mush within minutes of setting down.
    Kilborn wastes no time getting straight to the point: in the opening chapters people get their skin stripped, fingers broken, toes bitten off, eyes gouged out, throats slit, heads twisted off, legs shattered, ears ripped, hearts impaled, testicles squeezed...and it only gets worse from there. Nothing is sacred, no torture too obscene, no method too unsavory for Santiago, Taylor, Ajax, Bernie and Logan to acquire the information they want.
    Stuck in the middle of the carnage are a lot of people who don't know anything and are scared out of their wits. The power's out all over town, cell phone reception is a joke, and the only road out of Safe Haven is being guarded by a freaking tank. There's no place to run, no place to hide, and no way to call for help. Now it's up to a small group of townies led by a ready-to-retire sheriff and a younger fireman/paramedic to find out why hell decided to show up in Safe Haven, and put an end to it if at all possible.
    This book is adrenaline on steroids that has been liberally laced with PCP and cocaine. It barely stops moving to let you catch your breath before tossing the characters from one frying pan into another and one can envision Kilborn cackling gleefully as he reaches into his spice rack for another dash of pain, a cup of mayhem, a pinch or two of disaster, and two massive sticks of "oh my God he did NOT just go there". Yeah, he did.
    By the end of it all, your psyche will be a brutalized wreck just like the poor protagonists who had the misfortune to cross the Red-ops team. You'll hate yourself for having read it so quickly, and hate yourself more for having enjoyed it so damn much that you're ready to find anything else Kilborn has penned and devour it just as handily.
    Either that or you'll be in desperate need of a barf bag.
    Me? Let's just say I'm preparing for "Trapped" thanks to the short excerpt at the end of "Afraid." Bring it on, Mr. Konrath.
    If you'd like, the author also has a fun little Flash-based browser game based on the novel here:
    http://www.jakonrath.com/afraid.htm
    The concept is simple: just browse the text that shows up and click on every instance of the word "Afraid" that you find. It's not as easy as it sounds.
  13. Areala
    So I've been fussing around with a few hidden object games over the last couple of months which is why my progress on this blog has been...infrequent to say the least. Some of them have been crap, a couple of them have been good, but only one has stuck out so far enough to make me want to write about it on here, and that's Dire Grove.



    Dire Grove is just one game in a series known as "Mystery Case Files". These have been published on a number of platforms including the Wii and the DS, but their biggest following comes from the PC, which is where I encountered it. Hot on the heels of Ravenhearst, the previous game in the series, it picks up with you (the world's greatest detective) driving through the Irish countryside. All of a sudden, it's snowing in autumn, the temperature is dropping, and the road is iced all to hell making continued driving so dangerous as to be suicidal. You pull off to the side of the road just next to a sign advertising Dire Grove, a quaint little community that is now closed for the season. Just your luck.
    Despite the blizzard-like conditions, you can't help but notice the other car parked on the side of the road just ahead of you a little ways. It's running, the door is open, the lights are on, but it's completely abandoned. Who on earth leaves their car wide open and vacant in weather like this? Being the world's greatest detective, you can hardly ignore a challenge like this one, so you decide to find out.
    Hidden Object games are pretty much all based on the same premise, which is to play "Where's Waldo?" (or "Where's Wally?" for you Brits) with the list of items presented in each scene. Dire Grove lifts itself beyond this by including a number of more traditional adventure gaming puzzles where, for example, you might have to find a saw to cut through some rope, or a some oars in order to row a boat. Putting these two aspects to work simultaneously does much to break up the tedium of constant pixel-hunting that pervades so many hidden object titles.
    The other thing Dire Grove has in spades is atmosphere. Seriously, you're tramping around Celtic Ireland, listening to the wind, seeing the snow fall down your screen, and you just want to shiver involuntarily. The first night I started playing Dire Grove, the heat index was reading 90 degrees but while I was playing I didn't realize this at all. That's what I call successful immersion right there.
    So, where does the Blair Witch element come in? Well, as you soon discover, the people responsible for leaving the car running on the side of the road are a group of university students who have come to research the legend of Dire Grove and prove it to be based on a true story. The project leader has left behind a number of camcorder tapes documenting everything leading up to the trip and the bizarre things that have happened to them since they arrived in Dire Grove. Ostensibly, these videos are all shot by members of the team, but you'll quickly notice there are times when all of the students are in the frame and somebody else is holding the camera. I understand the need to get good establishing shots, but in the spirit of keeping it realistic, you'd think it would have dawned on the designers that you can't show everybody in the scene without people realizing it's a studio recording as opposed to the amateur camera work that it's supposed to be. A minor complaint, true, as the scenes are all well-acted and competently shot, but it jars you out of your suspension of disbelief a bit too often.
    The legend of Dire Grove also centers around a mysterious figure. In this case, it's a Banshee, the restless spirit of a dead woman who haunts an area important to her in life. A Banshee is no Casper the Friendly Ghost though; she's evil through and through, and out to kill or imprison anyone who threatens her territory. Which, naturally, is what the university students discovered to their extreme detriment before you arrived on the scene. It's a great story, marrying Celtic legend to point-and-click adventure with ease and high production values. If you've not played one of these games before but are interested, Dire Grove is a great place to start.
  14. Areala
    If there's any question that is bound to throw me for a loop (aside from "What's your favorite book?"), it's this one. I love when people ask it, because it means that they are at least faking a mild interest in my life, but at the same time I hate when people ask it because it means that they expect some sort of answer besides, "How the F&@$ should I know?"
    My musical tastes run from one end of the spectrum to the other, and that means that you'll find in my collection everything from 60s classic rock to 21st-century electronica, 80s pop to 90s one-hit wonders, soundtracks from multi-million copy video games to obscure basement-label releases that no one has ever heard of because they only recorded a single four-song EP twenty-eight years ago. I guess it's fair to say that I have a lot of moods.
    But I will say this: if there's one category that rules my shelves more than any other, it would be...well crap, it isn't really one category so much as it is a fusion of categories that I consider under one enormous umbrella of "shit Areala enjoys listening to an awful lot." We'll call it, for lack of a better way for me to describe it, "dark ambient".
    Now "dark ambient" is itself a genre of music (Wikipedia tells me so) but there's plenty of stuff I listen to that wouldn't quite make the cut as far as being officially DA. So understand that when I'm talking about my personal tastes in this music, it could be dark without being ambient, it could be ambient without being dark, and sometimes it might just be neither dark nor ambient but I enjoy listening to it anyway. Confused? Good, so am I.
    If I'm going to start talking about this stuff, it's probably best to start with an artist and composer who truly is considered to be dark ambient, and that is none other than Akira Yamaoka. Yamaoka wasn't the first DA artist I heard, but he was the one I most readily identified with and found myself seeking out. I own six of his "Silent Hill" soundtracks, and they really set the stage for my personal exploration into this genre. While I enjoy all of them, the music from Silent Hill 2 and 3 are probably the best starting points for anyone who wants to experience Yamaoka's genius for the first time. The Silent Hill 1 soundtrack for the PS1 is far more industrial than ambient, and it requires a very specific mindset to enjoy it without the game to assist. SH2 and SH3 are much more accessible, especially SH3 with the introduction of Mary Elizabeth McGlynn's haunting, ethereal lyrics that have become a mainstay of the series. Yamaoka's music (generally matched with videos of Silent Hill gameplay) can be found all over YouTube, so feel free to go exploring.
    My first real experience with ambient music came from a musician named Steve Roach. A radio program called "Hearts of Space" plays every Sunday night here in the US. It's been running for more than twenty-five years, and producer Stephen Hill has created more than nine hundred different programs of varying themes and styles involving "space music". My first encounter with HOS was back in the 1990s when I heard it playing on our local NPR station and I was introduced to Steve Roach via a track from his album "The Magnificent Void." Roach's compositions tend to be very long (he has a few albums that are 70+ minutes of music but only have 2-3 tracks on them), but they are wonderful to listen to after a long, grinding day. Here's a portion of one track from the album "Structures From Silence" on Youtube.
    Putting a techno/industrial spin on things, a co-worker of mine introduced me to a band called Informatik in the early 2000s. I purchased their album "Nymphomatik" shortly thereafter and while it's neither quiet nor contemplative (unless you do your best thinking while in the middle of a club surrounded by people dancing like maniacs), there's a strange character of beauty that surrounds their mixtures of synth and voice. One of their most popular hits is "A Matter of Time," so
    if you're so inclined.Moving back more towards ambient, I'd be utterly remiss in my duties if I didn't mention Brian Eno. He's pretty much been at the forefront of the movement since the 1970s and has arguably done more for experimental music than any other single artist since (consider him The Beatles of the ambient scene). It isn't dark, but it's certainly thought-provoking. "Ambient 1: Music For Airports" is four tracks of serenity that you can flow into and out of as you like. It's something I enjoy playing as I write.
    , and see if it strikes your fancy too.Edge of Dawn is next on my list, and while their sound isn't easy to describe, it's very easy to understand (more dark than ambient). Racing fans might have heard them in 2007's "Project Gotham Racing 4" on the 360, contributing the track "Elegance." Everything I've heard from them manages to resonate with me in personal ways, and I can understand the stories their songs are trying to tell, even if I have no direct experience with them. Their album "Enjoy The Fall" is a true work of art, and if I was permitted to make my own soundtrack to Cormac McCarthy's "The Road", then "Beauty Lies Within" would play over the closing credits. EoD has samples of all their music at their home page, which is in both German and English, at http://edgeofdawn.de/audio.htm.
    "Lovesliescrushing" is another band I just recently discovered on a large goth compilation from Projekt. Ethereal vocals mix with gorgeous synth work to create a dreamscape of sound that manages to fill the space you're in while leaving it feel empty at the same time. It's a very delicate balance, but by God, they pull it off and I've been hooked ever since. The song "Your Eyes Immaculate" was my introduction to them, and
    .I'm guessing most everybody here has heard of Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor. Reznor is known for penning and performing some of the roughest industrial stuff to achieve radio play in the 90s, but there's another side to Trent musically, and that's best heard through his 2008 release of "Ghosts I-IV", a gorgeous CD set of nothing but ambient soundwork produced in collaboration with several other artists. Some of it is as quiet as a summer's evening, some of it is as choppy and turbulent as ocean waters, some of it is a cacaphony reminiscent of a tornado, but all of its 36 tracks are incredible. Reznor is happy to let anybody download Ghosts I for free at the album's website, so there's no reason not to give it a listen. For those of you who saw "The Social Network", you heard more of Trent's more toned-down work: he and Atticus Ross contributed the soundtrack for the film. Amazon.com sells the whole album in MP3 format for $5.99 or the CD for two bucks more; considering it won both a Golden Globe and an Oscar, this is a steal.
    I could go on and on about other bands: Vangelis, David Arkenstone, ASP, Blind Divine, Pilori, Pink Floyd frontman David Gilmour's project The Orb, Sopor Aeternus, Die Form...the list goes on and on. But maybe those are best left for a "Part II", or your own explorations into this style of music. I hope you like what you find.
  15. Areala

    Nintendo DS Delights

    By Areala,

    Over our vacation last week, I gave my girlfriend something that I wasn't sure she would like. Now, normally I'm pretty conservative when getting gifts for her. I know what she likes and doesn't care for, since we've been together for over 10 years now. But this year, I decided to go with something that was a bit of a gamble. See, my girlfriend isn't very much of a gamer at all. Sure, she'll sit and watch me vapourize Necromorphs in Dead Space or whack Daedra in Oblivion or explore ancient ruins in Tomb Raider. But give her the controller and she's a little bit lost. Too many buttons, complicated games, lots of reading...it's not really her thing.
    This isn't surprising. She didn't grow up with a game system in her house the way that I did. Yeah, every so often she would play Super Mario Bros. on a friend's NES, but that's far different from owning the system itself. Occasionally, she will play Alchemy or Minesweeper on the computer. We're talking casual gamer to the extreme.
    She's still a casual gamer, but I'm slowly bringing her out of her shell. And earlier this week, I helped pry that shell open a little bit further by giving her a Nintendo DS (pink, of course) and a few games. Mindful of the fact that she'll probably never play it for more than an hour or so at a time, I tried to stick with things that she could easily pick up and put down again and that would be very simple for her to learn to use. To that end, she received "Brain Age", "CrossworDS", "Dogz", "Catz", and "Imagine: Animal Doctor". You should have heard her squeal when she opened the box with all her goodies in it...you'd have thought I bought her the moon itself.
    So far, Brain Age and CrossworDS are the hits, and we have worked together on a few of the puzzles in CrossworDS but she has been able to get most of them herself (granted, we're still on Easy difficulty here...) Imagine my surprise when, coming back from eating lunch, she asked if we could stop at the local game store so she could see what kinds of other games they had. We walked in, and she was entranced by the large wall of DS games available, gleefully pointing out such titles as NintenDogs, Garfield's Nightmares, M&Ms Cart Racer, My Little Pony, and a collection of classic board games. I do believe I've created a monster. She picked out "Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?" for herself, and told me to pick a game for myself to play on it when she's not using it. Not one to turn down an offer like that, I snatched up "Dragon Quest IV," which is the game that I very nearly bought a DS to play since it's a remake of my favorite NES-era RPG of all time.
    So I believe I can very safely say to everyone else out there: if the significant other in your life isn't a gamer, buy him or her a Nintendo DS and a few casual games for it. You'll be doing her, and yourself, a huge favour.
    *huggles*
    Areala
  16. Areala
    I've spent most of my free time today watching the news. Story after story, report after report, picture after picture, of the aftermath of one of the worst tragedies to hit Japan since the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And while the tragedy may seem remote and half a world away to somebody who lives in Indiana, there's still a part of me that is shaken, awed, and ultimately humbled by what is happening right now.
    This blog is usually reserved for my thoughts on video games and gaming-related content, and believe me, I would love nothing more than to be writing some pithy, overlong, articulated review of whatever the latest piece of software to grab my fancy happens to be. But today, I just can't bring myself to do it. Today, in Japan, gaming just doesn't matter. The irony that Japan is one of the world's largest producers of gaming content and entertainment-related media isn't lost on me. If nothing else, the disaster should serve to remind all of us out there that for all the fun we take for granted in our daily lives, there can also come times when a smile is rarer than a four-leaf clover in the middle of a desert, when laughter can be used only as a psychological survival mechanism, and the ability to pick up a phone, send a quick text message, or check our e-mail can no longer be taken for granted.
    And unlike when everything goes to hell in a survival horror game, in the real world, you can't just reset your console or reload the last save on your memory card. The only way to go is forward. I am only one person, one blogger, one voice. Alone, I am nothing. But with the internet on my side, I can find strength in numbers through people I have never met before. As I'm writing this, I have refreshed my news page to discover that a third explosion has just been confirmed at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. A meltdown is becoming more and more likely by the hour. Sitting here in my house, it feels like I can do little more than observe. You might feel the same way. But if you are reading this, if you want to help Japan in some way, then there are some ways you can do so right now.
    First, and most obvious, is to make a donation to the Red Cross. I know this works if you reside in the US; international readers might find it works differently or not at all for them, and for that I apologize. If you go to the American Red Cross homepage, you will find yourself looking at a simple form to fill out to donate to the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami fund, as well as a number of other worthwhile charities, including assistance for those serving overseas in the military, the North Africa & Middle East Civil Unrest fund, or simply "Where the need is greatest." A $10 is the minimum donation amount, and the website will provide you with all the forms necessary to ensure that you can deduct your donation amount on next year's taxes. If you're on your cell phone and don't want to go to the internet to make a donation, or you don't feel safe sending credit card information over the web, you can text the word REDCROSS to 90999; a $10 charge will appear on your next bill, and there is no limit to the number of donations you can make (five texts equals $50, for example). If money is too tight for you right now, but you're at least 18 years of age and have no prior history that disqualifies you, consider donating blood or plasma. There's never enough of it to go around in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
    The Salvation Army has also dispatched a team to Sendai to assist. You can visit their website to make a donation online, call the organization by phone at 1-800-SAL-ARMY, or text the word JAPAN to 80888 to make a $10 donation via your next cell phone bill. They'll even take a donation by check if you prefer to avoid the online world completely: drop it in the mail with "Japan Earthquake Relief" in the memo field to The Salvation Army, P.O. Box 1959, Atlanta, GA 30301-0959.
    Doctors Without Borders is another nonprofit group that has volunteered their time and energy to the cause. Currently, they are not accepting donations earmarked specifically for Japan, but they will be happy to use whatever money you can spare to help their relief efforts all over the world. Visit their website here to find out how you can make a contribution.
    Finally, while there are many relief organizations set up to help people, it is important to remember that humans are not the only ones who suffer in the aftermath of a disaster. Our four-legged loved ones are just as important to remember in these times, and if you disagree with that notion, then consider the emotional trauma suffered by a child to learn that her beloved cat went un-rescued, or the sorrow that an elderly shut-in would feel knowing that his only friend in the world, his dog, died leaving him even more alone now than before the earthquake. A number of animal welfare and rescue organizations have all come together to save those who are so often overlooked in the chaos, including the Japan Cat Network, World Vets, the Search Dog Foundation, Animal Refuge Kansai, and even Paypal.com. Petcaptain.com has set up a blog page with links to all of these organizations and information on how to donate right over here.
    We play games to entertain ourselves, to escape from the real world for a while, to fantasize about doing things that we could never do ourselves. When we do, we are heroes to the digital denizens of the gaming worlds, and we can brag about our achievements and trophies with our friends. But there are times in our lives when we are all called to be greater heroes, when we can truly make a difference in the life of someone we have never met. Saving the world from the ravages of the T-Virus, stopping the alien invaders from taking our homeland, or beating back an incursion of evil warriors from a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away all have merit. Today though, the battlefields of Modern Warfare, the simple apartment life of The Sims 3, and the crowded streets of Liberty City must all take a backseat for us, as gamers, to prove that we have what it takes to be real heroes on and off our television sets.
    Arigato gozaimasu.
  17. Areala
    Let's Read - Nintendo Power #8



    Here we are, eight issues in to Nintendo Power's run, and the big news of the Sept./Oct. issue is Duck Tales. In fact, it's such big news that the big N is devoting a dozen pages to it in this issue in addition to all the attention it got in issue #7. The best news is that Duck Tales is one of the rare examples of a licensed property game that didn't suck eggs, so I can't begrudge Nintendo for featuring this game on the cover. This issue also features the second half of the Super Mario Bros. 2 strategy guide that began in #7. Again, despite the fact that it is touted as a free guide (which it is, bound right into the magazine at no additional charge), it still carries a $2.50 cover price. Did these ever sell on magazine racks by themselves?
    Opening the magazine is Mail Box and this one is a doozy. We get a story about how durable the NES is, since it still worked after a mother accidentally (I presume) drove over the thing with the family's battlesh-...er...Cadillac. The editor is amazed by the story, but scolds her for taking it apart and advises her to send it to Nintendo's authorized repair center the next time she needs repairs done. Another (luckier) writer sent in a picture of the special design on his birthday cake (Mario naturally) and is congratulated by the staff. I have to agree, it looks pretty darn good. We also get a letter complaining about the fact that the game counselors won't help him (her? The name is 'Kerry'...could go either way) pass Death Mountain in Zelda. The editor replies that they deliberately release only limited information about the ninth dungeon and wouldn't want to spoil the surprises for gamers. Easy for you to say, editors: you didn't just pay money calling a 1-900 number only to be told, "Sorry, can't help you." Finally, a 16-year old writes in to say he's not too old to enjoy Nintendo, and plans to join the Air Force to fly F-15s. No reply is forthcoming from Nintendo on that one...wonder if he made it?
    Oh God...Player's Forum this month would come back to haunt us all over a decade later thanks to Seanbaby. The Video Spotlight is none other than Mark Discordia, a 32-year old plumber from Connecticut who likes playing the NES. Fast forward a few years, and Seanbaby manages to track him down and create a minor internet sensation by posting their very lively and profanity-laden correspondence on his website. Oh Mark, if you only knew what would come of this letter...
    A trio of siblings also get profiled, one girl and two boys, for their power-playing exploits including a winning score of 987 to 152 in Double Dribble (that has to be a typo...even playing 20-minute periods and exploiting the automatic 3-point shot trick, one would be hard-pressed to score 300 points in a game, much less nine hundred-plus). Their goals are to beat every game (good luck with that one) and to get their letter published. One outta two ain't bad.
    Time now for the Duck Tales feature! Some of the information about the game is repeated from what we saw in last issue's four-page preview, but there are plenty of maps and other useful tidbits that more than make up for the repetition. It takes you through the first three stages of the game, leaving the Himalayas and the Moon for you to map out and discover on your own, which is fair enough.
    Following this, we get another eight pages' worth of Dragon Warrior content. Seriously, I think NP produced more Dragon Warrior-related pages in their magazine than any other game up to this point (discounting strategy guides for specific games, of course). Unfortunately, much of this information isn't very useful, especially when compared with the bonanza of goodies we saw in issue #7. But wait, there's more! That's right, Dragon Warrior is getting its own pair of strategy guides just like Super Mario Bros. 2, coming in issues 9 and 10! As much as I love the game, these 8 pages are wasted space as far as I'm concerned. Too bad.
    Next up, Howard Phillips and 3 other lucky gamers model their way through a four-page article on the new NES Satellite, which is Nintendo's four-player adapter. I loved the dickens out of this thing even though there were only a handful of NES games ever made that could use it, and of that handful there were only a couple that were worth playing. The fact that it turned your controllers into semi-wireless remotes was worth it all by itself. It also ate batteries like there was no tomorrow (if you weren't using rechargeable ones with this thing, you were throwing away money). But the feature gives us nice little previews of Ivan "Ironman" Stewart's Super Off-Road, NES Play Action Football, Kings of the Beach, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Magic Johnson's Fast-break, and U.S. Championship V'Ball.
    Hoops, Jaleco's poor, neglected street basketball title, manages to eke out two pages of content after all the excitement about four-player games. I'm not a big sports gamer, but even I want to see more about this game. Couldn't we have cut a couple pages from the Dragon Warrior deadweight earlier and dropped some more screenshots or other juicy tidbits? One of the reasons I enjoyed playing Hoops as opposed to, say, Double Dribble or other NES basketball games is that Hoops actually had a roster of female players you could pick from as well. It's always more fun to insult one's friends by reminding them they got dunked on by a girl.
    Counselors' Corner prints hints and tactics for five different games this issue: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets 2 questions ("How do I navigate this one floor?", and "How do I kill the giant Mouser and destroy the Technodrome?" respectively), while the other four get one each. The location of the Hammer in Zelda II, the secret to getting into Castlevania in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest, a couple of tricks for navigating through Ridley's Hideout in Metroid, and the steps necessary to beat Stage 10-3 in Adventures of Lolo are all revealed for those who wish to know. Four more counselors get profiled as well, including a woman named Kim Racey (girl power!) who likes cross-stitch and reading, and a guy named Rob Baker who likes...um...people watching...? Uh... You know what? I'm just going to move right along here...
    ...to eight pages of Uncle Fester's Quest. Oh my. Oh my, my, my... I tried so hard to enjoy this game, I really did, but in the end... No, I can't even talk about it. On the bright side, the poster in this issue is crammed with maps for this game and features a really nifty picture of Batman on the reverse. If you're going to subject yourself to Fester's Quest, it's probably better to have this than nothing at all, but even so, this was just one more dud in the sea of duds that comprise most of the licensed gaming titles ever made for the NES.
    So of course they're going to follow it up with five pages on another dud of a licensed title, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? Much of the information on this feature, including one of the two maps, is cribbed directly from a previous issue and what isn't duplicated frankly gives you about as much help as reading the back of the box would. I get the impression that slipping deadlines caused an awful lot of garbage to make it into this issue as the editors were running around asking themselves what they could run in place of all the stuff that couldn't get finished on time.
    Finally, something worth getting excited about! Eight pages on Nintendo's new handheld system, Game Boy! This is probably the feature people wound up reading the most out of the whole magazine, as it includes a ton of specifics about the unit itself, a look at the version of Tetris that ships with it (probably the most brilliant marketing decision Nintendo ever made), and a story about Nintendo of America senior VP Howard Lincoln's trip to the Soviet Union to meet with the man who invented the game, Alexey Pazhitnov, and secure the rights to distribute it in the US. Keep in mind, this was before both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, so the peaceful meeting of these two cultures on Russian soil was an incredible event at the time. It's a neat look at how a video game helped influence history, and well worth reading and enjoying today.
    Previews gives us a lot to look forward to in this issue. Willow (based on the film of the same name), River City Ransom (one of my favorite NES games ever made), and Batman (based on the Michael Keaton film) all get three pages of coverage each, while NES Play Action Football gets sacked and has to settle for only two.
    Eight different games get some of their innermost secrets revealed in Classified Information this month. Probably the single most impressive trick listed is the password generator for 1943, which lets you custom-start your plane on any stage with any weapon and upgrades your little heart desires. How the hell they managed to crack this is completely beyond me, but it's damned useful. Ninja Gaiden gets two mini-tips concerning the conservation of power points as well as an alternate route through a tricky area. Star Soldier's code involves a complex series of controller inputs that probably require the use of a friend (or your feet) to enter effectively, but the result is to turn your space ship into an unstoppable killing machine of death, so it's probably worth turning yourself into a pretzel. Mega Man II's tips involve effective use of Flash Man's Time Stopper power to keep enemies from showing up in the Wood Man stage as well as keeping the energy beams at bay in the Quick Man stage, using Wood Man's Leaf Shield power to rack up tons of energy and lives in the Air Man stage, and a quick and easy way to bypass all the acid dripping from the ceiling in the final stage; nifty to be sure, but by no means earth-shattering. A sound test for The Guardian Legend, a couple of passwords that let you play mirror images of your own team in Tecmo Bowl, a pseudo-glitch that lets you avoid a couple of dangerous areas and a quick-save option in Zelda II are also included. Finally, there's a long and convoluted series of codes and in-game actions for Legacy of the Wizard that does everything from unlocking a secret sound test and giving you a free set of armour to allowing a playable character to refill his or her own life meter automatically three times in a row without actually having a Life Potion in his or her inventory. Like the Star Soldier code above, you'll either need to be Zaphod Beeblebrox or have a friend help you enter it all, but the end results are totally worth it. Not a bad round-up, all told!
    Howard & Nester manages to blow its own story continuity as well as use one of the most lame cop-out endings of all time while still being amusing, as Nester takes on Dr. Wily's trivia challenge while pitted against Wily's robotic H.O.W.A.R.D. creation in a duel of the (nit)wits. I can see the poor writer struggling to come up with a convincing way to anagram Howard's name, and what they come up with isn't as awful as it could have been. Sure, the story's a bit of a rip-off of the riddle game sequence from The Hobbit, but I can't hold that against it. It's cute, and it made me smile, so what more could I ask for?
    Man, there are a lot of new titles coming out on the NES soon! Video Shorts gives us tidbits on Air Fortress, Sky Shark, Casino Kid, Castlequest, Jordan vs. Bird: One On One, Bad Street Brawler, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms are all coming soon to a Nintendo Entertainment System near you! Of course, some of these games are better than the others, and reading the previews will clue you in to this pretty fast. Especially Bad Street Brawler's write-up, which quotes directly from the instruction manual: "You are Duke Davis--former punk rocker and the world's coolest martial arts vigilante!" I was not aware that "coolest martial arts vigilante" was a world record entry category, but I guess we all stand corrected, don't we?
    Top 30 shows some interesting trends this issue. Zelda II and Mario 2 swap places again, with a 3,000+ point gulf between their respective positions and Link holding steady at #1. Ninja Gaiden clings tenaciously to the #3 position, but it's still 2,500 points away from overtaking Mario and company. Legend of Zelda and Blaster Master hold positions 4 and 5 respectively, while Castlevania II: Simon's Quest has surged up the charts to #6 (despite the fact that the text for it claims it is in 7th place) with Legacy of the Wizard going from it's 26th-place debut last issue up to #7 in this one, trailing Simon Belmont by a mere 7 points! I'm surprised LotW didn't demand a recount to check for pregnant and/or hanging chads on that one. Bionic Commando slips a spot down to 8, and Guardian Legend (another favorite of mine) makes an impressive opening show in 9th place as Samus Aran swats Double Dragon down into 23rd place in order to claim the #10 spot. But there's something brewing on the horizon that is poised to take the entire chart by storm...Super Mario Bros. 3 makes its inaugural appearance in the rather inauspicious 20th place. We'll be watching to see what happens in two months' time...
    Pak Watch is a serious mixed bag this month. While it does highlight the coming of such epic classics as Shadowgate and A Boy and His Blob, it also reminds us that we can look forward to seeing the likes of Gilligan's Island and Godzilla. We also see some examples of titles that were dropped or changed from Nintendo's line-up, including two by Matchbox Toys (I suspect that Urban Convoy eventually became Motor City Patrol, but I've no idea what happened to Web World), one by Bandai (no clue what happened to Wild Boys, though I suspect it was canned entirely or else got converted into a Dragon Ball Z title that was released only in Japan), and a couple of simple title changes (Time Lords to Time Lord, and Baseball Simulator 9000 to Baseball Simulator 1.000).
    When you absolutely have to feel like a worthless failure in the eyes of the Nintendo pantheon, you know right where to turn: NES Achievers. Nothing like seeing people scoring nearly a billion points on Bomberman, ten million points on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (five people tied for this achievement on this game...what the hell were the lot of you thinking?!), or one million points on Xenophobe (which thirteen different people submitted...WTF?!). Double dose of girl power from Dawn and Donna Jones (from Indiana, no less) in RoboWarrior, and two other girls posted high scores in Ultima: Exodus. Best name on the list this time? "Elvin McDivitt" (we can only assume his parents were really into Tolkien).
    NES Journal gives us some more info on the coming saga of Captain N! A TV station near you will soon be broadcasting episodes of this series about Kevin Keene, a 15-year old from California, who gets drawn into the world of video games literally when the sexy Princess Lana abducts him from the real world and deposits him (and his faithful dog Duke) in Nintendoland, where he is to serve as one of the Forces of Light to beat back the likes of Mother Brain, Dr. Wily, Eggplant Wizard, and King Hippo. Not bad for what started out as one NP editor's work of fan fiction a few issues back. The Celebrity Profile this issue is actor Brian Robbins, probably most famous for his work on the TV show "Head of the Class". The rest of the Journal is dedicated to talking about a new way of experiencing an Othello tournament, why cleaning kits are good for your system, and showcasing Abbey Fischer's experience at the Summer Consumer Electronics Show (CES was the precursor to E3); the 10-year old won the NP contest to experience 4 days at the CES, eat lunch with Howard Phillips and a couple of game counselors, and test-drive a ton of new NES carts. She had a blast, and I don't blame her one bit.
    As we reach the closing pages of the magazine, we've got an ad for back issues as well as the Zelda and Super Mario Bros. tip books. Next Issue teases us with coming features on Shadowgate, Silent Service, Robocop and Ironsword as well as a second reminder about the 36-page Dragon Warrior guide they'll be including in case you missed it the first time through. As always, Howard Phillips pens the closing paragraph which talks about how exciting CES was and how much great stuff we have to look forward to in the coming months from Nintendo.
    But wait!! It's not over yet! We still haven't done the Player's Poll! This month, the grand prize is a trip for four to the set of Robocop 2, where you get to observe the filming, meet Robocop (presumably Peter Weller, unless he's staying in-character for the event), and tour Houston, TX all on Data East's dime (makes sense...they're the ones behind the Robocop video game). Now, here's the thing...Robocop 2 is rated 'R' (for a pretty darn good number of reasons). Even if either my brother or myself had won this contest, there's no way on Earth my mom would have let us at the ages we were go watch Robocop 2 being filmed. This strikes me as a pretty bizarre prize for a magazine that is aimed at a more youthful demographic to offer, but hey, whatever floats their boat, you know? Second-place is a full stand-up Robocop arcade unit (SWEET!), and ten third-place winners will take home copies of the NES Robocop cart signed by the cyborg himself. No jerseys are offered this time around, but with prizes like those, who is going to quibble?
    That wraps it up for this, uh, issue of "Let's Read Nintendo Power". See you back here soon when we delve into issue #9, and thanks for reading. Until then, folks, until then.
  18. Areala
    Let's Read - Nintendo Power #7



    When I started doing this series, it was actually this particular issue that I was looking the most forward to digging back through because the cover features Mega Man II, which is one of my favorite NES games of all time. Aside from Issue 1, this is the earliest issue of NP that I have in my collection, and I believe I acquired it through a promotion that Chips-Ahoy cookies ran where if you sent in a few UPC symbols, you'd get a free issue of the magazine. Enough of that - there's Mega Fun to be had coming up here, so let's turn the page and get cracking!
    Before I forget, the pull-out tips guide for this issue was for the first half of Super Mario Bros. 2. Amusingly enough, it has a $2.50 cover price despite being stapled into the magazine...wonder what that was all about.
    We open the magazine with an ad for some freebies you can get if you sign a friend up for Nintendo Power, including a big poster of tips and tricks that you can't get anywhere else (does anybody have this, by the way? We'd love to see it archived here!)
    Mail Box kicks the fun off once more, and thankfully there aren't any recipes or bad poems to ruin our day this early. In fact, compared to last issue, this letter page positively exudes 'awesome'. We start with a letter from a reader who built his own personal arcade cabinet to house his NES collection. Even though it ran him $200 (and this is in 1989, remember), the result is a cabinet with room for his console, a TV set, four controllers, two joysticks, a pair of 3D glasses (probably for 3-D World Runner or Rad Racer), a magnetic strip across the top to hold maps, a section for all his Nintendo Powers, and even holders on the side for pop cans so you can drink and play at the same time. I want one! Another letter complains about the magazine arriving late, which prompts a response from NP that it actually is timed to arrive late in the month instead of early. Someone else wants to know a number of personal things about a few Nintendo characters, and is politely told to use her imagination because we can't possibly think of everything you know. There's also a picture from a previous contest winner and his friend at Disneyland, wearing their Nintendo shirts.
    Player's Forum is a scant single page this issue, with three letters from would-be Power Players and a spotlight on a 36-year old father from Atlanta who winds up being this issue's Power Player. Oh yeah, and an errata: we got the Power Player's name from last issue wrong. Oops...
    The real meat and potatoes come next. Mega Man II gets an incredible sixteen-page write-up, showing maps of six out of the eight opening stages, screenshots of the remaining two, and a few teasers of bosses to come in the Dr. Wily levels. There's also tons of artwork, information about when and how to use the different weapons and items you acquire in the game, and even a brief description of the password system. Seriously, if you weren't dying to play this game before the write-up, you sure as hell are by the time you reach the last page.
    Faxanadu is back again this issue, as promised, and now we get a bit more to digest on the impossible-to-pronounce quest to save the Elves. Easily the most important part of this feature are all the screenshot maps that show the way through the different mazes and caves you have to maneuver through in the early parts of the game. While they gets more and more complex as the game moves on, any player can use this to get a firm footing in the game and understand how the mechanics of various items work.
    After two awesome write-ups, we get a mere four pages of answers from Counselors' Corner. Part of that is because one question for Legacy of the Wizard ("How do I go about finding the crowns?") gets a full-page explanation without actually giving any answers. What it DOES provide though is step-by-step instructions for using one of the most important and yet confusing items in the game: Xemn's magic glove that allows him to move blocks around. Other tips, like being aware of walls that can be walked through or that disappear on contact, how to avoid being damaged by spiked pits, and resetting the positions of key items by leaving the screen also get some press. An explanation of how and why fights break out in Bases Loaded, an method of passing a couple of Ninja Gaiden's trickiest spots, a tutorial on how to acquire the Ultra Space Sensor in Dr. Chaos, and some weapon-related queries for Friday the 13th round out this episode. Four counselors get profiled this time around, including one whose best accomplishment was being the first person at Nintendo to beat Ninja Gaiden, a pretty significant claim.
    The editors apparently fell asleep at the wheel when it comes to this month's Top 30. It's hard to say whether they confused games or confused point totals (or both), but Super Mario Bros. 2 holds the #1 spot, but scored 12,900 points versus Zelda II's 2nd-place showing with 13,428 points. My guess is somebody just entered the numbers in backwards, but how a mistake this noticeable didn't get caught prior to press time is beyond me. Among other changes, we see Ninja Gaiden debut in the #3 slot (dropping Legend of Zelda down to #4), but despite its 6,800+ votes, it's still miles away from inching into #2. Ryu's ninja antics are the only new game under the sun for the top 10; the next-highest newbie is WWF Wrestlemania at #20. Track & Field II which hit #5 last issue has stopped to catch its breath down at #12, and Metal Gear has completely fallen off the chart, despite its enormous surge up to #7 just before. Scoring the largest upward mobility is Mega Man II which has flown from #30 all the way up to #9 in the span of two months. Can a ninja or an android put an end of the Mario & Zelda show? Tune in next time and find out! Best line that could be taken out of context? The description for the Dealers' Picks: "What can you say about the dealers? They seem to enjoy vegetables, sword play, and football. Hey, who doesn't?"
    Following the Top 30, we get our first real look at Dragon Warrior. Sure, there was an itty bitty pre-preview last issue, but this time we get a twelve-page extravaganza including some pretty awesome artwork and enough gameplay description that you could lose the instruction manual and be just fine with this as a back-up. Reading the article now provokes a host of "Really? Duh..." reactions, but you have to remember that in 1989, there was nothing like this on the NES at all in the US. This article was the first to really lay out a lot of the concepts and ideas behind a computer RPG, and it heavily promotes the game as being playable by anyone due to its lack of twitch-style gaming mechanics and emphasis on turn-based strategy. Even if you can't cook Contra or massacre Mega Man, Dragon Warrior lets you take your time in deciding what to do. I knew I had to get this game as soon as I read this article.
    Six pages worth of maps and playing techniques for Strider come next. While I can't say as I ever felt very much love for the NES game, which utterly failed to capture any of the intensity of the arcade game the way the Genesis version did, this would be invaluable for anyone intent on beating the game. It gives you stage maps for the first four levels, as well as plenty of tips for getting past some tricky points.
    Previews drops a dime on four up-and-coming carts: Robocop, DuckTales, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, and Ironsword. Three pages are devoted to Officer Murphy's quest to rid Old Detroit of crime, Scrooge McDuck gets four pages for his globe-trotting treasure hunt, four more pages are granted to Roger to help prove his innocence (including a very helpful map of Los Angeles if you're dead-set on playing this turkey through to the end), but poor Kuros only gets two pages detailing his run-in with Malkil in the realm of Sindarin. Eh, he's played by Fabio. He'll get over it, I'm sure.
    Howard & Nester seems misnamed this issue, as Nester alone gets off at the wrong bus stop and encounters help from the lovely April who introduces him to none other than the mean, green fighting machines themselves, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. A slight mistake involving collectible items and pizzas leaves Nester with pie in his eye and Howard as the true game master once again. Not as good as some of the previous ones.
    Everybody's favorite section of the magazine, Classified Information, unloads five pages of codes and hints on us next, including some gameplay tips (and an open hawking of the NES Advantage joystick) for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the reverse-Konami code to earn 30 ships in Gyruss, an invincibility trick to make Seicross easy along with a difficulty enhancer to make it harder, a shortcut to bypass an annoying boss fight in Rambo, a couple of invisible walls in Zelda II, some opportunities for bonus points in Cobra Triangle, bonus stage locations for Mappy-Land, a simple way to defeat the stage 3 boss in Lifeforce, a way to steal lives from your partner in Jackal (and Lifeforce), a tip to make your overland excursions easier in Legend of Zelda, and a way to gather buttloads of coins in Subspace in Super Mario Bros. 2. Whew!
    Video Shorts proves that there's no shortage of great stuff coming down the pipes in the future. Bad Dudes, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Guerrilla War, Defender of the Crown, King's Knight, To The Earth, Shooting Range, Sesame Street ABC, and Adventure of Dino-Riki are all coming soon to an NES near you! God help us all.
    NES Achievers continues to show that there are lots of people with entirely too much time on their hands in the gaming world (Alex Fox of Federal Way, Washington and Tony Stevens of Rexburg, Idaho, I'm calling you out: nearly 95 million points on Zanac and close to a billion points in Bomberman? WTF guys, seriously?!). Sometimes it's fun to look at this just to see what the highest possible score on a given game is. Rampage appears to have quite an oddball one at 2,061,900. Girl power representing in Kid Icarus, Mega Man, Super Mario Bros. (three times), Solomon's Key, and Stinger. You go, girls!
    Probably the biggest news of all out of Pak Watch this issue is right at the front: Game Boy is coming, baby, and it's gonna be HUGE! The first five games are already lined up, and Nintendo is showcasing its marketing genius by including Tetris as the pack-in cartridge. That fact alone puts Game Boy on millions of Christmas lists all over the United States. Super Mario Land as a launch title doesn't hurt things either. Double Dragon II is the big NES story, and NP is heavily touting the 2-player simultaneous play that was missing from the first game. Bigfoot (the monster truck, not the cryptozoological mystery), Terminator, Ghostbusters II, Super Off-Road and X-Men get brief nods too. A one-page briefing on seven different new NES controllers (six third-party and one Nintendo-brand) gives some highs and lows, and the Gossip Gremlins start dropping rumours about some upcoming titles that have only just been announced, including a sequel to Top Gun an NES conversion of Shadowgate, and NES Play Action Football that will have 4-player simultaneous play.
    The First Anniversary is a little retrospective that takes a look at NP's first six issues. The theme is "1-Year, 1-Up" and it shows you how to find extra lives in a dozen different titles. A couple of them are pretty obvious (Mega Man leaves them right out in the open, as does Bionic Commando), but most of them are hidden and have to be found by attacking, shooting, or jumping into otherwise empty areas of the screen. Not a bad idea, but it could have been a lot better. Three pages isn't quite enough for this sort of thing.
    NES Journal this issue includes a brief history lesson, as Nintendo celebrates 100 years of existence! It's doubtful anybody under the age of 18 read this at all, but it's a cute little Cliff's Notes version of how Nintendo has changed over the last century, focusing first on playing cards and then electronics. Right after that, though, is the announcement that took the cartoon world by storm: it's the Super Mario Bros. Super Show! It starts in September, and if you were anything like me, it was THE show to watch after you got home from school Monday through Friday, especially Friday, because that was the Legend of Zelda segment.
    If the last few celebs they've written up in Celebrity Profile have been mysteries to you (either because you were too young to remember them, or never saw any of the shows/films they were in), then this one should be a real treat because everybody ought to know who Michael Dorn is, or at least recognize his Star Trek alter-ego, Lt. Worf. I got a laugh out of his idea for a Nintendo game that Worf would play (a very serious cross between Legend of Zelda and Punch Out!!). Admittedly, it isn't likely that a Klingon warrior with access to a holodeck would bother with the likes of a centuries-old 8-bit gaming system, but who knows...?
    In a final round-up of newsworthy tidbits, Vic Tokai hosted a contest in Los Angeles and Seattle that pitted players against one another in games of Golgo-13 for the chance to win some nifty prizes. More importantly though, Nintendo has installed TDD (Telecommunications Devices for the Deaf) equipment, allowing customer service reps and game counselors alike to assist deaf and hearing-impaired gamers get the most out of their Nintendo experiences. Thumbs up to you, Karl Franz, for making the proposal and helping pave the way for more people to enjoy their games!
    Next Issue will see the second half of the Super Mario Bros. 2 tip book, even more info on Dragon Warrior (because twelve pages this issue and four pages the issue before just is not enough for a game this big), DuckTales, Uncle Fester's Quest, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and more more more! Howard Phillips' letter to everyone touts the fact that Nintendo Power has officially become the fastest-growing subscription-based magazine in the US after only a year. You know, there might be something to this whole "gaming magazine" business after all... He also reminds you to save your tip books (they're collector's items, you know) and drops hints at bigger and better posters yet to come, and if this was your last issue, it's time to re-up!
    Bet you thought they forgot about the Player's Poll contest, didn't you? So did I, but it's there in the back. Five grand prize winners get to go to Seattle and tour Nintendo's headquarters with none other than Howard Phillips himself, play games with the counselors, and even beta-test an unnamed game (I'm curious to see if, in a future issue, they provide any further information about who won and how the event went)! Ten lucky second prize winners get their very own Game Boy system for free, and as always, there are 50 lucky third-prize winners who will get the Nintendo Power jersey. I was never lucky enough to win one of these...*sigh*
    That's all for this issue, folks! Check back later when we'll reveal what happens in...Nintendo Power #8!
  19. Areala
    There's no way I can keep myself from writing about the most awesomely bad film I've seen in years. And given that there are actually people who read this blog on occasion, hopefully this means that one or two of you will take the time to find a copy and watch it too, because I swear that you won't believe a word I write until you too have witnessed it for yourself.
    Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...Roller Blade Warriors: Taken By Force!



    OK. Tell me, honestly: you walked into a video store and saw that on the shelf. How could you not want to take it home and watch it?? But just in case the cover art of the gorgeous Kathleen Kinmont (she's the leather-clad one holding the sword) and Elizabeth Kaitan (the girl in white who's about to burst out of her top) wasn't enough to entice you, you could always check the back to find out the plot.
    Wait, plot? What plot? This is an 80s film about good looking women roller-skating through the desert of an apocalyptic future and fighting off evil-doers. What the hell else do you need to know?
    Fine, fine. I guess it won't be much of a blog post if I don't do a bit more to entice you. So here's the deal: Kathleen Kinmont plays Karin Crosse, a warrior nun of the "Cosmic Order of the Roller Blade" who has been given a mission to escort the psychic seer, Gretchen Hope (Elizabeth Kaitan), across the wasteland and back to her convent so that Hope can use her gifts to usher in a new age of peace and wonderment. Or something. Unfortunately, Crosse is knocked unconscious by a group of slavers and Hope is kidnapped by this same group to be fed to their pet mutant that runs the ore processing equipment which has kept the town in business all these years by providing material to trade to other settlements in the wasteland, and it's up to Crosse to get her back. Yeah, "Fallout 3" it ain't. If it sounds too confusing, don't worry, the script goes in about ten different directions and shifts around a lot following different characters for its 90-minute duration. Women on roller skates kill people who don't have enough sense to run off the road into the sand and rocks that would offer them complete protection from the wheel-clad amazons...what more do you need?
    The film's narration is provided by Rory Calhoun, a man who was previously known for appearing in all kinds of TV westerns back in the 50s and 60s. He also has some on-screen time later in the movie, but we'll get to that in a minute. In fact, why don't we watch the intro right now!




    Notice the costumes the two women are wearing? Those are the "habits" of the Cosmic Order of the Roller Blade. They last for all of about 5 minutes of film time until both Crosse and Hope doff them for the costumes that show off more skin and, I guess, allow greater mobility (or at least keep the audience from confusing them with a pair of technicolour Klansmen).
    The best thing about this film is that it's impossible for me to tell if it was supposed to take itself seriously or not. Both Kinmont and Kaitan are dead serious about the roles they are playing: Kaitan knows she's supposed to save the wasteland, and Kinmont knows she's supposed to be protecting her. Their scenes together are convincing enough and their dialogues about friendship and happiness so cute that you find yourself believing them and wishing the two would just lez out already and get that part of their relationship out in the open (SPOILERS: Alas, they never do). Rory Calhoun's character "Old Turkel" is also playing it straight: he knows Kinmont is going to come and kick his ass because he's been dreaming it every night now for weeks, and his fight with her, while short, is well staged. Everybody else seems like they just showed up for the week it took to film it, collected their salaries, and went home. This makes it impossible for me to classify it as total schlock or simple camp comedy, and actually makes me like it even more than I already should. Is it serious? Funny? Or just serious fun? Who can say?
    The director was clearly still learning the ropes here. Scenes begin and end with little to no warning, sometimes even cutting out when a character is still talking, and the scene transition effects look like something lifted straight out of Windows Movie Maker (though this predates amateur video editing software by a good decade). Fight scenes, for what they're worth, are pretty poorly choreographed though it's not hard to imagine why: consider trying to keep your balance on a pair of roller skates when you're flailing a sword around and trying really hard not to actually hit the actor you're "fighting". There's a little blood and one fairly good looking stomach incision death effect though, and the finale of the film includes a pretty prolonged full-body burn stunt, so at least some of the film's budget got spent on special effects. The same can't be said of the mutant creature which, alas, looks like somebody tossed a giant shag carpet rug over some poor guy's frame and said, "Stagger in that direction." In the film the mutant is blind, which probably came about due to the actor's inability to see out of the costume as opposed to any reasons necessitated by the story. Additionally, towards the end of the movie, Crosse is shown a giant "well" of caustic waste-product produced by the mutant-run factory. We know it's caustic, because the guy who shows it to her tosses in his hat to make a point and prove it. Now, if this were any other horror/action movie, you know that that pit is exactly where the bad guy would get his ultimate comeuppance, because you just don't put awesome things like toxic acid pits into a movie without somebody doing an involuntary swan-dive into them. You just don't. Toxic acid pits were made for dumping people into them, and everybody knows this. Sadly, this pit only gets to devour a white stetson. Poor toxic acid pit. :(
    The script and dialogue are pretty mediocre, except when there are moments of sheer brilliance that had me almost rolling on the floor laughing at how awesome they are. Much of the dialogue seems to have been re-recorded in post-production and dubbed in later (if not ad-libbed entirely), so lip sync is almost always a problem. There's a full scene where one guy's lines don't match up with his mouth at all, and since the whole thing takes place as a close-up of him talking, it's kind of impossible to miss it. A few other scenes are impossible to understand because the actor(s) in question are mumbling lines. None of the other warrior nuns are doing anything besides phoning it in when it comes to delivery, and even the main bad guy waffles back and forth between seriously playing a villain and just doing some moustache twirling for the camera. That doesn't stop screenwriter Randall Frakes from including a couple of just completely badass lines though. When a second group of warrior nuns is introduced, the voice-over narrator informs us that "[...]they skate the path of rightousness, making it hard for evil-doers...to have a nice day." But the best line of the entire movie comes when a pair of the nuns stumble across the corpse of one of their sisters who had been killed by a roving band of slavers. "Vengeance is mine, so sayeth the Lord," the first one mutters. "But sometimes," replies the other, grasping the hilt of her sword, "She subcontracts."
    I haven't laughed so hard in weeks.
    As the movie closed, I almost found myself wishing that this movie had found the same sort of cult following enjoyed by "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure". My guess is that "Go forth and skate the path of righteousness!" just wasn't as catchy as "Be excellent unto each other" or "Party on, dudes!"
    Maybe that's for the best. But that doesn't mean I can't share it with the rest of you Retro-maniacs.
  20. Areala
    Occasionally when the muse strikes me, I will write. Sometimes I do short stories, sometimes I work on longer ones, but often I write poetry. These are two examples from my lunch break at work today. Feel free to contemplate their meaning to myself or to you, and discuss in the comments box.
    * * * * *
    In my heart
    I wrote the ending a million times.
    In my mind
    I wrote it one thousand.
    In my journal
    I wrote it four or five.
    In my reality
    It was written once
    With heavy editing, not my own.
    * * * * *
    A million ways to say hello
    And one to say goodbye
    A million ways to laugh and smile
    And only one to cry.
    *huggles*
    Areala
  21. Areala
    Let's Read - Nintendo Power #6



    Welcome back folks to another exciting episode of Let's Read magazines with Areala! Today, we're tackling the sixth issue of Nintendo Power. Why are we tackling the sixth issue of Nintendo Power, you ask? Because we've already taken care of issues 1-5 in previous blog entries, and it's always best to avoid redundancies.
    A quick look at the cover will tell you that this is, in fact, the May/June issue from 1989, and the feature everybody will be talking about is none other than those lovable misunderstood heroes, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But to get you even more excited, we have "Plus! Plus!" about Bayou Billy and Cobra Triangle. Lazy editors or Engrish run amok? I don't know. Let's open 'er up and find out.
    Mail Box once again kick-starts the issue, and you can tell it's going to be a doozy. We get a recipe for a non-alcoholic beverage (Mike Tyson's Punch!!), a poem that claims to be a rap (not even Vanilla Ice would touch it), and an excruciating pun that manages to involve both golf and Double Dragon. Thankfully, some normal letters get printed to balance out the madness, including one that is highly complimentary of the Game Counselors hotline staff.
    As promised on the cover, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles gets a full ten-page review to compliment the preview it received last issue. The feature is a bit disappointing though, because it duplicates the maps printed last issue while only adding the strategy and overland map for Area 3. Add to this that the artwork for the Turtles and their various enemies isn't very well drawn this time, and Nintendo's annoying misspelling of Bebop's name as "Bibbop" and reference to the Turtle Van as the "Party Wagon"...well, let's just say this feature is a little less than bowl-me-over-awesome.
    The votes are in, and we have our winners! The first annual Nester awards have been, uh, awarded, after some intense voting action last issue in the world of Nintendo Power Awards '88! Drum roll, please? Winning for Best Graphics & Sound is Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. The original Legend of Zelda takes home a pretty little statue for Best Challenge. Super Mario Bros. 2 scores a hat trick, winning Best Theme & Fun, Best Play Control, and Best Ending (which is an enormous crock no matter how you look at it). Link from the Zelda series walks off with the Best Character award, while Blades of Steel fights off all comers to claim the accolade for Best Player Vs. Player. Finally, Zelda II walks up the aisle to claim a win for the Best Overall. Cue light applause, and tune in next year to see how things turn out again. Drop the curtain.
    When we raise it back up again, it's to put The Adventures of Bayou Billy back in the spotlight. Billy got a short preview last time around, but apparently that wasn't enough and NP went with another six pages of maps and strategies. Very useful, and they'll get you through 2/3rds of the game. Somebody at Nintendo Power is big on the spoilers, though, as you'll find two screen shots from the ending of the game itself. Boo!
    Rare's "Gradius-in-a-boat" game Cobra Triangle gets four more pages of content in this issue, with a map of Stage 2, and some tips for what is yet to come. Hot on its heels is three pages of previews for Konami's own pseudo-sequel to Gradius, Life Force. Life Force also gets the honour of being the fold-out poster of the issue, showcasing full maps for all six stages and images of each of their respective bosses. The poster is backed with artwork depicting Dr. Wily, eight of his nefarious robot henchmen, and a plethora of other evil mechanical creations from Mega Man II (my personal favorite from the NES series).
    This segues nicely into the next section, which happens to be a four-page preview of Mega Man II itself. While the screenshot previews of the different stages are nice, the artwork and accompanying dialogue is completely amateurish and laughable. The best line? Wily, ranting at a video image of Mega Man: "Your defeat will be frosting on the cake of victory, my victory!" The sad thing is, as a child I ate this up with a fork and spoon. I've no excuse.
    Following Mega Man II, action RPG Faxanadu gets three pages of its very own. It spends one of them showing all the character portraits for the various NPCs in the game, one of them explaining the storyline, and one showcasing hand-drawn artwork for various weapons, armour, and spells you can find/buy.
    Uncle Fester's Quest is next, receiving two pages of coverage that can just barely be called a preview. When half your preview is devoted to the tabs for the first verse of the Addams' Family theme, you probably should have just scrapped it in favour of something else. Like Clash At Demonhead. Two decades later, of course, it'll be known as a band from the universe of Scott Pilgrim. In 1988 though, it was a horizontal and vertical-scrolling action/adventure game. The preview doesn't do it much justice, but I'm sure it'll turn up again later on in the magazine. Taking the cake for previews which don't really do anything though is the two-page spread on the forthcoming Dragon Warrior. Devoid of even a single screenshot, the entire article is nothing but hand-drawn artwork (which is pretty good, truth be told) and a summary of the events that lead up to the start of the game. I suppose (SPOILER ALERT!) that this could really be considered a preview for Dragon Warrior III (END SPOILERS!), but perhaps that's just being snarky.
    This month, Howard & Nester find themselves on the set of the forthcoming Ninja Gaiden film. Nester is being brought in to serve as a consultant to the director, who is trying to ensure the film is as accurate as the video game. Naturally, Nester's pride screws everything up and a certain bow-tie-clad stunt ninja manages to save the day. Chuckle-worthy...but only just.
    Counselor's Corner answers questions this month about equipment locations and monster slaying in both Zelda titles, divulges the location of the Saw in Milon's Secret Castle, admits to the presence of a Stage Select code in Ikari Warriors, and shows where some critical equipment is kept in a later stage of Cobra Command. Plus, we get a profile of Shannon Taylor, one of the hard-to-find female game counselors employed by Nintendo, as well as three of her male co-workers.
    Following up on the previous issue's feature, we then get another eight pages devoted to Ninja Gaiden. This picks up right where last issue's left off, and guides us through Acts 4 and 5, right up into the cinematic prologue of Act 6. Sadly, there aren't any more "true facts" about ninjas this time, but I guess it's hard to top that whole "setting mountains on fire" one from last issue.
    Fiction Writer's Showcase publishes the winning entry from the short story contest conducted a few issues back. "Friends" by Robbie H. Lawton of South Carolina got first place, and I have to admit, it's a rather charming little story about one young gamer's relationship with Link from The Legend of Zelda. It's short, and it's easy to read, making it better than 99% of the fanfic you'll find on the internet these days. The too-cute artwork doesn't hurt either.
    Several surprises abound in the Top 30 poll this month. The big surprise? The brand new Track & Field II debuts in the number 5 spot, Metal Gear slogs its way up the charts from number 23 to number 7, only to be outscored by one freaking point by Blaster Master which now sits at number 6. Naturally, Mario and Zelda still dominate the top spots: there's a 1,000-point gulf between Zelda II at #1 and Super Mario Bros. 2 at #2, and a 6,500-point chasm between Mario 2 and the original Zelda at #3.
    Professor Nester's Father's Day Lecture is, honestly, one of the most amusing articles ever printed in a Nintendo Power magazine. I read this years ago and it made me smile, reading it now does the exact same thing. Whoever wrote this is a frigging genius; the six "Facts About Dads" guidelines are priceless and even if they are thinly-veiled ads for Nintendo products, they're still true if only in a stereotypical fashion. The best line comes right at the beginning, as Nester is pointing out the statistics for fathers who want to receive ties as Father's Day presents. After showing that a mere .0023% of fathers actually want ties, he goes on to say, "And only one dad in the entire country wants a bow tie." Who else could he be talking about but Howard Phillips himself?
    Classified Information this month drops six pages of secrets, including the grenade-pause trick on Blaster Master, the ability to swap life points for bullets in Golgo 13, the powered-up shot in 1943, keeping the pitfall traps from expanding in Metal Gear, a bizarre pseudo-warping trick in Zelda II, a sound test and some wall-climbing antics in Ninja Gaiden, continue codes for Mickey Mousecapade and Seicross, gameplay tips for Ultima: Exodus, the trick to getting the happy ending in Bubble Bobble, a way to double the POW block in Super Mario Bros. 2, and a minor graphical exploit in Adventure Island.
    Video Shorts has their work cut out of them in this issue, showcasing previews for Super Dodge Ball, Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle, Baseball Stars, Fist of the North Star, Kung Fu Heroes, Street Cop, Athletic World, Amagon, Monster Party, Adventures of Lolo, and Hydlide. Even Nintendo Power knew Hydlide wouldn't amount to much apparently, considering this quote from the preview: "The story line is so bizarre, it's beyond even what we are used to." How true, NP. How true.
    This month's Player's Poll Contest has a grand prize of a mountain bike + helmet (modeled by none other than Howard Phillips), and fifteen second-place winners get an autographed WWF Wrestlemania gamepak signed by Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, or Randy Savage.
    Ever wanted to walk into a store that was all Nintendo all the time? Well, now you can. NES Journal starts off by mentioning that World of Nintendo boutiques will soon be popping up all over the country in different department stores. I remember these as a kid, especially the demo kiosks that were set up to let you try games before you bought them. We also get a preview of the first Batman movie with Michael Keaton and Jack Nicholson, and the upcoming appearance of the Golgo-13 comic book that Vic Tokai is shopping around the US market (LEED Media starts the trend by publishing some trade paperbacks, and Viz Comics snaps up the license a couple years later). The Celebrity Profile for this issue is Holly Robinson, who at the time was playing the female undercover police officer on 21 Jump Street.
    A few issues back, NP ran a contest where players wrote in to design the ultimate video game. This issue presents the winner of that contest, who turns out to be no less than Jeff Scott Campbell himself. This is the same J. Scott Campbell who would go on to fame for illustrating several major Marvel and DC titles as well as co-creating Gen 13 with Jim Lee. Reading what little of the proposal is provided by Nintendo here makes me wish that somebody would have said, "We have to make this," because dammit, I'd have played the HELL out of this RPG if it was even half as good as what he proposed.
    Video Spotlight kind of creeped me out this time around, because one of the profiled power players gets calls from several different people about game tips but one of them really stands out: "Among them is an anesthesiologist who tracked Brian down through the school district." Let me get this straight...a doctor who specializes in knocking people unconscious tracked your child down through his school district, and you're letting him talk to your son about video games? Can you say "weird"? Oh well, not my child, not my problem...
    Reading NES Achievers this time around just made me laugh my head off. Not because the scores are laughable (they aren't), but there are some great names associated with them. For instance, "Jack Wang" sent in a high score for Arkanoid, and "W.W. Snuffer" contributed one for Castlevania. Also "Douglas Adams" got one for R.C. Pro-Am, but I'm guessing that wasn't the author himself. Some girl power in this issue as well: female readers sent in high scores for 1943, Arkanoid, Kid Icarus, Mag Max, Solomon's Key, Stinger, and Super Mario Bros.
    Pak Watch is stuffed to the gills. Four basketball titles (Hoops, Jordan vs. Bird, All Pro Basketball and Magic Johnson's Fast Break), The Three Stooges, Godzilla, Silent Service, Stealth ATF, Back to the Future, Double Dare, Infiltrator, 720-degrees, Short Order/Eggsplode, Trick Shooting, Chip & Dale's Rescue Rangers, Duck Tales, and a look at upcoming hardware: The Power Glove, U-Force, and Game Boy. Nintendo wasn't wasting any time churning out titles, that's for sure.
    Next Issue, we'll have in-depth features about Mega Man II, Dragon Warrior, Strider and Faxanadu as well as a honkin' huge 36-page tip book for Super Mario Bros. 2. Howard Phillips' letter reminds us all that the only true limitation in our lives is our imagination, and that Nintendo Power's one-year anniversary is coming up already (next issue) which means it's time to renew your subscription.
  22. Areala
    WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!! WARNING!!


    This blog entry deals with a game that features adult subject matter, including adult language, mature sexual themes, and graphic depictions of violence. If you are easily offended by such things or have not reached the age of consent for your area of residence, please do not read any further or click on any links featured within.
    In keeping with this month's recurring horror theme, I'm cranking it up a bit (hopefully without violating any posting rules) and introducing every last one of you to one of the best Japanese visual novel-style games of all time, Divi-Dead.



    "Woah, woah, slow down there, Areala. Visual novel? WTF?"
    Yes, I'm coming to that. See, in Japan, there's a very popular sub-category of the adventure genre known as the Visual Novel. Visual Novels are different from your traditional adventure titles, such as Myst or Syberia, in that they emphasize the telling of a story and tend to ignore puzzles or at least relegate them to the background. If you've ever read a Choose Your Own Adventure story, or played one of the "Fighting Fantasy" gamebooks that were all the rage back in the 1980s, it's a lot easier to understand. Your choices in the game drive the story forward, and the decisions you make ultimately influence the outcome of the story, and can sometimes lead to premature "Game Over" situations.
    Most Japanese visual novels would be considered "dating simulations". These stories tend to cast you as a teenage protagonist who is interested in dating one (or more) girls at your job, your school, or within your circle of friends. The choices you make as you interact with the characters ultimately determine who (if anybody) you wind up being with at the end. They've been around for years, and are probably the most popular style of visual novel out there.
    Divi-Dead, however, is something completely different. Playing Divi-Dead is akin to placing yourself into the center of a Japanese horror film and seeing what happens based on your choices. It's a very text-heavy title that relies more on building up a creepy atmosphere of suspense as you are playing and creating a lingering sense of dread as you start to realize that something very bad is going on, but that you probably have no way of preventing it. The story is amazingly convoluted, and it will probably require several play-throughs before you figure out all the details about what has happened. It also has 3 endings based on your actions, and viewing all of the endings is necessary if you want to have a hope of figuring out what is going on. But...what is going on?



    The game starts off with a very creepy introductory movie, a dream in which the protagonist of the story (you) is violently assaulted by an unknown attacker while in your hospital bed. Waking up from the dream, you find yourself in the dorm room of your new school. You're Ranmaru Hibikiya, a transfer student now attending Asao Private Academy, a secluded boarding school built in the mountains which houses several hundred students. It just so happens that your uncle is the Dean of the school, and he's pulled some strings to get you accepted there. In exchange for this, he wants you to be his eyes and ears on campus; some bizarre things have been going on within the student body as of late, and any light you can shed on the weirdness would be helpful.
    What follows after your initial wake-up period is several days of tension that threatens to boil over into something nasty. The students at Asao are all isolated from the outside world, but incidents of violence are escalating, people are seeing things, and many of them are behaving way out of line. It's your job, as Ranmaru, to make sense of everything that you've been swept up into, because if you can't, then things at Asao are going to come to a very bad end.



    Divi-Dead doesn't shy away from the graphic and gratuitous. Sex and violence both feature very heavily into the plotline, and if you have a weak stomach, you won't want to continue very far into the story. The scenes are all rendered in a beautiful 16-bit style, and more than once you will probably find yourself asking how they got away with showing what they did. In addition, the game is fully voice-acted by an all-Japanese cast, which is an exceptional treat. The music is stylistic, with tunes that are laid-back and a few darker, more foreboding tracks that drip with suspense. Wandering aroud a darkened school at night isn't something that most of us get to do, but Divi-Dead requires it, and the artwork brims with realism and a suitable undertone of shadowy menace.



    "But Areala," I hear you say, "this is all well and good but how can I play Divi-Dead for myself?" I'm so glad you asked. See, a group of enterprising individuals with plenty of time on their hands have seen fit to convert Divi-Dead from a PC-only application to Flash, allowing you to play it, online, for free. You can check it out for yourself right here if you so desire, and I highly recommend that you do. Simply use the left mouse button to click through the text that appears in the bottom of the screen, and when decision points show up, use the mouse to pick your choice and the game will advance. If you need to save your game, left-click on the gargoyle face in the lower-left corner and pick Save. To resume, pick Load and pick your slot; the game will pick back up again. Left-clicking on the gargoyle in the lower-right corner of the screen will bring up the Gallery % that you've unlocked so far. Clicking on that pop-up will (after a few seconds) load the image gallery so you can browse and review the images you've already seen. To exit this screen, just click on the area where the game displays the text normally, and it will take you back to the game in progress.
    The famous curse reads, "May you live in interesting times." The trick with Divi-Dead isn't figuring out how to live in them, though. It's figuring out how to avoid dying in them. So, go check it out, and feel free to report back here in the comments thread about your experiences!
  23. Areala
    I had to have it.
    The minute I laid eyes on it in my local game store, I knew that it was coming home with me. If there's one thing I'm a gigantic sucker for, it's horror-themed games. And as soon as I took Theresia off the shelf and read the description, I knew there was no chance I was leaving the store with exactly the same amount of money as I walked in with. No chance in hell.



    Theresia is a point-and-click adventure game developed with more...mature...themes in mind. We've seen a number of these in the past, even going so far back as the NES. Shadowgate and Uninvited are both excellent entries in the adventure genre, with enough annoying puzzles and creepy ways of meeting your demise that they can keep gamers like me entertained for hours. In a way, Shadowgate especially served to bridge the gap between the text-only adventure games like Colossal Cave and Zork of the early days, and the graphical mouse-based ones like Myst and The 7th Guest that stepped in to take their place once processors got a bit faster and memory got less expensive.
    The problem with Shadowgate, Uninvited and many others is that to make a mistake in those games is to seal your fate. There's no life bar: if you don't raise your shield in time, you die. If you drink the poisoned water, you die. If you forget to put on your clothing after waking up in the bathroom stall and walk outside, you...well, that doesn't kill you, but it does get you arrested for indecent exposure, probably one of the most humiliating ways to end your adventure before it even has begun. So the fact that Theresia features a life meter might make you think that it's easier, that it gives you an advantage over those older incarnations, and makes things a bit more fair. Indeed, you might be thinking to yourself, the game also provides you with elixers to heal yourself should you take too much damage, allows you to save anywhere (with three slots to boot), features a fully-working automap, and permits you to reload an old game at any time, so therefore it must be simpler. You couldn't be more wrong.



    As previously mentioned, Theresia is an adult-themed point-and-click adventure dealing with some very, very dark themes. In fact, when you first begin the game, you don't even know anything about yourself. The manual is deliberately vague, only barely setting the scene and omitting any backstory that you might have been able to use to meta-game with in your new world. When you wake up, you can't remember anything about yourself, nor how you got into this horrible...school?...asylum?...(prison?) to begin with. All you know is learned by looking at yourself: you're a young caucasian girl. And boy do you have a headache...
    Theresia combines puzzle solving and corridor walking with the storyline of a world gone terribly wrong, and characters who are all fundamentally flawed, some in ways that are darker than midnight in Central Park. As you comb and pick your way through your location, you start to uncover some terribly uncomfortable truths. First of all, you appear to be completely alone. There's no one else here, and the place contains signs of having been previously inhabited but abandoned a long time ago. The building is in complete disrepair, with hallways that have collapsed, shelves that have been knocked over, doors that have been broken off their hinges, water that has pooled in dark puddles, thick layers of dust that cover every surface, and an incredibly stale quality to the air you are breathing. Oh yeah...and then, there are the remains of some very unlucky individuals who have come before you. Rotting husks of men, crucified to the walls. Splatters of old, blackened blood on the floors. Dead bodies tossed into rooms with seemingly casual indifference. Instruments of torture, clearly never intended to be "just decorations." Whatever happened here, it was bad...very, very bad. And as if all the passive gruesome nasties aren't bad enough, someone (or more likely, several someones) have seen fit to booby-trap the whole place. Electric shocks, glinting steel knives, sharp razor blades, shards of broken glass and other hazards are just waiting to damage the unwary interloper who doesn't carefully examine her surroundings before making her moves. The importance of being sharp-eyed and looking at everything cannot be over-stated: often, descriptions of items will contain subtle hints about the relative safety of interacting with them. Thankfully, you'll find small vials of elixers that will ease your injuries as you explore, as well as 2x4s that can be used to poke and prod areas that may contain traps to give you a heads-up. You also carry around a very special amulet, one that allows you to draw blood from yourself in order to provide insight on what needs to be done to pass your current obstacle. Unlike most humans, it seems that your own blood doesn't bother you. In fact, you rather like it, and being slashed with a dagger or scraping an arm across a broken window doesn't put you off from further exploration. You don't know why...you just kinda like being hurt. Maybe you'll figure out why as you explore.
    The worst part is, as cruel as your amnesia sounds, it's nowhere near as bad as the memories that slowly start to return as you investigate your surroundings. Bits of paper, hidden diary entries, and small items stashed in holes in the floor or between the pages of books all serve to jog your consciousness, awakening memories of your mother. And how much you love her.



    Really love her. Yes, in that way.
    Then there are the dreams...where bad things keep happening to seemingly good people...at your hands.
    Theresia makes "Saw" look like "The Care Bears Care-A-Lot Special" in terms of utter depravity. It's rated M for a reason. Do not play it if you aren't prepared to travel into some very, very dark places.
    The game itself is actually two stories in one. Finishing the first storyline allows you to play a second story, focused on another character who is in similar circumstances and must also escape from a run-down prison(?) where she is being held. Only by completing both stories and overcoming the puzzles they contain will you finally be able to put all the pieces together and learn the full truth about the disturbing events that brought you to these places.
    The DS handles the tasks of playing and storytelling with great finesse. The dual-screen system is set up to allow you to see the map as you navigate the hallways and corridors of the place where you've been trapped. Item descriptions and images flash on the upper screen, while the lower one tells you what happens when you use them. Finding something that jogs your memory results in the playback of an FMV sequence that often utilizes both screens. The game doesn't have a whole lot of music, but what little it contains is used to the fullest effect, heightening the tension when shocking discoveries are made. And for some great, eerie voicework, listen to your voice as you chant out a small prayer while squeezing your amulet to draw blood and clear your thoughts. Sound effects are relatively mundane, but perfect for getting the job done. Metal shrieks, water drips, wood cracks, doors creak, and your footsteps through the halls change their sounds depending on whether you are walking on stone, wood, metal or another surface. Play with the lights off and the headphones on and you're in for quite a disturbing bit of game time.



    Clearly, Theresia is not for everyone. The game carries an M (17+) rating for a reason, as insanity, torture, genocide, and other disturbing themes all compete with one another to make you glad you don't inhabit the world for real. It's not a constant, "breathing-down-your-neck"-style of horror, like Resident Evil. Rather, it's the slow, creeping, "am-I-going-insane?" effect that Konami used in Silent Hill that makes you breathe a little faster and break out in a cold sweat. I jumped several times just from setting off a trap, and the memories found in the journals and witnessed via the FMV sequences take you to places that you often do not want to see. At the same time, the story is well-designed and works to draw you in and keep you immersed in a terrible world that you just don't feel right leaving until you learn the truth. If you're looking for a game that will transport you to Happy Pony Land with lots of nice pictures of rainbows and teddy bears, you'll want to pass on this one.
    On the other hand, if you enjoyed the likes of the Clock Tower series on the Super NES and PS1, Rule of Rose on the PS2, Phantasmagoria and Scratches on the PC, or just enjoy games where your puzzle-solving skills as opposed to your reflexes and arsenal of weaponry are what will keep you alive, Theresia will be right up your alley. Just don't send me the bill for your counseling sessions afterwards. After all, maybe you really do love your mother. Just like that...
  24. Areala
    I received the following message from an individual who identified himself as Leonard Huntings (though this is possibly a pseudonym). It was apparently reconstructed from an analog source and remastered for internet distribution. It's a little creepy...
    Appended to this message was the video itself, which I am presenting here:




    It's currently impossible to know where this video orginated, as I don't know anybody named Leonard Huntings. An educated guess would be that it somehow ties in with FaceTheHorror.com, and is related to Senscape Interactive's Unnamable Project, but I can't be sure without more evidence and despite repeated efforts to contact the developers, I've gotten no response from them at all on the matter, so maybe they think I'm crazy myself. Hope I'm not burning bridges with this.
    Hanwell Mental Institute does actually exist. Well, a place called "Hanwell Asylum" truly does exist (you can read the wikipedia entry about it and decide whether or not it's a place you'd like to visit) in England. If this video is related to the real place, then the secrets Leonard references could date back to the late 1800s and we could all be getting in over our heads. About all I can say is that as soon as I hear more, I'll post it here.
    UPDATE
    I've received another message from "Leonard" with a second video embedded. I'm reproducing it here:
    The video is here:




    Update 2!
    Two more videos from Leonard have been released. The third came without an accompanying e-mail, but
    The fourth one did show up in my mailbox, accompanied by the following text:
    The embedded video followed:




    What is going on at Hanwell? The end of the video gives an Internet address that will be familiar to readers of this blog. Face The Horror and perhaps we'll all live to see another day. I'll be leaving for Hanwell soon, to see if I can get any more answers. If you don't hear from me by July 9th, you should probably assume the worst. But I have to know. I have to know.
    Even if it kills me.
  25. Areala
    (Note to Penn & Teller: no infringement on your popular TV show is intended by this blog's title).
    You may not know who Andrew Oliver is, or why he would make such a comment, or why I am ranting about him, and that's OK. Andrew, along with his brother Philip, is the co-founder of Blitz Games Studios, a small development house from the UK which specializes in licensed titles, especially in the realm of software aimed at younger gamers. Remember all those Xbox games Burger King sold in their promtion back in 2006? BGS was responsible for them. Other licenses they've produced games for include American Idol, SpongeBob Squarepants, iCarly, Barbie, and The Fairly OddParents. They even gave us the chance to fight WOPR personally in their video game pseudosequel to the film WarGames back in 1998. Yes, it's a list of titles that would make a grown gamer absolutely cry. But in this case, it's Oliver himself who sheds the tears. Because according to him, it isn't pirates who are causing developers to lose money, it's the dreaded used game market (dun dun!).
    Oliver's argument goes something like this: if four people were to purchase a brand new video game, that means that we would get paid four times. However, if one person buys a brand new video game, then sells it to one of his friends, who then sells it to one of his friends, who then sells it to one of his friends, four people have played it, but only one copy has been paid for. Therefore, because of this, our profit on the game has been cut to 1/4th of what we'd originally have made, and we should be entitled to force the three people who subsequently bought it after the original purchaser to pay us something for the use of our game. It's an elegant argument, to be certain, and it seems fair. In fact, there's really only one problem with it, which is that it is complete and total bullshit.
    A small, niggling issue, I know, but one which has to be met with utterly deadly and destructive force each and every time it rears its ugly little brown-stained head. Because unless it is dealt with swiftly and severely, it will eventually manage to choke all of us to death and get us to believe that we, as consumers, don't have the rights we actually have when it comes to property. So you'll forgive me if I seem like I'm taking a rocket launcher to the proverbial barrel of fish, but there's no other way to combat this nonsense other than to tear it limb from limb.
    Here's how property works: when you own a particular physical object, you are allowed to do with it as you like, up to and even including destroying it, and no one, not even the government, has the right to say that you can't unless you are using it in a manner that could cause physical harm to a non-consenting individual, or that non-consenting individual's property. Thus, one can purchase a brand new car with the intention of driving it for the next few years, or one can purchase a car with the intention of encasing it in a solid block of cement and burying it in one's own back yard. You can even purchase a car with the intention of tearing it apart and using its individual components in a dozen other cars that you own, or smashing it to pieces with a sledgehammer and recording the video for YouTube. You can also purchase the car with the intention of selling it or giving it away (transferring ownership) to another individual as long as you understand that you are transferring complete and total ownership of the product to another person. You cannot sell your car to your neighbor, then steal it back from him the next day and use the receipt of your original purchase to claim that the car still belongs to you. You also cannot buy a car, take it apart, make molds of all the parts, duplicate them all ten times, manufacture 10 cars just like it, and sell those ten cars to your neighbors or even give them to your favorite relatives. This may seem like an extreme example of what nobody on the planet would do, so let's look at it another way.
    When you purchase a book, you are not, in essence, purchasing the story itself. You are instead purchasing a processed tree corpse which has been bound together in a format that allows you to read words on a page that were originally written by someone else. You are allowed to do almost whatever you want with your book, including taking it apart and rearranging the pages in a different order if you want, or even throwing it in the fireplace to burn it. You can lend it to a friend, sell it to a stranger, or donate it to a library as long as it's still in its original condition. But when you bought the book, you didn't buy the story itself: that still belongs to the author. You cannot re-type your book into a word processor, print off the resulting story, and sell it to other people. You can't even re-make the book in such a way that it corrects simple grammar or spelling errors and give that away, because you only own the book, not the words inside. However, if at any time you want to get rid of your book, you may sell it to someone else, who may then also read it and sell it to someone else. This is the way of things.
    It's the same with software. You aren't buying the program code itself; that belongs to the developers. What you are buying is essentially a medium (DVD, Blu-ray, SD card, whatever) that contains the program and a license to use it yourself. You aren't buying the rights to copy the program and give it away to people. But you do retain the right to transfer your ownership of that physical medium to someone else. Once the publisher has received the money for it, it is yours to do with as you please, up to and including frying it in the microwave or letting your dog use it as a very expensive flying disc. You can also give it to your buddy when you're done with it, or sell it to a middleman who will take on the risk of attempting to find a future buyer for the product in exchange for a greater percentage of your money if they succeed in selling it. This is the role that a used game store, such as GameStop or Disc Replay serves. Much like a used car lot, which does not need to pay Honda royalties every time they take in or sell someone else's Honda, a used game store makes its money by gambling that they can make more money selling a product than they give to you to purchase it. The point is that once I have sold my copy of Bouncing Kitty Play-Fun 2 for the Nintendo DS (which someone should make, by the way), then I no longer have the ability to use it. If someone else buys it, they are not harming the developers in any way: one person is still using one copy of the product which has been paid for, ownership has been transferred, and order has been preserved. The developer has still made the money on the game that was purchased new, and that is that. The profit on that copy of the game remains 100%. Piracy, on the other hand, is never giving you the money for that sold copy in the first place and depriving you of further profits by transferring that product around to deprive you of even more potential sales.
    Oliver, however, feels that this isn't the way things should work. Instead of this, Oliver would like to see penalties assigned to gamers who utilize their full and legal rights to transfer property from one person to another via third-parties like GameStop. And this...is Bullshit. In Oliver's rose-coloured world, not only every time a person bought a game, but every time a person transferred the rights to the media the game ships on, the developer would get a piece of the action. Thus, one copy of the game could potentially be sold 4 different times, generating four times the profit for that single copy. So, because Blitz Games isn't getting any more money after you already spent your initial $50 on Bratz Girls Really Rock for the Wii and decided to trade it back in because it was bollocks (the Bratz don't even take their clothes off, for goodness sakes!), they feel they should profit from the poor judgement of the next victim, when in fact we all know that they should be flogged for producing the thing in the first place, and you should probably take a few lashes yourself for encouraging them by buying it.
    It's time for game developers and publishers to realize that they do not get special treatment: every other form of media, from books to music to films, has the exact same property laws defending its use and transferral as video games. The job for game developers is to understand two things: first of all, that your ideal goal is to make games that are so amazingly attractive to consumers that they will want to buy it new instead of holding out for a used copy, and second of all that it is impossible to make money from everyone who uses your product. There are people out there who read dozens of books a year and never once pay the publisher for them, but these people are not thieves: they are patrons of the local library. There are people who drive pick-up trucks all their life but who have never once given a dollar to Ford, Chevy, or Dodge. They aren't raiding other peoples' garages at night, they are patrons of their local used truck dealership which allows them to own a vehicle that someone else bought from the manufacturer at a price that they are more able to afford. There are people who buy dozens of CDs every month but never give a cent to record labels. They aren't buying on the black market, they are buying them from people on Ebay or Amazon Marketplace, and spending what they feel the music is worth to them.
    If publishers want to get in on a piece of the second-hand (or third-hand, or fourth-hand) video game market, they need to adapt and change the way that they do business, not start bitching, moaning, and assigning perjorative fines to people who purchase their products used. If you want to make money from the sale of your own products on the second-hand market, then offer incentives for customers to purchase them from you instead of someone else. If you are Electronic Arts, then maybe it's time to get into the buyback business yourself. Find out what GameStop is offering in trade for copies of your newest sports title, and offer to beat that if the gamer who is done with Madden 2010 sells it back to you instead (hint: offer free shipping; that seals the deal every time). Offer a 15% discount on a different new title, or trade credit that can be used in your online store to purchase other second-hand games, or give anybody who sends you any 3 previously-played titles in complete, playable condition (offer the list on your website) a free second-hand game of their choice. List the deals you have on-line so that people who want to buy competitively have a reason to avoid GameStop and instead use the EA shop, and advertise the hell out of this anywhere you think the 18-30 year olds who make up the bulk of your market will be paying attention. Take proactive action instead of reactive action, and reward gamers for being your customer instead of trying to penalize them for shopping elsewhere.
    Oh, wait...that's too much of a hassle for you? It would cost too much money to run, market, advertise and deliver that service? Hmmm...that's what I thought. Well, I guess you'll just have to settle for the way things are now. Because my money is mine, it is not yours until I decide it is, and I'm quite capable of deciding for myself how much of it is worth going to you for the experience that you are offering me. Games that are worthy of my $60, like Dead Space, Dragon Age: Origins, Heavy Rain, and Borderlands, will make their way onto my system via a method that puts money in your pocket. Games that aren't will wait until I see a copy on the shelf that is worth what I'm willing to pay, either used or new, and will then find a space in my collection. Occasionally I will delay, and a title that might have been worth my $60 will not get bought until someone is selling it for $35 (to Pandemic Studios, makers of The Saboteur, I'm so very, very sorry I waited...). This is balanced out, however, for the times that I purchase a title that I felt was worth my $60 but wound up being much, much less deserving (to Bethesda Softworks, makers of WET, GRRRRRR!).
    We're your customers, not criminals. And we expect to be treated with respect, just as we expect you to respect the laws and our rights. Instead, you want to shovel a bunch of garbage at us. That's fine, it's your right. Just don't be surprised when you claim we're worse than software pirates and we suddenly aren't that interested in buying your game any longer. You can blame GameStop all you want, but the simple fact is that our desire to spend our money begins and ends with you. Either take the responsibility to change your actions, or enjoy your downward slide into mediocrity and eventual oblivion. But either way, stop with all the bullshit.
×
×
  • Create New...
Affiliate Disclaimer: Retromags may earn a commission on purchases made through our affiliate links on Retromags.com and social media channels. As an Amazon & Ebay Associate, Retromags earns from qualifying purchases. Thank you for your continued support!