I've got a Zune!

Catie gave me my new brown Zune today. I spent most of yesterday loading it with songs, and I've only used up about 3 gigs out of 30.

Now I need a radio transmitter for my car.

Virtual Console - 11/5/07

Today's virtual console offering should come as no surprise with Galaxy shipping next week.

Oh, and two other games came out as well.

Commenting

Before, I had my comment system set up to where only registered users could comment. That's silly. So now everyone can!

Nostalgiafest - N64

If you had any interest in video games in the mid-90s, then you will almost certainly remember the holiday season of 1996. For me, the Nintendo 64 was everything I could have possibly wanted after my five year love affair with the SNES. I missed out on the launch of the system, as $200 was an enormous amount of money for an eleven year old. Needless to say, I was disappointed but I managed to convince myself that Super Mario RPG was all I needed that year.

By the Summer of '97, there was no mascot RPG that could have convinced me to hang on to my SNES. So I decided to earn my own money by mowing grass over the summer. Between June and July, I had sweat enough to earn around $300 and on my families annual trip to Jacksonville to buy school clothes, I walked into Sears and came out with a console and the newly released Star Fox 64.
Between Star Fox, Mario Kart, and Super Mario 64 I had enough entertainment to last throughout the entire fall. And those were just the good games. I would play through any piece of plastic trash I could get my hands on, including trash like Chameleon Twist by myself and WCW vs. NWO with a few friends.

In retrospect, the console never really had any amazing titles. The hardware was hard to to make games for and Nintendo lost a lot of 3rd party developers. As a matter of fact, I would go as far to say that the console only had a handful of classic, timeless games. Only Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Majora's Mask, and maybe Paper Mario are really worth playing today. However, even if the console was nothing more than an Ocarina of Time player, it would have still been worth the $200. But that's an entirely different topic altogether.

Insane Toys R Us Deal.

Sounds too good to be true. Buy Super Mario Galaxy and get a free $25 gift card.

First Mario Galaxy Reviews

The 1up review is in with a 9.5. No matter how good the review is, the rabid fanboys of the internet will still have Parish's head.

9.5 is not a bad score.

Super Mario 64 DS.

Remember this thing?

I got the urge to play this today as a part of my recent Mario binge. It's been three years since I've last played it, and I get the feeling that maybe I didn't appreciate it for what is was back in 2004.

What it is is the most unique port in my memory. When putting this together, Nintendo put a lot of effort into making this not JUST a port. On top of one of the most satisfying single-player games of all time, Nintendo threw in three more playable characters (each altering how you play the game), some new areas to explore, multiplayer, and 30 new stars. The box should have read: Now with 25% more stars!
What's more, a lot of existing content has even been altered. Mario no longer looks like a jumble of polygons, some frustrating areas have been trimmed up, and some of the bosses are a little different this time around. You'll even find some new power-ups that turn the game into a fresh experience.

In short, the game is exactly what an updated port should be. It was an amazing update to an already perfect game. I like to think of it has Super Mario 64.5, as in it's not meant to replace the original but it adds a bit more content for those of us who still drool when they hear the Dire Dire Docks music.

Why Super Mario 64 DS Sucks

Still, Super Mario 64 DS makes a horrible DS game. As wonderful as the game looks, the DS just isn't meant for a traditional 3D game. The player will spend the entire game struggling with frustrating controls. Precision 3D platforming with a d-pad just isn't possible. The characters have two different walking speeds - haul ass and crawl. On top of the d-pad problems, the game also requires you to press multiple buttons to do fairly simple tasks. Want to do a long jump? Then you'll have to hold down the b-button while hitting both the r-button and the y-button. Oh, and you also have to make sure you're lined up perfectly using the d-pad. The tutorial messages should just say: "Good luck, fucker!"

Hope for the future

So what should have been the ultimate launch title for Nintendo's new portable system was soiled. This beauty of a game just doesn't work on the DS, period. So the reason I've taken the time to post this long, contrived rant is because I've come up with an absolutely genius idea.

Super Mario 64 DS should be available as a piece of Wii Ware software. Think about it. Not only would get all of the new content from the DS version, but you'd have it on a screen you don't have to hunch over to play and you could play it with a controller blessed with an analog stick. I'd gladly pay $20 for that.

Please?

Mario Galaxy unlockable spoilers.

As if the hype for Mario Galaxy wasn't out of control enough, this scan leaked out earlier this week.

Don't click if you're avoiding spoilers!

Mass Effect Screenshots

Lighting up NeoGAF right now is a controversy about a few new Mass Effect screenshots. Here's one that was publicly released a while back.
Gorgeous, right? This next one is from a preview build that is supposedly 99.9% complete.
Garbage, right? Yeah, you can't argue the poor quality of the shot. What CAN be said is that this shot is obviously from a scene where the textures haven't fully loaded. I would be willing to bet that this shot was purposefully taken to look bad, in the same way that the first one was specifically selected to look as good as possible.

Don't worry about how Mass Effect looks.

The Appeal of New Age Retro Hippies and turn-based combat.

Earthbound is good! I swear!

Anyone who takes the time to talk to me about games has probably heard at least a little of my affection for Earthbound. More often than not, the person I'm speaking to has never even heard of the game. So then I have to go on my stammering spiel about why Earthbound is good and why it's even worth the time to listen to me blabber on and on. It never turns out well.

"Well, it's got grumpy old men for enemies and you get to use a baseball bat as a weapon!"

"It trashes video game cliches in a way that no other game ever has!"

"The music! The music!"

Those might be catchy sentences to some, but it never really conveys why Earthbound is one of the greatest achievements in video game history. How can you explain to someone the complexity of something like Earthbound in just a few sentences and a few awkward hand motions?

I don't think you can.

What I think I can do is create a few well thought out points in a written form. Maybe that will do it.

Welcome to the real world.

There has yet to be a game as original or genre-shaking as Earthbound was in 1995. Good-bye convoluted plots of empires and destroyed home towns. I won't miss another game filled with swords and maces to swing, goblins and dragons to slay. In Earthbound, you can expect baseball bats and frying pans for weapons and rambling shrooms for enemies. If that's still a little on the mundane side, then did you know that by the end of the game you'll fight your lazy, spoiled brat of a next door neighbor who has managed to join up with an alien-super power? I bet that's not in Final Fantasy XIII.
As great as replacing the stereotypical sword with the a yo-yo is, it doesn't make a good game. What adds to Earthbound's quality is what the game does with the modern theme. Don't you think it's dumb that every rabid rodent you kill drops some cash? Earthbound thinks so too. So instead of using enemies as cash pinatas, Ness's dad drops you a little cash in your bank account for everything you kill. Wanna get your cash out? Then stop by the ATM and make a withdrawl. Early in the game you come across a town that is on the receiving end of your typical RPG terror attack. Usually you'd find some goblins (or any any other rotten fantasy creature) at the root of the attack. In earthbound, it's a street gang. Earthbound strings together a series of conflicts that the player can relate to.

Now if that was all Earthbound was about, it would get boring pretty quickly. Thankfully this doesn't happen and what Earthbound mixes in to it's real world them is what gives the game it's charm.

A Scalding Coffee Cup Appears!

Even with it's modern setting, Earthbound somehow manages to also be one of the most wackyand unpredictable games I've ever played. Thrown in with all of the bike-riding and pizza-ordering is a plot that only a madman could have come up with. Ness is awoken one night by a meteor crash near his home. Despite his mother's protests, he leads a pajama clad investigation all the way to the crash site. There he makes contact with a bee from an alien planet who informs him that he is the chosen boy who must stop the pending alien invasion. Throughout Ness's quest, he encounters a mind-controlling statue, a cult obsessed with the color blue, teleporting monkeys, dinosaurs, zombies, and ancient heiroglyphics bent on giving Ness a bad day. All of this he has to do while battling the occasional case of homesickness.

Amazingly, Earthbound manages to tie this all together into an experience that makes sense. Can you imagine playing a game for an hour and in that span of time fighting a giant pile of puke, a zombie, a crocodile, and a giant mole? That kind of random would typically leave a bad taste in your mouth. In earthbound it fits together so well that it's natural.

Eating Dots, Running From Ghosts.

If Earthbound retained all of its charm but managed to string it together with some shitty RPG action, it would still manage to be good. But like I said, Earthbound isn't just a good game.

Sure, by today's standards Earthbound falls short in terms of it's combat. It's all a very linear experience. My level 50 Ness is going to be exactly the same as your level 50 Ness. Every play through is going to be exatly like the next one, but that's ok. Earthbound succeeds by offering enough varied enemies and new abilities to make the game interesting.

Your four characters each provide a different set of options for combat. To keep the battles from being just a tedious act of pressing A, the game requires you to use the unique abilities of your four characters to defeat enemies. Fire bottle rockets with one character for a lot of damage while using another character to create a shield over your party. It's a long way from the deep combat in many modern RPGs, but Earthbound provided enough variety to support the rest of the game.

The Beatles and Breaking The Fourth Wall.

If Earthbound is not the best written/localized game ever made, then it's damn close. In your typical RPG, characters are placed only to provide you hints on your quest. They're all very uninteresting, and if it wasn't for their neccisity in finishing the game you would likely just skip right over them. Every line of dialog is something to be savored.

"You're the enemy of all zombies! You monster!" - Zombie

"I heard Venus made an appearance at the Runaway Five show. I missed her 'cause I went to the bathroom. I'll hate bathrooms for the rest of my life. - Venus Fan

First Floor - 'Fourside Bakery'
Second Floor - 'Second Floor of the Bakery' - Sign outside the Fourside Bakery

Those are just three random quotes from the game. EVERY character has something just as interesting to say.

In a sea of RPGs that took themselves too seriously, the creators of Earthbound recognized their game for what it was, a game. Frequently the game breaks the fourth wall, reaching out to the player. One character talks about how he just picked up this new Earthbound game and how hard it is. A gang member tells you to come back after you've finished the game and maybe he'll let you in. In Fourside, you can visit a building where the people inside are apparently making Earthbound 2 (according to the sign outside). At one point, a friend of one of your characters calls Ness up and asks to speak to the player. He specifically asks for the players name, which comes into play at the end of the game. It's something I wouldn't dare spoil.

The End

Above is a pretty expansive list of reasons why Earthbound is the most amazing video game experience I've ever had and it barely touches the game's charm. I didn't even mention the game's trip to Stonehenge, or the mind-expanding cake your characters eat. How about at the end of the game, where the party must give up their bodies to travel back in time for the game's final confrontation? How about the ending? Did you know that during the ending of the game, you can visit EVERY location you've been to before? Every character you've met earlier in the game now has something different to say now that you've saved the world. There are books that could be written about Earthbound's depth.

For a 12 year old game, Earthbound has aged rather well. You can still play the game today and appreciate what made it great in 1995. Earthbound oozes charm, and that's the key to it's success.

Wahjah.

Wahjah - Embarrassment by proxy. The awkward feeling is most pronounced when the person making a fool of themselves is so earnest in what they're doing that they don't see it as being embarrassing.