| September 27,
2002... Shop Smart, Shop
S-Mart |
I've got a new job now... I won't tell you what it is, but
here's a hint that should make it pretty obvious.
Remember Bruce Campbell's character from the Evil Dead
films? Well, there you go.
I was looking through one of the flyers at my new workplace
and was a little upset to discover that they'd slashed the
price on Fire Pro Wrestling, the Game Boy Advance version of
THE most complex and addictive wrestling game ever made.
C'mon, people... please don't tell me you're going to buy more
copies of whatever crapola WWF game they release for the
system. If you want real wrestlers that badly, just buy
Fire Pro and rename all the thinly disguised characters and
organizations in the game. Heck, even if you're not a
wrestling fan, you should get it. A classmate of mine at
the local college picked it up when I'd recommended it to her,
and she told me it was "kick ass" even though she admitted she
wasn't particularly interested in the greasy gladiators of the
ECWCWWF.
Anyway, you're probably wondering what happened to those
weekly updates I promised. I'm really sorry about
that... now's just not the time for that, since I'm currently
juggling two jobs and some of the world's most frustrating
college classes (the laughably titled "Intro" to Electricity
being one of the worst). I have been working on a Shaq
Fu review for Fighter's Misery, though, and after playing the
Wonderswan version of Rockman and Forte at a friend's house,
I'm thinking of teaming up with Mandi Paugh to give the game
and perhaps even the system itself the thrashing of a
lifetime. I swear, Americans should be signing petitions
to keep the Wonderswan OUT of the United States, so we won't
be stuck with yet another lousy handheld.
OK, I'll be back in about a week... and I may even post
another page entry before then if I get the chance.
| September 21, 2001...
Anything Is Finer Than a Game of Manic
Miner |
My last two posts were a little negative so I'll take the
advice of my mother (who actually used to tell me this, as
much as it sounds like something from a cheesy 50's sitcom)
and try to say something nice for a change. Maybe I'm
letting nostalgia get the better of me, but I really like the
new Journey song... it's got a driving beat that really sticks
in your head, and the band's new lead singer is a more than
adequate replacement for the tempremental Steve Perry.
Sure, it would have been nice to have the entire band back
together, but sometimes, these things just aren't possible...
and at least Journey chose a singer that would keep their
trademark musical style from the 80's intact. You know,
unlike those self-absorbed dorks from Van Halen who think they
can cast their singers overboard at random and hire new
artists who change the entire sound of the band. How
many times have they done this? They're on their third
lead singer now and Van Halen still sucks as much as it did in
the early 80's. Call me nutty, but I'd tend to think
that the man who named the band is responsible for its
shortcomings, not the guy who's holding the microphone this
week.
OK, so that whole "accentuate the positive" angle didn't
last for long. What can I say? It's in my nature
to bitch. And while I'm doing what I do best, I might as
well bring up that Jet Set Willy series I mentioned in my last
post. Recently, I downloaded updates of the two Willy
games, and it's clear from the mountain of options,
beautifully redrawn graphics, and tremendous soundtrack that
the designer, Andy Noble, really loved them. I'm just
having a hard time understanding why. Spending all that
time rewriting these games for a new format and improving
everything but the gameplay is akin to sculpting a bust of the
Mona Lisa out of manure. Sure, you could end up with
something really impressive, but the source material is still
a big pile of crap.
If you're into emulation- I mean, so deeply involved in the
hobby that you're familiar with obscure computers from the
80's like the Timex-Sinclair- you've probably seen gamers from
Britain praise and even devote web sites to both Manic Miner
and Jet Set Willy. They're so enraptured by the games
that they don't even bother to tell you what they're like,
probably thinking that you should already be familiar with
them, but I know better. So here's the scoop... Manic
Miner was the first game in the series, and as the title
suggests it's the United Kingdom's equivalent of Miner
2049er. If you don't remember THAT one, well, think of
Donkey Kong with puzzle elements rather than fast action...
each round's got keys you must collect to enter the next
round, but those keys are generally hanging above enemies and
obstacles that will turn you into post-mortem Miner if you
touch them. Worse yet, you've got to make a round trip
to the keys and back to the door near the beginning of the
round, which doubles the danger... and your frustration.
Contrary to what the whole country of Great Britain seems to
think, it's not fun to collect a half dozen keys, get squashed
by something close to the exit, and have to start the whole
damned round over again. It really becomes obvious that
this game was designed for British sensibilities when you
discover that there's no possible way to defend
yourself. That's fine for a civilized country with a
strict ban on firearms, but when this American gets caught by
a robot for the seventh time, he feels like dropping a grenade
into that garbage can lid it calls a head.
If all that doesn't make you feel helpless, just wait until
you get out of that mine with a handful of diamonds.
You'd think Willy's life would only get better after this, but
apparently, he's quite a boozer, and he made the mistake of
hiring an uptight maid who demands that he pick up the dozens
of items he dropped while throwing back beers with his
buddies. No cleanie means no sleepy for Willy, so he's
got to wander around in a drunken stupor picking up anything
shiny while dodging alcohol fueled figments of his
imagination. He may be rich now, but he's no safer than
he was before, and the structure of his enormous, disturbingly
decorated mansion actually makes things harder for him than
they ever were in the mines. The rounds in Jet Set Willy
have twice the enemies as the ones in Manic Miner, and to make
things worse there's far more backtracking and exploration
involved... you have to search through every room to find all
the objects, and because there are only a couple of paths in
each room the mansion is like a blasted labyrinth.
Furthermore (as if we needed a "furthermore"), most of the
rooms are designed so that perfect jumping is required to
reach the items within them. As frustrated as I was by
the last few rounds in Klonoa, they don't hold a fucking
candle to the first ten in Jet Set Willy... in fact, I don't
even think I've SEEN ten rounds in Jet Set Willy because I'm
snuffed so quickly in the early ones.
I just can't imagine how games this sadistic could be
popular with anyone, much less an entire country. I'm
thinking maybe the Brits were so starved for video games
(which are heinously expensive in Europe) that they were more
than willing to settle for Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy until
the Amiga computer gave them more and better options. In
fact, I've noticed that a lot of early British games,
particularly Psygnosis' Barbarian, have interconnected puzzle
rooms similar to the ones in Jet Set Willy. It must have
took the Brits a while to get this kind of gameplay out of
their systems... and unfortunately, some of them STILL look
back on it fondly.
I'll give you guys a chance to try Andy Noble's improved
versions of Jet Set Willy and Manic Miner and decide for
yourself whether or not the games have merit. I guess I
owe Andy that much... I do admire his work, even though I
personally feel he could have put his talents to better use
with conversions of games that deserve a comeback.
| September 19,
2001... The Roar, The
Merrier? |
Holy cow, I didn't realize so many of these links were
broken! Let me hop into CutePage and fix them...
(A half hour of typing, clicking, and swearing follows)
That's a little better... I guess. The Overclocked
logo should lead to somewhere now, although judging from my
past experiences with this page editor it'll probably send you
straight to one of the zillions of fetish porn sites on the
Internet. Hope you like naked computer rendered nerds
writhing in bondage to the tune of an acapella version of Moon
Patrol...
But seriously, all the other links should be fine
now. You still can't download either of the games in the
Pac-Mon series, and the Bomberman picture is still missing
staff members, and I admit, that's totally my fault. I
didn't feel like spending another hour adding characters to
the already crowded staff artwork, and I thought I could just
leave a few of the staff members who I haven't heard from in a
while... but somehow I forgot to add Josh to the picture as
well, and he's been a good friend and an important contributor
for nearly eight years. I'm sorry about that,
Josh. I'll add a link to your staff profile directly
below the picture, and hopefully create another drawing for
the rest of my contributors sometime next week.
Speaking of contributors, The Gameroom Blitz has a new
one... John Roche, a Neo-Geo fan who recently sent me reviews
of Garou: Mark of the Wolves and Kizuna Encounter. He
had a lot to say about the recent "Schlock the Vote" feature
on Fighter's Misery, too, and I intend to print his letter
along with his reviews next week. He didn't agree with
some of the choices I'd made, but he'll be happy to know that
Brutal will most definitely be one of the games I skin alive
in that page. I'd played the game on an emulator after
John recommended that I review it, and now that I've suffered
through its crummy collision detection, cheesy computer
opponents, and constant corner traps, wild black belt wearing
llamas couldn't keep me from kicking the crap out of
Brutal.
I wasn't really happy with the more recently released
Bloody Roar III, either. It isn't as impressive on the
Playstation 2 as the previous Bloody Roar was on the original
Playstation... for some reason, the playfields got a whole lot
darker and less distinct and some of the character designs,
which seemed fine in BR2, are absolutely moronic here.
Alice the rabbit is the most desperate attempt by a game
company to grab the attention (among other things) of its male
audience I've ever seen... and this is coming from someone
who'd played both the Turbografx-16 and Namco Museum Encore
versions of Wonder Momo. I assume that Busuzima is an
exaggeration of the wild eyed criminal introduced to fighting
games by Ryuji Yamazaki, but he's not nearly as impressive as
SNK's sharply dressed thug... frankly, he's just
grotesque.
Well, I've got to study for my Concepts of Electricity
test, so I'll save my rant about Jet Set Willy, an incredibly
popular- and overrated- game series in Great Britain for
Thursday. Besides, it probably wouldn't be right to
start another international incident so soon after the whole
World Trade Center thing. ^^;
| September 17,
2001... Holy Crap, the Towers Just
Fell |
Hey, guys! I've redesigned the layout of the site,
just like I promised, and... guys? Guys?
Oh crap.
Nothing steals the thunder from an important project quite
like a disaster. David Hasselhoff learned this the hard
way when he tried to launch his singing career in the United
States the same day OJ Simpson was chased down the freeway by
a fleet of cops, and I guess it's my turn to follow him off
the cliff marked "career suicide" by improving The Gameroom
Blitz just days after the destruction of the World Trade
Center in New York.
I could wait a couple of weeks until peoples' attention
starts to wander from the terrorist attack and back to their
daily routines, but then I'd come up with another excuse to
wait to finish the site, and then another, and then another...
until I gave up on it entirely. As it is, it's been
entirely too long since I've worked on The Gameroom Blitz, and
it's definitely suffered from this neglect... nobody visits
the GRB forum anymore, and 80% of the E-mail I receive is not
about the site but the same three pieces of junk we've all
seen countless times (the scammers responsible should just
merge their shady businesses and start distributing mails
about getting rich by selling herbal Viagra alternatives to
men who love online porn).
I'm hoping to bring the site back to life, and get people
more interested in it, by updating a lot more frequently...
instead of publishing a handful of new articles and reviews
every few months, I hope to add two major features every
month, a review or two each week, and, since it's worked so
well for other sites, a front page entry every couple of
days. I'm not used to doing things this way, so it might
take a while before I can get into the habit of writing on a
regular basis rather than publishing a lot of content all at
once. I'm willing to try, though, because it looks as
though it's the only thing that will keep readers coming
back. And even though I do feel for the victims of the
World Trade Center attack, I agree with Kohler and Parish that
putting the site on hold until things blow over in New York
isn't going to solve anything. If working on The
Gameroom Blitz right now makes me look as though I'm fiddling
while Rome burns, so be it.
Since the subject's already been brought up, I might as
well discuss the New York incident in greater detail.
Last Tuesday, I woke up to news about the attack, blaring from
the radio of the roofing crew working on my apartment. I
was still a little groggy so I'd only heard random bits about
airports across the country being shut down... after I'd
dressed, I walked outside and called up to the folks on the
roof, asking what the hell was going on. When they told
me that a plane rammed into the side of the Pentagon, I had a
hard time believing it... I mean, geez, America wouldn't let
anything happen to what amounts to the nervous center of its
military intelligence! When I drove over to my parents'
house to watch the news on television, it turned out that yes,
it was in fact true... and things only got worse from
there. It turned out that both towers of the New York
Trade center had also been attacked, and since they were tall
thin skyscrapers rather than a squat polygonal building,
neither they nor the people inside had a chance. One
person had described the towers as having been shorn in half
by the jets that collided with them... since the structural
support inside the buildings had been severed, the top halves
of both towers simply fell into the bottom halves, completely
destroying both.
All of this was just bewildering to me... I couldn't
understand why our property wasn't better defended, and how
the criminals who took these jets could, even in their twisted
minds, justify the deaths of thousands of citizens who
couldn't even find Iran on a world map, much less had any
direct involvement with the supposed "persecution" of Muslims
in the middle east. Fortunately, the passengers of one
hijacked plane had fought bravely against their captors, and
while it didn't save their lives, the fact that the jet
crashed into the ground rather than another building did spare
others. This brought up another question, however... why
do the victims of hijackings just let it happen? Sure,
attacking the terrorists would result in a few deaths, but
it's better to take that risk than to just line up like good
little sheep to the slaughter. Besides, if airplane
passengers were more resistant to terrorist attacks, they'd
happen a lot less... terrorists only hold planes hostage
because they know it's effective. When it stops working,
they'll stop doing it. Perhaps this amounts to belling
the cat, a great idea nobody is willing to risk implementing,
but if the terrorists have raised the stake to the point where
the hostages will die anyways, they should consider
sacrificing themselves for the greater good. With any
luck, this WILL happen more often, and eventually, there will
be a hijacking that backfires, leaving the terrorists in the
uncomfortable position of being taken hostage by the
passengers, rather than the other way around.
In any event, this is a very frustrating situation, and one
which could be hard to resolve... Bush can easily retaliate,
but against whom? Although everyone suspects Osama bin
Laden was behind the attack, nobody can say for sure that he
was responsible... and declaring war against an entire country
would be even worse for the same reason. We have to use
absolute precision in our counterstrikes, because as Kira's
evil twin in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine observed, violence is
a scalpel, not a club. If we can root out our enemies as
specifically as possible, it will be better for everyone...
better for innocent men and women in the middle east who may
otherwise be killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong
time, and better for the United States, which could fuel the
fire for more terrorist attacks if it doesn't attack those
specifically responsible for the destruction of the World
Trade Center. I'm also hoping that we as citizens can
keep from blaming the attack on Arabs who live here.
Remember, that darker skinned guy with the unpronouncable name
next door could have moved here to avoid persecution from the
same kind of overzealous dickheads who were responsible for
killing thousands of Americans. His enemy is OUR
enemy. So the next time you walk by a mosque or see a
random Arab on the street, just remember Jamie Farr, the
lovable Lebonese crossdresser M*A*S*H, and leave them alone.
(Gee, I can't decide whether that was condescending or just
plain offensive...)
Well, enough of that. I want to mention a few things
before the site begins. First of all, the King of
Fighters '99 Battle Tournament was kind of a disaster... I'm
debating whether or not to cover it in The Gameroom Blitz at
all. I'm also wondering if Pat's last party is worth
writing about so long after the fact... I had a lot of fun
there, but I covered the previous party in great detail and
I'm not sure my readers are interested in hearing about
another one. If you are, by all means let me know and I
might change my mind.
Next, I've collected all the votes I think I'm going to get
for the Fighter's Misery contest and have decided on the ten
fighting games I'll cover next in that feature. Although
I hadn't included it as one of the choices, so many people
included War Gods in their ballot that I've decided to make it
one of the games I'll review. I'll probably need to
spend a little more, ahem, quality time with the game first,
because it's been years since I've played War Gods (back when
it was first released in arcades), and naturally, I didn't
throw more than a couple of quarters into the machine.
If any of you wants to send me the Playstation version of War
Gods, I'd appreciate it... that way, I won't have to spend
good money renting the game and you won't have to waste all
that energy smashing the disc with a hammer. Just E-mail
me about it and I'll send you my house address.
OK, what else? Oh yeah... I met Jeremy Parish of
Toastyfrog a couple of times shortly after he moved to the
Montcalm County area. If you're familar with the
Toastyfrog web site, you're probably aware that Jeremy tries
his very hardest to present himself as a snooty
intellectual. I hate to spill the beans and tarnish his
on-line reputation, but Jeremy turned out to be a really nice,
generous guy when I met him in person. I'm hoping that
we'll eventually become pretty good friends, and that he'll be
willing to head down to the Lansing area with me someday to
either hang out with my old friend Pat Reynolds or the half
dozen guys who spend most of their free time at Game
Hits. The atmosphere at Game Hits (especially during the
gaming tournaments) has been described as Cheers without the
alcohol, and we really could use a net savvy, video game
loving equivalent of Frasier over there...
I'll probably talk a little more about my visits with
Jeremy sometime next week... we had a good time playing (and
ridiculing) the games on the A and ® editions of Namco Museum
and it'd be a shame not to cover that on The Gameroom Blitz,
even if he's already beaten me to it. Right now, though,
I'm a little talked out, so just check out the rest of the web
site... and if you've got comments about it, for the love of
Pete, post them in the forum!
Thanks.