Also, Awesome NES has finally cracked the Ms with reviews of M.C. Kids (an exercise in cross promotion that oddly has nothing to do with MC Sporting Goods), Mach Rider, and that classic financial management simulation, M.U.L.E.  You're not going to find a lot of games like this one on the NES, and you'll be looking a long, long time before you find one with an iron-plated donkey in it!

All right, now to more important matters.  I like to think of myself as a video game historian, but even I have large gaps in my knowledge of the industry, thanks to personal tastes and a stubborn refusal to purchase some consoles.  Both factors contributed to my missing Chrono Trigger when it was first released on the Super NES in 1995.  I disliked that system more than was probably healthy, and I had a similar contempt for RPGs.  They've never been my favorite genre, but thirteen years ago, when I was younger and even less patient than I am today, I would have rather swallowed a grenade than spent countless bleary-eyed hours leveling up a party of pixelized pipsqueaks.

That was then.  The bitter battle between the Genesis and Super NES is long over, and classics like Grandia, Suikoden, and Panzer Dragoon Saga have made me more open to games that are heavy on exploration and light on action.  With my biases behind me and a modded Wii just itching to play Super NES games sitting in front of me, I felt that it was the right time to try Chrono Trigger and see what I've been missing.

It turns out that it was a lot!  RPGs are definitely not my area of expertise, but after sinking eighteen hours into the game, I can understand why gamers speak so highly of Chrono Trigger.  The time hopping storyline is ingenious and has a profound impact on the gameplay... after you've finished a few missions, you're sent to a hub where you can select any time period you like, with any combination of the party members you've recruited.  It doesn't offer as much freedom as, say, Oblivion, but it was nevertheless a step in the right direction for console RPGs, which had been stiflingly linear before Chrono Trigger's release.

Also, I'm a sucker for a realtime combat system, and Chrono Trigger comes pretty darned close to offering one.  The combat strikes me as an ancestor of Grandia's outstanding battles... the characters aren't racheted into place, and you've got to factor their onscreen positions into your strategy.  For instance, Chrono's Slash works especially well against a cluster of tightly packed enemies, while Lucca's Flame Toss can turn a row of foes into charcoal.  The battles aren't as satisfying or as strategically deep as the ones in Grandia, but you certainly can see the influence that Chrono Trigger had on that series.

* Galaga Legions was announced as an Xbox Live exclusive.  Namco is calling this "the first true sequel to Galaga in twenty years," although judging from the early footage, I doubt that it deserves its place in that lineage.  It seems like the developers went way overboard with the huge swarms of enemies and massive firepower... the original Galaga was much more subtle than this!  However, I was wrong about Space Invaders Extreme, and I could be wrong about this.  Only time will tell.

* Sony CEO Howard Stringer (not to be confused with exploitative talk show host Jerry Springer) has been talking smack about the Nintendo Wii, calling it an "expensive niche game device" rather than acknowledging it as a competitor to the Playstation 3.  You might not be winning the console wars, Howie, but at least you're tops at being a sore loser!

* Speaking of the Wii, there's a new device on the horizon that will make the system's motion sensitive controller more accurate.  The peripheral connects to the bottom of the Wiimote and, according to the Wii Fanboy web site, "allows for more comprehensive tracking of a player's arm position and orientation."  Will it work with ordinary Wii titles, or just specially designed ones?  Inquiring minds want to know!

* Rumors persist that there will be a new Nintendo DS, without a Game Boy Advance cartridge slot.  Why would anyone buy a Nintendo DS with limited functionality?  The fact that it costs a lot less than the original or Lite models may have something to do with it.  IGN says a hundred dollars less, but the idea of a thirty dollar DS seems pretty far-fetched.

* Those Xbox 360 avatars shown on Joystiq were the real deal, and there's every indication that the Xbox 360 dashboard will receive a complete overhaul by the end of the year.  I've got mixed feelings about this... after all, if it's not broke, why fix it?  However, if Microsoft insists on making changes to the Xbox 360 experience, there's not a whole lot gamers can do to stop them.

Oh yeah, this is a video game web site, not my LiveJournal.  In that case, how's this do you?  Lately, I've been spending a lot of time getting my retro on with the Wii.  It's all thanks to the recent WAD Injector (tee hee) program that lets you insert your own games into Virtual Console channels.  Sure, there are homebrew emulators available for the system too, but they don't display games in 480p, which is pretty important if you're playing them on a high-definition television set.

The WAD Injector not only lets you play your favorite NES, Genesis, and Super NES games at the Wii's best available resolution, but gives you instant access to them.  There's no need to wade through a lot of confusing options... you just point the Wiimote at the appropriate channel, press the A button, and you're ready to roll.  The channels don't accurately reflect the games they play, instead displaying the games that used to be inside them, but it's a small inconvenience that's easily ignored.

The lone drawback of the WAD Injector (aside from shaky compatibility and legal issues) is that the save states in Virtual Console channels aren't nearly as convenient as those in homebrew emulators.  The Wii does save your position in games when you quit them, but you can't use save states to power your way through difficult titles like Bionic Commando. 

This could be a damning flaw or a blessing in disguise, depending on your outlook.  Without convenient save states, it'll take you a whole lot longer to finish games.  At the same time, your accomplishments seem more significant without this crutch.  It took me hours and hours to beat Bionic Commando, but once I finally blew away Hitl-er, Master D and escaped with Super Joe, I felt like I earned that victory.