Tutorials

I recently purchased and finished The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition and loved the game.  The entire thing was just a masterpiece in my mind.  Yes, the graphics were not PC quality, but I just feel like the game, and even it's predecessor, were designed to be played using a controller.  There were some menu sorting things that were unnecessarily hard with a controller, but that's nothing that ruins a game.  The one thing that made me balk at the title right from the beginning was the tutorial, and that's what I want to address today.

I can barely recall when this was complex.

Remember back in the NES era?  To learn how to play the game, your only resource was the manual or a friend.  Going into a game like Final Fantasy I without reading the manual was basically video game suicide.  You'd spend quite a lot of time trying to figure it out, and even then you'd oftentimes be stuck at certain points in the game.  Nowadays we don't have problems with games like this, but back in the days without Internet and with the video game industry really starting to get back on it's feet after the crash this game would have seemed entirely new and different.  A tutorial would have been helpful for those gamers new to the market and to RPGs.

This was such a brilliant game.

Advancing forward a few years to the SNES, game developers must have realized the need for tutorials as games became more and more complex.  Two of the tutorials that stuck with me, as the games are both two of my favorites from that system, are from Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy III.  In the former, the tutorial tries to integrate itself into the story as Toad tries to run ahead of Mario to the Mushroom Kingdom and ends up walking into some enemies that he needs help with.  The game essentially uses this as an excuse to have Toad explain to Mario how to attack and use items.  It seems primitive, but it works.  For Final Fantasy III, the developers left the entire tutorial as optional.  In the first town, Narshe, you can enter the house at the very entrance and talk to a bunch of wizened old men who tell you how to play.  The idea is that it's a learning center of sorts and there are some items and experience to be had inside.  If you don't enter the building you aren't penalized in any way and can just move on with the game.  I like that setup since the developers really tried to integrate the tutorial into the game, not slap it on like some post-it note afterthought or with a window that just says, "DO THIS."

Love the game, not the tutorial.

So finally, let's end with a much more recently developed game: The Witcher 2.  As I said, I didn't like the tutorial.  My biggest problem with the tutorial is that it makes you feel like you're going somewhere with the game, like it's the start, and then it just abruptly cuts out after you finish it.  You save some guy with a potion and fight in an arena, all the while thinking that you get all of the abilities you have and keep the items you earned, but that's just wishful thinking.  I don't like this style of tutorial.  I need the tutorial to do one of two things, either be seamless to the story, as in FFIII, or be part of thes story with pop-up windows if need be, like in Kingdoms of Amalur.

I didn't know that I was going to be awarding a winner at the end of this, but I decided that it sounded like a good idea.  I'm giving the Tutorial Award to FFIII.  It's seamlessly integrated into the game, gives you items and experience, and even allows you to skip it entirely without painstakingly forcing you to play along.  That's the best kind of tutorial.  Now only if developers could remember how to do things like that...

Retro Game of the Week: Ghostbusters

The ghost look so surprised.

I am a huge fan of simulation games.  When it comes right down to it, I could play Sim City for a few hours a day and really enjoy myself.  Unfortunately there are some simulation games that are boring, too complex, or just downright annoying.  Ghostbusters for the NES falls into all three categories.  I do have to go on record, again, and say that I fucking love Ghostbusters, but this game is just the shits.  It's a great idea, but poorly executed and on a system that just cannot handle what the game could have, and should have, been.  Let's start with the box on the left.  If you were to pick up this game back in 1988, there's little to no indication that you may not be getting what you want.  All you know is that you're getting Ghostbusters the video game and you're shitting your pants because you're just that damn excited.  Well, when you get home, change pants, and put that game in your Nintendo all your excitement is going to fall right out your ass.

Bustin' ghosts.

As soon as you start the game you get this voice yelling out Ghostbusters and you immediately get crapped out to the screen on the right.  The player takes control of the Ghostbusters logo.  So your first inclination might be that the game is some sort of Pac-Man clone, but by the time you travel all over the board, you find out that touching the ghosts only freezes them for a short period of time and that some of the buildings flash red.  Well, here's the scoop, those red buildings are haunted by ghosts and you need to bust 'em.  But how?  The game doesn't gives you one fucking clue.  You need a Proton Pack.  Oh, right, duh, there's a freaking shop up there.  Before you can actually go into the shop, you need to drive there.  No, not on the overworld map, but on a different screen.  You drive the damn car avoiding drunk drivers and obstacles or you lose money, and you need money to buy your equipment, which means you really need to be on top of things.  So you go to the shop and buy your pack and a trap and you're all set to go out and bust the hell out of some spirits.

Literally the only picture I could use.

So you head back out onto the overworld and zip on over to a red flashing building.  When you get there and go inside, the game forces you to drive there yet again.  After avoiding the damn obstacles for the second time you finally get to shoot some ghosts, and hell, it sucks too.  Your beam controls are as stiff as a corpse and the ghosts move too high up or too low down to capture almost every single time you get to this screen.  Even if you manage to get a ghost over the trap, it's almost up to pure luck if you capture it or not.  Oh yeah, and don't cross the streams, if you do, you disintegrate.  So if you finally capture a ghost or two you get some money.  Gain enough money and you can buy other worthless shit like Ghost Food, an upgraded Proton Pack, or better gear that has greater defense against ghosts.  So where exactly would you use this Ghost Food or defensive gear?  So far all we've seen are the overworld, driving, and ghost busting scenes and you can't exactly use items there.  In any case, now that you've gotten some ghosts you need to empty your trap and buy a new one.  That's right, you can't use one trap forever, you need to keep buying them.

This is very gray, too gray in fact.

So once you hit the shop again, you need to do the driving scene all over.  Fun.  By now, though, your gas meter is probably pretty low and you don't know why the fuck you have a gas meter anyway.  Well guess what?  You need to get gas for your damn car too.  For now you run out of gas and the sprites get out and push the car to the gas station, which costs more money.  So now you've wasted your precious ghost busting fee on gas and you can't buy that upgraded Proton Pack.  Fucknuts.  Whatever, you buy another trap and go after more ghosts.  After about an hour or so of doing this shit, you're still not any further along.  I had the problem of just spending my fees on new traps, gas, and getting hit in the driving stages.  It's like you were exercising only to go back to McDonalds any time that you made any progress at all, except without the addiction and food.  There's no food in Ghostbusters for NES.

Endgame staircases are harder to climb than any other type of staircase.  This is a fact.

Also after about an hour something flashes across the bottom of the screen.  Every time this happened while I was playing I barely caught the tail end of it.  The message just flies across the bottom of the screen at warp-fucking-speed.  Essentially it's telling you that you can now go into the Zuul building and play the rest of the game.  Finally.  Anyway, what you see next is the screen above.  Here you have to play stairmaster and avoid the ghosts.  This is where the defensive gear comes in handy, cause three hits and you're done, and you need to be almost flawless to beat this fuckfest.  Good luck.

The boss in an NES game is a naked woman-man. Fun.

At the top of the stairs, the next screen greets you and the game actually becomes fun for about five minutes until you beat the everliving shit out of the crazy bitch.  You dodge bullets here and fire back with your proton packs until she's toast.  The game ends and you get a shitty black and white ending screen with misspelled words and horrible grammar.  Yay.

Alright, I'm over it.  Hopefully now you see what I mean.  The game is way too boring.  I mean, how many times do you have to play the same freaking driving scene or the same ghost capturing scene?  Seriously, the only fun part of the game is the end where you're mimicking a 2D vertical shooter.  And talk about complex: why do you need to buy gas?  Getting down into that level of detail is just not needed here, it only creates problems for the gamer and causes them to get too frustrated to enjoy or finish the game.  The annoyance of this game is on full throttle and it shows with all of the same scenes, frustrating gameplay, and lackluster music.  I didn't mention this before, but the music is really annoying.  It's a decent rendition of the Ghostbusters theme, but it never stops.  Ever.  You'll want to cut your own ears off just to stop the noise.

Like I was saying at the beginning, I love simulation games, but this is just ass.  There's definitely an issue with the limitations of the NES and if it were on the SNES a few years later, I think that with some alterations, this could have been a good game, like SimCity.  The best change that this game could use though, is a change in location.  It needs to be located right in the fucking toilet.  Just drop that game right in like the shit bomb it is and move on with your life.

Retro Game of the Week: Duck Tales

Years ago, I was a great fan of the cartoon Duck Tales. I never really understood the point behind the show. Why ducks? I mean, couldn’t it have been just as good if it were anything? Monkeys, rhinos, parakeets, did it really fucking matter? In any case, the show follows the adventures of Uncle McScrooge, the richest duck in the world. For whatever reason he wants to constantly earn more money. In the show this means that McScrooge has to defend his hoard of money from villains or go on grand adventures to gather more money. The NES game that we’re looking at today is based upon these adventures.

The first thing that I’ll say about this game is that the music is excellent. The 8-bit rendition of the Duck Tales theme song couldn't be any better. Right away when the game starts up, you see one of the worst start screens ever. The whole thing is this terrible blue color with green, orange, and red splattered all over like some first graders rejected art project. The only option that you get to set with this screen anyway is difficulty.

Of course ducks can use supercomputers.

As soon as you choose how hard you want to get your ass spanked, you get dropped into a McScrooge’s base of operations with his fucking huge supercomputer. 

Getting your ass spanked...By a duck dominatrix no less.

Here you get to select one of five areas to search for treasure: The Amazon, Transylvania, African Mines, The Himalayas, and The Moon. The levels are all fairly detailed and the graphics in the game are very impressive for the time. Take McScrooge for instance, he’s well done and looks just like he does in the cartoon. His attack is ridiculous. The fucking duck jumps around on his cane like a damn pogo stick or whacks things with it like a damn golf club, and that’s it. You do that to kill Gorillas, break rocks, and open chests that contain treasure. The levels are structured in that you run around and collect all of the “small treasure” that adds slight amounts to your dollar total, running in the upper left hand corner of the screen, but the ultimate goal is to find the “big” treasure at the end of the level and kill the boss. Once that happens, you chat with some crazy pelican pilot and he flies your ass back to Duckburg to do it all over again in the next area.

Ducks.

Each level proceeds in the same manner, but the layouts are different. This is a great platformer game, and it plays very well. My main problem with it is that it’s just fucking weird. That really just goes back to the original idea behind the cartoons. Why the fuck is it ducks?

So let’s jump ahead to the final level, or at least the one that most people save for last, The Moon.  Here you’re a duck in space pogo jumping on aliens.  I don’t fucking get it.  Why are you looking for treasure in space?  This isn’t Uncharted, its god damn Duck Tales.

Wow, space.  Just great.

 So at the end of the game you have to go back to Dracula Duck Manor and beat the vampire duck.  After that you end up in a race to the top of a rope and you get your treasure.  The final screen of the game is McScrooge having some kind of fucking seizure on top of all of his money wearing a crown.  What this game all comes down to to me is what frontiers the NES was able to explore with popular titles.  Where else would you find a Duck Tales video game where they travel to space and fight vampire ducks?  Though this game is completely fucked up, it really shows the power of video games to explore and exploit cultural phenomenons as well as stretch the limits of imagination and creativity.  Even with my frustration with the fucking ducks, I have to admit that without this game there's no way that I could play games like Fallout New Vegas on a regular basis.

Day 12: Super Mario Land

The box just doesn't make sense.

With handheld devices fresh in my mind, I had to take a look at this strange customer.  This is one of the games that really drove the Game Boy's success in the early years.  Since Super Mario Bros. and it's successors were so popular on the NES, of course Nintendo would need to release a similar title on their mobile to look for the same success in that market.  My main issue with this game is just how fucked up it makes Mario.  I mean, just take a look at the box art.  He's in a submarine chasing after some crazy ass spaceship on Easter Island and later in Egypt?  I just don't get it.  At first I thought that playing it would give me some clarity, but I was horrifyingly wrong.

Yes, because Mario would do this.

The game is very similar to the others in the series as far as your platforming adventures go.  You jump on your enemies, collect coins, and try to reach the end of every level.  The differences in this game just baffle the shit out me.  First off, the controls are all fucked up.  The momentum of the NES game is gone and replaced by an awkward feeling.  The Super Mushrooms and Fire Flowers are still in this game, but the Fire Flowers don't give you the ability to shoot the signature Fireball.  Instead you throw balls.  Bouncy balls at a 45 degree angle.  Why the hell would you change the Fireball?  It's such an awesome move and pretty original for one of the very first "good" platforming games.  The other things that were changed to create this abomination were some of the transportation.  Rather than having Mario run and jump across every level to make it to the end, the game forces you into a flying machine and a submarine to reach your goal.  Mario's a freaking plumber, how in the hell is he flying a plane or navigating a submarine, much less all by himself?  Or maybe in all of his downtime after saving the princess, he relaxes by getting his fucking pilot's license.  That must be it.

Why does the pipe look like a huge tootsie roll?

So not only were some of the key components of Mario's essential gameplay changed here, but the plot was also changed.  Instead of chasing after Bowser to save Princess Toadstool, Mario is chasing after a spaceman, Tatanga, to save Princess Daisy.  The minions of Tatanga appear as Daisy to draw Mario in and then transform to kill him.  A spaceman with shape shifting alien thugs?  Who in the hell decided that Mario needs to battle some alien fucks to save the reject princess that doesn't appear in the mainstream games all that often?  I just don't get it.  Why change what was working so well on the NES? 




There's no denying that fans of Mario games around the world like even this piece of shit adaptation.  A sequel was even made to continue to bleed the mobile market dry.  Mario has had too many spinoffs in his day and this was the root cause of it all.  I clearly see the benefits of creating spinoffs like this and exercising the limits of Mario's success, but what the fuck is the reasoning behind changing the game itself?  A spinoff like this would be fine on the Game Boy, and I'm glad it happened because without it we would have lost a lot of good games through the years, but can't you make a freaking spinoff that at least has some of the same elements?  This game just doesn't feel like Mario.  I mean, Mario's certainly in it, but fighting a spaceman in Sarasaland where they end up having an epic showdown in Chai land?  None of it makes any sense.  Where's the Mushroom Kingdom?  Where's Bowser?  Where the hell is the Mario we know and love that throws balls of fire, not bounces balls like a goddamn four year old?

Day 10: Mr. Video

Who would you consider to be the most iconic and influential video gaming character in history?  A character who's been in all genres, sold over 200 million games, and is an Italian from Japan? Well, if you aren't a fan of Nintendo, you're just going to have to suck it up and realize that Mario's been around a long time, and he's not likely to ship off anytime soon.

This definitely came from Japan...

Mario's had many forms over the years with just as many names to go with them.  What we see on the left is an adaption of Ossan, Shigeru Miyamoto's first "Mario" concept.  For those of us that need to use Google to translate for us, Ossan apparently means something along the lines of "middle-aged man".  It seems that Shigeru had wanted to create a game that rivaled Pac-Man's popularity, but couldn't quite get the right components together.  He initially wanted to use Popeye and his crew in that endeavor but was unable to get the rights.  So instead, Ossan, who was known as Mr. Video outside of the company, became the star of Donkey Kong. 

Why barrels?

With the advent of Donkey Kong came a new name for Mario: Jumpman.  Why Jumpman you ask?  The best I can figure is this:  Miyamoto's original intentions for the game was to have it be a maze setting similar to Pac-Man.  However, to beat the curve as it were, Shigeru enabled the character to jump and created the Donkey Kong that we remember today.  Any way you cut it, this game is pure classic arcade goodness.  The name was conceived during this era and from my understanding it came from a landlord that wanted his rent money from Nintendo.  Apparently, the man, whose name was Mario, and Nintendo came to the decision to rename Jumpman to alleviate some of the landlord's rent issues with the company.  I find it no coincidence then that Mario's profession involves fixing leaky pipes.

 

 

This just speaks for itself.

Just as Mario's name hasn't always been, so is it with his job.  During the original Donkey Kong, Mario was a carpenter.  It makes sense what with all the ladders leading to nowhere, the flaming oil barrel with the hellish flaming imps that appear, and the hammer...Wait, no it doesn't.  Of course, when Mario made his leap onto the NES his profession became that of a plumber as most of the scenes involve going down pipes into underground settings.  The game involves navigating through the Mushroom Kingdom to save the Retainers of the kingdom in each castle until the eighth, when you have to toss that bastard King Koopa, known today as Bowser, into the pit of lava.  I've always wondered though, why is he a turtle?  I had to look it up.  Apparently, Shigeru Miyamoto's original design for the turtle king was mimicked after the Ox King, who's shown up in various forms throughout the years.  My most fond memories of him occur in the Dragonball and DBZ series.  At some point during the design phases, someone pointed out to Miyamoto that he looked more like a turtle than an ox.  Thus, King Koopa evolved from an ox into a turtle.

Mario today.

I could go on for days writing down the history of Mario, but that's not my intent.  What I wanted to do was flesh out some possible missing pieces from everyone's common knowledge of Mario. The early years are something that occurred mostly beyond my knowledge due to my date of birth being before their time.  However, I've wanted to know this information for some time as I have played every Mario game that I could get my hands on, good or bad, and the character's progression through those games has always impressed me.  I am no less impressed with what I've recently learned of his heroic journey to the year 2011.  Who would've thought that Nintendo's runner-up to Popeye could come so far through long shot odds to be the star of over 200 video games?