Tag Archives: Nintendo 64

Goemon’s Great Adventure — Issue 50

Posted on by

Lat­est, great­est adventure

Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture has always had the unfor­tu­nate posi­tion in gam­ing of com­ing after the excel­lent Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It can’t help but fol­low in the shad­ow of the game as its direct sequel, and it’s nev­er going to stand up to make itself the pre­mier entry in the series. What it does have going for it though are two things: Rar­i­ty and some improve­ments in areas where the oth­er entries struggled.

Based on real-life fig­ure Goe­mon Ishikawa, the tit­u­lar hero stays sav­ing the day in an alter­nate Edo with his allies Ebisumaru, Yae and Sasuke. In this tale, the gang wit­ness­es an Ebisumaru looka­like steal the Old Wise Man’s new dead-res­ur­rect­ing device and wreak hav­oc on the land. It’s a cute set­up and it does­n’t take much to get into the sto­ry of the two zany nin­jas. Where this entry excels is the much-improved inter­face. Though it seems less per­son­al and plot­ted out like Super Mario World with a world map, it’s a wel­come relief from the some­times-con­fus­ing lay­out of Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon. It’s nice to just choose a loca­tion on the map and go there with­out hav­ing to remem­ber how to get there.

Also improved are the mechan­ics. The biggest change in the game is arguably the switch from over-the-shoul­der view la Mario 64 back to a side-scroller in the vein of Leg­end of the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja. Despite how jar­ring it may have seemed at first, even­tu­al­ly I came to love the fact that it’s slight­ly eas­i­er to move around and get a feel for the char­ac­ters than it was in Star­ring Goe­mon. Move­ment seems more sub­stan­tial and there’s no more fight­ing with the wonky cam­era that won’t cooperate. 

The way it looks is bet­ter also in Great Adven­ture. Every­thing is cleaned up and less polyg­o­nal, though some char­ac­ters retain that blocky look no mat­ter what. How­ev­er, the glow up is most notice­able in the envi­ron­ment. Edo looks fan­tas­tic, with the beau­ti­ful recre­ation of feu­dal Japan­ese archi­tec­ture stand­ing out the most. I was always impressed with the Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja series in what it tried to do graph­i­cal­ly, and this is a sol­id-look­ing entry.

Just as good as the graph­ics is the sound. Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja, as a series, is known for its sub­lime sound­track and Great Adven­ture does­n’t dis­ap­point. We’ve cov­ered this in our review of the game’s tracks (Edi­tor’s Note: See Issue 39) for Beat.Trip.Game, and it’s so good it’s worth men­tion­ing mul­ti­ple times. 

Though it’s an improve­ment in most areas, there are some spots where it could be pol­ished a lit­tle more. Some of the trans­la­tion is rough and there are fre­quent gram­mar errors in the text. For a game that relies on text to get the point across, that’s too jar­ring and takes me out of the expe­ri­ence. Anoth­er gripe is that, while most of the mechan­ics are improved, some of the new mechan­ics — such as the pole vault — need some work. It’s not hard to do — once you fig­ure it out. The prob­lem is that it takes much too long to fig­ure out. If I have to watch a playthrough video to get the con­cept, it’s doing too much.
Goe­mon’s Great Adven­ture is a tech­ni­cal­ly sound and com­pe­tent entry in a much-loved series. Despite my ini­tial annoy­ance with it 25 years ago, it’s grown on me with anoth­er replay. While it’s not as great as the stel­lar Mys­ti­cal Nin­ja Star­ring Goe­mon, it’s defin­i­tive­ly a wel­come entry in the series. One thing we’re going to do is let Goe­mon be great, and he achieves it with this sol­id entry in the franchise.

Bust-A-Move 2 — Issue 47

Posted on by

Bub­ble Bob­ble Part Deux

Bust-A-Move gets down again in sequel

Long ago, bub­ble pop­ping took hold of my inter­est, right about the time I start­ed get­ting hair on my chest and some sense acquired when it came to good qual­i­ty video games. And would­n’t you know it, my late great mama — the dear­ly depart­ed GI Mama — also divined that she was a fan of the bub­ble-pop­ping non­sense that I’d brought home for my Super Nin­ten­do. Alas, my tastes had to grow so we looked for more bub­ble-pop­ping non­sense and found there was a sequel or two to the mad­ness. What apro­pos popped up was Bust-A-Move 2.

Now, let’s not get it twist­ed: This is the same old Bust-A-Move you’re used to play­ing if bust­ing bub­bles is your thing. Noth­ing is dras­ti­cal­ly dif­fer­ent than the for­mu­la estab­lished in the orig­i­nal game: You pop clus­ters of like-col­ored bub­bles in an effort to clear estab­lished puz­zles. This basic premise was set up in the first game for the SNES and it has­n’t changed, no mat­ter the iter­a­tion. But what has changed some­what is the pre­sen­ta­tion. In this ver­sion, there is an illu­mi­nat­ed map puz­zle path that your char­ac­ter can choose, and deci­sions have to be made to get to the end puz­zle. The deci­sion to include a vis­i­ble path struc­ture is a nice step for­ward, but still needs some pay­off to be a gamechanger. 

Slight­ly dif­fer­ent yet famil­iar are the graph­ics. Bust-A-Move 2 has­n’t real­ly changed all that much in the looks depart­ment. There are some new graph­ics for the back­grounds dur­ing puz­zles, the char­ac­ters are more defined and the bub­bles them­selves are more crisp and deep­er hued to pop but that’s about it. It looks OK for an N64 puz­zle game, but there are oth­ers out there doing a lot more with the same con­sole resources, such as Mag­i­cal Tetris Challenge.

The sound­track is a lit­tle more bub­bly than the orig­i­nal but has a lit­tle less charm than the first game. The songs are slight­ly catchy, but not near­ly as mem­o­rable as the first game’s 16-bit organ-inspired schtick. How­ev­er, what you’ll real­ly notice that’s dif­fer­ent is the addi­tion of voic­es. Now, your char­ac­ter and the oppo­nents make a lit­tle noise when they achieve a com­bo. It’s cute, even with the shrill squawk­ing that shows up in the menu.

But let’s be hon­est, what you came here for was to learn if the puz­zle game­play is up to the stan­dard estab­lished by the first game. Yes, it is, and here’s why: Not much changed. No crazy weird mechan­ics shoe­horned in, no mis­steps in how the bub­bles bank or strange con­cepts cob­bled togeth­er (aside from the sticky plat­forms that inex­plic­a­bly start show­ing up halfway through the sto­ry mode) make appear­ances here. You can be rest assured that it’s the Bust-A-Move that we all know and love.

My beloved late GI Mama once declared Bust-A-Move a cheat­ing game while I was mol­ly whop­ping her in a ver­sus mode run. She said she’d see me in the sequel. Well, the sequel here is just enough jus­ti­fi­ca­tion to wait for that rematch in heav­en when my time comes. It’s noth­ing new but then again, some­times stick­ing with the estab­lish­ment is the best idea when it comes to bub­bles part deux.

Pokemon Puzzle League — Issue 46

Posted on by

Poké­mon Puz­zle League catch­es the best traits of Tetris Attack

The zenith of Poké­mon came rather star­tling and ear­ly, some­where in the heady days of 2000. After all, by then, Poké­mon was in the zeit­geist as a video game and cul­tur­al phe­nom­e­non. You could stick your arms out in any direc­tion and hit Poké­mon prod­ucts. So, it goes then, that the video game sphere received its share of the wealth after the ini­tial fer­vor wound down. At this point, how­ev­er, the Nin­ten­do 64 was on its last legs and received a few games bear­ing the Pock­et Mon­ster license. Out of that smoke arose Poké­mon Puz­zle League.

Poké­mon Puz­zle League isn’t a ter­ri­ble use of the license. Sure, it’s gra­tu­itous Poké­mon every­where, but it’s not a bad puz­zling game in gen­er­al. The premise is sim­ple: Take what you already know about Tetris Attack and slap Poké­mon on it. That’s all Poké­mon Puz­zle League is, and since Tetris Attack isn’t ter­ri­ble either, Puz­zle League ben­e­fits from a sol­id foun­da­tion. The mechan­ics remain the same except there’s Poké­mon involved, and the Poké­mon don’t real­ly affect any­thing beyond aesthetics. 

Poké­mon Puz­zle League feels like a Tetris Attack clone ought to feel. The puz­zling mechan­ics are tight and quick move­ment is clean and pre­cise, even with the wonky N64 con­troller. This is one of the first Tetris Attack clones pro­duced, but it car­ries on the tra­di­tion of tight, good puz­zling game­play well. There is a boun­ty of modes to play, includ­ing stan­dard 2D and 3D line clear­ing, a 1P sta­di­um mode and ver­sus. The vari­ety makes for a good rol­lick­ing time and fills up play­time with qual­i­ty offer­ings. And, I’d be remiss if I did­n’t say some­thing about the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el. If you’re not pre­pared and don’t under­stand the mechan­ics of Tetris Attack, you will get wrecked even on the easy lev­el. The AI does not play around and while it’s part of the charm of Puz­zle League, it can be daunt­ing to have to replay lev­els mul­ti­ple times on Nor­mal or even Easy dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el because the AI caught a lucky break.

But what you came here for, let’s be hon­est, is the Poké­mon pre­sen­ta­tion. Thank­ful­ly, this is the draw. It’s a buf­fet of Poké­mon-dom, with all of the ani­me favorite char­ac­ters thrown in as well as the main gym lead­ers and Elite Four from the games at high­er dif­fi­cul­ty lev­els. The Poké­mon rep­re­sent­ed here are all using the 4Kids voice­work and the ani­me art­style, so hope­ful­ly you like the ani­me enough that you don’t mind that it’s based on the Poké­mon Orig­i­nal Series gen­er­a­tions. The sound­track is appro­pri­ate­ly Poké­mon, which means the music is good. There are a few bangers on the sound­track that make it a must down­load, includ­ing most of the Team Rock­et themes, Lorelei’s theme, and Pro­fes­sor Oak’s theme. Despite this being car­tridge-based, Puz­zle League does­n’t skimp on the sound quality. 

Poké­mon Puz­zle League is a joy to learn and get seri­ous about even if you remote­ly like Tetris Attack. It’s got the Poké­mon aes­thet­ic from the suc­cess­ful ani­me and hand­held games, a nice Poké­mon-cen­tric sound­track and a fun, chal­leng­ing puz­zle mechan­ic that’s beg­ging to be explored. If you love Poké­mon and puz­zle games, cast your Mas­ter ball out to catch this one.

Beetle Adventure Racing — Issue 45

Posted on by

Adven­ture of a life­time races on the scene

Smooth with no chas­er. Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing is like a fine cognac: No filler, no BS. It’s just a fine rac­ing game fea­tur­ing the pop­u­lar-in-1999 redesigned Volk­swa­gen New Bee­tle. Like that cognac, it’s what you want in an expe­ri­ence, but you wish there was more at the end of the glass.
Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing, while short on sto­ry, is a rac­ing dream. There isn’t much to the sto­ry oth­er than you’re rac­ing against oth­er Bee­tle dri­vers on six var­ied tracks. There are sev­er­al modes includ­ing a time tri­al, cham­pi­onship and two-play­er duel, but that’s about it. You’re also rac­ing with only Bee­tles, though they vary in col­or with dif­fer­ent stats. There are two unlock­able Bee­tles, but that’s pret­ty much all there is in terms of rewards. The depth real­ly lies in the tracks and their nooks and cran­nies. There are a ton of secrets and short­cuts that help in the point-gath­er­ing modes or to shave time in the time tri­als, and that sort of makes up for the lack of every­thing else. Sort of.
While the rewards are sparse, the pre­sen­ta­tion is not. Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing looks and plays won­der­ful­ly. The envi­ron­ments look great for a Nin­ten­do 64 game and real­ly make the game pop over­all. And it also plays well. The rac­ing is smooth and lithe, mak­ing for a sat­is­fy­ing expe­ri­ence when tak­ing curves or final­ly land­ing a short­cut path.
Of spe­cial note is the sound­track. It’s only six tracks plus a few oth­er menu tunes, but this is a fan­tas­tic sound­track. The tracks work well with the rac­ing locales, and almost all of them are bangers. Our long­time favorite is Mount May­hem, the snow lodge moun­tain track. We’ve been bump­ing that as long as the game has been out in var­i­ous for­mats, and 24 years lat­er we con­tin­ue to do so. It’s that good and comes with high praise.
Our only caveat with Bee­tle Adven­ture Rac­ing is that the dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el is slight­ly out of bal­ance. It could use some tweak­ing so that you see the lat­er rac­ing tracks a lit­tle more often. Giv­en that it’s hard to find some of the point box­es on the tracks and you need them in order to earn con­tin­ues, it should be eas­i­er to obtain for the lat­ter por­tions of the game.
Aside from the pun­ish­ing dif­fi­cul­ty, the game is prac­ti­cal­ly per­fect. There isn’t much to feast on, but when you can feast it’s among if not the best rac­ing game on the N64. It’s a heck of an adven­ture whether you’re a Bee­tle enthu­si­ast or not. V dub or bust.

Killer Instinct Gold — Issue 38

Posted on by

A killer Nin­ten­do 64 fight­ing sequel

It’s not been that long ago that Killer Instinct was still being rec­og­nized in the top ech­e­lon of fight­ing game series. But that was then, and this is now, and folks have a crit­i­cal eye toward the lega­cy of the defunct series. What folks real­ly want to know: Where does KI Gold – the 2.5 sequel game – appear in that legacy?

I’m old enough to remem­ber the launch of KI2 and then Gold for the Nin­ten­do 64 in 1996. I was heav­i­ly into fight­ing games then, still stick­ing with Mor­tal Kom­bat and look­ing for some­thing new to sup­ple­ment that fight­ing game itch. Enter Gold, which is an upgrade of KI2 for the home mar­ket. It’s a slight uptick in graph­ics, music and tweaks over the arcade ver­sion. The upgrades make it the bet­ter ver­sion of the game and push it toward must-have sta­tus for the N64.

Con­trol-wise, KI Gold is easy to pick up and a lot more acces­si­ble than its pre­de­ces­sor. For con­text, I bare­ly under­stood the com­bo sys­tem of the first game, but by the time Gold came along, I could hold my own against oth­er KI mas­ters, such as long­time friend of GI David Rhodes. If I could actu­al­ly win some rounds and every so often match­es against him, that’s evi­dence that the sys­tem is improved for casu­al fans. The con­cept of link­ers and chain com­bos made much more sense with a lit­tle in-game expla­na­tion, so this made the learn­ing process a lot eas­i­er to grasp. The change in sys­tems was the best in terms of accessibility.

Gold’s graph­ics are a slight improve­ment over the arcade ver­sion and even more so over the orig­i­nal game. But, in com­par­i­son to oth­er games on the mar­ket at the time, Gold doesn’t hold up par­tic­u­lar­ly well. Putting it along­side oth­er games avail­able at the same time, such as Tekken 2, doesn’t bode well for Gold. In par­tic­u­lar, there are janky tex­tures that snag and tear in the back­ground envi­ron­ments, which detracts from the oth­er­wise sol­id char­ac­ter models.

The sound­track, much like the pre­vi­ous game, car­ries the bur­den for the rest of the game. Rare’s sound depart­ment was known for pump­ing out good music, and Gold’s sound­track has quite a few bangers. It’s a lot of hard rock and a few tech­no tracks thrown in for good mea­sure, but it still holds up. In par­tic­u­lar, the char­ac­ter select theme – which was re-cre­at­ed for the 2013 revival of the series – is a toe-tap­per and still sounds fan­tas­tic on mod­ern sound systems.

But, the per­ti­nent ques­tion still remains: Where does Gold rank in fight­ing game genre lega­cy? It depends. If you care about flashy com­bos and aren’t too much of a tech­ni­cal con­tent fight­ing purist, Gold is prob­a­bly your fan­cy. It’s got enough to draw the casu­al fan in, but it’s light on the tech­ni­cal aspect of fight­ing games that the long­time purist would be look­ing for. It’s fun to play and revis­it from time to time, but if you’re look­ing to get bogged down in frame data and dig a lit­tle deep­er, Gold isn’t going to be your col­or. Your best bet is to look to the future of the series, and let this instinct die out.

Magical Tetris Challenge — 1Q2017 issue

Posted on by
Reply

When Tetris and Dis­ney col­lide

Mess­ing with an old and uni­ver­sal­ly loved favorite such as Tetris is a risky propo­si­tion. You can get it right or mess it up hor­ri­bly, where it is for­ev­er known as the “messed up ver­sion of Tetris.” Luck­i­ly, Mag­i­cal Tetris Chal­lenge by Cap­com man­ages to dodge that label and add a few ele­ments to the main game to refresh an old­er title.

Mag­i­cal Tetris is, at its core, a fun game with lots of charm to spread around. There are mul­ti­ple modes to choose from and the vari­ety helps the replay fac­tor long after the nov­el­ty of com­bo­ing wears off. The sto­ry mode is the oth­er mode most played at GI, and is based off the new Mag­i­cal Tetris mode. While I’m not fond of the cliffhang­er by dif­fi­cul­ty lev­el method, the sto­ry is ser­vice­able and moves the action for­ward with a nice added Dis­ney touch. Main­stays such as Mick­ey, Min­nie, Don­ald and Goofy fill out the cast, though you can only play as these four.

Mag­i­cal Tetris earns its bread and but­ter in the way it builds on the Tetris for­mu­la. With Tetris in the name and designed to appeal to a mass audi­ence using that, Mag­i­cal Tetris starts out with the basics: Cre­ate and clear lines using sev­en let­ter-shaped pieces. Clear four lines and you get a Tetris.

Ah, but here­in lies the addi­tions to Mag­i­cal Tetris and where the basics end and advanced play begins: For every line cleared, a small amount of ener­gy is added to a mag­ic meter. Fill up the mag­ic meter and you get what we’ve termed at GI as a break­down: All pieces restruc­ture to cre­ate a neat space and a large por­tion of the well where your pieces fall is wiped clean. Also, clear­ing lines cre­ates com­bos, which can be coun­tered until a piece is shaped 10 by 10. Com­bos and coun­ters cre­ates a back and forth, dur­ing which odd­ly shaped pieces are cre­at­ed and fall into the play field. By set­ting up the pieces in a decent shape in your well, you can achieve what is called a pen­tris, or five lines cleared
simul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

Com­bo­ing and coun­ter­ing makes the game­play fun and adds an increas­ing lev­el of com­pet­i­tive­ness and urgency to every match. Even if you’re not the most Tetris-com­pe­tent gamer, Mag­i­cal Tetris does an excel­lent job invit­ing all skill lev­els in to learn and get bet­ter. The basics are quick­ly explained and the advanced tech­niques are made plain as you go along. That helps in the fran­tic atmos­phere of a spir­it­ed two-play­er human match, where any­thing and usu­al­ly every­thing can happen.

The game shines in its visu­als, which ben­e­fit from that Dis­ney touch. The game is bright and col­or­ful and designed in the way of Dis­ney games and ani­ma­tion, mean­ing it’s top-notch through and through. The graph­ics are still good for an N64-era game and haven’t aged bad­ly. The sound­track has aged well, too, and is still one of the best of the era. Each character’s stage is mem­o­rably themed and stands out enough for you to remem­ber it well after your game is over.
Hav­ing played the major­i­ty of the Tetris spin­offs and cre­ations out on the mar­ket for the past 30 years, I need to have some­thing that push­es me to play. Mag­i­cal Tetris suc­ceeds in adding to the Tetris for­mu­la just enough to buy its way in to my library and stick around through charm and abil­i­ty. This is an excel­lent Tetris spin job.

Mario Kart 64 — 1Q2016 issue

Posted on by
Reply

Mario Kart’s grow­ing pains

Mario Kart has always been an inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence. Com­bin­ing go-kart­ing and Mario has and is a recipe for suc­cess for Nin­ten­do, quite hon­est­ly. And, by the time Nin­ten­do got around to mak­ing the sequel to the smash hit Super Mario Kart, they knew they had a sure­fire mas­sive hit on their hands. 
Mario Kart 64 takes every­thing you loved about the first game and immea­sur­ably increas­es it. The Mario char­ac­ters, the tracks, the secrets; every­thing about Mario Kart 64 is bet­ter than the orig­i­nal in every respect. Dri­ving has improved with bet­ter steer­ing qual­i­ties for all char­ac­ters includ­ing the bonafied intro­duc­tion of pow­er­s­lid­ing. Mas­ter­ing pow­er­s­lid­ing means a world of dif­fer­ence in race times, espe­cial­ly when you have brag­ging rights at stake. Old mechan­ics, such as the weight class con­cept, are still present but it seems every­one has a bet­ter rep­re­sen­ta­tion with respect to how a class real­ly con­trols. The light­weights feel like, well, light­weights. The heavy­weights actu­al­ly feel like they’re heavy to handle.
While I’m an admit­ted long-term Mario Kart afi­ciona­do, I have to admit that if you’re going to get into Mario Kart, this is the title to do so with. It’s not hard to pick up MK64 and grasp the mechan­ics. It’s also easy to play with friends who under­stand the nuances of Mario Kart so that you’re not left behind for very long. And it’s the play­ing with oth­ers that makes this one of the best par­ty games ever cre­at­ed. MK64 has Bat­tle Mode as its ace in the hole and it makes it one of the first quin­tes­sen­tial par­ty games, along­side Gold­en­eye, Super Smash Bros. and Mario Party.
With all that it has going for it, how­ev­er, there a few minor draw­backs. First, if rub­ber band AI both­ers you, this is not the game for you. MK64’s AI is one of the worst offend­ers of the rub­ber band­ing prac­tice and it gets worse as you go through the sin­gle play­er race cam­paign. Com­bine that with the pun­ish­ing dif­fi­cul­ty of 100cc and 150cc races and you have a frus­trat­ing, con­troller-throw­ing mess. Sec­ond, this is the sec­ond game after Mario 64 where Mario char­ac­ters are vocal­ized. I promise you will get tired of hear­ing char­ac­ters say their favorite phrase long before you fin­ish any of the modes. It gets old quick­ly and makes one wish they could turn the sound off, except that you’ll real­ize quick­ly that the sound­track is actu­al­ly great. This, how­ev­er, is the game that turned me against Mario char­ac­ters talking.
Mario Kart 64 is polar­iz­ing to some play­ers: Some think it’s one of the great­est kart rac­ing games ever made while oth­ers hate it. I tend to be in the mid­dle; it’s a great entry in the kart rac­ing genre, but there are some fair­ly major quirks with how it plays to throw a wrench into things. I like to think that the fun and the qual­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with Mario Kart boosts it out of the mid­dle of the pack.

Super Mario 64 — 1Q2016 issue

Posted on by
Reply

Mar­i­o’s great­est evolution 

Most of the gam­ing world would agree that Super Mario 64 is one of the great­est games of all time. I would agree also except for two things: First, the game gives me a tremen­dous headache after about 10 min­utes of play; and, sec­ond, I’m not like most people.
See, where I have a prob­lem with Mario 64 is where most peo­ple don’t have a prob­lem. Don’t get me wrong; I love the leap for­ward that presents itself as soon as you boot up the game for the first time. I was — and still am — in awe of the won­der­ment that is see­ing Mario in 3D after play­ing 2D Mario games for the major­i­ty of my gam­ing career. How­ev­er, I’m not in con­cert with the idea that it’s one of the great­est games of all time. Why? Just because it was the first to ful­ly real­ize a for­mer­ly 2D char­ac­ter in 3D splen­dor? Because it’s Mario and just because it’s Mario? 
No, I can’t form my opin­ion or even include the game in the con­ver­sa­tion of great­est game of all time just because of any of those things. There has to be some valid rea­son­ing and while there are some great points for it, I’m not sold 100 percent.
Mario 64, graph­i­cal­ly, is steps ahead of almost every­thing for the Nin­ten­do 64. Note that I said almost. 
Most games don’t hold a can­dle to Mario in ful­ly real­ized 3D and, even with his polyg­o­nal block style as with most ear­ly N64 games, Mario still looks like a king. Peach’s Palace is inter­est­ing­ly laid out and the graph­i­cal qual­i­ty of the cas­tle still blows away the com­pe­ti­tion 20 years lat­er. Watch­ing Mario run around, run and jump and be Mario but in a non-2D sprite is pure heav­en for Mario lovers like myself. 
But there’s that block­i­ness that I men­tioned before. It’s obvi­ous through­out and can be jar­ring from time to time. And for motion sick­ness suf­fer­ers like myself, the 3D is nigh unbear­able. It’s all I can do not to vom­it after 20 min­utes, so my play­time is imme­di­ate­ly lim­it­ed because of the visu­als. I should not be want­i­ng to vom­it after play­ing a Mario game.
The sound­track makes up for the ill­ness-induc­ing game­play. The sound­track is fan­tas­tic and it’s wor­thy of a main­line Mario game, eas­i­ly. From run­ning around in the plains of Bob-omb Bat­tle­field to tra­vers­ing numer­ous obsta­cles to take on the King of the Koopas, Mario 64 is a dream come true in terms of audio pleasure. 
And, this is, after all, the first com­mer­cial game where Mario actu­al­ly speaks. It’s a joy to hear him squeal and squawk for the first time as he explores the var­i­ous worlds. 
With all of my neg­a­tive sen­ti­ments about the leap from 2D to 3D for Mario, I still appre­ci­ate the mas­ter­piece that is Mario 64. Ground­break­ing and simul­ta­ne­ous­ly frustrating? 
Yes. But it’s frus­tra­tion worth hav­ing even if it takes a tum­ble down my list of great­est games ever.

Paper Mario — 1Q2016 issue

Posted on by
Reply

A ser­vice­able tale on paper

The moment you know Mario has gone on too many adven­tures is when you know you’ve played way too much Mario. Paper Mario, the sequel to the hard-to-top Super Mario RPG, is when I knew I’d played way too much Mario and seemed to expect way too much from a Mario game. The joke, how­ev­er, was on me as I real­ized that an in-depth and long adven­ture await­ed, and a sto­ry was to be told here that need­ed to be told after the high­light of RPG.
Paper Mario starts out much like any oth­er Mario game: The princess has been kid­napped and Mario needs to save her. How­ev­er, there’s a twist in the danse macabre that is Mario and Bowser’s eter­nal strug­gle over Peach. Bows­er has man­aged to get his hands on the Star Rod, impris­ons most of the wish-grant­i­ng com­mu­ni­ty and has lit­er­al­ly abscond­ed with Peach and her court into the sky. This is the point at which you should be say­ing, “Real­ly Bows­er? You just helped save your uni­verse in RPG and you’re back to cre­at­ing prob­lems again?” But, nev­er­the­less, the sto­ry must go on and Paper Mario fills that void nice­ly with an engag­ing tale of team­work and cama­raderie. I was most impressed with the depth of the char­ac­ters and the deft way Intel­li­gent Sys­tems fleshed out the world of Mario and some of his nev­er-before-seen allies who come from all walks of the Mario life. 
Anoth­er impres­sive part of the tale is the tongue-in-cheek humor sprin­kled lib­er­al­ly through­out. Paper Mario isn’t afraid to be self-ref­er­en­tial or pinch off oth­er games when it calls for shak­ing up the rou­tine “Mario saves Peach” bit. 
Spoil­ers ahead: There is a sec­tion that calls for a cer­tain princess to become a vir­tu­al Sol­id Snake-like char­ac­ter and it imme­di­ate­ly calls forth images of Met­al Gear Sol­id. That kind of bor­row­ing is the kind of thing that’s allowed and plays well with­in the con­text that Mario is the king of all that he sur­veys and even in his spin­off titles, he can still run with the best of the best, pay homage and still come out smelling like roses.
In his sec­ond RPG out­ing, Mario still plays just as well as his first attempt in the role-play­ing sphere. Paper looks like and plays out like a sto­ry­book, which is fresh and invit­ing to old diehards like myself. The mechan­ics are sim­ple to learn and are lay­ered enough that an expe­ri­enced RPGer can jump right in and under­stand what’s going on with­out much explanation. 
If you played the first game, con­cepts such as timed defense, timed offense and first hits will make sense. It’s that kind of ref­er­enc­ing that makes the game a suc­cess: It’s easy to pick up and play, regard­less of your lev­el of famil­iar­i­ty with the series’ system.
My main gripe, though, is that the game feels sprawl­ing and slight­ly dis­joint­ed at times. That’s a great prob­lem to have actu­al­ly, but there are times when back­track­ing and the seem­ing­ly end­less sid­e­quests tend to dis­tract from the main goal. Still, I’d rather have that prob­lem than be bored with noth­ing to sup­port the main story. 
Also, as a rather nit­picky side gripe, the final boss fight is one of the most aggra­vat­ing fights I have ever experienced. 
I was eas­i­ly in that bat­tle for half an hour sole­ly because of the boss’ abil­i­ty to heal, not because I was doing any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly wrong. If, at the end of the bat­tle, I say, “I will nev­er fight this end bat­tle again,” there is a prob­lem there. 
It was as if it was pro­tract­ed and drawn out for the sake of being a hard boss battle. 
My issues aside, though, I had an engag­ing and mem­o­rable time play­ing through and I couldn’t wait to work through a new chap­ter in the saga that was Paper Mario. This is a tale you lit­er­al­ly can’t put down.