Category Archives: Retrograde

Track & Field II — 3Q2015 issue

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Spir­it of an Olympic champion

Hear­ing the name Track & Field II eas­i­ly cre­ates pow­er­ful nos­tal­gia in me. I was a young girl learn­ing the ins and outs of an NES in 1989 when my old­er broth­er, Tony, brought home the Olympic con­test title. It was the last year that we lived in the same house and had time to sit down and play video games togeth­er. That was the year that I learned what it meant to duel an old­er sib­ling who had far bet­ter hand-and-eye coor­di­na­tion and reflex­es and why teenagers seem to do much bet­ter at games than lit­tle kids.
I’m no Olympic ath­lete so I’d rather try my hand at the dig­i­tal ver­sions. Track & Field II offers a vir­tu­al boun­ty of events from which to choose, and all of them are pret­ty faith­ful­ly recre­at­ed from their orig­i­nal coun­ter­parts. There are 12 events to choose from, with three that can be cho­sen in dif­fer­ent modes or as spe­cial events.
The events, rang­ing from hur­dles to gym­nas­tics and swim­ming, are fun to try but frus­trat­ing to learn the nuances. It took con­sul­ta­tion with Tony, an NES Max con­troller and many years to get the hang of cer­tain events. This is most­ly because there wasn’t a lot of info out there in the days before the Inter­net and because, again, I had ter­ri­ble untrained coor­di­na­tion and reflex­es. Even today, with a wealth of tips out there, it’s still hard to get a bull’s‑eye in the archery, and it’s been near­ly 30 years. Graph­i­cal­ly, there’s a few things to look at, espe­cial­ly for an NES title. It’s not going to set the world on fire but the graph­ics are fine for the time peri­od and don’t detract from the over­all experience.
The music, while not espe­cial­ly mem­o­rable, is still ser­vice­able. It’s not some­thing you’re going to be hum­ming well after you’ve put down that tur­bo con­troller, but it’s not bad, either. A lot of the tracks are well done and fit the gen­er­al mood of the event you’re par­tic­i­pat­ing in. There are a lot of sound effects in the game and they are gen­er­al­ly what make the game what it is.
The nos­tal­gic fac­tor is what keeps me com­ing back to what is a gen­er­al­ly frus­trat­ing game. That nos­tal­gia is what turns a poten­tial­ly con­troller-throw­ing hur­dles event into a first-place tri­umph over a noto­ri­ous­ly hard A.I. that likes to pun­ish at every chance.
It’s my chance to feel like the Olympic cham­pi­on that I will nev­er be.

Donkey Kong Jr. — 3Q2015 issue

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Like father, like son

I don’t believe there is any­one who reads GI who doesn’t know that I don’t care for Don­key Kong. By now, it should be painful­ly obvi­ous that I don’t care for the simian’s retro exploits or his more recent out­ings, either. It’s not that I don’t respect what the great ape has done for gam­ing; it’s more that I feel he gets cred­it for mediocre-to-hor­ri­ble games. Don­key Kong Jr. falls on the low­er end of the spectrum.
Much the same tripe as the orig­i­nal, you’re tasked with sav­ing some­one by mov­ing across hell and high water. But wait, this time it’s dif­fer­ent! No, you aren’t sav­ing Pauline this time around; no, you’re Don­key Kong Jr., the scion of Kong­dom sav­ing your incor­ri­gi­ble father from the clutch­es of evil human Mario. The fact that anoth­er ape has to save his parental fig­ure from Mario in a com­plete role rever­sal begs sev­er­al ques­tions: Where was Junior when his father was kid­nap­ping inno­cent maid­ens and run­ning ram­pant? Why would Mario even both­er to kid­nap the great ape in the first place? Sure, there’s the motive of revenge, but you’re nev­er going to get your ques­tion answered, try as you might. You just have to accept that DK needs sav­ing and it’s up to you, his reli­able off­spring, to do the job.
Hop­ing that your adven­ture in sav­ing your father is worth it, the game tasks you in uti­liz­ing a jump­ing and climb­ing mechan­ic that may or may not work, depend­ing on where you are height wise. Any fall more than a few pix­els high will kill you, which makes about as much sense as the kid­nap­ping caper you seem to be embroiled in. Who­ev­er had the bright idea to make jump­ing a chore and maneu­ver­ing your ape around impos­si­ble obvi­ous­ly didn’t get that this was a bad design deci­sion imme­di­ate­ly. See­ing as though they are the only skills your ape has, it would have been a lit­tle bit wis­er to make those work well.
Instead, you’ll watch Junior repeat­ed­ly get eat­en alive by croc­o­diles (we’re not sure why a plumber would employ these dan­ger­ous live crea­tures to kill an ape), nailed by ran­dom falling objects and fall to his obvi­ous and hor­rif­ic death, all because he’s under­de­vel­oped at jump­ing and climbing.
And while you’re wit­ness­ing this obvi­ous act of poach­ing, it’d be wise to use some head­phones. The music, much like the orig­i­nal game, isn’t the great­est and it will get monot­o­nous imme­di­ate­ly. Don­key Kong Coun­try this isn’t.
Your best bet is to try the game just for the nos­tal­gic fac­tor in see­ing a pret­ty rare char­ac­ter; Junior was last seen, by my count, in Super Mario Kart for the SNES. He isn’t putting in too many oth­er appear­ances and maybe, just maybe, it was this trip out of the jun­gle that con­vinced him to let his father do all of the adven­tur­ing in the fam­i­ly. This bar­rel isn’t full of laughs or a blast.

Shiritsu Justice Gakuen: Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2 — 2Q2015 issue

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Rival Schools 1.5 is still fun

We here at GI are strong pro­po­nents of any­thing Japan­ese, fight­ing games and edu­ca­tion. So, you can imag­ine the delight that is a gen­er­ous mix of all three. To that end, it should be obvi­ous by now that we love Rival Schools and its over­all series Project Jus­tice. Despite the fact that it comes from the brain trust known as Cap­com, we’re still entranced by the con­cept of Japan­ese high school stu­dents fight­ing to save themselves.

The mid­dle game in the series, Rival Schools 2, is an inter­est­ing addi­tion to the fam­i­ly of fight­ing games. It’s nei­ther a true sequel nor a spin-off of the orig­i­nal game. It’s an adden­dum, which Cap­com is noto­ri­ous for push­ing on the gen­er­al buy­ing pub­lic. It’s more of the orig­i­nal game — which we love — with some upgrades thrown in to make it worth import­ing. This ver­sion was nev­er released in Amer­i­ca, thus there are modes that you will nev­er see. That makes import­ing the game worth the time and trouble.

RS2 is your stan­dard fight­ing game, which does­n’t make it unique. How­ev­er, the inclu­sion of the board game mode and the char­ac­ter cre­ation mode that plays out like an eroge sim­u­la­tion are some of the good­ies that we’re miss­ing out on in the U.S. There’s also the addi­tion of three new char­ac­ters: Ran, a pho­to­jour­nal­ist who uses her cam­era to attack; Nagare, a swim­mer; and, Chairperson/Iinciyo, who leads the charge for Taiyo High School stu­dents to defend them­selves. Oth­er than these gifts, there’s not much dif­fer­ent here than the first game. You’re still fight­ing to defend your cho­sen school, and there’s still fun to be had in a slight­ly deep fight­ing game sys­tem. There’s not too much dif­fer­ent aes­thet­ics-wise, in that there are a few new stages and new stage themes. The old­er stages are still here and it’s fun to play against the new­com­ers with old­er char­ac­ters or a cre­at­ed character.

I have two caveats with rec­om­mend­ing the game to oth­ers. The first is the fact that it’s in Japan­ese most­ly and read­ing is a must to get through the char­ac­ter cre­ation and board game modes. That’s a bit much if you’re not into the lan­guage or know enough to nav­i­gate through menus. The oth­er issue is the fact that, as usu­al, Cap­com has seen fit to deny Amer­i­can gamers the best of a series, short­chang­ing loy­al mon­ey-spend­ing fans who would pay a high price for the good­ies of the char­ac­ter cre­ation mode and the board game mode. The dirty truth of it all is Cap­com has nev­er thought high­ly of its Amer­i­can audi­ence. We’re not going to see some­thing awe­some like either mode because “we just would­n’t get it any­way.” A fun fact is that both modes were to be includ­ed in the first game but were left out in Amer­i­ca because it would have been too much trou­ble to include them for Amer­i­cans, accord­ing to Cap­com of Japan. But we’re smart enough to make cash grabs off of for mul­ti­ple ver­sion of Street Fight­er, though, right?

The moral of this sto­ry is that Rival Schools and its fur­ther sequels all deserve to be played by a wider audi­ence. Although it’s a slight rehash of the first game, RS2 was deserv­ing of respect and a prop­er intro­duc­tion to the Amer­i­can audi­ence. Thank­ful­ly, we were allowed to see the next sequel, Project Jus­tice. Here’s hop­ing for a class reunion.

DDR Max Dance Dance Revolution 6th Mix — 2Q2015 issue

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A new era of DDR

Let’s have a quick his­to­ry review, shall we? Kon­a­mi cre­at­ed the Dance Dance Rev­o­lu­tion series in 1998 and by 2002, there were at least six entries in the main series. I’d gath­er that this meant DDR was pret­ty pop­u­lar, but you would nev­er hear Kon­a­mi say that too loud. At some point, how­ev­er, some­one real­ized the mag­ic that was DDR need­ed to come into the mod­ern era. So, every­thing that was relat­ed to the first five entries in the series — with the excep­tion of the song wheel and dif­fi­cul­ty cat­e­gories — was thrown out in favor of a com­plete over­haul. DDR Max was the result and with it comes a mixed bag of mod­ern and old DDR.

Graph­i­cal­ly, Max rep­re­sents the begin­ning of a new era. Sure, it resem­bles cur­rent DDR games because they use the song wheel, but the col­ors became a lit­tle brighter and the lit­tle touch­es used to illus­trate the dif­fer­ent dif­fi­cul­ties and cat­e­gories are empha­sized more. The inter­face is much eas­i­er to read, though the addi­tion of the Groove Radar still has some ways to go here. It’s not exact­ly help­ful in pro­vid­ing digestible infor­ma­tion that helps make quick informed deci­sions. That’s a com­plaint that still stands today, so much so that I tend to ignore the meter alto­geth­er. Also, the foot rat­ing is miss­ing and song dif­fi­cul­ty rat­ing num­bers have yet to come (that’s not until Max 2). But the song wheel has been fresh­ened up so it looks a lot bet­ter and is a lit­tle more palatable.

Musi­cal­ly, the selec­tion is among the best in the series. The one thing about Max that’s notable about the music is the lack of a Para­noia mix. For a series trade­mark song, its absence is imme­di­ate­ly notice­able, and quite frankly, drags the mix down a few notch­es. There’s a few throw away songs like Share My Love and Dive, but over­all it’s quite a few excel­lent choic­es thrown togeth­er to make a good song list. The vari­ety is nice and it feels like a good fresh start for a series that had a lot of repeats in the first five games.

I don’t go back and play 6th Mix often, most­ly because I can’t deal with a lack of Para­noia in my life at this point. As a DDR old head and one who owns the Amer­i­can ver­sion as well as the Japan­ese ver­sion, I applaud the change up that Kon­a­mi pur­sued. It was a bold move that paid off in the long run: DDR still looks like a lot like this form, even with at least eight more games under its belt as a series. Some­times, a change in pace is need­ed to keep the dance groove going.

DanceDance Rev­o­lu­tion trivia

* DDR Max is the first game to fea­ture a 10-foot dif­fi­cul­ty song. Max 300 was offi­cial­ly the first 10-foot­er in the his­to­ry of the series, though it would­n’t receive its offi­cial rat­ing until Max 2 was released.

* Max 300, the boss song of the mix, fea­tures 573 steps in its Heavy dif­fi­cul­ty chart. 573 is known as the Kon­a­mi num­ber, a num­ber that relates to the roman­ized pro­nun­ci­a­tion of the com­pa­ny’s name.

* Max is the first DDR game to fea­ture the Light/Standard/Heavy dif­fi­cul­ty scheme, dance point sys­tem, speed mods, Extra Stage/One More Extra Stage and freeze arrows. The dif­fi­cul­ty scheme would stay in place until the release of DDR Super­NO­VA in 2006.

* Two songs intro­duced in the mix, Flash in the Night and Fol­low Me, are the only two songs in the series that do not have an offi­cial foot rat­ing. These two songs were intro­duced in 6th Mix, which is the only mix that does not use the foot rat­ing sys­tem. They have nev­er appeared in lat­er mix­es, which gave offi­cial Kon­a­mi num­bered rat­ings to all songs.

Midway Arcade Treasures 2 — 1Q2015 issue

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A most­ly for­get­table trea­sure trove

We’re going to use the term trea­sure trove loose­ly when I refer to Mid­way Arcade Trea­sures 2. Sure, there are some dia­monds in the mine that was once Mid­way and its arcade hits. But some­times, as demon­strat­ed ably in this pack­age, Mid­way dug just a lit­tle too deep to find things that I would­n’t trade for a seashell and some glass beads.

Mid­way Arcade Trea­sures 2 fol­lows in the vein of the pre­vi­ous title, min­ing for hits out of the ver­i­ta­ble Taj Mahal that is Mid­way’s cat­a­log of arcade favorites. The sec­ond go-round imme­di­ate­ly catch­es the eye — and wal­let — for ver­sions of Mor­tal Kom­bat II and Mor­tal Kom­bat 3, arguably the cen­ter­piece in the entire show. Fol­low­ing up those pieces are less­er hits such as Pri­mal Rage, APB and Ram­page World Tour. The entire com­pi­la­tion is made up of 20 titles, which is a bar­gain for the amount of games you’re get­ting. Whether you want to play all 20 titles or not is the ques­tion and it’s eas­i­ly answered quick­ly: No.

A few of the titles includ­ed imme­di­ate­ly dredge up hor­ri­ble mem­o­ries. These drecks of mod­ern gam­ing soci­ety have been res­ur­rect­ed, and I’m not exact­ly sure for whose ben­e­fit. Hard Dri­vin’, men­tioned and dis­sect­ed in GI’s hor­ri­ble games pod­cast of yes­ter­year, is the worst offend­er of the bunch. I have no earth­ly idea who thought this was an arcade clas­sic and why it need­ed to be thrust upon the mass­es again. It was a hor­ri­ble game to begin with and deserves no fur­ther dis­cus­sion or inclu­sion to rean­i­mate it from the depths of hell where it belongs (Edi­tor’s Note: Fun fac­toid — Hard Dri­vin’ pro­vid­ed the basis for GI’s Tor­ture of the Quar­ter col­umn). N.A.R.C. also war­rants a men­tion as a title to avoid, as well as Pri­mal Rage. Let’s face it, Pri­mal Rage was tout­ed as com­pe­ti­tion for the likes of Mor­tal Kom­bat, Street Fight­er and Killer Instinct back in the day, but no one with any sense ever took it seri­ous­ly. The game does­n’t inspire any new feel­ings of doing so after 20 years.

With the inclu­sion of hideous titles, there will be some con­trol issues. The good news is that most titles play like they did when first released. The bad news is that some “improve­ments” have done just the oppo­site of their inten­tion. Let’s take, for exam­ple, Mor­tal Kom­bat II. Because of “new-and-improved” con­trol map­ping, it is impos­si­ble to fight hid­den char­ac­ter Smoke in all ver­sions except the PC ver­sion, and it takes a patch to fix that. That drags the over­all expe­ri­ence down con­sid­er­ably. Con­tin­u­ing with the Mor­tal Kom­bat exam­ple, Mor­tal Kom­bat 3 runs just like the arcade. Except, the arcade ver­sion of MK 3 was ter­ri­ble, with a lot of bugs and glitch­es that neces­si­tat­ed the much-bet­ter Ulti­mate MK3. It’s a mixed bag: On the one hand you’re get­ting improved con­trols and mod­ern advance­ments, but on the oth­er hand, these changes aren’t exact­ly welcome.
What is wel­come, how­ev­er, is the inclu­sion of the behind-the-scenes mate­r­i­al. Doc­u­men­taries and mak­ing-of mate­ri­als are includ­ed as bonus fea­tures for a few games, most notably Mor­tal Kom­bat II and Mor­tal Kom­bat 3. If you were an MK fanat­ic, these are inter­est­ing looks at the fran­chise at the height of its ini­tial pop­u­lar­i­ty. If you’re won­der­ing what the hype was about, it’s a great look at the ori­gin of the series and where ideas and mythol­o­gy were cre­at­ed. The bonus mate­ri­als for all games includ­ed are worth buy­ing if you’re into the arcade scene and its history.

Whether you deem this col­lec­tion worth your time depends on how ded­i­cat­ed you are to the preser­va­tion of the U.S. arcade scene. If you’re a purist and you care about obscure games such as Wiz­ard of Wor and Xybots, by all means go out and search for the trea­sure. Oth­er­wise, let this boo­by-trapped box stay hidden.

Devil May Cry — 1Q2015 issue

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Cap­com’s instant action plat­form­ing classic

In pre­vi­ous install­ments of Otaku Cor­ner, I reviewed man­ga based on Cap­com’s Dev­il May Cry. Ever since DMC’s arrival in 2001, it has grown from a crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed series to writ­ten and visu­al adap­ta­tions in comics, writ­ten nov­els and oth­er var­i­ous mer­chan­dise. Orig­i­nal­ly set in the Res­i­dent Evil uni­verse, because of tech­nol­o­gy restraints and an expand­ing reverse sto­ry­line from Res­i­dent Evil, the series was port­ed to the PlaySta­tion 2. Hav­ing enjoyed expe­ri­enc­ing the man­ga’s action, I won­dered if I would feel the same when I played the first DMC game? I was about to find out.

Dev­il May Cry has ele­ments that are sim­i­lar to Res­i­dent Evil; the only dif­fer­ence is that you will be deal­ing with super­nat­ur­al ene­mies instead of those who were cre­at­ed by uneth­i­cal sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­ments. You assume the role of Dante, a demon hunter/investigator who uses his skills to exer­cise demons for prof­it and to avenge the loss of his fam­i­ly from said crea­tures. One night while work­ing, Dante is hired by a mys­te­ri­ous woman named Trish, who after a brief but amaz­ing test of Dan­te’s skill, hires him to go to an aban­doned cas­tle where Mundus, the demon who is respon­si­ble for the death of Dan­te’s fam­i­ly, is plan­ning a return from hell. Unknown to our badass hero, he has tak­en on a a job that starts out as an oppor­tu­ni­ty for vengeance, but soon will unlock an ancient birthright and his true des­tiny as mankind’s newest pro­tec­tor against demon­ic forces.

Game­play in DMC is a com­plete 180 from Res­i­dent Evil as the bat­tle style is more melee com­bat that run­ning and hid­ing from zom­bies. I found the con­trols pret­ty easy to use, thanks to the ana­log sticks that allow plen­ty of free move­ment to jump and take full advan­tage of Dan­te’s sweet com­bat moves. You will love it when Dante gets to busi­ness imme­di­ate­ly with use of his twin hand­guns that can infict dam­age rapid-fire style and his awsome­ly designed sword Alas­tor that can be upgrad­ed to unlock new attacks. He also has a BIG trump card to real­ly make the demons howl with the use of “Dev­il Trig­gers” (think Goku or Veg­e­ta going Super Saiyan with an arse­nal of weapons and being in god mode).

The graph­ics are beau­ti­ful as Cap­com devel­oped a great game engine and made great use of the PS2’s tech­no­log­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties to bring out the action with­out using the god-awful cam­era angles found in Res­i­dent Evil. I per­son­al­ly liked how each cutscene brought DMC’s sto­ry­line togeth­er with­out any over-the-top dra­ma. The ene­my vari­ety is good, too, rang­ing from demon mar­i­onettes to giant owls and oth­er demon­ic crea­tures. I enjoyed the voice act­ing because it was not forced, flow­ing in sync with the game’s plot. I am proud to say that I would def­i­nite­ly replay this game when I’m feel­ing like I want to rip some demons apart.

Dev­il May Cry is a stand­out orig­i­nal game that is wor­thy of its praise from gam­ing crit­ics the world over. I find this anoth­er tes­ti­mo­ny to the fact that Cap­com can do them­selves and their cus­tomers jus­tice by being true to their craft. I was pleased with my first DMC gam­ing expe­ri­ence and await more in future install­ments of this series.

Mega Man X5 — 4Q2014 issue

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Pho­tos cour­tesy of http://www.GamesPress.com

Duo team attack finish

MMX5 takes place sev­er­al months after the events in Mega Man X4, dur­ing which the giant space colony Eura­sia has been tak­en over by an unknown reploid known as Dynamo as it was under­go­ing exten­sive repairs. As a result, a com­put­er virus infect­ed Eurasi­a’s grav­i­ty con­trol sys­tems, send­ing it on a col­li­sion course with Earth. At the same time, Sig­ma and his new band of Mav­er­icks have tak­en con­trol of var­i­ous areas that have equip­ment capa­ble of pre­vent­ing Eurasi­a’s fall, and he has also launched his own virus across the globe. X and Zero, under orders from their new leader Sig­nas, must go to those areas to acquire the equip­ment need­ed to stop Eura­sia, and send Sig­ma back to the scrap heap once more where he belongs. 

MMX5’s game­play remains the same as any reg­u­lar action-adven­ture game. You can chose between using X and Zero, who each have unique abil­i­ties. I chose Zero because of the option to use his Z‑Saber and Z‑Buster as more effec­tive com­bat tools, and also because of his stronger jump­ing abil­i­ties. MMX5 allows both char­ac­ters to be swapped out dur­ing the stage select screen, pro­vid­ed you choose before time runs out. This adds fresh­ness to the game­play, keep­ing the game from being too mun­dane or too com­fort­able for a cho­sen character. 

I liked the fact that there are new armors in the game that X can start off with. The Gaia armor from MMX 4 is less pow­er­ful but still gets the job done. You can find oth­er armor sets that will give you an advan­tage, with good old Dr. Light pro­vid­ing insight about them. He has also made a spe­cial armor for Zero that you will find lat­er on. I also want to note that if play­ers pay close atten­tion, there will be some back­ground scenes in MMX pay­ing trib­ute to clas­sic Mega Man and Mega Man X games.

The plot of the game, while a good sto­ry­line point with stop­ping Eura­sia, may frus­trate you because you would have to defeat the first four Mav­er­icks and lat­er be told that two were devel­oped simul­ta­ne­ous­ly with­out pre­vi­ous knowl­edge of both plans. I also ques­tioned the devel­op­er’s method of stage plan­ning when they placed Dynamo in near­ly every mid bat­tle to delay either X or Zero with­out any strong chal­lenge, and I ques­tioned why, dur­ing Duff McWhalen’s stage, it takes a huge amount of game time to fight off a sub-boss that required run­ning and fir­ing just to keep it at bay.

Despite some frus­trat­ing issues, MMX5 is a great game to kill time with and shows how — with prop­er care and fresh ideas — a gam­ing fran­chise can still be rel­e­vant. Get the pic­ture, Capcom?

Mega music

Cap­com always had a cre­ative knack for nam­ing Mega Man adver­saries. Mav­er­icks in X5 are based off of the orig­i­nal band mem­bers of the rock group Guns N’ Roses.

Griz­zly Slash — Slash
Squid Adler — Steven Adler
Izzy Glow — Izzy Stradlin
Duff McWhalen — Duff McKagan
The Skiv­er — Michael Monroe
Axle the Red — Axl Rose
Dark Dizzy — Dizzy Reed
Mat­trex — Matt Sorum

Harvest Moon: Back to Nature — 4Q2014 issue

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A life that’s sec­ond nature

A life of farm­ing is nev­er sim­ple. Ask any farmer and they’ll tell you: It’s a tough, tough job that requires before-dawn ris­ing and at-dusk retir­ing that repeats itself over the course of many a day. There’s also the fear of Moth­er Nature wreck­ing your liveli­hood and out­side forces such as oth­er humans steal­ing from you and run­ning you into ruin. But, thank­ful­ly, you can avoid all of that and expe­ri­ence the joy of liv­ing off the land at its finest, dig­i­tal­ly if you so choose, thanks to Nat­sume’s Har­vest Moon: Back to Nature. And, if you play your cards right and take time to pull your­self away from dig­ging up your ground, you can find your­self a cer­tain Mrs. to share the farm­ing duties with as well.

Back to Nature is the best game in the long-run­ning series. I say this with con­fi­dence because it’s one of the only titles in the series to have been remade mul­ti­ple times with the same set­up, just dif­fer­ent char­ac­ters. Every mod­ern Har­vest Moon title takes its cue from Back to Nature, as well. The main goal, which stays the same through­out the series, is to take a farm that’s fall­en into dis­re­pair and make it into a prof­itable bas­tion of hard work and suc­cess. Your char­ac­ter works to accom­plish this by pulling up his boot­straps and putting in a lit­tle elbow grease with lit­tle to no help from any­one else, aside from the gnomes he meets tucked away in the crease of the town.

Speak­ing of the town, you’re tasked with meet­ing folks and forg­ing some type of rela­tion­ship with them so that you are con­sid­ered neigh­bor­ly. The town’s set sched­ule makes for inter­est­ing inter­ac­tions and a type of sched­ule plan­ning not unlike Ani­mal Cross­ing. While you’re work­ing to save your farm and chat­ting up the towns­folk, you’re giv­en a third task of find­ing a suit­able lass in town to wife up. If you can man­age to put a ring on it by woo­ing your intend­ed (there are five love­ly ladies that you can choose from to pur­sue with vary­ing likes and dis­likes), you’re all but guar­an­teed to earn your place in the town and be allowed to stay.

Back to Nature is deep, extreme­ly deep. So much so that it takes quite a bit of time just get­ting the farm up and run­ning in a prop­er man­ner that you might make mon­ey to sus­tain it. And that’s mis­sion accom­plished for Back to Nature: Get you involved and think­ing hard about what it is you want to accom­plish in your town. That lev­el of inter­ac­tion is sim­ple to begin with, and with decent con­trols it does­n’t get too much hard­er to main­tain. It’s one of the things that I love about Back to Nature. It does­n’t press too hard about mechan­ics and there’s a wealth of infor­ma­tion with­in the game about crops and car­ing for ani­mals that can help you main­tain a com­fort­able way of life with­in the game. But some­times, the lev­el of com­fort you want isn’t always with­in reach.

While I praise the con­trols, the effect isn’t always ben­e­fi­cial for you. The game is hard in the begin­ning, some­times too hard for its own good. Take, for exam­ple, the fact that you arrive in town with basi­cal­ly noth­ing but the clothes on your back. You’re expect­ed to suc­ceed and set­tle down there but you have noth­ing tying you there very much. What’s to say that your play­er char­ac­ter does­n’t decide that it’s too much, packs up shop and goes home? It’s not very real­is­tic with some of the things you’re tasked with doing, and start­ing with absolute­ly no mon­ey and try­ing to rebuild a farm is impos­si­ble with no cash flow. 

My next prob­lem comes with the cash oppor­tu­ni­ties afford­ed in the game. With­out cheat­ing, it is near­ly impos­si­ble to become suc­cess­ful and well off. This leads into a larg­er prob­lem with the way time is struc­tured in the game as well. While the time aspect has to be dif­fer­ent than real time, an entire day should not pass with­in near­ly 30 min­utes. It’s extreme­ly hard to get much accom­plished in the ear­ly going and it demands that you must have a rou­tine in place quick­ly or risk being left behind. Sure, you’re giv­en a year or two to get things togeth­er but it’s hard to make things work on the farm, court a girl and par­tic­i­pate in town activ­i­ties all at once in the short amount of time that pass­es as a day. 

Cou­ple it with the sched­ule giv­en to the town and there’s a time man­age­ment prob­lem just wait­ing to hap­pen. The con­trols some­times leave a lot to be desired, too. More than once I’ve had a buck­et that I’ve filled with good­ies from my plot of land emp­ty just far away enough from a bin that it went wast­ed. And more than once I’ve been angered by loss of income because it’s on the ground and not able to be reclaimed. But that’s a fact of life in Har­vest Moon titles, I suppose.

Oth­er­wise, Back to Nature is a great sim­u­la­tion of farm life. It’s a good way to play a dat­ing sim and life sim all at once with very lit­tle con­se­quence for poor choic­es. Get­ting back to nature is an idea all of us need to think of at least once, even if it is to dig­i­tal­ly pair off and make a fast dollar.

Back to basics

Back to Nature, released in 1999 for the PlaySta­tion One, has been remade sev­er­al times. The first remake was released for Game Boy Advance as Har­vest Moon: Friends of Min­er­al Town in 2003. Friends of Min­er­al Town was expand­ed with a side sto­ry, More Friends of Min­er­al Town — which allows play­ing from a female farmer’s per­spec­tive — in 2005. These were lat­er port­ed as Har­vest Moon: Boy & Girl for PSP in 2005.

ChuChu Rocket! — 4Q2014 issue

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An epic cat and mouse game

Cats in rock­ets try­ing to kill mice. As well as being weird, the age-old con­cept of a cat-and-mouse game is sur­pris­ing­ly addic­tive. In the form of the Dream­cast’s ChuChu Rock­et, the con­cept man­ages to jump the bar­ri­er of weird and branch into the realm of entertaining.

The game of cat-and-mouse is sim­ple: Lead mice to safe­ty in your rock­et with well-placed arrows while avoid­ing cats that oth­er play­ers will send to hunt the mice. The more mice you have left alive at the end, the bet­ter. It’s not hard to get start­ed once you have that basic under­stand­ing of the game, and it quick­ly becomes an addict­ing exer­cise of fran­tic fun to keep mice alive.

The fun thing about ChuChu Rock­et is the sheer ran­dom­ness of every­thing hap­pen­ing on the play­ing field. There are so many fac­tors that can affect your mice total at the end of a round that it’s impos­si­ble to win by tal­ent at mov­ing rodents alone. One must con­sid­er the fact that only three arrows can be placed by a char­ac­ter at any giv­en time. With lev­el lay­out also tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion, the idea that you can be in the lead for five sec­onds and that be enough to win is a real pos­si­bil­i­ty. Throw in the pow­er-up aspect and con­stant­ly chang­ing con­di­tions of the match area and there is a real recipe here for dis­as­ter dis­guised as fun.

It’s a good thing that the game is so fun to play because the graph­ics and the music sure aren’t going to draw you in by them­selves. The game looks like a 1999 game, which isn’t to say it’s hor­ri­ble, but it isn’t pret­ty, either. The graph­ics date them­selves might­i­ly, but that’s not real­ly any­thing to be ashamed of, since ChuChu Rock­et does­n’t exact­ly need to get by on the qual­i­ty of the scenery. The music is noth­ing to write home about, and frankly, I played with it turned off for the major­i­ty of the time that I’ve owned the game. It real­ly adds noth­ing to the over­all expe­ri­ence and after a short time, it becomes rather irri­tat­ing. But, like the graph­ics, it isn’t real­ly what you came here for.

What you’re going to take away from ChuChu Rock­et depends on what you’re look­ing for. In this day and age, 15 years after its orig­i­nal release, you can take a sol­id par­ty game from this that’s a high­ly quirky title wor­thy of many replays or you can see a weird 15-year-old game about cats chas­ing mice with ques­tion­able game con­di­tions attached. Rat infes­ta­tion issues aside, ChuChu Rock­et is a great rat race into nostalgia.

NBA Jam — 3Q2014 issue

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The old king of the court

NBA Jam was — and still is — an expe­ri­ence. No, that’s not some pre­pos­ter­ous fluff dreamed up by an Nation­al Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion maven like yours tru­ly. It was tru­ly an expe­ri­ence because if you were around at the time that Jam hit the streets, you’d remem­ber the sheer amount of hype that sur­round­ed the arcade release. You’d also remem­ber the hype that came home with it. Was it jus­ti­fied hype? Yes and no.

You see, Jam rep­re­sent­ed the start of the exag­ger­at­ed sports game era, the type of game where the play­er ani­ma­tions were over the top and the action just as extreme. Throw in a pletho­ra of secrets — like play­ing as Pres­i­dent Bill Clin­ton — and the hype went into over­drive. The game isn’t bad and it most­ly lived up to its billing. The sim­ple set­up of two-on-two bas­ket­ball and fast-break bas­ket­ball helped cer­tain­ly, and the ani­ma­tion isn’t bad at all. The play­er inter­ac­tion is where it most­ly suc­ceeds, actu­al­ly. At the time,

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there was no oth­er place to get the kind of play that Jam offers: Crazy dunks, the abil­i­ty to be on fire from great shoot­ing and street ball-type rules. It’s that offer­ing that made it a phe­nom­e­nal success.

Jam does­n’t stum­ble in its race to be an in-your-face baller expe­ri­ence. That street ball play­er inter­ac­tion means you don’t have to learn much about the game to suc­ceed and play well. The con­trol is sim­ple yet has a lay­er of depth that means any­one can do well at any skill lev­el. The atmos­phere could be a lit­tle bet­ter with a bet­ter sound­track, but what will make you take notice is the announc­er. If there’s any­thing you will remem­ber about the game, it’s Tim Kitzrow shout­ing to the top of his lungs that a man is “on fire” or “BOOMSHAKALAKA.”

The graph­ics, like the sound­track, are noth­ing to get excit­ed about. There’s a sta­t­ic crowd except for the court­side folk, and then there’s the play­ers. Jam pop­u­lar­ized the over-exag­ger­at­ed look for play­ers, and it cer­tain­ly had its uses. It’s not out of place for Jam, and it brings a cer­tain atmos­phere to the action that Jam ben­e­fits from.

If there’s ever a rea­son to play NBA Jam, find it in the car­toon­ish action, sound and look. That’s where the fun is, and the main rea­sons why the game suc­ceed­ed in liv­ing up to the hype (most­ly) that broke back­boards in the old­en days of 1993.