The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening DX (Game Boy Color) 0

by Andre • Game Boy, Game Boy Color, Game Gear, Video Game Movie, Zelda

Aside from being the other Game Boy Color title in my friend Antoine’s library (see my very first game post back in August), Link’s Awakening DX was actually already in my collection on that old grey brick…  only not in fantastic, full-colour mode.

 

1993 (Original), 1998 (DX) – Game Boy, Game Boy Color (Nintendo)

 

As mentioned in the Super Mario Bros. Deluxe post, Antoine was nice enough to let me try his Game Boy Color one morning before school.  It’s strange, but playing a game in colour in the palm of my hands just felt incredible.  Here was Super Mario Bros., a game I’ve played through over and over again since childhood, and I was playing in the school hallway.  Amazing!  When he popped in Link’s Awakening DX, it was somewhat like visiting an old friend in the hospital, recuperating from colourful shots of botox to the face.

I say it felt like a hospital, mostly due to the white halls at our school…  anyway.  It makes sense to me.

In any case, it was strange.  I had owned a Sega Game Gear since I was young, but it didn’t quite feel like it was the ultimate hand held gaming experience.  Maybe if they had waited before releasing it, and made it sleeker or something.  I dunno.

 

Mine still works, but hasn’t aged well at all.

 

What I remember most about playing the original Link’s Awakening was discovering two things in particular…

 

Roc’s Feather!

 

Who is Roc, anyway?  First he leaves his invisibility cape in a Hyrule cave (in A Link to the Past), and now he leaves a magical jumping feather in a dungeon on Koholint Island.  Who forgets or misplaces two awesome things like that??  Roc, that’s who.

The lady next door came over to visit my mom, and I sat quietly at the kitchen table while I played Zelda.  I remember having to position myself correctly in relation to the power outlet, and have my somewhat bulky battery pack perched on the table in a way I wouldn’t yank it off in a moment of sheer gaming excitement.

 

Almost as bulky and awkward as the Game Boy itself!
 
 
While she and my mom gabbed about cats, making cookies, or supper…  or something…  I made my way through that first dungeon, and eventually came to a narrow hallway with an item floating above my head.  I couldn’t get to it yet, so I marched forward.  I opened a treasure chest a little while later, which revealed Roc’s Feather!  The simple fact that the item’s description said I could jump was quite something…  jumping in a Zelda game??  Really?  It opened up a whole world of puzzle possibilities, and almost single-handedly makes Link’s Awakening one of my favourites in the series.
 
 
Do these guys look familiar to you?

 

The second thing was mentioned in a Nintendo Power “Classified Information” section, which some might consider to be a “cheat”.  In reality, it was actually a glitch!  Performing it was simple, and allowed early access to areas you’d otherwise have to wait to be able to get to.

(Skip ahead to about the 0:55 mark for the glitch demonstration…)

 

 

 

If you pressed Select at the exact moment you crossed over to a new screen, it would launch you way over to the opposite side of the screen you were entering.  Walls, pits or bodies of water were no longer an obstacle!  It was fun to see where you could get to, but if you weren’t careful, you could easily screw the game up a bit, or possibly even get stuck “in” a wall.

 

 

 

The obvious choice to make a movie with was the DX version.  It had Game Boy Camera support (remember that thing???), which meant that a few of Link’s exploits were captured by a photographer in the game, and displayed in nice color images.  You could even print them (in black and white) on the Game Boy Printer!!!

Those were two strange experiments I definitely had no interest in buying into.

Anyway, I thought the images helped break up the monotony of reading everything.

Mega Man 4 (NES) 0

by Andre • Mega Man, NES, Video Game Movie

Some considered Mega Man 4 to be the beginning of the end of the love affair gamers had with the series.  Honestly, I didn’t find that happened until several years later with the countless Battle Network games that changed the formula altogether.

1992 - NES (Capcom)

It came out a couple months after the Super NES was released, but the Nintendo Power Pak Watch previews had me quite excited.  Why not?  Mega Man 3 was (as far as I’m concerned) the best game in the series, and the sky was the limit for 4.  They were adding a few things, such as a Mega Blaster you could charge and unleash for maximum damage, and Fliptop, a tin-can robot who would help you out on certain levels with random items.

I wanted there to be a “Super Mega Man” pretty badly, but I supposed it would show up eventually.  Mega Man 4 would just have to suffice for a while.

I remember renting the game and having that boss selection music stuck in my head, and humming it while at my seat in the school cafeteria.

Mega Man 4 was indeed a fantastic game, but that initial wow factor that had come with 3 was almost non-existant.  It was more of the same with a few additions, but even as a young kid I couldn’t help but just lose interest and explore other games, especially considering the fact that the Super NES had been out for a little while.  16 bit graphics were just too pretty to look at to be ignored.

It was worth a few rentals, but it has yet to make it into my NES collection; aside from being a part of the Mega Man Anniversary Collection, which I own for GameCube.

Speaking of which, I don’t usually go on a tangent from game to game in a single post, but it’s Mega-related to what I’m talking about.

2004 - GameCube, Playstation 2, Xbox (Capcom)

When Anniversary Collection was announced, the only logical choice for me was to buy the game for the Nintendo GameCube.  Yeah, the PlayStation 2 controller would have been decent to play with, but I really couldn’t see myself playing a Mega Man NES game on anything but a Nintendo console.  Every other option seemed like blasphemy!

Somehow, the controls have been seriously messed with.  B is jump, and A is shoot.  Considering the positioning of the buttons on the GameCube’s controller, how could this be messed up so badly?  You can’t even change the button configuration, which is really unfortunate.

Oh, but I found a way around that.

Thumb on B, side of my index on Y.

Pressing Y performs a rapid triple-shot, which works better than even pressing B on an NES controller super-fast.  You’d think the messed-up position my hand is in would make it cramp up after a while, but it really doesn’t.

Game on!

 

This was the first Mega Man title to have a proper introduction to the game’s storyline.  I mean, yeah, Mega Man 2‘s was classic, and the music just made it so great perfect.  It wasn’t an actual cutscene with detailed images, however, so that made this one start off a bit better than the first two.

Playing through this one again made me regret not having the chance to play it that much as a kid.  Like I said earlier, these games may have all followed the same formula, but they’re still a hoot today.

What a… stinkin’, no-good… burgerfricckle!! 0

by Andre • NES

In going back to play old games, I’m finding that some of them are real stinkers.  Games that were once cherished are actually big steaming piles of gaming poo.  I’ve watched a fair amount of Angry Video Game Nerd episodes in the last few weeks, and honestly, I’m holding back from a profanity-laced tirade on a game I once thought to be awesome!

Since this is a family friendly blog…..  I think…..  I’ll refrain from saying anything too vulgar.

The Adventures of Bayou Billy isn’t on my list of “Must Play Through Games”.  At least, not anymore.  I remember renting it from our Co-Op store when I was little, mostly because my friend next door thought it was an awesome game.  I got some enjoyment out of it, I guess.  You could pick up weapons like knives and bats to attack your enemies with, and the jungle\swamp setting seemed pretty cool.

For cryin’ out loud, the first level had you punching out alligators until roasted chicken (health) came flying out!  How is that not awesome?!

The other night, I re-played it.  Not only does it take abnormally precise positioning to land your hits, but when you do manage to connect, it takes a good five or six punches to kill the first few bad guys you encounter in the game.  It definitely didn’t take long to clue in why I never played it much as a kid…  you needed the NES Zapper for level two, which I didn’t own then, and nor do I own it now.

So much for a playthrough.  Not that I’d necessarily want to put myself through the pain and personal anguish of taking (what feels like) two or three minutes to kill each enemy I came across.

I will give the game this, however…  that distinctive Konami music is friggin’ amazing.  Here’s a short piece played at the beginning of the game, where the bad guy says “I HAVE YOUR SCANTILY CLAD GIRLFRIEND!!”  It just seems so…  southern bayou, gonna eat some cajun crawfish gumbo, 8-bit YEEHAW.

Adventures in the Magic Kingdom (NES) 1

by Andre • Disney, NES, Video Game Movie

This one may seem a bit childish on the surface, and it does somewhat come out of left field compared to the other games I’ve written about.

1990 - NES (Capcom)

Capcom had the rights to create Disney games for quite a while in the late 80′s to mid-90′s, and they took that license and ran with it.  So many memorable games came out of it – DuckTales, Chip n’ Dale: Rescue Rangers, Aladdin for the Super NES, just to name a few.  Adventures in the Magic Kingdom is another one of those games, but playing the game now doesn’t have quite the same effect it did when I was little.

I never had that “urge” to go to Disney Land when I was a kid (or Disney World, I never remember which one is where).  I didn’t really like Disney movies or cartoons all that much…  I was a Bugs Bunny and Road Runner junkie, more than Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.  Still, games like Mickey Mousecapade and this one held my attention quite a bit.

As with many of my gaming memories, this one goes back to Baie Sainte-Anne, playing on that old television in my grandmother’s room.

Something like this one, but not quite.

 Remember the buttons *other* than the dials to change the channel?  There were sometimes three, sometimes more, and their function was usually to adjust the brightness or contrast of the image on the screen.  I never touched them, usually, but playing with one of those buttons during a Magic Kingdom playing session changed the whole gaming experience.

The “Tint” button…  oh yeah.  Turning it different ways turned colors on the screen all out of whack; water turned red instead of blue, fire turned green instead of red, and everything you knew about the game just changed.  What color would Bowser be once you got to him?  You just didn’t know!

 

Pirates of the Caribbean!

It was actually at this exact point in the game where I paused it, and then started messing with the Tint button.  If my skills with Photoshop were any good, I’d try to recreate the messed up colors I ended up getting.  As it is, I’d have to take a painfully long time in MS Paint to do it, so we’ll just have to end up using our imagination.  The fire was blue, the main character’s hat and shirt were red, and the captive woman’s dress was purple.  To me, it was like playing a new game entirely!

From there, I did the same thing with other games, and it added that extra layer of fun when playing games at my grandmother’s.

 

Like I said above, I didn’t know enough about Disney movies and characters to complete one of the tasks in this game.  There are six silver keys to collect in order to get into the castle, and the first one dealt with talking to NPC’s who would quiz you on your Disney knowledge.  This was a question of trial and error for me, and even in this video, I had to take a wild guess on one of the questions.

The racing game is somewhat weird; instead of having a gas and brake button, you have to hit up or down on your d-pad to speed up or slow down.  There’s even one part in the course where you have to come to a complete stop!  If you didn’t know from failing that part of the level before, you had to start from the beginning…  and even then, you had other cars bumping you out of the way most of the race, and that was annoying as well.

There are two platforming levels, one based on the Pirates of the Caribbean, and another on a haunted house type of stage.  A Space Mountain-themed level and a Wild West train course round out the key search, and then…  that’s it.

I had never been able to beat this game, but when I did so yesterday, I was kind of disappointed that there was no final showdown in the Castle itself…  the game just ends.  Then again, this is a Disney game.  Not sure what else to expect.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time (Super NES) 1

by Andre • Super NES, TMNT, Video Game Movie

I haven’t been good at regularly posting updates, but I’ll get back on track eventually.

1992 - Super NES (Konami)

Let me start off by saying this game has the best music on the Super NES.  It’s a close one, but Turtles in Time barely beats out Contra III (in my opinion) simply by having so many original tunes that feel like they honestly belong in the TMNT universe.

I have a few memories about this game, but two in particular stand out.  The first, is that this is the first game I ever actually purchased myself!  Technically…  sort of…  well, I brokered the deal, anyway.

A friend of mine owned the game when it first came out, but when Grade 8 rolled around, I got a hankerin’ for some older Super NES titles.  Sure, the Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation were cool, but I wanted that nostalgia factor!  I called this friend up, asked him what it would take to buy the game from him, and he said he’d have to talk to his little brother about it.  A few minutes later, he called back and said his price was $20.  Perfect!  I’ll take it!

Now, how does a guy without a job get his hands on $20?  Well, he sneaks into his mother’s wallet and takes it.  That’s how.  It’s not one of my proudest moments, but I would go into her wallet every morning for $5 in lunch money, money she was aware that I was taking.  For about two weeks, I pretty much just took $2 instead of my normal $5.  That balanced things out enough, I guess.

$2 got me a can of pop and a bag of chips from the vending machines at school, which I was a-ok with!

The other memory actually deals with a quasi-clone of Turtles in Time released on the Sega Genesis.

1992 - Genesis (Konami)

It’s pretty much the same game, but with a few slightly altered levels.

In Grade 4, an old friend who had moved away a year or two prior made a visit to my house for a weekend.  If you read my post about The Legend of Zelda, this is the same kid that told me you could climb a tree in that game.  I knew he was full of it, and he was barely even considered a friend in Grade 1, but I was nice enough to play along with his visit.  Luckily, it ended up being a fantastic time.

To begin with, he had a TalkBoy.

If you saw Home Alone 2 in theatres and didn't walk out wanting a TalkBoy, there was something wrong with you.

We spent the whole weekend recording ourselves talking nonsense, slowing it down, speeding it up.  It was a blast!  We recorded some game sounds, too, and seeing as how he brought his Genesis, we figured we’d head to Blockbuster Video (ha!) and rent something for it.

I thought it would be fair to rent one game for his Genesis and one game for my Super NES.  We ended up renting Hyperstone Heist for Genesis, and Fatal Fury… for Genesis.

Frankly, I was quite pissed - all I wanted to do was show off a great game for my own console that we could both enjoy, and he’d rent a great game for his console that we could both enjoy.  Instead, we got two beat ‘em ups, one of which I was psyched to see, the other I knew nothing about.  Whoopee…  never mind the fact that the newly released Star Fox was actually available to rent that night, but we went ahead with Fury anyway.

Don’t get me wrong, Fatal Fury ended up being a decent game.  It just left the sour taste of unfairness in my mouth for the rest of the weekend…  and apparently, it exists to this day.

The intros and outros to the boss battles had to be included, because I’ve always felt they were just so epic.  From the taunt at the beginning to their dramatic defeat, it felt so damn satisfying beating them to a pulp.  Kicking the Rat King’s butt was great too, because I had his action figure, along with the toy version of his boat.

Just watching this short little video reminds me of how awesome it all is.  The Turtles’ speech before each level (“Let’s…  Kick…  Shell…?”), the sound of the doors opening before that first battle with Shredder…  damn.  So awesome.

One note about recording with Fraps is that, when the image shimmers quickly (like it does in some games), it won’t necessarily pick up on the rapidly flashing image.  In this clip, you’ll notice images that flicker on and off…  in reality, it’s flashing on and off so fast that Fraps can’t make up its mind, and doesn’t pick up on the quick flickering.  It’s no huge deal, really, but I just figured I’d at least explain it!