You got… VIDEO GAMES! 0

by Andre • Christmas

After one my more memorable Christmases for getting video games, I can’t help but think back to those years as a kid that I’ll certainly never forget.

1990 is one of the earliest Christmas memories I have, and that’s for a few reasons.  Sure, I remember getting a few other memorable gifts in years prior to that, but ’90 sticks out because of which games I got, and it was all recorded on home video.  That part helps, I suppose.

To begin with, I woke up to a massive Raphael doll (of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) propped up against our living room coffee table.  I proceeded to open the gifts in my stocking, which all seemed to have video game themes of their own – Super Mario Bros. 3 chocolate bars, a Super Mario\Legend of Zelda fanny pack, Nintendo brand gum…  it was all in there.

So was the New Kids on the Block “Step by Step” audio cassette, but that’s another story.

Though I recieved TMNT action figures in spades that year, it was the complete shock of opening up the first video game I ever receieved as a Christmas present - a Nintendo Game Boy, complete with the Tetris pack-in.  My surprise was caught on video…  I hadn’t asked for it, and only once had I ever played the thing. 

The Game Boy... Gunpei Yokoi's legacy.

On a ferry trip from North Sydney, Nova Scotia to Port-aux-Basques, Newfoundlandand earlier that year, I was quite ill from a virus of some kind.  I can still close my eyes, and see the paper barf bags we had on hand for me – they had a bendy plastic top you could use to roll it up and “seal” it with, not unlike some packaging I’ve seen on packages of chocolate chip cookies…

Anyway, we initially thought it was sea sickness, so I was brought down to the lower part of the ship, where we were told I wouldn’t feel the effects quite as much.  It looked and felt a bit like an airplane, what with aisles to walk through and comfortable blue seats in rows.  The only difference were the portholes just above our heads, where one could stand and look out at the Atlantic Ocean at eye level.  As I tried to get some rest, a kid who was a complete stranger was nice enough to let me try his Game Boy.  The game was Golf, and even though I didn’t quite understand how to play it (I was quite out of it, at this point in the trip), it had me intrigued.

1989 - Game Boy (Nintendo)

There was something alluring about that green and blue display, and the tinny 8-bit sound fit nicely.  I temporarily forgot about my illness until the ship docked…  and then was sick all the way through the car ride to St. John’s.  So much for it being sea sickness!

My folks must have seen how happy playing it made me, because even though I never asked for it, it was definitely one of the highlights from that Christmas season.  I also recieved the necessary Mario game to go along with it in Super Mario Land, as well as Mega Man 3.  The rest of my vacation was spent playing those games pretty much non-stop!

Other memorable video game Christmases;

1992 – Super Mario Kart, and an ASCII Turbo controller…  set up the Super NES in the living room, and found out turbo controllers and racing games didn’t mix.

1993 – Sega Game Gear, packed with Sonic the Hedgehog, and Land of Illusion starring Mickey Mouse came separately.  I just wanted to own *something* Sega-related, just to say I could.  I didn’t know if the Game Gear was any good or not, but I’m glad I asked for it!

1994 – Donkey Kong Country…  again, I had never played this game, but surely, all the hype must mean something.  Right?  Well, it was (and still is) a lovely game.

Nice little collection!

As for this year, there’s no doubt that I’ve never recieved quite as many games in one shot.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword (Wii) – I’ve already started playing through this, and though it’s taking a while to get interesting, it’s still Zelda, and I see myself enjoying it more the next time I play through it.

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection (PS3) – I’m particularly excited about this one, due to the fact that I’ll finally be motivated enough to play MGS3: Snake Eater.

Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune (PS3) – I’ve been meaning to try these games for a while, just to see what all the fuss is about…

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves (PS3) – …so when I recieved both games in a combo-pack with a new controller, I knew I’d be in for some fun.

Halo: Anniversary Edition (Xbox 360) – Great game when it came out, and them re-skinning it has me all excited to try it out.

Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360) – Seeing Arkham City in action on a 60-inch TV had me wanting it pretty badly…  I’m the type where I HAVE to play the original game first, however, so this might get played before MGS3…  we’ll see.

Assassin’s Creed (Xbox 360) – Here’s another one I need to play, just to see what all the fuss is about.  I don’t doubt it’s right up my alley!

God of War: Origins Collection (PS3) – I don’t ever see myself owning a Sony PSP, so having them re-release both God of War games in HD for PS3 was quite the treat.  I expect to enjoy myself tremendously as I mindlessly string together combos that look impressive, but I’m really just mashing buttons.

Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) – Not mine, as it was my gift to my wife.  Nevertheless, I’m sure I’ll be getting some enjoyment out of this one!

Almost as awesome as Christmas deals are Boxing Day deals, so I managed to pick up a few more titles…  you know, just to supplement my collection just a bit more.

Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (PS3) – I enjoy the CG-animated show enough to warrant buying this one, and seeing as how it tweaks the formula used in the first Lego Star Wars games, I couldn’t go wrong at $20.

Medal of Honor (PS3) – Another $20 buy, and this time, I’m almost as excited about having Medal of Honor: Frontline re-mastered in HD!  I’m such a sucker for old games, I tell you!

Guitar Hero: Van Halen (Xbox 360) – I’m not so much a fan of Van Halen as I am of other artists included in the game, but at $5, why not?

Guitar Hero 5 (Xbox 360) – While I prefer Rock Band over the Guitar Hero series (strumming notes to the beat of coloured squares just seems more satisfying than circles), set lists and downloadable content matters quite a bit.  First album Queens of the Stone Age tunes?  YES PLEASE!

God of War: HD Collection (PS3) – Alright, so I already own the first two titles for PS2…  but c’mon.  They had me at “HD re-make”.

 

So, there you have it.  I’ll go back to “reviewing” games in a while, but it was such a crazy and memorable holiday that I couldn’t not just sit back and remenisce!

What a haul! 0

by Andre • Christmas

The utter lack of updates can be attributed to the organized chaos that comes with the Holiday season. It’s become a pretty consumer-tastic time of year, but growing up, I always felt truly appreciative of what I got. Same goes for this year, even though I probably got way too much, and bought way too much.

As years went by, many different games were recieved as gifts… when I’m not posting from an iPod as I currently am, I’ll be recounting the memorable video game hauls from X-mases gone by!

I have been converted! 2

by Andre • GameCube, PlayStation 3, Wii, Zelda

No longer do I believe GameSpot to be the better resource for all things video games.  At least, not the more trustworthy one.

There was the whole situation with Jeff Gertsmann, who reviewed games for the site forever and was canned for giving an honest (in other words, “bad”) review of Kane and Lynch: Dead Men.  The game happened to be a sponsor for the site in the weeks leading up to its release, and it was more than just a coincidence he was “let go” after giving the game a low score.

I let that one slide, even though it didn’t really seem fair.  After all, I’m tracking my entire video game collection on GameSpot, something I can’t seem to do anywhere else.

Anyhow, a glitch was recently uncovered in the new Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword that would make the game un-finishable.  By that, I mean that if a specific sequence of events occurs within the game (by trying to complete the game “out of order” from the storyline), Link won’t be able to proceed to the next objective.  The player would then have no choice but to restart the game entirely

A full (mostly negative) article was posted at GameSpot, basically stating “not sure how this could happen in this day and age, but Nintendo says ‘don’t worry about it’”.

About five years ago, a slightly more aggravating glitch reared its ugly head in Zelda: Twilight Princess.  I won’t delve into details, as the video below describes it pretty well!

This was a pretty serious muck-up, but I never saw a thing about it at GameSpot.  Being concerned about it at the time, I looked it up elsewhere on the interwebs, and found a few websites confirming what was happening.  It never affected what I ended up thinking about the game when I bought it a month or two later, but I did make sure to avoid the glitch.

The site’s sponsor for a week or two back in ’06 before its release?  Twilight Princess.

Interesting…  Skyrim, which I have almost no interest in, but somehow keep hearing about, has almost crippling graphical issues on the PS3 edition, yet that gets no coverage.  Skyward Sword gets lampooned for a glitch that only shows up if you do a specific sequence of events.

What was GameSpot sponsored by for a few weeks last month?

Ahh, right.  Skyrim.  Not Zelda…  I see a pattern.

I have converted to IGN-ism.

I will return to video game memories very soon!  Worry not!

Note to self! 0

by Andre • James Bond, Nintendo 64

Don’t get too angry in the post looking back on your current GoldenEye playthrough.  It’s still a fantastic game, despite your current frustration with it…

MGS: The Conclusion! 0

by Andre • GameCube, Metal Gear, PlayStation, Video Game Movie

I just realized that the MGS series is now also guilty of slapping HD onto its games, and re-selling them that way.  Not that that’s a bad thing.  It’s just been done a fair amount over the last few years, and not necessarily to games that really needed it.

So I got to play Metal Gear Solid that night after the Bruns meeting, and was instantly hooked.  I can tell you exactly what did it!

In that first area, you’re just getting used to the controls and the way the radar works.  The credits are rolling, and you’re more or less focused on keeping out of sight…  then, you step in a frickin’ puddle and tip the guards off to your presence.  This game thought of everything, whereas I apparently did not.

Those damn puddles.

There was a moment of sheer panic that I had never really experienced before.  “Where do I go???  What do I do?? AAAHHHH OMIGAD HE’S COMIN’!”  I had to figure out what to do pretty quickly and took a fair amount of damage, but it was on from there.  The game had me absolutely hooked, and I wasn’t even five minutes into it.

The next day, I hitched a ride into town to get picked up by John in his boat of a Caprice Classic.  His place was quite a distance out of town, and even though I was a bit nervous with him driving (through no fault of his own), I chilled out on the drive by listening to some Tea Party (the band, not the movement), and some Static-X.

For some odd reason, Cake’s “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” was in my head as I got out of the car.  *DUNNN…DA-NAnaNA!  DA-NAnaNA-nuh-nuh-nuhhh…*  John said “Don’t finish it.  Please.  Just stop singing it.  I hate it.  So bad.”

I also remember that R&B singer Aaliyah’s plane crashed that day.  Weird.

Anyhow, not to get too side-tracked, but it was a weekend full of video games and junk food I’ll definitely never forget.  I felt like, after that last hangout, my mind was clear of clutter and good to go.  I was back behind the wheel of a car for the first time the next week, classes at university started soon after, and then the attacks on September 11th happened a week later.

What a friggin’ weird summer.

I think I may have submitted to Ocelot’s torture the very first time I played through it.  The only reason being that I thought the ending was somewhat of a bummer – who wants to ride off into the sunrise with a dude on the back of a snowmobile??  Not sure which one is considered canon, but I’ll take the one where Meryl lives.  If you tough it out during the torture, you end up with an ending that’s considerably better.

Though it’s got a bit of drama that isn’t even mentioned otherwise (Campbell is Meryl’s father???), the game’s alternate ending is actually the funnier one of the two.  Seeing Otacon take that endless tumble down the cliff was definitely worth re-playing the second half of the game.

Then again, after skipping all the cutscenes and Codec transmissions I didn’t need to record, it didn’t take long at all!

Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GameCube) 0

by Andre • GameCube, Metal Gear, PlayStation, Video Game Movie

This was way bigger than your typical current-gen video game re-make.  Most companies get away with a fresh new coat of paint, slap “HD” on the end of it, and that’s it.  The Twin Snakes not only had revamped graphics, but altered cutscenes, slight changes to improve game play, and completely re-recorded dialogue by almost all original voice actors.

2004 - GameCube (Konami)

I wasn’t necessarily feeling down in the dumps about the car accident, but I definitely didn’t feel comfortable enough to get behind the wheel again for quite a while afterwards.  I felt somewhat restricted as to what I could do that summer; hanging out with friends and going out for a night at the movies just wasn’t as easy to do, anymore.  It gnawed at my consciousness all summer long.

Later that month, I went on the yearly family trip to Connecticut to see my aunt and uncle, and also to see a NASCAR race in Long Pond, Pennsylvania.  For the long drives there and back, reading material was pretty much exclusively EGM, Official PlayStation Magazine and some other gaming magazines.  The main articles in all of them focused on the E3 held earlier that year, showcasing the upcoming Xbox and GameCube consoles.  The PS2 had its own ace in the hole with Metal Gear Solid 2, a sequel to a game I’d often heard about, but knew almost nothing of.  MGS2 looked so damn lovely, I had to give the first one a try.

Finally, a couple weeks before my fresh new start at Saint Thomas University, I rented it.  That same day, I had a meeting with folks at The Brunswickan, a campus newspaper I was interested in contributing to.  I’d be tasked with doing reviews of music CD’s, and I’d actually get to keep the ones I reviewed!  That was a great deal, and reviewing video games had the exact same perk!

Some guy with a cool German accent had dibs on reviewing MGS2, however.  Lucky guy.

After the meeting, my friend John could probably tell I still wasn’t completely myself.  He suggested one last hangout at his place with the old high school crew, just to play games and joke around all night before we all made the “official” move into life as post-secondary education students.

When I got home that night, I popped Metal Gear Solid into my PS2.  To say the least, I was hooked pretty much right away, and I couldn’t wait to show it off to my friends that weekend.

There’s one specific change made to The Twin Snakes that smoothes out one painful quirk the PS1 version had; the addition of a first-person view for firing your weapon.  In the middle of a boss battle, you could easily get a bit disoriented if you ran around enough.  With the GameCube re-make, pressing the Z-button gave you what Solid Snake saw from his own eyes, and you could whip out your weapon for a quick and precise shot if you needed to.

Metal Gear Solid (PlayStation) 0

by Andre • GameCube, Metal Gear, PlayStation, Video Game Movie

This will undoubtedly be worth two or three posts, not only because it’s about such a fantastic game, but also because it goes back to one of the weirder parts of my life.

1998 - PlayStation (Konami)

The summer of 2001 started off with a bang, in more ways than one.

“But Andre”, you say, “didn’t Metal Gear Solid come out in 1998?”  Yes, well, I’ll get to the point in a bit, but to me, 2001 was the year of Metal Gear.

In June of 2001, I graduated from high school.  It’s one of those events in a person’s life that’s supposed to be filled with meaning, and begins a gradual shift into adulthood.  Well, it certainly was that for me, but in a slightly different way for slightly different reasons.

A few weeks after graduation, I went to see Scary Movie 2 with my good friend Tom.  After getting to the theatre, I realized I had forgotten my wallet.  It would be a pain in the neck, but I had to drive all the way back home to get it.  

I was certainly right about the “pain in the neck” part.

As I pulled out of the parking lot (which was under heavy construction), I didn’t see an on-coming club-cab pickup truck - AKA the huge kind - in the far lane.  That “oh crap” feeling is something I’ll never forget.  In that fraction of a second, I experienced fear, anxiety, regret, and even managed to utter a curse word or two.  Just like that, I got t-boned in the driver’s side door, and my mom’s poor ’91 Honda Civic was a write-off.

Ouch.

I came through it pretty sore, though only with bruised kidneys, which meant peeing blood for about a week.  I’d also wake up a few times in the middle of the next few nights to a crunching noise coming from my mouth, which turned out to be shattered glass from the car window.  It was a bit traumatic, but I knew it could have been a lot worse.

Tom was also fine, and when he realized I was OK and my parents got there, he casually walked back across the street to enjoy Scary Movie 2 with his friends!  I have a good chuckle whenever I think of that.

Could have used this ten years ago…

I promise this relates to Metal Gear Solid, but it’ll have to wait until my next post.

After recently seeing the brand new “No Left Turn” sign where I had my accident ten years ago in June, I thought back to that summer of ’01 and felt like re-kindling my love for Metal Gear Solid.  The 2004 re-make The Twin Snakes (released for GameCube) was definitely the better choice to make a movie out of, simply due to its updated graphics and improved cutscenes and voice acting.

I’m not ruling out making a movie out of the original some day, just for fun!

Pardon me, while I burst into flames… 0

by Andre • Metal Gear, Super Smash Bros.

I had to take a moment for a short update, even if it is from my iPod.

Ten years ago today, Super Smash Bros. Melee was released. It wasn’t quite a launch title for the GameCube, but being released two weeks later, many still considered it to be. Even if it was an early title, many (including myself) consider it one of the best on the console.

Another game I first played a little over ten years ago? Well, with a sequel coming out soon (in November of ’01), I was determined to play the first game to see what the fuss was all about.

That game was Metal Gear Solid. A game that blew my mind so hard it might take more than a single post for me to rant about it…