Posted on April 10, 2013
My Top 100: #1 – Super Mario Bros.
1985 – Nintendo (NES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console, eShop)
Could it be anything else?
My previous experiences with games were fleeting, whether they were in the cart corral at Co-Op (with Centipede and Millipede) or in Baie-Sainte-Anne with our friends’ Vectrex. These were one-screen affairs that had a character moving from side to side, shooting stuff. Berzerk for Vectrex was pretty fun, and it kept my attention for a while, but aside from that, I didn’t have much interest in that kind of toy.
I was too busy with my Matchbox cars, Popples and Glo-Worms to care, I guess.
When I was finally introduced to Super Mario Bros. a year or so after the NES was released, I was suprised at how quickly the game’s world sucked me in. The colours were so vibrant, and there seemed to be secrets everywhere. There was an above-ground, an under-ground, day levels, night levels, and World 5 even looked kinda snowy.
Mario felt like he actually weighed something… if you compare Mario’s controls in SMB to those he has in Donkey Kong, I’m sure you’ll know what I mean. I didn’t know the concept of “physics” when I was little, but I definitely knew the game felt different from the rest of the ones I had played.
The idea that the screen was scrolling to the right was quite something, as well. I remember looking at the right side of the TV it was being played on, wondering where the land scrolling onto it was coming from. No longer were games confined to a single screen – this was one big world, like an interactive cartoon, waiting to be explored.
I’ve used the word “explore” a lot in my Top 100 game posts, and I truly think that my love of games comes from being able to immerse myself into the gaming world. Much like a movie or a cartoon, these are just images on a screen; once you put that controller in your hand, though, you become the character, whether it’s a first person shooter, role playing game, platformer, whatever.
I got a little too philosophical for my own taste, there. Still, it’s kinda true. If a game doesn’t control all that well, then chances are pretty good you’re not going to like it. Plain and simple. That’s where Super Mario Bros. had me right from the get-go.
Just now, while I was looking for a video to post, I couldn’t stop watching. Playing (or evidently just seeing) the game makes me happy. I think of all the trading cards, lunch boxes, t-shirts, colouring books, stickers, school supplies, and who knows what other Mario merchandise I made my mom buy over the years.
That’s why I can’t help but go back to it, time after time, just to feel like I’m 4-5 years old all over again.
I’ve already mentioned that snowy morning at our house when my sister rented an NES, as well as the time my dad got back from a work trip to Calgary with the console in his suitcase. Those are my two most vivid memories that I’ve shared in a prior post (seen here), so I’m kinda scraping the bottom of the barrel here… but here goes nothin’.
Our family friends in Shediac had a teenage son who owned an NES. After he showed me Super Mario Bros.\Duck Hunt, Renegade and Excitebike, playing NES was the only thing I wanted to do while we stayed there. I played and played, and since I was pretty terrible at Renegade, I focused on Mario and Excitebike.
They also had a teenage daughter, and she must have thought I was cute or something, because I hung around her a lot as well. She had some of her female friends over one day, and I was hanging around all of them. Now, keep in mind that I’m 4 years old. They’re all in the bedroom, talking about who knows what, and I casually stroll in to hang out with my new girl-friends. I’m not really paying any attention to their conversation, since I’m busy playing with the dog, a cocker spaniel named Sandy.
Out of nowhere, the girl says “OK Andre, time to leave. We have to change.”
I argued my point, saying I could put my hands over my eyes so that I wouldn’t see anything. It’s not like I even wanted to see anything! Besides, if the dog could stay in the room, I could stay in the room too!
She said the dog was blind, and that he didn’t have to leave. With that, she picked me up, plopped me just outside the door, and closed it in my face.
Shot down!
Another memory involves me waking up in the wee hours of the morning to my dad playing the game on our big TV in the living room. One of Dad’s friends was over, and he was watching him play, marvelling at how far he had gotten. He was at 8-3, which was the furthest any of us had gotten at that point. I knew it was way past my bedtime, but I stayed up to see what the level looked like.
There were lots of Bullet Bills, lots of Hammer Bros., and for some reason, in the background was a long brick wall. It looked quite intimidating, and it gave us the impression that the end of the game was near!
So, Dad managed to get to the last part of the level, but after making it past one of the Hammer Bros., got a little too confident, and lost his last life by running into yet another Hammer Bro a few seconds later. He tried again, only to die at the same spot, since there were a total of four of them lined up before the exit.
I’m sure what I thought was the “wee hours of the morning” was actually closer to 9PM, but I really did feel like I was breaking the rules to watch Dad try to make it to the next castle. For all we knew, 8-4 might not even be the last one, but finding out would have to wait another day.
World 6-3 was probably my favourite level in the entire game.
So, there you have it.
When I started making posts for this countdown, part of me doubted I’d actually get to #1. I tried to stick to the “one post every day”, but it quickly wore me out. I struggled to keep the writing fresh enough to keep it interesting, so I tried to spread it out a bit.
Like butter on toast!
Anyway, I intend to keep posting to this blog as long as I have memories to share, and even if the games aren’t Top 100-worthy.
See ya ’round!
Posted on April 10, 2013
My Top 100: #2 – The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
1998 – Nintendo (Nintendo 64, GameCube, Virtual Console, 3DS)
Whenever Nintendo Power compiled “best of” lists in its last few years of existence, Ocarina of Time always seemed to end up somewhere at the top of the heap. Nintendo had a lot to be proud of, and their flagship publication definitely did their best to hammer the point home; “The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is one of the greatest games of all time, and we’re not going to let you forget about it.”
The game was indeed damn-near perfect, but there was no need to brag about it… jerks.
Much like I wanted to explore the unseen sides of the Mushroom Kingdom when playing Super Mario Bros., I had been wanting to explore Hyrule the same way after enjoying the hell out of Super Mario 64. Ever since that kid in Grade 1 told me you could climb a tree in The Legend of Zelda for NES, I tried to imagine what doing such a thing in a Zelda game would be like. I knew the kid was full of it, but he really got me thinking.
Lo and behold, the world got its hands on Ocarina of Time in November of ’98, and the first level had us climbing through the guts of a giant tree.
Words couldn’t express how pumped I was to play this game! I put it on my very short Christmas wish list (yeah, I still did that at 15 to help with gift ideas), but never expected to find the Collector’s Edition with the gold cartridge under the tree that year.
Best Mom ever!
Anyway, the game not only looked and played great, it felt like Zelda was supposed to feel, looked like it was supposed to look, and sounded like it was supposed to sound. It felt like a lifetime since A Link to the Past had come out, but playing Ocarina felt like you were meeting up with an old friend; even though you had both grown up, nothing else had changed.
What else can I say? It was Zelda, it was 3D, and it played so well, I’ve bought it and beaten it more than once on four different consoles. I keep saying “OK, that’s enough Ocarina for me”, then I just find myself sucked right back in.
It’s just that good.
For the first little while after this game came out, I was desperately trying to find a way to play it. For some reason, Blockbuster Video had no copies for rent, and the only thing I had to whet my appetite was the November ’98 issue of Nintendo Power. There were maps and screenshots galore, and I spent most of my “reading periods” (the five minutes every day before classes actually started) trying to imagine what the levels actually felt like.
My friend Tyler found a rentable copy of the game somewhere, and I jumped at the opportunity. I didn’t necessarily want to go over to his place and play it – instead, I brought a VHS cassette to school, gave it to him and said “record what you can, and bring this back to me tomorrow!”
He was nice enough to do that for me, and as he gave it back the next day, he said “the game is good, but it’s really nothing special”. I was slightly disappointed, but I was still looking forward to going home and checking the tape.
My sister picked me up from school that day, and told me that she’d just gotten back from Houlton, Maine. She had gotten some groceries, as well as a few music CD’s. We were in the New Maryland “woods” part of the drive when she popped a CD into the car stereo, and said “this girl is apparently hitting it big in the States right now… it’s catchy song!”
At that point, I had just recently started listening to Korn, and was beginning to appreciate lots of bands from an entirely new (to me) genre of music – Rock. Much to the dismay of my parents and two older sisters, my interest in Pop and Country music was waning, and this girl singing a song about “hitting it baby one more time” really wasn’t my cup of tea.
She looked so damn pretty on the album cover, though… erm, I mean, nothing. The song was awful.
I got home, watched the Zelda tape Tyler had recorded, and was mesmerized by what I saw. I wasn’t sure why he didn’t like it all that much, but it sure looked like fun. I kept the tape, and watched it over and over until I got the game that Christmas.
You lucky kids with your YouTubes and Vimeos and other video-watchin’ doo-dads don’t know how good you’ve got it.
I also think about Anita whenever I play this game. I was on one of my many playthroughs, the first since I met her, and I evidently had to open lots of doors with Zelda’s Lullaby one day. The next morning as we both sipped our cups of coffee, she told me; “I had dreams about that Zelda song last night… it wasn’t fun. I kinda hate it.”
So now, whenever I play Ocarina of Time 3D and have to prove my so-called “connection to the Royal Family“, I crank the volume on my 3DS. The glare I get from doing that is priceless!
“She’s so pretty, she’d even look good bald!”
I probably didn’t say that.
Posted on April 10, 2013
My Top 100: #3 – Super Mario Bros. 3
1990 – Nintendo (NES, Super NES, Virtual Console, eShop)
After compiling a list of a hundred games I thought deserved to be on my countdown, I determined the order from #100 to #10 rather easily. “I like Title A more than Title B, but less than Title C.” That’s how I worked through my list, and even doing most of my top 10 was easy enough.
When it came to my top three, however, that’s when it got difficult. If there could be a three-way tie for first, I would be happy with that.
In good conscience, however, I can’t. I had to choose, and somehow figure out what these three games meant to me, and which one meant the most. That is, after all, what my countdown has been about from the get-go. These games are more to me than just several hours of gameplay; they were the defining games from various parts of my life, and I can still pick up and play any of them at any time, no matter what mood I’m in.
So that’s where Super Mario Bros. 3 fits in. Numéro trois. It feels somewhat low, but that’s just how it goes.
SMB2 was nothing like the first game, so it was only natural to assume SMB3 would change things up as well. In reality, the game actually went back to what made the original so fun – running, jumping, head-stomping and fire-spitting your way to defeating Bowser and rescuing Princess Toadstool.
But there was more to it than that… a lot more.
Sure, the Mushroom Kingdom was once again yours to explore, but it was friggin’ alive. After seeing the land map for the first time, I remember just sitting there and staring at it for a few minutes before going into the first stage. There were wandering Hammer Bros., dancing hills, mushroom huts, a castle moat… and what was this? Six stages in the first world? That was a wild concept. The first game had four stages per level, and the second usually had three per level… but six, and two castles??
If my Mario math was correct (even though my actual math was terrible those days), there’d be at least seven of these worlds. Whatever the hell seven times six was, I was in for quite the ride.
*I know there were more than six stages in later levels, I just didn’t know it at the time.*
Every world has a unique theme, and though the difficulty ramps up with every one, the challenges are always different. Whether it’s the brutal anxiety of swimming in World 3’s water levels with Big Bertha just a few pixels away, or the sweaty-palmed precision it takes when navigating World 7’s hundred-pipe stages, there are no two areas that feel the same. Never had the gaming world ever felt so vibrant and colourful, or seem so friggin’ big.
The game’s powerups were so random, too. The Super Mushroom and Fire Flower were back, and were joined by a few new ones as well. Flying around as Raccoon Mario was pretty awesome, but when the Frog Suit popped out of that treasure chest at the end of World 2, I no longer had any idea what to expect from the game. I mean, Frog Mario was pretty useless in the Desert World, but was pretty handy in future levels.
The Tanooki Suit’s random appearance didn’t seem to be too much out of the ordinary, but turning into a statue by pressing down and B didn’t make a whole lot of sense. It was pretty cool, though, and it could be pretty useful.
My “THIS GAME JUST WENT FROM AWESOME TO RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME” moment came some time during World 7, when I first got the Hammer Suit. Hammer Suit Mario is actually pretty useless – the arc of his projectiles was a bit tough to get used to, and I didn’t seem to last very long whenever I had that power up. Still, there was something incredibly badass about actually being one of the fearsome Hammer Bros.
I could go on and on about how the game plays, or how all the little things like the White Toad Houses, Treasure Ships and Kuribo’s Shoe kept you guessing, but for the sake of the blog, I won’t. Super Mario Bros. 3 was such a leap forward that pretty much every platformer released afterwards tried to emulate it somehow.
It was definitely Nintendo’s crowning achievement on the NES!
Ahhhh 1990. It was a pretty memorable year for me, and the decade it kicked off was quite fantastic as well; Crystal Pepsi, Full House, Jurassic Park, the ridiculousness of the OJ Simpson murder trial, and most importantly, the Blue Jays and Red Wings both winning back-to-back championships. There were a bunch of other things that made the 90’s awesome, but let’s focus on ’90 and the beginning of my love affair with Super Mario Bros. 3.
That was the year I remember going to Newfoundland to see my father’s side of the family. I had seen them a few times when they’d come to New Brunswick for a visit, and I had actually made the trip over as a toddler, but this was the first time I’d get a “grand tour” of the island from Mom and Dad.
Unfortunately, the trip became memorable for all the wrong reasons.
There are two ferry rides to Newfoundland; one lasts about 8 hours, but leads you to the opposite side of the island with a much longer drive to St. John’s; the other ferry takes about 14 hours, but with a much shorter drive afterwards. Thankfully, we had chosen the short ferry ride with the longer drive.
Some might think a relaxing ride on a boat in the middle of the Gulf of St. Lawrence would be preferreable to a cramped ten-hour car ride. I got pretty violently ill during the second half of the ferry ride, though, and it often had me (to quote Bill Cosby) with my face in a place that was not built for my face.
The majority of people my parents were making idle chit-chat with, including the ferry’s Captain, said I just had a typical case of seasickness. The Captain even said “ah, he’ll be fine after he gets sick a few more times”. He also said we should head to one of the lower sections of the boat, just so that I wouldn’t feel the effects of the waves as much.
I can still picture that lounging room down below; very dark, everyone facing one direction, and paper barf bags in a slot behind the seat in front of us. One of the kids in the family sitting up front let me play Golf for Game Boy, which was the first time I played Nintendo’s hand held.
A day or two after getting to Port-aux-Basques and hitting the road to St. John’s, I was still quite sick. During our hotel stays, in-between pukes, I tried to relax and get my mind off things by playing through Super Mario Bros. 3. It was in one of those hotels that I made it as far as the Pipe Maze for the first time, without even having to pause the game to puke! I got to that level with the Arrow Lift, the one you jump on to change directions… then paused the game so I could go puke.
It was an amazing trip, and quite memorable despite the stomach bug. We went back to Newfoundland two years later for a family reunion, but didn’t take the whole scenic trip around the island.
I’m definitely hoping to take the long way around again some day soon, even if it means packing the Gravol.
A fun trip, although it was a bit long for my liking at the time.
Posted on April 2, 2013
My Top 100: #4 – Mega Man 3
1990 – Capcom (NES, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, Virtual Console)
I’m not sure whose idea it was for to get me a subscription to Nintendo Power, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t mine.
Sure, I liked buying issues of this and that from time to time, but I didn’t really think getting one in the mail monthly was necessary. Still, it really was a nice little surprise to have an issue waiting in the mail that first time… it sucked that it was a guide to 4-player games, but I couldn’t be too upset.
I mean, seriously, what percentage of gamers have ever played a 4-player NES game? Thankfully, the next issue featured something I could actually get excited about.
My sister was picking me up on my last day before Christmas vacation in Grade 2, and she had gotten the mail beforehand. She put the issue of NP on my lap as I got into the car, and saw that Mega Man 3 was on the cover. That was amazing! Since the first issue I got was a player’s guide, there was no mention of the following month’s cover story.
In fact, aside from seeing small and blurry screenshots in an EGM or two, this was the first good look I got at it. I liked Mega Man 2 quite a bit, so this one should theoretically be much, much better. That’s just the way it went with games. A sequel was supposed to be better than the first game, and #3 in a series was essentially supposed to be perfect. That’s what the Mario games seemed to be doing, anyway.
For my money, Mega Man games don’t get any better than 3. 2 incorporated everything awesome about the first one, then built on it. In that same vein, 3 took everything awesome about 2, and built on that model even further. Bigger levels, better items, more characters, a fleshed-out plot (you know, by 8-bit standards), and a higher difficulty level… you didn’t even get to Wily’s lair until you beat the eight Robot Masters from Mega Man 2! Although, technically, it was spread over four levels and not eight, but it was still hard as hell.
Rush’s abilities were more flexible and useful than the aptly named “1”, “2” and “3” from the second game. Mega Man could now perform a slide move to scoot away (or under) from attacking foes, which minimized the annoying threat of having an enemy respawn if you backtracked a bit too much, just for being careful. I definitely liked the challenges the first game threw at me, but respawning enemies could sometimes drive me nuts.
Proto Man was an intriguing addition, seeing as how you didn’t know what his deal was until the very end of the game. Was he a friend? Was he a foe? All you knew was that he had a terrible attack pattern, showed up just long enough to drain a bit of health from you, and had a really cool whistle to announce his arrival. That curiosity about Proto Man, and wanting to find out who he was in the grand scheme of things, really helped drive me forward during some of the more difficult parts of the game.
Once you get through Dr. Wily’s Castle and beat the game, you’re treated to some of the best 8-bit music there is. The extended Proto Man theme that leads into the credits is probably my favourite chiptune of all time! Obviously, the rest of the game’s soundtrack is great, as well, but overall, I still believe the music from Mega Man 2 is better.
There will always be people on both sides of the Mega Man 2\Mega Man 3 “argument”, but it’s pretty clear which side I’ve always been on.
Christmas in 1990 was pretty awesome. I got several Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures, a Bart Simpson piggie bank (a Bartie bank?), a massive Raphael (TMNT) doll, a Nintendo Game Boy, and Mega Man 3. The Game Boy was a complete surprise, and I spent my entire holidays playing it and Mega Man 3.
The coolest part of it all was that my father had borrowed a camcorder from work, and got a bunch of the festivities on tape. It was such a great time, and I re-watched that tape over and over again in the years that followed.
The gathering we had that New Year’s Eve was also on tape, but I never watched that part of the video. Here’s the why…
My parents had friends over that night, and I was busy showing off my new games to their daughter, who was much older than me. After a while, we turned the games off and watched television. There were two movies on that night, both of which scared the absolute crap out of me. Because of that, I would always skip that part of our home video, simply because it reminded me of those movies.
The first movie we watched was Gremlins. Those little lizard-like bastards were kinda nasty-looking, and those kinds of things really grossed me out, for some reason. I remember a scene where one of them melts, and it looks an awful lot like melty green cheese… I’m not sure if that rings a bell, but I have that image stuck in my mind. That’s honestly all I remember from that movie, but it didn’t scare me nearly as much as the second movie we watched that night.
InnerSpace, a sci-fi comedy starring Martin Short and Dennis Quaid.
The premise involves Quaid hopping into a space shuttle-like device that shrinks down to microscopic size, which they intend to use to explore the inside of a mouse. You know, in the name of science. Unfortunately, something goes awry during the transfer, and Quaid’s shuttle ends up on the inside of Martin Short’s character.
Hilarity ensues… or, it’s supposed to, anyway. I was terrified.
Quaid’s character zooms through various parts of Short’s body, from one internal organ to another, desperately trying to find his ticket out of there before his oxygen runs out. Along the way, Quaid shoots a harpoon-like device into the back of Short’s eye, travels to his ear canal so they can talk to one another, then over to Meg Ryan’s body where he finds a growing fetus, and various other things.
It all weirded me out quite a bit, but it was one of the movie’s final scenes that scared me the most, and had me paranoid to watch movies of any kind.
The movie’s antagonist eventually manages to get shrunk down-to-size, and confronts Quaid in the pit of Short’s stomach above a green pool of stomach acid. At this point, I was so mesmerized about what I had seen so far that this didn’t bug me all that much. However, after a short battle, the bad guy bites the bullet when his shuttle crashes into the pool of acid.
What I saw next gave me nightmares for weeks; the bad guy’s skeletal remains floating across the screen.
Yep, like being scared that Jupiter would come after me, I was now scared that I’d someday be shrunk down to the size of bacteria and consumed by stomach acid. You know, because that’s a rational fear, right?
Anyway, I can’t help but think of New Year’s Eve ’91, as well as Gremlins and InnerSpace, whenever I play Mega Man 3.
“In a world where comedies are terrifying… one man kills another man in stomach acid, giving a Canadian child… NIGHTMARES.”
Posted on March 25, 2013
My Top 100: #5 – Half-Life
1998 – Valve (PC, PlayStation 2)
In Grades 10 and 11, I was so obsessed with all things Star Wars that everthing else that happened in those years seems like a blur. I don’t remember the NASCAR races all that well, which, if you know me, I’m sure you know is a big deal. I honestly don’t remember any games that I played those years either, other than Ocarina of Time, but they were probably mostly Star Wars games.
I had gotten my friend Ken to burn me a pirated copy of The Phantom Menace, and I watched that so many times that I actually had the entire first half of dialogue from the movie memorized, word for word. In between “important” note-takings in Grade 11 History class, I even wrote it all down in my notebook.
Obi-Wan: I have a bad feeling about this…
Qui-Gon: I don’t sense anything.
Obi-Wan: It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something elsewhere, elusive…
Qui-Gon: Don’t center on your anxieties, Obi-Wan. Keep your concentration, here and now, where it belongs.
Obi-Wan: But Master Yoda said I should be mindful of the future.
Qui-Gon: But not at the expense of the moment. Be mindful of the living Force, young Padawan.
By the end of the semester, I had everything until the pod racing scene written up.
Yes folks, it was that bad. I wish it weren’t the truth, knowing now that the dialogue in that movie was in fact quite dreadful… but it is 100% true. I didn’t look up that dialogue I wrote just above, so evidently, it’s still all fresh in my mind.
Crazy.
It was in this same History class that my friend John mentioned that he had started playing this amazing little game called Half-Life. I had heard about it on GameSpot TV, a show with Adam Sessler on ZDTV that eventually became the popular X-Play show on G4. I assumed it was something along the lines of Quake or Unreal Tournament, and as was the case with other PC games, I didn’t have much interest in seeing what Half-Life was all about.
John had a copy of the game burnt on a CD (which was pretty damn amazing, at the time), and he lent it to me. He wasn’t that much of a gamer, but I figured I’d give this one a shot. I had just gotten a new 3DFX video card, so why not let it stretch its legs a bit?
This was the first time I ever played with the ol’ keyboard and mouse combo, and the controls felt great. The Black Mesa research facility had texture and depth, and felt a heck of a lot more realistic than what I had seen before. NPC’s were talking to me, and although I had seen this sort of thing on console games before, interactions with Half-Life characters just seemed more genuine.
Things had changed quite a bit since Doom, that much was certain.
The narrative was much deeper, and you could associate with Gordon Freeman a heck of a lot more than… DoomGuy, was it? Even though Doom blew my mind for putting me in the shoes of an angry dude carrying a gun, needing to kill everything in sight, Half-Life made me experience something completely different.
I mean, the first part of the game has you showing up for work, and doing Gordon’s job. That was friggin’ brilliant! It connected you to the story, and made you feel as though you were as much a part of the journey as Freeman himself was.
From the moment you step off that hover train at the beginning, you’re sent through this amazing inter-connected space that sends you to every corner of Black Mesa. While the weapons all looked and worked pretty damn awesomely (not to mention how great they sounded), you needed more than just firepower to get past certain situations. There was always some kind of obstacle for you to overcome using your noggin, rather than brute force. I appreciated that, for sure.
Even though I’ve said time and time again that PC games are just not for me, Half-Life is one of those games that I need to re-play on PC again, some day. Sure, the PlayStation 2 version was quite nice, but I’ll never forget the awesomeness that was Half-Life for PC, and how it got me off that Star Wars kick.
I needed that… thanks, John.
The first memory I have about Half-Life comes a few years after I first played the game, on my second or third playthrough. What might seem like an incredibly happy memory is actually somewhat bittersweet. I know I’m usually pretty open about things on my blog, but I won’t get into the details, this time around.
I actually didn’t know it at the time, but the winter storm brewing outside my window that day was being hailed as “White Juan”. Hurricane Juan had rocked the Maritimes a few months earlier, and this blast of weather was the winter version of it. Luckily, I wasn’t working that day, so I settled in for my favourite snowstorm activity – playing lots of games.
That morning, we had gotten the call from Moncton, saying that my sister was driven to the hospital. She was going into labour! Before the day was out, we were hoping to have a little niece or nephew, and my parents would have a grandchild for the first time. It was very exciting!
They didn’t determine the baby’s sex beforehand, so everyone told my sister she was having a boy. Weird cravings? Yep, a boy. Belly has a certain shape? A boy. Blah blah blah. A boy. Mom and I were the only two people that ever told my sister we thought she’d be having a girl. It wasn’t by looking at her, or anything superstitious like that – although, maybe there is some science behind all that stuff, who knows.
It was just the simple fact that we saw her raising a little girl, and not a little boy. That was it.
I was at the part in the video above, where you travel down that massive elevator shaft with the green acid at the bottom, when we got the next call from the hospital in Moncton. I paused the game, headed out into the kitchen and soaked in all the details. We were both elated at the news that both the mommy and baby were healthy, but it was made even sweeter by the fact that it was a girl!! Mom and I were right! Take that, everybody!
Mom didn’t have much time to celebrate, since she had to venture out into the storm and go to work. That had me a bit worried, but she ended up making it just fine. I stayed home and played Half-Life for the better part of the afternoon.
What a strange, surreal day that was.
For memory number two, let’s fast forward almost three years.
I had been dating Anita for a bit more than six months when her roommates bailed on her just after Christmas. I wasn’t sure what she was going to do with her living situation, so I spent a lot of time with her at her place. I didn’t know if I was going to move in, or what, but I wanted to be there while the departing roommate and her boyfriend moved all her stuff out.
It’s not that I didn’t trust them… but… yeah.
Anyway, even when she was at work, I was at her apartment. No cable TV, no internet… just the PlayStation 2 I had brought over to watch movies with. Naturally, I brought a few games along, as well.
There were nights I played games in complete darkness on her little 14-inch TV for hours, waiting for what seemed like forever for her to get off work. The majority of the furniture belonged to the departing roommate, so it really was quite eerie in that place. Of all the games I played, Half-Life was the one that I played the most. In complete darkness, it was a pretty intense playthrough!
We ended up moving in together into a different apartment a month later, but there were definitely some memories from that old place that neither of us will ever forget!
Halifax after “White Juan”, February 2004.
Good times in the Maritimes.
Posted on March 22, 2013
My Top 100: #6 – Grand Theft Auto III
2001 – Rockstar Games (PlayStation 2, PC, Xbox, Mac, iOS, PlayStation Network)
Here’s another series that really made the transition into 3D nicely.
I remember playing the first Grand Theft Auto game on a PC in Technology class. Not only did you learn a bit about computers, but it also had various modules that explored building engines, wood sculptures, rockets, among other things. For some of them (like the Lego robot-building one), a computer was required for you to issue commands. I’d always sign up for these modules with my friend Tyler, who was quite the computer-savvy individual.
Before too long, Tyler had an NES emulator running on the PC’s in the classroom. We’d have to minimize it whenever the teacher came around, but it was pretty fun to play NES games once we had finished the module’s exercises. GTA was also one of the games he installed. It was cool too, I guess, but there was always too much going on at once, and the camera perspective made driving controls a little wonky. I wasn’t really a fan, and I ignored the handful of PC sequels it got.
By the time the PS2 rolled around, everyone was talking about Metal Gear Solid 2. I still have all those EGM and Official PlayStation Magazine issues from the Summer of ’01, and previews for Grand Theft Auto III didn’t take up more than a page in either one. The concept of a free-roaming environment sounded pretty cool, but it got a bit lost in the hype surrounding MGS2 and the new Nintendo and Microsoft consoles.
It was released to immense critical acclaim in October of 2001… I guess? Maybe?
I was still busy playing Gran Turismo 3 in those moments I wasn’t studying like a mad man, so I wasn’t really aware of any hype at the time. The next month saw the release of the GameCube and Xbox, so I was completely oblivious to the apparent awesomeness of GTA3 until early December or so. My friend Wil mentioned that he’d been playing it non-stop, so I figured I’d at least rent it to see what all the apparent fuss was about.
So, I rent it… and I like it…
Gone was the awkward camera angle from the previous games, replaced with the over-the-shoulder view commonly seen in most third person shooters. That was a big deal, because that was the only hurdle in the first few games that I couldn’t overcome. It was awful, but this new third-Claude-perspective worked great!
While doing the missions was definitely quite fun, I had a blast just driving around, looking to see what I could or couldn’t do, where I could or couldn’t go, and what ramps I could turn into slow-motion super jumps. Hidden Packages, Rampages, random weapons, armor, police bribes… I found a ton of stuff that I could eventually come back to if I needed it, and the completionist in me absolutely loved looking around for little secrets.
And then, to top it all off, getting the Callahan Bridge back open gave me that same kind of feeling I had gotten after defeating Bowser for the first time in Super Mario 64.
“YOU MEAN THERE’S MORE???!??!? HOOOOLY FRIG. Amazing.”
There was more lurking around every corner on the second island, and even more stuff to find on the third. The game’s missions were also getting more and more intense, and had you taking on a variety of different weapons and vehicles.
The simple fact that you had freedom to do what you wanted, when you wanted to, was pretty damn amazing. I’ve played it more than any other GTA game to date, and despite the fact that you can do much, much more in later games, this is by far my favourite.
There’s two things I think of whenever I play GTA3.
When I first rented the game, I was somewhat skeptical that I’d like it. I brought it home, popped it in, and watched the intro… but something looked weird.
The characters were being driven around in the back of a Police van, and camera shots of the cars zooming by looked a bit… off. It was obviously raining, but why was the pavement all shiny? It looked black, and was shimmering blue on the surface. I didn’t think too much of it, since I wasn’t sure what the game was really supposed to look like.
Eventually, the cutscene ended, and I was in control of the character. Unfortunately, the pavement still looked very strange, like I was driving on a night sky, or something. It actually looked like the rain was coming “up” to the underside of the seemingly translucent pavement. It was friggin’ weird. Something was definitely wrong, for sure.
I took the disc out, and there didn’t seem to be any damage to it. I popped it back in, and the same thing happened. Damn… my experience with this game wasn’t getting off on the right foot, at all. I had to make the trip all the way back into town, and try to explain to the dude at Blockbuster what was happening.
“Uhhh yeah, the pavement looks all black, blue, and shiny, and it’s like, raining upside down, or something?”
He gave me a weird look, but had no problem in swapping my copy out for another one. My only hope was that it wasn’t something on my PS2 that was screwed up, and not reading the disc properly.
I got home, and all was good this time around. I ended up playing the hell out of that game that weekend, and got it for Christmas not that long afterwards.
My other memory pertains to a rather grumpy day I was having in late ’02.
I had just started my new job working retail, and I wasn’t used to long periods of time on my feet. I mean, I wasn’t far removed from playing 8-9 hours of street hockey almost every day, but standing in one spot behind a cash register all day was proving to be incredibly hard on my knees and back. I also had a bad head cold at the time, and I was an all-around grump-face whenever I had to work the 8:30am to 10:30pm shift.
The morning after one of those long days, I had big plans; go to the podiatrist (the foot doctor people, I think that’s what they’re called) to get my knee and back pain checked out, go to my family doctor to get prescribed something for my head cold, and then a chill-out jam session with my friend Tom later in the day. He had borrowed my copy of GTA3, so I had to get that back from him, as well.
The podiatrist looked at my feet and asked “have you ever used arch-supports?” I hadn’t, just because our family doctor had taken one look at my foot imprints as a little one and said “he has flat feet!”
Well, I didn’t have flat feet, and the “flat” imprint was caused by my ankles rolling inward, putting my knees out of alignment, which ended up hurting my back, as well.
Frig. That explained why doing simple stuff like ice skating hurt me so much as a kid.
Anyway, right then and there, he took a mold of my feet to do up my arch supports, which would no doubt help make me more comfortable behind the cash register. I remember the plaster being cold and gooey, and I was quite glad when I was finally able to clean up and put my socks back on.
So, from there, I went to the doctor’s office. It was busy, so I sat and waited for my turn… and waited… and waited… finally, an hour after the scheduled time of my appointment, I went to see the receptionist.
“Oh, you’re here! You didn’t pop in to say you were here, so I just assumed you weren’t. I’ll tell Tom you’re ready to see him whenever he’s ready.”
An hour wasted. *sigh* Whatever. I got a prescription for meds, and headed over to Tom’s.
We jammed for a bit, and it was fun. When I grabbed the GTA3 box, the instruction manual looked like a big slice of bacon. He had spilled something on it, and it was sticky and barely even pliable… I was mad, but from what I can recall, I kept it all in. Tom was pretty apologetic, and he genuinely felt horrible for ruining a simple little instruction booklet.
I was extra grumpy, and I really hope I remember that right, and that I didn’t flip out on Tom. I don’t think I did… in any case, I ended up trading the PS2 version, messed up manual and all, for the Xbox version when it eventually came out. So it’s all good now, anyway.
Just one more reason for me to have trust issues when lending games to friends…… sorry guys, I’ve been jaded a few too many times.
Although the day was a pretty grumpy one, getting arch supports is actually the sole (HA!) reason I didn’t quit my job. I’m quite glad I got them!
Posted on March 20, 2013
My Top 100: #7 – Super Mario 64
1996 – Nintendo (Nintendo 64, DS, Virtual Console)
Imagine looking at a rubix cube head-on.
You know there’s a possibility of there being more sides to it. You’re pretty satisfied with looking at the green square, but the green one is nevertheless the only one you’ve ever seen. You have an incredible amount of fun looking at this one square, but you can’t help but wonder what the rest of the sides actually look like… if only you could pick up the square, turn it around in your hands, and look at what is actually a three-dimensional cube.
To me, that’s kinda what Super Mario 64 was.
Ever since I first played Super Mario Bros., I would try to imagine what was beyond the land that I could see on the screen. I’d play with friends, and we pretended to be Mario characters, imagining our back yards as being just like the Mushroom Kingdom. My imagination was vivid enough, but I used to think “if only I could jump into the television, and walk around Mario’s world just once, that would be amazing”.
The Super Mario Bros. 3 cartoon satisfied that curiosity, but only to a certain extent.
The Super NES era came with more detailed graphics and parallax scrolling, which gave Super Mario World‘s Dinosaur Land quite a bit of depth. You could see what was in the background, and it definitely helped make the world feel more alive.
Before the Nintendo 64 came around, I had no idea what a 3D Mario game might play like. I had seen screenshots of worlds in other 3D games, and I had played Doom quite extensively at that point, but 3D didn’t seem like that great an idea for the platformer genre. The idea of controlling a character in a 3D space with a control pad didn’t particularly sound all that easy to do. Mario 64 sure looked nice, but the introduction of the N64’s controller did nothing to alleviate my apprehension.
Then I played it. Ohhhhhhhh man, what a feeling that was.
The analog stick felt so natural under my thumb. It had just the right amount of resistance to it, and Mario was under complete control at all times. I was triple-jumping with ease in no time, using the Z-trigger to crawl and long-jump, while the A and B buttons did exactly what they always did. The camera controls took a bit of getting used to, but even that felt natural after a while.
It had everything I loved about Mario – the jumping, the enemies, the music, the variety in the levels, the power-ups, the coins… it was all there, and it felt like almost nothing had changed. Mario moved exactly like he did when he was only moving left or right, except now, he was doing it all over the place.
The amount of content was quite staggering, as well. Even when I defeated Bowser that first time, I thought “wow, that was an incredible game, surely there can’t be more left to play and explore”… and then the game just kept going, and it was all so friggin’ fantastic.
It truly blew my mind, and I feel like I’m 13 all over again whenever I play it.
Although I was pretty excited about getting my hands on the Ultra 64 for the first time (the Nintendo 64 name didn’t quite sound as fun to me, so I called it that for a little while), I really wasn’t expecting to get one until quite a while after launch. I was a little bit older, and a little more conscious of what such a thing would cost my parents. I had been spoiled by being the “baby” my entire life, and was finally at a point where I actually felt guilty for things I recieved as gifts.
Yay, growth!
Anyway, my first experience with the console was probably similar to anyone else’s – on a demo unit at a local retailer. There were two stores that had one; Zellers had a Nintendo-made kiosk with a lit-up sign and N64’s “cubed N” logo on it, while Toys R Us had a much simpler set up… a TV with an N64 hooked up to it, sitting on a shelf behind a glass display case. There was a little hole for the controller wire to go through, and a piece of velcro taped to where the memory card slot was. When you were done playing with it, you’d just plop the controller onto the “male” piece of velcro taped to the side of the glass case.
Taped to the glass was a quickly put-together sign, written with a fat black marker, asking kids to “please take turns and limit play to five minutes”. If they thought that would convince most kids to do just that, they were sorely mistaken. I often had to wait my turn to play, and when I eventually got a chance, I sure as hell played longer than five minutes too! Two wrongs don’t make a right, but I didn’t care! Why would I have to lose out, because some other kid got to play longer? Nuh-uh, not me, not this time.
Whenever I’d get off school at 3PM, I’d try to convince Mom that she needed to go to the mall for something, anything that would allow me to quickly run to Toys R Us and back. One day, she not only needed to go to the mall, but she said she’d be a while. “Awesome!!! See you in an hour, Mom!”
I made my way over to Toys R Us, and patiently waited for the kid playing Super Mario 64 to finish his turn. As usual, he went longer than five minutes, but I didn’t care, I had an hour to kill! When he was done, I grabbed the controller and kept on playing… and playing… and playing…
I noticed another kid come up behind me, seeing his reflection in the glass of the display case. I actually knew the guy, but I wasn’t sure if he knew who I was. Tommy was the much older (and much bigger) brother of a girl I went to school with. He waited patiently like I did before, but eventually, he politely asked “can I play?”
At this point, I had a choice to make. Do I politely give him the controller, and watch him or someone else play for the rest of the hour? Or, do I pretend like I don’t understand English, and just keep on playing?
I went with option number two.
I kept playing for what seemed like quite some time, all while he politely asked two more times if he could play. The whole time I was playing, I was thinking “oh man, I’m being pretty damn impolite here, but this is my chance to play N64!” After what seemed like several minutes of me ignoring the kid, I eventually gave him the controller and left the store.
Or, maybe I went down the next aisle and played Nights on the Saturn demo… either way, I think back to that day, and I feel pretty bad about flat-out ignoring that guy. Sorry, man!
Beta screens from development of Super Mario 64…
I was quite amazed with these, but the final product ended up being even better!
Posted on March 19, 2013
My Top 100: #8 – The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
1992 – Nintendo (Super NES, Game Boy Advance, Virtual Console)
I believe that Zelda games were meant to be played from a top-down perspective.
Sure, the age of 3D gaming has been pretty kind to the series, and all of them have been incredible in one way or another. Furthermore, it might have taken a while for me to truly appreciate the side-scrolling nature of Adventure of Link, but even that worked really well. Hell, I’d even be willing to try a turn-based Zelda game! Nintendo did a great job with Super Mario RPG and the Paper series, so why not?
Playing with a top-down view just goes back to that first time we set out on a Hyrulean adventure. It was just as simple as going up, down, left or right, and there was no lock-on targeting to worry about – walk around, hit stuff with a sword, and you were good to go.
A Link to the Past brought gamers back to the basics after Zelda II‘s radical departure from the original formula. Not only was the world bigger this time around, but the Light World\Dark World dichotomy added a whole new layer to the gameplay (pretty much literally). There were a bunch of new items that would become series mainstays, such as bottles, the hookshot, coloured tunics, as well as the legendary Master Sword.
This doesn’t seem like a big deal now, but by adding the Piece of Heart thing (finding four pieces grants one Heart Container), you were given yet another reason to explore both the Light and Dark Worlds extensively. Death Mountain in particular had several caves and ledges for you to drop down from, and it was never obvious how to get to them – you often had to travel from one world to the other in order to get to otherwise impossible-to-reach locations.
I could go on and on about why the game mechanics made it fun to play, but the overall mood of the game is great, as well. From the moment you step out of Link’s house and into a torrential downpour, you’re shown just what this 16 bit console was capable of. The lighting and graphics were not only fun to look at, but they set the mood quite well.
NPC’s were also given a much larger role this time around. No longer were they simply hidden in a cave to give you random tips, or walking around a village aimlessly. They could now be found anywhere on the map, and would not only give you a tip or two, but give you some kind of beneficial side-quest for you to complete.
A prime example of this would be talking to the Swordsmith in Kakariko Village, who mentions that his partner got lost along the way; you KNOW this guy can probably give you a better sword, and you’re left scratching your head, wondering where the hell his partner is. You eventually find him later on in the game, but the idea that such a seemingly minor plotline could help you so much made you want to talk to everyone, and finish every side quest there was.
Throw in some of the best music on the Super NES, and you’ve got one heck of a game.
This memory is from a year or two after the release of A Link to the Past, and it just screams of 90’s pop culture.
I wasn’t necessarily a fan of Game Genies because of their ability to let you cheat your way through a game, but I loved their ability to modify certain things and change the overall experience just a bit. I owned one for Game Boy, but I never had much of a chance to tinker with the NES Game Genie until Josh gave me his, quite a few years later. Naturally, I hoped there would be a Game Genie for Super NES, and when it finally hit the shelves, I rented it from Blockbuster as soon as I could.
The first weekend I had it, I messed around with codes for a few games. Cheats for A Link to the Past were slightly different than usual, allowing me to change the appearance of a few of my items, as well as some of the sound effects in the game. Not surprisingly, I spent most of my weekend playing “Super Zelda” more than anything else.
This was in late April, and the days were starting to get warmer and warmer. My sister had a friend over, and they were laying on the back deck in the awesome weather on old fold-out cushions, chillin’ out, listening to the radio.
I thought I’d try to be cool like them, so I turned off my game, got my own fold-out cushion, and joined them on the back deck. They were listening to Casey Kasem’s American Top 40 radio show, and I thought some of the tunes were pretty awesome. The only thing that could make chillin’ out on a Sunday like this even better, would be to have a nice cold drink right beside me.
I go back to the fridge, and get myself a nice cold glass of Crystal Pepsi… awwww yeah. It was on the verge of being flat, which to me, was an extra bonus. I don’t mind pop fizz, but I always believed that a pop on the verge of being flat (not *quite* flat yet) was when it achieved its maximum flavour potential!
I went out, and convinced my sister and her friend that what I was drinking was a glass of water. Pft… they’ll never know…
Anyway, I heard some great tunes that day. I heard this song for the first time, and I thought it was amazing…
Ahhhh the 90’s, a time when even the most awful songs were pretty great.
*This song came out in ’93, so I’m not sure why the clip above says 1996… oh well.*
Posted on March 13, 2013
My Top 100: #9 – Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
2003 – LucasArts\BioWare (Xbox, PC)
What’s this? An RPG in the top ten?? I know it’s not turn-based, but it’s pretty darn close. It definitely isn’t the sort of game I would have checked out, had the Star Wars name not been at the front of it.
When the game was first announced, the idea of a Star Wars game set 4,000 years before the events of the movies intrigued me quite a bit. There were comic books set during that timeframe, and the technology I saw when I flipped through those pages was a bit more primitive and organic-looking than what was in the movies. The game should be quite interesting, even if it was an RPG.
I bought Knights of the Old Republic when I picked up my Xbox, along with Enter the Matrix. It was somewhat of an impulse buy, considering the fact that I had no idea if I was going to like it, or the console it was on. It was Star Wars, so why not?
This goes without saying, but I liked it. I liked it a lot.
Once you get your character attributes all lined up, you’re dropped into the midst of a fierce space battle. The capital ship you’re on is being bombarded, and it’s up to you to learn the ropes and get to an escape pod as quickly as possible. Of course, it’s just a tutorial level, but you still have that “I need to get the hell out of here” feeling in the pit of your stomach.
In that first level, the battle mechanics are explained quite well – even an RPG newb like myself had no problem getting accustomed to it. While it’s not turn-based, the game does pause when encountering an enemy. This gives you plenty of time to choose how you’d like your character to attack, and assign tasks to different party members.
I’ve never been a fan of waiting for my turn to attack, preferring instead to be fully in control of my actions – you know, like in Zelda, you swing your sword, land hits, and that’s the end of it. I guess that’s why I’ve never been a fan of Final Fantasy or other popular role playing games, where you’re often at the mercy of a roll of a virtual dice.
KotOR pretty much works like a game of Dungeons and Dragons (which I’ve never played, by the way), and it was a bit strange to me at first in that I wasn’t fully in control of how often my character attacked. Still, not once did I ever feel like I wasn’t in control of a situation.
“OK, so I have this semi-powerful guy, this not-so powerful droid, and a Jedi to go up against… here’s what I’m gonna do… Aaaaand go!”
It could be a bit frustrating when your character shot a blaster bolt into the floor in front of him instead of a target across the room, but that stops happening after you level up a bit.
The decisions you make throughout the game give you Light Side or Dark Side points, and you can gain certain abilities if you stay on one path more than another. Whether you want to feel like a hero by helping everyone you meet, or you feel like being a menace to society and causing a ruckuss at every opportunity, you can do it! Definitely a great time, either way.
The path your character takes is quite amazing, working his (or her) way up from the depths of the city world of Taris, all the way to becoming one of the most respected (or feared) warriors in the galaxy. I won’t spoil the ending, because it truly blew my mind when I saw the cutscene, but it’s the kind of story that once you know how it ends up, you’ll feel like playing it all over again… and again… and again.
This takes me back to the summer of ’03 and the weekend I bought KotOR, along with my shiny new console.
Much like that night I bought the Spider-Man 2 game, I had a softball game scheduled on the following Sunday, and didn’t feel much like going. It was race day, and I just got this brand new console I wanted to play. Still, I knew that if I didn’t show up, the team might be short a player or two, and I’d get an earful from the coach, the Softball Nazi.
So much for it being a fun “Beer League”.
I showed up relatively early at the north side baseball diamond at Henry Park, and the game eventually got under way. All I could think about while I was in the outfield was KotOR, and the card game my character had been shown how to play in order to win money, called Pazaak. It was basically Blackjack, but instead of the perfect score being 21, it was 20. Also, some cards you can choose to “bring into” the match can actually decrease your overall total, in the event you go a little too far with deals, and your total goes over 20.
Anyway, I was thinking about Pazaak (no balls were being hit to me, thankfully) when I noticed that the sky had gotten really dark and cloudy, all of a sudden. It had been sunny just a minute before, and it was like someone flipped a switch. There was lightning off in the distance, and I could see the haze of pouring rain on the south side of the Saint John River. It was just a matter of time before it reached us!
Strangely, all we ever felt was just a few sprinkles. There were a few massive cracks of thunder and lightning nearby, and one of them scared the bejeezus out of everyone on the field. Other than that, we were able to finish the game without any problems.
We probably lost, too. I can’t quite remember, but I doubt we won, because we rarely ever did!
After getting home, I went right back to playing Knights of the Old Republic, then watched the race later that afternoon.
The next morning, I heard on the news that a 14-year old girl from Maine was at a soccer tournament when a bolt of lightning struck the field her team was playing on. This happened just down the road while I was playing softball, and I didn’t really put two and two together when we all got spooked by the thunder and lightning, then heard sirens not far in the distance.
Coupled with last year’s close call with lightning at the NASCAR race I was at, I might be pushing my luck with Mother Nature!
Top – This wasn’t how bright the day was… this was a lightning strike.
Bottom – I’m somewhere in this mess. One fan was killed by the strike, which happened very close to us!
Posted on March 11, 2013
My Top 100: #10 – Metal Gear Solid
1998 – Konami (PlayStation, PlayStation Network)
Wow, 90 posts already? Where did the time go?
I was somewhat split on which game to actually feature on the countdown. The original version of Metal Gear Solid blew my mind in so many ways, and it became one of my favourite games before I even reached the title screen. On the other hand, 2004’s MGS remake for GameCube, The Twin Snakes, made a some big changes that perfected the game even further.
Without that PlayStation version, however, I would have never even considered playing Sons of Liberty, The Twin Snakes or anything else in the Metal Gear series. That’s why I had to go with that one!
Where do I begin, though?
The game starts with a lengthy cinematic, and though we didn’t know it at the time, it was only a taste of things to come for future games in the series. I couldn’t help but be impressed at how it felt like a big-budget Hollywood movie. The graphics might not have aged all that well, but at the time, those first few minutes explaining Snake’s insertion into Shadow Moses were really quite impressive.
That first little area of the game, where the credits are given time to finish while you learn basic controls, was all I needed to experience to know that this would be a game to remember. I knew the idea was to sneak around and stay out of sight, but that moment I stepped in a puddle and alerted a guard to my presence, I almost peed my pants.
“Aaaahhhh he’s comin’, the radar shows red, he’s mad, gotta hide!”
I failed spectacularly at hiding, and died about 30 seconds after I started controlling Snake. Instead of letting it get me down, I soldiered on. How Solid Snake had to think, I thought the same way. I had never really been immersed into a video game like that before, keeping track of everything I was doing, misleading guards with footprints in the snow, making noises for diversions, using force only when absolutely necessary, or using chaff grenades to disable security cameras. Those sorts of things might all be par for the course now, but that was pretty damn cool 15 years ago.
Any minor complaints I would have had with MGS were addressed in The Twin Snakes. Where the original’s gunfighting could sometimes feel a bit strange (not knowing what you were shooting at could be a pain in the arse), the remake changed a few of the camera angles throughout the game to help give you a better idea of what lied ahead.
It also added MGS2‘s first person view, which could be used at the press of a button to help you aim a little better. That alleviated some headaches that came whenever the game used a top-down perspective in a big room with lots of enemies, half of which were somewhere off the screen and still shooting at you.
All in all, both games were so fun, fresh and hilariously over-the-top that I couldn’t help but include it among my favourites.
I was three years late to the MGS party, but that didn’t matter.
The week I started at Saint Thomas University, I thought it would be a good idea to rent a game to relieve some of the stress I was feeling. I had some doubts I’d be able to keep up with the work load, and though I wasn’t afraid of failing, classes cost way too much for me to show up and slack off. This was going to be hard work, but I was trying not to let it get to me too much.
I was planning on majoring in Journalism, so I thought it might be a good idea to write for a student newspaper. What I’d write about, I had no idea, but I’d write my fingers off if it helped me in class.
The Sunday before Frosh Week started, my friend John and I went to the office of The Brunswickan, the University of New Brunswick’s student-run publication. We weren’t UNB students, but they added us to their roster of writers.
There was a section dedicated to movie and video game reviews, but a few people had those covered, already (damn). I put my name in for the music section, and walked out that night with three CD’s, just so I could get crackin’ on some reviews – Adema’s self-titled debut album, Slipknot’s Iowa, and Strait Up, a compilation album dedicated to the memory of the singer from a band called Snot. Awesome! I didn’t pay a cent, and got to keep both!
Feeling pretty happy about things, I went home and played the game I rented before going in to The Bruns meeting… Metal Gear Solid.
Whenever I play it, hear music or see screen shots from the game, I can’t help but think of all the random things that happened in my first few weeks at STU.
I actually enjoyed my classes, and saw potential in getting awesome grades out them. So, that was weird.
9/11 happened just as we were getting into “real” classes (i.e. not the Frosh Week kind). Being in Journalism, that somewhat flipped the whole curriculum on its side, and we ended up talking about the events of that day a lot. I’m a big history buff, and seeing events like those unfold in front of my eyes was quite shocking and fascinating, all at the same time.
My Physical Anthropology professor was actually not in class the day it happened, just because she was “on hold”, and waiting to be flown down to New York City to help in doing identification with body parts. She ended up not having to go, but we didn’t have class that particular Tuesday.
After being told the professor wouldn’t be coming in, we were all getting up to leave when the girl next to me said, “Good, I don’t believe in any this stuff, anyway.” My friend Nick and I loooked at each other and rolled our eyes, and to that, she said “What? You guys think this whole Australopithecus thing actually happened? God created the Earth!”
I had always known there was a divide between science and religion. I had just never met anyone who flat-out denied evolution. I was raised Catholic, but I never once questioned what I was being taught in school.
I was young, and felt like calling her crazy and all that, but I’m glad I didn’t. Religion and faith mean different things to different people, and it’s a sticky subject. I try not to touch it with a ten-foot pole, but I guess that’s exactly what I’m doing now!
Anyway, the cherry on top of the weird STU Sundae was having my first review published in The Bruns.
Even though I submitted a short review of Iowa, a few weeks went by without hearing back from anyone. No “hey, good review, we’re printing it next week” or “OK review, we just needed something different”. One morning while waiting for class to start, John unfolded the Bruns copy he was reading and said “take a look at page (whatever), there’s an up-and-coming writer you should check out”.
What he was trying to say didn’t dawn on me at all. I opened it up to the music section like he said, and there was my review, sitting next to a few others. There was nothing quite like seeing my name in print for the first time, underneath an article I wrote. I could definitely get used to this feeling!
Unfortunately, a handful of reviews is all I ended up writing. STU and I would end up going our separate ways a few years later, but I definitely look back on the whole experience quite fondly.
Playing MGS reminds me of that crazy week when I first rented it, and all the craziness that happened in the weeks that followed.
STU had its own publication in “The Aquinian”, but I found out about “The Brunswickan” first. Simple as that!