Electric Dilintia

It's amazing how quickly my iPad went from the future of game consoles to a portable YouTube machine.  Although it had the potential to deliver all of the advantages of a home game console -- standardized hardware, a system of software oversight -- it ended up with the same problems that PC games give me -- unstable software, upgrades that ruin features and break compatibility.  Plus there's the limitations of a pure touchscreen interface, Apple's reluctance to adopt a controller standard, and the oversaturation of crappy free-to-play software.

But we had some good times, didn't we?  There's a few good games on there that made the platform worthwhile.  These are some games that I continue to enjoy between compulsive Twitter checks.

Plants vs. Zombies

This was the one that reeled me in.  The first time I saw a kid in a fast food restaurant with a giant screen full of peashooters mowing down waves of zombies, I was head over heels.  And the game is pretty gosh darned great.  The main campaign is a lot of fun, with lots of different zombies sporting lots of different abilities and lots of different plants designed to counter them.  So much is going on, but the game teaches you so gradually that it never feels overwhelming.  Not to mention all of the different side games that throw a few new twists into the basic mechanics.

I was a little sad when EA took over Popcap, and my fears were well-founded -- Plants vs. Zombies received a makeover, adding paid content on top of its initial asking price, and its sequel went full freemium.  But y'know.

Monopoly

I've become a little disillusioned with Monopoly after coming to the realization that pure luck plays the biggest part in determining your success or failure, but setting up houses and moving money around is still fun now and then.  The iOS version of Monopoly is a joy, with a very clean look and feel, some easily bamboozled CPU opponents, and some light music that drifts easily into the background.

Knights of Pen and Paper

A fun little throwback to tabletop roleplaying with an 8-bitty graphic and music style.  I'm a little sad that the developers didn't go with their original plan of creating new campaign scenarios to play from the beginning -- I was fond of the Fighting Pit scenario that was available in the original version -- but it's still a fun little diversion to play from beginning to end, experimenting with different player/class matchups.

Tiny Tower

Every mobile gamer should have at least one social/freemium experience in their life, and Tiny Tower is my personal pick for the best.  This game is awfully polite to the player, offering lots of opportunities to acquire the premium currency, little activities for active play, and periodic bonuses that speed up progress the same way premium currency does.  It's a cute little thing that you can watch grow day by day.

Poker Night 2

This is a perfect little lunch break game.  It requires very few inputs and has no timing dependencies, so it's something you can play while you're eating a sandwich or something.  Yeah, the little back-and-forths between the characters get a little repetitive after a while, but it's still quite satisfying to shove a full house in Brock Samson's face.  And GLaDOS is the dealer, how can you not love this.

You Don't Know Jack

This game only gets an honorable mention because, sadly, it's over.  We had some great times, but a quiz game with fully voiced episodes can't last forever, especially when people are mostly playing it for free.

Thanks Jellyvision.

1 Minute RPG

Just what it says on the tin.  It's a game where you can move left and right.  Touch a monster to fight it, pick up potions for bonuses, touch a town to create a save point and recover health.  Victory is mostly a matter of luck -- the best speeds depend entirely on when and where the invincibility potions drop -- but it's something to do for a minute or so while you're standing in line.

Osu! Stream

If Nintendo's not going to give us a new Elite Beat Agents, at least somebody will.  There's no cool comic book cutscenes or recognizable licensed music, but the number-tapping rhythm gameplay is here, exactly like you remember it.  It's even more fun on an iPad; multitouch input allows for some interesting patterns that require you to touch different spots simultaneously, and playing with your fingers feels like a cross between playing a musical instrument and fingerpainting.

The game also features a curious gameplay mechanic.  "Stream" mode offers difficulty settings that ramp up when you do better and ramp down when you fail.  It's something I haven't seen in a rhythm game before, and I like it better than the standard "cut out in the middle of a song" failure.

The game is a cheap download, and most of its songs are paid DLC.  If you want a recommendation?  Magnetic Love.

Little Inferno

Little Inferno is one of those games that you give to a friend and say, "Hey, try this!" then you sit back and grin and watch the expression on their face when they get to the good bit.  It's most obviously a fireplace simulator and a spoof on social freemium games, but that's not the only place it goes.

Defend Your Castle

This was cute as one of the launch titles for Wii Ware, and it's even more satisfying with a touch interface.  It does lose a bit of its charm when you've built up your castle enough to let the game run itself, but hey.

Think Fun Games

As of this writing, Think Fun has three apps up on iTunes: Rush Hour, Chocolate Fix, and Solitaire Chess.  All three are wonderful, addictive little puzzle games, perfect to fiddle around with for a minute or two or to chew through on a long car trip.

Myst

I tried Myst back on the PC, but for some reason, the game never really clicked with me until I tried it on my iPod.  There's something very cozy and bookish about the game that makes it well suited to being played with your fingers on a screen that sits on your lap.

Jurassic Park

Jurassic Park was sort of a turning point for Tell Tale Games.  Known at the time for their more traditional light-hearted, open world exploration point and click games like Sam & Max or Tales of Monkey Island, this game proved that they could take on a more serious narrative and even incorporate action elements with Quick Time Events.

Labels: lists

I miss Touch Generations.

Video games have such a negative image in our culture.  Games are juvenile.  Games appeal to our worse nature.  Games trap us in feedback response loops, turning us into Skinner Box rats.

It was so refreshing to see someone step up and tell us things could be different.  Games can teach us.  Games can help us improve ourselves.  Games can be quiet and gentle, a friendly harbor in the storm of life.  Games can take us places.  It's okay for adults to play.

I know that it's kind of stupid to be fond of a corporate marketing scheme.  Nintendo came up with an idea for a lifestyle where their video games were a necessary component.  I bought into it because they had so many beautiful photographs of fit 60-year-olds in beautiful living spaces, grinning serenely as they poked around with their slick little DS Lites or did yoga poses on a Balance Board or swung their Wii Remotes at their 60-inch flatscreen televisions.  They showed me a fantasy I didn't know I wanted, and I paid in over and over again.

And the brand wasn't always great.  By the end, it was getting pretty saturated.  Some of the games in the set seemed a little shoe-horned (Elite Beat Agents?) and a few were just outright dumb (Personal Trainer: Math).

But you know what?  There was a little something there.  The best of them really followed through on the promise of adding value to my life, whether that was helping me practice real-life skills or just giving me something small, simple, and engaging to chill out with.

These are my favorites.  Not all of these games have the official Touch Generations branding, but I associate them all pretty closely for the feeling you get when you play them.

Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!

The granddaddy of them all, and I still love it.  I bought the sequel, and I have the DSiWare versions, but the original is still my favorite.  I'm not proud that it's mostly because this is the easiest version.

True Swing Golf

For whatever reason, video golf is my go-to for digital sports.  This version, with its touchscreen controls, almost feels like a desktop golf toy.

Nintendogs

I have a real dog now, and so I don't play much Nintendogs anymore.  But it always sticks out in my head, whenever I'm at the park or out for a walk and something happens that makes me think, wow, that's just like Nintendogs!  It's quite a cute little pet simulator.

Clubhouse Games

A nice variety of classic board games, card games, and even a little billiards.  Fun in quick bursts, but I can easily find myself getting lost for hours in round after round of Sevens.

Rhythm Heaven

It took a while for Rhythm Heaven to really "click" with me.  I didn't really understand the point of a collection of music games that only featured one song and one rhythm arrangement apiece and no real scoring scheme, but one day it just all made sense all at once.  It's just fun music and cute things happening, and that's great.

Picross DS

Picross has been my logic game of choice ever since I discovered Mario's Picross back on the Game Boy.  It's like potato chips for your brain.  One is never enough.

Animal Crossing: Wild World

Wild World is, in many ways, the weakest entry in the Animal Crossing series to date.  Its world feels stripped down from the Game Cube version, and New Leaf is the superior portable version, but... yeah.  I still drop in on Elms from time to time, even if it's just to pull a few weeds and see who's moved out.

100 Classic Books

I bought this one at the height of my Kindle envy, and even if it's just a collection of public domain works, it's still a sharp piece of software.  Its best feature is a suite of search options that will match you up with a book based on the criteria you give it -- funny, easy to read, not too long, etc.  And the DS itself makes a very charming piece of ebook hardware, with the two screens as facing pages and any number of configurable page-turning options.

Scribblenauts

Scribblenauts isn't a very strong game simply because the player is so overpowered, but god damn, isn't cool to see what insane ways you can cook up to beat all of the different levels?  Whatever its faults, I prefer it over the later versions that started feeling more like a crossword puzzle than an adventure game.

Jam Sessions

Sweet little piece of music-making software.  I don't play with it enough.

Personal Trainer: Cooking

One of Nintendo's very coolest non-games.  It's a digital cookbook.  There's a variety of ways to sort through recipes to help you decide on something to try.  There's a shopping list feature to keep track of what you need to get to make a recipe.  There's step-by-step instructions that read aloud to you and a few clips of video demonstrations to help you understand certain steps in the process.  There's even a built-in oven timer and a Chef Game & Watch that you can play while you wait.

Personal Trainer: Walking

There's not much software to this one.  Most of the magic comes from the pedometer that you carry in your pocket, which you can link up with your DS to track your daily activity cycles.  And when the Wi-Fi Connection was still up, you could post your steps online to compete in leaderboards and contribute to a global step count.  The world was trying to walk its way out of the solar system.  I didn't keep track to find out how far we got. :(

Cooking Mama

The "Mama" series kind of went off the rails at some point, but the first two Cooking Mama games were a small joy.  It was playing "house" on your DS screen.

Duck Amuck

Yeah, I still love this game.  It's kind of messy and kind of dumb, but it's still charming, like one of those Flash games you keep playing in spite of yourself.

London Life

When I was playing Fantasy Life, it struck me how much it reminded me of London Life, a bonus game included with Professor Layton and the Last Specter.  And small wonder, because they're both games developed by Level-5 and Brownie Brown.  I never paid much attention to it, but I feel like I'll have a new appreciation for it, now that Fantasy Life has sort of primed me for the style of game that it is.

Electroplankton

A cool sort of musical toy that you can just sort of sit down and zone out with.  It's a shame the physical version is so rare, but at least now it's downloadable.

Art Academy: First Semester

Really cool piece of software.  Not just a computer paint program, but an actual painting simulation, where you create your palette by mixing colors and you leave realistic brushstrokes on the screen.  It comes with lessons to teach you the basics, and you can export your pictures to SD card to share.

Go Vacation

I'm still on about this one.  Kawawii Island is a place that I want to visit.  It's always fun to drop in, whether it's to swim, ride the train, skateboard down a halfpipe waterslide, ride a snowtube down a mountain, kayak...

Walk it Out!

It's not the best exercise game out there, but damn, Rhythm Island is still a completely wonderful place to visit.  Great music, interesting sights to see, a completely customizable walking route -- it's a great way to take a walk when you can't leave the house.

Wii Sports

Still the king of the motion control games.  Sports and Sports Resort turn your living room into a playground.  Playing tennis is still as much fun as it was eight years ago.

Wii Fit Plus

It's the center of my home gym.  It still feels really good to get on the balance board for half an hour.

Wii Music

For all of its problems, Wii Music is still a pretty cute piece of software.  It's fun to jam for a while, try out Nintendo music with various instruments, and rearrange classical pieces as chiptunes.  If you give it a chance, you can even learn a thing or two about musical style.

Of course, Nintendo has continued to produce many of these games as their own series.  In fact, it's better because many of these games have become downloadable and cheaper.  So maybe it's a little nitpicky and whiny to say that I miss the marketing initiative.  It's like I really need a company to come out and tell me "Here is a lifestyle you might like, and these are the products you need to live it."

But a lot of things come down to perception.  And for better or worse, I do like what these games did to mine.

Going forward?  I am rather curious about Nintendo's proposed Quality of Life platform.  It seems to be a return to the idea of products that make your life better, and I'm interested in seeing what shape that ends up taking.  We'll see how it goes.

Labels: lists

All right.  I've got the classics.  I've got pinball.  But my home arcade is about more than just living in the past -- this is a continuum, not a fossil record.  Why disclude the new classics just because they're new?  So here's The New Arcade.  The games that feel right at home next to the classics.

How do I decide which games make the cut?  I don't want to nail down the definition too tightly, but these are just games that I wouldn't be surprised to see in an arcade.  They're designed to give the player brief sessions, usually around 5-10 minutes or so, depending on skill level.  They're games that you pick up, play with a little, and then put down again.

So, what's going to go into my new arcade?

Activision Anthology

Maybe it's weird to start the "new" arcade with ports of 30-year-old Atari games, but hey.  These are games that were never in an arcade, though they wear the cabinet well.  Many games in this collection fit the bill, but I'm pointing to Enduro and Pressure Cooker in particular.  The first is a racing game, the second is about making sandwiches.  Beautiful.

Temple Run

This one's so much more fun with a joystick.  Nab coins, jump and duck.  Poetry.

Fix-It Felix Jr.

I never downloaded the update, so I'm still the proud owner of a Fix-It Felix Jr. desktop arcade cabinet. All these months later, the game still gives me a smile.

Fruit Ninja

I was reluctant to include touchscreen games in this list just because it kind of breaks the arcade feel, doesn't it?  Robot Unicorn Attack and Jetpack Joyride are very addictive and very arcadey, but if you're not playing them with buttons, do they really feel like arcade games?  Still, considering the fact that I've see an actual Fruit Ninja game set up in an actual arcade, I feel compelled to concede the point on this one.

Beatdown

Until I can determine whether or not the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game coming out for Wii is a viable substitute for the classic arcade game, Beatdown is a reasonable sidescrolling beat-em-up.

Unicorn Dash

It's basically Robot Unicorn Attack, minus the robot part, but plus iCade controls and the option to play your own music, such as "Can't Keep Johnny Down".

Wii Sports and Sports Resort

In the mid to late 90s, arcade games started coming out with all sorts of wacky gimmicks to try and compete with our home supercomputers, and I remember weird controllers being one of them.  You know the kind -- you'd pay $2 or something insane like that, take up a giant fake gun or something, and the game ends five minutes later.  The Wii Sports games feel perfect for capturing that spirit.  Go Vacation may go under this heading at some point, but for now, I'd still rather relate to it as an open world exploration game than as a minigame pack.

Link's Crossbow Training

Oh hell yes.  I can just see it, every pack of 3 levels at $1 apiece.  And it's so much fun.

Donkey Konga

Music game, stupid controller.  That's an arcade game all right.

Super Smash Brothers

Smash Brothers was born on the Nintendo 64.  It was designed for analog controls, which makes playing it with a digital joystick kind of awkward.  But hey, that's just part of the charm, isn't it?  Like trying to play one of the old Super Mario Brothers arcade cabinets and discovering just how much more awkward a joystick was compared to the D-pad?  Sure, I love the novelty of playing all three of these games arcade style.

Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix

It's the only DDR I've got, and the only one I've ever been good at.  Judge me all you want, see if I care.  :D

Game & Watch Gallery

I love the sheer perversion of hooking up a supercomputer to an industrial strength joystick and a giant monitor to play LCD games.  I've always thought of a Game & Watch Gallery as a pocket arcade without the quarters, so sure, let's give them their time to shine on the big screen.

Wario Ware Inc.

Supercomputer.  Industrial strength joystick.  Giant monitor.  5-second games.  SHEER.  PERVERSION.

Muscle March

Also known as "The Greatest Thing on WiiWare".  Maybe this was an arcade game in Japan?  It sure looks like one.  And it is SO AWESOME.

Samba de Amigo

Fudging it, I know, because this absolutely was an arcade game at some point, but what the heck.  I never played it until it came out on Dreamcast.  The Wii version is kind of hit and miss -- some days it seems to work fine, other days I can't seem to catch a single beat -- but what else am I going to do?  My Dreamcast and maracas are dead.

Rock Band

Yeah.  Rock Band.  Another one of those games that, years ago, it would have been completely impractical to see outside of an arcade.  Now it's become so commonplace that we've become culturally bored with the idea.

So there we go.  My home arcade.  One tiny corner of the basement, one enormous embarrassment of electronic entertainment.  Switching games is perhaps inelegant, and with only two stations available -- you have to move the iPad between the iCade and the Duo Pinball -- it wouldn't satisfy a real mob of gamers the way a real arcade would.  But as a hideaway for a middle-aged man on the cusp of a midlife crisis, looking for a door back to his childhood?  It'll do.

Labels: lists

So, Gabe is turning his garage into an arcade, eh?  Well, two can play at that game!

The last time I tried to build a home arcade, my options were kind of limited.  I had an X-Arcade cabinet kit, but the systems I owned were either incompatible (NES, SNES, N64) or had a weak selection of the classics (Gamecube, Dreamcast).  Add to that the fact that the X-Arcade Gamecube adapter hadn't been perfected yet.  Sure, I could have just put together a MAME box, but... I don't go for piracy, you know?

Now, of course, things are a bit different.  I've got a Wii with Virtual Console and a Gamecube with a Game Boy Player, giving me access to a wealth of games across multiple platforms, and the X-Arcade adapters have had some serious upgrades -- dual-stick mode on Gamecube, classic controller mode on Wii.  No more making do -- I can use my joysticks for everything.  I've upgraded to a giant TV monitor, now that they're going for a buck apiece at the Goodwill.  And I've got an iCade and a Duo Pinball for my iPad, just to round things out.

(Incidentally... With Apple adopting a controller standard?  I would buy a new iCade -- the full cabinet model -- just to take advantage of the greater range of compatibility I'm sure it would offer.  Just putting that out there.)

I understand that there's more to an arcade than just setting up one cabinet and putting a hundred games in it.  An arcade is space.  It's multiple machines and the space to move between them.  It's having people around to watch or play against.  It's music and lighting and decor and, as Gabe says, the smell of crappy pizza.  But hey.  Now I have fully three machines to move between.  It might not emulate a Chuck E. Cheese, but it's close to the game corner in a movie theater.

Of course, the objective of a project like this is to recreate the arcades from my childhood.  Dumping a bunch of games in a box is fine in its own way, but this is about time travel.  I like the new classics well enough, but foremost, I want to see the games I remember.

So here goes.  My favorite arcade classics.

Ms. Pac-Man

You couldn't escape Pac-Man in the early 80s.  It was the generic name for video games before words like "Nintendo" and "Playstation" were invented.  Many Pac-Man games were made, but the one I actually played was Ms. Pac-Man.  It was at Jill's Dry Cleaning.  As my mom did the laundry, I would watch its attract mode, fiddle around with the joystick, and, on rare occasions, inspire enough pity that my mom would drop one of her precious quarters in the slot.  Sometimes I would even clear the first level before I died.

I'd like to use the iPad version of this game, but without iCade support, I'm afraid I have to resort to Namco Museum on the Gamecube.  It's not my favorite version of the game because it maintains the arcade aspect ratio at the expense of screen resolution.  Hell, I'd rather take a Virtual Console version, if there was one.  But such is life.

Centipede

Sat next to Ms. Pac-Man was a Centipede machine.  I played this one less often -- I've never been much for shooting games -- but often enough that it's stayed in my mind.

It's not the same without a trackball, but the iCade version in Atari Classics Collection is fair enough.

Elevator Action

This was the premium game at Jill's Dry Cleaning.  A platformer.  It had so much going on, too.  You had elevators, escalators, doors to go in and out of, bad guys to shoot it out with.  If you shot the lights, they'd fall and the floor would go dark -- that's attention to detail!  And let's not forget the most gruesome death in any video game ever -- getting trapped under a descending elevator.  As if the animation wasn't bad enough, the sound effect made me scream with real, primal terror.  This was one of those games that infected you, to the extent that you'd want to play Elevator Action at the playground, imagining that your slides and things were elevators and escalators.

The NES Virtual Console version fits the bill for this one.

Pac-Mania

There were many games at Chuck E. Cheese's.  Of course there were.  But ask me to remember any of them, and the only one you'll get is Pac-Mania.  Kee-ripes this one was awesome, wasn't it?  Pac-Man! In isometric 3D!  You could jump over ghosts!  The maze was made of Legos!  Of course I don't remember any other games, why would you even pay attention to anything else?

This is another one on Namco Museum.

Rampage

Rampage is sort of the quintessential Midway game.  It's multiplayer, there's lots of senseless violence, it goes on forever and ever, and you take so much damage so quickly that no skill in the world will save you from dumping quarter after quarter into it.  But hey, it's giant monsters smashin' shit and eatin' bitches.  The fact that players can pound each other -- and devour their weakened opponents -- means that every game will eventually devolve into a simple brawl.  This game was probably one of the biggest reasons I didn't do much actual roller skating over at Skate U.

Since multiplayer is so important, of course I opt for the Gamecube version over the iPad.  The only real trouble is that, just as in the arcade, your character is hard-wired to the joystick you're using, but it's not that big a deal to plug player 2 into Ralph instead of Lizzie.

Paperboy

Paperboy was one of those games that stood out just because the concept was so different.  It was too difficult to really be enjoyable, and it still is today, but I still played it at Skate U now and then.  As long as it already comes on Midway Arcade Treasures for Gamecube, I'll give it a peek now and then.

Smash TV

One last memory from Skate U.  This one stuck out for the concept and the attract mode that depicted a battle against the enormous and iconic Mutoid Man.  I was never especially fond of games where all you did was mow people down with a gun, but I appreciated the snide social commentary -- the idea that, in 1999, we would watch gladiators fight it out in arenas for cash and toasters.

This actually turned out to be kind of a fun game, now that I'm a bit older and more aware, and now that the X-Arcade Gamecube adapter supports multistick play.

Spy Hunter

Once when I was little, I went on a three-week family camping trip to the Wisconsin Dells.  We saw all of the water parks and quite a few of the sight-seeing activities, but the rain kept us from doing a lot of the typical camping activities, so my brother and I spent a lot of our time in the game room playing Spy Hunter.  Driving games never really interested me, nor shooters, but something about the combination of the two worked for me.  Ramming bad guys off the road, avoiding civilians, speeding into power-up vans -- this one was clearly the highlight of the game room.  It helped that each game began with a grace period, where you would respawn automatically no matter how many times you crashed, giving you the impression that you were a lot better at the game than you really were.

I've got this one for iPad and Gamecube, and honestly, I'll take either version.

Arkanoid

I'd never played Breakout before encountering this one in the game room at the Dells, and I have to say, it got into my head.  I might have spent more time with it if Spy Hunter wasn't right next to it.  The dial controller was odd, and the concept of breaking blocks and catching powerups was fun.

I haven't been able to find a strict recreation of the original, but a new version for Wii Ware has been good enough to slake my nostalgia.

Street Fighter II

C'mon.  You knew this one had to be on the list.  This was the game that got our butts away from our Super Nintendos and back into the arcades... until the home version came out, anyway.  Street Fighter II was such a milestone in video games that I can summon genuine nostalgia for it despite never once actually playing it in an arcade.  Of course, I've seen it.  Of course I've watched other people play it.  The game was unavoidable in the 90s.  You simply cannot make a nostalgia arcade without including Street Fighter II in some shape or form.

The version I've selected is the SNES port of Street Fighter II Turbo on the Wii Virtual Console.  The Super Street Fighter II games always seemed, to me, sort of "impure", like they were stretching what could and should be done with what was essentially an "expansion pack", but I'll take the Turbo version for all of the enhancements it offers.  With my X-Arcade in Gamecube mode, it's particularly easy to recreate the original control scheme.  If my cabinet didn't wobble a bit in the middle of a match, it'd be easy to think that I had the original hardware.

Dragon's Lair

The boom and bust of laserdisc games was almost as quick as the lifespan of the malfunctioning devices themselves, so my only real-life encounter with a proper Dragon's Lair cabinet was when I was too young to really understand what it was.  But hey, close enough.  The game has come to capture my imagination, and I did eventually encounter its sequel during the arcade renaissance that Street Fighter II ushered in.

Dragon's Lair Trilogy has been available on the Wii now for some time, but it frustrated me by not offering Gamecube controller support, keeping me from enjoying a full, faithful recreation of these games with a proper joystick.  Luckily, the X-Arcade finally released a Classic Controller adapter.

Tetris

I remember when my parents got into bowling and my brother and I ended up spending a lot of time in the arcade.  Tetris was just making a splash at the time, and they had the two-player cabinet set up.  I was fascinated with the game at the time because it claimed to offer something cerebral in a world where video games were starting to explore and push the boundaries of acceptable interactive violence. I remember playground debates being fiercely divided on the subject, with one camp clinging to Tetris with smug superiority, as if it was somehow morally superior, and the other camp reveling in the violence of Bad Dudes, puffing up their machismo by making one cartoon dude beat the shit out of another cartoon dude.  Oh children!

Tetris Party seems to be the order of the day for me.  Sure, I could plug one of my Game Boy Tetrises into the GB Player slot, but I'm just as happy with bright, colorful Tetris coming out of my Wii.

720

Across the aisle from Tetris was 720.  I remember this game caused some confusion for me and my brother because 720 is just sort of a weird name.  We actually thought it was called "Skate Or Die" because of the warning you get when you spend too long trying to select your course, which compounded our confusion when we found an NES game with exactly that name.  The game itself was kind of baffling, but it stayed in my memory because of just how cool isometric 3D was at the time.

This is another one in Midway Arcade Treasures.  Maybe someday I'll even figure out how to play it.

Mad Dog McCree

This was a game that I saw exactly once, and maaaan was it cool.  Not that I actually played it.  Those laserdisc games were pretty damned expensive, weren't they?  Besides, I never really liked lightgun games, and all of the people I watched play it got smoked pretty quickly.  The first time I actually played it was on a PC CD-ROM.  And I have to say, I liked it!  Sure, the gameplay is kind of sketchy, but I adore the cheeseball atmosphere of it, like a Western created by people who'd only ever seen parodies of Westerns.  And hey, if there's any gameplay format that a laserdisc game could reliably replicate, it's a lightgun game.

Now the game is on the Wii, and it's just so much more satisfying to play it with the Zapper than it ever was with the mouse.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Oh hell yeah!  How awesome was it to walk into an arcade and see this bad boy set up?  Sure, the game was sensationally unfair, and your one key to success was how much allowance you'd brought to the fight, but wasn't it something?  At the height of the Turtles' popularity, here was a giant four-player machine where you could be your favorite Turtle and just knock hell out of wave after wave of robot henchmen.  SO.  AWESOME.

Sadly, I have no way of recreating this experience at home.  None at all.  The game cannot be found on any system that I own, nor is there an acceptable analog.  But it gets an honorable mention because hey.  It's TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES!

So there it is, my childhood superarcade.  Of course, as I've opined before, an arcade is more than just video games.  So next time I'll be offering opinions about the Duo Pinball controller for iPad.

Labels: lists

I've long counted myself as a Nintendo fan, but it's more accurate to say that I'm a Mario fan.  At least, this is what I've been telling myself for years.  But when Super Mario 3D Land didn't impress me and I actively disliked New Super Mario Brothers 2, it made me wonder if some sort of problem has arisen.  Am I growing out of the series?  Has its quality dipped?

But then I got to thinking.  There have been a lot of Mario games, haven't there?  And it's not like I've loved every single one of them.  I'm not alone in dismissing Super Mario Brothers 2.  Super Mario World was flashy and 16-bitty, but it didn't really inspire the same cherry Kool Aid sugar rush addiction that its immediate prequel gave me.

And it made me wonder.  Do I have another Zelda situation here?  In spite of my stated devotion to the Mario franchise, am I really just talking about a small number of favorites?

So sure.  Here's my favorite Mario games.  Only the good ones.

And since Mario has been in everything from tennis to Dance Dance Revolution, I figured I should narrow the scope strictly to platformers.  You know, games where your primary means of interacting with the world is running and jumping.  You start at one spot in a level, and you try to reach a different spot.  By this definition, I'm discluding the RPGs with turn-based combat.  Super Paper Mario would qualify, but it's not on this list because I just plain don't like it.

Also, it would have to be a Mario game.  Mario has to be a playable character.  So a number of games that I really like -- Warioland, Yoshi's Island -- are not up for consideration.

So here's the list.

Super Mario Brothers

Super Mario Brothers was the killer app for the NES, and it really pushed the whole video game industry to a different level.  It was sort of the pivot point where developers stopped thinking in terms of quarter-sucking amusements and toward more adventurey kinds of games.

These days, it sticks out as looking kind of primitive, and the gameplay is kind of basic, but damned if I don't still play it.  There was a long period where I wouldn't, just because it was such a step backward.  But then it was re-released for the Game Boy Color, and it made me realize, yeah, this is still fun.  Even without the raccoon suits or airships or even the ability to scroll left, it's still so much fun to play.

Super Mario Brothers 3

This game was one of the marvels of the NES.  I mean, it was just HUGE.  So many levels, so many great ideas, so many secrets.  Owning this game was basically THE event of my childhood.  I spent so much time going through its strategy guide, so much time exploring it just to explore it, so much time just thinking about it even when I couldn't play it.  And it still stands up today, whether it's on the Wii Virtual Console or on the Game Boy Advance.

Donkey Kong '94

The Game Boy was a pretty amazing gadget when it came out.  If not the first of its kind, then at least the first runaway success.  And yet, when I played the Super Marioland games, I could never escape the fact that these were the pocket versions, you know?  It was like playing a Game & Watch or Tiger Handheld remake of your favorite NES game -- there was just no getting away from the fact that this was the shrunken-down version.

Then the Super Game Boy launched with this remake of Donkey Kong, and I didn't really pay attention to it.  Donkey Kong was that old NES game, right?  The one with four levels that looped forever?

But when my cousin let me try his copy, I was floored.  Yes, it's Donkey Kong, but it's like Donkey Kong reborn.  There's so many more levels and so much more to do; it was Donkey Kong taken apart and rebuilt with more modern, Mario-y sensibilities.  I bought my own copy, and I've loved it ever since.  This was the real Game Boy Mario game.

Super Mario 64

Why Super Mario 64?  Why is this the one that I keep coming back to?  Why not the more impressive Sunshine or Galaxy games?  Is it just the nostalgia goggles?

I think it's just the fact that Super Mario 64 was designed to be a world to be explored rather than an obstacle course to be run through.  There's a real feeling of openness to its worlds that sort of encourages you to have a look around and see what might be hiding in its nooks that you don't get with some of the more modern 3D Mario games.  Your path isn't very well-defined.  You can get the stars out of order and skip some altogether.  And while this can be kind of frustrating at times -- I remember spending a lot of time wondering what the hint at the beginning of a level was supposed to mean -- it's also very freeing.  You can strike off in any direction you like, and you're almost certain to find something interesting eventually.

And there's also a very pleasant retro-future feeling to it.  Like, back in the 90s, this is what we thought Virtual Reality was going to look like.  Things made of polygons, weird floating geometric shapes with flat shading or incredibly pixelated textures.  The world is just so strange and alien.  I love coming back to it.

And the DS version -- with more playable characters and new levels -- is a lot of fun too.

The Subspace Emissary

Maybe I'm kind of fudging my definition here -- this qualifies as much for my Zelda list as my Mario list -- but hey.  You can play as Mario.  There's platforming.  It fits.

The Subspace Emissary doesn't get enough love, as I've opined in the past.  I'll never understand how people can be unhappy about a game where all of the Nintendo characters meet to battle each other and, eventually, to team up against an enormous evil that's threatening all of their worlds.

New Super Mario Brothers Wii

This is the single best Mario game ever.  Where New Super Mario Brothers on the DS was just sort of a nice throwback to classic platforming games, this felt like a game that was decades in the making.  Not a single note rings false.  So many familiar elements of the Mario canon have been brought together -- the Koopalings, Bowser Jr., Kamek, the airship, Yoshi, Bowser -- and not a single one of them was thrown in offhandedly.  Everything has been developed and had a new twist put on it.  Every single level has an idea to it.  Simultaneous four-player is so fun and so natural -- it's really the only way to play.

Labels: lists

Ah, Flash games. What's not to like? You don't need a high-powered computer to play them, most of them are free to play, and they're often short enough that you can actually finish them in a single sitting.

But visit a website like Armor Games, and you may find yourself a little overwhelmed by the selection. There's like a zillion games there! Which ones are the good ones?

Here's a few of my favorites.

Portal: The Flash Version

Top of the list is the one that made me discover Armor Games to begin with. Unfortunately lacking the dry wit that made the proper Valve game so incredible, this game is nevertheless something that will actually run on my computer, so it has the upper hand there. Plus it's a 2D game, and it's every hell of fun to play. There's even cake at the end!

Shift
Shift 2
Shift 3
Shift 4
Shift: Freedom

Which brings us to Shift, a series of puzzley platforming games that take an interesting gameplay mechanic -- the ability to invert game space -- and explore it to bits.

The later games get quite long and involved, and I have to admit I've only played the first three, sans "good" endings.

Exit Path
Exit Path 2

And here's a pair of hardcore platformers. They stand out for the elegant way they tell their stories and their ridiculous, beautiful death traps. Even as you die a billion times, the game never feels impossible.

Checkpoint

Another hardcore platformer, minus the story.

This is the Only Level
This is the Only Level Too

Clever concept. As the title suggests, each game has only one level layout. The clever bit is that every time you replay that one level, there's some sort of twist to the gameplay -- controls, physics, rules -- that makes it feel completely different.

Achievement Unlocked
Achievement Unlocked 2

Another pair of games with a clever concept. A sort of spoof of X-Box achievements, each game puts you in a small platforming environment with no real objective except to try and earn all of the games' 100+ achievements. Strangely addictive.

Wasabi

Speaking of strangely addictive, Wasabi is a game where you run a sushi restaurant by walking around a 2D environment and hitting blocks, Mario-style. More time-consuming than really challenging, but it's fun to earn all of the upgrades.

Coinbox Hero

To take Wasabi one step further, here's Coinbox Hero, the game where you hit a Mario-style coin box repeatedly and use the coins to buy workers and upgrades that allow you to get ever more coins from the box. Busy work, but strangely satisfying.

Saving the Company

Silly platformer with silly puzzles.

The Last Survivor

Brief platformer with an interesting puzzle mechanic.

Continuity
The Company of Myself

A pair of games related only by the fact that they're very enjoyable and best experienced without knowing what you're getting into.

The Game
Replaying :The Game:
Reimagine :The Game:

Part joke game, part satire, part cultural trolling, part gratuitous stick figure violence. The first two games are good for a cheap laugh, and the third... well, play them in order for the full effect.

Ollie's Dance Experience

It's Dance Dance Revolution with a lovably stupid story about stolen roller skates. Enjoy with my compliments.

Learn to Fly
Learn to Fly 2

Dissatisfied with a Kiwipedia article calling him a "flightless bird", a stubborn penguin has decided that he's going to learn how to fly. Each flight earns you money which you use to buy upgrades to improve your ability to fly. Gliding controls are fun, and the storyline bits are surprisingly entertaining.

Every Day the Same Dream

One of those artsy kinda games, it's worth playing once.

How to Raise a Dragon

Less a game and more an interactive storybook toy. You control a dragon through various stages of its life, and the choices you make affect the kind of beast it grows up to be. There's nothing difficult about it; it's just a small interactive world where you tell a short story to yourself.

Gretel and Hansel
Gretel and Hansel Part 2

Point and click adventure in the style of King's Quest with cool sort of paper doll graphics and horribly creepy Grimm-inspired situations.

Llama Adventure

Brief, silly, and very enjoyable text game.

Gap Monsters

Clever puzzle game with a cheerfully sadistic narrative voice. People sure loved Portal, didn't they?

Where Am I?

Interesting take on the maze game.

Labels: lists

Oh Wii. How did you get so old so soon? Five short years ago, people lined up around the block just to try out your magic wand. Motion gaming promised a world of new potential for the way we look at video games. Nintendo kept a shroud of secrecy over everything they did, with a smirk and a wink to dare us to guess what they were going to do next. For a while, it looked like the revolution Nintendo promised was going to change everything.

It's hard to think it's all going to end like this. Motion games turned out to be a flash in the pan. Nintendo's bag of tricks ran out about two years in. They may have won the market share, but they couldn't keep up the excitement for the long term. Now we're all moving on to Nintendo's next great hope -- a tablet controller.

But we'll always have the good times. For all of the squandered potential, wasn't it a fun ride? Maybe it was all worth it in the end. I know I came out of it with some games that I'll play for years to come.

The Wii Sports Games

You remember.

The first time you flicked your wrist up, and your character tossed a ball up.

The first time you brought it smashing down, and your character swatted it across the tennis court.

To me, that moment will always define the Wii. It was the moment when the game touched reality. The character you had created in your own image was mimicking your actions. It was such a small thing, and yet so perfect. Isn't it fun to do things instead of pressing buttons? Doesn't it make you feel alive?

Tennis and Bowling were the fast favorites. Baseball and Golf were all right. Boxing? Eh.

I don't play Wii Sports as much anymore, but it never fails to bring a smile to my face when I do. The sad fact is, nothing I've played since has managed to match that magic moment. Motion gaming has failed to gain any real traction beyond the arcadey minigame packs, and even then, there hasn't been a lot that feels this refined and natural.

Wii Sports Resort manages to sneak in under this heading, but just barely, on the strength of its Golf (superior to the original version) and Disc Golf.

Wii Fit Plus

I played Wii Fit daily for the three months following its release, and dropped about twenty pounds in the process. I'm sure there are better ways to get a workout than jogging in place and doing pushups, but Wii Fit has a leg up because it keeps you motivated. It turns weight loss into a game that you want to win. When you see your progress automatically charted day by day, it puts you in a frame of mind that you want to continue to do well.

Wii Fit Plus is the kind of sequel that replaces the original. Every single element of the first game is here, but they've added new ways of organizing your workouts and balance board games that really feel like games.

But the thing that really keeps me coming back to Wii Fit Plus is just... how good you feel after a workout. I also walk for exercise, and that's invigorating as well, but it doesn't really give you that full-body glow that Wii Fit Plus does. Take a spin through its workouts, and you'll use a little bit of everything in the process. That's something that no other video game can really do for you.

I don't play it as consistently as I did those first three months, but I still pull it out now and then. When I've fallen out of my exercise habit and I'm in the doldrums, it's always a great way to give my activity levels a kick start.

All of the Rock Band Games

My Rock Band instruments have never known the chill of the closet. They're always accessible, ready at a moment's notice should the need for a karaoke party arise.

Harmonix is one of the few developers that has taken the care necessary to keep the Wii version of their game as faithful as possible to the versions on other consoles (despite the hiccup of excluding song downloads from the first game), and for that I've rewarded them with devoted support. I've got the three games in the series proper as well as The Beatles variant, and a healthy horde of downloadable songs.

The market is increasingly apathetic toward music games, possibly because there's only so much you can do with "hit the color when it touches the line" style gameplay. But the appeal of Rock Band, to me, is less as a game where you're trying to score high and more, as I've said, as a karaoke machine. It's fun to participate in your favorite songs, even if your input method is as abstract as a guitar controller. They've really proven the concept of downloadable content -- sometimes the gameplay is already fine, and all you really want is more songs.

And the bottom line? When you come home after a hard day of work, there's nothing in the world more cathartic than pretending to be a drummer for a punk rock band.

Super Smash Brothers Brawl

And then sometimes you just want to sit down, grab a controller with a million buttons, and play a video game. And Super Smash Brothers Brawl covers a lot of bases.

It's an adventure game, a fighting game, a party game, a sandbox game, an arcade game. It's a Mario game, a Zelda game, a Metroid game, a Pokemon game. You can play it for minutes, you can play it for hours. It's fun with friends, it's fun by yourself. You can build your own levels, you can watch movies, you can collect trophies and geek out over Nintendo's history.

People complain about the lack of traditional games on the Wii? I say you only really need one good one.

New Super Mario Brothers Wii

Make that two.

You know why this game is so great. The level design is excellent. The Mario characters are a joy to control. The worlds are huge and crackle with personality. The game riffs on all of your favorite elements from the earlier games while making them feel fresh and new.

And it's multiplayer.

All other Mario games have been rendered obsolete by the sheer joy of the chaos that ensues when three or four players are trying to get through a level together, laughing and shouting and getting in each other's way. Single player just feels too lonely to bear after you've experienced it.

On the whole, I'd say that adds up to a pretty decent game system. It could've been more, but what it is is pretty decent.

Labels: lists

I hate Zelda games.

It took me a while to realize this. After all, how can you be a Nintendo fan if you don't like Zelda? But the first time I played The Ocarina of Time, I began to suspect it. And about three dungeons into The Wind Waker, I was sure of it.

From my experience, Zelda games aren't very good at guiding the player. On the one hand, they have very large, open worlds that lend themselves to lots of exploration and discovery. On the other hand, they impose very narrow, linear progression on the player. You need to solve puzzles in order to progress, but you often need specific items to solve those puzzles. On the other hand, you'll often need to solve puzzles in order to get those items. On top of that, the "puzzles" can sometimes be really unmotivated -- you have to shoot a statue in a dead end with an arrow, or you have to push every gravestone in the cemetery until you find the one with the secret passage underneath. The size of the world combined with the nature of the puzzles results in situations where you get hopelessly stuck, and it's not clear if it's because you're doing a puzzle wrong, you don't have the right item yet, or you're in the wrong place altogether. You could go to the internet at that point, but then you feel like you're cheating.

And god are they ever long! You can play for an hour and not make any useful progress whatsoever. Who the hell has time for this?

But at the same time, there are things I like about the Zelda games. I like the swordplay and the dungeon exploration and the cool items and the whole fantasy world. There is some appeal there.

So here's the short list of Zelda games I enjoy. These are the games that carry the spirit of the series without getting bogged down with all of the nonsense that usually makes me hate them.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

Top of the list is the first Zelda game I ever bothered to finish. Link's Awakening is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its tone. There's a really strange sense of humor that ties everything together in this game. The first time you meet Papahl, he lets you know that you're going to find him lost in the mountains later in the game. The world is sort of a medieval fantasy setting, and yet there are phone booths around the island that you can use to call for hints. Mushroom Kingdom enemies make appearances in side-scrolling sections, and Princess Toadstool even makes a cameo. There's an even in the game where the Significant Female Protagonist, Marin, follows you around, and she makes snide comments about some of the things you do, like checking the chests in other people's houses or playing your ocarina. It really reminds me of Earthbound -- you get the feeling that the people writing the dialogue were just having fun with it.

But the humor belies the grim nature of the game. Unlike most Zelda games, you're not out to save the world; you're just trying to get Link off this island so he can go home. But around the halfway point, you discover that the only way to leave this island is to destroy it. That was quite a shock for me -- the previous three Zelda games were pretty ethically clear, but this was comparatively pretty dark. The climax of the game is pretty bittersweet.

But enough about the story -- the thing that actually sets this game apart for me are the game mechanics. This game brought a lot of firsts to the Zelda series. This was the first game where you could equip any item you like to any button you like (well, the A and B buttons anyway). This was the first game (besides the black sheep Zelda II) where you had a jump button, which added a slight platforming element to the game. This was the first game where you could press a button to hold up your shield and it would block nearly any enemy you came into contact with. (This is probably the biggest reason why this is the first Zelda game I finished; it's a lot easier to avoid damage from enemies just by walking around with your shield up.) And this was the first game where your magic ocarina could play several different songs, each with a different magical effect. And there's just something about the look and feel of the game that's difficult to describe, like the way things bounce off of each other and the weird font they use for all of the text. There's just something really cute and fun about it.

The game world is also a lot easier to navigate than most Zelda games. This may be partly to do with the fact that it's a Game Boy game and there were limitations -- only one dungeon has a multi-level map, for example. But this is helped along by a hint hotline that will always tell you, generally, what your next move should be; a town library that offers a complete world map, including points of interest like character houses and dungeon entrances; and stone tablets in each dungeon that explain clear up some of the more obtuse puzzles that you'll come across.

Class act all around.

The Legend of Zelda

Yep, the original makes my list. It delights me that this series that invites fanboys to gush over its rich, detailed graphics and Tolkienesque storyline began as this 1986 game with low-res graphics and basically no plot.

Not to say the game looks bad; at its time it looked amazing, and even today I love how videogamey it looks and feels. I love the little animation and sound effect every time Link enters a cave. I love the fact that Link shoots lasers from his sword. I love the way trees look and the way rocky areas look. I love the roaring sound effect when you're close to a boss room. I love Link's death animation; it kind of reminds me of Pac Man. Yeah, there's the element of high fantasy and swordplay and everything, but I love the fact that this is a video game that knows it's a video game. Everything is very abstract and open to interpretation.

But the thing that really stuck with me was the instruction manual. There's not a lot of dialogue in the game, so the manual is what really brings the world to life. There's colorful illustrations of situations in the game to fuel your imagination. And there are little tidbits of text here and there that make your adventure feel a little more meaningful. My favorite is this passage from the section on starting up the game:

Link, the hero of The Legend of Zelda, does not yet exist. You create Link by first registering your player name. You may create a total of three different Link characters.

This is a really small detail, but I really loved it when I was ten. Most video games tell you who you are -- the character is already there, and you're just controlling him. But in The Legend of Zelda, the character doesn't exist yet! You select a slot, type in a name, and presto! A little elf guy appears right there on the screen! You made him! Maybe his name isn't even Link. Maybe he's named after yourself. It doesn't make a big different to the game, but it makes you feel like the game is a bit more your own somehow.

There are other little things. For instance, to explain gameplay in the overworld:

... use the cross button to move Link to the edge of the screen. When you get there, it scrolls right and the screen changes over to the neighboring scene. Do the same again and Link moves on to the next scene. That's how we can keep Link moving on to new scenes and new adventures.

I really liked that description: "new scenes and new adventures". It gives me the feeling that this game contains a multitude of different adventures -- there's one central goal to work toward, but every session you play is like its own little story, a chapter in the legend of your character. And that's certainly the feeling you get as you're playing the game. Though your progress is saved, you always start at "the beginning", so every session is kind of a trek, and you never know what you're going to find.

It's a little weird to complain about the obtuse nature of Zelda puzzles and then to compliment a game that's basically impossible without a strategy guide or a saint's patience for trial and error, but hey -- this game is old enough that I already know all of the solutions to the stupid puzzles, so I can just relax and enjoy the action element, which is pretty excellent. It's a tough game, to be sure, but there's something really pleasant about a Zelda game where your primary challenge on any given screen is simply to defeat all of the enemies rather than figuring out which item and how to use it to open a door.

The really neat thing is that the world is pretty much open right from the start, and your progress can be extremely non-linear. There are few places that are blocked off until you find the correct item, so you can explore and discover pretty much at your own speed. The game rewards exploration rather than requiring it. That makes it a lot more fun -- you can play for just half an hour or so and you'll still find something new that made your session worthwhile.

The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures

Oh god. The whining. "You have to buy a Game Boy Advance for every player, EUUHHHGNNN!" You know, at least the Game Cube game had a single-player mode that didn't require a Game Boy Advance. The Game Boy Advance version of Four Swords required not only a system for every player, but a copy of the game!

No, sorry, I'm not getting sucked into that argument. This isn't the place.

What I liked about Four Swords Adventures on the Game Cube is that it was very tight and very linear. Instead of exploring a huge overworld for hours and hours, you had discreet levels with a beginning and an end. Sure, there was some exploration and puzzle-solving and basic dungeon work in the middle, but there weren't a lot of opportunities to get lost. And that's probably because the game was designed to be played with four people at once -- you didn't want to have a lot of squabbling over where to go next bogging down the game.

With more linear progression and a focus on action, the game felt almost like one of those classic four-player arcade beat-em-up games. Everyone was working together to reach the end of the level, but at the same time, everyone was competing to see who could score the most points. There was even the "one held item at a time" limit! And, of course, I appreciated the fact that the items and gameplay recalled the mechanics from Link's Awakening. Pretty great game.

Link's Crossbow Training

I bought the Wii Zapper basically because I wanted all of the stupid controllers that the Wii had to offer. But the pack-in game justified the purchase. It's more than just a Zelda-skinned game of Duck Hunt -- there are all of these scenes and set pieces that you have to fight your way through. Even though the game is kind of short and arcadey, it suggests what would be possible if Zelda was a shooting game. And frankly, I'm disappointed that they're not going in this direction.

Zelda

Yes, Zelda. The penultimate Game & Watch. I won't repeat myself, but I will say that Nintendo really took the Game & Watch format as far as they could with this one. It brings you the elements of action and adventure that you'd expect from a Zelda game, and executes it in a format that's restricted to very static screens. Give me that over fifty hours of boring puzzles any day.

Labels: lists

Ah, the 80s. That's when games were games, man. They had entire buildings just for people to walk in and play video games! If you wanted to play video games at home, you could buy a box that hooked up to your TV and display maybe one or two sprites at the same time. If you wanted a video game in your pocket, you could get this thin thing the size of a credit card that had two buttons, played one game, and doubled as a digital clock.

This is a great time to love retro games. Our portable entertainment computers are sophisticated enough to hold literally the entire libraries of companies who made these games back in the 80s. And the fact that retro compilations don't require as much of an investment as a brand new game -- not to mention the fact that they're at a disadvantage in today's market when they're put side by side with much cooler-looking games -- you can pick up a whole lot of really good games for pretty damned cheap.

So here's a look at some of my favorite portable retro sets, with a closer look at the individual games that make them worth picking up.

Atari's Greatest Hits Volume 1

It's amazing the lasting appeal the Atari 2600 has, considering it was designed to play Pong, Combat, and not much else. Sure, Atari came out with some better consoles -- the 5200, the 7800 -- but the 2600 is the one that seems to stick with people. If you say, "I had an Atari", this is the one that comes to mind.

Atari's Greatest Hits Volume 1 has forty Atari 2600 games, from the big name arcade classics like Missile Command and Centipede to the forgettable shovelware like Slot Machine and Fun With Numbers. The emulation is perfect, and all of the console switches are right on the touch screen, to use at any time. They even went so far as to implement a hotseat multiplayer, so that you can pass a single DS back and forth to play any two-player game where the players took turns.

Personally, the only Atari game on the 2600 that I really care about is Adventure. Sure, it's nice to have 3D Tic Tac Toe, Flag Capture, and so forth, but why settle for anything less than the magic of an adventure game that's different every single time you play it? Even if you play Mode 2, where everything always starts in the same place, that damned bat is sure to shuffle things around enough to keep any of your plans from going smoothly. And Mode 3? Where you don't know what's going to be around the next turn, where the magic sword is, or when a dragon is going to ambush you out of nowhere? That's exciting. Adventure is worth the cost of the package all by itself.

There are also 10 arcade games, including my very favorite of all: Pong. Yeah, laugh if you want, but this is still an awesome game of skill. But don't think you can get away with making me play with a D-pad; the true joy of Pong is the precision you get from playing with the original dial controller. The DS version lacks this, but they make up for it by giving you a slider control on the touch screen. If you're a paddle fan, this is as good as it gets.

Activision Anthology

Activision goes down as being the first third party developer in history. And boy did they have to fight for it! It's kind of funny, in this age where Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft fall all over themselves to woo third party support, to think that Activision had to go to court against Atari for the right to make 2600 games.

And their games rocked.

The GBA version of Activision Anthology may run a little slower, and changes may have been made to allow for the different resolution, but damn do a lot of these games still hold up. Enduro is a marathon racing game where you drive day and night through all sorts of road and visibility conditions to try and pass a quota of cars in a short span of time. Pressure Cooker challenges you to catch burger toppings as they fly across the screen to fill customer orders. Pitfall and Pitfall II are engaging treasure-hunting platformers. And Space Shuttle: A Journey Into Space is a fully-functional space shuttle flight simulator.

On a system with 128 bytes of memory.

Stick Greatest Hits and Anthology in the opposite ends of your DS Lite, and you've created the Voltron of handheld Atari gaming.

Pac Man Collection

Pac Man was the game of the day. The name was synonymous with video games. Everyone played it, and every company imitated it. It's basically the quintessential video game. Run through a funky glowing maze, collect all the dots, avoid the brightly-colored monsters, and grab the special items to get temporary super powers. Namco tried over and over to carry Pac Man's fame into new territories, but they never really surpassed the popularity and appeal of the original.

Pac Man Collection on GBA is a collection of three different versions of Pac Man and also a Tetris-like game called Pac Attack. But the highlights of the package are the original Pac Man (playable in fullscreen or scrolling modes) and its arcade successor, Pac Mania. The 3D isometric view and the ability to jump over ghosts, while adhering to the basic gameplay of the original, makes Pac Mania one of the most memorable games from my childhood.

Dragon's Lair

Not really part of a portable collection, but Dragon's Lair gets an honorable mention in the list, because I just love it to pieces. The DSiWare version recreates the arcade experience like no version before it by offering a complete attract mode, a HUD for your score on the second screen, and an "Arcade Mode" that eliminates several seconds of video for complete authenticity. ("Home Mode" lets you see the complete video and also includes the opening Drawbridge scene.) It's really like having the arcade machine in your pocket.

Game & Watch

I've already said my piece about the Game & Watch experience as a whole and my favorite games in particular. But in addition to the Game & Watch Gallery series, you can now download several titles as DSiWare. The games look great with the DSi's sharper resolution. A feature has been included that lets you start from any score that you had previously earned -- no more long, tedious waiting for the challenge to kick in. And as a cute touch, all of the games feature a "watch" mode so you can turn your DSi into a clock. At only 200 points apiece and taking up very little memory, it's awfully tempting just to download them all.

Intellivision Lives!

The Intellivision folks have been courting the DS practically since it first came on the market. With a second, touch-sensitive screen, it seemed like it was custom-made to emulate the ridiculously complicated, overlay-enabled control scheme of the Intellivision. And yet, it was a real struggle to make this game happen. Publishers turned them down. Nintendo refused to distribute it as DSiWare. So when this collection finally became a real thing that you can put in your DS, it felt like a monumental victory for the underdogs.

It's too bad the games are crap.

Even overlooking the bugs left in some of these games -- Minotaur doesn't display inventory items correctly, Space Spartans has issues with some of the voice prompts -- they just aren't a lot of fun. It's often really difficult to figure out how you're supposed to play these games. There are too many buttons, and the instructions don't do a good enough job of explaining what's going on. It doesn't help that so many games in the collection are just electronic recreations of sports and tabletop games. And the games that are interesting and decipherable -- Astrosmash, Shark! Shark!, Thunder Castle -- just feel really slow-paced. They drag on and on, and wear out their welcome long before you lose.

I guess I appreciate this one more for the fact that it managed to exist than as something to put in my DS and play with.

Classic NES Series

Okay, so this isn't really a compilation so much as a series of reprints, and at $20 apiece, this was the most expensive way to get your nostalgia fix. Maybe the biggest appeal was to collectors who wanted something to waste their money on. On the other hand, isn't Super Mario Brothers worth it? Isn't The Legend of Zelda worth it? And isn't it just a little bit cool to get a GBA version of the original game box and a reprint of the original manual? Sure, the resolution fudging left a bit to be desired, but there's still something magical about being able to turn on a GBA (that looks like an NES, incidentally), stomp that first goomba, and nab that first Super Mushroom.

Retro Game Challenge

Okay, so none of these games were actually made in the 80s. But this game emulates something much more potently nostalgic than any of the other sets in this list ever could -- my childhood. Playing a game while a friend watches on and reacts, looking up cheat codes and reading about amazing upcoming games, watching as technology progresses from Space Invaders to Dragon Quest -- this is the whole experience of growing up gaming in the 80s, distilled into a single DS card. And that's what retro is all about.

Labels: lists

The DS has come a long way and taken on many forms since it debuted in 2004 next to, what, a remake of Super Mario 64, a cloud-drawing minigame, and a game about making silhouettes vomit goldfish? It's had some impressive and unconventional competition in the form of the PSP and the iPhone. But the platform did eventually prove itself, playing host to the birth of Nintendo's casual-friendly philosophy, the renaissance of 2D Super Mario Brothers games, and an awful lot of bitching about people cheating in Super Mario Kart.

It seems too early to be closing the book on the DS. Indeed, we're probably going to continue to see support for it as the 3DS takes its baby steps. But this feels like as good a time as any to take a look back at my favorite DS games. And not just the ones that I've liked, but the ones that validate the idea of owning a DS in their own right. These are the ones I've loved over and over again, and which I'll never stop being fond of. These are my Desert Island DS games.

It'd be nice and elegant if I could say that, out of the dozens of DS games I've played, that I could name a Top Ten list of essential games, but I can't. I can't even make a Top Five. So this'll have to do.

Shiren the Wanderer

Much as I loved Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, there was just no going back once I met Shiren the Wanderer. For a game where it's possible to go from start to finish in a single sitting, my goodness does this game feel bottomless. The randomized layouts, the crazy enemies, and the varied magical items come together to make this an adventure that's different every time.

Retro Game Challenge

I wonder when this game will get old. There's still something magical about playing through this game's narrative, anticipating and unlocking these amazing little games one by one, reading magazines, chatting with Arino... It's a magic door to your childhood that fits in your pocket. Listen to Arino's gasps of amazement as you bounce around on the heads of robotic ninja drones, and suddenly you're a kid again.

Wario Ware DIY

The driving philosophy behind the Wario Ware games has always seemed to be "simple fun". It completely amazes me that they've managed to take video game development and turn it into something that's so simple, so powerful, and so much fun to use. I remember playing with Mario Paint back in the day and drawing my own Mario levels and what not because those were the assets they gave you to use, and then I would wish that I could actually play them. And now that vision is realized -- the games I design in my head actually come to life now, and I can play them. And the games it comes with are excellent. And the comics are excellent. And the music is excellent. It's a creativity studio, but it's also an entertainment package. I love it so much forever.

Anything with "Ace Attorney" or "Ghost Trick" in the title

Okay, I'm kind of fudging this one, but I don't care. The first Phoenix Wright game enchanted me from the start, and the first trilogy left me with a completely satisfied feeling. So what if the gameplay was essentially the same between them? The stories were fun to follow, and the puzzles were a hoot to unravel. And yeah, maybe Apollo Justice and Miles Edgeworth fell a little short of my expectations, but I'll take 'em anyway. Ghost Trick is a different beast entirely, but the association is close enough to fall under this heading. And even though these games can really only be a "challenge" the first time you play them, they're just so much fun to watch and read that I'll return to them over and over again. It's as "challenging" as reading a book, and just as entertaining. It's just that you're keying in puzzle solutions instead of turning pages.

So, by year:

2005: 1
2006: 1
2007: 3
2008: 1
2009: 2
2010: 1

Nice to know that my favorite games fall all along the lifespan of the system, rather than being bunched up toward the end. Even if this is it for the DS, it's been a good run.

Labels: lists

Last year, I did a little run-down of the DS games that I take with me everywhere. I thought at the time that it would be interesting to do a follow up one year later, so here I am.

I've purchased extra game cases since last year's article, but I've come to realize that they weren't necessary. Turns out there's such a thing as having too many games available. Thirteen seems to be a pretty good number for me, so here's how it looks:

Brain Age, Brain Age 2, and Big Brain Academy -- My pocket-sized mental fitness gym. I keep falling out of routine with it, but it's still nice to have around.

Phoenix Wright 1-3 -- Who says Phoenix Wright games have no replay value? I keep all three of them on hand and rotate through them fairly regularly.

Nintendo DS Browser -- No, it's not the best web browser in the world, but it's still pretty cool. There's nothing quite like grabbing my DS off my nightstand and reading the latest Smash Brothers Dojo update in bed first thing in the morning.

Animal Crossing -- Animal Crossing remains on the list from last year, though my interest continues to wax and wane.

Jam Sessions -- Way too cool. This is my handheld karaoke box, and the songlist is only limited by the chords I can find on the internet.

Mario Party DS -- Finally, the real Mario Party in portable form. It's even a pretty good entry in the series!

Looney Tunes: Duck Amuck -- Have you pissed off your cartoon duck today?

Cooking Mama 2: Dinner With Friends -- More action, more danger.

Picross DS -- The finest logic game created by mortal or divinity.

Missing from last year:

True Swing Golf -- Basically just got tired of golfing.

Clubhouse Games -- Mario Party DS does a better job of satisfying my cravings for both board games and quick action games.

Sudoku Gridmaster -- There's just no comparing Sudoku to Picross. I just don't need anything beyond the Brain Age games to slake what little desire for Sudoku I still have.

Super Mario 64 DS -- I'll be back someday. Just not right now.

Electroplankton -- Still a neat toy, but I don't need to take it with me everywhere anymore. Jam Sessions seems to have cured my itch for on-demand music generation.

Elite Beat Agents -- It was hard to say goodbye to this one because it really is such a great game. The problem is, it requires some very specific conditions for optimal enjoyment -- earphones, seating, and frame of mind. It's just not an easy game to whip out and enjoy.

Cooking Mama -- Still a good game, but it pales compared to its sequel.

So let's look at the results:

Six of the games (Duck Amuck, Cooking Mama 2, Jam Sessions, and Phoenix Wright 1-3) aren't published by Nintendo, up from just one last year.

Four of the games (Picross DS, Brain Age, Brain Age 2, and Big Brain Academy) are official Touch Generations games in North America.
Four of the games (Animal Crossing, Nintendo DS Browser, Phoenix Wright 1-2) are official Touch Generations games in Europe.
Three of the games (Cooking Mama 2, Jam Sessions, Phoenix Wright 3) would probably receive Touch Generations branding if Nintendo had published them.
This is up from nine Touch Generations style games last year.

Nine of the games (Duck Amuck, Cooking Mama 2, Picross DS, Brain Age 2, Jam Sessions, Mario Party DS, Nintendo DS Browser, Phoenix Wright 2-3) were released this year, up from seven of the games last year.

Six of them (Jam Sessions, Nintendo DS Browser, Animal Crossing, Brain Age, Brain Age 2, Big Brain Academy) are non-games, up from three last year.
One (Cooking Mama 2) is based on real-world activities, down from four last year.

I use the stylus as the primary input for eleven of them (Duck Amuck, Cooking Mama 2, Brain Age, Brain Age 2, Big Brain Academy, Animal Crossing, Jam Sessions, Phoenix Wright 1-3, Nintendo DS Browser), up from eight last year.

Seven of them (Cooking Mama 2, Picross DS, Brain Age 2, Animal Crossing, Mario Party DS, Phoenix Wright 2-3) are new entries in series I've played before, up from three last year.

I play only one game online regularly (Nintendo DS Browser), same as last year.
I have two other games (Picross DS, Animal Crossing) that are WFC-enabled, but I rarely use them, up from one last year.

Seven of the games (Cooking Mama 2, Picross DS, Big Brain Academy, Jam Sessions, Nintendo DS Browser, Phoenix Wright 2-3) use exclusively 2D art (or use 3D so subtly that I don't notice it), up from five last year.
Four of the games (Duck Amuck, Brain Age, Brain Age 2, Phoenix Wright 1) use 3D art in a secondary capacity, mostly just for decoration, up from two last year.
Two of them (Animal Crossing, Mario Party DS) are fundamentally 3D games, down from three last year.

Doesn't look like my overall habits have changed very much, even though the games themselves have. Guess we'll see what it looks like next year.

Labels: lists

My DS Lite continues to charm me with its smooth and sexy contours, and the games written for it are truly top-notch. The Phoenix Wright series, Cooking Mama, Elite Beat Agents, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, Puzzle Quest, Duck Amuck, Jam Sessions, a funky little web browser, and any number of cool mind-improvement games... there's no lack of new and innovative game designs on the DS.

But now and then, you have to go back for the classics.

I've gone back to my GBA SP lately for three reasons, in order of increasing importance:

1) The button placement on the DS makes it a less than perfect GBA device. Those extra 20 degrees of incline between the B and A buttons just makes the DS feel unnatural to me when I want to play my favorite action games.

2) The DS won't play the original-model Game Boy games. When I want to get my Pokemon Trading Card Game on, I really don't have any other choice. My Game Boy Color still works, but the worn-out buttons and unlit screen makes me rather sad.

3) My SP is colored like an NES, which is nifty.

So, as I am wont to do, I've decided to put together a little list of all the Game Boy games that still hold my attention in this brave new era of complete DS dominance.

Donkey Kong (1994)

Despite being black & white and on Game Boy, Donkey Kong holds up as one of the best-looking Mario games of all time. Stuffed with lively animation and cool moves that would pave the way for Super Mario 64, Donkey Kong is a gem of a game that blows away its arcade counterpart in every conceivable way. There's 100 levels to enjoy here, and you can spend an afternoon munching them down like potato chips. Each one has a cute puzzle to unravel, a cute new take on the original barrel-leaping gameplay, or both.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

I was familiar with the Zelda series prior to this game, but this was the first one I really fell in love with. Being on the Game Boy, it doesn't receive the credit it deserves for the innovations that it brought to the Zelda series, including jumping and a button-activated shield. And, of course, there's the fact that the game does an excellent job of blending absurd humor with heartbreaking plot revelations -- yes, it's the Mother of all Zelda games.

Pokemon Trading Card Game

Picked this game up again the other day, and I've been busying myself with scores of card battles. There's nothing quite like managing to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with a well-timed Scoop Up.

Monopoly

Oh bite me, it's fun. Monopoly is one of the most famous board games of the past century for a good reason -- the mix of strategy and luck makes every match a real nail-biter. And having the luxury of opponents that you can murder simply by turning them off makes losing just a little less painful.

Beauty & The Beast: A Board Game Adventure

Yeah, I'm just as surprised as you are. But every once in a while, I have to dig up this weird little Mario Party wannabe from the dark ages of when Mario Party was still a novelty. All I can say in my own defense is that it's a surprisingly complete package for a licensed Mario Party knockoff on the Game Boy Color.

Harvest Moon GB

I've fallen out of love with the Harvest Moon series primarily because, in its efforts to be realistic, it's just gotten too damned complicated. Give me the first Game Boy version, where all you have to worry about is making sure your vegetables get watered and harvested. Yeah, that feels real good.

Ultimate Card Games

Clubhouse Games was nice and all, but it never ruined my love for Ultimate Card Games. Take the Five Card Draw Poker, for instance, where you play until everyone runs out of money except one player. Or the fifteen exciting flavors of Solitaire. Add a smooth and creamy soundtrack and digital photograph wallpapers, and you've got an unbeatable playing card package.

The Tower SP

Boy am I glad I found this one when I had the chance! Sim Tower is one of my favorite Sim games of all time, and having a portable version of it is bliss. Designing a skyscraper -- with shops, restaurants, office space, hotel rooms, and even movie theaters -- is an awful lot of fun. The sacrifices made in the conversion from PC to GBA are worth it to have the experience everywhere you go.

Hamtaro Ham-Ham Games

It's more than just Track & Field with Hamsters -- it's an adventure game. That revolves around Track & Field events. With hamsters.

Rayman 3

Easily the best platformer designed specifically for the GBA, and quite likely one of the best platformers of all time period. Playing Rayman 3 is like trying to build a rollercoaster while it's rumbling down the tracks -- fast, exhilarating, and fun.

Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga

There's any number of reasons why Superstar Saga is the height of the strange and storied Mario RPG series. You get to play simultaneously as Mario & Luigi. The RPG elements are more traditional than the ones in Paper Mario. The action elements are truer to the Mario universe than The Legend of the Seven Stars. It's easily the funniest game in the lot. It has a twisting storyline that defies the "gather seven powerful things" convention. And it's portable!

Space Channel 5

While it lacks the Dreamcast's next-gen graphic superpower, Space Channel 5 on the Game Boy Advance keeps the heart and soul of the game intact with well-placed voice acting, generally decent visuals, and Mexican Flyer. It's just good enough to be worth playing.

Wario Ware Inc: Mega Micro Game$ and Twisted

A pair of minigame packs that go everywhere with me. The zany pace, unforgettable characters, and irresistible fun make these good games to keep on hand wherever you go.

Activision Anthology

A pack of 56 Atari games on one cartridge? Sounds like a recipe for success to me! From board games to arcade games to a space shuttle flight simulator, this game's got a little something for everyone.

Ultimate Puzzle Games

Because sometimes, it's nice just to kick back and fill in a crossword puzzle. I haven't finished this virtual puzzle book yet, and it's nice to know that when I do, all I have to do is clear out the memory and I'll have a fresh book to do all over again.

Mario Party Advance

Huh. How'd this one get in here?

Labels: lists

It was hard to justify owning a Nintendo DS for just about the first year of its life. I mean hard. The killer app was a retooling of a first-generation Nintendo 64 game. Developers were still trying to figure out what they were going to do with this two-headed freak of nature. The first-party games included Yoshi Touch 'N' Go and Pokemon Dash.

I mean it was really, really, really hard to justify owning a Nintendo DS.

But even though it was a pretty shaky start, it was also a wonderful period of exploration and experimentation. With so little precedent, developers were free to take a few chances and make some messy, novel, and not-half-bad games.

Here's a list of a few of my favorite games from the system's "launch window". No one much thinks about them anymore, even though they were pretty all right. Maybe not great, maybe not worth the original retail price, but decent, and maybe worth tracking down if they're on clearance.

Feel the Magic: XY/XX

Once you got Super Mario 64 DS -- and chances are you did, whether you liked it or not -- the next must-have DS game at launch was Feel the Magic: XY/XX. It was a zany little adventure game where you try to win the heart of the girl of your dreams by showing off in a wide variety of death-defying mini-games. Really, it was impossible to dislike this game. It had a catchy a cappella soundtrack, an adorable stylized visual presentation, a crazy sense of humor, plenty of original uses for the touchscreen and microphone, and a wide variety of unlockable outfits that you could use to dress up (or undress, tee hee!) the girl of your dreams.

Unlike the Wario Ware games, however, there's really no scoring system to encourage you to improve your performance on replay. But this isn't a game that you play to conquer -- this is a sweet, silly love story that's fun to watch time and time again. If you don't feel a tug on your heartstrings when you get to the last level, see a psychiatrist -- you're probably suffering from emotional imbalance.

There was a sequel called The Rub Rabbits, but with its much steeper learning curve, I find myself with much less reason to replay it.

Sprung

Whenever there's a discussion about the most underappreciated games on the DS, Sprung is the first game that comes to mind. Not that it's a masterpiece or anything, but it just plain never got a fair shake.

On the one hand, there were all of the people who scoffed at the very idea of a dating sim. "no thnx, i have a real girlfreind, lol" On the other hand, there were the people who were interested in a dating sim and found that... there's not any actual dating simulation going on here. It's a little hard to find an audience when you're jerking around people's expectations like that.

Instead, Sprung is more or less an interactive teen movie. There's two different stories that feature the same characters, but a completely different sequence of events. For the guys, there's Brett's story, an airhead comedy about a guy who keeps getting in and out of love triangles and hanging around with his pals. For the girls, there's Becky's story, a tale of love, heartbreak, revenge, redemption, and maybe the man of her dreams.

You spend a lot of the game navigating through conversation trees, but there are a couple special items you need to find and a few traditional adventure game styled puzzles to solve. It can't compare with Phoenix Wright, but it's far from being the piece of crap that so many people dismiss it as.

The Urbz: Sims in the City

The Sims: Bustin' Out on the Game Boy Advance was a pretty cool spinoff of the Sims series. Instead of indirectly guiding a household through day-to-day life, you took direct control of a single character in a life sim RPG with a bizarre, play-at-your-own-pace storyline to follow.

The Urbz builds on the success of the original and fixes a few annoyances. Now you're free to move into any of several available homes throughout the city whenever you like, and you have access to fire prevention and theft prevention from the utilities menu -- no more getting your toilet stolen while you're waiting for burglar alarms to go on sale! The "job" minigames are a lot more fun this time around, including spoofs on Excitebike and Space Channel 5. And just like in Bustin' Out, you can take on the game's missions in whatever order and at whatever pace you like.

Decent game; too bad it's basically a port of the GBA version.

Zoo Keeper

A decent Bejeweled clone. The screen fills with puzzle pieces, and you can swap two adjacent pieces to try and line up three or more of the same piece. Matched pieces disappear, more pieces rain down from above. It's got some fancy add-ons, but there's really not much to say about them. It's as fun and addictive as popping bubble wrap. The only real problem is that it was hard to justify buying it at the launch price of forty dollars.

Pac-Pix

And finally, Pac-Pix. Although it was almost universally dismissed as an overblown DS tech demo, there's something lovable about this little game where you draw things that come to life. You draw a Pac-Man, which comes to life on the screen and starts moving around on his own. You guide him by drawing walls in his path and try to get him to gobble up all of the ghosts on the screen. In later levels, you'll need to draw arrows and bombs as the levels become more and more complicated.

The early levels are a breeze, but by the time you reach the game's twelfth chapter, you'll be tearing your hair out over the puzzles. The final boss in particular is an absolute nightmare -- I don't think I'll ever have the patience to finish it. Still, replaying the earlier levels is a delight, and it's modestly fun to use the game's "sketchbook" to try and see what other drawings you can bring to life with this thing.

Labels: lists