Games You Should Play: Super Mario Bros Tril(Quadr)ilogy

Super Mario Bros Tril(Quadr)ilogy
Platformer
1 Player
System: NES
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Year of Release: 1985/1986/1987/1988

I'd like to test slightly new waters, write about more than just what I've been playing recently. If you can read the nigh illegible text near the top of the screen or even just my little side note "About Me" section you can see I shockingly have interests that lay outside of the realm of video games. Today I plan to ever so slightly expand my horizons and talk about more video games! Specifically, Games You Should Play. The premise is simple, these are games I feel everyone who indulges in the hobby should play at some point in their lives. Super Mario Bros sprung to mind immediately, but which one? Well, you should probably just play all of them.

Games I Won't Beat: Fantasy Life

Fantasy Life
RPG/Life Simulator
1 Player (Local Co-op)
System: 3DS
Developer: Level-5
Year of Release: 2014
Beaten: Not yet

I was tentatively excited for this game, I love Level-5 even when their games don't quite hit home all the time they always look lovely and have a pleasant plot all wrapped up in a lovely blanket of charm and at least decent game play mechanics. Fantasy Life starts out swell. The charm is there in the look and dialog; I've even laughed out loud a couple of times admittedly. The game is upfront with how massive it is in scope with twelve classes to choose from you can do seemingly any number of things. So you start up your quest, and you talk to some NPC's. Then they keep talking, and then they talk some more and quickly follow that up with a bit more chatter which, of course, is supplemented by good old fashion conversation and most NPC's tend to throw in a bit of yapping around this point to spice it up and holy shit no one ever shuts up.

Fangasm: Wicked Clown Bros. 2

Wicked Clown Bros 2 (Super Mario Bros 2 USA)
Platformer of the Dark Carnival
System: NES
Developer: Njachpmk
Year of Release: 2014
Played: November 18th, 2014
Download here

Oh my god, I cannot believe this day has come. I was browsing the website Romhacking.net as I do from time to time, and in new releases I stumbled upon Wicked Clown Bros. I stuttered an exasperated no as curiosity drove me to click onward. Sure enough, someone out there felt it necessary to paint various ICP references over Super Mario Bros 2 USA for whatever reason. Of course I downloaded it and immediately gave it a shot. I was already planning on doing a series focusing on romhacks of various kinds as they appeal to me on a myriad of levels, but we're starting this off proper with the créme de la créme. Ugh... I was shocked to find they did more than just paint Mario and Luigi up like juggalos.

Games I Beat: DK King of Swing

DK King of Swing
Puzzle/Platformer(?)
1 Player (with multiplayer minigames)
System: Gameboy Advance
Developer: Paon
Year of Release: 2005
Beaten: November 15th, 2014

Clu Clu Land was a launch title for the NES that seems to have gone ignored since those days. The game play was simple, you play Bubbles a thing of some sort that's goal is to traverse a room in hopes of unveiling secret tiles. As Bubbles you constantly propel forwards, your only means of control is to stick your arm out to the left or right and grabbing a pole. You spin around until letting go and then go flying in that direction. Enemies would attempt to stop your sinister pattern finding, which you'd need to avoid or find a temporary power up that let you paralyze them. Many people I've talked to felt the game was awkward to control, or worse not even very fun. There was an expanded port released for arcades called Vs. Clu Clu Land, which had more level, this in turn got ported to the Famicom Disk System as Clu Clu Land: Welcome to New CluClu Land, which was only released outside of Japan via the playable NES games you could find in Animal Crossing as the much more concisely named Clu Clu Land D. Aside from various small cameos (and being one of the games involved in the NES Remix series) Clu Clu Land and Bubbles haven't really been in the spotlight since the NES days.

Except that one time...

Game's I Beat: Arkista's Ring

Arkista's Ring
Action Shooter
1 Player
System: NES
Developer: American Sammy
Year of Release: 1990
Beaten: November 13th, 2014

There's this thing called the Retro Game Gauntlet that I've attempted many times, but never gotten through all the way. It's basically a site with a list of retro game systems, you click on whichever system and it will pick one game at random from the relevant library. The goal then is to play through a game for each system in a row. General rule of thumb is three days allowed per game, but really I just use it as an excuse to check out completely random games I might not have tried out otherwise, leading me to Arkista's Ring.

For those interested in the Gauntlet check here.

Games I Beat: Luftrausers

 Luftrausers
Arcade Shooter
1 Player
System: PSN
Developer: Vlambeer
Year of Release: 2014
Beat: November 4th, 2014

Playstation Plus is a hell of a service. Between the massive discounts and the several free games you get monthly I've gotten a ton of value from the service. November 2014's release schedule is odd for me. On the one hand, Binding of Isaac Rebirth is released for free on fucking launch day. On the other hand, I lack a Vita or a PS4 to play it on. Depression quickly set in as I looked to my now ancient computer surely unable to handle the PC release. Sulking I went ahead and claimed my PS+ titles (even without the systems you can "buy" the free games and download them whenever you do get the systems) and see Luftrausers, a game that had a nice aesthetic look and I was mildly interested in it. Jaded by time, I didn't let hope set in but I booted the game up. It didn't play anything like I expected, the controls were weird, I died basically instantly and it seemed like there was no progression. I hated it. I almost deleted it on the spot. Then I kept playing, and I saw the light.

It doesn't fill that Binding of Isaac shaped hole in my heart though...

Games I Beat: Star Fox Command

Star Fox Command
All-Range Shooter
1-4 Players
System: Nintendo DS
Developer: Q-Games
Year of Release: 2006
Beat: November 4th, 2014

Before anything else, a tangent. Ever since Star Fox Adventures came out every fan of the first two Star Fox games have complained it was a betrayal to the series, something they'd label most future games with. I just want to take a moment to claim that's bullshit. True, Star Fox was originally an on-rails shooting game, and that 64 took and refined that concept immensely. Two games shouldn't (and don't) restrict a game series to be any one thing. I can't help but disregard comments claiming other games in the series are bad due to not following in the footsteps of their predecessors. If you want to talk about why they're bad because of the games' actual short comings that's fine and fair, I might even agree. But to just write off a game because it doesn't fall in line with exactly what you want is just ridiculous. I apologize because I don't know where Command falls in all of this, but this has annoyed me for a while now.

Games I Beat: Donkey Kong '94

Donkey Kong '94
Platformer
1 Player
System: Nintendo Gameboy
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Year of Release: 1994
Beat: November 7th, 2014

I'm sure you've all heard the story, you know. That one time a couple decades ago when Mario's girl got kidnapped by the big ape Donkey Kong. Poor Pauline never saw it coming. I know you know what the newspapers told us. He grabbed her when they were out and in an incredible show of bravery Mario gave chase through a construction site to get his gal back. There's some variation, a couple people claim at one point the chase took them through a pie factory for some odd reason, but at the end of the day after Mario chased DK to the top of that unfinished building he managed to trick him into falling and the zoo came and took him back home. But that isn't exactly what happened... Submitted for the approval of the It It A Title Society. The Tale of Donkey Kong '94...

Games I Beat: Super Smash Bros.

Super Smash Bros.
Party Fighting
1-4 Players
System: Nintendo 64
Developer: Hal Labs
Year of Release: 1998
Beat: October 14th, 2014

Super Smash Bros. Super Fucking Smash Bros. Am I even ending these sentences? What can be said about this game at this point? I mean really.

There was no introduction more appropriate than that.

Games I Beat: Hyrule Warriors

Hyrule Warriors
Musou (Kill 'Em All Simulator)
1-2 Players (Local only)
System: Wii U
Developer: Omega Force/Ninja Theory
Year of Release: 2014
Beat Legends Mode: September 29th, 2014

So immediately following losing a month to DCUO I decided to really give Dragon's Dogma a serious go and it was splendid. Sadly Hyrule Warriors decided to come out and I ended up devoting all my time to that. Hopefully I'll write about Dragon's Dogma sometime (splendid game and all), but going simply off the title of this entry I don't think that's what I'm here to talk about today.

Games I Beat: DC Universe Online

DC Universe Online
MMORPG
Massive amounts of players
System: PSN
Developer: Sony Online Entertainment
Year of Release: 2011
Reached End Game: September 1st, 2014

I don't want to get bogged down in this, but I do want to apologize for not writing more. I don't even know if I have an audience, but if I do, I love you. Honestly though I just haven't really been playing too many games lately. I did play through the Dark Souls II DLC but I'm not sure whether I'll write about it. With the final bit of DLC coming out soon maybe I'll whip something up about them or Dark Souls II in general, but no promises.

Unrelated anecdote's aside, for no real reason I decided to get into an MMO which ate up most of my time to play games. I've never seriously attempted to play an MMO before, I've tried some free to play ones on PC in the past, but I don't believe spending a couple months in Runescape really counts as experiencing an MMO. DCUO immediately caught my interest because I love comics, more specifically I love DC comics, and that single aspect is what's kept me interested in making progress. Oh and it's free!

Walking I Simulated: Proteus

Proteus
Walking Simulation
1 Player
System: PSN
Developer: Curve Studios
Year of Release: 2013
Hiked: August 8th, 2014

Apologies, I was hoping to stay on top of this blog, yet I allowed myself to slip. Truth is I haven't really beaten many games recently. I've been stuck jumping back and forth between RPG's lately. I'm sure at least someone will understand my current (admittedly self-inflicted) problem. I did manage to walk through Proteus though!

Games I (Regretfully) Played: Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures

Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures
Platformer
1 Player, with a local multiplayer mode
 System: Wii U
Developer: Monkey Bar Games
Year of Release: 2013
Played: July 29th, 2014

There's something you need to know about me, and more specifically my friend. We really really love Black Manta. You know. The Aquaman villain? And you can fuck right off if you're one of those unfairly judgmental bastards you laugh Aquaman off because all you ever bothered to watch was Superfriends and let that campy show cloud your vision. Anyway, Black Manta is a creature who thrives off hatred. In all of his incarnations you can depend on one thing to remain true, his absolute hatred of Aquaman. He gladly murdered Aquaman's family, got killed himself and was briefly brought back to life, and what did he do? He visited Aquaman just to ask how his wife and kid were doing. Right bastard sort of person we're talking about here. Most of his actions are derived strictly out of spite for someone (usually Aquaman).

Games I Beat: Lego Marvel Super Heroes

Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Comic Book Action! KAPOW!
1-2 Players
System: PSN
Developer: TT Games
Year of Release: 2013
Beaten: July 27th, 2014

There are several factors that detracted from my overall enjoyment of this game. Though it is a good game and I easily recommend picking it up on the cheap to any Marvel comics fan. Though I'd also warn them to not bother trying to get 100%. For reasons unbeknownst to me I'm pressing forward with that goal and boy do these flaws just get more glaringly obvious the further in you delve. Or maybe they're just harder to forgive the further you subject yourself to them?

Games I Beat: Mario Kart 8

Mario Kart 8
Kart Racing
1-2 Players (Local) 1-12 (Online)
 System: Wii U
Developer: Nintendo EAD
Year of Release: 2014
Beaten: July 20th, 2014

You can probably tell by the difference in the beaten date and the posted date that I've been sitting on this one a while. I found myself struggling to talk about Mario Kart 8. It's a really good game, typical of the series. Though Nintendo would like you to believe otherwise nothing really new was added in this game. Sure there's the anti-gravitational thing that I liked, but it doesn't change anything in a really big way. It plays exactly the same as being on the normal race track, but with a lot more boosting opportunity. Which is great. I really really love Mario Kart 8, I just also happen to simultaneously hate it. There's one major issue (at least in my eyes) that has a really simple solution, but I'm going to go over why I enjoy it so much first.

DLC I Beat: Crown of the Sunken King

Dark Souls II: Crown of the Sunken King
Suicide Simulation
1 Player
 System: PS3
Developer: From Software
Year of Release: 2014
Beaten: July 24th, 2014

I want to preface this a bit. While I'm a huge fan of the Souls series overall Dark Souls II is probably my least favorite entry. Ironically it's my most played by a HUGE margin. I don't want to get wrapped up in talking about the main game itself right now, needless to say I was underwhelmed overall. They streamlined a lot of things, some for the better but in my opinion they went overboard in a lot of key areas. Considering I only beat Demon's and Dark Souls once each while I've managed to claim the Throne of Want at least six times by now. That should show how much I really do love the game despite all of its faults.

Games I Beat: Fighting Force

Fighting Force
Beat 'Em Up
1-2 Players
System: Playstation
Developer: Core Design
Year of Release: 1997 (North America), 1998 (Japan)
Beaten: July 19th, 2014

Fighting Force is the first game my buddy recommended we play through that was a co-op beat 'em up on Playstation. We did play it first, but after dying once and having to go back to the last save (a common feature in older games that I don't hold against this) I decided to move on to another game. Not because I didn't enjoy it, but just as a break. We popped in Crisis Beat, and we didn't stop playing. Only because we didn't die, well the plot was pretty funny in a "what the fuck" sort of way, but the entire time we were bored. We went back to finish up Fighting Force and it is definitely the superior PS1 beat 'em up. It still isn't phenomenal though.

Games I Beat: Crisis Beat

Crisis Beat
Beat 'Em Up
1-2 Players
System: Playstation
Developer: Soft Machine
Year of Release: 1998 (Japan), 2000 (Europe)
Beaten: July 17th, 2014

Crisis Beat has to be one of the slowest, most tedious co-op beat 'em up games I've yet to force upon myself and a friend, this is just not anything worth wasting your time with. It's insultingly simple, with two attack buttons, a special attack button that drains health, a run and a jump button it takes next to no time to familiarize yourself with the controls. You can pick up items, though they either are simply thrown, or break almost immediately anyway and lacks a notable increase to damage output. Combos do exist, though I'm not sure how I executed them, I would just switch between the attack buttons at random. You can even throw your opponents, but again this seemed to happen at random. Don't worry though, precision and talent aren't necessary in this game.