You Remember that Carl Douglas Song? Yeah...

I'll maintain that the new Mortal Kombat has the best single player experience of any fighting game since Soul Calibur 2... maybe the best ever.

But 300 (yes, THREE HUNDRED) levels to the Challenge Tower mode is a bit much. The game already has a several hour long story mode. It has lots of fighters to toy with and play through the basic one-player fight 'ladder' and even non-fighting game activities, the Test Your Might and Test Your Sight sections.

I'm up to challenge 83 or so. Some of the challenges are easy and quick, some take a bit of time to get the hang of. But even if I spend an hour a day (and at this point they aren't so engrossing as to spend more than that) which would get about ten challenges done, that's over twenty days to completion.

THREE WEEKS. Holy crap. I want value for money, and Mortal Kombat has more than already delivered... but jeezo pete that's just too much. Seems like a dumb thing to complain about but this one of the few games where I could genuinely have enjoyed having 'done everything'. Lots of neat unlockables and generous gamerpoints.

I'll still pick away at this, but I've already found myself sliding back to spending more time with Super Street Fighter IV. That game doesn't have nearly the one-player content, but the actual fighting engine is something I like a lot better. Street Fighter IV (not Super) basically triggered the new modern happy-time for 2D fighting games. New titles (as opposed to re-releases or HD remakes) we've seen on home consoles:

King of Fighters XII
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger
BlazBlue: Continuum Shift
Tatsunoko vs Capcom
Street Fighter IV
Super Street Fighter IV
Marvel vs Capcom 3
Arcana Heart 3
Mortal Kombat (2011)

Upcoming still:

Super Street Fighter IV: Arcade Edition
King of Fighters XIII
Street Fighter X Tekken

I'm sure I missed something in the lists above too!

Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Mortal Kombat have definitely taken attention and traffic away from SSFIV, but the fact that Street Fighter has another update coming and is absolutely the best balanced technical fighting game means I probably have great timing to be learning and re-learning my Street Fighter chops.

Online competition is brutal for reasons mentioned in a previous post, and it is only going to get worse. But at least I find myself getting better, even if it only by inches.

Days of Yore, I Mean Gore

The game that almost singlehandedly started video games down the road of intense-scrutiny-for-content and provoked the creation of an industry rating system, is back and bloodier than ever.


Released in the heyday of arcades, MK was the major American contribution to the fighting game scene. Not as technical as Street Fighter (Japanese) and not as cutting edge as Killer Instinct (UK), Mortal Kombat relied on players wanting to return to it time and again to see all the wild stages, catch up on the cheesy story line, and indulge in all the characters’ ‘fatality’ possibilities.

If any fan is completely honest the fatalities (and their offshoot ‘babality’ and ‘friendship’ finishing moves) are the main draw. For everyone. Don’t pretend the story or depth of mechanics was the reason you were there. The graphics, digitized photos of actors mostly, were something of an eyesore even back then. Nope. You came for the gore. And since MK was an equal opportunity offender it was one of the few places where you’d see buxom female characters eviscerated or decapitated with the same aplomb accorded the macho males. Boobs and blood. An American exploitation tradition!

For those that bothered to pay attention, Mortal Kombat did have a back story that was more than ‘buncha people fighting to be the best’. See original MK movie. It was a corny tale of interdimensional overlords and ancient deities. Martial Arts temples, assassins and prophecies. As the series went on, the designers tried to flesh out the story line further to give nerds a high road to hang on to when they attempted to justify playing in all the boobs and blood. But up to now with eight episodes under its belt (and some non-fighting game offshoots) the plot has gotten so convoluted and repetitious that only the most diehard adherents have still kept track of who is who and who does what.

I gave up after Mortal Kombat 3. I was never a REAL Mortal Kombat player. I already had Street Fighter and Samurai Shodown. I checked in with Mortal Kombat to see what the controversy was about and dork around with the fatalities. I kinda knew the story from watching serious players play. Then when the next two sequels came out, I dallied enough to see new characters and note where the ideas were going. I might’ve bought MK2 and/or MK3 for my Genesis. All this stuff was ‘okay’ to me. I think I exclaimed ‘oh shit’ just like everyone else the first time I saw a head get popped off in a welter of gore. But after that, the ugly characters and unorthodox input methods (kudos for not copying Street Fighter but still weird) just turned me off. Along with the story line getting too dense for its own good, I guess the edginess kinda bled out of the games too. The DC versus MK game from not too long ago is supposedly pretty flaccid.

I haven’t bothered with it in years other than to note ‘oh, they’re still doing Mortal Kombat’ whenever the series was milked again on another console. But in 2010, folks seemed to be getting pretty excited about the new installment titled simply Mortal Kombat, but tagged MK9 in gaming circles to distinguish it from the 1992 original. The promo materials and statements made by the developers showed a return to what made the first three games, uh, ‘great’. Blood, boobs, and the original storyline—revisited through a timeline alteration plot hook analogous to the one in JJ Abrams recent Star Trek reboot.

Oddly, I found all this news to be kind of boner-inducing to me too. The things that made me NOT stick with MK back in dinosaur days were still in place. Same characters, same control scheme. But the speed and power of today’s consoles has given the character (and by that I mean the atmosphere and bloodshed) a new lease on life. Additional ways of dealing gory mayhem have been added along with a lot of nods to the first three games. I was really surprised by how much I recognized considering my limited time with Mortal Kombat in the first place. And wisely (just as Street Fighter IV has done) they kept the 3D characters fighting in a 2D plane.

So now having bought the game (released yesterday), it is pretty much everything I’d hoped for. The new polygonal character models, while still kind of stiff and unattractive, are way easier to look at than the old sprites… and that’s saying something considering how much I love the sprite art in old games. With the new Street Fighter releases, the characters look fine, but they aren’t literally better than a lot of the earlier generations. SF3 and SFAlpha’s fighters are well-drawn cel-animation-style 2D sprites. Their 3D polygon versions on current machines are also high-quality and recognizable… but kind of like comparing apples and oranges if you try to decide which is better. With Mortal Kombat there’s no real debate… at least not if you look back at the old games that this new iteration is referencing. The original sprites were photos of actors in not-good costumes, incredibly crude and not having aged well at all. The new characters, stages, menu screens, everything is very detailed and just drips with menace and hellish atmosphere. It’s like what the designers of the originals were trying to convey, but the tools were so crude players had to dig down pretty deep in the imagination to fill it out. The stages are awesome looking, with a lot of disturbing background imagery and updates to old stage themes. The in-game character art (like on the matchup screens) is decidedly amateurish though… looking quite a bit worse than many of the fighters’ polygonal models. Okay, the Raiden polygon model IS uglier than the matchup screen drawing. Sorry, Raiden actor!

The input method is still really hard to get used to. For someone to whom the Street Fighter method of blocking and inputting specials is second nature, this game is a pretty drastic change. But the fatalities, new x-ray attacks, and general weirdness compel me to stick with it. At least to get through story mode, see all the bloodshed, and tackle most of the challenges. With all the bizarre moves (lots of projectiles, teleports, distant grapples) and overpowered x-ray attacks I’ll probably never really jam on this online the way I’m currently doing with Street Fighter. It just doesn’t seem serious enough… an odd thing to say considering the mature nature of the game, but it definitely revels in its over-the-top B-movie props with considerable macabre humor. But I mean ‘serious’ in mechanics and balance. I guess time will tell whether the tournament players get a functioning, competitive fighting game out of it.

Perversely, this may be the game that sells the fighting genre to my son. I’ve had some serious reservations about allowing him access to this game—this iteration doing absolutely nothing to dispel MK’s rep for excess. But, I’ve been gradually allowing him to watch more mature movies (with relevant content discussions) like the Terminator, Matrix and Aliens series. Stuff with more cultural ‘weight’ than just any old film with a lot of head shots and sex scenes. So while this game is rife with even more violence than any ten movies put together, it is also decidedly more unrealistic or immersive.

That’s probably the key. Mortal Kombat is kinda cool now… but not very immersive. My kid has never really gotten into fighting games because for one, as far as his friends are concerned, it is a dead genre. And two, he had a lot of trouble with the command inputs. Fighters are traditionally joystick-friendly with their quarter-circle and dragon punch inputs. They are not so easy on a standard controller. And my kid is a controller (or wiimote) kid. With MK’s tap-tap input method, he has found a scheme that will work for him.

And he’s loving it. He loves the fact that he CAN do the moves, apart from the most complicated—the fatalities, but he’ll get ‘em. He’s just intimidated. And of course there’s the not-so-secret glee of all the bones cracking and ogling all the scantily-clad polygonal breasts.

He MAY just go to a joystick for this game eventually, and then I’ll have him! Brainwashed! Maybe he’ll migrate to my fighting games before too long and then I can kick my kid around the room in a way the law won’t frown upon!

By the way, hope you get to play this before too long, Australia!

A Wonderland Of Violence

Holy shit. Golf N’Stuff in Ventura, California still exists! I’d dearly love to drop in and see what that place is like now.


Playing Super Street Fighter IV on my Xbox 360 has really gotten me nostalgic for the arcade ‘olden days’. I’ve actually been a bit choked up at times. I’m getting the same feeling watching the new Captain America trailer that just hit, but that’s a different, though similarly nostalgic story. The source here is SSFIV’s fight request option when you are playing Arcade Mode. You play through the one player game as normal, but people seeking online matches can drop in on your game, just like an opponent could walk up, drop in quarters or tokens, and push the 2P button on an arcade cabinet. The other night I had so many fight requests coming through I barely made any headway on the 1-player game. Which was fine. I was just playing Arcade Mode to practice and kill time waiting for matches.

I mention Golf N’Stuff in the opening paragraph because when I think back on the good old days of arcade gaming that place is the one with the clearest memories for me. There are specific games at other locations that also mean a lot to my history, but their respective arcades sort of blur and aren’t so identifiable.

Back in 1990, I lived in California. I’d been there a couple of years, and had been hired by Games Workshop to help man their store in Santa Monica… effectively the first one ever on the west coast. I worked in Santa Monica but lived in Ventura, a commute of about 55 minutes through Malibu. I owned a NES at home and had bought a Genesis pretty much on its release day in 1989, but I was a player from the arcades first and foremost. So having home consoles didn’t stop me from hitting the game places, of which Golf N’Stuff was probably the best that I knew.

Golf N’Stuff was/is based around a huge miniature golf course with very elaborate setpieces for most of the holes. And a pretty big go-kart track. It also had an arcade with the usual hoop shot or skeeball games, an air hockey table and A LOT of quarter munchers. I don’t know what all is in that part of the complex now, but their website says 100 arcade games, and they list many of the riding, driving, and shooting games that have big hardware with them… the kind of arcade games that dominate Dave & Busters or Jillian’s. Back in my memories of the place, the machinery on video games rarely got more elaborate than a periscope, mounted guns, or a steering wheel. Hopefully, Golf N’Stuff also has the good ol’ arcade cabs with nothing more than sticks and buttons too. Or maybe a trackball. Of course I ran through the miniature golf course, more than once. It was way too big and fun not to. I drove the go-karts. But it was the arcade I went back to repeatedly… frequently just going to the park for that.

They had tons of games. My first time there was overwhelming. Had to try most everything once. They had three-screen Darius AND Ninja Warriors machines. They had standbys like Rush ‘n’ Attack, Shinobi, and Galaga ’88.. There was the super-tech game at the time, Hard Drivin’. After the newness wore off, I settled down to just a fraction of the games, putting a lot of hours in on Space Harrier, Outrun, and Spy Hunter.

I think the game I played the most was Strider. I was determined to 1CC this game. The closest I got to that was clearing it on the second life of my second credit. I just couldn’t get through that last upside down section, with the moving spikes and robots before the last boss rush, without losing two lives or more. I’m still going to insist there’s some luck involved in getting through that part unscathed.

But there, in my memory, near the middle of the main room was this cabinet with an attract mode depicting one on one combat. It looked a bit like Karate Champ, except mounted on this shelf to the front of the cabinet were these big rubbery looking buttons the size of dessert plates. You used a joystick to move per standard, but then you smacked these big-ass buttons and the force detected determined the power of the punch or kick from your onscreen avatar. This was Street Fighter, people. The original. Later versions of this game switched out the giganto-buttons for a six-button layout in standard-sized components, but THIS is the one I remember:

http://www.arcade-history.com/?n=street-fighter&page=detail&id=2647

I was NOT very good at the game. I don’t think I ever played it against another person actually. It was not a busy game, and I think part of that owed to the fact that the act of looking like a fool whaling away on a game hadn’t yet come into vogue the way it has with Samba de Amigo or the various Bemani games. Karaoke Syndrome. I tried it a few times, got a few victories, but never stuck with it enough to get decent. You couldn’t just credit feed to the end if you weren’t good enough to beat the AI opponents. I remember what Sagat, the boss, looks like from the game, so I guess I probably got that far.

Eventually, Games Workshop asked me to move across country to the HQ in Baltimore, Maryland. So my visits to Golf N’Stuff came to an end. But not before a thunderbolt struck. Street Fighter II. I only got a few games in over what was probably my last time there. There were crowds around this machine. All the serious players seemed to want to get in on this. All the combos, the specials, the tiers and matchups hadn’t been worked out yet. The internet wasn’t pervasive enough for players to have read up on all the strats before seeing the game. I tried Ryu and Guile. But I pretty much fell in love with Chun-Li.

Over in Baltimore, I never really found an arcade that could compete with Golf N’Stuff. The closest thing was a Sega Center that was in Towson north of the city. Arcade machines usually were found in the closet-sized arcades in shopping malls or in the lobbies of movie theaters. But there was always a version of Street Fighter II (CE, Turbo, Hyper Fighting, whatever) available to play. And usually already stocked with players, observers, and on-deck opponents. I remember vividly now how it was to switch out back and forth with other people waiting to play. Not a lot of words spoken. I rarely saw the same players from one day to the next. There were no organized meetings that I could detect. But that didn’t matter. It was intense. Stories from old players about that time are everywhere on the internet. Many of the tournament champs that arose then are still active experts today.

We seem to have no arcades left these days. Home consoles changed the way we game. I didn’t just give up fighting games altogether as arcades got scarce. I went along with the times, got into other genres more popular on home platforms, and just kept plugging away at the one-player-versus-CPU mode of 2D fighters like Samurai Shodown IV or 3D fighters like Soul Calibur. I just sort of kept at it off-and-on as the mood struck me. I’m sure many other arcade enthusiasts drifted out of fighting games altogether without a ready supply of human opponents. With the passing of the arcades and their respective scenes, game genres with fat ties to arcades (fighting, shmups, light guns, etc.) have been largely relegated to niche corners of the video game universe.

But fighting games kept being produced even if the customer base was a small cult. Online play has to fill the competitive void for most players, but it is dominated by massive multiplayer online games and first person shooter arenas. Every now and then SNK would release some special volume of collected King of Fighter games, or a young studio would re-tool a Capcom classic for the HD-generation to download over XBLA or PSN.

For fighting games that niche-yness changed with Capcom’s recent decision to update and revisit their Street Fighter series for real. Street Fighter IV, released in 2008, was a big budget return to the most popular 2D fighting series of them all. Gathering in many of the old favorites and pitting them against new faces, Capcom decided to go with polygonal fighters (like Soul Calibur or Tekken) instead of the venerable hand-drawn sprite approach in portraying all the characters. However they also made two critical decisions that ensured the blockbuster sales that followed. First, the characters are polygonal but have rendered in a very detailed, almost painterly way. Features like hands and feet are more exaggerated compared to their old portrayals… it looked odd to me at first… but there’s no denying the attention to details, and the artistry involved in the shading and modeling. More importantly, Capcom kept the mechanics within a 2D plane. The characters are 3D models, but the camera only moves around them during certain special moves… for drama’s sake really. The game is played along only two axes just like it always has. So you have all the detail and flashiness of a modern game with the tried and true delivery of traditional Street Fighter.

Super Street Fighter IV

Capcom released an update with some tweaks to the mechanics and moves, and several new characters in 2009, with Super Street Fighter IV. Although I bought SFIV, it wasn’t until Super that I really found myself trying to get back into Street Fighter mode. And that only just recently. I’m kind of a latecomer. I practiced quite a bit with good old Chun-Li and some with Fei Long… the Bruce Lee lookalike that I never used in the arcades, but that had grown on me in the various home versions of Street Fighter II and Street Fighter Alpha. I really like the new mechanics and this feels like the most rigorously balanced of any modern fighting game.

When I decided to go online and give versus play a go, I got several rude awakenings. I already knew I wasn’t that good. It had been long enough since I’d played any Street Fighter game, and there were enough differences, that I didn’t expect to be kicking ass. I also knew there’d be ruthless people out there, spamming difficult-to-defend moves, and doing anything to win. That’s fine. That’s part of the game. It is an old fighting game tradition that when someone shows up with some move or combination of moves that supposedly breaks the game, a veteran will come along and take them down a peg. In the absence of real-life experts to demonstrate this, the internet is full of advice and videos and discussions covering this very issue. If you become skilled enough you will be able to handle even seemingly ‘unfair’ characters or moves.

But one thing I didn’t expect was experienced players masquerading as n00bs. I just didn’t consider it prior to playing online. Why would someone who is obviously ‘good’ want to start a whole new account just so they’d get matched up with new suck-ass players and crush them? What would be the point of that? Yet it happened numerous times in my first out. I was bewildered. Here is a guy with zero ranking, but I can’t lay a glove on him and he’s obviously using sophisticated tactics with ease. Surely someone that good would have more pride, wouldn’t they? I have since come to understand that some decent players go to the trouble of starting new gamertags specifically so they try out new characters or new strategies and they want non-expert players to do it with. Someone who’ll have less predictability than the CPU, but will still leave them plenty of openings to try stuff out. I can’t say I respect this very much, but it is what it is. The matching service ‘thinks’ they are novices and so it puts them up against people like me, where they proceed to rip me one before I can blink.

The other shock was losing ranking points when beaten by a much higher ranked player. Before doing this I figured if you played against a MUCH better player (as determined by their points, there’s nothing telling the system about a masquerading expert) you wouldn’t go DOWN in rank. Hell, if you did well you might even gain some rank despite the loss. Nope. If you lose, you drop points. Yeah, if you lose to someone mighty, your points loss is less. But there seems to be very little ‘incentive’ to how the losses and gains work. I’d have created the system to be much more dynamic and encouraging. Even allowing some gains if you manage to do well or even win a round against a vastly superior player… which I did do but it mattered fuck-all to the ranking points. I’m sure a lot of hardcore players think this is fine, and don’t really care if the n00bs (forgetting they were new at one time) ever claw their way up from the ranks of pathetic-dom.

I have since adopted the philosophy (similar to real martial arts actually) that you can learn from someone who beats the shit out of you and to not take the ranking points very seriously. They show progress and all, but getting hung up on the points takes the fun out of it. It’s supposed to be a game. The game has a facility for matching you up with opponents close to your skill level but I wasn’t having much luck with that. That’s what I get for starting so late. It wouldn’t hook me up with other newbies. The lobbies are full of people that are all way better than I am. So if I set the matching to just take whatever I could get… BZANG!… ass handed to me.

After a few days of this discouragement, but before I’d learned to wax philosophical about it, I read someone’s suggestion of using the ‘fight request’ feature in Arcade Mode. So the next night I did that. I started the game with Fei Long on single player, to practice with him against the CPU, with my request parameters set to ‘same skill level’.

This worked out pretty well. As I said at the beginning of this post, it has been, to me, a really fun, nostalgic reawakening of that old arcade excitement. You’re sitting there trying to beat the AI opponent when suddenly ‘Here Comes A New Challenger’ splits out across the screen. You get a chance to re-select your character and his or her ultra, but then you’re off and fighting. I kind of wish when they showed you the gamertag prior to the match you could also see their ranking, but in the main, the ‘same skill level’ setting in this context worked pretty well… much better than it did when I was manually requesting same-skill fights outside of Arcade Mode.

And I’m winning more matches. I still suck, but I’m winning a bit more. I have the hardest time with the relatively new characters… or the ones originating from Street Fighter III which I have less experience with than SFII or SF Alpha. And even when I lose, it is a pretty priceless feeling to wake a better player up by beating them in a round and making them work harder for their victory.

Getting out there and fighting online is an exercise in ego-check for sure. It was pretty frustrating at first, but there have been a few people I had to send a kudo to for being good sports. More than one guy let me have a decent round (without just handing it to me) before wiping up the floor with balls. I think you can do what you have to in these games, and I’m not going to cry over tricky moves and tactics, but a little sportsmanship when you obviously dominate is a pretty decent thing to hand out.

Now that Marvel Vs Capcom 3 just came out and the new generation Mortal Kombat is on the horizon, I may find my pool of potential opponents shrinking considerably. I don’t think it will stay that way. SSFIV is the only one I really feel like being competitive with. Something to do with my old history with it, something about how they’ve worked so hard to make it balanced. MvC and Mortal Kombat have their appeal… I will buy and play both. SSFIV seems to have rather opened a floodgate and now lots of 2D fighters are starting to come out. These new hot fighting games are super-flashy or gory, but they’re usually relegated to novelty status by the most hardcore fighting players, who play them to see everything and unlock everyone… maybe prove their online dominance… and then gravitate back to the more technical shit like King of Fighters and Street Fighter.

I’m not a hardcore fighting game player by any stretch, but I’ll probably do the same thing. Enjoy the other fighters, but always come back to Golf N’Stuff in my living room with Street Fighter.

Nerd-Stick Part Deux

I got the proper part in (thank you Gremlin Solutions in the UK) and finished off the modification of my Xbox 360 joystick, the HRAP EX. My daughter helped me on this part of the project, as she did with the buttons two weeks ago, proclaiming that snipping the wires to the old Sanwa stick was ‘cutting the nerves to the brain’.

The Hori Real Arcade Pro EX does NOT have a simple little molex connector that harnesses the wires for easy hookup. It has a ribbon cable with tiny fine wires all splayed apart and soldered individually to each lead and ground on the four individual switches of the Sanwa stick. So eight connections to have to account for. The kiddo helped me make up masking tape labels to stick on each wire, so we’d hook up the correct directions when the new part went in.


I really didn’t want to have to solder, especially since their was ten-year-old child I wanted to keep involved. The switches on the new Seimitsu stick have flat pegs (blade connectors if you will) that internet searching told me could take a certain type of flat connector. So I hunted all over town for some female quick-disconnect ends that I could crimp on to each wire and as luck would have it, after every other outlets items were all too big, Radio Shack came through.


The disconnect ends themselves fit the Seimitsu stick perfectly. The end you push the wire into for crimping was a bit problematic. The wires off the ribbon cable were just so small. You had to really crunch down on the connector ends to get them to hold onto them. It looked a bit odd to see the smallest quick-disconnects in town sticking off the end of each tiny gray filament, but it worked. I almost got everything screwed back together when I realized the stick seemed short sticking up from the top of the faceplate of the unit when I was testing it on a game to make sure it all worked and the directions were correct.

I then remembered something I’d read when researching this project in the first place. The flush-style mounting plate that comes on a Seimitsu LS-32 stick isn’t quite correct to go into a HRAP. The SS-style mounting plate that I needed (named for the curvy cross-section of each end) actually comes on the LS-32-01 stick that I originally bought… y’know the one with the useless connector (and PCB). So I was okay on having the right part, but if I didn’t know better I’d swear there was some sort of evil afoot with the makers of the HRAP. If you want to swap in a Seimitsu stick you need the body of one model with the mounting plate of another?

Anyway, the SS plate nestles the top of the Seimitsu stick right up where it is supposed to be, so all worked out. A green ball top added on, and my daughters small hands to help me close up the case. I’m glad I went back in and fixed the plate because the difference in height switching between the two HRAPs would’ve driven me nuts.

The green of the joystick top and the A button don’t exactly match Microsoft’s more leafy green that is the Xbox 360 hallmark, but that’s okay. Controls on Japanese candy cabs in arcades tend to have bright party colors, so that’s what this green is, but it is close enough.

As I said in the first part post, the big push for me to do this was because I was having assloads of trouble pulling off double-hadouken motions in Super Street Fighter IV. I was hoping the characteristics of this Seimitsu joystick would help me. While I was waiting for this new stick to arrive I happened to re-read one of the online tutorials at shoryuken.com and happened upon a paragraph that I completely overlooked before. The author was swapping out his Sanwa for a Seimitsu (on a PS2 HRAP) for the exact same reason. I was inspired to try it by shooting game fans’ describing shorter, more precise movement capability. He got good results so that only made my waiting that much more difficult.

Now that it was all together, I didn’t waste any time testing it out. For STG/shmup games you can definitely notice a difference during quick direction changes. There is a lot less of a dead zone (virtually none really) when the stick is centered. For SSIV, I’m still not awesome at complicated command motions in the game, but I can get them out with at least twice the frequency after one short session. The flip side to this is that I have to be less sloppy or I’ll inadvertently move a way I don’t want to. A quarter circle for a hadouken is MUCH easier to accidentally turn into a forward jump if you push a little up past the 3 o’clock mark on the stick.

The new buttons are nice too. The original Hori buttons weren’t a problem, but these definitely feel less mushy.

All told, the whole thing, both joysticks, went well… and I’m pretty happy with the results. No glaring difference in appearances from the originals, but the play is the thing and that seems quite improved. It took a month from start to finish, but only two evenings and one afternoon were actual work. The rest was waiting on the mail. As I said in part one, I’m not actually enamored of this sort of work, so if I had to get another HRAP I’d probably get the EX-SE model that has all Seimitsu parts to begin with.

Complete Nerd-Stick

That fine old game controller, the joystick, seems to be increasingly uncommon amongst the general gaming population and yet there's a pretty big sub-market for high-end and even custom versions.

Ever since I started playing on home consoles, I've had to buy a joystick for use as a controller. The need stems from all the arcade playing I used to do before the NES resuscitated the console market from the post-Atari days. Joysticks... really crappy ones... were the standard on the old Atari 2600, the most popular home machine before the NES. But I didn't get into the 2600 too much... or the Colecovision, or the Intellivision, or the Atari 5200. My video game time was spent on quarter munchers.

There were some different input devices scattered around the arcades. All-button layouts for a lot of games. A steering wheel for any driving game. A spin knob for Tempest. A trackball for Centipede. There were cool custom devices like the the periscopes for Battlezone or Sea Wolf. But mostly it was a little knob or bat-shaped stick jutting up from the panel and with it you moved Pac-man around the maze or alternately blasted aliens and rescued humans in Defender. It was a simple, durable way to translate directional inputs, leaving the other hand free to push whatever buttons were needed.

When the Nintendo Entertainment System came out, I got the little brick 'd-pads' just like everyone else. I wasn't TOTALLY unfamiliar with the concept because years before I'd had a friend with an Intellivision. I'm not sure why the Intellivision pads are considered so awesome now. Back in the day I hated them so much I wanted to jam them up a stray dog's butt and then shoot the dog, hoping the controller got crushed in the death throes. The NES pads were better (to me) but it wasn't even a week later that I tracked down a Toys 'R' Us carrying official Nintendo joysticks. And these things were pretty damn awesome at the time. MILES better than the Atari 2600 stock versions. They worked with every game and made every game better. I think the only NES games I didn't use them for was Pinbot and other pinball simulators because it was unnatural to move a stick for the left flipper and push a button for the right. With the d-pad you could 'press a button' for both flippers to make it much more like actual pinball.

When I upgraded to a Genesis, there were no joysticks immediately available. I was pretty frantic. There had to BE joysticks released, since I was not a particularly early adopter of the console, but it was like a month or two before I could lay my hands on some. So before that happened I took a fairly heavyweight screw and drove it right into the middle of the directional pad on the Genesis controller. It stuck up about an inch, and it made all the difference in the world. It was not super comfortable... I got a pretty sore thumb nudging the screw around instead of cradling a joystick in the hand as I normally would... but it was a workaround that kept me from dying a bazillion times trying to learn how to get along with a d-pad. And when I finally did get the real joysticks, again my enjoyment of the console skyrocketed. And these were some goshdamn cool-looking pieces of hardware too, all-black with lights above the buttons. Both these and the NES sticks had turbofire buttons, which really helped considering that, as cool as the joysticks were, their base size and button placement didn't allow me to hammer the fire controls with anything like the speed and stamina I could manage in arcades.

So in the years since, every time I've bought a new game console I've immediately gotten a joystick (or two) to go with it. I don't use them for every game any more. When Sega released the analog pad for Sega Nights on the Saturn, I finally started using the type of analog thumbstick controller that everyone else had been using for months on their Playstations (the predecessor to the dual shock controllers that are synonymous with Sony now). The thumbstick was kind of like the old screw I put in my Genesis pad, only a lot more comfortable. Hours spent on the Dreamcast (bought after the Saturn, I skipped the PS1 for awhile) made me finally tow the line and become comfortable with a non-joystick.

The thumbtick based analog controller is now the standard. Even the unconventional wiimote has a thumbstick on its nunchuck accessory.

Except there are still certain types of games that absolutely suck balls on a regular controller. The games that still adhere to oldest (some would say *shudder* 'most retro') game mechanics.... namely 2D fighting games and 2D shooters. I'd argue that 2D platforming games and beat 'em up/beltscroll fighters are also WAY better with a stick, but you can at least play them competently on a pad. I understand there are gamers who can play shooters and fighters very well on a standard controller but I don't know how they do it, especially the ever-present-in-fighting-game shoryuken/dragon punch motion.

So, uh, guess what kind of games I played to death in the arcades AND on home consoles. Yep. 2D fighters, shooters, and platforming games.

My kids are totally unfamiliar with joysticks. By the time my oldest could even muster interest in video games, the PS2 was the dominant machine. So all they've ever really known is dual shock controllers and their antecedents. I have the pads to all my old consoles, so if they feel like jumping in the wayback machine and play some games on the Genesis, the d-pad (screw now removed) is pretty similar to the cross-pad on their Nintendo portables. But when I'm playing... or when I drag a joystick out for a specific game on a newer system, you'd think I was bringing a musket to a drug war. Much eye-rolling and snorting is sure to ensue. It isn't enough that I like those stone-age style games... and that includes RECENT shooters or fighters like Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu or Super Street Fighter IV... I have to drag out the stone axes and flint arrows with which to play them.

The derision reached something of a crescendo recently when I decided to upgrade my PS2 and Xbox 360 joysticks. I don't mean upgrade as in purchase better ones... I mean upgrade as in replacing parts. This is a level of fanatic nerd-ery the likes of which my daughter thought she'd never see me display in my home. I think she'd have been less affected if I'd cosplayed Evangelion pilot Ayanami Rei at an anime convention. My son, however, was intrigued. He has always been something of a 'fiddler'. He loves buidling models, taking stuff apart, or messing with Legos. In racing games he spends more time playing with color schemes and decals for his cars then he does on the actual driving. These joysticks are big too, Hori Real Arcade Pro models, so the idea of cracking them open and working on the guts was like asking him to help me work on real-life automobiles. I asked him to second 'the surgery' on one stick and my daughter to help me with the other. I wasn't trying to foment love for the joysticks amongst my children, I just thought this would be a cool and very different activity for us to bond over. And despite the utter nerd-ity of the project, my daughter also wanted to get in on it. Just to 'help me do this correctly' of course.

The Japanese company Hori makes a line of controllers for all makes of video game consoles, but they have a particular rep (and cult following) for their higher-end line of joysticks. These frequently use the same parts as the candy cabinet style arcade machines still found in Japan. In the case of the two sticks under discussion, both have Sanwa JLF sticks, the most frequent model found on fighters, and Hori's knock-offs of Sanwa buttons.

The 'need' to do this upgrade has been borne out of my frustration playing Super Street Fighter IV. It has been quite a while since I've put any emphasis on getting good at a 2D fighting game, but the new SSFIV is pretty awesome. However it is the first game of its genre that I've tried playing on the Xbox 360. I haven't done BlazBlue or any of the HD Capcom remakes on the Xbox Live service. I might be a little rusty, sure.

I've never really had problems executing any of the command motions in any previous fighting games, from any company on any system. But wow, I am having the devil's own time executing commands on this game, particularly the double fireball motion needed for most supers and ultras. My understanding is that the timing window to execute these commands is very forgiving. I've had no issues managing the same mechanics in various Street Fighter III iterations on other platforms, which is supposedly much more strict. I *think* my problem is the size of the 'throw' on the HRAP (Hori Real Arcade Pro) stick that I use on the 360. I think the time it takes to do the full range of motions goes outside even the timing window because the stick has to move very far in order to register each direction/point. I think the actual proper points the stick needs to hit are not quite all the way to the outside of the stick's range of motion... so in effect the map to get out the command is kind of smaller than the area the joystick moves... and I'm too old and impatient to sit there and fuck with this and learn it when all other fighting games I have DON'T have this 'placement' problem.

Because I play a lot of Cave shooters, small precise movements of the joystick are a must. Online the consensus seems to be that the short throw of the standard Seimitsu brand arcade joysticks are the best for these sorts of games. Short throw equals quick changes in direction... EXACTLY what seems to be required to overcome my problem with SSFIV. It appears the distance the Seimitsu sticks need to travel to engage each direction is smaller than the Sanwa sticks that my HRAP comes with. My play with Cave shooters could stand improvement but was never so bad that I felt like spending the money to upgrade to Seimitsu parts. But being unable to access a primary mechanic in SSFIV pushed me over the edge. My abilty to tap buttons quickly has never been a problem (my kids ALWAYS hand controllers to me for button mashing sections of games), but I figured I'd replace the Hori buttons with less-mushy Seimitsu versions as well.

The kids helped me with the modifications... small hands equals useful... and I'm really pleased with how they've turned out so far. I say so far because I actually got the wrong replacement stick for the Xbox 360 HRAP. From the outside the two models (HRAP 2.0 for the PS2, HRAP EX for the Xbox 360) look really similar apart from the colors, but actually the PS2 stick uses an easy slip-on molex connector for the wiring, where the Xbox 360 version is soldered. Which I didn't know. Seimitsu makes replacements in both slip-on (LS-32-01) and soldered (LS-32), but the soldered one ain't here yet.

The finished PS2 HRAP is pictured above. The original had all bright red buttons and a bright red ball top to the stick itself. I changed the button colors to match the color coding of buttons on stock Sony controllers. It makes the stick gaudier (though not brighter actually), but I then put black buttons corresponding to the controller triggers and a black ball top all to compensate for the color riot. Having the correct colors on there was done in the first place because onscreen prompts or quick time events can get confusing when your buttons are all red AND not placed the same way they are on the pad. I've also got a Dreamcast and an Xbox 360 with their own button color schemes. I'm not even going to try to memorise them all.

I'm not having fighting game troubles with the PS2, but I thought I'd give the new Seimitsu stick a whirl with one just the same. There is a noticeable difference in the ease with which the moves come out for me. The stick is a bit stiffer, and it has a smaller dead zone (the amount of travel the stick can move from center before engaging a direction). So subtler motions net the same effect as the unmodified stick. If my impression holds true, this should fix my problem playing SSFIV when I can get THAT stick changed out... hopefully next week. We've already done the 360's buttons.

Perversely, and probably temporarily, this little project has gotten my son all interested in joystick-necessary games. Up to this point, he hated almost all 2D fighters (doesn't like command motion inputs) and was indifferent to shooters and platformers. Now all of a sudden Gradius V and Thunder Force VI on the PS2 are hot commodities. And of course he wants his own joystick. If this interest holds up and we wind up having to get him one or two, the irony will be that I would probably give him the ones we've modified ourselves and I'd just get myself new HRAPs... but this time I'd get some specials that already come with Seimitsu parts (like the HRAP EX-SE). Modding these was fun, but I did it mostly because it was less expensive than buying new joysticks. If we're going to get new ones anyway, might as well get 'em already done. Unlike the kid, I'd rather spend the time playing than fiddling.

Past Blast Continued

More video games from the past I’ve dug up from storage:

Castlevania: Symphony of the Night for the Sega Saturn. 2d platformer. Everything they say about this game is true. I’m not a huge fan of the Castlevania series (blasphemy!), though I can understand the greatness. THIS is the Castlevania game to own if you had to buy just one. So… uh, that’s why I own it. Just the one. I will probably fork some dough over for Rondo of Blood at some point, so I can play through this game’s nearly-as-good prequel. Still pics might make it look like ‘just a platform game’ but that doesn’t begin to describe all the cool items, amazing music, dark atmosphere, and intimidating boss battles. It’s the usual ‘versus Dracula and his minions’ plot, but its pulled off about as well as it ever has been and maybe ever will be.

Panzer Dragoon

Panzer Dragoon for the Sega Saturn. 3d rail shooter. Graphics for this game haven’t aged all that well. You can see how ambitious the images were for their time, and the design of the world is cool, but as is usual polygons haven’t held up as well over the years as sprites seem to. Sprites can manage ‘charm’… polys usually just turn ugly. Nonetheless, if you can get past the scruffy graphics the gameplay, sounds and music are pretty badass. Nowadays Oorta is the standard bearer for Panzer Dragoon games… and rightfully so. But this is where it all started, and its still pretty cool.

Mars Matrix

Mars Matrix for the Sega Dreamcast. 2d vertical shooter. Your go-to game if you want an STG that is so difficult you will want to throw yourself off a building. Perhaps only exceeded by Gigawing 2, Dodonpachi Daioujou, and Mushihimesama Futari. Graphics are pre-rendered sprites that simulate 3d objects but are kind of crude-looking, thought they move and animate smoothly. The more you play the more ships, credits, and power you can earn, but if you are a nutter for getting the 1CC you better be prepared to put an inordinate amount of time in on this. A manic shooter with unholy amounts of enemy fire, the gameplay system centers around a shield used to deflect whatever bullets you cannot (or don’t wish to for scoring purposes) dodge. With proper memorization, there is a rhythm to using the shield, and getting the enemies to drop the most ‘gold’ to max out your firepower and bonuses. This game is very fun, but the tenacity to keep playing enough to learn this rhythm… ehn, I probably don’t have that in me. This is one I will just have to admire superplayers on and never try to get the 1CC. I find Cave shooters (generally speaking) to be more involving, so my manic shooter mastery practice will mostly go there.

Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master. 2d platformer on the Genesis/Mega Drive. Wow, is this a good game. I’d kind of forgot how good the Shinobi games could get. Much of the gameplay, the controls, Joe Mushashi’s abilities, etc. have all been done a million times, but they all just come together really well here. Joe controls so well and so intuitively that you will be negotiating even the most complex screens with ease. The only tricky part, and I was brutally reminded of this at the first boss during a recent go, is that to use the double jump you have to time the second press of the jump button right at the apex… and this can be hella-tough when you are being pressured. However, if someone wants straight up ninja action without all the sneaky complexity of Tenchu or the frustrating difficulty of (old) Ninja Gaiden, this is your game.


Chu Chu Rocket for the Sega Dreamcast. 2d action puzzle game. You must lead your mice onto an escape ship while avoiding the cats. This incredibly addictive game has two major modes. One is a frantic move-or-lose action game similar in intensity and speed to the Bomberman games. The other is more akin to the Adventures of Lolo on the NES where you have a pre-set board with cats and other obstacles already placed. You must use the tools given, then activate the board to see if the mice escape safely. Graphically very simple, but distinctive. This game is a really good example of Sega’s vision for a cute and family-friendly party game, as distinct from the many examples we have from Nintendo. Sega really did have some great innovative games, even if that seems to have fallen away from the company in recent years. Segagaga, Space Channel Five, Virtual On… they weren’t just Sonic and Shinobi. Chu Chu Rocket really worked well online too, years before all the online console stuff we get from the Virtual Console and Xbox Live Arcade.

Alien Front Online

Alien Front Online for the Sega Dreamcast, 3d third person polygonal shooter. A vehicle based shooter really from a third person perspective behind your tank or walker. An arcade game ported to the DC, this thing was a real showpiece for the Dreamcast’s graphics and it is still pretty impressive today. The objects themselves aren’t incredibly detailed, but the action is so fast, and so BIG. Tons of vehicles driving around, shit blowing up everywhere, and all kinds of cool weapons both human and alien. They even have an honest-to-goodness usable nuke in the game, and I can’t say there are many more satisfying video game moments than when you get to pop one of these off effectively. The gameplay, as is typical with arcade games, is kinda shallow, at least for home video game expectations. But the arenas are varied and interesting, and you can choose to play either as the invading aliens or the defending humans. This game also had online play. For the most part it worked pretty well, especially considering the pioneering role the Dreamcast had in actually forging this concept for consoles. Remember, the standard at this time was dialup. DIAL-UP. And I still remember decent lag-free games. The game also came with a microphone that allowed you a short segment of voice input every time you activated it. There was one evening of play I will never forget. Everyone on my team was saying the usual stuff, ‘go here’, ‘get that guy’, ‘don’t shoot at me’, etc. But one guy used his voice interval to just babble or shout incoherent stuff into the microphone. He was so weird, and he made some really hilarious noises, but he knew it was funny, and he’d keep doing it. That made most of the voices that followed him nothing but laughter. I could barely see what I was doing half the time from laughing so much. I hope that guy is still out there having a good time.

Guardian Heroes

Guardian Heroes for the Sega Saturn. 2d beat ‘em up. You don’t have to play this game to see how incredibly over-the-top it is. Just dig up a YouTube video and gape in awe at the madness. It is this kind of game that has fomented Treasure’s reputation for good play mechanics buried under impossible visuals. At base level, this game is akin to Double Dragon, Final Fight, or even Golden Axe. You walk along sidescrolling screens (generally headed right) beating up enemies as they appear. Most beat ‘em ups let you work in a few throws or combos to break up the monotony of just hitting the punch button. This genre has all but disappeared nowadays, but in its heyday it was huge. Mostly owing to their popularity in arcades. They are a great cooperative play experience, rather like playing a fighting game where you are partners with someone as opposed to being their enemy. In Guardian Heroes, the setting is a medieval fantasy (with some technology) world. The game has command-motion inputs like many fighting games, and multiplane movement like Fatal Fury, but these things weren’t unheard of in beat ‘em ups. Not being an actual arcade game with their hustle-the-quarters-quickly time constraints, Treasure also added in extensive dialogue scenes, choosable branching story paths, and RPG-like leveling up and character management. Now the game starts to look pretty ambitious next to a typical beat ‘em up, but where Guardian Heroes really sets itself apart is in the execution. The sprites for the characters and enemies are simply-colored anime drawings. But this simplicity allows for dozens of them to be onscreen at once, and for some really huge shapes to move quickly about the screen wreaking havoc. It is common in the game for you (and your buddies) to frequently be attacked by six or ten henchmen, one ‘captain’ with special abilities, and some giant robot with a screen-filling laser ALL AT THE SAME TIME. The chaos is unbelievable. With all of this, of course some visibility, and therefore control, is going to be sacrificed. You can’t always see where your character is and what they are doing underneath all the layers of explosions, bodies, and mayhem. But that’s part of learning the game. You have to learn to deal with it. And positioning yourself so that you can do what you need to is half the game. Simply awesome.


Elemental Master for the Genesis/Mega Drive. 2d vertical STG. A really unique vertical shooter from Technosoft, the folks behind the Thunder Force games. Although your ship is actually a little sorcerer dude walking through the backgrounds, the scrolling is still forced and constant. So the game looks something like Gain Ground in still pictures but is really more akin to the plane/spaceship/flying person sort of shmup. You have a button that fires forward and back, along with a weapon change button akin to Thunder Force. Unlike most of that series’ chapters you don’t lose whatever weapon you have equipped when you get hit. In fact, you have a lifebar as opposed to three lives. This game just rocks. It is perhaps a bit too easy, but it has cool weapons, decent visuals for the 16-bit era, and an awesome soundtrack. In fact, the soundtrack is part of what elevates this game, for me, into the favorites tier. There are good tunes all the way ‘round, but when you first get to the bosses that transform from human to monstrous, the music and sound effects will raise the hair on your neck.


Cyberbots for the Sega Saturn. 2d fighting game. A flashy, if somewhat simple mech fighter from Capcom. Gameplay is a variant of Capcom’s standard six-button system, like Street Fighter or Darkstalkers. The robots are varied, and the artwork is decent… again pretty reminiscent of Capcom’s other fighting games. Although more serious than Darkstalkers, the robots can pull off the same sort of ‘impossible’ special moves, blasting or slicing with weapons their mechanical bodies couldn’t possibly contain. But it is all done very well, with lots of trash talking between the rounds. Looking at this, I’m guessing it was kind of the blueprint for higher profile mech fighters that came along like the Gundam Battle Assault series. The way damage, weapons, and movement are represented all look very similar. The hero/Ryu character in the game made his way to being an unlockable in the later polygonal fighter Techromancer (Kikaioh). A decent game, but it probably doesn’t compel anyone but Capcom fighting game completists or fans of mech-on-mech violence.

Zero Wing

Zero Wing for the Genesis/Mega Drive. 2d horizontal STG. This game is kind of odd compared to most shooters, but pretty typical of games from the developer, Toaplan. Famous for the bad Engrish that gave us, ‘All your base are belong to us’, this game plays in a slow-paced (R-type speed as opposed to Thunder Force speed) fashion with a conventional power up system. But like most Toaplan games it is solidly designed with a gradually ramping difficulty level, widely varying levels and enemies, and an weird, rough art style that makes for some strange and memorable bosses. The music is actually really good too. I kind of got hooked on this in an arcade, in some town I was visiting. I never got to play it to completion. So when I saw there was a Genesis version I jumped on it. The port is pretty good. It isn’t as detailed as the arcade version and it doesn’t have as many layers of background scrolling, but all the enemies and timing seem right (compared to what I remember), and the soundtrack is actually better… same tunes but less tinny arrangement and ‘instruments’. This game won’t win any awards for originality (apart from the ‘Weird Boss Award’) but it is a good example of an almost relaxing STG experience. Not easy per se… but not stressful either, even in the difficult sections of the later levels.

(as usual images stolen from HG101 and a few other sources)

Past Blast Froth Fest pt1

Some oldie-games cracked open for the first time in years. For a lot of these modern, spoon-fed, shovel-ware gamers need not bother. They can be harder than an angry black cock.

In The Hunt

In The Hunt- Sega Saturn. Graphically incredible 2D (sprite graphics) submarine shooter from Irem. Development team formed Nazca and made Metal Slug for the Neo Geo. So if you are familiar with that game you should have some idea what this looks like. In fact, Metal Slug in a submarine is probably an apt description. Mostly a shooter, it has the player controlling the scrolling like the run 'n' gun that Metal Slug is. The pacing may be off-putting for gamers expecting the forced scrolling of a typical horizontal STG, but I think the game's other details more than make up for it. Unbelievable animation and detail. Gobs of destructible scenery which is atypical for any 2D game, let alone a shooter. A game that shows all the Saturn's strengths. Only five levels long with the last two-thirds of the fifth level (the fucking volcanoes and beyond) really putting the stones to you. There's probably some trick to getting past all the lava chunks without losing a bunch of subs, but I haven't figured it out yet.


Assault Suit Leynos 2- Sega Saturn. Sprite-based sequel to Target Earth on the Genesis and Assault Suits Valken (Cybernator) on the SNES. A run'n'gun with platforming elements like those games. Unlike the other two games, the production values surrounding the game look shite. The FMV intro and the manual art look totally second rate. Check out the man-breasts on the protagonist! The game even feels truncated with only seven pretty short levels, which for a shooter would be typical, but for a run'n'gun is pretty weak. If you're going to have so few, they need to be longer to make it your money's worth, ie the aforementioned Metal Slug, which has levels that might be too long. Leynos 2, the game itself mostly makes up for all these shortcomings. You pilot a mech-suit with abilities lifted straight from the anime series Mobile Suit Gundam (plots and scenarios largely lifted too, in all the games in the series). The graphics are pretty decent (sprites) with occasional huge bosses (like Gundam mobile armors), and a really neat weapon and suit customisation menu. It is an import only game, so plot details and conversations will be lost on the non-Japanese speaker, but the controls, though complex, are not difficult to figure out since the menus are in English. I could recommend this to Gundam fans or people who enjoyed the other Assault Suits games. It is easier than the earlier games because I think the idea is to play through it multiple times, getting better grades each time because you've earned better weapons and suits. There may be some additional level or ending when you earn everything, but I'm not that good at it yet. Internet info on this thing is bloody scarce, especially since it is a robot action game and not an effing dating sim.


Ultraman Fighting Evolution Rebirth- PS2. 2D fighting game with polygonal graphics. Bought this one mostly for my son, based mostly on Youtube videos since, again, internet info (in English at least) is really lacking on gameplay details. Fortunately this turned out to not only be better than a license like this has any right to be, I found it to be fun enough myself to see it all the way through to the end. Which was good because my son is totally intimidated by fighting games, primarily because he doesn't feel up to the task of managing command inputs like the so-called dragon punch from Street Fighter, and with my going through the game first, I was able to coach him through finishing the game himself. There are no command inputs for this game, but it was still a hurdle to overcome his reluctance, despite the subject matter which he loves. The game does a really good job fitting in the particulars of the various Ultraseries which is no small accomplishment. With episodes and characters spanning forty years of television, plots that change the characters powers and weaknesses at the writers' whims, and all kinds of abilities like firing beams, transformations, wrestling, and super-strength, it was herculean to make a game that was even playable and somewhat balanced. I won't say it IS super-balanced, it isn't a 'formal' tournament-ready fighting game, but it works surprising well. The controls are slower to respond than the Street Fighter-type games (I'd say its more 'tactical' like early Samurai Shodown) but it conveys the giant size and massive impacts of the characters... much like the recent Godzilla console games Atari distributed. The TV episodes almost always end with a huge finishing move, and they've worked those into the game, even giving finishers to all the monsters, because unlike the shows, HERE the monsters can win. To help ease things for younger players, and because the game IS rather tactical (with a detailed plot for a fighting game) the game saves after every fight in story mode. The battle mode is more like the conventional fighting game, shedding the plot pauses and the saves. The overall sheen of the game lets the older Ultraman characters fit right in with the new ones and its really fun (if you're a fan) to explore these sorts of 'crossovers' between the series. Many of the characters and backgrounds need to be unlocked, so there's a lot of replay incentive. I'm letting a huge bias cloud my opinion, I realize. People who have no interest in Ultraman will likely not see any draw to this game. But Ultrafans will find this much cooler than they would probably expect, and shows what the license could be like taken seriously... well, as seriously as it could be. The game is somewhat easy, and experienced gamers should have no trouble getting to final boss... but that's when black cock strikes, and you fight what might be the award winner for most frequently regenerated lifebars/most transformations in a game. The final chapter goes on for scadloads longer than any of the other chapters and unless you figure out a certain secret for one of the the boss's forms, it WILL go on forever until your character just wears down and dies.

Flink

Flink- Sega CD. 2D platformer, sprites. Another amazing graphic masterpiece. Games like this and In The Hunt were the real catalysts for my 'No Love...' post from several days back. This is a thoroughly European game, contrasted against the overwhelming majority of Japanese games and a smattering of American ones. The style of this game brings to mind the detailed, characterful artwork of Brian Froud, Arthur Suydam, or Patrick Woodruff. Every leaf, every blade of grass delineated in loving detail. An amazing soundtrack to go along with it, partly owing to the CD format of the game. The gameplay is pretty basic, jumping, bouncing on enemies, or throwing objects at them-- standard Mario-style-- but additionally, there is mildly RPG-like magic system involving finding and mixing ingredients. Some of the more involved precision jumping sections can get frustrating because Flink's jumps cannot be controlled quite as well as say Mario or Sonic. But the immersion factor is just huge because of all the care lavished on this game. The opening intro alone will tell you the designers poured everything they had into the details, and the intro doesn't use any FMV or anything... it is the same sort of graphic design used in the game itself! Awesome game if you are one of the few (or the insane) who actually own a Sega CD.


Soul Star- Sega CD. 3D shooter, sprite-based graphics. The Sega CD was supposed to be a huge leap in graphics and sound from the Sega Genesis, but apart from more elaborate FMV intros and CD soundtracks they didn't really live up to the hype. Especially when so many of the early games were 'cinema adventure' games that set new standards for suckage. Eventually some great games did come out, and they had the expected super music quality, but only a select few like Flink above, or this one, Soul Star actually LOOKED like a big step up from the Genesis. Again Soul Star's gameplay, like Flink's isn't revolutionary, but it does it what it does pretty well. You pilot three vehicles, a spaceship, a hovercraft, and towards the end, a walker. Each vehicle has a different type of playfield with the spacecraft a rail shooter (see Space Harrier or Panzer Dragoon), and the other two working in more free-roaming areas. The graphics are pretty amazing. Smooth scaling, relatively high speeds, and cool enemy designs, particulary the mechs and bosses later in the game. Planets and ships in the distance gradually scroll forward as you play to become the site of the next level. The control scheme for the hovercraft takes a helluva lot of getting used to, but I enjoyed the game so much I stuck with it. The music is almost haunting in places. This is another game where the designers were obviously enamored with their idea and really went to town creating an immersive experience. I'm not a huge fan of films that are hung up on just their special effects, but occasionally a strong setting or artful cinematography can elevate a mundane story. The interactive nature of a video game means this sort of successful world-building can be even more successful.

Vampire Savior

Vampire Savior- Sega Saturn. 2D fighting game, sprite-based graphics. Third in the DarkStalkers series. It is not hard to find heaping piles of praise for this game on the internet, but its been a long time since I played it, so I'm adding my own droppings to the pile. Saturn version, arcade-perfect, playing to the Saturns strengths. Absolutely jaw-dropping art and animation especially when seen on today's flat-panel TVs. The gameplay is deep with an elaborate and satisfying system for the specials and supers. One of Capcom's best. Not as perfectionist-technical as Street Fighter or King of Fighters tend to be... its more for fun. But not as retardedly over-the-top as Marvel vs Capcom either. A good balance. With some of the greatest, but decidedly underappreciated characters in all of gaming. My son's lack of patience for games like this makes me want to sell him to the gypsies.


GigaWing 2- Sega Dreamcast. 2D shooter with polygonal graphics. Flashy, somewhat cute-seeming blast fest... until about thirty seconds in. Then it initiates you into the world of manic shooters (aka danmaku, 'curtain fire') with all the subtlety of a rigorous fisting. The manic shooter is a relatively modern variant on the old 2D STG, usually vertically-oriented. It is characterised by a small hitbox (collision area) for the ship (often just the cockpit), massive streams of firepower available to the player, and screen-filling amounts of neon-colored projectiles. I'll probably devote more 'blog space to specifics of manic shooters (or bullet hell shooters as they are often called) in the future. But suffice to say this one is right alongside the notorious difficulty level many manic shooters lay claim to. It has a shield/reflection system similar to Mars Matrix (another game by the same house, Takumi), but using it well enough to survive is an exercise in practice, practice, practice. Short, intense, difficult. It took me a long while to warm up to this game, so unlike the shooters I've been used to. Now I'm a manic shooter devotee. I'd say the biggest strike against the game is the unlimited continues. It doesn't matter how hard a game is, or how worthy of practice, if you can just 'credit feed' your way through it. I wish this had an option to limit the continues. There's no incentive to really work when the temptation to just hit continue (again) exists. I really like the method used by Ikaruga, Radiant Silvergun, and Border Down of 'earning continues' through play time. By the time you've earned enough continues to finish the game your need for them should have dropped. Gigawing 2 is not even close to being one of my favorite shooters, but its decent.

Cool Cool Toon

Cool Cool Toon- Sega Dreamcast. Rhythm game with polygonal graphics. I am definitely NOT a fan of rhythm games. The only one I even have near me is some chapter of DDR that I got for my kids (complete with dance pad). So I cannot claim to be any sort of fan or expert. This game, however, struck me as interesting when I first saw previews for it on import sites. It has a very quirky art and music style. The graphics are polygonal but in a very cartoony solid-color style, that sort of looks like a precursor to cel-shaded graphics. The music is equally offbeat, cover a lot of different musical styles. That could be plus or a minus for the game depending on how closed-minded you are about your music... all of it is sort of 'dancey' as you'd expect. No beat, no game y'know? Its a pretty cool as the title say. There's nothing else really like it. But the game incorporates analog stick movements in addition to button presses (no dance pad, its more akin to playing an instrument than placing dance steps), and therein lies the game's main problem. Control. Odd thing to say if you place it in context of most other rhythm (or music games like Guitar Hero) since control is the last thing you worry about with simple button presses. Cool Cool Toon requires precise exact movements of the Dreamcast's analog stick though, and this proves incredibly difficult and frustrating. There are no detents or 'clicks' as you guide the stick in the clockface directions during the game. So no aids to your the exact placement. You just slide around rather loosely. At first this is no problem, the pauses between beats allow some correction, but as speed and complexity ramp up, you'll wish abominable tortures down upon the designers' children. I guess like a lot of other activities it takes practice. But this control scheme seems needlessly difficult, literally problematic to the goals of the game. There are already grueling memorisation tasks in other parts. So this one gets a lot of points on style, but only people absolutely in love with that style, and so willing to tackle the incredible learning/practice curve should seek out this game. Note: the clearest screenshots of this game seemed to come from the Planet-SNK site, so that's where I filched this pic. The huge 'nexgam' logo is NOT in the actual game.


Street Fighter III: Third Strike- Sega Dreamcast. 2D fighting game with sprite graphics. As most people know this game is basically a clinic on how to do shit-hot 2D animation. The sprites are huge, move fluidly and are cool updates on the classic Street Fighter characters. Fans are split on whether this game or the concurrently available Street Fighter Alpha 3 game was better. I tend to fall in the Alpha camp. That game is just more fun. This one is much more restrained and technical, and I do think it is a great game, I just prefer the characters in Alpha and the greater number of options for your super bar and special moves. If you want a Street Fighter game that 'feels' realistic, this is your boy.

Okay, that's enough for now. More later.

Smashing and Spazzing

My son has a new (current) favorite video game; Super Smash Brothers Brawl please step forward. His sister thinks its fairly decent too, but for him its just a ragin’ good time.

Me? Enh, not so much. I’d probably have called it Super Spaz Brothers Brawl.

Here’s the deal. It is just so chaotic and frenetic there doesn’t seem to be any strategy to it. I think that there probably is… but I’m just not interested in sorting it out amongst all the flashes, characters, and items. I’ve never seen a game with so many power ups. A lot of characters is kind of becoming the norm, but power ups? There seems to be almost as many different items to pick up and use as there are fighters, and I think the game boast sixty-two combatants! And they all seem to have basically the same (or very similar) moves, that are all executed the same way. Nintendo’s answer to game balance issues seems to have been just make all the same character with different skins and a few tweaked nuances.

I’m sure I’m waaaaayyy simplifying, but that’s what it looks and feels like. I’ve spent about three hours playing it now. I get why the game was anticipated, why it sold a ton, and why it is still pretty popular as of this writing which is a half-year after its release. There is a lot to do in the game; it has a nearly full-size single-player adventure mode despite its basic design as a multi-player fighting game. It has cool character designs, many of which span the entire history of home video game consoles (Pitt from Kid Icarus? Wow!), and tons of unlockables. If you like the basic play you have tons of reasons to stay at it. But every time I’ve played it, it becomes an exercise in alternating button-mashing with trying to stay/float/jump/glide on to the platforms of each stage.

All the flashes, blams, item effects and specials make a Soul Caliber 3 fight look dim by comparison. Even with making the characters look quite different from each other it is still quite easy to lose where you are and wind up getting socko-ed into the sky. I’ve enjoyed other spastic fighting games… not Smash Brothers so much, I’m more of a Power Stone man myself… but this one is just too much, I guess. It kind of reminds me of the Naruto: Ultimate Ninja series. Those are closer to a traditional 2D fighting game in presentation, but they are still muy spastico with very little in the way of finesse, and a lot of items, flash, and running around all over the stages.
Like I said, I can see what is great about Super Smash Brothers Brawl. There’s no way I’m going to criticize it around my kids. But I gave it a shot, to see what all the hype was about, and it just ain’t my thing. Am I getting to old for this stuff?