Always use protection.

I downloaded some games onto my Wii, and my family has one too, so I stuck the games onto my SD card and brought it over. SD to Wii memory... copy... "Cannot copy to this Wii console."

PUNK'D BY COPYRIGHT PROTECTION.

Forgot that Nintendo likes to keep all the money. I'm sure there are ways to hack it, but that's so illegal and naughty naughty. Stealing games isn't like stealing music! The difference is that games are harder to "share." There's no such thing as Game Napster! Except Bit Torrent. And everything like it. Hm.

A baby seal walks into a club...

Since the early days of the NES, there has been some form of the current Club Nintendo. The Super Mario Fun Club, My Nintendo, Nintendo Power Club, I'm sure there's more. Today, they offer special gifts to people who join the club and earn a certain number of points. The catch: you can only get points from official Nintendo products. First party games only. With the Wii, that's not so bad. Who's buys third party Wii games anyway? You get 30 points for registering a DS game and 50 points for a Wii game. At 300, you achieve "gold" status and at 600 you are "platinum." Also, with more points, you can cash them in for Nintendo cards or DS game cases or, the motherload, a Club Nintendo-exclusive Game & Watch Collection game for DS.

A number of months ago, a Tingle (the fruity elf guy from Zelda) game was made available to Japanese Cllub Nintendo members. Since then, the value of the game has basically skyrocketed. Hopefully, this game will do the same, because I have nearly enough points to order it. Still, it takes an awful lot of loyalty to afford it. 800 points = $800 spent on Nintendo products. And, since the Nintendo fiscal year ends on June 30th, I am fairly sure that Nintendo will mix up their rewards at that time. And then G&W will be gone forever! And that makes me a sad panda. But I do already have 720 points, and I'm sure there are some more Wii games sitting around this house. If only I cared about my Wii, I would know where the games are! I must have the shiny golden game. I don't even want to unwrap it or play it, however. I want to sell it when I'm 60 and buy a Ferrari with the profit.

Collect 'em all!

"Collector's Editions" of games have become more and more prevalent within the last couple of years. Is it just a way to squeeze another ten, twenty, or sixty bucks out of consumers, or are gamers actually getting a deal? If you keep the game shrinkwrapped, then yes, it will eventually be worth more money than the mas-produced standard edition. But if you open it, you will find... what? A bobblehead? A "Making of" DVD? A Master Chief helmet that will fit your cat? Fable II's Limited Edition included a "Making of Fable II" DVD and a few extra in-game items. For ten extra bucks. Couldn't these things just be downloaded? Sell them on XBL Marketplace for $5, and eliminate the need to promote and package two different versions of the same product. Oh, and the LE Fable 2's were originally supposed to include a miniature Hobbe figurine and some fate cards that should have been pretty cool... but if you preordered it on GameStop you got this message a few weeks before the shipping date:

Dear Valued Customer,

We are writing in regards to your Fable II Collector's Edition preorder. Microsoft has recently informed us that due to supply chain issues, the contents of the Collector's Edition have been revised. As a result, the price has been lowered from $79.99 to $69.99.

The original advertised contents: premium box, five printed fate cards and Hobbe figure will NOT be included as part of the Collector's Edition. It will now include:

*Fable II game disc
*Bonus DVD with new "Making-Of" Feature
*Bonus in-game content (requires Xbox LIVE)
- "The Hall of the Dead" Dungeon
- "The Wreckager" Legendary Cutlass Weapon
- Spartan armor and energy sword

To show their commitment to you the faithful fan, a special Fable album has been created for free download for a limited time. This includes a wonderful selection of music from the original Fable game and three brand new tracks from the upcoming Fable II soundtrack.


Weaksauce. Another ten bucks for some wimpy DLC that would sell for five on Oblivion.

Don't get me wrong, I love when companies go all-out with fan service. Working Designs' Lunar and Arc the Lad collections were behemoths with beautiful instruction manuals, cardboard standups, jewelry, soundtracks, the works. And their games were usually only about $10 more than the standard MSRP's of other games at the time too. Then they went out of business. Sad story. Today, you'd be hard-pressed to find a sealed copy of Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete for the PS1 for less than $150 (except this one signed edition on Amazon for $145... how cool would that be?).

Since Working Designs has gone belly up, limited/collector's editions of games have been less and less impressive and have offered nowhere near the quantity and quality they offered. Yes, there are a few rare exceptions (here, here, here, and here), but they are big-budget games from companies with deep pockets, not little companies that love their fans.

And then there are the movie-style limited editions, like when a new DVD comes out for $25 at Wal-Mart because it has special features. Special features don't make a DVD "limited" or "collectible." They make it a DVD. Certain things are expected out of the format; it's not a VHS tape. Despite the fact that I never watch the making of documentaries on movies, if they're not on my disc, I feel cheated. Weird that we can expect so much more out of something that comes in the same-sized box.

How hard is it to write a cover letter?!

Stayed up all night writing a beautiful, eloquent cover letter full of quips and witty insights to please the Penny Arcade gods so they would hire me for the most satisfying job in the history of time.

Hit "Apply."

"Your cover letter is over the maximum character count. The maximum allowed is 2,000 and you have 3,428."

*&(^**$%^%@@%!@#

So I took out a third of my personality and sent it in anyway. Kind of like a homemade lobotomy, except more painful because it was self-inflicted. I'm sure I removed some unnecessary embellishments and a few overly florid phrases, but there wasn't that much to edit off.

I hope I still sound awesome. :(

I feel awesome. Except that it's 7:30 in the a.m. and I woke up yesterday at 10:00 then worked 15 hours then got home and cranked out a beautiful cover letter then was told it was too long so I fixed it after another hour of preening and now here I am.

Sleepy.

Good night for now.

But I'll be back.

GL out. ;)

Hopefully, this will be my next job:

W00t.

*fingers crossed*

Remembering the past

On a whim, I fired up Braid today for the first time in many months. I had never been able to beat the game, and I am trying by bestest to never have to resort to YouTube to find solutions to the puzzles. Unfortuately, there was no save file left on my Xbox (weak) so I got to experience the whole game for the first time all over again.

Braid is beautiful.

It is a masterpiece of aesthetics, and music, and interesting, simple, clever gameplay. The story is told in snippets of books between levels, and the wording is such that it evokes an incredible emotional response in just a few lines of text. You connect with the hero, Tim, even though he doesn't say a single word. The game is only a few hours long, but there are so many "A-ha!" moments when you solve a puzzle all by yourself after 30 minutes of struggling. You actually feel proud of yourself for outsmarting this simple, sophisticated game - no - this experience.

On my first playthrough, there were always a few puzzle pieces I could never seem to reach. This second time, I felt much more self-assured. I already understood the mechanics of the game; I just needed to master it, to complete it. This time, I got closer. I completed level 4 and earned a nice, shiny, new achievement. But there are still a few puzzle pieces left... I am still stumped. I can't earn the beautiful Ico-esque ending I've read about in so many magazines, and heard about all over the Internet. I want so badly to know what happens myself, without reading spoilers, and without having to resort to finding solutions to the game on the Internet. Will this be another of life's great mysteries? Or will my searching mind stumble upon a solution in my sleep? I hope the latter. Maybe I just need to take a break from it for a few months again... but I can't. I'm hooked in its beautiful claws, and I don't want to be free again until I learn the truth.

One more funny for the day...

Ode to PopCap Games

You jerks. Why are you making games that are so addictive? They seem harmless, at first. But just as I was researching your site for nice things to say about you, I stumbled onto a free trial of Bookworm. Zap. There goes an hour of my life that I will never get back. "Yods" doesn't even sound like a word, but it won me 600 points.

You made Bejeweled, and moms all over the world have been in your grasp ever since. Sequels, and pseudo-sequels, and everyone still loves you. On their computer at work, on iPhone... your reach is limitless.

You just released Plants Vs. Zombies, and everyone loves it. A tower defense game, and it won numerous Game of the Month awards, despite the fact that that tired genre was originally created roughly twenty years ago. Your best selling game ever.

Feeding Frenzy, Zuma, Astropop, you can do no wrong... and I hate you. Now that you're on 360, the quest for achievements makes your games even more time-consuming. And Peggle is on WoW... what's next? Feeding Frenzy in the shower, on the fogged mirror on the wall, with your soapy finger? Perhaps.

That is all the attention you get. I must get back to Bookworm.

Thanks for nothing, PopCap. You addictive jerks. Why can't I quit you?

InferNO?

At E3, people were outside protesting Dante's Inferno, a game based on the first part of Dante's Divine Comedy. With pithy slogans like, "Trade in your PlayStation for a PrayStation" and "EA = Electronic Anti-Christ," these picketers seemed a little too clever to be actually picketing. And, lo and behold, it was a fake campaign to drum up interest for an otherwise uninteresting game. Oh well. In the age of MySpace and iPhones, sometimes companies have to resort to old-school hate mongering to garner attention. Even the fact that it was a fake publicity stunt is getting EA more publicity! Media is fun.

Not better than the original

A sequel should keep the good parts of the first game, throw out the bad, and add new features, making the core experience even more enjoyable. Final Fantasy IV: The After Years does not do this.

This WiiWare exclusive takes all the old graphics, charm, and mechanics, and adds MORE random battles. I spent the entire first hour of playtime on the first dungeon (which was only two floors) because I had to fight a random monster every four steps. Just to be sure that it wasn't like this before, I popped in my old copy of Final Fantasy II (the American title for IV) on SNES, my newer copy of FF4 on the PlayStation, and I even tried my copy of FF4 on Game Boy Advance, and, sure enough, there were a LOT more battles in this Wii one. Battles aren't intrinsically uninteresting, but these particular battles have been the same for fifteen years. They're stale. The one new feature in battles, Band Attacks, has already been used in numerous other games, most recently in Sonic Chronicles on the DS. Two or more characters team up for one attack, making a stronger attack, but depriving both characters of the necessary MP. Woo.

This game would be great on a cell phone, where it was originally released, as long as there was a quicksave option. As it is... The After Years takes great characters from one of history's most beloved series and gives them one more adventure. But that's all. Square is treading a long-beaten path, and their storytelling had better be nothing less than sublime for them to expect anyone to complete this game and invest in the downloadable content. There's a difference between pure, brutal nostalgia (Mega Man 9) and a shamless cash-in like this, despite Square bringing back the cast that worked on the original game to make this pseudo-sequel. Their love of the past cannot be denied. This game can be.


...Of course this is all just based on the first hour of playtime. If I ever find myself going back to it, I'll be sure to let you know if there is any change in how I feel about it.

Llama out.

Guess who's back... back again... Dreamcast's back... tell a friend

First ThinkGeek was selling them (and it looks like they just got another shipment! $100!). Now Amazon is. Brand new Sega Dreamcast. $120 with free shipping. Sure, it could have benefited from waiting to hit the market a few months (at least) but now it's gone. Yet people are still making Dreamcast games, and there are still servers running for four different games, including Quake III: Arena. Hope you have a land line and a 56k connection! Nothing like a stroll down retro lane to muster up some sympathy for the little company Sony killed.

Also, if you get one, make sure you get copies of Seaman and Jet Grind Radio. Two classics that deserved a better fate than they received. I'm still waiting for the localized PS2 version of Seaman 2... Come on Japan! And don't forget Leonard Nimoy!

Wow.

This is the first year that I've actually followed E3 as it was happening, and, compared to what I've read in magazines after the fact from other years (Wii Music... Yay.), this may have been the coolest year ever.

Why? Project Natal.

Video Games | Project Natal | E3 09: Project Natal Intro

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Incredible. I hope it works as promised.

And this is my first video embed, and I'm not an HTML tag expert yet... so sorry it covers up the other stuff on the side. But this must be seen by everyone. It's the future. You know, if M$ can make it work.

Do games NEED multiplayer?

If you want to be able to play one game and one game only for the next year of two of your life, then yes, multiplayer is a necessity. Sure, there are single-person experiences that seem limitless (Spore, The Sims, Tetris) but eventually you need something more. Why do you think the Sims have had expansion after expansion after expansion? In today's A.D.D. world of YouTube and an MTV that has lost it's "M," people need constant, updated stimulation. Online multiplayer is one easy way to accomplish this.

Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, and Call of Duty: World at War - the top three online games on 360. They will remain this way for the forseeable future. CoD 4's single player was great - the scripted action was intense, the characters were believable, and the sense of immersion in the battles was unparalleled. Yet, there is no reason to play it more than once. The experience will always be the same, no matter the difficulty level you select. But online, you can meet new people, and shoot new people. The experience will never be scripted; the experience will never be the same. Online multiplayer has helped WoW become a pop culture phenomenon, and one that's doesn't show any sign of letting up. A game can be fun, but without online multiplayer, there is no reason to keep getting better and better indefinitely. If you invested 200 hours into Final Fantasy XII to get yourself the sweetest, toughest party in RPG history, who will know? Who will care? I sunk 120 hours into Oblivion, and now it just sits on the shelf, collecting dust. At least I got all 1,250 achievement points!

A distant cousin to online multiplayer is the increasing availability of online leaderboards. Rock Band, Mirror's Edge, Mega Man 9, N+, basically every other XBLA game... by getting people to compete with each other to shave half a second off a speed run, single player games are given incredible long term vitality. Mega Man 9 came out months ago, and people are still competing for the top spot on the leaderboards. How many full-budget games can make that claim? Not as many as would like to, that's for sure.

"Give me more money!" - Nintendo

So I downloaded Final Fantasy IV: The After Years on WiiWare today, and I was pretty pumped. Until I found out that to get the whole game, you have to download $3/each episodes that will come out at the rate of about 3 a month for the next 3 months or so... turning my $8 game (great deal) into a $30 game (not as great). Still, it's Final Fantasy 4 for the next generation, so I won't complain too much. But couldn't I have just paid the World of Goo price of $15 and gotten the whole game at once? Nintendo is doing this online thing all wrong. They're taking all the bad parts of online play (nickel and diming the gamers to death) and ignoring all the good stuff (why doesn't Punch-Out!! have online mulitplayer?).

Still, it's a cell phone game ported to the Wii that will eventually cost me about $30 if I want the complete experience. I'm buying... guess I'm a fanboy. Oh well.

Riding the Zelda short bus

Third-person action/adventure games - the most derivative of all game genres. No matter how good/unique your game is, critics and the public will all declare it "like Zelda." It seems like the only way to escape the Zelda stigma is to include guns in your game (Ratchet & Clank).

Example: Okami. PS2's answer to Zelda. You got to be a wolf, there was a silent protagonist, you ran errands for villagers, you explored dungeons. Sounds like Zelda. Sure, there was a painting mechanic, and a cool art-style, but nobody cared except the critics. This game single-handedly closed Clover Studios.

Example: Beyond Good and Evil. Third-person adventure, hit bad guys with a stick, similar controls, pretty female protagonist (HA take that, Link!). The setting was unique, and the story was interesting, and the characters had... character. But the game felt like Zelda, even though there were no dungeons to explore or princesses to rescue. The photography aspect was cool too. Nobody played this game either.

More examples: Malice, Haven: Call of the King, Jak and Daxter, Dark Cloud, Oddworld: Munch's Oddysee, Psychonauts, Fable. All of these games have aspects that help separate themselves from Zelda's shadow, but many feel like that's all they do. Zelda with a hammer, Zelda with psychic powers, Zelda with experience points, Zelda with farts. Zelda wasn't the first, but it did it the best. I don't know if it will ever be topped by cookie-cutter games.

One thing's for sure, however: when (if?) a unique game comes along that turns the Zelda gameplay on its ear, I'll be the first in line to pick it up. With so many "me too" games flooding the market, I could really go for a breath of fresh air.

Guess who won the Punch-Out!! tournament?

This guy.

Here are my prizes: the poster announcing the tourney, a sweet bumper sticker I'll stick on my car after I finally wash it, and a Little Mac T-shirt, black, size XL. Which I will never take out of the bag because someday it'll be worth all money. Then I can sell it and buy a Ferrari! Aw, dreams.

So what if nobody else showed up? That doesn't mean I didn't train until 3 a.m. this morning! I was ready to use those gimmicky (yet still kinda cool) motion controls to lay down a whoopin' on any 10-year-olds in my way.

+2 experience for being in the right place at the right time.

Unappreciated Fantasy

Final Fantasy VIII - the most unappreciated Final Fantasy. But why? After the juggernaut of FFVII, it seemed like nothing short of the second coming of Jesus could compare to the masterpiece that preceded VIII. It had the same futuristic setting, but the characters were made to look more realistic. The graphics were much better overall, and the characters had similarly charming personalities and flaws.

The biggest polarizing aspect for fans was undoubtedly the Draw system. Instead of MP, you would Draw your magic from enemies. Harder enemies = stronger spells. You could then fuse your magic to your stats, making you resistant to fire, for example. If you wanted mega-stats, you would simply draw magic from enemies, over and over and over and over. Some people dug the customizable potential it afforded, most people hated the repetitiveness.

My favorite part (and biggest time suck) was the Triple Triad card game. You could play cards with pretty much everyone in the game, winning cards when you win, and losing cards when you lose. It was supremely addictive, and it was one of the main reasons I never actually finished the game. I was too obsessed with getting every card... way more fun than Pokemon. They tried to recreate the card mini-game experience in FFIX, but it just didn't have the same soul. It became too random, and felt more like Risk than a card game, where a lucky roll of the dice could mean a small army destroys a much bigger army 300 style. You can still play the Triple Triad card game online here.

Final Fantasy VIII was also one of the very, very few U.S. games that was PocketStation compatible. Remember that thing? Sony's first foray into the handheld market was this Tamagotchi-esqe monochrome VMU. It never came out stateside, but I imported one just to play it with FFVII. (I thought it would work with Street Fighter Alpha 3, too, but they took that compatibility out in the localization... jerks.) You plug the PocketStation into your memory card slot and download the game onto it. You could play this mini-game, called Chocobo World, I think, to level up your Chocobo summon to god-like status. It was pretty simple. You'd cruise your chocobo around a giant square world map to certain points where you'd battle a cactuar by pushing the buttons really fast, leveling up as you did. At level 50, you see a cutscene and your summon would become stronger. At level 100, my PocketStation glitched and I didn't get the 2nd cutscene. But you can't level up any higher... so I stopped playing my PocketStation. Thanks, Japan.

So why didn't people care about VIII? Squall was a cool character, a lot less whiny than Cloud and a snazzier dresser. There was a love story, and it worked well and kept you playing. Sure, the way you made money was kind of weird... You pass all the tests at the beginning of the game, then you never have to worry about money again. You just get it automatically every few minutes just for having a high "rank." They were multiple choice tests, and you had to get them all right, but simple memorization and persistent test re-taking eventually led you to the top rank. Or you could find the answers in PSM. Either way works. But Final Fantasy VIII is not seen as a masterpiece by many, even though it improved on VII in nearly every way. Was it the release date? The same day as the doomed Dreamcast? Maybe Sega should have been more worried about that... the graphics were pretty much the same quality as the 32-bit PlayStation at the time. Oh well. Who knows?

An analogy to describe my first impressions of Punch-Out!! on Wii

You know when you listen to a CD, and you learn all the words, and you fall in love with the band, and then you go see them in concert, and it's just incredible?

Alright. You also know how when you listen to a comedy CD, then you learn all the jokes, and you fall in love with the comedian, and then you go see him in concert, and it SUCKS because you know every punchline?

That's how it is with Punch-Out!! on Wii. You played the original Punch-Out! and Super Punch-Out! to death, and this is the same game with prettier graphics. You know every jab, and every boxer's tell-tale signs, and all you need is the quick reflexes you honed back in the late 80's and early 90's.

It doesn't suck. It's fun. But it's the exact same fun you had 15 years ago. Is that a long enough wait for you to have forgotten the "punch"lines?

Tipping the Scale

Scale has always been a strange technical issue in video games. You're limited by the size of the character, and the camera angle, and the hardware. In old NES games like Zelda 2, Link was the same size on the world map as an entire village. Once he was actually in the village, the buildings were bigger, yet the inside dimensions never seemed to match the outside, like that magical car from Harry Potter that could seat seven comfortably in the back seat while appearing to be a standard size from the outside. Later (much later), Final Fantasy VIII graced the PS1, and towns were finally getting a sense of scale. Sure, Squall still appeared to be as tall as the buildings while outside the city limits, but at least they weren't the same dimensions anymore. I just think it was the hardware. The one game I can think of in that entire console generation that had an entire world set to scale was Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. If you wanted to walk somewhere, it took you as long as it would in real life. It was improved even farther in Oblivion, and we now had a living, breathing world that resembled our own, if our own world had goblins lurking behind the registers at Wal-Mart.

Come to think of it, first-person-perspecitve games were always in scale. But the scope of the levels was always so constrained. Remember the first TimeSplitters that debuted with the PS2? The one where you didn't even have to look up or down, a la Doom? The levels, especially compared to sprawling RPG's like anything Square produced, were miniscule. Luckily, technology and game budgets nowadays are so out of control that even low-impact games can have a sense of scale and verisimilitude. Unless its Nintendo, then you're still doomed to be stuck with the kawaii big head, little feet, Pep Boys look. Hope you sprites have been working out your neck muscles! You're going to need them.

Vital Stats

TheGameLlama

Level: 4
HP: 82/100
Experience to next level: 1,337 points

Strength: 40
Perception: 21 (needs glasses)
Endurance: 25
Charisma: 68
Intelligence: 88
Agility: 35
Luck: 50

Inventory:
- 360 games - 40 (3 unopened)
- PS2 games - over 100
- Wii games - 18
- Wii games being enjoyed currently - 0
- 6 plastic guitars
- 2 real guitars
- 4 gaming microphones
- Mountain Dew and Cheetohs (a.k.a. dinner)
- Dive-bombing cockatiel
- Geriatric cat of self-licking
- Ceramic lawn gnome
- $3 Salvation Army thrift store wall art
- 5-foot-tall cardboard Tiki man

Quest:
- Success - Find it. Slay a dragon, perhaps? They guard that, right? Next to the gold?

Secondary Quest:
- Go to work, bring home the bacon.
- Blog.
- Teach self web design.

Those ******* Aussies.

I've scoured the whole Internet, from Wikipedia to Yahoo! to the Australian Ratings board, and I am finding incredibly wide gaps in the consistency of Australian censorship. Apparently, it's OK to broadcast The Osbournes uncensored and have full frontal nudity in their SOAP OPERAS as long as you don't show someone's head exploding in a video game. Their music industry has three different "obscene" ratings, yet F-bombs are just fine on TV, as long as it's after 8:30 p.m.?! Ridiculous. And it's alright to have porn, as long as you import it. It's illegal to buy it in the country. Plenty of games are banned, too, then later reinstated after a particular bit is removed or edited (see: any GTA game). But they don't remove all the offensive stuff, just enough to make it a M15+ game. Like in GTA IV, you can pick up a hooker, but you can't swing the camera around and look in the windshield to see what she's doing. But it's still completely fine to chase her with a baseball bat and beat your money out of her afterwards.

There are so many weird things to get censored for in Australia. Fallout 3 was banned because it blurred the line between sci-fi drugs and real drugs. Bethesda took out the word "morphine" (it's called Med-X in the game) and removed the shooting-up animation and Fallout 3 was reinstated. It was also edited for Japan (they don't like atom bombs much over there) and it was not released in India at all (there are two-headed cows).

The average gamer in Australia is 30 years old. If they are going to censor TV, video games, movies, books, music, and all other art forms, both passive and immersive, the Aussies need to find a more consistent method of going about it. If you don't want boobies on TV destroying their child's innocence, fine. Get rid of them from everywhere. Picking and choosing where it's OK to see them just confuses children, grown-ups, and foreigners like me. I'm getting mixed messages, Australia! Can I swear and see violence/nudity or not? It seems that I can, as long as I stick to the appropriate format. Network TV, here I come!