I believe I’ve written about Yoshi’s Island DS here, and you must know it’s been widely criticised. Lazy design, just awful soundtrack, and mediocre art are a few of the common complaints. So when information about the new 3DS Yoshi game was coming out and it had the same developers attached, some red flags started going up.
I did enjoy YIDS in the end, maybe nostalgia has a lot to do with it. So I was looking forward to this too. I even preordered to get a little Yoshi egg game case. I played through it over about a week and, as I was expecting, was not exactly blown away. The level design is uninspired, the soundtrack is again awful. The art style is not bad, but is more a matter of taste this time as it’s all 3D models that evoke the original art of YI, but also make it more Mario-y, and thus less distinctive.
It has a few touches that I appreciated. Collectibles now are counted by set (red coins, flowers, and stars) instead of all up, which basically means that to get more completion in the game you don’t have to get perfect runs anymore. Oh no I can’t think of any more here come the bad points…
Items are still gone, and the goal ring now has a confusing system that awards medals (lame). Shooting eggs now involves an initial animation, limiting your twitch response time and making the process a tad unwieldy—lame. Eggs can randomly be yellow or red, which is fine and all for giving you some extra stars in a pinch, but a red egg will not bounce off walls. Lame. Yoshi now seems to run more slowly, as he must gain momentum; again, lame. There were quite a few little tweaks to the formula, but they were obviously not thought through because they add up to making the game feel worse than the two previous ones it’s aping. Very lame.
Oh, I remember. Each fortress (mid-world boss stage) now has a battle with Kamek, which cuts down on the unique boss battles (a highlight of previous games), but which is actually kind of cool because he’s always been untouchable. The fights can also be inventive in concept, more puzzly affairs. Although their execution can be dull to play through. So a mixed bag there.
The all-new mechanics are pretty bad. There’s big eggs which are highly situational. They’re given to you when required, and then you pass that point. Very badly implemented. The transformations are gyro-controlled, and I don’t have to tell you that’s a bad idea. They’re also very segmented from the rest of the game, which feels gamey and annoying. They also have a couple of concessions to the New Mario, Super Guide stuff which is so patronising. However, there is an excellent payoff to the aspect of the noob-helper character that ties into the ending.
Speaking of which, the final boss is boring and predictably completely rips off the original Yoshi’s Island, but worse. They then surprise you by literally throwing adult Bowser at you out of nowhere through a time portal. It makes no sense and really undermines the whole concept of this being a separate game series from Mario that takes place in the past.
As I said in my Club Nintendo survey, the good parts of the game are where it sticks to the formula put down by much better game developers 15 years ago. Ironically you could say those are lazy parts, but then the new parts to this game are very lazily implemented. The result is relentlessly mediocre. Of course I managed to get some fun out of it, being a fan of Yoshi’s games. It looks nice and play fine, but because it’s trying to evoke the original it just shows all the more what a pale imitation it is. I think it’s time for Nintendo to take the franchise a little more seriously, take it away from these guys.
Gosh I’m pretty negative eh? I still finished and enjoyed it, but maybe it’s best to stick to Yoshi’s Island GBA, out now on the Wii U. That damnable small screen view aside, it’s a great game.
I knew I was going to play A Link Between Worlds, despite my initial hesitation. So I wanted to go back to a game I never bothered to complete: the very first Zelda game. We have it on the Wii’s Virtual Console, but I’m buggered if I’m going to put up with the limitations of the NES if there’s a better version available. And it turns out there is. At the BS Zelda Homepage, you can get reproductions and patches that let you play one of the most rare Zelda games: the satellite broadcast remake of Zelda 1 for the SNES. Only sent out at certain times in the 90s, the game was split into parts with timers. Hackers have stitched them together and made a few teaks, to make it the best version of the original game.
The version I played, Third Quest, uses the dungeons from the broadcast version, which are different to the original game. So it’s not 100% authentic, but close enough and the overworld is the same. They also made a few choices that probably meddle too much, like putting in the Hylian shield, but they also add other things to make it a bit more dynamic (I think, not totally sure). Also you can play as Zelda, which of course I did.
Essentially it’s a graphical and sound upgrade for Zelda 1, all the mechanics are the same. It’s not like a LttP romhack, all the sprites are brand new and look great, and are actually parseable unlike the NES version’s muddy, ugly graphics.
Of course, the graphics and sounds aren’t the only limitation of this NES era game. Movement and combat is stiff, and there’s little interaction with characters or the environment. Like a lot of SNES games, A Link to the Past is doing the same thing as the NES game it’s following, but doing it better and fleshing it out. That’s what I found with this, and I’d much rather play LttP than Zelda 1. But I did find myself having fun with this, enjoying the simplicity and the ramp up of my power, without plot distractions. I feel bad saying so, but I now feel I can give Zelda 1 a niche of its own.
I would recommend BS Zelda over the NES original any day of the week. In my mind, while it exists there’s no reason to look to the NES (apart from blind nostalgia). If you’re an impatient modern gamer like me though, have a guide handy for when you get stuck, because we’re not kids anymore and wandering the overworld endlessly can get tedious. I’m very glad for the BS version, because although I’m a completionist I just didn’t feel I could face the NES one. Similarly, I’m not sure if I’ll ever do Zelda 2. So in the end Zelda 1 was ok. Pretty forgettable in this day and age but I had some fun.
I tracked down a copy of this for a similar reason to Viva Pinata DS, as it is held in high esteem in the DKVine community. It’s the final game that Rareware made for a Nintendo home console, the final one while before they were sadly bought out by Microsoft. Like many Rare games, especially later ones, it had something of a troubled development. It started as a new IP that, while a spinoff of Diddy Kong Racing through Tricky the Triceratops, was much more loosely connected than Banjo or Conker. The tone is very different, a more serious adventure story. After finishing the game I had a great time looking through an archive of prerelease material relating to the original story and game of Dinosaur Planet. You can check some of that out here.
But Miyamoto intervened, as he so often does, and suggested changing one of the protagonists to Fox McCloud, as they bore a resemblance. Now hardcore Rare fans and Star Fox fans both will see this as a mistake, the Rare fans because it caused delays and cuts to the N64 game, resulting in a more content-light Gamecube final product, as well as undermining Rare’s original vision. Star Fox fans see it as a big anomaly in the series and a disappointing change of pace compared to the SNES original and N64 classic. Me, well, I don’t mind so much. I like seeing a different kind of adventure in the Star Fox universe, and what we got is what we got. You can’t complain too much, it’s not too different to what DP was intended to be and it sure looks nicer.
I knew not to expect a Star Fox game proper, but what I didn’t expect were segments of Lylat Wars-style scrolling shooter gameplay shoehorned in between areas of the 3D adventure action platformer. The comparison is not nice: the structure, design, sound effects, control, all are pale shadows of what the N64 game accomplished.
Thankfully, the original Dinosaur Planet-style stages are more well-developed. While the world is a little small, it’s populated by fun characters, mostly dinosaurs, with outrageous British accents of all stripes. This is fun and I dare say part of the “Rare charm”. I had flashbacks to their previous fully-voiced game, Conker’s Bad Fur Day, in a good way. The more affected accents of the principal Star Fox team are more grating, though. David Wise’s soundtrack on the other hand, fantastic as always.
Oh I was talking about the gameplay. It’s a bit like Zelda, a bit like Beyond Good and Evil. You get lots of consumable items mostly, as well as magic staff powers. The C-stick menu is a great way of sifting through all these actions and objects while still running around. Lumping some actions onto your sidekick Tricky is also cool because you develop a bond with the little guy. He’s so cute following you around, and he’s so integral that it’s only natural he feel a part of the team. It’s good to see Rare finally deliver on the partner gameplay they’ve been toying with since Conker’s Quest 64. Just a shame that the proposed Krystal half of the game was cut or reworked, in the end she’s a very underwhelming character.
Knowing about what was cut does undermine my retrospective view of the game, although you can tell while playing it that it’s a little lacking some areas. Parts of the world and gameplay feel bolted together and there’s not always a consistent feeling of progression. The plot is a little barebones too. It’s all about what goes on in your head though, so if possible I’d recommend reading a bit of Dinosaur Planet info and supplementing your experience of this game with that, to build it up a little more. That’s helped my view of the DP-SFA thing as a whole.
I’ve heard lots of criticisms of SFA: disappointing final chapter, tedious backtracking, dumb minigame-type sections, mediocre combat. I’d agree with all of them. However, I still look back on my playing of it fondly, and had a good time. It has got the Rare spirit, despite what some people may think. It also adds a lot to the Star Fox universe, especially in terms of Krystal who is very important to the next two games. I’m just playing Assault now and going back to Sauria briefly is just so joyous. I guess you could say it’s not easy to enjoy, but I’m glad to like some controversial games if they have some redeeming elements, and I think this does.
Being a fan of the DKU (as described by dkvine.com), and Rare games in general, I was interested in the Viva Pinata games. It’s the last successful new IP they’ve made since Banjo, really, and has done well for them. It’s also one of the last things they did before being totally creatively lobotomised by Microsoft. This is the only VP game on a non-Microsoft platform and hence the only one I have access to.
In a situation similar to Viewtiful Joe, I feel very underwhelmed by what the DS version is presenting and feel that while the control scheme could be good for the format, the other limitations fo the platform make it suffer compared to its console counterpart. I’m also not fond of the Rare handheld team’s latter work, which is characterised by ugly menus, messy graphics, and a general lack of polish.
My problems with this one aren’t just aesthetic, though. I’m not great on open-ended sims at the best of times, but the goals in this game confused me and while I learnt how to perform a few functions, I couldn’t figure out how to progress. There didn’t seem much point. I bred a few pinatas but then I had too many milling around, so I had to sell them or feed them to others. I couldn’t build an attachment to them. I dunno, the whole thing just didn’t grab me.
I basically picked up the game because of Rare, it was their very last game on a Nintendo platform. But apart from the lackluster presentation, I don’t think this style of game is really for me. It doesn’t happen often but I didn’t play it much and I don’t see myself going back. Sorry Pinatas!
Hi there. I really like the wackiness of the Warioware series. It’s got a really distinct sense of fun, and the way they’re presented make them feel like a labour of love. I only ever owned DIY, and I knew I was missing out a little because that was so heavily built around the creative aspect. Other games such as Touched and Smooth Moves are allowed to be more expressive: they’re not limited by graphics you would be able to draw in the game itself, or such simplistic control schemes, and microgames are allowed more variation. They also have more modes and so on.
I’m also glad to have this on hand as a party game. I played it with a friend last week and it was fun, albeit with a bit of a learning curve. I now appreciate more the simplicity of the original GBA/GCN one. Still, Smooth Moves is totally great. From the relaxed narrator of new forms, to the silly poses, to the absurd minigames, to the quite challenging gauntlet modes, it’s all fun to see. You want to keep playing just to see what it’s going to do next, what crazy action you’ll have to perform or what the characters are going to do.
It’s obviously an early Wii game, trying out everything you can do with the remote and showing off what it’s capable of. This does come up against its limitations at times unfortunately, where the gyroscope sticks or you point too far away from the screen and lose contact. And I just couldn’t figure out why the multiplayer modes have to be pass-and-play, why they can’t support multiple remotes.
As a Nintendo fanboy, I love that 9-volt’s stage here adapted many more modern games to microgame form, as until this point they were mostly stuck in a retro 8-bit (boring) mode. It’s great to see obscure stuff being trotted out, as well as seeing Link pull the Master Sword and turn into an old man.
While I was in the Warioware mood and having blitzed through Smooth Moves’s campaign, I got the WiiWare DIY Showcase, which links to the DIY on DS which I have. It’s completely compatible with DIY but on the big screen, with a few new stories and a multiplayer mode. A small thing but worth it just for the Donkey Kong Country microgame. ;)
Smooth Moves though is a very nice package, that variety of styles is always surprising and there’s so much to do. It’s always nice to play a game that is so disarming and genuine, and yeah just fun. Relax and don’t be afraid to get silly.
I finally got around to playing this. I got it back in the Famicom anniversary sale. Having played almost every Metroid game before this one (only Metroid 2 left now), I was kind of looking forward to it as the commonly-held “best” in the series.
I actually played them in a weird order. My first two were Fusion and Zero Mission, chronologically the last and first. I also played ZM’s included NES version of Metroid 1, with my own hand-drawn maps and everything! So while I’ve seen how low the series could go, it felt like I still had a glorious high to go through. To make a long story short: I prefer Zero Mission in a lot of ways.
I played the GBA ones a lot, and they have a distinct feel. I don’t have Fusion to go back and check, but I played ZM to confirm after finishing Super and it felt so right. In comparison Super feels slow and floaty, and the controls are much clunkier. ZM streamlines everything: no run button, no toggling between 5(!) different abilities, no need to deactivate or switch your powerups, no cumbersome X-ray scope. It’s also quicker and smoother, and with trickier puzzles and more impressive set pieces.
So my general impression is that I don’t quite see how Super is the be-all end-all that it’s made out to be. I’m just a dabbler in game design theory, so maybe a lot of the clever things went over my head. I think nostalgia must play a part too—in terms of growing up with it, ZM was my Super. However, Super has a lot of good stuff.
You can go anywhere to see why people think SM is great. It’s the subtle environmental storytelling. It’s the open-ended structure, where you choose what you do next, and many powerups are missable for a long time. The exploration, and the exciting combat.
There’s a dark side to open-ended exploration in a game with obvious goals, though. In Maridia especially I wandered around for ages, falling down holes and having to go the long way around. I don’t like that area. It brought to mind another comparison: the map, while immensely useful after my scribbled pencil scrawl for the first game, is simply not as helpful as its counterparts on the GBA. I relied on a separate map from the good folks at Metroid Recon, especially during the item collection phase.
Enough comparisons though. The endless secrets in this game were very rewarding: the animals who teach you new techniques (never could get the hang of the bloody walljump though), the beam combos, and of course all the missile tanks and so on. And sometimes it felt like you stumbled upon a boss, although most were well set-up. You get to know these areas you’re exploring, and then suddenly you find a hole in the wall that opens it up, that you never knew was there.
If you’ve played Metroid games before you know all the items you’ll get, although I had a few surprises such as the X-ray scope. Switching beams is also not something I’m used to outside of Prime, and I’m not sure I liked it. Sub Tanks are also unique to SM, taken straight out of Mega Man X, although given its open nature I wasn’t sure of the point. I also found so many things that I now recognise were being called back to in later games, especially Prime, ZM, and Other M. This really was an influential game for the series.
I dunno, I feel weird about this game. To me it’s not so special, just another Metroid game. It’s a good one though, probably better than Fusion if I really think about it. Fairly glitchy but full of ideas and atmosphere. Treating it as a game I didn’t like how it played compared to ZM, but it’s a well-crafted experience. My recommendation (if you somehow haven’t played any Metroid games) is to take this one fairly early. The bosses can be hard, but the puzzles are easier. Search thoroughly for items, it really helps. And find the Metroid larva!
This was an interesting little 2D point and click adventure game. I found it through Rovio’s publishing program, since I’m such a big Angry Birds geek. It’s fun enough, but I just want to cover two overly complainy points in this review, that don’t really have anything to do with the game.
I liked going through each chapter, which had their own themes. But a recent update adding a new chapter came at just the wrong time. I was going to buy it, at $2 for a few levels it was reasonable-ish. But Apple changed the iTunes policy for Australia, jacking up the price of apps significantly due to “fluctuating exchange rates”. Those fluctuate all the time. It irrationally ticked me off, and I have not spent anything since. I feel sore just thinking about it, overly entitled consumer that I am. Hopefully I can get over it soon and support this developer.
The main character in this game is a cute little androgynous cartoon thief. I thought it was a female for some reason, and it seemed cool. But then there’s a chapter where the thief falls for a princess. At first I thought it was a prince in an amusing reversal of cliche, but then my fancies were subverted when I found it simply was cliche. Le sigh. I couldn’t hold onto my interpretation. I don’t want to make any big statements about video game feminism, but those were just my not-premeditated feelings as I played.
It’s a nice game though, finding all the little secrets is fun, if sometimes obscure. The art and animations are very cute and endearing, and the design is strong. Rovio picked a good one to endorse.
I was curious about some of Clover/Platinum’s games, because Okami is so great and a lot fo people have nice things to say about Viewtiful Joe. I should have gone with the Gamecube one, but I just felt the DS one would be more accessible and cheaper. Turns out it’s not very good, so either it’s too watered down or the fundamentals of the series are not for me.
The first thing is, it’s confusing. I did’t know what I was doing or how I was doing it, both in plot and mechanics. They keep introducing new moves for you to execute using the touchscreen, but they’re universally awful, hard to activate with the tetchy controls and of dubious usefulness except when forced into a puzzle-type situation. I didn’t know any of the characters nor was I properly introduced to them in the game.
It seems to be favouring presentation over substance, with a silly slideshow feature in cutscenes, and a persistent camera UI overlay on the action screen which is pointless. The heavily cel-shaded style doesn’t really work and the graphics end up muddy.
I chose the easy mode because I didn’t want to struggle through combat on top of struggling with the mechanics, and things came together for me more as I went through. I should say it’s a 2D beat-em-up, with upgrades to your fighting moves purchaseable between stages and light puzzle-platforming elements. I found a technique to get through battles and didn’t vary much all the way through, which probably wouldn’t work in hard mode, but I didn’t want to put in the effort to master it. I just wasn’t invested enough. The combat system seems robust enough though.
So there’s a lot of weird design stuff to this game that didn’t gel with me. The touchscreen stuff was implemented pretty incompetently, and the characters, after my initial bafflement, were just kinda bland and cliche. It was a little amusing to fight bosses based on Robocop and Edward Scissorhands. But is it a movie? Or real life in a movie theme park? Or what? There’s a film MacGuffin, or something… I’m glad I played on easy though, it would have been too frustrating otherwise and I did want to keep going. Can’t really recommend it though, it didn’t win me over.
Ah, my most anticipated game of the last six months. I think that was a problem, actually, as it turned out I’d hyped the thing beyond all reality. The game is fantastic, but little details disappointed me, which I think reflects poorly on my own attitude.
Being a hardcore member of the DKVine forums, home to the Internet’s biggest Donkey Kong Universe fans, we of course had been overanalysing every scrap we could find since the announcement at last E3. I eventually disengaged from watching every gameplay preview, because going so far in really would spoil it for me.
Reception has been overwhelmingly positive (I agree with it), and I’ve seen more than a few comments indicating that this game was toppling previously-held beliefs on which is the best, or second-best, DKC game. For me personally, among others, my list is now DKC2>DKCTF>DKC3>DKCR>DKC1.
Let me get the niggles out of the way first. The lag on the loading screens disproportionately annoyed me. The swimming controls are not as smooth as Rayman Legends (which they are based on). Bonus rooms are boring. The final boss was a little underwhelming and a little too reminiscent of a certain reptilian monarch, who once again is conspicuous by his absence. Aquatic Ambiance is remixed far too much. The setup and payoff generally aren’t as impactful as they should have been, although progression feels very good. Still too many rocket barrels. And finally, dramatic underuse of Animal Buddies (partially offset by multiple partner Kongs).
So Retro seemingly took on many of the complaints from DKCR, and attempted to address them. They whiffed a few points, but gave us more charismatic antagonists, ways to change up the gameplay with the partners and swimming, and really just ramped up the execution on graphics, presentation, environments, and music.
Let’s give music its own paragraph because it’s a big thing. David Wise is back in glorious form, with excellent tunes. Not always totally appropriate, but nicely varied. Also not enough DKC2 remixes, but the remixes and references to DKC3 GBA were very cool to my relatively recently educated ears. The guy is just great, and the unqueness of the styles he brings makes for a soundtrack like no other game. Getting jazz flute and heavy metal just a few levels apart is totally cool.
Apart from the new features I mentioned and the coup of securing Wise’s involvement, this is really heavily built off the foundation of Returns. All the mechanics are the same, with Miyamoto’s boneheaded blowing mechanic replaced with the more intuitive pulling, piggybacking on another button which also is used for the more extensively implemented throwing of objects, and of course swimming added. The physics, the collectibles, the feel are all the same and that’s fine, really. It’s just been toned up and polished. Maybe they should have shaken it up a little more, plus I wasn’t used to the heaviness and finality to your actions of this engine, as opposed to Rayman and Mairo Galaxy which I thought of as I was starting as they allowed you some recovery wiggle room. I got into the groove though.
Nintendo’s hyping up the difficulty of this game but I don’t see it. In Returns I used many more lives in co-op though, and this has been solo only for me, so similarly I quickly reached 99 lives and stayed there. I used more coins on the new items this time, though, which is good, but they’re not very good. Especially the one-use only items which are gone after use, but then you have to carry on as long as you have lives. Makes them feel less useful. The long loading times also discourage exiting and entering levels often.
Basically the game is just a much better version of Returns, with more imagination and ambition. It’s not perfectly tuned though. For example, it seems to me that Dixie is the most powerful partner and I used her heaps more than the others, but maybe that’s a choice thing—how much of a crutch do you want? Oh and of course the motion controls are no longer compulsory, as the button layout from Returns 3D is now an option on Gamepad or Pro Controller. I found it much better that way.
I feel a little conflicted about this game, because in certain ways Rayman Legends stole its thunder, being an excellently produced 2D platformer that was very fun and had it all together. But despite borrowing a couple of mechanics, they do go in different directions, and it very much has its own identity. Definitely an essential Wii U game, one of if not the best so far. And I’ve already expressed how wonderful it is compared to other DKC games (I really do love DKC3). If you like platformers and have a Wii U, you need this game.
Oh, one more thing. I wish the collectible counters would increment after they appear on screen, not before. See what I mean about my attitude?
As part of readying myself for Dream Team, I had to finish the first three games, and this was the last one I needed. It may just be the latest-played-game effect that I’ve experienced before, but I felt like this was the best of the three. This contradicts opinions I’ve read that place it below the other two. Just taste, I guess. Since the gameplay is very similar to the other two, I’ll mostly just try to compare them.
The first thing that grabbed me coming straight off Superstar Saga is the increased graphical and sound fidelity on the DS system. The effects look better, the resolution is higher, it sounds better. The second screen is also used very helpfully, with maps of the area you’re in most of the time. It’s got that functionality from having the screen, whereas Bowser’s Inside Story only sometimes had a map, and sometimes Bowser or the Bros, depending on what was happening. It was inconsistent.
That principle follows through into other game aspects. BIS uses both screens, and the microphone, and touch controls. It’s cool to use the hardware but got gimmicky at times. PIT is more pure, like SS, but more advanced technically. I appreciate that. The “minigame” segments were also more organic, and less forced (and less often, I think).
The item systems are cool in this game. We still have eqipment badges rather than the activated badges of BIS that I didn’t use much. Special attacks are also activated by items rather than a character’s points stat, which is cool because you can stock up then feel better about using them more often, and you also get more different rewards on the map more often, which feels good.
The big feature of this game is the 2x2 gameplay, with the Bros. teaming up with their baby counterparts. I thought this was a very fun dynamic, and totally cute too! Instead of cycling through many abilities, they’re activated by different interaction between babies and adults, together or separate. Unlike the alternative of Bowser in the third, these characters are together and working together most of the time. The teaming-up mechanic weaves through both overworld and battles, and even to item management, not to mention the cutscenes. It’s a strong system, and getting more level-ups is always cool.
The presence of babies is due to the time-travelling plot. I liked being in the Mushroom Kingdom this time, and interacting with its residents under attack by a conquering alien race. Rather than the open world of the first or third games, this one is based around a hub in the present with portals leading to isolated locations in the past. It allows for a bit more variety to locales than in SS, and the stage-based structure has its pros and cons, but they do feel cut off. I did approve of having a Yoshi’s Island location, though.
The time travel was used a few times in cool ways, most often in interactions between younger and older versions of characters. Unfortunately there was no sense of consequences to locations, since you were stuck in the castle in the present, and the implications of an attack in the past to the present was not really explored.
The plot had a few little twists to it, which kept it interesting, as well as good use of recurring characters (I especially loved Stuffwell, Baby Bowser and Kamek, and the Toadsworths). However, the Shroobs made for less interesting antagonists. Despite their eeriness and apparent power, they didn’t really communicate with you so you didn’t have an equivalent to Fawful with his amusing writing. There was a stronger through-line than SS and even BIS, though, the plot being more focused.
So this game was a good sequel to SS, expanding on it and polishing its mechanics. The complexity of the 2x2 team was a good kind of complexity, and the babies were just great characters with a lot of potential and fun interactions with their older selves. It also is more focused than the other two I feel, especially the gameplay systems which got a bit out of hand in BIS. I was surprised that I seem to hold this one in the highest esteem of the three, judging from other reactions I’d read. But now it just leaves me to find out how Dream Team will stack up. Now that I’ve written this, I think I may be ready to play it now. Back to adventure!
I’ll keep this short. This is a great remake, but the game is fundamentally broken and unfun.
To elaborate, I was excited to get this game in the recent free promotion on 3DS, because I like free things. I was very appreciative of all its wacky features, like Game Boy Printer integration and the calendar, not to mention including (most of) the Lost Levels, the Boo race mode, the extra collectibles, the additional frames of animation, the added world map (even if it’s purely cosmetic). All good stuff, which makes it a great example of how to do a remake or rerelease right.
The two big drawbacks are using the same graphics, unlike the Mario Advance games and All-Stars, and the smaller screen size but same size sprites, which makes the whole thing much harder. Upcoming pits and enemies basically take you by surprise, putting the game at an even harder state than its wonky physics and slipshod controls already condemn it to. I don’t think SMB is a good game, because I grew up with World, not to mention Donkey Kong Country 2 and Yoshi’s Island.
But, I felt like I should play through it so as a Nintendo fan, I could say I did. Afterwards I also got the requisite point score to unlock the Lost Levels, through copious use of the VC restore point function, but I didn’t play that there because 1) It’s just annoyingly hard, and 2) It’s by far the inferior version, without even the NES version’s graphical update, still the smaller screen, and missing I think it’s 6 whole worlds?
Still, the fact that it’s there is cool, and it makes me long for more remakes of this type, with a ton of cool stuff added on. The Advance games are little better than the All-Stars versions or originals, and you still have the screen size tradeoff to contend with. There’s just a lot of character too in those menus, with Peach sitting around with her Toads and stuff happening, a fortune telling minigame with very limited purpose. It reminds me of the Game Boy Camera software with all its crazy little touches that tell you that they had fun making it. Anyway it’s a cool little oddity, but I’m glad I never have to play SMB again (unless I decide to give All-Stars a proper shot at some point).
I’m always thrilled to spot a Nintendo game for cheap at the shops. Metroid Prime Pinball was a real breath of fresh air, bringing back the Prime sensibilities in some small way to clear away the feeling I got from Other M. But that wasn’t why I bought it, just a nice side effect.
The game I probably played the most in my childhood was, oddly enough, Pokemon Pinball for the GBC. Pinball resonates with me even if I rarely ever had the chance with an actual table. It had been a while and I’m actually close to beating every Metroid game, since there aren’t too many. I’m glad I picked it up, even if it’s really short. So short in fact that hungry for more pinball content I emulated Mario Pinball Land, the previous pinball game Fuse had done for Nintendo, not willing to wait for the VC release.
The two games are surprisingly different. Mario is more like an adventury Mario game, while Metroid hews a bit closer to the aesthetic of a physical pinball table. In Mario, you go through single GBA screens in an interconnected area, accomplishing a simple task on each screen to get a star, while also collecting powerups and coins. It’s a very different take on a pinball game, with secret entrances to new screens, roaming enemies and boss fights, and a persistent story, of a kind. You can even continue progress in the adventure if you lose all your balls, the focus is less on the score attack. It’s like if Super Mario 64 was pinball-based.
Metroid, on the other hand, also has a story but plays out more like a pinball machine. There’s different boards but each one covers just the DS’s two screens. You are trying to re-enact the story of Metroid Prime mostly, completing a series of pinball table-like tasks to advance to a new area. It has bosses and enemies too, but a bit more modular. I love the liberties it takes though, doing things a real pinball table would never be able to do, like when Samus suddenly stands up and starts shooting bugs that are coming her way.
Metroid is really great, a well-tuned pinball experience with a goal and an adventure along the way. Mario is a bit less focused, with a sprawling world unlike a traditional pinball experience, with many secrets and actually a lot of accuracy required, not to mention trial and error and persistence. Yeah it’s hard but in a less fun way than Metroid. I preferred the DS offering, it seems a better crafted game, not to mention the subject matter. That’s not to say that Mario didn’t try interesting things with the pinball formula and gave a unique experience. It’s too bad Fuse has parted ways with Nintendo for now, maybe Jupiter (the developer of the three Pokemon pinball games) can take some time off Picross, and take another franchise to the table. Kirby’s had his shot… Donkey Kong Pinball, anyone?
Hrm. Well, I played it. I’m going to have to be a Negative Nancy again.
I like Super Mario World. I just want to get that out there, although I admit it’s probably mostly nostalgia. But it seems every Mario platformer I play leaves me stone cold. (Yoshi’s Island is not a Mario game. It’s a Yoshi game. A spin-off with distinct art style and mechanics. Ahem) The Galaxies were fun but didn’t have lasting appeal for me and in retrospect seemed flawed. Mario 64 is of course a glorified tech demo™. The 2D platformers are uniformly lacking in imagination, from the NES ones to the “New” ones. (I know everyone likes to suck up to Mario 24/7, so please read “solely in the opinion of a jaded gamer” after my every declaration. Thank you, Mario fans.)
I thought Sunshine would be the one to turn it around. Everything I’ve heard is that it’s the black sheep of the family, it’s divisive, it stands out too much. This seemed like a good idea to me. People have praised the world and atmosphere, qualities I value. I also like the extra interaction with the environment that FLUDD, the new core mechanic, affords.
Unfortunately I have to say that in terms of structure and design it’s way too similar to the ironclad blueprint that SM64 apparently laid down. I was expecting a world, but each level is segregated by magic portals. Why make the theme so homogenous when everything is so cut off? I expected a bit of plot focus, but there’s pretty much three cutscenes with atrocious voice acting (Bowser sounds like a Muppet). Peach was standing around talking to me for the first ten minutes: what a boon! But no, she got kidnapped again. Sigh.
I just couldn’t see past the obvious similarities, the mission structure. Sure, there’s lots of NPCs but they don’t really have anything to say and actually talking to them is stupidly awkward (too many functions mapped to the same buttons, and it’s very finicky for certain things like talking). I guess you could say I had expectations, but it fell short on all of them. However, at least it tried these things like plot and making a world, unlike other Mario games. The execution was just poor, and everything else is just the same as always.
So these elements that make it stand out to some degree were so flawed as to become drawbacks: the plot is dumb and the voices ear-bleeding. The world doesn’t have the variety that Galaxy or even 64 manages to achieve. It also has so many other missteps that I began to see why it was so widely disliked. The camera’s bad, many mechanics are poorly introduced and barely used, like Yoshi and fruits, and the different FLUDD nozzles. Swimming sucks. The enemies are both ugly and not effectively used. They removed the long jump, while making the slide slow you down more often than speed you up (due to collisions), and the camera focus button makes you ground pound in the air, which I inadvertently activated too often. The levels are too small and repetitive with many missions in the same area, doing similar things.
One of the few good points that stuck with me while playing was the dynamic that having FLUDD around enabled. Traversal was fun, using the hover nozzle to get some hang time or maneuever. Sideflipping then hovering was extensively used in my playthrough and felt good. It’s too bad the other nozzles were so bad and replaced the good one. And then many of the secret stages take away FLUDD altogether, negating the advantage this game has and replacing it with basic wonky platforming in very unforgiving stages. They also negated the ambition of world-building. You can’t have it both ways.
It seems the game has a lot of ideas jammed into it, but very few of them are followed through on and they just aren’t done well. Some do work, like having Bowser Jr. recur as Shadow Mario or having you clean up an area (I found pleasure in that, although I found aiming the normal nozzle awkward).
I dunno, my expectations were too high here and although Sunshine tried a few nice things, like a greater character focus and a consistent setting, those baby steps didn’t make it to the level that other 3D platformers already had such as Banjo-Kazooie, while the flaws make it not reach the gameplay level of other 3D Mario games. So it’s stuck between the two extremes, not quite as good as either. And subjectively, I simply didn’t have fun with it overall, and that’s the most damning thing. I’m proud to be a Mario hater (trololol) and this didn’t turn me around, but if you like Mario I don’t know if you would like this (assuming you haven’t played it and made up your mind already). It’s probably worth a go, especially for the bargain basement price I found it at.
Halfway through this review I found that my favourite Australian Nintendo site, Vooks.net, had done a podcast critique of Sunshine. I’m only halfway through it, but I agree with what they say so far. Check it out too, why not?
I was excited to see this pop up on the App Store. I have good memories of these games on our PC and friends’ Playstations, but it took me a while to figure out my strongest memories are of the second game. The first is really quite similar though, especially with some of the little tweaks they made in this rerelease.
Of course, it’s a game about destruction and murder, but the reason I love it is the traversal of the game’s environments via the medium of car. I also like being able to respawn yourself and repair damage at any time. Other highlights are the powerups, smooth controls, and unlockables. It’s really a great formula, but sometimes people can’t see past the inherent violence of a premise to enjoy the gameplay mechanics. Maybe I’m just desensitised.
I’m still playing it actually, I find it compelling enough to achieve all three objectives (racing through checkpoints, destroying other racers, and killing all pedestrian bystanders) in every race. It’s just easy to do, relaxing.
Sometimes it’s too slippery and I can see why they removed cops from later games. Still, it’s a classic in my eyes and deserving of a rerelease like this. I don’t know if I’ll go for the full-blown Kickstarted PC sequel though. I’ve kinda gotten my fix for now.
Recently I was gifted a copy of Dream Team (Bros), the 4th Mario & Luigi game. Having already played the third, Bowser’s Inside Story, I decided I should go back and catch up on the others before playing the latest, which apparently references the previous installments. I think I made the right choice in playing the older ones before the newest one, because I’ve done both 1 and 2 now and they seem to be improving with each one (in my opinion, common consensus seems to be first is best).
But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. The series has carved out a niche very distinctly from Paper Mario, which has quite gone off the rails in its last couple of entries. And unlike the latter, it seems to retain a core through each one, not changing too much at once. This may seem a classic Nintendo recipe for stagnation, but I say there'senough each time to keep it relatively fresh, and refinement of a formula can be rewarding—evolution as opposed to Paper Mario’s contentious revolution.
Er, more getting ahead. I can’t help but make these broader comparisons though, going from the third back. And I can’t help but feel hard done by on the still clunky design aspects of the first installment. For example, there are a ton of different modes and configurations for actions in the overworld. You get jumps, combo jumps, front and back hammer options, hand powers, and they all change depending on which Bro is in the lead. The difficulty curve is also a little wonky in places. We also have a lot of mandatory minigames that aren’t much fun, but at least break up the grind a bit.
These gripes are pretty minor though. As I said, the core is there and it is strong. The mix of isometric 3D puzzle platforming and RPG gameplay is a winning formula. Making it feel like Mario with these unfamiliar elements is an accomplishment. In fact these RPGs are my favourite Mario games, filling out this colourful world with imaginative settings and fun writing and characters. That skillful execution of these aspects is a big part of their appeal, and fortunately pretty much all the RPGs have it, despite some design shortcomings at times.
The Beanbean kingdom is an odd choice for location, taking us out of the Mushroom Kingdom. Ultimately it’s a great idea, fleshing out this world and playing with bean-related variants on familiar drones and such, as well as bringing in an interesting political dynamic at times. The antagonists and secondary characters are memorable, with recurring rogue agent Popple amusing and Fawful especially stealing any scene he shows up in, leading to his prominence in the third game. Cackletta is not as great as Fawful unfortunately but she gets the job done. Prince Peasley is fun too.
What really sells the game though is the Bros. dynamic, with Mario and Luigi playing off each other both in battles and the adorable cutscenes (not as adorable as the second game’s babies, though). Pulling off special moves is satisfying, but hard to do (so I didn’t use them often at all, except boss fights…). Their animation is wonderful, very fluid and expressive with plenty of cartooniness.
Anyways with this game apparently coming soon to Wii U Virtual COnsole of all things, it’s worth checking out for sure. But I do feel that the sequels build on the formula, as well as streamlining certain things to improve the experience. Now that I think of it though, this one probably edges out the others in its cast of characters and its immersive interconnected world (the second’s world is quite segregated and the third’s is too complicated). So I’d dispute the general feel that the first is best, but it does have its strengths and is in itself a great game. So if you just write it off, I will have fury! (it’s something Fawful says guys)
Being a fan of the DKU (as described by dkvine.com), and Rare games in general, I was interested in the Viva Pinata games. It’s the last successful new IP they’ve made since Banjo, really, and has done well for them. It’s also one of the last things they did before being totally creatively lobotomised by Microsoft. This is the only VP game on a non-Microsoft platform and hence the only one I have access to.
Hi there. I really like the wackiness of the Warioware series. It’s got a really distinct sense of fun, and the way they’re presented make them feel like a labour of love. I only ever owned DIY, and I knew I was missing out a little because that was so heavily built around the creative aspect. Other games such as Touched and Smooth Moves are allowed to be more expressive: they’re not limited by graphics you would be able to draw in the game itself, or such simplistic control schemes, and microgames are allowed more variation. They also have more modes and so on.
I finally got around to playing this. I got it back in the Famicom anniversary sale. Having played almost every Metroid game before this one (only Metroid 2 left now), I was kind of looking forward to it as the commonly-held “best” in the series.
