Summer Backlog Gaming
If you’re a college boy like me–though I hope to God you haven’t been a college boy as long as I have–then you know summer is the time when you go out and get a dehumanizing job and forget all of the information you paid thousands of dollars to learn during the previous months. Since the world has made it clear by this point that it doesn’t want me to have a job (mostly through silence), I’ve decided to spend the entirety of the next three months inside my apartment with the money and games I’ve been hoarding throughout the year, only emerging at night to feed on the living. That last thing is mainly for when I get bored.
So allow me to give you a tour of what’s on my agenda for the Summer of 2009. Be aware that you will be asked to share your own backlogs, and that there will also be a brief intermission with free orange drink, time permitting.
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Tags: backlog, bob mackey, ds, pc, ps2, retro, summer
The 61FPS Review: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Echoes of Time
Echoes of Time, Square-Enix’s latest entry into their Crystal Chronicles franchise, continues the unique multiplayer route pioneered by the 2004 GameCube game; but this time around, the focus is on a wireless cross-platform experience between the Wii and the DS instead of multiple Game Boy Advances tethered to a console by link cables. 61FPS bloggers Amber Ahlborn and Bob Mackey took a stab at playing this action RPG online together for the purposes of this review, and found that the Wii’s online capabilities (or lack thereof) hampered what would have been an otherwise great experience.
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Tags: amber ahlborn, bob mackey, crystal chronicles, ds, Final Fantasy, final fantasy crystal chronicles: echoes of time, the 61FPS review, wii
Is the Wii Stagnating Next to the DS?
When I was young, I received a curious dual-screen Game and Watch knockoff for Christmas. It was a vertical platforming game set on a pirate ship. Conditions for victory involved the finding and collecting of treasure: if the player slipped up and the pirate fell into the water, sharks would strip off the scurvy dog’s clothes. This particular death animation included a glimpse of the dead pirate’s cartoon testicles, bristling with stubble.
When Nintendo first revealed the DS, all I could think about was a naked pirate being eaten by sharks. I was not enthusiastic about the future of handheld gaming.
History proved me wrong. Once developers stopped feeling obligated to turn every game into Pointless Adventures in Stylus Scribbling (thanks for raising my blood pressure forever, Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow), we received our Elite Beat Agents and our Hotel Dusk and other gems that went above and beyond the call of Fun thanks to clever implementation of the Nintendo DS’ stylus.
When Nintendo announced the DSi, people scoffed at the built-in camera. It looks like the DSi’s little cyclops eye might already have a place in gameplay, though: A Different Game in Sweden has begun an “augmented” version of Ghostwire, an acclaimed cellphone game that lets players use their built-in cameras to find and talk to “ghosts.” By communicating with the dead and solving their riddles, you can bring them peace.
This could be the first of many original games to make use of the DSi’s hardware. It’s an exciting prospect, but it’s also made me wonder why the DS and DSi have successfully inspired developers, while innovation on the Wii remains stagnant.
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Tags: cellphones, ds, dsi, ghostwire, nadia oxford, nintendo, wii
PiCTOBiTS: The First Must-Have DSiWare
I have to admit, since I bought my new DSi, I’ve been a bit underwhelmed by Nintendo’s weekly downloadable software offerings for their new-ish portable system. Using the 1000 points they’d generously given me, I could only find a single game I wanted from the DSi Store: Bird and Beans, which was mildly distracting and well worth its two dollar price tag. Still, to justify me dropping an extra $40 on an upgraded DS, Nintendo would have to do a lot more than repurpose portions of six year-old Wario Ware games. Shovelware alone wasn’t going to cut it; I wanted to see something… interesting.
Thankfully, this week’s release of PiCTOBiTS fits that adjective to a T.
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Tags: bob mackey, ds, dsi, dsiware, nintendo, pictobits, portable gaming
Frenching With My DS
Like Nadia, I’ve recently been “playing” Ubisoft’s My French Coach–but unlike Nadia, my desire to learn French is not motivated by any need to better myself. In order to get my Master’s Degree (capitalized due to its stunning importance), I have to take a Departmental Language Exam; and because the American school system screwed me over by offering secondary language classes just as my brain shut off its word-absorbing features, I now find myself turning to outside help to achieve the million-dollar salary a Master’s Degree in Literature will eventually net me.
If you’re thinking of learning French through My French Coach alone, you may want to pay careful attention to that last word in the title. Notice how it’s not “Teacher?” This is very important.
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Tags: bob mackey, ds, education, language, my french coach
Wario Ware: Myself!: Mario Paint for Games?
When the Wario Ware series first appeared on the scene back in 2003, it was both a breath of fresh air and a zany, rapid fire examination of fundamental video game mechanics. Six long years ago, I never would have believed that a franchise cherished for its newness and iconoclasm could possibly grow so stale, but the most recent Wario Ware games, Touch and Smooth Moves, have been missing a certain something–or it could be that we’re just used to Wario’s wacky ways by now.
Whatever the case, Wario’s newest game, Wario Ware: Myself! might just be the innovation the series has so desperately needed since the supremely-underrated Wario Ware: Twisted!
The only problem? For now, it’s only out in Japan.
Continue reading »
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Tags: bob mackey, ds, mario paint, nintendo, wario, wario ware
Anticipation Time: Nostalgia for the DS
A little over a decade ago, Namco created the Playstation RPG Tales of Destiny as a sort of throwback to those old-school RPGs of yore–that’s how it was marketed, anyway. And not soon after that, other RPGs like Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete took this same, simple approach as an intentional contradiction to the 32-bit era, when RPGs were becoming increasingly grandiose and stupid, losing all of the storybook adventure charm they once had. It’s only gotten worse since then.
Truth be told, I’ve finally snapped out of my Japanese RPG love this generation after forcing myself to play through far too many lousy titles from the genre; and it’s only been fantastic fossils like the remakes of Final Fantasy IV and the Super Famicom Dragon Quests that have kept me from writing off the JRPG forever. So why in the hell did it take me so long to hear about the appropriately-named Nostalgia, an old-school DS JRPG made by Matrix and Red, two developers with a rather impressive (though low-key) pedigree? Hopefully the shame I feel is apparent without resorting to the use of emoticons.
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Tags: bob mackey, ds, ignition entertainment, jrpg, nostalgia, rpg, tales of destiny
John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself. 
Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Nerve, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.
Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.
Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines.
Based in Toronto, Nadia prizes the certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.
Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.
Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.
