Honorable Mention: Burnout 3

Posted on 27th February 2011 in Something Daily

I have always had a special place in my collection for racing games. Typically, while I devote a lot of time and effort to completing story-based games (Mario, Zelda, Metroid, et cetera), racing games are usually the games I play when I don’t care to think about plot or be forced to attempt the same objective again and again. These days, it’s Super Mario Kart, in my childhood it was Mario Kart 64 and Diddy Kong Racing, and last summer, when I briefly owned a Playstation 2, it was Burnout 3. One of these things is not like the others.

I really liked Extreme G 2. I also really liked the above mentioned DKR and MK games, and F-Zero. I like these probably because they’re complete fantasy – arcade style controls and/or speeds that no real car could ever achieve. I’m not into playing driving games that attempt to make you feel like you’re actually driving a car. Gran Turismo and Need for Speed have never really been my thing, mainly because I don’t think it’s at all fun to not be able to drift around corners or shove other drivers off the track just because a real car can’t do it. That’s where Burnout 3 comes in: to me it’s quite a good blend of realism and arcade ridiculosity. The cars have real names and look like things that you’d actually drive, but they handle impossibly well (for the most part) and do, in fact shove other cars all over the place. They’ve got you racing through back alleys and on highways and in the middle of street markets. It’s all very fantastic and kind of silly.

The fact that the camera automatically goes into slow motion every time you take another car down by ramming the crap out of it is just one more reason. It’s all really indicative of how arcade-y the game really is. And if I remember correctly, they’ve got a ridiculous radio DJ on announcing the whole thing. It’s a lot of fun. I played through the whole thing last summer when I was bored out of my mind lifeguarding by day and gaming by night. I did notice, though, when I started to play it more and more, that I’d be driving in real life in a real car and have the impulse to do Burnout drifts and knock slow drivers around a little bit – this game is dangerous. The same thing happens to me with Mario Kart, though, so maybe I’m just hypersensitive to it. But anyway. One more honorable mention and then the list can truly begin.

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The Difference Between the Early 90s and the 2000s

Posted on 5th January 2011 in Something Daily

I played a bunch of really old games for the first time today. A friend of mine got a Nintendo Entertainment System and some games for Christmas, so I got my first taste of the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the first Battletoads, and Double Dragon (the contacts of which were covered in white paint when he got the cartridge, allowing me to save the day with the isopropyl alcohol I use to clean tape heads. Surprisingly, it worked with little hassle). Those games are pretty sweet, and playing them makes me realize the difference between how we play games now and how people used to. The typical NES (and even SNES) game had to be designed to be playable in one sitting, due to the lack of persistent memory capability of those early consoles. This resulted in a different brand of replay value than today’s gamer is familiar with: in the early nineties, you had to play the same part of a game over and over until you finally mastered that section, eventually repeating that process over the whole game, which was typically no longer than a few hours. Today, replay value comes in the form of long campaigns and unlockables that require dozens of hours to acquire. In my experience, this typically means a steeper learning curve in the gameplay of older games. I’m not trying to say that one of these is better than the other by any means, only that this difference certainly exists, and as a person used to playing mostly newer games, the chance to try one over and over to finally master it is welcome. I’ve only really done this with Mega Man X before, but I’ll try with Starfox as well.

Those three SNES games that I picked up around Christmas had been sitting on my bedside waiting to be played, as my Super Nintendo is still in New York. I did get a chance to try them all out today, though. Starfox is really, really hard, F-Zero is awesome, and so is Chrono Trigger. Although I couldn’t figure out how to save in Chrono Trigger before my friend ‘accidentally’ jostled the console and froze my game. I guess I’m just going to end up being really good at the first hour of that game…and that’s ok with me.

In other news, I can’t wait to be back in New York. There are a lot of people there I would like to see, my SNES is there, and I’ll get to go learn rad stuff about computers and music. I won’t take the break for granted, but it has been going on for a while now.

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Super Dinosled Attack

Posted on 26th December 2010 in Something Daily

I’ve been eating way, way too many Christmas cookies. When I said I was looking forward to them, I think I was downplaying my excitement a bit. I feel exceedingly gross right now, due both to the absurd amount of butter I’ve been eating and the fact that I’m apparently now allergic to my own house. It’s happened the last few times I’ve visited home that I get sick within one night of arriving – it might be that I’m allergic to my pillow or something, I don’t know. Anyway, I made my way through this frigid Ontario day with a cold and some layered jackets.

Since deciding not to bring my brand-new multitool on this trip to Canada with me, I’ve been noticing tons of situations in which a multitool would come in handy. Bad decision – they don’t care at customs! What was I thinking?!

I don’t watch sports a whole lot, but when I do, it’s usually football. You could say that I’m an Eagles fan, but today, being in the company of my Buffalonian relatives, we were rooting for the Bills against the Patriots. Let’s just say that it didn’t go well. The worst part was that the people I was watching with seemed to know the Bills were going to lose before the game even started. I mean I know they suck, but it seems like there’s something wrong when you have absolutely no hope for your own team.

So if you couldn’t guess, I’m mentally very much on break. Since getting back home, I’ve accomplished nothing; the weird part is that I’m ok with that right now. By the time New Year’s comes around, though, I’ll probably be itchy to start something new. I’m tossing around some ideas for another useful programming exercise – we’ll see how that goes. I did make a good find at a Play ‘n’ Trade next to our dinner restaurant tonight: Star Fox and F-Zero for SNES for eight dollars each. Of course I couldn’t pass up that kind of deal; I feel like those prices are really good. I’ve never seen Star Fox for sale, but F-Zero is typically at least $30 at places I’ve looked. I decided after this find that collecting old games is definitely fun. And yes, it has taken me this long to figure that out.

So we’re driving back tomorrow (another 6 hours, sweet!) and then my break can officially begin. It’s busy now, but life will slow down soon. Remember what’s rad, like Super Nintendo and dinosaurs and sledding. Maybe also a Super Nintendo game where you’re a sledding dinosaur.

I think I just came up with my next cartoon.

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