Analog Control

The other day I was thinking once again about how much I dislike the N64 controller. A month ago I hated it so much that I wanted to discontinue my collection of N64 games. At first, my negative feelings towards the controller were due to the design itself. Three handles, two short ones on symmetrical sides with a longer one in the middle. The spaceship feel to the controller should have been awesome, but what ended up happening was a laboratory experiment with no room for your hands. Shigeru Miyamoto himself later admitted the reason the controller was so awkward was because of his own uncertainty. He wasn't 100% confident the 3D axis in gaming would be well received.

LoL.

Do you guys know how awesome the 8-Directional pad on the N64 controller is? When you hold it via the two short handles on the side, it's better than the PS1 analog controller. Speaking of Sony's controller, which came out in 1998 (three years after the PS1's release, and four years after the N64's), that one's awesome. The analog sticks are soft and rubbery, as opposed to the N64's molded plastic one, which makes it really easy to grip with your thumbs. Not only does it have good grip, but the rotation of the stick itself actually lasts. Good N64 controllers can be tricky to find because of how easy it is to wear down the thumbstick.

Cave Story Review

WOW. Just wow. If you own a Wii and have not played Cave Story, save up a few bucks and buy it. Take the engine from Super Metroid and add some seriously improved gameplay mechanics, and you have Cave Story.  Cave Story is one of the funnest games Wiiware has to offer, and here's why.

First off, Cave Story is fun to play. The controls are responsive and simple, which also means you can play this with whatever controller you want. Cave Story is compatible with the Gamecube Controller, Wiimote, and Classic Controller, which allows for a wide variety of options. I personally prefer the Wiimote which works great and feels very traditional. I appreciate that Nicalis didn't add unnecessary waggle to an awesome game.

Speaking of Nicalis, I appreciate that they added so many twists on the game that you don't even realize it's essentially Super Metroid 2. The first twist is the art style. For some reason it reminds me a lot of Chrono Trigger, which is always a good thing. The characters themselves look very cool, but at the same time a bit...awkward. Awkward may normally be a bad thing, but in the case of Cave Story, it really gives it a good flavor. The main character, Quote, has an over sized head and a skinny body. Odd things like this can turn me off to a game, but in Cave Story's case, you stop noticing how weird Quote looks once you get his gun, the Polar Star, at the beginning of the game. It just kinda fits together and works. Amazing.

My absolute favorite thing about this game has two parts. It has an intense story that's actually deep. This adds a nice contrast to it's cartoony nature in the same way Earthbound did. And that's a good comparison. Earthbound. But instead of an RPG, you're a sidescrolling hero with a ton of explosives. The best part about the deep, and often dark story, is that Cave Story never takes itself too seriously. It makes fun of itself from time to time, but not too much, just enough to keep the player from getting depressed at a serious part. And you're bound to get depressed while playing this game.

Cave Story is like Metroid, but with humor, better platforming, a clever style, and a pretty good price at 1200 Wii points, or $12 USD. This means you'll have to get 2000 wii points, which means you'll have 800 left over to buy FF6. Excellent! If only I could play Cave Story and FF6 with an NES Advantage...

In conclusion, all I really have to say is this:

NES Advantage Review

Nintendo's 1987 NES Advantage

Over the years, third party video game companies such as HORI, MadCatz, and NYKO have produced a wide variety of fighter sticks for home consoles. First party companies like Nintendo and SEGA have also produced these peripherals. Although the hardware and software quality in the gaming industry has improved for the most part, none of the above companies have come close to recreating a fighting stick as excellent as Nintendo’s 1987 NES Advantage. 
 
A fighting stick, or arcade stick, is a unique controller, with a unique purpose. They’re segmented re-creations of a traditional arcade box found in an arcade. Classics like Nintendo’s Donkey Kong were ported to home consoles to give the player a nostalgic, arcade gaming experience. With titles like Donkey Kong in the home, it made sense that companies would design arcade sticks for their home console to complete the experience.

Traditional arcade sticks have two main characteristics. The first is the stick itself, which is usually on the left. These “joysticks” are made to look just like the ones you’d see in the arcade. On the right, you have anywhere from two to eight buttons. The buttons are typically the size of a quarter, and are made to withstand a significant amount of abuse. Because of this, arcade sticks usually get poor reviews unless they’re built to withstand constant “button mashing.”
Durability is important in the gaming industry. Since fighting sticks such as the Advantage are bigger and more complex than normal controllers, they’re more expensive. Because of the extra price in making them arcade-sized, companies are often pressured to reduce the overall quality and durability of the stick, eliminating one of the main reasons in buying them.

The NES Advantage has both an arcade feel to it and durability. I’m not an arcade stick connoisseur, but I’ve used enough of them to say that the NES Advantage is better than the newer sticks being made today. For one, it does what it’s supposed to. It plays games well, and often better than a normal NES controller. Part of the interior and the bottom plate is made out of metal, giving it a nice weight, which is complimented by rubber feet that grip perfectly to any flat surface. Arcade sticks today make up for the lack of grip by sheer size, making them a hassle to store or transport. The NES Advantage, however, is just under 7¾” x 6¼”, making it half the size of average arcade sticks today. 
 
Small dimensions are great because storage is a major factor to me, but what about the buttons? The NES Advantage has two main buttons to replace the original controller’s A and B buttons. They are bright red which makes for beautiful contrast with the rest of the light gray arcade stick. The A and B buttons are both large, which makes it impossible to mistake them for the smaller, oval Start and Select buttons. They are both sturdy, which is nice, but that brings me to one of the best parts of this controller: the Turbo buttons. The NES Advantage has two Turbo buttons, one for A and B respectively. Above the turbo buttons is a dark gray knob, once again placed far enough away from the red A and B buttons so as to not get in the way. Each knob raises or lowers the effect that the turbo button has (if the turbo button is turned on). For example, if I turned the gray knob all the way up for the A button, all I have to do is hold down A and it will automatically press A up to twenty times per second. 
 
Since the Advantage is meant to be played with arcade style games, I don’t even have to button mash to have fun. Because button mashing isn’t required to effectively use the Advantage, Nintendo could have ripped us off by putting crappy buttons instead of the more durable ones it has. 
 
Nintendo poured a lot of quality into the NES Advantage. They haven’t really put anyone to shame, since the Advantage was released in 1987 and was one of the few arcade sticks around anyways. But what I find jaw dropping is how many competent third party video game companies have failed to meet the standards that Nintendo set for home arcade sticks almost twenty five years ago.

New Kirby Game To Be Released This Year?

Apparently HAL Laboratory is resurrecting a Kirby game that was originally supposed to be released for Gamecube. For those of you who aren't familiar with HAL Lab, they're basically the overshadowed slave for Nintendo. HAL has produced classics such as the Earthbound (right) series, Super Smash Bros. series, Pokemon Snap for N64 and most importantly, the Kirby series.

Kirby's legacy reminds me a lot of Samus'. Despite being so popular on the NES and SNES, Kirby's release on the N64 and Gamecube were...pathetic to say the least. Kirby's Air Ride? Please. I'd be pumped for that game if it had been followed by a proper platformer, which it was on the Wii...kind of. Kirby's Epic Yarn was totally awesome, but it was really just Kirby's "Paper Mario". It had style etc., but it just wasn't a Kirby game. It was really just Kirby being ported into a really tight Indie game, which really isn't a bad thing, it's just disappointing.

But enuff of my QQing. Let me know what you think.

leetz r us Dreamland: Return of Cartridge Gaming

Yeah I've heard it. Your average PS1 disc held 512MB while the N64's cartridge held a mere 64MB at most. Why would anyone return to cartridge gaming, especially on consoles?

I love CD's as much as the next guy, but what about the N64? After the re-release of Resident Evil 2 on the N64, Nintendo proved their system could pull off the same firepower as the PS1(top). Perfect Dark (bottom) is another example.

Let's look at a couple facts:

1. CD use over cartridges is based strictly on memory, but a game developer rarely uses all the space on a disc
2. CD's load times are slower because of required scanning by the console; cartridges load and save data extremely fast
3. Because Nintendo rarely gives priority to elements such as graphics, they really don't require as much space as other companies

I think Nintendo coming out with a cartridge based console would be freaking sweet. There's a lot of nostalgia packed inside those little carts that I'll never feel towards my game disc cases. Maybe Sega will surprise us all...

Region Coding: Yea or Nay?

This afternoon I had my first encounter with the infamous Region Coding. I've heard plenty of talk about how much of a shame region coding is, but I've never had the chance (or rather the need) to deal with it myself before today.

What is Region Coding?

Region Coding is basically what kept Americans from playing Harvest Moon: Magical Melody on their American Gamecube until Natsume released the game in America. To be more concise, and for the sake of just making sense, region coding means you can't play a Japanese game on your American bought console and vice versa. If I buy a PS2 in America, and I decide I want to play Thunder Force 6 (which didn't have an American release), that means I have to first buy a Japanese model PS2.

What does this have to do with anything?

Good question! It just so happens that I picked up a copy of Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu for the Super Famicom at a local game store. Back in 1992, Nintendo had their own version of Region Coding. As it turns out, Super Famicom games work like a charm on any normal American SNES. There's a small catch though. Nintendo molded the casing for the SNES and SFC differently. A normal SNES cartridge fits fine because of two little notches in the case, while the SFC cartridges have no such nicks.

Who cares?

Basically you can play any Japanese SFC game cartridge in a SNES, you just have to tear out the two little plastic pieces inside the cartridge bay. It's pretty easy to do, and there's a lot of videos on Youtube to help you out if you have any other questions.



P.S. The game sucks. Don't buy it.

Opening Paragraph

To the American teenager, writing is more often than not blown off as school work. You write in school, you take English classes, you live the dream. That is, to say, unless you're my sister, who's idea of a fun elective in the university is olde Norse, olde English, or dead-as-a-doornail Latin.

What people like myself (until now) don't realize is that writing is much more than something you either like or you don't like. Writing isn't a school subject, it's a language. Whenever I write for a class, the topic is not something I scrape out of my brain. It's some point of interest for me personally that I never knew existed. Or if it did exist, it was always something I never talked to anyone about. Writing became a person to who I could thoroughly rely on to listen to me no matter what. I can talk and talk and talk to Writing and it never gets bored of what I have to say. Partly because it's a captive audience, and partly because it's not an actual person. Either way, Writing is my friend, and Writing is my captive audience for this blog.

In this blog I will be talking about video games. Straight up. I will blab and blab to Writing about how fun, artsy, clever, and all around how awesome video games are. You, as my potential reader, may listen too. But you don't have to. Writing has to, you don't. Needless to say, I'd be delighted if you took a moment to hear what I have to spam about the oldest to latest video game software and hardware.