Twenty years ago today Nintendo released the gamer from the tethers of cords and cables. No longer the exclusive province of the living room, den, or bedroom, the Game Boy freed the avid Nintendo player to enjoy his (or her) favorites in the backseat of the family car, at the bus stop, or on the perimeter of the playground—far removed from the athletic contests of the more vigorous.

Or something like that.

Though it seemed like nothing of the sort back in 1989, this humble little handheld device would be the lynchpin of Nintendo’s continued success and set the tack for the direction it would take in the future. Its tenure would not be without missteps and doldrums but the Game Boy could arguably be the most important game system Nintendo ever released.

I don’t intend to speak for everyone. Nor do I intend to provide a comprehensive history of the Game Boy and its contemporaries. I only intend to provide my own personal experiences with this handheld system.

Most of the gaming sites—big and small—have already covered the Game Boy’s twentieth back in April. That’s when the Game Boy made its first tentative step into the world in Japan. We Americans didn’t get ours until July of 1989. Though I have no concrete recollection, I assume that I must have received my own Game Boy that fall as a birthday gift. The timing makes sense. My parents were not inclined to purchase expensive electronics for me in the middle of the summer and 2 months, plus the lead time from being a loyal Nintendo Power subscriber would have given me plenty of time to wheedle and plead.

At the time the competition to the Game Boy was not seen as any home console, but those irritating little LCD devices. I never saw a real Game & Watch which apparently were actually kind of fun. The ones I was familiar with were typically licensed trash that mostly involved moving something from side to side as obstacles “moved” toward the bottom of the screen. They were shrill, repetitive, and not much fun. Yet those were just the things parents at the time thought of when they thought of handheld games—if they thought of them at all. Considerably pleading was required.

So one autumn day as I celebrated my tenth birthday I opened a present to find the neon blue wireframe box I so desperately wanted. Carefully removing its contents from the styrofoam—yes, they used styrofoam back then—tray I beheld the Game Boy in all its blocky grayness. It really never was much to look at.

I tell you what did impress me though: the headphones. I’d never seen earbuds before. They were so sleek, so cool. Every Walkman I’d ever owned before came with a pair of clunky padded earmuffs bound together with wire. These were tiny.

I thought this was the coolest thing ever.

Even more impressive still to me was the little plastic case the game carts came in at the time. Over the years, these neat little dust covers have fallen to the wayside. When I first opened my Game Boy, I thought it was hot shit. It still looks pretty nifty to me today.

My plan for this retrospective is to devote a number of posts to particular high points in my history with the Game Boy. I want to spend more words than I care to tack on to this remembrance on each individual game, so I’ll be splitting them into single game posts.

Next time: In Soviet Russia, blocks stack you.

Have you been playing Retro Game Challenge for the Nintendo DS? It’s a remarkable game compilation. The central conceit of the game is that you as the lead character of the game have been transported back in time to the 1980’s—specifically to 1984-1989—and have been given the opportunity to play some of the best games of that era.

All of these “retro” games are fakes though. I suppose they’re real enough in a way, seeing as you can play them and all that. They’re not old, they just look like they could be.

The attention to period detail is spot on. Of the eight games playable in Retro Game Challenge three are in the same series. Robot Ninja Haggle Man, purportedly released in 1985, is a simple platformer more in the vein of an Elevator Action or a Lode Runner than a Super Mario Bros. It looks like it might be an arcade port, which is presumably the idea.

Later on in the game a sequel is released that follows the same basic rules but adds a bit more polish, difficulty, and abilities. It feels so much like an authentic sequel from the era. The level intro screens from the second game have a Mega Man feel to them where the first game had a bare-bones screen that had little more than a level number. The additions are a bit more than the original Super Mario Bros. 2 but less than Mega Man 2.

I really like this game. It’s clearly made by a group of people that grew up with the Famicom and love it dearly. Even the localization is spectacular, with appropriate misspellings for the year the game was supposed to be released—one game contains the text “You shooted ## asteroids” at the end of a bonus stage.

This morning I threw together a cross stitch chart for Haggle Man from the first two Robot Ninja Haggle Man games. Download it and make your own star of one of the best games you never played as a kid:

robot_ninja_haggleman.pdf

Through some careful bargain hunting I recently snagged myself a copy of a game that really ought to be right up my alley: Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker for the Nintendo DS. Except, somehow, it just isn’t.

Seeing as I just spent a year’s worth of free time assiduously cross stitching each and every monster in the first game in the series, you might think a game that actually stars a wide range of these monsters would be perfect for me. I thought so too. But there’s just something off about this one.

The devil’s in the details, and I think that’s what is killing me about Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker. The art style is as close to that of Dragon Quest VIII as one can get on the Nintendo DS. All of the townspeople look just like those in the PS2 game. Most of the environments are quite similar too, and there’s where the first little niggling issue appears. The interior environments of Joker have many of the same elements from DQ VIII, yet you cannot interact with them.

In (nearly) every other game in the Dragon Quest series there are cabinets, wardrobes, bookshelves, and hanging sacks that can be examined for potential items. These same things are in Joker, but they’re only window dressing. I’ve only been playing for a few hours and yet I still cannot get it through my head that no matter how enticing that cabinet might look, there’s absolutely no way it will have anything or that my character will even be able to pretend to search it. I don’t know why this is so aggravating, yet it is.

The 3D nature of the game doesn’t lend itself so well to the Nintendo DS’s control scheme either. With only four cardinal directions and no sensitivity moving from place to place isn’t as easy as it ought to be. I certainly hope that Dragon Quest IX, which I assume to be developed by a different team, will do something to make 3D movement a bit less irritating. I’d have preferred the 2-and-a-half-dimension style of Dragon Quest IV for DS to this.

But, it does still have many of the monsters I’ve come to love and what promises to be a very aggravating yet intriguing monster synthesis option. Unless I get distracted—quite likely with Retro Game Challenge and Dragon Quest V both out, to say nothing of my as-yet-incomplete game of Dragon Quest IV—I might still putter around with it. I feel I owe it to the Slimes and Drakees.

The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening title screen

A short time back in my trolling the web for interesting cross stitch and other crafts I came across this spectacularly excellent cross stitched map of the overworld from The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening by the indomitable Cross-stitch Ninja. An impressive feat of crafting, it called to my attention just how excellent a game is Link’s Awakening. I’ve continued to think on it, from time to time, because to this day it strikes me as surprisingly wonderful.

Link’s Awakening seems to come from a foreign time and place to me. It was released in 1993 here in the United States for the Game Boy. At the time, we only had the original blocky, blurry, green-screened monstrosity as far as I can recall. I own one of the original systems on which I played a great deal of Tetris, Final Fantasy Adventure¹, and little else that I can recall. I abandoned the Game Boy as a gaming platform at some point before the release of Link’s Awakening until some years later when Pokémon fever gripped the nation.

Indeed, by 1993 I had all but given up on the console, handheld or otherwise, as a gaming system. I was still very much interested in games. Contests of chance and skill seem etched on my very DNA. An impressionable 11-year-old I begged my parents for a Sega Genesis 2 , half-heartedly collected a number of titles, none of which could be considered “classic” and roundly turned to other means of recreation. Pen-and-paper games became an obsession and a neighbor had access to a seemingly vast assortment of pirate PC games (Transported on tape drives, no less!) that satiated my desires for pixelated adventure.

As such, I almost never put my hands around a Super Nintendo controller and do not have the warm fuzzy memories many of my contemporaries have of Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy III/VI, Yoshi’s Island, or Super Metroid. Nor did I play Link’s Awakening until it was re-released on the Game Boy Color in a slightly upgraded state. Indeed, my first experience with the game came from my mother’s college friend who came to visit one summer and brought a newly acquired Game Boy along as company during a long drive.

This is what I mean when I say it seems to come from a foreign time and place. Not having kept up with home and portable consoles during most of the 1990’s I find any games from the time period to be strange new relics resurrected from a time of which I was barely aware. It’s exciting, as if I had discovered a parallel universe. Or, a parallel universe’s entertainments at any rate.

So, then, back to the topic at hand. Link’s Awakening, upon final discovery in the Game Boy Color version, is a far cry different from the Legend of Zelda to which I was most intimately familiar. Keep in mind I had never seen A Link to the Past at this point even though it had been released several years earlier. While some of the elements had been teased in Zelda 2, I had not played a game in the series with such robust non-combat interaction. Here was a village of characters with whom Link could, nay must, speak. Link’s Awakening introduced, fully, the fetch-quest structure that was featured in every game hence. It also showed me a Zelda game in some semblance of 3-dimensions with hills to bound over and enemies that couldn’t be hit from below.

Link aboard his boat which he will crash on Koholint Island.

It was also kooky. Both the townspeople and monsters of the game’s setting Koholint Island are quirky and humorous. Many puns are used throughout the adventure. Children in the village break the fourth wall by telling you how to play the game, but claim ignorance of the meaning because they’re “just a kid!” The object of the game, though it is not immediately obvious, is to awaken the Wind Fish, a flying whale who sleeps in a giant egg atop the highest peak on the island.

Despite being a handheld game Link’s Awakening takes major steps to refining the core game play that would define the series. The items and weapons found in the game’s dungeons are essential to progress, even more so than in the NES games. More than any other early handheld game Link’s Awakening demonstrates that portable does not necessarily mean substandard. Through it we could see the first glimpse that handheld gaming could be just as significant as home console games.

Okay, so maybe A Link to the Past might have been more significant, but I played this one first, and it stuck with me. With its whimsical setting, endearing characters, and solid gameplay it has stayed one of my all-time favorite games on any platform. Honestly, I think it just might be my favorite Legend of Zelda game.

¹ It was actually a Seiken Densetsu game, a series that would be released here some time later as Secret of Mana.

² “Sega does what Nintendon’t!”

I mistakenly turned off my DS tonight on my break, thus destroying a day’s worth of exploration. Etrian Odyssey can only be saved in town, necessitating a trip up, and I’d been merely closely the DS lid and letting the sleep mode keep my place. It isn’t a huge setback, but I’ve lost a full inventory’s loot, a couple of levels, and a whole lot of map.

Earlier tonight I wondered why I was writing this: a diary of a DS game from last year. Part of it is searching for a topic. Four years in, and I’m still struggling to find just what I want to talk about here. I’ve written about video games before, but I haven’t quite found my voice on the matter. It is likely I never will. The real reason I feel compelled to write about Etrian Odyssey is how personal I find it to be. I touched on this last time in regards to the map. Somehow, it just feels like my game.

Etrian Odyssey is very deliberately tailored to be personal. The characters in your party are blissfully mute. Any personality they have is based solely on the portrait and the player’s decisions. Somewhere in the director’s diaries on the official site there is a post that covers this issue¹. The director wants you to bring your own story to the game, filling in the unspoken camaraderie of the explorers.

What dialog that does exist in Etrian Odyssey is very Dungeons & Dragons. Flavor text that could come out of the mouth of a seasoned Dungeon Master is sprinkled sparsely around the labyrinth. Much like a well-planned tabletop campaign it gives you a sense of the world without telling you what you ought to be thinking about it.

So, my team is at about level 14 and had I not thrown out a day’s exploration I’d be at the 5th level of the dungeon. I get the sense that this is probably the last level of the first “Strata” (the dungeon seems to be divided into groups of levels eliminating the need to start afresh every time). I’ll need to be doing battle with a wolf named Fenrir before too long.

One thing I didn’t quite get about the game until some time into it is the importance of item gathering skills. Every character class in the game has a set of skills he or she can learn. Each class has at least one item gathering skill that can be used at certain point in the game. Depending on the number of points sunk into this skill that character can extract a certain amount of randomized material per day. These points come at the expense of boosted stats, special attacks, or magic. With each level I raised, I looked at these skills and thought I would do better with a boosted attack. Now I’m not so sure.

Item collection is important, because finding money is difficult. In a rather sensible break from RPG tradition monsters do not carry any money. Instead you sell the skin, teeth, horns, eyes, and other assorted parts carved off of their inert corpses. It’s a bit like a MMO. Likely, the MMO games borrowed this from the original RPGs. This loot is also the manner by which new items are added to the game’s one and only store. Using the monster parts and gathered resource you sell the shopkeeper can make new and more powerful weapons and armor.

What I’ve found the strangest so far is the Etrian Odyssey‘s insistence that your party is the last and least noteworthy of a teeming horde of adventurers to brave the dungeon. Everything about the game thus far has communicated a sense of loneliness. The dungeon hardly feels well-traveled. From the unfinished map to the filing of new monster encounters with the local constabulary, the dungeon of Etrian Odyssey feels like unexplored territory.

¹ I’d link directly to it, but Atlus is insistent on Flash sites for their games that aggravatingly eschew any sort of permanent link.

My copy of the DS game Etrian Odyssey arrived last Thursday — I finally broke down and ordered the damned thing on eBay. I’ve been playing it with some regularity since it showed up in my mailbox. Thus far I’m very, very happy indeed.

I’ve been wanting to write about it, but I’d rather not just dump yet another review onto the interwebs, particularly when I’m not even close to any kind of conclusion. Instead, I thought I might write a little about what it’s like to play it. I suppose it’s a bit like a diary.

First a little background: Etrian Odyssey is a DS RPG released by Atlus. The entire game is centered around a single massive dungeon. There’s only one town with a single shop for all of your standard RPG needs. Battles are turn based with the participants taking one action per turn roughly in order of their speed. It’s pretty much the very same system that has been in place as long as these sorts of games have been, well, video games.

And that’s just it: the most refreshing aspect of Etrian Odyssey is its dogged use of formula. It’s almost soothing, in a way. Now I can see why Dragon Quest has been such a consistent draw in Japan. It’s like video game comfort food. I know that when I pick “attack” my dude will attack as soon as he’s allowed. I can set down the DS at this point, leave it for as long as I want, and when I pick it up I won’t have missed anything. I didn’t need to play a little rhythm game to get more damage. I didn’t lose any actions because I wasn’t paying attention. I can sit back and contemplate strategy. Or not.

The other big thing about Etrian Odyssey is the map. You have to make it yourself. Because it’s a DS game there’s that second screen to do something with. Instead of using it to move or enter commands the touch screen always displays the map, which you draw with the stylus. Because everything is at 90° angles it’s not too difficult. It makes the labyrinth seem that much more sinister and rewarding. I really feel like I’ve found something when I peek around a corner and scribble it onto my map.

After naming my guild — Badger, after my rambunctious 3-legged cat who in turn was given this name due to the badger’s tenacity and burrowing prowess — I made one each of the game’s 7 character classes¹ and put together an expeditionary force of 5. My first team consisted of a Landsnknecht (what other games might just call a “warrior,” he’s a straightforward attacker), a Protector (or knight), a Dark Hunter (a debuffer), a Survivalist (woodsman type that uses bows), and a Medic (the necessary healer). I played this team for a little while before realizing that I was probably going to need some magic and swapped the Dark Hunter for an Alchemist (this one casts spells like the ubiquitous fire and ice). Then a bit later I swapped out the Survivalist for the Dark Hunter again. I thought those debuffs might come in handy. Her poison strike certainly does when it hits. I’m still not quite satisfied. Once I get those last 2 classes I’ll probably do some more rearranging.

¹ There are actually 9, but I’ve yet to unlock the others.

I was hunting for Etrian Odyssey after learning just how good it was. The thing is, I just know that I’d seen it before and recently. A while back Circuit City had a clearance sale that held the potential to provide me cheap copies of God Hand, Final Fantasy IV Advance, Final Fantasy V Advance, Elite Beat Agents, or Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time. I was much too slow to find any of these games or, for that matter, any cheap games at all. I went to a bunch of stores though, as well as a bunch of other stores that just might hit my cheap games itch. Somewhere amongst all those stops I saw a copy of Etrian Odyssey but didn’t buy it because 1.) I didn’t know how hard it would be to find again, 2.) I didn’t know that I wanted it, and 3.) it wasn’t deeply discounted.

I was hunting for Etrian Odyssey, but what I settled for was Luminous Arc. I might have picked up Odin Sphere instead, but I was hell bent on getting a DS cart to play on the train so Luminous Arc it was. I thought, “It’s an Atlus strategy game, it must be pretty good. After all, they released Disgaea and a whole lot else.” Of course, I would come to find out that it’s actually developed by Marvelous Interactive, most famous for acquiring the Harvest Moon series, and not Nippon Ichi, who gave us Disgaea, LaPucelle: Tactics, and Phantom Brave. I was buying a game on the fly, based purely on the box and the pedigree of the publisher. It was like I was 12 years old and spending my allowance on NES carts all over again.

So, I picked it up and on my way to work that day popped it in on the Red Line. The opening cinema — a bombastic bit of anime J-pop crap — was worrisome. I chalked this up to a desire to cater to the opinionated forum lackey who wails and bemoans any significant localization effort for not being pure to the original in every respect. Besides, I could skip it by pushing any button (and believe me, I did).

Unfortunately, so much of the rest of the game falls right in line with that saccharine little intro. I swear, they must be able to buy these characters in bulk over in Japan. I’m picturing a catalog, distributed at trade conventions and by greasy-haired regional salespeople, much like a stock footage/photo catalog¹ wherein characters can be ordered by the pound. You need an earnest young hero with a secret past? Well, if you order him with an squeaky-voice, admiring younger brother you can save big yen! How about a love interest? We’ve got great rates on strong-willed mystics whose tough exterior belies a heart of gold! In fact, why not buy the box set which includes a confident ladies man, a soft-spoken young girl whose faith is tested, and an experienced mentor (whose an elder at the age of 18-22)? They go great with the kooky magic user pack. That one comes with a rambunctious child, an aloof and laconic warrior, a queen full of doubts, and a couple of wacky animal characters. Save big when you buy them all together!

And then there’s fucking Nikolai. Though not without precedent by any means — he’s the horndog weirdo nerd who loudly and inappropriately announces his boner to everyone within earshot, a staple of Japanese cartoons and other popular media — he attains particular attention by being the character most likely to make you wish the cut scenes were skippable and that there weren’t voice acting. Just look at him. This is the stupid fucking face he makes in every fucking cut scene in which he has a line. He has a hard on for witches, and no amount of violence can damped his ardor which is only exacerbated by his voice acting. My best guess is the actor was given the direction of “mincing caricature of homosexual, circa 1960” though I suspect his patter is par for the course with many popular anime titles. I’m tempted to attack him direct my own characters to attack him, except that would make him talk even more.

The cast of characters is nauseatingly familiar. They’re cliché. There’s not a single aspect about them you haven’t seen a hundred times before. Any supposed character developments have been telegraphed miles before. Light years before. The same goes for the plot. At the outset of the game your plucky young heroes are tasked by their church with destroying witches. Spoiler alert: the church is the bad guy and the witches are the good guys. Except, that’s only a spoiler if you have just awaken from your cryo-stasis pod wherein you have been resting for the past 30 years or so to take a crack at these newfangled electronic games the kids are so into these days.

As for the rest of the game, well it’s just fine. The battle system is just what you’d expect, because it’s precisely the same battle system you’ve seen since Final Fantasy Tactics and probably before that. You’ve got your long range and short range attackers and your healers. You’ve got your terrain and elevation and sides. You’ve got your turn order to watch. You can move and do something, or do something and move, or just do something, or just move, or none of the above (and it affects your turn order). You buy new equipment and potions or whatever. It’s the same damn game you’ve already played (unless you haven’t, in which case that’s great for you because you might not realize what a carbon copy it is).

This is not to say that Luminous Arc is a bad game. It isn’t. It just isn’t remarkable in nearly any capacity. All of the parts are solid, having been liberally swiped from established games. If you can get past the crushing sameness and god awful characters there’s plenty of game here to enjoy. Hell, I’m still playing it: the parts it does right it does really right, and most missions are just the right length for my daily commute (once I get past the interminable plot development). It’s exactly what I expected, and nothing more.

¹ I don’t know if you’ve ever seen these things, but once you have it’s like your eyes have been opened to a great secret of the universe. These stock photos and video are positively everywhere. All of a sudden you realize where every single “customer service” photo came from. That asian girl, smiling and turning slightly to camera with her headset on? You know where they bought her image. You see her in every commercial, on every website. She’s like some sort of Greek god of customer service.

In case either one of you is curious as to the recent dearth in articles posted may I present to the court exhibit A to the left of this sentence. I’m sorry, I just couldn’t resist the urge to speak in legalese. Phoenix Wright’s lawyer man powers are incontrovertible!

I haven’t had this much fun playing a video game since — well since Okami which dropped about a month ago and I’m not yet done with that anyway. That’s beside the point. Whether I had or had not played a fun game immediately prior in no way degrades the joy of Phoenix Wright.

Phoenix Wright might be called a “lawyer sim” though that’s only partually accurate. The game’s portrayal of law is tenuous at best and court proceedings are employed as plot points only when necessary. Phoenix Wright does not forge new ground but settles nicely into the established genre of adventure game, minus the maple-syrup-cat-hair-mustaches.

It feels fresh though. It’s a nice change of pace to play on the other side of a gun barrel, so to speak. Instead of shooting people you’re defending those accused of shooting people. Your only weapon is your steely cold logic.

The translation team deserves tremendous applause. As the court of law is primarily a spoken exercise it is crucial that this is done properly. The dialog is drop dead funny, and almost never feels stilted or awkward like many other fine games.

I don’t normally do this, but in this instance I will provide a rating. Not a numerical one, mind you, as those are still bullshit in my opinion. I rate Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney “steal it if you have to.” If you don’t have a DS, the same rating applies. You just need to play it.

If you’re already hooked like me you might enjoy this collection of game sprites and background as much as I did.

Now, if you’ll excuse me I have to clear Mile Edgeworth of murder.

Just as I was beginning to have such a big crush on them, Capcom goes and pulls the plug on Clover Studios makers of Viewtiful Joe, Okami, and God Hand. Just like that. Poof! How depressing.

Okami, as I mentioned earlier, has been the single greatest video gaming delight of 2006. I’m still plugging away at it. I’m not entirely sure how badly I want to see the ending, because I just don’t want it to end. That, and I’ve an OCD about collecting as many of those damnable Stray Beads as I possibly can.

I haven’t yet played God Hand, but despite the negative reviews I’m really intrigued to do so. Picking it up is going to be bittersweet, to say the least.

(By way of Kotaku)

+Or maybe, it isn’t so bad after all+

Amazingly enough I had no concrete idea what I was buying when I plopped down my well worn debit card at the local game store. I knew I had to have it. I knew I had been following it lustfully for the past nigh-on two years. Somehow I never bothered to find out what precise genre of game Ōkami happened to be. Was it 2D action game? A 3D platformer? Some sort of Pokemon wannabe? I hadn’t read any reviews, nor had anyone recommended it to me. The strength of the visual style was sufficient on its own to open my wallet.

Here’s my one word review: Wow!

Ōkami is an example of the finest video gaming has to offer, in this or any other generation. It demonstrates a level of polish and care few games approach. Nearly every aspect has been honed to perfection. Care went into this game and it shows. The controls are responsive and intuitive. The sense of accomplishment and discovery is addictive. And, oh! the visuals!

The game makes use of cel-shading to present a fluid and vibrant landscape remiscent of ukiyo-e prints. While not unique — the technique was famously used in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and Capcom’s own Viewtiful Joe — it feels all the more appropriate given the story and central game mechanic. As the sun god Amaterasu (reincarnated as a wolf) you have the power to create with a paintbrush. Draw a circle in the sky to cause the sun to rise. A quick line cuts trees, rocks, and enemies in half. Lazy loop-de-loops summon fierce gusts of wind.

Essentially this boils down to a replacement for the items and tools one might find in a Zelda game. Instead of carrying bombs in a bag, you draw them onscreen by making a quick upside-down capital Q. Where Link might carry a hookshot, Amaterasu uses her paintbrush to draw vines that zip her from place to place. This is a nifty little system that works in conjunction with the chosen style.

The staff at Clover Studio have clearly studied The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time like a master’s text and they are very good students. Everything from the well-meaning yet oblivious cast of wacky townspeople to the colossal and gruesome dungeon bosses is so very similar to any of the recent Zelda games without feeling derivative.

Yet my favorite part of the game thus far is one of the most basic. It’s just a joy to go to one of the game’s more open areas and just run. Playing as a wolf capable of considerable speed makes going from one destination to another pure joy. When Ammy puts those four legs in motion it feels like few other games out there. It’s a bit like when you first rescue Epona from the cruel Ingo in Ocarina of Time only you get to do it all the time. And once you really start moving a trail of colorful flowers erupts from the ground behind you, growing ever more vivid as you accelerate. It’s beautiful and it never seems to grow old.

I’ll admit, I had my doubts. When I first saw what would be the Revolution, now Wii, controller I was hesitantly excited by the possibilities. I had predicted something using the tilt and motion sensors GBA games had been rocking for a few years now as well as a two part controller evidenced by the “Nunchuk.” I wasn’t entirely prepared for such a radical departure from controller conventions but at the same time relatively unsurprised that Nintendo would do such a thing. I could see the potential for awesomeness but also the potential for failure if it all doesn’t come together just right. Alternative input devices can fail not only being horrible but by being almost great but not quite.

In the intervening months a steady stream of praise has been building behind this brave little machine. Once doubters seem to have started to take a second glance. Big names in game development have expressed interest in the Wii. I am excited all over again.

A facet of the Wii I had never expected to interest me has begun to look very nice indeed — thanks largely to the UI(User Interface) Nintendo has chosen — is the set of tools they have named Wii Channels. Essentially a collection of Internet powered gadgets a la WebTV the Wii Channels include weather, news, photos, and a neat little avatar creator. I doubt I’ll be all that likely to power up my Wii for news or weather every morning when my PowerBook is only a few feet away, but these channels are not as lightweight as I had envisioned.

Take a look at the video Nintendo has posted for the Forecast Channel (embedded video link). While I rarely have the desperate need to know whether it’s raining in Hokkaido or sunny in Berlin I very much like that you can spin the globe wildly on its axis with a violent flick of the wrist much like a physical globe. I could easily see something like this enacted without acceleration and being a terrible bother all around.

For more visual flair watch the Photo Channel (embedded video link) as well. I actually might use this if I wanted to show someone a slideshow. It’d be just as convenient as any other method of displaying photos on my television and smaller volume SD(Secure Digital) cards aren’t too pricey.

All right Nintendo. You win. I’m totally psyched about the Wii launch. This might well be the first console I buy on the launch day (if I can find one). I just can’t see myself doing the camping-out-waiting-in-line thing to get much of anything though. Someone give me a preorder that actually means something!

So, the Nintendo Revolution is now the Nintendo Wii? Really? The Wii? Okay.

You know, I think I really like this. It’s definitely different than the rest of the console names. It takes some serious huevos to come out with a name like “Wii.” Nintendo really is committed to this whole new demographic idea. I’m not saying the “casual gamer” is going to find the name Wii more pleasing than, say, Revolution. Hell, I don’t find the name Wii to be all that pleasant. It’s an alien-looking word, at least in English, and its inclusion is fairly brazen. Nintendo wasn’t fucking around when they said they were changing more or less everything.

Oh, I’ll bet the fanboy chatter is at a near fever pitch on whatever dank forums in which they practice their dark arts. Nintendo certainly isn’t making it any easier on themselves. It’s going to be fun to see how this all shakes out.

It occurs to me that this is precisely the sort of game that I would have been thrilled to play as a wee lad but precisely the sort of game I tend to turn my adult nose up at. It is a licensed game. Hell, it’s a game licensed from a toy line itself licensed from a popular movie trilogy. It’s a double whammy of licensing.

We discerning gamers of the world have good reason to snub the licensed game — though it may well be the bread and the butter of the industry — as it can generally be assumed to be of the basest marketing trash and rushed to market to capitalize on the release of a movie or whatnot. The horror stories of botched games — poorly planned and released prematurely — have been oft repeated and become a part of our collective gamer unconscious. Children, I believe, are immune to such common knowledge as well as reviews. I know I certainly played a fair share of what were probably shoddy NES games based on some cartoon, movie, or other product. A game like this one that combines two of my all-time favorite franchises into one would have sent me absolutely crazy with want.

Of course, I did end up setting aside my prejudice and buying this game (albeit on the cheap) or I wouldn’t be writing this little review. I had read some very positive things beforehand, so I still wasn’t just buying into the franchises. Still though, I’m a bit surprised as just how much fun I had.

LEGO Star Wars is based on the three prequel Star Wars movies. Technically, I suppose it’s based on the LEGO toy line based on the prequel Star Wars trilogy. While playing the game, I had to wonder if that wasn’t actually a wise decision despite the fact Episodes I through III are substantially weaker as films on account of they have so much “video-gamey” content. Look at the droid factory bit from Attack of the Clones. It’s basically a level out of every platformer ever made.

So, LEGO Star Wars is a platformer. You run, jump, double jump, fight, and collect shiny things. It uses established minifigures and models from the Star Wars licensed LEGO line that has been a best seller for the company over the past 7 years or so. As a fellow who has purchased several of these over that time period I can attest that they are spot on recreations of the toy line. True to their plastic nature ships and characters explode into their respective parts upon destruction, bringing me great delight. Most of the game is spent on foot leading a variety of characters through locations seen in the film series though there is a vehicle based level in each of the game’s three film sections. By variety I do mean variety: there are some 40-odd playable characters in LEGO Star Wars. Most are just slight variations on another character, but it’s still fun to choose from such a wide pool. Any game that lets me amble through as a compeletly useless and helpless gonk droid is all right in my book.

The neatest little touch is the attention to both of its licenses. Kudos to developer Traveller’s Tales for taking the time to think about what being made out of LEGO bricks would mean. Central to the LEGO brand is the fact that any creation can be torn down into its parts and rebuilt as something wholly new. LEGO Jedi can use the Force to make things out of bricks laying about. This is the best idea in a video game in the past year. It makes such perfect sense. Brick building is limited to certain pre-defined objects, and all a Jedi character need do is find something that glows and put the Force on it which puts a damper on the creativity inspired by such an inclusion but it’s still awesome.

I often wrestle with with the idea of worthiness when writing a review of something. Not being a professional critic with the time and drive to rank dozens if not hundreds of products I feel as if I should expend my efforts in alerting others to albums, books, or movies they might not have heard of otherwise. This becomes problematic when discussing videogames. For the most part, the most well thought out, polished, and noteworthy games are simultaneously the most well known. With the exception of certain genres, it takes a tremendous amount of money to develop and market a game, unlike a CD or even a movie. Lacking sufficient funds a band might just record in a cheaper studio or a director might choose to eliminate costly special effects. When a video game developer lacks funds it tends to detract from the experience of playing the game. Great games tend to be exceptionally well advertised.

That’s a whole lot of horseshit just to say: When I like a game it’s pretty safe to say that almost everyone else who plays games at least knows an awful lot about it. It’s very difficult to have indie cred when it comes to gaming.

That’s what makes Psychonauts so exciting: It’s a thoroughly polished and rip-roaringly fun game that was tragically underpurchased. The perfect game for me to evangelize about. It’s got cred!

Okay, so maybe Psychonauts isn’t all that terribly obscure. It’s certainly no Madden nor Grand Theft Auto in terms of visibility and sales, though it has garnered its fair share of positive reviews. Unlike most titles, Psychonauts is distinguished by conspicuous use of the creative director’s name. That’d be Tim Schafer, who is previously known for creating the PC adventure title Grim Fandango (which I sadly have not been able to play due to platform issues). This is evident by the sheer style of the game. It’s clear upon playing that Psychonauts was created by someone with creative vision rather than a checklist of shit that seems to work in other games.

Which is not to say that Pscychonauts is totally out there. The gameplay itself is fairly standard platformer stuff: run, jump, double-jump, shoot bad guys, collect shiny things. The platforming elements are represented well and are solidly put together. The imaginative bits are what surrounds the running and the jumping, all too often set aside for last and tacked on haphazardly.

Here’s the gist of the game: At a summer camp for psychics a demented madman unleashes a plot to conquer the world by stealing brains. The only way to defeat him is to sort of astrally project into various minds and conquer their inner demons. Each of the games levels are representations of inner thoughts and personalities. Each level is refreshing and new, oftentimes with its own peculiar artistic style.

Style is the key. We don’t particularly play games for new experiences. There are few key genres and we gamers know what to expect. Occasionally we like to be taken by surprise, but generally we like to know the rules. What distinguishes one game from another is largely style.

The central gameplay gimmick of “jumping” into another character’s head and playing a level based around his or her life feels familiar, though I cannot remember a particular game that has used it at the moment. If it has been done before, I don’t think it has ever been done this well before. Without drastically altering the gameplay, each different level feels fresh and has its own peculiar rules. Levels range from your standard creepy forest to a tabletop wargame complete with hexagonal field to a neon-and-black-velvet painting to a giant kaiju battle to a particularly loopy (quite literally) imagining of 1950s suburbia.

The production values on Psychonauts also stand out. Playing it is much like playing through a Saturday morning cartoon. Voiceover talent is almost universally excellent. Invader Zim Richard Horvitz nails the lead character Raz. I couldn’t imagine anyone being more perfect for the role.

Psychonauts is available for the Xbox, PS2, and PC. So long as you’ve bought a gaming system since 2000 you should be equipped to play it. You really should too.

If in your thirst for possessing new and exciting video games to while away the days of your life you happen to see the box below amidst the teeming rubble of PlayStation 2 titles I would advise that you grab it as quickly as possible.

You can thank me later. Because you need to own this game. You might not know it yet, but you do.

I already typed up a review for my other Internet project but I’m here to tell you man to man that your PS2 needs this game. If it could speak to you I’m sure it would coo sweetly at you about what good times you’ve had together and how much more you could have if you would just spend $20 on this new game about rolling over stuff.

Also: Katamari Damacy = best. . . soundtrack. . . ever. Well, pretty fucking boss anyway. It’s definitely toe for toe with Jet Set Radio and Space Channel 5, and if you know anything about anything you’ll realize I just put it in some very damned fine company.