Wednesday 19 September 2007

Games of the Moment - 19/09/07

Gives me something to do.

To be honest, all the games I've been playing at the moment are stuff that either have massive screenshots that are usually of lousy quality. Super Paper Mario, Metroid Prime 2, Crash Bandicoot - all good games worth playing (Although Crash 2/3 are a lot better than the first) but aren't worth blogging since a picture tells a thousand words.

Super Mario Bros. 2 (Japan)

Okay okay, there's nothing amazingly special about this one. Essentially it's the first Super Mario Bros. with new levels, newish graphics and a poison mushroom. Nintendo in their super-racist days did not allow this to get to America for fears this game would be "too hard", eventually releasing a re-tuned Doki Doki Panic there instead (and the rest of the world following). 20 years later the real SMB2 can be seen hanging around on our Wii Virtual Consoles and can be downloaded and played legally for the unfortunate price of 600 Wii points. No sign of it in the states yet. Take that yankees!

Although it's not a major win really. SMB2J is basically just an expansion pack to the first game. Not much has changed other than the things listed above - the rest is just a repeat of SMB1, which in comparison to later titles in the Mario franchise, ain't too great anymore. It got released eventually across the world in the form of Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels in SMAS for the SNES along with the other NES Mario platformers. That's easily the better version, but it's unlikely we'll see it again what with the Mario Advance series and the fact Nintendo can make more money releasing the games separately. Still, a nice game worthy of a good blogging, and as it's coming off the VC at the end of September, you better get it quickly.

Sonic Advance 2

I've been using a lot of stuff related to Sonic Advance 3 in SHPDMBGWL4 3 Ex, but Sonic Advance 3 is a pretty weak game when compared to it's immediate prequel. Sonic Advance 2 gets very little love really. It's tossed aside for being too fast and the overuse of the right key, and I can see why - most of the levels are just running to the right. This is only a recent argument against it though, partly because pretty much every Sonic game since has raped the formula and spoilt the 2D franchise slightly. I see Advance 2 as more of a spin-off as it's radically different to any of the previous titles. It's all about speed, and it's the first to do so. It's engine is devoted to showing off the GBA's running speed and it does a damn good job at it.

Things aren't perfect, but they're not bad by any means. Advance 1 beats it in terms of gameplay but Advance 2 is definitely the best looking of the series, and the best sounding. Cream the Rabbit is by definition, a lousy character and way too easy to play as, but she's a lot more bearable than Amy that comes along a while later. There's a lot of pros and cons in Sonic Advance 2 and I can't be bothered to list them all, but lets just say this is also a worthy purchase. Unfortunately Advance 3, being built off Advance 2, fails due to it's mis-use of the Sonic Advance 2 engine. A purely running based engine in an environment consisting of non-pure running based levels has some lousy results, compiled with a poor choice of music/sounds and not so great graphics. I can't see the magic there like with the other two.


Anyway that killed a few minutes. Get both sometime.

Monday 17 September 2007

Progress

Why did I even make this blog? All I seem to be doing is posting pointless VC updates and this site does it better than me! Oh well.

Still slowly making this (SHPDMBGWL4 3 Ex btw). I seem to be having a "level ideas block" and as such I've started coding even more secrety things. Good chance they'll disappoint since I'm also having a "secret reward block". So now as well as having a new set of eggs, keys, glory emblems, secret levels and half a dozen other things, it's also got gems, relics and Gemrelics™. Don't worry, I've got those platinum Gemrelics before, it's not THAT hard.

Think of it as being a tribute to the old Crash Bandicoot formula being abandoned in favour of the CotT one. Also my Aku Aku and Uka Uka don't look ugly.

Thursday 13 September 2007

Super Paper Mario release tomorrow

Meaning I can finally stop my five month rant on its unnecessary delay. I could probably post this tomorrow but I'm bored so here's a post a day in advance. Here's also hoping this is the last major Wii title to get a delay this long. Now I can focus all my energy in complaining about Brawl's 2008 date =P

Again though, nothing really interesting to post. If there's no fantastic VC releases tomorrow it could be a while until I blog something else.

Tuesday 11 September 2007

It's my Birthday

...and I suppose I should say something... except I still don't really have much to say. I was aiming to get SHPDMBGWL4 3 Ex out by now, but lack of inspiration has delayed it a bit. Nevertheless "11091990" will do something when it's released.

Now I'm off to eat cake.

Saturday 1 September 2007

Here's one I made earlier


Two updates in one day? Wow.

Due to the Player Adventure games being untested and impossible I've released them in one half-tested possible package. Yeah I sorta did that before, but this time it's all in one executable rather than five, and comes with some handy dandy extras. The errors addressed a couple of updates ago have been fixed, but it's likely that I may have made a couple more mistakes while porting (You can blame TGF for that one). I've damaged my eyes enough with this series, so I haven't checked through each game to the end, so feel free to report more probs.

This'll be compatible with the SHPDMBGWL4 3 Expansion pack I'm making.

EDIT: Now with fixed buttons and sound in PA5.

Command & Conquer: Now Freeware!

The Technology of Peace

That's right, the first Command & Conquer just got released as Freeware. If you've not played this in some form, you've already lost a great chunk of your life. It single handedly brought me into the world of RTS games, and if you're not an RTS fan, it could do the same to you. It's two mighty huge ISOs so it could take a while to download, but it's worth it. Kane is quite possibly one of the best video game villians ever.

You could argue it's the weakest game in the series other than some of those expansions, but by weak that means "1995's best game of the year".