“You see my contact down there? Can’t miss it, looks like a plate.”

Except that after this paragraph, the Wii will not be part of the discussion – hope you don’t mind. Not for nothing, the Wii has been instrumental in bringing the platformer back into the mainstream periphery. Per capita, the higher-def consoles don’t seem to boast a comparable amount of shelf titles that put classic design on display, opting instead to keep that Funny, Oddly-Dressed Old Uncle of video game genres sequestered in the nursing homes that are XBLA and PSN. That’s great for the nostalgia buffs who are used to traversing the road less traveled. However, unless you’re prone to demo binges (which is, admittedly,  a reality that too many of us have to contend with occasionally,) stuff like Arkedo’s Pixel series might as well be persona non grata in digital distribution. On the Wii, smaller studios can not only take a chance on smaller-budget titles with fundamentalist design – thinking of A Boy and His Blob or Klonoa, here – because there’s little chance of overspending on meeting the expected high-res visual milestones. Therefore, there’s a balance in production flow between building upon play concepts and asset creation as a result of the minimalized risk. An added bonus is that some of these studios take chances with established licenses, which helps to decrease the market for uninspired shovelware. The icing is that these games are granted increased exposure, sharing shelf space with the likes of your banner “Gears of Halo Duty” AAA guff when finished.

Fuck the 22nd letter of the alphabet.

But for all the momentum that the Wii has given to a genre formerly abused to move licensed IP or to make quick cash for middleware studios, you gotta wonder how much of that inertia was siphoned from the Indie PC gaming scene. The PC has always been a fertile proving ground for startups that knew their code; for those that didn’t, the price of admission was Flash. Since then, free applications like GameMaker and IDEs like XNA have made the science much broader and more inviting to the uninitiated, requiring only that you have an idea good enough to commit to. The hypothesis here is that creative freedom pays in dividends, and the proliferation of Flash games and increasing awareness of the independent development culture seems to prove it. Nintendo simply saw a cost-effective development culture on the rise and decided to take advantage. Need I get started on mobile phone SDKs being freely distributed like Tootsie Rolls at a pedophile picnic?

All the while, it’s the classic “jump-on-this-grab-at-that” foundation that many of these smaller projects embrace, thanks to technological displacement and nostalgic trends. We get good, cheap gaming experiences (sometimes at the cost of convenience) but it’s a trend enjoyed by both the hardcores and the mainstream alike. And who wouldn’t want to jump on that?

The following exhibits reside in a hard-luck bubble, though – the anti-cult games. These are games that actually got great scores and accolades from various agents of the gaming press, but still sold for shit. Well, fine, a lot of vaunted cult games match that profile. Beyond Good and Evil, Hotel Dusk, Zack and Wiki are all poster children for the beloved cult game archetype. But there’s the rub: “beloved.” Remembered. And the games on this list don’t even have that going for them. They’re the promising bud of a young franchise scorned by an extremely insular public that would not have them. And now they’re bitter as all hell, staring at you and your indifference from beneath a shear veil of disdain and rage (and maybe a jaunty hat shaped like a rooster comb.)

JLH: The Flash

The reasons for people looking over this one are pretty obvious. It doesn’t even bear mentioning that the general public still regard comics as cultural botulism and sticking a non-movie comic property onto anything sold in a Wal-Mart that isn’t a fucking t-shirt is going to be guaranteed losses. Then we have your average gamer cynicism versus licensed games, which made sure that any potential narrowcast appeal toward the hardcore folded in on itself like Chunk (10 points if you get the reference!) This is all compounded with the fact (not notion, fact – over 100 people believe it, so it must be true) that the console game it was supposed to support – Justice League Heroes – was a live abortion that preceded the The Flash, thereby preemptively dashing the brand’s rep.

What you missed out on:

“You see me NOW, you jive-ass motherfuckahhhhhhhhh”

While you can file this game directly under the traditionalist Beat ‘Em Up category (think walking right-to-left while punching all manner of mook and eating foodstuffs off the ground), it brings a twist to the party: the Flash doesn’t walk from left-to-right. He doesn’t walk, period. He’s, you know, the goddamn Flash. He RUNS; specifically, he runs up to each guy he seeks to make an impression on and dots their eyes before they can even think about blinking. Punch, punch, run, run, done, done. It’s a nifty spin on a classic play mechanic that turns what might have been an average Beat ‘Em Up into a speedy throwdown with elements of spatial reasoning thrown in. If you’re a  nostalgia whore like me, you’d be remiss in overlooking it. Really, you’re punching things at light speed. How could you even pass that up now, knowing this?

Boktai: The Sun is In Your Hand

“Wow, what’s that? It looks pretty slick.”

“This is Boktai. You play a pubert gunslinger who does battle with the undead in a spaghetti-Western fantasy wasteland.”

“Rich Tuppence a Bag, that sounds awesome!”

“Yeah, and you know what else? It’s designed by Hideo Kojima. As in, ‘Metal Gear Solid’ Hideo Kojima.”

“Dayyuuumn! And what’s that little sensor thing hanging off the bottom of the cartridge? What’s that do?”

“Well, since you have to play it out in the sun…”

“THE SUN! THE WRETCHED SOUL-STAR THAT GIVES LIFE AND LIGHT TO THIS ACCURSED WORLD?! SSCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECCCCHH”

What you missed out on:

As if this wasn’t sufficiently proven by my past verbal ejaculate, I effing love this series. Biblically. I’m man enough to admit that I have had intimate relations with my GBA because of Boktai, although I no longer refer to my Game Boy with such puerile nomenclature; he is now a Game Man. Yeah, there’s some startling blackmail material for you.

While the solar sensor factors heavily into Boktai’s play, it does so parenthetically (save for the boss battles, which actually must be done during the day.) What the sensor does is allow the sun to dictate environmental data, simulating factors like cloud-cover and how much direct sunlight enters interior spaces. Also, your weapons are powered by sunlight. However, you will find other ways of managing scenarios throughout the course of the game (Solar Banks hello) that render this solar dependency moot. And that’s the foundation of what makes the Boktai series so awesome: many strategies for a single mission. Boktai requires more of its players than a willingness to grind for sunlight -  be sneaky, be aggressive or be smart. The game’s format lies somewhere between adventure and surreptitious puzzle game, and these attitudes conspire to get the left, right and lizard parts of your brain gleefully working in conjunction. And it’s frustrating to think that something as innocuous as sunlight is what kept the series from being successful, and also what kept the third game from being released over here.

Lock’s Quest

Lock’s Quest got good reviews to beat the band, but didn’t sell and is not really a legacy in the current gaming stratosphere. Now how the hell did that happen? 5th Cell is a hot developer, so it ought to have notoriety among the hardcores.  Just as well, Lock’s Quest is a variation of popular Tower Defense genre (however loath I am to call it this,  for reasons I’ll explain below) – how did the casual audience not get all hot and bothered about it? Add this to the myriad options, play modes and sheer content that 5th Cell was able to stuff into this tiny cartridge, wouldn’t the sheer bulk value of this title have been able to do anything for the sales?

I have one theory as to why this one didn’t play in Peoria; it’s cockamamie but being that it’s the only thing I’ve been able to extract from my rectum at the moment, I’m going to just go ahead and lay it out: Brutal Legend syndrome. We all know what Brutal Legend is, right? It was a game that’s earned notoriety for supposedly dressing up in sheep’s clothing – rather, the clothing of an action game when it’s really something else. This marketing tactic could have been a knee-jerk solution for the notion that some people didn’t seem to know what they were playing during test. In all honesty, it’s a fine game. The on-field inclusion of the commanding entity in what would otherwise be a very straightforward RTS really upped the ante for this genre… but it is a genre that brings with it routine and convention. I’m thinking that Tower Defense fans (of all denominations) find themselves in similar straits.

Or maybe it failed because Lock looks like the main character of Boktai.

What You Missed Out On:

My feeling about games in this genre are pretty easy to summarize: “Fuck Tower Defense.” A game where you stare at a screen and literally watch dudes walk single-file for five minutes at a time is not a game to me; it is a sociological experiment, one situated just above the “hit the button, take the cheese” Pavlovian dynamic of your average Facebook app. Lock knows my pain, which is why he’s opted to take the fight from the tower right down to the god damn streets. Your automatic defenses serve only to aid you in taking down your mechanized adversary yourself – by your onesy. Solo. With a wrench. However, as the war progresses so do your “Archineering” skills, allowing you to build new defenses and layouts with the parts you scavenge from your fallen enemies. Put succinctly, it’s a Tower Defense game where you’re actually doing something, and that is Tower Defense done right.

Startopia

At one point in my life, a person could ask me if I’ve ever played Startopia and my answer would inevitably be “No, I’ve no idea what you’re on about, please let me shit in peace.” Nowadays, the role is inverted, with other people informing me of their ignorance toward Startopia (and also admonishing my presence in their bathroom.) Startopia is a life-sim/RTS, which would normally prohibit a game from occupying my cone of cognizance simply for being so. Although I have played and enjoyed a few RTS’s here and there, it’s a genre that I’m generally all to happy to be ignorant of. If you’re curious as to why, read the last entry.

As I understand it, Startopia’s introduction was met with stellar reviews and widespread acclaim; nil happened after that. That is to say, nothing. Sales were abysmal, the developer went under and you hear nary a word about this game anymore, even among PC gaming enthusiasts. The only reason I know of this game is because I’m lucky enough to have friends with good taste.

What You Missed Out On:

While Startopia does technically fit into the RTS category, the high marks it received seemed to focus on what the game took away from RTS conventions, which bucks the “more-is-better” trend that most RTS franchises seem to wallow in. For one, the economy is much more streamlined in contrast to other games of this type. It doesn’t pick nits with resources, possibly due to the game’s lack of a combat element, and causality between trade strategies and supply/demand are subtly apparent to the player – it’s a great thing.

Two, it takes your typical RTS bravado, punches it in the stomach, throws it nonchalantly into an escape pod and sends it spaceworthy. In its place? A large, red button with a smiley face upon it which reads “Don’t Panic”. This is the closest video games have ever gotten to successfully channeling Douglas Adams, bouncing one quirk (racial behaviors) off of another (personalities of the people you trade with) off of another (the narrator, ever a paragon of snarky omniscience, voiced by William Franklyn of THHGTTG radio show fame… as if the point needed to be further pressed.) Startopia treats you to many different stimuli on both the emotional and intellectual levels – always smiling, usually laughing.

iNinja

Mascot games are an unfashionable holdover from a time when gaming’s core demographic were mostly fart-obsessed, pubescent malcontents drawn to equally douchey anthropomorphic animal characters decked out whit a backwards ball cap and nauseating oodles of ‘toon ‘tude. It was an embarrassing time to be a teenager, sure; it’s even more embarrassing to walk into a store as a gaming adult and still have to confront the industry’s tenacious grip on obsolete marketing concepts. Never-minding that I can no longer relate to a teenage boy’s persistently aimless rage (see, my anger is more well-defined nowadays), I and most males from my generation bear enough cynicism to know when another cynic is trying to felch us. Most of these characters share the same imitative, superficial traits: vague rebelliousness, big heads and a willingness to commit expedient murder in mindless pursuit of golden baubles. And then here comes iNinja:

“I’m angry because I know I’m FUCKED.”

What You Missed Out On:

One helluva platforming buffet, that’s what. Being that iNinja was developed during the sixth generation (when well-made platformers were actually still profitable), there stood a risk of trying to outdo the other guy by awkwardly cramming in a bunch of disparate play mechanics and having it come out a basket of brightly-colored stinknuggets. But rather than being a jumbled, unevenly-paced Jack-Of-All-Trades-Master-Of-None, we have a seamless cornucopia of contemporary design elements that actually complement each other. Platforming sections often transition into wide-open fighting areas, displaying a tacit understanding of traditional stage design with a real talent for adapting into then-trendy concepts (such as the “Stylish Action” mechanic made popular by Devil May Cry.) Other more linear stages feature acrobatic, zero-gravity footraces or Monkey Ball-esque obstacle courses. For platforming fans, it’s like a goddamn toybox.

Another thing worth mentioning are the game’s cut-scenes. Sure, cutscenes haven’t been a big deal since 1997 and are now generally regarded with some leering contempt thanks to rampant abuse of the concept (you got that, Square-Enix? You listenin’?) However, do you know of many games can boast cutscenes created by animation luminary DON FRIGGING BLUTH? Yeah, that’s right: Dragon’s Lair Don Bluth? Did the cutscenes for iNinja. Oh, and the Ninja was voiced by Billy West, of Futurama and Ren and Stimpy fame. You couldn’t put more animation pedigree behind iNinja if you dug up Chuck Jones and had him hand-animate the motion loops in-game (but only when people weren’t watching.)

Part Two soon… soooooooooooon.

I’m disappointed in you, Punch-Out!!. I thought you might’ve been the disruptive element, the assassin to Nintendo’s squeaky-clean rep as king of my living room, but no! You just had to go ahead and live up to the promise of being a vast improvement upon a classic play structure without abritrarily changing a single fucking thing. Yes, nostalgic game geek, this is the game that you remember playing after school, during your afternoon recuperative sessions before questing that homework. And when I say that it is the game that you remember, the one that persists in your head rather than the not-so-intimidating reality, I mean it: characters are huge and full of amusing boist and bombast thanks to some of the richest hand-keyed animation seen in a 3-D game to date. But if all Punch-Out!! had going for it were exemplary production values then it would merely be a third of a potentially excellent game, right?

Punch-Out!! almost seems to revel in the fact that it needn’t fuck with something so accessible and pure, as while it offers three different control schemes for the player to choose from, you wouldn’t need to pick anything other than the familiar A+B+Select layout that the Wiimote “Classic” configuration mandates. Your opponents will demand everything of your thumbs in this game (especially in the Title Defense after-mode) and while the Nunchuk+Wiimote option isn’t necessarily borked, it simply isn’t as responsive. Seriously, Soda Popinski will exhibit this for you in about five seconds. That man isn’t a man at all, he’s an animal. A manimal, actually.

Also, like its forebears, the core of Punch-Out!!‘s action is rooted in adapting your limited attack and defense capabilites to effectively counter your opponent. Stats and contemplation have no jurisdiction here; this is all about pattern recognition and reflexes, sort of like a poker game where your role is to suss out which hand is holding a full house of unbridled pain. Your opponents are cocky and fast, but that cockiness is central to how you expedite a good beatdown as awareness of your opponent’s tells will keep you quick to the dodge and usually set the dope up for a dizzy. However, don’t expect to pull off a sure stick-’n'-move each time simply because your opponent telegraphs his punches; the fighters might be obvious, but they are quick and also hit much harder than Little Mac. Three unsuccessful dodges usually precludes a listless make-out session with the canvas. If you need further elaboration upon this point, perhaps you would like to step into Soda Popinski’s office. He’ll hand you a bitch card then knock you out colder than a frosted glass of RC Classic.

Unsurprisingly, not all of Punch-Out!!‘s appeal lies in its winking nods to the halcyon days of gaming’s wonder years. Most any developer that makes a habit of actually paying its employees and staying in business will tell you that a marquee game that mainlines unmolested nostalgia probably won’t return a decent enough profit. So, while Punch-Out!! calls upon the School of Twitch to form the foundation for play, its production values are as modern as a Wii can get (which I estimate to be about six years ago). Consider it a smart turn on developer Next Level’s part, then, to rely upon similarly traditional animation techniques to give flamboyant life to these hilarious 3-D pugilists. Recieving a thorough beating or two is something that Little Mac will become accustomed to so the idea of being entertained by your own immolation at the hands of your nemesis is fair compense for spending a round learning of your opponent’s taunts the hard way. Inversely, the extreme expressions and falldown animations resulting from dominating the opposition serves as a just reward for accplishing this. Each boxer has his own distinct personality (read: “embodies a very broad stereotype”), brought to life through fluid, outrageous motions that display an intimate understanding of several of the Twelve Principles. Of particular note is Principle number two – the entire game is based around the concept of anticipation. Each boxer’s taunts are dazzling but also easily noticable, giving you equitable opportunity to respond and satisfaction in knowing that you shut his trap. This all lends a richer character to the game, rendering its larger-than-life roster of palookas with a more potent realism than the frozen-faced, stiffly mocapped steroid marionettes that one would find in your average “photo-realistic” first-person shooter. Of course, one wonders if it’s even worth inhabiting a reality that could birth a hell-born creature of avarice like Soda Popinski, an abomination who eats men’s wills for lunch and drinks Hate straight from the tap.

I never really dwell upon the aural qualities of a game unless they happen to be exemplary. That being the case, I would like to mention that Next Level did a stunning job with the musical camouflage in this game – being that you’re going to be hearing the familiar Punch-Out!! music over and over ad infinitum, lending ethnic variation to the same song isn’t only welcome, it’s probably necessary. Thankfully, each iteration of the theme is a fun, personable accompaniment to its respective fighter’s stage and effortlessly strives to get the player to tap his/her toes throughout the fight. In particular, the peppy all-male choir in Soda Popinski’s stage provides a jaunty, optimistic counterpoint to having your very future torn from your corporeal form by a rabid, jellyrocket-shaped hurt machine in hot pants who will send you into a coma that you will not want to arouse from, lest you wake into a world where babies are rationed for sustenance and happiness is but a lie; a world where evil means survival and decent souls die the quickest; a world ruled… by Soda Popinski.

But I digress. Punch-Out!! still fucking rules, despite the looming, sucrose-addicted pinko threat that dwells within.

If so, too bad it never materialized. That would have been all of a guaranteed purchase in this household, regardless of the small library or the apparent lack of interest from third party publishers in bringing their properties over. Unfortunately, the best that an NGPC diehard could hope for at this point would be a possible compilation of those few great games on a newer handheld, recreated respectfully and accurately, mindless of potential overhead/profit conversion and making a quick, glitchy buck off of the corpse of fondly remembered franchises.

Right. And I’m hung like a mule.

Some might call it a broken game but take a second to consider the physics involved in the activity you have just witnessed. Warped-ass controls? Sure, that’s apparent enough. But the way that the cages interact with each other is simply superlative, and that takes a fair amount of work. This is what must happen now: a major publisher should pick up Sumotori and repackage it for domestic distribution as the keystone entry in a new “Hobolympics” franchise.

It’ll be bigger than AIDS. Just watch.

And hey, look at the barging synchronicity! Tim Shafer has made the original design doc for Grim Fandango available for public consumption, and in weighty PDF form, no less. This was obviously done in celebration of me finally getting to play this after all these years.

Aw, Tim. You shouldn’t have.

The 8 Most Innovative Pinballs of All Time (presumably until the next knee-quaking Pat Lawlor masterpiece hits the street). And this is from Popular Mechanics? Shit be legit, yo.

Two of my favorites are on there and that makes me happy, although I get the feeling that one of them is only flying wingman so as not to leave the other as the sole representative from the 90′s to play the field, so to speak. But what about Funhouse? Or Safecracker? Or (and I’m being absolutely serious, here) Shaq Attack? Addams Family was a good deal of fun and all, but it was a vessel of technologies already introduced around two years prior to its release. In contrast, Funhouse (near as I can recall) may have been the very first pinball to successfully incorporate an in-game antagonist to vastly effective and to some, just outright terrifying effect. That latter reaction to the Rudy is usually a strong indicator of a person’s arguable grasp of reality, but it was there. That little bastard sitting near the back of the playfield, mouthing off veiled threats and shooting needles at you with those jerky, mechanized oculars. I sometimes glimpse him in dark corners of my room. Then the towering hellbeavers come and try to rob me of my precious leghair.

…whoa, blacked out there for a second.

Twilight Zone would be a hard one to topple, though. More than a decade and almost 20 different tables that I’ve put my boogery fingers on and few have prodded my emotions into such a whirlwind gallop as this Twilight Zone, offering the unwary player many stackable features that could be innocently enjoyed should the player actually overcome the sensation that he may well actually be tossing about with forces unknown from within the Zone itself. It certainly evokes that innocuously sinister presence that so many other artifacts from the show were seemingly shrouded in. Once the player pulls that plunger, he becomes marginally aware of the crowding presence of other pinball machines that may also happen to be in the room, as if they were bearing witness to this new challenger come to face their tribal head, flipper-to-flipper, and see if the task is met and finished without the defeating notion that the hapless player’s soul and quarters were stealthily sucked into that other dimension, never to be bartered back. Or maybe I just skipped my meds that week, dunno.

“He battled thugs in Road House and now he’s battling cancer. The latest on Patrick Swayze, coming up.”

I couldn’t be that funny if I got my dick caught in a pickle jar for undisclosed reasons.
You just go ahead and make that college degree your indulgent bitch, Ms. Producer.

You know, I think that’s why I’m so hasty in giving short-shrift to the FPS genre as a whole. It’s such a simple, emotionally vulgar distraction but you name one title and chances are that it’s fans often talk of it in the same tone of voice that film buffs use when talking about The Third Man.
When coupled with the fact that most FPS fans often regard a product that invokes visual elements of anything other than gritty (even in hardcore, outlandish Sci-Fi) as strictly for teh kiddies then we’re looking at a genre
whose purpose seems to be more of a security blanket and less of a good time. Take note of one of the selling points of that BF:H trailer: “The key element is ‘fun’”. Now, I may be waaay off base here, but who here plays games because it brings them provocative philosophical challenges? Sure, BioShock runs objectivist thought up a flagpole in terms of both story and gameplay and the game is enriched because of that, but if the play wasn’t good, it wouldn’t be a game. It’d be a movie.

So then I wondered why there were certain games of this type
that I have been actually able to get into in the past. For this exhibit, we have XIII, Armed and Dangerous, Timesplitters: Future Perfect, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, and Metal Arms: Glitch in the System. The gameplay between all of these titles can be comparable with most other shooters but the one other thing that sets most of these games outside the norm is a goddamn sense of humor with the possible exception of XIII. Let the record show that this approach often results in high marks from the gaming press but low regard in the general FPS gaming community, despite the excellent fucking writing that is the hallmark of some of these examples, particularly from the Timesplitters series.

All the more reason for casual player to scoff at the “core” gaming community’s interests. Who the fuck wants to hang around someone who keeps trying to convince you of their own self-importance? That sounds like egomania run amok to me, and that’s the only thing I think of when people try to reconcile the popularity of a very humorous, stylized product like Team Fortress 2 for themselves by linking it’s origins to the forefathers of contemporary illustration, especially when the end result more closely resembles something altogether more important but less impressive when it comes to namechecking.

Further case in point, and I’ll continue to use BF: H as an example as it could be (and is) construed by some thin-skinned bitches to be a mockery of one of the biggest tragedies to ever befall the human race. Fine, make that criticism, if it makes you feel all “insightful” and reverent, deep in that endless well of bullshit that you call a “soul”. But in doing so, you’ll need to tell Harvey Kurtzman, The Zucker Bros., Mel Brooks, Spike Milligan, Mort Walker, Bernard Fein and Albert Ruddy and all of the aforementioned gents at Termite Terrace that their insensitive treatment of anyone who’s lost a life in that bloody typhoon is not welcomed. I mean, how dare they try to decode a smile or a laugh from the extranatural, gore-washed insanity that was the Second World War? There’s no laughter in war! None!

…but we can turn it into shallow cash-in for desktop he-men to show everyone in the digital world what impressive deaths they could have made if only they’d had the balls to join the army. Don’t laugh at war, don’t distance yourself from it, don’t cast a critical eye to it, be it satirical or otherwise. Just emulate it. That’s honor.