All Hail Suavo, Lord of Bad Rolls

When I was in college I played board games with a group of fellow nerd ranging in ages from 8 to 50. All of them had their ups and downs as people. Scott was a gentle giant of a man, but I worry about his health, James Ernst was a mathematical genius but took to playing the Meta- game to seriously. And Pete was way to hard on himself, to the point where if something went the wrong way he got distracted and his composure collapsed.

One man stood above all of these though as someone I remember. His name was George but everyone including himself called him Suavo. The first reason was that his actual polish last name was difficult to pronounce. The second reason was that he was a suave mother fucker.

When he played MechWarrior in the group he gravitated towards a faction that was known for the ability to take hits repeatedly, but not have much offensive might. Everyone questioned his choice, as it seemed that when rolling dice, he had no luck at all. He would often just miss the required rolls needed, or when he did hit it was of little consequence at the time.

He had this inane ability though, to share his luck, or lack thereof. Like a Jedi convincing a drug dealer to rethink his life, he merely waved his hands, and his opponents dice would turn to piles of cubic mush. I dunno how he did it, but at some point the rest of the play group would start praying and paying tribute to Suavo, hoping to appease him so our rolls would not go south.

To this day I still spread the word of Suavo, calling upon him for timely bad rolls and waving my hand like a jedi over my foes dice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Suavo is a fickle god, and he does not dole out his power whimsically

More Then Meets My Expectations

So here is something I like talking about that is not TOO politically heavy handed. That Big McLarge Huge sporting event that happened a few weeks back is also known as commercial cental, you remember that? Yeah I did not care much about it either, mostly cause the Kansas City Chiefs, nor the New York Jets were involved. I know how to pick teams don’t I? but one commercial played and I caught it on apple’s movie trailers after the game.



God Damn you Michael Bay! God Damn you!

Now I fit into a very small niche of Transformers fans. I am not in the “if it is transformers it is good” category, but neither am I in the “Purist” line of thought either. Much like my post partisan pragmatists political affiliation, I take each category of this beloved franchise in turn, and I examine it on its own merits.

The First Transformers film released in 2007 actually impressed me. I thought the character designs were a wonderful way to make the idea of robots that could turn into cares functionally work. The plot was thin no doubt, but nowhere NEAR as thin as the cartoon from the 1980s, and the set pieces were enjoyable. My main complaint was the lack of character development with the Decepticon characters.

The 2009 sequel was an unmitigated disaster. May people have their own ideas as to why, and I want to share my own. The writer’s strike of 2008 happened a few months before principle photography was scheduled to start. This meant that a Shooting Script was never developed, and rumor has it that a full final screenplay was sitting unfinished on Orici and Kruzman’s desk. As the strike carried on Michael Bay (director) and Steven Speilberg (Producer) had a tough decision to make, do we wait out the strike, lose a crap ton of funding or get our funding pulled, and delay shooting? Or do we try to work with what we have. Bay Elected to work with what he had, which mean shooting Revenge of the Fallen with what is called a Film Treatment.

For those that don’t know, a Film Treatment is a piece of prose, often in a short story form, that provides a basic outline of a films plot. For a good example of a Film Treatment I recommend picking up the special edition of “The Terminator” which has its full treatment as a special feature. At 44 pages it tells the story of the film, but you can pick apart what was discarded, what was altered, and what was enhanced.

This led to Revenge of the Fallen being CLOSE to the original vision of the film, but every fan could see where things fell apart. There was a “wait what?” moment within the movie where it all broke down. For me it was around the time Optimus prime got killed and the ever infamous twins escorted Bumblebee and Shia Lebouf across the globe. At that point what was actually a pretty decent action flick degenerated into a bad episode of Beavis and Butt-head.

So now we have this third movie, and again it is sold to me. I will be there, in the front of the line, waiting for my seat on opening day. It is the same thing as why G.I.JOE, and the Marvel Pantheon are so close to my heart. Basically people my age, the 30 year olds, are grown up and want their childhood back. Maybe it is some mid life precursor or something. Will we have a better movie? Well I am of the mind it can not get much worse, and at least the 30 second spot at the Daytona 500 looks promising.

Wow, I am late on this....

It took me a while to write this last entry on Ninja Gaiden, and Metroid. That was mostly because the two games were hard as hell, to the point of me NEVER in my life finishing them (unlike all the other previous entries.) And each shared so many aspects with the previous NES classics that I ran out of things to talk about. So I finally decided to consolidate the two and discuss highlights of each.

Ninja Gaiden was side scrolling beat em up. Its notorious difficulty was born from having to beat not only bad guys and bosses, but also the map and the timer. Precision jumps were the key, and coupled with the Castlevania “flinch” if you were off or got touched by an enemy, you were tossed backwards.

Ninja Gaiden was unique in the NES days for having cinematic story telling, with crudely animated cut scenes between major acts of the game. Taken for granted today, where such events are not only common but often rendered in the games engine, these comic book style graphics were a progressive leap forward, and possibly the first of its kind.

Musically the game was nothing special, and graphically it was hit or miss. While the backgrounds were rendered in stunning detail, you often looked at foes that were more a jumbled mess of pixels then anything else.

in the modern Era Ninja Gaiden has retained its nigh impossible difficulty, and romps through the demon world are little more literal then cult like. the problem is that modern games in the series are pretty forgettable, particularly since the developer at Namco "Team Ninja" seems to have a VERY unhealthy fascination with breasts.

Metroid was another beast. Where as Zelda had you explore what seemed like a large and expansive world, Metroid downsized it to a large alien base. Game play focused on exploration above EVERYTHING else, with power ups scattered far and wide, and your list of objectives was quite narrow.

1) Destroy the two bosses
2) After 1) destroy the bases main computer

Simple until you realized that you started off with none of the tools needed to do that task, and you had all of THIS to contend with. These aliens were not fucking around were they?

It is amazing in Metroid to see that the titular creature usually does not show up in it’s own game till the end. Much like the legend of Zelda before it, I assumed the main character you played was named Metroid, rather then the space jellyfish that the franchise centers around.

The Metroid franchise however is known for more then dungeon crawls, and exploration through upgrades. It can be argued that the Metroid series was the first video game series to have a female protagonist. Furthermore, the nature of Samaus Aran’s appearance belies and refutes any chance to sexualize her as a woman, providing a strong female (though I argue not feminine) character. For that, Metroid will always be remembered while Ninja Gaiden will be tossed aside in the Jiggle Physics bin.

Happy New Year!

Well yet again I want to wish everyone a happy New Year! 2010 was odd for me, a collection of good bad an ugly. Lap 28 is about to finish up for me personally and have I had one hell of a year. Enjoy my list of best and worst

Best Video Game that I expected to be good: Halo Reach. Yes toss be in with the cult of the Master Chief. The series has its many detractors, but I have always found the mix of music, story, and rock solid mechanics to be compelling. And Halo, unlike other multiplayer games online, is fun for me. Bungies Swan song is an A +. I can leave the franchise behind here if I need to, especially since Microsoft is planning on milking it on their own.

Best “Where the hell did you come from” Video Game: Darksiders. In an era where hyper realist gameplay and first person shooters reign supreme, here was a dungeon crawler in the vein of Legend of Zelda I just could not put down. The Colors were magnificent (the only brown was in a dessert), the artwork looked almost Todd McFarlane, and the story is great for those of us who dig Biblical mythology as mythology.

Best Movie: Iron Man 2. This film was what a sequel should be. The producers and director took what they had and improved it modestly, rather then trying to go over the damn top. The jury is still out on Tron Legacy and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is half a film (BUT A DAMN GOOD HALF A FILM) meanwhile I have yet to see a lot of the oscar contenders I wanted to see.

Best Television Series: This year it was How I Met Your Mother. I am looking at this show going “I see my college life in this!”

Best New Song: the Geek and Gamer Girls song, by Team Unicorn.

Best New Person: Carrie. Sometimes people just bump into each other and a strong friendship forms, go figure.

Best Old Friend: Pamela. Hey, weren’t you on my “worst” list last year? Shows how people can make up despite some pretty heavy disputes.

Best “what the hell am I doing moment”: Taking some corny ass fan fics with my buddy Chris and I, and saying “lets make our OWN Battletech sourcebook out of this!”

Best new hobby: Lighting a stick on fire and twirling it around.

Best excuse to have a beer: “you just finished your beer!”

Best Nerd Moment: Playing Dungeons and Dragons, and my wife pulls a spell from her characters list. The DM characterizes the spell as Black pool surrounding an area, and tentacles coming up to crush the dragonmen, and we all start making it sound more like Henai then D&D!

Best “this will be regretted later”: finally getting a tattoo. It’s A Steiner fist to represent my son.



Worst Video Game: Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. finally got it on gamefly 2 months after Call of Duty Black Ops came out. Expect a future Arbitration on this, but the short of it is I am getting tired of competitive multiplayer engines.

Worst Movie: Wolfman. I seriously did not emote with the character at all, like I would expect in modern film remakes.

Worst Television Series: South Park, seriously it is getting to the point where only one or two episodes a year are memorable, and the rest is just gags on the news.

Worst New Song: the “Roommate Song” by Brentalfloss

Worst New Person: Sarah. Girl you broke my best friend’s heart, all cause you are refusing to deal with your shit.

Worst old Friend: sadly I can not name anyone without being guilty of something myself. So I will instead apologize to everyone who thought I was a total fuck-tard this past year.

Worst “what the hell am I doing moment”: trying to drive strait through to Indianapolis from Kansas City in the wee hours, we had to get a motel overnight at Pon Du Hoc Indiana.

Worst New Hobby: making resin recasts of miniatures.

Worst Excuse to Have a Beer: seeing your mother, much as she drives you crazy, in a medically induced coma

Worse Nerd Moment: Watching Transformers Prime, and realizing that Peter Cullen and Frank Welker really are not that good at Optimus Prime and Megatron…

Worst “this will be regretted later.” Agreeing to take all of my grandfathers unopened model airplanes. While my wife may be doing the leg-work on selling them, it has been slow.

And for a third part of this “things in 2011 I am looking forward to

Video game for 2011: Duke Nukem Forever. I have not said that in 10 years. The game that time forgot apparently will be out around my birthday. It better cure cancer after the 12 year wait.

Movie for 2011: Conan. “Hither came Conan, the Cimmerian, black-haired, sullen-eyed, sword in hand, a thief, a reaver, a slayer, with gigantic melancholies and gigantic mirth, to tread the jeweled thrones of the Earth under his sandalled feet."

Television: for Piers Morgan to be able to overcome the “He is not Larry King” wall he faces.

Event: As always Gencon 2011

Concert: I really want to see Godsmack on stage again

News Event: Der Pope to keel over and lets get someone less Euro-Centric in the papacy

Comedy- Furry Comic, and cool entertainer 2 The Ranting Gryphon to continue his mainstream rise and get a Comedy Central Half hour.

Books- I just want to be impressed by a writer again.

What is a Man?

Castlevania was one of those Nintendo games that while popular at least in my social circle, I never owned myself. My first encounter came with going to my cousins house and she popped in a game, saying it was about Dracula. My mind crept to Christopher Lee, who was the popular Dracula at the time, and old school horror movies of the Universal and Hammer Vintage.

And then she hit start, and I beheld a man with a whip, and one of the most awesome video game musical scores I EVER HEARD.

The three Castlevania games on the Super Nintendo were not a massive revolution. Their scope only seemed more epic then Mario Brothers or many of the one word Nintendo titles like Karate or Golf because of the sheer variety of levels. Castlevania succeeded because it created an atmosphere. You as a lone man going through a castle and taking on every mythical creature and classic monster you could possible think of, and even Death himself all to destroy Count Dracula. This game was literally every kid’s fantasy if they were fascinated by horror and monster movies.

The plot of the series is centered right on stokers Dracula mythos, taking place primarily between the 11th and 18th centuries. Mathaias Cronqvist, who assumes the name of Dracula, is a vampire and count of Wallachia. Because of his vampiric nature he is a natural enemy of the Belmont clan of vampire hunters. In the first game (in terms of production) Simon Belmont, follows in his grandfather’s foot steps to ONCE AGAIN suppress a resurgent Dracula.

Resurgence and suppression is the main theme. It is acknowledged that Vamparisim, particularly Dracula’s Curse, can not ever be truly destroyed, merely battled. Throughout the series many characters that may be allies in one game are manipulated into foes in the next, creating on ongoing cycle of valor, betrayal, and redemption. Most of this is explored in latter games with more sophisticated platforms and the ability to better explore narrative.

As awesome as the setting was and a wonderful challenge to conquer, Castlevania was one of those games that defined “Nintendo Hard.” Aside from managing the maze of bullets and bad guys you had the three fatal flaws in the game to contend with.

The first flaw was that if your character got hit, at all, by anything, he would be propelled back a good four tiles. This can sometimes lead to you being able to clear a gap you would have trouble jumping, but most of the time it shoved you into a bottomless pit, or more bad guys.

Fatal flaw number 2 is that when your character had to climb stairs, he is fundamentally defenseless. Later games allowed you to attack on stars, which helped a bit, but when you are climbing a staircase between twin columns of fire breathing dragon skulls, expletives will leave your mouth.

The final flaw is the inability to control your jumps. When you are stark still, you jump strait up, and when you are moving forward, you jump forward a set distance. You can not short change your jumps, or perform any course corrections in mid air. And while games receive high praise for realism these days, on the NES THAT level of realism is a handicap.

Over the years Castlevania has produced over 30 games on over a dozen platforms, making it perhaps the most wide spread of the Nintendo 8. These days most Castlevania games have abandoned the linear progression in favor of a more exploratory format. 8 bit chip tunes have passed in favor of orchestral scores. But the core of the series remains the same. The twilight always comes, Dracula’s Curse lives on, and children of the night will dance once more in the woods of Romania.

Hope you all have a wonderful new year, it will be 2011 when we come back to take a look at memories of one of the most loved, yet hated, Nintendo turned gaming franchises, Ninja Gaiden!

Sorry to keep you waiting!

In an age where franchises in all popular media are being turned through the meat grinder for any last ounce of profit they can generate, one kid had been left behind. Kid Icarus was a gem of a game that was largely left behind in the great Nintendo boom of the 1980s and early 90s. It was known largely for its unforgiving difficulty, unique story and setting and quality music.

The story takes its roots in a hybrid of Greek mythology and Christian demonology. You play as an angel named Pit; whose “Land of Good” was invaded by an army of monsters from the “Land of Evil.” I shit you not, the plot is that much of a trope. So you as a surviving angel are given a bow by the gods and told “go forth and conquer.”

Graphically the game was built on the same “guts” as fellow cult classic Metroid. You can tell with the jump physics, and even the patterns that some on screen enemies move. Musically it had a style all its own though. Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka provided four six tracks (massive for the NES) that gave an ambiance any Dungeons and Dragons player would love for their own games. Not nearly as up beat as Mario’s over world theme, nor as depressing as Zelda’s Dungeon music, Kid Icarus Soundtrack managed to capture a sense of epic adventure and wonder.

In terms of game play, Kid Icarus was a platformer that managed to work out two sub genres in one game. The first sub genre was typical platforming, with the twist of stages being largely vertical since the goal is to “retake heaven.” The second type of plat forming genre is the dungeon crawl, where three levels are set up in a castle like area.

The game was mind blowingly difficult though. You started bare bones in the game, with next to no health, and a weapon with no power and range. The vertical nature of the game meant falls off the screen were lethal and enemies could hurt you in was you did not expect.

Most famous of these said enemies was the so called “egg plant wizard” a purple one eyed magician who instead of damaging you transformed you into a walking eggplant, preventing you from attacking or using any of the items you collected along with way until you were uncursed.

Kid Icarus was praised critically for the past 25 years, despite only having one sequel on the Game Boy console. Released in 1991 “Of Myths and Monsters” was largely a port of the classic game, with a minimally enhanced story and few additions.

The classic Nintendo game reach something of a cult item, retaining a certain popularity. Four Nintendo consoles passed up the opportunity for a full blown new game however, with only the Wii paying homage to the character in the crossover orgasm Super Smash Brothers Brawl.

It was not until the 2010 E3 this past year when Reggie Fils-Amie was pimping Nintendo’s latest handheld and showed us a very special trailer.

Video Games | Kid Icarus: Uprising | E3 2010: Debut Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Sorry to keep us waiting indeed. Whatever took you so long Pit, We are just glad to have you back.

Next time we will return to the original schedule and I will talk Castlevania.

TwouptwodownleftrightleftrightBA

Contra was not exactly a compelling game. The plot, like most in the NES series was a single four sentence paragraph that really served as a meager justification as to WHY you pumped quarters into the arcade machine. Your in game avatar was a silly knock off of the shirtless John Rambo, complete with a little bandanna, and you ran to the left and shot up billions of dollars of military hardware in the jungle. The game stayed that way until the very last level, which then made it look like the game should have been an “Aliens” arcade game.

Contra was a game for the Nintendo that characterized several things that are important for gaming as a whole. It clearly demonstrated that tight mechanics are important to narrative, and that a shallow game experience can be made up for by extreme difficulty.

Contra also reflected a fundamental misunderstanding of early video game producers. The limited lives and continues of early NES titles were brought to simulate the effect of being in a real arcade operating an actual cabinet. Lath meant limiting lives, something many video games continue to do this day, but also limiting the number of “continues” fabrication to represent limited pocket change. This created a whole slew of Nintendo game that demanded exceptional skill on part of the players to even finish.

Konami got around this with one simple keystroke combination though that spread like wildfire. The button pattern Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right B,A, entered before you started the game gave you 30 lives in the game, including after continues.

This key combination spread like wildfire in the 1980s, quite remarkable considering that the internet as we knew it was in it’s infancy. Word of mouth was powerful though, and it inspired game producers to include other so called “cheat codes” into games, or sometimes even allow players to enter a “debug” mode allowing you to fully customize your game experience.

Wow, I really did not have much to say about this game after all. Enjoy this music video then.

next time I will talk about the most under appreciated NES game, Kid Icarus