3 posts tagged “retro”

Broken is my absolute new hero for finding this for me.

Old school game tracks done on the Ukelele... how can it NOT be perfect?

Despite lacking blue spikes, basic plumbing skills or a kickass yo-yo and mermaid girlfriend, gamers tend to find a surprising amount in common with the heroes of their favorite games. Perhaps this connection comes from the inherent everyman-nature of the game protagonist, allowing every gamer to say “yes, I too know what it is to fight against the endless swarms of winged eyeballs. I too know that when the time comes I must use whatever tools are at my disposal, be they dodgeballs or boxer shorts, to right the wrongs of the world and rescue my princess.”

Whatever the nature of this connection, as a boy I connected with one protagonist so tightly that I swore off of eggplant until my early twenties. Kid Icarus was a hero for the ages.

The concept behind this game was a hybrid at a time when the established genres were only just being actually established, like God creating horses and Jello on the same day. I imagine the scene went something like this:

Nintendo Designer 1: <I say we make a vertical shooter next!>
Nintendo Designer 2: <No way! Its time for a platformer! There need to be more platformers out there, because platformers aren’t annoying at all!>
ND1: <Hmmm … I think I might have something here. Remember that time we took LSD and saw that eggplant with feet jumping into a hot tub …>

In the early days of Nintendo games, concept and content were purely separate ideas.
Game: Blaster Master
Concept: Pet frog turns into a tank when it falls into a hole in hero’s back yard
Content: Metroid-style shooter action with permanent powerups.

Game: Bionic Commando
Concept: Evil cyborg Hitler clone attacks the future
Content: shooter with “dangling” and near-impossible difficulty level

Game: Gyromite
Concept: Mad scientist … pillars
Content: Actually, that’s the basic content of Gyromite

So for Kid Icarus, the concept would be something like: Icarus fights Medusa, angels.

But the content … wow.

Let’s start with our hero, whose name is Pit despite the game being named Kid Icarus. Pit has wings and a bow, much like any angel. However, Pit’s wings are more for show than flight, perhaps an issue of stunted growth, and his bow shoots paltry distances at best. Also, Pit is an angel, a Judeo-Christian concept of semi-deity, trapped in a world of Greco-Roman names, imagery and gods. I’m not sure that’s every addressed though …

Pit is charged with saving Palutena, who has been kidnapped by Medusa. In addition, Pit must also rescue all of his fellow angel friends, who have been turned to stone by Medusa. Thankfully, Medusa’s spell can be counteracted by beating your stone friends over the head with a hammer. No, seriously.

From the onset, Kid Icarus provides an enjoyable challenge. Old school games involved learning the timing and memorizing the patterns, and Kid Icarus stays true to its course. Pit must jump increasingly difficult platforms to reach the top of each level, all the while attacking the various baddies and flying wombats who both pace the platforms and descend from on high ala Space Invaders. To kill said foes, Pit uses his short-range bow to pick off the baddies and collect their dropped goodies.

Every once in a while, Pit also entered into a labyrinth level of sorts, very similar to the palaces in Zelda 2: The Sidescrolling Link.  In these labyrinths, the game turned sidescrolling and Pit had to navigate the maze to reach a boss. In addition, the Labyrinths provided shops and permanent powerups, such as longer ranged attacks or revolving fireballs which actually gave the arrows more of a hit range (perfect for hitting the low-crawling baddies). Somehow the transition from vertical- to side-scrolling worked, and added a strange level of depth and progress to a game that might otherwise feel like “just another shooter/platformer.” Not that there were any other shooter/platformers at the time.

The labyrinths also had some challenges, like a shell-game type treasure room that might yield a Credit Card (for use at the Black Market shop) or mighty Zeus who MIGHT give you some power ups depending on his arbitrary bitchiness at the time of your arrival. Also, any of the stone friends you freed throughout the levels leading up to the Labyrinth would also show up to help you beat the boss of the level, though even in their armor they died in one hit. It was touches like these that really set Kid Icarus apart form other, more simple games of its day. All of these oddities added up to an actually deep gameplay experience that rewarded patience and attention to detail.

Progressing to the last level, the game turned pure shooter as Pit collected the mirror shield, some crappy helmet, actual man-wings, and a kickass laser-bow to use on the slowly-flying final level of the game. The treat of the game was that the last level, vastly different than any other level of the game, was surprisingly fitting and somehow plot-appropriate to the game on the whole. Of course Pit was flying and kicking ass finally; that’s what he’s been working towards. Like when Rambo finally ties that red hankie around his forehead, and you just know that he’s activated his Brown People Killing Powers, and all hell’s about to be blown to smithereens by some freaking explosive tipped water balloons or some shit like that!

Anyway, that’s basically what the last level is like.

Medusa, in the end, reveals herself to be nothing more than a giant face stuck to a wall, typical boss fodder for a shooter (though hardly an adequate explanation for kidnapping a goddess or even bowel movements). Her lasers are easily dodged using the giant Mirror Shield, and Pit’s kickass laser arsenal blows a hole right through her stupid face to reveal Palutena! Yay! Now for some snuggling.

To drive the point home, if you beat enough of your friends over the head with a hammer throughout the game, Pit transforms in a fully muscled and manly version of an angel. And rumor has it that there’s even an ultimate ending where in addition to being all muscley Pit also sports a kickass mustache! Now that’s a man!

But the lasting impression left by Kid Icarus, at least on this young lad, was the cheapest, dirtiest, and most reset-inducing enemy in the history of all gaming ever; the Eggplant Wizard. The eggplant wizard isn’t much of a wizard at all. He’s more like a man with an eggplant for a head who throws eggplants at his foes in the hopes of turning them into eggplants. These eggplants are less “thrown” than “lobbed like a softball to a 4 year old,” and yet they were somehow impossible to avoid. When transformed into an eggplant with feet, Pit was mostly only able to run around and get into a where he could regain his health but remain an eggplant and remember the good old days of having arms and a head.

There was probably a way to revert to an angel again, but I found the most effective method of dealing with the Eggplant Wizard was to throw my controller on the ground, hit something, and then reset the game with enough force as to possibly break my NES. 2 hours later, when I finally finished inputting the 150,000 character password, I was on my way to killing those eggplanty fucks agian!

Sadly, Kid Icarus appears to have been lost to the ages. A sequel never materialized on either shore other than a less-worthy gameboy title. And yet E3 2006 gave gamers new hope with the appearance of a new playable character in the upcoming Wii title Super Smasbrothers Something Something.

The constant question when going all retro is wondering how games hold up against the test of time. Not only have difficulty levels and expectations of content and plot replaced a willingness to attempt the same level a dozen times before finally beating it, but control schemes and graphics have made leaps and bounds since the days of the NES. Does Kid Icarus really stand the test of time?

I for one will never play it again to find out. And sure, a part of that is not wanting to destroy a wonderful memory of something I consider near-perfect…. But also, I just hate those fucking Eggplant Wizards THAT much.

Coming Soon: Princess Tomato, Wallstreet Kid, Skate or 720fornia Games presented by T&C, and the Power Pad! As always, suggestions welcomed.

    My many many readers will know that perhaps my favorite game of all time is a little ditty by the name of Secret of Mana. The sequel to a Gameboy title (named Final Fantasy Adventure stateside), SOM combined Square's epic and overwraught storytelling with elements of steampunk, the gameplay style of Zelda and the leveling and skill increases of an RPG. The combination, made even sweeter by the inclusion of multi-player functionality, made for what is still the predominant gaming experience of my wasted indoor-exiled youth. To this fan at least, SOM was the pinnacle of gaming and no experience, not even FF7, can come close to the combination of where I was in my life and how this game effected me.

    In Japan, Square release the sequel to Secret of Mana, which would have been aptly titled "Secret of Mana 2" in the US. I say "would have," because due to the prevailing mindset of game companies in the 1990's, Japanses games such as the Secret of Mana series were only given a one-shot appearance and then kept from the American shores so that gamers like myself could suffer through more rounds of Night Trap or Kriss Kross "Make My Video." Instead of the true sequel to Secret of Mana, American gamers were handed somehting apparently more our speed (if our speed was equivalent to a retarded turtle glued to the floor); Secret of Evermore.

    Developed by the American Square team, SOE was a more Americanized or possible Americeriffic version of the Secret of Mana engine. Using the same system of moving a character, killing things and gaining experience, Secret of Evermore disregarded things like cutesy characters and dialogue-heavy, philosophically-driven plotlines for bones and robots made of toasters. Instead of a kickass fantasy setting, gamers were thrust into the ever-popular "Character lost in the movies experiences multiple-themed worlds like Prehistoric-past and Retro-Futuristic Space Station!" What at the time seemed like a cool chance to see a lot of different landscapes as a gamer now comes across as insecure designers trying to show off as much as possible in what might be their only chance to ever make a game given the degree of Suckitude of said game.

    In other words, what a crappy premise. Hero gets sucked into a movie screen with his dog and must travel through different movie-themed worlds in order to get home or save the princess who is in another castle or possible fight zombies until a winner is you.

    Another aspect of this game that receieved "special" treatment is the game's protagonist; A. Boy. I don't think there's actually any punctuation in his name, but it's either refer to him as this or "Douchebag McWorstever" and the first sounds a bit simpler. As one can tell from the stunning portrait of the game's protagonist ... nay, its Hero, the concept for A. Boy was developed by combining America's favorite teenage/fortysomething hero, Marty McFly (as played by TV's Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future 1-3) with a bone. This bone, an equipable weapon through much of the game, is used not only to slay level-specific themed baddies, but also to keep shit in line by making threatening gestures (as seen in the image to the right). Said gestures are going to come in handy when players meet the primary plot device, the boy's dog.

    Depending on which hilariously themed level the player is traversing, be it the Egyptian Pyramid level or the Prehistoric Swamp, Dog will assume the body of an appropriate type of dog. For instance, in the future, the dog is actually a flying toaster who shoots lasers and burnt bread at enemies or some such crap. The dynamics between the boy and his dog are obviously hilarious, so I won't ruin the story by mentioning them .......... sigh.

    But the important thing here is to discuss why SOE was so terrible. And it was terrible. One time a fanboy of Square got into a bit of a verbal disagreement with me (imagine two sissies wildly slapping their arms at one another) over SOE and the lesser Final Fantasy child, FF5. Both, he proclaimed, were "pretty good for their time" and "had a lot to enjoy." Using the Google Babbleshit Translator, I was able to discern that even a fanboy is hard pressed to find much to enjoy from there games besides graphical representations of Vagina Bugs (obviously Japanese-inspired) and the cameo appearance of Cecil (protagonist of FF4) who has now settled down and opened a weapons shop with his wife Rosa. SPOILER!

    But the real crime of SOE was its theft and subsequent misuse of all things Secret of Mana. The graphics were subpar and often glitchy, the controls were loose and often unresponsive, the deep system of weapon and magic upgrading was replaced with a pointless system of "alchemy" and a limited number of weapons which only changed when the character moved to a new level. All sense of the serious and emotionally-driven plot was replaced with kitch and cliche. Even the imaginative world of SOM was replaced with rehashed and uninspired crap and the most boring boss fights possible. The game was dumbed down, the ultimate insult to what Square thought American gamers wanted and needed. And sadly, in a lot of ways they were right. Games like Secret of Mana, despite their quality, did mediocre sales in America, while games like SOE, the product of the cross-breeding of a poo with a vial of vomit, did just as well.

    Ultimately, even with a glitchy battle system that allowed for easy pillar kills (when a sprite's reach unfairly hits an enemy sprite on the opposite side of a physical barrier due to graphic and mapping limitations or carelessness), the game wasn't so terrible that I left it behind. At the time I had NoFX's "Heavy Petting Zoo" and would listen to Philthy Phil Philanthropist on repeat while playing through the Antiqua level of the game. Forever is that song ruined by the mediocrity of Evermore, but the memory is strong nonetheless. Sure, the ending blew, but there was at least a small amount of the beauty of SOM in there to keep me engaged until that end.

    I promptly sold my copy of SOE after I beat the game, and have never once gone back. I find it difficult to truly dislike things in life, be they half-baked movies or crappy, poorly written books. I always seem to find SOMETHING to love about the fruits of people's labors.

    In the end, the best thing to say about Secret of Evermore is exactly that. It certainly is a collection of things that a lot of people did. So kudos on that.