Nintendo 3DS ‘Ambassador’ program reminds us of primitive goodness and frustration with free NES games.

Surprisingly, Nintendo seemed to have uploaded their free Nintendo Entertainment System games for their 3DS ‘Ambassadors’ a day earlier than they had announced. Typically I’m sitting around in the afternoon to evening waiting for something new to show up on the Virtual Console. I think Nintendo is still trying to figure out this newfangled “internet” business the kids are raving about today.

The NES games are Nintendo’s thanks to folks who purchased their Nintendo 3DS device at the original $249 price tag before it was officially lowered to $169 last month due more than likely to unmet sales expectations. 10 Game Boy Advance games were also included in this reward package. Five have been confirmed.

The following GBA games have been confirmed as of this entry:

• Mario Kart: Super Circuit (2001)
• Metroid: Fusion (2002)
• Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi’s Island (1995, 2002)*
• Wario Ware, Inc.: Mega Microgame$ (2003)
• Mario vs. Donkey Kong (2004)

*Super Mario Advance 3: Yoshi’s Island is a Game Boy Advance port of the 1995 Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island originally on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3 (1990, 2003) has been rumored to be part of the package.

Leave it to Nintendo to refrain from keeping it simple, however. Their interface for browsing has typically been notoriously convoluted. Unless there was another way some of us completely missed, this is how you access your free NES games:

1. Access the Nintendo eShop from the 3DS menu.
2. Tap ‘Menu’
3. Find and tap ‘Settings / Other’
4. Find and tap ‘Your Downloads’
5. Find one of the NES games such as Super Mario Bros. and tap ‘Redownload’
6. Once the download finishes, repeat Step 2…

I’m not even kidding. When it asks if you’d like to continue, you are taken back to the first eShop menu, and it becomes a lather and repeat process for all six steps. I use a very good internet connection at home, but folks who aren’t so lucky may be sitting tight for a bit.

Nintendo released the following games, and I will be talking about some of them today:

• Donkey Kong, Jr. (1982)
• Balloon Fight (1984)
• Ice Climbers (1985)
• Wrecking Crew (1985)
• Super Mario Bros. (1985)
• Metroid (1986)
• The Legend of Zelda (1986)
• Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987)
• NES Open Tournament Golf (1991)
• Yoshi (1992)

Possibly the most successful spin-off of all time. /kanyewest

Super Mario Bros.

A long lost gem by Nintendo, never to be ever revisited–who am I kidding? You know what this is. Your grandmother knows who he is. Moses knew what Super Mario Bros. was and he split the Red Sea in two to find a copy. This was just the beginning of an empire, domination of a world whose subjects would lovingly get down on their knees and bow to a little man in red overalls. To be honest, I’m not one hundred percent on whether Super Mario Bros. was actually a launch game for the NES. Eventually Nintendo sold NES consoles that included the more common Super Mario Bros. / Duck Hunt two-in-one cartridge in addition to the gray Zapper gun accessory (I think). It is famously Mario’s first real grand adventure having legally changed his name from “Jumpman” and moving to bigger and better things from climbing ladders and avoiding barrels in Donkey Kong (1981). Super Mario Bros. is just about my age, and it’s still one of the most accessible games ever developed. The challenge is perfect. It’s still a fun way to kill a little time if you decide not to use any warp zone pipes. The concept and world design was crazy enough to keep running with it for decades. Its retro graphics have not aged well, but arguably everything else has. In a time now where people are playing quick games on their mobile phones and people embracing indie-developed homages like Super Meat Boy, the old has inverted into new. Playing this straight (that is to say, without any warping), I was able to get to 7-3 before I finally saw a Game Over screen. Remind me to try that Koopa turtle 1-Up trick next time.

Joust, Nintendo style.

Balloon Fight

Balloon Fight is the surprise hit of this collection for me and possibly my favorite in this collection. This is most likely because of my strange obsession with the 1982 Williams Electronics arcade game Joust. In Joust, you repeatedly tap a button to make your character’s giant ostrich fly around while trying to take out enemy characters on their ostriches before they have a chance to do the same to you. You are, well, jousting. I am not a great Joust player, but I love the idea and the design and the execution. Balloon Fight takes this idea and spins it into a friendlier “I’m a guy floating on a balloon and I need to take these birds out before they take me out over water instead of lava.” I think it’s even better embracing the game as an adult because of the hilarious concept and the hilarious idea of birds needing to float on balloons rather than just flying around. The fact that a man is taking birds out of the sky when they may have more of a right to be there than he does is something to ponder. Maybe they believe in fair competition, which explains why it’s one man versus about five or six birds per stage. Not to recycle the point, but much like Super Mario Bros. I found it to be a very fun pick-up-and-play kind of game and it’s the kind of thing you will find today in some mobile app stores. There is a two-player mode, but I’m not actually sure that’s supported on the 3DS. The third mode is “Balloon Trip,” which has the player trying to keep the balloon guy afloat dodging lightning bolts and popping other balloons. Thumbs up, I say.

The world's hungriest dragon.

Yoshi

To be perfectly honest, there isn’t much I feel I can say on Yoshi. It seemed like Nintendo wanted to get its fill of puzzle games in like Dr. Mario and Yoshi’s Cookie after the success of Tetris on Game Boy. In this game, you mix and match Mario’s recognizable rogue’s gallery and essentially score points connecting the same enemies together. Score good combos and keep the queues from spilling over and resulting in a Game Over. Occasionally, top and bottom halves of Yoshi’s eggs will drop, and if you manage to sandwich in many enemies in between the halves, you can score a lot of bonus points and hatch a Yoshi. This is an okay little time-waster, but there is something more appealing about Dr. Mario and Tetris. Yoshi feels rather limited.

Cruelty in a box.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

I should probably alert you to the fact that I didn’t exactly play this on the 3DS, but I recently did play it on the Wii Virtual Console from beginning to end. Zelda II has a bit of gained infamy over the years because it’s a bit of a departure from the design of The Legend of Zelda, which preceded it. The side-scrolling combat of Zelda II would never really see its way into any future two-dimensional entry of the series, nor would the idea of gaining experience points to strengthen health or magic or attacks. We would see the idea of visiting towns and talking to non-player characters who dispense more useless advice than useful in future games. Zelda II might be remembered for two things, if anything: “I am Error,” and its difficulty.

Like the first game, the player travels to several palaces to defeat the boss and find an important item for later use. Honestly, it feels like you as the player don’t have much to go on when not only unlocking new spells, but discovering locations and especially the locations of the palaces of Hyrule. In 2011, this would be a complaint, but I remember that in the ancient calendar year of 1988, a lot of secrets that weren’t hinted at were most likely only available through an issue of Nintendo Power. It’s probably how Nintendo got you to get a subscription! A lot of the game’s difficulty comes in the palaces, where you meet an entirely different set of enemies compared to the ones you run into in the game’s overworld map. In addition, many enemies are just as skilled with a blade as Link is, and you have to maneuver and time your hits to even get a hit in of maybe five just to get to a new area. The palaces become mazes and some areas are accessed in ways that are so not made clear. Unfortunately, if you lose all of your lives (yet another feature that would never be revisited in this series), you start all over from Zelda’s palace where she rests (until you wake her by acquiring the Triforce of Courage) and you have to make your way all the way back. This got especially infuriating at Death Mountain on your way to the final palace. Death Mountain is the stuff of nightmares, with its cruel enemies and their cruel patterns. It is also the game’s real test of courage not only for Link, but for us, who were willing to toil away all those hours gaining strength, to summon the courage needed to face that final palace, where heroes are forged. *ahem* Sorry, got carried away there. The point is, that place is a bitch!

Haunting your childhood dreams.

Zelda II is arguably the least appreciated game in the Legend of Zelda series, but it does have its charm and its difficulty is the stuff of legends. I always applauded Nintendo’s efforts to experiment with different ideas (and that does not include slapping Mario sprites on Doki Doki Panic! and calling it Super Mario Bros. 2) when they did. I was personally relieved when I finished the game finally, compared to my sadness when I finished Ocarina of Time 3D.

It may be a little off for me to jump right into talking about Zelda II without even discussing The Legend of Zelda, but I intend to get to it soon now that I have access to it again. I used to have the Gamecube Collector’s Disc edition from 2003, which had the NES games, Ocarina of Time, and Majora’s Mask but I sold it off.

The next entry will, of course, cover more NES games in this package as I get to them.

Dead Space 2: Permanent Markers

It takes a crazy man to face the trauma, horror, and insanity a second time that haunted him years earlier, and Isaac Clarke is crazy enough to do it. He took on monsters that invaded the doomed spaceship the Ishimura in 2008′s Dead Space, a surprise hit from EA and Visceral Games (then EA Redwood Shores). The game drew its plot and mood from films like Alien and Event Horizon. It drew its control from Resident Evil 4 and even improved it in ways. The combination worked well enough to continue Isaac’s troubled journey in Dead Space 2, set years after the events on the Ishimura.

We find Isaac this time in a hospital on a station called the Sprawl. Seemingly, he’s being treated for the trauma from the Ishimura, but his reintroduction is so brief that before you take in the fact that he now has a voice, you’re practically hitting the ground running the moment the game begins. Isaac is strapped in a straitjacket and you have to dodge the game’s enemies, the Necromorphs, as you make your way to an elevator to escape. The game feels like it really starts the moment you acquire the first of a few engineering suits in the game.

Isaac is greeted by an old friend.

Most of Dead Space 2 will feel familiar right away: the RIG (health meter), the stasis function that allows you to freeze enemies in place, the weapons, the overall feel and mood. The gameplay bears the same concept: proceed to an objective, battle the Necromorphs hidden everywhere, get something done, upgrade equipment, try not to die. The kind of game that Dead Space is means it doesn’t require a whole lot of retooling, just a few fixes here and there, a few this game did get.

As you guide Isaac through the Sprawl, you will encounter a few characters along the way: fellow patient and crazy guy Stross, who seems to be the key to destroying the Marker, the symbol of being and hope and life for the game’s Unitology cult that spawned the demonic and murderous Necromorphs. There is also Ellie, a pilot for CEC, the mining company that made the whole “planet cracking” process possible that more or less allowed this whole mess to happen.

Throughout the story, Isaac has moments of hallucination and breaks down as he is haunted by the ghost of Nicole, his girlfriend who served aboard the Ishimura before the Necromorphs took over. One of Dead Space 2′s themes is acceptance, and Isaac is struggling to accept Nicole’s death, but that part of him that can’t let go is infected by the Marker, who wants Isaac to get to it.

Certain elements of Dead Space are gone. In replacement of boss battles and shooting asteroids, the game has ramped up the amount of Necromorphs you fight. There are many moments where Isaac will have to destroy a swarm of them and they come in waves. In one fight, I counted about five or six in one swarm. Sometimes it gets frustrating and can feel cheap, especially when some of the monsters appear from right behind you without you even knowing. The final segments of the game take this to a whole new level, for better or worse. Hopefully you will have enough ammo for your weapons. Speaking of which, in addition to their upgrades, done at benches that can add more ammo to a clip or increase damage, you can actually reverse the process. For 5,000 credits, you can remove nodes from upgraded weapons and place them somewhere else. I didn’t actually use this feature, but it’s certainly nice to have.

The zero gravity areas are back and improved upon. Isaac can now travel anywhere in the Zero G area rather than find hopping points. If he strays too far from a landing point, a simple push of the button will orient him to the ground for landing. There weren’t that many to be found and, although it’s nice to see improvements, add very little to the experience.

Although the game remains identical to the first, the overall plot was underwhelming. Although I truthfully consider the entire Unitology and Marker plotlines to take a backseat to the intensity and fear, one aspect of the plot that was especially disappointing was its exploration of Isaac’s mental stability, or lack thereof. His anguish actually has a purpose, but its primary source feels like a copout. That could have been something, and didn’t deliver. The game also doesn’t do a well enough job to get the player to sympathize with the broken relationship between Isaac and Nicole. We didn’t know that much about them before the Marker entered their lives although we’re supposed to assume they were very close. I actually saw more chemistry between Isaac and Ellie.

Dead Space 2 is an improvement in all of the right places, and leaves alone what isn’t broken. For better or worse, it takes the “action packed sequel” route but does a decent enough job in execution. It is wonderfully produced though. The visuals are some of the most beautifully dreary set pieces in a game, and the lighting is exceptional. Although I find it to be a decent at best sequel, I commend Visceral Games for the effort they put into its design.

4/5

Vanquish: Ballet of Bullets

I do apologize for not having written anything in almost two months. Although I have been playing my fair share of games, I don’t necessarily feel 2011 is starting off as hot as I would have liked.

One of those games I’ve been playing (and playing over) is Vanquish, Sega’s attempt at a Western-style third-person shooter a la Gears of War. It was developed by Platinum Games, makers of Bayonetta (played by millions) and Madworld (played by three people). I only played Bayonetta as a demo and while I did get a kick out of it, at the time I didn’t feel it was for me. It’s pretty cheap now, so maybe I’ll give it a go.

 

Seriously. It's like Iron Man versus Mega-Michael Bay-tron.

Vanquish is the story of a group of Russian ultranationalists (videogames’ new Third Reich apparently) who annihilate San Francisco and seize an American space colony, demanding the surrender of the United States government and oh really who cares? Let’s kill robots!

Yes, in what seems to be a subversion of sorts from other action games that wage virtual human against virtual human, Vanquish launches its own Judgment Day and decides humans should be fighting robots. The Russians have robots, lots and lots of robots. The US has DARPA, the Marines, and Sam Gideon, who the player will be controlling for the duration of this war. Sam is testing DARPA’s new fancy Augmented Reaction Suit that they dreamed up after watching the Iron Man movies far too many times. This suit is so advanced and cutting-edge that throwing a punch overheats the suit, taking too many hits overheats the suit, it allows Sam to fly skate around with boosters on his feet (ROCKET SKATES!), and did I mention throwing a punch overheats the suit? To be fair, he’s using the suit’s boosters to really drive the point home.

More or less the moment you take control of Sam, you’re in what is typically referred to as “bullet hell.” The robots are everywhere firing at you and your squadmates. Sam is armed with a number of weapons, although to be frank I pretty much ran through Vanquish twice with mostly the assault rifle and heavy machine gun. Along the way, you’ll find green cubes that allow you to upgrade the weapon, allowing for more ammo and greater firepower. In a nice addition, if your weapon is fully loaded, picking up the same weapon also upgrades it one rank.

Vanquish features that oh-so-familar cover system that you probably won’t be using that much if at all. Sam’s rocket skates allow him to glide all over the area and fire at enemies. When he does this, he enters into the Augmented Reaction mode, which is the nerdy way of saying “bullet time.” Everything slows down, allowing you, and thus Sam, to get better aiming at his foes without them ever getting a chance to turn their guns to you. Of course, do this for too long and the suit overheats. When the suit overheats, you better take cover immediately because those bullets WILL find you and the game does that annoying thing games do when you take damage, the screen turns red and starts having a seizure. Why do games do this? Hey, your screen is turning redder and redder and pulsing like the human body does! Although it’s now harder for you to see the screen and make out the situation to devise a quick strategic retreat, it’s just going to keep doing this until — ahh, there we go. Dead. Enjoy making up the last twenty minutes!

Speaking of those twenty minutes, it wouldn’t be a Japanese game without ridiculously cheap boss battles! I originally ran through Vanquish on Normal mode, and even then it was pretty damned tough. When I fought the first sub-boss, I was doing pretty well. The bosses have glowing parts that scream “PLEASE SHOOT HERE!” so that their core opens up for the smacking. I had almost taken him out, and then he shot what would be Iron Man’s chest beam times a thousand and boom, I am dead. Despite having destroyed the giant robot’s legs, I had to do it all over. 20 to 25 minutes gone. It wasn’t like the boss was difficult, either. The bosses are bullet sponges for the most part. Hell, it happened AGAIN when I had to fight two of them AT ONCE. Japanese developers love to do that, because they’re sadists. The strange thing is that you will fight some tough bosses, but the final boss is actually a piece of cake.

Vanquish is a pretty fun game for the most part, especially if you don’t think too much about it. I mean, you’re shooting robots in third-person with a regular assault rifle (or a rocket launcher, the “LFE Gun” that shoots like an energy bubble at enemies). It’s not new. In fact, it should be pretty stale, but I loved what a mess the battlefield was and how crazy the fights got. Marines get shot down, and if they’re hurting Sam can revive them for bonus ammo and new weapons. I ended up saving like 10 of 80 or so wounded. I wish the robots had been programmed not to shoot at people being treated like in World War II.

It can have some serious frustration at hand, but Vanquish both drove me crazy and entertained the heck out of me.

Do I have to start scoring things now? I guess if that’s how this goes now. 4 out of 5!