Occupy Fantasy Zone!

I’ve bought a number of games on the Wii Virtual Console, and aside from games I have actually played in my youth, I’m not positive that I’ve seen the endings of any of them. My reflexes may simply not be up to par versus 25 years of difficulty that combines fast reflexes, the skill to develop said reflexes, and old-fashioned luck. I was put to the test when my friend visited yesterday and she and I took to a SEGA Master System game from 1986 called Fantasy Zone.

Fantasy Zone was originally an arcade game that, going by its Wikipedia page, was ported to many consoles of the day (including the Nintendo Entertainment System, although it is not licensed and appeared under the “Tengen” brand). The Master System version is available on the Wii Virtual Console at 500 Wii Points.

Two players can enjoy Fantasy Zone, although it’s a matter of Player 2 waiting for Player 1 to lose a life before it’s their turn. Players control a ship called Opa Opa (I like saying “Opa Opa!” out loud) through eight levels in a much brighter, friendlier, more colorful version of what resembles Williams Electronics’ Defender from 1980. Shoot the enemy bases located throughout the stage while avoiding and shooting at as many enemies as possible. Defeated enemies drop coins for the player to spend at the shop that appears in the stage as a red orb. Upgrade Opa Opa’s engines for speed, wings for movement, and weapons for more firepower. In true retro gaming fashion, upgraded weapons are on a 15-second time limit which might not be useful for boss battles unless you get really lucky. Fantasy Zone has such a cute and radiant look about it that it almost seems like it uses it against you, as my friend and I came to learn that Fantasy Zone is a ridiculously hard game.

Fantasy Zone. Absurdity documented.

The only way to lose a life in Fantasy Zone is to take one bullet hit or simply touch the enemy, familiar to anybody who has played a side-scrolling shooter in the last two decades. That will seemingly happen a lot. I was using a Gamecube controller throughout my entire experience while my friend operated the Wii Classic Controller. I couldn’t tell you whether that was an improvement over the Master System controller. Regardless, Fantasy Zone is still a test of skill, some luck, and knowing where to place the pixels to avoid any kind of contact with the enemy. In our earlier runs, I was struggling, watching Opa Opa slowly fire its default beam and crashing into things I didn’t know were enemies. Then after looking at the on-screen manual, we discovered rapid fire! Rapid fire meant blazing through stages until the boss wiped the floor with us on some capacity. I very much enjoyed how surreal the bosses looked: stage one has what is basically a leafless stump version of the Whispy Woods boss from Nintendo’s Kirby games. It fires… well, we’ve decided they’re nuts — cashews or chestnuts, maybe. The second boss shoots its red nuts while shielded by blue walnuts. My favorite boss is probably the army of snowmen that come out of nowhere by round five.

The thing that really got my attention about the game is that it had a backstory that is represented by scrolling text when the main menu is left idle. In the “space year” of 6216, the “interplanetary money system” had collapsed and a group of menacing creatures is stealing money from all planets, so Opa Opa is sent to destroy these creatures who want to build an enemy fortress in the Fantasy Zone. So, somewhere in their solar system, planets are on the brink of economic collapse because of a small percentage of beings, and money taken back from these beings goes into (Opa Opa) defense spending. I wonder if the people that this affects are protesting at a park somewhere. Just kidding. Maybe Ronald Reagan was their leader! Okay, I’m done!

It’s unfortunate that I don’t have any real nostalgia for Fantasy Zone, since I was strictly a child of Nintendo in the ’80s. In fact, I don’t remember what drove me to purchase it on the Wii Virtual Console in the first place! I’m guessing my friend did recommend it to me, otherwise I might have confused it for another Master System game. Sometimes I do manage to confuse it for the Wonder Boy series. Fantasy Zone is such a great example of retro gaming. Highly recommended!

E3 2011: Nintendo’s iPad, the Wii U.

Color me intrigued, Nintendo.

I have owned my Nintendo Wii for three years this month, and my library has never exceeded more than ten games. It would be a disservice to call the console a failure, because the sales numbers would point and laugh at the idea. Much of the system’s charm came directly from Nintendo themselves, with games like Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Galaxy 2. The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, Donkey Kong Country Returns (my personal favorite), and the Metroid Prime trilogy offer some quality software for this console–except for the fact that this was the company’s attempt to please the “core” fan base while they showered those darned “casual” folks with mini-game compilations and time-wasters, some providing genuine fun, some amounting to nothing more than shovelware. Yesterday, as I watched Nintendo give their presentation at E3, I started to wonder whether I personally ever gave the Wii a chance at all. I’d been critical of their decisions, as have others: an internet service that is almost at an atrocious level compared to the likes of Xbox Live and PlayStation Network, delays for their own releases when their third-party support is weak and those third-party games that ARE critically well-received seeing no marketing, thus no sales, thus another criticism of the lack of third-party support. Combined with the fact that the Wii is incapable of high-definition past 480p, there is some justification to be critical of the Wii. Maybe I should have looked harder for the games, but these companies should have made more of an effort to show me, to wow me. I remain indifferent about the concept of motion-controlled gaming. It works when it works, and it doesn’t the rest of the time.

Nintendo heard the critics, for the most part, and unveiled their successor to the Wii: Wii U.

The Wii U Controller, resembling a tablet with a button and pad interface.

If you see the image above, this is not the console itself, but the controller, which Nintendo is far more keen to show us than the base on which it operates. It is, according to their web site, a pad with a 6.2-inch, 16:9 touch screen. It features the typical button face, two circle pads (like their 3DS handheld device as opposed to an analog stick), a camera, accelerometer and gyroscope, stylus, rumble, and a microphone. The first disappointing news already is that the touch screen is of the resistive variety, not capacitive, so it may not be as accurate using your fingers, but I imagine at least the stylus will suppress that. What was rather impressive is the ability for video chat on the controller, which I imagine will be just one of many features Nintendo will cook up for that camera. Oh, and the Wii U will still make use of the original Wii remote.

The Wii U will support HDMI output, along with S-video, component and composite. Nintendo will finally, finally deliver in HD.

Now here is where the real challenge lies for Nintendo. One of the major criticisms of the Wii was the lack of third-party support. Nintendo was rather ecstatic to show you the kinds of titles it has lined up, such as Ninja Gaiden (Tecmo), Batman: Arkham City (WB Games), Darksiders 2 (THQ), Assassin’s Creed (Ubisoft), and all things EA Sports. This could work for them. Could. Wii adopters were mostly classified as casual players, and now Nintendo has to sell these games, most if not all will appear on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, to them (which shouldn’t be too difficult) but especially convince the ‘core’ audience to play the Wii U version of the big-budget game. The issue here is that Nintendo has caught up in a race where the competition is ready to move forward. Sony’s PlayStation Vita will sync from handheld to the PS3 console just as the Wii U controller will do. In fact, the PlayStation Portable already does this with the PlayStation 3. Sony has mentioned that they are working however which way on the PlayStation 3 successor. Microsoft is keen on giving the Xbox 360 a few more years by adding more games for its Kinect motion-control device and whatever they are planning for the Xbox 360 successor.

I hope Nintendo is listening to the critics, no matter how asinine the argument, and I hope they have learned from the Wii. With this investment and the kind of technology you are delivering to curious consumers, there is no falling back on Mario or The Legend of Zelda for the numbers. They will have a number of things to consider, also. Ergonomic design of the controller, battery life, comfort, aesthetics (although it does look friendly). Your internet service needs to get people interested, finding a less cumbersome way of security that will give people peace-of-mind in the wake of the PlayStation Network but feel friendly, too. You need online stability as well. Above all, there is price. The price is always the moment you stand on thin ice. Too low depending on production and design costs, you sell at a loss and won’t see profits for at least two or three years, sell high, you drive away the customers and you have your “FIVE HUNDRED NINETY-NINE U.S. DOLLARS” moment you can’t live down for some time. There is absolute promise in this console, though. A Nintendo console offering HD visuals is good enough for now to attract the folks, but think ahead, especially in terms of 3DS cooperation.

Nintendo, what have U got?

E3 2010: Sony and Nintendo: ‘Hey! This isn’t Harry Potter…’

Time passes rather quickly. Already my writing an entry on E3 may already come off as ancient history, but while the event was taking place, two major events captured my attention: the madness of pre-ordering an iPhone 4, and the madness of the 2010 FIFA World Cup and the vuvuzelas that come with it.

I say this time, let’s cut to the chase so we can get back to our soccer/football/futbol, shall we?

Nintendo’s approach to appease its ‘hardcore’ fan base, the folks who enjoy jumping on Koopa Troopas and launching fireballs as the company’s mascot plumber Mario over a shooting gallery at a virtual carnival starring their Mii characters, used to offend me. Their only answer to this ‘problem’ was to just throw another Mario game at them, but folks ate them up. Games developed by third-party developers that aim to a less casual audience tend to flop and appear dead on arrival (Sega’s The Conduit and MadWorld, and EA’s Dead Space: Extraction are two examples). This year, Nintendo brought in the big guns, and while I won’t be playing some of their future titles right away, it brings me a sense of relief that they will be there. We have a new Legend of Zelda game, titled Skyward Sword, for the Wii. I have yet to play Twilight Princess, released in 2006, and during that period I had considered myself “retired” from the franchise. In 2007, I had attempted to play the Phantom Hourglass game on the DS, but gave up on it for a number of reasons. Skyward Sword boasts a visual mixture of Twilight Princess, and the love-it-or-hate-it Wind Waker (Gamecube, 2003). It has an extra flavor of an oil painting/illustrated storybook look that drew me in despite series creator Shigeru Miyamoto’s awkward demonstration of the game at the Nintendo presentation last week.

Nintendo spent a lot of the presentation discussing the capabilities of the Nintendo 3DS, and with games like a new Golden Sun (the first since The Lost Age, the second episode, released for the Game Boy Advance in 2003). I had to actually look up the title of the second Golden Sun game. I hadn’t played it since 2004. In addition to the first-party games (a potential new Star Fox and a Kid Icarus game after all these years), there is a lot of third-party support from the big names, including a Resident Evil game from Capcom, a Splinter Cell game from Ubisoft, and a Metal Gear Solid title from Konami. Color me sold.

I regret that I don’t have a whole lot to express about Sony’s time on the stage because, as I remember it, I was physically tired having been awake for a lot of the previous night. Sony discussed their premium service, of which I have no interest in. They managed to show up the Kinect with Move, their take on motion control, by showing a demonstration of a wizard-ing game called Harry Pott– I mean Sorcery. It can be generically described as “interesting,” and absolutely nothing to get excited over. I will stick with my Wii, that I have even decided to touch for the first time in over a year (thanks, Super Mario Galaxy 2!). One of the stronger highlights was the appearance by Gabe Newell, co-founder of Valve, and his promotion of the much anticipated Portal 2. That wasn’t the big deal. We all knew that. The extra added punch came in the announcement of Steamworks, which allows Mac and Windows users to play multiplayer games on the same servers with one another, and its compatibility on the PlayStation 3. That about topped off the sundae, chock full of Kevin Butler and his motivational “We’re gamers!” speech that provided some genuine humor, with the cherry on top that was the development of a Twisted Metal game, the first since Twisted Metal: Black (PlayStation 2, 2001).

That about does it for this year’s E3, among other things. I need to dock points here, though, or maybe throw a yellow flag on the field.

Microsoft — 5-yard penalty for that creepy Kinectimals segment.

Nintendo — 5-yard penalty for the awkward Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword demonstration. An addition 10-yard penalty for the GoldenEye remake and failure to understand why it was the monster that it was in 1997. They announce the 3DS and its lineup. The penalty is declined. First down.

Sony — 10-yard penalty for an uninteresting presentation. Kevin Butler speech and PS3 Steamworks. That penalty is declined. There is an additional 5-yard penalty for the inability to sell me on a PSP after five years, as well as the failure to sell Move.

Next time: I talk about the iPhone 4.

Pilot

I can’t remember the last time I had an ongoing blog. When I had a MySpace profile, I’d update that with nonsense quite regularly but without any aim. This time, there’s a goal! Basically, but thoughtfully, I wish to express near-daily musings concerning the video game industry which, like any other geek, I have tried my best to keep an eye on. I play new games quite often, return to old ones, and I feel punching out a few phrases here or there is a better reactionary method than throwing a controller in rage. Here we go!