SuperPope: ex Cathedra

CD copy protection

Every PC game these days gives you the option of completely installing it on your hard drive. However, games still won't start up unless you have the CD in your drive. What's the point? All this form of copy protection does is annoy honest consumers. It takes a software pirate about two seconds to bypass this kind of thing. In fact, the first thing I do when I buy a new PC game is search for a "No-CD Patch" for it on the web. I'm not afraid to admit it. You know why? Because I bought the game. Its too bad hackers aren't interested in pirating "Bob the Builder: Bob Builds a Park". Sid would have an easier time getting the game started.

Video Game Review: Tron 2.0 (PC)

(All screenshots taken by yours truly)

This is another one of those games that I really wanted to play, but in my old age decided to wait until it's price dropped to $19.95. Now I'm tempted to buy several more copies and give them to my friends out of guilt for not paying full price last September. This game is terrific.

If you were a fan of the old Tron movie more than 20 years ago, this game will be very nostalgic for you. The look and feel is recreated perfectly, and the story assumes knowledge of the original. You play as Jet Bradley, the son of Alan Bradley, the programmer of Tron in the movie. By the way, Bruce Boxleitner's reprises his role as Alan Bradley in this game, and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos is the voice of a new program named Mercury.

X-Arcade MAME joystick

I recently purchased the X-Arcade Two Player joystick for my PC. It's made from arcade quality (better, actually) materials, and is designed for use with the MAME emulator for playing arcade games on your PC. However, you can also use it with your PlayStation, Xbox, Gamecube or Dreamcast just by purchasing a different adapter for it.

It isn't a PC joystick in a strict sense of the word. You actually plug it into your keyboard port and then plug your keyboard into it. When you use it to play games, it intercepts certain keypresses. To use it with MAME all you have to do is set MAME to use the X-Arcade control set.

The X-Arcade has eight buttons per controller, 1 and 2 player start buttons, and two pinball style buttons on the sides. Usually the pinball buttons are used to "insert coins" in MAME. MAME is a lot more fun with this thing. If you buy the two player version you can play two stick games like Robotron and Smash TV perfectly.

I imagine it would work great with other games, but I've not tried it yet. It's just really cool to have a nice, heavy arcade-style joystick to use.

Kenshin Dragon Quest: Yomigaerishi Densetsu no Ken

I imported this thing from Japan, and it's one of the most interesting things I've ever bought. The box includes a tiny video game system shaped like a shield, and a plastic sword. You put the system on top of your TV (or below it if your TV's too big like mine is) and use the sword as a controller. There are four infrared lights on the front of the system that pick up reflections from the sword as you swing it around. You can move the sword around in the air and get surprising accuracy for moving the cursor around on the screen.

During the actual gameplay (In the Dragon Warrior universe with Akira Toriyama graphics, of course), you move down the road in first-person view, hacking slimes, bats, skeletons and everything else that get in your way. You can slash in any direction and on any part of the screen. Different slash combinations can unleash special attacks. Holding the sword sideways and moving it around allows you to block attacks and projectiles. Stepping up and pointing the red "gem" in the hilt of the sword at the game system brings up your magic menu, where you can select from different magics you have acquired.

I am very impressed by how well this game works and how good the graphics are for a self-contained $60 game and system.

Top 6 games I love that nobody else bought:

I couldn't narrow this list down to just five.

Ico (PS2):
Come on, people! This is probably the most beautiful proof that video games can be works of fine art. Whispy, dreamlike graphics and lighting, hardly any dialog, and only 5 hours of gameplay. It takes a really good game to be this short and not disappoint.

Prince of Persia - Sands of Time (PS2, Cube, Xbox, PC):
Game of the year in most video game magazines. Why didn't you buy it? Very much like Ico in gameplay style, but with much better fighting. The voiceover is great, the story is good, and the graphics and gameplay are amazing. Another 5 hour adventure well worth playing more than once.

Disaster Report (PS2):
"Survival Horror" without all that "Horror". You're trying to get to your first day on the job as a newspaper reporter when the manmade island your office is on suffers a massive earthquake and starts falling apart. This is the only game I've ever played that has a button just for bracing yourself. More than just a lot of running, crawling, and collecting (although there is plenty of that), you begin to unravel a conspiracy at the root of the island's collapse. With different endings depending on your choices and a very Japanese urban feel, I really enjoyed it (terrible translation and voice acting aside).

Beyond Good and Evil (PS2, Cube, Xbox, PC):
Another excellent game from last year. This one really did seem too short to me (12 hours for a Zelda-type adventure?), but the whole thing is just so solid and stylish that I can forgive it. My only complaint? Why would an anthropomorphized pig living on an entirely alien planet keep saying "Sweet Jesus!!" Not only is that unnecessary, but how would he even know who Jesus is?

Breath of Fire - Dragon Quarter (PS2):
After 4 consecutive Breath of Fire games that were nearly identical in story, characters, gameplay and style, Capcom gave us this gem. Judging from its sales and reviews, though, they were casting a pearl before swine. In the world of BOF:DQ, everyone lives miles below the surface of the Earth. As Ryu, you are a low class warrior who begins to awaken to his supernatural powers, and begin a quest against the odds to reach the surface. The real twist is this: If you die, you either have to start over at the beginning with all of your skills and equipment, or continue with a substantial experience loss. Starting over again will also unlock other aspects of the story unavailable to you previously. A meter rises as you utilize your special powers. If it reaches 100%, it's game over. So you end up having to save your juice until you're really in a jam, and even then use it sparingly. This really adds tension to the game. I enjoyed every minute of it.

Ring of Red (PS2):
I hate real-time strategy games. Warcraft, Starcraft, Herzog Zwei; they can all fall off the face of the Earth as far as I'm concerned. Turn-based strategy, however, is a different story. Shining Force, Warsong, Advance Wars, and Fire Emblem are all rignt up my alley. That's partly why I like Ring of Red so much. This game consists of a series of turn-based levels set in an alternate history where Japan didn't surrender after the US dropped the bomb on them. You pilot diesel powered mechs with teams of foot soldiers at your command. The battles take place in a unique 3D view. I play this game every so often, but I've yet to make it all the way through.

Top 5 games that everybody liked but me:

Super Mario Sunshine (Cube):
What the heck? I mean, did everybody think they just had to like this game because it was the first Mario game since Mario 64? There were only 8 small stages with a lot of stupid goals to achieve on each one. Woohoo. And then there's the ingenious idea to leave the camera completely under your control. That comes in really handy when you're trying to complete one of the innane tasks required to reach a shine sprite that is no more valuable than the ones you can just walk up to. To add insult to injury, collecting all of the sprites only earns you a different still screen at the end of the game. Nintendo, that's not a reward. That's a practical joke.

Final Fantasy X-2 (PS2):
Okay, I haven't finished this yet, but I was really looking forward to it. Then I played it a while. All of the areas are available to you from the very start of the game, and they're the same areas you visited during the 90 hours you spent playing Final Fantasy X. You have to keep returning to them over and over to complete different goals. Sound fun? Not really. Why would I want to spend so much time in the same world again? At this point, the only reason I want to finish the game is to see the ending. I'm annoyed by the fact that I can't get the best ending without following a carefully prescribed path to the letter, and that some of the required tasks are ridiculously difficult and not even remotely fun (lightning tower calibration on the Thunder Plains? No thanks!).

Everquest (PC):
I was in the beta test for this game. It is a money machine, and I don't mean that as a compliment. It manages to suck the lives and cash out of people who barely had either one to begin with. And for what? The ability to say to newbies, "Look! My character is better than yours simply because I've wasted more of my life sitting around monster spawn points and hacking mindlessly at frogloks."

This game would have been dead at the starting gate if it wasn't massively multiplayer. Better single player games have been ripped apart by critics and gamers alike. The gameplay and interface are both horrible. Monsters stuck on the other side of a tree can kill you.

Take my advice: Play Morrowind instead. If you want human interaction, go outside.

The Sims (PC):
My sister loves this game. No, that's not a fair thing to say. She's a recovering Sims addict, and I'm not sure how well the recovery is going. She has all the expansion packs. Of course, she doesn't really play it, she just cheats to get a lot of money and builds houses for fun. And that's an honest approach. Why? Because there really is no game here. It's an ant farm full of idiotic humanoids who speak French-sounding gibberish. And it's the number one best selling PC game of all time. Proof that sometimes the "majority" only means that all the fools are in agreement (except for, of course, my sister).

Donkey Kong Country (SNES):
Okay, so I'm reaching back a ways for this one. I just remember it being the first game I didn't see what all the fuss was about. The characters were flat sprites in a flat world who were made out of pre-rendered 3D graphics, and it showed. You ran to the right and picked up bananas. Everybody loved it...except for me. To me, it was a poor man's Mario, and a lame non-Japanese attempt at a platform game.

Review: Magic Pengel (PS2)

Okay, my first review of a game for this blog. Magic Pengel is one of those games I was really looking forward to, but after reading mixed reviews of it I decided to wait until I could get it for $19.99 at Best Buy.

Cross Pokemon with Monster Rancher and add a twist: Your fighters are created from your own drawings. This is what makes the game shine. Once you get the hang of it, you can create virtually anything you can imagine. Of course, I created SuperPope, but added a giant pair of angel wings to make him more powerful. I also drew Hamtaro at the request of my son, and one of my favorite Flash animated monsters, Trogdor the Burninator. The game is very intelligent, and decides for itself what moves your character should have. If you draw horns on its head, it's likely to get a horn ramming move. If you draw a mouth on its head then it's likely to have breath attacks. Wings allow your doodle to fly, provided you draw them big enough to lift its mass off the ground.

The world is tiny, but beautiful. You basically have a small field, a seaside arena, a one street town that resembles something from Spirited Away, an official arena, and a sterile mechanical tower. You can challenge the town's citizens to duels, buy different brushes, or sell excess colors you've accumulated.

Start to finish, I spent 20 hours on this game. The voiceover is generally annoying and terrible, but that's nothing new. The battles are a slightly more strategic version of "Paper Rock Scissors". Still, I really enjoyed playing it. The fact that my own drawings were fighting the battles might have been a big part of what kept my attention.

If you've got 20 bucks and like to draw, you'll get a kick out of this one. I recommend it.