Over the weekend I got my copy of SSX 3 that I won off ebay. First let me just say that buying games off ebay rules. For $32 shipped I got SSX 3 brand new unoppened. Can't beat that! I had originally played the game over Christmas when a friend of mine (who also happens to be a game dev out in LA) said I had to play it. I was instantly hooked. I'm not usually into snowboarding games, but this one stood out.

The game is amazing, and takes the simple concept of racing and tricks to a whole new level. I've played the original SSX, but 3 blows it away. First of all, any game with a race that lasts a full half hour (real time) is friggen incredible, but the open endedness of this game is what really makes it shine.

The game encourages you to take risks, to try to find new places (there are many alternate routes to each course). Tricks are a must (especially in freestyle events where that's the whole point), and even in a race, tricks give you more boost, which make them meaningful in all facets of the game. I'm sure many will compare the trick system to Tony Hawk, but it really harkens back to games like California Games, which I don't think gets enough due credit for the whole genre.

The number of customizations to your character, and items to find or buy is staggering. I can't even imagine unlocking them all. And the courses themselves are just amazing. What's especially cool is watching the replays, since they show the action from different angles, and you can see just how far you're actually falling. It's about as unrealistic as you can get in that sense but that's also what makes it so much fun.

This is also a game Annette has gotten addicted to. It's always fun when she really gets into a game, because then I finally have someone to compete against (well, except for when she kicks my ass, which, now that I think about it, is what usually happens). Anyway, SSX 3 is on all 3 systems, so if you haven't checked it out, you really need to. It's definitely close to the top of the best sports games I've ever played.

Except for one glaring flaw, Metroid Fusion is the return of Samus to her 2D roots, and a worthy sequel to Super Metroid. While not an overly complex game, it keeps a good pace, and you can sit down for short periods of time to play it without losing where you are in the game. Of course this is benefitial for gaming on the go (and for those of us with less free time than we used to have, such as myself).

One of the great things about Fusion is the puzzles. I hate to use that term because they aren't really puzzles, but you figure out quickly to use bombs, missles, etc, everywhere to find hidden areas. Sometimes the only way to advance in the game is to find these places. A lot of them are obvious, but what it does is make you attempt to bomb different places to find a way forward, and in doing so, a lot of the time you find secret areas and items.

Of course this can work against the game as well. There are a couple areas where the secret you need to find to move forward isn't laid out well at all, without so much as a hint anywhere of what needs to be done to advance. Luckly these places are few and far between. Most of the time they're quite a joy to find.

It also seems that the game's difficulty level about half way through ratchets up very quickly. You go through the first half of the game fairly fast, without much opposition, and instead of slowly building the difficulty up, it seems to just all of a sudden slam into you all at once. This can be fairly jarring if you're not ready for it (and why would you be when you've been playing several hours at a fairly easy pace). Some of this can be attributed to the game controls. As you gain new abilities there are many different button combos for you to execute. Many of the bosses require you to use these different ablilities to their full potential, but in the heat of battle, many of them can be a challenge to pull off. Of course I'm not sure if this has more to do with my big hands on the little GBA buttons, or my lack of skill (probably the later).

I really enjoyed myself all throughout the game (except for that damn spider boss, for some reason I had a horrible time with him), which is something I rarely experience anymore with most games (yes, I'm becoming a jaded gamer). That is of course, until the last boss. I had pretty much cruised through the game, and while I did find a lot of hidden areas, I had only found half of the potential energy tanks that were there to be found. Of course, I was thuroughly trounced. Given the fact that finding all of this hidden stuff in the game is what makes it so fun I decided to proceed in finding the missing tanks. But alas, all the doors were locked!

This really ruined my feeling of the game at the end. It wasn't so much the difficulty in trying to beat the game with limited life reserves, it was the fact that they took away the exploration aspect of the game, when in fact that's what defines the game and makes it so much fun to play.

Except for that, it was quite a good experience. Not as good as Super Metroid, but a worthy sequel indeed. It's been a long while since I've played a 2D adventure and I must say I miss it. For everything 3D has brought us, I really miss the simple things you can do in 2D that can help make a game enjoyable.

Since I went off on a rant about game reviews recently, I decided perhaps it's high time I started doing a few myself. Thus, coming soon will be my own brand of game reviews. I've decided for a scoring mechanism to use an A-F grading scale, as I think it's one everyone can relate to, and it has enough grey area to make the scores somewhat meaningful. I promise not just to give A's and B's. ;)

I don't intend for them to be the type you would base a purchase off of. Quite the contrary, I intend for them to be my thoughts on a game I had played, as a way of soliciting feedback and discussion about said game. The games could range from new releases to old classics, whatever I feel like commenting about really. They'll probably end up being rather informal, and rather sporatic.

Reviews will show up on the index page and archives just like a regular post, but will have a review header with various info about the game being reviewed as well as its score. I also plan on adding a separate archive just for all of the game reviews. They should be easy to separate from regular posts (though they really are just regular posts when it comes down to it). Look for them soon.

As a sidenote, I finally finished making the original top banners larger, so they should all be rotating now. I'd like to get quite a few banners up there, so I'll be working some more on those in the future as well.

Lunar Magic is a level editor for Super Mario World (it works with both the US and Japanese versions of the game), and is pretty impressive. It lets you modify most anything in the game, including overworld maps, title screen, backgrounds, forgrounds, enemies, etc. It even lets you import new sprites into the game. People have been hacking ROMs for years but most of the time they're either done by hand or though some weird array of cryptic looking programs. Lunar Magic is much more user friendly in this regard.

Since it's PC only I tried it out through VPC on my Mac and it works pretty well. The interface takes a bit to get used to, although that's expected, but for what it does it's rather impressive. I did an initial test of changing and adding a few things to the first level, and it worked like a charm. It does seem to bloat the ROM file however. Three minor changes ended up doubling the file size. This is a small price to pay, if any.

I think I'll be playing a bit more with this in the future. I have a few good ideas of how to use this for my next ASMBLR project. Could be an interesting endeavour if I can get it all to work.

One thing that has tended to bother me for a while has been game review scores. It isn't so much that I don't agree with the scores certain people give games (although many times that's the case), but rather the entire rating system itself. Most game publications give games a score on a 10 point scale. In actuality however, it's more like a 100 point scale, since everyone seems to award points in tenth of a point increments instead of the full point. This has the nice side effect of allowing a greater range of scores and as such allows the reader to see really where a game falls in that grey area from 0 to 10.

Movie reviews tend not to have as much grey area. Most movie reviews are on a four star scale, or in the case of Ebert and Roeper, a boolean scale, either thumb up or down. One problem associated with not having a lot of grey area in your reviews is that it's harder to differentiate certain items from each other. Ebert can give two movies a thumbs up rating, but which one does he like more? Which one should I really see?

These types of decisions are even more important with video games for the simple fact that you are parting with $50 of your hard earned money. Good thing they use that 100 point scale in gaming then, right? Ahh, but that's where the skewed math comes in. Instead of review scores being evenly distributed over the 100 point range, they are weighted more like a grading curve. Meaning "A" games are perhaps a 9.2+, and "F" games are a 6.5-.

This is where the problems start to creep in. Very great care seems to be taken in numerical positions of games in the 8.0+ range, yet in the 5.0-0.0 range, a range over twice as large as from 8.0 on up, the numbers seem to just be randomly thrown out on the table. When a 5.0 is already a failing grade, what's the difference if a game instead recieves a 2.3? In reality, there is none. What's basically happened is that this nice big grey area game reviewers had to score games with and show some actual differences between games, has now been reduced to a four star system. A 10.0 score is now four stars, a 6.5 is half a star. Anything less than that, no stars.

What I'd like to see is for game reviewers to use a scoring format that actually corresponds to their scores. If you're only going to use 6.5-10.0 for your real scores, then use a four star or A-F grading system. If you're intent on keeping the 0-10.0 scoring system, then use it properly. Average games would get a 5.0 score, the same games getting an 8.0 now. Personally I'd like such a system, but I'd rather just have one in place where a reviewer felt they could actually use the full range of scoring, regardless of what type it was. Until then I guess I'll just have to live with 40% of games getting a score in the 8's.

As you can see I've made a few changes to the design and layout of the site. I've also updated all of the old posts with proper titles and categories. That all took quite a bit longer than I had hoped. Moveable Type has pretty bad search features (why can't I search on date?).

Anyway, with the new sidebar on the right, I figure this will allow me to expand the site pretty easily as I add more sections (and I will). I've also made a list of games I'm playing at the moment, added a few related links of mine that might be of interest, and also some other people's sites I find interesting. I'm sure other stuff might pop up over there in the future as well.

I also redid the main archives page so you can go right to any past post, and redid the RSS Feed to show comment totals. This has a rather interesting side effect. If someone posts a new comment, the comment total goes up and thus the RSS feed changes to reflect that. If your aggrigator fetches the RSS feed, any new comments will flag that post as changed, thus notifying you if someone has added anything new to the conversation. I figure since there is no subscription to comments (which I hear is coming in MT Pro), this could be a good way to keep people informed of when a thread changes. If it gets annoying, let me know, it's easy to fix. Oh, and for the time being you're only getting the Ghouls 'n Ghosts image up top. Since the logo size changed with the new layout, I only had one banner big enough off the bat. I'll add more later.

One thing I've had a hell of a time with though is doing this site up for IE/Win. Lets just say that if you're using IE/Win (which I know a majority are) you're not seeing the site the way it was intended to. Sure, it's close, but not quite, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it, because put simply, IE/Win sucks. The simple fact that a font-style in a blockquote makes the right border of a grandparent div disappear is assinine (which is what's happening right now). I was nice enough to use a hack to hide the lack of alpha-PNG support in background images, but the rest of it you're either going to have to live with until MS decide to get off their fat asses and make a decent browser, or go download a decent browser right now.

Anyway, enough babbling. The site is pretty much set now, and on its way, so enjoy.

After a ton of work, and quite a long time (try 7 years), the Walker Art Center has finally redesigned their site. I only meantion it of course since I was one of the people working on it. Obviously I've only been at the Walker for a year and a half, so I don't know what they were doing those other 6 or so years, but some how we've managed to do what no one else could, we completely redesigned the thing from the ground up in the last year, and made it work.

For my part I did the navigation, the Walker Channel, and Expansion site (the last one has actually been online a year now). Most of my other time recently has been put to task on our internal admin system, which kicks major ass, but unfortunatly, other than probably a dozen people, nobody will be able to see it.

The site as it stands is not done. We needed to get something new up since the Walker is closed for a year (for expansion) and the website is serving as one of the many gateways to the Walker. Thus most of the sections on the site take you to the new Calendar for now, and some of the site sections are still the old crappy version. Over the course of the next year new "neighborhoods" will be created with unique look and feels for many of these sections.

Perhaps this doesn't seem like a big deal, but internally for us, it is. The simple fact that after numerous tries this is the first real new site the Walker has had in almost 7 years (for various reasons), the fact that it's all dynamic (a first for Walker believe it or not), the fact that is uses all open source tools, and the fact that it attempts to use something a little more recent than HTML 2.0, make this pretty special. For a staff of four, we think it's a pretty big deal, even if there are quite a few bugs we still need to take care of. ;) Have fun, and search around.

I must have been working much too hard lately (more on that later), but I totally missed the fact that R-Type Final has been released on PS2. I've been waiting to play this game for a long time, and for only $30, how can I go wrong?

But there's a slight problem, I don't own a PS2. I know what you're thinking, "How the hell can you of all people not own a PS2?". I just don't. There hasn't been much on the system that I've really wanted to play besides the GTA games (which I've played to death on friends systems), and of the games I do want to play, most of them are Japanese, like Taiko no Tatsujin, and I've never been big on the mod chip thing (being a collector and all).

But R-Type is different. It's not just R-Type, it's R-Type FINAL. The last R-Type they'll ever make. And when you hold the world high score in the original version for the Master System, the series takes on a whole new meaning.

They say the shooter genre has died (especially since for some reason the term "shooter" now means "FPS" which I will never understand) and that nobody is buying them anymore. Well this shooter is going to move systems (well, a system). That's got to count for something, right?

After about a month of back and forth with Linkerworld (who I would not reccommend doing business with), I finally got my EZ Flash Advance card in the mail. It came in a rather large box, or at least larger than need be, given what was in it. The box was about the size of a big hard cover book, but the contents was just styrofoam peanuts, a small USB cable and the flash card. The card itself is GBA size, but it's translucent red.

In setting it up I was curious how it would go. Since I use OS X and the drivers are Windows only, I thought I might be able to use Virtual PC instead of using one of our old PC's. Since the unit didn't come with a CD or directions for installing the card (it was supposed to), I found this detailed thread outlining how to use it properly. From here I also found a link to the latest drivers and software. Very handy.

So I loaded up VPC and followed the instructions. At first I had an issue but it happened to be with VPC sharing folders accross my network, not due to the card or the software. After I figured that out, it all went smoothly. The card was recognized by Windows and the software easily loaded the games onto the card without a problem.

It's really an amazing little piece of technology. It's also cool that I can use an emulator to make it all work. Now that I know it will burn backup copies of GBA games, next I want to try out the demo games and programs, as well as the emulators the GBA supports. Should be pretty interesting and fun. Though, I should probably try and beat Mario & Luigi first. ;)

I see there's a new auction site out there now that's specifically tailored to video games called Bidiots. It's still new and slowly growing, but it is being backed by sites like Atari Age, and it looks like a great place to get repros and prototypes. I'm sorta hoping this takes off as it could be a good resource for gamers over the crud you find on eBay. They even have a Jaguar VR set for sale (two of them!). Now there's something you don't see every day.

I have imported all of my previous entries from past postings into this new weblog. That includes any journal entries from past versions of vitaflo and my short-lived Live Journal. As such most of them are not updated with this new layout (generic or missing titles, categories, etc), so things are a bit messy right now. Please bare with me as I clean up the mess, but now you do have over 5 years worth of posts to sort though if you'd like.

One thing I'd like to get back into is bowling on a regular basis. That was readily apparent last night as I had one of the best series (3 games) I've bowled in quite a long time. I bowled a 587 with games of 171, 172 and 244. That doesn't touch what I used to bowl, as I've had a 600 series in my time, and games over 244 (though that 244 is still a pretty nice game), but at least it proves to me I haven't completely fallen off the wagon, and I can still compete if I want to. I think it's time to see what tournies are coming up in my area, and get back into it.

Since I missed the Superbowl commercials because I was watching it in Mexico (though I hear I didn't miss much), I figured I'd pass along these two new commercials from Nintendo for their Famicom Mini. Famicom Mini is a special edition GBA SP that is styled similarly to the original Famicom. Nintendo also went ahead and is re-releasing several original Famicom games for the GBA. However, at 2000 yen, one wonders who will be swayed by the steep pricepoint. Still, I wouldn't mind having one of these SP's. They were only $120 for a while at Play-Asia. However, my real dream is to find one of the super limited edition Famicom designed SP's that Nintendo gave away last year. And I'm sure it will be forever just that, a dream.

Way of the Rodent has a new interview up with Eugene Jarvis (creator of Defender/Robotron/Crusin' USA). Relatively short, but interesting, he discusses his thinking behind his games, and gaming in general. Budding game designers take note, while his comments on game design may seem obvious, there are quite a few in the industry who simply ignore them. Some examples:

Designing videogames is all ABOUT limitation. It’s not about doing everything that’s possible, just because you can. It’s about finding some small subset of something that’s FUN and building on that.

We designed all the graphics and animation (for Robotron) in about two weeks, because there wasn’t much technology to play with. Today, you’re never really finished with your graphics because there’s so many options – reflectivity, alpha-shading, shattering systems… By the time you have the luxury of being able to focus on your gameplay, the deadline is looming. Then, we spent four out of the six months of Robotron’s development PLAYING the thing.

In PC and console games in particular, I hate it when I just can’t figure out what the game IS. It’s like the designer never really found out what was fun about the design and just tried to give the player lots of fancy options – you can drive backwards, have a camera up your exhaust pipe, lots of different kinds of gravity, whatever. If feels like they couldn’t quite find the point of the game and so they’re asking the player to design it for them. It’s as if they’re just trying to check as many boxes as possible. They think that if it takes a player two years to experience all of the options, then it’ll be two years before he figures out that it’s a bad game.

A few brave souls have created a rather interesting new emulator called "Dolphin" that, as you may have guessed, emulates the Gamecube. It never ceases to amaze me how far emulation is pushed, and how fast. I haven't read up on it very much as of yet, but I would assume it uses High Level Emulation to do its dirty work. Things have really changed in the emulation world since UltraHLE came out, and while I like the approach of having "something" to play with, I'd almost rather wait until computers are fast enough that low level emulation is possible (I'm a patient guy).

Still, people like Eric Traut (of Virtual Game Station fame) have shown that techiques other than low level emulation (in this case Dynamic Recompilation) can have very good results even on modest hardware. The problem with Dynamic Recompilation however is that Mr. Traut is such a master at it (he helped Apple with the 68k->PPC transition, and Connectix build Virtual PC), that everyone else looks weak in comparison. I certainly would like to see him try another emulator. Perhaps he's up to the task of emulating the Saturn?

Red Dwarf Series 3 and 4 are out today. I picked mine up this morning and plan on watching them tonight. Both come with about 3 hours of behind the scenes footage and interviews. The first two were excellent so I'm sure these will be just as good. Plus, if you pick them up now, you get the limited edition trading cards packed inside. A tempting thought, I know.

RockNES 3.11 is finally out. This is a major update from the previous release on OS X. Note that game saves have been revamped and are thus not compatible with older versions, however they are much more robust now.

After trying this out for a bit, it's still not as good as Nestopia, but it is faster. The one thing that bothers me about Nestopia though is that the colors are of a different pallette than RockNES. Nestopia is supposed to have the more accurate emulation, but to me, the RockNES color pallette seems to be the correct one. Perhaps I should email Bannister on this to get a definitive answer.