Quick Note - International Superstar Soccer 64

Today I added to my collection for the first time in ages. I was in a retro game store and found International Superstar Soccer 64 for the N64 in perfect condition for only €5. This isn't a game I owned, or even for a system I owned but a friend had it and we clocked up a good few hours on it.


Couldn't resist adding it to the collection.

The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

The Wind Waker is one of those top rated GameCube games that I have added to my collection. I managed to get an excellent copy of the collectors edition that included a compilation disc containing versions of The Legend of Zelda, The Adventure of Link, Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask. There was also a guide booklet included too, which is also in excellent condition.

The Zelda series is a strange one for me. I have only ever played one through to completion, A Link to the Past on the SNES. Myself and my friend poured hours into that game and loved every minute of it. Since then I haven't played much Zelda but did get a fair portion of the way though The Phantom Hourglass on the DS. I think I like the idea of playing through a Zelda game more than I actually enjoy doing it.

I put The Wind Waker into the Wii a few weeks ago and played through the opening section of the game. One thing stands out above all others and that is the graphics. For a game released in 2003 on an underpowered system, the game looks phenomenal. It is the cell shaded graphical style that gives it the wow factor. In another ten years this game will still look amazing because of the art direction, whereas games like Gears of War that look great now will look terrible in the future. I can't believe there was such a commotion when the game was released over the look of it. The game played exactly like I expected, the same as Phantom Hourglass the direct sequel to this game. I know I finish too many posts saying that I will return one day to play this game. In the case of The Wind Waker I hope that is true.

Punch-Out Wii

I picked up another game for €1 in GameStop's sale madness, Punch-Out Wii. There was a lot of press for this game last year, especially on US podcasts but I don't recall ever seeing it in shops here. I never played the original and to be honest this doesn't look like a game I will enjoy. I might just keep it in the shrink wrap. Still for €1 it is a steal.

Mario Kart Double Dash

I picked this game up on eBay to add to my list of must play GameCube (GC) games. I'd read mixed opinions of Double Dash online but the consensus seems to be that it is one of the top rated GC games. It must have been back in May, perhaps June when it arrived but I only got around to playing it a week ago. One of the reasons is that I had to get another GC controller first.

Myself and my wife (a huge Mario Kart fan) sat down and played it for a while and were less than impressed. It is probably a bit unfair on the game to judge it after playing Mario Kart Wii so much. Even though there is little difference in the graphical quality, we missed some of the Wii gameplay mechanics. Another problem is that we had played nearly all of the tracks in Double Dash either in Mario Kart Wii or the DS version. I think Nintendo is just being lazy now with having the same tracks in so many Mario Kart games. That isn't a direct criticism of Double Dash but of Nintendo themselves. I'm hoping that when it arrives on the 3DS it will be full of new tracks. I doubt it though.

I haven't played enough of Double Dash to get to know the ins and outs of the main new addition to the game, two characters to a vehicle. It appears to add a little element of strategy to the gameplay and it is nice to see something new in Mario Kart after all these years. With so many games in my growing collection that I've yet to play or games like Zelda: The Wind Waker that I want to return to I won't be promising to play Double Dash much more. 

USA Trip 2010 - New York City [Part 2]

I was immediately impressed with the hotel we stayed at, The Residence Inn Manhattan. The staff at reception were very friendly and we were checked-in in no time at all but best of all we got bumped up to a deluxe room with a view of the Empire State Building. I had e-mailed the manager a few months previously about this and was told there was an extra charge for this room. I declined on the basis we could spend that extra $25 a night elsewhere. Anyway, she said she would keep the request on file and could have the room for free if it was unoccupied when we arrived. The room was simply awesome. We had expected to get a tiny room in NY because that is what most people had told us to expect. Well the room we got had it's own little kitchenette, large bathroom, queen size bed and a sofa. Plus that excellent view that you can see here and here. As it was the evening already and raining heavily we got ready quickly and went to find something to eat. We ended up in Arno Ristorante just around the corner. It wasn't one of the better meals on the trip, a massive bowl of soup to start and a pasta dish with a distinct taste of cheese. We weren't actually that hungry anyway, probably more tired than anything. On a side note I did get a bit of a Goodfella's vibe off one of the waiters which made things more interesting.

The breakfast was not great but I was expecting that. I hadn't really enjoyed the breakfast food on our last US trip and this one was to be no exception. I just find that the food is either too sweet or stodgy for the morning time. After breakfast we walked up 6th Avenue to the Rockefeller Plaza to go to the Nintendo World Store. It was a shop that we had been excited to see and we weren't disappointed. It is probably more of a Nintendo store than museum but don't let that put you off. They had a great selection of Nintendo plushies but not the Mario Mushroom I wanted. I ended up buying a Yoshi plushy and my wife got one of Link. Thinking back on it now I should have gotten the cool mug that I saw there as well. Seeing some of the classic Nintendo handhelds and game & watch machines brought back some memories. Pretty much the rest of the day was spent getting to know the area we were staying in. I had taken my time deciding on our hotel so I managed to get one with a great location on 6th Avenue, only two blocks from Times Square. We wandered around the shops in Times Square (I picked up some nice stuff in American Eagle) and took my first few photos of the holiday. The first of many.

View from 'The Top of The Ro

The next day we went back to the Rockefeller Plaza to go to 'The Top of the Rock'. When deciding where to go to get the best view of NY you really only have two choices - The Empire State Building or the Observation Deck at the Rockefeller Center. We chose the latter and were not disappointed. The views of NY are amazing, especially the way you can see Central Park spread out before you. As an added bonus you also get to see The Empire State Building as part of the cityscape. We spent a good while up there taking plenty of photos and enjoying the glorious weather. That afternoon we were again back at Rockefeller Plaza to go on the NBC Studio Tour. It was quite an enjoyable tour as we got to see some good behind the scenes areas plus the tour guide was funny and informative. We got to sit in the Saturday Night Live studio and hear about the crazy amount of work that goes into producing a single show. I'd say that anyone who has an interest in US television would get a lot out of the tour but I would like to have seen more stages from shows that I'm familiar with.

The most trouble we had in our time in NY was finding a nice place to have dinner. The meals we had on our first and second nights hadn't been much to write home about so I went to the hotel concierge to get a recommendation for a good stakehouse. She recommended Benjamin Stakehouse only a few blocks away. I was a little nervous when she said that the dress code was smart casual as I had nothing but jeans in my case. When we got to the restaurant and were show to our seats we did feel a little out of place but we got over that pretty quickly as the staff were very friendly. I got a big steak with a side of onions and mash while my wife got the seabass. We both agree it was easily one of the nicest meals we've ever eaten. It may have been a little pricey, but that wouldn't stop us going back if we ever return to NY. 

Shopping is obviously one of the major attractions of NY but it was pretty low down on the list of priorities for us. We did plan on doing some but not to the extreme that some people do and had ruled out any trips to places like Woodbury Common. Neither of us actually ended up buying much in NY. It was a combination of not seeing anything nice and the throngs of people milling around every shop making it desparately uncomfortable. There was one item though that I was intent on buying, the iPad. After we took a stroll through the 'Pond' area of Central Park we went to the Apple Store at the top of 5th Avenue. Keeping up a tradition started on our last US trip we took a photo of ourselves outside of the store, a magnificient glass cube structure. The store itself an underground Mecca for Apple fanboys (like myself) was amazing. So much cool stuff in one room. Pity that that one room was so busy, it was iPad fever at its height. I was told that they didn't have any in stock and I'd be better off ringing other stores before wasting my time travelling to them. So I rang the other three Apple stores in the area each day that we remained in NY but had no luck in sourcing an iPad. Even Best Buy, an authorised reseller had no stock. I hoped to have better luck when we got to Boston. 

Sphere Within A Sphere

The next day of our stay in NY was probably the most enjoyable we had there. We hoped on the tourist bus at Times Square and travelled down to Greenwich Village. To go from an area like Times Square and other built up areas of NY and appear in Greenwich Village is like some sort of magic trick. Everywhere else appears to be populated by skyscrapers blocking out the sun all in neat little rows on the grid system and then suddenly your transported to a quaint little village that wouldn't look out of place somewhere in Europe. We idled down Bleecker Street popping into the clothes and music stores, keeping an eye out for somewhere nice for lunch. It is true that Greenwich Village has a different pace to it than the rest of the city and we spent a while just wandering around, enjoying the break from the hustle and bustle. After a tasty lunch we got back on the bus to take in more sites like the UN Building. As we passed the building the tour guide started to talk about one of the sculptures in front of the UN, one that I recognised immediately. It was a replica of a sculpture that I pass everyday on my walk through the grounds of Trinity College in Dublin. The guide told us that the 'Sphere within a Sphere' represents a war-torn Earth and that the sphere will be filled in when world peace is achieved. However, according to the Italian sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro the inner ball represents Earth while the outer ball represents religion. This is to show that religion is bigger than the Earth. Shame. I much preferred our tour guides interpretation. We have done the hop-on, hop-off bus tours in many cities across the world and we usually really enjoy them. We were left disappointed by the one in NY. It wasn't so much to do with the stops, there is plenty to see there but more to do with the traffic. Crawling through the city streets, being stopped by red lights at every junction isn't exactly fun. We probably would have fit more into our day had we travelled on the subway.

That night, our last in NY we went to see Mary Poppins on Broadway. It wasn't our first choice but the time suited us and the ticket price was reasonable. When we got there the theatre was packed and there must have been some sort of organised group there because there was a huge number of teenagers. On the way in my wife got suckered into buying a souvenir guide. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been taken out of the bag since it was bought. We took our seats up in the Gods, with a birds eye view of the stage. As we settle in we noticed this guy running back and forth looking all flustered. He made his way over to us and explained that he had two spare tickets that he had been unable to sell. He asked us if we would like to sit at the front and we said yes, assuming that he meant the front of the section we were currently in. We then started to follow him down flight after flight of steps and I began to wonder if we'd be scammed. We weren't. We ended up about seven rows from the very front of the stage with one of the best views in the house. The guy (whose name I can't remember) and his girlfriend had just moved to NY that day and felt that the two seats should not sit empty when they could be enjoyed by another couple. The show itself was very enjoyable. I have seen the Disney film many years ago and some of the songs were familiar but I had forgotten most of the story. The performances were uniformly good but the thing that impressed me most was the set. The main set was a four storey house and it would be raised or lowered depending on where the action was taking place. Very impressive to see.

So that was four nights in NY. We did enjoy our time there but we were glad to be leaving. As cities go it is very impressive but it didn't have the charm of a somewhere like San Francisco. We hoped to find that charm in Boston.


Part One | Part Three

Link

Just to wrap up the short series of posts about Nintendo plushies, here is Link. Not Zelda as many people seem to think. 

Don't jump!

A quick post to show one of my favourite photographs from a recent trip to New York City. This is taken from the 34th floor of the Residence Inn Manahattan.

The Mushroom Kingdom

Look what is growing out in my backgarden!

My wife and I had planned on buying some Mario mushrooms plushies when we were in the Nintendo World Store in New York City. Unfortunately, they weren't selling them at the time but we did manage to get a couple of pretty cool plushies nonetheless. I'll post about them later. 

Micro Mario and Zelda

This is a short follow up on the previous post about the Game Boy Micro (GBM). You may have noticed that I didn't talk about any games that I may have gotten for the device. So lets talk about some GBM games, after all what good is a game system without something to play on it? Like anyone who gets a new system you immediately look up the top rated games on the platform. Didn't take me long to spot three all time classics that were available - Super Mario World, Super Mario Bros. 2 and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Both the Mario games have been re-branded for the Game Boy platform as Super Mario Advance 2 and Super Mario Advance respectively. There isn't really anything new that I can say about these games that hasn't already been said before and in more elegant prose than I can muster. I will say that Super Mario World in particular holds up extremely well and looks particularly impressive on the GBM's high resolution screen.

Super Mario Bros. 2 is an interesting game to me because the first time around I found it was just too different to the original for me to properly enjoy it. When I got to play it years later in the Mario All-Stars Collection I found it to be the weakest of the games so of course it got the least play. Now with the GBM this is my third time around to play it and another chance to finally complete it. I'm currently further in the game than I've gone before, which is good but the last time I played it was two months ago.

My experience with The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the GBM though was, whisper it, disappointing. It isn't that the port isn't good, it is probably spot-on but rather the game has failed to stand the test of time like Mario. Maybe it is just that the RPG genre was never my favourite or perhaps I'm being too shallow that I'm allowing the dated graphics to get me down but I won't be playing through this game again. I think it would be best served leaving it in the past and those glorious memories of completing it in tandem with my friend on the SNES.

Nintendo Game Boy Micro - The Undiscovered Country

A curious thing happened while I was searching eBay for games that used to be in my collection. I came across a handheld system that I never knew existed. This wasn't just any random system from some obscure manufacture but a Nintendo handheld, the Game Boy Micro (GBM). It left me thinking how did I miss that whole scene? I guess there was a good number of years when I wasn't really following what was going on in the gaming space. I was content with my PS2 and found myself in a routine of simply buying the latest Pro Evolution Soccer came every Fall. It would come around like clockwork and I'd be there launch day ready to get stuck into another Master League season. Besides Pro Evo, or the odd random purchase (Wipeout Fusion) and some slight dabbling into PC gaming (Unreal Tournament) I wouldn't have considered myself that much of a gamer. I'd stopped buying Computer & Video Games magazine years earlier and with no broadband I didn't read any online press. It wasn't until Christmas 2006 that I entered the 'next' generation with the Xbox 360. So I guess it is no surprise that I didn't notice the GBM, especially considering it only seems to have attracted a small but enthusiastic following. At least that is what posts on NeoGAF would have me believe.

Anyway, I saw the listing for the GBM on eBay and it instantly struck me as a very charming little device. So apart from the simply wanting something for the collection that I didn't have what other reasons could I use to justify the purchase. Only one was needed really, the ability to play perfect ports of SNES classics like Super Mario World on the go. The original listing wasn't quite right but I did find another one that was in better condition, fully boxed and complete. Most importantly it was available for a very reasonable price. It is only when you are holding the GBM in your hand that you can fully appreciate just how small this device is. Micro truly is an apt name and obviously the screen itself is even smaller. Contrary to what you might think this is not really an issue. The screen on the device is simply awesome, vividly bright colours and a very high resolution provides you with a perfectly good viewing experience. Certainly far better than a screen of it's size would be expected to provide. The one real issue with the GBM is something that will be familiar to DS or PSP owners. The dreaded hand cramp. With the dimensions so small you really have to curl your hands into an extreme crab like position to play the device and after too short a time this becomes uncomfortable. To be honest this has put me off playing it for any great length of time, so beating Super Mario Bros. 2 is going to have to wait. Again.

The GBM is one of those items that is nice to have in the collection but is unlikely to get that much use. Just having it there is good enough for me. There is no real rationale for that statement, it just is. Getting the GBM was also the point at which the original idea of rebuilding my original collection went slightly askew. It wasn't something I'd owned before so that broke the basic premise of the idea but I feel it adds to the overall quality of the collection. Sure, who doesn't think the GBM is the coolest, tiniest handheld around?

Boom Blox [Wii] - Review

Another blockbuster from Steven Spielberg?

Boom Blox is a puzzle game developed by EA for the Nintendo Wii. The interesting thing about the title is that film director Steven Spielberg approached EA with an idea for a game. Against expectation it is a relatively simple family game rather than some grand action/adventure game. When this game first launched here in May I had picked it out as a definite purchase for the Wii. We are all acutely aware of the shortage of quality software titles on the Wii so I decided to hold off on buying it till there is a lull in good games and I could come back to this. So with nothing worthwhile on the market for PS3 or Wii recently, I went back and got Boom Blox last week.

The gameplay is like a mixture of Jenga, dominos, a shooting game like 'Duck Hunt' and Lego. There are three distinct game variants - throw, shoot and grab. In the 'throw' games you use the Wii Remote to throw objects at the onscreen objects to accomplish different things. There is a reverse version of Jenga where you throw balls at a tower of blocks with the aim of toppling the tower. Shooting games are pretty self explanatory really. The 'grab' games are perhaps the most fun. There is a game that is basically Jenga where you use grab blocks out of a large pile and try to avoid toppling the tower. Three game types doesn't sound like a lot but there is a massive variety of games within each type. The developers have thrown in plenty of little details that will make each level play differently. For example purple colour blocks will disappear when hit meaning blocks above will fall into the empty space, or hit two green blocks into each other and watch the resulting explosion fling surrounding blocks around the screen. These little details let the player bring much more strategy into play than one would expect.

You can play all these games as mini-games, trying to get a bronze, sliver or gold medal in each one. Or you can play the adventure mode where the developers have attempted to wrap a story around each game. It is a nice idea but the narrative isn't exactly deep or engaging and to be honest you don't buy this type of game for the quality of the story. The single player mode is not as fun as I was hoping it to be. In fact I was quite disppointed in it to be honest. However, you can overlook this rather large failing with the exceptional multi-player gameplay with two, three or four players. You can opt to play competitively or co-operatively with the latter being more fun in my opinion. Suddenly games that are fun alone become even more fun as you try to knock over your opponents towers or leave a precariously position tower for your opponent to remove a tricky block. I can't wait to break this game out when I have a few friends over as I suspect it will be a big hit with four players - fast, frantic and highly competitive.

The game is deceptively simple. The graphics (even for a Wii title) are unlikely to win any prizes. They are nice and colourful, while the backgrounds are surprisingly good. There is some added personality in the game with the addition of animals who watch the action from the sidelines and they have some nice animations. The sound too is equally functional rather than amazing. There is some nice tunes, especially those that have the animals chanting along and there are good solid sound effects for the falling blocks. The most impressive aspect of the game is one that can be easily overlooked - a very advanced physics engine. Everything that happens in this game happens as you would expect it to happen in the real world. The blocks fall very convincingly, causing chain reactions where you expect them. There is never a time when you think that something that has happened was scripted, you are always in control.

A good deal of effort has gone into improving the longevity of the game. Firstly, there is over 100 levels of co-operative and competitive levels to work through, added to the 300 or so single player levels. Very impressive. If that isn't enough there is a quite impressive level editor. Here you can alter existing levels or create your own from scratch. You can play the single player game to unlock more objects to use in your own creations. There is a handy meter on the side to say when you have enough objects in the level, otherwise the physics engine would be overloaded. It is here that the game shows off some more technically impressive functions, sharing created levels with friends over WiiConnect 24. It is good to see a third party developer take a lead here rather than wait on Nintendo so show everyone how it is done. Kudos to EA for going the extra mile and hopefully it will encourage other developers in future.

Graphics
Simple graphics but this is not title that requires state of the art graphics. Most of the power of the Wii is probably busy calculating where all those blocks are supposed to fall. Colourful and cute like most Wii games.

Sound
Functional and solid. The soundtrack is unremarkable apart from songs when the animal spectators chant along.

Controls
Possibly the best implementation of the Wii Remote since Wii Sports. It is especially good at calculating the speed of your throw from the force you use physically. The grab tool is also very accurate.

Verdict
I know EA gets a lot of criticism (some deserved) but for making this game they deserve a lot of praise. As a multi-player title it is a lot of fun, one of the best multi-player games on the Wii which is high praise as the system has a lot of good party games. If you want a fun game that you can hop on and play in short bursts or fancy a lengthy challenge then this is the game for you. If you intend playing solely on your own then I'd recommend renting first.

My gaming history (P.2)

If memory serves me I got myself a Nintendo Gameboy around 1991/92 when I still had the C64. A friend of mine had one at the time and I thought it was amazing. There really was quite a large jump in the quality of the games on the Gameboy and the C64. Many of the games I had on tape were fairly ropey in all honestly but it seemed that many games on the handheld were just of a quality. Although they were all in monochrome but I don't think that was ever an issue for me.

I got Tetris with my Gameboy and that is the game that definitely got the most play over the length of time I had the system. In fact, even my mother got in on the act and got herself hooked on Tetris a little bit. The next best game was definitely Super Mario Land. It was a great game and one of the best Mario games. It did have quite a few gameplay differences to other games in the series such as levels flying planes or piloting a submarine (I think). It had a great difficulty level, set at a challenging level but just short enough to complete in one sitting. Remember it lacked a save game facility that later Mario games introduced.

I honestly don't remember too many other games that I had. I know I had Beetlejuice but I don't remember much about it. Not a good sign. I just remembered that I had another movie tie in, Gremlins 2: The New Batch. I know I got to level two in that game and just couldn't get past it. It is fine having a difficult game but it they are made too hard then as the end user you soon lose interest in the game. I can't actually think of any other games. As a testament to how much I loved the Gameboy I actually had it until 2004 when I gave it to my brother (including all original packaging).

Up next is probably the best console I've owned.