Taito Legends -- Final Opinion.

First off, you're getting an awful lot of bang for the buck with this disc. Twenty-nine games is impressive even at $50, let alone Taito Legends' $20 asking price. They're not all gems, but for the most part the disc contains quality games. You get the legendary Space Invaders. You do get the few star titles like Bubble Bobble, Rainbow Islands, Operation Wolf, and Elevator Action. You get good games in the likes of Jungle Hunt, Rastan, Operation Thunderbolt, ThunderFox, and Battle Shark. You'll find true gems you've probably never heard of in Plump Plop, Tube It, and Great Swordsman. You'll find some notable oddities in Plotting, The Ninja Kids, and The New Zealand Story. What the disc really offers is a look at a couple eras of gaming. A traceable sense of history of development and just how long they've been chasing the 3D we take for granted now. Most kids these days probably believe one day there wasn't 3D and then one day there was Virtua Fighter and we've never looked back. Hell, Virtua Fighter might even be too old a reference for some of them.  How scary is that? The games are only part of the story with these compilation discs of course. The other part of the story is okay here. The presentation is simple and clean. It works perfectly. No hassles. No overwrought animation or crap to wade through. Just cycle left or right through the games which are listed in alphabetical order. Select a game and you'll get a list of options. You can set the controls, look at a game's sales advertisement, read the game description, get some hints and tips, and in some cases watch an interview with the developer. No bonus content to unlock. They offer up a Taito corporation history to read through. You'll be able to save all the high scores for each game as well as their individual settings. So in all it's heavy on content, light on extras, and is presented simple and clean. and offers up a good look at some arcade history. It is however missing some notable Taito releases like Arkanoid, Bust-A-Move, Cadash, Chase H.Q, Cloud Master, Darius, Darius Gaiden, Darius 2, Insector X, Parasol Stars, Qix, Sagaia, and a few more. Of course most of these will be in volume two of this compilation which will be released in Japan. Too bad it's never likely to come here. I'd buy it... I'm giving Taito Legends an 8.0.

Taito Legends -- Day Seven.

Taito released Battle Shark in 1989. The game pretty much offered up the same basic gameplay as Operation Wolf, but instead of the view of a commando on some secret mission, you were the gunner of a submarine during the third world war. The arcade machine featured a mockup of a periscope. You had the eyepiece where you'd look and see the actual game, and from the base of the periscope extended two flight stick type handles. They were used to turn the view left and right, and up and down. The eyepiece didn't actually move or you'd be knocking yourself out with the action. The in game view has you controlling a crosshairs as you are shooting submarines and other various underwater near future war fantasy vehicles all while fish swim by. You need to shoot the missiles and torpedoes being shot at you. It plays just like a gun game on rails without the gun controller. Each section of the map has you going through the same stage types. Descent, search and destroy, boss battle, ascension. The game featured cool voice work and decent graphics, and a notable score by Team Zuntata. It's a fun but short game.

In 1990 Taito released the ridiculously silly The Ninja Kids. It's a comic take on the ninja action games of the late 1980s. It's standard stuff with a button for attack, jump, ninja magic. You have the standard jump + attack, and the double tap of the direction + attack combos. That's it. You can select between four players. Each one offers a different weapon. It's clearly inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but goes much further as far as humor goes. The game has a cartoon art style even by 1980s arcade sprite standards. You're out to stop an evil cult from resurrecting The Satan. You progress through the game's five levels beating up anything in your path. As you go you're cutting people in half in a cartoon way. You hit someone with glasses on and they fly off and the character's eyes bulge out and the animation it entirely exaggerated. The entire game is like that. You'll face a midboss and a main bosses in each level. There are some questionably racist Japanese takes on black people and the game is one of the better examples of notable "Engrish." It has a few laugh out loud moments that are worth playing through for. The actual gameplay is barely average beat them up style even by the era's standards. Fun to play through once or twice, but not much there after that.

Space Gun was releasedby Taito in 1990. It's the further evolution in the Operation Wolf style of on rails gun shooters but this time it takes place in space against aliens. It plays out like a two player Doom as if it were a lightgun game on rails. The aliens come at you from all sides again while you control a crosshairs to aim. You have a button for a special shot that's on par to a grenade. You can find glowing panels on the walls and shooting them will reveal the three special shot types. You get a limited number. They're based around fire, ice, and electricity. There are hostages in each level that you're not supposed to shoot and are to help escape. You have to be careful in using your special shots when hostages are on screen as they might be taken out in the blast radius. You'll often find hostages stuck to walls from alien goo. You'll need precise aim and timing to shoot them free. The aliens themselves move well and are highly detailed and animated. You can shoot off specific body parts from them. Shooting their heads off isn't a for certain one shot kill as a few of them don't seem to need their heads to continue attacking you. The gore level has the aliens spewing green slime and exploding all over the place. The game controls well using the controller instead of the light gun mounted on the arcade cabinet.

Taito released ThunderFox in 1990. The game is in the long line of Rolling Thunder and Shinobi style games. An action game where the action is split between an upper and lower tier within the play field. You have buttons for attack, fire weapon, jump, and jump attack weapons. Holding up or down and pressing jump will move you up and down the tiers. You play as a member of an anti terrorism team out to stop a global terrorist organization. It's the standard stuff for the genre. Taito wasn't innovating in any way here, merely cashing in on something already on the way out in the arcades. The graphics are decent enough but nothing special. The gameplay is essentially just decent as well. It's shoot and stab through hordes of enemies across the tiers as they rush you from both sides of the screen and as they come through conveniently placed doors. The levels are all generic subgenera locations. You have the street, the military base, the enemy airship and the like. The music is worth noting as it's strangely inappropriate jazzy synth. It's just seemingly so out of place. It's worth romping through once, at least.

The year was 1993 when Taito released Tube It, the final game on the collection into arcades. Tube It is one of the best Tetris clones ever made. In the game you have to connect pipes. The play field is thirteen sections high. Each section has a connection dot on each side. You need to connect the pipes from one side to another. You can connect any two connection dots. The pipes come in straight, elbow, and T shaped sections. As they fall into place from the top of the screen you can move them and turn them. As you connect the pipe sections they change color allowing you to easier see the paths. It's not always possible to connect them straight across of course so you end up with glowing lines winding and curving all around before you finally make the connection and clear away that full pipe.  It's very fun and original as far as Tetris clones go. Graphically it's just not going to be all that impressive being a puzzle game but it gets the job done in a clear and simple manner. The music is catchy and fun as it so needs to be for the puzzle genre.

Taito Legends -- Day Six.

Operation Thunderbolt was released by Taito in 1988 and is the sequel to Operation Wolf. This time the story has you flying off to the "Mediterranean See" to the fictional country of "Kalubya" (Libya) because some terrorists have hijacked a plane and are holding the Americans hostage. So you need to go in and meet up with an informant that will help you. The game features a semi logical level progression as the last game. The informant leads you here, which leads you there, which leads you here and so on. What they've added this time around is simultaneous two-player cooperative play. They've also added in levels where it's supposed to be your point of view going into the screen. So level one is you running down the middle of a road. It's the same sort of gameplay with everyone popping out and entering the screen from all sides and throwing knives, or lobbing grenades, or shooting at you. The graphics aren't as good in Operation Thunderbolt as they were in Operation Wolf because of them attempting the pseudo 3D effect. What they were going for wouldn't be fully realized until games like SEGA's Virtua Cop. It's a fun romp to play through, but it's not as charming as the original.

Taito released The New Zealand Story in 1988. The game has you playing in the role of a flightless kiwi bird out to save your fellow kiwis who have been kidnapped by an evil walrus and taken to zoos all across the country of New Zealand. You can jump and shoot during the traditional platform action. You can use balloons and other items to help you fly. You'll have to avoid or kill the enemies while avoiding the spikes and other instant death type obstacles along your way. The progression within the levels isn't straightforward. You can see the goal on the map in the lower left. The game will scroll in all four directions and the path to the goal can be complex and winding. You need to reach the end of each zone before the time runs out. At the end of each zone is a kiwi to be set free. There are four levels to each zoo. At the end of the fourth section there is a boss battle.  The levels are large and very colorful. The graphics were impressive at the time. The game is massive. There are some seventy some kiwi to rescue. It's easily one of the weirdest games I've ever played. It's fun though, and just a tad too hard.

In 1989 Taito released Plotting. The game is a Tetris like puzzle game where the object is to clear the blocks from the screen. There aren't any falling blocks or shapes to twist, instead the blocks are specifically marked and you need to throw the same block into an identical block to remove it. They can be marked with a blue A, a red circle, a black X, and so on. You control a slime thing that can climb up and down the left wall of the play field. The blocks are all in the lower right corner. The wall on the left extends about twice as high as the blocks are stacked. The top right of the play field is like an upside-down staircase. You can either throw the blocks straight into the left side of the stacked blocks, or go above them on the left wall and throw them into the steps which will cause them to bounce down onto to the top of the stacked blocks. So that's the gimmick. You have to think in angles and banking your shot down to hit the correct block. Graphically the game is unimpressive, even taking into consideration that it's a game about blocks and the era it was made. This game is just all-around bizarre.

Volfield was released by Taito in 1989. The game is the unofficial sequel to Qix. It furthers the same basic gameplay found in Qix. You again have to claim eighty percent of the play field by drawing shapes and connecting the lines which then clear the field. Again there is the Qix like main enemy moving around the field and the lesser enemies who move along the lines. This time as you're drawing in the level, you reveal the next level's background underneath as you go. You can power up the orb you control so that it now can shoot at the enemies for a limited time which will help you clear the last bits of the field when there is less space and the enemies are all cramped together. The enemy can now fire at you randomly. This is actually a true evolution of Qix. It's still as fun, and as hard as the other versions of the game.

Taito Legends -- Day Five.

Plump Pop was released in 1987 by Taito. The game is arguably the best Breakout clone you'll ever going to find. The game is entirely nonsensical as far as story goes. You control a couple of dogs, cats, or pigs who are holding a trampoline and must bounce another dog, cat, or pig into the air to smash items out of the sky. The items will just be a menagerie of different things. Hot dogs, flowers, balloons, zeppelins, you name it, it'll be in there somewhere. The arcade game used a paddle knob type controller where you would just turn it left or right to move them either way. It also had a jump button. You need to clear all of the items out of the sky to go to the next stage. To go beyond Breakout, they added the jump button, clouds you can walk and bounce off of, warps, bosses, moving patterns of items, and bonus items for points and use. You can make the projectile character jump when he's on a cloud. You can make the trampoline characters jump for a few reasons. One is to alter the projectile character's course more dramatically. The other is to be able to avoid the dragons who will occasionally come out and push your trampoline characters around. They can't kill your characters, just impede their movement across the bottom of the screen. That's why you'll want to jump them. The game follows a pattern of progression. The first stage of a section introduces the new background, and it has the items in a new pattern. The second stage introduces new items in a new pattern. The third stage is the bonus stage where you're timed in catching fruit with your trampoline. You need to have the fruit land dead center for it to count otherwise it just bounces back up. The bonus stages start to alter after a while. Stage 3-3 for example has a giant chalice in the stage that you need to fill up by bouncing the fruit into it. Part four of a stage is always a boss battle. Usually a giant disembodied head that will come floating out. It normally will spew a bunch of items that you'll need to clear to get to it and start smashing into it. After enough damage the boss will be defeated and you'll be off to a new background. The game is very fun and wonderfully weird. It's graphically bright and colorful and the music follows suit. I really like this one.

Rainbow Islands is the sequel to Bubble Bobble and it was released into arcades in 1987. It's something quite rare as far as arcade sequels are concerned. It's an entirely different gameplay experience from the original Bubble Bobble. Fukio Mitsuji took a chance and used his Bubble Bobble characters in a new game and continued the story established in Bubble Bobble. They were successful in being turned back into boys from dinosaurs at the end of Bubble Bobble but now they're stuck in the Rainbow Islands and need to figure out how to get home. The player has to climb up each stage and reach the goal. There are the era's usual items like fruit and ice cream cones along the way for him to collect. The player has to avoid the enemies of course, and to that end he has the ability to create rainbows. The purpose of the rainbows are twofold. First of all they act as your attack. Hitting an enemy with a rainbow converts it to a bonus item for you to collect. The second purpose is to aid you in reaching the top of the stage. There are the typical platforms and the like for you to use to reach the top, but most of those are beyond your jump ability. You have to use the rainbows to create your path up through the stage. Pressing the rainbow button creates a rainbow that's slightly taller than the player character. Walking into the rainbow allows the player to walk up the outer edge of the arc. Creating another rainbow at the top will allow you to chain them together and create another step up essentially. You have to get up to the top of each stage within the time allowed. There are seven islands and four stages in each one. The fourth stage has a typical boss battle to be fought. Hit it enough times to kill it while avoiding its movement pattern. The graphics are again bright and colorful and the music is cheery. The game is fun and thoroughly enjoyable.

Super Qix was released in 1987 by Taito and it's the sequel to the classic game Qix. The gameplay is identical to Qix with some tacked on concepts. You need to draw in a specific percentage of the map to clear it. You hold the button to draw over the play field. You connect the shapes you draw to clear them away. Instead of having to avoid the Qix this time you need to avoid a gremlin sprite as it moves around the field erratically. You can't let it hit your line that you're currently drawing. So you have to be careful in trying to take too much off at one time. The gremlin doesn't bounce off the walls so you can determine where it's going to be headed. It changesdirection randomly at any given moment. Chasing you along the lines are two sparks you must also avoid. What they've added to this one is backgrounds images. Removing seventy percent of the screen causes a witch to come out and clear the screen revealing the hidden image and coloring it in as your reward. Then it's on the next stage. The game seems tougher to me than Qix even though it's essentially the same gameplay. Qix is a classic. Super Qix for some reason isn't quite all the way there.

Taito released Rastan in 1987. The golden age of the arcades for me was the five year block of 1985 to 1990 and this is an example of why. This games represents the standard console action game experience we'd see through the 8-bit and 16-bit eras. In Rastan you play as a barbarian out to rid the land of evil. You carry a big sword. You can swing the sword to either side while walking or jumping, you can also thrust it downward and upwards during a jump. You have standard platform hack and slash here. Cut through the enemies as you run and jump from platform to platform. You have to avoid spikes, and time your jumps while sliding down slopes, and you have to time your jumps when swinging from vine to vine, all while dealing with the enemies. You can find weapons to use for a limited time. You start with the standard sword, but can use a two-headed axe, a mace, and a flame sword. You can find potions to refill your life partially. There are icons to fill your life bar entirely. Icons to increase your defense and other to make you stronger. Rastan is a fun and challenging game that features everything that would be coming home in the genre for years to come. The impressive conversion of Rastan on the SEGA Master System remains one of my favorite titles to this day and I loved the arcade game. It's great to finally own this one.

Taito Legends -- Day Four.

In 1986 Taito released Tokio to the arcades. It's one in a long line of 1942 clones. You control a biplane over the streets of modern day Tokyo. Same gameplay as all the games in the vertical shooter genre at the time. Shoot them first and avoid everything else. This time you can kill the enemies and red planes appear. Collect them as your wingmen. You can then change the formation of the wingmen to alter the spray of your weapons.  You can cycle through a few formations and depending on how many wingmen you've collected, they will change dramatically. From wide shots, to concentrated beams and the like. The wingmen can be shot down so you have to consider that when moving to avoid shots. There is also a command to launch the wingmen kamikaze style into a target. They'll rush off and crash into it and cause heavy damage. The game has you flying through districts of Tokyo attempting to get to the city center. Each few sections along the way feature a boss battle. The graphics for this one aren't all that impressive, even at the time. The gameplay is derivative of the genre which was on its way out at the time as more complex styles of gameplay were being offered up.

Tatio released Continental Circus into the arcades in 1987. They probably meant to call it Continental Circuit first of all, as it's a formula 1 racing game. All of the cabinets in the US actually had the game as Continental Circuit, but the game's title screen still read Continental Circus. The game features three tracks. You need to qualify for the first one by achieving a ranking of eighty or higher in two laps. If successful, you'll move on to racing in that track. You'll then move on to the second track where you'll have to qualify further up in the overall rankings, and then race the track and advance in the rankings again. You keep doing this until you're at the last track and are going for the number one spot. The game featured a steering wheel, gas pedal, and a high-low shifter. Some sit down versions of the arcade game had overhanging shutter based 3D glasses. Some versions didn't. If the glasses were there, and they were enabled, looking at the game without them you'd see two exact images of the game sort of offset from each other and in different colors. Looking through the glasses brought the imagery together. Versions of the game without the glasses had the version of the game being emulated here. The unique thing about this game at the time was the use of the pit. If you bumped another car or obstacle, you'd begin to smoke and you couldn't take another hit. You car would explode if you hit something at that point. So you'd have to pull in to the pitstop and get your car repaired. You weren't racing against the other car's physical presence. You're racing against their times, and pulling into the pit didn't hurt you time wise. The game here suffers from not having the wheel, but it's actually playable. Another problem with this game at the time was it came out post Out Run and attempted to mimic that game's pioneering graphics techniques on inferior arcade hardware. Needless to say, it didn't work out that well.

In 1987 Taito unleashed another classic arcade game on to the scene in the form of Operation Wolf. Operation Wolf is a lightgun game where a mock up of an uzi is mounted before the screen of the machine. It has a trigger button for firing and another button to shoot a grenade. What made Operation Wolf special was in the way the enemies were presented. The game scrolls from either left to right or right to left and while this is going on enemies come on to the screen from either side or the top of the screen and then turn into the screen to fire at you. You have guys running in from the left and taking cover behind trees waiting to lean out and fire at you. They come diving in from the right and roll prone before firing at you. The helicopters come in from the sides and turn towards you and fire. The sprites are huge and the animation is great. All of it. Their movement in, and their death animations. The game also has a logical progression. You're going in to free some hostages, so to start you go to take out the enemy communications. You proceed on in subsequent missions to take out their ammo supply and weaken their defenses on the way to liberating the prisoners of war. You then proceed to escort them out and to the awaiting transport plane and you guard them as the plane takes off. You have to shoot items on the screen to pick them up, like ammo clips and extra grenades. The game features hidden items behind destructible bits of the scenery. You can shoot coconuts off the trees or chickens and pigs to reveal hidden items. The game also throws in some friendly characters you don't want to shoot and often need to protect. The game is frenetic and truly good fun on a console. I wasn't expecting it to be this much fun but they've really taken the extra steps to make sure it was. You control an onscreen crosshairs to aim. They have options to allow you to adjust the analog sensitivity and even to invert the Y axis. The control is perfect on a console as a result. This one remains great.

Taito released Exzisus onto the arcade scene in 1987. A brutally hard sidescrolling shooter in which you play as a space man purging the planets of an alien infestation. The game has all the standard bases covered. Forced scrolling, mid-bosses, weapon power-ups, and long and drawn out bosses. The graphics are great for the era and the music and sound are very impressive. The game features prominent parallax scrolling. Which I still just adore to this day. The game is really freaking hard. What makes the game hard is that the constant stream of enemies are coming at you from all directions. You have to be so exact in your movements. There isn't a pixel allowed for error. You need skills for this one. This isn't for the casual shooter fan. Not in any way. A very good game for those types, and nobody else.

Taito Legends -- Day Three.

Great Swordsman was released in 1984 and it's easily one of the most original and interesting arcade games ever made. You're out to prove yourself the greatest swordsman ever through three sword fighting styles. The game takes itself very seriously. It actually tries its best to make you try to win the battle with skill over just traditional video game hack and slash. You will face three opponents within each style. All three styles have the same controls. You can move left and right to make your character advance or retreat. You have a high attack, a mid attack, and a low attack.  You can block an incoming attack by meeting it with the same attack. In other words, block an incoming high attack with a high attack and block an incoming low attack with a low attack. For the first style of fencing, you'll be going for the first one to reach five points.  Each successive opponent will be harder. Each becoming more aggressive. After you make it through the fencing section, you'll go to the bonus round, where you'll have to deflect an archer's shots with the correct attack type. Miss one and you fail. After the bonus round comes kendo where you'll be going for the first one to reach two points. Defeat the three kendo fighters and you're off to the bonus round again. The final style is Roman gladiatorial where it's one hit kills. Defeat the three gladiators to win the game. Although the game is essentially an action version of Paper, Scissors, Rock, it's actually very well done and fun.

In 1985 Taito released the second sequel to Space Invaders called Return of the Invaders. This time they went all out with animation and color. They added backgrounds, went crazy with the aliens' attack patterns, made the shields move, and even allowed you to power up your tank.  They essentially added what everyone else had to their clones in the last five years since we'd seen the Invaders. It's still the same core gameplay that they pioneered. Shoot them before they shoot you and avoid everything.  More of the same, at a time when the world had moved on. Cool little footnote in gaming to own though.

Another true classic was released in 1986 and it was called Bubble Bobble. The game has you playing as one of two guys who have been turned into exceedingly cute little dinosaurs. You're out to save your girlfriends of course. To do that you'll have to go through the game's one-hundred levels. You can jump, and you can shoot bubbles out of your mouth. Hitting an enemy makes him float away. Jumping on an enemy with a bubble destroys it and makes bonus point laden fruit appear. You need to capture and then pop all the creatures within your bubbles. There aren't any platforming deaths in the game as if you fall out the bottom of the stage you'll fall back in through the top. It's this ease of play that makes the game such a success. You didn't need to be great to get anywhere. The game allowed anyone to feel like they've accomplished something. The game offered up cooperative play. It wasn't the first, but it was the first to truly reward you for it. You could only see the true ending by completing the one-hundred levels with another player. Still has catchy music. Still fast and fun. I would really like to see this come to Xbox Live Arcade. I'd buy it.

In 1986 Taito released Gladiator. The game offers up the Great Swordsman gameplay of a high, mid, and low attack, but adds in a shield that you can control to those three positions independently of your sword strikes. This would have been great if they had kept it to one-on-one fighting like Great Swordsman. Instead, they turned it into an action title. You'll be moving to your right and have to kill bats knock darts and other projectiles out of the air. You'll then reach a boss battle. He'll have your three sword strikes and a shield of his own. It's not the one hit kills stuff anymore from Great Swordsman's gladiator levels. You have armor which can be damaged and knocked off exposing your flesh. Strikes to exposed flesh are fatal. The concept is great, but the problem is the animation is too stiff and there is a great disconnected feeling to it all in the controls. This game would be expanded and later released on the Genesis as Sword of Sodan. I didn't like it then either. This one is unfortunately a total dud.

Taito Legends -- Day Two.

The Electric Yo-yo was released into arcades in 1982. It's a surprisingly complex action puzzle game for the era. You control an orb that has the yo-yo like ability to shoot out a line and grab onto stuff and pull itself to that location. The object is to clear the field of blocks that are arranged in various patterns. Touching a block makes it vanish. On the field is a snake like creature that bounces off the borders of the screen and is just randomly going about its business. You have to avoid it. The snake thing drops a couple of little bird like enemies that move one space at a time and actively pursue you. You can move in four directions, no diagonals. When moving on spaces where there are no blocks your movement is slow. When moving from block to block, or across the empty space from one block to another, your movement is lightning fast. The snake will sometimes cause blocks to glow for a short time, hitting one of these grants you invincibility for a short while allowing you to move through the enemies. The game was actually developed in the United States. It's pretty fun, and impressively complex. 

Zoo Keeper was also developed within the US and was released in 1982. Zoo Keeper has you trying to save your girlfriend trapped within a zoo where the animals have escaped their cages and are running amok. You play on two types of fields. The first one has a cage in the middle where animals keep pouring out. You run along the outside of a rectangle repairing the brick wall that keeps the animals in. They're rampaging around inside smashing sections of the wall away. You're rewarded for how many animals you can keep contained. When they get out they'll run along the same path on the outside of the rectangle as you are. You'll have to jump them. You're rewarded more for jumping two or three animals at once. You have to keep this up until the time runs out. Occasionally items will appear on the path for bonus points. There is one that will allow you to return any escaped animals to back inside the wall. After a few levels of this you'll get a boss battle that is essentially a Donkey Kong rip-off. You'll have to make your way up through the moving platforms to get to your girlfriend who is at the top next to a coconut throwing monkey. The game is frenetic and actually quite fun. Interestingly enough, the player looks an awful lot like Luigi before Luigi even existed, and your girlfriend's name is Zelda. The first Zelda of gaming isn't the one we all might have thought. 

Jungle Hunt was released in 1982 and was another title developed by Taito America Corp. It's essentially Taito's take on the Atari 2600 game Pitfall, which itself was a take on the opening sequence of the 1981 movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Standard game story here, out to save the girlfriend. The game takes place over four stages. Stage one has you swinging from tree to tree via vines. They're not all swinging in synch of course, so you have to time the jumps as to be able to catch the vine. From the last vine you jump into the ocean where you have to avoid crocodiles and air bubbles that slow your movement making you an easy target for the animals. You only have so much air, so you'll need to return to the surface every so often. You're able to stab the crocs to kill them, but it takes some decent timing. At the end of the water, you jump out on to land. You'll be running up a hill with boulders coming down. You have to jump the boulders. This level is forced scrolling and you only have minimal movement backwards and forwards across the screen. The final section is just one screen. It has your girlfriend suspended over a giant kettle. There are a couple of mask wearing natives armed with spears dancing around in between you and your girlfriend. You have to jump and avoid them, and then make the leap to your girlfriend, while also avoiding the kettle. Once you've saved your girlfriend, it starts all over. Except you play as the girl out to save the original character. They speed things up, make the timer faster, and add a few surprises along the way like monkeys on the vines you have to avoid. Shampoo, rinse, repeat. The characters and creatures are large and detailed and they contain a decent amount of animation. Impressive for the era. The game is still rather fun. I loved the arcade game, and the Commodore-64 port. 

In 1983 Taito released a classic arcade game by the name of Elevator Action. You're a spy being sent into high-rise buildings to steal documents. There are guards you can shoot patrolling the buildings. You must take the elevators and escalators down the thirty floors of each building. There are numerous doors on each floor you can enter to hide from the guards. Red doors contain the target documents. You need to collect them all and make your way to the bottom floor to the awaiting getaway vehicle. It's classic cat and mouse espionage gameplay.  The guards will follow you from floor to floor and they'll come in and out of doors. You can duck their shots, but they can also duck and fire low. You can also shoot out the lights to help them not be able to track you. Once you clear a stage, it's on to the next one in a seemingly never ending parade of levels. This game is a true classic and is as fun as it ever was. Again though, I don't think kids these days would be able to cope with its visuals or gameplay. Most of them anyway.

Taito Legends -- Day One.

Space Invaders was developed by Toshihiro Nishikado for Taito in 1978. Its success was part great design, and part timing. He was aware of Star Wars having been released in 1977 in the US with the film due to hit Japan in 1978. He set about designing a game that would cash in on the boom of all things outer space he felt coming. He based his designs on the aliens from H. G. Wells' War of the Worlds wherein the aliens looked like an octopus. He kept with the underwater theme and added aliens that looked like crabs. He created a game where you defend a planet from alien invaders. There are three alien types lined up five rows of eleven aliens. The bottom two rows are of the largest type of aliens and are worth ten points each. The next two rows are of the middle sized aliens and are worth twenty points each. The final row contains the smallest aliens and are worth thirty points each. From time to time an alien mother ship will come out and scroll across the top of the screen. Hitting the alien mother ship nets you one-hundred points. There are four shield bunkers on the bottom of the screen that the player scrolls under from right to left as the aliens move in formation from right to left and back through the play field. When they reach the edge of the screen they move down in formation one row coming closer to the player. The player needs to clear the field before the aliens touch down on the planet's surface. The shields provide you with some cover but they are constantly being eroded away by the enemy fire. The aliens speed up the fewer there are of them which adds to the tension. The game is notable for the first truly great use of sound in video games. The heartbeat music that matches the pacing of the invaders movement across the screen helps add considerable tension to the experience. Taito wisely allows you to set the options for this game to where you can play it in the original black and white color scheme, and in the correct aspect ratio. But for those who might not be able to tolerate such purity, they allow you to add color to the shields and ships, play full screen, and play on backgrounds. The game was so popular in Japan that it actually created a Yen shortage with all the coins being out of circulation by being within the machines. The game is a true classic and the first part of the holy trinity of video games. Pong was a hit and a milestone, but the industry as we know and love it was built on three games, Space Invaders, Asteroids, and Pac-Man. The game is as fun today as it ever was, but for most people it will only cause a few minutes distraction.

Phoenix was released in arcades in 1980. It's a very cool Galaga clone. You know the deal. Start with a bunch of enemies in formation at the top of the screen. The player controls a ship along the bottom of the screen as enemies break formation and a few of them come down toward the player. The player has to shoot and avoid them. The ones still alive go back to the top of the screen and wait their turn to come back down. The player gets a shield that will block all shots and enemy collisions. The trick is of course it only last a few seconds and it also stops all player movement while in use. Graphically Phoenix is more ambitious than other Galaga clones of the day with a scrolling star field and planets, as well as animated enemy mechanical birds. The enemies have very erratic flight patterns. The game also freshens things up with the enemy formation change each wave. The game repeats a five wave cycle. The first two waves are as described above. The third and fourth waves have you fighting enemies that start out as eggs that grow into large birds. They can't attack until bird form so it's best to try to get as many in egg form as possible. As the large birds you need to be precise in your aiming as shooting their wings will only destroy the wing which will grow back. It takes a center shot to kill them. On the fifth stage you'll fight a boss battle. The alien mother ship fills the middle of the screen with a formation behind her. You can chip away at the mother ship. Shooting a bit of it destroys that bit of it. You need to cut a path into the ship to the alien controlling the ship all while killing and avoiding the alien formation. This Galaga clone is a cut above the rest. It's a great game.

Space Invaders part 2 was released in 1980. It's like most sequels of the time that were created to cash in on the popularity of the original. Same exact game, but with color. Depending on the position of the invader within Earth's atmosphere they'll be a different color. The four shields are also now numbered with the wave number. Letting anyone walking by know you're on wave two or three. The point values have been slightly adjusted and the difficulty raised. The mother ship now can phase in and out of existence by essentially blinking as it crosses the screen making it much tougher to hit as now you not only have to time the shot to be there, but the ship itself has to be phased in. There are little animations of the mother ship calling for reinforcements between each wave and the new formation of invaders is seen entering the field. Outside of these small changes, it's the same gameplay.

If you were to cross Missile Command and Defender, you'd end up with Colony 7, which was released in 1981. In the game you're trying to protect the colony from invaders, imagine that. You control a crosshairs around the screen. The bottom of the play field has a valley between two mountains. The colony is in this valley. There is a shield extending across the valley from near the tops of either mountain. You have two cannons that are on the peaks of either side of the valley. They fire where your crosshairs is. You have the standard cannon fire, a bomb that will take out things within a region, and a bomb that will kill everything on screen. Of course the you get one of the smart bombs, a few of the others, and unlimited cannon fire. That is unless your cannons are destroyed. Under the shield you can see the colony with people and buildings. The aliens come down from off screen and try to bomb and eat away at the shield over the colony. They also try to take out your cannons. Lose the cannons or the colony and it's game over. The game is pretty tough. Visually it's a bit uninspiring, even for the day. The gameplay is fast and furious. The game just seems set a tad too tough. It might be much more fun if you could survive longer than a couple minutes.

Taito Legends -- Intro.

While continuing to play World of Warcraft and fretting over the ever growing stack of unplayed games I've decided to knock out some of the titles that offer up complimentary play styles with the MMORPG. Taito Legends is the perfect choice as it allows for quick bursts of arcade action to be played here and there in your free time. Taito Legends is a collection of twenty-nine arcade games from Taito published by SEGA for the US and Europe on the PlayStation 2. The games range from 1978 until 1993 and offer up a few different genres. It's been quite the year for arcade compilations with offerings from Namco, Capcom, and Tecmo. We'll have to see how Taito stacks up as far as gameplay, emulation quality, extras, and overall presentation are concerned. The twenty-nine games are as follows: Space Invaders, Jungle Hunt, Bubble Bobble, Operation Wolf, Elevator Action, Phoenix, Zoo Keeper, Battle Shark, Colony 7, Continental Circus, Electric Yo-Yo, Volfied, Gladiator, The New Zealand Story, The Ninja Kids, Operation Thunderbolt, Return of the Invaders, Tokio, Plump Pop, Rainbow Islands, Tube It, Great Swordsman, Space Gun, Space Invaders part 2, Super Qix, Exzisus, Plotting, Thunderfox, and Rastan. Now how many of those do you know? I've personally played over half the titles listed. I've seen but never played a couple others. I've never even heard of more than a couple. I also notice some major Taito titles missing from the list...

World of Warcraft -- Progress Report.

There isn't much to say about this beyond a basic progress report. The game is still fun at level thirty-six. We're still teaming together to get through the quests and we're working towards more experience and gold. The spawn rate issue is still present. There is still a wealth of stuff to do and we're never at a loss for something to do. The levels come relatively swiftly at this point but will most likely start to really slow down. We've been completing some dungeon and elite quests. We can handle creatures around level forty. I've gone ahead and used the two-month prepaid card so that will keep my account active until around the third week of February. In that time we should hopefully get rather far on our alliance side characters and get a decent start in on our horde side characters.

Animal Crossing: Wild World -- Final Opinion.

I still don't think there is much of a game here at all in Animal Crossing: Wild World but it's a little easier to take this time around.  What there is to do within the game can still be accomplished in around fifteen minutes. It's still the exact things that were available in the Gamecube version. It's a little easier to take this time around because I knew what it was going in. I'm fine with the pick up and play it once a day for fifteen minutes aspect.  Within that time I check what the store has to sell. I check the tailor's for new hats and accessories. I catch a fish, dig up a fossil or two, check and send mail. I also check in with each person in town. Most of my time is spent just trying to collect items for my house that fit with the theme I want. There are only so many times I can design a pattern or mess with the town theme, so I don't mess with those anymore. I don't like how there isn't really anything new at all beyond a couple of little gimmicks that are enabled online. The online aspect does add an aspect that's sort of related to something you could call fun if you maybe squinted and wished it to be so with all your might. At least for a little while anyway. It clearly can't sustain that. I think I can safely say that Magus isn't still chuckling over being called a cockmunch by a talking fox at this point. It's a shame that Nintendo doesn't seem to want to actually live up to the promising potential the base they've created exhibits. They're satisfied with it as is. The concept is sound and it really could be so much more than it is. As it is, it comes off as a glorified virtual pet game, and so be it. I'm giving it a 6.5.

Animal Crossing -- Welcome to Online, Cockmunch.

Animal Crossing still isn't even a game in my opinion. The core gameplay remains as it was on the Gamecube version. There is actually very little for you to do within the game. It's still offering up twenty minutes of activity a day. It's still nothing more than running the same errands for the NPCs, collecting fish, fossils, insects, and decorating your house. It still uses the same hideous user interface that makes moving items around and anything else you'd want to do a pain in the ass. Just switching between items is a hassle. It is not user friendly at all. The touch screen speeds it up a little bit, but just a little. The characters are beyond repetitive and you're still forced to go through the motions and get the items you would actually want or need over the game's time schedule. The online aspect though does breathe some life into what is otherwise a stagnant title. I don't know if it overpowers the stench of the rest of the gameplay. Going to Brahams and Oleen, Magus' and ZBo's towns, does add some variety in interaction. Following ZBo around making sure he doesn't defile my town or finding an item Magus wants and being able to hand it over helps out. The game offers up a couple of cool gimmicks online. One is the character of Blanca. When you go online and connect to the Nintendo WFC network you register with them each time, and they alter things in your game. They upload and download from your card without you knowing. Blanca is a character who allows you to design her face. Every once in a while Blanca will show up in town and she'll have a face that was drawn by another person somewhere in the world. She'll tell you who drew it and from which in game town they're from and give you the option of drawing her face. If you do, the next time you connect to the Nintendo WFC network she'll be uploaded and sent out to some random person's town where she'll show up with the face you drew, the design name you gave it, your character name, and the name of your town. I've continually send her out into the world with a hideous bloodshot eye for a face. Since Magus and ZBo have come to my town, my town's characters all talk about them. I get in game mail from the residents of Oleen and Brahams from the characters I've spoken to there. You can post foul things on the message boards outside the town hall in each town. Since Magus has been to Motavia a few times, a lost child from here showed up in Brahams.The mother was in my town looking for her.  Magus was able to bring the child over with him to my town so they could be reunited. A few of the characters allow you to change their greetings or catch phrases. One of the characters used to call everyone villain. I was able to change that to cockmunch. I was hoping for a bit of shock value. I got much more than that out of it with Magus. He had that shock value moment, but I was expecting him to instantly get that I had altered the phrase. I pretended to not know what he was talking about when he reacted to it. I also told him that the character was calling me villain. He told me he was looking around forums for reports of swearing in the game. I then began telling him that he had to be messing with me. He was determined enough to prove that he wasn't seeing things that he wanted to go back online so he could find the character and then take a photo to prove it to me. We did just that. If I had the option to switch it back to villain, I so would have, but I didn't. He took the photo and sent it around to everyone who is online with the NDS. I then revealed what I had done, and he felt sufficiently foolish. Or as he put it 'I got punked.' Something I was just hoping would give an instant of shock value turned into two days of funny. Since Magus has spent so much time talking to this one character in my town because of this incident, the character thinks Magus really likes him, and has rewarded Magus with a rather cool item. The online aspect adds a bit of intangible something to the offline game. I'm not yet sure if it's enough to save this from being total crap to being something just decent.

Animal Crossing: Wild World -- Initial Impression.

My initial impression of Animal Crossing: Wild World is pretty much what have I done. Animal Crossing on the Gamecube is easily one of my most despised games of all time. I hated it. I didn't even consider it a game. So one might ask why the hell did you get AC: WW on the Nintendo DS? Well, because the cult of Animal Crossing types said I was wrong. They said I didn't get it. I didn't give it a chance. I didn't play it with anyone else. That last part is true. I didn't play the game with anyone else. Nobody came to my town. I never went to anyone else's town. I had no interaction with anything real. I was left to my own devices with the non player characters. I was fatally bored. Nintendo really blew the online aspect of the Gamecube. Hell, they pretty much just went through the motions of pretending that they had any online interest.  If it weren't for SEGA and the Phantasy Star Online games, the Gamecube wouldn't have ever been online. Microsoft had phenomenal success in online gaming with the Xbox and Xbox Live and even Sony with their pain in the ass online strategy had major successes online with SOCOM. To the point where Nintendo can't ignore it anymore. They've got to go online, and the Nintendo DS is their first steps at truly doing it. I bought the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector and I want to get my money out of it. First with Mario Kart, and now with the second online enabled title AC: WW. So this time I'll be able to visit someone's town, and I'll be able to have someone come to Motavia. I continue to use my Phantasy Star naming theme across all games. I'll be able to see if the online aspect changes the game enough to say if I actually missed a key aspect of the Gamecube version. Or I'll see if I was correct in my opinion that Animal Crossing isn't even a game. We'll see...

World of Warcraft -- One Major Flaw.

As of this entry, I've reached level twenty-nine with my Hunter. Magus has reached twenty-eight with his Rogue, Riddel is approaching twenty with her Warrior, ZBo is around level fifteen with his Priest, and Pent is in the mid twenties with his Warlock. We're well beyond coming to grips with the game at this point. We've been earnestly advancing. Completing quest after quest. We've reached a point where we need to at the least pair up to accomplish some of the quests we're undertaking. The game is much more fun in group play than in solo play. Magus and I have reached the point where we're entering the highest brackets on our skill levels. I've reached artisan on herbalism and he's reached it on skinning. I still haven't spent a single talent point though. I just am entirely frozen when it comes to deciding where to place the points. I don't know which area to focus on as there is no clear path and a few seemingly must have items are on each of the three Hunter talent paths. I just can't decide. The game remains exceedingly fun at this point in the experience. Much more so than I could have thought possible. There is a flaw though. A rather major one in my opinion. It's the spawn factor. This is a flaw that's present in all games of the genre and one that someone really needs to fix. It's all about balance, and that's the difficulty. They can't get the balance just right and it tips either way. And companies seem to err on the side of too many creatures or spawn times that are too quick. I don't mind dying. If it's my fault. If I stumbled into an area too tough for me and couldn't get out. So be it. If I make some mistake that costs me my life, no big deal. But if I don't make any mistakes and I die because I'm fighting something and something else happens to spawn right there and I'm taken out then it pisses me off. It's not even remotely fair. I do understand the problem. They need to have it so there are creatures to fight. They can't have someone rip through an area and clear it out and then have others standing around waiting for something to spawn. The obvious solution is dismissed as not needed or labeled as too hard to code. They need a system to monitor areas and the number of creatures versus players.  If there is a lone player in an area, there doesn't need to be sixty-three creatures there, and the spawn rate can be slowed. If the game registers twenty players in an area, then increase the number of creatures there and the spawn time. It needs to come into being to remove a rather large flaw in the entire genre, and the only real flaw within World of Warcraft.

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness -- Void.

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness has fallen victim to the black hole of time consumption that is the massively multiplayer online role playing game World of Warcraft. Well, not really. It fell victim to just being so pedestrian and bland that I'm not going to be finishing it. Maybe I'll be able to get back to it sometime. I'm going to have to set up some sort of routine to make sure other games get played during the three months I intend to spend with World of Warcraft. Animal Crossing is coming up in a few days and will be the first test. I do have a large backlog of titles to be played at the moment. Unfortunately a lot of them are RPGs. I'll have to figure something out...

World of Warcraft -- Progress Report.

I have reached level nineteen in World of Warcraft. I have left my starting area of Teldrassil which is an island off the northwestern shore of the continent of Kalimdor and made the journey to Darkshore. I've tamed a bear as my pet. In keeping with my Phantasy Star based naming tradition I have named him Algo. The bear makes a major difference in how I approach the game and in my ability to deal damage and survive. His job is to be my shield. A Hunter can control the pets he tames where all the other pets in the game are purely for ornamental purposes. I can command Algo to be aggressive, defensive, or passive. He'll attack everything, attack only when attacked, and never attack respectively. I can command him to follow me, or command him to stay where he is. His attack range is rather large, even beyond the range of my arrows. I can use this to my advantage. I will select a target and command Algo to attack. He'll roar and rush off into battle.  The enemy will see him as the threat he is and will focus in on Algo and not me. This allows me to fire away from a safe distance. His attacks are actually quite powerful and he can absorb a lot of damage. I have attacks that slow down the enemy's speed which helps slow the damage he has to take. It's surprisingly smart AI and it actually comes off as actual teamwork. It's a strange experience. The pets have their own sets of skills that you can power up just like you would your own character. They are based on his level and the skill levels themselves. You can't buy a higher attack skill at level three without having one and two and so on just because you've reached level twenty which allows for the level three skill. The only requirements for keeping the pet are in keeping him happy. All that really comes down to is keeping him well fed. Each pet type has a variety of foods it will and will not eat. You just need to keep enough of what they like on hand. It actually costs me next to nothing as he's big on eating fish. I spend a lot of time fishing so I'm always well stocked on pet food. This isn't much of a chore as it helps in both my fishing rating and the cooking rating. Plus the benefits from having Algo are immensely worth it. We're all just plugging away, raising skills, gaining levels, doing quests. Keldroc has joined the game as a Mage. I've yet to meet up with him. He's reached level eleven rather quickly as of this entry. So we have a well rounded group with my Hunter, Pent's Warlock, Keldroc's Mage, Riddel's Warrior, and Magus' Rogue. We should be getting to the point where we'll be able to group up here and there to help each other through some of the tougher quests sooner than later.  As for now we're all just working on improving our characters.

World of Warcraft -- A Fishing We Will Go.

We have reached the point where we've pretty much come to grips with everything and are starting to advance in earnest. I have been focusing on skills over the leveling of my character. I've been leveling both the primary and secondary skills. The primary skills are based on your professions. You can select up to two professions to learn at one time. I have selected Herbalism and Alchemy. Herbalism is the gathering of plants. Herbalism fits in well with Alchemy as it's the making of potions from plants. Magus has selected Skinning and Leatherworking and Riddel is doing Mining and Blacksmithing. Both of their skill sets are complimentary to each other as mine are. There are some secondary skills you can do and I have been working on all three. They are First Aid, Cooking, and Fishing. First Aid is the making of bandages with healing properties. You need to collect cloth off the humanoid enemies in the game to create the bandages. Cooking is just that, the cooking of food to create items with healing properties. You gather ingredients from the fallen enemies and buy spices from merchants. You learn better recipes the further you advance. Fishing works great with cooking as it provides a lot of useful fish for the recipes. You can also find rare treasures and other items by fishing. Working for the group, I'll be able to make them specific potions they'll find helpful. Riddel will be able to make us heavy mail type armor and weaponry. Magus will be able to make us boots and pants and leather type armor. So far Magus has provided me with boots, pants, and a vest that's higher than anything I have found or can buy. It's very helpful for the whole group to be working this way instead of for the individual. I'm not aware of what Pent and Keldroc are intending to do, hopefully it will fill in what's missing. As a Hunter I'm able to tame creatures as pets and have them fight alongside me. I have completed the quests that will allow me to tame a pet. I still need to go to the main city for my area and learn the skills needed to train my pet. I have a few talent points to spend at this time, but I haven't spent them because I'm not yet sure what I'm going to focus on. There is time for that later. For the next few days I'll be concentrating on the skills and leveling my character and the completion of a few more local quests. Speaking of quests I have taken one on that's considered an elite quest. It means it'son the level of a boss battle or something of that nature. It didn't give me any warning that it was an elite quest. Although I can cancel the quest at any time without any penalty, I'd still prefer the game inform me beforehand that I'm about to undertake something on that scale. Once we've all had a chance to clear our starting areas, and develop our skills and the like, we'll head out into the greater world, group up, and decide what's next.

World of Warcraft -- Initial Impression.

I once said I'd never return to this genre. I had some of the best times playing Ragnarok Online, and I had what were easily the worst moments I've ever had gaming. The worst was enough to swear me off the genre forever. Or so I thought.  The concept of the genre is quite sound. The execution has always been flawed. And of course, there are the people themselves. My tolerance for dealing with idiots I can't virtually shoot or blow up is considerably low. So how is it I find myself back here again? Well, Riddel adores the genre and has been on me forever to play something with her. Magus has always expressed an interest in the game going way back, but he held off ever purchasing it. Between Halo 2, SOCOM 2, Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst, and some Splinter Cell, we've quite enjoyed the thousands of hours we've spent playing online games. The promise of the genre is a strong lure, backed up by people you know and trust, I find myself roaming around Teldrassil as a female Night Elf hunter. Magus is a male Dwarf rogue, and Riddel is a female Human warrior. Pent will be a warlock, and Keldroc is to come along as a mage. My initial impressions are the game is fun and it's pretty. It's pretty for obvious reasons. The graphics are impressive for the size and scope of the game. They're nothing close to the best, but you have to consider the ambition of it all. The game is fun because at this point everything makes sense and it's full of stuff to actually do. You're being kept busy while gaining levels. Your focus isn't seemingly on leveling. That is what you're doing, but it's presented in such a way to disguise it extremely well. Right now we're all just leveling and completing quests in our starting areas of the world. We are spread out around the world and it will be a while before we'll be able to group up and work on goals as a group. The interface seems rather intuitive, there are a couple instances of how do you do this or that, but for the most part it's been easy going. Hopefully it will stay that way. Hopefully it will stay fair and balanced. I'll need to see how the level progression goes. How much pure grinding there is. There haven't been any instances of the other people being jerks so far. The game appears to allow you to tailor the game around your playing style. I'll need to see just how far that goes. But for now, it's surprisingly fun.

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness -- Or Just Cursed?

I don't understand what's wrong here. I mean, Castlevania doesn't require anything special. There is nothing different about it. It doesn't demand something impossible to do in 3D and retain what makes it Castlevania. Yet somehow they can't get it right. The controls are simple enough. Left analog stick to move the character around. The right analog stick controls the camera. The square button is attack. The X button jumps. The triangle button is for abilities. Read that as magic.  The circle button is context sensitive. It's the final stronger blow in combat, it steals in combat, it examines, and it opens doors to new rooms. The R1 button guards. R1 + square to launch a ground based enemy into the air. The R2 button locks-on and disengages the lock-on. The L1 button centers the camera. The L2 button cycles between locked-on targets. The select button brings up the map. The start button brings up the submenu. The D-pad up or down cycles through your innocent devil commands. You can have them follow your command, have them fight as they wish, or have them guard. Left or right on the D-pad cycles through the innocent devil's abilities. Read that as your magic.  The controls are all very simple and quite traditionally mapped out. So what's the problem? Hector moves ploddingly and in a boxy manner. He's not as fast or agile as he should be. You need to lock-on to a lot of the targets to hit them and even then you're swinging around and missing a lot of the time. Locking-on to swift moving enemies will often cause the camera to spaz out as it follows their movement. You're doing this within the most generic looking art design I've ever seen. Beyond the character design that is. The world is just incredibly boring.  The game has you wandering through very long corridors that feel extended just to increase the game's overall size. The character art is the opposite. It's just all so fruity to the point of being ludicrous. There are a couple of decent aspects to the game. The innocent devil and item creation systems are great. In item creation you collect materials dropped from the enemies. You can also steal material from the enemies. You then combine this or that in various amounts to create all your weapons and armor. It's more fun to fiddle with what can be made than it is to play the actual game. The innocent devil system is an interesting take on the magic. The story, which happens to be the direct sequel to Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse has you playing as a devil forge-master. You can create innocent devils. These devils act as familiars that you can level up. As they level up they learn abilities that allow you to enter new areas of the castle. They also learn magic. You have control over when they use it. It's a simple system that actually works well. You can guide how they evolve. Creatures will drop evolution crystals when defeated. They will be color based depending on the weapon you use. Using a sword drops red crystals, using an ax drops blue and so forth. You can look at their charts and see what it will take to get them to go whichever route. They evolve to different looks and have different magic. Their core abilities will remain the same as you'll need those to get through certain areas of the castle. The load time in switching between the innocent devils is pretty long. You have to switch from the battle types to the healer well in advance because the game doesn't stop while it's loading the new devil in. You have to switch the devils from the submenu, which also sucks. They should have done it from the main game. The load time in general is pretty bad. Between each room it loads. You're loading for six to eight seconds every other minute or so for the whole game. I will try to finish this game, but I seriously question whether I'll be able to make it or not...

Xbox 360 -- Impressions.

I have connected and set up my brand new Xbox 360. The console itself is gorgeous. It's sleek with nice curves and lines. If I were to describe the console in one word, that word would be class. The system is just visually classy in my opinion. I think this might be the best looking console in the history of video games, even surpassing the original SEGA Genesis. I'm laying the system down, not standing it up. The curves and concave plating really show up nice this way. The chrome disc tray plating is a nice visual flair. It catches the light. The glowing green eye is cool. It lets you know the system is on because the system itself is surprisingly quiet. Connecting the system was simple. The power supply adapter is about the size of a brick. This baby sucks down the juice. You have the great combination component and high definition audio and video cables. And you have the Ethernet cable which I just left in place from removing the Xbox and putting the Xbox 360 in its place. I didn't use the one included with the system. The controllers are godly. I'm instantly in love with it. Everything is responsive and tight. The button positioning is exceptional.  It's comfortable and feels solid and well made. Everything about the system feels solid and well made, from the console, to the controllers, to the power supply, to the connection cables. The feeling of class transfers over to the system interface. You have four panels that Microsoft are calling blades. If you sign up for Xbox Live, or transfer your current account over to the Xbox 360, the Xbox Live blade will be the default blade when starting up the system. The system will automatically sign in to the service. Here you'll have access to your friends list to see who is online. Check or send messages. Check the latest news. You can access Xbox Live Marketplace from this blade. Xbox Live Marketplace is just that, a store where you can buy skins, themes, game demos, trailers, redeem your prepaid cards or promotional codes, and check your download history. Some downloads are free, others will cost you Microsoft Points, which you can purchase. The next blade is the Games blade. Here you can check your achievements, played games, access Xbox Live Arcade, demos, and trailers. Xbox Live Arcade allows you to download small games that are stored on your hard drive. You can play these games over Xbox Live. They feature everything from newly created content to classic arcade games. You can play Joust over Xbox Live. I will say that again, you can play Joust over Xbox Live. Awesome. The next blade over is Media. Here you can access your music, pictures, and video. You can connect your Xbox Live to your PC, portable storage devices such as external drives, memory card readers, and even the PlayStation Portable. You have to download and instal Media Center on your PC to be able to link the systems. Once linked you'll have access to all the music, video, and images on your PC. Here is also where you'd create custom soundtracks. The final blade is System. Here you'll have access to all the console settings, parental controls, memory management, network settings, and computer connection settings. Each blade is color coded so you will get to know them visually. It's a slick design. The Xbox Live blade is gold. I'm assuming it would be silver, if that's the level of your Xbox Live account. Games are green. Media is blue. System is purple. Speaking of Xbox Live, transferring it over to the Xbox 360 was very simple. You just tell them you're already a Xbox Live subscriber. You'll enter your Gamertag. You'll then be asked to enter your Passport information. If you've already signed up on the official Xbox site, you'll have this information. That's all it takes. I'm impressed with the design, quality, and interface of the Xbox 360. All of it is just classy. Now for the games...

Oh, What a Night -- In Pursuit of an Xbox 360.

It's Monday, November 21 and I'm out to get my hands on a Xbox 360. It's around noon. On impulse I decide to take the trip down to the next town over and their Super Walmart which is open twenty-four hours. It's cold this time of year in the high desert of southern California. I figure better to wait it out inside where it's warm. I arrive at the Super Walmart around one in the afternoon. A full eleven hours ahead of the street date and on sale time. I find out that they've received thirty something systems and that there is already a line of about one-hundred people ahead of me. This does not bode well. This is a telltale sign that this system shortage is no joke. It's for real. I head home and consider my options. The stores not having midnight sales the next day come to mind. What's my best option? I head out to Best Buy and arrive around nine at night and find about two-hundred people waiting outside. Kill that idea. So I think of the next large retailer close to Best Buy and come up with Target. I arrive at target to find about eight people outside. Now this is more like it. They say that the store only has core systems. Not the only option of the premium version. As the store was still open, I go inside and head to the electronics department where I ask the guy if it's true he's only received core systems. He points me to a stack of about sixteen green boxes. He tells me that's the full lot. On a level where some panic is registering, I have the idea of asking him if he has any of the hard drives that are sold separately. He says they had them, but had sold through the run of eight that day. To hell with this, I'm out of there. I head back to town and notice the line outside another target ranging around fifty people. I just keep driving. Toys R Us is near and that's my destination. It's roughly around half past ten. What's this? Only seven people in line at Toys R Us? I think I've lucked out. It's even better when I get into line and confirm the people in front of the line are father and son. That's one X360. The two students who follow, yep one X360. The husband, wife, and daughter, even better at one X360. I'm fourth in line. Hot damn. Now that's some luck. So it's just going to take doing the time, and this sucker is mine. The first hour spent in line was rather entertaining as everyone discussed the system and what games they were getting and what was coming down the line.  The next hour and a half were comically spent watching a movie. Yes, watching a movie. Someone put a flatscreen HDTV in the back of their mini-van and had it hooked to a DVD drive. Unfortunately the movie was Old School.  A moronic comedy that actually served its purpose well and killed ninety minutes. It wasn't too bad then. The temperature was hovering around thirty-five degrees. The conversation died as the temperature began to dip into the mid twenties a few hours later. The misery sets in fully. It's painful as I'm underdressed in both footwear and a means to keep warm. Combat boots aren't the best thing to wear while standing on concrete for twelve hours. My feet were killing me from standing, and the cold. My back decides it's a wonderful time to act up and partially go out.  I'm fighting boredom, frost bite, foot and back pain, and finding myself just reaching the midway point of the night. Suffering away in pure misery. The conversation picked up, games of Monopoly were being played. People were arriving. It was freaking cold. And it bothered me more than it normally would or should have for some reason. But it was all worth it. In a few more hours I'd have my Xbox 360. Time seemed to stand still. Around seven the manager for the store arrived and said she'd be coming back out sometime soon to hand out tickets to those waiting in line for the stock they had. Around forty-five minutes before they were to open and start selling the X360 she comes out and goes to the head of the line. She asks them which version they wanted and gives them the ticket for the premium system. Number two opts for a premium system and gets his ticket. Number three also opts for the premium system. There I am fourth in line. I'm about to cut her spiel about the extended warranty and all that short and just say premium. But she tells me all she has left are core systems. Did I want one? Did I want one? Did I want a fucking core system after just spending twelve hours in pain and the freaking cold? Did I fucking want one? I have never felt such rage in my life. If I could have imploded the entire universe at that moment, none of us would still be here. I respond with a vicious "no" that actually makes her step back from me a bit taken aback. I left the line, hopped in the car, and took off. Just barely noticing the dawning realization shockwave make its way through the line. What are my options? Circuit City maybe?  Off I go. I get there to see a line of about sixteen people. I get out and ask if they've had any sort of preorder campaign. They have. You need a voucher. There is a conversation taking place on the state of the lack of systems within the area. I relay my Toys R Us story. The one guy offers to sell me his voucher for face value. Wow. That's lucky. But wait, you guessed it, core system. Fuck me. Back to the car. Best Buy. It's close, but it was so damn crowded forever ago. Oh wow. Easily five-hundred people here now. I'm angry as hell, in pain, and beyond reason at this point.  I get out, get in line. Come to find out that this was like the luckiest break in all the world. Microsoft held a launch party for the Xbox 360 locally called Zero Hour. They rented a medium airplane hangar at the Palmdale Airport. They filled it with gaming kiosk showcasing all the Xbox 360 titles. They had food, drink, live music. They invited 3,500 winners from an online contest to the event.  They made it so that each person would be able to buy a Xbox 360, all of the launch titles, and all of the launch peripherals.  One of absolutely everything for 3,500 people. Guess what? Only like 2,000 people show. Best Buy was servicing the event. They were selling the systems. So what happens to all those extras? They were siphoned back into the Best Buy system. How do they do that? They take all the extra everything to the closest Best Buy. Best Buy # 106. My Best Buy. Hot damn, now that is lucky. Real luck this time. There were mountains of systems stacked up in Best Buy. Baskets full of every peripheral available for the launch. Tables and tables of all the launch titles.  I got through the line in roughly forty minutes. I got my Xbox 360. I came home and came on to post this entry while it's all still fresh and sore in my mind. I have been up far too long. I'm hurting, I'm hungry, I'm tired, and this entry is done. I will actually leave the hooking up of the X360 for later. Now I'll shower to warm up and ease the pain. I'll eat something, and I'll sleep the sleep of the dead. Never again will I suffer for a console like this. Never fucking again.

Mario Kart DS -- Final Opinion.

I have completed Mario Kart DS. That entails completing all the missions, earning a gold rank in the Nitro and Retro Cups in the three speeds of 50, 100, and 150cc. It also means earning gold ranks in the mirrored 150cc tracks. The gameplay is pure Mario Kart. Hopping into a turn to initiate a power-drift and drifting into the turn enough times to charge up the power boost that will rocket you out of the turn all the while hitting items boxes in hope of that perfect offensive or defensive item for whatever your situation might be. The graphics are great all around. The characters and courses are very well done. The tracks from previous titles have been improved or recreated as best as possible for the system. The new tracks all look great and are for the most part well designed. The sounds are pretty good. The karts roar and zoom appropriately. The character voices are decent. The offline game is marred by cheap AI in the 150cc levels. The game plays catch up with the computer controlled character. Taking one out with a red Koopa shell isn't as helpful as it should be as they are recovering and right back into the race almost instantly. Skill takes a back seat to luck. It shouldn't ever be that way in my opinion. The online mode fares much better. There the gameplay is near perfect and great fun. The game is saved by the online aspect. I'm going to give Mario Kart DS an 8.0.

Mario Kart DS -- Mission Mode & Online Play.

Mario Kart DS offers up two features the other games in the series haven't. One is the new mission mode. There are fifty-four of them. They're set challenges for you to meet. They range from challenges like "Reach the finish before Mario!" and "Collect 40 coins!" and "Perform 10 power-slide turbo boosts in 1 lap!" and "Get the Star and use it to hit 5 Cheep Cheeps!" to full on boss battles like "Hit the Eyerok's eyeball 3 times with shells!" and "Use Mushroom boosts to hit Chief Chilly and knock him off the stage 3 times!". You're rated in how you do from C, B, A, one, two, and three star rankings. They're a great bonus to the offline game. The online game is the other new feature to the series. The online interface is pretty much crap. You sign on to Nintendo's NWC and you select the mode you want. In you then sit there while the game searches for your friends or rivals or regional players or whatever. When trying to put together a four player game with friends, it should be a snap, shouldn't it? But it wasn't. We were all on at the same time. We were all searching for friends. It took us numerous times to get all four of us into the same game. The game will sit there and search for a few minutes. If you don't have four it searches for the full search time and then starts the game. Even though we had each other's Friend Codes we couldn't seem to find each other every time. Hopefully this is just a network kink that will be worked out.  Once we were able to get into a four player friend's game, the gameplay was exceptionally fun. There was no noticeable lag.  The annoying chance factor that shows up in the single player game isn't present in the online game just for the fact that you know it's the luck of the draw and that it's another living person causing the action. It's not the game attempting to keep things close as it does in the offline game. The online game appears to only be the racing aspect. The battle mode doesn't seem to be present. That's a shame, as that's the real draw in multiplayer Mario Kart. I think Nintendo's first official step into the online world is rather good where it counts. The gameplay is key, and that's covered. I don't understand why there isn't battle mode online from a technical point of view. I mean, if they can track four players in a race and all the items and all of that, what's the technical limitation in doing it for battle mode? What am I missing here?  

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness -- Initial Opinion.

Castlevania: Curse of Darkness is Konami's fourth attempt at a 3D Castlevania game.  Two Nintendo 64 games and two Playstation 2 games later they still apparently haven't gotten it right. The control and movement of the character are the first things that come to mind from the two hours I've spent with the game. Those two hours covered about 14% of the overall map. The character's movement comes off as plodding.  The camera is rather flawed already. The level design seems put together from a construction kit. Go down the same squared off hallways to the same turns. Whoever designed the levels just would insert the parts. It doesn't have an organic feel to it at all. The graphics come off as lackluster initially. The music seems to have potential. The familiar system may go either way. The infant fairy is rather cool and helpful. The battle demon is more of an annoyance. I'll have to see where it all goes. The initial impression isn't very good. It comes off as a major step down from Castlevania: Lament of Innocence.

Sly 2: Band of Thieves -- Final Opinion.

I have completed Sly 2: Band of Thieves with a time of just around twenty-five hours. That was with achieving 100% complete on all eight chapters. You could easily knock ten hours off that not looking for the clue bottles. The game offers up the core gameplay of the first title while expanding it off the paths and into more of a free roaming experience. Everything great about the first one has been retained. The exceptional art direction and graphics. The wonderfully comic Saturday morning cartoon storytelling. The ending events are actually strangely downbeat. Took me by surprise, and I like that. The gameplay is very polished, to the point of being slick. There aren't any real camera issues to be found at all. Being able to play as the three characters is great. They handled each one correctly. They offer distinct gameplay styles. I really like this series. It's a good thing I got around to it. Better late than never. This series actually feels more Nintendo platforming than anything Nintendo has produced this generation. It's that good. I'm going to give Sly 2: Band of Thieves a 9.0. I will have to make sure I pick up the third game.

Mario Kart DS -- A Whole New World.

The Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector arrived today. It allows my Nintendo DS to be connected to the Internet via the USB port of my computer. It's the only real solution for those of us who want their NDS online and aren't willing to fork over the cash for a wireless setup when the wired one we already have works so well. And for those of us who wouldn't be caught dead in a McDonald's using a NDS, or even worse a Starbucks. I was a little worried about it because when I ordered the connector which is only available through Nintendo's online site store there was a connection test Java application which my computer decidedly failed. The UPS man or woman left it on my doorstep while I was out collecting Dragon Quest VIII and Sonic Rush. Upon my return I immediately set about installing it, which proved quite simple. You simply load up the CD-ROM that came with the connector and click that it's okay to begin installing. It'll ask for your language selection, English of course. It'll begin installing the drivers. It will then ask for you to plug in the connector. The connector comes with a very nice USB extension cable for those people with the USB ports in the rear of their computers.  My computer has some USB ports in the back and a couple in the front. The ones in front are angled at forty degrees hidden behind a panel. My computer tower is also hidden away within the desk. The extension cable allows me to close the panel on the front of the tower, which allows me to close the panel hiding the tower within the desk. Without that cable I would have to connect and disconnect the connector each time I wanted to use it. With it, I can leave it eternally connected. It's a nice touch that personally saves me a lot of hassle. Once you've plugged in the connector the computer will recognize it as what it is instead of an ordinary USB device. It will then begin the setup of the computer so the device will work correctly. You'll then be asked to register your NDS. This is registering it with the computer and not Nintendo. It let's the computer know that it should allow the NDS to interface with it instead of blocking it. There will be an icon for the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connection Registration Tool in your taskbar. Clicking on that brings up the program. You'll need to load up your NDS with a Wi-Fi enabled game and go to the game's Wi-Fi menu. There will be an option there to connect. Instantly the PC noticed the NDS which I originally named Searren. Searren appeared listed in the program on my PC. Right-clicking on Searren brings up the options to grant permission to connect or to block from connecting. I selected to grant permission of course. After the configuration the NDS will ask to run a test. I clicked okay and a few painfully agonizing seconds later it connected successfully. That's it for the installation. It was really quite simple and painless. I'm sure Nintendo's tech support lines are working overtime with this one though just because people are stupid after all. After that I reloaded the game and went to connect to Nintendo WFC, which is what Nintendo calls its network. Once connected it had me save some information to my NDS and the game cartridge. It created my Friend Code. The Friend Code is how Nintendo sees me individually. With the Friend Code I can meet up with specific people online.  I have to give people I want listed as friends my Friend Code. They'll have to send me their Friend Code to get them on my list. I'll enter their code into my NDS via the game cartridge. It will be save both on the NDS and the game cartridge. Once I've entered the code and I have someone on my list, I can choose to play in the friends mode. It will connect me to only those people on my list who have me on their friends list. Mario Kart DS offers four modes from which to join games online. The before mentioned Friends mode. There is also Rivals, where you'll be matched against those players of comparable skill level. Regional Races allows for you to be matched with only people from your own country. Worldwide Racers allows for you to be matched with anyone from anywhere in the world. I must say it was rather impressive to be playing online versus other people from around the world from my portable Nintendo DS. Nintendo's system is rather primitive compared to Xbox Live but it seemingly more than gets the job done. Consider me impressed with Nintendo at this point. Now I just need to wait until I can make some friends...

Mario Kart DS -- Initial Impression.

Next up for me is another portable title, this one for the Nintendo DS, Mario Kart DS. My initial impressions of this one are sort of obvious. It's Mario Kart on two screens. The classic Mario Kart gameplay is here. The hopping, drifting, and item use are all present and accounted for. The colorful initial cast of characters are also there.  The standard options are all there. Time trial, Grand Prix, Vs, and Battle are all there. However there is a new mode called Missions. I haven't accessed that one yet. The game is the first Nintendo DS title to feature online play. It comes with a twenty-seven page instruction manual called Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection Instruction Booklet. Ease of use! As my Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is as of this entry in Portland, Oregon, I haven't had a chance to test it out yet. That should happen sometime tomorrow when the connector arrives. There are two cups from which to race. The Nitro Cup is all new courses created for the Nintendo DS. There are sixteen in all. The Retro Cup features Nintendo DS versions of classic Mario Kart courses from the other games in the series. There are sixteen courses in all for the Retro Cup as well. The courses are taken from Super Mario Kart, Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, and Mario Kart: Double Dash. They're from the SNES, N64, GBA, and Gamecube games respectively. As of this entry I haven't attempted those so I can't give an impression on their faithfulness to the originals. I should get into the gameplay and the online aspects in future entries. Right now the game seems very much classic Mario Kart.

SOCOM: FIRETEAM BRAVO -- Final Opinion.

I have completed the single player campaign in SOCOM: FIRETEAM BRAVO. There is a multiplayer mode, two of them in fact, but I don't have my PSP connected to the Internet, and I don't know anyone with a PSP for local multiplayer. So I won't be commenting on those. The single player game is actually quite fun. It gives you the full SOCOM experience in a handheld version. The control works well and provides little hindrance beyond the initial learning curve. The sights and sounds are all SOCOM. The graphics are decent enough. They have lower polygon counts to keep the frame rate up. SOCOM has never been even a remotely pretty game, so it's not like you're missing much. The action is far more important. The action is pretty faithful given the changes made to the control. The game is truly SOCOM with the artificial intelligence, it will do some damn stupid things. At this point I don't think it would be SOCOM without retarded AI. I don't know what it would be if the game functioned perfectly. The crosstalk feature proved to be rather cool, but I'm not sure how functional it will be considering the amount of time I've spent with SOCOM 3 online. I'm going to give SOCOM: FIRETEAM BRAVO an 8.0.

Sly 2 -- Expanded Property.

Sly 2: Band of Thieves quite literally expands on the first game. The first game's level structure called for a natural progression through the level. You'd follow the path from A to B to C. Sly 2 ditches that form of level progression in favor of a large sprawling hub world from which to seek out jobs. Each chapter gets its own hub world. Each hub world will have a safe house location that you use as your base of operations. You can go there to switch out the characters you're playing as. The jobs in each world are story based. They do an excellent job of advancing the plot. In the Jailbreak chapter for example, you need to bust Sly and Murray out of jail as Bentley because they've been captured. He'll need to survey the area first. He'll need to do something about the alarms he's noticed surveying the area. He'll need to figure out how to break Sly out. Once Sly is out you'll need to work on getting Murray out. It's continues along needing to do this or that so you can achieve the main goal. Instead of just going from hotspot to hotspot on the map as you were in the original game, you need to find waypoints that mark the start of a job. They add in a nonlinear feel to it by letting you decide on which mission to do first for the most part. Sometimes only one will be available to select. In the first game there were bottles that contained clues that you needed to collect in order to break into the vaults within each level. Only the hub world has them this time around. There are thirty in each location along with the one vault per location. The vaults still contain new moves for the most part. They're not required to complete the game. It's an entirely optional aspect to the game.  The bottles and vaults are counted in the 100% level completion rating though. It's this new format that is adding considerable size to the game. I am 50% through the game at over ten hours. The game is looking to be about twice the size of the original and it's offering up all of the same great gameplay.  That's sort of the textbook definition of sequel. More of the same, just bigger and better.

SOCOM: FIRETEAM BRAVO -- Control Issues.

So how did Zipper Interactive fit SOCOM on to the PlayStation Portable when it's missing a second analog stick and some extra buttons? The answer is they did a pretty good job of it. The analog stick moves the character forwards and backwards. It also rotates the character to the left and right. If you hold the L button and use the analog stick you can strafe to the left and right. If you tap the D-pad to the right you'll enter free look mode.  You can move the cursor around freely to manually aim. Holding the L button down while in free look mode allows you to move the character. Hitting the triangle button allows for you to cycle between standing, crouched, and prone positions. Hitting the circle button allows you to access the command menu where you can enter specific commands like cover target and fire at will. Holding the circle button while a context sensitive icon is on screen will issue the specific command shown. These appear in key instances to help you not have to fiddle with the command menu. The X button is the action button. It fires the selected weapon, throws grenades, or any other action. Holding the triangle button will automatically switch between grenades and the primary weapon.  The square button is for context sensitive commands like climbing, entering through windows, having an escortee hold position or follow, and the like. You reload with the combination of left on the D-pad and the square button. Hitting up on the D-pad enters the scoped views. Down on the D-pad returns you through the scoped views to the standard view.  To change the rate of fire, the combination of left on the D-pad and the triangle button is used. Since there isn't a second analog stick on the PSP, you won't be running and gunning in the same way that you're able to in the PS2 series. You press and hold the R button to target an enemy. While holding the R button, hitting the L button cycles through the targets. You can actually run and gun this way with the single stick. Holding the R button on a target allows you to move and fire. The free look mode and the scopes allow for traditionally controlled sniping and precise shooting. In the normal view you'll be able to see enemies on the play field from a distance greater than your lock on range. You'll get an enemy out of range message. You can switch to free look and snipe them. Or you can move closer for the auto aiming lock on. Certain factors come into play in determining your accuracy with auto aiming. Your stance is one thing you'll have to consider. Standing is less accurate than crouched, and crouched is less accurate than prone. Movement comes into consideration as well. If you're not moving, you're more likely to hit them. Distance is also a factor. If you can get close enough, and remain undetected, and fire from a prone stationary position, you're essentially assured a single shot kill. If you're in full run from a great distance, you're pretty much assured to miss more than a few times and it will take a considerable amount of hits to drop the enemy. This mechanic has the tendency to slow the game down in comparison to its console counterparts. It makes it play with stealth more of a factor.  That's not to say that the game doesn't have its moments of intense action, it surely does. I am through 79% of the single player campaign. The learning curve of the controls makes it really easy to get into the game and to truly get going. I feel the controls are a great success.