Chrontendo

Hey Everybody!

2012-01-16T21:41:00.000-08:00

In case anyone's wondering -- yes, I know the new episode is late. I'll level with you folks. My mother had surgery last week, and my time has consumed by filing legal paper work, driving back and forth to the hospital, sleeping poorly, and worrying a lot.

Let me stress that this was not some unexpected, emergency-type surgery. It was completely planned, and everything went fine. My mother's pretty tough, so I'm sure she'll recover quickly.

In the meantime, I'd like you folks to be aware that I'm not just sitting on my ass smoking dank and watching Rob Schneider movies or something. I would never deliberately watch a Rob Schneider movie. Hell, I've been so busy lately I haven't even had time to check out any of the games from the new Humble Bundle. VVVVVVV (not sure about the number of "V"s,) and Super Meat Boy are calling my name, but will have to wait.

I'll post another "Classic" Chrontendo episode on Youtube soon, just to tide people over for Episode 43.

Spotted in the Wild

2012-01-08T14:21:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Want your own "Base" shirt? I've identified the guy's shirt as the one being sold by ThinkGeek here.

A rare sighting today: someone wearing an honest-to-God "All Your Base Are Belong to Us" t-shirt! I spotted it on a pretty typical looking example of the North American geek-boy. It wasn't immediately clear whether the shirt was being worn ironically or not, but after a quick examination of the specimen (Bat-Man tennis shoes, cargo shorts, etc) I got the feeling this was an actual geek, not a hipster posing as one.

I'm not sure what someone's motivation would be for wearing such a shirt in 2011. No clean laundry? Nostalgia? Some sort of retro-geek statement? "Man, internet memes were so much cooler back then. Bronies? Fuck that shit."

This spotting was not as cool as the time I saw a guy in an airport wearing a Big Johnson Surfing shirt which looked to be in pristine, brand-new condition. This was in the mid-2000s. Apparently, somebody still make those things.

Season's Greetings

2011-12-30T21:41:00.000-08:00

Christmas is behind us and New Year's Day beckons. We'll ring in 2012 with Chrontendo Episode 43. It might be a while, however, as Ep 43 will be the biggest episode yet, with a butt-numbing 20 games. This will take us through March 1989 in its entirity.

Until then, with what can you slake your desire for entertainment? Well, there's a new episode of Generation 16 for starters. Also... how about a new movie review from Harry Plinkett? And it's a review of Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull! (Note: the video contains one very loud and disturbing sequence inappropriate for viewing in the presence of co-workers or family members) It's the perfect Christmas gift! Do you remember that warm feeling of nostalgia that washed over you when you saw Crystal Skull? Sure you do, but that wasn't nostalgia for the '80s and watching Raiders for the first time. No, it was nostalgia for 1999 and watching the Phantom Menace for the first* time! Skull brought those same sensations of excitement, hope, confusion, denial, disappointment, anger, and betrayal flooding back to you.

If anything Plinkett goes a little easy on Crystal Skull; he seems far too accepting of Shia LeBeouf's performance in the film, for one. Honestly - has there ever been a less engaging action "star" than LeBeouf? How many actors can duplicate his lack of charisma and screen presence? Jim Belushi, maybe? Spielberg and Lucas almost seem to be making fun of LeBeouf in the movie. The first shot of him in Skull shows him dressed up in 50's biker gear, drawing an obvious (and hilarious) parallel to Marlon Brando in The Wild One. It almost seems to state, "Sorry kids, actors like Brando are hard to find nowadays. Here's the weenie-ish 21th century equivalent. Yes, we know he looks like a kid playing dress-up, but look what we had to work with."

He's just like Brando, minus the cool and interesting part.

This sense of ersatzness pervades Crystal Skull. Even the plot revolves around fakery. Instead of legendary objects such as the Holy Grail or the Ark of the Covenant, Indy is searching for "Mayan" crystal skulls, which in the real world are 19th century forgeries, probably German in origin, sold to gullible collectors. The film is like that; a fake Indiana Jones movie, foisted upon its unfortunate viewers. Anyway, the Plinkett review is not quite as amazing as the Star Wars prequel reviews, but it's still pretty entertaining.

Okay, this post really didn't have much to do with video games. Next time, I'll elaborate on my theory about Rock Operas.

*And probably only time.

One Last Episode for 2011

2011-12-18T23:03:00.000-08:00

Hello folks. Things have been going a little slowly over here at Chrontendo HQ. I've been subjected to a seemingly endless series of Christmas parties and events, delaying the new episode considerably. But the wait has finally ended and Chrontendo Episode 42 is now available. You probably know what to do by now. For the dazzling 60 frames per second version, head over to Archive.org, and for the slightly grody-er streaming version, check out Youtube.

You might be relieved to know the delays have not been Skyrim-related (at least not yet.) I have just started Arkham Asylum recently -- and yes, that's Asylum, not Arkham City. I prefer to pay $17 for a video game over paying $60. Thus, I sometimes wait on new games. It's a cool little game, but... DAMN, is that voice work on Harley Quinn annoying! Not being familiar with the Batman cartoons, I don't know anything about the character. Is she really supposed to have this ridiculous Brooklyn accent? I half expected her to shout, "Cheese it! It's da coppers!" when Batman shows up.

In other news, Greg Sewart has finally launched his Genesis chronogaming video series, Generation 16. It appears the episodes will be a bit shorter than Chrontendo, and also a bit more professional looking; which is to be expected from a legitimate games journalist like Greg.

About Chrontendo 42: it consists of February 1989 in its entirety, 17 games all told. Namely, Tecmo Bowl and a ~~bunch of crap~~ fine selection of games which are very interesting from a historical perspective.

One significant fact about Tecmo Bowl is that it was Tecmo's first game aimed squarely at the US market. It debuted in the US in February and didn't receive its belated Japanese release until a year and a half later. While Tecmo Bowl was not the first football game we've seen for the system, it is certainly the best, and one of the most enjoyable NES sports games. It is the polar opposite of EA's 1988 computer game Madden Football. Tecmo Bowl's simplicity and intuitive controls are its major strengths.

What else is good in Episode 42? Well...

uh....

.... there's always Namco's Wagyan Land.

Upon starting up Wagyan Land, you'll be most struck by its visual style. Bold, flat colors, simple geometric shapes -- there are very few Famicom games that look like Wagyan Land. I just wish the game itself were better. The main culprit is the boss battles.* Remember how Alex Kidd had rock/paper/scissors boss battles? Wagyan Land takes that one step further and gives you word game boss battles. Yes, you need to defeat each boss in either a memory game or a word chain game.

Not quite as flawed, but less ambitious is the Konami/Ultra Games NES port of the 1982 arcade game Q*bert. Konami (or whoever ported this for them) were able to produce a reasonably good Q*bert facsimile. The colors are not as bright, and the controls are not as responsive, but it's still heaps better than the crappy ports for the Atari 5200, Commodore 64 and the like.

While not in the same league as Tecmo Bowl, Konami's Ganbare Pennant Race! is a decent and slightly unusual baseball game. You read that right, Ganbare, as in Goemon. One month after Ganbare Goemon 2, Konami stuck him in a baseball game.

What else is there in this episode? How about:

Friday the 13th

Another one of those games hated by the internet game critics crowd, this LJN release is not as bad as you would expect. At this time LJN's games were being handled by Atlus, who was then contracting out some of the development work. Its not clear who was actually responsible for developing Friday the 13th, but it does bear a noticeable structural similarity to LJN's Jaws. Both games take place in a relatively small game world, in which you may wander around freely. The objective is simply to defeat Jaws/Jason in battle. This is done by moving around the map, killing low-level enemies, collecting items and building up strength. Jaws/Jason also moves around randomly on the world map, and you will encounter them from time to time, but you can't truly defeat them until the last stage of the game. Both games are pretty non-linear and sort of resemble a much shorter and more simplified RPG. Also, they both suffer from "what the hell am I suppose to be doing in this game?" syndrome. They don't really resemble any other game in the NES library other than themselves. Friday the 13th is not a very good game - it's terribly repetitive- but it is not nearly as awful as you have been lead to believe.

Roger Rabbit/Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle

The first entry in the horribly confusing Crazy Castle series, which made the jump to the FDS to handhelds with the second game. Remember Kemco's Donald Duck, which was called Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular in the US? The same thing happened with this game. Kemco released it as a Disney-related title in Japan, and as a Bugs Bunny game in the US. Later entries managed to add to the confusion by throwing in Garfield, the Ghostbusters and Wood Woodpecker.

Famicom Jump Eiyuu Retsuden

Bandai and Tose combined forces with the manga periodical Weekly Shōnen Jump to create this game, which tosses in tons of manga characters into a middling action RPG. Characters from Fist of North Star, Dragon Ball, Saint Seiya, City Hunter and many others make appearances. Famicom Jump stands, along with Konami's Wai Wai World, as one of the first fan service video games.

Tom Sawyer no Bouken/Adventures of Tom Sawyer

Ye cats! Someone made a Tom Sawyer video game? Not unexpectedly, Seta chose not to adapt the novel, but instead used a dream sequence set-up in order to inject Tom into a standard sidescrolling platformer. The terrible graphics, music and level design sink Tom Sawyer to the level of kusoge.

Oh, and for those of you who notice that I occasionally add in-game appropriate music during the game's intro segment -- no, I did not use Rush's "Tom Sawyer" for this game. Because "Tom Sawyer" is a terrible, terrible song, Geddy Lee's charmingly dated synth drones notwithstanding. Does anyone have any idea what that song is supposed to be about? "Today's Tom Sawyer/He gets high on you/And the energy you trade/He gets right on to the friction of the day." Does this mean anything at all? What exactly is the "friction of the day" and how does one "get right on" it? Did Rush write this song by stringing together a bunch of random five word phrases? (Probably, yes).

Oh wait, never mind. This is a Rush song, so it's probably some Ayn Randian nonsense about how society oppresses the Übermensch.

The Rest

Can you believe it? More Japanese adventure games!

Yamamura Misa Suspense: Kyouto Hana no Misshitsu Satsujin Jiken

More cherry blossom intensive murder mystery excitement from Taito and Tose. This is the second game in the series, and improves upon its predecessor by adding in a dynamic action bar. That is, instead of always showing the same actions (talk, move, etc) the action bar is context sensitive. Only the useful icons will appear at any given time. Progress, I guess.

Sekiryuou

Yet another game based on yet another historical Chinese conflict. This time, we have an adventure game, taken from some manga you've probably never heard of.

Also, RPGs!

Hydlide 3

The orignal Hydlide is one of the most widely derided games on the NES. Hydlide 3 could be considered a bit of an improvement, since it offers such things as character classes, towns, shops, NPCs, and so on. Later in 1989, it was released for the Mega Drive/Genesis as Super Hydlide. I've always felt Hydlide had a worse reputation that it deserved. The original computer Hydlide was one of the very first JRPGs, so it can be forgiven for a being a bit primitive. The US release was severely delayed, however. In fact, it came out only a few months before the US version of Super Hydlide. By mid-1989, it must have seemed incredibly archaic.

And in case you're wondering, Hydlide 2 never had a console port.

Hyakkiyakou

An ugly, supernatural themed RPG.

Wizardry II: Llylgamyn no Densetsu

It's called Wizardry II, but this is really a port of Wizardry III. This version is not as soul-destroying as the original US computer Wizardry III, but its still not exactly a lot of fun to play. Unless you like spending hours wandering down many, many identical corridors inside maze-like dungeons, fighting lengthy turn based battles every four steps.

Also:

Bandai Golf Challenge Pebble Beach

Yet another generic golf game. This one distinguishes itself by being a US only release. Developed by Tose.

Tama & Friends - 3 Choume Dai Bouken

A simple sidescroller based on a cute kitty cat. Later, there was also a Tama & Friends anime.

Space Shadow

The pack-in game for the Hyper Shot, a machine gun shaped light gun from Bandai. The gun is cool looking, but the game is incredibly boring. It simply involves shooting aliens, one at a time, with each alien taking about 20 shots to go down.

Flying Hero

Here's an odd one. Developed by Aicom (Amagon, Legendary Axe), Flying Hero is an inferior looking remake of the earlier Sega Master System game Megumi Rescue. We saw Megumi Rescue in Chronsega 6, but if your memory fails you - it was an Arkanoid style game in which you rescue people trapped in a burning building.

OK, that covers it. With any luck, Episode 42 will cram in all of March, so it'll be a bit longer than normal.

And to soothe any hard feelings for you Rush fans out there, I'll leave you with some video footage of a prog-rock drummer is actually very creative and interesing. Perhaps you can eventually wean yourself from the empty showiness of Neil Peart.

Until next time, don't forget to check out Chrontendo 42 on Archive or Youtube.

*To all you would-be grammar Nazis: it's called synesis. Look it up.

Very Soon....

2011-12-05T23:43:00.000-08:00

December is here and it time for my annual catch-a-cold/sore throat thing. I was hoping to finish the voiceovers for Episode 42 today, but I'll have to wait until my voice is a little less scratchy. Then of course, we're off to Episode 43, and then... probably some more Chronsega and Chronturbo.

This is probably a sign of getting old, but for the last week I've felt the urge to listen to some classic rock live albums during my commute to work. Currently I've got The Who's Live at Leeds and Deep Purple's Made in Japan in rotation on my car stereo. I've come to a realization lately: I don't think that Tommy is exactly the Who's best work. Sure, there are some cool songs, but in spots it drags a bit, and the story doesn't make much sense. Even live, it drags a bit in spots, and I'm starting to question whether there ever were any really good "rock operas." Composing a rock opera is one of the early warning signs of a band's artistic decline (e.g. The Kinks,) if you ask me.

Anyhoo... I've been thinking about buying Skyrim at some point. Expect production delays if this happens. For the immediate future, however, we should be seeing Episode 43 pretty soon.

Thyme Crisis

2011-11-23T22:45:00.001-08:00

It saddens my heart quite a bit to see that my old alma mater, UC Davis, has become the latest example of police brutality against peaceful protestors. When I went to Davis, it has a reputation as a mellow, quirky, hippie-ish college - the sort of place where bicycles, vegetarian black bean burritos, and Earth Day festivals defined the campus. Back then, Davis was frequently mocked by conservative media outlets such as Rush Limbaugh and... er... The Daily Show for it's goofy left wing mindset and the famous "Toad Tunnel."

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Colbert - Tunnel Vision

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

The Daily Show on Facebook

I guess that things have changed I lot since I went to college.

Believe it or not, quite a bit of work has been done on Chrontendo Episode 42. I'm not going to lie and say it's "almost" ready, but it will definitely be more timely than Episode 41. As usual, there will tons of crap, including LJN's Friday the 13th! (I will admit, I hate that game.) For the moment though, I've been busy preparing for Thanksgiving. I'll be cooking a pretty simple dinner this year, compared to last. However, this didn't prevent me from having to go to three stores today looking for some goddamned thyme. Is there some kind of thyme shortage going on right now? Also, my birthday was couple days ago, and it seems I've been on a constant diet of fatty foods, cheese, cake and beer; all of which have conspired to make me lazy.

But!! I do have a very special treat for everyone! Perhaps you remember the remarkable story of Mudflaps, the kitten. She's doing fine, is getting bigger all the time, and is getting on smashingly with our other animals. She loves to groom our dog, Gigi, who is very patient with Mudflaps -- up to a certain point. I have immortalized this tumultuous cat/dog friendship in this brief video.

This is the only HD Chrontendo video, but don't expect too much, since it was shot on a cheapie camera.

At Last: 1989

2011-11-09T22:56:00.000-08:00

Guess what day today is? Today is the day that Chrontendo Episode 41 finally comes out. Yes, it's real, it's here, and it can be downloaded or streamed. As always, crisp, clear 60 FPS h.264 files may be had on Archive, and semi-decent streaming videos can be watched on Youtube.

I took a slightly different format this time. Instead of including the usual 15 games, I added a 16th game in order to completely cover January 1989 in one episode. The same will be true for Episode 42 -- all of February will be squeezed in.

Plus: bonus material! We start this episode by examining the most popular genres of 1988. I also list my candidates for the most significant Famicom games of 1988. With that out of the way, we can get to work on 1989.

I'll get straight to the point. The post-holiday releases mostly consist of a bunch of crap. However, there are two "big" games this episode: a sequel to one of Konami's most popular games (most popular in Japan, that is) and a not-particularly-sucessful game that has built up a cult following over the years.

It may surprise you to learn that Ganbare Goemon was one of Konami's best selling Famicom titles in Japan, along with Twin Bee. So I'm going to assume that Ganbare Goemon 2's January 1989 release was hugely anticipated. It was actually the first Famicom game of 1989; it hit the shelves on January 4th, which leads me to theorize it was orignally slated for December and was delayed.

As a sequel, I found it to be both very successful and somewhat disappointing. What do I mean by that? It's sucessful in the sense that it improves on the first game. It introduces a two player mode, along with a new character, Ebisumaru, for the second player. The game's sense of humor has been sharpened, the enemies and bosses are more colorful, and a real plot has been introduced. However, Ganbare Goemon 2 is a bit disappointing simply because of how similar it is the first game. Compared to contemporary sequels - SMB 3 or Mega Man 2 - Konami's sequel seems a bit old fashioned. Just like the first game you spend far too much time wandering around in first person mazes and jumping around trying to uncover secret passages. It almost feels like Konami was scared to tinker with a successful formula too much. Eventually Konami got over its cold feet. Future entries in the Goemon series would get weirder and weirder; check out the US release, Legend of the Mystical Ninja for the SNES if you want to see for yourself.

Our other notable game is Vic Tokai's Degeki Big Bang!/Clash at Demonhead. I'll admit it right up front: I didn't really like Demonhead very much. I understand there are some folks who think that it is one of the best games for the NES. This is not surprsing. Demonhead is a somewhat non-linear action platformer with branching paths, shops, experience points (sort of) and various equipable (duh!) pieces of equipment. It might remind you a little bit of games like Bionic Commando or Castlevania III, if all the cool stuff were taken out of those games. I discuss my disapointment with Demonhead in some detail in the video. I suspect Demonhead's fans may be viewing it through the hazy miasma of nostalgia. Regardless, it's still a pretty big improvement over Kid Kool.

Beyond those two games, we have a bit of Japan-only crap, and a racing game that was released in Japan, the US and Europe, under three different names. And, of course, Casino Kid. We also examine three US releases from 1989:

Tecmo Baseball

Another big disappointment. With Ninja Gaiden behind them and Tecmo Bowl ahead of them, you'd think a sports game from Tecmo would be something special. It turns out to be yet another nondescript baseball title. As far as I know, Tecmo Baseball came out in January 1989, though it seems to have originally been scheduled for 1988, judging by a reference in an issue of Nintendo Power.

WWF Wrestlemania

There are people out on the internet who don't like Nintendo's Pro Wrestling. To those folks, I would recommend trying out this little gem from Rare and Acclaim. It makes Pro Wrestling look like a work of undiluted genius and inspiration by comparison. Wreslemania began the Acclaim traction of licensing the rights to a property, then making a crappy video NES game out of it.

Sesame Street 123

A new publisher enters the fray: the New York based Hi Tech Expressions. I've mentioned that virutally every NES game from a US publisher is developed by Rare or one their associatiates. In this case, it's Zippo Games, another British company founded by a pair of brothers. They did some contract work for Rare before being bought out by the Stampers. Zippo barely even made use of the Sesame Street license here, instead creating a generic kids' game and tacking on Ernie and Grover. The title screen above gives you an idea of how little effort went into this. Remember back in 1984 when most Famicom title screens where just text on a black background?

Aside from Clash at Demonhead, only two other games saw release in both the US and Japan:

World Grand Prix: Pole to Finish/Al Unser Jr. Turbo Racing

Why does the name "Pole to Finish" sound so funny to me? Any way, this Data East release is yet another F1 racing game. And for the second time, it was localized for the US market using the name and likeness of a non-F1 race car driver. Al Jr. was a CART racer, just like Michael Andretti. If anyone played the US version years ago and wondered why your were racing overseas tracks instead of the Indy 500, well... now you know.

100 Man Dollar Kid: Maboroshi no Teiou Hen/Casino Kid

Not your typical gambling game, 100 Man Dollar Kid has an elaborate quest mode. Unfortunately, big chunks of the game were removed for the US release, Casino Kid. Also, the game's designers couldn't seem to decide what color the Kid's hair was, since it alternates between brown, black and blue. Some of the elements missing from the US version were later used in Casino Kid 2.

Naturally, we have a bunch of Japanese games - RPGs, adventure games, and the like.

Halley Wars

One of two FDS games this episode, Halley Wars is boring Shoot-em-up from Taito. It does have an interesting idea, however: any enemy ships you don't shoot down head to Earth and wreak havoc. Letting too many ships slip by will eventually earn you a game over.

Kidou Keisatsu Patlabor

AKA Mobile Police Patlabor. In the future, the police use giant robot suits to fight crime and rescue children. Based on a cartoon, naturally. This sidescrolling action game is a product of the unholy union of Bandai and Advance Communication - the developer of that Dr. Jekyll game. This is Episode 41's other FDS game.

Satomi Hakkenden

A turn based RPG, based on a 19th century Japanese novel, that doesn't even try to hide its indebtedness to Dragon Quest. One of the few RPGs from SNK.

Zoids 2

When I covered the first Zoids game back in Episode 22, I never would have thought Takara would release a sequel. Yet here it is. More dinosaur mech RPG action. Though I'm still baffled by the fact that the game looks like it takes place in a stereotypical medieval European setting.

Pachio Kun 2

Speaking of sequels no one wanted.... here's another pachinko game featuring the lovable living, breathing pachinko ball, Pachio Kun! Please be warned, this game contains references to sexual relations between pachinko balls.

Family Trainer: Rai Rai Kyonshizu

A moment of silence, please. We have now reached the end of Bandai's Family Trainer series of games. The 10th Family Trainer game is based on freakin' Chinese hopping vampires. Specifically, it stars a cute loveable baby kyonshizu. That's right, you play as a dead child.

Nishimura Kyoutarou Mystery: Blue Train Satsujin Jiken

Another mystery adventure game, this time from Irem and Tose. The funny thing is, there was a Tantei Jingujii Saburo game for the PS2 called Kind of Blue. Which raises the question: how many Japanese adventure games named after classic jazz albums are out there? If you don't know what I'm referring to, then educate yourself, you ignorant bastard! The opening sequence features some cool art.

Motocross Champion

One of the odder games this episode. A motorcross racing game, from Konami, which takes a bit of inspiration from Excitebike. The janky controls prevent this from being top-tier Konami, but it was later spun off into the Motocross Manaics series.

Space Harrier

Space Harrier on the Famicom? Yes, Sega really was a whore back in the '80s. Needless to say, this is not the best console version of Space Harrier.

Obviously, I'm aware that this episode took a really long time to produce. I'm sure Episode 42 will arrive in a more timely fashion. Until then, check it out on Archive or Youtube!

2011-11-07T21:30:00.000-08:00

So, I'm working on hacking together a rough cut of Episode 41 now. However, I'd like an opinion on something. I've included the video of the Family Trainer: Rai Rai! Kyonshizu below. Yes, it's a Family Trainer game based on Chinese hopping vampires.

Listening to the voice overs recorded on the new PC, I've noticed they sound super bass-y. The low end sounds too loud and distorted compared to earlier recordings. I assume this has something to do with the default settings on the new soundcard and the new speakers. So I'd appreciated some feedback on the voiceover quality. Do the lower frequencies sound too heavy and "boomy"? Does it sound the same as older videos? Thanks in advance.

2011-11-03T23:28:00.000-07:00

So good news! I've finished Clash at Demon Head (as the title screen calls it) AKA Clash at Demonhead (as the box art calls it. The manual can't make make up its mind, either.) I'm currently preparing my detailed takedown of this beloved cult classic. Not that I think it's terrible; it just wasn't as good as I thought it was going to be.

So I hope to get some major work done on Chrontendo 41 in a few days. But in the meantime, I've been too busy rockin' like Dokken. I have the misfortune to live in a city that is not considered a major market for most "medium-sized" bands, so I was very surprised and delighted to see that Mastodon was playing a show locally. As a super cool bonus, Dillinger Escape Plan was opening. You might not have been thinking that Dr. Sparkle was a rocker dude, but my impressive array of neck tattoos tells a different story. I can throw the devil horns and engage in meth abuse and perform ritual human sacrifice with the best of them.

(Bonus facts: Both Ronnie James Dio and Gene Simmons take credit for introducing the devil/goat/metal horns into popular culture. Dio claims learned it from his superstitious grandmother; Simmons says he invented by waving at the audience while holding his bass pick with the middle and ring fingers. Truly diabolical metal fans know it originated well before those two dudes.)

Even more surprising than Mastodon is the fact that Cinematic Titanic is doing a live appearance in my area! CT is essentially an unofficial reunion of the original cast of Mystery Science Theater 3000. Even the ads for this show describe it as "MST3K Live." What's odd is that the show is being held in the region's classy venue -- a rather expensive "arts center" that normally hosts guys like Yo Yo Ma or Wynton Marsalis. I guess the MST guys have made it big time. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited.

And speaking of ill-conceived CGI, have you guys seen the trailer for the Tin Tin movie? Freaky, cartoon-style heads and faces inserted into a photo-realistic environment? That's some uncanny valley shit right there.

Oh God, take it away take it away!

Happy Halloween

2011-10-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm almost done with the new Deus Ex game! That's good news for Chrontendo viewers. Though there are quite a few other big name titles that have come out recently, or will be released soon - so hopefully my attention won't be derailed again.

The other night I was checking out the Netflix and noticed that Ruggero Deodato's 1976 cop movie, Live Like a Cop, Die Like a Man, was available in streaming format. Fans of European sleaze cinema will know Deodato for such gems as Cannibal Holocaust (the pinnacle of the late 70s Italian cannibal movie genre,) but Live Like a Cop is a straight-up action movie, albeit a very bloody and violent one. It concerns a pair of buddy cops who break up a ring of gangsters using arson, torture and murder. Unlike the grim-faced rogue cops found in American movies such as Dirty Harry, these guys exude an amicable, goofy charm even as they cut a bloody swath through a gang of bank robbers and shady real-estate dealers. When not doing that, they are busy sexually harassing every woman they encounter. In the 70s it was apparently acceptable to openly engage your female coworkers in small talk such as, "Hey, when are you finally going to give in and let me have sex with you?"

Wheelie!

Anyway... the point of all this is that the movie opens with a super-exciting motorcycle chase scene. We see the cyclists weave in an out of traffic on crowded Italian streets, drive down stairs, drive over cars, drive into shops and through crowds of people, and pop a couple of wheelies that can only be described as "totally bad ass." It's the kind of stuff you used to see in the movies all the time back in the 70s and 80s. I began to wonder why action scenes in many of today's movies are so damned boring. Think of any car chase in a contemporary mainstream action film -- it's probably just tons of lame CGI effects and extraneous slow-motion. Even in "intelligent" action movies, such as the Bourne films, it's all about rapid cutting and constant shaky camera. These effects don't get your heart pumping so much as they lull you into a trance.

How did this happen? I'm not sure, but the first movie that I personally recall as suffering from CGI overload was the second Matrix film, from 2003. I barely remember anything about that movie, but the part that sticks in my mind was an overlong fight scene set on a busy freeway. It seemed to involve Keanu Reeves jumping around on cars while fighting a pair of albino robot ninja twins, or something. The use of CGI was so over-the-top that it overwhelmed any sense of danger or drama in the scene. All the cars flipping over in mid-air and people flying around in slow-mo made the entire thing feel very fake. At that moment you knew you were no longer watching a movie featuring real live people, but instead were watching a very expensive cartoon. (Matrix 2 also suffered from having bumped up the slow motion usage to hilariously high levels.)*

Perhaps having played countless video games over the years has lead me to associate computer generated graphics with fakeness. We know the characters in video games are not real, and today's movies contain many scenes that resemble nothing so much as video game cut scenes. Action scenes in older movies have an inherent physicality to them: we see a real man driving a real motorcycle. A scene of Sam Raimi's Spiderman swinging through the air is flat and weightless by comparison. We know Spiderman is just a bunch of pixels created on someone's workstation. If his web breaks and he falls... it's no big deal. He is just a bunch of pixels and can't be hurt.

Concept art? Frame from the movie? Frame from the video game? Who can tell?

Maybe this doesn't bother younger movie goers. Those who have grown up in the CGI era of filmaking might not experience any sort of disconnect between footage of solid objects and computer created objects. Maybe they think movies like Transformers or Smurfs or Green Lantern look cool, instead of looking like piles of tacky shit.

As for Chrontendo, the new episode mostly hinges on completing the Clash at Demonhead segment. For a game that's now considered to be a cult classic, I sure find playing it to be a chore. I'm also a bit busy in the near future - I went to a Halloween party tonight, have another one tomorrow, and have a few things to go to next week. I'll keep you posted on the new episode's progress.

*I disliked Matrix 2 even more than the first one, especially since I was dragged into seeing it on opening night by some Matrix-lovin' friends. I remember thinking that only one thing could make that movie bearable -- and that would be a scene where Keanu Reeves and Laurence Fishburne are getting ready to go out and fight some robots or something. Then Fishburne, says "Excuse me for a minute," and ducks into his room. A few moments later he comes out again, but dressed as Cowboy Curtis. "Okay, Keanu, I'm now ready to kick some robot ass." Sadly, this scene never happened and the entire movie was ruined.

Hunting for Praxis Kits

2011-10-15T20:49:00.000-07:00

Last post I mentioned things were going to be a little slow around here lately. Let me revise this: things are very slow around her lately. Bottom line: I've been busy with other stuff. Some of this stuff is "legit" like a having a friend from Vegas visiting for a few days. Another factor is the desire to test out the new computer on a modern PC game. In some bad news for Chrontendo fans, there's this thing out there called Deus Ex: Human Revolution. It turns out this thing is awesome, and better than it has any right to be. Also, here and there, I've been playing Dragon Quest V for the DS. Don't judge me, people. I can't spend all my gaming time playing stuff like Casino Kid.

"Sweet Dealer" sure sounds like a euphemism for something.

One a technical note, production of the new episode has been somewhat slowed. The primary programs used for Chrontendo are not Windows 7 compatible, so I'll probably be finishing up episode 41 using my old computer. I should set up the two computers at a 45 degree angle to each other, so I can use them both simultaneously, like cheesy keyboardists do.

I'm in the process of auditioning some new programs, so we'll see how things go. The end result will probably be Chrontendo looking a little different. Hopefully, for the better. Until, then I'm slowly uploading some older episodes on Youtube.

Elsewhere on the web, the dude behind Pre-Sonic Genesis has a new project called (ahem) Chronomancy. He's covering the officially licensed D&D video games - the Gold Box games and whatnot. Why the switch, you wonder? I can only assume he found a video game blog to be insufficient at completely repelling members of the opposite sex. By focusing on an even more "chick-proof" subject, he's able to achieve his goal of a totally abstinent lifestyle. Just a hunch. Anyway, it's cool, so check it out.

Also, Greg Sewart has a neat series of Sega CD reviews called WELCOM METOT HENEX TLEVEL on the Player One Podcast site. Unlike myself, Sewart is a legit writer, so the reviews are coherent, focused and entertaining. Reading about Sega CD games makes feel a little better about Chrontendo, since I have the consolation that I'm not having to play Corpse Killer or Wirehead.

Incidentally, my wife is at a "Goth Barbecue" party tonight. She informs me there is a pool there, but no one is using the pool. Is it even possible for Goths to go swimming? Can you look all dark and mysterious in swim trunks? Do they even make special scary Gothic swim trunks? Maybe they wear those old-timey full body swimsuits with the black and white stripes? Just wondering.

Fuck you, Tim Burton.

Will the Eighties Never Die?

2011-09-19T23:41:00.000-07:00

Things are going to be a little quiet on the Chrontendo front in the immediate future. Chrontendo is currently on hold (not on "hiatus" or anything of that nature.) I've recently put together a new PC, and it will take a little while to get everything set up. Having gone from Windows XP to 64-bit Windows 7, I now have to unlearn many habits and learn the peculiarities of the new OS. I still haven't figured out how to add a "show desktop" button on the taskbar. And, having to reinstall programs means having to deal with all sorts of missing DLLs and whatnot.

On top of all this, I feel sort of unfashionable by having a huge, clunky desktop computer. We are repeatedly informed that we are now in the "tablet age" of computing, and that powerful desktop machines are a thing of past. Everything is now done through online applications and cloud computing. Supposedly everyone loves the iPads, but I have no idea what I would do with it if I had one.

Also, we are in the middle of getting our roof replaced, and have been getting quotes from contractors for the last two weeks. Do you know what Dr. Sparkle just loves doing? Writing checks for amounts with lots of zeroes on the end. Hooray.

Earlier, I posted a terrifying picture of an old man in leather pants. You may be wondering, "Dr. Sparkle, why did you make us look at that horrible picture of that scary old man?" The story behind this is that my wife dragged me to a Human League/Men Without Hats show the other week. Yes, you heard that correctly, I just went to Men-Without-Fucking-Hats concert. The dude in the leather pants is the guy from Men Without Hats, and he was dressed in that exact same outfit when I saw them, right down to the little bitty cowboy hat (irony?)

Pic from here.

Both bands were operating in the "one original member" mode. To be fair, this line-up of Human League featured the three vocalists from the second version of the band, when they were producing all their hits. MWH consisted of the singer and three hired instrumentalists. Strangely, I was more curious to see MWH than Human League, simply because I had no idea of what sort of band they really were. When you think "Men Without Hats," what pops into your head? Probably a dwarf jester dancing around.

They turned out to be fairly standard synth-pop band fronted by a guy who pranced around on the stage looking like a gayer version of Bono. At two separate points during the show, he did a dance move thing were he pretended to be popping imaginary bubbles floating in the air.

Human League, the headliners, were the *better* band, I suppose. At least they had a drummer. The main dude (who was once known for his wacky hair style and is now completely bald) came out dressed in a black leather raincoat buttoned up around his neck, a hoodie obscuring almost all of his face and a pair of sunglasses. He was suffering from the delusion that he was Banksy, I guess. Or maybe it was some sort of comment on the London riots. One of the singers was a skeletally thin woman wearing a Euro-trashy evening dress thing and an absurd amount of sparkly bracelets, earrings, tiaras, and shit. All three singers did a few outfit changes throughout the show. I couldn't tell of the whole thing was supposed to be ironic or not. Despite having sat through an entire Human League show, I still have no conception of what Human League is supposed to be about.

Pic from here.

I should point out the show was at an Indian casino, and took place in a room the size of a small theater/large bar. I'll charitably describe the room as "two-thirds full." It was a very odd venue to see show and the room seemed more like it was more suited for a real-estate seminar or something.

Sorry for taking up your time with non-video game related stuff. There should be an Episode 41 related update before too long. Also, I should start posting older episodes of Chrontendo on Youtube in the near future.

Herr Professor Doktor von Sparkle Präsentiert: Videospielenbücherkritik

2011-09-06T22:50:00.001-07:00

Hello, everyone! I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day. For you folks outside the US, Labour Day or International Workers Day is usually a commemoration of the achievements of the working class in their struggle against capitalistic oppression throughout the last 100 years of so. For us inside the US, Labor Day means barbequing hotdogs, as per the instructions of our corporate overlords. My chili dogs turned out fantastic, thank you very much.

Dr. Sparkle has been hit with a bad case of the existential ennui lately, which means a slowdown in production of new Chrontendo episodes. I've also been busy with a few things the last week or so. One of them is putting together a new computer. One of the other things, unfortunately, was this:

It was not as bad as this looks. I'll explain next post.

However, we do have something a little different today -- I thought I'd talk about a couple books produced by fellow retro-game enthusiasts.

Many of you will be familiar with Gamespite. The main site is filled with high-quality game writing and the forums are a haven for old-school video game/furries/yaoi fandom. A couple years ago, Gamespite honcho Jeremy Parish came up with a clever idea: release a series of quarterly collections of reviews/articles from the site's various contributing writers in book form, then publishing those same articles, one at a time, on the web site.

"Sippin' Sizzurp in my ride, like Three 5?" No, that doesn't quite work.

So far, GameSpite Quarterly (now GameSpite Journal) has reached its ninth issue. The size of each issue varies, from #1's 150 or so pages, to #8's whopping 450+ pages. The meatiest two volumes, in terms of both size and breadth of content, are issues 5 and 8, which are reasonably in-depth looks at the NES and the Playstation 1, respectively. Each issue contains a series of articles about the console, arranged in roughly chronological order. Some articles are thematic; for example, Nintendo's legal battles with Tengen or the practice of importing NTSC Playstation games into Europe. But most articles discuss individual games. These can range in length from three sentences for Legend of Kage to five pages for the NES version of Strider. While these books can't come close to covering every game for each system, they do manage to get in the major US releases, plus a handful of lesser known titles and imports. Each issue is profusely illustrated with black-and-white screenshots and promotional artwork.

The GameSpite books are very dedicated to their subject matter. But if you want to see true obsession, you must turn to Hardcore Gaming 101's The Guide to Classic Graphic Adventures. This thing is huge: 772 pages and weighing about 2 1/2 pounds. Despite being in paperback format, its physical dimensions are that of a good-sized hardcover. It terms of content, it covers around 300 games and is nicely illustrated with B&W screenshots; though like GameSpite Quarterly, the screen captures can be a bit dark in places.

Not pictured: the heft of this tome.

The Guide focuses on the "classic" era of PC adventure gaming -- the mid-80s through the mid-90s. Virtually every well known graphic adventure game of that time period is covered, including the oeuvres of LucasArts, Sierra, Legend, Interplay, and so on. A few earlier games, such as the Zork series, and a handful of modern releases are discussed as well. A number of writers contributed entries, but the bulk seems to be written by Kurt Kalata himself. The overall tone is evenhanded and non-judgmental; even the worst games are described as "disappointing" or "flawed." I would guess that years of playing adventure games teaches one patience and forgiveness. Even the most well-loved games in the genre are filled with frustrating bullshit such as unfair deaths, impossible puzzles and sadistically frustrating action sequences. Adventure game fans learn to put up with a lot.

The book doesn't skimp on words.

Both Gamespite Quarterly and The Guide are not without their flaws. As self-published books they lack a professional editor, which often shows. Not that I'm complaining; it's beyond my abilities to proof-read a blog post of this length and not miss typos and errors. To self-edit a manuscript several hundred pages long and catch every single mistake would be just about impossible. Both books have problems with the most difficult word on the internet, "comprise." I was actually a little thrilled when I saw it used correctly early on in The Guide but later usage was inconsistent. Both books frequently (and exclusively) use "trope" in the modern, internet-y sense, but that probably bothers me only because I'm an curmudgeonly old bastard.

It is I who is being a dick.

The section on Star Trek games in The Guide contains the line "Like most great works of art, its appeal was not immediately recognized...." which is probably the most indefensible statement anyone has made about art, ever. Of course, it was used in reference to the original Star Trek TV series, so perhaps it was intended to be read ironically, as way of poking fun at the pretensions of Star Trek fans? GSQ 8 has a long and provocative article by Phil Armstrong on Breath of Fire IV, which goes against popular opinion and claims BoF IV to be the best game in the series and also the best Playstation RPG. It's a great article, but is bizarrely titled "Ying and Yang." Is that a typo or a joke that went over my head? I know Parish has a weakness for puns, so I'm thinking that it was intentional. Seriously, someone explain that to me. I feel really stupid every time I think about that title.

Despite such trivial imperfections, both publications get my most enthusiastic recommendation. Quality books on video games are not as common as they should be. Most are amateurishly written small-press works, or general video game histories which rarely get into the nitty-gritty of the games themselves. Or even worse, postmodern, academic books called "World of Warcraft and the Simulacrum: A Hermeneutic Perspective" or some such nonsense. Volumes of GSQ can be purchased on Blurb, and The Guide is available on Amazon, among other places. The Guide even comes in ebook format for those of you whose limbs are not sturdy enough to hold a 2 1/2 pound book and sip a soy latte at the same time.

Incidentally, the various comments about Akira, the movie, have whetted my appetite to revisit it. Maybe I'll like it more this time.

The Evil Desires of Dr. Sparkle

2011-08-23T00:36:00.000-07:00

My sinister plans for world domination have reached a new phase today, with the release of Chrontendo Episode 40. Finally we have finished with the year 1988 and are poised to begin 1989. You know the drill by know. Fancy-ass 60 fps h.264 versions may be found on Archive. A reasonable streaming version may be found on Youtube. As always, I recommend the 60 fps videos.

In order to squeeze in the very last few games of '88, I tacked on two additional games, leaving Episode 40 with a total of 17 games. Five of those are releases for the US market, from Konami, Sunsoft and Tengen. One of the Tengen games, Super Sprint did eventually get aJapanese release a few years later, by Altron, the same guys who published the Japanese version of Paperboy.

Skate or Die! marks the beginning of a new era of console gaming in the US. It is the first Electronics Arts game released for a console; though in this case it was published by Konami under their Ultra Games imprint. I've already mentioned my dislike for this game. Most of my complaints center around the controls (and maybe also the ugly graphics.) There were some genuinely baffling decisions made when Skate was ported to the NES, such mapping the kick, punch, jump and duck commands to the A button, while leaving the B button unused.

Sadly, warlock powers are missing from Platoon.

The two Sunsoft-published games are ports of Ocean Software's computer game Platoon and Bally Midway's arcade game Xenophobe. Platoon, which is based on the Oliver Stone movie (as absurd as that seems.) is an absolute mess on every single level. The developers must not have had the vision or discipline required to make a cohesive game, so they stuck four short games together and called it a day. Platoon comprises a side scrolling level set in a confusing maze-like jungle; a first person shooter set in a series of tunnels; a short and boring shooting gallery level; and an extremely repetitive top down run-and-gun level. Xenophobe is not as frustrating, but ends up being entirely pointless. The arcade Xenophobe offered the novelty of three player co-op on a single screen. The NES reduced the number of players from three to two and was only capable of putting two enemies onscreen at once.

I wish I were joking, but no -- this is an actual screen shot of Xenophobe.

Tengen puts in an appearance with Vindicators and Super Sprint. Vindicators, recently seen in the Chrontendo 1988 arcade round-up, is a top-down tank game, in which your stupid tank is constantly running out of fuel. Super Sprint is basically a gussied up version of Atari's 1973 (!) arcade game Grand Trak. It suffers from some of the weirdest damned physics in any racing game we've seen so far. The cars have no weight and slip and slide around on the track like it was coated in Vaseline. All five US games are their own sort of awful, and Vindicators is probably the best of bunch.

I fail to see anything particularly "super" about Super Sprint.

Moving on, Episode 40 does contain one timeless classic: Rockman 2/Mega Man 2.

Dr. Wiley's mini-warship appears to be monogrammed. Now that's classy!

Much ink has already been spilt on this game, and there is probably not much I can add. MM 2 stands with Super Mario Bros. 3 as being the apotheosis of a video game sequel, at least in the NES era. It takes everything that was good about the first game and expands upon it. Instead of Mega Man's six robot masters, we now have 8. Additional helpful items such as the energy tanks and the floating platforms are added in. New, huge and awesome bosses are introduced. The level design has become even more creative and varied. The music and graphics have been improved to a impressive degree. A password system has been added so that you are no longer required to play it in one sitting.

What would a villain's base be without spiky crushy things dropping down from the ceiling?

The first Mega Man, released in late 1987, was just about the most inspired and sophisticated platform game we'd seen on the Famicom at that point. Mega Man 2 raises that bar once again. Other than SMB 3, I'm not sure that there was really anything on the system that could touch MM 2 in the action/platforming field. Ninja Gaiden suffered an excess of cheap deaths. Bionic Commando suffered from uninteresting bosses. Blaster Master had those top-down sequences where you walked around on foot. Mega Man 2 was the one where Capcom got everything just right.

Air Man has bizarre taste in exterior decoration.

The Blue Bomber clearly dominates this episode, but a few other decent games will be covered as well:

Tetris

If you are like me, you'll make a lot of errors due to the unusual control scheme.

There were a total of three versions of Tetris on the Famicom and NES. This one, from Bullet Proof Software has the distinction of being the first released, but also the least fun to play. For starters, you rotate a falling block by pressing down on the d-pad. This will certainly interfere with your Tetris muscle memory. There is no option to increase the speed at which a block is falling; instead there is an option to instantly drop a block into place. Thus, you need to be sure a block is positioned correctly or otherwise wait while it moves very slowly down the screen.

And the blocks do move quite slowly in this Tetris. It's probably the mellowest version of Tetris you'll ever play. Also: no two player option. It's not fair to judge this game against later iterations of Tetris; but no one is going to toss aside Tengen's Tetris and play this one instead. Still, BPS deserves major props for being the first guys to release Tetris on a console. The fact that BPS had signed a contract that gave them explicit console rights for Tetris would lead to an epic legal battle a little later on.

Guevara/Guerrilla Warfare

Guerrilla Warfare rather obviously features Fidel Castro.

This SNK run-and-gun is hardly a great game in its own right. It's really just another variation on the Ikari formula: guys with guns walking around in a jungle and shooting everyone who crosses their path. However, it's a major step up from their console releases of Ikari and Ikari 2. In the 1990s, SNK would develop a cultish fan following based around their Neo Geo platform. But in 1988, SNK was still trying to shake off their reputation as producers of crap such as Athena. That would take a few more years, but Guerrilla Warfare is a step in the right direction.

Pro Yakyuu? Satsujin Jiken!

This is colloquially known as performing a "1-8-7" on a law enforcement officer.

Released the same day as Mega Man 2, this Capcom game pokes fun at the glut of baseball and murder mystery games for the Famicom. It certainly stands out among the crowd of Portopia clones -- Capcom threw in RPG elements, mini-games and even a mini vertical shoot-em-up.

The remaining titles this episode are not particularly notable. But we are obligated to discuss every single Famicom game, so here is a quick rundown:

Roller Ball

A rather basic pinball game from HAL, based on an old computer pinball game they released for the MSX in 1984. There's nothing really wrong with Roller Ball, but post-Alien Crush, it's hard to get too excited about a game like this.

Airwolf

You shouldn't confuse this horizontal shoot-em-up from Kyugo Boueki with the other Airwolf, from Acclaim. This is better than Acclaim's version, but it's still a slightly boring shoot-em-up with dull enemies and no power ups. For some reason, the boss battles are fought from a first-person viewpoint. For a licensed game, it's not bad, I suppose.

Akira

The best looking parts of the game are copied directly from the comic or movie.

Speaking of licensed games, we have this adventure game from Tose and Taito, based on the popular sci-fi manga/anime. Akira, the game, falls halfway between an adventure game and a Visual Novel, meaning there is more dialog and less interactivity than most Famicom adventure games.

Some of you might be old enough to remember the massive hype surrounding the Akira movie when it was released in the US in the late 80s. I actually saw it in the theaters at that time, and was pretty unimpressed. I felt the same way ten years later when I emerged from the theater after seeing The Matrix, wondering why everyone was so impressed by that movie. Maybe I should give Akira a second chance someday?

Shoukoushi Ceddie

I told you this game was not going to be pretty, and I didn't lie.

This one takes the prize for oddest source material for a Famicom video game. It's an adventure game based on Francis Hodgson Burnett's 1896 children's novel Little Lord Fauntleroy. Yes, the very same book that started a craze for dressing up young boys in ridiculously sissified outfits at the turn of the 20th century (though, conversely, it also led to pants becoming a standard clothing option for young kids.) Fuji TV's game is a eye-gougingly ugly mess that adds in some terrible "action" sequences to go along with menu navigation.

Moero!! Pro Soccer/Goal!

A non-terrible soccer game from Tose/Jaleco. If soccer video games are your bag, then give this one a try.

Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium '88

This game seems strangely familar.

The third game in Namco's popular Family Stadium series. Naturally, its virtually indistinguishable from the first two games in the series. The character sprites are unchanged from the first game; in fact, the only obviously new element is that you can now choose between four different ball parks. Please note, this title should not be confused with Tengen's R.B.I. Baseball 3, a completely separate game.

Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu

Prepare for some thrill-packed tactical spaceship action. No, not really.

Dudes in uniforms standing around in spaceships talking! That's a good description of every animated Japanese space epic ever made, and also a pretty good summary of this game from Kemco. There are some tactical space battles hidden somewhere in the game. Naturally, Ginga is adapted from a series of sci-fi novels, manga and animated TV shows.

Tarot Uranai

Fortune telling simulation game number three! This time, it's based on the tarot deck. Rare's Taboo: The Sixth Sense isn't seeming like such an oddball title, now, is it?

Next time: 1989 is upon us! And it brings with it: Wrestlemania and Seseme Street games! For now, you'll have to settle for checking out Episode 40 over at Archive or Youtube.

As Per Your Request

2011-08-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

For those wanting an animated '89 Dennou Uranai cat gif, here it is:

For those of you looking for Mega Man 2 infused Chrontendo goodness, you'll need to wait a few more days. Check back shortly. Chrontendo 40 will be ever-so-slightly longer than normal. I've decided to squeeze in two additional games, so that we can completely wrap up 1988 this epsiode. Sadly, those two games are semi-crappy Tengen releases: Vindicators and Super Sprint.

California Darkness

2011-08-07T15:19:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the hassle with Chrontendo Episode 39. Chris Osborn, of Juggle Chainsaws, pointed out that I referred to Fighting Road as Fighting Street several times during that segment. Sure, I make a few errors or misstatements in many episodes, but repeatedly using the wrong title seemed to be serious enough to warrant a re-upload. As for "The Adventures of Link," I didn't bother fixing that because, well... because Zelda II can go screw itself for all I care. Both versions of Episode 39 are still up on Youtube, but the revised version will, of course, be the one contained in the 25 disc Chrontendo Perfect (Remix) Collection Blu-Ray box set, when it comes out in 2027.

Work on Episode 40 has started, but I was a bit sidetracked last week due to my wife's birthday and a trip to the wilds of eastern California to check out the Black Chasm Caverns. The typical images that come to mind when thinking of California are beaches, surfing, hippies, techno-geeks, and Hollywood. All of this is completely accurate. At this very moment I'm posting this from my iPhone while simultaneously carving a gnarly barrel off of Hermosa Beach. However, the majority of California consists of farmland, desert, rednecks and quaint little towns in the middle of nowhere, in which every other building seems to be an antiques store.

At the bottom of the chasm you can see an underground lake in which live tiny, blind, scorpion-like creatures.

Anyway, Black Chasm is one of several caverns located in old Gold Rush country. It's not too far from the town of San Andreas (GTA fans take note: San Andreas is a real city, though small and not particularly interesting). While Black Chasm is not as huge or impressive as such well-known caverns as Carlsbad or Mammoth Cave, it's still worthwhile for its odd formations.

The "dragon" is the mascot of the caverns.

California culture certainly has a dark side to it; one that is manifested in video games such as Epyx's Winter Games and California Games, and now, in EA's Skate or Die! Released by Konami's Ultra Games for the NES, SoD! is very much in the Winter Games mode: a collection of mini-games beset with inconsistent and needlessly oblique control schemes. In fact, trying to play Skate or Die! caused Dr. Sparkle to fly into a bit of a rage. Yet, despite its ability to infuriate the player, some folks out there remember it fondly today. This is probably because back in 1988, we were young enough to have the time and patience (and lack of anything else worthwhile to do) required to figure out how to play this thing. Even the instruction manual doesn't understand the controls -- it is completely wrong about the controls for one event.

All skaters had crazy mohawks back in the 80s.

Does anyone out there actually like Skate or Die? Has anyone tried playing it recently? I'm wondering if its just me.

Chrontendo 39: Sequel-Mania

2011-07-29T00:55:00.000-07:00

Another hot slice of chronogaming goodness is served, courtesy of Dr. Sparkle! (Did that sound a just a little dirty? Good.) Chrontendo Episode 39 is ready for you downloading and streaming pleasure. Nice looking h.264 60 FPS versions may be found at Archive. And a plain old streaming version may be watched on Youtube. As always, I recommend the 60 FPS videos so you can see all the cool flicker effects, like the force shield in Gradius II.

Last episode left off in mid-December, right in the middle of the 1988 holiday shopping season. Tons of quickie cash-in games are crowding each other off the shelves of toy stores and electronics boutiques. And you know what that means, right, kids? Sequels! An amazing five games this episode are sequels to earlier Famicom releases. However, out of all the games covered this time, there are only a couple that anybody will actually give two shits about.

Gradius II is probably the finest game on display in Episode 39. Konami was one of the most prodigious and consistent publishers in the earlier days of the Famicom, but in the second half of 1988, they slowed down a bit. The Japan-only Gradius II could almost be considered a comeback, considering that their last big action title was Mad City/Bayou Billy.

Creepiest boss ever?

The arcade Gradius II (Vulcan Venture in Europe) was covered in the 1988 arcade roundup. It was considerably more visually impressive than the first game, but it was also substantially harder. Sure, the Vic Viper had some new laser and shield choices, but those didn't stand a chance against the waves of screen-filling projectiles thrown at you. This made the arcade Gradius II punitively difficult. Thankfully, in order not crush the souls of young Famicom players, Konami toned it down a bit for the console release. A good deal of this is due to the downgrade in hardware; the Famicom couldn't handle that many enemies and bullets onscreen at once. But Konami also made a few deliberate choices, such as beefing up the shield so that it could take multiple hits before disappearing.

Gradius II plays very much like the first game, only with more variety in the level design, and a whole bunch of brand new, enormous bosses. Sure, the Core guy returns, and a few favorites from Salamander make an appearance, but line up of new bosses is perhaps Gradius II's finest feature. There's even an honest-to-goodness boss rush level.

After playing Parodius, I can't help but think of a Las Vegas showgirl here.

The other big game this episode is Square's flawed but fascinating sequel to their company-saving hit, Final Fantasy. If you've ever played Final Fantasy II, you'll recognize it as a classic example of the black sheep sequel, just like Zelda II and Castlevania II. In this case, however, it set the pattern for the enitre series -- that every FF game would be dramatically different from its immediate predecessor. This allowed it to stand in stark contrast to Enix's Dragon Quest series, in which each new game built upon the foundation of the one before it, by gradually introducing a few new elements into each sequel.

You can't open a damned treasure chest without finding monsters.

With Akitoshi Kawazu leading the design team, FF II eliminated character classes, experience points and levels, replacing them with a system in which your stats, weapon skills, and magic increase based on what skills or magic you use in battle. Likewise, max HP and MP increase as you lose HP and MP in battle. This sounds fine on paper, but in practice it results in a very tedious system for leveling up, especially when it comes to magic. It takes a long time to level up a spell: doing so requires casting it over and over and over. For basic spells like Cure, this doesn't seem so bad. But spells that are useful only occasionally will never be built up unless you use a cheat or exploit one of the game's (perhaps deliberate) bugs. This is especially true with spells you acquire late in the game, such as Ultima. You'll need to cast a lot of Ultima spells before it becomes very effective, which is ultimately (sorry!) more trouble than it's worth. And I probably don't need to mention that if two characters have the same spells you'll need to level them up individually.

You have a lot of stats.

While the leveling mechanic sucks much of the fun out of the game, FF II is still quite notable for the many characters, items, monsters, and ideas that became series mainstays: such as Cid, Chocobos, Phoenix Downs, Dragoons, and so on. One character, Lion Heart (or Leon Heart in some versions,) had a distant relative turn up years later in Final Fantasy VIII.

Beyond those two games, Episode 39 is mostly a vast wasteland of boring and/or crappy games. Here are the worst offenders:

Fantasy Zone II: The Teardrop of Opa Opa

It's called that because Opa-Opa once killed a guy in prison.

A complete waste of plastic. There was already a far superior version of Fantasy Zone II on the Master System. The Famicom port, published by Sunsoft, suffers from ugly graphics and ear-piercing music. There is no need for this game to exist.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

I already bitched about this game a few posts back. And I'm still all worked up about it. Why do you start the game by hitting the "select" button instead of the "start" button? What were you thinking, Tengen? Were you not aware there was a button on the NES controller that was actually labeled START?!?

Even weirder, Tengen thought IJATTOD so valuable that they released an unlicensed version to compete with Mindscape's official release.

Family Trainer: Fuuun! Takeshi Shiro II

The umpteenth Family Trainer game and the zillionith Takeshi Kitano game. Fuuun! Takeshi Shiro II caused Dr. Sparkle to have a bit of a breakdown this episode.

Kyuukyoku Harikiri Stadium: '88 Senshuu Shin Data

Fake game alert! This cart is really just the first Kyuukyoku Harikiri Stadium game rereleased with re-jiggered stats.

Captain Silver

Omigod! Did we forget to feed the werewolf before we left?

The arcade Captain Silver was pretty annoying. The Master System version, covered in Chronsega 6 was a huge improvement. The Famicom port is notorious for its emaciated werewolves and is far worse than the other two versions. One-hit deaths have been replaced by a lifebar, but your weapon and agility have been seriously downgraded. Most enemies now take multiple hits to kill, so the net result is a game where it's actually easier to get killed than in the SMS Captain Silver.

And we have a few non-offensive carts as well:

The Triathron

This year's Triathlon had pretty high fatalities, due to giant whirlpools.

The first of three racing games this episode. Aside from the hilarious Engrish title, this KAC game offers button-mashy swimming/cycling/running action. It's pretty uneventful except for the deadly whirlpools in the swimming race.

Top Rider

An unabashed Hang On clone with a very unusual peripheral: an inflatable motorcycle featuring a built-in handlebar controller. Yes, the player is supposed to sit on a big squishy airbag while playing Top Rider.

Cycle Race Roadman

My favorite of the three, Cycle Race is a simple little bicycle racing game. It works quite a bit better than the cycling sections in Triathron.

'89 Dennou Kyuusei Uranai

This would be another utterly pointless fortune telling/horoscope if it weren't for one thing - this cat:

A fat cat driving a teeny little UFO!

Micronics has created perhaps the greatest video game mascot ever. Besides that, '89 Dennou has a few weird surprises, as shown in the video.

Paperboy

Another Tengen/Mindscape port of on old Atari arcade game.

Rampage

Data East releases a console version of Midway's classic urban environment destruction simulator.

Kaguya Hime Densetsu

The game gets a little judgmental at times. I don't see what the big deal is. She's unconscious, so she'll never know the difference.

Micronics developed this wacky adventure game, which does an irreverent take on the old Japanese legend of the Woodcutter's Daughter. Apparently, this tale was a favorite among video game developers, because it also inspired Nintendo's Shin Onigashima, covered back in Episode 22.

Fighting Road

This is what fighting games looked like in the 80s.

Another non-distinguished title from Toei. This time it's a single player one-on-one fighting game.

How would you feel if I told you that Chrontendo Episode 40 will finish up 1988 (almost!). Yes, I'll be glad to move onto 1989, too. One thing we have to look forward to in 1989 is more damned Western exclusive games. 1989-1991 is probably the peak of NES mania in the US, so the number of games aimed at the US market will explode during the next year or two. I can hardly wait. Mario's Time Machine, anyone?

Once again, head on over to Archive or Youtube and check out Chrontendo Episode 39.

Final Fantasy, in Beer Form

2011-07-26T23:11:00.000-07:00

Update! The Squall Double IPA has been consumed and turned out to pretty decent, though a bit mild for a DPIA. I wouldn't place it in the same weight class as the big California Double IPAs such Pliny the Elder or Stone's Ruination. I guess I'm just a chauvinist when it comes West Coast brewing styles. Wine snobs may dismiss Cali wines, but our beers are pretty unbeatable.

As Chrontendo Episode 39 is prepared for editing, I thought I'd share this tangentially related beer offering.

This is a Double IPA from Dogfish Head, a rather media-savvy brewer from Delaware, (they had their own reality show and an article in Smithsonian.) The Double IPA is the most quintessentially West Coast-y of beers, so I'm a bit skeptical of the results. Hopefully, it will taste plenty angsty and bitter. And maybe a little bitchy?

Kawazu-spawned Brain Damage

2011-07-19T01:14:00.000-07:00

Things have been busy on the Chrontendo ranch lately, but they should be calming down soon. Once again, I feel obligated to report on the stuff that has been taking up my time -- time which could have been spent on Chrontendo.

No one was more surprised than myself at my participation in a Zombie Walk last week. Being a man possessing a greatly dignified bearing, I was not actually dressed up as a zombie. Instead, I accompanied my wife and a friend, who were both in zombie makeup. There was a pretty damned huge crowd of zombies, anti-zombie forces, and spectators. Even in non-zombie form, I could feel a certain rush from the collective lack of inhibition that allows you to act really weird in public, scream and random bystanders, and pound on the windows of buildings as you pass by.

Some of the zombies had very elaborate, impressive makeup and costumes. There are not those zombies.

One thing my fair city can take pride in is the "invention" of the zombie walk; it's been a local tradition for years, and quickly spread to other cities across the world. (We also originated the IKEA dinner party, but that's a bit more underground.). Here's a random Flickr photoset of the event.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7148421@N03/sets/72157627086649689/

I've been going to inordinate number of social events lately, including this weird party a couple nights ago out in the farmlands past the outskirts of town. It was a pretty huge party - a patch of land was turned into a parking lot, there were porta-potties, and people were setting up tents and spending the night. It was definitely not my crowd -- there was sort of a Jimmy Buffet vibe going on, and the DJ was playing stuff like that "Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy" song. Dudes in cargo shorts and Birks drinking Corona, if you know what I mean.

I did finally get to see the new Terry Malick film, The Tree of Life, which seems to be receiving a pretty limited distribution compared to his last two films, both of which played in mainstream multiplex type theaters. Even among the art-house set, the movie has the power to cause audience grumblings and walkouts. In fact, if I were to pick the three movies at which I noticed the most noticeable audience displeasure, it would be The Tree of Life, Malick's Thin Red Line and Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

The famous "no refunds" sign from a Stamford, CT theater.

I found Tree to be pretty engrossing, partially because I used to know the person whom the Brad Pitt character is based on. But for anyone out there planning to see it, I'll warn you in advance: it is very elliptical. Not quite as imposing was the musical The Producers, which I got into a dress rehearsal of for free. As much as I like the original movie, the musical is pretty corny. Big Broadway musicals and I have never really got along very well.*

Also, I'm suffering a bit of brain trauma due to one particular game from Chrontendo 39: Final Fantasy II. The most-hated FF game, with the exception of X-2, FF II is from the diseased mind of Akitoshi Kawazu, later of SaGa fame/infamy. There are a couple ways to look at this game. On one hand, it rewrites the rules of the typical DQ style 8-bit JRPG. This would appear to be a good thing, but.... it rewrites the rules in the most ill-conceived way imaginable. Anyone who has played it will remember it as the game in which you spend as much time attacking your own party members as you do enemies.

FF II features various callbacks to the first game.

Despite its bad reputation, I felt the game was interesting and important enough to play all the way through, so expect a full report next episode.

Also, there's this: http://nestitlescreens.tumblr.com/. Not sure who is behind this. But if you go to the archive page, it's interesting how Jaleco's City Connection stands out. Also, congrats to DK 3 for introducing animation to the Famicom title screen.

*Nothing can compare to the Las Vegas Phantom of the Opera, however. It's like the Michael Bay's Transformers of musicals. And calling it that is probably being a bit unfair to Michael Bay.

USA! Not Yet #1 in Video Games!

2011-07-09T02:07:00.000-07:00

As usual, Dr. Sparkle has been busy lately... it's always busy, busy, busy around here. Another fine July 4th weekend has gone by, but something did seem a little different this year. On most years, fireworks are lit on July 4th itself, but last weekend I noticed the fireworks started on Saturday and continued on through Sunday and Monday. I suppose people had to get their fireworks fix over the weekend, but it did get a bit tiresome by the third day. Constantly hearing the "pip, pop, pip" of firecrackers all night can work your nerves.

Every Fourth of July, while manning a barbeque grill, I wonder the same thing: why do we choose to celebrate this holiday, which happens in the hottest month of year, by throwing an outdoors party that involves cooking meat over open flames? Temperatures hit triple digits last weekend, I think. And the hottest 4th of July temperature on record for my city is 111 degrees Fahrenheit, from 1991! In that heat it's impossible to step outside for 10 minutes without getting drenched in sweat. So why should I toss flipping burgers over hot charcoals into the mix? Really, I think BBQ parties would make more sense in mid-spring or late autumn.

A recent comment about Hannah Montana made me think of this frequently reproduced British tabloid cover.

You can't get more British than the phrase "sex shame."

I don't know much about UK tabloids but they appear to be much crazier than their US counterparts. Our tabloids mostly concern themselves with reality TV stars having plastic surgery or gaining weight; UK tabloids seem much angrier somehow; almost a little demented. I've seen this cover a few times recently in various news outlets due to some legal issues with the paper hacking into cell phones and interfering with a murder investigation.

I'll admit to loving the almost surreal juxtaposition of "Hannah Montana stickers" with "Sick Nazi Orgy." Which raises the obvious question: who the hell is this paper being marketed to? Exactly what demographic would be interested in both Nazi orgies and Hannah Montana stickers? (Other than Chrontendo readers, or course.) Also a nice touch: the red "5" enumerating the number of hookers involved. Because a mere three or four hookers in a Nazi orgy would not be nearly as newsworthy. Seriously, any UK folks out there: who actually buys these things?

Back to video games: Chrontendo 39 will feature a few December 1988 releases for the US NES market. All three are ports of US developed arcade games. Now, I don't normally like to choose sides in the Western vs Japanese games debate. I can see both sides of the argument. On one hand, in the mid '80s we have US developers creating innovative games like Wasteland and Maniac Mansion while Japanese companies are pooping out countless unoriginal Portopia and Dragon Quest clones. One the other hand... we have these three games:

Rampage

I liked Rampage in the arcades. Three Player co-op destruction. Smashing helicopters with your fist. Grabbing US Army solders and eating them. Tearing down three or four buildings, then repeating ad infinitum. Rampage was the sort of game best described as a "fun time-waster." Since nothing ever really happens in Rampage, it wasn't even much of a quarter-muncher. It wasn't as if you kept plugging in more quarters trying to get to the last boss -- there were no bosses or even any real "levels."

It's never explained why the army is just randomly blowing up buildings in this game.

This makes it sort of an odd choice for the NES. Aside from this, the Data East published port had a few more issues. First of all it received a downgrade from simultaneous three-player to two-player. Also, many of the monsters' animations and facial expressions had been dropped. Many of the various power-ups and harmful objects found in the game have been rendered unrecognizable due the NES' low-res graphics. Instead of eating a bundle of TNT and then belching out a jet of fire, you would pick up a pixely thing on the ground and shoot a stream of something out of your mouth.

The same is true to a certain extent in Tengen/Mindscape's Paperboy, based on the 1984 Atari arcade game. Probably the most offensive moment in the game is the truly awful-looking title screen.

NES vs Arcade. Note: his cap is backwards. That means he's got "attitude."

What I am wondering is this: if Tengen was unable to prod the NES into producing a nicer looking facsimile of Paperboy's title screen than this, why did they even bother? Why not design a new, simpler title screen, one more suited for the NES hardware? One gets the feeling that Tengen's object was not to create an acceptable piece of title art, but instead to produce something that would remind players of the arcade game's title screen, regardless of how ugly the finished product was.

The same philosophy holds true in the game itself. The arcade Paperboy featured a pesky breakdancer spinning around on his head. Apparently Tengen was not able to reproduce this for the home version, so instead we have a guy standing on his head kicking his legs around in the air. If you had never played the arcade game, you would undoubtedly be confused and disturbed by this character. "Whats going on? Is he... having a seizure?" Once again, Tengen seems be aiming for the recognition factor rather than something that makes sense on its own.

Watch out for that blue... "thing" in the driveway.

Far worse, however, is Tengen's port of the 1985 arcade game, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The original was pretty cool for 1985: it used speech samples from the movie, had fasting moving mine cart action, and plenty of underground caverns and lava pits. In this case, the opposite approach was taken from that of Paperboy and Rampage -- the game was rebuilt almost entirely from scratch. The game now involves running through a series of maze like caverns (made more confusing by the fact that each level screen wraps around both vertically and horizontally) looking for a bunch of hidden map pieces. This wouldn't be so bad, except for a number of flaws, starting with a needlessly confusing control screen. The very first thing you need to do is to start the game,, by pressing the Select button. Not, Start, but Select. From there you'll learn that the jump and attack buttons are reversed from the configuration found in every other NES game. And that you don't jump in the direction Indy is facing. No, you need to hold down the d-pad in the direction you want to jump and then hit the jump button. Otherwise Indy will always jump towards the bottom screen, usually into a lava pit.

A pretty cool game, but who leaves canisters of gasoline lying around next to lava pits?

Beyond the controls, the game offers suffers from a plethora of opaque and illogical rules. Keys are occasionally found -- these can open doors, but not all doors. Doors leading to rooms containing TNT need to be opened using swords. Swords are used to kill enemies (which makes sense,) but also are required to open these special doors (which doesn't.) Guns are also used to kill enemies, but are also needed to find hidden grapple points. These are found by shooting "small skulls," not to be confused with "large skulls," which are something else entirely and can't be shot with the gun. None of this is explained in the game itself, so in order to have any idea what to do, you need to read through the poorly organized and repetitive 14 page manual.

Ok, why is the cavern green?

And to top it all off, the NES Temple of Doom is hideously ugly.

All of this is giving me the impression that US developers in 1988 had no idea how to create a decent console game. Certainly I've seen no NES games from any Western publisher that comes close to the stuff being produced by Capcom, Konami, Nintendo, et al at this time. One major issue seems to be an over reliance on crappy arcade ports, usually of games a few years old and that have already been ported to every other system known to man before reaching the NES.

Nowadays, of course, US publishers dominate the US console game market, but in 1988 they made a pretty sad showing.

It's Chronturbo Episode 2! Oh Shiiiiiiiiiit!

2011-06-21T22:29:00.000-07:00

Many amazing things have happened this week. We've learned that Canadians are not all the mellow, polite people that the media depicts them as being. We finally saw that Duke Nukem game get released after 15 years. And now, the second episode of Chronturbo has suddenly appeared out of nowhere! That's right, you can now find fancy-ass 60fps mp4 and mkv versions at Archive.org, or a plain vanilla version at Youtube.

It's been a while since the first Chronturbo, so here's a refresher course. The series covers NEC's PC Engine console, and its US counterpart, the TurboGrafx-16. Despite its reputation as a failure, the system was quite successful in Japan, and there were around 700 titles released between 1987 and 1997. The most prominent publishers were NEC themselves and Hudson, who had actually designed the hardware was responsible for most of the software in the console's early years.

Pronounced "CD Rom Rom." No, I don't much care for the name either.

Episode One covered the system's launch in October 1987 through mid 1988. The second episode finishes up 1988, and sees the debut of the CD-ROM² add-on in December. While the initial set of releases for the PC Engine was pretty impressive, the console's full potential was not unlocked until the CD-ROM² appeared. Ahead of its time to a ridiculous degree (the first CD-Rom game for home computers would not come out until 1989), the new format revolutionized the very concept of what could be contained within a video game.

With 2000 times as much storage space as a Hucard (or a typical Famicom cart), this meant developers would no longer have to worry about trying to squeeze a game into 2 or 3 megabits. The inherent limitations of sound chips was no longer a problem when it came to reproduction of speech and music. Lengthy animations and FMV cutscenes could tacked onto games. In some ways, the birth of modern gaming occurred with the introduction of the CD-ROM².

No one said street fighting was fair. (Not pictured: the "street.")

Of course, in 1988, no one knew exactly where the future of video games lay, even those who created the first handful of CD ROM games. Fighting Street was simply a port of Capcom's arcade game Street Fighter. If you've ever tried to play Street Fighter, you'll realize just what huge step forward Street Fighter II was. Fighting Street may be a terrible fighting game, but as a technical achievement, it's quite impressive. The PC Engine version has slightly fewer colors than the arcade original, but other than that, it remains remarkable faithful. The main difference, however, was in the upgrade in music made possible by the CD format. The arcade game's puny-sounding chip-generated music has been replaced with a much beefier re-recorded soundtrack. Still, Fighting Street does seem like an odd choice to debut the new format with. Since it's a game that... you know... nobody actually liked.

Noriko is like a non-scary version of the girl from "The Ring."

The other launch title, also published by Hudson, was No・Ri・Ko. Here, the exact opposite approach was taken: rather than creating a traditional video game, Hudson and Alfa System chose to assemble a bunch of digitized photographs, prerecorded music, and audio clips of idol Noriko Ogawa talking. No・Ri・Ko is barely a "game." The story involves you taking Noriko out on a date, and you need to navigate a series of menu options to move the narrative along. There is barely any interactivity involved, but the CD-Rom turns out to be the perfect format for viewing pictures of girls and listening to cheesy J-Pop music. History was made.

The third and final CD Rom game of 1988, Bikkuriman Daijikai is even less game-like. It's more of an encyclopedia of Bikkuriman characters, with a few trivia questions and lots of animated cutscenes thrown in. While No・Ri・Ko and Bikkuriman Daijikai are not exactly exciting to look at today, they did serve as excellent experiments for developers to suss out what the CD-ROM² was capable of.

Aside from CD Rom games, Chronturbo Ep. 2 features 10 Hucard games. Far and away the best of these is Makyou Densetsu, or The Legendary Axe, from Victor Musical Industries.

It's a "grittier, more realistic" version of Adventure Island.

Let's put this in no uncertain terms: Legendary Axe is the best original title for the PC Engine from its first two years of existence. I'd go so far as to say its one of the best sidescrolling action games we've in Chrontendo, Chronsega or Chronturbo so far. It works on every single level - it's fast paced with lots of interesting enemies, it controls well, the sound and graphics are great, and it has an interesting attack mechanic involving a charged-up axe blow. Legendary Axe only really falters in its final level, which is too long and repetitive.

That's one freaky looking boss.

The surprising thing is that it was developed by Aicom, the same folks who were responsible for Amagon, Hoops and Chuugoku Senseijutsu, that Chinese fortune telling game from Chrontendo 38. Axe belongs to the same genre as Amagon, but is dramatically more playable. Enemies in Axe are fast moving, but they use understandable attack patterns and don't constantly fly across the screen at warp speed and slam into you mid-jump.

The other great game this episode is Alien Crush, from Compile and Naxat. This H.R. Giger inspired (with just a dash of M.C. Escher thrown in) pinball game remains one of the most well known of the early TurboGrafx releases. It was successful enough to warrant a demonically themed sequel, Devil's Crush, in 1990. If the screenshot isn't enough to sell you on the awesomeness of this game, you're probably a lost cause.

We haven't seen a whole lot of sports/RPG hybrid games so far, but thankfully, Namco's Pro Tennis: World Court is here to remedy that. Aside from the standard gameplay options, Pro Tennis offers a "Quest" mode, which awkwardly inserts tennis matches into a Dragon Quest inspired world. It's a silly gimmick, but the actual tennis part is a step above what we've been seeing on the Famicom so far.

Did I screw up and accidentally slip in a screenshot to a Famicom game by mistake? Nope, that really is Pro Tennis.

The relatively high standards imposed the PC Engine's software publishers means that we haven't seen any real kusoge so far. But there have been a few games that fell a bit short of the mark. A prime example is Hudson's Majin Eiyuuden Wataru/Keith Courage in Alpha Zones. There's nothing horrifically bad about the game; it's a inoffensive platformer in the Wonder Boy in Monster Land mode with the added bonus of wonky controls.

The Japanese original was based on a videogame inspired animated series from Sunrise. For the US release, an original story and characters were whipped up, and a promotional comic book was created. Since there was not even the slightest hint of a story in-game, it was up to the comic to explain who Keith Courage was and wy he was defending Earth from an alien invasion using an ultra high-tech armored suit .... and a sword. You can check out samples from the comic here, on the old Sardoose/Sardius/Danny Cowan site.

Doesn't the guy with the gun for a head look like he stepped right out of the Yellow Submarine movie?

The comic's artwork in done in the typical sloppy 70's/80's Marvel Comics style, but the artist, Steve Vance, later went on to become a Grammy winning album designer and illustrator, working on seemingly every Grateful Dead CD reissue, and creating the art for this very cool Rockabilly box set.

Anyhoo....Keith Courage was chosen as the pack-in game for the TurboGrafx upon its release in the US in 1989. Since then, it has become, along with Johnny Turbo, synonymous with the failure of the system in the West. As if, by releasing the TG-16 with such a underwhelming pack-in game, NEC was dooming the console from day one. I know Keith Courage has its supporters, and some of them even read this site! So feel free to defend it in the comments.

The Rest:

Gaia no Monshou

Before NCS/Masaya created the Langrisser series of tactical RPGs, they produced Gaia no Monshou (Crest of Gaia). While Gaia features all sorts of cool units such as knights riding dragons, the game itself is sort of infuriating. As far as I could tell, there is no way to see your units' hit points, damage taken, etc. You have no way of knowing if a particular unit is at full strength or one hit away from being annihilated. And then Gaia has the gall to use a points-based scoring system that allows you to lose the game without having lost a single battle. On the plus side, an English translation is available should you choose to try your hand at this thing.

Dragon Spirit

Dragons vs Flowers - the eternal struggle.

The port of Namco's 1987 arcade game should be cool. It's a vertical shoot-em-up in which you control a fire-breathing dragon that can grow up to three heads! Yet, somehow it just doesn't work for me. Maybe it's the unimpressive enemies. Maybe it's that your dragon is just too damned large to squeeze between enemy projectiles. Maybe it's the Xevious style controls where you have to operate separate buttons for air and ground attacks.

Appare! Gateball

Have you ever heard of gateball? No? It's an exxxtreme version of croquet played by elderly Japanese folks. I believe this to be one of only two gateball video games ever released.

Space Harrier/Fantasy Zone

What?!? Sega on the PC Engine? I don't know the how or why, but 15 days before Sega's new 16-bit console hit the shelves in Japan, these two games came out for the PC Engine. And they were released in Japan by NEC Avenue, making them the first video games published by NEC themselves. The fact that these two titles were also released for the Master System and Famicom leads me to only one conclusion: Sega was a whore.

Sadakichi Seven: Hideyoshi no Ougon

A wacky culinary themed James Bond spoof. Oh, and it's the first Portopia clone/adventure game for the PC Engine.

What's up next for Chronturbo? 1989 is year the PC Engine's release schedule really picks up, so episodes will be coming more frequently from now on. We are also going to bump up production to a full 15 games per episode. So we've got a few more Chrontendo's scheduled, another Chronsega, and then Chronturbo Episode 3! While your waiting make sure you pickup Episode 2 on Archive or Youtube!

Mario's Secret History

2011-06-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone. Sorry I've been out of commission for the last week or so. Things have been busy in the Sparkle household lately, and yesterday was my wedding anniversary. And I just saw that darned Super 8 movie today! So, I just wanted to get in a quick word to let you know I'm still here.

I would like to point on a recent and very interesting article from Wired on Super Mario Bros 2. If you recall Chrontendo Ep. 20, you know I'd become pretty dubious regarding the standard story of SMB 2, as is often repeated on the internet. The narrative generally goes something like this: we see Howard Lincoln or some other NOA executive sitting behind his desk when a package arrives from Japan. Said package contains the anxiously awaited Super Mario Bros 2, which Lincoln enthusiastically shoves into an FDS, dollar signs flashing his eyes. A moment later we hear his voice thunder throughout the halls of Nintendo's Redmond offices,"What is this crap?! No kid in America is going to want to play this! It's too hard!" Fuming, he flings the disk into a nearby waste basket.

Sometime later, Lincoln, Arakawa and a few others are still bemoaning the loss of their treasured cash-cow, Mario. Suddenly, some bright young executive has an idea! "Why don't we take some other game and release it as Super Mario 2?" Grabbing the top disk off a stack of recently arrived Japanese releases, he says, "How about this one here? It's, uh.... Doki Doki Panic. It looks like it has running and jumping and stuff." "Brilliant!" shouts Lincoln. "Quick, have one of the programmers hack some Mario sprites into this thing. Those stupid kids will never know the difference." Lincoln and Arakawa then commence puffing on their cigars between bouts of Satanic laughter. The moral of this story is: you got played, chump.

Everything you see here is a lie.

The problem with this story is that it overlooks the fact that the Doki Doki Panic/SMB 2 creative team comprised the key players behind the first Super Mario Bros.; and the game greatly resembles SMB; and that creatures from SMB 2, such as the Bob-ombs, were immediately integrated into the official Mario canon. In Chrontendo 20 , I surmised that due to the amount of money and talent behind Doki Doki Panic, someone at Nintendo must have realized during the development process that it would eventually get a US release, and that this release wouldn't feature the Doki Doki characters owned by Fuji TV.

Well, the article in question is based around an interview with Kensuke Tanabe, the actual director of Doki Doki Panic/SMB 2, and it goes into a good deal of background on the game. It turns out it originated as an uncompleted game from Nintendo EAD that was intended to be similar to SMB, only with vertical levels. At some point, Miyamoto assigned Tanabe to work on a new game based on this concept. Miyamoto later recommended adding traditional horizontal scrolling to the game to make it more "Mario-like."

The chronology is not discussed in any detail, but at some point, a deal with Fuji Television was signed, and Tanabe was told add the Doki Doki characters into the game. For the US version, Mario characters were used instead, since as Tanabe states: “We knew these Fuji TV characters wouldn’t be popular in America, but what would be attractive in America would be the Mario characters.”

One thing to remember is that at this time, Nintendo did not always design games with particular characters in mind. Nowadays, when a game like Gears of War is being created, the developers are already thinking ahead to a sequel in the event that the first game is a success. However, back in the 80s, the game idea was often designed first, and then characters added later. The first Kirby game is a fine example of this method. I also vaguely recall hearing that one of the Zelda games was not originally conceived as a Zelda game, but that it was incorporated into the series midway through the development process.

Anyway, the article fills out some of the gaps in the history of Doki Doki Panic/SMB 2, and shows the story behind this game is a bit more interesting than most people thought. You can read the article here. Definitely check it out if you have any interest in SMB 2.

For those who are wondering, Mudflaps the Kitten is fine. She is currently behaving as any normal kitten her age would - meaning she's running around like an idiot all the time. A poster wondered about the blood on my mother's dog's face. They were caused by Mudflaps scratching at the dog. The dog's injuries were very minor.

I've also cleaned up the Links sections a bit: added some new links and deleted some non-updating ones. I've been meaning to do this for a while.

A Brief Interruption

2011-06-01T16:08:00.000-07:00

Sorry folks, for discussing non-videogame subjects in this blog, as I am going to do today. Hopefully, everyone approves the freshly released Episode 38? I'm still hard at work on Chrontendo, but over the last few days I've been distracted with an animal related matter.

A couple days ago a received a late night call from my mother. She was on the verge of hysteria, since her two dogs had captured some sort of animal behind her backyard shed. She was concerned that they were in the midst of mauling a neighbor's cat or perhaps fighting a racoon. For those of you who have not had face-to-face experience with raccoons, please note that, while cute, they are larger than you might imagine them to be, and are capable of blinding or even killing a medium sized dog. I rushed over and was able to squeeze behind her shed and drag the dogs off. Once I got a hold of a working flashlight, a I went behind the shed to see what sort of animal it was and found a tiny kitten lying on the ground.

One of the dogs had blood on his face, and my first concern was that the dogs had either maimed or trampled the kitten. The kitten was still alive, but I couldn't tell what sort of condition it was in, especially since it was completely covered in dirt and mud. Using a pair of leather work gloves, I picked her up, and brought her into the light. We weren't sure if the kitten was feral or domesticated, but at this point the cat was in deep shock and didn't resist. We didn't see any blood or injuries on her, but her eyes were glazed over and her tongue hanging out. We weren't sure she was going to make it, but we covered her with a blanket in an attempt to keep her warm. Eventually, she seemed to snap out of it a bit, so it was decided to bring her back to my house and set her up in a pet cage.

After getting most of the mud off her front end.

By the next day it was clear she was a tame kitten and would let us handle her. We were pretty sure she didn't have any broken bones. While the presence of a strange animal in the back yard must have set my mother's dogs off, it seemed clear they hadn't been trying to hurt her. We tried to get as much mud off as we could, and the next day gave her a bath. It turns out the thing is pretty darned cute.

Cleaned up and looking precious!

At this point, we are going to make a poster and put it up around the neighborhood, in the off chance that she actually belongs to someone. However, I am hoping that end we up keeping her, as she is just as sweet and adorable as you would imagine. My wife does not approve of this name, but I am calling her Mudflaps. If the next episode of Chrontendo is delayed at some point, it's probably due to Mudflaps suddenly leaping onto the keyboard while I'm in the middle of something.

Episode 38 Has Arrived

2011-05-25T19:07:00.000-07:00

What could be better than a urinal constructed out of old SNES carts? How about a new episode of Chrontendo! Episode 38 is now available in a variety of exciting formats on Archive.org, or in a fast, convenient, streaming version on Youtube. Unless you're like me, and your ISP also provides on-demand streaming video, in which case your Youtube download speeds may have become suspiciously slow lately.

This new episode can be divided neatly into four parts. The parts consist of: a) one classic NES games, b) a few "interesting" but non-spectacular titles, c) a bunch of crap, and d) the 1988 Computer Game Round Up.

I mentioned the Computer Round Up a few posts ago, so suffice to say that it's a reasonably long, high-level view of some of the highlights and lowlights of the world of computer gaming in 1988. It's a quick run through featuring adventure games, strategy games, "arcade" games, sports games, and role-playing games. It covers Western games only, and focuses on US computers, but a few British and European titles find their way in.

As for our "great" NES game this episode, it's none other than Tecmo's Ninja Ryūkenden/Ninja Gaiden/Shadow Warriors. Something I neglected to mention this episode was that, due to Europe's inexplicable dislike of ninjas*, the game was retitled Shadow Warriors over there. And apparently the idea of masked assassins doesn't go down in Europe, since Ryu was depicted as maskless and shuriken-less on the box art over there.

Ninjas in Europe are required by law to walk around without their masks on.

Playing the game in the cold, hard light of 2011 makes me realize two things - that Ryu is a terrible ninja, and that Tecmo has padded out a six level game with tons of cheap deaths. On the other hand, the much touted cinematic cut-scenes are still very impressive. Seeing them in the context of other NES games of the time makes them even more so.

A relatively peaceful moment in Ninja Gaiden.

Ninja Gaiden also confirms what we assumed about Tecmo after playing Rygar -- that they understand the differences between a good arcade game and a good console game. Ninja Gaiden stands next to Bionic Commando as the most successful NES reworking of an arcade title. Just like Capcom's game, the home version Ninja Gaiden is an entirely new game. This is because it was developed separately from the arcade version, by a different development team. The NES Ryu has been heavily wussified; his arcade counterpart was capable of performing the flying neck throw, a game breaking and conservation-of-momentum-defying attack. Additionally, the NES Ryu has been given an angsty back story involving the death of his father, and even falls in the love with a bouffanted CIA agent. The arcade Ryu is concerned with one thing only: handing dudes their asses. That and escaping the slowly descending saw blade, I suppose. Despite this, Ninja Gaiden's transformation from a relatively simple beat 'em up into an epic Castlevania clone resulted in a far more memorable game. By the time the sequel rolled around, Tecmo had ironed out most of the kinks.

It turns out blowing up secret fortresses is pretty effective as foreplay.

Beyond Ninja Gaiden, there are no other games in Episode 38 that that I can reccomend without hesitation. Still, a few titles are worth taking a closer look at.

King of Kings

Daisenryaku + an RPG + a deck of cards = King of Kings.

No, not the Wisdom Tree game, silly! This is an oddball military strategy game in the mode of Daisenryaku/Famicom Wars, except with elves and dragons replacing tanks and jet fighters. The title "King of Kings" is a bit strange, especially when you consider the main bad guy is named "Lucifer." Since the game was developed by Atlus, we can chalk this up as another example of their inappropriate use of religious figures in their games.

Godzilla: King of Monsters/Godzilla: Monster of Monsters

It always though that "atomic breath" should look more fiery.

Military strategy games were so popular on the Famicom in 1988 that Toho and Compile decided to make a beat 'em up that looked like a military strategy game. You move Godzilla and Mothra around on a hex based world map, and then play a short sidescrolling beat 'em up level for each space that you moved. It works quite a bit differently from most action games, since your character sprites are enormous, and taking tons of damage is unavoidable. Luckily you have huge lifebars, so you can just sort of smash you way through the levels. It manages to feel a bit "off," however.

Hanjuku Hero

Yet another military/strategic/RPG type thing, this time from Square. The game has a comedic slant to it, though the humor will be lost on anyone not literate in Japanese. Later titles in the series would be far more interesting, but a couple things are notable. Namely, the game's great Nobuo Uematsu score, and the Egg Monsters that you can use in combat. These would later find their way into the Final Fantasy series as Summons.

Alien Syndrome

Believe it or not, the Master System version looked worse than this.

As with Fantasy Zone from Episode 20 , this is a Sega game published on the Famicom by Sunsoft (and later by Tengen in the US.) Somehow the Famicom Alien Syndrome manages to be better and more faithful to the arcade game that the Master System version.

Totsuzen! Macho Man/Amagon

You may have already seen this game in the preview of Episode 38 posted on Youtube earlier. If so, you know I don't really care for this game, despite the fact that this seems reasonably well made.

Kaettekita Mario Bros.

Nintendo pimps Mario out to an instant noodle company.

A genuine Famicom oddity, courtesy of Nintendo. This game, released for the Famicom Disk Writer, is a merely an improved version of Mario Bros. (originally seen back in Chrontendo Episode 1!), with some ads for Nagatanien noodle and rice seasoning products edited in. I assume the president of Nagatanien and Hiroshi Yamauchi belonged to the same country club or something. Even weirder, this version formed the basis for the Classic Mario Bros. game released in Europe a few years later.

In the category of less interesting stuff, we have the following:

Momotaro Dentetsu

A screenshot of Momotaro Dentetsu. Or maybe this is from Tetsudo Ou. I can't remember.

One of Hudson's longest lasting and most popular series, Momotaro Dentetsu (Momotaro's Electric Railway) is a take-off on Hudson's earlier Momotaro Densetsu game. Instead of an RPG, it's one of those train-themed board games, much like Tetsudo Ou, from Chrontedo 26.

Family Mahjong II

Another mahjong game from Namco, apparenty developed by Nichibutsu/Nissan Busan.

Anticipation

Great... the ice cream cone is humping the trumpet.

Another US release from Nintendo and Rare. This one's a "board game" in the style of Pictionary. If you're wondering how Rare cranks out games so quickly, part of it must have to do with the fact that certain assets, such as the system for typing out your answer using the d-pad, are borrowed from earlier Rare games -- Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! in this case.

Nakashima Satoshi: F1 Hero/Micheal Andretti's World GP

A weird and visually unappealing F1 racing game from Varie. These things never seem to get released in the US, but for some reason Sammy licensed the name and likeness of Michael Andretti (Mario's son) and gave it a whirl. I assume no one out there actually remembers this game?

Tantei Jinguuji Saburo: Kiken na Ninin

For the third Saburo game, Sunsoft used the same release tactic as Nintendo did for its adventure games. They split it up into two separate disks and released them about a month apart. For those who don't recall, the Tantei Jinguuji Saburo games are Portopia style mystery/detective adventure games.

Nankin no Adventure

Another adventure game, though this one is a humorous game from the obscure Japanese cartoonist Nankin.

Chuugoku Senseijutsu

Speaking of Rare, do you recall a weird old NES game called Taboo? We'll be covering that in around 5-6 episodes from now. In the meantime, this Jaleco release is sort of like the Japanese equivalent. It's a fortune telling game based on Chinese astrology.

Jaaman Tanteidan Matonarikumi

More crapola from Bandai, once again based on a kid's TV show. We covered its sister game back in Chrontendo 29.

We have now reached early December 1988, and in a few episode we'll finally get to 1989. We'll see a couple big name releases in late 1988, but before we do that we're going to switch gears for a second. The next episode up will be something that at least some of you have been waiting a while for.

Until then, check out Chrontendo Episode 38 on Archive or Youtube.

*See also: Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles

It Appears We're Still Here

2011-05-22T22:48:00.000-07:00

It's May 22, and the world still hasn't ended so I guess this means I'm going to have to finish up the new Chrontendo. It's being ~~hastily thrown together~~ carefully edited even as I'm writing this. Check back in a day or so.

Until then, I'll leave you with this:

For those who didn't see this on Boing Boing, it's a urinal made of SNES cartridges, complete with how-to instructions.

May Is The Cruelest Month (For Chrontendo Viewers)

2011-05-17T00:57:00.000-07:00

Here we are halfway into the month of May, and what's this? Still no new Chrontendo? What is that lazy son-of-a-bitch Dr. Sparkle up to, you might ask?

I'll have you know I've been neck deep in old computer games, assembling the 1988 Computer Game Round-up for Episode 38. I'll be honest with you; in the past I've given myself a decent head start on these things, generally starting on the research well before beginning work on the rest of the episode. This time, however, this did not happen. I essentially began from scratch just a few weeks ago. Bad time management on my part, I'm afraid, but I'm just now finishing up work on the Round-up.

This post's title is a cute joke for all you literary types out there.

Luckily, the exciting world of 1988 computer games makes the wait worthwhile. The mid-late '80s were a strange, transitional time for computer gaming. The Apple II and Commodore 64 dominated the first half of the decade, and by 1985, the next generation of machines had arrived in the form of the Commodore Amiga, Apple Macintosh and Atari ST. Yet, as impressive as these were from a technical standpoint, they failed to catch the attention of consumers. Instead, computers based the IBM x86 architecture and running DOS became the primary force in the marketplace. From the standpoint of gaming, these IBM clones seemed terrible: they suffered from ugly EGA graphics and very weak sound capabilities. Yet, by 1988 they accounted for almost 80% of the US home computer market, with Commodore taking around 10%, and the rest competing for the remaining sliver. By the 1990, Commodore had virtually dropped out of the race, and the next two decades consisted of Macs and and PCs slugging it out (in a manner of speaking - Macs rarely reached more than 5% of the market for most of this time period.)

Prior to 1988, DOS games tended to look pretty terrible. But a series of technological improvements changed that quite quickly. Newer graphics standards such as MCGA and VGA would allow for higher resolutions and more colors. Compare the the graphics of 1986's Might and Magic Book I with that of the Might and Magic Book II from 1988:

Might and Magic Book I (1986)

Might and Magic Book II (1988)

From here on out, things improved rapidly, with the popular Sound Blaster card released in 1989, and the XGA graphics standard in 1990. By the time of 1991's Might and Magic III , DOS games would look like this:

Might and Magic III: The Isles of Terra (1991)

In addition, something of a changing of the guard was occurring in the world of game publishers. Many of the significant smaller publishers from the first wave of computer gaming, such as Muse, Adventure International and California Pacific Computer Company had disappeared by this time. And in 1988, several major older publishers such as Epyx were on their last legs. The most significant such failure was that of Infocom, who virtually kicked off the computer game craze with their massive hit Zork in 1980. After a string of flops, they finally closed up shop in 1989. At the same time, a new wave of publishers destined for success in the 1990s and 2000s arose. In the 1988 Round Up, we'll see the debut games from Cyan, Naughty Dog, Westwood, and DMA (later known as Rockstar North.)

The Colony: it's like System Shock minus the excitement.

Another interesting development in 1988: the emergence of "real" 3D graphics. Oh sure, we saw a couple primitive 3D games in the 1987 computer game round up, but '88 is when the floodgates began to open. Oddly, British developers were leading the way. It seems unlikely that the country with such terrible home computers would take the initiative in technological innovation. Yet out of the UK sprung games such as Starglider 2, a shooter that used polygon based 3D. You might not be familiar with Starglider's developer, Argonaut, but you certainly know their work: they later helped Nintendo create the Super FX chip used in Star Fox. On the other side of the pond, Mindscape released the proto-FPS The Colony for the Mac, which featured suprisingly decent looking 3D enviroments. Still, the US was definitely behind in the 3D computer games race until a bunch of dudes in Shreveport, LA came along a couple years later and blew everyone else out of the water.

Once Episode 38 makes its appearance, in the very near future, we'll see all this and more. Did I mention Ninja Gaiden yet? It's going to be an episode jam-packed with excitement.

By the way, Blogger was doing some sort of update recently, and I think some comments may have disappeared. If your recent comment got lost, I apologize.

Strange Times

2011-05-03T00:23:00.000-07:00

My Goodness! Look at all the things that have happened in the world since I last posted! Alabama and neighboring states have been devastated by tornadoes. Osama bin Laden has been killed. And most importantly, at least judging by amount of TV news coverage it has received, a member of the British royal family got married.

I'm sure the Windsors are very nice people, and over the years they've done a good job "protecting the realm" or whatever exactly it is they do, but I don't understand why a certain segment of the US population gets all worked up whenever one of them gets married or dies. Considering that we actually went to war in order to get these guys out of hair, why are we now obsessing over them, 200 years later? I'll confess to a certain amount of naïveté in regards to the massive interest in the royals. Years ago, when Princess Diana died, I heard the news and thought, "Oh, that's too bad," and assumed that the world would move on the something else the next day. I literally had no idea that we would be subjected to round-the-clock media coverage for a week, followed by endless rounds of books, tributes and repeated exposure to Elton John. I really had no conception of how much people were "into" Diana, and to this day I still don't understand why .

Also surprising: this site is receiving some traffic courtesy of a link on the blog of The Weekly Standard writer Jonathan Last. I would never, in a million years, have imagined any sort of link between The Weekly Standard and this site, but Mr. Last has an interest in various geeky hobbies, it seems.

So what have I been up to lately, you ask? Working on Chrontendo Episode 38, of course! I've now completed Ninja Gaiden and am neck deep in 1988 computer games. But I've also been up to other stuff, like seeing the world premiere of Planet of the Vampire Women! This locally produced, low-budget horror/sci-fi movie had its first public showing Saturday night. The film features a few people that I know, and my wife stopped by the set one day and worked a fog machine, or something. Here's the trailer:

The basic premise behind the film is that if you throw in vampires, spaceships, blood, topless women, and topless women being splattered with blood, you end up with a pretty entertaining experience. The trailer is the PG-13 version, but I think you will get the idea. I have no idea what sort of distribution Planet of the Vampire Women will be receiving, but I advise you to keep an eye out for it, as it's far more entertaining than Transformers 2.

What's that? You thought that was all I had for you today? Oh, hell no! This post is loaded with content and it's only getting better! I also have a link to Matt McNeely's "micro-documentary" Unlimited Continues. This uber-short doc about the appeal of retro video games contains a few words from none other than Dr. Sparkle himself, including a moment where I struggle to remember the name of 3D Dot Game Heroes. Unlike Chrontendo, this is produced by someone with real movie making skills, so prepare to be impressed with its slickness.

Unlimited Continues from Matt McNeely on Vimeo.

And, while you're waiting, there's a new video up on the Chrontendo Youtube channel. It's a preview of Episode 38 -- namely the segment that deals with Amagon, a wacked-out body builder-themed game from Vik Tokai. Let me tell you kids something: this game gave me much more hassle than Ninja Gaiden. Or, at least, the first few levels or Amagon are much harder than the first few levels of Tecmo's game.

And now, I'll continue to forge ahead on Episode 38. Catch you later.

Chrontendo FAQ

2011-04-23T00:28:00.000-07:00

We are currently between episodes of Chrontendo, so I'd like to take a moment to answer a couple questions that I get in the comments from time to time. In other words, this is a literal FAQ, unlike the vast majority of so-called FAQs out there. Which makes me wonder -- why, in the video gaming world, do we call an unofficial, thoroughly detailed set of instructions for playing a game a "FAQ"? A "walkthrough" I can understand; but a FAQ? Most of these things contain no questions at all, much less frequently asked questions. Perhaps years ago GameFaqs was started by some guy who was tired of people constantly asking him how to perform MK II fatalities or something, and it just grew from there?

Hey... anybody out there have the "nudality" code?

Every subculture has its own special terminology and nonstandard uses of common words. Another very strange usage I see a lot in writing about video games is "franchise," as in, "Microsoft's Halo franchise." It seems impossible to talk about Mario, Zelda or any other video game series without using the word. I've done it myself many times. But why do we call a game series (or the totality of games based on a certain character) a franchise? Strictly speaking, the word franchise means a right that has been granted to someone. Hence the phrase, "disenfranchised voters," referring to those whose right to vote has been taken away or compromised. In the business sense of the word, it means to right to manufacture or sell a company's goods. McDonald's is called a franchise because they will allow you open up a restaurant with their name on it and sell their sandwiches (in exchange for a $45,000 fee and a chunk of the profits.)

Microsoft certainly doesn't go around granting people the right to make Halo games. Nintendo has occasionally allowed other companies to make Mario games (probably a bad idea,) but you can't walk up to Mr Iwata, hat in hand, and say, "I'd like to apply for a license to make my own Mario games, sir." So why do we insist on calling these things franchises? Other forms of mass culture do this as well (e.g. the Star Wars franchise.) When and why did we start using this word in such a bizarre fashion? How have "series" and "franchise" become interchangeable?

This is what happens when you let just anyone use your characters.

Anyway.... enough ranting. On the FAQ part of this post.

Are you going to be covering unlicensed or unreleased games?

In some form or another, yes. Probably in their own special episodes. We are technically already covering unlicensed games from Tengen, but releases from other companies such as Color Dreams or all those weird Asian companies like Sachen are a diffferent story. Since no one seems to know much about the release dates of those games, it would be difficult to integrate them into the main series. There's also too damn many of them, so I'll probably just play the more interesting titles. But you can look forward to Dr. Sparkle talking about Cheetahmen or Bio Force Ape at some point in the future.

A totally accurate depiction of someone playing Action 52 for the first time.

Will you ever be covering handhelds such as the Game Boy?

I can't imagine myself taking another project of that magnitude. Plus, I don't think most Game Boy games have enough visual appeal, being in monochrome and all. GameBoy-tendo would be really boring looking. However... feel free to start your own chronogaming series on the Game Boy!

What's the music that plays in each episode?

The opening is UFO by ESG.

The between game music is Tin Cans (Puerto Rican Remix) by Tortoise

There is a longer version of the between game music I sometimes use. Technically the track used is 3030 by Deltron 3030, but 90% of the music in that clip is sampled from an old classical/electronic fusion album called Lux Aeterna from William Sheller, who later went on to make a lot questionable pop music.

Seriously, does he have his tie tucked into his pants in that video? Someone should try to bring that back into style.

Lastly, the end music is a live version of "Vitamin C" by Can. For the longest time I couldn't remember exactly where this track was taken from, but I have finally found it again - it was from a May 1973 performance in Paris. This version has a wild guitar part which doesn't have a counterpart on the LP version of Vitamin C, so the clip I used isn't easily identifiable. Going forward, I'll list the music details in the credits of each episode.

Are you ever going to fix Episode 7?

Yes, I swear. It's just that Ninja Hattori Kun is such a boring game I can't think of much to say about it. Also, I'm biased against that game since "Ninja Hattori" is one of the top search terms that brings people to this site by accident It's quite surprising, the sheer number of folks who come in from this picture in Google Images. I don't think this site is quite what they were looking for, but who knows? I'm just baffled at how many folks are looking for info on Ninja Hattori Kun.

Oh, yes... if you're wondering about Episode 38: it is coming along pretty nicely, though the massive 1988 computer game roundup will slow it down a bit. I'll post a preview before too long.

Episode 37 Rears Its Ugly, Ugly Head

2011-04-08T00:05:00.000-07:00

(Updated 4/9/2011) Oh shit! Breaking news from commenter Kendra! Check out this here!

It's finally happened. Chrontendo Episode 37 is here, in a dizzying array of digital formats. For those of you who can stand to watch only the highest quality online videos, check out the 60 FPS versions on Archive: you can download or stream the h.264 MP4 video or its hipsterish cousin, the MKV. You'll also find the more mundane AVI version here. If you prefer a bit more Beiber and a bit less granola in your video hosting sites, check out the semi-decent 30 FPS version on Youtube.

Now you might be wondering what I mean when I describe Episode 37 as "ugly." For starters, take a look at the following screenshot.

A long time ago, Dr. Sparkle used to be a sort of crappy painter. Therefore, I feel relatively qualified to point out the various aesthetic malfunctions occuring above. Such as the forest green/mustard yellow "explosion" word balloon in the upper left -- is it intended to depict the violence and excitement inherent in the concept of "TwoOnTwo?" Why is the black edging on the large green characters missing from the right side of each character? What is happened to the right side of the basketball player's face? Why is he leaping with hands up in the air as if he were shooting a basket, yet the ball is approaching the basket from the opposite direction?. Who the hell would design a basketball hoop that's so much smaller than a regulation sized basketball? Or maybe the basketball itself is over-sized? Either way, it's not going to fit in that hoop. And why was the art director thinking that this garish mishmash of graphical elements and clashing colors was acceptable to use in a commercially released product?

Aside from the Moero!! Junior Basket title screen, we also have games in which Margaret Thatcher runs for President of the USA, Takeshi Kitano guides you through a board game version of Sengoku-era Japan, you compete in a "Grand Prix" by playing rounds of pachinko, and you play the classic board game Othello by answering trivia questions. Also, we have a mahjong game based around a manga character. Yes, you heard that right: there is both a mahjong and a pachinko game this episode. Sorry.

This all sounds pretty torturous, but luckily for you, I decided to throw in the Chrontendo 1988 Arcade Game Roundup! So between clips of 8-bit chicks in bunny suits, you'll get to watch giant snakes made out of fire leaping out of the sun! In not one, but two games! Yes, one of them is Gradius II, but do you know what the other is?

Snakes + Fire + Spaceships = AWESOME

As before, the games featured in the arcade roundup are grouped by publisher, so we get a crash course in the major games of 1988 from Sega, Namco, Konami, Capcom, Taito, and Atari, as well as those from smaller publishers such as Data East, SNK, Tecmo, and so on. It's all pretty amazing and exciting, so hopefully you'll enjoy getting to watch cutting-edge graphics for once.

Every episode of Chrontendo, I select one game as the "best" game of the episode. This time, I am going to, somewhat grudgingly, give the honor to Kemco's NES release of Deja Vu.

No one can deny that the original, Macintosh version, of Deja Vu was something of a revelation. One of the first adventure games to use the mouse, Deja Vu did away with the clumsy text parsers found in most adventure games at that time. Instead of typing out "move west," one could simply use the Mac's mouse to position the pointer onto the west door, and then, with simple click, move through the door.

The only NES game that requires you to literally, slap a ho.

Kemco's Deja Vu obviously couldn't make use of a mouse, so the entire control scheme was redesigned. You now have to use the d-pad to navigate a bunch of commands, and walking through a door requires two verbs, "open" and "move", and multiple button presses. In other words, it took Deja Vu's main innovation, a simple and easy to use control scheme, and made it much more clunky and slow.

The game itself is still pretty good, however, especially compared to the illogical and linear Japanese adventure games we've been seeing. I had some trouble with the DV's nested inventory system at the end of game, which kept getting me arrested. The video goes into more detail about my problems.

Also pretty decent this episode:

Sangokushi/Romance of the Three Kingdoms

Cao Cao doesn't like it when you call him "Cow Cow."

Koei's biggest and baddest history strategy game comes late to the party. It was originally released for the PC-88 in 1985. By November 1988, we've already seen a bunch of similar games hit the Famicom. Hot-B's Takeda Shingen, Namco's Dokuganryu Masamune, Irem's Hototogisu, and Koei's own Nobunaga's Ambition were all modeled on Romance. While there's nothing wrong with Romance, there's also nothing here we haven't really seen before.

Gyruss

You see kids, back in the 80s, not only was Pluto a real planet, it was bigger than Neptune!

Konami goes oooooold-school with this port of their 1983 arcade tube shooter. In the fast moving world of 1980s shoot-em-ups, Gyruss seems like a relic from the neolithic age. Still, it's a fun way to kill a few minutes. Unlike the games listed below.

The worst of Episode 37:

Yuu Maze/Youmais

Taito once again shows their lack of ambition, Famicom-wise, with this archaic looking FDS game. Yuu Maze is an honest-to-god maze game of the sort popular in the early 80s. You drive your little car around picking up dots while avoiding enemy vehicles, who don't so much chase after you as just move around randomly. Seriously, Taito, time to step up to the plate.

American Football/Touchdown Fever

Not to be confused with "White Line Fever." Also quite popular in the 80s.

I'm not 100% sure what the actual Japanese title of this game is. The box art has "American Football" in 100 point type, while the game's title screen just says "Touchdown Fever." Either way, I'd call it the worst football game for the system. Even 10 Yard Fight is better.

Family Quiz: 4-nin wa Rival

A quickie mini-game collection which incorporates trivia questions into Othello, a simple board game, and a memory game. It's notable only for being the first game we've seen from Athena, who would later make the Dezaemon games.

Saiyuuki World

Does this look familiar? It should if you've seen Chronturbo 1 and Chronsega 5.

The most baffling entry this episode is RPG-ish action platformer from Jaleco. Ostensibly based on the story of Son Wokong/Son Gouku from Journey to the West, Saiyuuki World is in reality a direct clone of Wonder Boy in Monster Land. Level design, boss battles, enemy placement -- all are taken directly from Sega's game. Of course, this has happened once before with Bikkuriman World, covered in Chronturbo Epsiode 1. But while that game was licensed from Monster Land's developer Westone, it's not clear that Jaleco did the same thing here. Instead of Westone's name appearing in the credits, we see a copyright to NMK. It doesn't seem possible that Jaleco could get away with "borrowing" the entire game, so I assume some money must have changed hands at some point?

And finally, some oddities:

United State Presidential Race: America Daitouryou Senkyo

Margaret Thatcher's wattle, rendered in all its 8 bit glory!

Yep. That's the title. "United State." A 1988 US Presidential election simulation game, where one of the candidates is Margaret Thatcher? The earlier games this most resembles are the stock market simulations; except instead of picking stocks you establish your position on various issues, and invest money in your campaign.

Gambler Jiko Chuushinha

I hope you guys like mahjong games, because we have another 3 dozen or so to cover before Chrontendo's done.

A port of a slightly earlier computer mahjong game, based on a manga series you've probably never heard of. Yet it was somehow popular enough to warrant a series of sequels that lasted up to the Playstation/Saturn era. To summarize, it's a mahjong game in which the icons representing the players are borrowed from a comic book.

Kaijuu Monogatari

You're probably familiar with this game because you've already seen the Episode 37 preview. If not: it's a Dragon Quest-y RPG from Taito that takes a great idea and ruins it through repetitiveness and blandness. More specifically, the game begins with each party member separated in different parts of the world. You can switch between them at will, and must level each up separately before meeting up and forming your party. Sadly, Kaiju Monogatari is pretty dull, even by mid 80s Famicom RPG standards.

Moero!! Junior Basket Two on Two/Hoops

You might recall Jaleco's Moero!! Pro Yakyuu, released as Bases Loaded in the US. Junior Basket is the latest in their Moero!! series, and is the first half-court basketball game we've seen. Aside from the terrifying title screen seen above, it's not... half bad. (DYSWIDT?)

Samurai Sword

The first Famicom game in which you chat up a waitress in a bar.

Capcom does the whole menu-based adventure game thing. While the production values are pretty good, the setting and story are not exactly inspired. It also suffers from the same stifling linearity as other JP adventure games, since as Princess Tomato. As a result, playing Samurai Sword feels less like puzzle solving and more like searching through menu options for the trigger actions that allows you to move forward.

Touhou Kenbun Roku

Another adventure game, Touhou Kenbun Roku is apparently the first game by Harvest Moon creators Natsume. It's a "wacky" adventure game based on the travels of Marco Polo. There's a brief but interesting musical digression during the segment covering this game.

Pachinko GP

AKA Pachinko Grand Prix. Wow, "Grand Prix?" It sounds like they took a pachinko game and tried to make it more exciting. If that was the developer's intention, it didn't work. Pachinko video games are still boring.

Takeshi no Sengoku Fuuunji

The third, that's right, third Famicom based on Takeshi Kitano. And it won't be the last either.

And... that's it! We're done for today. I know this episode seems kind of terrible, but next time we will have a really cool and difficult game involving a ninja. And after that we have a sequel to a popular RPG series from Square. And then, we have a sequel to a Capcom game involving a small, blue robot boy. So things are looking up! Until then, check out Chrontendo Episode 37 on Archive or YouTube.

A Little Preview

2011-04-04T22:01:00.000-07:00

Chrontendo Episode 37 will be ready in a couple days. Until then, I've posted a preview on Youtube. As far as I could see, there wasn't anything on Kaijuu Monogatari on Youtube, at least in English, so I've put up that segment.

One thing: Youtube's videos run at 30 FPS, so certain flicker effects, like the one I mention in the intro, don't show up. You'll have to wait for 60 FPS version on Archive for that.

Getting There

2011-03-31T23:05:00.000-07:00

Hey folks, I'd like to say that I'm just now finishing up Chrontendo 37, but that's not quite the case. All the videos have been recorded, and most of the voice overs are done, but there is a still a bit of work to do. My excuse is that I've been pretty busy lately. Now that both my wife and I are working full-time, we have the funds available to go out and do stuff. Last week, we went to one of those gosh-darned rock concert things, namely Richard Thompson. Which was a weird experience, since we seemed to be just about the youngest people at the concert. The audience vibe could politely be described as "NPR listeners." The dress code was shirt tucked into blue jeans -- light blue jeans, not the dark blue or black jeans that you and I might wear, but sort of a sky-blue color that you only see older guys wearing. Generally accessorized with a brown belt. Tommy Bahama shirt: optional. A lot of dudes there also looked sort of like Steve Jobs. Though we did run into a guy our age that my wife knew. He and his friend were cheering and standing on their chairs, much to the consternation of the folks around them.

Anyway, I've seen RT before so I knew what to expect from the crowd, but it still felt strange going to a show full of people my mother's age. And then we had a friend visiting from out of town for a few days. And tomorrow we're going out to another show, this time for some ukelele action (For those not in the know, chicks with ukeleles is a thing right now.)

While you're waiting, please note that after a long hiatus, I ♥ The PC Engine has been active lately! Perhaps the Chrontendo curse is not as deadly as I thought.

Also, I figure that last episode must have made Kelly Family fans out of some of you, so here's a little treat, courtesy of Boing Boing.

Hooray, Europe!

RPG Misery

2011-03-20T21:07:00.000-07:00

As progress continues on Chrontendo 37, it's turning out to be one of those episodes which lacks a really standout game, but still features several "interesting" titles. Déjà Vu is one of those. (Hey! Sit down, everyone! Don't get all excited.... I'm not saying DV is a bad game, simply that the clunky interface is a pain in the ass and it makes you wish you had a mouse.)

Another example of an "interesting" game is Kaijuu Monogatari. AKA Shell Saurs Story. Yes, that's what the box cover says: "Shell Saurs Story." I don't know what it means, either. But according to King Mike's translation, the game concerns "...animals called Shell Monsters who wore small shells on their backs." Kaijuu Monogatari is not Namco's first RPG -- they've already published several, Megami Tensei being the most significant. But this is the first really blatant Dragon Quest clone from Namco.

I don't see any shells.

Like Dragon Quest II and III, Namco's game uses standard turn-based combat, random encounters and a multi-character party. Kaijuu Monogatari starts you off as a solitary weak and defenseless hero, even more so than DQ. The most humble monsters lurking around the starting castle stand a pretty good chance of killing you, unlike DQ's famously wimpy slimes. You will immediately encounter bats and slugs in groups of two, each capable of doing 1 or 2 points of damage, and each with 6-8 HP themselves. Your own attacks do 1-2 damage, and you start with 14 HP. I think you can figure out the math yourself. Assuming you survive your first battle, you'll need to immediately head back and pay for a night at the inn to recover, then repeat.

Just like Dragon Quest, only uglier.

Once you gain a level, you'll should be able to withstand two battles between inn visits. After that it becomes smoother sailing, but like most RPGs of the era, you'll need to gain several levels before venturing out too far. Once you've gotten strong enough to actually start exploring, the game "really" begins. Except....

As I mentioned, Kaijuu Monogatari has four playable characters. In most RPGs you encounter additional characters as you progress along your journey, adding them to your party. Modern games will give you pre-leveled characters: each new party members is already at about the same level as your other characters when they join. Older games, such as DQ II will introduce characters at level 1. You will need to push them to the back of your lineup and desperately hope they don't get killed in every battle; but at least they gain levels quickly. Kaijuu Monogatari does things differently. Intially, each character is controlled separatley. You start out playing the main hero, but through a menu option you can switch to character number two, Kupikupi, at any time. The thing is: Kupikupi also starts out with basic armor weapons, no experience and little gold. If even if you've leveled up your main character, you will now need to do the exact same thing with Kupikupi - right down to the "fight one battle, rest at the inn" routine. And then you repeat all this again with characters three and four!

Back to square one.

Early JRPGs are notorious for their repetitive, grindy, nature. But Kaijuu Montogatari is the only game I've seen that makes you go through the whole process four times! Eventually, you will reach a spot where your hero and Kupikupi can cross paths and combine forces. Until then, however, you are forced to switch back and forth between characters, leveling them up individually. I don't know if this is a stroke of genius or an example of pure idiocy. One hand, it's cool to be able to see what each party member was up to before joining the hero. On the other hand -- having to build up each character from level one is pretty irritating. It might work better if combat had more of a strategic element, and less of pure luck. The fact that each character has an absurdly small number of inventory slots, doesn't help much either. Also: getting constantly poisoned sucks. As the CRPG Addict has wondered, why does every single 80s RPG love to poison you over and over?

Guess what's also in Chrontendo 37? The 1988 arcade round-up! 1988 isn't really considered a big year for arcade games; there is nothing quite as genre-defining as Contra or Double Dragon, both of which were featured in the 1987 round-up. There is plenty of technical innovation in '88, however, as Namco introduces its System 2 board, which was capable of all sorts of SNES-like sprite manipulation effects. And Atari brought back 3D games in a big way with Hard Drivin', five years after the failure of the first polygon based 3D game, I Robot. 1988 will turn out to be a big year for 3D, with Starglider 2 coming out for the Amiga and ST.

Oh shit! Flat-shaded polygons! The future is here.

Speaking of computer games, the 1988 computer game round-up will turn up in episode 38 or 39. The next few episodes will be pretty packed, since we've got one big game coming out in each episode. So think of Episode 37 as the calm before storm.

Finally, my apologies to Cornervizion, since I unwittingly let a comment of his get stuck in my spam filter for a while. In this comment he mentions Retro Core, a very fine videocast that was pretty influential on Chrontendo, in terms of both content and length. The fact that it was able to uploaded in hour-long videos on Archive.org was the reason I ended up going with Archive myself.

I've Been Working on Chrontendo, Really!

2011-03-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

Granted, I haven't gotten that much done since the last post, but I've had distractions. I've just started playing 3D Dot Game Heroes, and to make matters worse, it's barleywine season. This means high-calorie, high-alcohol beers that make me fat and lazy. But Bigfoot Ale only comes once a year, so what choice do I have?

Also, I keep getting killed or arrested in Déjà Vu...

In linked-to-Chrontendo related news, I see some folks are coming in from Reddit. Hi, everybody.

Update! I was at last able to walk into a police station without getting instantly handcuffed and arrested, thus beating Déjà Vu!

Why Chrontendo? Hidden Secrets Revealed!

2011-02-27T15:26:00.000-08:00

Sorry that the posting schedule has been a little light lately. The rigors of working a full-time job have been taking their toll on me. I must have some deeply buried aristocratic DNA somewhere within my genetic makeup, as I find having to actually work for a living to be rather bothersome. Still, I have found the time to get started on Chrontendo 37 (and Ninja Hattori Kun!), so I swear that a new episode will be up eventually.

In the meantime, I'd thought I'd take a moment to chat with you all about myself and the Chrontendo project. Back in 2007, Chrontendo pretty much just appeared out of nowhere. The fact that I don't have any presence in video game forums, or online at all, really (I don't even have a Facebook account), lends sort of an enigmatic air to Chrontendo. Jeremy Parish from Gamespite/1UP recently called me "mysterious." But it was never my intention to paint myself as some sort of shadowy, Pynchon-like recluse.

Welcome to my Presence.

The biggest question about Chrontendo is "why?" Why would someone devote the requisite time and energy to such a laborious, pointless, profitless, foolhardy and silly task as playing every NES in chronological order... and then documenting the whole thing in video podcasts?   Maybe some of you out there have your theories. Insanity? Drug-induced psychological dysfunction? Asperger's Syndrome? Demonic possession? Some form of über-geekery gone horribly wrong?    Honestly, I'm sometimes not sure myself why I'm doing this. Let me give you a little background, anyway.

Back in 2007 I found myself unemployed after the company I worked for -- a long-standing business that I was fanatically devoted to -- declared bankruptcy and was liquidated. I was unemployed for several months and feeling uprooted and untethered. Since unemployment provides ample opportunities for wasting time, I started reading a few video game sites on a regular basis.   There were two direct inspirations for Chrontendo: a fellow on the Atari Age forums called Chronogamer, and more directly, an ongoing series by Scott Jacobi in Retrogaming Times Monthly called Nintendo Realm (see here for the first column.), which contained brief write-ups of every Famicom game, in chronological order. Jacobi stopped the column in 2007 after reaching September 1986, around the same time Chrontendo debuted. There was also another, short lived attempt by someone else to do the same thing, but I lost the link a long time ago. (Update! This is referring to a site now revealed to be Xaqar's Game Reviews.)

The thing that struck me was that old video games had gone from being poorly documented pop-culture relics (until the 2000s, how many people knew anything about the NES' Japanese doppelgänger? Or gave even a second thought to the fact that there might be bunch of video games that came out in Japan but not the US?) to being a rigorously documented cultural phenomenon.   Think about this: it wasn't that long ago that a game such as Custer's Revenge was virtually an urban legend. Supposedly it existed, but you didn't know anyone who had actually played it or ever seen a copy. It could have been a hoax, and the very idea of a porno game for the Atari 2600 sounded pretty unlikely. Now, of course, you can go online and in a matter of seconds turn up screenshots, scans of the box, even the ROM itself.   It was the same with the NES on a much larger scale. Weird, old Japanese NES games? Not only did they really exist, but you could easily find a list containing the name and exact release date of every such game. Suddenly, all those old NES carts sitting in a shoebox in your closet became pieces in a much larger picture. It occurred to me that a chronological list of Famicom games was not just a random collection of game titles, but a tool for telling a story. It would be the story of how the Famicom went from simple games like Donkey Kong to epics like StarTropics II. The story would show not only the development of the Famicom, but also the development of modern video games in general.

Am I the only one who's ever wondered what was in those barrels that causes them to ignite upon contact with oil?

Something else I found very appealing was that since every released Famicom game was documented, the story would have a certain completeness to it. Maybe my background in mathematical logic is why the concept of completeness appeals to me. (Roughly speaking, a formal logic theory is said to be "complete" if every statement in the theory is either provable or its negation is provable. Some of you might have heard of Gödel's famous Incompleteness Theorem, which has penetrated into the non-mathematician consciousness through popular books like this.) So in telling the story of the Famicom, nothing would be left out: every stone would be upturned and a light shone into every dark corner.

Much has been made about the way the internet makes it too easy to find things, thus negating the thrill of the hunt. However, the internet sometimes works in the opposite fashion: it opens up new avenues for exploration. We now have the possibility of discovering literally hundreds of previously unknown games, often with intriguing-sounding names, like "Bio Miracle Upa." Or "America Daitouryou Senkyo." What could that game possibly be about? (We'll find out in Chrontendo 37, if you're curious.) And many of these games seemed virtually unplayed in the West. You couldn't find much information online in English about Kyonshiizu II.

This game totally exists.

At that point in my life, I suppose I needed a new hobby. I'd failed miserably at gardening (though I am thinking of trying tomatoes again this season.) Golf is simply too boring. I'd always been interested in video games, but didn't care too much for shooting other dudes in the head in Halo. So I decided to do a Famicom/NES themed podcast. At the outset , it wasn't clear how long I'd stick with Chrontendo; possibly I would lose interest after a few episodes. But I realized that if I had any chance of finishing the project, I'd need to pump out episodes pretty quickly. This meant sacrificing slickness for speed. I've tried to get a new episode out around every 2-3 weeks, and while I often don't succeed, I've managed to finish 36 + 7 episodes without burning out. The fact that I'm able to produce a complete episode in a reasonable period of time is due to two factors: I'm married with no children, and I don't watch television. Often, on a quiet evening at home, my wife will want to watch some silly true crime show about husbands who murder their wives, or vice-verse (Why do women dig these things so much? Years ago I worked in a book store, and noticed about 90% of the readership of true crimes books was female,) so I'll often take this opportunity to work on Chrontendo for bit. Completing a 55 minute episode in 15 days means I have to produce an average of only 3 2/3 minutes of footage a day. It's not enormously time consuming, and doesn't require playing video games all day.

I'll let you all in on one little thing: "Dr. Sparkle" is a bit of a fictional character. He's definitely more of a video game expert than I am in real life, and I try to instill him with a bit more confidence in talking about video games than I could ever have. Despite the fact that I produce a gaming-themed video blog, I wouldn't consider myself to be much of a "geek" in real life. I'm not particularly obsessed or fanatical about games, I don't read Penny Arcade, and don't have any interest in Japanese animation, Japanese pop music*, science fiction/fantasy novels, tabletop RPGs, Kevin Smith movies, or that sort of thing. Speaking of which, does anyone out there understand the cultish devotion that so many people have towards Kevin Smith? I've seen several of his movies, and there doesn't seem to be anything particularly distinctive about them.

I have nothing against fat people, but isn't it a little ironic that this guy is always wearing athletic-themed clothing?

The bottom line is this: I always try to finish what I start, and as long as circumstances permit me to do so, I'll continue to crank these things out. I enjoy Chrontendo; I learn a lot from it, and hopefully you do too.   I'd like to extend a "thank you," to all the commentors on this site, for not being ignorant, misogynistic, racist idiots, unlike the internet in general. I feel fortunate to have such an outstanding readership.

One last thing -- in case anyone's wondering about the name "Dr. Sparkle," here's where it came about.   It was inspired by a goth club in San Francisco called Dark Sparkle. For clarification purposes: I myself am not a member of the leather and latex brigade, but I know some people who are. I have attended various Goth-themed events, including a Goth wedding and Goth day at Disneyland. The confused looks on so many tourists' faces made the Disneyland thing worthwhile. Anyway... I had a theory that many great '70s rock bands had the word "Doctor" in their names. Dr. Hook, Dr. John, Dr. Feelgood, Dr. Strangely Strange, Doctors of Madness, and of course, Dr. Teeth. Thus, Dr. Sparkle seemed like the best possible name for a really awesome glam-boogie band from the 1970s. Since I would never be starting up a glam-boogie band, I hijacked the name for this project.

The 1980s introduced the concept of really awful bands with "Doctor" in their names.

So there you have it - Chrontendo explained. In the near future, we should be seeing Episode 37, then a few more Chrontendos. These will include some highly anticipated sequels from Konami, Square, and Capcom.   After that, its back to Chrontubo to finish up 1988 for the PC-Engine!

*I have a deep love of experimental/psychedelic music from Japan, however!

Mario, Morton and Wendy: 80s Icons (Updated)

2011-02-08T23:03:00.000-08:00

All the downloadable versions of Episode 36 appear to now be corrected. The AVI version has been re-encoded, which seems to have fixed the blockiness that started in the Big Challenge Dogfight Spirit segment. If anyone finds any more problems, please report them.

(Note: I apologize in advance for spending so much time discussing non-video game stuff in this post.)

Choices! So many choices! Chrontendo Episode 36 is now available in a variety of formats, including the standard AVI, the fancy 30 fps h.264 MP4, and MKV, which is some kind of weird format normal people don't use. The MKV version uses the same codecs as the MP4, but maybe you can impress your friends by knowing what MKV is? All of this is available to download or stream at Archive.org. Or, you can stream it in good quality at Youtube. My 15 minute restriction has been lifted ("Congratulations," said the Youtube message), so you can see the whole darned thing in one piece. You'll probably want to choose the 480p option.

Let's not beat around the bush. Just as Chrontendo Episode 5 is the "Super Mario Bros." episode, so will Episode 36 forever be the "one with Super Mario 3." Finally, all of Nintendo's innovation, hard work, clever marketing ideas, artistry, and thuggish strong-arm tactics paid off in a huge way: with the best-selling video game of all time.* In the US, at least, SMB 3 is the NES game - the game that defined the 8-bit generation. In Japan it seems to have slightly less cache. If you recall the earlier post about the 2005 Famitsu reader's poll of the best games ever, you might remember SMB 3 placed at #99, below Kung-Fu and RBI Baseball!

Wait a sec? How does she even know where the warp whistle is hidden?

Commenter Chris Sobieniak calls SMB 3 "the game nobody would shut up about," and that's not about to change today, as I prattle on at some length during the actual episode. In this post, however, I'll just discuss a couple bits of miscellany.

One thing that undoubtedly baffled kids back in they day was the Tanooki suit. It's interesting that Nintendo didn't try to localize this item as a "raccoon suit" or something. For those of you who don't know what a Tanooki is, it's simply the Japanese name for the animal we call the raccoon dog. Japan seems quite smitten with the little creatures, and frequently depicts them as magical little guys with... there's no polite way to say this, I suppose... enormous testicles.

Yep, extremely large testicles.

As you might gather from the tanooki's English name, they are in no way related to raccoons, and are actually canines. Probably the only time raccoon dogs have received any attention in the US was a few years ago, when it was revealed P Diddy was selling coats with raccoon dog fur trim. Since raccoon dogs are basically dogs, people got a little upset and the coats were recalled. Curiously, I've occasionally heard people of Japanese descent refer to Tanooki simply as "raccoons," so I suppose not everyone is aware that they are a completely separate species from the common raccoon.

Think about it. This man was selling real-life Tanooki suits.

Another odd thing in SMB 3 is the renaming of the seven Koopalings. Well, perhaps the idea that Bowser has children is kind of odd to begin with. This means we know that Bowser has had sex, perhaps up to 7 times. Take a moment to try to visualize that happening. (If you value your sanity, DO NOT click that link!) In the Japanese version of the game, they were simply given generic names based on animals. For the US release, they were named after talk show hosts and musicians. Five of these names are still familiar today: Roy Orbison, Iggy Pop, Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead, Ludwig van Beethoven, and Larry King. The other two, however, might not be recognizable to those who weren't alive in the 1980s.

Morton Downey Jr was an acerbic right wing talk show host who became enormously popular in the late '80s. He was sort of the prototype of the Rush Limbaugh conservative blowhard. (No one in my city is particularly proud of this fact, but Downey and Limbaugh both had their careers launched by the same local talk radio station. After Downey was fired, the station looked around for someone similar, and hired Rush Limbaugh as his replacement. Downey ended up with a TV talk show, and Limbaugh's show became nationally syndicated.) Downey's TV show mostly consisted of him insulting his guests; he was known for popularizing the phrase, "Zip it!"   His rise and fall happened with amazing rapidity, so that by the time SMB 3 actually hit shelves in 1990, his show had been canceled and he had virtually disappeared from the public consciousness.

Naming a Koopaling after Wendy O Williams was even weirder. One of the odder relics of the 70s/80s punk revival, Williams' band The Plasmatics briefly found a degree of fame for their outrageous stage shows. The onstage antics involved chainsaws, Williams running around topless, and, most famously, blowing up cars. The Plasmatics' music never really entered the punk rock canon; it's telling that their highest profile gig was opening for KISS - who were not exactly punk icons. In some ways they were more of a novelty act than a legitimate band. However, in the early 80s, the US mainstream media didn't really know what to make of punk rock, and the Plasmatics' wild costumes, hairstyles and stage act seemed emblematic of the genre as a whole.   The result was an awful lot of media attention given to the band, with such figures as Tom Snyder claiming the Plasmatics were considered to be "the best punk rock band in the world."

While Williams and the Plasmatics became quite well known, this never translated in record sales.   You can only blow up so many cars before people start losing interest, and when SMB 3 was released in the US, Williams had disappeared from the public eye.** At a time when bands like the Misfits were posthumously growing in stature, the Plasmatics were vanishing from the collective memory. Of course, you can't really blame The Plasmatics for being gimmicky; there were tons of gimmicky punk bands at the time. Once, while talking to Mike Watt, of Minutemen and fIREHOSE, I asked him about the distinctive flannel shirts that Minutemen wore. He said that at that time, punk bands all had their own crazy costumes. "Some of the bands wore garbage bags... we wore flannel shirts." Apparently, Minutemen singer/guitarist D. Boon was a huge John Fogerty fan. Interestingly, Watt later ended up backing Iggy Pop by playing bass in The Stooges. (Did you see what I did there? Brought everything back around full circle, to show the interconnectedness of the universe? I'm like the Kieślowski of video game blogging!)

That concludes our tour of some of the lesser lights of 1980's pop culture. What about the rest of the games this episode?   They're mostly a bunch of crap, but here's a quick look.

Jeopardy!/Wheel of Fortune

Wipe that fucking grin off your face, Marty.

One of the overarching stories we'll see unfolding throughout Chrontendo is the emergence of the US video game market. Another chapter begins today, with the appearance of GameTek, a Miami Beach based publisher which specialized in games based on preexisting properties. Their first two releases were developed by Rare, and proved that spending an entire game spelling out words using the d-pad is not very fun. I was also quite outraged to find a spelling error in Jeopardy!, especially since the game penalized my (correct) spelling as the wrong answer.

Knight Rider

You would think having a shoot-out on I-5 would attract some attention from the California Highway Patrol....

Here's a surprisingly fun game. I say "surprisingly" because the nameas on the outside of the boxes are Pack-in-Video in Japan and Acclaim in the US. Knight Rider is very basic little drive-and-shoot game, but compared to Cobra Command, it's not bad. I'd like to apologize in advance for using the Knight Rider game as an opportunity to make fun of German musical tastes. I do it out of love, guys -- not only for cool German bands like Neu!, but also for awesome-yet-unhip stuff like Kraan.

Incidentally, Activision also had a bit of involvement with this game. (The entire interview, with Tom Sloper, is quite informative, BTW)

8 Eyes

Simon who? I have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't really care for 8 Eyes, but the game sure has its fans. Despite some protestations to the contrary, 8 Eyes is a blatant rip-off of Castlevania. It does add a twist - you have a hawk (or is it a falcon?) that can be launched from your shoulder to attack enemies. It also has really good music. Give it a try.

Vegas Dream/Viva Las Vegas

Oh hai there, slot machines!

Sure, this is just a gambling game! But this HAL-developed title adds in some nutty randomized NPC encounters between rounds of slots and roulette. For example, a strange women approaches you and asks you to "escort" her to a show. Later that night, she steals half your cash! I think I can read between the lines: beware Vegas hookers, kids.

Daisenryaku

During the actual episode I compare Daisenryaku to Hydlide: both were innovative games that had the misfortune to reach the Famicom after a superior, yet derivative game (Famicom Wars and Dragon Quest, respectively). The granddaddy of Japanese military simulation games first hit computers in 1986. Two years later, it got a console port. A little too late, it turns out.

Genpei Toumaden: Computer Board Game

A really ugly dog is about to attack me.

Way back in Chronsega 19 we saw a Konami game called Getsufuu Maden, and I pointed out its strange similarity to a Namco arcade game called Genpei Toumaden. Well now the shoe is on the other foot, Konami! Because Namco released Genpei on the Famicom, and made it look kind of like Getsufuu Maden! It's gone from being a side scrolling action game to a top-down RPG. It's also one of the most Japanese games ever - even the numbers are displayed in Japanese characters.

Erika to Satoru no Yume Bouken

An obscure adventure game from Atlus and Namco. It would be almost completely forgotten if a programmer hadn't left an insane Easter egg in the game.

And at the bottom of the heap we have:

Cobra Command

Is Cobra Command the least faithful port of an arcade game ever? The original arcade title was a laser disc game with high quality animation. For the Famicom version, Data East turned it into a Choplifter clone. That doesn't sound too bad, but Data East equipped your 'copter with missiles that cannot hit anything. Even stranger, the screen scrolling is set up so that when you move forward, your 'copter ends up pressed against the far left side of the screen, making it unreasonably difficult to dodge enemy fire. My least favorite game this episode....

Big Challenge! Dogfight Spirit

If this screenshot makes the game look boring, that's because it is.

... except for possibly Dogfight Spirit from Jaleco. You fly a helicopter in this one too, though Dogfight Spirit is a vaguely Compile-inspired vertical shooter. Except that you spend the entire game flying over boring scenery evading screenfuls of enemies who constantly fire aimed shots directly at you. That would be fine, except your helicopter is equipped with worthless, lame weapons that cannot be powered up. One of the worst shoot-em-ups we've seen so far.

Dandy: Zeuon No Fukkatsu

No, it's Okay. You can just totally leave the top 2/3 of the screen completely blank. No one is going to care.

An extremely ugly Zelda/Action RPG type game for the FDS. Not much can be said about the game itself, but the history behind it is a little interesting. The original Dandy was an old Atari 400/800 game that served as the inspiration for Gauntlet. Dandy's creator John Palevich asked Atari to include his name in Gauntlet's credits; Atari didn't do this, but a couple years later released a similar game, Dark Chambers, that was credited to Palevich, though he seemingly had nothing to do with that game.

Donald Duck/Snoopy's Silly Sports Spectacular

All right!! An Disney game... from Kemco. It seems Hudson and Capcom weren't the only ones with rights to Disney characters. Released as a Donald Duck game in Japan and a Snoopy game in the US, this is simply a collection of uninteresting sports minigames. A few years later, Kemcom did a similar number when it released Game Boy Mickey Mouse games as Bugs Bunny games outside of Japan.

Black Bass II

Don't laugh. It's still much better looking that the first Black Bass game.

Or, in the USA, just plain The Black Bass. Sure, this is better than the dreadful original Black Bass, but it's still just a dull fishing game.

Ultraman Club

While not as bad as earlier Ultraman games, this one replaces the standard side scrolling action with a strange turn-based battle system. So it looks like an RPG, but it's really not!

I've been informed that I incorrectly typed in the number 20,000,000 in this episode. I can't beleive I overlooked that, but remember that all episodes of Chrontendo are sold "as is." And speaking of 20 million insane people, I wanted to point out that Chrontendo sometimes adds on a little MST3K-style stinger at the very end. I'm quite amused by the crying ladies hugging each other at the end of this one, so make sure you watch past the credits. And, by the way, I now have that stupid song in my head.

Last time, some folks indicated that they were having problems with the MP4 playing on Quicktime. I tested this episode on QT and didn't get an error, so hopefully it will work for everyone else. If not... then I guess Steve Jobs is giving you freedom from Chrontendo as well as porn.

So anyway, Chrontendo 36: check it out now.

* A record held until the Wii days, I think. Not counting games bundled with hardware like SMB 1.

** Williams released one final, hip-hop flavored album in 1988, then retired from music. After a few unsuccessful suicide attempts, she fatally shot herself in 1998.

Episode Status Report

2011-02-06T20:06:00.000-08:00

Here's some post-Super Bowl news for you: Chrontendo Episode 36 is more or less "done" in terms of content, and just needs to be checked, compressed, and uploaded. As mentioned a few posts back, I started a new job on Monday, and all the attendant stresses have taken their toll on me. But it's now time to pull myself together and focus on finishing Episode 36. So, I'm thinking... maybe tomorrow night?

(2/7/2011 - Not all the formats are uploaded yet, so Chrontendo 36 will not "officially" out until tomorrow night. But impatient types can check the usual places.)

Update to the Update to the Update. Plus: an Update!

2011-01-27T21:51:00.000-08:00

At this point, I think I'll stop uploading new episodes entirely, and simply post endless updates. So: at the moment, I'm uploading Chronsega Episode 6 on the Youtoobes, broken into several different chunks. This won't be a big deal to those of you download the episodes. But for those that prefer streaming, the quality of the Youtube clips is better than that of Archive.org.

I've noticed videos on Youtube getting longer and longer nowadays, and not just for people like Kanye West, but also for just regular folks. It seems the 15 minute length restriction has been listed for some accounts - those who have a "history of complying with Youtube's standards" or something. As of yet, however, I'm still stuck at 15 minutes, so full episodes will need to be broken into 4-5 pieces for the time being.

This site got a spike in traffic yesterday, perhaps due to this article on Joystiq, which mentions Chrontendo in passing. The article itself is about another NES-themed blog, one which I have not quite wrapped my head around. I was taken a bit aback to take a look at the most recent post and immediately encounter the word "universalism," which is either being used incorrectly*, or as a needless variant of "universality." Of course, I'm the guy who wrote "wheelbarrel," so I have no right to complain. Still, the blog looks very interesting.

Finally, this is the sort of thing that Twitter is for, but I'll complain about it here. Marijuana has been virtually legalized in California.... However: it's still bad taste to enter a store smelling so heavily of pot that you leave an odorous trail in the aisles as you walk around. If you absolutely must hotbox in the parking lot, please move around outside for a minute to let the smell dissipate. Seriously guys, I could smell you from a good 10 yards away.

*Universalism is the religious doctrine of universal salvation. The reasoning usually being something along that lines that a merciful God would not create a soul that he knew would be damned to hell. In the US, it's connected to Unitarianism.

Chrontendo Episode 36 Update

2011-01-26T00:35:00.000-08:00

First of all, it has come to my attention that the video for Ninja Hattori Kun is missing from Episode 7 (The "Zelda" episode.) I know I played that game, and I know I recorded a video for it. Somehow, it must have been left out during editing. When I get a chance, I'll record some footage, splice it into Episode 7 and re-upload it. However, for those of you anxiously awaiting Ninja Hattori Kun, be aware -- it's a pretty unexciting game.

I was originally hoping to have Chrontendo 36 done by the end of month. At this point however, that seems unlikely, due to one particular game. As you may realize, Ep. 36 will be covering the end of Sept 1988 and a good chunk of October, meaning that we will have finally reached the "Official Greatest and Best Selling NES Game of All-Time" -- Super Mario Bros 3. Yep, that game was released in Japan in Fall 1988, meaning there was almost a 1 1/2 year delay between the Japanese and US release. Imagine Nintendo pulling that shit nowadays! "We hope to have Super Mario Galaxy 2 out in the US by early 2012 at the very latest." Hell, Super Mario World came out in Japan not that long after the US release of SMB 3.

Whoa! There's like, a block way up there!

Anyway, the fact of the matter is that's it's been a loooong time since I've played Super Mario Bros 3. Playing it after all these years is... well, it's a bit baffling. I assume most of you have played SMB 3 and know it's jam-packed with crazy secrets, hidden items, alternate routes, invisible blocks, and so on. I often find myself at the middle of a level, thinking, "I just know there's something around here somewhere. Do I hit this block? Go down this pipe?" And the game is incredibly long! By my calculations, if we count the fortresses, the pyramid, that sort of thing, we get a total of 87 levels! How the hell did we play through this game in one sitting when we were kids?!?* Playing SMB 3 is not like shooting dudes in Halo; it's actually hard work trying to figure out where everything is! I play a few levels and then I'm worn out! Did I really have that much energy and patience when I was younger?

In summary, the good news is this: Episode 36 will feature Super Mario Bros 3. The bad news: since SMB 3 is the pinnacle of 8-bit gaming, it's all downhill from here. Shortly after the Japanese release of SMB 3, Sega launched the Mega-Drive and Nintendo demoed an early version of the Super Famicom. In essence -- the Famicom is dying. The system's best moment will be behind us by the time we reach Chrontendo Episode 37. Then we've got another 60 episodes of LJN and Acclaim games to look forward to.

Actually... now that I think about it, we still have Mega Man 2 & 3, Castlevania III and the Capcom Disney games ahead of us, so maybe things aren't so bleak.

*Probably we grabbed a few flutes and warped to the last level.

Good News for Me

2011-01-23T01:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday must have been my lucky day. First and foremost, I accepted a job offer. My new employer offered to pay me at the high end of the position's pay spectrum, and there is some sort of profit-sharing deal as well. What does this mean for Chrontendo? It means I'll be too busy to work on new episodes since I'll be investing all my spare time in coke and hookers. Actually... no, it means episode production might slow down a bit. But I managed to crank out episodes while being employed full-time in the past, so it shouldn't be a problem now. The coke and hookers binge is strictly temporary, I assure you.

I was naturally quite happy with this turn of events, so a bit later in the day I decided to buy myself a few bottles of fancy beer: the sort of beer that a man on unemployment ("the dole" for our UK readers) should not be buying. Astute readers will recall a few posts back, and remember that this hasn't stopped me in the past. As I'm shopping at my local big box liquor store (we have liquor stores the size of supermarkets in Cali; I'm not sure that every part of the world has these. We don't have drive up liquor stores, however,) one of the employees notices the contents of my basket and informs me that they just got in a limited quantity of Pliny the Elder, and it's stashed in the back room. They received 48 bottles and now have nine left. Naturally I took a few bottles. For those of you who are not beer fanatics, Pliny the Elder is a hard to find, high regarded Double IPA. So highly regarded that it somehow manages to average an A+ rating on Beer Advocate. How the hell does one "average" an A+, anyway? It's so hard to find that individual bottles sell for $12.00 plus postage on EBay. I happen to live in a city with a pub that sells it on tap, but still... it's not the sort of beer you see sitting on a shelf every day.

So anyway... I hope to have Chrontendo Episode 36 ready by the time my new job starts, but I can't 100% guarantee it.

Oh yes: for those new to the site who have found us due to the "Games, Dammit!" podcast or other things... Welcome, and I'm sorry I just talked about beer in this post instead of video games. The next post will be all video-gamey, OK?

A Few Things

2011-01-18T16:35:00.000-08:00

Hey, here's a little post-Chronsega Episode 6 update for you! First off, if you haven't noticed, there is a follow up video to Chronsega 6 on Youtube. It simply illustrates a few differences between the arcade game and SMS game in regards to difficulty and ninja magic. The video is quite short but says a few things that weren't really touched on in Chronsega 6 (but should have been.)

Last Shinobi pic on this blog for a while.

Also, it's been pointed out that QuickTime might experience some problems with the h.264 version of Ep. 6. I tried playing it on Windows QuickTime and it wouldn't play at all. QT gave me some crazy error message saying there was a "bad public atom" in the file. Jiminy Crickets! Is QT really that fussy? One "atom" can mess the whole thing up? I can play videos files that are all corrupted and mangled to hell in VLC, but apparently Mr. Steve Jobs requires absolute perfection from our video files. Anyway, I re-encoded the file, but the result had the same problem. Oddly, the larger h.264 file I had also encoded worked fine in QT, so I've uploaded that version. So, if you had problems with the smaller file, and have a "fat pipe" just grab the larger one, I suppose.

In other news: some of the sites in the links seem to be going content-crazy lately. SMPS has been pummeling readers with articles in the month of January, including a daily series of SHMUP reviews. HG101 has also greatly increased their update frequency to the point where I can't keep up.   Among the fascinating offerings are an almost pathologically detailed look at the 30 or so games based on the Astérix comics. Yes, there are seriously 30 Astérix games in Europe! They really love them some Astérix over there, I guess.

Also rising from the dead is a special, one-off new episode of Retronauts.   Oh, and by the way, Chrontendo gets a mention by Frank Cifaldi in the latest Games, Dammit! podcast on 1UP (it's at the very end of the podcast, BTW.) Thanks, guys!

In some non-video game related (but still plenty geeky) news, Red Letter Media released the long-awaited Revenge of the Sith review a couple weeks ago. If any of you are not familiar with the "Harry Plinket" reviews of the Star Wars prequel films, and if you have any interest whatsoever by Star Wars, or were spiritually wounded by the awfulness of those films, I would highly recommend you view these, starting with Phantom Menace.   These are not mere "reviews" but insanely long, mult-part analyses of everything that went wrong in those films. As such, they are far more interesting, well-written, and funny than the movies themselves.

At Last: Chronsega Six

2011-01-13T19:08:00.000-08:00

Update: It has been pointed out that I did make a mistake in the Shinobi segment, namely that I claim there are no bonus rounds in the Shinobi arcade game. In fact, there are (though possibly they only occur after boss battles?). It occurs to me after the fact that I didn't go into any detail about ninja magic in the game. Magic is incredibly useful in the much harder arcade Shinobi. Its importance has been greatly reduced in the SMS game - you start with none, and can only obtain it by beating those ridiculous bonus levels. In the arcade game, you automatically start out with the ability to use magic once per stage - helpful for doing massive damage to bosses. The lifebar in the SMS version makes bosses pretty easy, so the magic is not really necessary. Not that it never comes in useful - the astute viewer will notice I had the "wing" magic during that one impossible jump, and I could have simply flown over it. But I wanted to make a point about the stupid difficulty of that jump.

Yes, all you poor little Sega fans: it's finally here! The sixth episode of Chronsega, covering the Sega Master System releases of June-October 1988! Check it out in XVid and high-tech 60 frames/sec h.264 formats over at Archive.org.

Oh! Before we get any further, I want to talk to you about swords. Specifically the kind of crazy sword that looks like it has little swordlings growing out of it. Maybe you remember this from Fudo Myouoden/Demon Sword on the Famicom? Or maybe the Dark Dragon Blade from the 2004 Ninja Gaiden? It also turns up in Okami, Final Fantasy XI and various Koei Samurai games. The darned thing appears again in SpellCaster, so I figured it was time to dig up the goods on this nutty sword.

It must be a major hassle to sharpen that sword.

Well, guess what? It's a real sword! Known as Nanatsusaya no Tachi or Shichishitō in Japan, it's an old ornamental sword of great historical importance. So important that folks like you or I can't see it; it's kept locked up in a shrine by the monks. Wikipedia has more info.

It doesn't look so impressive now, does it?

As you know, the Master System release schedule was not always filled the brim with great games. Each episode of Chronsega had one or two top-tier titles, such as Fantasy Zone, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, Phantasy Star, Zillion, and so on... but all that changes today. Yep, third party games finally come to the Master System in droves, meaning we are going to see stuff from Taito, Compile, Irem, and Data East. Sure, they're all ports of existing games... but, c'mon, this is the Master System we're talking about. Which would you rather play, Bubble Bobble or Maze Walker II?

There's some decent stuff this episode, but I'm going to give this episode's honors to Golvellius: The Valley of Doom.

It's like Legend of Zelda, only more colorful.

We all know Compile right? Zanac and Guardian Legend on the NES. Tons of great shooters on 16-bit systems like the TurboGrafx 16 and Genesis. After the somewhat disappointing Aleste, Compile now brings us a straight-up Zelda clone for the SMS. In Golvellius you play the green-haired hero Kelesis. Your mission is to rescue the princess and save the kingdom from the brutish, porcine, demon-possessed Golvellius. Naturally, Golvellius is holed up in some hidden dungeon somewhere; in order to find him, you'll need to work your way through a series of easier-to-find dungeons, and pick up some better weaponry and armor on the way. While your at it, you unlock new areas, and grab some lifebar extensions and "bibles," which increase he maximum amount of money you can carry. So Compile has stirred a few dashes of Metroid into the Zelda stew.

Golvellius is a darned pretty game, has cool music (which changes whenever you pick up a new sword or armor) and switches up the Zelda formula just enough to not feel like a quickie rip-off. While it has its aggravating moments, it's certainly one of the most satisfying games for the Master System thus far.

But hey! This is not a one-game episode. There are actually other worthwhile releases this time around.

Final Bubble Bobble

Taito? On my Master System? Yes, it's true. Two Taito arcade games find their way to the SMS this episode. Despite the weird name, this is simply a regular port of Bubble Bobble; one that is somewhat more accurate, in terms of color and detail, than the earlier Famicom/NES version.

Rastan

I agree. That dragon's head does not look very attached to the neck.

Our second Taito game is a more grisly affair. A shameless Conan wannabe, Rastan is a nearly-naked, well-muscled dude who walks around hacking up monsters with his sword. Perhaps the most violent video game we've seen so far, Rastan graphically depicts enemies erupting into geysers of blood when killed. It's a decent amount of fun, though stiff jumping controls result in some frustrating sequences.

Shinobi

Back in the 80's, acid green was considered an appropriate color for ninja outfits.

In the mid-80's Sega arcade division produced more than those super-scaler games, such as Out Run and Afterburner. They also made stuff that could be well-translated into the console format: games like Shinobi. You control Joe Mushashi, the world's least ninja-like ninja. Out to rescue some children and kill some bad ninjas (?), Joe doesn't make the slightest attempt to be subtle or stealthy. Nor does he engage in ninja activities such as wall climbing or crazy jumping. I guess just about anyone can get away with calling themselves a "ninja" nowadays. Still, Shinobi is a fun game.

Captain Silver

The arcade and Famicom versions are not exactly well loved, but Master System Captain Silver acquits itself pretty well. Let me clarify: the Japanese/European release is pretty good; the heavily edited US release is almost pointless. In an attempt to fit the game on a 1 Megabit cartridge, Sega cut out two levels, four bosses and numerous enemies, making the US version absurdly short and easy. In this episode, we play the longer version, and encounter the dreaded Banana Knight boss, one of the most frustratingly hard enemies I've encountered recently.

Nekyuu Koushien

How to tell if a baseball game was Japanese-developed: Exhibit A.

It's hard to get too excited about another 8-bit baseball game, but Nekyuu Koushien is surprisingly enjoyable. Maybe it has to do with the dancing cats.

R-Type

A technically impressive port (programmed by Compile) that is unfortunately completely overshadowed by the excellent PC Engine/TurboGrafx release already covered in Chronturbo 1.

This episode is surprisingly short of bad games. But here they are:

Rambo III

Here you see Rambo fighting some "Soviet" soldiers.

A short, difficult, repetitive Operation Wolf clone that Sega spruced up at the last minute by adding a title screen that says "Rambo III." The game itself doesn't seem to have anything to do with the movie other than the fact that it involves shooting people.

Thunder Blade

Once again, a Sega Super Scaler arcade game gets a less than thrilling Master System port. The arcade Thunder Blade had very cool 3D effects; the home version was simply a very dull shoot-em-up. It also contained some of the worst sound effects of any Sega game.

Vigilante

Oh! BIG!

Irem's arcade game Vigilante was nothing special; just another pre-Renegade style beat-em-up. However, for the SMS version, Vigilante was transformed from a mindless button masher to an exercise in pure frustration. The most common enemy went from being a standard one-punch-kill minion, to a guy who latches onto you by putting you in chokehold that slowly drains your health. Even worse, he is almost impossible to hit and simply walks through your punches and kicks before grabbing a hold of you. The best way to complete the SMS Vigilante is to simply jump over these guys when ever they appear - and they appear constantly. Probably the only reason to play this game is to get a look at all the weird billboards and signs in the background.

And, here we a few other nice games:

Kujaku Ou/SpellCaster

Isn't it weird how villains in video games always know who you are before you know who they are?*

We just saw this in Chrontendo 35! But here, instead of an adventure game/RPG hybrid, it's an adventure game/sidescrolling action game hybrid. Sadly, it suffers from cut and paste level design and illogical adventure game sequences.

Shanghai

Congrats, Shanghai, you are the first game to appear on the Famicom, PC-Engine and Sega Master System!

Megumi Rescue

Little girls and kittens are your highest priority; after that, salarymen.

A cute little Breakout/Kaboom type game that uses the paddle controller. Here, you are rescuing people (and adorable kitty-cats!) from burning buildings.

Lord of Sword

I just had a GREAT idea for a game. A guy walks around and hits stuff with a sword!

Released the same day as Kenseiden, this reminded me a bit too much of Kenseiden to be enjoyable.

Super Racing

A game in which you race cars!

I'd like to think of Summer-Fall '88 being sort of a last blaze of glory for the Master System. By the end of year, the rate of releases in Japan will have slowed to a trickle, with the last ever Japanese Master System game coming out in early 1989. The system will still chug along in the US and Europe, and some interesting SMS exclusive games will turn up in 1989. Eventually, Sega will rise, Phoenix-like, in the early 90's.

But that's a story for another time. Until then, enjoy Chronsega 6.

Addendum: I encoded two versions of the h.264 MP4. The first was a little on the big side: 699 Megs, and the second turned out smaller than I thought it would: 312 Megs. The smaller video looks just about identical to the larger, so I uploaded the smaller one. If you guys fell the larger file is worth uploading, I will. Here's two screenshots.

The larger file is on the top. Click to englarge.

*Think about it. And when you bust into the boss' lair, they are never asleep or in the shower or whatever. They're always standing around just waiting for you. Though they often claim to be a little surprised that you "...made it this far."

Overheard

2011-01-10T23:11:00.000-08:00

At a restaurant recently, I heard a video game based conversation at the next table ("Wait a second, Dr. Sparkle," you say. "I thought you were unemployed! Are you telling me you are using my taxpayer dollars to buy fancy-ass hamburgers and overpriced beer* at some bistro!?" Yes, that is exactly what I am telling you.)

Guy: So I was playing this video game, called God of War, and there's a part where you have sex with these chicks. Like, you turn the controller one way, and this girl's top comes off. And then you press a button and you start going at it...

Girl (laughing): Wow, so, it's like a porno video game?

Guy: Well, it's just that one part. I didn't even know that would happen.

You have to imagine the conversation in frat boy/fashion victim girl voices. I'm guessing... God of War 3, maybe? I assume there's a sex mini-game in that one? It's always interesting to hear non-gaming geek types talk about such things.

And I'm working on Golvellius, so Chronsega 6 will be ready really soon, I swear.

*Bear Republic Mach 10, incidentally.

OK, Sorry!

2011-01-09T00:37:00.000-08:00

Alright, so a "couple days" have passed, and no new Chronsega! I'm still working on Golvellius! Don't blame me, blame Compile for making a Zelda clone, where every single item in the game is hidden. And I didn't get any work done today, either, as I was out and about (among other things, seeing Black Swan.) But it's worth it, for as Sgt D says, you can count the good SMS games on two hands, and Golvellius is one of those games.

But seriously, Chronsega 6 should be ready in few days. In other cool news, qaylis/Kahless GOA (is there an explanation behind that name?) has pointed out the very recent release of a prototype for Square's Aliens game for the FDS. Aliens has got the be the oddest title in the Square catalog -- an MSX game based on the James Cameron movie. Yes, it's actually an official licensed Aliens games from Square. A Famicom Disk System version was produced but never released. Thanks to a dedicated individual a prototype disk was acquired, dumped and released. This has actually been a pretty good couple of months for prototype releases: aside from Aliens, there has also been a Legend of Zelda prototype, and Baldur's Gate for the Playstation.

It's not clear why this game takes place in the outdoors with a mountain range visible in the background.

I'm not sure how I'll work in unlicensed or unreleased games in Chrontendo, though I'd certainly like to cover stuff like Aliens. Half of the fun is seeing terrible early work from companies that later when on to bigger things.

Next Up: Chronsega

2011-01-05T22:18:00.000-08:00

Episode 6 of Chronsega, the Sega Master System counterpart to Chrontendo, should be up in a few days. This new episode is simultaneously running a bit early and a bit late. Early, because it seems I just released Chrontendo 35 a few days before Christmas. Now, New Year's has just past and a new episode is already coming up. I guess that's pretty quick by my normal starndards.

But it also feels a little late since this is taking just a wee bit longer than the average Chronsega. Why? Let's face it: the typical episode of Chronsega features two or three interesting games, padded out with some generic sports titles, some light, goofy stuff like Galactic Protector, and a bunch of crap. Chronsega 6, on the other hand, is stuffed with big, important games: Shinobi, Rastan, R-Type, Captain Silver - and to top it all off - frickin' Golvellius! Throw in a decent baseball game, and some lesser know action games such as Spellcaster and Lord of the Sword, and you've got one super-packed episode.

Time to ride the wild, red worm!

So give me a few days to finish this thing up, and we'll see how it goes.

Let's Get This New Year Rolling.

2011-01-02T17:06:00.000-08:00

I figure I'll not dick around after New Year's Day and get Chrontendo off to a good start in 2011. First of all, I hope everyone had a good, or at least safe, New Year's. For all you young folks out there: enjoy it while you can. Once you reach a certain age, a certain amount of existential dread kicks in every time you pull down a calender and put up a new one. This is generally accompanied by a thinking, "Holy Fucking Shit! It's 2011! How is that even fucking possible?!"

And thanks for the comments wishing my father-in-law well. I have pretty ambivalent feelings about the situation myself, for a number of reasons that can't be discussed here. This is, I believe, at least the eighth time he's been admitted to the emergency room in the last 12 months. After a while, a certain numbness sets in when it comes to the man's health issues.

It's tempting to kick the year off with some sort of look back at 2010. If you perused the online gaming media at all recently, you're sure to have seen countless "Best of 2010" lists. After reading such lists myself, I realized: I haven't really played any new games recently. There are lots of things I would have liked to have played, such as the new Kirby and Donkey Kong games, but that simply hasn't happened. I'm sure many of you have gaming "backlogs." Since much of my video game time is consumed by Chrontendo, I've pretty much fallen out of the loop when it comes to newer games. Thus, the Chrontendo 2010 Awards has only one category:

Best Video Game Themed Music Video

What else could it be other than "Who's That? Brooown!" by Das Racist? Was there even any real competition?

While clearly based on Sierra adventure games, "Who's That Brown?" manages to squeeze in references to tons of old-school NES and arcade games, and even the ancient computer game Snake. There's even a flash game that goes with it. Das Racist, I salute you.

The one modern game I have been playing recently is none other than Dragon Age. Like any Bioware game, it tends to mix in great voicing acting, plot twists, lots of dialog options, and the ability to act like a good guy or a total dick at your discretion.* Naturally, Bioware tosses in plenty of long loading times, bizarre interface design decisions, and a handful of "how did this get past QA?" bugs. The most consistent bug I've encountered concerns the wheel-like interface that pops when you want to use an item or cast a spell. This freezes the action while you go through the various sub-menus, and make your selection. After closing the menu, the action starts up again, and you then move your character around, attack enemies, and so on. Not infrequently, when opening up this menu at the start of a battle, a huge glitch occurs where the action continues while the menu is open and freezes when it is closed.

This prevents your main character from moving or attacking and will generally result in needing to reload, even though it can sometimes be fixed by opening another menu. That fact that the game shipped with a recurring bug like this is pretty amazing. Not the mention the many other infrequent glitches that have been documented. As for the interface, it's a bit baffling that someone making games as long as Bioware has still hasn't overcome difficulties with such basic features as inventory menus. For a detailed and thorough take-down of Mass Effect's crazy interface design, check out this three-part article on Game Design Reviews. Yet... despite Bioware's lack of slickness, we still love them.

In brief:

Here is one of my favorite "Year End Roundup" articles, perhaps one you haven't seen considering where it was published. There's a nice bit of bitchy back-and-forth going on between a few of the critics.

Pre-Sonic Genesis is alive and kicking! After a hiatus of a few months, CJ Lowery returns with two Genesis games. It's nice the see the "list of death," as I call it (due the number of sites that cease updating after being added to the list), has not let claimed another victim. Maybe I'll start putting sites I hate on the list.

And I've received a few comments about the Phantom Fighter ad campaign. I guess the game was advertised in comic books, and those ads generated some attention. Is this the ad in question?

Image taken from The NES Player, a fine site you should all be familiar with.

So what about you guys? Did you play an games in 2010 that stuck out? Any consensus out there about the "big" games of the year: Black Ops, Red Dead Redemption, Mass Effect 2, etc?

*I generally play the "good guy" option in such games. However, I did play Mass Effect last year, and decided to take the "dick" route. It helps if you make your character look like a bit of an asshole.

Inter-Holiday Greetings!

2010-12-29T16:12:00.000-08:00

We are poised in the tiny space between Christmas and New Years, so I thought I'd quickly dash off a brief post. I hope everyone had a cheerful Christmas, despite the severe weather much of the country has been experiencing. Here in the blessed realm of Northern California we've been (for the most part) lucky. Despite heavy rains and howling winds, I haven't seen much locally in the way of flooding or overturned trees, compared to the last big storm five years ago. December 25th was one of those eerily dark winter days. Even at noon, with the curtains open and the Christmas lights lit up, a weird gloominess had settled in; it looked more dusk than daylight.

For anyone out there in Japan, I hope you were able to get your hands on the traditional KFC dinner.

My own Christmas celebration didn't turn out quite as planned. My father-in-law suffered a minor heart attack on Christmas Eve, and we were told he would be undergoing "heart surgery" on Christmas. This turned out to be not quite true. When I spoke to his nurse on Christmas night, I learned he only had a couple stents inserted. Anyway, Christmas dinner was scheduled to take place at my house. My wife's family wanted to delay it until later on Christmas evening, and then, on the afternoon of the 25th, asked if they could come by on the 26th instead. As a result we ended up doing Christmas dinner twice. Not what I was planning, but, hey, it happens.

Bubble Bobble? On the Master System? No way, dude!

Those of you who listened to Chrontendo 35 know that our next episode will be Chronsega 6, covering summer/fall 1988. It's going to be sort of an odd episode: heavy on ports of arcade and computer games, including a surprising number of non-Sega titles. Yep, just as Sega is getting ready to pull the plug on the Master System in Japan, they start getting third party support. Of course, Sega would continue to promote the console in the US, Europe, Brazil and other parts of the world.

So -- have a nice New Years. Please keep in mind the dangers of drinking and driving. I'll post something more substantial in a few days from now.

Grateful Turtles and Peacock Kings (Updated!)

2010-12-21T22:45:00.000-08:00

(12/23/2010: Apparently some dudes want to watch this on their iPads or whatever, so I've re-encoded the H.264 version with AAC audio, which is actually the standard for MP4 AVC. Let me know if there are any problems. Also: Merry Christmas and happy holidays!)

Let's get the important news out of the way first. Chrontendo 35 is ready to download or stream on Archive.org.

Pardon me for engaging in some personal chatter for a moment, but a few posts back Kevin Moon/K8track made a comment about the Ad Hoc fried chicken recipe. Ad Hoc has become quite famous for their fried chicken nights, and the recipe is supposed to be one of the best. I've finally decided to try making it, despite not really being much into deep frying. The "secret weapon" in the recipe is the elaborate brine the chicken soaks in, which makes the chicken almost too juicy. Still, it turned out exceptionally delicious. As my wife said while eating it, "I don't want it to end!"

And something else new: a commenter on Youtube suggested I upload Chrontendo episodes in 60 frames per second H.264 format. That's certainly not a bad idea. I'm all one for newer technologies, and H.264 is pretty promising. So, if you want the high quality 60 fps video, just download the H.264 MP4 file instead of the AVI. Thus you will be able to see the fast flickering effects sometimes employed, such as the shadows in Bayou Billy. And despite being slightly smaller than the AVI file, the quality is just about perfect. I suppose most video players can handle MP4, but if you need one I recommend VLC.

Previously I had noted the end of Konami's "Exciting" sports series by pointing out it was no huge loss. Well, perhaps I spoke to soon. Konami didn't so much stop making the Exciting sports games as they just changed the name of the series. I noticed that this episode's Konami tennis game bore the title of Konamic Tennis. Konamic is a rather goofy portmanteau of "Konami" and "dynamic." But other than the name, Konamic Tennis is really no different than any of Konami's previous FDS sports games, and even has an "Exciting Mode" among the game play options. Then it turned out that the Japanese title for Track and Field II was Konamic Sports in Seoul, and that of Blades of Steel was Konamic Hockey. So the Exciting sports games still live, under a new name.

As you know, every episode we single out one particular game as the best, most interesting, or historically important game. So moving right along, this week's MVP game is...

Nothing.

That's right. Zip. Zilch. Nada. No game really sticks out this episode of being worthy of taking the top prize. It's not that there aren't some decent games this time around. It's just that nothing here really qualifies as a great game.

We do have some reasonably good games, however, so let's take a look at those.

Mad City/The Adventures of Bayou Billy

What kind of idiot would go mano-a-diente with a fucking crocodile!?

They can't all be winners, and Konami's first beat-em-up is a bit of a misstep compared to its last few big action games. Bayou Billy is one of Konami's least loved 8-bit games. In fact, it's hated far and wide, mostly for its "lack of balance," tediousness, and patchwork-like quality.

Bayou Billy's ending. It really exists!

However, the original Japanese game, Mad City, is fun and breezy by comparison. Enemies go down in 3 or 4 hits, the driving levels are much shorter, and at no point are you required to fight alligators*. For reasons unknown, Konami substantially ramped up the difficulty for the US version of Mad City. Perhaps it was an effort the lengthen the game and give it more "value." As a result, even the weakest minions in Bayou Billy now take around ten hits to kill, and the vehicular segments have become grueling endurance tests. In this episode we actually play through a translated version of Mad City, and even get the see the alternate endings!

Ancient Ys Vanished

Thrilling RPG action.

The beloved Falcom action RPG gets its first console port. Unfortunately, the job was handed to Advance Communication, the same guys who made the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde game. The results are pretty disappointing, at least to anyone who's played a better version of Ys, such at the TurboGrafx 16 disc or Ys Eternal. Since Ys exists in so many different forms, we include a whirlwind tour of the many different releases of this game.

Konamic Sports in Seoul/Track and Field II

This console only sequel to Hyper Olympic/Track and Field relies on the same button mashing formula as its predecessor. Some of the same events return, some new events are added, and the character sprites are bigger. No surprises here, but a decent amount of fun can still be had.

Super Pinball

Giant robots everywhere. Even in pinball games.

Now here is a surprise! A nice little pinball game from Coconuts Japan. It's no Devil's Crush, but it's better than Moon Ball Magic. With a total of 6 different screens, including 4 "hidden" ones, and various little mini games thrown in, Super Pinball is actually quite enjoyable.

While there may not have been any great games this episode, we have no paucity of terrible games.

Matou no Houkai: The Hero of Babel

He even jumps like Simon Belmont.

The one game this episode that rubs me the wrong way, Matou no Hokai is from the good folks at Carry Lab, who had previously brought us Mystery Quest, a clever little game which owed a huge debt to Super Mario Bros. Matou no Hokai, on the other hand is a terrible little trifle that shamelessly rips off the Castlevania games. And when I say "rips off..." I don't mean "inspired by...." So blatant is its debt to Castlevania that not only do you get powerups by destroying wall-mounted torches and smashing blocks in walls, but the first boss is the goddamned Grim Reaper! He even throws sickles at you!

To get an idea of what Matou no Hokai is like, just imagine Castlevania with all the good parts taken out (atmospheric graphics, great music, fun boss battles) and all the bad parts left in and magnified (stiff controls, annoying and hard to hit enemies), and then throw in some brand new problems (clunky menus, the fact that one minute into the game you have to grind for XP.) Needless to say, I don't like this game.

Super Dyna'mix Badminton

From VAP and sometimes Nintendo collaborator Pax Softnica, we have this incompetently made badminton game. Just how lazy were the game's developers? There is an option to choose the sex of your player, but apparently no female player sprite was ever created: All players are represented with the same masculine looking sprite. Considering that the box art used the image of a pretty young blond woman, this omission is a little odd.

Kujaku Ou

Killer Mermaids.

Based on a manga, animated film, and live action Kung Fu film (!), Kujaku Ou is another poorly executed attempt to combine a Portopia style adventure game with an RPG (see also, Square's Cleopatra no Mahou.) SMS aficionados might think Kujaku Ou looks a little familiar -- it was reworked as an action game and released by Sega as Spellcaster.

And the rest:

Reigen Doushi/Phantom Fighter

When I started Chrontendo I had no idea that I would encounter multiple games based on jiang-shi AKA Chinese hopping vampires. Yet, back in Chrontendo 22 we had Kyonshiizu II, adapted from the Japanese version of Hello Dracula. Now we have Reigen Doushi, the official licensed game of Mr. Vampire, which is pretty much the greatest movie ever made. Improbably released in the US under the name Phantom Fighter, the game itself is nothing special. But it is kind of cool to play as a Lam Ching Ying.

Kame no Ongaeshi: Urashima Densetsu/Xexyz

You ride into battle on your flying lobstermobile.

Another obscure game that received a US release despite its heavy Asian subject matter. The Japanese game is based on the legendary turtle-saving fisherman Urashima Tarō. Much like Toei's Mr Gold from Episode 33, the plot of this Hudson game essentially just "Urashima in space." Hudson was apparently at a loss on how to market this in the US, so they changed the title to some random gibberish and renamed the hero as "Apollo."

Xexyz is a pretty slick looking game that alternates between platforming and shootemup stages. Developed by Atlus, it resembles 1987's Bio Senshi Dan; both titles are near-misses. Some weird jumping mechanics, a few bugs,and general lameness in the shmump levels prevent Xexyz from achieving greatness.

Maniac Mansion

A port of the classic LucasArts adventure game -- but not the version you are used to seeing. Two years before LucasArts and Realtime developed their own version for the NES, Jaleco took a stab at it themselves. The 1988 Maniac Mansion was only released in Japan, and didn't experience the same censorship issues as the later US release. However, Jaleco's game suffers from a general lack of personality in the graphics, and the fact that multi-screen rooms are compressed down to a single screen in size. While hardly an ideal port, it is kind of cool to see an alternate version of one of the NES' most popular games.

Kick and Run

A harmless little port of a virtually forgotten Taito arcade soccer game. After having played this, I wonder if this formed the template for Soccer League: Winner's Cup from last episode. The two games look and handle very much alike.

Eggerland - Souzouhe no Tabidachi

Remember how we had a new Eggerland game last episode? Well, here's another, this time for the Famicom Disk Writer. This shorter, easier game is the budget release in the Eggerland series.

Hototogisu

Our requisite Sengoku-era strategy game. This one's from Irem and looks pretty well made. If you want to see way more Hototogisu than I can offer, this guy has a 30+ part Let's Play on Youtube; though it lacks any commentary.

Famicom Meijinsen

Pretty good graphics for a shōgi game.

A shōgi game from SNK. I don't know how well it plays shōgi, but it has lots of options and charming graphics.

Konamic Tennis

The aforementioned tennis game from Konami.

Another episode down! Next up is Chronsega episode 6. Then its back to Chrontendo for what's going to be one whiz-bang episode. Until then, don't forgot to check out episode 35 over at Archive.

*There seems to be some confusion whether they are alligators or crocodiles. The manual calls them crocs, an animal not found in the Louisiana Bayou. On the other hand, they seem to aggressive to be alligators. Maybe Gordon, the "Gangster King of Bourbon Street," had crocodiles specially flown in to put in the swamps surrounding his mansion.

So Blogger Ate My Post

2010-12-18T00:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I had a very detailed and insightful post almost ready to go up, comparing the US and Japanese versions of The Adventures of Bayou Billy/Mad City. It also talked about the weird Jiang-shi game Reigen Doushi/Phantom Fighter. But, as I was editing in some screenshots, an unfortunate series of keystrokes erased the post, the auto-save kicked in, and now it appears to be permanently lost.

So for the moment, you'll have to be satisfied with this link to the latest Youtube "preview" which looks at the first level of Bayou Billy and its Japanese equivalent, Mad City.

Back to Our Regular Schedule

2010-12-01T22:54:00.000-08:00

Chrontendo Episode 34 is now out! Head on over to archive.org and download or stream it!

This post is going to be short. Why? Well, I sliced off a bit of my thumb, making it difficult to type. Let's get right down to brass tacks, shall we?

Besides 15 games, there is a mini-history of Atari/Tengen. Or rather, sort of a corporate history of Atari, Atari Corp, Atari Games, Tengen and so on. Since we have our first Tengen game this episode, I felt it best to clarify the backstory behind the two companies calling themselves "Atari" in 1988.

This episodes MVP:

Famicom Wars

Nintendo's entry into the military simulation genre easily outclasses similar games from Bandai, Irem, Soft Pro and rest. I've already mentioned how great Famicom Wars is; the franchise would only get better in later games, such as Advance Wars.

Also, now that we've covered Famicom Wars, it means the next game scheduled from Nintendo is none other than the Greatest NES Game Of All Time! I can hardly wait!

Other good games this episode:

Legendary Wings

Notable as the game Mega Man's staff was forced to work on in exchange for Capcom green-lighting Mega Man 2. It's a pretty decent shoot-em-up in its own right - it features a bit more variety than 1943, but is not nearly as creative as R-Type or Salamander/Life Force. It also suffers from an incredibly anti-climatic final boss.

Eggerland: Meikyuu no Fukkatsu

The third game in HAL's Sokoban-like puzzle game, and the first to be release in cartridge format. While some sources conflate this release with The Adventures of Lolo, they are actually two separate games.

Moero!! Pro Yakyuu '88/Bases Loaded II

OK, this is not really a fantastic game, but compared to all the horrible baseball games I've been wading through recently, it's a breath of fresh air. At the least the CPU's batters will not get a great hit out of every single pitch you throw at them.

The bad games:

Soccer League: Winners Cup

So instead of a lame baseball game this episode, we have a lame soccer game. This Data East release doesn't even assign a function to the B button, that's how no-frills it is.

Bakutoushi Patton-Kun

Sort of a pointless tank combat game, notable for only one thing: its rather surprising profanity laced loading screen. Other than that it's a not-very-good take on Namco's Battle City.

Big Challenge! Judo Senshuken

Alright, I couldn't exactly figure out how to play Judo Senshuken. It's a one-on-one Judo game, and looks like it might behave similarly to a Sumo wrestling game. Yet after several failed attempts to produce any sort of noticeable onscreen action by pressing the buttons and dpad, I gave up on this one. Still, just looking at it, I can't believe this game is any good at all.

The Rest:

The majority of games in episode 34, aren't quite "bad" yet aren't quite special enough to be considered "good." Still, there are some interesting games here.

Gauntlet

One of the three debut games from Tengen - the other two being US releases of existing Namco games - Gauntlet is a port of Atari's 1985 arcade mega-hit. Missing, however, is the 4-player co-op and the many, many speech samples. The resultant game is ugly and not very exciting, though it served its purpose of giving kids a taste of the Gauntlet experience at home.

Dragon Ball: Daimaou Fukkatsu

After the horrible first Dragon Ball game, Bandai and Tose attempt to redeem themselves with this sequel: a card-based, board game/RPG thingy. It certainly has more aesthetic appeal than the first one, but is still likely to be pretty boring to anyone who's not a huge Dragon Ball fan. (I'll let you in on secret: I am not a huge Dragon Ball fan.)

Mitokoumon II: Sekai Manyuuki

From Sunsoft, this wacky sequel to the 1987 action-adventure game sends the TV show's characters on an around-the-world trip to fight crimes in the wild west, Hawaii, Italy, and so on. Just like the first Mitokoumon game, there's lots of horrible sounding (but technically impressive!), garbled synthesized speech.

Tatake!! Ramenman

Yet another TV show tie-in game, this one features a Kinnikuman character who received his own spinoff anime series and movie. This Human-developed title looks like a Japanese take on King's Quest with a bit of one-on-one fighting thrown in. Tatake!! Ramenman is not the typical Famicom action-adventure game, but is too slow and boring to be of too much interest.

Asteka II: Taiyou No Shinden/Tombs and Treasures

Seeing the names Nihon Falcom and Compile in the credits might get you excited for a moment, but this port of a 1987 Japanese computer game just isn't that hot. HG101 has already gone into sufficient detail about its shortcomings.

The Money Game

The second wealth accumulation/stock market simulator game for the Famicom! It looks a little rough around the edges, but its sequel was considered good enough to get a US release under the name Wall Street Kid.

Silviana

A super-simple action RPG from Pack-in-Video. It's not bad - it simply lacks anything special to distinguish it from the many other Famicom RPGs of the era. An English fan translation exists.

Final Lap

A unremarkable port of Namco's arcade F1 racing game. The original was noted for its impressive (by 1987 standards) 3D graphics. The Famicom port obviously takes a huge hit in this area, and doesn't bother to add anything interesting in its place.

There we have it. Enjoy! Incidentally, I was trying to pratice a certain amount of discipline in recording this episode and make it a little shorter than average. The final product is around 60 minutes, so this didn't quite pan out.

As always, check it out on Archive.org.

Well...

2010-11-27T18:24:00.000-08:00

It turned out to be an interesting Thanksgiving. The meal was pretty darned complicated, and at one point, involved slicing about a million shallots. Me being an impetuous, hasty sort of guy, I ended up cleanly slicing off a sliver of my thumb. This was done with a mandoline, a device that seems do be explicitly designed to cause kitchen injuries, as it involves repeatedly passing your fingers over a very sharp blade.* It was a small piece, but still large enough that I very quickly realized it was going to require an emergency room visit.

Since I had guests coming over in a few hours, and a partially cooked turkey in the oven, I knew there was no way I could just dash off to the hospital, so using some heavy cotton pads and medical tape, I bound it the best I could and wore a latex glove to keep blood from dripping. With my wife's help, I was able to complete dinner without major incident. After everyone had left that evening, I rushed over the ER where they were able to stop the bleeding.

My thumb is currently all bandaged up, making it difficult to do things like button a shirt or move a mouse, and completely impossible to press buttons on a controller. So this means I'll be trying to play Adventures of Bayou Billy with my index finger. Great.

In the meantime, Episode 34 is pretty close to completion, so you should see it in a few days.

*The doctor even described it as a "pretty typical mandoline injury." Its nice to know I'm not the only one.