Pardon our dust
As you can see, there are new things to look at all over the site. We canned the ugly Twitter widgets for even uglier scripted text, though that's a stand-in for a fancier solution to come in a few days.
We're running into a problem right now that allows body and jump pages to span across the two rightmost columns, rather than the one where they belong. This will be fixed momentarily, our extremely handy admin tells me.
Hopefully the full redesign will be implemented soon. Bear with us in the meantime.
Jurassic Radio, episode 4
Our collegial little roundtable gets unwieldly — in an awesome way — as we invite Matty O (Velocigamer?) back to the show and welcome Nathan (Gameodon? Gamertooth Tigah?) for his first of hopefully many Jurassic Radios.
The irritating audio artifact of the week this time is my refrigerator, which is on the fritz and has radiated a low-pitched rattle for a few weeks now. We could have recorded outside in the gameosaurs' natural habitat, like we did last week, but my neighbor was at it again with the lawncare yesterday. Seriously.
This week, we talk KNIGHTS IN THE NIGHTMARE, inFAMOUS, DEAD SPACE, DEAD RISING, and DEUS EX and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mods. Our Top 5 takes a dark turn as we revisit our five most regrettable gaming moments, and our news segment gets tripped up on RAPELAY. Words like "nonconsensual" are involved.
This episode was a ton of fun to record. We'll get as many of these delinquents back for future episodes as possible. Tune back in next week as Pat Gann returns to detail his Los Angeline odyssey to E3 and back.
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Jurassic Radio, episode 4
SHOW NOTES
SomethingAwful's Rapelay review
Gamasutra - EA publishing a Tiger Woods golf game through browsers
Game Politics - Florida wants to dust used games for thumbprints
Joystiq - 3G enabled Zeebo released in Brazil (The console downloads old games, they don't cost much, and the money goes to game publishers. Seems like an effective way to combat the rampant piracy in the country.)
Kotaku - Madden lets you play with, or against, a friends. (As people who don't play sports video games, we're surprised this wasn't already an option. )
Destructoid - DSI to get gameboy/gba downloads to make up for single cartridge slot
Gizmodo - Hulu on 360?
Virtual Console Round-Up: May '09
It was slim pickin's this month for those of us who like to spend lots of money downloading old games. Wii's Virtual Console service offered one measly release per week. And, of course, only one of them stood out from the crowd.
That one was THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: MAJORA'S MASK. This "classic" N64 title is now seeing its third outing, as it was also packed with a "Collector's Edition" bundle on the GameCube. However, initial reports confirm that this is probably the best of the three versions. The GameCube version was known to be glitchy, and this Virtual Console port runs slightly more smoothly than the original N64 version, due to the beastly hardware that is the Wii (note the sarcasm, but also note that the Wii is still far more powerful than the N64).
Goron-Link will pwn j00.
If you're not familiar with Majora's Mask (from under which rock did you just crawl out?), it's a standalone adventure incorporating the same 3-D graphics as THE OCARINA OF TIME, wherein Link is forced to wear different masks to complete his quests. Putting on a mask transforms him into an entirely new creature, be it a Goron, a Zora, or something far more monstrous and intimidating. After putting on a mask, Link has a time limit (approximately one hour IRL, which is 72 hours in-game) to complete whatever needed to be completed using said mask. This shape-shifting phenomenon was (and still remains) new to the Zelda series, and word on the street is that the dungeons and puzzles in this game are top notch.
Also worth noting is that Majora's Mask marked North America's 300th Virtual Console release. Only 300? Come on, Nintendo (and all third parties)! Get your act together!
The other releases for the month were TOWER TOPPLER (C64), GALAXY FORCE II (Genesis), and CLAYFIGHTER (Genesis). Let's take a quick peek at each.
Tower Toppler, also known as "Nebulus" and a pile of other names (depending on region and console), is a game that had one great concept going for it. You control a cute little ball of fluff with legs named "Pogo," and your objective is to get to the top of eight towers and bring them down. When climbing the tower, holding left and right sends you around the perimeter of the cylindrical tower. However, the camera stays fixed on your character, and all movement is done by sending 2D, pixelated objects around the front and back of the tower. Great concept, to be sure, but worth 500 points? The game deserves credit for inventing the concept, but it was executed better in games such as BATTLETOADS (see level 12: The Revolution). Of course, you have to be good enough at Battletoads to reach the last level to enjoy it. So, maybe it is worth the download after all. Still, 5 dollars? For a Commodore game? Yuck.
Evil clay snowmen? It seemed like a good idea at the time.
ClayFighter was a cute novelty for its time. All these made up claymation characters, almost all of them a spoof of some pop culture icon, would battle it out Street Fighter style. The original game was released for SNES and Genesis. There were two sequels, neither of which (in this Gameosaur's opinion) are as cool as the original, despite the enhanced graphics with each subsequent game. My beef with this release is that the SNES version definitely had the superior graphics (though I suppose that may be trivial to some people at this point: the game looks downright gross by today's standards). But, regardless of version, the actual gameplay here wasn't all that great. If you're a fan of fighting games because you actually want a balanced match, look elsewhere. There are fairly big differences between each character, so there is some "cheapness" to go around. And, IIRC, the last boss was a big jerk (he was also a giant pearl necklace).
Finally, a rail shooter hit the VC this month. Galaxy Force II has a tiny following across teh internetz to this day. But compared to great shooters like GRADIUS and the infamous TOUHOU franchise, I don't much see the point of buying this. Then again, I never played it as a kid, and nostalgia is a big selling point for the majority of VC titles.
If you're gonna blow some dough this month, I'd recommend picking up Majora's Mask and nothing else from the releases this month. At least we have some half-decent WiiWare to look forward to in the near future (hi2u FFIV THE AFTER YEARS and VANDAL HEARTS).
iTunes functionality is GOOOO
So, milestone reached. Jurassic Radio is officially on iTunes, and you can officially search for and download it in the iTunes store.
It's late, and I don't have much to say beyond that, other than to tell you punks to go get yourselves subscribed already. Don't mind the "explicit" tags. We say fuck and damn like three times per episode, although we might compensate this weekend, now that we've got these big-ass fucking scarlet letters next to every fucking episode of our shitty goddamn fucking podcast.
Seriously, though, thanks for sticking with us so far. I do believe we're getting better at this as we go, and we've got a doozy in store for you this weekend. Check back Sunday for episode 4!
And keep an eye out for a stellar Gameosaurus.com redesign coming soon, courtesy of the one and only Amanda J. Gann. It looks spectacular, and it'll be my honest-to-God privilege to write for a site that looks as good as the one she's working on.
Review: "Bionic Commando"
LOOK HOW ANGRY SPENCE IS.
There's a brilliant game buried somewhere in BIONIC COMMANDO. The sequel to the 1988 NES original and last year's Xbox Live / PSN remake delivers in the areas that matter — an outstanding swinging mechanic and a satisfying single-player experience — but it falls down in story, replay value and so many other departments. Had Swedish developer GRIN spent a little more time polishing the game and a little less trying to give its titular hero some 21st-century attitude, they could have had a classic on their hands.
THE SETUP
The new Bionic Commando, which really needs a subtitle or distinguishing number, picks up a few years after the original(s) left off, with one-armed Nathan "Rad" Spencer sitting on death row for dubious reasons. His bionic arm, which allows him to grapple, swing and mess dudes up, has been confiscated.
Spencer's sprung at the last minute when Super Joe Gibson, the government operative you rescued in the first Bionic Commando, summons him to investigate the bombed-out husk of Ascension City. As Spencer, you and your arm are separately launched into the ruined metropolis, where you're charged with finding the guys who nuked the place.
The aerial combat in the game can get hairy but is mostly thrilling.
The introduction is interesting enough, even if it does lean on the we-have-details-about-your-missing-wife trope that kick-starts far too many action games and retired cop movies. But the story tumbles from there, with Spencer growling absurd, vaguely militaristic pablum about duty and betrayal and his beloved Emily. Spence may have been a wise-cracking badass with aviators and a firecrotch-red flattop 20 years ago, but now he's a dreadlocked Mestizo mope with a chip on his shoulder. He sucks.
Jurassic Radio, episode 3
(UPDATE: You can subscribe to the show in iTunes and any other podcast aggregator using this feed: http://www.gameosaurus.com/podcasts/feed.rss. In iTunes, just click on the "Advanced" tab up top and then on "Subscribe to podcast."
The actual iTunes store section isn't live yet, but we'll let you know when it is.)
Okay, enough hemming and hawing. The podcast WILL be up on iTunes sometime this week.
In our third show, it's just the original three Gameosaurs gnawing on the week's gaming leftovers. We take to the great outdoors this time to grapple with blood-sucking insects and the ambient roar of my crazy neighbor's suite of lawn-care machines.
Matt O, tentatively known as the Velocigamer, chose a two-keg party over recording with us this time. Can't say as I blame him, though he missed out on some pretty stimulating (and occasionally erotic?) conversation.
We talk BIONIC COMMANDO, PUNCH-OUT, TMNT II, E3 and a whole mess of older games as we count down our top five Dreamcast titles.
There was some discussion after we stopped recording as to just how much content we ought to be putting on the Web site. Obviously, there's been a deficit of that around here lately, something that's been beyond all of our control. Free time's a rare commodity for full-time twentysomethings.
But the idea has always been to let the site support the podcast and to blog as we're able. So with an eye toward being a little more diligent, we're going to start, you know, writing again, with the podcast as the star attraction until we find some way to move faster than light.
Thanks for sticking with us, and keep coming back.
ALSO! We're putting out a call for mailbag submissions. We still haven't set up an e-mail address for the site yet, so leave any questions in the comments. If we get even one, we'll be honored, and we'll respond to it at length on the next Jurassic Radio.
bai2ulolbbq.
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Jurassic Radio, episode 3
SHOW NOTES
BBC - EU Commission suggests game developers provide a two year guarantee - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8044125.stm
AP - Twin Galaxy's home town wants video game hall of fame - http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ieKvEyRAClmSZPvgSe3SX7At3z6AD9885GO00
Develop Magazine via Joystiq - Developers told of possible PSP rental (called rental, more like subscription) service - http://www.developmag.com/news/31924/Developers-already-briefed-about-PSP-game-rentals
Thinkgeek via Joystiq - Thinkgeek has new Dreamcasts (if we want to talk about how awesome the dreamcast was) - http://www.joystiq.com/2009/04/22/its-thinkgeeking-online-retailer-selling-new-dreamcasts/
The Guardian via Gamepolitics - Square Enix squashes fans' Chrono Trigger game - http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/05/21/square-enix-gets-heavy-handed-its-homebrew-fans
Gamepolitics - Calif. takes video game law to U.S. Supreme Court - http://www.gamepolitics.com/2009/05/20/breaking-california-appeals-video-game-law-us-supreme-court
TruTV - Boston cops would report zombie attacks - http://blog.trutv.com/dumb_as_a_blog/2009/05/via-twitter-boston-cops-confirm-that-any-future-zombie-attacks-will-not-be-covered-up-.html
Jurassic Radio, episode 2
Matt's good enough to join Dactyl, Nathus and me for our second and best-ever episode of Jurassic Radio. We still haven't figured out this whole submit-your-podcast-to-iTunes thing, but we have a guy working on it.
Hey, Apple: There should be an app for that.
In this week's episode, we discuss the top five console accessories (some of these are a stretch, but we tried really hard), the never-ever-ending "Duke Nukem Forever" drama, the abysmal sales of "ExciteBots Trick Racing" and other SCINTILLATING stuff. Marvel as Pat Gann says things that will horrify his Mennonite wife, and shake your head as I call things "fun" over and over and over again. Moratorium on podcast "fun," at least for me.
The incidental music in this episode is from Baltimore band Karmella's Game, which is set to put out its second full-length album sometime this summer. Become a Facebook fan here. The first act break is "Sorry," from the soon-to-be-released album. The second is "Symbiosis: The Great Machine," from their 2006 CD "The Art of Distraction."
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Jurassic Radio, episode 2
SHOW NOTES
The STAR FOX / Rumble Pak promotional video:
The EXCITEBOTS cover art: 
Jurassic Radio, episode 1
By Jove, I believe we've got it.
We'll never sound as professional as I'd like, short of dumping upward of a thousand bucks on audio equipment. But as entry-level podcasters go, I think we're set.
In this week's first, official, honest-to-goodness installment of Jurassic Radio, Rambo, Pat and I welcome guest Matt Oberdick for a frank discussion of Star Trek, movie-licensed games and experimental videogame sadism.
Thanks to the cute, hyper-chic Blue Snowball, we sound recognizably human this time, and without too much background hum and hiss, either. There are no drops and no pops. A few barks, but no pops.
I'm a little excited about it.
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Jurassic Radio, episode 1
Review: "Verge"
Spikes or fire, so many ways to choose to die.
I like darker games, and when I stumbled on a game where killing your character is an essential game mechanic, I was interested. If it's a free indie game, all the better. VERGE is short, more proof-of-concept than fully developed game, but what is there is engaging. It was developed for The Indie Game Source's Commonplace Book competition and limited by the competition guidelines (ie, time limit). The designer, Kyle Pulver, who also worked on BONESAW: THE GAME, says he's working on expanding the title.
There's no score and not much of a story. You're dropped in the middle of a world with a cryptic explanation. There are nine levels, but really only eight because the first one is a joke.
THE SETUP
Verge is a 2D platformer where the goal its to move your character from entrance to exit. Try to do it quickly, because you're timed. Monsters occasionally stand in your path (though, not many), and some of them exhale the fiery kind of breath. They can be dispatched with a few jumps on the head, but that's not always the way to go. The are two worlds to wander through, and the trip to the exit often takes you through the second world. Above ground is a world full of life. Below is a dark and desolate waste. One way to get there is to die. In later levels you can just jump across the span at points where the above and the below meet.
The above ground monsters, of which there are two, can be dispatched by landing on them, or just run past them. The monsters dwelling beneath the surface can't be killed. They home in on you and latch on then drain , but can be shaken off by mashing the arrow buttons. When you die while above ground, which you'll do often and on purpose, your soul will transfer straight down to the underground. When you die underground, you're toast and have to start the level over again. To avoid death underground, you have to find a resurrection spot, which transports your soul back to the surface. Dying and resurrecting at the right spots is the key to solving most of the puzzles.
At the line that life and death meet, you can get a velocity boost -- from what I assume is a near life/death experience -- by pressing jump right at the line. You can get a similar boost from pressing jump at the right moment when you land on one of the monsters. These mechanics aren’t necessary to complete the game, but they can be used to quickly advance through the levels when trying to get the best time. Plus they're a lot of fun.
THE PRESENTATION
Pulver says the game is inspired by a line from H.P. Lovecraft’s Commonplace Book. I haven’t read any Lovecraft, so I can’t say how well he pulled it off, but the change in style from life to death is abrupt and effective. The graphics owe a lot to CAVE STORY. There's nothing groundbreaking here, but it's pleasant enough to look at.
When alive, you move in a world bathed in vibrant colors. The land is green and the monsters are bright and alive. They move in the stops and starts of an animal weighing its surroundings before acting. The background is filled with trees and clouds and a muted sun. They could be more detailed, and it would be nice if they changed from level to level, but details like that are probably a low priority for a competition build. Death brings darkness and a floating skeletal snake that moves with a fearless, unnatural obsession. And the the ground goes grey and the background turns into various shades of purple.
The single song that plays in the background is appropriately haunting. It was written by Alec Holowka, who also did the music for AQUARIA, so the quality of the song shouldn’t surprise anyone.
THE JUDGMENT
The game’s limited development time does show. Jumping on bad guys more than once in a row earns multipliers, but they don’t seem to do anything. It would be nice if there were more varied monsters and ways to die. But overall, Verge is a pretty polished and well-executed demo of a potentially great idea.
Review: "Prinny: Can I Really Be the Hero?"
Better question: do you really want to be the hero? Many painful deaths await you, my friend.
Ah, Prinnies. Cute, lovable, demon-penguins from Nippon Ichi's DISGAEA franchise. Reincarnated from the souls of criminals, low-lifes, and other social misfits, prinnies are best remembered for saying the word "dood!," wielding two sharp knives, and exploding upon contact. Now, NIS has seen fit to use its adorable mascot as the "hero" of a new platformer for the PSP that's sure to challenge your preconceptions of the genre, in the same way that Disgaea challenged our vision of strategy RPGs a decade ago.
PRINNY: CAN I REALLY BE THE HERO? presents a relevant question: can a no-name creature with zero defenses embark on an epic quest? The answer, as I soon found out, depends on how good you are at platformers. And you have to be really good to make significant progress in this title.
THE SETUP
This PSP platformer makes no pretense of having a serious plot to accompany the gameplay. NIS, as a company, makes it their goal to put together the most hilariously irrelevant plots for their games. This particular scenario takes place over the span of 10 hours (one hour per stage), and it involves sending 1000 prinnies on a quest to reclaim "The Ultimate Dessert," which was stolen from their master, Demon Lord Etna. The first six missions make up the bulk of the game, and like a MEGA MAN title, these six missions can be played in any order.
The checkpoint is so close! Don't get hit, or it's all over!
Unlike Mega Man, however, Prinny adds a new feature that significantly enhances replay value. As time passes, and night falls, things change in each of the six stages. The basic mechanism here is that, whichever levels you play first, they will be easier, but the later levels will be far more difficult at the end than if you had played them at the beginning. Some stages are elongated, have new sections put in place of old ones, or add more monsters and opportunities for "pit death" (example: in one level, the "water rises" after dark, and areas that weren't pits now are). After completing those six stages, there's a special boss fight, then a special stage, followed by a "round-up fight" stage (where you re-fight the six bosses you faced in the main stages, with increased difficulty). At the end, there is a ferociously difficult final stage, as well as a two-part final boss fight.
Anyone who wants "the full experience" will need to play through this game a minimum of two times. However, there's enough content in the game to warrant many more play-throughs than that. Alongside the variance of the main stages, there are bonus items to find, bonus enemies to kill, additional "bonus" scenarios, as well as the ability to save replay footage to share with anyone who cares to watch you conquer (or fail) a stage/boss. There's also the difficulty level, which you can change at any time. The only difference here is the number of times you can get hit. During the game's introduction, a special red scarf is given to the "hero" (who, technically, changes with each subsequent death, as the "1000 lives" you're granted are actually 1000 different prinnies who just so happen to sound exactly the same). On normal difficulty, this scarf can ward off up to three hits taken. Upon the fourth hit, your prinny does what prinnies do best: explode. On the "hard" difficulty level, the scarf is only there for decoration. One hit = death. If you want to punish yourself, joining the prinnies in their purgatorial existence, feel free to make use of the hard mode.
The order in which you complete the stages matters a great deal in this game. Choose wisely!
The basic controls are suitable, though jumping is frustrating. Basically, you cannot control your direction in a jump anytime other than the initiation of the jump. It's realistic, but again, it's frustrating. Fortunately, prinnies can stop their jumps mid-way by doing a ground-pound (D-pad "down" plus jump button to go straight down, something we've all been doing ever since MARIO 64). You can also become stationary, mid-air, but executing attacks in the air. Other than that, prinnies can spin (in preparation for a dash), during which time they are immune to taking damage. You can also pick up and throw bombs and stunned enemies, and a few levels have simple "vehicles" that may or may not be required to progress in the level. It's a limited arsenal of abilities, but it's all you'll need in this simple, difficult platformer.
Bosses make up a significant portion of the challenge. If you think the 1000 lives granted per playthrough is excessive, allow me to enlighten you. Basically, each boss has a certain set of attacks, and there are some small aural or visual cues to let you know that they're about to execute one particular attack. During the span of the attack, there may or may not be a weak point to exploit, and there may or may not be a stationary "safe point" to return to. Even on normal difficulty, it's quite challenging. Most bosses are taken out by first stunning them (the ground-pound, and/or bombs, if they're available in the boss's arena), and then going nuts with button-mashing. The "re-use" time between attacks has to be something like, one thirtieth of a second, and no bosses have any blinking "invulnerability" time. So, when stunned, the key to victory is being able to mash the attack button. It hearkens back to the days where your best friend was the one who owned the third-party NES controller with the turbo buttons.
THE PRESENTATION
Nippon Ichi's in-house composer, Tenpei Sato, can be described as one part Danny Elfman, two parts George Michael, and three parts fill-in-the-blank Japanese VGM composer. All games in the Disgaea universe take on a "perpetual Halloween" feel, as the Netherworld is as much about childish mischief as it is about torture and death. The game's score only re-uses a handful of old tunes, and is mostly an entirely new soundtrack in the same vein as Disgaea and its sequels. I like it quite a bit.
NIS America has a spotty track record with English dubs, but everyone loves prinnies, right dood? It's really not hard to sell the prinny, and NIS America deserves a lot of love for "re-inventing" the aural and textual presentation of the prinny, since there are big differences between the Japanese and English versions of the creatures. Another win for NIS America was their version of a character that they decided to name "Darth Moab" (due to the shape of his head looking like Vader's helmet). When prinny is told by Moab, "I find your lack of taste disturbing," you know you're in for a parodied quote-a-thon, and I give props to NISA for the jokes, and for having prinny break the fourth wall at the end by acknowledging the Star Wars reference.
I've beaten the game twice and not yet seen this cutscene. Perfectionists and completionists, be prepared for the long haul, there are plenty of hidden goodies.
The game's visuals are perfect for a simple 2D game. However, the background environments have a small semblance of 3D, showcased best when prinny does an aerial attack, and the camera shifts 30 degrees to show off a 3D perspective. Had they wanted to, Nippon Ichi could've attempted a "multi-layered" 2D platformer, like LITTLEBIGPLANET. Then again, maybe that would be a bad thing to add, given the backlash we've seen on that particular gaming mechanic.
Many of the game's sprites are lifted directly out of older Disgaea titles, but there was plenty of sprite animation that brought the cast to life in a way that the strategy RPGs never did. Also, I love the homage to Mega Man when Prinny jumps into a gate before a boss fight, and he freezes in that position with the legs up, it looks exactly like Mega Man. That's good stuff.
THE JUDGMENT
Not every game manages to sink its talons into me like this one. I was only partially interested in the game from the start, but by the end, I didn't want to put it down. I think that's a sign that this is a decent platformer. Challenging, yes. Rooted in "oldschool" paradigms like limited lives and zero character growth, yes. But I was worried that NIS would totally fail at pulling off a game in a genre with which they have virtually no experience. With that point in mind, I think they did a great job. 4 out of 5, dood!