You ready for one more lap?

An important side note, I read a handful of reviews from other sites, specifically Destructoid, so when Jim Sterling gave his impressions of Mario Kart 7, effectively waggling a disapproving finger and deciding it was underwhelming, my first and only reaction was overreaction, claiming, “Well he just doesn’t like the series! There’s no way he’d give it a 5 out of 10 if he were being fair and actually knew what he was talking about! Hurdy gurdy bur!” This was all internal of course, but now I can say, very politely to Jim, “I disagree…to a point.”

Mario Kart 7 is a fine game. It’s a fine Mario Kart game. It’s a fantastic game for the 3DS and demonstrates its capabilities wonderfully. And it is indeed a franchise that’s showing its age in places, which I’ll get in to momentarily. But before I nit-pick and complain, I’d like to cover what the game did right.

Graphically, Mario Kart 7 again proves that the 3DS looks great and plays smoothly. Everything looks technically sound as you peel around corners and select through menus. The controls are tight and driving feels good. However, as a protip, make sure you’re aware that you can use both the L button and the X button for items. It took me a while to realize that X works just as good, so I’ve had quite a cramp in my hand from holding the system awkwardly.

I keep hearing over and over again that the real stars of the series are the tracks, and once more they don’t disappoint when it comes to new environments, for the most part. The coolest new addition is the use of sectional tracks rather than just circuits, meaning instead of just going around three times, you move through three checkpoints until you cross the finish line, allowing for a much greater sense of variety within the same race. I love that, but it sadly only happens three times. I would have gladly taken more.

This would work in real life...right? Please say yes!

Also new is the ability to hang glide at certain points, a welcome gameplay change that just feels right, plus a propeller that kicks in once you’re submerged that controls slightly differently than the other two kart forms. I found myself enjoying the underwater portions just as much as the rest, though they won’t be for everyone.

Finally, the new items are worthy of the game and mix things up appropriately. There is a fire flower powerup that allows you to hurl a bunch of fireballs at opponents, similar to Mario and Luigi’s signature weapons from Double Dash!!, as well as the tanooki tail, a powerup that takes some getting used to but that fits right in and works great in the harder races where everyone’s neck-and-neck.

But things aren’t all perfect. Despite the fluid controls, fun tracks, pretty graphics, and outstanding online modes (all there is to say about them is that they work just as well as the Mario Kart DS’s online modes worked), there’s a lot to be desired. Mario Kart 7 feels rather short, even though it’s the same length as the other Mario Kart games. It has eight cups with four tracks each, totaling 32 tracks, 17 characters, dozens of kart pieces to customize your play style, six battle maps, and four gameplay modes, but something still feels extremely lacking, and it may be because the title touts the fact that it’s the 7th game in the series.

See, when playing the new tracks, I thought, “These are great, but sadly there aren’t enough to really sink in.” While there are some standouts, such as the aforementioned sectional courses, we still waste time with the usual simple circuits early on or the uninteresting throwaway levels. But then you play the cups that revolve around tracks from past games and scratch your head, asking “Why this one?”

And why can't this tail make me fly?

I’m greedy, but I don’t think it’s unfair to want everything and more. I want a Mario Kart game with every previous track on it, every playable character, every item, every possible bit from the past. Why no more two-player kart action? Why no more bikes? Why only three new battle tracks and three fairly dull returns? Why not more, more, more?

But the biggest, most broken aspect of the games is the Blue Shell. I debated with myself on this one since it’s such a staple of the series, but now it’s just become a problem. Leading a race way out in front is not enjoyable because you become such a target for cheap shots from the computer. You’ll be absolutely killing in a race, zooming past the competition and just playing great, when all of a sudden you’ll hear the painful sound of the Blue Shell flying to get you and you’ll just get annoyed because there’s nothing you can do to avoid it short of stockpiling a Starman powerup, which you’ll never get if you’re in 1st place.

I get that the purpose of these super items is to allow other players a chance to catch up, or give you the ability to really stick it to the computer in the event that you’re losing, but the Blue Shell, the lightning, the Bullet Bill, all happen far too frequently to really feel like a hail Mary. Instead, they just come off as the computer punishing you for playing well. Nothing is worse than closing in on the home stretch, only to be blasted by a Blue Shell, then hit by lightning, then bumped off the track by other racers, and ending up going past the finish line in last place when you’ve been solid in 1st the entirety of the race. That’s broken and it should have been fixed by now, or at least given the option to turn it off.

That may be the heart of what I want here: I want a Super Smash Bros of Mario Kart. I want the ultimate compendium with races, battles, challenges, and full player control. I want options to nix certain items, or even build custom courses. When will we get that game? Perhaps not for a while, and that’s a shame.

At least there's more motion controls, which is what we were hoping for...

To cap this off, I’ll give you a rundown of the order I place the Mario Kart games. Way out in first is Mario Kart DS, followed closely by Double Dash!!, then Mario Kart 64, Mario Kart 7, Mario Kart Wii, Super Mario Kart, and finally Super Circuit. I suppose that means I’d place it right smack-dab in the middle of things then, huh? It’s not the best, it’s not the worst, it’s just there. Mario Kart 7 is a placeholder until something better comes along. Here’s hoping we won’t have to wait forever.

Hey those guys have trees growin' out of their heads. What the heck am I playing?

Let’s set the stage for why some people just weren’t happy with Mario’s GameCube outing. The year is 2000 and people are excited to see what the GameCube can offer. During a tech demo, and if knowledge serves me correctly it was the same tech demo that showed what Link and Ganondorf could look like on the ‘Cube (please don’t quote me on that!), a video detailing a supposed game called Super Mario 128, the proposed sequel to Super Mario 64, was teased. Being the usual characters that gamers are, our first and only assumption was that the tech demo was a definite statement of the game’s existence, showing over a hundred Marios running around, traversing spherical platforms. Naturally, we were confused when we instead got Super Mario Sunshine.

To quell some fears regarding Super Mario 128, while the game was scrapped, the concepts certainly were not. A number of other games were born from the ideas it created, such as Pikmin, Twilight Princess, and Super Mario Galaxy. And also, according to Nintendo, Super Mario Sunshine, a game that couldn’t actually run on either the PS2 or Xbox due to the amount of colors its graphic used (fun facts!).

Man, we really need to stop obsessing over tech demos already.

The basic plot of Sunshine is actually a lot different than most Mario games. No, not so different that Peach isn’t kidnapped and Bowser isn’t the Big Bad once again (that never changes), but the overall game is a drastic shift away from any other Mario game to date and stands alone as something wholly unique. All Mario games include the usual grass levels, water levels, snow/ice levels, fire/lava levels, sand levels, and underground levels, plus perhaps a castle, fortress, or haunted house for good measure. Sunshine, thankfully, does not include any of these as we know them.

Instead, Sunshine gives us a tropical village, a beach, a harbor, an amusement park, a scenic waterfall, a hotel, a village suspended by gigantic palm trees, and a resort island as the hub world. Can you catch the theme here? Everything takes place on the vacation hot-spot Isle Delfino and revolves around that one unified theme. It’s like Mario just went on holiday and we all got to join him.

I absolutely love this concept and need to stop and let it sink in. Mario is one of those characters that people whine on about never changing his formula, never switching things up or doing things different. Sunshine was a very clear attempt to try something different than every other Mario game, both with the setting and the gameplay mechanics themselves, still completely unique again to Sunshine. People forget that everything was different- not bad different but just different- and as a result Sunshine was one of Mario’s least successful adventures. Why would anyone wonder why Nintendo hasn’t taken any real risks with him since?

You're darn right!

Speaking of that gameplay, this time around Mario is joined by a sentient hydropack named FLUDD that dispenses useful information while also acting as a spray nozzle, a hoverpack, a jetpack, and a propeller. Water and graffiti are at the center of everything as Mario is mistaken for someone who’s been painting the island in sludge, easily cleaned with a few squirts of water. The platforming is drastically different than most Mario games thanks to the hover feature of FLUDD (no longjump here), but that doesn’t mean the game is easy.

Oh man, the highlight of the game comes when you encounter your first secret level. Each stage had one or two, placed in a cave or open doorway or some such, and when Mario jumped inside he’d be teleported to a place that can only be described as Platforming Hell. FLUDD would be taken from you (eliminating your hover feature safety net) and you’d be expected to get to the end of some of the most difficult Mario stages in his long history. Each level would be just a series of elaborate challenges suspended over insta-death that’d push you to utilize Mario’s primal skills with triple jumps, flips, wall jumps, and careful timing. These challenges were just straight up hard, and they’re worth the price of admission all by themselves. Plus, a snazzy a cappella version of the Mario theme plays during these stages, and who doesn’t like that?

Still, the game isn’t without some drawbacks. For one, this is the only Mario game that contains a fully voice-acted script, meaning that Peach, Toadsworth, and sadly Bowser all have full speaking voices. Bowser Jr is cringe worthy, but when Bowser chimes in with what sounds like someone doing a mocking parody of the character, things go from uncomfortable to just plain painful. At least there isn’t a whole lot of this going on, so it’s by no means a deal breaker. I’m just saying Bowser sounded better in the Super Mario Bros Super Show.

Also frustrating are Blue Coins. In all other Mario games, Blue Coins are just coins that count for 5 coins or something similar, but here you must collect 10 to get a Shine Sprite (the Power Stars of this game). There are 120 Shines Sprites, just like Super Mario 64 had 120 Stars, but 24 of those Shines come from these Blue Coins, which are hidden everywhere in levels to the point of being ridiculously difficult to find. Some are hidden in obvious places, but then others pop out when you spray random objects, forcing you to spray everything like you have OCD. That was a bit much, but yet again, not enough to ruin the game for me.

Have you ever seen Bowser so sad? I think it's because you weren't playing the game.

Even though Sunshine gets a bad rap, a lot of Mario mainstays come from the little island including the Piantas, the Noki, Shadow Mario, Petey Piranha, Toadsworth, and even Bowser Jr. You can see the influence reaching to the Paper Mario series, the Mario Kart series, and even into some of the sports titles besides continuing trends set up here in the Galaxy games. Nintendo certainly hasn’t just abandoned the memory of Super Mario Sunshine, despite what many may believe.

Were I to come up with a hypothesis as to why Sunshine has such a bad reputation, I think it would come down to two reasons colliding head on. The first is that this was the Mario game on the GameCube, a system that only Nintendo hardcores seemed to love (such as myself, which is why it’s my favorite system). The second is that the game breaks away from so many Mario traditions that it’s a bit jarring at first. I mean, neither Koopas or Goombas even make an appearance, or a large handful of other classic Mario enemies, so longtime fans may have felt like this one didn’t technically “count” or something, especially owning to the cornerstone of the game being FLUDD and cleaning pollution from the game.

If the water backpack mechanic was broken then I could understand the frustration, but it was awesome, so what the heck was the problem?

I think it was just unfortunate timing as the game is gorgeous to look at, even by today’s standards, has a soundtrack that’s severely under-appreciated as well, and was bold enough to try something very new in a series that’s been and still is regarded as formulaic to a fault.

Don’t let this absolute masterpiece go to waste. You’ve got a perfectly serviceable GameCube built into the Wii, so head out and find Super Mario Sunshine at a used games store. It can’t possibly be too expensive. Go play and enjoy. Besides, are there any other Mario games where Mario wears shades and a Hawaiian shirt? I didn’t think so.

Doing more with less

Video game soundtracks today are so unimaginative. Making music exciting and dramatic is easy when you have a full orchestra at your disposal. Try making a musical impact when you only have a few “instruments” to work with…it’s a little bit harder yet all the more memorable. Little did I know back in the NES days that the game music of the time would become its own genre more than a decade later.

All of these 8-bit era tunes can now be filed under the music heading of “chip tunes” and you’ll find there is a huge following of composers making new 8-bit style music that rivals some of the best game music that I’ll highlight below. I admit that nostalgia runs high when I hear the 5-channel hum of an 8-bit song, but what I really love about the music is how such a limited set of sounds can make such a huge impact. The best game soundtracks are ones that capture the emotion of what’s happening in the game to the point that it works beyond the game. Think about it…most game music is there to set the tone of the level or action that is happening.

Boss battles got big, ominous music that made you feel the pressure and the importance. Driving games got fast and groovy music. Action games got a strong, grinding beat while fantasy titles about wizards and warriors got the appropriate mythical themes. Now take that music out of the game and drop them into your every day life and if you’re like me, you’ll find some of it fits there too. Under a deadline at work? There’s video game music for that. Blogging about some happy moments? There’s a track for that too…all of it in beeping and blooping 8-bit glory.

The birth of a genre

I’m not ashamed to say that I listen to old Nintendo music a lot…at work, at home, in the car…doesn’t matter. When the mood strikes, I’ll put on my headphones (to spare co-workers) and fire up my favorite tracks. Not only will it take me back to a simpler time when life’s only worry was video games, the music really helps me focus because it’s track after track of songs I love and know…and there’s no lyrics or words to distract me. Pure electric boogaloo.

It doesn’t matter what age or generation of games you are, some music has just become timeless and iconic…songs you can’t escape. The Super Mario Bros theme and Zelda themes being two of the big ones, but behind these monolithic 8-bit scores are many great tracks that you’ve maybe never heard or maybe just forgotten. So here in no particular order are some of my favorite 8-bit game soundtracks.

Mega Man 3

Let’s get the easy one out of the way. It’s hard to find poor music when you look back at the 8-bit generation of Mega Man games, and every gamer has their preference, but mine is Mega Man 3. Not only is this the Mega Man title I remember the most, it is probably the soundtrack I listen too most frequently today. To my best estimation, there is no less than 30 minutes of awesome music as you battle through every stage in the game. Everything starts with a simple little jingle of sorts and then races into non-stop melody that doesn’t disappoint.

Robocop

I admit that I have a soft spot in my heart for Robocop. As a huge fan of the movie growing up, it was only proper that I was a fan of the NES game (a game in which I would later hold a world record). Movie video games were less prominent then than they are now so when they came out you noticed. But what makes the Robocop game music standout, fanboy love notwithstanding, is that it seems a near-perfect port of the actual score. The theme is highlighted during the film’s montage of Robocop kicking ass, and all you do in the video game is punch and shoot, so it’s only proper that the music makes you feel like doing just that. The music really put you in the mindset that you were a part of the movie…at least as much as an 8-bit Robocop can.

Battletoads

Battletoads has two accolades in my book. One is that it is one of the hardest NES games you’ll ever player. Two is that the soundtrack is absolutely awesome. Every track makes you want to keep moving and that’s exactly what you need to do in the game. The highlight of the score comes in the third level when it goes from a slow grind into a high-octane beat while you’re riding the hover bikes. The music matched the moment and if you ever need some music to push you to the finish line, this is it.

Batman

The first Batman game on the NES is on my Games You Should Have Played list and not just because it’s a lot of fun to play, but because it looks good and it sounds good. Unlike Robocop, Batman doesn’t make use of any film music so it’s all original and that’s all for the better. Every track sounds like superhero music should…powerful and hopeful, but not without moments of despair. I’ll argue that there’s not a bad track to be found in the 17-minute soundtrack. Much like the game, this soundtrack is one of the 8-bit era’s most overlooked.

The Immortal

If superheroes and cyborgs aren’t your thing, try out music from The Immortal and you’ll be transportable to your local renaissance fair instantly…assuming the bards were jamming out on NES consoles and not nose flutes. To be honest, the only track that sticks out here is the title track. Beyond that a few tracks can be somewhat clunky with more thuds and beeps that melody, but a few of the tracks set a good dungeon-fighting mood.

Castlevania, Blades of Steel, Lifeforce…or just about any other Konami game

Out of all the 8-bit era games there are two houses that created most of the memorable music. One of them was Nintendo, the other was Konami. You know the Nintendo songs by heart but music Konami games put out was just as good if not better. I know the Blades of Steel music isn’t a popular ring tone like Mario sounds are, but you’ll be hard pressed to find other NES music with as much depth as games like Castlevania (and Simon’s Quest!), Gradius, Contra and one of my favorites, Rush N Attack. It’s hard to pick just game out of the bunch…of course, it doesn’t help that the music across these games was fairly consistent and shared a lot of traits.

Super Mario Bros 2

I know I said I wasn’t going to include any first-party Nintendo games but I just can’t say “No” to the Super Mario Bros. 2 music, it’s just too happy. You can cite to me the history of SMB2 and how it’s not really a Mario game and all that stuff…I know all that, and I don’t really care. Fact of the matter is, this is one of the most light-hearted and fun soundtracks to come out of the NES era. If the music from this game doesn’t put you in a good mood, you’re a robot.

Chiptunes are alive and well

Even though the 8-bit era of gaming is more than 25 years behind us, the music from the games of the day are alive and well, and they’ve been inspiring new artists ever since. Finding old game music online isn’t too hard but if you’re looking for some new chiptunes then head over to places like 8 Bit Peoples and the 8 Bit Collective. There you’ll find people that have composed original chiptune works using NESes, Game Boys, and everything in between. If you’re not sure where to start, I suggest looking up the artists RushJet1 and Virt. All good stuff there that will take you instantly back to 1988.

In this list I focused only on NES games but I’d like to throw in a serious nod to the TurboGrafx 16 console and all the great music it pumped out as well. The TurboGrafx 16 was an 8-bit machine that acted like a 16-bit machine and because of that it’s not really fair to compare it to the NES but technically they are of the same era. Look for Dungeon Explorer and have your mind blown.

Bright? Colorful? Mario? Sold!

Mario, while quite the versatile mascot, has always been best when platforming. Personally I’ve rather enjoyed his 3D games better as it takes longer to complete each, plus when you’re really moving, man does it feel good. Super Mario 3D Land takes cues from everywhere with a play style similar to Super Mario 64, an art style similar to Super Mario Galaxy or New Super Mario Bros, the return of the Tanooki Suit and Boom-Boom from Super Mario Bros 3, and the combined efforts of all previous Mario games to squeeze something in for good measure. In the simplest terms, this is the sum of all Mario games as viewed on a handheld device.

Thankfully, for a handheld everything is pretty smooth. My biggest complaint with a lot of Mario’s handheld adventures has been the size of the screen as it can restrict just how much of the area I can see while platforming. Super Mario Land made Mario smaller so that more level could appear on the screen whereas Super Mario Land 2 made Mario bigger and slower with less level on the screen at one time. Super Mario 3D Land has a good balance as I never felt Mario was too big or too small for the purposes of the game, plus everything just looked so nice that I didn’t have time to worry.

Oh that looks nice. The levels may not be huge, but they're certainly fun.

It’s amazing that this wasn’t a launch title, or rather it’s a shame it wasn’t as it would have moved quite a few more 3DS systems due to the graphics and the 3D effect alone. Finally, there is a 3DS game that must must MUST be played with the 3D slider on in order to fully enjoy the experience. For some reason you even have the option of making the game’s 3D even better, which is essentially just a button you leave turned on at all times. The use of 3D is great and makes every level pop out in such a way that you stop outwardly noticing by the end of the first level, though you never forget it’s there. That’s hard to do but that’s the true goal of 3D.

Everything comes down to the controls. Does Mario control well? This is where I’m starting to see some faults. I got used to Mario, but he’s starting to become a bit slower in his old age, at least a little bit. You have the standard 3D Mario platformer moves such as the long jump and the backflip, but you won’t need to make much use of either. Part of this is because Mario cannot grip edges, something that will take quite a bit of getting used to and result in more deaths than you’d prefer.

The real star here is the Tanooki Suit. It doesn’t play quite like it did in Super Mario Bros 3, but it’s still just as awesome. You can control your decent in the air, making it easier to time jumps and make precise leaps, specifically the final flagpole jump at the end of every stage (and it’s important to hit the top in every stage as the game keeps track that you’ve done so in every level). The Boomerang Flower is a welcome addition as it grants Mario the ability to retrieve coins and items from a distance, and the Fire Flower is a classic standby, but the Tanooki Suit will take preference over all others, which makes sense as the entire loose plot of the game revolves around Bowser stealing all the leaves off the Tanooki Suit Tree, or something like that, resulting in enemies having Tanooki tails. It’s remarkably charming to see Bullet Bills with tails or even Bowser himself sporting the ringed addition to his backside.

Now if we could just get Mario's cape back, everything would be gravy.

As far as difficulty goes, I can’t really say. I’m good at Mario games, there’s no getting around that, so when I tell you my progress you have to assume that’s from someone who knows what they’re doing. After two days playing at a relaxed pace, I had beaten the entire main game (Worlds 1-8), including obtaining all possible Star Coins (three per level) and hit the top of the flagpole in every stage. By the time I had beaten Bowser I had accrued over 200 lives.

Thing is, lives are dished out like candy, so you can easily die three times in a level but finish with a total of ten for the stage. I’m very thankful that lives do not top out at 99, instead continuing into the hundreds. Oddly, this does in fact make me care more about then since I want to have as many as possible, if only for bragging rights. There will be some later stages where beginner players will desperately need some extra lives, and the game offers a fairly generous help system of giving a random power-up after two deaths, a Super Tanooki Suit (Tanooki Suit plus Starman) after five deaths, and a P-Wing that instantly beats a level after ten deaths. I was never given the Super Tanooki Suit, but many players no doubt will want to make use of these simply implemented aides.

Thankfully, there isn't really anything big and scary enough to make you freak out, but this is afterall a Mario game.

One thing I will say about the game is that I’m extremely pleased with the finale against Bowser this time around. The last three 3D Mario games haven’t really captured the feel of a full-on fight with the Koopa King, so when I found myself with sweaty palms and a panicked stare attempting not to die at the last second, I was very pleased.

Also, the game may feel short at first, but upon completing the first eight worlds, eight new worlds appear as variations of the first eight. These Special Worlds as they’re called take elements from each level and tweak them a bit to increase the difficulty, and while I’ve still yet to find any unbearably difficult by the second Special World, I will certainly say that they’re harder, so I’m enjoying myself. Plus, Luigi gets unlocked and plays like he has in the Super Mario Galaxy games, so who can be unhappy about that?

Naturally, you'll get your retro throwbacks sprinkled in, so no complaining there.

And that’s really what you can take away from all this. I really am enjoying myself, despite some frustrating deaths at the hands of Mario’s slow momentum or the weird tricks the 3D can play on you. You just can’t get that mad at deaths when you have 200 lives I suppose. I fully recommend Super Mario 3D Land to anyone with a 3DS, and especially to anyone considering purchasing a 3DS any time soon. This is the software you were waiting for, so it’s time to finally adopt.

Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword:

This could very well be the best Zelda if all goes well.

The biggest title Nintendo had showcased and the one that I’m most excited for is Skyward Sword, the next Zelda title, currently scheduled for the Wii this November (specifically the 20th). I saw this a while back at E3 where it was touted as the first Zelda title to really be made from the ground up as a Wii exclusive, complete with Wii Motion Plus controls (for better or worse).

Getting to play with the demo a few times, I’m happy to report that while the new controls will take a lot of getting used to, the game itself is exhilarating. Probably the greatest addition to the controls is the most insignificant to many players, but when I discovered that Link can now sprint when the A button is held, I was ecstatic. The only real downside to the controls is that the learning curve will look far different than most Zelda games as, just like you used to do when you were a kid, half of the difficulty will be in learning to play the game. Actually, scratch that, that’s not a downside whatsoever. Excited!

The graphics also shine far more in person than I expected. I was hesitant when I first saw trailers, but now that I’ve seen the game in motion, everything fits wonderfully. It’s simply a gorgeous game, pure and simple. And while visually it shares a lot of colorfulness with titles such as The Wind Waker, the tone still has some rather adult themes to it. A boss encounter with the Big Bad of the game was surprisingly sexual in a very subtle way. My full recommendation goes out to Skyward Sword at this point.

Mario Kart 7:

After Mario Kart Wii, I'm ready for something a bit more my style. Hopefully.

Another title I’m now more than pleased with, Mario Kart 7 has a lot riding on its shoulders. Mario Kart DS was the first title I bought for the DS and remains my favorite Mario Kart game, but now that I’ve played a few races of Mario Kart 7, there’s a chance that grand spot may be usurped.

It all comes down to hang gliders. Adding hang gliders and submarines to the series sounded rather strange, but they integrate seamlessly. When going off of jumps and such, gliders will instantly pop out of your kart, allowing you to fly a short distance back to the track and possibly zoom ahead of the competition. The same is true for the submarine propeller which appears whenever underwater. Both just feel like they’ve always been part of the series, or at least always should have been. This one is a definite Day One purchase for me.

Super Mario 3D Land:

How can I ever say no to a new Mario platformer, honestly?

Sure, this is a strange name, but the gameplay is perfectly in line with the Mario franchise. The level I played reminded me of a nice combination between parts of Super Mario Galaxy 2 and parts of New Super Mario Bros Wii. I made sure I picked a demo stage that featured the Tanooki Suit, and thankfully it’s a welcome return, even if it is sans full-flight. Just being able to flick the tail and lengthen your jumps is a great homecoming.

I did notice that the game felt incredibly slow, as in Mario’s running speed. He just never feels like he’s in a great hurry to get anywhere, evedespite there being a stage timer again. Even so, the platforming works great and the 3D is subtle enough that it works, making for another Day One purchase on my end.

Kirby’s Return to Dreamland (full preview via The Escapist):

Easy isn't always a bad thing.

I didn’t really expect Kirby’s Return to Dreamland to appear at PAX, but thankfully it was off in its own little area, just waiting to be tried out by anyone in reach. Myself, my wife, and Kyle and his soon-to-be wife all hopped into a game and started playing. Immediately things feel smooth and like a real return to Dreamland, as Kirby has his inhale/copy ability back at long last. Also, no artistic gimmick, for better or worse. Just straight Kirby action like we grew up with all those years ago.

However, the twist here is the four-player simultaneous play, much like New Super Mario Bros Wii. Except here since everyone is capable of infinite flight, you don’t really have the risk of causing other players to simply fall to their death. Unfortunately, with four players the game also becomes faceroll easy. We were able to just rush through the stage mashing the attack button as fast as we pleased and nothing stood in our way, though it was only the first level, so who knows how hard the rest of the game will actually be.

Fortune Street (full preview via Destructoid):

There's not a bit about this image I don't fully endorse.

The biggest surprise from Nintendo’s playable demos was Fortune Street, a title that’s apparently number 7 in a long line of games native to Japan. Square Enix and Nintendo are taking the chance and giving the US a taste of the series, which feels like a perfect mixture of Mario, Dragon Quest, and Monopoly. Most people walking by thought it was a new Mario Party title, actually getting kind of mad for no good reason, but it certainly isn’t a Mario Party game as there are no minigames to speak of.

Instead, the goal is to go around elaborate game boards and collect properties, then improve them in order to increase your assets and overall money, ultimately gaining enough to be determined the winner of the match. It’s incredibly simple despite the finer points (which are more complex, such as dealing with the stock market and making deals with players), and oddly enough my wife and I found ourselves addicted to the game’s charm. Somehow it tapped right into a nerve that made both of us want to dump money into properties we owned on the chance that the other would randomly land on that space and give up a ton of cash. Oh that’s sweet when it happens.

I really hope Fortune Street does well here in the US. It’s not going to be a big seller, partly because it’s just a strange game and partly because I doubt anyone’s heard about it (I’m a devoted Nintendo fan and I didn’t know it existed until I saw it with my very own eyes). Still, I wish it the best and want a copy for Christmas.

And that’s everything I sampled personally at Nintendo’s booths. I didn’t get to spend much time with Star Fox 64 3D (though it’s basically Star Fox 64 with better graphics), and Kid Icarus: Uprising got lost in the hustle and bustle of the show floor, so I can’t really comment much on either of those, nor can I say anything about Kirby Mass Attack on the DS other than they were giving out cotton candy when you played the title, so the line was too long to bother with.

The bottom line for Nintendo is that this upcoming holiday season is going to be great. I’ve still got my Wii primed and ready for the Christmas titles and my 3DS is trained up and expecting a glut of new titles every month, so I am about as happy as one can really be. But these are just my interests. What about you? What are you looking forward to from Nintendo? Or what are you disappointed or skeptical about? Leave a comment and let me know. In the meantime, I need to go freeze myself in a glacier until November. See you in a few months!

Have I mentioned yet that there is a 3D remake of Ocarina of time on the 3DS? I probably haven't yet, have I?

I got my 3DS just about a week ago today from Best Buy. I was aware that the price was ready to drop from $250 to $170, but I also knew that if I got it now I’d get 20 free games, something I can’t easily turn my back on. Still, I’m not stupid, so I checked with multiple employees and got them to confirm to me that I’d be able to actually get the difference refunded to me as long as the price drop happened within 30 days (it happens on Friday). With that in hand, I headed over to Costco to snag Ocarina of Time 3D. Those without a Costco membership or a friend who has one, you are definitely missing out as instead of $40 I paid less than $35.

At this point in time I’ve had a chance to play around with all the features of the 3DS except for actually playing Ocarina of Time. I know I’ll be sitting for a while and so I haven’t had the chance to devote the proper amount of time just yet. Despite that, I’ve messed with the Augmented Reality cards, Netflix, Pokedex 3D, the Mii Creator, Nintendo Video, and the shopping center feature. All of that compiles together to give me a pretty good idea where things are headed.

First, let’s talk about the 3D functionality of the system. I am notorious for getting motion sickness without much provocation whatsoever. I can get sick sitting in a parked car. Just last week I started playing Bioshock 2 and had to stop after three minutes because my head was spinning. There’s just no telling with me. Despite hearing the complaints about the 3DS’ 3D function giving people headaches, I haven’t had any problems at all. I’d go so far as to say that I’m genuinely enjoying the feature, and I didn’t expect to like it. It’s comfortable for me and I really like the depth-of-field that it’s adding to certain aspects.

And in the features included in the hardware, they’re really pushing this, too. Just the slightest hint of a raised menu header goes a long way to make me, unexpectedly, smile just a bit. The place to really see how far the 3D can be taken is in the Nintendo Video section, an extremely puzzling application that makes some sense, but yet no sense at all. The Nintendo Video channel is a constantly rotating selection of 4 videos that take advantage of the 3D the system can generate. The big star is the Ok-Go music video, which goes a long way to demonstrate how cool a 3D device can be. But partnered with this is a video from College Humor about a guy who has adventures in Pizzaland or something, a trailer for The Smurfs, and a really short explanation of what Nintendo Video is supposed to be, i.e. that it will remove old videos and put in new ones at random times. It seems that one of these slots will always be for a 3D movie trailer, something I couldn’t care less about, and the video about the pizza guy was cute but showed most definitely that live-action scenes look strange in 3D.

Pizzas and robots? Okay, I can get behind that.

This sort of crops up again with the 3D camera. The system has two cameras on the back that let it take pictures in 3D, and while the 3D is nifty to see, the camera itself is pretty low quality. The only way to get excellent results is to be standing in a desert at noon, because I can have every light on in my house in the middle of the day and the image still looks, frankly, like crap. Even so, I got my wife to swoon just a bit when we managed to get a picture of our dog since it does look cool to see him popping out of the screen a bit. This is all a novelty, like the Game Boy Camera (including stickers and junk to clutter photos with), but if I could see the enjoyment of the Game Boy Camera all those years ago, I can see the enjoyment here, now.

Speaking of novelty, the AR Cards are something that’s worth looking at in terms of where the future could be going. Setting down these special cards will make little things pop out of them when viewed through the 3DS, such as target boxes or a dragon or things like that. After playing with it a few times, I was finding both the fun and the severe limitations of the hardware. For example, fighting a dragon that’s supposedly popping out of your table is something that’s really cool, but in order to achieve this effect you have to keep the 3DS close enough to the card and keep the lighting conditions good enough that it doesn’t stop suddenly and need to recalibrate. This wouldn’t be so hard if you didn’t need to physically move around while pointing the 3DS at the card, and of course moving the 3DS out of that slim window where the 3D works perfectly just sort of lessens the point.

This is simple now, but just imagine what it could be in the near-future.

All that aside, I can see where Augmented Reality can go and I like it. Implementing more and better games into the real world is cool and is the next step toward virtual reality, something we’ve been crying out to become real for over 30 years now. How this can be implemented into games is something I’m not clever enough to know, but I have confidence that some indie developers will come up with some really creative games to show us how best it can be used.

Creating a Mii is still as simple as it was on the Wii by the way, except now you don’t have to mess around with the mostly imprecise Wiimote, instead navigating with the stylus. I want to note there that so far the touch screen has been bugging me pretty badly as I don’t really like pulling out the stylus all the time and just want to quickly tap with my thumbnail or forefinger. What makes me really ticked is that most of the time this doesn’t work, so I have to keep tapping progressively harder until it decides I’ve pounded sufficiently hard enough before responding the way I want it to. Calibrating the touch screen seemed to lessen the instances of this, but it still happens on occasion, at least when going through menus. Then again, I may just be holding back because I’m afraid to damage my system.

Anyway, the Mii Creator is actually a bit better than the Wii version since there are a bunch of new pieces to play with. Granted, it’s still lacking clothing options like the Xbox 360 dashboard offers for your avatars, but the new facial expressions and head shapes are a good addition. You can take a picture of yourself with the inward-facing camera and let the 3DS try and make a Mii for you, but those usually need some reworking. As of right now I haven’t used the Street Pass feature, so my Miis are just sitting around doing nothing until further notice.

This...this is not me by the way. It still demonstrates the simplicity of the system, but it's not like it screwed up and made that face for me. It's not that loose with interpretations.

I’m pretty excited for more applications to appear though. Having Netflix on the 3DS is great for me because I have the option to watch TV shows and movies while snuggled up in bed next to a sleeping wife without fear of waking her up due to noise. This app is exactly just Netflix on a handheld, so there’s not much to say here other than I’m happy to have this.

And since I’m such a stupid Pokemon fan, I had to have the 3D Pokedex application as well. It’s a strange piece of software as it’s really just a Pokedex that happens to display 3D Pokemon. I’m a bit sad it only includes the 150 or so Pokemon from Black & White versions, but with luck it will update to include all of them. What keeps me most addicted to it is the fact that you don’t start out with all the Pokemon. You start with 16 and get new ones periodically throughout the day. I just got Timburr by the way. It’s something small, but it keeps me engaged and returning to my 3DS to see what the new update will be.

That's right, now Snivy be big pimpin'...in 3D!

Finally, we come to the biggest letdown of the console: The shopping channel. The best way to describe it is “claustrophobic.” I heard from a few places that the shopping interface was pretty confusing, but complaints like that usually don’t hold true for me as I’m tenacious about understanding things and play with other features until I’m satisfied. When I got there though, man was that fear confirmed. The Wii’s shopping channel worked just fine for me with games split into the Virtual Console side and Wiiware titles, then the option to just search alphabetically from there, which is what I usually took. On the 3Ds the categories are extremely random and feel sort of dumb, to be blunt. “Sequels Baby!” is just embarrassing. And having a category just titled “Mario” is almost insulting, especially since there’s not a lot to offer yet that features Mario. And there’s no master alphabetical list!

This shames all of us, even me.

Even worse, the price of some of the games is just way too high. I want Shantae, but I don’t want to pay $12 for it. Donkey Kong on the Game Boy for $4? Not bad. And Link’s Awakening DX for $8? I suppose I can live with that. The problem is that the console needs people to first be able to afford the downloadables, and then secondly be easy to navigate.

The up side to this is that both of those requests are easily doable. Nintendo is willing to make tough business decisions, such as lowering the system’s price, so if they get enough feedback regarding the 3DS as having a poor interface and trying to sell games at too high a price, they’re in a position to fix both with a simple software update. I’m just curious how long it will take before that happens.

At this exact second, this moment frozen in time, I am happy I have a 3DS. I’m excited for the new games coming out even as early as next month. I’m eager to start downloading some older titles when I get the chance. I can live with a low battery life as I play most of my games sitting near an outlet anyway and I also have no problem buying an extended battery pack from another company (since they apparently work really well). I’m looking forward to how much enjoyment I’ll get from my 3DS, lovingly named Lulabell, even if the console doesn’t make it very far overall.

Maybe I'm so happy because I know this is just right around the corner.

But what about you guys? Who out there has a 3DS right now? What are some of your impressions? Leave a comment and let me know! I just might not be getting back to you so soon since I have an Ocarina of Time to go fetch.

10. Guitar Hero:

This was the biggest thing at the time it came out. Now where is it?

The idea of a video game hinging completely on a peripheral was nothing new. Dance Dance Revolution had made a huge name for itself as one specific music-based genre, and while it had imitators of its own, nothing compared to the amount of imitation that Guitar Hero would spawn from the simple concept of playing music on fake musical instruments. Five buttons and a strum toggle were all the buttons found on the first Guitar Hero controller, making it incredibly simple and accessible. But while Dance Dance Revolution still has its niche carved out, Guitar Hero carved out an entire chunk of the video game market, allowing Rock Band to sneak in with it, and then imploded the genre entirely within a few short years. It’s hard to think that just a few years ago Guitar Hero was one of the biggest franchises on the market but is now entirely absent from any future lineups.

9. Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare:

Suddenly the military became cool again.

Perks and XP and online name-calling. These things all existed prior to Modern Warfare, but not all at the same time in a well-known entity the way Call of Duty 4 made them common-place in just about every multiplayer mode in a First-Person Shooter released these days. Beyond simply the multiplayer framework, the narrative framework- gritty “realism” painted with browns and grays and hoorahs- has permeated further than I’d prefer to acknowledge. These days every new FPS that has a war-type setting is required to call itself “the answer to Call of Duty,” a claim that rarely has any sort of merit. When other games are going out of their way to exist purely as a reason to attempt to outdo you, then it sort of places you on a list like this.

8. Super Mario 64:

Well well, a giant bomb lives atop this mountain. How quaint.

People take Mario for granted. They really do and it’s a shame. While a new Mario game pops up like clockwork every new console cycle, sometimes more than once if we’re lucky, it was Super Mario 64 that changed things the most. Before Super Mario 64, the architecture wasn’t in place to see how a 3D platformer was built. The ideas were there, but it took Mario to place the bar high up and say, “Alright, clear this.” Even Mario games themselves are subject to the old question, “So, is it better than Super Mario 64?” Open areas to explore and secrets to find were fleshed out here for everyone to ogle over and demand more, something that Rare would do over and over and over again, each time making a variation of Super Mario 64. Simply, Mario just showed that he knew how to transition into 3D better than any previous franchise, something that his chief rival, Sonic, is still struggling to get right.

7. Final Fantasy VII:

How often did you hear Latin chanting in games before this?

A lot of RPGs have made us laugh and made us cry, but few have started something in motion that can never be undone: Oversappy melodrama. Final Fantasy VII burst onto the PS1 with graphics that amazed and a story that overwhelmed gamers everywhere, but in its earnest attempt at creating a connection to the player, something happened that allowed the genre to slowly spiral out of control into a never-ending battle against goofy dialogue, uncanny graphics, and an over-abundance of drama played up for the sake of drama. Don’t get me wrong, Final Fantasy VII is a good game in its own right. Unfortunately it is also the grandfather for every game or even character in a game that can be summed up with dark eye shadow and the phrase “Whyyyyyyyyy?! “

6. God of War:

Such a tragedy, literally.

Hacking and slashing are now commonplace in video games, but the Hack n’ Slash genre is essentially just the descendant of another mostly retired genre called the Beat ‘em Up. The concepts are the same with typically one guy running through a gauntlet of the same enemies over and over, literally just fist-fodder, until a boss is conquered and you are declared a Bad Dude. The main difference is blood, and God of War decided to set the tone for exactly how relentless a manly 3D Hack n’ Slash needed to be, partly through an upgradeable attack combo system and partly through the bane of many gamers’ existence: Quick Time Events. All too often reviewers utter the statement “Like God of War but…” when reviewing new games, something that solidifies my thoughts on God of War setting a standard that all games of its ilk are judged upon.

5. Grand Theft Auto III:

A cathartic release for so many gamers, but an unsatisfying release in the long run.

One aspect that most childhoods consist of is the ability to play with toys in any environment and do whatever you want with them. Total freedom. Video games have been trying to replicate this concept for ages, but no game succeeded in pushing us closer to that goal in one hearty jump than Grand Theft Auto III. It effectively created the sandbox style of gameplay, i.e. a world completely open for you to screw around in. You see a car you’d like? Take it and have fun. Want to jump your car off bridges? Go for it. Want to go on crazy killing sprees? Ye-yeah, okay, you can do that as well. The only regret is that the medium of the sandbox game began with a title hinged entirely on theft, drugs, and murder. And even though we’ve come a long way since GTAIII’s release, the most popular titles in the sandbox genre tend to be GTA games and games similar to GTA.

4. Street Fighter II:

The introduction to the realization that no matter how hard you try, you'll never be as good as everyone else.

Video games are serious business. At this point in time you can go out and train every week to hone your skills for a chance to compete head-to-head against other skilled opponents in all sorts of fighting games. But before Street Fighter II, there really wasn’t a game suited for competition of that nature. It didn’t invent the fighter, but it did tap into the core of what a fighter needs- balanced mechanics- and go nuts with the concept. Suddenly every character, used correctly, could prove victorious. Strategy was involved and mastery of controls was needed. The limitations of the buttons and joystick could no longer be blamed for a missed punch or a failed special move, leaving only yourself at fault for a painful defeat at the hands of someone better than you. I don’t even want to try listing the clones that Street Fighter II spawned, but I don’t mind giving props where props is due.

3. Halo: Combat Evolved:

Wonder why all sapce armor looks like this now...?

I just don’t like the Halo games, despite how hard I’ve tried. I don’t believe that they’re awful games, but I could never get into them. Regardless of my personal feelings though, Halo: Combat Evolved really did take the FPS genre and standardized a handful of mechanics that are still routine today such as the two-gun carry limit, regenerating health, and online multiplayer for an FPS on a console. More than anything, that’s what Halo demonstrated: That a First-Person Shooter could not only work on a console but work well. Unfortunately, it also meant we’d have to suffer through wave after wave of space marine games where the main characters are faceless one-man-armies who are too gruff to even care about the things going on around them. Even so, Halo is the reason the Xbox is alive today. Without it, we wouldn’t be mentioning Microsoft among the gaming companies these days because they wouldn’t even have a gaming division anymore. Man, talk about huge industry-shifting changes.

2. World of Warcraft:

If you had the choice, would you decide to live in the real world?

Gaming addition has become worse and worse, but it’s not because people are any weaker. Rather, it’s because games are just getting better and better to the point that a handful of players begin to prefer their lives as a Night Elf over that of a delivery guy. World of Warcraft wasn’t the first MMORPG to find success by far, but the level of success it has reached is unfathomable. It dominates its genre and refuses to share. Entire development companies go under just attempting to create a game to share the Internet with WoW. What World of Warcraft has done is create a model for a self-perpetuating game, one than never ends due to constant additions to the world. Instead of having to create a new installment of the series every few years, Blizzard is able to just release another expansion pack to WoW, snagging more and more users every year. It’s unreal what WoW has accomplished, but it’s certain that few other games have changed everything we knew about the medium like World of Warcraft.

1. Super Mario Bros.:

Hail to the king.

Except for maybe the granddaddy of all game-changers. The video game industry was in a freefall during the early 1980’s thanks to an over saturated marketplace full of poorly-made titles. The whole “home console experiment” thing that Atari had got going was winding down and it seemed that video games were doomed to become a fad that had already died out. But then came the Nintendo Entertainment System and Super Mario Bros. Everything changed at that point as players experienced precise controls, clever level design, hidden paths and secrets, power-ups, collectibles, iconic music, and a princess that was forever in another castle until she just had another quest for you to conquer. As soon as Mario demonstrated what a video game was meant to play like, developers rushed to replicate the formula with such notable conventions as the aforementioned power-up system, a coin-like item that when collected to a certain number rewards with more lives, and the simple “platformers go right” rule that wouldn’t be broken until Super Mario Bros 3 changed the rules yet again. No game deserves more respect for changing everything like the squat little plumber in red, and that’s why he tops my list.

So there you have it, Ten Games That Changed Everything. Did I leave off any games you feel should be on here? Leave a comment and let me know since I’m sure I didn’t cover every single game out there worth mentioning. Let your voice be heard and if you’re lucky, maybe you’ll succeed in changing my mind as well.

Want more video game Top Ten Lists? Then check these out:

-Top 5 Franchises That Should Get a LEGO Spinoff

-5 Aspects of Pokemon That Make No Sense

-Five Games I’d Like To See On The 3DS Without 3D

My heart remains with the NES even after 20 years.

Just when my gaming reached its darkest time

When the Wii was announced I was excited about gaming again. After going hardcore with the NES, the PC and the Playstations over a 15 year period, I was burned out. I wanted something new. The Wii gave me an excuse to get excited about gaming again. I was all about the “get up and play” experience that the Wii promised. I played the demos in the stores and in early 2006 a Wii was mine.

For once I was a part of the cool crowd. The Wii was the first console I had purchased at launch. I usually waited until the first price drop to buy a new console but I was itching to enjoy games again so I got up early one morning and found a lonely Wii at Meijer. From that day on for the next nine months I was a Wii addict. I hit more tennis balls and bowled more strikes than I care to remember. I downloaded a few WiiWare games that were fun but after 14 months or so the Wii had fallen flat in my house, but why?

Unless you like Mario, you’re out of luck

There was certainly no shortage of Wii games. Regardless what you consider a “good” game, there was a large collection of titles, but it just so happens that 75% of those titles were first-party Nintendo titles like Mario, Zelda and Metroid, and I quickly discovered that…well…I just don’t like Nintendo games. Prior to the Wii, the last Mario game I played was Super Mario Bros 3. I hadn’t played any Zelda titles since 1987 and I never got into Metroid. I was not a fan of the core Nintendo franchises and in the case of the Wii, that’s about all there was to play if you wanted any quality.

The Wii had all the ingredients to be great but it just fell couldn’t deliver.

Since the last Nintendo I had prior the Wii was the NES, I was expecting a lot of good, third-party games. Given that the Wii had some cool controls and more features than any previous Nintendo console, why shouldn’t it be host to a ton of great games? Even with the few games I enjoyed, the whole Wii experience did tell me once and for all what games I really liked playing, and they weren’t Nintendo games. The only hope the Wii then had was the WiiWare and Virtual Console. However, thanks to emulators, I could play any old console game for free.. Furhtermore, the WiiWare titles didn’t have demos and I do my best not to buy a game sight un-played, even for $10. After the novelty wore off, there wasn’t much redeeming value in the Wii.

I’m just not a Nintendo kid anymore

After three years of disappointment from the Wii, I got an Xbox 360 and it did what I thought the Wii should have done; deliver great arcade gaming experiences. The Wii’s failure told me indefinitely that I am an arcade gamer. I wanted short bursts of intense gaming action, and unless I wanted Mario, Zelda or a mini-game extravaganza, the Wii was not going give me that experience. Believe me, I tried to make the Wii work for me. I wanted to see my investment succeed but no matter how hard I tried, it just didn’t satisfy.

For better or for worse, the Wii exposed me for the gamer I was in light of the gamer I thought I was or the gamer I wanted to be. In the end, if that’s all the Wii has given me then I guess I should be thankful. I thought the Wii was going to be a different Nintendo, but I should have known better. Shame on me. The Wii may have broken sales records and is responsible for bringing a new audience to gaming, but this is one gamer that the Wii lost and Nintendo will probably never regain. If it’s all the same to you, I’ll just stick with my NES and keep trying to finish Battletoads.

Want more thoughtful introspections on video games? Check these articles out:

-I Get Your Genre: First-Person Shooters

-Let’s Think Deep: The Mind of a Fanboy

-5 Arcade Cabinets I’d Like to Own

You're getting your spoiler warning right now with an image you already knew.

Before we begin though, you should know that each and every one of these is a spoiler for its respective game. And not just a little spoiler, I’m talking big spoilers. If you don’t want some of these ruined, you might want to look elsewhere this Valentine’s Day. I assure you that there are plenty of other great sites to appease your lonely needs. Okay, shall we begin?

7. Cloud and Aeris (Final Fantasy 7)

Just because it made no damned sense doesn't mean it wasn't tragic.

Whenever we have to talk about tragedy in video games, little Ms. Flowergirl is sort of required to make an appearance, lest I get chastised by her swarms of loyal followers. We all know the story by now: Cloud meets Aeris early in the game, the two seem to share some romantic feelings here and there, but by the end of the first disc she has a seven-foot katana sticking through her back and an emo dude dancing away as he laughs, leaving Cloud to mourn Aeris’ death for years afterward, even bleeding into Advent Children, the sequel movie that takes place after the game. My only reservation with this pair is that depending on the way you play, you can lean Cloud more in favor of Tifa, his childhood best friend (as I did), making Aeris’ death and Cloud’s remorse mean significantly less in the long run. Rather the tragedy is that no one finds love in the end, period. Some bittersweet head nods, but no true romance.

6. Blumiere and Timpani (Super Paper Mario)

Who says a Mario game can't find some depth in story telling?

Paper Mario is a series that has a lot more going on than people realize at a first glance. Super Paper Mario in particular has a lot of aspects that hit on a deeper emotional level than anyone would expect for a Mario game, especially a Mario game that openly mocks itself. In this installment, multiple dimensions are in danger of getting erased as a man named Count Bleck seeks to wipe everything out after he lost his true love. Mario stops him in time with the help of a little butterfly named Tippi, only to realize that Tippi is really Timpani, the woman Bleck thought was dead (though now she’s a butterfly). Blumiere (Count Bleck) sees the error of his ways right before getting betrayed by one of his henchmen. At the Eleventh Hour, Bleck realizes the only way to stop all the worlds from facing destruction is to essentially sacrifice a pair of soul mates, of which the only two available are he and Tippi. They confess their undying love for each other at a wedding alter and then pretty much fade from existence. Where they are is never explained, but they aren’t returning. It’s like if Romeo and Juliet were played out with video game characters. And Mario was Benvolio or something.

5. Marle and Crono (Chrono Trigger)

Probably one of the most touching single shots ever to grace the SNES.

Possibly one of the best games to ever grace the Super Nintendo, Chrono Trigger was a title with excellent characters and a fantastic story, albeit a confusing one if you weren’t paying attention. As the love story goes, Crono, a young swordsman, goes to the Millennial Fair in his hometown and meets a girl named Marle, whom he later learns is the princess of the kingdom. Through a series of strange events, Marle is transported back in time where she accidentally causes herself to cease to exist, but is returned thanks to Crono’s intervention. They have a quiet romance (literally, Crono never speaks throughout the game) but it’s sort of implied that they’ll get married eventually. All they have to do is defeat Lavos, a being of insane destruction. In an early encounter with the beast, Crono sacrifices himself to save everyone, getting shredded into nothing by Lavos’ People Shredding Beam. Through an odd quest of item grabbing, including the actual Chrono Trigger, Crono can be restored, a scene that’s extra touching as Marle holds him and cries. But without much effort, you can completely forgo the side quest needed to save him and just go ahead and kill Lavos instead, leaving Crono dead at the end of the game and Marle all alone. And don’t give me any lip about this one not counting. If you play Chrono Cross it sort of implies that despite saving all of time from Lavos, Crono, Marle, and all their friends are killed anyway by the next big threat. That’s pretty tragic in my book.

4. Locke and Rachel / Cyan’s Life (Final Fantasy 6)

They don't even have full faces and I cry!

One of the first instances a game’s love story really struck a cord with me was Final Fantasy 6 (FFIII for the SNES). I hadn’t really played a game quite like it before, meaning the full effect hit me as the game intended. One of my instant favorite characters, the treasure hunter Locke, has a backstory involving a relationship with a girl named Rachel. You don’t really learn the circumstances as to what happened to her for a bit, though the main details are that while exploring with Locke, she falls off a rickety bridge saving him and loses her memory, disowning him since she doesn’t know who he is, then regains her memory moments before getting killed during a raid by the Empire. Locke has an herbologist create a mixture of herbs that preserve her body and place her in suspended animation (or some version of it) in hopes that some day he’ll find a way to save her. This becomes his character’s driving motivation, extended to the other female characters (“I won’t lose you, too”), though when he does finally find something that may be able to help her, it can’t. She wakes up briefly to say goodbye and tells him to move on with his life, allowing him to have a somewhat implied relationship with Celes.

This is sad and all, but Cyan, also from FF6, has a story just as sad, if not more so. He’s introduced as a noble knight from the kingdom of Doma. Kefka, the ultimate villain, poisons the town and kills everyone except for Cyan, meaning Cyan is forced to rush to his wife and child, only to find them dead. Not long after this he witnesses them board the train to the afterlife, unable to follow them. If that doesn’t make you want to break into tears, after the world shatters and you lose track of most of the characters, you discover Cyan living in a cave near a town sending letters to a woman named Lola in the guise of her dead boyfriend, a fact she’s unaware of. The only reason he’s sending letters to her is because he takes pity upon her. So yeah, tough call here. One of these two FF6-related love stories deserves to be on this list, so I’m not deciding and putting both up. You can decide in the comments which love story is more tragic, but in the meantime I’m moving on to number 3.

3. Commander Shepard and Thane (Mass Effect 2)

I'm hoping there's a deus ex machina in Mass Effect 3 that cures him.

I have a very special place in my heart for the characters of Mass Effect, mostly because I’ve played it from two completely separate angles: once as a peaceful male soldier and once as a vicious female vanguard. I greatly preferred playing as the female Shepard, mostly due to Jennifer Hale’s voicework. I even managed to play through the story in such a way as to make things extra tragic for everyone. During the first Mass Effect, you have the option of wooing Kaidan, a male tech specialist, or Liara, a female Asari scientist. I decided to pursue the romance with Kaidan, but in one of the end missions of the game you have to decide which teammate dies between Kaidan and a female solider named Ashley. I had been using Ashley throughout the game, so Kaidan didn’t come back with me, leaving Shepard alone for the romance sequence. This all makes the romance in Mass Effect 2 more potent as the options of mates increase to three with my choice going to Thane, a Drell assassin with a terminal illness related to his lungs. Their romance is odd, but the narrative I’d created, somewhat by accident, made things feel planned that way. My female Shepard had more character motivation to find someone to relate to as she’d been a real hardass to everyone. To think that her first romance resulted in a death and her very next romance has an extremely finite amount of time attached to it, well that just seems to define tragic in my eyes.

2. Wander and Mono (Shadow of the Colossus)

Evrything that Team Ico makes is just chilling, but excellent.

Those who haven’t played Shadow of the Colossus, it’s okay, I don’t think any less of you. The game prided itself on consisting entirely of boss battles with very little story or downtime in between everything. Unfortunately it was called a “Zelda-killer,” meaning it was doomed to undersell out of principle alone. None of that matters though as the entire narrative consists of the main character, Wander, laying a clearly dead girl named Mono down on a pedestal in a strange temple. His goal is to slay all sixteen Colossi in order to resurrect her, though with each he kills a part of him dies, too, until by the end he’s a walking shell of a man before being turned into a Colossus himself and then getting somewhat obliterated. Mono awakens, alive and well, but Wander-as-we-knew-him is completely gone, leaving only a strange baby for Mono to care for. Wander essentially traded his life for Mono’s, an act as loving as it is tragic.

1. Link and Every Girl He Meets (Ocarina of Time)

I always cry at this. Does that make me weak? Trick question, it makes me a man.

Yes, I found a way to slip Ocarina of Time into yet another article. I’m very good at that, specially when it fits so easily. Before you accuse me of fudging the rules here, I want to point out how perfectly Link’s story fits with the gist of my list here. First, Link is shown as best friends to a Kokiri girl named Saria, then as a possible love interest with Princess Zelda, and finally “engaged” to Princess Ruto of the Zora. But wait; there are three more ladies to add to this mix! Malon of Lon-Lon Ranch, Nabooru of the Gerudo Tribe, and Navi the little fairy assistant. The story separates Link from Saria by turning her into the Sage of Forest, then does the same to Princess Ruto when she becomes the Sage of Water. If you listen to some Gossip Stones in the game, they tell you that Malon wishes for a knight to take her away, leading many to speculate that she’s referring to Link. Nabooru promises Link “something” for retrieving the Silver Gauntlets, though we never know what that something ever is, however, she says before turning into the Sage of

Spirit that she would have kept her promise if she knew what a handsome man Link would become. At the end of the game no one gets Link and Link gets no one because in one timeline he doesn’t exist and in the other he never really met any of them, instead leaving Hyrule on Epona in search of Navi, who in turn had left Link for seemingly no real reason.

Furthermore, Link could never have been with Saria anyway due to her remaining essentially a child forever, Ruto for being a fish-person, and Navi for being a fairy. And of course he could never be with Zelda because Link never ends up with Zelda at the end of a Legend of Zelda title. You’ll encounter at least one scene for each of these characters in which they convey sadness at the impossibility of a romance with Link, or vice versa when he realizes he can’t be with them, either. None of this takes into account the player’s sadness when they learn their preferred girl (whomever that may be) isn’t ending up with Link. All this leads up to the final scene with Link facing Zelda while the camera freezes and goes to grayscale, a scene that sadly shows how no one is really happy with any conclusion as Link will be leaving them all. That wins the prize for Most Tragic Love Story in my book.

Link, there shall be no happiness in your future.

So three you have it, seven instances where the love story of a video game brought a twang of sorrow to my face and a tear to my eye. But these are just my examples. Do you have some better ones? What love stories from video games make you cry or hit you in ways you didn’t expect? Leave a comment and let me know. In the meantime, I’m going to go ensure that Mario gets more cake before I start crying again.

Want more video game lists? Check these out:

-Top 5 Franchises That should Get An SSB Spinoff

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-Top 10 Best Pokemon Ever

It certainly looks colorful enough. Is that all it takes to make a decent sports title?

I’ve talked about Mario’s outings via the sports medium before, touching on how golf and tennis have treated him great, soccer has been pretty cool, and baseball isn’t really his thing. Mario Sports Mix delivers not one but four sports at once, blowing away any dedicated sports titles in pure number but failing next to Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games (Mario Sports Mix is at least better than those two). In the package are volleyball, hockey, basketball, and dodgeball. Among them there are no real standouts for best sport since they’re all essentially the same game strategy-wise, i.e. keep mashing “shoot” and eventually you’ll score a point or two.

You may remember that Squeenix made a Mario sports title once before with the DS’ Mario Hoops 3-on-3. You may also remember that said title was okay at best. Squeenix used that DS game as the center of Mario Sports Mix, meaning they play exactly the same with three characters playing against three other characters. Final Fantasy characters are mixed in here and there, like a Moogle, a Black Mage, and a White Mage, but it’s something I can’t really care about. Those are Squeenix’s safe characters since they’re just a default image. Iconic, yes, but so are Toads and Koopas. People realize the Black and White Mages are the Toads and Koopas of Square-Enix, right? Despite this being a Mario game made by Square-Enix, characters from Super Mario RPG don’t make an appearance, so no Geno, no Mallow, no Axem Rangers, and to that I say, what a waste.

You also aren't really finding any stand-out choices from Mario's roster of characters, either.

Each character plays about the same with some being faster and some being stronger, but once you factor in special moves, everything sort of becomes a wash. Everyone’s animated well and they all sound like you’d expect, but it’s all things we’ve seen and heard before. These are flat characters in terms of personality, so it’s important to do something to lift them up from non-dimensional to interesting, and Square-Enix didn’t perform that duty here.

Mostly, if thus far your feelings are “This sounds like a game I’d want no interest in,” the reason is probably because your age is in the double digits or you’ve been playing games since you came out of your mother’s womb. Mario Sports Mix is made exclusively for the younger audience with controls that have zero depth (albeit the controls work for what they need to), so if you’ve come to enjoy games with substance, this is one instance where you won’t find any.

No fist-fights in hockey? Even Blades of Steel had that critcal gameplay element down right.

Were Squeenix to title it Mario Sports Party Mix, it’d be a little more accurate. This is a game meant to be played with a group of at least two other players, mostly because the computer AI is pitifully brain-dead when on your team, whereas the enemy AI yo-yos from “faceroll” to “rolfrape” pretty much any time the computer feels like switching its game up. There are some additional minigames thrown in, but even with those there isn’t much that will call you back for even a second visit to Mario’s gaggle-o-sports.

To recap, the graphics and sound are good, the controls are simplistic, but the game doesn’t do anything really innovative or original, delivering a title that will under deliver to even the youngest of players who may have a superior game like Super Mario Galaxy 2 or Mario Power Tennis. Heck, even Mario Party 8 has vastly more to do and to come back to. Mario Sports Mix isn’t a cash-in, but it’s clearly not meant for anyone but Mario’s youngest or newest fans. Everyone else will probably find themselves too bored to care.

At the very least, we can check three new sports off Mario's list. Football's all that's left.

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-Why I’m Never Going To Space: A Review of Dead Space 2

-Little Changes, Big Smiles: A Review of Little Big Planet 2

-Not Quite An Epic Wi9n: An Epic Mickey Review

Taking place years before Super Mario World, Yoshi’s Island tells the story of the Yoshis and their quest to reunite Baby Mario, dropped by the stork smack into the middle of the island, with his twin Baby Luigi, who was captured by the evil magikoopa Kamek. Mario is carried on the back of a different Yoshi through each level. If touched by an enemy, Mario floats up into the air in a bubble, wailing and screaming as a timer counts down. Once the timer reaches zero, Baby Mario is snatched up by Baby Bowser’s minions and the game is over.

Egg-shooting is one of Yoshi’s primary defenses. He makes eggs by eating enemies with his long tongue, (he can also collect them from egg boxes or egg-shooting tulips) and can carry up to six eggs at a time. He can also carry keys or Huffin Puffins, duck-like creatures that show up in a few levels and act like boomerangs, shooting a short distance and circling back. Also they look ridiculous.

See? Ridiculous.

Egg-shooting is a skill- several levels require you to calculate angles in order to hit an item that is otherwise unreachable, and the final boss of level 3 (Naval Piranha) is defeated by shooting an egg at the opposite wall so that it bounces back to hit his weak spot.

I’ll let you in on a secret though. If you are careful, you can kill Naval Piranha before Kamek enters and transforms him. As you swim into the cavern, don’t immediately jump onto the white platform. Instead, swim forward a little ways until Naval Piranha comes into view, then swim back and jump up toward the very edge of the platform. As soon as you touch the VERY edge of the platform, shoot him with an egg! You’ve got to be quick because if you go too far, Kamek’s entrance is triggered. If you are successful, Kamek will fly onto the screen and scream “OH MY!” since you’ve beaten the boss! (However, I only recommend this if you are afraid you might get hit and risk losing some points- I would beat this boss the normal way simply for the awesome music in this level!)

Of course I am very clever and I know many more secrets about Yoshi’s Island; secrets that would make your hair stand on end and your toes curl, but heck if I’m going to just give them to you. Instead, I have a series of tips that will help you to navigate the game, ideally with the full 100 points achievable in every level, and find the secrets for yourself!

1. Each level has a total of 100 points available for your completionist pleasure. 20 of these are red coins cleverly disguised as regular gold coins. But here’s a little something: you CAN tell them apart. I SWEAR they are a fraction of a hint darker than the surrounding coins, and if you can learn to tell the difference, you can find the red coins every time. (Either that, or I have played this game WAY too many times and have memorized the locations and convinced myself that I can see them. We’ll go with the former.)

Hey! Shyguy done steal my coins!

2. 50 of the aforementioned 100 points are flowers- there are five hidden throughout the level. They are pretty easy to find because they’re big and cute, but WATCH OUT- in a few castle levels there are fake flowers called Dizzy Dandies that may fool you at first. PAY ATTENTION and you will realize that they are shaped a little differently and have an angry face like this- >:( Angry face= get the heck away.

3. The last 30 points are the most infuriating, in my humble opinion. They are made up of stars. These cute little smiling stars not only add to your final score, but they determine how many seconds you have if Baby Mario gets knocked off your back before the dang toadies get him. That horrible timer will count down starting with the number of stars you currently have, and will get more frantic as it gets closer to one. I hate it. It will always default back to ten, but you need 30 for a perfect score. You can get those extra twenty stars from Winged Clouds, by hitting a POW block near enemies, by dropping an enemy or egg into a red tulip, or by hitting an enemy with a red egg. Each level will give you multiple opportunities to replenish your stars, but if you are careless you can mess up your chances of a perfect score because unlike flowers and red coins, you can’t just go back and find the ones you missed.

4. For cases like depleted stars, it’s excellent to know about the prizes you can win from minigames! Some of these minigames are within levels (you will need a key to open up a locked minigame hut), some you can play at the end of a level if you hit a flower at the finish ring, and the others must be unlocked after beating an entire world with perfect scores in every level. These minigames will give you prizes like 10 stars, 20 stars, ice, fire, and green melons, and POW blocks. You can access these items by pressing start during the level and selecting the item you want to use (except while fighting a boss, of COURSE). I can’t even count the times that a 10 or 20 star item has saved my butt at the very end of a level when I am 8 stars short of that tantalizing perfect score and have completely exhausted all other resources.

Four points short.... somewhere an angel just lost its wings.

5. Investigate all suspicious spots, nooks and crannies, etc. Often as not you will find an Invisible Winged Cloud that could contain stars or even extra lives!

I could keep going for pages and pages, but I’ll go ahead and stop there or this will have to be called Novel from a Grandmaster instead. A game focusing on the adorable dinosaur made famous in Super Mario World may at first seem trivial to the serious gamer, but it is at times a tremendously difficult game as well as visually delightful, audibly enchanting, and extremely unique. Anyone who loves the classic Mario games will…well, if you really love the classic Mario games then you have no doubt already played Yoshi’s Island, but if you haven’t, go do it! You won’t regret visiting this island. Check back soon for Part II, In Which We Discuss the Most Awful Enemies (among other things).

Want more Tips From a Grandmaster? Check these out:

-Tips From a Grandmaster: Super Mario Bros 3

-Tips From a Grandmaster: Super Mario Galaxy 2

-How To Beat Your Friends in Board Games

Bowser? Yeah, he's a pushover at this stage in my life.

The very basics of the game revolve around running and jumping, but in simplicity comes depth. Most enemies can be killed by a good head-stomping, though a handful are protected by spikes. Of the moves you have to work with, you can jump, throw fireballs (when powered up by the Fire Flower), fly (when powered up by either a leaf or a Tanooki Suit), and attack with your tail (also if you have a leaf or Tanooki suit). These will make up your essential skills, particularly the final two. Get used to how far you can jump when at a run, how long you can fly for, and how close you need to be to strike an enemy.

A common misconception is that Mario is slow. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Mario games are based off the theory that anyone can play through a level and conquer it on the first playthrough rather than be forced through trial-and-error. However, should your confidence and skills be high, speed will become your best friend as a full P meter means you can make more daring leaps and cross some gaps you wouldn’t normally be able to deal with. Once you get to max speed, things start whipping by at alarming speeds, especially obstacles. Each SMB3 level is relatively short, so a good speed-run can occur level-to-level in mere seconds if done right.

Don’t confuse this with NEEDING to run at top speeds. Some levels just don’t lend themselves well to running full-bore; the most obvious levels are moving stages such as Bowser’s Air Force or level 1-4. However, be comfortable keeping your finger ever on the dash button. Mario should have no reason to walk at any point; he should always be running whenever he moves.

And running can equal flight, a seriously useful ability.

Let’s take a second and look over the power-ups of the game offers. First, and most obvious, you have your Super Mushroom. This will make Mario big (as if you didn’t already know). Keep a stock of these in your inventory (accessed through the map screen) just in case you die in a level and revert to a tiny little squirt. You usually don’t need to power up all the way to something more since most levels have a ? block near the start that yields either a leaf or a Fire Flower, so don’t waste power-ups if you don’t have to.

Next, you have the aforementioned Fire Flower. It allows Mario to shoot fireballs, a nifty little trick that works wonders for Koopalings. However, don’t rely solely on that fireball, as many enemies in the game can’t be harmed by fire, such as Bullet Bills, Bob-ombs, Chomps, and Buzzy Beetles. As I mentioned though, bosses fall to fireballs extremely easily, especially mid-bosses found in fortresses. Keep your finger tapping that fire button and bosses crumple like they’re nothing. Only problem is getting to some of those bosses without losing your fireball ability. Should you have to slug it out with a mid-boss by means of simply jumping on them, remember their pattern. You only have to hit them once and they’ll fall to you as they freeze in place with their spikes out, so jump on their head, land on solid ground, jump as they’re ending their frozen state, then repeat until you’ve stomped them three times. They’re that simple.

The real winner in the power-ups department is either the leaf, which transforms you into Raccoon Mario (insert your own “leaves equal raccoon? That’s crazy!” jokes here), or Tanooki Suits, which transform you into Tanooki Mario. By the way, a Tanuki is actually not a raccoon but a type of dog species, though it does look exactly like a raccoon, only with huge testicles. Seriously, look it up. Anyway, both Mario forms are capable of flight when at a full dash, as well as allowing you to perform that tail swishing attack. It is critical that you learn how to use that tail attack since it falls everything, including things normally immune to fireballs. Bosses are the only exception for some odd reason, but everything else can be fell with a well-timed swish.

Swish! Good, keep swishing!

In addition to flight and tail swishing, you can slow the speed of a fall by flicking your tail with continued taps of the jump command. This is very useful for making precise jumps onto small platforms, or setting yourself up for huge 1-up chances, allowing you to bounce from one enemy to the next without having to touch the ground. This can easily be accomplished in some of the airships where cannons are constantly firing in all directions. Hopping from cannonball to cannonball is tough to master, but if you can get it right, 1-ups turn into candy that you get to just keep poppin’. The Tanooki Suit has the added bonus of turning Mario into a damage-proof statue if you hold down and the attack button. Be warned though as you’ll stop moving, so don’t do it over a pit unless you didn’t really want a Tanooki Suit or an extra life in the first place.

If you’re lucky enough to find a Hammer Suit, Mario will be capable of tossing hammers similar to how he can toss fireballs. However, the hammers are thrown in a very distinct arc, plus they can go through objects and smash blocks. It’s like an even better version of the Fire Flower that also allows you to be indestructible when pressing and holding the down button. The saddest part is that the soonest you’ll find the Hammer Bros Suit is probably World 7, and that’s if you don’t miss it completely. You get so few of these in the game that you should hold onto it unless you’re ready to make good use of the added abilities.

I'd certainly come close to being my favorite power-up from any Mario game... Not now, another time.

The last two power-ups are the Frog Suit, which helps in water stages well enough but is virtually useless in any stage that requires you to make careful jumps or run since you can’t really run in the Frog Suit, and the Starman, your invincibility item. Very, very few stages become easier with a Starman activated at the get-go, but there are the rare moments when it comes in handy. In World 2 there is a level where you face the Angry Sun. Pop a Starman and take a running leap at him early on to remove him from the stage for a while. Other stages, such as one particular stage in World 5 (level 5-6), has you hopping on the backs of Para-Beetles. If you have a Starman active, you’ll jump right through the first Para-Beetle you attempt to land on, killing it instead of using it as a platform and ultimately causing you to fall to your invincible death.

Besides the power-ups, there are some special items given to you via World Map enemy encounters against Hammer Bros, as well as tokens given to you by Princess Toadstool at the end of every world. The least useful item is the Music Box as all it does is make roaming Hammer Bros fall asleep for a turn. I’m just going to assume you’re good enough not to need to skip Hammer Bros, so forget it. Next is the Hammer, an item that you’ll probably want to make use of once and only once (I’ll tell you when). It breaks rocks on the World Map and nothing else.

The more useful item is the Cloud Charm, an item that allows you to move past a level without having to complete it. Granted, if you die in the next level you’ll get shot right back to where you started, so use this only when there’s a level you just can’t seem to get past, or a level that takes too long (assuming you’re going for a timed record). I use it almost every time to skip level 8-1, a level I just can’t for the life of me get through the majority of the time unless I’m using the P-Wing, the other super-valuable item as it gives you an infinite P boost for a single level. It makes Bowser’s Air Force a breeze, but don’t waste it on a stage you could easily just run through.

Nothing sucks more than catching a stray fireball and losing your P-Wing power-up.

Topping the charts of importance is the Warp Whistle, of which there are only three in the entire game. When used on the World Map a tornado appears and whisks you away to a World 9, consisting of three rows of pipes that warp you to World 2-4, 5-7, or World 8, respectively. The way it works is that you’ll be warped to the row containing the next world from the one you’re already on, so if you warp in World 1 you’ll be taken to the first row with pipes to World 2, 3, and 4. However, if you stand on the first space in the front row (the blank space) and use another Warp Whistle, you’ll get sent to the third row with World 8. That means you only need two Warp Whistles to jump from World 1 to World 8.

Here are the locations of the three:

The first is located in level 1-3. Near the end of the level is a white platform that looks bolted to the background. Jump onto it and hold down for a few seconds. Doing so allows Mario to fall behind the scenery for some odd reason. Run to the end of the level (careful not to get injured by the Para-Goomba) and you’ll end up in a Toad House with a single chest containing a Warp Whistle.

The second is also in World 1, this time in the Fortress. You’ll need to be Raccoon Mario to pull this off. Run to the end of the first area but don’t go through the door. On the end platform you’ll need to get a running start enough to fly, then leap into the air and fly straight up. Careful not to let the Dry Bones on the platform kill you or take away your power of flight! Once you find yourself up above where the screen shows, go as far right as possible and press up. You’ll enter a door and be in a room with another singular chest containing a Warp Whistle.

The third Whistle is in World 2 and takes a bit more planning. This is the only time you’ll ever really need to use a Hammer on the World Map save for some instance that you really want to get to some bonus games for one reason or another. At least one roaming Hammer Bro will yield a Hammer when eliminated. Once you have that, head to the top right corner of the World Map and smash the rock to access a third screen over where you’ll encounter a Toad House and another roaming Hammer Bro, which turns out to be a pair of Fire Bros that give up the final Warp Whistle when knocked out. With those three whistles you should be able to jump around to whichever world you’d like.

Might as well make it Pipe Land since I feel like I never get to see Pipe Land.

Okay, let’s try and cover some strategies in the meantime, right? Beyond mastering the various times to utilize the different power-ups, it’ll come in handy to know how long a Koopa shell will remain inactive before the Koopa wiggles back out and causes damage. Reason being, once stomped upon, a Koopa shell can be picked up and run with for quite some time, acting as a nice shield as well as a really damaging projectile to a wave of enemies. Knowing how to run with a shell is critical for passing stage 6-5 as the only way to clear the level is to acquire a leaf power-up, grab a shell, and fly up to a random exit spot that requires you to break away some blocks with the shell.

Another simple strategy for uncovering secrets is to consistently fly as high as possible within a stage. A lot of stages have platforms in the air with coins galore just waiting for you to uncover, such as level 2-4. If you fly up the far left side of the screen you’ll break through a bunch of blocks and be in a new area with tons and tons of coins.

Speaking of coins, my final tip comes from World 1. If you want a super secret airship of coins to appear, you can play through any stage of World 1 and end a level with your coin digits matching (such as 11, 33, or 77), then pair those digits with the last two digits of your score. If you manage to pull this off, the coin ship appears in place of a roaming Hammer Bro. Of course, if you manage to attain every coin in level 1-4 a white Toad House with a P-Wing appears, so there’s that, too.

There are some levels of Ice Land just stuffed full of coins to a player with enough fireballs to withstand the perils.

And that’s all the advice that this Grandmaster can muster at the moment. My P-Wing is all used up and I’m out of lives, but there’s plenty more to dig into that I didn’t cover. That’s the beauty of Super Mario Bros 3: There’s always something more to find. Happy hunting!

Want mroe about Mario? Check out these articles:

-Mario: A Retrospective Part 1

-The 20 Greatest Mario Enemies Ever

-Let’s Think Deep: Rethinking Remakes

10. Snowy Toronto: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

Snowy Toronto, Level: 1, Rating: Awesome

Not so long ago (this very year in fact), there once was a movie tie-in game that –gasp- DIDN’T SUCK! And it just so happened that its opening level took place on the violent snow ridden streets of Toronto Canada. I am speaking of course of the downloadable game Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It’s opening level, Snowy Toronto, is without a doubt enticing beyond belief. The music is amazing, the animations are full of personality, and the snowy backdrops are a near perfect representation of the vision Bryan Lee O’Malley intended in his very first volume of this epic tale of epicness.

9. The Frozen Tundra: Little Big Planet

Smile while you can! It won’t be that pretty for much longer.

There is a point in Little Big Planet where the game decides it’s time to let up on the happy juice and get serious. It is the first stage of the eighth world, and you have just finished seven other worlds that where absolutely stunning, each level design more breathtaking than the next. The Frozen Tundra is no exception. Media Molecule’s talent of capturing the spirit of snow using fabric-like textures is unreal. The music is great and you even get to go Dog Sledding. Yet half way through this level things start to get much more industrialized as you find yourself dodging missiles, electric fences, and oodles of explosions. So while Frozen Tundra may have been our last lighthearted view of this vast colorful world, it also cranked up the intensity and reminded us, “Oh yeah, we’re on a mission. Sackboy’s coming for you, Collector!”

8. Cliffhanger: Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2

“Break’s over Roach. Let’s go shatter the realism barrier.”

So Sgt. Roach and Captain Soap have to infiltrate a Russian Airbase to recover a satellite module. Naturally, said base is located on the top of the Kazakhstan mountains, so what follows is one of the most captivating and impressive uses of snow terrain to be seen in games thus far. It begins with Roach and Soap literally climbing the mountain with nothing but some mountains shoes and a handful of ice picks (think of it as the HD version of the Ice Climbers]. Once at the top of the mountain, they headshot some guards, steal the module, blow some stuff up, and make a run for it in a high speed snowmobile chase, wherein they escape by making a fifty foot leap from one canyon to another. So much for modern warfare. Realistic? Not really. Badass? Abso-freakin-lutely!

7. Surface 1 & 2: Goldeneye

Now digitally Wiimastered.

While Modern Warefare 2 was indeed quite a visual feat, Surface 1 & 2 were some of the very first instances of snow transgression in the first person perspective we saw. These stages from the original Goldeneye are so memorable due to Rare’s ability to create atmosphere in snow levels: The sharp sound effects of the winds contrasting with the very subtle music, mixed with the deep contrast of the pitch white ground with the pitch-black sky created a very powerful mood. You felt almost like a ghost on this mission.

6. Unbearable: Crash Bandicoot 2 Cortex Strikes Back

Yeah, that’s about what I said.

Crash Bandicoot 2 had dozens of snow stages, and Naughtydog made the most of them by giving Crash unique animations exclusive to these levels. You could see his breath when he was breathing, he would shiver if he stood still too long, and there would be crunching noises when he ran through the snow. I know I’ve complemented music a lot in this list already, but this had to have THE most catchy snow tunes I’ve ever heard, easily. But of all the snow levels, I’m going to have to go with Unbearable, because it combines two of my favorite level types in one. It is both a front-view chase stage, and a riding Polar stage. Only this time I wasn’t running from a snowball but rather a GIANT ANGRY POLAR BEAR while riding on another polar bear. Can you say genius?

5. Snowman’s Land: Super Mario 64

“Will you go Penguin Sledding with me?”

How could I not put this on the list? Super Mario 64 is one of the most famous games in the verse, and while its predecessor, Cool Cool Mountain, may be more memorable, Snowman’s Land had a lot more going on. Mario has to out-maneuver Mr. Blizzard and a Chill Bully, plus he get’s to explore igloos that are a lot bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. He can even get his hat blown off and still keep playing. That’s Mario for you. “It’a me, Mario, and I’m going to rescue the princess… as soon as I finish Shell Shredding for red coins.”

4. Feezeezy Peak: Banjo-Kazooie

“Happy Birthday!”

This counts the second stage on the list made by Rare. Banjo Kazooie came out very close to the same time as Mario 64, and both of them had snow levels that coincidentally featured giant snowmen in them. Close call, but I like this one better. Freezeezy Peak just looks more festive to me. I mean just look at that giant snowman with his pipe, green eyes and striped scarf that you can use as a slide. It not only captures the spirit of snow day, but Christmas as well. You get to deliver presents to sad polar bears, help light up a Christmas tree, as well as fight killer snowmen. You even transform into a walrus and enter a sledding race, just like so many of my Christmases as a child.

3. Heart of Ice: Uncharted 2 Among Thieves

And you thought Uncharted was just a jungle game.

Naughtydog is officially tied with Rare for 2. In all seriousness, Uncharted 2, in addition to having awesome everything else, had some astounding snow pieces, whether it was dangling over an icy cliff after a fierce train wreck or simply looking over at the mountains in a peaceful Tibetan village. Yet the highlight of these locals has to be when Tenzin takes our pal Drake mountaineering into a hidden cave, and among the icy terrain is this temple that is so massive and so incredibly intricate that I can’t even come up with an analogy for it. It’s just beautiful. Oh… and it’s also guarded by Yetis. Totally not kidding. Freaking Yetis!

2. Snow Barrel Blast: Donkey Kong Country

Notice how you can barely see anything. Yeah, that’s actually pretty accurate.

And Rare takes the lead for 3. I think everyone who’s played this game at least once will remember this stage. Donkey Kong Country’s art style was already years ahead of its time and Snow Barrel Blast was no exception. Long before Goldeneye and Banjo ever existed, these guys were already crafting incredibly atmospheric locations covered in snow. They made the terrain rougher to walk across, the enemies were tougher to spot, and the snow had varying wavelengths. Sometimes it would be very calm and appear only in the background at first, but would aggressively fall harder and harder until it eventually overtook the front of the screen. It actually feels like you’re caught in a freaking blizzard. For the time, that was crazy.

1. Snowpeak Ruins: Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess

Wait a minute… is this really a dungeon?

Twilight Princess had dungeons that hit on practically every single elemental type: Grass, Fire, Water, Earth, Ice, Light, Wind, and Dark (all that’s missing are metal and electric). But of all of them, the only one that momentarily made me scratch my head was the ice one. Most dungeons in a Zelda game take place somewhere obvious, like a cave, or a hidden temple, or inside something’s mouth. But Snowpeak Ruins… is a house. Yup, a house. You walk in and the owners are just chilling out, like “Hey Link, how you doing? You want the mirror? Oh yeah, it’s right up stairs. Could you get the key for us? Just look out for the ice skeletons and the armored lizard we keep locked up in the closet. By the way, would you like some Reekfish soup?” So yeah, for a game that’s pretty dark and moody most of the time, Snowpeak was one of the few locations in Twilight Princess that felt lighthearted and genuinely funny. Even the slide down the mountain to the house was fun. It had some classic “slide the blocks across the ice into their proper spot” puzzles, you got to shoot cannon balls at ice breathing dragons, and once the area is cleared, the owner Yeta is kind enough to take you right to the mirror of twilight personally. Finally, a dungeon that doesn’t have the urge to drown things out with some elaborate—

OH SNAP!

I take it back. This winter wonderland just turned into a freaking nightmare. One of the creepiest points in an already creepy game, followed by an Ice Boss that makes Chill Penguin look as intimidating as a bowling pin. But hey, at least afterwards they will go sled racing with you for heart pieces.

So there you have it. 10 Snow levels that make the absolute most of the cliché they are attached to. But trust me, there’s only about 78 gazillion more out there. Any favorites?

Honorable Mention goes to Shadow Moses of Metal Gear Solid.

Want more video game lists? Check out these:

-A Hero’s Best Friend: The Top 5 Video Game Pets

-My Top 20 Favorite Video Game Tracks Part 1

-Ten Games That Work Better As Rentals

Nope. Sorry Daxter. You are a little unqualified for this list.

5. Polar (Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back)

Who’s the good boy that makes snow levels fun? Polar is! Oh yes you are.

Over ten years ago, when I first got my Play Station One, Crash Bandicoot 2 was the first game I played for the system, and I immediately fell in love with the game’s style and sense of characterization. Once you reach the second hub world, waiting for Crash outside his level is a little baby polar bear known simply as Polar. If you jump on him enough times, he gives you about a dozen extra lives, which you are definitely going to need as you play his levels over and over again. While Polar isn’t the kind to just let Crash take control, he sure gives him one heck of a ride, charging at sea otters, dodging hunters, and even leaping over killer whales. Good times. Not to mention, he reminds me of my very first stuffed animal as a child, so there.

4. Squitter the Spider (Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy Kong’s Quest)

Spider Monkey! Spider Monkey! Does whatever a spider with buck-teeth, goggly eyes, and Tennis shoes can.

There are only two instances in which I actually like spiders. The first is Spiderman, obviously. The second is this guy. While he may not be as famous as some of the Kong’s other pets, like Rambi the Rhino or Enguarde the Swordfish, Squitter is my personal favorite. It’s just so fun to use his web slinger as a projectile attack to knock out the Kremlings, and how you can web a path to reach secrets from above. Plus, he’s got style. Those eight-piece Air Jordans were totally in back in the nineties.

What the…? Daxter! Stop trying to sneak yourself into my list! It’s too late.

3. Pokemon [Insert your own choice here]

There’s only more than half a thousand to choose from now.

If you look me in the eye and tell me you’ve looked through an entire Pokedex and could not find a single solitary Pocket Monster that appealed to you in any way, than I am convinced your aura is a big grey dingy black hole with no passion to speak of. Whether you fancy something cute, cool, creepy, colorful, or just plain kickass, there is a Pokemon for everyone in this world. And it doesn’t matter what you want to do with them. You can collect your favorite element and create a community, breed them to find their inner strength, or even train a team to be the best there ever was. No matter what, they will be your greatest allies right to the bitter end.

As for me, I gotta’ stick to my guns and go with the fire breathing salamander.

That’s right buddy. After all these years, I still choose you.

(Pranger’s Note: Jolteon FTW!)

2. Epona (Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time)

Epic boy on horse is epic.

See, we of the millennial generation don’t acknowledge Don Quixote as the pinnacle bond between a hero and his steed. No. To us, there is only Link and Epona. Right here is full proof that pets will remember you and love you no matter how long it takes for you to come back to them. For Epona, that was seven years. In all that time, he kept himself strong and when the time finally came to jump over that fence to freedom, all of Hyrule was ours for the taking. Not to mention that the trials of Link’s steed would only intensify in his next two games. In Majora’s Mask, he was captured and became the sole purpose of our first rescue mission. In Twilight Princess, the joust across the Bridge of Eldin is still one of the most epic moments in all of gaming.

And the number one pet of video games is…

DAXTER! For the last time, you’re NOT a pet! You’re just Jak’s idiot friend who fell into some dark eco and turned himself into an Ottsel! Enough. Go… hit on bartenders and fight insects on the PSP or something.

1. Yoshi (Super Mario World)

The Egg that hatched the video game-verse as we know it.

How fitting that one of, if not THE very first iconic riding companion in a video game was, in fact, a dinosaur. And just as dinosaurs completely surpass every species that came after them on the awesome meter, so too does this guy. Lets face it, Yoshi can do anything. He jumps incredible lengths, breaths fire, flies, creates earthquakes, and eats practically anything and sends it right back at his opponent. Not only that, with every passing game, it seems like his arsenal of tricks only gets bigger. He didn’t need to be in Super Mario Galaxy 2 to make it on the list, but the fact that he went the extra mile this year to further evolve an already awesome game is exactly the reason why he’s still number one to this day.

That’s all for now folks. Any of you have fond memories of your favorite pixilated pets? I know I couldn’t have gotten to meet them all.

Thanks to Trico here, we’ve got a BIG contender coming up in 2011.

Want more lists? Check these out:

-10 Awesome ninja Turtle Action Figure Outfits

-My Ten Favorite Video Game Trilogies

-Top 10 DBZ Relationships

10. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time Trilogy:

That sexy prince and his lack of shirts. Oh Dastan, you rogue, you.

This is the only trilogy on the list that I haven’t completed, and for that I’m very sorry. I have, however, played the first two parts of the Sands of Time trilogy and recognize that unless there was some sort of colossal failure with the third installment (I’ve heard it’s better than the second part), this trilogy is awesome. What Sands of Time does well is platforming. Combat, yeah, the game didn’t need combat, but when enemies take a break and Dastan puts his sword away for an extended period of time to allow himself to parkor around the room, the game vibrates with excellence. It does become apparent why they needed a time-reversing mechanic though: Some jumps the camera doesn’t feel like showing you are downright unfair and require trial-and-error to complete. That’s why the Sands of Time trilogy falls to the number 10 spot. Still, go play at least the first game, as Gus has already told you.

9. Super Mario Land 1-3:

In a series already known for weird, Mario becomes even weirder.

If you’ve played the Super Mario Land games, you know that the third title is actually the first Wario Land game and doesn’t star Mario. Let me explain myself here because this is one of the few instances where Mario platformers have some sort of continuity with plot. In Super Mario Land, Mario hears that a princess named Daisy is in trouble in a nearby kingdom called Sarasaland. He heads over to save her from an alien named Tatanga, then returns home to his castle in Mario Land, only to find it taken over by Wario. As it turns out, Tatanga appears as a world boss in Super Mario Land 2 as we learn that Wario paid Tatanga to distract Mario long enough for him to take over Mario Land. After Wario’s defeat, he heads out broken and penniless to find more money and build a castle of his own. At the end of Super Mario Land 3, Mario makes a quick cameo to steal a large status of Princess Peach away from Wario. This is the only time we get some sort of a sense of a greater narrative at work within the traditional Mario games. Plus, the platforming is spot on here. Each game plays completely different and offers a ton to do, so it makes for an excellent trilogy.

8. Resident Evil 4 (GameCube, PS2, Wii):

As a game with three releases, it's still better than the new Star Wars trilogy.

No, stop, I can explain this. How am I counting a single game as a trilogy? Well, it’s a single game that’s been released three times and each time it changes slightly. When Resident Evil 4 first appeared on the GameCube, it completely overhauled the Resident Evil series and restored a lot of its credibility. The controls were nearly perfect, as was pretty much all of it. Time passes and Capcom decides to release a version of RE4 onto the PS2, complete with new content, adding to the experience and making me want to play it again. I still consider the PS2 release the dark chapter in RE4’s trilogy as it was meant to be on the GameCube and only the GameCube, plus the new features only punished me for buying it on the GameCube in the first place. But then the final chapter in this saga, the Wii version, came out and righted all of the wrongs. The controls became even better than before, all the content from the GameCube and PS2 versions returned, and new content showed up as well. Each playthrough on each system will offer something different, making this one heck of a trilogy. I’m cheating. I don’t care. This is my list.

7. Mega Man 1-3:

Of all the men you can pick from, this one is the megaest.

While you may decide that any series that has more than three games doesn’t constitute a trilogy, I disagree. Bottom line, three things in a row that pertain to one another are a trilogy, therefore the first Mega Man trilogy stands way, way out as a great set of three games. The first Mega Man title introduced a way to play that would cause ripples throughout games from then on whereas Mega Man 2 and 3 would take the premise and perfect it, offering some of the best NES gameplay moments you could find, as well as some of the greatest music of all time. Then Mega Man 4 just sort of…was there. And 5 followed suit, as would all the rest. If you need a perfect example of all that was Mega, Mega Man 1, 2, & 3 are prime examples of where to start.

6. TMNT 2-4:

"Look! It's the genre best suited for our series! Let's go!"

“Hey Chris, you can’t have a trilogy of games that go 2, 3, 4!” Yes, actually, I can. How can I do this? The three TMNT console titles in question were made by Konami, whereas the first TMNT game was made through Konami’s sub development studio, Ultra. The games play entirely different between TMNT and TMNT 2, doing away with the sidescrolling platforming in favor of a beat-‘em-up play style that fit perfectly with the TMNT brand. TMNT The Arcade Game demonstrated a full knowledge of the property being worked with, allowing gamers to fight multiple characters directly from the actual show. TMNT 3 added even more characters and a pretty cool situation to boot. But it wasn’t until TMNT 4 that things hit a peak and remains to be topped. Traveling through time is fun enough, but implementing controls that just feel right and a soundtrack that’s to die for pushes things to a whole new level. Seriously, why can’t Konami, or I guess now Ubisoft, figure out how to recreate these Turtles games the right way? Please, no more Reshelled.

5. Paper Mario 1-3:

Don't let cuteness fool you into thinking these aren't awesome games.

I loved Super Mario RPG and like most fans, I wanted a sequel. I never got that sequel, but I did get Paper Mario, a title I was immensely skeptical of. I was so sure that it would suck that I scoffed every time I read something about it in Nintendo Power. But then it came out and I played/loved it. The humor was engaging and the battle system, while intensely simple, was fun. Next came Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, a title that took all the concepts of the first game and improved upon them, adding more humor and spectacular characters. Super Paper Mario closed things out with a new direction, taking the series out of the RPG genre and placing it in platforming. And once more, the characters and humor got even better. I’m still surprised that Super Paper Mario managed to spoof video games while not actually being a terrible video game itself, as seems to be the case with tons of games recently (Max Hazard, The Simpsons Game). There have been reports of a 3DS Paper Mario title, so the trilogy is about to become a full saga, but for now you have three games that play for the gamers.

4. Super Smash Bros:

Also, Lucario has been reading my DBZ Technique Guide.

Fan service is an art form that Nintendo knows inside and out. Taking this vast skill of the Nintendo fan, Super Smash Bros was created, a series I’ve already said a lot about. But just think of how excited kids were when this was first announced. “All your favorite Nintendo characters in one game that anyone can easily play and master.” Joy! Then to follow it up with a mind-blowing sequel? More characters, more levels, and more everything? JOY! And then do it again but harderer? JOYGASM! As of now there are no announcements of a fourth title in the series (I fully expect a 3DS installment to hit sometime in the next two years), meaning the three Smash Bros titles we have need to last us. And last us they shall due to the sheer amount of replayability. I’ve played hundreds of hours between the three copies (Melee has the most at this very moment) and I will surely play hundreds more before my games break and I’m forced to purchase them again.

3. Donkey Kong Country 1-3:

That's a monkey riding an ostrich. Do you need any more of a push to play these games?

Platforming gold. Yet another trilogy I’ve written about before, the Donkey Kong Country trilogy is something very odd but wonderful. Perhaps nostalgia is getting the better of me but were these games not phenomenal? Secrets everywhere, soundtracks you could listen to outside of the game, and graphics that showed where the medium was heading all combined to form one epic threesome of games. I’m still unable to pick a favorite of the three due to my enjoyment with each title for different reasons, and therefore I don’t have to pick a favorite, instead opting to lump them together as one massive game with an overarching plotline. And hey! It’s not going to be a trilogy much longer, either! Donkey Kong Country Returns promises to revitalize the series, but even if it doesn’t, I’m perfectly happy with the three titles we already have.

2. Mario & Luigi 1-3:

If I had to choose between the Mario & Luigi series and Super Mario RPG, man would I have a tough decision.

If you own a DS and don’t own at least one of the Mario & Luigi games, I’m not going to talk to you anymore. Nope, not going to. You clearly don’t like games, so you probably have nothing much to say to me. Take everything I said about the Paper Mario games and magnify it by a factor of three. The gameplay itself is incredibly simple, yet it keeps you engaged due to the reflexive nature of timing-based gameplay. You can’t just keep pressing the A button to attack enemies. Instead, you need to time your attacks and dodges to get through battles with minimal damage and maximum pain to your enemies. Plus, no individual can withhold a hearty smile upon hearing Mario and Luigi’s gibberish babble. If you do somehow manage to find it unamusing, go see a doctor right away because you may actually be dead and you’re certainly not a friend of mine.

1. Metroid Prime 1-3:

Rising from the shadows, Samus once again tops a list of mine.

Yeah yeah, I bring up Metroid Prime all the time, don’t I? But when you’re talking about a series as stupidly great as Metroid Prime, cut me some slack. I straight up love this series. I love the gameplay. I love the narrative. I love the music. I love the enemies. I love the weapons. I love the backtracking. I love it all. I want more, and it doesn’t look like I’m ever going to get more since Retro Studios has shifted work to Donkey Kong Country Returns and then whatever else Nintendo sends them off to do. Metroid: Other M sent the series in a direction it can’t really turn around from, so the Prime games I have are the Prime games I must live with. And that’s okay with me since they’re so good. If you can find a copy of the Metroid Prime Trilogy for the Wii, the version that contains all three games with Wii controls, snatch it up right away. Then play them all. Then tell me how much you enjoyed them. I doubt many of you will return unsatisfied.

So there we are, my ten favorite trilogies. Keep in mind that these encompass trilogies I’ve played, not trilogies I haven’t. You may be asking yourself (I mean Gus may be asking himself) “Hey, why didn’t I see Jak and Daxter/Sly Cooper/God of War/Crash Bandicoot?” Because, that’s why. Because I’ve either never played them or I think they’re rubbish (GoW? More like GTFO. Am I right?!). This is where all of you come in. Leave a comment and tell me your favorite video game trilogies. And feel free to break the rules. Think that three games in the middle of a series make for an awesome trilogy? Go for it and tell me right away. In fact, send me three comments just to keep things interesting.

Want more Top 10 Lists? Check these out:

-Top 10 Dragonball Z Relationships

-My Top Ten Favorite Video Game Soundtracks

-10 Pokemon You’d Rather Not Evolve

Sometimes the real world needs to stay away from our games, doesn't it?

The world is a very different, very scary place these days. Thankfully, video games are mostly blissful escapes from that harsh reality. But what if aspects of the real world started creeping into the fantasy realm? Here are ten ways the real world would ruin the video games world.

Pokemon Protected Under Endangered Species Laws:

Your lucky day, or a massive inconvenience?

The lands Pokemon games take place in are magical regions to live, full of awesome creatures ripe for the catching and training. And if you keep your eyes out and your wits sharp, you’ll run across a Legendary Pokemon.

BUT HOLD ON! You can’t capture that! Leave it alone! Because it’s the last of its species, it is protected by Endangered Species Laws, meaning you not only can’t capture it, you’ll be arrested for even trying. Pikachus? You can have dozens. But Lord help you if you catch a Mew.

Extra Lives Cost More Due To Inflation:

Suddenly every coin means a whole lot more and a whole lot less.

The Mushroom Kingdom is known as a land full of whimsy. Whimsy and war. Constant war. There hasn’t been a year where Bowser hasn’t appeared and tried to take over everything. At least Mario always shows up to save the day. That’s the one constant, other than the price of an extra life. 100 coins, right?

BUT HOLD ON! At this point an extra life would cost a heck of a lot more, possibly closer to 1600 coins. You’d see Mario steppin’ a lot more careful around pits if that were the case.

Families in The Sims Evicted:

Seriously, would you approve a loan for these morons?

Living a life as a Sim wouldn’t be too bad, all things considered. Your whole life is based off commercialism, you can easily find and make friends all the time, and if you don’t like your job, you can get a better one by reading a book for a few minutes. Wonderful, right?

BUT HOLD ON! How did you pay for your new house there? One of the causes of our current recession stems from the housing crisis where prospective homeowners were given huge loans for houses that they could never afford and thus were evicted at the worst possible time. The Sims are so incapable of taking care of themselves that they’ll wet their shorts if you don’t tell them to go to the bathroom. And these people were approved for home loans? Yikes.

No More Evil Corporations:

"I must destroy the world for reasons I forget why! Mwahaha!"

Shinra is certainly an evil, evil corporation filled with evil people doing evil things. The Umbrella Corporation is even worse, creating zombies and stuff for seemingly no reason at all. Luckily we have heroes to battle these massive companies. Some games are hinged on this massive takedown.

BUT HOLD ON! Before you go after the corrupt head of that awful organization, check to see if it isn’t crumbling from the inside after filing Chapter Eleven bankruptcy. And if a company is really, truly evil enough to destroy the world, the actual government is going to step in and stop that oil spill, I mean that zombie epidemic. No heroes are really required for the job, meaning Cloud and Tifa and the whole gang can just go shopping at Hot Topic instead.

Halo Protested On a Daily Basis:

"Why don't I just cram this down your throat instead? That sound cool?"

Earth is a hectic place to live, what with the fight constantly needing be finished. Aliens are popping up left and right with giant ships just to mess with us. At least we’re totally behind Master Chief.

BUT HOLD ON! This is a war, right? Those are BAD! Assuming we’re still our Earth, there will be those that believe the war is completely just. Then there will be the other half that opposes the war purely because it’s a war and those are always unjust. They attacked us first? That’s probably just because we were messing around in their solar system. You’d have a heck of a time getting anywhere as a soldier on the planet without someone picketing you and calling you a grunt killer.

Link Out of a Job:

"Hey! HEY! They took my job!"

Whereas Mario is the best option to save the Mushroom Kingdom, Link always steps up to the challenge and restores peace to Hyrule by rescuing Zelda. Otherwise he wouldn’t have much of a reason to do anything, would he?

BUT HOLD ON! Unemployment rates are ridiculous these days, meaning that there would be more than enough capable people just hanging around, ready for a chance to save a princess. Sure Link may be the Hero of Time, but with the right motivation, anyone could do what he does and restore the peace. It’s not like there’s a whole lot to do in Hyrule, anyway.

Silent Hill Subject To a Michael Moore Documentary:

Maybe this could be a good thing afterall.

If you had to pick one place of the world to avoid, it’d have to be Silent Hill. It’s a town suffering from, essentially, Hell owning all the real estate. Demons regularly appear and if you find yourself trapped within city limits you’re pretty much screwed, aren’t you?

BUT HOLD ON! What other town is best suited for a sadsack documentary ridiculing the shortcomings if the United States than a town devoid of all decency? Michael Moore would be there so fast that it’s scary, and naturally he’d go on and on until the Powers That Be intervened to shut him up. In Essence, Silent Hill would become an overnight tourist trap and eliminate any and everything that made it the place we love to fear.

Thousands of Greenhorns Attempt to Ford the River:

Why would you do that? Bunch of Greenhorns.

Ah the Oregon Trail. The promise of a better life after a trip of hardship is something we’re just programmed to love living in the land of the American Dream. Therefore, the Oregon Trail becomes a great choice, especially since Oregon is pretty danged sweet.

BUT HOLD ON! If you’ve ever played the Oregon Trail, you know the dangers of fording the river. You have to be an intelligent, experienced player even to CONSIDER fording the river. Sadly, too many fools would start fording the river willy-nilly, thinking it’s cool or something, and thousands would die. And since extra lives cost more these days, it’d be sad.

Real World Controls Enter The Gaming World:

Wouldn't it suck if this really happened? Wouldn't it?!

Video games have the advantage of being ridiculous distractions from the real world. Depending on the game, a single button press could result in you destroying the world. How cool! Precise controls are a great thing, aren’t they?

BUT HOLD ON! Next thing you know they’ll start trying to tell us the cool new thing is moving around while you’re gaming to do simple tasks and- Oh wait…

PETA Would Go Nuts About Star Fox:

Like the original space program. Except with more animals. And G-Diffusers.

If I could voice one video game character, I think I’d want to voice Fox McCloud. In fact, if I could WRITE one game, it’d be a new Star Fox game, mostly because we really need a new Star Fox game. The whole game concept is just too much fun. Animals in space? I’m there!

BUT HOLD ON! Animals in space?! You’re sending these poor creatures into almost certain DEATH?! It doesn’t matter if it’s other animals sending these animals into space, that stuff doesn’t fly with PETA. Granted, there’s a high chance these space wars won’t happen anyway due to protests, but rest assured, if that fox got into space, PETA would be there screaming about it and making their own game to mock the practice.

And I’m spent. How ridiculous of me. I’m all done thinking about the real world intersecting with video games, but what about you? Can you think of any ways the real world would ruin our lovely fantasies? Leave a comment and let me know. In the mean time, I have a river to ford.

Ooh, I'm getting antsy just thinking about Smash Bros. I should go play instead of writing this.

The idea of all my favorite Nintendo stars fighting each other in one big game was a concept I never imagined would become a reality. Even now I’m a little skeptical that it really exists, and furthermore, that it’s straight-up awesome. But somehow Super Smash Bros is a real thing and for that I couldn’t be happier. So to start a Monday off right, how about a Super Smash Bros Retrospective? That’s what I thought.

Super Smash Bros (1999):

How can you not be anything but excited when you see this box?

The essence of the first Super Smash Bros can easily be captured in the classic game commercial set to the Beatles song, So Happy Together. Mario, Yoshi, Pikachu, and Donkey Kong are holding hands as they skip through a field. Then without warning Mario sweeps Yoshi’s legs and they all start fighting. The commercial is perfect, and as a kid every time I saw it I knew I needed Smash Bros on my N64.

My first encounter with Smash Bros was once again from Nintendo Power with its usual hype train. All I needed to know was that Mario and Link would fight against Fox and Pikachu and I was addicted. I read the Nintendo Power articles over and over again, hungry for my Smash Bros. I even went out and preordered the game through Hollywood Video’s game kiosk, the precursor to Game Crazy (Lord rest their souls). Unfortunately, I was quoted a price that was awesome, ($35), but then waited and waited and waited and still, the game did not come in. I had to wait a whole week after it came out before my Hollywood Video got the game in. “Alright, that’ll be $50.” Uh-oh, he must have misspoke. Nope, the price was set and the first guy just screwed up. I went to Toys ‘R Us and got a copy with a coupon for $45. As soon as I got home it was time to try out my new favorite game ever.

It seems so simple now, doesn't it?

The very first character I tried out was Link in the arcade mode. The controls were entirely foreign to me, especially the jumping mechanic. I had to relearn all sorts of things for Super Smash Bros in order to just proceed through the game, but after a week or so I was starting to get the hang of things. I hadn’t played many fighting games before, but I could see why I definitely liked Smash Bros better: Battle length. Most fighting games had matches that usually lasted under a minute, maybe two if you were really pushed, but otherwise there was no such thing as an epic fight. With Smash Bros, you didn’t whittle down your opponent’s health but rather inflicted damage in order to make it easier to throw them further, leading to the ultimate goal of knocking them off the stage. I loved this concept, plus each character played differently, so I was almost never bored.

My friends and I would get together for four-player matches every few sleepovers, going nuts with the 12 characters and nine levels. We got our money’s worth for sure. And after we’d played for long enough, we’d just set four computer characters to fight each other as we did a running commentary, naming each character after someone we knew from school. It was simple fun and we thought nothing could be better. One of my best friends at the time, Derek, was also my arch nemesis, so whenever we played he was Fox and I was Pikachu. I let him borrow my game for a week and when I got it back I realized Fox’s character stats placed him at the top, showing that he’d spent all week killing Pikachu over and over. I wouldn’t stand for that, so naturally my next week was planned out for me. Life just couldn’t get any sweeter.

Super Smash Bros Melee (2001):

Best follow-up to anything in the history of ever.

When the GameCube was announced a whole bunch of excellent games were announced along with it. But for me there really was only one game: Super Smash Bros Melee. A new Smash Bros game on a better system? AWESOME! I started seeing commercials for it at movies theaters and on TV and soon I was psyched once more for a game I hadn’t even played yet. I didn’t need anything more than the knowledge that the original 12 characters were back, plus more, equaling 26 characters total (Sheik and Zelda counted as two characters). Also, 29 levels instead of nine? Double the items? More moves for everyone? Sold.

I preordered Melee as soon as possible, knowing that my GameCube’s purchase would be overly justified once Melee was mine. Sure enough, I brought the game home and went to town, though initially I was at a loss because I had to relearn the controls yet again. No matter, a week later and I was mastering the game more than I ever thought possible.

And mastering it properly never felt so sweet.

Melee added a lot more in terms of, well, everything. Everything got better. I was almost sad since I knew I could never go back to the original N64 version now that Melee had entered my life. I did pretty much everything I could as a single-player playing alone, honing my skills against opponents that I never played against because, sadly, so few other people seemed to own a GameCube. At this time everyone I knew had gotten into Halo, so I was left in the cold.

Until strange things began happening. At the end of my Freshman year of high school I was told about a Melee tournament happening at a festival our school did during the last week of classes. I practiced against a casual acquaintance to better my skills and I realized, “Wow, I’m actually really good at this game.” The tournament began and I did what anyone else would have done: I pretended I didn’t know how to play the game. My first opponent scoffed and killed me once, thinking the match was going to be super simple. Then I laughed and said, “Just kidding,” and proceeded to utterly destroy him. I was unstoppable, up until the final match against Jeremy Lynn, the deaf kid. His brother was hosting the tournament and the final match pitted me as Adult Link against Jeremy as Mr. Game & Watch, a character I’d never seen anyone use well. My usual tactic of trash talking and mental psyching didn’t work against Jeremy since, well…connect the dots for me. Regardless, after a grueling match I came out victorious, taking the only happiness the deaf kid had in his life (also, I beat him in chess later in the week, just because I’m an evil man). Oh don’t get me wrong, a month later he came over to my house and spent two hours demonstrating how I completely sucked at Melee compared to his unrelenting talent, but it didn’t count on the scoreboard. I was the official school champion.

For good measure, I made sure to kick fox's butt on principle alone.

I retired from Melee for a while until my Senior year when I met two of my closest friends ever, Trinh and Thomas. The three of us met in Japanese class but decided to start playing Melee as often as possible, creating a massive rivalry between we three. It turned out Trinh was unbeatable as Fox, and Thomas played a mean Marth, but in three-person matches I’d rule with Adult Link. Allow me to regale you with my greatest moment ever:

Trinh and I were in a heated battle for first-place, fighting at our usual favorite, Final Destination, he as Fox and I as Link. On a side note, it should be pointed out that in terms of character tiers, Fox and Marth were numbers one and two, whereas Link was near the bottom, and yet I still managed to go toe-to-toe with them, so eat it best friends of mine. Anyway, the match was coming to a close and it looked like Trinh was going to outdo me. He knocked me off the stage and as I fell I realized I’d never make it back. However, a Blast Barrel was rolling off the edge. Seeing my one chance I aimed toward it as it fell, hitting it right as it was about to exit the screen. The three of us assumed I had exploded, but it was actually the barrel blasting me straight up. I Spin Attacked to the corner, leapt at Fox, and sent him flying off to his own defeat since Trinh was so amazed he could hardly move. Single greatest game moment of my life, and there’s no way I could ever recreate it.

Super Smash Bros Brawl (2008):

That fire you see here represents the explosion of joy in my heart when I heard about Brawl.

Among the Wii titles I got excited for, the word “Brawl” came up a few times, letting me know that Melee would have a sequel and that it’d be bigger and supposedly better than the first two by a long shot. I watched the teaser trailers over and over and sunk into the pattern of religiously checking Smash Bros Dojo for nightly updates, drip-feeding me information about the new game. Who would be back? Who would be new? And what more could they really add? I was about to be blown away yet again.

The newest addition was the Final Smash, an ultimate move for each character useable whenever someone acquired the Smash Ball, an item of untold power! And I really mean that, too. Some Final Smashes, like Marth or Zelda’s were instant KO’s if they hit, whereas Mario, Sonic, Fox, and a mess of others had Final Smashes that owned multiple enemies way too effectively. Did is sway the balance of the game? Absolutely, but I was in love with it.

It also made you feel like a jackass if you got caught in a Final Smash, as it should.

To celebrate the eventual release of the game, of which all Smash Fans were forced to endure push back after push back of said release, I held one final going away party for Melee, a Last Chance Melee Smash, as I called it (because I’m oh so clever sometimes). A good long night of Melee was followed by a trek to my local Game Crazy store at midnight to get the new game and start playing that very night. The pilgrimage caused some annoyed gamers, but dang it, it was symbolic of my endless struggle waiting for this game.

It was no shock that the amount of content in Brawl was staggering. The unbelievable fan service Nintendo paid to diehards was worth every single unhappy moment I endured as a GameCube loyalist all those years ago. Just the soundtrack alone was phenomenal to behold. The first Smash Bros had maybe a dozen songs, total. Melee had closer to three-dozen. Brawl had over 300. GAH. Throw in 40 characters, yet more items, and user-generated stages and that’s a wrap: Best game on the Wii. The game even went out of its way to repair the problem of wave dashing that nearly broke Melee for me. I got good in Melee, but I could never be as good as the game-breaking moves that some players figured out. I’d watch those matches on YouTube and just think, “Wow, that looks so unfun to play.” Wave Dashing in Brawl, gone. Yeah, replaced by something else, but at least a progression was made.

Make Nintendo's best game ever: Mission Complete.

Brawl wasn’t without its faults though. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Mewtwo was missing. He was a tough character to unlock in Melee and even tougher to master, but he’s totally absent in Brawl. Plus, while the local multiplayer is one of the best experiences of any game in recent years, the online component is awful beyond respite. You can just skip it, unfortunately.

Silly monkey. Now go find Mewtwo!

Now comes the real question: What happens next? Will Brawl be the end for Smash Bros games? As the creator of both the original and Brawl, Masahiro Sakurai, mentioned, his goal was to make the best damn game he could, as if it was definitely going to be the last of the series. That doesn’t rule out another game, especially not now that the 3DS is on its way out, but there’s nothing on the horizon to give Smash Fans hopes of the next big game with Geno, the return of Mewtwo, and every stage from every game in addition to all new stages. It’s asking for a lot, but they delivered last time, so why not here?

Like you didn't all want this, too.

And I’m spent. My love for Smash can only take me so far since, well, there are only three games to the retrospective. So tell me, are you a Smash Fan as well? Or do you hate the game? Can you destroy families with Zelda’s Shiny Kick like I can? Or do you have a different character you end lives with? Time to share your memories of Smash. Don’t make me Shiny Kick you in the face.

Want to read another retrospective? Take a look at these:

-Games You Should Have Played: The Donkey Kong Country Trilogy

-More To Catch: A Pokemon Toys Retrospective

-The Plastic Wars: A Retrospective on Army Men

Want to know how to beat every inch of Mario Galaxy 2? Read on my friends.

Welcome to my first attempt at offering tips and tricks to a popular video game. For me, I’ve always felt as if I was a fairly good game player, but I was never sure if that translated to teaching. We’ll find out today as I offer Tips From a Grandmaster for one of the best games of the year: Super Mario Galaxy 2 for the Nintendo Wii.

Before we begin, know that I’ll be giving away a handful of spoilers about the game. Namely, all of them. I’m going to tell you every little secret you may encounter and I’m going to do it very quickly and unforgivingly. I will tell you what you get for collecting 120 stars, what you get for doing what comes after that, and your ultimate reward. Hopefully I’ll also be telling you how best to play, but that’s all speculation on my part.

This is your final spoiler warning.

Bowser will have none of this spoiling. Leave now or feel the burn of a spoil.

Okay, now that it’s just us devoted Mario Galaxy 2 players, let me jump right into saying that I’ve now successfully 100% completed Super Mario Galaxy 2. Overall it may just be my favorite Mario 3D platformer now due to how spot on everything about it has been. But there are still some unfortunate downsides that I will address, specifically limitations you’re going to have to find ways around in order to proceed at the Grandmaster level. We ready to begin? First, the basics.

Collecting all 120 Power Stars isn’t too difficult in the long run. I’d say that the more difficult levels tend to be ones where motion controls are required, such as gliding or using the giant rolling ball (I LOATH those levels). Get those out of the way first so as to alleviate stress later on. Two trains of thought dictate that when coming to a particularly difficult star you either A. Take a break from that star and go onto something different, or B. Struggle through it until you succeed. I’m very much of the second option, but that doesn’t work for everyone. Sometimes the best course of action is simply shutting the game off and allowing yourself to unwind for a bit.

Once you’ve collected all 120 stars and beaten Bowser yet again, you’ll learn of the Green Stars. These will double the number of stars in the game. Take stock of your skills at this point and above all take a break. It can be soul crushing to see Trickster Comets hit every single level again, right after you’ve just “finished” the game in your mind.

So it's basically a star, but it's green. Pretty simple concept to wrap your head around.

The basics of Green Stars are fairly simple. Green Stars in a level are proportional to the number of Power Stars in the level, meaning either two or three. Green Stars do not have a special condition to appear. Rather, they’re floating out in the open, waiting to be grabbed. They will not be inside boxes, chests, balloons, or enemies.

Most important to know for Green Stars is their distinctive sound. They make a sort of shimmery glowy noise when you are near them. This will be your big indicator as to their location or if you’re close to them. Sometiemes it works best to take it slow in a level and pay close attention to everything you see or hear. Many Green Stars will be painfully simple to grab. The very first Green Star in the first galaxy is pretty much right above your head, more or less, requiring a backflip at most to collect. Others will be downright nasty to grab.

My general rule for Green Stars comes down to going in order of your least-favorite galaxies first and working backward to something simpler. This will reduce your stress, as I mentioned earlier, and allow you to motor through some galaxies faster. I started collecting Green Stars from the S World first and worked my way back through all galaxies with gliding or ball rolling, then through boss levels, then all galaxies with two stars, then World 6 and so on. I ended with the Puzzle Plank Galaxy, my favorite for one reason or another. If you prefer to start simple and work your way towards more difficult galaxies, start in World 1 and move upwards that way. Nothing says you have to go in order though, so use that to your advantage.

And nothing said you had to like these stages either. They're unfair and I hate them.

Okay, now that you know how you’re going to be proceeding with the Green Star Challenge, you’ll need to know some techniques the first 120 stars didn’t teach you. Here they are:

This dude in now your best friend. Get used to it.

Get Comfortable With Luigi: You can switch between using Mario and Luigi at any time on the starship once you beat Bowser the first time. They play slightly different with the main change being jumping height. Luigi can noticeably jump higher and further than Mario. However, Luigi has less traction and takes a bit of extra time to stop, making precise movements tricky. Once you get the hang of Luigi, you’ll prefer him to Mario due to the game-breaking jumps you’ll be capable of. A vast number of Green Stars are placed in locations that seem only Luigi will have the jumping ability to hit, so you need to know how to use him and get really chummy because he’ll be your go-to guy for the second batch of 120 stars.

Sometimes you gotta break a few Yoshi eggs when baking a cake.

Learn How to Sacrifice Yoshi: Up until the Green Stars, I had never been in a situation where I needed to jump off Yoshi in order to get a little extra oomph to my jumps. Knowing the proper time to dismount from Yoshi to gain a little extra air is vital to collecting Green Stars since most galaxies with Yoshi in them place the Green Stars floating over an empty void reachable only with some well-timed flutter jumps and a hasty dismount/spin. Yoshi is your friend but you can’t get every star without dropping a few Yoshis to their untimely demise. Get used to this fact and learn how to dismount, a skill as simple as performing the backflip while on Yoshi.

It's fluffy. Learn to love it. Make that fluff an extension of your body.

Savor the Cloud Suit: It seems like a fairly simple rule of thumb that whenever a Cloud Suit is available in a level, you’ll be expected to utilize it to its fullest to get at least one Green Star in said level. Many times you’ll be asked to reach a Green Star only reachable with the Cloud Suit, meaning you have to know how to make really far leaps and create a cloud at the correct distance. Whenever you find a Cloud Flower and gain the Cloud Suit, don’t waste your clouds all willy-nilly. It is very likely you’ll be required to use all of those clouds at some point in the level. The Melty Molten Galaxy is a prime example of this. If you don’t save at least one or two clouds for late in the level, you won’t be able to get to one of the Green Stars. Be comfortable with the extra floatiness of the Cloud Suit and know when to spin and when not to spin.

Master the Triple Jump: You won’t have to use the Triple Jump until the Green Stars, but then it comes up a number of times. Green Stars will routinely be seen hovering just out of reach above your head. A backflip/spin won’t give you enough air, or even a summersault flip/spin. This is where the mastery of the Triple Jump is critical. The game won’t ask you to do a Triple Jump in any place that doesn’t allow for the running start, but it still demands careful timing. Practice in places where you aren’t likely to die from screwing this up. Once you have the rhythm down you should have less of a problem getting some of the more difficult Green Stars like the first Green Star in the Stone Cyclone Galaxy.

Line Up Your Shots: The Triple Jump is useful for gaining air, but the Long Jump/Spin combo will gain you the most distance, especially with Luigi. Problem is, some Green Stars are located outside your line of sight. You’ll frequently encounter instances where you can’t turn the camera to see straight, either, meaning you’ll have to manually look around to see where the Green Star is shimmering. Once you know where it is in relative distance and height, look for some markings on the ground to help indicate where to jump from. You’ll frequently find straight lines leading you right to the star, allowing you to have a better idea how to aim.

Hey, sometimes things get tough. You'll get over it. Sometimes ghosts chase you. You'll get over it.

Accept Failure: Some of the Green Stars are unfair, simple as that. I’d wager at least half of them are floating over an empty void, meaning that if you miss your shot you’re looking at one less life in your stash (or ‘stache). It is really easy to blame the camera in most places. Do that. It’s easier to accept that the camera is faulty rather than you as the player. Learn to accept when Green Stars are placed in a vague place in what appears to be an optical illusion and realize that you’ll need to just try again and again until you line the shot up perfectly. I can’t tell you how many times I was so dead sure I landed on the star from a crazy jump but fell right past it. Try again and you’ll get it eventually. It’s a pain, but learn to deal and you’ll be fine.

Come To Terms With What You’re Trying to Accomplish: Here’s where the End Game spoiler comes in: You aren’t getting anything from finding all 242 stars in the game. After collecting the 120 Green Stars, you’ll unlock the final galaxy, the Grandmaster Galaxy. This is a tough galaxy, and rightfully so. Once you collect the 241st star, the 49th Comet Medal, and accrue 9,999 Star bits with the Bank Toad, the final star will appear. It is a Daredevil Run of the Grandmaster Galaxy, meaning you have one hit point, no saves, and almost no chance to beat this one. I must have died fifty times just trying to collect this one single star. And what did I get for my trouble? You get three things, beyond the satisfaction of completing the game.

First, Roselina joins your starship. She will now sit on the starship and offer her thanks for having nothing left to do in the game. You don’t get to play as her or anyone else. She just sits there and says “Thanks” every time you speak with her. Secondly, you get a message on your Wii message board that shows a picture of your 242 stars lined up, saying basically, “Thanks for playing the game!” from the development team. Lastly, you unlock the death counter for your profile, letting you know how many times you died while playing the game. This isn’t a reward; this is an insult. “You won! Congrats! Yeah, but by the way, here’s how many times you died. Try harder next time.” Unacceptable. Worst completion reward to any game I’ve played in recent memory.

Look, Rosey, I like you and all, but your thanks isn't gonna cut it. Even Peach had the decency to bake me a cake.

But that’s the thing to remember: You aren’t pushing yourself to find every star because you’ll get anything. You need to understand that the whole point of you collecting everything in the game is so that you can say, “Yes, I did everything in this game.” Nothing more, nothing less. Once you understand this, the game is yours to make or break.

And that’s pretty much all I can say about Super Mario Galaxy 2. Any further Grandmaster questions can be directed to the comments where I will get back to you as soon as possible with an answer. Good luck and Godspeed young Mario star travelers.

Why am I writing this article? I could be spending this time playing more Mario Galaxy 2!

Okay, you know what I’m about to say. I’m about to have a joygasm for at least two full single-spaced Word document pages and none of it is going to be a surprise to anyone. Super Mario Galaxy 2 is a good game, end of story. I’m not even the only person saying this. But I also don’t know when to shut up, so here we go with the most obviously unneeded review yet! Let’s! Ah! Go!

And Then Chris States the Obvious

At the time of this review, I’m roughly 50-odd stars into the game and more or less completely done with the first three worlds (world 1 is completely finished). I’ve got a chance to play with the new power-ups, Yoshi, and Luigi, plus I’ve done my fair share of Trickster Comets and all sorts of other random what-not, so I’ve got a pretty good handle on what the game has to offer me for the next half. And on the half that I’ve played I can fully recommend the game to any and everyone, as long as you like Mario games/platforming games at least.

In the larger scope of things, Mario Galaxy 2 has been getting universally high marks. You’d be really hard pressed to find someone that really hates the game unless you wait for Zero Punctuation to do the usual “Whine whine, this game is a GAME, whine whine, poop joke” thing that Yahtzee is known for. Granted, I’m curious what he’ll find to gripe about, but otherwise my point is that everyone seems to think this is a good game.

A bunch of old enemies come back, and I couldn't be happier.

To prepare myself for the new game, I replayed the first Super Mario Galaxy just last week to full completion once more. It helped a lot to allow me to segue into the sequel without any trouble since I knew the controls inside and out. I was just worried that Yoshi would be a pain to handle, but thankfully, the controls when riding Yoshi are just as responsive as if you’re just Mario. The game plays a bit different with no long jumps or spin recoveries or wall jumps, but Yoshi missions aren’t a hindrance.

Really, no missions have been a hindrance yet. I haven’t felt the difficulty become unfair at any point, nor have I really considered a death the game’s fault. I know when I’ve messed up, and I never freak out thinking, “Crap! How am I ever going to beat this mission?!” Which isn’t to say the game is simple. Extremely forgiving, but not “simple.” While you’ll definitely encounter some levels where you’ll lose way more lives than you’d expect, those same levels also pack in 1-ups like they’re candy. You may die seven times attempting a single star but finish with three more lives than when you began just because you’re picking up two 1-ups for every death. As I said though, this doesn’t make the game “easy,” it just alleviates frustration.

Missions that require you to ride this star ball are about as close to controller-smashing as I get.

Anyone that assumed this game was just Mario Galaxy 1.5 is entirely wrong. While the controls and graphics are identical, and the story isn’t breaking new grounds in the Mario world, the game is entirely its own beast to tackle. The biggest change from the previous game is the improved hub world, or lack thereof. Roselina’s spaceship is no longer the staring point for all your actions, replaced by a smaller spaceship and a world map similar to more conventional Mario games. For me, this is a huge plus. It keeps things flowing a lot faster and gives a much better sense of progress.

That sense of progress is furthered by new things constantly getting added to your space ship, mostly in the form of new guests from the various worlds. It might just be me, but I love having that drive behind collecting random things, just because. Also, every level has a Comet Medal that needs be found, and while I haven’t yet encountered a level where the medal is incredibly well hidden or out of the way, it does create a good little bit of anxiety to think, “Oh man, I still need to find that Comet Medal before I finish this star!”

So more new things: Power-ups. Yoshi is one major power-up and functions perfectly. Flipping around by aiming his tongue at flower grab-points is surprisingly fun for such a simple action, and the various fruits he eats give him new powers for a short time, such as the dash pepper that makes him run extremely fast for a short period of time. The three new power-ups for Mario I’ve encountered thus far are the drill, which has been shown extensively in trailers and works great, the Cloud Flower, which allows Mario to create three more cloud platforms by performing a spin move, and the Rock Mushroom, a great addiction since it lets Mario roll up into a rock and smash into things. They aren’t groundbreaking power-ups, but they’re in my top list already. I definitely like the Cloud Suit better than the Bee Suit.

So far, I'm pretty pleased with the boss battles, too.

Oh, and the new music is excellent. There are a handful of old Mario tracks recomposed here in epic style that just add to the full package, as well as fantastic new tracks. The Puzzle Blocks Galaxy in particular may be my new favorite track/galaxy both for the music and the awesome gameplay of the level.

My one little gripe is pretty small but it still bugs me: There is no way to save 1-up progression. The game keeps track of Star Bits and coins, but if you have over 50 1-ups like I had after the first play session, they’ll be gone when you turn your console back on. It makes me a bit frustrated to feel like I’m really accumulating a significant amount of lives but to know that it’ll all mean nothing if I save and quit. I just would have liked a system of saving 1-ups when the game is turned off, that’s all.

There, that’s my one and only problem with this game. I haven’t felt this happy with a game purchase in a long time and I can already say that while I doubt it’ll win Game of the Year, this is my choice for 2010 by a longshot. Go buy this from Amazon right now. In fact, Amazon might even take too long. Go down to any store you can find and pick it up this very day. The $50 price tag is such a good deal, so if you find any place that has a discount, oh man, that’s like asking the bank to change a $10 and having them give you back $16 because they had a special that day. Go play Super Mario Galaxy 2 as soon as possible.

Good, I’m done with the article, I can get back to playing.

Let's finish this out with a bang.

If you’ve been following along, I spent a day talking about Mario’s 2D career, then quickly followed it with a chat regarding his 3D endeavors. The next day was all about the spin-off series that spawned from Mario’s greatness. And then we took a Sunday drive with the Mario Kart series. After that it was on to the RPG’s, then sports, and yesterday was all about the Mario Party series. Today’s the final part of the Mario Retrospective, so I’m pointing out just a few other games that I couldn’t classify anywhere else, plus wrapping up my thoughts on Mario’s career as a whole. So for one last time, let’s-a go!

Mario Paint:

Mario, is there anything you aren't just naturally good at?

Good old Mario Paint. One of the few games I had on my SNES when I started out, Mario Paint had a little something for just about everyone. You could create pictures, make simple animation, compose music, color, and even play a small game where you swat flies. The game was simple but had plenty to do. It was also one of the few games to utilize the Super Nintendo mouse, which only made sense since you couldn’t really draw with a controller (well, maybe a Wiimote). The music composer alone was enough to get people going, and nowadays you can find homebrewed programs based off the Mario Paint composer software. Not bad for a game that’s nearly 20-years-old. So why now Mario Paint on the Wii? Hmm?

Dance Dance Revolution: Mario Mix:

What the heck am i looking at? Why am I looking at this? Who thought this was a good idea?

I had gotten into the DDR craze, just a bit. Not as heavily as people I know, such as Other Chris, but I wasn’t a stranger to the excellent game with the dance pad. When I heard that Nintendo would be releasing a Mario Mix for DDR, I was pretty excited. I figured it’d be similar to Donkey Konga where there’d be a lot of Nintendo favorites. I was heavily disappointed to learn that while there were a handful of Mario-based remixes, there weren’t any other Nintendo themes. I didn’t just want a Mario Mix, I wanted a Nintendo Mix. The game even had the audacity to have a story mode with the flimsiest plot I’ve ever heard of: Waluigi steals the music from the Mushroom Kingdom so Mario must get it back by dancing. First off, why Waluigi? That was strange enough. Secondly, why dancing? Just because, of course. Even more depressing was how easy the game turned out to be compared to real DDR titles. I beat the entire game while at work at Game Crazy. That’s sort of sad, but at least the game had some cool remixes, so I can forgive it just enough.

Mario Is Missing/Mario’s Time Machine:

Funny how edutainment games always make kids hate learning.

There are a lot of Mario edutainment games out there, and I can safely say that none of them are good, but Mario Is Missing has a special place in my heart since I’ve actually played it and actually beat it. As with both Mario Is Missing and Mario’s Time Machine, there was really no thought put into making a decent game but rather just A GAME, and they succeed at that, insomuch as there are certainly elements of games in these two examples. But I digress, there is no point to play these games ever, and that’s a shame, because the two concepts are pretty good. Having Mario kidnapped and forcing Luigi to rescue him is a good concept, hence why Luigi’s Mansion turned out to be a game I enjoyed, and sending Mario through time could have been a concept that turned into something epic. Instead we got two bland games that failed to educate and failed to entertain, making them edutailures. Sad but true.

Hotel Mario:

"Remember kids, just because it has Mario's name on it doesn't mean you HAVE to play it."

If you’ve heard of Hotel Mario, you’re already aware that it’s considered the worst Mario game ever. I haven’t played it myself, but I’ve seen multiple reviews and footage of said game, and it definitely looks bad. It was made for the Phillips CD-i, the failed system that Nintendo allowed Phillips to include Mario and Zelda games on, much to our dismay. I don’t even want to go into how unfortunate Hotel Mario is in terms of a project, being bumped down from a real sequel to Super Mario World to nothing more than…well I’m not really sure what it turned out to be. It’s just sad.

The Super Mario Bros Super Show:

These guys should have got an Emmy. I don't even care what for, but they earned it.

Back in the late 80’s/early 90’s, just about any licensed product that could become a cartoon was converted into just that, so the Mario Bros were given a live-action/animated program called the Super Mario Bros Super Show. There would be live-action sequences with Captain Lou Albano as Mario and Danny Wells as Luigi hanging around in their New York apartment being visited by celebrities and occasionally working as plumbers now and then. In between these live-action segments they’d run animated adventures of the Mario Bros that’d tend to favor the US version of Mario Bros 2 more than anything else. The show is naturally awful, but it’s a good kind of awful where you can really get into it with a group of people. A Super Mario Bros 3 cartoon soon followed, capped by a Super Mario World cartoon, but in total these series didn’t last very long. However, they survive on DVD, so check them out, if purely for the camp value.

Super Mario Bros The Movie:

Don't care, this movie is great.

If ever there was a worse representation of Mario and his adventures, I haven’t seen it, because the Super Mario Bros movie was about as wonderfully bad as it can get. There isn’t a single bit of this movie that really works, especially when you consider the source material it was based on. It was really odd that with so much fantasy to work with they managed to screw it up beyond repair. Mario and Luigi don’t don their trademark outfits until the last few minutes of the movie, Bowser isn’t even a dinosaur, and Princess Peach isn’t even the princess. Daisy is the princess for some reason, though in a really odd twist of fate, they hook Daisy up with Luigi in the end, something that Nintendo wouldn’t do for another eight years. How did they know? I highly, highly recommend checking this movie out, but not with the intent of seeing a good movie. This is the king of bad movies, but bad movies that end up being good. If only Schwarzenegger was cast as King Koopa everything would have been so much better.

My Final Thoughts:

Would it really be like that? You've gotta wonder.

I’ve been a fan of Mario since I can remember, way back when I could hardly play video games worth a damn. And he’s always been good to me. But there are some things I never really understood. Such as:

“Is Luigi Mario’s younger brother?” They’re shown in Yoshi’s Island as being twins, but in Mario RPG you can hear Luigi’s wish as mentioning he wishes he were brave like his older brother. I just never quite knew for sure.

“Will Mario and Peach ever really be together?” I don’t care if they ever do anything adult, that’s just juvenile to joke about anymore, I just want one time when they go out of their way to show that there is a definite romantic love between them. You don’t even have too marry them, but at least show them on a legit date or something.

“Are Luigi and Daisy really together?” Mario Tennis implies they’re together. Mario Power Tennis even has Daisy refer to Luigi with pet names. But Luigi still seems to pine after Peach. Anything there?

“Where do the Koopalings come from?” There are seven Koopalings, plus Bowser Junior, plus some Kid Koopas if you count the Mario Party games. Where do they come from? Is it similar to Yoshis where they just come from eggs? Or is Bowser actually a widow? Maybe Mario killed Bowser’s one true love years back and now he’s getting even by stealing Peach? Something to consider.

“Is Peach really a good ruler?” Her kingdom gets ransacked at least once a year by someone or other, and the very things that hold the fabric of reality together, such as the Star Wand or Music Crystals or some crazy jazz, is easily swipable and exploitable. While the Mushroom Kingdom does have an army and guards and such, they’d always fail if Mario didn’t bail them out. At least the price of an extra life has gone down from 100 coins to 50 in the Galaxy games. Good to know inflation isn’t a problem.

“How do they regulate the sporting seasons of the Mushroom Kingdom?” They go golfing, race go-karts, hold tennis matches, attend the Olympics, play soccer, and even hit some baseballs around from time to time. Do they have a set schedule for these seasons? Does the Mushroom Kingdom’s populace just know, “Okay, it’s May, that means tennis is on TV tonight, but next month they’ve got the Grand Prix, and for a week in between that Bowser’s gonna ransack the village, so I should probably go grocery shopping.” I know, it’s a fantasy world, but just consider it for a bit.

“Can Bowser/DK/Yoshi speak English?” The official language isn’t even important to me here, it’s just the knowledge of whether they can all speak one unified language. Yoshi has been known to speak directly to Mario multiple times, but he’s also depicted as having no real discernable speech. DK grunts and such but he’s spoken just fine in the Donkey Kong Country series. And Bowser, oh man, I’m glad they’ve got him back doing his dinosaur noises for speech, but they did give him actual voice acting for Sunshine. It was a mistake, but he can speak clearly when needed. He just shouldn’t.

“Why do they have only singular words voice-acted in Super Mario Galaxy?” This is my last question, but it’s my most pressing. I just finished replaying the first Galaxy and it bugged the hell out of me that Roselina would have fairly short bits of dialogue in text, but then singular words like “So” or “Go” would be voiced. Why? Why not just voice-act all her lines? The entire script for the game, dialogue and every little bit of text on screen, couldn’t be more than five Word Document pages long, with Roselina’s speeches being maybe a single page. Why can’t she just speak all the words? I can’t even imagine how embarrassing it was for the voice actress to go through that. Mercedes Rose, good on you for voicing the new princess, and so very sorry they didn’t let you speak more.

And that’s all for me. I’ve written eight articles now on Mario and his games, and there doesn’t seem to be any indication that his career will end anytime soon. He’s still the pinnacle of iconic for video games, and his newest game, Super Mario Galaxy 2, which I intend to review this next week, is the second-highest rated game ever, barely behind Ocarina of Time and just past the first Mario Galaxy (earlier this week it actually was the #1). But enough about my ramblings. I’m done talking, now it’s your turn. What memories do you have of Mario? What games didn’t I cover that you wished I had? Do you actually dislike Mario and never felt comfortable saying so? I’m giving you your opening to say something, so go right ahead. In the meantime, I have a new galaxy to explore. Thank you so much for-a reading my articles!

Need more retrospectives? Take a look at these:

-Zelda: A Retrospective

-My Little Pony: A Retrospective

-Crash Bandicoot: A Retrospective