As I haven’t owned a Nintendo console since the SNES, I’ve missed out on the Pikmin series. Pikmin has always looked fun to me, so I was really pleased to hear that it’s coming to the 3DS next year. Since I have no frame of reference, I can’t tell you if it’s going to be good or not compared to previous games, but I can say that I do plan on picking this up so I can finally experience the fun that is Pikmin.
You can see one of the reveal videos below:
Genre: Racing
Platform: NES
Matt and I are taking a motorcycle safety course today so we can legally ride the new Tao Tao scooter that we recently purchased. What a better post for today than Excitebike!
I believe Excitebike was one of the first games I played on the NES. It seemed so fun at the time. It was action-packed and could get difficult. We all had the struggles with the stupid bike overheating (see video below). Sometimes the computer seemed to cheat. It did that a lot in these older racing games. The obstacles seemed ridiculous. But it was still a fun game and actually did get a bit challenging as you played through it. I don’t know that I ever made it past the first five levels or so, but I was a kid and just had fun playing it. My sisters and I would compete, but they were quite a bit younger and I would destroy them. And gloat.
I also spent quite a bit of time with the level creator. It was the first game on the NES that I had played that had something like that and I really enjoyed it. If I thought the obstacles on the main game were ridiculous, then the levels that I created were just insane. It was jumps from one end to the other. Needless to say, I didn’t play my own levels very often.
I’m not sure that I would recommend going back to play this now, however. I recently did so, and it’s just not that much fun anymore. Enjoy the game in your memory!
Genre: Puzzle
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Puzzle games are by far my favorite genre. I hate to brag, but I’m pretty darn good at them. I think the reason that I’m so good at them is because I’ve played them all for so long that patterns start to emerge and the games start to feel similar. That being said, I am not good at this game, and I love it!
Puzzles and Dragons Z/Puzzles and Dragons Super Mario Edition is a wonderful game for the 3DS. The touch screen is perfect for this game. It may look like your standard match-3 game, which is how I tried to play it for the first two hours, but it is certainly not that. You can play it that way, but you will be terrible at this game. Instead of taking one piece and lining it up with two or more of the same kind, you take it and move it anywhere you want on the board, but it shuffles the other pieces around as you do so. This means that, with some careful strategy, you can get huge combo moves. This is so different from normal puzzles games that my brain has had trouble adapting to the concept. I love the new mental challenge, though!
While you play your way through the game, you have to select which “cards” you want to play with as well. I have only played the Mario Edition so far, but I’m assuming it’s the same with the Z side as well. As you play these cards, which are essentially characters, you can level them up. You will constantly be switching cards around, though, because they definitely have advantages and disadvantages toward certain enemies. You can also build up power to play occasional power moves, which you’re going to need.
As I mentioned, there are two different games on this cartridge. One is the traditional Puzzles and Dragons Z (this is the latest in a long series of these games) and the other is a Super Mario Edition. I’ve read that the Z side is actually a bit easier, but I like Mario and I started there first.
If you like puzzle games and you’re tired of being good at them all, pick this one up! It will definitely challenge your noggin.
I just read an interesting article on the switch. It’s from Cracked, so be prepared for bad language. The author brings up some interesting points about the design of the system and the reason that we play games in the first place. It hasn’t altered my opinion of it much, but it does bring up some good points.
Genre: Platformer
Platform: NES
Have you ever been playing a game in a series and it just didn’t feel right? Like maybe it just doesn’t belong in the series? If you felt that while playing Super Mario Brothers 2, you were right. Nintendo of Japan had developed a Super Mario Brothers 2, but audiences in Japan found it too difficult. These levels were later released as the “Lost Levels” and can be found in several places, such as Super Mario All-Stars on the SNES.
Instead of starting from scratch, Nintendo re-purposed a game called Doki Doki Panic and released it as Super Mario Brothers 2. This is a really odd game and as a result, doesn’t really feel much like a Mario game. But we all still love it. Some of the odder parts are the fact that you can pull items out of the ground and throw it at mobs, secret potions that sometimes create doors, weird monsters, Birdo and the slots between levels.
Birdo was especially weird. That is the name of the monster in the picture above. Even though it wears a bow on its head, it is a male. He throws eggs at you from his mouth and you need to land on them mid-air, pull them over your head and throw them back at him. After you do this a few times, you can enter the big eagle’s mouth on the side of the wall. Yeah, I told you this got weird. Here is a picture of the slots between levels, which was also strange:
However, you could play as more than just Mario or Luigi. You could also play as Toad or Princess Peach. They all had their strengths – Peach could hover for a while, Toad was really strong, Mario was good all-around and Luigi…well, Luigi was funny to play? He always seems to get the shaft in these games.
I still like this game to this day. I don’t think I ever played it all the way through, though. I’ll have to do that soon. This game is available in Nintendo’s Virtual Console store, so it’s easy to go play!
It’s that time again – geez, time is flying. It’s time to discuss November’s Games with Gold from Microsoft. Next month, we’ll get the following games for free:
The only one that I know anything about is the Secret of Monkey Island. The Monkey Island games are always funny and entertaining, and I expect this one to be the same. As for the rest, I’ll download them and check it out. I’ve got quite a backlog of Games with Gold alone, not to mention the seemingly hundreds more around the house for other systems. I need more play time!
It’s finally been announced! I am very intrigued by what I saw in Nintendo’s announcement about its upcoming product, the Nintendo Switch. I actually like the name. It’s so much better than Wii and Wii U. I do like the detachable controllers from the sides, but they will require batteries (which I assume will be rechargeable with the tablet?). They also look a bit small on their own, but it would make multiplayer on the go a lot more fun.
I like the tablet itself, although they didn’t show any touch-screen controls in the video, so I’m doubting whether it has it or not. This is a big departure from what made their current handheld (DS and 3DS) so great. The touch screen allowed developers to be very creative. I’m concerned about the fate of the 3DS. I hope that it will continue to be a handheld in its own right.
Similar to the DS, the Switch appears to use cartridges, of which I’m a fan. Cartridges last a lot longer than CDs/DVDs. I also feel that they are a lot more fun to collect. I’m glad that Nintendo is finally going to have the power (Nvidia Tegra GPU) to look good on a large HDTV. I still don’t think that it’s designed to quite compete with XBone and PS4, but I will certainly be picking one up in March.
You can find the announcement video here: http://www.nintendo.com/switch.
Sorry for the lack of posts this week, but I’m on vacation visiting family in Wisconsin. I shall return in full force next week!
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