The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

As you may have cleverly guessed, my current attempt is to play through all of the Zelda games. I am doing woefully poorly, having completed only the first game, Link to the Past, Ocarina of Time, Link's Awakening, A Link Between Worlds, Minish Cap, and Oracle of Ages. But I am trying! My current project is Oracle of Seasons, which will get a full write up when it is completed (probably a week or two out).

Oracle of Ages and Seasons has a lot going for it, and a lot to be concerned about. First, it's developed by Capcom, one of my favorite Nintendo third party developers. But, it's developed by Capcom, and Zelda has always been the supremely brilliant Miyamoto's baby! It's part of an ambitious two game set, developed a released together. But these ambitious programs can often fall short of their promise. It's built essentially on the architecture of the magnificent Link's Awakening, but in doing so risks being limited in its innovations. Ages in particularly operates with a gimmick shockingly similar to A Link to the Past (two parallel worlds that change subtly when you shift between them), yet this too makes it so that creating unique ground can be challenging.

So the Oracle games shot for the moon in a risk-filled environment. Did Ages make the risk worth it?

In my opinion, yes. For direct comparison's sake, I'd say that Ages is probably worse than Link' Awakening, but that's about as descriptive as saying that Scottie Pippen was a worse member of the Chicago Bulls than Michael Jordan. Without an objective measure of quality, and compared solely to one of the best handheld games ever, this is limited in meaning.

So what is great about Ages? First, the architecture of Link's Awakening was preserved, which allowed for some very interesting mechanics that even Link to the Past couldn't have accomplished. Foremost among these is the remarkable idea that Link doesn't always need to have his sword out. This means that if you want, you can use two unorthodox items in combination to solve challenging obstacles, like using the Roc's Feather in conjunction with Pegasus Seeds in order to move faster and jump over wider gaps. The presence of side scrolling underground areas like Link's Awakening also open up the gameplay a little, giving you an alternative means of gameplay. There is even a boss that was fought in this side scrolling style, and it was a really fun one, too.

Second, the sound track is really excellent, although tainted a bit by the fact that Oracle of Ages and Seasons share a good number of tracks together. Still, the chiptune tracks are solid through and through, and are so good that you don't mind hearing some rehashes when you switch to the other game in the duo.

Third, Ages manages to separate itself from its Zelda peers by having the most challenging puzzles to date, and having some of the most unorthodox boss fights in the series. These puzzles are mind-bendingly difficult at times, but are worth the payoff (usually). The boss fights are frequently resolved without using your sword at all, making the notion that this Zelda is more about brains than brawn all the more clear.

Fourth, and finally, the world is absolutely enormous, and you really get to double it due to being able to see the world in the past, as well as the present. This is the spirit of the world that Miyamoto envisioned with the original Zelda, but probably tripled in size. This accomplishment is really remarkable, particularly when considering that Capcom was developing two games this size at the same time!

I did have a few criticisms of the game, which are the reasons it doesn't quite match up to Link's Awakening. First, the fetch quests between dungeons are so long and confusing, with little guidance as to where to go, and two worlds to work through, that getting from dungeon to dungeon felt more challenging than fun.

Second, some of the dungeon designs were so cerebral that they evaded common sense, making my need to resort to guides far more frequent with this game than any other Zelda game than the first. A good example is in one of the dungeons, where you need to stand just far enough away from a crystal switch so that you're standing on the red/blue squares that raise, so that the squares will raise you along with them. I looked around that dungeon for probably 45 minutes before finally copping out and resorting to zeldadungeon.net (great site, by the way).

Third, for a game with more focus on puzzle solving than combat, it was really hard! I died probably 25-30 times in the game, which is more than I usually will in a standard Zelda. There were few hearts to refill life bars, and no bottles to hold fairies, really increasing the challenge. I'm not sure if I liked this or not, but in general I'd rather a game be a little too hard than too easy, so I'll put this in the "liked it sometimes and not others" category for now.

Anyway, Oracle of Ages is an excellent addition to anyone's Game Boy library. It's a rich system with a lot of games, but it's a must own for Game Boy enthusiasts, or those who love handheld gaming. I'd give it a 9.3/10.

-TRO

The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap

I recently began a new job, which allows for more time with reTROview, but a lot less time to actually play video games. What I have been able to increase, however, is my handheld playing, as my lunch break has turned into an extended handheld session time. When I thought about the number of handheld games I needed to beat, this turned from a curse to a blessing, as I have been able to chew through a good amount of my backlog in the month and a half I've been working.

For my first game in the new job era, I picked The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap. I had heard superb things about the game, and had even played a bit of it when I was a kid, as my friend on the bus had a copy.

Zelda, as a series, is a bit cursed in that nearly every entry in the series (barring the CD-I games) is of superb quality. While this shouldn't seem like a curse, it highlights the flaws of the weaker (but still very good) games in the series. This is why so many people seem to dislike the superb Wind Waker, or pick on poor, underappreciated, Zelda II. When you're surrounded by real greatness, greatness begins to be expected. And for the most part, Zelda, as a franchise, has delivered some real classics. A Link to the Past, A Link Between Worlds, and Link's Awakening are not only among my favorite Zelda games of all time, but also some of my favorite video games, period.

So Minish Cap's review will likely be negatively colored by this fortunate reality for the series. It stands on the shoulders of giants, and is merely a very good game. I may be underrating it due to this perspective, so take this review with a pinch of salt.

I liked Minish Cap. But I didn't love it. We'll start with the positives. The visuals are gorgeous, following in the more cartoony style of Wind Waker (which I infinitely prefer to the hideous visuals of Ocarina of Time and Majora's Mask). The dungeons are excellent and creatively designed. I found myself needing a guide to get through them to be the exception, rather than the rule. But they always felt just challenging enough to solve with a sense of accomplishment. The story was good, and the shrinking mechanic was interesting, and used to fairly good effect. The game controlled extremely well.

I didn't like several things about the game, however. The first, and most important, drawback to the game was length. A veteran could probably clear the entire campaign in about 8 hours, although it probably took me, as a first timer doing a lot of meandering and fusing kinstones, about 15 hours. The game featured 6 dungeons, a very small amount for a Zelda game. A person may object to this criticism, however, arguing that the handheld nature of Minish Cap necessitated a more compact presentation of the Zelda formula. I would buy that if not for two observations. One, the three previous handheld Zelda's (Link's Awakening, Oracle of Ages, and Oracle of Seasons) were all FAR longer than Minish Cap. And these were all on an older system, with older cartridges, and two of them were designed by the same developer responsible for Minish Cap (My beloved Capcom). Two, the length of Minish Cap is much, much more unforgivable when you consider that a great amount of the game's length is not contained in doing interesting things, but is rather spent doing random fetch quests just to get the one item necessary to go to the next dungeon. This is an element, to a certain extent, in all Zelda games, and extends their play time a bit, but it is one of the more onerous and unappealing aspects of the games. What's more, Minish Cap seemed to have more of these quests, and the quests were longer. This small campaign is poorly complicated by a tiny world. Even Link's Awakening was bigger than the world of Minish Cap, and Oracle of Ages and Seasons positively destroy it in size.

The music was pretty uninspiring, to be honest. Zelda games generally have superb soundtracks, and the previous Capcom developed games (Oracle of Ages and Seasons) have some of the best soundtracks in Zelda history. This one is mostly unremarkable, with a few good tracks, and a few very tiresome ones.

Finally, I found the kinstone fusion to be very repetitive and boring, especially for the more common fusions, which summon chests with rupees across the map, gold monsters that drop extra rupees, or other uninspiring rewards. It is hard to keep track of all of the secrets you unlock with the kinstones, and most of the rewards are boring and uninteresting.

Anyway, Minish Cap is good, but disappointing relative to the Zelda series. I enjoyed it, but found myself wishing for a superb Zelda experience a la a Link to the Past, and finding Minish Cap to be wanting in that regard.

I'd rate it is a 8.6/10.

-TRO

Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings

As part of my seemingly never ending quest to complete every Final Fantasy game, I finally swung around to playing Revenant Wings. I have completed, to date, all of the main FF games (not counting XI and XIV, which aren't really completable in the purest sense of the word, or XV, which bored me to tears but I will complete some day), as well as a good number of spin-off games. There are still more that I haven't completed than I have, however. This is due to the fact that there are just SO many. I now officially own every single one in some form or other, so I felt that it was time to start cycling some of the spinoffs and handhelds through my rotation.

Many people do not like Final Fantasy XII very much, although I do. It was a fun and fresh take on Final Fantasy, the environments were gorgeous, and the combat actually wasn't too much more hands off than normal "mash X" combat in your standard Final Fantasy. I'd put it somewhere around the middle-low tier of Final Fantasy games, but that's just because the vast majority of the games in the series are excellent.

Anyway, due to the fact that so few people like XII, I feel like this one doesn't get very much attention. And it probably deserves about as much as it gets. It's a strange spinoff, in that it's more similar to Warcraft III than Final Fantasy. It's a real time strategy game with heroes and role playing element, but it's an RTS through and through.

I enjoyed the visuals of the game, and the controls were about as good as could be expected with the limited inputs available on a DS. Controlling multiple groups is challenging, but Revenant Wings contains a system in which minions are attached to a hero, and by commanding a hero, the minions will do the same. Each hero has a shortcut at the bottom of a touch screen, so moving between groups is fairly simple.

The story, however, was fairly boring. The strategy lacked a lot of depth. Most missions required capturing spawn points along the way, building up a huge army, and sending them all at your enemies. Spells were largely autocasted, and attempting to accurately select a spell's target showed why. When a ton of enemies are crowded around each other, it's nearly impossible to select the right target with your stylus. The main strategic elements came before the battle, when you are selecting the minions and heroes to bring with you. The game uses a rock-paper-scissors approach in which there are three types of units, melee, ranged, and flying. Ranged beats flying, flying beats melee, and melee beats ranged.Part of the strategy is picking the right type of enemies to counter your opponent's units.

This strategy is completely undermined, however, in that there are frequent "surprise" reinforcements that will come and completely overwhelm you in many missions. What's more, these "surprises" are not suggested in the preparation screens, so you may get a host of melee units sent at you when you packed your lineup full of ranged to take care of the flying units they told you were going to be there. This requires a lot of frustrating repetition of missions with the anticipation that these unpredictable and annoying things will happen.

The game was also a bit too long for a handheld game, and the repetitious nature of the missions made the length feel every longer. I think I spent about 15 hours on it.

Anyway, it's an average game that does some things well, but is mostly a drag. The beginning is enjoyable, but once you realize that the rest of the game has little to offer, it's a chore to finish it.

I'd give it a 7.5/10.

-TRO

Kirby's Dream Land 2

Kirby was a character to whom I had a limited interaction as a kid. My friend on the school bus had a copy of Kirby's Dream Land that we used to play, and I once rented Kirby 64, but besides that, I had played very little of Kirby. I knew that he was adorable, and I really liked both Kirby's Dream Land and 64, but didn't have a good sense for the totality of his games. This review, thus, is written from the perspective of a relative novice to the Kirby universe, so you'll have to forgive any lack of perspective.

I picked this game up because it was on my list of Game Boy games to acquire, and it was on sale on the 3DS Virtual Console. I don't have the original cart, but the Virtual Console adaptations are generally well regarded, and I noticed no problems with it, technically speaking.

It sat on my 3DS for a while, until I finally finished Pokemon Sun and realized I was without a primary handheld game to play. I looked through everything on my 3DS, and decided to give this one a shot.

This game is truly excellent. A little research yielded the fact that most Kirby fans really like this game, and feel it is one of the best, if not the best, in the series. I really enjoyed it for a number of reasons. The music is some of the best chiptune music I've ever heard. It's adorable, and appropriately tense and action packed during some sequences of the game. The game's difficulty curves magnificently, starting with an excellent first level that teaches the basics of the game without bashing you over the head with tutorials, but maintaining an easy enough difficulty level that even my gaming-inept daughters could complete. By the time the end of the game rolls around, you realize that it's grown much more challenging, but don't notice any bizarre difficulty spikes along the way. The visual design work is fantastic, building a lot of detail into a very small black and white (or green, on the original DMG Game Boys) screen. The enemies looks great, Kirby and his allies look great, and the world is beautiful and interactive. There are tons of secrets to unlock, and a big enough variety of levels to keep you interested from level to level. The game's length was appropriate for a Game Boy game, and a save feature was used well to preserve your progress.

On the downsides, I didn't much care for the controls while flying. Having the A button jump and the up button also be used for flying made for an awkward control experience. This makes a number of boss battles and jumping/flying sections far more challenging than they should be, and make you fight against the controls rather than your enemies, which is never good. Controls when not flying were generally pretty good, however.

I'd give Kirby's Dream Land 2 a 9.1/10.

-TRO

Pokemon Sun

I am a huge fan of Pokemon. Pokemon was my first initial foray into RPGs, and for that I'll be incredibly grateful. I have a memory of playing a Final Fantasy Legend game on the Game Boy at my friend's house, but I didn't really get it. I was pretty young, so it was understandable. He also had a Sega Master System, so his taste in video games was a bit off of my beaten path.

Anyway, my first taste of RPGs came at a winter camp out I attended with some other boys from area churches. Rather than enjoying the outdoors, I spent a good chunk of my time playing Pokemon Blue on my friend's Game Boy (Pokemon was, at the time, brand new). I was completely hooked. It was a fantastically immersive experience. You were playing as a boy, on a great adventure. The visuals were excellent, the design of the Pokemon was really cool (Charizard for life), and all of my friends were playing it in short order, and watching the tv show. I quickly saved up my money ($30, I believe), and bought a copy of Pokemon Red.

I have completed every Pokemon game's quest (at least one version), have caught every Pokemon in 2 iterations (Red and Y), have played several of the spinoff games, have watched a good chunk of the episodes of the TV show, and genuinely love the franchise. Every game in the series has some merit and is enjoyable in its own right, although my favorites are Emerald and Y.

Pokemon came back big time last year, with the launch of Pokemon Go, and the announcement of new games on the 3DS. With how much I adored Y (I think I put over 150 hours into it), I was extremely excited for Pokemon Sun, and even pre-ordered it. And I very rarely buy brand new games (maybe once per year).

Pokemon Sun was good, but not quite as good as Y. There were a number of extremely annoying things about it, but the core gameplay was fun. Story is always peripheral to the core gameplay of Pokemon, but the story was good. The music was also good, but not quite to the level of Emerald or Red/Blue. There were a few cool new Pokemon (although more boring ones than cool ones), and the Alola redesigns of existing Pokemon were extremely cool.

I didn't like several things about the game, though. I hope that some of these things will be addressed in new patches (I just know Game Freak is reading this ;)).

First, Sun introduced a new mechanic in which wild Pokemon can call allies when they are low on health. Sometimes these allies can be rare Pokemon that cannot be found in the wild. You can also use this mechanic to increase your chance of finding shiny Pokemon, and for time efficient EV farming. Cool, right? WRONG. Now, if they tinker with the mechanics a bit, this could work. But the reality is that with rarer or harder to catch Pokemon, this mechanic can become a nightmare. Why? Because you can only throw poke balls when there is one wild pokemon present. And the reinforcement can be called every turn! It will frequently happen that you will have to kill the ally pokemon several turns in a row before you ever get a chance to throw a poke ball. If it's a pokemon with a low catch rate, you can sometimes spend ten minutes just trying to catch it. Worse, if it's a pokemon with a low catch rate, low encounter rate, and self-damaging moves, these pokemon can be so frustrating to catch that it's simply a better use of your time to trade for one.

Second, being a retro gamer, I would have loved if the D-Pad could have been used to control your character. It's been that was since Pokemon Red, and it wouldn't have taken much to program this into the game. You could easily use the code from Y. You can still use it to select moves (I think), but simple motion would have been much more comfortable for me with the D-Pad enabled.

Third, and perhaps most frustrating, the game launched without a Pokedex for back catalogue Pokemon (Pokemon that can't be caught in the wild in Sun or Moon). This is mind-numbingly stupid, as the game has code for each Pokemon to be usable in the game, with full movesets, sprites, cries, and battle animations. Excluding this made the task of keeping track of your Pokemon, as well as which ones you need to catch 'em all, impossible. I really hope they patched this, more than anything else.

Fourth, it really feels like the Game Freak team is just running out of ideas for new Pokemon. Many of the designs, frankly, looked stupid. I know there's only so many animals out there to pick from for models, but a Donald Trump themed Pokemon? Really?

Even if it wasn't intentional, it's kind of funny.


Anyway, I enjoyed it on the whole, but a few basic flaws kept me from loving it the way I did Y. I hope the next game learns these lessons, and I hope that subsequent patches fix these problems (they may already have done so). But the existence of patches shouldn't enable developers to release unfinished games, and it feels like Game Freak, who generally has a very good reputation for launch quality, didn't put in the full effort that they should have, electing to add essential elements to the Pokemon after launch.

I'd give Pokemon Sun an 8.3/10.

-TRO

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

Now that the PiPocalypse is over, I can move on to talking about the other games I've played in the interim since I stopped blogging in September. While I teased this one in a previous post, I promised a full review, so here goes:

A Link Between Worlds is Beyond fantastic, and you need to play it ASAP. If you don't have a 3DS, I just don't understand why not. It's a phenomenal handheld with a deep library of games, a great selection of virtual console titles (although not as good as it should be). The controls are fantastic, and it's very impressive visually.

Anyway, of all of the reasons to get a 3DS, this is number 1. The best game on the system by far, a Link Between Worlds is the 2D Zelda game I have wanted ever since loving a Link to the Past on the SNES. Other 2D Zelda games have been successes, and are very fun in their own right, but never quite captured the magic of the SNES one, with Link's Awakening coming the closest.

I almost want to choke saying this, but A Link Between World's isn't just a fantastic homage to A Link to the Past, but it exceeds it  in most ways. In order to explain this concept, we need to examine the family history of Zelda a bit.

A Link Between Worlds keeps everything excellent about A Link to the Past, while jettisoning some of the tiresome elements, and replacing them with newer, better ones, just as A Link to the Past had done the same thing with the original Legend of Zelda.

The original Legend of Zelda is completely brilliant, but like most first runs of games, fails in a few areas. It is exceedingly successful in transmitting Miyamoto's vision of a pure adventure game. As he has stated numerous times, Zelda is based on Miyamoto's experience as a child of exploring the caves and areas surrounding his town. To a kid playing his NES, as I did, Zelda was absolutely huge. There were so many areas of the map to explore, and so many secrets and dungeons hidden everywhere. The world was your oyster, and you had to crack it.

Unfortunately, while Zelda succeeded in creating a vast explorable world, the game was simply too open to make for a cohesive and excellent game. Part of the reason is that the player lacks any sort of direction. He can theoretically go in any dungeon first, but has no idea where to find them! You may stumble into one, and can then beat it, but then where is the next one? Why am I clearing these dungeons? Sure, you can find out from the manual, or the cutscene in the title screen (if I'm remembering correctly), but those are lazy storytelling techniques. Plus, I never had the manual as a kid! And some of the dungeons are pretty impossible to find without some sort of guide, including that one dungeon that's hidden under a random tree which you have to bomb. That tree has NO marker indicating that it is special. Basically, in order to find it, you'd need to bomb every tree in the game.

In one of the most iconic moments in gaming history, an old game gives Link the only guidance he will receive in the game:

Gee, thanks. Who are you again?

A sword, and the thought that it's dangerous outside. So while Zelda is hugely important, very fun (with a guide to reference occasionally), and lays the groundwork for a positively brilliant series, it fails in one main element that really must undergird all great games, an achievable, clearly stated objective.

A Link to the Past remedies this in a way, but also shrugs off some of what made the original so great. When you begin A Link to the Past, you have a bit more story than in LOZ. You wake up to a telepathic plea from Zelda asking for help! Your uncle sets off to help, and you follow, completely unarmed. You find your uncle wounded, and take his sword and shield. You rescue the princess, and discover your objective: to obtain the Master Sword, the only tool to defeat the villanous Aghanim, who is trying to unlock the Dark World. Getting this sword requires clearing three dungeons, clearly marked on your map. And so on, for the rest of the game. The world is huge, and exploring it is fun, but you have signposts to suggest to you where to go next!

This is where the weakness of A Link to the Past seeps in, and where all Zelda games from Link to the Past up until Skyward Sword make the same mistake (you may be able to do a few of the Dark World dungeons in Link to the Past out of order, but I can't remember). From that point on, your path through the world, and through the dungeons, was strictly limited by your progress in the game thus far. In other words, you could not proceed to dungeon 2 until you had cleared dungeon 1. There was a strict order in which you had to tackle the dungeons, and you are unable to deviate from it at all. This fixes the lack of direction in the original, but also violates its spirit.

A Link Between Worlds fixes all of that. It represents a perfect fusion of Zelda 1 and A Link to the Past, by providing you with a clear story and objective, while also giving you flexibility and freedom to tackle dungeons as you wish. How does it do that? Glad you asked!

The item rental system in A Link Between Worlds makes it so that the vast majority of items are available from about 15 minutes into the game. They can also be acquired very cheaply! You also are given a few possible dungeons on the map to start, but can do them in any order you want. You also attain the pegasus boots very early, as well as the ability to teleport between save points, enabling quick transportation across the map. Each dungeon usually requires your sword, your wall merge ability (great addition, by the way), and one special item, which you need to access the dungeon. This item can be accessed from the very beginning of the game, opening up the world to your pace, rather than strict dictation by the designers.

The dungeons are brilliantly designed to be challenging, but intuitive. They make perfect sense, and adhere closely to the theme of the dungeon. I am not generally very good at solving puzzles, but this was the perfect mix of challenging puzzles that don't cause me to flee to zeldadungeon.net in 5 minutes. I only needed a guide to get through a dungeon at one point, but also didn't ever feel that they were too simple to navigate without being challenged.

The visuals and sound are fantastic updates to the ambience of A Link to the Past. They are obviously based on it, with the world looking very similar, but a bit better. The music features many tracks from A Link to the Past, but uses full orchestration, in addition to a selection of excellent new tracks. The controls are excellent, and there are tons of secrets to discover, in typical Zelda fashion.

If I have any complaints about this game, there would be two (small) ones. First, the game is a bit too easy. I died one time through the whole game. I wiped the end boss, and everything else in the game, without dying twice. To give you a sense of it, I usually die quite a lot in a Zelda game. I'm currently playing Oracle of Ages, and have died 20 times already. This is too easy, although it was so fun that it didn't bother me too much.

Second, I REALLY wish that they would have enabled the D-pad for use in controlling Link. In the game, it controls the camera, allowing you to look around outside of Link's normal area of view, but D-pad controls would have really brought back the nostalgic feel of Link to the Past. Additionally, holding the control pad in one direction as you run through the world can be surprisingly tiring.

All in all, this game is near perfect. I'd recommend it to everyone. It's a great game for those who have never played Zelda, and great for those who have always loved it. I'd give it a 9.8/10.

-TRO

A Note on Ratings

My ratings for things are a reflection of the old-school grading metric used in school, but it could use some clear delineation for the reader:

10-perfect
9.0-excellent
8.0-good
7.5-average
7.0-below average
6.5-bad
6.0-very bad
0-the worst thing ever

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 13 (Really the Last): Super Mario World 2

I know I said that Sonic 3 would be my last Pi Review. I forgot about this one, oops! Anyway, I REALLY wanted to like this one. I love Super Mario World, as explained in my earlier review. I love Yoshi. I love Miyamoto. I love hand-drawn sprites. I almost always love critics' darlings. But I just couldn't really enjoy this one much.

Let's start with the good. The music is catchy and fun. The concept is inventive. The graphics are fantastic. Some of the levels are really well designed, and there are tons of secrets in each level.

But SMW2 is crippled by one huge, glaring weakness. Pace. The egg throwing mechanic causes you to slow down, aim, and throw constantly. And this wouldn't be too awful, except for that some obstacles/enemies take two or more eggs to destroy! And God forbid that you have to go back and find more bad guys to swallow to make more eggs. You end up taking 15-20 seconds for every obstacle that needs to be cleared with eggs, and that's simply too long for a game that should be like Super Mario World, fun and quickly paced.

The controls are also a bit slippery, particularly in Yoshi's leg-kick float. Being able to use that more than once is a great design idea, but the long length of it, combined with the fact that its end is unclear graphically, makes it guesswork to be able to float again. I ended up killing myself more times by floating at the wrong time, or floating too many times, than I did by all of the other enemies in the game.

Anyway, I did beat this one, but I was glad to see it end. If you're one of those who thinks this is one of the greatest platformers of all time, I'm glad you enjoy it. I just can't say I'm one of you. I'll give it a 7.5/10.

-TRO

Leviathan

After fourteen consecutive video game related posts, it's time for something else! When I think about the greatest records of all time, there are about ten that come to mind. And eight of them are Miles Davis records. I wouldn't put Mastodon's Leviathan in the top spot, but it's certainly the best non-Miles record I've ever heard. And it's even (forgive me Miles!) better than some of Miles' better records.

I first discovered metal due to my high school friends. I loved jazz, and I loved technical musicianship, and my friends who were in to music were both metalheads. They loved bands like Metallica, Killswitch Engage, Iron Maiden, Dio, and Lamb of God. I could never really get into it, however, and not really because I had ever listened to it. It was more the mental picture I had in my head of what metal was. I always pictured satanism, death growling, silly lyrics, awful dancing, and complete lack of melody. While that picture is more or less accurate for certain subsets of metal, I had basically rejected an entire genre of music based on a stereotype that is certainly not accurate for metal as a whole.

My first foray into metal was with a few Dream Theater records, which I fell in love with. For someone who loved technical excellence in music, Dream Theater represented a pinnacle of my love. And it didn't even have any of the harsh vocals that fit my mental stereotype. I was also given two System of a Down records, and a few Metallica records. To my great surprise, I really liked all of it!

It was fiercely innovative and creative, raw and emotional, and to my great surprise, highly melodic! I loved the tonality of distorted electric guitars, and loved that the players were almost universally technically proficient, if not virtuosos. I still didn't care for Lamb of God, Killswitch, or any of the other bands to whom my friends introduced me that featured non-sung vocals, but I had the bug.

Six years later, after discovering many, many metal bands that I really loved (I even learned to love Pantera, despite the fact that the vocals initially turned me off), I found myself on a list of NPR's greatest records of the 2000s. I was interested to see what jazz was on there, and what metal records there were. There was only one metal record one the list, so I had to get it.

Leviathan. It truly is a massive accomplishment and worthy possessor of the name. The first track "Blood and Thunder" begins with an absolutely crushing riff, followed by a very jazz oriented drum fill. It then proceeds to my (at the time) least favorite harsh vocals. And yet, I found myself instantly captivated by this band. They managed to capture a perfect synthesis of a wide range of influences, but the byproduct sounded like pure Mastodon. They are one of a kind. The guitarists are excellent riff writers, and drummer Brann Dailor is a superbly talented musician who manages to separate himself from the pack of fantastic metal drummers due to his unique drumming style. The typical forms of metal drumming barely appear in his work at all. There is precious little double bass drumming, and what little is there is used to great effect. His snare tone and work is the best in the business, and he relies more on snare than any metal drummer that I have ever heard before. He syncs masterfully with bass player Troy Sanders. All four of the members sing, although guitarist Bill Kelliher sings less and less with each passing record (I'm not sure if he's appeared on one lately).

The great challenge of making a great metal record is in giving the listener space to breathe, and offering good contrasts. A record like Slayer's Reign in Blood works only because it's less than a half hour long. Working a very heavy album at nearly 50 minutes like Leviathan is a challenge. Man can only take so much brutality before it, too, begins to bore.

Yet Mastodon strike this balance perfectly. Each section ends just before you want it to, leaving you wanting more. The balance of heft and deft are excellent, as they cohesively weave their two threads together in a coherent whole. You do not ever feel like two separate bands recorded records and put them together (*cough* most metalcore bands *cough*). Each wing of the Mastodon sound works together in perfect unison to make a collection of excellent songs.

The concluding tracks, "Hearts Alive" and "Joseph Merrick", begin to wind down the crushing musical experience, concluding with a relaxing, yet sad instrumental guitar outro that leaves you, again, wanting more.

I can't recommend this record more highly. If you want an excellent introduction to the more extreme side of metal, with a healthy side of good songwriting and super musicianship, this record is for you. I'd give it a 10/10.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 12 (The Last): Sonic 3 and Knuckles

We've finally arrived at the last game that I've completed on the Pi since Christmas! Given my limited time to play games, 12 games beaten since Christmas is pretty good for me. But I've cheated again. I haven't beaten Sonic 3 yet...sorry! But this completely catches me up to date on Pi games, so now I just have to go back and write up all of the handheld games I've beaten since then (not 12).

This one is tough for me to objectively review. One of the reasons I love Sonic 1 & 2 as much as I do is likely nostalgia. They were two of my mainstays on the Genesis, along with Vectorman. And they have aged really well. I never owned Sonic 3, though, and had never even played Sonic 3 & Knuckles as a kid. I borrowed Sonic 3 once, but my selfish friend asked for it back after 2 (!) days. Not enough time to get very far.

Anyway, Sonic 3 & Knuckles is a great example of shooting for the moon, and mostly hitting! The changes between 2 and 3 are far bigger than the changes between 1 and 2. First of all, yes, Sonic 3 & Knuckles is 1 game, even if it comes on 2 carts. It was developed as one game, but putting it on one cart would be been prohibitively expensive, so they split it out into two.

The first, and biggest changes, is that you can now play as Sonic, Tails, Sonic 'n Tails, or Knuckles. And as opposed to Sonic 2, Sonic and Tails aren't just clones of each other. Each has their own specific skill set, and each can thus go through the same levels but access different parts or go through different paths due to those skills.

Sonic 3 also embraces the non-linear style of Sonic 2, and takes it to the next level. Levels are enormous, and go up, down, left, and right with ease. There are so many different paths and secrets to discover along the way.

The new powerups are minor, but fun. I particularly like that the water shield makes it so you can breathe underwater.

The best thing about Sonic 3 is that it redressed both of the previous two games biggest weaknesses: no save feature, and poorly designed speed sections. You can save in this game, and the speedy sections are just so fun. I haven't encountered one yet that dumps you out right on a bad guy, and I'm about halfway through the game.

In terms of weaknesses, I think I like the look of Sonic 2 better, and the minibosses between each act are a bit boring a drab. Having Robotnik to fight as every boss was fantastic in the last two. While the music of Sonic 3 is very good, it just doesn't feel as memorable as the music for Sonic 1 & 2 (despite Michael Jackson's involvement).

Overall, I'd say that Sonic 3 is, despite my nostalgia screaming at me, every bit as good, if not better, than Sonic 2. It improves both of the glaring weaknesses of that title, and only missteps a few times. I'd give it a 9.3/10.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 11: Sonic the Hedgehog 2

It's like Sonic 1, only slightly better! The great things about Sonic 1 are all generally improved with Sonic 2, although they failed to redress some of the weaknesses of Sonic 1, which are even more glaring in 2. If the speed of Sonic 1 was shocking, the developers of Sonic 2 cranked it up to 11 with this one. Introducing the spin dash enabled Sonic to move even faster, and without any length of level ground or downhill on which to gain momentum. The level designs are even less linear, necessitating *moving to the left* for extended periods of time in some levels, something that was almost never done at the time, and still is not commonplace. There are even more branching paths in Sonic 2, resulting in new discoveries each playthrough. Adding in Super Sonic also increases the replayability of the game, as you need to get 7 Chaos Emeralds in order to unlock him, no easy task. Having Tails along to help out in bosses is nice, too, and his character design is adorable. The music and sound is again excellent (with the exception of the horrible music in the penultimate stage), as are the visuals.

The bad enemy placement on the speedy sections, however, is even worse. You'll be flying through a super fun part at top speed, and then run into a coconut. What's more, that coconut will be there every time, suggesting that that was an intentional design choice by the creators. Ugh. They do the same thing with other unkillable enemies (like those cursed robots with the drills that burst out of the walls in the Labyrinth Zone), making it to your benefit to slow down and slog through the levels.

What's more, the game is even longer than 1, and still doesn't feature a save feature. The end boss is very challenging and glitchy, resulting in you being killed more by quirks of the physics or unclear communication of the boss' weak spots than by your lack of skill. Beating this game is, thus, a real achievement!

All in all, I like Sonic 2 a bit more than the first, and it is another great reason to own a Genesis. I'd give it a 9.3/10.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 10: Sonic the Hedgehog

There are many gaming memories of which I am ashamed in life, but none more shame-worthy than my decision to ask my parents to sell my SNES so I could switch to the Sega Genesis. I did so for two reasons, one horrible, and one fantastic.

The first was simple covetousness. My friends from church had a Genesis that I would play while I was at their house, which was a frequent occurrence. My other friends across the road also had a Genesis. Was the Genesis a better system than the SNES? NO! I would argue, however, that one of the real reasons why the SNES was so great was because they had two real competitors, Genesis and Mega Drive in the U.S. and Europe, and the PC Engine was still kicking along pretty nicely in Japan. So it's largely because of those systems that the SNES was able to build so magnificently on the success of the NES. Competition increases quality. But to my mind, at the time, I thought that Genesis was a better system. Simply because I didn't have it, I wanted one.

The second, and far better reason, is that the Genesis had Sonic. Sonic was one of the few examples of another game following the Mario path, adding in a few extra elements to separate it, and almost nailing it. But almost nailing Mario means that you are an incredible game.

So what is it about Sonic that's so great? First, the speed. The parts of the game in which you are on rails, moving too quickly for the human eye as you spin through loops, launch off of plungers, and speed through pipes were completely revolutionary. I don't think they really nailed this concept in the first two, as there were far too many times in which you'd be speeding along and hit an enemy which was intentionally placed there so as to encourage you to slow down. Or perhaps unintentionally and incompetently placed. I'd go with the first, as the game is too well done otherwise to suggest that level of poor design. But even having a pace like that in a video game was, at the time, revolutionary. And certainly it had never been seen before in a platformer (at least by me).

Second, the visuals are incredibly detailed and beautiful. While I love the visuals of Super Mario World and SMW2, I think the edge for best graphics in a platformer in the 16 bit era has to go the Sonic series. The backgrounds are great, the sprites are big and beautiful, everything is colorful, and the objects with which to interact are well designed.

Third, the music and sound effects are superb. The rewarding *boing* you get while hitting a plunger, the great noise when you're moving through the pipes, the music tracks for pretty much every level, the sound of Robotnik's ship blowing up on each level as you beat him...all great.

Fourth, I love how directed the narrative in Sonic is. In the Mario games, you barely see Bowser at all until the final level. In the Sonic Games, Robotnik is constantly hovering around, fighting you at the end of each act, and generally being an irritant. You always feel like you're making progress in the war against Robotnik.

Fifth, the game play is so magnificently simple. For a game as complex and fast as it is, the game operates on one button and a d-pad. It's the perfect example of how deep of a game you can make with a handful of mechanics (see also, Mega Man, Super Mario Bros., Shovel Knight). This game is even simpler in its control scheme than any of the previous examples, however, making it a shining star in simple-yet-deep game design.

Sixth, the levels in Sonic are so long, and really embrace the idea that level design does not have to be linear. There are usually 3 different tracks through a level, which can make every play through unique. This was largely unheard of in a platformer, and has made the game age phenomenally well. What's more, the design of these long levels remains compelling to this day.

It's not without its weaknesses, though. The lack of a save feature was pretty silly by the 16 bit era. Basically all of the platformers on SNES had save features, so it's a bit puzzling that this one did not. They could have really doubled down on experimental and long levels with a save feature (as they did in Sonic 3 & Knuckles). It's an excessively long game to play through in one sitting, although it's doable. The flaws in the speedy portions were noted above, and really do put a blot on the game. They encourage you to slow down throughout the game, contravening the main thing that made Sonic stand out.

All in all, though, Sonic is a great game. There are other great games on the Genesis, but its lineup just isn't as deep as the SNES. But the existence of Sonic was the biggest reason that in the greatest console war of all time, Sega was able to punch it out with the juggernaut, Nintendo. For that reason alone, Sonic will stand the test of time, even apart from how great of a game it is to play til this day.

I'd give Sonic 1 a 9.2 out of 10.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 9: Super Mario World (Or an Ode to Mario)

OK, you got me. I'm cheating. The rules for the Pi Reviews were that I would review games which I hadn't beaten before that I was going to beat on the Pi. The truth is that I actually have beaten Super Mario World several times before, but I simply love it to death, beat it again on the Pi, and decided to take this chance to talk about it again.

If you put a gun to my head, and asked me to choose my favorite video game series of all time, it would be very difficult to choose. There are many series which I really love, such as Zelda, Mega Man, Donkey Kong Country, Mass Effect, MLB: The Show, Super Smash Bros., and Street Fighter. But the two that will likely always be top two for me would be Final Fantasy and Mario (just limited to the main series games, not including the sports titles, Mario Kart, FF Adventure and Tactics, etc., many of which are also excellent). But if I had to pick, I think I'd take Mario, for three reasons.

First, essentially every main entry into the Mario franchise has been superb at launch, and has aged remarkably well. Basically the only Mario games which I do not love are Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario World 2 (generally my answer to the question "which games do you not like that everyone else loves" along with Ocarina of Time. But that's another blog topic for another time. Please don't kill me.) Even those two games, however, are actually quite technically competent, fantastically creative, and quite fun at times. I just think they're the worst of the series. I simply can't say the same for Final Fantasy. The NES-PS2 era were great at the time, but most have not aged well. And some really weren't all the great to begin with. FFIII (the one that was never released in North America until the DS version) is simply not good. FFVIII also struggles at times to separate itself from its titanic predecessor, X has dreadful voice acting, and XII's battle system is a bit too much watching and not enough playing. But the main problem with FF has been how poorly some of the entries have visually aged, and particularly the PS1 entries. As much as I love FFVII, the visuals on the characters when they are not in the battle screen are just dreadful.

Be honest with yourself. Does that look good? Look at those hoofs! Err....hands

 Second, the fantastic learning and design at play involved with Mario games means that you are constantly in action, which means you're constantly having fun! It's very easy to spend 10-15 minutes at a time tinkering with job configurations in FFV, or rearranging materia in FFVII, or switching equipment in any Final Fantasy game. While these are largely necessary elements to the genre, these down time moments become less appealing to me as I get older, and especially as I have less time in which to play. Mario maximizes fun, whereas Final Fantasy maximizes immersion. Immersion is great, but it increasingly takes a back seat to fun for me these days.

Third, the storied history of Mario is just too fond for me to even allow comparison to Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy is the dominant force in JRPGs, particularly in America, where Dragon Quest never really took off. But Mario taught the entire game industry vital lessons at every step in gaming history. 

Donkey Kong was a revolution in arcade games, and made it possible to develop and build interesting characters in video games. 

Super Mario Bros. is unquestionably the most important video game in history. It rescued home video game consoles from the city dump and put them back in every American's living room. It showed us a world that didn't just have a black background with space ships shooting aliens. It had seamless side scrolling. It had so many secrets to discover, encouraging interaction and learning both within the game, and across the gaming community. It made us realize how vitally important music is for video games. It made "Nintendo" a synonym for video games for an entire generation of moms. And it spawned all of the phenomenal sequels and startup games that came after.

Super Mario 64 literally created interesting 3D video games at the console level, and has aged so very well.

Super Mario Galaxy showed how excellently motion controls could be adapted into really good video games.

But my personal favorite Mario Game, and one of my top 5 games of all time, is Super Mario World. 

It plays perfectly.

It looks perfect.

It sounds perfect.

It simplifies the number of items and powerups from SMB3, but gives you so many varied locations in which to use those items that it never feels like a downgrade.

It has an enormous and completely interconnected world map, through which you can revisit your favorite levels as many times as you want. And there are so many levels with secret exits that finding them all without any help would be a massive undertaking.

The Super Nintendo is my favorite system, and Super Mario World is my favorite game on that system (sorry Earthbound and Chrono Trigger!). The reason that SNES is my favorite is that to me, the SNES was where gaming reached a crossroads, and the SNES took the right path. Cartridges could now hold massively detailed and enormous worlds in them, making it so that you did not have to make your games dreadfully difficult in order to ensure that the player would get his money's worth out of a short game through endless repetition. Save batteries becoming more commonplace ensured that you didn't have to complete a game in one sitting. With the right design, you could make a game challenging, but make part of that challenge the pure fun and ecstasy of exploring a massive world. Super Mario World set the stage for the pure fun of the SNES, compared to the artificially frustrating challenge of NES and earlier games. It's one of very few games to which I will assign a perfect 10/10. It's the one game I recommend to anyone who's never played video games, or has never been able to get into them. It's the perfect bad day game, and the perfect good day game. Go beat it if you haven't!

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 8: Donkey Kong Country 3

Donkey Kong Country 3...gets a lot of unwarranted hate in my opinion. I think people think of the DKC series as DKC 2 is best, DKC is very good, and DKC 3 went off the rails at a distant 3rd. I have to disagree! I personally think that DKC 3 is the worst of the three, but is actually quite a good game.

There are a few things I don't terribly like about this game, but appreciate that they shot big in making changes, and think that they really succeeded in improving 2 and several areas (heresy, I know).

First, the bad. The visuals just don't match up to the second one. I know that they were in a new land, and so enemies would look different, but for the most part, they have the exact same enemies, just reskinned. This was pretty lazy design on their part, but would have worked if the new designs looked good. Most of the time, I find them to be a reduction in quality from the original designs.

Second, the music is just not very good, especially when compared with the great music from DKC, and the brilliant music from DKC 2. There are a few decent moments, but little about it is memorable.

Third, the end boss is simply horrible. It isn't challenging at all. It took me probably 30 or 40 takes to beat DKC 2's boss, and only 3 to beat DKC 3. I think I died more on that annoying snowman boss in DKC 3 than I did on the end boss.

But there is actually a lot to like about the game! The design of the main characters is good, and I find Kiddie Kong to be funny and to play really well as a replacement for the bruiser Donkey Kong. It was GREAT for them to embrace different character designs to force you to think strategically about which character you will use for a level, section of a level, or boss. This is just better design than the second.

Second, the big overworld map is great. It is beautiful to look at, and is far more interesting to explore than just going from point to point on a map like in DKC and DKC 2. The mechanic in which you need to find parts to get new vehicles or upgrade old ones in order to access new parts of the map is fun, and makes a lot more sense than simply climbing up a mountain like in the other 2.

Third, the level designs are extremely creative and fun. Each tends to feature a different gimmick to them that you have to master and use in increasingly challenging situations, which is fun. But the best part is that these gimmicks are rarely reused, making each level feel fresh and difficult, unlike other games that recycle level themes. Sometimes, these gimmicks are frustrating failures (THAT STUPID LEVEL WHERE YOU HAVE TO ESCAPE THE LIGHTNING BOLTS) but are far more likely to feel fun and fresh. After two previous games, bringing new ideas can be challenging, but Rare really did a great job on level design for this game.

Fourth, the bosses are just really fun, and I love that you can bring your animal companions with you to fight several of them. The bosses also follow the pattern of the levels, in that they're very creative and different than the bosses from the previous two DKC's.

So don't believe the hate. Give this one a try. It's not as good as the other two, but it's good enough to be a top 50 game on a VERY stacked console. And it's not too expensive (or you can just get a Pi, although I have it both ways). I'd give it an 8.7.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 7: Donkey Kong Country 2

The last time we met up, I discussed my love for Donkey Kong Country. Many games get terrible or inferior sequels that change too much of the formula, and those changes are bad (Castlevania, Zelda), or change too little to justify the necessity of a sequel (Ninja Gaiden). There are certainly plenty of games in which the second in the series is the best (Mega Man, Mass Effect, Half-Life), and that represents a really magical accomplishment. While all of the games I mentioned managed to have VERY good first entries, they all suffered in some elements, and manage to improve in those areas to create a masterfully crafted and immersive game experience. DKC2 is certainly among the pantheon of truly great second sequels, and not because of huge changes, but because of little tweaks.

On it's face, DKC2 shouldn't work. It's a Donkey Kong game without Donkey Kong. He barely appears in the game at all, and isn't playable at all. At least in Donkey Kong Jr. you can see him on screen while you attempt to rescue him. I don't think DK appears until the very end of the game, when you (spoiler alert) rescue him from King K. Rool. The two player characters play very similarly to each other, except for Dixie having the ability to glide through the air. They move at largely the same speed, jump the same, and have the same level of strength.

So why is it better than DKC? First, the music is among the best on the SNES. I'd put it up there with Mega Man X, Chrono Trigger, Final Fantasy 3 (U.S.)...the real greats. There are a ton of tracks, and almost all of them are super catchy and interesting.

Second, the character sprites remain beautiful, but the backgrounds are even better than DKC, and the levels are bigger and more detailed.

The game is really hard, but curves really nicely, giving you the chance to learn and adjust to the difficulty as you grow more proficient at controlling the characters and discovering the layout of the levels. If I never play Bramble Scramble or that last level where you have to bounce to the top on the snake again, I will have a much less stressful life, but also less enjoyable! It's hard, but the difficulty is fair, and they give you a ton of extra lives, giving you a fighting shot at learning the levels through iteration.

And the end boss is just fantastic. Perfectly challenging, well designed, and even a little funny (seeing him blow himself up with his cannon is great). All in all, DKC2 will be an excellent 10-15 hours of your life spent. If you don't enjoy it, I'll be stunned. The main negative game is the disappointing similarity between the two characters, which was one thing that DKC did really well (and DKC3, although we'll get to that next post). It basically makes it so that there's never a reason to play Diddy, unless Dixie is dead.

Anyway, I'd give it a 9.5/10.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 6: Donkey Kong Country

I'll be honest with you. I really don't like Donkey Kong. By Donkey Kong, I mean the arcade game, and NES port. Are these games super important? Yes. Are they objectively good games? Yes. Did they introduce us to Mario? Yes! Did they put Nintendo on the map and enable them to have the cash to make my beloved NES? Yes! Are they fun? Sort of.

I know that in the very early days of video gaming, Donkey Kong was a titanic technical achievement, and represented a serious jump forward in terms of storytelling in games, graphical excellence, tight controls, and innovative and active level design. In other words, it's just another great leap forward for Miyamoto and Co.

And I know that Donkey Kong is a great arcade game, but that doesn't always translate well to consoles, and it's on consoles that I truly fell in love with games. They were longer due to exponentially expanding amounts of memory that could be included on a cartridge. They allowed a more natural learning curve of difficulty due to this long length, and due to the fact that there was less incentive to make the game super difficult, thus sucking away all of your quarters and making profit for the company. The arcade games that I truly love and grew up loving were the ones that exemplified all of the great elements of console games, rather than the reverse being true. I loved arcade fighting games that featured competition between players (Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Tekken, Guilty Gear) or games that required collaboration between players (X-Men, The Simpsons). The great thing about arcades for me was the social aspect, not the crushing difficulty.

And boy is Donkey Kong difficult. The hitboxes are weird. The jumping is difficult to time. And the fall damage.......ugh. The best change from Donkey Kong Mario to Super Mario Bros. Mario is no fall damage. Does it make logical sense? No! Jumping from impossible heights should hurt. But it's just not fun. It doesn't encourage liberal experimentation in game play. It doesn't make your heart leap at death defying stunts.

All that is to say that the first Donkey Kong game with which I fell in love was Donkey Kong Country. I am a huge SNES-N64 fan of Rare. They were Nintendo's go to ace third party developer in those days, and a ton of my favorite games from those systems were developed by Rare. The decision to license one of Nintendo's most famous and important characters, the first one that made them great, was gutsy, and it payed off big time.

The visuals are excellent, and represented a huge leap forward in graphic design for the time. Most games that take huge leaps forward with visual experiments are cool at the time, but later are looked back on with a bit of derision. They just don't age gracefully (e.g. the first generation of 3D console games like Tomb Raider, Virtua Fighter, Space Harrier, etc.). Somehow Rare avoided this, as all three of the DKC games look great to this day. Their use of 3D models turned into sprites is fantastic.

The controls on the first one are good, but not quite as tight as the second. The rolling off the edge and then jumpy simply doesn't work sometimes, resulting in a lot of deaths trying to get all of those secrets. Additionally, there are sometimes waaaay too many levels between save points (I'm looking at you, level with the platforms that you have to refuel).

The design of levels and music, however, are fantastic. They are only a slight touch below the second in both categories. The levels have a great amount of mystery to them, with all of the secrets peppered throughout.

The bosses are fun, and challenging.

And they took Donkey Kong and turned him from a princess stealing villain into the hero of the day, fighting sinister crocodiles for the sake of his precious banana horde. Yes, I know that Donkey Kong from the DKC era is technically Donkey Kong Jr., but who really cares?

In an age where a lot of retro games have aged badly, DKC has only gotten better with time. As a testament, in a house full of plenty of modern video games, my kids are most often to request to play DKC, DKC2, or DKC3 for their time playing games. The keep coming back to them time and time again, soaking in the environment, enjoying the characters, and continually trying to better themselves by getting past the part that killed them last time. That quest for self-improvement is at the core of all great games, and kids fundamentally get this, without it needing to be explained for them.

DKC is a great game, and really is the seed of a lot of talent and great ideas at Rare in the 90s (to be culminated in DKC2). I'd give it a 9/10. Go check it out, if you haven't already!

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 5: Mega Man X3

Finally, the last (I promise) Mega Man game on this series of Pi Reviews, Mega Man X3. I was already getting a bit burnt out on the Mega Man franchise by the time X2 finished up, so this review may be a bit more negative than this game deserves due to that, but here goes. Mega Man X3 is not good. The levels are much more lazily designed that X and X2, and the music is frankly dreadful. I'm not sure what happened to the team between the end of 2 and the start of 3, but there must have been some sort of burnout on their end, or perhaps a change of personnel. In any case, I wouldn't recommend this one unless you really want to finish all of the Mega Man X games and are thus particularly fond of flagellation. The controls and graphics are still excellent and the boss fights pretty fun, but that doesn't cancel out the lazy levels and dismal music. I did think it was cool that you could finally play as Zero, but since he basically has one life instead of being able to start a file as him, or switch characters between levels, I don't think I even bothered playing as him.

All in all, I would not recommend this one to any but the most die hard Mega Man or platforming fans. I'd give it a 6.5/10.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 4: Mega Man X2

The next game I beat on my Pi was, predictably, Mega Man X2. I was particularly excited to play this one, as I love Mega Man X, but had never really given X2 a proper playthrough. And I enjoyed it quite a bit! Most of the things that made the first one great are all here. The music is great, the controls are perfect, the bosses and level designs are fun, and the graphics are fantastic. I also appreciated that the end boss wasn't quite so soul crushingly difficult as it was in X (maybe it's just me). While it mimics greatness, however, it doesn't really expand much on the formula of X at all. And that, ultimately, is what made X so great, paying heed to the Mega Man formula while adding in another layer of complexity that separates it from its predecessors. Again, this is very hard to do, so it doesn't make this a bad game by any stretch. And it was certainly better than X3...but we'll get to that soon.

Altogether, I'd give this one a 8.3. It was fun and engaging, but not very inventive.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 3: Mega Man X

Ugh. More Mega Man?!?!?! Yup! I've already written pretty extensively about this one, so I'll keep it short. This is my favorite Mega Man game, and it's the best Mega Man game. I've beaten it before, but it was so convenient on my Pi that I had to play it again, especially since I was planning on playing X2 and X3 for the first time (you have to play the first one first!). The music, controls, and graphics are all perfect, the level design is excellent, and the bosses are fun and varied. Most importantly, for the first time since Mega Man 3, we got REAL updates to Mega Man. Introducing the dash, wall jump, and a variety of secret upgrades to X give this game a depth that the originals can't match. It's a perfect example of how to do a really good sequel or reboot. It has plenty of hat tips to the original series, while also innovating in an interesting way that increases the amount of fun to be had in the game. If you've never played this one, go do it. I'd give it a 9.5 out of 10, deducting slight points for how absolutely annoying some of the huge slowdowns can be when there are a lot of bullets on screen, and for the fact that some of the weapons are pretty useless unless you're using them against the intended boss. Other than that, it's fantastic!

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 2: Super Mario Bros. 3

As you can probably tell, my first project upon getting the Pi was to beat all the old Mario games I had not yet beaten. As I mentioned last time, Mario is one of my all-time favorite series (top 5 if not top 3), and Super Mario Bros. 3 is the best of the bunch, at least on the NES. While I had already beaten Mario 1 on my NES, Mario 2 and 3 still evaded me, so I went in chronological order. I had beaten 3 on an emulator before, with save states, but never done it in one straight run, so I set out to do it on my pi. And it was so worth it.

While I love Mario 2, both for nostalgic and for game play quality reasons, Mario 3 surpasses it in pretty much every way. The controls are again perfect, the music is the best out of the series, and is about as good as Mega Man 2's music. The visuals are among the best on the NES, and I don't think that's a stretch to say. But Mario 3 not only matched Mario 1 and 2, it continued to innovate in a way that is both bold and successful that you usually do not find in other NES series *cough* Ninja Gaiden Mega Man 4-6 *cough*.

The failure of these series to advance successfully is, of course, understandable. Before the NES, there were really no games that got sequels, or at least very few. And three games in the series? There you're pretty much talking about only Donkey Kong, which fizzled out pretty heavily by game 3. There really was no precedent for how to do a sequel well, so the trial and error of a Zelda 2 or Castlevania 2 can be forgiven, since they represented big new attempts at great things, and succeeded partially, and failed partially (neither game is as bad as their modern critics would say). But Mario 3 knocked it out of the park. While you can get fire flowers, mushrooms, and in Mario 1, and mushrooms and hearts in Mario 2, Mario 3 has SO many powerups, from mushrooms, to a frog suit, to a full racoon suit, to a hammer suit, stars, fire flowers, the P finger thing, to everyone's favorite iconic tanuki tail. The overworld map completely altered the way Mario games were played from that point on, and placed Mario in a believable world rather than isolated levels.

And the secrets you can find in Mario 3 surpass any of its predecessors. This is one of the things I love the most about the game, and one of the things I miss most about classic gaming culture. Now, there's no such thing as a secret in video games. Want to find the warp worlds in Mario? Look it up. Want to find those light arrows in Link to the Past? Look it up. Want to figure out how to get Gold Sonic in Sonic 2? Look it up.

We didn't have the internet in those days, and so finding a secret and sharing it with your friends was just an experience that the kids today just won't be able to enjoy the way I did. I still remember discovering from my friend that if you crouched on the white blocks, you could run behind all of the scenery, and use this to find a warp whistle. Or that if you ran fast enough with the tanuki tail in one of the castle levels, that you could fly over the top of the castle to find another warp whistle. It was just so fun, and like learning the hadouken in the arcade, it's a kind of communal and social aspect to video gaming that just won't be replicated.

All in all, it's a fantastic game filled with hours upon hours of pure joy. I'll give it a 10 out of 10, because it's pretty much perfect in every way.

-TRO

Pi Reviews Part 1: Super Mario Bros. 2

The very first game I wanted to beat on my Pi was Super Mario Bros. 2. My absolute favorite games on my NES as a kid was Super Mario Bros 3. And my second favorite was Super Mario Bros. And my third favorite was Super Mario Bros 2 (you get the idea). Mario was such an unbelievable franchise to me. It was colorful. The controls were perfect. The graphics were excellent (and have aged brilliantly). The music was perfect. The balance of fun to challenge was fantastic. And each of the three Mario games had something completely new and unique about them. All three completely blew my mind.

Little did I know that Super Mario Bros 2. in the U.S. was actually mostly a reskin of a Japanese game called Doki Doki Panic. Modern day grumpy gamers will use this as an excuse to say that Mario 2 isn't a "real" Mario game. While this may be, I suppose, technically true, that doesn't take away from its brilliance, nor its commonality with the other two Mario games. It was produced by Miyamoto and his team at Nintendo, just like 1 and 3. Its music was composed by the legendary Koji Kondo (composer for the Mario and Zelda series, just to name a few). And most importantly, it's FUN.

No, it's not as ground breaking as 1. No, it's not as fantastically polished as 3. But yes, it is a great game in its own right. The controls are great, music is catchy, the bosses are fun, the levels are inventive and varied, and it introduced a bunch of characters and mechanics that would remain a part of the Super Mario franchise to this day. If you haven't played it, or haven't given it a fair shot apart from the long shadows of 1 and 3, just try it. I think you'll enjoy it.

Now we just need to get Wart a cameo in a Mario game. Or at this rate, he could probably be a playable character in Smash Bros. ;)

He's a villanous frog that hates vegetables. Should be pretty easy to work a Smash moveset around that.

I'll give it a 9/10, as it's a bit buggy in places, and isn't quite as unified an experience as Mario 1 and 3. But those are very good games to get beaten by.

-TRO

Pi Reviews

My next series will be a set of all of the games I've beaten on my Raspberry Pi since Christmas. These are retro games that I have been struggling to beat since I've been a kid, but once I got the Pi and no longer needed to switch wires to hook up my old systems, I've beaten several old games that I'll review here (hopefully I don't forget any). Enjoy!

-TRO