What I'm Watching

I'm launching a new, sporadic, but regular series on this blog called What I'm Watching! Why is it new, sporadic, but regular? Because I don't actually watch all that much TV, unless I'm watching with my wife. A lot of what I watch with my wife I just watch to hang out with her, no because I'm interested in the show at all, so I won't review that as those reviews would be inherently unfair. But I am going to start reviewing shows I watch on my own time, usually while exercising, and I actually finished 2 shows (!) in the last week! This is the second show I finished, but it's much shorter and easier to review, and I'm running a bit short on time today, so I thought I'd start here.

The rules for this segment are either that I have to have watched a TV show or a whole movie, that I had to have to chosen to watch it of my own volition, and that I watched either the complete show or movie, or at least have watched up until the most recent season. My preference is to watch shows that are completed, but if I'm really interested in a show that's currently on the air I may try to stay up on the show every season (this rarely happens).

So my first and second iterations of this series will be coming soon! I'll be traveling this week for work, so I'm not sure whether or not it will come out this week, so we'll see.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 28): I, The Creator

Will it djent? Yes.

-TRO

*Sorry if you understood none of that. Just give it a listen, and google djent if you're still confused.

What I'm Playing (Volume 33): Super Mario Kart

My experience with Super Mario Kart is, strangely for how many copies it sold, limited almost purely to emulation. My cousin had a copy of the game, and I played it with him once, but by the next time I came back to his house he had replaced his SNES with an N64, and Super Mario Kart with Mario Kart 64, so my exposure was almost nonexistent during the period in which people actually had SNESs in their homes. I've never found a cartridge of the game out in the wild, so my first acquisition of an officially licensed copy of the game was with my SNES Classic. I'm trying to work through several of the games on the delightful little box and really enjoyed F-Zero, so I decided to move onto Super Mario Kart next.

This is a tough review for me. I've always enjoyed Mario Kart 64 as my favorite of the Mario Kart series, although Mario Kart 8 certainly gave that classic a run for its money. So I'm going to try to review this game through the eyes of someone playing it in 2017 but also reviewing it next to its peers, and in light of its importance in gaming history.

There can really be no doubt that Super Mario Kart is a titanic milestone in gaming history. The most important accomplishments of this game is in laying the groundwork for future and beloved Kart racing games, of which the Mario Kart series and Diddy Kong Racing are my absolute favorites, and establishing the Mario universe as not being limited to platforming games, opening the door for a dizzying array of truly excellent spinoff titles including the Mario sports games, the Mario Party series, and all of the different Mario RPGs.

So Super Mario Kart is important, and that must be commended and reflected in the review. But is it a good game? It certainly has some excellent elements to it! The visual presentation here is quite delightful, with a bright and popping color palette at play, nice animations for the racers, and beautifully designed and programmed courses. It's not quite as good as the presentation in F-Zero, but having the ability to have two players explains this, and that's really the meat of the game. For example, a casualty of having two players is that while playing in single player mode, you can only see half the screen, with the map displayed on the other half.

The sound is also excellent, with catch track after catchy track, and sound effects that will be familiar to anyone who's ever slipped on a banana, activated a star, or grabbed an item out of a box. It's amazing just how much this game established for the series, and how closely each subsequent iteration has adhered to the original.

The controls are very good. They are responsive, and each racer controls a bit differently, making controlling each racer a completely new experience.

The game has plenty to do, with 4 separate cups with 5 tracks each for a total of 20. You can race each of these, and if you can get first place in the first 3 cups, you will unlock the last cup. The game really thrives in the two player mode, however, and really opens up the eyes to the potential of what could have been there in F-Zero. Both racing against your friends and doing the battle mode against them make the game a ton of fun, and give it nearly infinite replay value, similar to all of the subsequent iterations of Mario Kart.

There were some elements of the game that chafed a bit, however. Super Mario Kart struggles with the same AI issues as F-Zero, in that it's nearly impossible to get a substantial lead over the second place person due to the limitations of being able to place all eight racers on the map in real time. It's slightly better than F-Zero in this regard, but it was definitely noticeable that while people get in your way all the time while you are trying to catch up, the AI rarely mess with each other, giving them a clear path to catch up to you once you hit a wall or go off the road slightly.

The courses were also a bit lacking in originality a lot of the time. It seemed that the game had only about 7 themes, and each course was based on one of these themes. There are the grass courses, the mud courses, the haunted courses, the Bowser Castle courses, the ice courses, the beach courses, and the one of a kind Rainbow Road. This meant that there were a lot of rehashed concepts for the courses, which was kind of disappointing, but is almost certainly due to the limited cartridge space. Compared to a game like Mario Kart 64, however, with its huge array of variety between courses, Super Mario Kart feels very repetitive and boring after a while, given that you're splitting 20 courses between these 7 themes, necessitating a great deal of reused assets. Only when you introduce two players does the game receive a new jolt of life, but this does make sense given the focus the developers put on the two player aspect of the game.

All in all, Super Mario Kart is both good and important, although it is definitely more important than it is good. It's definitely worth a play if you've never played it before, but don't be surprised if you, like me, find yourself being impressed at how much has stayed the same in the Mario Kart universe from 1992 to the present, but also find yourself wanting to power up your Wii U or Switch and play Mario Kart 8 instead. I'll give Super Mario Kart a 9.0/10.

I'm still finishing up the percussive game I referenced earlier, and after that I'm going to circle back around and finish The Legend of Dragoon, which I reviewed months ago but never actually finished. So it may be a few weeks before a new console edition of What I'm Playing, but I am going to finish up my handheld game over the weekend in all likelihood. I'll also be debuting a brand new series here next week, so stay tuned!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 32): Sky Force Anniversary

I know I said I'd be playing something else for my next home console review(s), but this game was free with PS Plus this month, and I've really been craving to play a vertical shooter, so it was a match made in heaven! I'll catch up on my promised game(s) next week, probably. It's possible I may be good to go with another tomorrow, but it all depends on how much time I have to game tonight.

My history with vertical shooters is limited, but pleasant. I used to play one of the Raiden games on my friend's computer (not sure which Raiden game), and I absolutely adore Aerofighters. I've also played a ton of vertical flash shooters on sites like Kongregate, but I have very little context for this review, only my gut sense for the genre and how I liked it. I have a bit more experience with horizontal shooters like Gradius and R-Type, but I generally prefer the vertical experience for some reason.

Anyway, Sky Force Anniversary is a vertical shooter a la 1942. It's definitely not in the bullet hell subgenre, but there are portions of the game that feel a bit like that. It's a remake of an older sprite-based game, but I never played the original, so I can't comment on how good of a remake this is.

The plot of the game is that you need to progress through 9 levels, shooting down every bad guy along the way, beating the bosses, and stopping the sinister end boss. It's not heavy on plot, but that's fine in a genre like this. More shooting, less chatting is my motto. You begin with one gun, and can upgrade your ship with stars that drop from enemies you've killed and objects you destroy. The enemies will frequently drop powerups, but these aren't powerups that substantially change the shape of your shots, or add new ones. These power ups merely increase the damage and fire rate of the weapons you currently have.

Rather than a one hit death system, Sky Force Anniversary gives you a health meter which depletes as you get hit. You don't get to get hit a ton of times, but it's definitely more forgiving than a game like Gradius. You can also upgrade your health to increase the number of times you can get hit before dying.

As you upgrade your ship, you can add a few passive weapon upgrades, including heat seeking missiles that fire every few seconds, and wing cannons that go along with your main cannon. You can also upgrade your ship with active powerups that must be collected in each level, including a laser that burns through everything, a bomb that blows up a ton of enemies on screen, and a shield that makes you invulnerable for a time.

The levels are challenging and will definitely require you grinding more upgrades to complete, unless you are a shooter genius of some sort. Most are of the standard fly straight and gun everything down variety, but one features you getting hit with an EMP and being unable to shoot, requiring you to dodge enemies for the rest of the level. This is the point in the game at which it most resembles a bullet hell shooter, although it's not really the same.

So is the game any good? Yes, although it has some weaknesses. The game looks excellent, and the music has a pleasing if repetitive nature to it. The controls are good, and the game is plenty challenging for a novice shooter like me, without feeling impossible. Each level features a chance to get bonus points by earning medals by accomplishing additional objectives like killing 70% of the enemies, 100% of the enemies, rescuing all of the hostages, or getting through the level without being hit. This gives the game a fun grindy nature to it as you cycle back around to each level to accomplish the more advanced objectives after upgrading your ship enough. The bosses are all fairly fun and challenging, and are nice to look at.

There are plenty of secrets to figure out in the game, as certain cards will randomly drop, powering up your ship even more. Finding these cards is pretty fun, and some can be very powerful.

The game, however, uses an annoying system of progress, in which you not only have to beat a level to advance to the next one, but you also have attain a certain number of medals to advance. This necessitates grinding old levels even after you have beaten them just for the privilege of trying the new level. I would have much preferred it if you had been able to advance as soon as you had beaten the newest level, and then find that you need to grind more just to be able to have a chance at victory.

The game is grindy, but it lacks some of the most fun aspect of grinding, seeing your ship grow stronger! Most of the upgrades in the game are incremental in nature, and very expensive. Getting an upgrade in your cannons should result in them changing color, getting a wider spread of damage, or something of the sort. In this game, it looks almost exactly the same before upgrading as after, making the rush of seeing a new upgrade very limited. For example, they could have easily made the health upgrade make your ship have cool looking new armor, but they just make the ship look exactly the same no matter what.

In addition to the problem of not having cool ship upgrades, it's also problematic that there's exactly 0 customization available to change how your ship fires/looks/performs. It would have been much better if they had had some sort of skill tree to make your ship small and fast, or big with high health and firepower, or to change the cannons from a direct line to a piercing shot to homing shots to spread fire. But you always just shoot forward with missiles flying around, which makes for a dull experience that doesn't play to your desires as a player, rather than completely being controlled by the designers of the game.

It also feels like they used the extremely grindy nature of the game to hide a low amount of content. The grindy nature of old games was a feature intended to overcome limited space on cartridges/discs/rom boards, or to suck more quarters out of you, which is two problems that many games no longer have. They could have easily added 5 more levels to this game, and reduced the grind a bit to make the game a bit less repetitious for no reason. This would be like if an RPG now included far less questing and more grinding. Sure, we all have fond memories of Dragon Warrior, but Dragon Warrior was made that way for a reason, and that reason no longer exists. Few could deny that a game like Chrono Trigger is better for its large amount of content that was enabled due to increasing levels of technical excellence. This game feels like it's playing at Dragon Warrior when Chrono Trigger is easily within reach.

But all in all, Sky Force Anniversary was an enjoyable experience for me. I don't think it's one of the best shooters available, nor do I think it's innovative in any way. But it does what it does well, and it scratched an itch for me. I'll give it a 7.6/10.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 27): I Wish

You've heard this song before, and odds are you really like it. While Skee-Lo is usually thought of as a one-hit wonder, it's interesting to note that the entire album sold fairly well, and was nominated for the inaugural Grammy for best rap album of the year in 1996 against 90s legends 2Pac, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Ol' Dirty Bastard, and Naughty by Nature (the eventual winners). Enjoy!

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 26): Change (In the House of Flies)

Remember, just because a band wins a Grammy doesn't mean they suck, although it's true more often than not. And don't even get me started on the Rock and Roll Hall of Shame and Disgrace (h/t Eddie Trunk). This track is really excellent work from a really inventive and original band. Change (in the House of Flies)

-TRO

In a Silent Way

Marking Miles' first embrace of the electric sounds, tone, and instrumentation of rock and roll, the rambling soundscapes of psychedelic music, and the improvisational genius of jazz, In a Silent Way represents some of Miles at his best. Miles has always been most interesting when he shattered down the barriers of what was acceptable in jazz, and he does it better than absolutely everyone else.

The record features a jaw-dropping array of musical geniuses (I do not use that term lightly) including John McLaughlin, Tony Williams, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Joe Zawinul, Wayne Shorter, and of course Miles. In typical Miles fashion, he manages to extract every ounce of genius out of the cast of characters, and assembles an absolutely titanic sonic masterpiece.

This record is definitely built more on the new and unique tones of the electric guitar, keyboards, and organ, and Miles arranges these tones into some absolutely gorgeous soundscapes, breaking new ground all along the way. The highlight of the record is the B-side, which I think should be listened to as one song. The B-side features the title track, a soothing building soundscape of keys and guitar to which the rest of the band builds delightfully. Abruptly, however, the track erupts into a groove ("It's About that Time") that makes even Meshuggah cringe with how brutal it is. Seriously, go give it a listen. The keys and bass absolutely captivate, all while Tony Williams' drums show just how powerful simple yet dynamic drums can be. The tension builds magnificently as you nearly die from the heft of it, yet tension is inevitably resolved through the reoccurring and uplifting organ pops that come more and more frequently as the song vamps up, down, and up time and time again. Throw in a few excellent solos from Shorter and Davis, and you have one of Miles' finest moments. Then to top it off, the band circles back in turn to another round of "In a Silent Way" to cap off the record brilliantly.

You need to go check out In a Silent Way. It's one of the highlights in a career filled with accomplishments that make Miles unquestionably the greatest musical figure of the 20th century. I give it a 10/10.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 25): Long Train Runnin'

Smooth

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 24): Happiness

One of the most confusing things about trying to follow modern music is the seemingly endless division and subdivision of genres. So when wikipedia informs me that this band plays "post-hardcore" along with several different combinations of genre word salad, I frankly have no idea what that means. But when I inform you this this song rocks, that should get you closer to the truth. Sad, poignant, creative, and melodic, I need to find more music like this. Oh, and the album cover rules. I love the colors, the detail when you look closer at it, and the slight off centeredness of the guy in the boat. Rock on, Dance Gavin Dance.

What I'm Playing (Volume 31): F-Zero

F-Zero is a futuristic racing game for the Super Nintendo, and was a launch title for the SNES in both Japan and North America. It is extremely fast paced, and uses the famed Mode 7 to simulate 3D environments in a way that is still very appealing today. Each car has a power meter which decreases when you get hit, and you can only increasing in pit stops, usually located after each lap is finished. You also receive a charge of turbo when completing a lap, which can be used in predictable ways.

F-Zero is one of the games I had as a kid that was always too hard for me, so I used the chance given to me by obtaining the SNES Classic to beat it.

It was an absolute joy to play, and for a game that broke as much graphical ground as it did in the home console market, it still looks fantastic today. You have two modes, grand prix, and classic. In grand prix mode, you go through 5 races in a series, and have to finish in 3rd or lower in every race to finish the cup. Curiously, it doesn't seem to matter what place you get overall, one downfall of the game. In practice mode, you can simply pick any race to practice on, as you might expect.

You can pick from one of four cars, each with their own fictional multi-billionaire pilot. Apparently the manual went into the story a bit more and introduced each pilot, but story isn't really why you're here.

The tracks are beautifully designed with plenty of speed boosts, jumps, and eye candy galore. Obstacles litter the track, as do other cars to get in your way. Skillfully avoiding these obstacles will separate the good racer from the bad, as they will slow you down a lot, and if you hit too many, your car will blow up, you lose a life, and have to try again.

The visuals of this game are phenomenal, and I can't really stress that enough. For a launch title for the SNES, F-Zero is one of the smoothest and most beautiful games on the console, and has aged fantastically. Usually games improve visually on a system towards the end of its life cycle as programmers figure out the little tricks that can be used to improve visuals, but the SNES launched with some exceptionally well aging titles, and F-Zero is pretty unquestionably the best looking of the bunch. The 3D environments all perform well, the camera is perfect, the cars look great, and they manage to accomplish all of this without the slightest slowdown, which would have been crippling in a high speed racer like this.

The music of F-Zero is every bit as fantastic as the visuals. It might even be my favorite non-Squaresoft soundtrack on the console. Every song is an absolute banger, and each sets the mood for the each track really well. There's just nothing bad I can say about music or sound.

The controls are excellent, as the game uses the new shoulder buttons on the SNES to good effect. The L and R buttons serve to make your car take tighter turns, which will be very necessary as you advance throughout the course. The controls work just as you think they will, and your failures will be because of you and not any bad controller schemes.

F-Zero is an excellent game which broke a lot of new ground. In retrospect, it's easy to pick on some aspects of the game, and I do. But these all need to be taken with a grain of salt give its existence as a launch title, and the great leap forward that the game brought to home console visuals and racing games in general.

I do wish that there had been a lengthier single player mode for the game. The grand prix mode can be cleared pretty easily for each cup in about an hour. From there, most of your challenge involves ramping up the difficulty, and trying to beat your old times. While this is fine, it can get a bit stale at times, and the highest difficulty levels are pretty unforgiving, if you want to finish first in every race. A story mode, or the chance to build and upgrade your car across the cups would have been nice.

I also wish that there had been a two player mode in the game, although this likely would have pushed the hardware to the max. But the existence of the technically similar Super Mario Kart with two players a year later suggests that it could have been done. Super Mario Kart doesn't look as good as F-Zero though, so who knows what would be possible.

My last, and most important critique of F-Zero is the competition. The game seems not to register the location of all racers at a time, but will rather only track the car in front of you and the one behind you. Further, the car behind you always seems to maintain the same distance from you, unless you slow down. This means that even if you've raced extremely well for full minutes, catching every shortcut with the fastest car, and you hit one obstacle, the enemy will catch up within seconds. This is kind of frustrating, and definitely favors a more conservative play style once you have a lead.

So, the question is, can Miyamoto make a bad game? The answer is no! Ok, there's probably a few, including Donkey Kong 3. And stop it with Zelda II, it's not bad, just worse than the first. F-Zero is just another in a long line of Miyamoto games that simulatenously push the envelope on what console games should look like while also managing to be titanic amounts of fun along the way. We all bow before you, Miyamoto-san. My love of video games may never have happened without that shiny Super Mario Bros. in my living room, along with the seemingly endless train of your work that has come after, including F-Zero, which I'm giving a 9.0/10. You're the most important figure in video gaming ever, and we all love you!

Here's a "hint" for the next Miyamoto game I'll be playing!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 30): Star Fox

Star Fox was one of the first games I had on my Super Nintendo, but I'd never before beaten the game! With the Super NES Classic Edition now safely in my home, I started to beat the first level to unlock Star Fox 2, and then enjoyed it so much I just finished the game up right then and there.

Star Fox is the story of Fox McCloud. He's a fox and he shoots down bad guys in his sweet space ship, and that's about as much as you need to know about the story!

Star Fox features the now legendary Super FX chip that enabled the Super Nintendo to reached graphical heights that would be otherwise impossible on the console. Examples of games using the expensive chip included Star Fox, Star Fox 2, and Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, but it's pretty uncommon in games in the library.

The game uses the Super FX chip to excellent effect in creating a fully polygonal 3D rail shooter experience on the SNES, which would be impossible without the chip. The game looks dated in that no one would make a game that looks like it today, but like Super Mario 64, dated doesn't mean ugly, or that people shouldn't make games like this anymore. Star Fox is actually remarkably beautiful, with huge objects that fly past you, lovely colors on screen, and distinct and visually appealing enemies to fight.

The game play is very basic, but fun. You steer the ship around the screen while shooting your lasers and bombs you pick up along the way. You can destroy objects or make riskier path choices to get upgrades, but the game is generally very linear. There are a few distinctions that separate Star Fox from it's rail shooter brethren such as Star Wars Arcade. You can now increase your throttle and hit the break to shoot Fox past enemies, or to keep from flying into them. This is mostly useful during boss battles as the bosses fly towards you, necessitating more mobility than would typically be seen among rail shooters. I also really enjoy that if you damage your ship in the right areas, you can knock off wings, reducing the mobility and firepower of your ship.

The levels are plenty long enough, and the game will take around 45 minutes to complete, but this is a nice touch. As the game doesn't have a save feature, 45 minutes is about as long as you'd like in the game. If it were longer, you'd like a save feature, but you don't feel cheated by the game's length, particularly as there are three difficulties to play through. Each difficulty doesn't just change the toggles on number of lives, bombs, firepower, shields, etc., it actually gives you a completely different set of stages to play through! This great increases the replay value of the game, and gives the game far more than it's 45 minutes of fun in the sun.

The game is generally excellent, but it isn't without its weaknesses. Some aspects of the game haven't aged terribly well, including the shooting mechanic. Rather than having a separate mechanism for shooting your lasers, they just shoot directly in front of you, making it very challenging to shoot and evade damage at the same time. This can cause the boss battles to drag on for some time, as the windows in which to deal damage are small. They largely designed the game around this function, however, so it's not a huge deal.

The technical challenge of creating this game on the SNES shows, too. There are times with fairly large amounts of slowdown, but it's not quite to Mega Man 3 levels. Most of the slowdown times are during complex and detailed cutscenes, so it at least doesn't affect gameplay much.

Star Fox is a fine effort and a joy to play, and laid the groundwork for 3D console gaming in a way that I think a lot of people reserve for Super Mario 64 and Tomb Raider. It's like Space Harrier (on the Genesis), only fun! I'd highly recommend you take this one for a spin. I'll give it a 9.2/10.





Next up in my console series of What I'm Playing is another SNES game that's been in the backlog for a while. If you can't guess this one, you need to turn in your gaming card.

-TRO

Concert Review: Russian Circles and Mastodon

What a great year for metal shows in my area! We had Iron Maiden, Meshuggah, Megadeth, and Mastodon in the area in one year, which is a very nice showing, even if two of them played the same show. The last time I had a chance to see Mastodon, it was ruined by the weather. There was a tornado in the area the day of the show, and the Mastodon and Clutch show that night was canceled. I was crushed, as Mastodon was my favorite band at the time, so I was absolutely thrilled when I heard they were coming back to the area.

There were two bands on the bill, as Mastodon was accompanied by Russian Circles, and instrumental metal band of which I had not heard before the show. It's always interesting to pop into a show as a complete novice, although it doesn't always work well with metal, as producing clean live sound in these situations can be challenging with the high volume and heavy distortion. These factors make higher tones and softer dynamics difficult to hear, so I find that many times my imagination is filling in the gaps that my ears miss during these shows. With a new band, this is impossible, as I don't even have a mental record of what the song "should" sound like.

Russian Circles actually communicated their brand of music pretty well, however. They were fortunate enough to have few band members, and pretty nicely produced sound to make each instrument distinctly different in tone. It was a bass player, guitarist, and drummer, although their was clear utilization of backtrack on most songs. This is mostly fine by me, but it may bother some. The bassist in particular had excellent tone, and was a notable sonic presence on the songs, something I find lacking in most metal.

Their musical style was largely one of building layer upon layer of music, and then strip it back down, certainly flying far from the verse-chorus-verse song structure familiar to most. In terms of metal genre, they ran an interesting gamut of tones, from more droning shoegaze style to doom to thrash. Many of the riffs built nicely to a head, and came back down satisfactorily, but others ran on far too long and were completely uninteresting. Perhaps the biggest weakness of the band was the drummer. In this style of music, you're dealing with lots of melodic and rhythmic repetition from guitar and bass, necessitating variation and creativity on the part of the drummer to help to build dynamics and tension leading into your next change of riff. The drummer for Russian circles did a nice job of using dynamics to build tension, but his fills between riffs were either completely off rhythm at times or awkwardly phrased. To a novice to their music, which of these alternatives was reality lacked substance, so the drumming could definitely use work. 

I'd say that on the whole, I didn't care for Russian Circles much, but they did have their captivating moments, and they have potential.

But I was really there for the all-mighty Mastodon, masterful purveyors of crushing progressive sludge for more than a decade. And they really were excellent. I came in imagining that there would be a rough 50/50 split between older and newer tracks, as defined by anything from The Hunter on to the present day exemplifying the newer, less proggy and heavy Mastodon.

While I enjoy the newer Mastodon, definitely prefer Crack the Skye and before, so I was hoping for a 50/50 split. I know the guys in Mastodon are a little tired of the older stuff, and have every right to be. It must be boring to play the old songs over and over, and your creative output as a 25 year old is almost necessarily going to be different than that of a 40 year old. But I appreciate the attempts bands make to play their classic tracks, and Mastodon did a pretty nice job here.

The most represented record was Crack the Skye, with probably 4 tracks played. I was pretty surprised by this, as this record is an extremely conceptually based record, but the tracks worked well on their own. After Crack the Skye, however, no record really got a preferential balance of the playlist, with every record having at least one track played. I really hate that they didn't play Blood and Thunder, Hearts Alive, or March of the Fire Ants, my three favorite Mastodon songs, but Hearts Alive probably doesn't work as a concert song, and the other two are probably tough on the voice.

The guys in the band were fantastic instrumentally. Bill laid down an excellent rhythm guitar, Troy had a great stage presence and provided a noticeable and interesting bass, but the two highlights were definitely the two guys I came to see, Brent and Bran. Brent was every bit the sloppy drunk guitar god I was hoping to see. His solos were fantastic, he pulled off all of the tricky leads you forget about in Mastodon songs, and he even improvised a fair bit on the solos. He's a one of a kind personality, and you don't quickly forget him (note: he's the one in the Dodgers uniform in the picture above). Bran (the one in the crazy suit) was truly masterful on drums. His performance was great, and he even played around a bit with established beats and fills to provide a unique and different listening experience for concert attendees. And he did all of it while singing on several songs!

Speaking of singing, this was the clear weakness of Mastodon. None of them are professional singers primarily, and three of the four sang during the concert. Bran was best, with a unique voice that was pretty good most of the time. Troy was second best, as he occasionally got a touch pitchy, but was there most of the time with enthusiasm. Brent was the worst, as he was notably pitchy at times, with one chorus were he was several half steps away from his intended destination. But it was actually better than I've heard in recorded versions of their live singing before, so they've been working on it and picking songs carefully that they can perform live.

All in all, I'd highly recommend you go catch Mastodon and Russian Circles on the remnant of their tour. It's a good time, and Mastodon in particular really brings it to good effect.

-TRO

SNES Classic Edition Hardware Review

So I finally got a chance to try out my SNES Classic yesterday, and I'm here to tell you about my thoughts about the hardware, the controller, and the interface.

In terms of the hardware, this thing is extremely nicely designed. The build quality is obvious from the second you pick it up. The power switch flips up delightfully, and the reset button is even spring loaded, just like the original. There's an LED light on the front that tells you the system is on, and the ports on the front look just like an SNES. There's a hidden catch on the bottom of the ports that let you flip it down to actually insert the controllers, but if it's just being displayed, you'd never know it was there. While it would be nice to have the controllers use original SNES ports, it's probably better in the long run to have the Wii inputs so you can use pro controllers, insert bluetooth dongles, etc. The thing is also SO tiny. Like, I've seen pictures comparing it to other things, and I simply wasn't prepared for how adorably tiny it is. I adore it!

The controller functions extremely well, and it's pretty much perfect to the original SNES controllers. If anything, this controller is better, as the shoulder buttons are much more solid, as the original shoulders were notoriously loose and weak. It's also great that the system ships with two controllers, unlock the NES classic that shipped with one. This is great for that playthrough of Secret of Mana I've been meaning to undertake with my wife, as well as for Contra III, and head to head SFII and Super Mario Kart. The one downside of the controllers is the short wire, rather than using bluetooth or a longer wire. They are not as short as the NES Classic controller, however, so it's not quite as bad. You'll also need to sit close to the system anyhow, as you need the reset button to return to the menu and establish save states.

This is the main weakness of the system. I'm not necessarily upset that they included wired controllers, nor really that the wires are short. They give a nice retro feel to the system, and minimize input lag as much as possible. It also helps keep the costs down, as $79.99 for 20 good to excellent games and Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts to go with two controllers in a very appealing package is a very reasonable price point. Assuming you bought all of these titles on the virtual console at 7.99, you'd need to pay nearly $168, so the bargain is an excellent one. This is made even more notable by how pricey some of these cartridges are, including the massively expensive EarthBound, and a ton of games that range from $20-$40. I'd bet purchasing them all at full eBay value would be north of $500. Sure, you could emulate them all (note to the NSA, I own EarthBound and would never, ever, ever consider emulating extremely high priced games like Little Samson or Aerofighters ;)) for free, but this is an extremely appealing package, a way to give the developers some money for their hard and excellent work on these classics, and a way to signal to Nintendo that we want more utilization of the classic libraries for their systems!

So it's not that the wired controllers are bad. I get it. But I wish they had included some more emulation functionality into the controller/UI. A button, or even a programmable shortcut, to get back to the home screen would have been nice, as would save state buttons or programmable shortcuts. As it stands, you need to hit reset to save your state, which is obnoxious when you have to get up and walk to the system in order to do so. Including this programmable option would have been very little work, and would have been an extremely nice option. More advanced functions like a rewind option would be nice for practicing the tough sections in games like Mega Man X, for example.

The user interface is absolutely fantastic. The load screen music is very reminiscent of the excellent music on the Wii, and is positively joyous. I've literally been humming it all day at work. The presentation is minimal, but appealing. You get the box art for each game, and can cycle through each game to select which one you want. It also shows you how many players are in each game, and how many save states you currently have. There are options to switch to CRT mode, 4:3 mode, and Pixel Perfect, which are nice touches, but nothing super special. One very nice piece of the interface is the demo screen. If you leave the system alone on the home screen, Mario and Luigi begin running around picking games, and it plays the loading screen for each, with a brief demo. This is a nice touch that they didn't have to include, but adds to the charm of the system.

I absolutely love that they made it so that you need to beat the first level of Star Fox to unlock Star Fox 2. I love unlocking things, and only wish that they had done more of this, and perhaps dug a bit deeper into the catalogue to make this less of a box of ROMs and more of a distinct product. For example, in order to unlock Super Mario World 2, you'd first need to complete Super Mario World. Or to have hidden unlocks, like having DKC 2 for beating the first game. I'd also have loved to see a challenges system with leaderboards for it, much like in the brilliant Mega Man Legacy Collection. Imagine speedrunning Mega Man X to make it on the leaderboard, or having a boss rush mode of the same game that you'd need to complete in order to unlock Mega Man 2 on the box. This would have been the nice kind of touches that would have made it an enduring staple in the Nintendo library, rather than a holiday distraction for nostalgia fiends. I realize that this kind of work and additional network functionality would have increased the price, and I would have been more than glad to pay $120 for a bells and whistles style of the SNES Classic, but that probably would have priced out a lot of the market here.

So is the SNES Classic perfect? No. But it's a great selection of games, in an attractive and loving package, that absolutely nails the market to which it is intended to sell. If you like the SNES, and are missing even a few of the games in the box in your collection, this is really a must buy. And kudos to Nintendo for producing enough this time around! I'll give it a 9.5/10.

-TRO

SNES Classic Edition Purchased!

Ermagersh it's so cute!

I actually found an SNES Classic Edition yesterday!!! Surprisingly, it wasn't really that hard, suggesting that Nintendo has done a much better job of supplying than in the case of the embarrassing NES Classic, for which I'm still looking. Luckily 2018 will see a rerelease, as I refuse to pay scalpers on principle.

Unfortunately, the Cubs were on last night, so I didn't get to play it before bed. I say unfortunately because they got spanked. But hopefully tonight will be better, and I'll have a few hours of time before the game to play some.

So this will be a two part review, one posted today, and one posted tomorrow. This part will be on the purchasing experience, and the list of games posted.

The purchasing experience was actually excellent. I saw a notice that physical Gamestop locations were getting some this week, so I called two stores, and the second one had one left. I'm sure others in the area had some as well. I managed to get there in time to get the last one, but it was 3:45 in the afternoon, so it wasn't like I had to camp out to get one. So nice job Nintendo on shipping enough! The guy at Gamestop got me in and out for retail value, no stupid bundles involved, and also gave me a few Marshadow Pokemon cards to get on my copy of Pokemon Sun to boot.

I still haven't even opened it yet, so the first part will just be a review of my choice of games included in the system. I'll be rating games on a scale of 1-10, with half of the score dedicated to quality of the game, and half dedicated to necessity of inclusion. I haven't played all 21, so some of these will feature disclaimers that I haven't played them yet. This is a seat of the pants estimation rather than a purely critical analysis.

Contra III: The Alien Wars: I haven't played it, but I've heard it's good, but not great. Contra is a critical part of Nintendo's history, but I wouldn't put it in the pantheon of must haves. I'll rate this one a 6/10. It probably could have been dropped.

Donkey Kong Country: It's critical to get at least one DKC game, and this one makes sense. It's a top 5 seller on the SNES, and a superb game. I might have gone with the superior DKC 2, though, just as the NES classic had Mega Man 2. 9/10.

EarthBound: I'm a huge EarthBound fan, but this really didn't need to be included. I appreciate the love to the fans, but I'd appreciate Mother 3 more. 7/10

 

Final Fantasy III (really VI): You have to have either IV or VI here, and VI is the better game. Must include. 10/10

F-Zero: It's an iconic launch title, fun, has a great soundtrack, looks great, and fills a gap in the racing genre with Super Mario Kart. It's not perfect, but it's a solid choice no one will disagree with. 9/10.

Kirby's Dream Course: A Kirby minigolf game?!?! I haven't played it before, but it seems like Super Star is enough Kirby here. I know you're short of sports games, but there are other options. 5/10.

Kirby Super Star: I have not played this game a ton, but you need a Kirby game, and this seems the logical choice. 9/10.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past: One of a few must-have-no-argument games here. 10/10

Mega Man X: Absolutely must have, no argument. 10/10

Secret of Mana: Excellent game, and fills a niche in that there are very few co-op games on the system, and no other co-op RPGs. With that being said, I could see it being cut due to its fringe appeal. 8/10.

Star Fox: An iconic Nintendo franchise's first and best outing. Must have. 10/10.

Star Fox 2: Absolutely brilliant marketing ploy appealing to true retro fans. Genius. 10/10.

Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts: Garbage that absolutely everyone hates. I hope Nintendo got a "buy Mega Man X get Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts free" deal on this one from Capcom. No one was asking for this, and no one wanted it. 1/10.

 

Super Mario Kart: The progenitor of a beloved series that holds up remarkably well to today. Must have. 10/10.

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars: A bit of a fringe candidate, but an excellent game that uses Nintendo's IP, which is why it's here. 9/10.

Super Mario World: This is the best game on the system, and the most iconic SNES game. If they didn't include it, I'd have been extremely puzzled. 10/10 (would give 11/10 if possible).

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island: An average game that's worse than it's originator in every way. But they had the IP, and it's well loved by others, even if I can't really understand it. 8/10.

Super Metroid: Nintendo IP? Check. Genre defining game? Check. Absolutely beloved? Check. 10/10.

Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting: An excellent port of an excellent game, although I wish they would have included Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers. It's more puzzling as they got the license for New Challengers for the Super Famicom Classic, but decided to include Turbo here. Regardless, this will be more than enough, as Turbo is the one most people remember, at least here in the states. 9.9/10.

Super Castlevania IV: I haven't played this, but I've heard it's good, and you need a Castlevania game, I think. 9/10.

 

Super Punch-Out!!: I haven't played this, but the thing does need some sports games, it is a classic Nintendo IP, and is apparently quite good. 9/10.

So let's just say for argument's sake that we can cut anything below 8.0 with impunity, replace SF II Turbo w/ New Challengers, and replace DKC with DKC 2. What would be the most logical replacements for Ghouls, Earthbound, Kirby golf, and Contra? This is just purely hypothetical, not taking into account the challenge of getting any of these licenses.

Earthbound could be easily cut for Chrono Trigger, the best RPG of all time, bar none. It would have wider appeal, and is just better. They also have 3 other Square games on here, although I don't know if they needed to pay for Mario RPG.

Kirby golf goes for NBA Jam: TE. I know licensing is a nightmare with these sports games, but it's better than Ken Griffey Jr. baseball, and BOOMSHAKALAKA.

Ghouls could easily be replace with the excellent port of Turtles in Time, and also set up another excellent co-op game to go with Secret of Mana.

I can't really think of another good run 'n gun shooter on the SNES, but that's also not my genre, so I could go with my gut and replace Contra with Breath of Fire II. SNES is the greatest RPG system of all time, with apologies to the PS1, so deal with it if you think there are too many RPGs. But I honestly think EarthBound is much better than Breath of Fire II, so let's just tack Earthbound back on to improve the quality of the games.

Sneaky guilty pleasure as a secret unlock? Aerofighters! It's not just a super rare and expensive cart, it's also an excellent shooter with a bizarre visual ethos that is a joy each and every time I play it. There also are no vertical or horizontal shooters on it, as the Genesis generally had much better selection in that department.

Anyway, on the whole it's an excellent selection of games with only two headscratchers (Kiby golf and Ghouls). If you're missing even a few of these games, you'll get your money's worth on the quality games alone. Next time I'll review the actual play experience of the system itself!

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 23): Love as Arson

It's always great when you find a band that goes against most of your regular aesthetic sensibilities, yet they are so obviously genius that you have no choice but to enjoy their work. Boy do I hate metalcore, and particularly metalcore on the hardcore side, but Converge RULES. Petitioning the Empty Sky is also one of the most metal names for an album ever.

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 29): Mario Golf: Advance Tour

Mario Golf: Advance Tour is a handheld version of Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour for the Gamecube. As Toadstool Tour is one of my favorite Gamecube games, and I've really been hankering to play it again, I ordered the handheld version to complete my extremely extensive review of the handheld Mario sports games on the GBA. So how does it stack up to it's beloved console counterpart?

Extremely well! Advance Tour is a masterpiece of handheld sports gaming, and will be one of my most cherished GBA games forever, on a handheld that I truly love. I enjoyed the Mario tennis game quite a bit, but Advance Tour positively blew me away with its brilliance.

The gameplay is nearly identical to the Gamecube and N64 versions of Mario golf, in which you press a button to start the power meter, one to stop the power meter, and another to determine how accurate your shot will be. Anyone who has played a golf game like Mario Golf or Hotshots Golf will be very familiar with the mechanic.

One of the things I thought would be most tricky about the game would be the putting. The greens on the console versions are usually very complex, particularly on the more challenging courses. Rather than try to portray the hilly nature of the greens on the handheld version, Camelot wisely chose to simplify these greens, making the challenge less about reading the greens and more about timing. It can still be difficult to hit longer putts, though, making putting no cakewalk, especially since it lacks a view from behind your golfer to see where your ball lies. All in all, this is as good a putting system as I ever could have hoped for, and it works for great effect.

You can play on 5 courses that increase in difficulty. These courses are largely taken from the Gamecube game, although they are altered a bit for handheld play. A few of the courses from the console version are mashed up into other courses, like combining the Mushroom Kingdom course with the Bowser's Castle course. The courses are all beautiful, and have a lot of the fun, fantastic style that you just don't see in golf simulators, including tricky shots to the middle of an island to cut a par 5 course in half, or giant chain chomps that will eat your ball if you land too close to them.

The game is visually perfect. It has a really nice recreation of the 3D visualization from the Gamecube version during tee shots, enabling you to look at the beautiful courses and watch the nice swing animations. During other shots, you have a top down view that shows you the lay of the course and your shot path, with the ability to zoom in more closely on the area to which you are shooting.

The music is all excellent, and is again taken from the console version.

You can play the game with multiple players in hot seat mode, or in linked or wireless match play against another player with their own copy of the game. I haven't done this, being a solitary wretch by nature, but I trust that it would work very nicely.

So is this just a port of the Gamecube version, with minor changes for functionality? Hardly! The main draw of the game, and the meat of how you'll spend your time, is a fantastic RPG mode in which you try to become the ultimate golfer. You work on progressing through the tournaments at the difficult courses in your area, and try to become champion of each. You can also play a doubles mode, in which you alternate shots with your CPU partner, and there are separate tournaments for doubles play. You can also challenge golfers to play you in match play, in which you try to win more holes than your opponent. You can also play doubles match play, in a similar style. After finishing a match or tournament, you receive experience which you can use to improve how far you can hit the ball, how accurate your shots are, change your shot angle, and how much you spin the ball. This mode will take the meat of your time playing, and it's quite a delightfully long game. I've spent probably at least 20 hours just playing through the RPG mode and then trying to set course records to earn all of the unlocks.

There are also TONS of challenges and training exercises you can do, including a mini golf game, a par 3 course, and opportunities to improve in your putting, driving, and approach game. These are lots of fun, and finishing them all would probably add 10 additional hours to the game. And I may do so, with how much I enjoyed it!

It's hard for me to find any weaknesses in the game at all, but in fairness there are a few. I would have liked it if the Mario characters would have played a larger role in the game, as they play almost none. It would have been fairly easy to have a Mario character be the champ of each course, and to get to play them in match play at the end, but they didn't do this for some reason. The only time you can play against the Mario characters in match play is in the quick play mode, rather than in career mode. Having their presence in the game would have increased the "Nintendo feel" of the game, which would have been nice.

The game also has a perfect physics engine, unless of course you're trying to hit the ball up a slope while your ball lies on the slope. In this case, it's literally impossible to hit the ball forward at all. You'll just pop it straight up in the air, which is totally not like real golf at all. Eventually you'll learn to just shy far away from slopes, but this is just a silly addition that exists in the Gamecube game, too. Boo.

But try as I might, those small weaknesses were all I could find. It's a true handheld masterpiece, and a must own for any fan of golf games, Mario, handheld gaming, baseball, apple pie, and/or motherhood. And it's pretty cheap, too! I got my copy for about 10 bucks on Amazon, and it was well worth the price. I'll be circling back to this one over and over again, for certain. I'll give it a 9.8/10.

The next iteration of the handheld What I'm Playing series is teased in the image below, and only hardcore fans will be able to figure this one out...

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 22): Too Hot to Stop

This is such an excellent album cover

Too hot to stop indeed. For some reason this was on the muzak at Raising Canes once, and I almost broke my thumbs scrambling for my phone to find out what it was once I heard that sexy synthesizer in the intro. Enjoy!

-TRO

3DS Rant

I adore Nintendo, and have since 1993 when I first plugged the RF cable from my garage sale purchased NES into my TV and enjoyed Super Mario Bros., Duck Hunt, and Bases Loaded. But Nintendo, like most companies, makes a lot of stupid decisions. The one that happened most frequently that was the most infuriating to me was their decisions regarding the virtual console.

For those who don't know, the virtual console is basically just a set of emulators that let you play games from old Nintendo consoles on your Wii, Wii U, and 3DS. By far the best set of games available was ironically on the Wii, which had not only Nintendo games, but also Turbografx, Genesis, Master System, and even some Neo Geo AES games.

I won't fault Nintendo for not including the games from the other systems. I have no idea about the negotiations that went into deciding revenue splits between the IP holder and Nintendo, or what the negotiations were like this round, what kind of profits they made last round, etc. It would have been cool, but ultimately they can't be faulted for not getting Hudson Soft to include games on the 3DS, nor could they be faulted for deciding that it wasn't profitable to do so. I don't know what's going on behind the big Red-N curtain.

But for heaven's sake, could we please just be completely honest and give people access to older games on a wide variety of consoles? For some incredibly bizarre reason, Nintendo said that the original 3DS couldn't run SNES games in "pixel perfect" mode, and so they wouldn't release the games on the 3DS. First of all, I'm sure the clever people at Nintendo could have figured it out. They figured out how to put out some very impressive SNES ports on the GBA, which was 2 FULL GENERATIONS AGO. If the GBA can handle Super Mario World 2, I'm pretty sure the 3DS can handle Earthbound. This bizarre reasoning carries over, in an even more bizarre version, to GBA games and DS games. Why in the world would you have handheld games available for download on the Wii U, but not the 3DS? Please Nintendo why. It's not like the 3DS can't handle them technically speaking. The thing plays DS cartridges! And it would have been a great fit to have your back library of handheld games on the 3DS, but they limited themselves to Game Boy and Game Boy Color, which is just completely baffling to me. Even if it wasn't pixel perfect mode, I don't think anyone would have cared.

I'll give Nintendo a 80% pass on not having N64 games on the 3DS. N64 emulation has always been tricky, so it probably requires power the 3DS doesn't have. But I do find it slightly fishy that one of the launch titles on the DS, and the first game I bought with my shiny new silver DS on launch day, was a port of Mario 64. Hmmmmmm.

And why can't we have Earthbound Beginnings on 3DS? It's an NES game!!!!!! It seemed like Nintendo was just using the Virtual Console this cycle to try to rescue the floundering Wii U, and gave up a lot of money in virtual console sales to get it.

Also, why were there so many Nintendo games that were on the Wii's virtual console that aren't on the 3DS or Wii U? It's not hard to put roms in a shop, guys. You already have the emulators. There are a ton of games I'd like on Virtual Console for 3DS that the Wii could handle, but apparently the 3DS can't. I really hope the Switch is better in this regard, giving a wide range of titles, and avoiding arbitrary distinctions that don't make sense.

Anyway, end rant. Get it together, Nintendo.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 21): Mudshovel

Anyone who knows me knows that I detest few things more than radio friendly brofest hard rock. Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback, Korn, Limp Bizkit, and ESPECIALLY HINDER can all go away and never come back. If I hear Lips of an Angel one more time...But I have to confess that despite bearing all of the horrific hallmarks of that genre which I so geniunely hate, this track is excellent. Go Staind for being a remarkable outlier on a probability curve which is consistently skewed towards low quality!

What I'm Playing (Volume 28): Mario Tennis: Power Tour

I'm cheating a bit. This isn't my first playthrough of Mario Tennis: Power Tour for the Game Boy Advance. I used to have this game in high school, and played it a ton yet. But I'm going to bend my rules for What I'm Playing going forward, and include any games I'm playing through, even if it's a replay.

Power Tour is a very good handheld adaptation of the superb Mario Tennis games for the N64 and Gamecube. Apparently there are Game Boy color games of Mario Tennis and Golf based on the N64 versions of those games, but I started with my mobile experience here, and I really wanted to play some Mario sports games again.

While my limited experience with Mario Baseball, Basketball, and Soccer (not the exact titles), weren't fantastic, I have always loved the Tennis and Golf series. Both take very complicated sports and boil it down to the essentials while adding on the cutesy charm of the Mario universe. While I probably prefer Golf, the Tennis games are excellent as well.

Power Tour is developed by Camelot, who are most notable for creating the Mario sports series, but also produced standouts like the Golden Sun series, which compose two excellent GBA games and one dismal DS game. In the main thrust of the game, you control a boy or girl attempting to distinguish him or herself on the mean streets of a tennis academy, and become the very best. Controls are simple but very effective. You can move with the d-pad, hit top spin shots with A, and slice shots with b. The computer decides whether or not your character will dive or not, a very good decision due to limited reaction times and a small number of button inputs possible on the GBA. The AI controlling whether or not you hit backhands or forehands, and when you dive is excellent, and never really makes a mistake, enabling you to focus more on spin, positioning, and shot direction. You can also hit power shots that you can unlock by training after you conduct a long enough rally.

The game features an RPG style mode in which you get experience after every match, and can use that experience to improve a certain aspect of your player's abilities. You climb the ranks through juniors, seniors, and varsity, and eventually progress your way through higher levels to become the champ. There is a certain charming story to the game that works, and I don't want to spoil it for you, so just check it out!

You can climb the ranks of doubles and singles, playing with your counterpart (girl if you selected boy, and vice versa) in doubles and by yourself in singles. Your doubles partner is controlled by the AI, which is perhaps too good. Your partner will rarely make mistakes, even if you don't level them up at all, making it far more worth your while to only level yourself to capitalize on big play opportunities. I wish that they had made the partner AI less perfect, forcing you to decide between investing in yourself, or your partner.

The tennis itself is fun and cartoony, with power shots that sparkle, freeze your opponent, blast them backwards, or spin them around in tornadoes. You can unlock these power shots by playing mini games, all of which are very fun. The better you get at the mini games, the more advanced your power shots will become.

The music is very good, as is the sound. There are good voice samples in the game which tell you the score, and make voices for the players. The game's visuals are solid if unremarkable, although the tennis shots do have a delightful streak behind them that never fails to make me happy.

The enemy AI in the game is probably too weak to be fun, although I may just be very good at the game. I never lost a set in my path to tennis greatness, whether in singles or doubles. What's worse, it seemed like the most common strategies were very effective from start to finish, and the opponents never really learned. After sending backhand serve returns up the line past my opponent in doubles 5 or 6 times in a best of 3 set match, I would hope that that opponent would start to position close to the line to force me to alter my strategy, but the opponents never really learn. With that being said, you probably won't lose much, but it also won't feel like a cake walk, as the ball will be delivered to different locations to force you to alter your strategy and shot selection to them.

The game is a good length, although it errs on the side of probably being a bit too long, which is better than being too short. It's long enough to feel rewarding (I spent about 8 hours completing both the singles and doubles stories), but short enough that the gameplay doesn't get too repetitive. If you really like the gameplay, you can play exhibition matches anytime, and can even play via a link cable against a friend, although I didn't test this out at all.

While I feel like the AI could have used some tweaking, I really enjoy this game. It's a fun sports RPG, and boy do I love those! If you're looking for a nice diversion that you can wander back to every few years, Mario Tennis: Power Tour is for you. I'll give it an 8.8/10.

Here's a hint as to what's up next on the handheld front:

-TRO