What I'm Playing (Volume 117): Windjammers

Windjammers is a game developed by Data East and originally released in Neo Geo arcade cabinets in 1994. It's a simple game that, based on my reading of it, went largely unheralded at the time of its release. It has, however, undergone a bit of a renaissance due to it's inclusion on the Wii Virtual Console, and later on PS4, Vita, and the Switch.

Windjammers is Pong. It's a tremendous overstatement, but it gives you a very good idea of the basic rules and mechanics of the game. You pick between 6 playable characters that have a range of speed and power, and have to throw a disc back and forth. If you get the disc past your opponent, you score points, and the match is over once you hit the determined number of points. Your character can dive for distant shots, and if you set up perfectly to catch the disc while still, you can pop the disc in the air and prepare for a power shot that varies depending on your character.

Matches take place on a handful of maps that change your strategy dramatically. Some maps have bouncers in the middle that will alter the trajectory of the shot, some are wider, and all have different layouts for point scoring. On each map, there's some yellow zones, for which you get three points, and at least one red zone, which is worth 5 points. These zones depend on the map, so your strategy will have to adjust based on where you're playing, in addition to the opponent's tendencies.

The graphics of this game have aged very nicely for a game of this era. As my son said, "it looks like a new game that they tried to make look like an old game". It's very polished and has a look that's completely at home on modern consoles.

The music of the game is very good, with a handful of infectious tunes that I found myself humming long after turning the game off.

The controls are very good and tight, although they take some getting used to. Figuring out which direction your analog stick needs to point to aim the disc properly takes some adjustment, but with a little effort you'll be guiding your circular baby right at your opponent's weak point.

The high point of the game is the local multiplayer, which will be sure to be a hit for gamers of every age and skill level. We recently held a little Memorial Day Windjammers tournament at my house, featuring my kids, their mother, their uncle, and their grandfather, and we all, from ages 7 to 60, had a great time taunting each other, celebrating, and competing. This game has the feel of a fighting game due to its quick rounds and focus on 1v1 combat, but is designed to be accessible for all and it's now a big family favorite.

The online seems to work fine, when you can get an opponent. It's nearly impossible. I tried to get matchmade on a Saturday morning, and literally sat in a queue for five minutes without being able to find a single player. But I did get in a handful of online matches over the weekend, and found the experience fun, if a bit lacking in comparison to the energy of playing an opponent live.

The game is pretty shallow, and lacks hardly any replay value for a single player. This game thrives with friends, and needs to be played as such. But with the right group, this will be a great night of fun, and you'll find that people just want to play this game again and again. I'll give it an 8.8/10.

Up next is a reTROview of a game that's been taunting me for decades (taunting me for so long that I may have already teased it months or years ago, but I forget), and was one of the oldest members of my remaining backlog. Check out the teaser below...

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 116): Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne

Well, that was quite a gaming weekend! I had an incredibly productive weekend in terms of backlog, clearing out 3 separate titles. I played this game for probably ten hours over the weekend to wrap up the bonus campaign, and then was able to crack through two other games as well.

The Frozen Throne is an add-on to Reign of Chaos, but to call it an add-on makes you realize what a pittance we get as "DLC" these days. Holy cow, did they ever pack this expansion full of an incredible amount of content! The game features four entirely new campaigns, dozens of new multiplayer maps, an entirely new playable race (single-player only), an improved map editor, a slew of new heroes and units, and ample balance changes. All of these changes result on infinite possible hours of exploration, particularly due to the map editor, and provide a tremendous amount of value to the player.

The game is still, nominally, Warcraft III, but it's definitely on steroids. The basic mechanics, thus, don't need to be delved into here, so I'll just focus on the changes.

The campaign is extremely good, and leans strongly into the alternative mission styles popularized by Command & Conquer. Sometimes, these can be a bit derivative and hokey, like the DoTA style mission in the Night Elf campaign, but the missions themselves deliver a lot of diversity and challenge. They made some weird decisions with races, however. These decisions seem to be made primarily to increase exposure to the new heroes included in the pack and to advance the story rather than keep adherence to the traditional four race, four campaign model, which is fair enough. The three traditional campaigns are a Night Elf campaign, an Alliance campaign, which focuses on the new hero the Blood Mage and his weird mashup of human/night elf units, and an Undead campaign concluding the story of Arthas that under-girded the narrative framework of Reign of Chaos. I will say, without spoiling anything, that the ending of the story felt very odd for me, and seemed more like a midpoint for a story than an ending.

There is then a separate, bonus campaign, which plays more like a traditional RPG, in which you control a handful of heroes with no base building capacity completing quests on a single map. This is the "Orc" campaign, and while it does advance the Orcs' story, it doesn't feel like a true campaign. This is better than you can say for the Humans, however, which were almost completely ignored in the story. The bonus campaign begins as a fresh an unique experience, but definitely tends to grow tiresome by the end. I probably spent 10-15 hours on the this campaign alone, and while I explored almost everything, this was too long for a single campaign, especially as most of the missions felt very homogenous.

The multiplayer is back and better than ever, and the new map editor allowed existing map archetypes in custom games to go to even higher heights. The map editor, and Blizzard's official allowing of these types of games within their client, completely makes this game for me, despite other flaws in it. It was kind of weird that you couldn't use the Naga, the new race that features heavily in the single player campaign, in multiplayer. But I suppose that this race did feel thin and pretty poorly balanced, with only one hero, so I don't necessarily mind it. The race would have needed some significant fleshing out in order to be balanced and competitive, and they definitely already delivered plenty of value in the box here.

This game's single player doesn't shine quite as brightly as the campaign from Reign of Chaos, but the meat of the game is in online multiplayer and the creativity of the community, and here The Frozen Throne stands supreme. If there's an online community, aside from Minecraft, that achieved more with the tools granted them, I'm not aware of it. This game is incredible today, and is a testament to the greatness that can result when developers trust their community to play around in their game's sandbox, and give them the keys to share those creations with the rest of the community.

I really have no choice but the give this a 10/10. It's a flawed package that nevertheless rises to tremendous levels due to Blizzard's open framework and commitment to excellent online experience. This game is one of my biggest nostalgic weaknesses, and will always be a personal favorite. Be sure to check out the remake coming out soon, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

I've already finished up this game, but I'll tease it here anyway. Check back in tomorrow (probably) for another reTROview.

-TRO

Top Ten Game Boy Games

This is a late celebration of the Game Boy's 30th anniversary! The fat gray DMG Game Boy was my first handheld ever, and I still have no idea how I saw anything on that screen. But my world blown by the handful of games I was fortunate enough to have for it, and the music for the system is still absolutely incredible. It completely changed my bus rides and lengthy car trips, and I still have a tremendous amount of fondness for the system, despite lacking a very good grounding in its library. I only had a handful of games for it (Super Mario Land 2, Pokemon Red, F-1 Race, Tetris, Pokemon Gold, Yoshi's Cookie, Pokemon Trading Card Game, and The Final Fantasy Legend). It turns out that my exposure to the system now is not too much greater than it was back then (as you'll see from my list), although I have beaten many more of these games now than I did as a kid. I also think my childhood collection was a remarkably solid one that touched on probably 40 or 50% of the must-have Game Boy titles, but I'm definitely biased by nostalgia, so take that with a grain of salt. For what it's worth, I only have a handful more games than that now, and some of them are in virtual console form.

Same rules as always-no ports, no problems with multiple games from the same series! I included dual mode games here (capable of play on Game Boy and Game Boy Color), as I consider them to have been released for both consoles simultaneously, rather than being backwards compatible. Sue me. Most Game Boy Color games weren't done like this, so I feel entirely justified in lumping them in here, and will gladly include some of them on my best Game Boy Color list, if I ever make one.

Apologies to the following games, and any of your favorites I'm not thinking of, which I haven't played enough to fairly evaluate:

Kirby's Dream Land
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Kid Dracula or any Castlevania games

Gargoyle's Quest
Final Fantasy Adventure
Final Fantasy Legend II or III
Wario Land II

I don't have a super deep library of honorable mentions, but I do want to mention that Yoshi's Cookie is greatly underappreciated. That's it. Man, I need to play more Game Boy games.

10. Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3

This is a fun, silly platformer with tons of charm. I really like Wario Land 3 better, but that's not dual mode, and I've never played Wario Land II.

9. The Final Fantasy Legend

This is a fun, and more importantly, very important game. It's the first handheld RPG I ever played, and the first RPG released for the Game Boy, so to be as good as it is is a remarkable accomplishment. It's got its warts, but it's well worth playing.

8. Pokemon Trading Card Game

This is one of my all-time guilty pleasures, and the first of the dual mode games on this list. If there was a sequel I'd support, a brand new video game based on the card game would be high on the list (yes, I know Japan got an exclusive sequel, and I'm just glad for fan translations). There are a ton of cards for being so early in the card game's history, there are plenty of opponents to battle, it curves delightfully, and the card game is just flat out fun. I'm a sucker for card game video games, and this one is among my favorites.

7. Kirby's Dream Land 2

I really need to play some more Kirby. I had such a blast with this game, as well as with Kirby's Adventure, that it's really inexplicable that I haven't played more Kirby. I think those two games are the only ones I've ever beaten, to my great shame. Anyway, we're now in all-time classic territory-this one is a must play.

6. The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening

This game is flat out incredible, and it's a testament to the quality of the top of the Game Boy's library that this one can't be higher than 6. I absolutely love this game!

5. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins

Before there was Pokemon Red, this and Tetris were my favorite Game Boy games. I spent so much time in this world that I can still remember almost all of the secrets. It's the perfect handheld Mario experience, and may still be the best handheld exclusive 2D Mario game, ever!

4. Pokemon Yellow

Sure, it shares a lot of similarities with Pokemon Red and Blue, but you can get Charmander, Bulbasaur, and Squirtle and battle Team Rocket, so it's different enough to get its own slot. It's fantastic!

3. Tetris

It's Tetris. It's the reason the Game Boy attained the dominance necessary to make Pokemon a global phenomenon, and its amazing today. I give it the edge over Super Mario Land 2 for importance, but they're both perfect in my book. I bent the rules a little since this is technically a port, but it's such an iconic Game Boy title that it's criminal not to include here.

2. Pokemon Gold/Silver

To be clear, Pokemon Gold/Silver/Crystal are better games than Pokemon Red/Blue *shudders*. Red/Blue is incredibly innovative, but also remarkably broken. Moves like Wrap and Fire Spin give high speed Pokemon way too much power, and Psychic, Dragon, and Normal types are left mostly uncountered in the games. The combination of Special Attack and Special Defense also makes special attackers like Mewtwo way overpowered. They are also super glitchy, and don't have a lot of cool features included in Gold/Silver. So these games fixed a lot of the problems, and are superior, but Red/Blue are still more important, and I personally have far more nostalgic attachment to Red in particular.

1. Pokemon Red/Blue

Picking a number one on these lists is rarely difficult, but this task was particularly easy. Red/Blue launched a global phenomenon that remains my favorite video game series of all time. It's an RPG with 151 playable characters. Find me that kind of depth wrapped up in seemingly simple mechanics anywhere else, in black and white, on the go. I'm waiting. There's really no debate here, except for perhaps with Tetris, but this is my list.

Anyway, that's the list! Making this list made me realize how many "Game Boy" games I love that are actually Game Boy Color games, so I'll probably need to tackle that one next, to continue doling out the Game Boy love near the 30th anniversary. Feel free to let me know if I missed any of your favorites!

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 115): Wario Land 4

Wario Land 4 is a platformer for the Game Boy Advance, and was released in 2001, the first year of the system. It follows the familiar story of Wario getting himself into some poorly thought out mission to enrich himself, and having to shoulder charge and self-harm his way to victory.

The game is similar on its face to the brilliant Wario Land 3, which I reviewed here. Both games feature a platforming control scheme, but a unique set of mechanics in that many of the enemies' attacks can physically transform Wario, enabling him to clear platforming challenges. For example, Wario can get hit by a fireball from an enemy, lighting him on fire, forcing him to run extremely fast, and turning him into a scorching wreck that can clear blocks that are otherwise impassible.

Wario Land 4, however, is more of a return to the form of the original Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3, in that the game eschews the Metroidvania stylings of it Wario Land 3 for a more traditional platforming experience. In its predecessor, Wario was invincible, save for one irritating example (read my reviews for more details). The transformations he suffered/used would sometimes set him back in the level, creating a difficulty curve even in the absence of dying. What's more, Wario gradually found more and more treasures, and many of these treasures were imbued with the ability to grant new and improved powers to Wario, allowing him to gradually move his way through the levels and return to them with his new powers, progressively unlocking new areas of each level.

In 4, Wario is still capable of his transformations, but many of his enemies can damage him now, which sets aside some of the unique charm and game design challenge of its predecessors. The structure of the game is basically that you have to progress through each level, getting four fragments of a gem to unlock the boss, and a key to unlock the next level. Once you've reached the end of the level, you must reopen the portal at the beginning of the level, which gives you a time limit to return to the beginning with your gems, keys, and all of the treasure you've received throughout.

The level design in the game is frequently extremely clever, and it definitely leans into its Wario roots by having plenty of puzzles sprinkled throughout the platforming challenges. Levels like the pinball level are some of the finest platforming moments on the system.

The visuals are really tremendous, especially when you consider the time in which the game was released. For a first year release on the console, this game is seriously one of the best looking on the system, period. It's got great colors, tremendous water and environmental effects, beautiful big sprites, and no slowdown to speak of. It's a great technical accomplishment.

I really didn't listen to the music much, as is typical of my handheld experience these days. If I was doing this professionally, I'd crank it on my own time, but I typically play during lunch hours at work, and wafting 16 bit soundtracks from your cubicle is not looked on terribly fondly in professional life, and I'd honestly rather listen to podcasts on my headphones while I play, so the music portion of these reviews gets a snub for handhelds. Sorry!

The game was too short, and far too easy. I only died a handful of times, and all of them were against bosses. The bosses were big and had great, creepy visual designs, but they were genuinely very simple. I think there were a total of fewer than 20 levels in the game, and an experienced player could easily chew through the game in less than an hour and a half. I think I cleared the game in about 3 days worth of lunch breaks, with no experience, and plenty of meandering through levels hunting for collectibles.

This is a good, unique platformer. But I think that they moved away from something that was truly genius in Wario Land 3, and took the easy way out. This is a very good game, but I wish they had leaned into the great tradition they had been building, and instead, we got a game that feels somehow flatter than it could have been. I'll give it an 8.8/10.

Up next on the handheld edition of What I'm Playing is a game I'm really enjoying that's going to take me a LOOOONG time. I probably won't see you back here until June with this bad boy. Hopefully I'll be knocking out a few home games in that time to compensate. See teaser below...

-TRO

What I'm Playing (Volume 114): Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos

I really love real time strategy games, am simultaneously poor at them and know very little about some of the biggest players in the genre. I've never played Dune II. I've never played Starcraft or Starcraft II. I've never played Warcraft: Orcs and Humans or its sequel. I've only played Age of Empires II out of the whole series. And I definitely haven't kept up with any of the modern RTS games, as my focus has shifted more towards playing console games as I've gotten older.

But the two games/series that stand out most to me in the genre are Command & Conquer and Warcraft III. I played Command and Conquer religiously as a younger teen, playing Command & Conquer, Command & Conquer: Red Alert, Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 especially. Later in my teens, my attention became completely captured by Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and its expansion, as I loved playing 2v2s and 3v3s with my friends and the edited maps. It's by far my favorite RTS game of all time, even though I genuinely love and enjoy Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 a great deal.

But for whatever reason, perhaps because I am bad at RTS games, I never completed the campaigns of either this game or its expansion, and so I finally dove back in on my actual physical copies of the games, and really enjoyed playing with an old friend once again. I also wanted to brush up on the game before its remake due out this year (please Blizzard make this happen).

Again, being far from a student of the RTS genre, you'll have to forgive me if I miss a little in terms of attributing the big leaps in the game compared to the genre at large. I'll just say how it seemed to me at the time, being a fairly early adopter, and discuss how the game has aged in 2019.

The biggest difference between this game and the Command & Conquer series was the existence of heroes with role playing elements, and I adored this. Being a fan of RPGs at the time, the mechanic made a great deal of sense, and added a level of strategic decision making that was lacking in Command & Conquer. Sure, there were characters like Tanya in Command & Conquer who were really heroes in all but role playing, but they also lacked functionality in multiplayer, which comprises a big amount of the gameplay in Warcraft III. For example, if you want to play a more aggressive, hero killing strategy as the Orcs in the game, you can select the Blademaster, who has extremely fast movement speed and crushing critical hits. If you wanted to play a more balanced style focusing on incrementally winning battles by efficient minion trading and map control, go with the Far Seer.

The game features four separate races (Human, Orc, Undead, and Night Elf), compared to the two sides in Command & Conquer. Despite the challenges of doing so, the balance in the game is generally excellent, with each race being very usable in competitive play while having a varied play style and approach. But the one area in which the game could probably be better balanced is in the hero choices. Each race has a viable path to victory, but each also has a maximum of two heroes that are at all usable in competitive play. You will almost never see, for example, any Undead team using a hero other than the Death Knight, and there is definitely a dominant hero choice among each team. But any competitive online game will always have a tier list despite the creators' best intentions, and the game is still remarkably well balanced today.

The graphics are pretty ugly today, and weren't even great back in the day. But this is an important, Nintendo-style tradeoff (see the Game Boy and withering tech), as even at the time of its release Warcraft III could run on less powerful machines, such as the Gateway 2000 that my parents had (it didn't really overcome my slow internet, though). But in modern times, it's not a pretty nasty looking game, to be honest.

The music and sound in the game are excellent, with separate tracks for each race that infuse the gameplay with a unique feel for each race. The voice work is tremendous as well, with unique voices for each unit, with dozens of phrases recorded for each. Some of these, as has been noted a lot, are pretty humorous, particularly if you click on a unit many times.

The campaign is long and very fun, although you're rarely at risk of defeat, save for in a handful of missions (the last Undead mission and the last Night Elf mission, to be clear). The worst thing that will happen most of the time is your army gets wiped out, you need to build a new one, and the mission takes 15 minutes longer to finish. I really don't know why I couldn't beat this one in high school. I must have just been really bad at video games. In fact, I don't think I got really good at video games until 5 years ago or so when I started testing myself on retro platformers that crushed me on original hardware back in the day, so I did find that I was handling a lot of the challenges better now than I did back in high school. The lore in the Warcraft series has always been superb, with sharp writing, careful thought, and interesting moral dilemmas throughout. I really wish that at some points in the game you would be given role playing choices to split the plot, as I think that would have greatly improved the replayability of the campaign to see all the endings. But they also do tell a pretty tight narrative that works on a lot of levels, with substantial voice acting, in 2002, so this may be asking a bit too much.

The controls are really good, and are way better than those in Command and Conquer, where you needed to command movement and select units with a left click. Using both mouse buttons makes for a clearer control mechanism, and it just makes more sense. But there are some weird control moments that probably could have been ironed out, such as only allowing 12 units to be selected at a time, and pathing improvements such as having characters move out of each others way in narrow spots.

But all of this pales in comparison to the glorious experience that was online multiplayer. If you ever tried to play Command and Conquer online, it was a really difficult experience. Warcraft III simplified everything by having a universal server and friends list that just worked. It was even playable on my 56k modem, although I'm sure this is some of the reason why I couldn't ever win at a high level in singles play. Microing was completely out of the question with my connection, so I tended to just mass a ton of units, pick heroes with auras that didn't require finely times actions, point them in the right direction, and pray for the best. Playing standard Warcraft III was incredible, but the game's biggest selling point, to me, was the prevalence of custom games and a robust map editor that were worth ten times the game's selling price. People could use the editor to create their own game modes, some of which were absolute trash, but over time a meta understanding of the good ones would emerge. Some of my favorites were Snipers-which featured a game in which you would have to point and click to launch a bullet across the map rather than auto attacking, tower defense-a game mode that has now been copied endlessly in which you need to destroy mobs of baddies with defense towers built in intelligent patterns, and especially DotA-Defense of the Ancients. DotA was my first exposure to the MOBA genre, in which you must take your place as a solely controlled hero on a huge battlefield split into three lanes, and push through enemy heroes, NPCs, and towers to crush the enemy's base. I was in on this 5 on 5 action from the very beginning (before it became the mega-hit DotA All-stars under the guidance of Guinsoo and IceFrog), commanding the Dwarven Sniper, Venomancer, and Skeleton King to middling, but tremendously fun results. I later jumped into League of Legends with both feet, and have spent more time in that game than probably any other. The sheer balls that it took a huge company like Blizzard to allow community members to play around in their game gave it life beyond the quality of the normal RTS action, much like great PC games like Doom and Half-Life.

This game has some warts as it has aged, but it is definitely, along with its expansion, The Frozen Throne, in my top 10 video games of all-time. It's still great fun to jump into, and surprisingly still has a bit of a community left, particularly in the 1v1 competitive and custom game scenes (don't expect to find a 2v2 or 3v3 matchup anytime soon, though).  I'll give it an admittedly biased 10/10. I greatly look forward to the remake, and it will definitely be one of the few games I buy new, at launch.

Up next will be a review of the expansion to Warcraft III, so no need for a teaser. See you soon!

-TRO