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

The Pi

I really intend to backlog everything I've done, gaming wise, since I last posted (September, ouch...). But one acquisition stands above all else in that time...my Raspberry Pi 3. If you'd asked me a year ago what a Raspberry Pi was a year ago, I'd have told you that it's a tiny, cheap Linux computer that can be easily programmed and is used in a wide variety of DIY computing projects. While this is accurate, I didn't really understand how great this little box is, particularly for emulation.

I discovered the Pi after the Mini NES Classic edition was announced. I was SO excited! My NES doesn't always work great (I suspect the pins are bent, and they aren't getting any better). It's a pain to lug a CRT into my living room to play it on, but this one natively outputs to HDMI. The controller wires are super short (although the classic doesn't fix this at all). And the classic edition came with 30 really great games, about 25 of which aren't in my collection (my NES collection isn't great). Many of these games are actually 3rd party games too, showing the length to which Nintendo went to develop this thing. It looks like a tiny NES, which is adorable. So I was pumped, until I couldn't find one. Anywhere.

Aww!

So I started following it obsessively, until I came upon this article, which explains in detail how to make your own emulation station using a Raspberry Pi. It was the perfect solution to my problems. It cost about the same, and was really an improvement in just about every way.

1. The library is theoretically unlimited, compared to the NES classic edition, which only had the 30 games from the NES, with no possibility of expanding. I have NES, SNES, arcade, Genesis, 32x, and PC Engine games on mine, and could get any that I wanted, at least up to PS1. I will still buy most of the games on my Pi at the moment, unless they're just prohibitively expensive (Flinstones Dinosaur Peak, Mr. Gimmick, Little Samson etc.) or I'm unable to get them in English (Bahamut Lagoon, the original Fire Emblem Games, etc.)
2. It supports my favorite wireless PS3 controllers, so I can play from my couch. The PS3 controller feels very natural with NES and especially SNES games, and feels passable with Genesis games.
3. It adds some nice emulation frills, such as customizeable controls, using any controllers you'd like, and save states. This makes playing games like Mega Man 1, Castlevania, and Sonic 1+2 where you can't save tolerable for people like me who only have sometimes a half hour or hour in a day to play.
4. It cost about the same, for a greatly improved library and identical presentation.
5. The one BIG downside to all of this is that it takes a decent amount of technical skill at computing to do all of this. There are forums to help, but my first attempt probably took me a total of about 3 hours to get it all set up and figured out.

Every since I got my Pi, my retro game playing has shot through the roof compared to my PS4 and other more modern console gaming. If you're looking for a way to help you get back into retro gaming, I'd highly recommend the Pi. At a total of about 90 dollars, assuming you need a controller, it can open your world to a host of really great and sometimes impossible to find games (I'm looking at you, Little Samson).

You're good, Little Samson. But not $1000 good.

-TRO

P.s. I still want to pick up a NES Classic Edition for a collector's item, but my Pi will definitely get a lot more use. And I'm not going to pay more than 100 bucks for it.

The Triumphant Return!

I'm back! After a few months off to focus on some work stuff, I'm finding myself with more time to keep up with reTROview. I'm going to try to put something up each day, whether it's a video, song, full post, or a what I'm playing. As a show of good will, today will feature TWO posts!

-TRO