Mike’s Gameboy Game of the Week: Digimon Battle Spirits

Oh was my post late this week? Well normally this would be the result of communists attempting to destroy the gaming industry, but unfortunately it was something far worse. Ponies. Ponies invaded my computer.

They’re plotting something, I can just feel it.

The levels of cute were so overwhelming I had to take a break and do some manly stuff like wrestling Bears and extreme beard growing.

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Way back in the far off years of 1998-1999 two shows popped up that essentially defined a majority of nerdy children in the United States, these shows were Pokémon and Digimon despite a great deal of differences between both shows many children (some even today) claimed that Digimon was a copy of Pokémon. In all actuality the Digimon series has much deeper established roots then the Pokémon series. Akiyoshi Hongo is credited as the creator of virtual pets most notably the Tamgotchi line and as the man who created Digimon. Digimon itself started as a line of virtual pets these virtual pets were created in 1997 as a series aimed at young boys. Whereas Pokémon was a result of Satoshi Tajiri’s fondness for catching small bugs and tadpoles Digimon is a result of the virtual pet craze. So children formed their respective camps and many to this day prefer one group over the other, or in some cases like a third group that popped up in the midst of this craze. However today we are not closely analyzing the the intricacies of sisters and whether or not they are similar or dissimilar, we are looking at Digimon Battle Spirit a fighting game for the Gameboy Advance.

Seems legit.

I didn’t particularly notice a story to this game, to my knowledge the extent of the story is:

The Big Bad Millenniummon wants to destroy the Digital World. It is your job to defeat him, fight all his minions until you reach him and defeat him to save the Digital World.

The game handles this in the best possible way, you fight everything. There are seven stages in which you have to defeat a target Digimon while avoiding or defeating some random spawning enemies who will drop random items which you can throw at your opponent. The stages are generally large and as you move around the camera scrolls with you so that you cannot see the entire stage at any point in time, some may find this annoying as it limits visibility and makes it harder to catch a computer who is on the run.

They better run before I Nova Flame all up in here.

In battle you aren’t trying to defeat your opponent in the rudimentary way of hitting them until they are out of HP, you are instead hitting them and trying to collect more orbs then them, at the end of the battle your orbs are counted up and whoever snagged the most wins. The fighting mechanics in Digimon Battle Spirits I almost overly simplistic with the A and B buttons controlling jumping and attacking with the triggers allowing you to vary your attacks by holding them in. There are five starting Digimon to choose from with several you can unlock later on by beating the game. Each Digimon has a unique move set and certain attributes that set them apart from the other Digimon. A good example of this is that Guilmon has weak physical attacks but moves quickly, this makes him a good comparison for Wormmon who attacks quickly but moves very slow. A random element to each stage is the appearance of the Digimon Calumon who can instantly digivolve your character to mega level for a brief period of time greatly increasing your strength and making you invincible.

Let’s be honest the Afro already hooked you on the game right? Just forget the rest of the review and go buy it already.

Digimon Battle Spirits should mostly appeal to fighting game enthusiasts looking for something different to try and even to regular fans of the Series as the game is simple enough to grasp and fairly easy enough to play that anyone can really do it. For those very reason I mentioned the game lacks much for the person looking for an intense deep fighting game like Soul Calibur or Super Street Fighter IX Hyper Turbo Limited Arcade Edition VII. The game can feel shallow at times as battles sometimes boil down to hit and run tactics and the final battle itself can for the unprepared be overwhelming. The game has some neat unlockable characters but aside from those few all they bring to the table is some new moves. The game is fairly inexpensive at most places and can provide a fun ride for a couple of playthrough and is more then worth a couple of bucks.

If I’ve learned anything from the Power Rangers jump kicks are the most efficient way of dispatching enemies.

Mike’s Gameboy Game of the Week: Guardian Heroes Advance

I have some fond memories of the original Guardian Heroes as I played it way back in late 90’s over a friends house, recently with the rerelease of Guardian Heroes for the Xbox 360 I have been able to relive those great memories of a fantastic Beatem’ up’ RPG with many endings and so many paths that it would take many play-throughs to truly enjoy the game. For comparisons sake the closest game to Guardian Heroes is Golden Axe, but the similarities are entirely superficial as unlike Golden Axe Guardian Heroes has a riveting story that changes based on your actions (I’d say both are great in the fighting aspect though.) Seeing is believing I supposed so here’s some gameplay footage of the first stage:

Unlike Golden Axe or any other beatem’ up you may have noticed that the characters don’t move around a three dimensional plane with enemies coming at them from all directions, instead the characters jump through three zones (one in the foreground, one in the middle, and one in the back) this feature while at first seeming ridiculous makes perfect sense from a design standpoint as in Guardian Heroes there are stages where lots of enemies will come at you all at once and being able to quickly jump to another zone out of their range giving a moment to collect yourself before the enemies all hop over. This feature is even more helpful due to the sheer difficulty of the game as mastering hopping from one zone to the other can mean life or death at points.

 

Look at those generic soldiers, think their tough shit jumpin’ out of the way of my lightning.

It would be impossible for me to fully explain to you the sheer depth of the story of this game with it’s many plot twists, undead, demons, gods, murder, and vampire clowns, however I can tell you this, you can play as any character you defeat in versus mode (in the Xbox 360 version you can play online as well).

Oh yes, even bosses.

Now that you have some grasp of the basic premise of Guardian Heroes lets talk about its sequel Guardian Heroes Advance.

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Guardian Heroes Advance takes things a little differently, it does away with the whole zone nonsense and allows you to move about a three dimensional plane, it also added a homing jump (a jump that automatically takes you to whatever the nearest platform is) and platforming elements to mix things up. It also did away the path choosing element of the previous game where you instead move along a linear path towards the ending of the game, luckily though there are two endings so it guarantee’s you at least two playthroughs. Not one of the things that makes up for it is how much depth they added to the combat system with the addition of a counter that can nullify damage and larger move pools for all characters.

Honestly what more could you want?

Of all the characters though the main three Enn, Ray, and who cares because they are all identical and their stats are the only major differences between them, have the largest move pools with different possible attack combos based on directional movements and how long you hold down the attack button. I personally like the addition of a ground pound attack that does area damage. Magic which in the previous game could only be executed by certain button combos (like a haduken) was a tad hard to pull off when a bunch of enemies were punching you in the face Advance fixes this problem by making it so that magic is charges and selected using the shoulder buttons making it a lot easier to pop-off magic spells when you need them.

The change was pretty shocking.

Now Guardian Heroes Advance follows the adventure of the Undead hero from the first game as he is revived by taking over the body of whichever generic main character you chose to start with. You are immediately tasked with saving the world from the Sky Kingdom as they hope to take over the world and create the “Ultimate Warrior”.

I honestly don’t know why though…

So you battle through stages fighting many enemies and eventually you wind up fighting the cast from the previous series who are apparently being controlled by the Sky Kingdom. You beat them and depending on certain conditions you get one of two endings after fighting the final boss. Now the real fun of this game comes after you have beaten it. Remember how earlier I said that in Guardian Heroes you could play as any character in versus mode? Well in Guardian Heroes Advance you can play as ANY character in both versus mode and story mode. So long after you’ve seen the ending of the games you can go back and decide to play as the best mage in the game and just spam uber-spells murdering all of the things.

The didn’t know what hit them.

I haven’t really touched on what versus mode is yet have I? Well in both games it is a feature in which up to twelve characters (be they human or CPU) can all duke it out. This means that you can either have twelve of the baddest bosses pounding on each other of just one tackling a whole bunch of the weakest enemies and utterly destroying them (or losing somehow [it happens oddly enough]). In versus mode you get to assign stats to each character based on the level cap you have chosen and they can either be preset stat distributions or you can set them however you want, this can amount to hours of amusement.

Dance my puppets, DANCE!

I found that Guardian Heroes Advance doesn’t easily appeal to many people due to the fact that a majority of the mythos of the game is lost upon a person who hasn’t played the first game. Guardian Heroes Advance is a must have for anyone who liked the first game and for anyone who is a diehard fan of Beatem’ Ups. The game has memorable characters and a decent soundtrack, the graphics are alright for a Gameboy Advance game, the controls are amazing, and you can play as any character in the game after you’ve killed them. Seriously, what isn’t there to love? To add even more incentive the game is fairly inexpensive. So why not pick a copy now? You can also grab a copy of the original game off the Xbox Live Arcade for 800 MS points if you don’t have a Sega Saturn.

Mike’s Gameboy Game of the Week: Monster Rancher Explorer

So while I was out with my friends this weekend past we were having a discussion on the Monster Rancher series and a friend of mine pointed out that there was a number of moderately unsuccessful Gameboy games. Naturally upon being told this I made it my immediate mission to play all of these games in order based upon how badly they were reviewed, so I hit up some of my local used game stores and found Monster Rancher Explorer for $3. Upon first glance the game seemed oddly familiar as if I had played it before, then while looking into the game I found that it is palette swapped port of another game called Solomon's Key (which apparently is one of the most copied games games if this fan site is to be believed.) Solomon's Key and Monster Rancher Explorer have differing stories and plots but both are the exact same gameplay-wise, they each contain around 60 levels with an addition 6 or so additional bonus levels and you place and remove blocks to reach keys which you use to open doors.

Seems Legit.

So powering the game up I am greeted with a decently animated opening telling me that this game takes place before the Monster Rancher games, it also tells me that the main character has decided to climb a monster infested tower just to write his college thesis.

I found the story to be a tad convoluted as apparently all of the worlds Monsters originated from a giant tower which you are exploring and climbing in order to find the legendary Phoenix which you apparently want to raise. Every 10 stages you are treated to a boss fight preceded by a short cut scene of a nameless elf dude who states that his favorite kind of fun is the fun that involves murder. Strewn throughout several stages are bonus stages/items which can help you though they aren’t apparent as you have to place a block in a specific spot and then remove it to reveal it. Honestly my first go through I knew nothing about these bonus stages and it wasn’t until I looked into the game that I found out about them.

I’m sure they just want to play some baseball or something.

Like I stated earlier the game involves the placement of blocks in order to reach a key to open a door. This isn’t nearly as easy as it sounds as each stage is typically filled with monsters that can destroy your blocks by touching them, the only way to deal with them is to shoot them with fireworks (which you have to actually find before using) or make them fall by placing a block beneath them and quickly removing it. A lot of the stages require a good deal of creativity when it comes to dealing with the monsters and reaching the key, but overall nothing is to difficult and the trial and error approach works just as well as even if you lose all your lives on a stage you are allowed to continue from the stage you left off on.

Ayup, I died on the first level. That is just how hardcore of a gamer I am.

Aside from just climbing the tower and completing the main story there is a stage editor which you can use to make your own levels that you can either play by yourself or have your friend play through a link cable connection. I couldn’t test this feature out first hand as I only had one copy of the game. The game also has a save feature so it isn’t a really long gauntlet where you have to beat it in one play through. Monster Rancher Explorer is a decent little puzzle game which can easily be picked up and dropped at a moments notice as there aren’t any advanced mechanics you have to learn to play the game and you can start back at whatever floor you last died on. For those who love plat forming puzzle games or are die hard fans of the Monster Rancher series I would highly recommend Monster Rancher Explorer as it is both inexpensive and can provide a great deal of enjoyment.

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Mike’s Gameboy Game of the Week: Tailspin

Let it be known throughout all of the internet that I was a child of the late 90’s and I watched many an awful cartoon show, one of which was Disneys “Tailspin” which is a show in which Baloo from The Jungle Book is an airplane pilot where he clearly isn’t paid enough for the trouble he routinely deals with. Some other recurring characters were Shere Khan who is a big business dude and Louie who is… the owner of a bar? This show apparently garnered enough popularity to merit several games two of which are by Capcom for the Gameboy and NES and the others are by both Sega and NEC for the Genesis, GameGear and Turbografx-16 respectively.

This is the greatest marketing decision by Disney ever.

So my first impression of this game when I picked it up at my local gamestore for a dollar was that it would most likely be an awful game due to it being based off a television show and it being on the Gameboy which was notorious for it’s massive amount of mediocre and bad games. I spied on the cart that it was developed by Capcom which honestly gave me mixed feelings as Capcom did produce Darkwing Duck, Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers, and Ducktales games that were all amazing. Upon getting home I popped the game into my Super Gameboy and started it up and much to my surprise it was a port of the NES Tailspin game.

Even on the Gameboy people don’t know how to use inside voices.

Playing the game was a different story, the controls weren’t as responsive as they were on the NES but once I adjusted to them (took about 20 minutes at most) I didn’t have much of a problem. If you have not played the NES version of this game then let me explain what the point of it is:

You are Baloo the cargo pilot for “Higher for Hire” and you are being sent to deliver cargo to nondescript destinations.

Pretty simple right? Well for a game with only six levels you can bet your boots that it works just fine for the game as a premise. The game plays like a space shooter where you pilot the “Sea Duck” which can only fire one round at a time and cannot fire again until the shot either leaves the screen or connects with something (you can increase the amount of shots with upgrades later on). Shot direction is also determined by up and down movement as the plane tilts in each direction respectively when you are moving. Firing shots can be awkward at first and in my opinion is incredibly annoying but you can get used to it after a while. Aside from just shooting things you can grab up cargo crates which according to the intro are remnants of other cargo planes which have been shot down, also you can flip the plane upside down and head backwards same rules apply with all movement and shooting.

Seems legit. :/

Something unique to the game is the addition of bonus stages hidden in each level where you switch from playing as Baloo to playing as Kit Cloudkicker his spunky sidekick where you pop balloons while surfing on clouds. The balloons give out a decent amount of points and generally can give you the push you need for an extra life.

COOLEST. THING. EVER.

At the end of each stage is a boss fight, the boss fights weren’t exactly challenging but were interesting. The designs for each boss are neat and if the battles didn’t shoot by so quickly I would have liked to have seen them do more then their two or three standard attacks. Once you’ve beaten the boss you get a brief reprieve where you can buy power-ups for the plane with the money you earned by collecting cargo strewn throughout the level, this I didn’t know my first time through as I avoided many pieces of cargo and lost some easy money.

I swear this had best be the best engine I’ve ever invested my blood money in.

In my opinion this game is worth a look if you can’t get ahold of the NES version the animations are not nearly as nice as they are on the NES, the only reason I would recommend this game is if you want a portable version of the game or if you want to give the bonus stages a try. Tailspin for the Gameboy isn’t spectacular but for the price I paid I’d say it was more then worth it, if you can get this game for a couple of bucks I’d recommend you get it.

You can’t argue with a tagline like that.

Understanding the Video Game Grading System

So it has come to my attention that in the gaming community there are many who seem to have forgotten or do not quite grasp the rating system reviewers use when critiquing games. I believe this may have been caused by the sheer overabundance of games being released for platforms as of late combined with the equally large number of people "reviewing" the games. Due to the fact that money has become tighter and games have become a greater investment then a decade ago people look towards critics and reviewers to tell them which game their hard earned money is best spent upon. The problem with this is that due to the sheer overabundance of critics (many of which hold heavy bias's due to external factors) many people tend to go for those that are most popular (i.e IGN, Gamespot, Gamefaqs), the problem with this is that critics are as human as the average consumer and not all will examine the same features of a game. This brings me to my original point that people have become complacent to hear the opinions of a singular source on all things even if the aforementioned person giving the opinion knows nothing about the game or system in question. My solution to this conundrum is to help you dear reader better understand how the game grading system works and to help you seek out second and third opinions on games from sources knowledgeable on the topic.

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The Grading System

The numerical rating system is the most common often using either a scale of “1” to “5” or “1” to “10”  with “5” or “10” being excellent and “1” being bad. It is rare for games to achieve the coveted “10” as it implies a game is without flaw and has features that are well worth investing your hard earned money, and a rating of “1” states that a game is so flawed and so disinteresting that the game has no value for anyone outside of a collector trying to get his/hers hand’s on all of the games. It’s fairly easy to understand those two extremes, but what about all the ranges of numbers in between those two? Well anything between 2-4 or just “2” in the 1-5 rating system is the mediocre range it can be assumed that any game that falls within the that range has features or flaws that make the game(s)  undesirable but it can still be played to an extent, likewise anything in the other extreme range of “6”-“8” are games that are above average and and contain some features that make it stand out as a unique experience.

Can be clicked to enlarge.

The above chart may be of a great help as I have noticed that many contemporary like to attach their own adjective’s to games like a “Painful” next to a 2 or “Good” next to a 6. It’s not to say that they are not appropriate terms however they are very subjective. When push comes to shove it is best to think of games in the ranges I provided above as there is usually a huge difference in quality between a game with a “2” and a game with a “1”, just like a game with a “8” vs. a game with a “9” or “10”.

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Getting Opinions on Games
Say you want to get ahold of a copy of “Fantasy Game 7” but you aren’t sure if it’s worth it. It goes without saying that the most likely course of action is to perform a Google search for “Fantasy Game 7 Reviews”, naturally the main review sites will popup.

or not…

The problem with just accepting the opinions of these sites is that the people who write them are as human as myself and you dear reader. Many reviewers on these sites have heavy bias' against and for certain games, here’s an excerpt from an IGN review of Dynasty Warriors 7,

“Most gamers will cringe when they learn that Dynasty Warriors 7 is essentially the same game as previous titles in the series. It leans on the same old gameplay that began with Dynasty Warriors 2 on the PlayStation 2 more than ten years ago, and that's not a good thing. It's not that utilizing the same gaming conventions is bad in and of itself. Rather, it's that Dynasty Warriors' gameplay has never been exceptionally well-executed or solid, so why throw it back at gamers time and time again? “ (Source)

The review is ended by stating that the game series has always appealed to a “Niche” audience. The statement is only half true as the Warriors games are insanely popular in the eastern hemisphere unlike over here in the States. The ultimate problem with the review is that he spends it explaining how the game lacks any new features to make it stand out from the other games, this statement would have more validity if not for this great discrepancy.

“I predict I spent roughly 8 to 10 hours with Dynasty Warriors 7, spread over three different days of playing.”(source)

The reviewer spent very little time actually exploring the game. This is not to say that this particular reviewer is bad, just that this particular review he wrote for the game has little validity due to the fact that he never finished the game and just tossed his opinion out and called it a day.
For many games that appeal to “Niche” audiences it is best to look for one of two things:

#1 A website specializing in that game series or games made by that company
#2 Or a wiki about the particular game series or game made by that company

There are a plethora of wiki’s and websites floating around that actually explore the entirety of a game, are you looking for a review of Earthbound or the other Mother games? Earthbound Central has you covered. Are you a fan of the Persona games or perhaps the other Megami Tensei games? There’s a wiki for that. Maybe you wanted to find something out about the newest Animal Crossing game, BAM there's a site for that.
I am not stating you should look for a specialist for every game because when push comes to shove there may not always be one for certain games of series, what I am saying is that you should at the least look for second and third opinions on games. Following up on my earlier example of Dynasty Warriors 7 a Gamefaqs reviewer lauds this game as being a great fresh addition to the series bringing back good mechanics and adding new ones. The discrepancy between these two reviews is obvious, one claims the game is old hat while the other states that the game is a great new addition to the long running series. The biggest difference between the two is that the Gamefaqs review explored the multiple aspects of the game and the IGN review only game an overview of it. If one were to have just used the IGN review to determine whether or not to buy the game they may have missed out on a potentially great game.

Sometimes you aren’t missing out on much.

The best reviews to look for are ones that examine as many aspects of it in as much detail as possible, if you are short on reading time however another fine option is a brief review that explains the games pros and cons. Naturally this means that you should check out every review posted by me because I am totally a specialist in every field and know all of the things forever.

ChuChu Rocket - A Quick Look (GBA/DC)

With the advent of the Dreamcast it brought the concept of online gaming to the world and with that the first truly online game, ChuChu Rocket. ChuChu Rocket is a puzzle game released on February 29, 2000 to the North American audience and rereleased on June 10, 2001 for the Gameboy Advance with only minor alterations. ChuChu Rocket was lauded at the time for being the first online game and for a brief stint was given away for free with a purchase of a Sega Dreamcast in Europe. The sheer popularity of the game at the time inevitably resulted in the GBA port, aside from the obvious lack of internet play the port allowed for up to four players to participate in puzzle battles with only a single cartridge, another thing the game contained was over 25,000 puzzle previously created by the online user-base for the Dreamcast version.

ChuChu Rocket as a puzzle game revolves around guiding mice (named ChuChus) to their rocket ships, the obstacles they need to overcome are KapuKapus (Cat’s), pitfalls, and walls. You guide the ChuChu’s by placing arrow panels down to change the direction in which they are traveling, however the KapuKapus will also change the direction they are traveling if they happen to pass over an arrow. Ultimately each puzzle requires a good deal of forethought such as…

See the above example? With three panels you need to get both sets of ChuChu’s to the ship in the center of the Dreamcast logo. Not all puzzles are as difficult, in actuality some are quite easy like the example below…

As you can see all that was needed to complete the puzzle was the placement of a single arrow.

As charming as the single player modes are the real fun in the game lies within it’s multiplayer modes. In multiplayer mode your obejective to get the most mice in your Rocket Ship and to direct as many Kapu’s into your opponents Rockets as quick as you can. The gameplay can be hectic but incredibly fun and rewarding…

The video above is a good example of what a multiplayer match look(ed)s like, as not long after the above recording the SEGAnet servers were shut down and to date there haven’t been any private servers for the Dreamcast version. In the video you will notice the Kapu’s and Chu’s all going every which way and each player attempting to drive them into their rocket by slapping arrow panels everywhere, things can get pretty crazy. The ultimate objective of any match is to get the most Chu’s, both the GBA version and the Dreamcast version have this and it can be rewarding as much as it is crazy. Both versions of the game can provide hours of enjoyment either alone or with friends, and for those looking for a more modern version an iOS port was recently released which boasts “HD” graphics and what not. I highly recommend this game to any puzzle fan as the game can really get you thinking.

Infographic: Gamers Get Girls

I received an email recently from a Tony Shin from Online University with the following infographic attached, he asked that I post it to the blog to further his message (of gamers dating?). So here for all you lovely people is an infographic about love and Video Games.

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Created by: OnlineUniversity.net