The 2000 trilogy: A Foreword

You know, from the looks of this blog, I seem like a pretty negative guy. That's mostly true, but I think I'd like to talk about something that I really like for once rather than act like a douche and bitch about things that bother me. So without further ado, I'm going to tell you about a set of three games that I was really impressed by and that I really like. Before I can tell you more about them, however, I must explain what they are. So here we go, exposition time:

In the mid 90's, Atari released three specific games for their doomed Atari Jaguar console that were based off of some of their older arcade hits. Although only two of these three had it in the title, I like to call these three the "2000 trilogy". These were Tempest 2000, Defender 2000, and Missile Command 3D. The only one of these that was fortunate enough to not get buried with the Jaguar once it went under was Tempest 2000. That game was so popular that it got a soundtrack release and several ports to other consoles under the name Tempest 3000. But why not the other two? Why didn't any other Atari games get the 2000 treatment? I can think of several awesome games that could have been made even more awesome with flashy graphics and kick-ass techno soundtracks.

We're going to find out soon enough with our first entry in this series, and my least favorite of the bunch:
Defender 2000.

The continuing problems of SimCity

SimCity, one of the most influential titles to ever hit the video game market. Over the years, the franchise has snowballed in both popularity and spin-off territory, which has essentially ended in the huge crash that was SimCity `13. What are the problems of this game? Well let me tell you the story of how EA not only layed out some problems to coincide with the launch, but are also providing problems that update with the game.

It all started before the game even launched. I like to think of this game as a taste of what the XBone was going to be like before Micro$haft finally realized that spying on everyone wasn't going to net them any more than an angry mob and a lynching or two. (Seriously, we need to start killing government people in return for the horrid things they're doing to us. Every time something as heinous as this comes into the public eye, about five of these political fuckers need to be publicly offed to send an example of: "You piss the public off, you die.")

But anyway, the point is that the so-called "revolutionary" cloud was pissing more people off before the game was even released. That's not even talking about the trainwreck that was the launch of SimCity `13. Because Electronic Arts wanted to go with this mandatory cloud gaming, and with so many people buying the game just to try it out, the servers for the cloud became overloaded pretty quickly. Overloaded servers makes for impossible online play, and that's a PRETTY BIG PROBLEM for a game that's always online. That's only the launch though, I've only barely begun to talk about this shitstorm.

Then there was the DLC. This was mentioned before the game was even released, and it's only gotten more annoying. Before it was released, EA mentioned you'd have to pay extra money to get such content as optional themed tilesets. Now that it's been released, it turns out the EA is attempting a very underhanded way of getting people to pay some sort of monthly fee by releasing the content they had blocked on a monthly basis, starting with May and the "Amusement Park set." Only two packs have been released so far, and one hasn't been released this month, so either I was right and EA failed, or EA was just pulling their typical DLC bullshit ON TOP of their online code bullshit.

Next came the idiotic way that they tried to take the load off of the servers. After a few weeks, EA began to get worried that their scheme for always online wasn't going to work and that they would actually have to let people play without any terrible restrictions. (Scary, I know. It's not like any other SimCity games were like this.) It was getting to bad that Amazon put up a warning saying how the game may not work after you buy it, and EA was asking for online advertisements of the game to be taken down. So because EA couldn't let their grand plan to suck up as much money from the game as possible fail is the best set of decision makers ever, they chose the best solution possible.

...

Wait, they did buy more servers or take down the servers of games that didn't work anymore to repurpose them for this game, right? I mean, that's the logical thing to do after all?

No? What do you mean that they took out achievements and the fastest game mode? How in the hell does that bog down a server? Player traffic bogs down servers, not the features of the program, though with the cloud you aren't allowed to save any data to your computer. I guess that achievements must take up a pretty good part of this cloud. Or maybe it's just EA trying to stick to their guns and continue to force this always online DRM bullshit on everyone.

I can mention more though. Let's talk about CalebPeters and the refund trouble that he had with an employee of EA. When he asked for a refund of the game after its atrocious launch, he was refused multiple times AND threatened with a ban from the game when he threatened to dispute a refund with the bank. After this, the chat text went public and it turns out that people HAVE, in fact, been getting banned from their Origin's because they tried to get refunds for SimCity.

And that's the main problem with SimCity: the company that owns the name. Maxis isn't owned by the EA of old, the one that released most of the Sim games in a big boxed set in like 2001. They're not the EA that released The Sims, which ended up outselling MYST. They're not even the EA that made the Sims 3, because at least that game wasn't always online. The EA of today is a leech of a company, willing to sell you a down payment of a game for $60 and then force you to pay $10 intervals whenever they feel like. Or take away features because the servers are being bogged down from a mandatory multiplayer mode. Or force a mandatory multiplayer mode in the first place!

As a result, I'm appalled at this horrific trainwreck of a game, and I'm a die-hard SimCity fan! I liked SimCity 2000 and I even downloaded the source to the original game when I found out about it.(Currently porting the code to GM8 so that the Game Maker community can learn from it.) I got Sims on GameCube and I played the shit out of the Sims 3 on my Xperia play when I got it. Hell, I still have a big boxed set of Sim spinoffs and main games that I got when I was 6 years old. I will NOT be buying SimCity unless an offline mod gets rid of the DRM and let me play singleplayer. Otherwise, I'll just stick to my Virtual PC and SimCity 2000.

Natsucon 2013 wrap up

Okay, so NatsuCon was pretty great. Not as great as last year, but all around good nonetheless. As promised, I went as the Joker, but things didn't go as expected. My makeup job was pretty good for my first time doing it, but I had to be incredibly careful when handling it, and it STILL flaked off all day. The video games in the vendor's room were incredibly sparse this year, with only two minor vendors. (Though last year's large influx of games at one vendor was due to a store closing up shop and selling all its inventory to the vendor.) Despite this, I still raked in three awesome titles: Super Mario Land to replace my decrepit, broken copy; Final Fantasy 1+2 Dawn of Souls; and Kingdom Hearts. I guess you could consider this section another entry in the Pick-ups section, but I'm not going to make a separate entry for the three games I've already mentioned now.

Anywho, something I noticed that really bothered me was the fact that there was unneccesary security measures all over the convention area. After the registration period ended, you couldn't even get into the building without a badge, and even then you could only enter through certain doors. I found this unnecessary because once someone was able to get in, there was nothing to really stop them from causing further mischief, so it really rendered the whole guarding doors thing as redundant.

Now if you caught the masquerade, I did a walk-on and I also ensured that the ending of the event was a real "blast" for Batman. It's unfortunate that I didn't receive any recognition or awards for my work, but I congratulate the people that did win the contest, even the ones that got honorable mention.

Band camp and Natsucon 2013

Since last week, I've been preparing for something that I never really got to do as a kid, out of both general disinterest and lack of funds: summer camp. Well specifically, it was a band camp that was hosted on a college campus, so I was also able to get a good look at what college at this place might be like. This Monday I left for the Missouri State University Campus in Springfield to partake in Bands Alive!, a summer band camp for middle school and high school students alike. The entire program lasted about 3 and a half days, with 3 being dedicated solely to learning a few concert band pieces and molding the sound to absolute perfection so that they can be played for an audience on the half day.

Right off the bat, I'm going to mention that nothing particularly interesting (read: dirty) happened there. Basically it was work, work, work, all throughout the day, so I doubt there was any time to do anything above a PG rating. However, everything that I was afraid would happen, ended up happening all throughout the week, and it was pretty grating. It started when I wasn't able to fall asleep the night before we departed for Springfield, which ended up biting me in the ass later on. I fell asleep for like 10 minutes after the lunch break, and I ended up being late for the auditions, which caused everybody to panic and look for me. After that incident, I was afraid that I would be incredibly inferior to the other students because my concert band isn't very big, and it doesn't cover what other high school bands cover. Turns out I was right when they asked me to play an F scale during auditions and I thought they were talking about an E flat scale. (In my mind, I thought they asked me to play a scale where the note F sharp was played first, and they wanted a scale where G was played first. It's because of concert pitches.)

Everything was kind of lax after that, but the real tragedy struck on the day of the concert, when my mother and sister got into a minor car accident on the way to see me. I don't know how other people think when this happens, but I feel absolutely awful about it. The fact that my family could have gotten hurt over me just pains me to the point where I just hate myself for putting them through that much trouble.

Either way, the time for thinking about that has passed, and it's time to think of happier things. One of which being that I will be in Collinsville, IL tomorrow for the convention: NatsuCon. I will be dressed up as the Joker, and anyone that's brave enough to shake my hand (and risk a Joy Buzzer attack!) will receive a card that has a random Joker quote on it, as well as a signature. (Of the Joker, though every ace card will have a Betaman signature on the back.) The quotes range from all the different forms of Batman media that contain the Joker, from the original comics, to the '66 Batman show to the recent Dark Knight movie and the Batman Arkham City video game. Only 54 cards will be given out, so it's pretty much everyone will get a random card until I have none left. I mean, they're nothing really special, just a deck of Aviator cards with Joker quotes on them. Still though, it's a nice gesture to those that were a nice enough sport to play along with the Joker getup and actually get Joy buzzed.

Anyway, I've got cards to autograph. I'll update tomorrow evening after I return from the convention hall.

If you see me, please don't hesitate to say hey!

Betaman game pickups # 1

This is going to be an ongoing set of posts that's pretty much just a text version of the "MONTHLY VIDEO GAME PICKUPS" or "WEEKLY GAME PICKUPS" videos you see on YouTube, except not as frequent or consistent in posting as those. Rather than weekly or monthly updates, I will simply make a new post for new games I pick up. Typically I pick up games at a lovely game store in Granite City, IL called Game Busters, and I go to various flea market shops and pawn shops in my general area.

What's great about Game Busters, at least for the store I go to, is that they usually have what you're looking for. They also usually have multiple instances of it. The handheld selection is not that great, but I mostly go there for the classic console games, as they have a ton of games that not only appeal to my inner child, but they also appeal to me because the cases you bring to the counter end up using covers from The Cover Project website. It brings me back to when I was 8 and didn't know how what game reviews were. All you had to go by was the cover of the box or the disk case, and that's exactly how I feel when I pick up games there.

As for the flea markets, while Game Busters has great prices for what they're selling, sometimes they just don't have what I'm looking for. (The entire store re-sells any games or systems they buy from consumers because they obviously can't just buy shipments of game cartridges and disks from the company any more. As a result, the availability of certain games are reliant if someone recently came in and sold a copy of it.)
This is when I head down to the flea market shops and pawn shops down where I live. (I'd love to go down to Game Busters every weekend, but I don't live in Granite City. It's just where some relatives live.) These places usually have what Game Busters doesn't, though it's not in as good of condition half of the time. Usually I'll end up buying a few dirty old cartridges and maybe a cracked disk case on average, but if I'm lucky I can sometimes snag an almost perfect looking disk in a new case or a cartridge still in the box and maybe even with the manual.

So this time, I only went to Game Busters, since I'm with my parents for their class reunion. I picked up three games and they all look great!

1. The Mansion of Hidden Souls

I have no clue about this one. I picked it over Robotica, Daytona Speedway, and Sonic 3D Blast. (Which I already own.) Apparently it's the sequel to a Sega Mega CD game called Mansion of the Hidden Souls, though I don't know if I have to play the first one to understand this one. I'll play the Mega CD version first, just to be safe.

2. Sonic the Hedgehog

A classic for the Sega Megadrive, and it's a copy that was packaged with the system, as denoted by the giant NOT FOR RESALE sign on top of Sonic's head. There's not much to say, other then the fact that I will be printing out a new box cover for it.

3. DuckTales

A classic if there ever was one. This is the video game adaptation of one of my favorite cartoons as a kid, and EVERYONE should know what this game is. That's all I have to say on the issue.

So that's all I was able to pick up this time. I'll be sure to update every time I get a new batch of games, hopefully keeping the maximum at 3 to 5 games per update. It's currently 1:00 in the morning where I'm at, so I'd best be off to bed before my brain implodes from the lack of sleep I got last night adding to the lack of sleep I'm getting right now.

Simply MYST-ifying

Just a little preview of what I've been working on:

This is a 4 color monochromatic version of the first slide to Myst Island, scaled to a 160X144 pixel resolution.

In short, it's the first shot of Myst re-created for the GameBoy, the first of many... (This is going to be a long project.)

But how did I do it? Well first off, I took a high quality screenshot from the Masterpiece version of the game, originally 543X332.

Then I scaled it down to the Gameboy's native resolution, 160X144.

(Not pictured) The picture was then chopped up into 32X32 squares, with the bottom row being 32X16 due to the resolution. Next comes the meticulous process of turning a picture with over ten thousand colors into a picture with only 4 while still attempting to get the shading and detail right. As you can see, much detail was lost in the conversion.

And now we have our final product, compared side by side with the original:

For my first demo, I hope to have the entirety of Myst Island completed, puzzles and all.

The problem with Sonic Adventure

Sonic Adventure is a mixed bag with the Sonic community. Some herald it as being one of the only good 3D Sonic games, while some call it the beginning of the downfall into Sonic's dark ages. Hell, some even say that it's just as bad as Sonic '06. It's just that nobody can ever seem to agree on what to think of this game or what opinion to hold on it. Nobody but me that is. At first, I was just like them, thinking it was okay one minute and terrible the next.

Nowadays, I realize that it was okay. For Dreamcast. Every re-release of the game has failed to address and fix any problems of the original, and has somehow actually succeeded in bringing about more problems to the game. I wish to use this time to address every single problem I had with Sonic Adventure and all of the remakes. We'll be splitting this list of problems into 5 categories: characters, glitches, cutscenes, storylines, and the re-releases.

Characters
We're going to talk about the individual characters and their play styles and how they're important to Sonic Adventure, but first we must look at Sonic Adventure and it's goal in the first place. Sonic Adventure, being a Dreamcast launch title, is supposed to showcase specific features of the console to show the consumer what it can do. As a result, each character is there to showcase a set of specific features. Below is a list of what I think each character was meant to showcase based on observations while playing.

• Sonic the Hedgehog: He's the main star, and he's obviously here to show that the Dreamcast is faster than any other video game console around. His complex and intricate levels show just how detailed levels can get, with loop-de-loops and rollercoaster like hills galore.

• Miles "Tails" Prower: Sonic's lovable little sidekick, and he's here to show how multiple entities can be used in the same instance along with the complex and intricate levels while still maintaining the same amount of speed. As a bonus, he could also showcase the complexity of models, due to his constantly moving tails.

• Knuckles the Echidna: Sonic's rival and one of his best friends. I would have to say that he's here to show how far the reach of certain instances are and how they can all interact with one another with his treasure hunting levels. Other than that, he's really just an overglorified game of hide and seek that's just there for the story.

• E-102 Gamma: A robot created by Dr. Eggman, and he's here to show how many instances can be recognized by the system at once due to his complex targeting system. I would also say that he's here to make everyone sad with his story, but that's something else.

• Amy Rose: Sonic's self-proclaimed "girlfriend", she's here to show how complex cloth physics can be with her dress, along with some model transparencies with the balloon. The balloon, to my knowledge, was semi-transparent in the Dreamcast, but was not in the re-makes.

• Big the Loser Cat: A big purple cat that isn't even crucial to the story at all. He's really only here to show how textures can be set so they aren't affected by lighting conditions. In the Dreamcast version. In the remakes, they took this feature out, making him completely useless

 Glitches
Apparently, the engine used in Sonic Adventure is incredibly unstable. This is made clear by all of the game-breaking glitches that are all over the game. I could spend an eternity writing down all of the various glitches I've ran into but I figured that pretty much all of them boil down to being collision bugs. Some are intentional and can be used to get characters to places they aren't supposed to be, and some are accidental, being triggered by going too fast or not fast enough in certain areas, or through abuse of certain moves. The glitches were bad in the dreamcast version, but only get worse with the remakes. Bugs that plagued the Dreamcast version were generally not fixed in the remakes, and new ones were added in!

Cutscenes
This is, in my opinion, one of the biggest flaws of Sonic Adventure and its many port-overs other than the glitches. Characters do the same motions over and over, they walk in place, and the lips do NOT match what they're saying when you have the english voices. On top of that, the way lines are delivered occasionally sound...off and could only be rectified by re-doing the entire voice acting. Tails seems to be the biggest culprit for this, though Sonic and Knuckles also do it some times. Once again, this was NOT fixed or even changed one bit during the remakes.

Storylines
The storylines do not tie in together at some points, mostly due to the way it's set up. For example, when playing as Sonic and fighting Gamma, Sonic wins while Tails watches. Playing as Tails makes Tails win while Sonic watches, and playing as Gamma makes it look like Gamma is about to destroy Sonic. However, Amy's story skips the entire fight and it makes both Gamma and Sonic look like they're at even odds. This calls into question which account was the correct one. Another issue is that Tikal, a character that gives characters exposition on why the monster of the week is going nuts, gives information to characters that do not need the information in the first place. Gamma dies at the end of his game, why does he need a moment with Tikal during his storyline? Big only interacts with Sonic and Tails about once or twice during his storyline, why does he need a moment with Tikal during his storyline? I understand that they wanted these characters to be tied in to the game so that they wouldn't feel like throwaway characters, but THAT'S ALL THEY WERE! Gamma's entire goal was to kill his brothers and finally himself so he could free the flickies, making his appearance a one-game only deal. (Chaos Gamma in Battle doesn't count because it isn't the original Gamma.) Big was so unpopular that he was playable in other main games as a re-skin of more popular characters. (Dr. Robotnik in SA2 and the typical power character in Heroes.) Aside from a few cameos though, he just isn't used in games.

In short, the storyline for this game is a mess, and like every other problem, the remakes did not do anything to fix this.

Re-Releases
Sonic Adventure has been remade twice, under the name of Sonic Adventure DX and Sonic Adventure HD respectively. Sonic Adventure DX was a remake for the Game Cube and the PC, which upped the polygon count, added a mission mode, removed all of the internet, and added a new lighting effect that made everything look like it was made of plastic. There's one problem though, the upped polygon count only goes towards 4 of the 6 playable character models, and not towards ANY of the environments. (I.E. Things that were supposed to be circles, but were hexagons or octagons on the Dreamcast are still hexagons and octagons in the remake.)

It's not the lack of any real change that bothers me, it's that they called it Director's Cut, which would imply that they fixed problems and restored lost content, but it doesn't. It's a ploy to get fans of the original to buy the game all over again by making them think there's new stuff. In fact, the remake actually includes LESS content from the original Dreamcast release in return for the things they added! The remake lacks any of the holiday based DLC, which is still available to this day on mirroring websites.

As for the HD version, it lacks true HD support, creating this big purple box around the screen. Other than that, it's just SADX with the original Dreamcast title and menus and the removal of Mission mode. As it is, you can ALSO download some DLC which restores the mission mode and the DX titles, but it's extra.

So next time you see Sonic Adventure being "remade" for a new console, it probably means they're just going to port the PC version of SADX and remove all the extra shit. While I would like to see an actual remake of Adventure that adds in widescreen support and improves upon the glitches, I truly believe that Sonic Team is too busy with their so many other projects to do this, and will port SADX until the end of time.