Random Modern Rant #1 - Facebook Games

I am setting aside the classic console games for a moment, but fear not, a new Classic Console Blog is coming soon enough.

For now though, I would like to step in to the modern world, and discuss the latest technology. Facebook games. Everybody plays, or knows someone who plays them. Facebook has become as mainstream as oxygen. Everyone, or almost everyone, is on Facebook these days, and what is there to do on Facebook besides post your latest adventures, or photos of your breakfast? Why play games of course. Games like The Spims, Monkey Bubble Nuts, Farmvillage, Killin' Gangsters, and Restaurantopolis have all been played to death. Most games are created, then copied, cloned, and advertised all over Facebook.

We have all been sucked in at some point, invited by friends to play some game on Facebook, or asked to help someone out with a quest to kill vampires, or give gifts of some sort. Then we start playing, and get hooked. The game consumes you, occupies your every waking thought. Then when the game gets interesting, people stop playing, and you get stuck at some roadblock, or stop leveling up, because none of your friends are playing it anymore, and have moved on to a clone, or copycat game.

Rant 1 - Social Network games are pointless. They require you to have friends that play the game in order to achieve higher level status, or to advance to a new map area. If you don't have enough friends playing the game you are hooked on, then you inevitably get stuck. But not to worry.....

Rant 2 - If your friends stop playing, you can advance your game by paying real life money. Did I just say that? You pay to advance further in a game.... Really? Coming from the 80's I am accustomed to playing old games on Nintendo/Super Nintendo/ Atari. Where there was no such thing as pay to play (except for the arcade 'Play Choice 10'). Imagine not being able to advance to world 4-1 in Super Mario Brothers, or not being able to advance to the next dungeon in Zelda unless you either A) convinced your friends to give you pointless shit, or B) payed cash to Nintendo or the game creator in order to move on.

Rant 3 - If you do get enough friends to play, and can actually advance the game without having to pay for it, the next problem you encounter is limited playability. Most Facebook games give you a certain amount of "energy" or "lives" each day. Sure they give you more of these after a certain amount of time has passed, but they stick you with a maximum amount of energy or lives. But not to worry, once again, you can pay real money to either acquire additional energy capacity, or you can pay a little more and get unlimited energy. You can also pay to have more energy added to your dwindling reserves.

Rant 4 - Some games require certain power-ups, or items in order to advance. Unfortunately these items usually cost an unrealistic amount of coins (the kind you earn during game play) or you can simply pay real cash. Either way, as soon as I reach these road blocks, I stop playing, and delete the game from my list of apps.

In summary. Facebook games are addictive, and fun, but if you have no friends, and don't want to spend real life money on the additional goodies in the game, you are limited to what you can do. True video games from the classic era of the console wars never had these features. This is why I will continue to play the classic console games from my youth. They allow you to play your favorite games the way video games were meant to be played:  unhindered, and free of the sleazy art of paying additional monies to actually beat them.

RANT MODE OFF!

Console 3 - JXD A1000

JXD A1000

You may remember the post I made about the Dingoo A320. If not, scroll down a few entries and find it. You can also simply go here: Console 2: Dingoo A320 - Classic Console Experience .

Well, as awesome as that thing is, the JXD A1000 is on par, if not slightly above the Dingoo.

A little background is warranted at this point. The Dingoo took a spill and died. Apparently the Dingoo was not designed to take a minor fall, and the soldering components easily bust loose, and make the device inoperable.  So I was in the market for a new handheld emulator. My birthday was coming up, and my mom asked me what I wanted. Well I stumbled across this little thing on Amazon, for half the cost of what the Dingoo was listed at. The biggest problem was that there were not a lot of reviews to be found online, anywhere. I watched a partial video on YouTube about it, and read some buyers reviews on Amazon, and it appeared that the JXD A1000 could do everything I was looking for. So I emailed my mom a link to the item on Amazon, and she purchased it.

The day finally came when it arrived at her house, so I rushed up there after work to go get it. Wow! This thing looks impressive right out of the box. It looks just like a Sony PSP, but it's not. Whenever people see me playing it, they always say, "Oh, is that a PSP?" Nope, nothing even close to a PSP. Once I show them what it is, they ususally say, "Oh, cool..." or just kind of acknowledge it, and move along.

The major difference between the JXD  and the Dingoo is that the firmware is not "open" on the JXD as it is on the Dingoo. This means you can't install the Dingux (Linux for Dingoo) on the device. To be honest, the Dingux, was not that great. It allowed you to install some additional emulators on the Dingoo, but it was mostly just a pain in the ass. The JXD has yet to be opened like the Dingoo, and I am fine with that. Here is what the JXD has to offer the casual user:

Emulation:

The JXD comes loaded with emulators for Nintendo (NES), Super Nintendo (SNES), GameBoy Advance (GBA), GameBoy (GB), GameBoy Color (GBC), Sega Genesis (GEN), and flash games. The machine handles all of these emulations great. The GBA is by far the best. The larger 4.3" screen (as compared to the smaller 2.8" screen of the Dingoo) really brings the games to life. The LCD screen is bright, and easy to see. The games on all systems, do not lag, there is no frame rate issues, nothing. This thing is great. The Dingoo did not come with a GameBoy emulator, but there was a homebrew emulator that could be installed on to it. The biggest problem was the audio output on that emulator. It constantly buzzed, and you would constantly need to adjust the volume so that it could be muted. The JXD on the otherhand, comes with a GameBoy emulator, and it has ZERO audio problems. Not only that, but the LCD screen smoothes out the blocky pixels of the 8-bit GameBoy games, and makes the games actually look great. Here are some pictures of the screen resolution for the main emulations:

Castlevania Legends (GameBoy)

Castlevania Harmony of Dissonance (GameBoy Advance)

Sonic The Hedgehog (Sega Genesis)

Double Dragon (Nintendo)

The Legend of Zelda - Link To The Past (Super Nintendo)

As you can see this machine handles everything just fine. I tried to find some flash games to install on this, but couldn't find anything that ran easily and good playability.

On top of the emulations, this machine will also play movies, and music. I have used it to watch a few movies already, and even though this has a small screen, the resolution is amazing, and makes it fun.

The Bad:

Let's be honest. As amazing as this thing is, it does have one downside. It is minor, but worth mentioning. Button configuration. The button configuration for the SNES is incorrectly mapped. As such, you have to re-train your brain to play anything on the Super Nintendo games. Its a minor flaw, but it is something that you can learn to live with.

Overall:

I love my JXD A1000, and at half the cost of the Dingoo, it is highly worth it. Anyone who enjoys old console games, as I do, will absolutely love this little device, purely based on the capability of the emulators found on it. The rechargeable battery provides hours of game play ability. The ability to play movies, makes a great alternative to your iPOD. It makes road trips fun (only if you aren't driving).

I highly recommend this inexpensive device to anyone who enjoys gaming.

Game 9 - SimCity (SNES)

System: Super Nintendo                                                           
Release Date: 1989
Genre: City-Building
Developer: Maxis

For Starters:

    Sim City. The very name should conjure up memories in the minds of most gamers, of all ages and platforms. SIMply put, the Sim City series has been a cornerstone of the video game industry for a long time. Sim City has been available on PC's and consoles for decades. It's success has even spawned sequels, and spin-offs (The Sims, Sim Pets, Sim Copter, Sim Tower, etc.), and even clones.
    Two of the versions that found their way on to the Super Nintendo were the original Sim City, and Sim City 2000. Super Nintendo also provided Sim Ant, and Sim Earth, but those are entirely different games than the original Sim City. Now that I have some of the background out of the way, let's move on to my own experience with this fine game.



The Good:

    Even though this game was available on the Super Nintendo, the graphics used for this game were not a full demonstration of what the SNES could handle. But when it comes to Sim City, it's not necessarily required to use full graphic capability. That being said, the graphics used for this game were good enough to
provide a basic feeling of an overhead city scape. Could some of the graphics been better? Yes, did it matter that they weren't? Not at all. Sim City is about planning and designing, and managing a city's growth and it's associated problems (crime, pollution, traffic etc.), so who has time to worry about weather or not the skyscrapers look realistic enough? So to begin with, you choose a name for your city, and a name for yourself (mayor). Then you can select the land structure, and finally the difficulty level. The 'Easy' setting has the highest amount of starting funds, so who wouldn't choose that( I know I always did)?
    Now begins the actual game play. Move the D-pad to control your on-screen cursor, to select the building items from the menu, and begin building the city of your dreams.All seems fairly easy as you get started, but you soon find out that the money goes quickly when you go on building sprees, and it takes an eternity for you to earn enough back in taxes to meet the demands of the citizens, when they begin demanding stadiums, or when you are finally prompted to build things like an airport, or a seaport to boost commercial and
industrial growth. The best thing to do is to bump up your taxes for a while, and then go outside and jump on the trampoline, stopping occasionally to check on the growth of your funds.
    When all is said and done, the over all game play is fun, but very time consuming for a SNES game. You can literally spend hours, days, and weeks playing this game. Mostly due to two facts, one being that it takes forever to accumulate funds, even with the game speed set to high, and the second being that the game is more or less open-ended. Meaning that even though the goal is to eventually reach the level of 'Megalopolis' (500,000 population). Even after reaching the level of Megalopolis, the game doesn't end, it just continues to
run, and run, and run. Of course reaching that level is tough enough considering that you have to run through statures of town, city, capital...etc. The best advise is to just keep plugging away at it, and turn off the disasters.

The Bad:

    Normally I follow my good comments with the bad comments, but with a game like this, I will skip it, due to the fact that, even though it can take a long time acquire money and the Megalopolis status, there really are no bad aspects to this game.

Overall:

    SimCity has been on multiple platforms over the years, and each one provided the same basic gaming experience, so anyone who has played SimCity on any platform already knows that this game is addictive and fun. The SNES version rewarded players with special Mario Statue gift, as well as a city attack by
none other than Bowser himself. But other than those two things, the game is the same from system to system. Enjoy!

Update: I have made a video about SimCity and posted it on YouTube. PLease visit it here:

ROM With A View: SimCity 

With a little patience, you can build a Megalopolis like this one.

Game 8 - Cool Spot

System - Super Nintendo (SNES)
Release Date: September 1993 (US)
Genre: Platform
Publisher: Virgin Interactive

For Starters:

    I am not entirely certain where to begin when it comes to doing a blog about the SNES game Cool Spot. It's a game that is on the lesser known side when it comes to most gamers, yet most people over a certain age remember 7-Up's marketing campaign in the late 1980's that involved an animated red circle wearing sun glasses. Simply know as 7-Up Spot, this little icon from the late 80's spawned a small series of video games. The only one I ever played was Cool Spot on the Super Nintendo. I found out later that this same game was also released on the Sega Genesis, and that it had a predecessor game (Spot) on the Nintendo and the Gameboy that was basically a flop. Having never heard of, nor played the NES or Gameboy game, I only stumbled upon the Cool Spot game at a local video rental store,that also rented out a large library of SNES games. Being a child of the 80's, and being purely sold on the game's potential by the screen shots on the back of the rental box, I decided to give this game a go. With that little intro out of the way, on to the game itself.

The Good:
   
    After being captivated by the game's potential, albeit based off of the screenshots on the back cover of the game box, I quickly learned that this game did in fact meet the expectations I anticipated. Simply put, Cool Spot is a fun game. The graphics are amazing, the controls are responsive, and the actual game play itself is challenging, and fun. I would like to add here, that the game designers got one important aspect of game play right. The ability to shoot in multiple directions. Yes, Cool Spot allows you to fire left, right, up, down, and even in diagonal directions. If you think back to Contra on the NES, one of the things that made it fun to play, was the ability to shoot in multiple directions. I can't think how much better games like MegaMan would have been, had they consistantly provided multiple directional firepower. I know some MegaMan games did allow for multi-directional shooting, including, diagonal, but I digress.
    The basics of this game are to rescue your friends, who have been captured, and held in a cage that is hidden somewhere within each level. Your only line of defense are carbonated 7-Up bubbles that you can fire relentlessly at the enemies that stand in your way. Once you have blasted your way through each level,and collected the required number of "cool spots" you must then locate your captured compatriate, and rescue him. Levels include a beach, the inside a wall, a pier, a toy room, and an inflatable kiddie pool. The enemies
that block your path are mice, crabs, bees, worms and a variety of everyday items, such as nails, and push pins are scattered throughout the levels that can cause damage.
    The greatest aspect of this game are the real world feel of the levels. 7 Up Spot exists in a world where everyday objects are larger than him. As such, each level utilizes a "Honey I Shrunk The Kids" look and feel. The open world feel of each level, allows you to explore not only left to right, but up and down through a simple, yet complex maze in search of each cool spot point. The game is generous in that it provides in-game means to restore your health meter, by means of collecting 7-Up logos, that are actually distributed somewhat
generously throughout each level. Each level has a time limit, but you can collect various extenders that will add additional time to the game. Some of these extenders are placed in precarious areas, but generally speaking, they are plentiful, and easy to reach.
    I have decided to save one of the best aspects for last. The music. The music of Cool Spot is well rendered, and sounds like it was composed by someone who actually understands music. I would guess that this is one advantage to having Virgin Records produce a video game. A little research found that the music for Cool Spot was actually compsed by musician Tommy Tallarico, cousin of Aerosmith leadman Steven Tyler. Tallarico also provided musical scores for games such as Earthworm Jim, Prince of Persia, and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series. Not a shabby resume. No wonder I liked the music in this game.
    Even though this game is exciting, fun, and imaginative, it is not without it's frustrations. I will now move on to the lesser aspects of this game.

The Bad:

    As mentioned above, the game play is open, and allows for fast fluid level exploration. While this is an attribute to the game's better qualities, it  is also the source for one of the bigger frustrations, being blindsided. The open world aspect of Cool Spot, requires you to travel up, down, and around various stages, and sometimes, you cannot see hazards that lie just off-screen. You may drop off a ledge and land on a nail, or an enemy, or, you may be trying to jump from one baloon/bubble to another, and miss it, since it is hidden just
out of view. You can use the L and R buttons on the top of the controller to scan up and down from your current view, but it doesn't always give you a clear idea of what is above or below you. Nothing is more frustrating than working your way through a level, only to miss a bubble or baloon, and then fall all the way back down to the beginning of the stage. When time is a factor, this causes you to sometimes hurry, and become careless in your leaping. The best way to beat a level is to take your time, and ALWAYS, look before you leap.

Overall:

    When I think back to how I randomly encountered Cool Spot all those years ago at Hastings Video in Logan, Ut, I often wonder who else may have stumbled across this hidden gem. If you can look past the fact that the game is a giant endorsement for 7-Up, you will be rewarded with a fun little game, that will challenge even a hardened gamer. I know this game did not have a huge following, as most people were soured by the games initial stint in the 8-bit world of the NES and Gameboy. But those like me that never experienced the
original Spot game on the NES were rewarded with a decent platform game, that has a high replay value.

Console 2 - Dingoo A320

Dingoo A-320

Well, here is a blog about a new device I got from my AMAZING girlfriend for Christmas this year (2011). The Dingoo A-320. What the hell is the Dingoo A-320 you ask? Well, simply put, it is a hand-held gaming device, that allows you to emulate NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, GBA, and original GameBoy, and GameBoy Color games.

This little device, made in China, already has the emulators loaded on to it, and has a full 4G of available space to store the various game roms on. So far it has met, and exceeded my expectations. It plays almost anything I have thrown at it thus far, with the exception of Mario Kart.

The SNES emulator is not always good with running sound, but the graphics seem to emulate well.

The GameBoy Advance emulation is by far the best on the entire system. I have re-lived the wonders of Castlevania: Aria of Sorrw, as well as Metroid Fusion. I am also experiencing Zelda: Minish Cap for the first time ever.

This little slice of heaven also runs all NES games....with the exception of RC Pro-AM (the cars are invisible).

Truely the best thing about this little handheld device, is that it not only plays classic games, but also allows you to play mp3 files, and movies.

This thing is truly amazing. It is considered open-source, and can be modified with an open-source version of Linux. I am sure most of the problems I have experienced thus far, although minor, can be solved through various downloadable items.

This device is available on both Amazon and Think Geek.

Highly recommended piece of hardware for those of us who love retro-gaming.

Console 1 - Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES)

A Basic SNES System.

Released: US - 1991
Bit: 16

    I know up to this point I have only made blogs about the games found on the original Nintendo Entertainment System (NES), but I decided to take a small break from that, and discuss my favorite game system of all time, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.
    I was never aware of the so called console wars, as they have been called by various groups, but I did know growing up that you were either a Nintedo kid, or a Sega kid. Simply put, you either owned a Sega Genesis, or a Nintendo. I had heard about debates as to what system was superior, but I myself had never engaged in any such debate, as all my friends were Nintendo kids. As such we engaged in a regular
diet of all the classic Nintendo games that were associated with the NES.
    Some history is required at this point, in order to put things in to perspective. Sega was the first to release a 16-bit system in to U.S. households in 1989. This system was called the Sega Genesis. The Genesis was released a full 2 years ahead of Nintendo's 1991 16-bit Super Nintendo System. This means that Sega
Kids had 2 years of thumbing their nose at Nintendo Kids for having an inferior gaming system. (Technically there was another 16-bit system released in 1989 called the Turbo Grafx 16, but I will be damned if I knew of anyone who owned it. I do not recall it being included in any video game dialogue as a kid. As such, I will not mention it again.) In fact I do remember seeing the advertisements for Sega Genesis systems with the taunting words, "Sega Genesis does, what Nintendon't".

The famous Genesis Ad

 This was the first time I was acutely aware of the war between the 2 systems. My friend Ben, a Nintendo Kid by all means, had a friend who was a Sega Kid named Mark, who I only knew by name. I sometimes heard Ben talking about going to Mark's house to play
Sonic (Sonic The Hedgehog) on his Genesis system. It's funny how life operates. Mark, the Sega Kid, would later become my first college roommate. Imagine that, a Nintendo Kid, and a Sega Kid rooming together in college. But I digress. 

     Rumors began circulating about Nintendo's anticipated response to Sega's 16 -bit console. While I didn't subscribe to Nintendo Power Magazine, I heard rumors about advertisements in said magazine that declared Ninendo's plans to release a 16-bit console that would once again level the playing field. It really wasn't until
sometime in Jr. High or High School that I began to hear more about it from my friend Ben. He had gotten a Super Nintendo, and was raving about playing games like Street Fighter on it. To this point I had really only played Street Fighter at the 7-11 by my middle school on the arcade cabinet. I wasn't very good at it, and was mostly a button-masher when it came to playing most arcade games.
    My first experience playing the Super Nintendo had to then be Street Fighter. I do not recall playing anything else for the first few months. I am sure there were other games, but Street Fighter tournaments at Ben's house were weekend regulars. Yeah we eventually bagan playing other SNES games like Sim City and Super Star Wars, but it was quite some time later.
    I didn't get my own SNES until years later. In fact I think the first Super Nintendo I bought was used, and was sometime between graduating from high school in 1995, and beginning college at Utah State later that same year. It may have actually been sometime after my first year in college, after I had come home for the summer to work, but I do not recall. I do remember playing Super Star Wars, and Sim City on my own system, and I remember going to the local video rental store in Logan my 2nd year there and renting all sorts of SNES games for the weekend, and playing them.
    To this very day, the Super Nintendo remains my favorite gaming console. It had such a great library of games, and the controls were awesome. The graphics allowed for most games to be done in an amazing way. The Super Star Wars series, for example, fully utilized the power of the Super Nintendo's graphics and sound to produce some awesome games.
    I am hoping to start mixing in a few SNES games in to my blogging rants here shortly. I will remain faithful to the original NES system, and it's games, but I need to balance out the two systems I experienced the most amount of time with.

Game 7 - Marble Madness

System: Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
Release Date: 1984 (1986 to Nintendo)
Genre: Platform/Racing
Publisher: Atari Games (Rare)

For Starters:

Ledges and Vacuumes....watch out!

    Marble Madness is a simple enough concept. Race a marble through a 3D environment, and try to beat the clock. As a child, I loved playing with marbles, and especially loved making courses for them to run through. I remember my grandparents having a plastic cube, that was actually a marble maze, that required you to drop a marble in one end, then rotate the cube around, guiding the marble through the inner workings of the maze, and out the hole on the opposite side. So when I saw Marble Madness on the Nintendo, I was at once captivated by it. As with most of the early Nintendo games I played, this captivation was short-lived.
    Marble Madness was originally developed in 1984 for Atari, and was later ported to the NES by Rare Limited in 1986. I bring this up only because of the fact that the NES version of this game is the only one I have ever played. I imagine that the controls for the Atari (i.e. trackball) would make game play a lot easier than the awkward game play one experiences using the D-pad found on the NES console. If using a D-Pad on a 3D game isn't challenging enough, the game also allows you to select from two different control options, those being 90 degrees and 45 degrees. Since the game grid was set at a 45 degree angle, as it relates to the television screen, the 90 degree control option simply meant that the ball itself would move left/right/up/down as it correlated with the same directions on the controllers d-pad. The 45 degree control option meant that those same directions on the d-pad would correlate to the grid on the screen, making the game a little more challenging.

The Good:

    Since my starting points pretty much cover most of the important points of this game, I still feel it necessary to not deviate from my standard format. Simply put, the best aspects of this game have to be the fact that it's a marble game. There is no denying that this game, while short, is very challenging. But then again, the physical cube I played with as a kid was also challenging, so it's a wash. The graphics, while basic, are decent. The 3-D feel of this game is really amazing, and the virtual world in witch you maneuver through was captured well by the developers.
    As far as the actual game play is concerned, the better aspects of this game are definitely the real-world physics that were incorporated. Should you move to close to the edge, gravity will take over and you will fall off the ledge, and with a large enough drop, your marble will actually break in to tiny pieces, that are then swept up by a little broom and dust pan animation....actually quite clever. There are speed boosters in some of the further levels, that are fun to try and hit, and the various obstacles, such as the vacuumes that pop up and suck your marble down the pipe,are just plain fun.
    Another fun factor is the game's 2 player mode. Race your friends through the various stages, all while trying to avoid the various pitfalls and obstacles. Add on the fact that you can bump each other off the track, and you have a recipe for a fun and friendly competition.

The Bad:

    I realize I am about to contradict myself a little bit in this section, but hey, I never claimed to be perfect. The same aspects of Marble Madness that are fun, are also a big part of what make the game frustrating. Honestly the biggest enemy in this game is time itself. As mentioned, each track is timed, and if you don't reach the finish line in time, you are done. Your other biggest enemy will be yourself. I found myself getting panicked when the time was running out, and would always end up trying to hurry too much, and would inevitably make a panicked mistake.
    The obstacles themselves, while fun, and innovating, are also very frustrating. Amongst them are, the marble-eating worms, and the roving pools of acid. That's right, there are roving pools of acid that will melt your ball, hammers that try and smash you to smithereens while navigating a narrow path with drop-offs on both sides, and a myraid of other hazards all out to get you. Good luck.

Overall:

    Marble Madness captured a childhood fascination, and brought it in to the video game realm. Oh sure, pinball machines, had the corner of this market sewn up years before Nintendo even existed, but who has the money or space to put multiple pinball machines in their house? I love pinball, but let's face it, any pinball video game I have ever seen has failed to recreate the experience of playing an actual pinball machine. Enter Marble Madness. While different from a pinball machine style of play, it captured the same elements that made playing with marbles in real life fun. Oh sure, the frustrations associated with trying to beat the clock and win will eventually cause you to shelve the game, and let a few colorful expletives fly from your mouth, all while swearing you will never play the damn thing ever again. But you will eventually forgive and forget, and find yourself once again reaching for this old friend. It will be enjoyed even more so if you can find someone to play the 2 player mode with. After all, what's more fun than beating your friends?