Shmup

To quote 'Team America': Fuck yeah!!

My eyes are bleeding. My thumbs are blistered. My brain is tuckered.
And it's only been one hour.

No, I haven't been on a date with Mrs Palmer and her 5 daughters.
Nor have I been on an extended trip to drop the kids off at the pool.

No.
Today, my copy of Ikaruga arrived in the post from Sweden.
I am now Hard Core.

"What's Ikaruga?", I hear you ask. Well, let me show you first:


And another level:


See, Ikaruga is a shoot 'em up. More importantly, it's globally recognised as the shmup.

Released in Japanese arcades back in 2001, then on the Dreamcast in 2002, and finally making it's way to the Gamecube in 2003 before disappearing from production forever, it's become somewhat of a rare collectible nowadays.

Nothing has since come close to the brain-meltingly difficult optical assault of gameplay that this title exhibits. There's not much available these days also has the same sense of "must.. try... again..!" addictive replayability.

Like most 'brilliant' things, the concept is extremely simple:

• The ship you pilot can change polarity (from black to white) at your command.
• The rules dictate that, whilst you are (say) white, you will be damaged by the black bullets coming from the enemies, but you can absorb the white bullets and store them as 'energy'. (A bar up the left side displays the amount of energy collected.)
• The same applies in reverse; whilst you are 'black', white bullets will harm you, but black ones can be absorbed.

PS: When I say 'harm', I mean kill. Yup - one hit and you're D.E.D.

To add further to this, the amount of damage you cause to an enemy varies. Hit a black enemy while you are white, and you will do double damage. And vice-versa.

Next, you can release the stored energy (the bar up the left side) in the form of homing missiles. The more energy, the more missiles at your disposal, up to 12 of them max.

Finally, you can score 'chains' by consecutively eliminating three enemies of the same polarity. The more times you do this, the more 'chains' you achieve, ultimately leading to a bonus extra life.


Knowing all this now, watch the videos closely to see how it affects the gameplay.


What's incredible is that the team responsible for this classic game was made up of only four people.
Nerds. :D

So yes - I'm thoroughly chuffed to be able to own a piece of gaming history in my hot little hands. Even more-so that I can simply throw the (Gamecube) disc into my new Wii and play it in backward-compatibility mode without fuss, on the big screen.

And to give you an idea of the sort of money people are wiling to throw into the ring to acquire this title: eBay
And in case it disappears - thats USD$199.00

There's just one more thing to show you..

..hard enough as it is, the game can be played by two players (which ramps things up significantly). Imagine if you were freak enough to be able to play it 2 player, by yourself??

Imagine no more:



Okay - so maybe I'm just 'soft-to-medium-core'.. *gulp

Number Two's

I think I've mentioned it before here somewhere; I need to stop going shopping on my own.
Not because I don't enjoy the fine company of myself, but because perhaps whoever is with me can drag me out of the damn stores.

And so, I arrive home once again with a bundle of gaming goodness under my arm, and a Fast Slimmed wallet to match.

It's this blooming Nintendo kick that I'm on.

I'm thoroughly enjoying my taste of Wii so far, and have managed to download a number of Virtual Console titles that have delightfully tickled my sense of good old-fashion fun over the past week as a result:

The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina Of Time (N64)
The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past (SNES)
Donkey Kong Country (SNES)
and the incredible Paper Mario RPG (N64) that just got released yesterday for download..

All of which have been worthy of the admission price alone.
Plus I'm still ploughing through my library of GameCube titles that have all received a new lease of life as a result of the Wii's arrival.

But oddly, I have only had one actual native Wii title (The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess) to play so far - having said that, as the review over at Gametrailers.com put it: "..it may well be the greatest videogame ever created", so I'm hardly complaining.
But great things come in pairs, and so today I picked up another Wii-specific title that has got reviewers the world over dribbling with excitement: Resident Evil 4 Wii Edition. Can't wait to turn off the lights and crank this one up.

However, as my passion for all things Nintendo builds to a crescendo, I naturally couldn't let the Wii be the only recent console from them that I own. So in order to bring the number of items in that category to a nice round '2', I caved and purchased a Nintendo DS Lite today. I managed to find a black one (which is incredibly shiny!) along with a couple of classic Nintendo portable gaming titles to keep me more than occupied on the train in the mornings:

• Pokémon Diamond (of which more than 1 million copies have sold since it's launch a couple of weeks ago)
• Yoshi's Island DS (I utterly loved this games on the SNES!!)
• Nintendogs - Dalmation and Friends (can you say 'cute'?! and I finally get to have a dog in my apartment)
• Brain Training (this looks like a ton of fun - really!)
• More Brain Training (hey, if it's good enough for Nicole Kidman, it's good enough for me)

Next on the 'must have' list will be:

• New Super Mario Bros
• Final Fantasy III
• Diddy Kong Racing or MarioKart DS
• Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass (when it comes out shortly) Another vid here
  

I also popped by EB Games and saw they had the excellent Avatar: The Legend of Aang on super-special for the PSP. (Factoid: This game was developed by THQ Studio Australia)
The only 'singular' aspect of my day ;p

As my newest little travel companion charges up in the other room, I should also add to the day of 'twos' by mentioning I finally got around to picking up Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and Reign of Fire DVD's from JB's today, as they both were down to the $12.00 mark
Having watched Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban just yesterday, I figured I might as well bring my Potter DVD collection up to (you guessed it) 2.

I've not heard much about Reign of Fire, but in a few moments I guess I'll know whether or not it is in fact a pile of.. well.. number two's.

A Little Bit Of Wii

I know; I said I'd never buy a Nintendo Wii.

And for all intents and purposes, I never would have.. had I not stopped past the Prahran EB Games store on the way home from work last night.

It's funny really, in that I normally don't have much of anything 'good' to say about the employees behind the counters of EB Games stores throughout the city. And in fact if one were to look up such a topic on the internet, one would find that my fairly negative viewpoint holds up under a microscope.

Generally speaking, EB staff are akin to supermarket staff. To the vast majority of them (it would seem), the boxes on the shelf in their store are.. well.. boxes on a shelf.

To be sold.

A small percentage of these individuals are actually games affectionados, and are seemingly quite at ease telling you exactly what you want to hear in the most ill-informed manner possible:

"So I can burn my own DVD's on the Sony 360 then?"
"Yeah for sure! Put down a preorder now and we can guarantee it for you when they come in!"

"So the PS3 will be able to read my old Viewmaster discs?"
"Yeah for sure! Put down a preorder now and we can guarantee it for you when they come in!"

"So this copy of Halo2 will run on my Sinclair ZX80?"
"Yeah for sure! Put down a preorder now and we can guarantee it for you when it comes in!"

"Oh shit - have you got the time dude?"
"No, but if you put down a preorder now I can guarantee it for you when it comes in!"

"Have you ever, like, played a game?"
"Yeah for sure! I put down a preorder and I was guaranteed it when it came in!"

Thank you Eurogamer and gametrailers.com for existing.

So, as I wandered past the EB on Chapel St last night in the freezing cold and pouring rain, I figured a couple of minutes inside a nice and cosy EB Store might be nice, as long as none of the 15 year old staff members wandered up to me and asked if I'd like to preorder whatever happened to be in my hands at the time.

After selecting a few Xbox 360 titles to aid in whiling away the Melbourne winter, I passed by the Nintendo Wii section out of curiosity, to see what games were being released post the '06 Xmas hype.
And as expected, there wasn't much there by way of anything 'next gen'.

Mario this, Mario that, a bizarre Japanese cooking game, and some poorly translated attempts at larger popular titles such as FarCry or Call of Duty 3.

I had a quiet chuckle, as clearly the poor old Wii isn't up to snuff in technical terms and has no hope of ever competing via hardware processing power with the PS3 or Xbox 360. (In fact, the Wii is essentially a slightly refined Gamecube so far as raw horsepower is concerned.)
Hell, the thing doesn't even play CDs or DVDs in it's drive.."HI THERE - HOW'S THINGS?"

aargh!

They got me, sarge. There I was, on my way to the counter even, and they got me with a sneak attack:

"Oh I'm good thanks - I'm just after these three Xbox360 games.."
*waves them around and turns towards the counter*

"You're wondering how the Wii fits into the picture at the moment, aren't you?"

*pause..*
"Well, yeh to be honest I don't quite get what Nintendo are up to - I guess in Japan it's a big deal?"

"For sure, but what the massive marketing campaign here in Australia didn't touch on, is that it's a Nintendo Fanboy's console."

*pause again*
"Oh.. er.. what?"

I'll save you the gory details of the 45 minute discussion that ensued thereafter, but I can easily summarise by saying this:

I never thought it would happen, but in that EB Games store in Prahran, on Chapel St, I found possibly the only EB employee (in Melbourne at least) that actually knew his stuff, was completely honest, and was into games more than me.

Actually, 'into' is an understatement - this guy was insanely passionate about games, and clearly had a lot of love for Nintendo. Not in a biased way, but in a way that pitched the console to me in an entirely new light.
(Nintendo Australia - if you're reading this - you need to employ this guy!)

Long story short, I happily walked out of that store with a considerably lighter wallet, and a huge bundle of Nintendo swag.


Now, as I write this, there is a little white box sitting upon my TV cabinet (warmly nestled vertically between my PS2 and my Xbox360), glowing a faint shade of neon blue from it's optical drive slot (telling me it acquired data of some kind over the internet while I was away).
I will likely walk into the lounge after typing this and wave the wiimote at the screen, to be greeted with the daily local news and weather, and perhaps some messages from other Wii owners.

I'll be sure to be sipping a nice strong flat white as I do this, due to having a late night and feeling just a little on the sluggish side. After all, what can one expect, getting to bed at 7am due to:

• Plugging in the Wii and having it automatically find my wireless access point
• Realising that all of my GameCube classics will run natively in full 16:9 on my LCD TV
• Cranking up Metroid Prime, Rogue Squadron 2, Wave Race: Blue Storm, & Legend of Zelda:The Wind Waker and realising that 4 hours had slipped by in the blink of an eye
• Deciding to take a look at the Virtual Console online store (realising that titles from NES, SNES, Megadrive, Nintendo64 and TurboGrafx16 are available for purchase) and downloading Super Mario 64 thus allowing another 90 minutes to pass unknowingly whilst reveling in the fond memories of this timeless classic
• Noticing that one of my all-time favourite SNES games Donkey Kong Country was available, and playing the first 3 perfectly accurate levels of that
• Deciding to pull myself away from the thing, despite noticing that the other N64 classic The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time is also available to download
  
• Slightly peeved at not seeing Yoshi's Island in the list of available SNES games to download, but somewhat relieved to read that it's on it's way to Australia due to it being made available in the Japanese virtual console store, along with The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past and Super Mario World for the SNES, and Goldeneye for the N64
  

All of this, and I haven't even got around to inserting the disc for Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess yet.
**note: watch this video review to really get a feel for how incredible this 50-60 hour gaming triumph truly is..

Ahh yes, I get it now, Nintendo.
Thank you, Mr EB Person. You'll be seeing me again soon..