Advance Warning #1: Racing Gears Advance

Way back in the early days of my YouTube channel, I made a short lived series called Nintendo Night, where I would talk about some of my favourite games for the various Nintendo platforms.  Back then I was making my videos by shooting the screen with an iPhone 3GS, and basically making it up as I went along.  These videos are rather embarrassing to watch nowadays, so I have decided to remake some of them, starting with the one I did about a rather overlooked GBA title called Racing Gears Advance. I don't have a huge collection of GBA cartridges - around two dozen or so - but I am going to cover more games for the system later on so I have started this new series called Advance Warning.  With the help of my Retron 5, I will be able to bring you some nice clear footage of the games I'm covering.  So let's get on with taking another look at Racing Gears Advance!

I remember reading about this game in one of the magazines that I used to buy around the time of its release, and thinking it looked really cool from the screen shots.  I love top down racers like Championship Sprint, Micro Machines and Circuit Breakers, so one look at the little cars racing around nicely detailed tracks planted the game firmly on my radar and taking a bit of a gamble, I pre ordered a copy.  I remember it was fairly late in the life of the GBA, The Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap had been released not too long before it, and my imported Japanese DS fat had recently turned up from Lik-Sang, so I ended up playing most of those two games on the superior screen of the DS compared to the dingy old screen on my GBA SP AGS-001 model that I owned at the time.  From the moment I put the game in and fired it up for the first time I was not disappointed - the game felt immediately responsive and intuitive to control with a nice little powerslide that could perform lifting off the acceleration button and then hammering back on to it as you turned into a corner.

The graphics are nice and bright, and compared to most games on the GBA, they are very nicely detailed indeed. Little things like the way the trees move in the breeze and the way your cars suspension reacts when going over cobblestones or a wooden bridge are great little touches that help to set Racing Gears Advance apart from the average crapware that was sadly so common on the system.  The tracks are pretty diverse in their nature, and consist of scenic rural areas like vineyards, treacherous snowy mountain tracks, shipyards, and even an active volcano!  Backing up the graphics is some very strong audio as well - particularly the music.  Again, music of this quality is fairly rare on the GBA, and the actual tunes remind me of SID music from the C64.  It is most definitely of a retro chiptune style, and even features some voice samples in tunes such as the catchy People Mover.  Sound effects are decent enough as well, but are a bit overshadowed by the music.  There's a variety of skidding effects, explosions and the like, which all add to the overall quality of the game.

So that's the presentation addressed, but let's now focus on the game play.  Initially, the game is a lot of fun indeed as you bomb around the circuits, building up money reserves from both pickups on the track itself and from winnings after placing in the races.  Each cup, of which there are five, consists of five races, so there's a very decent 25 tracks in total in the game.  At the end of a championship, the points are tallied and the final placing revealed.  If you come first, then you get to move on to the next championship, anything less and you will have to try again.  You are never actually faced with a game over screen, which is quite nice.  Before each race, you can take a look at the map, see roughly how difficult the track is, check surface type and the weather.  These last two things are important, because if you were go race on snow with your slicks equipped, or if you had dry tires on when it was raining, you would really struggle to control your car and also maintain a decent speed in the race.  So as you earn cash in the events, you should be buying new types of tire.  That's not all though, your car itself is also upgradeable - you can level up the engine, the turbo, the armour, the brakes and finally, the weapon cells.  As you progress through the different cups you will discover that it is absolutely necessary to upgrade your car in order to be competitive.

You can also take damage as well, which can get pretty expensive to fix.  Finally, there are many different weapons to buy in the game.  At first you just get access to nitrous and basic missiles, but with each new cup that's unlocked you will be allowed to buy more and more types of weapon.  Later types include mines that do a significant amount of damage to anyone unlucky to drive over them, and heat seeking missiles.  In addition to weaponry, each character has their own innate special ability as well.  One of them can steal cash by bumping into other cars, another one can mess up your steering temporarily, which can be infuriating.  That brings to my one major problem with the game.  By the time you get to around the third championship, the majority of the weapons will have been unlocked, and the computer AI starts acting like a complete bastard.  Within the first few seconds of a race it's quite likely that you will have been shot, spun out, run into level mines, and bashed into for good measure.  A decent race can easily be ruined by the overaggressive opponents, and it can become infuriating.  You can go back to previous championships, grind for money and gradually level your cars so that you can then easily win the current championship, so at least you won't get stuck, but this does make the game feel like a bit of a grind at times.

Despite these few problems though, Racing Gears Advance still stands out as one of the best third party games released for the GBA, yet it's one that I never ever hear anyone talking about.  When I checked the price for this review, I was surprised to find that there were copies available on Amazon.co.uk for around £28.  That's not an insignificant amount by any means, but I was thinking it would be worth £50 at the absolute minimum.  If you get the opportunity, you really should check this game out, either through emulation or by spending a bit of a genuine copy.  Despite the frustrating game play in the latter stages on the championship mode it remains a lot of fun to play and is a title that I still return to frequently today.  I'll be back with another edition of Advance Warning in the not too distant future, as well as bringing all the other videos that I've been promising for a while.  In the meantime, take care!

Cobra Triangle | Rare Replay #5

Today we're on to the fifth episode in the series of Rare Replay games.  I'm sticking with the NES again this time, and taking a look at a 1989 release called Cobra Triangle.   I had never heard of this one before I bought this compilation, but that's not entirely surprising as I never had my own NES growing up.  It was co designed by Mark Betteridge and the Stamper brothers, with programming duties also falling to Betteridge.  Tim Stamper and Kevin Bayliss produced the graphics, while David Wise once again composed the music.  The style of game is an isometric racing / combat game, where you take control of a speedboat that can be upgraded as you progress through the stages.

Probably the best thing about the game in my opinion is the wide range of different objectives that it throws at you.  One minute you simply have to get to the end of a course before the time runs out, the next you may be trying to steal armed mines from the enemy and take them up to a designated area on the water to blow them up safely.  Or you may be protecting a bunch of humans from being abducted by evil speedboats, attempting to jump across a series of waterfalls, or in a battle to the death against a sea dragon, giant crab, kraken or ultimately, a great white shark.  Like many NES games of the time though, the difficulty curve can be rather harsh.  You only have a couple of lives and a few continues to try and make your way through the game, and while you can collect more from time to time, you're more than likely to run out before you get to the end of the 25th stage and actually complete the game. 

Avoiding these whirlpools can be aggravating!

For my first few attempts, I did actually persevere without resorting to infinite lives cheat, but could barely manage to get past the 10th stage.  As I want to get all of the milestones in each game, I did turn the cheat on and slog my way through every level.  The one I struggled with the most was the hardest version of the mine defusing stage, as the time limit is extremely tight.  Neither the milestones or the snapshots were particularly challenging this time around.  The toughest one was definitely the one awarded for completing all 25 stages of the game.  It took quite a few attempts, but I got there in the end. Thankfully the addition of save states in Rare Replay meant I could walk away from the game for a bit and come back and try again later.

On certain levels, such as the ones where you are told to race to the finish, or others that just tell you to collect pods, you upgrade your boat by collecting said pods.  The power up system is very reminiscent of something like Gradius, where you have a list of options along the bottom of the screen, which will cycle through as you collect the pods.  At the press of a button you can select the currently highlighted option, upgrading your ship and resetting the bar back to the start.  By doing this you can improve the top speed of your boat, the power and spread of your bullets and eventually be able to shoot heat seeking missiles.  I would recommend upgrading your offensive options before improved the speed of your vehicle, as you will be going up against the sea dragon fairly early in the game and may have a hard time if you only have the pea shooter that you start with.

Overall: 8 out of 10
I do really like the presentation of Cobra Triangle - Rare have once again used the isometric perspective that they are so fond of, but for the most part it works really well here.  It can make lining yourself up with the pods in midair a little tricky, but this isn't a major issue.  Really though, the greatest thing this game has going for it is the variety of game play it offers.  While the eight or so different level types do repeat several times over by the end of the game, each one is very different from the last and they ramp up in complexity as you proceed.  The worst part of the game is the very harsh difficulty - you can get a good deal better at it with perseverance and practise but completing this game fairly and squarely on the paltry number of lives they give you will be an incredibly stiff challenge indeed.  Overall then I think I enjoyed this just a tiny bit more than I did with Slalom.  It is less samey, yet doesn't quite earn true greatness due to the harsh game play.  A solid eight out of ten. 

Wii Hidden Gems #4 - Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles

There have been quite a few attempts to adapt the Resident Evil franchise into an on rails light fun game over the years.  I actually quite liked Survivor at the time of its release on the PS1, though it has dated really badly now.  Having heard bad things about the sequel (that was based on Code Veronica) I gave it a miss, but then I did pick up Dead Aim for the PlayStation 2.  It was OK, though the controls were somewhat clunky.

Nintendo's Wii seems like the perfect fit for a new Resi shooter, as it has already proven it can handle the genre extremely well through titles like Link's Crossbow Training, Ghost Squad, and the downloadable Wild West Guns.  So in 2007 Capcom released The Umbrella Chronicles, which features various scenarios taken from earlier games in the series: namely 0, 1, and 3.  Fan favourite Resi Evil 2 has been skipped over for now, though it's included in the sequel Darkside Chronicles that I will also be covering soon.

Interspersed with the stages based on the stories we know and love are side missions where you get to take control of characters like Wesker, Rebecca Chambers, Ada Wong and Hunk.  Poor old Barry Burton gets somewhat left in the cold, unfortunately!  With three missions for each of the three games, and another twelve besides those, Umbrella Chronicles has plenty to offer fans of the series.  How about the execution though, does it finally get right what the previous games have managed to get wrong?

Graphics: 8 out of 10

The Umbrella Chronicles takes its visual style from Resident Evil 0 and the remake of the first game, so it looks just like those two titles.  Capcom have really done an excellent job of ensuring that the geography of the locations visited in the game matches that of the games that levels are based on, which is a real treat for fans of the series who have completed these games multiple times and know their way around the Spencer mansion off by heart, for instance.  Enemies look like they did also, and there's a nice variety of zombie designs so you're not being attacked by clones the whole time.  Some of them are even wearing hard hats or body armour, which means you have to change your tactics as a result.

As good looking as the Resi 0 and Remake levels look, it's really the ones based on Resi 3 that will have the most impact, as this is the first time they've been given a visual overhaul since the now slightly crusty looking PlayStation original was released. Seeing how great the decimated streets of Raccoon City and the Nemesis looks, it makes me feel that it's a shame that Capcom never got around to giving the much loved second and third games in the series the same remake treatment they gave the original.  But I digress - this game really does look great on the Wii, and enemies even react to being shot in different places.  You would hope that this would be the case, but it hasn't always been so in the previous on rails Resi games.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
The menu music is quite memorable and suitably creepy and Resident Evil esque. The music that plays during the game itself is also fine for the most part, but tends to blend into the background a bit amongst all the gun shots.  It's good to hear that they've got the little details right like the same noises as you click through your inventory - you wouldn't think that things like this would be all that important, but it helps make the game feel like it is genuinely part of the Resident Evil "brand".

This consistency carries over to the voice acting as well, as the voice of Wesker will be familiar to those who have played more recent entries in the series (though if memory serves me right he's not the original actor who played him).  I didn't really recognise anyone else as being from other games in the Resi series, though that doesn't mean they weren't!

Umm, Rebecca? You've got red on you.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
The game play in The Umbrella Chronicles is fairly solid and satisfying for the most part, but there are a few minor irritations.  Some of the bosses (in particular the big Leech monster at the end of the Resi 0 section) can be a nuisance to kill.  Of course with a bit of patience and some practise you will win the day eventually, but the first few times you will probably suffer a frustrating death.

It is good that you can go back to missions you've already cleared and earn more stars, though.  You can spend these stars on upgrading the weapons that you've found so far (and therefore unlocked).  The upgrades include total ammo capacity, clip capacity and fire power, and the weapons comprise the usual types that you find in these games: sub machine guns, shotguns, grenade launchers and more.  You will always have a pistol on hand that has infinite ammo, and that's pretty effective at taking out most fodder enemies, but you will definitely be needing the better weaponry when faced with lickers, hunters, and bosses like the Tyrant.

As the levels proceed, you can destroy certain items in the background to uncover hidden documents, more ammo for the special weapons, green herbs which heal you instantly, and first aid sprays that effectively give you a continue.  Each level typically lasts 10 - 15 minutes and is split up into smaller sections with at least one checkpoint in the middle.  If you reach a checkpoint, or the boss of the stage, you can restart from that point should you die.  You probably will, too - as the game can be fairly challenging even on the earliest difficulty.   The optional scenarios feel noticeably harder than the main ones, too - especially as you have to play these alone (at least to begin with).

Innovation and Cleverness: 6
Making a sort of "Greatest Hits" package out of the Resident Evil series is a great idea, and a real treat for fans, and Capcom really nailed the whole atmosphere.  That being said, it doesn't really bring anything radically new to the light gun genre.  That's OK though, where the game is lacking in innovation it makes up in polish - something which has been a bit lacking in the previous light gun games based on the franchise.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
Light gun shooters are traditionally fairly brief experiences, but there are a lot of missions in The Umbrella Chronicles.  Throw in multiple difficulty levels, branching routes in some of the stages, and a two player co op mode, and you have a decent amount of content for you to sink your teeth into.

Basing the value on the current price that you can find the game for (which is around £5 used and £15 new), I can say that you definitely get your money's worth.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles is a great offering for fans of the series, and is enhanced greatly by the option to play along with a friend. Everything feels authentic and handled with care, which is sadly not always the case with this franchise! Although the game leaves out the best games in the series in number 2 and number four, what is on offer is still good and the fact that it fills in gaps in the story is great.  I will be back with another review of the sequel once I have time to play through it all, in the meantime you should seriously think about adding The Umbrella Chronicles to your collection!

Golden Sun: Dark Dawn review

I have a confession to make going into this review: I never completed either of the first two games in the Golden Sun series.  I did get a fair old way into the first one - about 20 or so hours, and then as so often happened I got distracted by some other new and shiny game and it got left by the wayside.  Even though I never saw how the story played out in the end, I know enough to recognise who all the returning characters are in Dark Dawn, and it's fairly easy to piece together how things went down in the end. The Golden Sun series is not the most original of creations, after all - being made up of mostly generic parts. That's not to say that these games don't have anything of their own to offer, however...

Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Camelot Software Planning
Expect to pay: £6

At the opening of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn, some time has passed since the events of The Lost Age.  Isaac and the other Warriors of Vale successfully managed to activate all of the Elemental Lighthouses, restoring life to the dying land. Yet there was a side effect to this... the Golden Sun event caused catastrophic levels of destruction to the world of Weyard... many lives were lost, save for those who were directly bathed in the light, whose lives were extended way beyond their usual span.  All of the Warriors and their companion Kraden were affected.  The world was saved at great cost, and would never be the same again.

Isaac and Garret continue to investigate anomalies that are occurring throughout the world as a result of triggering the Golden Sun - dangerous Psyenergy vortexes.  They are assisted in this task by their children. One day, Garrets son Tyrell gets himself into grave danger after taking a flying contraption invented by Ivan for a joyride.  Thus the game begins with you taking control of the son of Isaac, on a quest to rescue Tyrell before he gets himself killed.  Things spin off from there and eventually a new threat to the world presents itself.  It's up to the descendants of the Warriors of Vale to set things right.

Graphics: 8 out of 10
The visuals of Golden Sun: Dark Dawn are very well done, with nice bright colours, a cool cell shaded look and some very pretty water effects.  They are held back a bit by the usual limitations of the DS system such as a relatively low polygon count which makes the characters look a little angular, but that is hard the fault of the game.  As such, this is one of the better looking titles available for the system, easily on par with something like Dragon Quest IX.

Sound and Music: 7 out of 10
Firstly, the music.  Whilst the compositions of Motoi Sakuraba are of high quality, his work can get quite repetitive.  His music is certainly quite distinctive - chances are you will be able to tell one of his pieces just from the instrumentation and motifs used - but because is also quite prolific chances are the player is already quite fatigued concerning his work.

Also, I have to say I really really hate the noise that your characters make by default while they are talking.  Although it can be turned off, you have to get through the first portion of the game before you can get into a menu and switch it off.  It's a really grating squeaky noise which becomes absolutely maddening during the short time you are forced to be exposed to it, so thank the sweet furry king of the kittens that you can disable it or I would never have got through to the end of the game.  The rest of the sound effects are competently done though really nothing special - they do their job but do not stick in the memory.

Some puzzle solving early on in the adventure.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
The fundamental mechanics behind Golden Sun: Dark Dawn are well established by this point - it is your typical RPG with random encounters, an overworld map, and towns - that sort of thing.  The random encounters are at least well balanced though, and you don't really need to go out of your way in order to level grind, at least until towards the end of the story and beyond.

There are a few unique aspects to the game though.  The first is the Djinn - these little creatures are hidden around the game world, and can be obtained either by defeating them in combat (which is never particularly hard) or by solving a puzzle within the environment in order to reach them.  Once in your party you can assign these Djinn to your characters, which both boost your stats and grant you access to Psyenergy (magic).  You can also select these Djinn in combat which gives some kind of benefit to your party (such as protection against physical attacks, or preventing your enemies from using magic against you for several turns) and also changes their status to "Set".  By setting multiple Djinn of the same type, you can then use summons - extremely powerful attacks by mythical gods and monsters that come with elaborate animations.  After using a summon, the Djinn that were "Set" then go into "Standby" status for a few turns, before returning to their default "Ready" state.

The types of Djinn that you equip on each character also have an impact on your character class - though I have to admit the intricacies of this system are beyond me and I simply matched Djinn of a given element to characters of the same type (Earth, Wind, Fire or Water). My main criticism of the Djinn system is that it makes the vast majority of standard offensive magic somewhat redundant, as you can simply spam the Djinn and summons over and over again at very little cost.

The other thing that sets this game apart (although similar things have been done in Lufia and Wild Arms) are the environmental puzzles.  Some of your psyenergy can be used outside of battle in order for you to interact with certain objects strewn throughout the various dungeons.  For example you can freeze puddles of water so that they become pillars of ice, you can make vines grow so that you can climb them, or you can use a whirlwind to propel yourself across a lake on an oversized lily leaf.  These puzzles are by far the best thing about this game and the Golden Sun series overall.  A couple of the dungeons were incredibly imaginative and fun to solve, and therefore will stick in the memory for a long time to come.

Innovation and Cleverness: 6 out of 10
Golden Sun: Dark Dawn scores most of its points here because of the aforementioned clever and fun puzzle design, because it certainly isn't especially innovative.  It is at heart a very traditional Japanese console RPG, and a fine example of one.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
This rating is based on a combination of how long it will take you to complete the game, whether there's any reason for you to come back to it once finished, and how cheaply you can purchase a copy of your own. Some professional gaming review sites would baulk at the idea of factoring the price of a game into a review, but we live in the real world, money is hard to come by for many of us, and price can make the difference on whether a game is a worthwhile investment or not.  As Golden Sun: Dark Dawn came out a while ago now, it won't cost you very much to pick up a copy - roughly £6 when I checked.  I bought my copy a year ago for £15, and the game is a good deal at that price, so £6 is an absolute bargain.  Upon completion of the game, there are four additional optional dungeons for you to complete.  For me, the incentive for doing so wasn't really there, as all you gain from these dungeons are additional summons.  Given the fact that you already have access to many overpowered summons in the game, and the bosses of the extra dungeons are considerably tougher to beat than actual final boss of the story, I didn't see the point.

Overall: 8 out of 10
If you are clamouring for a high quality, traditional RPG experience to play on the go, then you can do far worse than Golden Sun: Dark Dawn.  Admittedly you can also do better (I would suggest playing any of the Dragon Quest games for the DS before this - especially Dragon Quest IX), but you would be hard pushed to find a better game for less money (the best RPG's on the DS are usually at least £10, and this is steadily starting to rise as collectors snap them up and they become scarcer). For the money, you can't really go wrong this game.  One thing’s for sure, now I have finished it I do want to go back and play the first two games on the GBA that are languishing in my collection!

RMGB Radio Episode 1

In the first episode of RMGB Radio, I give my first impressions of the newly launched 3DS, along with four of the launch games: Super Street Fighter IV 3D, Pilotwings Resort, Ridge Racer 3D and Super Monkey Ball. There is also plenty of music courtesy of OverClocked ReMix (http://ocremix.org/).



For the full show notes, please click here.

Game Diary: A little bit of everything

Firstly, things have slowed down somewhat in Dragon Age II - after completing the first two acts in the space of the first weekend, I have only played 6 hours or so of Act 3 and there are still a ton of quests to do. I will continue to play through the rest of the game this week, but am happy to take my time over it. Aside from my main character (a warrior), I have also dabbled with the other two classes a bit. I have decided to make my rogue and evil son of a bitch who treats who absolutely hates mages, in contrast to my warrior who is out to help everyone and does everything in her power to help the cause of the mages (and her partner is Anders).

Next, I want to talk a little bit about handheld gaming and immersion. Over the years, I've heard from several friends that the reason they've never really got into handheld gaming is that they don't find it as immersive as playing a game on a large TV. Personally though, I found it to be quite the opposite. I've spent many hours at home, in my favourite armchair, with my handheld of choice and a pair of headphones - it's like a window to a pocket universe. Now that the difference in power and technology between handhelds is less than it has ever been, and the capacity of 3DS cartridges outstrips DVD by quite some margin, I am really excited to see what developers will be able to achieve on the new machine. I don't expect any of the launch games to truly exploit the power of the 3DS, as they have been made on a tight timescale, but games like Super Street Fighter IV 3D and Pilotwings should hopefully demonstrate the potential that it offers. I'll be picking my 3DS up at midnight on Thursday - exciting stuff!

The third topic of conversation I had on my list is my nephew, and the games that he likes to play. Because his dad and I have been playing both modern and retro games around him, he doesn't particularly distinguish one from the other - to him, they're all just games and he'll happily spend hours on the MAME cabinet playing something like Streets of Rage 2 just and much as he will playing LEGO Star Wars on the Wii or Blur on the Xbox 360. I find this incredibly refreshing. Maybe eventually he will start to become prejudiced against old games, but I hope not.

Finally, I am planning to make the blog slightly more Nintendo centric. They make the best games by far in my opinion and yet aside from the odd review here and there the content of this blog hasn't really reflected that fact. I am currently (re)playing Super Mario Galaxy, and I will put a review up once I've managed to collect all 120 stars. I'm up to 40 already which is a pretty good start, so in between Dragon Age II sessions I will continue to plug away at it. I also hope to start doing more videos - hopefully some video reviews to go alongside the text, as well as more in the Nintendo Night series, and Classic or Crap. I still don't have a decent camera unfortunately, but I will look into getting a used one on eBay maybe.


That's all for this week - next weeks article is sure to be full of my first impressions of the 3DS and the games, so be sure to check back in if you're interested!

RMGB TV - Nintendo Night

Keep checking this YouTube playlist regularly for gameplay videos of NES, SNES, N64 and Wii titles (including WiiWare and Virtual Console).

Movie Watch: The King of Kong - A Fistful of Quarters

Last Wednesday night I finally got a chance to watch the retro gaming documentary film, The King of Kong - A Fistful of Quarters, and it is truly a gripping insight into the world of competitive score chasing and the mentality of the people who spend hours of their daily lives honing and maintaining their skills. This movie in particular focuses on the rivalry between two Donkey Kong players and the race to be the first to score over 1 million points.

In one corner, we have Billy Mitchell, who is the closest thing that competitive gaming has to a superstar. He's been around since the early 80's. and made his name by being the first person to ever achieve the perfect game of Pac Man (eat every dot, collect every fruit, pick up every power pill and munch every single ghost on 255 mazes). In the film, he comes across as an arrogant cock who only cares about protecting his one remaining high score - no matter the cost.

In the other corner, we have Steve Wiebe, life long underachiever (yet still amazingly skilled, life just hasn't cut him a break) and all around Nice Guy. When he was made redundant and spent a period of time unemployed, he decided to purchase a Donkey Kong machine, having developed the skills necessary for the game when he was at high school. He took a look at the online score board on the Twin Galaxies web site, saw that Billy Mitchell had the top spot, and thought "I can beat that".

What follows is the tale of how Steve first beat Billy's score and submitted it by video tape, then had it taken away from him when it was discovered that the board may have been tampered with. He was told to come to FunSpot and repeat the achievement in front of a live audience. Which he did, only for a tape submitted by Billy Mitchell to be unveiled revealing an even higher score - which promptly got entered on the Twin Galaxies site as the highest score ever.

The final part of the film sees Steve attempting to get Billy to play him in a head to head match at an event that the Twin Galaxies organisation held in order to try and find new scores to be included in the forthcoming edition of the Guinness Book of World Records, only Billy refuses to turn up and take part. From everything the viewer has seen so far, it appears that the only reason he refuses to play is because he is scared to lose, but all is not as it seems. If you dig a little deeper into the background of the film, you will find that it has been edited in such a way as to portray Billy as the bad guy. It conveniently leaves out the fact that after Billy's videotaped score was accepted, it was taken town within 48 hours and then Steve was the uncontested champion for the next three years. Yes, their friendship did fall apart and Billy did indeed stop associating with Steve, but not because of the record attempt, because Steve was acquainted with a guy who calls himself Mr Awesome, a man who Billy has had several run ins with in the past.

The King of Kong is still a highly entertaining glimpse of competitive gaming but events portrayed within it should be taken with a pinch of salt. After viewing, I suggest you check up on some of the facts here.

Overall: 7 out of 10.

Retro Review: Earthbound

Earthbound (aka Mother 2 in Japan) is a game that is unheard of by most people, overlooked by others, and yet loved to bits by anyone who has had the fortune to play it. It's actually the middle part of a trilogy, but it is the only game in the series that Nintendo saw fit to translate into English and release (although not in Europe, only in the US). Exactly what makes this game so special its fans, and why should you care in an age when audio-visual extravaganzas like Mass Effect and Lost Odyssey are being produced? Pull up a chair and I'll tell you.

Format: SNES
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Ape
Genre: RPG
Region: NTSC (US)
Price: Around £30 (used)
***Tested on the GP2X***

Graphics: 8 out of 10
Earthbound has really great cartoon style graphics which are shown in an isometric perspective when exploring the world. There is a lot of detail in the many towns and dungeons that you will explore, including an arcade with little cabinets, a multi story department store and a town completely over run by zombies. Battles take place in a first person perspective very similar to Dragon Quest or Pokemon, and you will face off against many bizarre enemies throughout your adventure, including Mole Playing Rough, New Age Retro Hippy and L'il UFO. The whole game appears to have been created by people under the influence of drugs, as most evidenced by the decidedly trippy psychedelic backgrounds that appear during a fight.

These guys all belong to a cult that worship the colour blue - I told you it was strange!

Sound: 7 out of 10
The sound is just as quirky as the rest of the game - sometimes areas have no music and instead feature atmospheric background noise, such as the start of the game and whenever you enter a cave. Towns have more traditional RPG style compositions, and battles have rather offbeat tunes with unusual rhythms or tempos. There's nothing that here that would make you consider buying a soundtrack and listening to the music on your CD player, but what is here helps to add to the charm of the game.

Plot and Character: 8 out of 10
The plot of Earthbound, like all of it really, is rather daft. The main character, Ness, is woken up in the middle of the night by a meteor crashing into the hills near his home town of Onett. He goes off at three in the morning (like you do) to explore and discovers a benevolent alien bee by the name of Buzz Buzz which has come to warn the inhabitants of planet Earth about the evil Giygas, an evil being set on the destruction of the world. Buzz Buzz gives Ness the Sound Stone, an item he will need to gather the songs of sanctuary from various locations around the globe. Before Buzz Buzz can finish his message however he is squashed and killed by Ness's mum. Ness then sets out to save the world, and gathers several allies along the way.

The story won't win any awards, but the writing is really humorous... and really that's the whole point of the game - to be fun to play. The modern day setting and original situations you find yourself in is unlike any other game (apart from Mother 1 and Mother 3 of course) and is a refreshing change from all of the dozens of fantasy RPG's that are available.

Game Mechanics: 7 out of 10
By all accounts Earthbound is pretty solid, traditional turn based RPG (apart from the presentation and storyline of course), but it isn't without its flaws in the gameplay department. For starters, when buying and selling items you do have to go through a few too many menus for my liking, as the game doesn't let you buy multiple items of the same type at once. You are also limited to carrying about twenty items per character, and you can expect four of these to be taken up by equipment, and another five or so to be used up by essential story items, so having enough room for healing items can be a problem. This is mitigated somewhat once you gain your second and third characters and you are able to heal with PSI powers (magic) instead of relying on items.

Each character is clearly defined with their own set of abilities, so Ness gets the majority of the PSI points with the ability to heal HP and cure status ailments, as well as few attacks. Paula has mostly offensive PSI abilities, such as fire, ice and lightning attacks, Jeff can spy on enemies to discover what they're strong and weak against, and Poo can be considered a backup healer/attacker as and when required.

In addition to these battle skills, some of the characters have useful skills outside of battle too. Jeff can repair broken items which usually become better weapons or armour than the stuff that you can buy at that stage of the came, but it only happens if his IQ stat is high enough and even then only randomly when you rest at your house or an inn. Poo enhances the effect of certain healing items so it makes sense to make him the main item user.

Instead of automatically gaining money dropped from monsters (which never really makes sense anyway - why would a snake need gold?), Ness's dad deposits cash into his bank account, and you then have to withdraw it from an ATM which can be found in drugstores and hotels. You also have to save by finding a phone and calling your dad. One of the great things about playing this game on a GP2X is that you can use the Save State function of your emulator to save anywhere you like and not have to worry about going all the way back to town before you can shut off the system.

Taking a stroll downtown with the gang.

Innovation and Cleverness: 8 out of 10
Earthbound scores plenty of points for innovation for merely daring to be different in a sea of cookie cutter fantasy RPG's. Little touches such as a rolling HP meter (which means you can save a party member from death if you act quick enough) help differentiate it from the other games of the time and even today there's been little that compares to it for sheer oddness, except maybe Contact on the Nintendo DS and of course Mother 3. It's also a pretty smart game, as the citizens of the many towns always have something amusing to say. It's obvious that a lot of love went into the game both at the design stage and also when it came time to localise it for the US market.

Value and Replayability: 8 out of 10
The game features a good solid 30-40 hours of gameplay, which is just about right for an RPG in my opinion. While the game itself is fairly linear, it's such good fun to play through that you would probably replay it a few years later, and there's bound to be little things that you overlooked the first time through.

Overall: 8 out of 10
The fact that Earthbound failed to sell in high numbers and as a consequence Nintendo decided not to release the GBA sequel in English is a great shame, as this is a fantastic RPG that deserves to be played. It's only hope now is that the original game gets a release on the Virtual Console for the Wii and everyone realises how wonderful it is.

Normal service will be resumed...

...soon.

For now, check out this episode of GameHead dedicated to the voice of Mario, Charles Martinet...

Segment one also include a review of Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer and a preview of Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights

Segment two looks at some of the other roles that Charles Martinet has played, and also includes a preview of God of War: Chains of Olympus and a retro look at Leisure Suit Larry.


Segment three looks at how Charles performs as Mario during events such as E3, and also includes a review of Scarface: The World Is Yours on the Wii, plus a look at the Pac Man Championship Edition event.


Segment four takes a look at Super Mario Galaxy, a preview of the Konami vs Capcom episode of VS, and a review of Big Brain Academy: Wii Degree.