Monthly Update: November, 2021

 

Well, COVID-19 infection rates are continuing to go down, deaths are continuing to go down, hospitalizations are. . . also continuing to go down.  But the fact that the US is still averaging 79,000+ new cases every day for the last seven days is annoyingly staggering.  Sure it is not the 301,138 from September (of this year), but the fact that people are still refusing to get vaccinated for any reason they can think of is again, staggering.  I am sure that I am hitting some kind of pandemic fatigue talking about this every month and I am sure that some portion of you are tired of me bringing this up every month and why do I not just shut up and talk about video games like the good little sheeple that I am?  Plenty of reasons but if you stay tuned, I will probably get to them.

If you read my article from near mid-month, you will know that I went out (I went on eBay) and bought a Wii U (a used Wii U Deluxe that unbeknownst to me came pre-installed with Mario Kart 8) so that I could play, amongst other games, Metroid Fusion on the Wii U's Virtual Console.  There are a handful of other games that I am looking at too, but I jumped on it now because I had read articles saying that there was talk about Nintendo shutting down the purchasing side of the eShop for the Wii U and 3DS sometime after the first of the year.  So the system arrived, I hooked it up to our TV downstairs, finished the set-up process, then took it upstairs and set up the base unit under our bed so that I could play the gamepad like a proto-Switch.  There are some Wii games that I plan on buying that I will have to hook it back up to the TV to play (Dead Space: Extraction, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Chronicles, Metroid: Other M, Metroid Prime Trilogy, Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, and probably others that I am not thinking of off the top of my head).  Granted I have only played one game, but I am really loving the Wii U, or at least how I have been using it.

On the Switch, now that I have just finished Metroid Fusion I will be starting Metroid Dread soon (I started Metroid Dread in the evening) and I will have an article on Fusion ready for Monday (11/8).  I also finished The Blair Witch, a first-person survival horror game from Bloober Team (Layers of Fear, >observer_) which I will be writing about in a week or two (at the rate that I am writing articles these days).  I also finished Saturday Morning RPG and I have an article in the works looking at the game as a whole rather than each individual episode.  I did stop playing Missing Features: 2D not because I suck at platformers, but because after 11 levels, the game continues to move in a direction that has become no longer fun to play, and not what I had been enjoying about the game from the first eight or so levels.  Believe it or not, I am still playing Super Mario World: Yoshi's Island, but that is usually just me playing through a single level before feeling done with the game.  Occasionally I will have fun with the game and play two levels, but that is usually towards the end of each world/area and I want to see what that boss is like and those levels feel less cheap than some of the regular stages.  I briefly started Flashback over last weekend, but I felt that I really was not in the mood for this type of game, although I did have a lot of fun with The Way: Remastered and I do like that style of game, but I just have to be in the right headspace to play a modernized 29-year old PC game.

On other devices, I am still playing Professor Layton and the Unwound Future and not really finding this entry as engaging as the first two.  It could be the selection of puzzles feels like a barrel is being scraped, or that the mini-games seem random and out of place.  I do feel compelled to finish the game though because I do enjoy solving puzzles, but also because everyone who commented about the MIDI Week Single article back in September said that Unwound Future had an amazing and heart-wrenching story, which I have an idea where that is coming from a couple of the flashback scenes with a young Hershel Layton, but if it does go that route, it may not be too much of a surprise.  Also Layton and Luke need to stop being condescending assholes to Flora because in nearly every interaction with her (in this game at least) both Layton and Luke smack of patriarchal condescending assholes.  On the PSP I am also playing God of War: Ghost of Sparta, which is sadly not as engaging or as epic-feeling as Chains of Olympus.  I had planned on putting out a First Impressions article, but then I ended up being more than halfway through the game and I feel more compelled to finish the game than write about it, which may not be a good sign overall.

I'm sure that there is more that I could talk about but this was kind of where the flow naturally stopped when I was thinking about the games that I have recently played and started.  I do wish I was playing more PC games, as I sit here on my laptop writing articles.  But that is just time management and speaking of which I have some tea steeping that I should get to before in transmutes into coffee.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

I Do What I Feel Like

MIDI Week Singles: "Upper Mountain" - Tintin in Tibet (GB)

 

"Upper Mountain" from Tintin in Tibet on the Game Boy (1995)
Composer: Alberto Jose González
Album: No Official Release
Publisher: Infrogames Multimedia
Developer: Bit Manager

I have never played a Tintin game but I did read one of the comics back in elementary school (I think it was Cigar of the Pharaohs).  That has been my exposure to the character of Tintin.  But as the kids say these days, this track in particular from Tintin in Tibet, released on the Game Boy in 1995 really slaps!  Yes, it has that Game Boy sound chip and it could be a little grating on the ears, especially when listening through the mono speaker, but for Game Boy music, it is pretty damn good.  Or at least I think so, which is why I am sharing it with you all today.

This track, like the majority of the music for the game only plays during one section, when Tintin is platforming his way up a mountain in Tibet.  At times the music seems to suit for the scaling of a mountain while dodging giant snow boulders cascading down a mountainside, but for most of the time, it just comes across as overly dramatic.  In the hands of someone who knows what they are doing, and knows where/when to avoid exploding snow and deftly jump across frozen chasms wearing only sensible loafers, you would only end up hearing this song just less than two times.  On its own, however, I could probably listen to this track three or four times and not be tired of how much it sounds like Hans Zimmer composing on an 8-bit system.  

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

First Impressions: Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light

Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light

Original Release Date: April 20, 1990

Systems: Famicom, Nintendo Switch

Publisher: Nintendo

Developer: Intelligent Systems

At this point, I have played a couple of Fire Emblem games, but only a handful, and not including the mobile Fire Emblem Heroes.  I know my way around a tactics game too, from varying mechanics like those in Final Fantasy Tactics where elevation and character direction are just as important part of each battle.  Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light (hereto referred to simply as Fire Emblem unless otherwise noted) is the first tactics game that I can think of that I have played on the NES/Famicom.  I mention this for a number of reasons.  First, most of the other tactics games I have played have had some dimension to the battlefield be it elevations, screen rotation, but here, the battles are all fought on a 2D stationary map.  Second, this is the first tactics game I have played that forces you to interact with town services while in the middle of combat, but more on that later.  While this presentation does feel somewhat simpler compared to other Fire Emblem games, I also find it terrifying that I am going to mess something up a la Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light style.

The presentation for Fire Emblem, the version that Nintendo sold for an apparently limited time, is sparse in its presentation, at least for the digital version.  You can, if you want, watch a rundown of each type of unit that you are likely to come across and command during the game noting their strengths and weaknesses in regards to specific units and their usefulness during battle.  There is no digital instruction book, just a title screen, a snippet of lore, and then you are thrust into battle with only a brief dialogue between Prince Marth and Princess Caeda.  There is no explanation as to anything.  Everything in the game you need to find out by doing, and sometimes that means finding out by doing by accident.  During the first map, I took the numbers next to the weapon you use during battle as a strength or power indicator, but now I am thinking (after map 2) that this is actually a durability counter, then when it reaches 0, that the weapon will break.  So I need to find a blacksmith now?  Do the percentages that flash by when it tells you which type of terrain each character is in mean a defense bonus or an attack bonus?

On the map during battle, there are buildings, some look like huts, others look like a tent.  Visiting a wooden hut on the map constitutes visiting a village and engaging with the locals.  Waiting while occupying the same space as a fort (what looks like a walled-off hospital) allows your characters to heal.  You can buy items at an armorer (square building with a pickaxe) but you then have to trade with another character as those items do not go into a larger inventory.  You can only trade items between characters if they are standing next to each other.

Death is permanent.  I presume that if Marth dies that the game is over, but there has been no indication, in-game, that this would be the case, which brings up the issue I had with Fire Emblem: Shadows of Valentia.  If death is permanent, and if the game is over when the main character dies, in this case presumably Marth, why would I want to actively put Marth into battle?  Yes, to level him up, but if I use all of my other characters, level them up, and just hold Marth back, not putting him in harm, then I might run a higher chance of not getting a game over.  Maybe.  And I also run the risk of having him be significantly underpowered in the event that there are any one-on-one battles between opposing military commanders.  Although Marth is probably a lot stronger than other characters because he seems to be the hero, so that would make sense mechanically.

But in the process of researching (cursory research mind you), I found out that you can recruit enemy characters by having specific characters talk to them; often hinted at by talking to people in villages.  But then comes in the FOMO (as the kids today like to say) of losing characters (Bord was killed in Map 2) both in battle, or losing the chance to recruit them to your side.  And is there a limit to the number of characters you can have in your army?  Is there a limit that you can have on the battlefield at one time?  So many questions that I feel I can either look up information on or just jump back in and play the game some more and learn by doing.

Or just restart the game with some of this knowledge in mind and actually recruit both Castor and Darros without Bord dying.  And actually, visit all of the villages on each map.  Yeah, I am thinking I will probably start over now.  

Thank you for talking this through with me.  Your participation has been invaluable.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Let Me Get A Single Minute of Your Precious Time

MIDI Week Singles: "Silent Hill" - Silent Hill (PSX)

 

"Silent Hill" from Silent Hill on the PlayStation and the Game Boy Advance* (?!?!?) 1999
Composer: Akira Yamaoka
Album: SILENT HILL ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACKS
Label: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Developer: Konami Computer Entertainment Tokyo (Team Silent)

It made sense to use a song from Silent Hill the last Wednesday before Halloween, although if you were not familiar with the franchise, I would be surprised if someone were to not only guess that this was from Silent Hill, but from a survival horror game.  There are some hints to the setting, mainly being that the song sounds like it was recorded by someone listening to an LP, but that is really about it.  The Wikipedia page states that composer Akira Yamaoka did not have any knowledge about what Silent Hill looked like and composed the music apart from the game development, which is probably why the song sounds like you just walked into either a cheeses shop or an Italian restaurant.  There is even the James Bond riff (around 1:20) that to me eeks out of nowhere then slides back into the ether.

This is just a very strange song, but I like it.  It somehow works with Harry wandering around a snowy beachside town looking for his daughter after a car crash.  It kind of makes you question why it is there, which is kind of what Silent Hill is about.  Or I am just coming up with a justification for this song existing in this terrifying universe.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

Instrumental

*P.S.  This game was ported to the Game Boy Advance in Japan!?  Why am I only just hearing about this now?  That's right, it was a choose your own adventure visual novel.  I remember now.  Never mind.

MIDI Week Singles: "Sweet Sacrifice" - Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits (NDS)

"Sweet Sacrifice" from Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits (2009)
Album: The Open Door
Composer: Amy Lee & Terry Balsamo (Evanescence)
Label: Wind Up Records
Publisher: Activision
Developer: Vicarious Visions

Last week while listening to soundtracks from the Nintendo DS, I came upon Guitar Hero On Tour: Modern Hits, and I thought, "Oh yeah, these games use existing music.  Huh."  And then I spent the better part of the day debating if I should use existing music that was not specifically composed for use in a video game.  But since we are here, it seems pretty clear where I landed.

While not my favorite song from Evanescence's second album "The Open Door," it is one of the heavier songs, and choosing this song from their 2006 album to go on a compilation of Modern Hits released in 2009 does say something about the possible longevity of the song; although the game was released in June 2009 so you figure that Vicarious Visions was looking at what was popular towards the end of 2008; maybe?  It is a pretty standard Evanescence song in that it features more of Amy Lee's vocals than intricate guitar work by Terry Balsamo and John LeCompt.

Honestly, though, I feel a lot less competent talking about the modern live real person singing music than I do talking about music composed for video games.  The sound quality is about what you would expect from the DS speakers (not great, not terrible) and as for the Guitar Heroeness of the song, there does seem to be a lot of chugging riffs as opposed to quick "Through the Fire and the Flames" fingering, because thank the gods; I did play one of the Guitar Hero games on the DS back at PAX 08 and after playing the first song on easy, my fingering hand was pretty cramped so I can only imagine how it would be at the end of a maximum difficulty song.

Well, this was (somewhat) fun.  I do not see us going the full hog and featuring songs from the Guitar Hero and Rock Band franchises just so we can play non-video game music, but I know that it will not be the last time either.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
But He Knew It Couldn't Last

So I Bought a Wii U. Now What?

 

Well, the title pretty much says it, right?

Let us move back just a little bit.  I bought Metroid Dread which came out on the Switch on October 8th.  This is, technically speaking, Metroid 5 in the numbered Metroid series which does not take into account the Metroid Prime series.  I have played (although not beaten on my own) the first Metroid game, but I have beaten Metroid II - Return of Samus (being Metroid 2) and Super Metroid (being Metroid 3).  I have not played Metroid Fusion (being Metroid 4) and I really wanted to play that before jumping into Metroid Dread.  Metroid Fusion originally came out on the Game Boy Advance 19 years ago in 2002 and I think the reason I did not buy it at the time was that I was heavily influenced by the negative reviews, that it differed too much from Super Metroid.  I also have heard nothing but good things about Metroid: Zero Mission, a retelling of the first Metroid game and was also released on the Game Boy Advance in 2004.  

Now, I still have my original Game Boy Advance, but earlier this year, I discovered that the unit would not power on, even with a healthy set of new AA batteries.  I know of a person online (Gametracks) who has been doing Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance repairs and glow ups, but the prices are a little out of my price range; not to knock their work, which is pretty amazing and it looks great and I have read nothing but good reviews of their work.  I also have access to Conklederp's DS lite as my unit is a bit busted, so I do have a way to still play some of the GBA cartridges I still have.  I mention this because I could look into buying the physical cartridges for both Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission, but with the release of Metroid Dread, prices for those games has skyrocketed from around $20 to anywhere from $40 to $212 to say nothing about them being authentic copies and not the Chinese fabrications being sold for $10; the same goes true for Metroid: Zero Mission.

There had been, and I believe continue to be, rumors about Nintendo releasing a Game Boy Advance Online app akin to their NES, Super NES, and now Nintendo 64 on the Switch, which might include either of these Metroid titles, but they are both also currently available on the Wii U's Virtual Console.  So I started looking into used Wii U consoles sort of absent-mindedly.  But then I looked up the longevity of the Wii U's eShop as the Wii U officially ended production in Japan in 2017.  From the multiple sources I read, both official and on Reddit said that Nintendo had made a statement that as of January 2022, that Nintendo would no longer be accepting payments on the 3DS and Wii U eShops effectively making purchases impossible although you can still download already purchases digital titles.  This moved up my timetable a bit if I really wanted to purchase a Wii U for the two Metroid titles.

So last Friday (October 15th) I pulled the proverbial trigger and bought a used Wii U (the deluxe 32GB version) on eBay (my first purchase in about seven years).  So now I am creating spreadsheets to crosscheck, cross-reference, and cross off all digital Virtual Console games that I already have access to on either the NES or SNES Classic consoles, or on the NES, SNES, and soon to be N64 Switch Online apps.  And because the Wii U is gloriously backward compatible with Wii games, I now have another whole new console's physical library available to me, which means I am going to pick up Dead Space: Extraction at the very least.  But at least for the time being, my focus is going to be looking at which Virtual Console games I would like to have access to.  

But other digital games as well?  Most likely.  Metroid: Other M has always intrigued me and the Metroid Prime Trilogy is a tantalizing $19.99 rather than a whopping $65-$140.  I will have to do some scouring of the Wii U eShop after I get the system and register it to my existing Nintendo account because apparently, you cannot add games to your wishlist if you do not have the system.  So, Google Sheets it is with the lists.  And for those of you who like lists and reading lists by other people, I present to you a shortened (and likely ever-lengthening list, at least until January 2022) list of Wii U Virtual Console games that I am 69.47% likely to throw my money at.

• NES
• Duck Hunt
• Gargoyle's Quest II
• GBA
• F-Zero GP Legend
• Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade
• Golden Sun
• Golden Sun II: The Lost Age
• The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap
• Mario Kart: Super Circuit
• Metroid Fusion
• Metroid: Zero Mission
• NDS
• Mario Kart DS (turns out the one I bought on eBay in 2007 was a fake from China)
• Metroid Prime Hunters
• New Super Mario Bros.
• N64 (I may have to wait on some of these if they get announced for the N64 Online App)
• 1080 Snowboarding
• Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber (No idea this was on the VC. 100% buying)
• Wave Race 64

I know I completely skipped out on the SNES portion of the Virtual Console, but there was not anything that jumped out at me that I felt I would be sad about missing if I did not pick it up before January.  And again, this does not include any physical Wii U or Wii games that I am now going to be in the market for.

One of the things I am actually most looking forward to, is actually figuring out how to play the Wii U.  Do you just put the disk in and play off of the screen or the GamePad?  Can you choose which one to play and not the other?  If you are playing a Virtual Console game, can you just play on the GamePad without turning on the main system?  Otherwise, what is the range that the GamePad has to be within of the base unit before it disconnects?  Can the GamePad disconnect from the base unit?  Can you only play Wii games if you have the Wiimote and Nunchuk attachment?  How important is it that I get a Wii U Pro Controller and will it work with regular Wii games?  I have never seen a Wii U in action, so the next month is going to be interesting to say the least.

Leave it to us here at Stage Select Start to jump in on a console nearly a decade late and then purchasing nearly nothing but ports of games released on older systems.  Classic.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian
Born of No Love

P.S.  According to the email I received, the Wii U should arrive sometime between Tuesday, October 19th, and Thursday, October 21st, so it will be likely I will answer a number of my questions in November's Monthly Update article.

P.P.S.  Because obviously, the thing I need to do is add to my already growing backlog of video games with ever-increasing amount of free time.

MIDI Week Singles: "Into the Legend" - Dragon Warrior III (NES)

 

"Into the Legend" from Dragon Warrior III / Dragon Quest III on the Nintendo Entertainment System (1992)
Composer: Koichi Sugiyama
Album: Symphonic Suite Dragon Quest III: Into the Legend
Label: Apollon Music Industrial Corp
Publisher: Enix
Developer: Chunsoft

I learned last week that composer Koichi Sugiyama had passed away on September 30th, 2021.  He was 80 years old.  He wrote the music to every mainline Dragon Quest game starting in 1988.  He was also someone who held right-wing nationalist views, denying Japan's involvement in the murder of 200,000 to 300,000 Chinese citizens and the rape and subjugation of 40,000 to 80,000 Chinese women and girls.  I feel like it is hard to celebrate the music without bringing up the faults of this magnitude from the man, and then being able to separate the two while still acknowledging both; In a similar manner when discussing Richard Wagner's white nationalist views or H.P. Lovecraft's anti-Scemitism.  It is possible to appreciate the advancements and accomplishments that Sugiyama had on video game music at large, while still acknowledging that he may not have been a great person with the most forward thinking stances while denying the lives of nearly 400,000 people.

"Into the Legend" seemed like a fitting send-off after hearing about Koichi Sugiyama's passing while coming to terms with his social viewpoints.  The song has been recorded, featured (most recently during the announcement of the Dragon Quest III 2d-HD Remake), and arranged many times and for good reason.  The fanfare opening is just as grand yet different enough from the "Overture March" that it takes on a more heroic and less regal feel.  I decided to use the version from Dragon Quest III (Dragon Warrior III in NA on the NES) because at the end, there is the reprise of the "Unknown Land" / "Overworld BGM" theme from the original Dragon Quest and having that there as the song fades out completes Erdrick/Loto's story and legend.  It's just a great song and I wish that more arrangements had that overworld theme from the first Dragon Warrior/Quest game because it's a great send off.

~JWfW/JDub/The Faceplantman/Jaconian

What Better Way to Say I Love You