Video Game Collecting

I was in the electronics section of Wal-Mart when I noticed a wall full of “gaming” cards.  Although I know there are pre-paid cards for X-Box Live, and the PSN, and for Nintendo points I never realized there were gaming cards for online computer games.

So stupid me took the time to research these cards online.  I was embarrassed to look at them in the store because they look like they were marketed to 12 year old girls.  Take Zwinky for example.  From the Wal-Mart.Com website:

Create your own Zwinky avatar. Play games, shop, design your room. Gain access to premium outfits and collect furniture. Meet your friends in Zwinktopia – a fun virtual world. Worth $25 of Zwinky premiums and in-game items! Exclusive bonus: Zwinky Super Power.

Zwinktopia?  Collect Furniture?  Zwinky Super Power?  This just sounds stupid.  But lets move on.

Next up is Stardoll.  From the Wal-Mart.Com website:

With this Stardoll 10-Game Card, girls can go on a virtual shopping spree. They’ll experience a world of fame, fashion, and friends with their very own Stardollars. Stardollars let you buy the latest clothes, bags, cosmetics, accessories and much, much more for your very own Stardoll.

Remember when girls used to play with Barbie?  I imagine this is similiar.  It’s terrifying to imagine children wanting to invest money into this garbage.

And finally we have Outspark.  I’m not sure why I’m going to paste the description from the Wal-Mart.Com website, but here it is anyways: 

Have fun in a virtual playground! Enjoy free multiplayer games, meet new friends and explore awesome worlds. Use your SparkCash Card to get limited-edition in-game items like clothing, weapons, pets and more!

Do we see a pattern here?  I think so.  It seems all of the cards promise friends.  Which makes sense, since I can’t imagine anyone wanting to buy these cards as having friends.  That criticism is probably mean and uncalled for.  But suppose you spend ten dollars a month on one of these games.  Each year you’re blowing $120, and what do you get out of it?  Nothing tangible- thats for sure!

If you are desperate for a friend and you are willing to spend $10-$25 a month, I’ll be your friend.  Cash only.  All sales final.  No Refunds.

What’s going on with VideoGamePriceGuides.Com?  Well, if you’ve visited the site at all this Monday evening you probably noticed that it’s re-directed to a weird JudgeVegas.Com site.  Although this wasn’t intentional, in a small way, it kinda was.

You see the hosting for VGPG is shared with other domains that I run, including this one.  Way back in the day I started the judgevegas.com site and any additional site I created was technically an extension to judgevegas.com.  Well fast forward four years later and not only is it time to retire JudgeVegas.com, I also wanted to expand the functionality of VPGP.  This required VGPG to become the primary domain for my hosting.

Well, I asked the hosting company what all was involved in doing the switch.. and well, rather then giving me the details they decided to go ahead and do it!  DOH!.  So right now as I type this a backup of VGPG is being created, and will be migrated to the root domain.  So this time tomorrow it should be fixed.

Sorry for the delay!

I recently read in another blog a review about Donkey Kong 3. The author inferred that DK3 was Nintendo's biggest embarrassment until the Virtual Boy.

The argument for this remark was that DK3 departed from the platform gaming style of Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong JR. Although this is true, its difficult to fathom that a departure from a particular gaming design equates to an embarassment.

DK3 reinvented the existing space shooting genre that evolved from Space Invaders, Galaxian, Phoenix, Moon Cresta, Gorf, Galaga… the list goes on and on. Nintendo replaced the boring spaceship with Stanley the Bug Man- he still shoots up by the way, except with bug spray instead of boring lasers or missles. The enemy ships are now bees worms and other insects. The enemies in Galaga had tractor beams which would capture your ship. DK3 had a similar novelty but they were flowers captured by the enemy bees which could be rescued if shot down before taken to the hive. While all this nonsense was going on you were essentially fighting one intense boss battle with Donkey Kong in an attempt to force him to climb the vines.

Improving your weapon also mostly non-existent in the space games. Galaga allowed you to double your fire power and that was about it. DK3 allows you to shake loose a super sprayer that allows you to kill more faster.

DK3 also had music that fit the game perfectly. A pseudo "Flight of the Bumblebee", buzzing siren when a bee took off with a flower.

Donkey Kong would toss coconuts down on you if you ignored him which was also a challenge that the space games didn't have.

I did another ten game purchase from PedroGames.Com.  There was nothing too exciting to report, however I did make an interesting observation with Magic Johnson’s Fast Break.

Anyways, this Fast Break game could have been easily modified to be an NES version of NBA Jam.

NBA Jam was pretty neat at the time. Initially released in the Arcade it had an all star line up with digitized images of all of the playable players, plus codes and other stupid tricks would unlock other players (like the Clintons above)

Besides being a two-on-two basketball game like NBA Jam with a similiar feel, Fast Break has one other cool thing: PEPSI

Well, last night was supposed to be my big night for playing Spelunker until the wee hours of the morning.  It didn’t happen for a variety of reasons.  But in retrospect it was probably a good idea that it didn’t: Man Died In Cave. It would have been in bad taste.

So why is Spy Hunter called Spy Hunter?  Outside of having a vague resemblence of a chase scene from a 1960′s or 1970′s spy movie and a weapons van similiar to Knight Rider, there really isn’t anything about the game that has to do with “spying”.  This is where the imagination is important.  Any kid familiar with the game back in the 80′s could give you a totally different yet compelling story line to the game.  Perhaps you’re a spy who stole some top secret documents or maybe you’ve kidnapped back an important scientist working on a biologic weapon for a terrorist nation.  Who knows?  It doesn’t matter because someone playing the game could convolute any story around the gameplay.  The lack of plot is what gives the game it’s depth.

Let’s look at the very opposite of a game that leaves nothing to the imagination: Metal Gear Solid.  But before I do so let me set the record straight:

I’ve played all four of the MGS games.  I’ve completed 1, 2, and 3, and am currently working on number 4.  It is of my opinion that the MGS games have alot of potential in certain aspects of gameplay and game design, and although I often pick on MGS on this site, it’s purely to point out the shift in gaming over the past three decades and not necessarily to bash the game simply to bash the game.  There are plenty of other games that have similiar elements and as much as involved plot lines as MGS, it’s just that I’m most familiar with MGS and is most easiest for me to draw a (lack of) inspiration from this particular title.

And yes, I realize that Metal Gear Solid and Spy Hunter are two totally different games, but I want to compare the “imagination factor” of both games.  In Metal Gear Solid the game begins with an introductory sequence giving you a brief explaination as to why you are where you are and what you’re about to do.  Once you’re fully deployed (by water in part 1, by bridge in part 2, by plane in part 3, and by truck in part 4) you start working your way through a pre determined story.  The story is driven little by the gameplay but more to the conversations you have over your codec (the radio you use through out the game) the people you rescue and the bosses you kill.  It seems every character in the game has some story or commentary to shove down your throat.

Some of the codec conversations involve explaining how to use a particular weapon or item in the game, or to tell you what to do next.  This wasn’t necessary with Spy Hunter.  If I wanted the car to move I stepped on the gas, and if I needed to haul ass I’d shift to high gear and if there was one of those blue cars or a civilian infront of me God help them if they didn’t have insurance.

And just like the codec, there is also the cut scenes that are apparently a necessary part of the Metal Gear Solid games.  It doesn’t matter who plays MGS, everyone is going to have the same experience.  Where as with Spy Hunter no two stories are going to be the same.

This also leads me to another topic of game design: adrenaline triggers.  When you played a game like Spy Hunter the action was non-stop.  You’d get a brief rest driving into the weapons van, and a brief rest driving down the road to the boat dock and that was it.  Drive further and further into the game and adrenaline starts to kick in.  Metal Gear Solid has a similiar experience.  The boss battles create an excitement as does do the battle scene, particularly in the 4th one when you’re sneaking through the South American stage with the rebels fighting the security force and you’re in between both of them.  The problem is after you clear each area there is a cut scene or a codec conversation which totally kills the adrenaline and you start over.  The only thing that should truly kill the adrenaline rush is a GAME OVER screen with a pocket empty of quarters.  The high you would get from Spy Hunter experience is like battery acid in the blood.

So whether you’re playing Spy Hunter or even Metal Gear Solid, consider whether you want your imagination to determine a plot or if you prefer to drop $60 and have it spoon fed to you.

Here’s an idea: let’s keep a historical record of video game prices. I was inspire by my previous post about a Game Pro Magazine Scan that had an advertisement for “current” (current meaning 19 years ago) prices for Nintendo NES games.  Once a month I’ll do a master update of the games and post the prices here.  Consider it a historical record.

Nintendo NES Prices for November 2009

Three "top-down" helicopter games easily come to mind when thinking about the Nintendo: Tiger Heli, Twin Cobra, and Twin Eagle.

Unfortunately Tiger Heli and Twin Eagle leave a lot to be desired. It's kinda funny how all three (and Cobra Command) all feature an animal in the title.

I had mentioned in an earlier post about a recent PedroGames.Com spending spree.  This was mostly specific to Data East games.  Data East was an incredible publisher.  Burgertime doesn’t require any further explaination (http://www.salzmafia.com/labels/burgertime.php)  But what about the other gems?  There are plenty, and these are three I received:

The first was Heavy Barrel which I already spoke about here.  There are similiarities between it and Shock Troopers for sure, but my interest in Heavy Barrel actually stems from an entirely different game: Time Soldiers by SNK.  Time Soldiers had a neat plot:  Your comrades were sent back to time, so you need to go back and rescue them.  The problem is you warp right into a battle field of the respective era.  WW2, Ancient Rome, even some weird caveman battle with spears.  Neat stuff.  It’s kinda like Ikari Warriors meets Time Pilot.

Next was Side Pocket.  Billiards video games are cool for one very specific reason:  They are timeless.  Think about it… has Pool changed much in say the last 10 years?  25 years?  50 years?  It’s still the same game!  So a Pool video game manufactured in the mid-80′s is going to be just as relevant as the same game manufactured to day.  Perhaps the fancy pants processor in the PS3 or X-Box can render a cueball to look –OMG- so REAL!

Last but not least, Ring King.  There wasn’t many boxing games for the NES, and most people will either remember PunchOut!! or Ring King.  Ring King is something that just has to be experienced.  The between round perversion was awesome, and for Data East (or perhaps Namco) to spit in the eye of Nintendo and release such a spectacle is pretty cool (Don’t know what I’m talking about?  Look it up!).  But what I think is neat about this game is the audience and the announcers.  Most sports games from this era had terrible sterile audiences where it was the same head over and over.  In this game there is some variety to it.  And the announcers are extremely animated between rounds (probably outraged over the perversion hinted at above.)