Okamiden, Day 19

The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.

James Thurber 

The ending of Okamiden is all right; it's a bit of a let down after such an amazing game. I felt like it was trying too hard to set up Okami 3. Still, it's not too bad. 

Spoilers follow. 

Okamiden Diary, Day 18

And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting/ On the pallid bust of Pallas just above my chamber door
Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven

It took me a little longer to get to the boss fight with Akuro than I thought. First I had to rescue my colleagues, fight some lesser bosses and get some revelations. Now, I have to figure out how to defeat this guy. (I'm probably missing out on one of the ways to use the celestial brushes.)

I'll post my thoughts tomorrow.

Okamiden Diary Day 17

Little darling of mine, I can't for the life of me remember a sadder day

"Mother and Child Reunion," Paul Simon

I'm about 23 or 24 hours of play in, and I think I'm nearing the end, though I may be mistaken. (Also, I'm not really playing 80 or 90 minutes a day; I got large chunks in on the weekend, but smaller bits during the weekdays, and it averages out.)

A lot of really exciting stuff happened in today's play, but it was preceded by something less exciting but emotionally satisfying. I came into a room, and a demon sicced a  monster on me. It wasn't quite a boss battle, but it was tougher than most creatures. Anyway, once I finished, the demon thanked me, saying that the monster had been a pain in its side, and it was glad it was dead. That was a pleasant little twist. Yesterday, I said I didn't like boss battles for the sake of boss battles, but the demon's reaction turned a random fight into a memorable encounter.

Anyway, a ton of stuff happened afterward. Big stuff. Highly spoilery stuff. You've been warned.

The only real bad part of Okami was the beginning. Before you can begin playing, you need to sit through a 15 or 20 minute unskippable cut scene about events that happened 100 years before the game began; how everyone assumed that Shiranui, Chibiterasu's grand-sire, was evil until he sacrificed himself to save the hero Nagi from evil. Then they realized that he was actually an incarnation of Amaterasu. It's not a bad story, but it's never fun to do nothing whatsoever when playing a game.

Well, this part of the game takes place 100 years (and nine months) in the past, and we got to see this happen. Of course, Shiranui sacrificed himself trying to stop Akuro, this game's big bad, instead of Orochi, Okami's big bad. I'm not sure if this is because we've changed history, of the scrolls didn't quite have the full story. Either way, the wolf's sacrifice effective emotionally:

Poor Chibi. Sad little godling puppy.

Shiranui was unable to stop Akuro, but he was able to save his grandson and Nagi.

Then, soon afterward, we learn a nasty twist about who Akuro was. He's possessed Kuni, Chibi's first partner. (Or maybe created him as a vessel. I'm not totally clear.) And he explains how he's manipulated Chibi all along into killing the obstacles and acquiring the pieces he needs.

And then, Chibi summons help.

(Isshaku actually makes an appearance in Okami. He's that little blur in the bottom right of this picture.)

As I've said, it's tough to take good pictures of this game. I'll post a picture of Kagu which is, objectively crappy, but I like how the flash that unexpectedly went off makes it look like there's a spotlight behind her. It's appropriate for a child actress.

So this whole scene was effective. You have  pathos, betrayal, and the joy of seeing old friends. 

Tomorrow, I suspect, will be the final(?) showdown.

Okamiden Diary, Day 16

I know it is wet, and the sun is not sunny. But we can have lots of good fun that is funny.

Dr. Seuss, The Cat in the Hat

I once ordered a salad at a restaurant, and was given what looked like a plain plate of lettuce: no croutons, no fancy veggies, no creamy dressing. I was disappointed, and about to reach for some oil and vinegar, but  decided to taste it first.

Each leaf was perfectly dressed; they might have looked like they had nothing on it, but they had just enough extra virgin oil and vinegar to coat them, offsetting the slight bitterness of the greens with a rich and slightly tangy flavor.

I was unimpressed when I started this night's Okamiden. The first part had what felt like an arbitrary, meaningless boss battle, which should be a contradiction in terms. You put bosses in because it's a climactic part of the game play, not because it's been too long since the last battle. And compared to some of the previous bosses, this one was boring. It was a plain dragon; not even a complete one, you just had to battle the head since the rest was buried in a pile of ice.

Then things got interesting. We found something else in a block of ice. Something lupine.

No, it's not Chibi's mother; it's his grandfather. I'm sorry I didn't get any good shots of them together, but if there's anything cuter than a little wolf god, it's a full grown wolf god and little wolf god interacting. I loved how calm they were about it. "Oh, it's my grandson who's traveled through time. Well, guess I can curl up and take a nap," Shiranui seems to say. I don't know if dogs don't worry about paradoxes, gods don't worry about paradoxes, or it's a combination that keeps them so cool.

So Chibi and his companion head to the Moon Cave to rescue the companion's mother. I started this entry talking about food, and when Chibi and Manpuku fall through a trap door, they almost become the base for a soup, but Manpuku drinks it all instead. It's a great cartoony moment.

Tonight, I also learned the story of why Manpuku had to give up his dog, which would be tragic if it wasn't so silly; saw a demonic chef get jealous of another talented cook; and saw Chibi try to get the overweight Manpuku to move somewhere he didn't want to go. That was also an awesome animation as the puppy wound up walking in place trying to push the child.

So what started out as a ho-hum evening turned into an excellent night.

Okamiden Diary, Day 15

About forty years ago, I made a short visit to the curè at Bregnier, a man of immense stature and who had a fearful appetite.
Though it was scarcely noon I found him at the table. Soup and bouilli had been brought on, to these two indispensables had succeeded a leg of mutton a la Royale, a capon and a salad.

 Brillat Savarin

A short entry, even though this session was rather plot-rich.

Kurow got a message, and left in a hurry. He looked rather sad when leaving:

After a minor quest, Chibi found his new companion, who calls him Pork Chop. For no particular reason, he can shoot fire out of his hair and walk past spikes. (The mermaid could swim underwater and shoot water from her hair, but that made sense, because she was a mermaid. Kurow could float, but he was a moon person. And Kagu had magic powers, to explain what she could do. Maybe I'll learn about why my new friend can do these things soon.)

Manpuku is on a quest to rescue his mother, Charity, who has been kidnapped by demons because a) he had eaten everything in the house and she needed to go out and find him more to eat; and b) she's a good cook and may be the one to prepare Orochi's meal. But there's a demon chef, Umami, who is working to make an even better meal. Let's hear it for names which are horrible puns.

At one point, to propel them around a puzzle, Pork Chop and his companion jump into cannons. It doesn't photograph well, but a closeup of a dog's butt sticking out a cannon is a really silly sight.

Okamiden Diary, Day 14

I'm gonna make it to heaven/ Light up the sky like a flame/ I'm gonna live forever/ Baby, remember my name

Fame, Irene Cara

 

A lot happened in the last couple of hours of game play. But before I get into the plots, I want to mention two scenes that I really liked. (Obviously, spoilers follow. You don't get so far into a game without them.)

 

The first was when Nanami and Chibi were riding around a ship on a quest. The actual quest annoyed me; it felt largely like filler, and most of the monsters weren't powerful enough to be challenging, so there was a bit of boring grind. But there was one scene where Nanami came to a pet shark in the ship's aquarium. "If you have a chance to escape, go for it!" she told him. Mermaids don't believe in cages apparently, which actually fits well into the mythology.

The other moment I really loved was when Kurow rejoined Chibi, and took him flying. Look how uncomfortable the dog looks:

The game really packs a lot of personality into 256x192 pixels. That is not a happy wolf. I understand that dogs today don't like riding airplanes either.

Anyway, the story is, like the first one, doing some strange time travel things. I started this session nine months in the past, at the time Ammy is fighting Orochi with Susano's help. We run into Susano, but only see the other two from a distance.

As in the first game, and a few times in this one, we have needed clever disguises to get past demons. In this case, it's a piece of paper worn as a mask (you decorate the mask yourself. It's hard to see, but I gave Kurow a smiley face. Chibi's, which is not yet on him, says "Woof!" 

 

After tricking the demons, and seeing Ammy fight Orochi (I'm a little bummed Ammy and Chibi didn't meet, but there's still time), they meet Akuro, who I believe is the big bad. He needs to bathe in the blood of a freshly killed Orochi to gain the ultimate power, which is why he went back in time. When Chibi and Kurow stops him, he asks who they are, says he will remember their name, and creates another time portal, which he jumps through, followed by our heroes.

So now Chibi and Kurow are 100 years in the past. (Technically, 100 years and nine months. It's a good thing Kurow's from the moon, that makes it much less likely he'll kill his own grandmother accidentally.)

What indignities will Chibi have to endure to get from point A to B next time? Tune in and find out.

Okamiden Diary, Day 13

Bluebird seas I sailed/ With mermaids riding whales/ Oh whistle round the world/ Oh whistle round the world/ I’m a little wolf inside a girl, you say

Ringo Biyori (Spice and Wolf closing theme), Rocky Chack

I've been saying that Okamiden takes place in ancient Japan. Now I can be more specific. It takes place sometime between the year 1000 and 1025. I know this because today I met an actual, historic figure, doing what I must therefore assume are actual historic things, despite some evidence to the contrary.

(Spoilers follow)

Actually, I didn't recognize the historic character. Instead, I recognized her creation, who materialized as a spirit thanks to a magical jewel:

Genji, I knew, was from a work called The Tale of Genji. It's one of those contenders for the very first novel. He was brought into existence by his author, Shikibu. Since Genji was written in the first decade of the 11th century and the author died in 1025, the game must take place then (or, since I'm traveling in time, some point in 1026.)

But I'm getting a little ahead of myself.


To get to Genji, Nanini and Chibi needed to enter a doll-house sized temple, which they did with the help of the Lucky Mallet, which lets you shrink things down to bug-size and bring them back to normal. I didn't mention it yesterday, but Nanini loved playing with it, shrinking and growing Chibi a few times before he got annoyed.

Once in the temple, you needed to go through an underwater side-scrolling level, a staple of video games since at least World 4 of Super Mario Brothers. I've always hated them, though I've played ones which were far more annoying than this one. At this point we arrived at the shrine with the magic jewel, but found a woman had been possessed by evil spirits. We saved her, and found out she was Shikibu. I'm not quite sure how a Japanese lady-in-waiting wound up in an underwater temple, but will assume that it was a common practice of the nobility of the time to shrink themselves to microscopic size and visit shrines you normally need a sea goddess to guide you to.

I will note that she looks nothing like the pictures on her Wikipedia article. None of those show an angry woman who feels her literary creation betrayed her by turning into a horn dog. And none of them wear some sort of dragonfish helmet.

While trying to help us, she accidentally summoned Genji. I've heard of the book, but never actually read it. From what I can gather, he's the Japanese equivalent of Don Juan. As you can see by his dialogue, he takes a shine to Nanini (who, judging by the cartoon hearts, thinks he's kind of cute too). He grabs her and runs off, and Shikibu advises you to find them while she gets the jewel ready to use.

What follows is an easy, but cute, game of hide and seek. In each room, after you find Genji, he grabs Nanini, looks for another good hiding spot, fails to find it, and heads to the next room. At one point there's some fourth-wall breaking, when he looks out the screen of the game -- and blows some kisses while he's at it. I'm curious how that would look on a 3DS. But when you finally corner him, you find out it wasn't necessary -- Nanini doesn't like being abducted, and is beating him up.

After that, we find the information we need, which concerns a character from the first game, Waku. Okamiden reminded me of some of his background, which is good. All I remembered about him when I started playing the game was that he and Ammy had a kind of friendly rivalry going throughout the game.

No game diaries for the next couple of days, because I'll be out of town.

Okamiden Diary, Day 12

Oooh, what does this button do?

Dee Dee, Dexter's Laboratory

I mentioned before that one of my favorite parts of the original Okami, which isn't in the sequel, is feeding animals. I was thinking of this as I helped several animals out while playing today, including a pig and a puppy. The new system lacks the zen appeal of the original, as you can see from this video:




In addition to helping animals, I learned what the strange device that Gen was working on was. Since I needed to travel back in time, I wasn't too surprised it was a time machine. Though it was a nice touch that I had the TV set to Doctor Who while that happened.

I was also overjoyed to see Gen was given another set of blueprints, which he enthusiastically called "dubious." 


A few of the highlights of tonight's session, because it's getting late here.

• We've travelled back in time nine months. I wonder if that mean's Chibi's mother is going to make a cameo soon.
• When Kurow hears that we need to conjure a sea queen to help us with our quest, his first question is "Is she hot?" I think he's a little precocious.
• Since we have to go underwater, and Kurow not only can't swim but is hydrophobic, Nanini the mermaid is back. And I learned why she calls Chibi "Squiddy." 
• I also noticed exactly how she rides the wolf puppy. I thought she had balanced on him like a seal would, but she actually turns her tail and essentially rides in a side-saddle position, which makes a lot more sense.
• Ancient Japanese sailors aren't even curious when they pull children and wolf from the middle of the ocean.

Okamiden Diary, Day 11

Reunited and it feels so good/ Reunited 'cause we understood/ There's one perfect fit

Peaches and Herb

Okamiden is set less than a year after Okami, and in many of the same towns and environs. If I was cynical -- and normally I am -- I'd say it was because this let the artists reuse a lot of their assets, making the game cheaper to produce. But while playing today, I saw Chibiterasu raise a paw and attempt to reassuringly pat a distressed character. Who can be cynical when the puppy is trying to comfort you?

Instead, this is a great chance for them to reintroduce old characters. For example, Mr. Chic, a fashion designer, played a small role in the first game. You could get praise by helping him design clothing patterns with your brush. Well, he's back, with a shout out to the last game:

This time, he doesn't want your help, saying he's learned he needs to do things on his own. The cynic in me would say that the DS didn't have enough memory for another drawing mini-game. But a more generous interpretation is that an underlying theme of the game is the concepts of independence and dependence. After all, Chibi is much more dependent on his partners than his mommy was. (He's also more involved with them, if I remember correctly, Ammy was more indifferent to what her colleagues were doing.)

Anyway, this session, which was only about 20 minutes of play, had a lot in it. In addition to meeting our old friend Mr. Chic, I heard some words from an inventor you never, ever want to hear: "I found these blueprints in the old ruins." There is no way that can end well.

I also met a new enemy, Akuro, a super powerful demon, who mentioned that he'd be talking to some old enemies of Chibi. The thing is, those enemies were killed in the first game, which implies time travel. Now, I remember Okami had some time travel, but after four or five years I don't remember the details. We'll see what happens.

Okamiden Diary, Day 10

And very becoming her dress was. It was white velvet, without any other garniture than rich white lace worked with pearls across her bosom, and the same round the armlets of her dress. Across her brow she wore a band of red velvet, on the centre of which shone a magnificent Cupid in mosaic, the tints of whose wings were of the most lovely azure, and the colour of his chubby cheeks the clearest pink. On the one arm which her position required her to expose she wore three magnificent bracelets, each of different stones. Beneath her on the sofa, and over the cushion and head of it, was spread a crimson silk mantle or shawl, which went under her whole body and concealed her feet. Dressed as she was and looking as she did, so beautiful and yet so motionless, with the pure brilliancy of her white dress brought out and strengthened by the colour beneath it, with that lovely head, and those large, bold, bright, staring eyes, it was impossible that either man or woman should do other than look at her.

Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope

As I said earlier, at first I didn’t like Kagu. I thought she was really bratty, and a spotlight hog. And when the main character of the game is a puppy with a magic paintbrush whose mother is the goddess of the sun, it should be pretty difficult to hog the spotlight. And, as I also mentioned, my opinion of her mellowed after she realized that her magic powers weren’t a bad thing she had to hide from the public, and decided to become a Miko (some sort of magical priestess thing). My opinion of her has changed yet again. This time I feel very sorry for her, after meeting a fan. (Again, apologies for the mediocre screen shots.)

There’s nothing wrong with telling a girl, especially a famous child actress, she looks cute. But then this fan went and turned it into creepy country:

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and a demon will attack me.” Ewww. She’s a little girl, City Dweller.

Kagu agrees with me. Look at her reaction, and her express. It's what I was thinking too.

While I don’t have any screen shots, there were some really wonderful things that happened in Yakushi Village. This is a place where you encourage people – and animals -- who seem restless to move. They give you praise, which is the game’s equivalent of experience points. Yakushi was founded by Dr. Red Beard. A better name for him would be Dr. Red Mustache, since he has giant red whiskers, but that’s neither here nor there.

One of the families which moved to Yakushi Village did so because their daughter, Ayame, was sick. So sick even the great Red Beard couldn’t cure her. In an earlier quest, Chibi and Kuni revived her spirit by getting someone to put on an inspirational fireworks display. But Ayame sickened again.

Fortunately, Kagu knew Dr. Red Beard’s cousin, who, due to his blue mustache, is known as Dr. Blue Beard. It’s a sign that the game creators have never heard of Gilles De Rais. His medicine, with his cousin, is enough to cure Ayame, and this is celebrated with another moving fireworks display. My favorite animation was when Ayame’s mother started crying tears of joy.

Then, to cap off time in the village, I got swindled by a tanuki disguised like a merchant. For those who don’t know what it is, a tanuki is either a) a raccoon-dog; b) some sort of mischievous spirit; c) the cool suit that Mario got in Super Mario Brothers 3. So I was cheated out of money by a raccoon dog. I suppose I should be angry, but that is too awesome for me to stay mad.

And later in this play session, I got to use my lightning powers like a defibrillator, and simultaneously help a ghost pass on to the next world.

The game can be really interesting when you’re not fighting monsters. Not that the combat is bad, but the imagery in the rest of the game is amazing.

Okamiden Diary Day 9

I just can't imagine that you've ever been gone! It's not starting over, it's just going on! 

"Together Again," The Muppets Take Manhattan

Boss fights are fun to play (assuming it's a well designed boss) but not necessarily fun to right about. That seems to be the case with one I just fought, against a monster known as King Fury.

Normally I try to pad this by making interesting, non-spoilery observations, but I'm drawing a blank, so I'll just put in a cut. If you clicked on this from some link, you probably knew what to expect. If not, read on.

Okamiden Diary, Day 8

Fiona: Nibblonians to Nibble stations. Prepare cuddle bug for deployment in 40 nibblets.
Nibbler: Sometimes I fear we are cute.

Futurama, "The Day The Earth Stood Stupid"

A quick check around the Internet reveals that there's no easy way to get screen captures off a DS game. I found three possible options. One was to get a device which hooks up a DS to a TV, which can get screen captures. There are a few problems with this option: a) The device wasn't ever sold in the U.S.; b) the device was built for the original DS, and I have a DSi XL, so I don't know if it would work or even fit; and c) the device is no longer made. Another technique is to buy a specially designed video camera that fits on the top screen and records your game. The problems with this one are a) again, this was built for the original DS; b) the camera covers the top screen, making it impossible to play any game which uses it; c) since it's apparently a low resolution camera, the pictures may not be great. A third technique I found was to buy a developer's kit. This too has numerous problems, but for me the biggest one is that it's several thousand dollars. That isn't much if you're planning to design an actual game, since presumably you'd be hoping to make more than that in profit. But it isn't really economically feasible to just take screen captures of a game or two that you like. 

So I continue to take my screen captures of the game using a camera. Since playing the game requires two hands normally -- one to hold the DS, one to use the buttons and/or stylus, I can't take photos unless there's a time when there's no gameplay. And since those are often animated scenes where a lot is happening, it's hard to get a good picture, since everything is moving. (Plus, I want to keep an eye on the game screen, rather than my camera's screen.)

As a result, a lot of the photos I've gotten don't really do the game justice. I'll miss the perfect picture and need to settle for good enough; or I'm moving the camera and the image is blurry.And certain angles show the granularity of the DS, something you don't notice as much when playing on it.

I suppose this means you should get the game and play it for yourself. That's the only way to really do it justice. 

This is a preface to tell you that as soon as I realized what I was doing wrong yesterday, things got incredibly awesome. And also totally adorable.Some of this material is worthy of a site like Cute Overload or the Daily Squee. For example, consider this photo.

Warning: I'm about 12-14 hours into the game now. Spoilers follow. Adorably cute spoilers.

 It's a puppy typing on a computer!

Let me make it clear this is not the best shot of the puppy banging on the keyboard. There was one where Kurow (the blond boy) batted him away from the buttons, saying he didn't know what he was doing. And there's another when the computer crashes and Chibi bangs away furiously, beads of worry sweat flying off him.

Let me back up a few seconds. Yesterday I said I was worried I was missing something obvious, and I was. You had to draw a certain pattern to get past one door, and I'd been drawing it wrong. I thought I'd been drawing it correctly but missing a key item needed to continue. Once I got the pattern correct, the rest of the ruin exploration went smoothly.

We found the computer room and got some useful information off it. Later on, we found a pair of wings that Kurow could wear; they make it look like he had a flower on his back.

And the first time we tried to use them, we got blown completely off course. We wound up back in one of the old locations. And there was another great psyche out, where you thought an old character had returned but it was a dream sequence.

Then we had to fight an old boss, a giant witch queen who ran a demon market. To the game's credit, this wasn't a rehash of the previous fight; it was a totally different mini-game.

(I'm trying to avoid summarizing, because there's other places you can go for that. This is my impressions.)

Anyway, to make a long story short, we learned the techniques needed to get to the cloud, and learned a new brush technique, how to manipulate lightning. As I've said before, the animals who give you these are children of celestial constellations, and almost as cute as a puppy operating a computer. This is the tiger cub who game me the power of lightning:

I think it's the little rounded ears that make it so successful.That really does make it look like a baby tiger. Here is a video of one if you need an example.

And with the new powers he gave me, I'm ready to face a boss battle. My reports on that tomorrow.

Okamiden Diary, Day 6

Look, out the window! A fire truck! I've seen drawings of fire trucks in my picture books, of course, but how could I have ever known how pale and insignificant those crude representations were in comparison to the real thing! Fire truck! Oh, great God in heaven, fire truck! This has got to be the most moving of mankind's creations, and perhaps of nature's, as well.

Fire Truck! Fire Truck! Fire Truck!, The Onion

As today's quote suggests, the session I played today is guaranteed to appeal to your inner five year old. There are no fire trucks, but there are plenty of other awesome things. Seriously, in a couple of paragraphs, what I'm going to say sounds exactly like the story you'd here from a five-year-old boy.

But, to give some warning to people who are coming here because they Googled "drawings of fire trucks" and don't want to know what happens in Okamiden's plot, I'll start out by saying I actually died when playing the game today. That was the first time it's happened to me. I got careless when fighting some monster who can not only shoot lightning, but disassemble himself and spin around to create whirlwinds. I'm a little surprised; I remember Okami was very forgiving, and this game had been too, so far.

Also, all of my screen shots were mediocre. Here's the best one from today, with the explanation below. As Dave Barry says, I am not making this up.

Okay. So Chibi and his new pal Kurow are in ancient Japan, and they're looking at ruins because a pretty lady who was exploring them is sad that she ran away when monsters attacked it, and her friend is there, and Kurow likes the lady because she's pretty. But before they can get to the ruins, they learn that the bulldozers which are digging it up are cursed by demons! And they have to fight the demons and make the bulldozers work again. And then they get to a cliff, but Kurow can fly over the cliff and Chibi can make a vine to get to Kurow. And they enter the ruin and Kurow sees a spaceship and tells Chibi that it's his, and it's from the moon, and he's from the moon, and he was told to go Earth and wander around and he'd learn what to do and he's been having a real good time on Earth so far. So now the wolf and the boy from the moon are exploring the space ship ruins and they're fighting tough monsters.

Tune in tomorrow to see what happens next.

Okamiden Diary, Day 5

“Ah!” there sat the dog, with the eyes as large as teacups, staring at him.
“You’re a pretty fellow,” said the soldier, seizing him, and placing him on the witch’s apron, while he filled his pockets from the chest with as many pieces as they would hold. Then he closed the lid, seated the dog upon it again, and walked into another chamber, And, sure enough, there sat the dog with eyes as big as mill-wheels.

Hans Christian Andersen, "The Tinder-Box"

Yesterday, I complained that Chibiterasu seemed somewhat overshadowed by Kagu. I can now take that back. In my latest play, the pooch has shown he's got lots of personality.

While there's several things I'd like to talk about, I'm rather tired. So let's just show a couple of pictures and put in a paragraph or two.

Oilers-spay ollow-fay

As you may recall, my goal was to make trees bloom, but Kagu and I were interrupted by a super tought monster. When Chibi tried to attack him, the monster, King Fury, knocked him out. Look at his expression. He's got tons of personality even while unconscious. (Had I taken this a second earlier, he'd have had stars circling his head).

Later -- and I'm leaving out some interesting stuff, including a wonderful psych-out -- he and Kagu separate, but he meets a new friend. And he reacts to the friend by scratching himself. Because he's not impressed by what he's hearing. Or he itches. Or both. (His mother did that too, it's a family trait.)

Kurow, incidentally, has a similar problem to Kagu. She thought she was an X-Man in a fairy tale land. Kurow is quite open that he has a mysterious superhero background, coming from a meteor that crashed into some ruins. I think Kurow believes he's one of the Avengers. While the meteor background suggests Superman, the blond hair and way he twirls a flute like it's a hammer make me think of Marvel's Thor,

Okamiden Diary Day 4

To look at Montmorency you would imagine that he was an angel sent upon the earth, for some reason withheld from mankind, in the shape of a small fox-terrier.  There is a sort of Oh-what-a-wicked-world-this-is-and-how-I-wish-I-could-do-something-to-make-it-better-and-nobler expression about Montmorency that has been known to bring the tears into the eyes of pious old ladies and gentlemen.

Jerome K. Jerome, Three Men In A Boat

The little girl on Chibiterasu's back is Kagu. The blue monkey with the paper mask over his face is a demon. But he's not an evil demon; he's just a merchant who will sell you things like bones (which replenish the dog's health) or ink (which will replenish the ink for the celestial brushes). But I don't really want to talk about the demon, who gets one line, but about Kagu, Chibi's partner for a decent chunk of the game.

Kagu, who calls Chibi "Pooch" is a child actress. It's gone to her head just a little bit; she's bossy and rather vain. But she's not a total brat; she wants to help people.

I feel bad for her for two reasons. One, her hair seems pretty tough to manage. I know it's hard to tell from a photo of a DS screen. but it's got an elaborate braid, with a very long, thin strand on the back that's interwoven with pink flowers. (It's in the upper right of the shot.) Also, she mistakenly thinks she's in a different game than she actually is.

(As I said yesterday, potential spoilers ahead. But you should continue reading anyway, for such great phrases as "toilet demon" and "giant kabuki puppets.")

Kagu has magic powers. She can create lightning, lift heavy objects with her mind, and use this power to drive out demons. Unfortunately, she thinks she's in an X-Men game, where everyone will treat her as some sort of mutant pariah if they find out. However, she actually lives in a fantasy medieval Japan, where people love the idea of little girls with the power to exorcise demons, especially when demons have taken over her parent's theater. Fortunately, after using her powers to save them, and getting the approval of a priestess, she realizes that the ability to shoot lightning at monsters is a very, very cool ability.

Kagu and Pooch meet several interesting demons while going through the possessed theater. My favorite, who I was unable to get a good photo of was the Toilet Demon. He wasn't a living latrine, just an ordinary demon who locked his prisoners in a toilet stall. (Did they have toilet stalls in ancient Japan? This one was on the second floor, which implies decent plumbing, or a garderobe.)

Another cool demon is the prop spirit. You don't need to fight him, just help him fix his broken props so his bosses won't be made at him. Here he is revising his opinion of humans after being helped by Chibi's magic brush.

His bosses are a turtle and a crane who think they are wonderful actors, and possess giant kabuki statues to fight you. The fight was a little tough for me because I misunderstood the mechanics and wound up wasting ink and time, but I defeated them.

After they've been beaten, Kagu goes out to correct the ills, great and small, in the rest of the city, armed with a new dress a priestess gave her. At the moment, my quest has gone from fighting demons who possess giant puppets to making cherry trees blossom.

I notice this entry is mainly about Chibi's partner and not the wolf himself. Though he does one or two interesting things, and saves her a few times. I don't know if the scenes are Kagu-centric or she's just got one of those personalities that takes over the screen, like so many child actors do.

Okamiden diary, days 1-3

No, no, Lord Byron, before I'll believe that this Assyrian was actually like a wolf I must have some kind of proof;
Did he run on all fours and did he have a hairy tail and a big red mouth and big white teeth and did he say Woof Woof?

Ogden Nash, "Very Like A Whale"

Introduction
On Saturday, I began playing Okamiden. So far it's a good game, though hardly perfect. But while playing, I kept running across moments I wanted to share. After all, it's a game that involves -- so far -- puppies, drawing, mermaids, giant toads who eat too much fruit deluded catfish who can swallow a man whole, and child actors. (It's likely this post, and others, will contain spoilers. But I'll put a warning when they come.)

Okamiden is the sequel to Okami, a game which initially came out for the Playstation 2 in 2006. I played it then (or maybe some time in 2007) and really enjoyed it. "Okami" roughly translates as "Wolfie" Some research on the interweb tells me that in Japan, Okamiden has a subtitle, and the full translation might be something like "Wolfie's legend: the little sun." In other words, it's a diminuation of an already diminutive name. Here are the boxes for both games.

The original Okami was beautiful. and I don't mean "beautiful for the time." Screen resolution, polygon count and anti-aliasing have very little to do with how good a game looks. Rather than trying for realism, the creators made it look like classic Japanese prints. It tells the story of Amaterasu, a sun goddess who comes to earth in the form of a white wolf. In addition to her divine weapons, she is armed with a celestial brush, which allows her to draw and alter the environment. She uses this power in the game to do things like repair broken machines, bring water out of a lake to extinguish fire, or cause wilted flowers to bloom again. (Since the game involves drawing, a version for the Wii was made, since the Wii-mote is a more natural brush than the PS2 controller). Throughout the game, Amaterasu is accompanied by Issun, a flea-sized artist who provides the commentary. The game tells a rather convoluted plot about fighting an ancient multi-headed dragon and his minions, and re-enacting events of a century before.

The gameplay is not particularly challenging if you're used to video games. But it's worth it for the story. There's some really funny scenes. (Issun is great comic relief, calling the sun goddess who has come to save the world "Ammy" or "furball." Almost everyone else calls her "doggy," so it's almost respectful.) There's also a lot of touching moments. In addition to fighting monster, Ammy goes around trying to help people and animals. There's something very zen about watching her offer grains to some birds, and seeing them eat it as peaceful music plays in the background.

Okami told a rather complicated story, about fighting a giant evil multi-headed serpent, events repeating themselves from a century ago, Issun's quest to become recognized as a great artist and lots of weird things. Honestly, I'd forgotten much of it by the time I started Okamiden, though I remember enjoying it.

The sequel takes place nine months after the first game, and involves Ammy's son, Chiberatsu. If I understand Japanese -- and I don't -- that name translates as "Cute Little Sun God." It's made for the DS, and the graphics are almost as good as the original version despite the smaller screen and weaker processor. It still looks like an artist's print come to life. The DS isn't quite up to the task -- sometimes the game slows down when there are a lot of enemies, and there are frequent, though very short, loading screens -- but it's 95 percent there. For the most part, it's a pleasure to play, and the fact one of the major mechanics is drawing things works well with a game system that uses a stylus.

I'm not going to go into depth about mechanics or all the plot. You can get that information from Gamefaqs.com or some other site. These are just the details of the game which really appealed to me.

I plan to update this diary daily, until I win or I get bored, though if I only play for a few minutes one day I may not bother. With that out of the way, here are my impressions.

Potential spoilers ahoy.

Okami had a character named Susano. He started out as comic relief, but by the end of the game he had really matured. I was very impressed to see in this one that his new attitude has remained. It's always annoying when you see a sequel and everyone reverts to their old habits. But he does something that is both in character and touching for his adopted son.

Because Chiberatsu is just a pup, he needs to travel with companions. His first is Issun, but he's just around for what amounts to the tutorial. The second is Susano's son Kuni. Kuni calls Chibi "Mutt," saying he's not sure whether the pup is a dog or a wolf. The second companion, a mermaid, calls him "Squiddie," and the third "Pooch." Each time the little deity looks very, very sad.

In Okami, constellations came to life to give Ammy new brush powers (because these were celestial powers). In this one, the children of constellations help Mutt out. The original were funny, such as the mouse who carried a giant sword. These are also great; the three mice children come running out of the scabbard.

About the mermaid: the animation of her riding around on the dog's back is adorable. The boss they fight, a catfish who thinks he's a carp, is hilarious.

A wonderful touch: when Chibi is with a companion and comes to a sign or something else to examine, the companion reads the words on the sign, or explains what they're looking at. If the puppy is alone, he just cocks his head, whimpers, and looks confused. Apparently having the power to make plants bloom, cause the sun to rise, or create bombs out of thin air doesn't help you read. Surprisingly, this makes a lot of sense. He's a little puppy; why should he be able to read.

Number nine. Number nine. Number nine.

How long till my soul gets it right? Can any human being ever reached that kind of light?

Indigo Girls, "Galileo"

I have just finished playing 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors, an interactive novel/adventure horror game. I knew that it was my kind of game when one of the characters used the phrase "saponification." For those who don't feel like Googling it, saponification is the the process through which fat is transformed into wax or soap. In the conversation the characters were having, they were talking about it happening in to a human corpse, which keeps it from decaying.  (Wikipedia tells me this form of saponification is known as adipocere, but the game doesn't get into that level of distinction). Later in the game was another esoteric word, which I can't mention without giving away a major plot point. I bet that sort of conversation never crops up in Kirby, Pokemon or your typical DS game. 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors is a horror game, and it does have some gruesome imagery and blood, but it's also got existentialism, strange conspiracy theories, shout outs to Kurt Vonnegut, and some beautiful literate imagery.

For those unfamiliar with the game genres, an interactive novel is something like a choose your own adventure series on a computer, with pictures, sound and some minimal animation to go with the words. You go through a story, and at certain points you have to make a decision, which will both affect which future decisions you have to make, and the ending of the story. Because of this, they have a fair amount of replay value. Adventure games, strangely, don't involve adventuring. They involve solving puzzles. 999 weaves these together.

If you want a demo, you can go to the game's website. That "M" on the box means the game is meant for adults, so if you're under18 you'll need to lie to play it. The demo is somewhat different than the real game, but gives you some of the flavor of the introduction.

The story is told from the point of view of Junpei, a young college student. One day, he comes home to his apartment and finds a mysterious man in a gas mask, who quickly tranquilizes him. Junpei wakes up in the crew quarters of a ship, with a locked door, with a bracelet with the number '5' locked on his wrist. Then the window breaks, and the room starts filling up wirh water. He must figure out how to get out of the room, solving a series of puzzles to do so. (Don't worry, you can't die during the puzzle solving sections.)

Once Junpei escapes the room, he discovers eight other people on the ship, each wearing a bracelet with a different number. One of them is a girl he went to grade school with, and hasn't seen for years, but discovers he still has a crush on. The others include a giant man with amnesia, a woman in her 40s who is wearing far too little clothing, a blind man and his pink-haired sister, and several others.

The group hears over a loud speaker that they were brought here by Zero, to play the Nonary Game. Different rooms on this ship have different numbers, and there are rules for how the group must go through.
If they can find the correct door, they can escape. If they can't the ship will flood. The group needs to figure out what to do. But quickly someone dies, and the tension ratchets up. Why were they brought here? Who is Zero and what does he want with them? Can they escape with their lives?

As I said, each play-through gives a totally different experience.

The first time I played it, I was in a game filled with conspiracy theories -- about whether the Titanic ever really sank, about whether a mummy could exist, if scientists had perfected the Ice-9 that Vonnegut wrote about (ice which doesn't melt until it's 96 degrees). There were several other out-there theories. When I played that version, I didn't like the one character who struck me as cold, manipulating, and possibly in on the conspiracy. Also, I died rather horribly at the end.

Fortunately, I could play it again, armed with what I had learned the first time. (The game lets you fast forward through text you've already seen, but not puzzles, so if you play it several times, you'll need to keep escaping from the same rooms.) It let me correct a few choices I'd made before. And I learned something about the character I didn't like which made me now think of them as a poor victim, clearly not part of the mystery. Plus, this ending was different, with multiple people dying horribly in totally different circumstances.

I played it a couple of more times, trying to build on what I had learned. (One of the times I died, I said to myself "so that's what that puzzle represented.") Then, I looked up how to get the "good" endings, with the best possible solutions.

I don't want to spoil it for anyone who's planning to check it out. I found the ending very satisfying. Strange, but effective.

Sometimes you need to read a book multiple times to appreciate the details. In this case, you see different parts of the book each time you play the game. I like the effect.

Let's play dress up

Wearin' her wig hat and shades to match/ She's got high-heel shoes and an alligator hat/ Wearin' her pearls and her diamond rings/ She's got bracelets on her fingers, now, and everything/ She's the devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,/ Devil with the blue dress on

Mitch Ryder and the Detroit

I think that playing Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies was the first time I've ever really understood why little girls like to dress up their dolls. Whenever you get a new piece of equipment, you can put it on your character, and it changes the 3D model of them on the screen. It can give them an entirely different appearance, and is one of the many charming, simple elements of the game.

Let me give you some examples. Since the DS doesn't allow you to take screen captures, these were done the old fashioned way, with a digital camera, so you can see some screen lines. But they're still good illustrations. Here's the avatar I used as the main character in the game:

When you start, you choose your basic appearance. I chose a silver mohawk and large eyes for this character. You can see he looks pretty intimidating with his sword and shield and powerful armor. But I can also dress him up in a spear with bright red clothing and give him a crown and different type of shield and gloves:

Here's another example, how another of the characters I designed looks in two different outfits. Obviously in one she's wearing a skirt and breastplate, and in the other robes. While she has the same headband and shield, notice her footwear is different.

Seriously, this dress-up thing is addictive. For some time, I left my character in a Flamenco Shirt rather than slightly better armor, because how cool is it that someone would go out fighting dragons and mummies in a shirt normally worn on a dance floor? At another point, I found out that it would be possible to outfit my characters with cat ears, if I went searching for certain hard-to-find components to build them. I spent quite some time searching. My goal had been to outfit my martial artist with cat-ears to complement the cat-tail fan she was wielding, but it turned out they were a bad fit for her powers, so I gave them to the blue-haired priest shown above. 

So, besides a fashion simulator, what is Dragon Quest IX? It's a computer roleplaying game on the DS. As the number implies, there have been eight previous ones, in Japan at least. Not all were released in North America, and this is the first one I've played. Now I'm debating whether to track others down.

DQIX, as I mentioned above, is made of a lot of simple components. If you've ever played a CRPG before, you know the formula: go on quests to help villagers, fight monsters, collect treasures, go up in levels, improve skills, and defeat the big bad monster that threatens the world.  But it wraps this basic formula in a very, very polished shell:

• The music is simple and catchy. While there's much to be said for clever, elaborate scores in video games, I found myself humming the background tunes to DQIX several times over the last few weeks. Similarly, the graphics have a charming, cartoonish quality. Wikipedia and fan sites tell me that the same composer and animator have been in charge of the series since the beginning, and I can see there's a unity to it. The monsters are all in the same sill style.
• Someone put a lot of work into the translation. People in different towns talk with completely different mannerisms, sounding suspiciously like Australians, Cockneys, Welsh and a bunch of other different nationalities. The monsters' names are often bad puns: you might face a Meowgician (cat-sorcerer, obviously), Scarewolf,  or Coolcumber (a vegetable with an attitude).
• The mechanics are pretty easy to follow. With one exception, there's no need to read the manual (though it may provide some helpful tips). And that exception -- the exact effect of different attributes -- is pretty self explanatory, though I wouldn't have figured out the difference between Agility and Deftness on my own. But everything else is pretty easy to follow. When you level up, the only choice you sometimes have to make is how to assign skill points, and it's done in a really straightforward manner. If you've played games with weird webs of special skills and abilities that are never properly explained, this is a pleasant relief. Similarly, the combat options are pretty straightforward -- do you attack, defend, cast a spell or use a special ability? Who is the target of your decision?
• The longest cut scenes last two, maybe three minutes. Many games are horrible with cut scenes. The worst example I've encountered -- and I am not making this up -- is Xenosaga. There, you'd play a level for about 15, 20 minutes, then it would ask if you wanted to save, then it would show you an hour long non-interactive cut scene. Then it would ask if you'd like to save again. Then you'd play five more minutes before getting yet another hour long cut scene. If I wanted to watch a movie, I'd get a movie.

As a combination of the last two, it's a game which is always moving. If you're in a fight that's boring, you can probably finish it in 30 seconds and get on to exploring for a hidden treasure grove or finding the iron ore you need to make a magic boomerang, because you want to see how your Sage would look if she was holding a boomerang instead of a bow.

Summary: If you're interested in an RPG for the DS, this is a good choice whether you're a hardcore fan of the genre or not (though since it's been available in the US for months, and was available as a Japanese import before then, you probably own it if you're a hardcore fan. It's also a great choice if you want a game where you get to choose your characters' outfits in detail, and don't mind killing monsters along the way.

Wherein I compare Shigeru Miyamoto to Al Jolson.

ACTORS EAT CAKES WITH THE COOLIDGES; Thirty Enjoy Breakfast at the White House and Then Entertain Their Hosts. PRESIDENT NEARLY LAUGHS Guests Crack 'Dignified' Jokes, Sing Songs and Pledge Support to Coolidge.

New York Times front page headline, Oct. 18, 1924

Super Mario 64 is The Jazz Singer of video games. (I mean the 1927 film with Al Jolson, not the 1980 film with Neil Diamond.) It's incredibly important historically; and it's still pretty enjoyable today, if you can put up with some embarrassing elements by modern standards.  

As I said earlier, playing Super Mario Brothers Wii made me nostalgic, so I played Super Mario Brothers 3. And that inspired me to see what else the series had to offer I had missed, so I'm in the middle of Super Mario 64. I plan to play until I get an ending, though not necessarily the ending. (The object of the game is to collect stars. You can, I have learned, defeat the big bad when you get 70 stars. But to get the ultimate prize, you need 120. I've got 49 stars as of this writing, and I'm willing to put up with the game's flaws to get 21 more, but not 71.)

I never had a Nintendo 64. In 1988, I purchased a Nintendo Entertainment System. In 2003 or 2004, I bought a Playstation 2. Because I'm rather proud of my "Jazz Singer" analogy, let me beat it into the ground. That was the equivalent of going to the theaters to see Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush in 1925, and not seeing another movie until The Wizard of Oz or Gone With The Wind in 1939. 

Here is my mini-synopsis of the history of the Nintendo 64, derived from Wikipedia and a few gaming sites. The console premiered in 1996, and helped usher in the era of 3-D gaming. Super Mario 64 was one of the first two games for the system, and reviewers instantly called it the best thing since sliced bread.  IGN's review said "it must be stated that SM64 is the greatest videogame to date, and one which all games, regardless of genre, will be judged henceforth."

Despite praise for its games, the N64 was a relative failure. It sold 32 million copies. Its competitor, the Playstation One, sold more than three times that amount. The N64 used cartridges for games, like the Nintendo and Super Nintendo, while the Playstation used CDs. While cartridges had some advantages, they had two major disadvantages. For one, they could only hold 64 megabytes of data; a CD could hold 10 times that, meaning it could create much bigger games. For another, they were more expensive to manufacture. A game that sold for $40 on the Playstation would sell for $60-$70 on the N64. Also, the controller was horrible. Here is a picture of it. For Mario, you were supposed to move around with the joystick in the center, jump with the blue button, punch and throw with the green button, use the red button for some special moves, and use the yellow buttons for adjusting the camera angles. That's an ergonomic nightmare. There are times where you need to move and press the red and green buttons at the same time; that must involve some real finger contortions.

Fortunately, I'm playing it on the Wii, with a controller that resembles the one I got used to playing with a PS2. Everything is in a much more sensible location.

The Jazz Singer was not, technically speaking, the first film with recorded sound. However, it revolutionized the industry. Similarly, while Mario 64 may not have been the world's first 3-D game, it changed the way they were designed, and made them popular on consoles.

Mario's plot is, as usual, elementary. Bowser has kidnapped the Princess in her own castle, and used the power of magical stars to trap the inhabitants of the castle in paintings. Mario must enter these paintings, each of which has a world guarded by his minions, and recover the stars in there.

The Good:
The main reason why I continue to play this is that it's a joy to control Mario. Legend has it that Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of the Mario games going all the way back to Donkey Kong, demanded that it be fun to move Mario. Before any levels were designed, they created a garden level, where all testers did was make Mario run, jump and swim. They did this for a month before designing the first world, satisfied it would be a pleasure to move around. (Another legend about Miyamoto is that he records testers' faces while they play, and if they're not smiling enough, he redesigns the section. He's definitely a cult figure among gamers.) The ease of moving him is complemented by his sounds; when he jumps exceptionally high, he makes a little "woo-hoo" of delight.

The graphics are also, to my mind, excellent. They're bright and cartoony, and it doesn't matter that a modern game system could put more polygons onto the screen. It's fun to watch the little mushrooms (Goombas) wander around the screen.

Nintendo has always been a master of music. The background tunes are lively and quickly get stuck in your head. With a few exceptions, I'd say that music in games has actually suffered since the days of the NES. It's richer, of course, since they can have a full symphony instead of just synthesized beeps, but it's also much less memorable. Play a few strains of Kid Icarus, which I haven't played for 20 years, and I'll be humming along. Play the background music to all but two of the games I bought for the PS2, and I'll have no idea what you're playing, even if I put 40 or 50 hours into that game.

The Bad and the Ugly
The Jazz Singer has some scenes which are painfully embarrassing today, where Al Jolson puts on blackface. While the movie may have major historic significance, and a touching, classic plot, elements like that make it hard to watch. Also, while there is talking, much of the film is silent, so you need to put up with the extreme  gestures and over-emoting actors of the era did to get their points across. Things like that tell you this isn't a modern movie.

Two factors keep Mario 64 from aging perfectly: the camera, and the design philosophy.

Mario games have always rewarded oblique thinking. If you jump on a blank looking location, you might find an invisible box with a mushroom inside. Maybe you can walk on the roof of a level, avoiding all the enemies. But for most Mario games, these are bonuses. You can get through the game without ever figuring it out. In addition, the rules are pretty well defined. Mario can jump, break bricks, and pick some things up. No puzzle in Super Mario Brothers will ever call for Mario to mix a cocktail.

In Mario 64, sometimes you need to guess what the hell the designers were thinking. Each painting has six stars in it, and gives a clue how to get the star. Many present the sort of puzzle you expect from a Mario game: climb to a certain location, find a certain number of coins, or defeat a certain opponent. But a lot of the clues are so oblique as to be useless, and involve tricks that you use only once.

On one level, you have to push two crates as part of finding a star. That would be fine, but this is the only level I've encountered where you can move crates, and these are the only crates in the game that can be moved. In another level, you need to climb a tree, which wakes up a sleeping owl. The friendly owl then offers to fly you around. If you steer him properly, he'll take you to an otherwise inaccessible location where a star is located. Again, this seems to be the only helpful avian in the game; it's not a trend, and it's hardly intuitive. Yet another secret level is found by looking up at the ceiling at a certain point. All other levels are entered by jumping into a painting or hole.

I've given up trying to solve the problems on my own; that's what the Internet is for (particularly gamefaqs.com). But the fact that each puzzle has its own solution, which may have nothing to do with anything else in the game, is driving me crazy.

The other part I can't stand is the camera, which was considered a cutting edge piece of programming in the day. For most of the 3-D games before Mario, the action was shown from either a first person perspective or situated just behind the character. As an example, look at 1982's Pole Position, where you always see the action from just behind the race car.



While that's fine for a race track, it doesn't work for a platformer, where you want to have interesting things above and below, where sometimes you'll want to see the action from Mario's side (e.g., on a flat plain, so you can see enemies approaching from all directions) and sometimes from behind (e.g, while climbing a mountain, so you can see the falling boulders getting closer.) Mario 64's solution was "Lakitu," a cameraman who followed you around in a cloud, and was supposed to film you from the most appropriate angle. If the player wanted to change the angle, he could do so with the camera buttons, or turn Lakitu off and force a "behind the shoulder" perspective.

In theory, it means you'll see the action from an ideal perspective. It doesn't work that well. Too often I've plunged to my death because the camera shifts perspective while I'm walking across a thin plank over a bottomless pit, and suddenly pressing left doesn't move me along the board, but off it. The camera angles also have a nasty habit of omitting important facts. I was stymied on one world because it looked like there was only a bottomless pit in one direction. If you turned the camera to look down -- which it never does by itself --  there was a single step where you had to go to find anything else.

Since it feels wrong to have the only image with this post be from a game I'm not even discussing, here's a clip of someone playing the first world. Notice how sometimes the camera is behind Mario, sometimes to his side, and sometimes it can't quite find where our favorite Italian plumber is. You only need to watch about a minute or so to see all of that.




I don't mind failing in a game because I made a mistake. I hate failing because the game is making things artificially more difficult by warping my perspective in the middle of a delicate maneuver.

Most modern games are better about the camera, but still not good, and I really prefer my games with a fixed, intelligently positioned camera at every scene. Mario 64 set an unfortunate precedent.

And if you remember then follow, follow follow, follow

They've been going in and out of style/ But they're guaranteed to raise a smile/So may I introduce to you/ The act you've known for all these years. 

The Beatles

I will start this off with a video of one of the most amazing feats ever accomplished. Someone completed Super Mario Brothers 3 in under 11 minutes. Why they give out Nobel Prizes for achieving world peace, or discovering antibiotics, but fail to recognize accomplishments like this, is beyond me:




What I wrote about last week made me nostalgic for some older Mario. Since I have Super Mario Brothers 2 and 3 on my Wii, I started playing the third one. Many Mario purists would say that the second game in the series shouldn't count. In Japan, it's not part of the Super Mario series; it's actually a different game which they slapped popular Mario characters into to appeal to American audiences, much the way American actors were thrown into Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers.

I've had SMB 3 on my Wii for quite a while, but haven't touched it since soon after downloading it. For one thing, it felt extremely difficult. It's extremely easy to die if you're not careful. But I'm glad I took it up again. I'd forgotten how fun it was. I'm not quite done with it yet (just got to World 7) but I'll share my impressions so far.

While the controls on Super Mario Brothers Wii feel a little different, they're similar enough that I could take my experience back with me. While many of the levels are difficult, they're also perfectly sized. They're often amusees, a delicious way to start the meal, but only a couple of bites.

A few other impressions:

• The game seems huge, especially when you consider it came out in 1988, when computer memory was expensive. Like the last one I reviewed, it's broken into eight worlds, each with many sub-levels. And, like its successor 20 years later, each world feels enormous. World 6 has 10 basic stages, three mini-castles, and several places where you can earn special prizes or pick up extr. Some optional paths on the worlds are blocked off with boulders. In one, I broke a boulder on one world which let me enter a pipe that led to a raft. And that raft let me sail across a sea to where there were half a dozen prizes waiting to be picked up. In addition, almost every level seems to have hidden areas to reward inquisitive players.
• There's an incredible amount of variety. There are one or two monsters here which didn't make it into Super Mario Brothers Wii, but probably deserved to. For example, one castle looks like it has candles lighting it. But those flames are actually little monsters which will jump off the candlestick and chase you if you turn your back on them. In Super Mario Brothers Wii, one of the bosses (I never learned the names of Bowser's kids) threw giant bouncing balls at you. I was amazed to see that he used the same trick in Super Mario Brothers 3, and that you could jump off those balls to get at him back then too. It felt so sophisticated to find in a game back then. 
• There's also a bit of mental variety. Some worlds are best handled by running  as fast as possible. Others require careful timing and judgment. A few are even puzzle worlds; you need to figure out the correct way to get to the exit.
• While losing all your lives resets the numbered levels on a world, the castles stay defeated. Since defeating a castle unlocks shortcuts to get around the world, it makes the game a lot easier. If you die while fighting the final boss of a world, you may have to play through one or two boards to get to their flying ship, but you don't need to replay all of them. 

The coolness of Super Mario Brothers 3 inspired me to go out and pick up a classic controller today. I've always heard that Super Mario 64 was an incredible game (and Super Mario Galaxy is excellent, so I know Nintendo can do 3-D Mario) and figure I should check that out, and maybe some others in the series.

(An aside: While I was waiting in line to buy for my controller, I saw the meanest mother ever. She was with two boys, about 6 and 9, and kept saying to them they were only there to see if they had a game the older child wanted. Then she kept pointing out the awesome games they had. "Oh look, here's a 'How To Train Your Dragon' game! Didn't you love that movie?" she said. "There's Animal Crossing. Didn't you always say you wanted it?" Why tell them about all the great things if you're not going to buy them?)