Pre-FIFA Soccer

Champions World Class Soccer came out, ostensibly, in 1994, the year of the U.S World Cup, the year when soccer finally gained some popularity in the United States. The Super Nintendo was already enjoying popularity so I suppose that a soccer video game was inevitable. This game fills that inevitability with all the technology available at the times (very little) and all the buzzwords they could fill into a title (many as it turns out).

The game itself is uneventful: it features a total of 32 teams ranging from the very good (Brazil) to the very bad (Bolivia) to Wales. I cant find a pattern in these teams, at first I thought these were the participants in the '94 WC but thats not the case. They're also not the best teams in the world, as noted above, so the criteria for selection seems nonsensical.

While on the subject of teams I should note that all available countries are still around today, I was looking forward to a Yugoslav or Soviet team but no dice. The teams on the cover are there either randomly or as selected by where the developers wanted to sell more copies. Shilling to Mexican audiences was not desirable yet.

The gameplay is that which you would expect for a 1994 soccer game. That is to say slow, choppy and random, maybe its because I dont have the manual but I have no idea what the difference is between the buttons: they all seem to be for passing while on offense and for changing between players and tackles while on defense.

Its a shame that graphics weren't advanced enough to permit detailed, accurate depictions of soccer kits because the early 90's were a great time for soccer shirts. Err... on second thought its probably best they weren't able to get the detail. Probably a great idea that detailed players weren't available, nor the MLS inaugural teams. Though now I feel like playing as Colombia and seeing if they bothered with Valderrama's hair.

For what its worth I played as France and was unable to score a goal, I'm not entirely sure if there are celebrations or whatnot. The thing is I've played old soccer games that are mindlessly enjoyable but this one is not one of them, and thats too bad because I vaguely remember playing this when I was a kid and enjoying it.

If I have something positive regarding the game its gotta be that the uniforms are kind of cool. Each team has a basic white and coloured uni, with a few variations in socks, stripes and stuff. Its kind of charming. Sure, nothing compared with the highly detailed unis of todays games but good enough.

Crossover Madness to Return

Not being one to let an opportunity to cash in on nostalgia, Capcom is re-releasing Marvel vs Capcom 2, that bastion of subtle, strategic gameplay, as a download for the PS3 and Xbox 360. Ever since the Dreamcast died and the game went out of print for the PS2 the game has been a hot commodity among melee game lovers, myself included. I had the game for the Dreamcast and I have nothing but great memories of mindless fun unlocking the varied characters available.

The hot commodity comment comes from my many attempts to buy a copy on eBay. The game doesnt go for less than $60 either at auction or buy it now. Now that Capcom is coming out with a downloadable version (for $15) they can get their share of those who want the game but either dont want to spend as much for a past generation game or dont want to bother going down to the local arcade to get their ass beaten in by a mallrat in love with Iron Mans cannon.

I dont have any problems with this, capitalism being what it is. The market price will probably drop, I saw this happen with Boba Fett Unleashed figures that were at one point unobtainable because of its scarcity and price but which went down in cost significantly after a new version was released. Its gonna happen, too bad.

The main point of this entry though is that, like they did with Street Fighter HD, they're gonna improve the graphics system. As you can see here, itll go from high pixelation to smooth cartoon like quality. This is great news I suppose, with the advent and high availability of HD televisions, but the new graphics seemed evened out by the smudge tool on the Gimp to me. I know this is some hyperbole on my part, and we all know how much I love pixels so I'm clearly biased.

The good news is that the improvement is not mandatory. That is, you can play it in any mode you wish to. If I decide to actually buy the game its obvious what mode I'll use. Thats quite a big if, however. I love the game but theres a few doubts on my part: for starters all the characters will be available from the beginning which means that there is no story mode, there is only the option to get into dogfights either online, with friends or against the computer. This is awfully fun, to be sure, but it also gets old fast.

On the plus side the offer is a $60 game for $15, it comes with online play (for those who pay for that privilege), improved graphics and tons of sentimental value. Its a party game that anybody can pick up and everybody knows how to play. Until someone makes an alternative thats better than Mortal Kombat vs DC, or until someone brings Tatsunoko vs Capcom to the States on the Xbos this is a good deal for those who love the crossover games. Thats pretty much anybody, so if the hype is big enough, and if I finally get a stable Xbox system I might have to sell another Twilight book to come up with the funds to buy this.

Done-key Kong, har har.

I beat Donkey Kong the other day, all in all it took me about two hours. Not continuous mind you but thats the total in scattered play for about a week. Congrats I say, I never beat it when I was a kid and now, ten years later, sweet sweet revenge.

It was surprisingly easy. Why? I dont know, maybe because of my superior intellect? no, its probably not that I mean you have to walk straight and jump on things, you dont really need to understand the nuances of historical materialism nor how they apply to the case of a disintegrating Yugoslavia to do that. I'm sure it helps.

This isnt a bitch post mind you. I wasnt expecting this game to be GTA IV. No, no six-fingered women in this one. I was looking for innocent fun that I can pick up at any time and keep playing, thats what I got. Now we move on to other games. Anybody got a spare Mario RPG?

On the bright side now that my eBay business is actually working (Oh Twilight books, I had to sell you: not because you became too mainstream, no, its because that fourth book was balls) I actually have a bit of dispossible income and am able to actually buy a few more games, on the cheap, and write a couple more blogs.

But back to Donkey Kong, after I beat the game it turns out I only had beaten about 60% of it, Cranky Kong informed me I had missed a shit ton of mini games. First of all fuck you Cranky Kong, second of all I'm not completist, third, I dont have the time for this shit. I guess this is what passed as replay value back in the day. Im not saying its a bad thing, the capacity of the games was limited, I'm just saying I dont care enough to go back and try to find more Rambi tokens.

Was this the equivalent of Xbox achievements? because I was beating myself up for a while so that I could get as many SF IV achievements on my gamertag and I did a pretty good job. But do I feel like making Cranky Kong happy? not unless he'll create a webpage announcing my greatness to the world.

Good news is I can now focus on other games. Bad news is I have no other games to focus, unless I go back to Aladdin.

Boxing Game!

I was playing Punch Out(!) on the Wii the other day, the original NES one. Well original in that its the same port, the same system and whatnot but is missing one big thing: Mike Tyson. I guess that even in the anything-goes-pre-PC era of the late 80's early 90's its not practical to have a convicted rapist prancing around a kids video game.

Now being the political minded person I am what really struck me about that original Punch Out was the significant reliance upon stereotypes in casting the motley crew of boxers. I'm not gonna go through all of these because I'm sure its been done countless times before but just looking at a few fighters:

Soda Popinski who is obviously a merry drunken bolshevik (like all bolsheviks right?), I'm pretty sure that bottle wasnt originally soda.

Glass Joe and Gabby Jay are both Frenchmen, they're both the easiest fighter of their respective games.

The Italian fighter is named Pizza Pasta.

Great Tiger who's from Bombay (now Mumbai) and continuously calls you a pussy.

Don Flamenco, possibly the coolest looking of all the fighters, he just looks so relaxed. Sometimes I wish I were Don Flamenco.

Lets not go any further, I do believe the German fighter is falled Kaiser something, the Mexican fighter is a luchador, theres Super MachoMan, Bald Bull, King Hippo...we could go on. Great game, holds up amazingly well. One day I'll have the SNES version again. One day.

Picture Post 1

We're not hip so no worldless wednesday, instead a post with a single picture whenever theres not much else to write about. Hopefully itll feature glorious 8-bit, 16-bit or otherwise screenshots. Heres todays picture.

From Mischief Makers for the N64. Glorious pixels!

Ninja Turtles

I received my TMNT: Tournament Fighters in the mail a couple of days ago, turned it on, played it for a bit and proceeded to be disappointed. The fighting seemed slow, the fighters small, the sound gimmicky. I then played it a bit more and I realized that it actually isnt a sucky game. The reason it appears slow is because I'm used to playing new generation games, the fighters are small and blurry because of my small screen and bad connection and the audio...well the audio is still pretty bad.

Lets talk about the game. There were three different versions: the Sega game which had Raph on the cover, the NES game with Leo and, the one I had, the SNES version with Don dancing with a shark. No love for Mike I guess. The games not only had different covers but they also had different character rosters and, obviously, different graphics.

Like I said, the game really isnt that bad. The available characters included the Turtles as well as five other non-turtle characters. Casey Jones was in there...in the Genesis version. April was also playable...in the Genesis version. The SNES game got some not so great characters, including a purple dinosaur looking guy named "War", Wingnut,, the Shredder, a token female character and a few more. I might have gotten over my initial disappointment of the game but I stil have issues with the available characters. I find myself not caring for any of them. I used to like Wingnut as I had that action figure but not anymore. I think the Rat King is the final boss. I dont remember if you can later select the Rat King but I hope so.

But there are many pluses, this is an old-school drawn fighting game. Of course its modeled after Street Fighter and KOF, but it also does a few other things those didnt have at the time (such as a separate bar for a super move). Each character has a unique stage, also reminiscent of SFII, each character has unique moves, most are able to throw projectiles using the standard Hadouken movement.

Sure this might be a bit forced but the Turtles is a franchise with so many discrepancies between all of its media appearances: what happens in the tv show is different than the movie, than the comic book and so on. That the video game would be just as disconnected is not surprising.

The game is good, yes its a bit slow and yes its a bit difficult but that was the norm when it came out. It really isnt fair to compare it to todays game but thats what we do because of what the norm is today. The biggest issue then really isnt that the character selection is poor but rather that this was not followed up on such in the same way that SF or KOF was. If it had been then TMNT: 2009 would be something else.

Donkey Kong Country

Once upon a time there was a deal made between two video game companies to work together, one was a game developer that was ahead of the game, the other was the flailing king of the entire medium. For a while there in the late 90's it was the partnership between Nintendo and Rare that showed what a video game could be. Though they developed many games, many good games, there was one that stood out as the best, I do believe it was one of their first also and from what I understand video games would not be the same after it.

Yes, I'm talking about Donkey Kong Country, the coolest game around during my childhood/adolescence, a game that I always wanted but was too poor to buy. I did play it many times, I had it on loan for a while, but I was never able to actually buy it. Until now that is. Thank you eBay.

What made this game so good? well lets remember that at the time it came out (1994) Nintendo was the king, the Playstation was about to take the thrown for a variety of reasons: dissent, cheaper cd games, more mature titles. You name it. But the SNES was offering games that looked so much better than the traditional PS fare. The SNES, a weaker machine than the PS or the Saturn, was capable of giving us games with characters that looked like moving action figures, the gameplay was smooth and fun while the CD consoles had to deal with polygons and load screens.

This game eventually franchised out into a few others that progressively introduced new characters. Though the monkey (or ape) protagonist changed the gameplay remained the same. Fifteen years after the original came out the fun that is to be had playing the original also remains. I got the game yesterday and have logged in a few hours now. Its easy, but its difficult, I dont really know how to describe it. I dont think I need to describe it, I'm sure everybody has played it and understands.

It doesnt take rocket science to play it, too many new games require one to read books and make decisions and wander around a vast state on a hummer. How friggin unnecesary, how grating! I understand that games have to evolve, I even understand that we tend to romanticize things from our childhood but that does not take away from the brilliance of this game.

Besides, they never could improve it. They came out with a DK for the N64 and it wasnt as good, in general Nintendo moved towards the same crowd that the PS had before realizing they couldnt compete and deciding to go back to making kids games. But for a while Nintendo was in a dark place, it appeared doomed, the relationship with Rare soured and they went over to Microsoft, never to return.

So this wasnt the normal eightbitter post. It wasnt a game review because there is no need to review a game like Donkey Kong Country. Everybody knows it, everybody loves it and even if they dont I simply assume that they do because it was so big during my childhood. Anyway, I'm just glad I finally have it.

The Bourgeois Practice of Passwords

With the advent of memory cards and huge hard drives it is easy to forget that back in the 1990's games would often come with no storage capacity and the only way to secure your progress would be through the use of passwords.

I even forgot about it until a few days ago when a few of the newfound games I've been playing had the option to put in a password. Then I remembered that while playing Mega Man or Punch out I had books full of written down passwords, this was because, of course, if you didnt write it down and forgot it then you were royally screwed.

So whether it was dots, numbers, letters or characters the passwords had to be kept. The problem with passwords, if you think about it, is that when you use one you are being taken to a default version of the level you have previously reached. That is to say, when you reach a certain level and then quit the game your game is lost forever, when you use the password it becomes impersonal, it removes your labor and turns the higher stage into a commodity which anybody can pay for.

This was, of course, before the time of the internet.

The internet, that most communist of all work tools, has destroyed the foundation of the password. For a time we were forced to work for progress and see the same stage over and over until we passed it, the only alternatives were those who had already passed the game or video game magazines. These alternatives were not accessible, especially to the kids who played video games at the time. Then the internet came along and user-generated content followed.

The Password is now useless. It holds no power against anybody. You need a password? is MR. SANDMAN keeping you down? well google it! and you are very likely to find the answers you seek. Not because the bourgeois video game producers want you to have the password but because we came together as a community and made the information available!

This was a revolution of sorts, we were being held down, having to work for mediocre wages for really long hours since childhood. Sure we admit that the bourgeois game developers have played a consistently revolutionary role but their time of reckoning came and it was by the internet, instead of you know a proletariat revolution, that we were able to finally achieve the classless society that we have striven for. All thanks to our great bearded leader.

Aladdin Sane

As promised tonight we tackle the difficult subject of talking about Aladdin. I mock Aladdin, I mocked it yesterday, I mock it today but the truth is this is the reason I bought a Super Nintendo again. No, not because I wanted to play Aladdin but rather I wanted to play the type of game that Aladdin represents.

This game is a side-scroller with one straight forward plot. You play as Aladdin, a young Arabian lad who has taken some time off from cataloging European history (look it up) to move across a screen with his monkey friend Abu (who wears a hat) to, I can only assume, save Princess Jasmine from Jafar and probably her incompetent father. Look I cant be bothered to remember the plot, it was a good movie and all but it was a long time ago.

Anyway the game plays pretty sweetly, its a variation on the platform concept wherein instead of using a gorilla, a small blue suited deviant or a plumber you use a heavily copyrighted Disney character. He still jumps around on tents, fights evil doers, throws apples, gets energy from food and so on. The only difference is that he does it in the Middle East and he's voiced by DJ Tanner's boyfriend.

There are climbing stages, running stages, stages with vehicles, bosses, and cut scenes. Its like a non-violent Double Dragon or Contra so even though its lame to play a Disney game I'm gonna keep playing this one because its entertaining.

There is also a Password system whereby in order to save your progress you simply put in a password to move directly to a particular stage. I wont say much about this here since I plan to write an entry about passwords while I wait for some games I bought on eBay or while I go to the swap meet and get some more games. Suffice it to say that passwords are now easily available and to prove it I'll tell you that the password to get to the second stage is genie-abu-aladdin-sultan. So there you go.

Brett Hull (who?) Hockey

Yet another game that came with my system: Brett Hull Hockey. It was one of three games and I already did an entry on one so I have no idea what I'm gonna do after I talk about Aladdin tomorrow. Yes, Aladdin. But we'll cross that bridge when we get to it. Today we're talking about Brett Hull.

From what I can gather Brett Hull was a hockey player who, at the time this game came out played for the St. Louis Blues who are, of course, a hockey team. At the time he was probably a star and got his own video game. The brilliant thing about this game, and the time it came out really, is that professional sports leagues wouldnt just give you their license but that was not a problem, you could make your game anyway. Brett Hull Hockey has the NHLPA license but no NHL. Which means no logos and no team names. But the great thing was that they had the next best thing: city names on bicolor bars. To ease the fact that the NHL has two new york teams the Islanders bar says Long Island. This practice was a staple of unlicenced games. I think Madden even did it one year.

So how does the game play in 2009? surprisingly well. The graphics arent choppy at all, they movement is smooth, Bob Fuckin Costas is the announcer and he speaks like a robot. The only things I'm inclined to bitch about is that the Ice is too short (the field of play) and scoring is a bitch. There is fighting however and after each game you are treated to a metrosexual looking picture of Brett Hull giving you some advice.

That last link is for a picture from the '95 version so I'm inclined to believe its a series. Google results show that at least in one edition they had the NHL license. Unfortunately thats not the edition I have so, sadly, I am not able to call the Whalers a bunch of faggots in the comfort of my living room.

Final analysis? yay hockey!

Street Fighter II, a few Decades Later

One of the three games included with my $20 Super Nintendo, and the one I naturally gravitated towards, was Street Fighter II.

Ah SFII, you spawned a million clones, you kept Capcom alive, you profited from the Cold War, you brought nationalism to kids everywhere. So the real question became how good is this game? not how good was it at its peak but rather by todays standards. And though I realize that its unfair to subject a game to such standards I cant help but do it, specially since, well, I have nothing else to write about.

My first memories of Street Fighter center around the massive hype it generated in my elementary school. Yes, this was the game you had to play. So the first time I did it was at a local shady establishment of fun called "mundo divertido". They had about ten machines and there was a line to play SF. I eventually got to it, picked Dhalsim and got my ass promptly handed to me. But that didnt matter, what mattered is that I had played it, I had a story now see.

As I said there was a lot of hype, there was a lot of SF merchandise, official and clandestine, sold at the entrance to school, merchandise which I now wish I'd kept for ebay. But thats beyond the scope of this thing, the point is I had played it and I wanted more. So we scoured the local rental store until we finally got the opportunity to take it home for a few days. We played it like madmen for that one day. We might have beaten it a couple of times but it was only after struggling with those four bosses for hours on end. It was great.

And what is there not to like? you can pick one of EIGHT characters to play as, each with unique characteristics, moves, stages. Then there were the four final characters who you really did hate at the time because they were so cheap (except for Balrog, he was easy) but that made it that much better when you actually did beat it. The coolest character was Ken. Zangief was useless, Chun-Li we did not use for a while. Eight characters! so much variety!

The one thing that struck me as odd when I played it yesterday was how slow the game was. Obviously we did not feel that at the time, but now its kind of hard to get over. The fighting engine is great, it was great, but there are many flaws: aerial kicks and throws do an inordinate amount of damage, any fireball leaves the character throwing it motionless and vulnerable for a few seconds after throwing it.

The graphics are, of course, outdated but no less brilliant because of it. Theres so much pixelated goodness, even though the characters are smaller than I remember they still fill in enough of the screen and that which is not filled in is covered in the now iconic, glorious backgrounds. Sure I can bitch about the graphics twenty years later but we were lucky, at least we didnt have to deal with the Atari or Commodore graphics. So thats why Nintendo eventually won out. That second one looks like an error screen.

Now that I have the system, now that I also have an Xbox 360 with Street Fighter IV, will I keep playing the original? yes! its still remarkably playable. You go through it once or twice and you realize why exactly this series is so iconic, so memorable: it obviously came out at a time with a great deal of limitations but it was great nonetheless. It evolved through time too, they have a winning formula (which was widely copied as I said earlier) but they kept updating it with the times and in remains at the forefront of fighting games, and even though Capcom is shamelessly trying to cash in on our nostalgia at least they're doing it with quality products and with a respect towards what the game represents for losers like myself.

Welcome to the eightbitter

This entry is not really an entry. It doesnt count you see. Its a placeholder. I was way too happy to have "eightbitter' available as a blog address and I jumped on it. You can say I'm squatting on it. This blog will be an addition to the detritus of blogs about video games on the internets, to make it worse its about old video games. Yep very original. But I just got an SNES and I plan on exploiting my childhood to make this thing work. It probably wont.