Gamer’s Adventure

I’ve gone through Mega Man 9 twice so far and managed to get under 1 hour on the second run (though I had to restart the Wily Stages a couple of times due to time), just making it at 00:58:02. The replayable design of the game reminds me of Metroid Zero Mission, where I have the urge to immediately start the game again, and do a better playthrough to get some of those achievements earned.

I’ll be getting through the harder modes eventually and the rest of the downloadable content. At first I disliked the idea of paying for features that were usually given as unlockables… but Mega Man 9 was only $10. I expected it to sell for at least $20, so the DLC isn’t a ripoff, it just brings the price closer to what the whole game would be. Proto Man Mode is awesome just for being able to control Proto Man as he appears on Mega Man 3, and allowing the slide and charge shot. But I’ve had trouble using him because of the greater knock back from hits and only being able to fire two shots instead of three.

I started playing Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia, and at first I was underwhelmed. It starts out slow with a little too much story and text before you actually get to play. But it slowly eases the player into the game as it shows you the mechanics, and starts picking up a couple of areas later. I had gotten to a forest area that’s just a long straight horizontal line of screens, thinking the game was going to just repeat the previous cut and past level design. But then it got interesting, leading to a water area and prison where getting caught by the spotlights calls a giant demon head to chase you. So far it seems to break away from the monotonous level design of Portrait of Ruin by making the areas interesting to get through.

Looking forward to Chrono Trigger DS more now after seeing few minutes of the videos showing the new dungeon content. Gonna have to preorder this time so I don’t miss out on the soundtrack CD like I did for Ecclesia.

After debating about it for a while I decided to finally buy the first DVD sets for Bleach and One Piece, two anime series everyone has watched except for me, so I wanted to finally catch up and be in the loop with some knowledge of what the series are about. What I wasn’t sure of was whether or not to start investing in these series that have high episode counts, One Piece is over 350 episodes, that’s a lot of DVDs! But if I didn’t pull the trigger for these shows I’ve taken an interest in, then I wouldn’t be true to myself.

Anime is an expensive hobby, and as much as its come down and gotten more attainable over the years, it still adds up. So I’ve decided on a few guidelines.

I’m mainly interested in the affordable boxsets than the single volume Japanese style releases, which works because more anime is being released in boxsets nowadays. So unless its a short 12 episode series like Genshiken with 3 DVDs, I’ll pass the singles. If only the first two seasons of Bleach are out, then that’s as far as I get to watch at the moment, I’ll watch something else. Of course there are other questionable methods, but I prefer to watch DVDs or TV broadcasts of licensed anime.

When I couldn’t find volume 3 of Kujibiki Unbalance at any of the local stores, I got tired of driving around and using up gas to see if the DVD was restocked and said the heck with, and decided to order it online. I looked at a few stores and BestBuy.com ended up being the best deal with it on sale for $15 (Usually $20) + $2 shipping + tax. Usually I’d just buy from the local Best Buy because of the pricing, usually at least $10 off MSRP, but looking around online at other stores, sometimes there are better deals. I looked at Amazon.com and ended up getting Bleach Season 1 for $27 and One Piece Season 1 Part 1 for $22 with free saver shipping. So I felt good about finding a deals on two sets I wanted and saved about $31 by shopping around. Anime News Network even has a price comparison chart on each DVD release page listing current prices from online retailers so you can see the best price without looking up each site, though it doesn’t list everything like BestBuy.com.

With that in mind, One Piece will end up being at least 30 boxes of 13 episode sets, usually selling for $40 each, that’s reasonable but still kinda high for 13 episodes. I got Season 1 Part 1 for $22, and I’ve seen Part 2 go on sale for $29, so i’m going to try to only buy the sets if I catch them on sale for no more than $30.

I’ve watched the first 7 episodes of One Piece, I can say that I haven’t smiled and laughed at any show as much as I have from this one in a while, so I might be watching One Piece for sometime.

At E3 this year Nintendo focused more on the casual game audience, and showed off Wii Music, Animal Crossing, and Wii Sports Resort. But nothing for the the “core” game crowd aside from Miyamoto finally relenting and letting slip they are working on Pikmin, and the assurance that their teams were hard at work on our favorite series but weren’t ready to show anything off yet. Apparently Nintendo is taking a cautious approach of announcing games after the long delays such as Zelda: Twilight Princess and Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and instead when they’re ready to be shown off and close to release to maintain hype like Wario Land: Shake it! that wasn’t known until several months from its release. Last week’s Nintendo conferences in the U.S. and Japan showed off what’s coming up for the company.

Nintendo released a few trailers showing off Punchout!! (Wii), Sin and Punishment 2, and Mario and Luigi 3 (DS), and announced for U.S. release Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, the DS remake of the first Fire Emblem for the Famicom starring Marth. After the boxing portion of Wii Sports PunchOut!! seemed like a shoe in for Wii controls, and Treasure was known to be working on a few projects after working on the virtual console version of Sin and Punishment. In Japan, Nintendo released videos of their Wii and DS lineups.

There’s a new model DS set for release in Japan, dubbed “Nintendo DSi”, featuring larger screens at 3.25″, up from the original’s 3.00″, and the addition two cameras to further broaden the market. It’s also slimmer than the DS lite with the removal of the Game Boy Advance slot and adds a SD card slot for downloadable games. The removal of the GBA slot may be unfortunate for some, but really, with GBA support slowly fading away, does anyone still play GBA games that don’t already own a DS lite or a GBA SP? DSi won’t be coming to the U.S. until sometime in 2009 since DS lite sales remain strong, and I don’t know if I’d want to upgrade. Though, if DSi has a better refresh rate to go along with the larger screens, I might be sold.

Nintendo Co Ltd. president Iwata gave a presentation about the reasoning behind the Nintendo DSi, and talked about reaching the goal of not only having one DS per household, but a DS for everyone person.

Miyamoto had mentioned before that they could possibly remake some GameCube games with Wii controls, and now they’re going to remake them for those that missed the GameCube, starting with Donkey Kong: Jungle Beat, Pikmin 1 and 2, and Metroid Prime 1 and 2. Even at a value price, I wonder how that’ll play out if used copies of the GameCube originals are still available. Unless there’s a Zelda: Four Sword Adventures remake using the DS, and a Zelda: The Wind Waker remake with less sailing and more dungeons, I’ll probably pass on the games I already have.

I’m glad to see Nintendo finally showing off some games after E3, and seeing the video montage of games got me excited about video games. There hasn’t been much on Wii lately that I’ve wanted after Mario Kart and Mega Man 9. Owning a Nintendo console over the last few system generations, I’ve gotten used to relying on other systems (PS2 and DS) that I didn’t think much about Nintendo not showing much at E3 at the time.

I’m working my way through Mega Man 9, and its been just as good as Mega Man 2 and 3, amazingly faithful to the contraints of an NES game. In the meantime, here’s what else I’d like to play.

SoulCalibur IV has been out for sometime, but without a PS3 or Xbox 360, I haven’t been able to play it. The Soul series is probably my favorite fighting game series next to Smash Bros. It’s different because of the weapons based fighting, and destroying your opponents health bar isn’t the only way to win, ring outs can give you a comeback. SCIV is close to finally pushing me to getting an Xbox 360, but I’d prefer to play with the PS3’s controller and d-pad. There’s also the added cost of Xbox Live, and a wireless adapter for online play…

The revival of one of the greatest RPGs of all time, Chrono Trigger is coming up for DS. Though do I really want to play it on a protable, or get the the SNES original? I’ll have to see what content it has over the original. It’s meant to be played over and over, so I’d buy the SNES game again eventually anyways.

I haven’t played a Kirby game since Kirby’s Dreamland 3, and I’ve been tempted to pick up Kirby’s Super Star Ultra for DS, as its been a long time since I’ve played the SNES version. My first Kirby and favorite was Kirby’s Adventure for NES that I got through in three days with 100%, and I haven’t followed the series for a long time. Like Chrono Trigger DS, I wonder if I might as well get the SNES cartridge, and skip the switched controls.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia has me hopeful that the Castlevania team has taken the time to really work on the next game and break away from the bland level designs of Portrait of Ruin. It looks promising with stages taking place outside of Dracula’s Castle, said to be reminiscent of Castlevania 2. I’m not looking forward to Castlevania: Judgement, it doesn’t look like a great idea. The game looks like it could be fun, but the character redesigns are terrible. The concept of a Castlevania spinoff fighting game is already weird, but the character should at least look like the actual characters, or at least have alternate costumes with Ayami Kojima’s style. At least it’ll have good music.

It seems like its common now for people to have a backlog of games to play, and I’ve fallen into that trap too many times. I’m buying games, and not finishing them or getting to a point where I feel I’ve “beaten” it, or not playing them at all!

Just to name a few:

Final Fantasy IV DS - unopened, I’ll be starting this soon!
Mega Man ZX Advent- unopened
Mega Man ZX - unbeaten
Mega Man Powered Up - unbeaten, Wily stages
Contra 4 - last boss unbeaten
Super Mario Galaxy - need 120 stars

Creating backlogs of games to play and continuing to buy more and repeating this cycle is silly! I’ve realized if I don’t need to play a game right away when it comes out or I see it on sale, I don’t need to buy it, and I can always find it later somewhere else, whether that’s Best Buy, Gamestop, Amazon.com, or eBay. I’ve gotten into a very bad habit of putting games down, and feeling compelled to buy every new release I’m interested in, and then not end up playing it. When I was a kid, it was much easier to appreciate games when I rented them for 3 days, or only got a new game on my birthday and christmas. Even if I can’t keep up, with the games I’ve gotten recently, I should at least keep up with the games I’ve gotten now.

I bought a few games I had been wanting: FFIV was bought new, The PSP Mega Man remakes were bought at Best Buy and Target on clearence for $15 each, ZX Advent was on sale. But then I went overboard and bought Drill Dozer for about $10 at Target, and saw a bargin bin at Toys R Us with prices at $5 each for Valkyrie Profile 2, Taitio Legends 2, and Magical Starsign, and the PS2 version of PSU that I won’t play anyways. Why did I bother? Because I liked finding treasure in a clearence pile of games? I should have put that money towards SoulCalibur IV!