http://www.dpadhero.com (NES ROM)



Yeah, that's right. So someone ported the rhythm music genre to the NES, and it's a pretty successful attempt. "Dpad hero" has 4 songs - "Sweet Child 'o Mine," "Harder Better Faster Stronger," "The Swing of Things," and "The Way You Make Me Feel." It's basically Guitar Hero with 2 strum buttons and the dpad acts as the frets. It is hard. But you can't fail and you have the option of just listening to the song, as some of the 8-bit tunage is quite good, especially "Sweet Child."
I think this would have gone over well if it had been released back in the day, but there's something about the gaming atmosphere we're in now that makes it particularly compelling. We all love teh Rock Hero games, because of a combination of the gameplay, music choices, and roleplaying quality. But this strips out almost all of that, and takes gameplay to a whole new abstract. The point of the game is to hit buttons on a controller. There's no metaphor. There's no role. This basically ends up being the case, sort of, with earlier entries in the music genre - PaRappa the Rapper, maybe, and DDR if you play it with the pad - but this really does away with all pretense. Even in the name, the notion is that this is all you need to be awesome. Gamepad dexterity. Look, there's even an audience, but no on-stage persona. Just people going nuts over dots and arrows hitting a NES pad. It's either a satire of the state of the music genre today, or the first really, truly postmoderm gaming experience, or both. It's also just pretty fun. And free!

but not dead yet.

Mother 3, GBA, 12.2 MB

This might be the first game on here that I've actually finished. (Well, almost. One more fight.) Mother 3 is the sequel to Mother 2, which know may know as Earthbound for the SNES. Mother 1 was a NES game. Smash Brawlers are already familiar with its protagonist, Lucas. The series is know for having very simple graphics, a near-real world setting, and generally being balls out insane.
You may wonder why you haven't heard of these games before. When Earthbound was released here, it came with the whole strategy guide because Nintendo wasn't sure at the time how mainstream gamers would take to RPGs. It still didn't do that well. Fortunately we have the internet and it has graced us with a fan translation of the game (more on that later).
So, it's already an established franchise and features one of its characters in the biggest-selling single console game of the year, so where's the love, Nintendo? Hmmm, well, the game starts out with the destruction of a family: the death of the mother, the disappearance of your big brother, and your father's almost total consumption in his grief. Oh, and capitalism is introduced into your small village, and if you don't own a TV your house will be struck by lightning. Repeatedly. And your village alternately pities you, calls you a crybaby, and blames you for the demolition of their way of life. Where is that love...? Oh! What about the race of millenia-old transvestites who assist and inappropriately flirt with you along your way? Or the "O2 Machines" built to resemble Merman Freddie Mercury that you have to suck face with to survive in the underwater level? Wait - the key attack spell you gain upon realizing your psychic powers is called "PK Love..." unless you named something else as your favorite thing in the introduction. Which you did. And now maybe you feel a little guilty.
Basically, the ESRB rating system is not prepared for this game. There's nothing that's outright vulgar or unwholesome, but the cute, cartoony nature of the graphics and the age demographic of the system of release make this strange little game a no go in the USA. At one point, you slalom off a mountain in a refridgerator. Bad Nintendo.
But for those of us who have successfully passed the median age of Darwinian circumstance, it's one of the most fun RPG experiences you could have. First off, the quirk pervades pretty much everything. No other game could have you scrambling so fast to wolf down a bag of chips while fighting an angry cyborg caribou. One of the things that made Earthbound so memorable was the plethora of strange monsters to fight and the inscrutable actions they took in battle. Here is no different. Most everything is either cyborged or a Chimera, so look forward to getting your ass handed to you by a Cattlesnake or a Kangashark or a Muttshroom. If not that, then it's just trange, like the Negative Man, who wails about how worthless he is, or the Big and Lil Bros. Or the Men's Room sign (it knows PK Starstorm!). There's lots of weirdness for weirdness' sake, and many shoutouts to Earthbound
Fighting these things rarely gets old, thanks to the battle system. First off, damage is ticked down point by point when dealt. Healing immediately reverses this count. So you can be dead, but still have 100 HP and falling on the ticker. One heal and you're right as rain. Managing this is a key strategy for many bosses. Also, each background tune has a "beat" you can tap the button in time to build combos. Putting monsters to sleep exposes this beat, but you can't always rely on that ability. Also, emulators have timing issues that make this tricky to pull off reliably, but it's not such a key compnent that you can't beat it not doing it. One point I don't like so much is item management: each character holds their own items and only so many. You can trade items between characters, and the game is not shy about giving you healing stuff, but having to sort through and remember who has what and choose what to drop or use to free up room for a new weapon does bring things to a halt more than once.
The plot progresses through 8 chapters, the first 3 of which focus on side characters. The story is interesting and rich with subtext, and plot twists range from "seen it coming a mile away" to "why didn't I piece that together" to "Umm, right. Fine." My favorite is where you play the monkey who's been captured by the alien capitalist pigs (No, really.) and forced into servitude being a performing monkey to win the people's hearts. You're controlling the character, but not really in control, and your master is a cruel, vicious bastard. You will be electrocuted and taunted many times by him, but he's also the msucle in your party. Conflicted! Aside from Lucas, there's a PK-packing tomboy princess, a shy thief with a handy set of tools, and the family dog who sniffs out enemy weaknesses. It's easy to get into a rhythm once you have the full party, but the bosses get progressively tricky and you must adapt your PK use, healing duties, even item dispersal to match. Oh, and when you get killed and elect to "try again," you are without all the items you used in the previous attempt. Yay save states! Just to let you know, I'm about 22 hours in, lvl. 60 and I missed a few things. It pays off to stop and grind every once in awhile, but you can more or less maintain steady progress the whole way through.
You'll start playing for the WTF factor, and you'll keep playing for it too. But also the story does have a lot of heart, and nicely subverts the cliche RPG trappings is wears. Gameplay is simple but deep and fast-paced.

When I rained hot death upon my enemies. When, even when my tank was turned into a nuclear crematorium, I could get out a smart-ass one-liner. When unchecked nuclear proliferation was a .cfg file edit away. When the world's end was heralded in bright CGA rainbows.

These days are here again. FUCKING SCORCHED EARTH IS BACK.

There's a good reddit thread about some stellar ROM hacks, making totally new versions of Super Mario World, Super Metroid, aLttP, and others that I offer for your perusal. If you think any of these deserve to be spotlighted, then speak up!

Animaniacs GENESIS ROM (671.9 KB)

...and I/just realized/I'm singing the wrong Goddamn song! Oh well, you all know the drill anyway. Warners. Crazy. Tower. Escaping. Jokes you won't get for another 6-10 years. I had to decide between this and the very different SNES one (both made by Konami). I chose this because the SNES one is FUCKING HARD. In that game, you roll as the Warner Bros. (and Warner sister, Dot), who all have the same powers. The other sibs basically act like lives - if you get caught by Ralph the security guard, he takes you back to the water tower and you have to go get them (think the NES TMNT), which involves platforms, buzzards and MORE GODDAMN RALPH. I hate that guy. But the plots for both games are basically the same. Pinky & the Brain have a plan and it involves the WB studio lot. You run around and try to stop them. In the Genesis game, you can switch out your Warners, each of which has a different ability. Yakko is strong enough to push boulders and has a deadly paddle-ball. Wakko has a mallet, for flipping switches, etc. And Dot is cuuuuuute, which moves people out of your way. Also, she's immune to Hello Nurse, who stuns the other 2. At the end of a stage, you fight a boss, and move on. It's a pretty solid platformer. It's totally a Genesis game, so expect to see a lot of brown and green, and the music ... actually, it's atypically not-annoying.

Ahh, what the hell. Here's the SNES one too, just for comparison.

It's been a bit since I added a new game. I'm just trying to decide between the SNES or Genesis versions of Animaniacs. And between moving, working, and watching Death Note (which is awesome, BTW). I'll sit down and play enough of them to make a decision this weekend. I'm kinda leaning Genesis, though, because the play mechanic just seems more interesting. I did totally blow through Super Mario World. 96-star in one go, baby. Had to ask Wombat for one thing, but then it was just like I remember. It seems a lot easier, and the levels usually much shorter than I remember. I do also remember when I was a kid that I'd always try to go for the Yoshi coins, random coins, and various power-ups/bonus pipes, but this time I just couldn't care. Also, I'm way better at flying than I was, and there's something weirdly satisfying about just straight skipping a level via cape.

I usually write the post at work and then come home to upload the ROM, but if I had this watch, I could keep ROMs on me and upload from work.

What? I have 4 posts. That's enough to start begging for free shit, right? I'm still learning this blogging thing.

Also, apropos of nothing, but Andrew Sullivan finally got something right!

I will get to Mega Man games eventually. But just to get everyone in the mood, I need you to crack open a bottle of wine, recline comfortably, and get ready to have your day made. The Mega Man 9 promo art from Capcom:

Oh yes. Look how sweet it is. It's quite the shame that it's not actually going to have a box. Maybe special download card packages?

There's also an amazing interview with Mega Man 9's producer, Hironobu Takeshita on Gamasutra. He talks about how the designers had to forget all the fancy alpha-blended, triliner interpolygon tracing they've been using and work exactly within the original NES specs. To that end, allowing flicker and slowdown will be an option in the game. This needs to be ported to the DS, so that they can add the "blow to make the game work" mechanic as well. I sometimes play games I played back then and wondered how I could drop so many hours on what was essentially pixelated crap. I now know to blame oxygen deprivation.

For more retro goodness, some classic Mega Man boxart. Suitable for framing, or transition to black velvet.