The Best Marketing Campaign In All Of Gaming

 

I'm not one, personally, to get too swept up in hype and marketing.  Usually what will happen is that I will find out that a game exists, maybe watch a short trailer and then file it away in my mind and not look at anything to do with it ever again until it launches and I get a chance to play it.  I have to admit though, if I was a young Japanse boy in the 90s then there's a good chance that this advertising campaign for the Sega Saturn would have swept me right up into a hype train.

Segata Sanshiro, a play on the Japanese セガサターンしろ (meaning, "play the sega saturn!" said in a sort of aggressive way) arranged so that it sounds like a dudes name was a series of advertisements played on Japanese TV to, obviously, promote the Sega Saturn.  The first few snippits of these adverts depict our man, Segata Sanshiro, a bloke in a karate gi, approaching groups of youths who are not playing Sega Saturn and then beating them up and demanding that they go and do so.  Later adverts depict him doing absolutely insane super-human feats that relate to the theme of whatever individual game they are trying to sell.  For example, one of my favorite versions of this is where Segata is acting as goalkeeper in a football match and instead of just blocking the oncoming ball, he proceeds to flip the entire goal net over his shoulder so TECHNICALLY the ball didn't go in.  After some clips of the game, World Cup 98 ~Road to Win~, the ad ends with Segata being red-carded by the referee while shouting "OH NO!" in an overexaggerated katakana-English accept.

The absolutely insane thing about this series of adverts is that when it came for the release of the Dreamcast, the ad involves a bunch of business folks celebrating the launch when a missle is launched at Sega HQ.  Segata, who just happens to be standing on the roof of the building, proceeds to catch the missle in mid-air, rides it into space where it then explodes and kills him off.  Honestly, a truly hilarious way to give the mascot a sendoff for the next piece of hardware.

Segata Sanshiro seemed to be such a well-liked figure within Japan that he even got his own game on the Saturn but I've heard its an extremely lackluster mini-game collection where your reward for beating the games is the ability to watch the adverts which, honestly, seems trash but having not played it at time of writing this article I'll withhold judgement.  More well liked that the mascot though is the man himself Hiroshi Fujioka who is a bit of a legend here in Japan.  Known chiefly for being in Kamen Rider he's a sort of cultural icon that even my wife, who knows barely anything of video games and even less about Tokusatsu, knows who he is.  Hell, when I looked him up on Wikipedia before writing this blog I found out he even has a fucking planet named after him.  

I wouldn't be surprised if this ad campaign is the reason that the Saturn is remembered quite a bit more fondly in Japan than it is in the west.  Back in England I barely knew anyone who even knew what the Sega Saturn was, let alone had played one.  It was one of those systems that only weirdos like me owned alongside things like the Neo Geo and even today its only really hardcore enthusiasts willing to dig into gamings history that give enough of a shit to look at its libarary.  In Japan though it's a little bit more well remembered.  I've met plenty of folks who have at least got some memories of having fiddled with a game or two on the system in their childhoods.  I even met one guy in a bar once who spent the better part of 2 hours trying to convince me to play Wachenroder which, while it looks cool, I still haven't done yet.  Sorry.

There's a lot of weird, gross and shitty video game advertising out there, especially from the 90s and early 2000s, but Sega really knocked it out of the park with this one.  It's a shame it wouldn't last and Sega would bow out of the hardware biz after the Dreamcast but at the very least their efforts gave us some truly hilarious bits of old advertising to look back on fondly

Sonic Adventure

 

Nostalgia can be a strange thing.  I remember owning Sonic Adventure for my Dreamcast back in my younger days and I remember it being quite good.  At least I remember the Sonic sections being quite good and then the rest of a game was sort of a blur.  After finishing it on stream recently I can safely say that while I did have a bit of fun with the Sonic sections it was considerably more jank than I ever remember it being.

In my head Sonic didn't really get completely screwed until Sonic 06 and before that, Adventure and Adventure 2 while not the best games in the world were still solid attempts at making a 3D sonic game.  But I can safely say now that Sonic Adventure is just as broken and also suffers from being really really fucking boring.

When the game starts out and you only have Sonic to play with things are sort of OK.  You run very fast down a path, dash at enemies and then watch a badly voice acted cutscene and everything is great.  But once you finish his stages, in order to see the real ending of the game, you have to play as all of Sonic's stupid fucking friends.  Tails is sort of the same as Sonic, Knuckles is stupid McGuffin hunting, Amy is boring, Gamma has a cool idea that is over the moment it starts to get going and Big the Cat's campaign houses the worst gameplay segment of any game on the system and I say that as someone who loves Sega Bass Fishing.

What really surprised me though is all the weird buggy type things.  Often at points in the game the characters would get stuck on...the floor? I'm not entirely sure what was going on but often I'd being trying to navigate the hub world into the next stage and my character would just start flailing around, unable to move as the game struggled to work out how floors work.  The other big thing that I could have sworn wasn't a problem back in my teen years was loops.  Whenever a character had to go through a loop they would get half way and the forget how their legs worked and they would just stop dead.  This would cause them to fall off and usually result in a death.  Thankfully the game is piss easy and showers you with 1 ups but its still horribly annoying to have to play the same segment 4 or 5 times while the game works out how to get the character around a 360 degree piece of terrain.

So while we all like to rag (rightly so) on Sonic 06 for being a glitchy mess, let's not forget that Sega were practicing those techniques here first, because I sure as hell did.  

Game Gear Micro: Tiny System, Massive Piece of Shit

I have very limited experience with actual Game Gear hardware but quite fond memories of the system.  I remember when I was very young, my auntie had this huge house in the Lake District that I would visit with my family from time to time.  There was some sort of gathering going on at the house one time and all the adults were standing around talking and drinking, the usual fare for that kind of thing.  I however, unable to drink at that young and age, got talking to these two slightly older kids and to pass the time we sat in a hallway, on top of my aunties large refrigerator unit playing some kind of Sonic game on the Game Gear.  I was a big fan of the Sonic games on the Mega Drive at the time so when I saw these guys that had a version of it that could be played on the go, it blew my damn mind.  Thinking back, these first experience with the Game Gear might have been my first experience with a portable console.

Anyway, childhood stories aside, Sega have recently announced a Game Gear Micro, yet another mini version of an old system that has a collection of games for you to enjoy.  I've never been a big fan of these mini systems really but I do see the appeal.  The collection of games is usually pretty good (unless its the western PS1 mini) and they sort of look nice on a shelf as a collectors piece.  Being able to play these games with the actual controllers that come packaged is cool as well.

The first problem with the Game Gear Micro is that it's, as the name would suggest, tiny.  I always hated the Game Boy Micro for being just a tad too small and I'm fairly sure that this thing is even smaller than that.  I get that it's kind of a novelty but even Sega realized that the size of this thing is fucking stupid because if you pre-order the system then you can also get a magnifying glass which may make the thing slightly playable.

The games are the other problem with this thing but not the actual titles themselves.  The selection of games is actually pretty good, a bunch of Sonic games, some RPGs, some puzzle games, the standard array of popular titles and genres you'd expect to see on a system like this.  In total there are 16 games but this is where the bullshit starts to creep in.  There are 4 color variants of the Game Gear Micro; black, blue, red and yellow.  Each one of these systems has 4 DIFFERENT games on them which means if you want to play all 16 micro versions of these Game Gear classics, you have to buy ALL of them.

Which leads us into the third problem of the price.  They are announced to be roughly 5000 yen (About $45) each, which means if you want all of the games available you have to drop a whopping 20,000 yen, which is just fucking extortionate.  If I remember correctly the SNES mini, which had about 20 games packaged in, was 8000 yen at launch.  The PlayStation mini, for all the controversy over its game list in the west at the very least was $60 for 20 games.  For what you get bundled in a single unit the asking price is INSANE.

If they were asking for $20 per system then I'd be down.  Not only would I be down but I'd probably be OK with buying all 4 of them at once but for that much it feels a bit steep.  If you're a huge fan of the Game Gear and you like the idea of having one or all of these things on a shelf to look nice in your collection, go crazy.   But if you're just looking to experience games from a system you might have not played much or maybe even at all, I'd say its probably just better to look for.....alternative methods.

House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn Gameplay Footage

[Arcade Quickie] Soul Reverse First Credit

Dx2 Shin Megami Tensei Liberation First Impressions

I never thought in my life I'd be impressed to the point of gushing HARD on a mobile game but it's finally happened and OF COURSE it's a fucking Shin Megami Tensei game that has me frothing at the mouth with excitement.

I've talked about it before but just in case I'll cover once again what Shin Megami Tensei is before I continue in case a new reader has stumbled across this post.  Shin Megami Tensei is a long running series of RPGs that has been going since the old NES days.  It has its roots in tile based dungeon crawling but as the series has progressed that style has dropped in and out.  The big gimmick of the series is the whole "demon negotiation" thing where you can convince your enemies to join your ranks and use their skills in order to reach the end.  The series has seen some massive success recently with it's spinoff series Persona and at some point a Shin Megami Tensei 5 has been cited for release on the Switch.  In a VERY basic way just think of it as sort of Grimdark Pokemon.

So I woke up on Sunday with a big fat hangover and grabbed my phone only to find that Dx2 SMT Liberation was on the front page of the Japanese app store and despite my pounding headache I did a little squee and downloaded it.  As far as mobile games go it's not all that different from any other RPG where you collect monsters and battle them but if you're a fan of the series, especially the mainline series, the look and feel of the game will have you hooked pretty quickly.  EVERYTHING you expect from a tried and true SMT game is present in this title just sort of simplified a little bit because it's on a phone now but presented in a way that makes it perfect for short burst plays on a train, bus or while you take a shit.

 I'm not going to go into too much detail about how it all works because there's A LOT going on and I've not levelled up enough to see it all but curiously the game has only 2 out of 5 stars on  the app store.  Addressing some of these complaints I've seen in the review section will help you to understand something about how the game works though so here I go.

The first big complaint I've seen is that they say (in Japanese) that the demons and the artwork look like crap.  The game has opted for the older SMT look as opposed to the more modern art direction that they have used in games like Persona so this is more of a taste thing.  I started the series with Lucifer's Call on PS2 when it was still using that sort of older look so it doesn't bother me really, this is just a taste thing but be aware the art style looks a bit "dated" which will be nostalgic for some and hard on the eyes for others.

The one thing I can't forgive though is people complaining about the fucking "gatcha".  If you don't play mobile games then a gatcha is the way most games give you new items or characters.  You pay a number of whatever currency it may be and the game randomly gives you a character.  If you're lucky you'll get a rare thing and if you're not lucky you won't, it's the main way these free to play RPGs make cash by making people pull lots of gatcha for mad rare shit.  These are usually a big part of mobile RPGs but in Liberations case it's not such a big thing.  The complaints state that the gatcha is too expensive and the rate of rare shit coming out is too low, which is fine I guess but that's not really how your supposed to expand your roster of demons.

As you play levels, occasionally a demon will offer to talk with you and you enter a negotiation.  If you complete the negotiation successfully the demon will join you, this is how SMT has worked basically since the beginning.  From there, you have you fuse the demons together to make new ones in order to strengthen your ranks and this is the main way that the player in Liberation gets rarer things.  For example today I took a 1* demon and a 2* demon and fused them into a 3* demon with some sick fire skills.  The gatcha does give you rare shit but the game wants you to focus on negotiation and fusion, you know, the thing where you actually have to understand how the game works, rather than just dumb luck.  While paying your way into the rarest demons is an option and probably how Sega plan to make profit, doing it the old fashioned way is preferable and series fans will probably enjoy this more than just "push button, receive demon".

I've never been this hooked by a mobile game before so if you're a SMT fan then absolutely try it out and if you've never played one before then this free outing into the mainline may be a good place to find your feet. 

Arcade Quickie: Chunithm Brain Fluid Explosion Girl Expert

Code of Joker 2.0

When I go to the arcade I'm expecting to have a good time except recently my visit was turned into a rage session as a discovered that my favorite digital card game, Code of Joker, got a big update.  Granted it's not all terrible but generally speaking the update has left me disappointed and angry.  

For those that don't know and can't be bothered to search through old posts for the info, let me briefly go over what Code Of Joker is.  Code of Joker is a free to play arcade digital trading card game made by Sega.  Imagine if you smashed Pokemon, Magic and Yu Gi Oh all into one game and you'd get a vague idea of what the game plays like.  It's a lot of fun and the fact that you can play 2 games for free as long as you own the Aime card means that playing a couple of matches every day may just become part of your daily routine. 

So, very recently version 2.0 of the game came out and with that release came A LOT of changes.  Let's first talk about the good shit.  The interface is a lot cleaner and easier to navigate.  The old interface was very busy and while not difficult it looks a lot better now.  There are also 2 new characters each with their own special powers and one of them has even come with entire new color type of card thus raising the monster types to 5. The new color comes with a mechanic where you can fill a gauge to do bullshit OP shit but the fact you need a separate gauge stops the new type from being completely broken.  Code Of Joker has also taken the advance wars approach to gameplay and made all the characters fight in pairs now.  This means that you get 2 special abilities per game and even if you use a Joker mid match, the gauge will keep charging so you can do it again, whereas before you only got 1 joker use per game.  

But now for the bullshit because oh boy did this piss me off really fucking hard.  First, they reset everyone's deck to a new starter that's been rebalanced so that it's not completely fucking useless after all the updates.  This is sort of a good thing but the game didn't tell you that it had happened so I got rocked in my first game due to having a completely changed deck full of shit.  Granted, some of the new starters are really good but some warning would have been nice.  The game also has the currency that you get from playing matches that used to be called RP but now it's been changed to a different currency with the same function but you still earn from playing matches called AC.  The problem arises when it turns out that none of my previously stocked RP was converted, so I just had ALL my in game money taken away and now I can't buy any of the fancy new shit.  It's not my stock was turned into something else, it's just flat out fucking gone, and that's bullshit.  

Now all that is super annoying but not as annoying as having the game just take a bunch of my cards away from me.  When I went to make a new deck a good deal of my cards had been taken away.  Now I can't find online what had happened but I have two guesses.  1 is that due to the balance changes these cards do not exist anymore or the game just decided to take away any card that I earned for free.  I'm leaning towards option 1 but I won't be able to test until my wife tries to make a deck later.  This is complete shit though because imagine you had a Yu Gi Oh deck but some update comes out and some guy comes to your house, shreds a bunch of your old cards and throws you a deck of mishmashed shit cards, you'd be mad. This is the digital equivalent of that.  Once again, my cards weren't converted to anything, just removed from my possession so fuck you Sega 

Despite all this bullshit the game retains its core enjoyability and at the end of the day it's still free so I'm not going to stop playing it.  Just every card played will be filled with bitterness and rage 

Turning Japanese: Twitch and YouTube update!

So, you may have noticed that the last two weeks have been extremely thin on the ground when it comes to streaming.  Well don't worry I've not given up, I've just been extremely busy.  The first week of absence was due to new year and the build up to it, I was extremely busy and didn't have all that much time.  This second week is due to AGDQ 2016 which, at time of writing, is currently still going and I'm far too glued to that to stream myself.  That said, I'll be going hard once its done so look forward to that.  In the meantime I want to announce two new segments coming to identity gaming.

First the Twitch update

I've been living in Japan for a while now and I can speak it pretty well but if there is one thing that has sucked consistently since day 1 it's my Kanji.  Since I have dreams one day of passing certain Japanese tests within the country I thought I'd incorporate a bit of gaming into my Kanji study.  So, every Wednesday will be Japan day, a day where I play Japan exclusive games and do my best to translate them live on camera.  Like I said, my Kanji kind of sucks so it might be slow and plodding but it'll help me out and hopefully you'll be able to see some games you've never heard of before.  I'll enjoy it at the very least

Next the YouTube update, let's start with a video!

I go to the Game Centre an awful lot, I mainly enjoy playing a digital TCG called Code of Joker and the plethora of rhythm games that they have set up there.  So, just for a bit of fun and to give my YT channel some much needed activity, I'll be chronicling my adventures through the arcades of Japan by filming game play from my phone.  Weather it's me sucking at Code of Joker, beasting some other game or just trying out something new, if I can I'll film it and upload it.  I'll also be happy to take requests to showcase some games so if you hear about something  let me know and I'll go seek it out!

I'll wait until I lose some weight before I upload anything DDR related though....

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this content and keep supporting me, the site and the Alzheimer's Society!

Sonic Runners

I really don't understand how Sonic is still going.  For YEARS they've just been pounding out shit game after shit game and yet there are still legions of fans for this guy.  There are still groups of people who actually get moderately excited for an upcoming Sonic game and considering the quality of these fucking things I have no idea why.

That's when I was surprised when my friend said to me "I've got this really cool new phone game" and when I peered into his screen I saw it was a Sonic title.  At first I just laughed and told him to get out with that crap but the next day I started to get curious so I ended up downloading it.

Sonic Runners is one of those auto running type games.  If you're not sure what I mean by that then it's a kind of game where you character just runs forward and all you have to do is tap/swipe the screen to avoid obstacles.  Quite frankly, the novelty of this genre ran out after a few days with Temple Run and yet I haven't deleted the game off my phone yet.

Game play is very simple; Sonic runs and you tap the screen to jump.  You have to collect rings and gems to build score, kill enemies and save little animals.  It never ends, you just keep going until you die and the longer you play then the harder it gets.  Once you build up enough points you can fight Dr Eggman which will net you some extra rewards.  There is also a story that unfolds as you beat each area but I find myself just skipping through it because I'm pretty sure the scripts to Sonic games are written on the walls by a monkey with the pen jammed up its asshole.

Outside of the running you have to level up your characters so that they get more score or item effects last longer or you can play a little roulette game to get companions.  The companions come in the form of Chao's or remote controlled objects and bestow various effects when equipped.

You can pay for a special currency so that you can continue when you die or buy new companions but the currency is awarded to you slowly as you play for free so they micropayments don't really get in the way of the overall experience.  Also the games doesn't throw constant "BUY THIS SHIT NOW!" messages in your face which is nice because the idea of paying money for an iPhone games makes me want to vomit.

So to conclude, Sonic Runners is actually pretty good and considering that it's totally free its worth a try at the very least.  It's probably the best endless running game I've ever played which isn't saying much but I guess that's one point in it's favor. 

Then again, you could just play one of the originals or Generations and use your phone for better games like Super Monsters Ate My Condo or Mahjong Mobile......just sayin.....

Code of Joker: F2P Done Right

I've been playing a metric fuckton of Code of Joker recently and if ever there was a standard for what a F2P game should be then THIS is it.

I'm going to assume most people won't know what CoJ is but a long time ago I did a blog post about it so have a read here to clue yourself in.

http://identitygaming.blogspot.jp/2013/10/return-to-game-centre-code-of-joker.html

As a quick summary, it's an arcade trading card game that plays a little like Pokemon, Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh all slammed together into one really fun card battling experience.

Back when it was first released you'd pay a certain number of credits to charge an energy value.  You would spend those points to play games and any points left over at the end would be converted into currency for you to buy new cards with when you came back at a later date.

However this all changed and the game went free to play.  Code of Joker now works on a system similar to every iPhone game under the sun.  You have an energy meter that has 100 points and playing a game costs a minimum of 40.  These points recharge over time and 100 points is enough to play 2 games for exactly no money.

The complaint that I hear with a lot of free to play games is that there's a significant amount of stuff locked behind a pay wall.  If not that then it's a case of a lot of over powered, game breaking stuff being locked away from people who don't want to spend money. 

Code of Joker is not like this, you are not locked out of anything if you don't put any money into the machine with the exception of cosmetics.  The only thing putting money in the machine does for you increases the rate you get cards since you get 1 or 2 cards as a reward per game.  But even if you do decide to put money in, 200 yen ($1.60 or £1.10) gets you a maximum of 7 games.  7 fucking plays, for 200 yen!  That shit is NUTS!  £1 on a UK DDR machine would get you 3 songs, which lasts about 12 minutes while Code of Joker you can play for an hour or two for the same price AND receive a load of free shit while you do it.

This is how Free to Play games SHOULD be.  Locking people out of things or charging in order to win is stupid, pisses people off and turns them away.  If you provide paid options that actually reward the player without pissing off those who don't pay too hard then you have a recipe for success and SEGA have fucking nailed it here.

Typing of the Dead

It may be extremely weird that one of my favorite PC games of all time happens to be a fucking typing tutor, but this game is AWESOME so whatever.

The thing that most typing tutors have in common is that they are really boring.  They feel like your are taking some kind of fucking course and generally speaking it doesn't make you feel motivated and therefore you don't give a shit about your typing skills.  But then came along this game and changed EVERYTHING you thought you knew about typing tutor software.

In case anyone doesn't know what The House of the Dead is, allow me to take a moment to explain. 

Back when Sega was still doing hardware, House of the Dead 2 was one of the big motherfuckers of the rail shooter genre.  Everyone knew and had put at least one credit into one of these damn machines.  They were absolutely everywhere and it was impossible to walk into a cinema or bowling alley without seeing at least one of these games in the establishment.

The Typing of the Dead is exactly the same game as House of the Dead 2, but instead of a light gun you use your keyboard to murder zombies.  Zombies pop up on the screen with a word on their chest and you have to type it before they gnaw your face off.  Typing quickly is key to getting high scores and typing accurately is key to staying alive and trust me, this game doesn't fuck around.

The first couple of stages are extremely easy but after that they throw all sorts of crap at you like stupidly long sentences or words that you may be unfamiliar with the spelling of and shit like that.  However it's the games bosses where it really starts to shine.  Each boss has it's own gimmick so not only do you have to type quickly and accurately, but you have to overcome a challenge while you do it.

For example, the boss on stage 2 opens and closes it's chest and while it's chest is closed the word is greyed out and you can't type.  If you fail to complete the sentence in 3 short bursts then he shoves his spear right into your slow face.  Stage 3 makes this really difficult by making you answer a quiz while the words fly crazily about the screen.  The boss is a hydra looking thing and each head represents one question answer, so with this guy you can type the word perfectly but getting the question wrong will still result in taking a hit.

If you're bad at typing and you don't think you can handle this high octane typing action then fear not because there is a drill mode that will teach you the correct typing method and has many drills for you to practice so that one day you make tackle the horde of zombies in the story mode.

The Typing of the Dead is kind of old and kind of hard to find and it has a few things that are annoying about it.  For example you can't quit the fucking game, I have to alt tab and close it via the task manager every goddamn time.  But if you don't want to deal with all that archaic bullshit then just pop over to steam and get The Typing of the Dead: Overkill off the store. 

That's right, this typing tutor is so fucking good it got a goddamn SEQUEL.  Get on that shit.

Sega! Drop Sonic and Revive the Following....

So, anyone who has played a Sonic game past Sonic Adventure 2 Battle knows that Sonic is basically a giant pile of steaming shit.  Even if the last few games have been passable, they still aren't anywhere nearly as good as they used to be.  All any Sonic fan ever wants is for Sega to release a good, fast Sonic game devoid of all his stupid fucking friends (except maybe Tails) but this never ever happens.

So it's about time Sega just admit it, they aren't going to make another Sonic game that will ever live up to it's legacy, ever.  So here is what Sega should do; drop Sonic and breath life into 3 dead titles and try to actually put some effort into making them so that all the long forgotten fans like me and many others can get mad hype and throw all our money into the Sega coffers.

So if they were to do this, which 3 titles should be brought back from the dead?  Well let me tell you!

1. Shenmue

This is a fucking no brainer, right here.  Just go and look at the recent twittering from tons of fans basically begging for a Shenmue 3.  The ones that aren't begging for a Shenmue 3 are begging for a Shenmue 1+2 HD Collection.  WHY ARE THEY NOT DOING THIS?!  If Sega released a Shenmue 3 and a HD Collection, they would be swimming in so much money that they would be able to afford to provide every employee with their own private jet and still have money left over to fund the other 2 games I'm about to suggest.  Seriously Sega, get a clue and get on this fucking project already, jesus christ man.

2. Vectorman

If you don't know what Vectorman is, you are seriously missing out.  This was a game released in 1995 on the Mega Drive and it was a side scrolling game where you played as a robot shooting the ever loving shit out of loads of other robots.  The cool thing about this game was that the visuals were really slick for it's time.  Cool backgrounds, some interesting levels, vectorman animated all cool like, it was amazing.  On top of that he had this thing where he could transform into different thinks like a robot fish, a drill, a bomb, a frog, a train...all sorts of shit.  There was a Vectorman 2 but that was America only so I never played it, and still haven't.  There was some talk of a Vectorman 3 for the PS2 but it looked fucking terrible so it got cancelled. 

So Sega, NOW is that time to dig out this title, go get a new developer to begin work on a proper Vectorman 3 and keep all that charm that the first game had, none of that grimdark "I'm a serious robot" shit you were planning in the first place.  3D is fine, but just make sure it looks and plays good.  I dunno, release it on the WiiU or something and let us customise Vectorman on the fly with the touchscreen or some shit, just get on it.

and finally! 3. Dynamite Cop

If you owned a Sega Saturn you may know of a game called Die Hard Arcade.  If you don't know Die Hard Arcade, here is a video of me and my friend being shit at it.

Man that was a long time ago....what a terrible video......

Anyway, Die Hard Arcade actually had fuck all to do with Die Hard and it Japan it was called Dynamite Deka.  Dynamite Cop on the Dreamcast was the sequel to Die Hard Arcade and known as Dynamite Deka 2 in Japan.  Now with that confusion out of the way, these games are great beat em' up games that need to be brought back. 

Make a classic 3D beat em' up like this, maybe add in some online co-op play, maybe a 4 player option, improve that combat systems and whatnot and there's a good modern game there.  It's been a long LOOONG time since we saw a proper beat em' up and it would be nice if this genre saw a bit of a revival in the next gen. 

I know that if Sega said they were working on a Dynamite Deka 3, then I'd buy at least 20 copies, just sayin.

So that's it, get rid of that blue idiot and bring back these 3 great games.  We get great games, you get boatloads of money, seriously, heed my advice!

Return to the Game Centre! Code of Joker

Well it's been a long time, but today I finally made a return to one of the many game centres of Japan.  Pretty much as soon as I went through the door, I was greeted with all sorts of new games just waiting to be played, but the one that caught my attention today was digital trading card game Code of Joker.

If you have seen my prior posts about the game Mahjong 5, then you may notice that the machine is basically identical to that, however the game is obviously anything but Mahjong.  Code of Joker is a trading card game but unlike other game centre trading card games, you don't actually have to buy any cards, everything is done in game and stored on an Aime stat card.

Due to the fact I was with a group of friends, I didn't really get to play all that much but I did the tutorial and one normal game against the CPU, so I got a good feel of how it works.  I guess the easiest way to describe the game play would be like a strange hybrid of Magic The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh.

Cards in Code of Joker come in 4 types that include Units, Combination Monsters, Trigger Cards and Intercept cards.  Units are your basic monsters that you can play any time and combination monsters are upgrades for your basic units to make them even more powerful.  Trigger and Intercept cards are things that you play like Yu-Gi-Oh trap cards but the difference being trigger cards are activated when you play monsters or call an attack automatically, while intercept cards can be activated any time you want.

While I haven't tried them yet, there are lots of other modes that include an online mode that will hook you up with another player anywhere in Japan.  In the game centre that I was in there was also a "live" version of the cabinet, which I can only assume streams the game somewhere for people to watch but I'm not sure exactly.

The only disadvantage to this game is that if you were only staying in Japan for a short time then it's basically not worth playing.  Also, with it being a card game, knowledge of Japanese language, especially Kanji, is required in order to enjoy the game, so if you were a tourist hoping to try out Code of Joker then unfortunately your out of luck.

If you do know Japanese then there is a really good trading card game in here, so I would suggest checking it out.  I'll be covering Code of Joker as well as many other arcade games in the near future, so stay tuned!

The House of the Dead Memories

Today is a slow day, so let me tell you a story about one of the reasons why I love arcade games so much.

A long long time ago, back when I was just a kid and stuff like the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo were the best things I could get my hands on, going to the arcade was a big deal for me.  We're talking about a time when everything I used to play was 16 bit RPGs or platform games, so going into an arcade and playing something that was 3D and didn't use a standard control pad blew my goddamn mind.

So one day, I'm in London with my family since my dad had to do some work down there or something so to kill the time my mother agreed to take me to Sega World.  Now I've blogged about that place before, but holy shit it was amazing.  For a British child who loved video games, Sega World was gaming Mecca to me.

Anyway, one genre of game I really enjoyed playing back then was the rail shooters.  I really enjoyed using the light guns and there wasn't really a lot for my stupid child brain to figure out, I just had to point at the baddies and fire the gun.  House of the Dead was one of my favourites at the time, I loved the levels and when you died you got that cool little map that showed you how far you got.

Anyway, I'd had my session on House of the Dead and I went to some of the different floors to play other stuff like Fighting Vipers and Metal Slug and after the day wore on a bit I returned to the shooting floor to see if there was any other rail gun games that I hadn't played yet.  Then I saw this guy playing House of the Dead, way WAY older than I was and obviously a lot better than I was.  He was really far, to a point in the game that I had never even seen before, I couldn't help but just stand there and watch.

Once he beat the 3rd chapter he turned to me during the results screen and asked if I wanted to hop on with him.  My mother gave me a pound coin and I slammed that shit in and started shooting.  Now in hindsight I was probably fucking this guys game up, it becomes harder with 2 players and I probably wasn't pulling my weight, especially in the boss gauntlet.  We pushed on and made it through to the final level and then fucking Magician appeared.

When this motherfucker pops up he has NO weak point (apart from the blatantly exposed cables on his arms and legs, but I was young, whatever) and I lost my shit.  I had no idea what to do, my heart was going a mile a minute and my hands were shaking pretty bad.  We endured his attacks and shot wildly at him and eventually the last sliver of health dropped off and we beat the game.

We didn't really say much after that, I just thanked him put the gun back in its holster and then we went our separate ways.  That said, his kindness in letting me join him for the final stage to share that excitement as we fought the final boss is something that has stuck with me to this day, and it's a reason I enjoy going to arcades so much.

I've only really been to a proper arcade in Japan recently, but even to this day they still have that great environment and the people are quite friendly.  The games are also quite cheap and a lot of places do deals like 2 credits for certain games on certain days.  I'm glad there is one part of the world where coin-op is still a thing, I think gaming would be a lot worse off without it.

Is Hell Feezing Over? Sonic Dash Is Pretty Fun

Well I heard Sonic: Generations was pretty good but I've not played that so whatever...

Anyway! Sonic Dash was a game I downloaded on my iPod Touch in a moment of boredom simply because it was a free application and it had a character I recognised.  What I was expecting was another shitty Sonic game, just because he gets a game on mobile systems doesn't mean that will save him from shittyness.

What I got was something that was actually pretty fun to swipe away for short bursts while doing things like taking a dump or waiting for the bus, so it was a pleasant surprise.  It's not like this games success is all its own though, since it's basically a rip off of the massively popular Temple Run app but it does a couple things differently enough to differentiate itself.

Basically you swipe the screen to move, collect rings for upgrades and just try to build a high score.  You can then share your scores with your friends, most of which probably don't care, but the option is there in case you have a group of sonic lovers in your facebook friends list.

There are plenty of games on the app store that go around ripping off Temple Run but that game is pretty fun so I'll take a Sonic themed version of that over most of the garbage Sonic games that get released for big proper consoles.

Sonic fans can rejoice as Sonic Dash marks the second recent Sonic game that doesn't make people want to throw up and smash things in a fit of rage, but as fun as this is, mobile gaming is still a load of absolute bollocks so it's not like Sonic Dash will be remembered after a year or two.

The Ninja

Look at that shitty fuckin' box, look at it!  It's like one of the developers kids drew that shit.  Good job the game is so damn good!

If you remember a while ago I made a post on a shitty master system game called ALF.  Well, in order to get that bad taste out of my mouth, I went and discovered this gem.  The plot of The Ninja is super simple; ninjas have kidnapped a princess, so go wreck their shit.

The game has about 12 or so levels, and in each one you move through, throw knives or shurikens at oncoming ninjas and kill a boss at the end.  Hidden in the stages are some scrolls you need to find so that you actually know where the princess is being kept, and when you do that, you get a shit ending.  The game also likes to mix things up with some levels that involve shit like moving logs on water or stampeding horses and shit like that.

Despite what I said about the ending and box art being a load of shit, the game itself is actually pretty fun.  So go find a copy, it's a good way to kill an hour or two.

Panzer Dragoon Saga Session 5

Another session another section.  A little bit of confusion since I managed to forget how to solve the puzzles for a little while, but we pulled through in the end.  Big bosses, lots of gunship killing and a badass dragon dogfight.  Next time, the PDS equivalent of a sewer level

VIDEOS!

Panzer Dragoon Saga Playthrough Session 1

Well it's done and uploaded, the first 2 parts of my Panzer Dragoon Saga playthrough are ready for viewing.

I'm aware that I cut myself off a little bit at the end of part 2, but all you missed was "bye guys" so nothing of value was lost there really.  I'll hopefully be shooting some more today and have them uploaded by tomorrow morning (Japan time) or this evening.

Here are the videos!

Alpha Protocol First Hour Impressions

So back in 2010, Alpha Protocol was released and at the time I ignored it after hearing some pretty lack luster reviews and just generally having no personal interest in the game.  Then about a year ago I managed to pick it up on steam for some stupidly low price and now finally I'm getting round to actually playing it

So far, it's not an awful game, it's playable at the very least but oh lord are there some problems with it.  First of all, the plot is just dull, not so much because it's cliche but because all the characters involved are just boring and I end up forgetting their names straight after any given cut scene.  I'm trying to pay attention but I've seen this kind of plot so many fucking times that I probably don't even need to pay attention in order to figure what goes on.  But I only played for an hour so it could get better at least.

Who are you again?

The biggest problem with this game is it just has technical bugs crawling out the arse and no it's not just a case of my computer being bad.  I get that 3rd person games nowadays like to have over the shoulder cameras but this goes WAY overboard, where the camera is just constantly riding up the main characters back and it sometimes makes seeing anything quite difficult.

This guy was just running into that wall, probably hoping if he couldn't see me I couldn't see him either...

Speaking of the main character, I don't really like the skill points system in this game for some reason

I took this picture pretty near the start, so I've got a few more points since then, but no matter how much I load down on assault rifle skills, the guy is still a shit shot with it.  It's not me not being able to aim either, if you move or fire the reticule goes WAYYYYY off target, so I'm having to fire only 1 or 2 shots at a time to actually hit anything, and if I was going to shoot a gun like that, I'd just get a pistol for fucks sake.  That said, if I don't aim the gun, hitting shit seems to be a bit easier, so why in the hell does carefully trying to aim my gun make things HARDER TO FUCKING HIT!  Although there is a possibility that this will change over time too.

The last thing I have to touch upon in this first impressions post is the hacking mini-game.  I fucking hate this mini game, why does it have to be so fucking stupid?!

Basically you have to line up the 2 codes at the top with the codes in the big grid.  Everything that isn't the code changes constantly so you basically have to search for the line that isn't moving.  It's not hard, at all, but it's really fucking annoying and moving the right hand code piece with the mouse is a pain in the ass and I've sometimes failed hacks because it doesn't control properly.  But on the other side of the spectrum, you get the most insultingly easy lock pick mini game I've ever seen, so maybe this bullshit is the make up for that.

Despite all the complaints, I'm not sick of it just yet and I'm willing to at least try to get to the end.  What I will say though is that if it costs more than 5 bucks to pick this up, it ain't worth it.