Retro Sabotage
Retro Sabotage – a moderately interesting site, based on remaking certain classic games in Flash, but adding small, game-breaking details. Definitely a commendable effort, but slightly too trite for my tastes.
Retro Sabotage – a moderately interesting site, based on remaking certain classic games in Flash, but adding small, game-breaking details. Definitely a commendable effort, but slightly too trite for my tastes.
In searching for resources to re-work this site's design, I came across a number of well-known (and not so well-known) sites which host various interesting things.
Tons of fonts from various Famicom and arcade games. Compiled by a guy named Genshichi Yasui. I found it via browsing codeman38's font collection, which has lots of great fonts, including ones based off Secret of Mana and Donkey Kong Country.
If you've searched for "video game maps" before, you've no doubt come across Ian Albert's Video Game Maps. Comprehensive maps from various classic (read: good) games. I need to wget his site sometime.
Great crap of craps! In the attempt to have the longest game title ever, Nintendo released (a few months ago) the sequel to its quite popular DS music game, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan (roughly translated to "Yeah! Fight! Cheer Squad"). As you might expect, this game is completely ridiculous... a point hammered home when you actually see the characters who comprise said "ouendan": butch-looking dudes (yes, dudes) who sport long leather trench coats and scream manly-sounding Japanese.
How does it work? Various denizens of a city find themselves in various predicaments (illustrated by hilarious cut scenes). One kid has a crush on a girl and is challenged to a dodge ball match in order to win her heart. A tired, worn out old racehorse is running one last race and crosses paths with a robber running from the law. Cleopatra has indulged a bit too much in the starchy foods, and has to whip herself back into shape before Marc Antony comes home. You know, problems that normal people face every day. Once they realize that their problem is beyond their power to solve, they scream, "OOOOUUUENNNNDAAAANNN!" and get cheered to victory.
The Ouendan shows up and cheers and dances to a famous (I have to assume) Japanese pop song. Numbered circles appear on the screen, with shrinking outlines. When the outline is just on the border of the circle, tap it with the stylus in the order it appeared on the screen. Better timing yields more points, and keeps the Ouendan cheer meter raised higher.
Like all music games, the real point of Ouendan 2 is the songs that you tap the touchscreen in time with. Unfortunately, I don't really follow Japanese pop at all, which makes the game a bit harder to enjoy. I did recognize some of the tracks from the first game in the series (due to karaoke and such), which made it rather enjoyable and nostalgic.
You would think that if the music is somewhat unaccessible for the Japanese versions of this game, I might recommend the North American version, Elite Beat Agents. You would also be wrong, and I would probably feel compelled to hit you with a truncheon. I searched for "elite beat agents song list," and the first hit was from Game|Life, ironically enough. Check that link, and you'll see that the song list is total rubbish.
My recommendation is to grab the first Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan and try out its different take on the music/rhythm genre. If you just can't get enough, go for either the true sequel (<a href="http://www.nintendo.co.jp/ds/ao2j/index.html" title=Moero! Nekketsu Rizumu Damashii">Moero! Nekketsu Rizumu Damashii</a>) or its spiritual brother (Elite Beat Agents).
Remember that not-yet-day-old post about the Miyamoto-signed Super Famicom? In a bizzaro twist, it turns out that the seller, one Nathan Smart, is an attendee of the same church as my good buddy Soulman. If I would have actually looked at the seller's location, I might have anticipated this coming. Nathan writes a bit about his motivation behind selling the system. I can totally sympathize with his concern – just having too much stuff to cart around. Some dude in a movie once said, "The stuff you own ends up owning you." However, I can guarantee that such a one-of-a-kind item would make its way to the top of my "stuff to keep" list.