30 Days of Video Games Day 7

Best Gaming Couple:

Just kidding.  Kind of.  They do make a great team.

I dunno much on this one.  I do like the idea of Mario and Peach, but only when Peach actually does something to further her getting out of the situation, like in Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door.  It's kind of the same with Phoenix Wright and Maya Fey; Maya's a fun character, but Phoenix carries most of the investigation.

I guess I'd go with Crono and Lucca.  Crono isn't a particularly great character, what with him hailing from the silent-protagonist tradition, but he's very offset by the awesome characters around him.  Lucca is definitely my favorite for a couple with Crono, which is saying something considering most of the teams you make end up with Crono looking like a pimp.

 A 32-bit pimp.

But Lucca was a machinist, and she complained a lot less than Marle.  She also spoke regular damn English, something Ayla could never comprehend.  Also, judging by all of the fanart and cosplay on the internet, I'm not the only one with this opinion.

This is notable because Lucca isn't naked in this picture.

30 Days of Video Games Day 6

Most Annoying Character

Before I go into the real answer, I have to give a shout out to Larry Butz from Phoenix Wright. It's fun that he's a recurring character and that none of the other characters really like him, but damn it, he can even make Phoenix want to beat the crap out of him.

But no, this award goes to someone who really deserves it.  I've been playing a lot of Tropico 3 lately, and it really is a wonderfully fun game.  It's kind of a messed-up Sim City, where you're a small island nation in the Caribbean in the middle of the Cold War.  The events are just as wrong in the campaign mode, too; I've had to choose between people's lives and taking money out of the treasury for my own personal gain.  It's a hilarious game.  But even in the first mission, you get to meet Betty Boom, the revolutionary DJ on every damn island you go to.  Her entire job is to complain about everything you do.  I have played a mode easy enough where I could just govern like a nice guy, giving tax breaks and generally keeping the peace.  She complains about EVERYTHING.

The world as seen by Betty Boom

This is a true story: in one of my games, my island was so prosperous that I issued a tax cut and I gave the islanders free housing.  I was trying to please the capitalists and the communists.  Betty Boom complained about BOTH EDICTS.  How the hell can you complain about free housing?  And whenever I build an army to defend myself from rebels (I've lost because the destroyed my palace), she condemns my trying to protect myself and my citizens.

30 Days of Video Games Day 5

Day 5 – Game character you feel you are most like.

I've thought about this one since I've been on the list, and even though whenever I think about this answer my brain immediately says, "No, no, think of someone else," I always come back to this character.  So, bleh, it has to be Dick Gumshoe.

He's the nicest guy in the world, and he believes in people to a fault.  He's often described as "this big lug," which is pretty much the way my mind refers to myself.  And his pay will always get cut because of the little errors he makes, regardless of whether or not those errors are within his own control.  

So.  Dependable (kind of). Loyal to even those that treat him poorly.  Broke like a joke. A big son of a gun.  And when he was dealt his hand in life, it turned out the dealer left the joker in his hand and now everyone has to get a new hand.  Yeeeaaaaaahhhh.  Sounds pretty accurate.

30 Days of Video Games Day 4

Arg only 25 minutes until midnight!
My Guilty Pleasure Game - Definitely Warioware for the Gamecube.

It is almost the exact same game as the Game Boy Advance version, and that's what makes it guilty.  Another reason for guilt is the fact that I sold my GBA game, which gives me the sads.  The graphics look awful when blown up on the big screen, and the fact that I already know all of the games makes me playing against new opponents very unfair.

Ew.

But the game has one very redeeming factor: it's freaking Warioware.  And that makes it wonderful.  It's weird, and  it's random in about the closest way something can actually be "random."  Warioware is and always will be one of the best stupid guilty pleasures around.

30 Days of Video Games Day 3

Day 3 - A game that is underrated.

I can't think of an underrated game without thinking of Killer 7.  It's a weird game by just about every definition: the story is very off-beat, the main characters (or character?) are strange, the supporting cast is just as odd and the gameplay isn't what anyone expected to happen on a Gamecube.

Are there 8 people in this picture? 2? 1? Twenty? I can't answer wholeheartedly.

Unfortunately, that last part is what gave Killer 7 its shaky ratings.  It's an on-rails shooter, like House of the Dead with the ability to turn around and choose routes, but little else in the way of exploration.  One of the most 'apologetic' reviews I read said that Killer 7 would have made an amazing anime, but not as good of a video game.  Half of the points he gave (I think he gave it about a 6 out of 10) were for style.  And that's pretty damn accurate: the game oozes style in all of the right ways.  In the interest of keeping this short, I have this to say about Killer 7: good characters in an offbeat but interesting story can make up for some *airquotes* bad gameplay.

I never found the gameplay bad; I thought it was kind of captivating.  Plus, you get to play as a Luchador in a suit with twin grenade launchers.

30 Days of Video Games Day 2

My favorite character... This one's kinda tough.  There's a lot of characters that I really like, in games that I will probably touch on later in this series of blogs.  Phoenix Wright and Miles Edgeworth, for example, are two awesome characters in their games, and no one has popularized screaming OBJECTION! like Phoenix.

As if you needed a picture.

And Team Fortress 2 has a lot of characters that are fun to watch and play as, especially the Heavy, Demoman, Pyro, and Medic.  But I think if I'm going to choose one character from every video game I've ever played to be my favorite, I have to ask the question: "Who absolutely delights me when he/she shows up in a game?"  And even though I'll have a million different answers tomorrow, I'm going to choose one now: Fawful, from Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga.

A strange choice? Yes. But awesome.  It's the writing that sets Fawful apart from the other villains in, well, pretty much any game I've ever played.  So in the first game of the series, Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, the villain, Cackletta, wants to steal Princess Peach's voice.  But during the first "level" of the game, Fawful ambushes you aboard Bowser's airship.  He then busts out with this monologue:  

"I am the great Cackletta's most best pupil, who is named Fawful! I am here, laughing at you! If you are giving us the chase, just to get your silly princess's voice, then you are idiots of foolishness! Princess Peach's sweet voice will soon be the bread that makes the sandwich of Cackletta's desires! And this battle shall be the delicious mustard on that bread! The mustard of your doom!"

Fawful is full of "lolwut" sayings like this through out the series.  When Bowser asks him what his beef is, Fawful responds confusedly with, "Beef? I am lacking in beef. Fawful is beefless."  Engrish is at its best with Fawful, and that's why I'm choosing him for my favorite character from all video games forever (probably not, but still.)

30 Days of Video Games Day 1

For anyone who doesn't know, this meme has been kind of going around the internet.  I'm not 100% on why it was made or why other people do it, but I'm writing this because video games are fascinating to me for many reasons, one of which being that popularized gaming has been around for all of a few decades.  For anyone who accidentally stumbled on this and had some compulsion to read this and therefore doesn't know me, I am less than a few decades old; two and a fifth (rounded down) to be exact.  Being almost as young as an industry is kind of weird, and it makes a totally legitimate sounding excuse to really like video games and treat them halfway seriously.


So here goes.


Day 1: My Very First Video Game


Okay, so I'm not sure what my first game is, because I started playing reeeeaaaally early.  I'm pretty sure, though, that the first thing I played video games on was the original Game Boy.  And as any red-blooded American who played games on that brick, I played the most American game around:

I remember playing this before I even knew what I was doing.  I played multiplayer Tetris with my brother before I even really recognized Mario and Luigi as the characters on the side of the screen.  

Since then, I've seen Tetris grow into probably the biggest game franchise ever.  Tetris on the Game Boy in 1989 accomplished what the Wii set out to do in 2007: it captured every gaming market around.  Do you know someone who hasn't played Tetris?  If they haven't, they're in the minority.