Starting today (and ending until the end of the Earth or we run out of ideas, at which point we’ll continue when we have a new idea), we’re implementing Mashup Mondays. On Mashup Monday, we bring together the old and the new and create something spectacular.
This week, multiplayer mayhem: Street Fighter II and Halo 3
Woke up this morning, brushed my teeth, ate a little breakfast, turned on the TV, and what did I see? You think I’m going to say Gilligan’s Island, but no, it was the remake of the Honeymooners, starring Cedric the Entertainer and Mike Epps. I hadn’t watched it before, so I decided to give it a shot. Throughout the entire movie, I yearned for the days when a fat smart guy and a dumb skinny guy were actually entertaining. Comedy usually comes in fat and skinny - Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Fred and Barney, and Gilligan and the Skipper. Thinking about that last pair reminded me that they were the toast of the town back in their days, even past their day, what with the release of The Adventures of Gilligan’s Island for the NES as recently as 1990. Figured this was a good opportunity to share with you guys what the game was like, since because there were no sequels, I’m assuming few people played it.
In my post for Achievement Unlocked, I made reference to how I sometimes fill in the blanks on ideas or themes that games leave out, just to flesh out the game I’m playing and give it some extra weight. Sometimes those blanks take the form of NPCs, who are just standing around and don’t really get a whole lot of development. So for this segment on Homestyle, I’m going to point out some random NPC and try to make sense of the senseless.
Let’s start with Error:
Error makes his gaming debut in Zelda II: The Adventure of Link, courtesy of the Nintendo Entertainment System. This game was a huge departure from the original Legend of Zelda due to its side scrolling sections and character interaction. Link happens upon Error in the town of Ruto, where the image above recreates the meeting of the minds.
“I AM ERROR” is probably one of the most memorably lines of dialogue from any Zelda game, aside from “HEY!” and “LISTEN!” from Ocarina. “I am error” is an incredibly deep, philosophical thought on the existence of men in the world of Hyrule. In the grand scheme of things, we are all creatures of happenstance, and our being is merely an ‘error’ of chance. Why are we here? “Error.” Where are we going? “To err.” What are we going to do when we get there? “Error.” Error here is ahead of the curve compared to anyone in Hyrule, save for the woman who offers to sleep with Link for health (and if you don’t think that’s what happens there, you’re just lying to yourself). Everyone is worried about trophies and hammers being stolen, but Error knows the truth of his existence, that he is a mistake. He…is….Error…
Or maybe that’s just his name….
Or a typo….
Just wanted to drop a quick message giving everyone an update on the kinds of things we’re going to be doing here on the site. My buddy Charlie Applebutter hasn’t formally introduced himself yet, but he’s working on some stuff that should be up shortly. We’re also working on some reviews of some classic games as well as some interesting topics of discussion (food for thought: who’s the biggest tool in games?). Finally, we’ve got some guests putting together some stuff that’ll go up in the next week or so, so bear with us as we get things sorted out. It’s a very exciting time for me and Charlie, so we hope you guys look forward to what we bring you.
In the meantime, here’s a neat video of some old school drumming action. I’m pretty over Super Mario renditions, but I’m a sucker for a giant drum kit and a dude wailing on them
The rage in games these days is achivement unlocking (or getting trophies if you’re a Sony guy), the micro reward for doing something in-game, like winning a race or shooting 200 pigeons (GTA players know what I’m talking about here). It’s an added reward for playing the game and gives you some added replayability after the main game is over.
Armor Games has done the equivalent of taking out the cereal pieces in Lucky Charms and left behind the sweet, sweet marshmallows. “Achievement Unlocked” has you play as an elephant (don’t ask) in a room of spikes (stop asking) and your only goal is to earn achievements, and you get them for everything. It’s pretty sweet feeling like you’ve accomplished something by “Finding the main menu” or “Preloading the game.”
With games like this, I like to create my own story in my head. For this one, I kinda envision this being an elephantine version of Saw, with some puppet master putting Dumbo here through the ringer, just to make him appreciate things like “Walking to the Left.”
Movie tie in games have the distinct pleasure of being, almost universally, garbage. We all know about the ET debacle back on the Atari, and my first recollection of realizing movie games are horrible was Total Recall on the NES. For every Chronicles of Riddick, there are about 20 Enter the Matrix’s. But maybe it’s not the fault of the game designers. Maybe it’s the source material. I think if the source is good enough, the game should be able to follow.
Which brings us to our newest feature - Classic Reenactments.
Having just seen the movie Doubt, a gripping tale of conviction and devotion within the Catholic church and one sister’s fight to protect a child from the grip of a perverse priest, the story seemed ripe for gaming bliss. Here’s what I imagine a game version of Doubt would look like, as only Capcom could deliver:
Sorry for the semi-gross headline…
I just got done screwing around with flOw for a little bit. It’s a perfect example of a mental distraction from the real world. Not too complicated to grasp, visually stimulating, and the best way to kill some time when you really should be working on something more important. For the 3 of you out there who haven’t given it a try yet, here’s the link. You really should click it.
At the risk of being cliché and cheesy, let me kick off the inaugural post for Homestyle Gaming by saying “Welcome to Homestyle Gaming!” This site is for those of us who want to go home again, that period in our childhoods when our best friends were either 8-bit or holding the second controller. This is the place where classic games can call home and we hope that we get to help you revisit some of those memories.
“But wait,” you say, standing there with your smug “I’ve got you” face on. “Classic games are for losers and the children of the third world who can’t afford real games. We’ll have none of that.” Well to you, I say nay. We’re also going to devote major time to indie developers. Indie games these days do everything the big boys do, and we want to welcome them into the fold. Ever hear of a little game called Braid? Mind blowing stuff, with major throwbacks to classic games. These games are the classics of the next generation, and we’ll be talking about them too. So sit back, grab your hot cocoa and your D-Pad, and check back often.