Lemmings

Sometime back in the 90s, my friend rented Lemmings for the Super Nintendo, and we played it a bunch. It's a fairly simple puzzle thing, but it has these endearing creatures that you're supposed to save, and its music is just legendary. (You'll have to trust me on this. It's all chiptunes, but so many of them have an incredibly epic feel, and they have remained firmly stuck in my head in the decades since I played it.) Before I went home, I memorized my password to the tune of one of the game's music pieces. (LGSSCZL)

To give you an example of how I feel about the music: there is exactly one piece of piano music that I can play with both hands without having to practice and scrutinize written music, and it's an arrangement of the Lemmings tune with the Pachelbel's Canon chord thing in the background. I worked it out from memory one summer at my grandma's house. (I later wrote sheet music using Noteflight. A PDF is here.)

I don't love everything about the game. For one thing, you can't save all the lemmings. In fact, you have to blow some of them up. (It's just pixels flying, so it's not gross or anything, but it's not exactly a good plot point.) And some of the hazards that can take them out are a bit disturbing. And the game can get hard, in the tedious way. I mean, it's also challenging to use your various skills to make the lemmings a path to the exit. But even when you know exactly what to do, it's easy to make one little mistake that messes you up.

There are versions of the game for the PC and pretty much everything else that was out at the time. And there's a modern fan-remake called NeoLemmix, which adds quality-of-life improvements to fix that stuff. But I do care about intellectual rights. So, like 30 years after I played the game, I bought it on eBay and continued where I left off. It was just a few levels away from the end of the easiest difficulty level ("Fun"), so I have finally beaten the game!

If I keep playing, I'll probably use the NeoLemmix version. But either way, the music is on my internal playlist forever.

U.N. Squadron

U.N. Squadron was the first Super Nintendo game I rented back in the day. It caught my eye from the Nintendo Power magazine stuff based largely on the fact that it has an energy meter, unlike most games in the genre, so it seemed more accessible. The various customizations and the Capcom brand were draws too. I wasn't surprised to find that the game has delightful music. The backgrounds are gorgeous, especially if you're used to NES graphics. And it has a bunch of memorable boss battles and stuff. I eventually beat it on Easy mode, although it did require a bunch of tedious side missions to get enough in-game money to buy the best plane after I had already upgraded once or twice.

The game isn't perfect. Since weapons and planes cost money, you sort of have to lose and retry, over and over, in order to build up enough to buy what you need. In fact, the "right" way to play the game is to stick with the default plane (and its minimal special weapons) until you can buy the best plane, the Efreet. Doing this is sad because you have to bypass my favorite aircraft, the A10A Thunderbolt, which has an extra downward-firing cannon (at the cost of a weaker forward-firing one). It's kind of sad that the game simultaneously encourages you to get a variety of aircraft, and demands stinginess.

The "U.N." branding is kind of odd. In Japan the game is branded after some Anime series, but they changed the name for sale in other countries. There is no reference to the United Nations though, or anything else with those initials. It's about a mercenary group. But whatever - the genre is not known for its meaningful plots. 

There's a side-effect to the original branding though: games based on outside brands rarely get re-released on virtual consoles. So U.N. Squadron has never been available digitally on modern systems. So recently I bought the game on eBay and replayed it. It's really nice - it has aged quite well, assuming you can overlook the above-mentioned need to be stingy. After beating it again on Easy, I went for some additional runs: Beat on Normal, Beat on Easy without the Efreet (so I could use the Thunderbolt on almost all the levels, including the last one), Beat on Easy without using any continues (which required me to use my least-favorite character so I could power up my main weapon faster).

Metroid Dread

We waited a very long time for a sequel to Metroid Fusion, and it's delightful to have it. The game looks and plays like a real Metroid game, more so I think than Samus Returns (the game it most resembles and the second-most-recent). The map in particular is delightful - not only does it show you the location and type of items you've seen (including whether you've acquired them or not), it shows everything you need about the rooms you've visited, including individual destructible blocks and what it takes to destroy them. The lighting effects are nice too.

The boss battles are pretty hard - I perished a ton of times on almost all of them. But there are always checkpoints nearby, so the penalty for losing is low. (Really it's just time on the clock, if you're interested in speed running.) One of the help text thingies they show you while loading says that "no attack is unavoidable", and that's true - once you know what you need to do, even the hardest battles become reasonable. And one of them is pure joy.

I do miss the music of Super Metroid. Dread's music is fine, but none of it is memorable, and it doesn't lend the same kind of character to the different areas that Super Metroid (or even Zero Mission) had. 

As for plot, that is also fine, and I can't say much without spoiling things, but I will say that they didn't include much detail, and I don't feel like this works as the "ending" of the side-view Metroid story, like the pre-release media paints it as. At the start we don't find out how the Federation reacted to Samus's rebellion in the previous game, or where the Dachoras and Etecoons went, or why Samus's armor looks totally different now. And while the ending is certainly more plot-heavy, it still raises a lot of questions.

But anyway, I'm very happy that they finally made a new Metroid game. Hopefully it will do well and they'll keep cranking them out.

Axiom Verge

Any Metroid fan will agree that there aren't enough Metroid-like games in the world. So whenever I hear about one, I want to want to play it. But there's often something that shuts me down, like an icky theme or a super melodramatic premise or tone. Axiom Verge is an indie game (like literally by one guy) that is super popular but does have a weird/dark plot. But a sequel came out and people have been raving, so I gave it another look. The plot isn't sadder than Ori, and the icky factor is actually less than the worst of Super Metroid (although in the latter game you can avoid the worst of it). So I went ahead and got it.

Exploring the world is delightful. The visual and musical tone are very reminiscent of Super Metroid and Zero Mission. The whole experience feels familiar - in the sense that it's weird and alien, but the creatures from Metroid would feel right at home there. The power-ups definitely have Metroid-esque analogs, but they are unique at the same time, and it's fun to be surprised with how they enable you to get past the game's various obstacles.

And just like in Super Metroid, you can get lost and stuck. I got super stuck at one point. It ended up being just a matter of having forgotten about one little spot, but as I explored everywhere, I kept finding optional power-ups. That's a sign of good design, in my opinion. And of course when I finally found the way forward... well then I got stuck again, but after that, it was super satisfying. Another time I wandered all over the world trying to find that next item that would let me progress, only to realize that I already had the ability I needed, but I had never thought to use it in a certain way. And believe it or not, realizing that was a good feeling.

I like the boss battles. They're not super complex, but the bosses look cool, and it's satisfying to figure out what to do. (It's usually much simpler than what I expect going in.)

There's a lot of variety in items to collect. I mentioned the abilities that would correspond to "suit upgrades" for Samus, which are the main source of innovation regarding how you get around the world. But there are also upgrades to health and attack power, that sometimes come in pieces you need to collect a bunch of to equal one upgrade. So there is always a reward for exploring. There are also a lot of different weapons. Verify few are strictly required, but there's a lot of variety in how they work, so you can pick what works for you (or what looks the coolest).

The plot is decent but super confusing. The ending - I don't know if it was trying to lead into a sequel or just to cement the feeling that you don't know what the heck is going on. And of course I could have done without the bits of profanity thrown in, and the icky white remains of the former population. (In Metroid, you're always exploring ruins, but you generally don't actually run into the former inhabitants.) I was also a bit thrown off by this item you can get that allows you to enter codes that supposedly alter reality. One of them is obvious, but it doesn't seem to do anything. In fact, even after finishing the game I have no idea what you're supposed to do with it, or what any of the other codes are.

But that aside, Axiom Verge is the most Metroid-like game this side of an actual Metroid game, and that includes Ori. It is glorious.

A Link to the Past

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past has been one of my favorite games, really since I saw the first screenshot and saw that it was a return to the Zelda 1 style and looked amazing. The SNES graphics create a charming world to explore, and there's so much in it - the game has the most levels of any Zelda game, and it started a lot of the conventions they still use in the top-down games, and even some in Breath of the Wild (like certain switches and the sword spin). And the music is super epic - an orchestrated version of the original theme, and probably the best ending sequence of any game. My only real regret about the game is that I read too much before I first played it, so there were a lot of things I didn't get to discover.

I replayed the game again after not having done so for probably 15 years, and it was really fun. I'm surprised at how many things I didn't remember - I'm still not sure where the last 4 heart pieces are. In order to make it challenging, I decided not to power up the Master Sword or my tunic - after all, the green outfit and blue sword look better than the wonky colors you end up with normally. This worked out pretty well.

Here are some screenshots of my journey, along with some random thoughts. (Some spoilers implied)

This is one of my favorite spots. The trees and river create this nice, tranquil vibe. And you passed below it on the way up and saw the heart, but it was inaccessible at the time, so finding the way in is rewarding. It looks like a great spot for a picnic or something.

The Zora king looks cool, and I like how he calls you "little man".

I want a sign like this.

Drat, turned into a bunny again.

Zelda is very quotable.

See that bombed wall in the Tower of Ganon? I had never figured out how to get to it before. But this time I remembered a puzzle I solved (and felt like a genius!) in the extra dungeon of the GBA version of this game, and it hit me! (There's nothing essential in that room, but still!) I will leave it to the reader to figure it out. And no, there is no invisible floor.

This is me fighting Ganon, with the green tunic and blue sword.

... and proof that I won!

Now, a note about where this game falls in the plot. Nintendo has stuck it in the middle of one of three alleged timelines, but I think that's bunk. And A Link Between Worlds positions itself as a sequel to this game, which is also bunk (in part because the state of the Triforce at the start of that game matches the end of Ocarina of Time [split], not A Link to the Past [joined]).

But in any case, this has to be the last Zelda game. Here's why:

See? After this, the Master Sword is never used again. And Ganon is totally destroyed. The Essence of the Triforce said so. I think that precludes putting any other Zelda game after this in the timeline.

Anyway, even though I wasn't surprised by things very often, this game still ranks in my top five ever. Yay Zelda!

Cyber Shadow

This was a really good game for what it is. It's reminiscent of NES platform fighting games, but it has save points at reasonable places, upgrades to find - the stuff you'd expect in a modern game. It also has better, catchier music than most modern games have. A lot of the bosses are very cool looking. The graphics are intentionally retro, but given that limitation they look good.

On the other hand, it also has a melodramatic plot (although you can ignore that), and toward the end the game just gets a little TOO hard. But to be fair, even when things are really, really hard, MOST of the time it's a matter of figuring out what to do, meaning how to best use your various abilities to make the situation more manageable. So for most of the game, I didn't mind having to restart sections over and over because I felt like I was making progress by thinking things through. But in the rare times when it really does require precision (and in the many times when it seems like that's the only way to win), it does get frustrating. But none of this makes me dislike the game overall. (I paid the $15 pre-order price; the regular price is probably reasonable too if you're into this genre - I don't actually have any nostalgia for the NES ninja games.)

There was also one design bug, which I found quite frustrating. There's this part where you have to climb a set of platforms faster than this spirit monkey thing. The game hints that you can make it easier by sword-bouncing off of these lantern things, but I had this power-up left over from a previous area that made a blade spin around me and destroy stuff. That's great when you're fighting enemies, but this thing destroyed the lanterns before I could approach, so I just had to do the whole thing with very precise jumping. Drove me crazy.

Portal (1&2)

For the Christmas break, I played Portal 1 & 2. I had heard about them since forever, but I never really gave them a lot of thought - I was turned off by the "dark humor" motif, and of course they're not on Nintendo consoles. But Steam works on my laptop and the games were dirt cheap.

They're really fun. For one thing, the computer making fun of your character (who's not a bit fazed by the taunting) is pretty funny. And beyond that, the puzzles are really well designed. They're satisfying, not unreasonable, and they make you feel like an absolute genius whenever you solve one.

The portal gun works exactly like you'd expect - you put a blue portal here, an orange portal there, and they're connected. You can go through them. Other stuff can go through. Momentum is maintained. You can look through and see what you'd expect to see, which is generally the same room but from a different perspective (and maybe yourself, depending on how they're positioned). You can't help but want one. But then, that's how all good sci-fi tech is. Unrealistic, but so clear in its purpose and use that you can easily imagine what you'd do if you had it.

Best quotes: this and this, and my personal favorite.

 

Wishes

I've said before that time travel is always a bad plot point. Writers can use it for suspense, but as soon as you step back and analyze the logic of a story that uses time travel, you end up seeing major problems, all boiling down to the question of "Why didn't they use it to solve that?" And that's to say nothing about causality loops.

Well I've decided that using wishes are just as bad, if not worse. (And by "wish", I mean that a character gets to specify some nearly-unlimited action as a reward for something they did.) Wishes pretty much guarantee that the viewer/reader/player will come up with a better, obvious wish that the character could have used. And then it's just annoying. I recently finished a game that ended with a wish that made most things better, but had one very obvious and terrible side effect. Why didn't the character just say "except for this thing" at the end? And then there's Aladdin - I'm sure we can all think of more effective ways that Aladdin could have used his wishes. And why didn't Jasmine take a few wishes before Aladdin made his third? Wind Waker is another game that completely botches it.

To be fair, there might be a few exceptions. Wishes might be okay if they have very strict limits, or guaranteed side effects (like a malicious wish-giver who will look for loopholes). And I'm okay with a wish as a plot ender if the wish is just "fix everything", and everything does get fixed, like in A Link to the Past. (In general, I feel like there are some implied restrictions on Triforce wishes.)

 

That said…

 

The idea of wishes does raise an interesting question: if you were given the chance, what would you wish for?

 

Again, there have to be limits. If there aren't, your wish would have to be "maximize overall happiness for me and as many other good people as possible, for the greatest amount of time possible". Of course, if you're looking at the eternal perspective, God will make that happen anyway, so that would sort of be a wasted wish, but you could iterate on the exact wording. But to be interesting, the scenario has to have things scoped down. No asking for multiple wishes of course.

 

I think you'd want to disallow general commands, like "whatever will make me happy" - it has to be specified. Also it should have to be something that can take effect in an instant, and then be over. That would make the wisher think about long-term effects.

 

You'd probably also want to disallow the word "and", and maybe limit the number of words. Someone told me about a character in Dungeons and Dragons who was granted a wish. He presented a list of very specific things. The dungeon master (acting as the wish giver) didn't even read it, they just said "yep". Very effective in that context, but not a very good story element, so if you're designing the question, you'd want to disallow that.

 

One more limitation would be useful, I think: you might want to limit the scope of its effects. See, if you can create world peace, then morally you must do it, right? Like if you're Superman, then you'd feel guilty doing anything other than rushing around saving people. So if you want a character to make a more relatable decision, you sort of need to force them to have a certain amount of self-interest in the request. "No affecting the lives of others in ways that don't directly involve a benefit to you", or something like that.

 

So what would I wish for, given all of those limitations? My gut reaction would be to make me a Plasma Master. (That does have the risk of approaching the Superman problem, but I could set limitations that would reduce the scope of power.) If I had to scope it down even more, I might go for some localized mutant power, like not needing to sleep, or perfect health until the instant I would have died of old age. (But that would have the side effect of making you outlive your kids, which would be lame.) Flight is always a good option. Of course a billion dollars in an unhackable, untaxable bank account would be pretty life changing too, but that's boring. (Plus a well thought-out superpower could make you money - teleportation, for example.) You'd have to use a wish on something that no one could acquire in any other way.

 

But dude, whatever you wish for, don't make it stupid. Don't be like the time travelers.

Thunder Force AC

Back around the time I was introduced to Life Force for the NES, I was also exposed to Thunder Force III for the Genesis. I didn't actually play it, but I saw it enough to be intrigued by the power up system. You can get various weapon configurations which you can switch to at will, and when you get hit you only lose the current one. This is an interesting difference from Gradius and Life Force, where you power up and then stick with what you have, until you make a mistake. (Also, in Thunder Force III you can change the speed of your ship on the screen at any time instead of having to power up to get to a decent speed like you do in Life Force.) When I made a game as my senior project in high school, I based the power up system on Thunder Force III.

But I was always a Nintendo person - I never owned a Sega console. And I didn't realize that this game was eventually released (with some changes) as Thunder Spirits on the SNES. So I didn't get to really play the game until this week, when the arcade port was released on the Switch. It's very satisfying to be able to switch from one configuration to another depending on the situation: strong forward lasers, vertical missiles that then scour the floor and ceiling, a rear-firing cannon - even when starting a new life on Arcade Mode. And weaker wave and homing shots. Sometimes the obstacles and enemies feel cheap, but overall the power-up system (and nice graphics) offset all that.

The music isn't quite as catchy as the stuff in Life Force or Gradius 3, but it's still pretty good.

The difficulty level is crazy as you'd expect, but there are various difficulty settings and a "Kid Mode" - which gives you extra continues (plus the ability to give yourself more, but that's cheating), plus you don't lose power ups when you use a life. That itself almost feels like cheating, but Super R-Type has Novice mode, which is pretty much the same thing, so I figure it's legit. After a few tries I beat the game on Kid Mode using three continues, and later [with more practice] I finished it on Arcade Mode / Easy. My middle-school self would be so proud!

Samus & The Mandalorian

[Mild spoilers for Metroid & the first 6 episodes of The Mandalorian]

Okay so I really like The Mandalorian. And it's impossible to not notice certain similarities to Metroid games. Of course, Boba Fett came before Samus, so some of those similarities originated with Star Wars. But not all of them. Let's take a look at how much of them started where:

Who did it first?

	Mandalorians	Samus
Tri-directional visor	X
Bounty hunting	X
Boosted jumping	X
Flame weapon	X
Reluctance to remove helmet in public	X
Grapple (hook/beam)	X
Thermal visor		X
Parents killed in attack on peaceful colony		X
Traumatic reaction to the being that killed parents (droids/Ridley)		X
Rescued as a child by aliens who gave them armor and taught them to fight		X
Upgrading armor using items found on adventures		X
Rescuing/sparing a baby alien that had been flagged as a target		X
Getting rescued by the baby alien they saved		X
Dealing with evil organizations who want to exploit the baby’s powers		X
Betrayed employer by letting morality override job requirements		X
Attacked by monsters that are pretty much just two feet and a head with sharp teeth		X
Cool theme song		X
Total	6	11

Let's hope Samus isn't the suing type.

Christmas Nostalgia

Being an old geezer (okay, well at least half an hold geezer), it sometimes takes a while for the feeling of Christmas to kick in. And I'm not talking about the good feeling of doing good things for other people. Yeah, I know that that should be the focus, and I do try to do that. But that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the feeling of looking forward to getting fun stuff and getting time off of school/work for a while while you enjoy it. But there are a few things that can instantly trigger nostalgia about Christmas. Maybe they're weird, but whatever. Here they are in chronological order:

• Music from whatever records we listened to as kids. I think Perry Como and Bing Crosby or something.
• Certain types of cookies and chocolate candy, although I can't put my finger on exactly what
• In theory, old-style Transformers would do this. But I haven't seen one in a long time.
• Mega Man 3. This was probably my most-anticipated Christmas present ever, and something about the pre-Christmas-morning vibe made me think I wasn't going to get it. But I did! The music from this game is just epicly legendarily awesome.
• Mentos. The smell/taste of these are directly tied to playing Mega Man 3 at Christmas time, because that's when I first had them.
• Bomberman 64. There was one Christmas when Nintendo didn't have any good new games out, so I got the closest thing I could find to Mario 64 (as far as I could tell). The superhappy Green Garden music feels especially Christmasy, although the snowy White Mountain music does too.
• Metroid Prime. I was skeptical about whether you could make a good first-person Metroid game, but they did it! The quiet music from Phendrana Drifts (the snowy area) is especially wintery.

And... nothing else comes to mind. I guess the older you get, the more the seasons blur together, and I guess once you can buy your own stuff you don't rely on Christmas in quite the same way for cool stuff and experiences. But that's okay, because there's usually enough nostalgia in the above things to keep me going.

Bonus question: 

Since "Phendana" is a completely made-up word, why didn't they just spell it with an F?

Mega Man 11

I love Mega Man games. But I specifically like Classic Mega Man games. Mega Man 8 is my least favorite (although the original is pretty weak too). 9 and 10 were super retro, and I love those more than 6 and 7. But when Mega Man 11 was announced, I was skeptical. The art style is modern, and there are voice clips that can get on your nerves (like in 8). Things do look better than 8 visually, but they didn't use the perfect 3D model of Mega Man from Smash Bros, and the cell-shaded look wasn't quite what I had hoped for. There was a free demo, and it was admittedly fun. (You can slow down time!) But the music, while sort of catchy, wasn't nearly as glorious as the tunes from 3 and 4 (and some from 2). None of this was exactly a deal-breaker, but it didn't feel worth the $30 purchase price. I didn't even get the game when it was on sale for 20% off around Christmas time, partly because I didn't want to encourage the developers to make another game just like it.

But a couple of weeks ago eBay sent me a $5 coupon for no apparent reason, and I figured buying Mega Man 11 used would be a good way to spend it - basically I got the game for half price. It was definitely worthwhile. All weird things aside, the game is fun, and it does feel like a Mega Man game. Way better than 8, for sure.

From the demo, my first impression was that the game is super hard. Even for a Mega Man game. on the "Normal" difficulty (how could I play it on a lower one?) I couldn't beat the single Robot Master that was available in the demo, although it didn't let you "buy" (with in-game bolts) energy tanks and the like. The real game was also really hard, and I didn't beat anybody until I had visited most of the levels. But once I had purchased a bunch of upgrades and a few energy tanks, I started cranking through things. The clock said like 5.5 hours when I beat it. Then on Superhero mode it took me another 3 or so.

I actually do like the look, in general. The enemies managed to look classic in spite of the 3D cell shading. The robot masters look good too. And there's actually a fair amount of replayability, because the power ups you can get in the item shop are so useful that it kind of makes me wonder how well I'd do without them. Same with the slowing down time thing. In theory, it should be possible to do the game in a more classic style, once you know what to expect.


Final thing: even though I don't find my self humming any of the stage music (which is actually probably my biggest complaint), the stage select tune does get stuck in my head. So points for that.

Ikaruga

I've said before that I'm a fan of space shooter games - like 2D-scrolling things where you're a starfighter (or sometimes a dragon) and you blast through an environment full of robot ships and monsters. The genre captures a lot of science-fiction-ness in a simple format. And often the music is great. These games are also super hard - usually a single hit will blow you up, unless you get some kind of shielding.

Ikaruga is an innovative twist on space shooter games. All the enemies and shots are either dark (black/red) or light (white/blue). Your ship can switch between these two polarities at will. Touching a shot of the opposite polarity will blow you up, but you can absorb shots of the same polarity, converting them to ammo for your homing lasers. Your shots do double damage to ships of the opposite polarity. That's pretty much it - super simple. It's also insanely hard, even though it's only five levels long.

The game had my interest ever since it came out on the GameCube like 15 years ago, but I just got it recently. It was rare at the start, and then it kept getting re-released on consoles I didn't have. Also I wasn't sure I wanted to invest the time it would surely take to really play the game. (It also has super weird character art, and this weird point system that incentivizes you to destroy enemies in groups of three of the same color, as if surviving wasn't hard enough.) But now it's on the Switch and super cheap.

I really like it. Conveniently, the Switch version has a bunch of previously-unlockable options available from the start, like playing individual chapters and infinite continues (which is basically invincibility). This is a good thing, because Ikaruga is actually in sub-genre of space shooters that I'm not generally a fan of - it involves a lot of dodging a relentless stream of shots, rather than destroying enemies before they can fill the screen with shots. But this one is exceptional because the shots are your friends, if you do it right.

My son and I blasted through the game with the infinite continues, and then I did it alone, but of course that is cheating. I used 13 continues if I counted right, but the largest number you can have short of infinite is 9. Eventually I beat it with just those 9, and then 6. So no cheating! (That's on Easy difficulty; maybe someday I'll do it on Normal.) [Edit: I eventually beat it on Hard!]

In the mean time, the music gets stuck in my head all the time, and the gorgeous lasers blasting through enemy metal is simply delightful. And even when it's insanely hard (like at first, or if you turn the difficulty up), there are these moments where you feel like you're in the "zone", switching colors quickly to skip through otherwise impossible energy fields. It is glorious. Here, check out these shots of the almost-final battles:

So many lasers! What's not to like?

Breath of the Wild

I didn't want to get a Switch. $300 is a lot for a game console. For a time, I managed to ignore the main reason why people bought one last year: Breath of the Wild. I love Zelda games, but I somehow managed to convince myself that maybe this one wasn't what I was looking for. After all, it doesn't have regular "levels", and there's all sorts of stuff you can do around cooking meals with various ingredients, and some of the "T" rating descriptors gave me second thoughts. But then they announced Metroid Prime 4 for next year - also a Switch game. I knew I was gonna need that. And if I'm going to end up with a Switch, why not get one early so I can play it over the Christmas break? So I broke down and got it.

My goodness, the game is good. That's not news; it won the Game of the Year award, and it's a Zelda game after all. I'm not even sure who the audience of this post is, since anybody who cares about the game has already played it, I'm sure. But aside from being awesome, the game is also very long and involved, and so I naturally have a lot of thoughts about it, so here they are.

[Spoiler alert]

Even though I knew what to expect, I was kind of amazed when Link walks up to a cliff ledge at the start and looks out over Hyrule, and I thought about how much space there is, and now much detail, and how I was going to be able to actually go out there and explore it all. The intro bit is nice, giving you a little slice of the game in a limited (but still quite varied) space, before throwing you out there to find your way. And when I did leave the intro area, I think I covered so much distance (in game terms) in the first hour or two of playing that I could have traversed the entire map of any other Zelda game.

In doing this, I avoided roads, preferring to "explore". And I'm sure I found some shrines earlier than I might have otherwise by doing this. But I also ended up missing a bunch of things that were supposed to be obvious, like Hestu and the hint that the best way to get money in the game is to blast open the ore deposits you see here and there. I kind of wish they had included that stuff in the actual tutorial bit instead of assuming that people would follow the roads to their given destinations.

There were a lot of times where I had a hunch that I was supposed to look in a certain area for something and couldn't find it. But the game is so expansive that even if you don't find what you're looking for, you will usually find something of value. And even when you're missing out on something, you're never really stuck. There's always something else you can do.

The game does have two main weaknesses: First, there's very little catchy music - it's mostly mood stuff, like most modern games. And second, I missed the large "levels" (i.e. dungeons, temples, etc.) - meaning large themed puzzles chained together. This game has 120 "shrines", each of which contains one or more small puzzles (inside or as a requirement to access the shrine), and all but 4 of which are completely optional. I liked them, but most of them are pretty forgettable once you're done.

There was a lot of nice nostalgia in the game:

• The Lost Woods starts with a bit where you have to move in a certain path or you'll be sent back to the start. The beginning of this path is taken from the original Lost Woods in Zelda 1.
• The music that plays on Death Mountain is a slightly happier music than the final, Death Mountain music in Zelda 1
• Hyrule Castle has one of the few catchy tunes. It's a medly of the main Zelda theme and either Gannondorf's theme or Zelda's theme, depending on whether you're indoors or out. This sort of symbolizes the Triforce being brought together as Link approaches Zelda, who is locked in combat with Ganon.
• The map has all sorts of references to previous games. There are lots of towns, mountains, rivers, etc. named after towns or characters. I felt like the bridges and stuff on the eastern coastline was reminiscent of Zelda 1 too.

A lot of games that have really complex mechanics end up being "overdefined", in the sense that there's more to the game than you actually need. This game certainly fits this. There are some elements that you can dive into if you want, but I didn't. For instance, you can make a huge array of foods by combining different ingredients, but I stuck with a very simple combination of a "Hearty Radish" plus something else, which refills your hearts and gives you some temporary extra ones. And even those I didn't use much, relying instead on fairies (which automatically refill some hearts if you perish) and Mipha's Grace (which acts like that hearty radish meal automatically if you perish, but then takes 24 minutes to recharge).
There are also the horsies. I boarded one horse fairly early on, and stuck with it rather than looking for a better one (until after I had beaten the game, and then I did do some horsie quests). I also avoided a bunch of the mini-games.

I beat the game the first time in like 75 hours. I finished the last of the shrines and beat the game again in after about 135 hours. That is a lot of glorious exploration!

Okay so there's more I could say, but this post has been sitting in draft form for months, so I'm just gonna hit send. Yay Zelda!

Sonic the Hedgehog

In 1993 the Super Nintendo was a couple of years old, and I figured I'd get one eventually. But there was a brief period when I considered getting a Genesis instead. This was because of Sonic the Hedgehog. Something about the ads (specifically a bit from Star Light Zone) captured a sense of epicness, and because the ridiculous idea of a blue jumping hedgehog was more compelling than his plumber counterpart. I rejected this notion because I realized that despite the fact that Mario isn't that interesting as a character, Nintendo would always be the home of games like The Legend of Zelda (and I probably assumed Mega Man as well). But my friend got a Genesis and Sonic, so I sort of got the best of both worlds.

I loved Sonic. The game has great music and a beautiful, colorful world. I love how Sonic balances casually on one foot of you stand on a ledge, and (in the second game at least) waves his arms frantically if you are just one pixel away from falling. And I'll just repeat that the music is wonderful.

Sonic has a bit of an advantage over Mario in that he can gain a hit point much more frequently than Mario can, although Sonic never gains a long-range attack. On the other hand, though, Sonic games tend to require faster reflex, or at least a good idea of what is coming up next, and I had never seen a map of a Sonic level. Also, getting extra lives is harder; while collecting 100 rings will give you an extra life just like coins in Mario, in Sonic you lose all your rings whenever you get hit, and you always start a level with zero rings. This is balanced by some handy cheat codes, with which I beat the last level. Of course, that's not super satisfying, but one time, with guidance, I was able to get very close to beating it for real. Very close. Like, to the last battle, with one life left. But even though I had beaten Dr. Robotnik before, I lost that time. I was devastated.

Years passed. I told myself it was fine, because the game has this ridiculous ending anyway, in which it says "Try again" if you didn't collect all of the Chaos Emeralds, which you have a limited number or chances to collect and which require a totally different skill set from the rest of the game. (And that skill set includes a lot of luck, as far as I can tell.) And besides, Sonic is Sega character, and I'm a Nintendo fan.

But Sonic has been re-released since then. My in-laws had such a re-release for the PlayStation, which allowed saving and reverting state without a cheat code, so when I beat Sonic 1 on that, I figured it was a legitimate win, even if not the most satisfying one. (I saved only at the start of levels; saving mid-stage is a cheat no matter how you view it.) And last December I got the first two games on the 3DS for like $3 each. These editions also included the stage select without having to enter a cheat code, so I figured I could claim I could finally finish Sonic 2 that way.

Skipping some details - Today I beat Sonic 1 without any cheating! I looked at maps to find where extra lives and dangerous spots were, which helped. I actually finished with like 23 extra lives. I only got one Chaos Emerald, but you can play it again to collect more (I think), so maybe someday I'll do it. (I actually beat Sonic 2 legitimately a week or so ago.)

I only ever played the first two Sonic games - the only ones my friend got. And I have since learned that the later games used a different music composer. But those two are glorious and classical, and I'm really happy to have finished them for real.

Metroid: Samus Returns

I played Metroid: Samus Returns over the last couple of weeks. It is glorious.

For context, we haven't seen a new Metroid game since 2010, and there hasn't been a new side-view one since 2004. That was Metroid: Zero Mission, a remake of the original Metroid game. It was wonderful too. I remember going out to buy it on its release day. I finally found a copy at the third place I went to. I started playing on my Game Boy Advance in the parking lot. (Fortunately I had late classes at the time.) And ever since that day, I hoped that they'd remake Metroid 2, which needed a remake even more than the original, since the sequel was a Game Boy game. (Yeah, four shades of gray.)

Earlier this year, there was an ill-timed fan remake called "Another Metroid 2 Remake". Nintendo shut it down pretty fast for now-obvious reasons, but it was pretty cool too. It raised the bar for this one. But... man, Samus Returns is really, really good.

The graphics are amazing. The screenshots on the Internet look a little odd, but on the tiny screen nothing looks polygonal - it looks real. For instance, I love how the wave beam makes these little spiral-y trail-y things on your shots. And of course with the 3D on, it's even more amazing. I actually kept wanting to zoom in and look at things in greater detail.

The controls are great - they make use of every single button on the 3DS (except for the "New"-model-specific ones) and still use the right part of the touch screen to select weapons. (This is actually a bit tricky - it takes a while before you stop pressing the wrong button for some things.) The mechanics are nice - the game is challenging, but not tedious. My favorite thing early one was the map. If you come across an item that you can't get yet, the map sticks a little icon on there for you, so you know where to come back to later on. They threw in teleporters, which is handy, because the world is much bigger than I expected it to be. The "fast" ending requires you to beat the game in under four hours, compared to 2 or 3. (My first run took nearly twelve.)

The Metroids are pretty cool. They're a bit stylized and don't quite look like their counterparts in other games, but Metroids are known to develop differently in different environments, so that's not really a problem. The Queen battle was particularly satisfying. (It was also really hard - I had to leave and gather more items before I finally won, although I have since learned a trick that would have made life easier.)

Of course no Metroid game is ever likely to approach the awesomeness of Super Metroid, even if only due to nostalgia. And I think Metroid Prime is still my second favorite, for similar reasons. But I find myself wondering whether I like Samus Returns better than Zero Mission. It has several points in its favor: Samus Returns is longer, has better graphics obviously, there are no annoying Speed Booster puzzles, it has unique new abilities, there are "checkpoints" (temporary save points) before and after major milestones, and it doesn't even have the immodesty issue in the ending scene. (Unless you buy and use one of the Amiibos to unlock "Fusion Mode", but I hate Amiibos.) But there are a few disadvantages as well: less variety in boss battles and not as many catchy tunes among them.

Speaking of music, Samus Returns does have some good stuff. It's mostly "mood" background music (although it's a huge improvement over the original), although it has a nice remix of the one good tune in the original, plus a few from Super Metroid in a couple of places. The ending music is silmilar too, but it's extended and doesn't quite come across with the same level of catchiness. Of course Zero Mission doesn't have as good music as Super Metroid either, but it does have more "tunes" and less "background" stuff, which I like.

So the comparison is a tough call. We'll have to see how my impression of the game changes after some time has passed. Right now I'm trying to decide whether to attempt a speed run or to play the game on Hard mode. Either one is going to be tough, since I lost a lot in the first run. But the game is awesome, so that's okay.

Here's a Tableau viz, just for fun: