Why have I never played Metroid?

I’ve never played any Metroid game. Ever.

There, I said it.

I have no idea why I never have. I’ve wanted to, especially since I started writing this blog. But something always stops me and I don’t know what it is.

My 1st memory of Metroid is being a kid and being over at a friend of my brother’s. I don’t know if this was actually the case, but I remember they had a TV hung from the roof (remember, this is old CRT TV’s and it probably would’ve been quite small by today’s standards) AND THEY WERE PLAYING METROID ON NES ON IT!

It probably looked something like this – AWESOME then, not so amazing now

This probably set the standard for opulence that I’ve been trying to achieve in my life since then, but that’s a different blog. I recall he NES being new at the time, this might have been the first time I had even SEEN a Nintendo, so the whole thing was really impressive. BTW – remember at the beginning of the NES when they had a robot? A ROBOT?!?!

It’s Samus, not Seamus. Dumbass.

I also don’t know a ton about the game. I think it’s an open-world-ish game (ala Mega Man); that it’s hard, but not Mega Man hard; and of course, it features the most famous female videogame protagonist: Samus Aran.

Anyway, at some point I’ll start in on this series and it will be epic… or maybe hard to get into… or maybe the NES game will be too difficult and I’ll skip ahead to something more appropriate for my skill level… but you get the point 🙂

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Blades of Steel on NES – Game the Game

THIS IS NOT WHAT I EXPECTED IT TO BE! UP IS DOWN, DOWN IS UP, AND ICE HOCKEY IS THE ONE WITH THE DAMN PLAYER SELECTION!

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As you may remember, I posted a Pre Game with my mind’s eye not being able to distinguish between Ice Hockey and Blades of Steel. Well, dear reader, as you can tell from the headlines… was I wrong. So very wrong.

Here are some notes I wrote frantically whilst my entire world crumbled around me…

• Whoa whoa whoa… when you lose a fight YOU’RE DOWN A PLAYER!?!?!?!
• I can’t figure out how to pass – looks like it might be a problem with the emulator I’m using… apparently passing is actually a feature
• You control your own goalie – there’s an arrow that floats up and down in the net
• I can be Edmonton (whose colours are green?) AND NOT CALGARY (muaa ha ha)

MUAA HAA HAA, stupid Calgary!

In short, Blades of Steel is a very solid game. It’s just not the game I remembered… not in the least. The controls were also a weird adjustment for me.

(I’ll likely post about this in the future, but I was/am/always will be a huge fan of the early NHL games on the Genesis. They were probably THE fundamental series of games of my childhood. And lately I’ve been trying to get into the more modern NHL franchise with… limited… success. Anyway, all of this is context to me trying to get my little brain around the controls in Blades of Steel.)

It’s me, not you

My first few plays didn’t go phenomenally well (this image is of the CPU scoring… which it did a lot of), but that’s not a game issue. It’s entirely my lack of skill + total and utter loss and how I had misremembered this game. I’ll definitely be playing more Blades of Steel.

And stay tuned for my Game the Game for Ice Hockey!

COBRA TRIANGLE – NES – Actually Playing the Game Now!

We’ve had the Pre Game, now on to: GAMING THE GAME

They’re boat’n through your ocean, snatching your people up,
tryin’ to steal’em
so you better

hide your kids
hide your wife
hide your kids
hide your wife

and hide your motorboat
cause they’re stealin’ everybody out here…

– my wife, singing about Cobra Triangle
inspired by the classic: Bed Intruder Song

Wow, I had completely forgotten that this thing is fundamentally a racing game.

With that shock over, I quickly started shooting all of my motorboat enemies… though I’m not sure why we’re enemies… and why do they get shore-based weapons? It’s no matter as dispose of a few of them.

Right, I have a health bar. OOO powerups! It damages my body to run into the shore, makes sense, and I’m done the first level. That was pretty easy.

And this is the part that I’m really sad about forgetting: to get to the next level, my body sprouts a helicopter rotor and flies away! A HELICOPTER ROTOR! Dude, let’s just use that thing for the whole “race”!

So, are you trying?
– my wife commenting as I die for the seemingly 100th time while failing to prevent the enemy from making of with 8 helpless swimmers

In my first real attempt, I didn’t get very far. The first level is easy, then it’s kind of a bonus powerup level (that may be unlocked by performance, I’ll have to look that up), then it’s a damn guarding level. 8 helpless, drowning, terrified looking ‘people’ are arranged in a diamond with me at the centre to protect them. It’s horrifying! Enemy boats come and DRAG THE PEOPLE AWAY! … and the boats have UFOs!?! What in the blue hell is going on here?!?!?

And that’s as far as I got. I’m sorry that couldn’t protect you random, identical people… *single tear*

Look at this poor guy… THIS GAME IS DELIGHTING IN OUR TERROR

We now know fear.

COBRA TRIANGLE – NES – Pre Game

Original Box art (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobra_Triangle)

This is one of the defining games of my childhood… for some reason

I remember playing a lot of this game as a kid, but I don’t actually remember much about it or really remember liking it that much. It’s strange that I remember anything about it, come to think of it.

There’s definitely a boat, and I remember jumping stuff using powered platforms or something. Maybe there were weapons that I probably had to pick up??? There may have been puzzles and random things shooting at me because I remember dying all the time and I don’t think there was a save feature (did ANYTHING have saves* back then???).

SSSSSEEEEECCCCCSSSSS

In fact, the only thing that I clearly remember about Cobra Triangle is that each level has a timer labeled ‘secs’. And why do I remember such a weird detail, you may ask? Well, asky-pants, I remember because one time my old friend Neil once tricked me into yelling “SECS” with my mom just just outside my room.

OK, if you don’t get why that’s funny, say ‘secs’ out loud to yourself… and pretend you’re like… 10.

I bought Cobra Triangle a long time ago (probably years ago) when I first got my NES-as-a-grownup and never got around to playing it because: a) I’m kinda lame, and b) I don’t spend enough time playing games!

What others say… er… said…

IGN gives Cobra Triangle a 7.4, Good, rating and says it was released in 1989. They also rated it 66th on their top 100 NES games of all time. Cool.

* hilariously, my phone originally autocorrected ‘saves’ to ‘sadness’. Touché autocorrect, touché

PS – I wrote this pre game whilst doing fishing dailies in WoW. For the record, the Dojani Eel and Wolf Piranha quests can just go shut the hell up with each other.

Next up, the GAME GAME coming soon.

Blogging is hard

So I love playing videogames. I’m even writing my Master’s thesis about videogames. I like games now, but I LOVED them as a kid. Or at least, I really loved them in retrospect – probably something that happens to one as one gets older… the application of past love to things done in the past… (there’s probably a germanic verb conjugation for that)

ANYWAY

In the name of this love, or assigned love (or past love magnified by the passing of time or past frustration forged into love by a longing for youth) over the last few years I’ve been slowly putting together a collection of retro games/ systems. Chiefly NES, but I picked up a Genesis and even brought all my OLD OLD Coleco stuff home from my parent’s house. However, and to my everlasting shame, I’ve never really spent any time with the old favourites. I own Super Mario 3, BUT I’VE NEVER PLAYED IT, for example. There are lots of reasonable excuses like “being lazy”, “being busy”, or “I’m tending my WoW garden so leave me alone”, but it really came down to convenience. Modern TVs don’t have coax connections and having system upon system set-up in addition to XBox, Wii, Bluray, etc. takes up a buttload of space.

So imagine my happiness when I came across the RetroN 3. The damn thing plays 3 different systems worth of games! 3 SYSTEMS! It has wireless controllers and modern (well, not, like, HDMI or anything, but rather the respectable composite & s-video) video outs.

So I bought this thing online, waited for it, set it up, and tried it out.

Fail #1: the wireless controllers are rubbish (I’ll tell that story another time). Well, OK, that’s annoying, but no problem. The RetroN 3 has input for legacy controllers…

Fail #2: using the NES controllers still has WAY too much lag! I don’t know if you remember old games, but what they lacked in video quality, they made up for in speed and need-for-super-quick-movements-to-avoid-the-BOUNCING-KILLER-ENEMIESOFDOOM!

So. I’m back to my legacy systems and the not-doing-it-ness that comes with them, from me.

Though it isn’t THAT bad, it will just delay the population of this blog. And hey, this really is the epitome of a first world problem 🙂

EDIT: I tried again last night and don’t hate things quite so much.