Neogeo Arcade Stick Pro Review

Plug-and-play consoles are a great idea on paper: a quick, portable means of playing games right out of the box with almost no other accessories or game cartridges required.  Unfortunately, be it due to the limited technology of their time or just plain laziness, a lot of plug and play consoles aren’t that great.  Over the years the most common ones I’ve seen are the basic Atari and retro arcade games like Pac Man with the occasional Double Dragon or original Mortal Kombat.

The NES and SNES Classic systems caused a bit of a resurgence in retro plug-and-play consoles. After how much demand they got, I started seeing more of the retro Sega Genesis and Atari plug-and-play consoles as well as the PS1 Classic on store shelves.

The Super Nintendo Classic was the only one to catch my interest, but it wasn’t enticing enough to join the rabid fans in hunting one of them down, especially when I already had, or could easily get, the games on it off the WiiU eShop or other ports.  You’d have to put KOF on your retro game system to get me to want it.

Wuzzat.

Top 10 Stupidest Resident Evil Moments

Resident Evil has a reputation for being badly written and stupid, something I don't think it deserves.  The games have more strong emotional moments, badass moments and detailed lore than people give it credit for. Heroes, villains and the monsters in between them are well-established and have some good relationship building and continuity.  I can unironically say that a big part of why I like the Resident Evil games is for the story.

But I cannot pretend that Resident Evil doesn't have its bouts of stupidity, as if the concept of viruses being astoudingly mutagenic weren't outlandish enough.  Bad writing, bad delivery, bizarre concepts or awkward handling of situations are where its reputation comes from and regardless of whether it's exaggerated by the general public, it is still a part of what makes Resident Evil what it is.  As a sort of demonstration and celebration, this is my top 10 stupidest Resident Evil moments.

Odin's Sphere Leifthrasir Review

Odin Sphere, Muramasa: The Demon Blade and Dragon's Crown are sort of a trinity of Vanillaware games people actually care about.  All three use George Kamitami's fantastic artwork and tell classical stories using certain mythological inspirations.  Among the trinity, I've always considered Odin Sphere to be the best one overall, even after playing Muramasa, a faster-paced game on a stronger system.

I got the original Odin's Sphere on a whim.  I was at Gamestop to buy a copy of The King of Fighters 11 and 13, but since there was a buy 2 get 1 free sale on used games I also got Odin Sphere, which I remember being referenced in Nintendo Power as one of the Muramasa creator's previous games.  Essentially I walked out of a store with the two greatest fighting games ever made and a decent action game.

There was a lot to like in Odin Sphere, but technological restraints of the time weighed it down a bit.  It could get too unforgiving, loading times for the pretty graphics added up, some of the enemies required exploiting some kind of arbitrary flow-breaking weakness and the final part of the game, without spoiling anything, is bullshit at worst and vague at best.

I beat it, but never got the best ending, as that required repeating a certain set of missions, refilling the success-critical items for each time and having to wait through several loading times.  If it weren't for all the little problems Odin Sphere had I would've finished it fully.

Even with those gripes it's still my favorite Vanillaware game thanks to its story, a classical mythological tale of dueling kingdoms, dragons, forbidden magic and the underworld told across five different characters with their own play styles.  With the wrinkles ironed out it could almost be considered a masterpiece.

Lo and behold, Vanillaware promised to make it the fantastic game it could be with Odin Sphere Leifthrasir, an HD update to the game for the PS3, PS4 and Vita.  With my fond memories driving me, I got the Vita version, because with Muramasa Rebirth and Dragon's Crown on there, why not complete the set?

Fighting Game Camps: Mortal Kombat: Part 3 (For real this time.)

Continued from part 2.

Music

My brief single sentence describing the music in the April Fools version of this post wasn’t entirely off the mark.  Mortal Kombat’s music is extremely downplayed to the point that you may not even notice there’s music at all.  Where other fighting games have their music bombastic or energizing, Mortal Kombat goes for ambience.  In fact, in Mortal Kombat 9, there’s an ambience meter in the sound options menu.

It’s more akin to tribal drumming than the fanfare of other games.  There’s a lot of fast, looping drum beats, techno synth and long notes without any particular melodies.

J-Stars Victory Versus + Review

J-Stars Victory Versus and Senran Kagura 2 have been my two most anticipated games of 2015.  Both are centered around extreme power-clashing speedline-using shonen badasses on powerful handheld systems, but since J-Stars came out far sooner I counted the days for its release first.  That is, until Bandai Namco told me it wouldn’t be released physically on the Playstation Vita.

Apparently Bandai Namco hasn’t learned what XSEED did after the first Senran Kagura: that forcing customers to download a multi-gigabyte full-retail game on their expensive (especially on the Vita) memory cards through a digital distribution service that may not keep it forever is a really fucking stupid idea!  I wouldn't even be that offended if they didn't release it physically on two other systems and showed that they're perfectly capable of doing so!  Fuck you Bandai Namco!

At that point I should have stopped counting the days and not given in to their stupid fucking digital-only fucking didn’t-learn-anything fucking run-by-lobotomized-chimps fucking bullshit, but if I didn’t review a game synonymous with the word “shonen” I might have this blog’s title called out for being a lie.  So I got the damn thing, with only a Vita theme based on the game that plays its (admittedly awesome) theme song as the background music as compensation for the lack of a physical release’s pre-order bonus.  Fuck you Bandai Namco.

If you can get over J-Stars Victory Versus’ slap in the face for Vita owners and focus on the game as it is, then it’s an amazing action game and for some will likely beat out Super Smash Brothers 4.  The big question is whether or not you can honestly do that.