The Game Scammer Days of Reckoning

Good used game sellers are an important part of gaming.  It’s thanks to places like Ebay, Gamestop, Half-Priced Books and smaller retail shops that we’re still able to buy games long out of production at generally reasonable prices.  Say what you want about Gamestop, because they deserve it, but there are several used games I couldn’t have gotten without them, one of which was a big contributor to my Namco vs. Midway series (sorry I haven’t gotten back to that, but I hit a snag with one of the games).  Without these decent sellers I would have never gotten games like Neogeo Battle Coliseum, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword or the King of Fighters Maximum Impact games.  These are the people that should be supported.

The evil twins of these sellers are the scammers.  Also commonly called scalpers, scammers do not care about selling games at a reasonable price.  They care solely about fleecing as much money as they can out of people who just want to play them.  These scammers attempt to force people to pay more than the original game’s initial retail price even though a used game is degraded and thus worth less than when it was new.  They treat games like they’re some kind of collectible rather than a mass-produced product that’s the same as any other copy of the game that was sold for 50 dollars at launch.

Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection Review Part 5

 In 2004, the original Yu-Gi-Oh manga ended and America, being as late to the party as we possibly could, only then started getting it translated in 2005 while the anime was going into the filler arcs.  You would think the original series would be wrapping up with the story ending, but if you think that you clearly don’t know Shonen Jump.  The anime was such a money maker in America that 4Kids commissioned Studio Gallop to make a movie and the Capsule Monsters miniseries.  Even Japan wasn’t done with the manga because they made Yu-Gi-Oh R!  The original Yu-Gi-Oh was being kept around for at least a little while longer while the sequel to the anime, Yu-Gi-Oh GX, was starting to take off.

Recommended read.

That means more original-era games and the last game included in the Early Days Collection.

Yu-Gi-Oh: Early Days Collection Review: Part 4

A player might notice something around this time of Yu-Gi-Oh game releases; there were no new characters introduced in them and, barring the game-original Reshef of Destruction, there hadn't been for a while.  That's because Battle City was the last part of the manga to center around the card game.  After that came the final part with exploring the pharaoh's memories, where only two card games would be played for the rest of the story, none of which was between any new characters.  By 2004, in Japan, at least, the original manga ended.  This means the games had to start using the same roster of characters in new ways.

Yu-Gi-Oh Expert 2 is the only game in the Early Days Collection that has no translation, at least for its original version.  After Eternal Duelist Soul borrowed Expert 2’s dueling system for the English release, Expert 2 as a whole would get a revision released for international audiences.  I call it a “revision” and not an “updated version” because it takes a handful of cards out, changes some art and tweaks a few things that could be considered either for better or for worse.  I guess Digital Eclipse threw the original version in there for the sake of thoroughness and for the Japanese gamers that care.  The game we got in America would be titled Yu-Gi-Oh: Worldwide Edition: Stairway to the Destined Duel.

Yu-Gi-Oh: Early Days Collection Review: Part 3

The Game Boy Advance era is where I think Yu-Gi-Oh games hit their first big stride.  Up to this point, the games other than Capsule Monster GB with cheats have only reached the level of “good enough.”  Dungeon Dice Monsters comes off like an experiment to see what the designers could do with the GBA’s increased power and memory, which would explain why the monster clashing graphics are the most visually interesting and system-pushing part of the whole thing in an otherwise barebones framework.  After that, they took a big leap and made the first Yu-Gi-Oh game to follow the rules of the real card game, the game that would be released in American as Yu-Gi-Oh: The Eternal Duelist Soul.

Yu-Gi-Oh: Early Days Collection Review: Part 2

 At the turn of the millennium, Yu-Gi-Oh started finding its footing and established what the franchise would become moving forward.  The official card game from Konami was taking hold and just as impactful was the premier of the Yu-Gi-Oh Duel Monsters anime.

There was no stopping the Yu-Gi-Oh hype train in Japan and that meant there was no stopping the assembly line of Yu-Gi-Oh games to feed the hungry masses that couldn’t get enough of it.  It was another year and another Yu-Gi-Oh game, this time titled Yu-Gi-Oh: Tri Holy God Advent.  In Japan, that is.

It wasn’t until a year later that Yu-Gi-Oh made its American debut when the Duel Monsters anime was dubbed into English by 4Kids Entertainment, hot off the success of the merchandise fountain that is Pokemon.  Fitting that the 4Kids dub of Yu-Gi-Oh named a god after Roger Slifer because this thing exploded like the ending to Lobo’s Paramilitary Christmas Special.

I could go on a long-winded old man monologue about how it was the hottest thing in cool and one of my first shonen anime ever that I still enjoy to this day despite its faults, but this is a game collection review so I’ll keep it short.  Yu-Gi-Oh’s anime became a monster hit, but the manga it was based on still wouldn’t be translated to English for a few more years.  If you look on the back of some of the English game boxes (they’re in the instruction manuals in the collection) they say they’re based on the hit television series, which is not technically true, and on the back of some manga releases, a bit of text tacked on says it’s the inspiration for the hit anime featuring scenes too intense for television, which actually is true in both languages.  In America, Yu-Gi-Oh was riding the coattails of the anime specifically.

Yu-Gi-Oh: Early Days Collection Review: Part 1

As I already stated in my review of Yu-Gi-Oh: Duel Links, I’ve been a fan of the original Yu-Gi-Oh ever since it arrived in America through the anime from Studio Gallop.  When Kazuki Takahashi wrote his manga about a kid gaining Egyptian magic and playing games, he couldn’t have predicted the phenomena that it would become, let alone that his little one-off Magic: The Gathering knock-off would be at the center of it all.  When Shonen Jump gets a hit manga on their hands you’d better believe they’re going to merchandise that sonbitch.

Inevitably that meant games across all manner of consoles, in particular Nintendo’s handhelds.  The Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection puts the first 13 (the marketing says 14, but I’ll get to that) Nintendo handheld Yu-Gi-Oh games into one package and I was hyped to get to both replay games I used to love and play games I never got to before.  The enhancements and new translations made it all a big deal, but I swear you wouldn’t know just how big a deal it was if you read the reviews.

I was going to get the collection anyway, but I’m disappointed by the reviews of it I’ve read thus far.  Regardless of whether I agree with them or not, most give a general overview of the collection and come across as though they only played each game for a little while before writing them off.  Understandable, since there’s 13 games and they only have so much time, but I’m of the mind that even if one were to recommend the game, readers might want to know which games are more worth their time, how many are any good, what to expect from each game in more detail and what the cheats included in the collection can do to enhance their enjoyment.

The other sentiment I see is that it’s a collection made only for the old-school Yu-Gi-Oh players and that the only people who will enjoy the games are the ones nostalgic for them.  I think that’s both a reductive way of thinking and not true.  There are games in the collection that, even today, are a fun time, outdated cards or not.  I would love for younger people who weren’t around for them to experience some of these games and maybe get invested into the card game’s simpler times.

I’m going to review the Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days collection more thoroughly, less at the package as a collective whole and more the parts that make it up so that readers can make a more informed purchase.  I’ll look at every game in the collection, give some context of where the source material was at the time of each game’s release and some context of where I was at the release of some of these games.  I am writing this as a fan, but I’ll try to keep the nostalgia goggles off.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1996 & 1997

Like I said in the first King of Arcades competition, 3D gaming was in full swing in the latter half of the 1990s thanks to the Playstation and Nintendo 64’s polygon rendering abilities.  As evidenced by last time, Namco was already on that by this point, but for Midway, though they did dabble in 3D polygons in the past, the usual pre-rendered visuals were their reliable aesthetic, though even that started to change.

Both Namco and Midway were taking advantage of the new capabilities offered by Sony and Nintendo’s consoles in the homes.  I credited The King of Fighters 98 as being the first “Dream Match” game, because it’s where that moniker came from, but arguably Midway had already done the concept with Mortal Kombat Trilogy, a console-exclusive game that took everyone from previous games in the franchise and put them all in one PS1 disc or N64 cartridge.
 
Not only did Midway have Mortal Kombat Trilogy to maintain Mortal Kombt mania, but they also released the sequel to their hit 1995 Mortal Kombat movie.  People didn’t like it.  Personally I think it's a hoot.

Namco was also chugging along in the console space with PS1 ports of their arcade games, most notably Tekken and their new Namco Museum compilations.

Since home consoles were catching up to the technical capabilities of arcade games, they started taking the attention and arcade game development started slowing down, resulting in this competition having fewer games in both competitor’s arsenals and thus another double year round.  I might’ve skipped 1996 altogether, but I was able to find one game from that year and it’s a pretty important one.

TV Edits of the Viewtiful Joe Anime: Episode 20

In this episode, Joe and the Jadow trio wake up on a mysterious train full of toys, run by an enigmatic kitty conductor.  It's an episode that focuses squarely on Joe and the Jadow trio with all of their allies excluded from the plot.  This one is a favorite among fans for its underlying theme of childhood innocence and feelgood nature of the whole thing in a time where so much anime is blood and violence like Bleach, Chainsaw Man and Demon Slayer.

There's a lot to like about this episode and for me one of those things is Bob Papenbrook.  I've talked him up before, but for a lot of the Viewtiful Joe anime up to this point he's been doing his Almighty Leader voice and hasn't played Captain Blue since the first few episodes.  Blue's Japanese voice sounds like he's going through the motions, but every line delivered by Papenbrook really feels like an old-school hero.  Big ups to a voice acting legend.  If he were still around he would be the Great Old One of the West instead of Peter Beckman.

 

The movies this episode is based on are Toy Story and the Polar Express... Or is it?  Joe references the Polar Express by name in the English dub, but on closer inspection, the train setting might be a wild coincidence.  The Viewtiful Joe anime started right at the beginning of October of 2004 in Japan and Robert Zemeckis' hit movie The Polar Express didn't make its debut until partway into October of the same year.  There was no time for the movie to be a classic like the other movies referenced in this anime.  The popular children's book the movie is based on was almost 2 decades old by then, but so far Movieland has had places based on movies and only movies.

Toy Story is definitely an inspiration here though without a doubt and if you don't see it by the end, you're blind. 

Considering this is an episode with toys, children and rules against violence, you can't expect a lot to be edited out for inappropriate content.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1995

1995. The peak of Mortal Kombat mania.  Last year may not have had a Mortal Kombat game in arcades, but those home versions of the games were selling like hotcakes and the franchise was getting merchandised to hell and back.  There was the movie, which is widely regarded as one of the best video game to movie adaptations to this day, there was the promotional VHS of the movie and there was the live tour.

Mortal Kombat got so much attention that other companies were trying to get in on the digitized actors and violence, usually to poor results.

Oh yeah, Namco is in this.  They released games mostly in Japan and not in America so they got left in the dust, although Tekken was shaping up to be their heaviest hitter in arcades.  1995 was also the debut of the first Time Crisis, but I have never in my life seen that game.  I've only ever played the sequels.  Here in this competition, popularity, public recognition and hype means nothing.  All that matters is who made the best games.  The current score has Midway in the lead, 7 to 5.  Namco isn’t far behind and still has a few years left to take the lead.

Devil May Cry 5 Review

After Capcom released Ninja Theory’s Devil May Cry reboot, I don’t think anyone was expecting a sequel to Devil May Cry 4.  I think Ninja Theory’s game gets way too much flak because of its title, but regardless of the merits of the game itself, fans wanted a Devil May Cry 5.  However, in the intervening years Capcom came out with Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes, which became a monster hit despite no advertising or promotion whatsoever, and then later followed it up with Sengoku Basara 4 in Japan.  Over the years Sengoku Basara 4 built itself up as the most hyped English version of a game in the history of the human race to the point that everyone forgot about wanting a Devil May Cry game.  Something very strange happened though.  Instead of releasing Sengoku Basara 4 in English and bringing about world peace and a panacea for all diseases, Capcom not only made Devil May Cry 5, but fully dubbed it and released it in English.

I am at least a moderate fan of the Devil May Cry franchise.  Devil May Cry 3 is one of my favorite action games of all time and of course you know Devil May Cry 4 is good because it has the same producer as Sengoku Basara: Samurai Heroes.

That said, it’s curious that instead of translating and dubbing a fully released, content-rich game being exalted as one of the masterpieces of the gaming world that everyone and their dog wants, just like they had already done for the previous game in its franchise, Capcom instead made a new game from scratch with an English version.  That would have to mean that Devil May Cry 5 is practically godlike and I had to take a look to see for myself if it truly lives up to that hype.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1994

1994 was a slow year for our two competitors, for arcades at least.  Midway was busy with the home ports of Mortal Kombat 2 and as usual Namco was not releasing games in English because… Because.  Both companies did put out at least one game each in 1994 though.  On Midway's side is a tried and true rail shooter that sticks to a lot of its companies established conventions and a stop motion fighting game.  On Namco's side is the beginning of one of the biggest names in fighting games.  It’s a one-on-one.  We shall see which game carries their company to victory.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1992 & 1993

It’s 1992.  Last year Street Fighter 2 kicked off fighting games in a big way and every company was jumping in on the new competitive martial arts gameplay, Namco and Midway included.  At least, Midway did in America.  It’s even slimmer pickings for Namco arcade games than last time.  Their 2D fighter Knuckle Heads didn’t come out in English, just like the majority of their games around this time.  There was the first Ridge Racer that came out…

However, I’ve never seen a cabinet for the original Ridge Racer in my life.

I could only get my hands on one Namco game and it’s from 1993 so you know what that means: another 2 year judgment time span.  They’d better hope Midway drops the ball again, but considering what I know is ahead, I don’t think they are going to.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1990 & 1991

We’re back from my Sengoku Basara detour and our contest picks up in 1990 and 1991.  Since I can’t get any Namco games from 1990, this is a judgement for a 2-year time span, where most of Midway’s games are from 1990 and Namco’s games are in 1991.  Once again, Namco’s failure to release arcade games in English has them going in with a very low ammo count.  Technically one of their games for this year, Tank Force, didn’t even initially come out in English at all, but since they would otherwise only have one game for entry, I need to throw them a bone.  Maybe it will be the game that comes in clutch.

Extra History: The Sengoku Basara Way: Part 3

With Nobunaga dead, the last 2 parts of the Extra History videos cover Hideyoshi, his death and the battle of Sekigahara.  This post is going to be shorter than the other ones because, well, the videos go into a lot of backgrounds that Sengoku Basara chooses to push to the wayside for the sake of an exciting action story, but there is still a fair bit to note.

 

Extra History: The Sengoku Basara Way: Part 2

I've held off on discussing Nobunaga's Sengoku Basara design.  Everyone knows it.  He's portrayed as an evil overlord with a spiky and intimidating outfit with a blood red cape and he laughs at the carnage and atrocities he commits.  Up to this point in the Extra History videos though, Nobunaga has just been a very tactical and pragmatic warlord, not a lot worse than the others.  It's starting around here where we start to see where his reputation comes from.

Extra History: The Sengoku Basara Way: Part 1

We aren't done with Sengoku Basara yet.  In the first part of my Sengoku Basara retrospective I directed people to a series of videos from Extra Creditz, specifically their Extra History sub-series.  This 6-part series of short videos does a good job of detailing all the most important moments of the Sengoku period while making them fun and expressive through the use of artwork.  Even more fun an expressive is one of my favorite franchises, Sengoku Basara.

 

It's always funny to me when I learn something about history and think back to how the madcap action of Sengoku Basara interpreted that, especially with Sanada Yukimura Den steering closer to real history.  As such I thought it would be fun to go over some real history and how that was interpreted into what we see in the games.  The Sengoku era of Japan is already pretty crazy, as the videos show, so watching it become more crazy is pretty entertaining.

Sengoku Basara Retrospective: Sengoku Basara: Sanada Yukimura Den

I originally ended my Sengoku Basara retrospective at Sengoku Basara 4 because the main series and all the English media was already covered and the last game, Sanada Yukimura Den, is story-focused when fan translations are already incomplete and sparse for Sengoku Basara 4, which is still more than Sanada Yukimura Den got.  Since then I discovered a miracle.  An app for the iphone that, in a way, breaks through Capcom’s attempt to stop American players from enjoying Sengoku Basara 4: the translate app.

With the translate app, players can take pictures of the screen as the dialogue appears and form halfway comprehensible translation of all the text.  It doesn’t make the Japanese voice acting any better, but with the help of the translation app I can finally understand and somewhat enjoy the stories of Sengoku Basara 4, which, it turns out, are wonderful.  Sengoku Basara 4’s stories have something for everyone.  It has stories that are funny, sad, cute, awesome and everything in between.  It’s a pain to have to take constant pictures of the screen as the dialogue goes along and it doesn’t alleviate the depression of Capcom’s vicious betrayal, but it does make it partially possible to play the game to the potential it was made to be played.

It also means that Sengoku Basara: Sanada Yukimura Den is on the table.  Now that I can understand this more story-centric game, I can give my thoughts on it proper.

TV Edits of the Viewtiful Joe Anime: Episode 19

In this episode, Joe helps a young girl reunite with her mother while inspiring a team of little league baseball players led by Mona Marshall to not give up, all the while Gran Bruce concocts a plan to defeat Joe by cutting him off from cheeseburgers.

 

This episode is probably taking beats from a sports movie (pick one), but the movie it seems to take place in is Friday the 13th.  Yes, really.  I'll get to that.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1989

How did it come to this, Namco?  An entire year and nothing to show for it in English.  Namco officially has nothing for me.  They made arcade games, but not for America.  Valkyrie Densetsu looks like fun, but we didn’t get to play it.  Finest Hour looks like potential game of the year material and so does Burning Force, but the most we got of the latter was the inferior Genesis port.  The only game they might’ve had an entry with is Dangerous Seed, but it’s never seen a re-release and I’ve never been to any arcade that has it.  In fact, going to local arcades to play more games is to Namco’s detriment because there are far more Midway games at them than Namco ones.

That’s why I’ll be fudging the rules just a bit and giving them the only game of this year I was able to play: Rompers.  Similarly to Tower of Druaga, the game got English re-releases later with a full translation.  Since it technically never came to American arcades, like Tower of Druaga, any victory the game might give them will be a soft one.  That is, if there’s a tie, it will not win.  I’m not expecting another Splatterhouse miracle this time.  Maybe this will be a lesson in the importance of English releases.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1988

As I pointed out in the previous post, Namco has a lot riding on just one game for 1988.  It’s not that they didn’t make a lot of arcade games that year or that they weren’t even making good ones.  I mean they had an even better arcade board for even better games.  It’s just that almost none of their games came out in American arcades.  They made games that appear to be strong contenders like Ordyne, Marchen Maze and Phelios, but none of that was for America.  From what I can tell the only games from this year that came out in English are Splatterhouse and Metal Hawk, but since Metal Hawk heavily relied on a fancy motion simulator machine it means it never got re-released for new consoles with standard controllers.  None of my local places have a Metal Hawk machine either so Namco is placing all their bets on Splatterhouse.  It had better be the game of the year if they want to win.

Namco vs. Midway: The King of Arcades 2: 1987

So far Namco has been losing pretty badly and they needed to step it up to keep up with Midway’s constant technological innovations.  Good thing then that in 1987 they did just that.  I’m not sure exactly what kind of arcade hardware Midway was using, but 1987 marked the debut of the Namco System 1, an upgraded arcade machine capable of better sound and graphics, not unlike what the CPS-1 was for Capcom.  Midway’s arcade offering so far have left me in awe with their presentation, but new dedicated hardware might be the boost Namco needs to start racking up more wins.  Let’s see if they can get out of their losing streak.