Mento Miscellany 01/07/2014

Hey guys and gals, welcome to a new Mento Miscellany: the only blog made of 100% reconstituted video game parts. Actually, it's what I put up when I have lots of little things to talk about instead of one big central theme and, man, has the past week given me plenty to discuss.

I guess the first port of call, before I start getting into all the fun stuff, is welcoming the new hires Dan Ryckert and Jason Oestreicher, the latter of whom I'm probably going to end up calling Joustin' Ostrichrider because I'm a child and this is what children do. There's been a small wave of disappointment accompanying the tsunami of elation that comes with hiring two guys who clearly "get" Giant Bomb, and both tides are understandable. Many of us put ourselves out there and threw our hats into the ring when that call for new blood went up on the Giant Bomb forums, and even those who didn't nominate themselves still had their own ideas for who Giant Bomb should hire that they were hoping to see come to fruition, but from the first moment I knew it was Dan -- which, to be clear, was pretty much the same time as the rest of you. They don't tell the mods shit, for the record -- I absolutely understood why. I've been following Dan's content over on GI for a long while, and he's one of those choices like Justin/Griffin McElroy or Danny O'Dwyer where they're practically Bomb Crew in all but name only.

I previously wrote something flippant here about how we could try a little harder to make ourselves GB caliber to the extent Dan is if we want to be considered for next time, but given the amount of heated discussion about the suitability and diversity of future applicants, it wasn't really helpful or necessary.

Video games!

Picking Up Steam, New GOGs in the Machine

It's preview season over on Mento's Blogs of Madness (we're not calling it that), because instead of playing games I spent all of the past week watching SGDQ (that would be Summer Games Done Quick, the big charity event put on annually by those obsessive kooks in the speedrunning community), and most of the first half of this week catching up on site content I missed. I don't really have much to say about SGDQ itself, other than I'm super proud that we banded together as a community to give Jeff Gerstmann a hard time in the name of charity and Yoshis everywhere. Truly, our derision knows no borders either. There were some great speedruns, and I'd recommend everyone check out our timestamp-filled thread for a glance into the glitch exploit insanity that goes on every year. I'd recommend the amusing, RNG-forsaken Super Ghouls and Ghosts run to start you off. Educate yourself on Metal Wolf Chaos, Treasure Master, Goemon 64, whatever the fuck that Goosebumps game was and Ninja Baseball Bat Man too while you're at it.

Anyway, in lieu of any actual games I did play that I can talk about, here's a list of what I found myself owning once the GOG and Steam sales had concluded. There were a lot of magnanimous gifts this year, from GOG and some pals of mine both, so I hope to at least do something with those to demonstrate my gratitude. (If any of you want to send me dumb shit to cover, by all means do so. It's not like I have any pride, after all.)

• Shovel Knight: The gem of the Steam haul, generously provided by a pal of mine. I'll be sure to review it later this week, though that means playing through it first. The things I must suffer through... (I'm pretty stoked about this one, no joke. Thanks @omghisam!)
• Harvester: This is more the sort of thing I'm usually gifted. Harvester's an extremely odd FMV adventure game that appeared during an FMVinny segment some months back. I know very little about it and I intend to keep that way until I've played it in some manner of Brief Jaunt later this Summer. I'm going to have to figure out how this GifCam program works, aren't I?
• Long Live the Queen: Both Harvester and Long Live the Queen were bequeathed to me by longtime buddy (and the guy who introduced me to Giant Bomb, no less) @teflonbilly, so my thanks to that guy too. From what I can tell this is a Princess Maker satire where the young heroine you're creepily grooming keeps getting bumped off by scheming nobles the moment your back is turned. I look forward to spending a few months raising a little princess into a proper lady with a poison dart in her neck.
• BattleBlock Theater: I bought this one. It's been a long time since I was a regular member of the Newgrounds community (jeez, it's coming up on 15 years since I joined that site), but I still like The Behemoth's goofy sense of humor and the comic book presentations in their games, if not generally the gameplay itself. BattleBlock seems to be all about the 2D platforming and collectibles though, and I don't see how anyone could mess that up too much. (It's super nuts that NG regular Stamper's the one narrating this thing. If you've ever seen the Street Fighter 2 animation he did, it's a wonder he's allowed in polite society.)
• Jagged Alliance 2 Gold: One of those games regularly lauded as a leader of turn-based strategy RPGs for the PC. I'm looking forward to grabbing some mods and seeing what kind of mercenary monkeyshines I can get up to.
• SteamWorld Dig: I've played my fair share of digging simulators. Not just the big resource gathering games like Terraria, but brief freeware fare like Utopian Miner and Dig-N-Rig where the order of the day is to mine until you hit a limit, turn the ore into gold, turn the gold into upgrades and then dig even further. I'm excited to play a much more polished version of that dynamic.
• EYE: Divine Cybermancy: It was less than a pound sterling and seems too weird to ignore forever. I felt that way about Cargo!: The Quest for Gravity too though, and we know how that turned out. Actually, I'm not sure how that turned out either. I don't think these games are meant to "turn out" in any way that you're supposed to be able to anticipate.
• Realms of Arkania Bundle: Technically not part of the sale haul, since I bought this in a BundleStars bundle that happened concurrently, but I might as well add these old-ass Amiga RPGs and the slightly more recent updated version of the first game to the pile of stuff I'll probably end up ignoring forever. Here's to wise purchases, everyone.

In fact, speaking of which, here's the GOG harvest for this year's Summer sale:

• Tex Murphy Collection: So after the rousing success that was my Legend Entertainment round-up (scroll down to the bottom for another inconsequential announcement!), I decided to think ahead for a change and buy this collection of early CD-ROM sci-fi detective adventures for next E3. Though I've always maintained a vague peripheral acknowledgement that the Tex Murphy games exist, it wasn't until recently when the franchise belatedly stepped under into the noirishly-framed streetlight with the inexplicable sequel Tesla Effect that it's firmly on my radar again. I'm planning on doing a lot more adventure game stuff over the next year, since it's still a genre a tired old man like myself can get into and create fun coverage of easily enough. Plus, the funny ones kinda do my job for me.
• I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream: Talking of laugh-a-minute point and click games, I also picked up this adventure game adaptation of Harlan Ellison's grim post-apocalyptic novella which features an AI so resentful he makes GlaDOS look like BonziBuddy. Wait, I guess that little purple ape was a vindictive little prick too. Bad analogy.
• Master of Magic: Putting my money where my mouth is after the May Madness "Master (of Magic) Blaster" mini-series, after which I concluded that nothing has to yet to take MoM's throne. I've owned a functional CD copy of the game for decades, but having one that runs instanteously without having to recall a bunch of DOSBox codes was worth double-dipping. Fuck it, Master of Magic is worth double-dipping full stop. Triple-dipping, even. Everyone go buy five copies, and we might resurrect Simtex yet.
• Magrunner: Dark Pulse: One of a handful of free games that GOG gave away. I suspect most people have a copy of this game now. Seemed kind of like a cool first-person physics puzzle game from what I saw of it during Giant Bomb's coverage, but of course I'm more curious about the Lovecraftian overtones the late-game is purported to exhibit.
• Omerta: City of Gangsters: Ditto as above. I'm less enthused about actually playing this one, being fairly apathetic towards sim games and Prohibition period gangster business alike. I won't dismiss it entirely out of hand though, especially since it was free.
• Still Life 2: Another freebie. Might just wait to pick up the first in some bundle down the line, despite it looking like a procedural police drama where there presumably isn't some big overarching plot to worry about. Better to be safe than sorry though. I've got so many adventure games to sift through at this point that I can afford to put this off for... I dunno, like a decade?

Super Shenanigans and Nintendo Nincompoopery

So when I'm not spending money on games I fully intend to maybe, perhaps play at some point before the last protons in the universe burn out, I'm usually busy at work on our wiki. I've taken on a rather burdensome albatross with this Super Nintendo project, one originally conceived by the more senior wiki editor @starfoxa and kindly supported by even the even more senior editor @bobafettjm in his weekly "Wiki Update" series (go here and peruse his last few entries -- it's an interesting glimpse into what we editor folk get up to. If you happen to do a lot of wiki editing yourself, by all means elaborate on it in the most recent update's comments). I'm slowly working my way through a chronological list of releases for Nintendo's most beloved platform (well, for a very specific age group at least), ensuring each has the requisite screenshots, releases, overview text and header image for their wiki pages, and discovering all sorts of bizarre Super Famicom exclusive oddities among the crappy licenses and sports games.

I'm not sure if this is something I intend to turn into a regular feature down the road, but I want to go into a little detail on each game within a month to share what I've found. It's sort of like a little Super Chrontendo feature, though without Doc Sparkle's dulcet tones and clever editing. I'm working on 1993 right now, so I'll show you the relatively quiet month of January of that year and see what people think. If there's sufficient interest, I'll hop back to 1990 and start with the launch of the Super Famicom in Japan. I doubt I'll get into as much historical detail as Doc Sparkle's Chrontendo or Jeremy Parish's (currently of USGamer) Game Boy World series, but there's still a lot to be gleaned from observing a console's release history alone. Trends and whatnot.

~January 1993~

(NB: Each month begins with what I call the "American block"; a group of games that don't have a specific release date because game releases in the US either didn't keep track of that information (unlike Japan) or that the US is simply so large that any new game would be released in stores across the continent gradually, thus lacking any singular release day. Likewise, release dates in Europe were even less specific, with all the various languages and import tax laws of numerous countries to consider. The "Japan block" follows thereafter.)

• California Games II (January 1993): Epyx's ubiquitous series of Cali-based sports-related mini-games, perhaps best known for having completely indecipherable controls, found their way onto the Super Nintendo in short order. This is the sequel, which introduced events like hang-gliding and jetskis with which to endlessly injure your surfer dudes and babes in some kind of petty rebellion against their youthful good looks and gorgeous surroundings. I mean, uh, because no-one could figure out which buttons to press to stop them falling over. That was the excuse we all went with in the end, right? (You think I'm kidding, but I remember the DOS version being pretty brutal with the violent crashes and depictions of death. Jocular YouTube personality JonTron recently featured the series on his show, if you need further proof.)
• The Hunt for Red October (January 1993): They made a scrolling shoot 'em up based on the taut political 1990 movie based on a Clancy novel, to no-one's surprise. As if to fully honor the in-depth pointed commentary on the Cold War and futility of such a vindictive conflict, there's a bonus mode where you can shoot battleships with the Super Nintendo's brightly-colored plastic bazooka the Super Scope while listening to Sean Connery intone something momentous in that Siberian-by-way-of-Edinburgh accent.
• Elfaria (01/03/93): We'll be seeing a lot of JRPGs as this feature goes forward, as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy had already turned the genre into a powerhouse at this point in time. Though we in the West only saw a handful of official releases due to the expense of converting a large amount of story and menu text into English, there are a lot of fan translators like Aeon Genesis busy at work ensuring that we can all enjoy the full SNES library someday. Well, besides for all the aforementioned crappy license games. Oh, and the Mahjong and Shogi and Go games too, probably don't need so many of those. Elfaria is one of those games that simplified the whole turn-based JRPG format in order to appeal to a wider audience of younger and less experienced players, similarly to Mystic Quest. The game's graphics, created by manga artist Susumu Matsushita, have a unique cartoonish countenance to them and sort of gives the game's cutscenes a timeless Disney/Bluth quality. I know I appreciate Elfaria's art direction over the usual Akira Toriyama foreheads, who along with Final Fantasy's Yoshitaka Amano really implanted this idea in a lot of developers' minds that every successful JRPG should have a prominent and distinctive manga artist leading its art design.
• Alien vs. Predator (01/08/93): Before we ever saw all those terrible AvP movies, the whole notion of pitting Ridley Scott's predatory alien against John McTiernan's extraterrestrial predator had already been explored in a comic book series from Dark Horse Comics created shortly after the two franchises were introduced by their respective inaugural movies. This SNES brawler, which isn't to be confused with the much more palatable AvP Arcade brawler from Capcom, was actually the first video game to feature this interplanetary crossover grudge match. I believe it was also the first game to allow the player to play as the Predator, too.
• Burai: Hachigyoku no Yuushi Densetsu (01/14/93): Often I'll come across a game with so little information available for it that there's a temptation to just wing it. Fortunately, that temptation passes and I simply stick with what little I have. Burai, not to be confused with Burai Fighter for the NES (probably not much chance of that, though. Right?), is from what I can tell an adaption of a RPG made for CD-based systems like the Sega CD and PC Engine-CD. The header image in this case is a place-holder, since I'm sure the CD versions of the game -- which included anime cutscenes -- have far better material for a good background image. I'm just focused on the SNES right now, though.
• Europa Sensen / Operation Europe: Path to Victory 1939-1945 (01/16/93): There were a number of WW2 strategy simulation games for the SNES, and many never made the leap across simply because they focused exclusively on the Axis side. Understandable, given that was the side Japan itself was on during the conflict, but hardly marketable to overseas territories who were either Allies all the way or just kind of want to forget the whole sorry affair ever happened. Operation Europe was one of the few that allowed you to play as Japan's then-enemies, controlling Allied forces as they wage war across the European theater. This game is particularly dense with the strategy sim stuff, even taking into account troop deployment and logistics. Fun for wargaming nerds, but the sort of in-depth computer game the SNES wasn't really the ideal platform for.
• Dragon's Earth (01/22/93): Dragon's Earth is weird. From what little I played for it to gather screenshots, it's like a fantasy take on Bullfrog's Populous games. There's villages of people to co-ordinate, but the chief goal is to use them to search out artifacts necessary to take down surrounding evil forces, including one or more particularly persistent dragons who won't let you take too many breathers. There's a few shades of ActRaiser about that premise too. Human Entertainment were fond of taking chances back then, creating a lot of the Super Nintendo's more memorable experiments like SOS, The Firemen, Clock Tower and Fire Pro Wrestling (which did pretty well for them in the end).
• Makeruna! Makendou / Kendo Rage (01/22/93): My heart goes out to the poor localization team who had to find a way to "American up" a video game where a highschool girl who can transform into a superhero has to use her katana to navigate through hordes of supernatural Japanese creatures to get to school on time. With the exception of a few unnecessary name changes, they sort of left the plot entirely intact, which was considerate of them. But for a very strict time limit, Kendo Rage is a fairly standard side-scrolling action platformer game, not a million miles away from other prominent games featuring ninjas and katanas. But, you know, with a highschool girl wearing a knock-off Sailor Moon costume.
• Might and Magic: Book II (01/22/93): Though we think of JRPGs as being entirely separate from western CRPGs, they share the same origins. One of those origins would be Wizardry, and to a lesser extent the stylistically similar Might and Magic games. An obscure developer/publisher combo tried adapting this 1988 DOS sequel into a SNES game, with mixed results, in order to cash in on brand recognition. There are a few classic western RPGs that saw similar adaptations, quite a few of which were never released outside of Japan, which strikes me as a little odd.
• Populous II: Trials of the Olympian Gods (01/22/93): Another iconic PC game originally from a western developer (that would be Bullfrog, who I mentioned just above), Populous II didn't make as huge a splash when it came out due to it being largely the same as the previous game, only with more Ancient Greek business. Oddly enough, the original home computer game featured an expansion pack that featured Japanese mythology instead of Greek. I don't think that stuff made it into this version, which was adapted by a Japanese developer, but I'd have to get a lot deeper into it to know for sure.
• Ushio To Tora (01/25/93): "Ushio and Tiger". Apparently this is based on a manga about yokai (Japanese spirit creatures, and frequent enemies in any given Japanese game), and specifically the begrudging companionship between a yokai hunter and a particularly powerful yokai he's forced to ally with. To make things confusing, this game was released the same year as a completely different NES adaptation published by the same developers. This one's more of a boss rush-oriented action game, similar to GeGeGe no Kitarou: Fukkatsu! Tenma Daiou (which is also based on a manga about yokai).
• Namco Open (01/29/93): The SNES had an ungodly amount of golf games. At least the rules of golf are easy enough to pick up, but many of these games are far more in-depth on technical details than others, and you end up spending a dozen shots trying to sink the ball if you're wading into one of the less beginner-friendly ones. Namco Open sits somewhere in the middle as far as complexity goes, but it doesn't seem like a particularly good golf game anyway. That would be because Namco didn't actually make it; rather, they gave those duties to notorious devs-for-hire TOSE, who would frequently put out rushed, mediocre products for whoever was dumb enough to hire them on the cheap.
• Nobunaga Kouki (01/29/93): January 1993 really is a snapshot of where the SNES was at during this stage of its life. There were a handful of very successful, very influential games around this time, and Koei's Nobunaga's Ambition series was one of them. Part of an endless parade of imitators, Nobunaga Kouki (Kouki means "chronicles", it's not like Yoshi's Cookie or anything) builds on Koei's template to create yet another strategy war sim set during Japan's Sengoku era.
• Super Bikkuriman (01/29/93): Bikkuriman is one of those especially Japanese phenomenons, a collectible superhero sticker series borne from capsule machines and candy stores. Its success led to various video game adaptations, including separate PC Engine launch games for both its Hu-Card and CD incarnations. This Super Famicom adaptation is actually a fighting game, though like many licensed fighter games it was a far cry from your Street Fighter IIs and Mortal Kombats. Closer to that Ranma 1/2 game, if anything.
• Super Soukoban (01/29/93): Soukoban, or Sokoban, or Warehouse Worker, goes under many names in the west and is perhaps the most prominent type of puzzle game that's usually found on Game Boy after Tetris, Pipe Dream and those Looney Toon games where you walk out in and out of doors all day. I'm talking about games like Boxxle, where the goal is to push crates around mazes into the right positions without screwing up and getting them trapped somewhere. It's so ubiquitous it appears as a mini-game in Tales RPGs, among others. This one is a particularly harsh variant, because you're given a hard limit on how many times you're allowed to push each box.
• World Class Rugby (01/29/93): The SNES had rugby games, who knew? I didn't know it had proponents in Japan, but this sports simulator -- based on a European computer game -- was licensed and produced by publishers in Japan before it eventually saw its way back to Europe again. Rugby is, as we all know, American Football for non-wusses, though despite being so brutal its UK teams often have the most well-educated players of any national sport. It's considered very upper class, for whatever reason. I figure that factoid's more interesting than anything I can say about this SNES rugby game, which is pretty much limited to "it's a SNES rugby game".

That's all the releases for January of 1993 and believe me when I tell you that, despite all appearances, this could be considered a very slow month for the SNES during these peak years. If anyone's interested in hearing more little blurbs and asides about the SNES and its immense library of mostly drivel, feel free to leave some feedback. I grow less fond of my beloved childhood console by the second.

Lingering Legends

I haven't forgotten about the Legend Entertainment series I put on during E3. As well as the four games I've already covered somewhat, there's also three others:

1. Companions of Xanth (1993): I grew up with the Xanth series, but it wasn't until I thumbed through the first book again a few years back that I realized just how outrageously misogynist they are. Actually, I think I had an inkling back then, even though at the time women were these scary people who liked things I didn't like and couldn't possibly be reasoned with. Fortunately, I (more or less) outgrew that sort of thinking, and Xanth's only lasting influence on me has been my proclivity towards constant, awful puns. This game leans hard on the books' sense of wordplay, and of all the novels to be featured in a Legend game this one has the most influence from the author whose works are drawn from. One of the offical Xanth books was actually written in tandem with this game, telling the same story with a slightly different outcome.
2. Shannara (1995): Terry Brooks's Shannara series is a lot more traditional fantasy than most of what Legend adapted. The game follows suit, lacking anything too interesting to write about besides the usual elves and wizards, albeit elves and wizards that live on a post-apocalyptic Earth. It's still a well regarded series with a lot of world-building and depth though, and one that's about to receive an imminent TV adaptation if the internet's anything to go by (and when has it ever been?).
3. John Saul's Blackstone Chronicles (1998): This is one I really wanted to get up and running, seeing as its based on a horror series with presumably lots of goofy Phantasmagoria-esque effects and jump scares. It's a bit too recent to emulate effectively though, not the sort of thing you can easily get working on DOSBox for a bit of LP action. It's the last adventure game Legend Entertainment ever produced, before they were repurposed by GT Interactive and Atari into creating Unreal games and other such uninteresting material.

I'm going to put this out to you guys: Which of the seven Legend Entertainment games -- of the four I've already started and the three I've yet to check out -- should I cover in more detail? I'm definitely eager to keep delving into these games. In the case of a split vote or, more likely, no votes whatsoever, I believe I'm going to persist with Callahan's Crosstime Saloon and deluge the site with even more puns than usual. Consider it Mentozuma's Revenge for ignoring my request. I'd also like to see what Mission Critical's end-game is like, because I've heard it gets weirder and more Michael Dorn-y the further you get in.

If you're interested in seeing more of these games then by all means, just like the SNES feature above, please tell me so. Otherwise I'll just keep on producing weird new content that'll appeal to you fine folks as best as I'm able. Toodles!