Happy 25th Birthday, Metroid August 21, 2011

This month marks the 25th anniversary of the release of Metroid in Japan. It was a game that has inspired such a cult following from its fan base it has been made a staple of Nintendo’s portfolio of properties, putting it on par with the likes of Mario and Zelda.

To celebrate the anniversary of the game series that brought what was probably the first major female action video game protagonist, Samus Aran, I have decided to scour the internet to bring back some of the best and most nostalgic memories I have of this beloved series of games.

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, I recommend starting off like I did, with watching a very good retrospective series produced by GameTrailers.com a few years ago, right around the time Metroid Prime 3 was releasing on the Nintendo Wii. They go into pretty explicit detail about the release of the games, the platforms they were released on, and along the way you can get a feel for just what has made this series so beloved for the past twenty-five years.

Metroid was the brainchild of one of the major Nintendo head honchos, Gunpei Yokoi. Due to his pedigree during the early Nintendo years some people put him on par with his pupil, Miyamoto (considered by many Nintendo fans to be the father of us all) and one of the reasons the company was so succesful with games and game systems. Yokoi is also considered to be the father of the Nintendo Game Boy, which was a highly successful handheld device that kept Nintendo on top of the handheld market for several generations. Like a match made in heaven, Metroid 2 would release exclusive to this handheld platform, continuing the story of Samus Aran, and expanding the Metroid universe even further.

I have to admit personally that while I did own an original NES (as well as an original Game Boy) I was severely limited by funds and only could have so many games for the system and sadly Metroid was not one of them. I also was never fortunate enough to own a Super NES during its lifespan, and while I had seen games demoed on it when visiting various friends, I never got to experience any of them myself during the 16-bit era. This is why I’m so grateful that the Nintendo Wii had the Virtual Console store, and it actually was a huge selling point for me when buying the system. I wanted to be able to play all these classic games I missed out on and the Metroid series was a big part of that.

For those of you who would prefer an abridged retrospective of what those years were like, enjoy this brief retrospective that Nintendo did just prior to the release of Metroid: Other M. For a short, it’s actually extremely well done, narrated by Samus Aran herself, showing the story of the first three Metroid games cut to remastered CGI footage which retold the ending of Super Metroid (Metroid 3).

Following Super Metroid, the glory days of Metroid would hit a dark period following the end of the 16-bit era. In the aftermath of the massive failure of the Virtual Boy, Yokoi was forced to leave Nintendo and tragically died two years later in a car accident. Many have considered his death a conspiracy, or assume had he not been fired from Nintendo he would still be alive today, but no one can really predict that sort of thing. Regardless, There was no Metroid game released for the N64 generation.

But it wasn’t going to be the end of Metroid forever. Nintendo now had a new console, the GameCube, which was in last place in the console war behind Microsoft and Sony. While it was last, It had some graphical power behind it if you knew how to develop for it well enough. They also had the direct access of a very talented second party developer named Retro Studios, and they were going to release a new kind of Metroid game for a whole new generation. What follows is considered to be one of the most nostalgic game commercials of all time.

Metroid Prime was a major hit for the Nintendo GameCube and became a killer app for the console in a time when it was desperately needing one. This was around the time I started to get into Metroid. After seeing all the positive reviews of the game, I just had to play it for myself. Once Metroid Prime released for the Player’s Choice line, I bought a GameCube off a friend of mine just so I could play the game!

When Nintendo announced they planned to bundle the game with new GameCubes I sold my GameCube back to my friend (for exactly what I paid for it) and bought a new silver one, because the bundled copy of Metroid Prime had a behind the scenes preview disc for Metroid Prime 2. That preview disc was gearing up to be a major collector’s item. What made it so special was it could only be obtained by either buying a new GameCube bundled with Metroid Prime or buying five listed Nintendo games and registering their unique codes on Nintendo’s website. This early game registration site would be a precursor to Club Nintendo. Ironically enough, to this day I’ve never opened the game’s package.

Metroid Prime 2 released just before Christmas 2004. It would be the last Metroid game to release for the GameCube and the first to include multiplayer. Even with its few deeply loved games, the GameCube still finished last in the previous console generation war, unable to meet the minimum amount of sales Nintendo desired.

But a new generation of consoles were on the horizon, and Nintendo knew for it to be a success not only would it need to have something to set it apart from its peers, but the full backing of all their beloved properties, and Metroid Prime 3 would need to release for it, taking full advantage of the new Wiimote controller. When Nintendo was ready to release it, they were sure to make it a major staple of the Wii’s marketing blitz.

The Nintendo Wii was selling out everywhere for well over a year after release thanks to its proper marketing, great games, and unique control system. Nintendo released a limited edition of the three Metroid Prime games, called the Metroid Prime Trilogy, to take full advantage of the Wii’s control scheme, and released it in limited quantities for the same price of Metroid Prime 3.

With the Metroid Prime Trilogy complete, Metroid went dark at Nintendo. Retro Studios was now working on other projects, but Metroid would not be gone forever, and during an E3 press conference, the head honchos at Nintendo of America announced that a new Metroid game was coming, and it would be developed by Team Ninja, the company responsible for Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden.

Metroid: Other M was a different kind of game that people were not expecting. This was not another Metroid Prime game. It went back to the original game story of the original Metroid games, but also touched upon the expanded Metroid Universe only previously seen in print. A lot of people criticized how Samus Aran was depicted in it, but I had an appreciation for the game that other critics didn’t. It wasn’t as overwhelming as the Metroid Prime games had been, (with the overwhelming desire to scan anything and everything) and the linear nature of some of the levels actually helped with exploration. I had a lot of fun playing this game, I enjoyed the CGI cutscenes a lot, and I thought the ending was very satisfying.

Now that the Nintendo Wii is on its way out, what is next for Metroid and its hero Samus Aran? The Wii U is going to be Nintendo’s first strike at the next generation of the console war, which is currently unanswered by Sony and Microsoft. Currently, there has not been a Metroid game announced for the platform, but Nintendo knows they have one of the most recognizable property catalogs of any game studio in the world, it would be a shame if they were to let it go to waste.

Could the Release of the Playstation Vita Kill Sony’s Memory Stick? August 11, 2011

With the advent of digital photography, having a memory card you can store all your camera’s data to has become a very common practice.  However, there isn’t a definitive standard for memory card designs, and the type of card you will need is usually dictated by what memory card type your camera requires.  Because of this, there have been all kinds of different memory card types ranging in different sizes, speeds and capacities, and they are not universally compatible with each other.  To deal with this, photo devices and memory card adapters have to include multiple different slots for the different memory card types.

Right now the major three memory card types are CompactFlash (CF), Memory Stick (MS) and SD.  If you buy any kind of photo printer you’ll likely find a socket for each of these cards.   Stores that allow you to print out your digital photos also will have individual sockets for each memory type.  Even the launch version of the Playstation 3 had sockets for each of these cards so you could view your digital photos and videos on your HDTV.

If you have a Sony camera bought within the last few years, chances are definite that you use Memory Stick Pro Duo to take your pictures.  By having their own proprietary media type for their devices, Sony has been able to keep the Memory Stick business thriving for them and their third-party manufacturers like SanDisk.

But probably the biggest device that uses the Sony Memory Stick is the Playstation Portable handheld.  With the launch version of the device having no internal memory of its own, savegames, downloadable games, demos, music, and videos have to be downloaded to a Memory Stick.  With the ability to easily swap these things out, gamers have been able to continuously upgrade the PSP’s storage capacity as more downloadable content is made available to them.

Recently, Sony cameras have been shipping with dual sockets which will take either a Memory Stick or SD memory card.  Because SD is used in most cameras, many users have chosen to use SD cards to ensure compatibility with a wider range of devices like Blu-Ray players and the Nintendo Wii.  However, since the Playstation Portable still has only one socket that will only accept a Memory Stick, the Playstation Portable has become the major Memory Stick selling device.

However, the Memory Stick may be going the way of the dodo and the MiniDisc.  With the Playstation Portable on its way out, the Playstation Vita will be Sony’s major portable games system.  When I demoed the Playstation Vita at E3 this year, I was able to get a few technical questions about the device answered.  Game saves are going to be stored on the internal flash memory portions of a new proprietary game stick format, and the Vita developers have assured me that the device will have its own internal memory capacity, although they have declined to tell me just how much internal space a Vita will have at launch.

However, what the Vita does not have is a Memory Stick slot.  This was a really bad decision.  Without Sony’s cameras or handheld devices encouraging sales of new sticks,  Sony is basically handing the entire market to the SD card, which is used in a wider array of devices.  With Sony’s digital cameras now all coming with dual sockets, and the launch of the Vita likely bringing the retirement of the Sony PSP, there is no killer devices that will encourage the purchase of Memory Sticks.

Likely there will still be a market for a while for legacy devices (the PSP and Sony cameras without dual sockets) but once the PSP gets phased out for the Vita the sales for the Memory Stick is going to just dry up.

Playstation Network Now Pre-Ordering DLC, Why? August 10, 2011

Sony has started to take pre-orders of online downloadable games through their new Playstation Network PLAY inititaive.  Four games, including Bloodrayne: Betrayal and Street Fighter III Third Strike Online Edition are being offered for prepurchase.  Other than the fact the games are discounted to Playstation Plus members or by downloading all four of them you’ll get a free gift, there really is little incentive to preordering a digital game.

The concept of preordering something digital, opposed to retail, is quite different.  In this day and age, preordering a physical copy of something actually does make sense.  Someone is going to put a pre-order down for a retail item in order to reserve it for themselves.  There is a physical limit to the amount of retail games that can be sold.  By reserving the game early, you gurantee that you will have your game set aside for you in advance so on release day you can simply pick it up without any hassle.  But in the digital world, an infinite amount of copies of something can be sold.  There’s no concern all the copies are going to be sold before you get the chance to buy it.

I have talked in the past about this subject.  GameStop was offering preorders for the first Halo Reach downloadable Map Pack a few months ago.  They were offering Power Up Rewards Members a free avatar goodie as an incentive.  While this option for purchasing DLC turned out to be much slower than someone who simply purchased the content through Xbox Live the second it came out, it did provide players who didn’t have access to a Credit Card a chance to pay cash for the content, and gave users a free goodie to boot just for preordering that one map pack.

I can only think of two valid reasons why someone would want to preorder something online.  Pre-Orders through STEAM, for as long as the service has existed, has allowed the user the chance to download the game in advance of release.  With the content already downloaded, the user could literally have the game the second the game released, which, trust me, when Half-Life 2 released, was a really big deal.  If Sony decided to release these games the same way, preordering would be a good idea.

The other valid reason is used by Telltale Games with their episodic game releases.  Instead of buying all six episodes of a game series individually, you could buy all of them in one lump sum at a fairly reduced price, and be e-mailed whenever the new episodes came out, so you could download them immediatly upon release.  Now, Sony isn’t going the episodic route with these games, you can only buy them individually, and you’re only getting a discount if you’re a Playstation Plus subscriber, so this won’t be an option.

My guess is that anyone who preorders any of these games will have them unlocked in their download queue upon release, so you can download and install them the second its released.  This is what Sony did for subscribers to the Playstation Qore Magazine before it became a Playstation Plus incentive.  Really, if they do it like that, you’d have the same experience buying it the second it comes out.

This Halo Life August 6, 2011

With Bungie wrapping up their ties with the Halo franchise that they created after ten years of development, I decided to take some time out this morning and finally write the article I should’ve written a month ago when the last Bungie Day took place.  So without further ado, I present you with my newest featured article for the site, titled “This Halo Life”.

Ten years is a long time, and a lot has happened to me personally and professionally over those years, and through all of it, Halo has been a part of it in some way.  So I decided to write a new featured article about the impact that Halo has had in my life, and everything I’ve done because of the game.  I also included some little seen clips of the game and their developers that I’ve been able to find online.

You can check it out on one of the upper tabs on the top of the page.  I hope everyone enjoys it.

Why Are So Many Games Coming Out This Fall? July 12, 2011

Statistically there are two times of the year major games get released, and trust me I know this from plenty of experience. New games will either come out just before Christmas (usually the day after Thanksgiving is the cut off point) or March. Now I bet you can understand why games would come out in advance of the Christmas season, but why is March so popular? Because that’s the time set aside for the games that miss Christmas. As for the rest of the year, the release of major games can be quite sparse regardless of platform.

Recently, this has hurt even the biggest of publishers, and caused them to rethink the way they released games. In 2008, both the PS3 and Xbox 360 were preparing to release their major exclusives for the Christmas season, Gears of War 2 and Resistance 2. This was also the year which saw the release of the (then) widely popular Guitar Hero World Tour and Rock Band 2 games. With all these games getting expensive Collector’s Edition releases, gamer wallets just dried up! When EA released games from new franchises that year at the same time these major sequels were coming out, sales were hurt badly. The poster child game for this could probably be Mirror’s Edge, which was a fun game which reviewed well and just didn’t get the sales EA was expecting due to the heavy competition that season. EA even said they learned their lesson and would endeavor to spread out their release schedules better, and for the past two years, things have been calm. But that is about to change.

I was kind of hoping that there was going to be an even spread of game releases this summer, but the delay of RAGE, which was going to be coming in August, put the end to that. Now from the looks of it, all of the major game releases for the rest of the year are going to be coming in September, October and November, with October looking like it will probably be the most expensive gaming month in the history of this industry with games like Batman: Arkham City, The Darkness II, and RAGE. November’s looking pretty full as well with releases like Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Skyrim, and Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. Who can afford all this?

Heck, two of Sony’s major platform exclusives, Resistance 3 and Uncharted 3, are launching in that same period, and Uncharted 3 has already announced a $100US Collector’s Edition. By launching them at around the same time, those games are going to be competing with each other! Why would Sony do that?

As Mr. Spock would say, “Logic dictates to have a continual release stream of major game releases of established properties.” To launch them all together at the same time, especially when you are an optional commodity in a time when money is tight all around, is insanity!

Webmaster of Biggest Splatterhouse Site on Web Steps Down June 25, 2011

The West Mansion has been considered by many to be the biggest Splatterhouse fan site on the web.  It was created ten years ago today by it’s webmaster, Rob, originally on GeoCities (anyone else remember that?), and then moved to GameSpy hosting until it got shut down in ’09.  Over ten years it provided tons of assets both official and unofficial about the game.  Things like artwork, fanfiction, concept art, and it all culminated with news over the highly anticipated Splaterhouse remake which released last year.

Well…we know what happened then, I’ve talked about it in the past.  After playing the new game myself I can assure everyone that the reviews of it were wrong, and while it was not perfect it was quite a fun experience.  This horrible trend of game reviewers not knowing a good game if it bit them on the ass and overrating games that were nothing special is something I don’t hope will continue, but you just have to look at the recent media fallout of Duke Nukem Forever to see the tumblers for that lock continue to fall into place.

After today, The West Mansion will be in read-only mode until further notice.  Rob has posted a retrospective about his experiences hosting the site, and I encourage everyone to read it.  He has also written what he believes to be the definitive history of Splatterhouse’s (the recent one) development, which has been very educational.

It’s always sad when a major staple of the Internet closes down, or fades out.  Even though everything on the internet can theoretically last forever, Rob has devoted ten years of his life to operating that site, which is a feat I cannot fathom!  I’ve only been running gameXcess.net for about a year and a half.  It’s one hell of an accomplishment, and I wish you well, Rob.  Take care.

The Catch 22 of E3 June 21, 2011

Let’s face it; E3 is a media event as much as it is a trade show.  These game developers are there to show their games to the press, who in turn are expected to show it to the public.  Now, a lot of developers have decided it was easier and cheaper to just directly show their games to the public, which is why E3 went off radar for two years, but it was decided that was a bad idea and it was brought back.  Why though, with all the advances that have been made technologically over the past ten years, are the E3 exhibitors still operating within the same mindset?

If you want to see a game that’s being shown at E3 (not just a trailer, but a playable portion of the game) with the intention to write a preview of it others will read, there are usually two ways it will be displayed to you.  Of course usually the developer or publisher will choose which option they want you to have for you, but the rules for either are pretty consistent based on what my experiences were this year. The first can be a hands-on demo at a demo kiosk.  You can pick up a controller and get a chance to actually play the game.  Other than a controls guide, no instructions are usually provided for the user except to have fun and don’t die.  The other option is to wait in a line at a theater booth and see the game presented to you by the game development team while they talk you through what they’re playing and you can simply watch.

Here’s the downside of both of those options.  Demo kiosks usually will allow you to video record the game that you’re playing.  Unless E3 allowed you to have a professional cameraperson accompany you (which they didn’t for me this year) a lone journalist is going to have a really tough time video recording a live demo while playing the game!  If you’d like some examples I had to deal with this year, I had to record the Resistance 3 single player demo from my lap, I had to play Dead Rising 2: Off the Record demo one handed while using the other to record, and it made recording the Rage demo impossible.  I think Tim Buckley was the first to weigh in on this problem.  However, while his article sattired the problem, I don’t think he got to the heart of why these videos are so bad.

So it would seem that recording from a theater demo would be the best option.  You’re sitting down, the game is being played for you, and you’ll be able to hear developer commentary no problem while recording the game.  Well, that’s a no go, because for some reason video recording is still NOT allowed during a theater demo.  Don’t bother to ask they’ll usually tell you straight up before the demo starts.  In fact Randy Pitchford informed the crowd during the Aliens: Colonial Marines demo that a Sega security guard was watching us with night vision and would do terrible, terrible things to us if he so much as thought we were pulling out a camera or recording device.  Needless to say I was too scared to even put my phone into silent mode before the demo started.  Even after the four hours of waiting I did to demo the PS Vita, I was told to shut my camera off immediately before even the Q&A started (where they didn’t even say anything that wasn’t already officially announced.)

I can understand that the people who hold these theater demos don’t want poor quality offscreen videos of the demo showing up on YouTube, but my camera shoots offscreen pretty darn well (I’ve used it for some demo and beta lets plays because decent capture equipment is beyond my expenses) and I’m sure that a lot of other modern cameras that are a lot more expensive than mine can as well.  Plus, there’s only so many people that are allowed to be at E3, making the journalists almost the elected representatives of the public in general.  Don’t you want what they bring back with them to be decent?

For god’s sakes, developers, let me pull my video camera out when you do a theater demo.  I promise I’ll leave it to you to make your game look good.