A few nights ago, my girlfriend and I watched Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Walking out of that theatre and thinking about how much I enjoyed that movie put me in a weird mental space. On one side, the gamer in me was really happy to see video games represented with a level of love and respect that movies have failed to deliver on. On the other side, the movie watcher in me wasn’t so sure I enjoyed it for the all the right reasons.
Long before the August 14th, 1995 release of the Virtual Boy, I was excited to get my hands on one. Up until this point, Nintendo had never let me down. I had read all the preview coverage about the system and even entered a contest from a local newspaper that was giving one away. If that didn’t pan out, I was going to buy the Virtual Boy the moment I had saved up enough money for it.
Last week was the Virtual Boy’s 15th anniversary and I still don’t own one. I’ve had opportunities in recent memory to pick up up after the fact, but I’ve passed on it every time. Even if I did pick one up, it would be more for the humour in it than anything. The fall of the Virtual Boy is well documented, so instead of looking at the big picture, I wanted to talk about my personal experiences with one of the worst video game platforms of all-time.
This is an on-going series where I discuss the thinking involved in Street Fighter that I’ve applied to basketball. If you want to see earlier entries in the series, hit the link: Part 1: Spacing, Part 2: Punishing Mistakes, Part 3: Resource Management
Exploitation of Weaknesses
When I play the computer in Street Fighter IV as Akuma, regardless of difficulty, I can almost always land a Raging Demon. I don’t know what the guys at Capcom did about the AI, but 99% of the time when I input that command, the computer just stands there and eats it. Human opponents in general are tougher to fool, but virtually everyone has weaknesses of some sort. When I play an opponent, one of the very first things I check is my opponent’s ability to block a cross-up. It’s a tactic that most casual players don’t understand and won’t figure out how to counteract it within the span of one match. When I notice that my opponent doesn’t have an answer for that, or any other tactic that I throw at them, I will repeatedly use that tactic until I win or until my opponent finds an answer.
200 posts is a fairly big milestone for a blog. I don’t have the stats to back this up, but I’m pretty sure the majority of blogs get abandoned after a handful of posts. I love In Third Person, and I think creating 200 posts by myself in just over 13 months says a lot about my love of games and my commitment to this site.
During that time though, I also switched platforms from Blogger to WordPress. Unfortunately, I’m pretty sure that the majority of my Blogger readership didn’t make the jump to WordPress and that my WordPress following never dug into the older Blogger posts. If you don’t fit into either use-case, then 200 blog posts is a lot of content to catch up on.
If you’re looking to go back through the In Third Person catalogue, this 201st post highlights 5 posts you may have missed.
StarCraft II is without question, the hottest game on the planet right now. It’s arguably the biggest game of 2010. Everywhere gaming website I go to, every message board I visit and every video game podcast I listen to is talking about it. Even all of my coworkers are talking about their forays into the campaign and multiplayer modes.
Though I’ve heard and read enough about StarCraft II to hold up a decent conversation about the game, I kind of feel left out. You see, I’ve never played StarCraft II before. Or the original one. I must confess that, I haven’t even played an RTS since before the original Starcraft came out.
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Dance on Broadway is a very interesting game. When Ubisoft scored huge with Just Dance, there was no question that they would capitalize on that success. What I didn’t see happening though, was Ubisoft creating a dancing game based on Broadway musicals. I’m not sure if there are enough aspiring Broadway dancers that want to live out their Hairspray dreams through a Wii game to justify this game’s existence.
Even my girlfriend, who just so happens to be a fan of Just Dance and musicals, was reluctant to pick this up. With only 20 songs on the disc, it’s not easy to justify picking this up at regular price. Thanks to a Wal-Mart sale that took 50% off the regular price, she now owns it and we’ve strutted and shimmied our way through a number of show tunes. I haven’t played through every song, but I think I’ve played enough to say if this one deserves a standing ovation or whether it should exit stage left.
My girlfriend and I will be attending FanExpo this year. Neither of us have ever gone to a convention before (or done anything this nerdy before) but between the two of us, there is enough cool stuff to see and do there for that whole weekend. We’re both really excited to be a part of the experience.
One of those experiences includes a few game tournaments. I know I have no business in the Modern Warfare 2 tournament and the existence of a competitive Smash Bros. scene still baffles me. However, I’m heavily debating in my head whether or not I should throw my name in the hat for the Super Street Fighter IV tourney. Maybe by writing down my thought process I’ll come to a decision.
As I often do, I was surfing through the NeoGaf forums when I found the following thread that caught my eye:
Reviews which you NEVER forgave (EGM/Nick Rox – Grrrr)
In this 500+ post thread, users go off on reviews, reviewers and gaming outlets that said something about games that they didn’t agree with. It’s kind of scary reading through some of the hate in these posts. Some of these users seem to be harbouring more ill will over a 15-year old review than I do about ex-girlfriends who cheated on me.
This behaviour isn’t isolated to NeoGaf. These types of angry and hateful comments are apparent on virtually every video game message board and every game review with a comment system. I’ve even heard numerous stories on podcasts where reviewers said they’ve received death threats from people who didn’t agree with their opinions. Tell me, why do people get so mad over video game reviews?
Back in the early 90s, you couldn’t walk by an arcade without hearing that intro theme music to Street Fighter II. Street Fighter II was revolutionary for a number of reasons. It became the blueprint that every 2D fighting game has followed ever since. It introduced a new layer of video game controls and complexity. It had what would become some of the most iconic sounds in all of video games (hadoken!). What it doesn’t get as much credit for is that it was one of the first games to introduce a new level of complexity in music while being as catchy and timeless as any of the best video game soundtracks ever.
Ever since she got a Wii for Christmas, my girlfriend has amassed quite the game collection for herself. I haven’t actually taken the time to count our respective game stashes, but if she doesn’t already have more Wii games than me, she’s on pace to surpass me very soon.
We haven’t had too much time to play games together of late, since we’ve been out of town together for a number of reasons. In spite of that, we have spent some quality time with the Wii fired up. Hit the cut to see what we’ve been playing together. Maybe you and your significant other may enjoy together as well.
In Third Person 