B.G. Willers

08.19.13

Bygones Are Bygones

I was never a Sega kid.  If you look back through the archives of this blog, or explore the “Video Games” category, you’ll know that I am a fair tempered Nintendo fanboy.  And in the 16-bit days, the console wars were at Defcon 2.  It just so happened that I really ended up sitting out of the 16-bit era.  I never had a Super Nintendo growing up, but I had friends with both a Genesis and an SNES.  Maybe that’s what made adding the Genesis to the collection feel so right, or maybe it really is that enough time has passed, we can put those quarrels behind us.

I got a small amount of birthday money in the past couple weeks, and combined with a small amount of money I saved up, I had enough to buy this Sega lot on eBay.  A Genesis, 1 controller and 22 games.  I pretty much inherited somebody’s complete Genesis collection!

What do I play next?  Now, granted a lot o those games are mid 90’s sports games.  But it was really fun watching Andrea play some football that has almost more in common with the old vibrating metal football games of the past than it does today’s sophisticated Madden games.  Still just as fun though.  And neat to think that at the time, that was the pinnacle of gaming achievement for the genre.  Plus it’s kinda cool to play as Joe Montana for the Chiefs.  I mean, c’mon.  If you don’t like that you can play as one of the OTHER 27 teams! (Hint, there’s 32 NFL teams now).

Of course there’s Sonic in there, and some other arcade/adventure style games.  Really a pretty nice collection.  I know positively nothing about Sega, but it will be fun to experience these games for the first time!

08.6.13

Oldest of Friends

Tonight was Retro Night.  I really was at odds as to what to play.  What I NEED to play is Final Fantasy VI… but I wasn’t up for something that required such focus and investment.  To be honest, I really contemplated just sitting at my PC and watching all of the fantastically hilarious “Geek Week” content on YouTube.  But I said to my self, you have begun this tradition of Retro Night, and you MUST honor it.  I thought and thought.  Then I decided, you know, if it came down to any game you could play at this moment… of all time… what would it be?  And from there the choice was simple.

Andrea and Luke are out of town.  Some men might use this as an opportunity to go out on the town, hang out with the guys, smoke some cigars.  Me?  I decided to play Mario Kart 64.  And drink.  Infact I was doing equally as well at both.  Well, by the end I was doing much better at drinking than I was at Mario Kart.  Still got gold on all four cups in 150cc though.  Not really saying much though.  I’ve played so much of this game, I could play it even practically unconscious.

I would like to think that being slightly inebriated helps me experience these old games at a point in time before I had mastered them.  That is severely not the case.  It serves only to frustrate me as I know what these hands are capable of, only what I see happening on the screen isn’t matching what I’m telling them to do.  Slamming into walls, running into traps… not my usual style; not my style at least not when it comes to this game.  We go way back.

I tweeted a picture of the poster above a few days ago.  I’ve been tweaking out the Retro Room recently and knew I had this stashed somewhere, but it hasn’t been displayed in probably almost 10 years.  It was originally a poster insert in the Tips & Tricks magazine that I used to get back in the 90’s.  The magazine always published the fastest times for Mario Raceway, and I always would practice and beat the published time before the next issue came out.  Of course, then there would be a new FASTER time that some other reader had submitted.

At any rate, this poster appeared in one of the issues.  On the flipside, it has a similar scene for Kalamari Desert (wish I would have photographed that before hanging it).  Hopelessly lost in my Nintendo 64 addiction, I pinned this up in my room at the height my my Mario Kart 64 obsession.  Over the years I let go of some of the more minute parts of my collection, game boxes and the like.  But I could never bring myself to throw this one away.  It’s an emotional anchor back to a really different, but very pleasant, time in my life.  Sentamentally, I value it almost as much as the Mario Kart 64 cartridge itself.

It was a fun night.  Though I couldn’t help but think of all the fun we had with Biebs, Bef, Bobby and the rest of my family playing battle mode on Block Fort or Double Deck.  An experience that sadly I don’t think I’ll ever be able to re-live quite the same way.

07.22.13

Bending the Rules

Well… Monday’s are supposed to be Guild Wars 2 night according to my new weekly regimen.  But I played a fair amount yesterday, and since this morning for some reason I really wanted to play Guild Wars: Original Recipe.

So I took my GW2 night and made it a GW1 night.  A lot of the night was spent opening up new birthday presents.  All my characters except one had a birthday present to open.  Seems like it must have been that long since I’ve logged in.  And I got one of my most desired minis!  The Mini Candysmith Marley!

I spent the rest of the time mostly roaming around with no purpose.  I feel like when I log into Guild Wars now, I really should have the goal of accomplishing something.  With the Hall of Monuments, some of your achievements in GW can actually carry over to GW2.  I guess I sorta met that requirement by dedicating 5 new minis I didn’t have.  Wasn’t enough to get me another point, but it got me closer.

And because I always take gratuitous screenshots.  Here’s some nostalgic screenshots from tonight!  Man I can’t believe it’s been over 7 years since I started playing.  I also didn’t quite appreciate how much of an improvement GW2 graphics were over GW1 but next to my previous post, you certainly can notice the difference.  Guild Wars just doesn’t have the layout that allows for the wide open vistas like Guild Wars 2.  I still enjoy the screen shots just the same.

07.21.13

Pick a Direction and Go

One of my favorite things to do in Guild Wars 2 is just set out with absolutely no objective other than exploring.  Every map is gorgeous and there’s so many times where you’re walking along thinking, “This is so beauti… WHOA!  That’s amazing!”

Here’s some screenshots from tonight’s expedition!

The last several pictures all have been literally just like 20 steps into Kessex Hills. There’s amazing stuff every inch!

07.16.13

Retro Game Night!

I’m so excited.  I have officially dubbed Tuesdays as Retro Game Night in my house.  You’re probably thinking, I could play retro games every night around here if I wanted to.  And I COULD, but then I couldn’t get a lot of other things done, be it gaming, or actual, you know… responsibilities.

So I decided in order to be able to enjoy a few of the things I’ve really been wanting to do, and not just plow through them one at a time like it’s a job, I would take different nights of the week and dedicate them to different areas.  All part of this preparation and organization kick I’m on lately.

So there you go.  This whole idea is all about making time for the things I want to do.  I’ve felt so busy since Luke was born.  But hopefully putting a little focus behind my recreation, I can not only actually get to them, but also enjoy them.  All to often I feel like I’m just plowing through something I’ve wanted to do, making it something I have to do because I don’t know when I’m going to get back to it.  This adds some structure.  And it helps me remember I will get back to things, so I don’t have to force my way through them.

We’ll see how long this lasts.  I get on these kind of kicks then eventually they fizzle out for me, but right now, I’m pretty excited about it.

06.24.13

A new generation, and rebuilding of the Retro Room.

My little brother Jake came up this past weekend.  For the past two weeks, he’s been calling me every couple of days asking about GoldenEye.  What we can do, what levels we can play, and most importantly, what cheats we can use.  Haha.  I don’t think he typically plays a lot of games, but for whatever reason he’s really latched on to GoldenEye.  In fact, I haven’t seen anyone this excited about GoldenEye since… me.

So we spent a large amount of time playing that.  I was content to spectate.  As I’ve said before, I almost like watching people play games, more than actually playing them.  Which is why I still nag Andrea once in a while to play through Final Fantasy X.  It’s just so fun watching people discover the game as they play.  It’s as close as I can get to playing it again for the first time.

More than anything, I found it remarkable that an 8 year old kid in 2013 is at all interested in a game that is literally twice as old as he is.  Compared to games today GoldenEye must some mundane to some extent.  But I appreciated and enjoyed our shared enthusiasm.

If you’ll notice the TV on the floor in the picture above.  Luke has since moved into the old Retro Room.  So we moved that TV upstairs.  It is a heavy bastard.  Much more than one person can handle alone.  So in a time crunch, I had to set everything up like that, because I knew I’d be at work, and Jake would NOT want to wait until I got home to play GoldenEye.

Later this weekend, Andrea was able to help me get the TV up on the stand, and I started rebuilding the Retro Room.

Seems like a nice spread to me.  =)  One thing to note, is that little of that has been actual collecting, for collecting’s sake.  A vast majority is just accumulation over time.  Most people garage sale old games and systems once they are bored with them, I just never did and now I have a ton of this stuff.  This is all pretty much everything before HD consoles.  The only things missing are the Wii games which we still keep downstairs to play on the Wii U, and the ridiculous amount of controllers.  Everything else from 1987 – 2012 is pretty much right here.  Kinda weird to see all that history and all the memories in one place.

I like this arrangement better than what I had in the old room.  Rather than a straight line from left to right.  Looks pretty good I think for some free cards from Club Nintendo, and $1 frames from Dollar Tree.

You can’t be around all these classic games and NOT pick one up!  Andrea found Super Mario Land 2 and decided to give it a go.

And there’s pretty much the current setup.  I like it better than the previous arrangement.  I still have to swap some cables out to get some of the systems playable, but for the most part, it’s all within 60 seconds of being ready to play.  I have an idea for controller storage I’m excited to try and I want to try to find a few more things for the walls.  But the Retro Room is back!  That’s the important thing.

06.18.13

Nintendo’s E3 Direct: First Impressions

NOTE: I started writing these thoughts days ago.  Finally got time to finish them.  Sorry for the delay.

I’ve always enjoyed E3.  Even as my fanaticism about gaming has waned to make room for other important things in life, I’ve always still enjoyed E3 as a few days to relive all those times I used to get ridiculously excited about games and hardware that were coming out.  Hearing about amazing new hardware, mind blowing Zelda games, and the huge adventures that I would… someday… get to experience.  This year though, I was left with the feeling of, “That’s it?”

Maybe it’s just the way it was presented that made the games seem less exciting this year, or maybe, the games were less exciting.  Listening to Iwata speak English at length is strenuous.  I appreciate the fact that the president of the company wants to be there to represent Nintendo to fans and the media, and it’s not just some paid spokesperson, but for something like E3, where I’m used to things being sorta bigger than real life, I was a bit underwhelmed.  Reggie is still the man for this job, I say.  I usually enjoy Iwata in other Nintendo Directs, so maybe what I’m getting at here is that Nintendo Direct might not have been my preferred platform for Nintendo at E3.  If I could have the old press conference back, I’d take it.

So what about the games?  Well, let me say right away, I’m probably going to buy about half of them.  Haha.  And I suppose from Nintendo’s perspective, then these announcements were a success.  Super Mario 3D World, Mario Kart 8, and Donkey Kong Country are all probably eventually going to find their way into my library.  But nothing was jaw dropping.

Probably my biggest disappointment was Mario Kart 8.  This coming off of Mario Kart 7 which I have been thoroughly impressed with on the 3DS.  Mario Kart 8 seems like just 7 on the Wii U… with antigravity.  Really?  I never really thought a game that revolved around tossing banana peels and firing heat seeking turtle shells could “jump the shark” but it may just be possible.  Part of the problem is that Mario Kart is a 20 year old idea that may already be fully evolved.  No longer can you rely on improved graphics to re-pack and sell essentially the same game, and keep it feeling fresh.  Visual upgrades are now so incremental, that it was easy for me to look at Mario Kart 8 was 95% the same game as Mario Kart 7, a handheld game!  All that said… I’ll still buy it because it is Mario Kart.  Nintendo wins.

I felt almost exactly the same with Super Mario 3D World.  I was really expecting something more along the Galaxy line.  And I was HOPING more for a more traditional type sequel to Super Mario 64.  But instead a game was announced that I felt like I had already played.  I am 100% certain that this game will be amazing, solid, and successful.  But the announcement itself was disappointing.  Will I buy this one?  Yup.  Nintendo wins again.

One of the titles I’m most excited for, Wii Fit U, was announced… to be delayed until December.  So another aww shucks.

All in all, Nintendo’s software lineup for 2013 looks solid, safe, and predictable.  I don’t think they’ll have any trouble selling games.  All I’m saying is I feel like E3 could have delivered me a bit more this year.

 

06.10.13

The Retro-Room Has Been Evicted!

What was the “Retro-Room” is now officially “Luke’s Room”.  We had some doubt about how he would take to moving downstairs and into a room all by himself.  And turns out, he couldn’t be happier apparently!  He went to sleep without a single peep!  We’ll see how he handles the morning though when he wakes up and Mommy isn’t right there.

I for one am super happy.  I always feel like I have to tip-toe around in the morning getting ready because I don’t want to wake Luke up, and that in turn wakes Andrea up.  So this way, I don’t have to go into his room at all and he can stay zonked out.

As for the retro-room.  I guess all that stuff is getting relocated to our bedroom, which is really two rooms that got combined at some point in the past.  So there is plenty of room up there.  But I thought with it in our bedroom it would be less accessible when guests come over.  But then I thought, who am I kidding.  In all the time we’ve had guests over, maybe once did we spend any time in the retro room.  I guess I’m alone in my love for these old games.  If nothing else, hopefully in our bedroom, and having the opportunity to look at them each day, they will get a little more play time, at least by me..

06.9.13

Already Missed a Day

Third day in… and I’ve already broken my commitment to post every day.  Dang it!  But you know what?  I’m not going to apologize or feel guilt for it.  Yesterday was a pretty good day.

Saturday started out pretty much like a regular work day for me.  I had to get up and be at the radio station by 8AM to finish up some stuff I didn’t get done Friday, then I had a remote from 10AM to Noon.  So at least it was a half day if anything.  And the remote itself was pretty cool.  I was hanging out at a car dealership with 3 classic dragsters, a new Shelby GT500 and a new Dodge Challenger or two.  So as far as working goes, it wasn’t too bad.

After that I headed home, and really didn’t accomplish a whole lot.  Took a nap.  Watch a storm roll in.  We were expecting some hail, but it turned out just to be a nice good soaking rain, free water for the yard!  Then it was pretty much time to eat, played with Luke.  Luke went to bed and then… I actually got to play some Guild Wars 2!  It’s been about as long since I’ve played that game as it has since I had posted on the blog.

So even though I didn’t get a post made yesterday, I had a very enjoyable today.  I’m hoping for today to be equally as good, but a bit more productive.  As soon as Andrea gets up and around, I’m going to see if she can watch Luke and I’m going to get some work done on the cars (all four of them, ugh) that I’ve been putting off.

04.15.13

Actual Adventuring

I’m not going to lie.  A majority of the time when I’m playing Guild Wars 2 these days I’m on the Trading Post.  But with some free time this weekend, I decided to actually PLAY the game.  So I took off to resume my adventuring where I left off.  Remember ages ago when I posted some screen shots from exploring Lornar’s Pass?  Well, guess who’s still there.  It’s a testament to what I believe is both an insane amount of content packed into the game, and the fact that my play is highly sporadic.

Here’s an example of an in-game event (above).  I don’t remember this guy’s name.  “El Satano” or something.  I get around pretty good solo in the game, so I figured, what the heck, I’ll try to take him out.  If I do, I get some bonus rewards for completing an event and the world in that area usually changes in some way that effects everyone.  But when my first couple hits didn’t make a dent, and then he wholluped me for half my health in one swipe… I RAN!  I’ll have to come back here when I have an actual group.

I play a Charr Mesmer, which means one of my special abilities is to create clones of myself.  Basically shadows of my player with minds of their own.  The damage they deal is low to moderate, and their health is low, so they don’t last long.  But while I’m out on my own, I’ve found them invaluable for creating distractions, especially when I find that I have bitten off more than I can chew.  If I time it right and using my elite skill, I can call up to 6 temporary allies to my side.

Choosing your weapons has a huge impact on how you play the game.  I play with a Greatsword in my first weapon set.  A huge two-handed sword that you don’t actually swing at anyone.  Instead it fires bolts of energy at long range along with some other skills to summon illusions.  My second weapon set is a sword in my primary hand, with a pistol in my off hand.

I really love this setup.  I’m able to initiate a confrontation from a distance and start dealing damage as the enemy moves to engage me.  When the foe gets into close range, I’ll use a shockwave to stun and blast him back, then fire away again and summon some illusions.  When the foe gets back up and again starts to close in on me, I’ll switch to my sword.  One sword skill allows me to perform several rapid attacks while invulnerable to attack.  Once this skill wears off I’ll stun the enemy with my pistol.  This gives me time to heal, or wait a second or two for my other skills to re-charge.  With this arrangement I really feel like I can control the mobs.  The backup from my clones helps provide additional attack power and soak up some of the hits as well.

Look at that ridiculous sword!  It’s twice as long as my character is tall.  He is possibly compensating for something.

Here is a sweet pirate lair.  Amazing structures like this are all over the place in this game.  When I came upon this there was a Quaggan in charge.  A race that is known for anything but being cut-throat and devious.  Apparently at one point, he told one of the other players in the game that he had always wanted to be a pirate Captain.  So that player along with anyone else in the area at the time fought and took control of this outpost and made the Quaggan Captain.  As time passes the broken pirate crew becomes restless and plans to retake the outpost.  That’s what happened when I was there.  And I’m proud to say that I was absolutely no help and the outpost was lost to the pirates.

I don’t remember what this place was.  But it looked cool, so I took a picture!

So I finally decided that it was time to advance in my personal story.  I went off to my next quest.  And this SUCKED.  My computer companion on this trip said, “Watch the flags and torches to know when the wind is blowing… you don’t want to get blown off this wall.” I probably got blown off that wall 20 times, easily.  That or I just plain fell off.  Guild Wars 2 is not a great platforming game, but they sure like to throw plenty of platforming at you with quests like this and jumping puzzles everywhere you look.

But at long last, I finally passed it.  With much relief.  Glad that’s behind me.  Oh, look!  I have some Trading Post cash to go claim!

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