Retro Games

This past weekend, I was cruising www.ign.com, my go-to gaming site, when I came across their article about "The 100 Greatest NES Games" I sat and read through the entire article, about a two hour read. Throughout the article, I noticed a recurring theme: games were really hard, and many of them featured co-op mutli player (games like Ikari Warriors and Contra being notable mentions).This got me to thinking: are games these days as good as they were in the old days? Now before you start spouting off about graphics and particle effects, bump-mapping and the likes, I'm not speaking about them from a technical standpoint. I'm mean, more specifically, are games as fun as they used to be?

The focus today, it seems (as I type this, my girlfriend is playing Fallout 3, her current obsession) is on superior graphics and flashiness. I know that a lot of games do have some high "fun factors" and great stories, Fallout 3 being a prime example, but I notice that there's a lot of trash out there, too. Bethesda software's recent game, Wet, for example was, well... not good(Fallout, on the other hand, Bethesda's game from last year, is amazing in most aspects). I played the demo, and it felt stiff, repetitive and very under-produced.

I understand that this is a minority, but I can't help that feel that games were... better back then.

Look at an under-rated game of years past: Bionic Commando. In an era where the focus of most games was running and jumping, Capcom dared to remove the ability from the protagonist. You had to rely on his Bionic swinging arm to get around. Admittedly, at first, it is a little difficult. After fifteen minutes or so, I was swinging around levels like Spiderman with a gun. Another example is Battletoads. Battletoads has got to be one of the hardest games in the history of games. I've been playing that game since about 1991 (when there was a craze for anthropomorphic animals kicking ass) when it was released, and to this day I'm lucky if I can get past the third level without getting game over (seriously, check this game out. Its fun AND hard as hell). I actually remember an interview I read in a magazine some fifteen years ago where the producers admitted to making the game as devious as possible. You don't get games like that now. I recently saw an ad for a game called Badlands, and open ended first person shooter/adventure game for the Xbox360. A tagline in the article stated, "You are not hardcore enough for this game". I had to laugh a little bit, thinking back on games like Battletoads and Kid Icarus. Back then, you were either luck or insanely skilled to get to end of a game like that (keep in mind this was before emulators and save states and not including using games genie - no cheating!).

I once spent an entire summer playing StarTropics (the summer of 2001, actually. I was dirt poor) on my black and white TV. My buddy across the road had just got his PS2 and kept inviting me over to play. I would often decline, as I was too busy trying to beat a level near the end of the game.

See, this is my point. The old games of the NES sucked you in. Not because of their stellar graphics, but because of their focus on adventuring and fun.

I may have been young in the prime days of the NES, as it died out in 1994, and I was only eight then, but my earliest memory is basically that of an NES controller pad in my hand, playing Super Mario Bros. I remember the days before the net, when if you knew a secret in a game, you could impress your friends.

Overall, I just feels that games were more pure back then, more... fun. There's to much of a focus today on bloodshed and body count.

Monday, October 19th, 2009

Today, I did the 1.5mi run for midterm. Didn't do great. 11:34. But, not too bad, considering I haven't been able to run for nearly a month. As of now, though, back in the gym as often as possible, with a focus on cardio, if I can keep my mind trained on it. I also did my pushup training. It was as follows:

Monday: Start with a maximum set. Rest 110 seconds. Next set should be 90% of the max, with 100 seconds rest. Next set should be 80% of the max with 90 seconds rest. Every set deduct 10% and 10 seconds of rest.

Now, with my max being 40, my numbers should have looked like this:

40 36 32 28 24 20 16 12 8 4

for a total of 220 pushups.

My actual numbers were:

38 22 22 18 14 16 16 12 8 4

for a total of 170 pushups.

This was tough, and I'm not entirely happy with my results; 50 off. I'll just have to look at it as an incentive to try harder. Will update tomorrow with further exercise.

An update

I know I'm pretty sporadic at this whole blogging thing, so I thought it was about time I made an update. My fitness as of late, though I'm attending class three days a week, has been on the decline, but only slightly. This is because I sustained a pretty significant injury to my calf the week before last. Not sure what I did, but for nearly two weeks, I could barely walk. A talk with the doctor told me that I had bruised the Gastrocnemius, my whole calf muscle. So, sweet. I'm on the mend now. It doesn't hurt to walk any longer, but running is still out of the question. I tried a lap around the school gym the other day and paid the price. Once I'm back to 100%, however, I plan to push forward with my cardio, and give weight lifting a bit of a back seat. As important as weight lifting is, for my (future) career, cardio is more so.

On another note, I got a game (well, half a game anyway) of 40k on Sunday night. Tim and I played a 3000 point Planetstrike game. I have to say that Planetstrike is a riot. Here's the email that Tim sent out regarding the game:

Planetstrike mission against Ray's Ultramarines last night.
He was attacker, with a list like:
Librarian10 Sternguard - 2 meltagun, power fist, flamer, in drop pod with deathwind missilesLibrarian10 Tactical marines - rocket, flamer, fistLand Raider - multi-melta5 Terminators - cyclone missiles, in Land Raider CrusaderPredator destructorVenerable Dreadnought - twin-link lascannon, missile launcherVenerable Dreadnought - multi-meltaDreadnought - twin-link lascannon, missile launcherDreadnought - assault cannon10 Tactical marines - rocket, meltagun, fist10 Assault marines - power weapon, plasma pistol, 2 flamers10 Tactical marines - power fist, RazorbackLandspeeder - multi-melta, heavy flamerLandspeeder - multi-melta, heavy flamer

My force:
Librarian - terminator armour, storm bolterMaster of the Forge - thunderhammer10 Tactical marines - plasma cannon, meltagun, power fist, rhino with storm bolter10 Tactical marines - plasma cannon, meltagun, power fist, rhino with storm bolter10 Tactical marines - lascannon, meltagun, power fist, rhino with storm bolter10 Tactical marines - lascannon, flamer, power weapon, rhio with storm bolter10 Tactical marines - rocket, flamer, power fist, rhino with storm bolter10 Tactical marines - rocket, flamer, rhino with storm bolter and dozer blade7 Sternguard - 5 combi-meltaDreadnought - twin-link lascannon, missile launcherDreadnought - multi-meltaDreadnought - multi-meltaTechmarine - thunderhammer4 Servitors - 2 Heavy bolterVindicator - dozer bladeVindicator - Storm shield10 Devastators - 2 rocket launcher, 2 plasma cannon
As defender I set up the board and deploy first.
Built the board as a kind of ship thing. 2 Bastions and an intact bunker as the objectives. I deployed the Sternguard in 1 bunker, half of the devs in the other (with the plasma cannons and the sgt). The bunker had the Techmarine, his retinue of Servitors and the Librarian in it. Everything else went around all over.
This report is going to be pretty spotty. My memory of the game is pretty much all over the place.
For strategems, I took laser wire (set up a set of laser lines that cause dangerous terrain tests. Krak attack (deep striking models may land on a pile of krak grenades. And machine spirit (1 bunker can choose what to shoot at, and has BS3).
Ray took crash and burn (drop the wreckage of a vehicle on the table and blow up stuff it hits), plus Darken the skies (night fighting).
The firestorm was rather disappointing for ray. One immoblized dread, and the cannon off a vindicator. His first turn arrivals did a bit of damage. The Master and the Techmarine did a pretty good job of fixing what was broken though. Return fire slowed, but didn't stop the advance. There seemed to be a pretty heavy number of marines dumping onto the battlefield, and with the losses I was suffering (and in most cases facing 5 to 10 odds or worse in each match up), I was not doing very well.
I lost the Devastator's bastion to heavy firepower, and thinking it was a loss, abandoned it. The Devastator squad did not survive much past getting out of the door. Neither side was having much luck with saves, and while it put some pressure on the Ultras, it was really hurting my forces. This was partly due to my deployment strategy, which had me encircle the center buildings with units of 5 marines. Enough to provide lots of overlapping fields of fire, but not really enough to mobilize a good counter-assault.
The Ultra's used their dreads and Assault troops to good effect, cutting through swathes of the DA with little resistance - though a few of my sgt's managed to survive near-impossible odds.
Especially cripping for the Ultra side were their Land Raiders. These were difficult to damage, and it was left pretty much up to the Vindicators to do the maximum damage possible. Of course, in turn they suffered the most of the return fire. Ultimately, the game ended up a win for the DA, 2 to 1 objectives, though we had to call it after 3 turns. Had there been a 4th or 5th turn, it was probably going to go to the Ultras.
While the DA still had a credible defense, there wasn't much standing between the Ultras and the bunker. With that in their posession, it'd be difficult to draw them off of it, and still keep any sort of defense for the other objectives.
The Planetstrike book is interesting, and with the in-battle terrain effects, can be a very changable place. Stuff getting dropped in, or tossed around. Buildings being destroyed and reduced to rubble and ruins. I'll have to play this again. Maybe as the attacker.


Tim and I have another game scheduled tonight at Forbes', a 2000 point Planetstrike game. I'll be the defender this time. I anticipate a loss on my part, but we'll see. I have yet to build a list, however, but I have a pretty good idea of what I'll take. Maybe I'll post the battle report, and even take some pics.

That's all for now.