Micro Machines

Me & you, cartoon version.

Ever since scientist and inventor Rick Moranis proved people-shrinking technology to be a disquieting possibility in the documentary Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, I’ve had nightmares about it happening to me. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat (as opposed to my usual hot sweat) screaming that the bed is a matchbox stuffed full of facial tissue. So far this has never been the case, but I put to you that it’s only a matter of time. I consider playing Micro Machines to be training for that fateful day, when I suddenly find myself forced into a deadly race on someone’s kitchen table.

To ensure that the training reflected reality as closely as possible, I selected the leather-clad cool dude character Spider (pictured above) as my driver and the hapless simp Walter (also pictured above, the simp) as my opponent. The reality is that I’m completely awesome and that everyone else around me is more or less Walter. Worthless, useless, ginger Walter. I do have to admit that Walter’s glee in being selected to do anything save sit on his duff and slowly die out his butt was quite amusing, but his glee would soon be crushed as he lost race after race. After race. After race. In fact, all I had to do was outpace Walter to the edge of the screen, and a black ball would fly out and batter around my car for a while before I got a “BONUS” and drew one step closer to victory. Was Walter even cognizant of what was happening? Probably not.

Micro Machines is kind of entertaining: the character designs make me laugh; the racing part of the game, however, leaves much to be desired, which is a problem in a racing game. The tracks (bathtub, garden, tables & desks) and vehicles (cars, boats, helicopters) are varied, true, but the constant resetting of the vehicles when you outpace your opponent to the screen edge quickly became tiresome. The control isn’t so hot, and you’ll often find yourself getting inescapably stuck on obstacles. The overhead perspective makes it tricky to navigate around the levels even with helpful track lines laid down in front of you. Some of them look like lines of cocaine, but I think they’re supposed to be chalk. You really can’t snort chalk like cocaine.

Overall, I wouldn’t bother with Micro Machines except for the character selection screen, since that’s by far the best part. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to return to crafting tiny weapons and armour.

Mickey’s Ultimate Challenge

If you think hard enough, all your dreams will come true.

- Mickey Mouse. The Secret.

Dear Issac!

If you look at a penis long enough it becomes a Mickey Mouse! This is significance that Darwinists everywhere refute, but it is true! Do you believe it?! Even YOU can be a religious person!

If God does not exist how can Mickey Mouse look so much like a penis?! The Lord himself once said: “Give me thine hands… oh, fuck! I mean ‘penis’!” Actually, maybe that wasn’t the Lord.

Now we made a game so that you can play as Mickey the Mouse for free! You can be as one with the Mouse as I am. All the time. My spirit bleeds with songs of golden showering gold! I eat heaven cereal for breakfast! I eat snakes like YOU for breakfast!!

We made this game with YOU especially in mind, Issac! Issac, your mother came over for dinner last night and told me all about your school and how no one likes you at your school and then we had social intercourse! Not you and I! I and your mom! Your mom thinks that this game is great! I told her all about how you can be a mouse and how you walk really slowly. She thought that was the best part! She likes it when mice walk slow because I think she is afraid of mice and I think that she wants a man around the house to be there for her and to hold her.

I don’t know how to tell you this but……….. In this game, you have to do some really stupid shit. I made this game so hard! One place in the game: you have to make the same farting sounds that the little ducks do! That’s how you lower the drawbridge! You know what they give you when you do that, Issac? They give you a shoe!

Issac are you listening!

I want you to think really hard about what I’m saying to you! I’m telling you that this game is for people who want to engage in philosophical discussions!

LIKE!

Why does it matter if you can’t dust the pictures off before the lamp light runs out? It seems like a completely arbitrary contest.

Well, time is ticking on into the future and a learned man like me needs to get back to the old grind!

Tah Tah!

ben

Michael Andretti’s Indy Car Challenge

Yes, the wall is covered with nothing but the word "Michael"...

So, do you like IndyCar racing? Do you like looking at Michael Andretti’s face? Do you like looking at Michael Andretti’s name? Not just a little, I mean a lot…

Well, then this game’s for you!

Now keep your distance, you sick bastard…

Hey there...

Excessive display of Señor Andretti’s crude, palletized visage aside, Michael Andretti’s Indy Car Challenge presents us with a fairly bland arcade racing experience. The main championship game mode is supplemented by your typical practice race option, as well as a versus mode in case you have any friends who also share an unhealthy fetish for Michael Andretti. That’s about it. Sure, you can use a password to continue an existing championship game, but who in their right mind that isn’t actively defending the Confederate flag as “heritage not hate” whilst proudly displaying it above the gun rack in their beat-up dually truck would want to continue after playing once?

Controls are at least fairly responsive, helping make the game easy to pick up while at the same time remaining challenging/awkward enough that you’re probably not going to succeed in every race on the first try. The game also has the distinction of providing a “reverse” button, because how many times have you played a racing game and wished you could drive in reverse? Well, in all honesty, I admit that I have. Then again, I’m an asshole, so you can’t expect much less now.

Graphically, this game isn’t going to win any beauty pageants. All cars are palette swaps of the same rudimentary set of illustrations, and the Mode-7 tracks look like…well…Mode-7 tracks. Seriously, you can’t expect much else from the Super Nintendo’s Mode-7 effects. They almost make the platform a breeding ground for boring, ugly racing games.

Unless you absolutely love Michael Andretti and want to have, like, ten million of his babies, you should save your allowance money for something else.

Metal Warriors

Because everything is apparently more epic in space because you can't hear people scream except you also can't hear explosions which is way less epic so what's the point?

If you’d told me as a kid that one day I’d find the prospect of giant robot-suited people doing battle in space super boring, I’d have called you a retard.  But here I am, nearly 27 years old, and I honestly can’t think of a videogame convention I care less about.  Maybe the sims, I guess, because I think that wetting your pants and falling over when there’s too many dishes is a lot more poignant in person.

But anyway, in Metal Warriors you are a lady, I think, who pilots some mech thing that has a jump jet and also guns (duh) and a shield and a lightsaber or something stupid, and you fight your way through a space station where there are other supposedly lesser robot people trying to stop you.  The fate of something is in the balance, I’m sure.  There are “all your base” style introduction sequences that I only half-read because we all know the story anyway:

boy meets girl, girl wears giant robot suit, boy commands armada, boy and girl break up because they never see one another thanks to hectic work schedules, boy gives girl 3 days to pick her stuff up at his place which is a giant fortified space station, girl puts on her giant robot suit and says “fuck, my good robe was there, this is war, I guess, but I’m keeping those Creedence Tapes.”

It’s a story as old as time, really.

And we've been waiting for car damage in Gran Turismo for how many years?

As a shooter, this game fails.  It’s too slow and mazelike.  Combat is frustrating.  Difficulty is high.  So it also fails as a platformer with exploration elements.  Mostly, I just don’t have the patience for this sort of thing anymore.  It reminds me a lot of Cybernator, which is a game I actually owned in cartridge format (not that, uhh, I don’t own this piece of shit), except that Cybernator was a lot of fast-paced and insane action (also, recall that I was not too far from 13 at this point, and if you disliked Cybernator I would have called you retarded).  I also remember Cybernator being fun.  On the other hand, if this game had a map and zones in the way that, say, Super Metroid, had… and maybe if I could actually explore around and not just find the one way through the maze of every level, I’d potentially be on board.

Anyway, giant robots.  If they’re your thing then I guess maybe this is a game you might have liked?  I wouldn’t get your hopes up about that though… or the safe return of those Creedence Tapes.

Metal Marines

Who takes care of that grass?

Josef Plastico tightened his SPACE WORK BELT and squinted at the sky. Little lines crinkled up beside each eye like the folds in the skin on the back of a shaved cat’s neck. Josef Plastico had a shaved cat named “a Pornstar’s Crotch” that he bought since he had an allergy—he missed his cat.

According to Josef’s estimation, it would be about eight hours before he saw a Pornstar’s Crotch again, and about six before everything he built today was shot, blown up or otherwise destroyed. Josef worked for the SCAF building “temporary engagement structures” in the war against Zorgeuf and he wasn’t too fond of his job.

“That support beam is about 2 degrees off-centre,” said Josef, glancing distractedly through his LASER LEVEL SCOPE. “One good kick from a giant metal shoe and it’ll be tumbling down everywhere.” Josef’s crew muttered and shuffled their feet. One of them even spit chaw on the ground derisively. Another one of them spit chaw on the ground in bemusement. A third man spit chaw up into the air, caught it again in his mouth, and then spit it once more on the puddles of derisive and bemused chaw respectively. “Stop spitting chaw!” yelled Josef, pulling a DYNAMIC MECH WRENCH from his SPACE WORK BELT. He brandished the DYNAMIC MECH WRENCH in the air like a caveman would with an ORDINARY CLUB.

“We’ve got a lot of building things that will be horribly destroyed ahead of us in the next few hours, so everyone better get used to the idea of Sisyphean labour and get on it!” One of the workers pulled off his STANDARD ISSUE HEAD PROTECTING ENERGY HELMET AND BREATHING APPARATUS and scratched at his matted hair in confusion before reaching into a STYLISH YET UNSUITABLE FOR THE CONSTRUCTION SITE CANVAS BAG out of which he pulled a GALACTIC DICTIONARY AND THESAURUS, MULTISYLLABIC EDITION. He found the entry for “Sisyphean,” nodded, and got to work building an ICBM SILO. A few others slipped on chaw puddles.

Hours later, Josef surveyed the site. Billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of hours of research led to the scientific vista before him. He marveled at its elegance, its simplicity, its deadly efficiency. Then a robot blew it up. Josef threw his STANDARD ISSUE HEAD PROTECTING ENERGY HELMET AND BREATHING APPARATUS on the ground and swore loudly. Every day it was the same thing: putting their toys back together long enough for the children to fight again, and then cleaning up the resulting mess. It was a never ending cycle of attrition, each side only pausing to rebuild their structures and process the dead into LIFE-SUSTAINING PROTEIN DRINKS.

I’m so tired of this dystopian future, thought Josef, watching for the third time that day as a SURFACE-TO-SURFACE MISSILE BATTERY came tumbling to the ground. Then he was struck in the head by a piece of shrapnel from an exploding robot’s groin plate, and died on the grass.

Meanwhile, back at Josef’s tiny EFFICIENT CUBE LIVING QUARTERS AND REST ZONE, a Pornstar’s Crotch pawed ineffectively at a can of MARTIAN SALMON.

Metal Combat

Here come more robots!

This is the easiest game I have ever played. It’s so easy I’m bored of it.

The training portion of this game lasts a whole 5 levels and takes almost 10 minutes. First they teach you how to shoot one energy ball. Then they teach you how to shoot a bigger energy ball. Then they teach you how to shoot an even bigger energy ball. Then they teach you how to use the bomb. And they teach you how to block shots (you shoot them!). All of this doesn’t matter. The whole game can be won without any difficulty by shooting the bad guys in the chest repeatedly.

They make it impossibly easy for you. The bad guys don’t even fight back when they’re being shot. The energy bolts seem to disrupt their energy systems. I was able to take them all down without even taking one shot.

And after they have exploded several times, they, in traditional Japanese fashion, berate themselves at having lost with horrified looks on their faces. They looked so pitiful. I didn’t have the heart to keep disappointing these poor men. They would say things like, “I am the best ever!! How could I have LOST????” And I would titter and say, “Poor baby.”

But then again, I only got about halfway through the game, to where they reveal the mad twist (the main bad guy isn’t actually the main bad guy!! Sheeeeeee-). So maybe later the enemies figure out a way to counter the just-keep-shooting-them strategy. I dunno though. It seems pretty unbeatable.

The dialogue is also pretty funny:

Don't we all feel like that sometimes?

Mega Man X 3

Who died and made you king?

Mega Man X 3 is like a whitewashed tomb: its pristine and beautiful exterior belies the putrid, rotting corpse within.  I don’t usually subscribe to the whole graphics versus gameplay diametric, but this time the relationship is definitely inverse.  In Capcom’s efforts to make a better looking, better sounding Mega Man, they actually forgot how to make a Mega Man game in the process.  Deliberately unforgiving level designs densely populated with death machines hell-bent on your destruction give way to sparse, open, and redundant rooms, sometimes filled with nothing at all.  The former – characteristic of the NES originals – was frustrating yet strangely fulfilling, to the point where you may find yourself yelling to no one in particular, “I AM A HARDCORE GAMER!!” after some astounding feat or other.  The latter will have you scratching your head, wondering when the game will suddenly kick into gear and become a real Mega Man game.  This, of course, never happens.

Hello? Is anybody there?

I kid you not, some of these rooms exist for no reason whatsoever.  You run into the room, only to immediately run out of it again (you even unlock a door on both ends).  And yet, during both these events, the ‘camera’ slide-transitions as if to signify ‘this is the next area’.  That’s just stupid!  If I was the artist, I’d be pissed, not only for wasting a perfectly serviceable room, but also for wasting my valuable time.

X 3 is full of these unnecessary flourishes that force you to expect more than it can hope to deliver.  The polished visuals and cyperpunk settings scream ‘anime’, but its back foot remains firmly planted in the NES era.  The ’story’, ‘acting’ and dialogue is especially cringeworthy, and while I’m sure it’s no worse than what you’d expect to find in Mega Mans (Men?) 1 through to 6, at least they were upfront about their intentions: to be games.  By bringing the presentation forward, Capcom have announced their anime aspirations.  By leaving the rest behind, the game appears naked and antiquated.  The playable ‘intro’ would have been nice if it wasn’t just a pre-game wank.  You’re Mega Man, you run in there, blow up a few things, only to get punked by a former ally within the first minute (“you’re far too trusting, Mega Man!”).

Excuse me, waiter! There's some Elizabethan acting in my Mega Man!

This is the game’s ‘Raiden’ moment, where Zero (a robot replete with ridiculous anime hair, originally groomed to be the star of the X series) must rescue Mega Man.  Except, instead of saying “I thought this was called Metal Gear Solid because it had Solid Snake in it”, you’ll be saying, “I thought this was a Mega Man game!”  Once you’ve rescued him, though, it’s back to business as usual, and Mega Man will be handling things from here, thank you very much.  This ‘intro’ seems to have served no other purpose than to show off a playable Zero character, only to neuter the titular character in the process.  For the rest of the game, Zero is relegated to piece work and similarly showy cameos.

Robot hair is all the rage in 21xx.

I tried oh so hard to love this game, but I couldn’t help but compare it to its uglier, more frustrating cousins – you know, games with some semblance of level design.  And then it dawned on me that level design, important though it is, is never graded by the mainstream gaming press alongside the bullet points of graphics/sound/gameplay/replay value.  Even though graphics should be servant to level design; good gameplay is a symptom of good level design; and replay value is a symptom of good gameplay. Followed closely by: how many poorly designed videogames got a pass on those four bullet points alone? Answered by: probably this one, for starters! And then I started thinking about games with good level design, and booted up a new game of Super Metroid.

Mega Man X2

You're really getting to the bottom of the villain barrel when their elemental power is wheels.

Wire Sponge.

Morph Moth.

Flame Stag.

Magma Centipede.

Crystal Snail.

Wheel Gator.

Bubble Crab.

Overdrive Ostrich.

Are these Mega Man bosses, or Splinter Cell subtitles, or Japanese vending machine drinks? In any case, they’re evidence that someone is running out of ideas.

Wire Sponge?  Wire Sponge? Really?

Shockingly, it turns out that Wire Sponge’s level is really hard and he has like, grappling pom poms that kill you.  Are you surprised? I’m not.

I have decided that I hate Mega Man, and his incredibly deadly world.  Why would anyone live there?  It’s miserable.  Either there are thousands of robots trying to kill you, or there is one unkillable robot constantly trying to kill you and all your friends.  Nobody wins.

Just kill yourself, Mega Man.

Just kill yourself.

Mega Man X

I’m somewhat confused here.

Mega Man X was Dr. Light’s attempt at creating a self-thinking and feeling robot. Dr. Light was also worried that X might be able to turn against humanity (obviously, because he made the same damn mistake multiple times already in the previous games), so he seals him away in a capsule for thirty-plus years until it can be decided whether X would be a threat.

How about this, Dr. Light: Don’t put guns and crazy super weapons on robots! PROBLEM SOLVED.

X supposedly has thoughts and emotions in-line with a normal human. Nice, but then add a titanium-alloy skin and a fucking energy weapon for an arm, and it doesn’t take a PhD to point out that we have a damn KILLING MACHINE on our hands. I mean, what kind of emotions do you expect to go through his head the first time he meets someone and they want to shake his hand, only to find that it’s been replaced with a space-man gun? Or when he tries to hold a loved one on a cold night against his icy, metallic epidermis?

“Hey, X, high five! Oh, shh…sorry man, I forgot…”

Asshole.

Mega Man Soccer

It only belongs to Megaman because he runs the fastest. That's all that matters in the world of low-stakes deathbot teamsports.

It’s 200_-whatever-the-fuck and robots something something.  We’ve all been there.  Fucking Dr. Wily and Dr. Light comparing robo-boners throughout time while destroying the world probably because they both had a crush on the same nerdy girl in their highschool AV club except that she actually liked Billy Walthers who played baseball.  She liked baseball because the statistics were fun and her and Billy had a lot to talk about as a result.

SO ANYWAY these two run around breaking shit up.  It wouldn’t be so tragic if Dr. Light didn’t always win with his surefire Quality Over Quantity strategy.  At this point Dr. Wily probably has the lowest self-esteem of all time.  He’s sullen.  His latest skull palace is filled with tiny dying cacti from the henchman housewarming.  He won’t answer his phone when you call and you always have to leave a message.  You know he won’t call back.  His few friends have stopped trying to get him to come out because he’ll always say “maybe” but then never comes.

So one day Wily checks his email on one of those stupid robots with the helmets that are designed for squatting or whatever, I guess.  And he gets this message about his nephew and how much he loves soccer.  His nephew feels accepted and he feels like a winner even if all he’s doing is standing at backfield and maybe dribbling a little before giving the ball up to some bigger kid without asthma. They’ll even go out for a team pizza party if they lose.

Wily has an epiphany.

If he can convince Dr. Light to take him on in a game of soccer with their robotic creations, he can finally be considered an equal!  He can, at the very least, feel like the winner his mother always told him he was.  This is because soccer is like sports-based socialism in that the very act of participation makes you part of the success.  Even if you don’t win.

Everyone was apparently better at DIF than RUN. Fucking useless robots.

Anyway, they don’t tell you any of this in the introduction screens of Mega Man Soccer.  I guess it’s implied.  I dunno… because otherwise what the fuck are we doing playing soccer and why are all these guys who normally shoot at each other on the same team if not for the purpose of feeling like winners for once.  I mean, really.

It’s a pretty good soccer game though… there are balls, slides, headbutts (only on balls though, tee hee), gooooooooaaaaaaaaaalllllls, passing to centre, passing to wing, passing to centre, passing to wing, passing back, passing back to centre, passing to wing… this game has all the things I’d think one would need to call it a soccer game with robots with the exception of remorseless carnage but I guess we can’t have everything.

I would watch WAY more soccer if it took place on a fire or needle field.

But really though, this is all about allowing Dr. Wily to feel good about himself.

To quote Dr. Charles Klosterman: “To say you love soccer is to say you believe in enforced equality more than you believe in the value of competition and the capacity of the human spirit.”

And then at the pizza party, fifty-six innocent bystanders are slain and the few survivors spin tales about a brutal robot fracas over who gets the last slice.

Or something.