December 2004 Archives

There seems to always be something obtuse about a new Kingdom Hearts game. I needed several hours before I could really get into the first PS2 Kingdom Hearts, and that was after a good deal of teeth gnashing. I don't know if these guys are ahead of their time, if I'm behind the times, or if they just need some lessons in streamlining and manual writing.

My issue with the GBA Kingdom Hearts - poignantly subtitled Chain of Memories - was with the whole card-based gameplay. It's just not explained very well either in-game or in the manual. With a lot of trial and error, and some "Oh, duh" moments, I'm finally getting the hang of it. Until you yourself have that epiphany, it's going to go badly for you.

The card thing holds two major mechanics, neither of which I understood at the outset: level creation and combat. It's actually two different sets of cards, even though they all look the same. To grasp level creation, you have to keep in mind the weird setting of Chain of Memories (which I'll get into in a bit, because it's a smidge dopey), where Sora is more or less re-building the worlds from the PS2 game as he goes. When you come to a door, you must use one of your room cards to create the room behind it. Since the cards all have different effects, you're allowed the freedom to forge the qualities of the next room... at least in regard to treasures, shops, and enemy count. Using the card "Teeming Darkness" will create a room that has a ton of wandering baddies in it. You may want that if you're at a point where you need experience points or new cards (awarded after successful battles), or you may want to avoid that if you're in a hurry and can't be bothered by a horde of Heartless.

After a couple hours, you'll have plenty of room cards to choose from, so you can make a room with sleepy Heartless, weak Heartless, few Heartless, treasure chests, increased magic effectiveness, a Moogle Shop, etc. Now that I understand what I'm doing, it's quite interesting. Compared to my first stab at level creation, when I used cards without thinking about them and just felt annoyed at how random the levels felt. Another thing to note is that some rooms are just plot point rooms, so any cards you use to create them are wasted.

Combat was the real sticky bit. It's awful when you first start; you need quite a few battles under your belt before it makes sense. This same thing happened in the first Kingdom Hearts, except that the problem there was a crazy real-time action fight scheme that also asked you to simultaneously manipulate your inventory. Whoa. Chain of Memories combines the fight style of, say, a Street Fighter, with a deck of cards. It's offputting at first, but that's only because your starter deck is total crap.

The deal is that your deck dictates your attacks, both style and strength. Whatever card is on top is what will happen when you hit the A button. If it's a regular attack card, Sora will swipe with his Keyblade. If it's a Blizzard magic card, he'll cast Blizzard. The enemies are also limited to cards, although you don't see them until they use them. If you come at a baddie with a card strength lower than the card they have played, your attack will be blocked. CARD BREAK. So your first order of business should be to remove all the low level attack cards and replace them with better ones. 2s out, 9s in.

You can also "stock" cards for use later in the battle. You can stock three cards at a time, to be later activated for a super attack. This is the only way to activate the big moves, similar to the Summon attacks from PS2 KH. Playing one Simba card will cause a roar move that does some damage, but stocking two Simbas will do damage and stun whoever is still standing. Stocking/Releasing comes on an awkward button combo though... that old favorite of developers working around the weak button count of the GBA: smacking L and R at the same time. It's not too bad, just that the required symmetry of using both hands to perform the same action simultaneously is fundamentally at odds with how video game controls usually work, where every finger is its own independant input device.

Stocking normal attack cards can initiate a "sleight", a special kind of attack for Sora. Can't say I've cared much about earning new sleights. They're just one more thing to worry about in a frenetic battle that doesn't need anything else crammed into it. It's all I can do to remember to stock the Simba cards, much less stocking three generic-looking attack cards of a specific value. So I'm coming out against the sleights.

I haven't mentioned what makes all this so daunting (at first, anyway)... it's all in real time. You don't select a card, wait for the enemy to select a card, then match them up War style. In appearance, you're hitting the A button as fast as you would in Soul Calibur, running around the field, burning through your deck as you go. You can go through 20 cards in a few seconds. Enemies attack much slower than you, but that is offset by the fact that you're facing 6+ of them at a time. It's all very arcade in look and feel, which can cause frustration when you're trying to expertly manipulate your deck and properly time your attacks. And of course, when your initial deck contains nothing more than one of each attack card from 7 to 0, you're going to pay a heavy price when you get to those crappy cards. When every low strength move gets blocked, you'll be wishing the game would dump the deck and just let you beat on baddies, old school.

That's why you need to tune your deck as soon as you get extra cards. Pump up the power levels, toss in some Summons, and get back in the fight. Since you're clicking through your cards so fast, it helps to put the cards in a particular order so you know what to expect. (Decks are not shuffled randomly, and must be "reloaded" when they run out.) My current deck starts off with about 18 attack cards, all between 6 to 9 in value. Then three Simba cards, a Heal, and a free Reload card.

You also can throw in Heartless cards, but I'm not sure how they work. They all have some kind of overreaching battle effect - like blocking Card Breaks for 20 cards - but they never show up in your deck during battle. Maybe they just work by themselves for the specified duration without having to be activated?

This amused me: there are foil cards. I don't know if they have a different effect from the non-foil cards... but I have found some random cards that have a shiny, glowing sheen on them. They're probably just there to be collected. Moogle Shops, where you go to buy boosters of random cards, pay more credit for the foils, but I can't bring myself to sell them. Just like real life!

As for the Memories plotline, it gets off to a pretty inauspicious start that makes it feel like when The Simpsons pulls out a clip show. The game picks up where the PS2 game ends, with a wonderful FMV that recalls KH's final moments. (There better be a Movie Gallery option hidden somewhere, because these clips are too great to be run once and never seen again.) Then Sora, Goofy and Donald enter Castle Oblivion, which appears to contain all the friends and locations they thought they left behind in the first game. The twist is that nobody remembers anything, so Sora must embark on a journey to restore everyone's lost memories. Hence going back to the same worlds (and re-creating them from memory), hence fighting all the same bosses.

Bit of a drag, that. It punctuates the notion that Chain of Memories isn't a genuine part of the series and more of an add-on. Now, I'm only a couple of worlds in, so things could change considerably before the end. In fact, I just watched a scene where Sora suddenly recalls a fourth friend from their home island, a girl never mentioned before. If the amnesia is widespread, it presumably could be written to effect the first game as well... Chain of Memories' greatest purpose may be to introduce this new character, tailor made for a role in Kingdom Hearts 2. The jury is still out.

I've been waiting a long time to write this one, and the time finally feels right. Rhonda and I are adopting a baby! We're adopting from Korea; most likely it will be a boy. He will be in our loving arms sometime between June to August of 2005 (we guess; timetables are fluid). Babies adopted through the Korea program of our agency, Welcome House, typically "come home" aged 6 to 8 months. So that means our boy could be born right now, which is an awesome but bizarre feeling... knowing he is already out there, already a little screaming bundle, being fawned over by nurses and foster families. And very much in the mind of one Korean woman who just made the most difficult decision of her life, which is a sobering and important thought.

The adoption process is a long one, easily two to three times as long as an average human gestation period. We first attended an informational meeting in April of this year, submitted our first big application (where you must surrender hundreds of details about yourselves, your families, your income, your life, your personal philosophy, even a thorough autobiography) in October. You have to secure all sorts of official government documents, go to meetings, present yourself for introspective interview and home inspection... and all of that takes time to organize and prepare. Right now, our completed document is on a desk at the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration awaiting approval so it can be sent to Korea. The eager pain of waiting for events to move forward is a special burden, now that, in effect, our control over them is gone. Once our info gets to Korea, in a few months we will receive a picture of the infant we have been matched with... and a few months after that, we will travel to Korea ourselves to bring him home.

It's not all paperwork drudgery. We have met many other local couples at different places in the adoption timeline, met children who have already come home, been to parties and homes to talk and play. You can't underestimate the psychological importance of being with families who have been through this, who now have one, two, three beautiful children... from Korea, from China. It is healing and inspiring to look into their little faces and watch them look back, an unspoken covenant that awaits a lifetime of unique challenges for these children from another culture. We will be a multi-ethnic family, and we must be prepared for what that truly means.

We're expecting. And we've waited a long time to be able to say that.

The final issue of "Identity Crisis" is out, and it was easily my #1 Gotta Read First book of the book. Often, out of the week's pile, I'll hold my favorite title for last and slum through the weaker books first, but when a storyline is this good I can't wait for it.

I'm actually a little disappointed in the resolution of the big murder mystery, mainly because it comes in out of nowhere. It just didn't feel like a good mystery should feel: that sudden announcement that completes the puzzle once you hear it, even though you never could have guessed it. I'll have to go back and do the entire series in one sitting and see if it flows better... I don't recall many clues that would lead you to the riddle's answer in issue #7, but maybe I missed something. And finding out that it's just [NAME DELETED] who went randomly nuts isn't exactly rewarding.

No, "Identity Crisis" will be remembered not for the murder(s) of several important minor characters, but for the huge cool revelation in the middle. It's a great new subtext to the history of the DC heroes, not something dopey and forced like adding Triumph to the JLA charter... but something awesome, something real-world, something that makes perfect sense, like when Magneto (the master of magnetism) ripped out Wolverine's metal skeleton. Don't feed me crap that The Incredibles is a fresh and inventive look at super-heroes in the real world; comics have been doing "super-heroes in the real world" for 20 years now, without resorting to satirizing the conventions of the genre with jokes that were born in the first few issues of MAD Magazine. "Identity Crisis" is a good example.

I'm going to tell you what the big cool bit was. I won't ruin the murder mystery, but I will discuss this. It happened early in the storyline, so I'm not wrecking much if you haven't read it yet. (Waiting for the trade paperback, eh?)

Rewind back to the "satellite" era of the Justice League. Usually this Silver Age zone is thought of as a cleaner, simpler time. Villains were hokey. For reasons I won't explain (you have to read it to believe it), the League votes to lobotomize Dr. Light. Well, half the League - Superman, Batman, and several others aren't around when the vote is called... so it becomes a dirty secret carried by the rest. The notion is that Light is going to keep doing what he's doing, so they try to wipe his mind... take out the villainous bits. Naturally, Zatanna has to do it with her paranormal powers.

Some context here: Dr. Light has been a joke of a villain for decades. There's a great sequence where Flash remembers fighting Dr. Light back when he was a Teen Titan, and he comments how the guy was always a loser... getting regularly beat by the junior heroes. And this is why. In their efforts to "clean him up," they went too far and substantially altered his personality. And, fanboys dance, that is what Hawkman and Green Arrow have been fighting about all these years! It's a great debate... how far should the League go to stop the madness of villains? Absolute power corrupts absolutely, Lord Acton says.

And then Green Arrow drops the bomb that the Dr. Light case wasn't the only time they did it.

Aaaaah! It's not often that a comics event miniseries actually lives up to the oft-repeated marketing tripe that "this will affect the entire DC universe!" But that ugly little center at the heart of the Justice League will. We've already uncovered another victim of the League's largesse: another '60s era dork, the Top. His story is running in the current Flash books. What this does is offer an explanation to cover some of the geekier, the lamer, the sillier aspects of DC continuity... especially characters created in the 50s and 60s that don't hold up well today. Dr. Light himself will likely emerge from "Identity Crisis" with a darker, meaner revamp. (Which is sort of a shame because I have always been partial to the 1990s JLA/JLE hero named Dr. Light, an Asian woman with light-based powers who unfortunately wore much the same costume as the villainous Dr. Light.) You watch, villain-Light will end up with a new costume, a new name, and a new potential as a major villain in the DCU.

Smart stuff. One less-than-satisfying resolution aside, this is the series of 2004.

But how about those Michael Turner covers though. That guy is becoming a parody of his own work. He's one hell of a pin-up artist, but his stuff just can't carry an entire book because all the characters look identical. Go read his Supergirl story arc in recent issues of "Superman/Batman" and see if you can identify any female character by her face alone. He's like a latter day Rob Liefeld, but unlike Liefeld, Turner may have actually studied anatomy at one point.

It was revealed this week that Mario (and Luigi and Peach) will be making a guest appearance in the GameCube version of the upcoming NBA Street v3. It's been a while since I paid attention to the series, but I think it runs three-on-three "street" style basketball (whatever that means) with mega-hip stylized versions of current NBA players. So you will be able to play the Mario All Stars team against ... well, against whoever is big in basketball these days, I don't know. The last basketball game I owned was Larry Bird vs. Dr. J.

I did consider picking up the first NBA Street after playing a demo, but the fascination faded quickly. Now I'm back in the think tank again, because, yes, the inclusion of freakin' Mario makes me want it.

Now why is this? I think I've identified several reasons.

1) Mario stands for quality until proven otherwise. Even with all the crazy spinoffs, sub-franchises and innumerable re-releases, he still has a better batting average that anybody else out there. So, bizarrely, I'm ready to accept NBA Street v3 as a quality title based on Mario's inclusion alone. I know, this is the third game in a series that has maintained great reviews... but Mario makes me trust it all the more because I don't believe Nintendo would allow their precious mascot in a lousy game, especially one that comes wholly from a third party. I've said this before, but you would need years of rattyass Mario product to tarnish the dude's rep. You'd need weak games like Mario Pinball Land every month to make a dent in that overwhelmingly positive perception.

2) It's an easy-in to a genre I rarely play. I don't know a damn thing about basketball, about the teams, players or rules. I would never bother with a traditional NBA game. Yeah, I buy official NHL games, but it's only for fast action exhibition play; I can't muster the interest to care about trading players, stats tracking, or playing an entire season. When EA debuted the Street series, I was interested solely because the Street vibe seems to strip away the formalities and sports fan detailing. Throwing Mario in there gives me an instant connection to the game. I would play his team, on his silly Nintendo court with all the usual Mario SFX.

3) And how surreal would it be to see the Mario/Luigi/Peach team facing off against real NBA players? I haven't seen any screenshots of that yet, but I bet it will be hilarious.

This is just a great move on Nintendo's part, something that really differentiates the GameCube version from the PS2/Xbox version. It plays to one of Nintendo's strengths, and it's a bonus feature that nobody else can match. It's commonly known that the GameCube version of Soul Calibur 2 outsold the other two... an unbelievable feat all due to Link. (Heihachi... Who? Spawn? Yuck.)

Will NBA fans care? Not likely. Will PS2 and Xbox fans care? Of course not. It's certainly not going to improve Nintendo's cred in the eyes of those who already are on the bash wagon. But it's going to bring in people who hardly ever touch sports titles, and that's what it was meant to do. Who knows, maybe it will suck... but that would be one hell of a surprise.

The Cinnabar Gym is locked up tight. Not much to puzzle out though; there's only one other structure in town, the mysterious Pokemon Mansion. So the key is inside there, duh. The Mansion's big deal is a bunch of shut doors that you need to hit the appropriate switch to open them. The switches are all embedded in Mewtwo statues, so it's just trial and error to open each door in turn and fully explore the ruins of the abandoned mansion.

There's also some leftover diary entries (isn't there always) that slowly reveal what actually went down that blew the place up. This is where those crazy scientists tried to clone a new Mew... and ended up birthing the sinister and superintelligent Mewtwo instead. Oh, science!

No Mewtwo to be found inside, though. If you'll recall from the cartoon, he went nuts and escaped. So all that's in here are a ton of Raticates and other opportunistic pokemon.

Upon finding the key, I lit into Gym Leader Blaine. This is pretty much the one gym where having started with a water-type is going to pay off big time. My Blastoise drenched all of Blaine's fire-types, as the rock-paper-scissors effect would demand.

What is more interesting is that as soon as you leave the Cinnabar Gym, good ol' Bill is outside waiting for you. As his urging, you both board a jetboat to a hitherto unknown chain of islands to the east. Seven of them, wonderfully named "One Island," "Two Island," etc. And you though Pacifidlog was a terrible name.

As soon as we landed, Bill went into tech geek mode with his buddy Celio, setting to work on networking the Islands' PC system with the mainland. I haven't talked to either of them since; I've been out exploring. These Islands are new to the LeafGreen/FireRed remakes, so, aside from some minor alterations, this is the first totally new portion of the game. One Island contains Mt. Ember, an active volcano hiding a Moltres at the top (caught him on my first attempt, after only a half dozen Ultra Balls!). Two Island has some batty old lady who wants to teach a special attack move to an undisclosed pokemon type, as well as a guy who lost his daughter. Her name is Lostette, which is almost too ludicrous to believe. She is believed to be on Three Island, so I'm heading there now.

As for new pokedex captures and evolutions, wandering around the Islands has netted me a Persian (yay, now I really don't have to evolve my beloved Meowth, who has picked up two more Nuggets since last post), a Poliwhirl, a Ponyta, a Rapidash, and a Magmar. Found a Ditto inside the Mansion. My Old Amber fossil contained an Aerodactyl. My Gengar is still leading the pack, but I've been trying to keep him aside so the rest of the squad can level up. I don't know what level Growlithes turn into Arcanines, but it better be soon.

And wow, all three legendary birds! They were a hell of a lot easier to grab than those Regis from Sapphire.

Time: 37:20
Badges: 7
Pokedex: 85 (Seen: 134)
Party: Growlithe lv43, Blastoise lv47, Katamari (Meowth) lv38, Gengar lv54, Gyarados lv34, Snorlax lv47

There's a commercial running pushing the EyeToy, where they claim over a dozen PS2 titles support it. That's probably more like "over a dozen titles may use it" since one of the games they show is World Championship Poker, which offers EyeToy support inasmuch as it is totally optional. Mike and I actually just got done playing Texas Hold 'Em tonight. He doesn't have an EyeToy, but I do... here's what it looks like:

I realize it's a lousy shot, but that little picture-in-picture bottom right is my live video feed that pops up in-game. The game itself still runs with normal CG avatars; the EyeToy video is a total luxury. Add in a USB headset and it's not bad at all. Occasionally the audio would go staticky or be stepped on by the game's terrible play-by-play announcer, but you could trust it enough to hold a conversation, for the most part. And I got to mug for the camera for our amusement. As to the video quality... well, remember the first internet video you ever saw? It's a lot like that.

Still, having online play with voice/video chat is pretty cool for a $20 budget title. The game also has a creepy avatar-building mode, where you're supposed to recreate your face by manipulating a mess of effect sliders. Not too bad, although there's only a minimal selection of clothes. I can't find any notice about unlocking more clothes with all that virtual money you're earning - which would have been a natural bonus. So it's a bit anemic in the end. And although there's more poker variants than you've ever heard of before, they didn't sweeten the deal by including Blackjack. Holding that one for the inevitable online casino game, I guess.

We're playing again Wednesday night. Stop on by. The game will probably be titled "Joe."

But speaking of EyeToy games, a month ago we picked up one of the few genuine EyeToy-centric titles, Sega Superstars. The games are better than the ones on the Play disc, and interacting with classic Sega franchises throughout history is cooler than the committee-designed populace of Play any day. But Superstars makes the same asinine mistake Play made: no tournament mode. You can't register 4 players, gun automatically through X games, and see who has the most points at the end. Instead, you choose one game and take turns playing it. Weak. I've mentioned before how much slicker the Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban EyeToy bonus games handled the concept and I'll forward you there again. Once again, a complete afterthought has trounced a disc dedicated to EyeToy games.

Take the quality mini-games from Harry Potter and Sega Superstars, dress it up in a full-service Mario Party-style board game, take it online (optional), and you'll have the most awesome EyeToy disc created. I hope somebody somewhere is working on that.

Picked up more games this week, despite not having time to play them. But we had good reasons and better coupons, so the time was right. Sprung (DS), Mario Party 6 (Cube), Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (GBA).

I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel anyway. Finished Sly Cooper 2 tonight after a long break (review here)... and I could tell I was had been away too long. My skills were rusty, I had completely forgotten the buttons for Bentley and Murray. But I hate them anyway. The critics disagree, but I say those two totally suck and they need to go. Those two stereotypes aside, I really liked the game. I'm just all about Sly and the daring elegance he brings to the game. The other two can go pound sand... they're like taking Pac-Man out of Pac-Man and replacing him with that sad vector spaceship from Asteroids. It would work, but there's no magic.

Also beat Pikmin 2 this week... well, paid off Hocotate Freight's 10,000 poko debt anyway. There's plenty more game after that point. In fact, the game is telling me that I haven't even found half of the total 200 treasures available. That's a ton more to go, but I feel like I accomplished something anyway. I mean, I saw the credits roll.

So, not counting Mario Party 6, I only have 5 games in the Yet To Be Played Pile. That's not too bad. I've had to avoid buying Metal Gear Solid 3 and Metroid Prime 2 because I know they're just not getting played for a long time, which makes me sad because I love being part of the Launch Day hype.

Mario Party sort of breaks the rule. I know exactly when I'm going to play it: when friends are over. It's not something that's going to take a huge personal commitment like X-Men: Legends or Ratchet & Clank 3. Plus MP6 comes with a new stupid (free) peripheral, a microphone. I tested out one of the mic games tonight, a surprisingly varied quiz show. Since there's only one mic, you takes turns holding it to answer the questions, but other players can use their controller to buzz in and steal your question if you get it wrong. Cute. Worked well enough. If the game thinks it mis-heard your answer, it will ask you "Did you say 'Waluigi?' Yes or No?" and then you respond to that. I sure do wish the mic was wireless, as passing it around a group of four is likely to get cumbersome, but I doubt even Nintendo could get us a free wireless mic as a pack-in. It plugs into the memory card port, not a controller port, which is unexpectedly nice.

I'm a big supporter of the Mario Party series. Each one gets better than the one before. I know a new edition every year is a lot; even I would agree that fewer versions would make future sequels more of an event. But the concept has improved so much in little steps that it's hard to fault Nintendo for it. Just off the top of my head, they removed the negative coins for losing games, added the ability to speed up CPU turns, tried out 2P modes and 1P modes that weren't just the 4P mode with less human players, further developed the game board graphics every time (low point being #4's abstract boards), thrown in tons of supplementary games (like hockey in #5!), added more and more playable characters, cleaned up the once-confusing item system, all while keeping the core simple (win mini-games to collect coins to buy stars). It's the best party game available, and just about everybody has tried to top it and failed. Including Sonic, Crash, Pac-Man, and whatever pseudo-mascots they think they have over on Xbox.

Although I'd love the series to release at a lower price point, but then again I'd love every game to cost less. Duh.

Here's what Mario Party 6 has done to the formula. Every game board now has day and night effects. Every third turn, it switched from day to night and back, causing some events and mini-games to change. Interesting. There's a handful of microphone games. Interesting. Some of the boards change up the way you gather stars... one board has one single star location with different pricing during night and day; one board has one star location that rotates with a Bowser space; one board starts everyone out with 5 stars and sets you to concentrate on stealing them from each other. Very interesting. Stars are now counted after every game and stored in a bank, for use as currency to purchase unlockables. Very interesting.

The item system from MP5 is much slicker. In 5, you picked up free random item capsules at designated vending spots (in an unnecessarily long animation), then decided later to use them by spending your coins. Spending the money after the fact was weird, tossing them around the board to place them was weirder, and thanks to an obscure icon system, you could never tell what item was placed where. Not since that awful mini-mega system (#4) have I had such a rough time explaining rules to players.

Now called Orbs, you can buy them at a shop or pick them up for free (quickly, thank you). The hassle of payment has been removed, although you still do the long-distance toss to place them. But now, the Orbs you placed are marked with an image of your head, so you know what Orb spaces are likely to hurt you (those with somebody else's head).

Among the classic end-of-game Bonus Stars, the Coin Star is out, replaced with the Orb Star (the player who used the most Orbs.) For a long time now, I've thought that the Coin Star (most Coins in game) and the Mini-Game Star (most Coins won in mini-games) are more or less the same thing, so I'm happy they pared that down. Oh, and somebody up in English Localization finally changed the Happening Star to the Action Star.

Since MP6 wants you to gather stars to unlock stuff (like Toadette!), I've been playing all day. Well, not me, per se. Once the game starts, I set all the players to CPU and let the game play itself. So I'm actually getting stars right now. About 15 stars per game, on average. Plus, I'm probably opening up lots of ??????? games... I still have some of those left to uncover on #5, but it's random so the only thing to do is play. I know it sounds sad: I'm watching 4P CPU games of Mario Party, but I can get it even sadder. Once I set the players all to a starting handicap of 9 stars each! Didn't work though, the game saw through my deviousness and only awarded me the stars collected above the handicap setting.

Maybe I haven't found it yet, but #6 doesn't seem to have a single player Story Mode. I bet not many people have played them (they can get very boring, you against 3 CPUs) but they always end with some crazy board game boss fight against Bowser. I'll miss that in #6, but the other additions make up for it.

My third game for the DS (not counting the Metroid demo) looks to be Sprung, an animated dating game out this week. Although huge in Japan, dating games are nonexistant here in the US, so I'm looking forward to seeing how they play. Strangely, Sprung doesn't even originate in Japan... so who knows how it will measure up. Still, it's cool to see the DS living up to the early promise of new and different game types.

Another one on my watch list is Gyukaten Saiban, which Nintendo Power is already translating as "Objection Court." This is another only-in-Japan genre, the courtroom sim. Apparantly you are a lawyer... you get to interrogate witnesses and skillfully object at just the right times during the trial. Will it make it to the US? It just might. The series has already had several successful Game Boy editions, but they're rough to import since they rely heavily on text.

Animal Crossing DS isn't even a choice. I will have it as soon as possible. The latest round of screenshots seem to indicate a spruced-up 3D look, with the trees and houses placed on a rotating sphere to create the perspective lacking in the 2D-with-3D-figures original. The big question is if Nintendo will give the game internet access for multiplayer minigames, travelling and trading. I really really want it to, but I really really doubt it will.

N-Philes recently ran a feature on theoretical DS games stemming from N64 ports. Not that anyone wants to see the DS turn into a N64 port haven, but it seems inevitable and as long as they turn out some really good ones, where's the harm. They mentioned Starfox64, GoldenEye, and Mario Paint as pretty obvious choices. Starfox, yes. Hurry, hurry, hurry. GoldenEye, I believe the new one, Rogue Agent, is coming up for DS but I could be wrong on that. Mario Paint, eh. Unless there's some fancy new wireless dealie associated with it, I don't see the charm in doing that one again when every kid in the world has Photoshop or some kind of similar paintbox app on their PC. Mario Party? I would hope we'd get an all new, DS-centric one rather than a port of the N64 editions. They also listed a handful of esoteric cult games that no one bought then and no one would buy today. Glover? You're going to petition to resurrect Glover?

So I went back to my personal N64 library - which isn't very large, only 16 games. But I got to the N64 party pretty late. My big request would be Pokemon Snap, a photography game that I thought was a hoot. Top screen is your viewpoint, bottom screen allows for stylus mouse-look, photo browsing, item selection, whatever. Combine it with a little mic-based stuff borrowed from Hey You Pikachu, triple the environments, dump in a ton more species (the original Snap only featured 60-couple pokemon types), internet-based photo judging contests... you'll have a great DS title. I could fantasize new features and upgrades on this one for hours.

I'm surprised no one is calling for a port of Ocarina of Time, THE N64 game by most's reckoning.

I'd love a Conker's Bad Fur Day port, but that one seems out of reach, especially once the Xbox remake bombs. (Come on, Xboxers, prove me wrong!)

To get to the Power Plant, you have to swim in the river that runs around the Route 10/Rock Tunnel map point. Easy. The Plant itself is a very simple maze, culminating in a lone Zapdos awaiting your attention. I always dread these one-off capture battles, so I stocked up on Ultra and Great Balls and restarted a lot. I think I caught the Zapdos on my third or fourth restart, on the third or fourth Ultra Ball thrown. You just have to play the odds on these fights, be they Legendary Birds, Beasts or Regis. The other notable aspect to the Power Plant was the common presence of Pikachu, which I never did find back in Viridian Forest. Now I have plenty.

After a restock, I flew back down to Fuchsia for the long trek back to Seafoam Islands. Finding the Articuno deep in the bottom of the annoying multi-floor puzzle maze is easy; catching him was expectedly hard. It took many more restarts and Ultra/Great Balls to grab him. For some reason, I completely missed the second half of the dopey drop-the-boulders puzzle, so I wasted a ton of time backtracking and pacing trying to find the way out.

Once I realized what I had overlooked, I emerged from Seafoam almost totally scathed. Ugh. Happily, it's a short swim westward to Cinnabar and the next Gym Badge. Before powering off for the night, I visited the Pokemon Lab in town and dropped off my Helix Fossil with the weird scientist. He'll coax it back to life through the vagaries of super-science and I'll get an Omantye out of the deal. Then I'll return with my Old Amber and see what that gets me. It's like Jurassic Park down here in Cinnabar.

Also traded some Cinnabar native a Venonat for her Tangela. Venonats are all over the Safari Zone; I don't know if Tangelas can be caught in the wild so I think I came out ahead.

Back in the real world, I finally got to test out the wireless adapter with a fellow Champion-in-Training, Ben. The wireless linkup has a different presentation than the good ol' Link Cable... mainly so you can stockpile a ton of wireless players inside the Union Room. Since it was just me and him, the Union Room seemed largely ornamental. Inside the room, you can initiate chats, trades and battles, all riding on the adapter's happy wireless signal. I traded him a Nidorina for a Mankey, just so we could ponder the philosophical ramifications of sending our hand-caught beasts through the invisible air. Makes me hunger for the upcoming DS Pokemon games all the more.

Funny aside: since every gamer looks the same when playing LeafGreen or FireRed (there's one male player sprite and one female player sprite), the Union Room assigns different sprites to everyone in the room but you. So Ben saw me as a Bird Keeper, and I saw him as a Camper. The Union Room also does not show your character's true movement on other player's screens... the opponent sprites just walk in circles. I'd love to see a fully packed Union Room with all the random sprites pacing in low-grade pathfinding routines.

If the DS games weren't enough excitement, Miyamoto himself let slip news of another GameCube Pokemon game. The question, Miyamoto-san, is now this: Will it stink up the joint like Coliseum? It is entirely safe to predict that it will not have online play; that appears to be slated for the next hardware generation. If at all, Mr. Cynic says. For a long time rumors held of a multiplayer party game (Pichu Bros. Party Panic), but that one has vanished. Dare we dream for a fully-realized RPG combining the scope of the GBA series with the graphics of the Cube? Coliseum was only halfway there, plus it lacked the cool bonus features of the N64 Stadium games. Please learn from reviews - not from sales - on this one, Nintendo. We're all still waiting.

Time: 31:37
Badges: 6
Pokedex: 71 (Seen: 123)
Party: Growlithe lv34, Blastoise lv43, Katamari (Meowth) lv36, Gengar lv49, Gyarados lv25, Snorlax lv45