released August 2002, purchased August 2002
Banking that this would just be a tennis variant with bikini gals, Beach Spikers become one of the very few sports titles to grace my library.
This was about half a year before Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball came out for the Xbox, but this little GameCube exclusive did absolutely nothing to steal any heat from that game. The fact that Beach Spikers had no franchise tie-in (aside from a few Sega references) probably did not help.
Man, it is crazy to think of how games advance during each generation. If you dropped a volleyball game today with limited tournament options, a lackluster create-a-player mode, weird unplayable minigames, and a stilted CPU-controlled camera... at $50... it would be like printing a formal request for bankruptcy. During each cycle, we expect more - and we get more - from our games as time goes by. It almost makes you want to not buy anything until the midway point. Almost.
Anyway, Beach Spikers is a cozy, fun title... faithfully leaping into the Cube's early multiplayer must-haves list. Takes a round to get used to the timing on your button presses, and occasionally the camera will choose the wrong angle (so you get used to keeping an eye on the overhead player position radar map), but overall a worthy party game.
And it is far classier than the infamous DOA game, choosing to use realistic (if attractive) female volleyball player models, rather than over-the-top anime cheesecake. Which, in the end, didn't help sales.
Memory Score: Some of the worst voice over editing in this generation.
released August 2002, purchased August 2002
click here for my review written in September 2002!
Mario adventure titles are the high watermark of any Nintendo system. These are the games that receive the company's greatest efforts and, in turn, they maintain Nintendo's stellar reputation. Not counting all the sidebar Mario sub-franchises and re-releases, Nintendo usually only does one of these per console. So it's a patented Big Deal when they appear.
Unfortunately, in modern times Nintendo has found itself in the high-class problem of being the company that everybody loves to hate... so even their biggest games are relentlessly skewered by both the critics (who have decided that Nintendo needs to fail) and the fanboys (who have decided that Nintendo will never live up to the games of yore). When something like Mario Sunshine appears, there is always this brief bubble of gushing (it's beautiful, it's fun, it's innovative, it's a masterpiece) followed immediately by trendy bashing and nitpicking (it's derivative, it's boring, it's fundamentally flawed, and when you zoom the camera all the way in you can see jaggies).
Today, no one will speak warm words about Super Mario Sunshine. If you never saw a sales chart, you'd think this was a failure on par with Superman 64. People hate the water jetpack. People hate the minimalist story. People hate the lack of level theme variety. People hate the camera. People hate how it's not enough like Mario 64. People hate how it's too much like Mario 64.
I thought it was a great game, a GameCube necessity. A sumptuous, varied, scalable fiesta of a game, suitable for GTA-esque stretches of happy, shiny screwing around. Mario Sunshine may have challenged me, it may have frustrated me (damn those old school jumping levels!), but it never disappointed me.
I am now alone but happy on Isle Delfino.
Memory Score: Mario: the textbook example of a man victimized by his own success
released September 2002, purchased September 2002
I've been gripped by games before. I've immersed myself into game worlds for hours upon hours. But nothing to date compares to what Animal Crossing did to me.
This game took over my real life for over a year. When I looked at the clock, I always mentally computed how many hours I had left until Nook's closed. I took days off work so I wouldn't miss any afternoon holiday events. I started what became a rather famous online diary, which began as pure fan-fiction and then turned into a post-modern analysis of the game's potential. I fastidiously tracked missing items, and never missed a chance to find them (even if the game refused to give them up). I traded furniture with fellow players from all over the world. I scanned eCards by the bushelful, and made extra in-game money by plugging in my GBA. I autopsied this game, I examined it from every angle, I pushed it to the (non-cheating) limits.
All in about twenty minutes a day.
After playing all these trial-by-error, high pressure, stats-tracking, intense adventure, one-shot-kill, action games... it's just so nice to play a game that simply doesn't expect you to do anything. There's no arrow demanding you head in that direction. There's no locked door waiting for a hidden key. There's no timer counting down the seconds to a Game Over.
There's no Game Over.
There's not even a Game.
It is a zen koan in video game form.
And yet, Animal Crossing can drive you mad if you let it. Because so many other video game trappings have been excised, you start expecting perfection. Why is letter writing such a chore? Why is my inventory limited? Why do we keep having the same conversations? Why can't I influence the game's random methods of item distribution? Why did my most favorite villager of all just move out?
Animal Crossing is The Sims without micro-management, Harvest Moon without purpose, GTA without the missions, and a MMORPG without the MMO part. It is a relaxing, slow-drip game... made for casual players, yet maddeningly perfect for the hardcore types who have to collect every item and see every corner. It is Nintendo's most spectacularly innovative contribution to video gaming in the last decade.
Memory Score: There is no "extra life"... just your life
Next time: One of my favorite series makes a disappointing next-gen debut, a forgotten franchise gambles heavily and wins big, and a rare Nintendo pre-order bonus.
