I introduced Mike to the Wii this weekend. Predictably, Wii Sports has a big hit; he and I enjoyed some lengthy bowling challenges. Mike actually worked up to the Pro level when I wasn't looking and unlocked a sparkly bowling ball for his Mii. It was such a smart move on Nintendo's part to make sure that every US Wii owner walked away with Wii Sports (I won't call it a "free" game since a Japanese Wii w/o Wii Sports goes for about $210 American), because it sells the system. Now Nintendo just has to keep the momentum going with more stuff in the same vein. It ain't videos of people playing Zelda that are all over the internet... it's Wii Sports. Wario Ware Smooth Moves will be the next big Wii game that continues on this path, and it will generate similarly stupid/silly videos for YouTube. But then what?
The Wii and PS2 kept us plenty busy in the AM. We also did some Guitar Hero, Elebits, Bully, Trauma Center... and, of course, everything I've purchased to date from the Virtual Console. Chiefly: Toe Jam & Earl.
It's been about ten years since we last played TJ&E together. (Or at all, really.) And even back then, we considered it an "old classic." Which seems ridiculous now, as the game was just over five years old at the time.
(Sidebar: isn't it absolutely bizarre that Sonic celebrated his 15th anniversary in the same year - 2006 - that Pokemon celebrated 10? It seems like there should be worlds of time between the initial releases of those franchises, but it's only a five year gap. What screws it up is that Pokemon showed up in the US a few years later than in Japan, so by our reckoning it's seven years between the two.)
We beat TJ&E at least once back then (and I had beaten the game a year before that with my sister, back when the Sega Channel was waning... and you know what, I thought the game was old then) so it wasn't like we were walking in blind. Toe Jam & Earl is an obnoxiously difficult game. To clarify: it's not hard, it just terribly cruel at times. One bad encounter with a swarm of bees can run one player out of two or three lives in a row.
After losing all of our lives in stupid ways - and almost two hours of play - I checked online for any old secrets to the game, then finding those become our goal. Here is the spoiler for one of them.
Turns out there's a World Zero, the entrance to which is hidden way back on the very first island. You need to get to the lower left corner of the map, which will require Icarus Wings or something similar, because you'll just die swimming. We travelled through the boards until we got lucky and found some Wings (actually, I accidentally Randomized and that's how we got the Wings) and then we fell back down to World 1.
