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Time for Did You See #5

Last week I watched the indie film documentary: “High Score”.

If you’ve seen King of Kong: Fistful of Quarters (as covered in Did You See #1) then it’s a similar tale of “a guy [Bill Carlton] wants to make a name for himself and beat a long standing world record high score in a classic arcade game [Missile Command].

The similarities end in the above synopsis though, as this is it’s own story, and not just some sort of wannabe replication of the cult classic “King of Kong”.  King of Kong had a lot more prominent arcade high score legends in it, as well as the back history within that crowd.  This brought with it some controversies, some rivalries, and some good content for that film.

Although with High Score, it is mainly focused on 1 regular small town guy, and his quest to beat the score.  In place of any personal drama within people is substituted with the drama of being able to secure a working “Missile Command”.  The film is very well presented though, and gives you a very open and personal look into Bill Carlton’s life,  as well as his drive to achieve this goal.  It’s also a good general documentary about people that strive for high scores and the sacrifices they make, plus it gives a nice contrast of the video game cultures of now and then.

If you’re interested in Video Game related documentaries, and/ or you liked “The King of Kong” then you should certainly like this too.

Trailer below:

Official Website: http://www.highscoremovie.com [contains links to buy DVD]

Rent from iTunes – $2.99
Buy from iTunes –  $9.99

As there are a couple of game related things on my mind, so I figured I’d do the third installment of This & That.

First up ! ! !

OnLive

I’ve not really been following the progress of OnLive after it’s early days announcements and such.

Yet, too my surprise. I see the service is now LIVE for PC and Mac’s (only in America at present).

Now for those of you who are unaware as to what OnLive is…

It is basically a service that will allow you to play games on a computer without actually needing the ‘specs’ to run the game.  Essentially a high end server will run the game for you, and all you do is stream the game to your computer (meaning as long as your PC can support video streaming, you can play the latest PC games without needing to have the high end PC to run them).

When it was first announced it sounded a bit too good to be true.  Plus many people feared that the service would be riddle with lag.  Seeing as you don’t have the game running right in front of you, you would perhaps expect a bit of lag to come between you pressing the buttons and the game registering your inputs.

[Official OnLive website] [Wikipedia page for Onlive]

From reading ‘this blog post‘, it does seem there is the slightest bit of input lag when playing the games, whether that can be worked out, or if it just requires a faster internet connection, I don’t know…but really, lag is one of the worst problems a game can face. It can lead to a lot of detrimental problems in terms of online multiplayer, and will certainly be an issue with twitch sensitive played games, where the action is fast paced.  I guess this is a game by game problem though, as I can imagine playing something along the lines of an RPG wouldn’t cause any frustration through this type of service.

Another thing to think about in regards to OnLive is that you will never actually own the games.  You’ll be streaming the games…meaning you have no hard copy of it, and if OnLive ever went out of business, your copy of the game went out too.  From what I’ve gathered the games you get are on a rental-like service, *where you’d pay something like £5 (in the UK) and get the game for a week or something.  That’s cool I guess, for games you would only really play through once, but I personally find it’s nice to have some games sat in my collection at home, so I can replay the multiplayer whenever I want, or go back to replay harder difficulties, or explore new things, or even get some extra achievements/ trophies or something if I’m looking for further reasons to replay something.

*Obviously I’m just guessing these UK price plans at this stage.

It’ll be interesting to see how things evolve for OnLive, and I’ll keep an eye on it’s UK launch here.  OnLive also plan to release a sort of console equivalent/ set top box version, where people get the box, and a controller, and can play the games through there TV’s.  These will apparently cost much less than the home games consoles cost, so it will also be interesting to see just how much this cuts into the home console market.

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Next up, I want to briefly speak about the new XBOX 360 “slim”. My little bro got one for his 8th birthday just last weekend.  The 250gb model (which I believe is the higher end model).  Yet too my surprise!! It didn’t even come with any High Definition cables inside.  It only came with the standard composite (red, yellow, white) inputs.  I remember when I got my ’360 elite’ over 2 years ago that at least came bundled with a Component cable (offering nicely upto 720p).

Now the issue I want to raise is…why the hell would they release a high definition capable video game system, in todays market, without a high definition capable cable??

It is currently hooked up to the High Def TV in the front room of our house with it’s crappy 90′s-tastic component cable.  HDMI cables are cheap as hell these days so I’ll pick them one up soon.

On a positive note, the console does look very cool sat on a TV stand, with it’s glossy look (although it collects dust like crazy). Plus the new touch sensitive buttons are very cool, and the little beeping sounds it makes when you press them are great .

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Lastly, I was thinking the other week about how if my 10 year old self could meet me today, he would freaking love me!

Firstly he’d be more crazy with excitement than the N64 kid over seeing the modern day consoles…

However mostly I would totally love just how many consoles I have still hooked up, to my big screen, with surround sound.  Plus just the amount of games I have here ready to play at any given time.

Now…what would your 10 year old self think if they met you now?

Just a quick short post to say that some minor updates will be being rolled out on here over the next week.  So please be patient with any downtime, it should be minimal, or hopefully un-noticeable, but it’s just a small tidy up to try and improve some behind the scenes constraints with the article format here.

Secondly, if you’re not already, please follow us on Twitter.  It’s a convenient way to get a reminder of when an article goes up on here.  Although more interestingly so…I occasionally post links on there to other cool video game related stuff around the web on there, so there are some cool reads/ videos/ etc that you may be interested in that get mentioned on the twitter feed.
It’s spam free so don’t worry about your Twitter feed blowing up with crap.

Twitter Page Link:  @currentplaying

Lastly, if you’re interested in writing video game/ gamer related articles, and want to contribute here…  Or if you’re creating other such video game related media and want some extra exposure, hit us up via e-mail [currentlyplaying[at]kusohappens.com].

As a constant poster -slash- lurker on the GameFaqs.com message boards.  I see many topics popping up complaining about “Lag Switchers” (mostly in the Super Street Fighter IV message boards).

Personally I was unaware as to what specifically was being mentioned here at first, although I did kind of get the jist of what was being implied, as ever since my first foray in to online PC gaming back in like 1999, I’ve been aware of what Lag is.  If you’re unaware, then see below.

Definition of Lag: In computer networks, lag refers to delays in information transmission between network nodes. Latency is the time taken for a sent packet of data to be received at the other end.

Today I came across a topic on lag switching, that linked to a video, that not only showed me what a lag switch was, but also taught the viewer how to make one.

I swiftly “thumbs down” rated that video as soon as I realised it was the real deal, and I was happy to see a lot of the recent comments on it (at the time I watched it) where hating on the guy for posting such a tutorial.

I CANNOT believe the lengths at which some pricks will go to in order to obtain an anonymous online victory.  Nor can I believe how they can climb the online leaderboards and actually feel any sort of pride in what they’re achieving.  Super Street Fighter IV is not a game where online leaderboards are seen as a true measure of skill in the first place (it’s face to face tournaments held globally where players prove dominance, in a 100% lag free environment), and it’s no wonder why when you have assholes like these “lag-switchers” in circulation.

Another example of how the leaderboards in SSFIV aren’t a true measure of skill is how the currently #1 player on XBL (in terms of overall player points) has been many a times referred to as a “rage quitter”.  I’m not going to name and shame this person in question in this blog, simply because I haven’t fought that player personally, and no one has uploaded video evidence of this on YouTube, although with so many people backing up the accusation (and with allegations of this rage quitting user dating back to the Soul Calibur IV days) it seems highly likely.

Rage Qutting: The act of exiting the game/ turning off your console/ disconnecting your internet whilst you are losing before an online game/ match is finished.  This saves you from having a loss put on your record, and causes the winning player to not receive his win.

**Rage Quitting and Lag Switching is not limited to fighting games.  It is used in FPS’s, sports games, and many others.

It would bring me great pleasure to watch, or play these players who have such glamorous online records (through cheating methods) in real life, and see them exposed for the cheating scrubs that they are.

If/ when I have children, if I ever caught them playing video games online doing tactics like the ones mentioned in this topic, I’d take away there copy of that game, or worse yet take away there online gaming privileges.  I don’t condone this kind of behaviour at all.

Video games are meant to be a source of fun/ entertainment.  If you put enough time into a game and develop great skills at it, then that’s awesome.  However, if you want to cut corners, cheat, and effectively live a lie through the game, then you’re the urinal cake of society, whom I and many others would love to pee-on.

Apologies if anyone was offended by the increase in profanity in this post, but it really is a topic that just called for it.

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Extra:

Example of online rage quitter >>here<<

A rare example of a REAL LIFE rage quitter >>here<<

Rage Quit T-Shirt >>here<<

I was linked to an interview on Videogamer.com with Capcom’s Yoshinoro Ono yesterday in which he [Ono] mentioned that he feels the entry barrier to fighting games needs to be lowered for them to truly capture a big audience.

[Source: Videogamer Interview with Yoshinoro Ono]

Now it doesn’t take a genius to realise that in terms of game sales, what he said is true.  Although on the contrary, speaking as a long time fan of fighting games, it is almost a tradition that any good beat em up will need to be learned for me to have any chance of succeeding within it.

I personally know quite a few people who have picked up fighting games over the years due to hearing good things about them, or because they had seen someone else play it and liked what they saw.  Yet once they take the game home, they’ll give arcade mode a try once or twice and then from there they’ll just let the game collect dust on there shelf.

I’d say about 75% of the time the game they’ve bought is a solid game that providing they had stuck with it, they could have potentially lost many many hours immersed in it’s great gameplay. Yet because they didn’t stick around to learn the game, they got bored out of frustration with it and left it behind…

For me personally the fighting series I’m most familiar with is Street Fighter, as I’ve dove into various Street Fighter games at several points in my life I have learned the fundamentals to playing a lot of 2D fighting games.  Even still…I know when I pick up a new 2D fighting game, one with a fresh fighting game engine in comparison to the games I’ve played before, that within the game will be a lot I will have to learn (and I’m talking many hours of learning here).

This seems daunting at first, because generally we play video games for fun, and steep learning curves can be a big turn off.  Another issue is the fact that playing against computer opponents is nowhere near as fun, or a true measure of skill, as fighting human opponents is.

Before the advent of online gaming it was something of a necessity for your friends to have the same beat em ups you have, so that you could learn to play the game at home alone, then hook up with friends to play some multiplayer and test your skills out.  Ideally, if you lost, you’d be determined to improve and learn more, then come back for redemption.  If you didn’t have people to play with though, the hard work you’re putting into learning that game is going to go unnoticed, and unless the game in question has put a lot of unlockable rewards or incentives to pat you on the back for your play time and skills, then you might not have been driven to keep at the game for that long.

Moving back to the original interview that inspired this post though…

When you’re lucky enough to find that special [fighting] game, one that several of your friends have, and thus enabling you to have some truly amazing competitive matches, that time you’ve put into the game, and into getting good with specific characters becomes very worthwhile.  In the past 2 years I’ve been playing a lot of the Street Fighter 4 series (naturally only Super since that came out), and with that came a lot of new things to learn about the game.  Not only do I need to learn about the fine mechanics of the game play, but I also need to learn many many match ups.  I need to know the advantages and disadvantages the character I use has against all of the other in game character choices, and beyond that there are differences in how people can use certain characters (some could be aggressive and offensive, some may be defensive and more tactical).

I have been lucky that I have local friends who play the game whom I can test my skills against in some intense and very fun multi-player sessions.  Local multi-player has certainly been a catalyst for my devotion and time spent on the game.  Although Super Street Fighter IV definitely benefits from having a decent matchmaking system online, so I can always find opponents to spar with, whether I want to specifically face people of a similar skill level, or just take on anyone who comes (whether much weaker or much stronger).

Super Street Fighter IV is a very deep and finely tuned game.  So much so that it would take a lot of time to try and break it down, and even if I tried I’d probably miss something.
The in game ‘challenge mode’ does a fairly good job to teach you a character’s moves (ranging from the basics to the advanced combo’s), the in game ‘training mode’ has a great offering of options to allow you to practice things and try out new things that even the challenge mode didn’t teach you too.

As good as those 2 modes combined are though, it’s not enough to turn a fresh newbie to the game into a good competitive player.

Now…

Finally on to the question of lowering the entry barrier in fighting games.

Yoshinoro Ono said the following in that interview:

“What I mean by broadening the appeal is that where hardcore players are at the moment, with all their hyper super techniques, that seems to isolate themselves from the rest of the players. What I want to do is connect those people and casual players together so that the progression is a bit more continuous than it is at the moment, where a few of the elitists deem their skills amazing and don’t want to play with other people.”

Reading that has me [as a fighting game enthusiast] a bit worried.  Is he implying that perhaps the deep level of gameplay that we’ve come to expect from a high level fighting game needs to be dumbed down to be more simple and accessible for new players?
I encourage you to sound off in the comments section on how you interpret this.

If and when Street Fighter 5 is to be announced, it would shatter my faith in it being a good game if I was to hear it was being made simple to play.  I would want it to be like all traditional games in it’s series before it, and require me to put a lot of time in return for me realising that I have definitely improved myself along the way.

If Capcom wanted to capture a wider audience and attract a new crowd to the genre, then I’d much rather they make some sort of fun party game type beat em up (like Mario Kart is to racing games), heck “Street Fighter Kids” or something.  Give them a balanced and fun to play game in the fighting game genre that just doesn’t require an extensive amount of time to learn.  Then if these players enjoy that, they can then move on to Capcom’s other games (it’d sort of be like going up in difficulty like you would in Guitar Hero or something).

Alternatively! and this would be my preference here.

Keep making these amazingly deep, satisfying to master games.  Just make sure that you deliver an in-depth training mode, yet make it interesting and fun for them to sit through it.

A lot of great fighting games, in fact a lot of the best (imo) fighting games do very little in regards to teaching you the game.  For me, guides in game magazines, or better yet; internet forums.  Those have been quite vital for me to become good at the games I’ve wanted to be better at.

Another option would be to do what Super Mario Galaxy 2 has done in Japan/ Europe… Include an optional tutorial DVD with the game.  Mario Galaxy 2′s training DVD is provided to help people who have never played a 3D Mario game before, it also teaches them all of Mario’s available moves, and eventually builds its way up to advanced creative tricks that even some veterans might not have even thought of trying.

DVD guides like that are pretty much irrelevant to veterans of a series [MEGA64: Video parodying the Mario DVD], but I can certainly see how they would be beneficial to new players, and helps ensure they’re not so alienated by the hardcore player.

Everyone happy?

Time for another This & That.  An assorted bag of video game related topics.

This time I’m covering the following things:

• Competitive Gaming, and how I think it would be great on TV.
• The excitement that comes from E3
• Those annoying missions where…

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If you grew up playing video games then it’s more than likely that you have at one stage or another experienced some fun competitive multi-player with friends.  In today’s online multi-player bombarded video game market the chances to compete against other people are all to easy for us, hell, I know there are many people out there these days who will often opt for the game with the online multi-player added on over the good old fashioned 1 player game.

The point I’m getting at is that there is a lot of fun to be had with multi-player, and when you have people of an equal skill level, knowing all the ins and outs of a game and showing you all the game can offer, then you have the makings of some really entertaining gameplay footage.

In North America exists “Major League Gaming”.  A professional video game league that holds all sorts of events and tournaments on competitive multi player games to bring together some of the worlds best video game players (of specific games).  It has numerous endorsements and sponsors, so with the revenue they can offer some substantial prize money to these top players competing within “MLG”.

Sure enough there are critics against MLG and other such professional video gaming circuits, mainly due to controversies in the past (for instance, reportedly not paying people, or taking there sweet time to do so).  However I believe in recent years things have improved within these companies.

A few months back though I happened to be browsing the XBOX live marketplace and came across some MLG content that was free to download.  There are a number of downloadable videos offered on the marketplace but the majority cost a small fee to purchase.  However, THIS competitive HALO 2 match is FREE to download.  Now, I urge you if you’re reading this blog and have an XBOX Live account to download that video and give it a watch.  I was quite surprised to have enjoyed it as much as I did as although I have had many hours of fun with a lot of the Halo franchise’s offerings, I wouldn’t of thought me watching someone elses match would have been my thing, but the level of play shown, along with the enthusiastic and informative commentary and good video editing gave it a great overall production value.

Another area where I have a lot of experience in watching professional gamers play is with Street Fighter (particularly Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV).  As I’m personally a big fan of the street fighter series, and try to keep up to date on what big events have been played within the Street Fighter scene, what’s coming up, and then lurking forums and websites trying to find the videos of some of the worlds best Street Fighter players working there magic.

Daigo vs Justin (Capcom Fight Club April 2010 Part 2/2)
Online Tony vs Alex Valle (West Coast Warzone 2).

Getting back to my point though.  I really love how the internet and the communities within games give us ways to be able to watch the very best at work.  Although I can’t help but dream of how if there was a TV channel (well in the UK anyway) offering these matches, I would definitely be glued too it, and it would become to me what watching “Sky Sports News” is to the sports nuts.  Obviously it would have to cover a number of different games and genres though, to make sure everyone was happy, but I think competitive gaming [when done with commentary from people who know there subject, and with good video editing]  is just as much fun to watch (if not more fun, coming from a hardcore gamer here) than many actual sports.

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As you may well know this week has been the Electronic Entertainment Expo (or “E3″ for short).  Which is generally regarded as the biggest event in the video game industry’s calendar.

Basically it’s a gathering (mainly for the video gaming press’s benefit) to showcase what a company has planned for the coming month/ year.  The big 3 (Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony) generally try to raise excitement among it’s fans as well as attract new ones with upcoming games, features, and/ or hardware.  Plus you’ll have the big games publishers and developers doing similar unveils and announcements of new games, or showcasing new trailers, details, and demo’s on games not too far off their eventual release.

For the hardcore gamer it’s an exciting time of year, especially if you’re lucky enough to own more than just 1 console, as you can happily watch the majority of press conferences on show and generally be wowed by an onslaught of potential purchases.

I remember when I was growing up (we’re talking back in the mid 90′s here), when the internet wasn’t anywhere near established, in the days when it was the magazines that were THE ‘go to’ source for upcoming game information.  Over the summer months magazine after magazines would hit the shelves with big headlines on them letting you know they’d been to E3 and had a lot to show to it’s readers.  It was generally one of the most exciting issues of the year for the gaming magazines.

It’s those fond memories of the 90′s and video game magazines that made me realise, even as a kid, that E3 was somewhat a big deal.

As time passed, and the internet evolved into the “information super highway” that it now is.  We, the mass majority of gamers… the general public… have practically an all you can eat buffet’s worth of E3 coverage instantly available too us.

For the past 4 years or so now I have watched most of the E3 press conference’s LIVE, and before we was granted such great coverage, I settled with live text blogs from the video game press (such as IGN) from editors there attending the press conferences.

This year was great for me personally though, as I’m currently on a summer break from my university studies, so I had free time on my hands.  This year I hooked up my laptop screen up to my 42″ plasma, put the audio through my surround setup, and watched Microsoft, Nintendo’s, and Sony’s conferences live in HD thanks to GameTrailers.com‘s amazing streams of the show.  In previous years I’ve really let my love for video games be shown by the fact I’ve actually made arrangements in advance to make sure I could catch E3 live.  Such as either finishing work early on those days, or taking days off entirely.  That’s how much I dig E3.

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Lastly.  I was playing Bully: Scholarship Edition earlier.

In which I had a mission in which I had to sabotage a prized object of my (in game) opponents.  It was one of those missions you find in games where you have to do something fairly epic, but regardless of succesfully doing this act of sabotagery…unless you get all the way back to safety without dying it won’t count as being done.

I don’t hold much of a grudge though, as those kinds of missions are an integral part of video games, so I can accept them being there. Although on the other hand… God dammit! I did some serious damage to our foes… So what if I didn’t get back safe! I died fighting for the good of our side.  Now I have to start all over and do that whole sabotage part over again?  Jeez!

Did World War II widows get letters back saying: “Your husband killed 14 Nazi’s, saved over 20 Jewish war prisoners, but as he didn’t make it back safe, we must declare…Mission Failed”

I guess I’ll just take it as a nod to those difficult retro games I grew up with that didn’t believe in mid-way checkpoints, and really demanded you to bring your A-game and hope lady luck is on your side.

It seems like every other article I’ve published on this blog is Street Fighter related.  Not that I’m really complaining, and it’s mainly due to the internet constantly being home to a lot of great Street Fighter related news, videos, fan tributes, and everything else…

As an example of the “everything else” did you know there is a company creating a Super Street Fighter IV themed LED HD TV? …They claim it’s the perfect TV for the Street Fighter fan, whether that is actually true I can’t say.

>>Click here for the details on the SSFIV TV<<

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Next up.  A certain Street Fighter series character ranked quite highly in a recent ScrewAttack.com “Top 10 20″.
Video >>  1 – 10 (or click here to start with 11 – 20).

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You may have heard of Kenny Omega, as the guy who did Zangief’s Ultra in a wrestling ring.  However it seems his Street Fighter love doesn’t end there.  He also does a Hadoken (close range, obviously without the fireball), and his actual Titantron video is Street Fighter IV inspired too (loops repeatedly as they wrestling intro’s generally do).

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You may also be aware of Daigo Umehara.  A Japanese video game player who is one of the greatest Street Fighter players on the planet (some may argue he is the greatest).  If you want to know more about Daigo, you may want to check out THIS video feature on him.  He became sponsored by MadCatz in April, and MadCatz will be consulting with him to create the next line of Fight Sticks later this year.

Daigo had yet another great match up with the also highly respected Street Fighter player “Justin Wong” in April at Capcom’s LA Fight Club tournament.  If you’re a big fan of the games you owe it to yourself to watch both parts of the video.
Click here for Part 1 ///   Click here for Part 2

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Ever wondered what the role entails to be a Street Fighter background character? …then check out Dorkly.com’s guide >HERE<

Also from Dorkly…Street Fighter characters on Facebook!

M Bison scored #19 on IGN’s Top 100 Video Game Villains

IGN named there Top 5 favourite Capcom game franchises, did Street Fighter score?

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I was also playing my PS3 copy of Super Street Fighter IV the other week and noticed I unlocked something for “home”.  I did some googling which didn’t turn up many results, but it seems the “Trespass” T-shirt which is what I unlocked, was for completing Arcade mode on Medium or higher without using a continue.  I’m pretty sure that is the only HOME unlock for SSFIV, although interestingly there isn’t any “Avatar” awards in the 360 version .  I also here that Street Fighter IV (vanilla) had some HOME unlocks too, although personally I only have SFIV for the 360.  Photo of the “Trespass” Tee below.

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My friend Drew got a Street Fighter IV Tournament Edition (Round 2) Fight Stick the other day.  Here’s the unboxing of that if you’re interested…

>>Humor: The “counter chart” they don’t want you to see<<

>>Humor: M. Bison does level 1-1 of Mario<<

Humor:  Zangief made the accidental Video Game Porn archive with this “handjob”

….and that’s that for now

Europe!  In less than 2 weeks, Super Mario Galaxy 2 will hit the shelves.

The surprise sequel to the Wii hit “Super Mario Galaxy” released in 2007.  I say ‘surprise’ sequel seeing as how it’s quite Rare for Nintendo to do a mario sequel during the same console generation.  Depending on if you count Super Mario World and Yoshi’s Island (as they were totally different games to be fair).  It was the NES with Super Mario Bros/ Lost Levels and Super Mario Bros 3 that were the last time we truly had Mario sequels within a generation.

From what I’ve seen and read though, Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be much much more than just the “Lost Levels” of Super Mario Galaxy.  It will be a much more ambitious, more deeper, and much sweeter game to get into.

For a brief time this week Super Mario Galaxy 2 did something very suprising and knocked Zelda: Ocarina of Time off the GameRankings #1 spot (a site that tallys all the reviews for games up to give them there overall average). It’s no suprise that it did that though after numerous sites have given it amazing scores.  I was personally surprised and ‘upped’ my level of hype when I saw that Super Mario Galaxy 2 scored a perfect 10 from IGN, they’re not the only ones either, I hear it scored a 10/10 from EDGE too, whom are a bit critically harsh at times.

GameTrailers gave it a 9.7 also…peep the review below if you want to see some game footage.  Doesn’t really spoil anything major from what I remember.

So I figured that whilst I waited for SMG2…I would go back to Super Mario Galaxy 1, to familiarise myself with how great that was, and also to beat “Super Luigi Galaxy”.  Luigi Galaxy is basically playing the whole game in it’s entirety again, but as Luigi, although playing as Luigi has his trademark slightly improved jump and slidey stopping distance when trying to stop running.

Seeing as though it’s been like 2 years since I last properly played Super Mario Galaxy, re-playing from scratch again as Luigi has been a lot of fun, I’m currently about 35 stars in, and if I can continue to go for about 10 stars a day for the next 2 weeks I should finally get to see the secret bonus that is unlocked for completing the game with both characters .

I hear the reasons to replay Super Mario Galaxy 2 are much greater though, so I’m definitely looking forward to not only having perhaps the greatest 3D platformer in existence, but knowing that it will take a lot of hours for me to have fully experienced it all.

Just replaying Super Mario Galaxy again though just reminds me why I’ve never gone a single console generation since birth without having a Nintendo console…  That being that when Nintendo knuckle down in Japan with aspirations of making a great video game, you expect something special, and I’d say at least 95% of the time it’s not just a game worth owning…but a game worth hanging on to.

The level design and variety in Super Mario Galaxy is incredible.  It’s no wonder the 3D platformer competition has faded out over recent years because Nintendo keep raising up that quality bar.  Another series I’d love to see Nintendo work there platformer magic on would be Donkey Kong.  It seems ever since Nintendo parted ways with ‘Rare‘ they haven’t had any dev teams really wanting to make something of the Donkey Kong franchise (which let’s not forget is an older franchise than Super Mario).  Don’t get me wrong I really loved the Donkey Konga games and “DK Jungle Beat”, but that just seems like a passing phase for the Konga controller.  When Nintendo left Rare to take care of DK they really made something of DK.  Rare aren’t quite the same as they were in the N64 days though, as a lot of the people left Rare for “Free Radical Design” and other places.  However if Nintendo EAD got behind a DK platformer, whether it be a Donkey Kong Country 4, or a Donkey Kong 64 sequel…it would most certainly be great.

Back to Mario though.  Once I’m done with Super Mario Luigi Galaxy (and obviously it’s epic sequel) I ought to replay Super Mario Sunshine again, I only played through it once myself, and that was upto about 95% completion back in it’s GC days.  I kind of lost interest in Sunshine’s ‘blue coin challenges’ so I never fully 120′d it (although I did beat the final boss obviously).

I did enjoy Super Mario Sunshine though.  I thought it was a great game, not quite as legendary as 64 or Galaxy, but still a very decent platformer.  Then from there I should chase Sunshine with the original king of 3D platforming…Super Mario 64.  I 120′d (100% completed) back when I was 11, I didn’t stick with Super Mario 64 DS for as long as I’d of liked, and since re-purchasing Mario 64 from the Virtual Console on the Wii’s launch I think I’m only up to something like 30 stars, but I would gladly go for 120 again as that game still holds up great and is still a blast to play.  Don’t forget that through the Nintendo Wii you have the ability to play all of the current 3D Mario offerings.

So… I’m going to get back to jumping around the galaxies with Luigi.  Roll on June 11th!

Viva La 3D Mario Bros Adventures

Did You See #4: Retro Core

Retro Core is an amazing online video series created by a gamer who goes by the name of “Yakumo”.  Living in Japan, but originally from Liverpool (as you may notice from his accent in the videos).

He has literally an archive of shows online covering the greats and the obscure from gamings past.  With the advantage of being in Japan he is able to introduce you to a lot of games you may not of heard of before, as well as giving you some insight into some of the differences between Japanese and Western game releases.  Not to mention he does a lot of great features on rare gaming systems, and even some video trips to the Japanese Arcades (it’s a sight to see how much better they still are over the ones we have), as well as trips to some used Japanese Video Game stores (which again…totally own any I’ve ever seen).

It’s thanks to Retro Core that I am ever more eager to get my hands on a Sega Saturn, after seeing him showcase some awesome games I never knew the system had.  Also just seeing some games I hadn’t played in years, and some I’d totally forgotten about was a great bit of nostalgia.

All the episodes are available to download for FREE so I highly suggest going to SegagagaDomain and giving it a look.  There are over 40 episodes, and a Saturn Beat Em Up/ Fighting special is rumoured to be released at some point this year.  Each episode is generally over an hour long, so if you enjoy the show as much as I did that means you have literally a gold mine of great video game coverage to eat up your time or to give you some great background entertainment whilst you play your DS’s or PSP’s perhaps.

I’m unsure whether to suggest people to start with the Summer 2009 special to get a feel for what the show’s about, or to just tell you to go in at Episode 1.  Either way, if you still have a fond appreciation for retro games ranging from NES to Dreamcast, then you should definitely enjoy Retro Core.

>>> LINK TO RETRO CORE HOME PAGE – links to download all episodes is within

**If you will be watching these on your PC then I’d suggest just downloading the highest file size version, however personally I downloaded the majority of the show in .MP4 format, as I watched them on my PS3 and some of the .AVI episodes weren’t compatible with either my PS3 or XBOX360.

You’ve just got to love YouTube…

Pretty much every game worth mentioning has videos on YouTube, whether official, or more than likely… by gamers themselves.

I’m personally a big fan of the Street Fighter series, and YouTube is an AMAZING source for Street Fighter goods.  Whether it be guides, great fights,  fan videos, or more…

For instance just the other day I caught some videos of some of Guy’s combos from Street Fighter Alpha.  I’m pretty weak with Guy myself but seeing the video definitely wowed me at his potential, and made me really eager to play some Street Fighter Alpha 3 again.

Here’s the video in question:

There are a ton of helpful videos on YouTube for the recent Super Street Fighter IV also.  Not too mention how YouTube added to my eager-ness to play SSFIV when people were releasing videos of gameplay with the new character and new ultra’s in the days and weeks before.  You can learn a lot about a character simply by watching others use them, I’ve even had new found respect for characters I didn’t gel well with simply because I’ve seen them used properly and it’s motivated me to get better with said character.  Not to mention the fact that when you’re watching some good gameplay footage you get really amped to play the game…so I think my Dreamcast (especially) owes a lot to YouTube when it comes to spontaneously firing the system up to play some Alpha III or 3rd Strike after catching a glimpse of some good user videos that I’ve seen online.

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Then you’ve got fun little fan videos like YT user mmmramen’s Day in the Life of a Street Fighter.

Oh I should definitely link to the Street Fighter Retrospective whilst I’m linking to Street Fighter videos too…  It can be found on YouTube, but the guy who put this together put it on GameTrailers, and has the complete lot on there, where as YouTube has it put up by a fan of his work, and is missing the latest parts.  So below is the GameTrailers embed.  Click the link underneath to check out the full lot over at GameTrailers.

>> Nostalgic Gamers User Page / Complete list of Street Fighter Retrospective parts <<

Here’s something you’ve probably not watched before…a little news report/ interview with Van Damme/ Raul Julia on the Street Fighter movie.

I can’t believe it actually took me till the other week (I’m 23 years old by the way) when watching some clips of the Street Fighter movie (a film that’s so bad, but still I guess…a classic) is the fact that Guile is pretty much the most American character in Street Fighter II yet Van Damme portrays him with his usual heavily European accent  Although I was smart enough as a kid to realise the story of the film didn’t make sense alongside the characters stories in the game had.  I’ve still not bothered to watch the apparently dire “Legend of Chun Li” movie, and it depresses me that Neal McDonough (who is awesome in Band of Brothers) was somehow thought up to be a good M. Bison (Dictator).

Oh, and if you don’t know why I put ‘Dictator’ in brackets then you need to brush up on your Street Fighter history, but in brief, Vega/ Bison/ Balrog had a name switch before the Street Fighter II game left Japan, M. Bison was the original name for the Boxer character (whom is based off the real life boxer Mike Tyson), and Capcom didn’t want to get into a lawsuit over licensing rights and what not…

Anyway, I hope you’ve been inspired to do some more YouTube searching, or perhaps gone on a journey of watching a load of ‘related videos’ from one of the videos I posted above.  I’ll leave you now with a random match I found on YouTube from Tatsunoko vs Capcom (Wii) because it seems quite rare (at least unless you perhaps follow the TvsC scene) that you’ll see a TatsuCapcom match video.

The links below are from a topic I posted on “Street Fighter Preston” a Facebook Group I set up to round up Street Fighter Players in the UK town of “Preston”, and neighbouring areas.

Street Fighter: The Later Years
—> http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1711287

Street Fighter Legacy:
—> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2ZXSzaUIBQ
I Got Next:
—> http://www.igotnextmovie.com/

Justin Wong (chun li) vs Daigo (ken) –> Famous SFIII EVO tournament match
—> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS5peqApgUA&feature=related

Street Fighter Anime Boxset (£9.99 from HMV)
—> http://hmv.com/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280%3B0%3B-1%3B-1%3B-1&sku=987489

Angry Video Game Nerd – SF2010 (covers some other (proper) SF games too):
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/angry-video-screwattack/60452

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Forums (other than this little FB group) to talk to more SF players…good to share and learn tips:

http://www.shoryuken.com/

http://www.streetfighter4forums.com/

http://www.gamefaqs.com/

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Fan made SF version videos

Cat vs Printer
—> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okgo__l3_Oc

Pacquiao vs Hatton
—> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0XEbmVgu3qk

Breakdancer kicks baby
—> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RGKqGwzhb0

Edgar Falls (STOP IT!!!)
—> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mG3SANQZNwM&feature=related

Paramore vs Guile’s Theme
—> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pv8IFadiHU&feature=related

USA Street Fighter Cartoon series making Bison seem like a right pleeb.
—> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0j0lO7uQBo
(somewhat of a popular internet meme)

If you have any other good Street Fighter videos you’d like to add, then please post links in the comments section