themblan's blog

Last year, I dabbled in making videos for YouTube. I would record gameplay of me playing Splatoon for the purposes of later grabbing clips from it and then editing it into a video. I didn't do much editing, and it still was a lot of work. I learned a lot from the whole experience. Playing games for the purpose of making videos took a lot of the fun and freedom out of the game. What I was doing was getting footage of splats (or "kills" as they are called in other games), and so I would go out of my way to get splats, even though that playstyle wasn't really in my true nature as a person or a gamer. It made the gaming-experience a little more stressful, a little more like work, and less like play. After a while, I resented playing my favorite multiplayer-game of all time. I decided that I would cover all the weapons in the game, and then I would quit. I wanted to finish what I started. Recording while gaming is like going on a vacation and taking pictures constantly...

The first time I saw Volgarr the Viking was on a video by Dodger, the YouTuber who possesses channels called PressHeartToContinue and DexterityBonus. It seemed like an old-school game with a high degree of difficulty that required patience and memorization. I was always intrigued by it and wanted to try it, but not to the extent of plunking down money to do so. About two weeks ago, I bought it for Nintendo Switch because I was bored and out of the house. I enjoyed it immensely, although it's very stressful and punishing. It's not a game that normal people will want to play for hours at a time. Immediately, it reminded me of Castlevania and Ghouls 'n Ghosts. Like Ghouls 'n Ghosts, it has a similar power-up system where additional pieces of armor correspond to hits you can take from enemies. If you get hit, you lose a piece. If you find a piece of armor, you can put the piece you lost back on. It's a very methodical game. The enemies have set patterns, and so ge...

There are many aspects to love, but the one I will be focusing on today is the passive aspect of love. Love is accepting and appreciating things for what they are - not trying to change them. The saying goes, "If you love something, set it free." There are at least two camps in the Nintendo-fanbase. One camp is stuck in the past, and wants Nintendo to be like they were during the days of the NES and SNES - making great games as well as providing a popular platform for third-party games that are "with the times" technologically. A lot of these type of fans are labeled "haters," which is unfair. Their love for Nintendo is more like that of a parent that pushes a child to succeed in school. The child is stupid and lazy, and so the parent has no choice but to push him or her because of the capitalistic world we live in. Personally, I think this is bad parenting, and it backfires later on during the child's teenaged years. The child eventually rebels and ...

Videogames are works of art - creative things made by people. Scores mean something when they can be compared to two equal things. For example, when two people take the same multiple-choice test, the higher score means something because those two people took the same test; it was a fair comparison. With videogames and other forms of art, numerical scores are meaningless and illogical because games are not created with the same goals in mind, nor the same budgets. I remember hearing José Otero, when he was at IGN, talking about the rationale behind review-scores and all the drama and minutiae that goes into determining these numbers; it was beyond stupid. It reminds me of The Game Theorist on YouTube, and how he goes into insane amounts of detail into things that don't matter, and can't be proven. Today, the review-embargo for Super Mario Odyssey was lifted, and many great scores came out. What does this mean? It means whatever it means to you. Does it mean it's a good g...

Nintendo has a history of doing things differently, from sticking with cartridges on the Nintendo 64 to the Nintendo Switch being an underpowered home-console/handheld hybrid with detachable controllers. The question then becomes, "Are they a bunch of hipsters who do things differently for the sake of wanting to feel special and different, or do they do things differently because they are visionary innovators?" One of their former presidents: Hiroshi Yamauchi, criticized people who played RPGs, which were some of the most popular games in his own country, saying they were played by “depressed gamers who like to sit alone in their dark rooms and play slow games.” Was the Nintendo 64 an answer to the glut of single-player RPGs on the Super Famicom? Was the Nintendo 64 designed to be an action-game machine for local multiplayer gaming at his behest? It's certainly possible. When Yamauchi passed the torch to Satoru Iwata, Iwata took his predecessor's mantras ver...

The vocal internet seems to always make a point that Donkey Kong Country 2 is better than 1 or 3. I have always like 1 better. I could never get into 2, with its ugly color-palette, pirate-theme, and overcomplicated world-map and coin-system. However, with the advent of the SNES Classic Edition Mini, I used Hakchi to put it on there, gave it a second chance, and I'm liking it. I can see why people like the game. It seems like there was more work put into the levels. They are more complicated than 1's. They have a lot of verticality, as well as secrets sprinkled everywhere. I like how the animal-friends are more prominent in the game, and there are more of them. I do miss Donkey Kong, but I like Dixie Kong. I choose to play as her when I can. I still don't like the pirate-theme. I have never liked pirates or that whole genre in media. When Splatoon had a Splatfest with pirates versus ninjas, I couldn't pick ninjas fast enough. I like the more natural look and environ...

I can hardly describe the emotions I feel when I hear people talking about Cuphead, or watch people playing it live. For one thing, I do not like the art-direction of the game - this ye old animation-style of the early 20th century. I appreciate and respect the smoothness of the animation, but the character-designs and art-direction itself is something I have never liked. Everything is so round, and every character's eyes are so big and wide-open. It just kind of scares me a little. The gameplay of the game does not marry well with this art-direction. It feels like a cheap design-decision to just have cups shooting water out of their fingers and have it be a run-and-gun. This game would have been better as a platformer without ranged combat. Having anthropomorphic cups shooting water out of their fingers does not make sense nor look cool. Some kind of non-realistic gun would have been better. Overall, I do not like games that copy artistic styles from history. It is just lazy...

Think about it. Nintendo-fans buy up every SNES Mini. Of course, scalpers do as well, but if the casual store-goer doesn't see SNES Minis on the shelf of a brick-and-mortar store, he or she can't buy one. Whenever Reggie Fils-Aimé talks about Nintendo-fans, he is not fully happy; he kind of winces. He knows that they are double-edged swords. Sure, their fervor and financial support does, in part, keep the company afloat, but they are also holding the company back. Nintendo is constantly wrestling between pleasing long-time fans and trying to get new customers. Nintendo does make innovative games like Splatoon and ARMS once in a while, but they also churn out sequel after sequel in other franchises. How many Kirby-games does HAL have to make? I feel sorry for them and for myself, because I do not enjoy Kirby-games with the exception of Rainbow Curse. Because Kirby-games sell pretty well, they keep making them. Nintendo-fans are buying these games, and so innovation is stalle...

I see it all the time: questions like, "How many hours does this game take to complete?" Back of boxes will boast that a game has tens of hours of playtime. In a capitalistic and competitive world, numbers can be helpful when used correctly, but more often than not, they are parsed incorrectly. The number of hours a game takes to complete wasn't really something that was a critical thing to advertise back in the early days of gaming. The ultimate goal of playing videogames was to have fun. If you could have fun with a game over and over again, it didn't matter that there weren't 100 levels or mandatory hours and hours of grinding to do. I remember gameplay-hours becoming a marketing-point on the back of boxes and from the mouths of PR people, starting from the mid-'90s. After Final Fantasy VII was a commercial success, publishers began publishing more RPGs in the West, and one of the bullet-points on the backs of boxes became gameplay-hours. "100 hour...

I was hesitantly excited about the Nintendo World Championships for 2017 because there were signs that it was going to be bad. It was happening on a random Saturday in October; it was not tied to a major event like E3 or anything like that. They invited people once again, and also had a 12-and-under category. Could they repeat the fun and excitement of 2015? This was a question that was hanging in the air. Immediately, the whole event was brought into question when Andre Rene took the stage as the host. She came off more like a schoolteacher than a hype-person, as she was being very nice to the children at the event. Her presence really set the stage for the event. It was warm and inviting, but it wasn't exciting or fun. The first event also brought the whole event into question. Time-trials for shield-surfing in Zelda Breath? Really? It was boring to watch, as well as hard to follow, as the camera randomly cut to random players. Usually I detest commentary during gaming-events...

I understand if you are a collector, buying physical things for the sake of their eventual rarity is something that you do, but as a gamer, it's dumb. Buying games just because they're physical is dumb. I see it all the time. People will buy physical copies from Limited Run Games just because they're physical. They don't care if the game is not very good. The fact that the game is physical makes it seem a little better than it really is. It's like rose-tinted glasses, but instead of nostalgia providing the rose-colored tint, it's the fact that it's physical. It's the same thing with old consoles. People buy new releases of games on old consoles all the time, even if they're not very good. Sega Dreamcast still gets new games from independent developers. They are very basic games that have superior, free counterparts on smartphones. SNES got a new fighting-game, developed by some former SNK developers, called Unholy Night. I was hopeful for the game...

Recently, Cyrus Wesson, a Bandai Namco Community Manager, encouraged Nintendo Switch fans to ask for Project Cars 2 if they wanted it. A lot of people took this the extreme, wrong way, as if we needed to beg for a port, also digging up Slightly Mad Studios's shady past with the first Project Cars that was canceled for Wii U. This is my take on the whole situation. Cyrus Wesson is just one figurehead at the publisher of Project Cars 2. He is not a developer at Slightly Mad Studios. He has no power to enact anything. He was just doing his job: promoting the game. Even if there is zero-chance that Project Cars 2 gets ported to NS, which was pretty much confirmed , he has to tell us to ask for it if we want it. He can't put the cold truth out there that Project Cars 2 will never be ported to NS. Doctre81 took his statements to the extreme, as if Wesson maliciously wanted Nintendo-fans to offer free marketing for Project Cars 2. I believe he is half-correct. I don't believ...

"Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle and the Millionaires' Conspiracy," or Lady Layton, was supposed to be the game that got me into the Layton-franchise. I had dabbled in the first game on an emulator, and I had purchased the Layton & Phoenix Wright crossover, but never committed much time to it. It's not that I didn't like the games; I just got sidetracked. "I will commit this time," I told myself. I then realized a few things that derailed my hype-train. There is too much boring story and dialog. The puzzles are few and far between. This game is more like a visual novel - one of those dating-sims that are so prevalent on the Vita and Steam. When you finally do get to a puzzle, you realize that the difficulty in solving them comes from how they deceive you, rather than being a straightforward challenge. The wording of the puzzle will be very vague and deceptive. The picture associated with the puzzle will also be very confusing and dece...

I preordered my SNES Classic from the UK because I like the original case better. It arrived the Wednesday after launch to much anticipation. I had seen videos and pictures of this thing before, but it really shocked me how small it was. The length of the controller's wire was also shorter than I had imagined. Four feet may be an improvement from two feet, but it's still too short. I had trouble opening the door for the controller-ports. As much as it is nice to have it look like a SNES without the door open, I think it would have been better without the door at all, and the controller-ports where the door would be and not recessed. As an owner of one broken SNES, a working SNES, one New-Style Super NES (the original SNES Mini from 1997) , and one Super Famicom, I have to say that the SNES is a neat little gimmick, but it's not satisfying. I realize now that I would rather play with a real cartridge and real system. Most of the included games are not pick-up-and-pl...

Timed exclusivity-deals are not worth it. It casts a negative light on the hardware-manufacturer that possesses the deal. It's not something that earns the respect of gamers, like a real exclusive would. It's seen as petty and a cheap way to make a console seem more attractive. Gamers who do not own the console that possesses the timed exclusive generally won't be "I'm so glad that Microsoft has an timed exclusive in Rise of the Tomb Raider." They will be pissed and will refuse to buy the system that possesses the exclusive. Gamers would rather wait for the exclusive time-period to pass than to buy the system. When has a timed exclusive ever pushed hardware-sales? Rise of the Tomb Raider did not make a big impact for Xbox One. Resident Evil 4 did not make a big impact for Gamecube, even when it wasn't even announced for PS2. Timed exclusivity only serves to bloat the egos of the executives at the hardware-manufacturers and fanchildren. Instead of timed...

Africans around the world need to stop saying the n-word. It perpetuates the word, keeping it relevant. Every time someone in a company uses it, it becomes national news, and he or she gets fired. All this only serves to keep the word alive. What are the other racial slurs for other races? They really don't exist in the mainstream-vernacular because they are not perpetuated by mainstream media, and only exist within racist circles. We don't know them. They are not as widely known because the races don't call each other these slurs, like Africans do, like a sick joke. By saying that only they (Africans) can use the n-word, it makes it a forbidden fruit that entices people to use it. Even if someone is not racist, he or she will try to hurt an African by saying the word because Africans are programmed to be offended by it. I see it all the time. Immature children will just throw out the word in online videogames or chat-rooms because they know it is forbidden, and its us...

I read it all the time on reddit. People are returning to Nintendo after decades, or coming to Nintendo for the first time with the popularity of the Nintendo Switch. They anger me - all these bandwagon-fans. Where were you when Nintendo needed you most - during the Wii U era? What worries me is how tenuous their fandom can be. If Nintendo screws up again, will these bandwagon-fans abandon them like they did before? How disloyal people can be, pisses me off. Let's not equate a corporation to interpersonal relationships, but it's exactly people like these that also break off relationships with ease. There is folly in being loyal to a corporation, but there is also honor. This is what I think that longtime Nintendo-fans see. It is easy to bounce around from corporation to corporation depending upon how they are catering to your desires or not. They see the honor in sticking with a company through thick and thin because companies are not all just heartless, evil entities. They...

They are similar, right? They both have tentative support, lots of ports (like the recently announced Zone of the Enders 2 VR port), and are not mainstream. My dream was for Nintendo Switch to catapult Nintendo back into the mainstream - back into the mainstream conversation of videogame-consoles like Xbox and PlayStation. This, sadly, did not happen. NS is still a gimmicky, secondary console, albeit a well-selling one. Just because something is selling well doesn't mean it's a success. That sounds antithetical, but hear me out. The Wii also sold a lot but it wasn't a success, because it did not bring about a paradigm-shift in games. Motion-controls are still gimmicks, Nintendo was not able to ride the momentum of the Wii into the Wii U, and game-companies (developers and publishers) did not drop what they're doing and support Nintendo. Major AAA game-companies did not make games for Wii after a certain point, even though Wii had a larger install-base. What would ...

People are very similar at the core. We may look very different from one another, but if you go down to the scientific nitty-gritty, I don't have the exact percentages, but the difference between people is miniscule. Even chimpanzees and humans have remarkable similarities in genetics. The difference between an asshole and a nice person comes down to upbringing, empathy, and self-control. Whether or not you are an asshole, is a personal choice an adult can make. Assholes choose not to exercise this choice. They give excuses like "I'm just honest," or blame nice people and say that "They're not being real." It might be true that nice people are not being 100% truthful about their emotions, but what kind of world would that be if everyone was honest about their emotions all the time? There would be much higher rates of violence and crime. Assholes look at nice people like they're the problem. If nice people were 100% honest, then assholes would not...

With the SNES Mini (or SNES Classic Edition) out now, it is time to reflect on what made the original great. It's clear as day when I watch videos and read chats on livestreams about it. The SNES was so good because it had a very good balance of first-party, second-party, and third-party support; and technology that pushed the envelope. Software Nintendo believed that all their success in the past was solely because of them. This is especially evident with regard to how they designed the Nintendo 64 and its whole ecosystem. The whole ecosystem of the Nintendo 64 was basically telling third-party developers and publishers, "Don't make games for us." The cartridges were very expensive, and development was far more difficult than for the PlayStation. Nintendo was a very confident company to the point of arrogance. They probably looked back on the SNES and looked at the greatest games in its library. They probably saw games like Super Mario World, Link to the Past,...

Being a Nintendo-fan is like being in an abusive relationship. There are certain needs and desires you might have, but Nintendo completely ignores them and instead gives you things you don't want nor need. Eventually, you justify the games they give you, convincing yourself that you want to play them. If you're a one-console gamer, it's not like you have a choice. You develop Stockholm syndrome for Nintendo-games. By virtue of playing a game for many hours, you might grow to like it, even if you hated it at first. You start making excuses for them, and lower your standards. I remember when Mario Tennis: Ultra Smash came out for Wii U. People criticized that game for its lack of content, yet I still bought it because I was a foolish Nintendo-fan. I justified that purchase by telling myself I had never purchased a Mario Tennis game before, I wanted to support the developers, and that at least the graphics were amazing. I lost my own sense of consumerism and product-valuati...

Nintendo is the key to saving the Japanese gaming-industry. It's as simple as that. I was watching Sony's 2017 Tokyo Game Show Press Conference and at the end, the Sony-figurehead made a speech about saving the Japanese gaming-industry. I know what would save it, and that's if either Nintendo made a powerful game-console, or all the Japanese developers made games for Nintendo. It's that simple. Japan loves Nintendo, evinced by its still-strong sales of 3DS and astronomical popularity of Nintendo Switch. Think about it. Even though 3DS is weak and outputs ugly 3D graphics, it outsold the Vita in Japan, even though Japanese developers made a lot of games for it, and still develop games for it. Nintendo's games are very popular and beloved. Japan is a small country. Maybe there was a time in the distant past where multiple competitive hardware-platforms could co-exist. Back in the 16-bit generation, the Sega Megadrive coexisted alongside Super Famicom and PC En...