First off I need to apologize for the lack of updates, the summer has been really bad for blog posting. The last month has been pretty much the worst too. A week of preparing, followed by a week in San Francisco (which is more meetings than “work”), then Sarah’s wedding, followed by a week of being sick. All the while trying to fit in a  massive back log of actual work. Well here we are, things are sane again and I am no longer plague ridden. It’s actually been a really good summer, lots of projects have moved forward and I’ve got a lot of back logged blog posts to finish and publish.

I figured I’d knock a quickie one out just to post the above update. While sitting at home sick this week I started and finished Cave Story + on the Mac. For those not familiar, Cave Story is an indie freeware platformer/run & gun in the modern Castlevania / classic Metroid sense. It is a fantastic deep game (storywise) with awesome gameplay and music. Developed (scored and illustrated) single handedly by Daisuke Amaya (aka Pixel) over 5 years and released in 2004, the original is a treasured classic and as of the last year or two it’s finally gotten the attention it deserves. It saw an updated version released on the Wii last year with updated graphics and music.

Well as of last week, that updated version was released on the Mac AppStore. In fact there is an additional level (and bit of story) making the Mac version the most complete way to play Cave Story currently. (There is even additional new content promised in updates!) While it will be coming back to the PC-world via Steam eventually, this is truly an impressive moment for Mac gamers! We actually have something really awesome FIRST! (Who would gloat about that though, ha) Anyone who says $10 is a lot to spend on an updated version of a free game really needs to realize how impressive this game is, and that it is a bargain of a monetization for the blood, sweat and tears that went into it. The re-arranged music in this version is freakin’ fantastic and the graphical updates are just beautiful (and that is coming from a pixel-addict), check out this side by side I threw together:

 

Buy it now and enjoy it, seriously awesome. (Just make sure you don’t play it on the easy difficulty, normal is actually pretty easy, though hard is pretty nasty. ) It’s worth your time and 10 bucks.

Two blog posts in one day!? (Yea its just another Youtube embed)

In a parody of Duke Nukem, Mega64 and GameTrailers have partnered to produce a trailer for Doug Huggem, a feel good game to be released soon… in March 2024….

Here is the extended video of Jon St. John doing a recording session. Priceless

Just a quick rant. I’ve generally enjoyed Nintendo’s handheld offerings, especially since they evolved from time wasters to serious gaming platforms. Some of my best gaming moments ever (i.e. the Castlevania series) were on the Nintendo DS. Sadly the 3DS has failed to capture any interest from me. I thought I’d share my quick rant on why that is:

1. 3D is the new motion touch gimmick. Nintendo loves their gimmicks. The gimmicks bring in the casual gamers, and Nintendo is wildly profitable as a result. However I find because these things really are gimmicks for the marketing department, developers seem to treat them as such too. How many Nintendo DS games were hindered by thrown in usage of the second screen or pen controls? Far too many. For every game that really used the touch well, much to many used it for nothing but distracting motions that required breaking the flow of the game. (Compare this to the iPhone where most games use the touch well, with very few falling back to shitty on screen joypad buttons). It ruins the immersion to constantly switch control schemes between buttons and stylus, and frankly the stylus is a shitty way to play games. Game developers will use the 3D in gimmicky ways, ruining the immersion. While I generally find his movies to be awful, Michael Bay hits the nail on the head when it comes to the gimmicky use of 3D in *every* movie nowadays:“Right now, it looks like fake 3D, with layers that are very apparent. You go to the screening room, you are hoping to be thrilled, and you’re thinking, huh, this kind of sucks. People can say whatever they want about my movies, but they are technically precise, and if this isn’t going to be excellent, I don’t want to do it. And it is my choice.”Milk the 3D fad dry Nintendo…
2. The price is too high. Sure lots of people will argue that it has a camera, and storage, and a buncha other crap to explain the $100 jump over the DS, but at $249 USD its $20 more than an 8GB iPod Touch, which features more storage, a far richer software echo system (minus the AAA titles that Nintendo themselves always develop, really the only thing keeping serious gamers on their platforms), two cameras, and a gorgeous 960×640 IPS panel which is far better than the silly 3D + second panel which will surely look jaundice over time like every previous DS…
3. The battery lifeThis is a big one. One of my favourite things about the DS lite is that it has superb battery life, literally a week of my commuting and casual play. The official Nintendo rating on it is 15-19 hours. Superb. It’s a big reason why I enjoy the experience over the PSP which always had maybe 6 hours at the most (though thankfully you could easily carry two batteries for those overseas flights).  Iwata himself dismissed the PSP for having ‘sub 10 hour’ battery life at one point (I can’t find the quote). Here we are and the 3DS is quoted at 3-5 hours while playing 3DS titles. Yikes. That becomes a hindrance guys. My *laptop* pulls 12 hours of normal workload, my iPad pulls like 10 hours of HD video. This reminds me of the GameGear. I was so excited about it, until I realized it had like two hours of battery life, then you had to dump the six AAs… good thing most games didn’t have SRAM. With the 3DS reportedly taking 3.5 hours to charge… its all together possible you’ll have to spend more time charging it than playing it…
4. The 3D tech isn’t well suited to a casual handheld. So I really was excited about this since I hate 3D glasses, but sadly the Nintendo tech has its draw backs. First of all, the 3D effect depth slider is a bit weird. This itself ruins immersion. The reason they need this though, is to ] different hand holding positions. Yep, this means as you adjust yourself you will need to fiddle with the slider to get the 3D effect looking good again. Maybe its just me? but I am pretty fidgety when playing handheld games. Many people have reportedly complained of eyestrain, Nintendo has suggested you need to keep the unit steady while playing. Well if I was supposed to be sitting at a desk while playing, I should probably not be playing a handheld game. Nintendo has issued the usual eye-strain warnings and provided a way for parents to disable (and lock out) the effect for children under 6... sounds like the VirtualBoy all over again (I did have one of those when it was new, it was awful, and gimmicky)
5. Region locking is back. Really Nintendo? I thought you and I were passed this. One of the main reasons I loved this latest generation was that the DS, the PSP and the PS3 were completely region free. The Xbox360 has region protection but its up to individual publishers if they want to enforce it, and the Wii was shittily region locked. Some people like to play imported games. I am one of those people. My game library is pretty huge (near 1000 titles) and is about 50% is NTSC-J content. On the DS and PSP I was never forced to buy a second console just to play import games. Frankly I’m not nearly as hard core as I used to be, and probably wouldn’t double buy a console to play titles that don’t get localized, as sad as that is. Nintendo has decided the 3DS will once again be region locked, this is a regression.

Thats my rant. I’ll probably end up buying one when the next Dragon Quest title is out, the price has dropped, and it’ll sit in the 2D mode 90% of the time. Just slightly disappointed.

In his typical fashion, Steve Jobs overstated a victory in sales of iOS devices versus Nintendo’s DS handhelds. Not quite, the DS has still outsold the iOS handhelds, but Nintendo (and Sony) should still be afraid of Apple’s mobile phone gaming platform.

Both Nintendo (via the DSi) and Sony (via the PSP and exclusively through the ill-fated PSPgo) decided that downloads are the way of the future. Sadly both of these platforms have soured me toward it, DSiWare is pretty much all crappy mini games and fanservice shovel-ware, and PSN overcharges for what are essentially boxless PSP games. (It’s the Kindle dilemma, if you want me to not physically own something, you better make it cheaper, Kindle fails at this too). The iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad have tons of cheap and *good* games.

Frankly all of the above is a preamble to my list of awesome, must have, iOS games from this summer. Yes, in between my Dragon Quest 9 time, I’ve burnt all my gaming time on the following iPhone games:

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My favourite indie games of summer 2010:

Meow Meow Happy Fight

My most recent addiction, a pretty basic dual stick shooter that wins on fantastic style and wit as well as great difficulty. 5 hours in and I’ve unlocked 89% of the game. To get a feel for the flavour of the game check out some of the character bios. At $0.99 it was a steal, at $1.99 it’s still a bargain. I both look forward to more content updates in game (they’re coming) and future games from this developer. This game *begs* for bluetooth or wifi multiplayer, I hope to see it in an update, butwould gladly buy a sequel with this feature.

The Incident

A very unique game where you tilt the accelerometer to dodge falling debris. The pixel art style is even better on the iPad as it’s a Universal app. Very difficult game even a short while in. The music and art style are fantastic and give me a distinct EarthBound (Mother2) vibe, dunno why. Another bargain at $1.99.

Monster Dash

A side-scrolling rail shooter from the people who brought the very amusing Fruit Ninja game, Monster Dash is a charming endurance run where you see how many monsters you can slaughter and how long you can stay alive. Very polished and more content is on the way by the looks of things, an absolute steal at $0.99.

Super Mega Worm

Currently on sale for $0.99, this very 8-bit game pits you as a giant worm in the future against the inhabitants at earth. Nothing says fun like hearing a pixel woman scream ‘Ahh! My Baby!’ as you take out her baby carriage. Humorous, quirky and definitely addictive.

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My favourite mainstream games of summer 2010:

DoDonPachi Resurrection

Cave keeps up its onslaught of hardcore SHMUPs to the iPhone, and like Espgaulda 2, this does not disappoint. The control scheme is surprisingly great, and the game does not lag whatsoever, more than can be said about many of Cave’s PS2 ports. Maybe a bit more than most people want to spend at $8.99 (though well worth it) but wait for it to go ons ale for $4.99 again.

Phoenix Wright

All 5 of the GBA cases of this classic now available on the iPhone at 1/8th the price ($4.99), and recently on sale for $2.99. These are absolutely fantastic games, and work even better on a big iPad than they ever did on the GBA. Full of all the wit and 16-bit style that the originals had, Capcom’s support of iOS is fantastic. (Heck StreetFighter4 came out for the iPhone this summer, probably more major than all of these, but not my cup of tea)

Castlevania Puzzle of the Night

Konami’s entry into this mix is an RPGized clone of Super Puzzle Fighter. Very addictive puzzler where you build your character by playing a variation of Columns/Tetris through Dracula’s castle. Great game at $4.99, incredible when on sale for $1.99.

Knights of the Phantom Castle

Hudson’s entry into this mix isn’t really a summer title, in fact it was a very early iPad game. But this summer brought an update converting it into a Universal app so iPhone users can enjoy it as well, as well as a price drop to $4.99 (and a sale for $1.99!). This micro-management heavy click, flick and drag RTS has a cute little story and fantastic graphics and music. Highly recommended, and looks absolutely gorgeous on the iPad.

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Does the iPhone have any Dragon Quest 9 caliber games? Not yet. But it will one day as more developers are swayed away from the traditional handhelds. (See some of SquareEnix’s recent iOS offerings) These 8 games are just some of the hundreds thousands of great games that came out this summer. It is the best platform for indie developers, with an exceedingly low cost to entry (buy a Mac Mini iMac, you’ll like it), and a huge audience with next to no marketing cost required. DSiWare and PSN just don’t compare and the many Android stores lack the eyeballs. Steam has been really helping the PC indie scene, but it pales to what the AppStore is doing. Hate on the AppStore all you want (the policies are surely flawed), but developers are bringing more quality stuff than any other platform.

So I’ll keep this short as most of my DQ9 thoughts can be found here. I beat Dragon Quest 9 on Saturday night, just over 40 hours. The final boss is woefully easy, and really is sadly a let down to the whole experience. The game could most likely be completed in 30 hours if you do no side quests or alchemy, and neither are really required for the story. Having said that, there is a ton of post game (and non-linear) content to be had outside the main story, as per the multiplayer focus, and definitely doing a bit post-game is required to get the full experience. (As per the usual DQ style)

I guess my complaint is that there are so many awesome job classes, abilities and equipment, but you don’t *need* any of it to finish the story. Not even close, in fact my party was lacking such abilities as ‘Kazing’ and ‘Kaboom’ at the time of beating the final boss, in fact I learned ‘Multiheal’ about 5 minutes before reaching it. I’d love to alchemize more awesome weapons, build up a couple Sages, and teach my hero a fourth skill set (he already had Paladin, Warrior and Minstrel) but theres no point. No motivation to grind (didn’t sign up for an MMO) and with tons of great games to play and very little time to play them… no thanks. The story should have been at least 50% longer, at least to cover more of the character building the game possess.

Having said all that, it’s a great game, and worth your 40 USD and 40+ hours of time. I’ll say it thusly:

upside

• Solid story, albeit short
• Great classic music and sounds
• Excellent character design and visuals

downside

• Main story is hardly challenging (and short)
• No point to building awesome characters
• Focus on multiplayer and MMO-esque fetch quests

Buy it, play it, but I pray DQ X is single player only and more of a throw back to the story length of DQ7 and story depth of DQ8.