I'm catching the tail end of this particular news cycle. It would appear oh so very many are upset at this new "buy your mods" system Valve has set up. (For the past year I've repeatedly been calling Valve the company "Steam" by mistake.) They're upset at the notion that someone might want to charge money for a mod.
Now, part of me understands the notion of how "the community" might be mad at this. I can see how bad money can drive out the good, in some ways. That does happen, and inevitably we'll see some of that moving forward. However, sometimes the sheer time and effort put into making a mod should justify the author's desire to actually profit off of their work. Why should such "derivative" content as they develop not be profitable? Along those same lines, those who make extremely tiny "small" mods (and those philosophically opposed to the new model) are still free to make their mods free, and those free mods are sure to be instantly more popular than priced mods that do the same thing. I don't see a future where the modding community becomes so corrupt that minor "fixed this quest bug" type mods are going to be sold.
However, I'm giving the modding community for a lot of these games too much credit. Sure, there are a number of good to amazing mods available to games, but the vast VAST majority of mods I see on sites like "The Nexus" are just... awful. I'm talking about mods that just add their favorite OTHER fictional stuff as "reskins" for your character in the game, with no thought at all as to how well any of it should fit. There's mods that are just internet memes for the sake of memes. Mods that turn your sword into a keyblade, or your eyes into some weird anime eyes. And oh, the anime mods. They all just clash terribly with the in-game art style, and generally don't even look like anything but anime cliches stapled together. Oh, a blue haired pig tailed cat eared lady with weird frog eyes and a nose piercing? Congratulations, you totally NAILED the look of Oblivion sir! Oh hey, it's Megaman's "suit"! Nice one. Did you just mod the main character in Deus Ex to look like Link from the legend of Zelda? Unironically? You win! You win my enmity! Hell, at LEAST try something that was actually your idea.
This video more or less sums up the modding scene in Skyrim right now:
Frankly, I'm shocked that the above modded game worked as well as it did. Another big problem with the modding community is most of the mods I'm talking about here seem to be made in a vacuum. There's a core group of dedicated modders who work hard to make sure that their mods work well with other popular well-made mods, but outside of that, no one seems to know or care about compatibility with the major mods.
Let's tackle the elephant in the room here. Go to any specific game page on the mod nexus web site, and you'll find the list of the current most recent and most popular mods, and just about ALL of them are creepy "nudity" mods. I won't judge someone's sexy style kinks or whatever, but their need to "justify" these mods in the description is what creeps me out. At least they should be honest about their actual motivation, but wow, the lies they come up with... For example, half of the mods that change all the females in the game to ridiculous "bimbo" stereotypes describe themselves as "more realistic women" or "more beautiful women" (frankly, neither of those are true in any way shape or form with the blow-up dolls they seem to be showing in those screen shots). They alter the clothes to ridiculous levels (this is the frozen north, right?), or just change all the women (almost always women) to walk around naked. The most popular mods are just to model in genitals when someone disrobes. Now, that last one I could understand if they were actually going to program in sex scenes or romance systems, but they don't. The entire justification, full stop, is "realism", even though at no point in the narrative does someone get stripped down to their bare essentials. If making stuff players will never see look "more realistic" was such a priority, why don't they fix the various edge of the world "unfished" stuff nearly as often as they fix this?
What I'm getting at is this. At least with the ability to charge, a bit of culling is going to start happening. We might actually see people motivated to make decent mods aside from a dedicated but very small group.
Ever seen St Elsewhere? I've recently come across a fan theory that all of television takes place in the mind of the kid in the last episode looking into a snow globe (named Tommy Westphall). Okay, there were a LOT of 80's crossover episodes. One of those was Cheers. They already linked this show to Cheers through those crossovers. That's where the problems start for all of Japanese entertainment. Mickey Mouse once visited Cheers in a TV special. Mickey Mouse is in Kingdom Hearts. Final Fantasy characters are in Kingdom Hearts. All of Final Fantasy is linked together through Dissidia. The Final Fantasy 1 characters are in Mario Basketball for Nintendo DS. Mario is in Smash Bros. Smash Bros takes place in the mind of a child. That child.... is Tommy Westphall.
(Those were all huge enough properties that eventually I'm sure you can tie together everything else in Japanese media. That's one creative autistic kid.)
Ugh, so now the one big game the Wii U had for this holiday season is gone from the year. I don't think, like, Xenoblade Chronicles X and Splatoon will make up for its absence this year... let's hope Nintendo has something good to announce at E3 for release this year. But just in general this is sad because Zelda is my favorite series, and I'm really looking forward to this one. It's been quite a while since the last 3d Zelda, Skyward Sword!
Quote:
The Japanese cover looks a lot like the game.
Of course in the US the hero is made to look a lot more bulked-up.
BACKGROUND INFO & STORY
I finally beat this game a few days ago, and it feels great! Rolling Thunder was one of my favorite games of the '80s, but it's a very difficult game. Yes, despite its often nearly unfair difficulty I love Rolling Thunder, it's an incredible game and a bit of an under-rated classic. I actually already got halfway through Hard mode, which I didn't know existed until I finished this game on Normal yesterday; you get the password for it after beating the game on normal. Of course I have to challenge it. This is a super-frustrating game and you must memorize every inch of it to survive, and pull off those button presses PERFECTLY to not die, but I love it!
I bought the NES version of Rolling Thunder a few years ago and got to level three out of the games' ten levels before giving up. I started playing this game again a few weeks ago, after picking up Rolling Thunder 2 again and deciding that while it's great, I like the first game more, so I should play this game as well. I'm actually at the last level of Rolling Thunder 2 now, and will get back to finish that... but now I'm playing Rolling Thunder 1 in Hard instead. Yeah, I like this game a lot, as frustratingly hard as it is. The first Rolling Thunder game is my favorte one in the series; each of the two sequels isn't quite as good as the one before it, though Rolling Thunder 2 is a lot better than the third game.
Rolling Thunder is a mid 1980s Namco arcade game which got a NES port later in the decade, published by Namco in Japan and Tengen in the US. You play as Albatross, a secret agent, and have to, of course, rescue the kidnapped woman; Leila, another agent, was captured by the evil Geldra organization and you have to save her. So yeah, the story is awful, "rescue the girl" is one of the worst plots possible. There are even dumb little cutscenes between levels with fanservicey shots of Leila suffering to encourage you to save her. Fortunately it makes up for it with great gameplay. The game has a Cold War spy-movie look to it, maybe 1960s or something like that. The NES version is graphically downgraded from the arcade, but it holds up quite well. There have been changes to levels, and some bits have been simplified because of NES sprite limits, but things have been spread out a bit, so the end result is at least as hard as the arcade game and might be even harder overall. Arcade and NES longplay playthroughs are about the same length in time.
To make the game possible to finish, fortuantely Rolling Thunder does have a password save system. You'll get a password after every other level in Normal, and after every level in Hard. I was pretty happy to see the passwords every level in Hard, it's a nice addition! Most levels also have a midway checkpoint, but levels 5 and 10 do not, you'll have to beat those two in one try. There are 10 levels in the game. So, yes, this means that if you die at the final boss it's all the way back to the beginning of level 10, and in Normal, if that's your last continue, it's back to level 9. Fortunately, after a lot of practice level 9 is actually not too difficult, I got through it without too much trouble. It was level 10, and the last part of it in particular, that's the trick.
As it is an arcade port, Rolling Thunder has a points system. Killing enemies gets points, and you get a point bonus at the end of each level based on your time. You get one extra life at 30,000 points, and a second at 75,000. I imagine there are more past that. Lives are useful most of the time because game over sends you back to the title screen and thus the last point you can continue from a password, while if you reached the level checkpoint in a level with a checkpoint you will start from there for as long as your lives last.
Quote:
The beginning. Note the upper and lower platforms, and one of many doors.
CONTROLS
Rolling Thunder is one of those games where everything is very predictable and super hard. Any one bullet will kill you, and get sent back when you die. Albatross does have two hit points, but bullets take away two, while touching any enemy takes off one. There are no health recharges during levels, only if you beat a stage, so if you touch any enemy once you'll need to avoid that happening again until the end of the level. The sequels do have some health recharge or increase powerups in some doors, but not this one; it's a memorizer through and through. Play the game, die, learn where the enemies are, and try to do it right next time. Ammo is limited, so only shoot when you need to, wasting bullets means you might run out, and there is no backup attack, you're just a sitting duck. Again the sequels ease up here and give you melee attacks. I never actually ran out of ammo while playing the game in the last few weeks, but it is possible if you don't go in every ammo door or waste lots of ammo. You can only shoot straight ahead in a line, and not up, down, or any other direction.
Albatross does not control like Mario; your movements are more realistic, apart from how high you can jump, and more limited. Left and right move left and right, up looks up (needed to to platforms above you), down ducks (you cannot move while ducking, but can shoot), B jumps, and A shoots. The controls are very responsive, even touchy, and take time to get used to. You can only do one thing at any time, so if you hit the shoot button, you cannot duck immediately, you have to wait until the shot finishes and let go of the fire button before you will be able to duck, by which point you're probably dead. Try again. You will jump upwards if you hit jump, forwards with the direction Albatross is currently facing plus jump, and jump higher and onto a platform above you if you hold up and then hit jump. To jump forward you hit forward and then jump a moment later, but get the tap of forward off versus the tap of jump and you'll walk off the platform if you're at the edge. This can get very frustrating sometimes. You can't control your guy, Albatross, in the air, so you need to jump from the correct point in order to land where you want. To jump or shoot the other way you'll need to turn around first, which takes time.
One vital strategy to learn is how to fire both ways while ducking without standing up. Press the dpad diagonally down in the way you are facing, roll to diagonal in the other way, then press fire a few times. Albatross will fire once in the way he is facing, wasting a shot if no one is there, before flipping and shooting the other way. It's clumsy, but works, though the sequels improve this quite a bit, as in those games you can just turn around while ducking by hitting the opposite diagonal down direction.
Quote:
The back of the boxes (this and the other one, below) show several of the types of environments Albatross will face.
LEVEL DESIGN
Rolling Thunder has an iconic level design style. Clearly somewhat inspired by Elevator Action but zoomed in, Rolling Thunder is a side-scrolling 2d platform-action game. Most areas have either one or two levels of platforms, with ground below and platforms often above. Occasional sections have boxes, walls, or other rarer obstacles that block your way and force you to go over them or go to the other level to proceed. There are also a few sections with a background area behind metal grille walls that you can go to, to go around some obstacles and such. Most levels stroll to the right only, but once a As in Elevator Action, Rolling Thunder's levels are full of doors. Enemies often come out of doors, there are powerups behind doors (these are usually, but not always, marked with signs), and you can hide behind doors in order to stay out of the way of enemy fire. You are invulnerable when behind a door, even if enemies are there too they can't hurt you. It's kind of amusing when an enemy enters the same door you're behind; nothing happens. Levels are varied in length, which is nice. The game has somewhat limited graphical variety, but this is the NES so that is somewhat to be expected, and anyway I don't midn this all that much; you are invading an evil organization's base, so it makes sense that the game has a consistent visual theme.
In addition to coming out of doors, enemies also will come onto the screen from the sides or top. All enemies appear when you reach certain points on the screen, and whether you are on the upper or lower platforms will affect which enemies appear. So, you can memorize where enemies will appear from with practice. However, beccause of the sprite limit on the NES, you cannot be sure that every enemy will appear. I had to just learn all the possibilities, and try to figure out what movements would get the enemies I wanted for some of the trickier segments. This game is very unfair, there are segments where you just have to wait for the enemies to move out of the way before you can progress. Trying to get certain enemies to not appear by having too many other enemies on screen can work at times, though.
Because you die in one shot, and many enemies shoot at you, jumping and ducking are vital for survival. The controls are a factor here. Most enemies will shoot at normal height so you can duck under their fire and hopefully shoot them, but learn which enemies duck and shoot low, they can make your life difficult at times! I died innumerable times because of slightly messing up my button timing. Remember, Albatross only can move or jump in the direction he is facing, and you have to get that button timing right in order to jump where you want. Getting to the exact pixel you need to jump from can be tricky because of the need to tap forward with jump. Often you have to jump from the VERY edge of a platform, anywhere else and you'll jump over that block in front of you and into the bullets on the other side instead of on top of the block as you need to. It's very finicky and frustrating, but you get used to it, or quit. And I think a lot of people quit on this game, it's not mentioned as one of the great arcade or NES games nearly as often as I feel it should be.
Most of Rolling Thunder doesn't have instant-death pits, but there are some, and also some instant-death laser traps in the second half of the game that you will have to learn the timing for. The death pits, over pits of lava, are in levels 4 and 8. You really need to master memorizing how far each jump will take you to get through these, and jump from just the right place to land on the next platform! And the fire-bat enemies in these areas can be tricky, too. Watch out for their comeback after you shoot them! You can shoot that too for additional points. The segment in level 8 is particularly hard. Rolling Thunder 2 does have a part over death pits in one level, but it's not quite as hard as the segment in level 8 of the first game, and they entirely got rid of the parts where you have to jump onto boxes from exactly the right pixel on the very edge of the box below it. I kind of like that, but I do appreciate the challenge of the first game. It's probably kind of weird to miss those super-evil jumps, but... I kind of do. Heh. The third game has no jumping puzzle sections over instant-death pits at all, which makes it even easier; as I said in my review of that game I do find that one definitely a bit disappointing level design-wise. At least the second game is still a challenge, even if it's not quite as much of one as the first. Rolling Thunder is a very hard game, and beating the game on an actual cartridge and not in an emulator with savestates took effort, but it was really worth it. The password system really is a huge, huge help, save systems make games so much better.
Rolling Thunder is mostly a great game, but it is kind of disappointing that the second half of the game is mostly a copy of the first half -- four of the five levels from levels 6 to 10 are copies of levels from the first half of the game with some changes here and there, and a few new areas (levels 8 and 10 particularly have large new segments at the end versus levels 3 and 5). The only all-new level in the second half is level 9, which replaces level 4 and is quite different from it. Rolling Thunders 2 and 3 actually are all original stages to the end. This means that if you beat this game on both difficulties, and you have to beat normal in order to get the password to start on hard, you'll play most of the levels four times. It does get a bit repetitive.
Quote:
For enemies in the screenshots, note the grenade guy, monkey-man, pumas, and regular yellow and blue guy.
ENEMIES
There are only a handful of enemy types in this game, and most of them are recolors of the same hooded Geldra henchman guy. The colors are nice because you know how each type is going to behave at a glance. In Normal, some enemies will shoot at you and others won't, and the colors say which are which, and also how many shots it'll take to kill an enemy. In hard all enemies shoot at you, which makes things tougher, but the number and placement of enemies is identical to before. For enemy types, the blue and yellow guys take two shots but won't shoot at you in Normal, the purple guys die in one hit but will always shoot, the yellow guys take 3 shots, white four, white and another color two and they will shoot at you and also duck behind boxes, green and brown two and they will shoot but won't duck, grey guys will throw grenades at you, and some more. It'd be nice if you could use grenades too, but no. Grenades kill in one hit of course, just like bullets. (In Rolling Thunder 2, grenades do only one hit of damage, not two.)
Beyond the numerous henchmen, there are also several types of animal foes. Geldra has fire-bats, pumas (or some other large cat like that), jumping monkey-men, and flying birdlike creatures. All four die in one hit, mostly (the fire-bats are sort of an exception). The monkey-men will come at you from the ground or air, and jump around back and forth. Try to kill them as soon as possible. The birds can be tough to kill if they're in the air, so try to either kill them before they take off, if they start on the ground, or find a door to hide behind, and shoot them after they dive at you. Fire-bats seem to die when you shoot them, but will then fly up out of the ground into the sky at a diagonal angle. You can either avoid this or shoot it. And the big cats will jump at you; you can only shoot them when they are in the air or are tensing to jump, your shots will go over them while they're just walking on the ground. They will jump at you when you approach them, thankfully. The animal enemies don't always appear, but can make some areas tough, particularly when you need to deal with flying enemies, considering that you can only shoot straight and not up.
At the end of the game, you face Geldra himself, in a room full of enemies with a cool Art Deco design and the word "GELDRA" spelled out in the background and Leila chained up in the background. This room is VERY tricky, and memorizing and avoiding the start locations of every one of the numerous foes who drop from various points on the ceiling took many, many plays of levels 9 and 10; remember, every death in that room sends you back to the start of the level, and on Normal, game over and it's level 9 again. The game has only one true boss, Geldra himself. Amusingly enough, I actually beat him the very first time I managed to get through the waves of regular enemies and face Geldra himself! That was pretty awesome. He's tough, but just have enough ammo and fire high and low a lot and you should get through. Having enough ammo is definitely important though, that last room takes up a lot of it.
The last kind of obstacle that can kill you re those death pits and laser traps. Death pits are obvious, just learn the jumps and don't fall in them. Laser traps only appear in the second half of the game, at certain points in some levels. Level 9 is particularly full of them. These take perfectly timed jumps or movement to get through without getting killed. Because of how hard level 10 is, though, and that passwords in Normal are only every other level, eventually I got pretty good at beating level 9 while usually not getting hit by the lasers.
Quote:
Geldra's laughing face greets you when you go to the title screen.
GRAPHICS AND SOUND
Graphically, Rolling Thunder has, as I said before, very limited variety. There are ten levels, but only six of them are entirely unique, four of the levels from the second half are mostly rehashes. And many of the levels look similar, as well, in similar Geldra-base environments. There is also a level in a cave, and a few of those bits over fire-pits, but this game doesn't have the most variety. I do think that the look works, though, and again, Geldra is an evil organization, why not have a consistent look to your base? There is an obvious graphical downgrade from the arcade game, but for the NES it looks good enough.
For music, the game has even less variety. There are only a couple of songs in this game which repeat endlessly, so get used to them. Most levels have the same music. Fortunately it's decent, but more music would be nice. Different music in each level would have been great. The Japanese version of this game has enhanced audio with a chip that uses the Famicom cart's additional audio lines, but they had to remove that for the US version, so the audio on a FC with that version is probably better. I have the US version.
CONCLUSION
Rolling Thunder is one great game! This is a fantastic arcade classic, and the NES version of the game is almost as great as the arcade original. The graphics of course not as good as the arcade game, but it still looks fine, and all the enemies and obstacles from the arcade game are here. NES flicker issues actually help here, because you can get enemies to not appear if there are already too many enemies on screen, quite helpful at times. In order to take down Geldra and his thugs you'll need all the help you can get. Albatross controls tightly and the controls are touchy, and you'll need to get your button presses just right, but it does get easier with practice. This game is all about memorizing levels and then executing the perfect path through the stage. It is very, very rewarding when you finally get a level right and beat it! It just wouldn't have been the same if I'd used an emulator and savestates, the risk of being sent back if I died made me take the game more seriously, and it deserves that respect. And after a while I did eventually beat the game, so it is possible with effort. Now all I have to do is try to beat levels 6 through 10 of the hard mode... but I will try, and hopefully eventually beat the whole thing.
In conclusion, Rolling Thunder is fantastic, a great version of an arcade classic that is just as good as the arcade game, and I would definitely put it on my list of my favorite NES games. The game has a few issues, such as repetitive graphics and music and some control issues that could have been improved on, but they don't hurt it much overall. I give the game an A grade. As far as scores go, it's in the top ten of NES games that I actually own on cartridge.
Ars Technica put up a LOT of articles yesterday. I can't trust a single one of them though, because April Fool's Day exists, as a holiday. Maybe Nintendo is making a wool Amiibo (technically, such a thing could exist), but very likely that was just a prank by Nintendo. Frankly the "creative" pranks from Blizzard just aren't enough to justify this holiday's existence. Now I'm spending my free time searching for the same news stories date marked for today, because that's the only way I can actually confirm any of these things.
This is going to be contentious, I'm putting it right out there.
The recent rash of "Swatting" (as well as general responses by police to situations around the nation) have really made me think about a few things. I think we all recall that 80's and 90's cop dramas showed how dangerous law enforcement is, and how criminals always have the advantage, and no one wants their loved ones getting that phone call. However, I think maybe it's time to consider a different side.
Many have already argued that police are using too much force and escalate their responses too quickly to reasonably determine a threat. The counter is, these days, that this is the ONLY way for police to stay safe, precisely because they can't possibly know who's going to be a threat to them.
I'm starting to think maybe the correct solution may just be, and I know this is terrible, that police should "suck it up" and accept that they may lose their life at any time. I intentionally put that in the worst way possible. To put it another way, the job of police officer, sheriff, what have you, has always been one that's dangerous, and probably a lot more dangerous in the past, and yet the basic protections citizens were promised FROM such officers were still put in place, knowing all of that. Everyone's so afraid of death these days, of an officer getting gunned down in the line of duty, that perhaps we've forgotten that the job of police officer is, um, "supposed" to be very dangerous. That's the price you pay when you decide to protect the innocent. I wonder if it's just irrational to be someone who wants to stay a police officer and also demand that they be able to escalate things in a way that could easily result in hurting those they've sworn to protect, basically making whether or not the person they kill in any one incident a complete unknown to them before they take it to that point. The only reason "Swatting" works at all is because police are taking what they feel is the necessary precaution of not tipping off the party in question one bit so they can stage their attack with the element of surprise. Maybe the ONLY way a police force can work well without endangering the citizens they're supposed to protect is if they are forced to not take these escalation precautions, to be forced to leave themselves open to attack again and again, night after night, for the sake of preventing oh so many wrongful deaths by police action.
Cold as it is, I think maybe this is the only way the police can work, have EVER worked, and if any officers aren't comfortable with these risks in the name of a safer pursuit of justice, they should turn in that badge and retire right then and there.
About a week ago, Nintendo announced a partnership with the Japanese cellphone software company DeNa. DeNa will make the service that apparently will replace Club Nintendo, and Nintendo is going to make... ugh... cellphone games. Naturally Nintendo's stock has gone up because of this, because investors like mobile. I'm not happy because if Nintendo eventually turns into another one of those evil cellphone/browser-game companies that make nothing but exploitative trash designed to suck up your money it would be a horrible tragedy, but hopefully they can balance things so as to make apps that encourage people to buy Nintendo platforms so that they can play real games. I hope it works, there should be a place for games beyond exploitative not-free-to-play garbage.
I'm curious to read what your favorite printed game guide is (online FAQs, for the purposes of this thread, don't count).
I've seen a number of game guides over the years. I'm not exactly a collector, but I've got a fair amount covering just about every era of gaming. With that in mind, I've gotta pick a guide not just on how useful, complete, or accurate it is (though those three things are of course major factors), but on factors that go way above and beyond those basics, making the guide, all by itself, a notable collector's item.
Prima makes hardcover guides for practically every major game release these days, so while I might have made a special note for that, it's so common now that it's basically expected of a collector's edition of any guide these days. So, I can't very well add this or that guide for that alone.
Here are a few notable ones. Most of these are earlier guides, back when the whole concept of a printed game guide was itself pretty new. Heck, Nintendo Power themselves didn't quite get the hang of it until they made "Mario Mania", the first of their dedicated guides aimed at one specific game, instead of a large handful of them as their previous guides had been. Mario Mania may have been focused on Mario World, but it added so much more beyond that. It included a history of Mario games up until that point, including game cameos, a preview of the then-upcoming movie, some concept art where Miyamoto explained he'd wanted Mario to ride a dinosaur for years before World came out, and even some extremely super nerdy comparison lists like running speeds across the main series and so on.
Though, technically Mario Mania wasn't their first dedicated guide to one game. Before "Player's Guides" Nintendo Power had "Strategy Guide" editions of Nintendo Power that were focused entirely on one game. I distinctly recall their Super Mario Bros 3 issue. It was very well done, and included all sorts of deep level secrets, like how the coin ships worked, the pseudo-random nature of the card flipping game (which you could use to always win, first time every time), and so on. The only mark against it would be the intentional exclusion of a full map and strategy for the final level. That was left in the dark to, I think, leave some things unspoiled for the player.
Another of these Strategy Guide issues would come out with the release of Final Fantasy. In terms of information, it was exceedingly well done. However, the guide made a fatal error in deciding to locally source the artwork. It seems that they were so afraid of using Amano's weird and ethereal artwork (possibly afraid it would turn people off to the game) that they hired your uncle to draw the same artwork he drew for all his friend's D&D characters. The result looked pretty terrible, like your uncle after a weekend alone. (I meant no offense, Your uncle is the legal name of a relative of mine. A cousin I think.) (No it isn't.) Great guide, terrible art. Moving on.
I must give credit to the Earthbound player's guide. That guide was one of the best pack-ins a game ever got, as any fan will tell you. Mind, everyone can see that glory for themselves, as Nintendo has posted it, in it's entirety, online.
Check it out for yourself. It's the only one I can directly link to this way. From cover to cover, the whole thing has the conceit of being a clip book, with news articles, travel brochures, and so on. It's as though Ness grew up and and put clippings and photos of his whole journey in a book to keep the precious memories. The only problem, if I had to pick one, is that cover. Well, mostly the cover is fine. It too fits the theme, covered in photos of Ness' journey. It's also covered in vomit. Yeah, again this was part of Nintendo's "gross out" phase of advertising. Had they just skipped out on that, I couldn't find a fault to be had here. One thing to add. Unless you have some sort of smell add-on installed on your PC, you won't be able to smell the scratch & sniff. They were pretty neat, and the guide itself was written with notes to scratch each of them at various parts of the story, to add to the experience. Silly, a gimic, but heck I did it. Meeeemoriiiies....
Secret of Mana had not one but two very notable guides. One was a full, if basic, walkthrough included across 3 issues of Nintendo Power. Again they did some of their own artwork, but this time the artwork was actually pretty good, so I gotta give credit there. The whole style of that guide was a first person account, like a journal the hero is keeping during the journey. Very nice, and the backstory behind each of the weapon's forms were also nice touches. The second guide was ALSO done in the form of a journal, but this time in the third person instead of first person. This one was made by Prima, and is very exceptionally done (contrary to most of Prima's guides at the time). I'd recommend both of them. Two great guides for one great game.
We can't ignore the PC here. There were plenty of guides for PC games, but oddly there was a different culture around how such guides should be made. Most guides for PC games were almost exclusively text. This may have gotten it's start with the early text adventure games, but it stuck around long after "graphics" were invented through the power of white boards and 80's computer engineer mustaches. Most of these read a lot like modern GameFAQs style guides, but a few really stand apart from the rest, and those few are the King's Quest Companions.
Ah, I've got a special place in my heart for these ones. The King's Quest Companion guides were something else. Again, like most PC guides, they were almost entirely text with only a few sparse illustrations where words failed the author. However, it's what they did with that text that mattered. The author of these guides decided to make these guides in the style of a news report, like an interview with someone retelling the story as they heard it. It reads like a modern "alternate reality" game. A writer stumbled across a bizarre BBS connection on his computer where he contacted someone claiming to live in the fictional world of Daventry, retelling the story through a bizarre "skull" in a wizard's basement (a "square skull with a single black eye, and a strange lower jaw full of movable teeth with letters carved into them"). This third hand account then guides the player through all the puzzles of each game, going for the full point scores. The writer even goes on to explain some of the odd workings of the game, such as the wrap-around mechanic in the early games (a spell of warped space used as a defense against invasions), and even explain some of the bizarre moon logic employed in a few of the series' more obtuse puzzles. It was a novel approach, to say the least, and it makes the guides themselves a real joy to read even without playing the games.
Along these lines comes a much later guide, the Conker's Bad Fur Day guide. Whatever your feelings on this game are, know that the guide is just as hard to find and expensive as the game itself. In fact, I only have this guide now due to a stroke of luck. I ran into a library sale about a month ago. Normally the guide would go for a pretty penny, but in this case, the people selling these library books didn't seem to know what they had. I snatched it up for a ridiculously cheap price, and don't regret it a bit. I only recently read it, but it's definitely on my top 10 list already. Nintendo Power was by this point pumping out their guides in a very "by the numbers" way. Not to say they were bad, or incomplete, but they had gone a bit more bland, losing a bit of that old charm and unique flavor that set some of their old guides apart. With this guide, Nintendo Power's editors got a rare chance to really cut loose, and wow did they ever. The thing is filled with humor throughout, taking every possible chance to make all the jokes Rare didn't make in the game itself. They made the whole thing read like a seedy magazine you found in a truck stop bathroom. Heck, even the pages look dirty, with fingerprints on the edge and a general "grime" throughout. At first, since it was a library book, I thought it actually WAS this dirty until I looked closer and realized only the cover had been scuffed up (and considering the general look, that "lived in" cover only ADDS to the aesthetic). It's got weird fake ads and bizarre diatribes taking up whole pages and still manages to be a complete guide to the game. I love it already.
The most recent guide of real note to me has to be the fan-made Mother 3 guide. Again, this entire guide is available online for free. http://handbook.fangamer.com/page...
But it's worth noting how well made the printed version is. It even has a hardcover version. I know I know, those are a dime a dozen now, but I'll give this one some note for being an entirely fan-made project without major backing. Never fear, there's nothing illegal about this. All the art assets are fan made, and the practice of making "unofficial" game guides is well established at this point (I've got a few "unofficial" guides for Street Fighter and Donkey Kong Country, for example, which use the "unofficial" label they had to put on there as "edgy" and "not controlled by The Man" style street cred, complete with backwards baseball cap 90's kid. I'm not kidding, look at it!
Back on topic, that fan-made guide was lovingly crafted to resemble the Earthbound guide, with all sorts of additional clips and photos and pictures of clay models of characters throughout it, to really add to it. It's an amazing guide and deserves special note.
All that, to get to what is still my favorite player's guide. It was really a close call. By all rights, I'm REALLY tempted to put one of the two Mother series guides at the top, but if I had to pick, which I do, it would come down to the Link to the Past Player's Guide. This guide really set the standard for what I expect from any guide that goes beyond the bare essentials. Mario Mania was a nerdy festival of Mario in general, but the Link to the Past guide got all that nerdy detail and focused it specifically on the game it was supposed to be a guide for, and it was the first to do so. It really went all out. The first few pages catch you up to speed with the story of the first two Zelda games (including some really nice artwork), and then it jumps right into the thick of it. There are actually two different walkthroughs in it. The first is more loose hints and a general guide on where to go, and the second is the far more detailed and full explanation of every secret in the game. Both are done in the style of a historical account of the game's story (which makes sense, since Link to the Past was always intended as a prequel to the first two games). The guide covers secrets as you can get them, and then again reveals a full list of collectables at the end of the guide (standard now, but this one was the first to establish this). The guide is filled with some amazing artwork. It's not the same style as the game's own artist, but still very well done. All the items get their own new artwork and even some little tidbits. As I said, it reads like a historical documentary, so the details are actually explanations of the culture and items of the past. It even explains some backstory behind key locations. To be clear, this is actually a translation of the Japanese version of this guide (the author credits establish this), so all of this is basically cannon. From cover to cover, it's just a pleasure to read, and it established so many "firsts" in the art of guide making that many guide makers still can't keep up with. For all these reasons, seasoned with not a small amount of nostalgia, this is my favorite Player's Guide.
So, what do you think? What's your favorite game guide?
![[Image: 49638_front.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/6/3/8/49638_front.jpg)
![[Image: 49639_front.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/6/3/9/49639_front.jpg)
![[Image: gfs_1990_2_1.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/8/4/d/gfs_1990_2_1.jpg)
![[Image: 49638_back.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/6/3/8/49638_back.jpg)
![[Image: 49639_back.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/6/3/9/49639_back.jpg)
![[Image: gfs_1990_1_1.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/2/d/0/gfs_1990_1_1.jpg)