Sony's paying for development for some third-party titles, or something... SSV is the big one, of course. It's too bad that that will be exclusive, but Capcom will surely make ten more versions of the game, some on other platforms... and at least there will be PC versions. (As for DoTT HD, that's something I'd want to play on PC anyway, if it's good that is. The original version is still great, and we'll have to see how the graphics look, these HD updates of 2d games don't always look better...)
I... hmm. This is what I kind of expected the game would be, but it's not what I want from a Zelda game. I mean, the main Zelda series is my favorite console game series. I absolutely love them, from the original to Skyward Sword. But this completely changes things, and is quite obviously now an open-world game... a genre that has never managed to hold my interest. I've tried to play a few open-world games before, but they just can't keep me interested, I prefer a more focused experience. So... will I actually like this? I'm not sure. I guess Guild Wars is the closest thing to "open-world" that I've loved, but that's a very different kind of game (online RPG). So yeah, I don't know. I know open-world games are one of the most popular genres of the past couple of generations, but I just don't find them as fun as a lot of people do, while I do really love most of the Zelda games (the DS ones weren't that great, but the rest of Nintendo's Zelda games are among the best ever of course!). So yeah, I'm cautious. I'm sure it'll be great, but will I like it more than traditional 3d Zelda games as they have been before this one? My guess is no, but we'll see.
It was pretty cool to hear Miyamoto say that whatever Star Fox is, it'll be ready next year too, though. Looking forward to hearing more about that.
As for Mario Maker, they revealed Mario World and Mario Bros. 3 skins and graphics and such will be available. Nice additions. :) Looks great, I'm sure this will be fun to mess around with. New SMB really looks so bland compared to any of the 2d games, but that's why the other options are here!
Finally, for Codename Steam they showed some multiplayer. The graphics in this game defintiely aren't the best, and as I've said before I'd rather see a straight strategy game than this strategy/action hybrid, but it's from a really great studio, so I have confidence in the final product...
As for the awards, Nintendo got Developer of the Year, SSB WiiU got Fighting Game of the Year, and MK8 got Racing Game of the Year. The awards show, put on by Geoff Keighley and clearly funded by Nintendo, Sony, and some third parties, was more ads than awards, and many awards were just handed out off the podium for some reason (need to keep it free for the next sponsor segment, or something!), but it was decent. Hopefully if there is another one all the awards are actually handed out on stage next time, it was really weird how at least half of them weren't in this one. Also it was kind of long, over three hours. Still interesting, though. And yeah, Microsoft's absence was weird, considering how much Nintendo and Sony was in the show.
You know those Pixar people, always saying "what about the life of this inanimate object?" (and it always ends up amazing, except for Cars). Well prepare to be blown away, because now they're taking concepts and turning them into people.
So two things. First of all, I think it's great that Disney is remaking Herman's Head. Wait, nobody got that joke? Um, Herman's Head was an early 90's sitcom about this guy Herman and all his emotions were people living their own lives inside his head. Nobody watched it. Well, I'm sure Pixar's version will be better.
Secondly, and I know I'm overthinking this but... there's a bit of an infinite regress problem here. If all your thoughts are individual people in your head, then where do those homunculus' thoughts come from? Do they have inner-inner people in their heads controlling their different states of, say, sadness? And so on ad infinitum.
I'm still going to watch it and I'm still going to cry though, I'm just sayin'.
So, as we all know, Nintendo has now started releasing DLC for its games. I like having addons to games, but paid DLC isn't great. So far Nintendo's been quite nice about it, and even has had quite a bit of free DLC, surprisingly enough, but they'll probably eventually start monetizing it... and from there, it's a short slippery-slope down to on-disc DLC, which is the worst kind by far. I hope that doesn't happen, and again having addons to games is great, it's better than the old days of console games being just a single product and that's it, but paid DLC is often bad for the consumer, and it's an issue for preservation as well, of course -- unless/until you crack the system, that DLC's much harder to preserve than something with a disc is. And if you have account issues maybe you could lose it, etc. I had no problem with free downloads for PC games, but console DLC is so much more controlled, it makes me more worried from a preservation, and pricing, standpoint.
I know, there are plusses and minuses to all this stuff. All we can do right now is hope that Nintendo continues to be so reasonable with their DLC policies, and continues to improve their online network. I mean, with the Wii or DSi, your downloaded games were locked to the system you downloaded them on! That's pretty obviously horrible. Nintendo has improved on that, but I don't know if it's enough yet.
On a DLC note though, free Hyrule Warriors and Mario Kart 8 DLCs are announced and/or released. Link's in MK8 now, and True Midna was just announced for Hyrule Warriors: https://miiverse.nintendo.net/posts/AYMH...UKmKGDgYTg I'm definitely happy to hear that, True Midna is awesome and was the character I most wanted to see in that game!
I got a new system last month, a TI 99/4A computer from the early '80s. Actually, I got the computer unit itself several years ago, loose for $3 from Goodwill, but I didn't have the cables to make it work, so it's just been sitting in the basement. Well, I saw some TI 99/4A game carts locally recently, so I decided to get the stuff required to play the system; I've been wanting a new system recently without spending much, and this certainly does that! The base TI 99/4A is a cheap system, and I got a pretty good deal here on it too, that's for sure. So far, I think that it's okay, but not great. The computer is interesting, though. It'll be better once I have a gamepad adapter so I don't have to play games with the keyboard, too... :p Still haven't gotten that yet. At least I can play games, even if the controls aren't ideal. All of the games I have play on keyboard.
So, I got the system a while back, but to make it work, I bought a lot on Ebay last month for $22 including shipping that got me a power supply and RFU (both original; the brick is in the middle of the cord, not on the plug, which is great!), a game, and several replacement parts for the system that I don't need now, but who knows, might someday. I also have the Speech Synthesizer Module, which I got locally as a part of a $10 pack of the speech unit and some games -- yeah, it was a good deal! The Speech Synthesizer sells for a good $30 online, but I paid only $10 for that plus 12 carts, 9 of which are games. The system is a computer of course, so it has a bunch more accessories including a tape drive, floppy drive, etc., but for now I'm fine with just the base system. TI released most games on cartridges, anyway. The tapes and floppies are mostly for horrendously dated productivity software (both for the software and for saving data), and for text adventure games. I think there are a few non-text adventure games on tape or floppy, but most of the system's small game library are on carts. The TI 99/4A only lasted from 1978 to 1983, and TI tried to limit third-party software releases through most of that time, so it has few games, or anything else. Some of what it has are interesting, though, as I said earlier. One reason for the paucity of software is that for most of this system's life, TI strongly discouraged third-party software, unlike most computers; they wanted to publish everything themself. As a result, the system has a much smaller library than most computers of the time that lasted as long. Still, it has some good stuff for sure, games particularly. But facing tough competition, TI gave up on the industry and announced the system's death in the second half of 1983, early in the crash, and discontinued it in early '84; it was one of the oncoming crash's first computer victims, taken out by the Commodore 64's price war it seems, from what I've read.
The system itself is fairly well built. The system, power supply, RFU, speech synthesizer, and all 15 carts I have all worked perfectly on the first try! Very impressive, for stuff that probably has barely been touched in decades. The system is a bit beat up, and I really would like to have that joystick adapter (because the TI joysticks are apparently terrible, so I'd rather use the ones that let you use Atari/Sega [SMS/Genesis] controllers) because the keyboard, while nice and clicky, is NOT a good game control mechanism, but it works well, considering its age and where I got it! I was not expecting everything to work nearly so well... TI clearly had fairly good build quality. The system does have metal on it, and the cartridges have spring-loaded protectors over the board that goes into the system, so this does show. Maybe those protectors is why all of the games have worked first-try with no blowing or anything needed. The only issue I've had with the system so far is that sometimes some keyboard keys stop responding, but pressing around the keyboard fixes the problem, so it's pretty minor. A joystick adapter would also get around this problem; I highly doubt I'll ever do much non-gaming computing on this machine.
The RFU outputs via those two prongs that really old things have. I thought I'd need to buy a coax adapter, after testing it by taking apart my Odyssey 2's RFU (which is the same, but came attached to a two-prong to coax adapter), but then I realized that the O2 RFU has side two-prong inputs, so instead I screwed the crazy-big TI99/4A RFU onto the side of it. Of course both are manual RFUs, but it works fine and my TV recognizes it, which is great. No problems like those I had with the Atari 7800. It's weird to use a computer on a television, but I don't have a setup where I could attach this to anything other than a TV, and don't have a desk to do a proper computer setup for it, so it'll have to do. I have to play it with the thing sitting on my lap, of course. It gets warm once it's been on for a while, particularly on the righthand side of the system. It'd be nice to get joysticks, so I could just put it nearby (since menus and such require the keyboard). :) Of course, if I ever get the floppy drive addons (either sidecars that plug into the side expansion port, or the large external expansion box which looks like a desktop computer), it'll need to be on some kind of desk. They make the thing much larger. This will do for the basic system right now, though.
For games, all of the games below are cart only. I don't have any boxes or manuals for anything. I will need to print some stuff out, because I REALLY need a listing of the system command codes -- hitting several keyboard keys plus the number buttons does various commands, and I don't know what they are because the command strips are missing. For those who know, I mean those paper or cardboard strips that you'd put above the numbers on the keyboard that show you what the hotkeys do; we had something like that for our first PC in the early '90s, for Wordperfect. One other thing I'd like is an application, the expanded programming cart that lets you make Basic programs that play back speech samples from the speech synthesizer! It'd be nice to be able to do that, but the built-in TI Basic can't do that, I think; it's overly limited. The speech synthesizer is kind of cool, but all I can do with it right now is hear the speech in the two games I have that support it, Parsec and Alpiner.
Quote:
A full setup, shown on the back of the box. I just have the base system with the Speech Synthesizer module (the small box plugged into the side of the computer), so far.
I have 15 TI 99/4A cartridges. I will talk about each one below.
TI 99/4A
-- The Attack - This is the game that came with the $22 power supply, RFU, and parts bundle from ebay. It's got good music, but the gameplay is slow and kind of boring. This is one of several top-down shooting games on a sort of grid. You have to kill all the enemies to beat each level. Enemies come in two sizes, small or large. Small enemies can't hurt you, but if four combine they become a large enemy the size of four normal ones. The field is full of black squares with numbers on them, which turn into enemies once those numbers, which are timers, reduce to zero. You win a level once all large enemies and black timer blocks are gone from the screen. As with most shooting games on this system, the game is sort of grid-based. A tap of a direction changes direction, and then another press in that direction moves forward in that direction. You can also shoot, of course, and those are the controls. The game starts out VERY easy, but does eventually get trickier, though I imagine the keyboard controls hold me back too; the keyboard works okay for a slow-paced game, but once the action heats up... yeah, it's not great. Also, I wish the music played during gameplay, it's good. Probably there's a system limitation that made playing music during play difficult. Overall, this is one of the weaker shooting games I have. It's too slow-paced and too easy for too long. Still, there is some fun to be had once you get a ways into the game.
Next I'll list the 12 carts I got in that cheap $10 package locally, along with the Speech Synthesizer. Yes, all of this plus that accessory was $10. The first three aren't games, but I'll list them anyway for completion's sake.
Adventure - This isn't a game; it's a boot disc for text adventures. The cart allows you to boot any of the first twelve of the text adventures for this system by a guy called Scott Adams, which are available on tape and probably also floppy disk. Without one of those accessories, though, this cartridge is useless. Too bad.
Early Learning Fun - This "game" is for very young children. Anyone old enough to read this is outside of its agerange. There's nothing here remotely worth touching for anyone over, like, age six. TI released a whole bunch of learning "games" for children, and this is the one I have. It's probably aimed at about the youngest audience you could get to use a computer. This super-simple, incredibly dated visuals have definite charm, though! The simple but oh-so-early-'80s visuals, and beeping sound effects, combine to make this pretty amusing to "play" for a few minutes as you look at the various modes. There's nothing here beyond that, though. There is almost no actual challenge; as hard as this game gets are some parts where you have to determine whether there are more of one type of item, or another very obviosuly different item, on screen, when there are only like 4 or 6 items on screen total! It's ... not hard. But the title is "EARLY Learning Fun", so that's okay.
Music Maker - This is a music creation application. You can compose music for the system's decent built-in music chip, and save it to tape or floppy. Even if I had those addons, I'd probably never use this. I'm hopeless at music.
Games from this package:
A-Maze-Ing - Now we get to some more actual games! A-Maze-Ing is a maze game, as the name suggests. Real mazes to get through, that is, not Pac-Man dot eating. You play as a mouse in a maze, and your goal is to navigate the maze to the end. The game has a nice variety of options, including three maze sizes from small to decent-sized, one or two player simultaneous play, the option to have a few cats in the maze that will kill you if you run into them (so try to avoid being cornered!), invisible maze options if you want to make the game harder (the walls appear if you run into one), easy or harder cat AI settings, and obstacles in the maze. Yeah, there's a nice featureset here for the time. Of course your only goal is to reach the end, so you win the game each time you get there that's game over and you can then play again with the same or different settings, but it's decent fun for a few minutes. I've always kind of liked mazes. There's a LOT more to do in this game than there is, say, in the Atari 2600 maze game, Maze Craze! It's faster-paced and more fun than Snail Maze on the Sega Master System, too. The mazes aren't as large as Snail Mazes' mazes, but that's a good thing overall. A-Maze-Ing is very simple and straighforward in what it tries to do, but what it does it does as well as could be hoped for for the time.
Hopper - This is a clone of Sega's arcade game Pengo, with a few less features than arcade Pengo, but still pretty solid gameplay. You play as a kangaroo here, trying to escape from your human captors on a cargo ship. I don't love Pengo, but this is a pretty good version of it. Pengo is a top-down action/puzzle game. You move around a screen full of boxes, trying to kill the three enemies on each level by pushing boxes at them. If you hit one with a box, they die. If they touch you, you lose a life. And that's all there is to Hopper; some elements of Pengo, such as the enemies pushing/destroying blocks, don't seem to be present here. It just gets harder mostly because of the increasing enemy speeds. Other than that, the main difference is graphical; Hopper is kangaroo-versus-humans, instead of Pengo's penguin characters. Hopper is a decently fun little game, but I don't know how long it'll hold my interest. The game is mostly playable on the keyboard, though, which is nice... at the easier settings at least, that is. As usual, it's tough to keep up once the speed increases. This game has no variety -- just slide the boxes into the three enemies, and repeat until you lose -- but it's solidly done. This is apparently one of the later games for the system, from mid/late '83, and it's nice that I have it, it's a solid and good game.
Alpiner (Speech Synthesizer supported) - Alpiner is a game based on the arcade game Crazy Climber, except with normal controls. In Crazy Climber, you have to use one stick to control one hand, and another for the other hand. It's quite confusing. The Famicom (NES) version of Crazy Climber requires you to move one hand with controller one, and the other hand with controller two! Crazy. Alpiner's controls are better -- left, right, up, and down move you normally. That's the only control here, there are no other buttons. This game has impressive graphics for the system, with very large sprites on screen. However, the gameplay is REALLY basic, too much so for me I think. You are a mountain climber, and are trying to get up six mountains. The mountains are named for some large real-life mountains, but in this game you'll climb each one in seconds! Your sprite is HUGE, and obstacles are either large and very easily avoided, or are far too hard to see coming because you take up like a third of the screen's width and height. The graphics are decently good, and the speech samples are amusing, but I don't like the gameplay very much, it's just too uneven between the excessively easy parts, and the obnoxiously difficult and random ones you run into about halfway through this very short game. Avoiding the falling rocks when you're so large is a guessing game. This game could be worse, as it is playable, and occasionally amusing, but is kind of bad I think. The speech samples and graphics make it worth a try, though, it's amusing stuff to see.
Hunt the Wumpus - Perhaps one of the better-known games for this computer, Hunt the Wumpus is a graphical remake of a text-based mainframe game. The game is a fantasy action-adventure puzzle game with three difficulty settings and a few other options as well. You are a hunter, with a single arrow, and have gone into the caves looking for the Wumpus, a fearsome monster. The game field is a single screen grid of round caves (rooms) and curving connecting passages. Orange circles in a room signify that the Wumpus is within two spaces of your location. If you run into the Wumpus, the Wumpus eats you of course. Green rooms have a pit next to them, so watch out. If you enter a room with a pit, you fall into the pit and die. Bats ... not sure what those mean yet. Regarding the orange circles, only rooms count when counting to two, NOT curved connecting paths, so in the harder settings which have a lot of them this game gets QUITE tricky! You'll need skill and luck to kill the Wumpus in the harder difficulties, because you never know for sure if a room or curving path is in front of you. Regardless, using these clues, you have to try to kill the Wumpus. You've got to guess where the Wumpus is, hope you don't walk into it because that means death, and fire your arrow at the space where you think it is. If you're right, you win. If you're wrong, well, you had only one arrow and wasted it, so the Wumpus eats you. The game rules are simple, but once you get into it, this game is both challenging and pretty fun. The graphics are also simple, but have a great classic charm that has aged very well. The "you win" and "you die" animations are great as well, as is the menu music. On the easiest difficulty setting it is simple enough to kill the Wumpus, but try the harder modes and it's a different story entirely! Unfortunately, as in some other games from the era, there is no progression here; just play single levels and see if you win or lose. The game does keep track of how many times you've won, gotten eaten by the Wumpus, or fell in a pit, though, which is nice. Of course it won't save this; I don't know if any cartridge games for this system support saving stuff to tape, but this one doesn't. Still, it's great to have a sense of how well you've been doing in your current session. Overall this is a good game, but it gets frustrating quickly on the harder settings -- it's just so hard to figure out once lots of curving paths have been added into the mix! This is a decent little game, but I can see it getting repetitive very quickly. Still, for such old game, it's interesting -- this was definitely trying new things, back when it released in about 1980! And it's still fun for a little while, at least.
Quote:
The game may not be great, but the box art looks pretty cool! Wish I had it.
Blasto - This is a puzzle/action game. You have to clear a field full of mines, using a tank. The game has several modes and options, including one or two player simultaneous play and three screen bomb densities, Few, Average, or Many. The game has a strict time limit as well. This is a very short, but tough, game! At anything above Few bombs, destroying all of them in time is hard, and I haven't managed it yet. This game feels a bit like Combat but with mines. Squares on the field are either empty, normal blocks, or bombs. You can shoot in four directions, as always for the shooting games on this system. When you shoot a normal block it breaks, but if you shoot a bomb it explodes, destroying the eight spaces around it. So, destroying a mine will set off a chain that destroys all the mines around it. Try to think of the best path around the level so you get the mines as quickly as possible. This game is a bit too simplistic, though. Clearing the minefield is frustrating, and if you manage it that's it; there is only one screen. That's not enough, really. There is no AI opponent, unfortunately, but there is a decent two player versus mode, where you try to score the most points by shooting the other guy and clearing mines. It's a nice feature. I'd REALLY want joysticks for this to work better, though, sharing a small keyboard is no fun. Overall, as a single player game Blasto isn't that good, but the multiplayer is more interesting. It's still an average at best game, though.
Blackjack/Poker - I haven't played this beyond testing it to make sure it works, but I'll probably play Blackjack sometime. I don't like casino games generally, but blackjack is tolerable. This version is pretty basic, with single or multiplayer versions of both games. The graphics are bland.
Hangman - This is the only typing game I have (beyond Early Learning Fun), and it's kind of entertaining! It's too bad that this game doesn't support the Speech Synthesizer, for a graphical version of the hangman game in TI's Speak and Spell, but otherwise it's decent stuff. On the note of the Speak & Spell, yes, I had one of those growing up! Great things. Hangman is okay as it is, though. You can either use the games' built-in dictionary, or type words in yourself. You've got to choose the number of letters of each word you'll be challenged with, from 4 to 9, before playing. You have 11 guesses to try to guess the word. With each miss, a piece of the scaffold and hanging guy is added. Of course, once you've missed 11 times, the hangman has fully been drawn in, Taps plays, and you're dead. Try again. A bit grim for a kids game... but it does make you want to try again and get the word right next time! Anyway, overall, Hangman is an okay game. It's basic, but okay. The simple graphics have some serious charm.
Quote:
Note the difference between the descriptive text and the sprite art. The sprites show what the game is actually like. The text... uh, that has little to do with the actual game. :lol
Chisholm Trail - This is another top-down grid shooting game. It sounds like a Wild West game, but looks like a shooter. Move around the grid, and destroy the enemies! The game has 9 difficulty options (starting points), but in any setting the game is HARD right from the start, and it's fast-paced too -- none of that slow stuff like The Attack or Tombstone City. I want a joystick for this one. The game seems pretty good, though. In the game, there are four colored enemies who shoot at you and spawn endlessly when killed, and black block enemies which are your actual targets and won't attack you back. The colored enemies have different sprites as you progress, but the black ones always look the same. The black block enemies start from a ring in the center, so you can see how many are left. In order to complete each day, you need to destroy all 16 black block enemies on each stage. Making things worse, you have limited ammo, so the more you shoot at the colored guys, the more likely you'll run out of ammo and have to lose a life, if you don't lose them even before that first. There's one last obstacle -- when you kill a colored enemy, its starting-point entrance will shoot a laser blast at you if you're lined up with it, so stay away from them and focus on the moving black blocks. Chisholm Trail is a grid-based game of course, but everything on this system seems to be, so that's not exactly surprising. You do have free movement, but it's all on a grid. Tap an arrow key to change direction, tap again in that direction to move a space. The Attack works the same way, and Tombstone City as well. This seems promising and could be a good game, but I can't say for sure yet, need better controller. The game is fun, but I die so quickly! I haven't managed to finish a level of this yet, sadly enough. The enemies are tough to avoid and move quickly, and shoot at you as well. The music theme is nice, but as with most games on this system, there's no music ingame, only sound effects. Very few TI 99/4A games have in-game music, apparently... oh well. Overall Chisholm Trail is a decently fun game, but it's very difficult. This might be the hardest of the TI 99/4A games that I have.
Quote:
Where do you get game concepts like this? It's so crazy!
Tombstone City: 21st Century - The last of these top-down grid-based shooting games, Tombstone City is the most complex one. The titular city is in the center of the screen, and it's a safe zone. It's a small grid. Around this are hordes of aliens, because despite the wild-west theme, this is a sci-fi game really! Future wild west sci-fi, I guess? Your ship is called a "schooner", but looks like a generic 2nd-gen space fighter. Heh. So, as in The Attack, the game has basic enemies which can't hurt you, and a second enemy type which can. These threatening enemies are the same size as the regular ones, though, unlike The Attack's oversized (4 tile) threat-enemies. They also move quickly, so watch out and try to line up your movements... or die, at higher speeds while playing on keyboard. :p Yeah, this game makes me want a joystick for sure. Threat enemies turn into cactuses when destroyed; the cactuses were originally tombstones, but it was changed for censorship reasons or something like that. Now here's the trick to the game, which you must understand in order to get anywhere: in order to beat each level, you need to have all cactuses on screen be in a location where there are no other cacti in the eight spaces around them. If two cacti are touching they just sit there, but if three cacti are in contact, the three cacti vanish and a threat enemy spawns and goes after you immediately. There are also quite a few of the normal, non-threatening enemies on screen in each stage, and more may spawn, but threat enemies will mostly spawn only from places where two cacti are touching eachother. So, you've got to look for places with two cacti touching, and camp out around there trying to lure an enemy into a position where you can kill them while they're touching them, to destroy them and spawn another enemy who you hopefully will kill in an open space. Once I got a little better, I started luring them into chains -- making a set of three, getting a guy to spawn, and then using that enemy to destroy the next set of cacti. It's satisfying when you get a bunch separated all at once. It's an interesting concept, and once you get used to it, it's fun. It definitely isn't a simple game, though, unlike most 2nd-gen games, and it starts out slowly as well. Tombstone City speeds up as you go, though. My first impression on this game was 'argh, I died', but with a bit of practice, I'm starting to get better. This is a good game for sure.
These last three games I bought locally for $5 each, within a week of getting the system. It was pretty great that a local place had a few of the system's better games for me to get right after I got the system!
Parsec (Speech Synthesizer supported) - This game is one of the most popular games for the system. It supports the speech synthesizer, too, which is pretty cool; it uses it well. Parsec is a horizontal-scrolling shmup, and enemies come at you a few at a time. Unlike some shmups, your and the enemy's laser shots are VERY fast -- when you fire, an enemy in front of you across the screen will be hit almost instantly, and vice versa. You really need to watch out for their shots because of this! Also, your laser will keep firing if you hold down the fire button, but hold it down too long and you overheat and explode, so don't do that. The fast enemy shots can be tricky to avoid too. This is an endless game, as games back then usually were. I believe that there are about 16 different types of enemies you have to face before the game loops and starts repeating. The difficulty gradually increases for a long time, though, so only the very best players will be able to play this indefinitely. I can't get too far, but the great gameplay, decent graphics, and solid design make me want to keep trying. This is a tough but fun game, and I can definitely see why it's so popular among TI-99/4A fans! The speech definitely adds something to the game too, and the action is fast and fun. It's mostly playable on keyboard, too, provided that I don't have to move forwards or back much, but you don't need to do that often in this game. Still, I'd like to have a joystick for this, I'd probably do better. One issue I do have with the game is the ground -- while this game scrolls, there are no actual obstacles to avoid, apart from the ground itself. Unlike, say, Scramble, there are never any barriers above ground level; it's just the ground, with its endlessly-looping terrain of rocks and buildings, and the starfield above where you ac tually play the game. You can crash into the ground if you fly down to it, but it's be better if the terrain had more variety, as it does in, say, Scamble or Vanguard. Too bad. The enemies will provide plenty of challenge, though. So far, for me the hardest enemy waves are the ones that come from both the back and the front at once. They're quite hard to predict. Also, as in some shmups of the era such as Scramble, River Raid, and Zaxxon, the game has a fuel system. You use fuel by flying along, and recharge it in recharging tunnels which appear instead of the usual ground loop when you're low on fuel. Getting into the tunnels can be tricky, so be very careful. I've crashed into the tunnels a few too many times... and they are also narrow, so you have little room to maneuver. Still, it's a decent mechanic to have, and probably does add to the game. I like the shooting action more, though. The many types of enemies each attack a different way, and this game requires good reflexes. This game is visually simple, but everything from the time is. For a TI 99/4A game, it looks pretty nice. The sprites are small but well-detailed, and each different enemy type looks distinct. Overall, for its time this game looks and plays pretty well, and it's more fun to play than I was expecting based on videos; this game is fun to play for sure. The speech quotes are also pretty cool. If you get Parsec, definitely also get a speech synthesizer!
Munchman - TI's take on Pac-Man, Munchman is a blatant clone. The game has a few differences, to try to keep Atari from suing, but it's Pac-Man alright, and a good variant of it too. This is a good game, one of the more fun ones I have for the system. It controls decently on keyboard, too; you just need to move, no fire button. Instead of eating dots, Munchman (despite the title) actually works more like Crush Roller or Amidar, visually -- you're trying to pass over all of the paths. As you move, a chain-like line is laid down behind you. Once the whole screen has been filled in, it's off to the next, slightly harder, level. The maze is different from Pac-Man's maze, it's important to say, so this game isn't a clone, it's a similar game in the same genre. As in Pac-Man, there are four enemies trying to stop you. Unlike Pac-Man, though, each one starts from a different place. Munchman starts in the center of the screen, while the four enemies start in four squares around the center. They leave their little bases a few seconds after you start moving. Amusingly, the power pellets are TI logos. Yeah. One interesting game element that's different from Pac-Man is that ghosts eaten while you are invincible stay dead until after the invincibility wears off. Each one you ate is sent back to its base, and will only leave it after you're vulnerable again. So, avoid eating multiple TI powerups at once if you can, because it'll really cut back on how many ghosts you can eat! In Pac-Man ghosts will respawn right after you eat them, which menas if you then grab another power pellet you'll now be able to eat those. It's different in Munchman. I don't know if this way is better or worse, but it works. The graphics are simple but effective. This is a solid little game. It's entirely unoriginal, but is a good variation on one of the generation's greatest classics.
Car Wars - This game is TI's port of Sega's arcade game Head-On, released on the Atari 2600 as Dodge 'em (Atari) or Dodger Cars (Sears), and also remade years later on the Game Boy as Head-On (Japan) / Power Racer (US). The game is a maze game, and if it hadn't released several years before Pac-Man, I'd think that it was a Pac-Man knockoff. Instead, it has to have been one of Pac-Man's inspirations. The goal of the game is to get all of the dots on the screen. The screen is broken into four ring-shaped paths around a central block. This game is much less dynamic than Pac-Man, though. Unlike that game, you can't move freely; all you can do is change your speed between slower and faster (hold the button down to go faster) and change lanes at the four intersection areas on the center top, bottom, left, and right of the screen. The enemy car moves as fast as you do, and if they run into it, you lose a life... and the dot field is fully replenished. That's right, you need to grab every dot without dying in order to clear a level. As a result of this, this game is VERY hard! There's only one enemy car at the start, or two later on, and you can actually win this game, there are a limited number of screens... but good luck with that. Even beating one screen is tough! The game controls fine on keyboard, but it's just plain hard whatever the controller. This is a pretty good game, but it's quite hard. It definitely has that "just one more time" addictive quality to it that a good arcade game should, though. I have the 2600 version and the improved Game Boy version, so I wasn't sure if this would really be worth it, but the graphics are better on the TI, and the game controls just as well, so it was well worth the low price. Good game! On another note... I would REALLY like to know how this Sega arcade game ended up getting a Game Boy remake from Tecmo. What? It released after the Game Gear was available, too! How odd. Anyway though, Car Wars is a good version of this little-known, but probably influential, arcade classic.
This is pretty great... play it now! It's a web text adventure game, and repeats after only a couple of minutes of clicking, but the text sure gets the experience of petting a cat down just right. Cats are the best, and whoever wrote this understands that. :)
Nintendo has decided to get into the "sell toys with those games" market first started by Skylanders (and continued with Disney Infinity). On paper, it's a good way to revitalize the toy industry, steadily loosing relevance. It's also a good way for Nintendo themselves to return to their roots, as they used to make toys.
Having seen a few videos rolling that beautiful amiibo footage, I can say the figurines are pretty well put together, and nicely detailed. I can't fault their quality.
What I can fault, however, is their functionality. In that, consider this a criticism of ALL of these sorts of toys, as they all function in exactly the same way. These things are, ultimately, unmoving figurines permanently mounted to a base. Kids can't actually play with these things. Kids can't articulate Mario's arms or push the action button in his back to fire that fireball, nor can they dress up the Snow Queen in the various outfits she had in the movie, or even flap Spyro's wings. No, their sole functionality is "unlocking". You put these $15 figurines on a NFC sensor and it "reads in" data contained in a NFC chip inside the figurine. In some cases (Amiibo) data can be stored back on the toy and brought to another place to upload into a friend's system, but it all remains the same. This is DLC, very expensive DLC, plain and simple. There's simply no real novelty or joy in actually playing with these toys. The entirety of their function, from start to finish, is to put it on a sensor and have them "magically show up in your game". The characters could just have been unlocked in the game already, or in the case of data transfer, my 3DS could have stored that data just fine going from one place to another. In other words, I'm calling these toys, in their current form and function, nothing more than a gimmick, although a surprisingly profitable one.
But it doesn't have to be that way.
I think there's real potential here. It's been a long time since I've actually owned any toys. I used to have a rather large collection all stored in a chest that looked like a treasure chest, until they all were given away to good will. I don't really get upset at that mind you, it's just the sort of thing that happens to toys when one grows up and I've seen Toy Story 3. Still, I get a little nostalgic now and again, and the notion of collecting toys of my favorite video game characters is a pretty charming one. However, the toys I remember were 80's toys, and that was when the craft was at the top of it's game, before video games stole the spotlight and forced toy makers to simplify and lower the quality of toys from then on just to turn a profit. The toys I grew up with DID things. You had dolls that changed color, costume changes, ones with little strips of plastic that made the toy "talk" when you ran it through the back or something. You had toys with tape recorders and moving faces, all the tiny remote control cars you could eat, and toy playsets. Oh the playsets! No matter the franchise, there were massive constructs to play with your toys ON. Barbie had all manner of dream house, the Ghostbusters had their firehouse, Thundercats had their lair, G.I. Joe had unending military bases. Ninja Turtles had a giant technodrome and sewer, and Little Ponies had cloud heavens and cursed wastelands (My Little Pony had some dark stuff in it, such as a gargoyle from hell). All of these things could be opened up in cross section, interacted with, and took 4 D-cell batteries (not included). The board games even got in on this, with such ridiculously huge layouts and electronic components you just knew that this was it, the 80's had finally reached THE FUTURE. Heck, even Nintendo's ROB was more interesting than an Amiibo. ROB doesn't need an Amiibo, because ROB is it's own Amiibo, one that can read the TV screen and move around, stacking and spinning gyros and so on. Don't misunderstand, ROB sucked and all in implementation, but ROB had the right philosophy behind it, which this current crop of digital interactive toys is missing.
Let me get to the point, the games should serve the toys, not the other way around. You want to make toys and games interact? Make the game completely subservient to the end goal of making toys more fun. Make those toys do things. Create big play spaces, all connected and controlled by the game itself. The game will do all the talking and controlling, with score counters and such built in, but primarily you'll do most of your interaction via moving and using the toys, which the game will keep track of and create rules of play for. Do this, and this whole concept will finally unlock it's true potential. As it stands, I'm convinced they've got how these things should work entirely backwards.
Behold, BEHOLDEN UNTO IT YE SINNERS! Intelligent Systems, the extremely Japanese company behind Fire Emblem, Pushmo, and the "Wars" series, has made a new turn-based/real time hybrid strategy game. Steam punk Abraham Lincoln and his army of the US of A's greatest fictional heroes fight off an invasion of aliens, as the defenders of the Earth! I'm talking fighting alongside John Henry (folk hero), Henry Fleming (Red Badge of Courage), the Cowardly Lion (Wizard of Oz, my guess is he arrived in Kansas), Tom Sawyer (Tom Sawyer), Tiger Lily (Peter Pan, and certainly a better choice than another shot at ruining the real life story of Pocahontas), and others.
I hope to see Ichabod Crane in there somewhere, he's dealt with monsters before without losing his head. No, don't bother mentioning he was a coward in the original story. So was the lion! I suppose we could also get Billy the Kid or Johnny Appleseed.
I first covered Pod 2 here, on NeoGAF. This new review is perhaps triple the length of that old one, though, has a lot more new content than most any of the other redone old reviews I've worked on in recent months, and wasn't in a dedicated thread, so I think it well deserves posting as a full review thread! For the other improved reviews, see them on my site. Maybe I'll get around to posting them here too eventually. :)
First, a starting note: in order to access the Oddrock track or two of the cars, you needed to connect to the long-dead Pod online servers. The stuff is on the disc, but it's locked. However, fortunately, there is a way around this: put a save file on your system that already has the track unlocked! I found one on the homebrew Dreamcast save files disc that I have. Look up Dreamcast save files discs, and burn one; it should have the file you need. Anyone seriously interested in Pod 2 really MUST do this, because playing this game without one of the tracks and two of the cars is horrible! The alternative is actually getting your DC online and getting the files from the internet, but that, of course, is much more challenging. Just burn a save-files disc. Don't skip this step! Oddrock is a great track, and the two cars are pretty good as well. The file I used had only a couple of track times and almost nothing beaten, so it's not a completed game, fortunately, it just has the online stuff unlocked. You want the file which mentions that the Oddrock track and Crab and Bulldog cars are unlocked.
Quote:
At the starting line!
Introduction
The original Pod, for the PC, is one of my favorite racing games. When the sequel was announced as a Dreamcast-exclusive, though, I was disappointed; I wanted to play it on the PC, and didn't have a Dreamcast. I didn't get a DC until 2007, so I couldn't play the game when it came out. The mediocre opinions most Pod fans had of the game greatly lessened my expectations, though, which made me care less.
After getting a DC, though, I finally did buy the game. Pod 2 has several names. In the US, its title is Pod: Speed Zone. In Europe, it's Pod 2: Multiplayer Online. I'll call the game "Pod 2" in this review, though I have the US version. The game was not developed by the same team that made the first Pod, and you can tell -- this game is indeed a shadow of its predecessor, just like all the reviews said. It is a highly disappointing game, one of the more disappointing Dreamcast game for me. However, despite this, I find the game quite fun, and it's probably one of my favorite Dreamcast racing games. How can it be both of these things? Well, it's a very limited game, and is not even close to Pod's level, but what is here is pretty fun if you like this style of futuristic racing game as I do.
Comparing Pod 1 and Pod 2, the only obvious similarity between the two games is that both have "Pod" in the title, are futuristic racing games, have some slightly similar art design styles, have some large tracks with branching paths and dead ends, have car damage of some kind (though the car damage systems are different), have two player splitscreen multiplayer, and had online play on servers that are now long-dead. On that last point, with Pod 1 at least you can still play the game multiplayer via IPX LAN or via direct-IP play, but Pod 2 is splitscreen-only, sadly. Beyond those few things, though, the sequel diverges greatly from its predecessor, to its detriment.
Pod 2 has a lot less to it than the first game did. First, Pod 2 has no circuit mode. The first Pod has many different ways to play the game -- there is a championship mode, with either the original 16 tracks in preset order or your own custom championship of up to 16 races on any track; single-race mode; time-trial mode, extremely popular with a lot of Pod fans; split-screen multiplayer for two players; and online, LAN, or modem multiplayer for up to 8 players. Pod 2, however, has only single-race, time-trial, and split-screen multiplayer, though of course it originally also had online multiplayer as well. The loss of a main single-player championship mode is a big loss. Pod 2 doesn't have an ending, either, unlike the first game. The game has a short introduction, and that's it as far as the story is concerned. Disappointing! The severely limited content is one of Pod 2's biggest problems, along with the low production values and lack of a PC version.
Quote:
Racing. Nice sky!
Basics: Controls and Interface
Pod 2 is a fairly standard futuristic racing game. The game runs in a modified version of the Speed Devils engine, so it looks and plays as much like that game as it does Pod. The first Pod is a pure racing game; you only race, there are no weapons or turbo boosts. But perhaps because this is a console game, Pod 2 adds turbo boost and item systems. Unfortunately, both are clumsily done, as I will explain. The boost system works like that in Wipeout 3, F-Zero X, and others -- boosting drains your health. The items are few and weak. The game does play well, though. Cars control quite well in this game, and each car really does feel different. However, I don't think this game really controls like Pod. The Speed Devils roots do show here, I think. Pod 2 is sort of one part Pod, one part Speed Devils. I like Speed Busters, but Pod is a far better game. While Pod 2 has good controls, control is better overall in the first game, and is slightly different from how it is here. I do like how this plays, though, just less than the first game.
I also like the variety between the vehicles. The eight cars aren't just palette-swaps, they control very different. Choose your car wisely on each track, because some cars are better on some tracks, and others on others. Cars have health in this game, and when you run out, it's a very abrupt game over. Look out for the health refill pickups, they can be invaluable! They are by far the best of the pickups, in fact; the weapons are weak, and turbo boost is only sometimes helpful. Your shields (health) and turbo are based on meters on screen, so how much you have of each is limited.
On screen, the game shows your shields, boost meter, acceleration, a quite useful minimap, the three items you currently have, your lap times, position, and current lap number. That's it; Pod 1 has far more screen displays. I know that as a console game everything has to be larger, but this is disappointing, as I will explain later.
Basics: Race Types
The game has only two modes, single race or multiplayer. This game would be so much better with circuit championships, such as those in the original version of Speed Devils/Busters! Single races have six cars in each race, down from eight in the original Pod. Pod 2's graphics aren't amazing, either; the DC should be able to handle eight cars for sure. Since the online mode is long-dead, the multiplayer is splitscreen-only. Fortunately the splitscreen mode exists; in Speed Devils Online Racing they didn't bother with splitscreen support, for some stupid reason. It's in this game, and it's fun. I wish that the game had four player support, but two is better than nothing. Both Pod 2 and Speed Devils Online Racing were heavily focused on online play, which have money systems and more from what I've read; the single player is shoddy and limited in content. And then the online mode went dead, leaving not much here. The game does have some progression, though. When I first played the game in '07 or so, I somehow missed that each of the six tracks has three races on it, and you unlock each of the later two by beating the first track. So, after playing the game again because I wanted to improve the review, I decided to win all of the races, and after some effort I accomplished this.
When you start playing Pod 2, there are two options on each track: a Normal race, or Time Trial. Time Trial is just you against the clock with no opponent. In Time Trial, you can save ghosts, but it has no other effect, playing it won't unlock anything. Once you finish in first in each tracks' Normal race, you unlock the Hard race. The Hard races are pretty tough, and some of these took me some time to beat! Beat each track on Hard, and you unlock the last mode, the elimination race. In this race, the player in last place gradually loses health, and once they run out they stop and are eliminated. There are NO powerups on the track in elimination races, so you really need to be careful! You don't get anything for beating all six tracks' elimination races, but I did it anyway because I wanted to beat the game. These races are about even in difficulty to the Hard races, and sometimes actually were easier. They were a nice break from the normal races, and definitely add something to the game.
Basics: Graphics and Sound
Graphically, Pod 2 looks okay, but somewhat average. While this game is a Dreamcast-exclusive title, it definitely does not do a great job of pushing the hardware. Pod 2 runs at 60fps, but that's its only major graphical positive. The game clearly was made on a pretty low budget, I think. The game runs in the Speed Devils engine, but doesn't seem to have been improved much at all over the visuals in the original Speed Busters, a PC game several years old by the time Pod 2 released in late 2000. Pod 2 looks okay, but should be better. The graphics work, but aren't exactly some of the best graphics in a racing game on the DC. Like many DC games, it looks like it wouldn't have been hard to put this game on the N64 or PSX too. Just cut the car model detail, downgrade the textures and framerate, and it probably would work. However, it is worth mentioning that Pod 2 does run at a solid 60fps, and in progressive-scan too -- it is in those two features where it shows that it's a next-gen game when compared to N64 and PS1 racing games, not its per-frame polygon count. Also, the car models are fairly detailed, and are more complex-looking than in many other games of its time. The car models are reasonably nice, and I like many of the designs. Even so, the graphics could definitely have been better. Also, for the most part the tracks do not have the character of the tracks from the original Pod, artistically. A few manage a nice look, but overall they look blander than Pod tracks do. The whole game is like that, though, of course.
There are a few points in the game which stand out and suggest that this game could have been more, though. Particularly cool is the transparent tunnel section in one track; this game needed more nice-looking graphical elements like that! Sadly, for the most part Pod 2 doesn't even try. I like the tracks in this game for their designs, not for their great graphics, because they don't have them. The low production values really show in the very weak turbo effect and the near-nonexistent weapon effects, for example. Cars which run out of health don't even blow up either, they just stop moving and that's it! Pathetic. As for the music, it's techno, of course. I like techno, but this soundtrack is largely unremarkable, unlike Pod's amazing, addictive soundtrack. This soundtrack is okay, but I forget it as soon as I stop playing, and don't really want to track down a copy of the soundtrack to listen to on my PC, while Pod 1's soundtrack is one of my most-played game soundtracks.
Quote:
In a race.
Content: The Tracks: The Best Thing About The Game!
Pod 2 has only six tracks, a dramatic decrease from the 16 tracks Pod 1 had. It has no downloadable or add-on courses, either, while the first game had 20 more official downloadable tracks that were made available after its release. This is bad. However, on the positive side, the few tracks that the game does have are long and varied. The track designs are quite good. They feel different from the original game's tracks, but they are very well designed and interesting, and all have multiple routes. This is the one thing that saves the game from complete irrelevance -- the track designs are pretty good, and make the game interesting enough for me to want to play Pod 2 despite its numerous, crippling flaws. The game may have a lot of problems, but track designs are not among them. It's obvious that a lot of attention went into the track designs, and all six are well designed, fun, and challenging. I really like all six of the tracks in this game. They are very well-designed.
In the original Pod, tracks were usually complex. The opening tracks started out simple, but the game quickly got complex, and the downloadable tracks particularly are often quite hard, with dead-ends that seem to be the route forward in some cases. Pod 2's tracks split the difference between Pod's simpler and harder courses. Pod 2's tracks have many shortcuts and alternate routes, which is great. They're not entirely straightforward. However, the tracks are never as challenging as the harder tracks in the first Pod, but that's not all bad; the hardest Pod tracks are VERY frustrating, and I'm not sure if I actually like them. No, I don't have much fun in tracks like Parking, and that's not even Pod's hardest track to memorize. So, having some complexity in the track designs, but without the extremely frustrating designs of the hardest tracks in the first game, is, overall, a good thing.
Pod 2's six tracks come in two styles. Two of the tracks are narrow floating paths with walls or fences right on the sides of the road most of the time. The other four have larger, more open environments, with wider shoulders between the edge of the road and the walls.. Both types of tracks. Another thing I like is that the two narrow-path tracks, Volcano and Oddrock, remind me very much like the road type from the first Pod's intro video. That's awesome, because despite the intro, that type of track wasn't actually present in the original game. That track is one of the best tracks in this game, too. However, all six tracks have similar futuristic-world themes; there are none with the interesting, varied craziness of some of Pod's downloadable tracks. This is a natural casualty of this being a console game with just the base courses, though, since the more unique settings, such as the pirate track, were downloadable. Comparing the settings of the original 16 Pod tracks to Pod 2's, they both have a solid amount of variety.
Of course, there is also a lot less of everything else as well, including tracks and cars. Again, Pod 2 has only 6 tracks. Even if the tracks are pretty good, there are so few of them! And I really miss the addon downloadable tracks the original game had and their interesting settings, too. I know that as a console game from the days before hard drives on consoles that was never going to happen, but a sequel, or improved PC port, with more content would have been great! it's too bad it didn't happen. I can't help but count the addon tracks when I think about Pod's courses, and their varied settings, such as the halloween track, the giant casino, or the beach are pretty cool. Even so, overall, the tracks are one of Pod 2's main strengths. I really like all six of them, and they are a lot of fun to play. I've played this game for more time than you might think mostly because of how much fun the tracks are to race on.
Content: Cars and Story
Pod 2 has a lot fewer cars than the first game, too. There are only eight cars in Pod 2. Pod 1 also had only 8 cars originally, but Ubisoft released a full 44 downloadable addon cars for the game, while Pod 2, of course, has none. Yeah, that's a huge downgrade in comaprison. Also, car designs in Pod 2 are compeltely different from the first game; this connects to the story. Pod 2's concept is that the cars themselves are infected with the Pod virus, or something, and you have to race against them... why? I don't know, the story doesn't go anywhere and has no ending. The intro shows a virus, perhaps a version of the Pod virus from the first game, infecting a car. These alien-infected cars are what you drive. Then the game starts, and that's all there is to the plot. So, instead of cars made from industrial parts and junked vehicles, as the base cars in the first game are, this time the cars look semi-organic. It's kind of a cool look, but makes for completely different types of car designs from the original game. All eight cars are based on this one theme.
I mentioned the story in the last paragraph, but need to expand on that. What's the story beyond that very basic, and worldless, car-infected-by-virus intro? Considering how the first game ended, this one is surely set on a new planet, which I guess has somehow been infected. But after that, what happens? Is this planet also doomed, or not? Unfortunately, the game doesn't attempt to answer that. The first Pod has a pretty interesting ending, but no such luck this time; Pod 2 doesn't have an ending. There is no closure in this story. There's a bit of backstory in the manual, but that's it.
As for car damage, it is, unsurprisingly, global only this time, and cars can be destroyed. In the original Pod, damage affected car performance, but cars were very hard to actually destroy, if you could at all. This time, though, damage has no impact on car performance, but instead just is a standard health bar. Once that shield meter runs out, you lose automatically. It's nothing like the damage system in the first game. I actually really liked the sector-based damage option in Pod, where each of the six parts of your car took damage separately. There's nothing like that this time.
Content: Weapons and Turbo
In the game, there are five kinds of pickups. The most useful are the shield and boost refill powerups. These do as they sound, and make sure to get the shield powerups if you're touching walls much at all! These pickups are the only way to refill your health and boost; this game does not have standard shield-recharge areas on each course, unlike the original Pod which does have them. These refill items take effect instantly and cannot be stored.
The other three pickups you can actually keep are a turbo-boost, a mine, and a shockwave. You can hold three of these items, and can switch between them to use them in any order. The turbo is decent, it gives you a nice long turbo that doesn't drain the meter. The mine and shockwave are much weaker, though. Neither one does much, if any, damage; instead they mostly just stun enemies. It's a somewhat odd design decision. Considering how easy it is to die from just hitting the walls this is somewhat welcome, but it makes the weapons seem even weaker than they already did. The attack wave has its uses, but only in specific situations. This item will stun any cars close in front of you. It can be useful if someone passes you and you want them to get back behind you, or for knocking someone annoyingly fast back a bit if you close in. But really, most of the time neither weapons is needed, and I ignore the weapons more of then than I use them. Most of the time they are minimally useful. Why bother putting in weapons when they are so pathetic? The shield and boost recharge items are vital, though. You take damage every time you bump the walls, and need frequent recharges to survive; tracks do not have healing areas, the only way to heal is via pickups.
Quote:
This track branches several ways!
Other Modes: Time Trial and Time Display Information
Now, anyone who knows Pod knows that timetrial mode, and best times, were one of the most popular things in the original game. Many people actually preferred comparing best times to actually playing online, I believe. I've always found races more interesting than time trials, but even so, what Pod 2 has for this category is horribly disappointing. You see, in the first game, your current total time, current lap time, and times compared to the cars ahead and behind you are all displayed on the screen. At the end of the race, you see a table showing the exact finishing times for all racers. Because the game is all about how well you drive, and has no items or powerups, times really do matter a lot.
Pod 2 messes this all up with its turbo-boost system, boost powerups, and very limited time information actually displayed on the screen. The effect of turbo should be obvious -- this means that even if you take the same line on multiple laps, whether you have boost power left or not will have a huge impact on your time. There is a strategic element to this that I like, in saving boost for where it is needed, such as on hills, getting through rough terrain, and such, but it does mess with the purity of Pod's racing. I'm kind of torn here, though; I love futuristic racing games, turbo boosts, weapons, and all. But if you're going to have weapons, you need to do a competent job at it. This game fails at that, as I described above. The weapons here are pretty bad. I like the turbo button, but it wouldn't be needed in a game with gameplay as great as the original Pod has; it's only so nice here because of the general gameplay and design downgrade, I think. And of course, it makes accurate lap or race time comparisons much less even. Ah well.
I cannot defend the serious lack of time information in this game one bit, though. This time, the only time information you are shown during the race are your lap times. Total race time is NOT shown. In fact, your total race time isn't even shown at the END of the race! All you see at the end is your best lap, and that's it. Pathetic! How am I supposed to know exactly how well I did compared to the competition when it doesn't bother telling me how they finished compared to me? Pod 2 also doesn't save much, either. Other than the options menu choices, if you have the "online required" stuff unlocked, and whether you have unlocked the Hard and elimination races on each track, the only actual times saved are the top three race and lap times for each course. The problem is, the ONLY way you'll ever see your race time is if you make this table... and even then, you'll only know which one is your new time if you type in a different name each time! That's right, unlike just about every other game ever, Pod 2 gives you no indication of which of the times on the table is your new one. It's a somewhat unforgivable lapse. There are only three times on each table, sure, but it couldn't have been hard!
Other Modes: Multiplayer (and more on the absence of better single player)
Also, because this is a console game, you had to connect to Ubisoft's servers in order to play online. Of course, the servers were turned off a long time ago, so now the game cannot be played online. With Pod 1 you can play online today via LAN emulation or direct IP, but for a console game like this, the only way to play online after it was shut off was for people to have saved all the information the game sent to the server, and replicate what the server did based on that data. On the Dreamcast, this was only done for Phantasy Star Online, so Pod 2, and all other DC games which had online play, are now offline forever. Tragic! Of course, a PC port of this game could have fixed the whole problem... ah well.
As I said earlier, though, the game does have splitscreen, and two player splitscreen races of Pod 2 are pretty fun. This isn't the best racing game, but it is a fun one well worth playing sometimes with friends who like arcadey racing games. Still, the absence of a fuller single player mode is really unfortunate. But with Speed Devils, even though Speed Devils Online Racing is unforgivably limited -- it doesn't even have splitscreen, much less any championships! -- at least with that game, you can go back and play the original Speed Busters (PC), aka Speed Devils (Dreamcast); it has splitscreen and a full championship campaign. Pod 2 has no such equivalent. All it's got are three races to beat on each track, and then you're done. The worst thing about Pod 2 is how differently it plays versus the first game, but the extremely limited single player is second worst.
Quote:
Beta version screenshot. The simpler interface design is almost better than the final one... it's kind of busy.
Overall
So, on the whole, Pod 2 is a failure. The game has limited content, questionable design decisions, shoddy production values, only a handful hours of play in single player, limited replay value thanks to the lacking time-display information and two player splitscreen only multiplayer, and more. It's all Ubisoft's fault, of course, for putting the game on a console while the fanbase for the original game was on PC, and for changing the game so much by having only a few tracks and cars. However... despite this, I like Pod 2! I really do. Pod 2 is a fun game, and I've come back to it again and again because of that fact. The tracks are few, but they are really well designed, interesting branching tracks. I love the shortcuts and alternate routes in each course. Try them all, they add great variety and some may be faster, I like the differences between the cars, too. The elimination races are a fun challenge as well. But despite how fun it is, the game really does have a lot of issues. The turbo boost is one controversial one. Its addition was and unnecessary attempt to attract console gamers. When boosting the increase in sense of speed barely exists in another sign of the low budget showing through, too. However, as a futuristic racing game fan I like fast games, so I don't mind this as much as most Pod fans do. Still, it doesn't really make the game any better. Clearly on the bad side are the missing story championship mode. Yes, it's great that there are three races to win on each of the six tracks, and it was fun and challenging to win all the races, but for me, that's no match for a good championship mode, and when the previous game had one, its absence is a big problem. The complete lack of an ending is also kind of annoying, and the limited number of tracks as well. Et cetera. I won't repeat every flaw yet again, but they all hurt.
Even so, Pod 2: Speed Zone is a fun game that is absolutely worth playing for fans of arcadey or futuristic racing games. I like it despite itself. It really goes to show that good level designs can go a long, long way! Make some great tracks and you can have a good racing game, even if outside of that the game disappoints. I kind of wanted to like Pod 2, and do. In fact, wanting to play this game was a major factor in why I finally bought a Dreamcast in summer '07 -- Pod 2 is a DC exclusive, and despite hearing a lot about how poor it was, as such as huge fan of the original Pod, I simply had to play it sometime... and that meant getting a Dreamcast, so I did. :) And once I did, I didn't regret it. Pod 2 is a fun game to play for a while, as you explore the tracks and try to improve your times. Even if it's only a fraction as great as the first Pod is, Pod 2 is de, but it is a good game. It's just a very poor sequel to the amazing original game, and because of that it's a serious disappointment even if it is probably one of my favorite DC racing games. I give it a B; non-fans probably would give it at least one grade level lower or maybe even less (the game got a Metacritic average of only 6.9), but... I can't help it, as much as I hate Pod 2, I like it as well.
![[Image: 308049_front.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/0/4/9/308049_front.jpg)
![[Image: 308049_back.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/0/4/9/308049_back.jpg)
![[Image: gfs_103793_2_1.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/f/a/b/gfs_103793_2_1.jpg)
![[Image: gfs_103794_1_1.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/8/f/f/gfs_103794_1_1.jpg)
![[Image: 98113_front.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/1/1/3/98113_front.jpg)
![[Image: 98114_front.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/1/1/4/98114_front.jpg)
![[Image: 97935_front.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/box/9/3/5/97935_front.jpg)
![[Image: gfs_103389_2_3.jpg]](http://img.gamefaqs.net/screens/e/e/9/gfs_103389_2_3.jpg)
![[Image: 345449-pod_010.jpg]](http://static4.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/5/4/4/9/345449-pod_010.jpg)
![[Image: 345446-pod_007.jpg]](http://static5.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/5/4/4/6/345446-pod_007.jpg)
![[Image: 335968-podspeedzone_prev_020.jpg]](http://static3.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/5/9/6/8/335968-podspeedzone_prev_020.jpg)
![[Image: 345457-pod_018.jpg]](http://static3.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/5/4/5/7/345457-pod_018.jpg)
![[Image: 314554-pod2_b2_002.jpg]](http://static3.gamespot.com/uploads/original/mig/4/5/5/4/314554-pod2_b2_002.jpg)