Twelve Games I Love
Starfox – I spent many 90 minute sessions in college beating the crap out of this game. I loved finishing it over and over.
WarioWare Twisted – Genius. It combines the fast paced, yet rewarding minigame-after-minigame-after-minigame approach of the original with a perfect-fit, knock-your-socks-off technology.
Beyond Good and Evil – This is definitely the first action/adventure game I played that had me enthralled from start to finish. The new Prince of Persia series probably did that better, but BGE doesn’t take itself as seriously and, because of that, the characters and scenes stick in my head much more clearly.
Zak McKracken and the Alien MindBenders – This game really opened my eyes to how humor can find a home in really solid, challenging games.
Paradroid – As a kid, I played the heck out of this game on my C64. As an adult, I read the excellent dev diary of its construction by Andrew Braybrook. It’s a great game with an excellent use of the one button C64 controller and even a killer mini-game that’s a mix of strategy and reflexes. I’ve often called Paradroid the spiritual ancestor of Grand Theft Auto. I mean that in a good way.
Yar’s Revenge – This, Joust and Combat stick out as my favorites on the Atari consoles. Yar’s had deep gameplay, with limited graphics. I still play it today. (And now it’s available for the GBA, too!!!)
Psychonauts – Just killer. Again, humor in a challenging, solid game. And the authors managed to mix up the action with lots of little differences here and there while maintaining a cohesive experience. I could single out several of the levels in this game as favorite games on their own! The Milkman Conspiracy, Lungfishopolis, and the one with the Bull are just excellent.
Nintendogs – This and Harvest Moon(Friends of Mineral Town) are the only two video games my daughter plays – she loves them!
Joust – Joust was my first multiplayer experience (other than pong). Damn fine game.
Spiderman 2 – I get butterflies in my stomach when swinging through the city as Spidey. I’m serious – I can FEEL the movement and it makes me queezy. I never made it through to the end because I LOVE swinging around. They say Ultimate Spiderman is more of this goodness. Let’s hope so!
Lumines – This game has single-handedly brought me VERY close to buying a PSP about a dozen times. Luckily, my coworkers have it and I can get my fix that way. Also, there is an excellent homebrew version for the GBA.
Tempest – I was never very good at this game, but it’s the only game I could imagine buying an arcade version of for my home. I just may do that sometime.
Network Priorities
Online gaming (XBOX Live, PC FPSs, MMOGs) generally forces you to turn off anything else that is using your home network (streaming media, downloading files, etc). Luckily, the Hawking Broadband Booster has arrived. It sits between your broadband modem and your router, prioritizing traffic. Gaming traffic(and probably VOIP, etc) is given priority over downloads and P2P. Judging from the TeamXBOX review, it does it’s job.
XBMC – DVD Menus!!!
XBoxMediaCenter, the homebrew collection of tools for playing dvds, videos, and music on your XBox, just added support for DVD menus. This is a huge step. I normally use XBMC to play all my DVDs at home, but this will let me get at those special features(commentary), too! WOOHOO!
It’s too bad that Microsoft is putting so much effort into blocking homebrew content on the XBox360 – consoles are such beautiful platforms for ameteur coders to thrive.
DS Wifi Bounty Successful – almost!!!!
1 of the 3 milestones in the DS Wifi Bounty has been accomplished. A connection can now be made from the DS to the PC with no special hardware. Hopefully, the code and a demo will be available soon.
Congrats go to Stephen Stair(sgstair on irc) for his hard work and StoneCypher (stonecyph on irc) for putting together the bounty!
John Tokash 