I’ve said it more than once: what’s the use in having a blog if you don’t use it to tell people the things you like?
Here’s what I’ve been enjoying lately on my Switch 2. These are store links, but we get no affiliate or advertising dollars from them, they’re provided just out of convenience.
Cruise Elroy’s great retro-styled action platformer Annalynn (Switch, Steam, itch.io)
Tomodachi Life: Living the Dream (Switch), a social sim abounding in quirkiness
UFO 50, for many things but especially for the addictive Party House (homepage, Switch, Steam)
Caves of Qud, the terrific true roguelike, filled with equal parts, with atmosphere almost as great as its challenge, but also two accessible easy modes (homepage, Steam, GoG, itch.io)
Chibi-Robo, the sleeper hit for Gamecube where you help a tiny housekeeping robot save a fractured family and also discover the secret of the house’s living toys (Nintendo Gamecube Classics)
Kirby Air Riders, Masahiro Sakurai’s remake of the Gamecube cult classic, with even deeper gameplay, robust online multiplayer and so much fun that it oozes out of the system’s USB-C ports (Switch 2)
Dragon Quest I+II HD-2D Remake, not just a conversion but a redesign, not always for the better but still great (Square-Enix page, Switch)
Blippo+, Yacht and Panic’s sci-fi tale of interplanetary communication told through the medium of an exacting recreation of 90s satellite television (homepage, Switch, Steam, Playdate; currently on sale for Switch and on Steam)
Nintendo got its start making playing cards, and, incredibly, still makes playing cards to this day. I guess there’s always money in the banana stand.
A service Nintendo offered, and even more incredibly still offers, is to make customized playing cards for people, anyone, although the stated purpose is to promote products. The blog beforemario tells all about the service, and even links to Nintendo’s page where you too can order custom playing cards, and all you have to do is order them in a batch of at least 3,000 decks, oh and also navigate through the entirely-Japanese order site. Or you could just buy non-customized cards, some with Nintendo character art.
Lest the domain name not convince you that this is the same Nintendo, one of the example decks pictured uses Pikachu in its art (along with the appropriate copyright notices, as Nintendo doesn’t actually own the Pokémon characters).
beforemario has mentioned before that Nintendo still runs a large sideline in making traditional Japanese gaming equipment like Go and Shogi sets, or Chinese Mah Jong sets.
We’ve linked to TheZZAZZGlitch’s videos before, their obsession with the Pokémon and Pokémon Mystery Dungeon games is both admirable and somewhat worrying.
I’ve played quite a few Mystery Dungeon games, including nearly all of the many versions of Shiren the Wanderer (Rainbow Labyrinth is the only one I’m missing), and these dungeon level types keep coming up again and again. I’d be very surprised if essentially the same code, or close to it, wasn’t used in all of them. The beginning of the dungeon generation explainer is at 5:03.
One interesting thing is that the dungeons generated by the various routines often create maps that can be seen as variations upon the dungeons from the original roguelike, Rogue itself. Rogue used a distinctive 3×3 grid of rooms. Sometimes a “room” might be a winding corridor, a dead-end or a dark maze, but it doesn’t take much playing to see the patterns used, and the Mystery Dungeon games obviously use a similar system for most of its floors, using differently-sized grids. Sometimes extra dead-ends are generated, and there are a few extra styles, but in its overall plan it’s Rogue-standard. It’s what the video calls the “standard generator.”
This isn’t all that the video explains, for just one example it goes over the details of how the game’s random number generators work, and also how they can be abused (the dungeon RNG is seeded to 1 at boot, which can be used to ensure dungeons generate the same way). I think it’s essential viewing for any Mystery Dungeon enthusiast.
Quick post today, just a pointer to a video John Romero posted on his Youtube channel a couple of months ago (17 minutes), where he gathered (well, edited together Zoom video of) the other founders of id Software (back before it was just another cubicle within Bethesda’s, and then Microsoft’s box), explain the creation of their first 3D game, Catacomb 3D.
Interesting thing to notice? The word “Softdisk,” publisher of Gamer’s Edge and former workplace of the id Software founders, doesn’t appear anywhere in this video. There’s at least one screenshot that has part of its name, but it’s covered up with a different graphic.
(I’ve been trying to track down as many old issues of Softdisk’s publications as I can; it seems the only public place where they survive at all is in collections of Loadstar, including my own. Even the Internet Archive only has a smattering. They deserve to be preserved, dammit, both these guys’ previous work and that of everyone else who made software for that company.)
EDIT: As multiple people have reminded me of by now, there are other ways to get images off the system, though they’re annoying. Going through a smartphone app is annoying too. Everything involves getting out some bit of kit and plugging it in. It feels like a maze, so I think my issue that Nintendo is preposterously obstructionist over getting pictures off of their device stands.
Tomodachi Life is a big release from Nintendo, its first real use of their once-starring Mii characters since the quirky and underappreciated Miitopia, which basically puts your little pseudo-people through a D&D campaign, an idea so cool that I had it myself over a decade ago, though of course no one listened to me way back then, or really ever.
Let’s remember what Miis are. The name itself is a reference to the characters’ origin system, the Wii. You see, you just flip the W. The Wii was extremely popular, and opened up video gaming to hitherto unserved demographics, but because most “gamers” are entitled jerks they spread bad vibes about the system despite its popularity (remember “waggle?”), taking its sequel system entirely. Nowadays, Nintendo Switch Sports and Miis are probably its sole remaining legacy, regardless of how many other cool ideas it had. (A version of Opera made for it! News and Weather Channels! In Japan you could order pizza using it! I haven’t even gotten to Check Mii Out and Everybody Votes yet.)
This is the third game in the Tomodachi Life series. The first one was 14 years ago, the original Tomodachi Life for 3DS, got a cult following. It’s kind of Nintendo’s version of The Sims, if the Sims had (very) slightly more self-motivation, no mandatory biological need to fulfil, and an emphasis on weirdness. The second game, the sorely-missed Miitomo, was a free-to-play mobile game that also served as an instant messenger, but it hit sadly at a time when the old style of instant messenger apps were dying out, and lasted just over two years. It was dead in the water long before it closed.
What all the Tomodachi Life games really are is an elaboration of the old game of Mad Libs. “Hey _name_, I’m going to _place_! Should I pick up a _noun_ while I’m there?” Except it’s not just with words, but people too, your Mii characters fill in the role of actors in the many silly little vignettes built into the software. The game includes no characters on its own: you create everyone in the whole damn town, name them, pick how they look, and rate their personalities in five categories, then plop them onto the island and watch them bounce off each other.
Sometimes when they meet you’ll be asked to give the system a word or phrase for them to talk about, and that’s where the more explicit Mad Lib connection kicks in. Just like official Mad Libs*, Maybe nine times out of ten the jokes will fall flat, but that tenth time is comedy gold. Of course what everyone did, and still does, is make Miis of every celebrity and comic character they can fit into Nintendo’s limited yet oddly useful tools. In my game, I have a Mr. T character, downloaded from the Mii Channel on the Wii so very long ago, laboriously schlepped over to Wii-U (via system import) to Switch (via Amiibos) to Switch 2 (via another system import). Mr. T had a dream his first night in my game, on the isle of Yendor, in which he met three other Miis all with Mr. T’s face.
I’d love to show you the video of his dream, but I forgot to record it. Also, though, Tomodachi Life: Live the Dream has a fatal flaw. It’s a meme gold mine, sure, but Nintendo has disabled all media sharing from it. You can make all the great Miis you want, but no one else will ever see them! Its drawing tools are pretty darn impressive, but nothing you make with them can be shared on the internet! You can’t upload them to the Nintendo Switch smartphone app, or even transfer them to your cell phone using Nintendo’s stupid Wi-Fi system! I don’t know if you can get them right off an SD card, but ha ha, on the Switch 2 it doesn’t matter because it uses incompatible SD Express cards!
NINTENDO, ARE YOU LISTENING? WHY CAN YOU EVEN TAKE SCREENSHOTS OR VIDEO AT ALL IN TOMODACHI LIFE IF YOU CAN’T SHARE THEM? Nintendo is a company used to doing things its own way, which sometimes results in moments of brilliance, but at least as often means they do amazingly stupid things like this.
Because of this, you will have to live with potato-quality screen photos, taken with my very own smartpotato. I plant them below. Imagine how much better these would be if Nintendo actually officially supported the use their software was obviously made for. (Note: I’ve been told since writing this that you can still get images off using an SD card… although if you have a Switch 2 like I do you’re probably just as out of luck as it uses SD Express cards. I’ve yet to confirm cross compatibility with those, I don’t think I have the right kind of adapter.)
Hint: try alcohol next time. BTW, that’s the official Shigeru Miyamoto Mii on the right, as distributed through the 3DS’ online functionality. I also have a Masahiro Sakurai.Lego Larry is one of the more beloved Miis in my collection.This is exactly how this meeting would go down in real life.Another great thing about Miis is how far you can break them. “Edwin Tea” there is one of the several I scavanged from the Mii Channel and Check Mii Out, way back on the Wii.
Below is my absolute favorite of all the Mii interactions I’ve seen so far. Poor Patricia’s got it bad, and truthfully, I felt much the same way back in 2008. I kind of feel that way now, but sadly both his terms are up.
* BTW, did you know Mad Libs was co-created by Leonard Stern, who wrote many scripts for The Honeymooners, and wrote for and executive produced Get Smart?
Get Info made a substantial post on a couple of significant pieces of Japanese gaming ephemera, a four hour long program that aired overnight on March 14, 1987 that was basically 100 segments on a variety of games (and other things really), and a book that was released later that was an encyclopedia of gaming from around that time. A lot of it is as inexplicabe as Japanese media can be to non-Japanese speakers, but it’s very interesting as a gaming time capsule from the era. Clips are presented not just from Japanese properties but also games from around the world.
Nearly the whole program (with minor edits for copyright) is on Youtube (4 hours), with a table of contents with links in its description. Although, unless you have an insatiable hunger for random gaming clips, you’ll probably want to go through the TOC.
The book that followed contains Denshi Yuugi Taizen : TV Games,” presents 40 interviews with a who’s-who of game creation at the time, including Nolan Bushnell, Ed Logg, Steve Cartwright, Fukio “MTJ” Mitsuji, Trip Hawkins, Freefall Associates, Timothy Leary, Shigeru Miyamoto, Yuji Horii, Toru Iwatani, Sir-Tech, Shigesato Itoi and many more. A full scan of the book is on the Internet Archive.
We love it when we find weird and unique indie games to tell you all about! Our alien friends to the left herald these occasions.
One of the best puzzle games out there is Noumenon Games’ colorful, fun, and challenging Snakebird, its easier sequel Snakebird Primer, and their combined version on Switch Snakebird Complete.
But even Snakebird Complete costs $15. What if you just want to dip your toe in and find out why the snakebirds are the snakeword(s)?
Created by a Pico-8 dev called Werxzy, they’ve made a “demake” of Snakebird that is essentially just the original but with different levels and pixel graphics, which can even be tried out on the web. And if you’re already a certified serpent-falconeer, it even has some new tricks for you to learn.
The first level. Even this one is challenging!
You control up to four colorful adorable snakebirds, who you can switch between freely. Their mission is to consume all of the fruit on each level, and then escape to the next island. They all move, one turn at a time, like the snake in Snake, but in a side-view, gravity-burdened world with unexpected implications.
It’s a good idea to spend some time at the start getting used to how the SBs operate. Despite being nominal birds they cannot fly. It’s easy to get a longer one trapped against a wall, but you’re allowed infinite undo levels, and you’ll need all of them.
An early level with multiple birds. Your first instinct may be to share the fruit, but sometimes the greed of one bird is necessary if they all are to escape.
A snakebird that eats a piece of fruit grows one space longer. In multibird levels it doesn’t matter to completion which feathery slitherer eachs which fruit, but sometimes the design of a level means a specific bird will ultimately need to be a certain length.
Some levels have no fruit, and reaching the exit is all you have to do. “All” you have to do.
To complete a level, not only must all the fruit be eaten, but all birds must make it to the goal portal. This will often be the hardest part of the puzzle. The ease with which one birdbrain can get stranded unless their snavian colleagues help them to the exit will confound you, but they should be applauded for not leaving anyone behind. (They can’t applaud themselves—no hands.)
Hey kids, it’s your favorite, Big [Snake] Bird, just arrived from Snesame Sneet!
There’s even a level editor for making puzzles to challenge your friends, or maybe even yourself if you’re really forgetful. Progress is saved between sessions on the same browser. And it’s a good thing, for the game lives up to the original’s reputation for difficulty.
So please, give these fluffy beakworms a place in your heart. I’m told that as parasites they’re completely benign!
Snekburd (from Werxzy on itch.io, $0, based on Noumenon Games’ Snakebird series)
With the exception of two or three musicians (They Might Be Giants among them), for the most part I’ve agreed with what Marge Simpson once said: “Music is none of my business.” (Not counting that one episode where it was revealed she had been fangirl at the height of Beatlemania.)
Because of this, I just have to assume that this 16½-minute video from Cat’s Eye and Cybershell finding many (although they admit not all) of the songs that the musicians behind the Japanese version of Sonic CD drew samples from is on the up and up. The Japanese version’s soundtrack was by (looking up spelling on Sonic Retro) Naofumi Hataya and Masafumi Ogata. They mostly don’t seem to touch the US version, which had mostly different music by Spencer Nilsen and David Young, maybe because of those many musical references. Whichever you prefer is mostly a matter of taste, and how well you can handle an intro track for a game about a cartoon hedgehog with lyrics about “leather and lace” and “toot toot sonic warrior.” (Didn’t I make a post about that at one time? A search suggests no, but I was sure I had….)
Lots of names and bands that I’ve never heard of, and songs that I’ve never heard! Look, I know, it’s a huge area to be ignorant of, but at this point I don’t feel like I could possibly do it any justice, so I guess I’ll just go back to my CD of Flood. (Starts absentmindedly singing the lyrics to Particle Man for the hundredth time….)
Extra: this Sonic Retro forum post where The Sunshine Feeler dove into figuring out who did the vocals on the Japanese version, which reveals the amazing fact that the artist who did the rap portion of the intro song, Casey Rankin, also sang the remix of the DK Rap for Smash Bros. Melee!
Interesting fact about Mario Kart 7 (the one for 3DS). You might expect the CC values for the traditional three speeds/difficulties in Mario Kart games to be more of a name than a value the game tries to actually simulate, and usually you’d be right.
But MK7 actually means them. The vehicle speeds are actually derived from the CC number in that game. 100 CC is actually twice as fast as 50 CC, because the acceleration multiplier is double, and 150 CC is triple.
Meaning, if you hacked the game, or else made a mod, like CTGP-7, that let you set the CC number, by changing that one value you could affect the whole game, and try ridiculously fast, or slow, game speeds never intended by the designers.
But there is no need to stop there. CC is just a float. PabloMK7 hacked the hack and tried weird floating-point values for CC that shouldn’t rightfully work, like infinity, and NaN (“Not A Number”) , just to see what would happen. (5½ minutes) And then very high finite CC values, and infinitesimally small CC values, like point-lots-of-zeros-then-one CC, causing the engine to break in amusing, and somewhat frightening, ways.
So then, what would happen? Take a look for yourself:
Jeremy Parish, formerly of 1UP.com, currently of Retronauts and Video Works on Youtube, made an April Fool’s video, but because he’s Jeremy Parish it took the form of an interesting backgrounder on The Wizard, that big-budget Hollywood movie that’s like a feature-length advertisement for the NES and Super Mario 3. (18 minutes)
The Wizard stars Fred Savage of The Wonder Years, a popular show that you barely hear anything about any more. Like thirtysomething, remember that? I don’t either.
Many of my nights lately have been consumed with trying to play enough Caves of Qud so that I don’t embarrass myself too badly when I finally decide to talk about it. Most of my early explorations were in permadeath Classic Mode, but I have come to realize that playing it that way would mean I would need several years to finish it. I may not actually finish it before I write on it. On Nethack I had the advantage of being obsessed with it for years, had read many spoilers on it and participated on the Nethack Usenet group. These days much discussion of that nature has moved onto Reddit, which I have strong moral qualms about visiting now, not to mention that its app sucks on toast.
My play time for this game on Switch is 30 hours. I do not recommend it.
For most of the episode we try to treat the game as if all that skeevy stuff doesn’t exist, but don’t close it when it seems like it’s over….
As for the skeeve, the game’s official website has a section marked OPPAI, which I do not link to directly from here, in case it gets Set Side B on some kind of list.
I don’t make many @Play posts these days, and I’m sad that I have to drag out the tag for something like this. I am working on a lot of discussion about Caves of Qud (if I can link to Omega Labyrinth Life here I can certainly call out Qud), but the game is so blasted huge! Hopefully I can bring you something on that front soon.
Why is it misunderstood? Because it received several ports to other platforms around the time it was popular, they all lacked the special something of the original game, and in more recent times the game has been unfairly derided on the strength of those ports.
What is it that makes Dark Castle great on original Macs? It’s a combination of super-sharp art, responsive and unique controls (it’s a platformer but you attack enemies by throwing rocks at them with the Macin-mouse) and character. The game has gotten more worthy remakes in the current era, but still faces difficulties. One of the best modern versions sadly became unplayable on later-day macOSes when Apple decided to no longer support 32-bit software, a decision that I can’t possibly attribute to Steve Jobs, but somehow it still feels like it has to be his fault, somehow.
Now, as the video tells us, there’s a new remake programmed in Unity, released on the Mac App Store but also Steam, and is finally playable in a decent port for non-Apple platforms. It even got a whole episode of Retronauts about it, which I can’t link because, ha ha, it’s paywalled. I’m sure this video will give you enough information to decide if it’s worth your time, and even if it isn’t, it’ll fill you in one one of those many secret little corners of video game history that Set Side B exists to point out to you.
