The value proposition and target audience for these 2 new retro gaming options seem difficult to pin down. In 2020, a world where retro gaming has never been cheaper or easier, who wants to spend money on a cartridge based system or a modular disc-based emulation machine? The answer is me. Let me tell you why.
It’s so pretty…
Before I get into what these systems are, I feel like I need to explain my philosophy on retro gaming and why the mainstream options available now don’t satisfy me. Media has an interesting phenomena where only the best of an era survives and that cream of the crop media becomes the nostalgic standard. For example, “music today sucks!” Says the Old man or the Kid that’s too cool for today’s music. Then they listen to the Beatles and lament the loss of an era that produced such amazing music. The reality is, the only 60s and 70s music that has survived on compilation disc and XM radio are the best tracks. Sure, The Beatles are objectively great but there was awful music from that era too. That music doesn’t get played anymore. Look at late 80’s NES games, it’s been curated down after decades of people only remembering and revisiting the best that people think the only games from that era were Super Mario. Bros and Mega Man 2. The bad games have been left out of the conversation BUT MOST IMPORTANT TO ME is the mediocre games are left out of the conversation too.
This game was dope!
Let’s look back at the PS1 era of gaming and specifically the racing games of that time. If you were to ask anybody what the best racing game is for the PS1 era, the answer is Gran Turismo. Period. They could re-release Gran Turismo today and it would sell amazingly and it holds up really well. I loved Gran Turismo. I also loved Need for Speed High Stakes and Daytona USA CE for Saturn during that era. Test Drive was making great racing games in the PS1 era and so was Codemasters. Those are good games lost in the conversation of the era. Why talk about a mediocre game when you can just stare at the best? Why watch a documentary on Dominique Wilkins or Clyde Drexler when we can release another endless examining of Michael Jordan (yay)? That said, the middle of the road games are very interesting to me for both nostalgic and preservation reasons. NFL 2K5 is a legend but NFL Gameday ’98 brought 3D polygonal models to football. Gameday is a forgotten series. Content creators still talk about NFL 2K5 but Gameday is lost. Gran Turismo is still being dissected while Need for Speed and Test Drive are never discussed. This matters because if I want to learn about or enjoy Gameday, my only option is to play it on the original disc. Old Madden games show up on Plug and Play devices and still have life. Mega Man gets a new collection ever week but I want to play Need for Speed and Croc.
Great collection for all the major systems
What is the Polymega? The Polymega is a modular disc based console that emulates media. The base of the Polymega is a disc based console that can play the neo-geo cd, turbo duo, sega cd, saturn and more all with multiple region compatibility. The modular aspect of the system refers to the ability to buy and slot in cartridge based system components. You can buy the SNES, NES, Turbo-grafx, and 32x/Genesis components to add onto the system. The biggest feature of the system is the disc drive. I have a lot of those system, the Saturn, PS1, but the disc drives are failing and sound like death. The disc-based systems that I don’t own are super hard to find working. The Sega CD has been something I want to buy for year but finding a working one is almost impossible. The few working Sega CDs I find cost $130 at least. Finding a Turbo Graphics CD or a Turbo Duo cost hundreds of dollars, and Neo Geo CD cost even more. The value proposition of a New disc drive to play these old games is very high. The Polymega also allows you the ability to burn your discs ISO to the system so they don’t need be read during play. It’s a great way to save your discs, especially the rare games.
I guess all this talk about value proposition doesn’t make sense without acknowledging that the Polymega cost $400. The add-ons cost $80 each. It’s a big ask when an Xbox One X can be purchased for less at this point. Systems like this are always such a tough thing to buy but also to pass up. This system will sell out at this price, no doubt. Much like the Analogue high-end FGPA products, the market for these consoles gets sold out fast. The issue is if you don’t buy the first run there may never be a 2nd run and the aftermarket prices are INSANE. It creates a weird sense of urgency for something that is inherently non-urgent…the games for this system already exist. It’s something I always tell my Transformers Collecting friends, buy it new because it will never be cheaper especially for short packed figures and limited items.
What is the Evercade? The Evercade is a brand new handheld system that plays retro game collections. What separates it from other retro handhelds on the market are it’s build quality and that it uses cartridges. The is banking on collectors love of physical media as the selling point. Each cartridge has 10-20 games on it. There is a Taito cartridge and a Namco one and an Atari cartridge. The idea is that the games are emulated perfectly, they come in a beautiful case with a manual. You can display and trade your cartridges and relive the glory days of previous console generations. The value proposition for the Evercade is seemingly dubious on 2 fronts- 1. Chinese manufactured emulator machines have tons of preloaded games and emulators on them for the same price or cheaper and 2. A lot of the games on the Evercade are available on many different systems at cheaper prices. My thoughts on this are that the build quality on a lot of those Chinese consoles are awful and they lack customer support. As much as I support emulation and that scene, there is something to be said for being to have access to great retro games and to be able to support the creators in the process. To the second point, as somebody who has Double Dragon on a Master System, PC, Xbox One, and Phone….why would I want it on Evercade? The answer is solid portable emulation with good tactile controls. Ports on new consoles are iffy and I can’t take them anywhere. Games on my phone suck because touch screens don’t emulate tactile controls well enough for retro games.
The biggest perk of the Evercade for me is that all of my current ports of retro games are tied to internet access. Steam, Xbox Live, and the Eshop all need the internet. The retro games I play on the Switch are tied to having an online subscription. The Evercade doesn’t need the internet. Those cartridges are complete, no patches and updates. That’s very appealing to me. The Evercade cost around $80 for the console and it comes with a game, the games cost $20 per cartridge. It’s a good value and won’t cause sticker shock quite like the Polymega.
The one thing retro systems and games can’t defeat is time. These new console options are adding life to old hardware. The Polymega can be purchased at Walmart.com and the Evercade is available on Amazon.com. It’s incredible that in 2020 these consoles have mainstream distribution. It’s probably pretty obvious I am going to be getting both systems, but I recommend that you take a look. If you read this, I know you be interested in either one of these. Stay Safe, thanks for reading. Peace!
Being home on lock down during this pandemic has highlighted something that I miss dearly…driving. I had a 45 minute commute to work, a 30 minute drive to the second job. In my area, everything is a 10 minute drive away or more. I love the feel of driving. I love listening to a podcast during my daily commute. Music sounds better in a moving car. The drive is my time to think and decompress and that’s gone.
Another part of driving I love is seeing the aesthetic of a wet car, and the lights reflecting in the rain. Just when you think a commute has become mundane somebody drives by in a Kia Stinger or a Mitsubishi Starion (somebody owns one in my area now…amazing) and it just brightens the entire day. These things are missing in my life in a big way now. I’ve been watching countless vintage motor trend reviews on YouTube and I can quote Doug Demuro on basically every quirky car in existence. All of this leads me to Tokyo Highway Battle. This is the first entry in the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series and it’s an early PS1 masterpiece.
As much as I revere driving and cars, nothing compares to the reverence to automotive culture as Japanese video games in the mid to late ’90s. There is a love of the culture around the car that shines through more than even the obsession with horsepower and speed at the time. This love of cars boiled over to America in the form of the Fast and Furious series and my age-group’s obsession with Gran Turismo and the Japanese cars it exposed us to. A lot of games made it over here during this time, the best ones are not just racing simulators. Tokyo Highway Battle, much like later entries in the Tokyo Xtreme Racer Series, is a driving game disguised as a racing game.
Tokyo Highway Battle is a one on one street racing game, with arcade physics. You start the game with 3 cars and 3 large city tracks. You need to win on each track to unlock more cars and more tracks. The brilliance of the game comes in the progression. Your car is woefully under powered to win on 2 of the first 3 courses. The game doesn’t signal that you’ll need to upgrade the car. You race this 6 minute race, lose and just stare at 3 menus one of which says “speed shop”. Speed shop is where the races are won and lost. You can purchase everything from ground effects to turbines and it all impacts performance.
There are these interesting quirks in the system. Two giant ones you’ll want to know if you ever play this game. 1. Buying parts does not install them. You can buy everything in the shop leave and race and nothing will be upgraded. There is a second menu to individually install each part. You can click each part on or off. 2. There is a limiter on every car that limits the speed to 180 km/h regardless of the amount of upgrades you have. You can spend tons of points on a new turbo, mufflers, ecu and not be able to exceed 180 km/h. You have to pay and install the limiter remover. Once it’s gone, BOOM speed. The game never tells you this and figuring these things out makes you feel like a genius.
Tokyo Highway Battle becomes a very interesting game of picking out the right car to race with and invest in. Nothing clearly indicates which car is best for what track and it really depends on what you, the player, is comfortable driving. I’ve invested im the “type 6” car on the second group of tracks. It has a turbo so I figured it woulf he the fastest car out of the new group. It is…but I can’t get the handling to feel right so even on the high speed course I keep losing at the end when I slam the wall. I’ll try a different ride where the handling feels great but I need to grind to invest in the bolt on turbo because it makes the biggest speed impact in the game. That’s where this becomes a driving game to me, more than a racing game. Tokyo Highway Battle is super grind heavy and the AI car is basically a time trial aside from the fact that random highway traffic can slow the AI down. The grind is the game. The grind is bearable because the music is amazing, you get money even when you lose and you can jump back in and try again with 0 repercussions. It’s also neat that you can just grind for enough money to make a super car and brute force the win. The game doesn’t care. It’s like Outrun, just enjoy the sounds and the feel of the car and the competitive outlet is there if you want to deal with it.
Tokyo Highway Battle has a lot of personality that will become a staple of the Tokyo Xtreme series and most of Genki’s racers going forward. Every driver has a picture and a nickname. They tell you about themselves before a race. They tell you off after the race too. Each car is unique that you race against. They also allude to the Drift King being the best driver around that you need to defeat. The Drift King is the boss in almost all of the Tokyo Xtreme Racer games so it’s cool to see him in this title too.
There are a lot of games in this era that don’t hold up very well. Early 3D games have aged like milk visually. Tokyo Highway Battle stands out and is just as playable today as 20 years ago and the visuals and sound design are still impressive. Thanks for reading! Peace.
XBox 360 still sells NFL Blitz on their digital store. This is the last version of Blitz ever made. It has an ultimate team mode and lots of on-line features. If you boot this game up now most of those features are dead. EA requires you to update the Terms of Service and that’s not possible anymore so without the Terms of Service the game won’t let you access any of the on-line modes. The game is a shell of itself. NFL Blitz 2000 on Dreamcast works with no missing features. It only has an arcade mode and then local co-op but it works.
I purchased a Sega 32X from a wonderful gentleman on Facebook. The 32X is a touchy piece of tech at best, at worst it’s an easily broken mess. The 32X came with a 10 pin cable and everything I needed to play NBA Jam on it. When I plugged in the machine, it would show the black screen with the white writing on it that shows up before the SEGA logo on most games. Then the screen would go blank and I could hear the game but I couldn’t see it. Since this is a machine of the 90’s I know I have options. I start the googling promptly and start searching for Youtube videos to see what the problem may be and how I might be able to fix it. I find a few videos that surmise that the 2 white ribbons inside the machine probably need cleaned. Video issues usually stem from these white ribbons. Unscrew a few screws, remove the heat sink, clean out all the easy to access parts and then unplug the 2 cables to clean the connection points. There was actual visible grime on the ribbons, I wiped it off. I put everything back together and the 32X works perfectly. The 10 pin cable is actually not correct for the 32X, the 10th Pin give the unit power from the Genesis and stops you from being able to power off the unit. I used pliers and took out the 10th pin. Problem solved, now I can power on and off the unit. My cell phone on the other hand needed a new battery, the back cover is connected to important internal components and I needed to be sent in to Motorola to have the battery replaced. It cost $80. I bought a new phone.
A PSP I purchased on Facebook has a cracked Face plate and was bought “as is” which is code for it’s probably broken but for 30 dollars I know I can risk it. I found new faceplates, new battery, and learned how to replace the disc drive. As a consumer, I have so much control over how I approach repairs to this. It’s mechanical, it’s fixable. If I can’t fix it, I know people who can. My switch has a Joycon with analog stick drift. I can take it apart but it voids the warranty and may not be real solution. Joycons are very expensive but the best option is to replace the unit (this was after sending it in because the left joycon wouldn’t sync properly). When my Switch has issues, nobody local wants to fix it and I can barely fix it myself. The analog stick is doable but no amount of googling was going to solve the de-syncing issue.
What I am trying to point out here is the freedom and flexibility given to the consumer when they have options to repair their consumer products. Right to repair seems to work with hand and hand with planned obsolescence. You can’t affordably fix things so it’s cheaper to dispose of the item and buy a new one. Games fall into this with constant on-line connectivity and download codes. No more used games. This is terrible for the environment, adding waste of lots of easily repairable electronics and it’s awful for consumers. I should be able to replace the screen or batter in my cell phone without spending hundreds of dollars. I should also be able to go to a 3rd party vendor for repairs. Anti-consumer designs become a profit center for companies who are the sole entities that can fix an item. All of this is compounded by the internet where firmware updates and “support” can make electronics obsolete as well. My printer downloaded an update that stopped me from being able to use the 3rd party ink I purchased. If I update my PSP it will stop me from being able to run emulators or anything on it. I love that I can soft mod my Saturn to play Japanese games, if the Saturn was made today that option would have been patched out. Then consoles and phones officially stop getting updates and then they become obsolete on the software side even if the hardware still functions.
Right to Repair hits me hardest in regards to consumer electronics but it’s really most diabolical when it comes to repairing cars, medical equipment and farm equipment and the businesses that rely on being able to repair those things in a timely fashion. Companies don’t even have to release the manuals and equipment needed to repair expensive equipment, forcing people to wait for certified techs and proprietary parts. The days of the home mechanic and the 30 year old tractor will be relics of the past. Someday in the future my Nintendo Switch and Xbox One will be useless bricks. So many of my games will be useless. Battleborn, something I have written about extensively here, is having it’s servers shut down in 2021. Even though the game has story content and modes that can work without being on-line, everything is server based. The game will just be gone. I can play any Dreamcast game I want, servers be damned but I am losing access to games I recently paid 60 dollars for. There is no regulation for it. Game publishers have no rules on how long they have to keep servers active. So many on-line games flame out fast and hard. We saw it with the battle royale boom, a lot of games were just dead in the water and faded away.
There are about 20 states with right to repair legislation being considered. If you want to be able to repair your own items, support small businesses, and protect the environment you can reach out to your legislators. Repair.org is a solid web site to learn about the issue and it’s an umbrella organization for lobbying and organizing the fight for consumer rights to repair. The Electronic Frontier Foundation is fighting the fight on the copyright side of things, looking to help defend consumers and business owners from getting stymied with licenses, DMCA violations, and other software issues that prevent repairs. For me personally, it comes down to ownership. I feel like I own my Sega Genesis and it’s games. I own my Turbografx-16 and it’s games. I rent my Steam games on PC and hope that Steam gives me access in good faith if they ever went out of business or stopped their storefront. I won’t buy a Tesla because you’re a firmware update away from losing access to core features, and if you buy a Tesla and they go under what happens when the updates stop? That isn’t ownership. Fight the good fight, advocate for your rights! I enjoy playing 30 year old consoles now, but I fear in 5 years I won’t be able to revisit games from this era. Thanks for reading, Peace!
I was writing about a game and was interrupted by a flurry of phone calls and text message about the passing of Kobe Bryant. I never met Kobe but he was on the short list of people I would consider a hero or at the very least somebody who truly motivated me. He represents an era of the NBA that I miss, and his approach to basketball was something that was just….an unmatched fire and passion that nobody has come close to since he retired. I saw Kobe play twice in person and don’t think I ever missed a playoff game he played in on TV. Kobe permeated my gaming as well. I remember when Kobe was first entering the NBA, I had a sleep over birthday party where we were all playing Madden on the Genesis. That night was the dunk contest and that was when we all fell in love with Kobe. We were screaming Kobe cheese (like colby cheese? we were young and in the midwest…) and just going nuts watching this kid who was basically our age put on a show.
Kobe showed up in the era of “who is the next Michael Jordan” and he was the first person who seemed to have the chops to pull it off. I think his stats and rings speak for themselves but Kobe was must watch TV. I vividly remember almost falling off a treadmill when Kobe hit a game winner against the Suns in a playoff game. His last game in his career was peak Kobe, dropped 60 points to beat the Jazz. Just incredible. Kobe patterned his game off of Jordan with the fadeaway but it was great seeing Kobe win with Shaq and then Pau Gasol. The 2 championship eras of Kobe are fascinating tales. I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up how much Kobe represented an era of NBA basketball to me that just doesn’t exist anymore. Kobe played every game like he was the 12th man on the bench who could lose his job at any moment. I would say the same thing about Jordan. They would go to the Milwaukee Bucks and instead of playing a token 20 minutes to hit their numbers or take a “load management” game they would put on the best show they could that night. I think that’s why their brands resonated so much. Every city they went to felt like the most important city that night. Staying up late to watch the Lakers with Kobe was never a risky thing to do because you were guaranteed a show. Today’s NBA just doesn’t treat the game that way. My Dad used to surprise me with the new Kobe Bryant shoes when I was still playing. Those were always the most fun to practice in because you knew Kobe was taking a thousand shots in those shoes too every day.
This is a gaming blog so I will talk about my most memorable Kobe gaming experiences. Kobe Bryant in NBA Courtside for N64 was one of the first N64 games I played that wasn’t Mario 64 or 1080 Snowboarding. Courtside was a decent looking game for the time and much more arcade than sim. Kobe was the showcase. He had all the animations for every jumper and dunk in the game. Even as a huge Knicks fan, it was a fight to see who could be the Lakers in Courtside.
I always loved using young Kobe in NBA Hangtime. They rated him pretty average at everything but dunks. Playing Hangtime now, it feels crazy to see his stats so mundane but who knew he would ascend to the NBA great he became. His digitized face looks comically young in the player select screen next to Van Exel and Eddie Jones. Kobe was on the cover of NBA 07 and NBA2K10 which I still think is one of the best NBA2K games ever made.
My sadness feels selfish in that seeing Kobe pass at 41 years old, I can only imagine how much knowledge we weren’t able to get from Kobe about the game. We will never see him coach. My heart hurts for his family, friends and fans. I wanted to see Kobe dominate 3 on 3 basketball at 41…it feels like there is so much more for him to do. Kobe was also really close to my age. I feel like I grew up with his ascension through basketball and it’s a grim reminder that death is writing it’s own story and nobody know when it’s their turn to be the next character in it’s book. I have spent so much energy arguing about Kobe and Lebron and Jordan and Kareem. Those arguments are so much fun! Those arguments, those moments wouldn’t exist without Kobe. Those debates with my guys and the jokes and posts… Kobe was the perfect antagonist to Lebron and the Hero we didn’t know we deserved. Losing David Stern and Kobe so close is such a sad moment in basketball history.
Kobe always stood up for women’s basketball too. He would talk about the women in the same regard as men. He brings up Taurasi in the same breath as Nash and NBA greats. He was visible at WNBA games. That type of exposure is priceless.
I can wax poetic about Kobe forever. I don’t even know what to say. It’s weird losing a celebrity. I want to mourn but I feel stupid doing so because it wasn’t like I was kicking it with Kobe Bryant in real life. He has just been such an important figure in my life in so many ways. My wife was a big Lebron fan so I would debate with her about how Kobe was better. She is in my phone as Kobe, because I knew that would piss her off. I know so many Lakers fans who followed the Lakers because of Kobe. Few athletes have transcended sports and media in the way Kobe Bryant has, this early exit just doesn’t seem right. Thanks for reading this, it’s helped me cope. I am going to go play NBA Hangtime and watch highlights on Youtube of Kobe. Sad times.
With 2019 drawing to a close, it presents the perfect opportunity to reflect on the last decade of gaming. When I think about game of the decade it diverges into 2 schools of thought, what is the objectively most important games (sales, etc) or what are people’s personal favorites. Quickly, I’ll say that Fortnite is the objective game of the decade as it solidified and codified the games as service model. It wasn’t the first, but it was most impactful. Fortnite also cemented streaming and influencer culture in gaming. I hate battle royale games but I see the value and influence that Fortnite has had. With that said, I will layout my personal games of the decade and why.
Surprisingly, not this…
2019 was not a banner year of gaming for me. The biggest releases were not very appealing to me. Death Stranding, Control, even Pokemon Sword/Shield just didn’t do much for me. Madden 20 turned out to be weak and I refused to touch NBA 2K20 this year. I played some great games this year but really doubled down my focus on retro gaming and returning to finishing some of my backlog. That said, Street Fighter V came back in a HUGE way this year. I grabbed the Championship Edition upgrade and it opens up the game and makes it feel complete. SFV should be lauded as having the best Arcade modes in fighting game history. The arcade modes are both fun and a nice history lesson of the Street Fighter (and even Final Fight) series. Street Fighter V has reignited my love for fighting games and has me playing online again and watching combo videos on YouTube.
My game of the year 2019- River City Girls (Switch), River City Girl is the continuation of a favorite series by a great developer. Wayforward is money. The graphics are amazing, the music is exceptional and the game has a sense of humor and character that is unmatched. The 2 protagonist in River City Girls are charming and funny and get fleshed out in some really cool ways during the game. The boss fights are a little brutal but that’s par for the genre. River City Girls met expectations which is rare for new games lately. I’ll give a quick shout out to Need For Speed: Heat. It’s an arcade racer that does everything well and has been criminally overlooked.
My game of the decade is a surprise, even to me. I wanted to pick the game that not only holds up to today’s standards but a game that I actually continue to play regularly. Once I laid out that criteria it slimmed down the list pretty drastically. Tis the season for list so this is going to be a top ten list of my favorite games this decade. This is not an objective list, this is just my favorite games. You won’t see Fortnite, Minecraft or any Assassin’s Creeds games on my list but I think any list trying to make an objective best of/most important game of the decade list should include those games. All of the games listed here were played extensively by me and for much longer than their initial release windows.
10. Marvel Puzzle Quest (PC- 2013)- I don’t remember when I fell into this hole but I wanted a Marvel game and they weren’t being made anymore. I grabbed this for free and they had an easily obtainable Juggernaut and I have been hooked since. I have probably spent 20 dollars over 6 years on this game and never felt like I was missing content. They have great single player story content. The stories vary and continue updating. The asynchronous multiplayer events were fun too. The game also is a great way to see some iconic comic book covers and the roster is always updating. For a free game, this one does it right. I’ve also switched accounts and devices multiple times and never lost any progress. It’s the best match-3 game this side of puzzles and dragons, it also might be the best Marvel game of the decade (RIP Heroes).
9. Street Fighter V (PC- 2018)– Street Fighter IV was one of my favorite games of all time and a fighting game I played in tournaments. No game has compelled me to play online or anything since…and then Street Fighter V finally became complete. When I grabbed SFV it was a husk of a game with a bad roster and a survival mode, now it’s a game with the best arcade mode in fighting game history. It also has a fun story mode and every character has a story as well. The single player content alone is worth buying the championship edition for but the multiplayer is solid too. Graphically, the game is great. It runs really well on PC, and has an excellent soundtrack. Everybody talks about the resurrection of No Man’s Sky but Street Fighter V has risen from the ashes in a big way. I also like the V trigger system now, it adds a lot of depth and some really cool animations.
8. Agents of Mayhem (PC- 2017)– This is a perfectly competent Saints Row follow up and compared to Crackdown this game is a masterpiece. I love the Saturday Morning Cartoon aesthetic and the “hero-shooter” quality. Every character has a fun backstory and unique weapons. I like the variety in enemies and the driving is fun. This game feels like the rare situation where expectations were poorly communicated and then reviewers didn’t seem to get into the flow of the game. It’s an interesting flow, you have character missions and then story missions. As you complete you learn about the characters and unlock them all while continuing to progress the A plot with unique bad guys. Like a TV show there is an A plot and B plot. You level up and unlock things as you play. Each character has it’s own leveling tree. It’s a lot of fun but it deviates from Saints Row a lot. I think the graphics are average. Those things combined led to people bouncing off pretty quickly.
7. Sonic Colors (Wii- 2011)– Sonic Colors is the perfect merging of 2D and 3D Sonic. I think it’s one of the best looking Wii games on the system. I finally played it on Dolphin on PC and seeing it in full HDish glory is amazing. I really like the level designs, the wisps were a nice gimmick, and the story was funny enough. This game is peak 3D Sonic for me. The 2D jumping controls are actually a little sluggish for my tastes but they are still very strong. Some of the levels are just breathtaking, when you’re running through space at full speed and the rainbow track is building in front of you barely beating your feet…it’s amazing. Generations takes this formula and runs with it, and Forces keeps the trend going but Colors feels unique and perfectly paced. Forces had levels that were too short, while some of the 2D levels in generations are too long (No Sonic level should be longer than 6 minutes) but Colors hits the sweet spot. The DS Colors game is also a really strong 2D Sonic entry as well. I still hope they revisit Colors proper with a sequel or do a Switch remaster.
6. Forza 4 (Xbox 360- 2011)– I don’t have a ton to day about Forza 4. It’s the perfection of a formula. This game utilized the Top Gear license the best, the graphics were incredible and the pacing of the career progression was fantastic. This game didn’t get bogged down with drivatars or anything like that. It’s a fantastic racing game with an amazing selection of cars.
5. Bioshock Infinite (PC- 2013)– This is the first game I ever purchased a graphics card for. My pre-built gaming PC wasn’t going to be up to spec so I decided it was time to hit that 1060Ti. That experience got me into building my own PCs. Bioshock Infinite had amazing world building and the way they touched upon racism and the ills of society were really powerful for me to see at the time. Th soundtrack was really cool too, they had old-timey covers of 80’s Pop Songs and some older Beach Boys hits. I really liked how they had an NPC with you the entire game but it didn’t feel like a giant escort mission. The ending with the light houses was great too.
4. Borderlands 2 (PC/Xbox 360- 2012)– Borderlands 1 was a lonely, tense game with a dark sense of humor and some great gunplay and looting. It all seemed to take place in bleak deserts and empty building. Borderlands 2 was a colorful looter-shooter with jokes around every corner and varied areas to explore. The visual and tonal jump from Borderlands 1 to 2 is hard to even comprehend now. That coupled with a lot of quality of life changes Borderlands 2 had and it was a recipe for a timeless game. The story in Borderlands 2 is touching when it needs to be and irreverent when it wants to be. The main antagonist is great and the side characters all feel pretty fleshed out. My only gripe with this game is the lack of Roland. I think the cast in Borderlands 1 is better than 2. My favorite character in the 2 was Mechromancer and she was DLC. Borderlands 2 was supported with DLC the entire decade. Even before 3 dropped, they added some story content to bridge the gap between the two games. Borderlands 2 also has incredible co-op gameplay but is balanced enough to feel playable alone.
3. Pokemon Black 2 (DS- 2012)– This game is peak Pokemon. They iterated on a game for the first time with a real full sequel. This isn’t just Pokemon Gold or Platinum, this is a true sequel to Black and White. I love the story in this game, it touches on the weird reality that the entire economy is based on what is effectively dog-fighting. They don’t follow through with the story in a big way but that’s to be expected. Graphically, the game looks amazing. 2D sprites is where Pokemon shine, the 3D models are dull and make a lot of the Pokemon look odd or plastic. There are so many battle animations and idle animations for the Pokemon in this game. The main story is fun but the Battle Tree at the end is amazing. The post-game in this Pokemon is incredible and keeps me coming back even today. There is a fun risk reward system as you progress floors in the tree and it’s just endless strong trainer battles. In my opinion, that’s when Pokemon is at it’s most fun. I love this game. I also got the special edition DSI system with it and the case. Because I’m lame. It was worth it.
2. World of Final Fantasy (Vita- 2016)– I have talked a lot about this game on here before so I won’t rehash it all here. This is the best Pokemon game that’s not full of Pokemon and it’s the best Final Fantasy game. Period. It’s both fan service mixed with a super compelling original story. The post game is great and the graphics are excellent. I also bought this on PC.
Honorable Mentions- NBA 2K10, Madden 10, NBA Live 19, Street Fighter X Tekken, St. Seiya Soldiers Soul, Mafia 3, Sonic Mania, Sonic Generations, Sonic All-Star Racing Transforms, Freedom Planet, Mercenary Kings, Forced Showdown, Fight N’ Rage, Hand of Fate, Kirby’s Return to Dreamland, Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning, Gravel, Remember Me, NBA Playgrounds 2, Sega and Sonic All-Star Racing, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World and Shovel Knight
The Original
1. NBA Jam On Fire Edition (Xbox 360- 2011)– It feels blasphemous to have a sports title, an arcade sports title at that as my game of the decade. This game captured me the day it came out and never let up. NBA Jam On Fire Edition had an amazing net code at the time. I played the on-line for countless hours They had a leveling system and I maxed it out. I beat all of the single player teams and the Jam-bots. The graphics were amazing. The real faces with context specific reactions coupled with the 3D bodies looked fantastic The courts were reflective and beautifully realized. The crowds were unique, each team had their actual coach and mascot on the sidelines with their cheerleaders. It was such a well done game. The ball physics and movement felt like vintage NBA Jam but the additions didn’t ruin the gameplay.
The biggest additions to On-Fire Edition were the “call for screen (push) button” and “call for alley-oop button”. These made the game have just enough depth to separate it from previous entries. By setting screens you can play with defensive match-ups. It pains me to say this but I went on some epic winning streaks with the Houston Rockets playing on-line. I used the vintage roster of Hakeem Olajuwon and Kenny Smith. Side note- every mode you played helped you earn currency to buy new rosters and players. Every team has their history well represented. Hakeem was great for defense and had a strength rating high enough that he could dunk through anybody and set great picks. Kenny wasn’t the best 3 point shooter in the game but to my eye he was the most clutch. NBA Jam has always been notorious for having hidden stats for players and I think one of the developers was a Kenny Smith fan. What was awesome about playing on-line was that so many rosters were viable. Sometimes I would pick the Sixers and use Dr. J and Darryl Dawkins and power my way to victory. Losses didn’t feel demoralizing because the games were so quick. It was such a well made game. Even today I play it. I keep a 360 hooked up basically for this game and Import Tuner Challenge.
I have NBA Playgrounds 2 in my honorable mentions because it feels great and the single player hook is solid. I love how playgrounds 2 showcases the history of league and jerseys as well. BUT where 2K falls short is the graphics (I don’t love the player models in Playgrounds) and the movement feel. NBA Jam On Fire Edition feels so fluid, and rarely do you feel like you’re fighting against animations. Playgrounds on the other hand is all about timing animations to be successful. If you do a crossover in Playgrounds, you’re locked in and same with pushes. What’s fun that this leads to is certain players have safe animations. For example, Bill Lambeer’s special jump shot animation is a set shot 3. You can’t block it and only he has it. Melo has a turnaround fade that’s unblockable. The animations add a lot of depth but at the expense of feeling stiff. NBA Jam On Fire Edition never has that issue. It feels likes a true arcade game that would have been a worthy sequel to Hangtime in the 90’s. NBA Jam On Fire Edition is my game of the decade. Amen.
2019 was a weird year for gaming and this was a great decade for games. We made so much progress from the Wii to the Xbox One. There were tons of great new series as well some of the best entries from first party titles. From Mario Galaxy 2 to Red Dead 2, it’s been a wild decade. Handheld gaming died and came back better than ever. The consoles were supposed to die but the Series X and PS5 just got announced. Online gaming and free to play games are the biggest things in the world. It’s wild. We are in a new fighting game golden era. It’s been wild but 2019 kind of ended with a “meh”. 2018 was wild with Red Dead and Tetris Effect battling it out for Game of the Year last Year while now we people are debating between Control and…Sekiro? The passion just isn’t there from the reviewers I follow. The craziest thing about the decade for me is just how many games come out now compared to 2010. The volume of games that come out now via steam and on-line only platforms is incredible. It’s never been a better to play video games. Thanks for reading, Happy New Year! Peace.
One of the most interesting paradigm shifts in gaming in 2019 is the lack of mid-tier AA titles. Every game now is a big budget AAA game or a smaller indy title. With the loss of mid-tier development certain genres have been harder than others. We’ve seen the death of licensed game from Marvel and other companies and what has intrigued me (and hurt me) most is the lack of smaller racing games.
While both of these genres have footholds in the mobile gaming space, they have all but disappeared on consoles. Racing games have hit a fascinating point. It’s basically Forza, Forza Horizon and Grid and Need for Speed constantly reinventing themselves to try and stay relevant. You have a few smaller licensed racing games that iterate yearly like F1, Nascar Heat, and some rally titles but those are getting harder to find too. Juxtapose this with the PS2 era where there were so many options for racing games. Enthusia Racing, TOCA racing, Gran Turismo was still relevant, Need for Speed had multiple concurrent titles like hot pursuit, Test Drive, Midnight Club, Ridge Racer, every licensed porperty you could imagine and so many more. They were mostly licensed with real cars (lots of low budget games had reals cars which isn’t the case now) and some had real tracks. It was a really fun genre that provided lots of different experiences for racing fans of different disciplines. Developers took more risks. Racing games today seemingly have to straddle a perfect line of being all things for everybody like Forza Horizon 4 or Forza 7. Simulation and realistic enough for car buffs but drive able enough for casual fans.
They need to have sim options and the best graphics. Lots of developers don’t really compete anymore. When other games stick their heads in the ring they get destroyed by reviewers and game journalist who lament the days when a Need for Speed release was a big deal. NFS: Heat is a really pretty game that plays well but it’s not Forza Horizon so it gets trashed. The comparison is valid because Need for Speed: Heat decided to be open world for some reason and doesn’t commit completely to being an arcade racer. Same with Grid this year….nobody noticed or cared when it released which is sad because the first Grid game was a big deal and the reboot seems solid. Wreckfest and the Dirt series hover around but they don’t make the impact outside of PC gaming like they would have 10 years ago. The sense I get is that if a company is going to pay for car licenses then they are going to play it safe. That’s not fun.
I say all this as I explore the Tokyo Xtreme Racing series. This game would not be made or brought back in today’s racing game environment. It’s too niche, it’s too obscure, it’s too Japanese. It’s wild because this game feels like “The Dark Souls” of driving games (forgive me for the comparison). Dark Souls and From software have created an environment where even Star Wars games are aping their obscure, niche aesthetic and adherence to difficulty and not making the most accessible game possible. Driving games have gone the opposite route. Tokyo Xtreme Racer is the peak of what racing use to be compared to where the are now.
Have you ever seen Fast and Furious Tokyo Drift? Objectively, the best and most important movie in the franchise, it frames a lot of what Tokyo Xtreme Racer is all about. You’re an outsider in a Japanese car driving the Tokyo streets looking for races, taking down gangs via beating them in races. The game is a dungeon crawler, a fighting game, a racing game, a tuning simulator, all rolled up into one of the most compelling driving experiences you can have. There are only a few cars, basically one track and then you drive. On paper the seems ridiculous, in practice it’s addictive. You buy your first car, go out onto the city corridor/high loop and look for rivals. Flash your headlights and you race. Once a race starts both cars have a life bar. As you fall behind, the life bar goes down. You win when your opponent’s life bar hits 0. You make money when you win. Upgrade your car, buy a new car, drive in circles and race people. Every rival you racer is in a team or gang. If you beat 5 people in a gang (for example) you’ll be challenged by their leader. Beat 2 leaders and a Boss challenges you. That’s the game. The music is Japanese dance music. The graphics are good. The track is rendered fantastically, the game runs smooth and fast and the cars look excellent. Every race takes place at night and the headlight effects are solid. Opponents AI is competitive and varied as well. They dodge traffic and try to stay in front. The driving skews arcade but it speaks a very specific and easy to understand language that makes adjusting and upgrading the car immediately noticeable and effective.
This game is a low budget, narrow game with a singular focus and scope to match. The game does everything it can to maximize it’s playability and replay value within that scope. It’s not a good driving game, but it’s consistent driving model with consistent physics. It’s more Ridge Racer than Gran Turismo. Games like this aren’t really made anymore, certainly not into a series. There are 2 games for Dreamcast, 4 for PS2 and 1 for GameBoy Advance and 1 for the Xbox 360. A middling series like this would never be able to carve out a series like this in today’s landscape. What makes this series so relevant even today is that is does things that modern games are always trying to do and that’s emergent gameplay moments and story telling.
For example, I am in my Nissan Silvia cruising through a dark tunnel and I flash my headlights at “Rolling Guy 5” to race him. He is driving an AE86. I take him down easily, and end up near a hard left turn between between a sedan and a fruit truck. Normally, when races finish you can just continue driving but this time out of nowhere the camera pans out and the leader of the Rolling Guy gang flashes his high beams at me. It’s early in the game so I know my car isn’t faster than this boss. The environment is my advantage because we are on a turn and Rolling Guy Leader is slowing down a lot for turns instead of drifting AND more significantly, we are between traffic. So the race starts and boom Rolling Guy leader rams into the back of the truck buying me time to pull away. I weave through traffic his life bar is going down quickly and I slam into an NPC car and Rolling Guy is catching up to me. I see him coming up in my rear view mirror and block him long enough to railroad him into the back of another car. I keep driving and win the race. A screen pops asking you if you want to go to the garage or keep driving. I choose keep driving and the cycle continues. It’s fantastic. No 2 races are the same and the game encourages to try racing people you lose to because you may just need to do the race in a segment of the track your car is better suited for. What’s amazing is the track is constantly changing, the competition is always an unknown. You battle and race at your own pace. It’s a magical feeling that I haven’t been able to replicate in anything else. That loop I described is the same in every main game in the series (the drift series is a 2 game that spin off that is a little bit different).
Tokyo Xtreme Racer wasn’t a huge seller but it sold well enough to warrant existing. It felt like a window into a subculture and world that is so unique. Japanese tuning culture is captivating and it’s sub cultures like touge racing and drifting have all filtered into US car culture in different ways. We see those influences in the early 2000’s movies and games. Tokyo Xtreme Racing was the Fast and Furious game we always wanted. It was the game that personified the low end Japanese tuner car culture that we fell in love with playing Gran Turismo. New racing games are obsessed with Super Cars and Hyper Cars that nobody can afford and that are really hard to drive. Tuning a Nissan Sylvia or a Honda S2K is where a lot of racing games peak in my opinion. My generation has an adoration for Japanese bubble era cars that seems boundless. That culture is hard to find in the gaming now. Toyota will barely appear in racing games these days, when the Supra used to be every bodies favorite car to buy early in Forza.
It’s weird to lament an era lost of games that could be…well not great but games aren’t just toys or simulations they are also artistic expressions and allow end users to participate in a vision. It’s why I loved the Armored Core series. It was hard and obtuse and not for everybody but it was unabashedly it’s own vision. Those games weren’t cookie cutter open world games. My biggest issue with the new Need for Speed game is that it’s open world and it doesn’t need to be. The world feels dead and the engine doesn’t handle processing the open world well. The game would have been fine with menus and racing segments. Tokyo Xtreme Racer never added tons of cities or hundreds of cars. There were other games for that. Now every game feels like the Assassin’s Creed version of the genre outside of the Dark Souls-like games and the constant rogue-like games. I miss games with AAA budgets that could be different. Check out the Tokyo Xtreme Racer series. Tokyo Xtreme Racer 2 and Import Tuner Challenge are the best games to check out, if you don’t want to play them all. If you like one of the, you will absolutely enjoy the entire series. Happy Thanksgiving. Peace
What is scarier than a MOBILE GAME!?! WITH MICRO-TRANSACTIONS NO LESS! I have spent the last 2 weeks deep into Mario Kart Tour thanks to one of my best friends asking me to add her as a friend on the game. I had been avoiding the Nintendo mobile games because the reaction has been so negative towards them in regards to micro-transactions and constant begging for money. Mario Kart Tour is notorious because of it’s subscription service needed to gain access to the 200cc races and awards. All that said, Mario Kart Tour has done the impossible. It’s made me care about Mario Kart again.
The only loading screen I’ll tolerate on my phone…
In my mind Mario Kart peaked on SNES, rebounded on game boy advanced and fell off a cliff with Double Dash on Gamecube. I hated Double Dash because it changed something so clean and perfect. I love the simplicity of every racer having a standard kart and the only difference between drivers was weight. It was simple in a time where Gran Turismo was making sim racers complex (and awesome). Double Dash adding a second racer, wider tracks and different Karts just killed the franchise for me. I would argue it kind of never recovered or felt the same (I know, it still sells). People always go back to the N64 Mario Kart and Double Dash is a cult classic at best. Mario Kart 8 takes all of the things I hated about Double Dash and multiplied it. You pick driver, kart, glider, wheels, all to get in a race and get blue shelled into oblivion if you race well. I just stopped and went to the superior Sonic All-Star series skillful driving actually won races and the visuals are far more compelling to me.
With my negative frame towards Mario Kart, I figured I would have the mobile game. Same issues where you pick driver, kart, glider, but Mario Kart Tour did something unique. It made winning and losing not matter as much as accumulating stars and getting a high score with combos. The game rewards skillful driving. Blue shells are rare. Tour made all the elements of Mario Kart come together in a beautiful symphony of score chasing and racing.
Let me attempt to explain the hook. You get into the app. Every week you have access to themed cups consisting of 3 tracks and a challenge. You earn stars by hitting a certain score on each track and accumulate enough stars to unlock the next track. Every week one track has a cumulative score board that pits your total score in the cup against the score of other real players. You get rewards based on where you place. When you pick your character, kart, and glider you see that each item has a combo multiplier on it. That combo is critical in getting high scores. Every track has certain characters that combo on that track. For example, Boo has the highest multiplier on all the ghost tracks. This combo system incentives the player to value every item and to try different combinations of karts and gliders on each track. This scoring system turns the game into an arcade game where your reaching for the high scores and it leads to some really great strategy.
Mario Kart DS was good
On the track winning still matters. First place gets you more points than 2nd and lower. The real trick is putting together a driver, kart, and glider combo that has the longest and highest multipliers. Every action on the track is scored and if you do actions in a close enough sequence they multiply. If I hit a jump pad, hit Bowser with a red shell and then drift boost that’s a 3x multiplier to the score those actions provide. Once you get good you can combo entire laps. The biggest combo breaker is getting shot by an opponent. This system incentivizes learning the best routes on the track. It rewards you for racing on 150cc or above to maximize points. It give the game replay value and because a race is only 2 laps the time commitment is minimal. The game uses coins and rubies as currency and you get coins in races. Rubies are won by completing challenges or you can buy them.
Mario Kart Tour is the best looking phone game I’ve ever played. Period. It looks amazing. The graphics and details are stunning. They animate faces and throws. This is a game I play with the volume on because the music is awesome. This game feels like a love letter to Mario in the same way Sonic All-stars racing is a love letter to Sega. The controls are fine. You have to manual drift if you want to get the points. The karts auto accelerate, you drift with your thumb sliding across and swipe up to throw items. You’ll hit walls but figure it out and once you do it feels great. The character acquisition is randomized. You pull down on a pipe to shoot something into the air and it reveals your reward. If the pipe is gold it means your getting something nice but recently I unlocked the entire Halloween set with green pipes. It’s not a perfect system but its rewarding enough. You can coins by using rubies to unlock a coin rubs race.
There are actually more mechanics present in the game as well but it all comes together to make a really compelling and complex Mario Kart that has me engaging with the series like never before. It’s sad that the game has been floundering compared to Nintendo’s financial expectations because they made a masterpiece. To the games credit, I’ve been enjoying myself and spent 0 dollars and used the free 2 week trial of the subscription. They messed up and made a fair mobile game and that makes it harder to monetize but I honestly wouldn’t feel guilty putting money into this experience. They earned it.
I also love live games and mobile games because they have the best themed events and Mario Kart was made for a good Halloween event and they didn’t disappoint. Luigi has his vacuum car to suck up ghosts from Luigi’s Mansion. Boo has multiple drivers and a dope pumpkin kart and there are lots of tracks dating back to SNES that take place at the haunted Boo mansions. It’s been awesome playing the Halloween tracks. Mario Kart Tour also has a really positive, vibrant Reddit community.
Disclaimer- I would feel remiss to not speak on the predatory nature of mobile games, especially games with randomized character acquisition and consistent attempts to have money spent throughout. These issues are exacerbated in a kid friendly series like Mario Kart. I have been able to make it through this game without spending a lot of money, but there a lot of opportunities to spend money. Screens pop up to advertise new deals and clicking on characters you don’t have will send you to the store front. It is also very easy to sign up for that subscription. This is not a game to leave with a child if you have a credit card attached.
If you have any interest in Mario Kart, check out Tour. It’s a fantastic game. Happy Halloween! Peace.
The Nintendo Switch’s online NES game selection is heavily maligned, and rightfully so. BUT while browsing the selection, I saw River City Ransom. I haven’t played the original in probably 20 years but seeing it there, with save states and handheld it was hard to pass up. I got hooked. If there is a list of NES games that hold up today, River City Ransom should be at the top. It’s an action-RPG belt scrolling brawler. It feels like a game that so far ahead of it’s time that it’s amazing the NES didn’t crumble under it’s weight. After getting my fill of the NES game, I needed more….
The 3DS has 2 relatively great River City Ransom games here in the US. River City Tokyo Rumble which came out a few years ago and the newer River City Rival Showdown that came out in 2017. I was amazed at how good River City Rival Showdown is. It is one of the best playing beat-em-ups and best looking 3DS game I have ever played. I know that sounds ridiculous with the retro 8-bit style in the game but there so many elements that the game a stunner. I made the mistake of playing Rival first. Had I played Tokyo Rumble initially I think that game would have resonated with me more. It’s not bad by any means but graphically it looked dated, the characters weren’t as interesting and the story wasn’t as interesting.
What are River City Rival Showdown and Tokyo Rumble? They are retro styled brawlers comparable to Double Dragon. They have a leveling system akin to an action-RPG. You play as Kunio, who is the strongest high school student and gang leader? The students are all in gangs, Warriors style, with their own turf and they are fighting to take over other schools and cities. It’s all very captivating, but it’s made very clear early on that Kunio is the man. He is a legend in both games. The gameplay loop is you fight low level characters until you hit a boss. Level up and gain skills along the way. You can buy gear, eat food, and engage in different side quests to get stronger. The combat is a simple affair- you can jump, kick, punch, block (Rival) and pick things up. You earn new skills that make you much stronger but they are all variations of these buttons. Sidenote- Double Dragon and Double Dragon II are bad brawlers. The controls suck and they never feel good. I know they are cannon to the River City Stories but the games are inferior in every way.
How do these games look? River City Rival Showdown is amazing looking. The 2D sprites are layered on these detailed realistic 3D backgrounds and it creates an almost shadow box effect. On top of that there is an abundance of bloom effects on the text and lighting in the city. It’s gorgeous. The viewpoint in rival showdown allows the details of the world to really shine through. The neon effects capture the grime of the city and make everything feel significant. Tokyo Rumble has a similar 2D on 3D background effect but the backgrounds lack the details and texture. The lighting and everything feels flat. The entire game feels flat so I imagine the visuals make sense in that regard. Rival Showdown looks stellar. The visuals hold up well.
Do you recommend them in 2019? I recommend Rival Sowdown wholeheartedly. The story has branching paths and is super engaging. The gameplay never feels dated and the movement is smooth. The graphics are timeless. I would buy this game again if I lost the cartridge. It held my attention in a way no game has in a long time. I beat it in 2 days. Tokyo Rumble….is hard to recommend. It feels dated, the UI is bad. The only thing I like about Tokyo Rumble is that you can save anywhere. In Rival, you have to save at cafes. Mobile games should all have save anywhere features. Both game can fill a hankering for River City gameplay and story but if you had to pick one pick River City: Rival Showdown.
What happened with River City Ransom: Underground? This is the most poorly balanced, frustrating, needlessly difficult game in the series. The graphics and animation are excellent. The characters all have amazing move sets that take advantage of this visual fidelity. The music is awesome. Then you start playing through the game and it all apart. You can only save in safe rooms which is terrible. The safe rooms are not well marked or easy to get to. Every enemy can kill you. Leveling up is too slow and money too hard to come by. Progress feels like a 2 steps forward 3 steps backwards process. Even as I have leveled up, I still don’t feel powerful. For me, feeling powerful is part of these games. The characters all seem like they would be strong but the hits do nothing. It’s not fun dying, being sent back all the way to the beginning of the map and have to fight your way back to where you were trying to get to. The game also relies on lots of “clear the enemies, or kill 6 people and the boss shows up” but they don’t tell you the clues in game. I have been playing with a guide open. The game just feels like a slog to play through. It looks like it would be amazing. Weapons are pretty useless as well.
What about River City Girls? This is a 2019 release and I can’t rave about it enough. I have it for switch. I haven’t finished it yet, but am already listening to the soundtrack on Spotify. The animation is perfect. I love pixel art and this game has a unique pixel art style. No chibi style characters, everyone has longer bodies and dimensions but the animations are stylized in a way that makes it look really unique. The game has a subtle 80’s aesthetic, and almost feels like a Molly Ringwald movie. The controls take a little getting used to but become second nature after a short time. I love the boss fights and you can save anywhere. The only glaring issue with this game is that you can’t quickly skip cutscenes when redoing boss fights. It takes about 3 button presses. The art style on the intros is so cool you might want to watch them anyways. They do manga style cut scenes and fighting game intros to boss fights. It’s truly a spectacle.
If you love River City Ransom and/or the belt scroll beat-em-up genre, it’s never been a better time to be a gamer. River City Rivals and River City Girls are masterpieces. They both prove that the genre still has life. I haven’t been this impressed with this style of game since Scott Pilgrim vs. The World came out for Xbox Arcade. Thanks for reading. Peace!
I always feel like you can get a sense of who is going to win the Super Bowl by looking at the media that surrounds the league. Rosters, coaches, injuries, etc… those things help on a week to week basis but I think you can look at who Sports Illustrated and the ancillary media highlight to get a sense of who the NFL wants the casual audience to follow. It’s hard factual science, trust me. That said, I think Madden Ultimate Team is the real indicator of what the big team and story is going to be in the NFL. It’s not about the cover of Madden per se, the cover of Madden is reactionary. The cover reflects who was the most popular player or team from the year before. Ultimate Team is updated every week and is the most current portion of Madden and early in the year the giveaways, pictures and promos are set slightly in advance. This is where I glean my insight from and this is why I think the Browns are going to have an incredible year.
Yes. Welcome Back!
The first Twitch giveaway this year was Jim Brown, the greatest football player of all time. His card is an 85 and his Madden Ultimate skill is a cheat code (unbelievable stiff arm and trucking ability). The twitch prime free cards are huge! They advertise them everywhere and this year it’s a Browns player. It’s THE Browns player. This is clue 1.
The Greatest Football Player of ALL TIME. Don’t @ me…
The second clue is the Madden Ultimate Team solo challenge NFL Epics Event. You have to complete a series of challenges based off of Baker Mayfield’s successes last season. For example, you need to manufacture the comeback win against the Jets that started Baker’s career. Once you complete these challenges you are awarded and 86 rated Baker Mayfield. At the beginning of MUT season, this was one of the best cards in the game at the most important position. Everybody who played Ultimate Team early this year used Mayfield for those challenges and won that card.
The next bit of evidence is Joe Haden has an 88 rated Flashback card right now as one of the first big flashback cards. Haden is one of the few great picks the Browns have made over the last 20 years. On top of that, one of the pre-order bonus cards was an 82 rated Odell Beckham Jr. card.
Basically, for Ultimate Team every early player had their skill positions filled by the Browns. Baker at Quarterback, Jim Brown at running back, Odell Beckham Jr. at wide receiver and if you’re lucky Haden at cornerback. That is a lot of in your face Browns action for Madden. Not to get into the fact that Baker Mayfield was on Stone Cold Steve Austin’s new show, the Browns were on the cover of Sports Illustrated, and every time I turn on FS1 they are debating if the Browns are over or underrated. This is the kind of coverage reserved for an established good team like the Patriots or Steelers….but this is all for the Browns.
It really feels like this is the team that may turn the corner and be special. I know no Browns fan has EVER said that before but I genuinely feel like Madden 20 has all but guaranteed a Browns Super Bowl appearance (they did all of this with the Rams last year….). I am so hype! What could possibly go wrong?!? That said, week 1 coming up! GO BROWNS!
Saint Seiya was my formative anime. It is the show that felt like mine. I didn’t read much of the manga but the original anime Saint Seiya Sanctuary from ’86 (Knights of the Zodiac in the US, early 90’s) is a masterpiece. It weaves an amazing narrative around impossible odds, deception, religion, and most importantly friendship. Specifically, the show focuses on male friendship in a way a lot of shows don’t. As somebody who values my friends dearly, Saint Seiya is a perfect outlet for me. It was also beautifully animated and violent enough that the stakes always felt high. Important characters can and did die and that made every episode feel important.
The quick overview of the Saint Seiya story arc is there is a prophecy is told that things will get dark surrounding humanity due to Athena. Knights are lurking in the shadows of humanity to protect Athena and keep humanity safe. Once the prophecy is told that Athena may lead to the end of humanity, the Knights are split into 2 factions, those that still support Athena and those who want her dead. The Bronze Knights are sworn to guard Athena no matter what and Seiya is a bronze knight. There are 5 who fight to protect her. They end up fighting other Knights and enemies in an attempt to protect Athena and find out what is really threatening the world. The 80’s anime told this story over 73 episode, with almost 120 total that delve into a couple different storylines as well. The Netflix show is at 6, I didn’t expect it to get too far past origin stories and setting the stakes.
The 3 biggest things that seem to come up with the Netflix Saint Seiya are the animation, the update and localization, and revised story. The animation looks cheap. I hate to use that word, because I don’t want to insult the artist behind the show. The character models and armor stay true to the source material and look good. The show has a consistent artistic look and feel. The issue is once things start moving you realize how jilted and stiff things feel. The best comparison I can make is watching the Korean animated show Tobots. It looks fine, but in motion it never feels smooth. The fight scenes really suffer in Saint Seiya because of the animations. I think the show avoids fights and it leads to this weird thing where the main characters just talk and blast out a special move to end the fight. Saint Seiya has always relied heavily on big special moves in fights but usually there is a lot of hand to hand combat as well because using the big moves had a lot of risk associated with them (once a Saint see’s your special move, they can avoid it) because you have only 1 or 2 chances to hit with the move. This show is basically people talking and doing a big move. The only long form action is when the cast is fighting the military tanks and air craft. The Saints vs. Saints fights have been underwhelming thus far. My biggest disappointment is that the PS4/PC fighting game from a few years ago was better animated.
The localization isn’t bad per se, the voice acting is good but names were changed and Shun (an effeminate guy) was transformed into Shaun, a woman. I don’t mind Shun being a woman now, but they don’t utilize the gender change to add anything meaningful to the character. It was more impactful having Shun undermining traditional male stereotypes and masculine tropes on the show instead. I do hate the name changes. They changed all the main character names and then dropped the names of the special moves. Meteor fist (Seiya’s big attack) is now the Japanese name of the move. It makes it harder to remember the moves and it feels out of place when these English speaking characters use Japanese for their special moves. Phoenix Ikki is one of the coolest characters in the series and he still seems awesome in the Netflix show but his name is now Phoenix Nero. That name just means nothing to me, and because he looks like Ikki, it’s hard to connect with as a long time fan.
The story made a lot of changes to Seiya’s origin. Seiya finds out about his cosmo in the show during a fight with some bullies in an ally. They record him glowing and put it on Youtube and that’s how Athena finds out about Seiya. I don’t mind that origin, it shows that the world is really clueless about the Knights and Athena and the youtube moment gives Seiya a cool moment of discovery like a superhero discovering their mutant power. They also change how he met Athena and how the 5 saints became bonded in brotherhood/friendship. I don’t love the characterization of Hyoga. He is an assassin that turns to the correct side of history after a conversation with Athena. Hyoga was always confident but this show tends to feign confidence by making them act mean (or murderous). They haven’t strongly established the Pope as a threat yet and really focus on this military conflict between the Saints and the government forces.
The timing and pacing of the show feels off, like the characters make references to being a Saint like they have been in the fold for years but then other moments act like it’s the first time they are hearing about Athena and the cloths. It’s jarring when it happens and it happens a lot. They neutered the galaxian war battles to find out who was going to be one of Athena’s knights. It became a warehouse brawl with 0 fanfare. This is odd because Athena’s earthly reincarnation is wealthy beyond comprehension. One of the best parts of the original anime was the galaxian war tournament. It was like the super bowl where all the Saints fight each other to figure out who was the strongest and who would protect Athena. It was also a great character building segment that felt organic. The warehouse uses this moment to introduce characters but it feels forced. The Saints engage in some forced discourse and then in one hit they win or lose. What felt like a wrestling pay-per-view in the original anime feels like a knock off fight club scene in the new show.
The world building feels off. The show opens seemingly taking place in a 2019ish real world with real rules. Youtube videos, phones, and even military equipment is all present. The galaxian wars felt more realistic, as they are taking place in a warehouse. Killing the realism is a weird talking man hole cover for security that feels way more technologically advanced than anything happening in the world. Then they will immediately jump to a fire island or ethereal area. It doesn’t flow well and it’s hard to tell what the rules of the universe are. The original anime felt real and consistent with it’s rules and physics. People also bled in that show and only like 1 hit makes a person bleed in this series, yet they reference death and killing each other a lot. I would have been more intrigued if they were in the real world like heroes with secret identities and navigating this war like that. It’s almost too early to tell how this will play out.
In regards to how they discuss cosmo, what I find odd is as soon as they introduce the concept of cosmo, they start discussing it like we didn’t get the abridged notes but instead read the entire novel. They immediately start talking about how they “feel” each others cosmo and other references that feel out of place in episode 5. Cosmo usually feels more like a power level from Dragon Ball and is a very tangible force. The show makes it feel more flimsy, like the force from Star Wars.
My biggest grievance with this release is why did Netflix only choose to show 6 episodes? The show starts getting good in episode 6 and then the series is done. They do all this character and world building, at the expense of pacing only to finally have a banger of an episode and the series halts. I forced my way to episode 6 but now I want more after that episode.
While it may sound like my experience with this series is all negative so far, that’s not the case. I actually enjoy the show. There is something so cool about seeing a new Saint Seiya on Netflix. The armor looks great and the characters I know and love are present. The best part is my 10 year old son, loves the show and he doesn’t have any of my previous baggage. I think if the show appeals to a 10 year old, then it’s a success. I fear the pace and look of the early episodes will kill this show before it has a chance to shine.
What is the best episode? Phoenix Rising (Ep. 6). I’ve referenced it a few times but the action is incredible and the character development is strong. Visually, I think it makes the fights feel the best. Phoenix hits hard and it’s conveyed well. The dialogue and flashbacks are great and there are some very compelling moments that harken back to the importance of friendship and self determination. Phoenix Nero looks amazing. He is the coolest saint and has the best cloth in the series (in my opinion). He looks amazing in this CG and seems to be the character most benefitting from the shift in design. They kept Phoenix’ back story the same as the show and it resonates really well. It’s gut wrenching and violent in meaningful ways and makes Phoenix a sympathetic figure.
Will I finish the series once it’s released in it’s entirety? Yes. Out of both obligation and pleasure. This is a show worth checking out but the first couple of episodes won’t grab you. Watch episode 6 and marinate in what the series promises to be. Thanks for reading, Peace!
J3Blackgamer 