Retro Review - Micro Machines (SNES)

I have recently fallen into the possesion of a tool called a Super Smart Joy which allows me to plug my Super Nintendo controllers into my computer via USB. This means that I can now play emulated games as if I was playing it on the original console. This means I can do accurate reviews of old games from the 90's that you either worship as holy gods amoung games or scorne as primitive , ugly apes. I myself fall somewhere in the middle where by some games are certainly worthy of eternal praise (*cough* Zelda: Link to the Past *cough*cough* Chrono Trigger *cough*) others are worthy of eternal damnation (the laughably titled Shaq Fu). With this perfectly balanced and critical mindset firmly locked in place I give to you my first ever retro review...Micro Machines.

Micro Machines falls into the category I've penned as "non-serious racer" whereby instead of driving on all your favourite real life courses and winning money to spend on your real life dream racing car you drive in imagined, varied and creative environments and reality is thrown out of the moving car and backed over. As a person who doesn't give a single shit about actual motor sports I welcome the non-serious racer as the only type of racing game I'm actually willing to play. Anyway in the case of Micro Machines you race a number of different motorised miniatures around homemade circuits created in everyday settings. You race speedboats around bathtubs, trucks around sandcastles and RC's around pooltables. The levels are where the game truely shines because they're environments thay are extremely familiar but with a dash of fun thrown in. Watch out for the honey on the breakfast table circuit...that sort of thing. It's worth slogging it out in singleplayer just to see where you'll end up next and slog it out you will. Some of the levels, although highly imaginative, are frustration builders. Ah yes there's nothing that can get my teeth grinding quite like a cruel retro game. The problem is that you need to have the levels perfectly memorised at some points because otherwise you'll miss the 90 degree turn and sink into a very deep puddle. The overhead view is somewhat to blame for this but really it's the technology of the age that's the real culprit here. Back then depth couldn't really be done and that's what a good racing game needs. A good retro racer will make up for this by having a map to look at or with powerups to make recovery a little easier. In the case of MM the top down view was their solution and it would work really well except for the fact that you can't see more than about an eighth of a second in front of you, which regularly spells disaster. Remember how in GTA and GTA2 how you'd be trying to make your high speed getaway and then smack into a wall that wasn't there just microseconds before? You'll know what I mean. In fact anyone who's played one of the old top down GTA games will notice a similarity in gameplay. Another niggle is the sound. There is no music during the race at all which is horrible because the only sound that IS present is a horrible 16 bit monotone that fiercly grates at my ears like nothing from recent memory. This is something they failed to fix in the games sequal aswell, much to my disappointment. Actually MM2 was very disappointing for me indeed. All MM2 did was present the same environments, arranged differently. That and they made the characters all lame. In MM, instead of a roster of familiar characters they instead opted for a roster of familiar stereotypes. They were cartoonish and amusing. MM2 does it as well but removes the fun by trying to make them look more real. I'd officially had it with MM2 when they chucked in a pinball level. The reason I disliked it was because it removed the sense that the level had been made by characters in the game. That and it raised the question "how'd they get the cars in a pinball machine?" So just to wrap things up if your interested the original Micro Machines is better but be ready to get angry for not possesing the ninja reflexes necessary to play through some of the courses on the first couple of attempts.

If Life Were a Videogame - Katamari's

Life is no walk in the park. Slogging it through school, looking for a job, getting no shifts 'coz Sam's Warehouse has gone into receivership (fuck); this is life. We hate it sometimes but it's all we've got. Life is full of problems but according to We Love Katamari (read my reviews my minions) all of lifes problems can be solved in some abstract way using Katamari's. All anyone has to do in We Love Katamari is stand outside waving their arms and yelling to get the attention of the King of the Cosmos and then after a short brown-nosing session the King will order that a Katamari be dispatched to solve the problem. Let me just put this into a real life scenario. In real life, to get a job, you need a slick resume a suit and the skills to convince an employer that you are, in actuality, THE SHIT. It can be grooling and take anywhere up to and beyond a week. In the world of Katamari's however, if I wanted a job I'd stand outside shouting "Jobs!" over and over and eventually the King of the Cosmos will hear me out. At first he will scourne the idea of helping me but all I'd have to do is say "the King is jolly good" and he'll bend over backwards to make sure I get employed. Then what'll happen is the Prince will roll things up in a katamari until he can roll up the employer or even the entire company and then somehow this will get me a job. It's quick, fun and abstract. I like it. Plus you get to chat with the crazy old King of the Cosmos and he'll probably turn your workplace into a planet. Actually this kinda brings me to another point. If life WERE a world of rolling shit up to turn into stars then We Love Katamari is kind of disturbing. People and animals are often rolled up into katamaris along with all sorts of other crap and these katamari's are always either thrown into space as planets or blown into stardust. Two veeeerrrry unappealing fates there. So although Katamaris are seeminly excellent tools for employment or building campfires they come at the price of potentially being rolled up between a dozen thumbtacs and an elephants arse before being thrown into space to orbit helplessly until you die. Still, we all need jobs.

The Joys of Physical Education

I've been reflecting a lot on my youth as of late. Reflecting is perhaps a poor descritive as what I'm really doing is frantically digging because my memory is really quite horrible but that's probably for another post. EHHH-nyway I had recently tripped over a rather amusing nugget of repressed memory and have been giving it a rather large amount of thought. It was my first year of high school and I was in a PDH (Physical Development and Health) class. Not one of the horrible PE lessons where roid rage is concentrated firmly on crappy athletes (ala me) and kids who forgot their sport uniform (I avoided this because that would make me the ultimate PE teacher target). No we were in the classroom being fed the ills of smoking. At this point in my education I was probably in my 100th "no smoking" lesson of my life and was quite tired of hearing that they kill you. Just for the record I didn't and don't currently smoke. ONE thing I can remember clearly from that lesson was one of those godawful cartoon characters who skate, rollerskate and use inappropriate surfie slang. I remember a character saying, and I quote, "I'd rather drink a fish milkshake" in regard to smoking. At the time I dismissed it as silly. My friend and I joked about rather smoking than the milkshake. On reflection I think I was on to something. A fish milkshake is extremely objectionable. I WOULD rather smoke a cigarette than drink a fish milkshake...who wouldn't? This got me further wondering. Of course the point of the cartoon was to use hyperbole to stop kids smoking but really didn't it just discredit itself? Next to a fish milkshake a cigarette looks pretty good and once you've started kids along this train of thought there's alot of stuff that cigarettes compare favourably to. "I know I'm a pack a day smoker at 14, but at least I don t eat shit sandwiches." The cartoon would've been far more effective if it had gone for the honest route. "I'd rather not smoke at all thanks, I want a more healthy lifestyle" or even just a "no thanks" would've been FAR more effective and FAR less detrimental. I feel that PE would be extremely more effective if it managed to equip kids with the skills to wriggle out of peer pressure. Saying "I'd rather a fisk milkshake" to the cool kids when they're offering fags just makes you seem like the "weird kid." Getting out of it and still having friends is the goal here isn't it? Most people quietly respect a person who's not out to impress by giving in to pressure. Anyway so I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that PDH was and still is a waste of everybodies time and it can suck my cock.

Re-reviewing Unskippable

As the series as developed it has indeed gotten better. I actually find it more professional and amusing than the earlier ones (Eternal Sonata). So I just thought I'd update my stance on this show and give it a thumbs up. It's still no Zero Punctuation but I like it all the same.