Mario Bros.

Like Duck Hunt, Mario Bros. is another NES game that I first played in the early '90s in Georgia, USA (it may be the first video game I ever played, period). Whereas I enjoyed playing Duck Hunt, however, I never really cared much for Mario Bros. Increasing a high score has never been much of an incentive for me in video games, so when that's a game's main draw, especially one as repetitive as Mario Bros., it's hard for me to get into it. Duck Hunt shares this same issue, but give a kid a toy gun and they'll automatically be more interested in whatever's in front of them.

Every stage, or "phase", retains the same layout throughout the whole game, though the platforms occasionally change color every so often so you can kind of feel like you're progressing. As you advance, the game adds harder enemies, fireballs (fuck fireballs), and sometimes covers the platforms in ice to make moving around even more annoying. After Phase 11 the game starts to reuse various phases and it continues like that until Phase 99, in which the game goes to Phase 0 and starts over. No kill screen here!

Though I didn't play the game much, I do remember playing it with my mom and brother. It may be the first game where I learned to grief as I enthusiastically did everything in my power to get my brother killed, despite his protests. Along with that, my favorite things about the game were using the POW Blocks and running to one side of the screen and appearing at the opposite. I thought that was so cool.

I mistakenly thought my copy of the game was a dual game pak that included Duck Hunt, but that seems to have been Super Mario Bros. The version in my head apparently doesn't exist!

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Games I've Beaten
Entry #4
#3: Duck Hunt

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Duck Hunt

A light-gun shooter released for the NES in October 1985 (or April 1984 if you lived in Japan), Duck Hunt came out about three years before I was born. One of my earliest memories as a human being is of playing this game - it might even be the first video game I ever played, actually - which means we would have had it in the early '90s in Georgia, USA. Naturally I don't remember too much, with the sound effects being what stuck with me the most: the intro music when you begin a game, the jingle it plays when the dog shows the ducks you killed, the sound of the gunshot, and the dog's bark as he jumps into the grass; and, of course, his damned laugh when you fail. I do know that I tried to shoot that dog on multiple occasions, and if I were playing Vs. Duck Hunt, the arcade version of the game, I would have been able to!

I played the game with my brother and mom. I seem to remember her getting on to us for pressing the barrel of the NES Zapper against the television screen when we were trying to "cheat". For our multiplayer, I think we just took turns with the Zapper as opposed to hooking up an NES controller so another player could control the ducks. I'm not sure we even knew about this two-player option!

I always thought the copy we owned contained the original Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt, not Super Mario Bros. The version I have in my head doesn't seem to exist, so we must have owned Mario Bros. separately. This leads me to believe that my family bought the NES "Action Set" bundle, released in 1988. From Wikipedia's NES article:

... the NES was released in four different bundles: the Deluxe Set, the Control Deck, the Action Set and the Power Set. 

...

The Action Set, however, was released in 1988 was sold for US$149.99 and came with the console, two game controllers, an NES Zapper, and a dual game pak containing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt.

I didn't know that! We wouldn't have owned the Action Set until the early '90s, however, as we didn't own any game consoles until we moved to Georgia, which was sometime in either 1990 or 1991. I suspect this was because we lived in Germany beforehand.

Some may question why Duck Hunt is on my "Game I've Beaten" list. Games that don't have a defined end (reaching the kill screen after level 99 doesn't count) can be added to the list as long as I experienced most, or all, of the content the game has to offer. Playing all three modes in Duck Hunt qualifies for this (though I was never really a fan of the clay shooting), as the game doesn't really change throughout. I do wish I had some record of my highscores or even the latest round I reached, though.

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Games I've Beaten
Entry #3
#2: Rez HD / #4: Mario Bros.

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Rez HD

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This post contains major spoilers for Rez HD.

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Child of Eden arrived from GameFly recently. I've been interested in it ever since seeing Tetsuya Mizuguchi demonstrate it for the first time using the Kinect. As a Kinect owner myself, I was excited to see something that wasn't some sort of fitness trainer or minigame collection. Hearing Child of Eden described as a spiritual successor to Rez made me finally decide to check it out, so after buying $20 worth of Microsoft Points and using half of them on the Dragon Age II: Legacy downloadable content, I used the other half to download Rez HD from Xbox Live Arcade.

I knew very little about Rez beforehand. It was something I'd heard mentioned enough times to know it was sort of a cult classic, though, and what I did know I learned years ago, having seen a few screenshots and forum posts about it. I knew the game had an odd graphical style, that it had something to do with music, and that there was a vibrator peripheral released for it. This little bit of knowledge didn't tell me much other than that the game was weird, and I felt it was something that would be difficult for me to grasp and play or even understand. It didn't even seem like much of a game in the traditional sense I had known at the time, and all of this was enough for me not to investigate further. Thankfully, all my preconceptions were wrong.

Perhaps you can see why one might be confused as to the nature of this game.

Rez is weird, but only in its visual design and use of music; from a gameplay perspective it's pretty straightforward. To put it plainly, it's a rail shooter - you hold the A button, hover a cursor over the enemies/objects you want to shoot, and release to fire, all the while being guided on a predetermined path that never changes. Shooting red power-ups give you the ability to use an Overdrive, which, when activated, automatically shoots everything on-screen and is useful for the more hectic parts of the game when you have dozens of things flying toward you. Shooting blue power-ups (known as Progress Nodes) fill up your "life" meter, in which you level up into the next form when full. These forms basically act as your health bar, with every hit you take devolving you into the previous form, and the game ending if you get hit at form 0. I'm glad I watched the tutorial video before playing, as none of this information is given in the actual game. It took me until my second playthrough of Area 2 to fully understand everything. I remember thinking during the Area 1 boss fight, "I don't know what's going on but apparently I'm doing good!" as I watched its health bar drop. I hadn't even known that I had to be hit by things to devolve, thinking that maybe it was based on how many enemies I failed to shoot as they flew past me.

Well, actually, there was one thing I didn't realize until completing the first four areas. Feeling like something was missing, I did a quick search to find out I had to get 100% analyzation on every level to unlock Area 5, the game's last level. See, each Area consists of 10 layers, and to travel to the next layer, you can either shoot the Password Protectors (in the form of a cube) that appear, which are what give you the analyzation points, or you can do nothing and wait a little longer to travel to the next layer automatically, gaining nothing. I thought that the Password Protectors were just a way to jump ahead more quickly, not realizing they were necessary to complete the game.

The lack of explanation goes for the story, too, with everything told through text on a separate menu outside of any gameplay. Rez is about your infiltration of a network run by Eden, an A.I. that has recently become self-aware and shut herself down. Your goal is to bypass Eden's security, find her, and reboot the system. It's slightly more complicated than that (and I really mean only slightly) but that's the gist of it.

Even with the confusion the game wasn't very challenging, as I only failed and needed to restart an area three times throughout the whole game. They were all for dumb reasons, too. On Area 2 it was because I didn't realize I needed to turn around when the boss came out of its shell, on Area 3 it was because I didn't use Overdrives correctly on the final stage of its boss, and it also happened right before finishing the game at Area 5; I used all my Overdrives at the beginning of the encounter with Eden, not realizing that it was a total boss rush. It makes complete sense that a boss rush would be in there, actually, but I thought I was defeating her for good right then and there. The game doesn't have any checkpoints, but the areas are all fairly short, so having to replay them wasn't a big deal. I actually enjoyed it, as it gave me more time with an otherwise brief game. I've never been into score attack modes or anything like that, so I knew that the story mode and the few extras I unlocked after beating it was all I would get out of it.

The boss in Area 4 reminded me of Seven Force from Gunstar Heroes.

There were a couple of specific moments that reminded me of some other music-based games, as well. There is a form that Mars, the Area 2 boss, takes that gave me a heavy Everyday Shooter vibe. The targets you shoot prior to Mars coming out of its shell look exactly like something out of that game, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that Jonathan Mak was influenced by Rez, with the similarities the games share in regards to how the actions of the player and music are tied in to each other. There were also some camera sweeps during other boss stages that reminded me of Space Channel 5.

A lot about Rez just emanates a feeling of cool, whether it's the way your character pulsates with the beat of the song, or how your every action is timed rhythmically with the music. The game appropriately hits its high point with the final level as you progress through the evolution of life on Earth, from its beginnings in the sea to the exploration of outer space, with it all ending in a showdown with Eden as you face off forms of all the previous bosses you encountered. It's also my favorite use of music, featuring "Fear" by Adam Freeland. All of this is enhanced with an additional Xbox 360 controller laying on your crotch with the trance vibration functionality activated. That is what I was supposed to do, right? Either way, I recommend it.

Make me feel it! Make me feel alive again!

I'm glad I decided to play this before starting Child of Eden. I learned while doing some research for this that Child of Eden is actually a prequel, so that'll be interesting. I'm sure I'll feel even cooler controlling everything with my hands, but I'll have to see how well that actually works. Regardless, Rez HD was a fun, albeit short experience - not that being short is a bad thing. I prefer a game that's tightly knit as opposed to one that drags on, and Rez never felt dull. 800 points well spent.

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Games I've Beaten
Entry #2
#1: Alien Syndrome / #3: Duck Hunt

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Alien Syndrome

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Additional Notes:

I also

• beat the NES version of this game on co-op with my brother.

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Yeah... this is gonna be a short post.

Originally an arcade game developed and published by Sega in 1987, an NES version of the game was published by Tengen in 1989. Alien Syndrome was a two-player game in which you took control of either Ricky or Mary as they attempted to rescue their captured comrades from the alien threat. Rescuing a certain amount of hostages would open the exit to the boss, which would allow you to proceed to the next level after being defeated. With an isometric viewpoint, the basic gameplay involved shooting various aliens as you tried to find your buddies. A map (showing the location of everyone needing rescue) and better weapons could be found to assist in the mission. 

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"Take that, you squishy purple blob thingy!"

I think it was the box art that always drew me to load up the game more than anything, as it stood out from my collection. I found the simplistic tunes and sound effects endearing, and really liked the design of the various bosses. I was so young when I played the game that I don't remember much else, though I have faint memories of playing co-op with my brother.

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"yo why u gotta hate"

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Games I've Beaten
Entry #1
#2: Rez HD

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Games I've Beaten: Introduction

Playing games since the age of three (or maybe earlier, who knows?!), a 21-year-old is likely to have beaten a lot of games. Going through a database of pretty much every game ever made, I made a list titled "Games I've Beaten", which consists of exactly what you would think. After finishing, I was surprised by my results. The following is a list of the number of games I have beaten per platform:

Arcade - 4

Game Boy - 3

Game Boy Color - 3

NES - 10

Nintendo 64 - 12

Nintendo DS - 9

Nintendo GameCube - 6

Nintendo Wii - 7

PC - 7

PlayStation - 21

PlayStation 2 - 30

PlayStation 3 - 16

PSP - 5

Sega Dreamcast - 5

Sega Genesis - 18

Sega CD - 2

Xbox - 22

Xbox 360 - 69

This all comes to a total of 249 games. The reason I was surprised by my results? I figured the number would be a lot higher. I was also shocked to see how many Xbox 360 games I've beaten compared to every other platform. Thinking back to my past though, these numbers started to seem less crazy.

Over the years, I have played a LOT of games. If I were to make a list of games that I've played but never necessarily beat, that 249 would turn into a much larger number. When I was younger, I owned several more games at once than what I do now. I would often get new games without first beating the ones I already had, and eventually the number of games amassed to such a large amount that I would never have enough time to play through them all. The new games became old, I would lose interest, and then I would get something newer. This continued until around the time of the Xbox 360.

Another factor that plays into the low amount of games beaten is local multiplayer. When I was younger, all of my best friends were my next door neighbors or people that lived on the same street as me. A game that a single person would play through once or twice and put down became a game that lasted several months amongst a group of friends. Games like Cruis'n USA (which I have discovered recently a lot of people hate), Super Smash Bros. (99 lives for all!), Mario Party, and various Sega Genesis games would be played for several hours a day. Even games without a multiplayer component, like Mega Man Legends or Pokémon Snap would rarely be played alone. Then of course, you had Pokémon Red/Blue, in which everyone had their own Game Boy and would sit outside playing through their own adventure, occasionally trading (and later came the actual trading card game, which also lasted us all a while).

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Mmmmmm. So good.

Eventually, everyone moved away from each other, and with us all being console gamers and online play not yet viable, those several hour long multiplayer sessions sadly came to an end. Living in a new area full of douchebags I wasn't interested in associating with, playing games by myself became more common (until Halo, but that shall be reserved for a separate post). As I've become older, the importance of beating the games I play has increased, and I figured the new generation of consoles would be a fresh start and a great way to change my game-playing habits. Now, with services like GameFly, playing through more games has become easier and cheaper than ever before.

So, I have decided to start a series of posts titled "Games I've Beaten", in which I dedicate a post to each game on my list. Going through the list alphabetically, I will write as much as I can about each game, so depending on the game and how long ago I beat it, the amount I write could be miniscule, or it could be quite long. I will stray from the alphabetical format for every new game I have beaten as well, after there has been enough time since its completion. This is to ensure I have had enough time to actually think about the game and the aftereffects of hype have worn off.