PixlBit

Stage Select: Favorite Game Over Screens

The Game Over sequence in Banjo-Kazooie is definitely one of the best game overs, but I figured you guys would probably talk about it during the podcast and I don't have much to add except that Grunty looks a bit like Posh Spice in the Game Over sequence.

1. Moonfall in Majora's Mask. Doesn't really need much introduction, but I strongly believe that Aonuma's team must have been thinking of the scene in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor dreams she's at a playground when a nuclear weapon hits downtown L.A, because the last few seconds of MM's bad ending looks an awful lot like that scene, though made slightly more family-friendly. "You've met with a terrible fate, haven't you?"

2. Ninja Gaiden.  Tecmo literally tries to ransom Ryu Hayabusa for quarters. In the arcade version, he is tied down, with a buzz saw slowly descending towards his chest.  If you don't insert a quarter before the timer runs out, the screen turns red just as the buzz saw reaches him, and you hear Ryu groaning in pain as the screen fades out.

3. When you lose Missile Command, the screen has an explosion that displays the words "The End," rather than game over.  That was a deliberate design choice. The game's lead programmer said working on the game gave him nightmares of nuclear war. While the 2600 version was sanitized to be an alien civilization under attack by another alien race, the arcade version was meant to be a Soviet nuclear attack on the United States. Originally, the cities had name labels on-screen, specifically the names of six cities in Atari's home state of California. Atari removed the names to make the game's objective more personal, to encourage players to see the setting as their own home states and cities. Part of why this was an effective  game over was the fact that you were only delaying the inevitable. In the end, despite your best efforts, your cities, and all human life, were doomed. This sense of futility really comes into play if you run out of antiballistic missiles, at which point you can only watch helplessly as your cities are annihilated. Keep in mind that Missile Command was developed at a time when Cold War tensions were the worst they'd been since the Cuban Missile Crisis. With just five seconds of a flashing octagonal shape on a red background, Missile Command hits home with the point that in an all-out nuclear exchange, everybody loses.

Cage Match:

Two weak games in their series. I'm going to give it to Dante. He could kick Kain's ass. That's Dante's job, after all.

The Trails/Legend of Heroes series is bigger and older than you thought. The first Legend of Heroes game released in 1989 on the PC-Engine CD. In turn, LoH was originally the sixth installment of the Dragon Slayer series, which began in 1983 and includes two NES titles, Faxanadu (based loosely on the second DS game, Xanadu) and Legacy of the Wizard, which was Dragon Slayer IV.

As far as I was concerned, the Game Boy was a technological miracle on the level of the moon landing. My mom was dismayed at how many AA batteries I went through. My birthday present 3 weeks after Christmas when I got the Game Boy was the rechargeable battery back Nintendo made for it. 

Right after Christmas that year, my family flew to Germany by way of Space-A (we actually spent more time at Dover AFB in Delaware than in Germany). My dad was told by the Air Force that the Game Boy would interfere with the navigation of the plane, and I couldn't even bring it with me, so I had to leave it at home. But when we got on the plane, the military flight crew spent the whole flight playing their new Game Boys. I was mad, especially since there wasn't much to do in Dover but hang around the arcade at AAFES, and I didn't have any quarters. My dad actually called the Air Force and was told I could have brought the Game Boy with me, I just couldn't play it on the plane. 

i got this with my Game Boy for Christmas in 1989. I didn't think anything of the differences between it and the NES games, especially since at that poikt we'd only gotten two Super Mario games on NES and the second one was a huge departure from the first. I just thought it was awesome to have a portable Mario game, and one that played like an actual game instead of the simple Game & Watch/Tiger LCD games.

Nintendo released Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training for Nintendo Switch in 2019 in Japan, Europe, and Australia. I'm guessing the 3DS game didn't do so well in the US.

Tales of Vesperia was probably the only Xbox 360 game I cared to revisit, I was glad to see it get a Switch release. It is a beautiful game, and it has one of the best casts of playable characters with great voices to boot. 

I, too, miss world maps sometimes. Tales of Hearts, which came immediately after Vesperia, was the last Tales with a world map. A lot of games not only don't have a world map, but travel is accomplished just by selecting an icon to a number of disconnected areas. However, Dragon Quest VIII and DQXI did drawn-to-scale game worlds just right.

I actually thought about the Secret of Mana snow region and the music that Julian brought up during the podcast. That was some really good music. One thing about Narshe that I forgot to mention was the sound of the wind that played in the background. Final Fantasy VI has some of the best wind sound I've ever heard in a video game to this day. I actually got to hear the first World of Ruin Theme, which has the wind sound overlaid by funereal organ and piano music, played live at the Distant Worlds concert in Omaha in 2013, for which I had bought backstage passes to meet Yoshitaka Amano. He signed my FFIX cover art.

Stage Select: 

1. Tifa. She's tough and she legit seems like she'd be good company. I wish FF7 had a longer segment with her as the party lead. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything like this.

2. Geralt. In addition to his knowledge of monsters and poisons, I like his deadpan delivery. Plus, he knows where to hook up with the ladies. 

3. Going to go in a slightly different direction with Laura S. Arseid from the Trails of Cold Steel series. I've been on a pretty big Falcom kick lately, even writing a blog on some of their games back in February, and I've been playing through the Cold Steel series. She's a proud noble swordswoman, striving to become a master of her family's school of swordsmanship, yet she's willing to learn and grow, and she's one of the best party members in battle.

Cage Match:

Super Mario Bros. all the way. Tetris is a pretty versatile game, but in the end I'll take tight platforming action over dropping blocks any day. Super Mario Bros is simply a timeless classic that's still playable to this day. Even on the Game Boy, i spent more time playing Super Mario Land than Tetris.

However, one version of Tetris that I think doesn't get enough appreciation is the Atari version by Ed Logg. It has some really good music that because of the greater popularity of Nintendo's versions never got as much traction as Korobeiniki (the "type A" music from the Game Boy that's now a staple in almost every version released since). Tengen's NES Tetris, which was taken off of shelves after Nintendo sued Tengen because Nintendo held to Tetris on Nintendo systems at the time, was based on this version, and it's really close to the arcade. The music on the NES sounds almost identical to the arcade version.

Kind of surprised the Burnout series died after Paradise, which was in the beginning of 7th gen. I thought it was pretty successful and it was definitely a blast.

There are a lot of arcade collections on Xbox. I wish they'd make Midway collections for modern systems, and I wouldn't mind a Taito collection. But I do like that Arcade Archives brought most of Nintendo's arcade catalogue as well as a lot of other Japanese games to modern systems, as well as SNK Arcade Classics and Capcom Arcade Stadium. 

The Xbox was the only 6th gen system I skipped, I had both PS2 and Gamecube. The only Xbox exclusive that really interested me were Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black.

Dragon Quest Xi is the game that keeps on giving.