Random Games

So then....

I am still playing Mario 64 DS, and I have now gotten 50 stars (yay half way) and unlocked all the characters. So that is a plus. Its a bit annoying being stuck with the control pad instead of a joystick like the 64 had, but oh well. It still works out.

As far as consoles go, I haven't had much time to play, but I intend to do some of that this weekend. Still playing GTA IV, but it doesn't really hold that much excitment any more and I am considering selling it back, cause, well... I don't play it that much. Lego Indy is fun, but it is basically Lego Star Wars again, and while it is cute and such, I'm not sure that it has inspired me to want to get Lego Batman. I mean, if I had kids, yes it'd be a grand game for them.

I think that I would like to see about getting that Viking game, it was fun and I should be able to get it used so that is a plus. Also I am thinking that the Force Unleashed game should be worth a look. Bioshock is coming to the PS3 and I'd like to rent it and try it, I've heard some good things about it.

In long range plans I would like to get a Wii. There are good group games like Mario Party and Smash Brothers for it. I don't regret getting my PS3, if nothing else it has been worth it as a Bluray player, but I have found some games on it that I have been enjoying. I played Blazing Aces on my friends Wii and found I like the control set up on the PS3 more, so I would have versitility, which is nice. Plus, I would like to get Mario Galaxy and the new Zelda games. Cause come on, what other games have the history of Mario and Zelda.

As far as computer games go... Well I think I may be out of that arena for a while. My computer is now too slow to play most games that come out and I would need to upgrade it before I can go on with the computer gaming, but I think that it is a better current plan to keep with consoles.

Finally I think I may pick up the Zelda game for the DS. Since I will be traveling again it would be good to have a change from just Mario. But for now, I will sign off.

Super Mario 64

I have to say, this may be the best Mario game. I now have it on DS, which has some slight tweeks and actually looks better then on the console. It is grand to play it again, but I will just leave you with that thought for now.

Mario

Ahh, our good friend Mario. Short, portly little plumber. Mario is from the Mushroom Kingdom, which happens to be in a world that is not quite ours. This will make telling his story a little more difficult, as there is currently not a set dating system for the Mushroom Kingdom. But once you over look that, the story can be taken fairly easily.

Mario knew adventure from a very young age. As a baby he had a quest to find his lost brother Luigi. This was accomplished with the help of a gang of Yoshis. It would seem that Bowser had captured Luigi while he and his brother were being taken by stork to their parents. Luckily though Mario with his help was able to find his brother and rescue him from Bowser.

After this incident life became quiet for a while. Mairo and Luigi were able to grow up, one would assume peacefully, in the Mushroom Kingdom. During this time is most likely when the brothers meet their Wario and Waligi, who are constantly trying to one up the Mario Brothers. Also during this time it is likely that Mario meets Princess Peach Toadstool, who becomes the ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom and Mario's love interest, as well as her servant Toad.

At some time, most likely as a teen, Mario gets a pet ape who he names Donkey Kong. Mario gets a job as a carpenter and is going out with Pauline. However Mario does not treat his pet well, perhaps because a gorilla is not a good pet for a teenager, or perhaps because he is spending most of his time with Pauline, which also leads him to fail at carpentry. But for whatever reason Donkey is not a happy Kong and breaks free, he kidnaps Pauline. This leads Mario on a fight to save his girlfriend from his pet. While in the end he rescues Pauline, she leaves him shortly after this incident. Once again, the reasons aren't clear, it could be that he is rather cruel to his pet and she does not want to be kidnapped again, it could be that he seems to be a failure at carpentry and isn't going anywhere, or it could be that he is becoming more and more interesting in the Princess and less interested in her.

After Pauline leaves him, Mario grows anger and takes this aggression out on Donkey Kong. Donkey is locked up and treated very poorly, but at some point Donkey had a son. Well Junior finds out what has happened to his father and sets out to save him. Of course Mario doesn't want any part of this and does his best to stop the young ape, but in the end Junior saves his father and the two return to Kong Country, but that is another story.

Mario falls into depression, his girl left him, his gorilla left him, the girl of his dreams is busy being a princess. Mario sinks into his depression more and more. Finally his brother gets a hold of him and convinces Mario to come live with him. Luigi has a simple life as a plumber and soon trains his brother in plumbing. Mario starts to work his way out of his depression and enjoys his life with his brother. They enjoy playing in the sewers where they find an endless infestation of crabs, flies and turtles (yes in the Mushroom Kingdom there aren't gators in the sewers, there are turtles).

Soon Mario learns that his dreamgirl has been kidnapped by Bowser. He convinces his brother that they must set out in order to save the Princess. Once again Mario is out on adventure. With the help of his brother and their knowledge of the plant life in the Mushroom Kingdom they are able to to rescue Peach from Bowser. Mario and Luigi become well know and finally Mario has caught the eye of Peach.

Infact in his next adventure he convinces Peach and her servant Toad to join him and Luigi while they fight the evil frog Wart, since he has invaded Subcon, which is most likely a bordering nation to the Mushroom Kingdom. Wart is over thrown and peace is restored to Subcon which builds the relations between the two countries.

Of course this leads to Mario being known as a hero all over the land. Soon he is called to Sarasaland to save Princess Daisy. She was captured by Tatanga, who is a spaceman. By this point adventure has become second nature to Mario and is frequently going out on them or going to meet his fans, of course this leads Luigi to take care of the business. Again Mario rescues the Princess, all in all it is not a bad life from Mario's point of view, known all over the land, constantly meeting Princesses.

Mario and his friends also begin a go-kart league that becomes know all over the Mushroom Kingdom. Many of Mario's friend, as well as some enemies work their way into the circuit as drivers. These races become some of the most well known events that happen in the Mushroom Kingdom. This may be due to the fact that there isn't much in the way of sports or entertainment in the land.

But while he is enjoying all the fame that he has collected, Bowser returns to the Mushroom Kingdom and again abducts Princess Toadstool. Mario convinces his brother to leave the plumbing business while they set off to save the Princess once again. Again Bowser finds that he can not best the Mario Brothers and Peach is safe again.

At this point Mario and Luigi settle back into the plumbing business. Mario is found most nights at the local cafe regaling the children of the Kingdom with tales of his adventures. It is also around this time the brothers try to expand their business into Brooklyn. While it lasts for a short while, the supply problems of having 2 shops in 2 different worlds become too much and the Brooklyn shop is closed.

Of course with their frequent travel to Brooklyn Bowser is able to again capture Princess Peach (who one would have thought would have by this point gotten better body guards) and is able to take her off to Dinosaur Land. While again on a quest to save Peach, Mario is reunited with an old friend, Yoshi. Yoshi happily agrees to save the Princess. Again Bowser underestimates the Mario Brothers and they prove victorious. They all return to the Mushroom Kingdom thinking they will be at peace.

While Mario returns and enjoys his life of plumbing/rescuing princesses/racing go-karts, the amazingly presistant (or stubborn) Bowser returns for another try. Again he captures the Princess and Mario sets off to rescue her. And again Luigi is left to do the plumbing alone. Not surprisingly Mario is able to best Bowser yet again and save his sweet Princess.

Now after this adventure Mario feels that he has had about enough of the Princess saving and decides to take up golf. He is able to set up a Pro tour, with mostly his racing friends. They still race their go-karts, but now Mario realizes that there is money to be made in professional sports. He soon convinces his racing fans that in addition to golf they should take up tennis. The people of the Mushroom Kingdom flock to all of these events, again due to the lack of other entertainment in the land. Mario also decides that with the moves he has learned on his quests a fight club could also be a profitable venture. And it turns out he was right, as it draws more contenders then any of this other events. This may be because it is the only one that he has opened to more then his racing competitors.

But Mario is in for some trouble. He was out and about and was checking out a haunted mansion. But he finds himself trapped in a painting. This may be due to his last quest had him jumping through painting to go to different lands trying to save the Princess, or he might have just gotten a bad mushroom. But Luigi has to set out to free his brother. Now after this ordeal Mario decides that it is time for a vacation. Since he has never actaully taken one before he lets his travel agent pick the spot and he convinces Peach that they need to get away from it all. Which she agrees to, most likey hoping Mario will finally propose to her.

However when he gets to the Isle Delfino, where his travel agent sent him, it turns out someone who looks just like him had been running around trashing the place. So he is made to clean the island to clear his name. All the while Peach hits the beach to work on her tan. But she is kidnapped by the imposter Mario. The true Mario does managed to clean the island and save his girl. After all that they head back to the Mushroom Kingdom.

But of course there was not peace there. Bowser had plenty of time to plot. This time he kidnapped Peach and took her into space....




1. www.themushroomkingdom.net
2. www.wikipedia.org

Mario a Communist?

So if you search the web you will find many sites and articles that claim Mario was in fact a communist. But the simple fact is no, he is not, but still lets go ahead and look into some of their arguments.


First off is his color scheme. Now you have to remember that he started his live in the 8 bit world. So its not like there were a lot of color choices, but there were in fact some. And if you look into things he started off as the abusive owner of Donkey Kong.

Next up is that Mario is trying to over throw King Koopa. Now, Bowser may have appointed himself king, but it would seem that he is imposing his will over the Mushroom Kingdom by force. It would seem that Princess Peach's parents would be the true ruling, so here you have an imposter to the crown taking over and setting up his own troops to rule by fear and threats. He has stationed his troops all over the Mushroom Kingdom in order to oppress the people. So you have a story similar to Robin Hood.

At the end of each level in the Super Mario Brothers game you lower the flag of Bowser and raise your own flag. Now the flag you lower could be a peace sign as many people say, but then again, it could be a skull. Now based on the ways that Koopa seems to rule it is more likely that his flag is a skull. And while Mario does raise the flag with a red star, perhaps this was the flag of the true ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom.

So it seems that Mario is a hero that is trying to restore the correct ruler, rescue the Princess (daughter of the true ruler). So he is not trying to bring power to the people, he is trying to kick out the self imposed ruler who has seized control and terrorized the people. He does not share the wealth he accquires on his quest with the masses, he hoards it all for himself. Mario can't be a communist. He is not concerned with the masses, he probably has hopes that the rightful ruler of the Mushroom Kingdom will make him a lord.


But just for fun, check out this cartoon.

Don't see Star Wars

So Star Wars continues its long slow death. Way back in a simpler time Star Wars was released. It was an amazing movie and it was followed by some amazing sequels. It was made even though no one believed in it, they made up technologies in order to complete the movie. It was not a huge movie with a limitless budget. It rocked.

It continued to be a huge thing for about 30 years. People would re-watch the movie on VHS, there were always toys and games. Everyone knew it, many many could quote the entire trilogy. Lucas was making a mint on a movie that came out 30 years ago, which isn't a bad place to be. Had it been left as it was undoubtedly people would have introduced it to their kids and it would have continued to keep churning out money.

But this wasn't enough. George Lucas decided that he wanted to tweak a few things. Now instead of doing this with a director's cut put out on video he came up with the Special Edition and put it in theaters. This was the first knife in Star Wars that would start its death. New graphics were added. While many people went to see it in theaters and many people got it on VHS, it was hard to not see the original version that people had grown up with.

Then came the prequels. Major Suckage! But good old George continued to push through them, because there was money to be made. This time instead of the driving force being to tell a story it seemed that main purpose was show off all the new graphics that ILM could pull off now. While there was the promise of an awesome episode 1 what came out was was garbage. The same story followed with episode 2. It was an experiment in how digital you could get while filming a movie. Finally episode 3 came out, a movie that seems to have been shot entirely on green screen.

While yes, the graphics looked cool. But didn't someone say that a special effect is just a means of telling a story? Oh wait... wasn't that George? Way to go buddy. Well, on the other hand he did make millions off of what basically boiled down to a couple hours of special effects. But there was money to be made.

And yes, there were toys and games and tie ins. Cartoon Network put out an animated show, old animated cartoons were released. Money was made cause Star Wars was cool, even though it was dying as money was paid to keep getting a piece of it. And yes, I do own the 3 new movies, mostly for the sake of having the whole set of them. The best thing that I did was purchase the dvds that had the theater version of the orginal movies (With the Ewok song and all).

And now... Now we have another movie in theaters. This time its animated and just as crappy as ever. Had this been a fan creation, just someone with nothing better to do in there spare time it would have been cool. But to think that this was people's jobs? It was just sad, I recommend not going to see this one.

And George, should you happen to read this.... If the goal is to just make money, go ahead, do a full out release of that Holiday Special. I mean, you've already gotten this far down, at least that had the first appearance of Boba Fett. Otherwise, please stop and back slowly away from Star Wars and hopefully all of Hollywood. I'm sure that you have more then enough money.



And one last line... Han Shot First.

Study of Console History

So if you couldn't guess from the last post I'm doing a bit of study of the history of gaming consoles, mostly just for fun and enjoyment. Currently I'm reading a book on the History of Nintendo, which so far has been quiet interesting.

As a random fact, the code name for the Atari 2600 when it was being made was Stella. (I thought of you honey).

Well, I suppose that at some point there will be some more posting about games and consoles and the like, I know that you will all be excited for that.

Video Game History

So just for reference here is a bit of history of home video game consoles. We won't talk so much about computer games, that would only add to this. So then lets begin.

We will start in 1972 (before I was around), Magnavox released the Odyssey. And it did alright, then Pong showed up. This is when people noticed and we got the Odyssey 100 and Odyssey 200. And that was basically generation 1 of video gaming.

Generation 2 began roughly in 1976. It was the early time of 8 bit gaming. This is the period that gave us the Atari 2600 and the ColecoVision. It also saw the release of the first hand held consoles with changeable cartridges. Also this is when games like Donkey Kong, Frogger, Space Invaders adn Pac-man arrived. Also it saw the crash of 1977 (older systems where sold cheap, flooding the market, Atari and Magnavox survied), the rebirth (many more companies released consoles, Atari continued to dominate) and the crash of 1983 . Due to the cheap systems on the market, the flood of poor quality games and the fact that more and more people began to own computers, the video game market nearly died. Many companies filed for bankrupcy.

Of course this opened the way for Nintendo to come to the states and in October of 1985 they release the NES (Nintendo Entertainment System). The NES managed to survived because of a lockout chip which meant that they were able to control the games that came out on there system. This meant there wasn't the flood of cheap games and they were able to stay healthy as a company. This is also when we got the first appearance of SEGA, but there system failed to do much in the states, so mostly this generation of video games is known for the NES and Super Mario Bros. (It also happens to be where I entered gaming, though I kinda played around with some Atari stuffs).

Now then, as you can guess next came generation 4. Sega came out with the Genesis and to answer Nintendo release the SNES (Super Nintendo Enteratainment System). This closed out the 80s and brought gaming into the 1990s. Also Sega put out the Sega CD. And the 4th generation upgraded us for 8 bits to 16 bits. And with Sega being around it started some console wars. Now there were some other, smaller systems out there, but Nintendo and Sega were the big dogs. And Nintendo kept its lead as this generation closed out.

To start out the 5th generation Atari brought out the Jaguar and then there was the 3DO. These both used CDs and were much more powerful then the SNES and the Genesis. But they also didn't come close to selling as well. Due to cost and difficulty to program for them they were canned in 1996. To really get this generation going Sega put out the Saturn, a CD based system with dual chips, however it only lasted until 1998. A new comer named Sony released the Playstation (which would later be the PSone). This was orginally going to be a CD addon to the SNES. Nintendo put out the Nintendo 64 (N64). It was the only cartridge based system of the generation, but it still made enough money for Nintendo to remain on the top of the pile.

The 6th generation only saw bigger names putting out gaming systems, it also saw the switch from CDs (or in Nintendo's case cartridges) to DVDs (a whole 9 gigs of storage). This would allow for more information and more impressive gameplay as well as longer load times. Sega offered the dreamcast for this generation of gaming, it would be the end of Sega systems and the first that they would discontinue. Sony released what has so far been the best selling system of all time, the PS2. With the switch to games on DVD Sony allowed their system to play movies as well as games. Nintendo finally switched to an optical system, but went with a smaller size disc which would mean no watching of movies on the Gamecube. And then Microsoft entered the fight with the Xbox, which ended the need of memory cards by having a hard drive in the system. It was big and bulky, but it was carried on by Halo.

Now, in 2005 we entered the 7th generation of video game consoles. This era brought much more internet connectivity, High Def graphics, and wireless controllers. Microsoft ushered in the new era with the Xbox 360. Now to be the first system out Microsoft opted to stay with games on DVD, which limited the space for the game. Also they ended up with some issues with the system failing to work. But more Halo arrived and fixes were made. Sony brought out its third generation of system in the PS3. They waited to get the ability to play Bluray, which allowed for much, much more room on the disc. It also boasts quite an impressive processor. However this meant that it was more difficult to program for. Now eventually it will mean that the system will be able to do great things, however now it is still waiting for programs to exploit the system. And Nintendo presses on. They did make the decision to not try to compete directly with the other two and have aimed their system at more of a family based system. While they don't deal in High Def, they have a motion sensitive system for the controls.

Web Comics

So I have started reading some webcomics. I would like to recommend this one. It has lots of very funny comics. Also I tend to read Air Force Blues. But that might be cause of my job. Anyhow, this is a short post, but if you were to stumble across any various webcomics let me know.