Jake

Idle Thumbs 184: Super Pools 'n' Ghosts

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Idle Thumbs 184:

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Super Pools 'n' Ghosts

This week the 90s are back, but what if they came back wrong? Holiday reviewing season has Danielle in its grasp, but that may mean she has just been playing a ton of upcoming Nintendo and Sega games. That and Advanced Warfare. As the old saying goes, "Behind every Dorito is a gross, super-ripped and inexplicably triangular echidna, but you cannot see him, as he is perfectly hidden behind the Dorito."

Games Discussed: Super Smash Bros. (Wii U), Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, Ultimate NES Remix, Code Name: S.T.E.A.M., Costume Quest 2, Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, Grand Theft Auto V, The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth, 720°, Klax

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Disclaimer: The youtube description states"...this is NOT part of the game"

 

I'd be pretty shocked if that was the final game to be fair

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Man I am so excited for all the Nintendo games coming out in the next half year or so.

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Some dumb clarifications.

 

Amiibos use NFC, which is the same thing that's in a ton of phones and the same thing that Skylanders and Disney Infinity use.  It was built into the Wii U gamepad from day one.  It makes me wonder how long its going to be before the Amiibos are hacked and people mod their Smash AI.  It's also worth noting that the New 3DS also has built in NFC but the original 3DS does not.

 

The Great Cave Offensive was one of the games in Kirby Super Star (aka the best Kirby game).  The idea behind that particular game was collecting treasures hidden all over a giant map so it makes sense that it would be a huge map in Smash.

 

I like that Captain Toad became Commander Toad when Jake started talking about it.

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Just a heads-up, there was a launch-era Wii U game called Pokémon Rumble U that was compatible with little Pokémon NFC toys. The game was released here, but the toys never were.

 

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EDIT: oh man, Chibi Robo! High-five, Jake!

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Jake: the E3 trailer for Smash included Lincoln.

 

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(This was a matter of days before Codename S.T.E.A.M. was announced)

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Episodes where Danielle and Jake talk about Nintendo shit are MY FAVORITE EPISODES. This is, therefore, my favorite episode.

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Growing up in Pittsburgh during Mario Lemieux's long and glorious reign has rendered the phrase Super Mario and the pronunciation of Mario as completely and utterly baffling.  So there's that.

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Haha this episode was amazing. Trying to convey the nature of Knuckles' redesign was hilarious, and the audio of Chris seeing Dorito-shaped Knuckles was priceless.

 

As always, love the Nintendo discussions. I think this year I'll finally get a Wii U because god dammit so many great games out for it right now. Certainly more exclusives than for the PS4 I was all too happy to spend my money on during the hype.  

 

Danielle, "Broman McShoot-Face" is my new favorite term.

 

Also, shameless plug for me. I edited the

Sonic Boom Wii U trailers at a place I freelance at (not Sega).  The game is... uh... definitely a video game.

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My friends and I didn't refer to Mario as Super Mario growing up, but I grew up in Washington, DC which isn't exactly the East Coast while it isn't the South either, so its a weird edge case. I definitely remember by cousins in New York & New Jersey calling him Super Mario.

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NES Remix is just my favourite thing, because of things like this, where the game just challenges you to get every single mushroom in the game, one after the other. 

 

 

This challenge shows exactly how brilliant the game is, not just as a set of Wario Ware-style mini games, but as a thorough exploration of the design of NES games.

 

Because these challenges are just put back to back this way, you get to see and appreciate exactly how Super Mario Bros. was designed back in the day. Every mushroom basically stands alone as its own mini-challenge, which maybe isn't visible when simply playing through the game, but is made apparent by changing the presentation.

 

You see how the first few mushroom are obvious and easy to get, but how the game very gradually introduces enemies, obstacles and pits, tricky jumps, and hidden blocks, one at a time, and eventually together.

 

You see how the game likes to build a vocabulary of challenges and expand on it:

There's a mushroom inside a Hammer Bros structure, then a mushroom inside a hidden block in a Hammer Bros structure, and a mushroom being protected by a Hammer Bros on ground level. 

Or when there's a mushroom in an early castle that's protected by a spinning fire arm, which is expanded later on in two divergent ways, once by making the fire arm longer and actually reaching over the block so you can't use it as protection, and once be setting two fire arms one after the other so that you have to time your run.

 

You see how the different kinds of enemies present in the game change your behaviour when they're guarding a mushroom - a series of Goombas under blocks are dangerous because the blocks disrupt your jumping, but Piranha Plants and Bullet Bills and Koopa shells all present their own unique challenge.

 

The grading scheme NES Remix has builds on top of this: you can simply complete the challenges naively, but you'll probably only get two stars. To get a perfect grade, you have to really master the snippet of game presented to you: in this video, it's things like switch a mushroom's direction by hitting a block instead of jumping up and chasing after it, or running under jumping Parakoopas instead of waiting for them to pass.

 

So just in this one level, you get presented with nearly the entire set of challenges SMB has, and you need to master advanced techniques you wouldn't even need to beat the game in order to get a perfect score.

 

The people who make this game have a fantastic eye for this kind of thing, and they repeat it game after game. Games get recontexualised by grouping challenges by mechanic, by challenges that challenge your assumptions about the game [there's one challenge, again in SMB, that has you speedrun world 1-2, where you learn that the top of the screen shortcut is actually slower than running through the bottom normal part of the level, because the top shortcut only gets you two stars], or by having you run through touchstones of a game very rapidly [Zelda 1 has a series of challenges which mash two or three dungeons together in a Find the Dungeon Entrance/Get the item/Beat the Boss/Find the Dungeon Entrance/Get the item/Beat the Boss pattern], and I found when playing that I was just as likely to be thrilled at myself for beating a hard challenge that I was for realising something about why a certain level or mechanic worked the way it did or was designed the way it was.

 

I love NES Remix. It's probably my goty.

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I agree that not every decision needs to set off a tornado in Texas, but here is the point:  A choice is only meaningful if I believe that there may be consequences. It is good if a game offering choices sometimes shows that consequences are substantial. The design.needs the the right balance. If too often I can't even influence the immediate result I lose the feeling of having agency. I enjoyed the TellTale games of this year, but both TWD Season 2 and TWAU went too far in that regard. Too often have I selected the option of doing or saying something courageous and dangerous only to have someone else keep me from doing it in the last second. Too often for me to suspend disbelief.

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I was going to say the episode banner being Knuckles was a little alarming in a way, but then I saw the image Moosferatu posted and thought, "Welp."

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I just asked Danielle this via Twitter but want to put it here to drum up support (or scorn):

 

Can we change her Thumbs nickname to Super Mari-endeau?

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Here's an excellent in-depth interview about the origins of BoI (I posted this in the Rebirth thread some time ago). And actually Edmund did draw comics before making games.

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I just asked Danielle this via Twitter but want to put it here to drum up support (or scorn):

 

Can we change her Thumbs nickname to Super Mari-endeau?

I am for this Dads and all 

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