| Proud Member Of |
|
|
Overlooked SNES Games
What you should've been playing instead
of Donkey Kong Country 5: The Legend of Curly's Gold
by Bill on February 24th - 2004
Lord knows what the Internet needs is more articles about video games. One can't throw a Super Nintendo -- one of those older ones that has since come to look like it's been dunked in piss -- without hitting a Geocities site listing little Billy Thompson's favorite games:
1. Final Fantasy 7
2. Final Fantasy 3
3. Final Fantasy 2
4. Chrono Trigger
5. Captain Novolin
And therein lies the problem:
Everyone mentions the same ones. Hey, I played Final
Fantasy 3 all the way through 5 times lead an active
social life and was popular with many female persons, but I also
played the smaller titles that have fallen by the wayside. And so
today, I have taken it upon myself to lift them up and place them
in the spotlight, to be seen by all and then quickly forgotten
again.
On The Ball
Long before cartoony simians were shoved in those plastic balls used in 25 cent toy vending machines, and a little bit after marbles moved of their own volition to avoid pools of slime and wandering macaroni noodles, there was On The Ball. It differs from the latter in that you control the maze, not the ball; it differs from the former in that it never once STRONGLY SUGGESTS YOU PURCHASE DOLE BRAND PRODUCTS.
On The Ball is a port of the arcade game Cameltry, which either means an attempt made by a dromedary, or perhaps the act of being like one. As in, "Jeff has stored 3 gallons of water in his hump! What a stunning display of cameltry!" The object is to get the ball through a maze to the goal, which might be simple if it weren't for the unique controls. Like Cuba Gooding Jr.'s career, the ball is essentially in a constant state of freefall, and you have to harness the magic of Mode 7 and a retarded boy's love of football to spin the maze around it, guiding it to the goal while avoiding hazards. Time is your only enemy; You can't die, but certain blocks will take 2 or 5 seconds off the time you have left, and there are conveyors and force fields and smartmouthed Alaskan sled dogs to keep you from moving forward. Also, some later levels increase the difficulty by imposing restrictions, like only being able to turn the maze to a certain degree left or right, or forcing you to keep Skeet Ulrich under 50 degrees Fahrenheit in your ice cream truck. And seeing as how it just collapsed wheezing onto the ground, I believe I've officially exhausted that joke. And I wouldn't be able to use it if not for our greatest tradition of all. Honor, sir.
It was a relatively original idea for its time, and while I'd like to believe it's because the designers were creative masters, it was apparently because they were high as kites. Old games are famous for having bad translations and misunderstandings due to culture gaps, and On The Ball has plenty of that, but some shit doesn't make sense in any language.
Before this game, if you had told me someone could make a marble look statuesque and meditative, I would've said something along the lines of "Nuh UH!" or "Get oudda town!" or "NO YOU SHUT UP", depending on how much alcohol I had imbibed before you asked. Considering "before this game" means I was about 10, it wouldn't take much. I accidentally swallowed some Listerine when I was nine, took a swing at my mom and passed out on the coffee table. then i got on a cruise but it was rely ful of GAYS!!11 omg
Wildsnake
Poor Alexey Pajitnov. Thanks to a mangled mess of business deals, coupled with the USSR's government taking most of the money for itself, the inventor of Tetris earned little more than a pinch of shit for his creation. And in Alexey's homeland of Soviet Russia, shit pinches you, which just furthers the tragedy. Only recently, after the original contract finally expired -- oh, and the country fell apart -- has he been able to start collecting royalties that should've made him a millionaire 20 years ago.
In the intervening years, Alexey moved to the US and tried to recapture lightning in a bottle in a country where a man with a syrup stain on his head couldn't sneak in during the night and steal your wallet. He developed a new game called Breakthru! that didn't fare too well, though clones of it would become more popular when online Flash and Java games took off. He also lent his face to the covers of a few other games, giving them his "seal of approval" for a small fee. The fact that he was reduced to being a paid spokesperson for games that were clones of the game he created and wasn't making any money on is fairly solid evidence that God hates Alexey Pajitnov. Or maybe just Russians in general. Any place that cold was abandoned by its creator a long time ago.
Actually, since the box says "Alexey Pajitnov introduces.." with a picture of his smiling, hairy face, it was really just a sneaky way of trying to make you believe he made the game. Not that it really helped matters much. I don't know of anyone who was waiting patiently for the next bomb to be dropped by the dude who made that block game you can play on the crapper. Then again, maybe market researched showed that customers were more inclined to purchase a product they believed had been created by Richard Karn and Patton Oswalt's assbaby.
Wildsnake is less Tetris-y than most in its genre. The pieces, the snakes, are more movable than blocks; they can't be rotated, but can be made to slither in a new direction (all but up) as they fall, so they can be wormed into tight positions. Rather than--
I really need to disable that. Rather than filling lines to clear pieces, the snakes eat each other when two of the same color touch, so the strategy is to keep your holes open so any snake can get inside and.. eat.. Dammit, now the whole process sounds perverted, thanks a lot Clippy.
Wildsnake is a good game to unwind with and kill some time. It's not easier than Tetris, but it is somewhat of a more relaxed experience, thanks to the added maneuverability of the snakes and a complete lack of music that's better suited for celebrating having clotheslined M. Bison.
They couldn't even be bothered to keep his birthmark on one side of his head.
Secret Of Evermore
The first and last creation of Squaresoft's American team. As almost all console RPGs are Japanese, they wanted to make something that felt a little more homey to US audiences. Not a bad idea at all, though marred by a few things:
1. Japan has a rich history of
folklore and mythology to draw from. America has a rich history
of cowboys, killing Indians, and movies. They chose the latter,
making their main character a B-movie buff who's constantly
making references to movies that don't exist. Not necessarily
terrible, except..
2. The writers weren't funny. This is generally considered a
major flaw when writing jokes. Take this, for example: "As
Jethro the bibliographer said in They Came To Index Our Poultry,
'This is egg-citing!'" Now, did you laugh at such a labored
pun?
Oh.. you did? Seriously? Well, y'know, I try--why are you giggling? Oh, I get it, har har. Dammit, stop fucking with me, I'm trying to make a point here. As the cartographer said to his wife in Uncharted Territory.
(Now the question you've got to ask yourself: Did I really stop to talk there, or was that whole thing really my example? Oooh. Pardon me while I blow your mind.
As the hooker said to Klasdarg'hrel in Invasion of the Brain-Dicks)
The game also lost points for stealing its engine directly from Secret of Mana with few if any changes, and for an overly complicated magic system. And yet it had its good side as well. The story was fresh and imaginitive, the visuals were attractive, and the music was wonderful, the first soundtrack by now (relatively) famous game composer Jeremy Soule. Not that any of this got through to legions of rabid Final Fantasy fans. Many of them, those that define their very identities by their close association with magic-wielding teenagers, white teddy bears with wings, and insane, world-razing clowns, took personal offense at Americans making an RPG, seeming to believe it was a direct challenge to the Great Empire of Japan's authority to make games where people hit rats with swords. Much like the ratio of people who hate Bio-Dome to the number of people who actually saw Bio-Dome, bad buzz began to spread about the game even amongst people who had never heard of it before. The difference being that Bio-Dome really did suck.
Okay, I admit, I haven't seen Bio-Dome. Did I just prove my own point or negate it?
Evermore was a flawed, but still enjoyable game that deserved better than what it got. It flopped on the market and Square never made a game in the States again. As Rich Uncle Pennybags said in Monopoly: The Motion Picture, "They could've really gone places. But they just didn't get a Chance."
Wayne's World
SimAnt
Some people think they're nerds. They know the metric length of a Corellian Cruisier and can describe in detail each of the five seperate times Captain Kirk's toupee leapt from his head and devoured a crew member. Well I've got them all beat. I wanted SimAnt.
And I don't mean I bought it. I don't mean I was glad to have it. I mean I asked for it for my birthday. I mean I eagerly anticipated it. Even my regular dreams of the elderly man next door licking whipped cream off my nipples were interrupted by a procession of the little electronic bugs marching by. While other kids' thoughts were filled with images of anthropomorphic foxes flying space ships and digitized worlds where Robin Williams is attacked by a giant slug, I imagined skittering along the ground with a glob of food ten times my own weight, stopping only to battle an ant from a rival colony or give rides to Rick Moranis' tiny children.
In SimAnt, you take control of one particularly industrious member of the colony, and help your group to grow and prosper by leading them to food, avoiding predators, and attacking other colonies. The game is divided up into two modes. In Scenario mode, you play through eight missions that take place over the course of a year, starting with expansion and growth in early spring and ending with food gathering and hording in the fall in preperation for winter. In Full mode, the goal is to take over The Stupidest Man In The World's lovely Bel Air estate.
Now, I'm not the most observant guy you'll meet. I used to watch Power Rangers, VR Troopers and Beetleborgs all in a row and never notice my brain leaking out of my nose. But I think even I would find something amiss with upwards of 6000 ants crawling all over every square inch of my house. When I reached into the refrigerator to get a frosty brew, and pulled out that which was not a frosty brew but was in fact a giant quivering mass of ants, I would begin to get suspicious. Not only does this man not seem to care that the flesh has been gnawed off his feet by the living field of mandibles he once called a floor, but he lives in an oversized shed with a living room stuffed into a cubbyhole. No wonder all he does is watch TV and mow the lawn.
Like all the Sim games, for those people who don't want to actually learn anything, you can just kill yourself and others in humorous ways. I played SimEarth for about ten minutes before I gave up trying to understand thermal currents and magma flows and just started throwing down nuclear bombs everywhere. There are numerous ways to meet your maker: you can drown in rainwater, you can climb into a wall outlet and be electrocuted, you can get eaten by a spider, or you can be covered in chocolate and eaten by French people. You can also get cut up in the lawnmower, meaning either you're one big ass ant or the Stupidest Man is upholding his title by buying mower blades that ride one millimeter off the ground.
For anyone who did want to learn, the game came with a helpful Ant Encyclopedia for your little head to fill up on so you could then run around the house spouting off random facts like that kid in Jerry Maguire. I did so because I was fascinated by the little buggers, and it was the closest thing I could get to an ant farm. I could never bring myself to ask for a real one. Not because I found it embarassing, but because in every TV show, movie, cartoon, comic strip and nutritional fact panel I ever saw, the ants never actually stayed in the fucking farm. The entertainment industry lead me to believe that ant farms were made of crystal the width of one micron that shattered upon dropping, bumping, touching, seeing, thinking about, or being smashed with Homer Simpson's head. And once broken, the ants went everywhere immediately and you might as well move out. That's probably what happened to the Stupidest Man. He was really Wealthy Socialite Who Happens To Own An Ant Farm Man and then Urkel showed up with a robot that makes pies or some shit that knocked it over and now he's a bum in a wifebeater watching reruns of Family Ties and looking vaguely like a grown up Alex from River City Ransom.
So in conclusion, ants: Nature's silent killers. Ants and gimmick neighbors.
Progressive Boink is brought to you in part by the following sponsor.
Think you've seen everything this post has to offer? THINK AGAIN MISTER!!!
Special bonus features, only available on the DVD edition of this article!
Featurette: Overlooked For A Damn Good Reason SNES Games
 |
The
Adventures of Dr. Franken - Not, as one might first
suspect, a hi-larious collection of politically charged
essays about how Rush Limbaugh is fat and Fox News makes
shit up. Rather, it's a lackluster platform game starring
a character one
abstract-art-featuring-geometric-shapes-covered Trapper
Keeper short of being a complete set of everything you
thought was cool when you were 8. Unless you're a girl,
in which case exchange the abstract art with a white
tiger riding a glittering unicorn under a rainbow by a
waterfall on another planet with a big neon Lisa Frank
logo in the corner. His future's so bright he's gotta
wear shades, but his wardrobe's so bright everyone in a
20 kilometer radius is instantly incinerated in the
thermal flash when he opens his closet. The story is a timeless one: Franky and his girlfriend Bitsy want to travel to New York, but Bitsy doesn't have a passport. I guess Bitsy has some outstanding warrants she'd like to avoid, because rather than apply for a passport, they agree to dismantle her and mail her in pieces to the hotel. I'm not making this up. Because the world is exactly like stand-up comedians describe it, the post office loses the various Bitsy bits all over the world and so Franky has to run around collecting them. One has to wonder whether Franky ever entertained the thought of just collecting the torso and pelvis. Then one has to wonder why one is dedicating any amount of time to thinking about The Adventures of Dr. Franken. |
Writer's Commentary
The first and last creation of Squaresoft's American team. [This is the Secret of Evermore scene.] As almost all console RPGs are Japanese, they wanted to make something that felt a little more homey to US audiences. [There was some concern from the studios that audiences might be confused and think we were refering to the In Living Color character Homey The Clown, played of course by the great Damon Wayans. I assured them this was not the case. The producer then hit me over the head with a stuffed sock, which I felt was uncalled for. In the end, no one was confused, but ironically many viewers interpreted an earlier portion of the WildSnake scene to be a skit from Fox's short-lived The Edge.] Not a bad idea at all, though marred by a few things: [During production, a joke we liked to throw around was that if you were southern and read that line out loud, you'd think it said "married by a few things." Tee hee. We had a lot of fun on the set.]
1. Japan has a rich history of
folklore and mythology to draw from. America has a rich history
of cowboys, killing Indians, and movies. [This is the part
where I explain about the main character being a B-movie buff
who's constantly making references to movies that don't exist.] They
chose the latter, making their main character a B-movie buff
who's constantly making references to movies that don't exist.
[That's a good part.] Not necessarily terrible, except..
2. The writers weren't funny. This is generally considered a
major flaw when writing jokes. [I was later informed that
this isn't necessarily true. A friend down at Universal showed me
the box office numbers for Meet The Parents.] For example:
"As Jethro the bibliographer said in They Came To Index Our
Poultry, 'This is egg-citing!'" [Egg citing. That's
funny. I'm a great writer.] Now, did you laugh at such a
labored pun? [Breaking down the fourth wall here. We really
want to challenge and excite the audience in new ways.]
Oh.. you did? Seriously? Well, y'know, I try--why are you giggling? Oh, I get it, har har. Dammit, stop fucking with me, I'm trying to make a point here. [Almost got slapped with an R from the MPAA thanks to that outburst. Edits were made, and there were I think a total of 5 different MPAA screenings with each new cut, but they were adamant about that R until at the last second they remembered this isn't a movie.] As the cartographer said to his wife in Uncharted Territory.
Deleted Scenes With Writer Commentary
then i got on a cruise but it was rely ful of GAYS!!111 omg [This is the original extended cut of my Boat Trip joke, with an extra one at the end. It was a good part, and really helped flesh out the joke. But in the end certain allowances for length have to be made, and unfortunately this was one piece that ended up on the cutting room floor. It's never an easy decision to make.]
Writer's Commentary on the Writer's Commentary
[In the end, no one was confused, but ironically many viewers interpreted an earlier portion of the WildSnake scene to be a skit from Fox's short-lived The Edge.] {Who the hell is going to remember The Edge. I'm a terrible writer.}
Easter Eggs
Go to the main menu, and select Special Features. From there, highlight Featurette, and press up, select, left, right, A, A, B on your remote. If you don't have these keys, contact your player's manufacturer. Hit enter. Look for the picture of Charles Bronson on the new menu and highlight it. Enter the numbers on your remote that correspond to the numbers you'd have to dial on a touchtone phone to play the Charles In Charge theme. Hit enter. Solve the equation for x. Hit enter. Answer the geography questions correctly and you'll be treated to a teaser trailer for an upcoming article!
DVD-ROM Content
Download this article to your PC to delve deeper into the world of Overlooked SNES Games, with such exclusive content as:
Only $39.95! Buy it now so I can release a special writer's cut extended edition in four months!
