- So after three long years, I have finally been reunited with Guardian Heroes and Burning Rangers, two beloved Saturn games which I had to part ways with when I was dealing with heavy financial hardships.
The summer of 2002 was an extremely rough one for me. I was pretty much unemployed the entire year, having lost my job the previous fall when Ubi Soft closed its New York doors. Then when 9/11 happened just a few weeks later, I found myself struggling to find gainful employment among many others in the resulting economic crisis that hit the city particularly hard. I did have unemployment insurance, but it wasn’t much. Even with money coming from freelance writing jobs via Nick Mag which I had just began writing for, my cash flow was still tight. Each and every morning was dedicated towards scanning jobs sites and sending off resumes, though I almost never getting a response. In fact, of the literally hundreds of enquires I made, I think I got like three replies.
… Though I did get job offers, good ones, from across the country. Acclaim offered me a sweet head creative post in their Austin studio, where I would have been making close to a hundred grand. But I just didn’t want to move to Texas…. and its a good thing I passed since they went on to do that horrible BMX XXX game which pretty much tarnished the reputations of most of the folks involved…
On the plus side, the lack of a day job freed up much time, which allowed me to get in plenty of gaming those days, the most since my carefree days in high school actually. And despite the lack of expendable income, I still hunted for games, though I had to be a lot more frugal about things. At one point when I had a little cash lying around, and a lot of curiosity to kill, I finally got myself a 32X along with all the games that had been a source of constant temptation for years (all four of them). Alongside Virtua Racing Deluxe (good, but just didn’t have the same impact as the the brilliant Genesis conversion), Tempo (neat little game…. I just realized that I’ve barely touched the Japanese only Saturn sequel), and Knuckles Chaotix (fucking horrible game, but a sweet Sonic soundtrack) was the one game which I had dying to play…. not only the greatest hummingbird-based shooter ever made, but the only one ever made: Kolibri.
What else can be said other than you’re basically a hummingbird that shoot bugs and drinks pollen from flowers? Its from the same folks who did Ecco Dolphin, and much like that game, its very beautiful looking (especially for a Genesis game) and fun to play, but sometimes tough since you usually don’t know what the fuck is going on. But more than that, its representative of the creative risks Sega was willing to take at the time. That and of how desperate they were to have games on their systems.
Another game that’s brilliant in concept, but which unfortunately never made it is Virtua Hamster. To learn more about the hamster on a skateboard, simply go here.
Anyway, as fun as it was to have so much time for playing games and all, my money situation simply grew worse and worse. So eventually I had to resort to selling bits and pieces of my game collection online. The problem was, money was tight for everyone so the prices one got on almost anything was far lower than usual, but when you’re poor, you have to deal. I guess the best (or worst example) was my Super NES set. Included were…
Super NES – model 2
Super Mario World
Yoshi?s Island
Super Mario All Stars
Super Mario RPG
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
Super Metroid
Starfox
Super Punch Out
Kirby?s Dreamland 3
Earthbound
Tetris Attack
Castlevania 4
TMNT 4
Mega Man X
Super Ghouls and Ghosts
Super Street Fighter 2
U.N. Squadron
Rockman & Forte (plus converter)
Each and every game was mint (I take care of my shit) and practically brand new. Actually, every game was new when I purchased them, and in many instances, such as Earthbound, it was the very last new copy in all of New York City at the time (this is around 1999-2001ish). And what did I get for all of this stuff? $80 fucking dollars. This still haunts me to this day… one recurring dream I have involves a constant, never ending search for my missing SNES games. Sad I know.
During that summer, Dave invited me to come to California to hang out with his family, as well as hit the San Diego Comic Con and assorted amusement parks (he actually got me a ticket to Disneyland for my birthday earlier that year). So I was super psyched to finally be able to hit all the spots that I had long wanted to (my folks never let me go to Disneyland as a kid, and it fucked me up something fierce), but the idea of having little to zero spending money was not at all appealing. So to make sure that I wouldn’t have to worry while on vacation, I made the very tough decision to sell one a most precious Saturn game: the now legendary Treasure shooter, Radiant Silvergun. And I only got $200 for such a highly sought after title (which normally fetches easily $500). At least it made my California trip stress-free.
But as the fall approached, and the number of unemployment checks on the way began to seriously dwindle, I had to dig deeper. Dave offered to help by buying some other Saturn games off of me: Guardian Heroes, Christmas NiGHTS, Mega Man X4, Burning Rangers, and another game which I forget. Either because he’s such a good friend or I just needed the money badly, plus right then and there, I gave him the lot for an insanely low price (something like $60 or something). Later as things turned around, I was able to replace my copies, with the exception being Guardian Heroes and Burning Rangers since they still fetch primo cash online. Thankfully, in Dave’s eyes, the cash he forked over wasn’t to buy the games per say, simply to rent them out for an extended period of time.
So now I have them back, safe at home. Plus the timing is perfect…. a student of mine is working on a game that has a somewhat similar tone to Guardian Heroes so I figured that it would be beneficial to take a look at it.
And on a somewhat related note, I came across a site via the IC boards which has a ton of game music available for download. I won’t give away the URL here since I’m so afraid of two much attention raping its bandwidth, but if you know where to look, you’ll find it. Anyway, thanks to the resource, I finally have the soundtrack to Mega Man X4, which easily has the best Mega Man music since the NES days of 1-3. It’s very Transformers the Movie-like.
- As for gaming news, I’ve been pretty behind due to work and all, but I can tell you that today marks the 20th anniversary of the Nintendo Entertainment System! It shipped on October 18, 1985 to stores across America!
- I really didn’t think there would be much more to say about Jack Thompson, at least by this point. Following up on his idiotic offer to donate $10,000 towards a charity for a game idea of his, which was nothing more than a thinly-veiled death threat, was the head of National Institute on Media & Family publicly distancing themselves from the guy. Which had led him to go totally ape-shit, resulting in angry letters to every single media outlet that’s reported the story in an effort to correct them that he is indeed not insande, as well as calls for help to his buddy Senator Lieberman. And I’m sure everyone by now knows about the email/phone exchanges between the crackpot lawyer and the guys from Penny Arcade, also from this past Friday.
Well it seems that someone took up on Thompson’s suggestion, but he apparently didn’t like it, and said that the financial offer was “satire”, so the Penny Arcade folks decided to donate $10,000 of their own towards charity. And now it seems as if Thompson has called upon the Seattle police department to get them arrested!
- Here’s some more old news (at least if you haven’t seen my news updates at Insert Credit): those who pre-order My My Katamari (the PSP version of the game) will receive a very nifty bonus: a PSP carrying pouch shaped just like the prince’s head!
- And a while back I mentioned a site that listed every single movie reference to come up in a video game. Well here’s the same thing, but in reverse: a resource that lists almost every single appearance of an arcade game in an American movie over the past thirty+ years.
- Joe passed this one along: some say that the reason Mario is so popular is because he’s basically an every-man, someone that most anyone can identity with. Well now that’s officially a fact. Check out 64 Marios:
My fave has to be either Devo Mario or Hasidic Mario.
- So EA recently signed up Steven Spielberg to produce games for them. I wonder if it’ll employ some of the technology that he says that he’s invented which more or less sounds like the holo-dek from Star Trek: TNG.
This isn’t the first time he’s flirted with video games btw (the Dig comes to mind). But those hoping for him to be hands on the video game process might be disappointed. This might be just another thing he slaps his name on. Those who feel otherwise probably still thinks he had something to do with Tiny Toons.
- Also from last week is this interview with the men behind Shadow of the Colossus (a game which I am so excited for… I haven’t been this amped before a game’s release in a long whiles) in which they spill the beans behind Ico’s ending.
- For those who missed it: for a while it was rumored that Dead or Alive 4 would feature a character from the Halo universe. Most assumed it was going to be the series protagonist or the holo-chick Cortana for obvious reasons (you know, boobies). But it turns out that its going to be a female under the Master Chief armor, which is basically the best of both worlds, and cements many people’s assertion that Team Ninja are geniuses.
- Time for some game-related music videos. First up a rap vid which sports some Mike Tyson’s Punch Out references, as well as some decent animation (can’t talk much about the song itself… then again, I’m not fan of rap these days).
Next is a vid produced by G4 for its Cinematech program, which is pretty much the only decent thing they show at this point. Its some song with footage from some wacky PSone game that features construction equipment. A pre-quel to Buchigire Kongou.
- And here’s a 30 minute movie that’s “intended to give gamers the movie they deserved”. You’ve heard of the Wizard, but what about The Master?
Hey, at least its better then any of Uwe Boll’s movies.
- Ben Heck, master custom portable console creator extraordinaire is at it again, with NES Micro:
- Oh, and in case you didn’t know and needed to be reminded: video gamers + LiveJournal = hilarity.
- Finally, I just found out that James Jean, a friend of mine from SVA, as well as a super talented talent from the world of comics, is attached with an upcoming animated series based upon Castlevania! James is designing the show, Warren Ellis is handling the writing, and the whole thing’ll be based upon the third game in the series, Dracula’s Curse, easily the most underrated game in the series.
