Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

It seems only fitting that I should follow up my TGWP GoldenEye 007 post from last week with GoldenEye’s own sequel, Perfect Dark. Now after GoldenEye 007 pretty much established itself as one of the main reasons to pick up Nintendo’s last cartridge dependent console, most fans of the game, myself included, started to anticipate what Rare had planned for a sequel. Unfortunately though, it turned out that for whatever reason they were unable to secure the Bond license again, which meant GoldenEye’s successor would end up being an original creation. While this news made a few people worry that the sequel wouldn’t be as good as the original, those concerns turned out to be unfounded as Perfect Dark ended up being better than GoldenEye 007 in every aspect. Sure the catchy Bond theme was gone, and playing the game wasn’t like reliving one of the 007 movies, but improved graphics, better weapons and an amazing multiplayer mode more than made up for it.

And like with GoldenEye 007, it was the multiplayer mode that made Perfect Dark a real hit. In fact, I think my friends and I usually spent more time customizing the ‘perfect’ match than actually playing it. Another thing I particularly liked was the new weapons introduced in PD which included a ridiculously fun remote controlled rocket and the Farsight gun which allowed you to snipe an opponent across an entire level even if you were inside a building. The other thing that made Perfect Dark’s multiplayer entertaining for me was the stat tracking. I can only speculate how many hours of my life were spent playing GoldenEye, but Perfect Dark not only kept track of those hours, but also the virtual miles your character ran, kills, shots fired and pretty much any bit of data you could need to prove you were a batter player than your friends. And isn’t that what was really important?

[ Wikipedia - Perfect Dark ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Last week I wrote about the type of game that players hopefully only ever experience in their nightmares, so this week I thought I’d take a look at a game that sits on the other end of the greatness spectrum. Now before I begin, let me say that I recognize the brilliance of such games as Halo, Half-Life, Grand Theft Auto and countless others that I’ve played over the years, but for me, nothing provided as much sheer enjoyment and downright fun as GoldenEye 007 for the N64 did.

Before the game was released, I remember reading a small blurb about it in a now defunct gaming magazine, and they kind of brushed it off as another movie-to-game conversion that probably only Bond fans would appreciate. But little did they (or any of us) realize that Rare would not only create a game that was remarkably true to a pretty decent Bond flick, but also show the gaming industry that the first-person-shooter could work outside of a PC. In fact, for being the first real console FPS, I still think Rare knocked it out of the park. Sure, there were some compromises, like having to stand still in order to precisely aim and what-not, but I never considered them a downside, just a new and unique challenge that made the game even more interesting.

And while the single person game stayed remarkably true to GoldenEye the movie and was quite fun, I don’t think any fan of the game will deny that the true greatness of GoldenEye 007 came with its multiplayer. There were a couple of Summers I can remember where 3 friends and I spent a vast majority of our waking hours behind a big TV in my parent’s basement playing GoldenEye 007, and to be honest it was some of the most fun I’ve ever had. If I remember correctly, the multiplayer aspect was actually a last minute addition to the game, but thankfully Rare didn’t do a last minute job, and added a good level of customizability as well as a fantastic collection of weapons. I mean come on, how fun was it being the guy who was the first to find the RCP-90 or the Cougar Magnum in a 4 player match?

It’s been quite a few years since I’ve actually played GoldenEye the game, but I managed to catch the movie on AMC a few weeks ago, and I have to say I was surprised how often it reminded me of the video game, rather than the other way around. And for a game based on a movie to transcend the original film is a pretty impressive accomplishment in my opinion.

[ Wikipedia - GoldenEye 007 ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you missed a past issue of the New Yorker, or like me, have missed every single issue they’ve ever published, you can now order their complete back catalog on an easy to transport 80GB external hard drive. That amounts to over 4,000 issues of the magazine, including articles, stories, cartoons and even advertisements.

It also comes with The Complete New Yorker software which you have to install on your PC in order to access the back catalog, but presumably it makes viewing and searching past issues a lot easier. It’s available directly from the New Yorker’s Online Store for $179, and if you buy it now they’ll send you an upgrade disc in December for free which will ensure your collection is up-to-date for 2008.

[ The Complete New Yorker Portable Hard Drive ] VIA [ Chip Chick ]

By Luke Anderson

When it comes time for you to purchase a new USB flash drive, you’ll find that the market is simply bursting with products to choose from. With so much competition it can be hard for a manufacturer to make their gadget stand out. This latest drive from PNY seems to grab my attention fairly well.

PNY teamed up with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment to bring us this 2GB flash drive which happens to contain a digital copy of the original Ghostbusters movie. Of course the movie is DRM-protected and won’t play unless the flash drive is connected to your computer, which is quite a downer. What’s worse is they didn’t bother to actually mark the drive itself in any way to indicate that it contains such an awesome movie. The high price of around $53 is a bit much for a measly 2GB flash drive, even if it does have a movie on it.

[ Argos ] VIA [ Gearlog ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Whenever the topic of ‘worst video game you’ve ever played’ comes up, the answer for me is always easy. While I’ve definitely played some real disappointments over the years, nothing has come close to the truly awful, awful Superman for the N64. (Or Superman64 as it came to be known.) The game was developed by Titus and actually came out a year late thanks to a terrible showing at E3 in 1998. But for some reason most of the problems the game exhibited at E3 seemed to still be in the final retail version. Now the N64 was far from a 3D powerhouse, but Superman64 suffered from a particularly limited draw distance, and instead of trying to fix the problem, the developer originally explained it away as a “Kryptonite fog” that Lex Luthor and Brainiac deployed to confound the man of steel. Of course no one bought their explanation, so for the final version of the game the developer cleverly changed the storyline so that Superman64 was actually stuck inside a virtual reality version of Metropolis created by Luthor. Yeah, that’s easier to swallow.

But horrendous graphics were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to Superman64’s problems. The controls were atrocious and there were endless bugs that made the game almost impossible to play. However, that could actually be considered a plus, since the game itself was just not fun. Playing as Superman it was your responsibility to rescue Lois and Jimmy which usually involved navigating a clever maze setup by Luthor. And by ‘clever maze’ I mean a set of floating rings you simply had to fly through in a set time limit, which the awful controls and bugs usually made impossible. Like most people I opted to rent the game from Blockbuster instead of buying it, and ironically I can remember Superman64 appearing at the top of their rental charts for a while, since people were flocking to rent it just to see how bad it really was.

But on the flip side, next week I’ll be taking a look at what I still consider to be the greatest game I’ve ever played, and oddly enough, it was also an N64 exclusive…

[ MobyGames - Superman(64) ]

By Luke Anderson

When you think back to the early days of video games, Space Invaders will likely come to mind. The alien creatures tend to find their way outside of the game, and onto other products. This time they have landed on a flexible keyboard for your PC.

The keyboards come in two different color schemes (black/white and white/pink) and will run you $39. Sure, these are just the same flexible keyboards we’ve seen in the past, but the nostalgia factor does give it extra points.

[ 101Gear ] VIA [ Technabob ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If Antiques Roadshow has taught me anything, it’s that people will pay ridiculous amounts of money for the smallest bit of nostalgia, which is probably why something as big as this Classic Storefront Rocket Ride available from Hammacher Schlemmer comes with a $10,000 price tag. (Instead of the nickel it would have cost you to ride it back in the 1960’s.) In its defense though, the Rocket Ride is an authentic unit that has been completely refurbished to its original state including the tapered nose cone and retro space travel graphics. And thanks to a new electric motor, the ride still works like it used to, providing the passenger with a thrilling minute of rising, diving and banking motions. The working handlebars can be used to control the speed of the ride, and the unit also includes ‘realistic’ rocket and countdown-to-launch sound effects.

[ Classic Storefront Rocket Ride ]

By Andrew Liszewski

What a difference a year can make. Last week I wrote about Tiger’s Electronic Baseball which was one of the company’s first handheld LCD games. It featured simple graphics, basic controls and lame sound effects, and like any kid, I eventually got bored of the game. So when the time came to find a replacement, Electronic Hang-On seemed to offer so much more. The game is dated 1988 on the back, and it’s interesting to see how Tiger advanced the ‘platform’ in just a year’s time. The obvious improvement is the use of a licensed and already popular video game property. While Baseball was rather generic, Hang-On was a well-known SEGA title, and Tiger realized that players already familiar with the console version of the game would no doubt embrace a portable version as well. Clearly, the strategy worked on me.

The Tiger handheld games themselves also saw some much needed improvement. The lame two button controls of Baseball were replaced with a 4-way directional pad on one side (admittedly ‘down’ doesn’t actually do anything) and a set of accelerate and brake buttons on the other. While Hang-On’s gameplay featured the popular and somewhat overused ‘dodge the oncoming traffic’ approach, thanks to twisty roads and a turbo mode it could be quite challenging, and helped to pass many hours in the back of our minivan. I’d have to say the game’s sound effects saw the most improvement, and come pretty close to recreating the actual whine you’d get from a racing bike tearing down the highway. Even playing it now I’m somewhat impressed by how it sounds.

Unfortunately even with these improvements and a few other clever gimmicks the company created for later titles, the Tiger handhelds didn’t stand a chance against Nintendo’s Game Boy which was released in North America in August of 1989. And even though I was quick to embrace the Game Boy when it was released, I still had a soft spot for Hang-On and Baseball which is probably why they’re still in my collection so many years later.

[ Wikipedia - Tiger Electronics ]

By Andrew Liszewski

While Nintendo’s Game & Watch devices can probably be credited with jumpstarting the handheld electronic gaming market (or at least giving it a much needed boost) the company was no where near as prolific at releasing different segmented LCD display games as Tiger Electronics was. A few weeks ago I managed to dig up the first Tiger Electronics game I owned, which was a simple and generic version of baseball. No MLB tie-ins, so sports celebrity endorsements, just plain old baseball. The game’s sat untouched in a drawer for almost the past 20 years (it’s dated 1987 on the back) but I wasn’t surprised to see the rough condition it was in since I can remember throwing it in my school bag as a kid and taking it everywhere. However, I was surprised to find that the game still worked when I popped in a set of AA’s.

By today’s standards Electronic Baseball is downright crude, with cheesy beeps and blips used for sound effects, and uninspired baseball diamond graphics in the background. Besides the smaller buttons used for power, sound and difficulty settings, the game only has two simple controller buttons which are used for swinging and advancing your runners on base. And even though the graphics surrounding the display clearly show fielders wearing jellyfish and boxing gloves instead of traditional baseball gloves, your team never actually takes to the field. In fact the game is more like a home-run derby in that you really just need to swing on every pitch and hope for the best. Since this was one of Tiger’s first handheld games (at least in this form factor) it’s not surprising how simple the gameplay really was, but as a kid I still played with it for hours on end. Fortunately over the years the Tiger Electronics handheld games did get a bit more advanced…

[ Wikipedia - Tiger Electronics ]