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In a way, I suppose you could consider Wario World (GC) a licensed game. It's by Treasure, whom we here at insert credit love. Well, maybe you could call is a "commissioned" game. I played it only slightly. Call it a Mario 64-inspired 3D platformer with some Mischief Makers-ish grab-and-pull elements. I played it only slightly because I plan to sit down and tear the hell out of it later. I was only concerned with determining if I wanted to go through with the complete playing session. In other words, I sought to determine if the game sucks. People were complaining about its sucking last year. As a "commissioned" game by Treasure, we all knew, it would include a kind of mishmash of Treasure-y elements, and even combinations of such beautiful elements can add up to something less than beautiful. Well, this year, I release the verdict: Wario World, winner of the 2003 second-best Treasure game of show award, does not suck. And it looks nice, too.
Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes (GC) doesn't suck, either. Click the link to read why, big man. If you have some genetic aversion to clicking the link, just read this: 2003's best, most welcome and meaningful remake, reissue, or port.
Right after my first rip through Twin Snakes -- that's when I first got my heart torn in half by my favorite game ever -- in other words, I had to play Super Mario Bros. 3 with a GameBoy Advance SP for a controller. The idea of having to play Mario 3 with a cell-phone-like buttons doesn't excite me. My thumb covers the entire tiny D-pad, making me duck sometimes when I want to run. I guess I'll have to play the game on my GameBoy Player, with a nice Hori Pad, just to take advantage of all the new worlds, items (the cape as a standard powerup?! ROCK!) and enemies (one screenshot shows a Charging Chuck from Super Mario World in a level where Mario can apparently lift up vegetables). The main problem with playing Super Mario Bros. 3 in this build is the GBASP's layout -- with the A button angled above and to the right of the B button, I can't keep the run and jump buttons covered with my thumb at the same time without breaking my right wrist. Luckily, longtime pal Chris Kohler was around to capture some of my frustration on camera. Feel the pain. One thing the video doesn't show you is the procuring of both warp whistles, the using of said warp whistles, and the fact that the game won't yet let you select World 8 from the Warp Zone. Which indicates to me, at least, that the game isn't finished. Which shows in the clippish framerate. I will wait. It is, after all, the best game ever.
While I was playing the not-best (unfinished) version of the best game ever, Jimmy T, from Nintendo's Wario Ware: Mega Microgame$ began pestering me. Chris Kohler stepped in to help me secure an interview. We asked him where Hideo Kojima was. He said he last saw Kojima in the bathroom. We checked it out. Kojima was not there. I was not long in my sorrow, for I saw free Ninja Gaiden bags in the Tecmo's Xbox-pumped booth. Impressions of Ninja Gaiden: I think they were showing a demo. I couldn't find it. The bag is hella nice, though. Best bag of E3; despite its being smaller than the Microsoft Xbox bag, it has the shine, the gusto, and the non-abrasive handles. Worst bag goes to NCSoft -- their bag ripped when only ten pounds full, as I was helping insert credit's Vincent Diamante move.
The next stop was the Microsoft booth. This is where I insert a joke:
The Microsoft booth at the 2003 Electronics Entertainment Expo was so big, it contained two Xboxes.
I experienced a live demo of Halo 2 after waiting in line for a half an hour. The beauty almost killed me; I award the game with nonplayable game of the show, as well as second-best time I've ever had watching someone else play a game. The level was huge. The playing was flawless. A character in the game, at one point, called the Bungie team-member/pro gamer a "demo biatch." Which was kind of funny. Our very own Eric-Jon Waugh was impressed almost thoroughly; his almost complaint was that the game seemed "too scripted" -- what with a Ghost vehicle sliding by just in time for the Master Chief to jump on the front, kick the rider in the head, and board. I tried to assure him that this was just the way the level was tweaked to fit demo play.
We then extrapolated; at the end of the demo, the Master Chief is surrounded by large, scary aliens, and it looks like he's about to get his metal ass handed to him. We hypothesized: wouldn't it rock if he got, like, captured, and then the Covenant backwards-engineered his cybernetic technology, and made all kinds of alien robots, and then you played as a human trying to recover the Master Chief? Even Eric-Jon agreed that such a thing would rock.
Right now, Eric-Jon is playing Atlus' Super Dodgeball Advance on the Gameboy Player. This brings me to the perfect opportunity to name my award for BEST GAME OF THE SHOW: LOGO ONLY.
Atlus' Disgaea's silk-smooth graphics and Final Fantasy Tactics feel certainly surprised me into needing the game. In a few months' time, it shall be in my PlayStation2, in the form of most-punkishly localized game of 2003 -- apparently the song "The Invasion From Within" by Tsunami Bomb, a punk band I sort of like, has been adopted as the game's theme song. Something I more than sort of like is the Disgaea battle system, which allows support attacks. Also, when you move all your characters into position, and choose who attacks whom, you then have to choose "execute" from a list of commands. This creates the cool effect of everyone attacking at once; as cool as this cool effect is, it's not as cool as the effect of making the hero look as damned awesome as he does. With lavender-ish hair, fangs (he's the son of the lord of the underworld, after all), a red cape, and a semi-cutesy look right down to his massive sword, he might just be my new favorite RPG character ever in terms of style.
While the new Lufia for Gameboy Advance was not available to play during our time at the Atlus booth, the new action-RPG CIMA, from the Lufia developers at Neverland, was on demonstration at the Natsume booth. I like the game already -- Lufia's cross-shaped battle menu mixed with scarily Landstalker-ish kind of dungeon layouts. This game has already kicked my ass once. Expect it to kick my ass plenty more times before I write up my full review. Don't you know, Graham Markay, the Natsume PR guy who brought my attention to CIMA also says he'll send me a stuffed cow from Harvest Moon, and also says more budget releases like Gekioh: Shooting King might be on their way to the PlayStation. Looks like everyone wins. And CIMA wins, too: the game that finally proves someone, somewhere, remembers both Landstalker and Lufia II, even if it's the designers of one of those two games award.
[next: More Winners Means More Losers]
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