Inspired by LongDeth, I decided to photograph most of my Capcom fighting games (and a few related pieces.) There are some other bits, but this is what I could find at hand after midnight without digging through a bunch of crap in my room. On with it!
Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start):
The various editions of Street Fighter II- World Warrior, Turbo, and Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 1 (which contains The World Warrior, Champion Edition, and Hyper Fighting.)
Super Street Fighter II Turbo (X) three different times, including two copies on the 3DO. Not shown: the special Capcom controllers for the 3DO that make the game bearable to play on that system.
Alpha and III.
The Vs. games.
Others.
Not fighting games, but related. Not shown: Super Puzzle Fighter II Turbo for GBA.
Ah, dammit, I should have put Saturday Night Slammasters in there somewhere. Oh well, maybe if I take photos of the rest of the crap I didn't feel like digging up tonight I'll slip that in there.
Oh fuck I forgot Tech Romancer too! Dammit! I even had it out with the others but forgot to put it in the last photo! Next time, Gadget.
My mom recently got a Toshiba Satellite laptop, so now I hijack it to play games that have been released in the last five years, as our desktop is a bit old (and my brother is always playing WoW on it anyway.) Here I am playing OutRun 2006, a pretty damn fun game.
I forget the exact specs, but it has 2 GB of RAM, AMD Turion 64X2... I think 1.8 GHz, and an ATI Radeon PCI card (128 or 256 MB, I forget.) The three main games I've played on it are OutRun, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Portal.
But I do most of my gaming here:
All 5 Nintendo consoles (with a Game Boy Player,) a black Sega Sports Dreamcast, and the white SingStar PS2. The Gamecube is also a Pokémon XD limited edition. I didn't set out to own special versions of any consoles, they just happened to be available when I was in the market for them. Note the "Touching is Good" promotional mannequin hand, and the talking Tails I found at Goodwill. Also, I use a cassette adapter from the switchbox to the boom box when I want to play games in stereo, as the 13" Montgomery Ward that's been with us for some 20 years and now sits in my room is mono. Except for the sound of the tape reels turning, it works out beautifully.
I need a bigger shelf. And a place to hang that Phoenix Wright poster.
While accompanying my sister to a job interview yesterday, we decided to stop by the mall, as we'd arrived in the area early. As we walked into the entrance nearest the empty shell formerly known as Robinson's May, a glorious sight leapt out at me from my peripheral vision, a particular type of business establishment unseen in this shopping plaza for a decade or more, certainly before it became a Westfield.
"Um.... wow," I understatedly exclaimed to myself. Seeing the machines as I approached had left me in a momentary state of shock. Now, arcades aren't all that rare in the area, all things considered--there's a Boomer's even closer to my house than the mall, the bowling alley still has a few machines, and Nickel City and Dave & Buster's are a half hour down the freeway or so--but seeing one here, in this place, among the other shops (although at a currently dead end of the building) filled me with excitement. As we were drawn inside the establishment, my bristling expectations turned to "no fucking way!" ecstasy, as right inside the entrance, beckoning to be played, was a pinball machine. And not just any pinball machine, at that:
CUE BALL WIZARD!
To understand why I was so excited, you need to know something about my previous experience with this machine. In 2000, when my family got our first real computer (I don't count the DOS machine handed down by our uncle in 1993) one of the first games we got for it, and one of the few worth a damn that would run on that old eMachines box, was Microsoft's Pinball Arcade. It was kind of novel for a PC pinball game, being a collection of recreations of actual pinball machines rather than some made-up garbage for a generic budget title. One of the games in this collection, and the most modern represented, was Cue Ball Wizard.
I never played this particular Gottlieb cabinet in real life--I'd venture to say the number of actual pinball machines I'd played in my entire life at that point was around 5--but I played quite a bit of it on the PC. To have the physical box greeting me on this random sojourn was incredible. I pulled the single one dollar bill I had in my pocket, and found the change machine.
Someone playing Cue Ball Wizard
Aside from some dirt and a few of the lights not working, the machine played damn fine, especially considering its age. 50 cents for 3 balls, more than a fair price given inflation since the last pinball renaissance of the early 90s, the era to which this machine belonged. I somewhat surprised myself by hitting the 49 million points required to earn a free game on my first play, reached after my last ball had tumbled between the flippers and the bonus points collected for that round were added to the total.
In a typical display of the fickle favor of the pinball gods, my free game lasted all of a minute or so, 1-2-3 right through the gap. So it goes.*
Two more pinball machines graced the premises, Sega's Frankenstein from the same era and the more recent Sopranos game. Three pinball machines in one place, two of them relative oldies. I have a good feeling about this place. With the last-chance score matching failing to earn me another free game, I said goodbye to cowboys playing pool and cased the rest of the joint.
That good feeling? It wasn't misplaced. A brief rundown of what I can remember:
-TWO Samba De Amigo 2000 machines!
-TWO Keyboard Manias!
-Guitar Freaks -Gunbalina (Point Blank) -Gun Survivor 2: Biohazard Code: Veronica -Final Furlong -Rave Racer -Operation Wolf 3 -Dance Maniax -Star Wars Episode I: Racer Arcade -What appeared to be a Japanese Silent Scope game
-A bunch of stuff I can't remember right now
As I moved around, tears of joy welling up in the corners of my eyes, a thought occurred: The only thing this place is missing is a fighting game. Five seconds later, Ryu's silhouette appears next to the Capcom logo just off to my right. A generic sit-down cabinet tucked away in the corner. The attract mode begins as I stand still, now looking straight at the screen.... I catch a glimpse of Cyber Akuma, and I smile. The title screen appears: Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. The Japanese version- I didn't even think about this last point until we were leaving the mall, but this means (probably) Norimaro is in the game!
By now I'm convinced this place has everything but the kitchen sink. Oh wait, no, it's occupying a space that recently belonged to a failed eatery, so there's still one of those tucked behind a corner, too.
Having looked around, and out of changeable dollars, we departed, vowing to return to this magical place some day. I feel there is only one way I can end this tale:
A couple years ago Capcom had the guys at UDON bring the previously Japan-only Street Fighter: Eternal Challenge art book to the English-speaking masses. The paperback version went for around $20-25, and for some reason I didn't pick it up when I had the chance. Then one day I was browsing my favorite online retail sites, and it was gone.
I looked around again today, and aside from some schmuck on Amazon selling the Japanese paperback version for 300 smackers, nothing. Then I checked Capcom's site, and lo and behold, they somehow found a few more copies of one of the limited edition hardbacks.
So I sucked it up and finally bought one. And, if you like Street Fighter and have any plans of ever owning or simply perusing this art book but haven't picked it up yet, then now's the fucking time!
Unless UDON has saved some more of these or decides to print another limited edition with another cover for the convention circuit, I really doubt you'll have another opportunity to get this book for less than the $75 (+shipping and sales tax) Capcom is asking. I can't find any of the editions on eBay currently, not even the Japanese one.
I know I sound like a corporate shill, but that's because I SUPER SERIOUSLY BELIEVE that this book is only going to get harder to find from now on based on my searches online (that, and Capcom's scary urgency speak on the site worked on me.) Search elsewhere online for yourself, I'm not shitting you. As a Nintendo DS owner, I've been seriously burned by waiting to buy things and then having them go out of print (sorry, eBay sellers, Warioware isn't worth $50 used cart only) (goddamn you, Electroplankton) (Tetris DS? How the fuck is that out of print?) (Picross DS? Now you're just shitting me) (you see what I mean by now.)
So click the link below if you're a dumbass SF fan like me that waited this long to purchase this art book! Come on, you still have Christmas money, right?
Today I had my first major "fuck you" experience with PC gaming. I've never been a big PC gamer; there wasn't even a relatively current PC in our house until Christmas 1999, and it was an eMachines box at that. Furthermore, I just purchased my first ever graphics card a couple weeks ago... and that is where our tale begins.
For $8 after a $20 mail-in rebate, I wasn't expecting much from the 128MB PCI (not PCI-E) GeForce MX 4000 (half of you just figured out where this is going, I'm sure), but $8 to have something besides Intel "Extreme" integrated graphics inside the family PC was a deal I couldn't pass up. And lo, a whole swath of gaming heretofore unknown by our humble box suddenly made itself known, as I reinstalled GTA III and turned everything up for a test drive. How I finished this game before, I have no idea. Unreal Tournament 2004 ran smoothly on decent settings where before it had chugged, to an unplayable degree on certain maps, when tuned all the way to the low end.
And the Half-Life 2 demo, which had stuttered on the opening cinematic before, now ran quite smoothly at a perfectly enjoyable level of detail. Woe is me, friends, for this single fact gave me an unwarranted sense of confidence in the newfound powers of the machine.
What had led me to download that demo in the first place was a little package called The Orange Box that had recently been made available. I was particularly interested in Portal, one game out of the five included. I hadn't followed the development beyond a vague awareness of the concept, but as Portalmania swept the Internet gaming communities like wildfire I knew I'd have to give it a try eventually, being a big fan of room-puzzle games and humorous games in general. Alas, there was no demo of this game, and so based on advice from a friend on another forum I downloaded the Half-Life 2 demo to see if our machine could handle Portal.
Let me caution anyone in a similar situation that this is not a Good Idea.
As I said, I was flush with confidence. So, with their ad proclaiming $35 for The Orange Box as part of the 2 day post-Thanksgiving sale, I walked into my nearby Circuit City yesterday afternoon and snagged the last copy on the shelf, to the "Aw, man!" dismay of one of the employees.
I open the box, register the game on Steam, install Portal, run it, and am greeted with an error message informing me that DirectX 8.0 is required to run Portal.
"What the fuck?" I gently declared. For you see, my friends, the aforementioned Unreal Tournament 2004 needs DirectX 9.0b in order to run. Therefore, I believe my surprise at this error message is quite understandable. A quick query of Google later, I find the cause my problem summed up in two little words:
"Pixel Shader."
"Fuck!" I bleated. Just two days previous I had downloaded Psychonauts from GameTap, and had gotten an error message regarding that very subject. "Your video card does not support Pixel Shader 1.0" and so on.
But... but... DirectX 8.0... I have DirectX 9... wha...?
A couple of suggestions from IRC friends didn't make any difference. Portal will not run on this card. And there was little in my experience to suggest that it wouldn't, not in the system requirements, not in the card's specs on the box; only that omen from my Psychonauts experience, which was outweighed by the more favorable experiences that I naturally chose to believe.
I suppose I could just sell th-- oh, wait, what was that? Oh yes, Steam registration means I can't sell the game, because I don't "own" a copy of The Orange Box at all, as far as Valve is concerned. Before I rant a bit, I want to be fair; I knew this already when I took the game to the register, and to Valve's credit they actually have a message on the box regarding Internet activation that includes the URL of the license agreement, a courtesy many software vendors would do well to provide.
But I was expecting to be able to run Portal when I was at that register. And when shit like this happens I'm ready to tell anyone heralding downloadable distribution as the wave of the future to fuck off and die. I'm not accustomed to giving up rights of transferrance, doubly so now that I have been screwed over firsthand. That's another rant, but before I stop I want to say that I hope everyone at Valve bought all of their college textbooks brand new, and never purchase used games, CDs, or DVDs. (And yes, I am aware of the other issues surrounding this matter, before you comment telling me why I'm wrong; save it for when/if I devote a more in-depth post to this subject specifically, or face my fist shaking at you with Internet anger. For now, back to PC gaming sucking ass.)
Right, where was I? Ah yes: PC gaming is a fucking minefield and eventually everyone loses a leg. I'll play Portal and the rest of the games eventually when I can afford to upgrade. In the meantime, I've still got to beat Elite Beat Agents and Pikmin 2.
Moral: Make sure your card supports pixel shaders, and always wait for a demo if you're unsure about a game.
Alternate Moral: Go get a Nintendo DS, it'll even play fucking Japanese games without a driver update! Just press POWER!
It's that time again! I say that like I keep a regular schedule for this feature; haha, I kill me. I've tried, but then I get lazy. I haven't even written an article on here outside of my two feature series(es?) in weeks. Thank Niero's updating of the community blogs to be more user friendly for pulling me back to writing something after nearly two weeks! I hope you all survived in my absence.
Today's secret is from one of my favorite games ever. I know there are a lot out there who consider this game their favorite member of the franchise it belongs to, which is really saying something. I think it may be my personal favorite, too.
(It isn't Metal Slug, by the way; I just couldn't resist spelling out that "rocket launcher" soundbite in the title.)
Ever since the first Legend Of Zelda, secrets have been a significant aspect of the series, and not just in terms of hidden extra heart containers or other ways to extend the number of x that you can carry/use. Link's Awakening, the fourth entry and the first Zelda for Game Boy, remains one of the most secret-filled, or at least the one with the most cameos. The somewhat mysterious story is wrapped in a shell of light-hearted humor, and this refusal by the game to take itself too seriously was a refreshing change from the dramatics of the previous games. It also provided fertile ground for planting lots of Easter Eggs, and a few of these are actually somewhat useful, including today's secret.
What is it?
A hidden weapon technique.
How do you get it?
First you must acquire two weapons, both of which are necessary for completion of the game: the bow (and arrows) and bombs.
Both of them can be found in the shop in Mabe Village after you buy the shovel there, but take note that one of them is rather pricey...
Once you have both items, equip both of them (fun fact: this game introduced the ability to equip more than one non-sword/shield weapon at a time to the Zelda series, treating your sword and shield like the other earned weapons.)
Finally, press B and A at the same time. You may have to work on the timing; if you can't get it, try to press the A button first, as your thumb (or at least mine) tends to naturally hit the B button first when trying to mash both of them. Anyway, when you do it successfully, this happens:
How awesome is this secret?
Ka-BOOM! Now you can launch bombs across the screen, and they explode on impact. Perfect for the hero on the go who has no time to mess with such foppery as "fuses." Excellent for the green thumb in your life looking for a better way to take care of weeds and maintain their garden. It also makes julienne fries.
Seriously, Link just built an RPG launcher. It'd be easier to describe how not awesome that is. This turns timed bombs that take a little finesse to use in some situations into ranged death that takes no prisoners. This is an effective way to clear a crowded room of enemies. It's magnificent against those bad guys whose main weakness is bombs (save for the dodongo-esque creatures that need to be fed bombs to be defeated) such as Pols Voice.
One of the favorite room puzzles in A Link To The Past and Link's Awakening is a chasm or wall separating Link from a group of bomb-allergic enemies that must be defeated to open the exit door. The usual method is to lay a bomb down, pick it up, then throw over the wall/chasm with excellent timing so that the wandering enemies walk into the explosion. This little secret provides a much easier answer.
One of the things I liked about this secret when I first found out about it was a certain ambiguity. That is to say, it's difficult to determine from a player's perspective whether this is a glitch in the way the game handles weapons (which would make it the first glitch I've featured here,) or if it is an intended hidden feature put in by the designers. Nothing at all in the game requires you to do this. On the other hand, this trick made it into the Game Boy Color remake of the original game (obviously) while an infamous glitch (the map screen scrolling trick) was removed. One more bit of evidence that it was intentional is that bomb arrows returned in Twilight Princess, not as separate ammunition but by combining the bombs with the bow (this time as a documented technique, however.) It's possible that it started as an unintended glitch that the designers liked, and became a feature.
Whatever the case, take this knowledge I have bestowed upon you, and use it well.
By that, of course, I mean go harass the shit out of chickens.
Happy Halloween! (It's still Halloween here on the West Coast, screw you!) It seems like I've written both less than or equal too and more than four of these articles already: less than or equal to because that's the truth, and more than because I usually spend a good bit of time grabbing screenshots from my own original copies of the games on consoles they've officially been released on and adding funny quotes to them. Because I care, dammit. You're welcome.
Today is Halloween, though, and in the interest of time since there's about 40 minutes officially left in the day and I want this appropriately themed episode to launch on this most sacred of days, I'm cutting a few corners again, both in picture grabbing methods (say hi to that MobyGames watermark!) and in the length of writing. This is okay, though, as there's not much to it. Besides, today's secret can't really be shown.
What the hell am I talking about? Continue on to find out.
Ah, Mega Man 7, perhaps the most secret-filled game in the original Mega Man series. There's lots of optional stuff to find in this one, and it's all hidden fairly well but not in a completely unfair way. The one I'm focusing on today is rather simple to obtain, actually. Like many easily obtained secrets, the real trick is in knowing it even exists.
What Is It?
After beating the first four selectable robot bosses and a midboss, the second half of Dr. Wily's team appears on the stage select screen to challenge Mega Man. One of them is Shade Man (in the lower right corner above), a vampiric robot who can sap Mega Man's energy to fill his own life bar.
His stage is appropriately horror themed, with a Jack-O-Lantern miniboss in the middle of the stage, other monstrous robots, and some great moody music.
However, there's actually a hidden music track on this that may be even more appropriate . And the only clue you have that it exists is this:
Coffins popping out of the ground and releasing zombots in a Capcom game on the SNES. But...
How Do You Get It?
This doesn't work if you've already defeated Shade Man and are repeating his stage to collect items or for shits and giggles. Highlight Shade Man's portrait on the Stage Select screen, and hold B and press Start to start the stage. You'll notice the boss introduction theme will have changed a bit, indicating the code is succesful.
How Awesome Is This Secret?
Above, Shade Man's stage with the usual song playing.
Below, the secret music.
It's a remix of the graveyard music from Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts! (In case the article title didn't give it away.)
The boss intro music is also a remix of the short jingle for the map screen that is shown before you start a level in Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts.
I'm a real sucker for secret cameos. Hence my love for recent Nintendo games, which all seem to have at least one throwaway reference or two to some other big series of theirs. Back to the point, I wonder how the thought process at Capcom went with this one; at what point did someone decide this was going to be in the game? Did the zombie robots make it in as a clever nod, and then someone decided to go the extra mile and add the remix? At any rate, both elements combined result in a smile from me.
After a long bout of laziness and simply not being very keen on sitting at the computer for a couple hours taking screenshots and writing, The 3rd Party Memory Card (and my community blog) makes a return. I had fully intended to continue in the past couple weeks, doubly so since Chad has left us with a big gaping void not seen since hello.jpg, but ended up ripping him off even more than I am already (if you can believe that's possible) with my own de facto hiatus. This ends now. The hiatus, that is, not the theft.
Eye-catching title, eh? If you guessed today's featured game would be the NES classic Bubble Bath Babes, you're wrong!
It's not Gals Panic, either, but you are somewhere in the neighborhood. Not the neighborhood you may be expecting. Get your mind out of the gutter.
It's a puzzle game. You may have heard of it:
It's kind of a big deal.
I wanted to have some kind of suspense and not give it all away in the title of the post. As the cat is almost certainly out of the bag now, onward!
-The Setup-
The ultimate game for the obsessive-compulsive in all of us, Tetris is all about stacking blocks. Surely, you know the rules: stack blocks, make horizontal lines across the screen to clear them, don't let the middle of the stack reach the top.
The title of the game itself refers to a certain technique for scoring points. Clearing lines one-by-one is no way to earn the big numbers, and certainly isn't difficult or terribly satisfying. No, you must clear multiple lines at once.
And to do that, you need to stack, stack, stack those blocks.
Now, clearing two or three lines at once is certainly better than one, but there are many setups for both of those goals. What you want to do is make a complete wall (or two) of stacked blocks that cover 9/10ths of the playfield's horizontal distance, leaving a narrow channel at least four lines high.
Then, you wait, and continue stacking on top of the wall, leaving the channel open. What you are waiting for is one particular piece out of the seven types that appear in Tetris:
The straight line.
-The Moment-
The trap is set, here comes the net!
Drop the line piece into the channel.
Clearing four lines at once is called a tetris. It is the largest number of lines that can be cleared with one piece, the best way to score a lot of points, and can only be done with the line piece. It's also usually accompanied by the screen flashing wildly and a nice, loud sound effect, as if you're playing The Price Is Right pinball machine.
It's also pretty awesome.
-The Impact-
When I first thought about writing up this particular moment, it was something of a joke. It still is, and it's funny in my mind, so shut up.
As I thought about it, though, I realized there is indeed more to this moment. Sure, part of the joke is that it seems a bit silly to call this a "moment," compared to an opera or hitching a ride on flaming death, or other very deliberately crafted sequences in more narrative games. What's more, scoring tetrises is something you do multiple times in any given round of Tetris (well, if you're at all competent at the game), which runs just a tad counterintuitive to the definition of "moment."
Now that I've explained the joke and ergo thoroughly killed it, let's continue.
Yes.
What Tetris presents to the player with its eponymous game mechanic is one of the defining and most addictive risk/reward systems in videogames. In order to score lots of points, you need to build the stack to a certain height. It's only 1/5th the height of the playfield, so that isn't the real risk. What's risky is that out of seven possible pieces that the game can throw at you, only one scores a Tetris. While you wait for the coveted line block to show up, more blocks are being dumped on the playfield, and you have to continue stacking them, with three goals in mind:
1) Keeping the stack from reaching the ceiling
2) Leaving as few gaps as possible to maximize chances at additional tetrises
3)Not screwing up like this:
"Like bullseyeing womprats," my ass!
Once your stack climbs halfway up the screen, all three of these considerations interact quite madly. If you mess up on one point then the other two become harder to manage as well. Furthermore, screwing up on number three will usually result in a line piece coming right after the next one. There is a God, and He mocks your Tetris playing.
Of course, the truly satisfying tetrises come precisely after such screw-ups, when one manages to reopen the carefully built channel, and the very next piece that drops is a line. Never has a human being felt such sweet vindication, nor felt like such a badass.
Sometimes, if the mystic random algorithm that governs the block dropping order aligns just right, two or three lines will appear in a row after a long period of none. With so much time having passed, the player has built a truly impressive stack, and BAM BAM BAM, Stealers Wheel cues up on K-BILLY and the player does a victory dance as three tetrises are scored.
Oh, but there's more.
I haven't yet mentioned the 2-player (or more, depending on your version) mode, and this is where the risk one takes versus the reward truly shines bright. The goal is not to gain points, but to cause your opponent's stack to rise to the top of the screen before your own. Clearing two or more lines at once adds "garbage" rows with a one-block wide gap at the bottom of the other's stack, with two and three line clears adding one and two lines, respectively. A tetris will dump four lines.
With a little luck and speed, a player can build their stack and send a mountain of garbage at their opponent at once with a few tetrises very rapidly, pushing them from the bottom to almost to the top of the screen . To do this very quickly, however, you have to build a large stack to sustain multiple tetrises. If the other player manages to get a tetris before you, you'll soon find yourself stressed out with a lot less room to maneuver than you had a second before, possibly none at all. When both players are playing greedy and reckless in this manner, it's an awesome spectacle.
There's even more to it. The way garbage lines stack creates a continuous gap for every ten lines just ripe for tetris exploitation by one's opponent, should they clear the opening. This opens up a viable strategy where one can play conservatively against a reckless opponent by not dropping blocks as fast as they can, instead waiting for the garbage. This necessitates watching the opponent's side of the screen to determine when a line piece can be expected (as both players get the same blocks in the same order) to anticipate and prevent too sudden of an onslaught, but if the other player has been too wreckless, then one tetris facilitated by the very ammunition they had used against you can win the battle.
Finally, one more multiplayer Tetris phenomenon, what might be called Tetris Tennis. With two players dropping blocks at similar speeds (or, rarely, with one player a fair bit farther ahead in terms of blocks dropped), a point may arise in the match where both players get several lines in a row almost simultaneously. What results is garbage blocks quickly passing back and forth between the players as one scores a tetris, then the other scores a tetris off of the resulting garbage, and so on. It isn't always strictly alternating, one player may pull off two tetrises in a row before the other manages one, and that's what makes it exciting.
That, and the screen flashing and the buzzer playing.
And that, gentleman and ladies who are actually gentleman playing buxom characters looking for free phat lewt from lonely nerds who don't know any better, is a pretty damn thorough explanation of why getting a Tetris stands with your unexpected character deaths and cutscenes scored with soaring music as a memorable moment. Narrative? Production values? Fuck 'em.
What should have been last week's Secret is finally here! And with the arrival of #4 I think I've finally caught up, assuming I continue with my plan to make this weekly. Then two more 3rd Party Memory Card moments, and another Secret this Friday. The things I do for you people....
Anyway, hello again, and so soon at that! This week I finally live up to my name by uncovering a nugget of mystery buried in a Street Fighter game. I think there's a very good chance none of you have ever dreamed in your wildest dreams that the secret you are about to learn existed; I myself was giddy upon learning of it. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Strap yourselves in, because:
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 took the tag-team fighting of its three ancestors to new levels of insanity.
Yes, the pyrotechnics on display reached new heights as you commanded three characters with roughly the power of one Death Star apie-
Err.... yeah.... okay-
WILL YOU PICK YOUR FUCKING TEAM ALREADY?!? FUCKING HELL!!!
Finally.
Hey, you picked Dan Hibiki. What a fortuitous coincidence, because today's secret is all about you, Danny Boy.
What Is It?
As I was saying before the character select screen intruded, shit got crazy in the Marvel vs. series. In order for Capcom's stable to match the power of the Marvel superheroes, the Street Fighters, Darkstalkers, and others all got a boost in power from their usual incarnations.
All, that is, except for perennial whipping boy, Dan Hibiki. Compare his super fireball:
to Akuma's:
and it becomes clear that this is the most that Dan has ever sucked, and probably will ever suck. This is absolute zero on the suckometer. Servbot is arguably a weaker character, but even he has a couple of screen-filling moves to match the rest of the cast. Capcom appears to have dropped The Pink Wonder into a warzone without so much as a spork. Dan has always been subpar, but here.... here he's just hamburger.
Or so it seems. True, all of his regular attacks, specials, and supers leave much to be desired. But Capcom have indeed given Dan more power than he is accustomed to having, just like everyone else in the game. They have bestowed upon him an undocumented special move: The Otoko Michi.
How do you use it?
First, you need to have your super meter filled to level 3 or above, as this move uses three bars. Then, enter the following button combination carefully and quickly: Fierce, Short, Back, Jab, Jab. In the standard notation, that's HP LK <- LP LP. Make sure you're standing close to your opponent, as the move doesn't have much range.
How awesome is this secret?
HOLY SHIT LOOK AT AKUMA'S LIFE!!
...
Ouch, now look at Dan's!
The Otoko Michi is the single most powerful move in the entire game. Here it is being used on Sentinel, the character with the toughest defense:
Who would have thought Dan would ever get the most powerful move in any Street Fighter game? Of course, there are drawbacks as you've already noticed. It takes three bars of super meter to use, just like most of the really powerful moves in the game. Second, and the biggest setback, Dan will come out of the move in a bad way, as he will always be left with one pixel width of life left on his meter regardless of how much he had before. One hit, and he's toast. Third, it's slow and easy to dodge.
Fourth, unlike any of the other grab specials and supers, the Otoko Michi can be tech hit out of as if it were a normal throw, the damage thus being avoided.
This is the very definition of a desperation move. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and if Dan isn't as desperate as he'll ever be in MvC2, well, I shudder to think of a time when he's in a worse way. Of course, if Dan is about to die anyway, the move won't kill him, so that is indeed the perfect time to use it.
The Otoko Michi actually originated in the earlier Marvel Superheroes vs. Street Fighter, although its effect was a bit different:
Dan's super taunt was a better use of your super meter in that game.
Eagle-eyed fans may have noticed something.... familiar about this move. A level three super where the character rushes forward, grabs onto the opponent, and simply unleashes raw power upon them. Look again at that button combination:
HP LK <- LP LP
Why, in reverse, that's.... LP LP -> LK HP!
Indeed, Dan's hidden technique is a parody of Akuma's Shungokusatsu, going so far as to use the reverse of the button combination for that infamous move. Ever since Street Fighter Alpha Dan has been the Yin to Akuma's Yang, and the Otoko Michi came about as another joke to tie them together.
Personal story time: I didn't get into fighting games beyond Street Fighter II until I met my group of friends in college a few years ago. Dan quickly became one of my favorite characters, because I'm just like that, and I suck anyway. Before knowing about the existence the Otoko Michi, I actually had a conversation with a friend where we suggested that Dan should have almost this exact same move, complete with the reverse button combination. Shortly after, I found out about his move in Pocket Fighter/Super Gem Fighters: Mini Mix where he sends out the ghost of his father to do the Shungokusatsu. That was cool, but when I found out about the Otoko Michi I just about pissed myself with glee, and couldn't wait to try it out in front of friends, and inevitably screw it up but stll surprise them.
Intentionally hidden techniques have been in fighting games since at least the original Street Fighter, when Ryu and Ken's special moves were unlisted on the cabinet. The Otoko Michi stands as one of my favorites for all of the reasons above. Successfully unleashing it in the heat of battle is one of the most beautiful and satisfying moments you'll ever experience in a fighting game.
Hello, and welcome to last week's edition of It's A Secret To Everybody, coming to you here in the FUTURE! Because I took all that extra time, this should be a real gem, right? Err..... um...... that is to say.... yeah, sure, what the hell, this is the GREATEST THING I'VE EVER WRITTEN.
There's not much to this one, really, though it is pretty damn cool. With Halloween creeping up, let's move onward to this appropriately themed secret.
Zombies Ate My Neighbors, besides being one of the best titles for anything ever, is a top-down arcade-style action game for the SNES/Genesis. You shoot zombies and other typical (and not so typical) monsters and rescue the civilians they threaten for points over some odd 50 levels.
This genre is a great one for people who enjoy secrets. Most of the stages in ZAMN are packed with optional areas filled with collectibles, weapons, and powerups. There's no timer, so you're free to explore the stages at your leisure, assuming you have enough firepower and don't let every neighbor fall victim to the horrible horrors populating the area.
But what am I highlighting here? What in the hell is this "Day Of The Tentacle" secret?
What Is It?
Sadly, it is not the full version of Lucasarts' classic adventure game "Day Of The Tentacle" hidden on a PC in the "Office Of The Doomed" stage (and thus you can't play Maniac Mansion on a PC in Day Of The Tentacle on a PC in Zombies Ate My Neighbors, which would have been the most awesome meta-Easter Egg ever.) But you are on the right track, as this game was in fact developed by Lucasarts.
It's a bonus level where you can attempt to earn some extra points and items, including a 1-Up, which is an exceedingly rare item in this (difficult and long-for-an-arcade-style) game. You play it just like any other stage, rescuing the neighbors to make an exit appear. You don't run across it through normal gameplay, however.
How do you get it?
From the title screen, choose the "Password" option, and enter the password BCDF, the first four letters in the vowel-free password system. You'll hear a tone to confirm, but won't immediately jump to the stage as with other passwords, instead going back to the title screen.
Now choose Start, and you'll begin the bonus level. Upon completion, you'll continue on from the first stage of the game.
How awesome is this secret?
The level itself is short and simple, and doesn't play any differently than the rest of the game. The 1-up is nice, but isn't enough to make it stand out. So why the hell am I writing an article about it?
Purple Tentacle, the main villain from the game Day Of The Tentacle, cameos as the featured enemy in this stage! Yes! The connection is finally established!
Confession time: I've never actually played Day Of The Tentacle. I want to, and this secret only increases that demand. For anyone who has played it, however, I'd imagine this is an exciting little treat, much in the same vein as what Mario fans experienced playing The Legend Of Zelda: Link's Awakening and stomping on goombas with Link.
What I really like about this secret is how perfect this cameo fits into the game as a whole. Purple sentient tentacles without some sort of cephalopod attached are silly and disturbing monsters that could have been pulled right out of any classic B horror movie. What's more, the title of the stage and the game that inspired it fall brilliantly into another part of ZAMN's horror movie motif, which is that every level is preceded with its own title (and sometimes a tagline) mimiciking classic (and not so classic) horror film titles(and taglines.)
The pieces fit together so beautifully, in fact, that I can imagine the whole game came about as an excuse to put this little secret bonus level in it. While that's almost certainly not the case, it's difficult to think that the premise and title of the game Day Of The Tentacle didn't provide some inspiration.
I didn't have a PC in the heyday of adventure games, but for gamers who look back fondly on the days when Lucasarts produced as many original games as Star Wars-branded ones, finding this secret is a one-two punch of awesome.
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My Articles:
The 3rd Party Memory Card- In which I rip off Chad the C and expound upon my favorite moments in games.
It's A Secret To Everybody- In which I highlight and babble on about various Easter Eggs, cheats, and so on.
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I own:
NES
SNES
N64
GCN
Wii
Game Boy
Game Boy Color
Game Boy Player
Nintendo DS
Dreamcast
3DO
I like:
Fighting games, scrolling shooters, puzzle, platformer, racing games, adventure.... actually, pretty much everything, including an occasional sports game. Also, pinball. Pinball fucking rules.
My photographs (and occasional drawings and bad writing) are here.
