Over the weekend I was reinstalling Windows on my computer. While I was backing up all of my files I spent a little time going through my art folders. There was kind of a slew of materials that I created for the site and for other purposes that, for one reason or another, never saw the light of day. And others that were created simply to comment on someone's blog, that I liked and didn't want to get lost to time.



All weekend after playing BlazBlue for the first time, I had been kid of jonesing to draw a pic of v-13 (or Nu, if you like), but since I really have little to say on the game itself, it would be a picture without a blog. The idea struck me that I could put together a few blogs showcasing some of this previously lost art. This is where you came in.



When I first started contributing to Dtoid, one of the things that I did a lot of was quick photoshops to go in the comments. This was one of the first. I was always kind of proud of this one for some reason. More for the message than anything else. Never really caught on, though. But I thought it was funny.



When I started illustrating my blog pics from scratch, I drew a bunch for blogs that I've never ended up writing. This was one that I was going to use for a review of Phantom 2040 for the SNES. That's one of my all-time favorite games that gets very little attention (play it now!). Sadly, I never got around to replaying the heck out of that game to remember how to achieve all of the various endings. Someday I'll get back to it. But I always liked how the illustration on that piece turned out.

I should mention at this point that I draw primarily for fun. I really like the way my style looks. I also realize that it's not very good by most people's standards. I've got a lot to learn about things like anatomy and perspective. I am getting better at that sort of thing as time goes on. I really like that my style is so unpolished, though. To me that gives it a ton of charm. I may one day be able to draw a human figure and have it be proportionately correct, but I'm always going to have that sloppy, sketchy style. It's just what I like.



About a year ago, I wrote a blog celebrating RetroforceGo!'s 1st anniversary and their 50th episode. I had made a pencil/watercolor painting that I further edited in Photoshop to add in screen captures of various retro games. That painting actually gave birth to my current, sketchy art-style. Prior to that, however, I had started that drawing in photoshop the way that I always had. Back then I would draw a rough light sketch, then build layers of color and shading over the top. I didn't get too far, and I can't remember specifically why I changed up. But I did get Topher almost completed.



I really like the way that was turning out. I kind of wish that I had finished it (it looks much more like Mr. Cantler than the final blog version).



This is another unfinished pic that is much more recent. When my little brother, Paul, gave me a tablet for my computer recently, I became addicted to drawing as much as I could. I was doing a lot of experiments to try to get my tablet sketches to look as close to my pencil sketches as possible. Recently I started reading the Dune Chronicles, and this was a piece that was inspired by that reading. Doubt I'll ever finish it. It was more of an exercise than anything else.

That's it for today. I'll have two more blogs of lost artwork to share very soon. Including a couple of alternate takes on my page in the Destructoid Alphabet Book. Be sure to hit the gallery for a full res version of v-13 from BlazBlue.

The question at hand is, "What does Steampunk mean to you?" As one who lives for gaming, I see the answer to that question as I do all questions of meaning: through the veil of videogames. I think of Violet Beauregard, who entered the mythical chocolate factory only to ask, "What kind of gum you got?" Throw me into a world filled with mechanical prestidigitation and I'll simply ask, "What manner of games do you possess, dear chap?"

In a world where Benjamin Franklin neglected to merge kite and key to catch lightning in a bottle, video games would not come to be. Not as we've come to know them at any rate. You see, every possible universe has their own Yaniero Gonzalez (but only one per alternate timeline- Don't get greedy). In a steam-powered world as in our own, Niero has got our backs.

He would make gaming possible in that world where sophisticated mechanical technology powers all manner of modern gizmos, doo-dads, and thingamajigs. Niero would make it his business to seek out the games, the entertainment, the tests of skill and daring-do. What didn't exist, he would create himself. When his quest was complete, he would bring it all back to the world at large.

Niero would bring together a community of gamers and inventors; artists and engineers. As time marches onward, his dream will grow and grow. With it did the community and the marvels of their creations.

As impressive as is the first game which you'll find in Mr. Destructoid's Arcade of Wonders, "Hunter of Ducks", just wait until you get to the newly unveiled "Colossal Shadows of the Ancient Gods" attraction.

A full resolution version of this image can be found here.



The making of Steamtoid

This one illustration took me over thirty hours to complete from start to finish. It started with a simple idea: Mr. Destructoid in a Steampunk style. I wanted to go all out with this project. I wanted to put as much detail and shading as I could to make this much cooler than any of my previous illustrations. Maybe even something borderline good.



As I continued to work on it, new ideas kept popping up. Why not throw Colette in as well? How about tying it into games in some way? Colette's addition proved to be a lot of fun. It wasn't just a simple cartoon-y pic.



I actually needed to design an outfit for her. Borrowing all that I could remember from Project: Runway, I went to town with my Steampunk Colette Bennett concept. It was actually the third design that I ended up using. Then, I needed to figure out her hair. This also took a couple attempts.



Then came the attempt to tackle the gaming aspect. How could video games exist without electronics? My first inclination was to go with a shooting gallery. Title it Dunk Hunt and call it a day. I sketched that into the photoshop drawing. But that seemed so dumb. The idea that followed really changed the entire project around. Why would there be anything special about an acient shooting gallery? We've had those for over a hundred years. This needs to be epic in scope. The shooting gallery became a full-on animatronic version of Duck Hunt. This meant much more designing. Starting with the booth itself. I had to study up on Victorian architecture (and found that it's an absolutely horrid style with all of it's needless gaudiness).



Then came the characters themselves.



The really awesome thing about Steampunk is that it's a mixture of Sci-Fi technology that can work and exist because the creator says so, and obsolete technology. You can't just throw something together and say, "Here. This works. Accept it at face value." You have to make it plausible. Extra thought needs to go into the design so that when people look at it, they can get an immediate impression of how it might work. It really gets the brain working on neat concepts for tiny details that people might not even notice at first glance.



So, I'm putting this all together in the middle of a 12-day work week. I used up nearly every second of freetime available to me (not counting the hour that I played against Y0j1mb0 in Street Fighter IV), and even now as I finish writing this, I've been awake just over 24 hours and have been at it nearly 14 hours since I got home from work. Just about everything in that illustration was drawn, colored, erased, redrawn and recolored again. This really is the coolest thing that I'[ve ever drawn (granted from a real artist's standpoint it's not so great), and I'm really proud of it. Hope you enjoyed seeing behind the scenes of it's creation.

In the gallery you'll find full resolution versions of the final piece (perfect for 900x1400 widescreen desktops ;) ) and some of the daily works-in-progress. I want to thank a few people. First, to my little brother, Paul. He gave me an inexpensive but awesome tablet that has totally changed my way of drawing (for better and for worse). This couldn't have happened without him. To Y0j1, who encouraged me to really make this a finished work when I would have been content to stick with Niero and Colette against a solid background. Finally, to John D., one of my best friends for over 15 years now. He gave me a solid critique and I was able to use at least half of his advice (even though it meant completely scrapping the helmet and starting over at the last minute).

Only two years after the incredibly successful release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time along came it's sequel: Majora's Mask. Taking over the role of Chief Director from series creator Shigero Miyamoto, Eiji Aonuma crafted a drastically different Zelda game using the same engine as OoT. Though previous games had slightly diverged from the Zelda formula, Majora's Mask is still the game that feels the most unique in the series. Is this download worth your time and 1000 Wii Points or will it's age, peculiarities and lesser focus on dungeon crawling prove to be too off putting?

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask picks up the story soon after it's predecessor ends. Link has left the Kingdom of Hyrule in search of an unnamed old friend and finds himself robbed in his sleep by a mischievous imp, Skullkid. He awakens to find the legendary Ocarina of Time taken, and it's pilferer riding off on his horse, Epona, to make his escape. Link makes chase on foot, but finds himself transformed into a Deku Scrub (a small wooden creature) by the imp. He's wearing the stolen Majora's Mask, which gives him the powers of a god. Link eventually finds himself alone and disfigured in the foreign town of Termina, forced to embark on his darkest adventure yet.



As the town is setting for the annual Carnival of Time, it's residents are growing alarmed. An evil-looking moon overhead is coming ever closer to the town (talked into this murderous collision course by your friend, Skullkid) and threatens to destroy the village in 72 hours. The three day period lasts for roughly an hour of play time, but can be extended to almost three hours with the learning of an ocarina song. This gives Link precious little time to retrieve his lost belongings, transform himself back to his human form, and save the town from an imminent disaster.



This is where the games sharp turn to previous games occurs. There is no Ganon here, and no quest for the Triforce. Instead the focus is on time puzzles. At the end of the three day period, the moon crashes into the Earth, destroying the town and it's inhabitants. But recovering Link's Ocarina allows you to return to the very beginning for another attempt. During this travel back through time you'll keep your most of your weapons and items, but you'll lose replenishable items like arrows, bombs and any cash you have on you at the time. You'll spend as much time helping the townsfolk as you will in the game's four dungeons. Aiding the townies will net you new masks that grant different abilities when worn, like super-quick running or the ability to talk to animals. Bringing happiness to the citizens of Termina, however, is not always an easy task. Oftentimes, it takes learning the routines of the various characters or being in the right place at the right time with the right solution.

There are definite upgrades to the Ocarina engine on display. While so much looks identical, there is a much greater draw distance making the world seem fuller with less polygon drop-in. There are also far less of the low quality textures than were seen in the previous game. Many more special effects are here to impress, like some fantastic N64-era motion blur. It's the lighting, though, that is the most striking upgrade. As the time of day changes from dawn to day to dusk, or when it rains on the morning of the second day, the color of the environments change along with it. The sun makes everything appear more warm as it hangs closer to the horizon at the beginning and end of each day. And when the moon is out, the world is bathed in the blue of night. The sunlight is muted and murky when the sky is overcast, and gives the town a beautiful glow when it peaks out after the storm. It's such a subtle effect, but when you've got this game hooked into your HDTV with component cables and are viewing it in progressive scan, you'll be blown away by some vivid, old-school beauty.



If the lighting is the graphical cake, then the cherry on top is the moon itself. As the dementedly grinning satellite slowly gets closer and closer to the Earth, you will actually see it change from a small ball in the sky to an object so large that you won't be able to see more than half of it on the screen at a time. I found myself at points looking straight up into the sky and literally watching it grow. It's very subtle, but just like the minute hand on a clock, it's in constant movement.



And then there's the music. Oh heavens, is there the music. Koji Kondo outdoes himself with music that is every bit as much of a character in this game as Link himself. The highlight is the town's theme. It's a tune that changes in tone and intensity as the time moves forward. Starting out cheerful at the beginning, the tune becomes more hurried as time moves on to match the hurrying intensity of the worried citizens. In the final hours the music becomes a haunting mix of despair and terror as the moon completes it's descent into the town square. The dungeons and surrounding towns all have catchy themes of their own. And after being sadly missed in Ocarina of Time, the classic Zelda Overworld Theme makes it's return.

Sound design in this game is also incredible by N64 standards. Throughout the town you can hear the ambient noises of the citizens readying for the big carnival. Hammering and sawing can be heard in the town's square as set-pieces are being erected. Outside the town you'll hear the faint sounds of objects (for instance, a waterfall) grow louder as you approach, long before you even see them. This is old hat in this day of 5.1 surround sound. But this was quite a feat 10 years ago, when this game first debuted. It does play a key role, as certain characters have different footsteps, and you can be clued into where they are around you (and if they're entering doors nearby) just by keeping an ear out.



And this becomes important in the beginning, because the townspeople move in a set routine. And it's your job to help them achieve happiness to collect masks and progress through the game. These are various sidequests that are more fulfilling than in most any game I've ever encountered. This is because of the game's incredible personality. The residents of Termina all have their own backstories that you'll discover in different ways. It's very easy to become emotionally involved. When you hear the guilt-ridden confession of one of the characters, it actually feels good to have taken that weight off of that person's mind. Or in the most convoluted side-quest that involves tracking down a lost groom and ensuring a coming marriage ceremony, the sadness and urgency of the characters is incredibly touching. Playing through the game, I always felt a tinge of guilt each time I went back in time without stopping the moon from falling. I knew what dire fate I was abandoning these poor people to.



As with all Zelda games there is a system of advancement, where you'll need to acquire certain weapons and items to unlock specific areas. And this is managed all the more cleverly in how it effects not just dungeon advancement, but also how it relates to the interweaving storylines. A prime example is the massive boulder that blocks the way to a cattle ranch outside of town. A worker with a pick-ax diligently cracks away at it over time, but is unable to clear a path until the final day. When you finally arrive, you find the two sisters who run the ranch too distraught to speak. In order to find out what happened and, hopefully, prevent that fate, you've got to find a way through much earlier.

What Zelda game would be complete without dungeons to explore and bosses to conquer? Certainly not this one. While there are only four major dungeons, there is a lot of preparation that is involved before reaching them. They are located outside of Termina in each compass direction. Each is off of another village of creatures, such as the the Deku, the Goron and the Zora people. There are mysteries that must be solved before being able to enter the dungeons themselves. In these locations, you'll find yourself putting the spirits of the dead to rest which will grant you special masks which allow you to actually transform into these creatures at will. Each creature has it's own special powers, like the Goron rolling attack, or speeding through the water as a Zora. These are a lot of fun to play around with, and are necessary for advancing through certain areas and the dungeons themselves.



This is where time really becomes important. Because if you don't complete a dungeon before the time runs out, you'll have to start it all over again. This usually isn't a problem. But you may find yourself returning to a dungeon again just to unlock all of it's hidden secrets.

Controls contain the only tiny dent in the game's otherwise solid armor. They're not terrible by any means, but just a few tweaks could have helped this game achieve absolute perfection. With so many masks and items to sort through, selecting items often takes a bit longer than you wish it would. Having access to only three items and/or masks at a time, you'll be spending a lot of time in the start menu. Movement and combat are pretty tight for the most part. One exception would be the Goron's rolling ability, which often requires more precision than the game allows. There's also an issue that's carried over from the previous game when riding Link's horse, Epona. When jumping onto him, I often hit the gallop button for an immediate burst of speed. The problem is that the button is shared with the dismount button, so unless you've taken a step or two forward, you'll immediately jump off again. Conversely, you must wait for Epona to come to a complete stop before you're able to get on your feet again. As he doesn't stop on a dime, this feels like it takes longer than it should. These are minor gripes that don't affect the overall enjoyment of the game, but do add a noticeable level of frustration at times.

The boss battles vary between average and incredible. Some are basic Zelda fare, but some are even impressive by today's standards. One such boss is a 6 story tall beast named Goht. He runs circles around a giant arena, leaving you to try to chace after him with your rolling Goron form. It's a huge, epic battle that still stands up ten years later.



I first played Majora's Mask over three years ago on my N64. I honestly didn't know what to expect. What I found was an amazing game that immediately jumped into my top 10. It had some classic Zelda elements, but it's focus on a darker story and solid characterization really made it a richer experience. They could have removed all references to the franchise entirely, and it would have been every bit as good. Still, I'm very glad that the franchise turned out to be the Trojan Horse to get an amazing game into my system. The time puzzles are totally satisfying, the characters and storylines are so absorbing, and the presentation is so far above anything of it's time that I give this game my highest recommendation. Add to that the addition of crisper graphics and richer colors through the Wii's component cables and progressive scan, and an amazing game just got better.

My score (using the Destructoid Scale): 9.5/10

(Tomorrow or Saturday, I'll be posting a companion piece to the review as a Monthly Musing article. That will be spoiler-filled affair and offer more of an analysis of the characters and storylines. If you have played and enjoyed this game and would like to see it looked at in more detail, keep an eye out!)

(Jonathan Holmes recently posted a c-blog challenging the community to play through this game and write a c-blog about it. He was concerned about being crazy when he recently gave it a glowing review which ended up being the highest score on MetaCritic, where the average is 63%. I took him up on that challenge. Here are the results.)



When Capcom announced that they were porting the Xbox 360 game Dead Rising to the Wii, many people were shocked. Dead Rising was one of the first games to truly take advantage of the horsepower that this generation of consoles has to offer. How could it possibly survive the transition to the Wii, which is only slightly more powerful than consoles from a generation past? Not having played beyond the first 20 minutes of the original version, I'm not qualified to answer that question. If you read on, however, you'll find out if the Wii version stands up as a good game on its own merits.

Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop follows Frank West, a photojournalist who is following up an anonymous tip that leads him to the town of Willamette, Colorado. Flying in by helicopter, he finds that the whole area has been cordoned off by the military. It soon becomes clear that the town has been overrun by zombies. Frank is dropped off at the local shopping mall. He has three days to uncover the story behind the outbreak before his ride returns to fly him home.

The Wii version of the game is built upon the Resident Evil 4: Wii Edition engine. This is most obvious in the shooting mechanic of the game. You control Frank from a third person, over-the-shoulder perspective. Hitting the B button draws your weapon, and you're then able to aim with the Wii remote's pointer. Hitting the A button then fires the weapon. Aside from gunning down your enemies, you also have the ability to use various items strewn around the game as melee weapons.

The combat in this game is very glitchy and poorly designed. The vast majority of the weapons you'll pick up are used in pretty much the same way. You have the option of hitting the A button for slowly delivered, weak attack, or waving the remote for an amazingly slow, but more powerful blow. Trying to rely upon your melee attacks is futile, because you'll be taking damage left and right from the hordes of zombies that are coming for you. At the beginning of the game, you have to endure a long pause between attacks. This isn't helped by the questionable addition of auto aim. The game decides which enemy it wants you to hit and will turn Frank towards that zombie whether or not it was the one directly in front of you or not.



There are nods to the classic NES beat'em up, River City Ransom. For instance, there's an RPG system and you can buy books that will allow you to gain special abilities. Killing zombies gives you experience and upon leveling up you'll gain nonsensical upgrades like extra inventory slots, and the weapons that you pick up won't break as easily. Half of the books for sale will allow you to swing particular weapons without pausing in between strikes. Most of these are only semi-helpful because they are being applied to weapons that attack very slowly to begin with. But one book allows rapid swinging with the knife. This is a must get item, as it turns the knife into the only legitimately usable melee weapon in the game. Since the knife attacks quickly, you can generally get multiple hits on the zombie in front of you before you get attacked on the sides or from behind by another enemy. It doesn't slow you down much at all when you're running and stop to knife the zombie that gets in your way.

The rest of the books grant you special attack moves which mostly seem to apply to downed enemies. There are three reasons why they are completely useless. First, enemies on the ground are of zero threat to you, they're very easy to avoid. Second, stopping to attack them destroys the flow of the game and opens you up to attacks by other creatures. Finally, you must hit the A and B buttons together at the exact same instant with little input forgiveness. 90% of the time you will draw your weapon or punch the air.



This leaves the gunplay as your most reliable source of offense. The RE4 aiming controls as smooth as ever. Sadly, this is not without issues of its own. First of all it is incredibly slow. Pulling your weapon takes more time than it should, with some weapons taking a solid second or two before the first round is fired. In addition, all of your weapons will hold precious little ammo, and it takes half an eternity to reload. Trying to blend hand-to-hand with gun combat is made more frustrating in that you can't switch freely between them. If you try to hit the B button to draw your gun while you're waiting for a melee attack's animation to complete, you will get stuck in a loop of melee attacks. You'll first have to release the button, wait until you're standing still again, then finally draw your gun. Finally, the control scheme is wasted. Only a couple of enemies have location specific damage and animations. This is just unacceptable for a game engine with this much precision.

The two most common non-zombified human enemies that you will face bring the frustration to a boil: the zombie poodle and the grenade dropping parrot. Both of these characters feel like they escaped from an 8-bit platformer with the silliness of their concepts and their near-infinite numbers. They don't have any business in this game. That aside, they make combat a pointless endeavor. The dogs are too low to the ground and the parrots are too high to hit with a melee attack in most cases. Which leave your firearm as your best bet. However, once they spot you and come running towards you, you're a sitting duck. They can only hit you when you're standing still. Which is exactly what you'll be doing when you draw your gun. The poodles immediately run directly towards you and dive at you. Afterwards they're so low to the ground that you can't see them unless you're looking down at your feet. The parrots are difficult to aim at, because they will swoop overhead beyond your field of vision. By the time that you've lowered your gun, spun around and take aim again, they've managed to disappear. It will take another few seconds to locate them again, giving them plenty of time for another attack.

All of this would seem to make the game difficult. In truth, though, it's a ridiculously easy game once you get the hang of it. There are very few things in this game that will do much damage at all. That's only when they hit you. If you stay on the move, you'll survive the vast majority of situations relatively unscathed. Even if you get grabbed, you can usually waggle the remote to escape without getting hit. As the game progresses, it doesn't become more difficult, just more frustrating. You'll eventualy face cult members who will throw dust in your eyes that causes you to pass out. You'll wake up in a room with your clothes and inventory stolen from you, except for your guns. I know when I kidnap people, I want to make sure to give them ample opportunity to shoot my ass to death and make their escape. You'll then need to kill about 15-20 of these cult guys before you can leave the room and continue your mission. If you're carrying any irreplaceable items, they're gone for good. It's best to reset and pick up from your previous save.



Then there are the gun-toting enemies that you'll face en masse towards the end of the game. They will hit you with almost every single shot. And when they do, any action you're in the middle of will immediately be interrupted, even reloading your gun. And the camera's perspective will shift, making aiming your counter attack incredibly difficult. And if more than 2 of them are on you at once, it becomes impossible to reload. You will have to run straight towards the nearest one (pausing every second to get hit by a bullet) and slice him open with your knife, then turning around and going for the next guy. But as I said, it's frustrating, not difficult. Their bullets only take out a sliver of health with every hit.

The escort missions are the real heart of the gameplay. Frank is holed up in the security wing of the mall. You'll walk up to Otis, the Janitor, who will tell you of a survivor that's in a certain location in the mall. It will be up to you to track them down and bring them back to the security station.

Here is an example of a single escourt mission: Talk to Otis. Enter the ducts that lead out of the security area. Wait for a loading screen to finish. You'll find yourself on the roof of the building. Run to the elevator. Loading screen. Exit the elevator into the basement. Run through to the door that leads to the mall. Loading screen. Follow the on-screen arrow that directs you to exactly where you need to go, while just running past the zombies who will almost never touch you. The survivor will be in one of the 5 areas of the mall, and each one is separated by it's very own loading screen. When you find the survivor they will follow along behind you. Then you reverse these steps to get back to the security area.

If that sounds like fun to you, then you're in luck, as you will have to go through this exact same sequence of events about 40 times throughout the course of the game. Once in a very great while they will throw in a a short fetch quest before the survivor will join you. But that's almost the best the game does to offer any sort of variety. There are a couple of bosses throughout the game. They are all human. They all take the equivalent of dozens of shotgun blasts in the face at point blank range to kill (which is still an easy task in most cases). It confuses me how the humans in this game can take so much damage, while the reanimated corpses will drop right away if you hit them in the large toe with the second handgun you find early on in the game.



The game is very tedious to get through. After the first 45 minutes of gameplay, you've pretty much seen all that there is to see. And you've certainly done all that there is to do. Your first escort mission encapsulates how you will spend the next 15 hours that it will take to complete the game's main campaign (only 8 1/2 are spent on gameplay the rest are all cutscenes and loading screens). To call the game repetitive would be an understatement.

In addition to all of these complaints are bugs, glitches and design flaws that are too numerous to list. They really show the lack of polish on display. Here are some examples:

•Zombies don't just run up from off-screen. If you kill enough of them they will just magically appear as if beamed from a UFO. Often right behind you where you where you can't see them before they attack you, or right next to the survivor that you're supposed to be protecting.

•Zombies wearing hardhats are completely immune to damage in their heads. Shooting them in the face or in their exposed ears will have no effect. But a bullet in their belly, kneecap, toenail or wherever with the second level pistol and they will immediately die.

•If you enter an elevator filled with zombies, and hit the button to switch floors, the elevator will be completely empty when you reach your destination.

•When you kill an enemy, they will often scream out after they've already died and their body has disappeared.

•The arrow that leads you to where you need to go will often just flip out momentarily, and point behind you before correcting itself.

•The ammunition of the gun that you're carrying is not displayed onscreen. At any given point in time, you'll only see the rounds left in the guns clip. You have to move to your inventory screen to see the total ammo in each gun.

•At a couple of points you get to drive a car to plow over zombies. You walk up to it and press the Z and A buttons and instead of getting an animation of getting inside the car, or even just opening the door, you get a loading screen followed by the camera being behind the car which is now under your control. When you reach your destination, you get another loading screen and you're magically out of it again.



With all of this going against it, you might hope that the story would at least be good enough to keep you wanting to play. Unfortunately that is just not the case. The plot is completely inconsequential. The events that happen usually come out of nowhere and are so random that you can't possibly have any real concern for what is going on. And even if you did, the Young and the Restless-level dialogue and voice acting will kill it right away. And just when you think you're near the end, you'll encounter more false endings than The Return of the King, forcing you through more and more fetch quests.

I haven't yet mentioned the graphics. And really the less said about them, the better. This is not a game that is concerned with pushing the Wii to it's limits and showing you what how it can compete for your hardcore attention. The graphics are dated. This isn't a reved up GameCube game. It looks more like something from the early days of the Playstation 2.

For a system that is struggling to maintain any credibility with hardcore gamers, it was important for Capcom to knock this one out of the park. This was a rare opportunity to take a game that had been done well on a high def system and make an equaly strong game that delivers a new experience on the Wii. Unfortunately, instead of bringing their A game, Capcom turned the reigns over to the C team. They may have hit the ball out of the park with the Wii port of Resident Evil 4, but all they were essentially doing was adding motion controls to an already legendary game. When they needed to almost rebuild a game from the ground up, however, they ended up failing miserably. The Wii is capable of so much more. But it will have to be another game that proves it to the hardcore gaming community.



I'm sorry to say that I spent $40 on Dead Rising: Chop Till You Drop, and can't recommend that you do the same. It doesn't even feel like a beta build of a game. I was expecting, at worst, a game that was at least a fun diversion for a quick, brainless bit of fun. What I found was an unpolished game that offered zero enjoyment whatsoever, and more frustration than I could bear to deal with. Even with it being released at $10 less that the average Wii title, it's still priced much too high. I've played many a bargain title that have far more polish, far more playability and are far more fun than this game. Please avoid it at all costs.

My rating (using the Destructoid rating scale):2

Roughly a month ago, my Wii started acting very odd. While popping in Resident Evil 4 for the first time in ages I was greeted with flickering green pixels bouning across my screen. It wasn't too widespread, just isolated to a single ares on the back of Leon's coat. I assumed that it probably wasn't a big deal, maybe a dirty laser lens. I'd have to remember to take a look at it.

When I did finally get around to searching for a fix, I found what turns out to be quite a widespread problem. One which is showing up on message boards all across the internet. It's apparently most noticeable in games with heavy 3D rendering like Resident Evil 4 and Call of Duty 3. What I've learned from all of these internet searches is that it seems to be a problem with the Graphics Processing Unit overheating. Perhaps Microsoft doesn't have a patent on widespread overheating consoles.


Image courtesy of skesslerster's post on Fixya.com.

In every thread I've come across, the blame seems to be placed on WiiConnect24 being turned on. The theory is that when the system is placed in standby mode, the console isn't completely off and is still generating heat. The problem is that the fan isn't running to help dissipate that heat, and can cook the GPU over time.

This seems to be a problem that has been going on since launch, with people giving instances of this problem as far back as early 2007. The strange thing is that it isn't just a few examples here or there. A google search of the following terms will bring up pages of results: Wii green pixels Resident Evil 4. They're all across the message boards, yet there's never been a story on a single gaming site. So, it's obviously not as widespread as the Red Rings of Death, nor gaining that level of notoriety, but still a significant problem..

Running a lot of tests on various tvs, with different cables, and using the same RE4 disc on different Wiis, I've determined that it is an issue that rests squarely on my Wii. On a high def display it is completely obvious. But on a standard def tv with composite cables, it's hardly noticeable. I wonder if that is the reason why this issue hasn't made news. Maybe it's that most people who are affected aren't realizing that there's even a problem.


There's even YouTube videos like this one about the issue.

Lucky for most of these people in these threads, their Wii's were under warranty. Mine wasn't so lucky. It's going to run me $85. Still, now that I'm liking my Wii again, I need to get it fixed. Yesterday, I called up customer support. I could tell the support person was annoyed with all of my questions. I wanted to know what the cause of the issue was and how I could prevent it from happening again myself, or for my little brother on his Wii. I got zero information aside from being told that sometimes electronics break down and need to be replaced. WiiConnect24 is perfectly safe, I was told.

To me it seems like an odd explanation. The system is only a couple years old. Some of the instances I've read about happened after just a couple months. Compare that to my GameCube that's been played like mad for 10 years. I guess I'm not at all satisfied with that answer.

I'm emailing Nintendo today to see if they can tell me more (the customer support person said that every one there has the same information when I asked if I could speak to anybody else, perhaps someone who does the repairs). I'm hoping that I'll have more information to give back to you before too long.

In the meantime, it might not be a bad idea to turn off WiiConnect24 just to be safe. You'll still get all of your messages once you turn your Wii on. Granted, I think I will miss that slow fading blue light that I get every so often.

A year and a half ago I was very, very pleased with my Nintendo Wii. It was definitely my console of choice at that point in time. I've always been a retro gamer at heart (except when it was called modern gaming, but that was 20+ years ago), and the Wii never bored me. I always had something to play. I don't mean from the Wii's underwhelming library of games. For those who don't feel like the Wii has many good games going for it now, look back 18 months ago.

It was the Virtual Console that kept me coming back to the Wii in it's one year life-span, while I let my roommate's 360 collect the dust. That was at the peak of my Wii-love. It was then that I had ordered adapters to use my original controllers from all of Nintendo's systems. Now I could play the games I loved exactly how I remembered them. I was in heaven.

For about a month.

I bought so many new games on the Virtual Console in those weeks that I ran out of room on Wii's system memory. I tried to make things work for a while after that. I really did. I deleted a few games that I wouldn't play all that much whenever a "Best Week Ever" hit. Then came Wii Ware and Lost Winds. I had to delete a bunch of games for that. Like Sophie, I agonized as I had to decide which of my 8 through 64-bit children had to die (NOOOOOOOooooooo! Not ExciteBike!).

Finally I'd had enough. To buy a NES game would be a 20 minute process of debate, then backup, then delete, then download. "Fuck you, Nintendo," I yelled. If they didn't want to take my money (pure profit) for games that had already been developed up to two decades ago, then the hell with them.

Soon after, I set out to regain the lost video game library that was handed down to my little brothers and ultimately given away for good. Weeks of scouring eBay paid off when I came across an NES that had never been taken out of its box. I traded a $50 bottle of Japanese whiskey with one of my best friends, and netted a near-mint, barely used Sega Genesis in return. They joined my SNES and other consoles that were mine outright and never given away. Now I could play Metroid and Granada (it's awesome. Look it up), without any kind of extended hassle.

Who needs Nintendo anyway? They didn't want me or my money. And as time went on they even went about insulting me directly. My next step was to buy a PS3. I then got re-addicted to real modern gaming. One price drop later and I could finally play Lost Odyssey on my new Red-Ring in training. Finally the Wii was picking up the hobby of dust collecting ("This particle here goes back to the Revolutionary War!").

Well, Nintendo seems to have finally learned their lesson. This week they released firmware version 4.0. I can now pull games directly from my SD card. It's not the harddrive that we were waiting for. In actuality, it was a week's worth of program development, tops, that took them years. But I'm a man of my word. You gave me a storage solution. So, I'm giving you money. I downloaded nearly $50 worth of games from the Virtual Console this morning. I played them and my other games for hours. I now look at my Wii in a positive light.

Wait a second. Don't be so quick there, Nintendo. All is not forgiven. When a long-term friendship falls apart in such a way, it can take a long time to rebuild. But this is a good start. You know what, though? The trailer for Punch-Out looks exactly how I always wished a modern sequel to one of my top five games would look and play. A sequel to The Phantom Hourglass, one of my favorite games in my all-time favorite franchise, looks really promising. That's all going to go a long way.

Okay, Nintendo. I guess that we can be friends again.