I bought this one immediately, since I’m a big Bubble Bobble fan. It’s a great ‘pick-up-and-play’ type game which I can spend 10 mins on, have some fun, then put down and get back to real work. I played the Gameboy version extensively in my youth, and it seems there are a few differences in playability and game logic to the NES version. In the NES version on Virtual Console, the Bubble Dragons fall, walk and jump more slowly. Initially it felt like I was playing in slow motion compared with the Gameboy verision I’m used to, except that the monsters still move at full speed.
Also, it seems to take a long time (maybe forever) for the monsters to become angry and bust out of their bubbles. I’ve always finished the level before I’ve seen them escape, so maybe they don’t do it at all in the NES version. Despite these differences, it’s still good fun, and makes a great two player simulatenous game too.
Check out this evil hacked Super Mario Bros. level (warning, NSFW audio, don’t watch it if you don’t like rude words). It really reminds me of my first time playing Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels.
I was going to attend this expo since I live nearby to where it’s being held … but after reading the program I decided it wasn’t really worth the effort. There weren’t going to be any great revelations like E3 or the Leipzig Games Convention, and most of the ‘previews’ of new games are things that have already been released in other parts of the world, just not Australia. This is the biggest event of it’s kind in Australia, and yet ultimately I felt uncompelled to attend. Some Gamer has blogged the eGames Expo(and here) and generally reconfirms my feelings. A few parts sounded okay; it’s a shame I missed the interview with the Aussie guys who worked on Bioshock, that sounded like it might have been interesting. Oh, and I wouldn’t have minded some freebies.
Greg Arthurton, Nintendo’s Australia’s Director of Marketing, gave a short keynote speech. It was just the usual Nintendo “marketoid” banter, read directly from his little cue cards. Hey, I couldn’t have done much better … it just wasn’t that exciting. Listen for the guy who groans loadly when Greg claims Metroid Prime Corruption has “redefined the way we play a first person shooter on a home console” …. true, pointing the Wii Remote is a great new way to play a first person shooter, but it’s not really all that revolutionary but simply more of an extension of the gameplay style introduced many years ago with games like Duck Hunt on the original NES. I probably would have groaned or exhaled loudly too.
A disappointing week for Virtual Console releases in Australia (and presumably other PAL regions). This week, we got a single title - Double Dribble from the NES. Maybe Nintendo figures that since we got the Mii Contest channel this week, they can skimp on the Virtual Console releases. Maybe they are simply holding some stuff back for the school holiday season when lots of bored kids will want some cheap thrills. I dunno. Either way, my memories of Double Dribble were that it was good two-player fun in the 90’s, but only because every teenage boy in Australia seemed to be basketball crazy at the time of it’s release. I don’t think it’s one of those games that is likely to have stood the test of time, but then I’m usually a harsh critic of any sport’s videogame. If you wanna play basketball, get outside and shoot some hoops fatboy !
This is pretty cool … by setting up an infra-red light source and some finger-mounted reflectors, the Wii Remote “IR eye” can be used for finger tracking, much like the neat interface from the film “Minority Report”.
With a bit of refinement, this looks like it could actually be usable for a real game. Nintendo or a third-party developer should really take this idea an run with it … bundle a game with an infra-red light attachment and some little reflective thimbles, and you have yet another innovative control scheme !
In fact, this gives me an idea for some alternative ways to play existing Wii games … look forward to videos of me with a helmet mounted sensor bar in the future …
