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[GGM] Secret Star Fox Shame
One of the things my mother and I did for fun back in the day was just go to the mall and walk around looking at stuff. Well, she would mostly go looking at stuff while I made a beeline towards Sears, and specifically the videogame section. Back in those days, they had the gaming kiosks where you could try out a few games, but they were like… normal. If you have ever been to Walmart or wherever lately, the new kiosks have long been designed to be at the most uncomfortable neck angle possible, presumably to encourage people to play for 5 minutes and move on.
Jokes on them, but we would hang out for hours. Which, incidentally, is how I discovered that Sears was the place to go. EB Games had more kiosks and was obviously more focused on games generally, but that also meant it had higher foot traffic and thus kiosk turnover. I wasn’t going to hog the kiosk, if someone else came up and wanted a turn. If no one came up though? Fair game.
Anyway, it was the beginning of summer one year, and my mother noticed that I really liked playing this one particular SNES game that had recently came out: Star Fox. And during this particular summer, we happened to be going to the mall a lot more than normal. I figured something was up, but had not quite put the pieces together yet. I was just happy to be gaming with something new.
And then it happened. I beat Star Fox in its entirety at the Sears SNES kiosk. A few weeks later, my birthday game was… Star Fox.
My mother had put Star Fox on layaway and thus been heading to the mall so often so she could add to the payments. I felt genuinely awful, like I had wasted weeks of her life (and paychecks). I’m not sure if I spilled the beans later on, but at the time, I definitely pretended like it was game I was super interested in playing. Which… it kinda had been up to that point.
After that, I definitely made sure that I never asked for a game that I had played at a kiosk. Kind of the opposite situation the marketing departments were going for, but that was the 90s.
[GGM] Linking My Past
The transition into the 16-bit era represented a substantial leap not just in technology, but also in memories. So, let’s talk about heading into the SNES and what would become my comfort game: Zelda: A Link to the Past.
My mother and I moved about an hour away from my father, so that she could attend college. I have few memories of the Nintendo during that period of on-campus housing, aside from having a pet rabbit who consistently chewed through the cords to the controllers. At a certain point we had neither a rabbit nor a Nintendo, so I imagine that the Nintendo went back to my father’s place.
Later on, we moved again to a low-rent apartment complex up in the mountains. I was sent to play outside any time it was not actively raining, as parents were wont to do back in the 90s. One day, I was walking around, and what looked like a little boy called me over to the dumpster area. There, he asked me if I wanted to smoke a cigar with him – the kind that I had seen in grocery stores with the little mouth cap thing? I declined and ran back home. After telling my mother the story, suddenly I was not asked to play outside anymore. A few more days after that, a shiny new Super Nintendo appeared.
I am not certain whether Zelda: A Link to the Past (ALttP) was the first game I got for the system, but it was consistently the most played and most beaten game I have ever owned. Back in those days, I only ever got a videogame on my birthday and during Christmas, so whatever you got had to last. Which was a bit hard, as you never really knew going in how in-depth anything was beforehand. Luckily for me, ALttP had secrets galore. So much so, that it inspired me to start my own cassette tape “[Azuriel]’s Secrets” series, where I basically recorded myself narrating all the game secrets I had uncovered.
I still have the tapes, by the way. A few years ago, I bought a cassette adapter so that I could “rip” the tapes to MP3 and put them on my computer. I only ripped a few though, because A) they are cringy beyond belief, B) they happened to have also recorded the very loud sound of the boombox in which I used to record, and C) the whole thing was kind of a pain. It’s one of those things you think you should preserve, because… reasons. I let Little Man listen to the ALttP one and he was thoroughly bored within two minutes. Which is understandable, honestly, as I wouldn’t really care what a 10-11 year old version of my father thought about life either. May be a weird thing for a blogger to say, but nevermind.
Anyway, the other series of memories I have surrounding ALttP was how often I would get stuck on a boss or puzzle, and only get unstuck once I showed my mother. Not because she was good at videogames or clever with Socratic questions; she was actually quite terrible on both fronts. Rather, whenever I called her over to show her where I was stuck, I felt the desire to explain the situation, how unfair it was, and how many different things didn’t work. “I tried using my sword, I tried using a bomb, I tried using a boomerang, I tried using the hookshot… oh wait. That worked! Now, go away!”
I was a bit of an ass. Glad I grew out of that. ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ
EA Play
New month, new post shilling for Game Pass.
This time, I wanted to direct your attention towards the fact that EA Play is now an included part of the Game Pass subscription. It was supposed to have been added in December, but better late than never, I guess. While there is still a premium tier (EA Play Pro) that holds some newer games out of reach, a very large and very old selection of EA titles are available.
Seeing this one brought be waaaaaaay back, for example:
I cropped the name out, but it’s Populous, released 1989. It was one of the few SNES games in my library growing up – especially when cartridges could cost $80 in mid-90s money – so I ended up spending a lot of time with the game and its many scenarios. I also ended up playing SimCity and Civilization 2 on the SNES, and have many a fond memory of that.
I’m glad I took the screenshot because it appears EA has already taken down Populous and replaced it with its sequels.
Incidentally, there is a big ole “BETA” written across the top of the EA Desktop app they make you download, so perhaps they are testing things as they go. I already ran into one issue downloading a game, wherein the download crashed midway and now the game will neither open nor download nor delete. When I tried booting up Dungeon Keeper 2 for giggles – and to see what the fuss was all about when I played the supposedly bastardized mobile app back in 2014 – it was an unplayable slide-show. I’m assuming that last bit has more to do with the game expecting drivers that haven’t existed for 20 years, but it’s still a poor show to have games available to download (or purchase!) in a unplayable state. At least GOG (supposedly) updates their versions to be playable on Win10 PCs.
In any case, my actual download list looks like this:
Looks like random pishposh because it is. As it turns out, I already played through a lot of EA’s catalog over the years or otherwise own the games elsewhere. For example, many of the Battlefield games, Mass Effect series, Dead Space series, and so on. Not pictured but to be downloaded later includes: Mirror’s Edge Catalyst, Vampyr, Star Wars Battlefront 2 (maybe), and Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order.
There is even Anthem available, which I almost want to check out of morbid curiosity. Then again, I don’t want to develop a taste for toad right as the game gets canned. Well, Anthem will still exist for some indeterminate amount of time, but ending future updates on a Live Service game kills the game.
Anyway, if you don’t already have Game Pass then the addition of the EA library probably won’t move the needle much for you. But if you do have it and didn’t pay attention to the pop-ups… well, you’re welcome. I’ll post some impressions of these new (to me) games as I play them.
Or I won’t, because I’m too busy playing them. The eternal blogging dilemma.
Smart Move, Nintendo
Have you seen this adorable thing?
Of course you have.
Whoever walked into that Nintendo exec meeting with that in their pocket better have gotten a raise.
I’m not going to go over the details of what games it includes and all that – once again, there are a million different blog posts about it – but I did want to briefly comment on my reaction to it. Namely, it’s brilliant. And what is especially brilliant about it is the fact that it costs $60.
See, you can get a Raspberry Pi 3 for $30-$35 and potentially create your own emulator that plays all the games. But between the Pi 3 itself, some kind of enclosure for it, the microSD card, the controller, and all the steps necessary for piracy… well, let’s just say there is a point at which it’s better to just go legit. And, shit, how much would people pay for a tiny nonfunctional NES on their shelf in the first place? The fact that it plays actual games is probably a bonus.
We’ll see this holiday season whether or not the internet hype over the device translates into actual dollars. I hope it does… because I’m hoping for a SNES version later. Can you imagine? Super Metroid, FF6, Chrono Trigger, A Link to the Past, Secret of Mana, Mario Kart, and so on.
Then it will be on like Donkey Kong (Country).
Alpha Centauri 2
News out of PAX: Firaxis is working on a new Civilization game… in space.
Honestly, Alpha Centauri is basically one of those infinite-nostalgia games for me. My prior exposure to the Civilization games was actually Civ 2 for the SNES (yes, really), so you can imagine how blown away I was after installing those Alpha Centauri discs back in high school. Hell, I haven’t even played a Civ game since then – I have Civ 5 in my Steam library, but I was always a bit leery of getting sucked back in.
The thing that impressed me the most in Alpha Centauri though were the quotes that came with every technological advancement. You can read the big list of them if you’d like, but here are a few of my favorites:
Resources exist to be consumed. And consumed they will be, if not by this generation then by some future. By what right does this forgotten future seek to deny us our birthright? None I say! Let us take what is ours, chew and eat our fill.
- CEO Nwabudike Morgan “The Ethics of Greed”
This was one of the first times I encountered a thought turned on its ear.
We are all aware that the senses can be deceived, the eyes fooled. But how can we be sure our senses are not being deceived at any particular time, or even all the time? Might I just be a brain in a tank somewhere, tricked all my life into believing in the events of this world by some insane computer? And does my life gain or lose meaning based on my reaction to such solipsism?
- Project PYRRHO, Specimen 46, Vat 7. Activity recorded M.Y. 2302.22467. (TERMINATION OF SPECIMEN ADVISED)
I laughed. And still do at the meta-humor.
Man’s unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist.
- Academician Prokhor Zakharov
(Heard after researching Intellectual Integrity)
This was likely my first formal introduction to the Just-world hypothesis/fallacy. From a videogame! And beyond the above quotes, Alpha Centauri fielded a lot of more classical, real-world quotes from Plato and Aristotle which, combined with the coolness of the game itself, instilled a sense of wonder and wanting to know more. I definitely doubt I would have read The Republic without having played Alpha Centauri.
I don’t have any great expectations that Civ: BE will be better than my crystallized childhood memories of AC, but I remained cautiously optimistic nonetheless.
So far, it looks like the tentative release date is Fall 2014.
In An Age 
Old Game Appreciation
Jan 12
Posted by Azuriel
There was a Reddit post recently titled “I just sold my childhood for $600.” Bunch of photos of multiple old consoles, stacks of games, and so on. Nice vicarious nostalgia trip. Open up the comments section and the most upvoted replies are roasting the OP saying he got swindled, and that his collection was easily worth $3500 or more. Really?
For giggles, I went to Price Charting and looked up… Chrono Trigger:
Oh.
Now, some of those top numbers are clearly ridiculous collectors items that rich people buy and sell for
money launderingdick-measuring reasons – the rarity of sealed copy of a 27-year old game becoming a thing in of itself. But… uh… guys. I sold my own childhood collection back in 2012 for $375. One of the items? Chrono Trigger with the box and instructions intact. Probably wouldn’t count as “Complete” since I taped the poster to my wall back in 1996, but still. Worth about $300 by itself today.I’m not going to go through my full list, but for comedy purposes:
That’s $673 just on the SNES side. Granted, everything else not listed was less expensive. Nothing was worth much on the Genesis or regular Nintendo side. Did see that Super Smash Bros Melee (Gamecube) was $54, which is about what I paid for it back in college.
I’m not even saying that I regret selling those games when I did. That was almost 10 years ago, after all. If you look at the price graph, Chrono Trigger was selling for $42.50 at the time. Plus, I was starting a new phase of my life:
Bit prescient there, eh? I wrote that in 2012. My son will turn 3 this year, so it will be closer to 2025 before he’s playing videogames, I reckon. But sorry, kiddo, you’ll have to play Chrono Trigger on an emulator and not a then-$900 cartridge.
Anyway, if you still have a box full of old games in your own closet, now might be a good time to take stock. Some of them have apparently appreciated very nicely. For some reason.
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Tags: Chrono Trigger, Nostalgerbation, Price Charting, Retro, Sell All the Things, SNES