Over-analyzing Resident Evil

**Spoiler warning- This editorial contains spoilers for Resident Evil.**

Hello dear readers, welcome back to the game room and a happy Halloween to you all. I thought it would be appropriate today to once again step into the world of survival horror, so I'm going back to the subject of one of my favorite games ever.

Have you ever played a single game so many times that you just start to notice weird little things every time you play through it again? We all have at least one game we can always pick up no matter what and give it a run from start to finish while enjoying every second. The original Resident Evil is one such title for me, and even though it hasn't aged all that well compared to it's quite superior sequels, it's still a classic that I get the urge to play every once in a while. However, every time I do I feel like I notice a little something about the game that I never noticed before. Be it something in the background or a weird quirk in the story, Resident Evil is just one of those games I have endlessly scaled inch by inch and over-analyzed to death in the 20 years since it's release. So, I present to you a few amusing little things I've noticed by playing through the game at least a thousand times in my life.

The gap at the box puzzle. So if you've played Resident Evil, you surely remember the part where you have to push the boxes into the water-filled gap so you can safely cross into the flooded basement area of the guardhouse. Have you ever stopped to think though- how did anyone get across this gap when the basement wasn't flooded? Obviously, yeah, this was just meant to be a short puzzle and most likely there was not much other thought put into it. From an in-game point of view though, imagine the Umbrella scientists filling up the gap with water every time they needed to look at the Neptune tank, then pushing a bunch of crates into the gap (because they couldn't jump across it or anything, either). How would they get the crates out afterward? Would they even want to? Why is there even a gap in the first place? Why not build a little bridge over it? What kind of architectural design was this? And why is the water still there when you drain the basement? I have to ask myself these things every time I'm sitting and waiting as I slowly push those boxes over.

Fairly early in the game, you can make your way to the 2nd floor balcony area where you'll find the corpse of our dear Bravo team comrade Forest Speyer. Depending on who you're playing as, you can pick up either a bazooka or a few clips here and you'll get attacked by a few zombified crows. But something always bothered me about this area: it's supposed to be the dead of night, but doesn't it look a bit like daytime out there? I always liked that shot of Raccoon forest, but at the same time I've felt like it should've been a bit darker. I don't know, you be the judge.

Let's talk about another oft forgotten member of the team: Brad Vickers. So we all know the opening to Resident Evil pretty well: The S.T.A.R.S. Alpha team goes searching for the missing Bravo team in the Raccoon Forest, they get attacked by mutant killer dogs and their helicopter pilot Brad "chickenheart" Vickers flies away, leaving them stranded. They run to a nearby seemingly abandoned mansion and search for a way out, all while the pilot desperately tries to contact them over the radio. At the end of the game, the surviving S.T.A.R.S. members launch a flare early the next morning that signals him to their position, and he flies in the pick them up as the Spencer mansion explodes behind them, the end. Here's the thing though- what was he doing the entire time while they were running around in the mansion? Flying around in circles repeatedly trying to contact his team without any answers (whom he totally abandoned and left for dead, by the way)? Didn't he see the heliport? Don't tell me it wasn't noticeable- it totally was, as evidenced by these two pictures:

Why didn't he land there and then look for them? Or, better yet, why didn't he go back to the Raccoon Police Department building for backup? I also find it pretty funny that he just immediately dropped in as soon as the signal flares were launched, indicating that he had to be at least just hovering around the vicinity of the mansion most of the night. Or maybe he just took the helicopter to a Dunkin' Donuts and picked up some coffee, then came back later when he remembered that his friends were probably torn to pieces because of him. And all this brings me another point-

Rocket launcher madness. First of all, what's with that thing? It's straight out of the movie Commando, showcased by good old Arnie in the picture below:

Did the S.T.A.R.S. team really need that kind of firepower? I know they're supposed to be an anti-terrorist police squad, and maybe I just don't know enough about tactical police weaponry but I'm having a hard time believing that they really needed to be packing that kind of heat, especially on what was a search and rescue mission. But forget about all that. Let's talk about the real issue here- how the hell did Brad manage to toss this thing out of the helicopter at the end?

So in Resident Evil's climactic finale, Brad drops the player a rocket launcher which allows them to obliterate the previously unkillable final boss, the Tyrant. But I've always had a hard time wrapping my mind around just how Brad managed to do so. I imagine that thing would've probably been secured pretty tightly, lest the team just had a loaded rocket launcher sliding around on the floor of the helicopter at all times. But he couldn't have gotten up to take it out and then throw it out the window, could he? Do helicopters have some kind of autopilot function I'm unaware of? I'm no expert, but I'm gonna say they don't. So until I'm proven otherwise, I'm gonna have to say that the launcher was just sitting on the floor and he had to tilt the helicopter mid-air in order to slide it out. Also, how durable are those things? I always laugh at the thought of the rocket launcher falling out but then just shattering to pieces the second it hit the concrete. Or better yet, unintentionally going off when it hit and then blowing up Jill or Chris by accident.

How about the secret entrance to the Umbrella laboratory? This was a pretty memorable part of the game- upon collecting both the Eagle and Wolf medals and escaping the deadly underground tunnels, you emerge into a mundane looking outdoor area with a large fountain standing before you. However, when you place the medals in their appropriate east and west positions, the fountain drains and opens up to reveal a hidden elevator, leading to the secret Umbrella laboratory. Sounds pretty simple, and this was easily one of the coolest moments of the entire game (complete with a short CGI sequence where the water parts and reveals the secret entrance that made it even cooler). However, I have a few issues here.

Firstly, in the little courtyard area where the fountain is there's a large metal door. If you approach it and try to use it, a text box will appear telling you that it's been tightly welded shut. That's the end of that, but I've always wanted to know- where the hell does that door lead? It's not connected to the mansion anywhere on the map, yet there is a large building behind it. What is it? A little pool house for the fountain where they kept a skimmer and chlorine?

Second, let's talk about the fountain itself. So you're telling me that every time one of the many Umbrella scientists and workers who slaved away in the lab making the T-Virus had to enter the lab, they needed to insert two medals and drain an entire fountain just to use an elevator? I mean, there's an entire network of underground tunnels right before it! Couldn't they just have connected the lab entrance to that? And who refilled the fountain every time they drained it? What would happen if someone was exiting the lab and there was still water on top of it? Would they just get drenched? Maybe the scientists just slept in the labs all the time- as someone who actually works at a real lab myself, I can tell you that it definitely does happen from time to time. But where would they sleep? In that break room on the 3rd basement level? And why would there be all those bedrooms in the mansion and guardhouse then if no one was using them?

 The fountain opens up in this nifty little sequence that was always one of my favorite moments in the game. However...

...did they really need to do that every time they entered the lab?

And lastly, not a humorous moment but just something I always found very cool- the music change upon re-entering the mansion. So you start out by exploring the Spencer estate mansion from top to bottom, but there are still a few locked doors that you don't have the key for. You then leave the mansion for a bit to explore the courtyard and the guardhouse, where you eventually find the final key that will unlock the last doors. However, upon return to the mansion you'll find things are quite a bit different- it's now filled with the extremely dangerous hunter enemies that stalk every corner. Something else is also a tad different- the background music that plays on the 1st & 2nd floors of the mansion. Nothing too strange, but if you listen closely you might hear something interesting: the music is now a rearranged version of the original theme. Give the original music a listen, then listen to the revisit music- you'll notice it's almost the same, yet there's something far more sinister about the rearranged version, conveying that everything has changed in the mansion since you've been gone. It almost does feel like a complete different place, since it's filled with terrifying enemies you haven't seen to that point and new rooms to explore. It's just another nice little touch to an already great game.

Now I know what you're probably thinking- it's just a video game from the 90s, shut up with all the scrutiny. And you're right, it is just a game. A great game. One of my favorites ever. And I wouldn't be over-analzying it so much if I didn't love it and have played it so many damn times in my life to even notice these things. Such is the nature of games that we grew up with that have become timeless classics in our eyes. Thanks for reading.

Collection Additions Volume 6: Completing The 32X Library

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room once again. Not much to announce today, only one game...but it's a pretty significant one. Feast your eyes on....

...Star Wars: The Arcade Game, for the Sega 32X. It's a pretty common game, one of the most common 32X games there is, actually. It was one of the launch titles for the 32X, along with Doom and Virtua Fighter. So what's significant about it?

Well, this was the final game I needed to have a 100% complete in box North American Sega 32X collection. That's right, all 31 cartridge games and 5 CD-32X games, all complete with boxes and manuals.

It's funny looking at the whole thing and realizing that this is it. This is the entire library. Really puts into perspective what a failure the console was. And also the fact that Doom is the only box where the "32X" is backwards and that bugs the crap out of me.

My 32X collection technically has been complete for some time now, but I didn't really consider it "finished" just yet because I only had cartridges for Doom and Star Wars and needed to get the boxes/manuals for them. The reason for this is because when I first bought a 32X about 4 years ago, I didn't foresee myself going after the entire library. In truth, I just wanted to play Knuckles' Chaotix. However, when I got it I also picked up Star Wars and Doom with it, which were just available at the store because as I mentioned, they're two of the most common games for the console.

Anyway, with that box and manual, I can now say I officially have the entire library. It's kinda funny that I actually needed to obtain two of the most common games in order to complete it, meanwhile one of the first complete games I got was the rarest one of them all (The Amazing Spiderman: Web Of Fire- for those who aren't too well-versed in 32X rarity- which is up to about $500 complete these days).

I may be done with the 32X for now, but really I'm still not done yet, for several different reasons. First off, I need a new box for Virtua Fighter..because, well, look at it:

Now that's unsightly. Thankfully I didn't pay anything for this one- it was given to me by a friend when I first got a 32X. Most of the other games are in pretty good condition, but this is the ugliest one out of all of them by far. But as I said before, Virtua Fighter is one of the most common ones out there, so I shouldn't have a very hard time replacing it without spending much.

So once I get that one, then I'll finally be happy, right? Right?

Well....

I may have a complete North American library, but I'm just short on the worldwide collection. See, there were two games released exclusively in Europe and one in Japan. I do own two of those games:

That's FIFA '96 for the European 32X, and San Goku Shi IV (a.k.a. Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4) for the Japanese 32X. Funny enough, both of these games can be played on an American 32X without modification, since they contain no internal region lockout chips. FIFA is really no different from any other soccer game and San Goku Shi is a heavily text-based strategy game, and since I can't read Japanese it's pretty much useless to me as a game.

However, I'm still missing one game...a game perhaps rarer than any other, even more so than The Amazing Spiderman. That game is a little European game called Darxide, which was the final 32X game released for any country. Apparently the game had a very limited print run and was quickly scrubbed away when the plug was pulled on the 32X in early 1996, making it extremely rare nowadays.

I've only seen a handful of complete copies appear on eBay and they've gone for some ridiculous prices, and even then I'm always a tad skeptical about authenticity, since games can be so easily reproduced these days. I'd have to see a complete copy with the motherboard showing before I'd even consider buying one...and I'd also probably have to blow quite a bit of dough in order to obtain one. Then my quest would finally be complete and I'd have the greatest 32X collection in the world. Right?


....right?


Well...


There's apparently one last game even beyond Darxide, but I'm not 100% convinced that it even exists. There have been reports that a sixth CD-32X game was released in Brazil at some point in the mid-90s by Sega's South American distributor Tec Toy. Apparently, it was a CD-32X version of the Sega CD game Surgical Strike. This makes some sense; with the exception of the game Fahrenheit, all of the other CD-32X games were initially released as Sega CD games, then re-released as slightly upgraded versions that utilized the 32X hardware as well. Also, the American release of Surgical Strike even had an offer printed right on the front of the manual for a 32X upgrade (apparently, it was a mail-in coupon for a free CD-32X version. Wonder how many actually tried to redeem it back in the day?). Websites like Gamefaqs and Wikipedia list the Brazilian version as an official 32X game and a picture of the box has floated around on the internet for quite some time now. Lots of strange and conflicting stories have been told about it on a lot of back-alley websites, should you go looking for the truth in the dark corners of the internet. Any info I could dig up on it is murky at best; it's truly a mystery. I've never seen anything resembling a copy for sale anywhere, and seeing as most pictures I can find of the box are all of the same copy, I'm skeptical that it was actually commercially released at all. Then again, I wasn't living in Brazil in the mid-90s, so I guess I couldn't tell you for certain. If anyone out there knows the answer, feel free to tell me because I'd love to know.

Anyway, for now I'm pretty happy with my complete North American library. I'll be even happier once I get a better copy of Virtua Fighter, but I'm content knowing that I finally did it. So thanks for reading, and since I've posted links to this blog in public now, I'm aware I have a bit of an expanded audience. I definitely appreciate all the publicity I can get. Stay tuned for more entries soon, I have a lot of them currently in the works and I plan on trying to do at least two posts a week. So stick around and as always, game on!

Lookin' At Manuals

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. Remember the days when you had to use a bit of your imagination when playing a video game? The days when a storyline wasn't supplemented with fancy full motion video cutscenes, a tremendous amount of extra material to read about online, or even the luxury of voice acting? If you do, you probably remember thumbing through a good old instruction manual or two.

Yes, before any of those things, the only supplementary material video games had to rely on were manuals- it was where you learned the controls, the plot, and just about anything else you needed to know in order to complete a game from start to finish. I used to lovingly refer to manuals as "history books" as a kid, because anything you needed to know about the backstory of a video game could be found there. These days, manuals are a thing of the past- hell, they even were long before physical media as a whole started dying out. But personally I love having them for my old games, even for reasons besides being the completionist that I am. They're a window to the past, they provide quirky and even downright odd (or just plain wrong) commentary on games, and sometimes they'll tell you a thing or two about a beloved game you may have never even known before. So that being said, let's flip back through a few dusty, torn up pages and take a glimpse into the not-so-distant past of gaming history.

We'll start off somewhere just about everyone in my age group should recall- remember the manual for Pokemon? I couldn't have been the only person who actually took the time to fill out the blank pokedex spaces in the back of it whenever I caught something new. I remember always being annoyed that the last few pages didn't have any pictures at all on them.

There's also some weird stuff going on in the screenshots within the manual. "The Brock"? I don't recall that in the game...

 

And this one ALWAYS bugged me, even when I was a kid. When you use the fishing rod, you're only supposed to get text saying "oh! It's a bite!" But "ho! It's a hit!"? Where did that come from? I remember thinking that if you saw that message, you'd get a really good Pokemon. Still waiting on my Mew from fishing, damn it.

Localization is a pretty funny thing. For those who aren't aware, localization is the process by which developers translate video games developed in other countries for their local market, most being translations from Japanese. However, back in the day localizations were abjectly terrible, most famously so for extremely poorly translated lines like "All your base are belong to us." Localization isn't entirely about text translation, however- it also involves explaining the plot. As such, back in the day many game developers chose to craft their own stories that sometimes had absolutely nothing to do with the game. Here in the U.S., this often meant that many games became "Americanized" with ridiculous stories that weren't even a part of the original game at all. Case and point: the manual for Metal Gear on the NES. It's already well known that the game itself was somewhat butchered compared to it's Japanese MSX counterpart, but just read the plot synopsis from the NES manual:

I wonder if Hideo Kojima has ever read that...

I mean, really, Vermon CaTaffy sounds like an STD or something. But no, he's the tranquil shepard boy with 27 sisters. This is canon, right? I feel like I can't even make a joke about how the Metal Gear franchise would write another sequel to retcon this information in.

How about the original Resident Evil? One thing I always found funny about the manual is how it has these quite detailed back stories for characters whose only appearances in the game are as corpses. Take good ol' Kenneth Sullivan for example- the only notoriety he gets in the entire game is having the distinction of being the first victim the player comes across, being eaten by a zombie. Yet the manual dedicates half a page to his picture and a few sentences on his background in chemistry.

Sometimes manuals can be pretty damn funny, especially if the game itself is pretty wacked out. This is evidenced in a few snippets from the Earthworm Jim 2 manual for Sega Saturn, as you can see here:

Now that's hysterical. It just goes to show that when developers were having fun with what they created, the end product was always that much better.

The original Super Mario Bros. has a pretty simple story: a regular plumber named Mario must save a princess and her kingdom from the evil King Koopa. But here's something you might not know, straight from the original manual itself:

Wait, you're telling me that the citizens of the Mushroom kingdom were turned to...blocks? The same blocks from the game? The ones that Mario smashes open repeatedly. So...Mario is a murderer, basically.

I always found it pretty cool when manuals hinted at hidden stages within the game. The manual for Sonic & Knuckles did just that, telling only the title of the Hidden Doomsday Zone, yet withholding pictures of it unlike like every other level.

I also enjoy the bio Sonic 3's manual has for Knuckles. He's 15 years old and his favorite food is grapes...that's some vital info right there, folks.

Most manuals were in black and white, which didn't leave a whole lot of room for artistic liberties. However, I think the manual for Street Fighter II pulled off some pretty cool illustrations. I also find it funny how we would always struggle with trying to figure out all of the moves for characters in fighting games as kids, often just smashing all of buttons at once trying to make something happen, while meanwhile the movesets were right there in the manual for every character.

I also find it kinda humorous that manuals often included information like a character's blood type in a fighting game. You know, because Ryu can kick you in the face pretty hard with his tatsu-maki-sen-pu-kyaku, but he's also a universal blood donor. Bet you didn't know that.

But by far the strangest thing I've found is this manual for PGA Tour Golf II. Now, how difficult do you think it is to explain a golf game? You hit the ball in the hole, that's it. But this manual is nearly the size of a freakin' dictionary:

It has all this ridiculously unnecessary information in it like a SIX PAGE history of the PGA tour (including prize money amounts!), lengthy bios for 10 different pro golfers, and very detailed descriptions of different courses.

This is a Sega Genesis game!! What kid was sitting around reading this stuff!? And even if the game was designed for adults instead, what adult would even be reading it?? Or playing it at all for that matter! You know, sitting there in 1992 playing golf on Sega Genesis instead of actually playing golf in real life? Insane.

So anyway, it's always fun to dig around in the past a little bit, because you never know what you might find in between the dirty pages of a long lost manual from over 30 years ago. Thanks for reading.

Gaming Memories: Reaching Level 50 In Halo 3

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. No collection updates to speak of today, but I have something instead that I wrote recently. I wanted to revisit something I started off the blog with and then abandoned shortly after as it proved a bit too ambitious for a recurring series: recollecting personal gaming memories. I wrote a whole huge 4-part saga discussing my memories of playing games in the Resident Evil franchise (which you can find here you're interested in reading it), but haven't really done anything else. So today I'm going to revisit a moment that stands out to me as a tremendous accomplishment as a gamer- not even necessarily because it was all that difficult of a thing to do, but more so because of the story behind it and the long path to victory that ensued.

I know I usually talk about older games, but there was a time in my life where I was hip with the world and up to speed on the latest and greatest gaming trends. I'm talking about playing games online, over Xbox Live. Obviously, this has become ubiquitous these days; online gaming is everywhere and almost everything. However, back in the halcyon days of the early-mid 2000's it was a little unprecedented, at least to the mainstream of console gamers (obviously PC gaming, which I've never been into, is an entirely different story). I remember that buying a wireless router and getting into a matchmaking game in Halo 2 for the first time seemed like the coolest thing in the entire world. For the first time in my life, I was playing video games with other people who weren't sitting on the couch right next to me- they were halfway across the planet! The concept alone seemed unimaginable to me.

But there I was, gunning people down in what had already become one of my favorite video game franchises ever, only on its second installment. It was mayhem. I spent days on end locked in my room doing essentially the same thing over and over again but with different people every time (and sometimes friends too). I stayed up all night, I didn't go out with friends, and my eyes were bloodshot from sitting 5 feet away from the TV for hours on end. I remember feeling like I wanted to be better at it than everyone I knew. Better than all my friends, better than everyone I faced online. Now, I'm definitely no pro gamer- I never was, never will be, and nor would I claim to be anything close. However, I will say that I am at least halfway decent at first person shooters, most likely one standard deviation above the mean, for you statistics nerds out there. The point is, I took my quest to be the best that I could be at Halo very seriously back in the day. But alas, the climb to the top was certainly not an easy one.

The early days of Xbox Live were kind of like the wild west. As I mentioned before, online connectivity between consoles was sort of a burgeoning market at the time. Sure, it had existed in some rudimentary forms previously, but it really didn't reach the mainstream until the early 2000's. Because of this, Microsoft didn't really have that sophisticated of a system for dealing with their own online market in the beginning. As a result, Xbox Live was overrun with rampant cheating. Modders who hacked the game to basically allow them automatically kill you, so-called "standbyers" who would use some complicated means of causing other plays to lag while they were free to win the game on their own, you name it- anyone who had the means to screw someone else out of winning a match for their own gain was free to do so, virtually free of any ramifications. Halo 2 also had a plethora of weird glitches that users constantly exploited during matchmaking in order to gain an unfair advantage over players who didn't know how to do so for themselves (admittedly, even I too used the "super bounce" glitch during matchmaking periodically). It was total anarchy.

Halo 2 had a pretty simple ranking system- the more games of any matchmaking type that you won, the higher your rank number got, the highest being level 50. For some odd reason, levels in the high 40s to 50 were denoted by symbols like the Halo ring, a sun or moon, etc. That's neither here nor there, but I remember one particularly disgruntled Xbox user who rambled on over my headset about how anyone with a symbol ranking was not "legit." He was right though- if you saw that your opponents had those symbols, even before a game started you knew that you were done for, and that precious rank you worked so hard to achieve would take a hit. The highest I ever even managed to get myself to was level 34 before I was decimated by cheaters. I loved the game, but after match upon match upon match of getting unfairly beaten down, I grew incredibly weary of the experience. It made me hate playing the game not even very long after I had learned to love it.

Symbols denoting levels 44-50 in Halo 2's matchmaking. If you saw one of these in the lobby before the game, you pretty much knew you were screwed.

About three years after Halo 2 was released came Halo 3, this time on the next generation Xbox 360 console, and you bet your sweet ass I was one of those people parked out in front of my local game store at midnight waiting in line to get my copy on September 25th, 2007. By now, Xbox live had been totally revamped for the new console and things were quite different. Microsoft seemed to have finally gained control over their online empire and now monitored carefully for the aforementioned types of cheating. Any type was met with a swift ban, and finally we were all free to play and rely solely on our skill to win. This time, I wasn't going to let anything stop me on my way to reaching level 50. I played endlessly in the games' "Lone Wolves" matchmaking mode, a free-for-all battle in which 8 players duked it out against one another for 25 kills to win. I was pretty good at it- I even managed to make it to level 47. I was so close- only 3 levels away!

Halo 3 had a bit of a different system for raising your rank than Halo 2- ranks were determined individually by different matchmaking types. For instance, I could have a rank of 47 in Lone Wolves, but only a 7 in another type like Team Skirmish. However, your highest achieved rank in any game type was always displayed proudly in your user profile, the highest once again being level 50. Not only that, but you were also assigned a military rank for higher levels- such as Captain, Colonel, and Brigadier- and only if you managed to reach level 50 would be awarded with the coveted distinction of General.

I had come so far in Lone Wolves, but it got incredibly difficult to raise my rank at that high of a level. Lone Wolves was almost entirely built on preying upon others- as in, using every dirty trick in the book like camping, stealing kills from others and grabbing hold of high powered weapons and powerups as soon as they spawned. For me and my ridiculous sense of gaming morality to a fault, I could never take enough advantage to get over the proverbial hump. So, I had to start over from the bottom by trying my hand in Team Slayer.

Another thing I should mention is that I never really used the headset that came with the console or listened to other people in-game. This is almost a requirement of Team Slayer, but I made things a bit more difficult on myself by purposely choosing not to do so. Additionally, I never joined up with parties- even in a team game, I always chose to go it alone. Even still, I got better and better. I rose all the way to level 48; however, it was there that I hit a wall again. I would go on long steaks of alternating wins and losses, never gaining any ground. I would win several games in a row, just waiting to rank up to 49 but never seeming to get there, only to go on and lose several more in a row. I wondered if I would be perpetually stuck at 48 forever. I was good, but not good enough to rise to the next level. This went on for weeks. I remember reading somewhere that the ranking system was complex and through some sort of algorithm, it always left you at the rank it believed you should be at, and once you reached your limit there was no way to change it. Not knowing if this was true or not, I started to believe that I would never get any higher than level 48.

Even still, I refused to quit. Despite playing as a loner, despite never coordinating with my teammates through headset, I pushed on. I had come so far, gotten so close- the glory of a General rank was too enticing to give up. Finally, my day came. I was on a winning streak and every game I was kicking ass. And then, like a shimmering beacon of hope, I broke through- I ranked up to 49. I was ecstatic; the rumors weren't true, I wouldn't be stuck at 48 forever. However, I knew this wasn't the end- there was still one last level standing between me and the illustrious 50. But now, there was absolutely no way I was giving up. I was too close. I trudged forward, once again facing alternating wins and losses. I wasn't sure how long it would take this time. With every loss I feared that my rank would be lowered to 48 once again. I even kept track of every win and loss, charting out my progress. After days on end, I was trending upward. I knew the end had to be somewhere in sight.

 My actual "charts" of my progress in matchmaking wins, dated February 13th, 2008 and March 8th, 2008. Up arrows are wins, and down arrows are losses. Note the long periods of back and forth wins and losses for both 48-49 and 49-50. Also, apologies for my terrible handwriting. It hasn't gotten a whole lot better almost 9 years later.

And then it happened. I remember the game clearly- my team was getting beaten down from the very beginning. I had won eight of the last 10 games and desperately wanted to keep my streak going, so I buckled down and willed my team to victory. I had the overwhelming majority of kills on my team and despite them dragging me down, I carried us forward and won the game. Then, as the post-game stats screen faded and I was brought back to the matchmaking lobby, something was different. My rank was 50. And then, the shining golden General ranking was bestowed upon me. I leaped up and shouted with joy. I had finally done it. After all of the "unfairness" I had faced in Halo 2, after all the roadblocks put in front of me in Halo 3, I had broken through. I was one of the best of the best now.

I never played Team Slayer again after that day, leaving my 50 ranking as a testament to my dramatic triumph. Now, obviously for many people who are skilled at first person shooters, reaching level 50 probably wasn't a big deal, and if you are one of those people you're probably laughing pretty hard at what a "noob" I am right now (do people still say noob? I'm pretty out of the loop). Rightfully so for you, but for me, this was about more than that. It was about redemption. It was about earning my keep. It was about being the best I could be, and for that one day, I had done it.

Collection Additions Volume 5: A rarity and a...box

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. I go through some lulls in my collecting adventures, so this update is a tad light- however, I did get one very cool addition and another that was more or so just for the completionist in me, so let's check it out.

So that's Doom for the Sega 32X and Mega Man 5 for the NES. Doom was a game I've already owned for the 32X (as well as nearly every other console I own, it seems), but I didn't have the box for it. If you didn't already know from any of my other posts, I have a complete Sega 32X North American library- yup, all 36 of those pretty bad (and a sparingly few good) games for a weird console add-on that should've never existed. Anyway, I've been trying to obtain all 36 games CIB- I'm almost there, and the only games I don't have boxes for were Doom and Star Wars: The Arcade Game, which ironically enough are two of the most common games out of the whole library. Even then I won't be entirely finished yet because I want to get better condition copies of certain games (some of them are beat to shit), but having a box for everything will feel pretty good. Especially since the price of 32X games (and all games in general, pretty much) has been steadily increasing over the years. Thankfully my copies of the rarest ones (i.e. Spiderman: Web Of Fire, World Series Baseball) are in very good condition.

Anyway, there's not much to say about the actual game itself other than...it's Doom. The graphics are pretty good for the time, but the sound quality is terrible compared to the SNES port. The SNES port has inferior graphics though...so I guess it's just a matter of preference between graphics and sound. These days, it's kinda obsolete though since you can play a high quality version of the original Doom just about anywhere. But I digress.

As for Mega Man 5, it filled another completionist void I've been yearning to meet by finally obtaining all 6 original games in the Mega Man series for the NES. For the longest time I was missing 5 because it's (sort of inexplicably) the rarest of the bunch. I'm not sure if it's because it's marginally better than the other Mega Man games, but regardless it's currently the rarest NES I game I own thus far by quite a bit. Is it really that different of a game from the others though? I'm a tad skeptical on that. Of course I haven't had a chance to play it at length yet, but from what I have seen, it doesn't look a whole lot more original than the others. It could just be that I've always been a much bigger fan of the Mega Man X series than the original, but the first 6 just seem to blend together in my mind. Anywho, I'll just have to play it more find out for myself.

That's all for today, thanks for reading.

Why Sonic 3 & Knuckles Is My Favorite Video Game Of All Time

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. Today I'm going to talk about my favorite video game of all time, the nearest and dearest to my heart and one that I can always pick up and play, no matter the circumstances. It's a game from my childhood that was one of the first to make me love video games in the first place, and without it I might not be sitting here writing this right now. It's a game that's...actually two games, not one.

So let me get that out of the way right now, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 & Knuckles is technically two different games: Sonic The Hedgehog 3, released for the Sega Genesis in 1994, and Sonic & Knuckles, released a little later that same year. Both games were originally intended to be one massive adventure, but due to hardware limitations the development team was forced to split it into two separate games. However, the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge was fitted with so called "lock-on" technology, allowing a cartridge to be plugged in on top of it. I'm still not really sure how this works technically, but I've always just gone with it. Anyway, Sonic 3 could therefore be directly connected to Sonic & Knuckles, allowing gamers to experience the entire adventure in all of it's originally intended glory. For this reason, I consider the two to be one game. Playing one without the other is like watching only half of a movie; it just feels wholly incomplete to me. So, I will pretty much be referring to the two as one game throughout this editorial. It's just Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and that's all there is to it as far as I'm concerned.

Anyway, what is it about this game that I love so much? Is it just nostalgia, or is there something deeper beneath the surface? To answer that, we need to go back to the year 1995. Sonic The Hedgehog, both the character and the entire franchise, was at the height of popularity in the mid-90's. We all know that he keeps managing to sink to new lows nowadays (just as much as we all hope that "Sonic Mania" will change that), but back in his heyday, Sonic ruled the world. He had critically acclaimed games, not one or two but three different cartoon shows, comic books, toys, and an avalanche of other merchandise. On the gaming front, the Sega Genesis was battling it out with the Super Nintendo, which was churning out a seemingly endless barrage of it's own smash hit games. The Genesis had some pretty popular exclusive titles of its own, but it seemed as though only its' main mascot Sonic could stand ground with the likes of Mario, Link, Samus and Kirby. Sonic already had three hit games under his belt (the third being Sonic CD), and the Sega team needed to push him to new heights as the war of the 16-bit era raged on.

Maybe it was the fierce competition that drove the Sega team; I believe they had to have known that this game needed to represent their best work yet if it were to stand up to the juggernaut of Nintendo. What they eventually created was an overhaul of Sonic, keeping the original foundation intact while building on top of it. Sonic, Tails, and even Dr. Robotnik all sported new, slick sprites. Three new types of energy shields were introduced that added different special abilities, unlike the normal shield that appeared in the first two games. There was the fire shield that makes Sonic impervious to lava and fire and gives him the ability to do a mid-air dash, the electricity shield that attracts nearby rings and allows him to perform a double jump, and the bubble shield which lets him stay underwater indefinitely and lets him do a bounce jump on the ground for added height. Also, and perhaps most importantly, a new playable character was introduced with Knuckles the Echidna (which I've spoken about the overall importance of in my review of Knuckles' Chaotix).

But perhaps the best overall addition to the game as opposed to any of the previous ones was the progression of the story it told from beginning to end. Having a narrative in video games outside of manuals wasn't such a common thing, back in the days before things like extended cutscenes (or even voicework, for that matter). Obviously many great games pulled it off spectacularly, like the Final Fantasies and Zeldas of the world. What's more, even games like Super Mario Bros. 3 and Doom managed to have great stories with little to no dialogue at all. Sonic 3 & Knuckles falls into this category, as it's story is told entirely through the actions of the characters. As I mentioned you can get plenty of back story in the manual, but when we were kids nobody ever really bothered with that, and besides which all you need to know is shown to you through the use of clever little cutscenes throughout the game.

For example, within the first 15 seconds of playing the game you learn that Knuckles is an antagonist, after he knocks Sonic out and steals his 7 chaos emeralds. It turns out that Knuckles has been duped by Robotnik into believing that Sonic is his enemy and is after the master emerald, the power source of the floating island where Knuckles lives and is the sacred guardian of. Things progress from there and on the sixth stage (and final stage of Sonic 3 by itself), you can see Dr. Robotnik's final weapon, the Death Egg ship, prepping for launch in the background of the stage. Much later on, Knuckles confronts Sonic deep within the caverns of the floating island, and the two clash while Robotnik stealthily sneaks in and steals the master emerald behind Knuckles' back. Knuckles then realizes that he's made a huge mistake to trust him, but it's too late- Robotnik knocks Knuckles out cold and retreats back to the Death Egg ship, which then takes off for space. The story unfolds further as you play onward, culminating in a thrilling final battle in space where Sonic must chase down and destroy Robotnik's robo-carrier, retrieve the master emerald and save the world once and for all. And to reiterate, this entire story is told through brief cutscenes and a bit of supplementary material from the manual.

 The Death Egg ship prepping for launch in the background of the Launch Base Zone, the midpoint of the game (or the finale of Sonic 3, technically).

For me, nothing since then has ever even come close to the scale of that grand final showdown. The game is as simple as running to the right, collecting rings and jumping on bad guys, but the story it tells and the way it tells it just makes it that much more complex. And I have to throw this out there too- the game just looks beautiful. I've spent a ton of time in my life making perler bead sprites (such as those pictured below) so I feel like I have an added appreciation for great spritework, which this game has no shortage of. Sonic and the gang have all new sprites from the previous games, and the levels and backgrounds through which you traverse are exquisite. Sure, Sonic's gimmick may be to "go fast," but ironically you might just enjoy the game that much more if you slow down for a bit and take everything in.

 If you've ever made perler bead sprites, you probably have an added appreciation for detailed spritework. I certainly do when it comes to those of Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

There's tons of little details you just might overlook if you pass everything by in a blur. For instance, have you ever noticed that in water levels such as the Hydrocity Zone, you can see the surface of the water as you emerge from being underwater? Or how about late in the game in the Lava Reef Zone, when for just a small moment you can spot the Death Egg Ship in the background, embedded in the rocks. Later on you'll get much closer to it, but this little tidbit teases that encounter and truly makes you appreciate the fine details that the programmers added in. But my personal favorite little detail has to be in the room where you fight Knuckles in the hidden palace zone, where a large mural is displayed in the background that alludes to the secret Doomsday Zone finale, which you can only access if you've collected all 7 chaos emeralds in the bonus zones. I was always too busy battling it out with Knuckles to notice it as a kid, but one day when I was playing through for what had to have been the thousandth time in my life, I finally noticed it and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It was a truly brilliant moment and one that just made me love every bit of this game that much more.

 The Death Egg ship masterfully tucked away in the background of the Lava Reef Zone.

 See that mural in the background of the Hidden Palace Zone? It's a small easter egg that hints toward the secret finale of the game and the first time you really noticed it, you probably, as they say, shat bricks.

Of course, I'm neglecting Knuckles & Tails' campaigns here. Knuckles' story take place after Sonic's and has you exploring completely different level routes. Naturally, due to Knuckles' ability to climb walls and glide, the game mechanics completely change and you find yourself doing a whole lot more exploring and experimenting. Knuckles also has a different final boss fight against a supercharged mechanized version Sonic called Mecha Sonic (sometimes also referred to as Metal Sonic). Knuckles' campaign in general is a lot harder than Sonic's. The alternate routes are trickier to navigate and bosses also have slightly different attack patterns that make them more difficult to attack. For me though, I've personally always favored Sonic's adventure over Knuckles'. I appreciate that Knuckles offers a totally different way of playing the same game, but I think Knuckles' game ends a bit anti-climatically, especially compared to Sonic's explosive final battle. As for Tails, he can hover about for a bit which is fun, but for the most part his campaign is entirely identical to Sonic's, with the major exception being that the Doomsday Zone is omitted entirely.

In all, it's sort of difficult for me to put into words how much I love this game. I know it's not the best game ever created, and probably isn't even at the top tier level as far as games are concerned, but for me it will always be #1.