Super Mario Brothers 3 vs. Super Mario World

Usually when someone talks about the greatest of the Mario games, either Super Mario Brothers 3 or Super Mario World are argued for.

Sure, there is the occasional person that throws Mario 64 or the original Super Mario Bros into the mix, but generally I think Mario 3 and World are the two best of the pre-2000 core-Mario games.

If I took an official vote, my bet would be that Mario 3 is the overall favorite.

It was the first game with the diverging paths world map, insane amounts of secrets, memorable boss battles, and that ridiculous combo of the maze like world 7 and difficult world 8.

I sat cross legged, challenging myself to beat the game without using whistles and saving that P-wing until the flying fortress level for several years.

Mario was fine tuned and indeed, Mario 3 is probably the best game on the NES, but I always tend to have a soft spot for Super Mario World.

It's partly because I didn't actually own a SNES and didn't get as much time with Super Mario World. There was a point where I did have some Mario 3 fatigue.

Super Mario World has its own bullet-ed list of features that could go bullet for bullet with Mario 3, like an even larger world map, more secrets, the introduction of Yoshi in a Mario game, and a diverse set of levels.

But I think it's more about the social aspects of the game. I remember setting up a 27" standard definition television on the bottom bunk of my cousin's bunk bed, his window open allowing the crisp autumn air to blow against our shirtless bodies, and draping sheets over the outside to give us a cave to fully escape into this other world. (It sounds like some pre-teen, homoerotic adventure now that I've typed it out)

We would scream, laugh, talk about small world's issues, discuss what we were going to blow our allowance on, and beg his mom to order us pizza.

It was a game that couldn't be beat in one weekend. We grew with the game. Sure, we might have beat Bowser after just a couple weekends, but that 55% completion on the save screen mocked us. We spent months finding all of the secrets we could, until we were forever stuck on the 5th Special level.

Eventually we noticed girls and more adult oriented video games like Resident Evil took over our Friday-post-roller-skating-game-nights. Super Mario World was packed into a box and largely forgotten about. It wasn't until last fall when I was given a family member's SNES and about 15 games that I remembered the magic.

Demon Sword - NES

This was one of those games (much like Megaman) where the box art didn't really show you a great representation of the game. 

In Demon Sword, you play as a pale, skinny man in a kimono. The cover would have you believe that you were in charge of a shirtless Arnold Schwarzenegger fighting hawk dragons.

The actual goal of the game was to put this mythical tree branch looking sword back together and banish the demons. As you beat levels, your sword got longer until it was larger than the character. Link's buster sword had nothing on this one. 

I would describe this game as Super Ninja Mario Gaiden. 

The combat and boss fights reminded me of Ninja Gaiden. It was a chess match of dodging and slashing with some magic and ninja stars thrown in.

The actual platforming was more like Mario where you could fly through the level just based on muscle memory. 

And that speed was the thing that mesmerized me. 

Up to this point, I owned Mario, Zelda, the Adventures of Bayou Billy and Fester's Quest. Mario had a nice pace to it, but if any of you played any of Bayou Billy or Fester's Quest, you realized how much the developers actually hate you as a consumer. Much of your time was spent moving your character slowly across the screen. 

So when I got my hands on Demon's Sword and was able to fly through the trees with almost no frame rate issues, I felt free. The only other time I had a similar sensation was the first time I drove a car without my parents in it. 

I played this game so often that the contacts started wearing out and the first level was played as a mess of busted pixels. But by then, my muscle memory was so great, I could literally do it blind.

I checked on eBay and this treasure was going for $.99 on several auctions. If you have an NES and skipped this game before, drop a dollar on it and let me know what you thought.

Editorial: How Did You Get Your Nintendo to Work?

There was nothing worse than seeing two flashing colors on your TV screen when you should be seeing that glorious NES game title screen.

A un-countable number of comedians have already covered the subject of how everyone had their special way of getting their Nintendo to work and how you could only get your own NES working.

My cousin Ryan would lick the game and then press the game down as hard as he could. In desperation, I once licked a particularly troublesome game and remember tasting a dusty battery.

One of my best friend's in high-school had to use a Game Genie even if they weren't putting in codes. Without the Genie, the console wouldn't recognize a game was inserted.

My neighbor across the street would discard the warnings about only using the official Nintendo cleaning kit and would dab rubbing alcohol on a Q-tip and rub it in the games.

My wife's family would do a combo of blowing into the game, rubbing it down with a dry Q-tip, and in some cases shoving a Popsicle stick into the system to hold the games at the perfect height to make contact with the terminals. 

I would blow into a game for exactly 30 seconds. I'd then push the game all the way into the system and then pull the game out just a pinch. And I could never push the game down into the system. If I pushed it down how you were supposed to, blinking color screens all day long. 

You don't get these great stories anymore. 

Telling the heroic tale of putting your red-ringed 360 into the official Microsoft casket and waiting two to six weeks for a refurbished console to make its way back just doesn't have the same comedic feel of laying in your pajamas on the floor at 6:00 a.m. getting dizzy from blowing into a game for too long. 

So how did you get your NES to work?

Editorial: Inverted Axis and Inverted Choices

My wife humors me and plays video games with me sometimes. She's pretty good at them. But there's one setting she always needs to change immediately, and that's to turn on the inverted Y axis.

It's not often you meet someone that prefers the inverted axis. I know only three people that prefer the inverted axis, and two of them are in my wife's family. It seems to be a relic of the Flight Simulator days, or at least that's where my wife traces it back to.

There are times where she plays as the first player, saves the inverted setting, and the next time I pick up the controller I find I can't hit the side of a barn. And sometimes its not immediately apparent what is wrong. I'll play ten minutes just thinking I'm having a really off day before I remember that my wife had the controller last.

It's just strange how some settings are just assumed now and when a developer does them differently, it can really mess up your life.

Remember during the Playstation 1 era where many Japanese developed games had "O" as the select option in menus and "X" as the cancel option. (I'm looking at you Konami and Square)

I can't tell you how many times I spent five minutes stuck on the title screen of Metal Gear Solid because I would press "X" to load the game.

Or when you try to play Halo and end up throwing grenade when you really just want to aim down the sites.

Things that seem to have been ingrained into our gaming DNA by large adoption of standard settings. Call of Duty and Battlefield have taught us that the left trigger should aim down the site and the joystick-less games of the present just about shun the inverted axis.

I wonder if research and development studied the best way to handle these settings or if a few guys on the development team picked up a controller and found their preference, forcing it on the masses.

Hunter Hunted

One of my favorite childhood computer games was a Sierra platformer adventure game called Hunter Hunted.

My best friend from 4th-6th grade was his wealthy grandparents favorite grandchild.

We would get to spend weekends at their high-end, lake front condo, playing on their ultra powerful PC, powered by the ultra fast Pentium 2 processor. And since he was their favorite, they were always buying whatever the new PC game at Wal Mart was just for our pleasure.

Most of these games were installed and forgotten, but Hunter Hunted was one that stuck. It quickly earned a spot in our regular rotation.

It was a side scrolling game where you played as the strongest human on the planet, Jake, where you have to run from a beast hunting you, rebuild your car, and dodge the security bots on each level.

It was such a simple game, but addictive. Each level was a new puzzle.  Each weapon had its own weight. And for a computer platformer, it was incredibly polished.

And the graphics, my were they beautiful. The art design looked like Killer Instinct or Donkey Kong Country with a steam punk twist.

And being a 90s computer game, the soundtrack was mostly Metal. It was everything you could want in a game from 1996.

The best part of the game was the local multiplayer. My buddy would plug in his joystick and I would jam on the keyboard as we played an incredibly frantic game of cat and mouse.

Jake and the beast, Garathe Den, each had their own stats and unique weapons. Jake had the more powerful weapons whereas Garathe had a few more hit points and could navigate the levels with greater speed. As always, there were ways to cheese the game, certain areas where the opponent's weapons couldn't touch you but you were free to rain grenades down on them.

Unfortunately, this was one of those games that never got much traction on the playground. No matter how many times Spencer or I brought up how great it was, we just couldn't get anyone else to bite. In a way, I'm happy. It's my own private little game that not many people have heard of.

Around 1997,  Spencer moved away and thus my way to play Hunter Hunted.

I begged my dad to get a copy of Hunter Hunted for our own computer. He delivered a copy only weeks later (thanks to a buddy at work) on a burned CD. (Way ahead of our time, I know) Unfortunately, our computer was only half the power of Spencer's grandparents. The frame rate came to a crawl anytime anyone attacked. The game would simply crash if my brother and I tried to boot up the multiplayer.

A few years ago I purchased a copy of Hunter Hunted off of eBay. Surprisingly, it worked without much prodding on my current generation hardware. I played through the 65 single player missions with a smile on my face, eventually giving the CD ROM its home on my permanent game shelf.

Editorial: The Importance of the Controller (Top 3 List)

With this new generation of consoles coming, the controller seems to be the most talked about feature. (You know, other than that whole DRM thing) I don't remember the controller design being all that important up until the Playstation 1 / N64 era. Moving into "3D" worlds required much more precision than ever before. Manufacturers had to concentrate on more than going left or right and having 2-6 input buttons.

The controller had to be an afterthought for most console designers before the early 90s.

The NES came with its harsh rectangle and stiff D-pad. The Colecovision had its calculator with the joystick at the top. Or the similarly designed Intellivision with the calculator at the top instead.

Sega seemed to have the worst designs. I never really got comfortable with the Dreamcast controller and the few times I held a Saturn controller I wanted to throw it out the window. Even the simplicity of the Genesis controller wasn't exactly perfect. I still have scars from the blisters that controller gave me when playing Royal Rumble.

There have actually been more controller failures than successes. But, being ever the positive person, I'm going to focus on my top three favorite controllers.

3. Xbox 360

There's no way this controller could be in the top list if the D-pad was used more often in modern games. We can all agree, it is probably the worst D-pad on a controller. 

But in the age of the console first person shooter, this controller is the best. The triggers, bumpers, and placement of the sticks are ergonomically perfect for the modern console game. 

It wasn't until I switched to the Playstation 3 when I realized just how perfect this controller is. And considering where it came from, it's design was no small feat. Just look at the original Xbox's controller (I count it among the worst) compared to where Microsoft brought the design for the 360. 

2. Playstation Dual Shock 2: Specifically, the emerald green see through Dual Shock 2 controller. 

The weight was great, the design gorgeous, and I could play for five hours without getting tired. 

I loved being able to see through the case and see how the Dual Shock worked. 

I used this bad boy so much that the analog sticks eventually stopped working. Not willing to throw it in the trash, I took the controller apart and figured out how the thing worked. Turned out one of the pads the joystick interacted with was lose. Just had to reseat it and it worked perfectly. 

It felt solid to. I knew I could use it as a weapon if I somehow came under attack while playing games. 

1. Nintendo Gamecube

A small confession, I might spend time on the weekends writing love poetry to this controller. 

I don't hear this controller talked about often, but no other controller comes close to the Gamecube. My fingers instantly knew where all the buttons were. It was light, it had a lot of beautiful feminine curves, and it came in just about every color you could want.

It felt like the games were built around the controller, whether you were playing MarioKart or Resident Evil 4. Everything just worked. 

I still boot up my Gamecube from time to time and just wish I could pair that controller up with my Playstation 3. 

Editorial: Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and the Personality of the Level

A buddy came over last weekend for a kickback, old-school sleepover with pizza, video games, and general nerd discussion. (The only difference is instead of drinking Mountain Dew, we drank beer.)

When he saw that I had several Genesis classics on PSN, he demanded we boot them up. 

First up was Sonic the Hedgehog 2. My buddy is a Sonic fiend. He's one of those few people that have been able to forgive the countless terrible games featuring our favorite blue mascot. He's one of those mythological people that get excited before every Sonic game that comes out.  

I have a soft spot for the first three Sonic games on the Genesis, but I drifted apart from the chili dog eating animal after the Genesis. 

There are sections of the game I vividly remember. The beautiful first zone, Emerald Hill, bouncing off the flippers in Casino Night Zone, and the frustrating Shoots and Ladders of the Oil Ocean Zone. 

And then there are the ones I always forget about, not because they are lesser zones, but they were the ones I didn't have to play as much or they didn't cause me to throw my controller at the TV. It had been so long since I'd played Sonic 2, that when we came to Aquatic Ruin, Hill Top, or that damned Metropolis Zone, it was like seeing the game for the first time again. 

I was amazed at how varied each zone was. It's something missing from games today. Gears of War and Call of Duty are filled with the same brown and gray hues for the entire 10 hour campaign. 

In Sonic 2, each Zone has a personality, its own music and enemies. You came to know the new difficulties that awaiting in each area. It was handy when talking about the new secret you found on the playground to reference the lava river in Hill Top Zone or the bottomless pit in Mystic Cave. I can't say, "oh, there's a dog tag hidden in the ruined city, with all the cement and dust when the locusts attack," because that's the entire game. 

It took maybe 15 minutes for my buddy to get to the Winged Fortress, where hundreds of times I gave up on the game in my childhood.

We didn't beat it Saturday night. It might have been because we did not have a Genesis controller so the muscle memory was just slightly off. It might have just been the 7 beers we each had already. But Dr. "Eggman" Robotnic would continue to hold the last Chaos Emeralds.