Emulator Hour: Mega Man 3 (NES/3DS)

Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, I am finishing up today's post from the Aéroport de Bürbànk and sitting less than a foot away from a bin de trash.  But onto more important matters.

I recall first playing Mega Man 3 (III) way back in or around 1991 or '92 (seeing as how I was rarely one to play the newest video games, let alone games in the Mega Man series of which I was never able to beat until June of last year).

But I did it, I beat Mega Man 3 and I think I've come to, at least for now, a bit of realization that I like this game as a whole more than the frequently touted Mega Man 2 as the best in the series {{Citation Needed}}.  Thinking about the first three games in the series up to the year of our lord, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety, I found that I enjoyed the level design of Mega Man 3 the most whereas I like the music from Mega Man 2 just a smidgen more than MM3.  Plus there's the additions of the newly created slide ability and the robot pet dog Rush with his various, if somewhat limited use abilities (Marine Rush!?).

First off, everything that I loved about MM2 was refined for this installment.  The level design gave me enough of an idea to the robot boss type and I didn't notice too much of the level art being reused for subsequent levels.  But it's the level design is what makes me enjoy this game just a little bit more than MM2.  After defeating the first eight bosses, you have to go through four of the levels again, but they are in a ravaged state.  chunks of the world are now missing, as if the absence of the boss or the havoc brought on by Mega Man has left portions of the world/level in a state of disrepair.  In Gemini Man's stage part two, there are Jamacys that fall through cracks and holes in the blocks that create the borders to the stage.  In every stage that you run into Proto Man, his escape routes are still there.  Then when you get to the boss area, you now have to fight one of the bosses from Mega Man 2, which is a nice throwback until you realize that your weapons are all different than the ones used in that game so your weapon choices have to be decided upon rather quickly (or you can use the aforementioned chart like I did).

Similar to how I played Mega Man 2, I used a chart to figure out which bosses I should play and it what order.  And how I defended my decision as I previously did, I don't find this to be cheating.  I find it no different than talking to Dr. Potts or Delaños about the order they used and which weapon they found to be more effective against which boss.  Again, I still had to go through the level and defeat the bosses on my own in the end, I just did it with an additional bit of information.

But here is the order that I took the bosses in:

1) Snake Man

2) Gemini Man

3) Magnet Man

4) Top Man

5) Shadow Man

6) Hard Man

7) Needle Man

8) Spark Man

I decided to start with Snake Man, because that's what I remember from playing 23 years ago.  Also, Snake Man's theme is pretty damn catchy and there isn't much more to get me interested and stay playing a game that hearing awesome music while being destroyed by a giant undulating robotic snake hellbent on destroying a modified service and homemaking robot.  

Now, I know that based on the aforementioned chart, that this list doesn't take into account "the best" way to go through the game and choosing the bosses based on their weaknesses.  Sometimes, as in the case with taking on Magnet Man before Shadow Man, that I needed to take a break from constantly dying in Shadow Man's stage and I found I was able to get through Magnet Man's stage and take him out.

Going back to the music, I find it interesting that Capcom brought on newcomers to the Mega Man franchise, introducing Yasuaki Fujita (credited as "Bun Bun" during the credits) who wrote all but two of the songs (Gemini Man and Needle Man) and Harumi Fujita. What I find interesting though, is that the music from this game blends fairly seamlessly with that from Mega Man 2, while still sounding different enough to not be repetitive as to be disinteresting to long time players of the series.

In the end, Mega Man 3 took me 6h21m to complete with an average play time of 25 minutes.  In MM3, I found that the regular stages were a lot more difficult than MM2, but that the Dr. Wily stages were a lot easier to traverse.

I guess I should in closing say that if you haven't played any of the games in the Mega Man series, that Mega Man 3 wouldn't be a bad place to start as it is a great continuation of a great series that, so far anyway, is a bit easier than the previous two games but is still a challenging experience that should not be missed out on if you are at all into older NES games from a great era of gaming.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
If It Ain't Broke. . .

The Problems I Have With Worms

I feel like I start half of my posts off with "I've been playing [insert game name here] a lot recently."  And while I haven't been playing Worms: Revolution consistently, I do pick it up on occasion if I have 15-20 minutes to kill, which has totalled up to just over eight hours.  And let me tell you, the computer is too damn good for it's own good.

I've previously talked about my paranoia when playing games against computer controlled characters, and the computer AI in Worms: Revolution is no exception.  In fact, every recent iteration of Worms I've played, the computer controlled worms always seem to have great to just above average accuracy.  I can understand the computer having remotely high accuracy in the later levels, but on the level II-VI of W:R, there are a couple of enemy worms that are a pain in my annelid anus.

One of the funnest parts of Worms, especially when playing with other human players, is seeing how missed shots land.  Knowing that your overshot rocket could be retaliated with an airstrike that also accidentally hits their own worms, that's hilarity and part of what makes Worms a great game/series.  The computer's accuracy takes a bit of that away.

Let's just take a look:

 As you can see, the enemy worm aims with a hand grenade, selecting the perfect angle and power at which to launch said grenade.

 The grenade hits the wall with a timer count of 4 remaining.

The attacking worm, after their throw, retreated back behind the bottle.  That's coordination.

With the perfect bounce, it lands next to my worm with 2 seconds left and I snapped this picture right before the grenade goes off.

Perfect throw!

Here is another sequence of a well aimed arked shot by the enemy:

 It's that same damn worm again!  Five minutes later in the game and I was actually doing better than expected.  This shot though was the beginning of the end for me, although half of my downfall was my own doing.

Granted the enemy's shot was a little high, but the explosion still caused significant damage to my worm, launching him into the air and piling him with the other two to the right (76 & 61).  In the end, enemy worm (36) ended up down by mine (103) and he threw a perfect grenade through the the tunnel above and to the left, hitting two of my worms who were still gathered there.

I would like to point out, that the enemy worm (15) pretty much killed himself by shooting out sections of the map and flooding himself.

Am I complaining?  You bet!  But, only after I have to play a level more than three times and each game takes about 15-20 minutes that usually comes down to me making a stupid mistake and blowing myself up.  Or, by being killed by one of my own worms when they blow themselves up because they took more damage than they had hit points.

And apologies for not having this ready for yesterdays readers.  Life/work kind of got in the way and I ran out of time.  I know, excuses.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Someday, Life Will Be Fairer

$155,723/day needed to fund!?  That's possible right!? 

Cheating, cracking, breaking?

As I got to typing my thoughts about what JWFW had to say about cheating in video games, they got to be so voluminous that I thought it was best to respond with a new post, rather than to write an very long comment.

It seems to me that from your point of view, Mr. Jac O'Nian,  a system of "best practices" outlines how you view 'getting help' vs 'cheating.'  It seems to me that you're actually interested in how the player cheats themself out of the experience of playing the game; when they choose to use cheat codes or maps without ever having put in the effort.  And I've got to say, that's pretty damn cool.   It does seem like it even cheats the game designers, because they are not able to show their game for what it is.  However, I do love the game genie for its ability to show what the game COULD be.

For me, the fun and the very best joy of using a game genie comes from using it on games that I already know intimately well.  I remember getting Super High Jumping for Super Mario Bros, which was very exciting.  I had no thoughts of how "easy" it would make the game, more like: "what can I do with this?"  With super-high jumping, I now had access to the top half of the screen, an area that is normally closed off to the player without the correctly placed blocks.  What was possible, with these new powers?

My favorite GG cheats were 'do your moves in the air' on street fighter, and 'give Terra Shock' on FFVI also 'Completely Random Item Drop' on FFVI.  By the time Street Fighter II had come out on SNES there were hyper editions of the game floating through arcades, where Chun Li could shoot a fireball and everyone could do their moves in the air.  I remember salivating over the all-out mayhem that this brought to the game.  Game Genie was able to replicate some of these, but the results were pretty silly, complete with graphical glitches and control kerfuffles.

For FFVI, the best cheats were much better integrated into the game.  There was  no doubting that Shock was a totally badass move, and one that the player only sees very briefly (in one of the best scenes of the whole game, I might add.)  Who could resist giving Terra Shock?  It certainly  made the first part of the game stupidly-easy, but I got a lot of mileage out of using that move over and over again.  And then the cheat that makes items-all items in the game- appear completely randomly.  I had a Genji Glove and Offering before I left Figaro!  The Offering is a unique (and totally badass) item that doesn't appear until 3/4 of the way through the game (and is also a General Leo tease).

Granted, I never beat FFVI with these codes.  While it was fun for a while, it got boring pretty quickly.  The Game Genie served to disrupt the flow of what was obviously a very finely tuned game.  And I gained a renewed respect for the craftsmanship that went into the making of Final Fantasy III (VI).  So, that's my favorite part about Game Genie, breaking the game to see how it works.

------------------------------

I would like to also talk about Conklederp's observation #2, about the difference between Easter Eggs and cheating.  There are some easter eggs that make the game better.  Konami code when used in Contra being one.  That game is so hard, and really  not all that much fun without it.  And it's clear that the Konami designers knew how hard the game was, which is why they included the now infamous code.   Shout out to Gradius for the same code with a different, but still totally wicked, benefit.

And Goldeneye is a great example of Easter Eggs (among the many, many other things Goldeneye is a good example for).  They just nailed it with this game.  And let me tell you, getting that Facility cheat was fucking, fucking hard.  I could do everything correctly, but if the goddamn scientist wasn't in the first room I looked, I was fucked.  Man, that was a good game.  There was no better publisher in the world than Rare when that game came out.  So, yeah, I don't have the capacity to carefully explain every way in which Goldeneye is a great game, but Jaconian said it right in his post that they made 'a form of functional achievement.'

The only Easter egg I never got in 007 was Two RCP90's.  I think it's the cavern level in under 10 minutes.  I just.. never could quite do it.  Not patient enough, I suppose.

But Is It Really Cheating?

Dr. Potts brought up a nice point, his first in fact, about LIMBO in his post on Tuesday.  His first sentence was, "I cheated twice."

In our current world of near internet connectivity through laptops, netbooks, game consoles, e-readers, smartphones and desktops, the way that we seek and take in information has changed dramatically, especially since I started playing video games in the mid 1980s.  The way this affects gaming and how we game is what I wanted to talk about.

I can remember,  not the exact year, sitting outside on a set of bleachers waiting for my swimming lesson to start (so let's say somewhere around 1988-89) talking with one of my friends about how to beat The Legend of Zelda.  I was at the battle with Ganon and didn't have an idea as to how to slay the Prince of Darkness.  I obviously knew enough about the game's mechanics to know how the game worked to know what I was doing for the most part.  This friend told me that he had heard and possibly implemented as well, the tactic of using the meat/bait that worked for lesser enemies and that it would draw Ganon out and then you could kill him with the Silver Arrow.  My tactic of firing frantically with the Silver Arrow wasn't working too well and Nintendo Power only gave so much information, but not how to defeat the final boss.  Talking with friends about being stuck in areas in video games was the earliest form of Gamefaqs.  I do not consider this cheating.

Enter Game Genie.  Yes, the desire to cheat in games was very great, especially with a device whose sole purpose was to subvert the pre-existing game program to allow special allowances such as allowing Mario to perform multiple jumps in mid air, make Mega Man's special weapon meter never go down or even giving General Leo's "Shock" attack to Terra in Final Fantasy III/VI.  For me, I would never (okay, maybe not "never" but very rarely) use Game Genie on a game that I hadn't beaten...... Okay, with the exception of Mega Man II, although that was to see what bosses and weapons were like and I never beat a game with Game Genie.  Either way, I've never been a fan of cheating.

If I remember correctly, in Goldeneye 007, whenever you enabled a "Cheat," it would not progress the game beyond the level you were currently playing.  Even if was something inane as "Paintball Mode" you could not progress the story line.  I thought this was a brilliant idea in a few ways.  First, you had to "earn" the cheat and not just punch in a certain code or button combination.  You could almost say that this was a form of functional achievements as I know Dr. Potts and I would frequently ask if we'd gotten a specific cheat yet.  (Dr. Potts is also the only person I've known who was able to earn the Invincibility cheat by beating "Facility" in 2:05 on 00 Agent).  Speaking of which, I watched a similar video that Nintendo put out  way back when, showing how to go through the level to get the cheat.  To this day, it's still the only cheat I don't have in that game.

So with that, what do I consider "cheating?"

1.  Looking up or seeking information about how to beat/pass a particular area/puzzle/boss/enemy in a game without having tried it before.

2.  Using codes, exploiting bugs/glitches or otherwise manipulating the game that was not intended during regular gameplay.

     -Examples: 150 item cheat in Pokemon Red/Blue; The Konami Code; Typing "Red Alert" or "On Screen" (among others) in Warcraft II.

3.  Completing a level for someone.

     -While I won't beat a level for someone if they ask me to, I do have a "policy" of sorts that I will show them how to beat a level, but then make them do it themselves.  I don't see this being any different than someone looking up a video on youtube.
4.  Using maps for areas or dungeons that you have not previously tried to explore on your own.

With that, I do not consider Dr. Potts to have cheated on LIMBO.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Little Gage Says "No Fair!"

It's Not Paranoia If They Really Are Watching You

If it's one thing that video games have taught me, it's that you can't trust the "computer" anytime you play video games against a computer controlled character.  Let's break this down so that there's some semblance of planning and cohesion.

Board Games: (Monopoly, Dokapon Journey):  I don't trust computer controlled characters.  Now way about it.  Sure there could be a logarithm that actually has the "die" roll by any player be purely random, I just don't believe it.  

I've played Monopoly enough times on the NES and SNES against the computer to feel cheated every time, especially in the die roll department.  I don't have any empirical evidence that actually says that the game cheats, I just used to feel that I was fighting an uphill battle when it came to 1 player Monopoly.  Like how their Thimble or Car piece will magically move over my properties while I will frequently land on theirs.

Dokapon Journey on the other hand, sigh.  Penny Arcade does a great job of summing up the "theory" behind the game, but the game's execution isn't all there.  Imagine you're playing Dragon Warrior, but you're playing with three other people and you're able to get in the other players' way while everyone tries to complete the same tasks.  There's plenty of online forum bantering about how the computer characters will spin the exact number they need to get to a specific place (say, a weapon shop so you don't die in every battle and have to spend 3 turns at the church being resurrected).  The main problem I have with the computer in this game, is that it knows where to go.  Let's say a King's mission is something like "Go to the cave to find the treasure that was taken from me by the bandits."  There are 4 possible caves on the map, (and to enter a cave you have to "land" on it with the exact spin/roll number) and the computer knows exactly which ones to go to.  Anyway, don't trust the computer here.

Fighting Games:  (Street Fighter, Killer Instinct, Primal Rage)  Yes, I know there're a ton of fighting games out there, I just chose to list those three just because and put them in no particular order.  My distrust of fighting games stems from my awesome ability to get the shit kicked out of me 60% of the time.  The thing with a lot of these types of games is that you have to learn the moves for either a particular character or any number of characters (like games that use tag-teaming).  This has always been a personal problem for me in these games, which I know isn't universal.  Mainly for me it's about remembering the combination of buttons to press while trying not to get the shit kicked out of me.  And I just don't trust the computer (when the game's on "easy" settings) to accidentally screw up a combo move or to not know all the moves that that one character knows.  Although, I did like that in Killer Instinct, the AI would learn the moves that you would frequently perform, forcing the player to continually alternate their attack strategy or nothing would work.  Kind of like the Borg.

Poker/Card Games:  I learned this lesson very early on in my video gaming life.  One of the first video games that I played was Las Vegas Poker & Blackjack on the Intellivision.  All I'm going off is my memory, but I recall that I could do alright playing against the computer, but I was often convinced that the dealer would deal themselves better cards in any of four available games (5 or 7 Card Stud, 5 Card Draw or Blackjack).  Inevitably I would always end up bankrupt and then play either Astrosmash, Star Strike or Golf.

Then there were the little handheld poker and slot machine LCD games from Tiger that I would always seem to loose all my "money" on.  Tiny little hand held balls of cheating madness is what I call them.

This then brings me to Poker/Slot Machines in video games.  I don't trust them at all; like that's a shocker.  Especially in games where money or game tokens may be hard to come by (Pokemon, Dragon Quest V, Bioshock, Chrono Cross).  I always seem to play a couple of games to get the feel of them, realize that I'm not going to spend a couple of hours just in the casino when I could be out in the world map earning gold at a probably faster rate.  And I'll feel less cheated.

And now this brings me to real world video poker.  I personally don't trust the computers who control the outcomes.  I've played video poker a couple of times during a single venture while out with former employees on a unit moral building outing.  The whole time though I felt I was inside of Fear & Loathing.  I did manage to win $15 from the $5 that I was playing with, and like any person who just won, I kept playing and ended up with $0.  Which was fine with me.  I called it up to the computers winning and taking their first step in taking over the world.  

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Well Played Skynet