Virtua Fighter – SEGA 32X

I've always been a sucker for underdog products.
When everyone else was playing with Star Wars figures, I was still playing Army men.
When my best friends were collecting all those cool He-Man action figures, I was kicking it with Crystar: The Crystal Warrior (Never heard of him? You're not alone.)
And when the gaming world scoffed at the SEGA 32X and looked ahead to the superiority of other machines, I marched right out and bought one.
I've never regretted it.
At the time I was a cub reporter with the Providence Journal – living in a large house with grad students and restaurant workers. We stayed up late, had lots of parties and pretended we were still undergraduates. When I first brought home the 32X it was a revelation. We didn't know it was a poorly marketed albatross for the venerable SEGA Genesis. We just knew it came with a lot of extra wires, looked pretty high tech and allowed us to play the best fighting game ever made for people who don't know how to play fighting games: Virtua Fighter.
We spent many evenings passing around the controller in makeshift tournaments. We marveled when Pai's little hat would get knocked off by a kick to the face. We cheered when one of us would pull off a flawless victory - a "perfect" – against an opponent.
We drank beer and mashed buttons.
It was not an elegant way to spend our evenings, but it was not an elegant game. Even someone who had never played before could hack their way to victory if their timing was right.
Or if they chose to play as Pai. Easily the best fighter of the bunch, her victories mounted like so many quarters at the bottom of an arcade cabinet. Until one day, a roommate with too much time on his hands was able to utter these now-famous words:
"I beat Pai with Mau today."
And what a day it was.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

The Club - Xbox 360, PS3

Is it my dedication to heralding forgotten titles that drives me or is it the fact that I am woefully behind in my gaming because I can only play for so long before my wife and child reclaim me for their own selfish agenda (such as parenting, being a good husband and cooking things on the grill for them)? Who knows?
What matters is The Club, despite being quickly forgotten last year, is a fun game from SEGA that I don't want you to miss.
What if a developer known for racing games made a shooter? The answer is The Club. Bizarre Creations, the Project Gotham folks, apply the seat-of-the-pants racing sensibilities to this shooter and the result is a game unlike any other I've played. It rewards quick reflexes and gives new meaning to the term "twitchy" gameplay. There is no time to stop and think, no time to hide and snipe, and no time for love, Dr. Jones.
You gotta run and gun in this game, and even that time-honored expression doesn't fully embody the gameplay of The Club. (A side note: Anyone who has played the Project Gotham games is familiar with attention to detail and the clean graphical style for which Bizarre Creations is known. This is also evident in The Club. The opening cut-scenes – in which the characters are introduced – are excellent. The crisp graphics and lighting effects are also a joy to behold. What's best is that the graphics – while excellent – don't get in the way. Since this is not a game in which you are rewarded for stopping to smell the roses, that's a good thing.)
Once you choose a character – I recommend one that's fast – you are put through a series of shooting galleries in elaborate settings with a varying set of rules. There is some variety here, but every game involves you quickly killing as many enemies as possible in a timely manner. You are rewarded for creative kills and encouraged to kill quickly and repeatedly by a combo meter that keeps filling up as long as you're dishing out the death. If you let too much time pass without a kill – or by shooting one of the many "skull shots" littered around the game arena – your combo meter will drop. It drops fast and it's one of the features that keeps the adrenaline pumping while you play. (It's like trying to keep your line tight while you head to the next checkpoint in a racing game.)
There's a skeleton of a story here but that's not why you're playing The Club. You're playing it because it's a fine test of speed and accuracy that rewards folks who like to retry a mission until they nail it. For the rest of us – casual killers, if you will – The Club is a fun pick-up-and-play game that offers a nice diversion from the typical shooter.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball – Super Nintendo

In the mid 1990s there were few athletes, if any, more famous and seemingly superhuman than Ken Griffey Jr. Long before Mark McGwire ate steroids by the handful (not that it helped him hit homers) and Barry Bonds’ head grew to hippopotamus-like proportions, Griffey Jr. was the great American hope to smash Roger Maris’ famed home run record.
He was also the only real person in Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. Though the title had a MLB license, it didn’t have licensing from the players’ union, which meant real stadiums and teams with imaginary players. One of the best parts of the game was how these “fake” players would be given nicknames so anyone with half a brain could figure out who they were really supposed to be.
Long before anyone used a joystick to determine the downward action of a 12-6 curveball, baseball video games were simple and repetitive affairs. In Griffey’s baseball game, pitches were either fast or slow, strikes or balls. Hitting was also simple. You pressed a button and you swung the bat.
If a batter struck out, they would either sigh and put their head down, yell at the umpire or my personal favorite, snap a bat over their knee. All-in-all, the game was simple and charming.
Including me, there were four boys who grew up in my neighborhood within two years of each other. Every one of us owned this game.
The home run derby was fun and the season modes let you go from something like 20 games all the way to a full season of 162 games. No matter how many games you played or how many times the same music looped over and over again it never got old.
Oh, and you could hit 575– home runs. Maybe the imaginary players in this game were on imaginary steroids too.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Final Fantasy Tactics - Playstation

Mediocre graphics, stupid music and super repetitive gameplay.
At a glance, that’s a brief summary of the 1997 Square Enix release Final Fantasy Tactics (FFT). A spin-off of the Final Fantasy franchise (one of the most successful franchise in video game history) for the original Playstation, this game was released in-between the main title’s seventh and eighth installments.
Despite some of its obvious shortcomings, however, FFT is easily one of my favorite games of all time. Why? Because no title released on any console ever has done such a remarkable job of fusing the RPG and RTS genres. While you can level up your character and open up different abilities and spells based on experience, the in-battle fighting system only allows so much energy per character for each turn, creating a strategic element not seen in many RPGs.
The game also allows you to wander back and forth between areas picking fights with random villains for an infinite period of time without having to advance the story. What this means is you can get your team to a God-like level of power before even embarking on the second mission, making the main story line a cake walk covered in carnage and the bones of your enemies.
Yeah, that’s what I liked about it. Forget the main story. It’s something to do with medieval knights or something. I don’t even remember it. But I don’t care about it now and I didn’t care about it then. All I cared about was running over gangs of thugs with my wizard and a monk who could shoot shockwaves from his fists. When I was a younger fella, I lived in a house down in Providence with a few friends. By the time we moved out, I had played the game so much and annoyed my roommates so extensively that one of them hid the game from me.
To this day, none of them have admitted to doing it, but I know at least one of them reads this blog and buddy, I know the truth.
FFT is awesome and while many franchises release spin-off titles that flop miserably, this release is a valuable addition to the Final Fantasy universe. You can play it for months or even years and never get bored, at least I didn’t.
By George Morse
gmnorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Pac-Man - Atari 400

When I was a kid all I wanted more than anything was an Atari 2600, just like the one my best friend had hooked up to the one television they had in their house. Unfortunately for me, Rachel lived further away than I was allowed to ride on my pink Huffy, so it was only about every other weekend when we'd hunker down in front of the state-of-the-art 20-inch screen playing Combat until her parents came down the split-level stairs to catch Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs on 20/20. Alas, my dreams were thwarted when one Christmas my dad presented my sister and me with our big shared gift that year: An Atari 400 computer. A COMPUTER. Because he wanted us to learn something about this upcoming home computing revolution he'd read about in Popular Science. The computer came with some kind of drawing program that my dad referred to as a "game," and I dutifully occupied my Christmas drawing multi-colored circles. As much as I tried to hate that computer, I will confess that I did learn a thing or two about programming, mainly because I enjoyed making the computer respond with obscenities whenever I typed the right BASIC command.
I had the sense to save my Christmas money that year and head on down to the videogame kiosk in the local Sears, where I was delighted to find that I could, in fact, buy games for my nerd machine. The first game I plunked down about $50 for (keeping in mind this was some time around 1983 - in today's dollars, that's what, like $750?) was Pac-Man. The ride home in the front seat (this was also before seat belts and kids riding in the back until they're eligible for the draft) of dad's blue AMC Hornet was torture. I think I even asked to jump out of the car at the traffic light 6 blocks from home because I knew I could run home between the neighbor's yards faster than dad could get there on solid pavement. My plea fell on deaf ears and I had to wait out those last few blocks before I hopped out of the car in the gravel driveway, cleared the chain-link fence, and sprinted up the stairs to the attic playroom.
The best part about the fact that the Atari was a "shared' gift was that though my sister was only about a year older than me, her interests skewed toward boys and makeup, whereas my interests were of the ilk to position me for the It's Academic team I would compete on 5 years down the road. That is to say, the Atari was mine alone. This became especially important after I slammed the cartridge into the slot and discovered that this version was BETTER than the system at Rachel's! This Pac-Man wasn't a washed-out blob on a pastel background! The colors were vibrant. The dots were nearly round (round dots - a revolution in home computing, indeed!). There was music, just like the Pac-Man at the arcade up the street that I wasn't allowed to visit because that's where the less-respectable girls in the neighborhood went to smoke with the 20-year-old counter jockeys.
I can't say I know how long I played that day, but I do know it was dark when mom called me down for dinner and I couldn't move my thumbs for most of that night thanks to the joystick cramp I'd grown to ignore. And I doubt I ever got off the first screen. But I was hooked. I played probably the entirety of the next day, and every day thereafter before AND after school, stopping only to eat and throw something together each night and call it homework. It was around this time that Rachel started figuring out that boys existed and that the way to hang out with them wasn't to sit in an attic staring at a 15-inch tv screen with poor horizontal hold. But I continued saving every dollar I could get my hands on and soon had a fairly decent collection of now-classic games: Asteroids, Galaxian, even Centipede (with the roller-ball joystick that I think my dad finally chipped in for one day at Sears after he saw how crestfallen I was upon learning that you had to buy it separately). I never was really especially good at any of them (a pinball wizard, I wasn't), but I could beat my own high scores fairly reliably and that was enough to keep me coming back for a time. Some time over the next few years, I must have figured out that boys weren't entirely gross and I started kinda wanting to hang out with them too, which meant less time spent in the dusty attic playing Breakout. Which was probably not an entirely bad thing. It also meant that the precious twenties from Grandma's birthday cards were destined more and more for the Fashion Bug rip-off up the street. The 400 was at some point upgraded to an 800, and finally replaced by a ColecoVision (a real videogame console, finally!). There was an all-too-brief period in which a boy who actually enjoyed spending time with me also enjoyed playing Jeopardy! on the Coleco (which held what we believed to be the best Easter egg of all time, wherein "Schwarzenegger" was an acceptable answer to all Final Jeopardy questions, as long as you spelled it correctly). Thereafter, the sum total of my gaming experience over the next 20 years consisted almost entirely of watching a succession of significant others unlock all the cheats for the NHL series on PlayStation.
This year, the big family present I picked up was a Wii system, with a 4 and 5 year-old in mind. I was almost nervous about Christmas morning, when the kids awoke to find a Wii controller in each stocking, remembering back to my own thinly-veiled disappointment on that Christmas nearly 30 years prior. I thought for certain that my daughter would cry out that all she wanted was a Snuggie blanket. (A big thank you to the incessant marketing machine that is the Sprout channel; thanks to them she also desperately needs Wonder Hangers.) But after spending a little time designing our personalized Miis, we all discovered that the preschool set likes to box. And play tennis. And do yoga (the Wii Fit was SUPPOSED to be for me, but I find myself waiting in line for it at the end of the day). It's fun, and probably somewhat good for all of us too. And maybe someday, my daughter will wait on the porch to meet the UPS truck carrying her hot-off-the-presses copy of Wii jai-alai that was advance ordered on Amazon. But for me, that first "running through the neighbor's yard to get home that much faster and start playing" honor will always belong to a little yellow semi-circle and a few computer-generated ghosts.
By Jo-Ann Kriebel

XIII - Xbox, PS2, Gamecube

I was living in Philadelphia, running the bar at a Greek restaurant in a ritzy neighborhood called Manayunk. Actually, just the main street in Manayunk was ritzy - Manhattan salons, upscale restaurants, expensive boutiques. A few blocks up the road where I lived with my wife (then girlfriend) was a working class neighborhood with narrow streets and a lot of churches. (The part in the movie Unbreakable where the kid is playing football in the park was filmed there.)
I'd come home at 3 a.m. after closing the bar and get in some gaming before passing out. One of the games I remember fondly from this period was XIII. If Manayunk was a working class neighborhood fronting a fancy facade, XIII was a B-list shooter fronting a spectacular veneer.
Sometimes style is enough to trump substance.
It's rare, but it happens.
In XIII, a daring title from the previous console generation, the attention to style overwhelmed everything else. For me it was an obvious buy: I love first person shooters and I'm a big fan of cell-shaded graphics. XIII had both, and it played out like a 1960s espionage film.
You wake up on a desolate strip of New England beach. The near-fatal impact of a bullet has left your head pounding, and your memory erased. And you've got the number XIII tattooed on your chest. A pretty lifeguard in a red swimsuit helps you along. In your pocket is a key to a New York City bank box. You struggle to your feet and get assaulted again. You're shocked with how easily you're able to dispatch the bad guys.
It's not the most original beginning to a thriller (game, film or novel) but it's intriguing and it gets better.
And the game features Adam West in what was probably his last serious role before playing the mayor on Family Guy. (Come to think of it, it may be his only serious role. Ever.)
XIII took a lot of criticism for having more style than substance. I can't argue that. But I can say that at 3 a.m. when I would come home from work it was nice to have a game with a great story, good looks and gameplay that I could easily master before my eyes fell shut under the weight of the day.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Spider-Man - Nintendo 64

In the year 2000 I turned 28, took on a second newspaper as editor and rented a one-room apartment across from the newsroom. With the extra responsibility at the paper came a few extra dollars in my paycheck. I treated myself to a new TV and a copy of Spider-Man for the N64.
I never once regretted choosing the N64 over the Playstation. For all the raving about Sony's first console (and, I admit, it was a revolutionary console) I will still take the N64's best titles over the PS1's any day.
Spider-Man, which came out on both platforms, is no exception.
You should know, however, that I'm a Spidey geek. I've got a sleeve tattoo of Spidey and my favorite villains as well as a life-sized statue of him in my den.
One of the greatest moments of my journalism career came when I got to interview Stan Lee. I was writing a profile of a local comic books store - trying to get at what kept them afloat in the age of eBay and kids' waning interest in reading comics. I got it in my head that I had to interview Stan Lee for what was, at best, a local human interest story. After much wrangling with his PR flack I finally got the interview.
"Please hold for Mr. Lee," his secretary said.
Ten seconds passed like ten days.
And then:
"Is this the valorous Victor?"
Then I gushed over the phone for about 5 minutes and did the least objective interview of my life.
"You have been to the mountain," said fellow reporter, the late, great Arthur Turgeon.
He was right.
So imagine my delight when I began playing Spider-Man and was greeted by Stan Lee's narration in the game's opening. I knew right away that this was going to be a quality title that would do the hero justice. It certainly did. (I still love the Spider-Man game form the Atari 2600 just as much. You can bet that one will make this list as well.)
Some things define us. For me one of those things has always been Spider-Man. I've loved him since I was a little kid. My brother once took me to a face-painting booth at a carnival and I made the lady paint my face like Spidey's mask. My 2-year-old daughter knows more about Spidey than she does about Elmo. And on the first date I ever had with the wonderful woman who is now my wife, I laid out the (abbreviated) mythology of a character who has resonated with me for as long as I can remember. I knew I loved her the minute I set eyes on her so I wanted to lay it all out there right at the beginning.
I guess it worked.
This game honors each and every memory I have of the web-slinger.
Rare is the game that can top that.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Grand Prix - Atari 2600

One warm summer morning in 1982 found me in the basement, joystick in hand. I was already deep into my Atari addiction when Activision released Grand Prix. A 10-year-old kid living in a Baltimore suburb, I had played Asteroids and Adventure to death. Those games were great, but they lacked the polish and vivid colors of Activision titles. Grand Prix was no exception, and I knew this was true that morning as my mother watched me play. I was going for a record.
Why?
Not to brag about it on the internet or to unlock a new track; but to beat a track in a certain amount of time so I could send in a photo of my TV screen for a special Activision iron-on patch. (Note to Activision: Bring back the patches.)
As mom watched me fail over and over again I noticed she didn't seem as bored as she usually did when watching me play a video game.
"They should make you play this game before you get a driver's license," she said.
Today the game looks like it was created by a kindergarten class, but in 1982 the vibrant graphics and realistic sound effects were total racing immersion. The simple gameplay - race to the finish line, avoiding obstacles and other cars, as fast as possible - forced you to memorize patterns and pull off maneuvers with zero room for error.
That summer was two years before everything would change for my family. It was two years before my father got laid off from the tugboats and my mother rejoined the workforce after decades of being a stellar housewife. The days of her watching me play some stupid game in the basement would soon be over. I wasn't growing up hard, to be sure, but I grew up a little faster.
But on that summer morning with my mother watching I beat that track and she took the picture.
Of course, we left the lights on and the picture never came out. All you could see was me sitting next to a white screen. I've always wondered how many more kids would have patches now if they were better photographers. (And what did the folks at Activision do with all those pictures anyway?)
Grand Prix is a great game on its own merits, but it also a catalyst for fond memories of my youth.
You can't ask for much more than that.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Super Mario Kart - Super Nintendo

Around the same time that my brother left for college, my mom got rid of our cable. My brother, always an avid gamer, took most of his newer gaming systems with him to the University of Delaware. I was going into my junior year of high school. Though once I beat Mindsweeper in eight seconds and went through the typical obsession with Snood in middle school - computer and video games weren't really my thing. But now my brother was gone, it was only my mother and me in the house and we had no TV! How was I going to procrastinate on doing my US History homework with so few distractions? Then I found my brother's Super Nintendo had been left behind in the basement, and with it - Super Mario Kart.
I always loved Super Mario Kart and it had always belonged to my brother, meaning I only ever played with him where his superior gaming skills left me out of most of the harder rounds or in Eighth place (the lowest of the game) where he would spin laps around me. And now here it was - forgotten - it was mine!
Obsession ensued. I usually chose to drive with Toad - the mushroom player with a red and white cap. I could have picked Toad because he was light, because he took turns easily and had decent acceleration. But no, really I think I picked him because he was small and so was I. Why didn't I choose Princess Toadstool - the only female character? Because, come on - that's just too obvious. My brother, in fact, often played with Princess because she did have the best acceleration in the game. I remember Donkey Kong being very heavy and I wasn't used to a lot of extra weight. Mario was boring - what's the fun of Mario coming in first place - his name is on the box. Luigi was just kind of there, a sub par Mario. Yoshi was my second choice, or was it Koopa Troopa? I don't remember but in racing games it's usually best to choose a supporting character.
I am now 25 and have not played SMK in many years but recently my brother came to visit me in Brooklyn and reminded me of my brief obsession with the game in the Fall of 2002. He told a story I'd never heard about how one of his most crestfallen moments was when he returned home for Thanksgiving break and his little sister could beat him at Super Mario Kart. That's when I remembered - I had been good. Really, really good. I could swerve quickly around Rainbow Road without falling off the sides, I knew you needed to break when going around a turn, and I could skid over mud or ice without drowning. I have no idea if my skills still remain but a friend just got the new MarioKart for Wii. Time for round two?
By Fia Alvarez
fiaalvarez@gmail.com

Shadow Complex - XBLA

Downloadable content is a hallmark of this console generation. Some critics say the proliferation of game add-ons and arcade titles is picking the pockets of gamers. I'm not one of those critics. No one is holding a gun to your head demanding you buy that Gears of War armor for your avatar.
The truth is this console generation has featured the best gaming bargains of all time. What began with The Orange Box continued in The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Shadow Complex is a downloadable game that offers more thrills than many recent full releases. Anyone who has ever spent $60 for 7 hours of gaming (I'm looking at you Wolverine) will happily drop $15 on this excellent title.
The game clocks in at about 7 hours, depending on how thorough you are. After that you will likely start over from the beginning to see how quickly you can beat the game. There's also a Proving Ground option that offers timed challenges. That's a lot of gaming for a little price.
The side-scrolling shooter (think Metroid) honors the old-school style of gameplay while offering a truly next-gen presentation. The graphics are first class. The level design is excellent. The gameplay - save for some slight targeting issues – is rock solid. It's no surprise that Epic Games has released yet another excellent title for the Xbox 360 - they're made for each other. What is surprising is how much quality is packed into this little download. You start with only a flashlight and a pistol, but you'll be a cyborg killing machine by the end of the game. The weapons are ingenious and fun, but they don't overshadow the exploration angle. Your flashlight will reveal tons of secret passageways, weapons and gadgets.
You'll have a hard time putting this title down. I've got a stack of games I'm trying to get through right now but I put them all aside when I downloaded "Shadow Complex." There's something to be said for a rock solid game that offers players a decent story and an end in sight. I am reminded of the old days when you would be rewarded for finishing a game with the simple satisfaction of knowing you did it. "Shadow Complex" is such a game. It will not bore you. It will challenge you. And, once you beat it, you'll probably come back again.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Frontlines: Fuel of War - Xbox 360

Somewhere in the timeline between DOOM and Halo first person shooters got a reputation as being senseless endeavors with little substance. It’s true that cookie-cutter titles exist in the market, but that’s true of any genre. Especially in this glorious console generation — where A-list titles pop up year-round for all systems — there has been a backlash against what some people perceive as stupid shooters.
Into the flooded market appeared Frontlines: Fuel of War. It had neither the hype of Halo 3 or the depth of Bioshock.
But guess what?
It’s fun.
I mean really fun. I mean “keep it in the console until you’ve beaten it and then take it online immediately” kind of fun. Does it have to be anything else? Does it have to aspire to touch the heart and bridge the gap between film and first person shooter? Does it have to make a difference in my life on a personal, private level?
No. It has to be fun. And it is.
This is not to say that Kaos Studios didn’t round out the game with a decent, timely story about our energy crisis and one possible future. They did. They even included a journalist embedded with the soldiers that I obviously found endearing. But while the story in Frontlines is a fine skeleton, the meat on the bones is the fun factor.
You’ll feel it the minute you fire your first weapon. I don’t think I’ve seen tighter gunplay in a shooter. It’s not just that targeting and hits are done flawlessly; it’s that the guns feel amazing. They’re tight, responsive and satisfying. And they sound fantastic. I bought this game when my wife and I had our first kid. With a newborn at home I played all my games with a set of Sennheiser RS130 Wireless RF Headphones. These are serious headphones, and they came in handy with Frontlines because the sound is so good. (It’s probably better that I didn’t play the game with my surround sound system because the two women who walk their dogs by my house 38 times a day would likely think there was a firefight going on in my living room.)
FPS fans will be able to pick up and play this title easily. When you do you’ll quickly find that the war zone is littered with not only weapons and warriors, but tons of hardware. You’ll pilot a variety of vehicles in this game — which all handle satisfactorily — but the real fun starts when you stumble across the game’s many drones. These are remote-controlled, scale-model helicopters, tanks and other weapons of war that you can safely send into battle while you hide in the distance. I especially liked the helicopters, which pack an amazingly destructive arsenal of weaponry on their tiny frames.
In closing, allow me to explain it like this: When I got my copy of Frontlines I took it to a friend’s house where a poker game was to commence. I figured we’d check it out after we played cards. He was anxious to try the game so I fired it up and handed him the controller.
“This is awesome,” he said after a few minutes.
He was right. (And we never managed to put it down long enough to play cards.)
Frontlines: Fuel of War was not the defining moment that heralded the future of shooters. But it’s fun; a lot of fun.
And that’s awesome.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Personal Trainer: Cooking - Nintendo DS

I’ve worked in my share of decent restaurant kitchens and I’m here to tell you: This “game’s” demonstration for filleting anchovies (among other fine tutorials) is as good as I’ve seen anywhere.
Personal Trainer: Cooking not only makes planning and creating meals easy and fun, it makes you want to cook. That’s an impressive accomplishment for this unassuming little non-game. That’s right. This is not a game. Not even close. As Nintendo continues to redefine what a gaming console (or handheld, in this case) can do, they struck gold with Personal Trainer: Cooking.
Evidence of this is not only in the fact that the software is successful in helping people of all skills turn out fine meals, but that it has the one quality all good cookbooks have: You can’t put it down. Like a good cookbook that is fun to read even when you’re not cooking, Personal Trainer: Cooking is fun to explore any time. I found myself searching the globe with its cool country-by-country recipe finder looking for exotic dishes. Or I’d set a calorie limit (or just punch in the staples I had in the pantry) and see what I could come up with. If that’s not enough, the training videos included are excellent.
One small but important feature: Voice activation. Once you get cooking you don’t have to touch the DS again. You can tell the DS to repeat a prior step or continue on and it will recognize your voice. This beats thumbing through a cookbook with panko bread crumbs pasted onto your hands or fumbling with your remote control to pause that episode of Molto Mario you recorded.
The title boasts well over 200 recipes from around the globe. A calendar feature keeps track of the recipes you’ve cooked. The ingredient manager makes this an easy way to go shopping. There’s even a handy onboard calculator to keep your spending in check at the market.
I’m not about to give up on my obsession with collecting and reading cookbooks, but I will say this is easily the best $20 you’ll spend on any cooking gadget or book in your life.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Ninja Blade - Xbox 360

My room is dark and my headphones are snug. Ninja Blade opens before me and I am ready to give this title my undivided attention. A dramatic opening on the drop ship leads to a surprisingly fast quick time sequence (hitting the right button when prompted to let the cinematic action unfold) and then I crash through a skyscraper window and prepare to dispatch some hideous bad guys.
Not bad.
Much sooner than I expect a mini-boss climbs up the side of the building and onto the killing floor. More hack and slash, more button sequences, more bad guys.
I’m into this game only five minutes and I’m already doing a lot more than the typical tutorial and backstory that slows too many games down from the start.
And that’s how it goes with Ninja Blade, a fast and fun game by From Software that successfully brings a variety of gameplay elements to the XBOX 360 with polish and excitement. Having a darkened room and good headphones help — as they would with any game. Immersion is a guarantee with this set up. And the game deserves it. The graphics are crisp and the sound rocks.
It’s easy to compare the gameplay to other titles, so that’s what I’ll do. First you’re given a little God of War with the button timing. Then it’s more Kratos — or Conan, I’ve always thought the Conan slasher was underrated — with the swordplay. A bit of Prince of Persia comes in with some wall runs and jumps and then the sequence repeats. Haters will point to these other games as superior examples for their respective gameplay elements.
But haters always hate. Why there are so many haters in the gaming community is a topic for another column, but I’m not one of them. I’ll take a game on its own terms and its ability to bring a good time to my console.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Parsec - TI99

It's a throw back game, and probably not available anymore. I played this game in 1982 on a Texas Instruments TI99 computer console plugged into a Quasar television set.
Around the same vintage as the Atari 2600, the TI personal computer had a few cartridge games. Parsec was their flagship game and I think it shipped with the system.
At first glance, Parsec is basically a horizontal Galaga, or Vanguard. But unlike those arcade games, you could play it at home, and it was beatable with 16 levels of increasing difficulty. Your 2D spaceship battles UFOs with a sensitive laser blaster. The TI99 had a decent joystick. It was similar to the Atari 2600 remote, with just the stick and a single fire button, but lighter, more responsive, and the red fire button was wide like a (soon to be) Mac mouse clicker.
At each level you need to refuel and to clear the level you have to navigate the asteroid belt. To accomplish this, you need to switch gears. It's a cool feature. The default is 3, and your ship bounces around nicely to combat the alien vessels, but you need to slow down your horizontal movement to 2 in order to navigate the asteroids, and down to speed 1 to crawl through the refueling station.
Great game, wish I still had it in the attic.
By Matthew Zuchowski

Scribblenauts - Nintendo DS

When I was a kid I spent a lot of time engaged in one of the greatest debates in all of childhood: Who would win in a fight?
Superman or The Hulk?
The Hulk.
Godzilla or a T-Rex?
Godzilla
My dad or your dad?
My dad.
You get the idea. My next-door-neighbor and I would waste summer afternoons in our Baltimore suburb playing this silly game before we got bored and, of course, got into mischief. (Later in life I killed some time by throwing a tub of BBQ sauce at some dude's garage. I'm ashamed to say how old I was at the time. Let's just say I almost missed the prom because I was grounded.)
Perhaps kids of this generation will be spared the shame of youth with Scribblenauts, a game that lets you do almost anything in its virtual world. If you want to see if God is more powerful than Godzilla, go for it. If you want to see if a vampire can beat a wolfman, have at it. This is not the purpose of the game, however, but it's a plus.
The goal of this ingenious game is simple: Help Maxwell (you) solve challenge after challenge in a game world that you control. The trick here is that you choose what to put in the game world to help complete each task. For instance, let’s say there is a challenge in which you have to rescue a kitten from a tree. Using the Nintendo DS touch screen to insert objects into the game world, you could arm yourself with a hatchet and chop the tree down. Or you could write in a fireman and let him do the work for you. Or you could get a little nasty and use a slingshot to shoot the cat out of the tree (although points are awarded for avoiding violence).
The challenges in Scribblenauts range from the simple cat-caught-in-tree example to helping sea captains avoid ice bergs.
If you can think it, you can probably write it into the game world. The game recognizes some 10,000 words and translates them into characters and objects. And if you don’t feel like a challenge, you can simply write goofy stuff into the game world and see how they interact. I recommend the following: God and Satan; a vampire and garlic; a cop and a crook; Bigfoot and a dragon.
This is easily one of the best games I’ve played on my DS. If I would have had a game like this when I was young, perhaps I wouldn't have been so easily distracted and some poor man's garage door wouldn't smell like ribs.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Resident Evil 5 - Xbox 360, PS3

Awesome.
Summing up the experience of playing “Resident Evil 5” is just that simple. It is awesome in nearly every way. Sadly, that word is so overused that most people have forgotten it should be reserved for things that truly inspire awe – an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration and even fear.
It is the rare game that has you sitting back a bit on your couch so there is enough room for it to exist in your living room. You feel a need to be respectful of its place in the world. All the hallmarks of a first class game are here: Solid story, jaw-dropping graphics, excellent pacing, etc. It’s games like this that remind us why we play games in the first place. “Resident Evil 5” is among the handful of stellar games from this generation that will be remembered forever, such as “Bioshock” and “Fallout 3.”
Considering that the same could be said of its predecessor, “Resident Evil 4,” I think someone at Capcom knows what they’re doing.
You probably already know the major talking points about the game.
There is co-op play (it’s excellent).
The graphics are as good as we’ve ever seen in a game (they are).
It takes place in Africa (and, in my humble opinion, the game is not racist - but it's a good debate.)
The gameplay is similar to that of “Resident Evil 4” (getting a little long in the tooth, but works perfectly).
What else do you need to know? Well, as you once again take control of beefy commando Chris Redfield you are joined by a partner named Sheva Alomar in a mission to take on a bioterrorism threat infecting a fictional African country. I never realized how alone I felt in RE4 until I played through this one with Sheva. It’s nice having someone else around when it’s raining zombies; even if that someone is under AI control.
The game boasts impressive online components, an improved inventory system that is enhanced by the co-op sharing options, and enough thrills to keep you busy playing until the very end. Some say it’s not as scary as other installments. They’re right, but the intensity is so high that you may not notice.
Two minor but frustrating things to mention:
1. Despite the attention to detail and the stunning environments, for some reason a line of clothes hanging in a village will stop you in your tracks. Seriously. The first time I tried to walk through a few towels hanging on a line and was rebuffed as if it were a brick wall I was a little disappointed. I know it’s a small detail, but it immediately took my head out of the game.
2. Sheva, despite being a fine warrior and companion, is a mannequin the rest of the time. At one point I shot a gas canister and the explosion was amazing. Sheva, however, remained stonefaced as if nothing had happened.
Are these small points? Absolutely. In fact, if this game wasn’t so amazing I wouldn’t even bring them up. But it is the intense attention to detail and quality that is evident throughout the game that makes these little bits of silliness stand out.
And this title truly is a stand out title.
I'm not even a survival horror fan. I'm not a big country music fan either, but I love Johnny Cash. That's because the best demands respect.
And this game is one of the best ever.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Resident Evil - Playstation

I remember it clear as day.
It was just after Christmas and I had to be about 12 or so. This kid who lived in my neighborhood, who was spoiled rotten by his parents grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and anyone who had anything to do with him, had just gotten the original Playstation. He also got an X-Games title to go with it and this other game that I thought had a stupid name.
It may seem like a video game standard today but the first time I heard “Resident Evil” I laughed out loud. I mean, seriously, it sounds like some type of direct-to-video horror movie some guy shot with a video camera in his basement and some I-Party supplies. And to think, somebody, somewhere was the first person to think of this. Sitting in their cubicle at Capcom someone went “Hey! Resident Evil! I’ve got to be onto something here!” and then, adding insult to injury, hundreds of people involved in the development process signed onto the name before slapping it on the box and throwing it out into the world.
It was a dumb name then and it’s a dumb name now.
But people forget that because the game is awesome.
I remember we were about 10 minutes into playing it when a huge spider lept through a window and we had to take it out with a shotgun. It was awesome and brutal. For the next couple months, me and two friends made our way through the game.
This was before the Internet was a big thing, mind you. I still had dial-up AOL that wouldn’t let me on during snow days because the lines were busy so finding plot spoilers online wasn’t like it is today.
Nah, you had to play the game. You had to earn it. Which is what was great about Resident Evil. The reward for surviving each task made you want to continue. The new rooms, the new creatures, the new weapons, the alleged cheatcode that supposedly let you play the game as Jill naked, it was all to be gained by playing the game.
So yeah, the quality of Resident Evil titles may be a no-brainer nowadays, but you can’t overlook how important the first title was … even if it has one of the worst names in video game history.
Personally, I think “Trapped in a Mansion Zombie and Creature Killing Spree” is just as catchy.
By George Morse
gmorse@eastbaynewspapers.com

Video Pinball - Atari 2600

Before I was tall enough to play real pinball I was obsessed with this simple pinball game for the original Atari. Complete with bumbers, tilt action, spinners and specials, Video Pinball was – and still is – a great and simple game that can be enjoyed casually or fanatically.
What I mean by fanatically is that, if you want to, you can have this virtual piball table do your bidding for incredibly high schores. The tilt feature – which allows you to sort of steer the ball around the board – is primitive. However, without it this game woud be about as fun as playing Combat by yourself. I spent hours in front of the cathode ray tube carefully adjusting my tilt skills to get the ball to go where I want, when I wanted.
Oh, and by "ball" I mean the tiny square that was supposed to be the pinball.
The approximation of real world physics in the game is primitive as well, but it works. The ball either floats softly or rockets around the table. It also boats a rollover bonus – getting the ball to roll over an Atari logo.
There are some good pinball gmaes on the market these days – we'll eventually get to some of them on this list – but most of them suffer from the same problem: Pinball is supposed to be played on a pinball machine. The mini-video games that modern pinball games incorporate into their gameplay are usually weak. The same goes for most pinball games played on a TV. It's hard to replicate the pinball experiecne with a game pad and a television.
Luckily, Video Pinball on the Atari 2600 was so primitive and limited in its abilities that it entirely skipped this problem. My older brother bought this game for me and he and I played it for hours. Next time I see him, I think we'll fire this one up.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Mercenaries – Xbox, PS2

Known best for its go anywhere, commandeer anything gameplay, the original Mercenaries was a standout sandbox game at a time when everyone was jumping into the sandbox genre. It managed to be political and (contextually) realistic while not taking itself too seriously.
And it featured voice work by Carl Weathers.
That’s right. Apollo Creed himself.
Is there anyone cooler than Carl Weathers? In the Rocky movies he was always the coolest guy. He had style, he had charisma, and he could act. (Sorry, Sly.) Then he starred in a movie called “Action Jackson.”
That’s almost as cool as being named Max Power.
He followed that goofy - but still cool - action flick with a great performance in Predator and then a surprisingly hilarious turn in Happy Gilmore. They don’t make them any cooler than Carl Weathers. If there was any justice in the world, the Chick Norris phenomenon would belong to Carl Weathers.
Oh, and the game is a blast. You choose from three mercenaries - the chick, the black dude and the white guy with the ‘extreme’ haircut – and proceed to tear through a warzone while taking missions from a variety of political and underworld factions. Your mission is to kill or capture each of the bad guys on the notorious Deck of 52. In between there are enough side missions to keep you busy for months. You’ll drive tanks, fly choppers, unleash air strikes and plant C4 all over the place. It’s a little like playing GTA without feeling bad about accidentally running over pedestrians and cops.
Mercenaries was unfortunately followed up by a lackluster sequel. However, the original is one of the better games of the last generation. Considering a used Xbox is about $20 and you can get the game for $5, it’s well worth it. (Side note: I know the 360 is backwards compatible with most Xbox games, but I prefer the big black box whenever I have an excuse to fire it up.)
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Super Mario Galaxy - Nintendo Wii

Super Mario has always been awesome. I'm pretty sure it was the first console video game I ever played. I played everything from Kingdom Hearts on the PS2 to Skate on the Xbox 360 … and Mario has kept me a Nintendo man. Jumping around in world 1-1 and racing on the Rainbow Road has given me confidence that the Mario franchise is one of the best video game series in the world. In one of his newer adventures, Mario gets to kick goomba butt in space! Super Mario Galaxy makes you freak out on physics and lets you swipe coins on the ceiling.
Collect power stars by beating Bowser's minions, fly to the center of the universe and save the princess. I'd say that's a pretty simple storyline … with a couple of twists along the way. A friend will help you on your way by giving you hints on the level or just flat out telling you what to do. You'll surf manta rays and float around in giant bubbles to almost unreachable stars. Collect the elusive green stars and unlock an extra hard galaxy meant for the best gamers (as stated by the little green guys themselves).
Beat Bowser and you unlock your brother Luigi as a playable character. The game was awesome and kept me distracted for almost the whole summer. I rate the game an 8 out of 10 because the camera would screw around every once in a while … but all in all it was pretty great. I guess I'm saying you should play it if you like alternative platformers.
One more thing: Avoid the black holes. They're bad.
By Sebastian Rodriguez Lawton