The Bigs 2 – Multiple platforms

America’s national pastime - freshly cut grass, the crack of the bat, the smell of hot dogs at the ballpark. The sacrifice fly, the strikeout, the suicide squeeze, and the long ball. It’s the love of the game. The ambiance of what makes baseball so great. The plays that make you leap out of your seat with your heart racing, filled with goose bumps as your team wins the game. Those are the special moments that people remember which bring them back to the ballpark again and again. But what about the other stuff? The eleven foul balls during an at bat, the constant delays between pitcher and catcher, manager visits to the mound that drag the game out just a bit too long.
Don’t get me wrong; I love baseball. I love everything that makes baseball the great game that it is, but yes, there are the times where even I wish I was tuning into SportsCenter to catch just the highlights. So I guess the question is: Can you mess with the formula of baseball?
Most definitely.
Think about a baseball game that focuses on only the highlights of a game. Let’s lose all the stuff in between and concentrate on the high impact and excitement. Lets call it The Bigs 2. The Bigs 2 captures every over-the-top moment in baseball that you love with a twist. How about the dynamic catches? The true speed of a fastball? Or the shear power of the long ball? The Bigs 2 has it all. With oversized, exaggerated players and enormous ballparks that come to life, The Bigs 2 gives you all the drama you want in a baseball game. Yes, I do enjoy a simulation baseball game. I like being able to warm up my pitchers in the bullpen or shift my outfielders depending on who is at the plate but games like that really don’t translate well into local multiplayer action. If you have ever read anything I have written in the past, you know my opinion on how important it is for games to have a great local multiplayer value. Sure you have your online games but there has to be room for games that oblige to multiple gamers who play together locally. The shear enjoyment you get playing with your buddies while in the same room is priceless. The look on there face, the tension in the room and the pressure from onlookers are all quality gaming elements that you can’t experience by playing online.
The Bigs 2 accommodates up to four players to experience the high powered baseball action of your favorite sports teams. I've never played a baseball game that is simply as fun as this game. No down times or pausing for station identification, just baseball at its finest. And when I say finest, I mean over the top. When you have a speed baller on the mound you'd better expect an 109mph fastball cruising through your wheelhouse. Or maybe your slugger is up at the plate and finally connects on the pitch he's been waiting for and launches it into another time zone. I'm talking about big time, right out of "The Natural" drama. Lights will explode, signs will fall, basically you will remodel ballparks with a swing of your bat. But don't get too carried away just yet because you may just see a fielder scale the outfield wall like a mountain goat and rob you of your glory in front of your hometown. It works both ways. Third basemen will barrel into the stands for a foul ball. Talk about catcher/runner collisions at the plate? You better be wearing your helmet. This is baseball on the juice and that's a good thing. Even though it may sound like a different kind of baseball, it's hands down the best baseball game I've ever played. The over-the-top action and multiplayer that The Bigs offers simply screams replay value. This is a game worthy of your money and a space in your library; a perfect example of why we buy video games.
You haven't seen anything like this since the Mighty Casey struck out in Mudville but this is far from a strikeout, it's a grand slam.
By Stephen O'Blenis

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - Xbox, PS3, Gamecube

The tagline for "Superman: The Movie" said "You will believe a man can fly."
And we did. Decades later this is still the comic book film against which all others should be compared. They simply nailed it.
I could say the same for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. The tagline should read: "You will believe YOU can run on walls." The game so effortlessly hands over the controls to the player, so perfectly intuits man and machine, that you can believe in the moment that it's you soaring around the ruins, reversing time and careening off walls and poles with ease.
If not for the recommendation of a good friend and beloved Philadelphia bartender (yes, I know a lot of bartenders) I might have missed this title. I'm typically not much for platformers of any kind. But John - who claims he will write for this blog one day - told me this game was perfect. Unlike me, John will not waste time with a bad game. John won't let a game's flaws slide. Suffice to say, if John is playing it it's a great game in every way.
So, you know, I took his advice.
And I still play this game today. It is the best of the last-gen trilogy and far better than the last installment. Even with it's often infuriating difficulty and painful trial and error, the game set the right tone. It knows just when to give the platforming a break and let you kill some bad guys. And when that nearly gets tedious, you'll find yourself putting Spider-Man to shame with some acrobatic feats and clever puzzle-solving.
There are hundreds of great games in the history of this medium, but not all of them elicit the sort of universal praise and respect you hear about this one.
It stands - or sands - the test of time.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire - N64

Jeff was a bartender at the restaurant down the street. When I moved to Providence he and I became fast friends. It was a nice joint with good food and live jazz on the weekends. When I wasn't drinking there, writing stories for the newspaper or kicking around my new city, I was researching this new Nintendo system that was boasting true 3D graphics. I had been out of the gaming culture for a long time. I assumed that a system this impressive could produce only the best games. I didn't know - or maybe I chose to ignore - the fact that every great system plays host to tons of crappy games. I learned that lesson the hard way as I searched for a decent fighting game for the system.
No dice.
Luckily one of the first games I bought was Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire. When Jeff the bartender came by to check it out I was playing the Battle of Hoth section (little did I know how many more times I'd play that battle in future games).
"It looks just like the movie," he said, and I agreed.
Of course it looked nothing like the movie. But the 3D jump was so huge on the N64 - and particularly that game - that we were convinced games would never look any better.
I played that game all the way through in just a few sittings. The Hoth battle may be the best part of the game, but the third-person action/shooting and the always popular Star Wars space battle sections were excellent.
There's a lot of buyer's remorse in the gaming world. I've dropped more money on more crappy games than I care to remember. But this one was different. It was a perfect introduction to this new generation of gaming and the fun I would have with that system. The N64 is still among my favorite systems if only for the reason that – despite a plethora of bad games – the games that were great on that console were truly great.
To wit:
Goldeneye, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Wave Race 64 and Star Fox 64 … to name just a few. The passage of time may have diminished the once awe-inspiring graphics of these titles, but they're still as much fun today as the day they were released.
This excellent Star Wars title deserves to be among them.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Street Fighter II - SNES

Man I suck at this game. But that doesn't mean I don't have fond memories in which it played a major part.
I was a sophomore at Towson State at the time. I lived on campus with a dude who made Captain America look like a degenerate. He was a nice guy but not a lot of fun. I spent most of my sophomore year with a group of guys who, like me, had about as many female prospects as the nerd character in a John Hughes movie.
But we had beer and video games.
Dave had a SNES and lived off campus. Dave was – and still is – a cool guy. He's also the kind of guy who is good at games. Cards. Risk. Basketball. You name it, he can probably pick it up and master it quickly. I don't think Dave ever practiced playing Street Fighter II, but I know he could kick my ass at it every time. He always picked the sumo dude. I picked Ryu because I figured a karate stereotype would have the advantage. I kept thinking that as Dave repeatedly launched that fat bastard into the air and slammed me down over and over again. I never won.
Not once.
Luckily this was right about the time when I discovered scotch and Tom Waits. We'd play that game - and others - into the wee hours while sipping cocktails and listening to "Small Change" or "Rain Dogs." Sooner or later we'd put the controls down - or someone else would finally beat Dave and pick a different game - and we'd just listen to the music.
I know you super video game geeks out there revere Street Fighter II and I have no intention of cheapening its legacy with this boozy essay. But whenever I see that fat dude – his name is E. Honda - I get thirsty for a scotch and a little Tom Waits.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Mortal Kombat - SEGA Genesis

In 1994 I move to Charlotte, NC to intern at The Charlotte Observer for the summer. I was 21. It was my first time away from my hometown of Baltimore and I didn't know a soul.
The pay was good and the city was filled with pretty women and good restaurants. Another reporter intern and I shared a $500 apartment in a faceless subdivision. We didn't get paid until two weeks in and, since we both blew our cash supply just to get there, we ate a lot of fried bologna sandwiches. I can remember eating one with him while watching OJ's Bronco on TV.
Yes, it was that summer.
I learned a lot that summer, a lot of which was good. My roommate was the first black kid my age I really got to know as a friend. Charlotte is an interesting city and a perfect place for a 21-year-old reporter to discover if he's got what it takes to do the job. And, as I mentioned before, there are a lot of beautiful women in that town.
On the other hand, I struggled to find a voice there. I was unsure of myself in the beginning, feeling as if I had left all my talent in a suitcase back home that I forgot to bring with me. My mentor - the staff reporter who was supposed to show me the ropes - was a tired man with little enthusiasm for shepherding a punk around the city.
And sometime in July a large, painful cyst developed on my lower back - way down on my lower back.
Yeah, right there.
I had to have the thing lanced by some doctor I had never met and then explain to my editor why I had to miss damn near a week of work because I could barely walk, much less sit in front of a computer.
Man, that sucked.
It was during this week that I ate a lot of Pizza Hut delivery pies and played the hell out of my roommate's copy of Mortal Kombat on the venerable SEGA Genesis.
I'm not much for fighting games - especially if there's any blocking involved - but I could play Mortal Kombat on the Genesis. And I did. A lot. Back then the game's gore content was literally off the charts. I remember the commercial that built up the hype for the game's home console port - some joker yelling MORTAL KOMBAT! and thousands of kids running through the streets.
I wasn't doing much running that week, but I jumped around a lot and sent fireballs into the faces of may an opponent with Liu Kang. I still play the game today - either on my Genesis or on the surprisingly good Game Gear version.
It says a lot about a game that can bring a smile to a man who is literally out on his ass.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Wii Fit - Nintendo Wii

Getting my wife to play a video game is about as easy as getting the Pope to cook breakfast for Satan.
I’ve tried and tried, but she just doesn’t care for them. So when the Nintendo Wii came into my life I knew it was my last shot. Be careful what you wish for.
I’d like to officially thank the good people at Nintendo for making a “game” that my wife enjoys so much that I may finally have to wait my turn for a chance to play. (And this comes on the heels of my mother’s now infamous Christmas Eve Wii Bowling massacre.)
Wii Fit is actually more of a game than I originally thought. It has all the classic hallmarks of a good game: Challenges, score keeping, goals, a learning curve. However, it is the game’s other qualities that drew my wife’s attention. As a pediatric health care provider, she is suspect of gaming from a health perspective. She is also — like most medical professionals — skeptical of any product that promises health benefits.
She was impressed by the approach and science behind Wii Fit. The game goes into a surprising amount of detail — but not too much — regarding your health and how it is judging you. Its science seems sound and its ability to gauge your physical ability is impressive. (But don’t get carried away. It’s no substitute for your annual physical.)
It’s a useful tool — as a working mother, my wife doesn’t get to enjoy yoga classes as much as she used to. Wii Fit can help. And it’s fun.
After some quick BMI and wellness goal business is over, Wii Fit goes straight into Nintendo’s trademark approach of using fun to entertain, teach and (sometimes) enlighten.
The balance board is incredibly sensitive, not to mention heavy and sturdy. Although she focused her time on the yoga, the game also sports a variety of strength, aerobics and balance-based games that are a lot of fun and get the job done.
If you want to work up a sweat, you will.
And that’s the idea, right? Working up a sweat for an extended period of time while having just enough fun to forget you’re working out is probably just what Doctor Mario ordered to get you gamers (and non-gamers) in shape. Just to make sure the balance board doesn’t gather dust, the game will track your BMI daily and help you stay on track to achieve your goals.
Wii Fit is not the answer to a personal trainer, but it is a fun way to get exercise and plot a course to better health. As other games start to take advantage of the exceptional balance board peripheral, I think you’ll find this is an excellent addition to the growing amount of Wii stuff accumulating in your living room.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Pong

Was it Arthur C. Clarke who posited, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?"
I was a little surprised when Victor first suggested I submit the occasional guest posting to his video game blog. I'm not much of a gamer. I'm a digital immigrant, but I was born on the cutting edge of the generation shift. I'm old enough to remember playing Pong. Yes, Pong: the simplistic simulation of table tennis. And yes, I sucked at that game too.
Now, many of you may think NES is the Prehistoric Era. So let me peek through the mists of history and legend and try to describe Pong for you.
In terms of hardware, Pong was one box, a bunch of wires, and two knob controllers. There was no cartridge. The software for the game was inside the box. I can only assume it was on some chip, but for all I know, it could've been even more primitive. I was too young to know the actual price, but I know it was expensive, probably at least as great in late 1970's dollars as the latest and greatest gaming system today. And remember, all you got was one game.
Visually, Pong left much to be desired. It was a black screen, a white bouncing cursor, and two mobile, white bars at either side of the television screen. I don't think there was any kind of music, only the tinny sound of "bip" when the cursor bounced off a bar or the side of the screen. Still, this was amazing to us. We could interact with the TV; like magic.
I won't say Pong truly entertained us for hours. It had its place in our play rotation, but in the carefree youth of the 1970's we still ran around the neighborhood; sometimes we even rode our bikes out of the sight of our parents! My friend – who actually owned the only Pong system in the neighborhood – and I liked to build forts in his living room and pretend they were spaceships. Pong, and later his Atari system, filled the role of our mission controls. Using our imaginations, the game systems took us to far away worlds where we battled space aliens.
Sure it seems silly now. But remember, this was also the time when Commodore Vic 20's managed the flight systems of the entire Battlestar Galactica (the original model, under Lorne Greene's reliable command). Primitive computer line animation was cutting edge. A few years later, Disney's Tron really blew our minds with bleeding edge computer generated graphics like the light cycles. "Whoa!" as Tron's distant relative Neo might say.
The world's all changed now. I see preview trailers for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, or the brand new Heavy Rain, or even the new Aliens vs. Predators games, and I sit stunned. It's hard to imagine these are the evolution of Pong. Today's games have complex stories, near-photo realistic graphics, and full-fledged soundtracks. You can walk around a fully realized world, and interact with it. Heck, Pong's program could probably easily fit on my smart phone and still leave enough computing power to play a high fidelity ringtone of Beethoven's 5th Symphony when my VoIP call comes in.
That's 30 years of progress, it's magic, and people just take it for granted.
By John Fitzpatrick

Borderlands - Xbox 360

I've spent my entire gaming life avoiding Role Playing Games. Mostly because I'm lazy and not fond of reading things on a TV screen. Also, I find most of the Japanese RPGs a bit unapproachable. Realizing this is a gaping hole in my video game enjoyment, I'm working to change it. I'm even considering giving the Final Fantasy games a try.
One of the (perhaps) unintended results of the success of Bioshock is that it introduced shooter fans to some simple RPG elements. I liked the game so much that I gave Fallout 3 a try - a game I wouldn't have touched a few years ago.
Which led me to Borderlands.
Of all the games I played in 2009, Borderlands is the one I can’t stop playing.
First, the game is a bit of a surprise. Blending a first-person-shooter with role playing elements in a post-apocalyptic wasteland sounded a lot like Fallout 3. I was doubtful that Gearbox Studios would pull it off. They did, beautifully. In the game you play as one of four deadly scavengers searching for The Vault – which promises loot beyond your wildest dreams – in a bombed out wasteland that is as colorful as it is bleak. In this open world you can stay the path by taking mission after mission that will lead you to the prize, or you can wander through the wasteland looking for adventure or loot. You’ll likely do both. Either way, you’re going to have a good time. You’ll have an even better time if you bring along some friends. The multiplayer package in this game sets the bar for casual co-op.
The shooting is as good as any first-class FPS and the role playing elements keep you coming back. Also, even though this game is set in a desolate land of death it manages to be funny and satiric while never taking itself too seriously.
A steady release of quality downloadable content means this game will stay popular until its inevitable sequel is released.
In 2009 everyone was heaping praise on Uncharted 2. I disagree. I think Borderlands was the best game of the year, and it continues to enchant.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

NFL Fever - Xbox

I met my wife while I was tending bar at a dive in Baltimore. We had live rockabilly music on Thursday nights. Other than that, the place limped along on a thriving KENO business and the hipster drunks I was able to attract on most nights. My wife would be uncomfortable walking into a TGIFridays by herself. The fact that she walked into this joint on her own was one of many signs that let me know she was the one for me. She was to meet a friend of hers there but her friend was late.
She sat at the bar and I fell in love.
A few months later I moved into her Charles Village apartment. On my first night I brought a bottle of Makers Mark and my Xbox.
She should have known what she was getting into, but she stuck with me anyway.
She worked with special needs ESL families during the day and I made cocktails all night. I'd wake up late, have a little coffee, walk the dog and then come home and take the Baltimore Ravens to the Super Bowl over and over again on Microsoft's launch football title.
Anyone who knows anything about football and football games knows NFL Fever was no Madden. But it's no NFL Blitz either. The game was deep enough to not feel like an arcade button masher and accessible enough for folks who don't have playbooks memorized.
Which means it was perfect for me.
Monday nights at the bar were always slow, so we decided to start showing movies on the half-dozen TV screens that hung above the bar. I used the Xbox since we had no DVD player there. When everyone left for last call I'd pop in NFL Fever and the cook and I would play a few games. He wasn't much of a sports gamer and neither was I.
But no one looking at those TVs would have known any better.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

War Games - Colecovision

My appendix exploded the day before I was to fly to Orlando with my girlfriend and another couple. I was misdiagnosed in the ER and almost died. It was a nasty little emergency operation that did not go well. A ruptured appendix is no joke. I was out of work for a month and spent most of my time on the couch. Moving was difficult. A nurse dropped by every few days to change the dressing on the wound in my gut.
Oddly, what I remember most about this period in my life (1998) are the games I played while laid up on the couch for a month.
The best of these was War Games.
The girlfriend was kind enough to bring me her brother's old Colecovision (I never had one as a kid). After putting in a ton of time with Donkey Kong - what a mother that game is - I stuck in the War Games cartridge with low expectations. I was happily surprised to find a deep, challenging war simulator that is still one of the best move tie-in games I have ever played. Not only do the sharp graphics do justice to the iconic war room in the film, but the gameplay is tense and exciting. It's a little bit Risk, a little bit Missile Command and a whole lot of fun.
I was on some powerful pain meds back then so my memories of the game are spotty - as was my time with the Colecovision. But the impression was strong enough that I've been trolling the auction sites lately looking for a working Colecovision (they break easy) so I can play the game again.
Would you like to play a game?
Yes Joshua.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Perfect Dark - N64

I learned to love Perfect Dark when I began hiding in my parents' basement.
I was 28 years old when I took a break from journalism and moved home to Baltimore.
By "home" I mean my parents' home. Not content to merely be a Gen-X cliche I decided to work full time at a busy bar and pay down some debt before making my next move. I wasn't sure what that next move would be, but I managed to make a decent buck slinging drinks and got to spend some quality time with my folks after six years of living in another state. To be sure, I cherished the luxury of seeing them every day.
But living with two inquisitive senior citizens does have its challenges. With a lot of time on their hands they began to take extreme interest in my life. They both run on different schedules. My mother sleeps about two hours a day and spends the rest of the hours "occupying" her time. My father awakes around 8 a.m., has his coffee and then stretches the morning paper out over the next 3 to 6 hours. This means the questions my mother would ask me when I came home at 3 a.m. would also be asked by the old man when I'd join him for coffee around 9 a.m. As if operating from a fragmented hive mind, they each asked the same questions but didn't know that their counterpart was also doing the same. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions:
1. Did you earn a lot of tips last night?
2. How's the car running?
3. Are you sending out any resumes?
4. What do you want for breakfast?
5. What do you want for lunch?
6. What do you want for dinner?
7. What are you in the mood to eat tomorrow?
I had an N64 set up in the basement with a few games. I eventually realized there were only two things I could do in peace in their house: Use the bathroom and play video games.
I did a lot of reading in the bathroom, and my gaming became the habit that eventually led to the obsession it is today. One game I can thank for this obsession is Perfect Dark. I don't need to spill a lot of ink over how good this game is. If you're reading this chances are you know that Perfect Dark is (gasp!) better than Goldeneye in every way. I played this game daily, right up until the day I went to Gamestop to buy an Xbox at launch. Perfect Dark looked great, was packed with innovations – especially the cool weapons – and had the perfect foil for a guy trying to find ways to extend his gaming time indefinitely - bots. You don't see bots in games much these days. Game developers must think we're all online all the time and don't need virtual friends to slay in deathmatches.
Wrong.
The bots in Perfect Dark were good enough to keep me playing long after I had beaten the stellar campaign. I can only hope they're included in the upcoming XBLA release of this classic title. The N64 controller, once revered as a breakthrough, is still great - but I'm looking forward to playing the XBLA Perfect Dark with Halo controls.
Now if only my wife would let me play for more than 10 minutes without asking me what I'm cooking for dinner . . .
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Wii Bowling - Nintendo Wii

For most of my life Christmas Eve was the most important day of the year. My entire family would gather in my mother's basement for a feast inspired by our Italian heritage but flavored heavily with our Spanish and Polish roots. The table would buckle under the weight of paella, fried squid, perogis (a Polish dumpling), raviolis, fish empanada and more. When I was a kid and my parents were younger it was quite a party. Sangria would flow during the meal and anisette was sipped with coffee for dessert. The kids went to Midnight Mass and came home and opened one present. One year a couple dressed as Santa and Ms. Claus broke down in front of our house. They were hustled into the basement and fed immediately.
When I got older I was allowed to invite friends to come by after the meal. We stayed up all night and left late to play pool at the local hall that was open on Christmas Eve.
As the years rolled on it became clear that my mother could no longer handle the huge meal and all of the responsibility that came with it. On the last Christmas Eve in my parents' basement my brothers and I helped with the cooking. After that, my brother Danny started hosting it at his house.
It's still a fantastic evening.
But it's not the same.
A few years ago I brought my wife and our first child back home to Baltimore for Christmas. I don't know why I decided to bring along the Wii, but I did. After we left Danny's a few of my nieces and nephews came back to the house in which I grew up and we set up the Wii downstairs. We hastily threw together some sangria and started bowling. My mother, already in one of her flannel nightgowns and exhausted, came down to watch.
Then she blew my mind:
"Can I try it?"
Her first ball was a strike.
My mother held the Wiimote like her mother once held bingo markers – waiting for numbers to be called. Before each roll she'd nervously walk in place a little bit, her slippered feet poking out from under the long night gown.
Then she'd roll.
Three strikes and one humiliating game later, my 74-year-old mother had handily beaten the son who writes about video games and two of her college-aged grandchildren.
And once again, there was a party in the basement on Christmas Eve.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspaper.com

Horse Racing – Intellivision

Ladies and gentlemen, may I call your attention to the young man holding the mysterious rectangular device! Draw closer and notice that it is unlike anything you have seen before. Such exotic technology can only be called a wonder.
But wait, does the room begin to fall away? Do you begin to question your senses? My friends, you are no longer the drab urbanites that you imagined yourselves to be, clad in corduroy and stiff, plaid shirts from Sears. You, my friends, are the elite! Cash overflows from your pockets! Your top hats cast shadows on those rabble in the cheap seats. You, my friends, are high-stakes gamblers in the sport of kings, and tonight the rumble of hooves around the track promises glory to the luckiest few — or to those who have a discerning eye for a winning thoroughbred.
It was 1979, and I was 7 years old. With its 12 buttons on the front, two buttons on each side and a magical, silver wheel at the thumb, I held the most astonishing gaming controller ever made – the Intellivision controller. It put the Atari’s single joystick and red button to shame. And I, in my thick nerd glasses and aqua corduroys, was using this magical device to draw a crowd of actual grownups – probably half in the bag from several hours of partying – to play a game with me.
A game. With a child. In the midst of a grownup party. This had never happened before. And it was all through the magic of one of the least-sexy games ever created: Intellivision Horse Racing.
The game itself was simple even by Intellivision standards. Four horses started out of the gate. Two of them could be controlled by players, who raced them against each other and the computer-controlled steeds. The controls consisted of the dial to move up or down, one button for “coax” and another for “whip.” The horses would get tired quickly; you could usually get away with two coaxes and one whip. Any more shenanigans from the jockey would cause your horse to rupture something or other, leaving you to slog mournfully around the track while everyone else was watering their horses and tipping mint juleps.
As a mano-a-mano affair, Horse Racing was a miserable failure. But the real magic of the game came in the betting. You see, while only two players could actually control horses, up to six players could participate in the betting. Before each of the 10 consecutive races, the game was a round-robin affair where each person in the room weighed the odds, sized up the ponies based on past races and decided whether to choose an easy favorite to win or pick the exacta for big money. The green horse looks like the clear favorite, but his last win was a six-furlong race with a dry track. Can he go the distance for 12 furlongs in the mud? How sharp are these gamblers I’m betting against? Should I play it safe with the easy odds that pay low, or go for broke with the longshot? I don’t know, they've been drinking Stroh's all night – they don't seem to be very focused.
And of course, they weren't. At least not as much as I was. But this was the chemistry that brought a crowd of grownups into the living room to play a game with a 7-year-old. As the whiz kid running the show with this rare, new "family entertainment system," I felt like a million bucks. It’s a scene I wouldn’t witness again until the invention of Wii bowling. But corduroy doesn't come in that color anymore, and now I’m one of the grownups.
By Shane Hoffman

Left 4 Dead - Xbox 360

Zombies, zombies, zombies. Everywhere you look these days you’re almost guaranteed to find something zombie related. People fear that one day there will be a zombie apocalypse where we’ll find ourselves standing together, whether in a mall or local gun shop, and fending for our lives in hopes of a rescue. For years, movies have dramatized our demise by zombies with fun, no brainer action flicks but it wasn’t until Left 4 Dead on Xbox 360 did I realize how much fun it would really be if it did happen.
Left 4 Dead is basically every climatic moment of all your favorite zombie movies rolled into one. You and three other teammates are stranded in four different scenarios and have to band together to make it to the “finale” and escape the zombie ridden escapade. Left 4 Dead is really the first game for me that really embodies survival; and when I say survive I mean teamwork. If you don’t work together as a team then you might as well forget about getting to the chopper. But with every game, there is a twist. You may struggle together, heal each other, even defend your friend from the zombie horde but then it happens: How will you act when you are running to the boat and your friend goes down? Will you attempt to rescue him and put yourself in jeopardy? (Think of everything you’ve been through together.) Or do you selfishly turn away and run saving your own life?
This is what makes Left 4 Dead so genius. For approximately an hour, you and your buddies have been blasting zombies into next week on your journey for survival in hopes of a rescue. The next thing you know you are holed up inside an old farmhouse, cornered in a bathroom, low on ammo and finally the rescue vehicle pulls up. Then it’s decided. Go! Everyone makes a break for it. Jumping out windows, down broken stairs, covering as much ground as possible. Who will survive?.
I have spent countless hours with my friends blasting zombies for pure fun while wondering along the way “will I make it?” It’s the concept that makes this game one of the best I have ever played. You really care about your teammates when you’re playing and if one goes down, you make sure to get them back up. Left 4 Dead may not look like that pretty shiny gem but it’s so much more than eye candy. You won’t find graphics like a Gears of War or Modern Warfare but it doesn’t have to be. The gameplay brings this platinum title to glory. But the best thing about this game is that fact that if you don’t survive; you had a heck of a ride getting there and you can’t wait to do it all over again. That is what makes this game great. The replay value is endless.
In my personal opinion, Left 4 Dead is the greatest survival/teamwork game ever made. Strong words but I’ll let the game do the talking for me. If you haven’t played Left 4 Dead then I highly recommend you get yourself a copy. Even if you don’t have any friends to play with you’ll have no problem hooking up with three strangers and trying your luck at survival. Kind of ironic, isn’t it? Four strangers banding together, fighting for survival. Wonder where they got that idea from? Join the fight against the zombie apocalypse. It’ll be the most fun you’ll ever have fighting for your life.
By Stephen O'Blenis

Mechassault – Xbox

`"It's like the best arcade game you've ever played."
Those words of praise came from the man who would one day marry my oldest niece. He's a photographer, a gamer, and a hell of good guy all around. He's the kind of guy whose recommendations you take to heart.
And his last name is Champion. So he's got that going for him. Which is nice.
Without his recommendation I may have never picked up Mechassault. I had been burned by bad mech games before. I've found them either too complicated or almost unplayable.
Mechassault is simple, to be sure, but it's one of those games that is nearly impossible to put down once you get into it. I found myself thinking about this game all the time, planning my strategy for my return to the planet where me and my colleagues crash landed and encountered the Word of Blake cult.
Mechassault boils down the awesome power of huge mechs to a twitchy shooter that is like Halo in its simplicity. Smooth controls make it so your mech always does what you want it to do. Changing weapons is easier than blinking your eyes. Defensive maneuvers – such as jumpjets and cloaking – are useful and intuitive. And finding your way around the world is easy.
All this would mean nothing if you didn't have a cool world to tool around in and some decent enemies.
No problems there.
Everything in this world is destructible. A lot of games make that claim, but Mech Assault does it so well that you'll find yourself hanging back in some stages just so you can level entire cities. The enemies – from lowly grunts and tanks to towering mechs – are just challenging enough to keep you coming back. (And when you manage to kill those mechs, the explosion and sound effects that accompany the accomplishment are fantastic.) Being an original Xbox game means the graphics are excellent - they still hold up well.
When the game came out I didn't have Xbox Live, so I missed out on the thrills of playing this game online. With those servers shutting down any day now, I know it was not meant to be.
Maybe I'll get lucky in the future, because there are two games from the original Xbox that absolutely demand sequels. Crimson Skies is one of them – this is the other.
By Victor Paul Alvarez
valvarez@eastbaynewspapers.com

Operation Wolf - Nintendo Entertainment System

It was the late Eighties. My matinee heroes were Sly Stallone, Arnold Schwarzeneggar, and Bruce Willis. And there in the arcade stood a cabinet with an Uzi sticking up in place of a joystick. Ah, the lovely sidescrolling action unfolded as a cast of thousands of swarthy, Hispanics from some unnamed Central American country (Val Verde, perhaps?) popped up ready for me to cut down in a hail of simulated gunfire. How could any red-blooded, jingoistic, American boy fail to love Operation Wolf?
Of course, the problem was that arcade games cost quarters. And being something of a cheap bastard, I never liked plugging quarters into those machines. Still, Operation Wolf called to me. My brother saved up his quarters to buy a Nintendo. I remember the box of grey and taupe plastic and the rectangle controllers. The system also came with a gun-shaped controller for Duck Hunt. Point and pull the trigger. Could it be any more simple? I played a few rounds of Duck Hunt in my day, but I was never a big gamer.
Then Operation Wolf came out for Nintendo, and I shelled out the $50 for it. I missed the simulated blowback Uzi, but I was happy. The amazing thing for me was how close to the cabinet game it looked. No longer did I have to plug quarters into the machine. I played for hours until one day, I beat the game. As I recall, the ending had my first-person shooter character rescue some hostages, shepherd them through another round, and then jump onto a transport plane out of that pixilated green hell-hole
I went to college about that time. One Friday night I went down to the rathskellar and saw another cabinet game standing there. It was Operation Thunderbolt: the sequel to Operation Wolf. This was a two player version and had two MAC-10 submachine guns sticking up from the cabinet. I sidled up next to the crewcut fellow freshman playing the game and plunked my quarters in to take control of Player 2. Together, he and I blasted away at the African hostage takers (really, could you make such a politically incorrect game these days?) until these newest hostages were saved. And between us, it didn’t take as many quarters as I feared. All that home practice paid off. My wingman was an ROTC cadet. He and I became fast friends and shared a dorm room the next year as well as assorted other adventures.
After graduation, he got commissioned as an Army infantry officer and – soberly -- shot things for real. Sadly, I haven’t talked to him in far too long. He’s been a little busy these past nine years. I google his name sometimes; you’d be surprised what you can find online. He was part of the Army 1st Infantry Division task force that supported the Marines during the Battle of Fallujah in Iraq. He was widely quoted out of context in the media on the use of white phosphorus incendiary rounds during that battle. But knowing him, he’s probably prouder of his efforts to organize his area of operations for the first free election in Iraq in decades. That was also reported – but not as widely.
By John Fitzpatrick

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