I Bring Nothing to the Table

Well, they’ve done it for the first time since 1993. The Phils have won the NL pennant. Their victory came at the expense of sloppy play by Rafael Furcal and the Dodgers in general. In the end, it didn’t matter that Manny Ramirez was batting .500 coming into the last game. It didn’t matter that the Dodgers had Joe Torre manning their ball club. It just mattered that the Phils wanted it more, were a more solid team, and took it in five.

Speaking of a team that wants it, the Rays will have a chance to take the AL pennant tonight as they face off once again in Boston. Let’s all hope that Longoria belts in another few homers.

It’s probably too early to start calling me Nostradamus (we’ll have to wait until the regular season of baseball ends to know just how good I am), but if you remember this post I mentioned that Mario RPG’s launch on the VC in PAL territories would spearhead a US release. Lo and behold, Mario RPG, one of the greatest Mario games, SNES games, and RPGs in gaming history.

It’s too bad that Square Enix won’t be releasing any of its other landmark SNES RPGs on VC, preferring to milk tons of money out of players with remakes (which we like) and ports (which we find a bit annoying, but kind of like anyway). Go out and buy Mario RPG and let’s hope that Earthbound hits the system soon.

Gonna take a short blogging break to play some MLB Power Pros and prepare for a wedding I have to go to this weekend. Catch you guys on the flip side.

It seems that one of my favorite PC games from way back when is about to make a return with The Humans: Meet the Ancestors. A Lemmings-style game in which you guide a tribe of cavemen to the goal, trying to have them not die, The Humans provided hours of fun for me back on our junky Packard Bell until we lost the anti-piracy copy card.

I can’t say that I like the new Humans art style. Here’s a peek at the way the old game looked from some foreign TV station:

The new style is similar, but lacks some of the character of the old style. Oh well, I just might pick up the game anyway when it comes out.

DS Trailer:

PC Trailer (very similar, but spiffier in graphics and with concept art at the end):

If you read my 8-bit All-Stars feature you know I love me some Mega Man 2. There was just something sublimely perfect about that game with its polished level design and great boss battles.

It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a real sequel to a Mega Man game. The last canonical MM game was MM 8 for the PSX in 1997, with the X series taking over with about eight installments that have also stopped coming out.

Imagine the world’s surprise when Mega Man 9 all of a sudden showed up on an ESRB classification website. Could the beloved franchise be making a return in all of the splendor of the current generation’s technological advances? And then we saw the first screenshots and trailer…

Cue some controversy. I’d say that a large number of dedicated MM fanatics were happy with this new direction, but many were perplexed by Capcom’s choice to go way old school with this new installment. Personally, I’m a fan of the new direction. When you look at the disappointments that have been the more recent MM games, it seems clear that a conscious effort to get back to the roots is just what the series NEEDS. Not to mention the fact that old school, 8-bit Mega Man music is great.

It’s not exactly a straight NES-style game though, it does have some technological advances. If you look closely you’ll see that the game does have some fancy-pants effects that weren’t possible on the NES. Personally, I’ll be happy if the game manages to not drop framerate when a bunch of enemies appear onscreen.

Another neat little change in the Mega Man conventions is that MM 9 will feature the first female robot. Splash Woman is the first non Man robot in series history. Some purists are very anti-Splash Woman, but I’m pro-female evil robot rights.

If I’m not mistaken, Mega Man 9 is slated for a Fall release on WiiWare, Xbox Live, and PSN.