I Bring Nothing to the Table

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter.

Why this? I can’t resist Rockman music!

Enjoy.

Deep from the trenches, it’s time for your Monday video feature: Embedded Reporter.

Mega Man 9 is HARD.

People say, “That’s the idea. It’s supposed to be Retro like the days when games were tough.” Let me tell you a secret about the old Mega Man games: they were NOT this hard. Aside from Quick Man (the magma plumes were mad cheap), I could more or less reliably kill almost all of the Mega Man 2 bosses. At this point, I’ve still only killed Galaxy Man and Concrete Man. Funny thing about that is that both of those Robot Masters are more or less the easiest in the game. As hard as maybe this video looks, this is an easy stage.

The real point I’m trying to make here is that while MM has always been hard, it was never as insidiously hard as this game is. There are enemies who jump up specifically over gaps, as you see, enemies who pop out of nowhere to grab you and drag you into spikes, and tough enemies with hard pattern recognition required to defeat them. It’s abuse to play, but it’s so fun.

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

I’ve talked about how dedicated Capcom is to the old-school aesthetic of Mega Man 9, but just how dedicated are they? Below is the “boxart” for the DLC game:

See More Mega Man 9 Box Art at IGN.com

If you remember back to my 8-Bit All-Stars post, you might remember me talking about the Mega Man 2 boxart as being nonsensical for the anime-cutesy style of the game. This is such a return to the old school that it makes me kind of pumped for this game.

I know I said I’d have E3 updates as exciting things happened, but I’ve failed to see much that excited me in this show. That being said, I will close off with a particular trailer that does pique my interest:

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.

Insert another credit, because it’s time for your weekly video game news and you’ve just hit the Game Overview screen.

WiiWare

In a move that is still very confounding to me, Nintendo launched the WiiWare service this week with not even as much as a message in our collective Wii inboxes to tell us about the new game service. Of course, most game enthusiasts knew about it right away, but you’ve got to wonder if maybe publicizing the event a bit might have increased sales, right? Anyway, the WiiWare launch brought a bunch of games in the Xbox Live! Arcade and PSN fashion to the system including Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King.

That being the only WiiWare game I’ve downloaded so far (where’s Dr. Mario Online Rx?), it’s gonna be the only one I talk about. I’m about 75% of the way through the game, having played about 115 days of the kingdom simulator and I’d probably give it a thumbs-up to anyone who enjoys sims and enjoys the Final Fantasy universe. From the get go, understand that My Life as a King is not your typical FF game at all. You don’t actually fight monsters or control your adventurers. Instead, you build up your kingdom’s infrastructure and commission adventurers to go out and conquer the realm’s dungeons and monsters. At the end of each day you’ll receive a budget report and a report of everything that your adventurers did so that you can live the good, adventuring life vicariously. It definitely works as a game, but is a bit shallow as a sim. Then again, it’s a $15 game (with a whopping $25 in add-on DLC available) and looks quite nice on the system, albeit with a few framerate hitches. Unfortunately, you can’t preview WiiWare games, so be sure to read up on the game before you make a purchase.

MLB Power Pros 2008

So I’ve gone on and on about the new edition of MLB PP, but that’s not gonna stop me from talking about it a bit more today. IGN Wii posted about a hundred screenshots of the game in action, so we’re gonna take a look at a few.

New to this year’s edition of the MLB PP series is MyLife mode. Last year we had only the success mode, where you brought a college player through three seasons hoping to be drafted at some point. MyLife mode instead makes you a professional player as you go through his 20 year major league career. You’re not just limited to baseball, as you can see below:

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

I suppose you also have to manage your player’s moods to stay in high spirits as well as train your player to keep him fit and improving in stats and abilities.

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

You can even conduct interviews with sports reporters:

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

Season mode appears to be back with a VERY similar interface to last year’s game:

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

But it also seems to include a very neat “Expansion Team” mode that allows you to create two new teams to insert into the MLB lineup which seems really cool:

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

Success mode is back with a AA team instead of a college team. I assume the goal is still to reach the Majors while wooing the ladies among other goals.

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

Hopefully we’ll be able to transfer old created players from last year’s game, but if not I’ll at least get a chance to make my created Dan not suck quite so much this time.

July can’t come soon enough, I honestly cannot wait

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com

See More MLB Power Pros 2008 Screenshot at IGN.com