The nefarious Bowser and his army has turned the peaceful Toads into blocks, and only the magical Princess Toadstool can save them. Even worse, Bowser kidnapped Toadstool as well, leaving you, Mario, to save her.
Also, for some reason, Mario has a Portal gun. How handy.
Mari0 plays almost exactly like the original Super Mario Bros. You jump, run, run-jump, and throw fireballs. Different in this game is the obvious Portal gun, used to create shortcuts, going to unreachable locations, and conveniently defeat enemies. Furthermore, unlike the original game, you can actually backtrack the levels you’re in. The need to keep track of the portals actually makes this game harder than it seems, as physics tends to play tricks on you frequently.
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New week, new music. Lets try something different, shall we? Here’s the Mii Channel music from the Nintendo Wii console. It’s composed by Kazumi Totaka: the composer who frequently drops the Totaka Song Easter eggs in his games.
Well, there isn’t a whole lot to talk about the Mii Channel, let alone the Wii Console, but…according to the Iwata Talks interviews, the developers has intended to make it a simple, fun character avatar creation that anyone can use. The music is composed to be inviting, in that sense.
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New week, new music. Let’s go old-school, this time, with the spectacular music from Bomberman Hero. Redial, by Jun Chikuma, is a simple techno-like melody with an addicting beat. It’s oddly calming for an epic adventure of an old mascot.
Bomberman Hero has a simplistic, if familiar, story of an intergalactic evil organization emerging from the shadows. In an attempt to foil their plan, a princess manages to steal their plans, but gets caught in the process. Instead, she sends her loyal robot to take the disks, and inform Bomberman the trouble that’s brewing. Hence begins our hero’s journey through 5 different planets.
Bomberman Hero is a 3D platformer, where the camera doesn’t turn. As Bomberman, your method of attacking is — you guessed — throwing bombs. He has a few different maneuvers for this, useful for solving a few puzzles: he can drop a bomb, roll it, or throw it. In his travels, Bomberman will also don different gadgets, including a snowboard, jetpack, and submarine. Each level has a point system, where perfecting it unlocks the real ending.
Bomberman Hero was released on the Nintendo 64 in 1998. It’s now available on the Wii on the Virtual Console.
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Title:Milky Game:Bomberman Hero Composer: Jun Chikuma
New week, new music. I typically talk about lesser-known games in this series of posts, but here’s a more mainstream game I’m sure you’ve heard about. Here’s the Wario Ware Inc.: Mega Party Game$ (shortened toWario Ware) remix of Dr. Crygor’s Theme. It’s a jazzy pop-music by Ryoji Yoshitomi and Kyoko Miyamoto. The random but well-placed voices helps emphasize the bizarre nature of this game.
Wario Ware has a story…and it has nothing to do with the game. It is thatbizarre.
Fortunately, Wario Ware‘s gameplay is easier to describe. Like the Mario Party series, the game involves up to 4 players taking turns playing a randomized 4-seconds single-player minigame. After that game is done, it moves back to a single multiplayer minigame that involves outperforming other the player. The single-player minigames are all strange and funny by nature. Examples includes inserting a finger into a person’s nostrils, scaring away butterflies, and keeping a beach ball afloat by using a human body as a paddle. The multiplayer games are a little more tame, including a balancing game where if you lose on a single-player game, the stack of turtles you balance on grows taller. Another involves obscuring the player’s screen while they’re playing a minigame. It’s a decent minigame compilation that’s bound to make someone laugh.
Wario Ware Inc.: Mega Party Game$ was released by Nintendo in 2004. It’s only available on the Gamecube.
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Title:Wario Ware Inc. Game: Super Smash Bros. Brawl Composer: Keigo Ozaki
There’s a relatively lesser known Nintendo game called Pikmin. Everything about it should have been a blockbuster: Mario series creator and video game legend Shigeru Miyamoto designed the game. Nintendo themselves show-cased the game as a demonstration of their new console, Gamecube’s abilities to handle numerous characters and their AI. Some people argued this was the first game to get Real-Time Strategy right on a console. And yet…it fell through everyone’s radar. A shame, since the music in the game — such as The Impact Site, composed by Hajime Wakai — is wonderfully organic to match the wild-life nature of this game.
Pikmin has a relatively simple plot. Captain Olimar, a space captain cruising through space on a vacation, collides into an asteroid, and gets marooned on to an unknown planet. Unfortunately for Olimar, this planet is treacherous. Every creature, including spiders, are large and vicious. Worse, the planet’s atmosphere is toxic to Olimar, and he must rely on the month-long air supply left on his ship. His only path of escaping this planet — retrieving every lost spaceship piece, and repairing his ship — seems like an impossible task. Yet, as Olimar hopelessly scavenges his immediate surrounding, he encounters a loyal plant-based humanoid creatures that he names, “Pikmin.” He finds breeding these species to create an army is rather easy, and uses them as forces to defeat enemies and gather his lost spaceship parts.
Pikmin plays a lot like a Real-Time Strategy game. As Captain Olimar, you direct an army of Pikmins to handle different tasks, such as building bridges, fighting enemies, and carrying spaceship pieces. Olimar uses his whistle to gather Pikmins within a certain radius, and throws them to handle the selected tasks. Pikmins is breed by carrying dead enemies into their home-base, Onions. As there’s only a month of air supply available, your time in gathering all the spaceship pieces are limited.
Pikmin was released on the Gamecube, and later, ported to the Wii. It’s dramatically improved sequel was only released on the Gamecube for the US.
