Game Boy Advance

Super Mario World: Super Mario Advance 2

February 5, 2006

Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by Wayne Phinney Make a comment! / Tweet it!

One of the video game world’s most recognizable heroes is back on the GBA and this time he’s battling Koopa over 96 levels. Everthing is here from the orginal [i]Super Mario World[/i]: Yoshi, The Cape, Star Road and all the hidden extra’s scattered throughout the game. This direct port of the SNES classic is perfect down to every detail. The Gameboy Advance re-captures Mario in all his glory, the levels are just as colorful and detailed as it was on the SNES.

The sound quality is also fairly good with the creepy ghost house level music to the showdowns with Koopa’s children. It also plays the same, with the A button jumping, B to run and grab, and the L and R shoulder buttons doing the spin jump. The controls are simple and easy to use, although I did find that the shoulder buttons were uncomfortable to hold onto for long periods of time, which is thankfully offset by the fact that you rarely need to use them. If you’ve played the original game then there are no new suprises as far as levels go. It’s all classic Mario.

My one biggest complaint with this game was Mario’s slightly less famous brother Luigi. Although it’s nice that Luigi is getting some more spotlight, I found his jumping difficult to control since he seems to float more than jump, and when he’s in the air he skids around like he’s walking on ice.

All in all, if you liked the original [i]Super Mario World[/i] and you want to revisit a familiar land or if you’re not familiar with the Mario franchise and interested in seeing what its all about, its a great game and I recommend you pick it up.

Fire Emblem

February 5, 2006

Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by Chris Ingersoll Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Some games you love to hate. Others you hate to love. For me, [i]Fire Emblem[/i] is the first and only game in my many years of gaming I’ve actually hated to hate.

This is a good game. I know it is. But something about it turns my mind away from it, to the point of requiring extreme willpower for me to turn on my GBA. But I’ll get to that later. First the good stuff.

If you’ve played either of the [i]Advance Wars[/i] games, then you’re already halfway home to knowing [i]Fire Emblem[/i]. The same team made both series, but where [i]Advance Wars[/i] put you in charge of a bunch of faceless, nameless, and essentially disposable (as long as you weren’t worried about your ranking) units, [i]Fire Emblem[/i] throws in some RPG qualities into the mix that make the battle much more personal, both literally and figuratively. By literally, I mean that you units have names; they’re not just units, they’re characters. The figurative part comes through your units’ growth and the progression of the story, with you (as the “tactical advisor” who is never actually on the battlefield) along for the ride. Another twist is the old rock-paper-scissors deal with both melee weapons and magical attacks; none of this is anything earth-shattering, obviously, but it does make the game fairly unique.

Like most tactical games, everything you do revolves around battles (I mean… duh). But [i]Fire Emblem[/i] takes that to an extreme: unlike just about every other tactical RPG I’ve played (which, admittedly, is only two: [i]FFTA[/i] and [i]Gladius[/i]; the [i]Advance Wars[/i] games aren’t technically RPGs), you at least have some down time in-between conflicts for shopping, chatting with the locals, and what-have-you. Not so in [i]Fire Emblem[/i]. Other than being able to outfit your troops with whatever items you might have handy, everything productive is done during battle. I thought this would be obnoxious — and it was — but only for the first few chapters; once you find Merlinus (the merchant) it becomes much less of an issue.

Everything that isn’t a battle or the pre-battle phase is a series of cut-scenes, the majority using large, blinking (meaning the eyes open and close, not as in “flickering”) cartoons of the characters and scrolling text boxes; the occasional sketch-like frame is thrown in for certain dramatic moments. There aren’t a lot of expressions, but it’s a nice change of pace from the usual thumbnail sprites we usually get from console RPG conversations. As an added bonus, the writing is well above average and the story is an interesting ride as it unfolds over the 30+ chapters you first have access to. The first 10 are the tutorial starring Lyn, and the next 21 are the meat of the story, starring Eliwood; beating Eliwood’s chapters unlocks Hector’s chapters, many of which run concurrent with Eliwood’s, as well as “hard” versions of all three. Several chapters also feature optional side-quests if you accomplish certain goals, so there’s a lot of content packed in this cartridge.

Graphically, the game has three main divisions: the aforementioned “cut scenes”, the spritely field map, and the actual battle graphics. The map graphics aren’t anything much, but they get the job done. The battle graphics, however, are spectacular (especially the criticals!); you have the option of turning some or all of them off, but unless you’re restarting the entire game to correct some haunting mistakes (it could happen…), I have no idea why anyone would want to do so.

The sounds are nothing special. The background music is nice, but as with most GBA games I tend to play with the sound off (or very low) so I can’t remember much of it. I do, however, remember the effects. The hits are solid, the magic effects grand, and the critcals have a little extra “oomph” that makes you feel it (when playing on the Game Boy Player, I could have sworn the rumble feture kicked in, but that may have just been my imagination).

Gameplay is every bit as simple as [i]Advance Wars[/i]: move your unit, select “attack”, and watch the result. Repeat until dead or objective reached. There are a few variations, like trading items and upgrading classes, but by and large nothing complicated. The other side to that coin is that the actual tactics are basically limited to the weapon/magic triangle and some defensive terrain effects; no facing, no elevation, no ganging up, and really no special abilities to speak of. Considering that these battles are literally the whole show, they probably could have been a little deeper. In later chapters it’s actually a better tactical move to not attack bosses on your own turns and instead rely on counterattacks following your opponent’s strikes to do your damage, on the basis that they get to counter attack each and every one of your swings, but they can only move once on their turn, freeing your turn up to heal the damage they inflicted to your one character. It may seem cheap, but there’s simply no other way to deal with them if you haven’t leveled up to near-godlike ability along the way and delayed your class changes as long as possible. However, while the tactics aren’t as tactical as I’d like them to be, they’re still a nice change of pace from the static turn-based combat of more traditional RPGs (which have other elements, like puzzle-filled dungeons, that [i]Fire Emblem[/i] does not); the gameplay itself, in theory, isn’t my main problem with the game.

Here’s my problem: once you pass Lyn’s tutorial chapters, any characters who fall in battle are dead. Gone. Indefinitely put on the sidelines. Unavailable. All that work you put into leveling them up? Pfft! Out the window. (Of course, this isn’t all that different from the series’s [i]Advance Wars[/i] bretheren, but then again… it is, since there’s no leveling in [i]AW[/i] at all.) And if Eliwood, Lyn, or Hector die, your game is over. In a world filled with pegasi, wyverns, and three or four different kinds of magic, apparently no one was able to discover any sort of revive spell. When you consider the fact that the story spans the clichA

Metroid: Zero Mission

February 5, 2006

Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by Wayne Phinney Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Justin Bailey. Justin Bailey. Justin Bailey.

Ok ok… so I’m having a flashback. Sue me. I recently gave [i]Metroid: Zero Mission[/i] a run-through, and let me tell you, I’m impressed. Sure, this game could have been better, but then again, how could it have been? It was a remake of a 20 year old game, so I really couldn’t expect something mind-blowingly awesome.

But then again… I did really enjoy it.

The first thing I must let people know is that this game is very short, and if you want to give it a try, I’d recommend buying a used copy on eBay or something to that effect. Short it may be, but it was very fun. It was great going back through a remade version of the old game that I had played as a kid. It was great seeing all the new things they added to the game. It was great that this game played very much like [i]Super Metroid[/i], which is a truly awesome game. That’s perhaps the best way to describe it. [i]Metroid: Zero Mission[/i] is essentially [i]Super Metroid[/i] but taking place in the story of the first game. That’s the simplest and most easy way to explain exactly what it is like.

One nice thing is that they fixed the few spots in the game where you can get stuck. For those that remember the old NES title, there are some holes that you can fall in that are either extremely difficult to get out of, or completely impossible. Those areas have been fixed so you can’t fall in a hole that you can’t get out of.

One of the biggest differences between this game and the old one is the addition of another area in the game. I won’t say anymore so as not to spoil it, but it was a great new place to explore, and I had a lot of fun with it.

Other changes included Kraid who was a giant like in [i]Super Metroid[/i], and Ridley who seemed to be exactly like he was in [i]Super Metroid[/i] (like I’m complaining. It’s hard to improve on awesome).

The best addition to this game though is a map, and it telling you where you are supposed to go next. When you are new to the world of [i]Metroid[/i], it’s pretty daunting to get around without a map, and certainly not easy without someone telling you which general direction you should be going in. [i]Zero Mission[/i] solves those problems.

It’s really hard to write anything in depth about a remake of a 20 year old game, but to be as clear as possible, I will reiterate a few things. This game is basically [i]Super Metroid[/i] in the setting of the first game. If you ask me, that’s a great thing. I loved this game, and although it’s a tad on the short side, it was also originally made in 1986, so I can’t say much.

If you are a [i]Metroid[/i] fan in the least, you owe it to yourself to pick up this game. You will not regret it.

Golden Sun: The Lost Age

January 29, 2006

Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by Wayne Phinney Make a comment! / Tweet it!

How do you take a perfect game styled after the classic RPGs of the past and improve upon it? Well, I suppose tagging [i]The Lost Age[/i] onto the name is enough. I can’t really explain how this game lived up to the greatness of the original [i]Golden Sun[/i], but somehow it did, and I am quite impressed.

This game picks up right where the last one ended. While the lack of a complete ending in the last game could have been bad, the game had a good feeling of accomplishment when you did beat it, therefore leaving you feeling satisfied at the end. Satisfied or not, though, you still wanted more. When I finished [i]Golden Sun[/i], I went right out and bought [i]The Lost Age[/i]. I hoped that this game would deliver and it sure did.

Going into this, I didn’t care if all the skills and spells were the same. I simply wanted to continue on the story and triumph over evil and the like. I was pleasantly surprised to find out very early on that there are many different things. Of course the first thing you will notice is the new world layout. You can see the entire world this time from falls to falls (that’s right, waterfalls are at the ends of the earth). You can see on the map the land you once traveled through with Isaac, Garet, Ivan, and Mia, but now you can no longer get to that area. You start on an island continent that up until recently had no contact with other land. Due to the lighting of the Venus lighthouse however, the island has shifted and is now connected to the southern part of the Gondowan continent as well as another island continent. Your travels of course will take you through all these new lands, new towns, and new environments. Other new things include spells and skills, Djinni abilities, forgeable items, and so on.

The main difference in [i]Golden Sun: The Lost Age[/i] is the focus on the other half of the story. This time you play as Felix, accompanied by Jenna, Sheba, and eventually a newcomer to the game, Piers. Playing the role of Felix opens up a lot of the story and helps you to understand why he was against Isaac in the prior game and what his intentions are. Because you are playing as Felix, that is the excuse the game offers for why you can’t go back to the towns you visited in [i]Golden Sun[/i]. Those people remember you as an enemy and do not understand the intentions behind your actions, so it is safer to not visit them. I think Camelot did well with this detail to help you feel like there’s a reason for not going back beyond them not having all those areas programmed into the game.

Even though you see the story from a different perspective as Felix, the story still remains pretty much the same. Instead of trying to stop the lighthouses from being lit, however, your goal is to get to them and light them. Felix has his reasons, but so as not to spoil the story, I will leave that out. Most RPGs tend to have a problem with using the same enemies over and over, but this is not so in [i]The Lost Age[/i]. While some enemies you faced in [i]Golden Sun[/i] are back, most of the enemies are new and fresh. New skills of course help out, and the new Djinni seem even more powerful than once before. For instance, in [i]Golden Sun[/i], there was a Djinni that could revive a fallen comrade, but along with those, [i]The Lost Age[/i] had a Djinni that can revive all fallen comrades. Between the new enemies, levels, towns, skills, Djinni, and characters, this truly is a brand new game in its own right. While it plays the same as the original [i]Golden Sun[/i], it feels like you are playing an entirely different game, and this of course is a key element in what makes this game so enjoyable.

Speaking of similiarities and differences, this brings me to something I wanted to mention. A lot of people are hesitant to get this game because they haven’t played the original [i]Golden Sun[/i]. While that is certainly a good reason to try [i]Golden Sun[/i] first, [i]The Lost Age[/i] can be played without having played [i]Golden Sun[/i] prior to it. When you first start you get a briefing on what happened in the prior game, and since you are using new characters, you don’t actually need your characters from [i]Golden Sun[/i].

While you don’t need your characters from [i]Golden Sun[/i], for the best gaming experience, I recommend playing the first game and then carrying your characters over to the next one. Some parts of the story will mean more if you have played the first one, and I found that in the case of the final boss in [i]The Lost Age[/i], I needed all eight characters. While you can only play as four at a time like before, once your party (Felix) meets up with Isaac, you can mix and match characters, Djinni, etc. I finished the game with the lineup of Felix, Garet, Piers, and Sheba who are Earth, Fire, Water, and Wind adepts respectively. Jenna’s low HP made me drop her to my backup team. On the final boss though, I did as much damage as I could with my backup team, then when they died and Team Felix continued where they left off, it was easier. Since the final boss did more damage as the fight went on, it was easier this way.

Being able to move Djinni from character to character between teams was incredibly helpful, but even with the best Djinni setups, some enemies have a Djinni drain skill. Two enemies that I can remember had this. One was only able to drain one Djinni at a time, which wasn’t a big loss since I had a dozen others to work with, but the final boss had a habit of draining all the Djinni on one character. While I could live without the skills, the hit point, attack, and defense bonuses lost from this made dying all too easy.

Thankfully though, because of the game’s random enemy spawning like in most classic RPGs, you tend to level up at just about the pace you should be leveling up for your travels in the game. Just like in [i]Golden Sun[/i], when I got to the end I was the proper level to make it possible to beat the final boss, but it was still a fair challenge making the reward of winning that much sweeter.

Speaking of winning, the game’s ending is superb. While I don’t want to spoil anything, I will say that it ties up a lot of loose ends and brings plenty of closure to a game that was essentially left wide open at the end of the first one. As much closure as there was though, like most great games and movies, there is just enough left without a conclusion that makes it possible for yet another [i]Golden Sun[/i] game. Again, I won’t spoil anything, but if Camelot wanted to right now, they could make another [i]Golden Sun[/i] game and I would be ready and willing to plunk down the cash for it.

I really can’t say anything bad about this game. It is a perfect game styled after the RPGs of old, and just like the first one, it was a very solid gaming experience. With the longer gameplay(about 35 hours compared to the previous 25 in [i]Golden Sun[/i]), you really get the most bang for your buck. I can’t recommend this game more to anyone who owns a GBA. If you like RPGs in the least, you owe it to yourself to go out and buy [i]Golden Sun[/i], and then follow it up with [i]Golden Sun: The Lost Age[/i]. You will be glad you did.

Golden Sun

January 29, 2006

Game Boy Advance / Reviews / by Wayne Phinney Make a comment! / Tweet it!

Fifty hours. That’s right, fifty hours. It took me fifty hours to beat [i]Golden Sun[/i]. It’s not as bad as it sounds though. I got to the end of the game once and realized that not only did I suck, but I was weak as hell. I was missing just about everything one could miss and still make it to the end of the game. That’s what my stubborn ass gets for refusing to use any walkthroughs or guides. I could have gone back through the game and tried to get everything I missed, but I had a feeling it would be more fun to just start a new game. I did just that. This time I stopped being stubborn and consulted a guide. The only guide I used however was to collect the Djinni. Three other times I referenced a walkthrough since I was overlooking a couple minor details, but overall, I used just the Djinni guide.

What are Djinni? Well, they are little creatures aligned with certain elements. Mars Djinni are aligned with Fire. Venus Djinni are aligned with Earth. Mercury Djinni are aligned with Water, and Jupiter Djinni are aligned with Wind. While this may not seem very important, it really is. The four characters that you use in the game (you start with two) are also aligned with those elements. Isaac is an Earth Adept, Garet a Fire Adept, Ivan a Wind Adept, and Mia a Water Adept. Adepts are simply people who can use Psynergy, which in any other game would just be referred to as magic.

Anyhow, it’s best to keep Djinni with the person that shares the same elemental alignments as them. Every time you find a Djinni and set him to a person, it changes their stats. For instance, if I put a water Djinni on Garet, it may have a negative affect on some of his stats, if not all of them. As we know, fire and water do not mix, so it’s not always best to do this. Still, there are times when mixing the Djinni is a good idea. Djinni not only change your stats depending on who they are set to, but they can also affect the spells that you are able to cast. Mixing them up can give you spells that you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise, and other times, mixing them up will cancel out most if not all of your spells. The biggest challenge in [i]Golden Sun[/i] is not the game itself, but rather learning how to manage your Djinni properly to be as powerful as possible.

That’s not all with the Djinni though. Every one of them in battle can offer an elemental ability to the user. It’s like casting a spell, but instead of using your Psynergy points, it just sets your Djinni to standby after you use them. Some of them can increase your attack, create a firewall to protect you from damage, heal you, poison your enemy, or what have you. The more you get and the more experience you have with them, the stronger you will be in battle.

I mentioned, after you use a Djinni in battle, he will be set to standby mode. You can actually manually set them to standby outside of battle, but when in standby mode, you lose the stat benefits they would give you otherwise. That is why personally, I recommend keeping your Djinni set to your characters so you have your stats as high as possible. Once your Djinni are set, they can be used together to form even more powerful elemental attacks. These could be best described as “Uber-spells” that use the Djinni rather than Psynergy Points. You can use one, two, three, or four of the Djinni with the same elemental alignment to form an attack. Naturally, the more Djinni, the more powerful the attack. These attacks are nice though in that they are not at a set strength. The more you use them, the stronger your attacks with them become, which is very useful over time. Even though every character can have 7 Djinni at a time, the max of 4 being used at once is initially disappointing until you realize that as you use your skills, they will be stronger. Once you have used your Djinni in a grouped attack, it will take several turns in battle for them to be set to you for use again. If it was just one Djinni, then it will take one turn. If it was two, then one of the Djinni will be set after one turn and the other will be set after two. Continue this process for up to 4 Djinni, and you get the picture.

Throughout the game, Djinni will be incredibly crucial to your gaming, and without them, you will not survive. I recommend using a Djinni guide to get through the game, because even though I was able to locate most of them on my own, several I found I was unable to reach without help from the guide.

Now that we are done with the Djinni, which happen to be the biggest chunk of the game, let’s get into the story. You start in Vale as a young teenager. Your name is Isaac, and your friend Garet also lives in town. Your enemies(which you don’t know about yet), Menardi(the female), and Saturos(the male) are Fire Adepts, and their goal is to collect the Elemental Stars. The four elemental stars are used to light up the lighthouses of their same elemental alignment. Lighting them could bring destruction upon the world, and since Saturos and Menardi wish to rule the world, they will need these elemental stars to light up the lighthouses. The elemental stars happen to be located(and protected by) a mountain just north of Vale called Sol Sanctum.This is how Isaac and Garet get tied into this story. Saturos and Menardi entering Sol Sanctun creates a storm unlike anything Vale has seen. The townspeople don’t have enough psynergy to prevent a large boulder from falling down the mountain and ravaging the town. The boulder kills Isaac’s father, and is thought to kill Felix, the brother of Jenna, but then it turns out that Felix is rescued by Saturos and Menardi who he then joins on their quest. Isaac and Garet meet up with Saturos and Menardi and get defeated in battle after overhearing their heinous plans.

Three years later, after feeling guilty about not being able to save those who died, or being able to defeat their enemies, they have spent their time studying Psynergy. Saturos and Menardi return yet again, this time to get the elemental stars. They were not prepared before, but they believe they are now. This is where the game itself really starts. Your first mission is to investigate what is going on at Sol Sanctum at which point you find the elemental stars and meet up with Saturos and Menardi yet again. Naturally, they escape(like the game should be that short), and you basically spend the rest of the game chasing them from lighthouse to lighthouse while helping the people of the land on the way. There are many towns, puzzles, and even a few sidequests that aren’t all that neccesary. As with any RPG, you spend your time leveling up as you go along, but thankfully, the design of this game doesn’t make you feel like you are just playing to level up and just level up. You tend to level at the proper rate for what you are getting done in the game, and this is great since the game is quite linear and you can just play straight through it.

Let’s move on to the technical aspects of the game. The sound in the game is well done for everything, and it doesn’t feel generic. On top of that, for a 2D RPG, the graphics are just spectacular. I was amazed that the GBA could push those graphics with no slowdown issues of any sort. The story of the game is very enveloping, and you will find that you don’t want to put it down because you want to see what will happen next. Speaking of that, you CAN put the game down anytime. You can save on the fly any time outside of battles, which is great for just spending 20 minutes leveling up in between meetings at work or while on the throne. Like most GBA games, it also has a sleep mode as well so you can close the game up real quick if you are interrupted and then pick it up later where you left off.

I really can’t say much more about this game without spoiling any of the story, which is one of the biggest reasons I kept playing it. I spent fifty hours on this game, and it cost me $20 when I bought it. That’s a cost of less than 50 cents an hour, and considering how much I enjoyed the game, it was a great price.

This brings up the only real flaw in the game. It isn’t finished. In order to get the rest of the game, you have to buy [i]Golden Sun: The Lost Age[/i]. I don’t mind, because even for the two games, I will have spent $50 on them. I would have gladly spent $50 to have the game entirely on one cartridge, but I can understand why it was done this way. No casual gamer will drop $50 on a Game Boy game. If they drop the $20 on [i]Golden Sun[/i] though and get to the end and love it, then they will have to drop the other $30 to get [i]The Lost Age[/i]. This was how I was. I haven’t been a big RPG guy since the 16 bit days, which was why I went into this not expecting much, but when I realized how much it reminded me of the classic 16 bit RPG’s, I fell in love. Still, the two cartridge thing can be a pain. You can transfer your characters over, but you have to use a 200+ alphanumeric/punctuation passcode to get your characters back in the next game. The good news is, if you have a link cable, you can visit a friend who has a GBA(or if you happen to have two of your own), link up and transfer your characters. I’ve been looking for a reason to buy a link cable, so I will get one when I buy [i]The Lost Age[/i].

So really, that whole two cartridge thing is the only real flaw with the game, but from a marketing point of view, I understand entirely. There is no way they could have made any money selling the game for $50 on one cartridge, because most people would not have bought it. That makes sense, but it is still a flaw.

Even so, this is one of the greatest games I have ever played, and I am really looking forward to buying [i]The Lost Age[/i]. The sole flaw was the dual cartridge game. Otherwise, it was perfect. The puzzles were the proper difficulty, the game flowed smoothly, and I never felt like I was spending time playing just to level up. I was always playing with a goal in mind, instead of just mindless leveling. I loved this game, and for $20, I recommend it to every Game Boy owner out there.

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