Wii Will Rock You

I never asked for a Wii or expected to get one, but I can’t say I wasn’t happy to see it on Christmas morning in 2010. It wasn’t exactly a surprise—our parents had asked me and my brother “hypothetically” what games we would want if we were to get a Wii. My grandmother gave them some money and told them to buy one, but I was never completely clear on why. I didn’t protest, of course. One of the games we got when we first got the console was Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I was ecstatic about the idea of a Star Wars game that I could control by swinging the controller like a lightsaber and gesturing as if I were using the Force. Unfortunately, it was rather short and had very little replay value. The games I was much more impressed with was Super Mario Galaxy and Metroid Prime Trilogy, which I have played and replayed over and over again since getting them.

Super Mario Galaxy is reminiscent of Super Mario 64 in terms of basic game mechanics. You play as Mario, your main objective is to collect stars from various worlds, and your overarching goal is to rescue Princess Peach from the evil Bowser. How it differed was that, as the name would suggest, it had an outer space theme to it, which I thoroughly enjoyed as a longtime sci-fi fan. It also allowed the player to play as Luigi, who has always been my favorite of the Super Mario Brothers. It also had some creative challenges unlike anything I’d seen before as well as power-ups not seen since the 2-dimensional Super Mario Bros. games.

Metroid Prime Trilogy, a meta-series within the longer Metroid series dating back to the original Nintendo Entertainment System, is also a sci-fi game. Well, actually, it’s three sci-fi games on one disc, as the name, as the name implies. The first two were originally available for the GameCube, and I have them in that format, but the conversion to the Wii format strongly enhances the experience.  Instead of using a control stick and a button to aim, the player simply points the Wii remote at the screen to aim. It takes some getting used to, and my aim was very shaky at first—I kept spinning myself around without meaning to, which made it very difficult not only to shoot the creatures that were attacking me but also to move in the direction I wanted to as I explored the planet Tallon IV. However, before too long, I started to become acclimated to the new controls, and I haven’t played it on the GameCube since. Between the aiming controls and the first-person perspective of this adventure game, the only way the experience could get any closer to actually fighting monsters and exploring planets in a high-tech suit of armor would be if the game required me to move my legs in order to traverse the planet’s surface instead of using a control stick for that. It’ll probably still be a while before games get to that level of realism, but until they do, the Metroid Prime Trilogy is probably the best sci-fi adventure simulation experience available.

My Journey Towards the Dark Side

With the exception of the Sega Genesis (which I still don't know why my parents bought), I had always had Nintendo systems. I’d never wanted a PlayStation, a PS2, or an Xbox, and I didn’t really want any other Sega systems. I was under the impression that all high-quality games were put out by Nintendo. I still believe most are. But early in my sophomore year of high school, my friend Kabir suggested to me that, being a huge Star Wars fan and an RPG gamer, I would love Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I figured he was probably right, but the problem, as I told him, was that I didn’t own an Xbox, my home computer wasn’t a gaming machine, and the game wasn’t available for any other systems. To my astonishment, without my asking, Kabir said that I could borrow his Xbox to play the game. I was ecstatic. I promised to take good care of it, and I quickly became addicted to the game.

Knights of the Old Republic is unique among RPGs and Star Wars games in several ways. Its setting is different from those of most other Star Wars games—four thousand years before the time of the movies. The technology is basically the same as that seen in the movies for whatever reason (it’s never really explained, so my only conclusion can be that once a civilization reaches a certain level of advancement, technology basically stands still), including starfighters, space cruisers, lightsabers, blasters, and droids; however, all of the characters are different—after all, even Yoda only lived 900 years. One of the things that sets Knights of the Old Republic apart from a lot of other video games is that the player can choose whether to be good or evil (whereas in most video games the player must be good by default). The main character is created by the player, who chooses what the character’s gender is, what he/she looks like, and what physical and mental abilities he/she has, among other things. The player also chooses from among several possible conversational responses when he/she talks to other characters in the game, and different responses often lead to different outcomes for events in the game. Between the dialogue options, the character design options, and the morality option, the game has enormous replay value. You could play the game 36 different times and never do it the same way twice—no exaggeration. I know because I’ve played it approximately that many times.

Of course, after my first time, I gave the Xbox back to Kabir—I would’ve felt bad about keeping it much longer. I ended up buying my own Xbox and my own copy of the game, along with the sequel. I also got myself Star Wars: Battlefront (essentially a Star Wars-themed large-scale shooting game) and its sequel, which also weren’t available on Nintendo systems. In so doing, I expanded my horizons a bit and opened my mind up to the possibility of gaming on other systems.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's...

I'll admit I was skeptical at first about watching the Spider-Man movie back in 2002. I was under the impression that superheroes were for little kids, and I wasn't a little kid--I was 11 years old! Double digits! But my older brother wanted to see it for his birthday, and my parents weren't yet comfortable with leaving me at home alone for a period of time as long as three hours, so they took me with them. I was expecting it to be cheesier than a stuffed crust pizza and a nacho combined, and at that time in my life, I thought cheesy things were for “children” (except in the literal sense of the word “cheesy,” of course). I despised the word “child,” and never permitted anyone to apply it to me. From my point of view, it was a word to describe a single-digit kid who was fully dependent on his parents for everything. I wasn’t like that—I was independent! Well, except for the meals, home, and occasional transportation that my parents provided. But never mind those things.

 To my great surprise, the movie was well-made and able to be taken seriously. And, of course, as an 11-year-old boy, I loved all of the action scenes. Thus began my love for superhero movies. I’ve never read the comic books from which the heroes originated, but to I’ve always loved action movies, and superhero movies are a very special type of action movie, one that appeals to my nonconformist ideals—one man who’s different from everyone else becomes something greater and conquers evil. For a while, though, I felt that Spider-Man was unique among superheroes—all the other superheroes were still for little kids. I watched all three Spider-Man movies and liked them. I never watched any of the X-Men movies. I only watched Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer after it came out on DVD and someone gave it to our family for Christmas one year; I still haven’t seen the first Fantastic Four film because I was unimpressed by the former. I saw Hancock in theaters and thought it was okay, but not spectacular. I once saw the Hulk movie from 2003 on Cable TV, and that was a disappointing waste of my time. After the Spider-Man films, the next series of superhero movies I really loved were the string of interconnected Marvel movies beginning with Iron Man in 2008, including Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger last year, and ultimately leading up to The Avengers this year. What made The Avengers great was that it did a great job of balancing the multiple main characters, using humor, and having a good plot in addition to the awesome action scenes.

Of course, at this point, some superhero movie enthusiasts must be saying: “Hey, wait a minute, what about the recent Batman films? Those were awesome!” Well, I didn’t see Batman Begins or The Dark Knight until last year. I’d told a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen them, and as the most serious Batman fan I know, she was appalled. She held a party at her house just so that I could see them, and I’m glad she did. I was thoroughly impressed by everything from the plot and character development to the soundtrack and visuals. I liked it so much that I ended up going with my friend and several other people to the midnight premiere of The Dark Knight Rises. I generally like Marvel superheroes more than DC, but Batman is exceptionally cool.

The Greatest Adventure in the History of Basic Cable

I don't have a great memory, but I remember for sure one thing I did on November 1, 2005. Well, maybe two--I probably went to a drug store to buy some candy due to the after-Halloween sales. Three, if you include eating some of said candy. But the candy doesn't matter. I was 14 years old at the time, which meant that children’s shows were no longer cool, cartoons were still enjoyable but embarrassing to be caught watching, and live action TV shows were still boring. Or so I thought. I’d watched some shows casually before, if I was bored, my friends weren’t available to play, and I didn’t feel like playing video games, but I’d never seriously followed one until that day. November 1, 2005 was the day when I saw my first episode of House, M.D., "TB Or Not TB." House’s combination of deep characters, clever and surprising humor, and suspense had me hooked right away.

House became the first show that I watched on a regular basis with my mom and my brother (my dad doesn’t watch much TV, aside from NHL games). The next was Psych, a witty comedy-mystery show starring the brilliant but lazy Shawn Spencer and his uptight, book-smart best friend, Burton “Gus” Guster. Shawn, the son of a cop, has developed incredible observational skills and photographic memory, but lacks the discipline and obedience to be a police officer; instead, he pretends to be a psychic and operates a detective agency with Gus, and is often hired by the police department of Santa Barbara, California to consult on murder cases. My first episode was “Woman Seeking Dead Husband: Smokers Okay, No Pets.” Psych’s episode titles are always fun like that.

For a few years, I only watched House and Psych. In the summer of 2009, we kept seeing commercials for White Collar while we were watching Psych, and it looked moderately interesting, so we decided to watch the pilot, and we all loved it. White Collar became the first show I watched from the very beginning. Soon after White Collar, I got into Castle starting with “Vampire Weekend.” At Christmas that year, my brother received Season 1 of Chuck on DVD, and I ended up watching that and loving it, so I started watching Season 3 when it was broadcast the following month. Later in 2010, I started watching The Good Guys. I thought it was brilliant, and so did my mom and my brother, but apparently we were in the minority—the show was cancelled after only one season. This marked the first time I’d suffered the disappointment of seeing a show I liked get cancelled. I imagined this must have been what it was like for Firefly fans who watched the show when it was first on TV. I don’t remember precisely at what point I got into Lie To Me, but I liked that show, and it was cancelled, too. Chuck came close to being cancelled a number of times over the course of its run, and it ended up lasting five seasons.

Since we liked The Good Guys so much, we decided to start watching Burn Notice since it was made by the same people. It’s a bit short on humor compared to the other shows we watch, but we like smart characters, and the cast of Burn Notice is brilliant. The latest show I’ve gotten into was Doctor Who, which has replaced Firefly as my favorite TV show of all time and Star Wars as my favorite sci-fi series. At some point I’ll probably write a post devoted entirely to Doctor Who, but not today.

Big Hair Game

I got a GameCube for Christmas in 2003 along with a few different games. My parents actually messed up a bit on Christmas morning—they wanted me to open any and all non-GameCube-related presents first, then the system, and then the games; however, they’d forgotten which presents had what wrapping paper, so they ended up having me open Luigi’s Mansion before anything else related to the GameCube. I knew immediately that they wouldn’t have bought the game without buying the system, and I was ecstatic. I’d been wanting one ever since it first came out over two years earlier. That was something my parents were always intentional about—they never bought new technology right when it came out so that my brother and I would learn to be patient and be grateful for what we had.

However, I after the initial excitement of getting a new system wore off, it was really a bit disappointing. There really weren’t that many good games for it, and I still played my Nintendo 64 and occasionally my Sega Genesis even though I had it. But then my brother discovered Tales of Symphonia via Nintendo Power, and everything changed. Tales of Symphonia was a more traditional role-playing game than Fire Emblem, with quests and side-quests as well as free roaming capabilities rather than a strict progression from one chapter to the next. It focused on a central cast of nine characters. Lloyd Irving, the main hero, was very book-dumb but possessed very good instincts. Genis Sage was a half-elf boy genius and Lloyd’s best friend. Colette Brunel was a dumb blonde, a close friend of Lloyd, and the Chosen One for the regeneration of the world of Sylvarant. Kratos Aurion was [SPOILERS] Lloyd’s father and a 4,000-year-old angel. Professor Raine Sage was Genis’s half-elf older sister and served as a sort of mother figure for the entire party. Sheena Fujibayashi, a glamorous female ninja and summoner, was originally sent over from the world of Tethe’alla to assassinate Colette, but her compassionate nature prevented her from completing her mission. Presea Combatir was [SPOILERS] a 28-year-old woman who was the subject of a 16-year experiment that stopped her aging process and subdued her emotions. Zelos Wilder was the womanizing Chosen One of Tethe’alla who hid his true intelligence, cynicism, and self-loathing beneath layers of false carefree attitude and artificial self-absorbedness. Regal Bryant was [SPOILERS] the president of a large company as well as a remorseful prisoner who was forced to kill the woman he loved, Presea’s younger sister, after an experiment turned her into a monster.

Tales of Symphonia was the first game since Jet Force Gemini for the Nintendo 64 in which my brother and I could cooperate in the main part of the game, so we did. The first time we played through the game, I was content to let him roam around the over-world, towns, and dungeons, and only have to worry about the battles for my part. However, after the first time, I don’t think my brother and I ever played through the whole thing together again. After the first time, I wanted to be Player 1. My brother never wanted to be Player 2 for me, so I was on my own. I ended up liking it so much that I didn’t mind playing by myself. I’ve played through the whole game over and over, at least 15 times all the way through.

At various points while I was playing through it, my dad walked by and commented on it, calling it “Big Hair Game” because six of the nine main characters and many of the non-player characters have remarkable styles and/or colors of hair. He seemed vaguely interested, so one time I asked him if he’d like to play it, and he said yes. I guided him through it, and he has since played through it at least twice with minimal assistance. After my dad played through it, my mom decided she wanted to play, too, and I guided her all the way through it. This makes Tales of Symphonia the only serious video game (Mario Party, Mario Tennis, Mario Kart, and the multiplayer mode of Donkey Kong 64 don’t count) to be played by my parents. Now we all call it "Big Hair Game," and we occasionally make references to it at home.

Obtaining the Fire Emblem

Before long, my brother discovered another game through Nintendo Power magazine: Fire Emblem. It was made by Intelligent Systems, the same company that made Advance Wars. Its gameplay is also very similar to that of Advance Wars, although there are some key differences. First of all, the plot is more serious and the character development is deeper. These are the primary reasons why I keep playing and replaying it and the other games in the Fire Emblem series to this day. Secondly, unlike Advance Wars, it doesn’t have a modern setting—Fire Emblem takes place in a fantasy world with knights, kings, nobles, magic, and dragons. One thing about the Fire Emblem games that makes each new one refreshing, though, is that they don’t stick with the same world or the same characters in game after game; they usually make two games for each world and its associated cast. Third, the commander of each army takes part in the battle as a unit in his or her own right in Fire Emblem. In fact, all allied units and a few enemy units are unique characters themselves. If you lose a unit, it dies and cannot be resurrected by any means, so keeping your units alive is much more important in Fire Emblem than in Advance Wars. Units have different classes—for example, Mages cast nature-related spells with ice, wind, fire, and lightning and tend to be fairly well-rounded while Knights wield lances and tend to be slow but heavily resistant to physical attacks. Units can change class once; the change gives stat bonuses and usually allows the character to wield a new type of weapon. Additionally, units grow stronger as they battle in the fashion of a typical role-playing game with experience points and level-ups. The maximum level for every character of every class is 20. It’s possible to change classes starting at level 10, but it’s usually beneficial to reach level 20 in a character’s original class before changing classes because if he changes classes early and reaches level 20 in a promoted class before the end of the game, he ceases to improve where he still would have been able to improve further if he’d waited and gained more levels in his original class.

Like Advance Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics Advance before it, Fire Emblem was a game I could not share with my brother, so we each had our own copy. And like Advance Wars, I found a forum online centered around Fire Emblem. It was called Fire Emblem Fusion. Since there were no COs in Fire Emblem, I just called myself “Kyle” this time. Continuing the pattern I established on AWB, I typed my messages in orange all the time. On Fire Emblem Fusion’s welcome board, I introduced myself as “the orange man.” However, it turned out that Fire Emblem Fusion already had an orange man. His username was “SwordsAreShiney,” erroneously spelled with an “e” between the “n” and the “y” of “Shiney,” but strangely, that didn’t bother me. In real life he was a Canadian guy a year or two older than me. He and I developed an instantaneous but short-lived rivalry that suddenly reversed itself into a close friendship based on the color orange, and thus orange became my favorite color in general rather than just my favorite Advance Wars color. SwordsAreShiney, or SAS for short, led me to a different Fire Emblem forum, Fire Emblem Planet.

When I joined Fire Emblem Planet or FEP, much like when I joined AWB, it was just starting. SAS was a Global Moderator on FEP, so I had a friend in power from the beginning. Once for my birthday, he made the entire forum bright orange and kept it that way for most of the day despite heavy backlash from most users. In a reversal of the events of AWB, my brother joined after I did. Some of the people from AWB, mostly people I’d been friends with, joined FEP as well.

Through FEP, I learned that the Fire Emblem I’d played was actually the seventh game in the series although it’d been the first to be translated into languages other than Japanese. The sixth game in the series was a chronological sequel to the seventh, and it centered around Roy, who remains one of my favorite characters from Super Smash Brothers Melee. So I got myself a copy of the sixth game and started playing it. Some things about it were very difficult because I couldn’t read any Japanese at the time, and I still can’t read most of it because the Japanese use their own alphabets, called hiragana and katakana, more than they use Chinese characters which they call kanji. I can’t even read all of the kanji that they do use because although I do study Chinese, reading isn’t my strong point. Still, the game mechanics of Fire Emblem 6 were mostly the same as those of Fire Emblem 7, so I managed to get through it. At some point after I started playing Fire Emblem 6, I became aware of translation patches for the game that were being distributed on the Internet and got one of those, too, which immensely increased my enjoyment of the game because like Fire Emblem 7, it had a compelling plot and deep character development. Later, I played the eighth Fire Emblem game before it was officially translated, and I liked it quite a bit. However, when the translations were finished and the eighth game started to be sold in stores, I found that I’d liked it better in Japanese—it seemed like they didn’t even try to make the characters realistic and likeable, and I’m pretty sure the story and setting were thrown together in an afternoon by the laziest guy on staff at Intelligent Systems. Some members on FEP didn’t care about these things, though, because there were a few differences in game mechanics that people liked. However, the people at Intelligent Systems were apparently intelligent enough to realize that Fire Emblem 8 wasn’t as good as the other games in the series, so they never made another game with the world and characters of the eighth game. Fire Emblem 9, which featured an all-new world with its own characters, also came out while I was still active on FEP. I never got the ninth game in Japanese, but fortunately, it was a return to the previous level of quality in story and character development, so the English version was just fine. The star of Fire Emblem 9, Ike, replaced Roy as one of the playable characters in the next Super Smash Brothers game, Brawl, and I don’t mind that.

My Life as an Advance Wars Veteran

After my family had had our Nintendo 64 for a while, my brother and I each got Game Boy Advances. Not long after we did, my brother saw a game called Advance Wars in an issue of Nintendo Power and decided that he wanted to get it. So he did. As was the case with most of the games in my house, I played it too, but this one was different. This was the first game, and became one of a select few, that we could not share. We tried at first. But eventually, I ended up getting my own copy.

Advance Wars is a strategy game for the Game Boy Advance. In many ways, it’s similar to chess. Like chess, Advance Wars is turn-based, with each turn being called a day. Where chess has pieces, Advance Wars has units. There are many different types of units with different capabilities, movement, and levels of offensive and defensive power, but all units have 10 hit points that are depleted when the unit is attacked by a sufficiently powerful enemy. Infantry units, for example, can move three squares, and are one of only two unit types that can capture properties such as cities, factories, airports, and seaports. Terrain is also important in Advance Wars. Placing an infantry unit on a mountain provides much better defensive cover than being in an open field or on a road. Some types of beneficial terrain are more difficult to move across than others; however, properties are both beneficial and easy to move across, which is part of why capturing them is so important. The other part is because they allow the player to produce new units or repair damaged ones. Occasionally, the player is required to play with limited visibility, representing a lack of military intelligence reports of the current conditions in a given area. This is called Fog of War. Some units have better vision under these conditions than others. Reconnaissance units can see for five squares around them, while tanks can only see in a three-square radius. However, any unit in woods or a reef is hidden from all units except those directly adjacent to it. There are many different Commanding Officers, or COs for short, in Advance Wars. Each has his or her own unique strengths and weaknesses. After a certain amount of fighting, a CO can activate a special ability called a CO Power. The effects of the power and the amount of time it takes to be able to use it depend on the CO, but a CO Power always charges up faster for the side that is losing more units. There can be as many as four different sides involved in a battle, each its own country in the game world: Orange Star (which represents the US), Blue Moon (which represents Russia and Eastern Europe), Green Earth (which represents Western Europe), and Yellow Comet (which represents Japan).

All that game mechanical stuff is all well and good. It’s interesting, at least to me. It helped me develop a calculating and logical mind at a relatively young age. But that wasn’t the only reason why I liked it. I liked the story and the CO characters. Some people took issue with the light, happy-go-lucky tone of most of the dialogue because war is involved, but the truth is that the game mechanics are the only part of the game that’s meant to be taken seriously. The dialogue and story are just for fun, really. One of the COs, Andy, once asks the question, “What’s an airport?” If the dialogue was meant to be taken seriously, then he would either know what an airport is or he’d be sent back to basic training before being allowed to command the army again.

After we’d been playing the game for a while, my brother joined a message board centered around the game called Advance Wars Bunker, or AWB for short. At that age, I wanted to do most everything my brother did, and this was no exception, so I joined too, with the username “CO Kyle.” I made friends pretty quickly, even though I was younger than most of the other members. Of course, my brother and I had joined when the forum had been fairly new, so at first there were only a few other people there anyways. I would spend hours at a time discussing the game, playing forum games, and just talking. Some other members always typed in a particular style, and I wanted to be unique, so I began to type all of my messages in orange letters because Orange Star was my favorite country in the game. I also got AOL Instant Messenger around this time, so I sometimes used it to talk to my AWB friends in addition to the forum. After I’d been there for a month or two, members of a rival Advance Wars forum called Advance Wars Net or AWN came to AWB and invaded with spam and inappropriate messages. In order to help defend our forum against the spammers, I was temporarily granted the powers of a Global Moderator, which meant I could edit or delete anyone else’s posts or topics. I felt like I was really fighting a battle, which, in retrospect, is more than a little silly. But after a little while, the attacks faded and we announced ourselves victorious—and I had discovered how much I like controlling things. It was in part because of this that I wanted to make my own message board for a different game—Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which was the second game that my brother and I couldn’t share. My message board never really took off, though. So I stayed at AWB for about a year or a year and a half, during which time it gained more and more members, especially after Advance Wars 2 came out. I never really got used to most of the new guys, and when an increasing number of atheists and agnostics began to populate the forum, I felt alienated, marginalized, and frequently offended as a Christian. That wasn’t the only reason why I eventually left, but it certainly didn’t encourage me to stay.