Frank’s article about his days in the arcade really got me thinking about the time I spent at working at Skooters Family Entertainment Center in Bristol, Connecticut during my college years. I started off at the guy making pizzas in the back. Within a couple years, I was making employee schedules and running the LazerTron League. But most importantly, I got to play games for free.

I’ve certainly spoken enough recently about Street Fighter, and so I’ll be brief here, but it was by far the game I played most – both at Skooters, and in the arcade at Central Connecticut State University. I became fairly good friends with the 3-4 other guys in the area who were really good at the game, and I loved it when an out-of-towner with some real skill would show up to play. It was probably more than a dozen years ago, but I still remember the guy who showed up on a business trip and kicked my ass with Balrog. Good times.

It seems like a lot of the games I played most at Skooters were fighting games. Samurai Shodown 2 was another game I really enjoyed. I loved using Jubei’s parry/riposte attack, Sieger’s slide-punch-slam combo, and Haohmaru’s super-ultra attack, which I remember being very difficult to pull off.  Samurai Shodown let you fight the black-suited referee at times if you were doing very well at the game, which was neat. Too bad the ref always kicked my ass.

Darkstalkers felt quite a lot like Street Fighter 2, so I slid into that one naturally as well. I was primarily a Morrigan player, but I used Bishamon the samurai and the Sasquatch quite a bit. I also got into Virtua Fighter 2 when Skooters obtained a copy of that game. I first got good with Shun, the drunken monkey kung fu guy, but later started using Kage the ninja and Pai, since Pai had a really neat move where she could catch your punches or kicks if you timed the counter perfectly. I believe that Akira had about a hundred such counters, but I never got a chance to try to master that difficult timing.

Skooters never had a Neo Geo, but I’d play Neo Geo titles all the time at college and in a local convenience store. Final Fight, King of Fighters, Fatal Fury. I guess they were all fighting games and beat-em-ups, but Neo Geo had some good ones.

One Neo Geo game that always fascinated me was Crossed Swords. I never got much of a chance to play it, but being able to separately control your sword and your shield placement seemed a very cool game mechanic. Years later, I was able to try out the game via MAME, and while it was indeed very cool, its time had passed. You can see the screenshot pictured above in the header.

Probably the game I’ve been most looking forward to talking about in this article is Dungeons and Dragons: Tower of Doom. The game was a side-scrolling 4-player beat-em-up in the style of the X-Men and Simpsons arcade games, but it had far more depth than either of these. The available characters were warrior, dwarf, elf, and cleric, and your characters would actually level up throughout the game. The elf and cleric would get access to more and better spells. Everyone but the elf had a shield with which they could block certain attacks. There were special dash attacks, jumping attacks, and slides accessible through Street Fighter-like joystick movements. You could collect money and treasure, and use it to buy healing potions, arrows, throwing daggers and flaming oil. There were arrow traps, pits, and spiked walls. There were secret doors, accessible only by shooting a lever or pushing against a suit of armor that had looked like part of the  background. The game had branching paths, and you could take different routes which would lead to you fighting different enemies. We all knew not to take the path where you’d fight the red dragon. That thing sucked up quarters like nothing I’ve ever seen. Anyway, if you ever get the chance to try the Dungeons and Dragons arcade game, give it a go. It’s probably my second favorite arcade game ever.

Dwarf using a lightning bolt ring

It wasn’t until my college days that I first discovered Point Blank in the arcade in the student center at CCSU in New Britain, Connecticut. My cousin Paul and I played the crap out of that game. Point Blank is the best light gun game series ever invented. Years later, I found a Point Blank cabinet at the Old Chicago in Colorado Springs near where I used to work. It was nice to play again.

While I first discovered Dance Dance Revolution at a camp in New Hampshire where someone had set up a Playstation, I later played it in the arcades quite a bit. And I got fairly good at it. There was a year or two where I was seriously obsessed with DDR – I got to the point where I could ace “Smoke on the Water” on maniac difficulty, which was no easy feat.

My daughter will likely never play games in an arcade. It’s a sad thing to see them go, really. Arcades were an integral part of many of our childhoods.

Having finished the single-player game in Street Fighter 4 with both Sagat and Sakura on the same day a couple weeks ago, it really dawned on me how much stronger certain characters in the game are compared to others. I’m not talking about characters like Dhalsim and El Fuerte – I think they’re both pretty much fine. I’m talking about overpowered characters like Sagat and Balrog, and underpowered characters like Vega and Gen.

Overall, the characters in Street Fighter are balanced. If you’re having trouble beating a specific character, it’s likely either because you’re not familiar enough with that character’s moves and capabilities, or else because the other player is too good. Conversely, if you’re having trouble winning when playing a specific character, it’s likely because you’re not good enough with that character, or once again because the opponent you’re currently playing is too good. That being said, there are definitely characters in the game who are overpowered, and other characters who are underpowered.

After the original Starcraft was released, Blizzard released a number of required updates – without them, you were unable to play on Battle.net, which is the only way to play online. These patches made minor tweaks to the abilities of the various races in the game, eliminating loopholes in the game’s tactics so that all three races were balanced. I think that Street Fighter 4 needs a similar patch.

Sagat is the character who first comes to mind. Sagat combines normal attacks that have range second only to Dhalsim with quickness and high damage output. His two different fireballs, his very fast Tiger Knee, and that killer Tiger Uppercut make for one badass mofo. It’s very easy for sagat players to sit in the corner and spam fireballs. They come off quickly enough that it’s very hard to jump in over them without catching a Tiger Uppercut. Back in Street Fighter 2 days, Sagat was a poor man’s Ryu/Ken. Now, he’s better than either of them. Capcom needs to slow down his recovery after Tiger Shot fireballs just a bit and perhaps lessen the priority on his Tiger Uppercut. He’d still be badass, but not quite as ridiculous as he is now.

Zangief is difficult to gauge. Overpowered? Maybe. From my current perspective, his game is all about setting up throws. From my arcade experience with Street Fighter 2, this wasn’t always the case. But now that I’ve gone through the Zangief training and completed the game with him, I’ve decided that I no longer like to play Zangief as much as I used to in Street Fighter 2. At first, I’d have added Abel to the “overpowered” list along with Zangief, but after having played as Abel, I understand the character better. Most of my complaints have more to do with the computer’s nanosecond timing than anything else. His roll-throw pattern seemed nearly invincible until I realized that Abel can be thrown while rolling. And his Sky Fall air grab is very cool – grabbing a foe out of the air while Abel’s on the ground. Abel needs no changes.

Balrog, on the other hand, needs to be fixed. I’ve never been a good Balrog player, but even I can tell that Balrog is overpowered. When a good player unleashes a Balrog barrage, it sometimes seems like the entire game is one big long combo. He seriously needs some recovery time added to a few of his moves so that they become somewhat punishable if blocked.

Gen is another mixed bag. Hard to analyze. He’s the only two-in-one character in the game. He’s got two complete sets of moves in his crane style/mantis style. He’s even got two super combos and two ultra combos. For such a difficult character to play, I’d like to have seen him a bit higher in the character rankings. His slow crane attacks should do more damage, and his mantis attacks should have a bit higher priority. I wouldn’t want to see Gen be stronger than Ryu or even Guile, but seeing such a difficult-to-play character at the bottom of the rankings just feels wrong.

Vega should be a force to be reckoned with. He’s super-fast, and he’s got a great reach. The problem is that he can’t take a hit, and when he loses his mask, he takes even more damage. He does a bit more damage when his mask is off, but he also takes 25% more damage. The special move that makes him drop his claw is just stupid, as there is absolutely no benefit to dropping it, as he loses both range and damage. If they wanted to handicap Vega by making him lose his mask or claw after having taken some hits, he shouldn’t be so weak to start with. His claw should do more damage. Getting his claw off him and keeping him away from it should become a priority for his foes.

Lastly, Dan. Dan is the weakest character, and I’m okay with that. Dan is intended to be a joke. He’s an intentionally handicapped character, and he is hilarious. His animation for a throw has him stumbling, and his ex-Haduken attack has him screaming with exaggerated effort as his fireball travels less than halfway across the screen. Dan needs no adjustment, despite being obviously underpowered.

I have no expectations of a balance-adjusting update from Capcom, but I can always dream.

Anyone remember “That’s Incredible”? They used to show stunts and other random crap. Turns out they also held the very first video game championship, between 3 competitors, using arcade machines. This whole thing is very 80s, and looking at how primitive-looking these games really were is a trip.

Use Boxmen is a fun little game, reminiscent of Braid in its puzzles. There’s no time-rewinding, but there are some other interesting mechanics, and some damn hard puzzles.

Play Use Boxmen

Keepers is a weekly segment in which I discuss games I’ve played that I’ve seen fit to keep after playing. I generally sell a game that I’ve finished, so the only reason I keep one is because I plan to replay the game some day. Classifying a game as a “keeper” is generally a badge of merit.

Okay, okay. So Pixeljunk Monsters is a downloadable PSN game, and as such I couldn’t sell it even if I wanted. But still, I’m playing the game from time to time even though I’ve had it for over a year. And I still haven’t gotten halfway through the expansion. It’s a great game, and if you haven’t yet read my three part strategy guide, you should check it out.

My first impression of Pixeljunk Monsters was not a good one. I took it as just another tower defense game, this one with a cutesy theme. Oh boy how the game grew on me. It’s probably my most-played Playstation 3 game now.  The layout of the trees on each board and the patterns in which the attacking monsters travel really lends a lot of complexity to the game. There are land-bound and flying monsters, some immune to fire, some immune to cold. You collect gold to buy towers and gems to upgrade the towers or purchase new tower types. Each tower has a different upgrade path, so it’s important to know with each upgrade whether you’ll be improving a tower’s range, speed, damage, or area of effect. I’ve created a pdf guide to help with that.

I finally just got past the “Paku-Paku” level on the expansion by using nothing but arrows and cannons, and one black hive near the end of the game to help kill the boss. I have a feeling that I’ll do with Pixeljunk Monsters what I did with Mariokart DS – take years to finish every last piece.

Let’s be honest. Advent Rising was a terrible game. But it had some of the best music I’ve ever heard in any videogame ever – potentially even better than Symphony of the Night. Take a listen if you don’t believe me.

Lungfishopolis MusicCast: Advent Rising

Bosses? But isn’t Seth the final boss in Street Fighter IV? Yes, Seth is the final boss. And his name is awesome stupid. Capcom might as well have named this formidible opponent Horace or Bob. In any event, what I mean when I refer to “The Bosses” is that in the original Street Fighter 2, after having beaten all eight world warriors, you’d go on to fight each of the four boss characters in sequence: Balrog the boxer, Vega the masked Spanish narcissist, Sagat the Muay Thai boxer, and finally M.Bison the dictator. These are the four characters I’ll be discussing today.

Firstly, Balrog. Balrog is rated very highly in character rankings, and people who know how to play him well are very hard to beat. But he’s one of two or three characters in the game that I find myself unable to play. I’m just terrible with Balrog. I hate holding the three buttons to charge his punches, I have trouble pulling off his headbut while continuing to charge backwards, and I have a hard time getting him within punching range of anyone throwing fireballs. Still, I know he’s a good character because even though I suck with him, I nearly beat Seth the first time I fought him. Completing the game with Balrog was nearly as easy as completing the game with Sagat.

Also, an interesting bit of trivia about Balrog that you may or may not already know: originally, the Japanese boxer character was going to be called “M.Bison”, while the dictator was going to be “Vega”, and the narcissist was going to be “Balrog”. But when they realized that they stood to be sued for naming a Mike Tyson-looking character “M.Bison”, they played musical names and the boxer ended up being called “Balrog”.

Sagat is a monster. He’s come a long way from that guy in Street Fighter 2 who’d spend all day throwing tiger shots, yelling “Tiger!” in a wimpy-sounding high-pitched voice, just waiting for you to jump over them and deliver a boot to the head. Sagat’s speed and reach, along with his high damage output, make him arguably the best character in the game. The first time I played him in arcade mode, I beat the game without continuing and got the “Save Your Quarters” achievement. I don’t play Sagat much anymore.

Vega is a difficult character to play well. He’s got great mobility and reach, but El Fuerte could throw a plastic spatula at him and knock him out cold. I really like his back handspring dodge maneuvers and his new flip (flash) kick, but I have a lot of trouble timing his dive-bomb moves, and the moves that make him intentionally drop his claw and mask are just stupid. I might try to start playing him more, because I really like the underdogs, but I doubt I’ll do well.

Lastly, M.Bison. Bison is actually a really good character. His scissor kick goes right over a lot of low attacks, and is especially good for thwarting Crimson Viper’s Seismic Hammer. Like Vega’s dive bomb moves, I’m still having trouble aiming Bison’s. I also still have a big mental aversion to M.Bison because he was originally a final boss, and therefore was a bit overpowered when he made his first appearance back in Street Fighter 2: Championship Edition. As it stands though, I wouldn’t fault anyone for making him their main character.

The other night I finished Fallout 3, and when I say finished, I mean finished.  Every achievement point gained, all five DLC packs completed.  Are there still a few unnamed quests and places to visit in the Wastelands?  Oh sure, it wouldn’t be a Bethesda game if there weren’t, but for me, Fallout 3 is done.  Honestly, I’m sad to see it be finished.  I spent a lot of time in that game and I enjoyed most of it.  On an economic note, I also made a bunch of money off of the game as my five walkthroughs paid as much as writing 15 reviews.  Not a bad gig if you can get it.

Unfortunately, the last content pack, “Mothership Zeta”, ended all of the content on kind of a ho-hum note.  It wasn’t my favorite pack by far, that honor goes to “Point Lookout” but it was still an enjoyable romp.  Plus, you got to punch an alien while you were in your underwear and that’s cool no matter what.

In the interest of appeasing all of the stat-heads out there, I wrote down all of my statistics to show just what I did in my time in the Wastelands.

• Achievements: 72/72
• Achievement points: 1550/1550
• Number of saves: 663
• Time played: 81:25:10 (this is going to be inflated as I’d often pause the game while writing guides by bringing up the PipBoy rather than pausing the game via the pause button)
• Level: 30
• Alignment: True Mortal (Neutral)
• Strength: 9
• Perception: 10(+)
• Endurance: 9
• Charisma: 9
• Intelligence: 9
• Agility: 9
• Luck: 10(+)
• Hit points: 615
• Action points: 113 (+5 from my Ranger Battle Armor)
• Carrying capacity: 290
• Barter: 55
• Big Guns: 100
• Energy Weapons: 100(+)
• Explosives: 60(+)
• Lockpick: 100(+)
• Medicine: 100
• Melee Weapons: 58
• Repair: 100
• Science: 100
• Small Guns: 100
• Sneak: 100
• Speech: 100
• Unarmed: 38
• Quests Completed: 57
• Locations Discovered: 161
• People Killed: 720
• Creatures Killed: 1184
• Locks Picked: 154
• Computers Hacked: 78
• Stimpaks Taken: 176
• Rad-X Taken: 5
• RadAway Taken: 14
• Chems Taken: 7
• Time Addicted: 0
• Mines Disarmed: 33
• Speech Successes: 97
• Pockets Picked: 5
• Pants Exploded: 7
• Books Read: 44
• Bobbleheads Found: 20
• Weapons Created: 7
• People Mezzed: 1
• Captives Rescued: 4
• Sandman Kills: 21
• Paralyzing Punches: 0
• Robots Disabled: 9
• Contracts Completed: 0
• Corpses Eaten: 0
• Mysterious Stranger Visits: 0

Those last few are perk related which is why I didn’t have any.  I didn’t take whatever perk lets you disable robots until much later in the game, during Broken Steel so there weren’t many robots left to disable.  It was hella useful though, so I wish I had gotten it earlier.  Ditto with upping my repair skill.  Being able to repair your own stuff is a great money saving device.  Then again, the money you save by repairing your own stuff is probably balanced out by keeping weapons rather than selling them so that you have materials for repair.  I would have liked to have picked the Mysterious Stranger perk too just to see what it looked like, but at the same time, I think I did ok without it.  I’m sure I can find something on YouTube to shoe me what it looked like.

In the end, I really enjoyed the game and am sad to see it go.  It will be interesting to see what goes on in New Vegas but at the same time, it’s not the same studio, so I’m thinking that New Vegas: Fallout 3 as Fallout 3: Fallout 1 & 2.  It will still be good, just a different take on Fallout.

For now though, my character is safely at home, ready for whatever else comes his way.  After I returned from Mothership Zeta I headed to Vault 101 to pick up Dogmeat and then we both went back home to Megaton.  I put all of my alien gear and trophies in my locker, put on the armor, Shady Hat and Ghoul Mask I wore for most of the game and equipped the plasma rifle that had gotten me through so many scrapes.  Then I went upstairs and took a seat, dog by my side.  After all of this time in the Wastelands, I think I deserved a little rest.

I’ve always considered myself fairly good at video games. I used to kick all my friends’ asses at multiplayer Armored Core on the Playstation, and I ruled the Street Fighter 2 machine with an iron fist. But recently, I’ve been sucking. And I’m not just talking about all the Street Fighter 4 players that are beating on my ass online.

More and more, I’m finding that I’ve got to play games on the easiest setting rather than normal, which is what I’ve generally done in the past. Ghostbusters was the first game I can think of that I found too difficult and played through on easy. I told myself that it wasn’t a big deal – John had suggested that I play on easy, and many reviews I’d read spoke of the game’s many difficulty spikes. So I played the game on easy, enjoyed the story, and didn’t feel like a wuss for having done so.

Then I started playing Street Fighter 4 online and discovered that I wasn’t nearly as much of a badass at the game as I’d expected to be.

I’ve also been enjoying Prototype. The jumping, flying, and consuming challenges are a lot of fun. They’re just the right amount of challenge – it takes me a good half dozen tries to get a gold medal. But when I got to the battle with “The Specialist”, I was destroyed. I replayed that fight six or eight times, and didn’t even come as close to winning as I had the first time. I looked up a couple FAQs and walkthroughs, which suggested that I use whipfist rather than the claw attack I’d been using, so I tried that, and lost even more quickly than I had before. The primary walkthrough on GameFAQs says “This guy isn’t very hard to beat at all. He’s mostly just an annoyance.” You might imagine how frustrated I got to read this after having lost so often. So my plan with Prototype is to go a few weeks without playing, and then go back and restart the game on easy. I only hope that the challenges aren’t too easy.

The same night that I got my ass handed to me by The Specialist in Prototype, I tried to start playing Resistance: Fall of Man. I got the PS3 game cheap on EBay since it’s so old at this point. Long story short: I keep getting killed. I might have to restart this one on easy too. I suck at shooters where I can’t use a mouse and keyboard.

Lastly, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed. I’m currently stuck on this one. I think that if I have to restart this one on easy, I might just have to commit sepuku with a frisbee.

I’ve never before heard of this guy, or his “Rev Rant” series, but after having caught this video, I’ve got to admit – it made me think. What if we could pay for a game after having decided that it was actually really good rather than dropping $60 for a game that we discover stinks? Perhaps it’s a bit idealistic, but the guy makes his point well.