Blog Posts from "SmilingScot's blog"

"Actual product may differ" A rant on the little things that can build up

Sun, 06 Sep 2009 01:51:39 -0400

Usually when I post a blog, it'll be a Top 10 something. While I do have a number of those planned, I would like to take the time and share an experience I just had that while might not seem like much to you, it royally ticked me off. Even after reading this blog you might feel I'm overreacting, and you might be right. Still, I ask you all to keep an open mind and read what happened to me. I had just recently returned from a day trip to Washington and had brought back the PSP Dissidia Final Fantasy bundle. It goes without saying I was really excited to get this, especially since it wasn’t available in Canada. Here is a picture of the box itself. Take a good look at it, as I will be pointing out something shortly. As soon as I got home, I opened the box to start setting it up when I noticed something was wrong. I took out all the contents and that’s when I noticed it was this: Now you might be asking yourself “What’s wrong with this picture? It’s the game and DVD that is a part of the bundle”. Indeed it is……………… only when you take a closer look at the first picture you see on the bottom right what was included, or in this case what WASN’T included, which were the actual cases for both the movie and game. Now I really didn’t care that much about the movie (seeing as I already have a DVD of it), but not getting the case to put Dissidia in and stack with my other games was a huge shock and utter disappointment for me. I considered calling Sony to complain about this but I decided to take a closer look at the bundle box. As I expected, I found a VERY small message on the bottom of the box below the list of contents that read ”Package art is fabricated. Actual product may differ.” Once again, Sony has shown to me that it doesn’t seem to care about their customers. Now I know I’m probably in a minority group over this issue, but I feel that even though Sony had that disclaimer on the box, this was misleading consumers who want to buy it. How hard is it to put what is actually in the bundle package? Just check this old Super Nintendo box I still have: Nice looking console, two controllers, and a Super Mario World cartridge, NOT the box of Super Mario World. At least then when I got this for Christmas (or my birthday; I can’t remember) I knew EXCATLY what the contents of the box were. Now granted they don’t show the cords needed to hook it up, but you would think we don’t need to worry about stuff like that as that is needed to run the game. Yet that is not the truth, as we need some sort of memory card to save our data, which is sometimes NOT provided in most (if not all) console boxes for sale. So once a consumer realizes this when setting up their system, that person now has to go back to the store and pay more money to get the memory card. This experience has shown me that while video games are moving forward, customer care seems to be going backwards. While I know this incident will be only considered a small inconvenience to most people, it’s also another addition to a long list of disappointments by these companies, as I know most of you will have his or her own story of issues with these companies ranging from small to massive. Just remember that when you are looking into a video game product, do your research before making a big purchase. I’ll be doing that for sure when I will be looking into buying a PS3 (once I can afford it). Thank you for reading my rant. Please post comments on what you thought of it, any suggestions you might have, and if you also have had a similar experience. My next blog will be the long overdue Top 20 Favorite SNES Games once version four kicks in. Thanks again and keep on gaming. ~SmilingScot

Top 10 Video Game Commercials (videos included)

Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:34:32 -0400

Video games are advertised in all sorts of ways, with one of the original methods being commercials on TV. I have to say that most video game commercials of today are pretty boring compared to what I watched as I grew up. Some were good, others were bad, and then there are those that truly grabbed the audience’s attention. The following list I have put together is my top 10 video game commercials which stands out as classics in my book. With so many video game commercials of past and present, chances are your list is going to be different from mine. Even so, these commercials are meant to make you laugh and smile, so just sit back and enjoy the show.

Please note that some of the clips will have poor sound and video quality, since most of my choices are from old commercials.

10. Metal Gear Solid
We all dream of going on an epic quest, whatever if it’s to rescue a princess or save the world. This felt no different when Metal Gear Solid was first released for the PS1, where most of us dreamed of being the hero to stop the terrorists and save the girl. With its commercial, it shows that anyone is qualified to be a hero…………only it wasn’t for a good reason.

9. Sega Genesis
Sega had an extremely aggressive marketing campaign for their Genesis system, with the popular slogan being “Genesis does what Nintendon’t”. They produced a lot of commercials promoting their system while criticizing Nintendo. One of those commercials is the following that included a number of famous people.

8. Syphon Filter 2
Syphon Filter was a series released for the PS1 that I felt was horribly ignored in favor for Metal Gear Solid (not that I have anything against Metal Gear). It’s a shame too because the series back then was great. To counter the Metal Gear hype, a commercial was released promoting Syphon Filter 2. While it looked like a lot of gamers missed this, it still deserves praise for using the gameplay itself to produce a funny scene. Check the clip out and you’ll see what I mean.

7. Game Genie
Certain games were extremely hard to beat back in the old days. This could have ranged from beating the final boss in Batman, or just simply getting to the next level in Battletoads. That’s where the Game Genie came in, an accessory that with the proper codes could let you do almost anything to the game you were playing. With such a radical item, an equally radical commercial was needed to promote this.

6. Super Mario World
After the huge success of Super Mario Brother 3, Nintendo had the huge task of making an even better Mario game for the Super Nintendo. Needless to say, they did just that and released Super Mario World with the console’s launch. Naturally, they had to let the public know of this new game, which is where this commercial comes in. While it mainly keeps saying it has a bit more of everything, it’s safe to say they should have said it had a lot more of everything.

5. Final Fantasy III (VI JP)
There are so many Final Fantasy commercials that I love to watch, it was extremely tough to choose only one. In the end, I decided to go with the one which I believe is the very first Final Fantasy commercial to be aired in North America, which was Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan). The most impressive thing about this commercial was that they actually used monsters from the game itself for the commercial, instead of making up some weird and random creature that wasn’t even in the game. That alone shows whoever made this ad took the time to research the game, even if it was only for a bit.

4. Nintendo Power
Believe it or not, there was a time where we didn’t have the Internet to look up strategy guides and cheat codes to help us beat a video game. That’s where Nintendo Power came in, a magazine that was full of previews, reviews, maps, secrets, and codes for various Nintendo games. Not only that, they provided strategy guides for games the Final Fantasy, Super Mario, and various other games. With something like this, word needed to spread about how great this magazine was, which is where this commercial comes in.

3. Super Smash Brothers
The Super Smash Brothers series is one of Nintendo’s most popular and successful franchises. We all enjoy beating the stuffing out of all of Nintendo’s famous characters, but this was hard for us to picture back when it was first released for the Nintendo 64. Lucky us that this commercial gave us a good idea on how much fun that would be.

2. Grand Theft Auto
When something is advertised that doesn’t do and/or isn’t what the product in question really is, that is called misleading advertising. Taking that into consideration, this is exactly what happened when Grand Theft Auto did a commercial on Coca-Cola by showing an environment that is the complete opposite of what a Grand Theft Auto game really is. Yet by doing this, it produced one of the best commercials I’ve ever seen.

1. Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball
How can a video game that I’ve never played before, on a console system that I’ll never own, get labeled as having the best video game commercial? It seems pretty cheesy that I would pick Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball as my #1 choice. However, it has the one thing that most other commercials don’t have: it’s honest. This game’s commercial is the most honest video game commercial I’ve ever seen. In fact, it’s one of the most honest commercials I’ve ever seen on TV overall. If you’re finding this hard to believe, just watch the clip.

Seriously, what they showed is the EXACT reason why we would even consider buying this game. Now there’s a lot more to this game than what was shown in the commercial but this was all they needed to show to get Xbox users drooling over buying it.

I hoped you enjoyed reading this blog and watching these classic commercials. As usual, feedback would be greatly appreciated on this and my other blogs if you can spare the time. Thanks again and keep on gaming.

~SmilingScot

Top 10 Favorite Video Game News of 2008

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 02:11:08 -0500

I make it a personal habit to check up on the latest video game news on the internet, as it’s way more interesting than the news that is reported on TV. 2008 had a lot of interesting stories but as always, there were a number of them that stood out in my mind. This top 10 features my personal favorite video games news of 2008. Now when I say favorite, that means it’s my own personal opinion and it doesn’t reflect the gamers out there. So it’s fine by me if you disagree with my list, just don’t be a ***** out about it. With that out of the way, here we go.

10. The 18 hour boss
I regularly play Final Fantasy XI and was fully aware of a super boss called Pandemonium Warden. What I wasn’t aware of was that one linkshell (or guild as it’s usually called in other online games) wanted to beat this boss so badly, they fought it for about 18 hours straight before giving up. This news made headlines across the internet and Square Enix was heavily criticized for it. While it seems very unlikely this was Square Enix’s intentions and they did fix the problem in an update, this incident did remind a lot of people not to let a video game run your life.

9. EA’s failed takeover bid
There are a number of takeovers happening in the business world, but none generated more attention in the video game industry than the attempted takeover of Take-Two Interactive by Electronic Arts. With a deal that was around $2 billion, it looked like it was a sure deal. Yet Take-Two refused the offer and after 9 months and several extensions of the takeover deal, EA finally gave up. What was truly shocking about this whole thing were the comments John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts, made after the takeover deal fell through. He stated that the main reason of acquiring Take-Two was a charitable effort, saying “to help that company get through what has been an uneven profit experience”. Daily Destin was right on the money when he said John deserved the Most Full of **** award.

8. Spore’s DRM issue
A game that should have been a smash hit turned out to be Electronic Arts worst nightmare. EA added a security feature to the game Spore called digital rights management (DRM), which would require the user to enter authentication every 10 days and could only be installed up to 3 times (which changed to 5 later on). Gamers were so upset with this that they bombarded Amazon.com with a 1 star rating, cracked the DRM and freely distributed the game online, making it the most pirated game of 2008 with having been downloaded well over 1 million times, and has been subjected to 2 class action lawsuits. Even though Spore is now being sold through Valve’s Stream distribution platform without the DRM feature, it has proved too little too late to save what could have been a great game to remember.

7. Tomonobu Itagaki leaves and sues Tecmo
A man that doesn’t beat around the bush, Tomonobu Itagaki was well known for his work on the Ninja Gaiden series for the Xbox, Playstation, and Nintendo DS. Sadly, this legacy came to an end in June, when Itagaki announced that he was leaving Tecmo. On top of that, he also announced he was suing the company for withholding a promised bonus and the president of Tecmo for making alleged “unreasonable and disingenuous statements” made in front of Itagaki’s co-workers. Could this mean the end of the Ninja Gaiden series? Only time will tell.

6. Goodbye Jack Thompson
Jack Thompson has been the biggest pain in the video game industry for as long as I can remember. In fact he’s been more or less the biggest pain in ANY industry. That’s why I was so happy that as of September 25, Jack was permanently disbarred, never again to practice law. It’s too bad that he didn’t get disbarred a lot earlier, as us gamers had to endure his ‘opinion’ on video game violence. Sadly, I predict someone out there will take his place in continuing to slam video games, so let’s enjoy the peace and quiet while it lasts.

5. Nintendo’s ‘big’ E3 announcement
We were all speculating what could possibly be the huge announcement Nintendo had planned for E3, with a new Kid Icarus game being the popular choice. Never could we have imagined that this ‘big’ announcement was Wii Music. What followed next was a presentation that left more or less all that attended the press conference speechless, and it wasn’t because they thought it was an outstanding game. Because of this it should come as no surprise that when this game was released it got slammed by the majority of gamers, especially Nintendo fans who felt that this was a clear sign that hardcore gamers were being forgotten. I just hope Nintendo will recover from this in 2009.

4. Hideo Kojima’s honor
This piece of news was probably missed by a lot of gamers as it almost didn’t catch my eye. At the MTV Game Awards in Germany, Hideo Kojima received a lifetime achievement award, which in my view was something that was long overdue. The reason for this is because despite his great work on the Metal Gear series, it always seemed he was being overshadowed by other great people in the video game industry, such as Mario’s Shigeru Miyamoto and Final Fantasy’s Hironobu Sakaguchi. I know this may not seem like that an important piece of news for 2008, but I feel it’s important to me.

3. Grand Theft Auto 4 sales
Whenever you hear Grand Theft Auto in the news, it’s usually for a bad reason. That wasn’t the case when GTA 4 was released on April 29. This game dominated sales and set a couple of new records, including “Fastest-selling video game in 24 hours” and “Highest revenue generated by an entertainment product in 24 hours” in the Guinness World Records. It’s ironic that a video game that is hated by ‘concerned’ parents is one of the top video games in 2008.

2. The original Mega Man returns
A new Mega Man game is nothing new to us these days. It’s when a new Mega Man game is being released in its original style, as in 8-bit graphics, that gamers of all types took notice. Many young gamers may have been puzzled by this move, but long time gamers such as myself knew this was going to be something spectacular. This bold move turned out to be one of Capcom’s best ideas as it gained high praise from most gamers and reviewers. This very game proves that you don’t need fancy graphics and realistic violence to make a great game.

1. Final Fantasy XIII coming to the PS3 AND Xbox 360
This news was so shocking, I actually believed it was a practical joke for a bit before I realized it was real: Final Fantasy XIII is going to be released in North America for BOTH the PS3 and Xbox 360. This was a massive blow to Sony as it was trying to have a lineup of exclusive games for the PS3 so they could compete against Microsoft and Nintendo. Yet it seems that the ones that ‘suffered’ the most from this surprise announcement were the Sony fanboys that then littered almost every single video game forum on the internet with outrage and betrayal. What surprises me is that they act like that FF XIII is now going to be released ONLY for the Xbox 360. Last I checked it was still being released for the PS3, but I guess Sony fanboys feel that it should only come out on their own system. If that was the case, then why didn’t they cry fowl when Final Fantasy XI was released on the Xbox 360?

I hope you enjoyed reading this and if you can, please rate this and leave your comments on what you felt about my list. If you have time, please check out my other blog, as I would love to hear your opinion on it as well.

http://screwattack.com/node/12310

Thank you again and keep on gaming.

~SmilingScot

My first blog: Top 10 favorite NES games

Sat, 01 Nov 2008 20:38:20 -0400

Since this is my first blog ever, I wanted to do something simple. Seeing as Top 10’s are one of my favorite things to read, I decided to do one on my favorite NES games. That being said if a popular game is not on my list, don’t be a fanboy and ***** about it. Chances are I do like the game as well, but it just didn’t make the cut. With that out of the way, here we go.

10. Kirby’s Adventure

Kirby’s first game may have been on the Game Boy but in my opinion, his NES game was what first made him popular. It has easy to use controls, very colorful graphics, and the fun challenge of obtaining 100% completion, a task rarely seen in the older games. What I felt was the best feature about this game was its music, which made it so much fun to play from start to finish.

9. Startropics

This game seems to fly under a lot of people’s radar, despite it being semi-popular back in the NES days. A fun yet challenging game, Startropics has you going through eight chapters in search of your uncle who has gone missing. Along the way, you’ll explore different islands, fight monsters, solve puzzles, find power-ups, and in one case dress up as a girl. The only thing that I hated about this game was the fourth chapter, where you had to input a three digit password that is written on your uncle’s letter. Because I originally rented this game, I didn’t have the letter and had to go through all the possible combinations of the three digit password, which took me over TWO HOURS!!!

8. Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos

We all know ninjas are cool, but when you combine ninjas with cut scenes on the NES, you have a truly unforgettable series. Ninja Gaiden was ahead of its time, with hard levels, an assortment of power-ups, and a deep story that unfolded in its now famous cut scenes. All three for the NES were great, but the second one is my favorite for two reasons: I enjoyed the story in the second the most and it had the phantom double power-up, my favorite ability in any NES Ninja Gaiden game.

7. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse

The first Castlevania was great, the second was……… interesting, but the third was the best of the three for me. While you have to go through 10 stages to get to Dracula, there are multiple paths to take, making it 16 different stages in total to explore. Not only that, you could partner up with one of three characters on your quest: Grant the pirate, Sypha the magician, or Alucard the vampire. With all this plus being one of the more difficult Castlevania games, it was a game I kept playing over and over again, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

6. Crystalis

Another game that seemed to be missed by a lot of people, Crystalis was a fun action/RPG game for its time. Having four elemental swords at your disposal, each having its own strengths and weaknesses, a lot of strategy was required to defeat certain monsters, especially the bosses. With good graphics, a sweet soundtrack, and a simple yet enjoyable storyline, Crystalis is a great game that should not be overlooked. Its Game Boy Color version however is a different story……

5. Mega Man 2

I enjoyed playing all the Mega Man games on the NES, but 2 was by far my favorite. Bringing up the number of master robots from 6 to 8, introducing the live saving energy tank, keeping the level of difficulty high, and having a killer soundtrack made this a classic to all Mega Man fans. It was also the first Mega Man game to have a password system, so you didn’t have to fight through all the master robots again if you’ve already beaten them.

4. Dragon Warrior IV

It was a tough choice choosing either the third or fourth game in the Dragon Warrior series, but Dragon Warrior IV won out in the end for a couple of reasons. The first was how instead of starting off your quest as the hero like you usually do, you instead start off as a different character in the first 4 chapters. This gave the characters that you would eventually meet up later a more solid background and being able to ‘connect’ to them, something that was hard to do for any character of any game back in the NES days. The second was the introduction of the tactics system, a first for Dragon Warrior and a first for video games. This tells the party (except for the hero) how to generally act in battle, whether it is something offensive, defensive, or completely random. This made grinding for experience points and gold much more tolerable and less of a hassle to do. It was truly a great RPG that in my view could even compete against some of the 16-bit RPG’s.

3. The Legend of Zelda

The Legend of Zelda introduced us to an adventure that was so huge, it was one of the first games that gave us the option to save our progress and continue another day. Of course we had no problem with this, as it was so much fun to play. You had a huge world to explore that was full of monsters, treasures, dungeons, and of course, Triforce pieces. Even nearly 20 years after it was released, it’s still remembered as one of the best NES games.

2. Super Mario Brothers 3

Clearly the most popular NES game of its time, Super Mario Brothers 3 needs no introduction. We all know why this game is fantastic: huge worlds, tons of power-ups, mini games galore, plenty of secrets, and a replay value that could maybe be only matched by other high quality Nintendo games. Some people today say this game is overrated, but I say it doesn’t get enough credit, especially when compared to some games of today.

1. Final Fantasy

Shortly after I got an NES for Christmas, I got my first two games for the system. The first was Final Fantasy, a game that not only hooked me on RPG’s, but a game that hooked me on video games for life. Everything about it blew me away: choosing from six possible jobs, the detailed graphics, exploring large and difficult dungeons, listening to a HUGE variety of musical tracks (including the popular theme Prelude, a theme that has been in every Final Fantasy game), and the length it took to beat it. It was an RPG like never before that set the standard for future RPG’s of all types.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. If you can please rate this, post comments on what you liked about it, and what I can do to improve on future blogs. Chances are my next blog will be a Top 20 favorite SNES games, another simple one. Thanks again and keep on gaming.

Oh, and just in case you were wondering what the second game I got for my NES shortly after getting the system was:

…………………yeeeeeeeeaah…………

~SmilingScot