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Moviethoughts, volume 3

Two weeks have gone since my last entry, so here's two weeks worth of movies I've watched.

Airplane I had seen Airplane twice before but it’s just one of those movies you can put on at any time. Since some jokes have flown under the radar (ha!) before, it has been a good rewatch. The UHD has a very good image quality though there’s no HDR here. I might rewatch this with a commentary at some point. The movie also reminds me that I really miss Leslie Nielson. It’s remarkable how good he is in this and the first two Naked Gun movies before he constantly had directors that were just really bad at utilizing him properly.

Gigante This one caught me by surprise. It’s a well-acted and filmed romantic comedy that might seem a bit creepy if it weren’t for the very likeable characters. Very grabbing story of a security guy falling in love with a cleaning lady. It has some funny moments in here and you sure are rooting for the main character. If you ever get the chance to watch this, give it a try. The direction is flawless and the slow pacing is kept interesting with a variety of techniques and small character moments.

Elvira: Mistress of the Dark Elvira: Mistress of the Dark is so trashy and fun that it might be my favourite B-movie I’ve watched this entire year. Some of the line deliveries have the punch of a heavyweight Boxer on cocaine – Elvira entering the reading of a testament with the words “I’m late, but so is my aunt” comes to mind – and the movie is well paced. Add to this that Elvira: Mistress of the Dark also has the best ending of any movie I’ve ever seen, that I’ll compare every ending of every movie to this one, and you get a movie I’ll probably rewatch every year.

Elio A well made and animated kids movie that lacks any staying power. After a week, I have forgotten most about it and my kid isn’t talking much about it either. Still, enjoyable enough.

Pastewkas Weihnachtsgeschichte An absolute piece of shit trash movie made for German TV with a German comedian I didn’t like back in his heyday. And this is well past his heyday in my opinion. Anke Engelke has some decent moments here but it’s utterly predictable, boring and dumb. Thankfully, the torture session was short.

Psycho 2 I had expectations going into this. A legacy sequel to a cult classic by Hitchcock? That’s bound to be trash, right? Wrong! This is a cleverly written, mostly well-acted horror flick that’s heavy on the psychology of the characters and features some surprisingly gory moments. I guess back in the day the reception wasn’t all glowing, but I think this is pretty good.

Last Night in Soho Instant favourite. Psychological horror by Edgar Wright, interesting music pics, impressive camera trickery and overall superbly paced, this one immediately took seat in my top 50. Where exactly, I have no idea.

To catch a Thief Classic Hitchcock. Haven’t seen too many of those yet, but I am gaining a certain appreciation for these older movies. I guess that’s a side effect of slowly becoming old myself. It also made me realize that Grace Kelly looked absolutely astonishing back in the day.

Suspiria The plot is thin; the characters barely exist and the pacing is fucked. But the colours, lighting, score, set design, effects (except for the bat) are just so good and everything pops on the recent UHD release that I’ll forgive the movies flaws almost completely. It’s just fun to watch and find all the movies I’ve liked this far who have trace elements of this movie in it.

Millenium Actress I have missed most of Satoshi Kon’s output but I will gladly get the 4K restorations of his movies, since that helps me to catch up. Millenium Actress is a great movie that stays with me, thanks to the emotional core and complex narration. One of the very few movies I’d call flawless in terms of direction or animation quality.

Moviethoughts, volume 2

I originally planned on making this a weekly blog, but due to workloads, I have decided to collapse the past two weeks in terms of movies into one blogpost. I will try to keep it short for the individual movies though, so I hope this will be a swift and entertaining read.

The Thursday Murder Club is a recent Netflix production. It has a lot of good names attached to it, ranging from Chris Columbus as its director to Helen Mirren, Pierce Brosnan, Ben Kingsley and David Tennant as some actors I usually enjoy. On paper, this should be a winner: Get a bunch of older actors together and make them solve murder mysteries in a retirement home. The result however is one of the flattest, most meh experiences I have ever seen. The script needed at least another pass to be funny or suspenseful, the timing on the jokes is off many times and the cinematography is uninspired. The last point really surprises me because the movie does look expensive. Overall, it feels like this project lacked energy. David Tennant does his very best to play the villain but manages to overdo it. Considering the material he was given – a villain without any kind of depth, past or interesting motives – leaning into his past performances of bad guys was pretty much all he could do. The other actors do not fare much better: while all their characters seem to have unique pasts and skillsets, they all come off rather underutilized. Add to that a beginning that takes way too long to really establish the setting, and you have a proper borefest. It’s not bad per se, mind you, so it can be a decent enough watch and some jokes do land. I appreciated the fact that while this plot happens, most residents just try to live their normal lives and have a birthday party in the background, while the main characters do their own thing. This should have been better.

After that I did my first watch of The Exorcist (1973) on UHD. This movie has been on my watchlist for a very long time, since horror is a genre near and dear to me. While I already knew a lot of key moments of this movie thanks to Slavoj Zizecs The Pervert Guy to Cinema, some moments hit me hard. The pacing is classic but meticulous, the effects are old-school but convincing and charming while the acting is very much of the era. The fun bit is of course to watch this movie and just ignore the horror bits to discover what it’s all about. What I see here is a single mother struggling with the fact that her little girl is hitting puberty and is turning into a different person. A person that clearly notices that her mother is looking for a new romantic entanglement. In that respect it is remarkable how much the girl is turned into a mere body, a body on which all kinds of violence is inflicted, not just by the demon but also by those who seemingly want to help her. The true horror – at least to me – lied in the medical procedures the girl had to suffer through. Very hard to watch for me. All in all a remarkable movie that still looks and feels so much more interesting than many newer movies.

In preparation for the soon to be upon us remake of The Running Man, directed by Edgar Wright, I finally watched the original. I love me some good old Arnie and this movie delivers the staples: Him yelling and screaming in his signature way, the one liners, the ridiculous action and fun set designs. For a Stephen King adaptation, this one seemed to be produced after skimming the cliff notes of the novel and ramping up the media criticism a fair bit, which is very superficial, but serves the movie well enough. It does not reach the highs of other Arnie movies from that era, but it’s decent enough. Edgar Wright can probably make a more interesting movie out of this.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More by Wes Anderson is another Netflix production. I normally enjoy Wes Anderson productions and Benedikt Cumberbatch is an actor I enjoy, but this movie which consists of adaptations of stories by Roald Dahl did not grad me for long. Having the characters in the stories narrate themselves is fun for about 5 minutes before it crosses over into being annoying. The way how colours are handled is charming enough for about half an hour. Static shots can become stale, even if the movie adds a lot of variety throughout. I never really got into the stories and there was a general lack of tension for me. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if I had been less tired while watching it.

Midsommar is another movie that has been on my watchlist for a very long time. I am not going to say anything spoilery and keep things very short: It is a beautifully shot and haunting experience that shows true mastery of the craft, both in terms of movie making and horrorstory crafting. I enjoyed almost everything about this movie and even though it is almost three hours long in the Directors Cut, I would not shorten it in any way, as the pacing holds up. It’s quite the ride and maybe one of my favourite movies ever.

Psycho (1960) is my second Hitchcock movie after having watched Vertigo nearly a decade ago. I watched it immediately after Midsommar, which made for a fun combination, as this movie is very different. Don’t get me wrong, it has a lot of good tension going on, even though I already knew the twist, and the camerawork, while very much of its era, reinforces the more shocking moments. This is a movie that has been referenced to death. Everyone has basically seen this without ever having seen it, but it’s a worthwhile experience. The only thing I regret is getting the DVD version, because that looked bad on my TV.

All things considered these past two weeks were fun in terms of movies. I discovered at least one new favourite movie, which balances out the movies I did not enjoy that much.

Movietime: The World's End and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

It’s surprising I hadn’t seen the complete Cornetto-Trilogy up until this week. Edgar Wright made some of my favorite movies, namely Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver and Scott Pilgrim. I never got into Shaun of the Dead – don’t get me wrong, it’s a fine enough movie, but it didn’t stick with me. This is why I was a bit reserved about watching The World’s End. Luckily, that was unfounded, as the movie is very enjoyable, even if it isn’t my favorite of the bunch.

I found parts of it to resonate quite heavily with me. Getting older brought this remorseful view of my youth with it, that this movie expertly taps into. It deals with emotional and drug abuse quite well without making it the fingerwaving focus of the entire story. A lot of things are left unsaid and only subtly hinted at. Other things are powerfully conveyed in well written dialogue. It goes to show that a silly movie can be poignant, can have something to say. So many comedies fall flat because the writers completely forgot about that.

Since I’m thinking about the topic of drug abuse, I have also watched Fear and loathing in Las Vegas for the first time. Movies that put drugs so front and center never gel well with me on a narrative level and I felt disgusted all the way through. But there were silver linings: the dialogue can be surprisingly witty and the movie does a lot in terms of visuals. This one did not resonate with me, but I am still glad to have watched it.

While both movies are flawed in their own right, they were at least interesting experiences. Lately, I’ve been getting into movies more again, also thanks to letterboxd. My reviews there a way shorter than this one, since I normally write them right away, but you can still follow me on there, if that’s a thing you enjoy doing.

On why the Borderlands movie is trash

Yesterday I went and watched the Borderlands movie. I tooted about it, writing that it was a bad movie. That toot got a couple of likes, but only one brave soul asked what was wrong with the movie.

I have written up an answer. I feel like I should apologize.

It turns out that there is quite a lot of things wrong with this movie. In my opinion it all comes down to writing. Meaning the script is not good and the characters are wholly undercooked. The movie is laserfocused on being as funny as possible. In its runtime of a mere 102 minutes, the movie probably fires off about 200 of what it thinks are jokes. Not a single one landed completely for me and the four other people with me at the cinema barely gave it a chuckle or two, if that.

That's mostly due to the fact that the jokes are just bad banter, the timing is completely off and none of the actors seem to be fully invested in this. Add to this that many characters like Tiny Tina and Claptrap are as annoying as their videogame counterparts and you have one unfunny movie.

But wait, there's more: The script is badly written too! The characters are flat and have no arcs, besides Lilith and Tiny Tina who progress a little bit. Since the characters have no depth or motivations to speak of, there is little interaction. Without interaction, you have no chemistry and without that the entirety of the movie, which is mostly a series of moments where the cast runs away from things because why would they need agency if they can just react to everything that is happening to them, falls flat on its face.

I am not going into spoilerterritory here, so I'm just going to take one very early example. We have an opening scene where Roland, played by Kevin Hart, saves Tiny Tina on a space station. The door to her cell is opened, Star Wars gets a bad parodic nod, some banter ensues, they fight a character you don't realize is actually the antagonist and pick up another party member that has four lines of dialogue in the entire movie. However, the movie is nice enough to tell us that Tiny Tina is the daughter of Atlas and it makes sure to tell us that yes, Roland is the good guy here and Atlas isn't exactly the good guy here. Then the movie switches over to Lilith as the protagonist. She is hired by Atlas to find his daughter. But we already know that Roland is the good guy here. Hence a lot of possible dramatic tension is lost. The trade-off the writers went for here probably was the benefit of introducing a couple of characters. However, we get so little time with them, so little interaction – even here the movie interrupts itself with an action scene, as it so often does – that nothing is gained in the process.

In my opinion, the movie would have worked at least a bit better without this opening scene. Without us knowing who kidnapped/freed Tiny Tina. Without us knowing who the good guys are already. Yes, there is the marketing material, which already tells us that this is going to be a “ragtag team of misfits”-kind of movie, but it would still make for better drama and dare I say it better character interactions.

The thing is that I am almost sure that this is how the movie was originally supposed to go but someone had the brilliant idea that we really needed that scene to not be confused. Probably the same person who thought it was a good idea to integrate two powerpoint level exposition dumps in the first 20 minutes.

But why doesn't the movie have enough time to really set up these characters, I hear you ask. That comes mostly down to the pacing. The movie confuses good pacing with “action all the time”. We can't have characters talking to each other in a meaningful way for two minutes if they immediately get shot at. What little there is doesn't do enough to give these characters any real motivation. And the script leaves the actors hanging in so many moments. Cate Blanchett tries so hard to snark it up, but there's nothing to work with here.

There are positive aspects to this movie. The colourgrading is well done and the movie is pleasant enough to look at, with some neat camerawork. This is undercut by the editing, which makes the otherwise decent action scenes harder to watch than they needed to be.

Another plus – and this is the biggest, I'd argue – is that after 102 minutes, you're done with the movie and you can forget about it.

A look back on my month of 3DS

Back in April I decided to do a little experiment. I would play only my 3DS for an entire month. While I wrote up my initial experiences and impressions in a first blog post, I want to use this occasion to look back on this experiment and to evaluate my time I had with the handheld.

I started with a lot of enthusiasm. As a big JRPG fan, I always loved my 3DS since it has a lot to offer in that regard. So, I thought that going back to it for a month and really focus on it would be a lot of fun. And to be sure, I had a lot of fun. There are many games for the system I never spent any time with, and I was itching to get back to. Back when the 3DS eShop closed I made sure to buy as many “essential” games as possible. And when the used market was still affordable, I put a lot of money into creating a neat little collection. So there were plenty games to go around. But it turns out that focusing on a single system can lead to a burnout. At least for me.

I tried to chronicle some of my experiences on my Mastodon account. And at a certain point you could see my enthusiasm vaporize. Yes, it was great that I finally got to play Mario and Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story. It’s a great, fun game with an amazing soundtrack that I want to get back to. But after playing it for 8 hours I had to take a break from it, as I so often do. I tire of a single game quite quickly and need to switch it up, very often by using a different device too.

This was unfortunately when I found out that your old 3DS games can corrupt and become unusable. My copy of Paper Jam Bros. and of one of my Pokémon games are completely corrupted and unusable. Turns out you need to play them occasionally, to stave off that corruption. With a hacked system it could be possible to restore it, but I have yet to try this.

I got some decent time in with Zelda: Link between worlds and the second Phoenix Wright game. While I always have issues with Zelda games, I enjoyed the short amount of time I spent with it. It didn’t hook me, but maybe I’ll return to it to complete it one day. And I love the Phoenix Wright games and Visual Novels in general, but I must be in the mood for them. And quite often I wasn’t. Also, I played the original so long ago that I feel that a refresher is in order. So, I might play all the games in the collection I have for the Switch. I even managed to play and finish a game: Kirby Triple Deluxe. It is a fun, but short romp and I enjoyed every single second of it. It’s not as good as Planet Robobot (very few things are), but it was a very neat change of pace from the JRPGs and Visual Novels I was playing. Because as it turns out, I burned out on those two genres quickly, which lead the weird situation of me not playing any games in the final week of the challenge. Really, I got disgusted even by just looking at the device!

This might be because I always had the 3DS with me. Took it with me on my commute, it was always close by in the house and I tried to get in as much time on the device as possible. In those thirty days I managed to get in about 41 hours of gametime. For comparison, that’s more in one month than I played the system in 2023, 2022, 2021 and 2020 combined. If I had played it a bit more in those days I chose abstinence, I could easily add another handful of years. But I honestly think I overdid it and I should have paced myself better. Maybe I should have set a time limit to really enjoy myself.

This experiment also led to me to buy a couple of new games to add to my collection. Kirby Triple Deluxe was one of those games, but I also got Rhythm Paradise, which was very fun in short bursts, Professor Layton Vs. Phoenix Wright, just to complete the collection, and Lifesigns, a Visual Novel nobody talks about.

One other aspect I got to reexperience is the great local multiplayer the handheld provides. Tetris DS is amazing and just so much fun when playing against others locally. And it made me appreciate the fact that for many games you only need one cartridge and can share the game with others locally. A feature that is nowhere to be found these days, which is sad.

Do I return to my 3DS more often now? Yes, I have started a new playthrough of Samus Returns recently and that is going quite well. I will try to finish a couple of games on it every now and then, but considering my huge backlogs I got everywhere, it will take a lot of time. Will I do another 30 days challenge like this anytime soon? Maybe next year or the year after. Right now I am enjoying my time with my other consoles a lot and as I said, those backlogs are not going to complete themselves.

On Thursday, the 18th of April, I decided to challenge myself: After having seen a youtube video about somebody only playing the Nintendo 3DS for 30 days, I decided that I want to do the very same thing.

The reasoning was fairly simple: I haven’t really played my 3DS in a long time and it would be fun to revisit the system that I have many fond memories off. 30 days doesn’t seem like that long a timeframe either, so I was sure I’d have no problems making it through that challenge.

It’s way harder then expected. So much is already clear after about half of the challenge is done. But I already enjoyed my time so far and I’m happy to share my insights into what I have learned this far.

Lesson 1: Less is more

This one is basic and unsurprising: Having less choices improves your choice making. I don’t have all that much time to play videogames. Very often, I lose a considerable amount of time just trying to figure out what to play. Focusing on a single console and its library reduces the number of choices I could make. Which leads to me making far better choices.

Lesson 2: The DS/3DS libraries are huge and very diverse

It’s kind of an understatement, but the libraries for the dual screen handhelds are huge. I collected a lot of JRPGs, but I also have a decent amount of Jump and Run games, Visual Novels and many more. I like story heavy games, so collecting those has always made sense to me. However, I made sure to get a lot of Nintendo’s own games as well.

Lesson 3: Switching it up is key

With a challenge like this, I feel like it’s important to switch games as soon as you feel like you need a break. Yes, the Mario & Luigi games are great. Yes, Link Between Worlds might be the first Zelda in a long time to really pique my interest. Yes, Phoenix Wright has amazingly fun writing. But playing those games for days without taking a break is a bad idea, since it will most definitely burn me out.

Lesson 4: Leave your comfort zone

I don’t like Zelda but gave Link Between Worlds a try. That was a good idea. I heard many good things about Crimson Shroud but felt daunted by its mechanics. Now I want to play it more. Resident Evil Mercenaries always seemed odd and… it is odd, but I don’t regret giving it a try.

Lesson 5: True portability

You think the Switch or even the Steamdeck is portable? Compared to the 3DS, those consoles are unwieldy and complicated. The 3DS is small, easy to carry and always ready for a quick burst of gaming. This is not meant as a knock against the other devices, but true portable only devices have the luxury of an even smaller form factor and the 3DS with its clamshell design has been easier for me to always carry with me than other devices.

Lesson 6: Play more, play more focused

In a week I had played more on my 3DS than in 2022 and 2023 combined. I always felt kind of bad for leaving the device behind because I have a huge backlog on that thing. Now I feel like it’s almost manageable to complete all the games on there if only I spend more time with it regularly.

Lesson 7: Retro gold is precious

This is an extension to lesson 3: Revisiting Virtual Console games or even some 3D-remakes of older titles are a great way to break things up and to explore libraries of systems I never owned. This is especially true for the Gameboy, GBA and the Sega Game Gear.

As always, thanks for reading. If you want to follow me on mastodon, you can do so over at @[email protected]

Wii remember: Devil's crush

I love pinball machines. Which is sad considering that they disappeared in this country around the time when I became a teenager. Still, there were digital pinball games and they made sure I found some kind of outlet for that love during my youth.

Since I had a Sega Mega Drive, and yes, I refuse to call that machine by any other name, I played Sonic Spinball, a rather underrated spin-off of the Sonic franchise. It had a neat spin on the pinball formula, adding some light platforming and a clear level progression. It's one of the few games on the Mega Drive I managed to beat back in the day, even though I found it to be difficult.

Speaking of underrated and maybe even overlooked games, the TurboGrafx16 (or PC Engine) had plenty of those. Never really having been released in a greater capacity in Europe, the console completely flew under my radar until I got a Wii. It was a great surprise to me when Nintendo announced that the Virtual Console was going to include games from that device, even in Europe.

Enter one of the many droughts that the Wii experienced and me being intrigued by this weird little pinball game called Devil’s Crush. I read a lot about it, saw some videos, and thought to myself it would be a great idea to get it. And it sure was!

Devil’s Crush takes the basics of pinball and heightens them in the right ways. You have one pinball table with three levels and several extra stages. So far, so normal for digital pinball games. But this game is special is in the optics and audio departments: Devil’s Crush exudes a forbidden, ghoulish energy that was rare in the 16-Bit-days. Especially in the context of the way more prevalent Nintendo games, which were kid and family friendly, the TurboGrafx16 seemed to me like the little sister of the Sega Mega Drive. While Sega very obviously tried to cater to teens by being edgy, Hudson’s system was inviting much of the same energy. This might explain why this game got a port to the Sega Mega Drive too.

Every part of this pinball table takes the opportunity to add in as many demonic elements as possible. You have hooded figures, dragons, coffins that explode and give you many more creatures. The centerpiece is what you assume is a nice and attractive lady, but she turns into a lizard if you hit her often enough with your pinball. There’s nothing truly benign in this game and add to this an absolutely mesmerizing main track that keeps looping and creates a very dense atmosphere and you have the masterrecipe for a spooky 16-bit game. I feel reminded of the Splatterhouse games at times, which again is a Hudson franchise. Really, the soundtrack is the part of the game that stayed with me for the longest. Written by Toshiaki Sakoda, of MUSHA-fame, it builds so much of the atmosphere. According to an interview over at hardcore gaming, he has ghostwritten many soundtracks in the 80’s and 90’s, so you might have heard some of his stuff without knowing so.

When this game came out in July of 2007, it had been months since a new game had come out, that I was interested. As I mentioned before, Mario Strikers Charged was a lot of fun, but it didn’t get all that much playtime from me and I was already done with Twilight Princess and Red Steel. I was still happy with the Wii and the promises surrounding it, but this first real drought was already shifting my perspective. It was a good thing I had other gaming options. If I were limited to only Nintendos newest console, it would have been pretty bad. Then again, there Is Gamecube backwards compatibility, which meant I still kept playing the Wii, even though there were not that many games.

Since I enjoyed taking my Wii to my friend’s places, I also wanted them to get into this pinball game. Normally, a pinball game is a natural fit for some decent competition, with that focus on high scores and all. Unfortunately, it never became popular with my friends, which again limited the appeal of that game. But I still love it and it’s amazing music. And yes, I still need to check out the other games in the franchise. The only game I played that could be compared to this is Demon’s tilt, which I had some fun with when it was on Gamepass. Just looking at that game is like a horrifying terrific fever dream.

There is no legal way anymore to get a modern, digital version of Devil’s Crush anymore, which is a huge disappointment. With the discontinuation of the Virtual Console, most if not all TurboGrafx16 games are pretty much unavailable now. This is pretty sad, and I feel we are collectively missing out on many very interesting games.

But that’s enough of me complaining. It would only take another month for my favourite game of 2007 to arrive. So look forward to my next blogpost, which will hopefully take less time to come out than this one.

As always, thanks for reading. If you want to follow me on mastodon, you can do so over at @[email protected]

The next part of this little series takes me back to May 2007. Yes, there is a pretty sizable gap here, but remember: Both Zelda and Red Steel kept me busy for some time.

The biggest release I was surprisingly looking forward to for the first half of 2007 was Mario Strikers Charged. I write “surprisingly” because I have no huge history with football games. And yes, it’s “football”, get over it.

The first football game I ever spent time with was Nintendo World Cup on the NES. Our family got it because some of us (not me!) enjoyed football, so a football game was a must get. And for what it’s worth, I enjoyed playing it. It was weird, allowed for odd things like fouling other players so many times, that they just stayed lying on the grass and you could do some very mangaesque trickshots. Only a couple of years ago, I found out that this was the localized version of a Kunio-kun game. I recently bought it for the Switch since it was part of the Kunio Collection and it sure still is fun. Maybe I’ll write a blogpost about that one too. I put it on my list of sidequests to this blog series.

The second important football game for me was the official FIFA World Cup game for 2002. That world cup was very important for me, as it partially took place in Japan and as a young weeb, I was enjoying the attention the country was getting in mainstream media thanks to it. Heck, I even watched most of the games and I played the videogame alongside it. I prided myself on beating Brazil as Japan in the finals many, many times. If there’s something I enjoy, it’s a game where I can create my own alternative history.

The original Mario Strikers is not on this list, and I never checked it out. I must admit that the main draw for Strikers Charged was its online mode. Up until then, there were no online games for the Nintendo Wii and the fact that Europe got this game early made it feel even more special. It’s funny to me now that this was one of the reasons I was so much looking forward to the game, since I am not a huge online gamer. And the online mode would not be the reason, why I enjoyed this game.

Mario Strikers Charged is a football game in the same way as the original Deadpool movie was a romance flick. On the surface, some elements (a ball, two goals, two goalkeepers and the preference of hitting said ball with feet) have a striking similarity with the actual real-life sport. But the interpretation is so supercharged with excessive videogame logic, it’s barely recognizable at points. There are the special items of cours, which could stem from Mario Kart or indeed any other Mario sports title. They spice things up considerably and turn Mario Strikers Charged into a fun party game. But to dismiss this yet another party pleaser would be a disservice to the actual mechanic build in. There is the titular mechanic, which lets you charge up the ball with each consecutive pass and let’s you do super powerful shots. Then there are the special ability shots of the characters, which need a special charge up phase, that can be interrupted by anyone who is close enough to tackle you. When you manage to pull it off however, you get a cool animation and the opponent must use the sole Wii Motion gimmick present: Balls come flying at the screen and you must move your cursor in time to catch them, so they don’t score. I really like that this is a test of luck and skill at the same time and it’s well integrated.

One of the best things about this game is its flair: It has rock music, awesome lineart, great animations and the characters ooze with personality. The game felt surprisingly edgy and agressive without ever overdoing it. The latest entry in the series on the Switch toned it done but kept a lot of the mechanics present in this Wii title. Maybe I’ll do a blogpost on that game too?

As mentioned, the game had online features. They have been turned off some while ago but fans keep this game still going. I was surprised to find out that it still has a small, dedicated community that plays this as an e-sport. I played a couple of evening online and it sure was fun, but it wasn’t something that kept me engaged. For the most part, I played local multiplayer with friends or the single player mode. Local multiplayer worked great of course since it made those characters with their different stats shine. The singleplayer was surprisingly difficult and I remember never unlocking the final character. You play in cups with qualifiers and later with K.O.-rounds. As mentioned, it gives you a decent challenge and it’s a lot of fun to crush the enemy, if you’re good enough.

While not being the greatest start into 2007, I really enjoyed this, and I remember playing it often for a whole month. However, 2007 was a pretty barebones year for me… in the next part of this series, we are going to make a small pitstop in July before heading over to August and my favourite game of 2007.

As always, thanks for reading. If you want to follow me on mastodon, you can do so over at @[email protected]

Wii remember

I haven't been blogging in ages. And to be honest, it feels kind of weird to restart now, since the internet is in a weird place. To say the least.

Not too long ago, I had a Twitter-Account with a good number of followers. But as that site has become an eternal hellscape, I decided to move away from it. I'm very happy on Mastodon now, where I came up with this very blog project.

Since doing large threads can be a huge hassle on that site, I decided to give this space a go. Bear with me as I get a hang of it.

In this blog, I am going to focus on my personal experience with the Nintendo Wii – from launch to death. I will limit myself to the games I got during their release window (around two months of their release). Between 2012 and 2016 I bought many more Wii games used and built a big selection and I will for sure dive into some obscure games in other blogposts. But for now, I’m mostly trying to retell my experience of the system as it was back in those times.

Please note that I also owned a 360, Nintendo DS and gaming PC at the time. Even if I considered my Wii my most important machine back then, the sad truth was that I didn’t use it all the time. There were dry spells, and they were significant. But that did not take away from my overall enjoyment of the system. I am also including WiiWare and Virtual Console games, as I feel these were essential for the experience back then.

Before I go into the start of the Wii, I want to first talk about how hype was building up back then. The Nintendo Gamecube was my first console that I bought with my own money. That was a huge thing as a teen, since that meant it was wholly my console that I had to share with absolutely nobody. However, the selection of games, all above the JRPGs, was kind of lacklustre.

So, I was very much looking forward to what Nintendo would do with that new console they called “Revolution”. When the new name became public in April 2006, my enthusiasm did not drop. Watching the E3 2006 show of Nintendo, which was my first E3 I saw live, reinforced my hype: While I wasn’t a Zelda fan and still aren’t to this day, I was looking forward to playing this one. And Red Steel looked so awesome!

The announcement of the Virtual Console was also a big deal for me. I’m a huge sucker for backwards compatibility. And a system that is compatible with the Gamecube and offers downloads of retro games was absolutely blowing my mind back then. There was this promise of a machine that would bring together all the consoles I enjoyed in the past. And even some I missed out on, like the Turbografx-16, that never saw a full-scale release in Europe.

So, launch day rolled around and I tried to muster up as much money as possible for it. I was able to get the console with Wii sports, a second controller with Wii Play and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The last game here was a tough choice: I’m no Zelda Fan, but Red Steel did not seem meaty enough for me, so I initially skipped it, to get it used about a month later. Anyway, let’s focus on December 2006 for now.

Wii Sports and Wii Play were fun games, especially at get togethers. Before the launch of the Wii, I used to travel with my Gamecube to friends’ places to play games together. This continued with the Wii and these two games were fun for a while. I was really sold on the gimmick from the get-go, so it did not take a lot of convincing for me to get on board. But I very quickly had enough of it and moved on.

The game I played the most when I was alone at home was of course The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. Now, as I have mentioned before, I am not a big fan of Zelda. They are fine by me, but they never manage to hype me, and I only ever played a couple of them. In fact, Twilight Princess was the first game in the franchise I really sat down to play. And I sure completed it in December 2016. It was fun, very atmospheric, and quite engaging. It was also an experience I have a lot of trouble remembering now. Unlike other Wii games, I never revisited Twilight Princess and the most lasting impression I got from it was… moods. Which is fine, really, but I sometimes feel like I’m missing something, when it comes to this franchise. Maybe it has something to do with me getting into it so late, but the same holds true for Metroid and I love that franchise. However, the novel thing the Wii brought to the table and that was later dubbed “waggle controls” is something I really enjoyed. I felt that it gave me a bit more immersion. That sounds silly looking back, but I still think that motion controls can greatly improve your experience. If the implementation is done well, of course.

The other game I got early, but used, was Red Steel. This game was very hyped, and we got an early look of it during the summer, when gaming magazines dedicated a lot of pages to the game and pretty much filled them with bullshots. The screenshots still look leagues better than the finished game. It wasn’t ugly by the standards back then but failed to live up to the hype. Add to the fact that it was a generic game in terms of mechanics, and you see why so many have pretty much forgotten about it. I for one dug the atmosphere, as I am a sucker for Japanese aesthetics. I also enjoyed the First-Person Shooter controls, that were generally panned. What I didn’t enjoy that much were the swordplay mechanics, which were mediocre at best back then. I replayed this game to completion three times, one last time about five years ago. And while its many flaws have become way more apparent, I still hold a special place for it in my heart.

While these two games alone would be enough to keep me busy, I also got Donkey Kong Country and Golden Axe on the Virtual Console. I used to play Donkey Kong Country as a young teen at a friend’s place. I did not own a Super Nintendo back then, as I jumped from NES to Mega Drive, but I was always interested in this game. Finally getting it digitally for what I considered a low price was a huge deal for me. I played it a lot, but never finished it. Which is fine, but I still plan on returning to it at some point.

Golden Axe has a little personal story too. The only arcade around during my teenage years was at a cinema and they had a machine with Golden Axe on it. I got hypnotized by the attract mode of that game: the fantasy setting was a huge draw for me, and I usually enjoy Beat’em ups. After buying it, I did my best to finish it. And while that was enjoyable enough, with the crunchy music and sound effects and all that Beat’em Up goodness, I also enjoyed playing it with friends. It’s not the best of its kind out there, not even on the Mega Drive, but we played so many sessions of that game over the years.

And this already concludes 2006 and December 2006. For my next post, I will be skipping to May 2007, so stay tuned for that.