What happens when an otherwise straight-laced racer gets the car chase treatment, with slo-mo stunts and spin-outs everywhere? When police choppers drop toxic barrels and the cops lay spike strips, but your flashy ride barely takes a lick? It’s Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, the 2002 PS2/Xbox/Gamecube offshoot of EA’s long-running Need for Speed series that adopted wailing sirens, exotic sports cars, and the ability to use both as you either play the cop or the speed demon. Whether you  throw everything you’ve got at some hapless speeder and bust them in ’Be the Cop’ mode, or opt to test your memory of how to recover from a spin in the many Career modes, you’ll bank points towards the purchase fo specially-tweaked NFS edition cars and have a pretty damn good time of it, too. NFS HP2 omits the customization (read: ‘Pimp my Ride’) modes popularized in more recent games in favour of the real challenge of working with what you’re given and actually, y’know, racing. A good selection of original musical accompaniment and European-inspired tracks also encourage hitting the pavement, and probably help explain the game’s Greatest Hits status (which also makes it a steal.) Definitely a racing game worth owning.

Remember Nintendo’s first marketing angle for the DS that carried the slogan, ‘Touching is Good’? Talk about risque, especially coupled with the early strain of not-quite-overt-because-they-were-utterly-incomprehensible dating sims that graced the handheld (or ‘graced’–I’m looking at you, Sprung.) Now being of the female persuasion (and despite liking games, sharing few other attributes with men), I wasn’t too quick to hop on board with Feel the Magic XY/XX and start wooing Mute Silhouette Protagonist’s Near-Mute, Blushing Dream Girl. Even if I’d heard that wooing entailed some absurdly fun minigames. So it turns out that FTM is a very charming and personable, pick-up-and-play type of game that’s perfect to cover on the last day of the month when I’m down a few posts. But moreover, Sonic Team has created an endearing, universal story of boy-meets-girl, does crazy stunts in performance troupe of questionable motivations to impress her, and given it retro, cut-out visuals and sexual-revolution-era musical stylings. It’s all unified rather amusingly by a Japanese variety-show sensibility as FTM makes entertaining, challenging use of the mic and touch screen, often in tandem. I recommend this over WarioWare’s scattered, fetish-themed humor any day.

After the dissolution of any company, its talents (if any) must seek gainful employment elsewhere. I believe in the case of Acclaim, makers of the 90s’ most dearly-beloved basketball games, the talents were at best scooped up by EA for future employment–or, at worst, their work imitated to perfection–in the NBA Street series. Either way, it’s a wonderful happenstance that I should have tried the arcade-style dunk-fest that stars Mario and the Beastie Boys (in the Gamecube version, anyway). NBA Street V3 may feature real-life pros and their teams, but the drama is anything but as they tirelessly perform the wildest b-balling tricks you can muster. Thanks to use of the Trick Stick, these come off as effortlessly as watching a game on TV, and each motion capture has just as completely natural an appearance. Even the obnoxious announcer’s colourful commentary adds to the atmosphere on the street. As chock-full of customization as an EA game ever was, there’s no end to the fantasy in this professional league–and that’s why it makes a good video game.

It’s become a virtual impossibility to find Electroplankton in conventional stores, but should you overcome that challenge (read: buy it here!), the impossibility becomes not attaining heights of musical genius by randomly tapping your DS. If you have even the loosest plan when you start the Performance Mode, you can expect to create beautiful music together with the beat-box/sequencer/voice recording software. This game will improve your quality of life even if you opt for Audience Mode, where the computer devises melodies in each of the different plankton environments. Electroplankton is a one-of-a-kind application that’s sometimes a game, but always fun.

As the development that was billed to carry PS3 at E3 2007, I remember hearing that Heavenly Sword largely impressed in those early showcases. Then, the final version released, opinions changed, and the reviews fell flat. I returned to the comforting familiarity of PS3 having nothing, and forgot about it.Now that we’ve crossed paths firsthand, I find that Heavenly Sword is (mostly) my kind of game. As SCEE’s highly-stylized take on the most familiar refrain in hack-’n-slash gaming–of blood feuds, internecine warfare, accursed weapons, and the fated prophecy that ties them all together–it’s a description that reads like any given pagan myth, lasts only as long, and causes the occasional abraision through needless button-mashing and the Six-Axis’ slightly rough edges. Once you get used to the motion controls, however, the ever-popular Aftertouch becomes the highlight of Nariko’s five-day quest, next to the oldest story in gaming–in which our interest, perennially renewed by a mere modicum of skill in presentation and delivery, is ramped up as Heavenly Sword veritably flexes PS3’s cinematic muscle. Although combat may tend towards combo-matic monotony and visual flair, there’s some engaging boss fights to bind the mindless battles and puzzles in between.One can easily trace its bloodline to the likes of God of War and Jade Empire, right down to the epilogue-as-prologue chronology, but the tried-and-true formula of Heavenly Sword is still working. It ain’t broke, and they didn’t fix it.

I guess I should say, (D)C (D)C! Get it? “Si si”? Spanish? It was on Dreamcast first in 2000… yeah neeevermind it played out a lot better in my head.

Anyway, the only maraca-shaking game I can name has, over all these years, sustained the high esteem of those who played it, and garnered envious stares from those who missed it. It’s slated to be released on the Wii next month I believe, fully compatible with the existing motion sensing devices for that system (score!), but for anyone who is tired of dangling in the shifting limbo of release dates, the Dreamcast version is actually not so hard to come by. While you’ll need to procure the maracas separately, the original version of the game is the one that has already been acclaimed as disarming rhythmic delirium with a soundtrack like no other. It remains to be seen how the maraca behaviour at high, medium, and low levels will be replicated with the Wii remote and nunchuk… but you decide! Take your pick! And amigo, play that samba all summer long.

“Jet Grind Radioooooo!”

As I’ve gone about rediscovering my Dreamcast with a new VGA hookup, I’m troubled by my recent realization that one of my most cherished games is missing. It’s been many years since I tricked down the streets of Shibuya-cho, tagging the backs of the miscreant cops who try to crack down on the vandalizing youth, and I wanted to re-experience the original funky flavour of Beat, Gum and the GG’s gang again.

I may just have to secure another copy of Jet Grind Radio, the Sega/Smilebit celebration of graffiti as art that nonetheless carried a public service-style disclaimer against illegal spraypainting in real life. There really is no nebulous moral ground in this lighthearted take on unlawful activity, making JGR a game that could appeal to pretty much everyone. It’s expression as a game–it let you create your own designs or choose from among the 200+ tags you find throughout the game, it let you choose from any number of carefree characters, and it let you choose your tunes from an eclectic mix of commercial to… very indie music. In a genre that is wont to make executing tricks a matter of holding 10 buttons or more, JGR controls simply and smoothly and lightly.

The game that put cel-shading on the digital entertainment map is a definite must-play for anyone who, like me, still rummages through the old DC collection once in a while.

Back in 1995, when Nintendo still got the best RPGS and Nintendo Power still ran the Epic Center feature, I read of a monstrous project being produced in Hollywood facilities and that cost the at-the-time high price of a million dollars to make. (I could be wrong in the exactitude of these details.. the point is that you be impressed!) Years later, while several Final Fantasies were getting re-remade with tweaks invisible to all but an electron microscope, Square Enix gave the remake treatment to their only non-Final Fantasy candidate to my recollection. Final Fantasy Chronicles for PS1 retains the name of the of its FF half, but most notably, it brought back the million-dollar game in question: Chrono Trigger. A tale of temporal distortions and apocalpyse avoidance, CT remains as widely-beloved as any of its distant FF kin, and the advent of Final Fantasy Chronicles made the formerly $80+ SNES title much more accessible. With the added value of anime cutscenes and a translation more faithful to the original Japanese came the CD-ROM format’s introduction of some pre- and post-battle loading and other slowness, but that can do little to mar this great among console RPGs. If you haven’t ever played it before, it’s an absolute steal, and Final Fantasy IV isn’t half-bad either.

There’s no box shot to accompany this post, but if there were, the mouse-over caption might read, “Game of rarity and greatness, maligned by cover art”. Anyone who has seen Suikoden knows the truth when I say that a textual testimony really is for the best: then was still the age of the He-Man-inspired, Americanized cover art, and I don’t want you to get such a grossly inaccurate impression of today’s subject. It was one of the last Playstation RPGs I would discover, albeit one of the first to be produced–and yet, all those years after its 1996 release, several aspects of Konami’s strat-slash-traditional RPG timelessly endured. To this day, I challenge you to find a game that can match the extent of its character development, the charms of its mystical-but-politically-torn world, and the depth of its two battle systems, 108-character recruitment system, and the branching paths by which the player ultimately decides life or death for many of them.

 By not prematurely funneling the bulk of their resources into CG graphics on a 3D-unready platform (as was the case of many early PS1 RPGs, I feel), Konami may not have produced the most elaborate 32-bit visuals (think slightly above SNES level), but an expansive and cohesive game instead. The ever-intriguing Suikoden–which spawned several sequels, these continuing to attract much attention on every release–also boasts some of my favourite music of all time.

Gamers love their physics, at least from an observational and sometimes-participatory standpoint, and they love hair-raising tests of technical precision. In turn, I would postulate that a majority loved the schoolyard game of marbles–I know I did. When it comes to the opalescent gleam and vast nomenclature of my favourite fad, I’ve been known to ramble–which is an anagram of marble, by the way. I can think of few applications of my free time that brought me more satisfaction than that winner-take-all exercise in hand-eye coordination, held in trenches dusty and mud-caked alike, the dirt carved by the scooting orbs on their way into the coveted pot.

So now that several federal agencies are ready to certify me, here’s a charming game that doesn’t replicate the dirty game of marbles, but uses them very effectively in the cascading, tilting-world mode. Kororinpa: Marble Mania by Hudson has marbles shaped like darling animals, making the selfsame noises, and stages modeled after pastries set to accordion music. It’s desperately cute until your spherical protegé falls out of your Wiimote-driven control and into the void, at which point it can be despairingly hard. For Monkey Ball veterans it may be small potatoes, but with several unlockables throughout a great variety of stages, Kororinpa is a sweet take on the classic formula.