This year, the venerable Megaman, boyishly-built scion of a gaming and merchandise empire, turns 20. That’s pretty durn old in pixel years. It seems just yesterday we were heralding 10 years of Mega with Megaman 8, and an hour later, 15 years with Megaman Anniversary Collection. It doesn’t seem as though the big two-O is to be marked with a similar release, though art book did come out (and sell out); while the year is yet young, I foresee no return to the roots that made Megaman of one of the best series of all time.

So, while we wait with baited breath for the collected Gameboy editions, which we sadly know aren’t coming as the code is lost, we can use this prime time to catch up on seven outings of the original Megaman, plus arcade spinoffs, in Megaman Anniversary Collection. Exemplified in the NES and SNES Megamen is some of the highest-caliber platforming challenge in any game, period, along with the revolutionary level and boss design, power-up system, and later on, the repeated use of ‘Damn!’ in a child’s video game.

While Megaman Anniversary Collection doesn’t contain a whole lot of bonus content, it hardly needs to in view of the majesty of its offerings. One precious concession: a great behind-the-legend video chronicling the entire series to the date of this disc, which is a must-see for any fan.

Any new initiate to gaming at large would do well to get schooled in the ways of Megaman, and nothing makes a better disguise of its true tenacity than this cute package. Should such a one resist, mock them mercilessly, and remember, you’re doing them an unbidden favor of god-like generosity if they sing the Megaman blues.

Things are getting a little DS-friendly around here–maybe a little Nintendo-leaning on the whole, too–but who can help it? PriceGrabber is letting you guys do the talking, and if you say that Elite Beat Agents is a 5-star production, you’re going to have to answer for it with a lot of echoed sentiment on this blog.

Even if you can’t very well plug an instrument peripheral into it, the Dual Screen is no stranger to the popular rhythm-game genre. In 2005, Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! came out as a Japan-0nly … male cheerleading game. Yeah, you can see why they reworked the theme and came up with the secret agent shtick for the West (although a lot of us imported the original on its own merits). The basic gameplay, which consists of tapping numbered balls in time with the music, remains the same, however pop-culturalized the songs, with covers of the likes of Cher and Good Charlotte, may have become. Throughout the narrative that forms the content-light but laugh-heavy backdrop of the action, people in trouble call out to the Elite Beat Agents to help them dance their way out of distaster in live, love, and work.

… It’s better understood if you just play the thing. Nineteen buyers plus one reviewer makes 20 recommendations for you to get on the Elite Beat! What more do you need?

Kay, so it’s been a while since this one came out. I scooped up my copy after playing the demo, wherein, with unparalleled technical ferocity, the game first showed me perfectly maurading hordes of insanely high-poly goblins numbering in the thousands. Chased me clear out of my house and to the store, they did… after I was finished stylishly and effortlessly racking up a staggering body count of my own.

Ninety-Nine Nights had its an unexpected origins in the mind of Tetsuya Mizuguchi, of music- and rhythm-game fame. It’s much more like Dynasty Warriors than the typical sort produced by his company, Q! Entertainment, however. Think of it as reality-defying Dynasty Warriors, with added razzle-dazzle, longer combos, and, with the right character, the ability to play leapfrog on opponents heads. It’s simpler in a lot of ways, having a tale not so much to be told as to be ignored in view of the much more entertaining prospects of “beating ‘em up”, but even that gets a little stale after a while. However, for the Ninety-Nine Nights which so aptly give the game its name, you may really find yourself enjoying this one. And if not, at least it has attained bargain bin status!

As most everyone in the know already… erm, knows, the Wii is set to receive an update of a certain game by the now-defunct Clover Studios. But as I understand it, there’s not a lot in this update that you can’t get with the original, still-luscious Okami for PS2. A game that encourages the player take it seriously as well as have a few laughs, Okami has a bold, authentic art style derived from proudly Japanese culture, but an art game from the makers of Viewtiful Joe still finds time for the comedic in its drama of gods and mortals. Romping around as a wolf, which should bring to mind the Twilight Princess’ Wolf Link, you’ll also have to paint broken or missing parts your world back into being — think a bridge over a grand river — and this you’ll do in natural-looking style with your analog sticks for brushes. (I’m being serious — it does FEEL pretty natural, at least.)

Okami is a fairly long adventure of a breed hard to come by these days. You still won’t be able to look away from one of the most timeless games on PS2.

Because you can get infinitely more accurate, serious, and finally, more playable sports simulations when they DON’T feature flying and/or speaking animals, you have to make your fantasy sports game really stand out some other way. Sega has observed this from Nintendo’s repeated example, and our result is Sega Superstars Tennis, newly available for Wii and Xbox360. When you realize that it’s all about the characters, venues, and adaptations of old Sega games to a ball and a racket, you have a reason to be playing tennis in VIDEO form.

Superstars is not just a good tennis game, but a good VIDEO game because the makers followed some basic principles. First, you must include your flagship character. DUH. So in this case, we have Sonic the Hedgehog, plus three members of his immediate entourage. Next, draw on recent releases - NiGHTs should do nicely. Then, dust off those old favourites, like the rival news anchors from Space Channel 5, and capitalize on more recent memory with some Super Monkey Ball. You know that crazy fun game that almost single-handedly started the whole cel-shading craze, but that didn’t smash any sales records? Represent with Beat and Gum from Jet Grind Radio. Obscure references are the last official requirement; those can stay a surprise.

Suffice to say that Virtua Cop fans will really enjoy the missions that put you in a mock-up of the Wharf level, shooting cardboard standees, and getting Justice Shots with… a tennis ball. Puyo Pop and puzzle fans in general will get a kick out of clearing away the falling beans, trying for big combos, with… a tennis ball. The variety is reminiscent of the minigames in Mario Power Tennis, possibly the best part of that game, and so are the Superstar powers akin to Power Shots, adding a substantial “What the?” factor to any match.

While Superstars may not match Mario in terms of overall production value and quality, it sure is kinda fun.

In an earlier post, I covered with some dismay the Art Nouveau project that is the Wii Zapper. Sure, the two-handed carriage is comfortable and Tommy-like (which may be counter-productive in its trying not to resemble a gun), but… well, at the risk of starting a philosophy lecture, think of it this way. The crossbows in every game I know are still shaped like a crossbow, the knives like a knife, and yes, the guns like a gun. It’s just fun in a shooting-gallery kind of way to have something that looks real, not something that makes people tilt their heads and ask, “Is more assembly required?”. For all we know, suppressing representations of real things might lead to people actively seeking OUT those real things…

We could beat this debate back to life, or we can just direct our attentions to Nyko’s Power Shot. Voila! It can be held as normal, its appearance doesn’t cause brows to furrow, and the Wiimote integrates within it so you might not know it was there. I’ve played Ghost Squad with this baby, and while I’m not sure whether it helped, it felt cooler than pressing a trigger on a remote.

… with this YouTube video!

You weren’t expecting that, I bet! Well, judicial readers, my trust in your good taste is such that I believe you were intrigued by the above game trailer, which is dead cool, albeit admittedly lacking in real in-game footage. You’re yearning to hear the truth behind it — unless you’ve seen it before. In which case, I trust in your good taste EVEN MORE.

The painfully obvious subject of today’s post is hereby revealed to be the one and only Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, which is, er, the third of three sequels to Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Okay, so “one and only” = not true. I kinda gave that away in a previous post. It IS the first to feature a brand-new protagonist and to have been conceived for the DS, unlike the first three, which were actually cleverly-disguised Gameboy Advance ports. That means sharper visuals, more CG movies, better music, and longer cases — I can personally vouch for the quality of each. And loads of touch screen interactivity. The engine remains intact, the gameplay is tried and true, so if you’re any fan of the law (or at least fantasy play-law), you have nothing to lose in picking this one up.

Here’s some news that all DS owners can use … in two months. Oh well, better late than never, I say.

Know that, soon, the most venerated sphere aside from Earth itself and so many more blunt objects will revive in Super Dodgeball Brawlers on the Nintendo DS, 20 years after their NES debut! Technos, those guys who made Double Dragon, River City Ransom, and the remaining cream of the 8-bit crop, may have disbanded, but Arksys has taken the reigns and is due to release this follow-up in Japan any moment now.

With this knowledge that I have just come to possess, and that in this message I have imparted to you, how are we to carry on with the mundane travails of daily life? How to appear unaffected, when through the head, visions of stubby-bodied-yet-ridiculously-athletic high-schoolers dance to surfer music? How to remain calm, when they’re slamming each other stupid, with everything from pandas to the Eiffel tower, and occasionally a dodgeball?

No sellers on PriceGrabber.com appear to list this game yet. Not even the GameBoy Advance edition is anywhere to be found. And the Super Nintendo game only released in Japan, so don’t even try it.

!!! !!! !!!

The answer: plug a related product. IT IS TIME to get a DS — if you have one, then for your 7 closest friends. Because Super Dodgeball Brawlers with insane multiplayer is coming. Cry, beg, work if you have to. Want one of those hard-to-find colors? Take a gander at the Crimson/Black DS. We even have a couple Metallic Pearl DSes still hanging around — already a real collectors item.

I apologize for the long-windedness of this post. Maybe dodgeball will knock the breath out of me.

Even though the video games industry has become more profitable than ever before, developers these days must have it kind of rough. For example, during the “First Great Console War” between the Genesis and the SNES, a license to publish was usually granted to the tune of making 3 exclusive triple-A games in one year. The “Big Three” console manufacturers of today can drive a much harder bargain, demanding exclusivity and having developers eating out of the palm of their hands:

“If you want to release that on OUR system (we’ll call it System B), you need to have EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that System A version doesn’t. Also, you have to fix this bug, make this look better, change this character, blablablah…”

But then again, there are more places for shunted developers to turn to. You know where the games end up when a small, budding talent, who can’t promise anything big, has nowhere else to turn? Portables. Just check out how many games are being ported from small-to-big screen today, and you’ll realize a world of games that you might not have noticed before.

I have the feeling that Patapon is a game that could never make it if it weren’t for portables. One look at the art style, and you know a game is destined to be judged only by one curious player at a time. Add in the fact it experiments with mixing the RHYTHM and RPG GENRES… and marginalized is the middle name of Patapon. It sounds like great fun, and it’s cheap, and somehow, it has no reviews here. I feel that it will ‘fail’ if that keeps up.

I have a good feeling about this one. Don’t pass it up.

Hard to believe St. Patrick’s (a.k.a. Drinking) Day is almost upon us again this year. Harder to believe is that a one-time popular drinking pastime, even among non-gamers, was to stand on a plastic square and stomp arrows and call it dancing — that being Dance Dance Revolution. I say that with all the hypocrisy I can muster, because right at the height of DDR popularity, about 5 years ago, I was enjoying Konamix on PS1 in a perfectly unaltered state.

For me, DDR was akin to EverCrack for online gamers. I loved it hard. But now, 10 years after the first machines popped up in arcades in 1998, this portent of the rhythm/music game craze has given way to less embarrassing rhythm/music games. These I now play with an unheard nostalgic sigh for the DDR days.

SOME people must still be into it as I no longer am. New people every day should discover the leg-searing, sweat-pouring, toe-stubbing joy that was once my own! They keep making the games, and tomorrow, I’m even going to play the latest and greatest in feet games for the first time. To commemorate all this wonderful … stuff, here’s a product I may be needing, as I have not tested my soft dance pad in quite some time: the Naki World Dance Pad Non-slip . Naki is a good third-party brand that has never failed me, unlike Mad Catz, whose pad gave out after 2 weeks’ use. It’s also more affordable to get into DDR now than it ever has been, as you’ll see if you follow the link.