Dare to Play the Game

Welcome to another edition of Dare to Play the Game. I’m your host who is always two cents short of well, two cents. Seriously, we need to keep the penny; cause that’s about all I got. Yesterday was also my wife’s birthday, everybody rejoice. Well, what are you waiting for, lets check out releases! >

PS2

The Ant Bully
Sprint Cars: The Road to Knoxville
Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland SE

PSP

Tekken: Dark Resurrection

XBOX

Fuel

Gamecube

The Ant Bully

GBA

The Ant Bully
B-Daman
Hot Wheels Compilation
Summon Night: Swordcraft Story

Unless you invested in a GBA this week, you don’t have much coming. To be honest, I would like a GBA; however the small screen does hurt me. I know, get a GB Player; yeah but I don’t want a Gamecube. Maybe the WII will have something (one can hope). This week you GBA’ers get two great games from the wonderful minds at Atlus (I’d probably lean more towards Summon Night honestly) and a Hot Wheels Compilation (always good for at least a couple hours of mindless racing fun). PSP gets a Tekken game, but you are better off throwing down $20 for Tekken 5 on PS2 (if nothing else you get the first three Tekken Games which were fantastic fun).

First up, there’s Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth, a remake of the 2000 title Valkyrie Profile that shipped for the original Playstation. The game promises new features and bonus content, as well as non-linear gameplay. The story, as with most RPG offerings, sees players struggle against supernatural forces that threaten, well, everything. Lenneth shipped July 18 for the PSP.
Next, something for all the Final Fantasy fans out there. Dirge of Cerberus follows the frenetic exploits of Vincent Valentine, who most RPG fans know appeared in the seminal Final Fantasy VII. The North American release features all-new missions, a retooled camera system and faster paced action. Look for it to ship August 15, 2006 for the PS2.
On the Nintendo front, Square will release Dragon Quest Heroes: Rocket Slime for the Nintendo DS. The game puts the DS to good use through Multi-Card gameplay for up to four players. Also, the system’s Single-Card Download feature lets gamers start a 16-player session. And, of course, the dual-screen/touch-screen format let Square Enix design an experience only the DS can provide. Rocket Slime will ship to stores September 19, 2006.
Finally, Square has moved the release date for Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria to September 26, 2006, up from the previous date of November 2006. In Silmeria, players will get the chance to dive into Norse mythology and control a group of fighters with a unique battle system.

That news release could have been summed up in one sentence. Dirge of Cerberus gets released 4 days before my birthday and Valkyrie Profile 2 gets released in late September as previously reported here. Great news all the way around, nice to see Square Enix loading up this summer and killing us in the pocket book. 🙂 Seriously though, I will for sure pick up Dirge of Cerberus at some point (just because I pick up all FF titles). Valkyrie Profile 2 while a harder sell, I feel somewhat obligated to pick up due to the rareness of the first title (and all of the wonderful things I heard about it). It’s nice to see the PSP get a remake of the original as well.

SmackDown PS3 Smacked Down

I am probably the only one cheering this. Well unless you only own a 360. The PS3 is hurting so bad, it isn’t funny. Sony’s got issues. But at least the PS2 will get one more kickbutt wrestling game before it is put to bed. Also, with the extra time gained in development by dropping the PS3 version; they can make sure this one makes the critics stand up and cheer. Besides if you remember the first WWE game on the PS2, it was a piece of monkey crap. I just really hope the expand the General Manager mode and keep me interested in it for a long long time after PS3 is launched. If you remember Smackdown 2 on the original PS1; even though it had a lot of bugs; it had so many nice touches that many of those touches weren’t duplicated in PS2 until the third or so installment.

Hi, Kedrix I’m wearing the same red dress as I did to do a retro lookback to Metroid on X-Play. Wait, and you are doing a retro column to Metroid later on? Yes, yes I am. Oh my Morgan, we shall now consumate our deep love for each other with the Justin Bailey shake, rattle, and roll. (*frantic noises and other video game type sounds*).

Another trio of games this week, and perhaps the hardest games on the planet, the Shinobi series. These three games, Revenge of Shinobi, Shadow Dancer, and Shinobi 3 were brillant in level design aas well as featuring entertaining music and graphics. The character of Shinobi was most often associated with Joe Musashi, the hero represented in all three of the Sega Genesis versions of the above games. The antagonist most commonly found was that of Neo Zeed, a mafia type organization bent on…wait for it..taking over the world. Shinobi, besides its great gameplay featured the famous four ninjitsu attacks: Ikazuchi, Fushin, Kariu and Mijin. Also, you could throw shurikens at will which was just a really cool aspect. There is a little bit of controversy with that of the Shadow Dancer game (or also known as Shinobi and that damn dog). In the arcade, it was a story that was supposed to follow Joe Musashi’s son: Hayate. However, when it came to the Genesis version, it was changed to go back to Joe (with the dog). A lot of the levels were redesigned and hostages were thrown in. To be honest, it is still a great game. Just a different way to go about it. These games are great fun; just be prepared for a difficult challenge.

Before Nintendo mutilated the Metroid series with Metroid Prime, there was a great series of games (from Metroid on NES to Super Metroid on SNES, with a couple of GB and GBA games to boot) on the 8 bit and 16 bit console. But the one to start them all was a small fledging title with the main character Samus Aran against “The Mother Brain” and the metroid(s). It was one of the few games of its time to feature various gun powerups (wave and ice beam) as well as unique and different attacks (bombs, missles, ability to fly thru air and use yourself as a weapon) that you collected during the course of the game. The ending battle scene with Samus and Mother Brain still sticks out in my mind as being both hard but rewarding. This game also featured an involved password system (Justin Bailey and Narpas Sword0, that’s all you need to know), and some extensive hidden worlds. These hidden worlds were basically bugs that existed based on the way the game was created. However, the best part had to be that the main character (spoiler coming) was really a banging chick and based on how fast you beat the game, the ending would feature Samus in various states of undress. One hour or less, you could see her in a bikini. Woohoo, Nintendo pron!

Thank you for joining me in another column of Dare to Play the Game. A couple of cool things happened this week besides my wife having a birthday. (She’s 31 before I am, haha!) Anyhow, I found a pretty nice Daredevil t-shirt in his original yellow and red costume for a mere 6 bucks and my revolving dvd rack finally shipped. What does that mean, well if you read my last column, I need that so I can get all of my dvds to one place and my games out from my closet. From there I’ll be able to sell some of my less desirable games and instead collect key titles from console to console. This should make my 800+ game collection into more of a 500+ game collection. This makes a lot more sense for me and still have me enjoy the best of the gaming world. Take care.

As Always,
Kedrix of Aldrianian
(*The Forgotten One*)