Day 128: Perfect Dark

Like everyone else who was playing video games in 2000, I logged many hours playing Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64. But, like many others I'm sure, I never played the Perfect Dark game released for the Game Boy Color. I'm going to put your mind at ease now and tell you that you didn't miss anything by not playing this game.


As in the console version, the Game Boy game puts the player in control of Agent Joanna Dark on a series of missions, the details aren't important, that are completed by shooting a lot of people. Unlike the console game, this version uses a third person overhead view. The controls for the portable game don't feel as instinctive (as instinctive as killing hordes of people can be for gamers who don't leave the house if they can avoid it). Reloading and picking up items are more of a hassle. Game movement is slow and clunky.

Most importantly though, this Perfect Dark lacks the multiplayer mode that was the bread and butter of the N64 game. No one played Perfect Dark alone if they could help it. Why on Earth would they want to play Perfect Dark alone and on a tiny screen?

Day 127: Impossible Mission

Impossible Mission isn't just a clever name. Thanks to a programming error, the Atari 7800 version of the game actually is impossible to complete. And with the possibility of winning off the table, that leaves a lot more time for making fun of stuff.

The goal is to find all of the pieces of a key card that gains access to the lair of the evil Elvin Atombender. The pieces are hidden behind the furniture of Atombender's vast complex, so you'll have to search each piece while avoiding a bunch of robots that don't want you messing with their stuff.


Expect the vast majority of your searches to come up empty.


But occasionally you will turn up something useful, like one of those key card pieces or a password that allows to to temporarily disable that room's robots. Maybe a punch card that will come in handy if you ever want to play tic tac toe against UNIVAC.


Impossible Mission could be a really great game. In fact, it is in Europe. The programming glitch isn't present in the PAL version of the game. It's a great combination of action, puzzle solving and falling into bottomless pits after misjudging jumps. There's just that one little problem that can't be avoided.


In the North American version, that programming bug means some of the pieces you need to beat the game are hidden behind computer terminals, and computer terminals can't be searched. That devious Dr. Atombender, somehow he knew I would be too distracted by the flashing screen of his Apple IIGS to look behind it! Curse him!


Actually, I was joking about the tic tac toe thing. Oh well, since it's here...

Day 126: Tower Toppler

I've found that the best motivation to keep playing a video game a day is to occasionally play a really good video game. Tower Toppler is a really good video game. It's so good that if I were Harry Knowles, there would be bodily fluids all over my floor right now.

Fortunately for my pants, I am not a 500 pound shut in who made a name for himself saying by that The Phantom Menace made him shit himself.


The goal of Tower Toppler is to guide the little frog like creature to the top of a series of towers. The beautifully rendered and animated towers each present a series of puzzles and obstacles which must be navigated before the timer reaches zero. It's nearly impossible.

But the game is so unique and well done that I don't care that I'll never see the end of it. Tower Toppler is a cruel, unforgiving mistress, and I am her bitch.

Day 125: Meteoric Shower

The only even remotely interesting thing about Meteoric Shower has nothing to do with playing the game. It has to do with how it was released. Meteoric Shower was built in to a Colecovision clone called the Dina, released in the United States as the Telegames Personal Arcade. For many years there was debate amongst the retro gaming crowd as to whether or not it existed in cartridge form until it was revealed that nearly every European collector had about three boxed copies of the game, although no North American cartridges have surfaced so far.


The game is a pretty standard Galaga wannabe, with one exception. The aliens can attack from both the top and the bottom of the screen, requiring the player to turn around and shoot down.


Rather than make Meteoric Shower more exciting, this feature just makes it more annoying. Since the ship doesn't rotate and can only face straight up or straight down, you have to be above or below the aliens to shoot them. But since moving the controller up or down also reverses the direction of the ship, you can't shoot while backing away like in other four directional shooters like Galaga 3 or Centipede.

Meteoric Shower doesn't deserve to be on a cartridge of its own. It barely deserves to be added to the Action 52 cartridge. The graphics are ugly (why does the earth have rings?) and the sound effects are dull, but at least the collision detection works. As soon as someone unearths a North American cartridge, it will even lose its historical footnote status, making it just another bad game.

Day 124: Action 52 Friday with Atmosquake

Hey, I've already played this one, haven't I? It's the one where the player controls a space ship and has to shoot other space ships while avoiding terrain that sometimes kills him and sometimes doesn't but never kills the enemy ships. That sounds familiar to you too, right? I can't believe that the Action 52 guys would just swap the sprites out of another game change the name and call it a whole new game. I must have not been watching close enough at the selection screen. That's got to be what happened.

Day 123: Mad Nurse

Mad Nurse is actually more fun to lose than it is to win. Yes, there's a certain frantic excitement to rescuing a house full of babies from themselves, but it's more entertaining to watch and listen as they poison and electrocute themselves. It's not like they're real babies. I mean, I like to think that if a real baby was in danger, I would rescue it. Unless it was one of those babies that won't stop screaming in a restaurant. Just kidding. Actually, there are a lot of babies out there I would like to rescue from their moron parents, but that's called "kidnapping" a carries a hefty prison sentence. Wait, aren't I supposed to be talking about video games?

Day 122: Normy's Beach Beach Babe-O-Rama

I believe you've met Normy. He's the middle aged guy with the ugly clothes and flip flops. He may insist on growing his hair into a ponytail even though he's been bald since he was 24. He's got something you don't and he knows it. So do all the women you try to meet. They say it's "experience." It's actually the Porsche Boxster convertible which they don't know is the crappy Porsche. So when aliens kidnap all these vapid, shallow women, why on earth would we want to help Normy rescue them?


Honestly, I don't. I wish the aliens had taken Normy too. The fewer of these people we have, the better off the entire planet would be. But Normy's little adventure makes for a decent video game. It has some nice cartoony animations, even if the graphics are too pixely to really make the look work as well as it should. The puzzles are solvable without being insulting to my intelligence. If only I wasn't rooting for Normy to fail, I'd really enjoy playing this one.