Exposing my socks to the world

Pac-Man Vs. is one of the simplest and most fun games I’ve played in a while.

Everyone knows how to play Pac-Man, right? So picture this: Three people control the Ghosts (Red, Blue, and Green{?}) on the big screen, one person controls the Pac on a GBA, and everyone tries to get to some preset score. The person who plays as Pac-Man gets to see the whole screen while the Ghosts on the Cube get to see a limited area. The Pac gets points in all the standard ways, but the Ghosts have two options: Eat the fruit (which also makes his field of vision bigger temporarily, or eat Pac-Man. Eating Pac-Man steals 1600 points, and then the two players have to swtich controllers.

For some reason or another, someone decided to throw in some kind of Mario-esque voice in the game to randomly scream at the players while the game’s going on. He says stuff like, “This-a looks not so good!”, or, “Pac-Man ate a Power Pellet!”, etc. Other than that, it sounds exactly like a Pac-Man game should.

The bad? The amount of controller switching in an especially close game will quickly turn your controller cables into something resembling a bird’s nest, so at least one Wavebird would be an excellent add-on, otherwise your group will slowly get closer and closer together as the mass of cables grows. Problematic if someone in the room forgot deoderant that day.

I read somewhere (probably the manual) that this game can be played with less than 4 players, but that’s a lie. Sure, all the elements are there, but without the four players, it’s just like a demo mode. It’s like playing Mario Party without the full compliment of 4 players, it’s like a whole other game that’s just not as good.

This game is certainly worth the $20, and it even comes with a copy of Pac-Man World 2 if all your friends leave.

I hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday.

There are quite a few good games that have been released recently (and maybe even a few that aren’t quite so new). At least enough to keep me occupied through the end of the year. I’ll likely be buried under Final Fantasy Tactics Advance or my Legend of Zelda bonus disc for the next two days.

1. Mushrooms make you grow taller.

2. If you find food hidden in a block or a wall, go ahead and eat it.

3. If you ever don’t hear music, a zombie is getting ready to jump through a wall

4. Stores will buy back anything, no matter where you got it from, or what condition it’s in, but they will only give you half price for it.

5. When you kill wild animals, they drop money.

6. The money animals drop is accepted at all stores, worldwide.

7. People who leave their doors unlocked expect you to come in, talk to them, and possibly sleep in their beds.

8. Unless you’re in some sort of vehicle, you will be randomly attacked on any trip you make.

9. A good night’s sleep will heal all wounds and illnesses.

10. If you touch something and it hurts you, it’s evil.

11. If ghosts are blue, you can eat them.

12. On any long trip, you don’t need to worry about bringing food. All you need is a generous supply of ‘potions’

13. If you find a locked door, that just means that you didn’t pick up a key somewhere.

14. Monsters come from the moon.

15. If you get hit, you have about 3 seconds until you can get hit again.

16. I always keep a faery in a bottle in my pocket. You know, just in case.

17. Amnesia is always caused by a conspiracy.

18. Death is not evil, and may even help you if the price is right. In fact, I had Death help me with my laundry the other day. Nothing gets stains out of my slacks better than Death. Well, Death and a little elbow grease.

19. It’s never the first castle.

20. Learn to swim. You don’t float.

Happiness

Sadness

Anger

Frustration

Surprise

Happy about purchasing a new game

Buying KISS: Psycho Circus (and disposing of the evidence)

Playing Hook for the NES

Finals are next week, so I won’t be writing a whole lot of new stuff.

But don’t worry, I’ve decided to resurrect some older articles for you to read in case you missed them the first time around.

I just got my Legend of Zelda bonus disc in the mail yesterday. It has on it:

• The Legend of Zelda
• Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link
• The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time
• The Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask
• The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker (20 minute demo)
• Some movie about The Wind Waker (Think ‘commercial’ without any words)
• The Legend of Zelda Retrospective. This is a little movie of all of the Zelda games released for Nintendo systems (for some reason they left out the CD-i versions).

Just having access to the NES Zelda games in their original form is worth the price of the subscription to Nintendo Power. Around here at the Insanely Overpriced Video Game Store they seem to think that they should go for about $15 each (they also think for some reason that they can sell Crono Trigger for $100. I think they’re nuts).

So far I’ve managed to spend about 20 minutes with the thing. The think I like most about the whole thing is that I don’t have to fiddle with my Game Cube for half an hour wiggling the game around trying to get it to work.

Oh, and that retrospective movie is kind of neat, too.

It took all the creative energy I had in me, but I managed to forge an article out of the raw words that lay all around me.

Then I submitted it to another site.

You should go read it.

Don’t use a rarity guide. Rarity guides can be a great resource for older games and systems, and can let you know if a game is rare or not, but a higher rarity rating does neccessarily mean that the game’s good. Sometimes a game’s rare for a reason. Sometimes a game sucks and nobody bought it, and you shouldn’t either.

Avoid companies that you’ve never heard of. This really applies to PC games more than anything. If you are thinking about buying a new game for less than $20 and it’s by some company you’ve never heard of, you have about even odds that that the game will be good or not. The only problem with shopping the no name companies is that the games start out at mediocre and then go down from there.

Check for a return policy. If you’re going to go the used games route, try to go somewhere that will let you return the game. There’s a game store around here that lets you bring back a game within a week for whatever reason, even if you don’t like it. Very nice, and it lets you play some games you may not have otherwise. The downside? A lot of times the game stores will try to soak you for way more than the game’s actually worth, so you have to be careful.

Keep the price point in mind. If you’re at the store or a yard sale and you spot a game for $3 or less, go ahead and pick it up. Yeah, it’s probably garbage, but it’s not guaranteed to be so. I’ve picked up several games that were on the verge of getting thrown away, and a couple of them are actually worth having.

Maybe this will help you be a little braver in your quest for used and budget games. Who knows? Maybe that $1 game in the back corner of a garage sale will turn out to be the best game you’ve ever played.

It probably won’t, but you’ll have a good idea if it’s any good or not before you get it home.