this week in mild frustration

Hanging out, drinking a little beer at Collision's work, I pulled out my DS. This incurs a bit of scorn from the public--you don't have to be a videogame fansite contributor to understand that bars are not normal venues for handheld gaming. But hey. For some reason, I cannot get my great grey lil' guy to connect to my house's wireless, so when I want to play Spark Wars, I have to do it down the pub.

Also, I really really like playing Gunpey.



Gunpey's a puzzle game; you've got the standard rectangular play area, 5 rectangles wide, 10 tall. Shoving up from the bottom come line segments, four kinds:

^ V / \

You move the segments up and down (only) in their columns, trying to make continuous lines across the play grid. When such a line is made, the segments disappear. If the segments reach the top, as usual, you lose.

It's great on its own, but also comes with a whole raft of (typically) great Mizuguchi touches: strong musical integration, lots of cumulative collection elements, and the like. The game is framed as a "gunfight": you pick a character, and the game sends you off--in yr charming, retarded little spaceship--to another character's planet. You play until one of you loses. Either it's gameover, or you move on to another planet. Win four or five of these, you unlock a new character! Takes about half an hour, usually, on normal.

I've got two characters left to unlock, and I've had those two characters left to unlock for, uhm. Months now. This isn't our usual sort of Reviewieran malaise, either: I play this game a ton. I'd been trying to beat it on hard, but my skills have plateaued, and it becomes clear that I'm never going to crack that code.

I fire it up last night. I'm playing along, on normal. Battery's a little low, sadly, but hey. Just playing to kill some time anyways.

But things get weird. I'm playing...really well. Cranking through, I end up having a MONUMENTAL battle with Vincent:



Seriously, I play against him for better than 20 minutes. Total game time is like 35 minutes at this point. See, I was playing so well that I could actually also monitor the numbers. My previous high score? Like 627,000. This game? I'm at like 850,000. I finally beat Vincent, absolutely sure I've just beat the game, unlocked my second-to-last character!

And then there's another battle. Jesus. I'm gonna crack a million!! Noway can this clown beat me. No. Way.

Then my battery died.

In other news: Wow. Just...wow. His pokemans let him show you them. All of them. This guy...might be the anti-Reviewieran par excellance. Our OCD is always ADD: I've gotta have all of this! No, wait! All of THIS!!

In other other news: some folks have been out on front on this one: Nintendo has...abandoned us. I don't always agree, but then there's this:
one of the few upcoming games I'm stoked on? only being sold at goddamned WalMart. As a retail enthusiast, as a raving Marxist, this news couldn't be any worse.

Looking at Nintendo's website offers no better news. Flush with their crushing successes in these dark, casual times, previous failures are being swept under the rug. Want any support for the GameCube? Well, yer not gonna get it from the manufacturer. Crimony, the only thing about the system that everybody liked was the WaveBird, and you can't get one anymore! Fuckers.

In final news: why, yes, that IS a PAX pass I'm wearing!! Ayup: Reviewiera is sending an envoy to PAX. I'll be the pasty six-foot redhead in all black. Who will you be?