Lower and to the Left

E3 + Kari Taylor = Hawt

Sheesh. Little plumbers get all the chicks.

Just for you, Bradford, is the Ikari Warriors article. Enjoy.

RESET
I Wonder . . .

The Ending of Ikari Warriors

In what is probably my all time favorite arcade game, Ikari Warriors is also probably the weirdest series to happen in the mid and late 1980’s. Ikari I was a pretty straight forward top down vertical scrolling game with a heavy military theme. Ikari II was actually called “Victory Road” and saw Paul and Vince get shot into another dimension on their way home from saving the world in Ikari I. Part II was pretty much the same game as Part I using the same graphics, the same collision engine, and the same style. In 1989 came Ikari Warriors III with the subtitle “The Rescue.” In this game, the graphics were updated and using weapons became secondary to punching and kicking. Hmm? Certainly the weakest of the three, The Rescue signaled the death knell of the entire series. The original will always be my fave . . . except for the odd ending.

Released in 1986, Ikari Warriors started out okay. A couple of military buddies, Paul and Vince, crash land their WWII era bomber into an undisclosed jungle. Soon, you’re battling your way through enemy soldiers using only your guns and grenades . . . both that can be upgraded - - S, F, L, B anyone?

Soon, though, the game took an odd turn. As you fight your way into the final base, we start seeing some strange technology. Eventually your tiny avatar gets to a road block consisting of four rocket launchers connected to a central object. A well-placed grenade exposes this central figure as an alien that was firing the rockets at you.

Okay.

We keep fighting. A few more screens to the north gives us the ending of the game. To say that the game ends abruptly would be an understatement. I’ve been involved in car crashes that had more of a set up. Here we have a huge, poorly drawn military figure. He says to us . . . “Congraturations! You have rescured colonel cook and received 1,000,000 points. Continue to fight hard and bring freedom to the people you protect. Good luck . . . . . . & good hunting.”

Word for word.

Come on. We weren’t there to rescue anyone. We crashed. We were just trying to survive and find a way out of this odd place. Now we’re being attacked by aliens and being thanked by the Colonel. I think my problem with the ending is that it is so unsatisfying. There’s this alright story about two guys up against a whole army who stumble into some crazy alien stuff . . . and there’s no resolution.

I certainly don’t want this to turn into a WTSHD, but it would have been nice if they cleaned up the ending of Ikari and then tied it into Victory Road more. After all, both games were released in 1986 . . . it would seem that they had the idea for II even before I was completed. I think I’m going to try the Japanese version of Ikari . . . to see if it’s any different.

Here’s an ending that would have worked.

Paul and Vince battle their way through the strange alien/enemy fortress and things start to get a little weird with the alien rocket launcher guy. They blow him up and instead of the Colonel appearing, the game continues for maybe five more minutes of game play.

In that five minutes you start battling an odd mix of the standard blue soldiers, and some other soldiers, soldiers that don’t look exactly right. Maybe their arms are too long, maybe their heads are too big but something about them makes us realize that not all is right with the world. The game doesn’t come out and call attention to these odd new soldiers . . . it’s just left up to our perception of what’s happening on the screen.

Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the mix changes. By the end of the five minutes the soldiers are ALL the odd alien-looking guys. And just when you notice that something is amiss, we come to a huge gate . . . just like the fortified gates that we’ve seen in the game six times already. This time, however, there are some strange cabalistic markings on the walls and maybe a couple of skeletons of the former Pauls and Vinces littered around the place.

Once you blow up the gate and go through we find the Colonel. He should say something like:

Cook: “Thanks guys, for rescuing me from these alien bloodsuckers.”

Paul: “Alien?”

Cook: “Yep. Sumbitches captured me a month ago during paratrooper training at Gitmo. They’ve been trying to brainwash me ever since.”

Vince: “What do we do now?”

Colonel cook pulls out a handful of papers and some journals.

Cook: “I’ve been keepin’ notes. I know where their home world is. Let’s go kick some alien butt.”

To be continued - - -

See. Then the second game would be called Ikari Revenge. And the third game would have come out a year later . . . and not sucked.

Just my opinion.

Pac Man's Natural State is Eating Ghosts

I always hated that guy.

RESET moving nicely. 18 of the 60 articles are written. Today I'll be doing the research and writing of two articles.

1. "The Series Without Sequels" about 'unofficial' game sequels. Think Ergheiz and The Bouncer.

2. "CD Sized Pills" about viral marketing tactics.

I'll keep ya in the loop.

Greatest Franchise Ever

Reserve yours today at Game Crazy!

Practice, man. Practice

So. Even with all of the craziness of this past weekend I still managed to churn out two new RESET articles. "Deep Water: The Creation of the ESRB" and "Useful With Fists" are now checked off in the completed side of the ledger.

I think this week I'm going to cleanse the palate a little. Maybe the goal should be 4 (a combination of) WTSHD and I Wonder . . . pieces, and two of the 'funny' articles. Maybe I'll do the "Unexplored Genres" article and the "Quick Change: The Lonely Tale of Pirate Pete" article.

Hey. With those two being done now, that makes 5 of the 10 historical articles already done. I thought those were going to be the hardest to finish up, what with all the research. I guess not.

Eliminate the unguided.

Sometimes We All Go A Little Nuts

Umm. Okay.

Is My Dorsal Fin Showing?

Exerpt from the "Deep Water" article:

"And as Clive Thompson so deftly put it, videogames might show me HOW to be a killer - - one bullet per victim, adjusting for wind, moving from target to target, etc - - but does that simple knowledge increase my propensity for actually BECOMING a mass murderer? Surely anyone can read a book about car maintenance but does that make them a mechanic? Any person with a library card can check out a technical manual about how to paint . . . but the painting, the creation of something new and wonderful, belongs to a whole other set of rules.

There is a Gestalt about videogame violence that allows us to realize that the game itself is more than a sum of just the parts. The narrative, the frame rate, the polygon count, these are just the pieces of the game itself. The one measure that cannot be quantified is the subjective measure of "gameplay experience." I think it's honest for the ESRB to generate a rating for a game based on the content (the number of explosions, expletives, and murder victims). But to assume that by simply playing a "Mature" rated game I am going to start carjacking people, create havoc, and generally make a nuisance of myself is just plain shortsightedness.

The DESIRE has to be there.

Playing Need for Speed may give me an elusive driving edge. Mastering Time Crisis may teach me to be a better shooter. Enjoying Grand Theft Auto may mean that I'm a sadist. But to assume that just because I play Halo means that I am apt to pick up a gun and go into study hall to work out my aggression . . . well, that just demonstrates how quickly the media latches onto whatever they deem to be my raison d'etre. Chances are, I was a bad person way before I took the shrinkwrap off the box. If I was going to commit a crime, it's more than likely that playing State of Emergency had nothing to do with my decision at all.

We as a society are so quick to try to place blame, to decide WHY this all happened. We would do better to see things for what they are, and not always look for the man behind the curtain.

Maybe I am a bad guy just because I'm a bad guy. San Andreas ain't got nothin' to do with it."