Bruno's Blog

Author: Bruno

  • Introducing Saturn Saturdays

    Introducing Saturn Saturdays

    After more than 5 months – nearly half a year! – I am finally back with a new series of mini-reviews. Next console up? The inimitable Sega Saturn.

    I never had a Sega Saturn growing up and, as far as I can recall, never knew anyone who had one. Even my friend, Steven, who would end up getting both an SNES and a Genesis as well as a PS1, N64 and Dreamcast skipped right over the Saturn. In fact, I believe Steven had gotten a 32X or a Sega CD – maybe both! I suspect in hindsight it probably just a marketing issue – I doubt he knew about it before it was gone.

    But that makes it a special sort of treat to go “back” to these games I never played or even heard about when they were new. I haven’t yet been able to test these out multiplayer, but I’m hoping to do another full review soon.

    Vatlva

    A 6-player vehicle combat game that was only released in Japan. Really, really fun in multiplayer and even pretty fun in story mode. It eschews the 3D third-person perspective that was most prevalent in the genre for a strictly top-down 2D affair. There are a few control styles, but I prefer the second one. The face buttons let you do a melee attack, a shield, weaker bullet attack, a stronger missile attack, and two rear-facing attacks that differ based on who you’re playing. I can’t think of very many games that do this – Car Battler Joe on GBA is similar and was made by the same people, but is almost strictly geared for the single-player experience. I think Shipwreckers! on PS1 has a similar multiplayer setup, but I haven’t tried it yet (though I’m eager to if it is anything like this one).

    Guardian Heroes

    Another 6-player game, though this arena mode is mostly a sideshow, I think. The main gameplay mode is a beat ’em up that is restricted to 2-player cooperative. Instead of being a free-roaming belt-scroller, like most beat ’em ups of the time, Guardian Heroes lets you jump between 3 different ‘rows’ along the horizontal plane, a system which was utilizes in some Neo Geo games. The reason for this is that it allows players to use a Street Fighter style fighting input system to pull off special moves. In truth, I find this a little fiddly but combined with the RPG-style level-up system and branching paths, it does add up to a unique experience that is worth playing a few times with a friend.

    Three Dirty Dwarves

    A 3-player console beat ’em up is a bit of a rarity and this one plays a little differently than the usual Final Fight clone. Instead of having a health bar, each of the three titular dwarves gets knocked out after a single hit. However, a single whack from a friend can bring them back to life, which balances this out significantly. Each dwarf has a melee attack and a ranged attack in addition to a jump button, but they play pretty differently because each is equipped with different weapons. The aesthetic for this one is a little odd, something between Ralph Bakshi, Boogerman and The Head, which also sort of describes the story. This one definitely feels like a game that – technical issues aside – could have fit right into the early 90’s Sonic ‘tude era Genesis line-up. I like that, personally, but YMMV.

  • Super Nintendo Sunday (3)

    Super Nintendo Sunday (3)

    Firestriker
    Pieces
    Street Racer

    First update with 4 players! Alex and Peter both showed up this weekend, so we replayed recent games with more players. I’ll update the reviews to reflect my thoughts upon additional plays with additional players soon.

    Street Racer: We played this one with 3 a few weeks ago, but we somehow played a beta version of the game. We played the final version this time and it was much better than the beta, but… still not a good game at all. The total lack of items in this one really hurts it in my opinion. Some of the character weapons are ‘okay’ but usually whoever races better is sure to win. That’s probably fine for some people, but doesn’t fit our game group as much. The Rumble mode is terrible and slow, and the Soccer mode didn’t work for us in 3 or 4 player. Cannot recommend.

    Pieces: Had to try this one with 4 and it was great! The All Play mode is pretty long, though; it’s a real time investment. We probably had more fun passing the controller back and forth in the versus mode. All Play was still fun, and having another player did help with some of the runaway leader issues we had in 2 or 3, but the shine has worn off a little with that mode for me. To be fair, the versus mode has risen a little so my overall view of the game hasn’t changed too much.

    Firestriker: Another one we had to try with 4 people. This one lived up to my expectations with 4 players; very fun! We were able to try more of the “Soccer Style” multiplayer maps, and I found that there is a surprising amount of variety there. Some of the maps have a divider that makes it feel more like traditional Pong or Breakout. Other modes let you cross the field, which makes it feel a lot more like soccer or hockey. Then, there are different kinds of obstacles in different layouts. The free-for-all mode isn’t as good, to be honest, but still fun enough for a round or two palette cleanser between matches of the soccer mode.

  • Super Nintendo Sunday (2)

    Super Nintendo Sunday (2)

    Street Racer
    Pieces
    Micro Machines

    Just a quick weekend update. Another one with just me, Tiff and Alex! I was tempted to play either Lost Vikings or Crystal Beans From Dungeon Explorer since they both play up to three. But the former only plays three on Genesis (which I’ll eventually get to but not yet) and the latter is a bigger time investment to really get anything out of it. So we ended up playing:

    Street Racer: We thought this game was terrible, but we were playing a protoype version! There was no sound and the Soccer and Rumble modes were borked. Would have gotten two thumbs down all around but we’ll save judgment for next time.

    Pieces: All three of us really enjoyed this one, two thumb up from me and Tiffany and one from Alex. This is a puzzle game where you compete to put together jigsaw puzzles. Played two and three player. Full review coming pretty soon for this one.

    Micro Machines: A classic party game. One criticism I have is that the way scoring works kind of makes it hard for players with less skill to have fun. I’d only give it one thumb up for that alone, though otherwise Alex and I both like it a lot. Tiff gives it a shrug.

  • Introducing Super Nintendo Sundays

    Introducing Super Nintendo Sundays

    Panic Bomber
    I Love Golf!: Out of Bounds Club
    Firestriker

    I usually play games with my friends on weekends. I’m setting a goal for myself to start logging these plays and posting at least brief thoughts on the games. One fun way (well, fun to me) is to work my way through my backlog based on console. Super Nintendo is the most classic retro system, so why not start there? Most of these will eventually, I hope, get full reviews.

    Super Bomberman: Panic Bomber World: Technically a Super Famicom-only release. Something between one thumb up and a shrug from all of Tiff, Alex and I. Not bad but best in short bursts.

    I Love Golf!: Out of Bounds Club: Another one that never got released outside Japan. Played this two and three player. 8 holes was the perfect length for two but a little long for three. I’d stick to four holes there. I kind of wonder about downtime with four players. Two thumbs up from Alex and I, but Tiff only gave it one thumb up.

    Firestriker: The first game I reviewed for this blog (or ever, really). Two thumbs up from all of Tiff, Alex and I. Easy to pick up and play and has a little bit of an addictive, one-more-go quality. I think it would be even better with four.

  • Game Review: Firestriker (SNES)

    Game Review: Firestriker (SNES)

    Firestriker surprised me. On the surface, the idea of using Breakout-style gameplay in an action-adventure setting didn’t seem like it would work for me. I’m not a huge fan of Zelda games, a comparison I’ve seen a couple times, and Breakout is at best okay. But I was wrong! The addition of different kinds of enemies and objectives really adds some depth and complexity to the basic Breakout formula. And it isn’t an action-adventure or Legend of Zelda-style game at all; those elements are basically aesthetic.

    The single-player mode is definitely a spin on Breakout; I believe I’ve seen that it was marketed as a pinball game and that’s off the mark. Most levels follow the basic structure of trying to break bricks on the opposite side while making sure the “Trialight” doesn’t go through your own side. Firestriker adds a few elements on top of this that make it a lot more interesting, though. Your ‘paddle’ is a person and he has a lifebar now, because the different boards have different enemies and obstacles to avoid (while still juggling the basic challenge from Breakout). There are also a few levels that add different objectives to fulfill, like finding the key to go through the door or destroying all enemies of a specific type. Some maps require you to use specific characters that you unlock throughout the game.

    The two player co-op is just the single player game except what would be the ‘blocker’ you control with the L and R buttons is replaced by a second player. I like this because it actually makes the game more challenging and makes it feel like a true cooperative experience. You need to communicate and coordinate your actions in a way that transforms the gaming experience entirely even though the basic mechanics are exactly the same.

    There’s also a ‘Multi Mode’ game option for up to four players. There are several maps that come in two different ‘flavors.’ The first is like hockey or soccer where two teams try to score with the “Trialight” (the ball you use to score in the game). The second is comparable to Sugoi Hebereke or Super Smash Bros where players try to knock each other off of platforms in various different stages with different brick-breaking elements which are sort of neat and unique. Tiff and I played a little of each and it was pretty fun for a few minutes even just 1v1.

    What Did They Think at the Time?

    Well, this little blurb from EGM is very close to a concise summary of what I just wrote:

    lower score than I would give it, though

    Interestingly, EGM2 also reviewed this and gave it an even higher score:

    now that’s a little more like it

    Game Players had mostly good things to say and called it ‘unexpectedly fun,’ which I certainly agree with, but only gave it 69%:

    we’ll circle back to this

    What Do We Think Now?

    Overall, I have to say that the contemporaneous reviews I could find for Firestriker more or less nailed it in terms of what they said. But their scores don’t exactly align with what mine would be even though we don’t have any huge substantive disagreements for the most part.

    That’s interesting to think about and explore. Something that probably hurt it at the time, but doesn’t really factor into my assessment at all, is the length. The graphics definitely aren’t technically impressive for the standards of 1994, especially when you consider the next generation of gaming systems had arrived (though the 3DO and the Jaguar are hardly the best examples of the fifth generation) but who cares? They’re serviceable, which I mean as a compliment.

    Game Players in particular also just has some dumb categories.

    My hunch is that what really drives this difference, though, is the way they are getting to their number score. Now, mathematically, they obviously aren’t taking their score in each category and then using the average to come to their overall score — both EGM2 and Game Players rate it higher overall than those ‘fundamental’s would imply. But I’m not interested in looking at the constituent parts of the game like that at all, really. The sound and graphics must have dragged it down in aggregate.

    Anyway! Enough discursions. The ‘campaign’ mode in both single-player and co-op is just solid fun, and might not rate as a hidden gem alone. Tiff and I didn’t quite beat the game on our very first try, but we got very close. It will only take a few hours for most people to see the end screen. We were glued to the task the whole time we were playing, though. Even when one of us died we were actively engaged in trying to help and cheer on the other player.

    But where the game goes from good to great is in the multiplayer party mode. There are about 10 different maps in this mode, though some of them repeat with minor variations (mostly block placement). Most maps have a soccer/hockey/traditional Breakout objective of putting a ball into a goal, but a few are more of a free for all battle mode where the objective is to knock everyone else off the platform and be the last man standing. We only played with three players, but I’m sure it would be even better with four.

    Bruno
    Tiff
    Alex

    Everyone in the game group liked this one! ++ all around

    In my view, this game deserves to be mentioned alongside the great party games on the Super Nintendo like Super Bomberman, NBA Jam, and Micro Machines. To be fair, this checks a lot of boxes for me. I’m much more likely to play two player or multiplayer games than single player games. Firestriker gives us a fun version of both. But it doesn’t fit neatly into a niche; the co-op mode is, for my money, a lot more fun than I’ve ever had playing through the Super Bomberman games cooperatively. The very justifiable reaction to that is, “who cares about co-op in games like Bomberman?” I hope to review all 5 of the Super Bomberman games on Super Nintendo (well, Super Famicom) eventually, so I won’t belabor it here, but that series benefits from repeated iterations. In a head-to-head comparison between their 4-player modes, Firestrikers is probably just a notch below.

    Still, even if it doesn’t strike a fire under you the way it has for me, this game has a lot to offer and it’s definitely worth checking out if you can ever play in-person with one or more friends.

  • Random Thoughts on Cryptomining and Arkansas Politics

    Random Thoughts on Cryptomining and Arkansas Politics

    First, to level-set, I want to be clear that I would never have voted for Act 851 of 2023 that was snuck through at the end of the session. It takes away what should be an obviously legitimate authority of local government. My view on preemption is that states should set a basic set of rules and that localities should be able to build on top of those regulations to respond to local concerns and local interests. I support politicians of either party that vote for good things and don’t vote for bad things. That’s not enough to animate a political movement, unfortunately.

    And in particular, that is not how the Arkansas legislature generally feels about local democracy – over the years, they have preempted local decision-making authority in a variety of ways – often in response to local regulations in places represented by Democrats like Fayetteville or Little Rock.

    So, it was no surprise to me when it sailed through.

    I am a little surprised the extent to which the face-eating leopard caucus is surprised that the leopard ate their face. Senator King himself voted for SB202 in 2015 that retroactively prevented cities from enacting ordinances protecting LGBTQ individuals from discrimination. Pretty directly telling us that rural voters and their concerns matter more than urban ones. I think that matters a lot, because there’s no indication the GOP feels anything but enmity towards the areas Democrats represent and govern. Campaigning against the liberals and black people in Little Rock seems to actively help GOP candidates.

    So second, I think political parties “are not organized to promote ideas but loose federations of machines for getting enough votes to enable their party to lay hands on the spoils.”

    The hypocrisy, then, doesn’t bother me. I expect it. But in that light, I’m even more surprised that some people seem to think Democrats swooping in and helping GOP state representatives and state senators prevent themselves from being primaried would be good politics for Democrats.

    For example, Democrats are why rural hospitals in Arkansas still exist, something that helps way more people in rural areas than changing cryptomining regulations would. I think that it actively undermined Democratic electoral chances here in Arkansas if anything. Does anyone else think differently? At least, I would like to see a more developed political argument than I have that isn’t just based on what would be the best policy. I’m not even convinced it would get them a headline anywhere but the Arkansas Times, much less to leading to my folks and their neighbors out in Okolona voting for them en masse.

    On the substance, the concerns are real, but many are structural rather than specific to datamining in my view. What I mean is that only 10 to 20 percent of the water-usage we hear cited is directly used by miners. The other 80-90 percent is used in fossil fuel power plants to make sure our dino juice processors don’t die from heatstroke. I don’t know how much energy a cryptomine uses compared to a steel mill [i] or a lumber mill – partially because these things can vary wildly – but I do know the legislature likes burning coal, chopping trees, digging up metal and all other kinds of resource and energy intensive industries. And I know that our water infrastructure is bad, particularly in many areas of South Arkansas and the Delta. Those things are pressing issues we should address regardless. Narrowly tailoring something to crypto kicks the can down the road.

    An accelerationist might even say it’s good to let the GOP put a strain on the water and energy infrastructure they’ve created and underfunded. If it’s because they sold their constituents out to big business – even better! Maybe the people in Eudora will finally get something when the rusty pipes burst in Bono, too.

    I won’t go that far, but I at least want to think through what it means for Republicans to expect Democrats to save them like this. Did anyone even offer them anything, or were they expected to do it out of the goodness of their hearts? How often do politicians do that?

    Well, Democrats usually prioritize country over party politics, so it is a good assumption.

    During the Great Recession, our federal response was inadequate due to GOP intransigence and politicking, causing lengthened periods of high unemployment. They then used that economy to beat Democrats in subsequent House and Senate elections. But Democrats didn’t try to craft policies that cut out conservative states that were underfunding their automatic stabilizers like their UI systems, cutting people off SNAP prematurely, etc. Liberals are usually happy to save conservative voters from conservative politicians even though it doesn’t benefit them politically.

    As I wrote for the Arkansas Times, a similar situation played out during the COVID-19 recession, where Democrats continued to subsidize individuals and state and local governments long after Republicans would have liked. That’s why the US has such a good economy compared to our OECD peers right now.

    Republicans in states like Arkansas turned around and used this economic boost to cut taxes for the wealthy, underfunded public service budgets for the rest of us, and then campaign against big spending Dems on inflation.

    This pattern definitely needs to be disrupted for the good of our political system. In some ways, you can see how this dynamic leads to J6 and the muted reaction our institutions have had to it. Sympathy for me but not for thee.

    None of this is to say Arkansas Democrats have thought through things in these terms. I have no direct line of communication with anyone in the legislature anymore, so I couldn’t tell you either way, but I doubt it. Probably just want to go home.

    But, for my taste, commentators and observers should either think more about our political system and what it incentivizes or focus more narrowly on what would be the optimal policy. We do everyone a disservice when we conflate the two.

    [i] A rough calculation of BRSM’s energy use for making 3.3 million tons of steel annually would be in the terawatts, for example, and not so dissimilar from a cryptomine – roughly 5,000 kWh per ton produced is, I think, about 11 TWh or about 1/5 of the global energy use of cryptomining just for one steel mill. But check my math.