Just today I saw someone selling their Nintendo 64 (a semi-translucent "icy blue" edition) with a couple of games attached. I've got an old TV that has those yellow and white sockets and so the purchase of a good ol' console of some description - for research purposes that is! - is on the cards someday. However, I've felt that the N64 specifically has a pretty casual/for kids kind of aura. Looking at the relatively modest library, scanning names and drawing from a rather muddy pool, or puddle really, of information, I think most of the really gritty or mature titles were ports or new entries for series having established themselves on other platforms, and pressed developers to find external publishers (to do what Nintenwon't!). Just today I happened to pick up a copy of the psychological-horror-themed
Shadow Man, which will serve as a counter-example having seen release on the N64 and multiple other platforms simultaneously.
In this exact bulgy pulsating vein, we kick off today's update with a heaping helping of
Doom 64 guts and spillings. Try mapping the numpad to camera controls in a PC FPS: gives you an appreciation of why console FPS runs tend to have jagged edges in the area of movement. The same guy what done dem easy mode run last April now done done hard mode run in
0:48:40. Runner name is
Phillip 'ZELLLOOO' Shanklin. Me and ktwo were both mighty impressed with the vastness of the runner's ken (not a muddy puddle) what regards out-of-the-way medkits and other forms of emergency munitions - you're Doom'd to need 64 of them during this run! See what I did there? No wait, I've got more runs!
Gran Turismo is insanely popular. Two releases, the first and third, finished top two in that order amongst realistic driving games on
gamerankings.com and number one with its five years in full-out hardcore heart-failure-inducing Japanese "Ganbatte kudasai!" development* has the most sales out of
anything on the PS1. Maybe everyone else knew this?
Given this spectacular, roaring success of the series as a whole, despite its inferior scores, it is
Gran Turismo Concept: 2001 Tokyo's unassailable birthright to be brought slippers to in the morning or early afternoon, whenever it feels like alighting off its sumptuous
Hastens Lenoria king-sized bed; Slippers in which it can drift down the stately manor's elliptical foyer staircase and out the oaken double doors directly into its brand new state-of-the-art...
pod car? I was expecting something like the "Castrol Tom's Supra" (who's Castrol Tom?) Toyota actually auctioned a
real-life reproduction of once. This is the car speeding
'adeyblue' through most of the races and trials, barring those requiring good dirt handling, where he "slips" into something more suitable. Going about this pulls the tarp off each of the typically rather numerous extra automobiles and brings the game to 100% completion. Minimal mistakes, maximal speed, single-segment,
1:21:38. The best part is opting for the pace car so you can bump off it to optimize one turn before becoming ITS pace car instead, which might be considered swag by some...
Of the four characters selectable in
Fighting Force, Mace is the most appropriately named. She doesn't wield a medieval wrecking ball though, nor does she flourish a caustic aerosol can. Furthermore, ain't no-one "
shaving their face in the dark" with some either. That leaves us with only one logical conclusion: it's that she
embodies either maces, the swingy kind, and/or Mace, the chemical compound, originally consisting of "CN", phenacyl chloride, in hydrocarbon solvents but more recently replaced in common usage by pepper spray, "OC", and often found in a three-part solution that also has the OC with some ultraviolet dye for easy spotting of the fended-off aggressor (
LotBlind Trivia FlashTM). I'm willing to bet, seeing as the rest of the troupe bear names less inviting of dissection, that this incredibly appropriate nomination symbolizing female empowerment was fortuitous - that or taken from somewhere else.
All the enemy types keep to more run-of-the-mill appellations that someone hammered out on their keyboard between arriving at work and the first copy machine jam. How do we know them though when verbality is at an all-time low? Is there supposed to be a news crew behind the action cam with a reporter making sure to catch everyone's names? If you've been waiting for a chance to level accusations of "being too dog-dang clever for his own dog", here's where you'll notice getting furiously winked at. As for
'Soulless' (the
Trilby guy), he likes to keep to a deft double high kicks and a low roundhouse kick most of the time (of
0:27:59) in this reportedly quite shoddy PC port, played on Easy.
*Producer Kazunori Yamauchi "I would wake up at work, go to sleep at work. It was getting cold, so I knew it must be winter. I estimate I was home only four days a year." And yes, [death by] overworking genuinely is one of Japan's social issues: this aspect of the culture is reflected in the dad in Earthbound never being at home even though they're in America.
