The last Metroid is in captivity.
The galaxy is at peace…
Holy cow! We’re finally doing another Game Club!
In celebration of our 200th episode of the Player One Podcast and the upcoming release of Metroid: Other M for Wii, we are taking a look back at one of the most acclaimed titles for the Super NES, Super Metroid.
Despite all of the praise that Super Metroid has gotten over the years, the game is over 15 years old now. Does it still hold up after all this time?* Let’s find out by playing it together! Bust out your old cartridge or pick up the game for 800 Nintendo Points from the Wii’s Virtual Console.
We’ll be discussing Super Metroid on episode 201 of the Player One Podcast, so get playing and share your comments and/or memories. You can post them in the comments section of this blog post, in the official thread on our forums, drop us an email, or leave a voicemail (713-893-8069).
* Don’t be a fool. Of course it holds up! Still, maybe you have…odd…taste in games and you’re not a fan of Super Metroid. In that case, we really wanna hear from you.
Here’s the second pair of Atari pencils that 11-year-old Phil bought in 1986, and 35-year-old Phil is still hanging onto in 2010.
Series 1: Centipede
The cabinet art for Atari’s 1980 game, Centipede (as seen to the left), was some of the coolest artwork in the arcades at the time. Sadly, that trippy arthropod didn’t earn a pencil appearance. Instead, the art depicted here was lifted from the box art for the Atari 5200 and 7800 version of the game.
Still, a Hobbit-ish kid armed with a magic wand going up against a cartoony-looking centipede is pretty rad. Green, of course, is the obvious color choice here. I’ve held on to three of these pencils over the years.
Series 1: Haunted House
This is the first pencil that we’re looking at to be based on a console exclusive title and not an arcade game. Haunted House was released in 1981 for the Atari 2600, and the pencil artwork, not surprisingly, is taken from the game’s box art. In the game, the player is exploring a darkened haunted house, and only the walls and the main character’s eyes can be seen in the blackness. To find items, you must light a match that only burns for a short time. I know the game has its fans, but honestly, I could never get into it back in the day. And I played through the 2600 version of E.T., for crying out loud.
With its cool black color and cooler spooky design, this was a popular pencil among my classmates. I only have one in my collection. Does that mean it’s rare? Eh, probably not. I’ll just chalk it up to luck of the draw.
Here’s a slightly odd video game collectible that I haven’t seen get much coverage online—24-year-old Atari pencils!
I first got these pencils when I was in sixth grade, all the way back in 1986. They may, however, actually be a couple years older than that. By 1986, the Atari era had been over for a couple of years thanks to the video game crash of 1983, and Nintendo’s reign was just starting up. This didn’t stop my junior high school from stocking our cafeteria pencil machine with seemingly outdated Atari pencils, though.
Even though nobody really played Atari systems anymore, that didn’t stop my classmates and me from going nuts over these pencils. At a mere ten cents each, kids were buying multiple pencils a day trying to get a complete set. Of course, ample trading took place as well, and highly dubious rumors of “rare” pencils led to all sorts of elaborate deals.
In total, there were 20 different pencils, each featuring a separate game. The pencils were released as two “series” of ten pencils each, and each of the ten pencils within a series was a different color.
I was always an anal retentive sort of kid (a trait that has followed me to adulthood), so I could never bring myself to actually use any of these writing utensils. They were always viewed as a collector’s item. I’ve been hanging on to them for all this time, and I figured that I should take some pictures of them so that more people can learn of their existence. For the next few blog entries here, I will be showing off all 20 of these rare goodies.
Series 1: Asteroids The shiny blue pencils were always the most desired back in the day, and it’s not very hard to see why. Out of all the pencils, their color was the most attractive. Even if you weren’t a fan of Asteroids, the metallic blue finish looked awesome in your pencil case. The blue pencils were the ones that my classmates claimed were the rarest. I don’t know if this was true or not, but I do only have one Asteroids pencil.
Asteroids was first released in the arcades by Atari in 1979. The artwork on the pencil, however, was taken from the marquee of Atari’s 1980 arcade game, Asteroids Deluxe.
Series 1: Battlezone Although not as desired as the blue pencils, these shiny silver pencils were still pretty popular. I have four of these Battlezone pencils.
Battlezone was Atari’s 1980 arcade game that utilized vector graphics to create the wireframe world. I’m not sure where the artwork on the pencil is from, however. If you happen to know, please let me know in the comments section.
Last year, I made a blog post discussing the awesome video game sprites that can be recreated with Perler Beads, small plastic beads that are ironed together to create all sorts of designs. There’s also a long-running thread on our boards about them.
Recently, I was inspired by Atlus’ new PS3 game, 3D Dot Game Heroes, to create my first three-dimensional Perler creation. It took a little planning as I dissected the in-game character model, but I was able to recreate a pixel-perfect version of Frum, the game’s default character.
It turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I then figured that others might want to create their own Frum, so I whipped up a little tutorial. If you’re interested, but click on the grid-licious image to the right and follow the directions. You’ll have your own little Frum in no time.
Oh, and if you do decide to recreate his sword and shield (and you really should–he looks way cool brandishing them), they can be stuck to the figure with a little dab of hot glue. The glue dries clear so it’s hardly noticeable, and it’s strong enough to hold the accessories on as long as you’re careful when moving him around. However, with minimal force, you can pop the dried glue off the Perler Beads, so there’s nothing permanently stuck to your creations.
Thanks to the good folks at Headcase Games, we have two copies of their excellent new iPhone game, 180, to give away.
If you would like to win a copy, simply head over to this thread and post a comment. That’s all. It doesn’t even have to be anything clever (although you might want to share your OpenFeint name). Your post number will be your entry. If you haven’t signed up for our forums yet, this is as good an excuse as any. Hey, it’s free, so why not?
Make your post by 11:59 PM PST on May 14, 2010. After then, we’ll use a random number generator to choose two winners. The winner will receive a private message through our forums with a promo code for the game.
So what is 180? Here’s what Headcase Games has to say about it: Think quick! In the action-puzzler 180, you must flip, shoot, and match combos before the wall of coins can crush you.
Each piece on the gameboard has 2 sides. Touch any coin to flip it 180 degrees. Tap in the empty area to shoot your next coin. Shoot to connect 3 or more of the same front-side color to clear.
If you enjoy games like Tetris and Bejeweled but want something new and addicting, 180 is the game you’ve been waiting for! Full Version Features:
3 Unique game modes: Score Attack, Drop Attack, and Endless
Easy and Hard levels
Set up complex chain reactions and magnificent combos, and be rewarded with huge scores!
OpenFeint integration, challenge your friends on the leaderboards to see who’s the champ.
Comprehensive stat tracking
Colorful, detailed graphics and hi-quality sound effects.
4 Different characters to cheer you on!
Extremely simple to learn, with very deep gameplay that will keep you coming back for more.
Great for kids, adults and hardcore gamers alike, 180 is a unique game that’s suitable for anyone to enjoy.
This is a fairly informal contest, so there’s no laundry list of official rules. Still, here are a few important notes:
Only one entry per person. Feel free to post multiple times in the thread, but only your first post counts as your entry ticket.
In order to play the game, you will need an iPhone, iPod touch, or an iPad. The game requires iPhone OS 2.2 or later.
You’ll also need access to the iTunes App Store in order to redeem the promo code to download the free game.
Even if you don’t win, you should buy the game anyway. It’s pretty darn good, and it’s only $1.99.
About Headcase Games
Headcase Games is an independent mobile game developer comprised of a small team of industry veterans, whose previous credits include creative development on several popular AAA titles – Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series, Neverwinter Nights 2, Alpha Protocol, Heroes of Might and Magic IV, Caesar III, Knights of the Old Republic II, and several others.
Thanks to everyone who entered. A good, old fashioned random number generator has determined our two winners:
juanster and Shakey Steve
Congratulations, gentlemen. Be sure to check your private messages for your promo codes.
And a special thanks once again to Headcase Games for providing us with these promo codes to give away. Even if you didn’t win, be sure to check out 180. It’s a very fun game, and at $1.99, it’s a darn fine deal.
During our most recent episode (#184), we discussed some of the best and worst EGM covers. This was the image that a couple of us were using for reference during that talk.
Well, it’s not the exact image. Some time ago, someone compiled the original image and posted it online, but it only contained covers for the issues up to #232 (the Soulcalibur IV issue). I took it upon myself to edit the image to include the remainder of EGM’s original run as well as the “lost” issue and the two different covers for the reborn EGM.
The gimpy Street Fighter III cover that I mentioned can be seen on the fourth row down, eight over from the right. Just to the right of the Twisted Metal cover (click on the image for a proper view).
Check it out! An actual Player One blog post! An actual sorta-reason to come to our main page! Maybe now we won’t feel all guilty for asking people to go here during our show outro.
I was looking through some old backup CDs from my Ziff Davis days earlier this evening, and I found all sorts of crazy pictures/poorly-Photoshopped images that we used to amuse ourselves back on Expert Gamer and GameNOW. Many of them are extremely in-jokey, “you had to be there” kinda deals, but I figured that “outsiders” would appreciate this one.
There is a bit of a story behind it, though. Back in late 2001, there was a contest to design the movie poster for the then-upcoming Resident Evil film. Mike Vallas, one of the head art guys at Ziff, was a huge RE fan, and he jumped at the chance to design the poster. You might remember Vallas as the guy who told the show-stopping anecdote at the end of our Andy Baran tribute episode (#145).
Contestants were given access to all sorts of artwork, including logos and various poses of the movie’s stars. Most of the pictures were the standard stuff that you might expect…Milla Jovovich brandishing large guns, random zombies…that sorta thing. Among all the images, however, was one picture that really stood out. Instead of a grim-faced shot of Milla or Michelle Rodriguez in some sort of “action movie” pose, it was a close-up of Milla with a delightful grin on her face. It looked remarkably out of place–definitely not an image that would sell a zombie movie.
We all had a good laugh at the picture, and joked about how we should make a poster using that image to enter into the contest. Not one to let a good joke die, Vallas actually went ahead and did so after whipping up a trio of fantastic (and serious) posters for his own entry. This is what he came up with:
We were all extremely pleased with the results. At the risk of unintentionally taking any credit for this, I didn’t create any of it. The design and the tag line were all Vallas. Because Vallas wanted to enter his “real” entries (or maybe just one of them…I can’t remember if there was a limit to the number of entries one could submit), the idea was for me to enter the joke poster. Unfortunately, my laziness (and probably some hectic magazine deadlines) caused me to miss the entry date.
It’s a shame, really. For all I know, the movie producers would have loved the idea. They might have completely reworked the film to fit the poster’s aesthetic. Maybe that movie would have actually ended up being good (ho-ho!).
Bonus Trivia!: Unfortunately, Vallas didn’t win the contest. Strangely enough, however, the winner was another videogame magazine editor: Nick “Nick Rox” Des Barres, of GameFan and Play fame. I don’t recall the exact details of the contest, but Nick’s poster didn’t end up as the one used in theaters/on the DVD case (at least, not that I’ve ever seen). If memory serves, this is Nick’s winning poster.
CJ tells me that we’ve been getting an awful lot of angry voice mails this week in regards to my discussion about Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time during the What Ya Been Playing segment in episode 160.
While talking about the game, I mention that I recently finished it (which I totally did). I then proceed to “ruin” the game for the other guys by giving away the “spoiler” that Clank sacrifices his life in order to save Ratchet, thus providing the final, tragic end to the Ratchet & Clank series.
This offending remark occurs at about the 1:00:35 mark, and boy howdy did some people get steamed. Apparently these folks turned off the episode in a huff before they heard me reveal that I was kidding about the whole thing a few seconds later (~1:00:52).
No, people, I’m not going to blurt out the ending for a new game without some sort of warning. I’m not that big of a jerk.
So there you go, everyone. You can stop writing those strongly-worded e-mails and leaving those angry voice mail messages. Of course, if you’re leaving the voice mails by using the fantastic one-touch voice mail technology made possible with the official Player One Podcast iPhone App (buy it today!), then feel free to call and be as pissy as you’d like.
In short–It was a joke, people! I said as much! Clank doesn’t die at the end of Crack in Time!
A little over three months ago, I excitedly wrote about Philo and Moxie, the two new kittens that my wife, Dana, and I adopted. A few weeks prior, we had lost our beloved cat Mia, whom had been our pet for nearly ten years. We were thrilled to have two such wonderful, energetic animals in our house, and we were looking forward to spending many years getting to know them.
Early this morning, we had to put Philo to sleep. He was a little over six months old.
About two weeks ago, Dana and I noticed that Philo wasn’t quite as energetic as he normally was. He was known for getting into mild mischief by climbing up on our bookshelves or hopping up onto my computer desk to find small items that he could knock to the floor and bat around, but he hadn’t been doing anything like that lately. Figuring that he was simply feeling a bit under the weather, we didn’t worry about this change of behavior too much until it seemed to go on a bit longer than usual. After a few days, we noticed that he felt a bit warm, so we took his temperature (yes, the way you’re imagining). Sure enough, he had a fairly high fever (104.something°).
The next day, November 3, I took Philo to the vet while Dana was at work. They took his temperature again, and it had risen a bit into the 105° range. Severely high temperature aside, the vet also expressed concern with Philo’s relatively large abdomen, which Dana and I had attributed to him getting a little chunky. The vet used a syringe to take a sample from Philo, and she discovered that his gut wasn’t getting large with fat; it was fluid.
This was a sure sign that Philo was suffering from a disease called feline infectious peritonitis (FIP) that is caused by a mutated virus in the cat’s system. It’s a fairly rare disease (roughly 1 in 5000 cats suffer from it), and it only strikes very young or very old cats. This big problem is that it is currently incurable and always fatal. There are actually two forms of the disease, commonly dubbed “wet” and “dry.” Philo had the more common “wet” form which, sadly, is the faster acting of the two.
The vet told me that when a cat is diagnosed with FIP, they usually have to be put to sleep within a month, but two weeks or less is more realistic. With this knowledge, there was little we could do for Philo but try to make him comfortable as his body slowly began to shut down.
Philo lasted six days after his diagnosis, and it was tremendously difficult on Dana and I. Sure, we “only” had Philo for three months, but in that time, we had grown incredibly attached to him (my frequent nickname for him was “little buddy”).
During his last week, Philo’s health seemed to randomly rise and fall. One day, he would barely move, only occasionally getting up to nibble on his food, drink a little water, and use his litter box. At times like these, Dana and I were convinced that it was the end. The next day, however, he would be surprisingly alert. He would still be rather lethargic, but he would have a sudden burst of energy and start to play like he did when he was healthy. This would convince Dana and I that he might be able to fight through for another week or two.
This cycle continued until last Friday when we noticed that he had stopped eating. We figured that his swollen abdomen might be putting pressure on his stomach, making it uncomfortable to eat. Indeed, it made it difficult for him to turn around to groom his hindquarters. We set up an appointment on Saturday to have the fluid drained.
The next day, the vet drained him, removing about 2/3 of a liter of fluid from his lower body. He initially perked up immediately afterward, which gave Dana and I hope, but despite his regained ability to groom himself, he continued to not eat. With his weight and energy levels dramatically dropping over the weekend, the vet advised us to attempt to feed him with a food syringe, which we did on Sunday afternoon. He seemed to enjoy it at first, so things were looking up. Unfortunately, late Sunday night, everything began to fall apart.
Philo vomited up the food that we had given him earlier in the day, along with his pills. He then spent the night periodically coughing up saliva, which had turned thick and foamy. He also wandered over to his cat bed and urinated in it. This was the only time that he had ever not used his litter box.
When he was first diagnosed, the vet told me that FIP strikes hard and fast. Things may seem OK one minute, and the next, everything breaks down. She also told me that some signs that he is ready to go would be a lack of eating, vomiting, and incontinence–all of which Philo was suddenly suffering from.
It was time. As soon as the vet opened this morning, we called and filled them in on our situation. Within minutes, Dana and I were standing in a room, petting our dear Philo for the last time as he slowly went to sleep.
He was far too young for this to happen, and it was far too soon after Mia’s death. Dana and I have been crying an awful lot this week.
Philo was a pretty fantastic cat. When we first saw him, we were instantly charmed by his large, hairy ears and the little mark on his lip that made it look like he had been sipping coffee and stained his fur. We also loved that he was so close to his sister, Moxie. Moxie, by the way, is most likely safe from getting FIP. We had her checked out immediately after Philo was diagnosed.
Philo was trouble, but never harmful trouble. Like I mentioned, he simply loved to explore and climb where he probably shouldn’t. He was also extremely active and very playful. We didn’t have to worry about Philo clawing up the furniture or anything like that, but he might give you a friendly nip on the finger when you were petting him.
I do take some comfort in the fact that both Dana and I got some quality time with Philo before he died. A couple nights ago, he cuddled on our bed with Dana for hours as she played Zuma’s Revenge on her laptop. Last night, he sat on my lap for a few hours as I wrote an article for work (a review of Rabbids Go Home for G4). Of course, I was frequently distracted by my need to pet the little guy, but I’m exceptionally glad that I never took him off of my lap so that I could better concentrate. Moxie also gave Philo a few licks on his face before we took him off to the vet this morning. It was simultaneously the sweetest and most depressing thing that I have ever seen. Dana and I both lost it when it happened.
Luckily, we have lots of pictures of Philo and evenafewvideos, so there is plenty to remember him by. And of course, we still have Moxie, who I must admit has made dealing with this loss a bit easier. The video I am posting below is the last footage that I recorded of Philo. It was recorded on November 5, two days after his diagnosis. This was one of his aforementioned bursts of energy that showed Dana and me that he wasn’t ready to check out just yet.
It looks like Sewart didn’t make a post when he posted the episode, so here we go. And for the record, this episode title is boring. I suggested “Further Activision Gameplay Spoilers,” but apparently that was just too darn clever.
This week! CJ is missing! We’ve got a new theme song! Also, some more talk on Modern Warfare 2 (listen for the spoiler alert)!
Other games discussed in this episode include Forza Motorsport III, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, LEGO Rock Band, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed–Ultimate Sith Edition, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, The San Diego Zoo Presents: The Animals, and more!
Thanks for listening! Don’t forget to visit our new web site at www.playeronepodcast.com. You can leave us a voicemail by calling 713-893-8069 or you can send a comment via MP3 to our email address, playeronepodcast@gmail.com. Don’t forget to join our forums if you haven’t already! Thank you everyone for listening and supporting the show for the three years we’ve been podcasting.
Recent Comments