'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe

I claim this is half detailed analysis of whatever games I'm playing and only half semi-intelligible ramblings about popular culture, and in any case only 2 of you lot actually answered the poll :)

talismancer made an interesting post about old games today, and it got me thinking. Like him I own relatively few recent games and tend to play older ones, though not as old as DOS. To give an example some games I've been playing recently and/or frequently are:

Wipeout 64 (N64)
Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island (GBA)
Super Smash Bros Melee (Gamecube)
Metroid Prime (Gamecube)
Okami (Wii)
Twilight Princess (Wii)
Skyward Sword (Wii)

The oldest one in that set is probably Yoshi's Island as that was originally released on the SNES. The newest would be Skyward Sword - I have newer games, but none that I've played recently. Wipeout 64 is something of an anomaly: it's the only game in the Wipeout series that wasn't released on a Playstation of some sort. It's also possibly had the most hours put into it of any game I own, as I just find it such a fun racing game to play. What other racing game lets you throw the racetrack at your opponents?

Super Smash Bros Melee on the other hand easily has the most multiplayer hours, thanks to many, many years of elemnar and I honing our skills at it and generally teaching level 9 AIs to fear the Pikachu with a baseball bat and the Sheik with a star rod. From time to time ThatGNU would join in, and (with the aid of a glass of whiskey!) manage one devastating round against the pair of us before getting hammered in the next few.

The other odd thing about that list is there are no PC games on it. The last bunch of PC gaming I did was a while ago, when I leisurely trundled through Riven, Myst III and Myst IV (I would have started with Myst except the CD for that evaporated decades ago). They're an interesting set of games: Riven has the whole backstory with Gehn, Myst III makes for a comparatively relaxing interlude, while Myst IV has a much deeper plot with a couple of surprising twists. And while none of them are fast-paced action games, they do require a bit of thought and keeping a journal. Apart from text adventures, the only other game where I've been actively keeping notes is Skyward Sword.

I do keep meaning to have a crack at some more PC games again, as there's several that for one reason or another I've never got round to completing. I did enjoy the 5-way Command & Conquer ones in the flat in Brighton - we usually played them as us versus computers, with a general endgame of the AIs getting overwhelmed by Will's unstoppable zeppelin fleet (occasionally the AIs would wise up and gang up on Will, at which point they got flattened by the rest of us). Hmm... I really ought to get in touch with the (ex-)Brighton crew and set up a round of LAN games or something...

Nintendo have done it again.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is, somehow, more awesome than the original Donkey Kong Country.

So far I've beaten the first 4 sections and they've yet to run out of awesome. There's very little repetition in the levels - the level within a world will share a theme, but they'll often have their own mechanic or design to them. For example, while there's several mine cart levels they'll differ in just how you have to play them: so far there's been one riding in the cart, one riding on the cart, one alternating between riding on the cart and hanging from a moving platform, and one riding on the cart where you also have to avoid hitting a rather low and very spiky ceiling.

It's also got a very good tutorial system, in that there isn't one. Instead the tutorial pig will show up in the background telling you (in a speech bubble) which buttons to press. It only appears in the first couple of levels to introduce you to the controls, and then will appear during boss battles if you fail enough times. You can completely ignore the pig if you wish - it's in the background, and doesn't in any way interact with anything else in the level.

The other neat thing is the Super Kong mode: if you die enough times in a level, then the pig will show up and offer to let Super Kong show you how to complete the level. In this mode you basically watch a playthrough of the level, after which the game then unlocks the route to the next one. This means you can advance past a level that's got you stumped. At the same time, the game doesn't mark the level as completed (nor does it give you any pickups from it), so you can go back and properly complete the level.

All in all, a very good game and well worth getting.

I have, at long last, collected all Poe souls, collected all heart pieces, collected all golden bugs and defeated the Cave of Ordeals in Twilight Princess. And I found all the bugs and probably all the heart pieces without a guide. I will admit that I used a guide for a dozen or so Poe souls, but I can't be bothered to wait for night every time.

That fight with the three Darknuts is, I think, the hardest one in the entire game and also in some ways the most enjoyable. You cannot just take wild swings and hope you connect, because Darknut 1 will block, Darknut 2 will hammer you from in front and Darknut 3 will hammer you from behind. You have to actually concentrate and work at it to win against them, which makes it all the more satisfying when the last one finally goes down. It's quite demanding physically as well thanks to the Wii's control system. I wonder how many calories that battle was worth?

A while back I bought some shinyness in the form of a DS. And, like all modern shiny things, it has built-in wireless.

The DS relies on friend codes for adding, well, friends. Here's my codes:
Metroid Prime Hunters: 4382-0448-7571
Phantom Hourglass: 3909-5654-0154
Picross DS: 171913-932582

Comment with your code and I'll add you.


The Wii also has a similar system, although here you use one code across all games: 1528-2710-1226-9571

Again, comment with your code and I'll add you. I've got a bunch of Metroid Prime 3 friend vouchers in want of a good home.

Documenting this for future reference and to help others...

I've been having problems making my Wii connect to the Internet. The Wii Shop was working fine, but it failed to download system updates (error code 32004) or Opera (error code 204904).

My specific setup was a wireless connection to a Netgear WG602v2, wired to a Vigor ADSL 2200 USB, using Demon Internet in the UK. I eventually found that the problem was with the DNS settings. Originally it was set to auto-detect all settings through DHCP. After changing the DNS name servers to those used by Demon, firmware updates and Wii Shop downloads started working again.

How to fix: Go to the connection settings. Pick a connection, and enter the manual setup for it. Set up your wireless settings as usual, but when you get to the DNS settings make sure they are set to manual setup. Enter the IP address of your ISP's DNS servers (*not* the address of your router). Set up the rest as usual (if you don't know your MTU, 1492 usually works).

Yesterday pewterfish and I trundled into Brighton to pick up a few bits for a wiring project, and in the process wandered into Churchill Square.

Where the Wii was being demonstrated (don't worry, I'm not posting any spoilers for TP).





Unfortunately I didn't get a go (too many people crowding round, and I didn't have that much time), but I must say I was very impressed by how well the system worked in live tests. The games on show were Wii Sports, what appears to be a version of Wario Ware, another bunch of mini-games including air hockey, and of course Twilight Princess. I got a good luck at one of the setups, and the sensor bar was stuck on to the bottom of the screen (a nice widescreen TFT) with blu-tack of all things! The bar itself is about 1/2" by 1/2" by 8", give or take a bit. The Wiimote also looks surprisingly small and 'chunky', compared to a usual TV remote.

Looking at people using it, it looks like the controller takes a bit of getting to grips with. Then again, it's not that dissimilar to learning how to use a computer mouse. Wario Ware (or whatever it was) seemed to be the most innovative, by getting you to do such things as swat flies, crank the handle on a paper shredder, write on a piece of paper, and steer a car around. The air hockey was fun to watch - it looked like you were pointing the Wiimote where you wanted the 'sticks' to go, which made it tricky to line it up for throwing the puck around. Having played a PC version (there's a nice one in the DirectX SDK), I can see how hard it could be to begin with. An earlier group seemed to have no trouble after a minute or two, so lets hope I can pick it up easily.

Moving on (skipping Wii Sports as I didn't get a good look at it), we come to Twilight Princess. I'm going to try not to post anything that hasn't been broadcast all over the interwebs (or that you won't find out about 5 seconds in), but if you want the entire game to be a suprise then do not click the cut.

( Twilight Princess (game interaction/engine spoilers) )

Okay, that's the end of the OMGWTFTPLOLBBQ section. They also had a few DS's there, with StarFox or similar on them. Plus there was also a competition to win a Wii, to which I thought "worth a try" and filled one in. I have a couple of photos which I'll be uploading later.


Edit in Feb 2017: finally uploaded the photos. Only took me 10 years to do!