Now we’re getting into branching off of handheld games for the most part and onto console gaming now as by this time, we owned one of the then-current generation (specifically, a GameCube). Then it came to branching off of Nintendo and into Sony with the PlayStation 2. Enjoy!
2004 – Mario Kart: Double-Dash
I found out about this game with my brother when we played the demo at the fye (remember that store?) at the Natick Mall before it became the Natick Collection, and boy we were laughing our asses off when we were racing down the Mario Circuit track. We persuaded our mom (who was with us) to get it, and at some point we did end up getting it. What happened afterwards was another opening of Pandora’s Box where we played this game to death with friends and family whenever the occasion arose.
When I played this as a young kid/teen, we were often just playing for fun and didn’t really know of unlocking more characters, karts, and tracks. I had an idea they existed thanks to reading the Prima guide at various Game Stops and E.B. games stores, but it wasn’t until I had more knowledge of how to use the internet to find game strategies that I knew there was unlockable content. Until then, it was racing on the same tracks and bombing everyone in Bob-omb Blast.
Eventually I did manage to get everything in the game, and the process was honestly frustrating, as by the time I was grinding for it, I knew about the game’s questionable RNG thanks to playing Mario Kart Wii by that point (the most notorious Mario Kart game for its RNG). Also around this time, I was in college and my video game club threw around an idea for a tournament where entrants had to mimic the switching of the racers as they swapped in the game. Predictably, that never materialized.
2004 – Donkey Kong Country (GBA)
I’ve played this game a lot as well, and it came in our laps after my great uncle (who also had a knack for video games) gifted it to us. It’s funny enough that we also got the Japanese port, so my brother and I often referred to this as Super Donkey Kong for a while.
Going for the 101% completion rate is certainly a thing. That bonus room in Oil Drum Alley? How could you find it without a guide? What about those BS temple levels? Trying to complete Candy Kong’s dance tasks perfectly? Ugh. Regardless, the DK Attack mode was another challenge altogether, and one I plan on investing more time into. Speedrun? Could be a stretch.
2004 – The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie video game
I feel it’s necessary to mention this one because it’s one of the few licensed games I’ve played, and it’s one that’s ACTUALLY good.
We played plenty of this game when we first got it, but we never beat it. I did eventually during my senior year of college, and I’ve come to recognize there are some major flaws. For example, the need to acquire tokens to play new levels, forcing the player to replay levels to acquire hidden tokens. Or maybe the punishing difficulty towards the end of the game. Even then, the game still has the charm of the show.
Spongebob and Patrick’s attacks in the game harken to their personalities/interests in the show: Spongebob has his karate gloves. Patrick’s portliness is used for his slam attack, etc. . They also have their own challenges: Patrick has the Floating Block Challenge, for example, while Spongebob has the Spongeball Challenge.
Might I also mention the really good tracks in this game. The music is really good in this game. The music for slide levels is a banger. The Disco Star track is so dang catchy but it’s too short. Bubble Blowing Baby Hunt is just other-worldly.
2004 – Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Oh god, do I love this game.
I remember playing this to a point, then coming back to it, watching Chuggaaconroy’s videos, and trying to play the game but doing so terribly. Then there was a point where I was playing the game again, doing another playthrough, using a guide, and then actually beating it. Then I went to my old file and beat it. And both times, I also vanquished the Pit of 100 Trials first try. So many memories. Characters! A plot! Game mechanics!
Goombella? Spunky. Koops? Adorkable. Flurrie? Fabulous. Yoshi Kid? Awesome. Vivian? Best. Bobbery? Reliable. Ms. Mowz? Sassy. Oh, and I’m not joking when I say “best”. Her story is really something. A trial in self-confidence. The original plot, as you may or may not be aware, has Vivian as transgender, and this was written out in some localizations (including in the US, unsurprisingly), although I don’t feel the morals were really lost. I feel the “censored” version still works well, and the original one adds another dimension to it (and it also makes some of the underlying morals all the more sense). Outside the plot, she also proves to be the best partner in the game, although each partner has their own unique and reliable use.
Villains? So funny. The unique laughs of the X-Naut commanders, Bowser always getting screwed over, the dubbing of the Great Gonzalez (a carryover of the original, funnily enough), Beldam eating her words, Cortez proving to actually being an ally, etc.
Combat? Fun and interactive. Easy to pick up, gradual difficulty towards mastery.
Music? So. Many. BANGERS. The Sewers. Battling the dragons. And that track in the X-Naut Fortress. It’s all audible chocolate.
So yea. I love this game to death.
2005 – Onimusha 3: Demon Siege
This was my first venture into hack-and-slash, and unsurprisingly, this was also one that my dad first played.
I didn’t really think of mentioning this game at first, but I’ve realized it’s one that is quite important to take note of. For one, this game was the first rated-M game I had any real exposure to and it’s quite brutal even for a PS2 title. The opening movie that’s on the game disc really showcases the violence level that Onimusha games touch upon (at least on viewing, because this is the only title I’ve played).
Of course, much like many games I used to play, I was exposed to the game’s “easy mode”, although it was through my dad: while there is a boss at the end of the first level, I consider that one to be more of an introductory boss, as the one at the end of the second level is truly a ferocious one for new players who have no idea what they’re doing, and the game’s easy mode unlocks upon two deaths in the same level (most often two deaths against the same boss). Naturally my dad undertook this and not long after, we bought the official guide that Brady Games published (which we still own, might I mention, and I one I used often). Having read through the book and watching my dad play through the first third of the game, I knew what to expect so I began to grind out the game’s equivalence to currency or experience to enhance my weapons to make the second boss a little easier.
Obviously my knowledge of the game and its mechanics have improved drastically as I largely don’t need a guide aside from the infamous gas chamber puzzle, although there are times in which the game is quite challenging. Also, I still have yet to unlock all of the game’s content, and I hope to do so at some point. The process of unlocking the “ultimate mode” was challenging as the minigame that unlocks it is quite difficult. Additionally, unlocking the Black Vest is one that remains quite difficult to do since it requires completing of the “Critical” training mode, and if anyone knows anything about Criticals/Issens in Onimusha, they’re difficult to pull off unless you’re ultra-skilled, which I don’t think I ever will be.
I’d also like to highlight the voice acting in this title as well, because I’ll be honest – the English one is quite tacky and sometimes just flat-out bad. If Capcom ever decides to remaster this title (which they did with the first game, and I hope they do remaster all four main titles), I hope there’s an option to hear the Japanese audio, because I’ve seen gameplay with it and it’s a lot better. Do check out this video if you’re either into the series and/or have played this title with the English audio, because it’s the game being played with the best skill. Also, who doesn’t love Kaneshiro Takeshi?
2005 – Super Mario 64 DS
I played the original version of this on N64, but that was at friends’ homes and in very limited capacity. When I saw a classmate play the minigames and then played some of the demos at target, I somehow managed to get this one, but interestingly, my copy was used so it already had 36 stars acquired. I eventually began to learn more about the game as I played on, and eventually I was able to acquire all 150. I have since played files from scratch, including one where up until the final course (Bowser in the Sky), I didn’t quit the game and simply closed the lid on my Nintendo DSi LL (while charging whenever necessary) to see how many lives I could collect. I also developed a path to acquire stars in a specific order, as well as completing the main courses in order. Fun times!
The thing is, I spent plenty of time just remembering how the courses work to gain mastery of the game, and I also spilled a ton of downtime just playing the mini-games. They’re a great time-waster! The Luigi’s Casino games are mindless fun, as are the random puzzle games where you wonder why you made a stupid move. It also doesn’t help that some are “endless” where at some point you kind of just get tired and quit like with “Wanted!” (It’s so funny that Luigi is most often the one you have to look for in that game).
I do have to mention that I did end up playing the original game on N64 seriously during my senior year of college (more on that later), although by the time I got to Tick-Tock Clock (deep in the game, for those unfamiliar), I had enough. While I feel that there are plenty of people who prefer the movement on N64 due to the full 2D capabilites an analog stick provides, I found that the d-pad on the DS allowed for tighter control, as I could move straight in a direction and not just suddenly move in a random direction I didn’t want to go in. The camera was also unbearable on N64 and was excruciatingly frustrating to deal with. It didn’t help that I also had access to my DS cartridge and was able to compare and contrast on the fly. I just feel like the remake is a vastly improved version of the original that it could honestly replace it with the various improvement in quality plus the additional content that was added (aside from the minigames which are really just a bonus icing on the cake).
Anyway, I feel like plenty will disagree with my opinion (speedrunners sure as hell will), but I just think the original just didn’t age well at all while the DS remake definitely has.
2005 – Mario Kart DS
I’m putting this one in largely because of the effort that went into getting perfection in this game.
I can’t gush enough about the courses in this game (for the most part). Waluigi Pinball might single-handedly be my favorite Mario Kart course ever, with Electrodrome and Mt. Wario from Mario Kart 8 and Coconut Mall in Mario Kart Wii being close behind. I even developed an all-cup tour (a mode in Double Dash that isn’t in this title) that crests, in loose-order from my least favorites to most favorites, starting with Figure-8 Circuit to Waluigi Pinball (though Rainbow Road is the penultimate course). Airship Fortress and Delfino Plaza also deserve mention here because they’re fun tracks with amazing music as well.
I also love the addition of the Retro Courses (Shell Cup, Banana Cup, Leaf Cup, and Lightning Cup), because it allows for a different take on courses in previous entries in the series. Granted, some courses aren’t noteworthy picks (Baby Park, really?), but there are some cool ones (Banshee Boardwalk, Mario Circuit 1, Sky Garden, to name a few) as well.
The driver choice is something I also appreciated, as each character had unique strengths and karts to work with that I wound up trying many different ones: Mario and Peach with the Standard Karts (the latter being a lot of fun thanks to high “drift”), Yoshi and the Egg 1 (my favorite), Luigi with the Poltergust 4000, and Dry Bones in the Dry Bomber, to name a few.
I mentioned previously that this game has punishing RNG, and it definitely drove me insane countless times. At some point, I decided to get three stars on all of my Grand Prix scores, and this took a long time to accomplish (largely because of Mirror Mode). Eventually after accomplishing that feat, I noticed that sometimes my Mirror Mode times were slower in some of the cups, so I decided to take on the incredibly difficult task of having my Mirror Mode times be the fastest in Grand Prix, and furthermore, each time is set with a different character. However, if you know anything about Mario Kart, Mirror Mode is the hardest difficulty, so naturally that just means a bunch of Blue Shells to crap all over your times. Not fun! Most often I could tell if a run was slow enough to where I knew I wasn’t breaking the time I needed, and it all came down to Star Cup. So many attempts died. Eventually, though, I was able to finally get it down and the challenge was over.
I also haven’t talked about Mission Mode, but I’ll keep it brief. These are quite challenging, and getting three stars on all of them wasn’t easy, although eventually I was able to get that down too. I have to mention that the last mission of beating Wiggler is incredibly challenging, but also very fun to do so I wasn’t raging all that much (unlike Grand Prix d:).
2006 – Star Wars: Battlefront II (2005)
Talk about a shooter experience.
I can’t nerd enough about this game. So freakin’ fun. Brain-dead AI? Sure. But that’s what makes this game that much more fun and great to nerd over.
We got this game thanks to my brother playing its predecessor with one of his friends, and we played this a ton. My brother and I went hard at each other in the main Conquest multiplayer game type, but we also played plenty of Hunts, 2-Flag CTF (Capture the Flag), and much more. We also played the Galactic Conquest mode to no end, and it got to a point where we had learned how to earn the various award weapons and what not.
If you’ve played this game before, you probably know of the different classes in the game. Standard troopers are an excellent way to get accustomed, but most often the Engineer class is one experienced flock to a lot for its “overpowered” ability to simply drop ammo and health, effectively prolonging their time on the battlefield. I think the most infamous and notorious reward in casual play is the ability to play as the Heroes/Villains. Playing as Palpatine? The master has arrived (my brother and I would joke that he was saying, “yo momma has arrived”). Jango Fett? You’re going to make him rich! Then there’s the hidden Heroes/Villains on Mos Eisley (play Assault on that map) which is all sorts of nonsense.
And then there was Darth Maul. Darth. Freaking. Maul. Playing as the budding Sith lord meant a death sentence for the opposing team, and even that could be an understatement. If you were playing against someone as Darth Maul, you knew you were in for a world of pain, because you were going to die. A LOT. Anyone I’ve talked to about this game knows of how broken Darth Maul is. The range and attacks from his saberstaff is absurd. This is no more apparent than on Polis Massa where the halls are so narrow that anyone in sight of him is doomed to die. And if you know anything about how the AI in this game works, it’s brain-dead to the point where every AI-controlled character does one simple thing: rush at the enemy lines. That can absolutely screw you over on Conquest where you only have 150 lives shared between you and the AI soldiers, especially on Polis Massa! His power is comical to the point where a guide on GameFAQs.com gave him an 11/10 rating for all the Heroes and Villains. Broken!
Then there’s the Campaign and Galactic Conquest game modes. Those are fun in their own right. The former can be quite challenging, though.
Once I started to bring my PS2 game to college, I played a lot more on my own and worked relentlessly to get award medals for the sake of starting games with the award weapons. Then I began developing a 2-Flag CTF playlist and worked to try and complete said playlist without letting the opponent score. There are some maps where this was particularly difficult, in that your AI teammates could automatically score points for you, but that also meant the enemy AI could get through unguarded to try and capture your flag, meaning you had to play hard defense on your own. The situation to avoid on these maps was a tug of war where you’d kill the enemy flag carrier, try to wait for the flag to reset, but another enemy picks it up and the flag gets progressively closer to their base. If you ever died, you had to pray you could get to the enemy flag carrier fast before they scored. I was able to do it eventually, but boy was it tough to do, and even then I could only attempt to try it after being able to start with the Award Rifle, Award Shotgun, and Award Pistol.
During college I also began to learn of some of the other random stuff in the game, specifically aspects of Hunt mode. Trying to play against Wampas on Hoth was difficult unless you had award weapons (once you did it was a rout if you played it safe). Then there’s Hunt on Naboo where you play as Super Battle Droids against Gungans. Yea. I’m not kidding. You go against Gungans. And the Gungans are nearly impossible to lose against because all they have are Fusion Cutters and Thermal Detonators (the latter being the Star Wars grenade, meaning they would constantly blow themselves up). I actually lost once to the Gungans, and that was largely because I was not being careful in my approach and just in general being too aggressive.
One last thing: it wasn’t until this game that I really began to know what a Gamorrean was. These terrible creatures appear exclusively on the Jabba’s Palace map, and their sole purpose is to just kill anyone. They can kill enemies for you, but they’ll kill you as well, and it’s always frustrating to have a good killstreak going only to die by the swing of a Gamorrean’s axe which for whatever reason was often a one-hit kill. The game message “THE GAMORREANS KILLED (insert your player name)” just added insult to injury. However, it was always relieving to see the Gamorreans being awarded with the “Bantha Fodder” award post game, given to whichever character died the most (for whatever reason, all the Gamorreans on the map are regarded as “one” Gamorrean).
Overall, I have tons of memories of this game and I enjoy playing this whenever I have the chance. Once I get Windows I can actually experiment with this game on a computer since I already bought it on Steam (I did this a while ago)!
2006 – Shin Sangoku Musou 4 (Dynasty Warriors 5)
Now this is a game that has paid dividends for me not just for gaming, but also my general history and cultural knowledge as well.
My brother and I first played this in Taiwan as my aunt owned a copy of it, and then we wound up getting our own to play with when we went home to the States (our PS2 was odd in that it could circumvent region-locking aside from the US version of Gran Turismo 4, interestingly enough). Then we played this game relentlessly and worked to unlock as much of the “fourth weapons”, saddles, and unlockable items.
Both my brother and I began to recognize that the games were loosely based off of the Three Kingdoms period in China, with much inspiration from the novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It was around this time that I had been going to Japanese school every Saturday (shoutout to the Greater Boston Japanese Language School), so I was able to test at least of my knowledge of Japanese as well as my own Chinese due to the majority of the game text being in Kanji. I went through a lot of research over this and wound up furthering my ability to write in Chinese and gain appreciation for the historical material.
It wouldn’t help that in high school, I often found myself using the material to embark on projects. Once, I was writing about the Coalition against Dong Zhuo and made some mock-posters asking to “Overthrow Traitor Dong”. Then I took a class ON the Romance of the Three Kingdoms novel. I even brought in my DVDs of John Woo’s Red Cliff (both parts) to watch a dramatization of the eponymous Battle of Red Cliff.
Can we get a remaster of this game?
2006 – Digimon Rumble Arena 2
This game is so freakin’ dumb and broken that it’s easily my favorite guilty pleasure game, and it’s not even close. This was a game my brother and I played alongside Dynasty Warriors 5, and we enjoyed this largely because it was 1) a fighting game and 2) it was a Digimon title. It’s funny enough that we grew up watching a lot of Digimon (specifically the first two anime series, Adventure and Adventure 02) yet we hadn’t played a single video game from the series.
Anyway, this game’s item drops and stages are inherently flawed. Sure, you could turn off items, but no stage would be considered remotely “tournament legal” due to the omnipresent hazards and layouts. The Cannery? A lot of conveyor belts plus you could be turned into a can for a significant amount of time, hampering your offensive capabilities. Danger Gulch? One-hit KO mine carts plus a plethora of TNT barrels. The only stage that has any sort of “flatness” is Chaos Wasteland, and even then the little islands will freely move to favor infinite grabbing, and then the islands themselves will manifest other hazards altogether such as fire or ice.
Then there’s Twisted Toytown, a stage much similar to Poké Floats in that the screen is constantly moving and you have to move around unless you miss a jump or a platform that moves away from the ground. There’s also a bunch of hazards like claws extending from boxes much akin to a haunted jack-in-a-box. If you play as MaloMyotismon on that map, you will have a ~1% chance of losing regardless of enemy difficulty thanks to the “Pandemonium” Ultra attack, which changes the controls of opposing fighters. Even the highest AI difficulty will act dumb and won’t know what to do, and on a stage like this where missing a ride could result in death or just the pits in general, you’ll be keeping your lives while the AI will go down one by one.
This game is stupid. It’s one of those “it’s so bad it’s good” games. I love it.
2006 – Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories
I’ll be honest – I don’t even remember when I first played this title. Was it this year when I got started with Dynasty Warriors and Digimon Rumble Arena 2? Or the following one?
Regardless, this was my entry into the GTA series. I remember seeing ads for San Andreas a while back but not really thinking much of it. I also remember the ads for Vice City Stories on the Green Line trolleys and the stink that made with the locals. But those memories didn’t really click until a little while after playing this title.
Needless to say, my brother and I had a ton of fun just sucking at the game and taking our own leisure in just screwing around. This game would spark our interest in other titles in the series, as we also got a three-pack that had GTA III, Vice City, and San Andreas. More on the GTA series to follow…
2006 – New Super Mario Bros
I felt it worthy of putting this title here because it’s one of those games that I can every so often come back to and just play. It all comes to being simple fun, and I find it easy to just jump in and go for 100% completion with the Star Coins.
I remember getting the guide by Nintendo Power (which I still own) to help me on my quest, and I got at a local Best Buy. I remember my dad said I had to pay him back for it (which for whatever reason wound up flying past both of us). Regardless, even with a guide in hand, I had considerable trouble early on, but beating the game and getting 100% for the first time was super satisfying. Eventually, every so often I’d just come back to the game and gun for it again, and it was fun every time.
I even remember making a mock magazine cover for this in my Technology and Engineering class in middle school in 8th grade using CorelDRAW. I got a 91 for my work on “Tech Today”, and I kept it as a memento because I really like the end product. Could it be better? Sure. But then again, the assignment was just a lot of fun.
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