Offroad Extreme and Being Special

Offroad Extreme! Special Edition

System: Nintendo Wii

Developer: Data Design Interactive

NA Release: November 2007

[NOTE: This post is part of the first Review a Bad Game Day. Witness others endure the horrors of gaming's mistakes at http://www.reviewabadgameday.com.]

Mr. Rogers made it a point to say that everyone is special, and I'm certainly not going to argue with the legend. I will posit, however, that “special” does not always mean a grand thing. The Titanic was a special voyage, Ed Wood was a special director and Offroad Extreme! Special Edition is certainly a special gaming experience.

Even the cars look depressed to be in this game.

From what I've been able to find, Offroad Extreme! is a “special edition” because it's a port of a 2004 PS2 game updated with Wii remote tilt controls—for some reason at the expense of the original button controls. This is highly unfortunate as the motion controls are outright horrendous and almost seem selectively sensitive, choosing not to overreact to your tilting only when you're heading straight toward a yawning chasm. It's difficult to see why they couldn't have included both control schemes, but I like to imagine the discussion went something like this:

LACKEYS: Boss, we really need to put the button controls back in the game.

BOSS: But the motion controls are what make it special!

LACKEYS: That is technically true, sir. But, well, the motion controls are terrible!

BOSS: You're not understanding me, here. If we return the button controls, we give players the option to use them, yes?

LACKEYS: Yes.

BOSS: And if the motion controls are bad, players will use the button controls instead, yes?
LACKEYS: Yes!

BOSS: But the motion controls are what make it special!

LACKEYS: ...

The sad part is that Offroad Extreme! feels so lazily constructed as to have so little merit to deserve the moniker “special”... that it somehow manages to go full circle and madly becomes “special” again. A few more ways in which the game shines:

• Your rival cars sounding like bees in a dryer at the starting line, which is about the only time you'll ever hear them as they eventually leave you to your wiggly-driving stupor—oh, except for the one or three that always relentlessly slam into you at the beginning and pin you mindlessly to the wall. It's like the developers could make AI for these cars, so they just programmed a brick onto their accelerators.
• The apparent love of using a rain effect over the dull, brown, N64-quality courses, even though you never actually see the rain hit the ground, the sky often looks blue and sparsely clouded, and it does not stop raining when you enter a cave.
• The way the announcer tells you to “Start your engines!” with just enough of a threatening tone as though he knows you're thinking of running.
  
  
  
  
• How the camera will reverse angle when you try to back up from yet another slam into the wall but wont always return to facing frontward when you hit the gas again, often turning the simplest of maneuvers into that underground tunnel cart scene from Austin Powers.
• The collectable dollar signs that litter the tracks like a poor rapper's Geocities page and are all worth exactly one dollar. What did you get for fighting busted controls, crappy physics and broken cameras for three laps? $27! Extreme!
• If you take too much damage, which is nigh guaranteed, your vehicle explodes into an cheaply overlayed fireball animation of Birdemic-caliber laughability—twice. I can't actually cite this one as a fault, though. I could never find myself able to change one poorly rendered piece of this glory.

It is bad enough to face the cheap, unplayable pile of shame that is Offroad Extreme! Special Edition, but it's especially egregious to know this was all part of the now defunct Data Design Interactive's (DDI) business model. Wanting to take advantage of the growing family and casual markets, the company squeezed out as many abominations of gaming as it could, sacrificing any semblance of quality in an apparent attempt to take advantage of novice gamers' ignorance. They even copied and pasted large swaths of code in what they called their GODS engine to speed the process, making their games figuratively inbred.

But do you know what the worst part of this sordid legacy is for me? It's not that DDI helped pox the reputation of the Wii as a shovelware system, nor even the fact a bunch of kids got screwed over on birthdays and Christmases by well-meaning family members who were suckered into buying malfunctioning dreck. Those are certainly bad, but what outright haunts me is that Mr. Rogers was right: everyone is special, dammit, and there could have been some specially talented designers working for DDI.

We laugh at and pan shovelware, and that's often healthy. But there could've been people just trying to find a foothold to get noticed who ended up strapped down by the paltry budgets and push-it-out-the-door timetables of a company that was in too much of a hurry to milk another buck out of an unsuspecting grandma to take the time to make sure IT STOPS RAINING IN CAVES. These people's time and talents could have been wasted, and now they have pangs of hesitation and regret every time they think of writing “Data Design Interactive” on their resumes.

It is my great hope that, if this rings true for anyone, they are working at a place where the true meaning of “special” is known and acknowledged.

Earthbound and Getting the Girl

EarthBound

System: SNES
Developers: HAL Laboratory, Ape, Nintendo
NA Release: June 1995

[CAUTION: This post contains mild spoilers to the endings of EarthBound and the movie The Big Year. One you should really play if you haven’t. The other is just wasting time that could be spent playing the first.]

I sat down recently to watch The Big Year and came to some surprising revelations:

1. If you want to make a stale, plodding movie about birdwatching, then by gosh you can! It doesn’t even matter what fantastic comedic talent those evil Hollywood executives will try to foist upon you, you have the God-given right to underutilize them and ride your anemic, beige starmobile all the way to the Dullard Nebula. Yeah, America!

2. Even boring bird movies will make me think of EarthBound.  

Admittedly, though, even I’m surprised how this thought train circled around. Enduring The Big Year not only called me back once again to the most iconic game of my childhood, but it finally brought into focus this one tiny part that always stuck in my mind.

Upon defeating the final enemy in EarthBound, the credits don’t start rolling. You actually get the chance to walk around and explore the whole world to see what changes have happened as a result of your journey. Your other two companions, Jeff and Poo, go off on their own, leaving you to escort Paula, your first teammate and the only girl, home.

So the game is winding down, it’s just you and her, and you finally bring her back to her doorstep. The pixellated air is dripping with the potential of a big scene, and she says this:

Ness...
Thank you for escorting me home.
…..
...There was something I wanted to tell you, but I’ve forgotten it.
I’m sure I’ll remember by the time I see you again.
Well, I guess this is it...
Good-bye.
Uh...
...So long
...See ya
...Bye

And of course Ness just stands there like a dummy in true RPG main character form, but it further adds to the awkwardness. Even my naive, 12-year-old self felt something was off about the whole thing, so when Ruffini the Dog, possessed by the spirit of the game designer, provided an address to send questions and comments (have I told you I love this game?), I actually wrote in asking what it was Paula had meant to say, thinking I might’ve missed some sort of plot point. Things aren’t supposed to just drop off in these sorts of situations, right?



Sixteen years later, I’m watching Jack Black’s character in The Big Year going on his own quest to spot the most species of bird. Stuck in a job he hates and with little money, he makes sacrifices and maxes out credit cards to pursue his dream.

He falls just short of being the top birdwatcher in the end, but still tells his friend Steve Martin that they came out winners. And indeed he did. He became a seasoned traveler, visiting sites many will never even know existed. Not only that, but he finally earned the respect of his father, who initially thought he was wasting his life by not pursuing a lucrative career. It’s a very touching scene--or it would have been if they had made any allusion that this is what Black’s character was talking about.

No, this entire time he’s making eyes at his new girlfriend, played by That Woman from Parks and Recreation. She’s introduced and developed for about 5 minutes of the movie, then conveniently dumped out of the plot by the revelation she already has a boyfriend. We see nothing of her until 10 minutes before the movie ends, when she calls Black to say she and Nameless Other Guy broke up.

I am aware this sort of thing happens in many other movies, but perhaps it was my desperate attempt to suck whatever marrow of significance I could from this movie that made it strike a chord with me this time. What a crock! There was so much else Black’s character could have emphasized, his father being arguably the most important, yet they employed some arbitrary love interest as if all his other accomplishments weren’t enough--as though we can’t completely accept happy endings otherwise.

And that’s when it all came into focus. In EarthBound, a relationship between Ness and Paula was never really developed. Really, there was little more than the occasional NPC saying they looked like a cute couple and Paula’s parents keeping an eye on you. It just feels like they should be together because we’ve come to believe that has to happen; that to completely find oneself means finding love too, and that’s just not right. Ideally, that should come after one is confident and set in who they are. It can be a side effect of the process, perhaps, but it is not the necessity we want it to be.

Shigesato Itoi, writer and director of EarthBound, opened the entire world at the end as though he wanted players to realize the breadth of Ness’s influence and the effects those places had on him. It’s cool to think that Ness and Paula could end up together, but to have emphasized a relationship in the end would have detracted from so much more that the game and its characters were about.

So thank you, Mr. Itoi, for not taking the easy road. Because of your thoughtfulness, I remember more of your story after nearly two decades than that of a movie I watched less than a week ago.

Tetris and Lost Relics

Tetris

Platform: Game Boy

Developer: Bullet-Proof Software (original concept by Alexey Pajitnov)

N.A. Release: August 1989

The world-encompassing reach of the Tetris name is undeniable. Unfortunately, the wider a popular concept is spread, the shallower its real impact tends to become over time. The extraordinary stories of Alexey Pajitnov's conception of the game and Nintendo's battle to secure the rights to make the first blockbuster rendition of it still exist, but are long buried under sedimentary layers of adaptations, ports and free online knock-offs.

You can even play whatever this is, available now on the official Tetris.com website!

But I'm not going to tell those stories; they're already out there if you're willing to search. Instead, I'd like to tell you about the one Tetris game pak that would mean the world to me to have.

I never knew my great-uncle Jim that well, and he passed away early enough in my childhood that I don't have a great store of memories from which to draw of him. But there's one image I saw much too often to ever forget: whenever he and my great-aunt Rose visited my grandmother's house, he would sit in the same chair at the bar, beneath the overhead light, and huddle over Tetris on Game Boy.

I do mean huddle. He never actually held the system, as far as I can remember. It was always resting on the bar in front of him, with one of his fingers on the D-Pad and another poised over the B and A buttons. And that's how he would stay, tapping away with the intense confidence of a scientist at the helm of his nuclear powered robot.

The Game Boy almost never held anything else but Tetris. His children had tried to buy him other games to play like Qix and Super Mario Land 2, but I only know this because he let me play them one of the rare times I visited his home. He barely touched them himself, if he ever did at all.

The picture definition of "iconic."

No, great-uncle Jim's Game Boy was very much a Tetris-only machine, and the severity to which it had to bear this dedication still amazes me. The small grips that are on every Game Boy's directional pad were worn off completely, the entire pad itself somewhat sunken into the hole from which it protruded. The vibrant red of the B and A buttons were faded to a medium-rare pink in the center. This was all from the heat and friction of my great-uncle's large fingers over the many hours he spent playing a single cartridge.

Best of all, there was always a small strip of paper just below the screen, sealed into place with a piece of scotch tape: his high score. Occasionally changing, it was worn by that Game Boy like a badge of honor and always possessing a number I could never dream of getting close to.

It's not that great-uncle Jim was all-consumed with Tetris. He always took time to talk with the family, and he had no qualms about letting me play with his Game Boy once he had finished his current game—which often took an especially long time to an impatient 7-year-old but is something I can look in awe upon today.

If I had known back then how fondly I'd look back on that gray piece of plastic, I might have it today. Unfortunately, my childhood self never asked what had ever happened to the Game Boy and its treasured game after my great-uncle passed away. In fact, it wasn't until last year when I actually contacted my great-aunt, still living, and asked her if she had kept it with her all these years. She had not. She had given it away to another child whom she does not recall.

I wish I could run my fingers against that strangely smooth d-pad, or for the life of me remember that last high score and see how it stacks up on the Internet today. Sometimes I wonder if some kid now will feel this way in 20 years about an iPad he watched a loved one play Angry Birds on. Yes, I know that sounds silly now, but all I know is in a world full of so many ways, there's one game of Tetris I'll never be able to play again.  

Mario Kart 7 and the Right to Win

Mario Kart 7
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Developer: Nintendo EAD/Retro Studios
N.A. Release: December 2011


If you want to incite gamer rage (and I don't say that like it's a hard thing to do), remember two simple words: Blue Shell.

Regardless of the teeming numbers of people who still adore this series, odds are you'll be bombarded with racers relating in huffy terms their recollections of  getting hit with one of these leader-seeking missiles just 2 feet (it's almost always "just 2 feet") from the finish line, costing them the win, and how and these game-breaking abominations should've been removed after Mario Kart 64. 

They're one of the most divisive items in video games, yet consider this: everyone in a Mario Kart race has the same objective. Some actual driving skill does apply in achieving this goal, but at any given time on the field, the person in first might've have been much farther in the pack and the player in last might've been the leader just 20 seconds earlier. Heck, they may have been a victim of a Blue Shell midway through the race, but that doesn't tend to draw much whining. It's the end where we have placed all the importance, and how dare we let luck or circumstance determine the victor there. That's skill's realm, even if every part of the race leading up to it has been a whirlwind of mindblowing wackitude.

This is what we consider fair; consider "real." Except it kind of isn't.

How many times have you heard of the more deserving candidate being overlooked for the promotion, or the obviously weaker team winning the big game through a fluke? In fact, let's take a second to look at real-life racing.

Carl Edwards took the lead with 1 lap to go in the 2009 Aaron's 499 at Talladega Speedway. His skills got him there--in-depth knowledge and experience with the track, his car, his team and the other races. He was poised to take the win going into turn 4, but the car behind him wanted to win too. That car tried to pass, accidentally got into Edwards and...

Edwards's number is 99, by the way. Not 66.

The second place car won, while Edwards took a trip against the upper sections of the safety fence. Thankfully, he escaped the crash with no injuries. 

It's obvious what he did next, right? Take every opportunity to complain about how he should have rightfully won the race if only that jerk behind him hadn't put fate into motion? Appeal to NASCAR to instill some sort of "fairness" rule that would give him the points for winning?

Nope. He got out of his car and ran across the finish line, Talladega Nights style.

He waited for the other cars to pass, of course.

Edwards was disappointed, naturally, but he had perspective. He knew that skill and talent can get you toward the front in the end, but it's by no means a guarantee of victory. He was denied this time, but there would be--and have been--other times when he would take the victory after the misfortune of others. That's just the way life works sometimes, and we're conditioned to put more emphasis on the times we've been slighted than the times we've unintentionally slighted others.

So when you're the one for whom the Blue Shell tolls, don't whine like you're the only one it's ever happened to. Just take them as part of the experience--especially when you know you'll be tossing them next race.

Harvest Moon, the Birds and the Bees

Harvest Moon: Magical Melody
Platform: Nintendo GameCube
Developer: Marvelous Interactive
N.A. Release: March 2006


It has been a long time since I've thought about it, but suddenly I've been pondering a return to one of the great--and some would say taboo--experiments in gaming: playing a Harvest Moon game as a girl.

Of course this may not seem like such a sensational endeavor nowadays, when you can engineer a space captain of either gender in Mass Effect and have him or her knock matter with a choice of galactic inhabitants, but the simplified, real-world(ish) setting of Harvest Moon titles lend a certain wistfulness to the way your character finds and courts a spouse. Guys, do you want to have to constantly search for, analyze and properly respond to every single little signal your potential love interest may or may not send out to you, hoping to God you are responding in a way she will perceive as strong, yet caring and romantic? Or do you want to give her a piece of cake every single day for a year? 

Strive for the shaky green lines of happiness, my friend.

We know which choice sounds more convenient, but life just doesn't work that way. And it's ethically dubious to say it should, as it's merely reducing one's emotional and spiritual satisfaction to a game of Santa Claus. The Harves Moon social system is a rather objectifying way of treating people when you get down to it, but younger Tim wasn't thinking about that back then. Younger Tim was going onto GameFAQs to cheat and find out what the token bookish girl liked best.

But that's why I've always had a strange interest in turning the roles around. How has the system been set up to work with a woman courting guys? Are their responses to gifts and actions similar, or are they keyed differently? Each Harvest Moon game I've played--the last being Magical Melody--I vowed I would start a game as a girl and find out. But wait! First I had to play through as a guy because I just had to find out which virtual lady matched my personality best; and by the time I did that, well, Harvest Moon is a long game and I had moved on to something else.

But now that I'm older and more well-versed in the real-world ways of love (or at least the explosively disastrous aspects of it), it may be time to finally conduct this experiment. And if I can find a copy of Magical Melody or another reasonably decent title, I shall. There's one question I've always had about the female side of the game, though...

One of the "goals" of life in the game after marriage is having a child. When I played as a guy, my wife and I found out we were expecting when she collapsed one day. So, well, guess having a kid in this world is pretty taxing.

You missed your "Whoops!" moment by about 9 months, Mr. Smooth.

But how does having a child work out when you play as a girl? If/when you become pregnant, are you just supposed to keep laboring on your farm day in and day out until it's time, or do they place some realistic limits to prevent the expecting mother from becoming sick or working to exhaustion? Do any of the other characters care at all? What were the production meetings like for this consideration in the game?

They're weird questions, sure, but someone has to think about them. And as long as there isn't a delivery mini-game, I'm willing to look for the answers.