No-Effort Halloween Costumes for Gamers
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/30/11 at 01:20 PM CT
Uh-oh! Halloween is tomorrow and you don’t have a costume yet! Let MeltedJoystick help you out with 5 suggestions for no-effort (or little-effort) costumes with a gaming flavor.
5. Mario (“Super Mario Bros.”)
The only effort required for this costume is being a Club Nintendo Platinum Member… in 2009. That was the year Nintendo gave away official Mario hats (or the gimped WiiWare title, “Doc Louis’ Punch-Out!!”). Combine the hat with a red shirt, blue jeans, and a magic-marker mustache. You’re done!
4. Weighted Companion Cube (“Portal”)
This one needs to be done the night before so the spray paint has time to dry. Just take a cardboard box (big enough to cover your body), cut a head-hole, spray paint the whole thing gray, then glue a left-over Valentine’s Day card to each side. If you don’t have any V-Day cards, a red marker can do the trick as well.
3. James Bond (“GoldenEye 007”)
Do you have access to a place that rents tuxedos? Rent a tux and …
Of Js and Ws
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/23/11 at 09:08 PM CT
As I mentioned previously, I hate the term ‘JRPG.’ Not only is it used as a pejorative against my favorite genre, it adds negative connotations and a perceived need for segregation where none exists. What does the dreaded JRPG need to be segregated from? Why, the Aryan Race of ‘WRPGs,’ of course, with the ‘W’ standing for ‘Western.’ If this usage of Western was meant to separate RPGs featuring cowboys and six-shooters from RPGs featuring swords & sorcery or RPGs featuring space ships and mecha, it might make some sense. As it is, though, it’s just a way to geographically separate games by their country of origin. And it doesn’t really work.
What people are mistakenly calling ‘JRPGs’ should technically be called by their old name, ‘Console RPGs.’ But wait! Now that consoles are capable of running ports of the games formerly known as ‘PC RPGs,’ that line has been all but erased. It started to blur a long time ago when games like “Dungeon Master” …
De Metroides
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 10/16/11 at 06:34 PM CT
The ‘Metroid’ series has become one of Nintendo’s most popular franchises. This popularity seems pretty inexplicable when one considers the series’ roots. The original game, “Metroid,” appeared on the NES and, while it did take bold steps into unexplored types of gameplay, it was also one of the most inscrutable games ever made. Actually, out of the original ‘Metroid’ trilogy, only the third, “Super Metroid,” had the style, pacing, and gameplay framework to be playable and enjoyable without hours of boring trial-and-error and reams of graph paper. “Metroid II: The Return of Samus” was stuck in the middle, approaching the refined experience of “Super Metroid,” but stuck in the Hell of portable exclusivity.
How did this franchise become one of Nintendo’s ‘Big Three,’ alongside ‘Super Mario’ and ‘The Legend of Zelda,’ when it only had three games, one good game, and skipped an entire hardware generation (the N64) as a no-show? The answer lies …
Love and Hate: Portable Game Systems
Matt - wrote on 10/09/11 at 02:41 PM CT
Greetings fellow gamers! It is great to be a guest on the MeltedJoystick blog. Nelson asked me to fill in for him while he’s on vacation.
My adventure into the world of gaming began with the NES and has continued through this current generation. Since I am a child of gaming in the '80s and early '90s, I have a distinct love and admiration for platformers and RPGs. My brother and I spent countless hours mastering all the ‘Super Mario Bros.’ games for the NES and the SNES, along with many other platformers for the Genesis, Game Boy, and, later, the PlayStation.
Over the years my gaming habits have evolved and grown for better and for worse, which brings me to the topic of this blog post: portable game systems, particularly my love/hate relationship with them. Unfortunately, my career and life choices have dictated that I spend more time with portable systems than consoles, and I am sure that I am not alone in this camp. So I would like to reflect a little on portable …
View Archive
