Good Pipe in the Moonlight

We often seek counsel from those whose advice we subconsciously know we’d prefer.


Probably goes a long way in explaining why my
love of Conker and my general life philosophies are
in equal parts aligned and most certainly fucking
absurd

I’m sure examining that axiom more deeply is worthy of continued reflection, and hell, may even be worthy of it’s own article, but like most points I make on ATE, I refuse to elaborate on them in any satisfying or timely manner. Within that spirit, I take this moment now to mention I’m glad I finally got to start writing my series about Rare Replay, as it’s been on the brain for awhile. Rare as a company has delivered a treasure trove of material over the years, so that single compilation alone will be an absolute wellspring of enjoyable content to wax philosophical upon, as the game is filled to the brim with top notch content, and one can’t even really go wrong with nearly any title in the bunch.


Nearly

More on that down the road, and one we are even more immediately detouring from than I initially planned on, as today I was continuing to eye (in a matter of speaking) a satellite of related interests involving Rare’s offerings, but I stumbled upon the confirmation of a random oddity that turned out not to be a fevered dream after all. In celebration of Mar10 Day, (March 10th), Nintendo usually puts a spotlight on their favorite cash cow, in which to milk him further of his sweet capitalistic juices. In spite of my cynical mention of the whole affair, the events year in and year out usually do take the form of some fun events, whether they be in-game what-have-yous, or legitimate celebrations involving easter egg hunts that can score one some sweet swag. Though I’m not yet familiar with all of Nintendo’s machinations in reference to festivities entailing the celebration of Mario Day this year, I do know of one, which is starting today in Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, and one that can score you some sweet virtual currency that can be used for real life rewards***.


***Dead CEO’s not included

If you log into MK8D, Nintendo has up a special tournament dedicated specifically for a special community event in honor of Mario Day, the event running from today through the 17th in honor of the mustachioed bastard, and the goal is for the collective conglomerate of MK players to race an accumulative one million laps within that time frame. If achieved, every racer who helped out will receive 310 platinum points, which can be redeemed for all sorts of awesome things. Of course, any one player only needs to finish a single lap to contribute towards the grand total, but any laps the player races in that time will be added to the bottom line. Obviously, one will need Nintendo online and a My Nintendo account to claim the coins, *and* be sure to specifically enter the code 1152-2501-4827 under the tournaments tabs in MK8D in order to log the laps, but with all the said, if you burn some rubber in honor of the old plumber’s 40th anniversary, you will reap rewards thusly.


Possibly a blue shell enema in the process, but
at least it’s a worthwhile pain in the ass

Drift on my little koopas.

~Pashford

Rare Replay: A Journey Through Space and Time

Following up on my post from “yesterday“, I continue to “march” on with my monthly challenge “unabated”***.


***wibbly wobblyiness not withstanding

*Ahem* Which brings me to the start of what will be at least a thirty part series, as I on again, off again discuss the many titles found within the jam-packed compilation known as Rare Replay, an omnibus of greatest hits from Rare and their endeavors over their several decades long history. Technically speaking, it reaches all the way back to 1982, when the company was developing under a different moniker: Ultimate Play The Game, which was the name they developed their first game Jetpac under.


An (excellent) game that featured one whole screen
Kids just don’t know how spoiled they are these days

Though, ironically, much like yesterday’s post, which was billed as being about the Castlevania DLC for Vampire Survivors, content of which I hadn’t even downloaded yet, my mention of Jetpac too is equally and utterly full of shit, as I am not even discussing the title today, and really should have started this entire series on, what with it being the first game “Rare” developed, and then thusly became the first game featured on the compilation. Let it not be said Active Time Event is as paradoxically charming as it is confusingly informative on the regular.


Hellishly craptacular attempt at making sense,
I concede

Truth be told, this is all an incredibly flimsy excuse to not-so-subtly stealth brag about having beaten one of the titles on Rare Replay, Knight Lore (1984), which was one of the earliest isometric games ever developed (isometric being a type of perspective, if you didn’t know), though that honor does officially go to Zaxxon. Knight Lore is a tough as nails isometric platformer, and one that is also based on a time limit. If you compound that with the fact this initially came out on a home computer sans controller, I can’t even imagine how much hardware was nearly smashed in the attempts to beat the game in it’s entirety.


An artist’s portrayal of the average Knight Lore players
reaction (Hulk) in attempting to beat the game on their
ZX Spectrum (Wolverine)

Rare was wise enough to include the titular “replay” feature in Rare Replay, as a way to make the old school titles even remotely approachable, as many of their pre-3D adventures are completely fucked in the face in terms of difficulty. We are talking about the folks who brought to us Battletoads after all, and all of the broken friendships that followed in it’s cooperatively nightmarish wake.


What the end of every Battletoads partnership
looks like

I guess I should mention the replay feature is really more like a rewind button of sorts, that lets you manipulate time at will, so you can basically go back in time up to 30 seconds, in case you fuck anything up, which, in a game of Knight Lore, is going to be happening a lot. As I now just start to get into the ebb and flow of my writing state, and ramping up to really delve into the nitty gritty of what made Knight Lore so lauded in it’s day, and some of the harrowing feats involving my epic quest in conquering the trials and tribulations that Knight Lore has on hellish offer, I glance over at the clock and realize in classic ATE fashion, I have run out of time.

Time giveth, and time taketh away.

~Pashford

Raw Dogging the Rough Cut

This photo captures the essence of self-deprecation
involving my sales pitch of this post, but I promise
you the vibes are at least twice as funny and four
times less shitty in execution

In reference to my visual sarcastic aside above, I kept putting off a similarly slapdash attempt at a return to proper writing (about video games) for arbitrary reasons, though I imagine unless I had been kidnapped by a traveling dance theater to perform for them due to their outlandish threats involving being sent to actual hell before I die, outside of that obviously reasonably likely scenario, just about any other reason for a mood being spoiled thus halting the creative process would come off as arbitrary.


Like when family get togethers really spoil the holidays,
for example.

The joke would be on that ill-fated group of stylishly groovy kidnappers regardless, as December does represent a kind of personal hell for me every year, though I refuse to elaborate within any serious context as to why. I do attempt to keep this first and foremost about gaming after all, and the reasons I reference fall far outside the boundaries of the virtual. Now that it is almost February, and I’m in a much better place overall, I will eschew the notion of waiting for my first piece of writing, “the return” if you will, to be some grandiose affair or some amazingly well thought out narrative or brilliant deconstruction of the industry or some title I’ve recently beaten. I’m just going to casually riff about games in general for a bit, if that’s okay.


Just the average Pash like creative noodling for
your idle entertainment, just like old times

I recently gifted myself an Xbox Series X for X-mas, not that I even care about celebrating the event in any serious way, but I’ve been attempting to curtail my more Grinchly demeanor in many small, celebratory fashions to attempt to hold back the cynical tide that washes over me. In a twist of unintentional spiteful reinforcement of my complete apathy towards Christmas itself, I did in fact not even open the damn thing on the day of, and even waited till the New Year to do anything with it. While I have been thoroughly enjoying my experience with said system, as I have always been an advocate of any major platform within the realm as someone who identifies as platform agnostic, the series X is by and far the least substantial jump from one generation to another I have ever seen. It makes sense on some level, as why fix what’s not broken, as the UI for the Xbox family has always been mostly functional, so keep the ecosystem similar, right?

Fair enough, though I do think this among many factors indicative we, as a collective, are starting to come to a head here in terms of sheer innovation for consoles moving forward, and I’m not just picking on Microsoft here. Having seen the PS5 UI in action, and at least glimpsing the very “same-ish” nature that the Switch 2 is bringing to the table, I think the day of the truly new and the innovative, in terms of pure individualized ingenuity, is likely behind us at this point, for many reasons I think is worthy of a much longer winded, well constructed post on the matter, so I’ll save elaborating on that thought for another time.


An example of a well constructed post

The game I chose to be my “launch title” was Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, and truth be told, while the experience has been fun, I’m kind of shocked that this console is already four years into it’s lifespan and this is the supposed peak that we’ve hit with it thus far. Like, yes, I realize it runs at a high frame rate while stable, with hi-res textures and a shit ton of enemies on screen moving around, but the fact that it comes off as kind of a derivative Gears of War third person action romp comes off as a little underwhelming. Much like the Series X; yes, its fun and I’m enjoying myself quite a bit, but I certainly wouldn’t advocate to anyone to rush out and drop several hundred dollars on picking up the new Xbox offering or upgrading their PC just to enjoy this. Both feel like warm greetings to someone who hasn’t just arrived, but is “already there”, if that makes any sense. I know any stans of either MS or 40k are probably just vomiting blood at this point due to my perceived heresy in having reserved expectations about consumer products I interact with instead of trying to be the next big shill in the content creator space, but I didn’t start writing about games to blow smoke up the ass of either developers or fandoms while giving them a reach around with every prevailing thought I have regarding their favorite hobby/industry of choice.


I did not get into this line of work cause
I enjoy gargling wieners mind you

However, one is lucky enough once in a great while to enjoy a come hither experience that runs parallel to a gratifying sexual release, which is where my mention of downloading the Castlevania: Dominus Collection comes in. This would in fact be a double dip, but this is one media allegiance I don’t mind getting undressed for, as we normally have no problem having quite the sexy time together. That is of course, when Konami isn’t being a bunch of shit heels cause they’re too busy putting out low-grade pachinko machines for horny middle aged Japanese business men, and doesn’t leave me high and dry by sitting around with their thumbs up their stubborn asses for a better part of a decade doing absolutely fuck all while Nintendo and Netflix do all the heavy lifting in reminding people how awesome Castlevania is.


So awesome

Good thing I did download it, too, as Warhammer took an astonishing 11 hours to install on day one, and I desperately wanted to actually use my Series X for something on January 1st aside from using it as one of the most gloriously excessive paperweights of all time. Since I had recently just finished Portrait of Ruin on the Switch, and I had not touched Order of Ecclesia since it’s days on the DS, the choice was obvious (sorry Dawn of Sorrow). Such a damn good game that helped to set the ground work for what would become it’s marvelous spiritual successor Bloodstained. If nothing else, I praise OoE for it’s mindful editorialization, as the pacing is par excellence. I mean, everything is about as Castlevania-ey as it gets, so the game is a complete package, which goes on to help further showcase the the mind numbing, head scratching direction Konami would travel forward with after a successful series of three top notch titles on the DS, by going the Lord of Shadows route immediately following, soon after diverting into complete obscurity for the series in total.


Seen here: Konami helping to lay the ground work for
the eventual shift into focusing on their pachinko machine
machinations

Game pass has been sorely missed, and for all of the very reasons I love it, I also ironically can’t really utilize it. The value involving the content available with the sheer number of titles is astronomical, and definitely helps to continue to set the tone for what most platforms should have moving forward, but my problem is time, not access. To wit: I happily picked up Rare Replay once again after so long away, to continue my long and arduous trek to get the end all be all equivalent of a “soft” 100% of the title by finally acquiring the achievement “Stamper Brothers Forever”, which is essentially mastering like, 30 games. I double checked, and come this August, it will have been a decade since I started this insane quest, and I do not plan to slow down any time soon. Though, referencing my point about time being my problem, not access, outside of the last couple years where I was in a purgatory of sorts in a myriad of ways that prevented me from having an Xbox full stop, time is not on my side when considering the excessive standards, beefier offerings and ridiculously overstuffed with content that modern day gaming represents.


Surely, we must stop and ponder what might be
considered too much of a good thing?

I have many more thoughts to share, and even ones mentioned here deserve far grander elaborations, but this is my first post in months, so I’m going to give myself a Pash on the back and let this small victory breath for a moment while I muse what and or how I may continue to write with consistency in the near future.

Till next we meet…


~Pashford