Sam's video game collection essentials

Pac-Man World 2 is a platformer that had previously been released as a standalone title in 2002. It’s an adequate 3D platformer that sold pretty well thanks to featuring Pac-Man, and in my opinion the coolest thing about it is that you can unlock some old arcade Pac-Man games to freely play. This game is not what this post is going to primarily be about, as I want to focus on the game that it’s bundled with.  Pac-Man Vs. is a game that Shigeru Miyamoto himself, King Nintendo, was largely responsible for. The game was initially designed as a way to show off what can be done with the GBA-to-GC link cable, and Namco (owners of Pac-Man) greenlit Nintendo on making it into a full and proper release. It’s a multiplayer game that’s light on content, so it didn’t make sense for it to be a full-on $50 game by itself on store shelves. But Nintendo found alternative ways to distribute it. The best-known was for the budget re-release of Pac-Man World 2 in 2004, as a bonus inclusion. As a kid, ...

What we have here is a nifty little three-game compilation that, puzzlingly (pun intended), only came out in Japan. One of these games is a port of Dr. Mario 64, which had strangely enough only been released in America originally. Another game on here is a full remake of Yoshi’s Cookie, a game that hasn’t made my essentials list in any form previously. The third is, in my opinion, the real star of the show, which is a remake of Panel de Pon, released outside Japan with different characters in forms such as “Tetris Attack” on SNES and “Pokémon Puzzle League” on the N64. To read more about Dr. Mario 64, you can read my previous blog post about the original version. You can also read more about the basic gameplay of Panel de Pon in my blog post about the original releases. Yoshi’s Cookie is not your usual “falling blocks” puzzle game. Instead, you start with a square-based grid with cookies of various shapes. You control two lines that go across the screen, one horizontal and one vertic...

Released two years after Deadly Alliance, Deception is a direct sequel with a story that takes place directly after the events of the previous game. And as is the case with many good video game sequels, it delivers a similar kind of experience that Deadly Alliance was going for, only refined and with much more meat on the bones.  The core combat is largely the same, but with some tweaks. There are now “combo breakers” that a player can use a limited number of times per match which disrupt the opponent’s combo in a situation where you would normally be helpless. Arenas are more interesting now, with some interactive elements and even spots where you can knock an opponent into a completely different area and then continue the fight in that location. There are more characters now, with plenty of new characters, but some fighters from Deadly Alliance are absent for better or worse. Oh, and you can actually use the joystick now instead of being stuck with the d-pad! One complaint with M...

After Mortal Kombat 4, it would be a few years before we would get another mainline entry in the series. The only games we would see for a while would be ports, spinoffs and remakes. The arcade era of Mortal Kombat was over, as arcades in general started their decline. Near the end of 2002 is when the next major entry in the series came with Deadly Alliance, with a completely new style of gameplay, and now made exclusively for home consoles. Mortal Kombat 4 had technically been in 3D, but still mostly played out on a 2D axis and played like the games that had come before it. MK:DA is now a true full-on 3D fighter, with free movement towards any direction. The basic attacks are completely different as well. Characters of course still have “special moves” which involve cool, usually-supernatural feats like shooting a ball of fire or ice. Characters now have three different fighting styles that can be switched between with the press of a button, and these are often based on real-life mart...

Everyone knew that a new Nintendo console meant that a new Mario Kart game was around the corner. What people probably didn’t see coming was that Nintendo would introduce a big new twist on the basic gameplay. As you might be able to guess from the title and the cover image, Mario Kart: Double Dash is unique because it has two characters riding the same kart instead of one. In the past, different characters had different stats which affected the way they performed on the racetrack, so this new arrangement sounds like it could make things pretty confusing. They mitigated it by making this the first Mario Kart game to have unique vehicles that characters can ride in, instead of generic go karts. Now, upon picking your characters, you can choose which vehicle they ride in, and the selection you have depends on the weight of your characters. Larger characters cannot ride in smaller vehicles, so smaller characters have a wider variety of vehicles to choose from. It’s the vehicles themselves...

Camelot had previously done a very nice job with Mario Golf on the Nintendo 64, so much so that it began a new era where we were graced with a variety of quality Mario-themed sports titles. With a new console generation and much more graphical power, a second Mario Golf game made sense. Toadstool Tour doesn’t dramatically depart from what 64 did, but that’s okay because it really didn’t have to. Like the first game, rather than just being wacky and silly with Mario elements, this game does really try to deliver a fundamentally-sound representation of the real game of golf. It has many features you’d expect and hope for in a regular golf sim, such as different clubs, wind conditions to account for, and different rules to play under such as stroke or skins. The non-realistic fantasy elements mainly come with certain specific courses and unique modes. Some of the game’s courses are comparable to ones you might find in real life, but some take place in the Mario universe and feature certai...