Weekend Flashback #3 - Pokemon Snap (1999, N64)

Title: Pokemon Snap
Original Release Date: June 30, 1999
Platform: Nintendo 64
ESRB Rating: E

One of the fastest ways to shut me up as a kid was to slap a Pokemon game in front of me. Something about the mix of turn-based combat and its simple - yet very broad - storyline kept my interest for literal hours on end. Pokemon Snap was the series' first spinoff game for a home console, and though it was extremely short, I remember it being incredibly fun.

You play as a Pokemon photographer named Todd whose job is to... well, capture pictures of Pokemon. You team up with Professor Oak, who needs help with a scientific project on an island where Pokemon live fairly undisturbed by humans. The island in the game is home to a lot of different geographic regions, which makes it an ideal place to go to research all sorts of Pokemon. Over the course of the game, Oak will rate your photos on a point system and puts them into an album that you can reference back again later. That's about as complex as the story gets.

The game starts with one stage, and as you progress through, you unlock more by meeting certain conditions or figuring out how to unlock the stages yourself. You'll also get a few nifty items, like a Pokeflute and pester balls, which will allow certain Pokemon to come out of hiding, do something special, or both. You'll also get bait to lure Pokemon out into the open. How you use these items is entirely up to you, and I'll get to that in a minute.

See, I remember this game as being fairly long. My younger cousin and I spent months playing it. Literal months. We could compete to get the best picture scores, spend hours trying to find all the different Pokemon and framing the best shot, use a complex trial-and-error system to get all the special Pokemon. It seemed like every time we thought we were done, we would discover something new.

So, how does it feel thirteen years later? Well, it feels...

...it feels stagnant, unfortunately. See, I remember this game being really long and really complex and having a lot of hours poured into it, but when my friend Nikki and I played it together while we were revisiting it, I knew how to get everything. Every new stage, every hidden Pokemon, every nuance behind getting the "perfect shot." I remembered it all. It took a lot of the excitement and fun out of the game for me. Nikki, on the other hand, had a lot of fun playing it, and once I was able to turn my brain off, I enjoyed myself as well.

The "fun component" that I always seem to be talking about is severely lacking here, though, as far as following the story goes. While both Crash Team Racing and Ratchet and Clank feel timeless, Pokemon Snap feels tedious and tired. And oh my God the music. May God himself have mercy on your soul when you replay this game. As Dave pointed out, the music is tedious, tired, repetitive, and just plain awful. It did not, by any means, age well. Even CTR, which came out in the same year, had better music behind it than this. My great grandmother's funeral had better music behind it than this.

The part that was fun, though, wasn't the game itself, but the results screen when we were done taking pictures. See, now that Nikki and I are older, we pick up on certain things that we didn't notice then.

Like what a pervert Professor Oak really is.

We didn't alter this at all. This really happened in-game.

Seriously, we took a lot of oddball pictures, and soon the game wasn't about taking the best picture, it was taking the strangest, most effed up pictures we could manage within the one stage and sixty pictures we were allotted. We had more fun pelting Pikachu with bait and making Electabuzz fall flat on his face than we did trying to get Snorlax to wake the hell up. We tormented poor Meowth by making him fall off his platform, then worsened the blow by whacking him relentlessly with pester balls. We bounced apples off of a herd of Charmanders' heads to see them cringe, then laughed and made fun of them as they roared at us in their cute little Charmander voices. We knocked Charmeleon into a vat of lava, not to see him evolve, but because we could knock him into a vat of lava. We made two Magmar fight each other just to see one get knocked out.

This one was more a victim of
circumstance. Still comedy gold,
though.

We did countless other things to these poor, friendly Pokemon that would make PETA shit their pants in horror. And we did it because we could, and because the option was there.

And, really, what more fun is there than that in this universe?

Verdict: Taking the perfect picture of a Pokemon isn't fun. Having Professor Oak laugh at fainted Pokemon is.

Notes: If you want to relive Snap and have your own hours of hilarity, you can purchase this title again in the Wii's Virtual Console store for 1000 Wii Points (or, you know, ten dolla holla in real money.)

Review: Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns (3DS)

Title: Harvest Moon: Tale of Two Towns
System: Nintendo DS, Nintendo 3DS
ESRB Rating: E
Number of Players: 1
Buy It:

• Nintendo DS version - Amazon | GameStop | Play-Asia.com
• Nintendo 3DS version - Amazon | GameStop | Play-Asia.com

Before we start off, let me say this: for all intents and purposes, this review is for the 3DS version of Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns. Other than 3D effects, an animal-petting minigame, and the 3DS region-locking, I know of no differences between the two versions. Now, with that out of the way, let's get to talking about HM:ToTT!

The Harvest Moon games have remained mostly unchanged since the franchise started in 1996 on the SNES. As much a dating simulation as it is a farming simulation, it has a niche following in the United States, making it a small - but successful - franchise. Other than some graphic re-hauling over the years, the main HM franchise has always been about two things: rising up to create a successful farm, and finding yourself a spouse. In that regard, HM: Two Towns does nothing new. But the new things it does bring has kept me interested and occupied.

The most interesting part of Two Towns is that you can choose which town you want to live in at the beginning of the game. The first choice is the farming village Konohana, a tranquil and pretty Japanese-inspired town that centers around raising crops over livestock. On the other side of the mountain, you have your second option: the town of Bluebell, a more European-looking town that centers its income on raising livestock. No matter which town you choose, you can utilize the land on both farms. (This makes it easy to live in Bluebell and raise a lot of livestock and still use the fields in Konohana to raise long-lasting crops like soybeans, corn, tomatoes, etc.) Living in Bluebell is almost like cheating. Living in Konohana is a lot more typical of other Harvest Moon games: being broke all the time and struggling to get the money needed for important things like seeds, fertilizer, and pet food.

Other activities - fishing, bug gathering, and foraging - are back from other games and work just as well as they ever have. Fishing has a new option, though: you can now wade into shallow water and catch fish with your hands by walking up to them and hitting the "A" button. These tiny fish can't be used in cooking, but they can be sold for ten to thirty gold and be used to fulfill requests for villagers.

The 3D graphics add a cute shadow effect to the game, but overall isn't worth the ten dollars extra you have to plunk down for it. The 3DS-exclusive animal petting minigame, however, makes your animals friendlier faster, and is an interesting benefit to getting the enhanced version.

In spite of everything that Two Towns is doing right, though, classic HM bugs are still present. The game freezes periodically and at random times, and when your only option for saving is before you go to bed, a lot of things can be lost. Additionally, the game lags when there's a lot of things going on: riding your horse while other livestock roams around in their pens will cause the game to slow a little bit. In 3D mode, it's motion-sick inducing. In 2D, it's just annoying. The last thing that this game has wrong with it - really, really wrong - is that the weather system only kind of works. Listen to the radio before you go to bed, and it will tell you what the weather for the present day and the next day will be. There's about a 45% chance that the weather forecast for the next day will be wrong, making it confusing and difficult to plan ahead for the next day, especially for weather-specific events like flower events and figuring out what to do with your livestock for the day.

Overall, Harvest Moon: The Tale of Two Towns is fun and addicting. The typical bugs are still present, but are as much a part of the Harvest Moon experience as courting a villager.

Bottom Line: Mostly the same Harvest Moon, but with an interesting addition of choosing where you can specialize. It's a welcome - and interesting - change. Typical HM bugs are still present and more annoying than ever.

Final Score: 8/10

Review: Professor Layton and the Last Specter (DS) PART ONE - London Life

London Life title screen

Title: Professor Layton's London Life (mini-RPG bonus game)
System: Nintendo DS
ESRB Rating: E 10+
Number of Players: 1
Buy It: Amazon | GameStop | Play-Asia.com (English version) (Japanese Version)

I'll say this first: this is a review in two parts. Why? That comes next.

I bought this game the day it came out, and as of right this very second, I have not yet started the main game. That's because of this nifty little bonus RPG that Last Specter came with, called London Life. What is LL? It's one part Animal Crossing, one part Professor Layton, and one part Mother 3 (I think it was called EarthBound in English? Don't quote me on that, though.) And it's one hell of a great time.

You start off by creating a character from the top-down: looks, personality, style, the whole nine yards. Like in Animal Crossing, you start off by getting off a train in a new town and moving into your new apartment. Your furnishings are sparse at first: all you've got is a bed. Over the course of your time in Little London, though, you can buy new things and add to your room, though doing fetch quests for the other Londoners can get you some pretty nifty items that either can't be found anywhere else or are very expensive.

The game operates on two different levels: one is Wealth, the in-game currency. The other is Happiness, which affects almost everything else in the game: what kinds of fish you catch (and how often), what kinds of flowers you find in flower boxes, how much you get paid on jobs, and how well others respond to you. Of course, your happiness goes down if someone in town yells at you, but you can replenish it by making or buying food and eating it. Happiness, in most cases for London Life, is more important than Wealth, but the two are so well intertwined that sometimes it's hard to tell.

London Life player character (center) seen with
Luke Triton (left) and Flora (right)

But by now you're probably wondering where the Mother/EarthBound part comes in, right? It's all in the graphics, baby. Cute sprites looks like they could've been lifted right out of one franchise and plopped onto the other. It's not a bad thing by a long shot, either: London Life really benefits from sprite usage.

The biggest part about this game though is the part that I fear will turn players off of really playing it: it's all mission based. Don't be turned off by the fact that this is all built on fetch quests. I'm not normally a fan of mission-based games - my dislike of them kept me from really enjoying Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days - but I literally couldn't put this down. My inner completionist went balls to the walls with this and had a great time learning all the recipes, completing every single mission, and making my million-Wealth apartment all my own.

While the complete mini-story can be completed in around two hours, I had a lot of fun sinking hours upon hours into completing all the quests and helping out all the familiar faces from other Professor Layton titles.

I have no complaints with this game, at all, except maybe that it's too short. In all honesty, I would have bought this as a stand-alone game. It's that good.

Bottom Line: Mini-RPG that comes with Last Specter. Shockingly fun, lots to do, and extremely customizable.

Final Score: London Life gets a solid, well-deserved 10/10

Special Note: You can buy the game's full soundtrack here. It's beautiful, as I'd expect from a Professor Layton game.

Review: Chocolatier (DS)

Title: Chocolatier
System: Nintendo DS
ESRB Rating: E
Number of Players: 1
Buy It: Amazon.com


This is more of a job lot review than a real review, but here goes. Last time I went to Five Below, I decided to let the gamer inside me loose, and check out the games. Usually, there's only a handful of lame movie tie-in games for the Gameboy Advance, but this last time was a jackpot: DS games, PS2 games, and even a few Wii games lined the video game bin.


Among the games I found there was an unassuming DS game by the name of "Chocolatier" where you, the player, became a - you guessed it - chocolatier to revive a once-famous brand name to its former glory. By haggling for ingredients and travelling the world to get only the finest goods, you were able to make better chocolates, and as you got better, you were able to make more and more kinds of chocolates. As you progress, you gained the ability to buy new factories  (and therefore make more chocolates at once) and by running errands for people, you'll be able to get new recipes. The premise was simple, yet engaging. And for five bucks, I figured I really had nothing to lose.


Making the chocolates had an interesting game mechanic: plates with notches revolved around a "cannon" in the center of the screen with an ingredient on it. Shoot the correct ingredients onto the plate you wanted to by touching it with the DS stylus. Once the plate was full, it'd vanish and get replaced by a new one until your time ran out. (It was something like 60 seconds per round.) The better you did, the faster the wheel with the plates would spin, and the more chocolates you could pump out. Plus, the better a recipe you were using, the more ingredients you'd need to make the chocolate and the tougher it'd be.


The game was much more addicting than I thought it'd be. The entire campaign only took me about six hours to complete, but it was a fast-paced, fun six hours. And I did it almost straight because I couldn't put it down. Completely worth my five dollars.

Bottom Line: Fun, fast-paced game about reviving a chocolate company to their former glory. Look in the right places, get it for $5 or less. (Trust me, it's worth your $5.)

Final Score: 8/10