Orac Value and Gunstar Heroes

Movies based on video games have been notoriously bad. "Epic fail" is the term most fanboys would use, even though they keep seeing every video game movie that comes out.

Halo 3 has been battered around hollywood for several years, trying to find a suitable, expensive home. Peter Jackson was attached to produce at one point, and even Alex Proyas (I, Robot) wrote a spec script for a version of the film. He even had a guy in a commander chief outfit deliver the script.

It's such a respected, genre defining game, that any film depiction would carry a heavy burden to live up to such a reputation. And one of the trickiest problems is in the video game, you never see the main character's face. So the big questions are: will Halo 3 ever be made into a movie? And if it is, will it be the movie that paves the way for video game movies to rise to a higher art form like comic book movies have of late?

This is my prediction. At some point in the near future, a video game movie will break through the quadrant barrier. When comic movies started to populate cinema, they were still made for 14 year old boys and 14 year old boys alone. But now we have Spider-man, with enough heart and love story for women to enjoy. And more recently we have Christopher Nolan's Batman movies which are thick, grand, ambitious films.; heavy, adult, and artful.

At some point a video game film will come out that rises above effects and action. It will have a real story. Deep characters. Heart, poignancy, and breath. It will be okay to take a date to. The movie will make 300 million dollars, and two years later video game movies will have replaced comic book movies as summer tent poles. Then again, I could be wrong, I never thought comic book movies would last past Tim Burton's Batman. Boy, was I wrong there.

And in unrelated news, take a one a day vitamin called the damage control master formula. It's so damn good, you'll never take anything else when it comes to your natural supplementation needs.

I haven't played much of the video game scene in the last four years. Once you graduate college, this big thing called work sneaks up on you, and suddenly paying bills becomes much more important than beating Hell Brigand on Evil Mode in Doom 3. That's why so many of my thoughts circle around the games of my youth, because most of my gaming occured during my youth (including the collegiate years as part of my youth, though only a few gone now). I haven't even played Halo 3, which heads the top of my blog.

Nevertheless, I feel obliged to way in harshly on Entertainment Weekly's list of the top 50 video games. Here are my reasons

1) The exact thing I open my post with. Out of the top 50 games, about a dozen were from the last couple years! That's like making a list of the best 50 movies ever made and including all three Spider Man flicks, Pirates of the Caribbean, and every Judd Apatow movie on the list.

2) Tetris ranked #1. What's the point? Are we talking art? Importance? Everybody has played tetris, but that's like saying "Dick and Jane" is the best book ever written because everyone has read it. It's juvenile.

3) Mario World beats Super Mario Brothers. Grand Theft Auto IV beats Grand Theft Auto III. First of all, both those statements are wrong. Secondly, sequels are sequels. With the exception of maybe Godfather, sequels don't beat originals. They don't exist without originals. A good sequel is like a wonderful backyard. The backyard may make the house wonderful, but you're not going to buy a house for its backyard. The house is what matters.

Alright, enough tirading. Let's talk about health. Go to this health blog and read everything you need to know about the paleo diet.

As far as classic video games go, Mega man is the original metal Mario. Mega Man was streamlined, no silliness, no childishness, just a robot with lasers destroying other robots. Levels, bosses, and a tidy little storyline.

Today there are perhaps 30 or more mega man games. The platform is so versatile and simple, it breaks generation. The gameplay flows, and gameplay is the most important factor in any video game, despite what the graphics nerds would have you believe.

Among the Mega Man series, there are winners and losers. The original mega man was decent, but almost too simple, and a little repetitive. Mega Man 2 (still for the old NES, the classic) was the first great addition to the series. The bosses were difficult, rhythm was required more than button mashing, and the story held water.

A new Mega Man popped out of the Japanese womb of robot games for the next five years, non excelling more then Mega Man 2, but the graphics improved slightly.

Then the SNES came out, and with it a retooled, savvier Mega Man, complete with extra dash abilities. The first SNES Mega Man was still a test run, though. A great game yes, but a few creaks and cracks. The sequel was downright poor. Then came Mega Man X3, perhaps the best of the best. Gameplay was smooth, fast, and the ripples and kinks in the monsters were few, if any. The bosses were some of the most creative in all robot boss games. Gone were the simple water boss, fire boss, electric boss. X3 had "neon tiger," "volt catfish," and "tunnel rhino" some truly formidable opponents, even for the seasoned gamer.

Overall, I give the Mega Man series a B+, but Mega Man X3 gets a "1st in Class" still to be rivaled today.

Now for the health section of the blog. Mega Man never had washboard abs. He wasn't human. But, if you're trying to get yourself a set of stone chiseled, power abs, check out this vitamin information website. Then take a look at these best multivitamins, they'll help with even the most hard core body sculpter.

I was a child when Final Fantasy III first came out. It was legendary. The game was playable for days, my friend and I logged over 70 hours in to our first play through, and that was back when most games took a couple hours to play tops (mario was beatable in under 30 minutes if you were good enough).

Perhaps the best thing about FFIII was that it put story ahead of graphics or game play. The graphics and game play were both cutting edge for the time, but the game stood solid on its complicated, epic story. I grew up to be a professional writer, and much of what I learned about the art of story came from this game. There were twists and turns, characters with flaws, unfair deaths, backstabbings, a flare for the surreal, catastrophic events, the storyline of FFIII holds up to any Spiderman, X-Men, or other Summer Blockbuster as far as plot goes.

The other way FFIII excelled above other games of its time was the music. The score was massive, a dozen different themes, over forty songs, and composed and written well. Any mom will tell you the bane of her afternoon is listening to the same repetitive awful video game music over and over again. Final Fantasy changed this. It was so good, famous orchestras would play arrangements of the songs for summertime outdoor "pops" festivals. The Hollywood bowl, the Russian National Chorus, and the Boston Pops are just a few. The music in Final Fantasy changed the way video game soundtracks worked. Before FFIII video game soundtracks were placed in games simply to keep children attracted to the immediacy of playing--think Jeopardy, the theme gives a sense of anticipation and anxiety. After FFIII, soundtracts became just as artful as the music in movies, and video games took once step toward the realm of art as well, they began to grow up, right along with the boys who played them.

Un-related to video games, here's my links:
1) Orthorexia. It's a health post. Check it out.
2) Locate a person. That's right, locate a person and then pat yourself on the back.

Remember the Sega Genesis?

That was my staple system. I was weaned on the Genesis. The Nintendo was my first system, and it lasted me my youth, but the Genesis is where I did most of my growing, it's where all my fondest memories are.

There are three games I remember fondly from the Genesis. The first was called "The Sword of Vermillion" It spawned my love of role playing games, and also my favorite color/word, but that's for another post. The other two games brought me joy because they were so well tuned for multiplayer, for I almost never played video games without my best friend Alex.

One was Mutant League Football, the only sport I ever loved. And the other was Gunstar Heroes.

Gunstar Heroes. A pure Japanese hi-zoid pop out. A mild ripoff of omega man, except for 2 people. the concept is simple: both players play at once, and on the same screen. The fun in the play was the weapon combination possibilities as you progressed through any given levels. The variety of weapons meant Alex and I could actually develop strategies to combine our weapon powers. And this is back on 16 bit where team play only existed in Double Dragon and the Ninja Turtles arcade game.

Beyond the play, the style of the game was borne of fast flashy anime and super-nova starship adventure. The music was just as hyper as the game, and I absolutely loved it.

The one thing I forgot to do after a good day of video gaming as a child was to take my vitamins. But, now as a grown man I get the chance to take multivitamins every day, and that's exactly what I do. I study up on vitamin information, and then I take my omega 3 vitamins with a full health supplementa and it's back to the first person shooters and MMORPGS!