Perhaps one of the best GBA games most people will never get to play?
Mother 3
On my new commute to work these days, I am now playing Mother 3, which is the sequel to Earthbound (Mother 2) here in the United States. Apparently, the game was never released in America due to several reasons such as it being a bit too controversial for children (it looks cute but its storyline is mature), too many potential copyright infringements (the music team behind the Earthbound games love the Beatles, among other things), and it is a Gameboy Advance game that released in Japan when the DS already took off in the States. Suffice to say, the only way to actually play this game is by downloading a fan translation that patches the Japanese version of the game. It’s a stellar translation and Nintendo isn’t telling the group to cease and desist because the company decided not to release the game in the US, so no one holds the copyright. The translation group has even gone one step further and put together a 240 page full color guidebook with tons of original art and is selling it for $20. I almost want to buy the guidebook just to support their effort, but the thing about guidebooks with me is if I buy one, then I will have to depend on it as a crutch the rest of the game since I’ll worry I’ll miss something so I’d rather just play it freely. Plus, I’m in the subway and I’d be a little embarrassed reading a strategy guide and playing the game at the same time on my way to work.
Dawn of War II
I spent most of this week’s gaming time finishing off the campaign for Dawn of War II, but I haven’t had a chance to try out multiplayer enough to warrant a review. I’m surprised though that Steam is telling me I’ve already logged 40 or so hours into this game, so suffice to say, the game is pretty lengthy on the hardest difficulty. Review will definitely be out next week as this weekend should give me some extra needed time to spend with the multiplayer.
Defense Grid
Been playing this a bit this week since it’s on sale for $5 and I’m actually enjoying it a lot. It does a great job in the first few levels of keeping things simple and slowly adding more enemy types and towers to use. I also like that there’s a feature for speeding up the enemy movement, so you’re not always sitting around waiting when you don’t have enough to make/upgrade towers. Great deal at $5 and I’ll try to write some detailed impressions up for it next week.
Starcraft
Starcraft rounds out my heavy PC gaming week, as I’ve gotten back into the PC gaming side pretty strong thanks to Steam’s sale, Dawn of War II, and the impending Starcraft II release. Now that the Starcraft II beta is imminent, I’m continuing to play the game to brush up on its mechanics. Having completed the Terran campaign, I’m now knee deep in the Zerg campaign. All these memories keep coming back as I play this game – one of my more memorable aspects of playing Zerg that I got to experience again is having 4 Hatcheries next to each other and spawning a full hotkey of units at once.
