On the other hand…

The Nintendo DS has loads of titles in its library. Much like the Nintendo Wii, many of them are what is widely known as “filler”. Titles that are produced solely for the intend of making money. Of course, the intention of every game producer is to make at least enough money to pay the bills. But with titles like Petz: Dogz, Petz: Catz, Petz: Horzez etc., it quickly becomes clear that many titles are produced only with one thing in mind: Making a quick buck.

That doesn’t mean the DS doesn’t have some great titles, it most certainly does. But some of the real gems come in the strangest forms, and some are never really recognized for being exactly that: A little shining gem.

Maestro! Jump in Music (henceforth “Maestro!”) could be described as just another music games. The world sure needs one more of those, right? I mean, apart from numerous Guitar Heroes, Rock Band, DJ Hero, Singstar, Dance Dance Revolution etc., we certainly need more (that was sarcasm, in case you didn’t notice).

Now, I actually like music and I like music games. But by god, have they not released enough of the same and same old formula? Indeed they have, so does Maestro! bring anything new to the table?

For starters, Maestro!, as the name implies, incorporate the wonderful world of classical music. Sure, that has been done before, but not too often. Where Maestro! start to become really interesting is when we look at the actual gameplay.

The story is simple: The bird Presto lives next door to the spider Staccato. Not exactly friends, but they seem to get along. In comes the beautiful bird Bella, who both Presto and Staccato takes a fancy to. Presto wins and steals her heart (kinda unfair advantage he had, being a bird too, but hey). But Staccato is having none of that! And so he sees to it that the world goes mute. Now it’s up to Presto to save the sound and notes of the world.

How is this done then? Presto walks along strings set at different levels. In sync with the music comes notes that must be played by moving the stylus up or down over the string, much like you would play a guitar. Pulling down over a string can send Presto up a level, while the opposite will send him down. At first it seemed illogical, but in reality it is much logical, since that’s how you would do it in real life.

As Presto moves along, he collects objects, making chiclets follow him. You need at least enough to get a B+ grade to advance levels. Get many notes right and you’ll do fine, but miss a lot and you have to try again.

Luckily, the game is forgiving and you can try out a level before actually playing it. This can be worthwhile if you don’t already know the tune you are going to play.

That is, however, not all there is to the game. Soon you will have to learn new techniques for playing music. Each technique is carefully introduced with a tutorial you have to complete. There will be other birds entering the screen and you must click on them with the stylus at the correct moment. As they are moving, that’s not always easy, and of course you have to keep strumming the lines for notes.

Sometimes there will be several notes on top of each other, meaning you will have to strum them like a harp. There are times when you have to click an object and have to keep the stylus on the object as it moves, and then there are the “black holes” you have to rotate the stylus on. My favorite are the “mandolin” strings on which you have to strum up and down quickly.

The actualy gameplay is hard to describe, so here is the trailer for the game that demonstrates it quite well:

The game has 24 levels spread over 6 worlds. Each world ends with a music showdown with Staccato as your opponent. Seeing as these are the games’ “boss levels”, I would have believed them to be harder than the actual levels, but in reality, the boss levels are the easiest levels.

The normal levels can be played at different difficulty levels. On level “easy” it’s not too hard to advance in the game, although some of the later levels certainly taxes your stylus dexterity.

Now, all this would amount to absolutely nothing, if the music wasn’t well done. No matter how well done the game mechanic is, a music game with crap music would suck. So how does Maestro! sound?

I am happy to report that it sounds absolutely fabulous. I was totally gobsmacked at how amazing the music was done. Sure, it’s all “remixes” of popular and well known tunes, but by god, the music is awesome. Being composed by the obvious talented group Yubaba Smith & Fortune, the entire soundscape of the game oozes charm, joy and happiness. From the wonderful title theme that had me tapping my foot and whistling along in seconds, to the actual in-game tunes which are all respectfully (and quite faithfully) recreated versions of beloved tunes. The complete tracklist is as follows:

Green Grove: a colourful and flowery universe, full of exotic animals and lush vegetation. Rhythmic bass and afro beats inspire the music selection here.

* Ludwig Van Beethoven – Symphony No. 5
* Antonin Dvorak – Symphony No.9, From the New World
* Madness – Our House
* Traditional Japanese song – Sakura Sakura

Purple Sonata: what better music for a 17th Century palace with statues and marbling-a-go-go, than a classical sound, as baroque as you like, that has stood the test of time?

* Jean Sebastien Bach – Little Fugue in G Minor
* Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – A Little Night Music
* Perren, Mizell et al.– ABC
* Traditional French song – Vent Frais, Vent du Matin

Yellow Allegro: sojourn under the Italian sun in Venice where only the cursed seagulls throw a shadow over the scene. The music is typical of the setting: odes to joy, and love in the form of mandolin solos.

* Eduardo Di Capua – O Sole Mio
* The Animals – The House of the Rising Sun
* Antonio Vivaldi – The Four Seasons
* Traditional English song – Greensleeves

Indigo Flow: a change of scenery and a free-dive to thousands of metres below the water’s surface! Rare air bubbles ring out and myriad species of fish resonate with sound at every touch.

* Erik Satie – Gymnopedie No.1
* Pyotr Tchaikovsky – The Nutcracker
* Screamin’ Jay Hawkins – I Put a Spell on You
* Traditional Russian song – Otchi Chornye

Black out Beats: a spatial inspiration for this voyage beyond the solar system against a backdrop of starry skies and melting planets. The sounds tend towards the psychedelic: strange attractors winning out over gravity.

* Johannes Brahms – Hungarian Dances
* Edvard Grieg – Peer Gynt
* Leonard Bernstein – The Magnificent 7
* Traditional song adapted for Bizet’s Carmen – El Arreglito

Red Hot tempo: the Wild West, steam trains and gunslinging cowboys–even Charles Bronson’s reflexes would be put to the test in this Leone-inspired nightmare.

* M. Gore, D. Pitchford – Fame
* Ennio Morricone – The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
* Isaac Albeniz – Asturias
* American Traditional song – When the Saints Go Marching In

Some of the tracks might seem like an odd choice, but me, I’m all for exposing people to different kinds of music. And it cannot be stressed enough that the msuic in Maestro! is very, very well done.

There have been other music games with good music and decent game mechanics, but what about the presentation? Surely the humble DS can match games like Guitar Hero and the alike? No, of course you don’t get flash HD 3D graphics. But what you get is some of the most characteristic and charming graphics I have seen out of Nintendo’s own walls. This is simply how a game should be presented. From the very colourful graphics which have lots of neat touches and charm, to the way everything transitions from menu to menu. The selection screen is an old record player on which you move the arm to select option. And yes, you can click on the actual record and scratch and play in reverse and do pretty much whatever you want. It’s fun and it only adds more smiles to the players face. It certainly did here.

Presto himself is a great character. Just look at him! He looks so happy and joyful that I can’t help but smiling when I see him. Even the bad guy of the game looks fun. There have been painstakingly much work put into doing this game’s graphics and music.

But while many producers seems to think so, a game isn’t much cop without some decent gameplay. As I addressed earlier in this review, there are loads of games without any gameplay being released. They might look and sound flashy, but their life is shortlived, due to the lack of good old-fashioned gameplay.

Maestro! has the flash, but unlike many others it also have the gameplay. It’s fresh. It’s different. It’s challenging. But most importantly, it’s works and it’s damn fun. While I am sure it would not have worked so well with crap music and presentation that is not really problem here.

Maestro! delivers a breath of fresh air to an otherwise kind of tired genre – the music games. And it does in a way that none of the big consoles can.

Even the creators logo is charming! Pastagames is also doing a iPod Touch or iPhone version, so if any of you out there doesn’t have a Nintendo DS but one of Apple’s touchscreen gadgets, you are going to get the game as well. Any other device with a touch screen and the necessary CPU power could get it too, if it’s a success. Perhaps Android phones? Whatever it would take to ensure Pastagames make enough money to continue releasing wonderful games like this.

Ladies and gentlemen, if you have any interest in a charming, funny, good looking and wonderfully sound game, you need to look no further. This little gem has it all. It hasn’t received much attention (why not?!), but I can wholeheartedly give it much credit and can only recommend you purchase the game. It has most european languages (english, spanish, italian, french, german, danish, norwegian, dutch, portuguese and swedish) and it is worth it’s price.

You get a wonderful game and you support what seems to be a talented bunch of people who clearly invested a lot of time and effort in giving us this game.

Thank you , Pastagames.

Score: 9 out of 10

-Jacob

It’s not often that you see something that is unique, yet so familiar it almost falls natural. I’d reckon it’s pretty darn rare to behold something like that.

Nevertheless, I’ve recently had that very experience with a new game title. The title is Scary Girl, a game that is a collaboration of several forces, but altogether an Australian product from Touch My Pixel.

What is unique about the game? Well, how about the fact that it’s done in a wonderful and very atmospheric and characteristic art style? That it has several kinds of game mechanics, yet at its core it’s still a platform game? Or that it’s soundtrack and story is both amusing and emotional? And how about the fact that it’s an online Flash-based game, that you can play anywhere? No installation require, and save games are kept on the server, so you can save on one computer and continue on another. Last, but certainly not least, there is the rather interesting fact that the game is free.

The game starts out with a small introduction. We see Scary Girl’s dream in which she is dragged underwater, stumbles upon several strange creatures and a man’s face haunts her dreams too. She wakes up, heavy breathing, determined to figure this dream out. She thinks she needs to see her guardians Bunniguru (a bunny) or Blister (an octopussy).

Scary Girl is no ordinary girl. She’s not entirely human. She has got some kind of tentacles instead of arms and legs, yet, one arm is seemingly severed, revealing bone. The other has a pirate hook at the end. With her wee hat (with a Jolly Roger symbol) and eye patch, she does look somewhat like a octo-human-girly-pirate. She is no beauty, she’s a bit scary, but she’s also really charming to look at.

Scary Girl is a rather versatile… creature. She runs, jumps, spins (for attacking), and she has a pretty nifty spin-jump too. Later in the game she’ll dive, drive, fly and fight – to name but a few of the things she’ll get herself into. She can also interact with certain objects, like the eggs she finds lying about. Pick them up and throw them, and they’ll break. Either you’ll get goodies (gems for points, fish for energy), an annoying bomb that’ll steal your energy if you aren’t fast, or a sleek, black cat, that’ll make you invincible for a while. Or what about a golden fish, that’ll start a rain of fish?

Anyway, the game starts out as a pretty normal platform game. You run about, jump on foes (not all though), do spin-kills and collects items. However, the story you need to unfold calls for communication with your friends and … foes? The first one you meet, is the meditating Bunniguru, a mild-spirited, yet rather mystical bunny, that likes to be coy and playful. He’ll help you anyway, though.

The first little puzzle is easy, and seeing Bunniguru will solve the problem, making way for progress. But don’t get too comfortable, things will be much trickier on your way to solving the puzzle of your dreams and figure out just who that mystical face belongs to, and why you are dreaming of him in the first place.

While Scary Girl does have some text in order to explain how you control the main character and to tell some of the story, much of the game uses small animations and pictograms. Like when you ask Bunniguru about the face in your dream and he explains what you should do.

As you can see in the picture to the left, a sort of speech bubble pops up, an in it plays a small animation of what you should do. In this case, you see a bike getting assembled and driving through a city to a temple.

One could be forgiven for think that is what you need to do next. But it’s not that simple. The instructions you are given, are not always your very next step. There can be several steps in between. But your friends do know what the future holds, although they sometimes show the future in a bit obscure way.

The system works well though, and I’d say that kids should be able to get through this game without understanding the text or even being able to read.

I’ve mentioned earlier, that Scary Girl is versatile – and she is. Later stages involves diving (remember to pop up in airholes to breathe), fighting (a bit simple, but still fun), racing on a rocket-driving motorcycle and there are boss battles and lots of collecting of stuff. Most puzzles aren’t so bad, they can be solved with a bit of patience and thinking.

Scary Girl has a lot going for it. The graphics are really well drawn and everything ooze charm and character. The music is well suited for the game and you find yourself humming along some of the tunes. The gameplay is good. Mostly it’s fairly good platforming, broken by the occasionel stage with something entirely different. There are some annoying points in the game, but with a bit of patience, most people will be able to get through these.

As mentioned earlier, you can save the game and it will store your progress on the server. This works by creating an account on the game’s website, and it works fine… most of the time. Sure, it only saves at the beginning of each stage which is okay with me. But I’ve had it skip a stage somehow, when I loaded a save position. And you only have one. The game does have a few bugs. Like when I fell into a hole and Scary Girl’s energy didn’t run out. So I could sort of control her off screen indefinitely, which meant I had to access the game’s menu and restart the level.

Oh, I almost forgot. The game also offers a few bonus games in form of “Console Games” you can collect. Once collected, you can click on a small tv in the upper left corner  (to access the in-game menu) from which you can play the console games you have collected. They are quite simple affairs like a Pong/Break-out clone, a Space Invaders clone and a small race game (seen to the right). All these games are simplistic both graphics, sound and game play-wise, but they are a jolly good addition nevertheless. Even though the pong clone gets the ball stuck behind the bat and racks up points at an alarming rate (if it’s your opponent) or strips you of your lives very fast (if it’s you). And even though the racing game lets you position your car so it will never hit anything!

Even  with the mentioned bugs and even if the game demands a decent CPU (it’s not always ultra-smooth on my old P4 3GHz), its charm, game play, price and neat little story makes it something special.

If your gaming needs to be in 3D to be enjoyable, you might as well stay clear of Scary Girl. It’s not “next-gen”. But it’s still a very pretty, highly enjoyable and very competent game for those of us who like our platforming to be full of charm and character. Sure, it’s sometimes a pain to see what is actually a platform, and what is just background graphics, and the controls aren’t perfect by any means. But as for the “what’s a platform”-struggle, I suppose it was a choice the developers made in order to maintain the artistic style.

I’d also wish for a downloadable version. Heck, I’d gladly pay some bucks for it. The developers deserve it. In fact, how about a port for the Xbox 360? The game has potential written all over it, so why not make a decent buck that way. And optimize the game for the platform, because I’d love to enjoy the game full screen, something I can’t in this version. And that is a shame, since the game is a joy to behold. Click here to enjoy it!

Score: 8 out of 10

-Jacob

Trailer of the game:

Another, longer preview:

How about a nice retro/8-bit themed shooter in which you blast the crap out of hundreds of cocks? Sounds too fucked up? Well, it is… and then again, it isn’t. The graphics are quite smooth, the sounds and the music are well suited and to be honest, it feels like a kick-ass 8-bit game with tonnes of humour and good laughs.

Space Phallus might not be for the faintest of heart – or homophobes -  but under the massive amount of cocks and ball sacks, you get a pretty darn competent shoot’em up, that is getting better and better with every new version. It’s time to stand erect and check it out!

-Jacob

If some of you youngsters believe Doom is an ANCIENT game, you wouldn’t be that far off, compared to your own age. Doom is about 15 years old. But how about a trip to id Software in the time right before Doom was released? It’s all here, complete with a beta version of Doom with sound effects from the Super Nintendo version of Wolfenstein!

-Jacob

I’m selling my old PS2. Yeah, it’s been a long journey. I got it in 2002. It’s a PAL PS2, the old large model with power supply built in, room for ethernet and HD.

It’s modded so it plays backups and imported games, any region.Along with it you get  got over 250 games (click here for a complete list), that comes in a neat CaseLogic folder. The PS2 + cables + 2 controllers + Memory card comes in a cool PS2 EastPak bag. It also comes with a Guitar Hero controller, along with all Guitar Hero games, of course. A decent scartcable is supplied and I might even throw in a composite cable, if you plan on using it with a tv with composite input.

The games includes some real gems like Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Gran Turismo, Tekken, Virtua Fighter, Sly Cooper, Jak & Daxter, Ratchett & Clank, Black, Grandia III etc. A complete list will be added to this post later on tonight. All games are copies. No originals.

It’s the perfect gift for the young ones. The PS2 has decent graphics and an enormous library of cheap (or if you prefer, almost free, save for the price of the media) games. You might not ever need more though, seeing as this collection has hundreds of hours of entertainment.

The console works fine – I’ve been playing a lot of Guitar Hero as late as a few days ago – and appears almost new. I always handle my gear with care, so it’s got minimal amount of scratches etc. I will also add a picture to this post later.

Since this is a quite good package, I’ve decided that I won’t sell it for less than 2000 dkr. All lower bids are simply ignored. Unless you are Virginia Madsen or someother of similar attractiveness and plan on paying in alternate currency. In that case, I’m open for discussion!

Post me a bid in the comments if you are interested.

-Jacob

Supposedly my Xbox 360 has returned with its newly installed iXtreme V1.5 firmware, which will enable it to play back-ups. Since the process of making back-ups is quite elaborate, I’m rather curious to find out whether or not my already burned back-ups will work.

It shall be an interesting evening with tests galore.

*Update*

After having tested it extensively, I can happily report that it works well. Backups play, they install to HD and are playable on Live. I’m a happy camper!

-Jacob