One of the many cool things about the Nintendo Wii [wiionthespot, wiisensorextension, wiibomberman, wiigcgames, godfatherwiivideo] is the fact that it can play all games made for the Nintendo GameCube. There were a ton of neat games made for the GC, and most of them are now available for less than $30. Here are a couple of games that you may have missed on the GC, but are lots of fun to play on the Wii:
1-on-1 monster melee battles with all of the classic giant monsters from the Godzilla movies. Easy to play - sort of like Super Smash Brothers for grown-ups.
An ultra-charming adventure game where you play a miniature household cleaning robot. To stay powered, you need to find wall sockets and "plug yourself in" while exploring and doing chores in the house. Oh, and there is a pirate in the basement. Of course.
One of the most original games I've played in a while, Odama is a strategic war game set on a… pinball table. You advance your army by giving voice orders using the included microphone, and try not to kill your troops with the ricocheting pinball. The game is a bit hard, and leaves too much to chance, but the game design is truly brilliant. And addictive.
I'm seeing a bunch of wild and crazy solutions on the net for dealing with the short Wii Sensor Bar cable. I wonder why people are going so crazy with this thing when it is a simple two-conductor wire? If you have even the most basic of soldering skills (or not!), you can pretty easily extend the cable. You just splice in some longer wire, and… oh wait, that's all there is! And if you screw up, you can just order a new Sensor Bar from Nintendo for $10.
Here's what I did to extend the cable. If you decide to do this too, you do it at your own risk. I make no warranties and hold no responsibility if you do something like burn your house down… or worse. Why not just wait a couple of months for some pre-made extension cables to hit the market?
Most any wire will do, but I decided to use a 20ft 4-conductor RJ11 cable. Most folks would call this a "phone cord." Why did I use this? Because I had an extra in the closet.
I snipped the RJ11 connectors (the "phone plugs") off the end of the phone cable, peeled back the jacket, and stripped the insulation from two of the wires. I cut the Wii Sensor cable in two, and stripped the insulation.
The wires in the Wii Sensor cable are reeeeally thin. The flame from a cigarette lighter will burn off the non-conducting strands in the cable.
Even a poor, gobby, soldering job like mine will do the trick. I wonder if polarity even matters with this cable.
A little shrink tube (and that handy cigarette lighter again) can keep the connections safe, even if you do a crummy job like I did. Don't forget to slide the "unshrunk" shrink tube over the cable before you solder.
Voila, I now have a 30ft Wii Sensor cable that works perfectly.
Star Trek: Tactical Assault ![[B000GI7LNU]](http://www.mikeyp.com/css/external.gif)
for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS is an underrated game. However, it isn't for everyone:
So with that all out of the way, I found the game to be a lot of fun, smartly challenging, and fictionally authentic to classic Trek. A D.C. Fontana storyline takes you through various missions where you battle it out with other starships. The Star Fleet Battle rules apply: keep your strongest shields facing the enemy, attack enemies where their shields are weakest, rotate between phaser banks, use as much ship speed as possible, fire photon torpedoes at close range, and above all, apply emergency power when you have it, because dammit Scotty, we need more power!
A light RPG system is included, where you can apply "crew upgrades" to your ship's staff. These let you recharge shields faster, fire weapons faster, etc. It feels a bit forced to have this system apply to crew members instead of the ship itself, but from a gameplay point of view, it works just the same.
There are a couple of annoyances with the game. One is that it is far too easy to accidentally smash your ship against an off-screen asteroid. As you replay missions, you learn where the asteroids are located, but it still feels unfair. Another annoyance is with the AI allies. I was once in a battle where I handily whipped all but one of the enemy ships, only to lose the battle because my AI partner lost a one-on-one battle with the last ship before I could join the fight.
But overall, if you love Trek and war games, Star Trek: Tactical Assault is worth a purchase. It definitely makes me anxious to pick up its big brother, Star Trek: Legacy for the Xbox360 , when it comes out later this month.
A few months ago on Kevin Smith's blog, he lamented that a movie idea of his was getting made. Without him. Several years ago, he had an idea for a particular film story, but never got around to making it. As time passed, someone else eventually, and independantly, came up with a very similar film idea, and has since finished production.
The same thing just happened to me with a game idea. Several years ago, I had the idea of creating retro-style arcade games with a unique theme. The graphics would look as if they were hand-drawn with pencils and pens on loose-leaf paper, hopefully triggering some high school study hall nostalgia. I figured that I would call them "Loose Leaf games." I even went so far as to prototype an Asteroids clone with a background image of a scanned sheet of notebook paper. But the long hours of my "day job" took over, and I never followed through on the idea.
This year, someone else came up with the same general concept, and release a game. SketchFighter 4000 Alpha is a classic scrolling shooter game, with, you guessed it, a hand-drawn graphical theme with a notebook background. The game looks terrific, and even made the "Featured Download" on Apple's Mac OS X games page. I hope it sells well.
I wonder what will happen to the rest of my game ideas?
My long time friend Brian has relaunched his web site in a blog format. Welcome to the blogosphere Brian!
When he's not coding games, Brian writes the defacto software for Eastern Indian astrology, called Jyotish Tools. His blog is here:
http://blog.jyotishtools.com/
