Things That Are Still Awesome

A few years back my wife bought a Super Nintendo on eBay. Now we have a 3 year old who likes to play Super Mario World but, quite frankly, sucks at it. I guess it's not his fault, he's only 3. The upshot here is that he asks to play Mario except what he means is that he wants to watch while my wife or I play. And he holds the extra controller and gets excited when each board is finished.

So I was playing Super Mario World yesterday and I'm happy to report that it is still freaking awesome. This is one of the best video games ever made. I'm amazed at how entertaining it still is. And it's actually still somewhat challenging. Not challenging in the sense that I'd ever lose. I played like 5 boards and collected 22 lives and I don't think I ever died once. But challenging in the sense that a lot of the boards have secret exits and you ahve to find the switch palaces of different colors.

In my opinion, the biggest leap forward in Mario gaming was from Super Mario Bros. 3 to Super Mario World. It is basically the same foundation of a game, except it's way better. It's more expansive, takes advantage of the greater capabilities of the Super Nintendo, and really doesn't have many, if any, flaws. Now I can't really speak for Mario games after this one. If you have a Nintendo 64 or if there are Mario games for the Wii, I don't know about any of that. But Super Mario World is still awesome.

Guitar Hero Is The New Crack

Many of the readers of this blog remember the time Side Bar and MMG rented "Parappa the Rapper" for Playstation and there were about 15 twenty-something dudes in their basement enjoying themselves way too much playing a game that seemed to be designed for kids. In that game you had to press various combinations of buttons according to a beat in order for your character to "rap" at an acceptable level. Whoever designed that game was definitely a drug addict, there were all sorts of strange talking animals doing strange things like being driving instructors and making cakes with seafood ingredients, but that's beside the point. The point is that that was the first game I remember that had that format where you had to press button combinations with a beat.

All of us have also seen those people playing "Dance Dance Revolution" in arcades or wherever and they look kindof silly tapping their feet with the beat because it's not really dancing, but even so the people who play that game seem to love it. The problem with that game, though, is that you have to be active. Like really active. This genre of game where you have to press button combinations with a beat has finally been perfected.

Guitar Hero, which I had never played before Christmas of this past year, is the culmination of many years of genius being deployed into this game type. It's more active than Parappa, far less so than Dance Revolution, and just about the perfect amount of interactivity for a video game.

This game is addictive. I have Guitar Hero World Tour which now also comes with a drum kit and a microphone for the entire band experience. You can't help but look like an idiot when you play this game. You definitely don't look like Slash or Eddie Van Halen, the same way that dudes playing Dance Dance Revolution don't look like Michael Jackson or Fred Astaire

This is what most people look like when they play Guitar Hero:


I'm really serious:


UPDATE: Fa sho' (I'm struggling with how to spell the slang pronunciation of "for sure". Any ideas?)