Game memories: F

Feel the Magic XX-XY (DS)

Project Rub in the UK, but I got this with my imported US DS ahead of the European launch.  In many ways it was an ideal game to launch the DS with, showing many varied ideas on how the touchscreen could be used.  It didn’t hang together that well, but I remember the black, white and orange colour scheme vividly.

F1 ’97 (PS)

Murray Walker shouting “He’s on the green stuff” over and over again; tracks being messes of pixels a little way down the road.  A great game.

F1 2010 (Xbox 360)

Far too many options and menus to wade through.  Completing a single race in the career mode took ages, since you had to go through practice sessions, qualifying and the race itself.  Ideal for people who love F1, but for me it was just a bit painful.

F1 2011 (3DS)

As with F1 2010 above, but with a third of the framerate.

F355 Challenge Passione Rossa (Dreamcast)

At the time this felt like a massive technical achievement and tales of the arcade machine using three monitors underlined the game’s credentials.  I played it for about fifteen minutes before being totally overwhelmed by the options and realistic gameplay – in other words, I kept spinning off the track, couldn’t work out how to switch to a behind-car view, and had better things to play instead.

Field Commander (PSP)
Like Advance Wars but with little charm, little challenge, and a rubbish online mode.

Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (Gamecube)
I’ve never completed a proper Final Fantasy game; I’ve never even passed the first hour of one.  This, however, was played loads at virtually every games night we held.  Kieron had a bucket on his head, I was a Selkie.  John was accomplished at ranged combat, we all could heal each other but often didn’t.

Fire Emblem (GBA)
I never completed this.  I remember it getting very stressful due to the fact that if a character died in a mission, they remained dead.  I restarted missions again and again to protect my favourite characters, and as a result it grew stale and too difficult.

Floigan Brothers: Episode One (Dreamcast)
It’s a shame there was no episode two – this was an amusing game which was unlike anything else, as with a lot of Sega’s Dreamcast output.  It was far too short and there was a bit too much collection required as far as I recall.  I got this in Singapore and worked out pretty quickly that it was a pirate version, but bought the proper version on my return from HMV for a fiver.

Ford Racing 3 (Xbox)

I was convinced to buy this by people on RLLMUK praising the second game, the fact it was online (when there were few other online games around), and it was £10 brand new.  I think I played it online three times and offline twice, before being tempted away by other games that were just more fun to play.

F-Zero (SNES, Wii, Wii U)

F-Zero GX (Gamecube)

F-Zero X (N64)

F-Zero: Maximum Velocity (GBA, 3DS)
GX is the best.  The Mode 7 games are a bit pants now, but at the time they seemed great, particularly on the GBA where the handling was much more refined.  Replaying them now, they are just too floaty and the career mode is a bit lightweight with daft difficulty spikes.

Future Tactics: the Uprising (Gamecube)

I bought this in the US and as a result, the hassle needed to load the game meant that I played it little.  A shame, as when I did I remember it being a clever game melding a strategy turn-based game with something that felt more action-based.  I’m now able to play US games on my modded Wii; I may try this again when I find it.

Fighting Vipers (Saturn, Xbox 360)

I continue to be hopeless at fighting games that are more complicated that Street Fighter II, but Fighting Vipers has a pleasing lack of combo, super and extra EX WTF meters.  The fighting feels solid and the idea of being able to knock off armour works well.  I get the feeling that if I played this a bit more I could get quite good at it.  That’s unlikely to happen.

Wario Land 4: gem collecting

One of the 3DS ambassador games, this isn’t something I’d normally have picked up.  While Super Mario Land and SML2 were excellent examples of handheld gaming, taking home consoles experiences and reducing them to more immediate and shorter challenges, I had heard that from SML3 (Wario Land) onwards the games got just a little too complex.

That’s true of Wario Land 4 to some extent, with levels being just a little too big to play on either part of my commute.  The character of Wario is a little too large to show enough of the level, and the jumping physics are a bit suspect as well.  It just doesn’t feel like a Nintendo platform game.

I think it’s unlikely I’ll be back to this given the wealth of other games on the console …

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: collecting keys

I found the other swordmasters, so now my collection of tiger scrolls is complete. By button mashing I can send Link spining all over the screen; a whirly blade of doom.

This doesn’t help when your opponents are big knights with seemingly magic shields that stop anything getting through.

After getting stuck on the ground floor of the castle for ages (1F, but the one you enter on, stupid American numbering), I finally worked out that I had to bomb the bottom half of a wall on the other side from a weak point I could see from a different room. Which goes against every bit of logic so far, where walls only disintegrate if they look broken on the side you bomb to start with.

Up on the higher floors, and there are loads of knights who’ve just appeared, each one guarding a key. Lots of fighting ahead, and each fight lasts far too long since you have to wait for them to swing at you before their guard is down. After each fight, I’m warping outside the castle, sneaking past guards, and going to the fairy fountain for a recharge of health. It’s a little tedious, but there’s an end in sight, at least.

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: a point of no return?

Running headlong into the sparkly tree seemed to make all the leaves drop, and I could shrink down. So I got the book, went to the Temple of Droplets, and have got the last two elements via a place in the clouds. I fused the sword with the two elements, and headed through the new exit – to be confronted with information on the light force and Vaati, who knocked me out. He didn’t steal the sword, though, which was a bit stupid of him.

Oh, it’s now the Four Sword. I like the way that different elements crop up over and over in Zelda games.

Hyrule Castle is now all dark and foreboding, and even after rescuing the king it remains so. I can exit the castle, but in the town all the people and animals have disappeared into their houses. So it looks like I can no longer move the cats to make way for a new house, or finish off the kinstone collecting (not that I would do so anyway). I’m going to try to remember where all the other swords masters were, so I can learn different fighting techniques, and I hope they’re still around.

But it looks like the endgame now. Vaati, I’m coming for you.

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: a book on a bookcase

I got the mole gloves so I can now dig through dirt – and finally worked out what those filled-in cave entrances were about. I’ve also found power bracelets which let me move objects like bookcases when small but don’t appear to let me move little boulders when big. I’m now on a mission to return overdue library books. Don’t ask.

I’ve returned two, and have found the third, but it’s on top of a bookcase. There’s a note on the table nearby which hints that if there’s a problem I should just run headlong into it – but using the pegasus boots and running into the bookcase doesn’t do anything. There’s another one of the sparkly trees out the back of the house, but other than that nothing. I can’t work out what to do.

Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap: collecting elements

While Twilight Princess has slightly stalled, I’ve been playing The Minish Cap on my commute to and from work, and it’s been captivating. The storyline is semi-standard, with Zelda being frozen in stone, but it’s Vaati who’s the enemy rather than Ganandorf, and the world is inhabited by the Picori. Link has a magic hat who used to be a sorcerer, and he can shrink and grow at select portals. Half the trick is working your way around the world as a dot, where you can’t mount steps or traverse puddles.

I’ve made quite a lot of progress; I’ve mended the Picori sword, and fused it with two elements. Some of the objects collected are pretty innovative – the gust jar which hoovers up dust and grass, the cane which flips objects over – though there are as ever the stables of the boomerang and bow and arrow. The Game Boy Advance suffers from only having two buttons to which you can map objects, so there’s frequent breaks to reassign actions.

It’s very different from The Wind Waker, Ocarina of Time, and Twilight Princess, and indeed very different from Phantom Hourglass and Spirit Tracks. It reminds me most of Oracle of Ages, which of course is because it’s by the same team – but I never finished that so I’m hoping this has a little more staying power …

Pac-Man Vs: fruit appeared!

We also played this last night. It hasn’t aged at all, and had six of us shouting instructions at each other to try to catch Pac-Man. The scoring system’s a bit off (subtracting Pac-Man’s score seems a little pointless), but the core of the game is still amazing.

Pokémon Sapphire: aimless wandering again

My main team’s all at around level 40 or just above now, and I very much doubt that’s good enough to face the Elite Four. So instead I’ve been exploring, clearing the sea routes of trainers and so on. Then I went around the map to the daycare centre, to see how the poochyena I’d left there was getting on. It had gone up to level 20, so I took it out and battled with it to level it up once more so it would evolve. Which it did.

I really don’t know what to do now. I don’t want to go to the Elite Four and fail over and over again like I did in LeafGreen. But it’s a bit dull with no aim. I did think of trying out the pokémon contests, but I can never do very well at those. I really don’t understand what goes on, and I think that pokémon who are good for the battles may not be the best for the contests.

I get the feeling that there’s loads around to do – I’ve heard about breeding, for a start – but really I’m going to have to go and get stuck again, aren’t I?

Pokémon Sapphire: what's a shell bell?

I finally caught a relicanth, and then my adventures took me to a cave just off of Route 125. Inside was a man who told me that if I found four salts and four bells in the cave, he’d make me something. So I went exploring. All through the cave were staircases that started halfway up the cliff face, and I couldn’t find any way of getting to them. I looked around and found four salt piles, and a few other goodies, but I was sure I’d missed something since there was no way of getting to the blue ball things (which I assumed were the shells). I explored loads, made more annoying by the frequency of pokémon attacks.

In the end, after a long time of looking, I gave up and went back out of the cave. And then I had a change of heart, and went back in to check the old man wouldn’t just accept the salt. For some reason the cave was flooded. I have no idea why.

But this meant I could just walk up the top staircases and collect the shells, and on giving them to the old man he made me a shell bell. Whatever one of those is.

Pokémon Sapphire: to the Pokémon League

Maybe not yet.

Sootopolis City gym offered little resistance to Manectric, with a little help from Gyrados and Kyogre, so I’ve now completed the gyms and can control any pokémon going. And I can walk up waterfalls, which apparently will be very useful in getting to the Pokémon League.

But I’m not going there yet. My pokédex stands at 80 owned, 126 seen, and there are some big gaps. I’ve been exploring the sea routes (some of which have changed since the storm, I think) and fighting the swimming trainers. Again, Manectric can take things down in one hit, but I’ve instead been using Gyrados in order to beef him up. Combusken had the Exp Share, and he evolved into Blaziken this morning.

As well as the sea routes, I’ve been exploring the sea bed. I’ve caught a few pokémon there, but at the moment I’m on the hunt for a relicanth. I’ve seen one a couple of times but both times was unable to catch it. It’s pretty rare, it seems, and I’m having to fight loads of clamperls in my hunt.

Still, at least Gyrados (and Blaziken) are getting experience from it.