Peripheral Vision: Namco NeGcon
Way back at the end of 2010 I saw one of the strangest controllers I had ever seen at a local thrift store. For some reason I decided to pass on buying it until I went back a few months later, during their New Years sale. Seeing it was still there I purchased it without hesitation. After purchasing this odd little peripheral I didn’t do much with it beyond making sure it worked and putting it away with the rest of my gaming controllers. The poor thing has been sitting in a box amongst its controller brethren, but given the world has been put on standby for now I figured now is as good a time as any to pull it from its resting place and give it a good try out.
The first thing you’ll notice about this controller is that the center, where the controller pivots, is actually an analog steering mechanism for driving/racing games. The normal Playstation buttons have been replaced with A, B, I and II, the latter of which are actually analog buttons usually used for throttle and braking. L2 and R2 have been removed entirely and start is now a round button all by itself without a Select button to keep it company. Needless to say this controller will not work with a large portion of the PS1 library, for one reason or another.
When it comes to using analog, I still haven’t gotten it down. Sure, I’ve had controllers that use analog sticks since the Dualshock 22 years ago, but I still haven’t managed to master how analog works. I always tap analog sticks as if they were D-pads when I go around corners in every driving/racing game I play, I can never find that balance point. So when I booted up a few of the NeGcon compatible games that I own I had hopes that maybe I could finally find that balance point and drive like a pro.
First up I tried Namco Museum Vol. 3, in which I played Pole Position II. The only thing I can say is WOW! No, seriously, I was honestly expecting this controller would be a squirrelly mess but that was far from the truth. It took a while to really hone in on that balance point, but once I did I was able to float the car through the corners like butter. I am really impressed with how well the NeGcon worked. Although, come to think about it, the NeGcon and Namco Museum Vol. 3 are both from the same company, so shouldn’t they work in perfect harmony?
Let’s try Motor Toon Grand Prix, another game that is compatible with the NeGcon but produced by Polyphony Digital. Again, the cars floated through the corners pretty well after I took a while to familiarize myself with the way these cars handled. Motor Toon Grand Prix is a really good game, maybe because it’s from the same company who brought us Gran Turismo. Speaking of, that’s what I tried next. And yet again, after taking a few laps to familiarize myself with the weight of the car the NeGcon has an absolute brilliant response. I won’t lie, with Gran Turismo I still twisted the controller in a way similar to tapping an analog stick, but not as much as I would an actual analog stick. I’m really impressed!
Now, just for giggles let me try some games that aren’t officially supported and see whether they would even recognize the NeGcon. First up I tried Disney’s Magical Racing Tour and couldn’t get past the menu. There simply aren’t enough buttons, no dice. The same happened when I booted up Test Drive Off Road 2, the button the game is looking for to be pressed to pass the menu simply isn’t present.
Now I moved on to Nascar 98 and I was surprised to see the game actually has graphics for the I and II buttons. I was able to get out on the track and the analog throttle and brakes worked, but, and this is a huge but (so much so Sir Mix-a-lot might be interested), steering was an absolute nightmare. The controller only twists about 180 degrees and it took that whole span to do anything at all. With Nascar 98 there is an inside view where you can see the steering wheel move, and it was moving ever so slightly with each twist, but in the end it only amounted to just enough to make the turn and nothing more. Using the NeGcon with Nascar 98, even though it has the graphics for the I and II buttons works, but it’s just no fun.
Lastly I tried Hot Wheels Turbo Racing and I’ll try to sum it up as bluntly as possible by saying “Same as Nascar 98”. Turning on the ground was horrible but for some reason when the car was in the air it seemed to respond better, not great, but better. The problem being, as we all should know, steering only works when the wheels are on the ground. Normally Hot Wheels Turbo Racing is a fairly fun game, but not with the NeGcon!
For the games that the NeGcon is compatible with, it worked an absolute treat! Although few, there is a list online detailing all the games it’s compatible with, including a few PS2 games, surprisingly. For the games the NeGcon is not compatible with, well, it wasn’t fun at all and I’d rather not speak of that experience ever again. The NeGcon is fun peripheral that, if fully supported, really can make racing games more fun somehow. With it’s analog buttons for throttle and brake, the buttery smooth pivot in the center and having just enough buttons to get you into the game to race and nothing more, I actually feel bad that I never gave this thing a try before now!
Board Game Top Shop Review
Throughout the lifespan of the original Playstation many games were haphazardly published just to see what would stick and what wouldn’t. When it came time to make room for Playstation 2 games, many stores were all too happy to bundle together the games left unsold from the previous console and hand them off with almost any purchase. Buying a bunch of bananas for $1.99? Here are your included 45 Playstation games that nobody else wants. And that is how my Playstation collection grew from a well cultivated dozen games to over 100 within a matter of months, back in 2002.
More often than not the games were worth less than the disc they were printed on. Sometimes I found myself feeling pity for the poor souls who labored their lives away on these things. I know someone tried really hard to make a dream come true with these games, but they’re so far from playable it’s kind of sad. But sometimes, sometimes, there would be a game that would completely amaze me and kept me entertained for hours on end. One of the latter that truly stands out in my mind is Top Shop (or Board Game Top Shop if you’re being pedantic).
Top Shop was originally released in Japan as Tenant Wars, which I think is a far more apt title, in 1999 before being brought out of Japan by our good friends at A1 games and Agetec. Top Shop allows you to play alone with AI or against up to six real people. In a way Top Shop feels heavily inspired by Monopoly, except shrunken down and shoved into a shopping mall where you purchase and maintain stock and upgrades to a retail store. You can choose between Free or Story modes, Free mode being my favorite, and the object is fairly basic; earn as much money as you possibly can while forcing your opponent(s) into bankruptcy.
There are eight different maps, or should I say malls, to choose from with 44 different styles of stores. Each store has their own unique products to stock. The player, in free mode, can also choose from 11 different avatars to play. The anime style, even though I’m not a fan of anime, is cutesy and fun. The graphics looks really good, and still hold up today, mostly due to the 2D nature of the game.
To start the player will roll a pencil as a sort of die and from there you either move as many spaces along or you may trigger a random event where you choose a card. Landing on an empty space will allow the player to purchase that space and build a retail store within. While sometimes difficult, but not impossible, purchasing up to four adjacent spaces will allow the store to be expanded into a much larger retail store, offering much better, aka expensive, merchandise. Landing on a space that is already occupied by a store will force the player to purchase at least one, but no more than two, products from the store, after items are purchased from either player or AI stores, the items must be restocked, if stock runs completely out the store is shut down and that space becomes available for purchase once more.
Each mall has different tiers and to help navigate this are both elevator and escalator spaces. Landing on an escalator will move the player up to the next tier. The elevator can be used to choose which floor you wish to be moved to. One thing that is very important is remembering to stop by the bank and collect the payments from all the purchases made in your store by other players. In the bank you can collect your payments as well as trade in points, earned when making purchases from other shops, for special bonuses that will help you seal the fate of your greedy fellow shop owners.
I honestly didn’t know what I was getting myself into when I purchased Top Shop. I never really got into virtual Monopoly or any other board games on consoles, to be honest, but something about Top Shop drew me in, and to be honest I’ve played this game far more than I care to admit. The replay value is remarkably high as well. With so many different stores and mall settings to choose from, as well as with how long a single game can be played and played enjoyably throughout. Top Shop truly and utterly blew me away with how such an unassuming game could be so much fun and to a slight degree addictive. Whether it’s played alone with the AI or using the multi-tap to play with family and friends I think Top Shop is a worthwhile purchase.
Arthur! Ready to Race Review
If you grew up in the late 90’s you almost certainly encountered Arthur, or at least its merchandise. I wouldn’t say it was massively popular but without question PBS pushed hard, and it showed. With Arthur toys abound, it was only a matter of time before video games were published. Today we’ll be looking at Arthur! Ready to Race, released in 2000 for the Sony Playstation.
Arthur! Ready to Race is an overly simplistic game aimed directly at kids. The game takes place in an impressively rendered 3D version of Elwood City. Even though it’s just a small block of town, the way it’s laid out reminds me of River City Ransom’s town portions. Other than missions and interiors this is where you’ll spend most of your short time in the game.
Players take control of the title character throughout a meager two levels of game play. Within each level there are only four missions where you’ll be tasked with collecting tomatoes for Muffy, walking through a cemetery to collect something Binky has misplaced, chasing your dog Pal and finding your baby sister Kate in the library. Upon completion of these missions Arthur is given parts to help build his dream soap box derby car. Once all of the parts have been collected you will take part in a race with the newly built car, after which you’ll redo all four missions and build a slightly more impressive car.
Building Arthur’s soap box derby car isn’t the only thing you can do, but it’s really the only goal that matters to complete the game. To needlessly flesh out missions you can also collect Bionic Bunny cards, coins to purchase a handful of additional (useless) parts for the derby car or CDs you can listen to in the candy shop. Also strewn about Elwood City you may run across lost pets and parcels to return to the pet shop and post office for a small coin reward.
To be honest I wasn’t expecting much from this game, but even so I still felt underwhelmed with how easy everything is. The only button’s you’ll be using are the D-pad and X (and circle of you buy the horn), unless you want to check the progress of your car, in which case you can press Start and the pause screen turns into a blueprint of what parts you currently have. Speaking of screens this game has a ton of loading screens, and I do mean tons. Loading times don’t take very long but almost everything has to be loaded in and that requires yet another loading screen.
I never found any of the missions to be overly complicated, rather they added arbitrary distractions in the form of collectables to throw you off a bit from the main goal. Even so you can do the missions as many times as you want, even if you’ve already completed them, if nothing more than to just collect coins to buy the aforementioned useless parts for your derby car or to go back and collect the other meaningless Bionic Bunny cards you may have missed.
The 3D environment looks really nice, as do the 3D rendered characters, especially considering this was the original Playstation. Somehow they managed to rendered round objects in this game and it still looks very impressive to me. Some of the interiors, such as the Pet shop and Post office are all prerendered and look absolutely dreadful compared to the free roaming sections. It seems as though the animated series voice actors did the voices for the game as well, which I’m sure a fan of that era of the show would be pleasantly surprised.
Throughout the game I found it a bit off putting that Arthur had to explain everything to me and that everything was overly simple. The only time I found even a little resistance was collecting tomatoes for Muffy, and that was only because some tomatoes simply wouldn’t allow themselves to be plucked from their vines. For such a simple game you would think that this bug wouldn’t be present in the release, but it is and it’s only slightly annoying. I wouldn’t say I hated the game, it’s just this game wasn’t aimed at a grumpy 35 year old man like myself.
Sports Car GT for the Playstation
While Sony and Polyphony were pushing the racing video game genre to a whole new level with Gran Turismo, Electronic Arts was trying to get a piece of the action with Sports Car GT. Released for both PC and the original Playstation, Sports Car GT takes a little bit of EA’s Need for Speed and gears it more toward Gran Turismo territory. Even though I would personally say they didn’t quite pull it off, I would also say they did create a fairly good racing game that kept me busy for so many hours when I was younger.
Sports Car GT offers the player three main gameplay options: Season, Arcade and Time Trial. In Arcade the player can pick from any of the currently unlocked cars and tracks to engage in a one-off race against CPU opponents, with selectable opponent strength of any other available GT Class. Time Trial allows the player to hone their skills with the cars they currently own in Season mode and shave down those times on any given track.
Season mode is the main draw to the game, where the player has to work their way up through four GT classes. The player will start out in the GT qualifying class and progress through the GT3, GT2 and GT1 classes as well. An initial $50,000 will be given to the player to purchase and modify your first car; finishing third or higher in each given race will give the player additional money for more upgrades or additional cars. If you’ve done well enough during each given class the option of an additional race will become available to unlock and win a new car as well as an additional cash prize.
Sure, it may sound exciting to be able to upgrade vehicles, but the execution is very simplistic. The player simply goes into the store menu and purchases one of the available components to upgrade: brakes, suspension, exhaust, engine, gearbox, aero kit or tires. Once parts are purchased, the player may also adjust some of the parts to fine tune their car to their personal liking. Adjustments are limited to strictly parts that are essential for racing such as: brakes, suspension, ride height, transmission, gearbox, downforce and tires for a handful of situations.
Races take place across a few different tracks, with more being unlockable throughout Season mode, all of them being real life tracks such as Seabring, Road Atlanta and Laguna Seca; most of these tracks are now staples in simulation style racing games. At the beginning only the base tracks are available, with variants becoming unlocked as you progress through the game with options such as reverse courses, night time racing or racing in the rain.
The handling of the cars is fair, if a bit sticky, as long as you stay on the track. Crashing into anything isn’t much of an event as it just kind of sticks you into place and becomes slightly annoying to get back onto the track. If you have a good enough car the CPU opponents won’t be much of a challenge, which some may see as a flaw and some may see as an easy way to win.
Although the back of the game says 40 cars and teams included, I can only unlock 20 cars and most of them are just color variants of the same car. I’m not sure whether I’m missing something, but this is my old, original save from 1999, and I remember fondly beating the game completely so I just feel cheated. Again, Sports Car GT isn’t Gran Turismo strong, but I did have quite a lot of fun with it as a kid. Throughout the years the handling has become a bit wonky, the graphics are still fairly decent and to play a fresh save brought back memories. If you’re looking for a deep racing simulator you’re not going to be happy, but if you’re looking for a pick up and play GT car racing game with an arcade feel and upgradeable parts, Sports Car GT may just be what you’re looking for.
TOCA Championship Racing for the Playstation
TOCA Championship Racing for the Sony Playstation is one of the many gems I found through demo discs. I remember playing the demo for this game over and over again and loving every second of it, even with its limit choices. It wasn’t until I was much older that I found a copy of the full version, but it was well worth the wait.
Compared to other racing games on the Playstation TOCA may seem simplistic. An abysmal eight car choices (with an unlockable tank), although they are all real touring cars by real life manufacturers, and eight real life tracks on which to race. Your initial options are to decide how you’re wanting to play: Single Race, Championship or Time trials, all of which are fairly self explanatory but Championship is most likely going to be the main draw in the game.
Once you’ve made your choice it’s time to name your driver, select a car, select your favorite track and decide whether or not you want to qualify for a good starting position, or just start in the back of the grid and muscle your way to the front through fifteen CPU opponents. At the time fifteen CPU opponents was well above the usual count for racing games, usually being limited to eight, due to not being able to render all of them without massive lag, but TOCA does a great job.
Racing against these beasts isn’t easy, and by beasts I mean your CPU opponents. You will crash, or more accurately they will wreck you, and when you wreck there is damage done to the car. Sadly, or fortunately, the damage is limited to strictly structural damage on the car, your car can not sustain mechanical failure that I’ve found and believe me I’ve tried. Body parts will go flying and every pane of glass in the car will blow out so you knew how hard you had raced the car by the time you crossed the finish line.
Passenger side of car displaying broken windows and physical damage.
TOCA was among the first games that really forced me to learn how to line up a corner and how much gas and brake I had to apply at any given time. My, then, teenage mind was so used to Nascar games that never really required logic or any common sense, I just hit the gas and turned a single direction. With so many twists and turns, combined with TOCA’s unique handling, it took a bit of getting used to, but by today’s racing game standards it feels a bit more arcade than it did back then.
Besides being a completely different style of racing than I was familiar with, TOCA also offered a few features I had never seen in any other racing game before. The game adds variable weather ranging from sunny, cloudy, foggy, snow, raining or an all out thunder storm. Another really cool feature is the inside view of the car that puts you into the driver’s seat, which is far more common nowadays, but wasn’t so much back during the Playstation’s life. Finally all cars offer a working horn, and when I say working I mean it makes a noise, I seriously don’t think your opponents are going to move aside when you beep at them.
Even though TOCA isn’t as full featured as its racing game counterparts I still found it to be a very fun game to play. It taught me the basics of how to drive tracks that had many varying twists and turns and it taught me how to keep my tires on the track when there aren’t walls there to do it for me. Even though, due to the aging of Playstation Graphics, I find it hard to play these days, I will always retain the memories of playing the demo over and over again trying to get better and better with what was available.
Darkstone Review
In the late 90’s and early 2000’s RPGs were pouring onto the gaming market at an amazing rate. The SNES boom of RPGs was over and the original Sony Playstation had taken that crown, offering developers more space to create more epic adventures. The RPG market was rife with great titles such as Breath of Fire III and IV, Dragon Quest VII, an endless supply of Final Fantasies and FF remasters, Xenogears, Vagrant Story, Vandal Hearts, the start of the Suikoden series, Azure Dreams, The Legend of Dragoon, the list could go on nearly forever.
Among the sea of those memorable RPGs there was one by the name of Darkstone (Darkstone: Evil Reigns everywhere else in the world) that crept into the ranks and sat there, quietly and seemingly became forgotten without much notice at all. Released for both the PC and Playstation, Darkstone is considered an Action Adventure RPG, but I personally feel it adds some quality dungeon crawling into the mix as well.
In Darkstone you’ll be choosing one of four classes, which offer both male and female avatars, to seek out and collect the seven crystals which will form the Time Orb to defeat the evil Lord Draak, who has just awoken from a previous attempt to snuff out his existence. Since Lord Draak is now awake many of his minions inhabit the world of Uma now, bringing chaos and despair to many across the lands. Yeah, the story sounds cheesy, but every good RPG needs something to get players motivated.
Choose your class, and gender, name your character and begin the adventure! You’ll start out in the main town where you can learn spells, buy, sell, repair and even upgrade equipment and do all the normal things RPGs offer. The first thing you may notice is there are only three camera angles and none of them are particularly good, but that’s just the way many games were back in that era, so it’s not just this game it was just ignorance of the technology. Also, remember when I said you can upgrade equipment? Well there are limits to that, because the more powerful any given piece of equipment becomes the weaker it’s durability is, just something to be aware of.
Once you’re ready you’ll exit the town and be welcomed to the Land of Ardyl, in which you’ll begin battling many of Lord Draak’s minions, both above ground and while adventuring deep into loot filled dungeons. As you kill, you’ll gain experience and sometimes you’ll obtain loot such as articles of armor and weapons, potions, food, gold among other items. Some of this loot will need to be taken back to town and be identified by Madame Irma before it’s full potential is revealed. Once you’ve obtained enough experience you’ll gain a new level and be allowed to set skill points into four different attributes: Strength, Health, Magic and Agility.
To keep your adventures going you can purchase potions to replenish your health and your magic, as well as spells to regain health. Should you get into a battle and run out of magic or potions to keep yourself alive, don’t worry, you’ll just respawn minus some of your items and durability of your equipment. In Darkstone death is not the end, but it is a bit frustrating.
Some things I find surprising about Darkstone are, firstly, that the maps seem to be fairly good sizes and, since this is the beginning of disc based video games, the loading times that do exist don’t seem to take all that long. Also there is a rest feature, which can only be used when minions are not around, that allows you to recuperate health and magic. One of my favorite features is the fast travel system that allows you to fast travel to the entrance of places you’ve previously visited, making getting around much quicker and easier.
While not the most complex RPG, Darkstone is still quite an enjoyable RPG. There are plenty of dungeons and quests to do, but it may feel a bit much of the same eventually, it really depends on the person playing. My only real complaint would be how I felt the UI was a bit clunky until I became more familiar with it. Almost immediately after booting up my nearly 16 year old saves for this game the nostalgia came rushing back. I ended up playing for quite some time before I remembered I needed to buckle down and start writing the review. Darkstone is just a good old RPG that not many people seem to have tried.
Peripheral Vision: NUBY NB-711 Playstick for the Playstation
When I was a kid I always dreamed of having a joystick to play my favorite PC games. One Christmas that dream came true when my mother finally bought me one; the model and brand I have long since forgotten. What I do remember though is that I absolutely hated it. That joystick was the bane of my PC gaming experiences because, up to this point, I had spent so much time crafting my WASD and Space bar skills that a joystick was too alien for me to really acclimate to properly with my impatient mind.
For consoles however, I will collect the odd joystick such as the Quickshot or Beeshu joysticks for the NES, the odd Sega Genesis flight yolk and a slew of other joysticks I’ve come across throughout the years. That doesn’t mean that I’ll use them over the given console’s normal controller, but I think they’re nice things to add to my collection. That, dear reader, is where I introduce to you the NUBY NB-711 Playstick, for the Sony Playstation.
The NUBY NB-711 Playstick
Shaped much like a cheap joystick of the day, the Playstick could easily fly under most people’s radar as anything other than a cheap PC joystick, that is until you notice the Playstation controller plug. Even its miserably gray color scheme doesn’t add much to let people know that this isn’t a PC joystick. I’m assuming, all things considered, this is why the Playstick didn’t sell very well and isn’t well known today.
The joystick and its base are made out of the cheap Chinese plastic we all know and loathe, with the joystick itself being slightly stiff with a very small usage radius. I would say the stiff joystick might be because this thing is so annoying to use that it was never given time to be properly broken-in. The trigger on the front of the joystick represents square, and on the back of the joystick is where you’ll find X, triangle and circle. To the Playstick’s credit the joystick and trigger do have a great clicky response when they are pressed, a benefit that does not carry throughout to the other buttons on the joystick nor on the base.
The base is where you’ll find the bulk of the problems with the Playstick. Firstly it seems this was aimed at right handed people, which could alienate some left handed people. I’m not left handed but I do see how this layout could have been slightly modified to be more universal. The base is also where you’ll find the shoulder buttons and the Start and Select buttons, none of which have the same satisfying click as the joystick or trigger.
Toward the back of the base you’ll find the customizable turbo function with a its reset button. I can’t complain about the turbo feature because I feel this may be the sole redeemable quality of this whole joystick. A feature I do find useless is the slow motion slider. Other people may find slow motion a useful option and that’s good for them, myself, I find it to be an annoyance with the game perpetually pausing and unpausing. Finishing up on the very bottom you’ll find the standard suction cups to keep this thing bolted down to any flat surface you desire. I don’t see why you would want this though, because with the way the buttons are laid out on the base you’ll need to hold it with your left hand the whole time.
After some testing I find the Playstick to be a bit too cumbersome for my liking. The joystick is digital so you won’t have the fluid movement of analog and the buttons are a bit harder to press than I expected. With racing games I found myself flying off in one direction and never really feeling like I had full control over my vehicle. In action games I felt like I was lacking control, but since some action games don’t always require split second reaction it was moderately tolerable at best. Where this joystick might shine is during fighting games for those who are more of an arcade fighting stick fan. I emphasize might because the joystick may be good for fighting games, but the button layout just isn’t good at all. Finally, since the joystick is digital I didn’t have much fun with flight games either.
What I learned about the NUBY Playstick is that I don’t enjoy using it whatsoever. With a few better design choices I think it could have been a good product, but it’s so cheaply made and designed that it is pretty forgettable. The only good things I can truly say about my NUBY Playstick is that the suction cups worked, the turbo function worked and that it is compatible with a handful of Playstation 2 games, if you’re so bold to dare try using the Playstick at all.