Coryat Scorekeeper
I recently took the online Jeopardy Contestant qualifier test. I have no idea if I’ll ever be asked to do an audition, but I was surprised to find that there was no webpage/app/etc to keep track of one’s Coryat score, so I wrote one.
What’s a Coryat score, you ask? See that balding guy? He’s Karl Coryat. He devised a simple system for tracking your score as you watch and play along with Jeopardy at home. His system was named the “Coryat score” by Jeopardy fans after his appearances on the show, and is still used to this day to measure performance on Jeopardy.
His system originally used index cards and pencil, but I created a quick little HTML page with jQuery to accomplish the same thing.  You can check out the Coryat Scorekeeper at CodePlex.
Capcom and Dark Void Zero
So, you probably remember Mega Man 9, Capcom’s retro-style Mega Man sequel, and you’ve probably heard about Mega Man 10 being a similar release. But Capcom is also doing the retro-style thing for a new property: Dark Void Zero. Here’s a video about the (fake) backstory:
I’m not sure how I feel about this retro campaign from Capcom. On the one hand, I love the styling, music, and nostalgia, but on the other hand I feel like if they milk it too much, it won’t be special anymore. What do you think?
Games I’m playing these days
For Christmas, I received a bunch of gift cards, so I bought some new games.
I bought:
- New Super Mario Bros Wii
- A Boy and His Blob (Wii)
- Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360)
So far, they are all pretty fun, but I think I’ve spent the most time with Batman, especially if you include all the times I played through the demo. The most fun parts, for me, are the parts where you get to do stuff that’s very uniquely Batman. Specifically, the parts of the game where you are in a room with a handful of armed thugs, and you have to take them all out stealthily. The main strategy is simple: wait until they get far enough away from their friends, and take them out, one by one. You can do this a number of ways: sneak up behind them and do a silent takedown, glide across the room from up on a high perch and kick them, hang upside-down from a perch and string them up, etc. It really feels very Batman-esque, and is the most fun I’ve ever had playing a stealth game (which I usually find frustrating). This video will give you some idea what I’m talking about:
I haven’t played much of A Boy and His Blob, but keep this in mind: it was only $20, and it just came out. I first heard about it on the Retronauts podcast (episode 79). I mostly enjoyed the original one for NES, so I thought I’d pick it up.
As far as New Super Mario Brothers Wii: don’t play it with other people (especially people you like). Otherwise, it’s a fantastic 2d-style Mario game that’s very reminiscent of Super Mario Brothers 3 (more so than any other 2d Mario platformer since).
Nintendo DS
So, I got a Nintendo DS (Lite) for Christmas, with a couple of games.
So far, I like it. I even like playing GBA games on it better than on a GBA.
The Nintendo DS completes my (minimalist) collection of every Nintendo game system:
- NES
- Gameboy
- Gameboy Color
- SNES
- Virtual Boy
- N64
- GBA
- Gamecube
- Nintendo DS
- Wii
I think that’s the whole list. Not included are thins like the GBA SP, Pokemon N64, and various handhelds/game’n'watches/color TV games, but every distinct US platform is represented in my collection.
One can download demos via the Wii to a DS. This sounds like a cool feature, but in practice its somewhat crippled. Unlike, say, the Xbox 360, you can download one demo at a time. Which would be an acceptable limitation for a portable system, except that the demo just sorta floats in RAM, I guess, so once the DS is turned off, the demo goes away.
So. Anyone else have one? Give me some game recommendations. And not the obvious ones–more obscure the better. So far I have a couple of bargain bin games (Spyro and Time Ace). They aren’t terrible, but they aren’t outstanding either.
Secret of Mana for VC
Secret of Mana is coming to the Wii Virtual Console. You are required to get it.
Red rings
So, red ring of death, anyone?
This is why you haven’t seen me on Xbox Live recently.
*sigh*
A winner is me!
Cool. I won a free virtual console game–River City Ransom–from NintendoWiiFanboy.com (part of Joystiq/AOL).
Here’s a tool assisted speedrun of River City Ransom in 8 minutes, 10 seconds.
Speedlinking, May 23rd, 2008
Speedlinking is yet another tool of the lazy blogger. Basically I smash together a bunch of interesting links that I collect every so often, and write a sentence or two about them.
This week’s Speedlinking is being brought to you courtesy of the useful Instapaper website, which I’ve been using to temporarily bookmark the below links.
- Remember that Javascript FPS? Try JavaScript Super Mario Kart.
- Everything you love, you owe to capitalism.
- Flatwire allows you to hide your wiring without drilling or wall-fishes or anything like that.
- I want one of these.
- Finally, kill yourself.
ROMs of the week
This week’s ROMs of the week are once again two NES games: Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers and Super Dodge Ball.
“Okay”, you’re asking, “Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers? Seriously?”
Yes, seriously. Despite the deservedly horrible reputation of licensed games, Disney has got it right on many occassions: DuckTales, Kingdom Hearts, Mickey Mousecapades, and Chip and Dale’s Rescue Rangers.
This game is a co-op platformer. It’s like a combination of Contra and Mario. It’s fun, has good level design, and has great Capcom music–very Megaman-esque.
You can find it somewhere on the web to download, I’m sure.
Super Dodge Ball is a great game. It’s part of the Kunio-kun series of games, which you might know for River City Ransom, Renegade, Nintendo World Cup, and Crash ‘n the Boys. They didn’t really form a coherent franchise in the US, but there are a ton of Japanese games in this series.
Bean ball was one of my favorite game types from Super Dodge Ball. It’s a free-for-all similar to ball tag that I used to play during recess in middle school. Except that, you know, if I lost, I didn’t turn into an angel and fly away. This game also has catchy music.
I’m sure it’s out there somewhere on the internet to download.