Woo Hoo! All of 2!

Always look on the bright side of life. Sound like a useless piece of crap that people tell those of us who are constantly depressed? Well, here I am now telling you that you can. It's just pretty hard to do. It might take you a little while to find the bright side and it may not be all that bright when compared to all the horrible things about such a situation but it will always still be there. For example, I have a very short term memory. I can remember things that happened a long time ago but only if they were REALLY significant in my life or if they became etched from so much time thinking about them. So I can of course remember the names of my friends in high school and even primary school as well as their faces but the others are hard to remember. And all this was only three years ago. Still, I have trouble with Mathematics even though I am pretty good at it. I have trouble because I don't study it enough and so it is forgotten. What's the good point?

I love reading books. The good point is, is that after I have read a book, a week will go by and I will have forgotten how the story went. This means that I can read and re-read a book several times and every time I read it, it will be like the first time again. Of course I can remember how the ideas of the story went but I can never remember all the really interesting bits in them and I can never remember how they end. How cool is this? Very cool! After reading "Small Gods" by Terry Pratchett (the 13^th Discworld Novel) for the 16^th time, it is still a joy to read.

So even if it is hard to find, you'll get there eventually. So when someone says "Always look on the bright side of life", try to find it instead of just swinging at them. Still, I shouldn't be the one to tell you how to live your lives, just make sure you go out and actually live them.

Hoping that The new GBA is taken as far as it can go. Well, as of June 11^th 2001, the new nintendo handheld system has been out. Known as the GameBoy Advance, it basically fits the power of the Super nintendo into the size of the later gameboy pocket colours. I just really hope they start to do more with it than they did for the snes since it is quite a powerful and unique little system. What I’m trying to say is that if they just release the same games as they did for the snes, people will not care to pay the hefty price of the new system when they can get the exact same product for one tenth of the price. And just saying that it’s portable is not enough of a clincher. So hopefully they will get it together and realise what factors they have to work with. If you are a games company checking out this site, keep the following in mind:

You’ve got a portable system that has up to 4-way connection. Because of this, you should always be able to fit some kind of multiplaying factor into your games. And since everyone has their own screen, the screen each player sees is just as big as it normally is. To get players coming back to your games, there really needs to be a good multiplaying factor with a lot of options.

You have the Dpad and 4 buttons to work with. The thing is, is that with the snes, most of the released games only used about 3 of the 6 extra buttons on them. If you can think of how to really push the system to the limits, you really need to make games where you have had to "cut back" so that the players wouldn’t run out of buttons. Players need a lot of options and gameplay to utilise and will get bored if they aren’t using as many buttons as they possibly could be using. In some of my game ideas, I have even thought about using the extra "start" and "select" buttons for even more in-game features.

You have the power of the snes with a few newer features. There is already a company out there making GBA games that use basic polygons to create 3D games, even though this is a 2D system. I ain’t saying that everyone should be doing this but hey, if you need ‘em, they can be implemented.

And with cartridges that hold so much more information, you can beef up those games with so many extra features and extra features, not to mention that the actual game can take longer to complete. Now this is only a rumour but I’ve heard that the cartridges can hold as much information as one of the original N64 cartridges (which appeard to hold about 16 times as much info as the snes cartridges). Does this mean you could have a game 16 times as long as "The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past"? Well, if that game takes my friend 7 hours to complete after he knows everything about it, 7x16=112 hours to complete. I’m sure kiddies would get bored of it long before then. But you could use the extra space to add so much more game detail and pump up those endbosses...

But if I had to place bets, I’d favour the simplicity of "Chu Chu Rocket" to be the most loved and long lasting in the charts. Although I haven’t seen it yet (besides reviews and screenshots), it does seem to have a pretty catchy theme to it. A bit like Super Smash Bros.

Seeya round lads,

Mikeytoons.