Boos in Super Mario: The Not-So-Friendly Ghosts

Today let's take a look at one of the most recognizable enemies in the Super Mario series: Boos!  These ghastly enemies serve the purpose of adding a bit of supernatural elements to Mario's adventures, as if giant sentient mushrooms and evil turtles weren't supernatural enough for us all.

By ghost standards, Boos have a somewhat cutesy look that we've come to expect from Nintendo.  They basically resemble a rounded marshmallow in appearance, with two short stubby arms that seem to have no purpose other than to cover their eyes.  These ghosts usually wear a frown, and cruise around with their tongue stuck out of their large mouth.  Also they have large (and sometimes spiky) teeth sticking out of their upper jaw, probably as a last-ditch effort to make them look threatening.  Starting with Super Mario 64, Boos emit a high-pitched giggle when Mario's around.

You'll find Boos sometimes hanging out in haunted house levels in the Super Mario games, such as the Ghost Houses in Super Mario World, where you'll find large swarms of them floating around.  Another notable location is Big Boo's Haunt in Super Mario 64, which has a surprisingly creepy atmosphere and humorous enemies such as haunted pianos and books.  Here you'll even get a chance to do battle with Big Boo himself, who is literally a big Boo (he easily dwarfs Mario).

Big Boo pursues Mario.

Despite being malicious ghosts, Boos are actually pretty shy.  Anytime Mario looks a Boo directly in the face, it will cover its eyes and go invisible.  However, as soon as Mario turns his back on it, the Boo will reappear and begin to pursue him.  Naturally a good strategy when riding floating platforms is to always have Mario face as many Boos as possible.

Boos definitely pose a challenge in Mario games, due to their tendency to hide when you try to attack them head-on.  Also they almost always will gang up on Mario by attacking from different angles, making it difficult and sometimes impossible to stare them all down at once.  Still, they are a refreshing enemy to face every once in a while, when you need a break from beating down countless Goombas and Koopas.  Sure they aren't a scary enemy, but they have that Nintendo charm that we all know and love.

Today let's take a look at one of the most recognizable enemies in the Super Mario series: Boos!  These ghastly enemies serve the purpose of adding a bit of supernatural elements to Mario's adventures, as if giant sentient mushrooms and evil turtles weren't supernatural enough for us all.

By ghost standards, Boos have a somewhat cutesy look that we've come to expect from Nintendo.  They basically resemble a rounded marshmallow in appearance, with two short stubby arms that seem to have no purpose other than to cover their eyes.  These ghosts usually wear a frown, and cruise around with their tongue stuck out of their large mouth.  Also they have large (and sometimes spiky) teeth sticking out of their upper jaw, probably as a last-ditch effort to make them look threatening.  Starting with Super Mario 64, Boos emit a high-pitched giggle when Mario's around.

You'll find Boos sometimes hanging out in haunted house levels in the Super Mario games, such as the Ghost Houses in Super Mario World, where you'll find large swarms of them floating around.  Another notable location is Big Boo's Haunt in Super Mario 64, which has a surprisingly creepy atmosphere and humorous enemies such as haunted pianos and books.  Here you'll even get a chance to do battle with Big Boo himself, who is literally a big Boo (he easily dwarfs Mario).

Big Boo pursues Mario.

Despite being malicious ghosts, Boos are actually pretty shy.  Anytime Mario looks a Boo directly in the face, it will cover its eyes and go invisible.  However, as soon as Mario turns his back on it, the Boo will reappear and begin to pursue him.  Naturally a good strategy when riding floating platforms is to always have Mario face as many Boos as possible.

Boos definitely pose a challenge in Mario games, due to their tendency to hide when you try to attack them head-on.  Also they almost always will gang up on Mario by attacking from different angles, making it difficult and sometimes impossible to stare them all down at once.  Still, they are a refreshing enemy to face every once in a while, when you need a break from beating down countless Goombas and Koopas.  Sure they aren't a scary enemy, but they have that Nintendo charm that we all know and love.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Out of Place Gaming Moments

One very important factor that can make a game great is immersion.  We want to feel like we are in the world created by the game developers, interacting with everything and everyone.  Occasionally game devs throw in Easter eggs or other features that completely pull you out of that immersion.  Sometimes it's a welcome change, sometimes not, and sometimes it's just plain weird.  Previously I covered the strange and out of place giant heart in GTA IV, and today I'm going to talk about a couple other gaming oddities that seem out of place in the worlds they try to create.

Blitzball, from Final Fantasy X

When you hear the words Final Fantasy, what comes to your mind is most likely lengthy quests, epic boss battles, and......underwater soccer matches?  Ok probably not so much with the soccer, but unfortunately those of us who played through Final Fantasy X had no choice but to add this awkward event to our list of experiences.

You're pretty much screwed every time this happens.

Mini-games are no stranger to Final Fantasy games, remember all the hours you spent in the Gold Saucer amusement park in Final Fantasy VII?  In FFX, the team-based underwater sport known as Blitzball feels completely out of place with the monster-slaying, temple-exploring aspects of the game, but that could be forgiven if the mini-game was fun.  It is fun right?  Wrong.  Blitzball is a sloppy mess, an attempt to mix together turn-based battle and a sporting event, with disastrous results.  Your teammates are severely underpowered, the opponent AI is awful and unfair, usually ganging up on you and leaving you no choice but to fumble the ball.  The very last thing that could redeem Square Enix for introducing Blitzball into the world of Final Fantasy would be if this mini-game was optional.  But alas, nobody who plays through FFX can escape its clutches, seeing as you must complete at least one Blitzball match in order to advance in the game.

The Super Mario-style level in Star Trek Elite Force II

This is actually a pretty funny addition to Star Trek Elite Force II, even though it is in the form of a hidden Easter egg.  When playing a Star Trek-themed first-person shooter, the last thing you'd expect to encounter would be a side scrolling level in the vein of Super Mario.  However in this game it does happen.  At one point you can find a hidden warp pipe, shaped just like the nice green ones we all know and love.  Entering the warp pipe shifts the game to third-person view and takes you to a platforming level that clearly pokes fun at the mustached plumber.  Don't believe me?  See for yourself:

Honorable Mention: Everything in Conker's Bad Fur Day

This game is like one big episode of Monty Python, you never know what kind of level you'll end up in as you progress through. What starts off as a simple story about a drunken squirrel trying to find his way home soon evolves into a completely crazy adventure unlike anything you'll see even to this day.  One moment you'll be inside a giant mountain of dung fighting a living (and singing!) piece of waste, the next moment you'll be battling dinosaurs in a prehistoric-themed level, or pulling off slo-mo moves in a world that pays homage to the Matrix. It's unexpected, and everything is pretty much out of place, so this deserves an honorable mention.

This post has barely scratched the surface of out of place elements in videogames, what kinds have you encountered during your years of gaming?

One very important factor that can make a game great is immersion.  We want to feel like we are in the world created by the game developers, interacting with everything and everyone.  Occasionally game devs throw in Easter eggs or other features that completely pull you out of that immersion.  Sometimes it's a welcome change, sometimes not, and sometimes it's just plain weird.  Previously I covered the strange and out of place giant heart in GTA IV, and today I'm going to talk about a couple other gaming oddities that seem out of place in the worlds they try to create.

Blitzball, from Final Fantasy X

When you hear the words Final Fantasy, what comes to your mind is most likely lengthy quests, epic boss battles, and......underwater soccer matches?  Ok probably not so much with the soccer, but unfortunately those of us who played through Final Fantasy X had no choice but to add this awkward event to our list of experiences.

You're pretty much screwed every time this happens.

Mini-games are no stranger to Final Fantasy games, remember all the hours you spent in the Gold Saucer amusement park in Final Fantasy VII?  In FFX, the team-based underwater sport known as Blitzball feels completely out of place with the monster-slaying, temple-exploring aspects of the game, but that could be forgiven if the mini-game was fun.  It is fun right?  Wrong.  Blitzball is a sloppy mess, an attempt to mix together turn-based battle and a sporting event, with disastrous results.  Your teammates are severely underpowered, the opponent AI is awful and unfair, usually ganging up on you and leaving you no choice but to fumble the ball.  The very last thing that could redeem Square Enix for introducing Blitzball into the world of Final Fantasy would be if this mini-game was optional.  But alas, nobody who plays through FFX can escape its clutches, seeing as you must complete at least one Blitzball match in order to advance in the game.

The Super Mario-style level in Star Trek Elite Force II

This is actually a pretty funny addition to Star Trek Elite Force II, even though it is in the form of a hidden Easter egg.  When playing a Star Trek-themed first-person shooter, the last thing you'd expect to encounter would be a side scrolling level in the vein of Super Mario.  However in this game it does happen.  At one point you can find a hidden warp pipe, shaped just like the nice green ones we all know and love.  Entering the warp pipe shifts the game to third-person view and takes you to a platforming level that clearly pokes fun at the mustached plumber.  Don't believe me?  See for yourself:

Honorable Mention: Everything in Conker's Bad Fur Day

This game is like one big episode of Monty Python, you never know what kind of level you'll end up in as you progress through. What starts off as a simple story about a drunken squirrel trying to find his way home soon evolves into a completely crazy adventure unlike anything you'll see even to this day.  One moment you'll be inside a giant mountain of dung fighting a living (and singing!) piece of waste, the next moment you'll be battling dinosaurs in a prehistoric-themed level, or pulling off slo-mo moves in a world that pays homage to the Matrix. It's unexpected, and everything is pretty much out of place, so this deserves an honorable mention.

This post has barely scratched the surface of out of place elements in videogames, what kinds have you encountered during your years of gaming?

reade more... Résuméabuiyad

Andross: The Disembodied Head from Hell

What happens when you take the 3D head of Mario from the title screen of Super Mario 64, then make it infinitely more ugly and frightening to children?  Why you get Andross from Star Fox 64 of course!

Separated at birth?

This freak final boss has been creeping us out since the days of the original Star Fox on Super Nintendo, but today we're only going to focus on his N64 incarnation.  Apparently Andross used to be a regular non-evil scientist on Corneria before (cliché alert!) he went mad with power and was banished from the planet.  What's interesting to note is that before being banished, Andross didn't have an enormous disembodied head, giving rise to questions about the nature of his experiments after leaving Corneria.  This is something that for some strange reason has always been fascinating to me, how and why did he lose the rest of his body and turn his head into the Death Star?

As if this weren't strange enough, the big bad head has two different forms you can battle, depending on the path you take through the game.  There's Robo-Andross, where you find out that the disembodied head you were fighting was just a giant robotic Andross:

Proof that Skynet has a sense of humor.

And then there's Scare-the-Hell-Out-of-Little-Kids-Andross, which is supposedly his true form: a giant floating brain with two eyeballs that can independently fly around.

Even if you were to accept that some kind of science experiment would let you live as a giant head, living as a giant talking brain with huge paddle-ball-ish eyes seems a bit far-fetched.  We were given no explanation as to how this happened, but to be honest we were all so shocked by this revelation that we probably wouldn't have listened to an explanation anyway.

On that note, I leave you to ponder what was going through the Nintendo devs' giant floating brains when they devised this final boss in Star Fox 64.

What happens when you take the 3D head of Mario from the title screen of Super Mario 64, then make it infinitely more ugly and frightening to children?  Why you get Andross from Star Fox 64 of course!

Separated at birth?

This freak final boss has been creeping us out since the days of the original Star Fox on Super Nintendo, but today we're only going to focus on his N64 incarnation.  Apparently Andross used to be a regular non-evil scientist on Corneria before (cliché alert!) he went mad with power and was banished from the planet.  What's interesting to note is that before being banished, Andross didn't have an enormous disembodied head, giving rise to questions about the nature of his experiments after leaving Corneria.  This is something that for some strange reason has always been fascinating to me, how and why did he lose the rest of his body and turn his head into the Death Star?

As if this weren't strange enough, the big bad head has two different forms you can battle, depending on the path you take through the game.  There's Robo-Andross, where you find out that the disembodied head you were fighting was just a giant robotic Andross:

Proof that Skynet has a sense of humor.

And then there's Scare-the-Hell-Out-of-Little-Kids-Andross, which is supposedly his true form: a giant floating brain with two eyeballs that can independently fly around.

Even if you were to accept that some kind of science experiment would let you live as a giant head, living as a giant talking brain with huge paddle-ball-ish eyes seems a bit far-fetched.  We were given no explanation as to how this happened, but to be honest we were all so shocked by this revelation that we probably wouldn't have listened to an explanation anyway.

On that note, I leave you to ponder what was going through the Nintendo devs' giant floating brains when they devised this final boss in Star Fox 64.

reade more... Résuméabuiyad