“My constellation is THAC0. Get it?”

Much ado has been made about the impending fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. (“5th Edition” is not its official name as of yet; the project’s codename is “D&D Next.”) Aside from the expected rules changes, what’s really notable about this is that publisher Wizards of the Coast is crowdsourcing this edition of D&D. They’re attempting to take into account the various ups and downs players have experienced over the past few decades, especially the outrage over rule changes in the 3rd and 4th Editions. Using all of this fan-supplied information and a series of special playtests, their aim is to create a new, definitive form of D&D that’ll unite the warring camps and also bring in a lot more new players.

I can certainly understand longtime fans’ anger at major rules changes, especially the rapid ones during the 2000s. Aside from often throwing rules and strategies you were long familiar and comfortable with out the window, these changes meant your sourcebooks and stuff were now out of date and needed to be replaced. Sure, you didn’t have to go out and buy all of the new material, but you could usually forget about new products supporting the previous system. That’s a big problem, especially for gamers who’ve invested a lot of time and money into D&D. There’s a lot of players who simply quit playing, or moved on to more popular RPGs like Pathfinder.

As to how the D&D rule changes affected me personally, I had it a bit easier than most. I played a lot of D&D as a kid, but then fell out of the game for about twenty years. The reissued red box rekindled my interest in Dungeons & Dragons about a year ago. The game I’m currently playing in (as a tiefling wizard) is using 4th Edition rules and characters derived from the Essentials books. There’s a few players in our group who are new the game, and in my case, someone who hadn’t played in nearly two decades. As such, I wanted to start on the ground floor along with everyone else. I barely remembered the rules from Advanced D&D 2nd Edition (when I last played), so I didn’t mind the heavy revisions in 4th Edition.

Not only that, 4th Edition and its Essentials companion line made it easier for newbies and more advanced players to cooperate in the same game. That seems to be the modus operandi in Next, albeit to a much larger degree. Wizards of the Coast have implied that fans of rulesets as far back as 1st Edition will be able to comfortably play side-by-side with adherents of later versions, like 3rd Edition. That’s a pretty big gap in terms of playing styles.

All of this is a ways off, of course. If Next comes out in late 2013, for example, that’s certainly better than the ridiculous three-year span between 3rd Edition and its update, 3.5. But it wouldn’t surprise me at all to see this new version hit shelves in 2014. All of the playtests and feedback required for a project of this magnitude will result in a long period of quality control, but if the end result is a superior product, then I have no problem waiting.

My current game will not be “upgrading” to Next when it comes out, to the best of my knowledge; our DM has a tremendous wealth of 4th Edition material which should keep us incredibly busy for years to come. I haven’t invested as heavily in 4th Edition as most players, but I’ve still purchased a considerable number of books and accessories in order to play and enhance the game. If moving to Next requires a complete overhaul of my D&D library just to play, I will not be pleased. Comments from Wizards of the Coast seem to indicate that this will not be the case, but we won’t know for sure until Next is released.

In the meantime, hopefully I can gain access to some of the playtests. My local hobby shop will almost certainly host a few Next Encounters games, too. Time will tell, but I think that Next could be just the shot in the arm that D&D needs.

(Now if only they’d bring back Dragonlance…)

My parents were notoriously anti-video games while I was growing up, so I never had an NES or Genesis or other home console. However, they saw fit to placate my desire for video games with something else that was incredibly popular in the 1980s and 1990s: handheld LCD games.

Believe it or not, I never owned any of the famed Nintendo Game & Watch series; my cousin had Balloon Fight, but playing that was about as far as I got. The LCD games I owned were all made by Tiger Electronics. I started with generic fare like Baseball and Bowling before moving into adaptations of popular console games, but I played the hell out of ‘em all the same. A few of my friends in elementary school had LCD games, too, so we’d often play them during lunch or recess, passing the games around so everyone could try them. The games were tough as nails, and more focused on pattern memorization than any real gameplay. While the other kids laughed at me and went home to play Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest on their NES, at least I had the LCD version to amuse me.

I owned a few others: Double Dragon, Gauntlet, and Karate King come to mind. Moving beyond the Tiger sphere, my brother had a few Acclaim and Konami LCD games, like NARC, Gradius, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Basketball (yeah, you read that right). But of course, my favorite LCD game should come as no surprise:

(photo from The Mechanical Maniacs)

And look, it even features the same crappy US boxart from the NES game! Sure, it sucked in comparison to the original Mega Man 2, but it was the only way at the time I could get my Mega Man fix whenever I wanted. Surprisingly enough, I never had the Mega Man 3 LCD game back then, which is a shame since the NES original remains my favorite video game of all time.

By the late 1990s, LCD games had dropped in popularity like a stone, since the Game Boy was cheap and games for it were plentiful. LCD games are still around, but most of them are far worse than you could imagine. They’re little more than shitty cash grabs found in the impulse buy sections of big-box retailers. The big exception to this rule, however, is in the board and puzzle game genres. Games like chess or sudoku are very hard to screw up, as the rules really haven’t changed; program them in, and you’re good to go.

I lost my collection of LCD games long ago, much to my annoyance. I poke around on eBay from time to time trying to find a deal on some of my old favorites, and I’ve managed to score worn copies of Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest, Mega Man 2, and (finally) Mega Man 3. They’re often missing the battery door, but that’s an easy fix: I just bought some non-licensed Tiger games for a few bucks, and Frankensteined ‘em for spare parts.

In the early 2000s, I did manage to find a few of Nelsonic‘s old Nintendo wristwatch LCD games, like Zelda and Super Mario Bros. Surprisingly enough, they were rather cheap, and still in the boxes! (No, they weren’t knockoffs. I checked.) Their appeal didn’t last long, but they were still a cool novelty. I ended up trading them away for some other game, I’m sure. They just didn’t grab me the way the Tiger games did, despite the awesome Nintendo characters. (The tiny controls on a wristwatch didn’t help, either.)

With the underground popularity of “demakes” like Halo 2600 and Super Smash Land, I think the time is ripe for LCD adaptations of more popular games. C’mon, who wouldn’t want to play an LCD Portal or Uncharted?

Brace yourself: it’s about to get really fucking nerdy in here.

About twice a month, I play in a Dungeons & Dragons campaign with a group of my friends. We have a party of seven, which is a bit large for most adventures, but our Dungeon Master is skilled at amping up the challenges accordingly.

Anyway, my character is a tiefling wizard. The tiefling race offers some intriguing storytelling possiblities, and as for the magic-user vocation, my choice of that class was twofold. One, I’ve never played a wizard before; In the past, I played thieves and occasionally a paladin. Secondly, when my current game started, the group already had a thief, two fighters, a ranger, and a cleric. (A paladin joined us two months ago.) They definitely needed some magic-based support.

My character and our party’s ranger tend to stay out of the melee and fire off attacks targeting multiple foes or causing area effects. This is all well and good, and I’ve managed to annoy quite a few enemies this way, but the amount of damage I actually inflict is trivial.

You see, much of a wizard’s life consists of waiting around to grow more powerful. I’m currently at level four.) This is not a knock against our DM, nor the adventures we’re playing in; this is common drawback to all magic-users. While wizards start out with the ability to target more than one foe at once, it comes at the cost of barely scratching them.

Other party members are routinely dealing out over twenty points of damage; I’m lucky if I can break ten. I do have a few more powerful spells, but they’re all dailies; that means I can only use them once per day in-game. If we’re exploring a dungeon and I use a daily power early on, I can’t use it again until we’re finished with the entire area. (Camping out in a creepy dungeon is not wise.)

My area-effect spells are becoming more useful as enemies go stronger, since my attack powers aren’t nearly as effective. I’ve convinced enemies to attack on another, confused them, and even immobilized them. That makes them easy pickings for our fighters, so I’m least I’m helpful in that regard. Otherwise, I’ll just have to settle for hiding in the shadows, plinking enemies with ice shards and electric shocks.

At least until I hit level five. Then I can finally cast Fireball.

I haven’t done one of these posts in a while, in which I extol the virtues or a particular game or series, and wonder why in the hell it never got a sequel or otherwise proper followup. Remember when I talked about Mega Man Legends 3? And then it got announced, much to my profound happiness. Some of my character ideas were even chosen for inclusion in the game. And then…the game got fucking canceled. Argh!

But I digress. Today’s spotlight is on Kirby’s Dream Course. Fellow blogger Mister Raroo has been waxing ecstatic about the latest two games, Kirby Mass Attack and Kirby’s Return to Dream Land, and it reminded me of one of my favorite games in the series. I’ve been a Kirby fan since day one, and it’s unacceptable that Kirby’s Dream Course never made it past a single installment.

Nintendo’s Kirby series is quite long lived, with new titles still coming out on a regular basis. While most Kirby games are simple platformers, the little pink puffball has often ventured outside his comfort zone to try out other game genres such as racing, fighting, pinball, and even golf.

That last genre is where Kirby’s Dream Course comes in. Released in 1995 for the Super NES, the game placed Kirby into the role of a golf ball. Kirby’s Dream Course played like strange cross between traditional golf and miniature golf; the object was to get Kirby into the cup, of course, but in order to do that, he needed to defeat every enemy onscreen first. Players had control of Kirby’s speed, spin, shot type, and other traits, and defeating enemies earned Kirby his famous copy abilities.

With eight courses, and eight holes per course, there was plenty of content to be had. The single-player game was fun enough, but Kirby’s Dream Course really excels in its two-player mode. As you might expect, here you can challenge a friend to the game’s numerous courses. Here, not only can you gain abilities and try to defeat enemies faster than your opponent, but you can also steal their thunder!

So why the hell haven’t we seen a sequel for any subsequent Nintendo console? A new, four-player Kirby’s Dream Course would’ve been a fantastic upgrade. Even a portable version would kick some ass; the Game Boy Advance and DS would have been a good home. On the Wii or 3DS, it would be even better due to the online capability; in this always-connected age, an online Kirby’s Dream Course would be, well, a dream come true.

I give a lot of credit to Nintendo and developer HAL Laboratories for continuing to evolve the Kirby series across many different genres. But in this case, we definitely need to put Kirby back on the golf course. In the meantime, if you’ve got a Wii, you can nab Kirby’s Dream Course on the Virtual Console. It’s a purchase you won’t regret.

In this era of copycat FPS games, quick-buck mobile titles, and violent action-shooters, Japanese role-playing games (JRPGs) have taken quite a tumble. They’re still rather prevalent in their homeland, but not so much stateside.

I grew up on such console RPG heavyweights as Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, and later moved on to sixteen-bit fare like Breath of Fire and the masterpiece that is Chrono Trigger. When Final Fantasy VII came out, the JRPG genre really exploded over here, and while there were plenty of shitty games, there was a flood of great ones to play.

Not so nowadays. JRPG releases are few and far between, it seems, when it comes to Western territories; localization of JRPGs has slowed down considerably. There still seems to be a fair amount of them on handheld systems, but with the Nintendo 3DS not meeting its sales expectations, things may change. (Perhaps the PlayStation Vita will have better luck?)

Since JRPGs don’t sell as well over here anymore, we’re lucky if and when we get them. It really sucks when we get the first part a great series, then get shafted on later games that continue the story. For example, we’re not getting Valkyria Chronicles III, even though we got the first two games in the series.

So why have JRPGs have lost some steam? I’ve got my own theories.

Some gamers are tired of the clichés. For example, many JRPGs feature a silent protagonist who is thrust into a grand adventure and must save the world. Often, the games feature anime-styled character designs, which makes sense considering their pedigree. Finally, turn-based battles were the standard for quite some time, as it was easier for early consoles to process.

Those are the “big three” clichés when it comes to JRPGs. Grumbling about them is fair enough, but many forget that those clichés are often what make JRPGs fun to play. (I hear a lot of complaints about JRPG clichés coming from hardcore FPS fans. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.) It also may be part of a broader push against Japanese games in general.

Quality JRPGs are getting harder and harder to find as time goes on; I don’t think the genre will ever die out, but it’s not the vast field of excellent gaming that it used to be. When it comes at the cost of mobile game quick fixes and mindless action titles, it’s just depressing.