Project: Outlet Wii - The Final Peice

It's been over 2 years since I've last stepped foot in the outlet store, although I haven't completely stopped going to thrift stores. Sporadically I've been to Goodwill sales days as well as going to a local Salvation Army store, yet I've never been able to find the final piece to finish off Project Outlet Wii. I found everything, short of a replacement controller, through the outlet store, flea markets or other thrift adventures, yet for some reason I could never, and have never found a Wii sensor bar that wasn't already part of an overpriced bundle.

Up to this point I've been using a wireless Big Buck Hunter Pro bar that is essentially the exact same thing, albeit ugly and eats batteries like a glutton. This meant I would turn the thing on just enough to navigate the menus or get a game started, then I would turn it off and hope that I didn't use up the brand new batteries I just put in the thing, not 10 seconds ago. I do have a few games that require a constant presence of a Wii sensor bar, which I don't play all that often anyway, otherwise causing the game's controls to be horrible or non-responsive at all. I needed to find myself a Wii sensor bar, or did I?

Being the crafty fucker that I am, I decided that I would just compromise and use what I already had, but modify it to work with the Wii's USB ports. It's a super simple little project. All you need is a Big Buck Hunter Pro sensor bar, or analog, which I found at the outlet store years ago, I also often find them hidden among the toys at local Goodwill stores, and a cheap USB cable, which I procured from Goodwill for 50 cents.

While the Big Buck bar only requires 4.5 volts, USB will provide 5, and to be honest I'm not completely sure whether this will shorten the life of the sensor bar or not, but the fact is I'm sick of changing out batteries constantly and I don't often play games that require the bar on the whole time, so I see this as being a necessary evil. Either way I feel this project is worth the attempt as it only cost me about $1.

I simply isolated the 5v source and the ground wire and soldered them to the proper terminals in the battery slot. Then I made a knot in the USB cable and cut a notch in the battery door of the Big Buck bar and voila! Now I have a USB powered sensor bar for about $1. If this thing burns out or dies, I can most likely salvage the USB cable and just find a replacement bar at Goodwill for $1-2 and just do it all over again. Hopefully with the infrequency with which I use the sensor bar I won't need to, but it was well worth a try because now I don't have to worry about batteries anymore!

MySims Racing, is it a budget Mario Kart for the Wii?

With my Nintendo Wii library looking a little sparse I decided to try and stir up some hidden gems. Google wasn't much help as any results for Wii hidden gems either yielded lists of very well known titles, or mostly the same batch of little known titles that aren't quite up my alley. My goal was to unearth hidden racing titles for the Wii, which should be quite easy as it seems the Wii motion controls were quite popular with racing game developers.

Sadly I found out the Nintendo Wii was rife with abysmal, and downright shitty racing titles. After digging a little deeper I ran across a title I was partially familiar with, MySims Racing. I own, and do enjoy, MySims Kingdom, despite it being a very dumbed-down version of The Sims. So what could I expect from MySims Racing? Well for only $2 I was more than willing to try it out and see for myself.

MySims Racing starts you off with the options of Quick Race or Story Mode, you can also play up to 4 players in the multiplayer mode. One thing I need to say right now is that MySims Racing supports the Gamecube controller. Suck on that Ubisoft! Anyway, the meat and potatoes of this game is obviously in it's story mode, where you create your chibi-Sim and set off on an adventure that is quite remanescente of the story line from Disney's Cars. I mean it's practically a complete ripoff of it!

You are set in a small, forlorn town called Racetown, which was once a great hub of all things racing. After getting to know the local mechanic he reveals that you are the only hope to restore this town to it's former racing glory and bring back the hordes of racing fans. I told you it's Disney's Cars!

After you get over the shock of the, obviously, stolen story line, MySims Racing sets you off doing various racing related tasks for people in the town to collect things they've lost, test new parts, earn blue prints, collect gems among various other things. As you progress through the story you can upgrade your cars, of which you are given three types; small, medium and large. Each car can be upgraded using the same parts you've earned through blue prints as well as customized through the same blue prints you've earned for style parts. Although shallow, MySims Racing's customization and upgrades do add a nice little dynamic to the game.

Once a certain round of tasks have been completely you will meet the mayor of Racetown. The mayor will then organize a small championship for you to win and help bring pride back to Racetown. Once you've completed the fairly easy to win championship, an adjacent town is unlocked, repeating the cycle. Help new acquaintances with tasks, which builds their business around Racetown, earn yourself blue prints for better parts, everybody wins, etc.

Although the story line is stolen, the gameplay is cheesy and the competition doesn't usually pose any real threat, MySims Racing was fun and I feel that it was a really good game. Obviously aimed at the Disney Cars crowd of ages 5 to 12, MySims Racing isn't going to be as tough as Mario Kart, but adds a few elements that Mario Kart doesn't.

So can I honestly say that MySims Racing is a budget Mario Kart? Well, not whole-heartedly, no. I feel MySims Racing is fun to play, it's engaging and it offers the player the chance to customize their cars in a few different ways. For $2 (compared to Mario Kart currently being $30) I feel it was a solid purchase. MySims racing may not win over the hardcore Mario Kart fans, but I feel it's a very solid investment for the crowd who enjoys a relaxing, quirky and fun little kart racing game for a super cheap price.

Driver Parallel Lines, I'm finally not impressed!

I've written a few articles already about Driver Parallel Lines and how it's my favorite Driver thus far. I also believe that it is possibly the most competent GTA clone, as well as an all-round under appreciated game. Well, at least those are my feelings for the Xbox (and possibly the PS2 version) version, but I can't say as much for the Wii port.

Driver Parallel Lines was released in 2006, just as the sixth generation of consoles were almost gasping their last bit of breath. Yet, for some reason Parallel Lines wasn't released for the fresh faced seventh generation, like a handful of other titles were. That all changed in 2007 when Driver Parallel Lines saw itself ported to Windows and the Nintendo Wii, you know... the most deserving of consoles to port a GTA clone.

Again, I love this game! I can not state it enough, I simply love this game and the way it made me feel when I was playing through the story missions, as well as the countless hours I spent free roaming through their rendition of New York City. However, I feel this is due in large to the fact that the Xbox controller fit into my hands quite comfortably and all my controller choices were made with minimal human consciousness, it became almost intuitive.

So this past weekend Gamestop was having a buy two get one free sale, to which I decided I would take a chance and flesh out my Wii collection a bit further and buy some cheap games and get one for free; why not? Once inside the store the plan had changed, as my euphoria of being around so many games had dulled my memory of what exactly I came to buy in the first place. I forgot exactly what I had come in to purchase, as well as I had forgotten the huge list of games I wanted to even check to see if they had, but the very first game I did pick up was Driver Parallel Lines on the Wii for a measly $2.

My glorious collection.

After getting home with my haul I cleaned up the extremely greasy and finger print laden Driver disc and popped it into my Wii. After watching the intro cut scenes I was already less than impressed. The graphics seem to be sharper, with a new, slightly iridescent, sheen about them, but the textures are still the same, making the game look worse in the overall scheme of things. I also noticed that the game seems to try it's best to run at 60 frames per second, which I can easily notice from time to time. Sadly the only reason I notice this is because it comes through in bursts, making me all too aware that the game can't sustain a steady frame rate.

But here is where the game has almost entirely lost me; the controls are absolutely shit. Needless to say, I've owned a Wii for a while, and I had encounters with them well before I owned my own, so I'm well aware that the Wii controller and nunchuck are not going to feel the same as an Xbox or PS2 style controller, but there are plenty of games for the Wii that do allow for the player to use the Gamecube controller, which would have been this game's holy savior!

 At first I couldn't get the car to go, and it took me a while to figure out that I needed to be holding the nunchuck up perfectly straight, or else I would in fact be engaging the handbrake, rendering the car impossible to drive. Again, I will say that I am familiar with the stupid, and dare I say down right shitty, controls games have in them to try and encompass the Wii control scheme. While I am familiar with them, that doesn't mean I like them, and not all games have them, so why did Ubisoft try so hard to fuck this game up!?

It would have been easy; it should have been easy. Many Wii racing games allowed for the Gamecube controller, and Parallel Lines should have as well! I even tested it, the game won't acknowledge any Gamecube controller inputs at all. The way it is, using Wii controls, the game isn't very playable compared to the originals. All it would have taken was for Ubisoft to pull their heads out of their asses and make this GC controller compatible and this would have been the best version of Driver Parallel Lines.

The Audacity of Animal Crossing Villagers

When I first started playing Animal Crossing, maybe 10 years ago, I never really let one simple, yet boldly blatant, fact settle in to my mind. That I, myself, was the sole bearer of responsibility in my town. No one but myself was responsible for the maintaining of a whole village, packed to the brim with completely able-bodied animals.

Seemingly no one else had to do chores for Tom Nook to earn their plot of land within the town. No one else took care of the weeds, especially immediately surrounding their homestead, while I was gone for months or even years. No one else took the time to check in with the town's condition and plant trees or flowers where there needed to be, for the overall greater good of the village in question. No one else donated to the museum to fill out the displays. Instead they just complain that the town is terrible and simply move away, without lifting a single finger in it's aid.

Throughout the first game, which I still haven't really managed to perfect as I don't play it enough to be bothered, I noticed I was the only one who had to take care of the weeds, trees and various other things to beautify the village. At least after all was said and done I had a golden statue of myself places just outside of the train station to commemorate all my hard work, at paying off my home. It also seems Tom Nook never really hassled any of the other villagers about the size of their homes, so they just bought the basic and never really bothered to upgrade. As where Tom Nook constantly hounded me to keep upgrading and forever be indebted to him.

Although I haven't delved too deeply into maintaining my Wild World village, because my DS Lite is slowly decaying into a hunk of shit (Good job Nintendo!), I have noticed the theme of blaming the town for being junk and just moving away has carried over. Not much to say other than adios! If this were real life and someone just bought a home, never did anything to keep it maintained, then complained to neighbors about how terrible it was before simply packing up and leaving, this person would be labeled mentally insane.

Again the theme carried over to City Folk. I still enjoy working on City Folk, but this time things are bit more complex. This time the town asks for donations to build additions, such as an additional bridge, a water fountain and finally a lighthouse or windmill. Funds are paid directly to Pelly or Phyllis in the civic center, but I am the only one who ever bothers to put any bells toward such projects.

As I toil away, day after day, and slowly earn 1,000 bells here and 10,000 bells there, what do the other villagers do? They bide their time by walking around, holding one of their favorite tools. Almost every villager will eventually be seen carrying a fishing rod, an axe, a shovel or a bug net, proving that they too earn bells, somehow. Since we know they've bought these homes and have enough bells left over to pay me for misc. items I have on my person, or for doing random tasks, as well as tools to keep them busy, why don't they donate to the town fund? Or better yet, use those tools to donate to the museum?

How incredibly lazy and audacious these villagers are to move in, never lift a finger to aid in the beautification of the town and just complain about how terrible it is and move back out! Villagers come and go and it never changes, with the exception of a few, whom still let the occasional critique slip every so often. Even after all my hard work, they will always find something to complain about, as if my sole purpose in Animal Crossing is groundskeeper and fund raiser for things to keep them busy.

Video Games I need more of: Bully!

After I acquired my first PS2 I did the standard "What games can I use this thing for?" research and came up with a nice little treasure trove of games that I wanted to purchase. Among them were obviously exclusives for the Sony consoles such as Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Vice City Stories, as well as another Rockstar hit, Bully. The concept of Bully was a bit weird for me, at first, but after I purchased the game and gave it a bit of a play through it really sprouted out and became a game that my mind wished there was more of.

In the game Bully you play as Jimmy Hopkins, a 15 year old with a bad attitude, which is a slight departure from the main protagonists Rockstar is putting into their GTA series. Jimmy is sent to Bullworth Academy, a boarding school, to help him adjust said attitude. While at Bullworth Jimmy makes friends and enemies along his (mis)adventures through both the school yard and the adjacent town.

Bully plays a bit like a GTA game, but has its own environmental feel and works really well, although I always felt the overall area was just too small, as I was more familiar with the land masses of GTA games by this point. Even so, the game played great and there were plenty of story missions, side missions and many other miscellaneous things to do to keep yourself busy and entertained for quite some time. But once everything was collected, all the missions were done and all that was left was driving up and down the streets on Jimmy's moped, there was an undying desire to see a sequel.

A few years ago I acquired a copy of Bully: Scholarship Edition for the Xbox 360, which added more things to do, as well as beefed up the graphics and made everything look far more presentable and likewise appealing. Sadly, I had bought a copy of the game that had a hairline crack in the disc. When combining the need for the disc to be spun to be read, as well as the heat the Xbox 360's DVD drives are known for, the crack quickly grew to the point it would no longer boot up.

Although I got a fairly good taste of what Scholarship Edition was about, I never got the full experience, which only made me want an additional, more modern version of Bully even more, and I'm NOT a modern console gamer! I'm not sure where Rockstar would go with another installment of Bully, but I'm sure I'm not alone in this feeling of wanting to experience more. With all the improvements they've made in the GTA series, I bet another Bully would be nothing less than amazing.

Nyko Wand: Skewed Review

Let me start this review off by stating clearly: I purchased my Nyko Wand USED so this in no way means that all Nyko Wands are this way, perhaps so, perhaps no. This is my blog and these are my opinions, you don't have to agree, but don't be a nuisance if mine differ greatly from your own.

If you've read any of my Project Outlet Wii entries you'll know that the only remote I had for my Wii was a purple Nyko Wand, that I acquired from the outlet store as well. Throughout the whole time I've had my Wii, the Nyko Wand didn't respond the same way I remember the official Wii remotes did. The Nyko Wand chewed through batteries at a fierce pace, it would unsync/desync often in the middle of Animal Crossing and was just generally a poor excuse for a controller.

As I stated above I did purchase it used, discarded if you will, at the Goodwill Outlet store, which leads me to assume it was already in bad shape as someone else had tossed it away with their Goodwill donateables. Or maybe this is a case of a rare factory defect, and the previous owner had already purchased a replacement before donating it. I can only run on assumption, as almost everything else I've found there has been in used shape, but still functioned as if brand new.

Excited for the coming holiday in Animal Crossing: City Folk, I woke up every day to do my 15 minutes of play, just to get things going before heading over to Netflix and watching something to pass the day. December 17th came and all of a sudden my Nyko Wand went crazy. The lights at the bottom started flashing off and on as if it were trying sync but never stopped. I pulled out the batteries and upon placing a new set in, the controller still flashed as if it assumed the new career of being a tiny, purple Christmas tree.

I waited a few minutes and it never stopped, so I did what I normally do... I took it apart to see what may be wrong with it. I checked all the solder joints and made sure everything looked as good as they could be. Knowing absolutely fuck all about a Wii remote I have to say it did no good what so ever. I figured it was just having an issue syncing to the Wii, so I pressed the buttons and waited. Nothing...

After replacing the batteries a handful of times with various other batteries the controller just stopped working completely. Being the only Wii mote I had and it being dead... no more Wii.

For what it did, the Nyko Wand was, at best, OK! Sure all Wii remotes chew through batteries, but the Nyko Wand seemed to have an even greater thirst than I remember the OEM remotes having. The unsyncing issue was a huge mess and interrupted gameplay more times than I care to recount, simply because it could!

It was used, possibly abused by the previous owner, but it gave me well more than the 25 cents I paid for it at the outlet store (I have no clue what that thing weighed, but it couldn't have cost me much more than a quarter). It hated Netflix, it hated my Wii, the thing was just trouble from the start. I wouldn't buy another Nyko Wand unless it was at Goodwill or the outlet store, based on the experience I've had with the purple one, even though this may have been a rare defective unit.

I've since bought an OEM Nintendo Wii mote and the only thing I truly miss about the Nyko Wand is the option to shut the remote off, which is a massive oversight by Nintendo in not giving them that feature. The OEM remote doesn't chug down batteries, it doesn't have to resync every 10 minutes and it generally doesn't throw a fit, like the Nyko Wand did. The only true annoyance is that I have to manually shut it off while watching Netflix or when the remote isn't in use by pulling out a battery.

Throughout the whole time I've collected video games, 3rd party brands are either hit or miss and we base our buying choices upon that. I purchased Pelican brand Xbox controllers years ago that lasted 7 months and since then Pelican has never been a choice in my mind, even if it were in the outlet store. If my OEM Wii remote would shut off when I pressed the power button shortly, I wouldn't miss the Nyko Wand at all.

Animal Crossing City Folk: The trinity of DOOM!

Since I first saw the game played, at a friend's house I believe, I knew I had to try Animal Crossing on the Gamecube. The problem, at the time, was that I didn't own a Gamecube, and I didn't want to pay the price for the system, nor did I want to pay the price for the game. I'm primarily a vintage gamer, so I bide my time with the good, old classic and wait for today's craze to fade away and turn up for pennies in thrift stores, flea markets, etc. before I give it a go.

When I finally got my hands on Animal Crossing I was blown away by the amount of things you could do; all the animals to talk to, tasks you could do, fishing, collect, etc. But over time the game eventually ground itself into a giant repetitive hole and just became something I never wanted to play again. Years later, as I previous posted here, I did come back to my old Animal Crossing city of Hell and the residents were all to happy to let me know exactly how long it had been since they saw me last, and to be honest I missed them!

But as had happened before, with the help from Mr. Resetti due to a series of unforeseen power failures, I decided this game was too demanding and it was time to pack it away yet again. This only lasted until I found a copy of Animal Crossing Wild World at the outlet store. At first Wild World seemed much the same with a few added bonuses here and there, but it too quickly got on my nerves as it just felt like deja vu!

Throughout the past 6 months I've visited my Wild World town a handful of times, saw that its overrun with weeds and promptly turned off my DS, as the top screen no longer works anyway. But recently I was given a copy of Animal Crossing City Folk for the Nintendo Wii, and my views on the series haven't changed at all. I love the initial feeling of starting anew and exploring something new, but in reality its all the same.

Every game starts out with you moving to a new town, buying a home from Tom Nook and being his lacky for a few measly coins to help pay off his initial fee for housing. Although there is a mayor, Tortimer, Tom Nook seemingly owns everything else in the town! But there is a small feeling of justice knowing Tom Nook buys everything from you, thus paying himself back for the home you eventually own.

The main draw to Animal Crossing has been the interactions such as Halloween, and other holidays that not many other games have the ability or care to include. Apparently many holidays were left out in Wild World, so that coupled with the broke DS screen have really made me not even want to play it anymore. I did however use it to move my character to City Folk.

One fear that I had for Wild World has come up in City Folk, gimmicking! Nintendo and their stupid need to toss in the gimmick of the console and mess up the whole game. In Wild World I'm not forced to use the touch screen, it just aids heavily in the speed of doing a few tasks. In City Folk there are bits of game you can't do without having to use the motion controls.

Most people won't even notice because they have a normal Wii sensor bar, but since I have the makeshift sensor from another game, which chews through batteries, I have to constantly turn it off and on when I need to use the motion controls. Where in Wild World you can use the D-pad and buttons to move things throughout your inventory and select them to be sold, City Folk forces you to use the motion controls to click and/or drag. Even though there is absolutely no need for this, it seems everything else in the game can easily be done without the need for motion controls, except anything that requires selecting something (items, typing out letters, etc.)

So far City Folk seems to be much the same as the two previous games, but even with the frustration of the motion controls it still keeps me busy, for now. Hopefully after a little while this game will start to shine bright and I'll take more interest in it than I already do, which is blunted by Wild World. But as of right now I have to say the first is still my favorite for its simplicity, yet complexity all at the same time.

Outlet Wii Update! Doors have arrived!

All my life I've lacked patience, I haven't a single solitary drop within any fiber of my being. So after a tense 5 days, which honestly is less than I expected, the OEM Nintendo Wii doors that I ordered have arrived! With a knock on my door, the box slid into my hands and away I went to document the arrival!

Pretty much the only thing in the box were these nifty Nintendo bags (which I'm keeping!), holding the doors and the packing slip. I carefully opened the box and bags so I didn't destroy them. Once all was opened I packed the bags back into the packing slip and put them back in the box. OCD anyone?

And so we see that the poor beat up Nintendo Wii that I salvaged from the Goodwill outlet store bins is now almost whole again! The face is still a bit loose, but it stays in place and I never have reason to grab it by the face, so I won't worry about that. All I need now is an official controller and IR bar and everything will be perfect!