Viewtiful Joe follows Joe, a movie lover that is pulled into the movie world in an attempt to rescue his girl, Sylvia. Nothing too exciting there and for the most part pretty standard, but then Joe is given a watch from his movie hero, who at this point is getting old. This watch allows Joe to transform into a super sentai style character. Through a majority of the first game he attempts to come up with a cool superhero name final deciding on Viewtiful Joe.  In the end, Joe of course saves Sylvia, who then turns and also becomes a hero, Sexy Sylvia.  Within the first game you could replay the games with other characters which altered the cut scenes but mostly played the same.

The second game brought in Sexy Sylvia as a main stay.  Compared to Joe’s hand-to-hand combat style, Sylvia had guns.  These were used as an additional puzzle aspect in the second game.  Besides these basic styles the hero forms allowed Joe and the others to utilize movie powers. This ranged from altering the passage of time to zooming in for a close up. Each game added more such as the second game giving Sylvia replay abilities. These powers could be used in different ways such as fast forward allowing Joe to strike something enough times and fast enough to catch on fire to deal more damage. Further into the games, these powers needed to be used in conjunction to either make the bosses easier or even to get through puzzles.

Graphic wise this was when cel-shading was new and the thing to do. In this case, the cel-shading lends well to the movie themed levels. The atmosphere fits and even the serious levels have a colourful and fun feel. Along with the trips through different movie themes the music also changes accordingly.

The spinoffs, on DS and Gamecube/PSP, are also pretty good.  In the case of Red Hot Rumble on Gamecube and PSP, they basically tried to do a party fighting game in the vein of Smash Bros.  Unfortunately, this game is easily the weakest. While it shares the same look and characters as all the others, it doesn’t seem to capture the series.  Double Trouble, on the DS, however does feel like it could have been the third game that never happened.  The only thing that makes it obviously not the finale is the unconnected storyline. This one adds two more powers called “Scratch” and “Split”.  In these cases you are directly affecting the film.  This mainly was to use the DS’s touch screen and manipulates other onscreen objects.

Overall, I miss this series and wish it could have had the ending it deserved. If you can pick any of these up, in anyway, it should be done. However, if you can only find Red Hot Rumble go ahead and avoid it because that is not a measure of what this series really is.

Guitar Hero may not have been the first rhythm game but I would say it definitely gave the genre traction in the states.  Well that or Dance Dance Revolution, but Guitar Hero definitely had the more complex peripheral of those two. However, to maintain my Nintendo fangirl club status, the best rhythm game was and always will be Donkey Konga.

Donkey Konga was a rhythm game that used Donkey Kong characters and a set of plastic bongos.  The two games were for the Gamecube and allowed for the cooperative and/or competitive play between four players.  Drawback here was that if you didn’t have four bongos, which started at a relatively high price, than the players using controllers had a significantly easier time playing.  Using controllers also takes away from the idea of a drum circle in front of the television.  The bongos had the obvious left and right but also could track claps to add that extra fourth beat style.

Graphically, the game falls short for some people probably, but I prefer it.  Yes there is movement in the background but the gameplay area takes up the bulk of the screen. Playing Guitar Hero and Rock Band, the majority of the screen being filled by flashy movement often times would distract me from playing the game. On top of this key difference, being for the Gamecube this game doesn’t measure up to the Xbox 360 or the PS3, but the Wii doesn’t really either.

The first installment predates Guitar Hero and went down the path of least resistance music wise and used Nintendo game music.  This was still fun but obviously some were more obscure or even some that were tweaked to nearly unrecognizable.  The second game actually got a mix of the Nintendo music and some pop songs.  This one I preferred of the two because it gave me something to sing along to if I wasn’t playing at the time.

With the at least current moratorium on guitar games, maybe after some time is given I’ll get to see another Donkey Konga.  I actually don’t see it happening due to the saturation of the current rhythm games, if anything new comes out for this genre I can’t imagine it until the next generation of consoles.