The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters (2007)

It's always interesting to see the lengths people will go to defend and maintain the status quo, their legacy, their pride, etc. when it's put on the line in a film. Sometimes the more underhanded methods of some only encourage you to cheer on the others to prove that justice still exists in society. This suddenly becomes a very sad story when you realize that "The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters" isn't scripted; rather, it's a documentary of legacy and how the power of the few can trump the good intentions of a single man.

This documentary follows the events of one Steve Wieve, a newcomer to the competitive classic arcade gaming scene and his main competitor Billy Mitchell, most know for holding the top record scores in games such as Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., and Centipede for various times. Steve comes from a modest past, being proficient drums, baseball, and mathematics. However he has, as everyone who knows him will tell you, has always come up short: he he long gave up on performing as a profession, his baseball career ended in high school when an injury kept him on the bench for the state championship game, and had recently been laid off his job with Boeing now working as a science teacher.

One of his few hobbies he has is the Donkey Kong cabinet he has in his garage, a game that he had been honing his craft and strategy on since reading of Billy Mitchell's record 874,300, a score held since the 1980s. When he does eventually beat this score with one of his own (an impressive 1,006,600 points) and submits a tape of his playthrough to Twin Galaxies, the official record holders of arcade video games, he opens a huge can of worms as Billy Mitchell, a true puppet-master, maneuvers the game to his advantage to have Steve stripped of his new found title and have him jump through several hurdles to try to reclaim his the top score.

At the start of the film you are introduced to Billy Mitchell as this prodigy child of arcade games, one who put some the highest scores of all time in a short amount of time. He did so while keeping a standard of integrity and good sportsmanship, as seen in his friend Brian Kuh who originally lied about his high scores but was called out and inspired by Billy Mitchell to play and live honestly. Billy Mitchell would go on to run his own restaurant chain and corresponding spiced sauce franchise, a true American success story.

ALL OF WHICH ARE AMERICAN DREAMS!

Unfortunately, all of this would apparently be undone if his claim to fame, the high score for classic Donkey Kong is bumped down to #2 in the world. As he put it: "[in reference to competitive gaming] when you wanna attach your name to a world-record, when you want your name written into history, you have to pay the price!" The price Billy Mitchell had to pay, I can only suppose from watching this, was his humility. Through his claims that a live game is the only real way to ascertain ability and the fact that Steve happened to get the machine circuit board from Billy Mitchell's apparent archenemy gives Twin Galaxies enough doubt to eventually deny Steve his record. And despite Steve's best and honest efforts, Billy Mitchell becomes adamant in not ever speaking to or accepting any challenge of Steve's for reasons that are beyond me. The hypocrisy of claiming live challenges are important and not even accepting live challenges when your opponent flies hundreds of miles to do so is not lost on me.

"Fistfull of Quarters" does nothing to sugarcoat Billy Mitchell's shady tactics and really makes you feel for Steve who just wants to have something he worked so hard on recognized for once. Certainly worth a watch if you don't mind watching big dog Billy Mitchell and his crooked antics. You get a real feeling for classic gaming competition and how an unhealthy obsession can lead to a downfall of character.


Final Judgement: 8/10

Mega Man 2 (1989)

Nostalgia.

As I may have mentioned before (don't worry, I checked), there were some family friends of ours that I would get a chance to play games that I commonly never played. Mega Man 2 was one of those games that I never really got to go very far in but still managed to have fun with. Especially now that I actually have some experience and mastery in gaming, I was able to see the potential this game had.

Capcom, who at the time was only really interested in making arcade games such as Street Fighter, gave a group of six guys a chance to create an original game for home consoles. Keiji Inafune had to design nearly all the characters, enemies, logo, box art, and instruction manual, a task typically reserved for a larger team. Despite their small size, this small team made the very first Rockman game, later renamed Mega Man for North America. They established the anime-inspired and technical limitation stretching artwork, the "run-jump-and-shoot" gameplay, and the idea of facing off against the boss characters in any order you want.

What was very unique to this game was the element of gaining the main weapon of each boss character you defeat which you can use against others. In fact, certain weapons were actually more effective against specific bosses, making the decision of which stage you selected to play next have a strategy element. Add the sometimes very crushing difficulty level and a point system and you had a very solid game. Unfortunately, Rockman/Mega Man was not a huge success. The terribly inaccurate box art for the North American release certainly didn't help (as seen below to the right next to the original).

"Yes, he is Mega 'Man' but what part of you thought he should be YELLOW?!"

However, Capcom was still impressed by the sales that were made despite the word-of-mouth method being virtually the only advertising done. So, they allowed for the production of a second Rockman game as long as they worked on it alongside their other projects. With a slightly larger crew including the original team of developers, Rockman 2 was completed in roughly four months using unused ideas from the first game and improving on the initial design.

In the past, most games that were allowed a second installment had made significant changes to design and gameplay under the impression that most players would be looking for a new experience, often leading to some very bizarre sequels. This low budget approach to making Rockman 2 actually worked to the game's advantage giving gamers a new experience through adding different elements, like the collectible Energy Tanks that could completely revive your character, and taking out unnecessary ones, such as the point system from the first game.

One trait about the Mega Man games that I've come to appreciate was how the game often prepared you for certain traps and enemies before really unleashing them upon you. In many NES games at the time, like Ninja Gaiden, you were often forced to progress through levels by running into random enemies that seemed to spawn out of nowhere and come right at you, forcing you to master the game through repetition and memorizing exact enemy placements and patterns. In Mega Man, however, you instead were often introduced to certain obstacles in a controlled setting before the game decided to throw you into a storm.

Example: When you start the Quick Man stage, you start in a area with the hole in the floor being the only way to go. So you would assume, unlike other levels in the game where you would die, you will have to jump down into abysses to traverse the level and that's what happens for the first three screens. In the next room, however, you are introduced to the beams-of-death that will kill you upon contact. Rather than just assuming that the player will learn to avoid these through dying and anticipating this in the next life, the game actual sets the room as so:

As you can see, the level is literally funneling you towards the hole at the bottom. Combine this with the obnoxious, threatening sound the beam makes, and you can determine for yourself (a) there's alot of falling ahead of you and (b) the beams are a bad thing, all without losing a single life. Now, when you get to the part of the stage where there are six beams and require speed and dexterity to get through to the bottom, you can't blame the game for being cheap and not giving some kind of warning or heads up that that's what you needed to do. Impressive since no one had thought up of tutorial levels yet.

Being ahead of the curve gets you one of these.

Needless to say, Mega Man 2 delivers. It's good, nostalgic, retro, challenging fun that was such an effective pseudo-RPG side-scroller that CAPCOM would tamper and improve those elements for at least 10 iterations and make Mega Man one of their most easily recognizable mascos. Not bad for starting from an afterthought.


Final Judgment: 9/10

BONUS: It was all fun and games...until HE came...
If your still raging about the Air Man stage, just remember you're not alone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opADNvgeZYY