It’s been a few weeks since my last entry and things just continue to move at a rapid pace in the industry. First, we’ve got Microsoft revealing that their first-party games will be moving from $70 up to $80 - making all of the ire focused on Nintendo last month look a little premature. Everybody is making moves, and like all tech-leaning hobbies this one is getting prohibitively expensive. It sucks, but I just want to double down on what I said last newsletter. There’s plenty of fun and community to be found at fractions of the cost. I’ve found it helpful to diversify my sources of content around gaming so that I don’t experience the FOMO of the latest and greatest.
Speaking of content sources, we lost a real one at the beginning of the month with the selling off of Polygon to Valnet. The site is still around, but it’s likely going to lose its identity with much of the staff having been laid off. Polygon was one of the first gaming sites where I became familiar enough with a writer’s style and opinions to formulate my own dialogue with the review. I had to look deeper than a giant number at the bottom that told me whether it was good or not. In many ways it was what sparked the notion that I could write about games in my own way. I appreciate what it was and I’ll definitely miss it.
Now onto some good vibes! I recently traveled to Ohio (the air in the Midwest just hit different y’all), and that was a perfect excuse to continue my run of older portable titles. Thanks to my perhaps illogical fear that my PSP screen would get damaged in transit I retreated to the safety of the clamshell design of my Nintendo 3DS. In the midst of a multi-hour flight delay, my butt growing numb with each passing minute, I called on an unfamiliar cadre of agents to save me from my boredom.
Elite Beat Agents
Developed by iNiS, Elite Beat Agents was released for the Nintendo DS in November of 2006 as a Western market specific follow-up to their first rhythm game Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan. Like its predecessor, EBA has players tapping and dragging icons on the handheld’s touch screen in time with popular music tracks. While this is happening, the top screen is showing off increasingly chaotic scenarios where the titular agents are “aiding” those in need.
I had to put quotes around that because the agents aren’t actually doing any physical direct assistance. Rather, their dancing is a form of motivation for the people - inspiring them to press past their obstacles. At least I think that’s what’s going on. It’s funny, the game was included in Nintendo’s Touch! Generations sub-brand which was intended to appeal to a broader audience past the traditional gamer. This is the same brand that included titles like Nintendogs and Brain Age, and while I can see the rhythm-based gameplay appealing to just about anybody I can also see the confusion on my grandmother’s face as I try to explain that there’s a secret government agency full of dancers who encourage a mom to fight off the weather so she can take her son on a picnic.
While I’m confused by the business decision, I’m in no way complaining about the game’s tone. The quirkiness of the characters and the gonzo nature of the scenarios are its best feature, and I believe they are a large part of why this game still resides in people’s minds. After I got back from my trip I’ve been playing the game in one to two song chunks, and the level of silliness it brings is exactly what I need in the middle of the workday. The game is unapologetically itself and I can’t find any fault in that.
There are a couple things that I can quibble with however. The first has little to do with the game itself and more to do with the device it’s played on - the audio quality is poorer than I’d want in a game so reliant on music. It’s never outright bad, and once I’ve entered the flow of a song I’m no longer aware of it. Don’t worry, this isn’t American Idol on GBA levels of quality, but when a track is just getting started the level of compression is noticeable.
The other callout is a bit more layered. I initially had this noted as “missing out on storyboard” - meaning that I was unable to appreciate some of the story animations that were happening on the top screen mid-song because of how intensely I had to be locked into the game. On face value this translates to “one part of the game is so good that I miss out on the goodness of the other part of the game”, but when I went to YouTube in an attempt to catch what I had missed I also noticed that the agents had a repertoire of smooth moves that had gone unseen as well. This led to a cycle of internal Q & A that resulted in me coming to the realization that there is a tactility missing from this game that keeps it from engaging my entire body.
See, I have to hyper fixate on the icons because it’s difficult to find the perfect timing thanks to my body’s inability to catch the beat in the same way that it does in a Guitar Hero or even Donkey Konga. In those instances I have two whole hands and arms guiding me along (or hips when I’m getting funky on bass in the former), but in the case of Elite Beat Agents I’m only moving my right wrist. Honestly, I can’t even put this in the gripe category now - is this just a me thing? This reminds me of how some people don’t mind typing on their smartphone keyboards while I’m over here dreaming about the Samsung Rant I used in high school. Anyway, let me wrap this thing up before somehow I fall into a diatribe about the loss of physical buttons in EV vehicles (I had to use a rental car in Ohio, OKAY).
Elite Beat Agents for the Nintendo Dual Screen is a fun goofball of a game. It takes advantage of the platform to deliver a creative take on a familiar genre. The game has a style and an identity that you just love to see, and I’ll continue to applaud it whenever given the opportunity. If, like me, you missed this when it originally dropped you know what they say: better 6,700 days late than never.