Sports Video Game Review: Air Hockey-e

Air Hockey-e is an air hockey game by Nintendo. Like real-life air hockey, it is a simple game but is also quite addicting.

In 2001, Nintendo released an add-on for the Game Boy Advance that had a novel way of playing games or adding features to existing games. This device was the e-Reader, not to be confused with the book-reading devices of the same name.

The e-Reader was a scanning device that read cards with a unique dot code system created by Olympus Optical. The dot codes on the cards contained games, add-ons for Nintendo games such as Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros 3, and even complete Nintendo Entertainment System games.

One of the single card games was Air Hockey-e. In 2002, back when Toys Я Us stores still were a thing in the United States, they handed these cards out for free as a promotion for the e-Reader, which was required to play the game. In 2003, Air Hockey-e was also released in Australia, as a pack-in with every e-Reader purchase.

I was lucky enough to own a Nintendo e-Reader plus a Toys Я Us store near me that participated in the promotion. It is a single-card game that is played by scanning two dot codes into the e-Reader, which then saves the game to the device's memory. Games of this type were simple games that used the hardware of the Game Boy Advance, whereas five card games were Nintendo Entertainment System games that were played on an emulator contained within the e-Reader.

Despite its simplicity, it is an accurate, colorful representation of Air Hockey, which is a game a puck hovers slightly above the playing field on a blanket of air. There are two players, each with a paddle. The trick is to get the puck into the opponent's goal, which is a hole in the middle of the walls of the playfield, representing the net of standard hockey.

As this game uses air, it has a floaty quality as the puck moves slower than it would without wind resistance. That is captured well in this game. The graphics are bright and cheery, with a white and blue speckled playing field with the e-Reader logo positioned in the middle of the center line. The bright graphics make the game easy to distinguish, even on the older models of the Game Boy Advance which didn't have a backlight, which was all of them at the time of this game's release.

The puck was yellow, the opponent's paddle was green, and the player's paddle was red. This wouldn't be as easy to distinguish for people with red/green colorblindness. Thankfully the colors represent the paddles, which aren't allowed to cross the center line, so this won't cause a problem. The AI is not too challenging, but I'm not an air hockey expert, so I did lose the game to the CPU a few times.

Air Hockey-e was a great demonstration of what the e-Reader was capable of doing. It contained a music track that was composed of pleasing electronic drum beats, sound effects, and a well-coded artificial intelligence inside of an accurate representation of air hockey. It is a no-frills experience, but so is real air hockey. 

Final Verdict:

3½ out of 5

Visual Novel Review: Detective Pikachu

This review was originally posted on the McMurray Internet Channel website on February 15, 2019.

Detective Pikachu is a spin-off from the very popular Pokémon series.  A shorter, download-only version of the game, titled Great Detective Pikachu: Birth of a New Duo, was released in 2016 only in Japan. The full game was released worldwide in 2018.

The game stars a boy named Tim Goodman, who is looking for his father Harry, the latter of whom was in a car accident two months prior and vanished mysteriously. He meets his father's Pikachu, who is confused. The same incident that caused Harry to mysteriously disappear also changed Harry's Pikachu. Now, he has the ability to be a capable detective at the cost of his ability to conduct electricity. He also no longer acts like a normal Pikachu, as he has developed quirks such as eating sweets and drinking coffee.

Tim discovers that he can communicate with Harry's Pikachu, who talks to him in a gruff voice. Since both of them want to find out what happened to Harry, Harry's Pikachu, using the deerstalker cap Harry gave him as inspiration, declares that he will help Tim out as the "Great Detective Pikachu". Interestingly, the duo discovers that Harry's Pikachu cannot talk to other humans, and Tim cannot talk to other pokémon, including other Pikachus.

However, Harry's Pikachu can talk to other pokémon, which is helpful since pokémon sometimes see things that humans do not. Tim and Pikachu have to talk to everyone they meet, gaining useful information. They have to use that information to gain new lines of questioning and to collect evidence.

Overall, it's a straightforward game that's aimed at children, but the mystery surrounding Tim's father's disappearance and the sudden change in Detective Pikachu's behavior help keeps players motivated throughout. Plus, the deep-voiced voice actor of Detective Pikachu, as well as the contrasting cute animations, keeps it entertaining. After the movie, people will probably be expecting Ryan Reynolds as Detective Pikachu, but it's still worth checking out to see from where the ideas for the film were generated.

Final Verdict:
4 out of 5