Marble Madness

Year: 1984
Developer: Atari Games
Publisher: Atari Games
Platform: Arcade (originally); ported to numerous platforms; currently available on PC, iOS
Metacritic score: Not available
VGChartz sales to date: Unknown

WHAT MADE IT GREAT
Life is full of simple pleasures and gaming is no exception.  The gaming industry loves to get worked up over big AAA titles and the drive for greater immersion in games, but there's plenty of what we now deem "casual" titles vying for our attention.  There's a tendency to view these games with scorn, citing their simple mechanics or limited depth as evidence that our hobby is being dumbed down to appeal to players lacking the skills to play "hardcore" games.  To those people, I humbly present Marble Madness.  This is a game without story, plot or even any characters and whose gameplay is based on a simplistic board game popular since the 19th century.  With only six levels and no save feature, it's a game designed specifically with casual play in mind and a skilled player can beat it in under 5 minutes.  It's also one of the most challenging video games ever created and is probably responsible for an entire landfill's worth of broken controllers.

You'd think watching your marble shatter from too high a drop would be a warning to treat your controller well, but it only serves to further enrage you

Developed in the wake of the Great Crash of '83, Marble Madness wasn't exactly meant to be Atari's next killer app, but to push their new emphasis on more lucrative specialized controllers and simultaneous two-player gameplay.  Marble Madness fulfilled both these goals by making use of Atari's new trackball device and allowing two players to compete with each other at the same time.  Luckily the head designer was Mark Cerny, lead system architect on the recently revealed PS4, and as a result gamers got a game that was both challenging and addictive in it's brilliantly executed simplistic design.  Players take control of a marble and try to race through a simple isometrically viewed maze before the timer runs out.  You're given 60 seconds to make it through all six levels, but each time you finish a level you get some time added back onto your total.  The levels themselves are 2D polygonal drawings heavily inspired by the work of M.C. Escher to give the illusion of 3D graphics.  The levels are populated with various traps and enemies (and possibly a second player) that can impede your progress or bust your marble, causing a significant time penalty.  Speed is the name of the game here, as a faster finish rewards you with a higher bonus score and more time to take on the remaining levels.  Since you only have a set amount of time to complete the whole game, each level is a nerve-wracking battle between your desire to get there as quickly as possible while patiently navigating the course to avoid costly time penalties.  With a second marble thrown into the mix and a 5 second bonus going to whoever wins each race, two-player mode can ruin a friendship if you succumb to the marble's madness.

Roving pools of acid will dissolve your marble to dust, costing you precious seconds while you regenerate

Despite the humble origins, Marble Madness stands as a notable entry in the history of gaming.  It was one of the first games to use stereo sound and had a composed soundtrack.  It was the first Atari game programmed in C, whereas most games were written directly in assembly up into the 1990's.  It was also one of the first games to use 3D elements convincingly by combining perspective drawings with ray tracing to create levels that gave the illusion of depth and height.  When it first debuted in arcades, Marble Madness generated so much interest that the trackballs would break down from overuse.  Ports were launched on every system imaginable, including the NES version most of us are familiar with that has some of the weirdest credits of any video game.  Milton Bradley (yes, that Milton Bradley) got the license from Atari through their quasi-legal subsidiary Tengen, which is why their name appears in the title credits.  Even though they aren't credited anywhere, the game was actually developed by Rare who would go on to make the similar Snake, Rattle n' Roll for the NES.  Other ports of varying quality were produced for the Apple II, DOS, Sega Mega Drive, Genesis, Windows, Amiga, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Gameboy (and later Gameboy Advance) and many more, most of which were published by Electronic Arts (who currently holds the rights).  While most of these ports were forced to ditch the trackball in favor of the inferior d-pad controls standard to most consoles, they at least gave players a bevy of ways to get their marbles rolling.    

WHAT WENT WRONG
A short but impossibly challenging game is the perfect recipe for arcade success, but in 1984 the arcade scene was in its death throes.  The Atari 2600 signaled the rise of the home console domination of the market, giving the first taste of a future where video games could be enjoyed from the comfort of your own couch.  While most arcade ports to the 2600 were vastly inferior to their arcade counterparts, it was still clear that soon the technology would catch up enough to close the gap.  When the NES arrived Stateside in 1985 that promise would be fulfilled, but in the meantime Atari was still focused on the arcade.  They sold over 4,000 Marble Madness cabinets in the first 6 months while interest peaked and the game became the highest-earning cabinet in most arcades.  But then demand suddenly dropped as gamers grew bored of the limited number of courses.  

Though few in number, the levels got progressively harder by adding more challenging obstacles and increasing the complexity of the mazes

The desire for fresh games may represent one of the earliest impacts of the growing impact of the home market.  Arcade games had traditionally been very short and incredibly hard since they were specifically designed to scam kids out of their quarters.  Donkey Kong was just 4 screens that repeated until it overloaded the memory and glitched out, but it still made over half a billion dollars in it's first two years of release saving Nintendo of America from insolvency.  But by 1984 gamers weren't content playing the same few levels for years on end and the arcade profits dried up.  That same year, Atari was split in two with the gaming division taking over existing rights and software development while the hardware division began producing new consoles.  They released a flurry of consoles and home computers over the next two years, some of which competed against each other but the crown jewel was supposed to be the $1000 Atari ST.  That went about as well as you'd imagine, but it was the only Atari system to get a port of Marble Madness.  Ports on other systems saw better sales but most of those were published by Electronic Arts and developed by outside studios so Atari only would have received a flat licensing fee.

WILL WE SEE IT AGAIN
Definitely, but don't expect developers to race the clock in bringing it to market.  Atari released the game on iOS as part of a massive collection in 2011, but shows no interest in a standalone title.  EA was developing a spiritual successor to the game that also included the original levels, but quietly slipped passed it's 2010 release and has been unheard of since which could suggest licensing disputes.  It's too bad, because the trackball controls and gameplay mechanics are a great fit for tablets.  New levels with updated designs would greatly add to the games appeal, you could even incorporate tilt-based controls to give more depth to the mechanics.  But given how many different studios released various ports over the years it wouldn't be much of a surprise if the game turns out to be a legal hornets nest.  

Other versions of the game that have already been released are available on PS2, Xbox, GameCube and PC in the form of the Midway Arcade Treasures collection.  The title is misleading since it actually contains multiple games never published by Midway, including Marble Madness.  And while that port was developed by an outside studio Midway had contracted, it was actually just a compilation of three arcade collections the studio had developed earlier for SNES, Playstation and PC.  At the time Midway owned both Williams and Atari, but since then Atari has been sold and resold multiple times and just last month filed for bankruptcy.  Don't mourn too long, because the brand has already died many deaths and will likely be resurrected once again.  But when Lazarus rises again from his pit, it's unclear if he'll bring Marble Madness with him.  

Choose the right path and you will shave a little time off your run, but choose poorly and you'll be stuck in development hell while lawyers wrangle over your publishing rights.  

Have you played this game?  Is there a game you remember being great but no one else has heard of it?  Sound off in the comments below, and be sure to Like us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter!  

Ristar

Year: 1995
Developer: Sonic Team
Publisher: Sega
Platform: Sega Genesis, Game Gear (originally); later Virtual Console and also bundled in compilations for PSP, PS2, Xbox, GameCube, PC, PS3 and Xbox 360
Metacritic score: Not available
VGChartz sales to date: Unknown

WHAT MADE IT GREAT
For those of us born during a certain time, the 90's represented a coming of age in more ways then one.  For the video game industry, the 90's was when gaming transitioned from youthful fad to full-fledged entertainment industry juggernaut.  In 1982 at the height of the home console market just before the Great Crash of '83 the industry was pulling in around $4 billion annually, a number that would rise to over $20 billion globally in just ten years.  While there have always been multiple competitors in this market, it wasn't until the 1990's when we saw two companies so evenly matched.  By the end of the 16-bit era Nintendo would claim a slight victory in the Console Wars with 49 million Super Nintendos sold compared to Sega's 40 million Geneses (fun fact: the plural of genesis is geneses, you can look it up if you don't believe me).  It's fitting that the two generals of this conflict, Mario and Sonic, were both mascots from platformers because in many ways the 16-bit era was tailor made for the platforming genre.  The SNES and Genesis still had the same 2D rendering limitations as the previous generation, but modest increases in addressable memory space and processing power gave developers access to a greater palette of colors, sounds and sprites to craft worlds that possessed far more personality over their predecessors.   

If your first experience with video games was Pong, seeing this many colors onscreen at once could give you a stroke.  

This unique set of constraints favored games that were well-suited to 2D graphics and didn't require realistic graphics or gameplay to be enticing, so fans of platforming gameplay were absolutely spoiled for choice during the 1990's.  While many of the best selling platformers had gotten their start back on the NES (Mario, Mega Man, Metroid and Castlevania to name just a few examples) Sega was making headway with new properties of their own, of which the speedy blue hedgehog was undoubtedly the king.  But anyone who stuck too closely to Sonic did themselves a great disservice by missing out on titles such as Ristar.  The game stars an anthropomorphic star who is either the child of a Star Goddess or a "Legendary Hero" in the form of a shooting star, depending on whether you played the Japanese version or the English translation.  Your task is to save the Valdi galaxy by preventing the evil space pirate/19th century German imperialist Kaiser Greedy from enslaving the inhabited planets through mind-control.  The U.S. version also sees you rescuing your father/Legendary Hero/shooting star because somehow this makes the plot more...I'm not sure what exactly.  Maybe the Japanese thought we had a lot of daddy issues, but for whatever reason the plot was altered during the localization process.   

Apparently nobody notified Ristar of the change, because he maintains those arched eyebrows throughout the game

It's no surprise that the game borrows heavily from Sonic, especially since it was born from an early concept art in which Sonic was a rabbit, but Ristar set itself apart with a unique gameplay hook.  Ristar can run, jump and swim with the best of them but rather then rely on jumping, speed or a collection of weapons to defeat enemies and traverse levels, Ristar uses his extendable stretchy arms both to explore and fight.  Using the B button sends Ristar's arms shooting out in front of him, grabbing onto a handhold, switches, ledge, etc. will pull the rest of his body forward and releasing the button will make Ristar let go so his momentum can carry him.  Just like how stages in Sonic are designed to take advantage of speed, Ristar's stages are designed around swinging from place to place and the mechanic feels really enjoyable when you get into a rhythm.  The Star Hooks are especially fun to use as grabbing one sends Ristar swinging around at high speeds until you are ready to let go, at which point you rocket off like a shooting star.  Ristar is invulnerable while a shooting star and the player has some degree of control over charting his course, but mainly it's a matter of timing and gravity.  Each level has a hidden Star Hook that sends you to a bonus stage where you can earn special items by completing an obstacle course in a set amount of time.  Enemies can also be defeated by grabbing them and holding the button to pull Ristar into them for a high speed headbutt.  In this way, attacking enemies is just another means of traversing the levels allowing skilled players to swing themselves to the finish at a brisk pace, making the game popular for speedrun challenges.

Each stage ends with either a mini-boss or boss battle.  Battling the boss on Planet Undertow is made easier by not needing to breath since stars live in the vacuum of space.  Doesn't stop them from wearing sneakers, though.  

But you'll likely want to take your time as you explore the Valdi system since each stage is filled with hidden treasure chests in addition to the previously mentioned bonus stages.  It's also worth slowing down to check out the great background art and design touches that gives each planet a unique feel to match it's environmental theme.  While the platforming tropes of water zones, ice zones, etc. is still firmly in place, the level designs still make the grabbing mechanic your primary focus for navigation and attack.  The designs themselves are lustrously colored and filled with interesting details, for instance on Planet Undertow the screen brightness gets darker as you dive deeper beneath the water.  But perhaps the most standout feature of the design is the soundtrack with it's infectiously happy beats and surprising variation.  It's like MGMT meets Skrillex all filtered through 16-bits of pure joy.  

Bonus chests can contain anything from points to extra lives and are scattered in various hard to reach places

WHAT WENT WRONG 
Timing is everything.  Ristar was one of the last new games to release for the Genesis before the launch of of the Sega Saturn in the North American market.  The Saturn had already arrived in Japan and it's famously botched U.S. launch was only two months away from becoming a reality when Ristar was released.  Sega's attention was completely fixed on their next console and Ristar received very little marketing.  If that wasn't bad enough, an electronics powerhouse waded into the Console War by rolling out a new platform of their own.  Sony's Playstation had already followed the Saturn into the Japanese market in December 1994, and it would arrive in the U.S. in September '95.  The 16-bit era had ended, all hail the 32-bit reign!

...Moving on...

It's too bad everyone's attention was elsewhere, because Ristar was a really awesome game.  It was everything you expected from a classic Sonic game but with a whole new gameplay twist.  Game Informer gave it an 8.25 in it's original review and a more recent IGN review of the Virtual Console port is a testament to the game's sustained appeal.  With the Playstation's rise came new genre's based on first- or third-person perspectives along with true sports simulators like Madden NFL 97, the first in the series by current developer Tiburon.  After a decade of dominance the platforming genre was beginning to decline, and Ristar stands as a paragon of what developers had learned over the years.  In that way it was both derivative of them as some critics have pointed out, but also the ultimate refinement of those mechanics and principles.  

WILL WE SEE IT AGAIN
Despite starring in only this single outing, that determined little luminous sphere of plasma has grown in popularity over the years.  The game was re-issued in collections of Sonic games for GameCube and PS2, and was more recently brought to Steam and Virtual Console on it's own or bundled on PSN and Xbox Live in the form of Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection.  Ristar has also made two cameo's in the Sonic & Sega All-Star Racing series but never as a playable character.  He's become such a cult icon that homebrew sequel have even sprung up based around the original gameplay.  

Maybe we'll see a true sequel come from Sega, at the very least the cameos prove they remember the game exists.  Bionic Commando, which uses a similar platforming mechanic, has tried to refresh itself to mixed success but perhaps Ristar can make a more comfortable move to 3D platforming like Mario Galaxy accomplished.  If you want to play Ristar on the go, you'd better have a working Game Gear and a truck load of batteries because it's not available on 3DS or PS Vita.  While some Sonic games have made it to mobile Ristar is not one of them.  A touchscreen version may be difficult since your finger would always be obscuring the exact place you're moving to, but using a digital button pad might work.  We may never get another Ristar game, and it's possible the platforming genre will never be what it once was, but for a very short window of time Ristar gave fans of the genre one last fleeting moment of greatness.

Do we dare to wish upon this star?  Picture credit

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X-Men: Next Dimension

Year: 2002
Developer: Paradox Development
Publisher: Activision, Marvel
Platform: PS2, Xbox, GameCube
Metacritic score: 60 (cross-platform avg)
VGChartz sales to date: 710,000

WHAT MADE IT GREAT
Until now we've held firm (more or lessto a self-imposed rule that in order to be considered a game must hold at least a 75 average on Metacritic, when scores are available.  While it's possible the individual preferences (or drinking habit) of a single critic can miss a game's hidden potential, it's not likely the entire collective field of video game journalism could all undervalue the same game?  Or is it possible that a confluence of seemingly disjointed variables cause a group of distinct writers to all view a game more harshly then it deserves?  I'm going to try and argue just that and hopefully by doing so convince you that while X-Men: Next Dimension may not be the one of the best games ever, it is one of The Best Games (You Never Played).

X-Men: Next Dimension could actually be considered the third in a trilogy of fighting games based on Marvel Comics' mutant superheroes.  X-Men: Mutant Academy 1 & 2 both shipped for the PSX to generally positive reviews, but the name was changed to reflect the shifts brought on with the move to the next console gen.  The name change was fitting, because the early 2000's brought some big shifts to the fighting genre.  3D polygon games have been around since at least 1983's I, Robot for the arcade and Atari 2600, but was still seen as a rare and exotic feature when Star Fox released for the SNES nearly a decade later.  But Sega changed all that in 1993 with the gorgeous (for the times) 3D rendered polygon characters in the arcade crowd-drawing classic Virtua Fighter.  The game still relied on the same standard 2D plane of motion that's defined fighting games from the beginning, but it's sharp, crystal clear graphics were a noticeable improvement over the 3D pixelated graphics being used the nascent 1st-person shooter genre in id Games' Wolfenstein 3D and Doom. Sega triggered the polygon count wars and a race towards realism that would come to define the next era of gaming.  It was a war Sega would badly bungle with the release of 1994's Sega Saturn, evidently taking their success with Virtua Fighter and Virtua Racing as a sign that traditional 2D environments using 3D models was the endgame rather then just the first step.  But the importance of that breakthrough game can't be overlooked and most fighting developers spent the rest of the 90's toying with how to mesh the rise of 3D games with the 2D principles their genre was based in.

There was a good selection of characters available from the start with a few unlockable ones waiting for you to beat the various modes.

One series in particular, Team Ninja's Dead or Alive, took the foundation set by Virtua Fighter and incorporated a full 3D plane of motion.  Unlike the free roaming Power Stone, fighters in DoA still locked onto each other in 2D planes, but players were now free to attack, dodge and counter in 360 degrees within intricately detailed stages.  The Tekken series had used elements of this before, but Team Ninja put a much greater focus on 3D movement by making it more fluid and also using it as a trigger to shift to different parts of the stage.  Paradox Development was no doubt influenced by these games in using 3D range of motion, fast-paced combat and detailed multi-part stages to take Mutant Academy to the Next Dimension.  The evolution was completed by the fullest roster yet, 3D stages based on familiar locales, and an interesting new story mode drawn from the comics themselves.     

Yeah Beast, we were stunned also to see Bishop and Forge in this game.

The story mode derives from the Operation: Zero Tolerance crossover storyline (spoilers) from the late 90's and puts a unique twist on the mode.  The X-Men and the Brotherhood are forced to team up when hyper-sentinel Bastion threatens to wipe out mutant-kind.  Instead of choosing from the total roster and then receiving that fighter's unique backstory, Next Dimension's story mode unfolds as a series of cut scenes (voiced by Prof. X himself, Captain Jean-Luc Picard).  Interspersed between these are matches that play out according to the plot, sometimes limiting your picks to a few characters while other matches are preset depending on who's involved in the story's current battle.  There's also the standard Arcade and 2-player Versus modes along with a Survivor mode that pits you against an unending string of opponents.  The GameCube version also gets Practice and Team modes as an exclusive feature.  The Xbox version gets a bonus stage and Pyro as a playable character, but the poor PS2 version only got coal in its stocking.  

There's a full cast of characters and alternate outfits showing plenty of love to fan favorites with the likes of Gambit, Sabertooth, Nightcrawler and Rogue joining regulars like Magneto, Wolverine and Cyclops.  Moves for each character are well suited to their abilities, for instance Beast has longer, more agile combos of powerful basic strikes whereas Storm uses ranged lightning attacks, wind traps and flight to overwhelm her opponents.  The controls are like a simplified version of the button combos used in most Capcom fighters.  Basic strikes are assigned to individual buttons while pushing two or more trigger special attacks.  Special attacks can be charged up to greater levels by dealing or receiving damage, though one route is more ideal the the other.  Since you're using the joystick to maneuver rather then input complex movements for combos the game lends itself better to button mashing, but someone familiar with the controls and characters moves will still have a definite advantage.  Duking it out around the Savage Land or Asteroid M is made all the more fun by pummeling your opponent into different areas.  There's a special joy in watching Toad connect an air juggle combo to knock Blob through the X-Mansion's second floor window only to land a tongue-based special attack that sends him further flying into the underground hangar.

Getting kicked off a skyscraper sucks.  The fact it was Toad who kicked you just makes it depressing.

WHAT WENT WRONG
It's pretty clear that mixed reviews, including some rather negative ones, might have played a role in the game's underwhelming sales.  Releasing the week before Grand Theft Auto: Vice City also was probably not helpful in getting the mass market's attention.  Despite being mostly uniform in scoring the game in the poor to fair range, critics disagreed with each other over what exactly made the game so displeasing.  Some complained that there wasn't enough depth to the combo system while others appreciated the ability for less skilled players to learn big flashy combos while still leaving room for more experienced fighters to toy with their techniques.  There was also some confusion over whether the graphics were typical for the time or noticeably outdated, but with the benefit of time on our side we'd say the visuals have held up better then other games from 2002.

I've seen worse versions of Psylocke

But what really stands out is how favorably it's viewed by the gamers who played it.  While the critic reviews on Metacritic average out to a fairly mediocre 60, the user reviews sit at a significantly more favorable 8.9 out of 10.  That's a pretty big spread between then and now, and it's unlikely to be explained by mere nostalgia for a game that was never too popular in the first place.  It's surprising that critics who liked 2001's Dead or Alive 3 were so turned off by Next Dimension, particularly since some of them cited the strong similarities between the two as a weakness.  One critique which does still stand out as true is the imprecision in the game's hit animations which can give the characters a clunky feel.  The animations themselves are smooth and gratifying, but connecting them feels a bit disjointed compared to most fighting games.  But does the game's unsuitability for the pro fighting tournaments make it mediocre?

Maybe DoA3 raised expectations too high by the time Next Dimension released.  The game did have more realistic graphics and prettier visuals combined with an enjoyable combo system.  X-Men: Next Dimension certainly couldn't match it's dedicated breast physics algorithm, for what that's worth.  Perhaps X-Men fans were afraid the game's visual connection to the Bryan Singer film's would another lazy movie tie-in game.  Who knows, maybe everyone was just burned out on fighting games as scores for most series seemed to decline during this period.  Whatever the reasoning, the reviews weren't going to motivate a lot of people to give a new game a chance the week before a blockbuster like GTA: Vice City hits.  Most gamers let this one pass them by, but those lucky enough to get a copy on discount later could enjoy a fun fighter suitable for both game nights with friends and mastering on your own.

The Juggernaut appropriately towers over the ol' Canucklehead, but if those claws actually retracted into Wolvie's hands they'd go all the way up to his shoulders.

WILL WE SEE IT AGAIN
Not looking good for this one.  Paradox Development was bought by Midway in 2004 and went defunct in 2008.  Activision still has the publishing rights to X-Men along with the rest of Marvel's properties, but has shown no interest in bringing an HD remake or even straight port to Xbox Live or PSN.  Mobile platforms, a prime target for re-releasing older niche games, is not exactly an ideal outlet for the fighting genre.  Neither the Xbox or PS2 versions are on the backwards compatibility list for their respective consoles, and as for the GameCube version... yeah that's not gonna show up in the Wii Shop channel anytime soon.  

As far as hopes for a sequel go, well those are pretty dim too.  Activision has published other X-Men games from various developers since 2002, but none of them in the fighting genre.  It really feels like a wasted opportunity, since so much of what makes the X-Men a great property translates well to fighting games.  The huge cast of heroes and villains provide for a large, well-rounded roster while their mutant abilities lend themselves perfectly to unique and exciting move sets.  Marvel vs. Capcom 3 provides a tantalizing tease of what could be, but stops far short of delivering on 3D mechanics or a fleshed out story and leaves many favorite characters on the sideline.  Fortunately for those wanting to give it a try, old copies can be had for quite cheap online.    

In Next Dimension Wolverine may not quite be the best there is at what he does, but he's still pretty damn good at it.

Have you played this game?  Is there a game you remember being great that no one else has heard of?  Sound off in the comments below, and be sure to Like us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter!

Beyond Good & Evil

Year: 2003
Developer: Ubisoft
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: GameCube, PC, PS2 and Xbox (originally); now available on Playstation Network and Xbox Live
Metacritic score: 86 (cross platform avg)
VGChartz sales to date: 510,000

WHAT MADE IT GREAT
It was only a matter of time before this cult-classic grabbed a featured spot.  For those who played Beyond Good & Evil, you're probably wondering why it took this long.  As for everyone else, well you missed out on a unique, joyous adventure whose bright colors and characters hide a surprising depth and maturity.   Designed and written by Michel Ancel, best known for the Rayman series, BG&E is another Ubisoft effort that shows what's possible when you inject your characters with heart and soul (they are a French studio, afterall).  A far cry from Nietzche's 1886 treatise by the same name, though by the time the credits role you'll be left questioning whether moral choices can be so neatly categorized in black and white terms like good or evil in a world filled with so many different shades of color.   


You play as Jade, a young photographer on the war-torn planet of Hillys that was brought up in a home for war orphans.  The planet is under constant assault by the DomZ, a species focused on abducting people to convert them into energy or infect them with spores to turn them into mindless slaves.  In this atmosphere of fear, the fascist Alpha Sections came to power on a platform of security and defense but the abductions have continued unabated.  Jade is happy helping her anthropomorphic pig "uncle" Pey'j take care of the orphans, but when they need money to keep up the shield protecting their little haven it's up to her to take on a job photographing and cataloging the planet's wildlife.  This job will eventually lead her to the secretive ISIS network, a resistance movement that hires Jade to investigate their suspicions about the Alpha Sections.  Over the course of the game, Jade's camera will bring more then just the local fauna into focus and her revelations will change everything she thinks she knows about the government, her trusted guardian and even herself.  

Photos taken of sensitive areas are immediately uploaded to the IRIS network, but be warned that your enemies will go to great length to conceal the truth.

Jade's path puts her at odds with both the DomZ and Alpha Sections and she'll need to rely on a mix of stealth and combat to survive.  Jade relies on her combat staff for melee attacks, but her real weapon is her camera.  You'll need to solve puzzles and use your platforming skills to sneak into highly restricted areas and unravel the conspiracy by snapping incriminating shots to expose the truth.  You'll also be able to upgrade your camera over the course of the game enabling new abilities such ranged attacks.  Other useful tools Jade acquires include a hovercraft and spaceship used to navigate between the main hub city and the various assignments, both vehicles can also be upgrades using Pearls that are rewarded for completing missions, playing various minigames, cataloging the animals of Hillys, exploration or cold hard credits if you'd rather do things the easy way.  Further help is provided by a variety of player-controlled NPC companions possessing unique special abilities, but they're just as susceptible to damage as you are so keep an eye on them and share your food or PA-1's to help them regain or boost health.

Stealth can often help you avoid dangerous situations, but there are times when being discovered means instant death.

The gameplay provides a nice mix of puzzle-solving, platforming and straight up action while the planet of Hillys is an excellent backdrop for your adventures.  The game world has a distinctly European countryside feel to it which makes for a nice contrast with the more sci-fi and modernist elements of the setting.  It's also refreshing to play a game that has a strong female protagonist without beating you over the head with it.  A better way of thinking about it is that you play as a brave, loyal and adventurous hero that just so happens to be a woman.  Playing as an investigative journalist and using your camera to defeat the antagonists is also a nice break from the standard "save the world by killing everything" formula found in so many games.  But it's really the story that shines brightest, it's impossible to not care about these characters and feel the same compassion that drives Jade's journey.  I don't want to risk spoiling anything, to do so would be a crime against humanity, but I will say that while some of the twists can feel out of left field they add a layer of depth that's largely left up to the player to consider on their own after they put down the controller.

WHAT WENT WRONG
Our old foil marketing once again plays a large role in why BG&E never got the love it deserved, and a number of top executives at Ubisoft have been pretty public about how the game's release was mishandled.  The studio was hellbent on releasing the game in time for the holiday season, only Ubisoft Montreal had another game ready to launch at the same time.  That other game, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, was a highly successful reboot of the classic 1989 original and received widespread praise for its graphics, puzzles, time-rewind mechanic, combat, sound design...in short pretty much everything about the game.  Both games are based on a mix of action, platforming and puzzle solving and where released at the exact same time.  Further stacking the deck against BG&E, Ubisoft devoted almost all of its marketing effort toward Prince of Persia, a move that Ubisoft North America CEO Laurent Detoc would go on to describe as the worst business decision he's ever made.  

I know Jade, I don't get it either.

It's hard to understand how nobody predicted how badly Prince of Persia would cannibalize sales away from BG&E, but perhaps they felt the game was so unique, so different, that it would stand out enough to get noticed.  While BG&E is certainly special, however, at least some of its individuality was sucked out by the focus-group effect that took place after its troubled unveiling at the 2002 E3.  Sandwiched in a sizzle reel that included footage from Rayman 3, Splinter Cell and Ghost Recon, the crowd reaction to "Project BG&E" was deafening silence.  Although everyone who played the floor demo's walked away with a positive impression, the studio came to the conclusion that the original vision was too out there.  

The original design for Jade was younger, more stylized then and less sexy than what we see in the finished game.

As a result, the visual design was greatly tweaked to be less "artistically ambitious".  Further changes were made that greatly reduced the original focus on open-world exploration after the 2003 release of The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker was criticized for it's long sailing sections.  Ancel reported that these changes were demoralizing to the development team after having spent so much effort making the game stand out, and that the finished game felt more like a sequel then a reworking.  When reading the reviews, the effect of this changes becomes more evident.  Impressions were predominantly positive, but critics frequently cited the game's brief playtime and its inability to fully commit to any of its many gameplay aspects.  Perhaps GamePro summarizes it best when they say BG&E is "a jack-of-all-trades, master of none."  With non-existent marketing and good but not great reviews, BG&E's fate was sealed before it even hit shelves.

WHAT IF IT RELEASED TODAY
Thanks to the magic of re-releases, BG&E got the full HD treatment and was added to PSN and XLA in 2011 and it looks even better then you remember.  At around $10 the price is better too, taking much of the sting out of the short play time.  Actually, given the prevalence of shorter indie and episodic games available for download BG&E HD feels like a natural fit in today's market.  While sales data isn't available yet (downloadable sales are notoriously hard to track) it's safe to say they have likely outperformed original retail reception.  In the years since its release gamers have been more receptive of its original story premise and the game's reputation has steadily grown, creating the odd effect that its rank in 'best of' lists actually improves as time goes by.   

The sun hasn't set yet on this stunningly gorgeous remake, it continues to draw new fans into the promising land of Hillys.

If you needed further reason to check this game out, there's this tantalizing reveal from a 2008 Ubisoft conference hinting that a BG&E 2 is in the works.  While the story was originally intended as the first in a trilogy, poor sales scuttled that idea.  But thanks to a continued interest in the game by a passionate community and warming general reception Michel Ancel and a small team have begun development.  It's expected the new game would be destined for Wii U and the next Playstation and Xbox consoles, but little is known about the still much in development project.  But don't start salivating just yet, it was recently reported that development on this game had taken a backseat to Ancel's work on the Rayman titles.  With Rayman Legends due out in early 2013, hopefully development on the next Beyond Good & Evil will start in earnest soon.    

Pey'j is looking handsome as ever in his tastefully stained undershirt.  And is that a meditative Jade i see in the background?

 Have you played this game?  Is there a game you remember being great that no one else seems to have heard of?  Sound off in the comments below, and be sure to Like us on Facebook or Follow us on Twitter to receive updates and teasers for new posts! 

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