I know what you are thinking…”Where in the fuck is the Genocide?”. Well I wanted to try something different this week and I want to be able to write about more than one system so here I am to introduce you to Super NEStalgia. The game I am reviewing is the game that actually put the SNES on the map when it was released way back on August 13, 1991 here in the states (It was released almost a year earlier in Japan). The game I am talking about is Super Mario World. We all know that lovable little Italian stereotype named Mario, and this is his fourth game in the series and once again that is when you count “The Lost Levels”  and not Super Mario Bros. 2. He is back and just like normal he has to save that damn Princess Peach from Bowser and all his little illegitimate bastard children. 

He has a cape and is flying on a lizard….FUCK YES.

This game kept some of the same power-ups and random shit that SMB3 had but it also had a few new things, such as his badass little dinosaur/dragon/stretchy tongued lizard thing Yoshi. Enough about the repetitive storyline and random characters, lets get to the game review itself. I remember the first time playing this when I was just 4 years old on a Sears game demo machine, and being in love with it right away. I grew up on Nintendo until 1990-91 when I had received a Sega for my birthday, so seeing one of the most beloved characters of my early childhood in a brand new game blew my mind. When I saw it I automatically asked for a SNES but obviously that was not going to happen, so I had to wait several years until I had a few friends that owned a SNES before I could really sink my teeth into how amazing this game really is. First off lets talk about the graphics. This game is pretty…and I mean very pretty. It is crazy how a game that was released that early on in the systems life can actually come close to being the best looking game on the system, to me the only games prettier are maybe Donkey Kong Country, F-Zero, and Killer Instinct. Each environment that you get to play in has the perfect feel to the world that it is located in. Mind you there are a total of seven worlds that you must go through before you get to Bowser, but if you are good at this game then you will not have a problem getting to him pretty quickly. Difficulty is a strong point in this game only if you have not had the opportunity to play this game over and over again. If you are not used to a Mario game then this one will kick your ass constantly, but if you are a veteran of the series or just a veteran of this game then you will be the one to give it the good old fashioned curb stomping. Another thing about the difficulity is the fact that a decent amount of the stages when beat by finishing the level in a regular fashion, does absolutely nothing. In the Forest of Illusion you have to beat 4 out of 7 levels in a different non conventional fashion just to get out of that world. Even the “Ghost Houses” have to be beat by puzzle solving even if it is quite simplistic, it will fuck your mind the first couple of times. The bosses are not hard but the castles they are located in can be very difficult if you have no idea what you need to do. Last but not least Bowser’s castle is broken into two sets of rooms labeled 1-4 and then 5-8, I suggest rooms 2, and then 6 because they seem to be the easiest. When you get past that and you finally get to Bowser, he throws random “Mechabowsers” at you while he rides in his clown-face death-ship. You hit him with the toys twice, he leaves to throw flames at you, he will then throw cannonballs, and more toys. Hit him again twice he just abuses the shit out of his death-ship by slamming it into the platform you are on, hit him two more times and there you go…you beat the game. Obviously you know the music for this game had to be nothing short of golden, and you would be right, every song in the game is basically a different version of the main theme to this game just with different time scales, and different styles such as a Waltz for the Ghost Houses. Mind you this whole game soundtrack was composed by Koji Kondo, all by electronic keyboard and nothing else.

Just look how happy and sinister that clown-face death-ship is, you are scared shitless right now.

I remember last year living in college when I went to the community room and there was a SNES with this game in it. I played it and beat it in about 3 hours and 5 minutes or something like that, while ending the game with 42 lives, due to the amount that you can rack up during certain levels in the game. I decided to play the game and beat it before I did this review and I beat the game in 1 hour and 40 minutes, while having 56 lives left (I had 61 at one point). This is in no way a record due to the fact that a lot of people that do speed runs go through the short cuts and go through star road (the bonus secret set of levels) to go straight to Bowser. I beat all the stages that you have to to get to him, so I ran through the 7 worlds and beat the stages. I am not trying to brag honestly I just figured I would add this in here to prove the point that if you play this game enough or have enough experience with the older games of the series this one will not really produce too hard of a challenge.

Welcome to Dinosaur World…this is just an overview there are confusing levels in that forest of grimacing trees, and a levels in those blue doors. Either way Mario can still kick its ass.

To me this is the definitive title on the SNES, I do not care what anyone says. I understand that Chrono Trigger was a great game, and you could name as many games as you want to me but I will still say that Super Mario World is the definitive title. If you somehow have not played this game yet you need to get the rom and have a good old dose of Super NEStalgia right fucking now.

Bowser family photo (Not Pictured: That cocktease/whore Peach who had to have mothered these children and I mean willingly as well.)

In preparation of my first CD I recorded a freestyle today that I entitled Understand. I figured I should go ahead and put it up on the site since I have not put anything out for a little while. This summer I do plan on releasing my first CD titles Martyr Monday, which will have mostly my own material but a few cameos here and there. Trouble Dragon the side project of Skizzard and I will also have a song or two on it. Nevertheless this is the first thing I have been able to record due to different difficulties in a long ass time so please give it a listen and enjoy. I will also be updating the website with another Sega Genocide review, along with something secret that I have decided to review for next week as well.

Brett Martyr-Understand (Freestyle)

Tonight! Actually, not tonight. We’re taking a week off and there should be more podcasts posted tomorrow. We’ll be getting the technical details worked out soon to bring you more great 72pCPC goodness! Stay tuned, boys and girls, we’ll be back!

Tonight! We will be discussing Keith’s favorite games before he has to run away to the mystical circus group known only as the Irish Banshee’s from the South Pole. Tune in tonight at 9PM EST!

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Download this week’s episode of the Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast! We are discussing the rise and fall of one of greatest (or worst?) game companies of all time: Atari! If you didn’t know, Atari was almost responsible for killing video games as we know it. Tune in for your history lesson!

Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast - Episode 042 - The Rise and Fall of Atari

In this episode of the Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast, we discuss commercial failures in gaming. While there are games out there that are innovative, amazing, and fun to play, unfortunately some of them don’t make any scratch whatsoever (See Example: Psychonauts). We take this moment to pay homage to some of the best.

Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast: Episode 041 - Failcast!

Tonight! We will be podcasting and discussing Mythology in gaming! Everything from Quiz and Dragons to Quiz and Dragons, with special guest, Quiz and Dragons! Tune in tonight at 9PM EST to join the discussion!

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Eventually I will review a game or two that I do not enjoy, today shall not be that day though as I review one of the most unsung heroes to ever be on any console.  Vectorman was a side scroller/shoot em up, released back in October 24th 1995, and was developed by Blue Sky Software. Before I go any farther I am sure you are asking yourself….who in the fuck is Blue Sky Software? Well I would be lying if I said this is the only game that they made because they actually kicked alot of ass for the Sega Genesis back in its hay-day. They made the Sega adaptation of Dick Tracy, The Little Mermaid, Jurassic Park (I am still awaiting for Skizzard to do a review for that.) and they even made the Ren & Stimpy Show: Stimpy’s Invention which will be featured on the Genocide in the future. Blue Sky also did not get alot of credit for the games they made due to them not putting their names on the “Starting” screens, they were vigilantes for the industry…when other companies had to make a big deal about the games they made, Blue Sky was like “Well we made a game….it’s not that big of a deal.” It is sad to admit that the only good games they really made were on the Sega and have since folded but dammit its the fact that they did what they did which is fantastic.

This man is made of green balls of steel, oh by the way read the bottom left of the case. If you were a bad enough dude to beat this game in 1995 you could have won 25 thousand dollars, which I assume would be used to purchase a bunch of trash bags and save the world like Vectorman would have wanted.

Alright back story for our hero Vectorman. In 2049 earth was full of so much random ass trash because of us humans that we decided to try and go to other planets to live their permanently. While doing so we we left a bunch of “orbots” to clean up our mess that we had created stemming from humans being massive dicks and not caring what we pollute. Now for the villain…there was a big orbot that took care of the operation by watching over everything and his name was Raster. Raster somehow through another orbot, got connected to a nuclear warhead and slowly drove himself insane, and tries to become a dictator kinda like Castro, and changes his name to the more appropriate Warhead. Mind you he does this while the humans are gone, so he plans on committing genocide on all of them when they decide to return back…so technically Warhead is more Adolf Hitler, than Fidel Castro. Vectorman being away during all of this while taking sludge to the Sun, comes back and realizes that every orbot is now being controlled by Warhead and he does not want to comply. Vectorman takes it upon himself to tell Warhead to shove it up his ass and save the earth…while still apparently doing menial orbot slave clean up duties.

Pictured the robotic equivilent of Adolf Hitler.

I will give them credit, they came up with something original which I applaud them for and it’s not some cute bullshit story either. It equates to the fact that the world is full of people that trash whatever they want, and then it punches you in the face with robotic genocide. As far as this game is concerned its best thing by far is the graphics. The graphics were done in a pre-rendered style which was capable of making the games look like they were going far past the limits of the system, Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct also did this for their games.  Every single thing in this game is pretty, yes graphics at the time were not so great at the time this game was released, think about it Starfox’s graphics were said to have been top notch when they came out so compared to that game this game is nothing short of beautiful. The animation with the characters is perfect, the way they react is the way they should and looks just like how the reaction would actually be if somehow this were to have actually happened. Throughout the entire experience this game maintains a steady 60 frames per second I shit you not.The backgrounds are very artistic and look post apocalyptic and yes I know technically the apocalypse has not happened in the story, but when robots are willing to kill everyone/thing on earth I am pretty sure this is how shit would go down as far as looks are concerned.

This game controls amazingly, and Blue Sky really tried to test the limits of the Genesis and they did a damn good job. I rarely have a review where I will not go into controls too much, but honestly the game is damn near perfect for the kind of game it is so I have nothing more to add to it. The difficulty on this game is legendary. If you know anyone who has played this you will have no trouble hearing a good lashing out about how this game tries to tear your soul apart. Each stage has a crazy ass amount of enemies that you must mow down to get to the bosses and even when you manage to do that the bosses don’t fuck around either. If you get the chance I suggest looking up the random bosses due to the sweet names and design they have, such as Clockwork a robot with gears that spits random shit at you. They do have three different type of difficulty levels which are “Lame, Wicked, and Insane”. If you play on lame you will get alot of lives and a shit ton more health, compared to the other two and honestly you might as well play on Lame so you can enjoy the game even more because odds are you will still have your ass handed to you on a silver platter. This is one of the harder games for the Genesis and after a minute of playing you will completely understand what I mean by that statement. If you do find it too difficult then just pause the game and hit “C, A, Left, Left, A, C, A, B” which spells out “Call A Cab” and you can zip right to the boss of a stage. The one gripe I have with the game is the soundtrack which most of it sucks if your going to do a techno soundtrack you better hire Yuzo Koshiro of Streets of Rage fame. To this day this game is one of my personal favorites for the Genesis.

Who would have thought that Sega would try to make a sequel to this for the Playstation 2 a few years after Blue Sky shutdown, only to pull the product because the fans were super pissed that it was a third person shooter instead of the standard game they were used to from Vectorman 1 and 2. They also changed his looks to be more appealing…so they made him Master Chief. I swear if Sega had allowed that to be made I probably would not be writing about how badass the Genesis is constantly due to the amount of hatred I would have boiling in my blood.

Honestly Sega…what the fuck.

If you like games that have a different feel and story to them then this one is for you, to me its what would happen if you combined 1984 and a robotic apocalypse together. If you have never played this game then you need to get the rom from here because you will not be disappointed in the least. This game has a 91 percent rating of approval across the Internet, and if the Internet likes it can it really be that bad?

vectorman-f

The news has been told to the gaming community and I am one of the people that will be getting this game when it is re-released on the X-box marketplace, and the Playstation Store. Marvel vs Capcom 2 is simply put, one of the best fighting games of all time. I have always been a fanboy for Street Fighter 2 and Alpha 3 but they were not my favorite, to me the best fighting game was still Killer Instinct…that was until I played this game which has since changed my mind on how I view fighting games as a whole. Capcom made the announcement and decided that 9 years after its original release that this game needed to see the light of day once more. Maybe it was the fans hounding the asses of Marvel and Capcom, or maybe it was the companies deciding that they needed to do a good thing…Sir Pryz seems to think that it has a lot to do with the fact that the new Wolverine movie could use some type of boost other than the random amount or products that they have slapped his grill on.  They put it on a razor for fuck’s sake. Whatever the reason though I could care less because this game is 10 flavors of cool on a 10 point scale.

This game has you picking a team of 3 players from the Capcom and Marvel universes. It has a tag system which is actually a good thing and makes for very competitive matches when you are low on health slamming the two buttons down for a crutial tag in. This game also has more than just Street Fighter characters for the Capcom side, they have Captain Commando (a character made for the Capcom company, the first three letters of Captain and Commando make up Capcom), Jin, Hayato from Star Gladiator, Sonson, and Mega Man with two other characters from that series. I am sure you can guess who the Marvel side is represented by the most, but they also have other random super heroes from different backgrounds which really can fill out the roster very nicely. Speaking of the roster it has a total of 56 people to choose from which is a big list. All the fighters can do their own super combos when your super meter is full but if you want to destroy with full potential you will figure out the way to have a team super combo which will destroy the other trio you are trying to make it past. The thing you need to do is experiment to find the best team with the best combo and I think that I might have found a few of them in my own right which I will talk about later in this review. Each player has their good and bad sides and if you spend enough time playing it you can easily find out how to be technical, speedy, powerful, or a cheap little bitch of a person with your team.

Mind you I am sure when this game gets released in the USA again that the character select screen will not be in Japanese.

I have to review this game for what it is so I can give you a preview of it in case you somehow have not had the pleasure of playing this game yet. This game is pretty…and I cannot say that enough. The art on every single person is nothing short of straight up beautiful. The backgrounds are artistic and they are perfect for this game. If the background had a clock in it, it would actually sync up with the clock in the machine to give you the correct time which is a nice touch. Every single animation is done perfect down to a T, they even include a 2-d version of Jill Valentine and the damn Tyrant that she fights in the Resident Evil series and that looks great as well. They spent alot of time getting all this together after they made the original Marvel vs Capcom, more or less because the fans wanted it and I am glad that these superpowers in the industries they are in decided to give the fans what they want.

Now as far as characters go this game is ridiculous with the amount of different styles that are in this game so I will have to discuss them in a pretty big scope here. There are very few street fighters that were in the series that were not involved in this game such as T-Hawk and Dee Jay, and they were not in this game I would guess to popular demand saying that they do not need both those shit-holes in the game to take up space and be terrible. See a lot of the characters are pretty similar to other characters in the game. Cammy is a fast yet not powerful character, so her speed makes her good against slow characters. At the same time Spiderman has the same type of style, him and Cammy even share a super combo that is pretty much identical, his being the Maximum Spider and hers being the Killer Bee Assault. Then again you have your standard middle of the road fighters such as Ryu and Ken who are just like they are in street fighter 2 except that Ryu’s fireball is fucking gigantic compared to Ken’s and even Akuma’s. There are also big ass slow guys that join the fight and can be awesome and terrible at the same time, for example Juggernaut is the most powerful person in the game but is by far even slower than the Hulk or even Sentinel which is incredible with how slow they are. Look for the sake of this I will discuss a few characters in more details just to tell you who to look out for and who to play as.

Gambit is fast, very fast in fact but obviously his power will be a little less than the average person. He makes up for it though with his super combos and even with his regular special move that freezes the opponent in place if they get hit with his “Kinetic Cards”. If you can stand to use a speedy person then he is one of the people you need to look for. Speaking of X-men there are two versions of Wolverine in this game, one being bone claw, and they other having his standard Adamantium  claws. Both characters are fast, and can do quite a bit a damage although Bone-claw Wolverine is slightly faster and not as powerful, while both of them can take a lot of damage….too bad he can not regenerate his health as fast as he does in the comics though. To finish off the speedy characters that I enjoy I have to say that Cammy is badass. In this game you can dash and it is not very hard to take advantage of this with her because she might be the fastest person in the entire game, if you are against a person that cannot avoid a rush all you have to do is go and dash towards them then Cannon Spike, dash back and repeat….if you want to be a cheap bitch about it all. I am a street fighter fan-boy, and I love Ryu and Akuma…but in this game based off a overall basis I have to give the advantage to Ryu. Akuma is powerful yes but they did dumb him down for this game so people could not just destroy constantly with him like they have in other games. Once again I must say that the fact that Ryu’s fireball takes up 3/4th’s of a character model when thrown gives you a great weapon to keep people at bay with. On the same level as him I think is Captain Commando, who actually is slightly faster than Ryu, and is probably  a little more powerful but to do combos with him is slightly harder than one would initially think. Up next is Jill Valentine from the Resident Evil series. She is quick and actually can rack up some damage if you know how to use her. She uses dogs and zombies from the RE series to actually perform special moves, one of her super combos actually has her call up the tyrant to destroy your ass with three gigantic slices from his big claw. In my opinion her best move is how she has a counter attack where she pulls out her Beretta and as long as you keep hitting the strong punch button she will fire up to nine shots right into the person who tried to hurt you. Venom is a badass in this game and yes he is slower but his attacks are actually quite quick for a man of his size. His specials can do a lot of damage but you really have to get used to his style to use him effectively, Iron Man (and also War Machine) in this game is the same way so if you choose to use them be careful. Out of the slowest characters I can only stand Sentinel and Juggernaut. Juggernaut I will use almost never, but Sentinel is a very good character. When you are up against someone who must dash in and attack, or someone who cannot fight from a distance then you can be the worlds biggest bitch with Sentinel. He shoots out a laser from his mouth which can go the full length of the screen but nevertheless.

Jill summons the tyrant to completely obliterate SonSon and her little friends.

Personally I cannot stand any of the Darkstalkers characters in this game because they are not the people I used when I used to play the game in the arcade. Where in the Hell is my Jon Taliban, he is a werewolf and he is not in this game. I also hate a lot of the other characters in this game that are part of the Marvel side. There are so many generic characters that are useless unless your going to exploit the game which is what a lot of these people that play the game do. Mega Man is in this game and he is such a little bitch…I am sorry to say it I never was a fan of Mega Man but even I realize that Capcom has finally spent all their time making sure that he is between the ages of roughly 8-10 and that he is the biggest pussy in the fighting universe. B.B. Hood has more balls then Mega Man ever could. I will say this about my favorite fighting game of all time, there is something that I can easily gripe about.  Damn near every character has a infinite combo, which would not be so bad had they not been so easy to pull off. A little while back while I was at an arcade with a group of friends, I found a MVC2 machine and decided to play it. While kicking a huge amount of ass I had a random guy come up and ask to join me, and low and behold all he did was exploit the shit out of this game and yea he beat me but I actually held my own until about 10 seconds left in the entire match so to me that is a victory in itself. If you are going to play anyone in the arcade beware that your ass will get exploited more than likely, or even if you play this against a decent player on X-box Live you will have this happen as well.

The final boss in this game is hard, and if it’s your first time going up against the bastard named Abyss…you will lose unless you pull off a huge amount of bullshit. He has three forms and each form is crazier than the last. His first form has him dressed like a huge metal samurai, which throws lightning bolts and tridents at you, while he can also fire a huge laser from his chest. Fast characters are really good against him if you can just figure out exactly when to block and when to counter an attack with a super jump to just go over him completely. If you get past him you will face a green goo like substance that looks like it’s made of Slimer from Ghostbusters. This form will actually shoot lasers, and taunt you the whole time…attacking him with a close ranger character is not a good idea at all because of the damage he can cause so you really need someone from long range like Ryu or Gambit. The third form is a huge dog like demon from Hell. This thing is the length of 75% of the screen and the entire height of it if he is on screen at all. He constantly teleports and has the ability to keep shooting things from across the screen so your best bet is to constantly back up so you can block if he attacks and then just keep going for him. You must be careful though because if he hits you with a super combo he can kill all three of your players so fast that you will not even be able to react to what you just witnessed on the screen. I have not lost to the boss since the first time I went up against him actually. Once you figure out his pattern of all three forms he is not difficult but that first time you face him will be a monstrous  task to say the least.If you have a team with a good super combo it makes it a lot easier as well…any team with Gambit has an advantage because he can freeze the first two forms with his super combo. Honestly I still think the best super combo team I have found is Gambit with his cards, Ryu with a gigantic fireball, and to finish it up Iron Man with his cannon shooting a crazy amount of ammo at the sad sap in his way.

Example of the “Iron Man” Tony Stark owning face with his cannon.

Overall this game is almost perfect. I cannot think of a better fighter that I have played in my life. Even Street Fighter IV is not as good as this game in my opinion. You need to get ahold of this game on the marketplace, they have redone the sprites and made everything even prettier, you need to get it off the marketplace anyway because unless you own a Dreamcast and the actual game from 2000 when it was ported you kinda got fucked because all the other ports were apparently nothing short of terrible. I have no idea how much this game will be when it finally comes out but regardless what it costs I will purchase it. I have said before and will say it again Capcom could make me pay 50 dollars willingly to get this game all over again and relive the fun that I have had while playing it. If you play this game and you honestly do not like it, I will actually understand but will ultimately be confused at how you can not stand a game like this. It has a lot of ups and a few downs but all together this game does nothing but jut amaze me constantly every time I play it on my Dreamcast or in the arcade which is why I cannot wait to pick this up on the marketplace. Thank you Capcom and Marvel for listening to what the fans have been craving this whole time…although I hope in the future sometime that they will make a sequel to this game and revamp the series again.

I may be a fanboy but this asshole is just ridiculous.

Its that time again!! Tonight we’ll be discussing the not-so-futuristic trend of selling your games in new and different ways. From floppy disk rewriters to satalite download services to the current generations of Steam, Xbox Live, PSN, and the Nintendo Wifi Connection. This technology is much older than you think, and tonight, we’re taking a history trip.

As usual: Tonight at 9PM EST.

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