A little back story on my gaming style: I don’t really care about graphics if they are not the focus of the game.  I believe that the potential of video games exceeds graphics.  And I don’t really care that much about tight controls, though if the controls are tight it tends to help with the overall experience.  What I do expect is a coherence.  I want to know what I’m doing, and be able to figure things out on my own.  Essentially, I want a game that is unintentionally confusing and doesn’t force me to wander aimlessly trying to guess the right direction to go.  This is one of the major reasons as a child I had a much higher tolerance for *pardon the language* bullshit: I didn’t mind wandering aimlessly because I didn’t have better things to do.

“Sonic Adventure” doesn’t have tight controls, but still managed to be fun… at first.  The railed experience allowed me to make forgivable mistakes and constantly bump into walls, and eventually I got pretty confident in my ability to navigate the tracks with ease.  The graphics in “Sonic Adventure” are really pretty.  I say this thinking primarily of the first stage in the game which takes place along the beach side where I was chased by a killer whale and saw dolphins leaping around me.  The problem is with the “Sonic Adventure” overworld which tries to mask the ridiculously short length of each campaign.

For a quick compliment, the form of “Sonic Adventure” is quite nice.  It goes through multiple stories that happen at all the same time just with other characters – which sometimes shows (probably unintentional) similarities to “Rashomon.”  Then there is a story that is being told in tiny pieces throughout each characters path.  To fully grasp the entire story one must play as the characters, which is a really interesting idea.  But the story is garbage, even the little hidden one, and it’s as forgettable as a cereal breakfast.

As I stated above the problem with the game is almost solely found in the overworld.  It’s confusing, dull, and filled with busy work.  I spent a too much time trying to figure out what to do before each mission before I caved and ran to GameFAQs.  By the fourth character I had devoted the entirety of my gaming experience to reading step-by-step instructions, even occasionally watching videos of playthroughs to help me out.  Upon finishing the Sonic, Tails, Amy, and Knuckles levels I wondered why I was even playing – it would be a better waste of time just to watch the videos and not bother frustrating myself in between levels.  I quit.

Sonic doesn’t really need an overworld in his games.  I’m not sure why the developer thought this was an important addition.  The series worked best as a purely linear one, and the less story it has the better it is.  All I wanted out of my Sonic game was to run fast and have fun, and that’s hidden in this game.  I had to dig through layers of poor design just to get to the good part, then it was over in about ten minutes and I was back to the crap.  Then the choice to consistently recycle stages added nothing to what I liked about the game; it just made them feel old and boring.  The truth is that “Sonic Adventure” was a shoddy job.  There’s too much unneeded padding in the game and it ruins everything that could possibly be good.

Thanks to games like “Canabalt” and “RunMan: Race Around the World” we really don’t need Sonic anymore.  He’s a jem from the past, that has lost all its glisten, and it’s not really a shame.  Let’s enjoy the old games for what makes them great, and look to something new to replace it.

Turtle Killer….sounds like a sweet 80′s metal thrash band. Also note how cool all these bad-asses look.

The story behind this game is very simple, the President has been kidnapped by some random assholes from the African country of Zutula. You get to be one of three men, that will dominate the lands of Africa and those men are: Joseph Gibson (blue), Howard Powell (red), and Thomas Clarke (Yellow), and you do not get to choose who you are. It makes you one of these fine soldiers based on which player you are so the math goes as follows…1=blue, 2=red, 3= yellow, pretty simple. You are part of a three man wrecking crew given the codename “Wolf Force”, and you must get the president away from danger at the Hercules Transport area. The game only consists of 6 stages but each stage is amazing, even if the first one is seriously only about 1 minute and 10 seconds long if you actually know what you are doing.

Seriously, this man is the epitomy of cool, he was made the leader of a special task force and told them to shove it up their asses so he could form his own group, that right there is getting work done people.

While playing this game you will realize that you have two buttons you can press. One is to shoot, the other is to use your “Megacrush” which is a bomb that kills all enemies on screen with the exception of the bosses. It will damage them, just not an instant kill like with everything else.The good thing about this game is that most enemies die after getting hit once, like Contra but the good part about this game is that you actually have a life bar unlike Contra but there are a few bullshit things that can kill you in one hit such as you getting electrocuted. In this game you fight in a bunch of different areas, such as a jungle, a dessert and a city, a swamp, an airfield and even on a train type of thing. The guns in this game range from terrible, to over the top awesome. I mean you start with a standard gun and thank god you can upgrade any weapon by walking up to the upgrade item. This can make even the terrible guns awesome, and honestly most the guns don’t suck but if you aren’t using the green spreader gun, then you better have the flamethrower. When you have the flamethrower you never have to let go of the fire button to keep tapping, and when it’s maxed out it can take up like 65% of the area you are aiming at. It also tears through even the hardest bosses in no time, and is just simply the best weapon, honestly the only weapon better in a shoot’em up is probably the shotgun from the series Metal Slug. The biggest downside to the final level is that all you have to do is shoot a damn Airplane before it takes off and if you fail at that you pretty much fail at life….it is so easy.

As you can see the first player has died since it says game over….and yes those blue flames will rape your energy meter.

Ok when it comes down to it, unless you are playing this on MAME or in the Arcade you will be fucked. On the Sega this game is relentless, like seriously I think I have got to level three a handful of times and that’s playing the arcade mode on the Genesis. They did have an original mode on the Genesis which was where you could play as different soldiers going through different stages the only problem is that you had to buy the Megacrushes and food, and you even had to buy our upgrades. Depending on which soldier you chose that gave you a certain weapon, aka no soldier can hold more than one weapon so if you choose the asshole with the worst gun you might as well kill him off so you can continue with one of the other guys you can choose from. If you are playing in the arcade there are certain areas in stages where you can die probably 4 times in less than 20 seconds. To sum it up you better have a shit ton of quarters or tokens because you will need them constantly. I swear to you I never beat the game until I finally got it on the Capcom Classic Collection Volume 1, back in 1995. I swear it was the first game I played and I did not stop until I did what I could not do as a child. The graphics for this game are absolutely wonderful, and the sound once again is nothing short of classic Capcom. The weird thing is that this game did not get a port on the SNES which is insane figuring they are normally better than the Genesis with music…but every single song is a damn good recreation of the arcade music which is amazing. This game is one of the most fun experiences that Capcom has ever provided in my opinion. In the 90′s they kicked so much ass. I mean do not get me wrong they still do the right things sometimes but can still produce an aborition or two (Bionic Commando remake for example.). Overall if you ever get a chance to play, or even have the oppertunity to look it up online and get a glimpse of why this game is full of awesome, do your self a favor and do it.

This is the original mode I talked about, and yes you are using your awards of  valor to pay for items such as spinach and megacrushes. I wonder how many medals you have to get to pay for a 360.

The original Super Monkey Ball for the iPhone was a less than stellar port with none of the original charm of the franchise, with bad controls, and 2D graphics it seemed like it should have been made for the Super Nintendo instead of the iPhone.  But now Sega has released a sequel in an attempt to redeem themselves for their horrible sin.  With improved graphics and gameplay, as well as additional minigames, the latest iPhone entry is a huge step in the right direction.

The Super Monkey Ball series has always been great if only in premise alone.  You control an ape (or maybe the plane that the monkey moves across) in a giant hamster ball, rolling across a dangerously open plane in the middle of a neon abyss with the intent of reaching a goal and then flying up into the air in euphoric bliss.  By tilting the map, you navigate your monkey through each level, and it shouldn’t be surprising that this concept would be perfect for the iPhone’s title controls.  Which is why it was so surprising that the first iPhone release was…well…crap.  Pure and simple.  The controls were clunky and never really did what you wanted them to do.  It was usually luck that would get you through each level.  Super Monkey Ball 2′s greatest improvement over the first is the tweaking of these controls.  With much more responsive movements, the once impossible levels are feasible, though in true Monkey Ball tradition success may be determined by the occasionally lucky run.

Super Monkey Ball 2′s controls can be frustrating, but if they weren’t there would be zero challenge, and in a game that is essentially physics based puzzles trial and error is always your best friend.  Some levels seem almost impossible after your second, third, fourth, and seventh failure, but that’s what makes the final victory so wonderful.  It keeps you yelling at the screen, screaming “No, no, no!” as you tip over the edge of the platform into the endless void below, but anyone that loves a good fight will get right back up and keep rolling.

The game is beautiful, loaded with the bright colors and adorable characters one would expect in the series, and stacking it up against the previous game reminds you of just how fantastic this sequel looks.  The monkey you control moves much more fluidly and is rendered in 3D unlike it’s predecessor.  And the backgrounds and platforms are a mix of bright colors that held create a positive and energetic mood.  This is doubly so when paired with the happy-go-lucky music that you’ll hear pumping through your headphones as you play.

Like any title controlled game, Super Monkey Ball 2 was not created with the public transit in mind.  The wiggling, squirming, and elbow jabbing you’ll do while trying to keep your monkey balanced will leave everyone on your flight much more tired and irritated than they normally would be.  But if you don’t mind looking like a fool, I suppose that won’t bother you much.  Usually you’ll have to be satisfied playing it at home, and there’s absolutely no way to play it lying down with the control’s layout.  If you don’t mind sitting up, and don’t mind reserving what really couldn’t be a portable game on a portable system for more private moments, than you’ll be just fine.

With multiplayer and minigames like Monkey Bowling (and two other games that are “coming soon”) it comes off as a very earnest attempt to make a quality game with a lot of replay value.  It feels like a game that could have been made for a forty dollar price on the DS, with equally strong content and graphics.  Ten dollars can come off a bit pricey on the iPhone market, and maybe it is by comparison with some other great titles on the platform, but it’s still a great deal and by far the cheapest, quality deal you’ll find for any Super Monkey Ball game.   For anyone that loves the series this is a must own, and for anyone casually thinking about picking it up, or just like fun games then this a strong recommendation.

I played some Sonic Drift and Sonic Drift 2 recently and ho-boy, let me tell you… yeah.

I was kind of told that Sonic Drift was one of the best games for the Game Gear, more specifically Sonic Drift 2 was one of the best games for the Game Gear.  What I found was that if Sonic Drift is what some consider good than they really need to change their standards.  Sonic Drift and the sequel are racing games for the Sega Game Gear based on the once popular Sonic series as anyone that grew up in the 90s remembers.  Now-a-days the series spends most of it’s time trying to imitate popular franchises, which actually is what they were doing with Sonic Drift.  It’s a Mario Kart clone, except one of poorer quality and on an inferior system.

A reason why Super Mario Kart worked was that it was an early kart racing game that you would play on the SNES (i.e. on a television).  Sonic Drift you play on a handheld system that is either too dark or too bright and weighs six tons.  The odd thing about the game is that there would be something redeemable about it if made for a home console.  Unfortunately, it isn’t so I have to play the game kind of “squinty.”  The blocky pixels make Sonic Drift a horrible sight to behold in teeny-tiny vision and the gameplay is much more generic than it’s Mario predecessor, and the track feels more cramped.  I remember sitting in my orthodontist’s office as a kid and playing an extremely similar motorcycle game for the same system.

All that leaves us with a generic, but not unplayable game… until the god awful music, which is both horrible and repetitive, comes stabbing at my ears.  That is probably why I hate it.  The music is murderous.

But if you are willing to turn off the volume, rediscover the game gear you probably never owned and are willing to prepare yourself for some disappointing nostalgia than I heartily recommend you play either of the Sonic Drift series (which would have been better on a home console).  It’s a very early racing game for the handheld consoles, and the genre has really done nothing but improve.

A long time ago, back when the SNES had the home console market by the balls, there was a big corporation named Disney that asked another company, named Capcom, to make games for it.  Capcom said to Disney, “Yes!  I will make for you games!  I will make for you the greatest games imaginable!!!”  And so Capcom set about making the greatest Disney titles ever and the greatest of all of these was known as Disney’s Aladdin.

Disney’s Aladdin was an extremely short game, with only seven levels, though arguably the lack of saves and limited lives made up for it, but the gameplay in Aladdin was top notch and the levels were beautifully designed.  In the traditional 2D platforming way you usually jumped on each enemy’s head to defeat them, on top of that you could throw apples to temporarily stun them at range.  You could use ledges and and pegs to climb and swing smoothly through each level and were able to use a blanket for gliding.  The simple but fluid controls are reminiscent of last gen Prince of Persia titles, making Aladdin arguably the closest thing to a 2D Prince of Persia (and this includes the original Prince of Persia).

The levels go from sandy streets to lava filled volcanoes to heavenly casino, and the progression doesn’t feel particularly forced.  This is partially because the films story is used to connect each area to the next in pointless still cut-scenes, and it is secondly due to the fact that each level is so pretty and different that you can’t help but embrace them.  Aside from platforming there are two levels taking place on the magic carpet (each on total opposite ends of the game’s difficulty curve) and there is the occasional boss fight.  Alongside the varied gameplay is the game’s actual length, which isn’t very long at all, that ensure you won’t get very bored by repetition.  Sometimes shorter can be sweeter.

Disney’s Aladdin is probably one of the most remarkable examples of 2D platforming, which will seem a little strange if you’re one of those jerks that believe anything Disney does is supposed to automatically be bad.  So with great controls and great design Aladdin has a warm little place in my heart.

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Since dear old Chadley reviewed the SNES version, I thought I’d throw my hat (or fez) into the ring with the Sega version. If you haven’t had the chance to play both versions you truly missed out. Both have great things to offer… but I have to side with Sega’s version since I played the shit out of it back in teh day.

The biggest difference between the two is the style of attack. Both versions have the apple throwing ability which can make or break a situation (SKIZZ’S ADVICE: if you’re playing the Sega version, CONSERVE YOUR APPLES! You’ll thank me when you battle Jafar and you’re not completely screwed). SNES’ version lacks one key component: the sword-wielding Aladdin. The SNES version utilizes a lot of acrobatics (including being able to VAULT OFF OF BATS to get to higher areas. The physics of that scenario are baffling until you remember it’s a video game) but slicing guards and various enemies with an Arabian Sabre feels pretty great.

Like the SNES version, there are a lot of great (yet different) maps to travel through. The desert level has one of my favorite secrets of all time. At some point, you’ll find clothes hanging on a line along with a hat with Mickey Mouse ears. Stand under it (as if to wear it) for a few seconds and you’ll get a 1Up. Fun stuff!

One of the most frustrating levels in the game is the dungeon. You have to work your way up to the top by correctly timing when the stones in the wall come forward. You hop up on them and try not to get hit by exploding skeletons and the like. Time it wrong and you could find yourself plummeting to the bottom to begin anew.

Even MORE frustrating than that is the escape from the Cave of Wonders on Carpet. It starts off slow but gains momentum as the level progresses. With the help of Genie…’s hand, you are given the direction to head towards. Which becomes a little tricky when you’re darting past your doom at high speeds. The best way to go about this is to chill in the middle and await your direction. But beware, at some point there will be a giant rock blocking your way in the middle. Hit it and it’s back to the beginning of the ride. So it’s a matter of knowing where little chunks of bullshit like that reside.

Aladdin is a game that is really easy to underestimate, possibly due to it’s Disney nature. But keep your wits about you or you’ll be out of continues in no time. And, again, SAVE YOUR APPLES. Max those bitches out and use them only when necessary. As the game progresses they become more and more scarce and you do NOT want to walk into that final battle without them. Belie’dat!

[SkizZ]

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

It was only a matter of time before I had to get to what might be my favorite game overall on the Sega Genesis. This game is actually the first that I had ever beat on the Genesis and that was on a snow day with my brother when we had nothing better to do but holy shit did I somehow stumble upon a game that would forever change the way I view Sega and beat’em ups. This classic game is actually the second of a trilogy that was only made to counteract the fact that the SNES had the Final Fight series which is good in its own right, but not even close to the barrage of action that this series of games provides. Streets of Rage 2 was released on December 20th 1992 and was a North American release game before it was released in Japan.

The game has you playing as one of four different characters out to stop Mr. X from using his syndicate to take over a whole city day by day. You are also out to save your old friend Adam (Who was a playable character in the first game.) from being held hostage any longer by the evil Mr. X. The young group of crime fighters who dare fight the syndicate are as follows…Max Thunder a former wrestler with black hair who is the strongest character by far but is also by far the slowest out of the four. Blaze Fielding who happens to be from the first game, is the series sex appeal who wears red and damn…Sega could have done alot better with that department. She is the average character who has no good or bad things about her, she is just average. Axel Stone is next up on the list, and yes he is complete with jeans, white T, bandanna and blond hair. This is by far the best person to pick because he is strong and frankly does not suck in any way shape or form compared to the others in this game. Finally you then have straight up stereotyping with Eddie “Skate” Hunter who so happens to be Adam’s brother who is African-American, wears roller skates, and also dons a outfit similar to some shit Kris Kross would have worn back in 92′ complete with backwards red cap and everything. Before I go on any farther I want to really try and understand what the Sega execs were thinking when they decided to come up with the concept for Skate. “Well we need something that’s hip and cool….what about rollerblades, backwards caps, urban attitude…oh also can we get away with it by making him roughly the age of 12? Oh we can?”

On this boxart you can see our heroes kicking ass…while three do not look like they do in the game.  Sega decided to not fuck with Skate and how he looks in this picture due to the fact that he might have lost his “Street Cred” had they put him in a “Say no to drugs.” T-shirt.

Let me explain something…as far as beatem’ ups go this one is not hard, nor is it easy unless you have played it an insane amount of times and know where everything is and where it will be coming from constantly. In this game you can do regular attacks, jump attacks, throws, charging attacks, and special attacks….although the special ones will take health away from you if you pull them off so you really need to be careful not to hit that button when you do not mean to otherwise you could just screw yourself really badly. There are different difficulty levels and if you try to play on the secret Mania setting…you might as well kiss your ass goodbye due to the fact that everything will destroy you. Your enemies in this game consist or regular street thugs, guys in jackets, bikers, fat men, kick boxers, and even women with electric whips. This game has a total of 8 levels with a big boss fight at the end of them all just to challenge you even more so than you already had been challenged. This game is pretty by 1992 standards, and you can tell that the developers took alot of time trying to polish up the graphics to make sure they could test the limits of the system at that particular time. I really like the background art for alot of the game, due to the details that they all have. If you are fighting at the baseball stadium take a look around at the background and the stadium seating, if you are fighting in the “cage” look at the fans cheer the boss on, Hell if you are on the beach take a look at the water its very very artistic given the time it came out. As for the music….it was made by none other than Yuzo Koshiro who has worked on games such as Actraiser, Shenmue, Namco x Capcom (which is a RPG only in japan that sounds like a badass concept…look it up.), and the entire Streets of Rage Series. In this game the music has different elements but a lot of it makes you listen deeply as you punch some random asshole in the face. The boss music is amongst some of the most epic music I have ever heard and I remember when I was little I would go to the option menu and load up that song just to listen to it over and over again. These songs are so popular that when he does a show in Japan as a DJ he will get requests for the songs from this soundtrack, and he will play them due to popular demand. Amongst mere mortals this man is a god when it comes to his musical abilities.

Its foggy, it looks like an alien hideout, it has a guy dressed up in a metal suit similar to the way Blanka in Street Fighter looks….oh also it has techno rocking your shit as well. How could this get any better?

When I play this game I always pick Axel due to one move that outshines all the others in this game. He can proform the “Grand Upper” if you hit towards twice, followed up by the attack button. What this move is, is a standard uppercut…that turns your hand slightly on fire. It can drain an enemies health really fast but the best part is that if you are going against certain bosses, they will block the attack but it will do more damage due to the fact that when it is blocked it counts as a few hits compared to one gigantic hit. Axel has a slight edge against most the bosses for the simple fact that a lot of them will charge towards you in an attempt to do any damage…this is where that grand upper once again comes into play. In level four the final boss will not take your shit, or combos for that matter, he will just break out of them. To avoid his onslaught of bullshit you just need to back away from him, and let him run towards you and then uppercut his ass down to the ground. Rinse, Lather, Repeat. If you have Axel this tactic will work on most bosses, with the exception of Mr. X who has a tommy gun, and will have no reason to rush you when he can just spray lead all across the screen. He is straight up the definition of a asshole, and he will let you know it as he laughs the entire time he tries to kill you. After you kill him, you pick up Adam and low and behold the city/world is saved from the demented Mr. X.

Meet the boss Abadede he looks like the Ultimate Warrior and is a complete dick. He is possibly the hardest of the bosses to fight unless you have his strategy down.

Honestly I could go on for hours about this game being as good as anyother game on the Genesis but I refuse to write a whole damn book for one game. This game is simply put, one of the greats on any system at the time it was released and still can stand the test of time to this day. If you get the opportunity to either buy it for the Genesis, buy it for the Virtual Console, buy it on the new Sega Collection, or even to cop the Rom…you better do it and you will not be disappointed. Think of it as a hybrid between Final Fight and Double Dragon. The only way this game could be more testosterone laced is if somehow it was on fire as it fed you beef jerky and force fed you motor oil. This is a great game and I will always sing its praises. This is the first Streets of Rage to make the genocide but all of them eventually will, even the SOR Remake that Bomber Games made from the ground up will make an appearance but that’s for another day. Until then pay respect to your elders and enjoy the Genocide.

Yea my pictures are biased figuring they all have Axel in them, but his arm is on fire making the shape of a dragon so whatever bad you have to say about him is invalid.

Streets of Rage 2 (U)

AWWWWW SNAP! I am digging way back for this review so this one will not be a big review of a game but more or less a lesson in how games could kick ass back in the late 80′s. This game is Super Thunder Blade and actually was a sequel to an arcade classic named Thunder Blade. I remember being probably 4 or 5 years old and actually getting the chance to play the arcade cabinet…although it was the stand up instead of the actual cockpit which did kinda take the play value down a little bit, but nonetheless the aracde game was at the Pizza Hut and I dominated it for the duration of my evening. What blew my mind is when I got back to town and went to the local video game store and found out that they had a copy of the sequal for the Sega Mega Drive (also known as the Sega Genesis). I had to rent it and god damn was I glad that I did. This game is about you flying a military helicopter and trying to rid the areas that you are in of the crazy ass vigilantes that are currently trying to ruin shit. So as you can guess this game is a shoot’em up which has the camera behind the copter taking control, with a few birds eye view stages thrown in. When I started up the game and saw the menu screen complete with a picture of the copter you were going to use, I was excited. Once the game starts it has your copter getting loaded up to the top of a hanger of some sort and then you get to fly around saving the world…or cities…or whatever you are saving…really that part is kinda unsure. I really like how there is very little back story to this game. To me that makes it even better because Sega did not try and bullshit a story to shove down the consumers throats, they just basically said “OK you have a copter…there are bad guys…shoot and survive.”

This game is actually very good looking…but the best part about the visuals is the fact that this game was released in 1989 when the Genesis first came over seas. Mind you I did not even get to play it until 1993 so looking back on this I can say for the time the graphics were really good. If you look up screens now you will be very unimpressed I would assume but once again take into account the fact that this game was released in 1989 when 8-bit games were flooding the market with graphics which were good by their own standards, this makes Super Thunder Blade’s graphics look really nice in their own right. Still to this day when I play the Sega Mega Collection for my PS2 I will normally play this before I turn the game off and appreciate the graphics for what they were back in their day.

Random buildings, a tank, a helicopter near you and two from afar, should be the least of your worries when you try and go through this game.

The sounds to this game are pretty standard I mean there are a few awesome sound effects such as when tanks are shooting lazers at you and the crash sequence noise is a mangled piece of audio that somehow sounds great in this game. The music in certain stages is actually pretty good making you want to take a second and stop playing just to hear the music…but the moment you do that is the moment you get your copter shot down. The difficulty to this game is actually harder than you would think. The biggest bitch about this game is the ability to only be able to get hit once before you crash to the ground, mind you that is actually how most shoot’em ups worked back then so it is understandable as to why they would do it…but still completely crazy when you see some of the things on the screen flying at you at rapid speeds. Some of the things that you have to take down are honestly damn near impossible to do so without having them shoot you during the sequence. Mind you the sub boss you face is a big tank which if you are smart enough you can go to the corners of the screen and move when it shoots at you to avoid getting hit while also being able to shoot back at it to give it some damage as well. Then at the end of the stage you have to deal with a bird’s eye view of you having to kick the ass of a ship kinda like the 1940′s games Capcom produced had you do. In all honesty to review a game that you cant get that far on is in itself ridiculous, but I do not care about that, this game is difficult at times and I really cannot think back to a time where I got to the third level although I can guarantee that I have once before at least. I really wish that there was a sequal to this game released on the Genesis and no I do not want Sega to make a sequel now 20 years later because they would shit all over it just like they did the After Burner series (Thanks PSP for sucking huge amounts of balls).

Original After Burner = A good old fashioned ass kicking.

New After Burner = PSP game…enough said.

People as I have said before on the podcasts…pay respect to your elders and find out where good gaming roots came from, and with this title Sega made you really cannot go wrong. If you can stand a barrage of bullets and missiles coming at you constantly while trying to take out the bad guys then obviously I suggest this game for you. Just remember this game is older and it will not be the best game you have ever played in your life, but if you can appreciate the way games used to be and the amount of fun they could give you then you really need to play this game at any costs.

I have never seen a city where the sky was black and the background white, by the looks of the vigilante onslaught coming I never want to see this city without a helicopter of magnanimous proportions.

super-thunder-blade

]]> http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2009/04/27/sega-genocide-super-thunder-blade/feed/ 0 http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2009/04/21/sega-genocide-mickey-mania/ http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2009/04/21/sega-genocide-mickey-mania/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:25:27 +0000 morter1987 http://seventytwopinconnector.com/?p=1380 M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E……yes America’s favorite little rodent is getting reviewed today for what I believe is a classic game if you are a person who can get past the difficulty of games and still enjoy them. This game was released in October 1994 for the Genesis in the North American region and believe it or not was one of the only games for the system that actually had more content than its SNES counterpart (Yea suck that Nintendo….OK I am a huge fan of Nintendo too but I owned a Genesis first.) The SNES version was missing an entire stage, and hell it was missing one of the best graphic showcases that the game even had so basically what I am telling you is that this game kicked the SNES versions ass like it was its bitch. The SNES game took a dive like Butch in the fifth. Nevertheless this game has so many reasons for being awesome so why not hop to them.

This game is a classic, look at Mickey he is swinging away from the Mad Doctor with that smile beacuse he knows Minnie is about to get plowed.

First off this game features a badass named Mickey Mouse, he is the biggest cartoon icon in the world. He is so recognizable that anyone can see his picture from any country and automatically know who he is. That is enough to get people to play and buy this game but the thing is this game is actually good….really good. This game was developed by Travelers Tales, with the help of Sony Imagesoft  Sony Imagesoft at the time had a little known man named David Jaffe, and this was his first game that he did any work on. Why does this matter? Maybe you heard of his “God Of War” series of games for the Sony Playstation, this game was his jump off that propelled him into the developer he is today and thank the lord that it did. This game graphically is amazing. The stages are all based off of old Mickey Mouse cartoons and start off with the infamous Steamboat Willy which was made way back in 1928. They even have Mickey meet Willy and from that point the game comes at you with amazing colorful graphics (not the first stage because cartoons were black and white back in those days.) throughout the entire game from start to finish.

Mickey meets Steamboat Willy, nothing beats nostalgia.

With that being said let me explain something I am a huge fan of games and also believe that just because a game can be difficult does not mean that it is a bad game. I love Battletoads and that game is the hardest game that I have ever played. This game kicks your ass and lets you have it constantly, it would honestly be easier to do an abortion in a back alley blindfolded and one handed than beat this game. I swear to you that I have been playing this game since it was released way back in 1994 and I have not made it past the third world which would not seem so bad had their not been seven stages total. Let me explain how this game lets you get your ass kicked. At times you will be facing crazy ass enemies such as skeletons that when hit will explode….when they explode their bones can hit you causing damage and when you only have four hits and then you are dead, you will find yourself constantly killing and then running away from your fallen enemies. Some of the jumps in the game would be difficult to make if you were on the fucking moon so you basically have to wait until you are falling to your death before you go and hit the jump button. Another difficult part of this game is the fact that sometimes the hit detection is not the best to the point where you can blatantly hit your enemy….and somehow miss them. I know what you are thinking is that this game has to be broken but to me it is not broken to the point of completely making it a bad game or even a great game. The second stage of this game is a real bitch. The Mad Doctor level has you in the doctors castle trying to basically survive the barrage of random shit tryting to kill you. There are so many enemies and jumps it really tests you no matter how good of a gamer you are. I actually played this a few months back with a couple of people at The Ohio State University and it took us 3 hours to get to the third level…and that is with us all watching our mistakes and trying to correct them constantly. I will say that with this stage being so hard there is one part that makes up for it when they integrated 3-d’ish graphics while you ran up a tower avoiding bolders. This game even has puzzles intergrated into it, they may be simple but hey they tried at least.

This is a level that I have never and will never get to nor do I care…fuck Jack and the Beanstalk.

Sound wise this game actually does a great job taking music and sound effects from the different cartoons they take place in, which can be a great thing when you are like me and grew up on the mouse on VHS and wore the tapes down untill they started to fade terribly. To be honest this game is not the best thing I have ever played but it is alot better than most the games this console had to offer and it is disappointing that alot of people still have no idea about this game and alot of people also hated it for being so hard. I really think that this might be the best Mickey game on any system which is saying something due to Capcom kicking ass with Mickey’s Magical Quest. Consider yourself a gaming idol if you can deal with even half the shit this game offers you due to difficulity, on the other hand even if you are not the best gamer ever and you have the opportunity you need to play this or buy this because of how much fun it can be just be aware that you will die, you will continue, you will die again, you will start over…rinse, lather, repeat.

He looks like a goofy asshole….wait….he is a goofy asshole.

Jim was an ordinary earthworm rummaging through the trivial dirt and random shit that worms run across when during a space battle a super suit fell from the sky and so happened to engulf Jim. Thanks to this suit he now has the ability to kick a lot of ass all the while being a funny and awesome alternative to other gaming characters of the time such as Sonic and Mario. In this game you have to save Princess Whats-Her-Name from the evil Psycrow, because he has kidnapped her and taken her hostage just to basically piss our man Jim off once again. To get her back you must shoot, whip, and snot your way through level after level.

Look Jim is playing the accordion like Weird Al for the princess, the only difference is that Jim will get laid for this while Weird Al is probably still a virgin.

This game handles perfect. I really mean perfect. For the type of game that it is there is simply nothing wrong with the controls as you can honestly feel them not needing to be forced or pushed just to do certain things throughout the game. there are times where they could have possibly had a certain tweak here or there to make things a little less complicated but you can easily get past the small things to focus on the whole games controls. Right away you are thrust into action, with a stage called “Anything But Tangerines” which has you shooting aliens and eventually riding up stairs avoiding old ladies as they fall from the sky. If they land on you, they shout “Fresh!” and bitch-slap you with their purses as you have to go all the way to the bottom of the staircase only to have to do the whole thing over again. Each stage is honestly something to discuss but for the sake of saving myself a lot of words I will only go over a few more of them. The most original stage to me has to be “Jim’s Now a Blind Cave Salamander!” (or also known as the Villi People). This stage has you playing as Jim and all you can do is swim around, shoot enemies, and avoid all obstacles as you are moving through the body of a animal of some sort. In this stage you also must collect earthworms which you then get to use to access trivia questions at the end of the level. If you can somehow guess the correct answer you win a small prize, which could be health or ammo, the only catch is the fact that the questions are nothing but random ass nonsense. For example: What color is Jim’s big red gun? A) Blue B) Green or C) Yellow…..the correct answer is B) Green but how are you even supposed to congure up a guess as to something that ubsurd.

This is Jim as a Blind Cave Salamander….and yes he is still cooler than you will ever be.

Another level in the game is “The Flyin King” where you have to use your trusty Pocket Rocket to move a hot air balloon full of TNT across a map while avoiding enemies, and cannons, only to use it to kill an enemy at the end of the stage known as Major Mucus. You also must go through a grill to face a boss known as Flamin’ Yawn, in Stage Ate. There is one stage that I cannot stand which is “Udderly Abducted” which has you saving cows from ufo’s and other random shit. It by far is the most tedious stage in the entire game and I hate it more than anyother stage that I can think of in gaming history. Finally you finally get to save the princess by facing Psycrow in a footrace to get to Whats-Her-Name. This sounds like an easy task but the problem is that there are so many pits that you cannot really see untill you are jumping right into them that you can easily screw up over and over again. Hell if he beats you to certain points before you can get to them, he will lock a door and then you are fucked…all you can do is withstand the barrage of shit he throws at you untill you finally die and start the stage over. This stage can and will kick your ass when you have no idea what to be facing which is normally the case.

Little lesson here Tommy Tallarico did the soundtrack to this game. I know what your thinking…who the Hell is this guy? Well the man has 25 awards for making badass music in video games since 1991, and has done other games such as Wild 9 and Robocop Versus the Termanator. What does this mean for this game? Well basically its an audio orgasm of awesome that destroys your ears and makes them feel as if they are getting throttle cocked the entire game. Yes there are a few tracks that could have been done better I will say that much at least, but this soundtrack kicks ass. In the game when you are the blind cave salamander they play Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, part 1 which is just classic and somehow with the feel of the stage actually works very very well. They also use Moonlight Sonata albeit part 3 for the final race against the boss. They even use Cuban Pete for two stages as well. If you can get ahold of this soundtrack you need to for the love of God…or Allah…or whatever you believe in, because you will not regret it.

Look if you ever get the chance to play this game or buy it please do. This game is nothing short of an example of what gaming used to be like, and what it should currently be like. I mean Earthworm Jim as a character is basically what would happen if you put Bruce Campbell into a spaceage suit that allows you to kick copious amounts of ass. This was the last really successful game of the franchise and its a damn shame too because Shiny could have made alot of progress and kept Jim alive instead of making Earthworm Jim 3d and giving all the fans a nice big middle finger of awful gaming. There are rumors of a possible fourth game in the series coming out and if it does I want them to keep it simple and cartoony just like EWJ2 was. If they deviate from that formula at all I am sure it will suck like all the 3D Sonic games do now. If you like crazy ass story lines that have no seriousness to them at all, while having the most fucked up twist ending in cartoon gaming history then this is the game for you. If you have a problem with good games or anything remotly fun, then stick to something like Zoop you pansy.

Hey its Zoop…..remember Zoop? Yea no one else does either.

Earthworm Jim 2 (U)