The first was simply put as the Iron Man fighting game tournament. I was in a group of 6 people and I had to face each of them in each of the following games- Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Capcom vs SNK 2, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Breakers Revenge, and last but not least Vampire Savior which is the 1997 version of the Darkstalkers series. To be honest I was completely outmatched by damn near everyone that I had to go up against. Each game you played two out of three out of five rounds and I learned a few things right off the bat.

1: No matter how good I think I am or how decent I may be at a game someone will and can kick my ass no matter what I do.

2: Breakers Revenge is full of broken shit that allows me to do nothing all the while the people I go up against keep coming at me with an onslaught of terror.

3: Apparently I am a lot better at Vampire Savior than I ever would have thought (Felicia FTW!).

Yea shes a cat, whatever she kicks so much ass.

4: That my combo of Cammy, Ryu, and Sagat are hard to beat if in Capcom vs SNK 2 if I just remember how the hell to use sagat as a spam/distance fighter.

5: Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure might be up there for the best fighting game I have ever played even though I cannot imagine what the hell the people were on when they made the comic and the two fighting games based off of it.

Regardless of all of that I went 5 out of 25 and did not advance to the next round. It was a huge learning experience and one of the many I had throughout the day. The best part was I started to realize that all these guys were like a community of friends and when they watched each other they wanted to give tips on what they could have done to do better. Even without knowing any of them I was quickly accepted and was involved in a lot of discussions with the overall group of people. Jesse also participated in this tourney but did not do as well…although I cannot recall his record.

Ok time for tourney two of the day and of corse as luck would have, it turned out to be a “Mystery Game” tournament. Essentially I was forced to play some of the worst titles I can ever imagine.You played two out of three rounds…if it was a fighting game and if you lose twice you are out of the tournament.

The first game I played was entitled: Joy Mech Fight. This game was a fighting game made back in 1993 for the famicom. We played it on a top loader and I have to be honest, if you look at this game for a second you will say “Wow this game has to be one of the shittiest games I have ever seen.” Honestly I loved it, they had a lot of diverse fighters for a game that was released on Nintendo. I also just found out that it had a 38 player roster, which if you can your math most games in 1993 had roughly 15 so that is astounding. I won my fight using a character that was named Tiger and did it using his diving kick attack.

To me he is a cross between Sagat from Street Fighter, and Rax from Eternal Champions. Oh in other news the attack is called the eagle kick, and was my weapon of mass destruction.

The next game was DX Hird…which I would love to provide you with a good review or picture but it has been so long the only thing i remember is that it played like Battle Arena Toshiden 3 and was terrible looking. It is so obscure that I spent 10 minutes on google looking up and down for it and I have nothing but one man talking about how bad it is in a forum…I was unaware that a game could suck that bad that no physical evidence exists.

Next up was Masked rider Agigo, which is a game based off of the Japanese television series Kamen Rider. This game was one of the prettiest games that I can remember from the tourney and the actual movement from the characters looked great. This game was not responsive at all and even if you wanted to use one of your strong attacks it would take about 4 seconds to load the damn thing up before you could go and use it. None the less I won this game as well. Once again I cannot get a picture of the game I am referencing so deal with it.

After that came Heaven’s Gate which is a game so bad that wikipedia does not have an existing article about it. I remember it being for the PS1 and kinda reminding me of Virtua Fighter except way way worse. All I know is that I won this game as well but honestly I cannot remember anything about it upon seeing pictures other than what I just told you.

THIS GAME IS BAD! I also realize Jin looks like Hanzo from World Heroes.

The next game was Sailor Moon S, which as you could guess was a Sailor Moon fighting game. The control and response to this game are some of the saddest I have experienced. I mean they could actually be worse but holy god, I really think they just liked to rush fighting titles based on random cartoons in Japan because they know people would buy it. Think about it Sailor Moon was/might still be that popular over there so this makes sense. Once again this game was another win for the Martyr.

This game is a lot worse than it looks.

The only game I played that was not a fighting game was a heated match of Frogs and Flies. You are a frog who jumps in the air and tries to eat the dots they call flies that are on the screen. Two people go at the same time and it starts off as day and after every 30 seconds or so it gets darker and darker until it goes black and a winner is determined. This was the closest game I actually played during the entire Mystery Game match-up. It was also a great game to shout expletives as my frog would jump like a huge pussy or just jump way too hard off his lily pad due to the great controls of the Atari that we played it on. Chalk up another win.

This game is actually more fun because the controls suck so bad. I have never cussed more at a game in a short amount of time then I did at this one.

The final game I would win at was Natsuke Crisis Battle and it was for the Super Famicom. After getting my ass kicked the first round I had the misfortune of picking the female version of Zangief and somehow pulled off some of the biggest bullshit moves once I figured out she was just like him. I do not mean in the spamming lariat sense, but the 360 degree rotation while jumping to throw my opponent into the ground type of character.

Very obscure never heard of game of good god damn reasons.

Finally I was able to play a arcade game for the tourney and it was Karate Champ. This game has one of the least responsive controls I have ever seen in a fighting game. You play until you get two full points or the time runs out. Points are given based on the attack you use and where you inflict the attack. You use two joysticks, one moves you and the other helps attack. Depending on the two directions you move the joysticks, you can do front flips, jump kicks, and other crazy karate shit. Biggest problem with this game is that the hit detection has to be really perfect. If you are off by 1/18th of a second or if you are kinda too close to them the move will not be  completed. None the less I had a hell of a fight but still lost by a half a point.

There is not a better feeling than executing the jump kick for the full point. TO THE FACE.

The last game I was able to play for this was the very creatively named FIST. This by far was the worst thing that I played the entire day. I really wish I could get a picture of it just to show you how bad it is. The controls were terrible, the game play was worse. It was on the PS1 but I swear it looked and felt like a blind man made a game using random code that sounded good to him in his mind and he turned it into FIST. 

Yep this is all I could find. Thank you Ebay.

After my two losses I had to get ready for the final tournament of the night and I am not sure where I finished exactly I just know that I did really damn good and came pretty close to actually getting to the final. I then had to prepare myself to be entered into the King of Iron Fist Tournament, or at least the sixth edition of Tekken anyway. As fate would have it I had to go up against my buddy Jesse in the first part of a round robin event. Each match was 3 out of 5 rounds and 2 out of three fights. The first match I decided to use Bruce and after Jesse dominated the shit out of me I looked him in the eyes told him I was sorry and picked Eddy Gordo. I do feel bad that I had to use one of the cheapest characters against a guy that never really plays Tekken too much but I needed to get that first (and only win of the day) so I chose him and beat Jesse’s ass. I decided that after the fight Jesse and I had that I had to pick a character I was good with that was not someone people knew how to defend well. I thought about Eddy again, but he is a beginner character so I knew I stood no chance with him…after several minutes of debate I said “Fuck It” and I picked Jack 6. Jack is slow as all hell but is very powerful and has great reach and the ability to put the opponent into the air to juggle…slight problem is that I am not good enough with him to know how to consistently keep the person in the air. Overall I faced about 10 different people and lost to all of them. Most of my matches were very close and I met a few people that will be at the Power Up event at the end of the month that I plan on attending.

While playing against all these great players I was told a few different things from some of the participants.

1: The fact that I chose Jack when almost no one really is comfortable with him, threw most of my enemies off because they did not know what to expect.

2: I am very good at blocking and anticipating low attacks which is key to keeping a match as close as it can be given most juggle attacks start from a low to high position.

3: That for it being my first tournament that apparently I was skilled a lot higher than anyone thought I would have been when I told people it was my first tournament.

4: That the word Perfect, is described as “The seven golden letters” and you better not let that shit happen to you.

Like I said before this was one of the best things I had ever done and I learned a lot from it. Met a lot of awesome people who seem to want me to go back, and I earned the respect of people I have never met because I had the balls to pick a character that no one plays with while trying to compete with people much better than my sorry ass. If you ever have the chance to go to Arcade Legacy you need to. It is 10 bucks to play all night, and all the games are free and set up so all you have to do is hit the start button to enjoy some classics such as Killer Instinct, MVC2, Point Blank and many others. For further understanding check their website.

http://arcadelegacy.wordpress.com/

In Japan it was known as Street Fighter Zero 3 so this picture is still accurate

I personally remember seeing this at the local video store the day the game came out and losing my shit. The day was April 30th 1999, and I remember being the first person to rent that game to this day. By now you can tell that I am a huge fan of fighting games and there are so many that I need to review so why would I choose this one to follow Killer Instinct you might wonder? This is the best game in the entire series that changed the genre of fighting games forever. This game boasts the biggest roster for a street fighter game to this day with a whopping 34 fighters when it hit the home consoles. The entire reason everyone is fighting is because Bison has something called the Psycho-drive, he of course being the level headed man he is wants to use it to destroy the world as we know it to basically make it a wasteland and blowing away all the people he has met in the process. Slight problem is that even though he is the second strongest person in the world he cannot power it himself so he needs the body of a “Fighter” to throw into the Psycho-drive and power the unholy hell out of it until it makes the world a’splode. Depending on who you choose to fight with the story will change and you even have dialogue set ups before certain matches to give you a little insight to what the hell is going on. Even better is the fact that if you do get to what you assume is the final showdown with M. Bison you have to fight a sub boss consisting of Balrog or Juni and Juli (Both the girls are actually clones of M. Bison and basically copycat Cammy the whole time.) Once you get through all that and you finally get to face the man himself…you only get one opportunity. You either win two rounds, or lose two rounds and waste all that time getting to him because it will just show a cut-scene of your character being thrown into the Psycho-drive and chaos ensues.

Another unique thing about this game is how there are several different styles you can use for your super combos. You have the normal A-ism combo system which basically just gives you three different levels to get your meter up to and depending on what button you press that determines the amount of damage you can inflict with your super combo. The second is the X-ism which is basically just one big ass meter you have to fill before you can pull of super combos and then there is finally the V-ism which gives you the ability to actually make up a combo using certain buttons presses on the fly so pick your poison and either way if you know what your doing then you should be good. Back to the characters for a minute. Like I previously stated there happen to be 34 of them but in all honesty I pretty much pick the same five or six all the dame time.

First and foremost when it comes to Street Fighter games in general if this person is in it I must play with them. Cammy White is single handedly the hottest thing that the series has ever had (Fuck Chun Li and her huge offensive lineman like thighs) and is the first girl I ever had a crush on which 1: Is sad to admit that a video game character that could kill me in like 1,000 different ways is the first thing I had a crush on. 2:Is completely plausible because shes hot as hell and I will defend that (along with her honor) to my dying day.Lastly 3: Is probably the exact reason I decided to start playing as her and kicking ass all the fuck over the place. She is fast but not strong, which is really not too hard to compensate for if you just have a good strategy and hell her special moves help her avoid projectiles so shes good against characters that throw random shit. Also the fact that she is not a charge character even if her moves seem to be that of a person who would require a charge is a good thing so you can just use the same rolling motions some of your favorite characters have and completely dominate.

Cammy Fucking White is dressed up as a soldier promoting one of the best games Capcom has ever made holy shit I don’t think my brain can handle the awesome. Quick question is it a little odd that I now want to fuck that plane because of Cammy being near it?

Second there is Rolento. Rolento is a military genius that is fast yet stronger than most fast characters and has what might be the second strongest super combo in the game. He throws out a trip wire to lynch the opponent when a man from the sky dangles a god damned metal hook to assist you. His attacks overall are kinda iffy at best but if you can get used to his style he is a very good character to use. By the way Capcom I am not calling you out for being Disney-esque when it comes to overt racial prejudice, but if anyone has the opportunity to play as Rolento and do the trip wire lynching to Balrog…all I have to say is that I have not seen anything as blatant as the expression Balrog’s face has when he gets the attack done to him since the civil rights movement existed. Seriously Capcom, I have never once doubted you or questioned at least to a serious degree but holy fuck.

Third is Balrog. I remember playing Street Fighter II Championship Edition in the arcade and picking him simply because he looked just like Mike Tyson. He is a slow but amazingly powerful charge based character and I honestly think he is one of my better people to play as in any of the games he has appeared in. Mind you he is a little harder to use due to his sluggishness, but honestly if you get good with him he is a serious contender in any match you can throw him in. Plus his throw consists of him just throwing headbutt after headbutt into the persons concussed skull.

Forth is Ryu. Yes hes the poster boy for the series and yes he is a bad ass.

Fifth is undoubtedly Akuma. For starters his name means Devil in Japanese, and you cannot get much more over the top than just being named after the demon-man himself. Second he is the most powerful character in the game and is very fast as well so you simply cannot lose when you are using him, or well if you do lose you should probably just quit your life as you have failed harder than most people ever could. His best and most powerful ultra combo is the “Shun Goku Satsu” which translates into Instant Hell Murder. There is not a move in video game history with a better name. There just simply is not one. When it comes to Akuma he only fights people that he actually thinks pose a threat to him and can test his skills as a warrior. He will never fight an unworthy opponent because of his “moral code”. Hell the man has even stopped fights (in the actual storyline) when he knew the person he was fighting was not up to their 100 percent top form. My question is that if he only fights people that are worth it and people that can test his skills as a warrior…then why the hell would he ever face a person like Dhaslim or Dee Jay when we all know for a fact that Yoga and Jamiaca are not known for their warriors. Akuma was and still is banned from most tournaments in America which just shows how dominant he really can be.

BAD ASS MOTHER FUCKER

There were several different game modes when you were playing this on the home console. You had your standard Arcade mode, and Survival mode but you also had the “Final Battle” mode which let you skip all the way to the final fight with M. Bison so you didn’t waste all that time fighting the first 8 rounds if you ended up losing to him, and Finally the most awesome mode was World Tour. World tour had you choose one character and you had to fight certain people under certain circumstances  and sometimes it would even make you fight multiple people at the same time. Stipulations could be anything from you only being able to damage your opponent with ultra combos, to you having to face two different people at the same time but only one of them takes damage. The final battle (if you are bad ass enough to meet certain requirements) has you face 2 different people per match for three matches. It starts out with Shin Akuma and Evil Ryu (basically the two toughest characters in the game) then you face M. Bison and Shin Akuma, and then you fight them again. It is so damn hard because they will constantly throw projectiles and random moves at you and God help you if you get stuck between the two of them. if you are in the middle of them attacking you have lost this fight and there is nothing that will save you from certain death. This game is hard but so rewarding when you actually do kick some ass.

The art in this game is simply one of the best for a game ever made by Capcom, the music is fantastic and the announcer is amazing. If you do not lose your shit or get amped when he first says the words “Go For Broke!” then you are seriously a huge huge pussy. Simply put this game kicks ass and you need to play it. I do not care if it’s the arcade, the console or emulating it through your computer. Whatever you have to do you simply must do it for the sake of your video game life. If you disagree with me in anyway you can kindly direct your hatemail to me and you will probably recieve a nice cool glass of Fuck Off in return.

Martyr out.

A boxer is about to punch a man made of fire in the dick it appears, I do not think I need to explain how awesome that really is.

Nevertheless the story line behind the game goes a little something like this. There is this big company named Ultratech who has completely taken over the world and all forms of government. They decide it is in their best interest to form a huge fighting tournament to test some of the diabolical creations that they have made in their secret labs. They also invite a few regular participants, or at least that what they say, I mean last time I checked a skeleton, a wulf (made by Ultratech and yes wulf is correct spelling), a Indian, a ninja, a raptor (made by Ultratech), a alien (captured by Ultratech), a criminal who is apparently on fire all the damn time, a secret spy, and a two headed what the fuck, are not even close to what I would call normal. The one man who is normal to a certain degree is former heavyweight champion of the world T.J. Combo. I mean he technically he did totally have his arms replaced by cybernetics but at least he had the common courtesy to have them covered up with synthetic skin unlike that asshole Jax from Mortal Kombat. If the person wins they basically get promised something by Ultratech, because once again this coporation rules the world and can basically do whatever they feel the need to.

The list of people to choose from is as follows

Thunder – Indian who is trying to find his lost brother who went “missing” after the tournament the year before. He is armed with tomahawks.

Fulgore- A 1 year old cybernetic badass that the tournament is basically funded for, just to test out how much PWNAGE it can deal out. If he wins the competition then mass production will begin.

Glacius- Alien captured by Ultratech and is promised freedom is he can win. His name comes from the fact that he is basically liquid ice (sounds logical right?) and can shape shift.

Cinder – Criminal who was captured by Ultratech and was told that he can be set free if he put up with some chemical testing, which went wrong and now his body is comprised of flames. If he can kill Glacius then he will get returned to his original form.

Jago - Tibetan monk who is trying to rid himself of the evil within and somehow thinks that it is his destiny to destroy Ultratech.

Riptor- A human/raptor hybrid that was created by Ultratech and is being tested as a killing machine in this compitition.

Sabrewulf- Count Von Sabrewulf is infected with lycanthropy and is promised a cure by Ultratech if he wins. A side note on him is that he is a reference to Sabre Wulf the first game that Rare ever made.

Spinal – A skeletal warrior who fights because he loves it. I kid you not I have no other reason other than that.

Come on do you think this skeleton would love to cuddle you next to the fire in the background?

T.J. Combo- Former heavyweight boxer who held the title for 5 years until it was found out that he had cybernetic arms that basically kicked the asses of the opponents for him. If he wins the title Ultratech will let him drive around in his pink 64′ Caddy and regain the title he had lost.

B. Orchid- Hired as a secretary for Ultratech, she turns out to be a spy for some unknown corporation, and to top that off has what might be the best or ugliest rack ever…one of her finishing moves she flashes the opponent and they have a heart attack.

Eyedol- The final boss of the game. He is a two headed piece of shit who does nothing but deplete your health bar in very cheap ass ways, and can regain his health slightly when he stomps on the ground like a dumbass. Did I mention he has a club? Oh I failed to mention that? It will not matter because he will give your face and attitude a slight adjustment with it. Ultratech released him out of his dimensional prison to kick some ass.

My only real beef with Ultratech is the fact that they use all these people to try to prevent shit from happening, and they also use them to control the world. They get the people they want dead to appear at this thing and use others already in it to possibly kill them. Honestly this is sound reasonable logic until you factor in that they just want to control the whole world…WHICH THEY ALREADY HAVE DONE DUE TO THE FACT THAT EVERY PLACE IN THE WORLD HAS NO WORKING GOVERNMENT BECAUSE THEY ALREADY TOOK IT OVER IN THE FIRST DAMN PLACE.

This game is different from other fighting games for a few different reasons but I will only mention the ones that actually matter. Instead of fighting in “Rounds” you have two health bars that you have to deplete to kill the enemy. To explain that better if you were fighting and depleted the enemies first health bar without getting hit, now they have one health bar to try to kick ass while you still have both of yours. The fighting is continuous which is a good thing for this game. Next up is the combo system which is not like others at all. In Mortal Kombat for example you might have to do something like “High punch, Low kick, Low punch, High punch” to do a four hit combo. Well Rare said “Fuck that shit” and decided to make combos have a much more automatic feel. They do this by you hitting a certain button, or even preforming a special move that will have a string of hits to it. Everyone has special moves but one special move for each character specifically can be performed in the complete opposite direction to enable its use to maximize combos. If you were using a character that had a move such as “Hold Back for two seconds, press forward and medium punch” well you could also do it by “Holding forward for two seconds pressing back and then medium punch.”

Back to the combo topic, the goal for the most part is to do as much damage at one time as possible so the bigger the combo the better the damage. Each combo you do will have a specific name based on the number of hits it has, all you really need to know is that 8 is Awesome and anything from 12-17 is a Killer combo, which will be shouted at you by the manliest announcer in the history of games. Another cool feature is that if your enemies second life bar is flashing red you can either 1: End the match with a combo that ends in a “No Mercy” move which makes the combo a “Ultimate” combo. Or 2: You can actually do an automatic super combo simply known as an ultra, which will range anywhere from 18-80 hits if you are a badass, or can glitch the game out. There is not a better feeling in this game than when you kick the ass of your friend and end it on an ultra, once the ultra hits you can sit back and watch the destruction which for me is usually me throwing the controller to the ground as to say “I DA SHIT” as I look at my friend letting them know that yes they did get owned, and yes they can do nothing to stop it.

Alright if you are not new to the Internet then I guarantee you know this game for one thing alone and you probably had no idea where it came from. In the middle of owning face with combos, or if you are the one getting owned with combos, a combo breaker (pronounced “C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER) can be done and it will automatically disrupt the attacking party with a move that will make them take damage and embarrass them at the same time. It is effective, and the computer uses it all the damn time just to get under your skin. I dare you to try and beat the final boss without having him break one combo and then take half your life with a 5 hit combo. When fighting you have to make a choice, do you do huge combos with the hopes that your opponent is retarded, or do you do small ones knowing that a combo breaker can not be used unless you do a combo of 6 hits or more. The choice is yours and honestly you will live and die by the choices you make in this game. Speaking of dying  just like other fighting games at the time there is a time at the end of the match to kill your fallen comrade with what they call a “No Mercy” move. Honestly alot of them are terrible, but there are a few that are pretty awesome. Fulgore transforms into a turret and shoots the shit out of the other person, even Orchid flashes some titty. Other than that they are pretty bland. They do have a few stages that can allow for some pretty cool falling to their death….deaths. All you have to do is hit them into the air when they are right on the edge and boom, instant gratification.

The graphics to this game are simply mind-boggling, this game was the first to use a Hard Disk Drive which allowed them to basically make this game the prettiest game that had yet existed on the fighting game market, and do yourself a favor play Virtua Fighter, and then play this and tell me that this game does not blow the other out of the water. The sounds are perfect for this game. The sound effects that they use really are fitting and its very good that they actually took the time to not make every male character sound the same and every female sound the same as well. They use different noises based on what character is getting rocked and that’s the best part. Every character sounds pretty much like you would expect them to. The music is badass and had a CD that came with the SNES version when it came out in 1995 called Killer Cuts, and yes I do own it thanks for asking. The difficulty for this game is adjustable just like most fighting games back then but its hit or miss. It is either really easy or completely bat-shit insane.

Eyedol is such an asshole. Good luck trying to deal with any of his bullshit he is about to pull on you.

I played this game first at an old pizza place, but I really got good at it when it made its jump to the SNES. I can say there is only one person I have yet to beat the game with and that is Jago, I am just not good with him at all. Everyother person is at least moderate for me but with him I am nothing short of a huge piece of shit. My favorite character personally due to his combos is easily Sabrewulf, but am probably best with either Combo, or Fulgore. This game was so groundbreaking a popular, they did make a sequel Killer Instinct 2 that had alot of differences which I will get to in a review of it eventually. Hell the main man from Rare said he would not mind either putting the original out on the Xbox Arcade, or making a third if he could get the backing of some company to actually help them. I swear this shit needs to happen so badly, I mean let me say this much, KI 1 was one of the best games ever made for the arcade, and it’s port to the SNES is one of the best games on the system. Then you have KI 2 which was not bad in its own right but was not the same as the first, so they need to make a third and push the envelope as much as possible. By the way did I mention this was also popular enough to actually have a card game in the same setup like Magic, which I have never seen but that’s simply amazing.

On second thought….maybe Glacius is actually cooler than most people think he is….COOLER GET IT?

Then again hes getting his face melted by Fulgore…I guess the verdict is still out on this one.

To provide more information on this game I will refer you to the definitive Killer Instinct website on the Internet.

http://killerinstinctonline.net/KIARC.htm

I also wanted to add the Roms, but the Internet decided to give me the middle finger and refuse to upload what I wanted. Sorry for the inconvenience but I think the readers are big enough boys/girls/boy-girls to find them on their own.

]]> http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2010/03/22/killer-instinct/feed/ 1 http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2009/12/22/mercs/ http://seventytwopinconnector.com/2009/12/22/mercs/#comments Tue, 22 Dec 2009 06:39:02 +0000 morter1987 http://seventytwopinconnector.com/?p=2023 How many Capcom games can I review in a row? The apparent answer is four so far at least. Mercs was a game that I remember playing at the local bowling alley when I was a wee lad. My father and I would go to this bowling alley and just hang out, but mostly I would dominate Samurai Showdown, Operation Thunderbolt, NBA Jam T.E. and even World Heroes, but more often than not I would always turn back to the game Mercs. Mercs was released in April of 1990, in the arcades, and then eventually saw a port to the Sega Genesis and this year made its appearance onto the Wii’s virtual console.

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.

This is a promo flyer that they used to get people to want to play/buy the game and there is no way in hell that this game fails at doing either.

This game takes place in a fictional land named Malus that is being completely run into the ground by a big dragon named Gildess. Gildess has dispatched all his army of random beasts and men, to destroy the entire countryside. Once he had succeeded it was up to our fair heroes of this story to try to make a big bit of difference and take him down once and for all. Just like Knights of the Round, this is a side scrolling beat em’ up that has RPG elements, only this time they are much more noticeable. After every two stages or so your character will pick up a new weapon that will increase his attack strength, and if your lucky you will be able to pick up a shield that will increase defense as well. The weapon, and shield will be labeled with a certain level, but you can be any level when you get them, so you can be a level 3 and get a level 6 shield and vice versa. You can level up at any time during a level if you do good enough or collect enough jewels while fighting. Honestly if you can time it right the easy way to gain exp is by attacking the arrows that get shot at you by certain enemies, because when you do it counts as double the exp compared to just blocking them.

You are able to pick from one of 5 different masters of their own craft to get the countryside back in the right hands, so here is the rundown or the choices you will have.

1: Elf – The elf, is the fastest character and has the farthest range of any of the men you can choose from but the problem is he has no defense, and dies very easily. He is the only character that cannot increase his defense throughout the game, and he cannot even equip a shield like all the others can, he is the worst character in my opinion but an experienced player can actually do quite well with him if you can counter constantly.

2: Wizard- Ok this wizard is not the same as the one in quiz and dragons who kicked way too much ass for his own good. This wizard has low defense and low speed, but has the second biggest range and has the best magic….which should be pretty obvious. His defense is upgradable, although the speed of his attacks are not. To begin the game he honestly sucks, with no strength but eventually becomes what might be the strongest in the game, he also gains the ability to do multi-hit attacks, so that helps out a lot.

3: Fighter- The fighter is a big, brute of a man. He has decent speed and defense which can be very helpful if you can use them effectively. His magic is by far the worst but he makes up for it by regaining his health the fastest out of all the characters. He can also wield a shield that can be used to deflect certain attacks from enemies such as bows, and sword attacks.

4: Cleric-By the grace of God this man has the best defense and actually is a very easy character to use even for a beginner. His biggest drawback is the fact that he has no speed or agility, but to counteract that his magic and strength is pretty high up there. He also gets a shield to defend himself with, and he seems to level faster than the other characters for some reason.

5: Dwarf- This man has balls of steel, and can swing an axe like no ones business. He has what I would say is the second slowest attack speed, but is actually quite fast with decent defense, and has crazy agility for such a little man beast. He also has the worst range, and really weak magic which should be no suprise.He like the fighter and cleric carries a shield that is very effective if used right.

To be completely honest if I had to choose between them, I normally pick the fighter or the cleric. To me they are the most balanced and are very good for people that have never played and they are even good for the most experienced veterans as well.

These are the men you will get to choose from and to be honest, they all look like they are ready to kill everything in their paths.

As soon as you pick your character you are thrust into the action and have to traverse through 16 different levels on your quest. You will travel across the countryside, go into caves, go on a viking ship and a lot of other locations as well. The controls for this game are broken down to two buttons, one to attack and the other to jump. If you push the two together you will use your magical ability the only downside to this is the fact that when used you will actually lose health, and if you are a character like the fighter who’s magic is not up to snuff then there really is no point in even using it. If you have a character that has a shield you can hit back on the joystick at the perfect time to deflect certain attacks and that is very important unless you want to keep pumping quarters into the machine, or having to reset your SNES cartridge. The game-play is classic in the sense that you can tell the game is from the early 90′s but in no way am I knocking it for that reason. It is actually alot of fun and quite addicting from the first time you slash, shoot an arrow, or whatever your character does to destroy your enemies. I will be honest a lot of the stages are short, but the ones that are not can actually be quite brutal on the ass kicking. Mind you, in this game you will go up against, minotaurs, werewolves, mummies, wraiths, dragons, wizards, lizard-men, giant spiders, and a lot more in the game. Each of the bosses are hard with the exception of the wraith who can be very easy if you get the timing down just right. If you have the manhood to make it all the way to the final boss you will be in one hell of a fight for your life. You have to fight Gildess and I shit you not he takes up about 75% of the screen when he is on it. His attacks are that he can grab you, spit fireballs, and just engulf you in flame. The biggest challenge is that he is so damn big it is so easy to think your about to ruin his world only to have him turn you into a human bonfire.

This is one of the bosses, and yes hes a gray dragon mixed with a knight which is one of the most bad-ass things ever invented. Sadly I cannot find a picture of the final boss Gildess, which is why I have found a video to show him instead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaiSekPniRs&feature=PlayList&p=E814C727A6FAFBDD&index=15

The music to this game is very important because I really think that Capcom nailed it perfectly. They took older sound effects, and mixed them with different music and made it unbelievable. The one piece of music that sticks out is when you get to fight the final boss Gildess, it honestly is one of the most epic pieces of music I have ever heard when it comes to fighting a boss.

Is there any reason that Capcom threw mummies into this game? Probably for the same reason there is a ninja in Quiz and Dragons.

To this day I will play this game and be remembered about the first time I showed a good friend of mine how awesome it is as we were drinking Kettle One Vodka. Each time that we get the opportunity to, we will still play this game to this day because it truly is one of the best games that Capcom has ever made, its just a shame that a lot of the good things they have made always get slept on. I can compare them to the music industry actually, most of what is awesome is overshadowed by all the things that people remember them being famous for. If you ever get the chance to play this on MAME or SNES you really need to do it, this game has a high ranking on the Martyr seal of approval. The only problem is that the SNES is inferior to the MAME by far in my opinion, hell you can’t even play with three people on the SNES like you could in the arcade which to me is a huge damn shame. I really wish that more games like this existed, but Capcom did make two Dungeon and Dragons arcade games which from what I have seen are kinda similar so eventually I will get to them but until them please find a way to play this game, and if you don’t like it you can send your mail to me and I will refuse to read it due to an invalid argument on your behalf.

Mame Rom File:

kodu

“Why don’t we take Dragons and mix them with the one thing that makes absolutely no sense…trivia!”

Now to the game. The far away land known as “Capconia” has been peaceful and happy for years thanks to what is known as a knowledge tree. One day A demon named “Gordian” takes a seed from the tree and plants one of his own and then spreads the seeds to these big dragons, and whoever cannot answer the questions right will be eaten alive by them. So “The King” decides to roam the countryside and find four warriors to fight for him and destroy “Gordian”and the other knowledge tree, if you are to succeed the peaceful land of “Capconia” will be happy once again. Right as you put your quarter in the game you get to choose from four characters which are as follows. “The Wizard”, “The Fighter”, “The Amazon”, and “The Ninja”….wait “The Ninja”? Seriously, I mean do not get me wrong ninjas are so awesome that I am not mad they are included…I am just very confused as to how he can fit with the rest of our heroes, nevertheless he is in the game and is pretty sweet. Why the hell could they not add “The Pirate” to the mix to make this game even more over the top? Sometimes Capcom, I just don’t know about you. 

Back to the topic at hand just go pick your character and then you must traverse through a wide landscape. When the game map loads up, it rolls a 6-sided die and lets you move how ever many spaces have come up. Once you have stopped moving, you will then have to go up against a random dragon, beast, skeleton, werewolf, or anything else that it shows you that you have to fight and then you must defeat it by answering a certain amount of trivia questions right. If you go up against a Wyvern and it has a 6 in the corner, well you must get 6 questions right before it is dead. During the levels you can land on an “Inn” space in which you must answer a question right to get to stay the night and refill your health, or you can land on a elf space, in which if you get it right you get a secret item. The items you get could be instant health, your choice of category, or the ability to even have the correct answer flash at you so you dont get any wrong. At the end of each level there is one boss that you must beat which normally takes more health to kill than the other things you come across, and all the bosses are dragons for the most part until you get to Gordian. In the final level, you will fight each dragon you have faced before, and then you will fight Gordian who kinda looks like a more ruggedly handsome version of Satan. Each character you choose from has 6 misses until it is killed, then you must enter another quarter and keep playing from where you left off. You also must answer the question in a reasonable amount of time otherwise you will have a piece of your life taken away. You will go through different places and can actually choose different paths depending on where you want to go, you can even choose different paths in the middle of a level if it gives you the option.

How fucking sweet could one enemy be. He just told you that the only path you can choose is death, and he calls you stupid as well. Good luck with that you old ass Wizard.

Let me break the characters down, I mean obviously they would not just have you choose from four different people without giving you some sort of benefit with all of them right? “The Fighter” is the person who recovers his health back the fastest when he is low, and somehow him being a fighter does not make him the strongest of the group which to me is kinda odd, I mean he carries around a sword and looks like he could kick the shit out of Conan the Barbarian. “The Amazon” is pretty effective, because her power is the ability to only have two or three answers to choose from compared to the regular four, and when you play on higher difficulties this is very effective when you have no idea who the hell won the Oscar back in 1934. “The Ninja” is the strongest because if he gets his question right he has a high chance of doing two hits of damage which is perfect for the later bosses that actually take about nine hits to die. Finally we come to my favorite which is “The Wizard” who can actually get to choose the category  that he wants to answer questions from, this is also good for certain people, for me I normally pick sports trivia and completely dominate it.

Referring back to a previous statement, “The Fighter” could kick the shit out of Conan. I also learned that ninjas actually fought will o’ wisps and mummies which I did not know existed in feudal Japan

The music for the game is completely classic Capcom. Honestly all the music seems like it flows perfectly with the game, and it is all actually pretty damn complicated, there is alot of different sounds coming out most of the time, but that’s not a bad thing at all. When it comes to the games control…well its a trivia game with 4 buttons and no joystick, unless you mod the cabinet which would not be that difficult to do. As for the game play the biggest setback is the fact that the trivia can be outdated, I mean we are dealing with a game that has questions about “Who has the all time home run lead in Major League Baseball?” or “What is the highest grossing movie ever made?” with the answers being from a time where I was roughly 5 years of age. If your younger than me and play it is even more ridiculous unless you are a badass and know a bunch of useless shit. What is good though, is that in 2006 they released this game on a compilation disk with other games that Capcom had made for the arcade, and they even have a mode where they redid it. They made it all trivia about Capcom games, and it is actually alot of fun, and a shit ton easier if you have “The Wizard” like I use. You can choose from different types of games, but all I did was choose Final Fight games and just keep pounding the questions away really easily. Unless you run a Mame program just fork out the few bucks it will cost to go and get the disk for a PS2 or even the X-box, I just wish that Capcom had the ability to make this game a download with updated trivia.

This game is by no means perfect, but it is as good as a trivia game could be given the fact that it did come out in 1992. The great thing is that you are actually likely to see this in any serious arcade because of the cult following it has achieved and apparently it is kinda easy to find them which means I am sure that asshole Billy Mitchell has played it a few times in his day.

“I am Billy Mitchell and I am a complete and total dick-face.”

This poster kicks so much ass it instills fear into the hearts of mere mortals…and pussified wizards everywhere.

The story is as simple as possible, basically Arthur pulls out his sword Excalibur out of a rock, which makes him destined to take over as the King of England, so the magician Merlin makes him get two of his most trusted knights to go through killing everything in sight to eventually battle and take King Garibaldi down once and for all.

For the sake of this game I shall provide back-story to these characters too: Arthur being the main fucking man and all does not need any anything else said about him at this particular time. Which leads me to Percival who is the son of a blacksmith, and bigger than the other two selectable characters, and he also does the manliest thing possible for the time….he chooses not to fight with sword…but with a big ass battle axe that would make Gillus Thunderhead jealous. Finally there is Lancelot who has been traveling around all the countrysides trying to find a King that deserves his service…and he meets Arthur…and so let the bloodshed begin.

Like I stated previously, there is the sword in the stone let the bloodshed begin.

Alright this is a classic, beat-em-up and hack and slash with RPG leveling up added to the mix. Your character will obviously start at the level of 1 but you can max him out at 16 and even then that’s a damn hard task to pull off but it is very possible, and you do it by gaining EXP by killing things, collecting gold, and even eating food. Just like every other beat em’ up, each character has their ups and downs when it comes to speed, defense, and strength. You have Arthur who is the middle man of the group, he is level on everything and is the character I always choose to use because, 1:Anyone can dominate with him, because he is the perfect blend of speed, power, and defense. 2: He has a very good variety of attacks that can knock enemies down rather fast. 3: He is King Arthur…he owned the round table….he killed dragons, he is fucking sweet. Then you have Lancelot who is faster than Jesse Owens in his prime, but is pretty weak which can be a problem because it takes several more strikes with him than any other character to take down even the simplest of enemies. Third we have good old Percival, he is the strongest of the group but is slower than The Hulk, running through a puddle of molasses.

There are all three of our valiant warriors destroying everysingle body in the history of Olde England

Now I must admit that a lot of people have never played this game and that’s is a sad sad statement, because this game is easily in my top 10 beat em’ ups ever, hell its possibly good enough to even crack the top 10 of my favorite Capcom games of all time as well. The control to this game is perfect, you attack with a button and jump with a button…pretty standard and classic, and if you want you can proform a desperation move by hitting both at the same time which will knock any normal enemy and most bosses on their sorry asses as soon as it hits. Say you come across a chest and decide to break it open, you will either see food or gold….which you can then hit again to split it up into small portions so you are not such a selfish asshole while you play with your friends. If you are good enough you can actually hit back on the joystick as soon as your getting hit to completely block out, and cancel the hit the CPU tried to destroy you with and this even works on some boss attacks which is very good because without it you will be pumping money into this game constantly.

When it comes to the music, it is perfect as well. I mean honestly every single song from the very beginning select screen to the final credits just fits with what you would picture knights destroying the countryside to sound like. If the music sounded any different it would have taken this game down quite a few pegs in my mind, with a game of this magnitude you have to have music to match, and thank God Capcom always delivers on that aspect. The animation for this game is perfect, they hand drew every single sprite which is phenomenal, you honestly believe what you see would be what it looked like if you were able to time travel back to these times…although I don’t think people would look like cartoons.

Arthur at level 1, will stick fuck Scorn’s world up like there is no tomorrow.

The game has only 7 levels, but you have so many enemies (albeit most of them generic and pretty easy to kill) and magnanimous bosses that if you were to play this in the arcade, you will be pushing quarter after quarter into it.  Honestly the boss for the 5th level Bulbars, is probably the hardest and has the best music in the game. He is like 10 feet tall, wears a metal breast plate with a skull on it, and carries a hammer that is basically a fucking anvil on a pole, and all he does is just slam it on the ground destroying your hopes and dreams. If you were to play this game in one sitting I’m going to say probably about 2 hours to 2 1/2 hours to beat it which honestly is not too bad for a beat em’ up. This game was eventually ported to the SNES and I have not played it but it seems from what I have seen that the SNES version is pretty good the only bad thing is that you cannot play with 3 players all at once, and to top that off the music somehow gets completely mangled which is surprising given the fact that its on the SNES which normally means that the music will be pretty damn close to the arcade counterpart.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urbhp7u231s

Sadly I cannot find the Arcade version of the song, so I provide you with the SNES to prove to you how much a song that I actually like can sound like someone played it on a fucking keyboard from 1985.

Nevertheless, I would love to say that you would be able to find this in the arcade…but I guarantee that it is damn near impossible to find it anywhere, and if you do you have to play it you will not be dissapointed.

Ok, that title is a little misleading… but I knew it would catch your eyes. Ya sick fucks, ya! You think we didn’t notice the hits we get from people who type “japanese rape game” into a search engine? You sick fucks. But, hey,  you come to our site so… NO, I’m not covering a “JAPANESE RAPE GAME”, why would think I’d be doing a post on a “JAPANESE RAPE GAME”? That’s crazy!
However, I almost did a review on “Golden Axe” while thinking about “Legendary Axe.” Thus, I said fuck it and decided to review both.

Legendary Axe

What’s that? You say you want a clone of “Castlevania” and the like? But you want a fun one with good music? That’s a tall order, but I think I can help you out. There’s a catch… you have to have a TurbroGrafx 16. There’s a tall order to match your tall order!
“Legendary Axe” is the name of the game! Like I said, it’s very similar to the “Castlevania” format. So you can probably tell, assuming you like “Castlevania”, you’re going to have some fun.

One of the pluses of this hidden gem is the attack system. Chiggity check it!
Throughout the game, you’ll find … I don’t know…. medallions? These aren’t medallions you’ll find in granny’s trunk of ancient artifacts. Every time you nab one, a meter fills up at the top of the screen. The more it fills, the more powerfully you swing the axe and crack an orc in the teeth.

(as you can see, whoever is playing here is in good standing)

The music is pretty sick. Which is a pretty good thing considering you’ll be listening to the assorted tracks a LOT. Because of a slight detail I forgot to mention… this game is a tricky. I’m talkin’ tricky tricky, and not like the Lou Bega’s final single in America. I’m talking the kind where you have to play, and play, and play until you figure out the numerous mischevious curtails.

(be sure to watch out for killer moths!)

Prang and I played this game a good bit before anger got the best of us.  This game doesn’t play fair, but the challenge to beat it under those circumstances is like a drug. At one poin’t you have to battle a bunch of giant, floating eyeballs. As if the battle weren’t insane enough, there’s a good chance you’ll fall into “Father Time’s Corner.” This is a place you don’t want to be, but sometimes that’s the only way to survive. These eyeballs will float around the side of the screen you’re on and CONTINUOUSLY ATTACK YOU. When one goes away, another comes at you, and so on and so forth. And you have to crouch in the fucking corner until these incessant iris carriers relent. Which could take minutes! That doesn’t sound like a lot until you’re there… then you know why I refer to it as “Father Time’s Corner”… ‘cause you could very well be there forever if the game deems you that much of a threat. I doubt it is actually programmed to do that, but “Legendary Axe” is shady so I wouldn’t be surprised if some sort of black magic is involved.

However, despite the odds being against you there is hope. It just involves a lot of grinding and figuring out exactly where enemies are coming at you from

Golden Axe

A classic arcade sidescroller for the arcade &  Sega System 16, “Golden Axe” takes you on a sideways journey. Now to give fair warning, some of these are screen shots from other “Golden Axe” games. But they’re all, for the most part, the same game. So they’re just examples… plus they were all I could find. Three Medieval-style characters to choose from:

Gilius Thunderhead

And dwarf rockin’ a double-headed axe. My personal favorite.

Ax Battler

Oddly enough, he lacks an axe. Rather, he wields a broadsword.

Tyris Flare

An amazonian chick with a long-sword.

Oh yeah, check out that pixely goodness, ya sick fucks! HA!

For reasons not interesting enough to go into, these heroes three are heading to the castle of Death Adder (great name, I know) to save the King of Yuria and his daughter. Throughout the game you’ll learn to utilize techniques such as the running shoulder ram, the falling slash attack, and spells fueled by blue potions. You’re attacked by Death Adder’s henchmen, some of which ride fun creatures you can hop on and increase your chances of attack… depending on the situation you find yourself in. Make sure you knock enemies far away from a beast when attempting to mount, or they’ll knock you right off and hop back on. If you take this precaution you’ll be rewarded with a mythical creature that can either belch/vomit fire or trip enemies with it’s tail! What fun!

Be weary, for when you go to sleep…
GNOMES WILL STEAL YOUR POTIONS!
OHNOOOOOOO!

The good news is you can get the back by knocking the snot out of dwarves. Gnomes clothed in blue hold potions, green carry food to restore your life.

The key to getting through this game is to know the measure of the somewhat limited moving capabilities. Also making proper use of potions will get you further on the path to Death Adder. Once you get there, you’re on your own. I haven’t made it that far yet. And probably won’t for some time because other games take priority.

Well, I hope you enjoyed this double axe-tion action!

And for your patience, you’ll be rewarded with more girls kissing each other.

YAAAAAAAAY )

Don’t say I never did anything for you!

HAPPY VD!

Yep! Here it is… now, before you give this podcast a listen, there is something you gotta know first. We knew, going into this week, that our recordings were going to be immature, childish, dirty-humored, terrible examples of culture, but they were going to be funny. This podcast, and the next minicast we release are all about being funny, hilarious, highly-offensive laugh-fests. If you don’t want to be offended or laugh histerically, skip these. Come back for next week’s shows. I enjoyed these podcasts, and I hope you do as well.

Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast: Episode 023 – SEX

All right! Here’s a treat, an entire minicast dedicated to the Xbox Live Arcade game Braid. I know, I know.. everyone is talking about Braid, but they have reason!! Its an amazing leap in gaming!! I highly suggest checking this one out, its worth every penny of it’s $15 (USD) price point. For more info: Check the minicast.

MiniCast 002 – Braid