Fun fact about “Sonic 4″: It will be episodic for the PS3, Xbox 360, and Wii.  The first episode will be this Summer.  So check out the article at Gamespot.

That’s right! We are officially back with our reunion episode! 72PC Podcast is officially back on the air. We’ll try the best we can to bring you the best video game reviews, opinions, news, and general banter on a semi-regular basis. Stay tuned to the website for all the great stuff. We’re working on a better way to bring you live podcasts, but for now, we’re going to focus on bringing you quality pre-recorded content. If you have any ideas, suggestions, or would like to see a certain topic, throw an email to fanmail@seventytwopinconnector.com.

Seventy Two Pin Connector Podcast – Episode 043 – Skibbity Fuck Poop Video Games

Go ahead and click for the show notes…

Feel The Magic Official Trailer:

Heavy Rain Trailer:

Wu Controller:

Poets of the Fall – Late Goodbye (Max Payne 2 Ending Song)

Big Daddy Daycare:

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.

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.

It’s kind of strange that the Game Gear failed where Game Boy succeeded.  While the Game Boy was a black and green portable NES, the Game Gear was a fully colored portable Genesis.  Sure it took several thousand batteries to run and weighed more than a lead brick, but… it was a lot more expensive than the Game Boy… but… the game’s pretty much all sucked…

You know what?!?  Sega tried!  They tried really hard!  And that’s gotta be worth something!… I guess…

So I found my old Game Gear and few games with it: Disney’s The Jungle Book, World Series Baseball, Deep Duck Trouble, and Sonic Triple Trouble.  None of these games are exactly classics.  And I really have never heard about a “good” game being released on the Game Gear, I’m not sure if there even are any.  But there has to be at least one gem out there, right?

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

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

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

As usual: Tonight at 9PM EST.

http://live.72pc.com

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

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