3/10/2009 - D-Pad Hero

Except for the "controller" and the CD-quality music, there's nothing about Guitar Hero's gameplay that prevents it from being a game that could be played on retro systems like the NES. It's just a rhythm-based game that tests how well you can follow the button presses and strumming directions on the screen. This fact is not lost on modders who can make custom games that can run on NES emulators and potentially on the console itself. And thus the game "D-Pad Hero" was born, and it actually looks hard:



I mean, it seems difficult to me to separate the directional nature of the left-B button and the right-A button from the directions you have to press on the D-Pad. Even trying to follow the motions in my head is giving me a headache.

Every NES Game Ever Made! Screenshots!

Not much to comment on for this video... the title pretty much says it all.

1/5/2008 - NES BttF game's music is from the movie

If you've seen the Angry Video Game Nerd's review of Back to the Future for the Nintendo Entertainment System, you'll have heard him complain about the horrendous music in the game and how it doesn't sound like anything in the movie. Well, this video actually proves him wrong:



Wow, this was a revelation to me and to a lot of other gamers, I'm sure. To think that the absolutely vile cacophony from the game was actually "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News, only SPED UP... that alone tells you that the programmers for this game did not know the movie at all. Also, the fact that somebody recognized it and took the time to speed down the music to match the original soundtrack... well, it just shows that old games, even bad ones, never truly die.

12/6/2007 - Battletoads Wind Tunnel

A lot of video games these days are what I call rental games... meaning that they are so short that they are only good for a rental. A lot of times this is because they've dumbed down the games in terms of difficulty in order to attract a broader audience. That may be fine, but that makes those kind of games unworthy of spending $60, high-production values or not.

Back in the day (I can't believe I'm using that phrase), games were harder. A lot harder. If you went back and played the original Super Mario Bros. right now, you'd probably be surprised at how hard it is because the controls aren't as tight as they are now and the platforming is less forgivable than the newer Mario games. I've already mentioned Contra which was so difficult, they had to put in a 30-man code.

Probably the best example of this phenomenon was the game Battletoads. This game came at the end of the NES life cycle and the title characters were probably created as a response to the tremendous popularity of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This game employed a great variety of gameplay. In fact, it put itself in pretty much every genre: beat-em-up, shoot-em-up, platforming, and vehicle play. The game wasn't very long with less than 20 stages, but it was hard. My God, was it hard.

Like Contra, though, it wasn't really cheap in its difficulty. The controls were pretty tight and you had a generous health bar for your Toad. Still, this game is a true test for your reflexes... particularly in the vehicle stages. Take this video for example. It's of the FIRST vehicle stage in the game and don't let this run-through fool you. It may look difficult already, but nothing would prepare you for actually playing it yourself. I remember my cousins and myself trying to complete this stage and I think it took the entire night into the next day. We would get further and further each time we played only to get our butts kicked after the checkpoint. And there was NO WAY we could ever accomplish what this video shows: completing it without dying once.



Again, I have to remind you that this is the first vehicle stage. The other ones were even harder than this. If you could complete this game without a Game Genie, you were a true hardcore gamer, and I would bow to you.

11/6/2007 - Street Blaster V Turbo 20

We saw what happened when Double Dragon was ported over to the Atari 2600. Despite its, um, primitive nature, it still looked playable and somewhat faithful to its source material. Now what happens when you try to go from a 32-bit game to an 8-bit system? And not just any 32-bit game... it's Street Fighter II, baby. To my knowledge, the only official 8-bit port of Street Fighter II by Capcom is the one for the original Game Boy. The rest, including this little gem, are pirated games.



Let's try to review this, AVGN-style (without the swear-words, of course). First of all, what's with the name change? Street Blaster V Turbo 20? I know they were trying to avoid lawsuits by Capcom, but how did they come up with "Street Blaster"? Is there a construction worker character in the game that blasts streets or something? And is this the fifth Street Blaster game, or the 20th? Or it could be a cumulative title, making it the 20th version of Street Blaster V Turbo, which itself is the faster version of Street Blaster V, which is the fifth version of Street Blaster, making it the overall 26th version of Street Blaster (unless there were Championship Editions in between).

Now look at the character select screen:

I can recognize the first 10 fighters... they look like most of the Street Fighter gang. But what about the next 10? Is that Evil Ryu? Is Blanka in a hockey mask? These look like the Bizarro versions of the Street Fighter characters? Why was this even necessary? I mean, in the original Street Fighter II, you could only choose from eight World Warriors. It's like the makers of this piece of junk were trying to give you a bonus by allowing you to choose alternate versions of the characters.

Then, when Guile and Chun-Li are chosen, the VS screen shows Blanka and Dhalsim. What the heck happened? Did they not even test this game before releasing it? Then we get to the game. Okay, it looks decent enough. But why is Chun-Li just doing her Spinning Bird Kick? All Guile has to do is Sonic Booms and she's down for the count. Speaking of which, why does her body bounce three times when falling to the ground? Boy does that get annoying fast.

So after Guile wins, Blanka says "Ha Ha, Nice Fight, Go Next Fight!" It may not be as bad as "All Your Base Belong to Us", but it's close. Then you have a Guile vs. Zangief screen, where it's Blanka instead of Guile again, and Zangief is having some kind of complexion problem:

Now that's just disturbing.

After the Guile/Zangief fight, the next opponent is Ryu, but the VS. screen shows E. Honda. Whatever. The thing is, the music for Ryu's stage is E. Honda's music as well. Oh well, they're both from Japan. After Ryu is Chun-Li again? Oh wait, it's the Bizarro Chun-Li, and the name on the HUD says Maki. Oh boy is this game crap, or what?

I do have to say that after looking at this game, I think that Capcom could have made an NES port of Street Fighter II and it probably would have been decent. I mean, the NES was certainly capable of displaying the fighter sprites in a recognizable way, and it had enough horsepower to emulate the fighting gameplay engine to a degree. Surely, if they could churn out mediocre Mega Man sequels at the end of the NES's lifecycle, they could have made room for a guaranteed success of a SF2 translation. And they could have save the rest of the world from this awful piece of garbage.

8/20/2007 - iPhone NES Emulator

In his keynote presentation introducing the iPhone, Steve Jobs said that the "killer app" of the iPhone is making calls. Well, I think there's a new killer app out there... some hacker out there took it upon himself (and I'm pretty sure it's a "him") to install a program that will emulate a Nintendo Entertainment System on the iPhone complete with a virtual NES controller! This is something Apple themselves should have done... the iPhone would be a great platform as a gaming machine and while it wouldn't rival the GameBoy, I think that it would entice even more people to buy the device. Portable gaming machines themselves cost well over $100, so if Apple could make the iPhone a gaming device, then it would somewhat justify the $500-$600 price point. Here's some video of the NES Emulator on the iPhone... it may be a little slow, but it's only Version 1...

6/1/2007 - Double Dragon 2 - FLASH Parody

The first sequels in long running franchises all have some unique quality that make them supremely awesome, or make them the black sheep in the family. Examples of the latter are Zelda II: The Adventure of Link and Castlevania II: Simon's Quest. They may have their fans, but I'm sure very few would classify them as the best games in their respective series. More often or not, though, the second game of a series is the gem that people will continue playing and become a classic.

The best example on record would have to be Mega Man II. For me, that game just had the right amount of difficulty for someone to pick up and play over and over and have a satisfying experience each time. What made the first game unique was, of course, the ability to make each boss' weapon your own after you defeat them, and that certain bosses were weak against certain weapons. The problem was that you didn't have a save or password feature... you would have to play through an entire game to figure out what the best sequence was. With Mega Man II's password feature, you could carefully map out the stage order and backtrack if necessary to perfect your overall sequence. Also, the game just had this magical quality to it that no other Mega Man game has, and it had the best soundtrack of any 8-bit game out there.

"Part II"-fighting games also belong in the awesome list. Everybody knows what a quantum leap Street Fighter II is over the original, and the same goes for Mortal Kombat II. Like Mega Man II, I would have to say that Mortal Kombat II is the best Mortal Kombat of the series. I think even the creators of the series would agree since they made the entire Shaolin Monks game based on the storyline and universe of Mortal Kombat II. The characters in that game just seem so much more iconic, and it didn't have the overkill complexity the later games had.

That brings us to Double Dragon 2 for the NES. The original Double Dragon for the NES was a rather unique port of the very popular arcade game. It tacked on an experience-building system so that the more enemies you beat, the higher the experience you have, and fighting moves would be unlocked. To me it seemed unnecessary, but I guess the developers thought the game would be too easy if you had all the moves from the beginning. That didn't really make sense though, because the original arcade game didn't have this experience-building system and it was still a quarter muncher. What was really bad about the first NES game, though, was the lack of a two-player mode for the main game! I mean, it's called Double Dragon! One of the pioneering innovations of the arcade game was the ability to play cooperatively in a beat-em-up fashion. To take that away for the NES port was a letdown to say the least. Thank goodness they fixed that for Double Dragon 2.

I think the only true way to enjoy Double Dragon 2 for the NES is to play with a buddy. It's not that there are any fighting moves that you can cooperatively pull off in the game, or that there is some huge advantage to having an extra player (to the contrary, some parts are actually easier if there's only one player on the screen). No, it's just the experience that you have collectively in this game. Like Mega Man II, the controls are tighter, the music is better, the graphics are more vivid... and it had the same magical quality that I can't explain. Maybe this animated tribute can explain it better than I can:



Now that's some great sprite manipulation! It's also a great trip down memory lane for whoever played this classic with a buddy. Interestingly enough, some of the coop moves you see in this movie did make it to Double Dragon 3 for the NES, but that didn't save it from it's mediocrity. The Angry Video Game Nerd says all there is to say in his review.

5/12/2007 - Mario: Game Over

It's not an accident that 8-bit nostalgia is at a peak right now. Those who grew up on the gray-box classics are now in their late 20s to early 30s, like me. We now have the resources and know-how to pay proper tribute to that which we spent many hours of the day, every day. From video reviews, to hacked ROMs, to musical skits, it's all coming like a 60's revival, and I for one couldn't be happier.

Another prevalent genre is the comedy skit, and this is the best one I've seen yet. It features Mario trying to cope in the "real" world. I always wondered what was the deal with mushrooms making Mario "Super". Was there a hidden subtext that Miyamoto was trying to put it? Were all these evil reptiles just a hallucinogenic dream? This video may shed some light on the subject...

4/21/2007 - Fix My NES

Anybody who owns one of the classic NES consoles will see the next video and sympathize:



Trust me, we've all done it. It's a ritual. It's like the Konami Code. Or 007 373 5963. Is it because the NES itself is flimsy? No, mine still works and it was bought in 1985. Is it an inherent trait of a cartridge-based system? No, because the SNES didn't have this problem, and I've never seen anyone do this to any Gameboy system. My theory? We all just played the hell out of our NES's.

P.S.: I'm just glad installing RAM isn't this difficult.

4/18/2007 - EHS Winter Percussion, NES

If you are still a disbeliever of the retro trend, take a look at this video. It's a high-school percussion band playing the themes of some of the classics: Legend of Zelda, Double Dragon, and Super Mario Bros.

Sure, LoZ and SMB have had their remakes and emulations on the Wii and the GBA, but Double Dragon was perhaps in the second or third tier of those old NES games. If you want to play the NES version, you'd actually have to dust off the old system, or use an emulator.

It's debut was around 1988, around the time when these high-schoolers were still infants. So it's doubtful that they "grew up" playing Double Dragon. And yet, here it is, a central part of their presentation -- and the crowd recognizes it. How did they come about integrating the music of a good-but-not-great game in their collective minds? It's something that you'll hear me say again and again: RETRO IS IN!

Anyway, the kids here did a good job. Not just in their music interpretations, but their entire presentation. The costumes look really authentic and the enlarged covers of the 8-bit games are the icing on the cake!