NES Game Reviews #51: I Can Remember When Hydlide Played Hoops With Hudson Hawk and some HOT SLOTS while a Hunt for Red October happened.

 

 

This set of games may not be the most well reviewed because well I really want to get past the Letter H. Even though the Letter I is not much better. These are all not very good games and most of them are not even going to be very fun to talk about but someone has to review all the NES games and doing it alphabetically has shown some things, some letters just didn't past the mustard. Or whatever that saying is. I don't care if I got it wrong PINKY you can just go play HYDLIDE. Ya jerk.

 

 

The god damned fucking Nintendo Entertainment System along with just about every other console on it had way way way to many fucking spoirts games on them. It's way too many games even if you like sports. Are you really going to spend extra money to play a different basketball game in 1991 when you have Double Dribble? No, you really shouldn't. I have seriously gone on record as being a human being who never ever got sports. Okay, I get playing them. You get exercise and get to do something with people whos company you enjoy. That makes perfect fucking sense to me. WATCHING sports, any sports on TV is just the most boring fucking thing in the history of the world to me. I do not and will not get it. I'd rather sit down and watch Mama's Family, Everybody Loves Raymond, Charles in Charge and Monster By Mistake than watch a single sports event. I don't even care what one. I just do not get it and never will. As for Hoops. it fucking sucks. How many more of these fucking sports games do I have to talk about?

 You see what I got to fucking work with when it comes to H games. I get the one nad only SLOT game for the NES. Yes slots were in other poker games but I don't remember playing them because you were playing the fun part of the game like poker or blackjack. Slots are literally the most boring way to gamble your money away and it does not get any less boring when it is brought to the NES. This is a pretty easy game to beat but it is also incredibly tedious.  Yes I have beaten it. Yes I am like Comic Book Guy from the Simpsons in that I have wasted my life. I can't even bring up the SAUCY AND DIRTY SECRET of the NES that most people don't know about. I mean most people as people my parents age or people who just grew out of Video games and didn't spend any amount of time trying ot beat Hot Slots. And no it wasn't to actually see the naked ladies, it was to have another game on my beaten list. I'm not that sad. I think the people who bought this game to get off are the second lowest wrung of perverts. The lowest group is clearly people who like Atari Porn. Anyway this game is not fun and sucks ass.

 I am one of the ten human beings to ever exist that enjoyed the motion picture Hudson Hawk. I think it's a fun lively movie. I mean I haven't seen it in like I dunno, twenty years? It's hard to remember when I saw it first. Anyway I don't care what you think of the movie this video game is worse than it by 1305249230490 percent. This is one of THE worst NES games ever. Your character controls so horribly. The graphics and sound are just thrown together rubbish. Some games made on the NES still look really damn good for what they had available to them. This is not one of them. Bruce Willis literally has a giant head for some damn reason. He's also very small. You have to deal with these AWFUL FUCKING CONTROLS while searching through THE SHITTIEST MAZES ON THE NES. You have to jump CAREFULLY or you will hit the alarm and make it impossible to get anywhere in. I somehow beat this game for the NES bounty and I think I took at least 15 years off my life by doing so. It's an awful game and I hate it. Never fucking playing Hudson Hawk, ever.

 Do you love slow moving games where everything is firing at you and you only get a limited amount of weapons to use while the enemies who are always shooting at you? You don't! Then you won't enjoy this fucking game. The sub moves so fucking slowly and you have to dodge bombs and random ass walls that are popping out of the ocean?! I don't know I saw the movie once and I didn't really like it. Yeah. I didn't like The Hunt for Red October. CRUCIFY ME YOU SHITS. The graphics are honestly fine enough and the music is droning horse shit. The NES had some of THE BEST video game music ever. I don't care what BORING ZOOMER JERKS who talk on youtube say about the NES being overrated. THE NES IS BETTER THAN THE N64 AND GAMECUBE ZOOMERS HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT THAT??? HOW DO YOU FUCKING FEEL ABOUT THAT? Oh where were I? oh yeah Music on the NES could reach the HEIGHTS of Video game music and then it could be just droning hard to listen to bullshit like in this game. Fuck The Hunt for Red October.

 I have some weird I dunno if I can call it nostaliga for it but it always reminds me of the final NES forum that actually had a sizable userbase. Back when the Internet was fun and not POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS melting like every fucking ones minds. It's amazing how politics have done that. Anyway I'm reminded of Play the NES because a Youtuber Game Reviewer Guy by the name of Armake21 (this is a nice way of saying AVGN ripoff #2940) would stick up for this game EVERY time it got mentioned. It was actually kind of amazing. If you wanted to say something to Armake21 you'd just have to talk about Hydlide. He would stick up for it by saying hte original game was very important for its time and not bad at all. I have never played the original Hydlide and I never will. Not because I hated Armake21 or anything but because I do not have 2830 years of life to get through all of the things I WANT to get through and not Hydlide on the Ultra CX-2 computer or whatever fucking computer it was originally made for. I don't know. I'm sure the original Hydlide was something different than the NES game however the NES game is terrible. You have to fiddle around in the most obnoxious ways to somehow beat a single enemy. The music is terrible. It's also one of those RPGs that if you care enough to beat you can probably beat it in like 35 minutes to an hour. That's pathetic for an RPG.  Hydlide was apparently made in 1984 and then redone for the Famicom in 1986 and in 1989 they ported it to the NES and holy shit this game was SO fucking dated by 1989. I don't even know if it was ever good and Armake BLESS HIS SOUL was just crazy nostalgic for it or something. I don't know and I don't care. Hydlide sucks and the letter H is over.

 I love one thing about this game and its how easy you could put a NES game out and make money. This game is a match game where you find the matching image under a number. This is not a full game but Game Tek put it out as one. Seriously all three Fisher Price games made into one game would seriously not be enough to classify as a game. Yet they were all sold as 3 games. It's amazing. Anyway this game is fucking boring because I'm not 5 fucking years old anymore. This is all I have to say about I Can Remember and if you want more you can go fuck yourself. Bitch.

GOOD GAMES: 136

BAD GAMES: 105

OKAY GAMES: 37

IMPATIENT GAMES WHATEVER WHO CARES?: 5

GAMES OVERALL:  283

NES Game Reviews #49: Hillsfar is Home Alone with Hook in Hogan's Alley while watching the Hollywood Squares

 

I kinda love this ad. It's all about the NES game with images from the NES game and someone at the end of the creation of the ad was like OH SHIT DAVE WE ALSO MADE A GAMEBOY VERSION (which I'm going to assume is probably like the NES game and probably worse) and they just jammed a small version of the gameboy game up there in the corner. It's weirdly hilarious to me. Anyway you know the drill, we are on the H's and uh most of these games are kinda shitty and I'm not really in love with having to discuss them so let's get another six of these out of the way and get to games that are more fun to discuss.

 I think this just might have been the last non-sports title I had never played before on the NES. That's something wild considering that I started getting back into NES games twenty eight years ago (wow I am now going to explode because I feel that old) in 1998. I don't believe I ever played this on emulation or owned it. I played it earlier today and none of it looked even a little bit familiar at all. I've played most NES games (the non-sports ones) enough times to go OH THERES THAT THING but not Hillsfar. Sadly Hillsfar is not a very good video game. I jumped over things with a horse and then got lost in a city. I guess you have to use keys to open doors as a thief. You can be other things and I guess the game changes but I just don't care. The amount of time and effort you have to pretty much put into any of these Dungeons and Dragons games to get anywhere is not worth it. I mean I could do it. I could find out how to work it all but I then realize I've somehow never beaten Adventure Island, Blaster Master or either Golgo 13 games and those are game I care about. This is just a very "Hi I exist" video game. I'm putting it in the bad game category but I can't even get mad about this game. Also by 1992 any video game company knew how to get the most out of the old NES except these guys. This still feels like a 1987 game. Dated, ugly and not very responsive to the controls. I did not enjoy my time with Hillsfar and wish just about any other game for the NES was the last non-sports game I ever played. Oh well, you can't win em all and you shouldn't cry over spilled milk.

 There's something really beautiful in simplicity done right. This game has no wild backstory, no insane adventure you go on, no lore. It's just a game where you play as a police officer and you shoot bad guys in Hogan's Alley. Is this Hulk Hogan's alley? BROTHER!!!! or did Hogan from Hogan's Heroes turn to a life of crime after getting out of that POW camp in World War 2? The world may never know. Hogan's Alley is a game where you just shoot criminal jerks.  You got the guy on the cover. A dude who looks like he would have annoyed Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon and a guy who looks like he JUST stopped using heroin and has been forced to stay up for like a week. They all have so much character which is why I can see them in my minds eye so clearly.  This might be a very simple game but it's the best game of the H's BY FAR. Anyway I hope portnoyd doesnt POOP in Hogan's Alley like a JERK.

 

Well GAMETEK actually got RARE to make this game for them. It's based on a pretty dull game show where famous C-List people of the 1970s would make saucy comments. Then Paul Lynde would say something incredibly gay and people were then surprised that he enjoyed the man love. It's wild. So you have to guess to see if the celebrity is right and if they are you get a circle or a x like in Tic Tac Toe. The most important part of this show is you know the celebrities. So what do you get in this game. You get a bunch of lame looking cartoony characters that look like NO celebrity I've ever seen and I know about too many of the bastards!! Sure you couldn't get actual celebrities because it would probably cost too much but couldn't you make some parody celebrities or something. I dunno. This doesn't seem like the most fun game show to watch and it isn't much fun to play. That's all I really gotta say about Hollywood Squares.

 When I first found out about this game in 1998 I damn near shit my pants. Somehow I missed out on the NES Home Alone games as a kid in 1990. and the SNES Home Alone games. and the Genesis Home Alone games and I kinda enjoyed playing it. Hell, I'm gonna be honest about one thing I still kinda enjoy playing this game. However I am going to be fair and honest by saying two things make this game not very good. First off, you have to wait 20 minutes. I think that is too long but to be completely fair it would have been fine if you could use any of these items you pick up more than twice. Two times and the item just disappears forever. That's not a good thing. The other thing is that you can go tripped up on things and cannot move. It's very annoying. Also the guys seem to go from really slow to really fast when they see you. I dunno if I like that. Anyway the funniest thing with this game is the first tim I ever beat it I got one of the bad guys stuck and they never ever got back up. I don't know how it happened but it did. That would not happen in a game made by Capcom or Konami or whatever. I still like the concept of this game. It feels very Home Alone. I still think this is probably the best Home Alone game I've played. I still have not played the Sega Genesis games but my god the sequel to this game and Home Alone on the SNES are so, so bad.

 

 

This may be a harsh, unpleasant opinion but the world needs to hear it: Everyone who worked on Home Alone 2, Swamp Thing or the Simpsons Bart games for the NES should have been drug out into the street and shot. Seriously you are handed three things that you could make video games out of if you were competent and cared. It's not like these were three concepts that would make you go HOW THE FUCK ARE WE GOING TO TURN THIS INTO A GAME?!? I mean even if it is a concept thats oiut there just be like FUCK IT WE'RE TURNING IT INTO A PLATFORMER. I'm a sucker for platformers but my god this is one of the worst on the NES. I fucking hate this game with all of my being. All of it. First off they turn TIM CURRY into some kind of weird ghoul and I just can't abide by that in any way man. First off the controls and how the character handle is so awkward. The second part is that you HAVE to get int to find goodies that you'll need to use later on in the game. Every single character is one you have to jump over or get hit by. They give you so little ammo for your guns its insane. The game is also very dull. You can do a lot with a simple platformer game. A LOT of games are platformers and they are creative and amazing and well thought out. This was just some thrown together horse shit. God I don't know how I beat this game because you have to do so many "jesus christ fuck you game" things. Blah. I'm tired of talking about this stupid shit game. Remember when Garfield's catchphrase in the animated specials were "so and so should be drug out into the street and shot" What a crazed little beast that cat was.

 This is a pretty bad game based on a pretty good movie. I know PORTNOYD is WRONG about it but Hook is a cool movie. Haters can vacate this area!! Except Portnoyd. He is still allowed to be here for some reason. Uh, Anyway this is a Ocean game and well it's probably one of their better games if I'm being fair. Still it's not very good. The biggest problem is that your little dinky ass knife does not seem to hurt any enemy. So yo upretty much have to avoid all the enemies. Also this game seems to really slow down at times. I guess it has too much shit going on at those points. It's neat to see the characters from the movie but this game isn't much fun. I mean if you collect NES games I'm sure you have nostaliga nad love for the SNES and there's no reason to play this game when you have the vastly superior SNES game, which was made by the people who made Skyblazer which is another cool SNES game. I should talk about those games instead of these mostly poop games. This was a bad set of games man and somehow the next set is even worse.

GOOD GAMES: 136

BAD GAMES: 99

OKAY GAMES/HAVENT AGED WELL: 37

GAMES IMPATIENT WHATEVER GO AWAY: 5

GAMES TOTAL:  277

TV You Forgot About #11: Uh-Oh (1997 - 2003)

 

I must start this review by restating my feelings on Game Shows. My feeling is that they are a thing that exist and I don't really care about them or think of them very much. Yes, like every child who was born between say 1965 and 1995 I watched The Price is Right with Bob Barker on sick days. It was that or some kiddie show made for pre-schoolers or a soap opera. You didn't get much choice on sick days. However it also kind of mattered what kind of sick days they were. On the sick days were you weren't actually sick and pretended to be to stay home, I'd just play Super Nintendo. On the days I actually was sick I would just sleep to try to get better. Honestly it was only a few select times that I watched Bob Barker but you saw him. Every damn child did. I could watch Jeopardy from time to time and when Who Wants to Be A Millionaire/The Weakest Link were popular I would watch them. Were they the last really super ultra holy shit popular game shows? The only one I can think of that came after them that got even close was Deal or No Deal. I just know that those two shows I would watch with my family and have a good time doing so. They have a special place in my nostalgic heart. Game Shows have their place on TV but they were never something I was ga-ga over.

They also made game shows for children. They probably did a bunch before Double Dare in the 1980s but you know that's when they became the most popular. Nickelodeon did a lot of them in the 1980s and 1990s. I do not think I saw any of them. I have no idea if they weren't shown up here in Canada or if I just didn't watch them and watched I dunno Sailor Moon or Gilligan's Island instead. I was amazed to find out that All That and The Amanda Show showed up here on Canadian TV. I couldn't watch everything people!! Before I get into the show of UH-OH I must go on what seems like a completely pointless and stupid tangent about sketch comedy. You know sketch comedy so I won't have to go into a complete history here. Stuff like Saturday Night Live or Kids in the Hall. They also had sketch comedy for kids. YTV had a good amount of it too. They had the classic You Can't Do That On Television which became a Canadian-American production when he went to Nickelodeon and was actually created by a British man. Three countries had to come together to bring the world something that beautiful. They had Squawk Box and later on System Crash. Squawk Box was hilarious to my younger self and I never watched System Crash. I will refrain from going to much into these shows because who knows I might talk about them in more detail on this blog.

 Which is what brings us to the TV show It's Alive. It's Alive ran for four seasons between 1994 and 1996. It's something I do not remember in the fucking slightest. Do you ever feel like you really should remember something, like a TV show or a movie but you just do not at all. Like I watched a TON of YTV. I mean I would take time to watch old ass 1960s sitcoms on TBS like The Beverly Hillbillies or Disney cartoons on Family Channel but I really seriously should remember something about this. I think it was because in the first season it was a hour and a half and the last half hour was just a random episode of either Are You Afraid of the Dark, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers or Captain Scarlet. Captain Scarlet was created by the Thunderbirds people and I think I just blocked everything related to this show out of my mind because knowing that YTV would waste an entire hour on that fucking horse shit every week would have driven me mad. I could have also forgotten about it because it's very forgettable. The one episode I watched had a prolonged soap opera sketch and then a game show parody. Then some joke about a rapper. It was all very pointless and unmemorable. I have to mention it becuase Uh-Oh was a sketch I think on this show. The game show they were doing in the show as Al House of Goo or some shit. I literally just finished watching this and can't remember the actual name. I don't know if Uh-Oh was also a sketch or if Al's House of Goo was made into Uh-Oh. I also don't really care. The next time I talk about It's Alive it will be of the cool movies from the 1970s/1980s about killer babies. Larry Cohen was a nutbar.

Anyway Uh-Oh was turned into a game show proper in 1997. The host of the show was Wink Yahoo, actual name Scott Yaphe. Scott was one of the sketch players in It's Alive.  You had three teams of two kids each. They would be asked questions and you could also go to a speed round to do challenges. Gross slime filled challenges. I would refer to this show as a Double Dare ripoff all the time. It's what got port interested into learning more about this show because Portnoyd wishes he could hug and kiss Marc Summers on the mouth twenty four seven. They would also go outside to do an outside challenge. I dunno if that happened all the time or what. I'm seriously only watching one episode of this show, not all 70 something damnit. The prizes for this episode were a snowboarding thing for first place, a hockey jersey (it's Canada bro) for second place and a Game shark for your N64 for third place. Not too shabby really. Oh and the girl in this episode Marie was from Newfoundland. I wonder if she still lives here. Anyway since I am also from Newfoundland I am for Marie to win it all! 

 This is a picture of THE PUNISHER. Yes, it's a man in a gimp suit. I had not seen this show in several decades and really only watched it when not a single other thing was on and I didn't feel like playing Super Nintendo because some game had pissed me off. I would joke about a guy in a gimp mask playing the Punisher in the last few decades thinking I was being hyperbolic about it, but no. That man gets smacked around by a woman or another man during uh you know the kinda stuff Gimps are into. I do not know anything about the Punisher's actual life except that he was the guy who would slime the kids when they got enough questions wrong or something. They were put into a little slime container place and just slimed. I'm still amazed I was correct in calling him a gimp. I didn't even see Pulp Fiction until I was like thirty! Anyway any time a kid hit UH OH on the spinning thingamgig their partner would be put into THE SLIME CHUTE and if they got a question wrong their partner got slimed. Do you think any kid totally got the question wrong because their partner pissed them off. I totally do because I totally would have if someone pissed me off. Also Marie totally has the Newf accent and it's hilarious. The outside events were a part of the slime tour and they had to do some gross shit like well find buffallo turds in hay. Well the turds were fake. I hope.

 Anyway the RED team won because of a TRADE and SPIN thing. I kinda hate that shit in game shows. Someone works to get 210 points and then the goobers who were in last place get to trade to win. Red Team was the goober team of the episode and they won just out of sheer luck. Oh well. I wonder what Marie is up to these days. I hope she's doing well and still enjoys Jiggs dinner from time to time.

FINAL THOUGHTS: I did have a little bit of fun re-watching this. No I won't be watching any more of it but it does make me want to talk about VIDEO ARCADE TOP TEN. Would you like me to talk about that portnoyd? I promise it's better than Thunderbirds. God damn I fucking hated Thunderbirds and still do. Creepy fuckin marionette bitches.

NES Game Reviews #48: Heavy Shreddin with the Harlem Globetrotters and Heroes of the Lance Vs. Hatris's Heavy Barrel

 

The H's are here. The H's are also probably the worst overall letter for NES games. I really don't know how to open this blog post. Most of these games are not going to get very good reviews from this reviewer at least. So I guess we really get to these six games.

 I am the last and I mean last person to review any sports game. Seriously the last person you should ask anything about sports. I am pretty sure I know Babe Ruth because of the Sandlot. I did not think the Harlem Globetrotters were even real for a good portion of my life. I thought they were made up for that one joke in the Simpsons. I didn't learn they were actually real until I found out about the Gilligan Island movies and was like oh that's cool. Seriously I do not know sports, the rules to sports or any of this stuff. I however can tell you that this is a very slow, boring and not fun basketball game. Sports games seem to be the most fun the faster they feel and this game is just a slow mess of shit covered in piss. The graphics are dull, the music is forgettable and there's a reason I don't think GameTek made any other games outside of the game show genre. I do not like basketball but I respect the Harlem Globetrotters. They were friends with Gilligan!!!!!

 The Russian Guy who Created Tetris is weird (I didn't want to misspell his name so he's now known as this forevermore) he's one of those guys who came out of the box swinging. That's not the saying I was looking for but it will do well enough. Seriously Tetris is a 10/10 video game masterpiece. Its one of the most iconic games ever made. It's like making Casablanca as your first movie or something. EVERYTHING you make after this will be judged very harshly after you come out with a masterpiece on your first go. Hatris is a fine game. It's very enjoyable and fun and I enjoy matching up the hats. It's biggest problem is that it's Big Brother Tetris is you know FUCKING TETRIS. I am also pretty good at Tetris and not so good at Hatris. I'm glad The Russian Guy Who Created Tetris made games that weren't Tetris as they are honestly still pretty good games it's just you kinda shot yourself in the foot by putting out your MASTERPIECE first. Still this will probably be the only game I give a GOOD rating too.

 Heavy Barrel is a game I beat for the NES BOUNTY. For anyone who somehow finds this post the NES Bounty was a thing THE NES SCENE crew did in like 2020 to like 2023 on Discord where we tried to beat as many NES games as we could. Six random games would get put up and I turned into the most insane crackhead because of this. I did beat a lot of games for it, actually I think I beat the most games for it. We got to like 540 or so games. It was nuts. Heavy Barrel is one of the NES games I played to completion for it. It was a game I played from time to time to try and beat it and finally did for the NES BOUNTY. It is a very okay game that I think could have been better if they did two things. Give your guy a life bar and make him just a tad faster. You get limited continues and damnit they should just give you unlimited continues for this old hard ass NES games.  You get a bunch of different levels and places to go. Different kind of enemies and a few different kinds of ammo to shoot. It's a simple game with simple graphics and music I do not remember at all. It's a very OKAY game that could have been pretty great with some fixes. Still yeah let's go.

 This is one of like three skiing/snowboarding games on the NES. You have Ski or Die and Slalom. I wanted to save my feelings on those games until I get to them but I will say this. This is the worst of the three. Somehow the graphics and music and controls are WAY worse than those other two. This game is just kind of slow too. It's also weirdly addictive. I don't know why either because it's sluggish and ugly and not much fun. But whenever I turn this game on. I'm always trying to get farther in it. I'm gonna put it in the BAD pile despite that because I don't like playing it all that much. Oh well.

 

Oh hey it's Dungeons and Dragons. We are back talking about FCI and some really awful NES games. I don't know anything about Dungeons and Dragons except that I enjoyed watching the 1980s cartoon series. That's it. You make up a game and play it with a Dungeon Master which sounds like a weird sexual thing. Like something involving those BDSM guys. Smacking and hitting each other. DURING THE SEXY TIMES. It takes different strokes to move the world guys. Alan Thicke even told us. Whatever happened to Robin Thicke and everyone getting angry about his song. Remember that? I like getting angry over pointless things. Oh wait no I don't. Anyway this is the worst of the NES Dungeons and Dragons games. You get a bunch of characters and they are all useless as fuck. Fighting enemies is the shittiest thing in the world and you really should just try to avoid them whenever you can. That's not good for a you know VIDEO GAME. The other problem is the really really really dull looking backgrounds in this maze game. Everything looks so fucking similar that you have to really pay attention or just use a fucking video guide because it's 2026. Once you know what to do this really shitty game only takes 15-20 minutes to beat. Portnoyd beat it for the NES Bounty and I don't know how he did it. I think everyone (except Strx and Ratix who had like 30) had one "fucking what" game we beat. My game was the Terminator. Holy shit do I have things to say about that game when we get to it. Jesus fuck. Anyway Heroes of the Lance sucks and I feel bad for anyone who liked Dungeons and Dragons because you were considered to be in league with Satan by weirdos with too much free time or you had to play this to get your fix. It's like living within a world of shit. Sad.

 This is a pretty alright pinball game for the NES. Done by Rare based on a Williams pinball game. I watched my mom play some pinball game once. I think it was some movie game. She was pretty good I thought. I don't think she'd be able to do it now. I don't know why I brought this up. This game is as I said fine but it's like Heavy Shreddin. You have a lot of other better Pinball options on the NES. My personal favorite was also made by Rare and is called Pinbot. Pinbot is a better game than this one in EVERY way. Hell I like Pinball the black box game more than this. There's not much to say about this pinball game really and I now have to wait for portnoyd to yell at Rare because he's too much of a SALTY WIMP to beat Battle Toads. It's been several decades now portnoyd, give it up!

 

GOOD GAMES: 135

BAD GAMES: 95

OKAY GAMES/HAVENT AGED WELL: 37

GAMES IMPATIENT WHATEVER: 5 

NES Game Reviews #47: The G's are Done, No I don't feel like making up some dumb title like GYRUSS LOVES GUNSMOKE IN THE GURREILLA WAR WHILE GYROMITE AND GUMSHOE WATCH IN GUN NAC'S GARDEN.

 

Look at this. Look at this wild Japanese beauty. I think it's some kind of ad for the game. I don't know. It should be put up in better visual quality! Anyway somebody owns this BEAUTIFUL THING and I am very jealous. Anyway yes, we are back to reviewing NES GAMES because well I feel like it and it's my blog. That's pretty much the only reason. I do want to be the ONE MAN COOL ENOUGH to POORLY REVIEW EVERY NES GAME and I'm gonna do it. You will all see a review for every NES game ever! Now here are the last 6 remaining G games. It's a pretty good group of games honestly.

 Let's start it out with a STORY! I remember this game was one of the MANY games that you would see all over the place back in the late 90s/early 00s and into the 00s also. Seriously go to a used video game store BLAM Guerrilla War. Go to a thrift shop BLAM guerrilla war. Go to the flea market BLAM Guerrilla War all at the simple low price of $5. That was the standard really for NES games in Newfoundland. You sons of bitches with your Funcolands where you go in and buy 340 games for $25 WASNT gonna happen here! Anyway I think someone on some message forum said this was a great game so I picked it up and was honestly kind of disappointed when I beat it on the first go. I think I even got into an argument with that person. However before I reviewed this game on 20 or so year old memories I was like LET'S SEE IF I STILL FEEL THE SAME WAY and started up a emulator and played the game through and yes this is a very, very, very easy game. However it's still pretty fun. I guess I'm just getting old and a simple fun game to play is more my speed now. This game is also hilarious as it's about CHE GUEVERA and FIDEL CASTRO and that's hilarious to me. The game has some great music. The graphics and some of the things the game does are really neat. There's two really big guys that you can't actually fight, they just pick you up and throw you around and the effect is actually pretty well done for the ol' NES. It's a fun little game that's worth playing. I dunno what else to say about that.

 I forgot about this games existance. It is a Zapper game from the ORIGINAL BLACK BOX games that dorks jizz and piss their pants all over. I will never understand the OMG ORIGINAL HANG TAB!!!!!! shit they piss shit out of their asses about. How about caring about the quality of the fucking game and not how much money you'll make because of some STUPID PIECE OF SHIT IDIOT WANTING THE ORIGINAL HANG TAB!!!!!!!!!!!! I forgot about this game because thinking about it makes me angry. Not only for the HANG TAB SHIT but because this is a fucking miserable game. I fucking hate Gumshoe for the NES. I think it might be the worst Zapper game on the NES. Actually yes it is. It's also the worst Black Box game. Yeah the sports titles might be worst technically but they don't make me as fucking angry as THIS STUPID PIECE OF SHIT DOES. This game is fucking miserable. You play as a Gumshoe who has to be kept from dying from everything hitting him. Also once you hit him and he starts going up he can't hit the damn fucking ground anymore. This means you have to keep him from hitting any of the RANDOM ASS SHIT that is flying at you. This game is annoying and I don't like it. Fuck you, Gumshoe.

 I wish NES games were all considered dumb and worthless by most people again. I wish all the dumb shit I like to any degree was considered dumb and worthless by most people again. I want nerd culture to go back the way it was. I want YouTube to be a viable source of entertainment again, not one made up of shitty reseller jerks, stupid anti-woke I AM ANGRY AT GAYS AND WOMEN jerks and AI crap. I wish people didn't argue about political GARBAGE onlie. I am just tired boss. I bring all of this up because Gun-Nac is seen more as a OMG THIS IS RARE (and no it isn't. Sorry, I honestly have come to the belief that the only truly RARE NES games are Stadium Events and the Panesian games) AND THAT IS THE REASON I NEED TO OWN IT. SO I CAN SHOW IT OFF and not because I love the thing and just want to own it. Gun Nac should be owned because it's a terrific video game.  If you like ROOTY TOOTY SHOOTY games then Gun Nac is one you MUST own. It's fast and furious and you get all kinds of cool weapons and most of them are fun to mess around with. The game's challenge is fair. It has some really hard moments but it does start of pretty easy. The game has great music and stages and the best thing about it is that it's weird as fucking hell. You shoot a robot bunny in the first damn stage! God bless Japanese weirdness. Down with collecting so you can be like OH HEY INTERNET I HAVE THIS THING BECAUSE I "FORCE COLLECTED" IT instead of looking around places for a copy. I don't even want to look up the going price of this game because It'll make me puke out of my asshole. Go play Gun-Nac it's awesome. 

 I had to look it up today. I was always curious but never bothered until now. Apparently this is NOT related to the television series that ran from like 1954 to 1974 and for like 5 or 10 years on radio behind that. Yeah, there was a time when Westerns were like the Superhero movies of today. All over the place and everyone just going to watch them. Didn't matter what it was they just wanted to see Cowboys. Anyway this game is not related to it and Capcom even put a . in there. I do not know when this game came out but it really might just be the FIRST GOOD CAPCOM game because they did not let the PIECE OF SHIT MICRONICS ASSHOLE make it.  They made it themselves and did one hell of a job. This is a top view Western style ROOTY TOOTY SHOOTY game. You play as BILLY BOB who has to shoot down some CRIMINAL SCUM and save the town. This is a fast paced action game. You got all kinds of guys getting ready to shoot your ass. You can buy things from the towns people. You think they'd just help you for free but I guess they want DAT BLING BLING which costs money. You can buy a horse so you don't die in one hit. You can buy different guns that you lose when you get hit using them. This game is great and I'm glad the MICRONICS MAN was told to GO FUCK HIMSELF. It makes me want to play the Arcade game. Anyway I like the name of the guy from the TV show James ARNESS. He was Peter Graves brother. ARNESS is a fun name.

 You know the ONE thing I really wanted when I was collecting? A Power Glove. I still kinda want one. Oh and I also really wanted a R.O.B. too. I just wanted to CONFUSE YOU a LITTLE BIT by saying a Power Glove. I am a saucy boy. Anyway I never got either when they were at a price they honestly still should be at. I do not believe either are rare enough to be over a hundred dollars each. That's just assinine. I will still get a R.O.B. though. I do not care. I love that guy. He looks like a little Johnny Five and I love that. So I never had a R.O.B. but I did own Gyromite and Stack Up. Two games you have to use the R.O.B. robot to play. I don't know why I didn't put these two games on the back burner like the Power Pad games I have been skipping. I just forgot about them. It's not hard because one of the two R.O.B. games seem like the most boring game of all time. That's Stack Up. Gyromite actually seems like it could be a fun game if I were to get the robot. Oh well, Enjoy this non-review that I will redo when I get my R.O.B. which I will. I will be the weirdo who will wear his Power Glove EVERYWHERE after he gets it. It might have been bad to play games with but man it still looks 1980S FUTURE COOL which is the best kind of cool.

 

This is a great game to end the Gs on and also this post. Gyruss is one of ULTRA GAMES (aka Konami #2) best games. Of course it's really hard to pick when it comes down to it. Ultra Games was a company Konami made up just to make more money and more games becuase Nintendo was like NO ONLY 10 GAMES A YEAR or something for companies. I do not know why they wouldn't want more good games on their console and to tell a company that made GOOD to GREAT games like ALL THE TIME  This is yet another ROOTY TOOTY SHOOTY game but it's done differently than both Gun-Nac and Gun.Smoke. I love how unique ROOTY TOOTY SHOOTIES games can get. This game has you in the background shooting at enemies coming at you. You shoot enough of them and you get to the next stage. Every few stages you get a boss. You have to get from some planet to I think Uranus. ehahahah. Butts. Uh, okay I have to act a little mature now. Hhaha. anus means butt. hahahah. butt. Okay okay. I got that out of my system. Konami or ULTRA GAMES does everything incredibly well like most of the time. The graphics are great for the era, the music is great, everything is great about this game. Makes me want to try to Arcade game. Anyway Gyruss is a very well made game that is worthy of playing.

GOOD GAMES: 134

BAD GAMES:  93

OKAY GAMES:  34

GAMES IMPATIENT: 5

  

Reviewing Movies Based On Television Shows... Woo...

 

I had no internet for two whole days. TWO WHOLE DAYS. I watched a good amount of movies in those two days. I'm not going to review them all but several of them were TV shows movies from the 1990s. It was a big thing to make TV shows and cartoons into movies back then. It started in 1987 with the pretty funny (at least I think so) movie Dragnet with Dan Akyroyd and Tom Hanks. I still have never seen an entire episode of the actual Dragnet show and I don't think I need too. the movie is clearly superior because it gave us the second best white people rap of all time. You can see that here. The best white people rap is clearly this one. That movie must have been a hit because in the next decade you had like 4320429204 movies based on old TV shows. I watched five of them in the past two days and we shall discuss them. I hope you enjoy the image of the old zenith I stole from google. The first tv I ever remember using was a Zenith. 

 The Saint is one of two movies that were turned into AMERICAN MOVIES HOO YEAH AMERICA EAGLE WOOO YEAH EAGLES FREEDOM EAGLE FREEDOM MOVIES from GROSS FOREIGNERS FROM BRITAIN. The Saint was originally created a book/short story character in 1928. They made him into a TV show in 1962. It was one of the first big roles for a SCRAPPY YOUNG BRITISH MAN named Roger Moore. That's right! THE BEST JAMES BOND EVER! This movie is very.....okay. I can't say if anyone was really miscast because I never saw the original show. I lived in Canada in the 1990s not Britain in the 1960s. I do hear good things about the show. Anyway Val Kilmer is uh weird as hell in this movie. He's trying to silly even in the more serious moments. I dunno. Elizabeth Shue plays a cold fission scientist. That's a huge jump from hanging out with the Karate Kid and babysitting children.  Anyway Val Kilmer is a guy who's a MASTER OF DISGUISE and he uses his really goofy disguises to fool some Russian guy. Honestly I've forgotten most of this movie already. It feels like a longer episode of an episode instead of a big budget movie. Like except for some BIG EXPLOSIONS nothing about this feels like a big budget movie of the time. I dunno. I didn't hate my time watching this movie but I wouldn't really recommend it.

 Lost In Space is based on a WOOOOO AMERICA WOOO FREEDOM EAGLE EAGLE FREEDOM WOO tv series from the mid 1960s. 1965 to 1968. I have never seen an episode of it. This movie's kid characters are fucking hilariously 1990s. I mean they are as actual characters kinda boring but you couldn't get more 1990s kids than anything. The girl was like SO TOTALLY IN TO THE MALL!!! and the boy was a SECRET GENIUS who can re-create robots. They are boring characters but also so 1990s so I kinda loved them. The girls story seems to go nowhere, she was angry she had to be in space but seems to like being lost in space maybe? I dunno. Gary Oldman plays the bad guy and he is the reason to watch this movie. He's very entertaining.  The biggest problem with this movie is Matt LeBlanc Le Blac? The fucker who played Joey from Friends. He is NOT a cool badass type hero. No way will I ever believe that. The man is just not good enough as an actor to pull that off. It comes off as annoying and bad. I would say that this movie is probably better than the Saint but I still wouldn't really recommend it. It's not awful but it's not really a necessary viewing. I like that they destroy the COOL 1990S robot and turn him into the GOOFY 1960S robot. At least kinda. I dunno. 

 HOT TAKE ALERT. HOT TAKE ALERT. You will not like this review! According to like every other person who has ever heard of this movie (and not actually seen it) this movie is a bad poopy pile. I am here to tell you that this movie is NOT a bad poopy pile! This movie is actually my favorite of the five. Will Smith is having a great time playing his character. Kevin Kline is having a great time playing his character. Salma Hayek is having a great time playing her character (AND YOU SEE HER BOOTY! THE MOVIE SHOULD HAVE WON AN OSCAR FOR THAT BEAUTY). Kenneth Branagh is having way way way too much fun with his role. He clearly is having more fun than should be legal. It's amazing. This movie is actually incredibly funny and incredibly fun to watch. I loved watching this movie. I laughed so much. It's actually geniunely funny as hell. The giant mechanical spider everyone goes on about is awesome. ITS A FUCKING GIANT MECHANICAL SPIDER JESUS CHRIST PEOPLE LEARN TO HAVE FUN WATCHING A DAMN MOVIE. I don't give a shit what anyone says AND ESPECIALLY PORTNOYD this movie is a good time and is the best movie on this list.

 This is the worst movie I watched of the five. I haven't seen every movie based on a television show but I know that they would have to be really really really bad to beat this one. This movie is based on another British show called The Avengers. These Avengers predate the comic book ones. They started in 1961. They even beat them to the silver screen. The 2012 Avengers movie is much better movie than this one. I have never seen an episode of the TV show BUT I can tell you this is like when your teacher tells you to read White Fang and then write a report on White Fang and you decide to spend your month to get it done by playing TMNT 4 Turtles in Time and watching I dunno Archie's Weird Mysteries instead and on the last day you quickly read two chapters and the back cover and write a report on that. You get a D-. I'm pretty sure you should at least watch some of the show you are doing a movie on. This movie is pretty dull with some weird things just thrown in. Like an invisible man. I get the feeling the tv show is done much better. This movie is also not very well written either. So Sean Connery and "Father" (a member of the Avengers spy program thing) team up to clone Emma Peel (played by Uma Thurman) for......some reason. I do not think the movie ever gives a reason. I guess it was to get her to join up with Ralph Fiennes to stop them???!? Also the only reason Sean Connery has to take over the world is for money. He has a weather changing machine. The episode of Inspector Gadget with a weather changing machine was much better than this. And much shorter. This movie is not funny or entertaining really. Even Sean Connery a man who was lively in EVERY SINGLE OTHER PERFORMANCE HE EVER GAVE was like "no i refuse" in the most scottish way ever. I do not like this movie and I hope portnoyd doesn't try to defend it. I actually doubt portnoyd has even seen any of these movies. Go play TMNT instead. Hell go read White Fang instead. Just do something else.

 The Mod Squad was based on a late 1960s-early 1970s TV series that I have also never seen an episode of. Are you really surprised I've never seen any of the TV show episodes of these shows? Anyway I watched this and I thought it was pretty good and was pretty much worth a watch. It stars a group of pretty likable young actors who WERE ON THE ROAD TO CRIME AND BAD THINGS until DENNIS FARINA comes in and saves them. They start working with the police. Going to places where the police can't easily get too. Dennis Farina is killed and then THE MOD SQUAD have to find out who did it. This is a movie plot you've seen approx. 12,000 times. It's worth watching just because the three leads are very likable and fun to watch. Giovannai Ribisi reminds me of Pete Davidson except he's not terrible and doesn't make me want to puke out of my ass (don't try it kids. it hurts). I will now call him the Good Pete Davidson. Anyway I have the least amount of things to say about this movie execpt I wanted so badly to go on the internet and look up the name of two random cop actors. You've seen both of them play cops in like approx. 12,000 movies. said actors are this guy and this guy and now that I know who they are I can forget them again. Anyway I say this is good enough a piece of entertainment to watch it.

 

FINAL THOUGHTS: Poop. That's all I gotta say. 

TV You Forgot About #10: Yvon of the Yukon (1999 - 2003)

 

I had a lot of fun with yesterday's post. I was wondering what I could do for a follow up. I figured I was letting NEWFOUNDLAND SECRETS go, why not some CANADIAN SECRETS. I figured that it's always fun to talk about cartoons and it's always fun to talk about obscure crap so I figured I'd talk about some cartoons from Canada. It's all about perspective when it comes to obscure crap. This aired all the time in Canada but Portnoyd and DA BYS (that's what we call each other up her bys it's like the word boy without an o in it. Newfoundland SECRET #2 GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE). This is not the first time I talked about Canadian cartoons. I've talked about the Final Episode of the Raccoons here. I talked about Monster By Mistake which I think just might be my least favorite piece of animation ever here and here. I talked about Flying Rhino Junior High here (which actually showed up on CBS in America for like two years. Wild huh?) I talked about The Smoggies here. So I've talked about a good amount of Canadian Cartoons created by Canadians instead of Canadian-American productions (which I have talked about like Inspector Gadget or the Care Bears.) 

So I picked Yvon of the Yukon because it was something I kinda hated as a kid. I mean I could sit down and tolerate it so it WAS better than Monster by Mistake. It's just one of the many things that got stuck in my head and stayed there for decades. I figured it's enough to talk about it. It was a part of the flavour of YTV which was the channel that aired this and many other shows. It was wild. You got the popular NickToons, you got the popular Cartoon Network stuff, just random shit to fill holes, Canadian content, and a lot of anime for the time too. Canada dubbed a hell of a lot of Japanese animation! It was an interesting time and place to be a fan of animation. I look fondly back at the time of 1999. Turn of the millenium. We had such high hopes for the year 2000 and they all got dashed. Now we just wish it was 1983 again.

So this show was created by Terry Klassen and Ian James Corbett. They were both voice actors for things like Captain N, The New Adventures of He-Man (gross) and  the Dragon Ball Z dub. Canadian voice actors had their sticky little maple syrup fingers in just about everything! So they teamed up with Story B productions (which I believe are now owned by Wild Brain.) and Corus Entertainment. Corus Entertainment owns YTV and so it was easy for them to put Yvon of the Yukon on the air! The show ran for three seasons and fifty two episodes. The voice cast had a mix of indigenous actors, anime dub actors and Transformers actors. Yes, every Transformers series from like Beast Wars to sometime in 2007 were voiced by Canadians. WE ARE ALL AROUND YOU. YOU WILL NOT SURVIVE!!!

So, uh, what was Yvon of the Yukon even about? Well buddy let me tell you. It was the story of Yvon Ducharme, a frenchman who was tasked with trying to find THE NEW WORLD by King Louis XVIVIXIVGX or whatever one it was. Too many fucking kings to keep track of. Anyway he went and tried to find it and ended up becoming frozen in ice. For three hundred years. Then a dog pisses on him and it defrosts the ice and he tries to work with the people of the Yukon for reasons. I dunno. I didn't make this show! This was one of those gross-out cartoons of the 1990s, like Ren and Stimpy or my favorite Rocko's Modern Life. Those were better cartoons. Probably isn't fair to call Rocko's Modern Life completely gross out as they made jokes about everything. Still this one just went for smelly frenchman jokes and pee jokes. From what I remember they were just missing whatever it was that made Ren and Stimpy funny to me at that age. I think it was because Ren and Stimpy went farther than just pee jokes. I dunno, I don't really like Ren and Stimpy as much as I did then. I really should rewatch some of it and also Rocko's Modern Life.

So I will now watch some episodes and then come back to discuss what I liked and did not like about them! Well, I was going to do something different than explain to plot to you and make dumb jokes but I seriously have to tell you about this amazing and also kind of terrible episode. It's called Fromage to Eternity, you know like the movie From Here to Eternity. I don't think it has anything to do with the story of this episode except for the Fromage part.First off it starts with Yvon watching what is a weird mix of America's Funniest Home Videos and Rescue 911 called America's Funniest 9-1-1s. Everyone ends up farting at the end of the segment which causes Yvon to laugh. He then sees an ad for Meal in a Can and we move on to the rest of the cast. I like how everyone looks kinda messed up like they did too much meth or something. Except for like the lady cop who is a sexy lady cop. I guess no matter what you draw you kinda want to draw something sexy. Weird. They are all getting ready for the local potluck. They all end up making Jello shit for it to win an award or something. Except for Yvon, he makes a fondue, even though he has an flashback to when he lived in France in like 1602 or whenever the fuck Loui XVIVIXIVGX lived about making a meal that was ruined when he farted. He even says he will never cook again but then cooks a fondue. They really were writing great stuff here. The fondue is made from 300 year old cheese that turns everyone into a 1960s hippie stereotype. Even the people who did not eat any of the cheese fondue. So he sees another commercial for Meal in a Can and King Louis XVIVIXIVGX tells him to take over Upyermukluk (great name) and he tries to do that by getting the cast of the show out of the town while they are on their high. Then Yvon eats the cheese to prove it didnt cause everyone to go nuts and then he goes nuts and becomes the pied piper. Yep. This show is fucking weird.

 Okay, the second episode I watched was Mad Dog Ducharme. It starts with Yvon and Tommy (owner of the sled dog that peed on Yvon in the ice and bringing him into the year 1999) trying to trap polar bears. It does not go well and we go back to the Mad Cossack which is a bar/resturant of some sort. They serve Moose burgers and seal chunks. You ain't lived until you had a seal chunk! Anyway they see on the TV a wrestler called Killer Koloski or some shit yelling at the camera about cowards and Yvon thinks this is about him because back in the year 1699 or whenever Yvon was at war with Algeria or Alaska or Algebra or some A related thing or country. Anyway he got his shoes tied wrong while everyone around him went into war. King Louis XVIVIXIVGX was there on the battlefield and he called him a coward. Now Yvon is going to take the challenge of Killer Koloski and become a wrestler. So he trains with Bill (Tommy's dad and owner of the Mad Cossack). He trains and then tries to fight some wrestlers. He loses. Badly, even to a man in a wheelchair (which literally made me laugh out loud), however after some guys smack talk France and King Louis XVIVIXIVGX. This causes Yvon to go into a frothing mad lunatic mode and SMASH THE SHIT OUT OF THEM. He then starts doing this to like every wrestler. Then Killer Koloski and his manager a Don King lookalike shows up. I don't think many people even remember Don King these days but if I were given a cartoon I would make reference to him.  Anyway it turns out that Killer Koloski is a fake and doesn't want to get hurt so they bring in Ivan the Terrible to fight Yvon who beats his ass until they uh realize that they should have told Yvon he said something bad about King Louis XVIVIXIVGX at the start of the match. However it turns out that Ivan the Terrible is actually French and he and Yvon become friends and even leave the match halfway through to go get something to eat. The crowd then beats the shit out of fake Don King and Killer Koloski. Ivan then tries to get Yvon to come ot his wedding but he can't. He has to trap polar bears with Tommy and Tommy is all sad because he thinks its dumb. What a weird fucking episode.

FINAL THOUGHTS: Uh, this show is not very well written to be fair, yet I enjoyed watching it. The show is all over the place and the comedy doesn't always hit. However some of it was pretty amusing honestly. I loved the guy in the wheelchair as a wrestler fighting Yvon. This show is weird and I respect that. I honestly kinda want to review the other 50 episodes just to find what kind of weird shit is within them. Portnoyd AND THE BYS are you up for at least 25 Yvon of the Yukon posts!?? 

THE NEWFOUNDLAND SECRETS #1: The Video Stores of Old!

 

This is the start of a new series of blog posts. Why? Why the hell not. Anyway, this is THE NEWFOUNDLAND SECRETS. Secrets about NEWFOUNDLAND the MOST MYSTERIOUS PLACE IN THE WORLD. at least to the people in my discord. I live in Newfoundland and uh it's not very mysterious honestly. It's quite uh typical to me. I've lived here for forty years and it just seems like any old place. However to the DISCORD FANS OF CLAWX, Newfoudland is a MYSTERIOUS AND SPOOKY AND WEIRD PLACE. This came up because I mentioned someone should make a VIDEO STORE SIMULATOR video game. Like you get a trading card store simulator and who gives a shit about MAGIC THE GATHERING unless you are like a giant NERD. Video stores were cooler. Uh, I think I will try not to use SO MANY CAPS in the rest of this post. Anyway I mentioned how I should do a post about the Video Stores and one person agreed. That's all it takes to get me ot write about something, just say yes. You don't even need to read it afterwards, just be like yo mang write that shit. So that's why you are getting this look back at the video stores I remember going to when I was a child.

 Our first video store is the one I remember fondly from my early years. I remember going here a LOT to rent like The Care Bears Movie 2 or The Good The Bad and the Huckleberry Hound. You know only the most respectable and amazing of cinema. It felt like it was a store that went on forever, but you also got to remember I was somewhere between 3 and 8 years old when I would go to this place. I'm pretty sure this was where I started my love affair with Horror. My parents would tell me to stay in the kids section but you can only look at the same Transformers tape (you know those huge ass ones. Totally cool. wish I could own one but they want more money than God for one) before you get bored and go to look at other places. I would get to the Horror section and be amazed by all of the insane box art. There's a reason most people who collect VHS go for Horror because man they wanted to sell you on movies like Icebox Murders and they knew the movie was terrible (and it is. I saw it) and you needed a killer box art to get people to rent it. Anyway another great thing about this store was the fact it was RIGHT NEXT DOOR to a toy store called Romar's. I don't know who Romar is but good gosh darn he made a good toy store. That place was awesome. I don't remember getting many things from this place but holy shit it was a good place to go to as a kid. I remember a Scrooge McDuck stuffed toy that I still want because I refuse to grow up. I also remember getting our VHS copy of Homeward Bound from here. Which was weird because I do not believe they sold movies before or after this but this was a movie my sister and I watched so many fucking times. If you don't cry at the ending then you are a cruel creature. Sadly sometime after 1994, both of these places went out of business but Kelly's still exists as something else that I don't really give a shit about and you can go their website here.

 I don't remember the name of this second store, and this is just a image from DINOSAUR DRACULA and when they would find random VHS stores in New Jersey. I TRIED to get a CERTAIN SOMEONE to go to these places but he was like NO I JUST WANT TO STAY HOME AND KISS MY METROID CART. He missed out on the last VHS stores! HE COULD HAVE MADE HIS VHS COLLECTION LEGENDARY. anyway I know I promised that I wouldn't use caps lock after the first paragraph but I had to. I have to get the point home!!!! Anyway this was in a small mini mall, right next door to a convenience store (that also rented VHS and NES games everyone did that shit in the late 80s/early 90s). I remember this place pretty fondly. I remember getting into trouble with my mom because I went there with Terry Hiscock to rent BEETLEJUICE. I got in trouble because I didn't tell her where I was going. I also remember BUYING the NES game DuckTales here. I remember it being for not much money and they would probably have gotten more money if they kept renting it out. I mean DuckTales is still something talked about. It's weird. I also remember my sister stealing the box to the movie Chasers. a obscure comedy film from the 1990s that no one else remembers except me. We brought it back and I don't think anyone other than I have seen this film in my family. I just remember it mostly for that. I don't even remember anything about the movie. I don't remember much else about this place except they had one hell of a NES section. They had Pac-Man with the weird Tengen cover that will always be seared into my mind's eye. Poor Pac-Man looks so worried. GET THAT BIG BALL PAC-MAN! I BELIEVE IN YOU!

 

Now we get to what might be my favorite video store from my youth. Or at least the one I went to the most. Allan's Video was a chain store. We had one in Highland Drive. One in Elizabeth Ave. One in Mount Pearl and I think another one somewhere else. I remember you had to drive up a hill. This could be a dream. I don't know. Memory is a weird bitch that I kinda hate. They used silent film comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as their mascots. I never knew who they were until I was an adult. They had an amazing horror section and that's what I mostly remember renting there. That and SNES games. You see they had a deal for 7 dollars and 77 cents you could rent 7 movies for a week. Older ones of course. The new shit you had to pay that 5 dollars. In fact you had to pay $5 for a regular rental so I'm sure a lot of people just said fuck it and picked up 7 movies in hopes they'd watch like two ro three of them. Me I watched or played all seven. I would always make sure to pick up Chrono Trigger and Inspector Gadget for the SNES until they got rid of those games. We would go shopping at Sobeys around there and I would go to K-Mart (when it was open), Blockbuster and then Allan's. Allan's Video on Elizabeth Ave was the second to last Video store to go. It was in 2014 when they finally closed down. I wasn't even renting movies any more. I would uh TOTALLY LEGALLY OBTAIN THEM OTHERWISE. Yeah, get used to it I'm using the damn caps lock!!! EAT MY SHIT! Anyway I've still never seen a Laurel and Hardy movie but I still have a fondness for them and their weirdly drawn cartoon versions. 

This was Jumbo Video. I think they were #1 in Canada. I do not know for sure. They had locations all over Canada and they started in Ontario. I remember Jumbo Video because you could rent $3 for like $12 or so? I mean with taxes. We started going ot Jumbo Video when one opened up like 10 minutes from our house. We would go to a different video store. I mean I would usually stay home at that point but still. Jumbo Video had three locations in St. John's. One right near my house. One in Ropewalk Lane. and another in Mount Pearl. Which is just basically a part of St. John's. We just let them think they are different. It's cute. They also bought the Allan's Video on Highland Drive when that closed. That was the last place to go. If Allan's Video had a good starter horror selection then Jumbo Video was where you went to rent the weird obscure shit. I remember renting Slumber Party Massacre and Pieces here. They would sell movies but at way too much of a price. I could get my mom to buy a movie from Allans Video at $5 but I wasn't getting Octaman for $15. It was a good move on her part because that movie is uh, not worth $15. It's funny what sticks in your mind huh?  You could also get free popcorn to eat while you browsed and that was cool as hell. Apparently the Ropewalk Lane place would go all out in October and make their Horror Section look scary and spooky but I never got to see it. Sometimes life just sucks you know. Anyway this was a great video store and I miss it.

 Another random image stolen from Google because this store did not have a really cool logo. It was called Capitol Video and it was AMAZING. They packed so many fucking movies into this store it was insane. The only time I ever saw TROMA RELEASED VIDEOS was in this place. If Jumbo Video was where you went to rent the weird obscure horror movies then this was the place where you went to rent the weird obscure everything else. They were amazing. I loved it. They were ran by a husband and wife team and also a random guy. Maybe related to them. I don't remember ever seeing the wife just the husband who seemed to be bored working there. I guess the SHEER BEAUTY all around him got boring. I wish never to be bored by weird obscure cinema. You could also get the popular stuff too. They had a great selection of just about everything and I really enjoyed the atmosphere. It was one of those weirdly cheap looking Video Stores where everything was shoved in a wall. I also liked that they PROUDLY put porn out in the open. I mean it was mostly soft core stuff and not NICELY SHAVED BEAVERS GET FUCKED BY BIG DICKS vol. 12 but it's the thought that counts. Sadly sometime after 2010 they got flooded and pretty much threw out all of their videos. All those VHS lost like tears in rain. You see what happens when I get sad I start talking like Rutger Hauer!

Another photo stolen from Dinosaur Dracula. I did this because I don't like to see images above a paragraph and then no images. It does not look good. This was not the video store I was talking about. Anyway from whenever I can remember to like I believe 2001 My family and I would visit a small town called Lewisporte, where my Aunt, Uncle and cousins lived. It was always a fun time. We of course would still end up finding our selves at the video store there. I remember they had clip ons to put on the movies that were rented or not rented but they had funny faces on them. Like a sad face if it was rented or something. Anyway this place ruled. My sister and I would save up like two dollars and buy as much of this penny candy as we could. Chocolate with sprinkles on it. So good. Like manna from heaven. This video store also had games for sale. Or maybe rent. It was like the smallest rental section of games ever. It was Double Dragon for the NES. Some other NES game that I can't remember and fucking Earthbound. With the giant box. It might still be there. They were there for years. I don't know why I didn't try to buy them. It was vacation and I was given money but my parents would usually end up giving us more. Oh well. The weirdest thing I ever rented was from this place. It was the movie Junior, not the Arnie/Danny Devito movie, but a horror film. However it was not a horror film but someone had taped uh over it. With porn. I think gay porn. It was not very well filmed porn so I really couldn't tell. It was also spliced in with scenes from a sitcom that I do not know the name of and I know way too much about sitcoms. It was very strange and I didn't like it.  Anyway this video store was in a weird random spot where all the houses were facing away from it. That's all I remember about this nameless video store, except that I loved it. I still want to eat those chocolate sprinkle candies. Those were the best.

 

Finally we get to the store everyone talks about. Everyone goes on and on about how they rented from Blockbuster Video. All Day and Every Night. If you were to believe them it must be the best video store ever and I must have rented so much stuff from there. Well, that's not true. Blockbuster came to Newfoundland in 1996. It was on the same stretch of stores and fast food locations that K-Mart used to be in and Wendy's is still in. It was a pretty great place to kill time while waiting for your mother and father to finish buying the groceries. I am here to poop on the parade of everyone who blithers and blathers about Blockbuster. I never really cared that much about them. I think I got to rent three whole movies from them because they were 5.99 so almost 10 bucks with tax. I'm sure those 7 movies from Allans for 7 days for 7.77 would end up costing more but my parents would get me out of their hair for quite a bit more time. My mom would never really let me rent from there or rent from there. The other reason I never cared about Blockbuster is that INCREDIBLY COOL HORROR SECTION got dwindled down to shit because they needed to buy 405 copies of the newest movie out so they could be like ITS NEW AND WE HAVE IT YOU'LL GET IT or whatever they did in the 1990s with new movies. My parents did not grow up in the lap of luxury and would try for the best deal and well Allan's won that deal. Still Blockbuster got several locations right next to Jumbo Video on Ropewalk Lane and also in Mount Pearl. St. John's was a wild place to rent movies. Seriously if you couldn't find it in this town it probably did not get released on video or laserdisc. Laserdiscs blew my mind when I saw them first. They didn't last long as rentals though but man they were wild.

I could go on. We had a LOT of video stores. We had a store that rental porn and just porn. My friend tricked me into calling them wondering if they had any Super Nintendo games for sale. Ha ha. Jerk. We had another one that was on my uncle's street and another one in quidi vidi. Not to mention all of the stores in the smaller cities. It was a great place to be a movie fan. We had a lot of weird looking places that actually turn out to be houses. You could have to the top half be your house and the bottom be a video store because why the hell not. It was the 1990s and somehow the population of Newfoundland was enough for like at least 25 damn Video stores! some right next to others! The 1990s was the last cool decade we will ever live. It had style and all decades since have been boring horseshit garbage. I hate the future. I miss video stores.