The YTV 35TH ANNIVERSARY SPECTACULAR WOO!!!

 I was thinking about doing another NES game review set but there’s three of them in a row and I like to make things a bit more different around here. Like A post on a different subject every day or so. I just wanted most of the Baseball shit out of the fucking way so that’s how it all happened. I also just don’t have it in me today to talk about fucking Battle Chess. You know the days when it’s hard to muster up the want to talk about things you like. Well it was mostly one of those days for me. Talking about Battle Chess on a day like today would have been impossible. It’s literally nearly impossible on the best fucking days and I want a decent review of every NES game. Or at least passable. The other reason was that I found out through a youtube video about YTV’s 35th Anniversary and I want to celebrate that and also complain about things because that’s what we do here. So I’m just gonna talk about YTV, Canada’s Premiere Kids Channel (or how it used to be that)

So, September 1st, 1988 a channel came out of the ether (actually two! a bit on them later on) in Canada. It was known as YTV. YTV showed American shows, British shows, Muppet Shows and because of laws that Canadian TV channels need to show Canadian content, Canadian shows. YTV was the thing I watched for whenever we got it in my house (I have no idea if it was day one or in like 1991 or something and I don’t care enough to really check it out) to at least 2001. I mean that’s when I stopped being a “oh man gotta sit down and watch 12 hours of television before playing 8 hours of Super Nintendo!” thing. I mean I’m sure I still watched it until YouTube came around. Also my nieces watch way too much YouTube and it weirds me out. So much of that stuff I do not think I would have a single interest in, especially the toy videos. Those would have just been a time for me to yell to my mother “WE GOTTA GET TO ZELLERS A NEW NINJA TURTLE THING CAME OUT” and go there and get it so I could play with it. I needed Television, not bite sized little clips. I wanted a narrative to my stuff, dangit!

Anyway YTV had all kinds of TV shows from all over the place during it’s run. At one point it would show movies in the evening, stuff like The Slender Thread which is about a woman attempting to commit suicide until Sidney Poitier saves her (the woman is also Mel Brook’s wife!!!! Like real life wife!!!). It’s not what you’d find on a “youth and family” channel today. The sheer wildness of it all is what I remember the most. Along with the PJs. or Program Jockeys. You see they would have set program blocks of shows. One was Treehouse (I think until it became it’s own tv channel) for the young viewers. Another one was The Zone (more on them in a bit) and THE BREAKFAST ZONE. They knew the Zone was the biggest draw to the channel. These were people, usually young adults (I believe thier ages ran from late teens to mid 20s.) that would talk to us about stuff (new shows, their lives, stuff like that) these people had a very nice “big brother/sister” vibe to them.

This was an idea that could have crashed and burned if they picked the wrong people but for like 35 years they did it right. Until now. They stopped having someone talk to the kids about the shows, or themselves or just do silly stuff. I mean I’m just taking the word from this YouTuber, but I can see it because the last time I watched YTV with my nieces it had a ton of the charm and everything taken out. The YTV logos used to look like this:

Now it looks like this:

It had different variations over the years but the stuff from the 1990s and 2000s and probably even early 2010s felt like YTV hired a really good graphical artist type person to create the stuff and the last one just feels like YTV got a random executive to make it in some cheap computer program in like an hour. That’s not all, they used to make unique commercials for a show. Trying to edit something so the announcer could do some goofy shit. Most of them come off kinda cringy nowadays (hey sometimes I look up YTV commercials on youtube when I’m bored) but I’ll take cringe over no fucking emotion at all! All of this is very depressing but I can totally see why they do it.

For like the first twenty five years of its existence YTV didn’t have to deal with any of the American channels. YTV was where you went to get Nickelodeon shows and Cartoon Network shows. Now you get the Disney Channel (if you wanted any Disney stuff you needed Family Channel and it was a premium cable channel that I believe I didn’t get until at LEAST 1995. Along with TBS, I used to watch it scrambled like a pervert would watch porn. It was wild) and Teletoon (I will probably blather on about them but they didn’t have the personality of YTV) became Cartoon Network Canada now. I remember when Cartoon Network killed Teletoon Retro, the last TV channel I would watch (well alongside Comedy Gold which showed old sitcoms). I didn’t get to enjoy either very long but man they were pretty great stuff.

I don’t know if Nickelodeon is in Canada now or what. I don’t watch any of this new stuff. I know people are shocked about that. However it’s not all. They have to deal with the internet and streaming and YouTube. You can easily find whatever you want on the internet, a good amount of things on streaming, and kids love YouTube, so I can see why they gutted everything that gave the channel a personality. I just think it’s pretty sad.

You know for all the things I was into as a kid there’s still things I kinda wish I had watched or enjoyed and I never thought this would have been one of them. The YTV Achievement Awards was an award show that I never cared about as a kid. It was an award show and honestly the first few shows looked drier than a British man’s sense of humour which is probably why I thought they stopped doing these after like three of them in 1992. Nope, they ended in 2000. The YouTube video that I watched that inspired that this incredibly insanely long ramble is like an overview on all of them and I’m kinda sad I missed out on at least watching one of these. I don’t even know why. I do know that at least three would have been interesting. One because it was hosted by Weird Al Yankovic who is someone I’ve been a fan of SINCE I was a kid. I think the year I got into his st uff was the year he hosted in 1994! I really feel bad that I missed out on that, even if it was something I wouldn’t have watched all of it. I should have at least watched some of it. The other two involved Newfoundlanders winning the award. That would have made for some great discussion at the schoolyard. I mean if any of the other children would have talked to me about anything instead of being like “ew the weird kid”. I dunno, but this was a pretty interesting YouTube video (although hearing about how a lot of the kids who won awards passed away very young. Very sad)

Remember when TV channels would “sign off” and “sign on”? Well if you do you are probably old enough for the retirement home but I do! They were really kinda weird. TV channels would just go to color bars for like 8 hours and then 4 hours, then 2 hours now all TV channels just stay on all the time. I don’t know but they are one of the weird things I get nostaliga for and I felt like talking about them here in the most scattershot thing I’ve ever wrote. Ever. But seeing as I will not get a chance to talk about them here because I don’t think I’m starting a post series of “RANDOM YTV THINGS WOO”. YTV Sign offs changed all over the time. At one point it was random things done by fancy kids (one of them was a fencer!) called YTV Really Me. Then some old lady talking about a place in Nova Scotia. Then then ask you to send them comments if you had any. Then you’d get the national anthem. They changed all the time and as someone who spent a lot of time up in the middle of the night I’d see a lot of sign offs and hell even a few sign ons. I just felt like talking about them.

While not a tv show this is something I remember so well from YTV. I loved Short Circuitz which were computer animated shorts, ranging from like 30 to a minute thirty that would play during the commercial breaks or in between shows like Reboot or Beasties (what we called Beast Wars in Canada. Yes I know it’s weird) and they came from The Mind’s Eye, Beyond the Mind’s Eye and Imaginaria. They are on VHS and I want to own them. My personal favorites were the rubber ducky one shown above (it would get faster and faster and was always an amusing delight to me and my sister) and Styro the Dog which is still the best CGI thing ever made. Sorry Toy Story.

Well, I hope you enjoyed talking about these things today. I’m honestly glad that I did and didn’t force out another NES game review thing. I think forcing something out when you aren’t really into it but now I am so expect to see it soon. I cannot wait to give at least three of the next games glowing reviews and then get eh about the next two. Anyway enjoy.

WHOS READY FOR SOME FUCKIN BASEBALL ON THE NINTENDO WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

 

This time it’s nothing but baseball. So I’m going to just come out and do this right after the last one and finally finish up this shit for at least a little while. Thankfully after the Bs there’s like four Baseball games and that’s good enough for me. Plus it will take quite some time to get there. Woo. Time to get this shit done.

I was nice enough to despite not being able to even get anywhere in a Baseball game for the NES, put Base Wars as the okay game. The game I want to at least play again. That game I want to be able to end up enjoying some day some how. That game I want to get good at. This game Baseball Simulator 1,000. I couldn’t give a shit about. I actually enjoy some Culture Brain games. Or maybe that was Electro Brain. Or maybe both. It’s weird that two companies decided BRAIN needs to be in our name. Anyway it’s a baseball game that I always end up knocking fly balls or giving it to the computer and it has no robots. So in other words this game can piss off.

This game has oodles of charm and I actually can get at least a hit or two in the game! Which is insane for me when it comes to a baseball game. Literally insane. I’ve never played baseball in real life, or watched it on the tv, or even know the complete set of rules. I just remembered I have Dusty Diamond Softball and Softball is like the same damn thing and I will not hear any arguments on this. I mean port will probably pull of the list of differnces and make an argument but I will not listen. Anyway this game you could actually save and you could literally just play 2 games (or 419410) in your game season. I will rate this one OKAY because I want to like it more than I do.

I remember playing this game once when I finally got it because there was a time when I was collecting NES games and this one was somewhat rare even if it was just Baseball. I didn’t spend almost $30 on a copy like people have to do today if they somehow want all the games. Anyway you know how I said Baseball Stars was a charming game that I want to be able to get good at like Base Wars. Well Baseball Stars 2 removes all of that charm and is pretty much worthless and not worth a shit.

You might be thinking “Claw, you missed 3 games” No, I’m reviewing all four of these games in one post. When I said that I was going to review the original game and others in one paragraph to make it easier but decided against it because it wasn’t fair. THIS is the game series that made me think I should do it. Just this one. The rest of the games that got a trilogy or a series or whatever at least deserve a paragraph to their own. However for these piles of shit I am taking a mulligan. If I were some weirdo on twitch trying to beat every NES game I wouldn’t let people decide because I know what games are going to be last and not ever in the discussion. The Ultima games, the rice sims and Bases Loaded. Bases Loaded is actually the worst series on the NES. At least fucking Ikari Warriors 3 was almost competent. Bases Loaded is the worst Baseball series of games ever and I don’t know how it got to four. I really really really hate the fucking “from the eye of the pitcher view” it throws me off EVEN MORE than any other baseball game on the system. I’m reviewing all four of these games here by saying this statement: I’ve played just about every NES game licensed and unlicensed since getting my own personal computer in 1997 via emulation or physical cartridge. I’ve also played a good amount of Famicom games and I’d say just about every single European/Australasian game too (and hell I’ll review them too after I do the American set, just the stuff America did get though) and I think today, 2023, 38 years old was the first (and probably last) time I ever booted up Bases Loaded 3 or 4. It was to see if they still kept that awful pitcher view shit and they did. Also Bases Loaded 4 goes for $60 and makes me hate Nintendoage, Youtube and everything so much more. If someone said “Hey would you make all collectables worth as much as they were between 1998-2006 by pressing this button” That person better get out of the way because I’m jumping as high as my fat ass can and crushing that fucking button with my humongous ass. The fact that this game goes for that much is insane. This game went for nothing because no one wanted it just for a full set. Fuck people making the rarity of shit the big deal and not the fun of finding a new game. Anyway, don’t bother telling me to review Bases Loaded 2, 3 or 4 in actual paragraphs because I’d rather get to better games (and worse ones that are more interesting to discuss)

Good Games: 24

Bad Games: 26

Okay Games: 7

Reviewing Yet Even More NES Games, Baby!

 I will probably run out of “comedic” titles for these posts sooner or later but I also have 65,4050 games to review. And I’ll do it because I’m having fun. It’s entertaining and enjoyable, brings me back to the forum days when you’d just make a post about I dunno Barbie being a poopy game or something. I dunno. This might be the worst batch so far. Not a looker in the bunch. So expect some yelling and screaming and being confused.

I was fearing these games the most. These are the last games I want to play and the last games I want to ever try and beat. It’s not even that I hate stragety games. I played Desert Commander among others and actually had fun. However there’s several things that make Desert Commander more appealing to me than Bandit Kings. Desert Commander is genuinely pretty easy to get into where as Bandit Kings reads like a book that’s been written in a dead language. A dead alien language. As in aliens from outer space aliens. I mean I am still not very good at Desert Commander but I never ever know where to start with any of these games I lovingly refer to as rice sims. The Other problem is the time it takes to beat one of these games. This one, which seems to be one of the shorter ones takes almost 7 hours to beat. I’m sorry but you need to be a thrilling game with a thrilling plot and all kinds of crazy awesome shit for me to play you that long to completion. I know people love these games but I cannot for the life of me not rate them as crap. I even tried to get into Romance of the Three Kingdoms with the help of a YouTube video and got like maybe an hour in before I realized I had messed something up. I don’t forgive that kinda stuff in games I was having an amazing super fun with (instead of almost kinda having fun). I’m sorry but rug pulls are for Sierra Games and nothing else. I do not get nor do I really care for these games and I never see that fact changing.

Before I go on to really yell and scream at this game let me tell you that I don’t think it’s a game that’s as bad as people make it out to be. Kind of like Back to the Future people would call this game one of the worst. Yes, It’s a bad bad game (for a brand that I don’t think ever had any good games) but I can name 200 games that I would play this over. It’s awful horse shit that I do not enjoy in the slightest but there’s way worse out there. Let’s get to the bad shit in this game. First off Barbie moves slow as hell making it hard to get out of the way of an enemy or boss. Secondly Barbie is a giant fucking easy to hit sprite. Like I don’t think it’s even more possible for a sprite to get hit more than this. Third this game is weirdly harder than a fucking Barbie game should have been. Lastly this game is dull as hell, the levels are just random horse shit that will either be annoying to get through or uninteresting. Nothings keeping you from coming back a second time to play this game. The reason that makes me somewhat stand up for this game is those 200 I mentioned do things that are even fucking worse.

The First Person View did not work on the NES. Yes, there will be games that I praise and even enjoy that have that in them. However they at least used it sparingly. The Bard’s Tale everything is First Person outside of the battles. I would always always get lost so quickly in First Person View mazes. However those games I will praise at least made it so that I wanted to get out of the maze and would fumble around until I did. This game just makes me want to turn it off the second I get stuck in a maze. You say “buy graphing paper and make a map” two things with that, my mother, would have been like “use the regular paper we have.” because my mother is an old lady who doesn’t spend money. She literally bought sausages no one in the house liked and would not eat repeatedly because they were cheaper, despite the fact if no one ate them she would lose money. You think she’s gonna throw some dough at me to buy graphing paper for a game she knows I’d lose interest in? Yeah. I was also not going to spend what little money I had to get the fancy graphing paper that made for better maps either to be fair. I didn’t have much and whenever I did get any I spent it on comics or other NES games. My point is that First Person View also looks dreadfully ugly on the NES and I don’t think it looked good in 1991 or whenever FCI made this game. I know people go gaga for these games and I’m glad for them but again I think it’s a big old pile of dog shit that I got on my shoe. Also I ain’t making no maps now if I ever decide to force myself to beat this game (I wanted to beat every NES game at one point and a part of me still does) it will be doing the fumbling around thing because I am also way too lazy to make any maps. Either way I don’t like this game. Turn Based RPGs on the NES for the most part aged way too badly for me.

I really want Base Wars to be one of the baseball games that I like. I want to put it on the sports games list of sports games that I approve of. I keep playing it hoping to finally get somewhere or even somewhat good at it. I don’t even expect to ever beat a season but a game or two would make me at least want to play this game again. I’ve never beaten a single game in any baseball NES game. I’ve gotten near the end of fucking Battletoads. I’ve beaten The Terminator and Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends. AND DR. CHAOS. AND DR. JEKYLL. Yet not ever beat the computer in any NES baseball game. I always never hit a home run or fly balls or literally sometimes hit the ball right into their hands. The reason I want to like this game is because it’s from Ultra aka Konami and I really don’t like not liking a Konami game because even the worst game they clearly polished that son of a bitch to look perfect. The second reason is that you play as fucking robots and that’s fucking cool. I want to be a Weird Mech Robot thats just designed to play Baseball. You also fight the other Robots! How the hell? Man if I make it to heaven the one question I’m going to ask God is “how the hell do you play Baseball games on the old NES?” because that’s the thing I want to know THE FUCKING MOST. I can do it somewhat sometimes with Bad News Baseball on my BEST DAY EVER. So yes, I’m calling in the Almighty to help me with this. To be fair I will rate this game at least okay because I know that Konami put tons of effort into it. Those guys were never slouches.

I’m glad the majority of Baseball games start with the letter B and they didn’t create ZOMBIE BASEBALL THIS GAME IS ACTUALLY COOL IF YOU CAN PLAY IT RIGHT or something like that. Nope for the most part I will be done with at least one sport when the B’s are done, actually I’ll be done even quicker but that’s for the next post. Anyway, Baseball is a black box game and i’m sure if I looked it up and saw some shitty falling apart box and but the hangtab was still there someone would still ask 2,000 dollars and get it. I won’t get into the entire rant because this game doesn’t deserve that. I don’t have to be good at Baseball games to tell you that this one IS shit. Even if I was the master of Baseball on the NES and no one could touch me and even Bo Jackson went “Wow This guy knows Baseball!” even then I’d say this game was worthless. It’s slow, it’s clunky, it’s better forgotten as a relic that it clearly is. Fuck this game.

Good Games: 24

Bad Games: 20

Okay Games: 6

NES Game Reviews Because I haven’t Reviewed Enough Already! Doing the B’s

 Well, I’m all fired up and finished writing about Aladdin but still want to write more so I figured why not blab on about five more NES games. It’s easy, I’ve already played the games and all I need to do is blab on about them for way way way too long. Which I can easily do because that’s ALL I do. I love blabbing so much. So very much. It’s wonderful.

If you look up the word confusing in the dictionary you will find a picture of this game and nothing else. This game just wants to confuse the hell out of you. You have to find like at least 35 items and put them back in the right place. Like Milkshake. Yeah I think Marty might have ordered a Milkshake in the future era? I can’t remember because I was too busy being entertained by like everything else in the movie. I just believe that Milkshake is one of the items you have to remove. You also have to spell out the word so if you get some word you don’t know too bad the item explodes and you have to do the weird mini game again. Most of which are not fun. The game also makes you go to 3 different eras to bring stuff back, didn’t want to make it fun or enjoyable to you by say having you have to bring back items from the 1950s in the 1950s area. Nope sometimes you have to bring a item you find in the 1950s to 2015. Also you have to look around very similar LARGE areas that have no map. Some people complain about Metroid not having a map but that game is MUCH easier to look around. The most insane part is that after you beat Part 2 you literally get Part 3 where I think you have to find just 10 items and put them back in that same area. No jumping to other areas or anything. Wow Imagine making a game you could beat in say an hour and have fun with instead of a game that takes you 15 hours and makes you want to rip your hair out and shove it down your throat in an attempt to end the pain.

This is the first beat em up game I plan to discuss. Beat em up games are either really good or really bad. You either have creative enemies to fight and decently sized stages or you have the same enemy 8290 times to fight in a stages that never seem to end. Bad Dudes is mostly in the first category except it’s got some jank. The controls are not perfect and that really drags this game down. This is not a bad game. It’s still fun enough once you get used to how the controls work but why play it when Double Dragon, Double Dragon 2 or even 3 are just over the horizon, or TMNT 2 or 3. Or POW. Or Renegade. I’d rather play those games over this one but Bad Dudes is still a decent enough game. It would get an OKAY ranking. If you could find it for $5 (good luck lol) then I’d say pick it up. There’s nothing more to say about Bad Dudes than that.

I’m in the B’s so that means a lot of Baseball games and you will probably expect me to completely trash this game or at least not be interested in it. The problem is I actually like this game. It’s like one of the two Baseball games I’d play willingly. It’s one of the few I can actually score any kind of goal in. Every other time I end up hitting like 202429429 Fly balls or the computer beats my ass. The computer still beats my ass in this game but Tecmo (remember that name people!) actually made a baseball game that I can actually kinda get into. That’s worth a million dollars. This game is charming and silly and has Bunny Rabbit Umpires. Also cameos from Mr. T if I recall correctly. Even if I thought the game was crap I’d still tell you to buy it just for that.

Remember just like a paragraph ago. Like before the baseball game where I talked about how beat em up games needed to move fast and furious to be good. Different enemies doing stuff. Still this game is probably one of the poorest and shittiest Beat em ups regardless of console. Period. This game is not only incredibly slow moving it also saddles you with a ton of shitty moves you have to try to pull off with shitty controls. I mean the game tries by having you fight charming and fun enemies like weird looking punks and gorillas but its so hard to fight them. It’s also got not really great graphics (they try to be cartoony and fun but just fail) and not very good music. A failure of a video game that I’m sure portnoyd will defend because he’s a weirdo like that.

I remember a time when black box NES games were just games, plentiful. All over the place. Before people shit their pants and went OMG THEY WERE THE ORIGINAL GAMES. Yeah they are the original games made for the NES. However most of them have dated like milk. Hell I’m sure some of them were like milk when they came out. It was weird, when I first got into collecting NES games, maybe a few of them were sought after. Now people are like OMG I GOT A HANG TAB FREE BALLOON FIGHT FOR 27 GRAND WHAT A STEAL. I mean Balloon Fight was a game I owned, a game I wanted after playing it emulation and is still a game I enjoy today. It’s a fun Joust clone. It’s just weird how they made these games into weird MONEY MACHINES. Like Donkey Kong Jr Math was a game no one cared about and now the YouTubers are like ITS RARE SO ITS COOL. No it isn’t, it’s a bag of wet shit (sorry to spoil my thoughts on it.) Balloon Fight is a simple fun game where you pop bad guys balloons. Or in the other game on the cart see how long you can stay in the air without getting hit my something. It’s a fun game. It’s a worthwhile game to own but I don’t get the people making the black box games out to be amazing masterpieces (except for like one)

Good games: 24

Bad Games: 16

Okay games: 5

The Final Episode #121: Aladdin (1994 – 1995)

 

Aladdin was without a doubt my favorite Disney movie as a kid. It came out when I was like seven and I do not know how many times I watched it with my sister as kids. I don’t even think the VHS tape worked any more when we were finally done with it. I mean we had all the Disney movies or at least a whole hell of a lot of them and the one we’d always pick was this one. It had great music, great characters, lots of fun action, a memorable plot, and Robin Williams as the Genie. I have no idea what would end up being my favorite Disney movie now but didn’t I promise to watch like all Disney movies? I think I did. I should get on that.

Anyway I even liked Return of Jafar. I didn’t watch it as much as the original movie but it was still fun. I was over the moon when I found out that the movie was getting it’s own TV show and it was one of my favourites from the Disney Afternoon. It was done by Tad Stones (that guy again?!?!) from Darkwing Duck and Chip N Dale Rescue Rangers fame. He will come up several more times when we discuss even more Disney stuff. We are just clearing up The Disney Afternoon right now people! Disney still kept doing stuff! He also teamed up again with Mr. Alan Zaslove who as I said before worked in stuff from a teenager in the 1940s to like the early 2000s. That’s one hell of a career. He must have been in his late 60s when he was doing this show.

Aladdin was shown on the Disney Afternoon and also CBS. CBS started Saturday Morning TV Fare with Captain Kangaroo in 1955. They are actually no joke still at it. I didn’t even know Saturday Morning TV was a thing any more. They work with a corporation called the Litton Entertainment (who apparently does the same for ABC owned and operated stations. This fact is literally blowing my mind.) I’m amazed but I also feel really bad for the kids who have to watch this because they can’t get YouTube or streaming or hell any other option. I mean you get one dog show and like 3 shows about History. The kid of our generation that would willingly watch something called Henry Ford Innovation Nation would have been made fun of by everyone. Literally everyone. I don’t think children of today are any more keen to watch this stuff. My mind has literally been boggled by this information. It’s wild. I also wrote this entire paragraph just to tell you all about it.

I should talk about the voice cast. Mostly it’s the same from the movie honestly, It has Gilbert Gottfried, the guy from Full House, Linda Larkin (Princess Jasmine) Frank Welker (as Abu, he’s like the greatest animal voice guy ever). The only changes are Homer Simpson now voices the Genie (and honestly does a decent job) and the Sultan’s actor is new too. The Sultan was always such a nothing character that I don’t really care enough to see who played him in either version. This episode however has one hell of a guest cast. Jim Cummings another guy that if you were making a cartoon you were legally obligated to contact him to see if he wanted in. Tress MacNeil who has voiced literally every female character since the dawn of time despite only starting voice acting in 1979. Very impressive. Keith FUCKING David, the smoothest smooth black man voice ever. To round it all out Hamilton Camp, a man who started his career in movies, tv and animation in 1946 and literally worked so much that several of his voices came out after he passed away in 2005. He will always be best known as Fenton Crackshell (aka Gizmoduck) to me.

Anyway today’s Final Episode is called The Great Rift and was written by Mark Seidenberg, not the guy who writes about science and people not being able to read or something. That’s who came up first on google until I entered IMDB to the search too. If they are the same person then wow that’s a wild career change. Anyway he started in writing for the animations in 1984 with the Snorks, then came several Hanna Barbera shows like Galtar and the Golden Lance. Then Disney with Duck Tales, Goof Troop and Aladdin. He also worked on Jackie Chan Adventures and COW Boys of Moo Mesa. The weirdest thing was he worked on the Biker Mice from Mars reboot in like 2006. I always forget that is a thing. But it is. I don’t like it.

Anyway this episode starts up with Aladdin and his pals checking out the lost city of Mesmaira. It’s all destroyed and screwed up and covered in sand. They end up finding a chest of jewels and one of them is stolen by a hawk which they had noticed earlier. Iago chases the hawk because he’s s till money crazed even though he’s now friends with a Princess and can probably get whatever the hell he wants. Anyway they bring the jewels back to the Sultan’s palace while the hawk shows us that it’s no ordinary jewel it’s an EVVVVVVVVVVVVVVIL jewel. With a person inside it! She’s the hawk’s wife Queen Deluca. The hawk is voiced by Keith David. Just to let you know.

So Aladdin and the gang are back at the Sultan’s palace and Queen Deluca changes her husband hawk into a giant hawk and causes him to grow big as hell. Anyway Queen Deluca pretty much makes Aladdin and the gang run the fuck out of the palace, turning the Sultan and Jasmine into jewels on the way out. Thankfully Abu gets the jewels into his hat before they run off. They try to come back later, the Genie gets sent to the ends of the earth. The Hawk Husband gets sent back to Mesmaria in a desert. Oh, and the other jewels turned out to be her brothers who also have powers. They are all fighting each other which brings the Great Rift to Agraba. The Great Rift just happens to be a giant green monster that is just getting more powerful. Shit is getting real.

Aladdin rescues the Hawk who used to be a man, not to be confused with DC Comics Hawkman. They team up and this time actually get the jewel from Queen Deluca, after some trouble they finally destroy it. Which turns Queen Deluca back into a normal woman, takes all her brothers powers away, gets rid of the giant monster and brings Sultan and Jasmine back. Now that they are not being influenced by the evil jewels, Queen Deluca, her husband (who is now a man again!) and her brothers are welcomed to the city of Agraba.

FINAL VERDICT: A pretty fun, energetic, enjoyable way to end this series. I always liked how magical and mystical the Aladdin world was and this just helps me to enjoy this episode a lot. People being transformed into birds. Giant monsters. Evil Jewels that corrupt people. A great little episode. 

The Comic Review #90: Dark Hawk #7-8

 

Well then it’s finally time for us to discuss Darkhawk again. This time it’s a two parter sos we can get the series over with sooner. Not soon enough for portnoyd’s liking but I like the idea of reviewing a two parter in one blog post. Feels better that way. Anyway today’s issues introduce a new supervillain to bother Dark Hawk. Created by Phillipe Bazin comes LODESTONE! She’s apparently Darkhawk’s GREATEST CHALLENGE. Ho boy.

The first part of this story is seriously light. We see Dark Hawk fight some drug dealers while a character named Bobby aka Headset watches. Headset is a big nerd but the kinda nerd from like the 1980s and 1990s the ones that were into like weird stuff like Mozart. That’s the stuff Headset always listens to on his way home. He even agreed to see Karate if Chris Powell (Darkhawk’s alter ego) and his girlfriend Cheryl Colon (lol that’s not the best chose for a last name) come to the Mozart festival with him. So he came and they now have to go there. Chris Powell is not too happy about that.

We get some stuff about Dark Hawk wondering if he should keep the criminals there with him until the cops arrive or kill them like the Punisher does. He also reads a story from a hidden journal his dad kept but it doesn’t help him because the story ends before he learns out what his dad did! His mom also has a plan to stop all the stuff that’s been happening to her (like you know attempted murders and stuff) and it might involve this Private Investigator. Or Private Eye. Or Gumshoe. Gumshoe is not a good NES game.

Anyway there’s another fight with the drug dealers that Dark Hawk takes care of easily. He then hears someone scream and he finds out that it’s Headset, He tries to get him to take the Darkhawk Amulet and become Darkhawk but he can’t because he’s now unconscious which is when Lodestone shows up and starts screaming for Chris to show her the Darkhawks power but he can’t because the amulet is with Headset. Oh man. Pretty good way to end an issue huh?

So Chris Powell is being held up by Lodestone’s magnetic powers until he just flat out lies to her because she didn’t see him change from Darkhawk to Chris she just thinks he SAW where Darkhawk went too. He does this and then worries if he should stop Lodestone or help Headset. He decides to stop Lodestone as he doesn’t want any more people to be hurt. Lodestone and Darkhawk fight until more people come around to be lookie loos. Frankly if a superhero/supervillain fight happened anywhere where I was I would run as far away as possible from it. Probably get a part of your body lazered off. Anyway we also see an ambulance come for Headset! Let’s hope he’s okay. I like this nerdy goober.

Anyway Darkhawk gives up because he thinks people will get hurt and Lodestone starts trying to use her magnetic powers to steal the amulet. Darkhawk thinks this is the end but someone comes to save him. That someone is Phillipe Bazin who wants Darkhawk’s body and everything so he can find out what makes him tick and get the power for himself. He uses this doohickey to cause Lodestone major pain. Anyway Darkhawk is now at a abandoned factory owned by Bazin and he’s beeing poked and prodded and he can’t exactly escape because of the pain the machines cause him.

Darkhawk pretty much gets a small saving grace when Allegra Bazin shows up and literally gives him enough time free of prying eyes to change back into Chris Powell. He’s smaller and everything and just has to ignore the pain long enough to change back into Darkhawk! Which is exactly what happens! Lodestone however sees him escape and they start fighting again. Phillipe Bazin shows up with the doohickey and it’s knocked out of his hands and into Allegra’s who shocks Lodestone. Darkhawk wonders if he should try to stop everyone here and now but realizes he’s overwhelmed and escapes! He also wonders why Allegra even decided to help him! QUESTIONS UPON QUESTIONS! We then go to a scene with his mom talking to her shitty private eye who after she leaves talks to someone via telephone saying that she is getting to close and won’t back off and needs to be eliminated!

FINAL VERDICT: I want to how all of this ends even though I’m sure I read the story where he does conclude like 15 years ago. Anyway I enjoyed this story and I hope to see more soon. Next issue of Darkhawk will have the Punisher and the Return of Savage Steel. We will come back to them in a few posts because next time is the second issue of Vigilante!

Even More NES Games Part Who The Hell Knows: The A’s are done and gone JERKS!

 So all of you jerks who said I wouldnt get past the A’s are WRONG. I am going to talk about all of these games. All of them. This is the easiest blog posts I can make. I don’t have to watch anything, read anything or do anything except remember these games and I’ve played the majority of them. One hiccup will be explained soon but I’ll review those games even if I have to buy them and a damn power pad!

Astyanax is yet another game that reminds me of the very early days of collecting NES games. I don’t know why I bought it because holy shit the cover art is kinda goofy. Okay, I love the dragon. He’s kinda awesome but the dude looks so goofy. Anyway It was like $5 at a store that I don’t dare go into any more because I’d have a freak out if I saw the price for Astyanax now. Way more because finding this stuff in Newfoundland now has to be hard as hell. Astyanax was the perfect $5 game. Or the perfect rental. You would bring it home, play the game, enjoy it and then forget about it for like 15-20 years. The game is a simple platformer where you fight all kinds of cool monsters. The levels are well thought out and you fight big and bold monsters as a big and bold sprite. This won’t hit your top 150 but you’ll still be glad you played it. The only problem comes from the big sprite, sometimes you will hit something you shouldn’t because of it. That’s all I can really say in negative qualities about this game. It’s one of the many “pretty good but not great” NES games. I have fond memories of it and it will still make me smile.

Here’s another game based around Greek history? I think Greek. Astyanax has something to do with the city of Troy but I don’t care enough to look it up. Athena is some kind of Goddess I think. I’m a NES game reviewer, not a theologian. This is another game made by Micronics and it just might be the worst they ever did. I hate Micronics more than any other game publisher. Even Ocean was more enjoyable. The best Micronics game is still at best awkward and probably has a better port anywhere else. This game is the jankiest piece of shit possible. You have to power up and wow they have power down items mixed in too which is annoying in any fucking game. This game is stupid and terrible but it’s somewhat noteworthy at least the Arcade version was one of the first games where you could play as a lady. Neat. Anyway the NES version has terrible everything except graphics. I actually like these cartoony graphics. Too bad the controls, sound, enemy placement, enemies themselves, everything is too annoying to bother with.

Here comes the hiccup, I had forgotten about the Power Pad (even though I might still own one) and the Power Pad games are like some of the 11 games I have never ever ever played. I will come back to them but I think I have to own the games and swallowing the fact I will have to pay $10 for a game that people would give the fuck away. You can say it’s only $10 but I could buy several comic books for that money. Things I would like to own over Athletic World. Anyway, I will be skipping over these games for right now because I can’t get the emulator to work with power pad stuff either and man playing a game that way would be so annoying too. So expect those 11 games as like a two part article at the end or something. Attack of the Killer Tomatoes has one hell of a interesting history. It’s based on a series of weird horror movie parody films from the 1970s to 1992. Then they made a cartoon for Fox Kids that I still haven’t seen anything related to it(I really like the movies. Fun goofery and they have the original live action Gomez Addams, John Astin in them!) Anyway this game is fucking horrendous. Probably the worst game being mentioned in this part. Either that or Athena. It has some annoying graphics, annoying controls, the levels themselves are just poorly designed and poorly thought out. You’ll be screaming HOW THE FUCK WAS ANYONE MEANT TO ENJOY THIS? Somehow despite being annoying and weird it’s also very short so when you get used to the games shittiness you’ll beat it very quickly. So at least the terribleness will be over quickly.

We have our first Zapper only game (I think?) and first NES game brought to us by Color Dreams. I will probably be nicer to this game than I will be to most of their other games. It’s a passable “OKAY” game. It will not change the world. It will not top the list of Zapper games (either full on Zapper games or ones that can use a Zapper like Bayou Billy). You can do what the game wants you but it’s never that frantic or crazy like other Zapper games get. I really don’t know what else to say here. This game does what it sets out to do OKAY enough. This is totally one of the most OKAY things in existence. It won’t make you scream for more and it won’t make you want to cut your balls off in frustration. It’s probably the second best Color Dreams/Bunch Games/Wisdom Tree game. Wild huh?

I think people overrate this games badness. Yes, it’s a messy awful game that isn’t much fun. You play through the same stage like at least 10 times that are broken up by 3 mini games that aren’t fun to play and you have to beat to pass on. 3 mini games that literally punish you so quickly and harshly for a simple mistake. However, I’d play this over many many other NES games that I consider way fucking worse (including this games sequel). I’d play this over Athena and Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. This is just boring although the fact you get ONE chance at the last level before you get pushed back to the beginning is the largest pile of horse shit ever shovelled into a NES cart. Holy shit that garbage is mean.

The rankings now are!

Good Games: 22

Bad Games: 14

Okay Games: 4

See you! Have fun!

NES Games Need Reviewing and I’m the Man for that Job, Baby!

 I’m wondering if it will ever happen when I’ll just give all 5 games in a post positive reviews? or negative? I wonder what will happen first, or when it will happen? I’m gonna say right now that it won’t happen today because well I like spoiling things, but it’s something I’m curious will it or won’t it happen? Anyway enjoy the worst opening paragraph I have ever written.

Games like this are the PERFECT reason idiots who go DURR I ONLY COLLECT LICENSED GAMES DURR are wrong and full of it. It’s not a complete collection of NES games if you don’t have these and you are missing out on so many fun games. Like this one. This game is mega fun, you go around an area saving people until you have to exit the level and fight a boss. It’s simple but you’ll find out that I like simplicity. A game I can beat in 30 minutes is way better to me then some 82 hour sim game or Ultima. This game does what it sets out to do and does it incredibly well. The graphics are cartoony and fun (not like the box cover at all lol) the music is good and the bosses are cool, large and fun to fight. I don’t know about you but this game is clearly better than several actually LICENSED games. That’s games okayed by nintendo, not games made from a license. I think this is a game you should own if you enjoy retro NES games period.

Vic Tokai is a pretty underrated publisher/developer/whatever of games. However the first game that I get to talk about that they made for the NES can go fuck a goat or a dirty asshole or something. I don’t like sports games in general, I don’t even know what I’m doing or how to shoot goals and then I watch some video on YouTube and be like OKAY this guy makes it look easy as hell so I go back and try and still fail miserably. Then the CPU comes in and gets 32 points to my maybe 3 and I turn the game off and go do something else. That’s me with most sports games. I don’t get them and I don’t enjoy playing most of them. This game is even worse because for whatever reason the game stops when you get the ball and then starts up again which is weird, disorienting and annoying. I got the ball twice and that happened and I was like yeah I double don’t care about this basketball game.

Alpha Mission is one of the shooters I kinda call “arcade like” like Star Soldier, Star Force and Starship Hector (lot’s of stars) they just have that weird early NES game arcade feel to them. You’ll have to wait for my thoughts on like every “arcadey” kinda early NES shooter till I get to them but I don’t really like this one. I think it’s slow and clunky and I see no reason why I should turn it on instead of just about any shooter. There’s not much else to say really. I wish I could turn every game into some kind of spiel but Alpha Mission exists. I’ll probably give it an OKAY rating in the end because I could see people enjoying it but I just don’t get into this one. It’s not hot poop like some others we will get too but it’s not a hardcore winner either. Also there’s not much to say about this game either way.

Amagon brings me back to the days of just downloading every NES rom and trying out games that I never played and I’ve always been a big fan of it really. It’s a charming little run and gun shooter. I remember having arguments with a guy who thought it was the worst NES game (it wouldn’t even crack the bottom 200 on its worst day) but I always thought it was a quirky fun little game from AMERICAN SAMMY (which is probably my favorite name for a game company ever) who mostly made fun and quirky games. We will get to those down the line. Anyway Amagon has you playing as Amagon (what a weird name) a soldier whos lost on a crazy island filled with monsters and mayhem. You play as probably the goofiest looking sprite in the NES library (which just adds so much to the charm for me). This game is decently hard too. You’ll need to know when and where to use the power to charge up into Super-Amagon. Still I’ve beaten it twice and I usually end up turning this game on whenever I have nothing else to do and playing it from time to time. I dunno but Amagon is pretty awesome in my book.

American Gladiators would that count as a sports game? or just a game show game? or both? If it counts then this is the first sports game I’ll give in say I actually kinda like. You play five different games five times over for like five levles of difficulty. I actually enjoyed playing several of these games, the only one I didn’t was the wall. THe controls on that segment are really annoying. Still I would rate this as something I want to try and beat, which makes it better than All Pro Basketball which I never want to see again. There’s not much else to say about this except that I never saw the show and I kinda want too because it seems fucking wild and ridiculous.

That’s it, five more games, you know the drill daddy-o!

Good games: 18

Bad Games: 10

Okay Games: 2

See you soon for more!