3/31/04

The Vectrex review page... it's alive!  ALIVE!!!   Er, uh, sorry.  I teamed up with Brian Pacula, the former editor of The Good, The Bad, and The Eight-Bit and one of the Vectrex's most devoted fans, to bring you reviews of two dozen games for this unique console.  If you've never heard of the Vectrex, imagine what would happen if you fused a classic Macintosh, the original Game Boy, an X-Box (for extra girth), and the arcade game Asteroids together.  You'll not only get a pretty good mental image of the system, but you'll understand why I used the Frankenstein analogy at the beginning of this paragraph.

Well, enough about that.  It took some therapy, but I've worked through the trauma of seeing Tails' butthole in Sonic Advance 3 and have gone back to playing the Game Boy Advance.  I managed to beat Metroid Zero, but not before suffering through a brand new scene in the game which forces Samus to sneak into a ship full of cranky crustaceans, "armed" with nothing but a wimpy pistol.  When fully charged, this pathetic excuse for a gun freezes the relentless, razor-armed lobsters in place for about three seconds, making it only slightly more difficult for them to surround you and fry you to a crisp with their own, far more deadly weapons. 

Just when I started to question Nintendo's sanity for including this incredibly aggravating stealth mission in the game, I retrieved Samus' space suit, and the tables quickly turned on the merciless space pirates.  I tell you, there's never been anything more sadistically satisfying in a Metroid game than exacting revenge on the Chozos by blasting every last one of the bastards into crab cakes.  The only way it could have gotten better is if the designers had included a melted butter attachment for Samus' laser beam, although judging from what I've seen, that seems to be the only weapon the game DOESN'T have.

3/29/04

I discovered over the weekend that all it takes to keep me entertained for hours on end is a video capture card and some cable television access.  There's so much you can do with the snapshots... just look at the bottom of this page!

Anyway.  The Vectrex feature is just about finished... all I need to do is plug in an introduction and it'll be ready for publication.  I'd write it now, but I'm suffering from a bit of writer's block, which will hopefully pass in the next few days.

3/23/04

Sorry I haven't been updating lately, folks.  I've been really busy, filling in for my manager at work while he's been away.  Let's do a little catching up, shall we?

First, the documentary Video Game Invasion recently aired on GSN, the channel once known as Game Show Network.  It wasn't the embarassment that Spike TV's Video Game Awards was, featuring important video game designers like Howard Scott Warshaw and Nolan Bushnell instead of barely dressed dancers and professional wrestlers (they don't use steroids anymore... or any less!).  However, the fact that it was on a Sony-owned network became obvious when skateboarding champion (and shameless corporate schill!) Tony Hawk announced that "the Playstation left Sega's Saturn in the dust" and illustrated why with bogus footage.  The producers ran clips of the Playstation game Tomb Raider next to footage of War Gods, the atrocious fighting game which was never even released on the Saturn.  Aww... that's OK, Sony!  Not every system can be as good as the Saturn, especially yours, but I'm sure a little self-delusion will help soothe your savage penis envy.  Heck, if you're lucky, you might even be able to get a few of your dumbest fans to believe your slander and lies.

Well, enough about that.  There's a beta version of Sonic Advance 3 on the Internet now.  I've given it a test run and I didn't think it was anything special... in fact, the only thing that stood out in my mind was Tails' apparent wardrobe malfunction at the beginning of the game.

Funny how it only takes a single pixel to turn the world's cutest video game mascot into a perverted orange flasher.  Oh well... at least we know what he uses for propulsion while he's hanging in mid-air.

3/19/04

Well, I've finally played Death Crimson, and I must say that it really does live up to its reputation as the worst light gun game- and perhaps the worst game EVER- on the Sega Saturn.  No words (not even swear words!) can describe how viciously, maliciously bad this game is, but for the sake of humanity, I'll try.  Death Crimson sucks.  It sucks the white from paper, the Corinthian from leather, and the eleven herbs and spices from a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken.  It has been shown to cause cancer in laboratory animals, the scientists hired to handle them, and their immediate relatives.  Death Crimson will abduct your eyeballs, drag them to a secluded forest, and sodomize them until they squeal like pigs.  Its symphony of destruction will haunt both your dreams and every waking moment.  Dream Crimson is the scourge of the seven seas, a plague upon the land, and a threat to the entire galaxy.

The designers (or more likely, designer) of Death Crimson should be convicted of a gun crime and thrown in prison forever.  In fact, this is the most sinister use of a firearm since the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.  You'd be better off playing Area 51, Mighty Hits, or even Russian Roulette with a loaded weapon.  At least you'll die happy, knowing that you never, ever had to experience the indescribable horror of Death Crimson.

3/17/04

I would have finished the Vectrex special by now had it not been for my latest toy, a video capture device which I've been using to take pictures of practically everything.  Although it's distracting me from my work on the Blitz now, this will ultimately be beneficial to the site, because it will allow me to take pictures of games on systems that are currently impossible to emulate.  Pictures like this!  And this!  And even this!

But anyway, back to the Vectrex feature.  I should have it done by Monday at the latest.

3/15/04

Good news, everyone!  We're delivering a package to a planet of oversized, undersexed Amazon cavewomen.  Oh wait... no, that wasn't it.  The Vectrex feature should be finished in a couple of days now that I've received Brian Pacula's reviews.  Also, Bender's banging some robot who sounds like Bea Arthur from The Golden Girls.

3/12/04

3/10/04

I sure hope nobody comes here for up-to-the-minute video game news.  The only thing I can really report is that a sequel to The Great Giana Sisters (the Commodore 64 game whose suspiciously familiar name and gameplay earned it a lawsuit by Nintendo) was recently released for the Dreamcast.  If you've ever wondered why people get so excited about this Super Mario Bros. clone... well, I can't figure it out, either.  In comparison to any of the Super Mario games, even the first, Giana comes up short.  It's got the most aggravating level designs this side of The Lost Levels and a pointless power up system that leaves you vulnerable to attack no matter how many items you've collected.  I'll give the designers some credit... Giana's Return is more complete than most Dreamcast homebrews, and Giana's transformation from a sweet, conservatively dressed girl to Cyndi Lauper's evil twin has always been hilarious.  However, I can't really recommend the game unless you were a fan of the original (and frankly, I can't imagine why you WOULD be).

3/8/04

There's lots more stuff on the Blitz today, including the first Advance Theory update in a long time and a review of the Saturn game Terra Cresta 3D.

I may have made the wrong call on the upcoming GSN video game special starring Tony Hawk.  The interviews with Steven Kent, the author of The First Quarter, have got me thinking that this documentary might actually be legit.  After all, The First Quarter is only THE best book ever written about the history of video games!

3/5/04

The Gameroom Blitz has received its first donation, courtesy of a friend of mine who's been a loyal reader of the site for over a year now.  Thanks, man!  I hope you enjoy the bonus articles in Full Spectrum.

Anyway, I thought I should mention that after an agonizingly long wait, the Game Boy Advance title River City Ransom EX (or its Japanese counterpart, Downtown Nekketsu Special EX) has finally been released.  It's a pretty good conversion of the NES game, and as the name suggests, the designers have thrown in some new features, including a (slightly) improved ending and more abilities for Alex and Ryan... or should I say Kunio and Riki?  The only problem is that the game's one fatal flaw has actually been made worse now that you can buy even more powerful martial arts moves.  In the NES game, once you built your character up to a certain point, you were practically unstoppable.  On the Game Boy Advance, the new attacks really DO make you invincible... there's an enhanced version of the Acro Circus where Kunio rolls along the ground, bowling over everyone in sight and often killing them with a single blow.  This attack is impossible to counter, so you can steamroll through the entire game without any trouble.  Bad move, Atlus.

Aside from that, River City Ransom EX is a lot of fun, and you'll really appreciate some of the extras the designers have added.  Just wait until you see what the last boss, Simon, has learned since you last saw him!

3/3/04

I have to give Tech TV's Morgan Webb-b-b-b credit... she works very hard to make me hate her.   In last night's episode of X-Play, she reviewed a mediocre side-scrolling shooter for the Playstation 2, using it as an opportunity to crucify the entire genre and to remind us how much better things are now that games have moved to the third dimension.   Funny how all the proponents of 3D games conveniently forget how frustrating it is to fall in a pit because you couldn't accurately judge the distance between platforms, or because you were handicapped by a lousy camera angle.

Luckily, there are still some sites out there that fight the good fight, like Kobun Heat, which was brave enough to reveal the truth about Sony's overhyped Jet Li: Rise to Honor ("It's not just repetitive... it's fucking repetitive!"), and Toastyfrog, which recently put the hammer down on Rockstar Games for strongarming the staff of 1UP into giving their games glowing ratings.  It's comforting to know that there are sensible people on the web, balancing out the unfathomable stupidity of the Webb.

3/2/04