This is something that many retro gamers and collectors have to put up with from time to time. Consoles get old. They break. Or if they don't break, they just become more trouble than they're worth to keep fixing. Or maybe we just don't know how to fix the damn things. This happened to my Sega Saturn. It's been a problem since I got the console in a trade with a friend - it was a duplicate console for him, and he told me up front that it had a problem with the lid of the disc drive. It was a problem I could deal with. The console doesn't detect the drive as being closed unless it's held down by something. It used to be that I could just hold it down with a book or something and not have a problem. But after taking the thing out and hooking it up in the hopes of playing some Panzer Dragoon or Nights or something similarly awesome...
Yeah. It's on top of my 3DO, just because that's where I put it, but the rest of this is necessary to get the damn thing to even read a disc. I'm holding down the disc drive with my XBOX, which is balanced on a corkboard which is held up by a stack of VHS tapes. And to make things even better, I'm not hearing any audio, so apparently the disc drive isn't the only problem. Granted, I can play Panzer Dragoon just fine (albeit silently) this is kinda ridiculous.
So, it looks like I'm gonna blow $40 or so on a replacement in the near future. Hooray.
As the title of this post suggests, I really don't understand the modding community. Sometimes, they'll make something incredibly awesome, like mods in Skyrim that require players to seek warmth from the cold, or requires them to actually sleep and eat at regular intervals. That's really cool and it helps a player immerse themselves into the game more easily. It also sounds like Fallout New Vegas's Hardcore mode if it was actually done well. There's also mods of old games, mostly Super Mario World from what I've seen, that create an entirely new game with the engine. These mods are awesome. They make sense to me.
Then, you have a mod that makes Sonic the Hedgehog a giant erect penis. No, it doesn't give him a giant, erect penis, but I'm sure that exists too. Those are all over Bioware and Bethesda games, and Sonic porn is rampant on the internet, so it just makes sense. Except it doesn't make any sense. I hate the internet.
No, this mod turns Sonic into a giant, floating cock that runs really fast and slams itself into robots. The link is below. I don't think it would be the best of ideas to post this directly here, in the event that posting a video of male genitalia running through a city at high speeds collecting rings and stomping robots comes back to bite me in the ass at some point. But the link is there.
And yet, here I am laughing like a little kid. Damn you, internet. Damn you.
Of course, I need to conclude this with the one line from Egoraptor's Mega Man X Sequelitis episode that I thought of immediately after I saw this. You can also take this as my review of Sonic Generations. Seriously, as a former fan of the Sonic games who'd been beaten down by the horrors of Sonic '06 and all the other terrible Sonic games in the past decade or so, it's good to finally get something as kick ass as Sonic Generations.
I just now remembered something that happened to me a couple years back. It might not be a particularly funny story, but I sort of find it amusing. I'm guessing I can fit this into either the movie or feeble attempts at comedy section of this site's subject matter. Onto the story.
I live in Syracuse, New York, the hometown of the Baldwin family. They weren't born here - they're actually from Long Island, but they have strong ties to the community. Their mother lives here. She's sort of a hometown hero here with her breast cancer charity. She's kind of awesome. Anyway, the Baldwin brothers are frequently in town. My mother saw Stephen in a Wal-Mart and I think I saw him outside of a building in the city once. My former co-workers at the library I used to work at had Alec stop in to pick up some books for his mother. Nobody cares enough about Danny or Billy to bring up times they saw them. It's like bumping into Jim Belushi or Don Swayze. Nobody gives a shit about them.
"Oh, but Don Swayze was in a few episodes of True Blood!" Who cares. He's just an uglier version of Patrick Swayze.
"Oh, but Jim Belushi has a career!" Yeah, and he sucks and everyone knows it. His brother was a genius. Jim Belushi's just an unfunny douchebag.
"Oh, but Martin Sheen's brother, Joe Estavez is a better example of a celebrity sibling nobody cares about!" Yeah, but he doesn't even have the same name as his brother, so that joke would require more explanation that I'm willing to provide.
One time, their mother got Alec to do some commercials for a local grocery store. It's painfully obvious that Alec didn't want to be there, and he put no effort into it. Unfortunately, I can't find these ads on Youtube to show you how little Alec cares about grocery stores common folk buy their ham at.
Anyway, the story I wanted to tell is about me putting my foot firmly into my mouth. This happens to me a lot.
I was talking with my co-workers at the library I used to work at about celebrities with local ties to Syracuse. I started off by making fun of Tom Cruise (born in Syracuse) for being short and crazy, then went on to saying that I hated almost every movie with Richard Gere (his parents live here, and he has a house here) was ever in and made a crack about celebrity Buddhists who don't adhere to the teachings of Buddha when they aren't convenient. Also, a joke about how people in Syracuse probably assume that he's a Ninja or Karate master because he's a Buddhist, and Buddhism is Asian, and they all know martial arts or something. Don't let the college town status fool you, we aren't a smart city. If we were, then we wouldn't be such a shit hole, and we wouldn't worship college sports teams with cult like fervor. Anyway, I was getting some laughs from my co-workers out of this little tirade. I have to say that the librarians I know aren't stuck up prudes like the stereotype suggests. They're very fun people. But I digress. I went into a Baldwin joke. I think it was something like this...
"You know how you can tell the Baldwin's apart? Alec's a fat jerk, Stephen's a stupid jerk and nobody gives enough of a crap about Billy and Danny to even know if they're fat, stupid and/or jerkish. They probably are, though. After all, they're Baldwins."
My co-workers informed me afterwards that a regular patron who just left a minute prior to my Baldwin joke has some sort of family connection to them. I think it's that his brother is married to one of the Baldwin sisters. I narrowly avoided offending a guy's family and possibly having to apologize and act like I was sorry for calling the Baldwin brothers fat, stupid and/or jerks.
The point of this story is... I have no idea. Something about Alec Baldwin's Schweddy Balls, I guess?
The 32X. The giant, black, mushroom shaped tumor sticking out of the Sega Genesis meant to prolong it's lifespan longer than it should have been. One of the biggest commercial failures in the history of gaming. Even the ads for it made the joke that people make about it today. That it looks like the Genesis is mating with it.
They're having disgusting pig sex, Timmy.
But the thing most people tend to overlook is that the 32X had a pretty solid library of games. Star Wars, Metal Head, Tempo, Kolibri, Virtua Fighter, Cosmic Carnage, Knuckles Chaotix, and of course, excellent ports of Mortal Kombat 2 and Doom. Today, we're talking about Doom, which is probably the best home console port of the game (The N64 version is better, but it's also not really a port as much has it is its own game.)
The MKII port was just as good as the SNES version, and whether you prefer it or the one on SNES comes down to whether you prefer the SNES controller or the six button Genesis controller. The version of Doom however is a huge step above the SNES version because it's actually playable. Yeah, yeah, the soundtrack of the SNES version sounded better. By a long shot. The 32X version sounded horrible. But that's the only thing that the SNES version does better, or anywhere near as well, honestly.
The SNES version is almost unplayable. There's a delay between when you push a button and you shoot the demon in the face. The graphics are dark and muddy, making it almost impossible to see what's going on.
The 32X version is bright enough for you to see what's going on, there's no delay between pressing the button and shooting, and the controls just work really well. It takes a bit of getting used to changing the weapons, but aside from that, it works.
There are only 15 levels, but you can pick them from the title screen right off the bat, which is a huge plus.
Let's be real for a second, though. It's pointless to review Doom. Why? Because it's Doom. At this point, it's like reviewing Space Invaders. What are you going to say about that? "You shoot the UFO's and they go faster. Sound interesting? Then get it." Everything that can be said about Doom has been said. It's a simple, pick up and play FPS that's fun as hell. All you need to know is if it plays as well as the PC version, and the answer for the 32X version is that it does very well for a console version of the game.
It's also really cheap, which is a plus. It shouldn't cost you more than five dollars for a loose copy of the game, and any retro game store that has 32X games in stock at any given time probably has at least one copy of this.
So, yeah. I recommend it. But I could've just saved us all some time and said "It's Doom. Sound interesting? Do you have a 32X and five dollars to spend? Then get it."
All the way back in July, I made a blog entry about buying a copy of Sonic The Hedgehog for the Master System off of eBay, wherein I promised to review the game upon it's arrival. Somehow, it slipped my mind, and I'm just now getting to it. So, here goes. Sonic on the Master System.
To talk about the Master System Sonic, I have to compare it to its 16-bit older brother. The biggest comparison I can make (aside from the graphical downgrade) is that the Master System Sonic is more of a traditional platformer than the Genesis version. Yeah, I just said that Sonic isn't a traditional platformer. Sure, it's a defining series in the genre, but it has less emphasis on platforming as it does on "GOTTA GO FAST! FASTER! FASTER! GET THE RINGS! OH CRAP, I HIT SPIKES AND I'M DEAD." That's pretty much the Sonic experience. I'm glossing over the fact that the levels are, for the most part, very well designed around the premise of going fast as hell.
Yeah, except for that one. There are a few levels, such as the infamous Marble Zone (for some reason, it's usually the second set of levels in the game), that grind the games to a screeching halt and make you do some, in my opinion, very tedious platforming in a game that should be about GOING FAST! GOTTA GO FAST LIKE A BLUE COKED UP SPEEDY GONZALES!
I'd like to point out that I really do like the original Sonic games. I just see the flaws in them as well.
That long diatribe had a point. Sonic on the Master System is less about speed, and more about traditional platforming. There's still an element of speed in the game, but the game is less brute force speed and more precision. If you play this like the Genesis Sonic, you're probably not going to do as well as you would if you were playing it with Mario in mind, at least a little bit.
The game's also, surprisingly, not a direct backwards port of the Genesis version, which is a plus. Not because I dislike the Genesis version - in fact, the Genesis version of the original Sonic is one of my favorite games of the 16-bit era. I like this because the Master System version is actually its own game. It has some stages in common with the Genesis version - Green Hill Zone, Labyrinth Zone and Scrap Brain Zone. But it has three original stages as well, Bridge Zone, Jungle Zone and Sky Base Zone.
It's also worth noting that the Green Hill Zone is quite a bit different from the one in its Genesis counterpart in terms of level design.
It's one of the best Sonic games I've ever played, and the first truly great game I've stumbled across for the Master System. Check it out.
If you want to buy your own copy of this game: It's also available on the Wii Virtual Console. I'm not sure if that's the Master System or Game Gear version, but the Game Gear version is apparently more or less the same game with only a few differences. The Game Gear version seems to go for a very low price, and it's probably one of the more common games on the Game Gear. I certainly lucked out getting my complete in box copy for $13 including shipping from England, and it's unlikely that you'd get one for as cheap as that. According to Pricecharting.com the market value is $15 for a loose copy. That's probably not counting international shipping. Occasionally, some idiot buys one for a few hundred, because of the rarity of the American release of the game, but it's not worth nearly that much.
I also want to bring some attention to the game's stellar soundtrack. The Master System wasn't known for it's sound processor to say the least, but they really made the best of it for this game. Here's the theme to the Bridge Zone. It was apparently later sampled by a Janet Jackson song (for some reason) and as Tails's theme in Sonic Adventure. It really is a great piece of 8-bit music.
-update!-
A friend of mine commented on Facebook about the platforming elements being prominent in the original games. I think I might have gone through my opinion on the original games a bit too quickly without really putting a shred of thought into it, which I do sometimes when I'm trying to get something out of the way quickly, which is absolutely what I was doing. I figure I might as well elaborate on what I should have said. To do that, I'm just going to copy and paste most of the response I gave to him, because what I said there is a lot closer to my actual opinion instead of "GOTTA WRITE FAST! GOTTA GET IT DONE SO I CAN TALK ABOUT WHAT I WANTED TO TALK ABOUT! I'M THE SONIC THE HEDGEHOG OF WRITING!"
"In the
Green Hill Zone, it's all about speed. Marble
Hill Zone is one of the more tedious and slow moving bits of
platforming I've seen in a game, and those levels being back to back is
really jarring. I just didn't want to spend too much time critiquing the
original game. My point was that the Master System Sonic focuses a lot
less on speed than the first Sonic game, which was at the time of it's
release, the only other Sonic game out there. I also honestly prefer the
Master System version, as much as I love the original on the Genesis.
Even though I hate Marble Zone with a passion."
Also, to an extent, the Master System Sonic sort of makes the original Genesis Sonic feel a lot more like that entire blue Speedy Gonzales on coke thing I described by comparison.
I don't see much reason to own a Gamecube. I like the console. It has a great collection of games, and the controllers are damn near perfect, but the problem I have is that I can play my Gamecube games on my Wii, and plug my Gamecube controllers into my Wii. Because of this, there's really no reason for me to own an actual Gamecube. Sure, there's the Gameboy Advance player, which lets you play Gameboy Advance games on your TV, but with the upcoming Retron 5, that will make the Gamecube just a little less necessary.
That said, there are two Gamecubes that I want. And I want the hell out of these.
First up is the Panasonic Q.
A Japanese exclusive that also plays CD's and DVD's. I'll be honest. The
only reason I want it is that it looks really, really cool. I doubt
it'll bee of much use to me, since it's probably region locked and can
only play Japanese games and DVD's, but in the event that I ever start
importing Gamecube games, this, and the next Gamecube I'm going to show
you are the ones I really want.
This next one is something I've wanted from the very moment I found out it was an actual thing.
This is the Char Custom Gamecube, based on the character of Char Aznabel from the long running anime franchise, Gundam. I've probably mentioned here before that I'm a Gundam fan, particularly of the original timeline, and Char is one of my favorite characters in any work of fiction. This thing is straight up bad ass. It's four times more badass than the average Gamecube. If you got that reference, then you and I have something in common.
Oh, and there's also a Char Custom Wavebird wireless controller.
HOLY SHIT ON A BISCUIT I WANT THAT.
I want that even more.
If that car existed, I'd want it too. And I don't even drive. And for the record, neither did Char. He could pilot a mobile suit like nobody's business, but he never learned to drive a car, so he wouldn't need a custom car... Which leaves me with two questions. How and why do I know that?
Oh, so it does exist. Japan, stop making me want things I can never have.
I recently heard a NintendoAge user (I believe his name was retrokidd89) call a game "Unicorn Shit." In fact, it was a game that I posted about getting for really cheap. The term means a collector's piece that's rare and valuable, but terrible.
The game in question is Shaq Fu on the Game Boy. Here's my hand holding it in front of Char's Zaku, which is a cool collector's piece that's only worth about $15, if I remember right. Shaq Fu on the Game Boy is worth $25.
Why don't I just pay $25 to have someone punch me in the face repeatedly?
The game is terrible. I give the other versions of Shaq Fu a lot of slack for not being as bad as people say, but this version is almost unplayable. And yet, it's worth a decent bit of money.
So, there's one piece of Unicorn Shit from my collection. It's one of the few really rare games I own. And it's Shaq Fu on Game Boy. I need to go out and buy a copy of Panzer Dragoon Saga so I can at least have a rare, valuable game that's awesome, as opposed to this mess.
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