I Don't Understand The Modding Community

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.

Click here if you dare.

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.

Trash Talking The Baldwins

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?

"Nobody can resist Alec's Schweddy Balls."

Doom (Sega 32X) Review

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."

Sonic The Hedgehog Master System Review

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 Want These Gamecubes

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.

Unicorn Shit - Shaq Fu on Game Boy

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.

I'm lazy lately, aren't I? - Updates for the blog and my Youtube channel - 8/19/2013

I've been neglecting both of my blogs a bit lately, and I apologize for that. It's been due to a combination of writer's block and having more of a focus on my Youtube channel lately. Most of what I've been wanting to do lately has been stuff much better suited to videos as opposed to text.

For one thing, there's my recent Let's Play videos of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. I've had two episodes so far, and I'll just put links to both of them below...

Episode #1

Episode #2

I'm also planning to do a few more Let's Play videos in the near future. I'm not making any promises, but the ones I'm most wanting to do are Reservoir Dogs on the PS2, a retrospective sort of video on the Battle Arena Toshinden series, and maybe a couple Sega Saturn games, since I'm going to finally be getting a working Saturn in the next few days. I want to do some more RPG's in the future, but those are time consuming as all hell to play, much moreso to edit videos together out of the gameplay. But if I ever do those, I intend to make videos for Star Ocean: The Second Story and Final Fantasy VII. Maybe The Granstream Saga as well, since I sort of like that one, and it's pretty obscure.

I'm also doing dramatic readings of video game based CreepyPastas, but I don't know if that idea has legs. Slowbeef from Retsupurae is already doing that sort of thing. I haven't uploaded anything along those lines yet, but I will put something up if in the next few days.

I also have a few anime reviews that I want to do. The big ones right now are the anime adaptation of Battle Arena Toshinden. The only problem is that it's not that bad, honestly. But I've only seen the first episode. The second one might be horrible. There's also the infamous Violence Jack, which I hate with a flaming passion.

I have both of those on my laptop, I just need to type up review scripts and shoot the footage. I could also just write text reviews and put them on here. I'm not sure yet. We'll see what happens.

Game Reviews - SWAT: Global Strike Team (PS2)

I mentioned this game in one of my Recent Game Collection Finds videos. I said that it looked like a Rainbow Six ripoff, and that I'd make an update at some point if the game is anything worth mentioning.

Well, it is. It's actually a very good game. Surprisingly good, actually. I'm loving this game. It isn't really a Rainbow Six ripoff. I should have noticed at the time that it was a SWAT game made by Sierra. SWAT was a popular series of PC games that I've never played.

All I knew about the series was that it was a tedious, unforgiving mess of a game that Spoony made great comedic fodder out of. His Let's Play SWAT 4 videos are still some of my favorite things he's done, and I'm a huge fan of his so that's saying something. I was always sort of aware that he probably wasn't playing the game right, but that was what made it funny. The game took points off for "unlawful use of deadly force" whenever he shot a guy who was pointing a shotgun in his face, just because the guy hadn't fired yet, when I'm sure any SWAT officer would have sprayed that guy's brains across the wall the moment he pointed the gun at him.

I didn't expect this game to be fun. I expected it to be a lot like SWAT 4. But it isn't. The ally AI isn't stupid, or at least they don't get in the way, and instead of working in a precinct in a random city, you're playing as a
team of commandos that operates like SWAT dealing with a multinational criminal organization. That's not important, though. The plot just serves to put you in the specific scenarios the missions take place in, such as a bank robbery, a skyscraper in Paris or the London underground.

The goal here isn't like that of most traditional FPS games. You don't go in guns blazing. That gets you killed. You don't have a lot of energy unless you're playing on easy mode, and even then, you probably shouldn't play cowboy. You also can't go in stealthily dispatching each enemy. You're a SWAT officer, so you have to ambush the enemy, overwhelm them, incapacitate them and handcuff them. Or failing that, spray their brains across the wall. The game doesn't take points off when you do that, provided the enemy has opened fire on you, or has a hostage at gunpoint. If you kill a suspect when they're doing that, you're good.

You also get a tranquilizer pistol, which is very useful as well if you want to take a guy down, but still want to arrest him. Also useful is melee. A lot of the missions have you in close range, and occasionally, you will be face to face with a criminal. So, you can just hit him in the face with your gun and knock him out with one hit.

The most fun parts for me however are the sniper sequences. You use your team's sniper to get into position and take a group of goons out. For some reason, it's just very satisfying to do that.

The best part though, is that your teammates never inform you that you're in their spot.

Check it out if you get any enjoyment out of FPS games. The game goes for a very low price, and you can probably snag one on eBay for $5. It's also on the XBOX, and I doubt that version's any different. I highly recommend this game.

Blog Update: My First Youtube Video!

Several hours ago, I shot and uploaded my very first Youtube video, which is just me showing off some recent additions to my video game collection. I intend to make more of them. In fact, I intend to shoot at least one more video tomorrow, because I'm expecting a package of games that my mother bought for me when she was on vacation in St. Louis to arrive in the mail tomorrow. I might also make a few videos for my other blog which focuses on music. Who knows? In time, I might be making full length reviews of movies, anime, games and more.

As a little aside, I've been planning with a couple friends to make some gaming related videos, but nothing's come of that yet due to conflicting schedules.

But the point is that I finally took that plunge into video making, which I've been intending to do for years. I intend to do this along with blog entries. I found that shooting that video was a lot quicker and easier, since I usually labor over what I write for a long time, trying to get it to sound exactly the way I want it to, and with the video, I just found a functional camera angle, turned on the camera and talked for 13 minutes.

So, here's the link to the video. This is my first step in my journey from being an anonymous zilch on Blogger towards being an anonymous zilch on Blogger and Youtube.

Collector Stories - Great Finds - Xenogears (PS1)

Xenogears is generally seen as one of the best RPG's on the Playstation, and for good reason. It's a JRPG with giant robots using kung-fu. That's awesome. It provides more than that, which was completely unnecessary because giant kung-fu robots should be enough for any gamer, but it has a compelling story, a very well developed world and characters and gorgeous visuals in gameplay, and great animated cutscenes. It's a fantastic game and any RPG fan should have a copy of it.

On Pricecharting.com, the asking price seems to be about $25 to $40. I got mine for $18. How? Because I settled for things many collectors wouldn't bother with.

First off, it's a green label Greatest Hits reprint. A lot of collectors don't bother with those, and because of that, they generally go for lower prices. The game also didn't have the manual, and there were strange, small, black smudges on the back of the case that I still haven't been able to get off. I don't know what those are. I'm assuming that it's food residue, but it's small, and it ain't coming off, so I'm not worried.

Also, the eBay seller only had about 20 sales to his name. Another thing that any eBay user would be a bit iffy about. And I was iffy about it, but the deal was too good to pass up, and I wanted to play Xenogears.

I guess the moral of this story is that collectors are really obsessive about getting certain editions. I know one collector who won't touch a green label game, no matter how good the deal is. I don't understand this. There's no difference between the game if it has a green label or a black label, it's just a label on the side of the case and the coloration of the disc.

I'm not complaining, though. It makes collecting easier for me. It's not settling for less. It's accepting the fact that it's not perfect, and it's cheaper because of that, and sometimes good enough is good enough.

Collector Stories - My First Boxed Super Famicom Game

I just got my latest eBay purchase in the mail. It's complete in the box Super Famicom game - that's the Japanese Super Nintendo, for any readers who don't know. I don't own a Super Famicom, but I do have a Super Nintendo with the two plastic tabs inside the cartridge slot removed, and that's the only modification you need to play a Japanese game on an American Super Nintendo. I'm not sure about European ones, but I'd imagine that it's the same process. There's no region lockout function on the Super Nintendo, making it very convenient for importers who don't want to spend $70 on a Super Famicom.

The game is SD Gundam GX. I am a huge fan of the Gundam franchise and I'm a sucker for buying games based on the franchise. In fact, I bought a PS3 when it came out because one of the launch titles was Gundam Crossfire, which turned out to be one of the worst games I've ever played in my life. But there are good games in the series, and this is one of them. It's a strategy game with some action thrown in, and while it isn't a particularly deep game, it serves it's purpose well for a Gundam fan. You control an army of mobile suits and battleships and blow up another army of mobile suits and battleships. But this isn't a review of the game. That'll probably come later. This is a review of the packaging for a boxed Super Famicom game. I've never even seen one of these before, so this is a first impression.


This is the second Super Famicom game I've bought, the first being the Japanese version of Pilotwings, but that was just the game itself, so I really didn't know what the box looked like.

It's about the size of a VHS, and it opens from the top. This specific box is in slightly shoddy condition, but it's acceptable. It's twenty something year old cardboard. You kind of have to expect that.

Shown for size comparison

The case contains a piece of plastic to hold the game in place, and if I remember right, the Super NES games only used a piece of cardboard, which is a lot less likely to survive for a couple decades.

The game itself rattles a little bit when I shake it, but it works. In fact, my copy of Pilotwings rattles as well. Maybe Super Famicom games rattle more than their Western counterparts. I've only ever had these two Super Famicom games, so it could just be these two specific carts and not a general thing among them. But they do look a little less well designed. They're closer to the shape of a Genesis cartridge, and those tend to have a little more rattling than Super Nintendo carts. Maybe they're just not as well designed.

Also, the game leaves a little bit of space in the cartridge slot of my Super Nintendo when I put it in. That's sort of obvious given the difference in shape between the cartridge and the cartridge slot, though.

The booklet isn't in great condition either, but again, it's almost twenty years old. It's a lot smaller than the American Super Nintendo booklets, but it feels like it's made out of the same kind of paper.

The manual itself

On top of the manual for Clayfighter for size comparison

Also, the manual has some pretty cool drawings of super deformed mobile suits in it.

One of my favorites, the Kampfer from Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket on the left, and the Double Zeta Gundam from it's eponymous series on the right.

And a recreation of an iconic scene from the original Gundam. That scene didn't take place in open space, though. I'm not sure why it does here.

Honestly, the wear and tear doesn't matter too much to me. I'm just glad to have this game in this good of condition. Collecting Super Famicom games might be my next collecting vice and there are a lot of people selling them in North America, which makes it easier for me than if I had to rely on a seller in Japan who I might not be able to communicate with if something goes wrong due to the language barrier, not to mention the huge shipping and handling price and the time it would take to get a video game from Yokohama to New York.

In any case, I'm going to sit down and play this game for a bit. Expect a review at some point.

Video Game Review - Somari for the NES

Somari is an 8-bit version of Sonic The Hedgehog starring Mario.

What in the hell?

My initial reaction was that there was no way in hell that this game wouldn't be laughably terrible. After playing it for about ten minutes, my reaction was that this game is one of the most impressive bootlegs I've ever seen.

Apparently, nobody knows who made this game, where it was made or even exactly when it was made. It's more than likely from Asia, my guess would be China or Taiwan because of their active bootlegging industry at the time, but it's most likely from Taiwan. Apparently, somebody took out a trademark there in early 1994 for the name Somari. That's more than likely this game.

It's a shame that nobody really knows who they are, because these bootleggers could have been hired by Sega or Nintendo to make real games

I'm not going to lie - this game isn't as good as either of the games it ripped off. But it's very good on it's own merits.

Mario runs fast in this game. Maybe not as fast as Sonic did, but considering that this is an 8-bit game, it moves fast, and it feels fast for what it was. It also looks damn good. The colors are a bit dull, making it look more like a Master System game, but they look good for a Master System game. Here's a comparison between the graphics in Somari and Sonic The Hedgehog on the Sega Master System.

  

Sonic's colors pop out more, obviously, but consider that Sonic on the Master System had an actual budget and a team of professional, top of the line programmers and artists working on it. Somari was amateur hour, and I think they did a very impressive job.

The only problems with the game are that it has a very high difficulty, some control issues, a few glitches (it is a bootleg after all) and the music is bad enough to make your ears bleed.

If it sounds like I'm making excuses for the game, I am. It's a bootleg. The issues that Somari has kind of come with the territory. But bootlegs are rarely good games. There are exceptions - the Famicom versions of Chrono Trigger (an excellent backwards port, even if it did have Pokemon sprites in it) and Final Fantasy VII (which Kotaku editor Luke Plunkett called a "triumph of the human spirit," and Gamepro called "The video game equivalent of the human genome project") are the two big ones, and I think Somari is on the same level as those two. Consider what it is: a bootleg made by amateur Chinese, Taiwanese or Russian programmers who more than likely funded the project out of their own pockets. Don't expect gold from them. Expect silver, and you'll more than likely get that.

The easiest way to get it is on an emulator since it's rare to find it on eBay, but if you do, expect to pay anywhere from $20 to $60 for it. It might not be worth that price, and I really can't see how someone would have a problem pirating a game that was made and distributed illegally in the first place, but the collector in me definitely wants a copy, just because it would make a good conversation piece.

So emulate it. You might not like it - in fact, the consensus seems to be mixed on whether the game is good or not, but you have to give the anonymous programmers credit, because what this is a very impressive achievement for what it was.

Things That Annoy Me - Wartune's Advertisements

I've been seeing a lot of advertisements for an MMO called Wartune lately. Here's everything that these ads tell me about this game.

Wartune has half naked women in it.

So, this game apparently has boobs in it. That's nice, but is it worthwhile for gamers to pay their hard earned money to play Wartune? If so, how much does it cost? Is it free to play? What does the game look like? What genre of game is it? I assume that it's an RPG, but it could also be a fighting game, or honestly, pretty much anything. These ads say nothing substantial about the game that they're trying to sell. To be fair, I did find some that advertised the game...

MMO gibberish! And cleavage!

But I had to seek that one out with a Google image search. Most of the ads are shit like this...

That armor is ridiculously impractical. There's no joke here, I'm just pointing out the obvious.

This isn't an uncommon advertising tactic for low budget MMO's. Remember Evony? For those of you who don't, it was apparently a crappy MMO strategy game that stole graphics from Age of Empires that advertised with boobs, implying that you can "play discreetly on your browser," even though there was nothing to be discreet about, because there was no sexual content in the game, and was shameless enough to sometimes just have lingerie clad breasts and captions along the lines of "come play with me." This is the future of advertising, folks. Admittedly, I doubt they got an actual ad agency to work on this, because that's blatant false advertisement. At least Wartune doesn't get that bad...

Ha! I lied! And so did they.

Is anyone really even surprised by this? The game doesn't have an AO rating. As far as I know, it doesn't have any ESRB rating, because it's a browser game. It's no more required to get one of those ratings than the porn games on Newgrounds.com. Except this game isn't a porn game. As far as I can tell, it's just a dime a dozen MMORPG. That's the only thing I did research on this for. Truth be told, I didn't even need to do that. I've seen plenty of ads for pornography online before, and they all had one thing in common - they had pornography in them, and scantily clad women flashing a come hither stare isn't pornography. The Dead or Alive games are more pornographic than Wartune.

I don't have any problem with sexualized material in an advertisement. If that's the route you want to go, that's fine. The problem is that sex doesn't really sell nearly as well as you think. If we're talking about suggesting sexual material to someone, then they'll probably check it out, but they won't necessarily pay for it. It isn't hard to find free porn on the internet. It also isn't hard to buy real porn. We live in a time when it's really easy to get pornography. People are desensitized to this, and showing some animated boobs in an advertisement isn't going to result in too much interest.

If you're saying "Hey, we have an awesome game here, check it out," and showing a sexy woman flashing a suggestive glare, like in the following ad, it might work...

I doubt many female gamers would be interested. You don't need to put up the sign.

But it doesn't. No mention of the gameplay itself, just a scantily clad albino chick making fuck me eyes. I particularly love the "No girls allowed" message here. They're assuring people who click on the ad that women won't spoil the fun by being bad at video games and talking endlessly about how much they love chocolate, or whatever it is that women do.

I don't have any sort of moral problem with shameless cheesecake like this, in fact, I don't mind it at all if it's done well, like with Bayonetta. What I do have a problem with is being pandered to, as I find it highly insulting to my intelligence, and to the intelligence of male gamers everywhere. Most male gamers are of at least average intelligence and most of us aren't cave men who think only about boobs. That's not to say we won't turn into drooling idiots at the sight of an attractive woman, but the stereotype of us being one track mind neanderthals who only think about sex is highly insulting.

- Update! -

I was unfair to Wartune's ads. They're bad and I don't regret tearing into them one single bit, but in hindsight, comparing them to Evony was a little much. Here's a compilation of Evony advertisements, and they're much more pathetic than anything I've seen from Wartune. Also, at least Wartune keeps with the swords and sorcery theme. Evony took stock images from porn movie covers from the 1990's.

http://www.lazygamer.net/general-news/a-history-of-evony-ads-the-insanity-continues/

So for what it's worth to the folks who made Wartune, I apologize for comparing you to Evony. Nothing else in this article, though. You deserve all of that. Also, from what I hear, Wartune isn't a bad game. I doubt I'll ever play it, as I'm not an MMORPG guy, but if I get bored of Star Wars The Old Republic and still want to play an MMORPG, I might give it a shot.

Also, I should point out that the art from Wartune's ads is very well drawn. There's a lot of attention to detail, it does a great job of capturing the feel of a swords and sorcery setting, and while the costumes are stupid and impractical, they're well designed. They'd just function better as lingerie than they would as armor. I sort of want to know who the artist is, because whoever he/she/they is/are, there's some obvious talent there, and I want to see more of their work.

Collector Stories - Verify Before Buying, Dumbass

You know how hard it is for me to not make stupid, impulsive purchases on eBay? Just before I started writing this, I had to talk myself out of a bidding war for a copy of Lethal Enforcers on the Sega Genesis - a game that I don't particularly like, but I wanted it because it came in the big box with the gun controller and everything. It's badass. But I had to force myself to say "No, I don't need it." But dammit, I want it. Anyway...

It's hard for me, as a collector, to pass up what I think is a really good deal. Especially if it's a friggin' awesome deal, like getting a game that's worth a thousand bucks for fifteen bucks because the seller doesn't know what he has. Let me explain...

Sonic The Hedgehog on the Sega Master System is a very common game in the European market, but given the commercial failure of the Master System in the North American market, there are very few copies of it made for the American market. Therefore, American copies of the game are extremely valuable. Like, a thousand dollars valuable. But European copies go for the equivalent of about five bucks, tops. And that's complete in the case, not loose. It's more common than dirt over there.

So, what's the difference between the two versions of the game? Nothing in terms of gameplay, or even the design of the cartridge or case. So, how can you tell the two versions apart?

The most expensive sticker ever.

You see that UPC sticker? That's the only difference. A sticker on the case. It's not even a part of the case itself. That sticker increases the value of the game 200 times over. And the kicker? That sticker is very easily counterfeited.

I bought this game on eBay, believing it to be the rare as hell American version of Sonic for the Master System. At the time, I had it confused about which version was the super expensive one, and after a small bit of research, I realized that I was an idiot. I bought it from a seller in England, and with the shipping, the price added up to about $13.

On one hand, I did see what may have been a UPC sticker on the back, exactly where it's supposed to be on the cartridge, and he didn't draw attention to it by mentioning it as the "SUPER RARE AMERICAN VERSION!!!" and his starting price was something like a single British pound. On the other hand, why the hell would an English seller have an American copy of this game? If it is the American version, it's unlikely that he counterfeited it, because why would he do that and then not draw attention to it while selling it and ask for a higher price?

I don't know. Regardless, it's not something I'm going to be able to sell, because it is so easy to counterfeit, that no collector would trust a seller's word on it unless they knew them, trusted them and could verify that the seller is the original owner. I can do none of that. Also, the seller is in a region of the world where the cheapo version can be found without any trouble.

At least I didn't get ripped off. Worst case scenario, I got a big name game for a console that I only have a small collection of games for. Best case scenario, I have a super rare game that I can't verify the rarity of, and therefore probably can't sell for more than a couple of bucks if I ever want to. I feel stupid, but I can't complain much. If I ever wanted the game, I wasn't going to get it for the market value. The price of shipping from Europe guaranteed that I'd be spending at least twice that price. I paid about the expected price.

I'll post an update when I get the game in the mail. The projected date of arrival is between the 15th and 17th of July.

Film Review - Miami Connection

I have found the holy grail of low budget eighties action, and it is called Miami Connection. A wonderfully cheesy Tae Kwon Do kicking, eighties rocking, ninja biking masterpiece. It's the great, forgotten eighties b-movie. It's been years since I've seen a movie that I loved this much on so many levels. I can honestly call this one of my new favorite movies.

It's not your typical bad movie. It's charm isn't out of it's stupidity or the staggering ineptitude of the people making it. In fact, I'd say that for what it is, it's well made. The action sequences are well shot and it's obvious that most of the actors at least know how to fight. For example, the film's writer/director/star, Y.K. Kim runs a martial arts school in Orlando and one of the co-stars, Maurice Smith is a kickboxing champion. The acting isn't horrible. It's not good by any means, but it's serviceable. This is surprising since the only two actors in the main cast with more than one credit to their name are Vincent Hirsch, who has one other acting credit and the aforementioned Maurice Smith, who had a handful of other credits for small parts in low budget martial arts movies. This complete lack of acting experience from the cast would convince you that the acting would be a lot worse than it is.

The most prolific people involved in this movie are Y.K. Kim's co-director, Woo-Sang Park, a Korean director of 20 films and composer, Jon McCallum, who's other credits include Surf Nazis Must Die and Soultaker, another pair of classic b-movies of the era, the latter of which was made famous on Mystery Science Theater. This movie should be a lot less competent than it is.

The charm doesn't come out of it's stupidity either. And the movie is stupid. It's about a martial arts rock band that fights crime, and the last ten minutes or so has them fighting biker ninjas.

The charm is because of the film's sincerity. There's nothing about this movie that convinces me that Y.K. Kim knew it was stupid. There's also nothing convincing me that Kim thought it was anything more than it was - a martial arts movie with some ham fisted themes about peace and friendship. But those themes aren't shoved down your throat. The moments that are supposed to be taken seriously can't be taken seriously, but you also can't make fun of them because there's an obvious heart to them. This movie is a sincere labor of love on Kim's part, and the rest of the cast seems to have been in on that. You don't get that sort of sincere feeling from a b-movie save for maybe the films of Ed Wood, but in Wood's case, he's the only person that wanted to make those movies. Here, everyone seems to want to be there, and is putting actual effort in and having fun.

The movie also has an awesomely cheesy eighties soundtrack featuring such awesomely bad songs as Against The Ninja and Friends Forever. Both are worth checking out. They're horrible, but they're charming. I included the audio only version of Friends Forever, because the audio quality on the video versions was very poor, and there's a dialogue break during it. Friends Forever was featured in the soundtrack to Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, which is another reason I need to play that game.

If I'm not convincing you, watch the trailer. That's what got me to watch the movie. After watching it ten times in a row, I found it streaming on Netflix and made an evening out of it.

Seriously, do yourself a favor and watch this movie. It'll change your life for the better. It's not just one of my favorite b-movies. It might be one of my favorite movies ever. I haven't enjoyed a movie this much in years. Trust me on this - you need to see Miami Connection. Watch it on Netflix. If you like it enough, do what I intend to do and give the people who dug it up and distributed it money for an actual copy of the film, and some cool merch. They deserve it. Give them money to keep them funded so they can keep digging up more movies like this and distributing them to the populace.

There's a link to the distributor's page for this film below. Click on that and consider buying something after you watch it on Netflix. Companies like this need your money to stay afloat, and they deserve to stay afloat. They're people who love these kinds of movies as much as the people they sell them to. That's worth something to me. I'm considering just getting the standard DVD for the film and maybe the poster. The seven inch vinyl single is unfortunately sold out, but the VHS is still there if you want the authentic experience.

http://drafthousefilms.com/film/miami-connection

I beseech you, Draft House Films. Take it. You've earned it.

My Thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic - Part 3

I'm still playing this game quite a lot. In fact, it's been several days since I turned on my PS3. I feel like I'm neglecting it. I have found time for my Sega Genesis, though. I can always find time for some Streets of Rage or Ristar. But I'd say about 90% of my gaming time over the last week has been with Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's really quite addictive.

Last night, I signed up for a paid account. The $30 two month non recurring one, to be exact. I like to have every paid subscription I have due at around the first few days of the month, but I didn't want to wait another week to get it and all the goodies that come with it. So far, the only perks of the paid subscription I've used are the increase in experience points after level 10 and the ability to make more characters on one server.

Other things I've done recently is play the multi-player with a friend of mine. He was a Jedi Knight and I was a Jedi Consular. I went through the random name generator, and it gave me Slagrico, which might be the greatest name I've ever given to a character in any game or work of fiction I've written. I like to pronounce Slagrico like that awful early nineties one hit wonder Gerardo or whatever his name was pronounced Rico Suave. That's kind of how you have to pronounce that name, isn't it?

Anyway, the multi player is pretty fun. I haven't done enough with it to really be able to go in depth about it, though.

I also have a couple of characters on a European server. It runs a lot smoother since there are fewer players. The only problem is that on a pair of occasions, I got booted off due to a bad connection, given that the server is located on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

The other classes I've experimented with are the Jedi Knight and Sith Warrior. I've had a lot more time with the Sith Warrior, but they're both very similar. I like the Sith Warrior storyline so far. You get to be an asshole, and it feels like it's in character as a Sith for you to be one. But at the same time, it feels weird for me to just make the dark side decisions all the time. I'm certainly playing a bad guy, but I'm not cartoonishly evil, nor am I evil just for the sake of being evil. It's sort of like how I write fiction. I try to give my bad guys a little depth, and have some good in them. Maybe it's a sense of loyalty to the people they work with, maybe it's a feeling of respect for a worthy adversary, or maybe they just that they don't kill without having a reason to. That's kind of how I'm playing that character, and the dark side/light side alignment is fairly even there. And it doesn't feel like I'm playing against type, either. A sith pretty much has to be at least a little evil, but that doesn't mean I have to stab puppies for the fun of it.

I'm also still loving the Bounty Hunter storyline. If I remember right, I'm at level 15 with that one, and the Jedi Knight story I just started is off to a promising start.

Also, a little fun fact: The male Jedi Knight character is voiced by David Hayter, the voice actor for Solid Snake, which is pretty cool, even if he doesn't sound like Snake at all. I still know that it's Solid Snake.

My Thoughts on Star Wars: The Old Republic - Part 2

A few hours ago, I put up an entry about my first impressions of Star Wars: The Old Republic. It's been about 24 hours since the first time I played, and I just got my bounty hunter up to level 10 and I'm about to make a second character, but I'm not sure what class I'm going to make.

Anyway, I figured I'd give a little bit more of my thoughts on the game.

The first thought is that at the start, when I only had two attacks and a few support abilities (shooting with my blaster pistol and firing a rocket at the enemy) it was a lot easier. I just hit the 1 and 2 keys and alternate back and forth, but not use the rocket too often so as to avoid overheating. That worked very easily and intuitively. Now, I have several other skills. I can shoot an explosive dart at an enemy that explodes in a few seconds, heavily damaging other nearby enemies (which is satisfying as all hell), I can fly up in the air with my jetpack and rain down rockets at a selected area, which isn't as useful as it sounds so far since enemies tend to move out of that area, but when it works, it's even more satisfying than the explosive dart. I also have wrist mounted flamethrowers, which also aren't as helpful as I wish they were, and a handful of other abilities. Even the ones that aren't very useful are fun.

But here's the problem. You can set up those abilities to number keys. This is fine, but using every number from 0 through to 9 and the "-" key can be a bit confusing, and it's easy to lose track of which key does what, especially if you aren't looking at the keyboard at the moment. And you aren't, because you're in a fight. Maybe more experienced PC gamers don't have this issue, and I'm aware that there's really no other way to implement this, but it's a bit annoying. It's not a crippling flaw, because with the bounty hunter, I tend to only use a handful of weapons, and even then, about 60% is the standard blaster attack, 30% is the rocket attack and every other attack is the last 10%, so it's not a huge problem.

Another problem is really just my computer. My laptop had a cooling fan in it crap out a few days back, and I need to get it repaired, and I'm not sure when that'll happen. So, for now I'm using my mother's laptop, which is about a year and a half newer than my computer (which unfortunately means it has the infernal abomination of an operating system that is Windows 8), but it's not as powerful, so I have to put the graphics in the game on very low, and even then, the game has some problems making the movements look fluid. I'm not knocking the game for this, because this problem is mostly on my end, but I'm sure that the amount of other players using up the bandwidth isn't helping.

Also, having just hit level 10, the game's giving me fewer experience points. This is because I'm a free to play user at the moment. If I were giving them $15 a month, I wouldn't have that problem. Also, I'd be able to play as more than three races, and get a lot of other cool shit.

So, my only problems are either moderately annoying issues that I can't see how they could fix anyway, or problems on my end. In any case, these issues aren't major ones.

I do forsee myself getting a paid subscription, and I also see myself making more entries about this game. It's very good, and I can't recommend it enough. Especially since you can play it for free

First Impressions: Star Wars The Old Republic

I've recently begun playing Star Wars The Old Republic, the free to play MMORPG. I want to make a few statements before I get into talking about my first impressions of the game.

One: I've never cared about MMORPG's. I don't like playing multiplayer games unless I'm playing them with friends who are in the same room as me. I don't get the point. I'd rather not play a game with some 13 year old ritalin junkies flinging around every bit of profanity their puny little minds can think up.

Two: I'm not a huge Star Wars fan. I love the original trilogy and I like some of the games, like Shadows of the Empire on the N64. My knowledge of Star Wars ends at those movies and that game. I've never played Knights of the Old Republic, but I really want to at some point.

That out of the way, I'm enjoying the hell out of the game. I haven't had any interactions with other players, which is how I like it (I'm playing on a Player Vs. Environment server, which is what I'd recommend for others with my mindset) and so far, the story's fairly interesting. I won't go into too much detail, because I'm still not far enough into it to really know what's going on with certainty. It's just something about some sort of contest, and to get into the contest, I have to run some errands for a Hutt crime lord. Of course, the Hutt crime lord is an asshole, because there really isn't any other kind of Hutt crime lord.

I'm also eager to play a Sith agent and a Jedi knight, and to sign up for a paid subscription in the near future. I'll provide my thoughts about that when I get to it.

Just a heads up - it takes an eternity to download the game. Mine took about five hours to get up and running. But it's free to play unless you want to get some extra features. There's nothing to lose if you don't like it, except for a few hours.

Game Collecting Stories - My White Whale, The Lunar Games

I think most collectors have that one game, console or peripheral that has eluded them for a while to the point where it becomes something of an obsession. To the point where you feel like Captain Ahab in Moby Dick trying to kill that damned white whale. For some, it might be a big name collector's item like Earthbound, for others, a no name game that they really want like Spider-Man: Web of Fire on the 32X in an effort to complete their 32X collection (and why wouldn't you? It's such a great console, and Web of Fire isn't infamous for being one of the worst games on the 32X... Oh, wait. ) For my white whale, there's more to it than "I WANT THIS." It wasn't even a specific item I wanted, and the reasons for my obsession wasn't that it was a rare, expensive item, but that it kept slipping through my grasps.

It was Lunar 2: Eternal Blue for the Playstation. I saw a complete boxed copy for sale on eBay with all the cool stuff that came with it, the game, the soundtrack CD, the cool collectors items... all of it. Usually, that goes for about $100, easy. I didn't have that kind of money to spend, but I did have about $70. I figured I'd just keep the game on my watch list just out of curiosity to see how much it would go for. I was betting at least $120. I checked back the next day, and it was something like $55. I was pissed. I could have gotten it. There's a very good chance that the final bidder had a much higher bid than that, but it was worth a try. I might have a really kick ass collectors item and what's supposedly one of the best RPGs on the PS1 in my collection for about half the typical market value.

That's when it started. After another lost auction for the game (just the game itself in the standard double jewel case - none of the bells and whistles) it got worse. Then I saw a copy of Lunar: The Silver Star, the first game in the series at a thrift store. I was elated. I was about to get one of the Lunar games for a few bucks. I opened the case, and there was nothing inside. I asked the people who worked there if they kept the discs separate, but they didn't. They just had the empty case.

I will own you some day... You bastard.

That's the moment when it got personal. I went to GameStop and found the PSP game, Lunar: Silver Star Harmony for $15. I didn't hesitate. I grabbed it, put it on the counter and laid down my money. I finally had one of those games. I didn't know if it was a port of the first game, the second, another game in the series I didn't know about or an entirely new game, but I didn't care. I owned a damn Lunar game. Anything else is irrelevant.

I got home, popped it in my PSP and turned it on and... giant ass crack on the screen. The PSP still worked, but I couldn't see a damn thing. I looked online to see if I could connect it to my PS3 and play it that way, but I couldn't figure out how to do it.

This was the point that I gave up. This was probably almost a year ago and I had put it out of my mind. Until now.

I just bought myself another PSP. I can now at long last play Lunar: Silver Star Harmony.

I just paid over $60 for a handheld console that I don't particularly care for, passing over a replacement for my long lost Nintendo DS that was roughly the same price

If this game isn't amazing, I'm going to be pissed.

Pokebominations

Today, I discovered a website called Pokemon Fusion through a recent Comedy Goldmine article on Something Awful. that lets you create your own Pokemon by taking the face and color palate from one and putting it on the body of another. I've probably spent upwards of an hour and a half on this site making my own abominations of nature, or as I call them, Pokebominations. I figured I'd share a couple with you here, because I don't have anything better to do on a Tuesday night.

This unfortunate Psyduck wandered too close to a nuclear power plant and started to melt like the wicked witch of the west. Shame on you for laughing at the horrible fate that befell this once happy creature, once so full of life. He's got like, a minute to live and he's in unspeakable agony, and there's nothing funny about that.

This horrific monster is the stuff of nightmares. One minute, she's a beautiful young woman and the next, she's Milena from Mortal Kombat, but with sideways fangs ready to eat your throat out and enjoy it.

Beware, for a she could be behind you right now, and you wouldn't know it until it was too late.

Hey, guyth, I'm a thnake. Ithn't that neato? Hith. I'm hithing at you. I'm gonna go thlither away now.

I don't even have a theme for this one. I just love the fact that it's fat and drooling.

Hey, guyth, I'm a rat now. That'th pretty cool, huh? Well, I'm gonna go frolic in a meadow and thcare ladieth in their kitchen and make them jump on chairs and be all thcared and thtuff. Thee you guyth later, okay? Buh-bye, guyth.

I just love Weezing's face on Caterpie's body. It's like he's saying, "Aw, come on man, I don't want to be a caterpillar. I wanna be a beautiful butterfly. Don't laugh at me, man. This is who I is deep down."

Now, he's saying "Aw, shit, son. I'm in my cocoon now. I'mma be a pretty ass butterfly any day now, ya feel me?"

"Yeah, man, this shit tight. I'm the beautiful butterfly I always knew I was deep down inside my heart or some shit, like Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis. I dunno if it is or not, 'cause I ain't read that. I don't bother with that stuff. I was too busy readin' 'bout butterflies. But that don't matter now, 'cause I'm beautiful and free, like a butterfly, which makes sense, 'cause that's what I is."






Now I'm a fith. A pretty fith with a lithp in the othean. I'm gonna go thwim around a coral reef or thomething.










I might have to do this again. This was kind of fun.