Virtua Fighter Animation Review

Virtua Fighter was a huge success for Sega back in the day, and they needed to milk that cow for all it's worth. The GameGear was not discriminated against when it came to Virtua Fighter.

They did a fairly decent job "De-making" Virtua Fighter. Most of your favorite fighters are here, and play similar to their 3D incarnations. 

The graphics are a bit laughable, but it's surprisingly deep for what I expected. Then again I didn't expect very much from it. Some of moves transfer over to the GameGear version, but the fighting is far less detailed and complex. It's a admirable try for such a limited hardware system, but it's not that great of a game. 

Score: 3 out of 10

Japanese Words For Today: Even More Vegetables

豆

Beans are Mame

きゅうり

Cucumbers are Kyuuri

ぴいまん

Peppers are Piiman

にんにく

Garlic is Ninniku

ねぎ

Green Onion is Negi

Things I Like: Super Street Fighter II HD Turbo Remix

Such a great idea, Street Fighter II remastered in HD!

It's certainly that, the graphics looked sick!

Even though I think it's tad too hard in single player, it's still a great little game. 

My Top Five Zelda Games #4: Majora's Mask

I had gotten and beaten Ocarina of Time shortly before this game came out. I couldn't contain my excitement for awhile. 

Despite a lot of recycled graphics, Majora's Mask is one of the most unique Zelda games ever. It's dark, weird, has aliens, and is about the end of the world. Not exactly a typical adventure in Hyrule. Hell it's not even set in our favorite Nintendo kingdom.

The moon in Majora's Mask used to freak me out. Wasn't so scary looking far away in the sky when I played Ocarina. 

I didn't like Deku too badly. Blowing bubbles and gliding were pretty lame. 

Goron Link was much better, strong but slow. Unless you were rolling, which was beyond awesome. 

Zora Link was the best. I loved zipped zagging through the water. Plus the twin blade fin attack was pretty neat. 

I do admit my disappointment with Oni-Link. I worked so hard to get every mask, and turns out he just plays like Adult Link in Ocarina....

I did hate the 3-day system, crappy ways to save your game/inventory, and the fact that there were only 4 dungeons. It did have the best side-quests in the series, so I still love it. 

Fact of the Day: Tis No Monster Just an Oarfish

Most sea serpent stories are really just mis-sightings of the Oarfish. 

Urban Champion Review

I've heard how bad this game really was for a LONG time, but never got a chance to really take a ride on the Stinkville Express myself. The most ironic thing about the game is that it's actually made by Nintendo. 

The game isn't really broken or anything, the word we're looking for here is "shallow." Imagine a fighting mini-game they often put into other genres to "mix things up" and what not. That's basically what Urban Champion is like. 

It's just Random Dude vs. Random Guy with generic punches for a long period of time. You're suppose to hit your opponent in the manhole or something. 

But even after you do that, the game keeps going on and on and on. I can't believe people bought this game so many years ago for $50 or more. Such a shame. 

Score: 2 out of 10

Jeopardy! (Sega Game Gear) Review

I love my Jeopardy games apparently. Had to try out the old Sega Game Gear version of the classic game show. 

The graphics are quite a bit better than the NES version, even though it looks like I'm playing as Willie Tanner from ALF. There's only one other contestant though, whether you're facing the CPU or a human.  The sound is also horrid when they try to put in verbal sound clips from the show itself. The Sega Game Gear was not powerful enough for that. 

While the game-play moves a bit slow, and the questions are dated (of course) I liked most of the answers that they asked. Decent mix up on the categories, even though I stink at a few of them.

In short, it's really not a bad version. Could be better, but I could hope all day and never get anything. If you're a Jeopardy! fan I'd give it some consideration.

Score: 7 out of 10

Virtua Fighter (Sega 32X Version) Review

The Sega 32X was a unique console. Not only was it a bad idea, and a mess of a hardware system, but Sega soon left it out to die after release. However there were a few games for it, one such being Virtua Fighter. It's actually pretty close to the Arcade and Sega Saturn versions than you'd might expect. 

Obviously the graphics do take a swift punch to the face, but they're defiantly 32-bit. Frankly if you had to get any version, this would probably be dead last on your list. 

It plays rather decent, but the controls are too simple and floaty at times.There's also very little content besides a regular single-player and multi-player mode. It's an impressive effort for a awful system like the 32X, but it's still a bad game. Laughably this is probably the best game the console had to offer.

Score: 4 out of 10 

Super Noah's Ark 3D Review

Was this a real game? Yes it actually was. Back in the day, a company called Wisdom Tree sold Christian-themed video games to kids. However they were greedy capitalists who would rather see more profit that actually give Nintendo a proper royalty. 

So they invented a cartridge that worked by plugging into a Super Nintendo, and it could bypass the lock-out chip if a real SNES game was locked on the top of it. Think Game Genie or Sonic and Knuckles in a sense. Nintendo probably had full right to take action against them, but I doubt they wanted to be known as the company that sued Jesus....er Noah whatever. 

At least the game self-admits their piracy. Also ignore the cute animals on the cover-art. 

I say that because Super Noah's Ark is really just a FPS, and it's exactly like Wolfenstein 3D. Seriously the layout is 100% the same. 

Except instead of killing Nazis, you shoot feed at animals. Who somehow kick you for no apparent reason. I thought the animals on Noah's Ark liked Noah? Why do they want him dead? 

The game is almost as ugly as the SNES version of Wolfenstein 3D, and even more awful to play. The music is annoying, and the game-play is unforgiving. It also gave me serious motion sickness. 

The game is seriously not very fun to say the very least. It may even cause you mental pain. Do not play unless you just can't help not knowing what the game is like.

Score: 1 out of 10

Wolfenstein 3D (SNES version) Review

Before Doom, there was Wolfenstein 3D. It was a "Doom Clone" before there was a Doom to speak of. It's bascially the same game as Doom it just replaced Demons with Nazis. With all the controversy that surrounded Doom back in the day, why did no Congressmen or Senators ever speak of Wolfenstein 3D? Shooting demons from hell is evil, but damn if you hate on a game where you shoot Nazis, then you're Un-American. 

This is what the PC version looked like. Not exactly ground-breaking graphics today, but back then it was on the top of it's class. Kids were begging parents to buy them ultra-nice PCs or computer parts so they could play this alone. I've never played the PC version, and I never will. However I did play the SNES version of Doom, and even though I don't really like Doom I didn't think it was a bad port. 

This is what Wolfenstein 3D on SNES looks like. Muddy, blurry, and just plain hideous. They take out pretty much all the Nazi logos, and everything. Apparently they wanted to release it in Germany (which pretty much bans anything Nazi unless it's about history and education), and it still got canned in land of BMW, Beer, and Bratwurst. 

I really could not stand playing Wolfenstein 3D on SNES for more than a few minutes straight. It's incredibly awful in almost every way. It's an aging game even in perfect or upgraded form, and it doesn't help when the graphics and control are almost as bad as our former enemies. 

Score: 1 out of 10

My Top Five Zelda Games #5: The Legend of Zelda

The first game had to be in there, despite looking the worst graphically (except maybe 2) it holds up pretty well everywhere else. 

NES games usually were very little games with little depth at all. That's why they were so hard, because the tough challenge masked the fact that the game would only take 20 mins to beat if you were using cheat codes. However Zelda had a huge over-world, and it wasn't really hard when it came to combat, but rather with the puzzles. Beat the first game in 20 mins and I'll give you all the money in the world. 

The dungeons were so extensively detailed and intelligently designed. Ignore the 8-bit blocks, there's art beneath the surface. 

Even the bosses were pretty damn good. Most of them might not par some of the recent 3D games, but for the power of the NES this was leap and bounds above everything else. 

Final Fantasy Tactics: War of the Lions Coming to iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad

The Playstation classic will hit the iOS systems on September 15th. 

Things I Like: Wii Sports Resort

I liked the first game, but I think the 2nd game is quite a bit better. 

Jetski was boring though. 

Frisbee modes were pretty sweet though. 

Canoe was crap

Table Tennis was alright

I really didn't like basketball. Sucked at it in multiplayer.

I loved the sword fighting. 

Archery was also pretty sweet.

Was also more than happy to see bowling come back in full force.