Wizards & Warriors 2: IronSword

                                                                              
First off I must apologize to readers of this very crummy blog for lack of recent updates. I have no real reason for the lack of updates. I can't very well blame the lack of updates on my job (because I don't have one) or my social life (because again I don't have one)  I  just got a criminal case of BEING GODDAMN LAZY and didn't feel like talking about anything, well I can't very well talk about the Silent Night Deadly Night sequels now that it's after Christmas and I'm not really in the mood to try to watch the New Years related horror films tomorrow seeing as I have other things to do. No really, I actually do have other things to do! I also hope everyone who reads this terrible waste of space had a happy holidays. No matter what you celebrate I hope you had a damn good time doing it.

                                                                                   

Now today's review is a present for a friend by the name of Damien "Beefy" Leroy Cappello Jr. who loves Wizards & Warriors more than he loves Jesus. So I hope you enjoy this review! Also I hope you get trampled by reindeer for making me play this terrible terrible game again, but first let's talk about Wizards & Warriors. Wizards & Warriors was first published in 1987 and was the first game in the trilogly. it was some of Rare Ltd's first work on a NES game. They would go on to make a ton of very popular and beloved NES games including Battletoads and uh... I forget what else. Still Wizards and Warriors was a pretty decent little title, sure you'd have to be a quadriplegic not to be able to beat it and a bunch of bugs. Wizards and Warriors III for the NES was also pretty good, although I haven't put in enough time to really give it a fair review. Wizards and Warriors X for the gameboy I never played and also I'm sure you caught on to the fact that I'm trying not to talk about Iron Sword because I really do not like this game. At all.

                                                                                   

Ironsword was not programmed by Rare LTD. That is if Wikipedia is to be believed, because I'm too lazy to check up who really made this festering pile of dicks I will just say that Zippy Games (whoever the fuck they are) the company Wikipedia says is responsible really is responsible for this festering pile of assy awfulness. This game, this fucking shitty game wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the fact your god damn sword is fucking uesless and you have to jump right into the goddamn enemies like some kind of spazzy retard. Seriously, everythign else about this game is fine. The controls are decent, the graphics are good, the music by Mr. David Wise is great. it's just ruined by the stupid combat system. I don't remember the combat system in the original game being that stupid. Maybe it was. Who cares?  No one except Damien C.

Wizards and Warriors the original game has a small cult following. Even Ironsword has a very small cult of supporters, however you never hear much about the other two games. Despite not being the greatest series of games I would have liked to have been able to play a Super Wizards and Warriors for the SNES. Alas things just didn't turn out that way. Also since every single person who reviews this stupid game has to make a comment about it, that is Fabio on the cover. Goodnight and don't play this game.

Vindicators (1988)

                                                                              
I think that Tengen was probably the best unlicensed developer for the NES. Okay sure that's rather faint praise as every other company released rather shitty games and were MAYBE decent enough to churn out one good game, however Tengen made a good amount of great or at least very good games. There "Sega" Ports of Fantasy Zone and Alien Syndrome were pretty good, the games had a few flaws but were overall very good. The arcade ports they made were pretty damn good too, Pac Man, Pac Mania, and all were very good games worth owning. And the carts were cool looking.

                                                                       

Today's game is Vindicators (originally it was supposed to be Volleyball but I said FUCK IT as I didn't want to write about another sports title / black box game. Volleyball for the NES sucks. There, thats my review.) and Vindicators isn't a very good game (but it makes for a more interesting review than Volleyball) Vindicators was made in 1988, for the NES and the arcade, both versions made by Tengen. I've never played the arcade version but I have played the NES version and it's not exactly a bad game but It's not very good either. It's tolerable and would have been better if it wasn't for one thing. The biggest reason this game sucks is because of the controls. It's hard to explain but the controls are very annoying and you'll end up dying because of them many many times.

                                                                            

Another thing is that this entire game feels slow. I dunno what it is but this game feels sluggish and all. The tank goes about 3 seconds per hour and all the other tanks and stuff attacking you goes way faster (not too fast but still faster) maybe there is a way to make the tank go faster by buying things to improve your tank with stars you pick up in the level. I must say that is a very neat idea and makes me sad that the game's controls aren't very good because I want to make a badass tank and fuck shit up but I'm never able to get past the 3rd level because the controls.

Vindicators is still a game that goes for like $2 at Flea Markets I'm pretty sure. It's not a hard game to find and it's inexpensive so I'd still say give it a shot, but I say that about any game, even the ones I don't like. You never know what games you'll enjoy and with that said this rather terrible review is over.

Uncanny X-Men (1989)

I'm not the world's biggest X-Men fan, to be honest I only really like the issues of the series that Chris Claremount wrote. Maybe some of Louise Simonsons stuff, but I only really like the X-Men stuff from the 1970s and 1980s. I haven't read any of the really old 1960s stuff but I hear its crazy but to be fair every comic written back then was crazy so it fits. Anyway, The X-Men of the 70s and 80s were good times. X-Men from the 90s to now...ehhhh... and I'm pretty sure you'd have to be crazy or the world's biggest X-Men fan to be able to enjoy this game.

                                                                               

I don't really feel like going into the history of the X-Men at least not because of this game. If I ever talk about the X-Men's history it would be in a different article. Mostly because I'm lazy and this game doesn't deserve any amount of time spent on it (yet I spent HOURS of my time beating it. I don't get me either) and for fuck sake you are on the internet reading this shitty blog, you probably know all about the fucking X-Men already, and you can tell this paragraph is an attempt to put off talking about this awful game and it sure as hell isn't working.

                                                                          

You already know that I stick up for games, not to be cool or anything, I mean I stopped trying to be cool in the 5th grade when I realized it would never happen. I'm lame and I'm proud of it! I just stick up for those games because honestly I don't see what so terrible about them. Maybe I'm just too nice to games, maybe I just try to be positive to them. I don't know. I do know this, The Uncanny X-Men for the NES is DEFINITELY one of the worst uses of a license ever. Even if you aren't an X-Men fan at all you can still admit that a game based around the X-Men can be awesome. I mean to be fair a game based around any superhero can be awesome if done right. The X-Men for the NES was not done right. Not at all.

                                                                      

This game was published by LJN and I have no idea who actually programmed it (remember, LJN only sold the games, never programmed them) and that is a shame because I have no idea who to firebomb for this incredibly awful pile of putrid shit. And don't be like LOL YOU ONLY PLAYED IT FOR 5 MINUTES GIVE IT ANOTHER SHOT (yes I'm mad at the person who said this.) I didn't I beat this damn game. THIS STUPID UGLY SHITTY GAME. You want some reasons why this game sucks? Here I'll give you the biggest reason why this game blows. The enemies (which never stop coming) can easily shove you into a corner and fuck your ass so goddamn hard that you will not survive. Add in awful music, ugly levels, bosses that you do not even need to fight (I'm not joking when I say I just strolled on by 4 of the 5 bosses) and the fact whoever made this had no idea about the X-Men. The X-Men have never fought Boomerang. God damnit HE'S NOT EVEN A FUCKING MUTANT. Jesus.

This game could be tolerable if it wasn't for that annoying thing the enemies do where they ram you against a wall and keep fucking you . That is bothersome. Very god damn bothersome. Fuck this game. Fuck it hard. FUCK.
I

I love you, Rainbow Raider!

                                                                              
Today we are going to be talking about yet another comic related thing, and as you can tell from the picture above it is not going to be the third part of that Spider Man story. I'll get to that whenever the hell I feel like it you got a problem with that punk? No, today we are going to talk about the greatest shitty supervillian of all time, I am of course speaking of, Roy G. Bivolo, the Rainbow Raider. (Who is a one man gay pride parade!) Created by a crazy son of a bitch by the name of Cary Bates (I'm not joking about the crazy part either, seriously read some of the man's stories. Dude was nuts, but in a totally awesome way!) and artist Don Heck. He first appeared in Flash #286 in 1980 and went straight to the top! and by that I mean the top of the Z-Listers list!

His real name is Roy G. Bivolo and yes it's a pun on the acronym "ROYGBIV" (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, pronounced roy-gee-bihv) (thanks wikipedia you help out lazy assholes like myself every day!) and Roy has a very sad backstory, and by sad I mean goddamn hilarious. Yes you see, Roy wanted to be a painter but HE WAS COLOR BLIND! yes, roy couldnt see any of the beautiful colors we all take for granted! His dad an optometrist wanted to create something that would cure his son's color blindness but instead only created something EVIL! what his dad created were goggles that could create beams of soild color! WHICH ROY THAN USED FOR EVIL! to get back at us for being able to see colors! and not liking his shitty art!

Roy had some actually pretty cool powers thanks to his dad's goggles, he could create soild beams of light to escape from crimes, and he could also use his powers by dousing a person in a beam of light, each color of the rainbow causing different emotions. Like red would cause you to get angry and blue would cause you to shoot yourself in the head. I take everything back, the Rainbow Raider is a goddamn badass motherfucker.

Sadly, some random supervillian I've never heard of killed Rainbow Raider in a comic I never read! One day though, he will return! THIS I SWEAR!

Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 (1987)

                                                                             
This seems to be the internet's favorite B-movie, but I am not the biggest fan of it, for one reason which we will get to in a minute. Today we are talking about Silent Night Deadly Night Part 2 from 1987. It's a very cheaply produced movie and It's not very good but I'll save you the trouble of reading the rest of the review and say that yes, it still is worth watching. I don't put it on my favorite bad movies list like the rest of the internet seems to but I do think it's worth a watch mostly because of Eric Freeman, who we will get to in a bit also!

The biggest flaw this movie has is that the first forty mintues are composed of flashback scenes from the original movie. No joke, I know the producers told the people who made this movie (and they recieved very little money for too!) to re-edit the original movie but the director was having none of that. Still despite the budgetary reasons for the flash back footage it's not a terrible thing to say that I wish they'd have put in you know more NEW footage. I had already seen the previous movie a week ago, and I'd seen that movie a lot too, so I skipped pretty much 40 minutes of a movie. You shouldn't be able to say that damnit! I don't like skipping through movies.

And what's even sadder is that the new footage is actually pretty enjoyable and I wish they had more of it. It's enjoyable for one reason though, Eric Freeman. Eric is my choice for the worst actor of all time. I'm not joking here. He is really really really terrible, but my god he is so fucking funny even though any human being could probably act better than he could, they certainly couldn't be as entertaining as Eric. I'm sad that Eric didn't continue with this series or do any other movies because man oh man the guy is a fucking hoot. The movie would have been a rather bland slasher film with flashbacks to a entertaining slasher film if it wasn't for Eric. You saved this movie, Eric and I hope you are having a good life out there wherever you are.

Also the movie seems to forget it's a holiday slasher film.  Ricky never gets into the SANTA CLAUS suit until like 20 or so minutes of the movie is left, but who really cares about that anyway, Eric is so goddamn fun to watch.  Also for fans of the original movie, Mother Superior finally gets it in this one, but honestly, the actress who does her really wasn't trying and the actress in the original movie MADE that character. Seriously,  Mother Superior in the original movie was fun to hate, but not really so much in the sequel, I guess they couldn't afford her for this movie. Anyway here's an interesting tidbit, the actress from the sequel supposedly died in a home invasion shortly after this movie was finished filming! that kinda sucks! a lot! she wasn't a very good actress but that's no reason to wish her dead!


I'm kinda sick of talking about this movie now, so I guess that means I'm gonna clue up. Everything about this movie kinda sucks and if it wasnt for Eric Freeman I would have probably stopped watching it halfway through. I love you Eric. I seriously hope you are happy with whatever you're doing out there!

Silent Night Deadly Night (1984)

                                                                              
Now this is the Killer Santa Claus movie everyone knows about, okay I doubt every single person on the planet knows about Silent Night Deadly Night, but it's got an incredibly large cult following on the internets and to be fair, I doubt this review will be as long as my one for Christmas Evil, because funnier people have done reviews of this movie already. Pretty much everyone with some blogs / sites related to B-movies has already talked about this movie. Only reason I'm really adding this review to the pile of other reviews that people have done about this movie is because I plan to talk about the sequels too and it would look weird if I didn't talk about the original (and to be absoluetly fair the best) movie in the series.

                                                                          

Also before I get into the movie I would like to say a hearty fuck you to every person who protested this movie when it came out. Fuck you Mickey Rooney. Fuck you mothers who got mad over it. Fuck you Siskel and Ebert. Fuck you Leonard Maltin. Seriously, if you don't want your kids to see this movie DON'T FUCKING LET THEM. Don't get in the people who want to see its faces and try to stop people from having a good time. Seriously, go fuck yourselves.  Okay, with that little rant ouf ot the way (hey it's something everyone has to talk about when the review this movie, how moronic and stupid the people who protested it were. Not saying they didn't have the right too, but I do think they are shitbags for doing it. And seriously watch the youtube video of Siskel and Ebert review this movie, goddamn are they snobby pricks although it is fun to watch them argue at times.)

                                                                         

Now for the movie, which I honestly have to say is incredibly enjoyable. The best part of this movie in my mind would have to be the characters, they are all so incredibly entertaining. My favorites would have to be Billy's boss, Mother Superior (she's really fun to hate) and Billy's Grandpa. I don't think theres a person alive who could hate William Hare. Dude was fucking nuts in this movie, you could tell he actually scared the shit out of the kid who he was acting with, he was that out of his mind talking about how evil Santa Claus was. There are so many incredibly enjoyable scenes in this movie, like when Billy as a kid punches the Santa Claus who comes to the orphange in the nose breaking it. Holy shit that HAS to be one of the greatest scenes in film history. Also the plot is better than you'd expect for a slasher movie, which is Billy as a 5 year old sees a man dressed up as Santa Claus kill his parents which causes him to go fucking bonkers later on in life. Not an oscar winning plot but it does the job (and seriously fuck anyone who says THIS MOVIE HAS NO PLOT! about any movie. I hate to break it to you sweetie, but every single movie ever made no matter how stupid has a goddamn plot. The plots may not be good, but it's fucking there) and this movie has Linnea Quigley which always a damn good thing. Seriously I love that woman, every movie I've seen her in was a goddamn riot, if I see her name in a movie I know I'm gonna have a good time.


Anyway, Silent Night Deadly Night is a great Christmastime horror movie. A incredibly fun little movie with admittly better acting than you'd expect, not great but you could tell most of the actors were having fun in their roles which in the end is a damn good thing if you ask me. I also think I read somewhere that the man who played Billy is incredibly rich because he's on the board of directors of this company, so I doubt he even cares what anyone says about this movie as he has more money than any of us ever will.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game (1990)

A big reason why I still love these games is because of nostaliga. It's not the only reason, because I do like a lot of games a whole lot that I never knew even existed as a kid (like the original Contra and Super C... I thought that series started on the SNES...yes I was dumb) anyway I am a goddamn whore for nostaliga and those halcyon days of yore, and there is nothing that brings me back faster than someone mentioning something that had to do with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, sure I watched more television as a kid than anyone should ever allow,  but they were always my favorite. For crying out loud I wanted to name my baby sister April, that or Baby X. BUT NO MY PARENTS HAD TO GO WITH SOME LAME NAME. damnit.

                                                                             

Anyway, I loved all 3 of the TMNT games that they put out for the NES. And Turtles in Time for the SNES (I'll get to reviewing SNES games one day, maybe. I hope.) But yes, these games gave me some great times as a kid, and holy heaven are still fun today! That's right I'm even including the original TMNT game in with the others. I do think thats a bonafide NES classic. And anyone who cant beat the damn dam stage is a wuss. That's right. I said it. Now today we shall be taking a look at the first sequel to the NES game which is a port of the arcade game (which if i recall correctly I NEVER got to play as a kid. That's right. I never got to play it till I was at least a teenager, and that's a god damn shame) and this port has two extra levels!

                                                                             

Maybe I'm biased but I actually like this port more than the original arcade game, maybe it's the nostalgia or what not, but I actually get more enjoyment out of this game than the arcade game. I'm not saying the arcade game was a piece of shit, no, it was pretty damn good too, just I like this version more. I think it's the sweet lookin polar bear in one of the new levels. He's got one smooth ass leather jacket!. Anyway, let's get to the game. Anyway I think everything about this game is pretty fun, great graphics, good music, great level design (I fuckin love that snow level) and great 2-player fun (still a hoot even with one player). I don't really have anything bad to say about this game. It's just a fun little timewaster.

They are still making TMNT games but I haven't played any of them and frankly I don't really care too. They are all based on that new cartoon that I don't care about. Damnit, I like my turtles cartoon to be as goddamn corny as humanly possible. Don't try to make something as goofy as TMNT serious. That's no good! Ya morons!

Shadow of the Ninja (1990)

                                                                               
I think it's a shame that Natsume just pumps out Harvest Moon games which I don't enjoy as much as everyone else ever seems to do. (Not to say anything bad about those games, they are decent fun, but I don't think they are so goddamn insanely amazing, and definetly not worth the money the older games go for on eBay.) because their non-Harvest Moon games were and still are fucking amazing. It's a shame that of the four games they made for the NES, only Abadox has gotten a bit of popularity, nothing against Abadox because thats an awesome game too, BUT each one of their games on the NES needed to be as popular as Abadox, as they are all fucking excellent games.

I have no idea what this games plot is but I don't really give a flying fuck anyway. They (this game has TWO ninjas, a male and a female!) just have to stop some big asshole from taking over the earth or some shit. I've said it before and I'll probably say it again, every plot on the NES sucked. I might give a good plot related points to like 6 NES games out of like almost 800 but the plot for this game is not important. Do you really care about the plot for a sidescroller? Fuck NO. You just wanna tear shit up, and that's what you get to do in this game, tear the SHIT out of as many weird enemies as humanly possible. The graphics for the time are AMAZING, very bright and vibrant. The sound is also incredibly memorable. The challenge is just right, this won't be a game you'll be in a day or two, no, unless you are like A fucking GOD at NES games, it will take you a few days to beat it. Maybe even a week, the five lives you get go by FAST. (they call the lives continues in this game so you continue from the level you died at even if you died at the boss, I'm sure that makes some youtube reviewing crybabies very happy.) I really don't have anything bad to say about this game. It's fucking great.                                                                                    

                                                                                
                                                                               

If you like sidescrollers or Ninjas YOU NEED TO OWN THIS GAME. This is an excellent game, upthere with the Ninja Gaiden and TMNT games (In fact I'd even rate this game higher than the third Ninja Gaiden game!) Everything about it works. Seriously, if you were like a lot of people, disapointed by Ninja Gaiden III (which I wasn't, it has flaws, but I feel it's still a good game) Shadow of the Ninja may be a very good replacement for Ninja Gaiden III, pretend this is the third part instead, you can just pretend Irene became a Ninja or some shit. I don't know. Just get this game.

RoboCop 2 (1990)

                                                                               
I think it's interesting on how I'm reviewing this game only a few days after the man who directed the movie RoboCop 2 died at the age of 87. And I didn't know he also directed The Empire Strikes Back and that unofficial James Bond movie, but despite not being as good as the original film I enjoyed Robo Cop 2. Sure it's cheesy and silly as hell but it was at least an enjoyable motion picture just because of how strange and weird it was. And even if you didn't like Robo Cop 2 it was still a whole hell of a lot better than the game based on it. Plus the Robo Cop 2 robot at the end of the movie was fucking awesome.

                                                                                

Well, I think anyone who wants me to trash licensed games will be happy with this review, because I do not like this game in the slightest. I'm not going to lie, there are things about this game are pretty good. The graphics are actually pretty nice and smooth and textured even if Robo Cop himself looks really fucking goofy. The music is decent but not really memorable, I don't it will ever be on a top ten list of peoples favorite games. What totally ruins this entire game and makes it a pointless waste of time (a pointless waste of time that I finished. Yes, I like wasting my precious God given time on this earth playing bad NES games, but to be fair I would have easily wasted that time away even if I didn't play NES games.)  is the play control. Robocop's jump is really goddamn awkward. The character seems to slip all over the place which causes me to have an aneurysm.  I have no idea how I beat this game with controls this incredibly bad.

                                                                          

RoboCop 2 is what people think when they think of licensed games. Very bad games that were thrown together at the last minute (I'm sure this game was put together ten days before it was supposed to be released) The entire game is a ugly waste of time and plastic, and I'd rather watch Robo Cop 3 than play this game ever again. Also fuck that goddamn stupid shooting scene after you lose the first level because you didn't collect enough Nuke. So goddamn annoying. Fuck this game. Hard.

Q*Bert (1989)

                                                                              

To be honest I wanted to not do a review of this game mostly because I didn't want to review two arcade games back to back, but then I realized that the other Q games I have are Qix (which I'm sure was in the arcades, don't ask me. Arcades were before my time!) and Quattro Sports. You see I don't own any other Q games. That and their weren't too many to talk about, so I guess you get two arcade games in a row. I don't think I need to explain what Q*Bert is, as it was a very popular Arcade game. It was even made fun of in the Simpsons. Or was that Family Guy. Or maybe both. I can never remember. Also I think you can tell I'm pushing the length of this review up, of course I know the fucking difference between the Simpsons and Family Guy. Oh well, let's get this abortion over with.

                                                                             

I should also say this right now, I don't really like Q*bert or at least this version of it. The NES version of Q*Bert has pretty good graphics and sound, but the goddamn controls are very annoying. They are just incredibly bothersome to me and I find it incredibly hard to move the character around without dying. I have no idea if the arcade version did it better or what but I honestly do not really like this game. I do declare this to be the worst of the arcade to NES games

                                                                                

Yeah, I kinda wish I had Quattro Arcade or Quattro Adventure so that you could at least get a good review more than two paragraphs long but you'll take this review and you'll like it you fuck.

Christmas Evil (1980)

Well, it's December again! You know what that means! Christmas! and you know shitty blogs like mine will spend most of their time talking about obscure Christmas related things AND well you'd be right. Yep, I have a whole slew of horror movies that take place during Christmas AND New Years and don't act like your surprised they made a horror movie around those holidays because they made horror movies based around every god damn Holiday you could think of, EVER. I'm sure theres some horror movie based around Arbor Day out there.

                                                                                   

Our first movie is a very special film intitled Christmas Evil.  Very special indeed because for years I would call this the worst motion picture I had ever seen. I can even remember the first time I saw it, when I was like fifteen years old, expecting a movie the cover promised, but I did not get that movie, instead I got this very dull motion picture and I would have kept calling this the worst movie I had ever seen until I got this great idea to make this terrible, terrible blog where I talk about pointless shit like old NES games and movies like Christmas Evil. In other words, things 98% of the world has never given a shit about and never will. 

                                                                                 

But yes, I decided to re-watch the movie for two reasons. I felt giving the review based on vauge memories of the film wasn't fair, and I wanted to see if the movie was as bad as I remembered. Well, it isn't. I've definetly seen worse motion pictures than this in the last ten years. Hell, I actually enjoyed worse motion pictures than this in the last ten years. I still don't get the weird cult behind this movie but I don't really hate this movie anymore and to be fair it's still not a very good or enjoyable movie in my opinion.

The big reason I and many other people don't really like this movie is because it's simply not very interesting. I don't really like calling movies boring because people will think I need my movies to be fast paced and all that shit. I really don't. It's just that the plot of this guy who really likes Christmas and goes crazy just isn't that good when told seriously. That's the big reason this movie blows is that they try to take the whole guy dressed up as Santa seriously. Like fucking hell that's an idea that will never ever ever be taken seriously by anyone so you might as well sleaze up the entire movie with crazy antics like in Silent Night Deadly Night.

                                                                               

To be fair to Christmas Evil though, the main actor is pretty decent and the movie has some fun scenes, and I like the fact he actually does some Santa like things (like climbing down the chimney) it's all just taken way too seriously for me and a movie like this really shouldn't be taken seriously. Not for a goddamn moment. Still it was the first feature length movie where a guy dresses up as Santa Claus and kills people (the first time was in Tales From the Crypt and was only a 20 minute segment) still being the first doesn't mean you were the best. Not in the slightest.

(Note: This movie is also known as You Better Watch Out & Terror in Toyland)

Popeye (1985?)

                                                                               
OK, this is for the shitty Othello "review" I posted, At least it is to make up for that "review" and to be fair, Othello is a game meant for two human players, it simply isn't very entertaining otherwise and it WAS true. I didn't have any one to play it with and like Legends of the Diamond I wanted to get to the next game to review and didnt want to waste any time with a really shitty review (trust me the review would have sucked.) But today we take another look at the old BLACK BOX games but today's game is something special, it is to the best of my knowledge the first game to feature a licensed character in a NES game.

                                                                            

That's right, the first game to feature a fictional character wasn't Batman or Scrooge McDuck or Superman or something like that, nope it was Popeye. A character created in like 1929 and a character I have no fond memories of. You see I never saw anything related to Popeye (unless I'm forgetting which could be the case) until I saw the movie with Robin Williams when I was in my teens (I actually remember liking the movie a fair bit too.) so I don't have any nostaligic memories towards the character or the game. I just know who he is. That's it and you'd have to be living under a goddamn rock for decades not to at least know who Popeye the Sailor Man is.

                                                                             

I think this was also an arcade conversion, along with Donkey Kong. I don't know if the arcade game had more levels or anything. I mean the Donkey Kong arcade did have an extra level in it that was taken out in the NES version, but I'm already totally sure anyone wasting their time reading this shit knows what I'm talking about. Enough blather, it's time to get down to the knitty gritty and talk about this game and wouldn't you know it that the first game to have a license stuck on it is actually pretty fucking good.  Maybe I just don't expect as much from 25 year old video games and realize that even the best games back then had problems and that even the worst games have their positive points, what I'm trying to get at is that I like a lot of licensed games most people don't, mostly because I try to remain positive about pretty much everything in my life, even when playing games based off movies and tv shows. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm just not as picky as every other NES fan. Also I should just get back to talking about this game.

Popeye is like pretty much every other arcade classic in that it's very simple and very goddamn addictive. You play through like 3 fucking levels until it resets. I really don't know whats up with these Arcade to NES games but I really like them. They are just simple fun, no crazy outlandish levels, no bosses, no plots, all you do in them is try to get as many points as possible. It's just a really simple fun. I know I haven't talked much about the game but there's not much to say. For its time the graphics are pretty damn good, backed up with some catchy music. The play control is also very good, and I'm saying this right now, that if you like your arcade classics, I'm fucking sure you will like Popeye. Now get off your ass and get yourself a copy of this game.

Othello (1988)

                                                                               
No, there wasn't some crazy game based around the Shakespearean play that I never read, no this is the board game Reversi (which is also called Othello I don't know why though) which is well a pretty fun game, if you have two players. I don't have anyone who wants to play Reversi with me so I can't review this NES game. Bye.

Comics I bought today!

This is just a quick little update to brag about the amazingly beautiful comics I bought today at the flea market. They are all old Adventure Comics from like the 1960s, Superboy and Superboy and the Legion of Super Heroes stories. Here they are

                                                       

See? See? I told you they were fucking amazing. I don't even know which one of them is my favorite. I think it might be the Revenge of the Knave From Krypton. I haven't even read these stories but I can tell they will fucking bonkers.

Ninja Crusaders (1990)

                                                                                    
In the 1980s, people fucking loved Ninjas. There were a shitload of Ninja related movies made, there were a bunch of cartoons involving Ninjas (like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) and of course a massive amount of games where you play as a Ninja (and don't forget the massive amount of games where Ninjas appear as enemies... like in Gun.Smoke. Yes, a goddamn western game had Ninjas in it. Thats how much people loved Ninjas) We all know about the greatness of the Ninja Gaiden games, and even the games based off the Ninja Turtles. BUT what we didn't know about is this fine little gem from American Sammy.

                                                                                

American Sammy made like 3 games for the NES BUT in my mind they were all pretty damn fun games. Amagon, Vice Project Doom and today's title Ninja Crusaders. I actually think Ninja Crusaders is the weakest of the three games, with Vice Project Doom being the best of the lot. Seriously, if you like Ninja Gaiden, Cabal or Spy Hunter you need to check out Vice Project Doom, that game is all 3 IN ONE. Now how awesome is THAT? And what makes this game unique is how depending on your weapon you can turn into an animal. A tiger, scorpion, dragon or falcon. All of those animals have their strenghts and weaknesses and I think it's a pretty neat gimmick (also if you are like me and didn't realize you could turn into an animal until you looked it up, you hold the attack button)

                                                                                 

Now I think the games graphics are pretty decent for 1990. You can easily tell what everything is, I mean it's not the lush graphics of say Super Mario Bros. 3 or something that really pushes the graphical chip of the NES to its limits but they aren't so terrible they will bother you, but to be fair the bad graphics in NES games don't bother me. Not even in Uncanny X-Men. The music is well pretty decent also, but it's not very memorable. The game is pretty hard but I think if you work at it hard enough you can easily beat it, but to be fair I believe that to be the case with EVERY game you work enough at it and you can do it. Ninja Crusaders isn't as hard as Ninja Gaiden but it'll still take a week or two of solid NES playing to beat it.

Ninja Crusaders is not as good as any of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles games. Well, its better than Tournament Fighters. And it doesn't even deserve to lick the balls of Ninja Gaiden, but really those games are classics and some of the best on the NES. Ninja Crusaders is a fun little sidescroller that has a neat gimmick, but it's no classic. Still worth the $5 you'll shell out to get a copy of it.

Metal Mech

                                                                              
You know I try to be very fair with my game reviews. I try to find something good about every game I review, except for like really shitty games like Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde or Dragon's Lair. There are a shit load of NES games I really like that no one else does. like for example, I'm a fan of Superman, Total Recall and Godzilla. Many people hate those games but I was able to find some enjoyment out of them. Not saying they will become my favorite games on the system, but I feel they are way too hated, shit they are all streets ahead of this pile of shit we are going to talk about today, and belive me, I don't got anything nice to say.

                                                                               

Metal Mech is a lot like the game Blaster Master if Blaster Master was a piece of shit. Metal Mech was made by Sculptured Software who I think made Virtual Bart which I spent hours of my life trying to beat as a kid, admittly I liked Virtual Bart then but I haven't played it since so I have no idea how it holds up, but I know this game is a pile of shit, but getting back to my original point, this game is a lot like Blaster Master, I even refer to it as the ghetto Blaster Master. Remember how you could get out of your ship in Blaster Master and go around right? Same thing here (I don't think theres any overhead parts in Metal Mech, but I can't stand playing this piss poor pile of shit for very long) except instead of being in a cool underground cave of sorts fulled with neat monsters and shit, you get a very uninteresting city look, and everything looks drab and bored like they tried to rush this game out.

                                                                                

Another problem is the control really sucks, where as controlling the guy and his tank in Blaster Master was easy. It's annoying here. The Mech jumps really awkwardly and it's weapons cant shoot anyone under it. The guy sometimes gets stuck on fucking ladders, it all feels like this game was barely finished. The music is very uh not memorable, seriously I just played this game minutes ago. MINUTES. not hours, years, months, days or whatever ago. MINUTES and I still do not remember the music and I'm not even going to bother to check to see if the game even HAD any because I don't want to play that game again.

I've beaten Superman and Total Recall because somehow I saw good in those games, maybe I'm crazy I don't know but I don't hate those games. I think they honestly did some good things in both of them. Metal Mech did nothing good, has no charm, isn't interesting. It's just a boring ugly annoying video game that is better left forgotton. Like my Legends of the Diamond "review".

Legends of the Diamond (who cares?)

Laser Invasion. Last Action Hero. Last Ninja. Last Starfighter. Life Force.

Legacy of the Wizard. Legend of Kage. Legendary Wings. Lemmings. Little League Baseball

Little Mermaid. Little Nemo. Little Ninja Brothers. Little Sampson. Lode Runner.

Lone Ranger. Loopz. Low G Man. Lunar Pool. These are all the games I own that start 

with the letter L. Every single one of them would have been a better choice (except 

for Little League Baseball) than today's game. Sadly I ended up picking Legends

of the Diamond for my alphabetical order review thing no one cares about. You see its 

hard to talk about a sports game period, even the best ones. It's goddamn impossible

when you don't even like the good sports games.

I don't know what it is but I never really cared for sports. Football, Hockey, 

Baseball, Soccer, Tennis, Basketball. You name it, I don't give a shit about it. I can

remember back to a fonder time when I was a but a wee child and we would have reading 

time at school. A full period where we just read a book of our choosing. Every other boy

would read a sports related novel written by some guy named Christopher 

Iforgothislastnameforfucksakeitwas18yearsago and I would be reading Tintin or Choose your Own

Adventure or this weird seires about a bunny who could talk because he was a lab testing animal 

(if you know what series I'm talking about I will give you a kings ransom to know its name.)

And I don't think I ever rented a single sports title, except for Super Punch Out when I was a kid.

Not one. I don't even want to play this game because I know for a goddamn fact that I'll be bored in 

about twenty seconds.

In fact, I refuse to play this game, and I'm going to say it's a piece of shit. There. 

Legends of the Diamond sucks ass. and yes I know the format for this review is 

screwed up, I don't care. Blame that piece of shit Legends of the Diamond. And I'm just going to say it 

RIGHT NOW, except for the Punch Out games and the original Baseball Stars, all other sports games suck shit 

and I hate them, yes that includes Blades of Steel, Ice Hockey and Tecmo Super Bowl. I'd rather eat a pile 

of dog shit than play even those games. God damn fuck shit.  

(Also despite the fact I didn't really like sports as a kid, one of my favorite movies ever is The Sandlot.. 

which revolves around baseball. I don't get me either.)

Comic Book Ads Part 1!

I don't really feel like talking about the third part of the Spider Man story, or talking about the next game I mean to review (it's a baseball game... and I'm dreading playing it because I hate even the best sports games.) so I decided why not just discuss the ads from the old comic books I loved so much as a child. Maybe I was just a weird child but I really liked a lot of the old ads, they were unique and colorful and very charming. Today I will now talk about a bunch of them and make sarcastic remarks about them because I've grown up to be a very bitter man.

                                                                                   
Our first ad today is uhh... A team up with Spider Man and Captain Crunch...yeah... well not exactly a team up because the Captain has been kidnapped and this was a weird one because it contintuned from another ad where J. Jonah Jameson tells Peter Parker that Captain Crunch has gone missing (I never thought I'd say those words... but here we are!) and Spider Man has to go fight Sogmaster and the Soggies from the old Captain Crunch ads... but I didn't know that they were Captain's enemies until the creation of the internet, where people could learn some of the most pointless bullshit imaginable I thought they just created them for this one ad. Also I'm still pissed that this didn't have any conculsion, you didn't get to see Spidey pound the shit out of the Sogmaster. Also did anyone win that contest?

                                                                                  
I don't think I ever saw anything related to Gumby except for that one short that was in one episode of Mystery Theatre 3000, but according to wikipedia Gumby ran for 255 episodes from 1955 to 1989, which is 34 goddamn years of a ugly claymation thing (like seriously what the fuck was Gumby supposed to be anyway?) and his horse. I'm still amazed they lasted that long, but yeah Gumby was popular in the 1950s why would you use him in a attempt to sell some random candies made by people I never heard. I seriously haven't heard of Brach's ever but those candies do look pretty good. I dunno maybe they are really famous in america, or were famous during the 1980s, but I still don't know why they fucking bothered with Gumby, why not I dunno anything else.

                                                                                       
There were two versions of Lazer Tag. A version called Photon (which had it's own animated series and a series of novels) and a version just called Lazer Tag which was put out by Worlds of Wonder, who also made Teddy Ruxpin and helped Nintendo with the release of the NES during its first few years in North America and such. It's strange how they actually went out of business because they did create two of the more memorable things from the 1980s. Also despite owning this comic a decade after it came out when I was like 10, I really wanted Lazer Tag, but then again it would have gone to waste because I didn't really have any friends to play with,  but damn that's a cool ad. Also it seems the WoW Lazer Tag also had a cartoon. What didn't have a fucking cartoon back then? They even had a goddamn cartoon about a fucking Rubix Cube (which I just may review if I can find an episode of)

Well, that's it really. I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane and had fun with this article that I literaly threw together in a few minutes, but I do plan to make a part 2 and a part 3 and a part 4 and so on and so on   discussing the ads of by gone days, when I have no idea, but it'll be done.

Kid Niki: Radical Ninja (1988)

                                                                              
I remember this game from way back in the old NES scene days, mentions of it would come up A LOT. Like most people would make threads on the forums about it, and it would usually end up in a heated debate. I remember people not liking this game and I remember people who were like me and enjoyed the game. I'm still glad I didn't listen to the naysayers (which is an important note I must say, if a game I trash looks good, still give it a shot anyway. I mean shit most games are still pretty cheap and theres always emulators, it's really worth your time to try any game to see what it's like despite what anyone says.) and bought this game for like $5 at Microplay, and I've had this game for a long ass time too. This games been with me for at least a friggin decade. God damn I'm getting nostalgic about the early 2000s.

                                                                                    
Kid Niki is like a platformer game. Like every other single game I talk about. T he NES had a lot of platformers, and it's lucky I'm a fan of that type of game, and that I really like them, STILL talking about the same type of game and just always posting postive reviews can be kinda tedious. I kinda miss yelling and cursing at games. Still Kid Niki is a good game and it's worth playing it. The graphics are pretty good, the challenge is fair (one of the big reasons I remember people back then not liking this game because it was too hard, I feel the challenge is very fair. It's not too hard but it will take you some time to beat the game, you'll have to spend some time with it.) The music is damn good and I have to say this too, the people who made this game were on drugs. A lot of drugs. Seriously this is a very weird NES game. Weird enemies. Weird bosses. Weird level design, I think the weirdness of it all really helps sell the game.

                                                                              

Kid Niki is an all around good game and if you are a fan of strange shit I think you should pick up a copy of this game. Also there were two famicom only sequels that I also enjoyed very much, AND I found out thanks to wikipedia that Kid Niki has a cameo in Kickle Cubicle (another IREM game... a damn good one too) if you hold A on Controller 2 and then turn on the game and keep holding A until the game starts and pow out pops   ol' Kid Niki. Also before I go the box art for this game is fucking terrible, but remember the old saying not to judge a book by it's cover. Kid Niki has one terrible cover but is a damn fine little game.