. . .on in the hearts of young people everywhere. Rock.. . .on?

So some quick news.  Bane will be wearing the Batman suit.  I'm not really sure what to think about that. The idea behind it is sound, Bane hates batman, so in order to defeat it, he must become what he hates.  Interesting right?

Except there is a war for Gotham and I guess Batman isn't there.  I don't follow comics much. Anyone know what the heck is going on in the 52 universe now?

Well maybe the animated features will clear it all up.

Check out the story for yourself,

http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2013/11/29/what%E2%80%99s-new-in-the-new-52-bane-wears-the-bat-suit

The title may sound odd, but I plan on doing a list of NES titles that you could have easily have bought and may find lying around the house.  THIS list is for the crazy stuff, the stuff that you probably don't have a high chance of just stumbling across.

The prices I am pulling are guesstimates.  Many of these titles do not pop up often, some only coming up once a year at best, some versions never.  Some can be new, while other never had a box to speak of to make it complete or new.

So without further ado, lets begin with NUMBER ELEVEN!

11.  Honey Peach


Release Date: 1990
Publisher: Sachen
Developer: Sachen

Sachen games were pretty plentiful.  You wouldn't have heard of them as they were primarily Taiwan based, they released dozens of games, all rip offs or just terrible games, and only a handful making it to the states. I literally can't list anything else they have done that truly matters as most of the titles were not released in America, thus we were spared 'Worm Visitor'.

Yes, Worm Visitor is a really poor Frogger clone.

You can probably surmise from the title that this game is up to something special.  Is it a Harvest Moon style game were you grow peaches and other fruits?  Does the character get special power ups from eating them?  So much wishing, so little to do with what it is about.  The saddest version of the story is that it is an adult game.  Yes, 8 bit pixelated (that word is not coming up on my spell check.) nudity.  This was yet another tired strip poker game for people who seriously had nothing better to do or cheaper way to go.  A good ole rock- paper- scissors throwdown (or as we call it, quartz-parchment-shears) with nes 8 bit girls playing.  I can not stress this enough that this was 8 bit.  Sure it looked better than the Atari, but really. . . you play, they strip, you get a code, there are six girls.  As you can imagine it probably gets old pretty quick if not already in this sentence.

However, as with a good deal of unlicensed games that feature nudity, they weren't sold in the general Mom and Pop's video game store, thus making it difficult to get.  They did however release quite a few of them, keeping it lower on the list than the others.

Collectors Value
Cart 500
Complete 800
New N/A

10.  Little Samson

Release Date: November 1992
Publisher: Taito
Developer: Tekeru

Video games have transitioned a lot.  There is always games that everyone else wants to copy the success of.  During the NES days, it was platformers.  Mario, Sonic, Adventure Island, Mega Man, all big franchises that made the companies millions.  Taito needed that hit.  Apparently Space Invaders and Bubble Bobble wasn't enough, but to be fair, a solid platformer was sorely needed.  This was one of the few games on this list you might have been able to get in the store, yet obscure enough to it still being highly unlikely.

The designer Shinichi Yoshimoto worked on the original Strider game for the arcades, a solid hit for Capcom in the arcades before Street Fighter 2.   The design work shows as the game has been well reviewed and enjoyed, despite being unknown.

So here's the plot, during a bad thunderstorm, an evil prince is awoken having been sealed away.  No reason or questioning., he's evil, it's Nintendo, deal with it.  Moving on.  The king summons four heroes to fight against the newly risen evil.  K.O. the mouse, Gamm the Golem, Kikira the Dragon, and the title character, Little Samson.  Much like 'Legacy of the Wizard' and 'Donkey Kong 64', each character has their own skill you have to use on various levels to move on.  Interestingly enough, the story has no dialogue in the game, it is all told in cutscenes much the same way Sonic games on the genesis were told using facial expressions and without narration.

What was supposed to be a huge platforming success, is virtually unheard of anymore. It's a shame because it looks like it would have been a lot of fun.

Collectors Value
Cart 650
Complete 1800
New N/A

9. Flintstones Surprise Dino Peak

Release Date: August 1994
Publisher: Taito
Developer: Konami

Meet the Flintstones!  The series now owned by Seth MacFarland, was one of the biggest hits on television and a weird cereal to boot.  It's games left something to be desired.  The first game was The Rescue of Dino and Hoppy.  It's easy to find and not worth much which means that most people wont know if they have a rare gem or a worthless game if they don't know the difference.  What made the second game worth so much?  Was it fantastic?  Nope, it wasn't released in stores, instead, this game was only released at the local blockbusters for rental.  You are going to see that a lot in rare games on these lists.

You switch between Fred and Barney as you search for missing Pebbles.  Not the stones, the baby.  Rock puns. . .Fred is stronger using a club, while Barney uses a long range slingshot attack and can climb up skinny poles being lighter than Fred.  The final boss is a flame breathing dinosaur with a punk rock hair do. They apparently has the kids and has control over the Lava trapping them.  Not making any of this up.  After defeating him and stopping the Lava, the kids become angry because they were going to roast marshmallows over the lava and are now upset at their fathers, leading Fred to exclaim, "Boy I feel foolish!".  Right. . .shutting off the lava was the only part that didn't make any sense. . .ah Nintendo games. . .

Released late in the consoles life (seriously, 1994?  Super Mario World came out 1990!) the game was virtually unknown and then as usual sold in the 9.99 bin to be forgotten.

Collectors Value
Cart 650-1000
Complete N/A
New N/A

8. Peek-a-Boo Poker, Hot Slots, Bubble Bath Babes

Yes, I'm combining these three, these three fabled Panesian games.  Where the Honey Peach is unknown, these gems went into a craze during the rise of the NES roms.  So many tales told of these rarities and the difficulties of finding them.  Most collectors own them with a show of pride on their wall due to the rate they continue to pop up online.  They are also pretty darn terrible. Sold without the Nintendo seal of quality(which really only meant that you followed their guideline and paid them, not that it was a good game), they were bootlegged carts sold through mail order in Japan, but released by another Taiwanese company called, you guessed it, Panesian.

Peek-a-Boo Poker was a poker game, Hot Slots a slot game and Bubble Bath Babes a bizarre tetris style game.  I'm really working here aren't I?  Only interesting thing to note is that Bubble Bath Babes had two releases, one regular, and one with the nudity removed and re-titled as 'Mermaids of Atlantis'.  Well that, and one of the other games developers, C&E, had one note worthy game, Beggar Prince for the Sega Genesis.

The more you know. . .

Collectors Value
Cart 900-1100
Complete 1200-1500
New N/A

7. Zelda Test Cartridge

Released: N/A
Publisher: Nintendo
Developer: Nintendo

In order to keep broken consoles working quicker, various repair technicians were spread throughout the country.  These certified reps were given test carts and tester systems, they would use one cart to test a pad or a controller and find what was wrong, and a test cart to test a system so that repairs and technical support could be offered locally.  However with the myriad of video game collectors, it's just another difficult to find version of a game.

The only difference is it is featured in a yellow cart rather than a gold or grey cart.  That's it.  It pops up almost never due to many of them being destroyed as most of these carts were once the new consoles were available.  No box or case was made for it so this is a cart only game.

Collectors Value
Cart 1000-1200
Complete N/A
New N/A

6.  Cheetahmen 2

Release date: N/A
Publisher: Active Enterprises
Developer: Active Enterprises

So there was this game. . .Action 52.  Anyone who watched the angry video game nerd (so much win) has to have seen the episode where he tries all the games on it.  Many of the games were crude, and a few didn't even work.  However it was all an elaborate ruse to get sales up to show off it's game, Cheetahmen.

There they are, the average consumer at the store.  They see the game and think, "Jimmeny wilikers!  What a deal!  52 games on just ONE dang gum cart?  That's way better than getting only one game, and I would be saving money at just under a dollar a game!  Jeepers, I would be a fool NOT to buy this game!" or so the marketing division, enacted using puppets and a crude understanding of the human language, told themselves. I believe this to be true thanks to the time period, and Cheetahmen.  Cheetahmen was a game trying to capture on the success of animal humanoids fighting villains.  I'm sure there was one or two in the 1990's right?  Ninja Turtles, Street Sharks, Street Frogs, Thundercats and Tiger Sharks. No there weren't any of these things then (gotta work on my sarcasm font).

So here's the skinny, a mad scientist, Dr. Morbis, kills a mother cheetah and then takes baby cheetah's and genetically modifies them to be part of his army.  Now that we have sufficiently painted him as an evil with no way to save him, we just need for the unexpected twist of his own creations turning on him.  Really?  After all he did for you, killing your mom and turning you into a part of his super powered army.  The three characters were, Hercules, Aries, and Apollo as all the famous painters were taken and philosophers might not have been cool enough.

Although that does sound pretty wicked.  "Horus!  Back up Diogenes!"

The first game was released on the Action 52.  However, the SECOND game was planned but never released.  So this wasn't one you could just find anywhere in particular.  So how did it get into circulation?  Well in 1996 a famous explorer, uncovered ancient incan ruins, revealed a secret plot to overthrow the junior baseball league of america.  Sorry, the actual version is a bit boring.  Someone bought a warehouse filled with games, including Cheetahmen 2, then just auctioned them off.  Only 1500 games were sold at auction.

Be warned, if you go out looking for this game, they did a reproduction of it as a kickstarter project.  You'll see complete games for around 2-300.  However original titles are far more expensive.  However if you are just the kind of person who HAS to own that game, go crazy.

Collectors Value
Cart 1200
Complete 1800
New 3500

5. Myriad 6-in-1

Hey look!  Another great buy of multiple games on one cart!  You see those guys selling 12,000 games in a plug and play controller?  We always assume having more is better, when the reverse is generally true.  Then again, these turned out to be worth a lot so perhaps the last laugh is on us.

Caltron 6-1 was one of many multicarts published in 1992 (just wait, I'm going somewhere with this. . .) released by Caltron (well yes. . .) for the NES, it was pretty terrible with every game being a quick slap together, and yes, it was unlicensed.  Shocker.  The game itself was pretty rare to begin with, as they didn't sell too many of them.  Shortly after, the business went south, and another company bought the games.  Can you guess what the name of that company was based on the clues?

So they released the game, slapping a quick sticker over the Myriad title with a plain white cover and printed text.  It was so bad you can still see the sticker underneath around the edges, and the opening of the game when started, still says 'Caltron 6-in-1'.  Hilariously, they went out of business as well.  With less than 100 copies of the game released, it is the rarest unlicensed game on the market.

Collectors Value
Cart 1200
Complete 4000
New 5500

4. Family Fun Fitness Stadium Events

Now we are getting to the fun ones.  Only a few more to go!  So, around 2009, people started going crazy for NES consoles when a ebay seller got 13,000 dollars for one online.  For months people believed that the old NES console was worth a ton of money, so much that there is an episode of Storage Wars where some dude thought they would get at least 5000 dollars for it after reading the 001 serial number on the back. Those of us who collect, just remember a triple title for the Nintendo that was the true cause of the price craze.

So you see, Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet was, as well all probably know, a triple title given free with the NES Fitness System package.  You run on the pad using by banging your hands on the pad because trying to run that fast normally is tiring and you just want to beat the fast cheetah guy at the end.  However, a company we know as Bandai, first released a Power Pad game called "Family Fun Fitness Stadium Events".  It was out for only a short time on the east coast.  Didn't sell at first, I mean, who buys a console to workout in the 1980s? Nintendo bought the game rights and then pulled the games from the market so they could have a quick game to sell with their Power Pad.  With so few released, in so small an area, with so few sold, you can see that just finding a game on it's own is astronomically difficult.  The person who sold the Nintendo had several BOXED COMPLETE games, one of them being that game.  THAT is what everyone was fighting for.

It is the rarest licensed release on the market.  Even the European PAL version is worth a good deal, however it is less rare, thus goes for a little less, but still, take a look at the numbers!

Collectors value
Cart 5000
Complete 8000
New 25,000

3/2. Nintendo World Champ Grey/ Nintendo World Champ Gold

The holy grail of the game collecting world.  Nintendo World Championship Gold, and Grey.  The titles are considered the crème de la crème (that's french for 'wow you have that cart?!') of the game collecting community, regardless of what system you collect.

Anyone who watched 'The Wizard' knows how ridiculous the game event in the movie really is.  You don't get points for using a warp whistle or finding a secret areas.  You get it for staying in the air and hitting the enemies in succession.  Dying actually is a better strategy, but I will come to that in a moment..  Back in the day before Pokemon, Nintendo would hold crazy game events, and one of them, in 1990, was the Nintendo World Championship.

There were three age categories and you had to score a minimum of 200,000 to qualify.  Once you did, you moved on to the World Finals in Universal Studios.  There they played on the specialized cart designed for the contest. They would play Super Mario Bros until they got 50 coins, then one custom level of Rad Racer, and then they would play Tetris as long as possible within a time limit.  The points would then be mulitiplied giving you your score.

This was how it was added up:

(Super Mario Bros. score) + (Rad Racer score x 10) + (Tetris score x 25) = final score.

The actual strategies employed were actually pretty brilliant.  The idea was that moving faster would get you a better score.  As I stated before, points were not determined by secrets. Many contestants simply ran around gathering coins but beat up enemies to get more points.  The most common tactic was using the warp pipe to gather coins and moving to the next level.  However dying proved to be a faster method, as you keep your coins and lose nothing by dying.  After all, you had 99 lives in Mario, and a full timer in Rad Racer.  You really couldn't die permanently in those two.  You could in the last game however, in Tetris, by stacking lines to the very top, ending your session and waiting for the timer to run out.  Thor Aackerlund is still one of the high score winners by gathering the coins, then dying, and gathering them again, scoring over 4,000,000 points!

The winners would receive a gold or grey cartridge of the game they just played along with fabulous other prizes like a 10,000 dollar savings bond (most of the contestants were under 18 mind you) new 1990 Geo Metro Convertible(and yet), a 40" rear-projection TV, and a gold painted Mario trophy(real gold might have posed a problem but would have been really cool to see Indiana Jones style).  the Second place got a silver Mario trophy.

We don't care about any of that however.  We care about the 116 carts made for the competition.  90 gray, 26 gold.  Each one has a unique number making it easy to track and to authenticate it.  It had the games and the format from the competition, only you can adjust the DIP switches to change up how you want to play the game as well.

A collector owns it and makes reproductions for others to try the game out on their own.  The cost for the original game is astronomical.  Grey copies are more readily available and still sell from as little as 5000, to more than 8000.  A gold has sold for no less than 15,000.  Crazy thing is, NOT ALL OF THEM HAVE BEEN LOCATED.  Take the story of an eBay bidder who's son died in the military.  They were just selling the games and took two big pictures. Collectors then noticed a hidden gold cart among them, leaping the bidding up to over 24,000.  There is speculation about the auction itself, but this is one of those wonderful 'hidden' gold we collectors love to imagine.  Coming across an old attic, opening it up and there is one hidden there covered in dust.  Still hiding, waiting to be found. . .

Collectors Value
Cart 18,000
Complete N/A
New N/A

1.  Nintendo Campus Challenge 1991

Wait, there is a game more valuable than the Holy Grail of gaming?!  Actually, yes there is.  Only recently was the throne upended when this cart was discovered in 2006 by the one of the world's luckiest jerks.  The game was found by Rob (the last known owner of the Genie's Lamp) Walters, at New York in 2006.  You see, they came across a garage sale and saw some nice SNES games.  The man who was selling them remains anonymous due to legal issues, having been a former Nintendo Employee.  They had a mountain of rare items in a box filled with dozens of rare carts, promo items, and more in a closet.

Now that the screaming has subsided, let's talk about this game.  The Campus Challenge was held at, you guessed it, colleges.  Running it out of 58 college campuses and spring break locations. You played on various game consoles, both the NES and the Game Boy, and could play as often as you wanted to try beating your score and getting the top prize.

This time they were flown to Disney World over New Year's weekend in January 1992 to play against one another.

The event gave each player a time limit to play.
Collect 25 coins in Super Mario Bros. 3.
Get 100,000 points in a custom version of Pin*Bot
Go as long as you can in Dr. Mario

The score was totaled using the following formula:
(Super Mario Bros. 3 score x 10) + (PinBot score) + (Dr. Mario score x 100)= total score

The final round pitted Steven Lucas who won with a score of 2,394,130 against Matt Sekelsky.  I don't know how, I wasn't there.

The cart was never given out, and they were all supposed to have been destroyed. However people forget about the pack rats who just sorta squirrel things away for no good reason. There is only one known pack rat whose name shall never be known, who still had an original copy of the 1991 Campus Challenge cartridge in existence.

Collectors Value
With only one game, it makes it harder to classify.   The game sold for $14,000 in July 2009. After 3 months, the game was resold on eBay for $20,100.

So that's it!  Those for the moment are the rarest most expensive titles that are currently known in collecting circles. If you have one, show it with pride if you didn't realize it was worth anything.  We will be doing another one on a regular basis and show off unknown games.  Think your game is worth something? Write in, take a picture, bring it by and let us tell you what its worth!

Til next time!  Later Gamers!

Na na na na na na na na Alfred!

Grimm, Castle, Arrow, One Piece, I talk a lot about TV shows I like. It can be hard to get into a show that is already several seasons in. I prefer to get into shows on the ground floor, although watching three seasons of Castle in two weeks was a lot of fun and got me caught up to enjoy the ongoing fourth season.   It can be overwhelming to many people including myself when a show has three or more seasons.  You miss so much, how are you supposed to watch it all?  Not everyone enjoys that.  It's nice sometimes to get into a show from the first season.

There is a lot to choose from and a lot of hidden gems.  Geeky culture is starting to become more profitable, that can be both a good and a bad thing, but for now, here is my geeky picks of shows that are still only in their first season to check out while you still have the chance.

9. Xiaolin Chronicles

Ok, this one is a bit of a cheat, its based off of an old Cartoon that aired years ago on WB called Xiaolin Showdown. Go watch it on Hulu.  It's odd and slow at times, but the writer and director, Christy Hui is building a world and making the characters more diverse.  When it fell apart after season three, there was so much more to tell.  Now years later she is starting it up again on Canadian television.  It's silly fun that mixes western and eastern animation and story and with only a few episodes in, it's worth checking out before it goes crazy. Gong Yi Tan Pai!

8. Steven Universe

No not the Steven Hawkings Universe, but that is still awesome.  This is a brand new Cartoon Network show.

It sucks being the youngest trying to find your place in the family business.  It's even harder when the three older female siblings are protectors of the world with fantastic powers, and poor Steven can't figure out how to use his gem to help.  He tries to make breakfast, be supportive and help out however he can anyway, making more trouble than he meant too, but also at other times coming through and saving the day.  I really enjoyed the diversity of the cast, and that they are always kind and supportive of Steven despite his getting into trouble.  If you liked Adventure Time, this is a sweet show to watch.

7. Once Upon a Time in Wonderland

The original Once Upon a Time show is in it's third and I think it's final season.  The storybook characters of Disney fairy tales living in the real world, never knowing who they were until the curse was lifted.  Despite the feeling that they had no idea where they were going during the second season, it's great fun to enjoy.

During the appearance of the mad hatter, they gave a tiny glimpse into the world of wonderland.  Only hinting here and there, but never really exploring it.  To be fair, there is a lot of ground the writers could cover with many other Disney tales.  Well now they plan on exploring it with Alice.  Sure we've heard this story, and you may be tired of Alice getting a new treatment time and time again, but watching Alice take down eight burly guards by herself while dealing with not only the Queen of Hearts, but Jafar from Aladdin as well?  All while trying to rescue her true love, the Genie in the bottle?  It's actually pretty interesting and worth a look.

6. Crazy Ones

Robin Williams.  You love him or you hate him.  The TV show is being spearheaded by the same group that did Ally McBeal and you can see it in it's zany writing.  'The Crazy One's' is a clever dual reference to not only the crazy people working at the Ad agency in the show, but also to the famous commerical by Apple and Steve Jobs.  It's a fun and silly pleasure to watch the oddness unfold and the strange characters that show up as guest stars.

Plus it's Robin Williams on TV which the last time was Mork and Mindy.  That was ok right? I never saw it. Tell me if I'm right.

5. Beware the Batman

Despite the fact that I'm a bigger Spider-man fan, I will always enjoy a good Batman story.  For those of you who know about the show, we all made fun of the aesthetics and the strange characters.  The weird CGI, the fact that batman was missing the top half of his head, and Alfred wielding guns?

Do kids even know Wind and the Willows references?

They cut out all the major characters and instead bring in B listers and unknowns into the fray.  What happens is it makes Batman more interesting.

The animation is tight, the stories are fun and enjoyable, and Batman needs an image change now and then. It's on hiatus until January so watch it now before it gets three seasons like Brave and the Bold.

We all know Virtua fighter by now right?  The blocky weird 3D fighting game from way back.  Were you a fan of the ninja?  The lion head guy?  I've had people mistake it for Tekken at times due to the similarities between characters.  It was the first arcade fighting game to have full 3D polygon graphics and thus is one of the foundations of gaming.

Released December 1993, Virtua Fighter has just hit it's 20th birthday.  Developed by Sega-AM2 by renowned developer Yu Suzuki, known as Sega's Miyamoto who worked on Hang on, Space Harrier and of course the Shenmue series.  Designed in part with the Lockeheed Martin company which works on aerospace technology (no joke)it was a revolutionary 3D styled fighting game that is also recognized by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History like Pac Man and Dragon's Lair as being a landmark of entertainment studies.

Each character used real world martial arts(although the floaty jumping was questionable), and even with street fighter 2's popularity, they limited it to three buttons so it would be easier to program and to force people to remember combinations rather than button mashing.  Even now it is seen as an inspiration to many fighting games.  The refusal to make it online is due to the developers feeling that any lag would ruin the gameplay as they demand absolute precision on the game.

The first game had a limited roster of characters, but the game series has had many new faces appear.  For now, here is the original cast and what style their fighting moves were based off of.

Akira Yuki was the star of the game, using a form of Kung Fu called Hakkyoku-Ken.

Sarah Bryant with her brother, was from California and uses Jeet Kun Do but mixes it with Savate and Taekwondo styles.

Jacky Bryant is a race car driver and like Bruce lee and his sister Sarah, fights using Jeet Kun Do.

Pai Chan, the daughter of Lau Chan, was the 18 year old action movie star using Ensei-Ken or Mizongyi.

Lau Chan was a master chef who also used Koen-ken and entered the tournament as he was a perfectionist by nature.  He was the big villain in the anime.

Jeffry McWild was a fisherman from Australia using Pankration, a combat sport that has boxing and wrestling.

Kage-Maru, the token ninja who fights with Hagekure-ryu Ju-jitsu

Wolf Hawkfield was a Canadian wrestler who wanted to be strong, then had nightmares about the world ending in later games.  He used professional wresting moves.

Dural is the final boss, a shiny female cyborg that uses all the characters martial arts.

While polygon counts disappeared quickly making the first game obsolete, it still stands as a fantastically made game to play, even the current ones.

Sega has a website set up to capture this event here:

Japanese Site Sega Virtua Fighter 20th Anniversary Site

Fighting game fans have a lot to thank the game for when it comes to 3D fighting games.  Go party Virtua Fighter!


Odd Facts:
Siba of Shiba is a character who was never featured in the main series. He would have been from the middle east and used Pencak Silat.  When he finally reappeared in the Fighters Megamix, his move set was closer to Bahn from the Fighting Vipers game. He wielded an unblockable blade.

There is a real life wrestler named Jim Steele who took on the name and look of Wolf Hawkfield during 1994 Japan All Pro Wrestling Tournaments.



As they used real fighting moves, the fighting styles were used for characters in the Shenmue series such as Akira Yuki's moveset was used for Ryo Hazuki, there were several other characters in the second game that you fought against that shared other movesets.

DOA5 ultimate featured Akira Yuki, Sarah Bryant, Jacky Brant and Pai Chan.

In the first game, Dural was actually Kage-Maru's kidnapped mother as a cyborg.

There was an RPG released for PS2 and Gamecube based on the series called Virtua Quest.

OMG Powers!

If you haven't heard, Marvel is unveiling the new Ms. Marvel, a 16 year old girl from Jersey.  Now I will generally blast comic books for being too adult when their market was supposed to be for kids, or badly written or even just plain insane and unreadable, and I'm a fan!  However I am always pleased at how they at least TRY to deal with stereotypes.  Back after 9/11, Marvel added an X-men named 'Dust' to their roster.  It was a perfect time, as mutants were feared and hated, to add someone who was both Muslim and a mutant.

So having the new Ms. Marvel be a 16 year old Muslim from a conservative family is downright interesting and intriguing. It may end up being another tired story line after a while like I felt with DC's New 52 (you had ONE job DC. . .), but for now I'm curious.

The Master Sword always hides in the Lost Woods, why not a cemetery, on the grave of a warrior who-oh yeah...

To say that I enjoy the Legend of Zelda series would be an understatement.  I have a treasure trove of Zelda paraphernalia that would make Miyamoto raise an eyebrow.  It is true, that sometimes the enjoyment of it can blind one to basic problems with the series or over look things that do annoy or frustrate you, making it hard to be objective when talking about it.

I have been a bit frustrated with Zelda games as of late.  Twilight Princess was good, but lacking a little for me.  I haven't beaten Skyward Sword, the ONLY title I have yet to beat.  I just need a day off for that.  It isn't that they aren't good games, I just wasn't having as much fun as I used too, replay was a bit lacking for me as well.  Why did they have to create a timeline?  And why did it have to split?  As far as I was told, each game was just a story told by a different storyteller.  Heck, I assumed at the end of Ocarina, defeating him in the future sealed him away for the whole of the timeline.  I assumed that there wasn't some crazy time distortion and in my mind it was all linear and easy to figure out.  Heck they did it to all the Pixar films, why not this series?  I have my favorites of course as many know.

My top three Zelda titles are as follows:

1. Legend of Zelda: Windwaker
2. Legend of Zelda Link to the Past
3. Legend of Zelda

A close fourth was the Link's Awakening for the Game boy.  For all you Ocarina fans out there, don't worry. I enjoyed the game as well and enjoyed it tremendously.  However not nearly as much as I did the other two.  For those of you who skipped Windwaker due to it's cartoonish look, for shame.  Realism can be fun, but one of the great things about games from Shigeru Miyamoto is they always have a unique look to them. You can easily see the difference between any of them in the series, and not just because of better graphics. I have to respect a series that can completely change it's look.  I wouldn't mind seeing more of it done artistically.

I'm the king of the world, on a boat like Leo If you're on the shore, then you're sho' not me-oh

So yes, my happiness has been pretty high as of late in terms of Zelda games.  Windwaker HD is an absolute dream.  They didn't just make it look nice, they actually fixed many annoyances and flaws.  That is the purpose of remaking something.  Now adding or making it nicer, improving.

Now we come to Legend of Zelda, a link between worlds.  I am a kid again.  I can't even decide where to begin with the mass amounts of love and happiness I am having while playing this game.  Simplicity at it's finest.

Ganon!  Yes!  Get out of here 'dorf!

First off, this is NOT a remake.  It is a new story set in the same world.  The maps and placement of areas are the same, however there are many characters and new surprises awaiting you.  Keep a lookout for little easter eggs right off the bat.  In your house. . .take a good look at the wall to the right.  See it?  Heh. . .well if you don't have the game, you're just going to get more curious as I go on.

The game is played overhead but is still rendered in 3D allowing for more dramatic cut scenes and dramatic camera angles.  This is one of the best games to play in 3D and in many ways MUST be played in 3D (doge the cucco's!).  It renders at 60 frames per second even in 3D mode, meaning you get fantastic quality, much like Pokemon X and Y.  You start the game as any other Link game at first.  Go where they tell you, get what you need, fight that stuff and get to the next area.  Then it changes up a little, giving you access to ANY AND EVERY weapon.  I was a bit surprised when I made it through a dungeon in record time, searching for the item I needed and realizing that there was not one.  Yes, in this one you can choose which dungeons to go too, in whatever order you want.  Or to be more precise, in whatever order you can solve the clues to get into said dungeon.

All your items uses are on a magic meter. It can recharge on its own, meaning you no longer have to hunt for bombs and arrows.  That is handy and a better idea.  You never run out, you just run low and have to wait. Zelda likes to add other elements to the game series as of late, an hourglass that fights ghosts, a baton that changes the wind, and this gives Link one of the more interesting abilities in a 3D game.  The ability to turn themselves into a painting on a wall.  Yes, you heard right.  Like a paper mario RPG, you can slip between cracks, slide across caverns, squeeze between rocks and travel in a far more interesting way.  The world had to be tested over and over again to make certain of where you could and could not go, and yet still get really far going absolutely nowhere.  This power comes a bit later of course, but is fun to play with the entire game.

The controls are tight.  You'll need them to be as they throw everything at you from jumping skeletons, hidden monsters, birds, bombs and crazy mini dodongos.  Moving around is simple and while I do occasionally get stuck on which button I set my items up on, that's more observation than anything.  I am a bit frustrated that the ice wand just drops a pile of ice. I wanted it to blast cold at enemies or something. . .

Length and difficulty wise are up to you.  Zelda dungeons can always be frustrating to figure out what you missed or how to get out of an area.  I hated, and still hate the jungle temple in Ocarina.  Water temple?  Easy.  Yet every Zelda game has that stumping moment where you need to take a break and think it through.  This isn't any different.  I've just completed the main area and now have a new quest and I have only figures out the one.  Boss is still murdering me.  As the game no longer requires you to find the item in the dungeon, you will have to just wing it when it comes to bosses.  Did that work?  Dangit!  What about that?  Nope!  Let's try-and I'm dead.

So, free form choose where you go, simplistic design and exploration heavy, every area filled with secrets and gems, new abilities and wonderful cinematics.  Doing pretty good so far, and I haven't even spoiled the surprises in the story itself, although I can imagine you all have read everything about it online.

If you were never a fan of Zelda, nothing I say will really sway you.  And that's ok.  I think even those who don't care for Zelda would be pleasantly surprised by the freedom, the endearing characters and the ease of enjoyment.  The puzzles and dungeons are still difficult, and solving how to get into some of the Dark World areas is requiring a lot of legwork. However I have found that with most Zelda games, you just have to think outside the box.  All the answers are pretty easy once you just start trying crazy things. If you have enjoyed Zelda, you should already be playing this game.  It's beautiful, fun, and enjoyable.

Later Gamers!

Mosh pit!

I'd like to start with my first attempt at reviewing Grand Theft Auto 5.

Word of caution, I am not a reviewer, as such, I reserve the right to change my mind as I play more and time passes.  I just think to much and have to talk about it.  So here we go.

There is nothing quite as frustrating as the process of reviews.  If someone wants to hate something for personal reasons, it's annoying to get a lower score because of it.  And if someone gives a less than favorable review, people flip out and attack that person.  It is taken to a heightened level sometimes, like when someone gave the third batman film a poor review on Rotten Tomatoes that people got upset with, or the Metal Gear Solid 4 game getting less than a perfect score.

Seriously.  Chill out.  Getting upset just makes it a bigger deal than you want it to be.  Criticism can be harsh and even undeserved, yet it is our reaction to it that decides if it will change its perception.  Shrug it off, learn from it, or gripe and whine about it.

When the GTA game series first came out, I gave it a passing glance.  Looked a bit boring as overhead driving games reminded me of Spyhunter, but with no cool spy gear and a world to explore rather than a fun speed run, I passed on it.  My first foray into the world wasn't the third game, but Vice City which I purchased used for around 10 dollars.

Vice City made me laugh, the character was entertaining and the jokes were amusing.  After the original story for why he was there had been forgotten, I just drove around listening to the radio and enjoying the sights of the city.  It was entertaining to just steal cars, run around and do silly missions.  It was enjoyable, had a sense of humor to it, and heck, the eighties were hilarious already.

Then came San Andreas.  It was frikkin huge.  I rented it at first, and just got lost playing around.  The humor however never came up like the last one.  The rules to do things never stopped, there was always something else to do and eventually I hacked it, flew around in a jetpack and just explored, but within an hour I just got bored of it.


I played a short bit of GTA4 before just becoming bored of the series in general.

It confuses people when I say I get bored, but it's true.  The story was pretty deep and interesting, but I didn't care.  The world was just not all that exciting and I don't even remember what I was doing when I stopped playing.  Nothing stood out for me.  I think I got to watching television while playing the game and just gave up.  Too much realism can be a bad thing.

So now on to GTA5.  The game that people have been freaking out about like Skyrim.  My initial reaction was a resounding 'meh', yet when I played it there was a lot that was pretty nice about it.  The sheer level of detail is psychotic, being able to go into houses and see all the detail then drive anywhere and explore is on the level of creepy guys in their basement writing about their day in thousands of journals.

The controls of the game are pretty straight forward, once again trying to drive is frustrating, at best, as just a simple touch will slide my car making me swerve like an indecisive twit.  When I got the the second character (I forget the characters names. . . Franklin?) I LOVED the power to slow things down and still have perfect control while driving.  I thought for sure it would help when I tried out the race.  I was wrong.  During the race, trying to take turns was nearly impossible.  I'd end up spun around or just smash into the wall.  It claimed that the more I did and the more I upgraded the car the better I would get.  Is it really that much to ask for the ability to just drive correctly?  To be fair, I've always been terrible at even the simplest driving games that are not Mario Kart.  I often wish the controls handled like Mario Kart for other games.  I had so many many issues trying to escape from the police the first time in the stolen car.  After the sixth time I was ready to just give up.  I couldn't find an alley or hidden place anywhere in the city.  Eventually I just drove up a bridge into oncoming traffic using his ability to outrun the police.

So the movements and the setup was pretty impressive.  They fixed a lot of issues with the previous games control-wise and updated the graphics, tweaking the individual things that happen in the city transforming it into a living breathing world.

I played it longer than I thought I would, and I am interested in getting a bit farther and seeing what happens. So the fact that I am going to play more of it is a good indicator since that is more than an be said for the GTA4 game.

Here comes the resounding meh. . .

The characters feel exactly the same as the previous games.  I could care less about it being offensive or cursing for every single word for the sake of realism.  It doesn't really push the boundaries like everyone claims the series does, and that's my issue.  I keep hearing people who want things to be more offensive and more bloody in gaming like it is a divining rod of the best of the best.  Show people dying or being blown up, have them get choked with their own intestines!  Yeah!  That's not offensive, just boring.  It's awesome when you are a kid in Junior High.  That one kid who could curse and watch gorey movies was so awesome to us, which is the basic level of intelligence and imagination the game provides.  It's a game for children.

Dude!  Jimmy's got the newest Splatterhouse!  He's so awesome!

If gore and cursing and sexual innuendo things are in a well polished game, well then that draws me into the narrative as I'm playing, Spec Ops the Line, and Bioshock Infinite taking time to get serious and really make you think while doing all of that, then that's fun to me.  Or just going silly and crazy like Saints Row and Deadpool, then I laugh and get by enjoying myself along with fun gameplay. It sticks with me and makes me want to play it again.

I think Rockstar is afraid to do it now.  There are DOZENS of ideas they could easily incorporate into the GTA series that would really bring about a deeper sense of realism or enhance the game.  However it would alienate the target market, and they can't do that.  One relies on the other, so GTA will never be able to break the mold until they are willing to piss off it's market.  With as much money as they have, they could too, but why would they want to any more than making a mario game where you deepen the storyline and work with interesting character rather than the same jumping games.  Oh wait, Mario RPG series.  Right, they did.

Here are a few I would greatly love to see the ROCKSTAR guys do.  They could care less about a little guy like me and my opinion FYI, but hey, worth a shot to send out some thoughts.

Story wise, I would love to see the same story, but with a protagonist who has never committed any sort of crime.  Sure they have written a type of criminal before who is trying to play it straight.  I 'm saying someone who was never one to begin with, not even family or friends in it.  That would be some great story telling as we would get to watch them evolve and change over the course of the game.  They learn as we learn.  It's why we loved 'Breaking Bad'.  Good guy going down a bad path.  The game, 'Mafia' did it, so why not give it a shot?  The character gets into it by accident, then slowly due to corruption and hatred loses, little by little, until they are trapped with no way out.  You still care about them as they have morals and regret decisions they made but they do what they have to do.  Bonus points for changing the race or gender.

Heck I would enjoy playing as a female in the series.  Is it that big of a leap?  Guys want their girlfriends to like the game, so when you had three different protagonists, would it have been difficult to include one girl? Probably.  In all this world building, it would be crazy difficult to have made a change in the setup for girls and male hookers would have felt less realistic.  Which is just another reason why this game isn't really ground breaking.  It's just doing more of the same. Again I say, 'meh'.

At first glance I thought this was a whale in outer space with the earth behind them. I would have thought more highly of the game if that was indeed true.

The game is exactly what fans want.  That's fine and all, but I get sick of reviewers praising it as being this amazing series and perfect in every way.  It's a good game, but it doesn't change anything anymore than Skyrim did to Oblivion.  If this was my first time playing the series, I would be happy, but as such, it's just par for the course.  The world is big and vibrant, but feels wasted on the characters.  At least if they didn't talk I could give them some sort of interesting personality.

Hey, it's one guy's opinion vs millions of satisfied customers.  Again, saying I'm bored with it is like complaining about too many Pokemon games.  If the company is making money, who cares what I say right?

Just thoughts.

Later Gamers.