Wall Street's Kids love games

Yep, its THAT fucking fun.
Ditto
You know there ARE probably better screens than this but since I didn't play this game, this is what you get.

I’m no financial analyst, nor political analyst and you don’t have to insult me with it ok! I’m not very smart. There is one thing I am sharp on and it knowing bullshit when I hear it. A prime example is when the word ‘recession’ was being used when describing our economy a few months back. Everyone was asking “are we headed towards a recession?” People at where I work threw the phrase around as well - and asked me as if I was the kind of guy that reads a newspaper (I don’t need a newspaper I got the web). Some days I can’t remember what fucking day it is, now I have to remember the Word of the Month- screw that. Even in the haze of my first few awake hours at work before my tasks were at hand and the the only thing that keeps me from collapsing is a Mcdonalds iced coffee, I had an answer for the “Do you think we are heading into a recession?” pop quiz- and my answer was quite simple:

“I thought we were already in one.”

The fact is, in the last 8 years and even before 911 our economy was circling the drain and the terror attacks and the subsequent war in Iraq that followed didn’t help. Gas shot from $1.50 and then climbed to 2 bucks in less than a year ( now it nearly costs your damn blood). Stocks dropped like a stone in an empty pool. Then to add more insult to injury, jobs did a vanishing act. The poor bastards that made 10 and hour in a factory is forced to work now at wal-mart for way less because his old job got shipped to China. Ironically and painfully he is now stocking the very goods he once made (only now its made shittier and with lead). Wall Street and the biggest banks in the world had a damned party during these terrible times- giving out loans to people that had no earthly way of paying for them ( ‘Oh, yeah I had to HAVE money to PAY that mortgage and I needed a JOB to do it). Now the US gov has to pony up 700 billion to save their Harvard asses. That’s BILLION folks with a ‘B’.

How does this relate to video games? It doesn’t. Well… maybe it does. People are going to be paying for this- not the banks that fucked it all up but people like you and me. The video game market might take a hit for this. A new x box 360 isn’t going to fuel your car or heat your house and the latest installment of Mario isn’t going to make your upcoming higher taxes go away. It’s a damned shame because less than a decade ago the industry was at its highest and video games finally were outselling the music business. Mind you, back then the economy was WAY better when you compare it too now. Its like comparing apples and turds.

You even might think “Gee, at least this is a social and economic problem you CAN’T blame on games!”. Sorry it kind of is. Every time a stupid asshole storms into a school or building with a shotgun and plays Duck Hunt with classmates or co-workers- the video game industry takes a hit from Joe Lieberman, Hilary Clinton, Bush’s wife and also most of the conservatives on Capital Hill. Many of these blame flamers go on rants about how these games train and influence people to commit violent acts on others- while millions of others play these games and never hurt a soul. Meanwhile there are plenty of non violent games that really don’t influence anyone. Except maybe Tetris- I think of that game anytime I stack boxes at work.

Here is where I make my point after 4 goddamned paragraphs of my banter. Back in 1990 a video game was made for the NES called “Wall Street Kid”, a simulation game about the stock market that only about 3 people owned and 1 person liked (and that person probably wore a helmet indoors). I’ve never played this game because I care about the quality of my sanity but I can only imagine that it is an abortion in a NES cart. Based from what I’ve read- in this game you play a young investor that inherits $500,000 and is now trying to make more of that money by investing it into the stock market. While this sounds pretty educational and rewarding, it falls short. Along with the simulation of the stock market, you also have a girlfriend that you have to take out on dates, and buy things for so she’ll stay with you. You also have to make time for the gym and buy a yacht. I wish I was making all this up. In this game you can’t just make an honest and reasonable living and enjoy your life- you also have to maintain a relationship with a gold digging cunt and blow your cash on a castle that once belonged to a family. I don’t know why but I suddenly care about that family that just lost their castle to a pig.

I’d love to be able to trust the stock market a little more. Then if I ever inherit 500 k I can buy an old NES off eBAY and a copy of WSK. Then after learning all I can from the game I can then move to New York and spend some time on the trading floor- dressed in one of those suits or those stupid day glow vests. Raising my hand, yelling out numbers, looking at computer screens of symbols with numbers and at the time the closing bell rings I can find out that Adelphia took all the money I invested and gave it too the 2 sons and 1 father that owns the company so they can buy a 10,000 dollar umbrella stand. Then I can take the remaining 5 bucks and buy myself a McRib on my way to my new job at WalMart. Thanks Wall Street Kid. The McRib was good and the vest makes me look like a douchebag.

Now if every school shooting gets blamed on games why can’t this pile of shit be blamed for this crisis with the economy? Because it was made back in 1990? Hell most of the people work for these banks were in their 20s in those days and might have owned a Nintendo. The seeds of insane financial decision making were sown in those years. Then suddenly when the time was right BAM they became an insider with the NYSE and using the ‘Nintendo Logic’ they crippled the market.

Ok- Now that I’ve failed to convince you that (unless your dangerously retarded), then why are video games blamed for violence in our society? I don’t think that the Lehman brothers played Wall Street Kid. Washington Mutual’s heads are too old too be playing video games that are almost 2 decades old. But still, Wall Street Kids played games with us. It was all a damn game to them.

“I never understood why the people of France chopped off Marie Antoinette’s head- NOW I FUCKIN’ GET IT!” -

LEWIS BLACK
(BLACK ON BROADWAY)

To check out an even more ‘Not so nice’ review of Wall Street kid check out Seanbaby.com HERE and look at other horrible ideas to base NES games on.

Diamonds and Dogshit Report- Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon

I entered a trachea once, and the bitch never called back.

Rex Ronan: Experimental Surgeon

Sculptured Software/Heath Hero Network inc. 1993

SNES (but oddly enough never released for the crappier systems)

When a console dies off, it becomes a sort of free for all to see just exactly what was made for it. The Nintendo Gamecube- while largely ignored and died ungracefully and unfairly- is now being sought after due to its low aftermarket price and little-known gems of games that were released for it. Some of these games turn out to be great finds, proving that sometimes hype doesn't always equal success. Games like R-type are a fine example (I'd never heard of them until now, and I'm addicted to all games R-type), we rarely heard about it but when you've played it you wonder just how it got past you.

Then there’s the shit that was better left not made. Games based on sitcoms, movies, board games, TV soaps or any game with porn and nudity in it. You would think that these properties, with all the money invested towards them- that developers would put some extra TLC into them. Nope. ET, Enter the Matrix and even the Tim Allen sitcom "Home Improvement" all flopped once made into pixeled adventures.
Here's a game that isn't based on anything really other than a decent idea, but still was a pile o' shit. You play as Rex Ronan, a doctor doing a new experimental surgery to a patient that is dying of smoking-related symptoms. This patient is a heavy smoker and why? its his job. He worked as a salesman for a huge tobacco company and his career has now backfired and is killing him. Rex Ronan’s only big idea rather than chemo and telling this man to lay off the smokes is to shrink himself to a microscopic size and scrub out all the tar, pre-cancerous cells and even tooth stains. 9 years of medical school and the poor, micronic bastard has to travel into the center of this mans sternum to cure his cancer. Armed with a Ghostbusters-like ray gun, a flying ship, and dressed in full purple spandex, this man is ready to kick some cancerous ass.

The sci fi classic movie Fantastic Voyage comes to mind sure, but this wasn't really based on that. It is its own bad idea. RR:ES is a title as awful as it is obscure, but really the concept and story of the game isn't THAT bad its just poorly executed. This game suffers from bugs, failure controls and graphics that leave a lot to be desired. But I'll have more on that later.

Now as your scrubbing the inner walls of this mans throat and lungs, you'll face an army of nano robots. These bots are programmed to kill you before you complete your mission in saving this mans life and have been planted there by the tobacco company to insure that the patient never blows his whistle on them. You see, there’s another great idea: corporate paranoia. Unfortunately for the tobacco company they only built robots that were made of legos 'cause they die so easily. If they don't fall apart easily then they're cheap as hell and replicated 1,000 times. Bullshit.

This game is plagued (or cancer riddled) with the dullest missions and most lifeless levels. One such in particular is the level where you use your spaceship (or BODY ship-whatever) to travel through this patients bronchial tubes or wind pipe and have to avoid mucus (all in a very unplayable third person perspective). Not just any mucus though, its some kind of acidy mucus that eats away at the metal of your ship and is so solid that you can crash into it. Shooting at the snot balls gives you points and also is an expensive and dangerous alternative to just prescribing this man some cough syrup.

The look of the game is ok, but still could use some accuracy as far as human anatomy is concerned. I know that a humans throat does not have twists and turns and two-way tunnels and I never went to medical school or even college. Lungs in this game look like sewer tunnels lined with a semen-like substance that is supposed to be cancer cells. Robots are all cloned one after another and attack you in large groups making up for the ease of their demise by just all ganging up on you. The bullshittery is topped off by the worst sound samples and music that would make you want to stay inside an elevator to hear MIDI tracks of 'man eater' by Hall and

Oats until you attacked your eardrums with a q-tip and a hammer.

Sculptured Software gave us the Mortal Kombat games on the SNES and they also gave us this. I guess everyone makes mistakes, but how far does the process of making shit like this take before someone was smart enough to stand up in the office and say "Hey guys, this game is a travesty. Maybe we ought to stop here before it gets out of hand." Along with being boring its also an edutainment game that attempts to demonize tobacco, and the tobacco industry long before the meaningless laws were made.

According to the surgeon general and groups of heath-Nazi Californians, a man smoking a cig at the beach 20 feet away from you is attempting to kill you with his filthy habit. I don't smoke but as I played this I really suddenly had a hankering for a pack of camels. I just wanted to light up that loosy and suck that smooth, chemical enhanced flavor and be as fuckin cool as Steve-fuckin-Mcqueen. Ironic huh?

The 90's saw a revolution in the hopes of a smoke free world. First there were smoking sections to keep those smelly breathed, yellow toothed offenders in a small corner of the restaurant or bar. Then they had to go outside. Now we have them standing 25 feet from the building. I guess next they'll just make them smoke in oncoming traffic. What’s that smell? hmm nope its not a Marlboro- its the sweet smell of Prejudice, ladies and gents. I know smoking is bad and expensive but- for fucks sake- why not just have smoking bars and non-smoking bars and let Americans MAKE UP THEIR OWN MIND!? They have gay bars right? I'm not gay so I don't go (unless I just want to get my dance on)

oh wait. I know why- because that would be called *freedom*, something that died about 8 years ago.

Enough of the rants. I just have a problem with educational games and propaganda. This game is both. So it might be good that this game didn't make any tracks and was discovered on a ROM collection CD while I was bored. But think about it- back in the old days of gaming people could buy this sort of thing on a cartridge and spend almost 40 bucks for it.

On a happy note, Fantastic Voyage would be a great game, provided it was medically accurate and more fun than cleaning the walls of a mans lungs. You could have different missions and objectives. Like curing prostate cancer! Who wouldn't want to be play a video game that takes place inside a mans 'gouch'? Wait...never mind.

The show that made the 90's ( no not 'Friends')

People ask me sometimes WHY I write a blog about video games that are old, outdated, rarely played or suck altogether. Truthfully I do it for all the youngsters out there who have no idea just how primitive games used to be. I have 2 sisters that did not grow up in the 80's Nintendo era, so they haven't a clue just how big Mario was, and the blood they've seen in GTA and Doom 3 may have never happened if Mortal Kombat hadn't warped fragile young minds and pissed off bitchy soccer moms everywhere. The 1990's was a great decade for games (not to mention the only decade I really remember, hell in 1985 I was wearing GI:Joe underoos and eating my boogers) and other media as well. The PC was becoming a household tool thanks to Windows 95, the Internet was growing so fast, and people became millionaires in a matter of days with it (and lost those millions in less than a day). But video games were not the only thing that shook the media world, and got jaded middle Americans to get off their fat asses and bitch to the US government to tell others what they can and cannot see. Television and Radio was breaking rules that never really existed in the first place but that didn't stop many pussies from thinking otherwise.

Since this blog is called Video games AND the 90's I figured I'd cover both.

Beavis and Butthead- (1994/SNES/Genesis/Gameboy and Gamegear)

Beavis and Butthead was THE show of the 90's. Its first appearance was a crudely animated short by the shows creator Mike Judge called "Frog Baseball", in which Beavis and Butthead catch a live frog and use it as a baseball, then laugh like two jackasses when its dead. Horrible. But I couldn't stop laughing. This was just the beginning. MTV picked up the show and before you could say "Fartknocker" or "Buttmunch" it was a regular show and on every night. I loved it, each episode was just a day in the life of 2 dumbassed teenagers that just went through life (and laughed like idiots along the way). They lived in a shitty house in a white trash part of town, they worked in a fast food joint and they also lived together it seemed but they were not related, they were just good friends (not gay either- at least I don't think so). The adults in the show weather they were the boss at Burger World or their high school principal and teachers did everything they could to tame these two ass-wads to no success. Who needs education, social acceptance, and a work ethic when you have a TV, a baseball bat, a frog, some firecrakers, and a chainsaw that you just stole from ole' Mr. Anderson next door.

My father and I had a fondness for this jackassery in motion and it became a huge hit when it was made into a real reoccurring show on 5 nights a week. This was a cartoon that was finally made for adults, there was no apologies, and controversy of course came in spades for this show. Kids mimicked the show, burned down houses, and the like, just like their heroes on TV. Why would anyone want to be like the boys from the show? Simple,... because we were kids. Even if the show was made for adults only, fuck that MTV isn't going to snitch to my mom. As a result MTV would be forced to start the show with a disclaimer that told you to get some common sense, and the show was also only showed on late night TV.

The controversy in retrospect is kinda trivial and silly now when one thinks about it. Family Guy, South Park, and the late night run of Cartoon Network has even racier shows and more edgier jokes than Beavis and Butthead ever had. I think the reason behind that is that B&B wasn't about being subversive and crude, it was just good fun. South Park goes out of its way to offend you, all for just the sake of being offensive (IMO that show fucking blows). Family Guy (much better than South Park) is a cavalcade of slapstick and funny inside jokes, but it doesn't seem to have a 'direction'. Aqua Teen is good but... -Jesus fucking hell- forget it, what is that writing staff smoking. B&B was more grounded in reality than any of those shows. We were or at least knew a Beavis or a Butthead. Nothing they did was ever 'too stupid' or 'too surreal'. Even when the boys nearly wreak the town from rolling in a giant truck tire that rolls into traffic and derails a train you can still think 'It could happen, why not?'

MTV was looking to get away from its long established music roots. B&B was MTV's ticket to get away from music videos and focus their attention on lame shows involving groups of hot college students living in an apartment, or shows with people doing things like hitting themselves in the nuts with a hammer. How did the boys affect and subsequently kill the music video market? Simple. They watched those very videos and roasted them to the point where we finally saw the uselessness of the music videos. Like a puppet show the boys watched music vids and said on TV what the rest of the world was thinking.

"This sucks"

and

"What the hell is this crap"

Music videos are a stupid idea really, all of them are the same: There is a story centered around the song, and meanwhile the artist and his or her band are playing in the next room. Maybe there a hot chick coming out of a swimming pool in slow motion or the band is playing while wading in a septic tank, and bam! Theres your video. Sure, MTV still slings music videos around, chewing up young musically inept talents and then spitting them out so they can become bad film stars, but fuck all that. MTV should no longer stand for 'Music Television' anymore. Change the name.

In the early 90's these two boys stirred up hell, only to become a movie that even the snootiest critics had to like. The animated film: Beavis and Butthead Do America was a smash hit, and proved that even the simplest idea could be sustained for 90 minutes. I personally think its a brilliant movie for its time, and is a now rarity. You don't see animation like that anymore, now its all CGI with big name actors just supplying voices. Maybe the next summer blockbuster will center around blades of grass with the grass trying hard to make friends with the autum leaves that just fell on them. With voices by Jerry Seinfeld as a Larry the lawnmower , Edward Norton as Leafy and Chris Rock as the Grass. I'm rolling my eyes now- fuck that idea.

South Park, Family Guy and Robot Chicken- even if they all managed to join forces- can never be as good as B&B. Even the creators of those shows have tipped their hats to them in some way or another. You don't create laughter with just your fowl mouth little shits (I'm looking at you Trey Parker and Matt Stone), you will not become legendary with cut scenes and slapstick (FG creator Seth Macfarlane). Above all, those shows may have just been farts in the wind if not for Mike Judge giving us something sick and twisted to prepare ourselves with.

Mike Judge would later create the very down to earth animated family show King of the Hill. A show that B&B would probably consider "Wussy crap". Its very interesting to see that the creator of the first big subversive cartoon was able to later make something that even my grandmother can enjoy. Could the South Park guys do that? I wouldn't really want them to.

Beavis and Butthead-if real people- would be at least in their mid to late 20's by now (2008). The world has changed. You cannot get through life without a debit card and gas costs you your fucking blood. An airplane is impossible to get on now without being nearly probed anally. Fast food joints now have to tell you just HOW unhealthy their food is, because some stupid fat fuck sued them. People also blow themselves up in public, gun down Amish school children, and get themselves killed from having sex with a horse. I ask, are we REALLY getting more civilized? B&B were a couple of fucked up kids, but they'll never be as uncivilized as the real world.

Oh... shit, I forgot this was supposed to be an article about the Beavis and Butthead Video game made back in 94.

It sucks. I mean really sucks. Yep... total shit of a game. There. I'm done.

Worst Fighting Games of The 90's-Part 5-Atari's Pitfall

From the makers of such hits like :
ET: The Game (Still availiable 6 feet in the ground somewhere in New Mexico)
The Atari Jaguar system (Still availiable under the platform shoes in a bin at a goodwill... you gotta kinda dig for it)
and the smash hit translation of Pac-man (now availiable in a dumpster in New York City, happy diving you fucking BUM!)
Comes...
Damn it.

Pit Fighter-1990- Atari

I almost cannot consider this a 'fighting game'. You only can pick from 3 fighters and all 3 of them blow, there is a button to push in order to jump and the game really has no story other than "fight people and make money" . But since punching and kicking someone head to head is the name of the game in Pit Fighter, I guess you can consider it a fighting game.

This game was made by Atari games and was an arcade hit but for only 1 reason: it was the first fighting game to use photo-real digitized graphics. I'm sure however once the quarter was inside the machine and the player selected his fighter, the games horrible animation, uninspired characters and way-too-easy system of fighting kept them from depositing another 25 cents. (Is it me, or does Atari have a fascination with making shit?)

As I've mention you get to pic from 3 fighters, all of them pretty much the same. Kato, a black belt and karate kid ripoff. Ty, a kick boxer and rip off of Billy Blanks (I don't care if this game came first before ty-bo). Last and least-of-all-time we have Buzz, an ex-pro wrestler that unnecessarily wears black under-eye stripes because EVERY wrestler has to have some kind of gimmick.

The game takes place in abandoned warehouses and subways, and your surrounded by a huge throng of people that look and act as of they're on their way to the Jerry Springer studio after the fight. Surrounded by concrete walls and rabid human waste that wave around cash, you get the feeling that you've been there before, and if you don't get that feeling don't worry, you'll be fighting there again real soon. Over and over again.

Your fighter that you selected merely just on a frustrating whim will battle against REAL hardcore brawlers. Before a match however most of them have to get greased up to look grossly sweaty and then have to get drunk enough to move as slowly and stupidly as possible. The casting for this game must have been done at a biker bar somewhere near the Atari headquarters. The only interesting character I fought against was Angel, who is the only woman in the game. She dresses like a dominatrix, so I'll give them some points for at least trying to get sexy with this. Then there is former KFC employee, Southside Jim and greasy fat ass biker, CC rider. And who could forget rejected WWF wrestler, and gay porn actor Chainman Eddie, who NEVER uses chains to attack, he just wears chains for fashion (fabulous!).

This game was able to support up to 3 players but I doubt whom ever played this game had any friends. That person that was begging for 2 more players had already convinced everyone in the arcade that he was dangerously insane and playing a game like Pit Fighter proved it. So what was this lonesome dove with a roll of quarters to do? Maybe if he was brave enough, he could pay that woman across the street from the arcade to play with him. A good deed after all, what else is she gonna do? Scream at traffic about how the FBI put a chip in her brain. No way did the FBI do that, that's just political soapbox shit. The FBI in the 1990's was too busy putting "Winners don't use drugs" on the demo screen of nearly EVERY arcade game. Which is far more deplorable than putting a computer chip into a crack whore's brain. It was also WAY less effective at keeping kids off of drugs as the Nintendo anti-drug smash hit Wally Bear and the NO Gang.

opps, I forgot I have a review to do here...

Drugs might have made Pit Fighter tolerable. It might have also made the lousy animation move a little smoother. The digitized graphics of that time may have been a little too sketchy to make a FULL game. One might say this was just a first step in making games like Mortal Kombat... Whatever. When Mortal Kombat hit consoles later on, the reaction was huge and people were buying Genesis and SNES systems left and right. When Pit Fighter premiered on home systems people played the game for about 5 minutes, then traded it in for 5 minutes alone with the aforementioned street-walker they met outside the arcade.

God bless her. Even after getting a cigarette put out in her eye, then having to attack that 'john' with a broken ashtray, she still finds time for games.

Worst Fighting games of the 1990's-Part 3-Bloody Hell

(This next game got its attention for 1 reason, It got the actor who played Johnny Cage from Mortal Kombat fired. Since I fucking hated Johnny cage, I'll give this travesty some credit. At least we didn't have to see that egotistical pansy ruin Mortal Kombat 3 (that game ruined itself).

I won't name the actor who played Cage, but I'm sure you can google it if you'd like. The actor had appeared in a magazine ad dressed as the Johnny Cage character standing next to a cabinet to an arcade game that Midway didn't make, with his hand on the controls. Midway fired him because of his presence in that ad being a contractual no-no. I remember seeing him in the ad as well in a game magazine back in the day, smiling his ass off, which was obviously Oscar-worthy acting because the game he stood next to wasn't worth cracking a smile.

If a game maker is going to hijack a mascot from someone else's franchise then that might tell you that the company really is into being shady. Frankly thats like getting Sega to have Mario appear in an ad for its next Sonic game. You know what other buisnesses are this shady? The Mafia.)

BloodStorm

Incredible Technologies/Chun Soft/ Strata

1994

I won't bother talking you through the craze and hype of Mortal Kombat again, because we all saw it and I already have enough MK pages to sink your ship. In this vain however, Strata needed to compete with the famous fighting game. Its previous try-TimeKillers, wasn't cutting it and they needed to follow that with a much more vile fighter that would get the sadists of arcades to drop them their quarters. One would expect them to give up the failed formula of Timekillers and try something new, get better artists, animate characters better, throw in some nudity, make the game fun, or for goods sake have a better way of attacking other that just mashing buttons into the floor. But NOOOOOO.

Mortal Kombat had blood, and was famous. So the makers of another way-to-violent-game, came up with a game more bloody than MK and its Timekillers game combined. They called it Bloodstorm.

[Game Developer: Hey chief, You know that insanely red and bloody game that were working on, well dammit, I just can't think of a name for it.

45-year-old-Game Developers' boss: Well the best way to sell a game is to give it a good name, not just make it fun and re-playable there, sonny. If we have that we'll take the arcade world by storm!

Developer: IT GOT IT! Blood,... Storm! Blood Storm! We can even remove the space in the middle of the 2 words and make it ONE word. We can invent a word!

Boss: Good job, sonny. Now get out of my office and feed my ostriches.]

Using the finest cheap comic book artists from England, and the greatest animators of Mrs. Cornholepeckers 5th grade class, they cranked out a fighting game filled with characters that made no sense, all fighting for the most original prize that any hero or villain could fight for: World domination! Yeah makes sense, no fictional protagonist/antagonist has EVER wanted that before.

These fighters all get something about their look that either makes them very futuristic or very primitive. All of them are ridiculous in some way or form, from either having a giant concrete fist to smash you with, having a bionic eye or fighting in a thong.

Excess ensues on an even grander scale. Characters can lose limbs thus giving the other guy an advantage. Once you've lost both arms your stuck with using your feet or at worse, headbutting. Its just that sad. This game features a block button as well ala Mortal Kombat. Why, you might ask? Because anyone who liked using the 'hold back' feature of Timekillers will surely go mutinous and move on. One could guess they were trying to piss people off.

Blood fills the screen in larger amounts, like in Kill Bill Vol1 or this game wasn't trying to be funny with it. Heads can be cut off at anytime by any opponent via 'death moves' that can be even executed at the beginning of a match (mind you, the CPU always blocks it, unless they are 'stunned').

This game tries to be innovative to the eyes by giving us some rendered 3d objects to use as weapons. The end result looks like crap, a cartoon character armed with a CGI-looking rocket launcher on his back. It doesn't look right, in fact it looks cheap. You can either be an animated game with cartoon-ish graphics or a CGI game, both together look like ass. Each character in the game has a CGI looking weapon and after you defeat a character you can steal it. Shoulder mounted rocket launchers, optical laser eyes, giant concrete fists, and belts with pockets that carry explosives. By the end of the game your fighter looks like he or she could lighten the load a bit, trying to carry enough gear to start a war.

This little ditty has tons of unneeded and who-gives-a-shit secrets. If you win a match in a special way, you get to fight against a secret hidden super tough boss, don't worry about losing those fights though, the match is only for shits, giggles, frustration, and the off chance of higher points. I've encountered two of these travesties, one is named Blood which is a red clad fighter with a red body, and a distracting, moving spraying blood splatter for a head. The other fighter I found was called "Shadow" who is a character that is invisible and forces you to follow his shadow on the floor. I have yet to beat these challengers, mostly due to the cheap bastard AI this game uses. I also found it just a little too easy to get access to fighting the secret characters, which makes this game even more of a pain in the ass. No one wants a CHORE of fighting an impossible cheap opponent just because they lopped off a head at the end of a match.

Speaking of cheap, the bosses of this game suck too, one of them being a rendered polygon 3d robot that towers to about 15 feet tall. I can't really describe it, its just the lamest damn fighting game character. Its like MK3's Motaro only way dumber and lazier in the design department. The other boss is a flying character that looks like a 1st generation CGI looking bat. If fighting against a boss the size of a damn mosquito sounds like fun to you, then please don't ever mate. The fact that I cannot be any more descriptive, or remember their names is a bad sign too.

Incredible Technologies no longer exists as a game developer as far as I know. The thing that surprises me the most is that BloodStorm was even getting prepped for a sequel before that company imploded. Those out there looking for a good hybrid of Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat should just try Timekillers, and they'll see why gore and cartoons in video games is a tightrope walk between art and playability, and clearly Incredible just didn't walk it.

Worst Fighting Games of the 1990's part 2

Now turn your head and cough.
Read that ridiculous shit on the pic, just read it.

Killer Instinct 2

Rare/Nintendo

1996

Killer Instinct 1 was a surprise, a success and not to mention great alternative to the the blood soaked world of Mortal Kombat, and the cartoonish world of Street Fighter. We had looks, sounds, speed, and intensity all in one, complete package. We all felt KI's sting, and we needed to see it happen again, we begged the folks and Nintendo and Rare to give us a sequel, we clamored for it. If we had known that they were going to screw it up this badly, we would have probably kept our mouth shut.

KI2 was in arcades in the coolest looking arcade cabinet, with our good busty friend Orchid on the side of it, staring us down with those huge... eyes. The game featured updated graphics, and sound that really WASN'T changed but that was ok, the sound was fine to begin with. Everything looked great on the outside, but KI2 was like a chick with a Wonderbra on, and lots of make-up, and you find out after that hot date when you've taken her home that she's on the rag, (but still didn't bother telling you about that).

The characters are my first gripe. Cinder was awesome in the first game, c'mon! The Human Torch in a fighting game, what wasn't to like? Riptor wasn't a bad idea either, a human and dinosaur mixed, why not? But in KI2 they scrapped those and gave us the addition of new fighters that are as boring as they are forgettable. The worst part is they kept most of the other lame-wads too, like Combo, Saberwolf and Spinal and just kicked them up a notch by updating their look. The new graphics gave Orchid a much better bounce in her step which is fine, but she also had to now compete against other sex-appealed whores, like Kim Wu, and Maya. Conan the Barbarian must be really pissed he wasn't picked for the role of Tusk. Tj Combo doesn't look like a boxer anymore, now he just looks like an ass in camo pants. Saberwolf has bionic arms, ...Whatever. Nothing great to see here folks, move along.

But what takes the cake and hurls it, then eats it again, is the fighting system. Before, combos were as easy as start and follow with other buttons, and mix it up. Now here, we get a clunky and complicated system of "Auto" and "Manual" moves that don't perform nearly as satisfying as before. Now you have to have an 'opener', hit certain buttons in sequence and then close it so that the CPU opponent doesn't lay waste to your sorry ass with an even longer combo than yours. If you loved KI 1 and was able to bust out 13 hit 'Killer' combos than playing this game will totally insult your whatever previous skills you might have had.

The story to KI2 is worse than the one before. Now the game seems to take place 2000 years in the past. The logic behind that, is that when Orchid defeated Eyedol (yay! go Orchid!), Eyedol's death released energies so strong that it caused a time warp. Yes that's right, the ultimate excuse for having a trip in time, a WARP. I guess as a result of this warp, all the fighters now control and fight like ass, just like people from long ago. They adapted you see.

Not even Orchids skimpier outfit could save this game, or Maya's annoyingly bouncing chest. I like boobs, but jezz when it comes to a video game I'm %100 sure they're fake.

To top all this off, this game is easy, too damn easy. Gargos is the final boss (he's just a gargoyle) and if he was any easier he'd just stand there and beg to be hit for some kind of sexual kick. I should never have to up the difficulty ante on an arcade game. I guess after KI1 a lot of people bitched about how tough Eyedol was (he was too), but really that's the whole point of the game, and since its in an arcade, there is no reason it shouldn't munch at a roll of quarters.

I was mad back in 1996 and I'm still mad about this disappointment. I can only guess that the people at Nintendo and Rare didn't want the series to last, so they roasted this turkey. This game also had to compete against others like, Tekken and Soul Caliber so it was doomed from the beginning. If you also get beaten out by the Street Fighter Alpha games, then that's saying something, its saying that it was better the first time around.

Nintendo 64 FINALLY had a KI release entiltled KI Gold. Due to the N64's cartridge media that meant poor sound (compared to CDs) and no movies for all the characters. The first KI didn't even make it to the N64, which is really the fault of the N64 not really being a completed project.

[In fact a good side note is that during the opening ads for KI one in arcades, theres a teaser showing the 'Ultra 64' logo and the announcer of KI telling us that this game was going to be made for homes in 1995 only on the Nintendo Ultra 64. If the Ultra 64 was made instead of the N64, things might have worked out for Nintendo and they wouldn't have gotten stomped so badly by Sony and its Playstation.]

When the X Box 360 was in the works KI3 was announced and recently the development for it was cancelled. Maybe that's for the best. I can only imagine what kind of shit they'd give birth to for the third time around.

Fighting games are a dying genre really, and perhaps if Killer Instinct was translatable into a first person shooter, it might stand a chance on the modern systems. As crazy as I may sound, KI the FPS might work, after all I'd love to put a bullet into Spinals cackling skull. And repeat.

Worst Fighting Games of the 1990's part 1

This list begins with a bang, the kind of bang that comes out of an ass. I've yet to decide just how many games will appear on this list, but I am hoping to get to at least 5 or more. Considering what kind of shit came out in the 1990's, that won't be too hard. This was a time when video games were really trying to experiment with things, from full motion video, to polygon based graphics. It takes a considerable failure to make it here, a company has to make a game that doesn't just suck, it also has to waste things, like time, money, logic, and even sanity. Some failures start off with good ideas but then just end in horror and im starting off with that here.

I should also point out that this list isn't in any kind of order, the reasoning behind that is due to my inablilty to really name what sucks the most. These games all are equally shitty.

Ask anyone what would be a fun fight to watch, weather they be a man on the streets, a businessman in a suit, or an african tribesman with a large bone ring in his nose. Most of them would tell you that dinosaurs and giant apes would be fun. Thank God that Atari answered that prayer and gave us the hit game, Primal Rage. The second thing they would answer is large robots, metal machines of death armed with sharp blades, lazer guns, or SOMETHING that they would use to emaciate each other. One such game answered that prayer and gave us a shit game called Rise of the Robots.

Rise of the Robots

1994

Time Warner Interactive/Mirage

SNES,Genesis, and also the losers of the 90's like the 3do, CDi, Amiga and the like.

This game had it all going for it, or so it seemed on the outside of the box it came in. The graphics to ROTR were all computer generated in the style of games like Killer Instinct. This game was all about robots kicking each others metal asses and taking model names, all for the sake of finding out who was built better. The story to this game is kinda typical, following a plot of an evil company doing bad things involving robots and getting them to fight rather that just have an all out war. No one followed plots of video games back in these days, so who gave a damn WHY the robots were fighting, just throw them into a ring and watch them bash each other.

This game had 7 fighters, all of them ranging from robots with human forms, to machines that look like forklifts with legs, spider robots, hell even a gorilla robot. Before matches, each robot had a cool opening movie to introduce themselves, seeing this happen on a SNES was unbelieveable. The games opening title screen reminded me of Super Street Fighter 2's Ryu opener. The look of this game was not seen on the 16 bit systems and the aforementioned Killer Instinct was still a year away. Lets also not forget that this was a fighting game with ROBOTS, so what could go wrong,? You'd have to work really hard for a concept like that to fail.

The main fighter, the 'Ryu' protagonist of ROTR is a fighter called ECO35-2, or 'Coton' for short. Now if you think that name is fucking dumb then wait till you meet the rest of them. The other fighters are called:

Loader

Builder

Crusher

Military

Sentry

The Supervisor

If you want background information on this motley bunch of recycled tin-canned-ass-bags, then just read thier name, thats how imaginative the developers were willing to go. Now, one would hope that even a game like this could at least give you a good selection of these characters, right? Right?

Wrong, if you were player one, you were shit out of luck. You only got to play as 1 damn fighter:

ECO35-2 thats it. In two player made player two could pick them all, even the boss- The Supervisor was availiable if you entered the cheat. Meanwhile player one is stuck with the blue, generic, bland way-too-human to be a robot fighter: ECO35-2.

This game can be beaten in one sitting. Its way too simple. The AI genius of this game is hard however if you try to think that this game is even remotely complex. The controls are set up exactly like Street Fighter 2 in that you have 3 punches and 3 kicks, all of which look the same but are performed at different speeds and inflict less or more damage. The key to winning this isn't anything special or difficult, no combos needed and no special moves. The key to survival in ROTR is walking your clunky, blue, slow ass robot towards your enemy and hitting the punch button and then... repeat. I've never completed a game so easily, and frankly the games ending for just 1 character didn't make me feel good for finishing this piece of shit.

Graphics sell this game as I have mentioned, and sound gets a few points too. The package and ads for this game noted Queen Guitarist Brian May scoring the soundtrack but in fact his track called 'The Dark' is the only song that made it on the main intro screen. I guess the designers for ROTR tested this game while their Cd player at the office played hits like 'Bicycle' or 'Radio ga-ga' and thought it would rock. No insult to Brian May at all, he's a guitar legend, but this project was NOT for him. Queen is ok, but not for a fighting game. While fighting you'll hear energizing music and lots of samples of what resembles metal hitting metal sounds, which works for it. No voice samples are in this game, no announcer yelling FIGHT! Lame.

Thankfully this was a rental at a Blockbuster and I wasn't a sorry bastard that actually went out and bought this. Otherwise this game would have been tied to a brick and thrown through a window of a Walmart. The even scarier part is that this game had sequal that appered on the Sony PSone and the Saturn, which got the same reception as the first game. No one can learn sometimes.

There was a lot of innovative gaming systems comming out in the mid-90's and a lot of them tanked. This game wasn't bad enough to kill the Nintendo SNES or the Sega Genesis, but it probably had its hand in on killing the 3do, and CDi systems ever so slowly. So while your cruising Ebay don't be surprised if Rise of the Robots is a pack in game for someone trying to rid themselves of a CDi or 3do system, they're just trying to get rid of the financial hex put on them from that fateful day when they had spent 500 plus dollars into what was supposed to be the newest generation of gaming system and what could have been a original and creative fighting game if only the folks at Mirage gave more than a damn.

Diamonds and Dogshit Report- Dogshit- Nintendo starts seeing red

I am currently writing an article about Sega and its rise and fall. Ultimately that piece of writing will be a truthful and brutally honest commentary on HOW that company blew it and now no longer makes consoles. But in the process of writing that, I thought: Nintendo has had some stinkers too. The Power Glove was Nintendo's worst peripheral back in the 80's, so bad that even its 90 minute movie/commercial starring Fred Savage (The Wizard) couldn't save it. That however was the 80's and I hadn't gotten into gaming then. Nintendo enjoyed a prosperous and well deserved place at the top back in the 1990's with the SNES and its Gameboy systems, which gives good reason that they would take some risks, try to cash in on a trend, and then lose.

Nintendo loves to try something new weather its needed or not. Lately they've released the Nintendo DS, a portable with 2 screens, one of them being a touch screen, not to mention N64 graphic and sound capabilities. So far that has been a success, even as currently the Game Cube is eating the dust of the original Xbox and PS2, Nintendo manages to keep afloat with its portable market. But Nintendo can't afford to fuck things up now, drastic moves in the wrong direction will send them into bankruptcy and force them to join the ranks with Atari and Sega as 'failed console companies'. As far as consoles Nintendo only has 1 failure: The Virtual Boy.

In the 1990's Virtual Reality was this buzzword that hit the gaming world by storm and it seemed to have one common element that would make an ordinary game seem like a virtual game: a screen inside a pair of large goggles. If the screen was 2 inches away from your face than you suddenly were IN the game. Games like Doom and Hexen gave us a new genre called the 'first person shooter'. This was a time when people didn't want to just SEE Mario beat king Kuppa they wanted to BE Mario and beat king Kuppa. Trouble is, console makers really didn't know what to do with VR. Sega had a cool VR system in the works but it never made it past the prototype phase. Even the Atari Jaguar had a VR system planned as a cool peripheral. Nintendo ran with this concept and the inventor of the Gameboy, Gunpei Yokoi dreamed up a product.

The VB came out in 1995 and on the outside this thing looked pretty,... interesting. VB looked like a pair of huge googles mounted on the tripod. This device has some interesting hardware inside, such as a 32 bit processor. Another thing that made this thing unique was its ability to play a different set of graphics in each eye creating an illusion of 3d, similar to the effects used to make 3d glasses. The controller was pretty innovative being that it was made to be switchable between left and right handed. Not a horrible idea in all, but it came with one HUGE flaw. Red graphics!

This thing only had 2 colors in its display, red and black. Games like Mario Tennis on this machine gave the impression that our favorite Italian plumber was playing tennis in Hell. Red Mario hitting the red ball to Red Yoshi, under a black sky. That is tennis in Hell, not the usual bright happy place Mario dwells and roams. I could mention other games but honestly this was all I had played. I remember displays of this thing set up at Blockbusters. I was so young at the time and even then I was soooo not impressed. I played about 2 minutes of Mario Tennis before my eyes began to hurt a little. This machine had a manual that was loaded with warnings telling kids to not play this thing for more that an hour and take breaks to rest your eyes. Hmm I wonder just HOW they found out that this thing was dangerous to eyes?

Maybe it was timing, maybe it was lack of software, maybe it was the red screen, or fuck perhaps the fact that after an hour your got a headache while using this thing, truthfully this thing has all this to blame for its failure. The price didn't help either: $169.00. A Game Boy with its green and white screen didn't cost more that $40 at this point in time, and at least that thing didn't cause eye damage unless you played the fucking thing in the dark. Few games were made for this machine. None of them really took advantage of the 'virtual' concept of putting you IN the game, most of the games just showed you a Viewmaster effect, but in motion. In less than a year Nintendo stopped pushing this device and began focusing a little more on the N64. Smart move.

Gunpei was fired after this, which is really a sad loss. The Game Boy he invented was THE system that made the industry rethink of the handheld market as something to take seriously. In 1997 he was killed in a car accident after losing his job at Nintendo.

Was it fate? If it is then that makes the Virtual Boy responsible for murder. The Jaguar sucked, but the worst of that fallout was that a few designers and programmers might have had to go look for another job. Nintendo now has hand helds that rock and all of them are made to the standard that Gunpei had always wanted, for example he had origionally said 'no' to a color version of the Game Boy until technology was made to make the battery life longer. This is one the reasons color game units like the Sega Game Gear didn't hold a great fight against the 'green giant' Game Boy. Gunpei is rumored to have said that the VB wasn't to his liking when it was released and was rushed out too early, and he was absolutely right. A year after his death the Game Boy color came out and the rest is history.

I make trips to antique shops and Goodwills alot. I'm looking for things like this. I don't know why but I love a loser. I can't really explain it. Oh well.