My first Genesis Article

Sheena Vs the worst car salesman ever
By the way the last two pics are just level 1
Bosses in this game just rape you as the game moves on.

Contra Hard Corps (1994-Konami) : A Tribute to the hardest fucking game I ever played.

Here it is folks, a Sega Genesis Article where I don't bash, knock, defame, or even negatively criticize Sega. I do however cut into Konami though, so sorry. On my blog I use my first amendment right to victimize games, and its developers. I will be fair and just this time and this page wont end in someone getting depressed or being told that their game SUCKS, because this game actually kicked ass back in the day, the downside was that it was not for newbies or people who think that just because they conquered Halo or Guitar Hero, they can defeat ANY game.

Super Nintendo had the some great titles going for them in 1992, few that I can remember. Contra III: the alien wars , was the only one that really sticks in my head. I loved playing it and after hours and hours of grueling over trying to defeat it, I finally finished the game until the very end (only to find that I needed to select the higher difficulty level in order to see the ending which was total horseshit, 'Normal' is enough). In those times Contra was the original NES's hardest games and Contra III up-ed that ante even more, resulting in a gaming experience that wasn't designed to be beaten, it was designed to beat you. If I could go back in time I would love to have bought stock in Galoob and Codemasters, the makers of the Game Genie cheating prep, because I'm certain they sold units like crazy due to this very game.

Sega owners were-I imagine- very bitter. They didn't get a version of Contra at the same time, so after Komani's office perhaps getting loaded with hate mail from pissed Sega fans, they had a go at making a version of the game that was for the 'edgier' system at that time. Contra Hard Corps released in 1994 to good reception, we loved it... at first.

Fact: This is the hardest game ever made

I believe that opinions generally turn into FACTS after a majority of people agree. CHC has been on the ' top hardest games' of all times near the top more than any other game I've heard about. This game isn't just hard to me, to me its nearly impossible to get through it without a Game Genie which points me to the fact that this title has NO cheat codes built into its programming, so a Game Genie is the only way.

From the constant onslaught of aliens and robots, to the speed at which they move, to unpredictable patterns, to those fucking monsters also having GREAT aim. This game was the only one that could turn a calm man like myself and make me want use my Genesis controller in to a boomerang. I'm terrible at this game anyways but its difficulty makes me so bad that I cannot even finish level 1. Its tough, and apparently I'm not alone in saying this.

Contra games were designed for arcades with the purpose of eating rolls after roll of quarters. These games are not impossible to defeat, as long as you remember from the last time you played, just HOW you died before, but Contra was the game that kept you coming back for more. Maybe you'd make it an inch or two THIS time.

However, CHC was not a bad game. It-in my humble opinion- is one of the top 5 best games that the Genesis had to offer. Its features include selectable characters, multiple paths and endings, and speed that the SNES wasn't able to do with its processor being half the power. The graphics are not as good as Contra III on the SNES. BUT with as long as this game is, one could imagine that the game's look would suffer just a bit. This game doesn't give you as many foot soldier battles like in CIII, instead we get about 5 boss battles per stage. Huge Bosses, some of which take up the whole goddamn screen, and with the faster processor you'll never see their swipe of death coming at you until it hits.

The only way I was able to finish this game was using the Game Genie. It must have taken me an hour to get through it, its a long run, and its loaded with hundreds of unique and creatively designed enemies and a story that is pretty well thought up (for 1994).

One thing that I loved and hated about this game was the final level. You'll think that you've reached your last boss battle, and suddenly NOPE its not over. Then your flying on a rocket ship clinging to the outside of it and shooting at alien filth that pokes its tentacles out of the panels and NOPE still more to kill. Then you'll be at the tip of the climbing and flying rocket and be forced to kill another giant boss that has about 5 different attack patterns as you try to fire away at its red 'weak spot'. Action movies don't mount the dangerous tension this high.

When its all over the games ending is really quite small. You know why? Because you weren't really supposed to beat this game. It was a different time, a time when you had to commit to winning. No saves, no cheats, and no mercy. Further proving the fact that they don't make them like they used to.

Difference between improvement and revolution (the Street Fighter story)

(sorry for writing an article that ends in depression-haha)

In 1987, video games had made a successful comeback. Nintendo had helped the industry recover from the crippling 1983 video game crash and arcades made a healthy profit. Arcades were delivering the games that were not always availiable to home consoles and if they were, the games were extremely limited. A prime example is a game called Strider, a platformer in arcades that was so poorly handled on the NES that people assumed that it really WASN'T the same Strider.

Arcades had some great games, but the NES was making things easier; no trip to play games- just plug and play. The downside to that was nearly EVERY game on the original NES was about the same. Beat Em Up's were huge and this was mainly due to the popular Double Dragon series. From that point on games were all about walking left to right and punching and kicking ANYTHING that walked in your direction. WHY? because those fucks kidnapped your girlfriend. Again.

This formula was wearing thin around 85. The same man attacking you over and over really starts to suck at about Level six and most of these games didn't even have good endings that made you feel good about your accomplishment. It would have been nice to see after awhile a cool cartoon porno scene come up after you've saved your frail waif again from the clutches of the evil crime boss-ninja-robot assassin- whatever. But again, it was all about the adventure getting to the end, and if the roll of quarters you brought to the arcade didn't get you there, then the Game Genie cartridge strap-on could.

Fuck that. It was old news. Then something happened. A little company called Capcom took the beat em up concept and made something of it that didn't require the monotony of fighting the same man twice. Head to head action, colorful characters and special moves. The even stranger part is that no one saw it coming and most of it hadn't been done in such a grand scale before.

Anything would have been better than its main competitor. The only other fighting game at the time that was Head to head style was the 2600's Atari game simply titled 'Karate'. This game blows beyond anything else. The classic mess ET: the extra terrestrial is 6 feet under the ground in New Mexico and this game is probably still floating around in pawn shops and antique stores, is there no justice in the world? If you want to see just how awful things can get on the 2600 then click here. Your Lego collection could look better at fighting than this.

But with this piece of shit giving reason for you to attack an Atari cart with a hammer, Street Fighter premiered in that same time and blew minds. When your partner games in the Arcade is ANOTHER Double Dragon clone and a 4 color Atari pong game with stick men, then success presents itself naked at your bedside.

For those of you that don't remember or have never played, Street Fighter 1 was amazingly small compared to its latter game Street Fighter II. In the first installment, you only got to pick 1 man, Ryu (Yes, THAT Ryu). You would have light-medium-and fierce punches and kicks to mix it up. You got 3 special moves which we all saw in SFII: the hurricane kick, the fireball, and the Shroyuken punch. Despite all these limits, it was still the best thing out there, and was only available at arcades and on the Turbo Graphix console (that few of us owned). It doubtful that the NES would have been able to pull this game off, seeing that it was so detailed and had real (but crappy) digitized voiced dialogue [to be honest the only phrase you could hear being spoken was after you won a match when your opponent said "What strength! But remember there are many guys like you all over the world." ].

The reception wasn't all that big for the first Street Fighter but it was enough to prompt a sequel. The rest-as they say- is history, but the jump from 1 to II was big. There was 8 fighters instead of just 1. The story was different for each character you picked. SFII may have been just a way of classically reviving a dead franchise because in video games 6 years is a LONG wait for a sequel. 6 years gave us a lot of time to get better home systems made which is why the SNES version might be the best arcade translation ever for that time.

The Genesis released the Champion Edition of SFII but with only 3 buttons on the controller for a 6 button game WHY FUCKIN' BOTHER. Nintendo and the SF games gave the industry a clue when it came to designing a game controller: you needed at least 6 buttons. These games are very reason Sega had to make the Model 3 Genesis (with a new 6 button controller).

The list of later Street Fighter games is long enough for me to not want to name them all on this page- if you want that list, go to wikipedia. It seemed to take a long time for this series to make a Street Fighter 3, and when it finally did the reception was lukewarm and bittersweet. We even got to see the series get a 3d face lift with the Street Fighter EX games, giving the snail paced Virtua Fighter a run for its money.

As of writing this, Street Fighter 4 is on its way to the latest generation systems like the Xbox 360, PS3 and the Wii. I, however don't own any of these systems and really am not holding my breath on this newest chapter.

Am I too old? No. Am I pissed that it took over a decade for Capcom to count to 4? No. My real reason for not caring about SF4 is that I'm one of a few that remember the series true roots and the real secret to all its charm. Whatever 3d multi-polygon- cinematic shit comes of this new game will just depress me even more.

Sometimes change isn't always good.

1990's Fighting Game's Hardest Bosses

I'm a calm man (I think so and my friends would agree to as long as I lay off the booze) and I rarely lose my cool especially when it comes to something as simple as a video game. Its a real pain in the ass however to face a challenge so grueling, unforgiving and unfair that the controller to my SNES or my Genesis leaves a dent in my drywall. Everyone has- at one point- turned thier controller into a projectile so don't start laughing as you read, thats the main reason that 3rd party companies make replacement controllers for game systems. They certainly don't build controllers like they did the origional NES ones back in the 80's and I'm sure that they have the 'rage prone' gamer in mind for designing new ones: one hit against a wall or floor and boom!, plastic everywhere.

Fighting games of the 1990's didn't give us our victories very easily, and more times than many we all suffered the wrath of bosses so horribly hard that we would turn to our Game Genie's and cheat codes JUST to say 'I did it'. I choose to not grant myself a victory so cheaply until i had finished the game myself, and I when that was done, i'd dabble in that crap later. Gaming is supposed to be a challenge and in arcades the games were even harder because that roll of quarters that burned a hole in your pocket wasn't going to spend itself, now was it? Hell that girl in high school never believed it was your penis anyways.

Bosses in games are just like bosses at work, they cripple your spirit and successfully remind you that you CANNOT press a button fast enough and/or at the right time. No one ever really remembers an easy one like KI2's Gargos, or Mk2's Shao Kahn. Its those cheap, AI controlled, and borderline psychic oppenents that drove us normally calm gamers to the 'cheat' sections of the gaming magazines.

Let's take a look at some of the toughest (I think anyways):

Kintaro (MK2): According to the story of Mortal Kombat 2, Goro lost the first Mortal Kombat tournament and it might have something to do with the fact that he was weak and didn't block much. I beat Goro after 1 try just by doing jump kicks, (cakewalk!). But Kintaro, Goro's brother is way meaner and way pissed off. He blocks almost every thing that heads his way and doesn't give you a lot of oppurtunity to strike for free. I could only beat this four arm goliath with Kitana because he did fall for the 'fan lift' attack a lot, but he didn't fall for much else. To make matters worse, his stomp attack was hard enough to kill half the life bar, and every hit that he landed on you threw your character across the screen. Kintaro wasn't a fair fight, but he was possible to defeat and when you did, you already felt like you had beaten the whole game even though Shao Kahn was waiting for you next.

M.Bison (SF 2,3, Alpha and god only knows how many others): A flying, stomping, and scissor kicking threat to your sanity. The trick of beating Bison was just to 'get lucky' and hold back to make sure you block whatever he decides to hit you with next. There was no telling what he'd do either. One second he jumps and stomps your head than he follows it the next second a flaming hand slap of some kind. Then just when you think you got him and you channeling that final blow fireball, he flies at you with an electrically-charged arm out and blows past your projectile and fries you into defeat. At this point you either set your SNES on fire or you might have to explain to a zit-faced virgin that runs the arcade just WHY you put your fist into the screen of thier Street Fighter 2 cabinet.

Vega (SF2 the only one he was technically an unplayable 'boss' in): You ever had a fly bugging you while you sleep or drive and no matter what, you can't possibly kill it, because the little fucker dodges nearly every swipe of your hand and fly-swatter? Thats SF2's pretty boy fighter, Vega. Nevermind the sexual orientation or androngenus image of this all-too-vain SF2 brawler. What pissed more gamers like me off was the fact this asshole never stood still.

Eyedol (Killer Instinct): I hate this son of a bitch. Eyedol played as fair as Hitler. For starts he delievered punishing combos that killed have your life bar. Oh! But if you were lucky enough at all to have damaged him beforehand, then after the combo that he branded you with he'd end it with a club smash that sent you flying 30 feet in the air, giving him time to stomp his foot and recharge a portion of his health. The same club smash can also be used to slap incomming projectiles back at you with triple the speed, making you feel like a stupid cock for thinking you could 'fireball' you way to victory. Rare and Nintendo owe anyone that defeated Eyedol a hookers' blowjob, because the games endings just seemed too small a reward after trying to kill a boss that cheats.

Motaro and (sort of) Shao kahn (MK3): Forget how stupid he looked, or how much of the damn screen his horse/human body took up. Mortaro was a cheater. EVERY projectile attack bounced off of his body and hit you, so forget about trying to freeze him. A slight punch from this centurian turned you into a human cannon and threw you against the screens edge, and any time he blocked an attack you would be then picked up and pummeled with his fist. Your reward for beating him was having to fight an upgraded verion of Shao Kahn now armed with a 50 lbs sledgehammer that knocked you unconcious, leaving no wonder that MK3 blew so much.

Death (Timekillers): A notorious blocker, a heavy hitter, a speeder and not defeatable unless you stun him and then kill him via 'death move'. All the more reason that Timekillers was so ill-recieved.

[Thats really what comes to mind so far, if you readers have one leave me a comment and i'll try that one out, just keep in mind these are FIGHTING games from the 90's. I want to always keep this blog intersting even it if it is about the past. Thanks.]

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.

90's Fighting games- The Honerable Mentions

Snk's well done fighter, with a story written by the same people that penned beat-em-ups back in 1985. Girl gets kidnapped, boyfriend (never a husband thats too hard to follow) goes on a bad ass mission to save her and has to beat up generic thugs along the way.
Limb chopping off fun. Drawn by someone in 5th grade art class, before his perturbed teacher had him admitted to a rubber room.

Dinosaurs, blood, guts, flatulence. Atari was a far better publisher than console maker. Its too bad it was just a flash in the pan.

You now see the foundation for Tekken. I really like how we have a beautiful sky back there and these very synthetic and unorganic characters. Great steps in a fighting game, and we had to wait for the Saturn in order to play it at home.

This list of the top 5 fighting games of the 1990's has been a blast to make, I've been enjoying every pixel of it and sadly there wasn't enough great games for me to do a top TEN that would be easily understood by all who owned the great 16 bit consoles like the SNES and Genesis. Truthfully, I'm was kinda torn by some of these games because some were good but really not THAT good. To be on the top 5 list, you really had to be unforgettable in every aspect.

These following games didn't suck, they were all good, but not great either and I have explained just WHY they didn't make it. I feel its my duty to at least give them a moment in the sun. These game are in no particular order, they're all equally mediocre.

Primal Rage (Atari 1994): Dinosaurs and giant apes duking it out, eating humans for health during matches, gathering worshippers and performing death moves ala Mortal Kombat. No better ideas have been made by Atari. This game had cool stop-motion animated graphics of prehistoric menaces to the 'Urth' beating each other into a bloody paste all for world domination.

What went wrong: This game suffered from horrible and almost embarrassing console releases that looked ok, but had all the fun censored out. Also this series never went ahead with its sequel and honestly that move caused this series an untimely death. Quite a surprise for a franchise that gave birth to action figures and other merchandise. It could have been magical. Magical, I say.

Timekillers (Strata/Incredible Technologies, 1992): I don't care what anyone says, I loved this game! It was more violent than MK and was creatively inclined with its 'limb loss' feature. Whats better than cutting off an arm or a head to win a match? This game will get its own article very soon, just wait.

What went wrong: This game gets put on a lot of fighting games 'Worst of' lists and its not hard to see why. The game really needed a lot more work. More frames on animation, better looks for its cookie cutter characters, and a system of combat that's easy to follow would have helped. The story to this game really didn't exist until its loathsome console release on the Genesis, to which bred a plot that didn't really make sense or even get followed, we just wanted to chop some arms off. This game really looks rushed, and this could be due to the fact that it was made to cash in on the Mortal Kombat rage. All in all, 10 year old can draw homemade comic books that look better than this game.

ClayFighter (Visual concepts/ Interplay, 1993) : This game was fun, admit it. It was the first time that a fighting game had a sense of humor and the first time we got to see a game that made of other games. We all loved it so don't deny it! This games graphics were made from stop motion clay animated figures, all of them armed with an array of fighting moves and a smart ass-ed attitude. Best part is, was that all of its character were very unique and innovative, with the exception of one that really killed this game. Which brings us too...

What went wrong: The 'N. Boss'. The boss and lost fighter of CF that you fought against was a circle of spherical balls that threw other players projectiles at you. No punches no kicks, NOTHING, just a circle that attacks you. So lame, so half-assed. There is a game programmer out there kicking himself in the face right now due to his boneheaded decision to staple this travesty into an otherwise good game. Other than that, I noticed that this game didn't have a lot of frames of animation causing it to look really choppy. I know my SNES can do better than this.

Virtua Fighter (Sega, 1993): A fully rendered 3d fighting game that finally gave us a camera that wasn't JUST showing the side view of a fight. We started to really see what was possible in a 3 dimensional world and 'virtual' reality suddenly didn't have to involve playing a crappy shooter with a pair of giant electric goggles strapped to our head. Seeing this game these days kinda reminds us of that Dire Straits music video, we see martial arts being performed by a diverse lot of unmotivated characters, fighting in a video game was now realistic, which was a nice change from the gore riddled world of Mortal Kombat. But that also brings us to..

What went wrong: This game was so... ssslllooowww! It was like the fighters had gum stuck to their shoes. Jumping attacks now required you to do formulas in modern physics just to land a mid-air kick. The worst also came from the Genesis console release of VF, which included NO polygon based graphics, which is impossible for the Genesis to do, and there was the revelation that this game really was all about looks, and less about action.

Teenage Mutant Ninja(hero) Turtles:Tournament Fighters (Mirage/ Konami, 1993) : Our four shell shocked smart ass-ed heroes along with other characters of that series having a fighting tournament and the winner takes April home to have their way with her with a dirty weekend in the turtle van, or just fight for money. Cool characters, good Street Fighter inspired controls. I liked it actually. Yeah thats right, screw you, I liked this game.

What went wrong: No one else liked it. Besides did we need another frigging TMNT game?

No.

Art of Fighting (Snk/ Takara for the console release, 1993): Great fighting game with an innovative control scheme. Using the 'special' buttons meant dealing blows that made your opponents into bruised paste. Bouncing off of walls and dealing a flying kick to the face was beyond satisfying. I love and still screw with this game and discover new tricks all the time. All the characters have personalities that don't blatantly copy other games like and before it. The best part was that the SNES version has almost ALL the fun of the original arcade version, right down to the camera 'zoom' effects.

What went wrong: Almost nothing really, this game rocks. However this games plot follows the story of 2 men out to get the gang leader that kidnapped their girl. That story was used up 5 years before this game was made, and it was in its prime with Double Dragon. Also in the story mode you can only play as 2 characters. So we have the same used-up story involving the same 2 used up hero guys, one man is a martial arts expert with an unpronounceable Japanese name, and the other is an American pretty boy with a pony tail. I'm shocked this never became a cheesy action movie starring Steve Segal and Kurt Russel.

Eternal Champions (Sega, 1993): The Sega Genesis was getting its ass handed to them by Nintendo and its SNES. Why? Badly executed or horribly translated fighting games. Solution? Make one that's specifically for the Genesis, hype it up to commercially high levels, and try to advertise a failure motion controlled prep behind it (remember the Sega Activator?) . This was a creative and well received stab at one upping Timekillers by being WAY more complex story and fighting style wise. Great characters that span across time and cultural borders, good moves that present themselves as being linkable for combos and other specials and CGI death moves exclusively on the Sega CD system version that put Mortal Kombats' fatalities to shame. A top choice for Genesis fans.

What went wrong: It was on the Genesis.

Street Fighter EX (Arika/Capcom 1996): There is 6 games in this series spinoff of Capcom's fighting classic, all of them in full 3d. These games weren't bad at all, but it does definately scream the fact that Capcom was trying to get a hold of the 3d market of fighting games that was established by Sega's Vitua Fighter Series, and also Tekken. (I myself personally failed to include most of the 3d fighting games mainly due to the fact that as an old timer of video games I didn't own the Playstation until it was late in that consoles' life.) The fighting mechcanics of SFEX remain very faithful to the 2D origional series, only this time we get to see the dragon punch from a full 360 degree angle, so it still wins.

What went wrong: Nothing really, but theres no way you remembered this game until just now when you read this. Admit it.

Street Fighter Alpha (1995 Capcom): Great follow up to the other 3 versions of SF2, despite the fact that this game is actaully a prequel story-wise. The action is fast, the animation and character design looks fantastic, and the fighting system of 'spirit moves' give this game a 1 up above all the other SF games. It was exciting to see that Cap' wasn't giving us ANOTHER tired translation or update of SF2.

What went wrong: Again NOTHING. But SNES console owners got totally screwed on this, and forced them to go out and get a Playstation. Oh well, I guess we had to move on. I also thought the 'Dan' Character was a big pansy (c'mon the pink karate suit?), but that's done on purpose.

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Stay tuned ladies and gents, the WORST list is on the way (and man, is it long).

Strange Finds: My totally amazing EXCELLENT discovery... NOT!

Wayne's World (yes, it was made into a video game)

1993

THQ

SNES,Genesis,Gameboy,NES (maybe others but who would care?)

Before comedian Mike Myers was 'shagadelic' and 'randy' as Austin Powers, he was Wayne Campbell of Aurora Illinois, a lovable loser that hosted a public access cable show along side his shy and quirky companion, Garth Algar. A running skit on Saturday Night Live like this didn't really NEED a movie behind it, but people loved the mullet-headed-hair-metal-loving dofuses that looked as if they were making a show while inside of a nogahide walled Midwestern family room basement, surrounded by the very things that made them losers: Their mom and dads antique collection, sports equipment, and 1980's rock memorabilia. These two lovable doucebags sat on a presumably smelly davenport and talked about rock, babes, and... rock. Hollywood of course HAD to squeeze pennies from this half-baked idea.

After the movie was out and was a hit, the other Hollywood; Video games, needed to cash in as well, and thus brings us to the subject at hand: Wayne's World: the video game. That sudden scream of horror or perhaps that quick burst of WTF laughter was you.

I don't know what is worse so please feel free to tell me:

A mediocre movie based on a crappy comedy sketch or...

A Video game about a mediocre movie, based on a crappy comedy sketch?

Whatever- the point is, this game sucked. Wayne is a large-headed bobble doll that runs around with his guitar. Not that cool white Fender Stratocaster that he bought in the film but a really horrible green pawn shop fodder guitar. Hit the attack button and he unleashes a riff that sends out killer sound waves that destroy evil. He jumps incredible distances around levels that sorta resemble guitar shops and rock clubs, defending the world-Wayne's World- from what is presumably evil,... bad,... things. He does all this with a sarcastic grin on his face that just fuckin BEGS to have a foot violently shoved in it heel first.

I have played this catastrophe and haven't even made it past level one. This is somewhat due to bad playability, but its mostly due to just the absolute horror on screen. I would rather watch a a farmer have sex a dead goat than play this waste of electricity. OH I forgot, did i mention WHAT KIND of evil your fighting and jumping around about? MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS!! but these are not 'cool' musical instruments like guitars or basses, oh no! These are lame ones like bag pipe with evil eyes on them that float around and assault you with noise. Drum sets that pummel you, and who wouldn't fear the mighty accordion that whacks you when you get too close? I didn't even lose at this game and I wanted to stomp a mud hole into my controller after playing. I think the only high point is hearing the sound clip of Wayne saying 'Shawing!' Wow thats pretty risky, a video game penis joke in 1993 didn't happen.

The gameplay is muddy, frustrating, and very untested. It seems like this was a rock and roll platformer that just had Wayne's annoying smile pasted to the character. This game features odd cut scenes that contain sketch inspired dialogue, but none of it is funny. There was no need for this game, and no reason to believe it would convince gamers to spend $50 or even $10 on the cart. This is the kind of game cart you accidentally steal while at a Goodwill when you were looking at the suspecting old bag behind the counter and were reaching for that must-have Gradius 3 cart but missed your mark, you get home pull the plastic box out from inside the crotch of your baggy jeans and DAMMIT you got the wrong one.

Now as I write this I realize that games and failure of this kind wasn't uncommon in gaming back in the 90's or even now. A lot of bad games are games based on movies, a movie comes out, people like it, and they want to experience it at home. No problem, but why do games based on movies usually SUCK?

Remember ET? Atari, armed with its 2600 console made a game based on the successful 1982 film and rushed its release date and gave the poor programmer only 6 weeks to build the game. The end result was appalling, the game made little sense, the graphics were ugly and made ET look like a mangled green cock. The gameplay consisted of falling in about 200 holes in order to find pieces of his phone to 'phone home'. This game was loaded on millions of cartridges and all of them came back to Atari. Along with that, Atari was in a financial crisis due to banking way too much on this game and the success that it never had a snowballs chance in hell of receiving. The video game crash was now in full swing and 1982-83 became a dark 2 years for gaming. It might not be ET's fault alone, but you don't end up burying millions of carts in New Mexico on 'just a bad call'. Its true. Atari broke and overstocked buried millions of ET carts, when faced with dire circumstances.

Things are different nowadays but very little has actually changed. Total Recall on the NES, Wayne's World on the SNES, Genesis, and Gameboy, Waterworld- and in this modern age- Enter The Matrix. The industry just hasn't learned its lesson. Very rarely does a video game based on a movie do well in the eyes of gamers. I myself think we all could do without it, we don't need crap based on crap, it just piles higher and higher.

Thank God Lucasarts makes Starwars games that deliver the goods, so maybe I'm wrong. But come on- WAYNE'S WORLD? Why?

90's fighting game top 5 list-Number One- Mortal Kombat 2

[I will make a lot of enemies for putting this game on the top of the 1990's fighting game pedastel. In which case I will advise all potential whiners and bitchers to create their own damn blog if you disagree. oh and by the way, blow me.]

Mortal Kombat 2 ( or II)

Arcade and also 'Throw a rock at any 1990's era gaming machine and anyone you hit most likely that system had a release of this top notch fighter except the Jaguar and 3DO consoles.'

1993

Midway

Sequels are almost always a let-down. From movies to video games to sex, it seems like lightning just won't strike twice. There is a magic in that first time experience, and you never get it like you had it before, its just not the same. I think the main problem is when it comes to any media (or sex) the second time around needs to be DIFFERENT- not just a repeat.

The world loved the first MK. Arcades had to get multiple cabinets just to cut down on the lines. 50 cents became a normal and acceptable price for a credit at a video game. Grown men- 20 somethings- and more crowded this machine. All for a game that was clunky, slow and had only ONE good selling point: Hardcore violence.

So in 1992 when MKII was on the table at Midway I'm almost positive that they held some kind of meeting. I don't know the story and frankly few people care about HOW this game was made. But my instinct tells me that Midway's suits read through piles of mail and page after page of reviews of MK just to see where they went wrong and what could be done better. Midway listened and Midway delievered.

The gaming world felt the heat of the original Mortal Kombat, and a mojority of those who felt it, liked it but they hated the slowness. Not being able to duck under projectiles, slow walking back and forth, only 1 fatality per person, way too easy bosses, a meaningless scoring system, 'Test your might', blurry looking digitized characters, the secret Reptile character being just a green speedy rip-off of Scorpion. The list goes on and fucking on. It was a great game but it was in no ways perfect and its predacessor needed to have more balls, more speed and a HELL of a different look. The first game was foundation to the series and its control system was good, albeit ADEQUTE. The characters for the second MK needed look more,.. cool (for lack of a better term), which ment no more fighting in outfits that look like halloween costumes. The characters needed to be better than just looking cool, we needed some that didn't even look human. Goro looked like a tall man with 2 extra arms (at least to me). Shang Tsung looked like an old fart fighting in a kimono.

The world of MK need a facelift too, Which meant things needed to be turned upside-down. The world and story of MKII had to take a completely different turn to the left. Why not places with floating monks or people on fire? Why not pit levels where the spikes are now on the ceiling or better yet no spikes at all just flat ground in which to splat someone.

Fans held thier collective breath. Not Midway though, they knew this was going to be a hit. No one spends over a year on a game unless its going to rock (unless your John Romero of Daikitana fame). This was 1993 and the video game making process wasn't into the 'Hollywood budget' phase yet. Making games then might have been tough then but compared to now its small potatoes.

I was a small boy when this game came out. I saw that all my friends had the EGM's and ANY magazine that remotely tried to report on this game. The first pictures I saw really blew me away, I was shocked by just how 'dark' the new MK was, and I'm not just talking about violence and content, it was just dark. The Outworld the MKII was set in was nightime almost 24-7. I ended up begging to get to the nearest bowling alley arcade just to see this game. Just to see it, thats all, and because of all the grown men and thier endless rolls of quarters, I NEVER played MKII until its console release.

This version of MK had speed and then some. Matches were heated and two experts can be done pounding each other for two rounds in as little as 30 seconds. MK was really born for arcades which means your going to be playing very quickly and the machine will rob as many quarters as it can get. The speed was a welcome change and a well handled one at that.The fighting style was the same but with the new speed-up, it was now time to see how fast you could 'juggle' your opponent. The block button will always be a MK staple, don't even try to run away. We'll never see an MK without that god damn, fucking BLOCK button.

The arcade version of this game featured a DCS sound system that nearly shook the damn cabinet. Characters screamed, blows sounded like explotions, splatters of blood made you think of raw meat hitting the kitchen floor, 'Get over here' finally meant GET THE FUCK OVER HERE, and the announcer's voice was deep and menacing enough to get you in the mood to kick some ass. Music was now full and engaging, painting the world of MK in a new 'fantasy' light. Its a shame that the arcade is dead, because this game was the loudest when arcades were in thier prime.

The look of the game was far out there. The world of MK wasn't the same after this because in the story all the fighters are now competing in a place called Outworld. This place was surrealistic and yet still easy to recognize. You fought in wastelands littered with dead bodies impaled on spikes, or in forests with trees that bellow and have faces. Outworld was like Hell but with an oriental theme. There were 3 pit levels ranging from spikes on the roof, to pools of acid, and even just a flat stone ground that broke your enemies. One level that cathes the story followers eye is the Arena level were we see that Kano and Sonya are chained up and imprisoned.

Along with the backgrounds this game had a much more 'painted' look. The first MK took realistic images and put them onto fake CGI backgrounds, which resulted in a tacky 'cardboard cutout' look. MKII was much better, all the characters look real but also have a 'painted' look, as if artists with millions of colors are illustrating a moving picture. It wasn't 'photo-real', it was stylized and artistically asthetic, not to mention easy to pass the most discriminating eye. I'm into art myself so I might be one of the few that noticed this about MKII. Point is, it looked way better than the blurry shit from before.

The fighters got a makeover as well. The ninja costumes on Subzero, Scorpion and the now playable Reptile look WAY better. They have these cool coverings over thier mouth that look more like guards made of plastic or metal instead of just cloth. The two female fighters fight in knee highs and carry weapons like razor sharp chinese fans or ninja sais. Baraka was a totally new look, he is a mutant from the out world with a large jaw and metal shards that come out of his arms ala Wolverine. Kung Lao fights with a hat that has razor blade around the brim. The only character that sucks is the returning Johnny Cage, fighing in jogging pants and blowing kisses after a victory (rolling eyes). Fuckin candy ass.

The story kicked ass and was good enough for a movie. After Liu Kang wins the first MK game (according to the written story of MKII, your winning character to beat MK doesn't matter), Shanf Tsung goes back to outworld with his 500 year old ass in his hand and Goro's corpse to explain to his boss, Shao Kahn. Shao Kahn is fair enough to allow Shang Tsung a second shot and restores him to his youthful 30ish year old prime. But theres a catch, the MK fighting team from the last game needs to be taught a lesson. So Shao and Shang kidnap Sonya and Kano and invite the gang, both evil and good to go to Outworld duke it out and pervoke them to try and stop Shao Kahn from either losing his mind and killing them first or even worse, invading the Earth world. Other fighters are just out for personal glory and a spot in Kahn's throne. Thats the story, hope it was clear cause I'm not writting more into it.

The two new bosses were tough. I mean it. Goro is now dead and his bigger, meaner and cheaper brother Kintaro is PISSED! He still had four arms but also tiger stripes on his back. He could jump out the screens' view and then stomp on you and drain half your life bar. The only way to defeat him was to stick to a pattern and don't stand still. But don't expect a victory on the first try (or even on the 5th). Shao Khan, the final boss was bad too but since he likes to point at you and gloat during a match, he was much easier. I guess if you spent enough time to defeat Kintaro than Shao Kahn is your chance to rest a little. Kahn had a penchant for cheap moves that take a lot off your health, some moves being very slow moving kicks that knock you to the other side of the screen. Totally cheap, but satisfying once beaten.

The AI was better and the improvement came from how the computer tended to 'mirror' your patterns, that is if you had a pattern. Don't expect to do the same moves more than twice. The cpu would just cut you down before you can keep it going. Jump and kick down the oppenent once and land a hit, no problem, try it again,... WHACK your hit. Since you can't block a projetile with a projectile than you can't count on the computer fireballing you, just at the moment you throw one. It was not however, impossible.

The drawbacks to this game are not enough to turn you off completely. The only this I thought was bad was the pit fatalities now had to be done with a special button code. In MK the one pit level was easy, just uppercut and its done (down and high punch). Another thing that truely screwed up this violent opus was the additions of "Friendship" finishing moves and the "Babality" moves. Why would anyone want to turn their opponent into a fucking baby? After a match of me pounding my oppenent into a paste, why give them flowers before they die? Stupid. This was all done as a source for humor which is fine but fuck that noise its still,... STUPID. But it comes down to choice, if you don't those moves; don't do it! This game also was made for those who really only like to master the fighting of 1 character, so if your like me and you like using them all, then you'll have to memorize a shitload of moves. I however was a Kitana fan and she was the only character I could successfully use to bring down Kintaro.

This experience was needed to be brought home to console users. It was almost a damn law. No game this good could have just sat in the arcade. But the first MK was poorly handled by the 16 bit giants of the gaming industry; Nintendo and Sega. If the SNES's censorship of MK's successful gore effects didn't piss you off enough than the Genesis's version with its shitty graphics and sound would. Fans of MK again got nervous and held their collective breaths, myself included. How would the console developers handle MKII, would there be blood, plus real fatalities and if yes, then what would we lose? MKII was a big and expansive experience and everyone was unsure how it would be handled. How could they jam all the greatness into a 5 inch, 24 meg cart? What would change?

If you were an SNES owner, nearly NOTHING. Nintendo learned thier lesson and released a version of MKII that was and is comparable to MAME. Sounds were there and the graphics were spot on. Only little things were moved around, like smaller characters on screen or a fewer frames of animation. The SNES version blew me and everyone else away and outsold the weaker Genesis version by millions. All the blood and fatalities were intact and arcade junkies were happy. Console owners got thier 50 bucks worth. The Genesis version again was,... lame. sorry Sega fans, it sucked. Nintendo shined because of this. Now we had the blood that was missing from the first game and graphics that only the SNES was capable of delivering.
One has to wonder, Why didn't they re-release the first game WITH blood? Im sure it would have sold like crack. In the world of emulation and hacks there are now 'bloody verions' availiable from file sharing networks all over the web. Even an NES rom is availiable of MKII (thats not a typo someone actually made and hacked Mortal Kombat II for the old NES).

Nearly EVERY port had an MKII release. It was big and profitable in every aspect including... fucking merchandising. T shirts, comic books, action figures, just naming a few of MANY. I never got THAT into this series and honestly I have yet to find anyone that owns the Mortal Kombat gaming gloves that had the padded thumb protectors. Anyone still wearing a Mortal Kombat T-shirt is most likely still a virgin that is so fat that he hasn't seen his penis in 4 years. OK ok ok ok I won't like I bought the action figures, they were made by the same company that made the small GI Joes. This might be an explaination why I don't get laid as much as I'd like.
But more than all else, MKII gave Hollywood a vision and a movie of MK was made, and it wasn't bad. Really it was good. I love the (first!) Mortal Kombat film, and after bombs like Super Mario Bros and Street Fighter, I am surprised that Hollywood would even think of green lighting a MK movie. The film took a lot of creative license from Mortal Kombat 2 and not so much from the first game, which is another reason that this game won a spot at #1. If a video game can become a king in all media aspects than its more than just a damn video game, its pop culture.

This was the turning point for the 16 bit market. Who won the fight? Nintendo. The SNES had the best fighting game translation made for that time, and the more powerful systems still couldn't beat it. The Sony Playstion was 2 years away, and that so called 64 bit hunk of shit the Atari Jaguar didn't have an MK release nor did the 3do, so MKII was a fight for 16 bitters. Sega tried, oh they tried so hard, but not even the 32x attachment version of this game could help them from going in the toilet. Thats another reason this game gets this spot, because its part of video gaming history. Nintendo owes a lot of gratitute to MKII.

Mortal Kombat 3 came out almost 2 years later, and would be the game that would sink MK into a downward position on its rollercoaster-like lifespan. Why? because it wasn't as good as the one before it. MK is still alive on the modern systems and is doing well, but now the series is done with Hi-res 3d graphics and not digitized photo real sprites.

In fact, I'll be blunt MK3 sucked. I guess the lesson here is quit while your ahead, or at least before you make crap like Mortal Kombat: Mythologies: Subzero.

Diamons and Dogshit Report 2 - A Diamond- Earthworm Jim

No cows were actaully hurt while making Earthworm Jim

For God's sake keep Pete safe! (Pete is that purple dog)
1994's Extreme Sports Event: Jim versus Major Mucus
Art that is silly and at the same time, serious.

No super-space-cyber-suit would be complete without undies!

Earthworm Jim

Shiny/Playmates/Virgin

1994

Somewhere between madness and genius there is a thing called 'brilliance'.

Earthworm Jim was madness, brilliance, genius and art all thrown into one package, and it came in the form of a run-and-shoot platformer in 1994. EJ was a grossly funny cartoon brought to life in a video game and its purpose was to take all the things that made up video gaming culture and subvert them as part of a parody. Along with its unique acerbic attitude toward games in those days, it also put a new character in the rankings of gaming, right next to Mario and Sonic. This game made you laugh and challenged you at the same time (lets put a strong emphasis on the word 'challenge').

The story to EJ was as odd as it was ludicrous, and that might have been done on purpose. The main character that you play as is the result of an accident, according to the games story. The games story (in short) tells us that a 'Ultra-high-tech-indestructible-super-space-cyber-suit' falls from space onto earth, and landed onto an earthworm. This earthworm ends up crawling inside of the suit and mutating from an ordinary crow-fearing, dirt-eating worm into a super intelligent heroic super earthworm named Jim. Now this story wouldn't be complete without a villain and it has one named Psy-crow, who is a funky looking (duh) crow that wears a suit similar to Jim's and he wants Jim's suit instead (I guess Jim's suit really rocks). What Psy-Crow also wants is to kidnap Princess Whats-her-name (that's the characters name, I'm not making that shit up). But Whatever, few of us actually cared about the story, we cared about the game.

What made the game so fun was the 'look'. The world in EJ was weird and cartoon-inspired from top to bottom, in fact that's what I digged about this game the most. I was and I am still an art nut and EJ always impresses me. The game was designed by a cartoon vet Doug TenNapel. The art and design of EJ looks like it takes creative points from Ren and Stimpy and the muscled character designs of Simon Bisley. Jim has his earthworm body sticking out of the collar hole of the muscular upper torso'ed yet skinny legged suit, It looks absolutely ridiculous, but its supposed to look silly, its a cartoon. Jim has the ability to pull out his head and 'whip' at things like enemies and hooks conveniently placed in level for which Jim could use to swing himself around. This game of course isn't complete without Jim being armed with a gun. His gun shoots what looks and sounds like regular bullets but it looks like a 50's inspired ray gun with an antenna tip, but as odd as it looks, its a lot better than Jim using his head as a whip. Princess-whats-her-name has a Betty Boop in a full-bodied 'bubble bee suit' look. Its very hard to describe and honestly I feel stupid even trying to right now, because if you are reading this right now there's a good chance you played this game and you remember all this, but its always fun to look back (that is the point of this blog).

These characters animated better than anything else in those days thanks to EJ being published and made on a very beefy 24 meg cart which was rarely heard of in platformers or any game for that matter. The gaming world called this motion technology 'Animotion' but I'm sure that was just fancy talk for 'We worked on this game harder than any other have before us'. The work showed and after awhile during playing, you just forgot it was a game and began to control a VERY fun cartoon. More impressive was also what was going on BEHIND and AROUND Jim.

The world of Earthworm Jim was a diverse place, each level looking and playing different and unique from the other. The first level called 'New Junk City' takes place in a cartoon version of a junk yard, with crows flying around and pecking at you and guard dogs nipping at your heels. Another level called 'Down The Tubes' takes place underwater inside tubing that looks like a hamster tube maze and get this; you also get to ride a hamster at one point! No two levels look the same at all and that was a surprise back in those days, usually we'd see the same brick walls and the same trees over and over (*cough* Mario! *cough*) but not here. Another plus was that you were never moving JUST left to right, EJ had you moving zig-zag style from one area to another, up, down, all around and even forward away from the screen into space like on the 'Andy Asteroids' levels.

This was also part of the challenge, no longer could you just run and jump. You had to think, be creative and figure out things. This was more of a challenge for players because NOW they had to really look at the levels and see for themselves just WHY we couldn't get that green diamond in 'What The Heck' to levitate Jim from point A to point B. Gaming magazines must have been in good business in 1994 because plenty of us were thumbing through EGM's and Gamepro's trying to get tips on how to help Jim save the universe. Strategy guides could never help us perfectly time and help us swing Jim around from hook to hook on certain levels and gamers had to find a pattern to go by and never, ever stay from it. It was a challenge but never so frustrating that we had to fling our controllers into a wall because we died 100 times a level.

A game that is designed by a cartoonist deserves and requires cartoon-ish sound. If you thought Hanna Barbara had some sound effects that were unique then your still right, cause EJ had a sound effects cache that was familiar and nostalgic, even in those days. Jim's voice samples (done by creator TenNapel) sounded like he had a funny southern twang, but was a hillbilly that was trying too hard to be cool. Whenever Jim said "Groovy" I giggled, it was funny. Hit a speed orb in Andy Astroids and you'll hear Jim scream "Whoa NELLY!",- goofy as Hell. The music ranged from serious rock sounds, to backwood-sy banjo shit and the 'What The Heck' level had elevator music that was interrupted by rampant screams of unseen victims being held prisoner in the land of 'Heck',- totally goofy. The sounds of EJ was a layer of video gaming art that before then was sometimes overlooked or just took a back seat to the games visuals. This was 94' so we'd better hear something better than 'Doinks' and 'Pings' like in Mario.

The result was good. The game was fun and great sales of the title followed. A lot less was sacred in a game now. You could now use a video game as a good medium for comedy. This was really the first successful 'comedy game' and this game had a blast making fun of other games that were in the same vein. It was a gross out game as well, seeing that one of the enemies of EJ was a anthropomorphic ball of snot named Major Mucus, but it was all in good fun,... what kid doesn't pick his nose?

Was anything wrong with EJ? Yes, it got famous. Jim spawned merchandising that was ranked next to Mortal Kombat and Mario. Everything from action figures to a Saturday morning cartoon came out from the success of Earthworm Jim. The inevitable yet predictable sequel was good, but lighting didn't strike twice and honestly I didn't like it as much. Other games have been made but the fact that I can't remember any of them is a bad sign (I even know all the names of the Full House line-up). The only cool EJ plug I liked was his cameo appearance in Clayfighter 63 and a 3/4 (to bad that game sucked). But the original EJ was a gem and it came at a time when most of us thought that platformers were on the way out. Earthworm Jim revived a genre that was getting its ass kicked by the 'Fighting games' that ruled in the 90's and showed that an old dog like the 'platformer' could be taught new tricks.

Years later, TenNapel moved on after EJ to do the game 'The Neverhood' that had a sequel to it called 'Skullmonkeys'. Skullmonkeys was a stop-motion, clay-mated platformer on the PS1 that really felt like Earthworm Jim, even though it looked NOTHING like it. I was so sure that it was made by the same creator even at that time, so its good to know that I was right about that when I did my research JUST before writing this article. I also think I should add that because of that revelation I now see that art is easy to find and easy to recognize. Video games really don't get a lot of credit for artistic achievement even today and its not fair.

But that's a different subject for a different time.

90's Fighting Games Top 5 - Number 3 -SNK's most expensive experience

A samurai fears nothing, not even lamps and trees!

Trash talk BEFORE it was ok to swear in video games,... and now you know why they allow it these days.
The Snes version's 'zoomed out' look. Im afraid to make a Genesis screen shot. The fight nust be VERY intense just look at that excited (and symetrical) 'band' behind them.



Samurai Showdown

SNK 1993

Takara 1994 (for console releases)

Everyone seems to be fascinated with Japan. Not so much the technological metropolis that we all see today but the 18th century era that is lovingly translated and romanticized in films and books. The film 'The Seven Samurai" is a classic film and has made people believe that Japanese samurai culture is dangerous, attractive and yet still noble. Its the perfect background and concept for video games.

Samurai Showdown succeeded while other samurai games fell because Showdown simplified everything that we loved about Samurai's:

Their showdowns!

Now before I make things sound stupider let me explain. Ever see a kick ass samurai film? like say, Seven Samurai, or Duel to the Death? Name ANY Martial arts film and the most memorable thing is the fight scenes. When the gloves are off and the swords are unsheathed you forget things like the 'story'. SNK gave the action junkies what they had wanted, and threw everything else overboard. This game could have been a platformer 'beat em up' where you had to walk around and battle the SAME fucking guy OVER and OVER again and meet a cool unique boss at the end, but the most expensive game system maker in the world wasn't going to bore the masses.

The game still had a story and a decent one at that. I really thought that the story involved 1 man named Haohmaru on a quest to test his skills and see how mighty of a samurai he really is, but in fact SNK had written a story for this game and it involves the said samurai as well as a slew of other warriors around the world on a quest to stop the malice and plagues of an evil warlock named Shiro Tokisada Amakusa. OK whatever, it didn't say ANYTHING like that when I turned the game on and the main point of the game was the showdown. This game seemed to present itself with a main character that had a personal test to give himself by beating the asses of every big showoff in the world, not saving the world from some kind of danger. The thing that gave the world of SS its beef was the setting; 18Th century. The days before we would see fighting games with hovercrafts and robots in the background.

SNK loaded this game with great looks. Every character looks bad ass and animates as smooth as silk (at least on the arcade and NEO GEO systems), this game follows a lot of the hand drawn Street Fighter 2 styles but doesn't blatantly rip that style off. Each character looks unique. Every fighter has a weapon that reflects their personalities; swords of all kinds, blades, broadswords, samurai swords, giant hooks, gloves with blades on them, you name it. Each fighter had their own background that reflected their persona, like the character Earthquake who lived in a prospecting area of 18th century Texas, or Galford. a Frenchman that lives a life of luxury which means he has to fight in a castle. We see plenty of Asia; most especially, feudal Japan, which always is romantically charged and beautiful to see in games.

The style of fighting in SS is very fast paced, kinda like what Street Fighter 2 games tried so hard to do but with little success. The actual fighting consists of you trying to unleash ultra-hard special attacks that maim your opponent, which was satisfying when finally pulled off. Sometimes you could link some moves together and form combos but there was no credit for that. The motive in SS is to kill and if you had to roll the d-pad or -joystick up your ass to do it, then do it, because seeing that power move executed and your opponent taken down because of it is just too damn sweet. These powerful attacks were not like ordinary special moves they were 'fatality'-styled, they were used after a long battle ensued and your character or the other finally got too pissed off to take any more crap. This is the reason some people call these 'desperation attacks'.

Samurai Showdown was fun. Arcades had a good run with this game and if any arcades still exist there is a SS game still there from when they got that cabinet in '93. SNK's Neo Geo released this gaming experience home on a 118 meg monster sized cart and later other ports were released. The SNES had a decent version, and Sega had... an adequate version. This game also helped the 3do stand a little longer when SS was made for it, but even a 32 bitter like the 3do couldn't hold much of a fight to the arcade version. SNK makes BIG games even if the game itself is small and short, because of the details and action that SNK bleeds over into making a game. This attitude gave SNK the drive it needed to make the NEO GEO but that console would cost gamers $699. But hope was in the air for Genesis and SNES owners, but it was a hollow hope.

On a NEO GEO, a system with top-of-the-line arcade guts inside it, SS played with great quality and 60 frames per second of action, with no hitches. SNK's system was a powerhouse for its day (even today too), and all those bells and whistles came with a huge price tag. So when normal people on a budget want a big shot game then companies work to try and put hundreds of megs from Neo Geo cart games into a small SNES or Genesis cart that might only be able to handle 24 megs at the most. The result in regards to SS was not as good as people wanted. The great 16 bit giants had very 'chopped down' versions of the Showdown that really weren't up to the standard that people saw in arcades. SNES didn't have that cool 'camera zoom' effect so the characters were small, had fewer frames of animation and the games sound was... sub-par, The Sega Genesis version had the Earthquake fighter missing and horrid sound and graphics. Another big gripe was due to Mortal Kombat making bloody waves of controversy, Samurai Showdown had none of the blood that was in the arcade versions which is ridiculous because SS kept the blood amounts low, you very rarely saw it! One of the tamer fighting games out had gotten censored all because of 1 game that went too far. The 16 bit home releases of this game were good tries anyway, I guess you can't have it all.

But this embarrassment keeps this series down and also puts Samurai Showdown in the middle of the list and not any higher like it should have been.

Showdown wasn't a phenomena, though MANY sequels exist that blow this game away. This game was HUGE in Japan and was a great SF and MK alternative for people in the US. There wasn't a big movie, and not much merchandising behind the series (none that I've seen, anyway). Maybe you can find a t-shirt here and there, but that might also be just unofficial crap that SNK would sue over if given a chance. It's nice to see that SNK didn't try so damn hard. If you had the money back then, you could buy a NEO GEO and enjoy the games that kept arcades in business for years. But the people at SNK were not going to shove games down your throat, because they only wanted the gamers that were truly serious about the hobby. There are probably better fighting games that SNK made back in the 90's but this was truly great and set the standard that even Capcom would have to adapt to with later fighting games, like X-men: Children of the Atom. Which is why before writing THIS review I was also considering SNK's Art of Fighting, but who really remembers that one?

90's Fighting Games Top 5 List- Number 5

Mortal Kombat (1992 Midway)

Why is this game at the bottom of the list instead of like, 3 or 2? Because without its additions of controversial blood and gore, this game would have surely died. This isn't saying that the original MK sucks, its... OK, but play it now if you still have your copy and tell me if it still is as fun or legendary as you remember. The first Mortal Kombat might be the most overrated game ever made, and when compared to its later sequels you'll find that the first game has some flaws, but before I cluck on about that lets look at why it rocked the gaming world.

Digitized Graphics- This wasn't the first fighting game to use digitized footage or actors in order to create its sprites. Pitfighter, one of Atari's many failures, was the first fighting game to do this. But rather than give us muddy movement and choppy animation like Pitfighter, Mortal Kombat gave us characters with some great personalities. Each character was believable and cool for the most part. MK even gave us a stop motion animated four armed monster to fight against: Goro. For the first time in gaming history we really began to feel and believe that REAL people were beating each other into a paste on screen.

Blood- The sight of bodily fluids when I first played MK was enough to scar my mind. This was 92, a time before it became the norm to have blood in a game.It was enough to also spark congressional hearings and even made it a game believed to be responsible for the rating system that now graces the cover of every game that gets released. The gore of MK is now so tame to today's standards that you almost can't believe that it caused such a problem. The added fun was being able to maim your opponents or be maimed by executing 'Fatalities' in order to finish someone off. These moves included:

Punching off someones head

Pulling off someones head

Burning your opponent into a crisp

Ripping out someones heart

Blowing up someones head

or doing whatever satisfies the Ed Gein in you.

This was another reason for controversy. It wasn't enough that your characters bled (too much sometimes) they also could murder each other. Street Fighter 2 didn't really involve KILLING anyone, which is why that game never got the attention and censorship that MK eventually received. The oppression of censorship wasn't fully realized to me until its console release.

MK on the SNES was released and was widely disappointing to many. WHY? Because the SNES might have had a near perfect arcade translation but they made a bad move, they cut out all the blood and modified some of the Fatalities to make the game more vanilla. The Genesis version gave us all the blood and was accessable via the famous 'Blood Code'. The assholes of Nintendo's marketing department may have made the biggest mistake in allowing this, and it may have been done because of the demographic of younger kids owning and SNES system and older kids owning a Genesis. The drawbacks may also have come from the 'Lets test the market' strategy of what will win: Better graphics or better action? Whatever these bozos did to ruin MK for Nintendo owners, it was short lived, because Sega and its shittier Genesis version of MK blew away Super Nintendo version in terms of sales. This move caused Nintendo to rethink things and when Mortal Kombat II arrived it pulled out all the stops and gave us all what we wanted: Blood and gore.

OOOOK... there you have it. The secret to success. Digitized graphics and Blood. This game also had other things that made it great, like its story. The games plot seemed to be a mix of Enter the Dragon with a slight fantasy film (name whatever one comes to mind) angle to it. 7 people have entered a tournament to take down the 2 corrupted leaders of that tournament: Shang Tsung, a shapeshifting sorcerror, and Goro, a 10 foot cheap sonofabitch with four arms. Whatever, did anyone really pay attention to that or were we all just too busy learning how to pull off Rayden's fatality?

These 7 fighters were a colorful lot of criminals (Kano), agents (Sonya), ninjas (Sub Zero and Scorpion) , noble warriors (Liu Kang), an egotistical actor (Johnny Cage) and even the God of thunder (Rayden). All of these fighters worked and looked great in full realistic glory (for its time), each of them with their own story and persona that made them into icons of many fighting games after. Sub-zero and Scorpion were both palette color swaps of the same ninja (along with the secret and unplayable character Reptile), this following the Ken and Ryu of SF2 idea of getting the most out of 1 design, I'm surprised they don't do something similar to that or, at least more often, in Hollywood movies. Sonya was kind of the 'token woman' that you see in a lot of fighting games, even being able to shoot pink girly rings off of her wrist, to this day I always wished they would have tried harder in developing her, it feels like they didn't try. Johnny Cage pissed me off to no end. He fought with his shirt off in a pair of spandex shorts, and he's a candy assed, Hollywood actor that loves to gloat at the end of a match by putting on his sunglasses and stare at you with a crooked smile, he just BEGS to be 'Finished' at the end of a match. As annoying as Cage was, he was so fun to hate. Sub Zero is a ninja with the ability to freeze, and Scorpion is a ninja from hell that can breathe fire in order to kill you off. Kano is a thug criminal that throws knives and rips off Blanka's Barrel roll from SF 2. He's the token badass of this game and I loved his Fatality of ripping out someones heart, too sweeeet. Liu Kang is a kind of bland kung foo master inspired by Bruce Lee, not much else to note other than the games epilogue thats explained later in MK2 suggest that he won the tournament. Then you have the God of thunder Rayden who can fly at you, pasting you to a wall while screaming something in a lauguage that I'm not even sure exists, damn that was a fun move!

But it wasn't all so sweet. The SNES version proved that this game was quite bland without all the carnage. The controls were my big gripe. I was used to holding the joystick away from my opponent in order to block attacks, but here they added a button for it. I never used it much unless I was blocking an incoming projectile. There was 4 other buttons for high-low punches and high-low kicks, but there was really no difference between a high or low attack.

The action was slow moving and felt very stiff, like the characters and their controls were 'stuck'. The fighting method of winning this game was dependant on using 'juggle' combos that consisted of hitting your opponent into the air and using whatever hits you could dish out to keep them from hitting the ground. Some arcade junkies made a lot of enemies by memorizing tricks and combos that literally gave them a 24 hit hollow victory. This is a style of fighting in a game I've never preferred because it offers you no opportunity to counter attack, you just have to sit there and wait till your plastered to the floor. Thankfully this was only something that experts you played against could do, if you played against the computer you fought someone that was either too easy or too cheap.

MK 'you vs the computer' tip: Stay away from the corner, you'll get a barrage of punches or other hits you'll NEVER escape from.

It just goes to show you, looks aren't everything. MK had flaws but the beauty part is that Midway listened to the cries and bitching of its players and delivered a sequel that gave us all that was missing from the original. This is the difference between Midway and other companies that made fighting games (like Strata), while their first show was a success, they didn't get lost in it when it came down to repeating it. In fact, MK 2 wasn't even close to a repeat of the original, it was a totally different game (more on that as this list progresses).

Regardless of slow fighting, funky controls and cheap or unimaginative AI, MK is now a classic. Right up there with Pac-man and Galaga. This game might have made MILLIONS of dollars on its arcade release alone. Rarely does a video game inspire such widespread controversy and at the same time, get so much merchandising behind it. I can remember MK action figures, trading cards, T shirts, books, a cool movie (and a shitty sequel to that movie), and apparently even a live martial arts stage show (this game even had an off Broadway spin off, amazing). Mk also has laid foundation for many fighting games after in that it told developers to not be afraid of anything. Without MK giving the mainstream the violence that sells, then even games like Grand Theft Auto (not even a fighting game) would ever be made.

All this hype over red sprites of blood that didn't even look very real in retrospect. I'm sure Midway secretly thanks the US congress for making a big deal of MK's violence, after all that was and still is the best free advertising any medium can get.