Video Game Review: Pac-Man

Why did it take so long for this game to make it to the NES in the US? I mean, let’s face it, for today’s discriminating gamers, the graphics are pretty basic. And without spending a quarter each time you want to make a run on that mysterious level 256, some of the thrill is lost.

Speaking of level 256, it’s all bugged out. I can get through the first 255 levels easily enough, but this level is all jacked up, and I don’t know why. I tried psychically beating the level based on where I assume all the pellets and ghosties are supposed to be, but that just doesn’t work.

I suppose I could just play for hi-score, but I maxed that out a long time ago. Truth be told, this game is just too easy. I suspect it’ll be too easy for you, as well. Since I’m pretty sure that all of you, like me, spent most of your childhoods in front of the arcade version of this game in your basement while your mother was nailing the owner of the local pizza shop while your father was working at said pizza shop producing pubic-hair-laced pizza after lice-infested pizza, this game should be a snap for you.

Video Game Review: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

A little known fact: instead of going through all the trouble to hire actors and coordinate special effects, the film is actually just two and a half hours of footage of someone playing this video game. It’s that realistic.

Where this game really shines is in its myriad of menu commands. The SWING SWORD command, the WALK TWO STEPS command, the DO NOTHING FOR THIRTY SECONDS SO THE PLAYER CAN EAT A FEW DORITOS AND WASH THEM DOWN WITH SOME DELICIOUS PEPSI command. Everything is done with a command. How does this guy go to the bathroom when there’s no player around to command him to?

I don’t know.

But the duels are pretty cool. Why an archer would duel someone when he could just shoot ARROWS at them, I don’t know. But, like I said, pretty cool. I could rag on this game for being a tie-in designed to promote a movie and wring more money out of fans, but I won’t. A lot of time was put into making a detailed and engaging game and that’s evident to the player.

Video Game Review: Paperboy

This game brings back a whole steaming pile of nostalgia for me. When I started at this rag eight years ago, I, too, was a humble paperboy. Riding my bicycle past dogs, dodging skateboarders and miniature tornados, all of these things happened to me on a daily basis.

I remember this one time, it was snowing, and I had just finished my paper route and proceeded to the obstacle course, when I crashed into a truck tire and broke both of my legs. Did it stop me from riding my route the following day? No! Because I’m a survivor.

Over the weeks that followed, houses that used to be painted red (so that I would know not to deliver newspapers to them) gradually started painting their houses blue and white, becoming subscribers based on the word-of-mouth buzz surrounding my excellent service.Sure, it was hard. I encountered Death any number of times, nearly bit it trying to jump ramps over go-kart riders and RC cars, but I persevered and eventually landed the sweet gig I have today.

Video Game Review: Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout

We’ve clearly gotten to the point where the dark forces of marketing have taken over the video game market. One could argue that it started over eight years ago with ET, potentially the worst game ever made, and continues with this game.

I’m not saying this is a bad game. Certainly a few orders of magnitude better than ET (what isn’t?). In fact, it’s pretty fun to play and the graphics are decent. What I’m saying is that we’re ending up with these non-canonical, one-off games that were probably already finished before someone got the idea to plop a Bugs Bunny sprite into it (Case in point: Doki Doki Panic becomes Super Mario 2…).

It makes me wonder: does EVERY character for every franchise need his own SMB-clone? Next you’ll be telling me even the Domino’s pizza Noid will get his own game…wait, what? He ALREADY DID? It’s yet another Japanese sprite-switch? Ridiculous.

So, back to Bugs Bunny. It’s an alright game. Fun to play for a little while. It’s just…it’s just that it doesn’t have that feel of a Mario game. The color palettes are too pastel, too similar. The background sprites, while detailed, don’t really have much of a Bugs Bunny style to them.

It’s a rental game; it’s not inspired…it’s something you’d do to kill time while waiting for a better game to be released.Let’s be brutally honest here, this game will sell because it has Bugs Bunny on it. No serious gamer is going to run out and buy this, but he might find himself stuck playing it because his little brother has it.

Video Game Review: Final Fantasy

Four letters? I only get four letters to name my characters? What is this, 1920? Luckily, my favorite curses are only 4 letters long, so this isn’t a huge problem. One awesome thing is that you can pick which four types of characters make up your party. Four fighters all the way, buddy.

Like most other recent RPG’s, you will likely find yourself killing hordes and hordes of monsters just to get enough experience and gold to advance the story just one tiny bit, but if you do, you will eventually get an AIRSHIP, and it’s GREAT.

Now, here’s a thought…what if they make a sequel to this? A ‘Final Fantasy II’, if you will, that’d be an oxymoron…get it? Because it wouldn’t be the FINAL fantasy after all? Hehehe, I’m a funny guy.

Video Game Review: Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular

This isn’t a video game review so much as a public service announcement. This game actually has a lot in common with syphilis: from the outside, it may seem inviting, but once you realize what it is, you should get as far away from it as you possibly can. Also, it will, over time, destroy your mind in a way not dissimilar to the aforementioned syphilis.

This is a game so bad that it had to be completely redone as a Snoopy game to contain its original horribility as a Japanese release with Donald Duck sprites. They were actually worried that bad word-of-mouth from Japan would make its way here, to the US.

In a way, the designers of this game were pretty ambitious. Rather than strive for the title of ‘Worst Game Ever,’ they tried to unite The Six Worst Games Ever into one cartridge. Tolkien would have been proud.

Here’s what it is: Snoopy and Spike competing at various sportslike events in Italy. Pogo Jump, Push Your Opponent off a Gondola, The Boot Toss, Carrying a Stack of Pizzas without Dropping Them, Racing in a Potato Sack, and Oh My God There Is No Way To Actually Pole Vault Across This Goddamned River, Is There?

Just for the record, I have never, nor have I even heard a story about someone ever successfully pole vaulting across that goddamned river. It’s just not possible. I suspect Shigesato Itoi (or possibly even Beat Takeshi) had a hand in that, because making games that are, by definition, impossible seems to get them off.

So…back to Snoopy. The central question of any video game review is whether the reader should purchase/play the game in question. The answer, given objectively and with absolutely no bias, is this: under no circumstances should you or anyone else ever play this game. Not even if it’s free. Not even if someone has you strapped to a chair with giant lasers pointing at you which will zap you if you don’t play this game.

OHMYGODRUNAWAYWHILEYOUSTILLCAN!

Is what they should put on the outside of the box this game comes in, with a sticker bearing the exact same legend affixed to the cartridge in case the box has been lost.

And yet, a part of me worries that I may have piqued your curiosity, like you may be thinking to yourself, ‘It sounds so bad that it might actually be fun to play, just to make fun of.’ NO! DO NOT MAKE THAT MISTAKE! You should not even be imagining what it would be like to play this game, the taint of it is that strong.

Even as I tie the rope to the rafter in a vain attempt to rid my mind of the impurity of this game, penning out this review along with a copy of my last will and testament, I implore you, for all that is good in the world, don’t let yourself be exposed to the Lovecraftian horror which comprises Snoopy’s Silly Sports Spectacular.

Video Game Review: Tetris

In this game, you are Tetrov, a Russian architect trying to rebuild the Berlin wall using substandard Russian bricks. When you are successful, your country launches satellites and palaces into space in celebration. When you fail, you are shot.

Now, in the US version of the game, most of the plot points have been edited out and the focus is on the blocks. However, in the Russian version of the game, the block-dropping portions are actually bonus puzzles played after thrilling platform-jumping levels where you dodge CIA agents and seduce female government secretaries in order to steal their keycards and gain access to classified documents and information pertaining to the fabled Stealth Bomber.

When you complete the game by infiltrating the Groom Lake facility, you fly your hijacked jet back to the Motherland as rockets, fireworks, and Kremlins explode jubilantly in the air around you.When the jet lands, you are still shot because you know too much, but your family gets bread. I give this game ten stars for gameplay, awesome graphics, and its heroin-like addictive qualities.

Video Game Review: Mother

This Japanese game is a knock-off of Dragon Warrior. Its creator is a sadistic monster named Shigesato Itoi. Why do I call him a sadistic monster? Because you have to invest at least six solid months of your life into leveling up in order to have any hope of beating this game, which none of you do to begin with because it’s in Japanese, which you can’t read.

My superiors question the utility of a video game review for a game nobody in D’Starkville will ever encounter. My answer to them is this: in five or six years, someone might make an awesome sequel to this game, and then somehow it will draw attention to this game, and then people might find themselves faced with the option of importing it, or if computers have evolved far enough to allow reasonable emulation of NES hardware, stealing a digital copy of it.

Should all of these things happen, our readers will remember back to this day, this glorious day, and they can say, ‘Yes! I read an article telling me to avoid this game at all costs!’

I’m not saying to avoid it because it’s bad. In fact, the dialogue is pretty clever, and if someone were to go through all the trouble to translate it into English (my game counselor Dan says this is being done as we speak, but the game will probably not actually be released) I bet it would sound snappy and clever.

The music is great (love that track that plays at the shopping mall), some of the enemy sprites are pretty detailed (even though the overworld sprites are VERY basic and one could argue that they suck pretty hard-core…) and it even has a few touching moments.

No, I’m saying to avoid this game because it’s just too time-consuming and difficult. Unless you can find a way to cheat. If that’s possible, I say go for it.

One thing I can tell you for sure is that this game will never spawn a cult of rabid fans united by a fancy network of interconnected computers.

Also, I’ve killed this farmer guy about 150 times.

Video Game Review: Bubble Bobble

This game, starring two bubble-blowing lizards, takes place in the Cave of Monsters. And let me tell you about this cave, this is one never-ending cave. So basically, these lizards have to battle through the cave to save their girlfriends, eating everything they find along the way.

In terms of difficulty, this game alternates between ridiculously easy and ridiculously impossible. The levels themselves are not all that difficult, but you have to make it through 100 of them.

And…I don’t know…I like it. It’s strangely addictive, and there is a mind-boggling array of different items which randomly appear when certain mathematical requirements are met. Many of them give you points, but a few of them trick out your lizards to make them more efficient killing machines.

As a disclaimer, I should add that I’ve never finished this game. A typical session involves playing flawlessly for roughly an hour and then dying continuously at the same spot until it’s GAME OVER. Dan, my game counselor, says this is common.

I should add here that Dan is an EXPERT. He’s been playing video games since he was 4 years old, which strikes me as odd because it doesn’t seem like they’ve been around all that long.

When I speak to him, I picture him playing along with me, instantly booting up whichever game I’m playing and giving me real-time advice.In actuality, Dan tells me, there is a giant book with commonly-asked questions for each games and cheats and hints, and all he does is read from it. I asked him to send me a copy of this book, but he says he would lose his job if he did so.

Video Game Review: Milon’s Secret Castle

Let’s start with the positives, to get them out of the way. This game has really good graphics, and many challenging levels for you to explore. Now for the negatives. You’ll never make it to most of those challenging levels because you’ll kill yourself before you ever manage to get past the first three.

An innovative feature of this game is that it gives you absolutely no direction. You are free to explore the world of the game as you choose, as long as the world you choose is the first few levels, because there is no logical way to get past them. Eventually, you may find yourself locked in a room with a fire-breathing dragon. Your weapon against this dragon? Bubbles.

There’s about a 99% chance this dragon will kill you.

Now, none of you have to review this game. You don’t have some ogre-like boss hovering above you telling you that you can’t go home until you beat the game because journalistic integrity requires you to complete the game before you review it.

But you also don’t have an expense account to blow on video game systems and hours of telephone therapy with Dan, my video game counselor at Nintendo. For eight bucks a minute, he’s walked me through dozens of video games and failed relationships. He’s helped me get over my abandonment issues by telling me how to kill Mother Brain, helped me through my aquaphobia by navigating me through the water levels in Super Mario Bros.

Now, after getting killed by this goddamn dragon one too many times, I seem to have thrown the game through the window. You will, too.

Video Game Review: Metal Gear

Within ten seconds of starting this game, you are actually punching dogs. In their throats. Awesome! And look at that sweet dog tag-like font! Now, to be fair, I haven’t yet managed to get past the third screen of this game, so I don’t know how ‘in-depth’ this review will be.

The play control is kind of awkward, I keep hitting the ‘garrote’ button when I mean to hit the ‘disembowel’ button, but the graphics are great. I can just imagine what some of the later stages are like, if this first stage is any indication, I bet they are awesome!

Sweet! I just cut a guy open and wedged a grenade inside his ribcage! For 8-bit, the detail depicting his open chest cavity is surprisingly realistic. I predict this game will spawn many successful sequels across numerous gaming platforms.

Video Game Review: Contra

This game is just begging to be made into a Schwarzenegger movie, though he has a better shot at becoming Governor than that actually happening. Two military-style guys with guns shooting bad guys, what could be better than that?

How about going more than fifteen seconds without getting killed. What is the point of making this game so insanely difficult? Dan, my video game counselor, assures me this was not done to spite me personally. Dan also had a very helpful piece of advice for me: a little piece of awesomeness called the Konami code.

OH_HELLS_YES!

Thirty lives, bitches. The sad thing is that I still can’t beat this game, even with the code, even with Dan by my side (well, the phone by my side with Dan at the other end). What I need is a way to cheat MORE. But the graphics are good, and it’s violent and fun.

Video Game Review: Mega Man

This game is too hard. Maybe if you’re like really good at games or something, then you might like this game. Me, I don’t like it all that much because, like I said, it’s just too damn hard.

Things shooting at you, holes to fall into, crazy android supervillains with turbocharged weapons…this is a lot more stress than, say, a gardening game, or some sort of card game. Nintendo Canasta, that’s the way to go, or Nintendo Euchre, that’s the ticket.

Honestly, with all the loud noises and all the flashing, I don’t see how anyone is supposed to get into this game. The Japanese are crazy. And it’s totally unrealistic. Maybe this is what it’s like to live in Tokyo, but it’s certainly nothing like D’Starkville. Paperboy, now THAT game is a pretty true-to-life description of this place.

To tell you the truth, I never wanted to be a video game reviewer. I wanted to go overseas, to be a foreign correspondent doing stories about corrupt dictators and international corporate espionage. Instead, they’ve got me locked in a room with a kid’s toy reviewing whatever steaming pile of digital poo is making the rounds this week.

I hate my life.

Video Game Review: The Legend of Zelda

So…wait. Is this little green dude named Zelda, or is this a chick, or what? He’s saving a princess…her name is Zelda. So who is this green guy I’m controlling? I really need to start reading the instruction booklets before I start playing these games. Certainly before I start writing about them.

The giant, shining money is good. Killing octopi is also good. That dragon at the end of the first dungeon, though, he’s a real asshole. I need more hearts before I attempt another dungeon…

One of the best things about this game is that it is GOLD. That’s how I know that it’s GOOD. And I can cut animals with a sword, which is also pretty sweet. Not to mention shooting them with ARROWS. It’s just like deer hunting, except in this game it appears I am ripping these animals’ hearts out and eating them.

Take that, octopus-bitches!

And, while we’re on the subject, what is the deal with all these princesses getting kidnapped? Are they raping them, or what? If not, why take them? If they are, do these hero-guys really want to deal with the years of therapy and psychological healing it’ll take for these sluts to get over it?

If that’s the case, they certainly won’t be putting out any time soon, so what’s the point of saving them?

I’d take some of that giant, shining money and go to the strip club hidden in the sixth dungeon.

Video Game Review: Kid Icarus

So the first thing you notice about your protagonist is that he’s got WINGS. So he should be able to FLY. But he CAN’T. Because he SUCKS. Playing this game is a series of letdowns. It’s kind of fun shooting things with arrows, and completing the various stages, but it really sucks dying all the time and losing a big chunk of your progress.

Another thing you may notice as you grind your way through Icarusland is that there are SO MANY MONSTERS. That might have been a better title for this game. Because fighting monsters one at a time is so passé, better to fight them a dozen at a time.

If you’re playing this game, I suspect you’ve already beaten Metroid, because that’s a much better game. If that’s the case, I’d recommend shelving this one and playing that instead, because that game is soooo freakin’ sweet.

Video Game Review: Dragon Warrior

Erdrick? More like Nerdrick! And what kind of king sends one bepimpled teen with a bamboo stick and the most ridiculous helmet ever to rescue his daughter and save the world? He’s got all these soldiers and tons of tax money, and he sends YOU out on this perilous quest.

What a bastard.

Before this game, a term like ‘level-grinding’ had little meaning for the average gamer. Now, if you want to finish this game (not a prerequisite for living a long and happy life, you know, you could just skip this one altogether…) you’ve got to kill about 1000 slimes before you can even leave the general vicinity of the castle. Sucks, right?

If you play this game, it will piss you off. It will make you question your morality, your sexuality, your rationale for getting out of bed in the morning. This game will make you want to want to slit your wrists as you jump out of a 12th story window while attached to a very long noose (that’s triple suicide—and, yet, still not quite overkill) because you will, at some point, spend a few hours dodging monsters, hoping to end up with some good item and some asshole monster will cast sleep on you, you will be helpless as he proceeds to kill you, and you will have to start over. At which point your controller may fly into the TV, which is probably why they’re as flimsy as they are; this might protect your television to some extent.

With all these problems, I can’t see them making a sequel to this game. There definitely won’t be ten sequels, dozens of spinoffs, and a Saturday morning cartoon. What this game won’t be is one of the single most influential video games of all-time.

Video Game Review: Pinball

This game has some of the most basic graphics I’ve ever seen. If this game is to succeed, it must succeed on its gameplay and its addictiveness, and it does just that. Really…I…can’t…stop…playing…it. I had to cut off my right thumb just to break away from it long enough to write this review.

Luckily, with recent advances in surgery, I can get this iced thumb reattached in no time and be playing Pinball again by tomorrow.

The entire game takes place on 3 screens. You bounce a pinball between them and try not to let your ball fall off the last screen. What I desire is to find a real pinball machine made to these specifications. I’d pay top dollar for it. My boss refuses to get me one, even though I’m sure it could be justified as a business-related expense.

For some reason, Mario appears in this game’s bonus stage trying to save the chick from Donkey Kong. Paulina? I don’t remember. One thing I do know: Mario really gets around. And he loves saving chicks from big monsters, even though their naughty bits have probably been savaged by eleven inches of monster dong.

But, hey, whatever works for you, big M. I’m not here to judge.

Actually, as a reviewer, I am here to judge. To judge this game. I judge it to be great. So great, in fact, that I hereby resign my post at the D’Starkville Diatribe so that I may devote all my minutes and hours to getting 999,999 points.

Oh…my boss has informed me that if I resign, I will lose my health insurance, which I need to get my thumb reattached so that I may play this game again. It’s like the Gift of the Magi, like cruel, cruel fate is punishing me.

I’m about to pass out from blood loss. Avenge me, readers. Avenge me.

Video Game Review: Super Mario Bros.

To be quite honest with you, I just don’t get it. I mean, he’s a plumber and he’s fighting a turtle-dragon to save a princess. Who but the Japanese could devise such a wacky premise for a game? Honestly, I just don’t see this catching on.

And the guys who made this game really seem to have a thing against turtles…they want you to jump on them? That is cruel. Not as cruel as turtle soup, but close.

Another thing to consider is the power-up system. He eats mushrooms which make him double in size (is he hallucinating?) and finds flowers that allow him to spit fireballs. My cousin tells me he’s ‘throwing’ the fireballs, but, to me, it looks like he’s spitting bouncing fire-loogies at his enemies.

Something else I should mention is the play control: it’s awesome. Maybe, in 20 years, if computers get good enough to emulate these video games and someone has spent years using state-of-the-art futuresque gaming systems with much better controllers, maybe then will this play control seem bad in comparison. But I doubt it.

I just want to mention that I’m getting fed up with these little mushroom-headed bastards telling me I’m not in the right castle. How many freaking worlds does this game even have? I wish there were a way to skip past a few of them…oh, wait, there is! According to my game counselor, Dan, at Nintendo, there are these things called ‘warp pipes’ which allow me to skip to the last world without having to rescue most of these lamewads. Does that mean they’ll be eaten by their pseudokoopa keepers since I never saved them? Who cares! Dan certainly doesn’t.