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.