Random As Rhyme

This idea hit me last night for no real reason at all but I figured it was a pretty good one so I shouldn’t let it just drift by like a lot of my other ideas. Before I get started though I would like to say that this is my own personal list of games I played, not games that existed, I didn’t play a lot of good games so that is why some of your own favorites are not on this list so don’t kill me.

10. NHL 93

Never mind the oddly blue ice this game was lots of fun, relatively quick game play for the time epic hits, injuries, and fighting. EA sports cut its teeth on this game and it’s the reason why they are still creating some of the best sports video game tittles today. I logged a lot of hours playing this game, mostly during hockey season.

8. Golden Axe
I never owned this game but my best friend at the time did and we played a lot of it, looking back on it the female playable character was quite scantily clad I wonder if thats why his older brother bought it. None the less it was an pretty awesome game for when it was released (89) and you got to kick little elves for power ups! Take that short stuff.

7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist
After playing the damn near impossible to beat TMNT for the NES I was hesitant to play another Turtles out of fear that my dreams of being a radical fighting turtle would be crushed further. However this game was thankfully modeled more after TMNT arcade game and had none of the frustration of the NES game. The bright graphics and sound made it really stand out but the best part was that at one point you could ride a rocket powered surf board!

6. X-men 2: Clone wars
This game was pretty unique due to the fact that as soon as you turned it on and selected a character you were fighting, before the tittle screen, no waiting no listening to a story just fight! Again vivid graphics and fun side scrolling action came into play here and they game also had a pretty decent difficulty curve so there was no blowing through it incredibly fast.

5. Comix Zone
This game is awesome, and had an original (albeit it completely insane) story line with great game play, levels, animation and power ups. However this game was pretty difficult and you had two continues at most so that kept the frustration factor pretty high. One cool fact about this game though was that it came with a free CD which was my first CD I ever owned. I listened to this song a lot

4. Toy Story
This game was able to capture the imagination of the Toy Story movie and transfer it to 16 bit form for the Genesis. Having a fun lofty feel and genuinely nice looking 3d animation it was very hard to ever get frustrated at this game and with its inclusion of multiple different puzzles there was not much monotony. I actually still play the ROM of this game from time to time and will probably end up playing it soon after I finish this blog.

3. Aladdin
I originally had no interest in playing Aladdin as I don’t really remember if I have seen the movie all the way through but regardless of that fact or the fact that Arabian Nights is a song that can remain forever stuck in your head the game was a lot of fun. Similar to Toy Story it was a hard game to get mad at no matter how often you died. Don’t forget, hammer pants are AWESOME!

2. Sonic 2
Sonic games really need no explanation. This one game with my Sega so I played it a lot, I let my dad play once and he got killed so fast no one in my family could play a video game worth a damn even my brother, not sure why as they are all well educated and capable of walking and chewing bubble gum.

1. Streets of Rage 2
This is my favorite game of the Streets of Rage series however all of them are awesome. If game rating existed at the time this would have recived an M rating because you could stab, shoot, and club people with big aluminum pipes. In addition to all of that there was a copious amount of scantly clad women in the game who you got to beat the crap out of, it was an equal opportunity beat em up game.

Ever since I can remember I have never been fairly impatient. I hate waiting and always have. This probably explains why I was born 6 weeks early. My mom says as a baby she never had to wait for me to wake up to get the day started, she would come into my room and I would be wide awake and as I got older trying to get out.

My impatience also extends to waiting on my body to heal, I don’t like to take it easy and I don’t like to be victim to any sort of illness. This is pretty funny since I was a sick kid, but being a sick kid was not a bad thing since I was a Sick Kid – a child patient of sick kids hospital.

When I jumped the gun in coming out of the womb it meant I wasn’t quite done yet so I was placed in an easy bake oven (incubator) until it went ding. I was such an unattractive baby that to this day I have not seen any pictures of me prior to my actual due date (Dec 16th).

Soon after I was born I came down with a serious case of pneumonia, serious enough that my pediatrictian told my parents were told not to travel to Jamaica with me. However my parents figuring they could deal with whatever happened decided to go anyway. The story goes once I got to Jamaica I made an immediate recovery and became a huge ball of energy. Even at a young age their was no way I was letting a little cold keep me from having fun in the sun.

My health was pretty stable until around the age of four until my parents and day care workers noticed I developed a limp. When my parents tried to ask me what was wrong apparently I couldn’t really explain it. While everyone was pretty worried being four I was unconerned. So they just watched to see if the limp got worse, which it did. It turned out I was developing an urinary tract infection due to a UPJ (Ureteropelvic junction) obstruction and I needed surgery, fairly important surgery, since one of the complications of a UPJ obstruction is losing a kidney.

So I went under the knife, and a lot of my friends have seen the scar.

On my way to the operating room seeing the games room at Sick Kids and wanting to go in there. I had to stay in the hospital for about 9 days under observation and for seven of those days I made my way down to the games room IV pole, catheter, stent and all to play ExciteBike.

The IV meant that my hand was heavily bandaged so I wedged the controller between my leg and the arm of the chair. I played hours of Excite Bike and this not only sparked my love for video games but also my love for bikes on dirt tracks.

Soon after release I was diagnosed with fairly severe asthma. Most kids with asthma are forced to take it easy lucky for me though my parents purchased a breathing machine I could use at home to cut back on the amount of time they spent in hospital cots. While I still logged quite a few hours on this machine in front of the TV and still had to carry a puffer (yes I was that kid) it was way better than the alternative.

As I got older, thankfully, I got healthier, and aside from incident where I urinated blood (complication of my operation), I have been health issue free.

I am however left with an everlasting love for Excite Bike

There is a somewhat universally known fact among gamers movie tie ins, regardless of how good the movie can or will be the game will suck. Most if not all tie in games are rushed out the door to meet the movies release date and since their sales are more dependent on how the movie does as opposed to how the game actually plays. I know this and I currently have two movie tie in games collecting dust in my closet. So why on earth did I get another one?

Well I am a pretty big fan Wolverine and this trailer tipped the scales:

The game looked and the developers and bloggers have been hyping the game up for so long I figured there was know way they could screw it up too bad and it turns out I was right.

Graphics 3.8/5
This game looks great for the most part and a few things stand out more than others. As you incur damage Logans upper body reflects the damage (though he appears to wear adamantium plated jeans). His shirt rips through to skin, which rips through to muscle, then bone, then finally vital organs all and all it is a nice effect and not one I have seen used in other games.

The cinematic cut scenes are above those of any movie game I have played and the kills are just things of amazingly gory beauty. Certain theatrical moves are slowed down and serve as a great visual and comedic treats. Surprisingly this does not get old which I thought it would.

I have only noticed 2 strange graphical glitches, both of which came while I was rotating the camera around the character. Sometimes Logan isn’t really standing on anything just slightly hovering above it and while some mutants can levitate he is not one of them. The other strange bit is that the game seems to have a hard time remember whether or not Logan is wearing a shirt, if you zoom in close it’s gone but when you pull the camera away it re-appears. However neither are game breaking or hideously jarring just strange.

Sound 5/5
“That game is loud!” – my girlfriend.

The sounds are well done and yes it can get pretty loud as the action heats up.

Controls 5/5
The controls are great I was able to pick this game up and start of playing instantly with only a quick flip of the instructions on the latrine. It starts of as a bit of a button masher but as you go on helpful hints pop up that allow you to do different combos by using a combination of weak and strong attacks as well as rage powered attacks. The multifaceted grab button also makes sense in all of the different applications it’s used for, such as opening doors, and pushing pulling and carrying things, in addition to throwing useless enemies onto poles.

The only thing that took me a little bit to get down was the lunges but once I did they were immensely useful.

Creativity 4/5
This is where, for a movie game, this game really shines. The last movie game I played was Transformers and it was repetitive to the point of being annoying. Wolverine seems to have a few repetitive bits but even though I am still early in the game play I can confidently say its not as bad as Transformers.

This game has some shooting aspects, some puzzles, and a few different types of enimies, it also follows an interesting flash back focuses stroy line which obviously follows the movie I have yet to see.

The most creative part of this game is the gore which is the games intentional lure. Anyone who buys this game will be rewarded with a plethora of interesting ways to stop your enemies, my two favorite right now have to be shoving enemies heads into helicopter blades and ripping their arms of and beating them senseless with them. Sure these kills are probably not the quickest and easiest way to off someone but they sure work at keeping the simple minded (myself) amused.

I can easily say the Wolverine origins is the best movie tie in game I have played thus far and the best I own. If you have been waiting for a tittle that really gives you an idea what it is like to be a mutant on the edge this is it, and if you are patient I would recommend picking up a used copy so that you can save a few bucks. The un caged pre-sale edition promotion is over now anyway.

I found out today via Kotaku that Marvel and  Capcom are re-releasing Marvel VS Capcom as downloadable games for X Box and Playstation 3.  When I first got ps3 I didn’t really think online content would interest me but the Street Fighter II HD remix quickly proved me wrong.

Not only are they cheap, fun, and a throw back to the games of yore they also have great online components that allow you to flex (or get flexed on) your video game muscle to unknown people all around the world.

No matter how far video game makers push current games gamers are still going to feel the nostalgic pull of some of their old favorites. Marvel Superheroes was one of the few games I played the crap out of on my Sega Saturn and it was the predecessor to M vs C so its natural this news would send me down memory lane.

The memories of these other ones however are just a product of my mind wandering on the go train.

Marvel Superheroes

Having logged a lot of hours player Street Fighter 2 on my Genesis getting into this game was like hoping on a new bike, different, but with a little practice I could still throw down. Wolverine, Ironman and Spiderman were my go to characters because they were fairly easy to play with and some of my favorite Marvel Characters.

The only fault I can put on this game was the fact that any time I played it in the arcades I got destroyed by kids many years younger than me.

Daytona USA

Most people will remember this game from the large multi-chained arcade versions but Sega ported this down for the Sega Saturn. The graphics were not nearly as good as the arcade machines but it was a great way to memorize the tracks and hustle people at Sega City which was cool to do at the time (seriously).

I have a key chain around here somewhere stating that I am a champion from one of my many wins…

Virtua Cop

This game also came with my Sega Saturn and was your classic cop themed shooter game, tt was first person shooter but you could not control the movement, just the gun. If memory servers correctly it’s the first game I remember playing with cut scenes.

I didn’t have the Virtua gun, but head shots and crotchshots are fun no matter what you are using.

Virutal On

I love giant Robots, especially giant robots that shoot often and aim even less. Oddly enough I do not remember this game having techno sound track but I do remember the near seizure inducing graphics. I think this game might be the reason I have to wear glasses today.

This is the only game on the list I can’t recall actually playing all the way through.

Fighting Vipers

Fighting Vipers is a super violent, and in my opinion, under rated fighting game for both the Saturn and Arcades (surprise!). It had quite a few features that set it apart from most of the other fighters of that time.

The arena was 3d which meant you could use the walls to your advantage and for finishes punch people through or on top of the walls.

The damage system was fairly unique in the sense that the more armor you lost the faster your health depleted, you could also see the armor fly of during the match and if your opponent was a girl by the end of the match she would be in her bra and panties.

The final unique feature of this game was the fact that some players carried weapons on their backs, my favorite characters were Raxel and Picky since you could beat your opponents down with a flying v guitar and a skateboard respectively.

I really need to order one of these rca cables from and fire up my Saturn again, any interested parties are welcome to come over and mash buttons. Please no throwing my controllers.