twiztor

a few years ago, i lived in a college town. while waiting for the bus one day, an Asian girl was bundled up in a winter coat, hat, and gloves. it was about 20 degrees. i was in shorts. she said something along the lines of "aren't you cold?" to which i responded "it hasn't even gotten cold yet". she seemed concerned, and asked "how cold does it get?" and i responded, honestly, "it can get to 10 below pretty regularly". she says "below what?" and then i just felt terrible for laughing. i hope she made it thru the winter.

autumn for me also. i live in Iowa, where we get all four seasons with a fury. i don't do well in the heat, so summer is out. i hate shoveling sidewalks with a passion, so winter is out. my b-day is in October, so fall wins!

GTA: Mushroom Kingdom, here we come! MK Fatalities in Smash Bros! a Metroid FPS that only exists for multiplayer, and you can't create an account without using cursewords as a username! a Legend of Zelda that may as well be Uncharted 7! i'll pick up a NX eventually. probably not at launch. i typically wait for the first price drop or the introduction of a black/dark gray system. i don't understand why they keep launching with white systems. Plus by then there's usually a few good games for it, since they haven't had a strong launch lineup in years.

i choose the counterpoint of option A. maybe i'm too much of a planner, but it would give me a definitive timeline for getting everything done that i'd want to do. Say i wanted to see Paris. i would know that, for example, i had 10 years to make it across the ocean. Just a way to prioritize and put things in perspective. Likewise, once you got towards the end, it would give you time to say goodbye and get some closure with your friends and family. Sure, it would be sad, but that's going to be the case regardless of life. This way all of those "i wish i would've told them _____" would be solved. option B really grants you nothing. So you know how you die. so what? as stated, there's nothing you can do about it. If i find out i'm going to get hit by a bus, i'm going to be paranoid every time i cross the street. if i find out i'm going to drown, everytime i went swimming/bathed/whatever i'd think "maybe this is the time". the knowing but not knowing thing would drive me insane.

i too mourn the loss of video stores. the last one closed down a couple years ago in town, and sadly it doesn't seem to be a market that will be revived anytime soon. Redbox sure doesn't cut it for finding obscure '80s slasher movies. i could always count on the local Family Video for that selection of off-the-wall flicks i'd never heard of.

born in '82 here. you're talking about digital TVs if you can enter the number. i grew up on a TV where you had to physically get up and turn the dial to the number you wanted. the dial only went up to 13, but that didn't matter since i lived in a small town with only 10 channels anyway. Something like this: as for the channel box, my grandparents had one, and i was always confused on how you'd find out what you wanted to watch. the TV listing in the paper may as well have been Greek to me. i don't fully understand the love for VHS. don't get me wrong, i enjoyed the hell out of mine growing up, and i still have a VCR in a closet somewhere. Hell, i even like to browse old VHS collections at flea markets and stuff, but at this point i'd rather watch it on DVD or stream/download it. Way less hassle.

i've been waiting for official comment on its re-release, but this is the first time i've seen a date: August 8th. holy buckets, i can't wait! thanks for the head's up, retro!

i wouldn't. the movie's storyline is taken DIRECTLY from the early comic books. some characters were changed (the cartoon changed the story on Splinter & Shredder's mutations, but the movie reverts back to the comic story). Not to mention all of the characters that appear in the cartoon but have no presence in the original movie trilogy (Krang & the Technodrome, the Neutrinos, the Punk Frogs, and plenty of others). i mean, to say that the film only happened because of the cartoon's success is something i wouldn't argue. but it is most definitely NOT based on the cartoon.

just ordered Mighty No. 9 on Wednesday (apparently nobody local got it in on release day). haven't gotten it in the mail yet. I see that it's getting a ton of negative reviews and lots of hate, but i'm looking forward to giving it a go. My expectations are pretty low at this point but i can't imagine i won't have at least some fun with it.

i grew up with the NES until it was well past its life cycle. Most of the games i got as bday or xmas presents. that means my parents/uncles & aunts/etc. usually bought whatever was popular and on the shelves at the time. there are only a handful of games that i remember EAGERLY anticipating, like Legend of Zelda II and Super Mario Bros 3. I ended up getting a lot of franchise games (Ninja Turtles, Mega Man). Whether a game saved or not literally had no impact on which games i got, as most of the time, i didn't have any input anyway. i've never pondered if there was any difference in sales for titles that did/didn't have a save feature.

i remember hearing about it years later and being upset that i never got one when i saw the Wizard in theaters as well. not that the magazine is that great, but come on! i missed out on a freebie!!

Episode 2: Kirby's Adventure (thoughts): -i'm adding to this post as i go. there's no way i can save up all these thoughts until it's over. -Smash Bros. how do you guys not get this game? i've always found it incredibly intuitive, and like you, i grew up playing MK2 in arcades. -i found Birdman to be highly enjoyable and can't stand Wes Anderson's movies. different strokes for different folks i guess. also, Dances With Wolves was terrible. -Howard's praise of Crystal Pepsi being taken off the market is highly offensive to me, as i've been awaiting it's return since 1993. -ha! i literally watched True Romance just 2 nights ago. love that film. my wife can't stand it because it's too violent. i keep expressing that it's a love story, but she's not buying it. Kirby: -i want to parrot the perfect way that the skill level increases as you go. starts off super easy but becomes somewhat challenging later on. nothing unbeatable. -my favorite power early is the flame or ice one (whichever gets you the ice shield or whatever that hovers around you). Later on, cutter and beam become my go-tos. -how did you not get the UFO power? there's only like one or two levels that offer it, IIRC, but it is legitimately awesome. -that eyeball/cloud boss always gives me a bit of trouble too. Even kirby's pole-vault power seems to be finnicky on whether i can get it to work or not. -this whole episode really makes me want to play Kirby's Adventure tonight. unfortunately, that won't be happening, but definitely in the next couple of days i'll power through it. Love it.

the Legend of Zelda reveal blew me away, and that's the only thing i watched at all. i read write-ups on the other presentations, but they just don't hold any interest for me.

i believe i've mentioned before that the game i'd kill for is a MK vs SF fighting game. i mean, since we're going all-out here, i'd base it on MK2 and SF2, but with an expanded roster for both, adding in a lot of the MK3 and SF Alpha characters. Specifically, for SF i'd also want the Final Fight characters in there, cuz Guy is my boy!! as an NES aficionado, i find it mind boggling that more 80s cartoon franchises didn't have NES games. there's TMNT, of course, and 2 G.I. Joe games. a Transformers game was released in Japan only (i've got a repro cart of it- it's not very good) but there's no Thundercats or He-Man. So i guess i just wish there were mediocre-to-good licensed titles of these properties. i wish a handful of SNES game franchises would've started on the NES, so that i could've possibly been introduced to them (we didn't get a SNES until YEARS after it was relevant). Stuff like F-Zero, which i have a fondness for, but i really would've loved it if i grew up with it. Then again, the reason it worked was because of the enhanced graphics that the Super provided, so i guess it's a mixed bag. lately, i've been trying to figure out if a UFC game would be possible on the NES. i think it's too involved, but i bet there's a way to have a stripped-down version (A for punches, A+down for kicks, B for grappling/clinch, B+down for a takedown) but the notion is tying my brain in knots. and i'm sure it wouldn't even be that much fun, but maybe *JUST* enough to be entertaining with friends. or it could be total garbage.

oh, i've listened to all of the songs on the album, so i'm fully aware of the cheese factor involved. thanks for the heads up on the auction. it was over by the time i saw the link tho. i'm in no real hurry, it's just something i keep an eye out for if i'm at a record shop or whatever. eventually it will be part of my collection.

would that be better or worse than being a man and buying it?

i want to apologize for never following through. i had every intention of giving it a go, but then stuff happened, i got busy, and to be completely honest i haven't had much interest in retro gaming mags lately. i'm sure in the future i'll get back into it, but i'm just not feeling it currently. thanks and congrats to all the people that have stepped up and helped out. all of you are contributing and making this website more complete.

Mortal Kombat, by a wide margin. MK: Annihilation was complete garbage tho. i actually was a big fan of the Double Dragon movie when i was a kid. i'm sure it's terrible by today's standards. i actually have it downloaded and sitting on my PC, but i've been too scared to watch it and ruin my good memories of it. saw the first two Resident Evil movies and they were both perfectly acceptable. the Street Fighter movie was another that i really enjoyed. It is a complete farce of the game series, but it totally works for me. as direct-to-video movies, there was a live action Tekken movie in like 2010 that i didn't see on the list, but it was better than i expected. the Super Mario Bros. movie is complete shit, and if anybody tries to defend that utter filth, then i can't be held accountable for my actions.

i've actually beaten maybe 10% of the games i own. sometimes it's due to challenge, sometimes because of lack of free time, but usually it's just that i get invested in something else instead. i actually had to force myself to go back and beat the Wii Zelda games (this is my favorite video game franchise of all time, and i actually enjoyed the games!) because i had never finished them back when i picked them up. my Skyward Sword save file was last played in November 2011 (THAT'S WHEN THE GAME RELEASED!) but i had only played thru about 30% of the game. i started over and finished it within a month earlier this year. but to actually answer the question, undoubtedly it is Diablo 2. i mean, technically i beat the game on multiple difficulty levels, but i never maxed out my character and i never beat it on the hardest challenge level. this is my singular favorite game of all time. i used to have what i called "Diablo 2sday" where, every Tuesday, i would get off work and start playing D2. and drinking Captain and Cokes. and play until i was hammered drunk and couldn't even focus on the screen. and i've got quite an alcohol tolerance, so this would be like 8-10 hours. EVERY WEEK. the kicker is that i didn't play online, so i did everything myself. and i explored every part of the map. every time i played. finally lost interest once D3 came out, and was vastly inferior. now that i'm thinking about it, it's been over a year and a half since my last session. maybe next week....

this is probably my favorite non-game gaming item. i'm not sure why, but i just think it's freaking awesome. it's a foam banana (shown here next to a Donkey Kong amiibo for size). it was some sort of promotional item for Donkey Kong 64. a member on a different message board i'm a part of was wondering what it was worth, and when i saw it, i knew i had to own it. i keep it always on display along with my Wii/Wii-U games. since the topic specifically says "video game-related item that is not an actual video game" i have to show these off too. video game BOARD GAMES! i got the Zelda one at a garage sale when i was a kid. the box is pretty beat up, but all the pieces are there, so i'm happy. the DK one i grabbed when a dude posted on a facebook garage sale site, showing a stack of games. he didn't respond, so i basically harassed him until he finally got a hold of me and we worked out a deal. i saw the Mario one at a video game store, but they wouldn't sell it. i finally found it on eBay about a year ago and got a hell of a deal on it. for those curious, the Zelda one is quite a bit of simplistic fun. the DK one has a plastic donkey kong that dispenses barrels, which is pretty neat, but the gameplay is fairly boring. the Mario one is the least fun of the three, although it is ok. i've been keeping my eye out for a vinyl copy of Buckner & Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever" album, but one at a good cost has thus far eluded me....

"well the jerk store called.....and they're running out of YOU!" OK, so maybe this is the worst one ever, but it's the first to pop into my head, so now you are subjected to it.

it was, in fact, simply titled "NBA Jam". although "NBA Jam: Heroin in Your Veins Edition" would be pretty legit. but speaking of NBA Hangtime, man, that game was the shit. my friends and i all made our own custom characters, and the 4 of us would take turns to make it all the way through a perfect season. this would be like a week-long endeavor, since if/when we lost a game we'd have to reset and play that game again until we won. i don't think we ever made it because the n64 memory cards always seemed to be unreadable at some point and you'd have to start over.

this version is news to me also. i recently picked up a hacked NBA Jam for the SNES that includes Jordan, Shaq, and Magic Johnson, and complete 1992-1993 (or is it 93-94?) rosters. it's pretty awesome.

so i've got Photoshop and a basic knowledge of its usage, but not much in the finer details of it. give me some tips on what you're looking for. i'll give an issue a shot, and go from there.

2-player co-op is amazing. but, as Schloss said, the way you have to keep starting stages from the beginning when one person dies is freaking brutal. in one-player, this game is pretty damn tough. in two-player, it has to be pretty much impossible. SO unforgiving.