twiztor

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.

my favorite joke to tell: two guys are golfing. They're out to play a full 18 holes, but the group in front of them (2 females) are slowing down the whole process. these guys put up with it for a bit, and finally decide that one of them should go ask the ladies if they can play through, rather than be held back the entire day. so the lucky guy walks in the direction of the women, gets about halfway there, stops, and turns around. he gets back, and the other guy asks what happened. the first guy says that he couldn't go up there. one of the ladies was his wife, and the other, his girlfriend. the second guy will have to go talk to them. so the second guy walks towards them, gets about halfway there, stops, and also turns around. the first guy asks what happened now. the second guy says "Same fucking problem."

playing Legend of Zelda. i remember being blown away that my dad had found the entrance to level 5 after it felt like we had burned every bush and bombed every rock possible. you see, my dad wasn't a gamer really (he did love some Space Invaders tho!) so for him to discover this secret blew me away. years later i found out that he heard some of his firemen friends discussing it and got some tips from them.

i called my mom. she didn't answer. i left her a facebook message.

haven't considered it much, but i wouldn't be surprised to see a cartridge-/chip- based system (think Nintendo DS) but where the games are actually downloaded. You can only DL the game if you have the chip/cartridge inserted into the system and have the DL code in the packaging. Good for one download and linked to your Nintendo ID. i mean, it's not what i would want out of a system, but at this point, Nintendo doesn't really understand the market anymore anyway. i'm a diehard Nintendo fan, but the Wii (despite being the greatest selling system of all time) and especially the Wii-U were pretty much failures in the video game community. Unless the Big N gets some serious third party support i feel like we're headed down the same path.

oh snap! i didn't even consider arcade cabinets. fuck, if we're including those, i absolutely need both of the 4-player cabs, X-Men (1992) and the Simpsons (1991). Plus a skee-ball machine. i mean, shit, if i'm building an actual arcade somewhere, Area 51 is a must. damn you all for making me go down this rabbit hole. Now i just want to play Lucky & Wild again, it's been like 15 years.

that's not weird at all. i hope you can find a way to cope.

firstly, i disagree with the term "holy grail". in the biblical sense, there is only one "holy grail". to use it as 'this is which mass-produced game i want more than any other' is a far cry from it's meaning. that said, i am aware of its general-term use in the collecting community. just wanted to state my displeasure of the term. semantics aside, the game i most wish i had that i'll likely never own is Clayfighter: Sculptor's Cut for the n64. it goes for around $500 right now, which is completely out of my price range. for those unfamiliar, "Sculptor's Cut" is a variant/reprint/limited edition of Clayfighter 63 1/3. It was mainly available as a rental-only from Blockbuster. It features the same gameplay but adds (i think) 4 characters unavailable in the original release. I remember seeing this advertised in some magazine of the time (likely Nintendo Power) and thought it was awesome and i needed it. obviously, that never happened....