Count_Zero

So, I’m continuing on with the Nintendo Power Recaps with issue #46, for March of 1993. I’m also posting this issue of my recap on GiantBomb.com. Hello to you all! Anyway, this issue’s cover game is Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Loose. All things considered, the cover art for this issue is a little better then some of their earlier cover art for licensed properties (as opposed to licensed photographs). Our letters column actually has stuff that’s worth mentioning this time. We have a letter asking about a code to play as the bosses in Street Fighter II (code? No. hack using a Game Genie or Pro Action Replay that they can’t talk about? Yes!) There’s also a letter about the trading cards that they have at the back of each issue that I haven’t been talking about (because it doesn’t really matter), and a letter about how you can get a job as a game counselor ? live in Seattle, be over 16, have great skills at video games, and have better skills at communicating what you’re doing. The Nintendo Power editors also give a little shout-out to a Canadian video game TV show called ?Video and Arcade Top 10?. On the one hand, I’m tempted to hunt down some video of this out of historical curiosity. On the other hand, being that this is the early 90s, there are likely to be some crimes against good taste on display. Starfox Guide I cannot, for the life of me, understand why Tiny Toons is on the cover and not this. Starfox is the first game to take advantage of new technology for the SNES, it’s first party, and for the time it looked awesome. For modern audiences it probably looks pretty crappy, but you win some and you lose some. We get a run down of the interface, and the two gameplay modes, as well as a look at our characters and their ship. While this game is an on-rails shooter, you have a decent range of motion on the track ? a 3×3 screen square in which you can move. Mind you, the Arwing takes up a lot of space on screen, so that’s not as dramatic as it might be on modern console. We also get a run down of some of the stages you’ll go through, and we get an isometric map of the first stage, which is rather nice. Apparently next issue there will be more maps of later stages in the game. Super Strike Eagle Guide Micropose’s PC combat flight sim has come to the SNES, where they probably still had to heavily simplify the controls. We get a look at the four perspectives ? cockpit view for dogfighting, an odd above-the-plane view for bombing runs, satellite view for when you’re going from point A to Point B, and a semi-isometric view for landing and takeoff. We also get a run down of the interface for each of these perspectives, as the interface changes between them Super Conflict Guide This is a hex-based modern military strategy game from Vic Tokai, with a Gulf War style setup. However, while the scenario’s vary, the objective of each mission is the same ? capture the enemy’s flag, before he captures yours. While I like strategy games, you can only play Stratego so many times. Anyway, we get notes on the effects of different types of terrain, and different types of vehicles. Wayne’s World Guide Licensed game, based on the film, developed by Radical Entertainment, and published by THQ. This is, essentially, a platformer, with Wayne attacking enemies by playing guitar chords at them, and with Wayne having a digitized head of Michael Meyers on his shoulders. Anyway, we get detailed maps of the first stage, and some notes on later stages. We also get some really dorky fake dialog between Wayne and Garth to pad out the article. Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Breaks Loose Guide And here’s our featured ?review?. We have notes on power-ups, notes on bonus stages, as well as maps for every stage in the game. Not a bad preview, in my opinion. Nester’s Adventures This issue, Nester is playing Wing Commander, leaves his wingman and ends up a POW. To be frank, Nester’s comics have just kept going downhill after Howard left. King Arthur’s World Guide This looks like some sort of side-scrolling strategy game. It’s like Lemmings meets Worms. We get notes for the training levels and maps of 4 of the other levels in the game. Starfox Comic Fox and his team steal the fighters while spouting lame one-liners and making terrible puns nearly non-stop. Adventure Island II Guide This is the second outing of Master Higgins on the Game Boy. Like the sequels to Adventure Island, this game takes a multiple path route, like Super Mario Bros. 3. Master Higgins has a few more dinosaur friends in this outing, and he can go back to past levels and grind for useful items. We don’t have maps for levels here, but we have basic notes for each area in the game. Milon’s Secret Castle Guide This is the Game Boy version of the NES game that ended up on the Angry Video Game Nerd’s show. That’s not a good pedigree by any stretch of the imagination. We get gameplay notes and not much more. Krusty’s Funhouse Guide We get some general tips to progressing in this reverse Lemmings clone. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back Guide We get a look at this port of the NES ?Empire Strikes Back? game. They don’t go into too much detail, but they already did a very in depth guide for the NES version earlier, so in theory you could hunt down that back issue ? if you weren’t new to the magazine. In all seriousness, it wouldn’t hurt to say, ?This game is similar to the NES version, but it’s portable? and then wrap up the guide with ?See issue $issuenumber? to wrap it up. Alien3 Guide They have not forgotten the NES with this sort-of Metroid clone, only scaled down from the 16-bit versions. We get maps of the first 4 stages, with notes on where all the prisoners are and what order in which to rescue them, as well as strategies for the first boss fight. Dragon Warrior IV Guide This game has been re-released for the DS with the subtitle, Chapters of the Chosen. We get notes for the first 5 chapters. We don’t particularly get a lot of stat information, related to the characters weapons and abilities, but we do get a few useful pieces of information, such as learning that when you get 8 slimes on screen after they call for reinforcements, they form a King Slime, which grants more XP and cash, as well as useful information about times of day. As with prior issues of Nintendo Power related to the Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest series, they eschew the Akira Toriyama art from the Japanese games in favor of art more in the style of Frank Frazetta. Mickey’s Safari in Letterland Guide An edutainment platformer. Mickey must collect form words. Widget Guide A two page little guide for the game based on the TV series. It’s a relatively short game, only 5 stages long, and we get notes on each stage, as well as information on the various forms Widget can switch between to get past various puzzles. Publisher Profile ? Capcom So, Nintendo Power’s staff would like to take a moment and tell you how awesome Capcom is. How awesome are they? So awesome. The article focuses mostly on Capcom USA, and only covers games that were released on Nintendo systems and arcades, so no games that got microcomputer releases are mentioned. They also give brief profiles on the Street Fighter, Mega Man, Final Fight and Disney games. The Nester Awards So, another year, another set of Nester Awards. I’ll post the pages and then give my picks among the nominees. Graphics and Sound SNES: Legend of Zelda ? A Link to the Past ? First Party Games tend to do well. Game Boy: Super Mario Land II ? See the NES Pick. NES: Mega Man IV ? Around this time, the Mega Man games were pretty popular, and popularity tends to carry votes over little played-but-good games. [*]Theme and Fun SNES: Street Fighter II ? The game ultimately brought a whole genre into popularity, which makes it more likely that the game will do well on the poll. Game Boy: Kirby’s Dream Land ? Kirby is still one of Nintendo’s most popular characters. NES: Mega Man IV ? See my earlier remarks about the blue Bomber [*]Challenge SNES: Super Smash TV ? While Zelda is nominated, I think Smash TV is more challenging than Zelda, due to the fact it’s an arcade port. Game Boy: Double Dragon ? I have to admit that I’m just guessing here. NES: Prince of Persia ? For those who haven’t played the original Prince of Persia, this Prince of Persia game had a time limit for the whole game, which upped the challenge. [*]Play Control SNES: Contra III ? This was a tough one, and I found myself split between Contra and Street Fighter. However, I feel that the control for the Street Ffighter games was more refined in later installments. Game Boy: Kirby’s Dream Land ? Part of the reason why the Kirby series lasted so long was because of its good control. NES: Mega Man IV: The Mega Man games were always well known for their very precise control, as opposed to, say, Mario’s floaty jumps and skidding stops. [*]Best Hero: Link, though I’m shocked Ryu or Ken didn’t make the list ? and I suspect he would have won, were they nominated, due to them being the first characters that everyone learned to play in Street Fighter.[*]Best Villain: M. Bison[*]Most Innovative: Mario Paint, since, as YouTube demonstrates, people are still getting a lot out of this software package.[*]Best Sports Game: I’m going to pass here, as sports games have never really been my thing.[*]Best Overall Game: SNES: Between Legend of Zelda and Street Fighter II, I’m going to say, for now, that Street Fighter II is the stronger contender. Game Boy: Kirby’s Dreamland is the most likely winner here. NES: I’m just going to be an RPG fan and say Dragon Warrior IV, though it probably doesn’t stand a chance. Top 20 Street Fighter II, Super Mario Land II and Tecmo Super Bowl still hold the top spots for the SNES, Game Boy, and NES respectively. Now Playing Of note in the lists of new releases is Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego, published by Hi-Tech, the aptly titled brawler Brawl Brothers published by Jaleco, Culture Brain has the fighter Ultimate Fighter ? in no way related with the MMA promotion. They also are appropriately critical of the Terminator licensed game from Mindscape for the NES. Pac Watch The upcoming titles of note are Battletoads in Battlemaniacs, Railroad Tycoon (which I didn’t know got a console port), Super Bomberman, and a Mad Max inspired action game from Mindscape called Outlander. I wonder if it’s licenced from the series of post-apocalyptic novels? Anyway, from their CES coverage, we get mention of the upcoming Link’s Awakening game and Final Fantasy III. We also get a brief picture of the goombas from the upcoming Mario Bros movie, and if that isn’t a warning, then I don’t know what is. Finally, it’s time for my Quality Control pick of this issue. For those new to my columns, this is where I pick one game among all the games profiled in this issue, and choose to review that game. This is partially to keep them ?honest? by indicating a game that was featured prominently that may not have been as good they portrayed it as being. It’s also meant to hidden gems that might not have gotten the attention that they deserved. For this issue, I’m picking the cover game ? Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Breaks Loose. For those reading this on Giant Bomb, the Quality Control review will be posted as a review. For those reading on my blog, it will be posted as a blog entry, like normal. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: Nintendo Power, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

Purchase this book at Amazon.com So, last week I talked about the documentary about Stephen Hawking, “A Brief History of Time”. This week I have a book review taking an alternative approach to Stephen Hawking’s theories of Black Holes, and how they are wrong. The book in question is The Black Hole War by Leonard Susskind. Essentially, the plot of the non-fiction book is pretty simple. Stephen Hawking comes up with his theories of how Black Holes work, and how nothing can escape them. Well, sort of – Hawking Radiation is emitted by black holes (that’s one of the ways we can find them), but the amount of radiation emitted is not equal to the amount of material that is captured by the black hole. Thus any “information” captured by the black hole (from light to anything else) is lost. That’s a problem, because that violates Thermodynamics. For those unfamiliar with Thermodynamics, I’ll just do a quick rundown of the 3 main Laws. You Can’t Win (you can’t create more energy than you expend) You can’t Lose (you can’t destroy energy) You can’t get out of the game (You can only break even). Leonard observed this, as well as other physicists, including Gerard ‘t Hooft. So, they started to work together to find evidence to show that Hawking’s theory was inaccurate regarding information destruction, and the book describes, essentially, how they went about putting together an alternate theory. To be more specific, the book has two “plot threads”. The first is a more linear traditional narrative of “We worked on this theory, and presented it here, but it was missing this-and-this so we had to work on it more.” In and of itself, that plot thread is interesting, but it’s not the most interesting part of the book. The most interesting part is, basically the infodumps. As Susskind, ‘t Hooft and others work on developing the new theory, Susskind explains the theory and it’s development in more-or-less layman’s terms (where the Layman is someone who has watched a few seasons of “The Universe” on The History Channel and/or watched “Cosmos“). This second plot thread takes up the most of the book, as it takes a lot to explain physics and Quantum Mechanics at a near layman’s level. That’s fine with me – I’m definitely into science, and I don’t mind reading through the complicated theories. That said, if you’re not into reading scientific theories explained in layman’s terms, this really, really isn’t the book for you. This book is written for people who like science and want to be somewhat up-to-date on physics, but don’t have the time or money to take the college classes to, essentially, take you to Susskind’s level. It isn’t a tell all about all the inner politics and drama in the world of physics professors. If you don’t like science and you’re looking for a tell-all, you’re gonna hate this book, so don’t bother picking it up. On the other hand, if you enjoy learning about science – particularly the space sciences, and you want to learn more about how the universe works, you’re gonna love it. Filed under: Books, Reviews Tagged: book review, Books, review, science Source

After a little break to get some schoolwork done, I’m going to carry on with filling one of my gaps in the EGM recaps. This issue is issue #21 for April of 1991. The focus of this issue is on 16-bit systems, from Nintendo, Sega, and NEC. The Editorial column for this issue focuses on Sony and Nintendo’s announcement that they working on an optical drive for the SNES, one we all know never pans out, and ultimately leads to the development of the PlayStation. Letters to the Editor We get letters applauding EGM’s staff’s prior articles on the TurboGrafx-16, as well as a question about how they got their screen shots of Darius Super in a prior issue ? they snuck them at a convention, how else? There are also letters about other magazines running tricks and news stories that they ran first, which they’re flattered about. We also have a letter from a Mr. Marty Kitazawa, President of SNK Home Entertainment, disputing what he says are claims by Sushi-X in a prior issue that the Neo-Geo home console system is doing poorly in Japan and the US, and that the home console version is being discontinued. Kitazawa cites an increase in third-party licensees, as well as their sales expectations (over 100,000 units) as proof that the system is doing well, and he demands an retraction. While he does not get that retraction, EGM’s staff does agree that the system is doing well. However, I would consider expected sales figures of 100,000 for a platform to be rather low. Review Crew As a reminder, our review crew at this point in EGM’s history is Steve Harris, Ed Semrad, Martin Alessi and Sushi-X. Double Dragon 3 (NES, Acclaim): Marion has been kidnapped by the Shadow Warriors (even though she died in the last game, and now Billy and Jimmy must come to the rescue. The crew is generally impressed with the game, particularly the gameplay alterations in this one. Martin gives it a 7, Steve and Ed give it 8s, and Sushi gives it a 9. Overall: 32/40. Star Tropics (NES, Nintendo): This first-party Zelda clone, on the other hand, they’re not too impressed with. Not because of lack of originality… well, okay, because of the lack of originality. Basically, the consensus is that if you’ve beaten everything else then you should give this a try. Steve and Sushi give it 4s, Martin gives it a 5, and Ed gives it a 6. Overall: 19/40. Ikari Warriors 3 (NES, SNK): The Ikari Warriors need to kill lots of guys for world peace. Right. Anyway, the crew finds it just average, not being able to meet the standards set by prior games in the series. Ed and Sushi giving it 5s, and Steve and Martin giving it 4s. Overall: 18/40. Magic Darts (NES, Romstar): It’s a darts game, which apparently adds special techniques to the game. Martin isn’t too impressed with the single player, though he thinks it’s fun in multiplayer and gives it a 5. Everyone else likes the special characters and special techniques and gives it higher scores ? Steve and Sushi gives 6s, and Ed gives a 7. Overall: 24/40. War on Wheels (NES, Jaleco): It’s a roller-derby game, the second one we’ve gotten thus far. The Crew isn’t too impressed, and to be honest, I can’t see roller-derby making for a good game either. Ed and Sushi give the game 5s, and Martin and Steve give it 4s. Overall: 19/40. Klash Ball (NES, Sofel): Another Ultra-Violent Football Of The Future! game. However, this one isn’t executed very well. Ed thinks it’s all new and interesting and gives it a 6. Steve thinks it’s a good idea that would fit better on a 16-bit system and gives it a 5. Sushi gives it a 5 for a similar reason. Martin, on the other hand, says it’s just air hockey with robots and gives it a 3. Overall: 19/40. Totally Rad (NES, Jaleco): This is a platformer which, basically, had the main characters changed from anime-style teens to hip surfer dudes and dudettes (or would it be sk8r bois and grrls). That said, even considering how dumb the English version of the story probably is, the game gets 8s across the board for being fun to play. Overall: 32/40. Shadow Dancer (Genesis, Sega): Here’s the next installment of Sega’s Shinobi series. Unsurprisingly, the game gets 8s across the board for solid graphics and gameplay. Overall: 32/40. Sagaia (Genesis, Taito): Shump in the Darius series. I wonder why it’s not given a proper ?Darius? name. Anyway, the game has 28 levels, which impresses everyone. They’re not impressed with the audio, which leads to Sushi and Steve giving it 7s under Ed and Martin giving the game 8s. To be fair, the original was on the PC Engine CD, so you’re going to have some difficulty beating that game’s sound on a cartridge system. Overall: 30/40. Fatal Labyrinth (Genesis, Sega): This is a roguelike, one that pre-dates the Mysterious Dungeon series of games, and quite possibly might be the first console roguelike. However, the crew is not impressed with it. Steve and Sushi give the game 5s, Martin gives it a 4, and Ed gives it a 6. Overall: 20/40. Valis 3 (Genesis, Renovation): This is a cartridge port of Wolfteam’s 3rd person action platformer (ala Strider). Martin gives it a 7, as he thinks the game lost a lot in the transition. The rest of the crew thinks that for a cartridge port of a disk game, it does a good job and gives it 8s. Overall: 31/40. Flicky (Genesis, Sega): This introduces one of Sonic’s furry friends before Sonic had furry friends. Anyway, it’s a repetitive puzzle game, and it gets average scores because of it ? the average part, not the puzzle game part. Steve, Martin, and Sushi give it 5s, and Ed gives it a 6. Overall: 21/40. R-Type (Game Boy, Irem): It’s R-Type, it’s on the Game Boy, and then the crew likes it. Even Sushi, who gives it a 7. The rest of the crew gives it 8s. Overall: 31/40. Mickey’s Dangerous Chase (Game Boy, Capcom): It’s a platformer with Mickey Mouse. It’s considered average, though there are no particular reasons why, and it gets 6s across the board. Overall: 24/40. Hunt for Red October (Game Boy, Hi-Tech Expressions): This is a submarine shump ultra-loosely based on the movie. Martin gives it a 3 for poor gameplay, and everyone else gives it 5s for the same reasons. I’d give it a 1 for poor use of the license. Overall: 18/40. Mysterium (Game Boy, Asmik): This is something of a mix of Wizardry and Shadowgate. Ed really likes the game because of the variety of things they can do and gives it a 7. Everyone else isn’t as impressed, Martin gives the game a 4 because of the similarities with Wizardry, though he likes it more. Steve and Sushi give it 5s for similar reasons. Overall: 21/40. Blockout (Lynx, Atari): This is like Tetris Sphere, except it’s a small box. The crew likes the original idea, though they’re not to impressed with the execution, and give it 6s across the board. I can understand why, all things considered. I wonder with modern 3D technology if someone could finally pull this game concept off. Overall: 24/40. Gaming Gossip Well, remember, back in the early days of EGM, Q-Mann had his own column. Let’s see what he’s got this time. The SNES is set to launch with two controllers, Pilotwings, and all the cables you’d ever need. You’re right on the controllers, and the cables (sort of), Pilotwings didn’t come out until after the system’s launch. Cinemaware has gone under. Now someone else will have to port those PC games to consoles ? badly. Konami has a Simpsons arcade game coming out. Terminator 2 will put the Terminator up against the ?Kei 1000? – I think you had wax in your ears there, Q-mann. The Atari Panther will include a number pad! Except the Panther doesn’t come out and the Jaguar doesn’t have a number pad either. Features Data East is working on arcade games that use CD-ROM technology! However, they haven’t formally announced any games that use the technology yet. Again, we get an article on the SNES CD-ROM. I swear, you could come up with a drinking for video game magazines of this era. I don’t know what all the rules would be yet, but I do know that one of them is that you have to take a drink whenever someone mentions the SNES CD-ROM. Next Wave So, on the upcoming title list, notable stuff includes SCAT (Special Cybernetic Attack Team), a jetpack shump for the NES that looks like it would be interesting if it had decent 6-direction control. Konami has the helicopter sim Laser Invasion, which I’d more interested in seeing re-made for modern consoles, as a twin stick setup (or Wii-mote and Nunchuck setup) would work better for control. We also get a look at the Lone Ranger game which I’ve already done a Quality Control on in the past. There’s also Raiden Trad for the Genesis. There’s also a screen shot of Sonic the Hedgehog, and a few screen shots of Street Fighter II. Micro Gaming Insert One of the things I don’t miss from older issues of EGM is all the bloody damn inserts. Anyway, this one is for portable gaming systems, and features a look at the Game Gear, which is now getting a US release. We get system specs, information on the average price point for games – $30-40, which is about average for portable games now as well, though adjusted for inflation that’s probably a little higher now then it was then. Anyway, we get a look at the first Mega Man game for the Game Boy. There’s also more info on R-Type, and a look at Pac-Man for the Game Boy. There’s also a buyer’s guide for the Atari Lynx, including system specifications and a list of accessories you can buy for it ? including a car charger. Considering the Lynx’s infamously poor battery life, I’d hate to see what playing the Lynx with it hooked up to my car would do to my car’s battery. We also get a look at various first titles for the Lynx, all published by Atari. The titles include a remake of Ninja Gaiden for the Lynx that looks alright. There’s also the futuristic football game Tournament Cyberball. Getting back to the Game Boy after that insert-within-an-insert, we have a look at the Action-RPG Rolan’s Curse from American Sammy for the Game Boy. FCI also has the puzzle-RPG Ultima: Runes of Virtue. In the Game Boy’s Next Wave section, we have screen shots of Caesar’s Palace (when carrying around separate LCD Video Poker, Slots, and Blackjack games is too much of a hassle), as well as Final Fantasy Legend. We also have a Game Boy specific International Outlook. Of note here is Parodius for the Game Boy, and that’s pretty much it. International Outlook Now here’s our main International Outlook. Asmik has an interesting looking shooter for the Genesis/Mega Drive called Verytex. Toho Japan has the mecha shump Heavy Unit. There’s also a big full-page preview of Ys III: Wanderers from Ys for the PC-Engine CD (later remade as Ys: The Oath in Felghana, which is getting a US release from XSEED). Super Famicom Times Since the SNES hasn’t been released in the US yet (since this issue was published), any coverage of the SNES has to be related to the Import scene. There’s a look at Dragon Quest 5, Goemon (later released as Legend of the Mystical Ninja), a full-page look at Actraiser ? focusing on the action-platforming stages. Behind the Scenes at Bullet-Proof Software This is, basically, a look behind the scenes at the company that brought Tetris out in the US ? and by look behind the scenes, I mean they just talk about how they licensed Tetris. The licensing process of that game is certainly an interesting story, and is very well documented, both in the book Game Over, as well as a documentary done by the BBC that’s currently on YouTube. So, rather than try to sum-up this article, I’ll point you towards the documentary. Arcade Alley We get a nice big look at the Simpsons beat-em-up (which never gets ported to home consoles). Previews We have a look at the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade game for the NES from Taito, with notes on each of the game’s stages. There’s also a look at the redesigned Sega Master System, as well as some of the upcoming titles for the system, like Golden Axe Warrior, a knockoff of Zelda in the Golden Axe universe. There’s also a somewhat extensive look at Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective for the TurboGrafx-CD, and an look at Abrams Battletank for the Genesis (which is different from War in the Gulf in the sense that the scenarios have a NATO vs. Warsaw Pact arrangement in mind). We also get a through strategy guide for Shadow of the Ninja by Natsume for the NES, and tips for beating Dracula in Castlevania III, along with the game’s ending. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: EGM, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

No affiliate link this time, so click on the poster to see it bigger. I love physics. To be more accurate, I love all the space sciences. This ties in to my enjoyment of science fiction series like Star Trek and Star Wars, and from watching documentary series like Nova on Public Broadcasting as a kid. Plus, like most people, I love underdog stories. So, when I learned about Professor Stephen Hawkings, a physicist from the UK who helped to expand our knowledge of how the universe works in spite of the disease that was slowly destroying him – Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. So, when I learned there was a film based on his book “A Brief History of Time”, where he explained the basics of quantum mechanics to a mass audience. I leaped at the chance to watch it. The film, from director Errol Morris (director of the acclaimed documentary “The Thin Blue Line”), takes a split focus, with two “plot threads” (not really plot but, you get the drift) intercut. One half of it is biographical, telling the story of Stephen’s life, up to the present – documenting his struggles with ALS, including the how he got the use of his voice synthizer. The story is told by Stephen’s family, his friends, his colleagues, and by Stephen himself. Before I watched this movie, I essentially had little to no knowledge of Stephen’s history. I figured the process was difficult to overcome, but I didn’t quite understand how difficult it was. The second half of the film relates to the gist of the book where the film takes it’s title. The film, through Stephen and his colleagues, explains some of the important points that are brought up in Stephen’s book, particularly related to Black Holes and to the expansion and contraction of the universe. The film uses computer graphics and a few slow motion photography shots to illustrate some of the points brought up in Hawking’s work (specifically using examples from Hawking’s book). I understood the essential elements about how this worked from reading the book myself, as well as from other science programs and other books about physics, but when I first saw the film, the illustrations really helped to get across the ideas for how black holes worked to me. All of this is accompanied by an excellent score by Philip Glass. As I mentioned in my review for Koyaanisqatsi, Glass’s music works best when it has images to accompany it – on its own it’s kind of monotonous. Here the film has plenty of solid images working for it, and the film really works well with Glass’ musical style. For those unfamiliar with Philip Glass, his music focuses a lot on strings, with what I’d best describe as small repeated riffs. On their own, they’re bland, but with images, they do an excellent job of imparting a mood. I really liked this movie, and I’m giving it my full recommendation. It’s got plenty for fans of science, even if you already know some of the concepts in this anyway. If you’re not a big science fan, this is one of the few places where you can really learn this much biographical information about Prof. Hawking firsthand. Filed under: film, Reviews Tagged: Documentary, film, review, science Source

Get "In A Metal Mood" at Amazon.com So, on several occasions previously, my Dad had mentioned that Pat Boone had recorded an album of metal covers. Well, today I finally got around to hunting down the album in the library, and I gave it a listen. First – The Track List You’ve Got Another Think Comin’ (Judas Priest) Smoke on the Water (Deep Purple) It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Want To Rock ‘n Roll) (AC/DC) Panama (Van Halen) No More Mr. Nice Guy (Alice Cooper) Love Hurts (Nazareth) Enter Sandman (Metallica) Holy Diver (Dio) Paradise City (Guns ‘n Roses) The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix) Crazy Train (Ozzy Osbourne) Stairway to Heaven (Led Zeppelin) This album wasn’t done as straight up metal. Instead, the songs were re-arranged into a sort of combined Big Band & Jazz style. This worked okay for some of the songs, but others it didn’t. Now, I kind of skipped around a bit on the album, when a track didn’t sound that good to me. All that said: What I couldn’t really get into and skipped: Love Hurts, Panama, and Enter Sandman really didn’t do it for me, and No More Mr. Nice Guy was also kind of meh for me (but then again, I’m not that much of an Alice Cooper fan). Some of this is due to the way the vocals worked in the original, compared with how it worked in a big-band form, like with Enter Sandman. I’m not sure how to adapt Metallica to Big Band though, or even if you can. The Thing That Should Not Be might work, but the subject matter would probably be something that Boone wouldn’t have been comfortable with. I’d almost think that going with a different artist would have been better, possibly even doing Aces High by Iron Maiden (as Dickinson’s soaring vocals could fit better with Big Band than James Hatfield’s growl). Fear of the Dark would probably work pretty well too. Part of this was also due to the arrangement – Panama had a really pounding sound to it in the original, which made it a great driving song, which in turn fit with the subject matter of the song, and was why it was the music in the Intro cutscene for Gran Turismo 4. I really think that Dance The Night Away or Jump would have worked better for this album instead of Panama. What I listened to all the way and didn’t quite work: Paradise City didn’t work very well, partly because of Axl’s vocal style. The Big Band style works great for sustained notes, which unfortunately Paradise City doesn’t have a lot of. Instead the song uses a more rapid vocal style that, while it works great in metal and blues, and even in some more recent R&B, just doesn’t work in Big Band at all. Yes, the sustained notes are there, particularly in the chorus, but Boone practically has to engage in scat in order to make the delivery of the lyrics keep up with the music on the verses. Sweet Child of Mine by Guns & Roses would have been a much better choice. Crazy Train had a few little problems, like the ?choo choo? bit by the background vocalists, and some other stuff that I couldn’t put my finger on. Stairway to Heaven was okay, but I wouldn’t have minded if they’d made the album a little longer and found a way to adapt the song’s big middle guitar solo to saxaphone, like they did with the song’s ending guitar solo. What Worked: ?You’ve Got Another Thing Coming? by Judas Priest was an excellent start to the album. Rob Halford’s vocal style works excellently with big band. While I admit I was a little surprised to see Judas Priest on here due to Halford’s sexuality being an open secret, it was a really good pick for the album. ?Smoke on the Water? by Deep Purple, and ?The Wind Cries Mary? by Jimi Hendrix, while I wouldn’t describe those artists as being ?metal?, have absolutely splendid versions on this album. The cover of ?It’s A Long Way To The Top? by AC/DC also turned out very well. However, the stand out track on the album was the cover of ?Holy Diver? by Dio. While RJD’s own contribution to background vocals is unfortunately barely audible over the other female background vocalists, having him in there gives the performance something extra. The inclusion of Psalm 23 at the end of the track, while it wasn’t included in the ?Holy Diver? album, wasn’t that bad either, considering that it’s essentially become the ?Metal Psalm?. It’s definitely one of the best tracks on the album. The Verdict: I realize that I’m taking this album too seriously, but in spite of (or because of) the surrealism of mixing Pat Boone with metal, and my own enjoyment of big band and swing music, I thought this was a pretty decent album. I won’t say that this album will turn metal fans into Pat Boone fans. After his show on TBN (the Trinity Broadcasting Network), was canceled by the network because of Boone doing this project, Boone backpedaled from the album, and was rewarded by getting his show back. Frankly, it’s unfortunate that he felt he had to do that, as in my book, because this album was a definite artistic gamble, but a good one. He tried something new, and did a decent job at it. The only problems I had with this album were related to song selection instead of performance or arrangement ? with the exception of my nitpick about Stairway to Heaven. I would have liked to have listened to a second collection of metal songs by Boone, or even his take on other other genres of music, including, possibly, some older New Wave music. I could see ?She Drives Me Crazy? by the Fine Young Cannibals? fitting in nicely with this format. Hopefully, some other artist with a similar musical style to this album, like Michael Buble, will rise to the challenge of mixing metal with Big Band or Swing and making something amazing out of it. Filed under: music, Reviews Tagged: metal, music, Reviews Source

Get Three Days of the Condor from Amazon.com I enjoy spy thrillers. Marathon Man, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Smiley’s People, Sneakers, Spy Game, etc, have all stuff I’ve enjoyed. I bring up Spy Game, because it was my first exposure to Redford in a spy film, which in turn leads me to this week’s review ? Three Days of the Condor, which features Redford acting alongside Max Von Sydow in a spy thriller set in the US. The plot follows Joseph Turner, code name ?Condor,? an analyst for the CIA. When assassins kill everyone at his station except for him when he’s out getting lunch, he finds himself on the run, and trying to find out why he and his station were targeted. He seeks help from a Kathy Hale, a civilian he comes across while evading pursuit in a sporting goods store. The film is, ultimately, a ’70s spy film in the context of ?The Marathon Man? or the ?Bourne Identity? novel ? the main character gets betrayed, and spends the film on the run. The problem is, for a character who learned everything he knows about tradecraft from books, Turner’s character’s a heck of a lot better than most CIA agents. With Bourne, the main character’s a trained uber-assassin. With Marathon Man, the main character is basically stumbling through the movie and ends up getting caught in traps moderately regularly, which makes sense because he has no spy training. On the other hand, Turner does tricks that Bourne doesn’t even know. To give credit to the film, Turner survives his only fight scene through near luck. As it is, the film’s plot isn’t too convoluted for its running time, the acting performances are all solid in this film (though nothing is really Academy Award worthy), and the problems I had above weren’t anything suspension of disbelief couldn’t handle. There were no elaborate set-piece car chases. No big over-the-top fight scenes. It’s just a grounded, but enjoyable, thriller. If you’re looking for a good suspense thriller, this is certainly an excellent place to turn. Filed under: film, Reviews Tagged: film, review Source

So, for the moment I’ve run out of EGM issues to recap – at least moving towards the present day. There are still some gaps in the backlog that need to be filled, and do intend to fill those once I get the issues. In the meantime though, I’m going to take a moment to look back at the history of EGM, and a look at my recaps. The growth of EGM, to be frank, very much reflects on the development of the gaming industry after the crash. EGM was, originally, basically a bit more of a computer game magazine than a video game magazine. At the time, that was the safest way to go – when the game industry tanked after Magnavox, Atari, Intellivision and others self destructed spectacularly, that’s where gaming went – which is also where the next generation of American game developers also were bred. When Sega and Nintendo (primarily Nintendo) came in with a 100 GP diamond and resurrected the game industry, EGM very rapidly shifted their coverage to reflect the growing popularity of console gaming again. I cannot under-estimate the significance of this. When I went through the Retromags archive and started my Where I Read series for Electronic Gaming Monthly, I did look for an earlier magazine that covered console games, over personal computer games. I couldn’t find one aside from Nintendo’s house magazines. To my knowledge, Electronic Gaming Monthly was the first magazine to re-tool itself to focus on covering the rapidly growing Video Game Industry. GamePro and Die Hard Game Fan both came later. Consequently, EGM found itself in the position to set the tone for video game journalism in the United States – a position they did an excellent job of doing. While GamePro chose to take a more “entertainment” based focus for their coverage, they were in the minority. Other video game magazines emulated the tone that Steve Harris and Sendai Publications took with EGM, in terms of more serious criticism. This doesn’t mean that they were all working at the same standards as EGM – Die Hard Game Fan, for example, borrowed GamePro’s entertainment tone for certain parts of their magazine like giving their reviewers elaborate personae. It helped that EGM wasn’t smacked down heavily for being critical. While Capcom pulled their advertising from EGM over review scores for some of the later iterations of Street Fighter that they unfairly considered to be too low, platform holders – particularly Nintendo, never leveraged their position to get higher review scores for games on their system, or lower scores for games on their competitors. Additionally, EGM, in my opinion helped lay the ground work for some aspects of the modern and retro-gaming scenes. EGM had one of the most extensive import preview columns I’ve seen thus far in magazines from the period. Additionally, EGM gave a lot of coverage to systems outside of the Big Two – particularly the TurboGrafx family of systems, as well as the Atari Lynx and Jaguar, the 3DO, the CD-I, and Keith Apicary’s beloved Neo-Geo. Thanks to the coverage of those systems, among other factors, they got enough of a fan-base to support a broad number of modern collectors. As I conclude my forward progress in my EGM recaps (for now – again, if later issues become available later, I will continue), I’m pleased to say the initial reason I started this series has become moot. I started recapping issues of EGM after the magazine’s death, in an attempt to tell some of its storied history. However as I write this, I am pleased to say that EGM, like Gordon, is alive! So, if you aren’t already subscribed to EGM, and you liked my recaps, please go and to subscribe to them. Steve Harris is back in charge, and some of the old EGM staff is involved as well (including Dan “Shoe” Hsu). For what will replace EGM for my Monday recaps – in the future I’m planning on doing recaps of Die Hard Game Fan. Long time readers will remember that EGM took several pot shots at Game Fan in their letters pages and their editorial pages, and I’m interested in seeing Game Fan’s side of the affair. However, I’m debating on having that wait until after San Diego Comic Con, as I’d like to build a substantial buffer before the convention, so I can focus on covering the con, and then on recharging (and heavily focus on job hunting) once I get back. Filed under: News, Video games, Where I Read Tagged: EGM, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

Get No Country for Old Men from Amazon.com I came in to this movie knowing nothing about Cormac McCarthy. I hadn’t read the book this movie was based on. I hadn’t read The Road, nor had I seen the movie that was adapted from the book. What I did have, however, is knowledge of the Coen Brothers from seeing Fargo and O Brother, Where Art Thou. I can justifiably say that after seeing this movie, I couldn’t see anyone else doing this film. I don’t have this reaction with all films. Sometimes, when watching an film, I can sort of get ideas about how the film might look with another director – how John Carpenter might do the original Friday the 13th instead of Sean S. Cunningham for example. This, though, is a film only the Coen Brothers could do. The film follows three characters, hunter Llewellyn Moss, sheriff Ed Tom Bell, and hitman Anton Chigurh (rhymes with “Sugar”). While hunting in west Texas, Moss comes across a drug deal that turned into a bloodbath. Among the carnage he finds a satchel carrying 2 Million dollars. Chigurh has been hired by the owner of the money to get it back. Finally, Sheriff Bell finds himself following in the wake of blood left by Chigurh’s passage in search of the money. To use a crass analogy, Chigurh is like a somewhat amiable, fleshed out Jason Voorhees. Within the first 5 minutes of the story, he garrotes a police officer with a pair of handcuffs, and then kills a motorist with a captive bolt pistol (used for killing cattle), so he can take the man’s car. Now, Chigurh talks, and is on occasion nice to people – if we didn’t know about the trail of corpses that Chigurh left behind him and his generally being a psychopath, the scenes with Chigurh and the people he comes across who aren’t related to his hunt would seem somewhat pleasant. But because we know Chigurh’s past actions, the scenes become more suspenseful and more sinister. Even with Chigurh isn’t the center of the scene, when he’s in the background or out of focus, the scene becomes darker with his presence. Appropriately, the costume and makeup designers give the character a dark color palette to go with his dark hair, making him a big dark spot in the back of the shot, when he’s in the background, like Death himself. Moss, on the other hand, is almost the exact opposite of the horror movie and chase movie protagonist. He’s competent, intelligent, and pretty prepared. Everything the audience of a slasher movie would shout at the screen, he does and then some. While he isn’t Jason Bourne, he’s as skilled at setting up a safe house and going to ground as many Robert Ludlum protagonists. Consequently, at several points Moss very nearly gets the better of Chigurh and when he doesn’t defeat Anton, he at least provides enough of a setback to him that he can get some breathing room. Finally, there’s Sheriff Bell. Because Bell is traveling in the wake of Chigurh and Moss, he becomes the Greek Chorus of the film. He becomes witness to the brutality left by Chigurh, and voices the audience’s shock and horror at their actions. Yes, I realize that’s the definition of a Greek Chorus, but since they’re not always teaching Greek Tragedy in schools these days, it’s helpful to mention what a Greek Chorus is. This movie is certainly one of the Coen Brothers best films. I’m giving this movie a whole-hearted recommendation. As a note though, to those whose only experience with the Coen Brothers is Oh Brother, Where Art Thou and maybe Raising Arizona – this film is considerably closer to Fargo than those two films. Don’t come into the movie expecting that kind of comedy. Filed under: film, Reviews Tagged: blu-ray, DVD, film, review Source

For this game I played through the first level. The Premise In the future, Earth is torn by a massive global war over limited natural resources. Jake Brain is a mecha pilot for the United Pacific States Marine Corps, and together with the crew of the Mech Carrier Versis, they do battle with the forces of the evil Axis for the safety of Earth. The Good This has some of the best controls for any of the mecha action games I’ve played. Only Metal Storm has better controls, in my opinion. I had no problems pulling off shooting in almost 360 degrees. The shield system seems to work well, though I never got in the hang of using it. The Bad The original version of the game had portraits of the characters during the mini-cutscenes during missions. These were even visible in the game’s coverage in Nintendo Power. Those portraits are absent from the released game, which is unfortunate as they really fleshed out the game’s characters, and helped give the story more depth. The Ugly The game gives the player a limited ammunition supply, and in the first level I couldn’t find any way to replenish my ammunition supply for any of my weapons. While I didn’t run out of ammunition for my weapons, I came pretty close, and I couldn’t find any health power-ups at all. Considering that you have only one life in this game  (though you have 3 continues), that’s a pretty significant problem. Additionally, there’s no password option, so this is a single-play-through game. The Verdict Despite some grievous flaws under “The Ugly”, I still had some fun with this game. I probably wouldn’t necessarily pay $10-30 plus shipping on eBay to get the game. However, if I had a SNES and came across it at Goodwill, or at one of my local retro video game stores, I’d definitely consider picking it up. Similarly, if I had a Wii, I’d consider getting it from Virtual Console. Filed under: Quality Control, Video games Tagged: Nintendo Power, Quality Control, SNES, Video games Source

We’re continuing on with the Nintendo Power recaps with issue #45 for February 1993. Of note in the letters in this issue is one calling for the SNES getting Final Fantasy III, which they say we’ll get it as an adaptation of Final Fantasy V (sort of, we get Final Fantasy VI instead). Cybernator Guide Konami has a new mecha action game, and this is the guide for it. We get a map for the first stage, as well as notes and boss strategies for stages 2, 3, and four. Reading this, and seeing the plot summary – this feels like a Gundam game based on the original series. It’s probably not a Gundam game, but I suspect the plot similarities are deliberate for Japanese audiences. Harley’s Humongous Adventure Guide This is a platformer with a miniature (as in Honey-I-Shrunk-The-Kids) bent. We get maps for stages one through 4, plus a couple of notes for stage 5. Wing Commander Guide Being that this is a fairly complex space sim for a home console, this guide spend most of its time explaining the controls and giving strategies for dog-fighting, over giving mission-specific guides, which is nice. In particular, the game appears to account for micro-gravity to a certain extent. Jeopardy Guide The SNES is getting a new Jeopardy game. We really don’t need a strategy guide for this. The Addams Family: Pugsley’s Scavenger Hunt Guide We get maps of all of levels 1 through 5. This game doesn’t look so hot though, so I’m not too impressed by it. Worst. Nester. Comic. Ever. Nester’s Adventures This issue the game is Sonic Blast Man and there no hints of any kind here. No, seriously – nothing. Aerobiz Guide Koei’s business simulator is getting a guide. The guide gives advice for the first 3 quarters of the business year, as well as general pieces of late-game advice, such as stopping airline service to Iran when war breaks out between Iran and Iraq, and keeping an eye out for new airplanes going on the market. Unsung Heroes of the NES This is not a precursor to the “Real Men of Genius†commercials. Instead this is meant, I guess, to be some sort of “inside baseball†article discussing the promotion of video games, and what can lead to a game’s success, with examples from games that were featured in Nintendo Power but didn’t do well – some of which were even Quality Control picks, like Metal Storm. Starfox Comic There is a new comic for one of the SNES’s biggest titles. In the comic, Fox McCloud is, basically, running a sort of Robin Hood meets Captain Harlock space piracy operation. The art looks pretty good. Game Boy Coverage First up is some coverage of Darkwing Duck. Essentially, this is a port of the NES game for the Game Boy. We get notes for each of the game’s levels. We get notes for the first 3 acts of Spot: The Cool Adventure, but not much more than that. For Alien 3, we don’t get any level specific notes, instead getting some notes on navigating the game’s environments. For Ren & Stimpy there are some notes for the first 3 acts and that’s it. There are also some basic notes for Rampart and The Little Mermaid. Zen: Intergalactic Ninja Guide So, this is sort of like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Ninja Gaiden meets Captain Planet, in that you’re a ninja fighting evil polluters. We get maps of the side-scrolling levels but not the isometric levels. Bomberman II Guide Due to the way the game works, we get strategies for beating enemies (both in single and multi-player) instead of maps and walkthroughs. Tiny Toon Adventures 2 Guide We get maps of the Log Ride, Roller Coaster, and Bumper Cars stages, as well as notes for the Train stage. Eon Man Guide This is a superhero game with a plot involving time travel, and doesn’t involve Booster Gold. We get maps of the first 3 stages. Top 20 Street Fighter II retains the top spot on the SNES, and Super Mario Land retains the top spot on the Game Boy. However, on the NES, the #1 spot has changed again, this time replaced with Tecmo Super Bowl. Now Playing Of note in the also-rans this issue is a port of Dragon’s Lair for the SNES that’s been turned into a platformer. The Game Boy has a port of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, and the NES has Ultima: Warriors of Destiny. Pak Watch The notable upcoming titles this issue include Mechwarrior, Starfox and Shadowrun. My Quality Control pick for this issue is Cybernator. I’m interested in seeing how closely it hews to the Gundam series. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: Nintendo Power, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

This week we come to what will be the last of my EGM recaps, sort of – for September of 1999. I say sort of because there are some back gaps in my archive which I really need to fill, and once I get the issues to fix them, I will. However, as I’m not recapping any issues of EGM’s current run (the one that they’re currently publishing both online and in print), I won’t be recapping any issues chronologically after this one. Unless some get put up on Retromags. Have I confused you enough yet? Good. It’s appropriate then that this issue’s cover story is the launch of the Sega Dreamcast, which is somewhat widely accepted as the last console to be considered “retroâ€. Now, eventually I suspect the retro game community to accept the GameCube and Xbox as being retro systems, but for now, the Dreamcast is the last retro console. Considering that this is the first console launch of the “next†generation, the EGM staff is understandably pumped. Letters to the Editor We get a couple letters about prior articles on the gender gap among gamers. One writer feels that rather than having games that are “tailored†to girls, more girls should just play games. We also get a letter singing the praises of Visual Novels. This reminds me to see if there’s an official English version of Fate/Stay Night, as I’ve heard good things about that. Apparently there isn’t. Press Start Our first story of the issue is that Square is working on a all-CGI movie – Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I thought it was a decent movie, but it bombed enough at the box office to kill Square’s theatrical feature division, at least until they started the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII project and they resurrected it for Final Fantasy: Advent Children. Additionally, the first commercially available PS1 emulator, Bleem! was released. The software tried to get around copyright infringement problems by requiring you to own the physical disk to play the games. The problem is that the software still had to infringe on the PlayStation’s BIOS, which meant they still got sued. In other news, Buckner and Garcia re-recorded their hit, Pac-Man Fever, as CBS wouldn’t re-release the original to cash in on the retro revival. Being that their web page is actually still live (as opposed to many other web pages that are featured in this magazine), I’ll send you there to pick up the album. Though if you do want to give me a kick-back, in some form other than the PayPal link to the side of the page, you can go to Amazon.com to get it. There’s also an interview with founder and CEO of Crave, Nima Taghavi, CEO of Crave Entertainment. For Quartermann’s rumors of the month, Dreamcast versions of Driver and Soul Reaver are looking more credible. While I’m not seeing a Dreamcast version of Driver in my research, I am seeing a Dreamcast version of Soul Reaver. There’s also a rumor that the PlayStation 2 is going to be the center of Sony’s media-center hub strategy. Well, yes and no. This concept is Sony’s intent when they designed the system, but they abandoned the concept on that system, and later moved it to the PS3 where, in my opinion, it worked considerably better than the on the PS2, because of how it handled music, Blu-Ray films, streaming video, and photographs. Previews On the Dreamcast, Midway is working on NBA Showtime: NBA on NBC. Essentially this is a “next gen†(for the time) version of NBA Jam. Activision is also bringing their sequel to Vigilante 8 (appropriately sub-titled “Second Offenseâ€) out for the system – the prior installment only came out on the PlayStation, PC and N64 – not the Saturn. The Dreamcast is also getting a port of Street Fighter Alpha 3 and another of King of Fighters ’99, which unfortunately runs into some problems with the controller design. Though, the Dreamcast version of KoF ’99 includes connectivity with the Neo-Geo Pocket Color if you’ve got King of Fighters R-2 for some kind of fighter builder mode. On the N64 we have Pokemon Snap, an on rails “shooter†in with a camera instead of a gun. There’s the more lighthearted golf game Mario Golf. There’s also WCW Mayhem, possibly one of the last WCW games to come out, as we’re coming to the end of that promotion’s life. We also get a look at the N64 version of Rainbow Six. I prefer the PC version myself, if only because of the improved precision you get when planning missions. While the PC version had some path-finding problems, which EGM staff hopes is fixed on the console version, I found that with proper placement of troops I didn’t run into problems with path-finding. We also get a look at the N64 version of Starcraft. While they spend much of the preview talking about the removal of online multiplayer, replacing it with split-screen, my main concern is with the cutscenes from the original games. I know the N64 doesn’t have online, so you don’t have to tell me that they took it out. However, the original game had a lot of character, which was really born out by the cutscenes. When Kerrigan was revealed as the Queen of Blades in the Brood War expansion, we, as the players, actually gave a crap. The fact that her voice actress did a really good job at making her look like a scarily evil character helped. Anyway, the N64 also has Hot Wheels Turbo Racing, which doesn’t look so hot. On the PlayStation we get a look at Final Fantasy VIII, which basically combines the summoning and materia system from the last game into the Guardian Force system. How well that works varies depending on the player. Naughty Dog is also working on a cart racer for the Crash Bandicoot series. There’s also a look at Suikoden II from Konami, which I’ve heard decent things about, though the port was apparently somewhat unfinished and still a little buggy. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been released from the PSN store yet. Psygnosis is working on Wipeout 3. Spyro the Dragon is also getting a decent sequel. Perhaps more importantly, we’re finally getting some really good skateboarding games for the PS1. By really good, I mean Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater and Thrasher: Skate and Destroy. Hopefully, if I manage to get a few more issues of EGM after this one, I’ll get to see John Davidson stop complaining about Extreme Sports games. Speaking of good games, EA is publishing (with Dreamworks Interactive), the first Medal of Honor game, which in turn starts a long string of World War II shooters from various developers that continues to this day. Westwood Studios RTS Dune 2000 gets to be the latest real-time strategy game to be ported to the PlayStation. While, frankly, RTS games don’t work well on consoles, in theory a RTS game could work better on a console that has a dual-stick control system. Activision is putting out a fighting game with the Wu-Tang Clan license, using the Thrill Kill engine. While I wouldn’t mind this being decent (sort of an ahead of its time “Def Jam: Fight for New Yorkâ€) with the engine it’s using, I can’t imagine it succeeding. Anyway, the PS1 is also getting a port of You Don’t Know Jack, which should work well – except for questions that require typing, like Gibberish Questions. Now, what it doesn’t say is who the host is. I’m going to guess it’s Cookie, since he’s the iconic You Don’t Know Jack host, but I could be wrong. We also get a look at Metal Gear Solid: Integral, an expanded version of MGS. While this version of the game itself is not released in the US, we do get the added content in the form of the VR Missions add-on pack. Also of note is a brief glimpse at Vagrant Story, the latest game from the team at Square that did Final Fantasy Tactics, and which we still haven’t gotten as PS1 Originals on PSN, even though Japan and Europe have already gotten it. Come on Square. We’re waiting. At arcades we have Tekken Tag Tournament, which becomes the first Tekken game to come out on the PS2. There isn’t anything of interest coming out for the Game Boy. Features First up is EGM’s look at the Dreamcast’s launch. By the time this issue’s come out, the Dreamcast would be out, which leads to the question of what to get with the system. We get another rundown of the system’s hardware. As an aside, if you come across one of these and want to go online with your broadband connection, there’s an add-on unit you’ll need to get – the Dreamcast Broadband adapter, which will run you in excess of $100, and since the connector on the Dreamcast is proprietary, there isn’t particularly anything you can do about it. Also, the Dreamcast has region protections, so if you want to play Japanese Dreamcast games, you’ll need to get a Japanese Dreamcast – or get a boot disk. Anyway, the five launch games they’re recommending you pick up are Soul Calibur, Sonic Adventure, Ready 2 Rumble Boxing, NFL 2K, and House of the Dead 2. Also of note among other launch titles is Marvel Vs. Capcom. We also get a look at the Dreamcast’s online functionality – the first console to ship out of the gate with online support, and the best online support for any console until we got Xbox Live on the original Xbox. We also get brief impressions from the crew for each of the launch titles – full reviews will be in EGM’s next issue (which I don’t have), so this is what we’ve got for now. I really like this article – it takes a very conversational tone, like they guys sat down a table, plunked a tape recorder down in the middle, and discussed. The only way this article would be better would be if it was in something like the modern EGM, were we have the staff of EGM sitting around a table, talking with video cameras on them, and the guys having the time to really discuss each game. Maybe even doing it as a podcast, spending 2 hours or so on the whole lineup. They really like Soul Calibur and Sonic Adventure (not surprising – Sonic Adventure is considered to be one of the last great Sonic games). They’re a bit more split on Ready to Rumble boxing. They also kind of like House of the Dead 2, though they’re disappointed with the lack of a first-party light gun. They also really like Power Stone and Marvel vs. Capcom. Review Crew Our crew for this issue is Crispin Boyer, Che Chou, John Davison, Dean Hager, Dan “Shoe†Hsu, Chris Johnson, and Shawn Smith. NFL Blitz 2000 (N64, Midway): The latest installment in the series has some slowdown problems, particularly with four-player modes and when there are a lot of players close together, but otherwise it’s okay. Shoe gives it an 8.5, Chris gives an 8, and Dean & Shawn give 7.5s. Overall: 31.5/40 Command and Conquer (N64, Nintendo): Shawn and John like this port (which looks like it’s been re-built from the ground up), with John liking the new AI, while Shaw likes the new 3D graphics over the earlier versions sprite-based graphics, and both give it 8.5s. Crispin gives it a 7 for similar reasons. Shoe is a little less impressed with what the game has lost in the port (save slots, cutscenes, and some control stuff), and gives it a 6.5. Overall: 30.5/40. Duke Nukem: Zero Hour (N64, GT Interactive): Duke Nukem is now officially no longer relevant. The game is panned for it’s unchanged, banal gross-out humor (I’m not gonna call it “frat-boy†because it’s insulting to frat-boys). However, perhaps even worse, from a gameplay standpoint – there are no checkpoints in any of the levels. None at all. If the levels were short this wouldn’t be too bad, but they’re not short – they’re huge! Shawn gives the game a 6.5, Crispin gives a 5.5, John gives a 5, and Chris gives it a 3. Overall: 20/40. Mario Golf (N64, Nintendo): This is a fun little arcade style golf game (which we actually saw previewed earlier). The only complaints I’m really seeing here is that you can only play 18-hole courses – you can’t play just the front or back nine of a course, which is a point I can see. Che and Shoe give the game 7.5s, while Crispin gives it an 8.5 and Dean gives it a 9. Overall: 32.5/40. Monster Truck Madness 64 (N64, Rockstar): You read this right – this is from the publisher of the Grand Theft Auto series. They just hadn’t hit it big yet. John doesn’t see the appeal of Monster Truck racing, seeing it only as an American thing. Frankly, the rest of the crew doesn’t see the appeal either, and they all have problems with the game’s controls. John and Shoe give the game 5s, Dean gives it a 4.5, and Chris gives it a 6.5. Overall: 21/40. Pokemon Snap (N64, Nintendo): The crew for this game finds it fun for people who aren’t too familiar with Pokemon and fans of the series alike, as well as finding it a novel concept. Come to think about it, only Endless Ocean and Africa come close in terms of concept, with the difference being that the latter two games innovate on the formula by being free roaming. Che & Crispin give it 8s, and Chris & Shawn give it 8.5s. Overall: 33/40 and it receives the Editor’s Choice Silver Award. The Next Tetris (N64, Nintendo): It’s Tetris with the option for four-player simultaneous play, which is kind of innovative. I wouldn’t mind seeing a modified version of this for XBLA or PSN to be frank. Anyway, the consensus is that this is a solid Tetris game, and gets 7s Shoe & Crispin, and 8s from Chris and Shawn. Overall: 30/40. Tonic Trouble (N64, Ubisoft): This is a sort of 3D performer, ala Rayman. The crew’s kind of split on it. The members of the crew who review it find that it doesn’t bring anything new to the table and considers it kind of dull, but they disagree about whether or not that means that it’s a terrible game – as the game itself is competent. Chris gives it a 7, John and Crispin give it 6.5s, and Dean gives it a 4.5. Overall: 24.5/40. In-Fisherman Bass Hunter 64 (N64, Rockstar): Yeah, again, this is published by Rockstar. We only get one score on this one – a 5, as the game is really dull. Chessmaster 2 (PlayStation, Mindscape): Only one score on this one, but it’s a higher one – a 7.5, as the Chessmaster series has generally been well known for putting out excellent chess games. NFL Blitz 2000 (PlayStation, Midway): This version of the game doesn’t have the slowdown problems the N64 version has. Dean and Chris give the game 8.5s, Shoe gives it an 8, and Shawn gives it a 9. Overall: 34/40 and it receives an Editor’s Choice Silver award. Driver (PlayStation, GT Interactive): This game is really ambitious with its semi-open world gameplay with a 3D perspective (as opposed to the GTA-style top-down perspective), which leads to some slowdown, which is the game’s main problem. Shawn gives the game an 8, while John, Shoe and Dean give the game 8.5s. Overall: 33.5/40 and it receives an Editor’s Choice Silver Award. Evil Zone (PlayStation, Titus): In Japan this game was called Eretzvaju, a fighting game that was structured so that each character’s story mode was like it’s own OVA series, with a plot specific to that character that progressed among the fights, as opposed to most fighting games, were they’re just a string of fights, with occasionally one or two story-specific fights in the sequence. Then Titus got their hands on it and did a horrible localization. I’m not simply paraphrased the review here – I’ve played the English version of the game, and it was a terrible localization. The bad localization is the crew’s main complaint – it leads to some tonal incongruities. The people who played the Japanese version and who like anime recognize it as being just a bad localization, the people without familiarity with anime think it’s meant to be parody – but one executed poorly. Except for Che, who thinks it’s great and gives it a 7. Chris gives it a 5.5 and Dean gives it a 4.5 for the reasons I cited earlier, while John gives it a 4 with the added criticism that he hates the controls. Overall: 21/40. Jade Cocoon (PlayStation, Crave): Basically, this is an attempt to provide an answer to the Pokemon-style monster battling game, though technically Pokemon was meant to be a more kid-friendly version of the Shin Megami Tensei games. The complaints from he crew are that the game is kind of dull and monotonous, with lots of text to read in the story (which is, itself, rather generic). The problem is that unless you’ve got an awesome story like the Megami Tensei games (which leans on the side of the epic), you need to have something like being able to trade and battle your monsters with other players to make up for it. Pokemon is great for this because it’s a portable game. Jade Cocoon is, on the other hand, is a home console game – so unless they have it set up for trading critters between saves, allowing players to bring their memory card to a friend’s house, the trading and battling option is gone. Crispin gives the game a 7, Che gives it a 6.5, Shawn gives a 6, and Chris gives a 5.5. Overall: 25/40. Konami Arcade Classics (PlayStation, Konami): This is another retro arcade game collection, but with Konami games. Being that this has Gyruss, Time Pilot and others. The crew likes this collection, with Crispin and Che giving it 7.5s, and Dean & Shoe give it 7s. Overall: 29/40. NFL Xtreme 2 (PlayStation, 989 Sports): The game uses a capital X in place of an “Exâ€. Never a good sign. Indeed, this game is a piece of crap. AI for receivers is terrible – when they reach the end of their pass route they stop dead. Animations in general are poor, and in general the game puts being “edgy†and “extreme†over being a good game – a problem that would saddle Acclaim’s BMX XXX later. Crispin gives it a 3, Shoe gives it a 3.5, Shawn gives it a 2.5, and Dean gives it 4. Overall: 13/40. Rising Zan (PlayStation, Agetec): This is a kind of odd game with a ninja cowboy (as opposed to the usual Samurai cowboy). It’s kind of cliched, but it’s done in enough of an over-the-top (and probably poorly localized) style that it grows on the crew. John and Che give it 7s, Shoe gives it a 7.5, and Chris gives it an 8. Overall: 29.5/40. Sled Storm (PlayStation, EA): This is a downhill snowmobile racing game – which is pretty environmentally unfriendly, come to think about it. Anyway, the crew likes this game – even John, who has previously complained about how horrible Extreme Sports games are and how they all need to die. John, Dean and Shawn give it 9s, while Che gives it an 8. Overall: 35/40 and it receives Game of the Month and the Editor’s Choice Silver Award. Soul of the Samurai (PlayStation, Konami): Samurai dueling game, and nowhere near as good as Bushido Blade, due to graphics, gameplay style, and lack of depth. Chris and Shawn give it 4.5s, and John and Che give it 6.5s. Overall: 22/40. Tarzan (PlayStation, SCEA): A tie-in to the Disney film, and like most movie licensed games go, a generally mediocre game due to sluggish controls and generic gameplay. Shawn and Che give it 6.5s, while Chris and John give it 5.5s. Overall: 24/40. Tiny Tank (PlayStation, SCEA): This is actually a re-review. The last time they reviewed it after they’d gotten a finished version of the game, but prior to release. Well, the publisher pulled the game after EGM had sent the issue to bed, but before the release date. Well, now the game has been re-worked and was sent out for review again. This brings us to now. The game didn’t do well before, and it’s still not doing well now. The game’s character – in terms of the title character’s personality, has been toned down. Additionally, the game has problems with slowdown throughout the length of the game. Ultimately, I think this quote from Shawn says it best – “Tiny Tank should have been re-built from the ground up – not just tweaked.†Shawn gives it a 4.5, Shoe gives it a 3.5, Dean gives a 5.5, and John gives a 6.5. Overall: 20/40. Now, for the Game Boy reviews after this, we only get one score per game. Conker’s Pocket Tales (Game Boy, Rare): Now, we haven’t gotten Conker’s Bad Fur day yet, so this is still cute-and-cuddly kid’s mascot game Conker. The game is considered a good kid’s adventure game and is given a 7.5. I’m wondering what parents are going to think when Bad Fur Day comes out. Looney Tunes (Game Boy, Sunsoft): While prior Sunsoft Looney Tunes games have been fun (as shown by prior Quality Control picks), the quality has apparently slipped, with this game getting a 4.5. Motocross Maniacs 2 (Game Boy, Konami): Think of this as a 2D Trials HD without the physics. It reviews kind of like what I’d expect for Trials HD as well – a 7.5, due to fun gameplay at first, leading to absurd difficulty. Pac-Man Special Color Edition (Game Boy, Namco): You’d think they’d know how to avoid messing up Pac-Man by now. You’d be wrong. They even have Pac-Man clipping through ghosts. That probably wouldn’t be a problem if you’re normal Pac-Man, but if you’ve got a power pellet and are aiming for some Ghost Munching, that would piss me off to no end. 5.5. Pokemon Pinball (Game Boy, Nintendo): Decent cartridge, and is compatible with the rumble pack. Gets an 8.5. R-Type DX (Game Boy, Nintendo): It looks like the camera angle is too close in this, and apparently the controls are too sluggish. It still gets a 7 though. Spawn (Game Boy, Konami): Games based on this infamous Todd McFarlane series have never been particularly good, and this is no exception. Pathetic game design gets this a 2. Tarzan (Game Boy, Activision): This game comes off better than the PlayStation game from earlier in the issue, getting a 7.5. The Final Word this issue is about the cost of development possibly stifling innovation in games. It’s safe to say that this doesn’t happen, particularly with games like Uncharted, Dead Rising, and Guitar Hero/Rock Band. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: EGM, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

Get "Live Free or Die Hard" from Amazon.com As someone who intends to become a network security professional, I know a little something about hacking. Not how to penetrate people’s systems or anything like that, but I know about security flaws, I know about ways a possible attacker might come at your system, and I know that the visual for these attacks would be pretty boring. After I learned that the premise of Live Free or Die Hard would involve cyber-crime, I developed a lot of reservations about how this film could turn out. However, after much deliberation, I decided to give the film a watch. The movie brings back Detective John McClane of the NYPD. Now formally divorced from his wife and estranged from his daughter, he’s ordered to take a computer hacker from New Jersey to Washington DC for questioning related to an attack on the FBI’s computer system, as well as the deaths of several other hackers. After he arrives at the house of the hacker, Matt Farrell (played by Justin Long), some assassins attempt to kill Farrell, ringing alarm bells for McClaine. As John and Matt make their way down to DC, a series of hacker attacks, masterminded by former NSA hacker Thomas Gabriel (played by Timothy Olyphant), bring the US infrastructure to it’s knees. It’s up to McLane and Farrell to stop Gabriel’s plot before millions of lives are lost. First thing first. The concept of the story isn’t totally off base – the concept for Gabriel’s attacks was covered in an article in Wired magazine that in turn inspired this movie. Additionally, the director does a decent job of not spending time on the intricacies of the attacks, instead focusing on just showing someone typing or working on a computer to show that the attack has begun, and only then cutting to the after effect. While this gives the implication that the time it takes to do the attack is very fast, it’s good visual shorthand. Additionally, while Gabriel is a hacker, the film does take time to distinguish Black Hat hackers from White Hat hackers (security consultants). They don’t spend a lot of time on it – but it’s significantly more time than most other films spend on the concept. Also, while most of the hackers in the film tend to be geeks of the room decorated with figures and geek paraphernalia variety (and one lives with his mother), they’re generally socially comfortable. Even some of the hackers working for Gabriel don’t look too bad. Also, the film has bad guys who use parkour and martial arts who end up getting taken out by McClane, they all get their licks in on McClane first, and he looks appropriately beat up by the end of the film. However, the film is not without some faults. By the end of the film, John McClane has gone beyond the regular “terrorists” and other criminals he’s faced in prior films – having taken out the Joint Strike Fighter and a Helicopter, among other massive pieces of damage he’s wrought. While the way they do it is (with the exception of the sequence with the JSF as an exception) isn’t totally implausible, it’s so far over the top from the stuff he’d done in the 4 earlier films in the series that I could almost say that this film has little to no similarity to the earlier films in the series. As a lesser nitpick, Gabriel as we see him really doesn’t feel like a hacker. What we’re told he can do, and what he’s done in the past meshes with the mindset of a hacker – a real hacker, someone who explores systems to see how they work, and if something doesn’t work right (or is broken) tries to fix it. It’s the mindset held by a hands-on person. However, in the film Gabriel rarely touches a keyboard. He doesn’t fiddle with electronics. The only possible way for him to be more hands off would be for him to be sequestered in some secret lair, petting his cat while giving out instructions to his lieutenants by intercom at the start of the film. I had fun watching this movie. It’s not a stellar film. However, Justin Long’s character is probably one of the better depictions of hackers in cinema, the action sequences are fun, and it’s always nice to see Bruce Willis take on the John McClane role again. I recommend at least giving this film a rental, and certainly outright buying this if your a fan of the Die Hard series. Filed under: film, Reviews Tagged: blu-ray, film, movies, review Source

So, previously, one of my Quality Control picks was one of Capcom’s Disney licensed games for the NES – Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers. This week, we’re going with one of their SNES licensed games, featuring Disney’s biggest mascot, Mickey Mouse. The Premise Emperor Pete has dognapped Pluto, Mickey’s pet Dog. Mickey must progress through several worlds to free Pluto from Pete’s foul clutches. The Good The costume switching mechanic in the game works really well, and they do a good job of setting up reasonable puzzles to take advantage of the changing costumes. The Bad There are some jumping puzzles that require precision and speed above and beyond that in the Mega Man games. The Ugly Some boss fights don’t provide some visual input about whether you’re dealing damage to your enemy. To be specific, with some boss fights you can get multiple hits in on one jump, as your jumping on the boss causes you to bounce up, in turn allowing you to position yourself to come back down on the weak-spot again. However, other bosses become temporarily invincible when hit. Consequently, it’s a little tricky to tell whether you’re making progress on some bosses. A life bar for the bosses would have helped in this respect. The Verdict I liked this game more than I liked Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, and thus far it’d say it’s one of Capcom’s best Disney licensed games. I’d definitely recommend picking this up. Filed under: Quality Control, Video games Tagged: Nintendo Power, Quality Control, SNES, Video games Source

We’re moving on to Nintendo Power’s 6th year, with our cover story for this issue being Mickey’s Magical Quest from Capcom. There’s letters about Mario Paint, but not much of note. Also, from the Table of Contents, we have a significant note – the SNES games have been moved to the front of the magazine, with the NES games being moved to the back. It’s doesn’t seem like much, but it’s a really big shift. The Magical Quest Guide Pete has kidnapped Pluto, and Mickey must save him! We get notes on the special items in the game, as well as an overworld map. We get maps of all 6 as well as strategies for all the bosses. Shanghai II: Dragon’s Eye Guide It’s a Mahjong game. What more do I really need to tell you about this? Sonic Blast Man Guide We get notes on the move list, information for some of the levels, and notes on beating each of the bosses for all 5 levels in the game. Equinox Guide This is the sequel to Solstice. We get maps for some of the areas in the game, and where you need to go in the first 3 areas. Sports Games We get a good long look at Madden for the SNES, and various other sports games. Really, it’s just a dedicated section for sports games on the SNES. Firepower 2000 Guide This is a tank and helicopter shump for the SNES, with some anime cutscenes. We get notes for all the levels and all the bosses. I like the look of this game. This could be a tough issues for me to make a Quality Control pick. Mario vs. Wario Comic New Mario comic. The comic kind of sets up that Mario was kind of unintentionally a dick to Wario when they were kids, and now Wario is seeking revenge. It’s a one-shot comic, and the artist isn’t credited, which is unfortunate. Before there were achivements... Power Players I’ve been ignoring the Power Players pages, because there isn’t of much of interest to me here. However, now Power Players has adjusted their format – rather than just tracking high scores, they’re now assigning challenges which you need to complete. Basically, it’s proto-achivements. Here’s the list of challenges. Incredible Crash Dummies Guide Game Boy game based on the toy line. This is essentially an obstacle course game, and we get maps of the first 3 courses. Battleship Guide This isn’t the standard Battleship game – there are power-ups you can unlock to make your fleet more capable – but your opponents will get power-ups as well. The Humans Guide This is something of a Lemmings variant for the Game Boy. We get some notes on how to properly use the Spear. Mega Man III Guide We get notes on only a couple of the Robot Masters from this. The majority of this article is spent on user submitted potential robot masters. A few have potential, while a lot are kind of corny. This in turn leads to… Mega Man V Guide A new Mega Man game on the NES! So, the Robot Master stages we get mapped, in order, Gravity Man, Wave Man, Stone Man, Charge Man, Star Man, Napalm Man, Gyro Man, Crystal Man, (Fake) Protoman, and notes for Dr. Wily’s Castle. RC Pro-Am II Guide We get notes on some of the special events in the game, and a few track notes. Jetsons: Cogswell’s Caper Guide Cogswell’s up to no good again, and only George Jetson can save the day. Is it just me or is George Jetson way more heroic in video games than he is in the cartoon show? Anyway, we get maps of the first 4 stages. We also get notes for the next 8 stages. Nester’s Adventures Comic We get a shift in art style as Nester is playing Desert Strike. The advice here is to try and pick up 4 POWs before you start shooting, and to head back to base when you’re damaged. The second hint is pretty obvious, but the first is nice to know. Mario Paint Special Being that Mario Paint is more of an app suite than a standard game, we’ve got a special article showing all the awesome things you can do with Mario Paint – or you can just go on YouTube now and look for Mario Paint, to show what you can do. 1992 In Review A new year means the obligatory retrospective. We get a run down of the top 10 games for Nintendo’s 3 systems. They are: SNES: Street Fighter II Legend of Zelda Contra III Super Star Wars Mario Paint Super Mario Kart TMNT IV Out of this World NCAA Basketball. Death Valley Rally Game Boy: Super Mario Land II Mega Man II Bionic Commando Tiny Toon Adventures Gradius Batman: Return of the Joker Track & Field Kirby’s Dream Land Looney Tunes Yoshi NES: Mega Man IV Darkwing Duck Lemmings TMNT III Rampart Star Trek Little Samson Captain America and the Avengers Gargoyle’s Quest II Felix the Cat Preview of the Super FX The SNES is getting Polygonal 3D graphics, and with this we get our first look at Starfox, as well as a detailed look at how the Super FX chip works – though I already went into this on the issue of EGM that had a similar article. Instead, we’ll get to the fun part – making an Papercraft Ar-Wing. I’m just going to post the instructions and all the parts for this one at the bottom of the article. The full Evaluation form How to Be a Game Evaluator This is not about game testing. It’s about basically being in a focus group. We also, finally, get information about how the rating syste m in the magazine works. It’s a nice change to the pretty obscure numbers that we had before. Apparently they have a pretty scientific criteria for deciding how the ratings are handed out. We even get a copy of the evaluation form. Top 20 Here we go. Street Fighter II is still on top on the SNES. Mario 3 is still on top for the NES, but on the Game Boy, Mario has lost the top spot to Kirby. Now Playing I’m just going to stick with the also-rans that caught my attention, which consists of Spectrum Holobyte’s WordTris, the latest game from Alexei Pajitnov. Pak Watch Interplay is releasing this game from a little developer named Blizzard called The Lost Vikings. FCI’s bringing out Ultima VI, and the Game Boy is getting a Zelda game. My Quality Control pick for this issue is going to be The Magical Quest. I feel like giving another Capcom/Disney team-up a try. By the way, imagine if the Capcom/Disney partnership never fell through, or perhaps was restored with the Marvel/Disney games – Capcom vs. Disney. Tron Bonne and her Serv-Bots vs. Magician Mickey & his brooms! Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: Nintendo Power, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

So, after filling a few holes in my recaps of EGM, we now continue forward again with issue 121 for August of 1998. Our cover story is most of the upcoming Resident Evil games for the PlayStation and other systems. Our Editorial column this issue is about the upcoming torrent of Dreamcast titles, as well as wishing John Ricciardi well in his new job of Editor in Chief at Expert Gamer, EGM’s companion strategy magazine. I’ve been somewhat considering doing EGM2/Expert Gamer for my next recap column after I get caught up with EGM, though recapping Die Hard Game Fan is also tempting as well. Also, now amongst EGM’s contributing writers are James “Milkman†Mielke, Tom Ham of Newsweek and the Washington Post (who still writes for the post), and Gary Mollohan. Letters Here we go. Our letter of the month objects to EGM’s staff having reservations about the Dreamcast because Sega’s mismanaged every single console they’d released since they added the Sega CD to the Genesis. The writer feels we should embrace the Dreamcast with open arms and encourage it to succeed. I understand this line of thinking. However, buying a new console is a substantial investment. We have a letter about Square jumping ship to Sega because some guy at EB said so. Press Start E3 has come and gone and with it came many news stories. Nintendo is still working on the Dolphin (later revealed to be the GameCube). No titles have been announced yet but some developers have finally been publicly attached to the console, including Rare and Retro Studios. On a sadder note, between issue #120 and #121, Owen Hart died in a tragic accident during a WWF pay-per-view. As an aside, they misspell Bret’s name (one t at the end, not two). On a lighter note, the Dreamcast is getting House of the Dead 2 and Sega Rally 2. The PlayStation 2 is not getting the PocketStation in the US. Nintendo hyped Pokemon Yellow. Sega’s also making games for the Game Boy (including a version of Sakura Taisen). We also get our first glimpse at Seaman for the Dreamcast. Quartermann’s rumors relate to getting a Dreamcast version of Soul Reaver and Tomb Raider (credible, but unconfirmed), Hasbro considering buying out Acclaim or GT Interactive (quite to the contrary – GT Interactive gets bought out by Infogrames, which in turn buys out Hasbro Interactive). The start of an era Ladies and Gentlemen, the first ad for GameStop – which was a web store before it was a physical store. Previews First up is a preview of Soul Calibur – a game which becomes one of the best (if not flat-out the best) third party game for the Dreamcast. Sega has their own first party football game with NFL 2000, along with the basketball game NBA 2000 (which becomes the start of the 2K series). There’s also a home port of the arcade racing game Hydro Thunder. There’s also the 3rd party brawler Dynamite Cop, from the developer of Die Hard Arcade. The system also gets the 6th game in the Test Drive series. On the N64 we have Perfect Dark, the spiritual sequel to Goldeneye 007. There’s also a look at Donkey Kong 64. Rare has Jet Force Gemini. THQ is bringing out the next Road Rash game (instead of EA, who started the series). Aki is developing WWF Wrestlemania for THQ, and the system is also getting WCW Mayhem, and a port of Starcraft. On the PlayStation, Capcom has another survival horror series, with dinosaurs instead of zombies in Dino Crisis. It’d almost work, except there’s unlimited respawn on the Dinosaurs. I really think that Dino Crisis had some potential to be just as successful as Resident Evil, but the first game mishandled the execution somewhat, and the later games went more towards action than in terms of survival horror. There’s also something of a 2 & ½D Tarzan platformer. Also, EA had NCAA Football 2000. There’s also Tenchu 2, Wild Arms II, Vandal Hearts 2, and the Misadventures of Tron Bonne. The Game Boy is getting the Pokemon Yellow, and the arcades are getting San Francisco Rush 2049. Feature – Everything Resident Evil So, apparently the Resident Evil movie was originally supposed to be written and directed by John Romero – but he was fired because the script stunk. Considering some of Romero’s more recent work, I’m not too surprised. In particular we get a look at Resident Evil 3: Nemesis. The game features a new dodge move for Jill Valentine, as well as unlimited re-spawn on the Zombies, so now you know that when backtracking you’re no longer safe. On the Dreamcast we have Resident Evil: Code Veronica – which follow Claire and Chris Redfield’s investigations into the Umbrella corporation, and includes a modified version of the “Zap†system from Resident Evil 2 (where if you took an item as one character, when you came back through as the other character the item was no longer there), which expands to cosmetic damage and that sort of thing. There’s also a remake of Resident Evil 2 for the Nintendo 64, and a remake of Resident Evil 1 for the Game Boy Color. There’s also an timeline that’s accurate to where series is at the time where the issue is running – but is now dated thanks to Resident Evil Zero, and the plot developments we learn in Resident Evil: Code Veronica and 5. Reviews The people on our rotating roster of the review crew this issue are, Crispin Boyer, Che Chou, John Davison, Dean Hager, Dan “Shoe†Hsu, Chris Johnson, John Ricciardi (spending his last issue on the crew), and Shawn Smith. All Star Tennis ’99 (N64, Ubisoft): Reviewing this one is Dean, Shawn, Crispin and Chris. Dean comments that the controls are a little too picky, and he finds the Bomb Mode (a game mode which has a lit bomb appear on the court where the ball hits) to be a little too goofy, and gives the game a 5. Shawn, Crispin, and Chris give the game 5.5s, with objections to sluggish animation and insanely stupid AI, especially in doubles. Overall: 21.5/40. Air Boardin’ USA (N64, Agetec): Futuristic extreme sports game. Chris and Dean give the game 1.5s, complaining that the level design is horrible, the way it handles checkpoints is terrible. The fact that it uses vertical splitscreen on 4:3 TV sets instead of horizontal in two-player is terrible, and the music is awful. Che and Crispin agree, but give a 2 and a 3.5, respectively. Overall: 8.5/40. Shadowgate 64 (N64, Kemco): This is a sequel to the classic adventure game. Che and Shoe give the game 6.5s, finding the game is a little too slow, and they don’t like the fact that the game only uses text as the hints for solving puzzles. Shawn and John Davison also find the game very slow and very boring, and give the game 4s. Overall: 21/40. Alexi Lalas International Software (PlayStation, Take 2 Interactive): This is a very erratic, choppy, loose soccer game. John Davison and Che give the game 2.5s, and Shoe and Dan give it 4s, with the consensus being that this game isn’t worth your money. Overall: 13/40. Ape Escape (PlayStation, SCEA): This is the first game to really require the Dual-Shock controller, and the game is lauded for how it uses the controller. The only real complaint is with the game’s camera, which is not mapped to the Right Stick. Crispin, Shawn and John Davison give the game 9s, and Che gives it an 8, all for it’s excellent use for the Dual-Shock controller. Overall: 35/40 and it receives Game of the Month and the Editor’s Choice Silver Award. Bugs Bunny: Lost in Time (PlayStation, Infogrames): 3rd person platformer with the Looney Tunes license. Crispin gives it a 5.5 and Dean gives it a 5, due to a terrible camera and touchy controls. John Davison gives the game a 4 for the AI, and Shawn gives the game a 3 for the combination of the AI, the camera, and kind of surprisingly, the fact the game gives you unlimited lives, which, in his words “takes all the challenge awayâ€. Overall: 17.5/40. Chocobo Racing (PlayStation, Square): Cart racing game. John Ricciardi and Chris consider it a solid cart racing game with lots of unlockable characters (though it’s no Mario Kart) and they give it a 7 and 7.5 respectively. Shoe and Dean, on the other hand, don’t like it, with Shoe finding it too cute and saccharine (and kind of boring), while Dean doesn’t like Cart Racers in general, and they give it a 5 and a 4.5 respectively. Overall: 24/40. Echo Night (PlayStation, AgeTec): This is a survival horror game. Dean gives this a 6.5, Che and Shawn give this 6s, saying it has its freaky moments and lots of side quests, though the game itself is pretty short. Chris gives it a 5.5 for similar reasons. Overall: 24/40. The Next Tetris (PlayStation, Hasbro Interactive): We all know Tetris, right? Good. Now, this one has some piece variants, where some pieces can “settleâ€, by breaking apart and allowing bits to fall down to gaps below them. Shoe found this very hard to get used to and gives it a 6.5 (and I’ll mention that this mechanic wasn’t used at the current main Tetris site. The rest of the crew has less reservations, and they also like the ability to swap out the game CD for a music CD while you’re playing for custom soundtracks. Crispin gives it a 7, Che gives it a 8, and Shawn gives it an 8.5. Overall: 30/40. R-Type Delta (PlayStation, AgeTec): I’ve played this game and it’s pretty fun. Che gives it a 9, saying it’s the best R-Type ever. Shoe finds the game addictive but incredibly hard, and gives it an 8.5. Crispin gives it an 8 for similar reasons, adding that the 2.5D graphics in the game are gorgeous. John Davison gives it a 7.5, as he likes the game, though he feels it would work better with analog stick support. Overall: 33/40 and it receives the Editor’s Choice Silver Award. Super Mario Bros. Delux (Game Boy Color, Nintendo): Re-make of Super Mario Bros. Being that it is Super Mario Bros, and you really can’t go wrong with it, John Ricciardi gives it a 9.5, and everyone else gives it 8.5s. Overall: 35/40 and it receives the Editor’s Choice Silver Award. The Smurf’s Nightmare (Game Boy Color, Infogrames): This platformer doesn’t work out so well. The levels are big but with no checkpoints (even Sonic and Mario had that), you can’t run, and you can’t look down. However, the game isn’t hard, it’s just dull. Crispin gives a 5.5, Shawn gives a 4.5, Chris gives a 3, and Dean gives a 4.5. Overall: 17.5/40. And that wraps up this issue. Next week, unless I fill a whole in my archive, will be the last week of my EGM recaps, and that issue will have the launch of the Dreamcast. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: EGM, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

Get "50 Cent: Blood on the Sand" at Amazon.com Awhile back I played and reviewed (somewhere else – I can’t find the precise review) 50 Cent: Bulletproof. The game was the first game featuring rapper 50 Cent. It wasn’t a good game, but it wasn’t absolute crap either. It was just incredibly mediocre. However, it sold incredibly well. So, I wasn’t surprised when the game got a sequel, but I wasn’t particularly expecting quality in any form, so I just ignored the game. However, then I started hearing murmurings from game journalists whose opinions I trust about action shooters. I was hearing things about how this also was not a bad game. To the contrary, the word was that it was actually kind of good. So, I added the game to my GameFly queue, and now I finally got it, and beat it – which means it’s time for me to give my opinion on it. The game’s premise is rather silly. The idea behind the story is that 50 Cent and G Unit perform a rap concert in this unnamed war-torn Middle Eastern country (and by war-torn I mean it’s slightly less peaceful than Somalia). Once the concert is completed, Fifty learns that the promoter doesn’t actually have the money to pay the $10 Million dollar fee Fifty was supposed to be paid for the concert. The promoter manages to talk his way out of getting ventilated by 50 by offering him a priceless diamond encrusted skull instead. Fifty accepts the skull and he and G-Unit head for the airport to get out of the country as soon as possible. Unfortunately for them, the convoy is ambushed, and the skull is stolen. Fifty loads up on guns and he and G-Unit set out in pursuit of the skull. The game is a modern Unreal Engine game – this means that the graphics are going to have a lot of brown. That said, the environments are also very internally consistent – which is good, because, to the game’s credit, the game has almost-but-not-quite the same degree of geographical progression a game like Half Life is lauded for. Let me clarify this a bit – every level connects together in a logical fashion, and were it not for the occasional prerendered cutscene, or the end of level rating of the score, the the entire path of the story could be mapped – in engine – as one continuous unbroken path. That’s actually a good thing, it gives the story a sense of continuity and a sense of place by making the game designers stay consistent. The game itself is a standard cover-based 3rd person shooter, which is fine. However, it changes things up a little by borrowing some mechanics from Bizarre Creation’s shooter “The Club”. As you go through the levels and kill enemies, you earn points. If you kill a series of enemies in quick succession, you build up a combo multiplier. You get additional multipliers for your point total depending on whether you taunt after each kill, if you blow up your enemies, set them on fire, or other methods of killing them. This encourages a play style where you come out of cover, kill a series of enemies (maybe hitting a few with a grenade), before ducking into cover and letting your health recharge. Additionally, Fifty also has melee take down moves, activated by hitting circle near an enemy. This triggers a canned animation, during which Fifty is invulnerable, and the player can hit a timed series of presses of the circle button. Once the animation completes, the target is killed and combat goes on. As you go through the levels, you’re accompanied by one of the members of G-Unit: Tony Yayo, Lloyd Banks, or DJ Whoo Kid. If you choose, you can make your game open for online drop-in-drop-out co-operative play. If you choose not to, the AI for your chosen member of G-Unit is still fine, though not as good as a second player. That said, the game doesn’t give an option for split-screen co-op, and if your co-op partner drops out in the middle of the game (for various reasons), you’re bumped back to the last checkpoint you reached, which leads into my next problem. Specifically, the checkpoints are just a bit too far apart. Two great examples of this are in the later levels of the game. First, in one part of the level, you face a room with two “wings”, one open area to the right, one narrow area to the left, with a pillared “corridor” in the middle, with a machine gun at the end. In order to beat the level, you have to swing to the right, kill the enemies there, take out the machine gunner in the middle, and then cross the center aisle to the left section. During this section, if you kill the machine gunner in the middle before you cross the center aisle, another enemy will pop out of the door behind the machine gun, man the gun and start firing. They’ll keep coming until you clear out the left side and reach the machine gun. After that point, another wave of enemies springs out of the doors to the left and right of the room, and you have to quickly work back and forth to take them down. The problem is that there’s no checkpoint between waves. If you know what you’re doing, and you’ve got a human partner, this is easier. However, otherwise, if you die, you have to start the entire sequence over again. In a similar vein, in the final boss fight of the game, against a helicopter, When you get two hits in on the helicopter, the helicopter will blast the floor your on with rockets, so you have to flee down to the balcony on the next floor down. While going to this balcony, you have to fight through a couple waves of enemies. After getting 2 more hits in on this balcony, you then have to go down one more floor before you can get the last two rocket hits in. Once again, during this trip, you have to fight through more enemies. However, this is all on one checkpoint, so if you die at any point you have to start the entire fight over again. This fight, on it’s own, took me about an hour to complete, with the final run being about 10, 15 minutes. This turned that boss fight into an exercise in frustration. Finally, the game is short. Really short. I beat the game the day I got it from GameFly, in less than 10 hours. Once you’ve beaten the game, you could in theory play through the game repeatedly in an attempt to unlock more concept art, various cheats, and standard definition music videos, I really can’t see any reason to buy this game. Rent, sure, but I don’t see the replay value there – particularly without split-screen co-op. If split-screen co-op was there, I could see the game being enough fun with someone in the same room to make it worth playing a few times repeatedly. However, I can’t see anything more than that – particularly since the game apparently doesn’t have any Trophies on the PS3 version (from what I saw on my Cross Media Bar). That said, I do think the game’s a very good rental, one that could get you an evening’s amusement. Filed under: Reviews, Video games Tagged: PS3, review, Video games Source

Get Road Runner's Death Valley Rally at eBay Now, while I did not beat this game, I did get considerably further than I could with Super Star Wars. The Premise: In a series of levels each designed to be their own Wile E. Coyote & Road Runner Cartoon, you, controlling the Road Runner, dash through the stages trying to reach the finish line of each stage. The Good: The game has an excellent sense of speed to it. Without exaggerating, I can say that this game is just as fast as the Sonic the Hedgehog games are. Additionally, the game is legitimately funny. Each “cartoon” starts off with an opening gag similar to the jokes from the cartoon series, and each “course” ends with a slapstick joke similar to those from the cartoons. The Bad: The Roadrunner’s controls aren’t great. Jumps are really floaty, and his attacks are hard to pull off. Sometimes his turbo-boost is more effective than others are. The Ugly: As you get further in the game, the levels become more and more complicated, to a point that the difficulty in the game becomes less related to evading enemies and more related to finding the exit in time – which is unfortunate because the final boss fight in the game looks incredibly interesting, and I’m disappointed that I couldn’t make it to that fight. Unfortunately, the level for the last stage is so complicated that the map in Nintendo Power wasn’t of any assistance to me at all. The Verdict: This is a pretty fun game, and I’d say that the game could reasonably be considered the SNES’s answer to Sonic. Again, it’s not perfect, but I’d say that it’s worth picking it up, if you come across a copy. Filed under: Quality Control, Video games Tagged: Nintendo Power, Quality Control, SNES, Video games Source

We continue on to the last issue of Nintendo Power for 1992, and the cover game for this issue is Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally. The letters column for this issue has nothing of interest. Batman Returns Guide So, this is more of a brawler than a Ninja Gaiden style action-platformer. Oddly enough, we get maps of the whole game. It’s kind of odd – you really don’t need maps for brawlers. Boss strategies, certainly and maybe specific notes for levels, but not maps. Maps are considerably more useful for platformers. James Bond Jr. Guide You remember this cartoon show? Yeah, me neither. Anyway, it got an action-platformer for the NES with some very expansive levels as well. We get maps for stages one through three, and a couple notes for level 4. We also get an important not that in order to get the proper ending for the game you have to beat it twice. Tecmo Basketball Guide They did football. They did football, they did soccer (or Otherplacian Football), so now it’s time for basketball. We gets notes on the playbook and strategies for the game. I’m gonna note that this is the first basketball game I’ve seen thus far that had a playbook. Caesar’s Palace Guide Well, this one is a gambling game licensed by the casino. However, it doesn’t have the structure of the Casino Kid series. Legend of Zelda – Link to the Past Comic This is the last chapter of comic. No, really, the title is “The Final Battleâ€. Link and Ganondorf throw down. Link and Zelda work together to defeat Ganondorf, with Link taking on defending the Triforce – which unfortunately leads to Link becoming more distant from the Princess, with the two basically breaking up. Super Mario Land 2 Guide We have a guide for Mario’s second outing on the Game Boy, and the introduction of Wario’s arch-nemesis, Wario. We get notes for each of the zones in the game, leading up to the final zone – Wario Castle. Bonk’s Adventure Guide Hudson’s real-we-mean-it-this-time-honest mascot has finally come to the Game Boy, as opposed to keeping the character on the Turbo Duo. We get maps of all 6 rounds in the game. Looney Tunes Guide Sunsoft has a new game for the Game Boy with the license for the characters. We get different characters for different stages, with each playing differently. Daffy Duck goes up against Marvin, Porky Pig has a shump stage where he goes up against the witch (though I only recall Bugs going up against the witch), Tweety naturally goes up against Sylvester, Taz has a sort of bonus stage, and Speedy Gonzales doesn’t go up against any recognizable antagonists that I recall him facing. Anyway, The Road Runner is up against Wile E. Coyote. Finally, Bugs goes up against Elmer Fudd. Super Mario Adventures Comic Mario comes to the rescue and throws down with Bowser. Meanwhile, Luigi and Yoshi set about freeing the other Yoshis. With Mario, Luigi, and the Yoshi’s working together, eventually Mario and Luigi beat the Koopas (and Bowser) save the Princess and thus save the day. Desert Strike: Return to the Gulf Guide The Genesis semi-helicopter sim has gotten ported to the SNES. We get a run down of all the possible co-pilots you can get, as well as the sub-screens, and a map of the first mission of the game. Road Runner’s Death Valley Rally Guide We get a run down of the game’s power-ups and maps for a selection of stages in the game, along with a table showing how many of each kind of flags are in each level of the game. The game looks pretty fun, and I particularly like the single screen shot we get of the final boss fight of the game. Spider-Man & The X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge Guide I’ve played and beat this one before, so I’m not going to play it again. We get maps of the prologue and the first stage for each of the X-Men plus Spider-Man, as well as notes for each character’s second stage, leading up to the final boss rush. Pushover Guide This is an odd little game that plays off the whole “knocking over dominoes in a row†thing, and combines it with Lemmings. Super Scope Showdown This is a little combined preview/guide thing for 3 upcoming games that take advantage of the super-scope – Battle Clash, Bazooka Blitzkrieg, and X-Zone (which was actually reviewed in an the EGM I recapped yesterday). Nester’s Adventures Finally, we get some useful in-game advice. Specifically, we get some advice for taking out enemies in the Mode 7 Landspeeder level in Super Star Wars. Top 20 Street Fighter II continues to hold the top spot for the SNES, while Mario holds the top spots for the NES and the Game Boy (and with Zelda and Metroid holding the #2 spots, respectively.) Celebrity Player Profiles Apparently this feature is coming back! Our profile this issue is of Craig T. Nelson of “Coachâ€. He does actually play video games though, with his real-life kids. Nelson recently made appearances in “The Proposal†and “Blades of Gloryâ€, and perhaps most famously did the voice for Mr. Incredible in “The Incrediblesâ€. He also decided to stop paying taxes entirely, saying on Glenn Beck’s show, and I quote “I’ve been on food stamps and Welfare, did anyone help me out? No.†Putting aside the stupidity of that quote, I’d like to wish Pixar luck re-casting Mr. Incredible (should they do a sequel to The Incredibles) because of Mr. Nelson spending time in federal prison for tax evasion. Now Playing Of note in the also-rans that were reviewed this issue are F-117A Stealth Fighter, which they considered to have too steep a learning curve. Koei’s fantasy strategy game Gemfire was also too slow for their taste. Yeah, they reviewed other titles but there really isn’t much that caught my attention on this one. Pak Watch Of note in upcoming titles is SimEarth, Sonic Blast Man, and Yoshi’s Cookie. Also, in Japan we get mention of Final Fantasy V and Barcode Battler. My Quality Control pick for this issue is going to be Death Valley Rally. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: Nintendo Power, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

This week, once again, we’re filling another gap in my archive of EGM recaps, with issue #42 for January of 1993. Our cover story for this issue is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyper-stone Heist for the Genesis. Our editorial column for this issue relates to CD Rom systems. In particular, Sega’s got the Sega CD, and while it doesn’t have a lot of great software, at least they have software. Nintendo’s CD system is still promises in the ether, yet they’re still attacking Sega’s system in press releases. Well, Nintendo of America is anyway – I haven’t finished reading Game Over, but thus far, Nintendo of America is the one that most often seems full of bull. Letters First up are questions about whether anyone other than the SNES is getting Street Fighter II – well, aside from the Genesis, several home computer platforms are getting releases – notably Atari ST, Commodore 64, and the Amiga – but only in Europe (so if you hunt these down, then I hope you’ve got a PAL monitor). Also, in Japan arcades are putting out specially licensed Street Fighter II tokens, some of which are gold, or with holographic images. We also get a letter about Tengen Tetris, and letters about the costs for disk games. Ultimately, while disk games are less expensive to manufacture than cartridge based games, studios have sunk the manufacturing savings into development, allowing them to develop more elaborate games (occasionally involving FMV). We also have a very perceptive reader who must be a software developer, noting that Sega has apparently re-discovered a coding trick for graphics from the Amiga and is using it with Genesis games. I did not know that. Review Crew The crew this issue is, as from last issue, Steve Harris, Ed Semrad, the man who calls it right down the middle – Martin Alessi, and Sushi-X. Magical Quest Featuring Mickey Mouse (SNES, Capcom): So, this platformer gets 9s across the board because of the dynamic gameplay. Overall: 36/40 and it gets Game of the Month and the Editor’s Choice Platinum Award. Cybernator (SNES, Konami): Mecha action game. The game gets 8s across the board. The game apparently has a moderately steep learning curve to it, but it’s got some deep gameplay and a lot of fun graphical tricks, so it apparently makes up for it. Overall: 32/40 and gets the Editor’s Choice Gold Award. X-Zone (SNES, Kemco): Light gun game for the super-scope. The crew feels that the game really is the killer app (no pun intended) for the Super Scope. Steve gives it a 7, with the rest of the crew giving 8s. Overall: 31/40. Gods (SNES, Mindscape): Action-platformer with a mythological theme. Ed and Steve consider this a good side-scrolling action-platformer with some puzzle elements and they give the game 7s. Martin and Sushi aren’t as impressed, having some problems with unresponsive controls, and not liking the poor sound. Martin gives a 5, and Sushi gives a 6. Overall: 25/40. Pro Quarterback (SNES, Tradewest): I shouldn’t need to tell you what kind of game this is. The Mode 7 graphics (and how they’re implemented) cause some problems with passing. The degree which this hurts the game depends on the member of the Crew – but in seriousness, this is the biggest complaint everyone has with the game. Ed and Martin gave the game 7s, Steve gave it a 6, and Sushi gave it a 5. Overall: 25/40. Chester Cheetah (SNES, Kemco): Platformer licensed from the snack mascot. Remember when snack foods had mascots? Anyway, Steve finds the game too slowly paced, and gives it a 6. Everyone else is considerably more impressed with the game. Martin and Sushi give the game 8s, and Ed gives the game a 9. Overall: 31/40. TMNT: The Hyperstone Heist (Genesis, Konami): This is a slightly re-done version of Turtles in Time. The game is applauded for it’s detailed graphics, though Sushi found it way too easy and gives it a 7. Everyone else gave it 8s. Overall: 31/40. Road Rash 2 (Genesis, EA): The second game in the series now includes split-screen multiplayer, though the crew isn’t too impressed with it. They like the rest of the game though – Martin gives the game a 7, while the rest of the crew gives it 8s. Overall: 31/40. Jerry Glanville’s Pigskin Footbrawl (Genesis, Razorsoft): You may recall that back when I was bothering to recap issues of GamePro, they actually interviewed Glanville about this fantasy twist on football, and how he did all sorts of input on the game. Well, it either wasn’t very useful, or they ignored him, or both, because this game doesn’t do so hot. Everyone agrees that the game has little to nothing to do with football, and they’re kind of wondering why Glanville endorsed it – outside of wanting some of those sweet dollars that Madden was raking in. The game also isn’t particularly very fun if you’re not playing a two-player game. Anyway, Ed gives the game a 7, Martin gives it a 6, Steve a 5, and Sushi a 4. Aquatic Games (Genesis, EA): We have a James Pond Track & Field Game. It’s precisely as “good†as you think it is – meaning it’s pretty mediocre – one of those games (as the crew describes it), that’s clearly aimed for kids in terms of it’s play style, visual style, and control, except the game is balanced for older players, who wouldn’t play this game. Ed and Sushi give the game 6s, while Martin gives it a 5 and Steve gives a 4. Overall: 21/40. Exile (Turbo Duo, Working Designs): This game was covered a few issues prior (and last issue in particular, come to think about it). The crew likes the game for its story, though they’re not too fond of the game’s music. Ed gives it an 8, and the rest of the crew give it 7s. Overall: 29/40. Time Cruise (Turbo Duo, Face): This is a pinball game with something of a sci-fi theme. The consensus is that while the game takes advantage of the fact that you’re not dependent on physical space to have large boards, it’s still a rather bland game. Ed and Martin give the game 6s, while Steve and Sushi give it 5s. Overall: 21/40. Shock Man (Turbo Duo, TTI): This is very much a Mega Man wannabe. Sushi really likes it though, and gives it a 7. The rest of the crew, as you make your way up the list, finds it progressively more dull, with Martin giving a 6, Ed a 5, and Steve a 4. Overall: 22/40. RoboCop 3 (NES, Ocean): One of a series of 3 licenced games (not all by Ocean) coming out for the NES this month. The crew considers this the best of the RoboCop games – though that’s still not saying much, as it’s merely decent instead of godawful. Sushi gives it a 5, with the rest of the crew giving it 6s. Overall: 23/40. The Jetsons (NES, Taito): Now this game, on the other hand, gets a fairly solid review score. Everyone likes the game, with Ed giving it a 8 and the rest of the crew giving 7s. Overall: 29/40. Swamp Thing (NES, THQ): This one didn’t do so well. The graphics and animation are bad, the pacing for the levels are terrible, and the graphics are awful. Ed gives it a 4, and everyone else gives it 3s. Overall: 13/40. Terminator 2: Arcade (Game Boy, Acclaim): This is an adaptation of the light gun game for the Game Boy, where you move cross-hairs with the D-Pad. Sushi gives the game a 6 (as while he thinks the game is solid, it’s still a Game Boy game), and the rest of the crew gives the game 7s. Overall: 27/40. Dig Dug (Game Boy, Namco): Portable version of the Namco arcade game. Everyone finds it pretty solid, though kind of average, with Sushi giving it a 5 and everyone else giving it 6s. Overall: 23/40. Mega Man 3 (Game Boy, Capcom): Sushi considers it one of the best Game Boy games in the past few months, but he still wants a higher resolution, color Game Boy and gives it a 7, and Ed and Steve gave it 8s, with Martin giving it a 9. Overall: 32/40 and it receives the Editor’s Choice Gold Award. Prince of Persia (Game Gear, Tengen): The game gets very sold reviews, except from Sushi, who considers it an lackluster port, and gives it a 5. Martin gives the game a 7, and the rest of the crew gives it 8s. Overall: 28/40. Super Off-Road (Game Gear, Virgin): The crew isn’t very impressed with this port, because of the system’s small screen, Ed gives it a 6, Steve and Sushi give the game 5s, and Martin gives it a 4. Overall: 20/40. Dirty Larry: Renegade Cop (Lynx, Atari): While this is a good looking adventure game on the Lynx, it doesn’t review great. Steve gives it a 5, Ed and Martin give the game 6s, and Sushi gave the game a 7. Overall: 24/40. Gaming Gossip The 3DO console has been code-named the “Operaâ€, though it later becomes known simply as the 3DO. There’s also a look at the Sega CD’s starting lineup (including Virtua Racing). Finally, before there was the Madden Curse, there was the Sega Curse – Evander Holeyfield apparently lost the title shortly after getting his own boxing game. Also, Tecmo Super Bowl is getting delayed to 1993. News According to reports in Japanese newspapers, Sony has finally dumped Nintendo and their planned CD-ROM add-on, and is planning on working on a system of their own, to be called the PlayStation. Nintendo is planning on attaching themselves to the Phillips and their CD-I instead. Atari is also planning to price their next-gen system, the Jaguar at $99. At CES, Sega’s planning on introducing a whole bunch of new add-ons for the Sega CD and the Genesis, including a 6-button controller, a two-button mouse, a multi-tap, and a karaoke add-on. Leading Edge First in the arcades, Street Fighter II Turbo Championship Edition or just Street Fighter II Turbo. Basically, there are some new attacks, and it’s faster, but otherwise that’s it. Irem has R-Type Leo. Capcom also has the brawler Destruction of Heaven and Earth 2, which looks kind of pre-cursor of Dynasty Warriors-ish. Game Doctor We get questions about game collection (currently not widespread, but give it a few years) and, using a cartridge as a buffer for a CD-ROM game (the Turbo Duo’s already doing that). International Outlook We have a new Ultraman fighter, based on the Ultraseven TV series. Sunsoft has the RPG Albert Odyssey. There’s also the brawler The Fang of Edo from Telenet. Human also has the RPG Dragon’s Earth. There’s also Mazin Saga featuring Mazinger Z. There’s also a portable version of Shining Force for the Game Gear. Hudson has the cute mascot-based shump Cotton. The Sega CD has a Cyborg 009 game. Next Wave We have a look at Flashback from US Gold, as well as the Alien vs. Predator brawler from Activision. Sega also has their X-Men action-platformer, along with Chakan: The Forever Man. The Duo is getting Bomberman ’93, and the NES and Game Boy are getting Yoshi’s Cookie. Features We get a featured preview of Road Rash 2. The article goes into several things they wanted to include, but couldn’t for technical limitations – stuff like weather and Harley Davidson style motorcycles. We also get a look at the making of Phantasy Star IV. Previews The titles of note that we get a look at are Bubsy, The Lost Vikings, a Wayne’s World game, as well as a look at the Cool World licensed game. Ocean also had a Lethal Weapon 3 licensed game. There’s also a look at California Games 2 and Skuljagger. We have Battleclash, another light gun game for the SNES. EA has Bulls vs. Blazers and the NBA Playoffs as well. On the Genesis we have our preview of The Hyperstone Heist, along with a Superman game from Sunsoft, and then Double Dragon 3, along with a port of Out of this World. There’s also a look at Ecco the Dolphin and Sunset Riders. Taito has a sequel to Chase HQ as well. EA has the racing game Lotus Turbo Challenge with two licensed cars. Tradewest has Championship Pro-Am, which is in the same series as RC Pro-Am. There’s also the cyberpunk adventure game Rise of the Dragon. On the Duo we have our look at Lords of Thunder, the next big shump for the Duo. The NES is also getting a sequel to RC Pro-Am, along with NES versions of Alien 3 and The Terminator. On the Game Boy, we get a look at Super Mario Land 2, and Adventure Island 2. The Game Gear gets Super Space Invaders. On the Lynx we have Dracula: The Undead and Joust. EGM Lifestyles We get our first look at Babylon 5, as well as information about Coppola’s “Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein†film, along with Disney’s “Hocus Pocus.†Additionally, we get an article about the Star Trek official Fan Club magazine. Unfortunately, the fan club no longer exists in the united states. Bummer. We also get an article about the hip new trend spreading through the comic industry – variant covers. This trend will ultimately nearly kill the industry, and end up destroying several lesser publishers. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: EGM, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

Get "In the Electric Mist" from Amazon.com As a quick note – I’m reviewing the US release of the film. The European Union cut of the film is several minutes longer and is the director’s vision for how the film would turn out. The way that crime thrillers and mysteries have been adapted to the big screen has kind of changed over the years, more or less. While TV series like Peter Gunn and Bones try (and succeed) to provide a “knowledge chain” sort of like a chain of custody, where the audience has access to the same pieces of evidence that the people investigating the crime(s) has, and they see how the conclusions are drawn, and they usually figure out who solved the crime around the same time the detective does. Films, and in particular In the Electric Mist, don’t do it that way. The film follows Louisiana detective Dave Robicheaux (played by Tommy Lee Jones). While he investigates the brutal murder of a prostitute, he comes upon (with the help of an actor in town as part of a movie shoot), the body of a black man he saw murdered when he was a young man. Robicheaux decides to investigate both the new murder and the old murder at the same time. My main complaint with the film is how it handles the investigation. To be specific, the film gives some lip service to the first murder (and subsequent related murders) in the first half to three quarters of the film, and then it casually forgets about it, focusing on the murder that Robicheaux witnessed as a young man. I don’t have a problem with the movie spending time on the older murder. What I do have a problem with is that the movie forgets about the big series of murders. The film establishes that there are at least a dozen murders related to the one that’s started at the beginning of the film (possibly making it a serial), and the film lets it slide. We do get some vague, possible closure over who might have done those murders, but it’s not satisfactory. On the good side, the film’s acting is excellent, particularly Tommy Lee Jones’ performance as Robicheaux. Jones does an excellent job getting across the character’s emotional torment over certain plot points (which I won’t get into), without overacting. When all’s said and done though, I can’t recommend a purchase of this film. It’s an enjoyable film to watch, but I wouldn’t buy it. However, I would recommend giving the film a rental, if you come across it in a RedBox, or in a video store, or on Amazon VOD, or it pops up as a Netflix recommendation. Filed under: film, Reviews Tagged: DVD, film, review Source

I’m sorry, but I have to admit that I wasn’t able to get past the first level of this one. The game sends a never-ending string of enemies at you in the first level, and I wasn’t particularly able to figure out a pattern for the first boss, so I wasn’t able to get past it – at least not within my self assigned deadline. This is not a game I would have been happy to spend money on. Pass on this game unless you don’t have any problems regularly running into a brick wall. No, seriously – if you’re looking for a run-and-gun (as that’s all this game really is), hunt down a SNK or Metal Slug collection instead. If you want a Star Wars game, pick up one of the Jedi Knight games, or Republic Commando, or Knights of the Old Republic. There are much better Star Wars games out there. Filed under: Quality Control, Video games Tagged: Quality Control, review, SNES, Video games Source

We’re continuing with our Nintendo Power Recaps, with issue 42 for November of 1992. Our cover story for this issue is Super Star Wars for the SNES. Joe & Mac Guide The first major cave man platformer has come out for the NES, and the art on this preview fails anatomy pretty badly. We get maps of the first 4 levels of the game, as well as notes for fighting the various bosses. Crash & The Boys Street Challenge Guide This is, essentially, a Track & Field game with a River City Ransom skin. We have Hammer Throw Golf, Water Slaughter (a swimming event, where both competitors can fight underwater if they so choose, and they do choose), Skyline Scramble (pole vault between the roofs of buildings), and Judo (straight-up fight). Mega Man 1 Guide It’s been some time since Mega Man 1 came out, but they’re gonna take a moment to revisit it for those who didn’t subscribe to the old Nintendo Fun Club newsletter. We get maps of the stages for Bomb Man, Guts Man, Cut Man, Elecman, Ice Man, Fire Man, and Dr. Wily’s castle. Legend of Zelda Comic Roam defeats the multi-headed serpent, and Zelda is freed. Link and Zelda and Roam escape the fire temple before it explodes. Roam then says that he’ll be the one to defeat Ganon and sets out on his own. Zelda tells Link that while a magic arrow is what it takes to defeat Ganon, Roam’s attitude will likely be his downfall. As they’re about to enter the castle, Roam appears, and his negative emotions summons spirits of the various enemies Link has defeated, including Aghanim. The spirit of Aghanim overcomes Roam, and they merge into Ganon! To Be Continued. The Flintstones Guide Last issue we got a guide for the Jetson’s game. This issue we have a guide from the Flintstones game. We get notes for each of the levels in the game, but no maps for the levels. Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins Guide We get notes on the various zones in the game, but not maps for the various levels in the game. Track & Field Guide The Game Boy has a track and field game of its very own now. We get a run down of the events in the game. WWF Superstars 2 Guide Another wrestling game for the Game Boy. We get a run down of 3 of the 6 wrestlers who appear in the game, Hogan, the Undertaker, and the Mountie. Super Mario Adventures Comic The wedding of Bowser and Peach has arrived! The ceremony begins and Mario makes his dramatic entrance right at “Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peaceâ€. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest Guide Instead of getting Final Fantasy V, we’re getting this incredibly simplified RPG. It’s probably even more linear than Final Fantasy XIII was accused of being. We get maps of the dungeons and information on where to go (though, having played the game, I can say that it’s really hard to get lost.) We get maps of the forest dungeon, the earth dungeon, and the water dungeon. Super Star Wars Guide We get maps of the levels in the game, and some power up notes. It looks like while the graphics are better, they have made the levels a little smaller, and have dropped some of the more non-linear elements of the original, which is for the best. The notes for the levels continue on to the poster, covering every level in the game. Shooter Feature We get coverage of two shooters this issue, one is Axelay, which was an Also Ran that became a Quality Control pick several issues ago, and Space Megaforce from Toho. Space Megaforce is a top-down shooter like Xevious, but with Gradius & Thunder Force style weapon upgrades. We get some notes for areas 1 through 8 in this game. For Axelay we get notes on the various weapon upgrades, as well as on the first 6 stages of the game. Faceball 2000 Guide The SNES now has a First Person shooter, and a tame one at that. We get some notes on the gameplay and little else than that. Top 20 While Mario still holds the top spot on the NES and the Game Boy (with the first Super Mario Land), Street Fighter II has bumped Legend of Zelda and Mario from the top spot on the SNES side of the list. The Celebrity Player Profiles are now no more, replaced with a crossword puzzle. It’s the end of an era. Nester’s Adventures This issue Nester is playing “Out of this World†and he has some difficulty controlling the hover vehicle. Now Playing We have a special guest reviewer, Jade Hall, who won an earlier contest. This issue, I’m going to be sticking with reviews that particularly catch my attention. Jade likes just about everything except for Amazing Spider-Man 2 for the Game Boy, the space sim Out of Gas, and shump Starhawk (all for the Game Boy). As far as Rob and George go, they’re split and Crash & The Boys Street Challenge and Rocky & Bullwinkle. Not too much else caught my eye. Pak Watch Of note this issue is Spider-Man & The X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge from LJN. Vic Tokai is working on “Super Conflict†a turn based (hex base) strategy game based on Operation Desert Storm. My Quality Control pick for this issue is Super Star Wars, as I said I would pick several recaps ago. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: Nintendo Power, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

This week we’re going back to fill another gap in my archive. Specifically, issue 41 for December of 1992. Our cover story for this issue is Road Rash 2 from EA. For those unfamiliar with the series, Road Rash is a motorcycle combat racing game series. Our editorial column from this issue is from Ed Semrad, hyping the changes to EGM. Basically, the magazine is now bigger and better. No information about whether it’s more badass. In the letters column we get several letters about whether or not there is a boss code for standard Street Fighter II. Capcom says there isn’t, but Capcom also says that there isn’t a character vs. same color character code either, and they’re running that code this issue. That said, I don’t see why you’d want to both be playing characters of the same color, because then it’d be harder to tell which character is yours. We also have a letter hoping for more Star Wars games, and another letter from a reader who figured out, entirely on his own, why the names for Vega, Balrog, and M. Bison were switched around in the American version of Street Fighter II, and he wants to check to see if he was right (he was). Review Crew We now return to the classic lineup – Steve Harris, Ed Semrad, Martin Alessi, and Sushi-X. Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Genesis, Sega): The crew likes the game, but Steve and Martin feel that the game is too linear and give the game 8s, without more options for exploration. Ed and Sushi-X though feel that the multi-player makes up for it, with Ed giving a 10 and Sushi giving a 9. Overall: 35/40 and it receives the Editor’s Choice Gold Award and Game of the Month. Death Valley Rally (SNES, Sunsoft): This is a kind of speed based platformer (ala Sonic), where you play as Road Runner. That the style of platformer certainly lends itself to some of the more speed based Looney Toons characters. Steve, Martin and Sushi find the game really good though Martin and Steve found the controls a little sloppy and the gameplay a little too fast, and they give the game 8s. Ed absolutely loves the game, particularly with how they use Mode 7 for the Coyote falling sequences, and gives it a 9. Overall: 31/40. Desert Strike (SNES, Electronic Arts): So, Sushi X’s response to the game can best be described as “America, FUCK YEAH!â€, and gives it an 8. Steve and Ed give it 7s, finding the control a little choppy (get it, choppy – it’s a chopper game, yeah), though they otherwise like the game. However, Martin is a little less impressed with the graphics and gives it a 6. Overall: 28/40. Q*Bert (SNES, NTVIC): Ed was concerned about the game’s control, but he’s satisfied with the game and gives it a 7. Martin’s also a little satisfied and gives it a 6. Sushi finds the game repetitive and tedious and gives it a 5, while Steve isn’t fond of the controls and gives it a 4. You know, I suspect that Q*Bert would work great for something for Xbox Live and Games for Windows Live’s Game Room, with online leader-boards and challenges. Overall: 22/40. Super Valis IV (SNES, Atlus): Gets 7s across the board for not having the same sound quality and cutscenes as the CD-ROM versions of the game, but it’s still a solid action platformer. Overall: 28/40. Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade’s revenge (SNES, LJN): It’s a Marvel licensed game from LJN. They’ve been hit-or-miss in the past. Ed and Sushi like this game, thinking the controls are good and the characters have excellent variety and give it an 8 and a 7 respectively. Steve and Martin are a little less impressed with the lack of the ability to select your character, and they give it 6s. Overall: 27/40 Mega Man 5 (NES, Capcom): Another year, another Mega Man game. Steve thinks the series really should have gone to 16-bit, and gives it a 6. The rest of the Crew agrees, but they still think the game merited a higher score than that, with Ed giving a 9 and Martin and Sushi giving 8s. Overall: 31/40. Batman Returns (NES, Konami): It’s a Batman themed Beat-em-up. They consider it a little more iffy and repetitive than Sunsoft’s earlier Batman games, with Ed giving a 7, Martin and Sushi giving 6s, and Steve giving a 5. Overall: 23/40. Madden ’93 (Genesis, EA): It’s Madden, and it’s 1993. It’s well executed, though Ed is a little uncertain about whether this annual roster update and minor gameplay tweak thing will work out. *Looks over at his shelf of games and his copy of Madden ’09* I think Madden will fare just fine. Steve and Ed give the game 8s, while Martin and Sushi give the game 9s. Overall: 34/40. Crue Ball (Genesis, EA): It’s a glam metal pinball game with Motley Crue’s music. The main complaints are with the sound quality – Martin says this game would be a better fit with the Sega CD, because of the capabilities of the Sega CD. Martin and Steve give the game 6s, Sushi-X also gives the game a 7, while Ed liked it and gives the game a 9. Overall: 28/40. BioHazard (Genesis, Sega): New Shump from Sega. Unfortunately, it’s a little lackluster. Ed and Martin give it 6s, while Steve and Sushi give it 5s. Overall: 22/40. Sewer Shark (Sega CD, Sony): The crew’s kind of split on this one. Martin and Sushi find it a FMV game with very shallow gameplay, and they give the game 6s. Steve likes it a little more and gives the game a 7. Ed loves the game and gives it a 9. Overall: 28/40. Black Hole Assault (Sega CD, Bignet): This is sort of a mecha fighting game. Sushi finds it just average and gives it a 5. Steve thinks it works okay for two-player, but isn’t so good in single player, and gives the game a 6. Ed and Martin liked the game a little more and gives the game an 8 and a 7 respectively. Overall: 26/40. Night Trap (Sega CD, Sega): Before Grand Theft Auto 3, a series of mods for Doom, and then another mod for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas would bring video game companies to Congress, Night Trap brought them to Congress to answer for the horrific depictions of women hung on meat-hooks that the congress-critters had been told were in the game by trustworthy lobbyists and other people in the moral majority. Anyway, Steve, Martin and Sushi aren’t too impressed, and give the game 5s, except for Martin who gives it a 6. Again, Ed likes considerably more, and gives it an 8. Overall: 24/40. Cobra Command (Sega CD, Sega): This is a on rails FMV action game which they like considerably more than Sewer Shark, possibly because the FMV is more executed. Ed, Martin and Sushi give the game 7s, and Steve gives it an 8. Overall: 29/40. Loom (Turbo Duo, TTI): The Lucasarts adventure games has been ported to the Turbo Duo, with CD Audio and everything. The crew enjoys the game, with Steve, Ed, and Martin giving the game a 7, while Sushi gives it a 6, as he doesn’t find it very exciting and would prefer to wait for the sequel (which never comes). Overall: 27/40. Dead Moon (Turbo Duo, Natsume): Another shump for the Duo. The crew thinks this is a solid shooter among many solid shooters on the Duo. Steve, Martin and Sushi give it 7s, and Ed gives it an 8. Overall: 29/40. Hit the Ice (Turbo Duo, Taito): This is a hockey game. The crew is kind of split about whether it’s a mediocre hockey game (Steve and Martin) or a great hockey game (Ed and Sushi). Steve and Martin give the game a 5 and 6 respectively, and Ed and Sushi give the game a 8 and 7 respectively. Overall: 26/40. Alien 3 (Game Gear, Ocean): I can’t imagine this sort of pseudo-Metroid style game working on the Game Gear, but the Crew think it works well. Martin gives the game an 8. Steve, Ed and Sushi give the game 7s. Overall: 29/40. Bonk (Game Boy, Hudson Soft): Hudson’s mascot comes to the Game Boy. Aside of Sushi, like normal, hating it because of the limitations of the Game Boy platform and giving it a 5, the rest of the crew liked it. Martin gives the game an 8, and Ed and Steve giving the game 7s. Overall: 27/40. Ren & Stimpy (Game Boy, THQ): Again, Sushi gives this a 5, as he didn’t like it or the platform. The rest of the crew finds it a bit more mediocre, with Martin and Steve gives it 6s, while Ed gives it a 7. Overall: 24/40. Pit Fighter (Lynx, Atari): I’m not impressed with the graphics in the screen shot – it’s slanted toward red – like Virtual Boy red. Aside from Steve giving it an 5, but the rest of the crew liked it. Ed gives it a 6, and Martin and Sushi give it 7s. Overall: 25/40. Gaming Gossip Development has begun for games on the 3DO. There’s also an ad in Variety for the Double Dragon movie, which Q-Mann think looks nice, but we all know that it’s total absolute crap. EGM Express We have sketches of Sony add-on for the SNES, where they become the PlayStation after Nintendo kicks them to the curb. We also have information on the launch of the Sega CD. We also get notes on the launch titles for the system (including Time Gal and Rise of the Dragon). Leading Edge We get a look at the arcade version of Golden Axe III, as well as Street Fighter II Tournament Edition, which now lets you play the bosses. Dogyuun is also an interesting looking shooter, there’s also Lethal Enforcers, and the semi-3D polygonal shooter Space Lords. International Outlook Konami’s working on Gradius III, with even more freaky bio-mechanical enemies to blow up. There’s also Road Blasters FX for the Mega CD-Rom. Media Rings is working on the racing game Zero 4 Champ II for the TurboGrafx CD-ROM. We’ve got Annet Again, featuring the return of Annet Evans. Unfortunately it doesn’t get a US release. Misawa Entertainment has the bizarre shump Christopher Columbus, where instead of steering a space ship or a witch on a broom, or a flying potentially homosexual bodybuilder, you’re piloting a sailing ship. There’s also the first Ranma ½ Fighting game and Cosmic Fantasy 3 (which has already been licensed, with the licensed version being advertised in this very issue). Speaking of anime licensed stuff is Gunbuster for the PC Super CD-ROM (the Turbo Duo). Konami has Snatcher, the latest big project for Hideo Kojima, which I wouldn’t mind seeing getting a new release in the US. There’s the game Super HQ, the sequel to Super Chase HQ for the Genesis. Special Preview We get a big special look at Bubsy, which considering the big behind-the-scenes series of articles we got in GamePro from about the same time, shows that the developers and publishers of the game are doing their best to hype the hell out of this game. Next Wave Of note in this issue is a Jaguar licensed racing game for the Sega CD. Batman: Revenge of the Joker is getting ported and up-rezzed for the SNES. There’s a bad licensed Dracula game (based on the Coppela movie) for the Sega CD. We have a sequel to Smash TV titled Total Carnage for the SNES. EA has the Turbo Lotus Challenge racing game, which much like the Jaguar game features licenced cars, but only from Lotus. Feature Articles We have an article with their wish-list of what they’re hoping for in Street Fighter 3. I’ll be considering this in context with Street Fighter 3 and Alpha, as opposed to the long iterations on Street Fighter 2. First, they’d like to see some faces return from Street Fighter 1, specifically mentioning Birdie, Adon, and Gen, who we all get in the Alpha series. They’d also like to see some super-moves and/or desperation moves, which we also get later in the Alpha series and the Street Fighter 3 series. The writers would prefer that holds become harder to pull off, which doesn’t happen. They’d also like to see some sort of tag match, which we don’t really see until the Versus series of games. Previews Of note this issue, we get a look at the new brawler Rival Turf 2. Konami has the mecha action game Cybernator for the SNES. We finally get a screen shots of Power Moves, after they have gone quite some time without screen shots in the very ads for that game. There’s also a side-scrolling platformer adapted from Dragon’s Lair. I suspect that if the disk add-on for the SNES had been released, we probably would have gotten a proper disk-based version of this game. Ultima: the False Prophet is also being released for the SNES. Koei’s putting out their business strategy game Aerobiz for the SNES. Titles for the Genesis of note (aside of ones featured in the reviews) is Shinobi III. There’s also World of Illusion. There’s also also Road Rash 2 for the Genesis (which is featured on the cover). There’s also a look at Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist, which is essentially a re-skinning of Turtles in Time. There’s also a Captain America & The Avengers brawler, which features a fair number of members of the Avengers’ Rogue Gallery in the boss roster… and a Sentinel, which I find odd as none of the Avengers in this game are Mutants. On the Duo we get a preview of Exile, which is a disk-based RPG for the Duo. There’s also Samurai Ghost, which looks a bit like Altered Beast, with swords instead of punching. The NES is getting Robocop 3. The NES has Best of the Best: Championship Karate. The Neo-Geo has the isometric shooter Viewpoint. The Game Boy has Spot’s Cool Adventure. The Game Gear has a port of Prince of Persia, along with Super Off Road. EGM Lifestyles Disney is working on Aladdin, those shoes with lights in the heels are brand new, the Sci-Fi channel has been launched to wider audiences, and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine has been launched as well. Dark Horse has launched the Alien vs. Predator series of comics, and the Super Soaker has just appeared on the market for the first time. As a kid who lived in an apartment complex as a kid, I always wanted one of those, since the rest of the kids in my complex also had squirt guns, and having the super-soaker would be like bringing “Old Painless†from Predator, or even Tony Montana’s M-16 from Scarface, to the gunfight at the OK Corral. Finally, Image comics has launched, and now Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld can write and draw about whatever they want, giving us Spawn and Youngblood, starting a new wave of absurdly grimdark across the comic landscape. However, we wouldn’t have Witchblade, The Darkness, or Danger Girl without them, so I’ll cut them some slack. Well, I’ll cut Todd some slack. Rob Liefeld still sucks. We wrap up the issue with advice for beating everyone in Street Fighter II in Single Player as Ryu or Ken, and the ending cutscene in Soul Blazer, which is nice to see as that was a Quality Control pick. Filed under: Video games, Where I Read Tagged: EGM, video game magazines, Video games, Where I Read Source

Get "The Soul of a New Machine" from Amazon.com About 6 years ago, a sort of scandal rocked the gaming industry related to a blog post by a woman known as “EASpouse”. The blog post criticized EA’s labor practices at the time, which required employees to work massive amounts of unpaid overtime, as they were salaried employees. By massive, I mean about 12-16 hour days, 6 days a week, regularly. This was a big deal among gamers, because very few of us had ever had the opportunity to peek behind the curtain like this. It was likely that most of us viewed game development with a variation of the way that Roald Dahl as a child imagined the inside of the Cadbury Chocolate Factory near the boarding school he attended (which later led to Charlie & the Chocolate Factory). The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder shows that such working conditions are nothing new. The book follows the development process of Data General’s micro-computer (sort of like a rack mounted server, except it’s the size of the whole unit, but essentially only being one of the server nodes), that would be a successor to their Eclipse line of microcomputers, code named the Eagle, and later released as the MV/8000. The book goes into both the personal and technical aspects of the development process, profiling the various men (and a few women) involved in the project, and giving a description of the technical aspects of the process for the layman. While the technical bits (pardon the pun), are enjoyable, the book’s strength, and where it spends most of its time, is in profiles of the people. The book paints a bleak picture of the inner workings of Data General. The working conditions at Data General, particularly on this project, are brutal. Much as with EA Spouse, employees are salaried, with no overtime pay, and work 12-16 hour days, 6 days a week. As the project goes on, project leads and younger employees are worn down. Often, employees at Data General observe that the company brings in a lot of new fresh recruits, and few stay at the company after they turn 30. Many of these new recruits drop out for various reasons, and often employees discuss the company’s sweat-shop like working conditions. As the project moves into the heat of summer, the air conditioning breaks, turning their windowless basement office into a sweltering oven, which they can’t even leave the door open for, for security reasons. Only after the employees strike do they fix the air conditioning. By the end of the book, several of the project leads, themselves burned out, leave the company, and while some of the employees on the Eagle team stay on, many more have left. Tracy Kidder got an impressive amount of access at Data General when he wrote this book, and while he’s honest and truthful about what happened there, Data General, at least to my 21st century mind, comes out of this book smelling like shit. I base this solely on what Data General does, and I know this because Kidder doesn’t whitewash – he thankfully calls it right down the middle. While the book is never accusatory, it makes clear that Data General is a predatory employer. It preys on young, semi-idealistic college Engineering graduates, who don’t have a lot of job experience and are looking more for interesting problems to solve, interesting work to do, than a big paycheck. They promise them interesting problems, and briefly, very briefly, warn them that there will be long hours and possibly a limited social life, that this job will become their life. To meet the deadlines required of them they will have to give up friends, family, and the outside world, living only the job, for months or years at a time. Plus, because they’re salaried, despite all the hours they get that would be overtime, they’re only making their standard pay grade. It chews up 22-24 year old kids, and spits them out at 30, burnouts who had great potential, but were consumed by their jobs. They don’t say if many of these former employees stay in the industry, and some certainly do – Ray Ozzie, creator of Lotus Notes and current Chief Software Architect at Microsoft is a Data General veteran. However, those who leave the industry with a sour taste in their mouth will probably leave worse off then they would be if they worked somewhere else. Had they been actually paid overtime, they could have possibly built a nest egg that could have allowed them to retire early, or to at least take their time looking for work elsewhere. While some poor decisions related to processor architecture helped to kill Data General right before the dawn of the 21st century, it is my suspicion that the boom in Silicon Valley may have inspired a brain drain. Nicer weather, a less oppressive corporate culture. For people who wanted more money, there was the change to come in on the ground floor of companies which had the potential to be worth millions and get significant stock options. For those who preferred challenge, they could face whole new challenges when designing new systems and new architectures at the new companies in the Valley. In summary, the book is a high resolution snapshot of the early days of the computer industry, before the internet started to permeate our lives in subtle ways – computerized tax processing, credit cards, ATM machines, and so on, leading up to the more overt ways it would later find its way in – Bulletin Board Services, E-Mail, and finally, proper web pages. People interested in the history of the computer industry will certainly find this fascinating. People who don’t care about the history of computing can still find something in the profiles of the people in this project, and how the project’s process slowly wears them all down. Filed under: Books, Reviews Tagged: Books, review Source

Get Axelay from eBay When it comes to reviewing the also-rans in Nintendo Power, the reasons for picking that game as a Quality Control title are different from the reasons why I’d pick a game that was featured prominently in the magazine (say, with a guide). With the games that get a guide, I’m looking for a game that’s generally not a classic, and attempting to see if it was worth the consumer’s time. The assumption behind this is that the customer is more likely to buy a game that gets a guide over one that doesn’t. When I’m picking an also-ran, I’m looking for a game that the consumer would likely overlook because of the lack of a guide, but would be worth picking up. A diamond in the rough, if you will. That brings me to Axelay. The game had stood out to me earlier based on how well the game had fared in reviews in Electronic Gaming Monthly – getting 9s across the board due to its quality of gameplay, and its graphics (and being chosen for Game of the Month). However, when I came to this issue of Nintendo Power, the game was considered an also-ran, and was negatively regarded by the only two people at Nintendo Power who are their “critics”. Thus, it seemed to me to be the perfect Quality Control pick. The Premise: The solar system of Illis finds itself besieged by an invading alien armada. After their defenses are overrun, a lone pilot sets out in the D117B “Axelay” starfighter to fend off the enemy attack. The Good: This game has some of the best uses of Mode 7 graphics in shumps. By means of explanation – the game has, like Lifeforce, top down stages and side scrolling stages. However, with the top down stages, the backgrounds are done in Mode 7, giving the illusion of skimming the surface of some alien world. This also allows level designers to have enemy space ships fly below the player’s ship before coming up in front and attacking, as well as giving some distant hints that enemy ships are coming. This in turn gives the player a bit more information about what is going up – which is better level design. The Bad: I’d be nice if we had some “preview” footage of each weapon being used, so we could find out which weapons work better under what circumstances. Additionally, the homing laser feels like a “pew-pew” gun in terms of the amount of damage it does. The Ugly: Like with Thunder Spirits, when you get hit by enemies bullets you lose your active weapon. However, unlike Thunder Spirits, there is no way to get your active weapon back. The game needs a way to earn back the weapons you lost, otherwise the mechanic just locks the player into a death spiral. The Verdict: This game is worthy of the praise heaped upon it in Electronic Gaming Monthly and, frankly, I would have preferred if this game had gotten a guide in this issue of Nintendo Power, instead of a brief mention in the Now Playing section. Filed under: Quality Control, Video games Tagged: Nintendo Power, Quality Control, review, SNES Source