Mega Man X2

You're really getting to the bottom of the villain barrel when their elemental power is wheels.

Wire Sponge.

Morph Moth.

Flame Stag.

Magma Centipede.

Crystal Snail.

Wheel Gator.

Bubble Crab.

Overdrive Ostrich.

Are these Mega Man bosses, or Splinter Cell subtitles, or Japanese vending machine drinks? In any case, they’re evidence that someone is running out of ideas.

Wire Sponge?  Wire Sponge? Really?

Shockingly, it turns out that Wire Sponge’s level is really hard and he has like, grappling pom poms that kill you.  Are you surprised? I’m not.

I have decided that I hate Mega Man, and his incredibly deadly world.  Why would anyone live there?  It’s miserable.  Either there are thousands of robots trying to kill you, or there is one unkillable robot constantly trying to kill you and all your friends.  Nobody wins.

Just kill yourself, Mega Man.

Just kill yourself.

Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow

Presumably he is looking at his map to figure out where the treasure is, even though there are just piles of gold and gems everywhere. Some of them are floating in midair, even. And who's guarding them? Spiders. Not even giant spiders, just fairly big ones.

Oh look.  It is a Disney platformer with an anthropomorphic cartoon animal protagonist.

Look at my face.  Look how surprised I am.

This game nearly made me motion sick, which is something no other game has ever managed – not Portal, not Serious Sam, not Burnout, nothing.  It just ended up hurting my eyes, though, because every time your character turns, the camera rockets in the direction you’re looking.  It’s painful.

I briefly worked at Toys R Us during the Christmas season, one year, in the electronics department.  I sold video games to people.  It was a dark time, although slightly less dark than the previous year where I had worked at a call center doing telephone surveys, which made me consider killing myself.

Based on the purchases parents tend to make, I can assure that this game sold fairly well, and that is a sad, sad thing. But there is a lesson to be learned there.  Can you imagine that child, the one who only gets one or two games for his console (which is fair, given the ridiculous price of cartridges at the time) and who must treasure each one, digging deep into every level to squeeze out every drop of fun?  This is why they put secrets in these games, maybe – so that children could find something new after putting the cartridge in the console for the eight thousandth time.  Consider that child, and consider the glut of games available to us on multiple consoles, the ease of online purchasing and, yes, piracy; consider the number of surprisingly good free downloadable games.  That kid probably fucking loved Maui Mallard.  I know that I, for one, play many really decent games and can’t really be bothered to deeply appreciate them because there are so many other titles to distract my attention.  Having too many games might actually make us enjoy each of them less.

None of that means you should ever bother to play this game, though.  It’ s not very good.

Mario’s Early Years: Preschool Fun

FUCK YEAH I DID

This is a game where you point your cursor at things, and then a creepy voice gives you information about those things, like how many there are or what they are the opposite of.

It is a game consisting entirely of pointing.

I guess games haven’t changed very much since this came out.  After all, Diablo 3 is coming out soon.

Magic Johnson Super Slam Dunk

I'd like my Magic Johnson to super slam your dunk.

David Foster Wallace believed that tennis is the most beautiful sport, but basektball isn’t too far behind – it’s just that, as a team sport, it doesn’t have the purity of movement that tennis does.  Similarly, fencing and boxing are close, but they are directly violent and thus lack some of the grace and geometry that makes tennis the most beautiful.

It is indubitable that basketball is a beautiful sport.  Many will say that it’s not as fun to watch because it’s too high scoring, and any individual basket is unexciting because, in itself, it is not a significant event.  But the beauty of the ball’s motion in basketball is what really makes me enjoy watching a game, even if I rarely watch sports at all.  The straight lines and small weaves of hockey, or the tumbling, bouncing irregularity of soccer – they don’t do it for me.

I am also terrible at hockey and soccer, so.  You know.  That could have something to do with it.  I’m kinda okay at basketball, when compared to other people who are not very good at basketball.

And so, the problem with a basketball video game is that it loses the beauty of the sport.  The round loops and swirls and quick reversals of direction, the bursts of speed and smooth transitions from one direction to another by the players as they relentlessly hunt the ball, the surges in the tempo of ball-to-court as the tension explodes in the ball’s vicinity – that’s all lost.  Instead, the game becomes a pallid, cardboard strategy game – move closer, pass to open players, shoot and hope you hit the net.  In this game, where your shot doesn’t even depend on your own abilities as a player but on some eldritch random number generator buried within the cartridge, the soul of basketball flits silently in the bleachers and watches you play.  On top of that, this is a game with almost no collision detection and distorted isometric perspective, and bizarre screen-rotation every time you reach the other half the court, and so what little sluggish strategy you can find in other basketball games is lost here as well.

Maybe that’s why football games seem to be the most successful, and the most high quality, amongst the mainstream SNES sports games – football and hockey.  Football is a game of strategy and collision and deployment, which can easily be simulated on even an SNES’s virtual field, and hockey’s straight lines and larger spaces make it easier to model as well.  Baseball, too, because it so easy to divide into tiny condensed chunks of play.

I can’t say I was ever impressed with any of the older soccer games, or any of the old basketball games (no, not even NBA Jam).  None of the boxing games, either, that’s for damn sure.  Football and hockey games are the only ones I recall being any good in that era.  But I was never a huge fan of sports game at that time, nor am I now, so I may be unenlightened.

I do know that this game is probably the worst basketball game I’ve played, including that time I was playing in real life and I stepped on my cousin’s foot, and he tried to move back but fell over because I was standing on his foot, and he fell  backwards right onto a trailer hitch.  I got in a lot of trouble.  This is still worse.

Lufia II

This made me laugh out loud for a good three or four minutes.

I played this game for about seven minutes, counting the time I spent laughing at that screenshot.

Apparently, a lot of people liked this game, or something?  Whatever.  If they’re not even going to try, if they’re going to produce that, then I’m not going to bother either.

I said to myself, “Myself,” I said, “if this game starts in a town with less than ten buildings and about that many people, and if they say the same thing over and over and over when you talk to them, I’m not going to play this game.”

So here I am.

But apparently this game contains a side-question which is a 99-level tower, each level randomly generated, with puzzles, monsters, treasure, etc.  The interesting thing is that it actually puts you back to level 1 with zero experience and almost no items, and you only get your shit back at the end when you die or manage to defeat the final enemy – a massive red jelly which kills itself after four turns in the turn-based combat system, removing any chance of getting its item drops unless you kill it in three turns.

That’s right, this shitty little game contains Diablo as a side quest, and that side-quest ends with a hilarious HAHAHA FUCK YOU.

So it’s not that bad, I guess.

I'm not sure why one of the most common enemies you face with sword in hand is something you put on toast.

Lethal Weapon

That door on the bottom floor, there? Yeah, it takes you to the sewers.

Alright.

Someone comes to you with a game license.  It’s something called “Lethal Weapon.”  This someone – probably a well-spoken individual wearing a nice suit with a quiet tie and one-and-a-half chins – is operating under the assumption that you know what Lethal Weapon is.

But maybe not.  Maybe this guy was burned before by some manic depressive who he hired to make a game about Tim the Tool Man Taylor, after he was given a game about dinosaurs instead.

You say “Of course I know what ‘lethal weapon’ is,” but he can’t see that you used lower case letters.

So, taken aback by the broad license you’ve been given, you go home and you do some brainstorming! There are a lot of things that could be lethal weapons, after all, and you know what your job is.

Your job is to put them all in the game.

Let’s have a look at the list you came up with.

• Guns
• Knives
• Crocodiles
• Flamethrowers
• Fire in general, actually
• Falling spikes
• Floors with spikes in them
• Probably walls with spikes in them, too

You figure that’ s a pretty good list to start.  So you painstakingly draw the sprites and animations for all these implements of death, and you decide to put them in a sewer level, right, because who doesn’t love a sewer level?*  Besides, where else would you find crocodiles?

Then you get a call from your boss, who’s really excited because he loved that movie, Lethal Weapon.  You know, with Mel Gibson and Danny Glover?  With the criminals and the chases and the shooting?

You bury your face in your hands and draw a shuddering breath.

But at least you got the gun right.  And that sewer level is pretty great.  And who knows where these action heroes might end up?  Let’s use that level.  Let’s use all those levels!  Yeah?  It’ll work.  But we have to tie it in with the movie somehow.

Let’s paste some rendered screens from the movie in, even though they have nothing to do with the level.  That’s perfect.  Nobody really reads those screens anyways.  Let’s write something about bombs in the sewer.  They’ll see Danny Glover looking dramatic and it’ll dovetail right in with that thirteen foot crocodile.

Oh, right, bombs, that should go on the list.

And that is how, presumably, this game was made.

*NOBODY LIKES YOUR FUCKING SEWER LEVEL YOU SON OF A BITCH

Last Action Hero

Some fucking compelling drama right here, my friends. Look how invested he is in that punch. He looks like he's pushing a button in an elevator. He also looks like he's made of potatoes.

ANOTHER BEATEMUP

FANTASTIC

There are more crushingly fucking awful beatemups on this goddamn console than there are licensed platformers with stupid cartoony animal protagonists.

This one was interesting, at least, because it was nearly impossible to get past the third screen.  I certainly couldn’t do it.  You have to fight a knife guy a very specific way or he’ll always hit you; you have to fight a bat guy the opposite way.  The third screen pits you against both a knife guy and a bat guy, and it is impossible to hit either one of them without getting absolutely devastated by the other guy.

On top of that, this is probably the ugliest game I have played while reviewing for this site.

Why would anyone play these fucking games?

Jesus.

King of the Monsters 2

This game is awful, but that gross monster thing is pretty cool.

Move around slowly and isometrically.  Mash the attack button.  Take mostly inevitable damage.  Eventually die.  Hit continue.

In the arcade, this game and its horrible kin, the beatemup, had a purpose: to empty your pockets of quarters.  That’s all there was to it.  These games don’t even count as games, in my mind.  They’re more mindless than snakes and ladders.

On a console, its true ugliness is revealed. Now, this game exists solely to waste your time.  It offers nothing whatsoever beyond that.  It is the purest of bad video games.  It is revolting.  It is counting down the seconds until you’re a corpse.

To play this game is to stare into an existential void, because you have nothing else to look at.

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball

Look at the pipes on this son of a bitch. Look at them. It's like a...like a goddamn plumbing jamboree in there.

Baseball games apparently come in two kinds:

1. The kind where you press a button to throw balls, and you press a button to hit balls, and you hold a direction to throw balls there.
2. The kind where the torque of your pitcher’s wrist is actually statistically important and your pitching options take up half the screen, obscuring the pitcher himself.

This is the first kind, blessedly.

Nonetheless, after one inning it was 9-0 for the Packers, who apparently employ a team of cyborg weightlifters programmed specifically to hit homeruns like they were talking back.

The intro was far more entertaining; a close up of Ken’s zombified pixel-eyes, with quick cuts to greater and greater zoom distances, each cut accompanied by a robotic buzzing sound (further reinforcing my cyborg theory) until ending with Ken, in all his glory, posed for the title screen, his grin a little sickly, his eyes staring outward in slightly different directions.

Judge Dredd

I am going to headbutt him so hard.

The central mechanic of Judge Dredd, beyond its fairly strong platforming/shooting/headbutting engine, is that you are judge/jury/executioner; this means you can deal with criminals as you see fit, in terms of arresting them or killing them or whatever.

What this really means is that you can murder them a little bit, such that after getting shot a few times they put up their hands and a flying justice platform whisks them away to be brutalized in prison, or you can murder them a whole lot, such that they are just entirely vaporized.

This occurs no matter what manner of violence you employ to dispatch them, so you will often find yourself headbutting a guy so hard he explodes, in a sort of blue-flash-because-we-wanted-a-lower-rating kind of thing.

The problem with the game, though, is that the background objects and foreground objects are pretty much identical, and it’s all grey or brown, and it’s extremely difficult to tell where the fuck you are or what you’re supposed to do or where you’re supposed to go and why that fucking gate thing or whatever is still in the way even though I pushed a button that looked pretty important and was the only button in the whole place, maudit de sacrament d’hostie de caulice.