Data East was probably right about that statement back in 1984...but now we have....well...Link uses a Boomerang, right?
I'm digging the arcade cabinet for Cube Quest but make sure to check out that nightmarish picture of Snakes in the upper left hand corner. Uggh. Speaking of nightmarish pictures one cannot help but comment on the frightening two pictures of Mr. Do up above. I'm not really afraid of clowns but I can't abide China Dolls or their ilk...had to spend the night at an Aunt's house one time as a child...of course I had to sleep in the room that was filled with those little evil things.
...Super Mario Bros. Crossover! A big thanks to the awesome Retroist, more than usual that is, for finding this absolutely killer game. The creator of this title, Jay Pavlina, apparently worked for over a year on creating this beautiful flash game and the love he has for the NES is quite apparent from spending a few minutes playing his first ever offered title.
Beside the mustachioed plumber you can also choose the vampire slaying Simon Belmont, the intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran, the jungle fighter turned alien slayer Bill R., the mega-awesome Mega Man, and the Hero of Hyrule, Link. These brave companions have sworn to set out and rescue Princess Peach from the villainous clutches of Bowser.
This isn't a simple mash-up, the music for the game changes for each character, the music from their own titles. Each character brings with them some of their special abilities, like Simon's axe throwing, or Samus's bomb drop.
I can only hope that Nintendo, Konami, and Capcom see what a wonderful piece of work has been given to the masses this day. Take a moment to play and I think you'll agree this is worth its weight in Koopa shells.
I am lucky enough to have a wonderful wife who looks out for my geek needs. I was pleasantly surprised to find this Tron t-shirt from www.threadless.com in the mailbox yesterday. The title of the shirt alone, My Other Ride Is A Light Cycle, is worthy of geek drool but throw in the fact that it glows in the dark as you can see from the above picture and this shirt is obviously full of win.
Winding down the day here at the Victory Vault with just a few more pics of the wonderful geeky creations from Lesley Karpiuk (top photo). I highly recommend that you head over to her site, http://www.thepinktoque.com/ , because there is a ton of good clean fun waiting to be purchased.
I mean that is a table full of D20 soap dice in that top picture and the only way you can get cooler than that is to add some Cthulhu to your soap! What are you doing still reading this? Go over there and buy some soap!
Have you ever thought to yourself that taking a bath would be so much easier if you could do so by scrubbing your filthy form with various Nintendo game system cartridges? Well, if you have, I probably don't want to be standing next to your scraped up self but thanks to the incredibly talented Lesley Karpiuk of PinkToque we can all clean up with these very awesome cartridge shaped soaps. There are very reasonably priced, the gameboy carts are $2.00, while the the Super NES and N64 carts are $6.50...the problem I foresee is not wanting to use them but put them on a shelf.
I'm going to post a couple more later today because they have some really geeky things to tempt your wallet.
It seems as if Mario and Luigi are having to get serious in the Mushroom Kingdom as their foes have become far more frightening in this wonderful art piece by lastscionz. Thanks to Kotaku for the heads up...or is that 1-up?
These offerings today came out last year in the arcades around the world. The Castlevania and Justice League game look pretty swift but I fear that Tetris game with its huge joysticks would drive me bonkers.
How does the gaming giants Valve make their popular online Team Fortress 2 game even better? By adding Sam and Max items into the mix of course! So not only can you adorn your avatar's head with Max's Severed Head but you can also carry his pistol and Sam's revolver into battle!
I don't know very much about this crazy world but when a buffed up ex-wrestler turned Mayor of Metro City requests my aid to rescue his beautiful daughter...friends, I'll be standing shoulder to shoulder with that guy and bringing the pain to the thugs of the Mad Gear gang!
At least I answered that call when I played Final Fight: Double Impact this morning on the Xbox 360. Capcom has released a double package of classic 90's arcade fare, it went online last week I believe, and it is worth its 800 points. Just think about it as spending 400 points for Final Fight and 400 points for Magic Sword with some nice bonus material thrown in to boot.
I'll get to Magic Sword tomorrow or perhaps Friday because we need to spend time chatting up Haggar, Guy, and Cody.
I had a ton of fun playing Final Fight to completion today, it helps now that you don't have to keep shoving quarters into the hungry coin box every minute and a half. I spent all of time playing as Cody but back in the day I used Haggar as my digital avatar. The gameplay is as remembered, move left to right, one button for jump and one for attack, press both to unleash a devastating attack at the expense of losing a portion of health.
The basic gist of the game is that you need to beat down an army of generic street trash...well, maybe not so generic...there are acrobatic ladies in high heels, Andre the Giant clones, large Asian men who head butt you and lots and lots of guys in leotards who throw Molotov cocktails and knives. All this is done to rescue Jessica from the clutches of the Mad Gear Gang's evil boss, Belger, whom happens to be in a wheelchair and uses a crossbow against you in the final round.
Cody is the all around go-to character, nice movement speed, okay damage. Guy is incredibly fast with his attacks but lacks the stamina of Cody. Haggar is pretty slow...cut him some slack, he's a Mayor now...but his attack are very strong and its always fun to lariat someone with your big old arms.
Each level has a specific challenge you need to complete to unlock various bits in the vault where you can look at original artwork, fan art, a Street Fighter/Final Fight cross-over comic...which I've only been able to read a few pages and I'm already trying to find the collection at my local comic shop, and a full episode of the Street Fighter cartoon which focuses on Metro City and Guile coming to help out Cody and Guy, kind of neat even if the animation is just atrocious.
Ahem, the challenges can range from beating a specific stage in under a certain amount of time, obtaining a specific score, to only losing 3 lives on a certain boss. Some of them are obviously very, very hard to accomplish. Beat the entire game with only 18 lives lost...a second player might be the only way for me to see that goal done.
By the way, check out that Final Fight arcade flyer up above...Cody is standing there over Andre's bloody body...only in the 90's could that have been your artwork to get arcades to buy your game.
Below I've included the trailer for Final Fight:Double Impact which shows you a few of features available to you. As usual click the window to be taken straight to the source. Enjoy.
Undoubtedly one of the most popular fighting franchises to hit arcades in the last 15 years has been from Capcom, especially the Marvel VS. Capcom series which is about to get a third outing in the spring of next year.
Entitled Marvel VS. Capcom: Fate of Two Worlds the company debuted the trailer today which is provided below. I recommend clicking the video window to go directly to Youtube as the pictures looks to be cut off to me.
So once more my gaming brethren and I can strike down Mega Man, Strider, and Ryu with the combined might and fury of Doctor Doom, Juggernaut, and Shuma Gorath ("Waste of Flesh!"). Well, at the very least that is the team I end up using most of the time...once in a while I'll slip Magneto in Doom's place.
The producer of this upcoming title, Ryota Nitsuma, says they are planning on having 15 characters to choose from on each side. He also added that there is a possibility of DLC for additional characters but they are not being worked on at this moment. The above trailer has been said to be actual in-game footage from the games engine...if that is indeed true then it should be one nice looking title.
Special Effects wizard and quite possibly an actual Wizard, Richard Taylor, has crafted this one of a kind X-Box 360 for an auction by Microsoft Australia. This diorama showcasing Master Chief's anger at being kicked off the Leader Boards was created by the Weta genius for the achievement of passing a million units sold down under.
Of course Weta was set to be the special effects provider for the Halo movie that Peter Jackson was going to produce before time and other circumstances shut the production down.
Thanks to Kotaku for the pic and info!
A Place In Time - Bosshouse featuring Amanda Abizaid
We ended with Donkey Kong as the subject for last weeks Saturday Supercade and the famouse escaped gorilla is not only going to start us off this weekend but he'll keep us warm as well thanks to the talented Carolina Patchworks!
"There's something out there waiting for us, and it ain't no man. We're all gonna die."
I have been a huge Predator fan since the first movie and I am one of those shunned outcasts that actually enjoys the Danny Glover movie more than Schwarzenegger's offering. In the Summer of 1994, my group of friends and I discovered the Aliens Vs Predator arcade game by Capcom at one of our local Wal-Marts. Like many of the Capcom titles of that time this was a side-scrolling beat-em up offering.
Now in the long run of that year only one of my friends and I really took to the game, we must have spent easily a hundred dollars during that Summer, beating it over and over. Mind you these were Summer nights filled with disposable income, nights when you would get off work and meet your friends at the Village Inn, scarf down some greasy hash browns and bacon and then head over to Wal-Mart to grab some Star Wars Micro Machines or other prize.
If I remember correctly a few years later you could buy action figures of the Predators and Aliens not only from the game but the comic series as well.
Even though the hordes of adoring fan letters and requests for various game reviews keep me up late until the wee hours of the morning and make me more jazzed than a sugar rush/espresso combo...sometimes I just can't pull myself out of my stasis chamber to make a post. That was the case for yesterday, dear readers. Such is the curse of old age.
However, my energy levels are at least showing half-full today so I share this photo of a Super Mario Bros. fan that has the message we gamers must all face someday no matter what we accomplish. I sure do love some Mario and Luigi but I couldn't go through life with that on my neck.
Looks like the fabled Asteroids record score achieved by Scott Safran back in 1982 has been topped. John McAllister of Seattle, Washinton has racked up a score of 41,338,740 points during a 52 hour marathon. 52 hours of continuous play. That just boggles the mind, to be good enough to topple the score much less be good enough to play it for 52 hours without losing all of your ships. A praise worthy talent to be sure.
However the score has still to be confirmed by the referees of Twin Galaxies, they have a pretty strict method of verifying scores. You have to videotaped the entire challenge, that means never shutting off the camera, and you have to record the settings of the game you are playing. Since it was a 52 hour sessions the referee will have to watch the entire 52 hours of play before John is crowned the new King of Asteroids.
Thanks to the Xbox 360's Game Room I have found a new favorite for a classic arcade game that I had never had the chance to play before. Konami released Shao-Lin's Road (Also known as Kicker in some countries) in 1985 and what little information I can find says it is the sequel to the arcade hit, Yie Ar Kung Fu. It was also released to various home computer systems as you can see from the Spectrum box art pictured at the top.
This game is deceptively simple, you play Lee who has finally mastered the fighting art of Chin's Shao-Lin but you have become trapped by a gang of Triad. Your goal is to escape the temple grounds by kicking anything that you meet, Triad thugs, sumo wrestlers, Kabuki fighters, geisha girls, a bowl of rice...yeah, you actually kick a bowl of flying rice at one point as well as a cake.
The controls are simple, you are allowed to move in the usual four directions, you can jump forward, and of course you can kick. There is much enjoyment to be had by leaping between two buildings and planting your foot in the back of a thug's head...I might have found one of the secrets of enjoying life playing this game.
You start each first level of a stage by defeating all of the thugs as they try to chase you across the screen, they'll try to drop down on you and jump up from below as well. Four hits and you lose a life, but if you succeed in knocking them all out you are treated to Lee shouting out, "Guts!"...which I don't quite understand.
Every second stage of a level challenges you with boss as well as the normal thugs you encounter. They usually have as much agility as you possess so the key to defeating them is not to stand still too long, place a foot in their face and drop down a level, when they follow you apply the same treatment. Of course around the third stage when the Kabuki fighter sets you on fire...you need to develop another strategy.
My scores so far have not even ranked me on the Leaderboards but an enjoyable feature of the Game Room is that you can watch the game play of the top players. So I was able to watch the entire game played by the current champ while drinking a cup of tea, picked up on where I could get some more points by doing so.
Overall I highly recommend Shao-Lin's Road but I warn you that it is quite addictive once you start playing it.
Well, that is another post packed Saturday Supercade come to an end. Looking at that rather grisly sticker up above, I just don't think Mario would do something like that. Sure he is put out because DK stole his girl but heck he just locks the big gorilla in a cage for Donkey Kong Jr. so I don't see him mounting Donkey Kong's head on the wall. Yuck!
Switching over to Donkey Kong now from Fleer for what looks like an almost all sticker Saturday. Thanks to TRsRockin.com for the above picture. I use to have practically a full set of these stickers back in my youth but I traded them for an album of Dragon's Lair stickers.
Now if I ever get to visit New York City this is the type of art I expect to see on the streets, Raphael reaching out for the last slice of pizza pie! Perhaps he needed an energy boost playing that unforgiving first NES game?
I think Fleer stole some of Buckner and Garcia's lyrics for Pac-Man Fever as I look at these two sticker sets. Don't you wish though, back in the day, that either we had elected Pac-Man for President or had a U.S. Pac-Man Team?
My grandmother's closet door still has a ton of these Fleer Pac-Mac stickers on it...if we ever sell that house I'll have to take the door with me. I'm sure it must have brought her great embarrassment when she had company over, "This door is my grandson's...shrine to video games...and Star Wars...and Garbage Pail Kids...and Gremlins..."
I can honestly say that I have never had the pleasure of seeing much less playing these games. The Galaxian 3 game looks the most interesting to me, that would have been a blast to play, six people manning different stations for a galactic battle.
Crime Patrol looks very much like a 1990's arcade game, though this one has the added benefit of live action going for it.
Something about the Prime Time Fighter flyer really makes me think it was a quarter muncher.
As always a big thanks to the Arcade Flyer Archive!
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