A little less than a month away...

Thanks to Joystiq for the awesome image of Dr. Egon Spengler.
Though...aren't they crossing the streams?

Is it A-Maze-ing?

I have never heard of this game before in my life. I just really like the box art...the nearest I can tell from my snooping is its a knock-off version of Maze-Craze which has a cop chasing a crook through a...maze. Thanks to Atariage for the heart pounding excitement above.

Saturday Supercade.

Sometimes you just need a Donkey Kong belt buckle.

Wor.

Wizard of Wor that is. I first played this 1980 classic at the Skate Place, I remember being jazzed by the synthesized speech...such as it was, as well as having to watch my back around the other player...1,000 points per slain fellow Worrior is nothing to sneeze at.

It took me a couple of games to get into the swing of it and once I was lucky enough to find another player that wouldn't make me squander my quarter we could survive a couple of levels, mainly by staying in a lower corner back to back to blast the oncoming Burwors and Garwors. Of course when the Thorwor or the Worluk showed up...it was everyman or, Worrior as they are called, for him or her self.

The Wizard of Wor wasn't just a shadowy narrator either, he would indeed pop in around the 3rd dungeon level to blast the crap out of the Worriors but I didn't find him near as panic inducing as I did the Thorwor. Thorwor...that should be a heavy metal band name.

It must be Thursday.

What more can you say?

"Stick and move..."

There was a time that Mike Tyson represented to me the ultimate fighting machine...this was of course before he gained a perverse taste for human flesh while in the boxing ring. I obtained calluses on my right hand thumb thanks to this NES game from 1987. In honor of the next week's release of the Wii updated version of Punch-Out I could think of no better title to reminisce on.

From the fine folks at Wikipedia I dug up this interesting tidbit: "Nintendo of America's founder and former president Minoru Arakawa attended a boxing match featuring Mike Tyson. While watching the boxer fight, Arakawa became so astonished with the athlete's "power and skill", he was inspired to use the athlete's name and likeness in the upcoming port of the Punch-Out!! series to help the game sell well."

I had a pretty long Summer with this game, I never had any difficulty with the boxers until around Soda Popinski and even then you were given the chance with a rematch, but if you lost you went down a rank and if you lost again the game was over. When it came time though to match gloves with Mike Tyson you had one shot and one only. You lost that fight, and you generally did, it was back to that last Password save spot to climb the heavyweight ladder once again.

Tyson was an animal in game, his attacks almost impossible to avoid without a memorization of his pattern, the way his feet were pointing and how his gloves moved, and a whole lot of luck. I remember when I knocked him out I was over at a neighborhood kids house where my Grandmother lives and I believe he was more nervous than I was over the outcome of the fight. But I did prevail and I ran back to my Grandmother's house to report my victory. My Grandmother used to keep a notebook with my record times and the amount of games I defeated, someday I'll try to find it and scan it.

A big thanks to Gamespy for the above pics.

"If it bleeds...we can kill it."

Wow...this game is somethin' else. I rented this NES version of Predator multiple times to finally lay low the alien hunter that had killed my fellow mercenaries...I was found wanting in that task...I could never finish the game. I became stuck in the level where you had to take a mud bath and fire your flame arrow at the Predator.

I know there is a level warp cheat code but I always felt that path lead to darkness as a gamer. Still if you have an emulator and feel up to punching soldiers, scoripions, and a few more scorpions...actually even if you do have the ROM for an emulator, don't play this game.