Handy Super Metroid Map!

Click on the picture to make Samus sized!

Wow, no Saturday Supercade post last weekend? I leave the Victory Pellet Vault for one day to attend this year's VillainCon, assuming my loyal henchman can take care of things and look what happens! Worldhive computers have become infected by some kind of phishing virus, the Radium reactors almost melt down...and Paraguay has somehow been linked to my Facebook page. Sigh. The burdens we must bear.

However at least I can count on the brilliant minds over at Brawlinthefamily.com to give me a helping hand today. Here for your enjoyment is an easy to follow guide to Super Metroid on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. Enjoy!

Raid On Alamut - Harry Gregson-Williams

Friday Flyers.

Click the pics to make 1988 sized!

Is it just me or is that Rock 'n Roll from G.I. Joe hanging out the left window in the Blasted flyer? Unfortunately I cannot really add anything to the other two offerings this week as I've not had the pleasure to play them. Please feel free to add anything if you have had the chance to give them a go!

If I Didn't Care - The Inkspots

It Must Be Thursday.

Poor little Toad. Surrounded on all sides by Bowser's Goombas. Good luck freeing him with this Japanese crane game.

My Little Box - John Frizzell

Box Art Wednesday.

Today's Box Art Wednesday is brought to you by the letter I for Intellivision!

Really busy today here at the Victory Pellet Vault so all I have time to add is that Stampede by Activision was the best cattle rustling title to be released for a console until Red Dead Redemption hit the shelves last week.

Roxanne - Sting

Enter The Ryu Hayabusa...Exit The Goombas.

Hold the phone! Ryu Hayabusa from the NES classic Ninja Gaiden has just been added to the already fantastic Super Mario Bros. Crossover game by Exploding Rabbit studios. The fine artists at Dueling Analogs just recently came up with the mock NES cover you see above, fantastic work to be sure, I especially dig the Internet approved seal on the bottom right corner.

Jay Pavlina, the creator of the Super Mario Bros. Crossover flash game says that Ryu will make his debut with the 1.1 upcoming update. I cannot wait to take on Bowser with Ninja skills!




Electric Youth - Deborah Gibson

"It's gonna drive you insane."

Back in 1982 in my youth my first introduction to the Atari 2600 title Megamania was through the TBS aired Starcade during a commercial break. The advertisement is reminiscent of MTV videos of the 80's with music provided by The Tubes, I'll post the commercial below for your enjoyment.




Unfortunately I was not able to get my hands on Megamania until the Activision Anthology was released for the Playstation 2 in 2002. I found it to be an enjoyable but very tasking title. The gameplay is a riff on Space Invaders where you control a ship and must fire a shot upwards to hit moving targets as they descend upon you, however in Megamania the objects move much faster in a cascading effect and will reverse direction which can easily result in the loss of your ship by collision.

To add to the difficulty of the game you have an energy bar that depletes the more shots you fire but at least you can control your fired shot, move it just a little to the left or right so that it helps connect with the fast moving objects above you.

The enemies in Megamania are a little odd. You are not fighting an alien invasion in this title but are stuck in a nightmare where you must defeat bow ties, hamburgers, and steam irons. I'm guessing that Steve Cartwright must have been having sleepless nights when he was designing this title.

I've come to play this title again quite a bit just recently as the X-Box Game Room has added it to its available Atari 2600 titles. It's worth the 240 points because while it may not have the next gen graphics we've grown accustomed to it still has an outstanding and challenging game play. Feel free to look me up by my online gamer tag, Unicron2005, if you want to spend an evening blasting 8-bit foes!

Thanks to Atari Age for the pictures above, check out the box cover, the creator of the title Steve Cartwright signed it!

Saturday Supercade!

It's an 8-bit art show for this Saturday Supercade!

1.) You have to be careful when exploring this crazy thing we call life because around every corner there might just be a lurking Pitfall tile created scorpion waiting for you.

2.) I guess when your water pipes begin to pour out 8-bit pixelated water your only choice is to call on the Mario Bros. plumber company.

3.) Wonderful Tron representation from the I am 8-bit art exhibit. End of Line.

4.) Why use spray paint when you can create an entire Donkey Kong out of post-it notes?

5.) A nicely crafted laptop tote bag featuring Pitfall Harry doing his thing.

The Spirit Of Adventure - Michael Giacchino

Friday Flyers.

Click the pics to make 1978 size!

I've had the privilege in my youth to have played all three games presented for this Friday Flyers and they were all at a local bowling alley. I do want to point out Atari's Orbit over the others though just because of the complexity of the controls....there were 12 buttons on that cabinet not including the 1 or 2 player start. Critics had the audacity to complain about William's Electronics Defender having too many buttons in 1980? Yeesh.

Miracle and Magician - Wendy Carlos

It Must Be Thursday.

While technically not an arcade game you still had to use coins to make it work and it was found in penny arcades back in the day. At least that is my reasoning for this post and I am sticking to it. "Laughing Sally" apparently starts to laugh hysterically when you insert your coins but I personally say its real purpose is to make gallons and gallons of nightmare juice. Brrr.

Carriage Without A Driver - Kronos Quartet

Lego Meet Pac-Man.

Yes, you are looking at an arcade cabinet for Pac-Man made entirely of Legos. The genius behind this work of art is one Ben Fleskes and he didn't alter any of the Lego pieces in the construction of his cabinet. The emulator that he has installed in his cabinet is the same offerings that I've talked about here before at my local Red Robin. We here at the Victory Pellet Vault salute you, Ben!

A big thanks to Kotaku for the pics and heads up.

Box Art Wednesday.

The Commodore 64 offers us a nice selection of box art for todays post, and a huge thank you to lemon64.com for the scanned covers above!

I really like the style of that Dan Dare cover art, I believe EA released two more sequels for it, and looking at the reviews on the lemon64 site it seems to have been a pretty nice game to play.

I owned and still do the James Bond cartridge for the C-64, I also remember the difficulty I had playing the Diamonds Are Forever stage. Grrr.

I've never played the Raid on Bungeling Bay but I remember staring at the ad for it...quite frankly that is a terribly menacing cover in my opinion.

Old Mr. Keeg - Douglas Pipes

So Every Princess Is To Be Named Zelda?

In my youth I was lucky enough to make friends with the youngest son of my Grandparents best friends. His name was Ross and even though he was 9 years my senior he was an avid Weird Science reader as well as a huge early console and PC fan. So on Saturday nights I would go with my Grandparents to play bingo at a small town social every week and then afterward we would spend a couple of hours at Ross's house where I would peruse his mass collection of Atari 2600, Intellivision, and PC floppy disks.

So as I grew older our mutual interest in gaming led to us both swapping NES titles every weekend and since Ross had a full time job he was able to secure the newer games as they came out. We both went nuts over the original Legend of Zelda but when the sequel, The Adventure of Link, came out...he was disappointed by the complete change in gameplay from its predecessor. So much so that he flat out gave me his copy of Zelda II.

I didn't get a chance to play the game upon going home and had to wait until Sunday morning until I was able to once more step into Link's shoes and live a life of high adventure in the land of Hyrule. Though come the morn I found I took to the title like a fish to water and was shocked to hear the next day at school as I was going on about the game that my fellow students hated it so much. What was it about the game that I was digging that so many others weren't?

From the Wiki regarding the story of the Advenure of Link:

"

Six years after the events of The Legend of Zelda, the now sixteen year old Link notices a strange mark on the back of his left hand, exactly like the crest of Hyrule. He seeks out Impa, who responds by taking Link to the North Castle, where a door has been magically sealed for generations. Impa places the back of Link's left hand on the door, and it opens, revealing a sleeping maiden. Impa tells Link that the maiden is Zelda, the princess of Hyrule from long ago, and the origin of the "Legend of Zelda." Zelda's brother had tried to force her into telling their recently deceased father's secrets concerning the last of three sacred golden triangle treasures of his kingdom, known collectively as the Triforce. Princess Zelda refused to reveal its location, and the prince's wizard friend, in anger, tried to strike her down with a spell. Zelda fell under a powerful sleeping spell, but it also resulted in the wizard's own death. The prince, unable to reverse the spell, had his sister placed in the castle tower, in the hope that she would one day be awakened. He decreed that princesses born to the royal family from that point on would be named Zelda, in remembrance of this tragedy.

Impa says that the mark on Link's hand means that he is the hero chosen to awaken Zelda. She gives Link a chest containing six crystals and ancient writings that only a great future king of Hyrule can read. Link can read it and it indicates that each crystal needs to be placed in a different palace in Hyrule. This will open the way to the Great Palace, which contains the TriForce of Courage. This, combined with the other two parts, has the power to awaken the enchanted Zelda. Taking the crystals, Link sets out to restore them to their palaces. Meanwhile, the followers of Gannon are seeking to kill Link; sprinkling his blood on Ganon’s ashes would bring Ganon back to life."

Doing a little research shows that 1-up.com has a score of 65/100 and Gamespot bestows 69/100 on The Adventure of Link. IGN gives it a 70/100 and Nintendo Power 72/100.

So what say you? Is the negative reception to the game in fact because the gameplay had changed? Perhaps the title is considered too difficult? Is the storyline just too crazy to comprehend?

Night Moves - Bob Seger

Nintendo Power Hotline. No Gauntlet Advice.

Ah, the joys of that particular Birthday so many years past. I open up my last present and there in my shaking hands is Gauntlet for the NES. I love Gauntlet...heck I even tried to dress up as Questor one Halloween in my youth. It didn't quite work out like I had expected. I was asked if I was everything from Robin Hood to Peter Pan. Sigh.

Back to the point of the post, after about two days of playing the NES port of Gauntlet I found myself stuck. I was facing the Dragon at the end of the game and just could not slay the wretched beast. My Grandmother being a saint of video games suggested I call the Hotline phone number listed in our Nintendo Power magazines.

So I jumped up and using her phone dialed the number with bated breath to see if these gurus of gaming could perhaps give me the one vital piece of information that would help me topple my digital foe.

Unfortunately this was not to be.

It turned out that Tengen didn't exactly produce licensed versions of Gauntlet, Pac-Man, or RBI Baseball for the NES. It seems that the company found Nintendo's license too restrictive and as the Wiki states, Nintendo didn't want their licensees to have more than five game released in a year and those titles had to be console exclusive for two years.

When I asked the Hotline attendant to help me with my Dragon problems...he became quiet for a couple of seconds and then informed me he was not allowed to give any advice on Tengen titles. I was terribly confused, he had to repeat that about three times and this guy was really terrific because even at that young age I could tell he really wanted to help me.

In plain desperation I pleaded with him to help defeat the dragon. His reply though pained was brief, "Shoot the Dragon more." He then hung up the phone. I put the phone up and then went back to the game and as if he was in control of my NES unit I was able to defeat the Dragon...just because a Nintendo Hotline attendant told me to do what I was already doing.

Come to think of it I might have been talking to Dio.

Killing The Dragon - Dio

Good Morning and Welcome To Nightmare Town.

Thanks to Kotaku for the above pictures as well as the bit of news that if you decide to pre-order Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood you will gain access to the Harlequin character above. Gamestop sums up the character pretty well : "Behind the gaudy costume and twisted smile lies the soul of a merciless Assassin. You call yourself the Harlequin. Your victims will call you a walking nightmare."

True words.

Holy Diver - Dio

Saturday Supercade!

Yes, that is indeed a Q*bert teapot which makes it possibly the most awesome teapot ever created...if you could actually drink out of it that is. The very talented Phil Theobald over at 1-up.com created the items you see above though he admits they are for decorative purposes only. Still, these are awesome creations indeed and we at the Victory Pellet Vault salute you for your wonderful creations!

The Defender - Buckner & Garcia

Friday Flyers.

Click the pictures to make 1984 sized!

I'm not sure about the rest of you readers but that Future Spy arcade game looks very similar to Zaxxon to mine eyes. What say you?

Make sure to carefully peruse the flyer for the Glob...is that a monkey riding a pig at the top? Looking over the ad for this game really makes me want to find out more about it, I'll update later if I can stumble across anything.

Many thanks as always to the Arcade Flyer Archive for the flyers posted above.

The Moment of Truth (Karate Kid) - Survivor

It Must Be Thursday...Lovecraft Edition.

As great as my love for all things H.P. Lovecraft I am not sure I have the strength of sanity to place this awesome Cthulhu chess game. Look what we have here for playing pieces:

The King pieces are obviously Cthulhu while the Queen is Nyarlathotep.

The Bishop pieces are represented by Father Dagon and Mother Hydra.

The Rooks are none other than Shoggoths.

The Knights are the Hounds of Tindalos.

Lastly but not least...well, yeah I guess they are, we have the Deep Ones as pawns.

Ready to pull out that wallet and secure one of these for your own nefarious nightly chess sessions? Therein lies the rub. This is a handmade personal set by Electix over on the Wet Canvas Forums. Which might be for the best...because whom can truly say that when you move your pieces on this Lovecraftian chessboard that you in turn are not being moved by cosmic forces beyond your comprehension upon theirs?

When Darkness Falls (Blackthorn Asylum) - Nox Arcana