Most ridiculous game… ever.
Archive for the ‘Video Games’ Category
I Wanna Be The Guy
Saturday, December 20th, 2008Kid Icarus
Sunday, March 30th, 2008While playing this game, I said the following things out loud and to myself. Shut up.
“So the screen scrolls up and doesn’t scroll back down, so if I miss a jump, and I know there’s a ground 3 pixels below the bottom of the screen, I die anyway? Horse shit.”
“That ‘harsh training’ is pretty harsh. I can’t survive it with the shitty life meter and no powerups available to me at the moment.”
“This random store owner didn’t say ‘BUY SOMETHING WILL YA’, but it’s pretty close. ”
“390 hearts? Why would I have this many hearts on the first level? It’s almost like you don’t want me to buy this item of unknown power.”
“Oh, 500 hearts for a barrel. I barely had the 210 for the life refill item. Horse shit.”
“Missed another jump, died again. Fuck.”
“So ducking on the floating platforms makes you fall through it and die if there’s nothing to catch you. Good to know. Now to repeat the last 10 minutes of work.”
“So THAT’S what those hammers (that you can collect before getting to the dungeon) do. Now what do those things flying out of the statues do?”
(When Joe dies fighting the dungeon boss): “I have to do the whole dungeon over again? Fuckin’ a.”
“Finally, a side-scrolling level! And a life powerup! Now I won’t die if I stub my toe.”
“Alright, finally getting some good weapons and health… wait… this is the end boss?”
“So, I beat the end boss, get to start over with all my weapons, powerups, full life meter and hearts, and none of the enemies are harder? It’s Zelda backwards!”
Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games
Monday, November 12th, 2007Firstly, this game has Mario.
Secondly, this game has Sonic the Hedgehog.
Thirdly, the 15-second TV commercial for this game features Europe’s The Final Countdown.
If those aren’t good enough reasons for me to get a Wii, I have no idea what is.
I need a Wii. Like, really, really soon.
1994 Blockbuster Video World Game Championship: The End
Monday, February 5th, 2007This weekend was the “big thing” in my life up to this point. This would be a defining moment in my life. (P.S. in case you don’t notice, I jump between present, past and future tense in this write-up. I’m not submitting this for a writing award, so just bear with it.)
1994 Blockbuster Video World Game Championship: The Middle
Thursday, February 1st, 2007Continuing the story of Joe and his video game tournament journey…
1994 Blockbuster Video World Game Championship: The Intro
Wednesday, January 31st, 2007If you tried searching for “1994 Blockbuster Video World Game Championship” on the internet’s most popular search engines, chances are you’ll come up dry. There’s not a lot of information out there on the event, which is a shame for me since it was a big moment in my life way back in the day.
By complete happenstance, while searching for my stored-away college diploma and transcripts, I found 2 folders, contents completely intact, of information about the finals of the competition, which were held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Seeing no other information out there on the subject, it is my self-appointed duty to present this info to the masses, right here, on averagejoe.cc! *cheap pop*
I’ll start off with what I know about the beginning of the tournament (unfortunately, I have no physical evidence to back up my claims of anything before the finals, so you’ll just have to trust me on this.) The tournament started at the local level. Competitors entered the tournament at their local Blockbuster Video store and chose to compete on one of two systems: Sega Genesis or Super Nintendo. My choice was the Genesis, so most info I can remember is about that format. For each system, each store would have players compete in 3 games on their system. Each game had its own scoring rubric which was based on the in-game score plus bonuses. Players would have to arrive at the store at specified times to play one of their games. The 3 game scores are combined to determine a store champion who would advance to regionals.
The games for the Genesis were NBA Jam, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Virtua Racer. NBA Jam had players play against the computer for 2 quarters. To get the player’s tournament score, the player’s in-game score was multiplied by some amount (1000, I believe) and a bonus was given if the player outscored the computer (guessing 5000). I don’t exactly remember Sonic 3’s scoring rubric; it may have been in-game score with no additional adjustments. I don’t remember Virtua Racer’s scoring at all. The first round was NBA Jam, where I scored 32 points in my allotted time. I was in 8th place after round 1. Round 2 was Sonic 3, where I was the only person in my store who knew how to get a Perfect in the Special Stage (and for those that remember, Perfects get you 50,000 points). After the second round, I had a commanding lead that I didn’t relinquish. Joe is the store champion! (I still have the shirt to prove it.)
Before the next entry: Pictures of the shirt will be edited into this post.
Next entry: The Regional Tournament and the Finals!
The entry after that: PDF scans of all the paper documents I have (to give the whole story some credibility. Credibility is a nice thing to have, after all.)
1986 World Series Game 6 Re-Enacted in RBI Baseball
Monday, April 17th, 2006IT GETS THROUGH BUCKNER! HERE COMES KNIGHT! THE METS WIN IT!
Baseball goodness and NES goodness. Fantastic stuff coming from both a Mets fan and a fan of old-school NES. Length of video: 8:30.
Vectorman
Friday, November 11th, 2005This came with the Sonic Gems Collection for GameCube.
My first impression is that it’s kinda like Earthworm Jim, except it sucks. More to follow, maybe.
Penny Arcade and the Jack Thompson drama
Tuesday, October 18th, 2005In case nobody knows what the title means, I’ll explain. First, you need to know the players involved. Penny Arcade is a video game-related webcomic and news site. It’s one of the most popular and consistantly funny and punctual webcomics out there. In addition, they host an annual toy drive called Child’s Play which benefits children’s hospitals around the country. Jack Thompson is a Florida lawyer who, in recent years, has taken up numerous cases against violent video games. His most recent legal adventure is against Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. He claims that the game trained a young man to kill two police officers (which I think is a pretty big stretch) among other things which you can read about in the wikipedia entry.
The story: It’s in the wikipedia entry, but for those that want don’t want to read it, the long and short of it is that Thompson wrote an open letter to the gaming community challenging them to design and sell a video game which is about a father of a son killed by video games killing video game makers (read that sentence again to make sure you follow it correctly.) He added the stipulation that if someone did do this, he’d give $10,000 to the charity of Take Two chairman Paul Eibeler’s choice. Thompson didn’t expect someone to actually do it, but someone did. And all of a sudden, we have a fufilled challenge, but no money. The reason? Because the challenge was a “satire”. Thompson claims his challenge was a parody of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, which is an 18th centry satire which says that Irish families should eat their children.
Now, my take on this whole thing: I don’t know what this guy’s problem is. He made the challenge, which is fair enough. It’s an odd challenge to say the least, and it’s one that a normal person wouldn’t make. (I mean, c’mon… I’d challenge my friends to say embarrasing things to people and do ridiculous things for a laugh, but what Thompson proposed is on-its-face disturbing.) But if he wants to make a challenge to the video game makers community, it’s fine by me. But, he tried to make them look bad by offering the charity donation on top of this. I guess the intention was to make it look like video gamers don’t care about charity or people in need (which reminds me of the movie Head of State where Chris Rock’s character is the subject of a smear campaign ad in which is opponent points out that he went to an anti-cancer convention, whereas Rock’s character did not, which leads to the really obvious conclusion that Mays Gilliam is “For Cancer”.) What Thompson didn’t count on was a group of game modders actually taking him up on the challenge. Thompson quickly pointed out that “it was a satire” and proceeded to NOT donate any money. Penny Arcade cartoonist Mike Krahulik (whose alter ego is Gabe) then proceeded to show up Thompson by donating the promised $10,000 to The Entertainment Software Association Foundation on behalf of Jack Thompson. Thompson then responded by contacting the Seattle Police complaining that he’s being harrassed (the letter was so poorly constructed, it would’ve been better constructed by the idiots who troll the Rajah.com forums. As another aside: he got the URL of Penny Arcade wrong in the letter. Hasty much?)
I have no idea what’s goin on now. You’d best go to some other sites (such as PA) to get yourself up to date. The bottom line is that Penny Arcade is fucking awesome in all regards and you should go to their store and “buy their Goddamn stuff!” because they surely deserve our patronage.
Penny Arcade CCG
Saturday, August 6th, 2005I MUST HAVE IT.