Category: Musings

Some game purchases from a garage sale

Went by a garage sale this past weekend and picked up a stack of games for roughly ten dollars. A varied collection for a variety of consoles… that was all that remained of what was allegedly a huge stockpile of video games. I’m guessing the guy who was selling them wanted to get rid of them rather quickly so he charged only ten bucks. It’s surprising to me considering the games I got, but it goes to show how much people tend to be ignorant of some of the games’ true value or worth. Anyway, here’s what I picked up;

– Two Super Famicom games; Dragon Quest I & II and Super Tetris 2 & Bombliss. I’ve played the Tetris one extensively and might merit a video in the future. Sampling some DQI&II is rather interesting; I’d like to be able to sit down and give this a proper go… and contrary to what is said on Wikipedia, Dragon Quest I & II works fine on the FC Twin… at least as far as I can tell.

– Doom for SNES… I’ll be honest; I have no intention of playing this game. I just wanted the red cartridge.

– A fair number of Atari 2600 games; Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Rampage, Commando, and Demon Attack. At last, a classic childhood favorite has filled a void in my collection. Also, Rampage on the Atari 2600 is actually pretty damn fun and provides the player with a rather solid gaming experience. And the graphics aren’t have bad either.

– Some Game Boy titles; Kid Icarus Of Myths And Monsters (the sequel/remake to the NES classic – therefore I own all the games in the series outside of their Japanese counterparts), The Amazing Spider-Man (as featured on AVGN’s Spider-Man episode from 2007… and believe me, despite its flaws, it’s actually the best game in the series, as its sequels are far worse), and a non-Game Boy title, Pac-Man for Game Gear.

– A nice healthy compliment of NES titles to fill out the shelf; Silver Surfer (a game that’s more frustrating than it is crappy), Double Dragon III (this one IS crappy), Twin Eagle (a nice little shooter with helicopters), and Ring King… yeah, the one with the blowjobs.

– Finally, I got Sonic 3 and Columns for Genesis. So that completes the main Sonic titles (only missing Spinball, 3D Blast, and the Puyo Puyo knockoff feature Eggman).

All in all, a rather nice and solid bounty for ten bucks. And that brings my total rack of titles over the 700 mark. Unbelievable.

Scott Hall Arrested for being drunk… good times.

If you’re looking for more means of supporting the theory of TNA slowly becoming WCW, here’s more substantial evidence.
According to this online newspaper article, Scott Hall was arrested and charged with disorderly intoxication. I guess he was drun… um, I mean, “battling personal demons” again. Hall, I may remind you, is currently one-third of TNA’s World Tag-Team Champions, with partners Kevin Nash and Eric Young under Freebird rules. (To anyone who is confused by that statement, it basically means that any two of the three men can defend the titles in a match. This dates back to the Fabulous Freebirds team who first pulled this off.)
Sadly, it only makes WWE look good when they let someone go and then that someone gets busted for, as was the case with Jeff Hardy. It wasn’t like any of their champions were busted for having pot in their car trunk or went crazy and killed his whole family.
Oh wait.

COMIC REVIEW – Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #4 (Hamilton Comics)

So here we are; the very first MMPR comic book I ever picked up and one of the few comics I still possess in my small-ish collection to this day. And coincidentally enough, it’s the first issue in the series to feature the White Ranger. We’re four issues in and we’ve only seen Tommy in two of these damn things, it’s really shocking.

Unfortunately, Tommy the White Ranger is written like Tommy the Green Ranger; someone who feels like a sixth wheel on this well-oiled five wheel machine. Even more unfortunate is that even though we have new Rangers, there’s no explanation as to how we’ve got this change in cast. Even worse, the new Rangers are written so that they act much like the old Rangers. So Aisha’s translating Billy’s technobabble and Rocky’s the defacto leader of the group. Amazingly, at no point during these early issues is Adam depicted as a master of hip hop kido; something that would’ve been a sight to behold.

Fortunately, the stories in this miniseries are so basic and barebones that it really doesn’t matter who’s filling what shoes. There’s a monster that’s turning all the parkland into poisonous swamps and the Rangers have to take care of him. Swamp Man sounds like a name of a rejected robot master pile from Mega Man (or at least, something out of the numerous fan games out there) and his design is just that of a simple mud man design, but the way he’s killed off is fairly ingenious and gives Tommy something to do in this comic book.

Sparky Moore provides the art for this issue and would be back for several issues. His art is simplistic and nowhere near as messy as the previous issues, though this means that the fight scenes are somewhat underwhelming. On the flip side, however, Moore has a tendency to get the faces right, almost to the point where some depictions almost capture the likeness of the actors as though they were tracings of still shots or promotional material. Moore would do more issues later on, including the next one.

A pretty standard, run of the mill issue. Next issue, we begin the two-story format and Tommy has more stuff to do here… so there we go.

VIDEO COMMENTARY #01 – Contra 4 by the Angry Pissed Off Game Guy Who Ate Siberia


(2021 Update: Due to changing Youtube algorithms, the old Youtube embed has been replaced with a newer Youtube embed.)


Now I’m going to admit that I’m not the greatest Contra player ever. If anything, I’m rather mediocre at the titles, barely able to make it through the halfway point. For the most part, I was able to beat Contra 4 on a fluke (on Normal) and had more fun with the challenges than the main game. But even with that said, Contra 4 has all the solid makings of an exciting adrenaline rush due to its hyper difficulty and classic arcade gameplay that has made the series a classic franchise.

I’m certainly not going to make a video and say that the game sucks.

Of course, because Contra games tend to be difficult (as is the case with most old-school Konami titles, actually), they tend to be fodder for would-be angry game reviewers who simply don’t know any better. Perhaps the most jarring example would be a YouTube video by a user Vib-something, but posted under the name sizzler07. You might have seen this video as some kid calling himself the Angry Nerd XD or something and complaining about how he can’t beat the first level. It’s really, really, REALLY sad.

But we’re not touching that today.

No, the one we’re going to be looking at is a review of Contra 4 by a large man who calls himself the Pissed Off Angry Video Gamer or something. His most famous video seems to be his Nintendo Gamecube review, where he smashes a Wavebird controller and cooks his Shitcube in a microwave. Yeah, in addition to that and his Shitbox 360 review (where he shot Cheetohs or something), he also did this.

Unfortunately, the horrendousness of this video review is so utterly heinous that a text format could NOT do this thing justice. Therefore, in the spirit of Asalieri’s Reviewing A Reviewer videos, I decided to go ahead and do a commentary/review/critique/rambling/whatever video in regards to the POAVGer’s opus.

Another Habs Victory – Another Riot

Wow. Hockey talk. Go figure.

I’m not a big hockey guy, but I enjoy a good game when I can.

So le Canadiens de Montreal win their playoff series in seven games over the Pittsburg Penguins. Le Habs go on to the Conference finals for the first time since 1993. Hey, 1993 was also the last year they won a Stanley Cup… reading too much into this? Yes, I am.

Of course, with the Canadiens victory comes a riot party… and idiots looting stores.

Maybe you should just watch hockey games not taking place at the Bell Centre at home.

Oh… and a message to Heritage Minister James Moore, who boldly declared his beloved Canucks to be “Canada’s team” – Your boyz didn’t last long, did they? So there goes “Canada’s team” off to the golf courses while the Blackhawks move upwards towards something. At least a certain President is happy that his hometown team is going somewhere.

And a message to Gilles Duceppe, who declared Montreal to be “Quebec’s team” – and I’ll be doing this in broken French – Bizarre vous diriez que la considération de l’équipe manque à présent dans les francophones. La seule raison vous dites Montréal est l’équipe de Québec est parce qu’il n’y a aucune équipe Nordique pour vous pour accorder ce titre.

Haim Saban Re-Acquires Power Rangers – new episodes to air on Nick

It’s all here. And given that several news sources have confirmed it, this is indeed legit.

Hmm… well, this certainly confirms that there’s going to be new material down the line. And while people are triumphantly declaring this a return to form, I’m going to steal a bit from Wil Wheaton and claim that I’m cautiously optimistic.

On the one hand, I always felt that the Saban-era shows were stronger than the Disney-era shows and despite the relative cheap nature of the series, seemed to have more care involved in assuring a quality product. On the other hand, the fact that Saban has control again doesn’t guarantee the success and quality of the older shows. After all, it’s been a while since he’s done this.

Now part of the news also disclosed that Saban inked a deal to produce 20 new episodes to air on Nickelodeon, with the backlot of 700 episodes playing on Nicktoons. Great idea for those who have Nick, bad idea for those DON’T.

I guess if new eps do happen, I’ll be watching them off YouTube.

COMIC REVIEW – Mighty Morphin Power Rangers #3 (Hamilton Comics)

The third issue of Hamilton Comics’ first Mighty Morphin comic miniseries sees regular series writer Donald Markstein take a brief break from carrying this run on his back and filling in is writer Jack C. Harris. The story for this one is somewhat silly; Kimberly is scolded by her mother for not cleaning her room – we’ve all been there.

However, when the Rangers need to deal with a monster, it turns out Kimberly lost her coin and that it’s buried in her room somewhere. Turns out her coin was used as a coaster for a pop drink. I was not aware you could do such a thing with a coin considering the massive size difference, but then again, power coins aren’t drawn with any real consistency in terms of dimensions throughout these early comics. Actually, consistency is hardly something that is a priority with these comics.

The story is kinda goofy even for Power Rangers and the art from issue artist Al Bigley is a bit messy; the only strong point being that everyone looks the part, but the line art is a bit chaotic. Almost as if this was drawn in a rush and handed in before having to take a dump. That said, it’s far from the worst art I’ve seen in this run and Bigley would be back for a couple more stories. All in all, not a strong issue, but not completely terrible.

Also worth noting; this is the first issue to feature Rocky, Aisha, and Adam as the new Power Rangers, effectively replacing the original half of the team after a big ol’ two issues. Much like Lord Zedd, the three Rangers are just shoehorned into the story and basically assume the roles of their predecessors. (Rocky assumes the leadership role Jason held, Aisha translate Billy-speak, Adam does… whatever Adam does.)

Tommy does not appear in this issue in any way, shape, or form; postponing the comics debut of the White Ranger by another issue.