Bugs Bunny's Birthday Blowout

System: NES

Cheats Used: None

This was Kemco’s second and last Bugs Bunny game for the NES and it was released to coincide with Bugs’s 50th anniversary celebration (which I recall went on for a year and included a TV special and the first new Bugs cartoon in about 20 years). Like Crazy Castle, Birthday Blowout is simple yet challenging. Most of the challenge, though comes from some tricky platforming bits. The game is otherwise fairly easy because most enemies can be avoided and you rack up a ridiculous amount of extra lives by collecting all the carrots you see and using them in a bonus game after every level

There’s a good amount of variety in the environments you traverse and there’s a boss fight every two levels (although some of the bosses repeat). One particularly clever boss fight has both Foghorn Leghorn and Henery Hawk and the trick is that you’re supposed to hit only one of them with the other being a decoy. Also, in the later parts of the game, there were several levels that I had to try several times to get through, so it does provide some challenge. All in all, this is a nice alternative to Mario if you don’t feel like playing that one for the hundredth time. Thumbs up!

Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle

System: NES

Cheats Used: None

My sisters and I received an NES for Christmas when I was four years old. Aside from Mario, Crazy Castle was the first videogame I ever played and I must admit, I still have a soft spot for it. The game has a whopping 60 levels and each one is like a puzzle. The enemies move in patterns and the challenge is to memorize these patterns and use them to get through the levels. Each level has a password, but you’re not likely to need them unless you don’t feel like playing through the whole game in one go because with each level you complete you get an extra life, making it nearly impossible to run out.

Some levels are tricky and took me several tries, but most are easy enough that anyone should be able to beat the game without much trouble. What’s interesting about this game is that it was originally based on Roger Rabbit, but someone else had the American videogame rights to that film, so Kemco changed it to Bugs Bunny for its American release. The series would have four sequels on the Game Boy and Game Boy Advance, with the last one featuring Woody Woodpecker in place of Bugs Bunny. I’ve not played the sequels, but the original is great fun and an excellent way to kill a couple of hours.

The Itchy and Scratchy Game

System: Super NES

Cheats Used: None

Here’s a game that should have worked. The Itchy and Scratchy shorts have always been one of the best parts of The Simpsons (with the one that opens the movie being the best of them), so it seems like a game starring the duo would be a lot of fun. Sadly, this is not the case. The game finds you playing as Itchy and the goal is to kill Scratchy before he kills you. However, there are two problems.

First, your default weapon, the mallet, does very little damage so you have to upgrade to a better weapon, but they only let you have two upgrades and they expire quickly. The second problem is that Scratchy seems to have far more health than you because he takes a lot of hits to kill while you can only take a few, which makes the game extremely unfair. I wasn’t even able to make it past the first level because of this. Spy vs. Spy this ain’t. At least that game made your deaths funny so you didn’t mind so much.

The Amazing Spider-Man

System: Game Boy Cheats Used: Infinite Health, Infinite Webbing The Angry Video Game Nerd hated this game, but I think it’s fun. The controls aren’t perfect, but they’re responsive enough not to be a problem. The game has six levels and you get three lives and three continues. At the end of each level, you fight one of Spider-Man’s foes, including Mysterio, Hobgoblin, Scorpion, Rhino, Doctor Octopus and Venom. The main challenge of the game comes from the fact that the bosses’ attacks are hard to avoid while getting a hit in and in the last couple of levels, the mooks you fight are also hard to avoid. Without cheats, I was able to make it to level four and I only turned the cheats on to see the last two levels. There’s not much to say about this one except that I had a good time with it and if you’re a fan of Spidey, you could do worse.

Wayne's World

System: Sega Genesis

Cheats Used: Infinite Health

I’m a big fan of Wayne’s World. The movie is one of my all time favorites. So imagine my disappointment when I discovered that the game is a horrible, worthless piece of crap. Seriously, this is one of the worst games I’ve ever played. I would have turned it off except I hit the final boss just as I decided to quit.

First, you start off with five hit points and you can refill them as you go through the levels, but that doesn’t help when almost every hazard is almost impossible to avoid. Second, the level design is confusing and it’s easy to get lost and wind up back where you were a few minutes ago. Third, the between-level bits with Wayne and Garth are lame and not even the slightest bit funny. Fourth, hearing Wayne say “Not!” every time he gets hit gets very annoying very fast because you get hit a lot. Fifth, the levels are all very bland and there’s little to no variety between them. In short, this game is an absolute train wreck and should be avoided at all costs.

Movie Review: The Wizard

Anyone who’s heard of this film knows it’s nothing more than an ad for Nintendo. In fact, when the film was first released, its main selling point was that viewers would get a first glimpse of Super Mario Bros. 3, which wouldn’t be released in the states for another year or so. However, despite the film’s status as a feature length commercial, it still manages to be entertaining.

The plot, such as it is, involves two kids (one of whom is autistic) who run away from home to compete in a video game tournament when it’s discovered that the autistic boy is a gaming wizard (hence the title). Shades of Tommy, perhaps? The acting is about as good as you’d expect for a film of this type and the writing is fairly solid, although there are some moments of unintentional humor, which, some would argue, makes the film more enjoyable. In any case, this film ought to be required viewing for anyone with an interest in gaming history because it offers a snapshot of just how Nintendo-crazy America was in the late 1980s. It really is quite fascinating.

Transformers: Convoy no Nazo (The Mystery of Convoy)

System: NES

Cheats Used: Invincibility

In this game based on the classic G1 TV series, Optimus Prime has disappeared and, as Ultra Magnus, you must traverse ten levels to rescue him. This game is notorious for its difficulty, and after trying it without cheats, I can see why. You only get three lives to make it through the game and you die if you get hit just once. Also, level nine is a maze similar to the ones in Super Mario Bros., but in this game, rather then looping around, it lets you get all the way to the end of the level before bumping you back to the start if you took the wrong path. In this day and age when cheats are just a Google search away, I honestly wonder how many gamers have made it to the end without them. Still, even so, this is a fun game to play and if you’re a fan of Transformers at all, you owe it to yourself to give it a try.

I'm Back!

Hi all! After five solid days and a total of about 25 hours, I'm just about finished with Pokemon Black. I've got all the gym badges and I've captured all the legendaries it's possible to capture at this point, including Victini.All that's left is to level up my team some more before taking on the elite four and N. That's gonna take awhile, so I'll work on it a little at a time and I'll start posting here again.

I can tell you that if you like Pokemon at all, you have to play this one because it's the best game of the series so far. They've added a number of great features (like TMs being infinite use now and your pokemon no longer losing HP from poisoning outside of battle) that make the game much more enjoyable. The new pokemon are awesome and the fact that they level up quicker in this game makes grinding less of a hassle. Also, if I ever manage to finish the main story, there's a ton of stuff to do afterwards, which is nice. It's easy to see why Famitsu gave this game a perfect score (something they rarely do) and I recommend it very highly.

PAUSE

Pokemon Black comes out today and it's going to be taking up a lot of my time for the next couple of weeks at least. I'll still be posting stuff here but it's gonna be infrequent for the immediate future. Sorry, but I've been excited about Black for a year and once I have it in my hands, I'm not gonna wanna put it down right away. Once I finish the main story, I'll start posting more regularly again, I promise. I hope you'll bear with me.

Bonk's Adventure

System: TurboGrafX 16

Cheats Used: Infinite Lives

After Nintendo’s Mario series defined the NES for a whole generation of kids, it became standard practice for other console developers to invent mascots of their own. NEC’s mascot was Bonk, a little caveman with a big head. Bonk would star in three games and have a spinoff set in the future featuring his descendant, Zonk. In this first adventure, you have to save Princess Za and the people of Moonland from Evil King Drool. The only weapon you have is Bonk’s head, which you can use to bash enemies.

Like most games of this type, it starts out pretty easy and then gets harder the closer you get to the end. Level 5-5 is especially brutal because you have to refight all the previous bosses plus a new one. This is why I used an infinite lives cheat, because I knew I was going to need every last one. So how does Bonk compare to other famous mascots? Quite well, actually. NEC never had a superstar like Shigeru Miyamoto in their corner, but despite this, they managed to come up with a good, fun, well-designed game that I think can stand proudly alongside the best of what Nintendo and Sega had to offer. I’d love to see a new Bonk game on the current systems, but someone has to remember he exists first.