Super Bowel XLIII

Yes, there is a reason why I’ve misspelled Super Bowl in such a manner. Perhaps, I am just a product of my environment. After all, my hometown decided to show the area’s pride by programming the message board outside the local fairgrounds to celebrate the recent playing of the Super Bowel. This is of course the 43rd consecutive contest of intestinal fortitude, in which we bit down hard, took hold of the handles and passed our opponents.

I can recall the struggle. I took my seat, program in hand, and prepared myself for what was about to come. You can feel it in the pit of your stomach bubbling and churning. You wait for them to pass through that long dark tunnel. Sometimes, you wonder how such big beings can emerge from such a small opening. Once they funnel out though, you know there’s no turning back. You are in it for the long haul.

Our team made some tough movements up and down the playing field but, ultimately, we splashed down with success. There were times when we shook with anxiety, our brows furrowed with sweat. You shift in your seat, uncomfortably until something lets loose and tears the other team a new one. There is nothing so truly delicious and satisfying as dumping all that fear and worry and relishing in knowing that it’s all over. You sigh with relief. You laugh a little. You feel better that it’s all over. Unfortunately, from sitting so long, your but hurts.

Congratulations. Hopefully, we all waved our Irritable Bowels, the most recognizable sign of our explosive spirit. Super Bowel XLIII will definitely go down in history as hard to swallow for the losers.

Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start!

Part Two of a Series entitled All Your Free Time Are Belong To Us

Those of you who have ever owned a Nintendo Entertainment System have those directions burned into your memory. It's, of course, the Konami code. Originally used to get power ups when entered during a paused game of Gradius, it gained popularity with the game Contra, granting 30 extra lives if inputed before the start up screen. This was necessary, as the game was damn near impossible to beat with the allotted 3 lives and 10 continues granted out of the box. Since then, the code has appeared in numerous video games and has become part of the pop culture lexicon. To this day, I recite this directional mantra as an inside joke whenever I want or need more power or time to do something. "Sure, I can carry all those groceries, honey. Let me just input the Konami Code and I'll magically have the strength of 10 men."

As much as I have loved video games all life, I've never been on the cutting edge or frontline when it comes to new technology. Preferably, I tend to hang back for awhile until the prices come down and the bugs get fixed. The obsession never supercedes the need to be frugal. More often than not I have come into possesion of a game or system well after it was been surpassed by it's replacement. Case in point, the NES. As early as 1985 units were beginning to pop up in households signaling the end of the drought brought on by the Video Game Crash of 1983. While my friends got on board with the new 8-bit technology, I still fiddled with my Sears branded Atari 2600 system. Additionaly, I had begun getting into the home computer video game craze which seemed to promise better graphics and I could get games cheaper due to the ability to copy the game to a blank disk.

Eventually, I got on board around 1988. A friend of mine decided to sell his NES after only owning it for a year. He had the Basic Set which did not include a game but did include the Official Player's guide which detailed every game up until that point. He sold it to me for a $100 and threw in Marble Madness as well. Soon, I was off to my local video store to rent games. As with my Atari, I traded games with friends and can fondly remember being thrilled with the ability to enter in passwords and play saved game states or get power ups. I suspect that the passwords merely retreived data from the game code in the form of letter or number characters that manipulated score and progress in the game and not really a true saved game. Later games came with a battery that allowed for actual saving of progress and not just restoring the game to some state dictated by turning certain "switches" as it were. I could be wrong. During lunches in junior high, my friends and I would gather around the latest copy of Nintendo Power which got passed around like a Playboy stolen from the private stash of someone's dad. We fought for an unobstructed view of this sacred tome which gave us tips and tricks on how to defeat Mother Brain and Ganon. Foldouts containing detailed screenshots of each level showed us where the elusive green mushrooms hid as well as which candle we should avoid as to not lose our boomerang in favor of a stupid stopwatch. We'd feverishly scribble down passwords anticipating the moment the school week would be over and we could lock ourselves in our rooms with a case of New York Seltzer or Snapple Iced Tea and game away the weekend trying out The Amazon's Pirahna Bite which while kicked major ass would eventually be taken away from you.

The quality of the writing in games left a little to be desired as most were guilty of horrible Engrish. No, I didn't spell English wrong, I really meant Engrish. The most famous being the origin of this title of this blog series, "All your base are belong to us," from Zero Wing. Still, other games like Pro Wrestling provided thrashing of the english language with the phrase "A winner is you." Sometimes the best games were ones that had no dialogue at all, allowing only for side scrolling action. The controllers had a second action button which added to a learning curve for those of us used to the old days of the Orange Button. Eventually, I came into posession of a NES max controller that allowed me the advantage playing against friends as I had access to a turbo button.

I never got into the other controllers. Some of my friends would unleash an arsenal of gear when they would have others over for gaming sessions. There was, of course, the light zapper for Hogan's Alley and Duck Hunt. Since my NES did not come with Duck Hunt, I never had a zapper. At the launch of the NES there was the ill fated, R.O.B. This little robot that helped sell the console in North America never got its due with only two games specifically made to use it. Another popular controller was the NES Advantage or as I called it the BAJ (Big Ass Joystick). It allowed you to slow down game play with a feature that essentially toggled the start button rapidly, pausing the game intermittently. Dragging around and storing of the Advantage was difficult with the size of this beast. And let us not forget, the Power Glove. This thing looked like some kind of kinky toy better suited in the bedroom than the game room. It made an appearnce in that awful movie with Fred Savage called The Wizard. None of my friends ever owned this contraption, although one did own the Power Pad, which was a plastic floor mat with sensors in it for use in athletic type games. While I'm sure the intent was meant to get kids off the couch and do some exercise while playing video games, most kids found it easier to lay on the floor, pounding the buttons with our hands instead.

As with the Atari, the NES waned in popularity after a few years in favor of burgeoning advances in new technology. While still found in my collection of systems, the console has been collecting dust and I only play some titles through Nesticle, an NES emulator. That's not to say that the NES became completely devoid of replayability once the fourth and fifth generation consoles emerged. College provided a much needed revival of the system as my dorm floormates and I would engage in Tecmo Super Bowl Tournaments lasting for days on end. That is, until we acquired a Sega Genesis by illegal means and then it was NHL 94 24/7. We liked the game but were severly disgruntled by the fact that the blood and gore of fighting had been removed. Still, we could make heads bleed, which was good. We would get drunk on Mad Dog, declare in a pre Vince Vaughn, "Swingers" tone, "Wait I'm gonna do my thing with the thing," and just maul each everyone to death with Bob Probert. I look back on those days as a simpler time when gaming wasn't a way of life but a mindless distraction. I could wax nostaglic about it for hours on end, but I have to be off now, it appears my Princess is in another castle.


My Top 20 Best and 5 Worst NES games. (And before you flame, I've never played Final Fantasy, so I have no point of reference.)

Best

1. Metroid
2. The Legend of Zelda Great game, check out this old school commercial
3. Castlevania II Simon's Quest
4. Castlevania III Dracula's Curse
5. Golgo 13
6. Tecmo Super Bowl
7. Mike Tyson's Punch Out Before Tyson was replaced.
8. Double Dribble Just what the hell was that mascot for LA supposed to be?
9. Blades of Steel
10. Ninja Gaiden
11. Goonies II
12. Double Dragon II The Revenge Much better port of the original Double Dragon.
13. Contra
14. Metal Gear
15. Tetris Highly addictive game
16. Kid Icarus
17. Mega Man 2
18. Pro Wrestling
19. Major League Baseball
20. Wizards and Warriors

Worst

1. Deadly Towers The fact that you randomly changed position on each start was annoying enough.
2. Total Recall Had about as much to do with Arnold's movie as Arnold's movie, The Running Man had to do with King's (Bachman's) book.
3. Legacy of the Wizard I have no idea what this game was about or what the family pet was.
4. Rygar The length of this game just frustrated me.
5. Battle of Olympus Dumb clone of Zelda II, frustrating as well.

Honorable Mentions

1. Super Mario 3
2. RC Pro Am
3. Faxandadu
4. Friday the 13th One of those few games that made you jump. It was scarier than most of the movies.
5. Star Wars
   

Yorgle, Grundle, and Rhindle, oh my!

Part One of a Series entitled, All Your Free Time Are Belong to Us

Imagine if you will, it's Christmas morning in the year 1980 and you're five years old. The year has been somewhat good to you. You're still riding high on the fact that the Steelers won the Super Bowl despite their 9-7 season for this year. The U.S. was beginning to feel patriotic again with the "Miracle on Ice" during the Olympic Winter Games and you were still giddy and confused by the declaration that Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's father. "But they don't have the same last name." Still, all this aside, nothing enthralls you more than running downstairs to see the plethora of presents that Santa has left you. What did Santa bring me this year? I hope I get more Legos and Star Wars action figures. Maybe, just maybe, we'll get an Atari this year.


You see, video games have been a huge part of my life and this Christmas was nearly met with disappointment as I had finished opening all my gifts but no Atari was to be found. Suddenly, as if it were straight out of A Christmas Story, my parents said there was at least one more for the three of us kids, all the way at the back of the tree. We feverishly opened the big honking box, mystified at what could be inside. It was an Atari 2600! Well, to be truthful, it was the Sears Tele-Games version that included Target Fun instead of Combat. Additionally, they bought us three games to go with it. They were Asteroids, Space Invaders, and Maze Craze. As the ColecoVision and Intellivison consoles became available I lusted for one these as well because the quality of games where perceived to be superior. Since my parents were unwilling to buy me another 2nd Gen console, I opted to just make the best of my Atari and hold out for hopes that the graphics would get better than a square chasing a dot around the screen. I simply became creative with what I had. I would trade games back and forth with friends constantly rotating my stock. It was a frugal effort that kept me from having to buy more 4 bit titles which mostly did not provide much content or replay value as others. Where graphics lacked, I found enjoyment in compelling game structure. My favorite game to this day is Adventure. It offered the first "easter egg" in the form of a credits screen and had a level that randomized locations of objects and monsters allowing for a greater replay value as the game could be different every time.

Alas, my ownership of this game was short lived. It disappeared sometime between 1983 and 1984. To this day I maintain that it was in my house the entire time, having slipped into another dimension through a worm hole located in a chair in our living room. The ratty piece of furniture had a tear somewhere under the seat cushion and I believe that the game fell down between the cushions and was lost forever, along with one of my Lego men, and my math homework from third grade. Honest, Mrs. Kofsky, I swear I did the assignment. It just disappeared from my Trapper Keeper.

For seven years I played that Atari even though the console had declined in popularity and eventually died off around 1983-84 due to the underwhelming appeal of piss poor titles and saturation of the market by every Tom, Dick, and Quaker who wanted to cash in on the craze by stealing programmers from each other to establish lucrative gaming divisions. With the advent of home computers, and computers in the classroom, sales moved away from game consoles and found their way into Steve Jobs' and Bill Gates' pockets. In the past few years I acquired another Atari 2600 while cleaning out the house of my wife's grandmother. Right now it's sitting in my garage collecting dust as I have no place for it or do I have the hookups to make it work on any of my televisions. My own Atari, I believe, is sitting in storage at Dad's office as is most other things of my childhood. Now having access to two consoles, I may consider selling one on eBay if I find it a worth while venture. In any case, I still do play Atari titles, although, they are in the form of ROM images used on an emulator called PCAE. This way, once in awhile, I can still go chasing after a dot with my red square and with only one button, there's no confusion as to how to slay the dragon. If only all of my life was that simple. Think of it, anytime I get the blue screen of death, I need to just blow on my computer as if it were a cartridge and voila, problem solved.

My Top 5 Best and Worst 2nd Gen Console games.

The Best

1. Adventure (Atari 2600)
2. Pitfall! and Pitfall II (Atari 2600) Jack Black once did a commercial for Pitfall!
3. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons (Intellivision)
4. Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back (Atari 2600)
5. River Raid (Atari 2600)

The Worst

1. E.T. (Atari 2600) Is there any wonder why there are thousands of copies buried in New Mexico?
2. Pac-Man (Atari 2600 port) Horrible graphics and little similarity to the original. Reason 2 for the Game Crash of 83.
3. Smurfs: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle (ColecoVison) Sure, the music was good. But, if you walked into a picket fence or a blade of grass, you died. Come on!
4. Swordquest: Earthworld (Atari 2600) Another popular adventure game, but extremely boring and difficult
5. Raiders of the Lost Ark (Atari 2600) Loved the movie but a one player game that required the use of both controllers and lacked half of the movie's elements meant "Welcome to sucktown, population you."

Honorable Mention

1. Cosmic Avenger (ColecoVision)
2. Circus Atari (Atari 2600) Highly addictive Breakout style game. Clown deaths are kewl.
3. Warlords (Atari 2600)
4. Yars' Revenge (Atari 2600)
5. Haunted House (Atari 2600) Simply a derivative of Adventure in a 4 level mansion but offered more difficulty.
6. Frogs and Flies (Atari 2600) I know this makes six, but I had to add this silly game because it just simplified everything to spending the day eating flies. How cool is that?