Virtual Console Wishlist 2008 – The Super NES Edition

Here we are again, at the end of another year. Only this time it’s 2008. And since it’s a different year, I guess I get the luxury of running the same article I did last December without the guilt of using the same idea twice in a year. So like I did back then, I’m going to make a short list of games that I would personally love to see on the Wii’s Virtual Console service. It’ll be a little bit harder this year, because I used my most wanted in 2007, but coming up with seven more wasn’t too hard. And I even have a gimmick this time!

For 2008’s VC Wishlist, I’ve decided that I’m only going to pick games that appeared on the Super Nintendo (or Super Famicom, in some cases). Why? I dunno. I was just picking games and once I had it down to a relatively short list I realized that the ones I wanted the most were on the SNES. Sure, there are some NES games that I would love to play again, but none more than G.I. Joe or Nightshade. The only thing I’ve craved on the N64 lately has inexplicably been Pokémon Stadium, but that’s not super important. And like last year, I really couldn’t give a crap what happens with the Sega and Hudson machines. Or even the Neo Geo. I can’t even think of all the systems they’ve got on there now. All I had as a kid were the Nintendo machines, so we’re gonna stick to those.

#1 – Soul Blazer

Chances are you’ve never played Soul Blazer before. It’s only slightly less likely that you’ve never even heard of the game before now. Or maybe it was huge and I just missed it because I was afraid of RPGs back in my SNESing days. Imagine my surprise when I opened the ROM file a couple years ago and learned that it wasn’t really that much of an RPG at all!

No, Soul Blazer has more in common with the Zelda series that it would with any Final Fantasy. It’s one of those top-down action RPGs that I love so much. Wish I had known that back in the day! Yes, that would have been good, because I really don’t think Soul Blazer has held up all that well over time. The graphics aren’t horrible, but do reek of bland. It looks almost like a dressed-up Final Fantasy Mystic Quest. Or at least that’s what I can best liken it to. Not to mention that the gameplay could use a little sprucing up. I’ll give in to the fact that it’s an earlier SNES game, but it could still work a little better. The point is, at the tie I would have thought the games was great. At present, it’s a little outdated. Or a lot.

So If I’m being so hard on the game, why do I want it on the Virtual Console soooo bad? for one, because if you look past its age, it’s not a terrible game. A little clunky and rough around the edges, but entirely playable. I do like it, but there’s not use pretending it’s better than it. The main reason I want to see it is because I’ve never played all the way through. I’ve only spent about two hours at most with the game, just more than enough to form an opinion of a SNES title. And I want to play it because I’ve been itching to go through Illusion of Gaia again, but my misguided sense of fairness is forcing me to play this one again. And if it lived on my Wii, that would make it that much more appealing to actually load up and play.

I can’t truly rate Soul Blazer at this point, because I’ve only barely gotten into it, but then again, I’ve only finished two of the games on this list, so it’s really more of a “I want to truly experience these for the first time list”. Mostly, anyway. If I did have to place a final judgement on it right now though, I could tell you that I’ve easily downloaded games of lower quality than this. The TG-16’s Neutopia, for example. And that’s essentially the first Legend of Zelda game with a facelift. So yeah, I would buy this one as soon as it showed up in the Wii Shop. Might not play it right away, but it would give me peace of mind to at least know that it’s there waiting for me.

#2 – Illusion of Gaia

Illusion of Gaia is the sequel to Soul Blazer, and the second game in the trilogy. It’s also the only one I’ve finished. Of all three games, I think this one would be the most likely Virtual Console candidate, if only because Soul Blazer (as far as I know) was never hugely publicized and the sequel never made it to North America.

Illusion of Gaia is a huge step up from its predecessor. It’s still a top-down Zelda wannabe, but it’s much more polished and the story is actually really interesting. Or, at least, it was many years ago when I played it through. I think it would probably still hold up pretty well these days.

The plot of the game follows a young boy named Will on a quest to save the world from a doomsday comet. It’s pretty standard stuff, but the part that I love about it, and indeed what drew me to the game in the first place, is that most of the game locations take place in real-world locations like the Nazca lines and the Great Wall of China. It’s officially a fantasy world, but there are so many analogues to real human history and mysteries, and I think that adds an incredibly interesting facet to the game. I know it sounds horrible, but I kind of wish the game gave even more real information about these things. It would be the first truly entertaining edutainment title.

Plot and locations aside, I still think Illusion of Gaia is a solid title. It’s still sort of a lo-fi Zelda, but it has its own charm that I find very few other games possess. Maybe I’m just looking at it through rosy nostalgia glasses, but I’ve been itching to play through it again. The only reason I haven’t is that I have so many other games in progress that I couldn’t possibly start playing a game I’ve already seen through to completion. Also, I want to play and beat Soul Blazer first, if just for that minor sense of completion. Of all the games featured here, I think this is the one that I have the strongest craving to play.

#3 – Terranigma

The last in the series, Terranigma is also the finest. Well, probably. I’ve only been through roughly a tenth of the game, but that was much more recently than the other two, and I remember thinking that it was really quite awesome. My friends even agreed with me when I showed it to them. Though to be fair, it was still early in our career of playing ROMs, and it was mind-blowing to play pretty much any SNES game on our computers for free.

Terranigma, as far as I remember, is more of a “preserve the world and nature” themed game than simply saving the world. Or at least, that’s the impression I got from the first couple hours of it. A quick check on Wikipedia confirms that it’s a wee bit more complex than that. The game takes place in a world where the Earth is hollow and the overworld is dominated by good, and the underworld interior by evil. There’s more to it than it seems though, because the hero of the game… is from the underworld!

I honestly can’t remember a lot about this game other than the fact that it plays pretty closely to Illusion of Gaia and that it was a ton of fun. Not sure why I never finished this one, because whenever I think about it, I can only remember it being pure bliss. I’m sure it wasn’t that good, but I’m willing to stake my reputation (not that that’s a huge gamble) on the fact that it is a top tier SNES game. In fact, while it was only released in Japan and Europe, the main (only?) reason we never saw it is because Enix’s North American branch closed down before they could get it out. the only thing I’m not into about this game is that because of my misguided sense of obligation, I have to finish the other two games before I’ll let myself start this one! Aargh! Well, if by some impossible stroke of luck we see this on the Virtual Console first, I suppose I’ll have a loophole.

#4 – Robotrek

While not a sequel to any of the aforementioned games, Robotrek comes to us from the same development studio as the Soul Blazer trilogy, Quintet. Over the years, I have come to really respect their work, and the fact that most (if not all) of their SNES titles were published by Enix made them must-plays for me. See, I’m willing to give anything with the Enix name a shot because they had so much wonderful product in the 16-bit era, and Robotrek is no exception.

I have actually tried playing Robotrek twice, neither time making it very far into the game. This saddens me, because it’s exactly the type of game I want to play. For one, it’s an Enix RPG, and much more of a standard RPG than the last three games I just talked about. For two, it has a large collection/synthesis/customization aspect to it, and that I absolutely adore.

The game is about robots, obviously, and I have no idea what the plot was about, but you play as a young boy who uses robots to battle. It’s essentially Pokémon a year before Pokémon existed. Not only can you build new robots, but you can customize them to your liking, adding new parts and weapons, and even make your own new parts by combining old ones. Like I said, it’s exactly the kind of game I want to play. It’s almost like if Custom Robo were a standard JRPG.

So yeah, I think I’ve made it clear exactly why I want to be playing this on my Wii as soon as possible. I think the reason I put it down in the past is maybe because the completionist in me became too obsessed and I was too interested in beefing up my robots than actually playing through the story. That sounds about right. I do, after all, usually have Butterfree and Wartortle before even reaching Brock.

#5 – Umihara Kawase

Nintendo very rarely uses their infinite power to infuse the Virtual Console’s lineup with games that were never released in whatever particular region you may be in. Sin and Punishment would be the big one for us here in North America, but there are tons of lesser known games that never made it over here that I would love to see make it over in digital form. Umihara Kawase would be somewhere around the top of that list.

The thing that makes Umihara Kawase a good candidate is that Nintendo could put it up with very little extra effort going into it. The game is a platform puzzler, and one of the best. You play as a small girl tasked with reaching a door on the other side of the stage, and your only ability is to use a fishing line as a grappling hook. The trick is that the hook responds to all sorts of physics, and the game can get very complicated, but once you get good (good luck ever mastering it!), it’s insanely entertaining. And that’s why it’s easy. The game needs no instructions. The only thing you have to learn is how your hook is going to respond to how you use it. Any story sequences I may have forgotten about are irrelevant, and the game is simple enough that you don’t need the tutorial.

So if Nintendo could put it up so easily and it’s so great, why isn’t it available yet? Sadly, it’s likely because the franchise then moved to the Playstation and recently somebody decided it would be a good idea to make another sequel on the PSP. I hear it’s a pretty sad interpretation of the SNES game, and that’s why I’d love to see the original swing into our lives via Wii. Will it happen? I don’t think it’s too likely. In fact, I’d wager that the Playstation game ends up on PSN before the SNES edition hits Virtual Console. Yes, that’s how bad it’s gotten on Nintendo’s digital distribution system.

#6 – Mario’s Super Picross

Of all games never released on American shores, I would think that Mario’s Super Picross is one of those with the best chance to end up as a Virtual Console candidate. Why? Because it’s already been released in Japan and the PAL territories, and also because Nintendo loves Picross. They’ve made a few puzzles from this game available as free DLC for Picross DS, so why not let us have the entire game for a few bucks?

I think I’ve made my love of picross obvious over the lifespan of this website, but if you hadn’t heard, I heart picross. It’s a fairly simple puzzle game wherein you’re given a grid and a set of numbers for each row and column. You have to deduce from that set of numbers which spaces on the grid in that row or column need to be filled in. It sounds unbearably easy, and for someone who’s spent a few hours solving picross puzzles, it usually is. The main mode in Mario’s Super Picross gives you a time limit in which to solve each puzzle, and you’re deducted time for each mistake you make, so it’s very much a thinking game. Fortunately, like sudoku, event though it involves numbers and heavy thought, there is no math involved. If there were, I wouldn’t love it.

It gets harder in the second set of puzzles, hosted by Wario, in which you have unlimited time, but the game won’t tell you if you make a mistake. It can take much longer to figure these ones out, but I’ve never taken much more than half an hour to get any of them done. It’s also much more satisfying to solve one of these puzzles, like when you beat a game of mahjong without any hints.

I stand firmly in my belief that Mario’s Super Picross will eventually be available to me as a Virtual Console title, because the Japanese and Europeans already have it, so it has to show up here sooner or later. Only now since Chris Kohler has become disillusioned with the VC, we don’t have anyone to badger Nintendo for equality anymore.

#7 – Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island

Alright, Nintendo. Honestly, where is this? We have all the other Mario platformers, and even Yoshi’s Story. I think we’ve waited more than long enough for this one. We deserve Yoshi’s Island.

Yeah, I totally saved the best for last. As much as I like any of the other games on this list, none of them could even hold a candle to the majesty Yoshi’s Island. It is platforming perfection, a mecca that may never be reached again. How Nintendo could have slapped Yoshi’s Story on the VC list without Yoshi’s Island to reinforce Yoshi’s reputation is a mystery that may never be solved.

I honestly don’t think I should have to describe this game or why I love it. I mean, I don’t know why you would even be on this website if you’re the kind of person who would have skipped over this gem. Unless you’re my girlfriend, but that’s really the only acceptable case. So really, if you haven’t experienced the wonder that is Yoshi’s Island, I highly recommend you stop reading this right now and go find yourself the ROM and an emulator. Or at the very least, the GBA port. Just play it. And that recommendation goes double if you’re my girlfriend, as there may be hope for you liking video games that don’t require plastic guitars after all if you try this out.

So yes. That’s my list. It’s taken a lot of beer and Danish butter cookies to struggle through, but I’ve done it. Unlike last year, wherein I posted this in early November, I’m just making this one up on the second-to-last Monday of the year. Hence, this time we won’t think of these of games that I want to see before 2008 is up, but rather a list that I would like to see show up sometime in the year 2009. And don’t fret; unless some giant change in my life takes place that makes me unable to webmaster anymore, there will totally be a 2009 edition. It’s just too easy.

Give all ya got, and give it to me

I had two plans for today’s entry. the first, and best, was to write a new Virtual Console wishlist. That went to shit when I took an extra shift this morning, slept the afternoon away, and then played Tales of Vesperia all evening. The next plan was to write about something exciting and new on either the VC or WiiWare. That one didn’t work out because nothing even remotely interesting has been released on either service since Mega Man 3. And that was waaay back in the begining of November. Nevermind that there hasn’t been anything I would buy since Secret of Mana came out in October.

So Virtual Console has been kind of a dumping ground for mediocre to crappy games for the last couple months. It’s really sad because there’s still so many wonderful titles that are absent from the list. We’ve got the essentials like Super Metroid, Mega Man 2, and the aforementioned Secret of Mana, but where are the sleepers like Dragon Warrior or even Yoshi’s Island, one of the most wonderful platform games ever made? I understand that we’ll never see Crono Trigger or the SNES Final Fantasy titles because they’re all being remade or ported to the DS, but there are still tons of great projects under the Square-Enix name alone that will never be seen again (Wonder Project J, Lufia 2, etc) that would be perfect for the service. We won’t even start on what Capcom, Konami, and all those other developers. At the very least, I want the Soulblazer trilogy. Illusion of Gaia alone would even sate me. I want to play that game again so badly.

WiiWare hasn’t been faring much better. Actually, it’s been a lot worse. Aside from Stong Bad’s games, the only thing I’ve even considered downloading in the last God-knows-how-long is Space Invaders Get Even (pictured right), but the whole buy-it-in-pieces setup has turned me off completely. I would much rather buy the whole thing for 2000 points at once than make a bunch of smaller installments. It’s nice if you just want to try the game out but don’t feel like shelling out a whole $20 for it, but that’s exctly why Nintendo should provide demos! Have they not learned anything from the wonderful Xbox Live Arcade setup? But anyway, the service is otherwise polluted by games that look so bad I’d be amazed if even one person dowloaded them, and a flood of dumb colour-matching puzzle games. It’s ridiculous, and has made Nintendo the laughing stock of the digital distribution world. And to be considered worse than Sony in that category is a real testament to just how bad things are. Yes, they’re providing a lot of content, but quality control should at least be present, if even just to keep out the complete garbage like Hockey Allstar Shootout and Target Toss Pro: Bags.

So I suppose this post kind of volates the spirit of my “24 Days of Materialism” feature, being that it mostly tells you not to buy anything, and is more of a rant than a review. However, I did name a few games that are worth at least convincing a friend to buy. Like Space Invaders Get Even. You should totally get it and then invite me over to play. It’ll be awesome I promise.

Title goes here

Did you ever notice just how thoughtful Amazon can be sometimes? I was just going to use one cover for this one, but they had a pre-made image woth all threee in it. Whoo!

But don’t let that little ‘whoo” there fool you. I’m actually in a trerrible mood right now and really want nothing to do with anything but sleep. But I’ve got a responsibility to myself to at least write a couple lines here.

So today I’m telling you to buy Arrested Development. It’s one of the best shows that’s ever been on TV and it’s a damn shame that Fox cancelled it. But that’s what Fox does. It cancels everything good. Buy these DVDs. This post is five years too late!

Let’s have a good time

Last time I was down in Grand Forks, I didn’t really have a shopping list, but rather I was just picking up anything that piqued my interest and was of reasonable enough price. I went home with a lot of new movies. One of the more interesting purchases the the 3-disc set you see below this paragraph, 6 Films to Keep You Awake.

I looked it over, somewhat intrigued by the descriptions of the movies contained within, and showed it to the woman. Her eyes got wide and agreed with me that it looked worthy of purchase. We got back to our hotel, and while it wasn’t supplied with any DVD playing devices, I had enough foresight while packing to bring mine along with me. Only I forgot the remote! So while we couldn’t navigate the menus to watch Arrested Development, each movie on this set was on a different side of each disc, so we were able to pop whichever we saw fit in and mash the play button for success! Lesson: never forget the remote.

The first film we watched was A Real Friend. To our surprise, the film was in Spanish with English subtitles, but it was of little consequence, as there was no way to decipher exactly what had gone on in the movie no matter what language it was in. There was a little girl who was friends with Leatherface and a guy who she called a vampire. A couple people died, Leatherface and the vampire fought, and then the conclusion showed the girl’s happy family (with the vampire as her father) watching a TV that was playing the intro to this movie. It was confusing and didn’t really explain anything. I didn’t like it, and it put a bad taste in my mouth.

To Let was much more enjoyable. We watched this one the next night, and it was actually really good! Also it was Spanish too. I figured it was safe to assume at this point that all six would be. So anyway, the plot was about this young couple who were looking for an apartment. They drove out to this creepy place in a bad part of town, and once inside, they discovered that the landlady had been stalking them. They try to escape, but the deranged landlady beats the husband with a bucket, and the wife escapes to another part of the apartment building and finds another woman tied up in a bathroom. Since I like this movie, I won’t spoil it, but there’s a man-beast, much bloodshed, and a truly frightening old lady. It’s great.

Last night, we finally picked the set up again and watched the Baby’s Room. It wasn’t as good as To Let, but I did enjoy it. Yet again another new family moving into a new house, only this one is haunted! Sort of. The husband starts seeing a man in the baby monitor, but can never find this apparent burglar. Eventually, he almost slices his wife’s face off, thinking she was the burglar, and she takes the baby and moves out, leaving him to deal with the creepy phenomenon by his lonesome. It goes into some spooky parallel dimension shit, and the conclusion is exactly what you’ll guess it to be, but I was entertained, and that’s all I really ask, so it gets a pass.

We haven’t watched the other three movies yet, but plan to watch A Christmas Tale sometime over the weekend. Maybe I’ll tell you how it turns out. Judging from the other three, they could be awesome or terrible. I really don’t expect any to top To Let, but here’s hoping! Based on that movie alone, I highy recommend picking up this set. It’s only like $20, and for six movies (albeit of varying quality) that’s not too bad at all.

We got it!

Today I’m going to take a quick look at what is called a “manga”. I’ve you aren’t in the know, it’s basically just a Japanese comic book. Call it a comic in front of an anime fan though, and you’ll get your ear chewed off. Me, I don’t care. It’s a comic. You just read it backwards is all.

So Uzumaki then. It’s a horror book, and there are three volumes in total. It’s about a small, isolated town which inexplicably fall sunder some kind of stange curse. See, the villagers, one by one, start to see spirals and become obsessed with them, and this obsession often leads to their horrific deaths. Some are a little less shocking than others, but a few will turn a weaker man’s stomach. And this is just the first volume! By book two, hospitals are being invaded by mosquito women, babies are trying to return to wombs, and the town’s utter destruction seems almost inevitable. Book three is basically a small group of characters’ fight to escape the town and the curse.

There’s an article about it over on Game Spite that describes it way better than I ever could, so I recommend you check that out if you feel interested at all. Another thing of note is that I learned, whilst searching for the cover image on Amazon, that there is actually an Uzumaki movie. So I’m itching to download that. Though I’m sure a lot of material would be cut for time, it seems like it would be a really frightening and surreal film. Hopefully it’s good.

So the comic, yes wonderful. It’s great. Not particularly scary, but if you read even the first volume, you’ll never look at a spiral the same way again. Hell, you’ll probably never want to see a spiral again period.

She’s a helluva thrill

Okay, video game soundtrack time. I guess you can all just leave the room now since nobody cares.

Yep. Megaman 9 official soundtrack. I was totally psyched for this one. Had it pre-ordered and everything. And it rocks. Like, for real, not just for the sake of the pun. Inticreates had a lot of extra processing power to work with for this game, but kept it down to NES-styled graphics. The best part is that they kept the music consistent with those graphics, and you get a disc full of wonderful 8-bit techno to rock out to with this one.

Honestly, there isn’t a lot else for me to say here. I want to talk on and on about it, but if you’ve played any of the NES Megaman games, you pretty much know what you’re signing up for here. I’d say it’s on par with the original game’s soundtrack as far as quality goes, and that’s pretty good. No song will ever trump the theme to Bubble Man’s stage, but the stage anthems are great contenders. The intro music is pretty rad too.

What else do I have to say? I love it. If you like chiptunes, then you’ll probably get a kick out of it. Just make sure you import it, and don’t get it through Amazon or the like, or else it’ll cost you like double. That’s a bad thing.

Yeah yeah yeah

Between now and that last post, I’ve got my PC’s audio working! Huzzah! Turns out I haven’t completely forgotten everything I used to know about computers. It’s just hidden under many layers of dust and dates I now have to remember.

Many months ago Nintendo released some screenshots for a new Kirby game on the DS. They didn’t put a title to it, but I could tell right away that it was a remake Kirby Super Star. I was ecstatic. Sure, ports are generally frowned upon, but KSS is the best Kirby game ever, and given the generally tepid quality of Kirby Squeak Squad, there’s no guarantee a new game would have been better.

When I was a young ‘un, I first saw Kirby Super Star in an issue of Nintendo Power and knew it had to be mine. I owned and loved every Kirby game up until that point (minus Kirby’s Dream Course), and ran as fast as I could to tell my parents that I needed it or I would die. I had used this excuse before (Chrono Trigger, Earthbound), and it had been unsuccessful. Fortunately, my birthday was right around the corner, and what did I receive? Oh yeah. Kirby.

I played that fucking game so much that I’m surprised the cartridge never died out. I played alone, I played with my brothers, I played with friends. I played through all the games in Kirby Super Star upwards of twenty times (it took a lot longer back then!), and never got bored of it.

So naturally I grabbed the port. I had blazed through a ROM version of the original game in a single sitting not six months earlier, but was anxious to get my hands on this prettier version. And it was so much more! There are nearly twice as many games to play in this new version, and most of the new ones are really hard! Revenge of the King is a sweet “dark world” take on Spring Breeze, and Meta Knightmare has you burn through most of the original game as Meta Knight. Helper to Hero and The True Arena are great variations on the classic The Arena, and make it hard again. I used to get so frustrated with The Arena back in the day, but lately I can breeze through it without more than a couple nicks, and the new games just prove that while I’ve mastered what the original game threw at me, I’ve still got a lot of work before I can say I’ve truly conquered the fresh material.

In the end, Kirby Super Star Ultra is exactly what I’d hoped it would be: a prettier version of a game that I dearly loved in my youth. And then it’s more too, with all the extra games! Of course, it’s a Kirby game, so for the most part it’s super-easy, but Kirby games are always fun, even that unusually lame Nintendo 64 entry. Do I recommend? Hells yeah! Just make sure you have someone else to play with: half the fun of Kirby Super Star is playing God with player 2. Also stealing all the food from your dying friend.

If you don’t know, honey

It’s been a long and sketchy night. I havn’t done it in forever, but tonight I decided that it would be a good idea to reinstall Windows on my PC. Yeah. I was up all night last night backing everything up, and I’ll be up all night tonight trying to get everything back to normal.

Considering that fact that I’d pretty much forgotten what I was supposed to be doing, I think things went alright! Windows in back, and I’m connected to the internet. That much should have been obvious. It took me a while to figure out how to reconnect the website as a network place, but then I finally remembered to use “ftp” instead of “http”. I was sweating there for a while! There were also some issues with graphical drivers, but I got that sorted out easily. I still haven’t found my audio drivers though, and let me tell you, trying to blog without music is like a day without sunshine. If I remember correctly, I had a hell of a time trying to get my audio working last time I did this too. Let’s hope I figure it out quickly.

Today’s review is not really an object that can be bought, but rather more of a Christmassy memory for me. It’s also relevant now! More on that later though.

I would just like to take a couple paragraphs to talk about Ninja Turtle stockings. Yeah, I suppose I should have grown out of these a long time ago, but my TMNT fanboyism is hardly waning. The fact that I’ve kept my turtle stockings (not pictured) over the many years is not a tribute to my everlasting love of the green guys, but rather a testament to what a pack rat I am. But these are cool so they get a free pass! How could you throw out something like that?

So anyway, I bring up the turtle stockings because recently they have become part of The World’s Greatest Coincidence. See, I have two turtle stockings, Leonardo and Donatello. I suppose they sufficed when I was a child, but I’ve had a secret longing in my head to own the other two for as long as I can remember. Imagine my surprise one day when I was visiting my girlfriend’s house while her family was unpacking their Christmas decorations and I saw that they had two as well: Raphael and Michelangelo. Meant to be together or just dumb luck? I like the first option. It’s like we each had half of a pendant and came together to form the whole. It is clearly our destiny to be together.

So yeah, that’s going to be my greatest Christmas story for years to come. You might wanna get used to it now. I will totally be telling our children and grandchildren and various other relatives this story, and I figured it was perfect for a blog entry too. Of course, it’ll still be some time before all four turtles are united under a single roof (we can’t afford a house on TRU salaries!), but they day that they are… that will be magical.

Shooo-ryuken!

If you aren’t exactly in the loop, Mortal Kombat Vs. DC Universe was released not long ago, and it’s pretty much been the talk of guys at work. I’m actually really surprised at how much people have been talking about it. I never thought Mortal Kombat was very good. At all. If I ever played it, it was just to rebel againt my parents who didn’t want me playing anything with blood in it.

What I am interested in though, is the new Street Fighter! No no, not 4. Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix!

Okay, long name. But it’s great! It’s almost exactly like SSF2T as you remember it, but pretty! And rebalanced, and with more options, and with online play, and some other stuff. The point is that it still plays exactly like Street Fighter should, and that’s why I love it. Despite the fact that I am complete crap at it.

Yeah. I tried playing the remixed mode on easy, which supposedly, was really easy. It wasn’t. Not for me. I made it about four guys before I got to Cammy and I just could not defeat her. I know that I suck at fighters, but I just had to get in on this action. And you know what? Despite the fact that I couldn’t even get halfway through the fighter roster, I’m having fun with it. It’s Street Fighter! How could it not be fun?

The only qualm I have with the game is that it shows you how to execute every character’s special move, but only with an arrow. Sometimes those arrows are very twisted, and I cannot make out for the life of me what they’re trying to communicate to me. I wouldn’t mind if it said B-BD-D-FD-F+X. That is completely understandable to me. But trying to understand an arrow that goes across them twists in on itself is like trying to read a completely foreign language. Just too hard. Also I could never do the Dragon Punch even when I knew the combination so that’s not helping. In the end though, great game. But that much was obvious 15 years ago.

Just wanted you to know

Alright! Twelve days are gone and done with, and that means I’m halfway there! I think that alone is cause enough for celebration, as I’m pretty sure that none of us thought I would make it even this far. So here’s to twelve more days. I can do it!

Today’s object of my affection is season two of Metalocalypse, Brendon Small’s wonderful black metal-themed satire. If you didn’t read last year’s review of season one, the show is about a band called Dethklok. It’s full of brilliant social commentary, satire on Hollywood and the media, and violence. Oh yes, so much violence. Season one was pretty bad, but season two takes everything up a notch and almost gets disturbing. And while it’s twice as funny as well, the fact that even I’m starting to think the violence is getting to be too much really says something.

But enough about the downside of things. The show is hilarious! This season parodies wonderful things like publicity stunts, “with-it” celebrity managers, rehab, and celebrities who decide to become government officials. “Deathgov” is definitely one of my favourite episodes. The season starts out right after the first ended, with Dethklok and the rest of the world recovering from an attempt on the band’s lives, though sadly it continues on throughout the season as self-contained episodes and shows barely any interest in a running story until the last two episodes. I was a little disappointed, but then I realized that the show was great anyway, so I’ll forget about it.

I think one of the greatest things about the DVD set in particular is the special features. Like the last season, this one’s special features are all just a bunch of extra material. Not blooper reels or deleted scenes, but rather entirely new short sketches. Or, well, not short. Most of them are really long and some even make fun of you for sitting through the entire thing. My favourite has the band sitting in their band meeting closet, only eyes visible, just naming bands. It’s hilarious in its own way, and the fact that it lasts for around twenty minutes (didn’t actually time it) is the icing on the cake. It’s nice to see that even the DVD extras are taking jabs at how puffed up the importance of DVD special features is. I guess the only things that would be considered special features are two music videos for a pair of songs from The Dethalbum. Also, Nathan reading Shakespeare makes a return, wonderful as ever. That should be enough to convince fans to rush out and buy this set.

So what am I going to do with my conclusuory (yes it is a word) paragraph? Not much. How many more positive adjectives do I need to use? You know what? I could really go for some spaghetti…