Posted on by Alexander Case

Movie Review – Hoodlum

Get Hoodlum at Amazon.com
Get Hoodlum at Amazon.com

I’ve been a fan of gangster films (with gangsters of most types), ever since I discovered Shadowrun when I was in middle school. So, I’ve become kind of familiar with the genre (though I’m not even going to pretend I’ve seen seen everything the genre has to offer). So when my Netflix recommendations popped up Hoodlums, I added it to my queue – as I had not seen a gangster film set in the classic gangster period featuring African Americans, and I was kind of hoping it would be a good take on the genre, and that it would portray it’s subjects appropriately.

The Premise: Ellsworth “Bumpy” Johnson has just gotten out of prison in 1936 (in the midst of the Great Depression) and has returned to Harlem where, he intends to get back into helping “Madame Queen” Stephanie St. Clair in running the numbers business (an underground lottery). However, Dutch Shultz has been muscling in on her turf, and has been getting the attention of district attorney Thomas Dewey, with Lucky Luciano (representing the Commission of New York’s mafia families) attempting to maintain order. Being that this is the kind of film that it is, things go out of control, and a gang war is waged across the streets of New York. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Where I Read – GamePro #46

Despite my going back to school, and all that effecting my time I have for writing, the GamePro recaps continue with issue #46 for May of 1993. We have another Sports issue. Our Editorial this issue also discusses the violence in video games debate, with the general advice being that the onus for protecting kids from violent content lies in the hands of parents. However, as game ratings only exist on the Genesis, and they’re not necessarily consistent, I have to say that this advice isn’t as reasonable, but that’s just me.

Letters: Not much this issue. We get letters about playing as the bosses in the SNES version of Street Fighter II, people applauding the Sega CD, and people complaining about the grainy video on the Sega CD.

Hot at the Arcades: We have a Looney Tunes arcade game that didn’t get a home release, and Creature From The Black Lagoon licenced pinball table.

The Cutting Edge: This issue we have coverage of the VVS. It’s a TV, in a pair of glasses! Yeah… they’re still working on this and it’s still clunky as hell. Read more

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Quality Control Review – Sword Master

As I’ve mentioned previously, I really like Swords & Sorcery games, particularly RPGs. I also like fantasy and semi-fantasy platformers like Castlevania. So, when Sword Master came up on this week’s issue of Nintendo Power, I was looking forward to it. All things considered, I probably shouldn’t have looked forward to it…

The Premise: As a lone knight, you must go forward and defeat an evil sorcerer who is enslaving the land with his evil minions.

The Good: The combat has a bit of depth to it, in terms you, and your enemies, have high, medium, and low attacks they can use, and you have ways of defending against them, sort of.

The Bad: The levels are very generic. Aside from some basic jumping, you walk forward, and kill everything in your way. Think of the gameplay as Altered Beast, only without the transformations, or the fireballs, and generally more bland and generic.

The Ugly: As I mentioned, supposedly, you can high-block the high attacks, middle block the middle attacks, and low block the low attacks. I can pull off the low block, but I couldn’t pull off any other other blocks. I could pull off all 3 levels of attacks, but the AI reactions were cheap enough that for the mid-bosses, I just couldn’t hit them, no matter how much I tried.  The game is just cheap in all the bad ways.

The Verdict: Avoid this game. There had to have been a better game that could have taken this game’s slot in Nintendo Power. I’m not even going to put referral links for this game in this review. That’s how unimpressed I am.

Posted on by Alexander Case

Where I Read – Nintendo Power #23

Our Nintendo Power recaps continue apace today with our recap of issue #23 for April of 1991. Our cover game this issue is Power Blade… and frankly I’m not too impressed by the art this time. I wonder if the brisk pace of the issues is making it more difficult for the artists to really bring the quality.

Letters: Operation Desert Shield is underway, and our Servicemen in Saudi Arabia love the Game Boy. We have a full page of letters from Servicemen who brought their Game Boy and are playing the crap out of it. I wonder how many Servicemen in Iraq now and in Afganistan brought their DSes and PSPs. Though, I suspect that you could probably bring more PSP games because of their size, but you could possibly lose them more easily for the same reason.

Power Blade Guide: The game is out, though the look has been re-worked to make the protagonist a bit more of a Ahnuld/Stallone Musclehead. We get a list of the moves and power-ups for the game, and we get maps of the all 7 sectors of the game. Scores: Graphics & Sound – 3.7, Play Control – 4, Challenge & Excitement – 4.2, Theme & Fun – 4. Read more

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Where I Read – Electronic Gaming Monthly #58

We move on to issue 58 of EGM, for March of 1994. Our cover story is Super Street Fighter II Turbo. The cover art is great, except for the face, which doesn’t quite work based on the perspective. The issue clocks in at 232 pages.

Editorial: This month’s editorial by Ed Semrad is around, basically, the growing pains over the upcoming rating system for video games, with Sega and Nintendo fighting over whose system they would use. Sega’s is modeled after the ESRB’s ratings and would have both system’s games come out evenly. Nintendo’s appears to be designed in a more convoluted fashion, and would make just about every single game on the Genesis look awful. Ed describes this as being over “the most trivial of things” which, due to 20/20 hindsight, and California’s law over the rating system going to the Supreme Court, and Left 4 Dead 2 being banned in Australia, I’m having a bit of a chuckle at that phrase. To be fair though, Ed probbly couldn’t see this coming. Though, considering the outrage over Night Trap and Mortal Kombat, he probably should have seen this coming. We all should have seen this coming. Read more

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Ring of Honor Review – Glory By Honor 2002

Alright, we’re on to the next Ring of Honor show after Unscripted. This is Glory By Honor I, held on October 5th, 2002 at the Murphy Recreation Center. As a reminder of who the champions are, all the belts are held by The Prophecy, with Christopher Daniels & Donovan Morgan winning the ROH World Tag Team titles in that tournament, and Xavier beating Low Ki for the ROH World Title. Our hosts are Jeff Gorman and Chris Levi, with Steve Corino having left the announce booth as part of his (concluding) feud with Rudy Boy Gonzalez. Read more

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Where I Read – GamePro #45

My GamePro Recaps continue with Issue #45 for April of 1993. This issue is about 177 pages long and our cover story is StarFox. Though, the length of the issue will probably be padded a little by the second half of their strategy guide for Sonic 2. The editorial this issue is, basically, saying that the NES is managaging to hang on by it’s fingernails. Well… we already knew that, from the fact that NES games are still coming out. So, let’s just move along.

Letters: We get a letter about the SFX Chip, and what it does (it lets the system create crude 3D polygonal shapes), what the expansion port on the bottom of the SNES if for (nothing), whether we’ll get a NES converter for the SNES (Innovation’s working on one, but Nintendo cracks down on them like a ton of bricks).

LamePro: We have the debut of GamePro’s god-freaking aweful April Fool’s section. EGM comes up with with a made-up cheat in the magazine, complete with screen shots as evidence, and asks you, the reader to find it (thus requiring some thought). GamePro, on the other hand, does a lame, fake magazine, with pathetic made-up parodies of existing games. Read more

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Quality Control – Metal Storm

Get Metal Storm from eBay

Well, I’m going to go back to the text reviews for the time being, as the audio reviews don’t carry over well to Facebook (as my reviews are also syndicated there. Plus, frankly, I’m just not getting a lot of listeners for them. If you do want the audio reviews back, please let me know, and I’ll start doing them again in the future.

Anyway, my game for review this week is the mecha action game Metal Storm for the NES, from Irem (the people who brought you R-Type). Let’s see how it turns out.

The Premise: An alien intelligence has taken over the research station on Titan. You, in the M-308 Gunner Mobile Suit must infiltrate the facility, get through its defenses, and destroy the base before it can destroy Earth! Read more

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Where I Read – Nintendo Power #22

Alright, this week’s issue of Nintendo Power is issue #22 for March of 1991. Our cover story is the mecha action game Metal Storm (which was the poster game last issue), and a lot of the art on the cover is very similar to last issue’s poster (but that’s okay).

Letters: We have a letter from a kid who managed to be a Nintendo Game Counselor for a day thanks to a letter he wrote to the Mickey Mouse Club. So, I guess something good came out of the Mickey Mouse Club (instead of just Brittney Spears and Justin Timberlake). We also have the Nintendo Rap… which I’m just going to tip toe on by.

Metal Storm Guide: We get some notes off the bat about the “reverse gravity” system and some of the weapons and power-ups in the game. We then get some maps of the first 6 levels. On the bright side, the game has a password system (which, frankly, a lot of games on here don’t have). Apparently stage 2, by the way, there have unlimited vertical scrolling on the levels (with the maps wrapping). That could make it easy to get lost in the levels without the map. Anyway, the general visual theme of the levels is pretty industrial, with not a lot of visual variation to it, at least in the the levels we get pictures of. Ratings: Graphics & Sound 3.8, Play Control 3.7, Challenge and Lasting Interest 3.7, Theme & Fun 3.7. Read more

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Where I Read – Electronic Gaming Monthly #52

Another week, another hole I’ve discovered I can fill in my EGM Archive. In this case, it’s issue #52 for November of 1993. This issue is quite epic in its length – 324 pages long, and our cover story is Sonic CD. Oh, and there’s a Super Street Fighter II Strategy Guide that will probably pad this issue out a little.

Editorial: Christmas 1993 is coming up. So, there are so many consoles out, how do you decide? Basically they do a run-down of all the consoles on the market, and pick them all apart except for the SNES and Genesis. Not much else other than this.

Letters: Well, we get people not happy with Major Mike being off to the side for his reviews. We also get more letters about Project Reality (which the EGM staff dismisses as vaporware), Nintendo has a new top-loading version of the NES, which they also poo-poo. Personally, I like the Top Loading chassis, as that way I don’t have to worry about the pins getting bent as much. We also get a letter from a producer at Sunsoft covering issues with the World Heroes games, with the original letter being 3 pages long, and they had to shorten. I wonder what happened to the original letter. If Ed Semrad or Steve Harris reads this (as he was still the EGM publisher at the time), and they know what happened to the original letter, and want to do a full rebuttal to all the points in the letter that aren’t in their response here, please let me know. In the course of their response, they do take a moment to slip a shot in at GamePro and their frequency of Perfect Scores (across the board 5s), which I can’t argue with in the slightest (nor the lack of criticism in their critical reviews). As far as their criticism that the scores were two low, they refer them to Famicom Tsushin’s score, which is an overall 24 (7, 5, 6, 6), which is lower then their score. Read more

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DVD Review – WWE Presents The World’s Greatest Wrestling Managers

Get "The World's Greatest Wrestling Managers" from Amazon.com

So, I’m trying to watch some more wrestling stuff, and I’ve gotten a few wrestling DVDs in, which I’ll be reviewing over the next couple weeks. First up is more of a documentary focused DVD, based around various managers in the WWE’s history… as if you couldn’t tell in the title.

The Premise: Hosted by Todd Grisham, we take a walk back memory lane and discuss some of the greatest managers in the WWE’s history, and what made them great, as heels, or as faces. We have interviews with the managers in question, as well as with various WWE Superstars talking about those particular managers, and what makes a good manager in general. The individual mangers who get profiled include Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, Captain Lou Albano, Paul Bearer, Jim Cornette, Paul Heyman, Sunny, “Classy” Freddie Blassie, “The Sensational” Sherrie Martel, and “The Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart, The Grand Wizard Of Wrestling, and The Lovely Miss Elizabeth, as well as a general profile of female managers/valets in wrestling (with particular mention given to Debra, Chyna, Trish Stratus and Rena Mero). Read more

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Where I Read – GamePro #44

Our GamePro recaps continue with our coverage of issue #44 for March 1993. Our cover story is the best games of 1992. Well, normally this would come out in the first issue of 1993 but it works. Our cover art is, I presume, of Shinobi, featuring a ninja of ambiguous gender. The isue’s 193 pages long, but they’ve also got a Sonic The Hedgehog 2 strategy guide in there, so that will probably pad it out some. Oh, and like usual, the Editorial column re-states the table of contents. *Sigh*

Mail: We get questions on Pro Action Replay in Street Fighter II Turbo, and why Turbo Technologies is being so slow in releasing titles for the Duo. They get into this on the Retronauts episode on the TurboGrafx, but basically, the problem is that TTI US has to go through a lengthly negotiation process with NEC and Hudson in Japan before localizing it, making it difficult to port games over. This kind of explains why the TurboGrafx and later the Turbo Duo basically were the Shump and WorkingDesigns RPG system, with the addition of LaserActive games like Mad Dog McCree once they got a CD-ROM drive in the system. Yeah, there’s Bonk too – but it bears mentioning that the TurboGrafx systems just didn’t have the same degree of 3rd party support (at least in the US than the Genesis and SNES had. We also get complaints about games costing $50 to $60 bucks in the US, and more in the UK. Get used to it. It’s going to cost that much until at least the present. Cartridge games are, frankly, expensive to manufacture, and the cost of making disk games hasn’t gone down much either (plus the hardware itself is expensive to make). Plus, in the UK, you’ve also got the VAT. Read more

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Where I Read – Nintendo Power #21

We move on to issue 21 of Nintendo Power. Our cover story is StarTropics. The cover art is much better than last issue, with an interesting mix of drawn art with papercraft art. Again their editorial is hyping the coverage in this magazine (re-stating the table of contents). Though, they do say one contraversial thing… only it’d probably only be contraversial if the internet was more wide spread – they say that the NES port of Ultima: Quest of the Avatar is better than the PC version. I’m going to have to take issue with that. Not a big issue, but a slight one.

Letters: We get more letters about invincible NES Control Decks and Game Boys. We also have a woman with a pet racoon that she named Tanooki. For the record – Exotic Pets Are Bad!

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II – The Arcade Game Guide: I’m surprised this wasn’t on the cover, considering that at this point, Turtlemania is running wild, brother! Anyway, we get some small screen shots comparing the NES and Arcade versions of the game. Basically, the sprites on the arcade version look a little bigger, and you’ve got 4-player multi-player. We get maps of some of the early areas of the game, including notes on what enemies come out when and, just as helpfully, how many there are for single player and multi-player (as, in two-player you get more enemies than in single-player). Also, we get the number of hit-points for the bosses, and again, the bosses (well, some of them) have more HP in two-player than in single-player. Anyway, we get maps of the first 7 stages. We also get some two-player strategies, including the basic stuff, like “Who uses the health power-up”, and slightly more advanced stuff, like “Which Turtles go well togeather.” We also get the 10 turtle cheat for the game. Score: Graphics & Sound – 3.9, Play Control – 4.1, Challenge & Entertainment – 4.3, Theme & Fun – 4.0. Read more

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Where I Read – Electronic Gaming Monthly #45

For this week’s EGM Recap we’re going to take a step back to fill another gap in the archive (hopefully I’ll be able to alternate these until all the gaps are filled). This issue I’m going back to April 1993 for issue #45 of Electronic Gaming Monthly. This issue’s of average size, about 183 pages, and our cover story is the game adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, directed by Francis Ford Coppela. Of all the Coppela films to get a video game adaptation, this is the one that needed it the least.

Editorial: Ed Semrad gives his thoughts on Winter CES, and he’s going to be a little outspoken here – you see, his game of the show isn’t Starfox, which was a cover story the previous issue, it’s Slipheed for the Sega CD. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Blu-Ray Review – Earth: A Biography

Get "Earth: A Documentary" from Amazon.com

Most people have heard about the BBC’s excellent documentary series Planet Earth… which I must admit I haven’t seen yet, but I plan to watch in the future. However, first, I’ve decided to review the BBC’s companion documentary for the series – Earth: A Biography. Is the series a worthy companion, while still being able to stand on it’s own for those who haven’t watched Planet Earth, or does it leave something to desired?

The Premise: The documentary follows Iain Stewart, a geologist from the University of Plymouth in England, as he travels the world explaining various concepts on how Earth works – specifically relating to how we got to the earth we have now, from volcanoes and plate tectonics, to ice and the movement of glaciers, to wind and the atmosphere.

Read more

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Where I Read – GamePro #43

It’s time for our next recap of Game Pro. We continue ever foreward with our coverage of issue 43. This issue is about 201 pages long and our cover story is Star Trek: The Next Generation, and various games based on that. However, our cover art, while it’s not an original art asset, it’s not well chosen either. I’m not going to cover the editorial this issue, because (again), it’s just covering the stuff that was in the table of contents.

Letters: We have questions about getting the Sci-Fi channel on your local cable provider, and a bunch of other Street Fighter II questions, some of them involving illegal bootlegs of the game.

Cutting Edge: This issue they’re taking a step into the realm of PC Gaming, with talking about using a CD-ROM Drive on your PC. Now there’s a nostalga hit for you – I remember when games took boatloads of floppy disks to install. Yeah, I hated that and I love how CDs and now DVDs help limit the amount of disk swapping. Oh, and if someone says they liked swapping 10+ floppy disks during installation, punch him (and he will be male) in the crotch. Anyway, to be more specific, this is a hack that allows you to hook up your TurboDuo to your PC. This is probably not legit, at least as far as Turbo Technologies is concerned, but it is kind of cool. Speaking of TTI, they’re working on a 32-bit system, which isn’t much of a surprise, and Sega’s working on one too. Oh, and Camerica is putting it’s “Aladdin System” aka the Game Genie. Read more

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Quality Control – Deja Vu

Well, my review is done for Deja Vu for the NES. How good (or bad) of an adventure game is it? Well, you’ll have to listen to the review to find out.

The game was originally released for the Macintosh, but the version I’m reviewing is the NES version, which is only available on eBay. There was also a port of the first and second game in the series for the Game Boy Color, but if you thought the game was pixel bitching bad before, it’ll be even worse on the GBC’s small screen, so I just reccomend you skip that version of the game entirely.

Posted on by Alexander Case

Where I Read – Nintendo Power #20

Anyway, it’s time to get started with Nintendo Power’s 4th year. This is issue #20, and our cover story is Mega Man III, and I have to say the cover art isn’t as good as some of the stuff from the previous year, particularly Rush. However, US cover art for the core Mega Man series has never looked good in general. Anyway, this issue is of average length, at 107 pages. This issue also gives us a start-of-issue “editorial” section which is, basically, re-stating the Table of Contents – except we haven’t actually gotten the Table of Contents yet (where as GamePro, which puts it up after the Table of Contents). Anyway, I’ll finally be discussing the scores they’re giving this time, as with this issue, I can finally tell what the heck their scores are! Previously they had a kind of really rough mercury thermometer thing going on, which made it difficult to tell what score they were trying to give. Now they’ve changed the scores to more solid numbers, so I can actually tell what they’re supposed to be.

Letters: The Woz Loves Tetris. No, seriously. Steve Wozniak has written a letter saying how much he enjoys playing Tetris, complete with a photograph of his high score. Also, our servicemen in Iraq for Desert Shield love their Game Boys too, which make sense because they can take a bigger beating than a Rolex and Samsonite luggage combined. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Where I Read – Electronic Gaming Monthly #57

Once again the EGM Recaps are going forward once more. The issue we’re covering today is issue #57, for April of 1994. Our cover story is (*ugh*), Beavis and Butthead. I grew up when that show was on the air, and I never found it funny. Anyway, it’s getting video games based on it, and if the history of comedy TV show to video game adaptations is any sign of the future, this is going to suck too. Anyway, this issue’s kind of long, at 212 pages, so we might as well get this over with.

Editorial: The price point of the N64 (still known as Project Reality) has been announced, and it’s going to cost $240. This leads to Ed’s editorial about how, basically, video game systems are expensive toys, and at this point in it’s history, I wouldn’t dispute that. I’d say the point where video game systems started to jump the gap from a “toy” to as much of a part of your home theater system as your stereo was, possibly, with the PS2, and it’s ability to play DVDs. Considering at the time the DVD format was pretty new, this helped get a lot of DVD players in people’s homes, in the same sort of way the PS3 helped get people Blu-Ray players. Read more

Posted on by Alexander Case

Movie Review – The Wicker Man (Original)


The Wicker Man is one of those movies I’ve heard many great things about, but have never gotten around to seeing, until now. So, now that I’ve seen it, I’m going to tell you what I think about it. Oh, and by the way, In cause you didn’t notice from the subject line, I’m referring to the original Wicker Man movie, starring Christopher Lee, not the remake starring Nicholas Cage.

The Plot: Scottish police officer Neil Howie comes to the island of Summerisle to investigate reports of a missing girl. However, upon arriving he learns that the girl isn’t missing… but no one’s actually willing to show him the girl to prove it. So he investigates, and in the process learn’s about the sort of Victorian-pagan revival thingie practiced by the inhabitants of the island. In the course of his investigations he learns of a dark and sinister core underneath the island’s quaint exterior. Read more

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Where I Read – GamePro #42

We’re on to issue 42 of GamePro, the first issue of the magazines 5th volume, but not it’s 5th year (it’s been publishing for 3 and 1/2 years), which means that they’ve been doing some creative accounting in the counting. Not that any publisher would do such a thing, right DC, Marvel? Anyway, our cover story is Battletoads, and since the art assets are not provided by Tradewest or Rare, much as the art of Chester Cheetah was provided by Frito-Lay last issue. Anyway, this issue comes in a 224 (approximate) pages, though we’ve got another Street Fighter II insert so that will pad that somewhat. They had another insert last issue, but I skipped it, because if you really want the Street Fighter moves, that’s what GameFAQs is for (and Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix has a move-list option on the pause menu).

Editorial: We have content! The TurboDuo’s coming out, as is the SegaCD, and they’re going head-to-head. The Duo’s got a somewhat more substancial library of games, but the Sega CD has Sega’s slick marketing machine (can you say “Sega does what Nintendon’t”?) behind it. Read more

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Quality Control – Gauntlet II

Get Gauntlet 2 from eBay (if you want the NES version)

Alright, I’ve played (though not beaten – it’s a really long game and I’ve only got 1 day to play it, sort of) Gauntlet II. Again, I’m reviewing the PlayStation Network version of the game, as that version is significantly more accessible than the NES version, and if you buy PSN version the developers actually get money and a random warm and fuzzy sensation, as opposed to just the random warm and fuzzy sensation they get for when someone buys the NES version on eBay (which, while pleasant, doesn’t pay the rent on their offices).

Posted on by Alexander Case

Where I Read – Nintendo Power #19 (Guide #4)

We have now come to the final Nintendo Power strategy guide, published in December of 1990. It weighs in at a slim 77 pages, and is covering games that support multi-tap. Well, there’s not a lot of ground to cover, so we might as well get started. Though I have to admit, for the last guide issue, the cover art… isn’t very good. I’m not sure though what they could do to replace it.

Your Friend the Multi-Tap: We get a run down of the wireless NES Satellite and the wired Four Score, as well as some discussion of multi-tap ethics, and things that can be done to make things run smoothly, such as color coding the player inputs and the controllers (red controller is always P1, etc.) Very useful stuff instead of having to pause the game and having to follow the cable to the system, at least until the PS3 and X-Box 360, where they were kind enough to give you a visual aid on your controller. Anyway, this is really useful device, some of which is obvious enough to have occured to someone else, but not to me.

NES Play Action Football: As I’ve mentioned previously, I’ve played the crap out of this game as a kid. However, I never owned a multi-tap so I couldn’t play it 4 player. For that matter, I never played it 2-player either. We get a run-down of the various teams and their playbooks, as well as some notes on the various types of plays and advice for succeeding with each team. Read more