Keith is Good!

Inglourious Basterds for NES

2012-02-11T11:36:00.000-05:00

...son, business is boomin'!

2012-02-01T15:44:00.000-05:00

Hello. My name is Reggie... You can call me R.A. I play NES games you've probably never heard of.

And yes, you've read the above correctly: Final Fantasy VII for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Well, to split hairs, it's Final Fantasy VII for the SUBOR Entertainment System. The game is a Chinese pirate of the 1997 PS1 version; probably cobbled together from Final Fantasys 1, 2 and 3 for the NES and released sometime in 2005.

Since fluency in Mandarin isn't among my many skills, my review is based on an English translation/face-lift hack (still in progress) coded by a brilliant group of hackers at romhacking.net.

And right from the start, this game makes clear it isn't effing around. Though most all the the graphics and music are unique to the English translation, the Chinese story and game mechanics follow as close to the PlayStation version as 8-Bits will allow. The game is inevitably shorter; with sidequests and flashbacks either truncated or cut entirely. This means no Yuffie (yay!) and no Vincent (boo!). Most of the game's final act gets the axe as well, with the final battle coming directly after the meteor is first summoned.

What's left though, is undeniably FFVII:

I won't go through the game point-by-point--like I've said, it follows the PS1 version. What I will say is that the NES version of FFVII is an amazing accomplishment. Both from the original Chinese Game Pirates ("編曲!" [translation: "Arr!"]), and even moreso from the Hackers who've overhauled the graphics and translated the game to English--to bring a PS1 gaming experience to NES technology is a hurculean achievement.

The above screen serves as perfect example. The final boss fight is at once both instantly recognizable from the PS1 version and undeniably in the mold of the NES Final Fantasy games. Even if divorced completely from it's prototype, Final Fantasy VII for the NES provides a full, satisfying gaming experience.

Crawl Through the Sh*t – 11 Lessons from “The Shawshank Redemption”

2012-01-24T09:57:00.001-05:00

RED

Not long after the warden deprived us of his company, I got a postcard in the mail. It was blank, but the postmark said Fort Hancock, Texas. Fort Hancock... right on the border. That's where Andy crossed. When I picture him heading south in his own car with the top down, it always makes me laugh. Andy Dufresne... who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne... headed for the Pacific

On its surface, Frank Darabont’s 1994 masterpiece, The Shawshank Redemption, is aHollywood-standard prison flick. The film’s true beauty, though, comes inviewing Shawshank Prison as a metaphor that which restrains our everyday lives.Seen as such, The Shawshank Redemptionis a modern-day fable of universal truths.

1.Leave the Gun: The film opens with Andy Dufresne accusedof his wife’s murder. Although innocent, Andy is damned to Shawshank by hisfingerprints on the bullets near his wife’s home. Drunk and confused, Andydropped them as he left. Don’t give in to anger; had Andy simply left his gunand ammunition at home, he would have walked a free man.

...read the rest at The Blog For Men.

2012-01-16T05:00:00.000-05:00

Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril is, simply put, the most difficult game ever produced for the Nintendo Entertainment System. For those unfamiliar with Battle Kid, let me cast some light by showing it's title screen:

Still unsure what sets Battle Kid apart from every other NES title? Let me channel my inner CSI: "Zoom and Enhance!"

That's right, Sivak Games developed Battle Kid and released it for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 2010, a full 15 years after the previous NES release. The plot is intentionally thin to the point of non-existence: our protagonist (Timmy) must venture into the Fortress of Peril to disengage a 'supermech' machine and stop a group of shadowy ne'er-do-wells.

When Battle Kid declares itself a Fortress of Peril, the game isn't effing around. Modeled after the PC Freeware Game I Wanna Be the Guy, Battle Kid is an S&M Fetish of a game: designed to be intentionally painful and difficult. Gameplay most closely resembles Metroid--with a large open world to explore and very little prompting--except Timmy's suit of armor--as opposed to Samus'--is quite porous. Spikes kill Timmy. Aliens kill Timmy. Blobs kill Timmy. Plants kill Timmy. Fish kill Timmy. Even limes and lemons kill Timmy (yes, lemons). It's 1-hit death from start to finish. Here's a small taste of Battle Kid's Horror:

The game offers varying modes of difficulty: Easy Mode allows infinite lives, provides passwords and starts Timmy with a gun power-up (and pink armor). Unfair Mode, on the other hand, pits Timmy against the Fortress of Peril with only his wits: no continues, no saves, one hit and its over. Make no mistake, though, even on Easy Mode, Battle Kid is grueling. Continue points pepper the fortress, but they're spaced like oases in the Sahara; only the lucky can navigate from one to the next.

A point-by-point review of Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril would make for comparative War and Peace blog post, so let me summarize: Timmy kills things (and gets killed), picks up keys and various powerups as he wends through the hair-pulling, teeth-gnashing perils of the eponymous fortress. All bosses bested, Timmy comes to a massive--and mostly impossible--warmech robot (shown above). It's defeat provides one of two rather unsatisfying endings, neither of which I'll spoil.

None of that really matters, because Battle Kid is fun as hell. It's a giant wooden roller-coaster and you're in the back car being whipped around like a rag doll. The moment you get off, head aching and neck stiff, it's a race to get back in line to ride again. Not many make 'em like this anymore, and certainly none can even hope to match the difficulty of Battle Kid: Fortress of Peril.

That is, until the release of it's sequel, Battle Kid 2: Mountain of Torment.

Arts College Pioneers Internship Program

2012-01-13T11:54:00.000-05:00

13 Dec 2012
Evansville, IN

In an attempt to aid new graduates in an increasingly difficult job market, the Liberal Arts College of Southern Indiana (LACSI) instituted a college-wide internship program. Mandatory internship as part of core curriculum has long been in place at Business and Professional schools, providing tangible work experience in the students' area of expertise.

"We want our artists, poets and interpretative dancers to be prepared for their inevitable roles in the greater workforce," said Mary Kenning, Dean of Students at LACSI.

Erin McCord, a senior studying Polynesian Art History, is excited about her new internship. "You list your choices," she says, putting on her new green smock, "and the Internship Director matches you to an appropriate company. I got my first choice--Starbucks!"

Companies preparing LACSI students for their employment futures include Starbucks, Chili's, Applebee's, 7-11, Jiffy Lube, and local gentlemen's club "Foxx Tailz" (for LACSI dance students).

Her half-caf caramel macchido served to a hurried businessman, McCord gives a toothy grin and a shrug. "I'm just glad to know what work is available once I graduate with a Degree in Liberal Arts."

2012-01-09T05:00:00.000-05:00

Before cataloging the myriad testicle-shrinking terrors that is the Battletoads, let's set the mood with a little music:

Battletoads Dubstep by keith_is_good
The above music, played every time Battletoads is paused, beyond being my favorite part of the game (literally) becomes quite important as the game advances.

Developed by Rare and released in 1991, Battletoads is the consensus #1 hardest game for the Nintendo Entertainment System. And for good reason; much like Bayou Billy or TMNT, Battletoads is a hybrid beat 'em up/action/racing game, the difference being that each segment of the game is both well designed and incredibly difficult.

uh, maybe we should...
hehe...let her win...

To say the plot is 'run-of-the-mill' would be derogatory to mill products like particleboard and plywood--evil Hootie McBoob kidnaps someone (I'm not sure who, I pressed start) and its up to the ~~Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles~~ Battletoads to defeat her. Aiding the the Toads are in this quest is ~~Splinter~~ Professor T. Bird. The game is an unabashed Mad-Lib of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, swapping 'toad' for 'turtle' on the line 'Semi-Aquatic Animal.'

LEVEL 1

This is one bird you DON'T want to
play scissors with.

You punch things and they die. Not much challenge. For that matter, NONE of the beat 'em up sections of the game are particularly difficult. Chesty LaRue's minions, it would seem, trained under Glass Joe. Flying enemies here score 1-hit deaths and there are a few chasms to jump, but nothing--including the rather cool 3-D boss--is difficult.

LEVEL 2
Here the Toads repel down a long chasm. Again, the challenge is lacking. Beware, however, the scissor-beaked birds. If not killed immediately, they sever the 'Toad's rappel line, scoring 1-hit kills. It's also worth nothing that repeatedly punching dead birds will yield 1-ups if timed correctly--a skill worth having.

I'll just avoid this pink wa--d'oh!

LEVEL 3
This level is analogous to the damn dam level in TMNT, except in the Mad-Lib of NES games, Rare has chosen 'speeder bikes' instead of 'poison algae.' Punch some kangaroos (really? kangaroos?) to death, destroy the life-stealing Space Invaders and then its onto the aforementioned bikes o' horror.
The challenge of this and all subsequent 'race' sections is that the screen scrolls at the limits of your reaction time. After burning a few continues here, I discovered the glory of the pause button. Jamming on start creates a sort of slo-mo effect, making wall avoidance easier. Therefore:

IN EVERY SPEED LEVEL, PAUSE OFTEN TO IMPROVE REACTION TIME.

By pausing as the walls appear, I was able to move by degrees and avoid them. It also enabled me to see the glimmering warp point near the end of the level. Hitting a warp skips 2 stages forward, so onto...

Game Executive: Well, do they surf?
Rare Developer: Uh...sure. They do now.

LEVEL 5
Another racing level?! Sonofabitch! Stage 5 swaps surfboards for speeder bikes, and thankfully, dials down the difficulty. The logs only injure (not kill) and the action never moves as fast.
There's a battle with a giant rat halfway through, but again, its a Glass Joe kind of fight. The rat literally lets you punch it in the back of the head. I recommend doing so.
After the rat, level 5 finishes with a slightly more difficult surfing segment.

Is that a snake in your cavern, or are you
just happy to see me?

LEVEL 6
This is the first level where it behooves one to have an extra few remotes lying about. In an accident of which the details are still hazy, all mine were destroyed. Level 6 is basically a series of puzzle screens where your Toad must Ride the Snake from one point to another, avoiding all manner of spikes along the way. Unfortunately, there's no real way to tell at which point the snake is going to shunt you into a spike until the snake shunts you into a spike. Hope you collected an ass-load of dead-bird lives on Level 2, because this level is all trial-and-error.

LEVEL 7
A rehash of Level 3, swapping pillars of fire for pink walls. Just as annoying; jam on start.

LEVEL 8
Level 8 is a basic climbing level, offering a nice respite before shit gets real. In a thoughtful move, Busty St. Croix left a weapon at the start of the stage, making the baddies laughable. The only real warning here is the gas jets which begin to appear at the halfway point score (again) 1-hit deaths.
After a rather boring climb, the boss fight is with a bull of some sort. Jump over him and punch him in the back of the head. Annoying but easier than the preceding level.

Weee! Helicopter rides!

LEVEL 9
It seems when Rare swapped out Mutant Turtles for Toads, they forgot to also remove the obligatory sewer level. No joke, though, Level 9 begins the grueling gauntlet to the end of Battletoads. Most of the enemies here score 1 (or 2) hit deaths, there's spikes abound, and a large portion of the level consists of running from giant gears which squish you flat. Again, I can only give the anachronistic advice that you get a shit-ton of 1-ups in Level 2.

Can't we just punch him instead?

Level 10
This is the granddaddy of them all, the hard of the hard--Rat Race. Level 10 has you racing a rat to the bottom of a tower in order to diffuse a bomb before it explodes. Rat Race is so difficult, it makes watching Rat Race seem like a good idea. Luckily, there's a glitch here: after the first race, if you can punch the Rat out of the air AFTER it's head bonks the steel girder, it will fly off screen and you'll advance to Level 11 without having your soul crushed by two more races. Unfortunately for me, I was unaware of said glitch. Many hours. Many hours.

LEVEL 11
After the grueling difficulty of Rat Race, Level 11 offers the only-slightly-less-soul-crushing Clinger-Winger level. Here your Toad must outrace a whirling vortex of doom on an anti-gravity unicycle. As dumb as that sounds, Level 11 is even dumber to play. Holding in on the D-pad makes your Toad go, and turning corners with even the slightest hitch will spell certain doom. This is another level where constant pausing is a must. After the race, however, you do get the joy of beating the shit of the Vortex, so it's not ALL bad.

LEVEL 12
Although certainly not the hardest, this final stage is without doubt the most annoying. It's another beat 'em up/climbing level, except instead of a stationary chute, your Toad must climb a spinning tower of doom. There are disappearing platforms, platforms which drop and monsters which delight in creating gusts of wind which push you to oblivion. Once you learn the timing of each specific platform (i.e. die a couple hundred times) the level becomes manageable.

He's got horns and she's a dominatrix...There's
something awfully Shakespearian going on here.

Atop the tower is ol' Hootie McBoob herself. This is the most difficult Boss Battle in the game, which is to say it's kin to KO'ing Piston Honda after a couple thousand bouts with Glass Joe. Busty St. Croix attacks by kicking and turning into a yellow tornado, attacks avoided with a simple jump. However, due to the timing of her kicks, any hit usually results in Toad death. Slow and steady wins the race here: wait for her to stand still, jump behind her, punch and repeat. In this way the battle took me around five minutes, but I managed it on only a handful of lives.

After 12 ball-busing levels, after the Jet Bikes and the Rat Race and the Clinger Winger and death after death after death, your reward is to watch the escape of Chesty LaRue. That's right, after defeating the game's final boss, she flies away free, with the following text as consollation:

Fuck you, Battletoads!

CONCLUSION
Battletoads is unequivocally the most difficult of the TEN HARDEST NES GAMES OF ALL TIME. Although some levels tend to mirror the action of earlier levels, there are no simple pallete-swaps, meaning each stage has its own learning curve, and each curve grows steeper as the game progresses. Three lives and three continues will get a Battletoads novice to Level 3 if they're lucky. Getting through all 12 levels requires practice and brute force of will. Battletoads easily earns:

Five Controllers of Impossibility! I'd award it more, but all my remaining remotes are mysteriously broken.

And finally, 12 games fought and bested, I claim myself

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM!™

I fully expect my new found title to get me into the VIP at local clubs, act as a half-off coupon at all participating Chipotle restaurants and earn me the right to shout "I am the Potentate!" at whomever I damn well please.

There is, however, the nagging feeling that my title is only partial. I know FOR A FACT of a NES game much, much, MUCH harder than any of THE TOP TEN HARDEST NES GAMES OF ALL TIME. This legendary beast of a game is worse than the combined nightmares of Battletoads and Ikari Warriors, a game to make the weak run and the strong cry out in anguish. It is the Clulex to my gaming Smithy, a boss beyond all bosses. And the name of that game

...will be revealed next week.

99 (Yule) Problems

2011-12-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

99 yule problems by keith_is_good
(With apologies to Jay-Z)

If you're havin yule problems I feel bad for you son,
I got 99 Problems but your gift ain't one.

I'm on gift wrap patrol, festive bags and rolls
Folks wanna make sure these packs is closed
Wife's chirpin' "there's too much tape on Joe's"
I got it done hun, so what kind of facts are those?
If you be tying bows til the Rapture goes
You'd be medicating with some marshmallows
I'm like, look honey, lets go find some misletoe
Suggle on the sofa with some hot cocoas.
Turn on the radio or some chrismas shows
Mall shopping trip? We ain't doin it! It's all--
Brat packs buttering up that fat man
So Santa Claus'll pull a good stash from his bag - CHUCKLES
I don't know what you take me as
or understand the jolliness that KG has
I'm all 'deck the halls,' cause it's Christmas, hun,
I got 99 problems but your gift ain't one
Christmas!

[Refrain]

The year was 94 and my stocking's full
Peal when I see that Santa brought a haul
got two choices y'all, I can call for Ma OR
Bounce to the presents throw that paper to the floor
Cause I ain't bout to sit til the family wakes at 8
Plus I 'm on the nice list, I can hardly wait!
So I, run over to the boxes and bows, I hear
"Son why are you unwrapping those?"
"Cause I'm young and I asked for a Nintendo
It's technically Christmas, dad, let me go!
Should I go back to bed or rip some more?"
"You realize, son, it's 5:54!
It's night an mom's sleeping, outside it's still dark
Sugarplum visions and the nativity star!"
"I already opened this gift! It's too late to quit"
"If your mom sees that, she's gonna throw a fit."
"I'll pull it out the box, hook it up real fast
We'll play a few rounds, then we'll put it back!"
"Ha! Aren't you sharp as a tack;
You got this all planned, son? Like Santa's elf or somethin?"
"Ain't from the north pole but I know a lil' bit
Open something early you gotta re-wrap it!"
"I see how smart you are, you unwrap this one."
Got 99 Problems but my gift ain't one.
Christmas!

[Refrain] x2

Once upon a time not too long ago
Reindeer named Rudolph had a shiny nose
Now this ain't a nose in the sense of havin a sniffer
But a sniffer glowing lightbulb red -- What a Shimmer!
Peers deplored him, tried to ignored him
In Reindeer games they wouldn't let him perform
But then one night, fog obscuring sight
Santa was in need of a Sliegh Light
Christmas may not happen
But fat man started clappin
"Rudy lead my Sliegh and be my Reindeer Captain!"
Nose blazin bright you can save Christmas
Deliver all these presents to the nice list kids
Now the Reindeer love him, watch Rudolph run,
He got 99 problems delivering gifts ain't one
Christmas!

[Refrain] x3

You crazy for this, Saint Nick!
Ho! Ho! Ho!

2011-12-19T05:00:00.000-05:00

On this, the penultimate step to my becoming:

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM.™

I went in expecting the ultimate potency of NES's Silver Surfer to shrivel my gonads and instantly turn all my hair grey. Released by Arcadia Systems in 1990, Silver Surfer is lauded by many as the most difficult game ever produced for the Nintendo Entertainment System. Similar to Konami's Life Force, Silver Surfer is a space shooter, which alternates between overhead and side-scrolling levels. Unlike Life Force, Silver Surfer is packed with near-unavoidable one-hit-deaths, baddies who eat bullets like candy and confusing background/foreground sprites.

I think the Angry Video Game Nerd said it best:
"Silver Surfer... silver shit."

The image currently floating
though my field of vision.

PREAMBLE:
The gameplay opens with a Mega Man-style Stage Select screen. I played every stage. I died many times. When asked to enter my initials for a high score, I rebelliously wrote 'A$$.' It got to the point where Morose Silver Surfer (your reward for dying) burned into my very retinas. For a being imbued with the Power Cosmic, there's a lot of shit that can kill the Silver Surfer. It would seem Arcadia Systems decided Hemophilia and Osteoporosis are side effects of the Power Cosmic, because EVERYTHING YOU TOUCH KILLS YOU. EVEN RUBBER DUCKIES.

This here? This is where you live.

REPTYL:
But then a wonderful thing happened. I found a sweet spot at the bottom of Reptyl's level. I collected some power-ups (F's strengthen your bullets, B's give screen-clearing Bombs and Spinning White Orbs provide additional bullet streams) and the enemies started to die with ease. Powered-up, I managed to beat the first section without dying once and came to a realization:

Without Power-Ups, Silver Surfer is Hard as Hell. With Power-Ups, Silver Surfer is Effing Easy.

The second section of Reptyl's stage switches to overhead. Powered-up, Silver Surfer fires not one, but three bullets which spread a la Contra's Spread Gun. In addition to offing baddies, your bullets also destroy other bullets. This means the Zeroth Rule of ~~Fight Club~~ Silver Surfer is (and it helps if you read this in Alec Baldwin's voice):

"ABF. A always B be F firing. ALWAYS BE FIRING. "

Is that a surfboard or are you happy to see me?

Couched in the lower left and fully powered, Silver Surfer is near invulnerable. For some reason the end of this section forces you to kill Sea Turtles. I thought Silver Surfer was supposed to protect endangered life-forms, but hey--what do I know?
Section 3 (as all 3rd Sections are) is just an ante-room to the boss: a Lizard riding a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Fully-powered up, Reptyl didn't stand a chance. Since the (rather thin) plot of Silver Surfer revolves around your collecting parts of a Galactic Super Weapon, Silver Surfer strikes a bad-ass pose and collects his space-carburetor.

ENTRE'ACT:
It's important to note that not all Stages of Silver Surfer are created equal. Reptyl, for example is by far the easiest of the five. By trial and error, I found the level difficulty, from Easiest to Hardest to be: Reptyl, Emperor, Posessor, Mephisto, Firelord. This level order is important because once you begin a stage, you MUST finish it, even if you die. There's no returning to the Stage Select screen. Going from easiest to most difficult allows a player to get used to the controls and difficulty of the game bit by bit.

EMPEROR:
Section 1 is overhead, filled with gun turrets. Again, stay couched in the lower left as much as you can and only stray when absolutely necessary. Your three spread bullets should clear the way for you.
Section 2 side-scrolls and offers no real challenged to the Powered-up Surfer. Stay on top when possible and Always Be Firing.
I'm not clear on Silver Surfer Villains (apparently neither were Arcadia Systems), but I believe Emperor is Ruler of Planet Suck. He stands behind a wall of turrets while you blast him to hell. Literally no challenge at all.

The Pink and Black Attack is Back!

POSSESOR:
First: Possesor looks like a sprite-rip of Bret 'the Hitman' Hart. Right? Section 1 of ~~Bret's~~ Possesor's stage is side-scroll, and although the stage is peppered with bullet-shooting baddies, it isn't too difficult. Position your shooting powerup so it fires down, stay near the top of the screen and the drones won't come near you.

Section 2 switches to overhead and has a few elements which can be annoying as hell if you're not expecting them. First are the eyeballs which appear from nowhere and fly at you. If you're in the bottom 3rd of the screen, they shouldn't be an issue so be careful not to fly too far up. The other wrinkle comes at the VERY END--two spiky doors which close over the Surfer (killing him, of course) if you linger at the bottom of the screen. After defeating the eyeball and in the coliseum-type-thing, fly up!
Possessor himself is, again, mostly harmless. He hides behind a Titan-type thing that shoots ghost-sperm. Place yourself squarely in front of it and, like Weird Al, get Trigger Happy.

FIRELORD:
Firelord is the only stage in the game which is genuinely difficult. In most other levels, powered-up weapons make travel easy. Not here.
Section 1 is an overhead section where Silver Surfer can only travel over the brown areas. This makes for some tricky navigation. The baddies that emerge from the "water" are placed at tricky angles, requiring precision firing and control.
Section 2 is a side scroller, and unlike previous levels, there's no 'safe zone' at the top or bottom of the screen. Fire drips from the cielings and pumpkins (yes, pumpkins) fly up from the floor. Even with your guns blazing both down and across, this section requires extreme caution in the pumpkin sections.
Firelord's antechamber has birds and flames which fly in obtuse trajectories. They can be difficult to avoid, so ABF becomes very important. Firelord himself, though is a major push-over (Major Push-Over [salute]). At the back of the screen, none of the baddies or projectiles can fly to avoid your bullets. Fire away and get a picture of that sweet, silver bulge!

I ain't afraid of no ghosts. Oh, wait yes I am.

MEPHISTO:
Where Firelord's stage was difficult due to level design, Mephisto's stage can be tricky due to its baddies. In side-scrolling Section 1, there are ghosts flying from doors. They swirl about and do a decent job of killing you. Stay as far away from the doors as possible.
Section 2 is peppered with the vanishing eyeballs from Possessor's stage and projectile-throwing Hands which cannot be destroyed.
Mephisto's ante-room is filled with sperm-looking things which multiply (and shoot) when you hit them. You really have to lay on the B button to get through this unscathed. Mephisto, like his fellow Bosses, is comparatively simple.

After defeating the 5 "Bosses," and still one distributor cap short of a complete Galactic Weapon, Silver Surfer gets the following memo from his boss, ~~Lumberg~~ Galactus:

Of course, the famous... Magik Domain??

MAGIK DOMAIN:
This level is genuinely difficult, both in design and baddie placement. Switching your bullet buddy between firing down and across is the key to traveling through Section 1 unscathed. If there's open space below you, fire down. If there's ground, fire both bullets across. It's essential Silver Surfer stay as far back AT ALL TIMES--baddies fly with such velocity that even at the back of the screen you will just only kill them before being killed yourself. If your thumb gets tired, seriously, pause for a minute. Always Be Firing!

We Were at the Beach!
Everybody had Matching Towels!

Section 2 is a relatively short overhead stage. The only real challenges here are the spikes and the section boss. Much like Firelord's overhead stage, Section 2 of the Magik Domain requires precision navigation of the surfer to avoid giant spiked pillars which would otherwise kill you. There only real baddies here are Bubble Machines which shoot Bubbles (how is it someone with the Power Cosmic can get killed by an effing BUBBLE?). Avoiding the spikes and bubbles, the boss of this Section is a Rock Lobster (ski-do-dee-bop!).The Rock Lobster moves quickly, but in a set pattern. More Bubbles appear during the fight, but the only real danger is crashing into the Rock Lobster.
Section 3 is short and littered with power-ups. If you're not on full weapons at the start, by the time you reach the final boss, you will be. Dispite the sprite in the lower left throughout the Magik Domain, Silver Surfer's Final Boss is Grape Ape with a Gun. There's a safe spot just above the level of his head, so the only real work here is dodging when Grape Ape charges. Honestly, I found the Rock Lobster a more challenging boss. Although Grape Ape takes a ton of damage to kill, the fight is easy--I managed to defeat him on my first try. With the Galactic Fuel Pump in hand, it's off to Galactus and a well-deserved ending.

CONCLUSION:
I fully expected Silver Surfer to erode my will to live until I was just a slobbering shell of my former self. Couples passing my park bench (and future house) would shake their doleful heads: "What Happened to him?" "He played Silver Surfer for NES." On the contrary, I actually enjoyed this game. Yes, the trial-and-error learning curve for Silver Surfer is equal parts tedious and frustrating, but with power-ups in hand, I felt the Power Cosmic flowing through my veins.

Silver Surfer DOES NOT belong among the Top Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time. The only reason it gets Two Controllers of Impossibility is due to baddie placement which make death-avoidance difficult. Other than that, the game is a cakewalk. I spent more time on the first level of Ikari Warriors.

So, as Kenny Loggins would say, "This is it."
I'm going to take a break for the Holidays and ring in the new year with my final ascent on the mountain of NES Immortaility. January 2nd, 2012 -- it all ends. The mere thought makes me turn green.

Hardcore Wrapper

2011-12-16T05:00:00.000-05:00

Kids Shows in Real Life

2011-12-14T05:00:00.000-05:00

2011-12-12T05:00:00.000-05:00

Of the TEN HARDEST NES GAMES OF ALL TIME, Ninja Gaiden is the only I've owned since its release. Which means I've been ragequitting at Stage 5-4 (bloody Bloody Malth) for 22 years. Released by Tecmo (Ready! Down! Hut Hut Hut Hut Hut Hut Hut...) in 1989, Ninja Gaiden is a side-scrolling beat 'em up following young Ryu Hayabusa as he journeys to America to avenge his fallen Father. Through various cut scenes, this story expands to include the CIA, Possessed Statues, the Amazon and a Furry named Jaquio.

The Original Angry Birds.

None of the plot really matters, of course, because this game is EFFING HARD ("That's what she said"). How hard is Ninja Gaiden? The game's difficulty can be completely encapsulated with two simple words: Infinite Birds. You want to jump over to that ladder? Well this army of white falcons would rather you just jump into that bottomless pit. And guess what? The birds win every time.

Oh, and there's also the inconvenience of losing a Boss Battle, but we'll get to that later.

I'll have a Chocolate Malt, please.

ACT I:
This first stage is some sort of American street (complete with Coca-Cola signs) and offers no real challenge. Move slowly and stab everything. The boxer drones offer some difficulty if you let them get too close, but as long as you're jamming on the B button, they shouldn't be an issue. The Boss is a purple sloth with a sword who seems to have occupied a Soda Parlor. Your Schwartz is bigger than his, so simply stand back a bit and slice him until he explodes.

Save us both the time and get in the pit, Ryu.

ACT II:
Let the controller-throwing begin. After a simple jaunt, Ninja Gaiden begins cheating on Stage 2-2. The baddies are upgraded with projectile weapons, and most of them are perched right before perilous jumps. I've found the best strategy is to jump at them and slash before they get a chance to fire guns/throw knives. To compensate for the fact that Ryu ends up at the bottom of a pit every 3rd jump or so, Ninja Gaiden allows for infinite continues and puts you at the nearest doorway when you die.

The Boss is a guy swinging a scythe. Avoid his weapon and wall-jump over him--he's not that difficult.

ACT III:

I'll just jump in this pit now.

The Levels of Ninja Gaiden don't vary much in design. Instead, the difficulty comes from the evolution of baddies. Case in point: Stage 3 introduces of the aforementioned birds. One second you're jumping between platforms, the next you're bounced into a pit by a falcon. Welcome to Ninja Gaiden. Once you learn the quirks of each drone (and at what pits they spawn), the levels become manageable. The Boss of Act III is a Jumping Ninja. His only attack is to occasionally throw a trio of bullets at you. The bullets can be destroyed by your sword, so simply follow him around the room, slashing him (and his bullets when he shoots). So far, the Bosses have been a pushover.

ACT IV:
Not much to say here.A jungle then a mine. Lots of birds. The Boss is a pair of demon dogs. They jump around the room, spit poisonous loogies and look very scary, but they are, in fact, harmless. They always spit over Ryu's head and if Ryu stands under one of the two pedestals in the room, the dogs will jump over him. Jam on B until they die.

Into the pit you go!

ACT V:
Act V is very long and very difficult. New and devious baddies obstruct your path. Green Jumping Ninjas, Silver Blade Throwers, Jumping Monkeys Jet-Pack Ninjas and, of course, more birds. Also in ACT V is the most difficult jump in the game, requiring Ryu to jump down from one wall onto another wall. Missing the lower wall rewards you with instant death. Dallying on the upper wall too long means death by bird. I blew through 6 lives before I finally made it to the other side.

Bloody Malth? Bloody Hell.

After that, its an arduous climb through some ruins, with jet-pack ninjas peppering you with throwing stars. The Stage Boss here is even more frustrating than the stage that preceedes him: Bloody Malth. It's theoretically possible to avoid the balls of lightning he chucks at you, but I couldn't manage it. Instead, I stood right next to him and slashed like mad, taking my hits as they came. This worked well--on the second try. My first battle with Malth ended in my demise, pushing me ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE START OF THE STAGE. Losing to a boss seriously sucks.

ACT VI:
The final stages pull out all the stops. Birds everywhere. Lots of jet-pack ninjas and their throwing stars. Jumps that border on impossible. It's very important to note that there's a spin-attack power-up on the first screen of 6-3. GET IT. Seriously Get. It. And whatever you do, don't accidentally swap it for throwing stars or fire. Make certain to keep the Spin Attack until the final boss.
Why, you ask? This:

The battle against Ryu's possesed father is probably pretty difficult. I wouldn't know, because the spin attack gives you a 1-hit win. Unfortunately, your power-up is taken away, leaving you with only your sword against Jacquio and the Demon.

This is where Ninja Gaiden earns its stripes as NES Hard. Jacquio is the more difficult of the two, flying over Ryu's head and chucking fireballs everywhere. It takes some practice to dodge his projectiles, and unfortunately, practicing against Jacquio means dying and having to beat all of Stage 6 (a VERY long stage) again. After besting Jacquio, there's a brief cut scene in which the Demon awakes before its off to battle again. This second of the final bosses is decidedly easier. The Demon attacks by chucking little demon spawn at you, and although they do major damage (Major Damage [salute]), they're easily dodged. Destroy the head, destroy the tail, destroy the heart. I got it on my second try.

With the Demon vanquished, Ryu puts on some Al Green and gets all "brown chicken brown cow!" with the lady that shot him in Act I.

The sun isn't the only thing rising *wink*

CONCLUSION:
Ninja Gaiden most definitely deserves to be listed among the Hardest NES Games. Losing a Boss battle, especially later in the game, is a soul-crushing defeat, putting poor Ryu at the very start of the stage. And have I mentioned the birds? To hell with those birds.

Ninja Gaiden, however, is more tedious than difficult, earning it three Controllers of Impossibility. I considered four, but the game doesn't really get difficult until Stage 5. Compared to Ghosts'n Goblins--which throws the hardest boss at you ten seconds into level 1--3 out of 5 is justified.

Only two left now. There's probably no surprise as to what the two Hardest NES Games of All Time are, but perhaps a little surprise at the order in which they appear. Which is which? You'll have to surf over here next Monday to find out.

Kids Shows in Real Life

2011-12-09T05:00:00.000-05:00

Kids Shows in Real Life

2011-12-07T05:00:00.000-05:00

2011-12-05T05:00:00.000-05:00

If the Nation of Glitchy Games were to revolt against their despot (E.T. for Atari), the rebels would name NES's Ghosts'n Goblins as Prime Minister. Ported from Capcom's arcade machine by Micronics (the same ~~asshats~~ company who shat Ikari Warriors) in 1986, Ghosts'n Goblins is famous for two things: awesome Engrish and terrible glitches. With it's brain-melting Japanese to English translation in mind, I loaded the cart and started Level Seven of my quest to become

NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM IN THE MOST EXTREME POWER!™

I can't tonight, honey--I'm going to
be abducted by a demon.

STAGE 1:

I'm not positive on plot specifics, but upon pressing start, it looks as if the protagonist is about to get a blowjay when a demon steals his lady-friend. And because most 1st-gen NES games are about dudes chasing poon, the knight suits up and starts slaughtering the undead to get his blowjay back.

Everyday I'm shufflin'

For nine glorious seconds, I actually thought, "this game isn't so damn hard." Jump a few gravestones, kill a few zombies--no big deal. Alas, on the tenth second, Ghosts'n Goblins introduces the most difficult enemy in the entire game: the Gargoyle. He swoops with a Falcon's accuracy, fires projectiles, and taunts you with his sweet dance steps. You could run away as he swoops and try to score a few hits, but the only sure fire way to kill the Gargoyle is to employ the Elbow Glitch. Discovered by ~~cowardice~~ accident, if you score a hit while the Gargoyle is still sitting, run away and wait a few seconds, the Gargoyle will disappear. Later levels practically require this ~~cowardice~~ strategy.

"Oh yeah! Hit me harder, baby!"

After the Gargoyle, the zombies are replaced by (what appear to be) flying condoms. They're not difficult, but have a knack for spawning right in front of your face. Eventually the flying condoms give way to the Stage Boss, a pasty demon in S&M Leathers. Half the time, S&M Monster will stand still and let you pummel him. The other half, you will die. I quickly learned death is really no big deal because Ghosts'n Goblins offers infinite continues and savepoints in the middle of each Stage.

STAGE 2:

He has the blue apple splatters.

If the Gargoyle in Stage 1 wasn't deterrent enough, Stage 2 presents the most frustrating portion of the entire game. After jumping icy-looking platforms, good Sir Knight arrives in a city populated by Ogres. They require ten hits to kill, move quickly and attack by spitting and pooping on you. If this wasn't difficult enough, the Stage spawns birds to attack you as well. Excepting the end of the Final Stage, this is without a doubt the most difficult part of the game. You have to anticipate the birds and kill the Ogres in a specific order or you'll end up a pile of bones in short order.

After the perilous journey through Ogre-Poop City, the rest of Stage 2 is a simple matter of jumping some platforms and killing a few birds. The level boss here are TWO S&M Monsters, but if you're cautious, you can engage one while the other sits and watches. Again, just crouch, fire away and hope for the best.

STAGE 3:

Stage 3 starts with a rehash of Stage 1--lots of zombies, a few bats and some tower-things that shoot bowling balls at you. Simple. When the palette changes from brown to Blue, watch out. The rest of the stage is teeming with Red Gargoyles. Move slowly and employ the Elbow Glitch whenever you see one. At one point, after climbing a ladder, a Red Gargoyle materializes from thin air behind you, but luckily, you can simply avoid him by not climbing the ladder.

You will have to fight one Gargoyle near the level's end, but thankfully its on a long, flat plain, so you can simply run away and score a few hits as he swoops overhead. After the Gargoyle comes the Stage Boss: A Dragon. A quick note here about weapon power-ups. Enemies often drop weapons after being defeated. The general rule (General Rule [salute]) is to avoid them: all weapons have the same attack power. The only weapon better than your spear is the dagger, which flies faster. The fire and the axe fly in short arcs, making them both useless and dangerous.

The exceptions to this rule of weapon avoidance comes when specific enemies have weapon immunities. Case in point: the Dragon in Stage 3 is immune to your spears. Thankfully there's a Fire weapon leading up to the Dragon. Grab it. The Dragon is easy to avoid, simply duck under it or jump it when it's near and barrage it with fire.

STAGE 4:
Stage 4 is a respite from the insane difficulty, a simple level consisting of some moving platforms and a Red Gargoyle. Eventually Sir Knight comes to a bridge over a fiery pool, but as long as you keep moving forward, the baddies will spawn behind you and the jets of fire from below should miss your feet. The Boss battle here is another Dragon. If you have the Spear, there's a Shield weapon available at the start of the bridge. Blast the dragon and move on.

STAGE 5:
This stage isn't 'difficult' per se, but takes some getting used to. The task is to climb a series of ladders and platforms up to the gate of the tower where your ~~blowjay~~ princess is waiting. The tricky part is the level is chock full of Ogres and Flying Condoms, and there are various paths up. After some trial-and-error, I found a 'a path of least resistance,' with minimal Ogres. A few deaths and I was to the top of the tower where a giant Red Demon waits. He's crazy easy , mostly because his projectiles are slow and he doesn't swoop low enough to hit you when you're crouched. Crouch under the swoops, step to the side of projectiles, and pump him full of daggers or spears.

STAGE 6:
This Stage makes up for the relative ease of Stages 4 and 5 and then some. You have to remember that this game was originally made by Capcom, and what does Capcom like to do in the last Stage, right before the Boss Battle? Make you fight every Boss again. This is made more difficult by the fact that certain bosses have weapon immunities. So the spears used to dispatch S&M Monster are worthless on the Dragon. The best tactic here is to stay on the ground floor until the Flying Condoms drop a dagger. Use the daggers to defeat the S&M Monster and the Dragon above him.

Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Enter This Screen.

On the level platform where you fight the dragon is a Shield weapon. BE SURE TO Pick up the Shield AFTER beating the Dragon and proceed upward with EXTREME CAUTION. After the Dragon, the level has Gargoyles guarding the edge of each platform. If you're careful, you can pass without waking them up with one exception. There is one Gargoyle planted right next to a ladder, meaning you'll have to fight him. Climb up the ladder a way to wake him up, then drop below and fight him. If you're lucky (or, like me, if you've died so many times you can proceed through Stage 6 with your eyes closed), you can best the Gargoyle without waking any of the other Gargoyles or getting shit on by an Ogre. The peril, unfortunately, isn't over: climbing this ladder sometimes triggers another Gargoyle to materialize behind you. Also, it sometimes does damage to you for no reason at all.

If you can get by without being attacked by the ladder or having a Gargoyle appear from nowhere, the rest of the level is a cakewalk. The boss here are two of the Demons from Stage 5--attack them one at a time for an easy win. If you grabbed the Shield earlier, the door opens and it's on to fight the Final Boss. If you didn't get the shield, and instead stayed with the (much better) daggers, Ghosts'n Goblins gives a big 'Fuck You' in the form of the following screen:

And then it puts you back at the start of STAGE 5. Bastards.

He only hit me because I was
drinking a coffee at the time.

STAGE 7:
Not really a Stage, just a battle with the Final Boss. He's a push-over. He paces to and fro and spits fire which is easily jumped. No real strategy, just hit him in the head until he poofs into flames and dies.

Now, after trudging through all 6 stages of Hell City, after the countless Red Gargoyles and S&M Monsters and Flying Condoms, Ghosts'n Goblins gives you the following screen as ultimate reward:

You beat the game! Sike!

Then it's back to Stage 1. If you find a 'Trap Devisvt By Satan' unsatisfying and want to get your ~~blowjay~~ princess, YOU HAVE TO BEAT THE ENTIRE GAME AGAIN!!! Quest 2 is an exact copy of Quest 1, except the monsters are faster and your will to live is much, much weaker. If you do manage to get through this entire game twice without committing ritual Sepukku, your "happy ending" goes as follows:

Congraturation! Three hour of your
life is not being come back.

CONCLUSION:

The nicest thing I can say is that Ghosts'n Goblins actually manages to be not totally awful. Even with infinite continues, it's a challenge to play this game from start to finish. Bad programming and only two hits mean Sir Knight will die more often than not. Beating Ghosts'n Goblins is a battle of wills: The voice that says, "You must save that ~~blowjay~~ princess," versus the voice that says "you are wasting your time, idiot." I have no problem giving Ghosts'n Goblins

Four Controllers of Impossibility! Aside from Ikari Warriors (which doesn't qualify for Controllers of Impossibility because it is, in fact, not a game at all, but rather a torture device) Ghosts'n Goblins is the most difficult game I've played yet. I can't imagine the #3 Hardest NES Game of All Time being much more difficult than G'nG. Of course, it could slice me in half with a Katana, so we'll see...

2011-11-28T05:00:00.000-05:00

I'll start this chapter in my quest to become

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM™

with this:

First clue this game sucks:
Four Raphaels on the cover.

Pretty much sums it.Developed by Konami (again?) and released in the US under their "Ultra Games" imprint in 1989, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles is known for teaching 7-year-olds the art of controller whipping and swearing (courtesy of their older brothers' friends). Based on the television series of the same name, the game is a hybrid Beat 'Em Up / Adventure game, and like Bayou Billy before it, does neither particularly well.

Unlike the other titles of the Top Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time, I remember quite well playing TMNT... and hating it. Each Turtle has their signature weapon with pros and cons, but none have good hit detection. Also, once hit by a baddie, there is virtually no "recover time," meaning two baddies can bounce you like a volleyball until you (literally) shrivel and die. Fortunately, you can switch between Turtles at ANY TIME and Pizzas--health powerups--respawn once you exit a room and return. The key to survival, then, is to use Donatello (his Bo Staff has the most power and reach) never let a Turtle die, and once you find an easy slice of pizza, power everyone to full. EVERY TIME.

...and Dumber.

MISSION 1:

Dumb...

A training mission of sorts, Mission 1 is a short, straightforward affair. Go down one manhole and defeat Beebop, then follow another to a fortress and defeat Rocksteady. Beebop takes a few Bo staffs to the face and Rocksteady can (famously?) be killed from an upper ledge.

MISSION 2:

A seldom seen spectacle: the Stage 2 Win Screen.

Stage 2 is the most infamous level in TMNT, probably because everyone RageQuit here and never got any further. Apparently, while you were rescuing April O'Neil, the foot clan planted some bombs on a dam. Why the Corp. of Engineers can't handle this is beyond me. The swimming physics are wonky and the various impediments (electrified algae, electric bolts and the one-hit-death sea floor) are quite good at shitting on your parade. There's a two-minute fifteen-second time limit, but it isn't really an issue. Take your licks when they come, switch Turtles if one's life gets low and disarm the various bombs. I got it without dying on my second try with plenty of time (and health) to spare.

MISSION 3:

Every 6-year-old's dream car.

April--Safe! Dam--gloriously un-blown up. Splinter--kidnapped. You'd think a ninja master could fight off a few Foot Soldiers, but whatever. Mission 3 has you poncing about the city in the Turtle Wagon(!), trying to save Splinter. This task requires two power-ups: Missiles for the Wagon and Tightropes to walk across building-tops. The Missiles (and easy Pizzas) are in the building you spawn by, so take multiple trips inside to power up and load on missiles.

Not Impossible, Dorkly.

A quick note here on power-ups. Many drones drop alternate weapons (ninja stars, boomerangs, etc.) So on Pizza-hunting excursions, make sure to score weapons for each Turtle. Especially be certain to GET BOOMERANGS FOR DONATELLO. Boomerangs have power equal his Bo Staff, longer range, and are fungible as long as you catch the boomerangs you throw. This comes in very handy in the later stages. South from the start is the Scroll power-up (strongest weapon in the game) in a pair of buildings. It's not necessary, but it is very helpful. I'd collect one for Leonardo and Raphael.

HADOUKEN!

The southernmost pair of doors on your map contain a large Pizza and the required Tightropes, so much as you did with the first building, power up and collect a bunch of both. From there, curl around the south and west of the map, blow up a few barriers and you'll arrive at a lone building. Going through the building (there's a full pizza at the end, so again, power up) leads you to the boss stage. Jump across a few rooftops to fight the boss: a Clone Turtle/Robot. A few hits from the Scroll turns the Turtle Clone into a Robot. A few more Scroll hits destroys the Robot, freeing Splinter.

MISSION 4:
This stage is some sort of airfield. Your goal is to navigate the numbered sewers from 1-18. Right off the bat is easy pizza, so, again, power up. The path here is forked and obfuscated, making this level a pain in the ass. Thankfully, each sewer is numbered, so you have SOME idea of where to go. If you're low on health, there's an easy pizza in sewer 11 (available via sewer 10) and at the end of sewer 12.

The lead up to the Boss Room in sewer 17 includes some pain-in-the-ass moving spikes (made even nastier by the game's poor jump physics). To avoid instant death, simply stop at the precipice of each ledge to fall safely below. If you lose a Turtle, don't sweat it, you can retrive him in Mission 5 (and 6 for that matter). The end boss here is a Giant Mouser that shoots eye lasers and spits smaller mousers from its mouth. There's a safe spot directly under its jaw, so stand there and jam on up with the Bo Staff for an easy fight. From there you'll jump into the Turtle Blimp (I hadn't realized they even HAD a blimp) and fly off to the Foot Clan's secret base.

MISSION 5:

It looks like the Technodrome smoked
a few Krangs.

Much shorter than Mission 4, Mission 5 has you searching for the Technodrome. The wrinkle here is that it isn't in any set location, but spawns randomly in one of four locations. The building at the map's center holds a lost Turtle (if you've gotten killed at any point) and easy pizza, so again, power up. Also, the Northwest building holds more Scrolls and Pizza. Other than that, its pick a sewer and hope you chose right. Your reward for choosing correctly is a battle against (a rather stoned-looking) Technodrome.

Avoid its lightning, jump on the tread and Bo Staff its red eye. Not too difficult. If you want to preserve some health, have Raphael destroy the gun turrets first.
After it blows up, you jump inside and...

MISSION 6:
Off to find the Shredder! This level would be easy excepting one thing: the jet-pack robots. They fly around shooting lasers which do major damage (Major Damage [salute]), so my advice hearkens back to Karate Kid and Top Gun: run the eff away! If you jump, they'll fly to the top of the screen and then you can safely run away. If you follow the ladders down (and east) you can rescue a fallen Turtle. Other than that, it's avoid avoid avoid. In Shredder's antechamber, jumping isn't possible. This would make the Flying Robots near impossible except for one thing: they fly away if you turn your back to them.

apparently The Shredder wears old-timey longjohns.

Eventually, you'll reach the Shredder. His attack is one-hit-kill, but that's really not an issue as long as you have some throwing stars or Scrolls. Simply stand on one side of the room and pummel the Shredder with projectiles and he won't even get the chance to take a single shot. After a boss battle which can only be described as 'anticlimactic,' TMNT fans are treated to the ending they know so well: Splinter turns back into a human?! Then it's some credits and back to the title screen.

It's probably best not to ask questions.

CONCLUSIONS:
I don't think I'd use the word 'fun' in describing TMNT for NES. 'Interesting' or 'Barf-Inducing' perhaps, but not 'fun.' Everything in this game is a chore, a skill to be practiced and mastered like piano lessons. The awful jump physics and poor hit detection conspire to earn TMNT:

I would have given Four Controllers of Impossibility if it wasn't for Fungible pizza, powerful B-weapons and boss fights that are beyond easy.

Next week brings the #4 Hardest NES Game of All Time, a ghoulish title considered by many to be the hardest of the bunch!

Thank you, Craig T. Nelson!

2011-11-25T11:11:00.001-05:00

This Thanksgiving, we're thankful for Mr. Craig T. Nelson (on behalf of Colin Mochrie)

Improbable Broncos Inspire "Tebow Rule"

2011-11-23T05:00:00.000-05:00

If by "Tebowing," you mean
just barely beating crappy teams,
then yes, he is "Tebowing."

Denver, CO
23 November 2011

Love him or hate him, Tim Tebow is good business for the NFL. Despite abysmal numbers, he's amassed an unlikely 4-1 record as Denver's starting QB. His late-game wins have ignited talk radio and TV, driving ratings through the roof. Most of all, he's given us a barrel of lol's with viral 'kneel and pray' photos affectionately called, "Tebowing."

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell, seeing the river of cash flowing from Tebow, has enacted what is being called the "Tebow Rule." Approved despite dissent among NFL owners, the Tebow Rule states henceforth, the Denver Broncos are only allowed to play crappy teams.

"He beats Miami and Kansas City and people go nuts," Goodell says, head shaking. "I don't pretend to understand it, but since Tebow's success generates revenue, we've tweaked Denver's schedule."

This means the Broncos' Nov 13th game against pitiful Minnesota has been moved to 1:00 PM to boost viewership. The following week, the NFL has removed rough-and-tumble Chicago from Denver's schedule and instead has them playing the 0-10 Colts. The same goes for the following week; instead of New England, Denver will again play the (we're assuming) 0-11 Colts.

Denver will then close their season with games against the University of Maryland, the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers and, ironically, the Tecmo Bowl Denver Broncos.

"It should work well if everything goes to plan," Goodell says with a grin. "Although I still think Tecmo Denver's Pass 2 could give Denver some problems."

2011-11-21T05:00:00.000-05:00

With apologies to Jon Bon Jovi:

Whoooooaaaa! I'm Halfway There!

Whooooaa OOH! Best Nintendo Player!

Bayou Billy won't be as bad as Ikari I swear!

Whooooaa OOH! Best Nintendo Player!

He Doesn't look like
Crocodile Dundee at all.

Ahem. Entry number 6 (Be Seeing You, Number 6) takes us down to the Bayou (or at least what a group of Japanese Computer Scientists think of as "the Bayou"). Released by Konami in 1989, The Adventures of Bayou Billy was advertised as an 8-bit gamer's dream: 1/3 Beat 'em Up, 1/3 Driving Game, 1/3 Light Gun Shooter. Unfortunately, Bayou Billy is a video game dilettante of sorts: advertising multiple genres without excelling in any. The Beat em' Ups are tedious, the Shooters simple and the Driving glitchy. Perhaps knowing this, the programmers try to give you a leg up from the start.

PRACTICE MODE:
The title screen gives you three options for gameplay: Game A (which utilizes the NES Zapper) Game B (which utilizes only the gamepad) and Practice. I'd wager most people skip practice and dove straight into Stage 1.

Don't.

Practice gives you infinite tries to master each mode, and even more, rewards you for beating the stages. Practicing Driving nets you an extra life, practicing Shooting nets you more bullets and practicing Beat 'em Up wins you a Meatball (a 1-time health refill).

She's got huge... tracts of land!

STAGE 1:
Our back story is the stuff of videogame legend: a fat villain (named Godfather Gordon here) swipes your girlfriend and its up to you to win her back.

Reenacting Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Power-ups in hold, Stage 1 is a Beat 'em Up in a swamp. At first, the task seems impossible: the drones are quick, take 6 hits each and hit direction is sloppy. The key here is knowing that, although drones equal your lateral speed, they move very slow vertically. Also, drones only attack at a certain range, so if you jump kick from just beyond their reach, you can score an easy hit almost every time. With those two bits of knowledge, Stage 1 becomes mostly tedious, broken in bits by crocodiles (just stand on top of them and wail on punch), and a guy with a stick (which is no big deal considering YOU HAVE A GUN).

Billy! Get to dah Choppah!

STAGE 2:
Still in the swamp, Stage 2 is the first (of two) Shooter levels in Bayou Billy. If you practiced beforehand (and probably even if you didn't) this stage is laughable. Enemies drop extra bullets and extra health as if they were candy on Halloween.

The stage ends with a battle against a helicopter and the drones it constantly spouts. The helicopter attacks little and the drones it deploys are easily killed. After pumping it full of lead, we get quick view of Annabelle's sweet detcollatge, then it's off for more Beat 'Em Up fun.

STAGE 3:
Same as Stage 1, basically, except we have a boss fight this time: A Giant Bald Dude. Apparently there's a programming glitch where you can trap him in the upper right corner and punch him to submission. Sadly, I didn't know that fact and wasted 3 lives practicing my jump-kicks. Yuck. Without using the glitch, Giant Bald Dude is the second hardest boss in the game.

STAGES 4 and 5:
Stages 4 and 5 are the two driving levels.

If you took the time to practice (and even if you didn't), Stage 4 is a snap. Shoot a continuous stream of bullets, lob grenades at the planes and you're onto Stage 5. This is where driving gets tricky. The road is narrower here and the curves steeper, meaning you may actually have to use the brake a few times to avoid getting blown up. Luckily, I'd amassed quite a few 1-ups in the previous 4 Stages, meaning I had leeway to make a few mistakes. By using a little caution, I made it through Stage 5 with eight seconds to spare.

Uh...A hillbilly whipping a black guy in
Louisiana? Someone call Al Sharpton.

STAGE 6:
Bourbon Street is the easiest in the game. The new baddies (a man with a Mace and knife-wielding hipsters) have very limited attacks and predictable movements. Also available here is Bayou Billy's Ultimate weapon: the whip. It's quick, has a long reach and causes the same damage as a jump-kick. Whatever you do, once you pick up the whip, DON'T TOUCH ANY OTHER POWER-UPS.

WHIP + BULLET-PROOF VEST = GOD MODE

Whip in hand, the rest is laughable, excepting...

STAGE 7:
Sheeeeeeeeeet. Stage 7 makes Stage 5 seem like rainbows and unicorn farts. Stage 7, the final shooting segment, is littered with baddies.Guys zoom past on motorbikes. Dudes pop out of manholes and from behind saloon doors. Everyone has a gun and a hair-trigger, so the strategy here is simple: shoot first, ask questions later. This is where that cache of extra bullets (from winning the practice mode) comes in handy.

Luckily, there are a few well-placed health kits and a bullet-proof vest available. If you hit the power-ups, you should make it to the end bosses: Terminator and Knife Guy. These are the hardest bosses in the game. You'll take heavy damage no matter what you do. Kill knife guy first. If you aim for his head, your bullets will deflect his knives. After that, it's a lead-eating race with Terminator. If you're accurate in shooting the Knife Guy, you should be able to finally dispatch Terminator with 1-2 health bars remaining. The gates to the maison open and it's on to the end.

STAGE 8:
There are 3 waves of unique baddies protecting Godfather Gordon, but, like I said earlier: WHIP + BULLET-PROOF VEST = GOD MODE. I finished Stage 8 on my first try.

STAGE 9:

That's a bullet in Billy's Face.
Sadly, he hasn't a shit to give.

Finally, a face-off against Godfather Gordon. Have I mentioned WHIP + BULLET-PROOF VEST = GOD MODE? Because in a twist of cruel irony, Gordon attacks by shooting at your bulletproof vest. If you want to take a moment to laugh at his impotence, be my guest. Simply walk circles around the portly Mr. Gordon, whipping him all the while. He has a lot of health, so the battle takes awhile, but as long as you don't royally screw up, this battle is, ironically, the easiest part of the game.

The inevitable fight vs. Cajun Space Robots.

You'd think killing your rival would end the game, and, of course, you'd think wrong. Never able to leave good enough alone, Konami couldn't resist the urge to shoehorn two Space Robots into Bayou Billy's New Orleans Adventure. You read that right--Space Robots. Apparently these final bosses are supposed to be Godfather Gordon's twin sons, but really they're Space Robots. They're big and fast and there's two of them, but, again: WHIP + BULLET-PROOF VEST = GOD MODE. Run circles around the room and whip when you've got enough distance to do so without getting hit.

Annabell's Pixel
Augmentation

Defeating the twin Space Robots rewards you with what you've been waiting for since pressing start all those stages ago: Pixelated Boobs! Annabelle jiggles out from her cell, and then we're treated to a cinematic cut-scene of the reunited lovebirds and some fake credits (similar to Castlevania--another Konami title) before a very cinematic, "The End." A pretty decent ending for an 8-bit game, actually.

CONCLUSION:
I actually had a good time playing this game. The practice mode was invaluable, both for its practice (duh) and its power-ups. I made it to Stage 5 without using a continue. The fact you're also allowed 5 continues is a big help, giving you the time to learn the nuance of each baddie and level. Of course I still game overed a few times, but by my final run, I only died twice.

The Adventures of Bayou Billy gets:

Three controllers out of five for difficulty. Yes, the hit direction can be frustrating, but the learning curve here (compared to Ikari Warriors or even Contra) is pretty shallow. 5 Continues is enough to learn the game on the first or second try, and excepting the luck involved in the Stage 7 Boss, there seems to be little "computer cheating."

I've rounded the corner now on my quest to become

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM,™

having bested five of the ten titles. Next comes the first of the Final Five of the Top Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time. I'm already getting green over it.

Thank you, Craig T. Nelson!

2011-11-18T05:00:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Craig T. Nelson!

2011-11-17T10:34:00.001-05:00

Thank you, Craig T. Nelson!

2011-11-16T10:43:00.001-05:00

Thank you, Craig T. Nelson!

2011-11-15T05:00:00.000-05:00

Thank you, Craig T. Nelson!

2011-11-14T14:00:00.000-05:00

2011-11-14T05:00:00.000-05:00

Before any snarkiness, before any banners about becoming master of Nintendo, before any screenshots or gameplay .gifs, one thing needs to be made clear:

IKARI WARRIORS FOR THE NES IS, WITHOUT PEER, THE WORST GAME I HAVE EVER PLAYED.

So much so, I've produced a PSA to educate the youth of America on the dangers of Ikari Warriors:

I programmed better games on my TI-82 during Mr. Reineck's Calculus class ('Quest for the Golden Sipa Sipa' was awesome). There's exactly ONE COOL THING about Ikari Warriors, and it doesn't happen until 3/4 through the game. I could have cleaned the bathroom grout with my tongue. I could have eaten Cat Litter. I could have done literally anything other than play Ikari Warrios and it would have been a more satisfying experience. As much as I want to veer from The Angry Video Game Nerd's territory, any discussion of Ikari Warrior requires the following preamble:

StiNKs.

Shit! Ass burger with cheese! Feck! Balls! Grundle suckers!

Okay. Got it out of my system.

Ikari Warriors, made for the arcade by SNK and ported to NES by Micronics in 1986, is very much like the musical, 'Mama Mia!' They both require ABBA. When Micronics ported Ikari from the Arcade version, they included a 'virtual quarter' of sorts. After you die, simply press A, B, B, A, to get an extra set of lives.

With infinite lives, I can see how Ikari would be fun if you're a) playing with a buddy, b) stoned, c) under 8 years old, or d) all of the above. Plop down on the sofa, crack a few beers and shout obscenities as you and a buddy blast drones to pixelated hell? That could be fun. But playing solo, careful to avoid every damn bullet and kamikaze solder? NOT FUN AT ALL. The rules on becoming

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM™

clearly state "NO CHEATS," so ABBA and its dancing queen infinite lives falls were nix. I think I'll need those beers after all.

STAGES 1-4:

I pressed start, and Ikari Warriors treated me to the following prologue:

It's fitting this game starts with a wreck.

This sums pretty much the entire Game

Ugh. After that cinematic masterpiece, you're shuttled to the jungle floor to kill baddie after baddie after baddie. The 'gameplay" (I use the term loosely in Ikari's case) is an overhead shoot-em-up in the style of Commando. The problem is that your bullets can travel in only 8 directions, whereas the baddies (and their various projectiles) don't have the same restriction.This means killing the hordes of drones involves equal parts prescience and luck. You have to anticipate where the baddie will be and try to hit that spot rather than the baddie.

Several power-ups exist to upgrade your grenades, gunfire and foot speed, but they're too few and far between to be of any real assistance. The only safe havens in Ikari Warriors are the vehicles: the Tank and the Helicopter. The Tank is invulnerable to gunfire and kills any baddie it touches, making your nearly invincible inside it. Unfortunately, it cannot cross water. The Helicopter, although less powerful than the Tank, is equally invulnerable and can cross both land and water. Both have time limitations in the form of "fuel," when the fuel counter reaches 00, they blow up with you inside.

Educated that cruddy video game programming is usually a 2-way street, I spent a bit of time trying to exploit Ikari Warrior's glitches. Death after death after death (after death), I learned that Ikari Warriors lacks any sort of "two drones at a time" or "invincibility spot" glitch. With those avenues closed, I tried drone farming for 1-ups. Alas, standing immobile too long clears the drones and fires rockets at you. So no 1-up farming a la Contra.

Damn. The grisly reality is that to beat Ikari Warriors means trudging through (literally) miles of baddie-infested jungle (and space ship). Whereas other games ratchet up the difficulty from level to level (in order to create a sense of variety in the gameplay), Ikari Warriors is a long, flat plain of suck. The levels swap palettes and change some baddie sprites, but end up being copies of one another.

The drone upgrades, from L to R: Dimitri Martin, White Mr. T and an old school Cylon.

I've played Contra, and you,
sir , are no Contra

After hours of drudgery, the final boss is... a wall. Nice. As opposed to the rest of Ikari Warriors, there's no real challenge here. To reward you for your hours of play, the programmers put a safe spot right in front of the boss/wall, meaning you simply walk forward, lob a few grenades and collect your glory. For all the time I put into this game, I was expecting, at the least, a brief animation depicting my army man asending a mountain of slaughtered corpses while things explode in the background.

But I got this:

At least he expresses his sincere.

Barf. A few lines of pink Engrish text on a black screen. After imbibing the glory of General Kawasaki's poorly-worded and poorly-punctuated attaboy, it's back to the jungle floor.

And that ONE COOL THING I mentioned earlier? Two words: Zombie Hitler. Flanked by drones, Stage 3's boss is a corpse behind a desk who bears a more-than-passing resemblance to Hitler. Considering the original Japanese version of Ikari Warriors was teeming with swastikas, I'd say its a safe bet to say your reward for finishing 3 levels is chucking a grenade at Undead Adolph. It's all downhill after that.

CONCLUSION:
Ikari Warriors sucks. No Controllers of Difficulty. It just sucks.

I swear, if any of the other titles on this list suck as bad as Ikari Warriors, I quit. That grout in my bathroom remains un-licked, and I have a whole tub of cat litter, which means there's ALWAYS something better than shitty NES games.

Hopefully #6 on the Top Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time won't geaux as badly as Ikari Warriors.

2011-11-07T10:08:00.000-05:00

[DISCLAIMER]: I HEREBY PROMISE TO TRY MY VERY BEST TO AVOID A PLETHORA OF DEVO "WHIP IT" JOKES. NO GUARANTEES, THOUGH.

My introduction to Simon Belmont came via the (notoriously bad) Saturday morning cartoon, "Captain N the Game Master." As you can see below, this provides quite a confusing image.
It was my assumption, then, that the Castlevania video games centered on a man's quest to become the ultimate metrosexual. That misunderstanding was eventually shattered when I played Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (which I nostalgically hold to be the best of the series), but somehow I never got around to playing its progenitor.

Developed by Konami and released on NES in 1987, Castlevania is a dark, surprisingly atmospheric game, following Simon Belmont as he journeys through Castle Dracula to defeat the Vampire Lord and break the curse on his family. The gameplay here is nothing unexpected: it's a classic 8-bit side-scroller in the mold of Super Mario. What sets Castlevania apart are the gloomy palettes, the macabre imagery and the wonderfully downbeat soundtrack. Like Mega Man and Contra before it, I was rather excited to best this game on my quest to become

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM.™

AWESOME!

STAGES 1-3:

First of all, let me say the opening animation to Castlevania, with Simon looking to the looming castle before walking through the gates, is pee-your-pants bad-ass. It's amazing a pixelated image can create such foreboding and suspense. With a deep breath, Simon (and I) enter the gates of vampire hell and...

YAWN. The first level of Castlevania (composed of stages 1, 2 and 3) is easy to the point of boredom. Simon is powered-up on the first screen, and the baddies are easy to beat and/or avoid. Most difficult are the bounding dogs and the swooping bats; a simple jump dodges and one strike will whip it--whip it good (sorry).

He was running me amok.

I suppose Stages 1-3 are meant to acclimate a player to the physics and timing of Castlevania, but I couldn't help be bored. The opening boss is (surprise!) a large bat, who's only attack is to dive at you. I Wupped Batman's Ass on the first try.

Cut the Mullet, Jerk.

STAGES 4-6:
Again, like Stages 1-3 before it, Stages 4-6 are laughable. The only real challenge are the flying Medusa Heads; they ponce about in swooping arcs but lack speed. A simple whip or jump renders them moot. Pass a few instant-death spikes and you're taken to the boss, a giant flying Medusa head. Again, not too much challenge here. Medusa's only attack is to release snakes which slither along the floor. Simply crouch and Whip the Donkey's Ass. The snakes get instant-death with Medusa not far behind.

STAGES 7-9:

Got any Sudafed?

Oh! Sorry, I didn't realize you... I'll just leave.

Stages 7-9 start to ~~annoy the shit out of players~~ pump up the difficulty by introducing the Hunchback. Hunchbacks resemble tiny Meth-heads and jump all over the place, making them difficult to hit. These levels also introduce Dragon Skull Cannons: stationary baddies which shoot fireballs. The fireballs can be whipped (into shape! [sorry {again}]) or jumped, but either way, require good timing. I burned my first Game Over before reaching the Boss: a pair of mummies. Like the 2 previous bosses, the Mummies require no real strategy. I just mashed on B and put them on a Hell Greyghound Bus Ride.

Birdman caught me on his property.

STAGES 10-12:
Stage 10, with its moving platforms and baddies which spawn at the worst possible time, killed me literally 40 times. My stomach sank, anticipating the final "GAME OVER." Stage 1, here I come (again). Thankfully, the GAME OVER never came. Castlevania has infinite continues. I literally sighed with relief.

After burning through a few (dozen) continues, the catacombs rose to a flat, grassy stretch. Uh-oh. Unimpeded ground this late in a game is ALWAYS a bad sign. My foreboding was rewarded with a shit-ton of giant Eagles dropping Hunchback paratroopers. And after that? Fire-spewing dragon heads. And after that? Stage 13 and the hardest boss in the game.

The level boss here is Frankenstein's Monster and a fire-spewing hunchback (who looks to be humping his head). The Monster is mostly harmless. The Hunchback? Annoying as hell. Even though Castlevania offers infinite continues, getting to Frankenstein's Monster and the Hunchback with lives and health to spare is an unholy task. Stages 10-12 took twice as long as the previous 9 Stages combined.

STAGES 13-15:
If Simon Belmont wasn't already journeying through the upper crust of Hell, I'd say TO HELL WITH THIS. Stage 13 starts with a couple of Hunchbacks then introduces Castlevania's Biggest Pain in the Ass: the Axe Knight. The dude takes a bajillion* (*approximate) hits and chucks axes at you. This gets real fun (read: not fun at all) in the run-up to the level boss:

They put me on a War Hell Ride.

If the two Axe Knights weren't bad enough, there's an infinite chain of Medusa Heads bombarding poor Simon. By the time I reached the Level Boss--The Grim Reaper--I was to my last health bar. Luckily, The Grim Reaper is kind of a joke. His attack consists of a number of spinning scythes, which move intermittently depending on where you stand. If you let Simon stand still so the scythes can get a beat on you, a few steps in either direction will evade damage. Then its only a matter of (literally) whipping the Grim Reaper INTO SHAPE (I'm not even going to apologize for that one).

STAGES 16-18:

These stages are probably very hard. I say "probably" because as soon as I saw the Giant Vampire Bats on the fisrt screen, I ran the eff away from everything. Huncback-dropping Eagles? RUN! Medusa Heads? RUN! I managed the few tricky jumps and finished Stages 16 &17 without killing a single damn thing.

Which brings us Dracula. As bosses go, Dracula is mostly harmless. In his human form, he teleports around the room, shooting fire from his cloak. Once you master the timing, the fight becomes boring. And mastering the timing is simple because dying against Dracula spawns you RIGHT OUTSIDE HIS DOOR. Dracula's second beast form is similarly simple. Holy Water (available in Drac's chamber) both damages and momentarily freezes the beast, allowing Simon to Whip it! Whip it Good! [crack!]

After sending the count back to hell, you get the pleasure of watching his castle crumble to the ground, followed by a list of phony credits, including "Belo Lugosi," "Boris Karloffice" and "Love Cheney, Jr."

I hope he had homeowner's insurance.

CONCLUSION:

The ease of Castlevania's early Stages is mirrored by the difficulty of it's later Stages. From Stage 10 onward, any one baddie can seriously piss on your parade, and the final Stages require serious repetition to master. That said, infinite continues make beating Castlevania a matter of determination rather than skill. Even Stage 15 with its Axe Knights and Medusa heads became routine after a few (hundred) playthroughs. I'm solid in saying Castlevania gets:

Two controllers out of five. Were some of the level hard to the point I shed bitter, bitter tears? Yes. But knowing I had infinite continues kept me going, and made Castlevania manageable.

Next Monday I tackle the Number 7 in the Hardest NES Games of All Time, and channel the power... of the Warrior!

Ogling Women on a Nude Beach - in 3D!

2011-11-04T11:00:00.000-04:00

Note: The Cartoon below is a Straight Eye Stereogram:

Everything You Need to Write a Novel in 30 Days

2011-11-02T14:37:00.000-04:00

As you may or may not know, November is National Novel Writing Month ("NaNoWriMo" to the cool kids). For the 3rd year running, I've decided to ~~punish myself~~ take part in the event by trying to write at least 50,000 words of fiction in a month.

And just like Musicians like to show off their Rig ("Check out my Amps and Post-Heads, Dude!") the above photo displays everything one needs to write a novel in a month. From Left to Right:

Tissues--hopefully I won't need these much longer, but it seems inevitable that every year I get stricken with the most heinous cold around October 30th. I've literally (literally) gone through a box of these in the past 24 hours.
Laptop Computer--Mainly used for going to the National Novel Writing Month's website, www.nanowrimo.org, to update my word count every five minutes or so. Also quite useful for one who prefers to type as opposed to write by hand, as portability means one can novel anywhere.
Gridded Softcover, String-Bound Notebook--Since I type faster than my brain works, I tend to write all my first drafts by hand. Sturdy and portable, with grid lines in case I get the itch to start drawing in the middle of a noveling session. I have eight of these in reserve.
Pen--UniBall Signo 207. Medium Nib, Black. Any other pen and you're just a poser.
Printed Outline--So I don't start meandering and write page after page about, lets say, cats.
Coffee--Pretty self-explanatory. Eight O'Clock Coffee, Colombian, Whole Bean. Required for early morning/late night word sprints and as cow-pusher for the various writer's blocks bound to obscure my writerly rails.

It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take These!

2011-10-31T05:00:00.000-04:00

Like most of the games on this list, I'd never really played the original Contra prior to my quest to become

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM.™

Alternate tite:
Terminator vs. Rambo

My only real knowledge of Contra was that, upon its release in 1988, it made famous The Konami Code. Pressing: ↑, ↑, ↓, ↓, ←, →, ←, →, B, A, Start at the title screen earns players a reserve of 30 extra lives. Being that the only real rule in my quest for NES Supremacy was NO CHEATING, playing Contra without its (sometimes) eponymous code was like going to a steakhouse and ordering a salad and Horchata.

So, resisting the urge to pump 'roids into my digital Arnold, I just pressed start and...

STAGE 1:
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE.
WHY ARE ALL THESE PEOPLE SHOOTING AT ME?! DO THEY NOT KNOW THERE'S AN ALIEN INVASION GOING ON?! STOP SHOOTING AT ME! WHITE SKY ABOVE, WHY DID THAT BRIDGE BLOW UP?!

Reset, I think this is the beginning
of a beautiful frienship.

It was during this initial "trial-and-error" session that I learned what would quickly become my Third Best Friend in playing Contra: the Reset button. If you can't even make it through the first stage without dying, then what hope do you have for the rest of the game, right?

Take that, IKEA TV stand!

Half a dozen resets in, I met my Contra BFF: The Spread Gun. When I was told, "its not the length that counts--it's the girth," I'm going to assume the implied subject was the Spread Gun. The Spread Gun shoots up to five bullets, which arc out and cover half the screen. Basically you stand back and watch the baddies die. There's only one point in the game where another weapon trumps 'ol Spready, but we'll get to that later. I took it slow through the Stage 1 Jungle, and with Spread Gun in hand, beat some sort of blue wall thing to advance to Stage 2.

Konami must really hate walls.

STAGE 2:
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE.

Stage 2 takes a Holiday from side-scrolling and introduces a sort of first-person shooter. You look from behind your Schwarzenegger and blow up a series of walls. Electrical currents prevent any forward movement (on penalty of momentary paralyzation) and baddies strafe in front of you, lobbing bullets, grenades and barrels. The point is to blow up the glowing orbs and not die. The not dying part proves surprisingly difficult at first. The forced perspective makes it so bullets (both yours and you enemies') travel in awkward trajectories. This means even the best evasive maneuvers are worth, to quote Matt Foley, "JACK SQUAT!" The key to these levels (which I only learned after multiple game-overs) is to simply duck. Pressing down makes it so NO BULLETS CAN EVER HARM YOU. Dodge a few grenades, make it rain with your Spread Gun and the level is over in no time flat. The boss is yet another wall, this time with guns and a weird circle thing, but again, the Spread Gun makes it almost laughable.

I hope Ridley Scott sued over this.

STAGE 3:
FUUUUUU... wait. That wasn't so bad.

Stage 3 brings us back to side-scrolling, except instead of advancing left to right, our little Governator, our master of California English, must climb up a waterfall, platform by platform. This level's difficulty is ratcheted by two things. First, falling down the screen doesn't scroll you back down--it kills you even if a platform is LITERALLY RIGHT UNDER YOUR FEET! Second, there's a new baddie--some sort of scuba guy who lobs explosives. Other than that its a rehash of Stage 1, and honesty, the difficulty isn't too much greater. If you'd lost the Spread-o-matic at any point, there's another to pick up halfway through the stage. The boss, instead of being a wall, is an alien-wall. It fires projectiles and swings its arms, but, again... Spread Gun.

Are those horribly misplaced guns
or are you guys happy to see me?

STAGE 4:
Stage 4 is the second and final qasi-first person stage. Nothing new from Stage 2, just more of it. Stay on your belly and blast everything with your Spread-a-led-a-ding-dong (too much?). If you're without a Spread Gun, grab the Fire Gun power-up here. The Fire Gun is practically useless in the side-scrolling stages due to its snail's pace, but here its wider hit range make it useful. After another round of wall-blasting, you reach basically the same boss you fought in Stage 2, excepting this one has drones assisting it. Once you blow away the glowing turrets, the main boss phases in and out of existence, firing heat-seeking projectiles. The answer to this puzzle? S _ R _ _ - _ U _! Pat, I'd like to solve: Spread Gun!

STAGE 5:
I nearly crapped my pants when the ante-screen announced Stage 5 as: Snow Field. I had pre-traumatic flashes of sliding into pits and bullets, unable to control my 8-Bit Det. Kimball ("It's not a tumah!"). I was ready to hail a Taxi Cab and Run back to Stage 1. Thankfully, the snowfield, which brings us back to side scrolling for good, is icy in palette only. Right off the bat, we're greeted with two new wrinkles in this stage: bombs thrown from the background and men in gun turrets. The bombs can be tricky, and the gun turret men require you to duck, but by this time (having Game Overed and Reset for literally hours) my reflexes were good enough to get by.

How to Succeed in Contra without
Really Trying.

Stage 5 is most notable because it's here that I made my Second Best Friend in playing Contra, and the only point in the game I willingly relinquished my Spread Gun. Amassing 1-ups in Contra takes a long time, making baddie farming a tedious process. Stage 5, however, has a nice workaround for the extra-life-challenged. Early in the stage is a screen with a lower platform, two higher platforms and the Machine Gun power-up. With Machine Gun in hand (as it fires continuously), I perched on the right side of the lowest ledge and unleashed hell. The baddies here spawn either in the path of your gun, or on the ledge above. Those above promptly jump into a bullet. Therefore, I simply taped the B button down on my controller and read a book. Like a whole book. I resumed the game with more lives than the screen would show me (a max of 4 ribbons are displayed) and went on my alien-killing way. Is this a bit disingenuous? Maybe. But the subset of my NO CHEATING policy is to, quote, "Load the Cart, Press Start and Play." The way I figure, taping down the B button while my Lil' Arnold beat all the baddies and their Cousins for 1-Ups is simply taking advantage of a flaw in the programming (a la the first rule of Karate Kid).

After earning a plethora of extra lives, Snow Field offered two Giant Tanks (which require a powered-up gun to defeat), then brought me to the boss which is, for the first time in Contra History, NOT A WALL. An alien ship flies overhead and releases little UFO Saucers which trace the edge of the screen. The little saucers are easily jumped, and even without any power-ups, the Mothership is quickly dispatched.

I assure you that isn't cotton candy.

STAGE 6:
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUDGE!

Stages 6 and 7 are had me at my wits end. I seriously considered Giving up the Gun. Even with my cache of questionably-gotten 1-ups, these stages burned a few game overs. Most every baddie packs heat, the jumps are longer and the in-stage obstacles are downright devious. Case in point: Stage 6 and its giant columns of fire. On first play through, there's little warning before--BAM!--your Arnold is incinerated. This stage is teeming with cracked pipes spewing columns of fire, making me think maybe the aliens hired a piss-poor contractor.

I'll get you, Logan!

After navigating the flaming maze that is Stage 6, you face off against Juggernaut from X-Men. Apparently he's defected from Magneto and works for the aliens now. He paces to and fro across the screen, jumping like an idiot and throwing curling stones. Compared to the level, defeating Juggernaut is simple: jump over his head, dodge the curling stones and pump him full of Spread. I beat him on my first try.

More spikes than an S&M Bar

STAGE 7:
Anyone got a spare NES remote? Mine got accidentally smashed into a thousand pieces.

Stage 7 SUCKS. I mean, really--shouldn't this game be over by now? Level 7 actually made me wistful for Stage 6 and its fire-columns-of-death. It looks like a futuristic meat packing plant, with spike-tipped pistons and spike-covered walls which rise from the earth RIGHT AS YOU WALK INTO THEM. Caution is essential in navigating this stage. Take a few steps--did a spike-wall appear? No? Then take a few more steps. Oh and there's mine carts as well. Beats me why aliens need mine carts, but there you go. The boss, thankfully, is another wall. Turrets lob bombs and grunts charge from a door, but neither are too difficult. Even without my trusty Spread Gun, the boss only managed to hit me once. The wall blows open and your Conan the 8-Bit is given a Diplomat's Son access to...

STAGE 8:
The Alien's Lair. About damn time. It feels like I've been playing this damn game for 10 hours (oh, wait). And thank the gods of 80's video games, this level is both short and simple. There's even a Spread Gun upgrade. Instead of gun-toting drones, little alien fetuses fly (slowly) at you, making for easy target practice. There's a miniboss here, an alien head taken pixel-for-pixel from the Alien movies, but all you have to do is stand under it and shoot until it blows up.

Seriously, I hope Ridley Scott sued.

I think Freud was
the level designer
of this penis...enemy!
I mean enemy.

After the miniboss, the walls of the stage are lined with sideways alien vaginas which spit at you. They look creepy but offer little resistance. You'll get your Spread Gun here, which is Contra's way of repaying all the karma you've amassed thusfar by getting your ass whipped.

The final boss is--what else?--a wall (with a beating heart attached). The boss attacks by spawning aliens which scuttle at you, but that's it. I mean really. The alien heart was dumb enough to give you a Spread Gun and all it has are a few slow-moving baddies? Yawn. It should have the common courtesy to at least shoot laser beams at you. Something. Dispatching the alien heart yields you the satisfaction of watching your helicopter fly from an exploding island and a brief paragraph of scrolling text.

I Think UR a Contra

Had I beaten Contra in 1988 (at the ripe age of 6), this ending would have been SO AWESOME! There's a helicopter AND an explosion. Then, the scrolling text hails me as savior of THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE and gives me license to append HERO to my official title. Damn right.

CONCLUSION:
Contra has easily been the hardest game yet in my quest for NES Immortality. I could have spent a whole Vampire Weekend on this one. Like Mega Man before it, some of the level design is vexing to the point of madness. Unlike Mega Man, however, Contra has finite continues, more baddies and a razor-thin margin of error. At certain points I had to walk away from the game before something got broken.

I can say without hesitation Contra is 3/5 on the NES Remote difficulty scale. And it's only the second entry on the list. Yipes.

Tune in next Monday as I whip number 7 on the Top Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Wizards

2011-10-28T12:37:00.000-04:00

The other day, two adjacent synapses fired simultaneously and I was struck by the following thought:

If the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
attended the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, into which Houses would they be Sorted?

Very nerdy, I know. Placing two, three or all four of the Turtles in any one house would upset the tenuous balance between Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw. Plus, not even Harry Potter could beat a Quidditch team with Michelangelo and Raphael as Beaters. The Sorting Hat would certainly place one Turtle per House, and I'm confident--nay, certain!--the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles would be Sorted as follows:

Donatello
Of the Four Ninja Turtles, Donatello is the easiest to sort. Known for his superior intellect and introspective nature, the Sorting Hat would only have to graze Donatello's green dome to discern which house suits him best. Think of it this way: is Don more Harry Potter or Luna Lovegood? It's not a stretch to think Don has a copy of the Quibbler tucked into his shell. And besides, would you really want to grant Michaelangelo access to Rowena's Diadem? That means Donatello must be...

Raphael
Like his buddy Donatello, Raphael offers little challenge to the Sorting Hat. Perhaps Raphael would consider himself a 'realist,' but the more honest assessment is that he's equal parts ambitious and pessimistic. His fighting skills are a close second Leonardo, and Raph is vocal in his desire to usurp the do-gooder Leo as leader of the Clan. Again, the Hat would only have to touch the sweat of his green skin to decide Raphael certainly is a...

Michelangelo:
This is where the Sorting Hat gets flummoxed. Both Michelangelo and his brother Leonardo show flashes of brilliance. Both have great strength and show little fear in the face of danger. Leonardo shows more pluck as leader, but Michelangelo shows greater creativity in solving problems. Mike isn't one to let a few stingy rules get in the way of what is right and good. And besides, which other house would accept the designated party animal of the four Turtles? Think of Michelangelo as the 3rd Weasly twin. After a long deliberation, the Sorting Hat opens it's mouth and declares, "Cowabunga! Michelangelo must be...

Leonardo:
By process of elimination this one becomes obvious. I can hear fandom's slobbering legions decrying my turn as Sorting Hat with Curses not allowed without a permit. But consider some of the tenets which make one a Hufflepuff: Empathy, Constancy, Loyalty, Justice and Honesty. How could any Sorting Hat in its right seams apply any of these terms to Michelangelo? Yes, Leonardo acts as leader and yes he shows great courage--but by the same token, he is bound rules and refuses to stray from the precepts of law. He must be...

Donatello would probably excel in Herbology and Transfiguration. Raphael would (naturally) obsess over Defense Against the Dark Arts. Leonardo, already imagining his job as a Ministry Auror, would throw himself into Potions and Charms. Michelangelo, of course, would organize parties in the Common Room and spend a lot of time inhaling fumes in the Astronomy Tower. Beyond that--who knows? There's always Quidditch tryouts.

Gaddafi Escapes After Libyan Rebels Mistakenly Execute Carlos Santana

2011-10-26T05:00:00.000-04:00

Honestly, I'd make the same mistake.

26 October 2011
Misrata, Libya

It would seem Libyan declarations of independence have come, like a virgin on prom night, prematurely.

While performing an autopsy this past Sunday, it was discovered rebels had the corpse not of Mummar Gaddafi, but instead American Rock Gutitarist Carlos Santana. Official reports of the snafu conflict, but rebel fighters paint a simpler picture.

Asad al Maquri, one of the rebels present at the faux-despot's capture, explains the situation thusly:

"He was all like, 'Don't shoot--you got the wrong man! I'm Carlos Santana!' And I was like, 'Enough of your filthy lies, Gaddafi!'" Asad takes a deep breath, his blue eyes shimmering and clear. "I mean, isn't that EXACTLY what Gaddafi would say?"

"So we shot the bastard."

Even considering this major setback, Libyan independence may still arrive within the week.

"We've dispatched a team to Reno, Nevada," al Maquri says with a smile. "We have it on good intelligence Gaddafi is playing a gig at the House of Blues tomorrow."

2011-10-24T05:00:00.000-04:00

I feel it necessary to recuse myself on two counts before beginning this first chapter on my quest to become

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM.™

lol. U jelly, bro?

First--my name is Keith G. and I am a Mega Man-iac. I started with just a few Robot Masters, I tried Wood Man in 1989 and haven't stopped since. You can see my collection (proudly displayed) at right.

Second--for my years of Mega-Love, not once have I played through the original Mega Man. Released by Capcom in 1987, Mega Man 1 was like reading the Illiad and the Odyssey--I'd start with the best of intentions, but break off my pursuit one Robot Master in. Without passwords, each time I restarted my Mega education, I'd start at square one, get one Robot Master in... et cetera.

One Ring to Rule them All

So it was with a certain glee that I loaded my beloved cart and circled the Original Ring of Six. Knowing how the Mega Man titles work, I knew each Robot was critically weak to the weapon of another and that choosing the correct level first can make or break a Mega Man session. I COULD have simply Googled the Robot weaknesses, but that borders to close to cheating, so instead (perhaps still buzzed on a Top Gun high) I chose Ice Man [chomp].

In retrospect, I realize this ranks among the worst ideas in the history of mankind, on par with Greedo Shoots First and Credit-Default Swapping.

You'll learn to welcome death.

ICEMAN:
I had vague memory of Iceman's stage: slippery as hell with flying penguins. This was spot-on; however, I'd forgotten that the Iceman stage births a standby of the Mega Man series: the disappearing block puzzle. Having faced these in Mega Mans 2-6 already, I figured, "no problem." Wrong. Your jumping point for these two puzzles are water, changing the physics of movement. To further complicate the matter, each has a baddie sliding about the floor, doing a smashing job of effing up your jump timing.

After the two block puzzles, not much separates Mega Man from Iceman's lair. Inside the chain-looking door thingies is an ante-chamber (thankfully) filled with flying penguin drones. Depleted from my run-ins with the floor spikes, I refilled my energy and went to face Iceman.

He killed me almost instantly. Thrice. Even at full-strength, three shots from his ice gun make for one dead Blue Bomber. Their spacing makes it possible to jump, but such a strategy requires perfect timing and perhaps a bit of luck. When given the option between Continue and Stage Select, I quickly chose the latter and, thinking him most likely to be the weakness of Iceman, tried my hand at Fireman.

Hope you like getting burned.

FIREMAN:
Compared to the Slip 'n Slide that is Iceman, Fireman is a cakewalk. The key here is slow and steady: avoiding the pillars of fire and jam on your mega buster. Near the end of Fireman's stage is a screen with laser-fast arcs of fire. If there's a way to not get hit here, it's beyond me. I just ran through, took my licks, and went into Fireman's ante room ready for a fight.

It wasn't much of a fight, really. I killed Fireman on my first try by repeatedly shooting him in the face. His main attack does little damage; so long as he doesn't physically touch you, its in the bag.

With Fireman's weapon in my arsenal, I returned to Iceman, ready for another fight. Iceman again kicked my ass. Apparently the laws of physics in the year 20XX are slightly different; fire does little against ice. Beaten again by the nefarious Iceman, I decided to face him last and switched to Bombman's stage.

Hey Joe / what you doin'
with that / gun in your hand?

BOMBMAN:
Bombman's level is some sort of futuristic metropolis, except instead of citizens, there's lots of gun turrets and bombs. The one notable thing about Bombman's level (and this is including another ridiculously easy boss fight) is the first instance of everyone's favorite Mega Man baddie, Sniper Joe. He's actually quite devious here as he's on a flat plane (rather than a higher platform) meaning you must both avoid his attacks and hit him once he moves his shield. Later in the series, Sniper Joe manages to put himself on platforms, making his gun practically useless. Not here.

The other lesson I learned from Bombman is a minor tweak which makes the first Mega Man much harder than its sequels: Mega Man is NOT invulnerable to spikes while blinking. In later games, intentionally getting hit can get you over tricky spike jumps. In Mega Man 1, it gets you killed faster. After a tricky antechamber of ladders and baddies, Bombman is a major disappointment ("Major Disappointment" [salute]). His bomb attacks are easily jumped, and I killed him before I even remembered to try the Fire cannon on him.

Seeing this guy was like Dr.
Frank-n-Furter showing up in
Rocky Horror.

GUTSMAN:
I went next to Gutsman. His stage is a giant unfinished construction site, complete with infamous hard hat guys (apparently called mettaurs) and gaping pits. There is a devious section involving moving platforms which drop from beneath you, but Gutsman's stage is remarkably short, and passing the platforms is the biggest challenge.

Gutsman himself (always my favorite of the Original 6) doesn't offer much in terms of challenge. The giant bricks he throws are dodged with a simple jump. He shakes the earth when he jumps, but timing your own moves accordingly doesn't require much skill. I pumped him full of Fire and was on to the next stage before I could say "In the year 20XX..."

I believe you have my stapler.

CUTMAN:
Since he seemed coolest, I went next to Cutman. His stage (whatever it's supposed to be) reminded me of scaling the burned-out shell of the Initech building from Office Space. It's mostly like Bombman's stage: lots of guns. Additionally, many screens involve moving block-type enemies, which, as long as you take it slow, are rather simple.
Cutman himself is painfully simple: the two Gutsman blocks in the corner are a dead giveaway. Two attacks and Cutman snips loose the mortal coil.

Many Bothans died trying to get that capsule.

ELECMAN:
To hell with this guy and his damn stage. There are random bolts of electricity. There are long sections of ladder with enemies flying at you. And most of all, there's the most deceptive powerup in the entire history of the Mega Man series. See that energy capsule? LEAVE IT. Aside from Wily Stage 4 (which I'll ~~rant about~~ discuss later), Elecman is the hardest stage in the game.

Also notable is that late in the stage, if you have the Gutsman power (which I certainly did), the Platform power-up is available. It allows Mega Man to create platforms in mid air. Despite seeming very useful, it is, in fact, (almost) worthless. Pick it up and then shuffle to Elecman's antechamber: two screens of ladders and electricity. If you're chomping at the bit to reach the boss (which I was), you'll most likely waste half your energy before you even reach Elecman...

This guy still kicked my ass.

...which is fine so long as you have the Cut Blade. Three hits and its bye-bye-bye (bye-bye) to Elecman and his seemingly misspelled name.

Which left me again with Iceman. Oh, Iceman--you sick sonofabitch. Trial and error (and a few wasted lives) finally landed me on Iceman's (rather unlikely) weakness: Electricity. Thee jolts from the 'ol Elecman gun and I was dancing on Iceman's grave. Literally. I danced.

Wily should have invested less in
Bombmans and more in Clay Monsters.

WILY STAGE 1:
My celebratory dancing proved perhaps premature. Wily's stage starts with three of the jumping eye-robots and gets worse with pillars of fire which are quite difficult to avoid. You're rewarded for passing these obstacles with platforms which shoot at you, spikes, and the only room requiring the Platform power-up. The level isn't long, but compensates in difficulty, capping it all off with the most difficult boss in the game: The Clay Monster.

He breaks down into small blocks which fly across the room, injuring Mega Man if hit. Once re-constituted, his eye opens for a fraction of a second. If you miss that fraction of a second, sucks for you. After a few deaths, I found the Elecman weapon effective and was on my way to...

Mega Mega!

WILY STAGE 2:
As much as I bitched about the first Wily Stage, the second sucked about a hundred times more. Punctuating sections of platforms-and-pits are the re-emergence of Cutman and Elecman. Its the genesis of the Mega Man standby: defeating each Robot Master a second time. What make Mega Man 1 much (read: MUCH) more difficult is that the Robot Masters, instead of being in stand-alone rooms, are integrated into the level. This means if you die anywhere in the level, you must defeat each Robot Master again. The final boss of this section (rather than an expected Robot Master) is a clone of Mega Man. The Clone uses whatever weapon you use and doesn't seem to have a particular weakness. Fire works the best, and after half a dozen tries, I finally defeated the Clone and moved on to...

Fish in a barrel, my friend. Fish in a barrel.

WILY STAGE 3:
Ahhh... a nice, relaxing stage. No real baddies to worry about, plenty of drones to power up. You're pushed through some calming waters into a room with some Guts blocks and a series of Bubble-Robot things. The key to this guy is to beat some of the preliminary robots with your mega buster before moving to the Guts Blocks. By the end, he's moving too fast to accurately shoot with your buster. This level was, rather literally, like shooting fish in a barrel.

WILY STAGE 4:
EFFING DAMMIT! If this Nintendo wasn't vintage, I would whip this controller straight through the TV. This stage, in addition to having the remaining Robot Masters and Dr. Wily himself, has THE MOST DIFFICULT SINGLE SCREEN IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF ALL ELECTRONIC MEDIA!

This is just evil. The 1-up and "refill everything" power up are nice, but the rest is evil.

My name is Mega Man. You hurt my father.
Prepare to die.

Passing the above screen rewards you with, in order: Bombman, Fireman, Iceman and Gutsman. Again, die during any part of this and you must defeat each of these four robots all over again. If you manage to get through those four with your energy (much less your sanity) intact, you'll face off against the grandaddy of evil robot creators: Dr. Wily.

Measured against the difficulty of the level preceding him, Dr. Wily is (thankfully) tame. The attacks of his giant Machine are both predictable and easy to avoid. In its first form, simply running around the screen will avoid the pellets. In its second form, there's a safe spot directly under the gun. I used the mega buster for the first and the Cut Blade for the second form, and had Wily bowing to my potency on the second try. The ending sequence for Mega Man, setting it aside from the previous entries on this list (Karate Kid and Top Gun), is actually pretty decent for an 8-bit cart released in 1989. Mega Man runs home to Roll and Dr. Light, shedding his blue armor as the sun sets behind him.

He's jumping for joy, not because he's won, but because he'll
never have to face that damn impossible jump again.

CONCLUSION:
I'd heard a lot of chatter that Mega Man wasn't a deserving title on the Top Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time. I think this mostly owes to gamers' familiarity with the platform. Having never played it start to finish, I found Mega Man much more difficult than any of its successors; it's levels are downright devilish at times, there are no E-Tanks and the game lacks a password system. Infinite continues made this managable, though. If Mega Man had been programmed like other titles on this Ultimate NES Hard list, with a finite number of continues, it would seriously vie for the hardest game of the lot. That in mind, I give it:

Two controllers out of five. Some portions had me pulling my hair, but ulimited continues meant, with patientce, one could eventually master even the trickiest of jumps.

So one down, nine to go! Next Monday we move onto title number 8 in the Top Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time, and blast into alien territory.

NBA Threatens to Cancel Less Games

2011-10-21T06:49:00.000-04:00

21 Oct 2011

Spoke to us while stroking a white cat.

New York, NY

With Labor negotiations at an impasse, NBA Commissioner David Stern canceled the first two weeks of the 2011-12 NBA season this past Monday. Announced during Baseball's Playoffs, NFL and NCAA Football, and the opening of NHL Hockey's 2011 Season, the only coverage given to the NBA's lockout has been a 50 pixel box on a Chinese website sandwiched between two Penis Enlargement ads.

"Wait... the NBA plays games in November?" Alice Miggs, a sanitation worker with the City of New York and die-hard Nets fan, took the news with wide eyes. "Why would they even play games in November to begin with?"

With backlash ranging from nonexistent to pleasantly surprised, Commissioner Stern has decided to ratchet up the pressure:

"If the Labor Union won't meet us halfway...we'll... We'll be forced to cancel less games!"

The Horror. Considering the NBA season should only be 50 games anyway, the threat of a full 82 game schedule is the sporting equivalent of being simultaneously waterboarded and Rick Rolled.

"Think about it," Stern says through a sneer. "Do you really want to watch Cleveland and Minnesota in November?"

Fabulous Reality!

2011-10-19T05:00:00.000-04:00

The sound kicks in near the end of this one:

2011-10-17T05:00:00.000-04:00

The second step in my quest to become the

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM™

takes me north on the hiiiighwaaaay toooo the..... DANGER ZONE! [da da dah!].

Crap.

Like it's predecessor in this list of ulitmate NES challenges, Karate Kid, Top Gun is hailed as equal parts difficult and crappy. Developed by Konami and released in 1987, Top Gun (like Karate Kid) is adapted from the film of the same name. It's got all your favorite characters, as long as your favorite characters aren't Maverick, Goose, Iceman, Magician, Jester, that hot chick, the one grumpy guy or the brooding commanding officer. Basically there's a plane that kind of resembles a plane from Top Gun (but not really).

I was never a huge fan of the movie, but spent countless hours with flight-sims like Wing Commander and Tie Fighter, so I was actually a little excited to play this game. My mistake. Expecting Tie Fighter while playing Top Gun is like expecting water while drinking battery acid.

Get used to seeing this.

MISSION 1:
Mission 1 (the levels are called 'Missions') is ripped right from the Top Gun screenplay: "Training for the Next Mission." With Kenny Loggins singing in my head, I chose the most powerful missiles (you get three choices) and took Exit 5 onto the hiiiighwaaaay toooo the..... DANGER ZONE! [da da dah!].

After a lift-off sequence that takes about five seconds too long, you're up in the skies. Right from the start, I decided to try what worked so well in Karate Kid: run away from everything. I jammed left on the d-pad, and--wouldn't you know?--every single baddie flew right past me. As an additional bonus, I soon discovered jamming down with left increases your airspeed, meaning the baddies have almost no chance of hurting you. Your speed maxes at 1600mph (almost Mach 3), which is (technically) 700 mph faster than the jet's top speed.

Maverick, meet Missile.

There are a few caveats, however, to this decidedly un-Maverick strategy of airborne pacifism. First are the heat-seeking missiles. Occasionally, drone planes fire missiles at you. Simply flying away from these missiles works only half the time, meaning avoidance will eventually result in death. Fortunately, letting go of the d-pad and jamming on the fire button works like a charm. So anytime you see ANY red on your flight screen, jam on the fire button. Problem solved.

False.

Wrinkle two in my quest for Ultimate Top Gun Pacifism are the infrequent attacks from behind. Periodically, a tone sounds and your...raaadar wipes to...DANGER MODE [da dah da!]. Basically you fly right, then left, and then the danger is gone. This would be really annoying if I wasn't running away from everything to begin with, which I am, so really it's not annoying in the least.

Another successful water landing.

Conversely, the next obstacle between me and not accomplishing a single damn thing in Top Gun is annoying as hell. Each mission ends with a sequence where you must land your fighter jet onto an aircraft carrier. Again, torn right from the screenplay, right? Whereas the heat seeking missiles and danger radars are mere mosquitoes, landing your plane in Top Gun is a hungry velociraptor of death. Your only aid in this task are directions flashing on your radar: "Left! Left!," "Right! Right!," "Speed Up!" and "Slow Down!" The controls in this section are touchy as hell, and the directions do little good. Basically, you center the approaching aircraft carrier on your screen and don't touch an effing thing unless specifically told to do so. Even then, you'll probably crash into the ocean.

Is that a refueling rod or
are you happy to see me?

MISSION 2:
After our outstanding performance in the first mission (doing absolutely nothing and then crashing into the ocean) central command decides to advance us onto Mission Two: Destroy an Enemy Aircraft Carrier. Level 2 provides much the same of Level 1, just more of it. Additionally, there are enemy aircraft carriers peppering the ocean, some of which fire guns and missiles at you. Again, avoid avoid avoid and blow away any missiles that get near your target box. Another wrinkle is presented at the halfway point of this level: mid-air refueiling. Think of it as Landing the Plane Lite. The upside is that you have a good long time to try it (opposed to the landing sequence), so as long as you follow directions, you should be okay.

The enemy? That awkward-looking smudge!

Mission 2 (and each subsequent mission) ends with a boss fight. The first pits you against a poorly-rendered aircraft carrier and a few drone planes. The strategy here is pretty straightforward: avoid the planes and bombard the aircraft carrier with missiles. If you chose the most powerful of the missiles (you did choose the most powerful, didn't you?) the fight lasts literally five seconds.

Of course, then you have to land the damn plane again, but after four or so oceanic crashes, you start to get the hang of it.

Attacking a Space Shuttle, just like in the movie!

MISSIONS 3 & 4:
Missions 3 and 4 (again, only 4 levels?) are to destroy an enemy base and a space shuttle (yes, space shuttle). Nothing new here, more drones, more missiles, more flying the eff away from everything. After mastering the second mission, the game's most difficult enemy is boredom. The levels are long and uninteresting, and the gameplay remains static until the end. Mission 4 tries to trick you with different combat "modes," but "mode" is just means the game is going to do a palette swap in mid level.
Eventually we get to the ulitmate boss of Top Gun, a space shuttle on a platform. Everyone fires missiles at you, but as long as you keep bobbing up and down and firing your mega-missiles at the shuttle, the battle should go by quickly. And again, like Karate Kid before it, Top Gun rewards players with an ending ranking with Citizen Kane and Gone With the Wind:

They're cheering because you finally landed the plane.

False. Your plane lands, your pilot gives a thumbs-up, and you get cycled back to Mission 1. A crappy ending to a crappy game.

CONCLUSION:
Again, like Karate Kid before it, Top Gun isn't so much hard as frustrating. Running away from everything seems to be the best strategy. Learning to dodge the missiles only takes a try or two, and from there, its just practice landing the plane and refueling. Top Gun took me slightly longer to finish than Karate Kid, mostly owing to its tediously long levels.

Top Gun gets a difficulty rating of:

two controllers out of a possible five; the game mechanics took some learning and even Brave Sir Robin would end up with a missile in the face now and again.

I'm starting to think this whole NES Master thing is going to be a cakewalk. The first two games came and went not with a roar, but a whimper. Hopefully my streak continues next week with the offical Level One of my quest to become

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM™

From here on out, it's bound to get a little Wily.

Boston Hipster Reclaims Ironic Sox Gear

2011-10-14T05:00:00.001-04:00

This man shrugged with Glee

Boston MA
14 October 2011

Arnold MacMurray, 29, has been living in a personal hell for seven long years. In 2004, with the Boston Red Sox down 3-1 in the American Leauge Championship Series, Arnie bought a Bill Buckner jersey to wear ironically whilst out and about his native Boston.

"I figured it was a safe bet," MacMurray mumbles between drags on his corncob pipe, "That Buckner Jersey was my way of saying, like, how sports are such a bankrupt enterprise, man."

Arnie's act of fashion disobedience became instantly null when the perpetual also-ran Red Sox won not only the AL, but the World Series.

"People on the street started high-fiving me," Arnie shudders. "High fives, man! It was awful."

And so it went. Each baseball season seemed to bring more wins, more playoffs, more World Series. Arnie relegated the ironic jersey to the back of his free-standing clothes rack and faced the harsh reality that he may never again be able to mock Boston sports-lovers with his attire.

"It was a dark time for me," Arnie says.

This September, though, a wonderful thing happened: the Red Sox started sucking again. The black magic which peppered their 86 fruitless years returned with a vengance: the pitching fell apart, the offense made anemics look like gluttons and the Sox squandered a 9-game lead. Tied on the last day of the season for the final playoff spot, Arnie went to his free-standing clothes rack for the appropriate gear.

Putting on his ironic Buckner jersey was, quote, "like Eskimo kissing your roller derby sweetheart."

The Red Sox were eliminated from the playoffs in the early hours of September 28th. Arnie wasted no time in gallivanting through Black Bay and Fenway with his Buckner-clad chest puffed.

"Now people look at my shirt and shake their heads in woe," Arnie says, twirling his moustaches. "It's everything I could ever hope for."

2011-10-12T05:01:00.000-04:00

When I said my quest to become

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM™

would follow as I (woefully) tried to defeat the ten hardest titles for the NES, I was telling a half-truth. What I failed to mention at the outset was my Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time is ten like the B1G TEN (meaning there's actually 12).Two games garnered almost as many votes for difficulty as votes for crapiness, earning them a place near the list despite being almost universally reviled.

It's "Enteractive."

The first of those two games—and the first in my quest for NES supremacy—is Karate Kid. Developed by ~~a team of LSD-fueled monkeys~~ Altus, Co. and released by LJN in 1987, Karate Kid is a grab-bag of disparate plot elements loosely based on the film franchise of the same name. There's a Karate Tournament, some wind and a Guy with a Spear.

Now, I could spend a few paragraphs decrying the construction of this game: awkward hit direction, bad jump physics, A.I. on par with spore mold, but others have said it better. I'll just say the game is poorly made, which, ironically, makes it both incredibly difficult and mind-numbingly easy.

Stop running into my foot.
Stop running into my foot...

LEVEL 1:
Case in point: our first level is a karate tournament. The Neanderthal A.I.'s strategy is to run full-bore at you, even when your foot is in their face. So, if a dude gets near you, just ask yourself, WWCND (What Would Chuck Norris Do?)? The answer—kick that sumbitch in the face. The A.I. remains painfully stupid from the first baddie to the very last, so if ANYONE gets near you, kick him right in his stupid face. What's that? You said you want to use a hammer punch or crane-kick (your practically useless power-up moves)? Nope—kick him in the face. You want to Sweep the Leg? False—just kick him in the face, idiot.

LEVEL 2:
After your tournament win (Flawless Victory), Daniel-San goes to what is supposed to be Okinawa. This is apparently from Karate Kid II, but since I've never seen Karate Kid II (or Karate Kid I, for that matter), I'll just have to take Wikipedia's word for it. This is where shit gets real. Two mindless drones chase you, which wouldn't be so tough expecting that, according to ~~a team of LSD-fueled monkeys~~ Altus, Co., Okinawa is teeming with deadly pits. Leftovers from WWII? Godzilla's footprints? Your guess is as good as mine. While the drones aren't very good at landing punches/kicks, they are the Michael Phelps' of pushing you into pits.

We both know how this ends, chief.

The saving grace against the random pits of death is that the game awards an extra life every 20k points, which takes very little time. After each death, I simply found a straight stretch of ground and kicked people in the face until I was 1-up'ed. In this way I made it through the first level in very little time. The boss at the end, instead of being a flame-throwing wizard or a ninja with two swords, is simply a palette-swapped drone who takes five hits instead of one. The strategy? (Everyone together this time) Kick the sumbitch in the face.

LEVEL 3:
Level 3 is basically the same as Level 2, excepting there's a typhoon going on (again, I'm fuzzy on plot specifics, here). This alters the game's physics, pushing Daniel backward and pelting him with birds, sticks and cabbage (yes, cabbage). None of the flying objects injure Daniel, but they do aid in what I'm assuming is the central plot of the Karate Kid movies: Two people and/or vegetation trying to knock Daniel into random pits. Within minutes, I was ready to cry "matte!," except by a single stroke of dumb luck. While running for my life through the cabbage-strewn typhoon, I stumbled on the game's other nugget of craptacular programming...

The screen can only handle two drones at a time.

A Winner is You!

This means that if you can manage to get the drones behind you, there's literally no one between you and the level boss. This new flaw quickly supplanted "Kick everyone in the face," as the primary rule of ~~Fight Club~~ Karate Kid, making the strategy guide for this game remarkably short: "Run the eff away; excepting when one must kick everyone in the face."

The only real obstacle, then, between Daniel and... whatever it is he's trying to accomplish here...are the lousy mini-games peppering each level. Pressing up while in a doorway transports you to one of three minigames: catching flies with chopsticks, karate chopping blocks of ice, or jumping over a swinging anvil-thing. Each game awards points based on blah blah blah... The point is, entering a mini-game removes the drones behind you, meaning you may have to kick more people in the face. Avoid them like...like, well like Karate Kid for NES.

eff this guy.

LEVEL 4:
The fourth and final level (Really? Only 4 levels?) is a pallette swap of the first, with rocks on the ground instead of wood. The drones take two hits instead of one and you know its serious because Daniel is wearing a RED OUTFIT! A new drone is added to the mix in this final level: The Spear Guy. Eff the Spear Guy. Seriously. The Spear Guy skewers you with his penis-looking spear and pushes you across the screen, doing damage the whole way. Basically, if he hits you, you die. This would be a real pain in the craw excepting that...

Oh I'm gonna get me a face-kickin'
Yes I'm gonna get me a face-kickin'

...At the very start of level 4, the drones spawn BEHIND you. Jump a few pits, avoid a few rolling boulders, skip the mini-games and you're taken to one final drone patiently awaiting repeated face-kickings. This final boss is clad in yellow and black, so I suppose he's Cobra Kai, but I honestly don't care enough to check. Basically he runs into your heel a few times and the game ends. For all your work, all the running the eff away, all the sumbitches kicked in the face, your toil is rewarded with one of the most resplendent video game endings of the 8-bit era:

Just kidding. You get a cruddy black screen and poorly-written text. Mr. Miyagi winks at you and then its back to the title screen! Yipee!

CONCLUSION:
From first the first drone to the final wink!, Karate Kid took me about an hour, most of that time devoted to kicking random guys in the face for 1-ups (this being before I discovered that running away is the 1st Rule of ~~Fight Club~~ Karate Kid). The poor quality of the programming makes it inevitable that Daniel will fall into a pit or two. Conversely, the poor quality of the programming makes it so you only really need to beat seven people in the game: four at the Level 1 Karate Tournament, and then each of the remaining 3 Level Bosses. This game isn't so much difficult as it is frustrating, earning it a NES HARD rating of:

one controller out of a possible five (with five being the most maddeningly, controller-whippingly, computer-cheatingly difficult of games). If any of the other games on the list are as easy as Karate Kid, I'll be the

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM™

in no time flat.

We'll see how the quest continues next Monday (and each following Monday from here to #1), when I delve into the danger zone in pursuit of NES glory.

2011-10-10T08:45:00.001-04:00

Nothing I could say about the Nintendo Entertainment System's difficulty can even compare to this creepy Australian commercial ———>

The Max Headroom cosplayer isn't pulling your chain when he declares his near-invulnerability. Nintendo was crazy hard. It was the Nintendo Entertainment System which birthed such joys as whipping your remote across the room and complaining that Tecmo Bowl is cheating (although, in Tecmo Bowl's defense, it was your own damn fault for not choosing LT or Bo Jackson).

With the Nintendo's innate difficulty in mind, I hereby declare my quest to become...(drum roll, please)...

MOST ULTIMATE POTENTATE OF THE NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM™

The task is devilish in its simplicity: Beat, in order, the ten hardest games ever produced for the NES without cheats of any kind. Load the cart, press start and play.

Before we get into the fun, I should say a bit about my method in creating the ultimate NES Hard list.

Basically, I Googled it.

Each time a game was mentioned via website, blog or message board, that game earned a point. Games labeled as glitchy or unplayable due to bad programming were deducted a point. Additionally, I posted to a few gaming message boards, soliciting votes for hardest NES game. After scouring the internet, I tallied the points and ranked each game according to votes received (no electoral college here). This left me with a clear ranking of the Ten Hardest NES Games of All Time...

...which I'll reveal post-by-post, starting Wednesday.

Let the games begin! Heeya!

Coming Soon...

2011-09-30T05:00:00.000-04:00

A.V. Club Reveals Man’s Awful Taste in Music.

2011-09-28T14:08:00.000-04:00

Gary, IN

28 Sept, 2011

If you like this CD, The Onion hates you.

For some, epiphany comes in thedense silence of church. For others, ultimate realization whispers among the RockyMountain pines. For Charly Green, 32, epiphany came yesterday afternoon, in thehallway outside his basement apartment.

“I locked myself out,” Charly grins, “and I waswaiting for the super. To kill time I surfed the Onion’s A.V. Club. They had anarticle about the best music of 1993, and—bam!—epiphany."

Green expected treatises onNirvana, Pearl Jam and Green Day; instead he found rants on Sugar, ScreechingWeasel and J Church. At that moment,approximately 2:34 p.m., Charly realized his wretched taste in music. SpinDoctors, who had previously inhabited a soft place in Charly’s heart, werelikened to a black hole destroying all things good.

“I used to jam ‘Little Miss Can’tbe Wrong’ in my car,” Green says in his staccato drawl, “thank God the A.V.Club showed me the error of my ways.”

After reading about DigablePlanets, Ben Weasel, Superchunk, Seaweed, et. al, Green came to an inevitablerealization:

“All my favorite music sucks.”

As penance for his auditory sins,Green is currently trudging through Yo La Tengo’s entire discography. “I’m justglad it happened when it did,” Green sighs. “I mean, I could have gone my wholelife listening to the crappy music I liked.” Green takes a long breath as his mp3player switches to a Sunny Day Real Estate EP. “I shudder at the thought.”

More Tabs!

2011-09-26T13:37:00.000-04:00

Since I liked the first Tab post I did (see below), here's round two--a song I wrote as an undergrad called Cherche La Femme. Is it a bit syrupy? Sure. Are the lyrics hyperbolic and cliche? You Betcha! Can't stop me from liking this song, though.

Verse1 (Fingerstyle):

E C#m7 A Bm A Bm A E C#m7 Bm A Bm A

Sleepthe weekend away for lack of anything better to do

E C#m7 A Bm A Bm A E C#m7 Bm A Bm A

Thecloudy weekend dreams dance with thoughts of you

E C#m7 A Bm A Bm A E C#m7 A Bm A Bm A

Whenyou can’t sleep the world becomes your dream the edges to life blur andsway

E C#m7 A Bm A Bm A E C#m7 A B

Putmy head to my pillow and hope theyall go away

Refrain:

Bm7 E C#m7 A

Cherchela Femme - always slipps right through my fingers

Bm7 E C#m7 A

Whowhat where when - rejection fades but pain still lingers

Bm7 E C#m7 A

Whyoh why cant I get her out of my dreams

Bm7 E A D A

Ohwell I’ll live with it it seems

Verse2 (Strummed):

Drinkthe weekend away Lonely chaser to a love not there

Lightbends through a citron sky Flashing your face everywhere

Thisis the story of a love ending Three ounces at a time

Justgive me two more bottles, And I swearI’ll be just fine.

Instrumental

Refrain

Blast from the past!

2011-09-10T10:35:00.005-04:00

I started playing guitar in the Summer of 1994. I believe I wrote this song (my first) in October of that year. I'm quite surprised to find that 12-year-old me was a better songwriter than half the grunge bands of the era (I'm looking at you, Gin Blossoms).

LEVIATHAN

MUSIC & LYRICS BY KEITH GOOD

MAIN RIFF: x4 REFRAIN: x2

e|---------------------| e|-----------------------------|

B|---------------------| B|-----------------------------|

G|---------------------| G|-----------------------------|

D|------3-3--------1-1-| D|444-777-666-555-444-777-666-8|

A|-1-1-4-4----4-4-2-2--| A|444-777-666-555-444-777-666-8|

E|2-2--------5-5-------| E|222-555-444-333-222-555-444-6|

verse 1

[F#] Sitting quiet [C#] ly in my room [A] Passing hours [B] playing guitar

[F#] Writing lrics [C#] soon forgotten [A] as the hours pro [B] gress

[F#] Boredom over [C#] takes me slowly [A] nothing to do [B] have no money

[F#] Cable went out [C#] car is busted [A] radio just [B] sucks

refrain

[F#] Saturday [A] boredom like [G#] old Levi [G] athan

Its [F#] suffo [A] cating my [G#] will to sur [B] vive

Will [F#] someone re [A] move it I [G#] can not [G] move it

Put [F#] hook in its [A] mouth or run [G#] line round its [B] tounge

verse 2

Phone has remained dead for hours, no one ever cares to call me

Trapped inside this hellish prison wiht nowhere to go

Lock the door and toss the key I’m trapped here for eternity

Destined to become a meal for the leviathan

refrain

Saturday Boredom like old Leviathan

My guitar remains my true companion

Angel don’t leave me, I just want you to be

The one who will help me survive Saturday

That was fast.

2011-08-31T16:32:00.002-04:00

'American Vampire' will see its first publication, 11/9/11 at Yesteryear Fiction. Hooray!

Excerpt from: American Vampire

2011-08-30T09:39:00.002-04:00

Electric dragons roamed the warehouse. Birthed from copper and steel obelisks, they flew to the center of the shop, leaving a wake of sapphires. He shoveled one last load of compressed coal into the boiler’s mouth and stepped back. His conglomeration of magnets and locomotive parts conducted a beautiful symphony: coal fire from the boiler shot compressed steam to each of the four magneto towers, forcing the magnets across copper screws which pulled electricity to the domes atop each column.

Above the boiler, insulated from its hellfire by layers of Comanche fabric, sat a crystal dodecahedron 12 inches across. The dragons swarmed a filament ascending from the box and plunged inside.

Protected by the crystal and glowing with electricity, sat a human heart. Each snapping dragon made it dance. The man stepped to a small dial atop the boiler and nudged it clockwise. The pistons increased their intensity. Sparks flew faster, stronger, until one dragon chomped the tail of the next into continuous arcs of power. Electrons sputtered from the machine, condensing an electric cloud over the man’s head.

He lowered blacktinted goggles and peered at the heart glistening inside the crystal box.

The heart beat. It was alive.

The man fell to his knees and cried in savage ecstasy. Electricity rained over his hands, his eyes, until his veins ran blue and he was indistinguishable from the cloud above him. The dragons, weary of their mechanical master, began to fly free through the shop. They exploded vials like glass bombs. They kindled errant papers and wood like struck matches.

Even for one who can not die, the chaos proved too much. Frantic to save the machine, to preserve the two tons of steel and 78 years of toil, he lunged to the copper kill switch glinting from the boiler. The machine shrieked in agony, bleeding molten metal. The pistons halted, the steam fizzled and died.

The familiar dark draped over his eyes. In the haze between life and death, the man saw a strange beast—maybe imagined—roaming his workshop. A chimera of water and flesh doused the shop, squelching the hungry fires. The water-beast hovered to where the man lay, stooped down to his face. He opened his mouth to speak but the curtain of consciousness dropped, plunging him again into the unfathomable abyss.

Wishful Thinking...

2011-06-30T11:47:00.005-04:00

I had so much fun designing the cover for my novel, that I decided to engage in some wishful thinking and design the cover for its sequels. Now all I have to do is write the books, eh?

Dumb Dicks Cover Art!

2011-06-24T14:27:00.003-04:00

Hot of the presses, here's the cover art for my mystery novel, Dumb Dicks. I designed this in GIMP and modeled it after the Penguin Classics line

Fishbottom Antique and Pawn (Take 2!)

2011-06-21T11:05:00.002-04:00

A few months back, I posted an excerpt from my Dumb Dicks manuscript, a short called, "Fishbottom Antique & Pawn." Having since edited that original manuscript from 125,000 words to a svelte 90,000, I thought it'd be fun to revisit that section to see how it changed between drafts. So below is the draft 2.5 of "Fishbottom Antique & Pawn," from the hilarious! spine-chilling! super-awesome mystery novel, Dumb Dicks.

A grizzled old man squinted from behind his desk. Its surface, like every other surface in the store, was strewn with what he referred to as ‘trinkets,’ but which were more accurately called ‘shit.’ Finding only two typewriter dealers (and the first long defunct), the process of elimination led Sid to this tin shack halfway between the Moonside Motel and Bakersville. A hand-painted plank nailed to the storefront announced ‘Fishbottom Antique & Pawn.’ This was a case of extreme false advertising, as the junk looked neither ‘antique’ nor pawned. The atmosphere was thick with moldy books and mothballs, a hundred clocks ticking syncopated time. Guitars, violins and brass horns hung on the walls, glass-fronted curios housing all manner of ill-matched menageries: fountain pens and shot glasses, fur hats and pocket knives. An engraved brass plaque before the old man's register announced, ‘Arthur J. Fishbottom, Jr.—Prop.’

“What was that again?” The old man placed his cigarette nub atop the pile of 3 ½ by 5 floppies serving as ashtray.

“I said I have a quick question, sir.” Sid smiled, attempting to approximate Liam's charm. It was an awkward facsimile at best. “You see, I'm president of the Bakersville Typewriter Appreciation Society and we’re trying to track down a specific typewritist so we can award him our Golden Inktape Award.”

Arthur J. Fishbottom, Jr. tipped back his short billed cap and kneaded unshaven cheeks with knobby hands. “What does this have to do with me?”

“We only have his typewriting samples to go by, you see. It looks like his typewriter is very old, from the 50’s perhaps?—and we think he’s probably gone through a whole set of strikes—a few extra t’s and e’s.”

Fishbottom straightened in his chair. With precision beguiling his tremoring hands, he tucked the cigarette in the corner of his mouth and sucked a red ember. Smoke puffed from his nostrils as his gaze meandered over Sid’s head.

“I see what yer sayin’,” he said, suppressing a cough. “The thing is… my memory ain’t so great anymore. Comes and goes.”

“Does it?” Sid narrowed his eyes.

“Yessir,” Fishbottom drawled. “I’d wager it’d come straight back if maybe some of this fine merchandise found a loving home.”

Sid scoffed. “You’re kidding.”

“Oh, when it comes to my memory, I never kid.” He smiled wide, “especially if it means some customer of mine can win the ‘Golden Inktape.’”

Sid reached to the nearest counter and grasped a stoneware beer stein. An eagle swooped down its face, beak open and wing breaking from the cup to form a feathery handle.

“Okay.” Sid plopped the stein on Fishbottom’s desk and pulled a twenty from his wallet. Fishbottom nudged the glasses down his nose and peered at the bill.

“I can feel something coming to mind,” he crossed hands over a pot belly, “but that’s not really a remembering-type object.”

Sid moved to return the twenty but the old man swiped it.

“Thanks kindly for your purchase, young man. A mighty fine mug.”

“In what section would I find a, ‘remembering-type object?’” Sid asked.

Again, Fishbottom’s gaze ascended over Sid’s head. He turned to see half a Fender Strat angled above the entry, its enamel finish worn to ash and hardware missing. Sid again reached for his wallet.

“Fine. Fifty bucks.”

“Oh… No, no.” The old man rocked in his chair. “That there gee-tar was sold me personally be the great Erin Clap-tone. I don’t think I could ever part with it.”

“Of course,” Sid pulled two more bills. “Who hasn’t heard of the great Erin Clap-tone? One fifty is my last offer.”

Fishbottom removed his cap and scratched autumn leaves of dead skin from his scalp.

“Such an important piece of personal history—I couldn’t let it go for anything less than…six hundred?”

“Two hundred,” Sid countered. Fishbottom again put on the theatrics of indecision, head shaking great woe.

“I don’t know…”

“Two fifty.”

“Sold.” Fishbottom bared teeth as mismatched as the junk in his store.

Sid pulled a card from his wallet. “You take plastic?”

The old man nudged a digital credit-card reader. “One must be modern,” he said. “Just let me ring this up…two seventy-five…”

“We agreed on two fifty!” Sid protested. Fishbottom looked from the device with eyes wide, bushy eyebrows arched.

“Surcharges and Taxes, you know. Would you like to re-negotiate our agreement?”

Sid scowled as he swiped the plastic. The machine beeped and screeched, connecting to the aether via antiquated cables snaking through Fishbottom's store. After a brief pause, it spit out two receipts. Fishbottom tore them free and, bundled with a Bic and Sid’s card, handed them over.

“Sign the top, the bottom is yours.”

The moment Sid scribbled his name, Fishbottom swiped the receipt with a frown.

“No tip?”

“Tell me about the typewriter,” Sid ordered.

“If you insist,” Fishbottom shrugged as he secreted the slip to a drawer. “The guy you’re after calls himself ‘The Admiral.’ Has an ancient Underwood electric he just won’t junk. I offered him fifty for it but he won’t sell. Just keeps replacing the parts as they break.”

“What’s he look like?”

Fishbottom held his hand at shoulder level. “Little fella. Napoleon type. Always wears a wool pea-coat, even in summer hellfire.”

“His face?” Sid asked.

“Average, I ‘spose. White hair. Brown eyes. Thin nose.”

“What about his real name? I can't well search 'the Admiral' through the county auditor.”

Fishbottom smirked. “He pays cash, comes alone and only refers to himself as the Admiral.”

“And when was the last time he was here?” Sid asked.

Fishbottom stopped to think, cigarette bouncing on his lip for another drag. “Today’s what—Friday? Hm.” Cigarette still perched, he cracked his lips to puff a stream of smoke. “Must’ve been a week ago Tuesday? Bought hisself a new drum for the typewriter. Asked after a battery powered AC pack for the thing, but I don’t carry nothing as fancy as that.”

“Is there anything else you recall? Any little thing? How he smelled or the way he walks? It’s very important he get his award.”

Fishbottom shrugged. “Looked a little gaunt, maybe. Hadn’t shaved—usually a clean cut guy.”

“You’re sure there’s nothing else?”

Fishbottom shook his head. “Nope. That’s the book on the ol’ Admiral. Good luck givin’ him whatever award it is he earned.”

Sid forced a courteous 'thank you' and walked to the exit.

“Son,” Fishbottom called from his desk. Sid turned and saw his bony hand pointing to the door frame. “Don’ forget to take your mug and gee-tar. I sure as hell don’t want that junk.”

I Do, I Do

2011-05-26T11:37:00.002-04:00

A performance of my original composition entitled, "I Do, I Do," wherein those expecting Colbie Callait's 'I do' or Byran Adams' '(Everything I do) I Do It for You' are sorely disappointed (which, liking cruddy music, is an emotion they are well acquainted with).

Que Milagro!

2011-05-16T09:43:00.001-04:00

A performance of my composition entitled. "Que Milagro!", wherein I realize I need a haircut (mostly due to a passing resemblance to...shudder...John Mayer).

The Adventures of Captain Toasterhead Pt. 3

2011-05-15T02:04:00.000-04:00

The Adventures of Captain Toasterhead Pt. 2

2011-05-11T02:02:00.001-04:00

The Adventures of Captain Toasterhead Pt. 1

2011-05-10T13:51:00.001-04:00

Winning!

2011-04-28T17:06:00.004-04:00

After forgetting all about this project for half the month, I'm proud to say I've 'won' Script Frenzy. My Musical, "The Brief Immortals," clocks in at 105 pages. While that may not be a mammoth book for a musical, I'm damn proud of what I have.

As such, here's the play's finale, 'Last Try (Reprise).'

ISAAC

I'm lucky to've lived

more lives than any one man should get.

And now my voice

Cries out in glee, saying, 'you haven't lived life yet.'

ANDI

I've purchased my soul

Reclaimed from trappings of fortune and fame.

My credits aglow

I'm proud to inhabit my given name!

BONES
I've emerged from the shade

Clean and repaid for the sins of my past

I've thrown down omission

Ready to say yes and sing out at last!

CHORUS

All we ask

All we're given

Is just once chance

our only chance

To try.

Now we're ready

Now we're willing

To throw down doubt

Sing it out

and try.

Daily given the strength

Granted the wisdom

To better life's woes

Past forever behind

Present in mind we find serenity.

Clear now I see: Happiness is a choice.

When the dawn burns

My choice reaffirms

In an unwavering voice!

I know tomorrow

Will bring one more chance

To try.

Cast off the sorrow

Always one more chance

To try.

I know tomorrow

Will bring one more chance

To try.

Cast off the sorrow

Always one more chance

To try.

Comics time!

2011-04-27T12:43:00.002-04:00

Script Frenzy Frenziness!

2011-04-25T09:19:00.006-04:00

As a part of the April Script Frenzy program, my musical-in-progress, "The Brief Immortals," was highlighted on scriptfrenzy.org! The event organizers choose a project each day in April and create an original poster for the script! San Francisco graphic designer Jared Silbert designed a sweet poster for the play!

http://blog.lettersandlight.org/post/4810442203/30-posters-30-days-day-21

I'm thinking I should finish the play, now.