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Friday, October 15, 2010

Retro Rewind: Top 5 fave NES games

Greetings and Salutations Internet goers, mad mab here once again.

And Welcome to retro rewind, a new segment where I review something form the past. And today I am reviewing my top 5 fave NES games. Granted my family didn't have alot of the NES games when I was growing up.  But these happen to be the ones either I owned, or my family owned.
This review is all about a nostalgic look back to my fave game system of all time. Now to be honest, my family had gotten the sears arcade machine/atari 2600 machine first. And yes, my family still owns ET for the Atari 2600. but more on that later. This was going to be a Video Review, and I may still do that. But for now I just wanted to get my thoughts down about my favorite games from my childhood on the NES.
 #5 Pipe Dream and Othello

ok ok, why a tie? because Othello is really a challenging and favorite NES game of mine, but other than flip coin like objects, there really is much to it. But I liked it enough that I felt it deserved a spot.
Pipe dream is also a challenging game, that can get really intricate because your building a system of pipes. When a certain timer runs out, liquid begins to flow through the pipes. you build it to short or not far enough before the liquid reaches the end, you lose.  And you really have to get created building this, because if you build loops they add points, and the longer it takes for the liquid to reach the end also adds points.

#4 Klax and Pyramid
I know that I probably shouldn't mention these games, being unlicensed NES games and all but I loved them. And I know it's another tie...but they're both tegen games.
Pyramid is a tetris knock off that uses triangular shapes, but it is way frickin harder than tetris because everything is type of triangle! I'm assuming that you're suppose to build a pyramid from the shapes...but I've never beaten the game, so I have no clue as to what you're really suppose to do.

Klax is a color tile stacking game, much like the eventual bejeweled and tetris attack games. Your over all goal is to stack one color in a column or row of all one color, they will vanish and it will add to your score. the game can get really fast really quick in some cases and you end up screwing up the column or row. Mostly what makes this game so awesome is the music.


#3 Zelda
I got this game on a gold cartridge at town side swap meet/yard sale in a place called Packwood. It too had memorable 8 bit music, and although I've never beaten it, it was in my book the 2nd greatest action/fantasy/adventure game.  The evil wizard ganon has kidnapped the princess zelda, as link you embark on an epic quest fighting many strange creatures, to re assemble the tri-force, an object of immense power that was broken up into 3 parts and scattered to different locations of Hyrule. In some cases, I feel that is to the NES what Lord of the rings is to fantasy books.

#2 Final Fantasy
I feel this is the ultimate action/fantasy/adventure game of all time on the NES, Why? because of for the most part...it is THE rpg. You get to select your party members, their names, what they learn, what they wear and tons more. Granted Zelda has an amazing overall real life story and historical myths behind it, but Final Fantasy would be to the NES what D&D is to non video game rpgs and what World of Warcraft or Guild Wars would be for the pc.
It does have a rather long drawn out storyline, which does spoil the game for most people. But when you're traveling around a world, I imagine it would take some time to beat the the game.  Sometimes the turn based stuff can get very annoying or in some cases can be a life saver. Most of the time I just sailed around on the ship cause it was very fast in the water and had a neat little tune to it.

and for #1 Super mario bros/duck hunt
I know they are technically two different games on the same cartridge, but this game cartridge was my over all favorite game form my childhood. And I'll bet some people are wondering why I didn't put Tetris on the list, because my and I played that game so much that it was only fun when we could trounce other people.
Duck Hunt was a particular favorite game of me and my brother, because shooting those ducks with the zapper, especially if the zapper is old. or there is a glare on the screen.
Mario is THE top NES game of all time, Mario practically built Nintendo's popularity. When you think back to the video game wars...who was Nintendo's Poster boy...Mario.
It was quite the adventure game, did have quite a bit of action, and did have a certain fantasy too it. So why isn't didn't it win out against Zelda or Final Fantsy in that genre. For the most point, mario doesn't really have much of a plot. It's a standard rescue a princess from an evil dragon kind of story, sure its got a ton more bells and whistles on it....it still sticks to that standard plot. It wouldn't be until Mario 3 that the truly gave Mario's storyline a better plot, but I didn't really play the 3rd game until well after the SNES came out, and very little time spent playing it at that. For my family, Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt is game unlike any of the ones we orginally owned. Mario will forever hold a candle is our hearts.

Now remember, these were my fav NES games from when I was growing up. Your list may be different than mine, and that's fine...I challenge you to do your own review so that you can do your fave games justice. The reason for that is because not everyone liked every game, some people found certain games to be very hard and other found those same games very easy. It's the nostalgic value that each and every one of our favorite games hold, a testament to our childhoods. And there are those people whom may have had atari, sega or even sony games and consoles.
So their childhood will differ from yours even further, the important thing to remember...is you shouldn't get too mad at certain reviewers for bashing your favorite game while putting a game you hate on a pedestal. The reason they may love a game you hate, is probably the same you love your game...it was an iconic thing of their childhood.
For all you gamers out there, I suggest you play some of your old favorite games from your past...maybe even some of the games you hated. It might just be a fun way to spend an afternoon. Grab some friends, your favorite snacks, and play some of the games you grew up on.


Thursday, October 14, 2010

October Reviews

I am sorry that I am overly behind in my reviews, but I plan on getting my 3-4 part Blackest Night Review into gear. I also plan to do a few tim burton movies this month, as well as catch up on some old retro stuff like my top 5 fav NES games. 

So I do apologize for being late with all of this

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Critic Critque

What do you usually do on a late night when you're bored?

For me I usually watch some reviewer vids, as of late this is typically The Cinema Snob. For those of you who don't know, Brad Jones aka the cinema snob reviews things like F grade or lower movies (at least to me they are), and more often than not an exploitation movie.

Now for the 99% majority of the films he reviews, I have never watched or heard of. After watching his reviews, I found there were good reasons why I haven't. Some of you may know the snob from "Brad Tries" and his campaign to bring back crystal pepsi, something I support by the way.

I don't like it when people talk trash about the snob's work, but most of the time..even the worst movies will have cultists lurking in the shadows. But to tell you the truth, I'd rather watch a bad review done by the snob...than nearly any of the movies he's reviewed. So all you people out there saying brad tries is boring, or some of his reviews are bad or just plain stupid...you can all just STFU.

He's a great reviewer, to me...he's what siskel and ebert would be like if they were uncensored, so they could say what they really feel about bad movies. The Snob is among my top 5 favorite reviewers, and it's not hard to see why when you've watched enough of his videos. 


Watching a snob review has become a nice little late night ritual, or during the day when I'm bored. If you haven't seen any of his stuff or would like to brush up, just click the following link.

http://www.thecinemasnob.com/