Obscure Title Tuesday: Anticipation!

Obscure Title Tuesday presents- Anticipation for the NES! Or, as I like to call it: Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

This may be as obscure as it gets! This little ditty, unsurprisingly for the NES, is probably so obscure because it’s just a game of Pictionary. That’s it. There’s a board you go around, and each color space on the board is a different category, like letters, clothing, food, etc. Wooo!

The entire game play is: you see dots on the screen, and then, as time runs out, the game starts connecting the dots with a pen, drawing in lines here and there. When you think you know the answer, buzz in and, one painstaking letter at a time, spell out what you think is being drawn as the picture. (Gah you need to know how to spell. I can’t tell you how many times I yelled at the screen: It’s a Friggan Xylaphone! The thing marching bands have!! Xylafone!!! Xylaphoooone!!!! *timer runs out* *sadly, to self* zylaphone.) Also sometimes the answer is so long it’s hard to spell out the answer before time runs out, given the awkward slippery letter choosing system.

......Those Dippin' Dots Ice Cream?

Once you get all 4 colors, you move up to the next level. There are 3 levels total. Get past the third level and you WIN!!!! There’s a few different difficulty settings for the computer players. *Yawn*

I’m not gonna lie, I’m mailing in this review by doing Anticipation. I always knew I was gonna do it because it’s so obscure, but, there’s absolutely nothing to say about it. No jokes to be made. They made an entire NES game about connect the dots. It’s Meh. The game is Meh.

"Hat."

Ooooh, actually, HERE’S how you know a game’s crappy: The box art has no cartoon character, or recognizable character, or anything extraordinary, or even gripping. The box art for this game is literally real, no-name actors being normal people playing what I can only assume, but I have no guarantee is, this video game.

The 80's

The only other example of a game that is so bad it has a no-name actor doing something normal is that game Razor Scooter 64 for the Nintendo 64. You guys remember thaat? The box art was like, a 12 year old on a razor scooter. That was it! I want my box art to have either a cartoon, or a sword, or a gun, or a Plumber, or a woman in a space suit, or an Italian -- NOT an actor you hired to take a picture of themselves doing something that they can do in their everyday clothes. Even worse, the family in this box art is playing the game itself WHICH YOU CANNOT SEE!!!!

They don't even show the television!

Gah, that’s bad. Can you imagine? Its so bad, they won’t even let you see the television on which they are playing the game; it is so bad, you are to know nothing about the gameplay or nature of this game until after you’ve bought it. It’s a family, looking engaged, gathered round what I’m guessing is a television playing what is impliedly this game. And that could be the box art for ANYTHING. In not showing the product itself, just a happy family doing something you assume is this game, that could be the marketing for any product ever. Certainly any video game or movie or television series… just have someone on the movie box art looking at a television screen happily. But also, for any other product, you could market it this way.  Because the box art doesn’t... you wouldn’t know... it’s not... you could have a microwave, and the art on the box is a smiling family LOOKING like they just ate something.

So wait......which one farted?

I’m not done. The box art has EIGHT FRIGGIN’ PEOPLE ON IT! How many controllers fit in a regular Nintendo Entertainment System? It’s less then 3. The game itself had a max of 4 people! I would be misled, seeing this box art, because I would know nothing about the game itself and therefore would infer the only logical conclusion: 8 people can play this game at the same time. Which is not unreasonable because the tagline is ‘Nintendo’s first video board game’ and many board games, like Monopoly, can have up to 8 players. LIARS!

Liar!

LIAR!

It’s a meh game and that’s all there is to it. The music is meant to be quick, short and catchy, games go by quickly, and the only thing good that I can think of to say about it is that it would be an acceptable way to pass 20 minutes if there was nothing on television because of another writers-strike and the internet hadn't been invented yet. Otherwise, no need. To quote Norm MacDonald: “I Bet ‘Board’ is spelled ‘B-o-r-e-d." Thanks, Norm. If you were a Video Game, you would get a 5.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqeqsBQ0wq0&feature=related

2.5/5 It’s Not That it Sucks, it’s That This Person Wants to Give You a High Five:

Obscure Title Tuesday: Sesame Street ABC & 123!

Obscure Title Tuesday Presents: Sesame Street ABC & 123! Or, as I like to call it, The one that taught me how to count and shit!

Ahhh, Sesame Street. Whether it be fond memories of a childhood learned to read and count from you, or Liberals using scare tactics like "Republicans want to cut funding to Public Broadcasting Station (PBS) so they can kill Big Bird", those Jim Henson creations have a special place in my heart.

That being said, this game is shit. Just Kidding! More like the shit! Though the game will have absolutely zero replay value now to anyone old enough to read this article, rating it in regards to the age range this game was targeted for (the very young that are just learning the different letters, numbers, colors, and shapes), this game is great!

All you favorite Sesame street characters are here (except Snuffleupagus) hosting 4 mini games, each with varying degrees of difficulty that you can set easily from each mini games start screen:

Wait...both 'B' and 'P' work here. What the hell????

Big Birds Letter Go Round: A giant Ferris wheel moves around and around, with each cart being a different letter. You push A to stop the Ferris wheel to select one of the letters. The easiest mode has you matching upper case and lower case letters, while the more difficult levels prompts you to fill in the missing letter for a word, or even to spell out your own word……And don’t you spell out a cuss word you dirty piece of crap, childhood innocence is on the line!

Oh, and if you spell enough words right, Big Bird comes and dances across the screen! And that yellow mutha-sucker is off the hook! He’s all dancing and jumpin’ up and down to this cool music; I learned how to dance from this game.

Ummmmm......yes?

Astro Grover: This is the numbers one. Little aliens come across the screen, and you either count how many there are (1-9) or do simple addition and subtraction (the answers never go above the number 9). Now, I love Math, but for one section of the game, there’s this Moon, and NOT ONLY does the moon, in the normal state of the game, look sad and unconfident in your number identifying ability, but if you get the answer wrong, the moon shakes his disappointed head ‘no’ and this really scary music plays. It’s only for a second, but it scared the crap outta me when I was that young. It was my second biggest surprise Video Game scare ever. The first being the evil music and flashing lights from when you beat world 7 in Super Mario Brothers 3; then you get the letter from the Princess, at least you THINK it’s from the Princess because all 6 other letters were nice, quiet, no background music, peaceful power-up-giving letters from the princess, and you go to look at the similar looking letter then BAM!!!!! The letter is really from Bowser! and scary music plays, and I shit my pants and ran into my Mommy’s room. And she said: ‘I guess we won’t buy you any more Video Games that scare you. And you know what? I manned up, went back and beat that f*cking World 8. Cause that’s how Super Dope Gaming writers be when they’re kids.

I'm Sorry!

Ernie’s Magic Shapes: Match the shapes! And the colors! For example: match a square with a square, but don’t choose the triangle because a triangle is not a square, dumbass. Or, Ernie shows you a red square, and you can select from a blue square, a red square, a green square, etc. Though, for some reason, for the red square, you can not select a triangle again. But why would you, dumbass? The highest difficulty section has a complicated picture like a bird made up of many different shapes, and you have to match several different, similar-but-not-exact shapes to the picture.

Ernie......you're kinda bein' lazy here.

Ernie’s Big Splash: This is a spatial game kind of like snake. No! It’s more like pipes, where you start out in a square as a rubber duckie, and you can go straight, up, left, or right based on different pieces that you can select from, and you keep going until you make a path from your box to Ernie. The harder difficulties have various Sesame Street characters you have to navigate through before you get to Ernie. When you make it to Ernie, you see the rubber duckie go through all the boxes with these little animations and sound effects; when Ernie gets his duckie, he rejoices happily, splashing carefree in his tub in what I presume is all his nude Muppet glory.

The music for this game is good, the dancing Big Birds will blow your mind, and I definitely remember learning several new words from this game. Dope!

3.75/5 Can Teach Current Gamers’ Future Potential Children to Read and Count! Literacy!

Obscure Title Tuesday: MTV's Remote Control!

Remote Control for the Nintendo Entertainment System! Or, as I like to call it…..no, you know what? No. You don’t even get a cutesy little stupid joke here, you piece of crap game! Just No. Gah Remote Control, how do I hate thee…. Let me count the ways:

It’s a quiz/trivia show based on the MTV show ‘Remote Control’ which was a tongue-in-cheek, meant to be stupid humor TV and music trivia show. It could be funny at times, what with the jokingly, overly raucous audience loudly yelling things throughout the show, especially if the three contestants had a good sense of humor. Think of it like Jeopardy, except totally, all-encompassingly laid back with like next to nothing on the line.

We all look like smiling douchebags!

Each game lasts around 15 minutes, and by 15 minutes, it is 15 minutes too long. The theme song is catchy, but it runs through the entire game non-stop and gets tiresome after about 2 minutes and annoying as all hell after 7 minutes (I timed it). Whoever wins gets a nice, short speech from the host ‘I am honored to be your video game’ and their face (you can select from 9 different faces, who smile or frown in different ways when you answer a question right or wrong) appears smiling on the main title screen. That’s it.

It works like a standard trivia game -- you select a category (just a number on a television, you don’t know what category you’re getting), they ask you a question, you buzz in, and select from 1 of 3 answers. If you get it right, points. Some time into the game, the person with the lowest number of points gets eliminated, then at the end you have a rapid fire round which has you complete the song, television show, or movie title from a list of 15 words. Just go down the list spamming the A and B button as fast as you can.

Insert humorous remark on photo here

With no raucous audience, no contestants, and hysterical quips from the 8-bit host like ‘Who do you think you are, Einstein?’ ‘Nice answer. And nice hair.’ And ‘If fish is brain food, I’m guessing you grew up in Nebraska!!” I don’t even F*cking get that one. This video game pretty much has nothing going for it for 3 reasons:

1) There’s no essence of the show in this game and/or a sense of humor. Sure, they tried. I’m sure someone, somewhere, at some point on the game developer staff thought that if, when a contestant got an answer right, the host said ‘Who do you think you are, Einstein????’ kids would bust out laughing so hard they’d pee their pants. And that makes me want to find that person and tell him to his face that he is not funny. And then break a light bulb over his head and say ‘Who do you think you are, Einstein?’ and then if he says ‘Einstein didn’t invent the light bulb, Thomas Edison did.’ Then I would say: ‘Who do you think you are, Einstein!!!!????’

Insert humorous remark on photo of crappy crap game here

2) The trivia is noticeably not for the target audience that would play this Video game. I cannot stress enough what a ridiculously obviously huge flaw that is! If anyone reading this were making a trivia game about television specifically geared for our generation (born around the late 80’s) you would probably put in plenty of references to those late 80’s/early 90’s Sunday morning cartoons and television shows we all watched, like Batman, Spiderman, Reboot, the one with the turtles, the one with the alien, the one with the Dinosaurs, the one with all the transforming, the purple one, the gay one, you know…. Television shows that we could have conceivably watched and known about. Almost every question here is about shows from primarily the 60’s and very early 70’s. You’d have to have been born around that time to get ‘em. I, then and now, often do not recognize all 3 of the actors or televisions shows listed as potential answers. Categories include ‘Mary Tyler Moore’ ‘Odd Couple’ and ‘Hogan’s Heroes.’ Yeah I’ve heard of these shows, but I don’t know enough about them to answer a trivia question based on one specific episode. The only categories I ever even recognized the answers to were the questions under ‘The Cartoon Show,’ ‘Gilligan’s Island’ and ‘The Bat Channel’ And even then it didn’t matter because you just raced to buzz in first and guess any random answer because you’re not gonna know it anyway and there’s no penalty for a wrong answer.

3) It’s boring. Gah, it’s soooo booooooring. It’s so boring, writing this article about it was boring. And that theme song WILL NOT STOP! I’m not even gonna link to it to give you a little taste because why put you through that? And there’s typos in the questions. GAH I hate this game!

I’m considering giving it the lowest score possible: A negative 12 out of 5. No seriously, there’s no replay value, it’s really annoying, and there’s nothing redeeming about it-………..ladies and gentleman, we have a winner. For the first time ever on superdopegaming dot com, I present you with: a straight up goose egg:

0/5 ZERO OUT OF 5!! EPIC VIDEO GAME FAAAIIL!!! GO TO HELL MTV!!!!!

Obscure Title Tuesday: Yoshi!

Fresh from the egg, just hatched. If this is the face of your child when they are literally just born-they will either be a winner or a huge arrogant prick.

Did you know? Did you know that Loveable Yoshi, who has helped you out so many times in the past, with not only your surviving Mario adventures but also your fun level, not only appeared in a game for the Nintendo Entertainment System but even appeared in his VERY OWN GAME EVEN! Did you know that just like the box art indicates, a smug looking Yoshi looks on smugly as screaming ‘Boo’ ghosts and confused goombas fall away in the distance as a newly smugly hatched Yoshi adventures forth, battling all your favorite Mario bad guys without the aid of Mario in a jumping and flying fire-breathing goomba-busting fun adventure?

That’s right you DON’T know about this game, not because this epic sweeping side scrolling Final Fantasy-esque side scroller simply sold poorly, no, you don’t know about this game because rather than being any of the things I just mentioned- It’s a shitty puzzle game.

To start with, you would think that this game is a thing for Yoshi fans to be really excited about. Yoshi is in his very own game, without the aid of Mario in any way. And the game developers at Nintendo were so confident in their product that they didn’t even put their flagship character, Mario, on the box art as decoration or as a reminder of the Yoshi-Mario relation.

Well, unfortunately for your hopes and dreams, Mario IS in this game. In fact, in this game, you control Mario. Wow. I will admit to never playing ‘Luigi’s Mansion’, but if I or any Luigi fan ever picked up a copy of ‘Luigi’s Mansion’ and the whole time the only character I could play as was Mario, I’d flip a shit. Well Yoshi fans- Your shit is thoroughly flipped now, because Nintendo hates your green Dinosaur Love.

You control Mario controlling his enemies. You control everything BUT Yoshi.

“But wait!” You say. “I am a more than average educated gamer, and I know that Yoshi’s debut was in fact for the SUPER Nintendo in the game ‘Super Mario World.’ What the Fu*k?” Yes knowledgeable gamer, while I don’t approve of your cussing, in giving Yoshi his very own special amazing title in which you don’t even control Yoshi at all, Nintendo decided to go DOWN a console from the Super Nintendo to the Nintendo Entertainment System for this Yoshi adventure. Did I say adventure? Cause I meant shitty puzzle.

You control Mario in a Tetris-esque game screen, with 2 blocks of Nintendo bad guy characters falling from the top of the screen. Unlike Tetris, you don’t control the falling blocks, you control the blocks that have already fallen, by moving Mario, with 2 outstretched hands, to switch the fallen stationary blocks to try to get them to match the ones that are falling. When 2 bad guys on top of each other match, they disappear. That’s it. There are only 4 columns total, so the game play isn’t challenging at all, even when the blocks are falling fast.

The only thing to break up the aforementioned monotony is that sometimes an up facing half-egg appears- if you put a down facing half-egg on top of it, you get points and a little baby Yoshi pops out. Awww. Also, you can pile bad guys on top of the up facing egg, so when you put the down facing egg on top of the bad guys the egg will eat all the bad guys before getting to its matching shell and hatching bigger sized Yoshis. If you risk it and go all the way to the very top most part of the screen with bad guys on top of an egg and then land with the down egg, it makes a cool sound effect and a really Fat Yoshi comes out, and it’s kind of awesome. But other than those cute baby and Fat Yoshi’s, that’s it. I imagine anyone reading this column could already master this game without even having played it once, and within 15-30 minutes (honestly depending upon how much you like baby and fat Yoshi’s) anyone would get bored with it. You would need a very young child for this game to be entertaining, for then it would be somewhat challenging to them and perhaps very young children don’t mind endless monotony in place of dashed expectations. So, basically it’s like a mix between Tetris and Dr. Mario, except unlike Tetris and Dr. Mario, this game is much shittier.

See, the background in now Green instead of Red, so that gives the game depth.

Before you start a game you can change the difficulty level and choose from 1 of 3 songs; this screen is similar to the customize-the-start-of-your-game screen from ‘Dr. Mario’, except this one has way less options. Probably because they wanted to stick it to Yoshi fans for not liking Mario more. Oh, and in the 2 player mode, the person holding and switching the blocks on the other side of the screen is Luigi. He left his mansion to be in this shitty game.

Hmmmmmmmm……OK, then again, maybe I’m ragging on this game too much…it’s an all right puzzle game, it doesn’t glitch, moving the blocks instead of the falling pieces is a unique variation of Tetris, Fat Yoshis are fun, you can recognize all the characters clearly and this game definitely sucks. I’m sorry, I can’t- I can’t not compare this to the side scrolling Mario adventure featuring Yoshi that I thought this game was gonna be when I first popped this cartridge into old NESsy. To be fair the box art does say ‘un casse-tete paniquant avec Yoshi et ses amis!’ Wait…OK, It also says ‘Pure Puzzle Panic’ but I mean……not having read that small blurb, or speak French, anyone would expect this to be a side scrolling adventure! Also I was probably too young to read at the age I got this game anyway. But I still wasn’t so young that I thought it was good or anything other then monotonous and boring! Fat Baby Yoshis be damned!! F Minus!!! Crippling Disappointment!!!!

Except for the title music and 3 song choices which are catchy, the graphics are fine, the young’uns might like it and……Fat Yoshi undamned.

1.5/5 Play Tetris or Dr. Mario or Outside or 52 Card Pick-Up Instead

Obscure Title Tuesday: Monopoly!

Monopoly for the Nintendo Entertainment System! Or, as I like to call it: Insert Joke Here!

Monopoly is, of course, the insanely popular property trading bankruptcy game by Milton Bradley that, by some fluke, is not too complicated for the average American to play. You go around a board buying property, when you own all the property of a certain color you can buy houses and hotels for that property, and when your friends (or enemies!) land on these properties they must pay you major bank, or ‘rent.’ The object is to bankrupt everyone else, leaving them penniless and you Scrooge McDuck.

I should stop walking because this road is about to end

When playing this NES game with others the game functions exactly as a normal game of Monopoly, though there are 3 key ‘differences’ you have to get used to. Many people play Monopoly using house rules, which is pretty much any rule other then the official rules to make the game more fun. A common house rule is if you land on the free parking space then you get 500 dollars (or some other amount of money, like the money you lost from chance cards and landing on that damn ‘Luxury Tax’ space RIGHT in between Boardwalk and Park Place! THAT space should be the free parking! If I come that close to Boardwalk and not land on it I should be consoled with parking that is free, not a 75 dollar diamond ring….heh heh heh, crazy 1933.) Since that’s not an option for this game, landing on free parking gets you nothing but the animation of your game piece chillaxing on free parking.

Curiously, even tho this game was made in the 90's no one has been named 'Gertrude' since the 1800's

There are two other ‘differences’ (which are really just the original rules of Monopoly that some don’t use) that may frustrate some. Whenever you land on a property, if you choose to not buy that property, it MUST be auctioned off, with the property going to the highest bidder. Though auctioning of a property is quick and easy in the game, it makes the rich get even richer as they can abuse people with less money by getting properties cheap whenever anyone lands on a property that they can’t afford. Finally, there are a limited number of houses and hotels that can be bought in this game, whereas most home games will find some pennies and use those when they run out of houses in the box. This doesn’t matter too much, though, as there are 32 houses; more than enough to bust your opponents. Other then that, the board is the same, everything costs the same, you can offer trades to people who can accept, offer counter trades, or just flat our refuse, you got your chance and community chest cards, game play is quick, and, with the addition of video technology, all the game pieces have little movement animations during significant events like moving around the board, going to jail, buying houses or hotels, and each chance and community chest card.

Gertrude buyin' a railroad. Because that was the main mode of transportation in her day.

The music for the intro is catchy, though there’s no music during gameplay; just sound effects and snippets of music during things like the rolling of the dice, trading, going to jail, or whenever you land on Boardwalk and Park Place and no one has purchased them yet. There are enough sound effects to make the absence of a general background song not noticeable. Also, when you win the game it shows you, triumphant on top of a giant dollar bill sign with your name and how much all your money and property is worth combined displayed, along with a totally bitchin’ song in the background that makes you feel like a winner and forget all about the recession.

Donnie would later fall and sue the giant golden dollar bill manufacturer for another $12,125.

The area in which this game shines is the computer AI. You can play with up to 7 computer players and……they don’t suck! The AI in this game plays an effective game of monopoly and is even able to hold up against your many, repeated attempts at trying to trick it into making a stupid trade. Trading with these computer players is like playing Monopoly with a friend of yours who is really tight fisted with his property, but not unreasonable. When you choose to play with a computer player the game brings you to an art gallery showcasing 4 pictures of high society with their names underneath, collectively called the ‘top four.’ You can also click on the ‘bottom four’ to see the crappier, noticeably poorer and more homely computer players. Though they are billed as the ‘top four’ and ‘bottom four’, I find that there’s nothing really that much different about how they actually play or go about trading. Interestingly, I think the bottom four are just less lucky when it comes to dice rolling. Or, more accurately, they land less on unowned property. Specifically, and I don’t mean to accuse Milton Bradley of blatant racism, but, most racistly, the worst and most G-d awful bottom four computer player is ‘Ollie’, who is Hispanic, and I have seen him play multiple games where he rolls so poorly he only buys 2 properties for the entire game before he goes bankrupt…curiously, during these times the property he buys is a green property and a Railroad……other then that, however, I’ve played many games and never noticed a predictable pattern in rolling tendencies. Oh, and at the beginning of each game a person is randomly chosen to go first, and Ollie always goes last. In FACT, you can’t even feel bad for him and just give him free money because if you try to trade him and offer him like, 20 dollars for nothing in return, he won’t simply refuse the trade, he will literally move your cursor to the ‘quit trade’ button. I like to think of it as, he’s too proud to take your pity hand me down charity. To be fair to Milton Bradley and Nintendo, this would be a lot more racist if there wasn’t another Hispanic guy in the top four named ‘Erwin’ who will destroy you. If you let him.

I know from memory that Ollie just landed on Park Place with 4 houses. I love Monopoly.

There are some options to customize your game before you start, like properties being randomly assigned, timed matches, or you can literally just choose who owns what property and how much starting money each player has. I find it’s more fun to either play the classic game of monopoly, or, make yourself start with as much money as you possibly can, then, when you land on that ‘Income Tax- Pay $200 or 10%‘ space, (four spaces from ‘Go’) click ‘B’ to pay 10%, and watch that little cash register guy eat like….$99,999 in taxes…he only eats one bill at a time, so it takes like 5 minutes!

Also, the computers play at a medium pace, but there is an option to make them play quickly so that they don’t watch any of the animations and perform no brainer decisions quickly (like buying properties).

All in all, besides poor prideful Ollie, this is a fine substitute for the board game and as long as you can get past the auctioning of property and the no free money for landing on free parking, this is a great fun game that can be played with friends or alone! Of course, I really enjoy the game ‘Monopoly’. So I guess if you don’t like the board game you would probably think this game sucks. Oh well!

3.75/5 Computer Players That Don’t Suck! No Missing Pieces! Only a Teensy Bit Racist!!

Scott Pilgrim vs. The Wii

For those few of you who do not know, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game recently came out for the PS3, and the Xbox 360 version is not far away with a release date set for the 25th. The design of the game is one reminiscent of 2D, old-school beat'em ups like River City Ransom for the NES or Secret of Mana for the SNES. Both of which are classic titles. I never played River City Ransom, but that won't stop me from using it as a tag for this post. Scott Pilgrim is clearly an accessible game - graphically, at least - for any console. So, why, dear readers, is the Wii the only one left out?

I understand this comes out on the heels of KeepinItFresh's "Open Letter," but I can honestly say that this is the first game in a while for which I've felt genuinely giddy. It's as if Scott Pilgrim: The Game is that sexy girl at work you always have flirtations with, but nothing ever comes of it. That's what it feels like for me. I'm excited for this game; I talk about it with my friends and explain how badly I want it; I've spent a lot of time with Scott Pilgrim (not the game, but the graphic novel), and I want my due payoff. The problem is, of course, that the only system I own is the Wii. Now, I'm sure the decision to keep it off the Wii has some business and marketing decisions behind it, to which the general public are not privy. Does this make it any less heart wrenching? God No. No it... it just doesn't. I want to play this game and I would happily dish out the $10 or $15 to own it, but not the several hundred it would take for me to get a PS3 or Xbox 360 first.

For the most part, the Wii's Virtual Console and Wii Ware games provide more variety and an overall better gaming experience than when compared to the alternatives. The PSN has Final Fantasy VII, Metal Gear Solid, and Echochrome; the XBLA has Shadow Complex and Castle Crashers. All of which I think are great additions to the system and may even go so far as to call them reasons to buy each respective console. The Wii may have begun with much bigger success than it now holds, even the newest addition - the Wii Arcade - was a disappointment; although, it did show interesting promise. Surely most of the gaming community believe now, more than ever, the recent downloadable games offered by the Wii are nowhere near the quality of other systems. The point is, despite me only buying (or wanting) a handful of titles, I still believe in the service. Even now, while I sit, staring at the lack of Scott and Ramona, I realize I can still go back to the Virtual Console, find River City Ransom, and settle.

IGN has dealt with the decline of the Virtual Console (here you go) and claimed "It must be like jumping through hoops to try to get any game not originally presented by a major Japanese publisher through the submission and approval process to go live in the American Wii Shop." Does this mean that Nintendo doesn't care about white people? Looks like it. I would love to see other titles (IGN makes special mention of Earthbound throughout the article) also put up, but this one takes the cake - most likely because it's in my recent memory, but also because I can't just find a place on the internet to download it illegally like... well like almost every classic game in existence. It seems to be true that "Nintendo of America hasn't been able to fully respond to our requests." But don't get me wrong, I don't mean for Super Dope Game Reviews to take up a war against Nintendo, and I certainly don't plan on doing anything so bold as to sign a petition to get Scott Pilgrim: The Game onto the Wii. I just really want to play this game.

While the previous entry by KeepinItFresh focuses on the faults and betrayals of Nintendo's system, I choose to view these imperfections as what makes the Wii even more beautiful. I know the worn out, scratched up, broken apart Wii has seen better days and hasn't aged as well as other systems (who seem to be just now reaching maturity *cough* PS3 *cough*) or even as well as I had hoped. But all this simply makes me appreciate what the Wii has that other consoles don't. A catalog of games that focus on a fun experience, for instance. Also, what the Wii lacks can be turned into a positive - like the absence of a platform for preteen boys to shout profanity at me through a headset. Maybe I'm more of an optimist, or more of a Nintendo Fanboy (proven by my choice to capitalize that title), than KeepinItFresh, but I'm sure that while I flirt with other games from other systems, I'll always return home to the Wii, who has been there for me through thick and thin, like a loving wife instead of that sexy girl at work.

Obscure Title Tuesday: Golgo 13!

Golgo 13 For the Nintendo Entertainment System! Or as I like to call it: The one where I have SEX but in real life I'm only 12!!!

I need to be fair and straight up right off the bat: I did not beat this game. My shame is great, but not overwhelming, for I know that I am a solid casual gamer and NOT of the personality that I feel like I HAVE to beat a level when that level is so difficult and frustrating that I just want to punch the person reading this article. If that happens to me in a game, after a good number of hours it's like: F*ck it. This isn't fun. I'm playing this to have fun and experience entertainment, not feel like an angry failure. Or, alternatively, a pathetic failure. So take everything said here with a grain of salt, as it may be that the later 3/4 of this game are the most amazingly fun challenges in gaming history and we're all missing out by reading this and not playing it right now.

It's hard to rip on a game that went out of its way to be diverse and creative. (4 distinct game genres of play!) There’s a legitimate (complicated) storyline with great music to match. But, alas, the shortcomings, like freaking impossible mazes, make what could have been a NES classic into……an obscure title. (Eh? See what I did there?) (Cause the name of the article is obscu-you get it.)

The 007-esque plot is: You are Duke Togo. A spy! But a CIA helicopter has been shot down and there was a weapon on board, and maybe somebody got it, and the Russian KGB is definitely involved, and you should investigate, but then a….thing happens……lot of people to talk to……there’s a virus……yeah, there is a LOT of talking in this game and I could not follow what was going on- it’s just too complicated and fragmented. But props for trying- I mean, you know, plenty of NES titles don't even have a story: Track and Field, Balloon Fight, Super Off Road, Dr. Mario......Tetris.

As mentioned earlier, there are FOUR distinct game genres of play:

Golgo 13 or......CHUCK NORRIS?!!???

Side Scrolling: You start out the game with this genre. You’re in a town with red buildings in the background, some of which you can enter and talk to people to progress the story or get hints on where to go. You're wearing a fairly pimp blue suit and you can either jump, kick, or shoot the bad guys (who are wearing decidedly NOT pimp green suits). They all die in one shot. Duke can jump 5 people lengths into the air, so, think 25-foot dropkicks. Your helpful contacts who roam the streets are also wearing ugly green suits, but bullets pass right thru them. Sometimes guys on motorcycles will ride into you. Jump out of their way, but don’t bother shooting them as their motorcycles outrun your bullets. Sometimes a huge gun will enter the screen and shoot at Duke, thus changing the gameplay to:

Quick! Shoot that Giant Incoming Missile out of the air before it hits you!

First Person Shooter: You move a crosshair around the town (it looks different) and shoot both bad guys on the ground and huge helicopters in the air. Most die with one shot. One of my favorite moments in the game comes not when you shoot down a helicopter with your pistol in one shot, but, when in a water level, you use your pistol to shoot a SUBMARINE that explodes in THREE shots. Thank goodness they cleared that up because after shooting the helicopters in one shot with my HAND HELD PISTOL I was gonna start questioning this games realism, especially after the whole bullet velocity motorcycle problem mentioned earlier. The feel of this part of the game is meh, as sometimes bad guys are hard to find and keep shooting you while you're scrolling from left to right trying to find them. Fortunately these scenes only last about 30 seconds. Later on:

Quick! Shoot that......the hell?

Moving Helicopter Battles!: It's like those games where you’re flying in a helicopter in a side scrolling game but the screen is always moving to the right and bad guys come at you from the right hand side of the screen and you have to shoot them! You can fly forward, back, up, and down, and the planes that attack you are varied and shoot in different patterns. Also there’s these gigantic floating circle bad guys that have other floating circles circling the central circle…they take a lot of hits. The feel of this Helicopter part of the game is good…if this section of the game had a B button super special attack, some power ups and different background scenery this could have been the whole game, and a fun one. However, someone who played too many freaggin’ jigsaw puzzles when they were a kid just had to throw in:

BOOM! Headshot. Take THAT United States Army or Military.

The First Person Maze Levels: With no overhead view, no map, and a wonky feel, the maze levels sucked hard. They sucked so hard you guys. Floors give way and drop you down to ANOTHER MAZE! which is just as complicated as the maze you were sucking at before you fell, but you have to beat this maze just to get to a ladder that takes you to the ORIGINAL level of the maze! But by then you've already forgotten where you can't go, and you fall down a level again because you stepped in the same place that you fell down before, but it's still so complicated and awkward you can't remember how to solve the lower level maze from a few G-d Damn minutes ago so it's like you’re starting from scratch Gaaaah!!!! Not to mention there’s a fake maze that goes nowhere. A Fake. Maze. That goes nowhere. You only realize this after exploring the fake maze for hours. You have grenades that you can throw when walls randomly close right in front of your face, but sometimes you're supposed to throw them at dead ends, but this doesn't always work and it's unclear when you’re supposed to do that. There are bad guys standing around in certain areas…push A to get a cross hair, then tap left once and it puts the crosshair automatically on them…. Just hit A again to shoot them dead and that refills your grenades back to 3. You know what? Just writing about this pisses me off, that's how bad it was. It pisses me off even more because of the cool things this game had going for it.

The music is good. It sets the tone, starting off with a slow, lonely feel, like, "what's going on, I’m just starting this game but I'm unsure- where am I, who am I, ok, kinda getting a feel for this" and then BAM! It ratchets up for the next scene and it's all like duh nuhhh nuh-nuh-nuhhhhh, and there’s like a bass groove and everything. And it's long enough to only repeat a couple times before the end of a level. Which is no problem because the music’s so badass you FEEL like a spy…..a spy named Duke Togo, I might add. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lB4Yl1koV3Q Jump to 2:35, wait 15 seconds…and you’re a spy

Speaking of names, the colorful cast of characters includes names like Dirk Bullit, Cherry Grace (More on her in a second), Maria Lovelette, Fake Enormous (Who, I kid you not, is a midget), Red River Jr., Condor, and Ladies White. Of course, I didn't actually get to MEET most of these people since I couldn't get past the maze levels, but I'm sure they were all very nice.

In the beginning of the game you get your first mission from Cherry Grace, who I refer to as a 10 bit character as opposed to an 8 bit character because she's an F’ing 10! In the dialogue when characters speak you can see everyone’s face close up, and she is one of the more attractive NES characters you will come across in a game. I only mention this because

YOU HAVE STEAMY HEALTH REJUVINATING SEX WITH CHERRY GRACE IN A HOTEL!

'nuff said.

OK It might be a motel but it doesn't even matter because Oh My G-d you guys….You see 2 figures in a hotel window, they come together in an embrace, the lights go out and then your health meter at the top of the screen goes up to full. The first time this happened I immediately tried to re-enter the hotel just to have sex again but some ugly hotel guy (Red River Jr.) told me Cherry had left. Literally I would purposely loose almost all my health right before this point in the game just so that the sex scene would last longer. It was as epic as it sounds, you guys. In fact, this game isn't that bad. I was giving it a hard time earlier cause of the maze stuff, but, you know, maybe this whole game is just like a huge metaphor, with the sex scene being like……sex, and the frustrating maze scenes being like all the times when we're not having sex and we have to deal with frustrating women HAAH am I right guys????????????11111111???

Not to gloss over this but there’s a cool part of the game where you have to snipe somebody from a helicopter and the crosshair is shaking because…you’re in a helicopter. When you shoot the bad guy blood comes out of his head when he dies. In a NES game. Keep in mind this game was released before No More Heroes for the Wii.

Golgo 13 strives to be a cool 007 adventure without the nasty copyright issues. And with a spy story, great music, and diverse gameplay, this title could have been a NES classic preceding Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64. But in a game that is 13 Acts (levels) long, when I can't get past the 3rd act without cheating by going online in order to look up a map of each maze that some other gamer just as frustrated as me painstakingly figured out and drew in order to provide for all the other miserable people playing this game…I'm going to have to pass. And give this the lowest possible score, a 0 out of 5. Except the sex bumps it up to 2.5. OK, also the music and story and diverse play styles, Sheesh.

2.5/5 Frustratingly only being able to get through 1/4 of a game has never been so much fun!

(Also, for some hilarious insight into this game, check out this screen capture play through): http://lparchive.org/LetsPlay/Golgo13/Update%201/index.html