profholt82

I've always liked this one with Phil Hartman. I can't say I recall seeing it as a kid, but it was included as an unlockable in the Activision Classics compilation for PS2.

And here I thought I was welcome....

I was curious, so I looked them up on allmusic. Gran Turismo was the album with "My Favourite Game" and was released in 98. First Band on the Moon had the big hit "Lovefool" and was released in 96. Learned something today.

I liked their song "My Favourite Game." Not sure if it was on that album or another though. The blonde singer looked hot in the video.

Got a bit too excited ogling the Princess Toadstool illustrations?

Everything I said was as an adult, if you want to call me that. But when I had the game as a kid, it was one of the first games I owned on the NES, so I played the heck out of it because I didn't have much else to play. It had enough variety in its gameplay to keep my interest, whereas the later Arcade Game port was more of a weekend rental type of game for me as there was very little variety there. Fun with a buddy, but boring after a half hour or so single player. The first game, while hard, kept me coming back for more. Similar in that regard to Ninja Gaiden which you mention. A game that kicks my tuchus, but I have to keep trying. Oh my gosh, those freaking hawks and the flying guys who drop stars on you.... gahhhhhh! Ninja Gaiden is a better game than TMNT, but not by a lot in my opinion. I swear TMNT is an underrated game, and perhaps a bit too hard, but you just need to stick with it.

I would say that your opinion of TMNT is shared by the majority of gamers, Gandalf. I just tend to go against the grain with it. I find that the game has a lot of depth and variety, and in spite of the difficulty, it rewards persistence. I enjoy the beat em ups as much as anyone though, especially with a buddy. But the first game offers a unique experience that you can't get from them. I'd suggest giving it a fresh chance, and to be patient with it to see if your opinion of it has changed from your childhood.

I've long considered the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game on the Nintendo to be my favorite of the series. The NES sequels are fun beat em ups, as are the Genesis and Super Nintendo games, but the first game is something entirely different. If you want to have a fun co-op experience with a buddy, you really can't go wrong with any of the beat em up games, but if you want to sit down by yourself and have a serious gaming session, the first Turtles game is the way to go. Yet for some reason, for as long as I can remember reading about original Nintendo games on the internet (early aughts or so), this game seems to have been derided by many people for one reason or another. There's no denying that it's tough as nails once you get deep into it, and it certainly requires time and patience (and trial and error) to complete. But as a kid, when I got a new game, all I had was time and patience to complete it (and this was one of those games), so I guess difficulty in games has never bothered me as much as it does some others. While I grew up with TMNT when it was new, I hadn't sat down and played it in ages, so I suppose I had mostly forgotten about how difficult it was. But I recently picked up and watched the new blu-ray release of the classic movie The Wizard, and in it, there's a scene where Beau Bridges (who plays the dad) is playing TMNT and is all jacked up and into it. It's one of those scenes that stuck a chord with me because I can remember playing Pong and some Atari 2600 games causally with my dad back in the 80s, but when the Nintendo came along, it was as if those games were too complicated for him to figure out. He'd try to play Super Mario Bros. with me, but couldn't get past the first level in spite of trying fruitlessly with his furrowed brow. Seeing Beau Bridges in that scene took me right back, and it also put the Turtles game in my head. And sure enough, within a day or two, I popped TMNT into my console for the first time in a long time and gave it whirl. Well, the difficulty level in this game is no joke. Compared to many of the NES games I've played over the past few years, this is definitely one of the tougher ones. It took me about 4 or 5 days of plugging away at it for an hour or two at a time before I finally finished it. "Welp, the kids are in bed, time for dad to play his vidyagames..." Hahahaha, but, man, was finally beating this bad boy ever a feeling of accomplishment. A helpful tip I'll throw out there is when you get a scroll weapon, change turtles and save that baby for when you really need it. The problem is that even if you don't have your special weapon selected, when you're fighting through a slog of enemies, often new weapon icons will drop and you'll pick one up unwittingly, losing your scroll in the process. It's quite frustrating. That said, I actually ended up defeating Shredder the second time I faced him with the boomerang as I didn't have the scroll. His pattern is fairly easy to learn, and I stayed on the top right step and just jumped and fired the boomerang at him between his attacks. So, there you go. The process of getting to him though, sheeeeesh.... The brutal Technodrome level and the seemingly endless maze through the airfield, it's definitely a test of endurance with plenty of trial and error. But when you finally get there and take him down, well, it's dang satisfying.

That was the first thing I thought when I saw his pic too.

Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream It was the summer of '93, several weeks before school was to start back up. I had an old Technics turntable and a cassette boombox in my bedroom, so I had a decent music collection at that point, but I had been bugging my dad about a CD player for probably a couple of years by then. It seemed like all of my buddies had them, and would trade CDs with one another, and no one wanted to trade tapes with me (and certainly not one of my 45 singles which I was still buying from Coconuts Music in the early 90s). I don't know what it was, but something must have lit a fire under my old man's tuchus at that time, because I recall him getting the family together on a Saturday morning and loading us all into the station wagon for a trip to Service Merchandise. He purchased a very nice Pioneer 6-disc changer (which he still uses to this day), and told me and my sister that we could each pick out one CD from the music section. My little sister chose the Beauty and the Beast Soundtrack, and I chose Siamese Dream from the "new releases" rack. I had recently been enjoying the video for "Today" on MTV which they had labeled a "buzz cut." Incidentally, several years earlier, the first cassette tape that I remember going to the store and buying with my own money was MC Hammer - Please Hammer, Don't Hurt 'em.

Saw this last night, and it sucks. John had been fighting cancer for years, and was finally over that, and had been playing some shows around Nashville the past few years, but then this damn coronavirus came along and got him. Ugh, sucks. He's such a unique songwriter, I've enjoyed his music for years. If you haven't listened to his latest album from 2018, 'Tree of Forgiveness,' I highly recommend it. NPR wrote up a detailed overview of his life in their obituary: https://www.npr.org/2020/04/07/750894794/john-prine-obituary

I have a wife and 4 daughters, yes 4, you read that right. So being on lockdown, all couped up together in our house, working from home, with the kids' school and activities cancelled for the foreseeable future, I sometimes find myself yearning to escape into the world of vidyagames. Well, that and thankfully my good pal Johnnie Walker is there to keep me company in the evenings, so thus far my sanity has been maintained. I love my girls, but sometimes daddy needs a break. But being on the lookout for something new to play, I took the advice of someone whose opinion I trust, as he recommended Titanfall 2 to me as a good, fun, cheap game to waste some time with. After checking around online a bit, and seeing that I could get a brand new copy for all of $7 shipped to my mailbox, I figured it was a no-brainer and clicked buy buy buy hoping for the best. Anyhow, since I mostly play classic games on old consoles from the 80s and 90s, my Xbox One is essentially a glorified 4k UHD player, which is fine as I'm just not all that into new games usually. I find that in most of the games I try, much of the “gameplay” involves occasionally pressing a button to move the long movie-like story sequences along, and I generally bore of them quickly. If I want to watch a movie, I'll do so, I don't need my games to be movies. But I've got to say, I genuinely enjoyed playing through Titanfall 2. While it has its share of the movie-style sequences to advance the story along, I didn't find them to be long or gratuitous as they are in so many contemporary games, and the gameplay itself is actually rather fun and varied. You play as a soldier named Joe Cooper, and due to happenstance, you get a field promotion from grunt to pilot. But in this world, pilots don't fly planes, they control these big robot mech things called titans. And that's the bulk of the game really, trouncing around in a big super-powered mech, blasting enemies, traversing mazes with some light puzzle solving here and there. Sometimes you have to get out of the mech to get to certain areas, and that gameplay is similar to your standard FPS Call of Duty-type fare, but with some different gaming mechanics sprinkled in such as double jumping and wall climbing, which adds a platforming layer to the gameplay. Your mech is named BT, and he's got some personality, and converses with your character. Not that BT's rapport with Joe is all that original exactly, but it is light-hearted and often touches on a sort of Abbott and Costello dynamic with malapropisms and such which I enjoyed. With the themes of the game revolving around killing everything and traversing through a post-apocalyptic world, the levity between Joe and BT is a welcome respite. Perhaps my favorite feature of the game revolves around the numerous boss fights which are sprinkled throughout the levels, because they involve some different strategy beyond simply blasting everything in sight as you do in battles with normal enemies. You see, your mech has numerous loadout options which you accrue throughout the game and can switch between at will, so trial and error for choosing between the best weapons for your opponent becomes part of the challenge. Think of it like in the Mega Man games when certain bosses are easier defeated with specific weapons which you pick up in different levels. There was plenty to like here in Titanfall 2, and it kept me busy for a couple of days. I'm not one for online gaming, but the game does have some online modes for those who are into that. I, however, just played through the regular game, or campaign mode as they sometimes call it nowadays. Titanfall 2 isn't exactly a classic or anything, but it was a fun time sinker, and well worth the $7 entry fee.

RH, I've never tried a Saturn emulator, so I can't help you there. Historically, there have been issues with emulating them properly , I've read over the years, due to the architecture of the hardware. But you can play Saturn games from any region on your standard American Saturn without any mods if you'd like. Just get an Action Replay cartridge and insert it in the slot. Then when you power on the console, it automatically bypasses the region lock. This is a handy tool to have because unlike in the US, the Saturn was a massive success in Japan, so there are over 1000 games for it, most of which do not require any knowledge of the language.

After hitting up an arcade for the first time in ages recently, and enjoying the heck out of their racing games, I became nostalgic for an old Sega arcade from when I was a kid called Rad Mobile. I haven't come across the game since the early 90s, but I loved it back then and it has stayed with me in my gaming memories over the years. Well, after doing a little research, I discovered that the game was ported to the Saturn as a Japan exclusive release called Gale Racer. Well, spit! I quickly hit the ebays and found a Japanese seller who seemed reputable and had a good looking copy with plenty of pics, and I ordered it, along with another game to help make the transcontinental trip worth the wait. So while I ordered it in early February, it wasn't until a couple weeks ago that the package finally arrived via Japanese Post, and with all of the craziness in the world nowadays, I decided to scrub down the contents with Clorox wipes and allow the games sit for a few days. Overly cautious I suppose, but rather be safe, yadda yadda. Anyway, I finally got the chance to fire up Gale Racer in my trusty Saturn, and I had nearly as much fun with it as I recall having at the arcade as a kid. What a fun game. The Saturn port seems to be a faithful reputation of the arcade original as well. The gist of the game is that you have to race a bunch of cars across the United States. About 20ish different cities are represented, each with its own track that sometimes resembles it (and sometimes not so much, hahahaha, as in the Chicago skyline is in the distance, but you drive along a palm tree dotted shoreline for instance). The tracks are challenging, and aside from your fellow racers, there are also many random cars that inhabit each one, that making quick reflexes with the steering wheel and brake are a must. Furthermore, some tracks are in the night requiring you to turn on the headlights, while some are in the rain requiring you to turn on the wipers. Not that you couldn't drive without the aid of these tools, but it would certainly be much more difficult without them. And the game is chock full of character. For example, in one stage, a semi truck was jack-knifed on the road in front of me, so I careened to the left to avoid crashing into it, and ended up on a set of train tracks. Lo and behold, a train showed up in my rearview mirror and I had to drive like heck before finding an opening to get back on the road and avoid being squashed. In another stage, a fleet of police cars attempt to chase you down and force you to crash, which really gets your heart thumping. It all makes for one heck of a ride. The racing gameplay maintains an Outrun-esque feel at its core, but with a solid helping of Mad Max dumped on top to give the game a unique ambiance. And the graphics are fabulous for the time; it was a super-scaler game developed by Sega's fabled AM3 team. Gale Racer was released to arcades in February 1991 according to the interwebs, and this is notable because dangling from the rearview mirror of your car is not a pair of fuzzy dice or even a pine tree air freshener, but a little blue Sonic the Hedgehog doodad. This may actually be his first appearance in a video game, because the first Sonic the Hedgehog game wasn't released on the Genesis/Mega Drive until the summer of '91, but not having done the serious research, I would leave it to a Sega scholar to determine whether this is actually the case. Anyway, while the Saturn port seems to have mixed reviews across the internet, I effing loved the game and had a lot of fun with it. I'll certainly be playing much more of it in the future, that's for sure. Sad that this one only got a Japan release and had the name changed to Gale Racer, as had it come out in the US as Rad Mobile, I would have bought a copy many many years ago. But as it is, I'm happy to have made this discovery. After all, better late than never. Side note: I still remember being excited as a kid to see the arcade cabinet in the movie Encino Man....

Try a 2 player beat em up game with her. Something like Streets of Rage, Final Fight, Ninja Turtles, etc. Those games are easy to pick up and play, and generally don't require total concentration and hand-eye coordination to have fun with. Plus, having 2 players on screen together means that you could assist her if she's having trouble with an enemy.

Regarding Sega Swirl: "The game is an oddball in the Dreamcast's library as it was not released commercially. Instead, it was bundled with copies of the Official Dreamcast Magazine in the UK and US, with the Web Browser 2.0 software, with Sega Smash Pack Volume 1, and for a period, with new Dreamcast consoles (as part of the Web Browser 2.0 software included with them)." https://segaretro.org/Sega_Swirl Obviously this isn't the be all end all, and there could very well have been some sort of limited physical release at some point or perhaps in a different region, but Segaretro is the most complete online database that I know of when it comes to cataloguing Sega's releases.

While it wasn't the hardcore technical analysis that they've done in a number of videos, I think they still conveyed the shortcomings of the mini system well. And the simplicity and lack of video and audio settings in these mini consoles don't exactly lend themselves to that type of analysis anyhow. But yeah, "disappointed" is a good word to describe the way they talked about the lag and shimmer brought on by the console. But I didn't see anything in the video that suggested that they were going easy on M2 because they're chummy with them. Beyond the shortcomings in the PC Engine they mentioned, they also brought up issues in M2's Genesis Mini. And Coury went so far as to call Lords of Thunder unplayable due to the lag. Basically, what I'm getting at is that there are many youtube channels where it's clear that that the hosts are "on the take" so to speak, where they're essentially giving a haphazard review that glosses over a product's shortcomings. But in no way is that the case in this video, nor any of My Life in Gaming's review videos that I've seen.

A buddy of mine picked this one up recently and was talking to me about it, asking some questions because he was having a tough time with it. Now I've had a copy for at least a decade and probably hadn't played it in about half that time, so I decided to fire it up for a refresher. Playing through the game took me a while, and a couple of tries, and when I finally made it to the boss in the Skynet level, I ended up burning through all of my continues and almost all of my lives before I finally beat the giant bouncing Terminator head (which kind of reminds me of Zombie Nation). Holy crap, does that thing take a ton of damage. That was about a 15-20 minute boss fight, no exaggeration. Sheesh! Fortunately, he drops weapons and power-ups throughout the fight, and because you rack up so many points blasting away at him and his minions, you'll occasionally earn a bonus life. Throughout the first 9 levels, there are numerous health and one ups to be found throughout each maze-like stage, which makes the game manageable in spite of its difficulty. I mean, there is a steady barrage of bullets and projectiles coming your way throughout the game, so it is definitely tough. I learned that if I had a good weapon to swap it out when I was about to die so that I didn't lose it. You can carry two weapons at a time, and can swap between them with the A button, so it's recommended to switch to your less powerful one when your health is getting low. And whenever you respawn, you're invincible for several seconds, so that's a good time to just plow through a difficult spot in the level as quickly as possible, thereby skipping through enemies. And the boss fights all have set patterns which you can pick up on fairly easily with a little practice. After I mastered these techniques, the game was much easier to manage.

Ha! Don't meet too many Frank Henenlotter fans. You're all right, Reed/Brock. As far as the VinSyn slips for Raw Force and Christmas Evil, yeah, they offered them as surprises in two of their past few special sales. They do two big sales every year, the Thanksgiving sale and the Memorial Day sale. Great deals and always a few cool surprises. Got lucky to get those. This past year they had slips for Jack Frost, but I swear, they were gone within minutes of the site going live, and I missed out. They announced that the BMX themed 80s rental favorite Rad will be coming out on 4K for the Mem Sale this year, along with some unannounced surprises. Looking forward to it.

+1 Lightning fast shipping, and easy to deal with. Would fap again!

I've really been enjoying reading through this thread today, so I figured I'd play too. While vidyagamez are obviosuly a favorite hobby of mine, I also dabble just as much in some other areas. You gotta keep it fresh, otherwise you're liable blow your wad. I'm pretty heavy into records and hifi in general, and cast a wide net as far as music goes, but I'd say I'm particularly partial to 50s/60s jazz and 70s/80s punk. Here are a few of my favorites I thought to pull out off hand, perhaps you'll recognize a few. I've been collecting movies pretty much since I could walk. Started on BetaMax and have graduated to 4k UHD. Here's a sampling of my collection. It's nothing too crazy compared to a lot of guys, but I'd say I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 flicks or so. I still pick up the occasional VHS tape as well and have a S-VHS deck. You'd be amazed by how many movies never made it past VHS onto a disc format. I dabble in comics a bit. There are actually a number of new titles that I read fairly regularly, but I'm also into some silver and bronze stuff and pick them up on occasion. Here are a handful of my favorite titles. Baseball cards are a longtime hobby of mine. I've never been really serious about it or anything, but I go to a handful of card shows a year, and have a fondness for 50s and 60s stars. 56 Topps is probably my favorite set. And I suppose there are a few other collectibles I'm into here and there. If it involves spending my hard earned money on useless stuff, I'm probably into it. Hahahaha

For whatever reason, I recently decided to play some SimCity 2000 for the first time in possibly decades. I set it up in DosBox on my PC and it worked perfectly. I put so much time into this game on my family PC when I was around 12 or so, but honestly, I can't recall if I've played it since. Well, one thing's for sure. I'm rusty as heck at it. It took me 3 or 4 tries before I finally made a city that actually made money annually. I basically just ruled like a bastard. Coal power plant, cut police, fire, hospital, education budgets to almost nothing, and added sales tax, income tax and parking fines. And after some lean early years, Holtsville blossomed into a bustling metropolis. At that point, I upped the budgets and added public services to make the city nicer and encourage growth. Eventually, the Navy set up a base on my ocean front, and wouldn't you know it, within a couple years of that, a massive monster attacked my fair city and sent a good portion of it into chaos and wreckage. Mayor Holt kept a stiff upper lip in those tough times, however, and we rebuilt and are now stronger than ever. And the people gave their mayor a glowing 69% approval rating. Such a fun game, a real escape and time sinker as well. I had a lot of fun with it yesterday afternoon. My daughters were fascinated by the game, and watched some of the action, so I named a stadium and museum after them. And their mother is naturally the warden of the penitentiary.

These are my recent movie pickups from the past couple weeks. Vinegar Syndrome is probably my favorite label.

I'd have to do a lot of thinking to come up with a top 10, but my absolute favorites are Operation C and Metroid II. Love those games.

My money's on the 3 seashells becoming the next big thing.