Webhead123

I haven't played enough sports games or enough of the 5th gen to really offer anything of value. The NFL Blitz port to N64 was a decent time-waster and I know second-hand that there are a bunch of good sports titles on the PS. Outside of that, I have no clue. The only sports games that ever appealed to me were on the NES, SNES and GEN.

Honestly, Black Manta is a much better game than some might give it credit for based on first-impressions. I know that was my take-away. The first time I booted it up I though, "Oh. This is going to be a bad Ninja Gaiden rip off". But after just a couple minutes of letting the game draw me in, I changed my tune. And the first time you encounter a boss! I was honestly taken by surprise. Totally Rad does the same thing, which is just cool.

The National Video Game Museum in Dallas has a giant-sized Pong console near the entrance that is actually playable. It's quite an experience...although it is still just Pong.

I love the Vectrex even to this day. There is something so timelessly appealing about vector graphics that makes them outlive their contemporary pixel graphic competitors. Berzerk on the Vectrex is something I could play for hours.

I didn't have an Intellivision growing up (I had a Colecovision instead) but what little I played of it at my friends or cousins was fairly impressive for its time. The controllers kinda sucked but the graphics capability was a step above the 2600 and it boasted the best sports titles of the time. Today, I doubt its library would hold up to the Atari at all but I certainly wouldn't mind owning one and firing it up from time to time. 6/10

Thanks! Now that I've fought my way through it, I will say that I'm glad that I did give it my patience. It isn't a terrible game at all...it just requires a certain kind of mindset and a little time to understand what the game is asking of you. It's not something that I'll probably be compelled to revisit all that often and there are more fun and polished ninja games on the NES but for what it is, it is worth playing. The "transformations" are triggered by holding the "B" Button for a couple seconds, at which point, your ninja will change into a different animal form depending on which weapon you have equipped. While in animal-form, holding the button again will change you back into standard ninja form. This is one complaint I have that hampers the mechanic. Why couldn't they just let you toggle forms with the Select Button? Just a tap of the select button would make using the transformations so much more reliable. The B Button is the same button you use to attack. So, if you're planning to transform, you need to either do it when no enemies are on screen, or risk not being able to attack for 2 seconds while you hold the button down. As far as I know, the transformations are unlimited but it does take a few seconds to pull off and some forms control a bit differently, so you just need to be careful when and where you use them.

Because I don't have and didn't look up the manual before I fired the game up, I actually didn't even know about the transformations until the second-to-last stage. I was just mashing the buttons out of frustration when I discovered it. Yeah, that definitely changes up the game and gives more value to the weapon choices, although they aren't quite as impactful as they first seem. They feel like more of an afterthought than something that was fully incorporated into the game.

I thought about this. Sadly, none of my potential co-op partners would last more than a few seconds in a game like this. Good news, though! I finally managed to do it! It's certainly not easy but if you have the rhythm of his attacks down, you can duck the first hit, jump the second and then sort of force the boss toward the far wall so that when he shoots his projectile spread, you have room enough to run back the other way and dodge them. Well, I can put this one to bed now. With just a slight tweak to the difficulty (why not give the player 3 hits instead of just 1?), this could be a pretty decent platformer worth revisiting on occasion. The idea of the different weapon transformations is pretty novel for an NES game and the graphics are serviceable. The music is mediocre-to-irritating but the control is fairly tight and it would be just about the right length if you weren't forced to replay some of the later stages so many times because of deaths. What could have been a reasonably good game is a bit too punishing to really be anything but a curiosity.

I was originally trying to do it legit on my own moxie...but I've reached the point where I kind of no longer care. I just wanna put this dirtbag in the ground. I'll probably just search up some playthroughs and see what I'm doing wrong.

I can only imagine that playing on an emulator might make it even worse. Sort of like the later fights in Punch-Out, if you have any amount of input lag, you're going to suffer. Even on original hardware, this beast is relentless in the last couple of stages.

Has anyone ever managed to defeat the impossible final boss of this game? For an 8-bit ninja game, there are better titles of course, but there are certainly worse ones. It settles into mediocrity. Unfortunately, what prevents it from being what I might otherwise call a "hidden gem" are three BIG problems: a) one-hit deaths, b) hyper-aggressive, respawning enemies and c) when you die, you go back to the beginning of the stage. Imagine playing Ninja Gaiden where one hit kills you and sends you back to the beginning! It's one of those games where you will never get very far without playing a stage a dozen times and absolutely memorizing the enemy spawn locations. You end up inching forward, so as to let just one enemy on-screen at a time to kill them before you let the next one spawn in. The final stage is the absolute worst about this. If you let more than one enemy on-screen at a time...you're f**ked. Just keep inching forward if you wanna get through it. But yeah, the crowning lump 'o coal in this smelly stocking is the final boss. His first form actually stupid-easy once you realize his very basic pattern, although it still takes 64 hits with the ranged weapons to put him down. His second form is impossible. Im-f**king-possible. You can't stand in front of him and try to dodge his spear because his forward attack has zero frames of delay. If you see the spear, you've just been hit. Dead. So, what do you do? You try to jump over him and get behind. But guess what? As soon as you start jumping, he turns around and walks in your direction! So you end up landing on him and *BAM*! Dead. Yeah, remember how this game has one-hit deaths? I've even tried abusing the invincibility frames of the transformation power. That can help you avoid a hit here or there...but it's so unreliable because you have to HOLD THE B BUTTON FOR TWO FULL SECONDS to do it! So, you gotta know 2 seconds in advance that you're going to need to tank a hit...and the invincibility frames DON'T SEEM TO WORK AGAINST HIS PROJECTILES ANYWAY! And every time you transform, he summons one of those giant fly-things from the center platform anyway. So if the boss doesn't hit you, the fly-things eventually will. Seriously, I've been banging my head against the wall that is this a**hole for over an hour and about 50 attempts. What the f**k am I missing? Is there some secret power-up or exploit that I don't know about? Update: Conquered. This chick is toast!

Neat, original concept. Great graphics. Some interesting gameplay elements. Unfortunately, it suffers greatly from the "cryptic maze-hunt" design philosophy and is much more of a chore than a game about being a dolphin should be.

Honestly, I could go with any of the big 3 as the winner in exclusives but I sided with the PS3 mostly because of: 3D Dot Game Heroes Dragon's Crown Folklore God of War III inFamous Ni no Kuni and the various PS2 HD Collections

1. Ghouls 'n Ghosts (GEN) - BEATEN! - 1/5/21 2. Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (GEN) - unbeaten 3. X-Men 2: Clone Wars (GEN) - unbeaten 4. Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (GBC) - unbeaten 5. Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons (GBC) - unbeaten 6. Final Fantasy III (SNES) - unbeaten 7. Demon's Crest (SNES) - unbeaten 8. Sunset Riders (SNES) - BEATEN! - 2/28/21 9. God of War (PS4) - unbeaten 10. Resident Evil 7 (PC) - unbeaten 11. Into the Breach (PC) - BEATEN! - 2/13/21 12. Guardian Legend (NES) - unbeaten 13. Duck Tales (NES) - unbeaten 14. Mega Man IV (NES) - BEATEN! - 10/09/21 15. Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64) - unbeaten

I made an attempt through Kung Fu a year or two ago. I unfortunately didn't record any of it but I seem to recall making it to about the 4th loop. If I remember correctly, the difficulty did seem to ramp up in subtle ways, like weaker enemies being replaced with tougher ones.

It's not April 1st. What am I even looking at? Who would dare to store fried chicken on top of their game console?

I loved MM2 so much that I had to get the Worlds of Power book of it and read it a couple times at least. I also had this sticker slapped onto my NES Advantage:

I actually didn't log as many hours on Switch this year. Most of my gaming time was either on PC or on classic consoles. I played quite a bit of GB, GBC, SNES and NES this year. Oh, and a little bit on PS4 as well.

I'll only rank the ones where I've at least gotten to the final castle. As such, I'd rate them thus: 2>3>6>1>4 Yeah, I never even got through all of the robot masters in 5, 7 or 9 and have not played 8, 10 or 11 yet.

MM2 is easily the winner for me, although to be fair, I didn't really keep up with the series much after MM4. MM2 was the right level of challenge and has the most consistent gameplay and best music in the series. MM3 had some interesting ideas but never felt as "complete" as MM2 in terms of its design. MM5 & 6, which I only played decades later, felt a bit too easy and derivative and MM9 overcompensated by being way too punishing. I have never played 7, 8 or 10. I have 11 on my backlog but haven't gotten to it yet. It looks fairly promising.

A meatball sandwich out of 10?

Historically significant? Yes. Fun to play today for more than 5-10 minutes a couple times a year? No. 4/10 for modern day consumption. Many of the clever variations on basic Pong can actually get pretty fun but even then, it's just some variation on two lines and a bouncing dot, so you can only take the experience so far.

Rush 'N Attack was an early rental for me and yeah, it's no Contra and it annoys me that it uses "Up" to jump but once you get into the groove, it's a fun game. It has a kind of rhythm to it that is easy to enjoy.

For me, playing Pac-Man on a cocktail cabinet is the only real way to experience it! That was how I first played Pac-Man in the early 80's and the memory is still strong. I can almost smell the cigarette smoke and cheap beer. Actually, a friend who is a fellow vintage arcade enthusiast has a cocktail multi-cab in his home office, loaded with Pac-Man (and more) and I've considered getting one myself.

9/10 - It's one of the very earliest video game memories that I have and has a charm and design that is the epitome of vintage video gaming. It's gameplay is timeless. I was never terribly good at it but, even to this day, I still boot up a game of it at times when I'm looking for something satisfying that takes only seconds to get into and can fill as little or as much time as you're willing to give it. One of the all-time greats.