Hoskat

Thanks everyone! I'm glad some people are getting enjoyment in my Nintendo ramblings.

Over the summer I finally got the last game I needed for my NES collection (Bonk's Adventure) and decided to ramble on video for 18 minutes about my 30 year journey. In the video I talk about: * My definition of complete collection * A history of my love for Nintendo and some of the nerdiest things I've done over the years * Stories of how I acquired some of the games

Genre: Soccer Publisher: Tecmo Total Time Played: 20 Hours Short Review: The most unique sports game on the console plays more like a role playing game. Luckily, you don’t need to know much about soccer to get a lot of enjoyment out of this game. Interesting links related to Tecmo Cup Soccer Game Soundtrack Playthrough (4 hours 4 minutes) Instruction Manual Not What I Expected When I was 5 years old my mom signed me up to play soccer, my first team sport. When we arrived at the first practice I cried and refused to get out of the car. That was the end of my soccer career. With the exception of gym class I’m not sure I’ve ever played soccer. Needless to say, I don’t know much about it other than there are 2 teams and the goal is to kick the ball into the other teams net and whoever has scored the most at the end of the game wins. I was not looking forward to this game, a 30 year old game about a sport I know nothing about. I was fully expecting this to be a huge slog, it was not. I never felt like I fully understood this game, but, this was not because I don’t understand soccer, it was because the game was a black box that even the internet couldn’t fully help me understand. I never got a handle on it and I’m going to spend the next several paragraphs complaining about the game a lot. But, somehow I still enjoyed every minute of playing it. So, it’s like Blitzball? When I described this game to my brother he said it sounded like the mini game Blitzball from Final Fantasy X. I’ve played through that game twice and while I have played Blitzball I never focused on it. It was a side quest/mini game that I didn’t really enjoy. I definitely see the similarities with Tecmo Cup Soccer and maybe now that I’ve finally grown to love this type of game I should revisit Blitzball. Blitball from Final Fantasy X is a more sophisticated version of Tecmo Cup Soccer A Text Adventure With RPG Elements I used to play The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on my grandfathers Apple IIe computer. It was a text based game where you literally typed in the command you wanted and the system would respond with text that told you the outcome of your selection. It was a very primitive game that required precise typing to accomplish the goal. There were no images at all, the game took place mostly in your head. Tecmo Cup Soccer is similar but adds a visual layer and instead of typing your commands free form you select them from a menu. The visuals in the game are stunning and remind me of the great cut scenes in Ninja Gaiden. Ninja Gaiden is well known for incredible cut scenes What’s the Story? I didn’t expect a soccer game to have a story and the story is pretty thin but the first time I turned on the game I was surprised that this wasn’t a typical sports title. It isn’t a game that keeps track of wins/losses or goals scored. It is a very linear game. You play soccer matches, your players get better and eventually you win the tournament. I actually appreciated this. That linear goal is wrapped in a story about a boy named Robin Field whose dad is a big soccer star. He trains Robin and his brother Cecil to play soccer and then leaves with a note saying he will see them at the Tecmo Cup, the biggest soccer tournament in the world. In order to get to the Tecmo Cup Robin must first assemble a group of friends and win the national tournament and then take the best players from every team in the national tournament and play in the Tecmo Cup. Between each game and each half of a game there is a screen or two of generic text about wanting to win the next game Throughout the game you will see a lot of screens like this with generic platitudes. Several times throughout the game you see a cut scene with a guy named Lucas who says he will join the team after his injury heals. I kept waiting and waiting and waiting for him to join but it wasn’t until the final game in the Tecmo Cup that Lucas can play. Yes, he is the best goalie in the game by a long shot but I don’t think the 15 or so cut scenes with him saying he would be back soon was worth it. Stats In a traditional role playing game each player has stats that determine how they will perform. These stats include things like Hit Points, Magic Points, Agility, Luck, etc. In Tecmo Cup Soccer each player has similar stats that determine how good they will perform. Offense Guts – This is equivalent to stamina. Each move in the game reduces this number. The more guts you have the more this player can be used in the game. Dribble – The higher this value the better the player will be able to evade opponents as they surround him with the ball. Pass – the ability to pass the ball successfully to a teammate without it being intercepted. Shoot – The higher this value the more likely a shot will go into the goal. Defense Tackle – The ability to slide and kick the ball away from an opponent Mark – Blocks an opponent from dibbling past you or passing the ball Cut – Cuts off the opponent from passing the ball Goalie Punch – When the opponent shoots on your goal this will have your goalie punch the ball away. The ball gets loose and there is a chance it will go back to the opponent. Catch – Instead of punching the ball away the goalie will catch the ball allowing him to then pass it to a teammate. Pass – The higher this value the better chance that the goalie’s pass will make it to a teammate. Pre-Game Setup Before each game you sit in the locker room and your coach fills you in on the latest changes. He first will list off all of the players who have gotten better since the last game and then you have a few options: Advice – The coach will tell you about the team you are about to play. It is always something generic like “Don’t let Ayerton get the ball, he’s a tough opponent” Memo – This is where you talk to Anne, who I think is Robin’s girlfriend. She always says how good of a job you are doing and then provides you with a super long and complex password so you can pickup where you left off. L. S. – This stands for League Standing. This option only appears during a few games after the national tournament but before the Tecmo Cup. It shows your wins/losses which determines if you win the preliminary tournament or not. Member – This only appears after you win the National Cup. It allows you to sub in players from the bench and build the team you want. Start – Starts the game The Main Game (Offense) Each game starts off with your team, The Tops, getting the ball, the second half always starts with the other team getting the ball. The game consists of 2 30 minute halves. But, these are Nintendo minutes where each minute is closer to 10 seconds. An entire game came be played in under 15 minutes. When you have the ball you see your character on the top half of the screen running on a soccer field. You never see another player. Under the large animation of your player you have a bunch of stats. On the left you see the time left in the half and the current score. In the middle you see a view of your player’s location on the field denoted by the soccer ball. You always go towards the goal on the top of the field. On the right hand side you see your players current stats. Each second that passes the Guts stat lowers as the player is using energy which lowers his stamina. At any point you can press the B button to bring up the action menu. This moves the image of the field up next to your player and replaces it with “What now?” where you can choose to dribble (up button), pass (left button) or shot (right button). Depending on your selection here changes what happens next. If you chose to shoot the ball you will see an animation of the ball flying through the air, sometimes it passes other players, sometimes it is intercepted and sometimes it makes it to the goal where you see the goalie dive to stop the shot. Sometimes he does, and sometimes the ball goes into the net. Sometimes the ball goes through the net, sometimes it hits the goalpost and there is even a chance that the ball hits the goalpost so hard it explodes. In my experience, it didn’t matter what stats my player had, it didn’t matter which team I was playing, it didn’t matter if I did a special shot (more on that in a second). It always seemed completely random what happened when I would shoot the ball. This is my biggest gripe in the game. No matter how good my stats were there was no way to see the stats of my opponent so I never knew if the matchup was even or not. I never could get a handle on any of this. I’d watch YouTube videos and see people playing who were at a much lower level than me dominating every team. Nothing I have found online explains any strategy for where to put which players on the field or how to do know if a pass or shot will be successful. Anyway… As you level up your players their stats increase making them stronger dribblers, shooters, passers and gives them more guts to perform these actions. In some cases the player even learns a special shot. This shot is much more powerful than the regular shot and is accompanied by a special animation and flashing screen. These special shots use a lot more guts than a regular shot and sometimes a player can only perform 2-3 in a game before they run out of guts. So, use these only when you are sure to score (as if there was a way to know this). I read a walkthrough online that said some team (I forget which and am too lazy to look it up again) has a really strong goalie. If you score on the goalie it hurts his morale (not a stat that is visible to people playing the game) and it makes him easier to score on a second time. The note also says that he is really good at blocking special shots and your regular shots have a better chance of scoring against him. I probably shouldn’t put too much stock into a random internet article I read but if this is true it makes me really mad. What is the point in having special shots that seem to be much better than the regular shot if in some cases those shots are not worth shooting? I’m ok with this if there was any note or memo or player comment or any indication at all how you could use this knowledge to your advantage. Passing the ball is another annoyance for me. I learned a strategy in the final game of the Tecmo cup that would have potentially made the game easier for me. When you bring up the “What now?” menu you can choose to pass the ball. When you want to pass the ball you see a different view of the field and this time you actually get to see where the players are located. You have the option to chose one of 4 players to pass to. When the player has the soccer ball by their name they flash on the screen above so you can see where they are in relation to you. What I didn’t learn until the last game was that if you cancel the pass and then select pass again the players you can pass to change. I always assumed I only had the option to pass to the 4 players under “Whom?” and many times the player I wanted to pass to was not in the list. Passing was another huge black hole for me. Sometimes I would see my player with the ball, there would be no opponents anywhere nearby and the player I was passing to was also wide open. I would pass to him and the pass would be intercepted. Other times I’d pass the ball to a player who had 3 or 4 players around him and the ball would go right to him. I never saw any indication with all of the on screen graphics that would let me know which pass was going to work and which wouldn’t. It always seemed completely random, which is fine, but, having the screen visualizing where the players are wasn’t necessary since it didn’t seem to help me at all. I feel like showing a picture of a bag of marbles while I selected who to pass to would have been just as helpful. If you bring up the action menu and decide you don’t want to pass or shoot you can always select “Drib” which will take you back to the main screen of your player kicking the ball down the field. Sometimes I’d bring up the menu, look at my players location to the opponents on the pass screen and try to map out how to keep dribbling to avoid the players. Just like I mentioned above this was pointless. Sometimes I’d pull up the pass screen, it would show me as wide open so I would continue to dribble. I’d take one step and an opponent would intercept me. What is the point of showing a map of the field and all of the players locations if it is an inaccurate representation? Like in an RPG there are random encounters. This is where 1-5 members of the opposing team appear and try to stop you from reaching the goal. When this happens your player has the option to keep dribbling, pass the ball to a teammate or shoot the ball at the goal. After you make your selection a few animations will play out showing how your player fared against the opponents. Here lies a problem. You can see your players stats on the screen, you cannot see your opponents. The rule of thumb if the opponent has a real name and not just a number it means they are one of the better players on the team. So, again, no matter what I selected the outcome always seemed random. Sometimes 5 opponents would surround me and my player would have a low dribble stat and I’d dribble and pass all 5 players. Other times one opponent would be in front of me and my player with the strongest pass stat would have the ball and attempt to pass to a guy with no opponents in between and the ball would be stolen. It makes no sense. The Main Game (Defense) Anytime you don’t have the ball you are on defense. It always felt like I was on defense much more than I was on offense. The screen looks similar to when you are on offense except you can’t see the stats of the player with the ball. The soccer ball on the field at the bottom of the screen represents where the player is on the field. Notice anything? There is no way to know where your players are in relation to the ball. So, how do you make your players try to steal the ball? Well, the truth is, I don’t know. When the other team had the ball I would just randomly push the D-Pad in a bunch of directions hoping that I was invisibly controlling a player of mine towards the ball. But, since I couldn’t tell where I was in relation to the ball I didn’t know which direction to press. This may have just been placebo and the real way to stop the ball was just wait for a random encounter. Again, I don’t understand this game mechanic at all. When an encounter did happen it would show a list of all of the players on your team who are around the ball. You get to select what each player would do to try to stop the opponent. Tack, Cut, or Mark. Tackle attempts to steal the ball, cut attempts to cut off a pass and mark tries to block the player’s path forward. As you guessed, there is no rhyme or reason as to which of these commands would work. No matter how good my players stats were the outcome always seemed random. with a cut stat of 107 this is what I’d select. Sometimes it would work, sometimes it wouldn’t. What Happens If The Game Ends In A Tie? National Tournament (basically the first 1/3 of the game) The game ends in a shootout. Each team picks 5 kickers and each gets one shot to score a goal. The only choice you have to make is to kick to the right or left. If the defender dives left and you shoot right you score. When you are the goalie you do the same, choose whether to dive left or right. If you chose correctly you block the shot. Whoever has the most goals at the end of the shootout wins. If there is another tie you do another shoot out. Preliminary League Tournament (2nd 1/3rd of the game) This is a tournament where every team plays every other team. If the game ends in a tie the game ends in a tie. After all teams play all other teams the winner is determined by number of wins, ties and losses. If there is a tie in win/loss stats the winner is determined by points scored. Tecmo Cup (last 1/3rd of the game) In the Tecmo Cup when a game ends in a tie you play 2 more halves, each is 10 minutes instead of the regular 30 minutes. If there is still a tie you then go to a shoot out. Level Up! After each game (I think they are called matches in soccer) your coach will tell you if any players on the team “got better.” If a player is on the coaches list they have leveled up and all of their stats increase. In some cases a player will learn a special move like a more powerful shot. In the case of Damon, he learns a new dribble move where he basically plows over members of the opposing team. There isn’t a special command for this, it just happens. Another example of something that I don’t fully understand why it works that way. Depending on which team you are playing against, if you lose you will rematch the team or be forced to go back a game and play the team before the current opponent again. Again, there was never an indication on what would happen if you lost. If I lost a game for the first several hours of my playthrough I would just enter the password and try again. But, then I realized I needed to level up because I was never going to beat a team without good stats. Luckily, I found a team that if you lost against you would play them again. I kept losing on purpose just to improve my players. I never saw any clear indication but I suspect that if you pass a lot your pass stat will go up more. If you dribble a lot that stat will go up, etc. By the time I reached the final game most of my players were on level 16 or so. When I checked out YouTube the videos I found of the final game most of the players were on level 13. So, I had more than enough stats to dominate the final game. Except, I didn’t dominate because stats don’t seem to matter. I took me half a dozen tries to beat Brazil Jr. in the finals of the Tecmo Cup. No matter how hard I tried I just could not score a goal. I tried regular shots, every super shot I had including Damon’s Blast Shot which is the most powerful in the game. The goalie on Brazil was insane! More than one time it was tied 0-0 with less than a minute left and Brazil scored a goal right as the timer went to 0. Talk about frustrating! The Final Game Do you know how many times I played the final game? Me either, but it was a lot. I would lose and instead of resetting and putting in the password to try again I would let the game kick me back 2 games and then fight my way through those teams in order to level up again and again. After doing this a few times I was finally ready. Most of my players had Guts over 900 and were level 18 or 19. Even with this I would still struggle to score goals and the computer would seem to always get the best breaks. I know the game is decided by a bunch of hidden stats and random numbers but I just wish I knew what those were. It bordered on unfair. On the last game I was up 1-0 with less than 2 minutes left. The best player on the other team got the ball and went straight across the entire field without one of my players stopping him and shot to tie the game at the last second. Then in overtime neither team scored so it went to a shootout which is pure luck. This actually happened probably on 3 occasions on the last game and I just never could get the game to go my way, until I finally beat it which took wayyyyy longer than it should have. Final Thoughts Even though I never felt in control of the game and I used more brute force than strategy to play through Tecmo Cup Soccer Game I still somehow really enjoyed it. The animations are up there with NES Open Golf and Ninja Gaiden as some of the best on the NES. I hope at some point in the future someone way smarter than me decodes the code behind this game so I can finally learn when a pass or shot will be successful or not. I did have a lot of fun in middle school playing World Cup Soccer but haven’t played it since then. I imagine that is the only soccer game on the NES that will even hold a candle to how fun this game was. View the full article

Genre: Arcade Publisher: Nintendo Total time played: 15 Hours Short review: An arcade style Pac-Man knock off that is addictive even if the controls aren’t quite as easy to pick up as I would have liked. Interesting links related to Clu Clu Land Soundtrack Instruction Manual Video Review (CGRUndertow) Full Game Playthrough (23min 47secs) Hi, hello, how are you? Remember me? I play Nintendo games and try to beat them. But, I’ve been MIA since May 10, 2022 and haven’t beaten a single NES game. I took a short break after finally beating Solomon’s Key thinking that Clu Clu Land would be a cake walk since I thought I just needed to go for a high score. I expected to be done with the game when I was tired of playing it since there is no ending. What I discovered was there are 20 stages before it begins looping and getting through those 20 stages took longer than I expected. Now, 90% of that is because I didn’t play it enough days in a row to finally get good at it. I have no one to blame but myself. What is Clu Clu Land? At first glance it is basically a Pac-Man knock off. It was one of the games for the NES that came out the day the NES was released way back in 1985. In 1985 video games were still trying to figure out what they were and almost all home console games were versions of existing arcade games. Since arcade games were meant to suck quarters out of your pocket they needed to be simple to learn, hard to master and never end. The designers wanted you to feel like each time you played you got a little better and constantly come back for more. Clu Clu Land was not an existing arcade game, but, it sure seems like it would have been. It has all the hallmarks of a game that would have been successful in an arcade. The goal of the game is to move your character (Bubbles) around the screen uncovering hidden gold bars. Once all of the gold bars are revealed the level ends. You can see how many gold bars are left on the stage by looking at the “LAST” number at the top of the screen. It is a simple concept and easy to pick up. There is a bit of a story if you read the manual but the story doesn’t need to exist. All you need to know if that you want to uncover gold bars, not fall in the black holes and not come into contact with the sea urchins. Characters and Collectibles Bubbles – The main character of the game, she moves in a straight line on her own, she will change direction if she hits a wall or if you reach out and grab one of the poles in the stage. The controls are simple but do take a while to get used to. If you are moving left to right you will hit UP and DOWN to grab turn posts . If you are moving up and down you will hit LEFT and RIGHT to grab turn posts. You can grab a turn post and as long as you hold down the direction Bubbles will spin around and around until you let go. It takes a bit of practice to get the timing down. Pressing A or B will shoot an electric shock wave that freeze sea urchins and makes them non-dangerous to Bubbles for a few seconds, in the later levels the sea urchins are non-dangerous for very little time. Sea Urchins – These are the blue spiky looking guys. They come out of the black holes and try to touch you. Much like the ghosts in Pac-Man if they hit you you lose a life. Luckily Bubbles can shoot a projectile by hitting A or B, which the manual calls “Electric Shock Waves”. If you hit a sea urchin they will turn yellow/orange. If they are not blue you can push them around the stage without getting hurt. Push them into a wall to get 500 points. If you kill a sea urchin another will come out of the black hole shortly. Gold Bars – The most lasting legacy this game has is the gold bars. They are the exist same sprite as Rupee’s in The Legend of Zelda that game out a bit after Clu Clu Land. So, you could say, without Clu Clu Land we wouldn’t have Zelda’s iconic Rupee. These gold bars are hidden around the stage, if you pass between two posts where a gold bar is hidden it will be revealed. Each level features gold bars in a pattern. You will play these levels a bunch and eventually memorize all of the patterns the gold bars could be. Sea urchins are unable to pass through the gold bars. Black Holes – The little multi-colored octagons are black holes, This is where the sea urchins will emerge and if you run into one you will lose a life. However, if you are holding onto a turn post you can swing through a black hole no problem. Turn Posts – These are the white circles all over each stage, use them to change Bubbles direction by reaching out her arm and grabbing them like a kid grabbing and spinning around a flagpole at recess. Fruit – Much like Pac-Man, every once in a while fruit appears somewhere on the screen, pick it up to earn extra points. Rubber Trap – A pink bar that spans 2 posts that Bubbles bounces off of and changes direction. Like the gold bars you can’t see these until you run into it and reveal it. These can be pretty annoying and it is possible for a stage to have 2 rubber traps next to each other and Bubbles can get caught bouncing between them indefinitely with the only way out being to run out of time or get hit by a sea urchin. Bonus Sack – A money bag that appears on the screen sometimes. The manual says it gives you 11,500 points, I’m pretty sure that isn’t true, it was much fewer points. Bonus Timer – A clock that will randomly appear on the screen, get this to freeze all the sea urchins on the screen for several seconds. I’m embarrassed by how many times I hit a frozen sea urchin and lost a life. Bonus Flag – A white flag that randomly appears on the screen. This is a 1-UP. You know how I learned this? By reading the manual after I beat the game. I never knew how I was getting extra lives while playing, I thought it was every so many points. If I had known I would have beaten this game months ago. I almost never picked up these flags figuring they just gave me a few points. The Levels There are 5 regular levels, 1 intro level and 1 Bonus level. After playing through each level you get to the bonus stage and then the levels loop. In each of the 4 loops of the game Bubbles gets faster and more sea urchins can be on screen at once. After playing some of the later stages when Bubbles is really zooming around the first few levels feel painfully slow. The manual was nice enough to show you all of the possible shapes the gold bars could be laid out for each stage. Read the Manual You know the old trope that men never read instruction manuals before putting together furniture, fixing a carburetor or cooking a meal? Well, I didn’t read the manual before playing Clu Clu Land and it cost me months of trial and error. So, from now on I plan on reading the manual before I play the game. If I had read the manual I could have seen the shapes above and had a better idea of what each level had in store. I would have also known the white flags were the only way to earn extra lives. I also would have seen the best part of the manual, one that is totally something I would do because I’m lazy. In the bonus stage you are supposed to get 3,000 points for finding all the gold bars (which are blue in the bonus stage). But, the game was programmed incorrectly and you only get 30 points. Instead of fixing the code they just put a note in the manual. Also, they a call the “Gold Bars” “Gold Nuggets” in the note. Not a lot of consistency in the manual, feels right at home with something I’d write. Frustrations Clu Clu Land is surprisingly addicting. I would say it is in the top tier of the NES release titles (called Black Box games). There were a couple of minor issues I had to keep it from being perfect. The number in the top left of the screen is how many lives you have left. This number is always 1 less than the number of lives shown on the screen you see between levels. I kind of get why it is this way, but, it is just not a great UX experience. The screen between levels is painfully slow and cannot be skipped. Pausing the game is instantaneous, unpausing the game takes about 2 seconds. The controls are easy to pick up but they are a bit more sluggish than I like. When you shoot the sea urchins to turn them yellow/orange they sometimes don’t push the way you want them to and you’ll have to change directions to push them into a wall Bonus Stage I never successfully revealed all the blue gold bars on the bonus stage. My highest number was 60 in the allotted time. I did always enjoy these stages as they were a nice breather after the yellow stage before it which was always pretty tough. Lucky for me, the bonus you get for clearing the stage is less points than you get for not clearing the stage. The Loop After beating all of levels 4 times the game starts over and Bubbles is super slow again. There is one small change though, and one I’m thankful I didn’t have to play through to “beat” the game. When you cross over a gold bar more than once it changes colors and then if you cross over it again it changes colors back. All the gold bars on the stage need to be the same color to beat the stage. I’m sure it is possible but would be so hard as the shapes the gold bars make on the stage make it nearly impossible to pass over them all without passing over at least one of them twice. Final Thoughts I was familiar with Clu Clu Land and have had it in my collection for years but had never played it before. It should not have taken me 6 months to beat, but, most of that time was spent not playing video games and then when I would finally get back to it I’d have a short learning curve of relearning the control nuances. If it weren’t for the few gripes I mentioned above this would be a nearly perfect game. Honestly, it feels like a smart phone game that you can pick up and play for a few minutes at a time and never get tired of playing. This game is way better than it needs to be and while I don’t recommend playing it until you clear all 21 stages I do suggest playing for a bit just to see what all the cool kids were playing in 1985. View the full article

In the 5th installment of under-appreciated horror movies the guys loosen the reigns and talk a bit about some movies that were popular but don't get brought up in conversation as much anymore. They also discuss what they have been doing to get into the Halloween spirit and Matt and Luke talk about Halloween Ends. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworX

After taking the summer off the guys are back to talk about the biggest star in Hollywood in the 1980's and 1990's, Arnold Schwarzenegger. On top of his movie career they go into details about his early childhood, his body building career and his political career. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworX

The guys sit down to talk about 1992 and all of the video games that shaped their young pre-teen minds. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworX

The guys sit down to tell stories about their first jobs and the people they met working there. Matt and Luke had paper routes. Luke worked at a grocery chain, Matt worked at a Mexican restaurant and Jason worked at both a Mexican restaurant and a grocery chain. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworX

After 3 months I knocked out Solomon's Key. Thank goodness for that continue code! https://hoz14nes.wordpress.com/2022/05/10/solomons-key/

Genre: Puzzle Publisher: Tecmo Total time played: 25 Hours Short review: An ingenious puzzle game that takes great hand eye coordination, puzzle solving skills, a steel trap memory and luck. Many people consider it to be one of the hardest games on the NES Interesting links related to Solomon’s Key Full Video WalkthroughSpeedrun by Arcus (19min 34sec)SoundtrackInstruction ManualA great game I wasn’t in the mood for It has been 3+ months since I completed Pinball. I believe that makes this the longest distance in time between two games in the 9 years of this journey. The length in time wasn’t because the game was really hard, which it definitely is. I’ve just been much busier than normal in 2022. So, I’ve not had the free time to tackle NES games like I used to. A lot of my free time has been spent watching movies and uploading to my spoiler free movie review YouTube channel. Between a full time job, keeping up with chores and household projects, my YouTube channel, and raising a 4 year old I found myself only being able to play 20-30 minutes at a time a couple of times per week. In a game like Solomon’s Key that makes it hard to memorize levels because they are all so intricate and there are so many of them. Solomon’s Key reminds me a bit of Wrecking Crew because of how each level is a single screen puzzle and Milon’s Secret Castle where there are a million blocks on screen and any one of them could be hiding an item. How to Play As I stated exactly 1 sentence ago Solomon’s Key features a bunch of levels that are each a single screen. You control a guy named Dana whose job is to get a key which opens a door and then get to that door. In the first level this is very simple, but, by level 3 you better be prepared to try over and over again. This is a game where it is impossible to beat some of the later levels in one try because what seems like a solution may be a red herring, a trap that if you attempt means you can’t beat the level. Each block location becomes important. Dana jumps with the Up button on the Directional Pad. He creates blocks by pressing A. He can create a block directly in front of him, or, if you hold down he creates a block down one square diagonally from where he is kneeling. If you stand so far to the edge of a block that it looks like you might fall he can create a block 2 squares in front of him. Any brown square can also be removed by hitting A while standing in front of it. Pressing the B button will throw a fireball and clear enemies from in front of you. But, only if a small fire icon appears in the top right white bar on the screen (next to “Fairy”). Fireballs are hidden in some stages that you can pick up if you find them. They could be hidden inside a brown block, or, they could be hidden in a random space and not appear until you create a block in that space and then remove it. They also could be hidden behind another item. A few items in the game can be hit with A and they transform into a vase that increases your fireball count by one. The goal is to get to the end of the game which is roughly 50 levels. I don’t know for sure because some of the bonus and hidden levels are not numbered and depending on some hidden items you do or don’t pick up the game has different levels and different endings. Get the key and go through the door…simple Just beat the game Initially my goal was to play through every single level, find every item, play every hidden level and bonus stage and get the best ending. But, I just don’t have the time or patience to do it. I feel like if I owned this game as a kid and didn’t have the internet or a dozen other consoles to distract me I could have mastered the game by sheer repetition. It just wasn’t in the cards in 2022. I quickly decided my goal was just to get to the end of the game without using the internet even if it wasn’t the best ending. Items There are so many items in this game, some give you fireballs, some give you different fireballs, some make your fireball white bar longer so you can hold more fireballs. Some unlock bonus stages, some are just for points, some give you extra lives, the bells make a fairy appear and if you get 10 fairies you get an extra life. There are probably more that I’m forgetting. The point is, I never memorized the items well enough to be able to tell you what they did. I probably should have learned and tried harder to collect them in the early game because I desperately needed them in the later game. The secret continue code It would be a miracle for me to beat Solomon’s Key without continuing and initially I thought I would have to do just that. Thankfully I learned that on the poster that came with the game a continue code was given to the player. By holding A+B+Up on the game over screen you can continue on the stage where you lost your last life. This was an absolute life saver and the reason I never bothered much with finding all the secret items in each room. When you get a game over you lose any unused fireballs and since I died so often I figured I’d just practice each level until I could beat it. I thought I was taking the easy way out by just plowing through the levels and not learning each levels secret. Level 43 which I found this to be the hardest room in the until I got to level 46 which was harder Hidden warp zones In multiple levels there are small icons like that look P-Wings that act as warp zones. If you pick up this item you are warped 7 levels forward when you walk through the door and complete the stage. I accidentally found one of these and was surprised to learn it warped me 7 stages. This probably saved me 2 hours of game play to not have to learn those stages I skipped. I later learned there are several of these warps hidden throughout the game. While I enjoyed learning many of the stages I would have loved the ability to skip some of those harder levels. That’s what I get for not exploring every block in every level. Save states to the rescue That continue code that I spammed my entire play through has an Achilles heel. It turns out once you reach level 41 the continue code quits working and if you use it on a later stage it returns you back to level 41. That means you have to beat the last 10ish levels on a single continue. Of course these are by far the hardest levels in the game. For the most part the levels required brain power to beat but these last levels require brain power and precision timing. A single brick put in the wrong spot or removed at the wrong time renders the level unbeatable. Since extra lives are few and far between that means you have to play those last stages nearly perfectly. Because of this I created a save state each time I beat a level and just practiced each level dozens of times until I could beat them. Once I did this for each of the last levels I began attempting to do them all at once. Without this modern day “cheat” I’m not sure I would have ever had the patience to beat the game. A couple of the later levels took me probably 100 times to beat which means I would have had to play through the earlier levels that many times to get enough attempts to beat it This one took a long while to master. Every time I beat it I felt like I got lucky. A worthy challenge The older I get the more I like puzzle games like this. I mentioned above that Wrecking Crew is another great puzzle game and so is Adventures of Lolo. These games take puzzle solving skills more so than hand eye coordination and nothing feels better than solving a complex puzzle on your own. If I had been in a better place while playing through this game I would have probably beaten it quicker and probably enjoyed it a lot more. It is a great game, the level design was great and the puzzles were tough but not impossible. I would definitely consider it a hidden gem and recommend it to anyone. It isn’t one I expect a lot of people to beat but I think playing through a few levels would provide some great entertainment. Level 46, I’m embarrassed to how many attempts this level took Finals Thoughts It took a long time but I finally beat those last 10 or so levels on a single continue. 4/30/2022 is when I finally beat each level using save states and it wasn’t until 5/9/2022 that I was able to beat all the levels at once. Beating Solomon’s Key gave me a great sense of accomplishment. I’m sure I would feel it even more if I kept playing it and mastered each level and beat it without the continue code while getting every item, unlocking every bonus stage and getting the best ending. But, alas, it was not in the cards for me right now. Solomon’s Key is a great game if you give it a chance. I’ve enjoyed watching others play through it on YouTube and learning that many of the levels can be beaten many different ways. The game designers really outdid themselves creating such clever puzzles with multiple solutions. View the full article

The guys invite a special guest, movie critic, Tommy Wood from Reel Talk: A Movie Podcast to discuss what is quite possibly the best all time year for movies, 1999. Multiple genre defining masterpieces, completely original scripts, animation classics and multiple cult films make up this great year. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworXTommy Reel Talk: A Movie Podcast

The guys sit down to discuss the music that shaped their life in 1989. Jason really hates one of Matt's picks and Luke didn't have a lot of context for what was cool because of his age. Apple Music Playlist Spotify Playlist Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworX

The guys sit down to talk about the TV shows that shaped their life in 1991. 1991 was a year for Nickelodeon and talk shows. Follow Us Online: Episode Blog with Show Notes, Videos and PhotosFacebook GroupKeep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworXJason illustrated a children's book, The King Who Forgot, you can buy it HERE

The guys sit down to discuss one of the all time greatest children's entertainers and most recognizable character actors of the 1980's, Jim Varney aka Ernest P. Worrell. Since he is one of the most famous people from our neck of the woods we all know people who knew him personally. Follow Us Online: Episode Blog with Show Notes, Videos and PhotosFacebook Group Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworXJason illustrated a children's book, The King Who Forgot, you can buy it HERE

Genre: Pinball Publisher: Nintendo Total time played: 3 Hours Short review: One of the earliest NES games takes takes a stab at recreating the excitement of playing a pinball machine in an arcade. Interesting links related to SoundtrackVideo Review (Classic Game Room)PlaythroughIt’s Pinball! I have played real pinball before on multiple occasions but I did not grow up in pinball’s prime. When I would go to an arcade as a kid there were pinball machines but my heart wanted to play the video games, pound the buttons, rotate the joysticks and put quarter after quarter into the machine to try to beat the game. Pinball just seemed old and outdated so I would only play pinball if the arcade game I wanted to play was occupied. As an adult I still don’t play pinball much but I have a much great appreciation for the technology that makes it work. I can’t imagine the engineering that goes into making the hundreds of mechanical parts work in tandem to provide a fun experience that is skill and luck based. The art of the pinball cabinet is incredible, I just wish I had more experience playing the games. Copy Cat Of course since pinball machines were so popular in the 70’s and early 80’s it makes sense that Nintendo would try to capitalize on that and provide a pinball experience on your TV. For the most part NES Pinball succeeds. There is enough here to make it interesting for fans of actual pinball cabinets but by today’s standards it definitely feels very bare bones. The developers tried to create the pinball experience 1 to 1 instead of adding in features that could not possibly exist on a mechanical pinball machine. How to Play Playing pinball is very straight forward even if the control scheme in unorthodox. There are 2 games modes, A and B. The only difference I could find is that the ball felt heavier and faster in mode B. I’ve read that this mode is more realistic and mode A is more arcade style. In my play through I focused on mode A. The directional pad controls the left flipper and the A and B buttons control the right flipper. The A and B buttons also launch the ball back into play when you start the game or lose a life. The goal of the game is to score 150,000 points. This isn’t a goal the game gives you but the goal that the internet has determined is the score needed to “beat the game” as it allows you to see everything the game has to offer. At 100,000 points your flippers disappear and at 150,000 points they return. When the flippers disappear they are really still there and work just as they always have, you just can’t see them making the game a bit more difficult. The invisible flippers are the only thing in this game that could not be accomplished on a real pinball table. If you score 50,000 points you do get an extra ball, there is no fan fare, no sound queue, no visual queue. You just will look down and see the ball number is increased by 1. Top Board The top half of the pinball game This is the top half of the game board, if the ball falls down the black path to the left or in-between the flippers it will drop to the bottom half of the board. I spent a lot more time on the bottom half than the top half. The top half I had much more success scoring points even though I never stayed here long. I won’t go through every single point scoring opportunity but just hit some highlights. Most of the time I found that luck played a bigger role in my success than skill which made the game rather frustrating. My favorite way to score points was to bounce the ball off of the white/pink 100 circle in the middle and up between the blue/white vertical lines which scores 1,000 points on the way up through and another 1,000 on the way back down. I was never good at pulling this off but every once in a while I’d get lucky and it would bounce 10 or so times in a row giving me a quick 10,000 points. If you can shoot the ball up through the left side and hit all the white balls the seals bounce a ball on their nose and you get 100 points with each bounce, this was another quick way to score points…if you could shoot the ball up that narrow path. The best way to score points is pure luck. You can shoot the ball up and around the green pillar on the left and when it rolls over the white line the 3 penguins in the image above create a slot machine and if you get lucky and it lands on 3 penguins a stopper appears between the flippers making it impossible for the ball to fall between them. This bumper remains until you shoot the ball around the green pillar again. On my winning run I scored about 80,000 points on this screen with the bumper in place. Bottom Board The bottom half of the board The bottom half of the board is much more stressful. The points are harder to get down here and the 3 100 circles shot the ball in a random direction when they are hit. The best way to score points here is to get in the center of the 3 circles and just watch the ball bounce between them for several seconds. If you hit one of the 3 eggs above the flippers it turns into a bird, hit the bird and it disappears, hit the invisible spot and the egg comes back. If you get all 3 birds on screen at once it creates a bumper on both the right and left sides which keep the ball from falling and losing a life. If you hit a bumper the ball bounces back into the game but the bumper disappears. To get it back you must get the 3 birds again. In my experience at least 50% of the time the ball would hit the bumper it would bounce back into play, hit something and immediately go right back to where the bumper was and fall to lose a life. If you can get the ball to travel between the little walls under the cards at the top of the screen it flips the cards over. If you flip all 5 cards over a bumper appears between the flippers. If you get this bumper and the 3 bird bumpers you are nearly invincible and just need to focus on points without fear of losing a life. If you hit all the numbers on the left side of the screen the horizontal pink lines on the right side of the screen disappear and allow you use the plunger to shoot the ball back to the top of the screen. Finally, if you shoot the ball inside the red circle at the top right of the screen it takes you to a bonus stage. Bonus Hey look! It’s a him, Mario! In the bonus stage you move Mario left and right to bounce the ball around the screen. If you hit any of the numbers they change between 3 colors. If all of the same number are the same color the blue lines at the top under the princess get smaller. If you do this a few times it creates a hole and the princess falls down, you must catch her and direct her to an exit. This was a nice touch but I don’t think I ever got enough points or got enough enjoyment to make the bonus stage worth it. Final Thoughts You know…this was kind of fun. It’s another one of those that is fun to pick up and play but not really fun to try to score the 150,000 points to beat it. The game felt like 90% luck and 10% skill. You just can’t control where the ball is going to bounce and if you get just a few bad bounces it is game over. I did find some enjoyment in trying to hit everything and see what would happen. I think it is easy enough for anyone to pick up and play and enjoy for 10 minutes at a time. In 2022 it feels more like a free phone game experience than a full fledged game, but, for 1985 I bet it was pretty revolutionary. View the full article

The guys sit down to talk about 1994 and all of the video games that made their Middle School lives so much better. Matt and Luke remember getting Sega Channel. They also discuss NBA Jam Ski Trips and Mortal Kombat tournaments. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworXJason illustrated a children's book, The King Who Forgot, you can buy it HERE

Genre: Puzzle Publisher: Hi-Tech Expressions Total time played: 8.5 Hours Short review: It’s like Pong and Arkanoid combines with an overly long Sci-Fi story and a 3D gimmick. It is a cool concept but not executed as well as I would have liked. Interesting links related to Orb 3D Speedrun by AndyDick (31min 49sec)SoundtrackVideo Review (NES Friend)An Unneeded Gimmick 3D is the gimmick that just never goes away. Every 10-15 years it has a resurgence and then dies away again because it just never works like it should. The NES had a couple of “3D” games including Orb 3D, which came with 3D glasses. Much like Rad Racer, the 3D in Orb 3D is pretty lackluster, luckily it isn’t needed to play the game. A Crazy Story I’m not going to recount the story of the game here but it takes up several pages in the manual. It is way more involved than it needs to be and the story never really comes into play in the game. It is almost like the game’s creators had the idea for a story and an idea for an unrelated game and then just lacklusterly put them together. How to Play Orb 3D is kind of like Arkanoid or Pong. A ball bounces back and forth across the screen and you move a paddle up and down to hit the ball and bounce it back in the opposite direction. The ball can travel in the foreground or the background. When the ball hits the paddle on either side of the screen it moves from the foreground to background or background to foreground. You can also make the ball jump between the background and foreground by hitting the A button. There are 30 levels in Orb 3D. The manual refers to these levels as “Enigma Chambers” which is a way cooler name than this game deserved. Is it Hard? In each Enigma Chamber you have to solve the puzzle before time runs out. In Orb 3D time is a fuel gauge, so, you have to solve the puzzle before you run out of fuel. Most levels will take several attempts because you first need to figure out how to solve the puzzle and then actually solve it. Most of the puzzles are pretty straight forward and just require you to clear the screen, but, the controls are less than responsive and controlling the ball and making it bounce where you want it to is much harder than it should be. Luckily there are unlimited continues so if you are tenacious enough you will eventually beat Orb 3D. In most stages sometimes a second Orb shows up so you then control 2 orbs at once which I didn’t find made the game any easier, but, hey, its something, I guess. I Need some Fuel As time ticks away your fuel slowly decreases. If the ball passes your paddle off of the screen you lose a good chunk of fuel at once. If you get low on fuel you can hit the B button and travel to “Vern’s” to refuel. Vern’s is a mini game and you can only get fuel if you have enough points to do so. I never figured out exactly how the game determined what happened at Vern’s. One of several things could happen. Move your ball through as many of those holes as you can. The fuel bays are open and traveling through them gives you fuel. The fuel bay doors slowly close so you need to get through as many as possible as quickly as you can.The fuel bay doors are all closed. If this is the case you can hit your ball against the dollar sign to open the fuel bay doors.Instead of going to Vern’s a giant pink head appears on the screen and you must hit him in both eyes to go to Vern’sWhen you travel back to the stage the only change is that the bars on the side of the screen are slightly smaller making it a bit harder to hit the ball. Sometimes when you go to Vern’s you see this guy. He looks like he may be high in this photo. Enigma Chambers I don’t know why I’m doing this but I’m going to show a screenshot of all 30 Enigma Chambers and let you know what you need to do to solve each. Enigma Chamber 1 Pop all the bubbles to complete the level Enigma Chamber 2 Get a strike or a spare to complete the level. This means you have to knock all pins down but only get 2 attempts. Enigma Chamber 3 Just clear the screen. You need to hit all these things more than once but they eventually disappear. Enigma Chamber 4 Hit the line to turn it into a cloud, hit the cloud to turn it into a butterfly and then hit the butterfly to make it disappear. Enigma Chamber 5 The Cheshire Cat. Hit him to make him disappear and beat the stage. Enigma Chamber 6 This was the first stage that gave me trouble. A number 6 die appears on the top row of the screen in a random location. It slowly rolls down to the bottom of the screen with the number decreasing by 1 each time it moves. The green number at the bottom of the screen starts in the 20’s and each die you hit is subtracted from that number. When the green number reaches 0 you win. Enigma Chamber 7 You play tic tac toe against an invisible computer player. Get 3 0’s in a row to win. If you lose or it is a draw the board erases and you start again. Enigma Chamber 8 Another children’s game. This time you need to get 5 in a row to win Enigma Chamber 9 One of the pool balls is spinning, hit it to make it disappear. After all balls are gone hit the 8-ball to beat the level. But, if you hit the 8-ball while other balls are still on screen all the balls reappear. Enigma Chamber 10 One of the skulls spins at a time. Hit the spinning skull to make it disappear. When there are no more skulls you beat the level. Enigma Chamber 11 Once all rockets are gone you beat the level. A rocket will blast off making all rockets on top of it disappear. So, hit the rockets at the bottom to make this stage much easier. Enigma Chamber 12 Slide puzzles are the worst. Games that feature slide puzzles make me anxious because I’m so bad at them. Luckily, to beat this level you just need to hit the 2, 5 and then hit the 6 to move them into order. Enigma Chamber 13 Hit each face 3 times to make it disappear. Enigma Chamber 14 This level reminded me of the under-appreciated unlicensed game, Krazy Kreatures. I didn’t ever figure out how this level worked, sometimes I’d hit an animal and then a couple of animals would disappear. Once they are all gone you win. Enigma Chamber 15 This level was hard as duck for me. To win you have to line all ducks up on the same row. If you hit the duck from above it moves one direction and if you hit it from below it moves in the opposite direction. Enigma Chamber 16 This is another level that you just have to clear all the magnets. Hitting a magnets makes it rotate. When the red ends of 2 magnets face each other they both disappear. Enigma Chamber 17 One bombs wick is lit. Hit it before the bomb blows up to make it disappear. Once all bombs are gone you win. If you don’t hit the bomb before it blows up there is no penalty, it just reappears and you can try again. Enigma Chamber 18 This was the first head scratcher for me. As always the goal is to clear the screen of eyes. The center eye opens on its own. If the center eye is open hitting any of the other eyes makes them move around the screen. You need to hit the center eye to close it, then hit any of the closed eyes to open them, and then hit the open eyes again to make them disappear. The key is the center eye must be closed for you to clear the other eyes. Enigma Chamber 19 Another level that took me forever. The goal is to spell the word “Orbit” by hitting the letters in the correct order. It is really hard to hit the letters in order without hitting another letter accidentally. Enigma Chamber 20 Similar to the rocket level hitting an arrow will cause a chain reaction and get rid of the arrows in front of it. Enigma Chamber 21 Hit the value displayed at the top of the page on your bingo card to turn it into a red circle. Get 5 in a row to win. If you hit the wrong value the value at the top of the screen changes. This was straight forward but hard to complete without running out of fuel. Enigma Chamber 22 Each of the 3 pumps blows up one color balloon. You must hit the pump 7 times (I think) in a row to pop the balloons. If you hit a different pump the balloons you have been blowing up will deflate. Enigma Chamber 23 Another head scratcher. This is a game of Simon Says. One item appears, when you hit it a second item appears, then 3, then 4. You must hit them in the same order each time to clear the stage. Enigma Chamber 24 Instead of clearing the screen you have to fill up the screen. If you hit one of the cats all blank spots touching the cat are filled in with more cats. If you hit a cat with no blank spots around it then it disappears. Enigma Chamber 25 Hit the rings at the top of the screen until the reach the pegs at the bottom. Sometimes when you hit the rings they don’t move. I never figured out why they only move sometimes. Enigma Chamber 26 You are the red queen and your goal is to clear the rest of the pieces. Pieces move like in real chess. I expected to spend more time on this stage because even when you know where to move it is easier said than done. Enigma Chamber 27 Hitting a car from the left side moves it up a square, hitting it from the right moves it back one square. Get the blue square to the top before the other cars (which can move on their own) gets to the top. Enigma Chamber 28 Get the same image in all 3 boxes to win. You can hit the slot machine from the front or the back to make it stop. I think I got lucky on this one beating it as quickly as I did. Enigma Chamber 29 Move the pink ball to the exit to win. Sometimes the ball didn’t move how I expected it to making this level took me longer to beat than any other level. Enigma Chamber 30 A fitting final stage. This is a massive matching game that was much easier and more fun than Enigma Chamber 29 Planning Ahead Was Pointless I really didn’t like Enigma Chamber 29 because it seemed like moving the ball through the maze was harder than it needed to be. I would sometimes hit the ball and it wouldn’t move or would move in the wrong direction. I got pretty good at moving the Orb where I wanted by playing this level over and over again. I fully expected the final stage to be even harder so I watched a video of it on YouTube. In this video I saw that the final level was a matching game with 48 cards…24 matches. I just knew this was going to be a nightmare so I decided to plan ahead. I drew the level on a piece of paper and marked where every match was in the YouTube video I watched. When I finally got to the final level I immediately realized that the placement of the cards is random so me planning ahead was a waste of time. Not only that, but every time you got a game over the cards would change locations. The saving grace was that you can actually pause the game and still see the board. I paused the game after flipping each card to mark its location and eventually had enough information to know where all the matches were. Because I’d spent so much time in Enigma Chamber 29 perfecting my Orb placement actually hitting the cards wasn’t that bad. In fact, I bet I beat Enigma Chamber 30 on my 3rd try where it took close to 50 tries for Enigma Chamber 29. my crude Enigma Chamber 30 cheat sheet Final Battle The final boss was super easy. Just like the dragon that sometimes appeared going to Vern’s to beat it you just need to move the Orb through both eyes. The catch here is the gravity is a bit wonky. But, I didn’t notice a fuel gauge so I think maybe you can’t die on the final boss?? After Enigma Chambers 29 and 30 I appreciated and easy final boss. What a final boss! Final Thoughts In concept this game is really cool. It’s basically just a bunch of simple puzzles you need to figure out. It kind of reminds me of sitting in Cracker Barrel, you’ve got checkers, the peg jumping game and usually a couple of other things to keep your brain occupied while you wait for food. But, the fact you had to use clunky controls and an ever moving ball was too complex. It added an unnecessary handicap to the game. Most of the puzzles were a bit too simple and the only difficulty in the game was controlling the ball to complete the puzzle. It is worth checking out and if it had been executed better it could have been much more fun. Thank goodness for unlimited continues. View the full article

Matt and Jason sit down to talk about their thoughts on the 2021 movie Ghostbusters: Afterlife. This is a supplemental episode to the full Ghostbusters episode. The review is 100% spoiler free. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelGhostbusters Afterlife Spoiler Free Video ReviewLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworXJason illustrated a children's book, The King Who Forgot, you can buy it HERE

The guys sit down to talk about their love of Ghostbusters. Jason tells the story of how he got in trouble for calling his mom a rude name he learned from Ghostbusters and Matt recalls every detail of the day he saw Ghostbusters 2 in the theater. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworXJason illustrated a children's book, The King Who Forgot, you can buy it HERE

Genre: Basketball Publisher: Milton Bradley Total time played: 1.5 Hours Short review: A primitive basketball game featuring 2 of the NBA’s all-time greatest players. Interesting links related to Jordan Vs. Bird One on One Written Review – ArnpolySoundtrackVideo PlaythroughAn Interesting Work Around Old video games always were always trying new things to portray sports in a way that hid the limitations of the primitive hardware. Many of the early NES sports games were pretty bad with stiff controls that only followed the very basic rules of the sport. Jordan vs. Bird knew they couldn’t do a full 5 on 5 basketball game the way they wanted to and decided to make it a 1 on 1 game that freed up some processing power to make the game more fun. In my opinion it didn’t work and the faux variety of game modes didn’t help. All of this is just me speculating. It is also possible the developers just wanted to do something different to stand out from the pack of other NES basketball games. In that way, they succeeded. Michael Jordan and Larry Bird Without a doubt, these two guys are 2 of the best NBA players of all time. In my opinion Jordan is the best NBA player ever (although my limited sports knowledge makes my opinion worth about as much as an NES copy of Jordan vs Bird). Larry Bird is a legend but still doesn’t get the credit he deserves. I saw an infographic a few years back that showed that Larry Bird actually had better stats at almost every point in his career than Lebron James. Jordan was his own brand and rarely lent his likeness to sports games. That is why in many games of the 1990’s and 2000’s the Bulls would have a generic player wear #23 who happened to be the best player on the team. I wonder if Jordan got a bad taste in his mouth from the mediocrity of this game he gave his name to? 3 Game Modes In Jordan Vs. Bird there are 3 game modes and all are pretty much just not a lot of fun. You can chose to play a full game of basketball, a shortened game to 11 or 15 points or just shoot around and warmup. You can choose to do a slam dunk contest against another player, practice dunks or follow the leader where you must do the same dunk as the other player. You can choose to participate in the 3 point contest or just practice shooting. One on One In this mode you take control of either Michael Jordan or Larry Bird and play half court basketball. There are a few options to choose from including if you want to play a full game or just play to 11. You can also choose the length of the quarters and the difficulty. I played on multiple difficulties and didn’t notice any difference. There isn’t much to this game. A shoots if you are on offense and B swats at the ball if you are on defense. When shooting the ball the goal is to hold A and release it towards the top of your jump to release. If you wait too long the invisible referee will call traveling. I believe the closer you release the ball to the top of your jump the better chance it has to go in. If you are close to the basket and hit A you will perform a dunk. It took me a few tries to win for some reason. The computer AI is not that smart so it should have been easier than it was. I played as Jordan and 90% of the time I could just run around Bird and dunk for an easy 2 points. I struggled more on defense. Most of the time I could just tap the left or right button and run Bird into the bottom corners of the screen and swat the ball away from him. But, a lot of times he would just launch a shot and it would go in. He hit a lot of 3 pointers which meant my 2 point dunks weren’t enough to beat him. Anyway, after a few games I bested him. I didn’t play as Bird and I didn’t play best to 11 or 15. I just did the straight 2 minute quarter full games At least it is easy to see the score, the shot clock, the period, the time and tell the players apart. Slam Dunk Contest In this game mode you have the option to play against the computer or with up to 3 friends. I played against the computer and we competed in a Jordan vs Jordan dunk contest. That’s right, only Jordan dunks so no matter how many players are in the contest they are all Michael Jordan. There are 10 dunks to choose from and some look pretty cool for the NES. The problem is that they are hard to do. This is more of a timing game than anything. You need to know when to release the ball during your jump to make the dunk and score the most points. The computer is really good at this and you basically just need to practice for a while to get the timing down and also get really lucky. Many times my dunk would go in and I’d get 4’s and 5’s from the judges. The computer would do a dunk that looked identical and get 8’s and 9’s There are judges who score your dunks, the highest score after 3 rounds of play wins. I’m unsure if the winner is determined by total score over the 3 rounds or if the winner is the person who wins 2 of the 3 rounds. The first column dunks originate from the left side of the basket, 2nd column from right in front of the basket and right column from the right side of the basket. 3-Point Contest After learning that you can only be Jordan in the dunk contest it probably comes as no surprise that you can only be Larry Bird in the 3-Point Contest. This one took a minute to get the hang of. There is a rack of balls set up in the right corner of the floor and you hit a button to grab a ball and then tap A to jump and at the peek of your jump tap B to release the ball. This is different than how you shoot in the other game modes. You get 1 point for each ball that goes in the basket and 2 points if the last ball of each rack goes into the basket. After shooting the 5 balls in the first rack a new rack appears which you must run to and shoot again. You have 60 seconds to shoot 30 balls. Highest score after 3 rounds win the contest. Again, I’m unsure if it is a cumulative score over 3 rounds or just the person who wins 2 fo the 3 rounds. There is a pretty big glitch here. If you shoot a ball and pick up another ball before the first ball goes in then your first ball disappears. So, you have to wait for every shot to go in or miss before attempting another shot. The judges don’t have much to do here, they just show how many balls are left in each of the 5 racks you are shooting from. Be Careful When Pausing The Game On more than one occasion while I was playing someone would come into the room and say something and I’d go to pause the game. Muscle memory tells me that Start pauses NES games. On rare occasions Select pauses a game, this is one of those times. In most games where Select pauses the game the Start button does nothing, but not in Jordan Vs. Bird. The Start button takes you back to the menu of the game where you select which game mode you want to play. There is no “are you sure” message or anything, if you accidentally hit start it is basically the same as pushing the reset button on the console. Who thought this was a good idea? Final Thoughts This felt like a game that everyone knew some kid who had it. I remember playing it as a kid but I don’t really have many memories from it. It is a bit different than other basketball games from the same time and I feel like it is one of the first games people remember when it comes to sports and the NES. After playing it in 2021 I’m pretty sure they remember the game because of the 2 superstars attached to it and not because of the fun gameplay. This is not a good game. It was ambitious but there just isn’t enough meat on the bone to make it fun to play. It is glitchy and somehow it is both too hard (dunk and 3 point contest) and too easy (regular game) at the same time. View the full article

In the final installment of a 3 part audio play we find out how everything is connected and who Terry, the towns gravedigger, really is. If you have heard last year's audio play you may even notice a bit of a connection. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworX

The guys welcome special guest Wes from Reel Talk: A Movie Podcast for the 4th annual unappreciated horror movie episode. Each of the guys brings some intriguing movies. Wes and Jason find they love 1970's vampire twins and Matt reveals why he really skipped Luke's wedding. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworXWes Reel Talk: A Movie Podcast

I beat Starship Hector. It only took me 5 months https://hoz14nes.wordpress.com/2021/10/11/starship-hector/

The second installment of a 3 part audio play that will be released this October. All 3 installments revolve around strange stories in a small town narrated by Terry, the towns gravedigger. This installment features the story of a serial killer. Disclaimer: Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Keep up with everyone: Matt Video Game BlogMovie Review Facebook GroupMovie Review YouTube ChannelLuke Luke wrote a novel, Into the Wallwood, you can buy it HERE Jason Follow his art page on Facebook - Jason Shepard ArtworX

Genre: Shooter Publisher: Hudson Soft Total time played: 40 Hours Short review: A vertical and horizontal shooter that is easy to pick up and nearly impossible to master. Interesting links related to Starship Hector Full Playthrough (19min 16sec)SoundtrackThis Won’t Take Too Long This was my first time playing Starship Hector. When my random number generator told me this was the next game I needed to play I immediately went to find TMR playing through the game on YouTube. I also went to www.NESMania.com and saw that the game received a fun rating of 10/10 and a difficulty rating of 4.5 out of 10. TMR beat the game in under 3 hours. I guess you don’t become the first guy to beat every NES game on camera without being really good at video games. While I agree this is a very fun game and it is very polished with great music and responsive controls it is also one of the hardest games I’ve played for the blog up until now. I would give this a 9/10 or 10/10 for difficulty. What I thought was going to take a few hours ended up taking months. What Kind of Game is it? Starship Hector is a shooter that features 6 stages. The odd numbered stages are vertical shooters and the even number shooters are horizontal shooters that are broken up into two sections, an outdoor section and an indoor section. How Do You Play? Your ship is equipped with 2 shots, both have unlimited ammo and there are no upgrades or alternate weapons. The B button shoots your straight bullets that are used for hitting any enemy ships. The A button shoots a shot that attacks enemies and structures on the ground. In the vertical shooting stages this isn’t obvious, in the horizontal shooting stages B shoots straight and A lobs to the ground. The goal of the game is to survive each stage and beat the boss at the end. You start with 3 lives and there are no continues. You earn an extra life at 200,000 points, 500,000 points and 1,000,000 points. Shooting as much stuff as possible is a necessity for 2 reasons: you need the points and the more stuff you shoot the more points you getif you don’t start killing the bad guys the screen gets overrun quickly causing the action to slow down and the bullets become invisible as they flicker because of the limited NES hardware.The start of level 1, I saw this screen a lot Are There Powerups? There are not powerups in the traditional sense. You have the same guns throughout the entire game. Each stage features a structure that if you shoot it releases what look like mini hot dogs that replenish your health. I found these to be a double edged sword. Sure, it was nice to be able to replenish health but they were almost always placed in a spot that caused enemies to swarm and you have to decide do you want to shoot the bad guys or shoot the thing that spits out hotdogs. Many times I’d end up losing more health than I gained trying to eat the hotdogs. Speaking of health, you do have a health bar and it is fairly substantial looking on the screen. But it really doesn’t mean much. If you hit a wall it is instant death, if you come into directly contact with an enemy it is instant death. It will provide a small buffer if you get hit by 2-3 bullets but for the most part the game feels like a one hit kill kind of game. In the vertical levels there are a bunch of hidden spots on the ground that you can shoot with the A button. Some of these reveal what appears to be glowing wiring like you’d see on a computer motherboard, but, very small, maybe the size of a dime on the screen. Shooting this spot after it is revealed will destroy every ground enemy currently on screen. Many times it is necessary to reveal the spot and let the screen scroll to allow more enemies to appear before shooting it. This way you get the maximum benefit of the screen clearing item. Keep in mind, this has no effect on flying enemies. Stage 2. What you can’t see here is those 4 orange guys on screen were about to shoot 12 bullets at me. There are also hidden items that when shot a dozen or so times reveal a letter. These letters spell out H-E-C-T-O-R. I thought you’d get something for spelling out the word but you don’t. However, in level 5 one of the letters always seemed to give me a “Hector Bonus” which played some fun music and gave me a lot of points. Ouch, My Arm! I can honestly say this is the only game I’ve ever played where I physically am not strong enough to play it. There is no rapid fire and you have to shoot constantly if you stand a chance at surviving. Each run I’d have to change my grip multiple times and pause and stretch my right arm. After a single stage of mashing the buttons my forearm would start seizing up. I tried pulling out the NES Advantage controller and turning on the turbo which quickly killed all enemies. Unfortunately, I am not good with a joystick (that’s what she said) so I did worse than using the regular non-turbo controller. Eventually I learned the levels so well I knew when I could lay off of constantly firing my weapon and give myself a couple of second break in each stage without pausing. This is what I felt like after playing through Starship Hector. My shooting arm got a good workout. The Bosses I have to say, as hard as the stages were the bosses were all pretty easy. Sure, I died several times on most of the bosses but I never felt like they were unfair. If I got hit it was my fault. There are no checkpoints in the game so if you get to the boss and die it is back to the start of the level. Stage 3 Boss – Shoot his eyes closed to defeat him AI Manipulation I watched probably every video of people playing through this game on YouTube and learned a few things. In the first part of horizontal scrolling stages 4 and 6 if you move your ship to the top left corner of the screen above the icon showing how many lives you have left it makes the stages much easier. Most of the enemies go right by and never hit you and the few that can hit you are easily taken out. Once I discovered this those stages became much easier. Going Against My Instinct Another thing I learned in the horizontal stages is that you want to keep your ship close to the front of the screen. This seems counterintuitive as it gives you less time to react to enemies appearing from the right. But, many times the enemies appearing from the right are on the ground and you can take them out before they start firing bullets at you. I found this to be the saving grace on the last part of the final stage. Once I learned to move closer to the right edge of the screen than I was comfortable with I started doing better. Don’t get me wrong, even with these tricks the game is tough and you really do have to just memorize it. If you don’t know where the enemies are coming from they are hard to react to. Luckily, the levels are all much harder than the bosses. If you can get to a boss 2-3 times you should be able to easily learn the pattern and take them out quickly. It Sure Doesn’t Look That Hard If you watched me play Starship Hector you’d think it didn’t look hard. The game looks to move at a slow pace and the way I’ve memorized every level makes it easy for me to dodge bullets and move my ship to prepare for the next threat. I’ve played so many times I could probably beat the first few levels with my eyes closed. I think if I played 2-3 times each night instead of 2-3 times per week I’d have beaten it long ago. Final Level/Boss The final level is a side scrolling level that features 2 sections, an outside section and an indoor. Once I learned that you can literally hang out in the top left corner of the screen in the outside section that part became very easy. The inside section will put all your skills and stamina to the test. There are a lot of one hit kills and if you can avoid them you still have the dozens of enemies and dozens of dozens of bullets to dodge. It didn’t happen often, but, once I learned the level inside and out I could sometimes get to the final boss with full health. When this happened my heart rate went into overdrive and my right forearm was on fire from mashing the buttons to shoot the enemies in the level. The boss isn’t that hard but the anticipation of beating the game after months of trial and error really made the final minutes of the game an edge of my seat thrill ride. The final boss has 2 phases. Phase 1 you must take out the shield surrounding it. You can shoot the shield or drop bombs on top of it. I found dropping bombs was safer so that is what I did. Phase 2 you must shoot the boss in the eye. I didn’t realize this for probably 4-5 attempts and continued to drop bombs from above which I didn’t realize didn’t damage the boss at all. Once I found the secret rhythm of moving above the boss as far to the right side of the screen and wait for the boss to shoot 2 waves of bullets and then quickly moving the ship in front of the bosses eye to shoot it and repeating this the final boss became very easy. The final boss…it is giving off a bit of a Mother Brain from Metroid vibe. Final Thoughts While it did take me months to beat this game it wasn’t something I got to play every day. The game is fast paced and short so when I did have a chance to play I’d get 3-4 good attempts in. I’d usually stop once my arm got too sore and it was effecting my gameplay. By the day I beat the game every level felt almost like second nature. I should probably record myself playing through it before I lose the muscle memory. I never grew tired of the game as it is very well designed. I do think a more generous health bar, level check points and continues would have elevated my thoughts on this game. I have absolutely no complaints other than the difficulty. I feel like most people wouldn’t spend the time to give this one a chance, but, if you do you will find a very competent shooter. View the full article