Hoskat

The first 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 a story of Nate, a new boy in town who meets a girl and her dog while walking in the woods. 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 going back to school. It turns out the first day back to school left an imprint and there are stories about avoiding bullies, making friends and asking out teachers. 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 Gabe from Reel Talk: A Movie Podcast to discuss their favorite music of 1998. Some time is spent analyzing the lyrics or Meet Virginia, Gabe realizes he likes depressing songs and Matt talks about the best lyrics from the Can-I-Bus album. 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 ArtworXGabe Reel Talk: A Movie Podcast

The guys sit down to talk about the TV shows that shaped their life in 1993.

The guys sit down to talk about the pools, parks and vacations that shaped them. Matt and Luke introduce Jason to the childhood classic game M.A.S.H. Matt tells the story of Luke getting body slammed by a WCW wrestler and flashing his entire baseball team. Matt and Luke talk about their friend Taylor’s pool where they spent a lot of their summer days hanging out.

It's hard to believe that Matt, Luke and Jason have now recorded 50 episodes of The Lost Art of Podcast. The guys talk about their favorite episodes and favorite moments from episodes past. Don Knotts and James Brown stop in for a visit and the guys confuse each other on video game release dates as they talk through their favorite video games of 1986. Wordpress Site: https://thelostartofpodcast.wordpress.com/ Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/TheLostArtOfPodcast Matt's Video Game Blog: https://hoz14nes.wordpress.com/

Genre: Action Publisher: Data East Total time played: 2 hours Short review: An early beat em up that plays similar to Double Dragon but doesn’t have quite as much charm. Interesting links related to Bad Dudes Speed Run (15min 07sec)SoundtrackVideo Review (TheHeineHouse)Memories I have a vague memory of playing this as a kid. I’m pretty sure that there was an extra lives code that we used to beat the game. The only things I remembered were that the Level 1 boss is Karnov from the NES game Karnov and that at some point in the early 90’s I rented Two Crude Dudes on Sega Genesis which felt like a sequel to Bad Dudes. What’s the Story? In the late 1980’s everything was bad. First there was Michael Jackson’s hit song Bad and then there was Bad Dudes on the NES and then there was Lucas from The Wizard, he had the Power Glove…which was also Bad. In this game two bad dudes are hired to rescue the president. That’s right, the secret service couldn’t handle it so they hired two guys in black tank tops to do the job. I’ve always wondered why the president was kidnapped by ninjas. We never find out. Controls This is one of those unique NES games where B jumps and A attacks. No matter how many games I play like this it never feels natural. Jump: B High Jump: B + Up Jump Down to a Lower Platform: B + Down Jump Kick: B + A Spinning Jump Kick: B + A + Right or Left Punch: A Foot Sweep: A + Down Fire Punch: Hold A until character begins flashing and then release A Pick Up Item: Down + A while standing next to item Power Ups What would an NES game be without enemies who drop powerups? Luckily for us only the red enemies drop power ups so we know if we see a red ninja we definitely want to take him out and see what goodies he leaves. Clock: if a ninja drops a clock you can pick it up to add some time to the stage. At the end of the stage you get points for how much time is left on the clock. But, points don’t matter and I never once ran out of time so this power up was useless. I still always pick it up though. Soda: If you’ve ever played a beat em up game before you probably already know that a soda replenishes health. The powerups stay on screen until you pick them up or walk out of frame. This was handy if I found a soda can while I had full health. I could fight some guys until I needed it and then pick it up. Nunchaku: the weapon of choice for Michaelangelo Turtle (I assume that is his last name). This weapon seems to be much more powerful than the regular punch and has a longer range. It does have one downside though. The gray ninjas throw what I assume are ninja stars at you, you can punch or knife them out of the air but your dude isn’t bad enough to swat them away with the nunchaku so you almost always take a hit. Knife: Pretty much the exact same benefits as the nunchaku but can hit the gray ninja’s ninja stars out of the air so this is a much more useful weapon. Stage 1 – The Streets To no ones surprise the president wasn’t on the streets In this stage your bad dude takes it to the streets where he must fight a bunch of street ninjas before finally reaching the stage 1 boss, Karnov. Being the first stage a spent the first few times I played Bad Dudes to try out all the moves mentioned in the section above and mastered them as best I could. Then, on subsequent playthroughs I discovered that if you just do the spinning jump kick across the stage you can skip most of the enemies and reach the boss in well under a minute. In a game like Double Dragon you can’t move forward until all enemies are defeated. On top of that you earn experience points that help you learn new moves. In Bad Dudes none of that happens, you can rush through the stages and not kill all the ninjas because there is no advantage for doing so. This is the type of game where you would expect to earn an extra life when you hit a certain number of points. But, you’d be wrong. The only way to earn an extra life is to complete a stage. To beat Karnov I found hitting him with the fire punch and then immediately jumping up or down to the higher/lower level and waiting on him to jump next to me and then hitting him with the fire punch again worked wonders. Most times I could beat him without taking a hit. Karnov, the stage one boss in a perfectly timed screenshot where it looks like his chest is censored Stage 2 – Top of the Truck How are there so many guys on this moving truck? The bad dudes now find themselves on top of a really long semi moving down the highway. This is an autoscroller level meaning you can’t move forward until the screen scrolls by itself. The screen scrolls very very slowly so be prepared to punch and kick a lot of ninjas. You can’t skip fights in this stage like you could in stage 1. Be careful, you can fall between the trailers and land on the road below. This doesn’t kill you but does take a big chunk of health and because the truck is moving it is hard to jump back up top. Eventually the truck stops and you must defeat the stage 2 boss. After I beat the game I found out the best strategy is to stand on the hood of the truck and hit the guy with the fire punch as he tries to jump up and hit you. But, I took the less glamorous approach of just mashing buttons. I didn’t know his name but called him long claws short boy Stage 3 – The Sewer What was it with ninjas hanging out in sewers in the 1980s? No ninja turtles here, just regular old ninjas. This stage I handled much like stage 1. Just jump kick as fast as you can to the right until you reach the boss. There are some spots where you have to jump over holes which makes this slightly harder than stage 1. If you fall in the hole you don’t lose a life you just lose some health from the stinky sewer water touching your tank top. The boss in stage 3 is a regular looking ninja. But, as you approach that regular ninja turns into 5 ninjas. Lucky for us the NES isn’t super powerful so even though there are 5 ninjas on screen only 2 of them can attack you at once. Once you defeat 4 of the ninjas you get to fight the main ninja. After hitting him a couple of times he turns back into 5 ninjas. Rinse and repeat a few times to take him out. It is impossible to get a shot of all 5 ninjas on screen due to the NES screen flicker. I won’t explain how it works here but is a neat trick to get more items on screen at once than the NES hardware can handle Stage 4 – The Jungle The jungle plays just like the streets and the sewer with a different background. In the jungle you fight some more ninjas. This is the first stage to feature vertical scrolling.It is pretty clunky but makes the stage feel bigger than it is. After you reach a certain spot in the stage and clear out all the ninjas the screen freezes and then begin to very clunkily pan down. Once the screen stops moving you can drop to a lower level and continue forward. This doesn’t add much to the game but I guess the developers wanted to try it out anyway. The stage 4 boss is impossible if you don’t know what you are doing and super easy if you do. My first couple of attempts ended on this stage. The boss is really strong so you want to not let him hit you (seems so obvious). When the boss is close, hit him with a fire punch, he will jump back and wave his arms and then walk towards you again. Hit him with another fire punch where he will jump back and do a back flip kick. Be sure you aren’t too close when he does his punch or back flip kick and you’ll be fine. This fight is all about timing and going slow and steady. A robot! Stage 5 – The Train Just like the top of the truck level, but, now we autoscroll left This is the stage that gave me the most trouble. It is another auto scrolling stage but this time it scrolls much faster. It isn’t super fast but much faster than the snails pace of stage 2. The gaps between the train cars are larger making it easier to fall below and take out a lot of your health. There are also a lot of ninjas here. The regular blue guys aren’t bad but the gray guys that throw projectiles, the fire ninjas (yes, fire ninjas), short guys, jumping sword guys, girl ninjas and even a green Karnov (stage 1 boss) make this stage much harder than anything that came before. On top of the storm of ninjas the final boss is tough. He swings a rope with a spear on the end of it above his head. (This could be (but I doubt it) where the idea for Scorpion’s weapon in Mortal Kombat came from.) I never found a good strategy on this guy. Much like the stage 2 boss I just mashed buttons and tried to dodge his attacks. The key for me was to not die in earlier stages. Since you earn an extra life at the end of each stage it would be possible to have 5 or 6 lives on this stage giving me a little buffer. While each stage ends with a digitized voice saying “I’m Bad” I would have preferred this boss saying “Get Over Here” Stage 6 – The Cave These bad dudes have literally looked everywhere for the president. The cave plays just like the streets or the jungle or the sewer. There is one added stage obstacle, the falling stalactite. Much like the earlier side scroller stages I’d just run and jump as fast as I could through the barrage of enemies, over spike pits, holes and dogs (yes, we are fighting dogs now, or maybe foxes?) There really isn’t much to note about this stage that is different than what we’ve seen before. The final boss is fast and has a long stick that does a lot of damage. The one saving grace is there is a red ninja who drops a can of soda that sticks around once the boss shows up. I used this to my advantage and picked it up at the last moment when my health was low. Even so, this guy was hard to beat without losing a life. Prepare to lose a life on this guy Stage 7 – The Warehouse lots of ninjas on screen at once here After searching high and low we ended up in a warehouse full on ninjas where every enemy you have encountered in the game has come to heal after you beat them earlier. The stage itself is just as straight forward and easy to skip as most of the others but once you get to the end you are faced with the famous old school video game boss rush mode where you must fight every end stage boss in a row. It seemed like they were all a little easier than when you first fought them but I can’t be sure since this time they don’t have a life bar. You also don’t fight the bosses in the same order but Karnov is still first making him the only boss you fight 3 times. They must have really liked this character as he ended up getting his own spin off game after Bad Dudes. It has been a while since I’ve played Karnov but I’m pretty sure there is no mention of the time he was involved in capturing the US President. After defeating all the bosses again you meet the final boss of the game and fight him on a helicopter. Things don’t get much more epic than this on the NES. The boss looks like the lead singer of an 80’s hair band and honestly I can’t tell you much else about him. I had 1 life left so was pretty nervous once I got here and just mashed buttons and somehow took him out. I don’t remember what kind of moves he performed as I think I got lucky and caught him in a pattern where he couldn’t hit me. A fight to the death on the side of a helicopter. Final Thoughts Bad Dudes is a bit clunky to play but is pretty fun. It doesn’t take long to get the hang of it and there does seem to be some skill involved. It took me 7 tries to beat the game which is much shorter than the past few games I’ve played. The game is not easy but not frustratingly hard. I would say the difficulty balance is nearly perfect. This isn’t a great game but it is a good game and one I’d recommend playing. From beginning to end you can beat it in 20-30 minutes. I’ve now saved the president and seen one of the greatest end screens on the NES where the President thanks me for saving his life by going to get a burger with me. Classic. View the full article

The guys sit down to discuss one of cultural icon and one of the most dominant athletes of all-time, Bo Jackson. Starting in Bessemer, AL through his childhood, high school, college and professional career Bo impressed everyone he met. Jason wasn’t as familiar with Bo Jackson as Matt and Luke so they try to convince him of Bo’s greatness.

Genre: Action Publisher: LJN Total time played: 10 Hours Short review: Does a decent job of hitting all of the beats of the film of the same name but it fails to make a video game worth playing. Interesting links related to Back to the Future Speedrun (17min 11sec)SoundtrackVideo Review (Angry Video Game Nerd)Video Review (LJN Defender)Where Have I Been? It has been a while since I posted a review which means it has been 3 months since I have beaten an NES game. This is partly due to the fact that I lucked into a PS5 and have been playing through Spider-Man Miles Morales and partially because I started a YouTube channel where I am posting short spoiler free movie reviews. No fear, I’m still playing NES and hope to have a nice run of fun and easy games so it isn’t 3 months between reviews again. An All Time Classic To me, Back to the Future is a perfect movie. On top of being a perfect movie I also have a strong nostalgic attachment to it based on how young I was when I first saw it. As much as me and pretty much everyone else my age loves the movie I don’t really remember anyone ever talking about the NES game. I wonder why? It’s Kind of Like the Movie On paper this game sounds just like the movie. We get to see our hero Marty McFly riding a skateboard down the street, we see him in the 50’s diner, trying to keep his mother from falling in love with him, inventing rock n roll to make his parents fall in love and barreling down the street at 88mph to travel back to 1985. We even see the photo of him and his siblings that is slowly fading away. How could the game fail? Level 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 5 The first stage of the game you find Marty walking vertically from the bottom to the top of the screen. The goal is to get to the end of the street before time runs out. On the way there you have to dodge bullies like Biff from the movie. You also can find a skateboard just like Marty in the movie and it makes you move a lot faster. It’s so much like the movie!! At the bottom of the screen is a photo of your family. If you take too long to complete the level the family photo fades away. This also happens in the movie, if Marty doesn’t get back to modern day before his photo fades he won’t exist. To combat this you must pick up a lot of clocks in the street to delay the photo from fading. Oh, also, there are open manholes, a lot of bees, hula hooping girls, bowling pins, men carrying invisible panes of glass, oil slicks and other obstacles that aren’t in the movie. I guess they just needed to add a few things to flesh out the levels and make them more game like. Hope you like this screen as you’ll be seeing it a lot. But then the next level is the exact same thing again, and so is the next level and the level after that. In fact, the only differences in the levels are the color palette and how many obstacles there are. Honestly, the level design isn’t bad. The issue is there is only really one level in the entire game. It’s the repetition that makes the game so bad. Tips Points are your friend, you get extra lives pretty frequently (I think every 30,000 points).If you pick up a bowling ball you can hurl it at enemies and rack up points quickly. Bees and Bowling pins each reward you with 500 points so knock out as many as you can. You keep the bowling ball until you die.Pick up as many clocks as you can, if you don’t the photo of your family in the bottom of the screen will slowly fade away. If it disappears you lose a life. In the last stages (after the guitar mini-game) I don’t think you need to pick up clocks anymore because it seems the photo no longer fades.The “Time” in the bottom right corner counts down really fast, if it hits 0 you lose a life. In the later levels if you hit a single object in the level and fall over it is nearly impossible to complete the stage before time runs out.The skateboard is your friend. You travel much quicker on the skateboard meaning you can finish levels quickly and every second left adds to your score. You keep the skateboard until you die. The skateboard doesn’t appear unless you have the bowling ball.At the end of each stage if you jump in the air you will earn between 100-900 points depending on how high in the air you are when the stage ends.The bees attack Marty from every angle and circle around him constantly, if you stand close to the bottom of the screen the bees will disappear when they try to fly behind Marty. This is a must in later stages.Music The movie Back to the Future has an iconic score and soundtrack. The music is timeless just like the movie. The music in the game isn’t horrible, it has a pretty decent little melody to it. But, just like the repetitive level design the music in the game is also repetitive. The melody in the ONLY song in the game (other the the guitar mini-game which has a rendition of Johnny B Goode) is short, very very short. You will hear the less than 10 seconds loop something like 250 times as you play through the game. By the end you will have been driven crazy by the song. Have you ever heard how police will sometimes blast annoying music to draw people out of a house or building during hostage situations? I honestly can’t think of any song that would drive someone out quicker than the song in the game. Mini Games The game features a map that has a few iconic locations from the movie. As you progress through the one level over and over again you reach one of these locations and play a mini game from the movie. In fact, these games are by far the best part of the game even if they are all short and not that fun. The game map The Diner – Marty finds himself behind the counter at the diner throwing milkshakes at approaching bullies. In order to beat the game you must hit 50 bullies before a single bully makes it to the diner counter. To me, this is the hardest mini game in the entire game. The issue is Marty can stand in 6 different positions behind the counter and must be perfectly aligned with the approaching bullies to hit them. As you hit more bullies they move faster making it imperative to have perfect placement and quick reaction time to beat the level. As you get close to 50 bullies they began throwing projectiles at Marty adding another layer of complexity. If you are lucky, a waitress will bring you a milkshake, if you pick up the milkshake you can hit the B button to clear all bullies from the screen. Honestly, once you get past this mini-game the rest of them aren’t that bad. While it only takes 50 points to win the maximum score is 99. On more than 1 occasion I scored all 99 possible points. The School – On the surface this mini game looks and plays a lot like the diner mini game. But, now you are on the left side of the screen and instead of hitting bullies with milkshakes you are blocking kisses with a school book. What makes this easier than the diner is the hearts always come at the same rate and are pretty easy to catch. Again you must catch 50 to beat the level. I was able to score the maximum score of 99 points more than half of the time. The Dance – In the movie’s climax Marty plays guitar on stage at the school dance where his parents fall in love and in the process he invents rock n roll music. In this mini game Marty must catch music notes to fill up the heart meter until his parents kiss. This is the easiest mini game in my opinion…once you know what to do. Marty can face left or right and move his guitar to a high position, mid position or low position. Notes fly at him from both directions and he must align his guitar to catch them. The sharp notes always land in the high position, the regular notes land in the mid position and the flat notes land in the low position. Once you know this the game is pretty easy. I bet Chuck Berry will want to hear about this. The Lightning Storm – The final level is just like the climax of the movie. Marty must drive the Deloreon time machine at 88MPH and hit the pole right as lightning strikes in order to generate the power needed to return to 1985. It is an all or nothing event and the game takes this a little too seriously. You get a single try on the final stage, if you don’t do it, no matter how many lives you have left it is game over! Talk about unfair. If you hit any lightning bolts in the road it slows you down quite a bit. From what I can tell this is 100% luck as the lightning strikes so quickly it is almost impossible to dodge. No Cigar I experienced the greatest frustration any gamer can experience. I got as close to beating this game as humanly possible without doing it. As stated above you must be traveling 88MPH in the final stage as you cross the “finish line” or it is an instant game over. On one of my attempts I crossed the line going 87MPH. This is equivalent to being at the final boss in a game and getting game over when one more hit would have killed him. Where is doc? It wasn’t uncommon for NES games based off of movies like Batman to have incredible cut scenes recreating scenes from the movie. Back to the Future didn’t do that. There were cut scenes but it was just text scenes like you may see in a silent film. If other games didn’t have great cut scenes I wouldn’t feel like this was an omission but just a limitation of the hardware. But, if Ninja Gaiden can have killer cut scenes that makes me think the programmers of Back to the Future were just lazy or ran out of time. But, I can live without the cut scenes if the game included the co-star of the movie Doc Brown. He is such an iconic character and is a huge part of the story. He deserved more than being the voice of the words in the silent movie style cut scenes. Final Thoughts I honestly didn’t hate this game. it is really simple and repetitive but is mildly entertaining. It hits a lot more of the movie beats than most games in the genre even if the co-star of the movie, Doc Brown, is never shown on screen. I’d say this game is worth playing but not worth the time investment to beat. It is a short game, 15-20 minutes, but, it will take you dozens of attempts to get through it unless you get really lucky. By the time I beat the game I could get to the final stage every time. From what I’ve read and watched online the Deloreon stage seems to just be pure luck. The lightning bolts seems to be random and appear so quickly they are hard to dodge. You have to use your instincts to anticipate where they are going to land and get lucky. I had some theories that the better you did in the mini-games the easier the final stage would be but I ended up scrapping that idea after my dozens of attempts did not produce results to back up my hypothesis. View the full article

The guys sit down to discuss one of their all time favorite years in movies, 1987. Jason finally picks some movies that weren't panned by the critics and Luke picks a B movie that makes Jason proud. For the first time Luke doesn't bleep all of the cuss words (mostly Jason's) so for the first time, this is a PG-13 episode.

The guys sit down to discuss one of their all time favorite years in movies, 1987. Jason finally picks some movies that weren't panned by the critics and Luke picks a B movie that makes Jason proud. For the first time Luke doesn't bleep all of the cuss words (mostly Jason's) so for the first time, this is a PG-13 episode.

Hey guys, in between playing and collecting NES and podcasting I decided to start a movie review channel on YouTube. If that is your thing feel free to check it out. 1. 100% spoiler free 2. short videos because your time is valuable https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjj_z5oXUHPC_xl0EhUpCsA

The guys discuss their favorite songs and albums of 1995. Matt discovers he likes rap songs that give driving directions. Luke discusses the first album by his all time favorite band and the guys all agree the year was a huge year for female artists.

The guys discuss their favorite songs and albums of 1995. Matt discovers he likes rap songs that give driving directions. Luke discusses the first album by his all time favorite band and the guys all agree the year was a huge year for female artists.

The guys discuss the best TV shows of 1985. Turns out, Jason is really into cartoons aimed at young girls, Luke talks about watching G.I. Joe while sitting on a warm vent, Jason talks about the weird ritual he had when his ex-girlfriend was in the bathroom and Matt Mr. Belvedere's himself.

The guys discuss the best TV shows of 1985. Turns out, Jason is really into cartoons aimed at young girls, Luke talks about watching G.I. Joe while sitting on a warm vent, Jason talks about the weird ritual he had when his ex-girlfriend was in the bathroom and Matt Mr. Belvedere's himself.

Thanks guys! I can't believe how much I enjoyed this game.

Genre: Action Adventure RPG Publisher: Culture Brain Total time played: 10 Hours Short review: An ambitious game that fits snuggly in the action, adventure and RPG genre Interesting links related to The Magic of Scheherazade Speedrun (1hour 5minute)SoundtrackVideo Review (TwoHeadedGiant)Arnpoly Written ReviewOne Memory It’s funny how a single memory about a game can stick out so strongly in your mind. A memory about a game I never played that really isn’t even a large part of the game. Back in the early 1990’s my mom rented this game and played it for a few days. There was one part in the game where she was walking through a cave and kept falling into holes. We tried and tried but no matter what the holes seemed to always get us. We decided to call the 1-800 Nintendo help line. The man on the phone told us that the holes never move and that the best way to get through that section of the game is to put a piece of tape on the TV every time you fall into a hole and then the next time you get back to the place in question you can avoid the tape and avoid the hole. It worked! She was able to get through this section with tape on the TV. Literally all I remember is tape on the TV. I asked my mom about this recently and she has no memory of it. What Kind of Game? This is an action game with fun sword, shield and magic rod gameplay. It is an adventure game that takes you through time and lets you explore much like The Legend of Zelda or Willow. It has turn based battles like Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy. It has a cool mythological story like The Battle of Olympus but instead of ancient Greece it takes place in the Middle East. It also has some cryptic puzzles much like Castlevania II: Simon’s Quest. The Magic of Scheherazade is ambitious. It tries to fit a lot of cool concepts into the game and while most of them work none of them are 100% perfect. It is a fun game and luckily some of the more tedious stuff can be skipped completely. I liked this a lot more than I expected to. The Instruction Manual I don’t always read the instruction manual before playing a game (or before putting together IKEA furniture) but in this case I did and I’m glad I did. It is probably the most detailed manual of any NES game I’ve played. In fact, both the manual and game sometimes give too many hints. As an example, anytime there is a hidden room on a screen a message pops up and says “Use Oprin here” which is the magic that reveals hidden rooms. To me, it is cool that there are hidden things in the game but the fact the game tells you when there is a hidden room and tells you how to make it appear seems pointless. Just make the room not hidden and save me from having to cast a spell. Upon further research, it turns out that if your helper has died in battle they will not be able to tell you to cast Oprin until the holy man in town revives them. But, I never lost a single helper in battle so I didn’t realize this was the case (more on this below). Box Art The word Scheherazade is so illegible on the box it looks like a Scandinavian heavy metal band logo. The graphic artists gave up and just added the word Scheherazade again in legible font below the illegible font. Button Assignments This game explores a lot of unique ideas that aren’t seen in other games. On the surface, the game looks and plays like most other overhead action adventure games on the system. Many games feature sub-weapons that can be assigned to a button or used by hitting a combination of buttons but this is the first game I can remember playing where the player can set what both the A and B button do. Each button has a list of commands that grows as you progress through the game. While it seems that it gives you a bit of flexibility in how you play you quickly learn that even though you have the ability to change your play style I pretty much stuck with the magic rod on the B button and the Pampoo healing spell on the A button for most of the playthrough. Having to select an item to JUMP or SPEAK slows down the game. I wish the game was smart enough to know I was in a town and when I hit a button in front of a townsperson that I want to speak. So, in theory, this is a cool concept but it added a bit of extra work on the players part. Class Assignments At the start of the game you can select your character to be a Fighter, Magician or Saint. In a lot of RPG’s this selection will impact the entire game and how it is played. In The Magic of Sheherazade it doesn’t really effect anything. The Fighter is better with the sword, the Magician is better with the magical rod and the Saint is better at defense. But, at any time you can change your class by visiting any town’s holy man. This makes the selection much less important. I found the magician to be the most well rounded and only changed away from that class if it was needed for the story. In some cases you have to change classes to get a certain person (or tree) to talk to you. Buying Items Ah, the tried and true store that is in every RPG ever. When you visit a town you can buy a few items that are pretty standard throughout the game. The thing that makes it unique is that you can ask the clerk for a discount. He will either lower the item price or get mad and kick you out of the store. There is no penalty for asking for a discount and getting kicked out. You can just walk back in and buy the item. This is another cool concept that in execution is a bit unneeded. Bread – You can hold up to 10 of these. As you may have guessed eating this restores some health. Unlike many games if you run out of hit points your character auto eats bread and restores some hit points. So, think of this as a get out of dead free bread. Mashroob – I kept calling this a mushroom throughout my playthrough, it works exactly like the bread except instead of replenishing hit points it replenishes magic points. Carpet – Allows you to fast travel to a town. In theory this is a good idea but I found it didn’t work how I wanted it to as the town I wanted to go to either wasn’t in the travel list or I forgot the name of where I wanted to go and traveled to the wrong place. R. Seed – This rupia seed can be planted at the bottom of a hidden staircase somewhere in the world that is revealed by casting the Oprin spell during a solar eclipse. If you then travel forward in time through another hidden staircase somewhere else in the world and return to where the seed was planted you are rewarded with hundreds of coins. As enemies only drop 1 coin at a time and on rare occasions a 20 coin Money bag planting this seed it a must. As ridiculous and complex as it seems this is actually not bad as the hidden stairs aren’t that hidden and solar eclipses happen fairly often. Key – These are needed to open doors in the final temple of each chapter. Horn – In the final temple of each chapter you come to a room with 3 stone gargoyle statues. If you touch one they come to life and are hard to kill. If you hit them with a horn they stay stone and the locked door in the room opens. Again, it seems like there is no way you would ever figure this out but it is spelled out in the manual and townspeople remind you. Map – Buying a map is kind of pointless. It doesn’t provide you an overworld map, but a cheap graphical representation of the final temple in the chapter. In my experience the map was useless and the temples were generally small enough that 5 minutes of exploring would be enough to know where to go. Again, another concept that didn’t add anything to the game. Loan – This is the only game I can think where if you don’t have enough money to buy an item you can get a loan from the shop. I did have to do this a few times and then worried constantly that the loan would come due or would gain interest that I couldn’t repay. You never have to get a loan, but, doing so will save you a lot of time grinding and building money. Luckily I was able to pay back my loan by harvesting the Rupia Seed tree in the future. The Eclipse This is the only video game I know of that has an eclipse. As mentioned above, planting a R. Seed during an eclipse will reward the player with hundreds of coins. But, that’s not all. You also become more lucky if you visit a town casino during an eclipse. I wish I could talk more about the casino but I never spent any time in one. This is another example of a cool concept in the game that wasn’t needed. In a few of the chapters you could do some task to get a special spell that is only used in that chapter that would accomplish something to make the game a bit easier. As an example, in Chapter 2 there is a huge desert you walk through and it slowly drains your life as it is too hot. But, if you have the right spell and cast it during the eclipse it causes a huge rainstorm which turns the desert into a nice grassy field. This again is not needed in order to beat the chapter but it is a nice touch and something unseen in other NES games. Turn Based Battles When you start out the game you are in a town and you talk to people and then you exit the town and you are in an overworld much like in The Legend of Zelda or Willow. As you walk from screen to screen sometimes enemies appear that you can take care of with your sword or rod. This is the “action adventure” part of the game. But, every once in a while when you exit one screen and before the next screen loads you are thrown into a turn based battle much like in Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior. Example of a fun action adventure style battle. The first time this happened I was very confused. This is not the game I thought I was playing. The turn based battle is a bit clunkier and more complex than other classic RPG’s on the NES. You have to choose who you want to fight along side you and choose a formation. The farther into the game you get the more companions you have to choose between. I did a few of these battles and did not enjoy them at all. I did some research on the world wide web to see if I could pick up some tips to make them more enjoyable and less tedious. What I found blew my socks off. A random turn based battle in the middle of my action adventure game. It turns out, you don’t have to ever fight these battles. Before the enemy attacks you get the option to escape from the battle. If you try and fail you then must pick a formation and companion to fight alongside. If you choose “fight alone” you get another chance to escape. If this fails the battle begins and you get first move. At this point you can try to escape again. If you fail this 3rd time you are going to lose some hit points as the enemy will attack. But, in my experience, only a handful of times was I unsuccessful at escaping before I got attacked and I never had to try to escape more than 1 time after the battle actually started. I wish I could regale you all with tales of my hard fought battles and how the game has a cool feature that allows you to try to “make peace” with the enemy. But, alas, I never learned this game mechanic because I literally escaped from every battle. This is another example of a cool feature that wasn’t needed. Level Up Because this is an RPG you earn experience points for defeating enemies and every so often you character gains a level where your health, magic and attack power goes up and every once in a while you learn a new spell. The game has an interesting feature where you can only level up 5 times in each chapter and when you beat the chapter your character is automatically leveled up to the max level allowed for that chapter. I usually maxed out or got close to it in each chapter just by wandering around trying to figure out what to do but I like the idea of never being too weak to succeed in a chapter as you are auto-leveled up between chapters. This feature is the reason I never felt the need to learn the turn based battle system. I found much more success finding an easy enemy in the overworld and just fighting them over and over to get much needed experience. How To Play As I’ve mentioned above, the game is broken out into 5 chapters and each follows a very similar structure. I’m not going to walk through each chapter I’m just describe how the game plays in general. First off, this is a typical “save the princess” game where you must rescue a damsel in distress in each chapter and the last chapter you rescue your girlfriend/wife/something? You start each chapter in a town where you are told to talk to everyone. In the town the people will give you mild hints on what to do. You can visit a shop to buy items, a hotel to replenish your health/magic. Some towns have casinos. There is usually a holy man who can change your class or give you a password so you don’t have to beat the game in one sitting. Lastly, there is a university where you can pay some money to take classes to learn new skills. The university is sometimes hidden, but, don’t worry, your little helper will tell you when to cast Oprin to make it appear. Typically there are 3 classes in the university, 2 of which teach you a new battle formation to use in the turn based battles. As I mentioned above, I didn’t need this but never knew what I’d learn taking a class so learned them anyway. The last course will usually upgrade your sword, rod or armor. The upgraded item is proof that you have completed the class and is needed to talk to another wise man somewhere in the chapter. If you have the upgraded item the wise man will teach you a spell. Once you have explored everything the town has to offer you leave and explore the overworld. As the chapters progress the overworld maps get larger requiring more exploration. Usually there is another town to discover but the same amenities are found there. While exploring the overworld you will find a hidden door that takes you either into the future or the past. If you go through the door you will explore the same map in a different time. This is usually where you complete some other task that gives you access to the final temple of the chapter. Once you have completed this task you can then visit the final temple which plays much like a Zelda dungeon where you must fight guys, explore rooms, open locked doors and eventually get to a boss. The Bosses The end chapter bosses all look pretty cool and remind of the bosses in Fester’s Quest where they are huge, you are small and the background is solid black. Chapter 2 final boss Some of the bosses required certain spells or techniques to defeat. Because of this it is always important to talk to everyone in every town and explore every nook and cranny of every chapter. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t tell you when you’ve found everything and more times than not I got to the boss and could not defeat them. Luckily this is 2020 and the internet exists and led me in the right direction to find whatever person, place or thing I was missing to defeat the boss. I don’t think I would have liked the game nearly as much if I couldn’t use the collective knowledge of retro gamers on this game. I enjoyed figuring things out on my own, but sometimes that wasn’t possible so the internet saved me. Final Thoughts There is a lot to do in The Magic of Scheherazade. It is a very polished game that takes the best parts of a lot of other NES games and crams them into a tight 10 hour package. Unfortunately, the way the multiple games game mechanics are worked in seem like afterthoughts. Many of the cool features of the game can be completely skipped and aren’t needed to beat the game. I was thankful one of those was the turn based battles as I didn’t want to dive into learning that mess. But, the cool chapter specific spells that change the landscape, the planting a tree in the past and picking its fruit in the future and the inclusion of casino games were all ambitious but not needed to beat the game. I’m glad I got to experience some of these things but wish they had been more integral into the game play. The Magic of Scheherazade is a great game that I bet most people haven’t played or even heard of. If you read the manual and have Google close by there is a lot to enjoy about it. I think this one falls into the “hidden gem” realm for me. View the full article

The guys sit down to talk about their favorite Christmas TV specials. Matt talks about hooking up the internet for a rich lady and talks about all of the celebrities that died right after he watched their movies.

The guys sit down to talk about their favorite Christmas TV specials. Matt talks about hooking up the internet for a rich lady and talks about all of the celebrities that died right after he watched their movies.

Genre: Action Publisher: Konami Total time played: 2 Hours Short review: A game synonymous with the NES. The first truly great run and gun style action game. Interesting links related to Contra My Original Review From 2013Original SoundtrackHeavy Metal Contra SoundtrackSpeedrun (11 minutes 34 seconds)Contra Live Action Short FilmContra memories (James Rolfe aka Angry Video Game Nerd)Confession Time Never have I ever, until today, beaten Contra without the Konami code. In my defense, I never really tried. Before I started on my journey to beat every NES game, and honestly, not until I was 50 or so games into the journey did I start taking it seriously. That is why the first several reviews are not much more than a paragraph or two. The truth is, I wrote all of those reviews in a weekend while staying at my in-laws long after I had beaten the games so they weren’t fresh in my mind. This is one of the few games that I have “beaten” that I don’t feel great about since I did use the Konami Code so I wanted to play it the right way. Why Now? Why did I decide to revisit Contra even though there are 500 more games to beat? Well, the answer is simple. My daughter discovered “old games” which means I am spending a bit more time in my game room than I used to. While she plays “crooked Mario” (Mario 64) or Elmo or “the Mario with Yoshi” (Super Mario World) I needed a game I could quickly play, that allows me to pause and help her out if she gets stuck. I decided I’d try Contra as the next game on my quest to beat every game is a bit more involved. Like A Glove Turns out when you have played Contra as much as I have you slide back into it like it hasn’t been years since you have played it. It only took me 8 tries to beat the game without the code. Turns out slow and steady wins the race in Contra. I was so used to just running and shooting with no regard to my life as I usually have 30 of them to spare. I Don’t Remember Honestly, I have no idea when I first played Contra. It was a game I never owned and don’t remember renting but that is only because all of my cousins and friends seemed to own this game. When I think back on Contra I don’t have any specific memories, more of just a general feeling of nostalgia. Level by Level Jungle: This is where it starts, dropped into a jungle where you must fight your way through hoards of bad guys, guns, and avoid holes in order to break down the entrance to a base. What a great start to a game. You get to see a bridge explode, walk waste deep through water, and experience the Machine Gun and probably the best weapon on the NES, the Spread Gun (which I called squirt gun as a kid). Also, you get to hear one of the most high energy rockin songs on the NES. What a cool first level Base 1: How cool, the 2nd level is inside the enemies base and instead of a side scrolling game you move from the bottom to the top of the screen in an almost 3D like manner. Once you shoot all the glowing octagon looking things on the wall it will explode which disables the electric fence in front of you and lets you pass. If you duck, the bad guys bullets can’t hit you. But, beware, some of them throw grenades which can hit you while you duck. You need to also watch out for the rolling pins who comes your way across the floor, you can jump over them or blast them with you gun. Waterfall: Yet another new way to play. In level 3 you are now ascending a waterfall by jumping up and up and up dodging falling boulders, bullets and trying not to plunge to your death Base 2: This is basically just like level 2, but, this time there are more bad guys and the little octagons you have to hit are covered with a glowing square that you must break first. Snow Field: The obligatory snow level. My daughter asked why my guy didn’t have a shirt on and that he might get cold. I had never thought about it before but she is right. Also, unlike most video game snow levels your character doesn’t slip and slide on the ice, he controls the same as in every other stage. This is the first level in the game where things get a little tough. Multiple guys are shooting from all directions as well as grenades being launched from behind trees and also a couple of huge spike covered tanks that take a lot of bullets to take down. Energy Zone: Honestly, this is the level that kept me from ever trying to beat this game without the code. The level has a bunch of fire lasers that shoot out at you, some are random and some are on timers. I always found one laser to be really tough and I’d lose several lives making the 3 life run impossible. Thanks to YouTube I found some strategies that made this a non-issue and the level ended up not being that bad. Hanger: Turns out this is the level that game me the most trouble. Or, more specifically the boss (which is really just a door). Throughout this level you encounter spike walls, dropping claws and runaway mine carts on top of the regular flurry of bullets. Again, slow and steady wins the race. Alien Lair: The final stage puts you inside the Alien Lair, which may actually be inside an alien seeing as how the final boss is a giant human looking heart. I found this level to be much easier than level 7 as long as you take out the purple mouths that line the walls throughout. If you don’t they shoot some heat seeking white puff balls as you that can be a pain. Not the final boss Final Thoughts I can’t say anything about Contra that hasn’t been said better before. It is an all time classic that is fun and easy to pick up and play alone or with a friend. If you are intimidated by the one hit kills there is an easy to enter 30 lives code making the game much more manageable. I’m glad I finally took the little amount of time to actually beat the game without the code. View the full article

Genre: Puzzle Publisher: Nintendo Total time played: 4 Hours Short review: A knock off of Tetris featuring Nintendo characters and iconology. It’s a lot of fun but it seems to be more luck based than skill based. Interesting links related to Yoshi Video Review (CGRundertow) SoundtrackNot Much To Say You know, this doesn’t happen often but I don’t have a lot to say about Yoshi. It isn’t a game I really every played growing up so I don’t have any memories. It also is a pretty simplistic game so there isn’t a lot of narrative needed about how to play. I can say, I do really like the box art with that bright yellow background. How to Play This is basically a Tetris or Dr. Mario knockoff. Blocks fall from the top of the screen in pairs and your job is to move the blocks at the bottom of the screen to match the falling blocks. This is accomplished by placing Mario under two stacks and hitting A or B to swap the stacks. You can only match vertically and only 2 blocks at a time, so, there is no benefit to matching horizontally. Much like Tetris or Dr. Mario you have a few options when you start the game. You can choose the speed at which the blocks fall and the music you want to hear over and over and over again. You can also select between two game types. A and B flip the two stacks in Marios hands.Game A The goal here is to get as many points as possible, stay alive as long as possible. Don’t let the blocks touch the top of the screen or it is game over. Game B This is where the meat of the game is. Each level starts with a line or more of blocks already stacked, the level doesn’t end until you clear the board. There are 16 levels, each ends with Yoshi eating a fruit, when you get the pineapple you’ve seen all there is to see. The game keeps going but just repeats the previous prizes. This plays much like mode B in Tetris or Dr. Mario where you try to clear the board of already laid lines, viruses or character blocks. As expected, it starts off easy with only a single line to clear, but, by the end there is no room for error as all but 2 lines are filled with blocks at the start of the level. This is where luck comes in as the strategy only takes about 5 minutes to master. There is no rhyme or reason to the order the blocks fall so it is possible to get to the final few levels and have the random blocks that fall not have a match and causing an immediate game over. It is pretty unfair but that is how the game plays. I expected in the higher levels to have more than two character blocks drop at a time but it was always just two blocks. The speed at which they fell increased slightly as the levels increased but the difficulty curve seemed to eventually flatten out. Check out the images below to see the similarities between the 3 games. Character Blocks Regular Character Blocks: There are 4 of these, they all behave exactly the same, just look different. If you match two vertically they disappear. Goomba, Pirahna Plant, Ghost and Squid. Eggs: There are 2 egg blocks, a top egg and a bottom egg. The bottom egg can be matched only with another bottom egg or a top egg. If you combine a top egg and bottom egg it will clear out any blocks between them. As an example, if your stack from bottom to top is Bottom Egg, Goomba, Squid, Pirahna Plant, Top Egg the entire group of enemies will be removed at once. The top egg is kind of a free play. It disappears no matter where it is dropped and has the added benefit of clearing out anything between it and a bottom egg. I Got Lucky As I have said, the skill part of Yoshi can be learned and mastered rather quickly. It just take a bit of luck to get past level 16. I would say maybe 8-10 attempts total were needed to beat the game. But, it could have taken much longer as you never know what is going to happen with the blocks in those last few levels. In my winning run the last couple of levels graced me with several drops of 2 top eggshells which actually gave me a minute to take note of where the pieces on the board were and prepare them for the next drop. This small moments of fresh air allowed me to stay focused and compose myself enough to beat level 16. I then quickly died on level 17 but I didn’t mind since I’d seen all the game had to offer. Final Thoughts Yoshi is a pretty fun game. But, it doesn’t really feel like a full game. You can see everything it has to offer in just a couple of minutes. It is fun with cute characters, catchy music and solid controls. But, there just isn’t much to it. There are no advanced strategies and the fact that it is possible for the randomly falling blocks to make it impossible for you to make a match gives Yoshi a bit too much randomness to attract a competitive community to dump a bunch of time into the game. I would definitely recommend Yoshi to people and may even pick up and play every once in a while but it just isn’t an all time classic. View the full article

In this episode the guys talk about the era of N64 and Playstation and the video games they played in 1998. Jason declared he was too busy going on dates to play video games so we brought in Matt's college roommate Jeremy to fill in. Jason is still here adding color commentary. There is also a surprising amount of talk about flipping cars and Matt drinks a salad.

In this episode the guys talk about the era of N64 and Playstation and the video games they played in 1998. Jason declared he was too busy going on dates to play video games so we brought in Matt's college roommate Jeremy to fill in. Jason is still here adding color commentary. There is also a surprising amount of talk about flipping cars and Matt drinks a salad.

Genre: Sports Publisher: Gametek Total time played: 7 hours Short review: A pretty decent version of one of my favorite gameshows from childhood, American Gladiators. Interesting links related to American Gladiators Speedrun (MixMastaPJ) (22min 08secs)Written WalkthroughSoundtrackArnpoly Written ReviewI’m Back! Technically I never left, but, it has been 3 months since I beat an NES game so I figured I’d fill in my fan on where I have been. My 3 year old daughter has discovered video games (NES and Switch) and has decided her bedtime is about 10pm. So, my free time is spent playing Mickey’s Safari in Letterland, Fisher Price: Firehouse Rescue, Fisher Price: I Can Remember and just recently she discovered Kirby. When we aren’t playing NES we are playing Mario Odyssey or Link’s Awakening on Switch. So, I haven’t had the energy or motivation to play games on my own after playing so much with her recently. This Is Just Like The Show I have played this game several times over the years and always loved how similar it was to the show. Sure, not all of the events are here and neither are all of the gladiators, but, it is a really great representation of why I loved the show show much. The intro is unique to any other game on the NES. As the credits are playing before the title screen your character jumps around the screen across the credits as if they were pathways. It is a pretty cool effect. Unfortunately, you can’t skip it and it takes 15-20 seconds to actually get to the title screen and the older I get the more every second counts. Free time is harder to come by how cool, your characters runs across the copyright! How to Play You don’t get to pick a character or enter a name, you just hit start and choose an event. There are 5 events to choose from, all from the hit TV show but most of them have a little spin to make them more game friendly and less realistic than on the show. You can play the events in any order. There are 4 regular stages and a final stage where you must tackle “The Eliminator”. I’ll discuss each of the events in the below sections. You start the game with 5 lives and earn an extra life one of the 3 ways: Beat all 5 events, you get a life when you go to the next stage.Put a ball in all 5 canisters in PowerballGet the trophy at the top of the 4th rope swing in Human CannonballHuman Cannonball Human Cannonball I always start each stage by tackling Human Cannonball because it is the event that I feel I am the worst at. If I can get it out of the way first I have a better chance of beating all the events. You start on the left side of the screen and the goal is to knock the gladiator on the right side of the screen off of his pedestal. Both your pedestal and the gladiators are going up and down and the rope swings back and forth above your head. This is an event of timing. You must first time your jump to grab the rope as close to the bottom of the rope as you can and release from the rope at the perfect angle to knock the gladiator down. Each level adds some element of difficulty, for example, the speed at which the pedestals go up and down, the speed of the rope swinging and sometimes the gladiator is off screen and you must swing for several seconds to finally reach him. The 3rd gladiator of each level has a power-up that looks like a fist, it flies across the screen and if you time it right you can grab it and gain the ability to move up and down the rope. If you don’t get this power-up wherever you grab the rope is where you are stuck. On the 4th Gladiator at the top of the rope is a trophy that houses a 1UP. You can only get this if you picked up the fist power-up on the 3rd gladiator. I can’t tell you how many times I reset the game because of how many times I flew over the gladiator or hit his pedestal. I think the key is to release the rope right as your character stretches his legs out in front of him. Human Cannonball Joust Joust As a kid this was my least favorite event in the game. No matter how much I played it I never figured out how to get any better at it. Much like Human Cannonball you have to face 4 gladiators to win. After the 3rd gladiator a flashing pugil stick flies towards your character. If you can grab it the 4th gladiator can be knocked off the pedestal in 1 hit. Thanks to the internet this event finally started to make sense. The gladiator can attack high, mid or low. You have to counter his hits: If he attacks high you attack lowIf he attacks mid you attack highIf he attacks low you attack midThat’s really all there is to it. The tricky part is that even though each gladiator has a simple pattern they repeat over and over again they don’t attack at the same frequency so you can’t learn the rhythm, you have to kind of feel the attacks on the fly. After each gladiator you have to jump between a few platforms to get to the next gladiator. This was pretty simple but I did fall more times than I care to admit costing a precious life. I found the 3rd stage to by far be the hardest for Joust. In fact, the 3rd stage joust may have been the hardest stage in the entire game. For this reason, after I beat the 3rd stage I would start each attempt by entering the password to start on the 4th and final stage just so I didn’t have to do that 3rd stage Joust again. This was a double edged sword, because I didn’t play the first 3 levels I wasn’t able to build up a large amount of extra lives which come in handy on The Eliminator, but, I didn’t have to suffer through 3rd stage Joust. Joust! The Wall The Wall! To me, this is the most well thought out and fun event in the game. The goal is to reach the top of the wall while avoiding gladiators and making sure not to miss a hand hold. The controls are pretty complex yet intuitive. The A button controls your right hand and the B button controls your left hand. Tapping either button while hitting any direction on the controller will reach your hand to grab the wall. In order to keep from falling one of your hands must be on the wall at all times. In the later stages this takes a bit more skill as in some places the hand holds are spaced to where you have to perfectly place your hands to grab them. On top of this, gladiators come at you from all directions. I found it best to move into a spot where the gladiator is forced to miss hand holds or hits a wall or falls off the wall. The gladiators in this event are stupid and always come at you in a straight line even if there are obstacles in the way. I think this is the event in the game people remember most, and for good reason. It is fun, it is challenging and it is fair. If you fall it is your own fault. The Wall, you better be careful rounding those corners. Assault Assault, those tennis balls are shot at 100mph! As a kid watching American Gladiators on TV this is the event I would have been the most afraid to do. The gladiator shoots tennis balls at the contestant at 100mph. I would not have wanted to get hit with one of those! In the NES game you are tasked with defeating the gladiator one of two ways: Hit him with the guns scattered along the stage 3-4 timesReach the end before you are hit 3 times.The gladiator is not stationary in this event, he moves back and forth across the screen randomly shooting balls at you. 3 hits and you are a goner. In the first couple of stages I found picking up the guns, hiding behind the barriers and shooting the gladiator was a good strategy. In the 4th stage I found just running back and forth to get to the end was the way to go. This event is pretty random and even though I beat it more times than I didn’t it was never a sure thing. Should I shoot or should I run? Powerball Someone was sure to get tackled in Powerball every episode. A breather from the other intense events. Powerball is the only event in the game where you can’t lose a life. The goal of the event is to put a ball into each of the 5 canisters scattered across the play field. It won’t be easy though as 3 gladiators spastically run all around the screen. If a gladiator touches you the ball you are carrying is knocked from your hand and you must run across the screen to pick up another. If you put a ball in all 5 canisters before time runs out you get a 1UP. It is possible to actually earn 2 1UPs on each stage but I was never fast enough to pull it off. I usually saved this event for last simply because it was a sure thing to beat it. I didn’t want to waste time playing though it early only to get game over on one of the harder events. Put the balls in each canister for a 1UP The Eliminator This is a pretty great final stage of a game. While it is nothing like The Eliminator in the show it is also very similar to The Eliminator in the show. This final stage is broken out into 5 sections. If you die you return to the beginning of the section where you died. Section 1 – Platforms Not a lot of room for error here. In this section you move from left to right jumping between platforms while the screen slowly auto scrolls. While you jump around off screen gladiators throw an insane amount of medicine balls at you. If you are hit by a medicine ball you are knocked back a few feet. If you are ducking when hit by a medicine ball it bounces off of you. The trick is to avoid as many balls as possible and duck for the ones you can’t avoid. The biggest issue with all sections of this stage is that if the auto scrolling screen catches up with you and you go off the left side of the screen you lose a life. This wouldn’t be so tough but the game is very unforgiving because if you are even close to the left side of the screen you lose a life. I’m not sure if this is a glitch or just bad hit detection but I found it to be the most unfair thing in the entire game. Section 2 – Hand Bike No way I could do this in real life. A staple of the TV show this section features a hand bike where you must use your upper body strength to pedal a bike while hanging. In the game the medicine balls are still coming fast and furious so the ultimate goal is just to move back and forth on the hand bike while avoiding the balls. I found this to be the easiest section of The Eliminator. Section 3 – Conveyor Belts Those are conveyor belts This plays exactly like section 1 except instead of jumping between platforms you are now jumping between conveyor belts adding an extra layer of difficulty as the platforms now move under your feet. Section 4 – Hand Bike This is exactly the same as section 2 Section 5 – Zip Lines This part is just about as hard and unforgiving as the final boss in any NES game. In order to beat this section you have to perfectly time your jumps between 8 zip lines. Each zipline is faster than the last and you must find the perfect place to release and jump to the next one. It took me probably 20 attempts to actually get this far as the entire Eliminator stage is no joke. I probably had another 5 attempts and never got past the 3rd zip line when I had a great idea. I needed to study this last section of the game. I watched several YouTube videos at 25% speed to find the perfect place to release from each zipline. After a few tries I was able to get to zipline 5 but I still felt like there was more I could do. I ended up taking a screenshot of each of the 8 ziplines at the exact moment when I needed to release. Finally It has been 3 months since I beat a game on the NES. But, that is because I haven’t had much time to play. I would go 2-3 weeks at a time without getting a chance to play American Gladiators. I was ready to be done with it, not because it isn’t fun, not because I didn’t enjoy playing it, but, because 3 months is too long to spend on a game. If I take this long between every game I’ll still be trying to beat games when I’m 126 years old. On the attempt when I beat the game I was doing really poorly on The Eliminator. I ended up losing 5 lives on section 1 leaving me with only a single life to beat the entire level. Somehow that is exactly what I did. When I got to the ziplines I knew I had a chance. I was excited to try out my new strategy. Luckily you can pause the game so I would pause on each zipline and study the picture to know exactly where to release my hold. And, on my first try I beat it. Hopefully the above images can help others conquer this challenging last level. This was actually a pretty fun game. It isn’t an all time classic but I can definitely see myself pulling it out from time to time and playing through it. Now, I need to hop over to YouTube and watch some clips of the TV Show. View the full article