Hoskat

In the 3rd installment of under-appreciated horror movies the guys sit down to talk about 15 more movies that more people should have seen. Not a single movie discussed is actually in 3D

In the 3rd installment of under-appreciated horror movies the guys sit down to talk about 15 more movies that more people should have seen. Not a single movie discussed is actually in 3D

This episode is a departure from our regular nostalgic look at 80’s and 90’s culture. To get everyone in the mood for Halloween our lovable co-host Luke wrote this horror story about a serial killer named “Jack the Machine” and it was turned into a short audio play. 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. View the full article

This episode is a departure from our regular nostalgic look at 80’s and 90’s culture. To get everyone in the mood for Halloween our lovable co-host Luke wrote this horror story about a serial killer named “Jack the Machine” and it was turned into a short audio play. 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.

The guys sit down to discuss the man who is synonymous with basketball, Michael Jordan. On the journey of Jordan's life through high school, college, NBA, baseball and his father's murder they detour back to some stories of growing up playing basketball.

The guys sit down to discuss the man who is synonymous with basketball, Michael Jordan. On the journey of Jordan's life through high school, college, NBA, baseball and his father's murder they detour back to some stories of growing up playing basketball.

I unchecked the RSS feed in the "manage blog" section. Hopefully that fixes the issue. I tried to delete the extra posts earlier but couldn't figure out how to do it.

I actually forgot I had this set up to post here at all. It is automated so there had to have been a glitch either here or with my podcast hosting site. Sorry

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE The guys sit and discuss the music of 1987. Matt and Luke found the year to be underwhelming, Jason had a hard time narrowing his picks. Matt talks about the time he met one of the biggest rock stars of all time, got backstage passes to a legendary band’s concert and met a satanic metal head. Spotify playlist of all songs on the list: Matt’s #5 – Aerosmith – Dude Looks Like A Lady Matt’s #4 – Guns N Roses – Welcome To The Jungle Matt’s #3 – Eazy-E – Boyz N Tha Hood Matt’s #2 – Michael Jackson – Man In The Mirror Matt’s #1 – R.EM. – It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) Jason’s #5 – Richard Marx – Endless Summer Nights Jason’s #4 – White Snake – Still Of The Night Jason’s #3 – The Breakfast Club – Right On Track Jason’s #2 – Depeche Mode – Never Let Me Down Again Jason #1 – Prince – You Got The Look Luke’s #5 – George Harrison – I’ve Got My Mind Set On You Luke’s #4 – Rick Astley – Never Going To Give You Up Luke’s #3 – Fleetwood Mac – Little Lies Luke #2 – George Michael – Faith Luke’s #1 – R.EM. – It’s The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) Left Photo: Matt (right), his dad (left) and Los Lobos guitarist David Hidalgo (Middle) Right Photo: Matt, his mom and dad and members of Los Lobos Glen Benton, lead singer/bassist of Deicide who Matt ran into at a concert. View the full article

The guys sit and discuss the music of 1987. Matt and Luke found the year to be underwhelming, Jason had a hard time narrowing his picks. Matt talks about the time he met one of the biggest rock stars of all time, got backstage passes to a legendary band's concert and met a satanic metal head. View the full article

The guys sit and discuss the music of 1987. Matt and Luke found the year to be underwhelming, Jason had a hard time narrowing his picks. Matt talks about the time he met one of the biggest rock stars of all time, got backstage passes to a legendary band's concert and met a satanic metal head. View the full article

Genre: Shooter Publisher: American Sammy Total time played: 12 Hours Short review: A pretty straight forward auto-scrolling shooter where you kill hundreds of guys while riding on a motorcycle. Interesting links related to Thundercade Full Game Playthrough (Arnpoly) (27min 22sec)SoundtrackReview (Take On The NES Library)Ahh… Memories I rented this game one time as a kid and remember nothing about it but I remember a lot about the situation surrounding me renting the game. It was a Friday night and my dad took me to the video store and then to Arby’s. As we pulled in the driveway my cousin Sarah burst through the front door to greet us, she was going to be staying the night that night. As she ran down the sidewalk to meet us her foot hit the edge of the sidewalk and her leg gave out, she broke her ankle right there in front of me and my dad. Needless to say, we went to the hospital for her to get a cast. I remember nothing about the actual game, but the vision of Sarah breaking her ankle is burnt into my mind. Another Arcade Port The game started in the arcades and was made to be hard so you kept putting in quarter after quarter. It falls into the shooter genre called “Bullet Hell” where no matter where you are on the screen there are dozens of bullets headed your way. I was actually pretty impressed how well the NES levels and the arcade game levels matched. So much so that the same power-ups are located in the same places. The NES seems to have a bit fewer enemies, probably because the NES hardware couldn’t handle it. I’m thankful for this as the game was hard enough without double the enemies. 6 bad guys and a tank to worry about (From the Arcade Game) How Do You Win? B shoots and A uses your bomb. The goal is to stay alive until the screen stops scrolling. This game is only 4 levels long and can be beaten in about 20-25 minutes. That is if it doesn’t take you 100 attempts like it took me. Throughout each level you control a motorcycle and move around the screen in all directions dodging bullets and shooting bad guys. To help you along your way you will find different sidecars that add fire power to your arsenal. These sidecars are hidden inside bushes, trees or inside buildings. To find them you must blow up everything in your path. The Powerups There are a lot of power-ups in the game but they fall into just a few categories and are pretty each to keep straight. Your motorcycle can have two different gun power-ups, one sidecar on each side of the bike. The key is, you have to run into the power-up on the side of the motorcycle you want that power-up. More times than I care to admit I hit a power-up with the wrong side of my bike replacing a good gun with a crappy gun. Green Guns – These guns shoot bullets about halfway across the screen and there are a lot of variants. Some shoot forward, some shoots sideways, some shoot 1 bullet, some shoot 2 bullets wide, some shoot big bullets that do a lot of damage and some shoot double bullets that do a lot of damage. Red Guns – These guns shoot bullets the full way across the screen and for that reason are much better than the green guns. All the same shooting variants are available for the red guns. Bombs – You start each life with 3 bombs and use them by hitting A. These bombs clear all bullets off of the screen and blazes a path about 3x as wide as your motorcycle and wipes out all enemies in its path. If you use a 2nd bomb within a few seconds it covers the entire screen instead of just the straight wide path up the middle. Each level has several hidden bombs, the most I had at once was 6, but, that is because I used them a lot during tough sections and unloaded them on the end level bosses. V Gun – This is the most powerful gun in the game and adds a sidecar to each side of your bike that shoot a double wide big bullet at a 45 degree angle. The game gets much easier with this gun. Even though this was the best gun in the game I prefer the double forward shooting red guns to this one as I found it easier to clear a path in front of me. Now we’re cooking with gas! 1UP – Adds an extra life. Each level has a couple of these scattered throughout. If you want to beat the game you will need to remember where they all are. The Bosses At the end of levels 1, 2 and 4 there are bosses. Level 3 just ends as your motorcycle drives off the screen. Both level 1 and level 2 feature the same boss, a giant plane that moves left and right taking up half the screen with 5 guns that each shoot a 3-way shot at you. This is where I used most of my bombs. If you beat the boss quickly enough a B appears behind the plane and if you pick it up it takes you to a bonus stage. If you don’t beat the plane fast enough it eventually just moves towards the bottom of the screen and drives away. If this happens you don’t get a bonus stage or a cut scene, your bike just keeps driving and the next level starts. I found this to be a nice touch and it makes the game feel like one huge level (all 4 levels combines are still shorter than level 1 of Ikari Warriors). But, if you want to beat the game you better beat the plane and get to that bonus stage. Level 1 boss…looks just like Level 2 boss Bonus Stage In the bonus stage a big plane flies over and drops a lot of parachutes that contain power-ups. There isn’t a way to get every parachute but you want to get as many as you can. Most of the time the parachute contains a missile that shoots with your regular gun, unfortunately it only lasts a few shots so it isn’t much help in the next stage. The parachute could also be a V Gun, a bomb or a 1UP, if this is the case the parachute opens up and you see what the item will be. My goal was to always try to get the 1UP. Get them parachutes Are You Kidding Me? Is Thundercade hard? Yes, yes it is. But, it is also fair. I just didn’t know that for my first 60+ attempts. For weeks (maybe months, its hard to know for sure in 2020) I played Thundercade on my Retron 5 on my 65″ HDTV. Even though every time you play the game the enemies appear in the same locations and the power-ups never change locations I just couldn’t get a feel for the game. On a couple of attempts I’d get to the end of Level 3 but the game was starting to feel impossible. On a whim I attempted the game on a tube TV with real NES hardware and on my very first attempt I got to the final boss of the game. Lag on HDTV’s is real y’all! I guess it was subtle enough and I had no history with the game that I didn’t notice but once I played on real hardware on an old TV the difficulty of the game dropped 50%. Are You Kidding Me Part 2? I got pretty good at the first 3 levels of the game over my dozens and dozens of attempts. Many times I could get to the final boss without ever using a continue. A few nights before I beat the game I was having a pretty good run and was on the final lead up to the end of the game when the power flickered and the game reset. It defeated my confidence and I decided to call it quits for the night. I went upstairs and complained to my wife about it and that is when I learned she was trying to turn on the smart lights in our living room but hit the wrong button and accidentally turned off the power strip in the game room. Sometimes having smart plugs throughout the house can be painful. That Final Boss The final boss of the game is a power plant with 10 windows. Each window features a guy who pops up, shoots some bullets and then ducks out of sight. Your bombs are no help here, they do not remove the onslaught of bullets and I didn’t notice them doing any damage to the guy either. Also, having upgraded weapons didn’t seem to help here either. The sidecars make your motorcycle wider and easier for the bullets to hit. To win you must shoot each guy a lot, I have no idea how many times because I was too busy dodging bullets. But, I do know that the guy turns red when he has only 1 hit left. I can’t tell you how good it felt to get that last hit on the red guys. Each one you kill means that is one less bullet coming at you. In theory, this should make the boss easier as you go along, and it does. I had more than one attempt where I got in a groove and would knock out guys one at a time only having 2 or 3 left. I would start tensing up thinking “this is the time” and then without fail a bunch of helicopters would appear out of no where and shoot at me. These helicopters show up in every level and were my biggest cause of pain throughout the game. They move erratically and shoot erratically making them hard to dodge. I found these guys showing up on the final boss as the only unfair part in the game. In fact, two times I had only one guy left on the final boss and he was red, that means a single shot from me would kill him. But, those helicopters showed up and killed me. Every attempt I would shoot around 5,000 times (the game keeps track) and I was 1 shot from the end and died. This is the most frustrated I’ve ever been playing a game. It took several tries but I eventually got lucky enough and finally beat the game. I never really learned a strategy to make the final boss easier. But, on my winning attempt I was in the zone, I had 8 lives and had yet to use a continue when I finally got to the power plant. I blew through the boss so quickly I never once got shot and the helicopters must have been scared because they didn’t show up. This is one of the few games I can remember 1CC (1 Credit clear), meaning I did it without continuing. The Final Showdown Final Thoughts I feel so stupid wasting several hours over several weeks playing the game on a TV with lag that would never let me beat it. Now I’m wondering if my struggles with Best of the Best and Ikari Warriors can be partially blamed on the TV? I disliked those games so much I shant be attempting them again on a tube TV so that mystery will remain a mystery. Once I played Thundercade under the right conditions I grew to like it quite a bit. It is basic but it has a pretty fair difficulty and good amount of gun combinations that made it never boring. It isn’t an all time classic but it is in the top of the mid-tier of NES game View the full article

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE TO YOUR COMPUTER The guys sit down to discuss their favorite Amusement Park and County Fair memories from the past 30 years. That first hill into the small tunnel on the Beast at King’s Island is killerMatt and Luke both had these cheap Beast hats with a built in mulletThe Vortex at King’s Island is about to be removed but the guys have so many memories of riding it.That slide on the right is a doozy!Flight of Fear at King’s Island was previously known as The Outer Limits The Smurf’s ride from King’s Island Panthom Theater, that replaced the Smurf’s ride at King’s Island Evil Knievil at King’s Island The band Matt discovered the night before a King’s Island trip Jason and his family at King’s Island in 1986 Loch Ness Monster at Busch Garden’s Williamsburg with the interlocking loops.Matt loved this runaway ski lift coaster so much he bought a shot glass so he’d never forget it. Son of Beast at King’s Island, the only wooden coaster with a loop (until it was torn down). Look how much wood!Chang at Kentucky Kingdom, a stand up coaster that packed a lot of G-ForceMatt and Luke’s dog Boomer who ran away to join the carney’s at the fair and later found Matt at Sears. View the full article

The guys sit down to talk about their favorite Amusement Park and County Fair memories from the past 30 years. View the full article

The guys sit down to talk about their favorite Amusement Park and County Fair memories from the past 30 years. View the full article

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE TO YOUR COMPUTER In their first episode recorded remotely the guys sit down to discuss the our favorite TV shows that premiered or ended in 1995 and the biggest events of the year including the OJ Simpson Trial, Cal Ripken’s Ironman record, a murder on the Jenny Jones show and celebrities who died on Christmas Day. Matt’s #5 – The Critic Matt’s #4 – Mr. Show Matt’s #3 – Full House Matt’s #2 – Ren & Stimpy Matt’s #1 – The State Jason’s #5 – Taxicab Confessions Jason’s #4 – Full House Jason’s #3 – The Love Connection Jason’s #2 – Supermarket Sweep Jason’s #1 – Batman: The Animated Series Luke’s #5 – Sliders Luke’s #4 – Mad TV Sopranos on PAX TV (edited for content) Luke’s #3 – The Drew Carrey Show Luke’s #2 – My Brother and Me Luke’s #1 – Goosebumps Ryan Gosling int he Goosebumps episode “Say Cheese and Die” View the full article

In their first episode recorded remotely the guys sit down to discuss the our favorite TV shows that premiered or ended in 1995 and the biggest events of the year including the OJ Simpson Trial, Cal Ripken's Ironman record, a murder on the Jenny Jones show and celebrities who died on Christmas Day.

In their first episode recorded remotely the guys sit down to discuss the our favorite TV shows that premiered or ended in 1995 and the biggest events of the year including the OJ Simpson Trial, Cal Ripken's Ironman record, a murder on the Jenny Jones show and celebrities who died on Christmas Day.

Genre: Action Publisher: American Sammy Total time played: 3.5 Hours Short review: An action platformer that plays like Ninja Gaiden mixed with Batman, with some first person action as well as some driving levels. The game also has a pretty involved story. Interesting links related to Vice: Project Doom SoundtrackSpeedrun (14min 28sec)All Cutscenes Fresh Air After so many long, hard and/or boring games in a row it was nice to get a short and to the point game with good controls, a good story and no unfairness…well, almost no unfairness. That’s Different The first stage of the game is a top down driving stage that plays like Spy Hunter where your goal is to drive fast and clear anything in your path with a gun. Before playing the stage you are presented with the beginning of a story that feels like a futuristic film noir. After beating this level you are presented with more story and then finally, the title screen. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a game with playable prologue before the title screen, at least not on the NES. Starts out as a driving game Hey, Wait A Minute After the first driving level I had assumed the game was a driving game, but, I was wrong. The first level after the title screen is a side scrolling platformer that plays like a mixture of Batman and Ninja Gaiden, but, not as good as either of those. The bulk of the game looks and plays like this. Controls and Gameplay The gameplay is really straight forward, A jumps, B swings your sword. Most enemies are killed with a single hit and bosses are all pretty easy with easy to distinguish patterns. Throughout each level the enemies you kill will drop 1 of 5 items: Coin – Collect 100 of these for an extra life. There are unlimited continues and levels are pretty short so I never really felt the need for these extra lives. Skinny tube?? – This replenishes 2 points on your health Hunk of Meat – This replenishes a lot more of your health G – Adds grenades to your inventory. To select the Grenade, hit select until it is highlighted on the heads up display at the bottom of the screen. Grenades are thrown in an arc and have a pretty big blast radius. B – Adds bullets to your arsenal. To shoot the gun, hit select until the gun is highlighted. The gun has a longer range than the sword but not much longer. I found this to be the least helpful weapon in the game. As a side note, I used the sword 90% of the time, so much so that I rarely if ever ran out of bullets or grenades. It wasn’t until I was on the last level that I realized B was for bullets and G was for Grenades. I thought G was for gun and B was for bomb. Another Game? After a few levels you are presented with the 3rd type of gameplay, it is a first person on rails shooter where you move the cursor over the enemies and fire. There are 2 of these levels in the game, both are short, which is good, any longer and they would have gotten old. A different type of level The Story I’m not going to go into the story, mainly because I don’t remember exactly what it is about as I only read through it once. But, I can’t think of another game on the NES with a more detailed story. In fact, this video, shows just the games cutscenes and is 14 minutes long! Compare that to a game like Super Mario Bros. which has 0 cutscenes and no story. Pretty Shallow The music in the game is pretty great, the controls are solid and the level backgrounds and gameplay is pretty varied. But, there really is no depth to the game, no strategy. For the most part, you just use your sword and walk through the levels fairly easy. I’d say of the 11 levels I got through 6 of them on my first try. With unlimited continues it was easy to practice the harder levels until I mastered them. I also found the enemies to be pretty random and not detailed. There didn’t seem to be any consistency to the enemies, it was just a bunch of random guys with non-memorable looks. But, as I said earlier, the game is mainly polished and feels incredible after the last few games I’ve had to suffer through. That Final Level Difficulty Spike As expected, the further into the game you get the harder it is. The final stage was pretty difficult, guys jumping out and throwing stuff at you from every which way. There are even some big holes you have to navigate while dodging triple ninja stars thrown by Ninjas who come out of the holes. Not only that, the narrow platforms provided disintegrate if you stand on them for too long. I spent more time on this level than all other levels combined. But, I eventually got pretty good at the level and could get to the final boss every time. The Final Boss The final boss is pretty underwhelming, its just a guy who looks like you, he jumps between the middle and both sides of the screen and fires his gun if you are not close to him and swings a sword if you are. After a few tries I found the secret, when he lands a jump and shoots his gun you can hit Down+Forward and run toward him in a ducked position avoiding his bullets. Get close and hit him a few times with your sword. If you hit Down+Forward to early, before he shoots his first bullet at you, he will shoot from a crouched position and you won’t be able to run toward him. After getting the feel for this he is easy to beat. The Final Final Boss This is one of those games with 2 final bosses and of course the final final boss is massive and a nightmare to beat. The first 5 or so times I got to the final boss I didn’t get a single hit in before I died. After watching some videos I found a strategy, stand under his legs so that when he lands a jump you can swing your sword at him from below. This didn’t work for me, you have to be in the perfect position or he is going to kill you quick. After a lot of trial and error I found that you can easily dodge the projectiles he fires when he lands. After dodging, throw a bomb to do one hit point of damage. Unfortunately, I never had enough bombs to actually beat him. If you die on the final boss you have to play through the final stage again, I was able to find a spot in the final level where I could farm bombs. As it turns out, the enemies re-spawn if you walk off screen and then walk back. On top of this, the enemies always drops the same items. So, I was able to gather a lot of bombs and refill my health before the final fight. I was feeling confident with full health and 32 bombs, more than enough to beat the boss. But, after hitting him twice the screen turned red and I died. I thought the game glitched so I tried again, same result. It turns out there is a timer in the game, one that never came into play before this level. There isn’t time to farm health and bombs because then you won’t have enough time to beat the boss!! After some trial and error I learned that throwing a grenade at the boss right before he lands his jump allows you enough time to dodge his projectiles and because the grenade explodes so slowly it actually hits him two times. With this new strategy I only needed half as many grenades! This guy took longer to beat than the rest of the game combined. Final Thoughts After a bunch of brutal and un-fun games Vice: Project Doom felt like a masterpiece. But, it isn’t a masterpiece, it is just a really solid game that is in the top 20% on the NES library but never reaches that all-time classic feel. As detailed and long as the story was I was disappointed that the end of the game was just a quick story wrap up and this: View the full article

Genre: Fighting Publisher: Electro Brain Total time played: 10 Hours Short review: I guess this qualifies as a karate game but I never once felt in control so it almost felt like I was watching a poorly animated 8-bit cartoon over and over until I was lucky enough to win. Interesting links related to Best of the Best: Karate Championship Video Review (FilmnStuff) Soundtrack They Tried I’ll give it to the developers, they really tried to make this game realistic. The graphics are pretty decent and the idea to use the stage lighting as the life bars was pretty unique. But, the way the game flows, the menus, the objectives and the manual leave a lot to be desired. The Menu This is the menu screen, looks nice, right? Let’s go through the options here and try to make sense of them. Reset: I never clicked this button but I assume it resets the game or at least resets the stats back to the default? Pad vs NES: this means the player on the left is controlled by a human and the player on the right is controlled by the computer. You can change this to Pad Vs Pad to play 2 player. Not sure why they decided to go against the best practice naming that every other NES game uses. Grading: Clicking this screen shows all the characters in the game with how much money they have won. But, at no point in the game does it tell you how much money each fight is worth or how much you have. The only way to see your name on this screen is to have enough money to be on it. Hitting the A button while looking at the money takes you to a screen that shows little icons which represent the trophies each player has. This same trophy icon appears near the fighters mugshot on the menu. How you win/lose these is not clearly explained, but, I think I finally have it figured out. When you win match you get the trophy of your opponent and they get your lowest ranked trophy. So, it is possible to have your name by the trophy on the Grading screen but that trophy now shows on your opponent on the menu screen. Select Hits: Until I found a random YouTube comment that was shown on screen as a screenshot in a different YouTube video on this game I had no idea how this screen worked. The manual mentions there are 32 moves in the game and you can assign 8 of them to your fighter at a time. On the Select Hits screen there are 8 options. What I assumed was that you could assign a specific move to each of the 8 options creating your 8 unique moves. But, I couldn’t figure out how to assign moves. What you actually do is select from 8 presets each with a set of 8 pre-assigned moves. Load: Allows the player to put in a password to continue an earlier game. You aren’t loading anything, you are inputting a password Save: Generates a password. Again, it doesn’t save anything, just gives you a password you can “load” into the game. Name: Allows you to change the name of your character Preview: Allows you to watch a preview of you vs. the opponent. This served no purpose and was the equivalent of not hitting start in a game and the game then shows you a demo of the game. Physical Type: This pops up your 3 attributes and compares them to your opponent. From what I gather these numbers mean absolutely nothing. Sometimes I would fight an opponent who literally had half of the stats I did and I would lose 10 times in a row. I understand the concept here but it appears to be completely broken. Match: This is what you select when you are ready to lose to fight your next opponent. Next: The game lets you fight whoever you want whenever you want. I prefer the traditional fighting game method of moving on to the next guy automatically. All of the opponents look exactly the same and the only way to know if you have beaten them is to remember which trophy they got when you beat them. Training: This is where you build up the stats of your 3 attributes. The first 2 require you to just mash the buttons to fill up a meter while the 3rd requires you to hit Up, Left or Down depending on which of the 3 training pads on the screen protrude from the wall. Honestly, this is the only part of the game I felt like I had a decent handle on. But, like I said earlier, I never noticed any increase in my fighting ability as my stats increased and it is possible to increase your stats too much and not be allowed to fight an opponent. One big annoyance was that if you lose a match your stats go down a bit meaning you have to train more. Eventually I gave up on this and just would put in the password to avoid having to do the training again. Honestly it didn’t save much time but my thumbs started hurting from the button mashing required in training. Not bad looking. Unfortunately this is 90% of the game. Am I Controlling This? The first 3-4 hours of attempts in this game I never once felt like I had control of my character. Even after beating the game I still can’t fully explain how the controls work. But, I will explain how I think it to works. First off, the time between hitting a button and the character performing the moves is so slow it was really hard to know what button performed what action. I think this was done to keep people from just button mashing, you are supposed to plot out your moves. This is to make the game more realistic, it just frustrated me. Holding or tapping the Down button will dodge or block your opponents moves. It was hard to time with the huge lag in button input but if you got lucky and dodge a few attacks your life meter increases a bit. To pull off an attack you hit A or B (both buttons do the same thing) and tap the D-Pad in any of the 8 directions. Sometimes hitting the D-Pad without pressing A or B would also perform a move. I think pressing A+B with no direction pressed may also perform a move. Again, I never felt comfortable as to what I was hitting actually did. No Spam! In a lot of fighting games, beginners will perform the same move over and over, this is called spamming and often times a spammed move is impossible to stop meaning experienced players will lose to beginners. In Mortal Kombat for example, if you continuously foot sweep your opponent you can win most matches. It isn’t fun and doesn’t take skill so is generally frowned upon in the gaming community. Best of the Best made sure you couldn’t spam to win a match. If you attempt the same move 3 times in a row the referee stops the match for a few seconds and resets the fighter’s positions. How To Win A Match? At the start of the match there are 4 lights above each fighter. As you hit your opponent the lights dim and then go out. When all 4 lights go out the fighter will fall to the ground and not get up. The other way to win is to make it through all 5 rounds and have more lights than your opponent. I never once went to decision, I always won or lost in the first 4 rounds, with exception of the last fight where it did go into the 5th round. How To Beat the Game? You have to beat every opponent in the game plus some secret opponents that will ask you to fight after you have won a few matches in a row. Basically, I just kept fighting until I saw the screen telling me I was the best of the best. The Breakthrough The comment that saved my sanity Before I found this comment I won 6-7 matches in about 8 hours. After reading this and using this strategy I won my next 5 matches in a row. Without this I don’t think I would have been able to beat the game. So, basically, this is a way to spam the opponent with the same attacks without triggering the games anti-spam feature. It made the game much better but still not fun. But, you can’t argue with results. The below image of me beating a fighter who had the highest number for all 3 stats, 99. Look at those splits? What you don’t see is how violently the character does the splits, he lands so hard he bounces off the ground! Final Thoughts This game is pretty ambitious, the developers tried to make a realistic fighting game. But, the NES hardware couldn’t really handle the vision of the game designers and because of that the game is nearly unplayable. Honestly, if there wasn’t such a lag between inputting controls and seeing the action performed on screen the game would have been decent. But, because I never once felt in control I have to give this game a really low rating of 1 heart. View the full article

9 for me. I've only seen the movie one time but it would definitely make my top 20 of the 2010's. I honestly can't believe a movie about a college jazz drummer could be as edge of your seat thrilling as it is.

Genre: Action/Arcade Publisher: SNK Total time played: 5 Hours Short review: An early port of a quarter munching arcade game where you play as a soldier who must infiltrate the most heavily guarded base of all time. It is one of the hardest games on the NES. Interesting links related to Ikari Warriors The Mexican Runner Playthrough (55min 25secs) Soundtrack Video Review (Angry Video Game Nerd) Level Maps Arnpoly Written Review Oh Boy After playing through 40+ hours of Bases Loaded I was so thankful the next game, Section Z, was fun and not too difficult. However, the the random number generator gods were not in my favor after I beat Section Z in late December. I made the decision to take a week off and go into 2020 with a fresh palette and start knocking some games off my list. Another reason for the short break is that I got a Nintendo Switch for Christmas and wanted to play through some of the games I’ve heard such great things about. My heart sank when the next game I would be playing was Ikari Warriors. I had always heard such bad things about this game, it moves really slow, is full of flickering enemies that are too numerous for the NES’s processor to handle and it was supposed to be really difficult. I Cheated One of the most impressive feats on the NES is to beat Ikari Warriors the legit way, without every continuing. In the gaming world this is known as 1CC (1 Credit Clear), the phrase was coined (pun intended) back in the heyday of arcades when skilled gamers could beat a game on a single quarter. When Ikari Warriors was in the arcade the point was to kill the player as quickly as possible to make them put in quarter after quarter trying to finish the game. When the game got ported to the NES this became less necessary as no matter how many tries the player needed to beat the game they only had to buy the game once. The instruction manual does not mention anything about being able to continue, you get 3 lives and when you lose them it is game over, unless you score enough points to earn an extra life. However, the developers had a secret weapon up their sleeve. Whether this was left in the final game on purpose or was a mistake that was never removed is a mystery to me. Either way, it is one of the best known secrets on the NES that when you die in Ikari Warrios you can quickly tap ABBA on the controller to get another continue. Entering that code is the equivalent of putting another quarter in the arcade. If you want to watch someone beat the game without “putting in another quarter” watch the video by The Mexican Runner. It took him 37 hours to finally do it. If you want to read a detailed description of what it takes to master the game, read Arnpoly’s review, it took him just over 100 hours. If you want to hear someone make excuses and complain about Ikari Warriors keep reading, you are in the right place. ABBA As hinted above, I used the ABBA continue code and I used it a lot. The first few nights I played the game I played it legit, when I got a game over I started over. I felt like I was doing pretty well, I would kill some guys, eventually getting to a tank which made the game much more manageable. I eventually got to some water where the tank had to be abandoned. I figured I was close to the end of level 1. On a whim, about 4 nights into my journey I decided to use the ABBA code just to see the entire game and try to pick up some tips and tricks for when I would play through it without using the code. I eventually got to the end of level 1, it took 30 minutes and I continued over 30 times. The water I got to the night before was about 5% of the way through the first level. At this point I got very discouraged and decided that life was too short for me to spend the entire year of 2020 struggling through a broken game I hated. I made the decision that I would probably never wear the badge of a real hardcore gamer who could 1CC Ikari Warriors. I have come to terms with my decision and even using the code to gain unlimited continues the game is still a nightmare. The beginning of a very long journey Let the Complaining Begin The first thing you will notice while playing through Ikari Warriors is how slow everything moves. It is almost as if they game is in slow motion. I originally thought it was because the programmers were over zealous and the NES couldn’t handle the game. But, that isn’t the case. As you kill enemies some of them drop power ups, an “S” increases your speed and an “SS” gives you super speed. The “SS” powerup makes you move at the speed you should have been moving all along. This makes me madder than it should. Why make the game unbearable until you get a powerup and then take the powerup away when you die? On top of the slow movement the game is full of enemy soldiers who want nothing more than to kill you. I don’t know how many guys I had to kill while playing through the 4 levels, but I bet it was well over 1,000. This wouldn’t be horrible if there weren’t so many cheap enemies who pop up at the last minute to kill you. Seriously, you would have to play through this game hundreds of times and memorize where the enemies are in order to avoid some stuff. The Tanks and Helicopters Sprinkled throughout each level you will find abandoned tanks and helicopters which you can enter, these make the game much more fun and easy. Both vehicles are immune to enemy soldiers and regular bullets so if you can commandeer one you may actually make some progress without dying. But, the farther you are into the game the more annoyed I got by these vehicles. More times than not I would get into a tank and within 5 seconds would hit a mine or get blown up by a grenade. You can exit the vehicle but I found that most of the time I couldn’t get out quick enough or the buttons didn’t work to exit and I ended up dying when the vehicle blew up. Power Ups If you want to survive you need powerups, the most useful being “L” which gives your gun a lot more range. I found with this powerup I could stand a good distance from enemies and shoot them. However, when you die you lose your powerups and I died so much I never kept a powerup long enough to do me much good. Slow and Steady Normally slow and steady wins the race. But, not in Ikari Warriors. If you try to go slow and inch forward killing enemies from a distance the game starts firing missiles at you from the top of the screen. Seriously, if you take your time the game makes it harder to advance. Eventually I just went balls to the wall and didn’t care how much I died. I just wanted to progress forward, and since I was using the ABBA code I wasn’t too worried about continues. There were several stretches in the later levels where I would die 10-20 times in a row before I would advance a single screen. Keep in mind, without the ABBA code you get 3 lives to finish the entire game. Cheap Deaths I found my fair share of glitches throughout the game. I got so mad that on several attempts I would die and re-spawn in a place where I was trapped and couldn’t advance. There were walls on all sides of me and the screen doesn’t scroll backwards. I was forced to reset the game when this happened and it was probably the maddest I got while playing through the game. Probably the coolest screen in the game. The image above is the end of stage 3 and it took me several tries to get past it. First, there are 3 guys on either side of the desk (they were already dead and gone in the picture) firing unlimited bullets at you. If you can see the skull behind the desk that means the ABBA code is disabled for some reason. So, I would attempt to walk forward enough to see the enemies but not far enough to see the skull. That way I could continue if I died. After a few attempts I was able to successfully do this. I then threw grenades at the zombie guy until he died. After this I didn’t know what to do, I thought the game messed up. I waited too long and the “you are going to slow” missiles started firing at me. I ended up getting hit by the missiles and getting a game over and since I could see the skull on the wall I couldn’t continue. I ended up looking up what to do online and would have never figured it out on my own. You have to throw a grenade in the exact right spot in front of the desk to make a staircase appear. If you do that and go down the stairs you have beaten stage 3. Good Riddance (Final Thoughts) I really didn’t like this game. Some games are fun casually but hard to beat. Some games are easy to beat and not very good. This game is just plain not fun. It is way too hard and the frequency at which a new player dies makes it almost unplayable. This gets my vote for one of the worst games on the NES simply because of its difficulty and slow buggy gameplay. I had been dreading playing this game for as long as I could remember due to its reputation as unforgiving and not fun so I definitely had a negative bias going in that I just couldn’t shake. I’m glad I’ve now played through it, and I am also glad I didn’t spend the 100+ hours it would take to master the game. But, I am also sad that I’ll never be able to wear the “Beat Ikari Warriors 1CC” badge of honor. View the full article

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD THE EPISODE TO YOUR COMPUTER The guys sit down to discuss their favorite movies of 1994 aka the year of Jim Carrey. Matt’s #5 – Pulp Fiction Matt’s #4 – Ace Ventura Pet Detective Matt’s #3 – Speed Matt’s #2 – Forrest Gump Matt’s #1 – The Shawshank Redemption Jason’s #5 – The Flintstones Jason’s #4 – Beverly Hills Cop 3 Jason’s #3 – Ace Ventura Pet Detective Jason’s #2 – Wes Craven’s New Nightmare Jason’s #1 – The Crow Luke’s #5 – Wes Craven’s New Nightmare Luke’s #4 – Major League 2 Luke’s #3 – Pulp Fiction Luke’s #2 – Ace Ventura Pet Detective Luke’s #1 – Interview With The Vampire View the full article

The guys sit down to discuss their favorite movies of 1994 aka the year of Jim Carrey.

The guys sit down to discuss their favorite movies of 1994 aka the year of Jim Carrey.