Once again I didn't have a whole lot of time for gaming on Tuesday but I did play a couple games.

Batman - NES 1989 by Sunsoft

First I played several stages of Batman on NES based on the original Batman movie with Michael Keaton as Bruce Wayne (Still the best Batman movie IMO). Man, this game can be really hard. I've never beaten the game and I think I've gotten to the Joker only once. The music in this game is awesome and it's probably the highlight of the game. I recorded footage from the first few stages.

River City Ransom - NES 1989 by Technos

Another game from my Top 20 favorite games list. This game is fun as hell. It's too bad I didn't have anyone to play some co-op with as that would have made for better game footage. Either way I did record about 6 minutes of footage from my game session. I'm still pretty good at this game and I had a blast playing it again. I love everything about this game. The music, the RPG elements, the upgradable fighting moves, the crazy "BARF" dialogue, everything. I've beaten the game a few times in my life but not yesterday.

I will be uploading the footage from RRW Day 2 and Day 3 when I get home from work today. I have uploaded parts 5 - 9 of my TMNT IV Co-op session with only 1 part to go! The last part is the final showdown with Super Shredder and the end credits sequence. Be sure to watch the credits for a cool little end sequence. Here are parts 5 - 9:

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Have fun with Day 4!

I'm having a hard time deciding what to play next. I don't know if I should try to play through an entire game or just play a little bit of several games. With a full time job and a long commute, I don't have a whole lot of time on weekdays for gaming. So I decided at least for RRW Day 2 to just play a little bit of a few different types of games.

TMNT Tournament Fighters

First I played a bit of TMNT Tournament Fighters on SNES. It's the only TMNT fighting game that was ever made, although it was ported to Genesis and NES (I have both of those as well). The game is really hard and not really all that fun, unfortuneatley. I actually like the NES version the most but the SNES version looks the best out of the three. I figured I'd record some footage for the hell of it since I'm sure a lot of you have never seen it. I played the first stage in the story mode as Donatello and the first battle in tournament mode as Shredder.

U.N. Squadron

Sticking with the SNES theme, I threw in U.N. Squadron, which is a really cool old school shooter by Capcom from 1989. Man that game is fun but its hard, or at least it's hard playing it on a small laptop monitor. I don't think I even made it through the first level lol Maybe I'll replay it and try to record some footage of later levels.

R.C. Pro Am

Finally I played about 8 levels of R.C. Pro Am, which is a r/c car racing game made by Rare on NES in 1988. This is one of my Top 20 favorite games of all time if you didn't see that video blog I did. I haven't played this game in a loooong time. I was able to spell out N-I-N-T-E-N-D-O and get to the second car type only after getting a Game Over once. I recorded all 8 levels I played.

I uploaded the first 4 parts of my TMNT IV Turtles in Time Co-Op session yesterday. I should have the remaning parts, 5-10, uploaded tonight. Then I'll work on uploading the footage from Day 2. It's too bad they don't have something set up where you can que up a bunch of vids to upload on GS.  For Day 3 I might play some Capcom games on the Capcom (lassic collections that were released on the PS2. There's some really good stuff on those discs and they are really cheap too. I might play some Mega Man too but we'll see.

Have fun with Day 3!!

Here are the first 4 parts of TMNT IV:

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As you may already know, this week is Retro Revival Week. This is the first time I've participated in it and the first time I'd heard about it. It's kinda funny cause I was already going to play a retro game this weekend and when a friend of mine told me about it, I said "hey cool, I can record the game session and upload it for RRW!" The rules are to play only retro games for one week, April 29th to May 5th, 2007. The games have to be "retro" games, obviously, and they have to be older then 1999 (I believe). My first entry is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time for SNES (aka the game that should have been put on XBL Arcade). As I said previously, I had already planned to play this game this weekend because I got my GameBridge last week and I wanted to record footage of 2 player co-op on hard mode. So that's what I did. My buddy Matt came over on Sunday and we played the game, all the way through on hard mode. Man, we kinda sucked lol I haven't played this in at least a year. Usually we'll get together and play it on hard mode every once in a while just for fun since TMNT IV is so freakin awesome. We did pretty well up until Slash, then we pretty much went downhill from there. I think it was partially because it wasn't easy being huddled up to a 15.4" widescreen laptop, instead of the 27" TV I would have normally played it on. That and one of my SNES controllers is a piece of garbage.

Anyway, we finished the game in about 28 minutes. Is that good enough for a speed run? I recorded all the gameplay footage as well as the end credits. There will be 10 parts in all, pretty much one for every level. I have about 1.2 gigs of footage to upload! So I went to upload the first part here on GS and it took about a half hour. Everything seemed to be going ok and then I got a PM that said "Video encode failed." I thought WTF?! Then I noticed that other people participating in RRW are having trouble with Glitchspot as well. Sorry I don't have any footage to show you guys yet. I think some of you were looking forward to seeing TMNT IV in all its glory but until Gamespot gets their video upload fixed you're going to have to wait. I was thinking about uploading the vids to Youtube if I have to but does GS allow you to link Youtube vids in your blog??

Last week I got Pokemon Diamond for DS. I bought it on Tuesday and then a friend I don't talk to on a regular basis emailed me out of the blue and mailed me the same game as a belated birthday present. I was able to return the game for store credit at Toys R Us and I used it to buy Valkyrie Profile 2 on PS2. Now I just have to fork over $100 for the first game on PS1. Man, I knew I should have bought that game when I had the chance while I was working at TRU. So I've been pretty addicted to Pokemon and I'm about 17 hours into it now. I don't know if I can avoid playing it for a whole week. Hey, it's kinda retro, right? I mean it's a sequel to a game that came out in 1998 and it's not that different from the original lol My girlfriend has been playing the hell out of Kameo: Elements of Power on the 360. She works at TRU and got it for FREE from the Microsoft rep last week. The game seems pretty cool, except for the fact that the camera is completely broken.

Last week I ordered a device made by Adaptec called the GameBridge. I got it on Amazon.com for about $20 including shipping. It finally arrived in the mail today (I know I'm impatient) I was surprised at how small it is and how light it is. If you stepped on it you'd probably break it. Below is my first footage recorded using the Gamebridge. I played a few minutes of Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation 2 on the Gamecube via Gameboy Player. It seemed to record great and there were no sound or video issues. I'm very pleased with it so far. I've also recorded some footage from TMNT IV on SNES and Gyruss on NES. Look for that later tonight. This weekend I plan to play through TMNT IV in its entirety and I will upload all the footage on GS.

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Last week I didn't do a whole lot of gaming, aside from working on Castlevania SOTN and Super Robot Taisen Original Generation 2, but I did download Gyruss on Xbox Live Arcade. Man, what the hell did they do to this game? It's absolute crap. Ok I realize this is supposedly what the arcade version of the game was like back in the day, but I find that extremely hard to believe. My knowledge and experience about arcade games 20 years ago is that they were always better then the home console versions. But apparently this is not the case for Gyruss. The NES version, in every aspect of the game, is by far superior to the arcade. The graphics, the levels, the sound, EVERYTHING. The worst part in this version is the music, it's unbearable. One thing that Gyruss is known for is its amazing music, well that is not the case here. It's slow, boring, dull, uninspiring. The music in the NES Gyruss is fast, uplifting, extremely catchy and it made you want to play the game just to hear it. In this version you just think "oh my God why am I playing this crap" (the answer is for achievements only).

The graphics are probably the next worst thing. What you see on the screen is a bunch of little blips. You fly a little blip of a spaceship, you can't even tell what it looks like. You are shooting at a bunch of more little blips and you have no idea what the hell they are other then different colored shapes. In the NES version you can tell that you are a cool lookin little spaceship and you are fighting a bunch of varying alien vessels and monsters, all of which are very detailed. Another thing the NES Gyruss is known for are the very cool and challenging boss fights at each planet in the solar system. Guess what? There are no bosses in the arcade version. So that automatically makes the game a hell of a lot easier. (Granted I haven't beaten the game but I've gotten up to Saturn and haven't seen any type of boss so I imagine there are none in the game). It's too bad there are no screenshots or video of the original NES version here on Gamespot so you can see what I'm talking about, but if you search for Gyruss on YouTube you can find a few. This is one thing I aim to fix when I get my gamebridge, recording footage of old video games that don't have any screens or video here on GS. One final thing about this game is that I don't know for sure if there are any bombs in it. In the NES version you get bombs that wipe out anything in it's path (they're really more of a supercharged energy blast). I have seen a screenshot of what I think is a bomb on the arcade version so I may have not seen one yet, although in the NES version they showed up right from the beginning.

Overall, Gyruss on XBL Arcade is absolute crap, IMO and should only be purchased for some relatively easy achievement points and for fans of the original arcade version. If you are expecting this to be similar to the NES version, you will be greatly disappointed. I'll admit I haven't tried the XBL Co-op but I don't imagine it would be all that fun.  Here is what the NES version is like:

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On Saturday I finished Castlevania: SOTN on XBL Arcade and I got all the achievements! The only one that I had a little trouble with was Belmont's Revenge (45), beat both castles with Richter Belmont. At first it seemed like this achievement would be almost impossible but after reading some faqs I found out that you don't have to explore the entire castle and defeat all the bosses. You can go straight to the end boss of the game, and there isn't even a boss at the end of the first castle! Another thing that made it easy is that if you get the Holy Water, and use Richter's Hydro Storm attack, it will kill any boss and any enemy in one hit. Even the final boss of the game died in one hit from Hydro Storm. The problem with Richter is that if you get hit by any attack, no matter how weak the monster is, you will loose 1/3 to 1/2 of your life. That and the fact that Richter does not have a double jump makes platforming especially difficult since it forces you to use his uppercut attack (press down, then up + jump) constantly. This wouldn't be that big a deal if the D-pad on the 360 controller wasn't a piece of garbage. With that said, it took me about an hour to beat the game as Richter. I was constantly dying and restarting but there are plenty of save points along the way so it wasn't too bad. In game time it took me less then 15 minutes to beat the game.

Castlevania:SOTN is one of my favorite games of all time. I bought it on 360 just to get the achievement points, since I've played the game so many times and have become very skilled at it. I had never beaten the game as Richter before so this was a great excuse for me to accomplish that feat, especially cause I got an achievement for it too!

After SOTN I started up Project Gotham Racing 3 again, and I'm into that at the moment. I wanted to start Final Fantasy XII last weekend but I was fairly busy and I didn't have a large chunk of time to play an RPG. I hope to start it this weekend.

No, I'm not talking about that awesome Whitesnake song, but I wish I was.

I was listening to my local radio morning show today and they pretty much talked about nothing but the Virginia Tech shooting. They were talking to a bunch of students that were witnesses and then they talked to a couple that are from my neck of the woods, Minnesota. Later in the show they talked to some journalists from ABC and guess what was brought up? Yep, VIDEO GAMES. The woman from ABC specifically mentioned Doom and Grand Theft Auto. Keep in mind that they still don't know the motive or the shooter's background but they are already speculating and blaming video games. This is only the beginning. I'm sure we'll see a new article here on GS about Jack Thompson making some statement about video games being bad and blah, blah, blah. At least not everyone is a complete moron. One of the guys on the show made a joke about how people think all games are "evil." He said something like "yeah, I had to stop my daughter from playing that Frogger game," or something to that effect.

This is just so sad. It seems like we are getting closer and closer to a point where Mature rated games or even all video games for that matter are going to be sold like pornography behind some curtain in some store and people will be shamed for purchasing video games.

I finally got my Playstation sign to work today. All it really needed was a light bulb. I got this thing several years ago while I was working at KayBee Toys. They had it in the back and were going to throw it away. I said, "can I have it?" And the manager said sure. It didn't have a light bulb in it and I was under the assumption that it needed a special size. I guess I misread the label or something. It needed a 36" flourecent light bulb. I went to Menard's today and picked one up. It was like magic when I turned it on the first time. Mmmmmm......Playstation. I don't know where I'm going to put it, but it looks damn cool when it's light up in the dark. Here's a pic of my cat admiring my Playstation sign:

I finished the main quest quite a while ago, and since then I've done a bunch of side quests.  I finished the Mages Guild, Fighters Guild, Thieves Guild, Dark Brotherhood, Arena questline, Knights of the Nine, and all but one of the Daedric Shrine quests.  Here are my final stats in the game.  Sorry if you can't read everything.  I have an "old fashioned" TV, I haven't purchased an HD TV or even a flat screen.

Crap, when did I get 120 bounty? 

It says I've only owned 1 horse but that is not true, I've had at least 3. 

It doesn't say my play time in these screens but I've played for about 81 hours.

I don't have any pictures for this, but I finished God of War II last week.  Overall the game is just as good as the first one, it's hard to pick a favorite of the two.  Everything in the game has been improved, from the graphics, sound, level design, combat system, platforming and puzzles, they are all fantastic.  My only complaint would be that it seems pretty short, I finished it in about 11 hours.  And the ending completely sucks.  It's just like Halo 2, one of those "to be continued" endings.  I guess the PSP game is going to continue where GoWII left off and lead into GoWIII but I don't have a PSP!!  That and overall it was a lot easier then God of War I.  Admittedly I still have to go back and play it on Titan Mode at some point but the motivation isn't there.  The only reason I played through God mode on the original is to unlock all those extra movies that told different things about Kratos' past and possible sequel plot points.  Well in GoWII there are no extra movies to unlock.  It's all stuff you can use in an additional playthru.  Such as new costumes, new abilities, new magic, etc.   Even then the game is still fantastic and I loved playing it.  My favorite part is probably the boss battle where you have to face two of the sisters of fate at the same time.  I really enjoyed that boss battle.  Don't expect a review anytime soon, but who knows I've been bored at work so maybe I'll write one up for Oblivion and GoWII.

Last night I played Heavy Weapon for about an hour and I got three achievements in it! I continued my single player mission mode where I had left off at level 18. I completed that level with absolutely no problems at all, the boss was a cakewalk. Then on to the very last level in the game, The Red Star HQ, level 19. This one was pretty tough, even though all my weapons were maxed out. The main difficulty in this one, was that there is an unending wave of satellite laser enemies (not sure what they're called) constantly coming at you the whole time. The problem with these guys is that if their laser hits you, your'e dead. It doesn't matter if you have a shield or those spinning orbs. Normally these things aren't that big a deal but when you combine them with a constant barrage of other enemies, like rockets, tanks, kamakazie planes, bulldozers, etc. they become a pain real quick. After several tries I finally got to the final boss. At first this guy looks like he's not too hard but he's got three forms, and the first one is the worst. He shoots unblockable lasers from two sides in three different patterns. They don't home in on you but it can seem like it. I got my a$$ handed to me the first few tries but I eventually defeated the boss and got the Ultimate Tanker (25) achievement. Not only that, I regained my spot at #1 on my friends leaderboard. I had added a couple dudes that 3pwood_lives and I played 4 player TMNT with this weekend to my friends list and one of them had a higher score then me, around 14,700,000. Well my high score is 14,900,000 which puts my overall rank at about 1600 on the leaderboards.

After playing through the single player game, and once again failing the 12 minute survival achievement I hopped on XBL for some 4 player mayhem. The game is a blast online and the screen gets FILLED with enemies. It's too bad there aren't more achievements you can only get online. I got the ComSat Uplink (10) achievement for playing with 3 other people for a minute and I also got the Massive Destruction (20) achievement for destroying 12 enemies with a single Nuke. Now I have all but 3 achievements for Heavy Weapon, the aformentioned Champion of Freedom (25), the Freedom's Last Stand (25) for defeating all 19 bosses in Boss Blitz mode (certainly doable but not easy) and the almost impossible Cannon Happy (20) for completing 11 missions without using Nukes or dying.

I think maybe I'll pick up Assault Heroes next but for now I'll continue playing Symphony of the Night and I think I'll start in on Final Fantasy XII this week.

NOTE: There might be some minor Spoilers. 

The movie was awesome, definitely one of the best this year so far.  I enjoyed it more then TMNT and maybe a little more then 300.  Unfortunately it looks like the movie didn't do as well as predicted and will likely be considered a failed project, financially anyway.  I saw the movie at noon on Easter Sunday and there were about 10 people total in the theater.  From the fake trailers, to the cheesy dialogue, the look of the characters and the setting, and the grainy film reel effect, the movie had this feel of a 70s B-movie and you felt like you were no longer in the year 2007.  It opens with some 70s graphics/text that said "Prevues of Coming Attractions" and then you see a trailer for a fake movie called "Machete."  This was probably the best of the trailers.  Total over the top cheese fest about a scarred up Mexican, who's a bad ass lookin dude hired to kill a politician.  His employers turn on him and shoot him as he's about to kill the target.  So he's out to get "revenge."  Then you see him killing tons of people in various comedic and entertaining ways, and even sleeping with his ex-boss's wife and daughter.  There's one shot where you see the guy wearing a trenchcoat, he opens it up and you see dozens and dozens of machetes in all the pockets and sown into the inside of the jacket.  It's so frickin hilarious.

So now it's time for the feature presentation and we are treated with another crappy lookin 70s style graphics/text with the words "Feature Presentation."  Then there is a short little animated sequence of a cougar or a mountain lion (not sure what exactly but a big cat of some sort) and then it roars and it says "Restricted."  I wonder if this is really what the ratings looked like back then?  The first movie is Planet Terror (by Robert Rodriguez).  It's a typical zombie horror movie where an entire town gets infected when they are exposed to some sort of gas and then turn into zombies.  The military gets involved (Bruce Willis has a small part in it) and then the survivors try to escape.  There's a ton of gore and a ton of swearing.  I've seen a lot of zombie movies and this one is actually one of the better ones.  It doesn't try to be serious, it's just over the top action and gore.  If you went into this movie expecting it to be gripping and serious, you'd be disappointed.  I guess it kinda has that "Feast" or "Cabin Fever" feeling.

When Planet Terror is over, there areno credits and no intermission, just a few more trailers and then Death Proof starts.  There were three trailers this time, "Don't," "Thanksgiving," and something called "Werewolf Women of the SS" (I think that was the title).  The Nazi one was done by Rob Zombie, and surprisingly was the worst, it was entirely forgettable.  All I remember is there was some boobs and some crappy lookin werewolves.  I was expecting a great fake trailer from Rob Zombie.  The "Don't" one was funny but it got old real quick.  The narrator talked slowly the entire time.  Every sentence was like "If....you're....thinking.....of.....opening.....that......door.......DON'T" and then something "scary" would happen.  The first time it was funny but it got old real fast.  "Don't look in the basement, Don't look under the bed, etc."  The last trailer was Thanksgiving.  This one was done by the dude who did "Hostel."  Basically it's some dude dressed up as a pilgrim going around killing people.  Pretty gorey and the end of it was quite disturbing.

Okay now time for "Death Proof."  This is the one done by Quentin Tarantino.  This movie is has an entirely different tone to it.  It's not an over the top gore-fest but rather a more serious movie with a lot of suspense towards the end.  Not a lot of gore (some) but a TON of swearing.  It doesn't look like it's from the 70s, in terms of the film reel quality, it looks like it was done today.  But the setting, clothing, music, etc look like they are from the 70s.  One thing to note is while both movies look like they are from the 70s, I found it odd that people were using cell phones the whole time.  This movie is really really slow and pretty boring until the very end.  Basically it's about two different "groups" of girls and their encounters with a stuntman who goes by the name of "Stuntman Mike," played by Kurt Russell (fantastic job by the way).  The first group are having a reunion.  One of the chicks is a local radio DJ.  While on air that day she describes one of her friends.  She says if you see her, call her Butterfly, buy her a drink, and recite this poem (I don't remember the words) and if they do all that she will give you a lapdance.  So they go to a bar and this is where they encounter "Stuntman Mike."  The second group of girls are actresses and are on a break from a film shoot in town.  One of them is a car freak and sees an ad for a 1970 white Dodge Challenger, very similar to the one used in the film "Vanishing Point."  They take the car out for a spin, do some crazy stunts on it and then they have their encounter with Stuntman Mike.  I don't want to spoil anything for you but this movie is a slow and constant build up to the very end of the movie which is a fantastic car chase and I assume it's similar to the aforementioned "Vanishing Point."  The ending is a little surprising but it's frickin awesome.  Throughout most of the movie it's a TON of dialogue which ends up being mostly pointless, especially at the beginning.  So if you're like me, and don't like missing something and going to take a leak in the middle of the movie, the best time to get up during this 3 hour film is right after the fake trailers and right when Death Proof starts.  You won't miss a thing, trust me.

You may have read that there are "missing reels" in the movie.  Which I guess is what happened back in the 70s during the grindhouse movies.  Well there are only 2 missing reels.  Both of them are sexual.  They didn't cut out any gore, or at least I assume they didn't.  I doubt they would have advanced the plot at all, just some naked flesh to stare at.

Overall this is a fantastic double feature.  Highly recommended to any fan of horror or suspense films.  I'd say the best thing is to go into the movie not expecting some serious movie, with a complicated plot and great acting.  This movie is a tribute to the exploitation films of the 70s with over the top action, gore and cheesy dialogue.  I'm sure this will become a cult movie in the future.