A Good Deal + Embarrassment

The recent games I’ve acquired are as you can see from the above photo.

I didn’t have any plans on getting NeoGeo Battle Coliseum, but when I saw it at $5 when at Toys-R-Us more recently I figured I would get it. It was the only game I found that I wanted during their buy one, get one half off sale. Saving a mere $2.50 would’ve not been worth it for another game I didn’t want.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein: Operation Resurrection was the purchase I mentioned in my last blog post for $2.25 complete. It was from Glyde.com. They have some pretty good prices at times. In fact, I’ve ordered another PS2 title Urban Reign for $3.25 from them also complete.

I kind of made a mistake going back to Stickman’s for the next two games. The prices aren’t exactly great and the games aren’t cleaned. This can be easily seen on cartridge games without a box and on Genesis cases. They also have never given out receipts for any purchase I’ve made with them yet think they can complain about product that’s stolen. How can they even tell the difference when I don’t have proof of my own purchases is amazing.

Speaking of stolen items, I felt I was taken when I bought Road Rash 3 and Gaiares. The latter game was even missing the manual. Stickman’s Video Games = embarrassing.

The final game I got was Riot Zone off of the Virtual Console. It’s a TG-16 Super CD beat-’em-up. I’m a big fan of the genre and it was good enough for me. For those that aren’t much of a fan of the genre I actually don’t recommend it for you. The gameplay doesn’t seem to have anything special to make it stand out and the animation for the two playable characters is the worst I’m seen in quite some time. Also to top it off it doesn’t offer two player co-op.

Gaming Update incl. Mercenaries 2 + 11 Games

Over the last few weeks I managed an addition of 11 games to my collection. Here they are.

View larger image

Double Dragon II: The Revenge (NES)
As I mentioned previously, either twitter, here, or both, I went a little too crazy with the steel wool on my first copy of the game making it no longer work. This copy works great as is and shall remain that way.

Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos (NES)
At $5 this was the best deal I’ve ever seen for this game. Usually it goes for at least $9-10. I was going to get Double Dragon II for the Game Boy, but I had to settle for this instead. That’s not a bad thing.

God of War: Chains of Olympus (PSP)
I originally played the copy that was disc only that came with my God of War PSP. I decided that since I see the game all of the time that I’d get a complete new copy. Next for this same treatment is Daxter.

Army of Two (PS3)
I wasn’t aware of this at the time, but apparently someone out there thinks this game has homosexual overtones in it. Please. As the person that I am I had to purchase it because of that. It’s my way of saying “Screw you.”

Soldiers of Fortune (GEN)
This game may sound like a game that you know of, but it’s not. This soldier is plural and not first-person in anyway.

Rest of the purchases:
Valis III (GEN)
Chase H.Q. II (GEN)
Star Ocean: First Departure (PSP)
Mirror’s Edge (PS3)
BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger (PS3)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of the Foot Clan (GB)

Onto the gaming update portion of this blog post.

I’d recently played some more of the downloadable Super Street Fighter II Turbo and of the just bought BlazBlue against Usagi704. Not a great performance on my part since I’ve not played much of the fighting games as of recently.

Yesterday I did manage to capture Carmona in Mercenaries 2. That mission was a pain for the drive back to the HQ as I’m sure VixDiesel can understand.

I’ve also uploaded a video showing, as best I could, the ridiculous things that happen when simply driving a car in Mercenaries 2. It includes commentary to get across how absurd it all is.

Lastly, another video I uploaded was of some nearby fireworks that I could see just above the distant treeline from my front yard.

Bad Games by Good Developers: TechnoSoft

When trying think of what developer to use as the subject of another Bad Games by Good Developers article, TechnoSoft came to mind because of the great Genesis port of the pinball game Devil’s Crush called Dragon’s Fury on Sega’s system. While their list is relatively small it was still really hard to find a bad game that they’ve made. I had to settle for the Genesis shoot-’em-up Elemental Master.

I can’t really explain the game because it doesn’t have an entry on Wikipedia or much about it anywhere else. It still seems like a pretty decent game even though TechnoSoft had made much better shumps like Hyper Duel and the Thunder Force series. The most unique thing about Elemental Master is the fact you play as a human instead of space ship.

Apparently, Elemental Master isn’t a bad game, just the worst of the bunch when only taking into consideration what TechnoSoft themselves developed. That sounds like a good dealt hand. That’s for sure!

Elemental Master gameplay videos:
Intro
Level 1
Ending