3 Games Finished

I haven’t done a gaming update in awhile so let’s get to it.

I finished three games recently. The first was Riot Zone. I was able to clear the game on one credit on Easy with a score of 473,270. One move which can make combat easier is always using the jump kick on the enemies. It works great on bosses too, but overall makes the game pretty boring. A fairly mediocre game on a system not know for beat-’em-ups.

Yesterday I completed Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars on the DS. For my first full experience with a point and click style of game it was great. The hint system helped out in some tough spots. The story was fantastic with a surprising turn of events for one of the characters right near the end. Definitely recommended if you’re into these types of games and maybe even if you’re not like I was.

Back during the first quarter of this year I was a bit burned out of the God of War games because I played the PS3 collection around that time. I had left God of War III unfinished until I decided to pick it back up and finally beat the game. I did so earlier today. The boss battle with Zeus was better in God of War II, but still good enough and certainly overall less frustrating.

Those three games bring my total of finished games for 2010 up to 27. The full list can be seen here.

I can’t get enough of the addicting pinball game Alien Crush. I’ve bested by top high score again with it now standing at just over 17.2 million!

Finally I’ll leave you with video footage of Pit-Fighter gameplay from the Genesis version.

Thanks for reading.

The Ninja, The Viper, and The Fighter

View larger image

Another set of games acquired over the last week. I’ll get the downer part of this news out of the way at the top.

As you know from my review (online archive) of the Stickman’s Ashland, Ohio location, it’s pretty bad in about every possible way. When I was there a week ago last Friday I bought Truxton. It’s a fairly difficult to find shoot-’em-up for the Genesis. It cost me $12 for the game only which is about what it is. The guy at the store claimed it goes for $50-70 complete. I looked that up after I got back and found out the real deal. A complete copy of Truxton only goes for $20.

The fun doesn’t stop there. It wasn’t until late Saturday night I noticed online that I was charged $21 for the game. Since they’re closed on Mondays for some reason, I had to wait until Tuesday to return to get my money back. As it turns out they’re so cheap that they called the other crappy location in Shelby, Ohio to charge my card. Luckily I was able to get the difference back in cash so I wouldn’t have to go through that again. Bottom line: They sell crap and I ain’t going back.

I’m happy to say there’s a good thing I can say about Stickman’s. It’s in the form of another location in Galion, Ohio. Of course I expected it to be crap, but apparently the third time is still a freaking charm. This location isn’t owned by the same person as the other two locations and it shows. Everything you’d expect from such a store was being done at this location. The place was clean and didn’t smell bad, the prices were reasonable, and the games were cleaned and tested. I’ll gladly go back to this place in the future after getting Code Name: Viper, a second better looking copy of Shadow of the Ninja, and the Genesis version of Pit-Fighter. It probably helped that the owner was a woman.

From Glyde.com my order with Urban Reign came in. It was an excellent complete copy at only $3.25 and it’s not the easiest to find.

And finally my winning eBay auction of the Game Boy version of Samurai Shodown arrived today. It’s probably more rare than any of the other games listed in this blog entry yet I was able to get it for a mere 99 cents.

Now Playing: June 2010

Surprisingly enough I don’t have a whole lot to say about my past month of gaming. Most of what I would say for Prince of Persia: The Fallen King and Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight can be read in these two previous posts (both link to my online archive). One addition I do have for the latter game is a video of five matches that I recorded not too long ago. Check that out here.

I also got in some pinball action in the form of the Genesis version of Devil’s Crush called Dragon’s Fury. The game tends to play faster than the original TG-16 version and it’s very easy to lose a ball. Despite all of that working against me I somehow managed to get an impressive score of 50,791,000! Best my top score if you can. Muhahaha! :P

Because of my E3 excitement for the Criterion Games developed Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit being released this mid-Novemeber, I started playing the 2002 release of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2. Well, I didn’t start playing it as much as I’m continuing on.

The game still looks great especially the car models. The music which makes up the soundtrack is quite dated, though.

My progress on this fairly difficult game is Event 25 in Championship and Event 19 in Ultimate Racer. I’ve noticed while playing that you can’t just be a good driver. You also have to watch for those gaining on you in the mirror and cut them off. It’s a skill all on it’s own and is the sole reason I keep the lead many times.

I’ll leave you with this trivia question and see if you can answer it. Which of these games on my wish list for PS3 did I order yesterday from Gamefly? This time I haven’t mentioned it anywhere so good luck on your guess.

September ’08 Purchases

The following videos are of me showing off my purchases for September. Below the videos are still pictures of those games. Enjoy!

Sept. Purchases: Part 1 – Part 2

NES Max Controller

NBA Shootout 2000 – PS
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back – PS
Colony Wars – PS
TNA Impact – PS3
Mercenaries 2: World In Flames – PS3
Fatal Fury – GEN
Sega Classics Collection – PS2
WWF Smackdown: Just Bring It – PS2
Robo Aleste – SCD

Guerrilla War – NES
Mega Man 4 – NES
Kirby’s Adventure – NES
Castlevania – NES
Mega Man 2 – NES
Jackal – NES
WWF Super WrestleMania – GEN
NBA Give ‘N Go – SNES
Skyblazer – SNES
NBA Live ’95 – SNES
Cal Ripken Jr. Baseball – SNES

Bottom 10 Owned Games

The following list is the ten games in my collection that have the lowest amount of total GameSpot members owning as well.

Raging Fighter (GB) – 16
NBA Action starring David Robinson (GG) – 31
Dragon’s Revenge (GEN) & Pong/Asteroids/Yar’s Revenge (GBA) – 33
Natural Selection (PC) – 36
VR Troopers (GEN) – 38
Raiden Trad (GEN) & Tomb Raider: Legend (GBA) – 39
The Combatribes (SNES) – 41
Fighter’s History (SNES) & Nanostray 2 (DS) – 47
Dragon’s Fury (GEN) – 49
Crue Ball (GEN) – 54

SOME INTERESTING GAME INFO
I’m sure that most of you have never heard of Raging Fighter. It’s a Konami fighting game and I think it was the first of that genre to be released for the Game Boy at the time. I was huge into fighting games at the time so it was great to have something on the go.

Natural Selection is actually a modification for the original Half-Life that was very unique in that one team played very different from the other. Another HL mod that was like that was Vampire Slayer.

Hard rock/heavy metal fans will probably be wondering about the Genesis title, Crue Ball. If it sounds like a pinball game with the Motley Crue license, then you’d be correct.

How’s the bottom of your collection list looking right now?

Now Playing: November ’07

This past month had a few games that I didn’t get excited about enough to keep playing. Just to make it obvious what games I’m talking about, here’s a quick list.

Timesplitters 2 (PS2)
Dragon’s Revenge (GEN)
Sonic Heroes (PS2)

Timesplitters 2 was odd in that it was fun at first, but soon it was a little boring because it didn’t have much variety. Dragon’s Revenge is a decent pinball game, but it doesn’t have the excitement of crazy high scores like some others of the same genre. Oh and don’t get me started on Sonic Heroes. The control and overall problems with that game make it an unrecoverable mess.

I played some Guitar Hero at one point while figuring out what game I’d like to tackle next. I decided on Super Street Fighter II: Turbo Revival which I’m still playing because it’s just that damn good! I also went for the superior pinball game Dragon’s Fury where the scores really do get pretty crazy.

Fighting games continued to flow during the month as well, especially with vs. mode action. Those games consisted of Street Fighter Alpha Anthology, Mortal Kombat Trilogy (N64), various versions of Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, and the original Mortal Kombat on the Genesis with the blood code enabled, of course. :)

For single player purposes I got back into Need for Speed Most Wanted. I haven’t completed very much since the last time I played it, but it has still been fun as expected.

I’ve been somewhat interested to try out one of the Sam & Max episodes for awhile now. Telltale Games made that decision easy when they offered episode 4, Abe Lincoln Must Die!, for free on Valve’s Steam platform. I was pleasantly surprised by the type of humor that the game offered. It definitely was the highlight of the whole experience.

I”m sure that some of the fighting games that I mentioned will carry over to December because they’re just that much more fun with another player. What have you been playing as of recent? Hopefully it’s a fighting game too. :D

PSone EX Plus

More gaming goodness and I bought a total of 10 games and another system. That makes three this year. First to the games.

I bought a second copy of Super Street Fighter II for the Genesis solely because this copy was complete and in even better condition. I was also happy that I found Tecmo Super NBA Basketball (thanks SonicHomeboy for the heads up) for the Super Nintendo. It’s plays much faster than the sorefest of Bulls vs. Blazers. Here’s the list of games with the usual condition rating.

Forgotten Worlds (GEN) – game only; good
Tecmo Super NBA Basketball (SNES) – game only; great
Dragon Warrior (NES) – game only; great
Duke Nukem: Time To Kill (PS) – complete; fair
Tomb Raider (PS) – complete; good
Crash Bandicoot: Warped (PS) – complete; good
Dragon’s Revenge (GEN) – complete; great
Super Street Fighter II (GEN) – complete; excellent
Capcom Classics Collection Vol. 2 (PS2) – new
Spider-Man 2 (PS2) – new

Details: Closed | Open

The pre-owned system that I bought was the second model PSone. I was surprised several different times by this system. First was the price: $17.95. Next was the size: smaller than I originally thought. And finally the weight: heavier than I expected for the overall size. Now I’d like to get one of those fliptop screens and a car adapter and I’d be set with a truly portable PlayStation!

PSone system with controller, AC adapter, A/V cable – $17.95; excellent

Condition scale: Excellent, Great, Good, Fair, Bad