2 B A Cloud Master

Fuck Cloud Master. It is absolutely no fun to play. For those of you that don't know, and hopefully that is all of you, Cloud Master is a side-scrolling shooter for the Sega Master System. It is a port of the Japanese arcade game Chuuka Taisen by Taito. It was ported to the Famicom and various other Japanese home computers, but the Master System version is strange because it was only released in the US and EU for the Master System and not in Japan on the equivalent Sega Mark III. Even so, there was nothing particularly different about this version.

Link's Awakening DX and 3DS Virtual Console

I have a weird history with The Legend of Zelda series. I've played a lot of the “main” Zelda games, but I never beat any of them. I know it's weird, but I never fell in love with the series like so many people, and I've probably put more time into Landstalker and Alundra than the Zelda series as a whole, though I never finished those games either. My group of friends and I recently played through The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures on a ridiculous 4 Gamecube, 1 Wii, 4 Game Boy Player, 5 television setup, but that's a story for another day. I'll just say that I'm pretty sure it was the first Zelda game that I'd ever beaten, and that's kind of sad.

River City Ransom EX: Even Ransomer

River City Ransom is a tough game to write about because it is hard to stop playing it. I didn't actually play the NES game when I was a young kid, but I was one of the many people that discovered it later on emulator. It's a rare game because it has really good fighting physics, a lot of depth for a brawler, and it is downright fun. I recently picked up the 2004 remake, River City Ransom EX for the Game Boy Advance, for only a few dollars. I'd heard mixed opinions on it from friends, but for the price I figured it was worth checking out.

Eternal Champions: A Fate Worse Than Death

The popularity of fighting games in the 90's has more than a few pitfalls. As primitive as the early Street Fighter games were and as much as I don't like Mortal Kombat, I have to admit they became the basis of 2D fighters because they got the core of the game right. Most of the games that tried to capitalize on their popularity superficially recreated the games they aspired towards, but messed up the formula. Eternal Champions  was Sega's attempt to make a 2D fighter, and it is definitely one of those games that doesn't really understand what makes fighters good.

Dr. Chaos: His Doctorate Is Not Actually In Chaos, That Is Just His Surname

I don't know where to start with Dr. Chaos because it is such a strange game. It is an action-adventure game developed by a company called Marionette, whom as far as I can tell hasn't made any other games that people in the US have heard of. In Japan it was released on the Famicom Disk System, published by a company with one of my favorite names, Pony Canyon. Of course, in the US it was released on cartridge for the NES, so it was one of those games that you could save in the Japanese version, but had to remember passwords for the US version. One thing that was surprising to me was that the box art for the US and Japanese version were basically the same, and it pretty much depicts the stuff that is in the game, which I think is rare for a 1988 NES game.

Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon

Sometimes after playing a particularly bad game I take a sick pleasure in discovering the company that developed it has went out of business. Pocket Studios did nothing but contribute to the glut of terrible licensed games for the Game Boy Advance. As it turns out, Star Wars: Flight of the Falcon  was the studio's final game. I think the main problem with this game is that the developers failed to realize there is a difference between what the GBA hardware can do and what it can do well.

An Art Alive Exhibit

Art Alive is generally remembered as “Sega's Mario Paint,” which in spite of the fact it came out a year before Mario Paint is pretty much accurate. It's not like Sega invented the idea of a console art program anyway, I mean, wasn't there that dinosaur coloring game for NES? Art Alive wasn't as robust as Mario Paint, and it didn't have a mouse, but it was a decent little paint program. Instead of talking shit for a few paragraphs like I usually do, I'll just display some of the wonderful art I made using this game. I hope to see some detailed interpretations and critiques in the comments.