So my folks were out of town recently and while watching their place, I stumbled upon my old Nintentdo game console. I'm a packrat, in that I still have my old
SEGA Genesis/CD-X, Atari 7800, Atari 2600 and I think if I searched deep enough I could find the old PONG console! There's even an "Atari 400 personal computer" somewhere around. Anyways, I was a late bloomer with Nintendo, as I spent 86-88 hoping that the Atari 7800 would catch on. So I didn't get a Nintendo until my 15th birthday in 1989.

I dusted the thing off, plugged it in and did a quick tour of all of my old games. In most (okay, ALL) of these, I was still stuck on the same obstacle as I was back in 1993- the last time I played most of these games. They were:

Batman: The Movie
One of my favorite games at the time. It had re-creations from the movie and the graphics were okay, but very dark. The bat-a-rang attack took alot of practice, but was pretty sweet once you got the hang of it. Still stuck on an annoying rooftop hang-up.

Tecmo Super Bowl
The awesome 1991 game. I sold a van for this game. Truth. Some nutjob named Cecil donated a broken down old van to my Boy Scout troop and the thing endedup in front of my house. It sat there for about a year, and my folks ignored it. One day around December 1991, I called up a salvage company and got them to come down and haul the thing away. They gave me 50 bucks for it.

Anyways, in my game, I had the Broncos at 9-1. When I resumed the season/game, I got a "John Elway comes back from injury" message. Elway got injured again in the game I played. Gary Kubiak came in and I got creamed by the Raiders. Kubes kept fumbling and throwing interceptions. I had Ricky Nattiel inserted as my TE. Probably because I thought Nattiel's #84 was close enough to have him as my "make-belive" Shannon Sharpe. The rosters were based off of the 1990 season, but Sharpe was a rookie then, about sixth on the depth chart and didn't make the game. That's actually a cool thing about old football games-- they're sorta' like a digital trading card of the NFL of that year (for example, I will NEVER sell my Madden '99 PC game, simply because it has Bill Romanowski slapping his forehead and mocking Kordell Stewart in the opening segment!!)

I also remember having a shitty, slow-moving "NFL" game that I played forever. Think I sold that at a garage sale when I got Tecmo Super Bowl.

MLB
A baseball game from about 1989. Official team names, but no players. You have a full roster, but no season saves and stat tracking. Played one game: Pirates vs. Cubs and got bored when I was up 11-2 in the 3rd. Pitching was too easy.

Jackal
The cool-ass dual player jeep game! Damn, I loved this game. My bro and I used to have tag-team strategies for this game. I'd draw the canon's fire, while he'd waltz up and bomb it with grenades. I used to finish this game, routinely, but there was a timing/laser beam obstacle that ate me alive this time.

Adventures of Bayou Billy
The only game that used the combination of Nintendo's gun/zapper and the controller. The controller portions were also split, as you have a driving game and a sideways fighting game. The sideways fighting part was tough and I couldn't get past it this time. Spent less than five minutes on this game.

Robocop
Similar to Bayou Billy in its sideways fighting. Very tough and slowwwwwww moving. The ED-909 killed me again. Cheesy digitized version of the Robocop theme!

RoadBlasters
One of my favorite all-time ARCADE games. A so-so home video game. Entertaining, but the time limit thing and the land mines soon catch up with you and make it frustrating.

Legend of Zelda
I roamed around for a bit, but without a map, patience and familiarty of this game's quirks, I didn't want to pursue it. Still, when I was done I had wasted almost an hour!

Link: Legend of Zelda II
Ehh...turned it on and remembered why I hated this game. Was actually the first game I ever bought, and I was extremely disappointed. Still am.

Metroid
Oh cool. Another battery-saving game. I had no memory of the map, so I just waltzed around and blew shit up. I went to some insane purple/pink level and got destroyed. I was apparently about halfway through the game, as my Metroid character had already un-masked and changed into the pink chic.

X-men
One of my weaknesses with video games is that I automatically covet the comic-book tie-ins. This game has horrible graphics and terrible logic, although you can chose your X-men team. Still, fucking awful.

Tecmo World Wrestling
Oh golly! So much fun! Your fingers start to hurt after awhile. I played the brown/green Road Warrior looking guy and kicked butt. Coolest thing: you cna routinely perform the AIRPLANE SPIN and chuck your opponent out of the ring! Also, the ringside granny calls the moves, CORRECTLY. Including the Northern RIGHT suplex and the Octopus! I need to re-create ALL of these guys in my PS2 "Smackdown" and stage a Tecmo "inVasion" angle!

Ninja Gaiden II
Very play-able. You can call down ninja magic and blow the crap out of stuff...but I forgot how to do it halfway through. Kept falling on some bamboos spikes and dying. Don't think I ever finished this game...memory's foggy.

TECMO NBA Basketball
Similar to the NFL game. I had the Nuggets sitting atop their division, with Dikemebe Mutumbo and LaPhonso Ellis. Never got into this game as much as I did with Tecmo Super Bowl. Once you figure out the dunk move, you can dominate. I think this was current around 1992, and it may have been one of the last Nintendo games I ever bought.

BaseWars
Half shitty baseball game, half shitty fighting game. For some reason, there's never been a decent baseball video game, to this day. Which only backs up my theory that the appeal of REAL baseball is that it makes for a shitty video game.

Super Punch-out
NOT the Mike Tyson version. A re-packaged and re-issued version. My bro bought this as a "gift" for me around 1990, so he would play it, non-stop, whenever he was home from college. I still have the touch, as I went all the way to the final championship fight. It was some generic looking brown-haired guy, whose name eludes me right now. His super-duper whirlwind attack killed me.

Plus, Super Mario Bros 1-3 and DUCK HUNT.
These don't need any additional recapping or explanation. Not surprising, they've all aged pretty well and are still entertaining. I don't know why I ever bothered searching for other Nintendo games... just take these four and you're set.

I remember having a "Pro hockey" game that I bought in early 1994. I believe I returned it and finally dumped Nintendo.

I also found my SEGA Genesis/CD-X and its games. I think I was the only fool who bought the CD-X. The premise was that it played Genesis games and the Sega-CD games, plus it was a portable CD player!!. I remember shelling out 300 bucks for it in 1994, thinking it was something exclusive and COOL. I desperately wanted a portable CD player, but never used it for such. The CD games were okay, but I would have been better off buying the plain ol' Genesis for 130 bucks. Nevertheless, I bonded with this thing and really got into the SEGA games.

If you guys get a kick out of some geezer babbling about his old video games, I'll come back and do a review on my SEGA crap!

Mr. Dream I think is the guy who replaced Tyson. Also that X-Men game might be top 10 for worst ever made.

"Mr. Dream" sounds about right.

Another reason to love Tecmo World Wrestling:
Ring-side Granny: "The Piledriver! It's doomsday for the skull!"

Next time I do a 'rasslin' recap, you KNOW what's going in there!!

Have you ever played Pro Wrestling? That and Wrestlemania Challenge were my big wrestling games on the NES system. I loved Starman in Pro Wrestling. My friend and I had this epic 30 minute match. He had the guy who used the claw hold and I was of course Starman. The ending came when he missed a top rope knee drop and I basically just rolled over and pinned him. He was quite pissed about that one.

I liked WM Challenge because with the Ultimate Warrior you could press slam guys out of the ring. Though I hated Rick Rude and Andre as they could sap your stamina with sleeper holds.

When I bought TECMO World Wrestling, I thought I was getting Pro Wrestling. Played Pro a few times at a friend's hosue and dug it. Which one had Blue Panther/Blue King come out of the crowd and challenge you?

Never knew there was a Wrestlemania Challenge. I played the awful "Wrestlemania" game from about 88, with Bam Bam, Hogan and DiBiase.

Challenge came out in 1990. It had the same generic jobber that the first really awful game had. Wrestlers were Ultimate Warrior, Hulk Hogan, Randy Savage, Andre the Giant, Big Bossman, Hacksaw Jim Duggan, Ravishing Rick Rude and Brutus Beefcake.

There was also some Steel Cage Chall

I remember that crap NFL game that Estragand mentioned. I rented it one time, along with Tecmo Super Bowl and Tecmo World Wrestling, years ago when we would spend a weekend at my grandmother's. Looked like something that should've been on Atari at least.

And I can't wait for you to do your Sega stuff.. As for the CD-X/Sega CD, the only games I enjoyed for it were Shining Force CD, Snatcher, and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue.

WrestleMania Challenge was the shit just for the elimination tag... yes, back in 1989-90, I was easily pleased. :P

Batman was awesome. Tough game.

I picked up Bayou Billy a couple of years ago there and beat it. I like it more than most.

Zelda II was absolutely brilliant. Loved it.


About Punchout -- It sounds like either SodaPop or SuperMachoMan got the better of you. You weren't quite at the end of the game yet.

I'm assuming it's SMM, since Popinski didn't have hair, and only SMM had the "spinny whirlwind move thing." Mr. Dream/Tyson's big move was the uppercut that knocked you down in the opening 90 seconds of the fight.

SodaPop had the one twist around.

But yeah, it was SuperMachoMan who had the repititive "spinny whirlwind move thing". He had two versions of it. One of them was just one rotation which wasn't as powerful and the other was the one where it just kept on coming.

No joke here. One time I kept on avoiding it and he just wouldn't stop. I always count the rotations when I fight him and there was time he did that rotation punch 16 or 17 times in a row. Yeah, I was the one who went down that time. :) That was a tough move to avoid.

What a game though. One of the best ever.