Get "Good Night and Good Luck" from Amazon.com
I’ve always looked favorable on some of the icons of journalism. While I’ve often expressed a fondness for Hunter S. Thompson, who if he wasn’t the godfather of Gonzo Journalism, he was one of its leading advocates. However, I’ve also often spoken highly of Edward R. Morrow, and I’ve often stated that the field of video game journalism needs someone like Murrow, who would be unafraid to say that, for example, Activision was heavily in the wrong on a particular topic, and then enumerate the reasons to support his argument, and ultimately shut them down. Probably the closest person to filling this role is Dan “Shoe” Hsu, formerly of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Anyway, when Good Night & Good Luck came out, it became a title on my must watch list. And there it remained until, finally, I got around to watching it. Now, what do I think about it?
The Premise: The film documents a series of influential shows done by Edward R. Morrow taking on Sen. Joseph McCarthy, and his Commission on American Activities, done in a docu-drama style. read more…
Well, the streak of GamePro issues continues unabated. The next issue of GamePro is issue 33 for April of 1992, featuring Michael Jordan (who is not wearing a number on his uniform in this picture) on the cover. This issue is, again, fairly short – about 100 pages long.
Editorial: Finally we get some actual journalism in the editorial, relating to responses to questions posed to Nintendo of America regarding the SNES. First, related to the lack of backwards compatability, and whether or not an adapter will be shipped to allow older NES games to be played – they consider it inappropriate to sell an add-on adapter, instead we include all the cables necessary to play both (thus, if you sold your NES to upgrade to the SNES, and hoped for backwards compatibilty like the Genesis or TurboGrafx systems, we can make more money off you when you buy a new NES.) Also, some SNES games around launch have been experiencing slowdown and other framerate drops – this is because of the systems 4 CPUs working togeather to provide a superior graphical experience (in other words, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature – I thought Nintendo had actually learned something from the last video game crash, and all the crappy, buggy games being put out by companies like Intellivision, which is the company that coined the phrase). They also hype their CD-ROM add-on, which never comes out. Now, they don’t do the next step here, which is draw the necessary conclusions (Nintendo of America is an asshole), and respond as appropriate – Nintendo hasn’t changed their tune, in spite of their settlement with the FTC. However, from what I understand, the Debug systems that they use to review the pre-release code for games are basically property of Nintendo, so if they do say thing negative, in theory Nintendo could pull the consoles, and they wouldn’t be able to review games until months after they’d hit shelves, potentially killing them. read more…
Get Batman for the NES from eBay
Alright, I’m doing something slightly different this time. I’m not going to be doing the review as full text. Instead, I’ll be doing this primarily as a youtube video with narration – particularly since this time I fixed the problems with the game audio intruding on my voice over. If this works better, let me know either on the comments here, or on YouTube. Hopefully, if I get a job soon or find if the site starts to make some money, I’ll be able to get a real mike and work on improving the sound quality of my voice over.
We’re on to issue #10 of Nintendo Power, for January of 1990. It’s a new year, a new decade, but not a new volume, though we’ve got a new hand-held system coming out. Our cover story for this issue is for the Batman game, featuring The Dark Knight small and in the background, and Jack Nichelson’s Clown Prince Of Crime large and in the foreground. Well, much like in The Dark Knight, it’s the Joker who steals the show. This issue’s a little longer than the last one, about 100 pages long.
Letters: We’re starting off with letters about the changes to Mario’s nose – and accusations of plastic surgery? *headdesk*
Batman Strategy Guide: Excuse me for a minute while I break out my Danny Elfman playlist (a track by Mystic Knights of The Oingo Boingo starts playing) No, the other Danny Elfman playlist! (Elfman’s main title for Batman starts playing). Much better! Anyway, we get maps of some if the first few stages (1 through 3), as well as notes on the last two episodes (4 and 5). Not much else here. They don’t even have any notes on what the power-ups do. Admittedly, often times these notes will be included in the manual, but it’s still useful to have that information in the magazine article, as the magazine is physically larger than the manual, making it a little more difficult to lose the magazine. read more…
Well, we’re starting off this issue of EGM, number 48 (we have continuity again!) for July of 1993, off with one of the magazine’s first gatefold covers, featuring the sequel to Desert Strike – Jungle Strike, as well as the upcoming Jurassic Park games, with the cover opening up to reveal basically a 2-page spread of Jungle Strike art. By the way, after the rather small last issue of GamePro, this issue of EGM is absolutely gargantuan, weighing in at 183 pages.
Editorial: This issue Steve basically has a discussoion of what he seeas as the state of the industry, commenting that bigger and better thigns are to come, and giving his thanks to the people who have helped the magazine get this far. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that Steve was moving on or something, from the tone of the editorial column – but I know better. read more…
Get the movie adaptation of Pink Floyd's "The Wall" from Amazon.com
Well, you all know that I like Pink Floyd. I’ve reviewed their famous concert at Pompeii, as well as a documentary on the band’s history. Well, in the early 80s, The Floyd put togeather a film based on their hit album The Wall, to try and bring the pagentry and imagery from the show to audiences who wouldn’t have had an opportunity to see it. Now, the execution of the concept changed over time, but it stuck with the album’s plot. The question is: did it work?
The Premise: Rock musician Pink (played by Bob Geldof, making his film debut), is undergoing a nervous breakdown in his hotel room. As he goes mad, he looks back on his life, and at the circumstances that brought him to this point, starting from the death of his father in the second world war.
The Good: Gerald Scarfe’s animated sequences are excellent. One of the things about the Live in Berlin concert that didn’t quite work with me was the fact that we didn’t particularly get to see many of Scarfe’s animated sequences. We got a good look at “Goodbye Blue Sky”, and “The Empty Spaces”, but that’s it. Here we finally get to appreciate them in their full glory. read more…
The Cover of GamePro #32
Well, while our EGM Recaps are getting broken up, our GamePro streak is, fortunately, continuing unbroken and unabated with issue 32, covering March of 1992. Our cover story is, not surprisingly for this period in game history, Street Fighter II. Unsurprisingly for this magazine, their cover art of Ryu, Guile, and Chun Li, which is done in-house, is god-freaking-awful. I’m looking forward to when Nintendo Power covers this period, as their in-house art has been, thus far, excellent, and I’m looking forward to their coverage of Street Fighter II (if there is any – I hope there is). This issue’s actually pretty short for gaming mags of the early 90s, only 98 pages long.
Letters to the Editor: We start off with a letter asking if there are plans to put out something similar to the Game Genie for the Genesis. Why yes, there is, it’s called the Pro Action Replay which, unlike the Game Genie, is still around. The Game Genie, on the other hand, didn’t survive the 16-bit generation, and was replaced by the GameShark – both of which are now obsolete, with now replacements, meaning that if you can’t beat a controller-breakingly hard game – tough rocks. We also have questions about what you can spend the $5 rebate you’re getting (as part of the weak-sauce damages that Nintendo has to pay out) on – you can only spend it on games. Which makes it even more pathetic. I’d bet that the $5 damages would probably cover not the licencing fees that Nintendo gets from the publishers, but rather the cut the publishers would be making on the game sales. We also get a letter asking when any winter sports games will be coming out for the Genesis or TG-16, mentioning specifically snowboarding. I don’t think we get a Snowboarding game at all until the 21st century. read more…
Get Willow for the NES from eBay
Well, my latest Quality Control column is ready, and this time I have video and audio ready. Excellent! I still shall, of course, have the text recap, for those who are at work and can’t listen to the video, or what have you.
The Premise:
Willow, a little person, must use all his skills in swordplay and magic to free the land from the grasp of the dark queen Bavmorda.
The Good:
This is a decent action RPG in the vein of Ys, with pretty good control. The graphics are alright for a NES game from this era, and sound isn’t totally awful eather, though I don’t recognize any of the music from the film.
The monster design is alright, and the monsters who shoot flame and other missles at you do have a discernable pattern, and the “bullets” are slow enough that if you spot the pattern you can avoid them. Also, upgraded weapons and armor come fairly regularly, and as the game is from a top-down perspective, it doesn’t run into any of the problems encountered by an Action RPG like Faxanadu. read more…
The cover of Nintendo Power #9
Alrighty then. Our Nintendo Power recaps take us to November & December of 1989 and issue #9 – the halfway point of Nintendo Power’s 2nd year. Their cover story is one heckuva title, and one which I’ve already talked about previously, at least the history of it – Tetris. Again, Nintendo Power is, at this point in its life (and I think in general), rather small, only about 100 pages long.
Letters: Of note this issue is a letter from a 75-year old retiree, with a poem about playing Legend of Zelda. We also get letters about the NES not recognizing that a cartridge is in it, or not reading the cartridge properly – thus the power light is flickering on and on. Fortunately, Nintendo makes cleaning kits to help you clean out the dust. Well… that’s part of it. There’s one other little thing… because the NES basically decided to design the system so it looks like a VCR (or a Betamax player), instead of using the top loading model of the Famicom, the system has problems with pins getting bent on it. This is something Nintendo doesn’t go into in this letter, and I don’t think it’s anything they ever acknowledge in the pages of Nintendo Power, except maybe when they launch the later top loading NES later. read more…
Alas, we have another gap in our EGM reviews for this week, as we move on to EGM #47 for June of 1993. But, fear not, this issue has one heck of a cover story – Mortal Kombat. The cover art itself could be a little better though, but we’ll leave that aside. This issue’s a big one too – almost 197 pages long.
Editorial: The editorial this issue is about probably one of the biggest stories of the console wars, at least with regards to third party publishers – Capcom has signed on with Sega, specifically to publish Street Fighter II: Championship Edition (the current build in arcades) for the Genesis before putting it out for the SNES. However, just to convolute things further, Capcom also announced they’d be putting out the next version of Street Fighter 2, titled Super Street Fighter II: Turbo on the SNES exclusively – which could potentially undermine the Genesis version of the game. Well, we’ll see how this turns out, ultimately. Oh, and there’s still the matter of the difference between the home versions of Mortal Kombat, the red, wet version… read more…
