The Super Mammal Side-Scroller of the Ages!

I've wroted blog articles (bloticles?) on all sorts of shit. The ones that get most of the hits are the silly ones about video games though. So, here's one 'bout video games.

Well, I must say I do enjoy a nice video game every now and then. A nice warm cup of tea, a relaxing arm or wing chair...and a good old fashioned side-scroller or two. Sometimes I feel like a nice Super Mammal Side Scroller if I find the fancy. If I must say, at times, I do indeed find the fancy. Without any further meaningless set-up, I would like to now present the award for Super Mammal Side-Scroller of the Ages.

The finalists for this prestigious award are: 

- Cheetah Men 2 (by Active Enterprises)

- Bio Force Ape (by SETA)

Obvious Omission

I'm a let me finish, but yo, The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have had some of the best damn sides-crollers of all time.

 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f49OKDTQZwk)

Da Da Du-Da-Du Da DA! 

Ok, yes it is true that the TMNT games on NES were the shit (the motherfucking shit) but the fact remains that Leo, Raph, Donnie, and Mikey are not mammals...those guys are reptiles, dude. Reptiles have cold blood, but mammals have warm blood....and, I think reptiles stalk their prey with heat vision.

Either way, no Ninja Turtle side scrollahs can be considered for Super Mammal Side-Scroller of the Ages due to them not being mammals. Thus they are obviously omitted from consideration for that sole reason.

Moving on,

Cheetah Men 2

Listen to this good ass shit right here,

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkmbbZZOgKg)

Neer-Neer--Na-Na-NEEEER! Neer-Neer-Na-Na-NEEEER!

Yeah, that's the beats right there. That makes me feel like dancin' on the jack groove (maybe even the jack move n' groove). Hold up check this out...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7b0pp9O4Ec)
REMIX !!!

Those Cheetah Mans know how to get down. Anyways, who are the Cheetah Men?

Oh fuck you, Morbis.

Story Synopsis: The unrelentlessly evil Dr. Morbis murders a cheetah whilst vacationing in the vast Serengeti region of Africa. The dastardly mad scientist proceeds to kidnap her three cheetah cubs and keep them as prisoners in his lab.

Dr. Morbis preforms terrible genetic experiments on the poor defenseless cheetah cubs. By the time they reach adolescence they became fully cognizant cheetah-men (half-cheetah / half-man men).

Realizing the evil intent of Dr. Morbis our three protagonists Aries, Apollo, and Hercules break out of the lab and vow revenge on Dr. Morbis. In defense Morbis creates dozens of evil genetic monstrosities to kill the Cheetah Men ranging from half-man/half-hyenas to half-man/half-rhinos...to the dreaded Ape-Man.

Is this game good? NO.

It was only released on something called "action-52" which sold 52 games on one cartridge. The reason this cartridged had 52 games on it but cost the same price as a cartridge with one game on it is because all 52 games sucked ass and were bad.

It sucks, man. Like things don't even blow up when you kill them or anything...they just disappear. What kind of side-scroller doesn't make the things you kill blow up or explode? A stupid side scroller that's what kind.

Cheetah Men 2 has good music for a DJ to spin at one of those drug-people rave-parties...but it's not a good video game. No way, Jose.

Final Score: -34/100

Bio Force Ape

Intense Mine Cart Level

Story Synopsis: BFA is a pretty crazy dude, man. He was once the pet monkey of a brilliant non-mad scientist yet when a rival science gang kidnaps the non-mad scientist and his family...the monkey gets super pissed off and drinks a vial of serum from the research lab and undergoes a mass transmogrification into a roided up testerone-ridden Super Ape Man hellbent on all sorts of crazy revenge.

BFA has to track down the kidnapped individuals through 3 levels and obstacles aplenty stand in his way. Henchmens, half-man / half-bees, half-man / half-crocodiles, and all sorts of shit don't want BFA to achieve his goal.

Guys you kill in this game don't blow up either though...but at least they fly off the screen pretty ceremoniously. If it's a sub-boss or a boss, they get reversed german-suplexed, piledrived, or perfect-plexed...and THEN fly off the screen ceremoniously. So it's all good.

Is this game good? Yeah, I guess.

It's not as bad as Cheetah Men 2 but it's certainly no Turtles in Time that's for god damned friggin' sure. It's by no stretch a Metal Slug and that's a fact jack. Yet, this game has some pretty fluid (6?)-frames-per-second animations and at least BFA is a fucking bad ass dude who knows a heckuva lot of wrestling moves. Plus, a lotta games have minecart levels but not many are as intense as the BFA minecart level, son.

Final Score: 39/100 

Well it looks like Bio Force Ape by SETA is the Super Mammal Side Scroller of the....wait...hold the phone....

A CHALLENGER APPEARS

Yester-damn-day, someone got tired of Super Mammal Side Scrollers sucking and released what appears to be a genuine Super Mammal Side-Scroller and it might very well give these Cheetah Mens and Bio Force Apes a run for their money when it comes to crowning a SMSS of the Ages.

This game was made by the same great people who made Abobo's Big Adventure so you know this game is on the up-and-up right off the bat. 

Story Synopsis: A gorilla was chilling way down in the jungle deep, doing his thing and not bothering nobody when an evil corporation happened upon him and straight up kidnapped him. 

The mad scientists brought the poor gorilla to the corporation's lab where they routinely test products on poor defenseless animals. They had a new line of chainsaws and pogo sticks coming to market and they decided to test them out on their new gorilla specimen. Naturally they removed his arms and replaced them with chainsaws and then obviously removed his legs and replaced them with a pogo stick. For good measure they hot wired his frame to an internal super computer which gave him advanced bionic six-million-dollar-man-esque capabilities.

Turns out this wasn't a good idea as the Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla escaped from the lab and now has to navigate his way through various sub-basements of the facility in order to reach the top and exact revenge...BIONIC CHAINSAW POGO REVENGE !!!

Is this game good? Yeah.

Yo, when you kill stuff in this game it blows up, that's for damn sure. Even christmas trees and vending machines were blowing up into bloody messes of blood and explosions. Man, I was holding down the pogo button, the chainsaw-spin button, and the extendo-chainsaw-spin button all at the same time and rushing through the levels...everything in those levels was getting blowed up, exploding, and bleeding, and dying around me...I was like..."holy, shit."

I thought I had a seizure...but I didn't. I think my brain was just trying to tell me that this is The Super Mammal Side-Scroller of the Ages that it had for so long been seeking.

Man alive. Man alive. Some of the power-ups in this game are vicious and awesome, and they are all yelled at you when you get them by Roger Barr's iconic voice-over voice. MEGA-SAWS! EXTENDO-SAWS! MASSIVE DAMAGE! DEATH SPIKE! SHADOW CLONES! PROJECTILES! INVINCIBLE! 

Dang, that cat Roger Barr really seems to enjoy yelling...

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhmeElUNjbw)
 
He has a legitimate qualm with the Goonies, I must say.

Anyways, like Abobo's Big Adventure this game is FREE, bro. So yeah, play it...

Here: http://games.adultswim.com/bionic-chainsaw-pogo-gorilla-action-online-game.html

Conclusion

Over the vast intertwining years in the calendar of life there has no doubt been many Super Mammal Side-Scrollers yet only one game can be Of the Ages and that game without any regret, second guessing, or further deliberation can be declared...

Bionic Chainsaw Pogo Gorilla.

6 Particularly Obscure Video Games that are Odd and Cool.

I am a big geek and sometimes I like to scour the internet for rare or obscure things. In the case of video games, there's some diamonds in the rough out there. Games that weren't released because they were so strange and odd and original that they were deemed bad. The following are a selection of truly odd (but good) games that not many folks (other than weird internet geeks know about).

1. Taito's Hit the Ice

 Roaming the wastelands lookin' fer beers eh!

Hit the Ice boggles my mind. It's basically what you'd get if you threw Ice Hockey, Dragon Quest, and Slapshot into a blender. You are a Canadian tough guy hockey player who is told by his coach to go out into the wastelands of Canada and win the VHL championship. As a Canadian, I'm interested in how a Japanese company would portray the great game of Hockey and also wonder how it would translate into an RPG genre of game. Basically, Japan perceived us Canadian types as neanderthal gorillas who wander around a giant wasteland searching for hamburgers, chicks, hockey games, and fistfights. I think they hit the nail right on the head with this one. 

All the elements of an RPG are there, you travel the worldmap getting into random encounters (except you don't fight gremlins and shit, instead you are attacked by rival hockey teams who you play 2-on-2 hockey matches against).The trick to winning these battles is to score one goal, then pick-a-fight and punch your opponent in the face until the clock runs out, then hot chicks come out and you celebrate gaining 5 EXP points.

Secret Tips:

1. Do not go into the arenas until you're good, the opposing teams are as fast as fuck and can literally uppercut you across the ice.

2. Eat Hamburgers all the time. Burgers give you vital nutrients and EXP points.

3. Watch out for rowdy arenas in opposing cities where rowdy rednecks will pelt you with beer bottles.

4. Cherry pick. There's no two-line passes or offsides so while your goalie holds the puck skate into the opposing zone then pass it across the entire ice surface and shoot.

5. Use "Dicky" Fontaine cause he has the best name in the game.

 

6. You can't swim so you have to buy an apple to give to an old man who has the life saving inner tube which you can use to cross rivers and streams at will!

2. Enix's Wonder Project 

Wonder Project was an SNES game that tells the story of a guy who makes a robot kid and introduces him into the world of humans. Blind to the ways of mankind this modern day Pinocchio must adjust to the world around him. You don't even control the character you just reward him and punish him depending on what he does. Each stage of the game has different situations and obstacles that require him to react in certain ways, and in order to get him to react in certain ways you must teach him through painstaking repetition and drills. 

For example for some levels of the game he needs to be nice and tame in order to help an old lady or something...while at other times in the game you have to beat the nice out of your son/robot in order to make him aggressive in order to compete in a fighting or athletics competition. It's a strange concept and you really have to play it to understand what I'm talking about. Some behaviors that you taught him at the start of the game have to be washed out of his mind to get him to interact with an object differently for a later stage in the game, it's really difficult to know what you have to do in a lot of cases. He has to be smart at times (make him read the encyclopedia all day), and other times really stupid (make him read comic books all day) in order to progress the game.

The ending is surprisingly terribly heartwrenchingly sad (unless you got 100% in each of the stages).

3. Tomcat's Photoboy 

Photoboy is the fucking best game, whoever made this is a great, reliable, and trustworthy member of the human race. You play as this deranged-faced golden haired youngster who's parents died in a horrible plane crash and now makes a living by taking pictures of fucked up shit for a local newspaper (whacky premise). The gameplay is really addictive and by the time you beat it...you'll look back and wonder what the heck just happened, but you'll know you are a better person for having played it. 

Secret tips: 

1. There's a really rare occurrence in each level that will net you a shitload of points, they are really brief and hard to capture but keep your eyes peeled for EXTRA insane nonsense going on around you (such as the Back to the Future Dolorean going back in time or the Terminator attacking some kid).

2. You can rapid fire at a lot of occurrences and catch them more than once, which is so cheap but once you master it the game is actually quite easy.

3. In the boss stage where your editor is popping up in random boxes and taunting you to take pictures of him you can cheat by clicking the button nonstop which slows the game down to a virtual halt.

Photoboy always reminds me of my childhood dog "Cubby". When I played the boss and didn't know about the slow down trick, I was going at such a pell-mell rate to keep up with the editor that I knocked a bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch off the desk and all over the poor dog. He didn't consider either the milk or cereal as real food and didn't seem to care at all that he was covered in it.

4. Seta's Bio Force Ape

Bio Force Ape is quick little 3-level side scroller with slick animations and a great story. It's about this monkey who's friends get kidnapped so he drinks this solution that renders him into a testosterone-ridden, enhanced, super ape who suplexes the hell out of any anthropomorphic bee-humans or crocodile-legged sub-bosses that stand in his way. I love the way he tries to wrestle his way out of any elevator he accidentally goes in, and how he reverse face plants the dinosaur guys.

This game developed a myth around itself between collectors and NES folklorists who knew it existed and knew it was awesome. As questions of how cool it was grew and grew, someone fanned the flames tenfold by releasing ficticious photos of the game which painted it as being too awesome and too hilarious for it's own good.

Bio Force Ape is what Cheetamen 2 aspired to be but failed...the super-mammal side scroller of the ages.

5. Itoi's Mother ZERO

Shigesato Itoi's Mother series has developed a cult following over the years, the games are satirical of the RPG genre yet are very deep and very well written. It's as if the spoof is actually of higher quality than the spoofed you might say. The complete story of how this was ported and translated is available at lostlevels.org.

What makes the Mother series good? It's hard to say, the graphics suck, the gameplay of an RPG in general is repetitive and boring, it tries at times to be annoying on purpose, and the characters are bland. How is it good? It makes no sense...but it just is. 

Tim Rogers from Large Prime Numbers wrote the best review of Mother 2 that I've found and I think he may have figured out why this stupid nonsense is good. He states,

"Shigesato Itoi, producer of Mother 2 and two other games, says in a recent interview that videogames are, at their best, like prostitutes. A prostitute, he is quick to distinguish, is a lot like a lover, only that it requires no emotional input from its momentary significant other.

[Mother 2] is a prostitute that's missing one tooth somewhere you won't discover unless you look at her really hard, and she has this shitty grin on her face for some reason or another. She does nothing to provoke you to be cruel to her. And between the time she takes her stockings off and the time she puts them back on, she's going to tell you a story so creepy you will never be able to forget it. Your time with her will not be entirely comfortable, nor will it be entirely enjoyable." 

- Rogers, T. Literature of the Moment (a critique of Mother 2)

Video games are prostitutes? I think maybe what makes this series fascinating is that its creator is a very odd yet intelligent fellow himself and that his oddness and intelligence carries itself very well from his head into his work. I think Rogers may be right in his assessment of Mother 2, that quote might be the best way to describe the game.

Mother ZERO might fit that description even better, it is unique from start to finish. My favorite character in the game is a lonely soul who helps you out of your own mind as you finish up journeying through it. I don't know how he did it but with just two colors, a handful of pixels, and some words...Itoi managed to make me feel complete empathy for a character in a really silly video game. You can't escape your own mind unless you answer this guy's questions correctly and how are you supposed to know which answers are correct? I have to try and figure out what this guy wants? He wants me to ignore him? Okay, if it will let me get out of my own mind I will gladly ignore you I guess...jeez...what is this game up to? What kind of shtick is this Itoi brother pulling? The whole game is like this too. It's an interesting one that's for sure.

7. Square's Live A Live

Squaresoft used to make SNES games that were really good, it made one or two good Final Fantasy games (VI & VII) and that really great effin' game Chrono Trigger which has a well written story and beautiful music score. Right before they made Chrono Trigger they made a strange game called Live a Live which is sort of hard to describe. It tries to cover a lot of different genres, from western to sci-fi to kung fu...and it makes for an interesting thing. See this site for a more in depth summary.

The Western and Kung Fu chapters are particularly good, I think the key is that it doesn't take itself too seriously which has made recent Square games (anything past 1997) totally awful and dangerously emo.

If you make anything creative, whether it's a song, a story, a video game (etc.), you really have to make sure you don't take it too seriously. A video game is supposed to be fun above all other things. The games they make these days take themselves too serious.