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Posts tagged Way Back Wednesday
Doom
11017 days
Let’s all be honest with each other here. Wolfenstein 3-D is the first FSP that you can remember. In all honesty though, Doom is the first one that mattered. Where would all other FPS’s be with out the tracks that this game laid down first? Think of all the little things that Doom did, that just about every other first person shooter has copied since. Granted not the one that started it all, but definitely the one that everyone cares the most about.
I can remember the first time I played Doom. It was on a really crappy PC way back in the day. Though only a shareware version of the game a friend had given to me, it was enough to get me hooked, even back then. Once I got my hands on the full version, I realized that this game would become an obsession. I would play it for hours and hours and each time I played it, I got a little farther, or discovered a new section. This was the drug for my fix.
Later another friend would go on to get Doom for his SEGA 32X. Though it wasn’t a huge step forward for graphics or power, it introduced me to a much easier way (for me) to play Doom. Just as a little aside here, there has always been debate between PC and Console players over which is better, mouse and keyboard, or controller. I will just go ahead and reveal my allegiance to controllers. For me, it is the only way to play a game. Moving on… After I played Doom for countless hours yet again on a different format with a new control scheme, I couldn’t wait to get my own version at my house to play again. I wouldn’t have to wait very long because soon after that the PSX would release the first Doom that I could purchase for a home system other than PC. I played that version almost non-stop until the game disc literally wouldn’t work anymore in my system (probably from the shitty boxes they used to keep PSX games in).
At this point I knew I was hooked. I knew that if a new game were to come out that had the Doom name on it, I would purchase it, no questions asked. Yes, at that age, I was one of “those people”. The ones that buy every iteration of a game simply because it had a certain name on it. Sorry. I was an addict and had a lot of disposable income at the time. Anyway, again, the PSX wouldn’t make me wait long. They released “Final Doom” for the PSX around ’96, which i quickly snatched up. This game however was not you run of the mill Doom. It was much, much harder than the original Doom and Doom 2. In fact, I am pretty sure that I never actually finished “Final Doom”.
Rosie O'Donnell attacks... oh wait
Doom could probably be credited with creating more than a few of the staples in FPSs that still are used today. I would be willing to say that Doom is probably the first game to allow you to use a chainsaw to kill the minions from hell, or anywhere for that matter. Doom II created the phenomenon of the double barrel shotgun in games. Also the character that you play is the personification of “Me against the world”. You were a nameless “super marine” that could carry twelve different weapons, eleventy billion round of ammunition and literally, single handedly take down the population of hell, AND live to tell the story. It was what every kid wishes they could do, be an almost Totally Unstoppable Badass.
Years would pass before Doom 2 would have a proper sequel. That’s not to say that the time in between wasn’t filled with at least SOME sort of Doom game. I can remember purchasing Doom 2 for my Game Boy Advance. Who could pass up Doom on the go? I feel like there is another version in there somewhere that I owned… but I can’t recall at the moment. Oh well.
Doom 3 would be announced from Id software in 2000, sort of, when John Carmack posted internally about remaking Doom with “next generation” technology. There was some opposition to the idea, being that Id kept going back to the well for it’s ideas and some wanted to get away from that. This was eventually put to rest and they went ahead and started development on the game. It was shown first at Macworld in 2001 and later demoed at E3 in 2002. To say that the game was well received would be an understatement. Computer owners everywhere immediately started beefing up their existing PCs and Macs in order to handle the HUGE processing power needed to handle Doom3.
When it was released the game caught a LOT of flack for the fact that you had to make the choice between using your flashlight or using your gun. However eventually PC users managed to “mod” the game so that you could use both the light and the gun at the same time (even a “Hello Kitty” flashlight if you wanted!). During all this I was forced to sit on the sidelines and just watch others play. I didn’t have as much money as I used to, and I couldn’t get a PC rig together in order to play it. Once again though, time was on my side. Microsoft would release a version of Doom3 for their first Xbox in 2005. Day one, I once again had Doom in my hot little hands, and was ready to take on the hordes of hell again.
Doom3, A very slight improvement over Doom II
Doom3 wasn’t so much of a sequal to the others before it, but more of a retelling of the original story. Done with amazing graphical technology, it was well above and beyond what other FPSers were doing at the time. I didn’t care so much that I couldn’t use my light with my gun, in fact, I saw it from the perspective of the developers. It really did create a more tangible feeling of fear. Walking around claustraphobic corridors waiting for the next “Monster Closet” to pop open. Making the choice between walking in the dark with you gun out ready to shoot anything that moves, or walking around seeing everything and knowing you would have to be quick to switch to get a shot off in time.
After finishing Doom3 I knew it would be years before I would be able to get back into the fight against hell’s minions. Xbox Live would help to fill the void slightly by releasing their version of Doom for the XBL Arcade. Just another format for me to purchase the same game from back in then day again. Doom also became a motion picture starring(?) The Rock in October of 2005. Now i am kinda biased when it comes to video game based movies. I think they are all good (barring Uwe Boll’s) in their own special way. No I don’t think they are “Oscar worthy” nor do I think they deserve really ANY award. I just enjoy seeing the games that I have liked for years turned into full fledged movies. It’s a sickness.
Is Doom over and done with… HA! Not likely. Doom 4 was announced to be in production in May of ’08. Not very much information exists about the new version. Id software is developing the game, it will have the Doom name attached, and will be powered by Id Tech5, that is also powering Rage for Id. Nothing has been told weather it will be a sequel, prequel or simply a retelling of Doom II (much like Doom3 was for Doom I). Rest assured though, however this game is released, I will own at the very least one version of the game.
Doom, like I said, stands to this day as one of the most recognizable games ever created. Much like Tetris, or Mario Brothers, you could probably ask just about anyone out there if they have heard of it, and they will say yes for one reason or another. Doom started a LOT of controversy back in the day for being to violent, and portraying evil and demonic images. True gamers know it was just the icing on the cake, fluff and sparkles, on an already great game. I for one am sure that this game sits firmly as part of the foundation of my video game history. With out Doom, I probably would have been more into RTSs or Point and Click adventure games most of my life, and then where would I be? If you have never played all the way through at least ONE of these games, you owe it to yourself to find one of the many formats and try. It may just change your perception of FPSs and become your favorite way to kill demons.
Contra
01040 days
by WiFi Pirate
in Reviews
There is a short list of games from my childhood that i vividly remember almost everything about. Super Mario Brothers, Goonies II, Mega Man II, and Contra. I remember where every enemy is, what weapons are pop up where, just about anything from that game. That is not only a testament to how much of a geek i am but also to how much fun this game is.
I can remember the first time i played Contra on the NES. I was at a friends house, and he had just gotten it from like KB Toys or something. He told me that it was a two player game that we both could play at the same time, and i was hooked. From the second the title screen fired up, you knew you were in for something. There they were, Bill Rizer and Lance Bean… you don’t get more tuff than those two names! Your average gamer, and especially the ones growing up now with neo-retro titles on XBLA, probably have no clue that the game actually went by another name in the PAL regions. Over there it was called “Probotector” and they weren’t humans they were, you guessed it, robots. Also… the arcade version was hard as hell.
Quick put the code in before the music stops!
Any true Nintendo Entertainment System generation kid can look at this pic, and immediately hear the title song playing in their head. I know i hear it right now writing this. The music from this game was catchy. I mean we are still talking about 8-bit technology, but still good stuff. The sound effects in this game were kinda forgettable on the other hand. Except for the gun sounds. Machine Gun, Laser, Fire-ring-thingy, and the always present ever sought after “Spread Shot.” There literally were fights started over just being able to wield this weapon first.
The story behind Contra was… well pretty much nonexistent. If you can tell me the plot of the game (with out reading wikipedia) you are better than me. All i can remember is being dropped off in the jungle, fighting my way through countless enemies, and defeating a giant alien heart like thing. Then you are treated to one of the most lame endings, as your helicopter flies off into the sunset “Congratulations! You defeated the vile Red Falcon…” who we never really told you about at all. So, thanks for that then.
How much further up?
One of the best things about this game however was the Co-Op. Running through hordes of enemies with a buddy, shooting anything that moves (and some that don’t) was just mindless fun. Made all the better by the infamous “Konami Code.” Thirty lives were more than enough to tackle this game. Hell, have fun with it. Fall off cliffs, jump into enemies, catch a bullet in the crotch, who cares. You got lives to spare.
Contra is one of those game that people play and they really don’t know why they keep coming back. It is a truly unforgiving game. Most have been a “one hit death” kind of gameplay, making it all about timing and awareness. If you lose track of where one enemies bullet has flown, you will die from the other three that you never saw. It’s campy as hell to play as well. I mean how many video games have you ever played where you are taking on swarms of bad guys while literally running on top of the blades of a helicopter, mid-flight. It was never meant to be taken seriously and that is why the majority of people love that game (and Metal Wolf too).
Giant Heart Boss... Really!?!?
Contra would go on from it’s roots on the MSX and NES to spawn more sequels and re-releases than i care to count. Contra has been present on just about every video game system in one form or another. Some were really good, like the recent Contra 4 on the Nintendo DS. Some were not so good like… well, a lot of them. One things for sure, you can’t keep a good game franchise down. I am sure there will be a Contra game on the next generation of gaming consoles, when ever those come out.
Contra will always remain one of my favorite games from the NES days. I have purchased several different versions of just that game, and its subsequent releases. Nothing beats the original though. So grab a friend, hook up the NES one more time and don’t forget to blow out the cartridge. Take a trip back to a simpler time of arcade style shooters, that will kick your ass routinely, and enjoy every second of it.
Metal Gear Solid (Series)
01047 days
by WiFi Pirate
in Reviews
When i think back over (almost literally) a lifetime of games i have played, there are only a certain select few that i have followed religiously. Somewhere in the top three of those few games sits, the Metal Gear series. It has been way to long ago that i played the first Metal Gear for NES, so even though it was the first, i have not included it in this review. This instead will be about the more recent games from PSX, PS2, and PS3.
Back in probably the summer of ’97 I read in (the now defunct) Official Playstation Magazine about a game that was coming to the PSX. Just from the name alone i knew that i wanted to purchase and play this game. Metal Gear Solid. It was a name that i hadn’t heard since the late 80′s but i knew that given the amount of fun i had with the first i would no doubt enjoy the next installment. I remember reading about how it would use the PSX graphical prowess to the max, and would also use something that was all together new to Playstation gamers… Rumble Feedback. (It also, if i am not mistaken, required you to have at least the PSX controller with the two analog sticks on it.) The game featured a full voice cast, a very strange yet intriguing story, and some of the best in game cut scenes in that Gen consoles.
Metal Gear Solid would go on to sell millions of copies, and make it’s way across several systems, including the PC, and Gamecube (as Metal Gear Solid: Twin Snakes). It also was easily one of my favorite PSX games ever. I kept the discs all the way up until i sold my entire collection about a year ago. Hideo Kojima (the director) introduced some really fascinating things during the game that many developers have since mimicked in their own games. Probably one of the best and most memorable ones was Psycho Mantis’ ability to “read your mind”. When in fact all it was doing was checking the information on your memory card and telling you what Konami games you had been playing. It didn’t so much add anything to the story, but more to the feel of the game. You felt like you were actually being told by a damn video game what you had done in the past. It was a nice effect in the middle of a heated battle.
After Metal Gear Solid’s release on the PSX, fans of the game and the series would have to wait four years to get their grubby little hands on the next installment: Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons Of Liberty. “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to decieve.” This game is bubbling over with controversy, from almost the very start of the game. The first 15-20mins of the game (and the full extent of the demo) you played as the well known hero Solid Snake. However immediately following that first mission, you played through almost the entire rest of the game as… Raiden? Who was this whiny, platinum-headed, wanna-be that was thrust into the hands of players? Gamers everywhere (myself included) were totally taken by surprise with this second rate Snake.
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Only two years after the release of MGS2, came the next installment, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. Kojima, probably hearing the backlash from some of the (not so) fans of MGS2 decided to take this game back to its roots, literally. In part three you play as Snake… Naked Snake. The game also takes place before any of the previous games, story wise, in the mid ’60′s during the height of the Cold War. The story, boiled down to its most basic elements, is pretty simple. You play as Naked Snake and are sent into the jungles of the Soviet Union to rescue a defecting scientist, Dr. Sokolov, who was working on a sort of armoured tank (“Metal Gear”) called Shagohod. Things quickly take a turn for the worse when your “Boss” turns out to be a double agent and you have to fight off members of the “Cobra Unit” and stop a potential nuclear attack on the US. Isn’t that always the way, just when you think shit is going your way, you slip on that inevitable banana peel of life.
This time around Kojima turned sneaking missions from previous games on their ear. This time you have to use camouflage suits, face paint, and your surroundings to pretty much hide in plain site. Depending on what you were and where you are, you have a “Camo meter” that will show the percentage of how well you blend. It’s a simple but very effective game play mechanic that almost totally changed the way you play the game. Also most of the boss fights were more believable, if ever so slightly. I still have a problem with “The Pain” who can control hornets, and “The Sorrow” who is a ghost of a dead medium that, well really doesn’t do anything.
Naked Snake & The Boss from MGS3
Well they would have to wait another four years for the release of the next adventures of Solid Snake. In June of 2008 Konami released worldwide on the PS3, Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots. As a side note, this game is the reason at least initially that i got a PS3. Now granted i got one 2 weeks after the release of the game, it still was the reason i went out and purchased the system, truly making it, at least for me, a “system seller.”
*Spoiler Alert*… I guess… I dunno. Has it been long enough??
This installment of the series again followed, Solid Snake. Set seven years after the events that occurred at “Big Shell” in MGS2, placing it in the year 2014. The years have, well to put it bluntly, have not been good to Snake. In fact he is called “Old Snake” almost from the start of the game, and rightly so. Though he is physically only in his 30′s i believe, he looks like he is well into his late 50′s early 60′s. Why is that… well because of that damned “Foxdie” that Snake was injected with back at Shadow Moses Island. Oh and guess who is also back, sort of… Liquid Snake. Yeah the dead brother you never knew you had. Oh and it’s really only b/c Revolver Ocelot grafted his [Liquid's] hand onto his own. There is much much more as far as story goes to this one, insane amounts more. I won’t go into it all in detail. However i will say this, many of the friends from the past come back to pay a visit one way or the other. Also surprisingly enough, Kojima actually manages to sew up pretty much EVERY loose end in the past four games. Even all the crazy stuff that happened in part 2 that turned everyone off. Love it or hate it, the story from this game is simply put, amazingly crafted. Personally i loved the way that everything came together at the end.
Old Snake
The game reached Corinthian heights as far as critical and public acclaim. It scored a perfect 40/40 from Famitsu magazine, which is almost unheard of, and still sits as one of the highest rated games on most aggregate game rating sites. As of the end of 2008 (just 7 months after release) it had sold over 4.5 million copies. Unfortunately, Kojima has made it clear (has he really?) that he is NOT going to work on another Metal Gear Solid game. Speculation has already started burning like wild fire that he will take on some other character in a MG’esqe type story. The people in the know, if they truly know, aren’t speaking and probably won’t until Kojima himself speaks on the matter.
Metal Gear Solid the series has been running for ten years now, and has a following of millions of people. It has spawned countless spin off series games, re-releases, and special edition (including a LE PS3). The Metal Gear Solid “brand” is also viable for several different markets. There have been action figures, soundtrack releases, even a comic book. It is one of those games that you can mention almost to anyone and they will know something about it, or have heard about it in some capacity. As i said before, to this day it stands as one of my all time favorite series. Even now i wish i could go home and play through some of it. Kojima-san may not ever do another game based around Snake, but i for one certainly hope that his next game at least keeps the flavor of MGS alive.
Twisted Metal (The Series)
01061 days
by WiFi Pirate
in Reviews
An evil clown is on the loose. He is trying to run down other cars on the road in his ice-cream truck, his head is on fire and he is shooting out ice-cream cone missiles. No it isn’t the plot to some failed attempt by the Insane Clown Posse to break into NASCAR… its just part of the fun of Twisted Metal.
The term “Vehicular Combat” is a term that wouldn’t even exist if it wasn’t for the Twisted Metal series. Twisted Metal was and IS a series that has always been about the fantasy of being able to roll down the street and obliterate anything in your path that you want. What other game lets you drive, an Ice-Cream truck or a guy tethered between two giant wheels named Axel, through the Eiffel Tower, AFTER you just knocked it over? None games that what.
The first game, looking back on it now, is very ugly, seriously ugly. However at the time it was an amazing achievement in video games. Driving around, and in some cases, through towns, blasting away at your foes with all sorts of shock and awe inducing weapons. It was a teenagers dream. I literally think that i played that game so much i wore out my first PSOne. I would take it to all my friends houses just so we could play it non-stop. We would set up a sort of “pass the controller” tournament, and play for the better part of a weekend.
Not to mention when Twisted Metal 2 came out. Which by the way I got my first (and only) ticket for in my car. Long story short i was in a hurry to pick up my copy and didn’t completely stop at a stop sign and got pulled… blah! I think we played the second game even more than the first. To this day the second stands out as the best in the series. Thinking about it now, i may have to go home and buy it off the PSN so that i can own it again.
If you really want to put a story behind the series, it is pretty simple to lay out. The contestants in the “Twisted Metal Tournament” are all out to win because, if they do manage to stay alive long enough they have one wish granted to them. Some are lunatics that just want revenge (as in Sweet Tooth’s case) some are out to clean up the streets, and some just want their life back. Simply put they are all out to destroy what ever they have to in order to get their wish. Who is granting these wishes? Well that would be the mysterious Calypso. If I remember correctly his wishes were all granted in that “Twilight Zone” kinda way where you get what you want but not the way you want it. I guess like “The Gift of the Magi” way, but without the love story.
Want Some Cotton Candy?
The series had a great run at first. The first, probably, three games were relatively we received by gamers and critics alike. The series after part three took a sharp nose dive however. There were a couple more sequels on the PSOne, then a God-awful version called “Twisted Metal: Small Brawl” that seemed to be aimed at kids. The series did experience a “re-birth” of sorts on the PS2 with Twisted Metal black and then on the PSP with a port called Twisted Metal: Head On. After those two games though the Twisted Metal franchise has pretty much gone into hiding. There have been several rumors that it is coming back (again) on the PS3, but nothing concrete has ever surfaced.
Interesting to note that David Jaffe was one of the Lead Designers on the original Twisted Metal. You may know him from his other popular body of work, Calling All Cars… wait, I mean, God Of War. He himself has not come out right and said “There will be another game” however the tech nerds of the world deciphered a jumble of numbers at the end of Head On and discovered that it said “Twisted Metal is coming to PS3″. So you can take that however you like. I for one would be very happy to have a new game, so long as it is in the vein of the first three or Black and not the others.
This game is just mind-numbing fun. Get a bunch of friends together and slap in this game and see if you aren’t enjoying yourselves 5 mins into it. After writing this article, I am now positive that I will be going home tonight and downloading TM2 for my PS3. If you have never played the series you should at the very least check it out somehow. Just be sure to stay away from the Ice-Cream truck, Sweet Tooth is the kind of clown that people have nightmares about.
The Arcade
11075 days
There will come a day, probably soon, where kids growing up will have no idea what being in an Arcade was like. It is probably hard for most adults my age, and a little older, to imagine such a thing, but sadly, it is true. That is why instead of reviewing a game today for Way Back Wednesday™ i have chosen to spin the tale of Arcades in my life.
I have been thinking over the past several days of what my first Arcade experience was, and best i can figure, it was Chuck-E-Cheese in the early 80′s. I used to have all my birthday parties at that place (“T’was the style at the time”) and can remember playing games like Pac-Man and Donkey Kong endlessly with my parents money. There was also the table top arcade games like Galaga and Ms. Pac-Man at out local Pizza Hut that would devour quarters at an alarming rate. Finally there was the “Kids Area” of a local furniture dealer that had an arcade version of Popeye that was free to play. Going furniture shopping with my parents was never a problem.
Moving into adolesance, and once my parents moved us into the sticks, the only arcade time i got was at a mall that opened up a few years afterwards. I can remember going into that place and playing all the “new” games and never wanting to leave when my parents were done shopping. Since i didn’t have a car the parents were the only way of getting there, i had to seem like i liked shopping just to get a free ride. One time our school took a “Field Trip” to the mall (exciting i know) and that was where one of my favorite memories of arcades took place. A bunch of students, after we ate in the food court, went into the arcade and starting playing the X-Men game. That big ass two screen arcade cabinet that had like six sticks on it. Well we all piled on that thing and starting going to town. Nothing much really about the game itself was extremely fun, however the people playing it were. I can remember one of my friends in the jungle level SCREAMING at the top of his lungs like that damn howler monkey in the background. I think we may have gotten ourselves kicked out, but it was so worth it to hear him yelling exactly like that monkey over and over again.
Arcades all over America are all the same. They smell the same, are mostly laid out the same, and they all bring a smile to the face of any true gamer. Once when i went on a trip with a friend to Disney World, we stayed in the park itself. That alone is amazing (i highly suggest if you can that you do it) but one day we decided to just take the monorail around to all the different Hotels and “explore”. One of the hotels we stopped in was the “Contemporary”. It’s a giant triangle that the monorail runs directly through. On one of the levels was an arcade. So naturally we had to stop and play some games. I walked up to the “Virtual Cop” light gun arcade game and plunked in my quarters. Several dollars and about an hour later i had beaten my first arcade game, on vacation, in Disney World! Truly something that i could be proud of, in my own little dorky way.
Going into the Arcade at my local mall was second nature to me. Once i got my license i would drive out there about once a week and just walk around the mall for a little while, check the shops, then make my way to the arcade. I always enjoyed going in because i got to see what new games were out. By then i had come to find that most of the new games in the arcade would soon be coming to home consoles as well. One game always grabbed my eye, and i couldn’t go in without playing it; Mortal Kombat. Mortal Kombat is the first game that i actually could play with confidence that i would get through several opponents before i knew i was in trouble. It also was the first game that i took the time to memorize moves so that i could go in and pull of the finishers. Which i did the first time and was elated to see Sub-Zero rip someones head off and claim Victory. After playing through several different versions of fighters and beat-em-ups i decided that the only game i could consistently beat on a regular basis was Tekken 2. Me and my Wang… Wang being the character i used. I could tear through that game from start to finish in less than 10 mins. It was great.
I asked around, to a bunch of my friends and people that i work with, what their favorite games or moments of arcades were. Most were pretty much the same. Going into an Arcade and picking your machine and just doing your best to dominate it. Be that by going on a winning streak only broken by the fact you had to stop playing, or finishing a game over and over again because you worked there and got free tokens. Pretty much everyone played either the Street Fighter type games, or the light gun games. There wasn’t much love for the side-scrollers or the beat-em-ups. I for one loved side-scrollers. Games like N.A.R.C., Ikari Warriors, Final Fight, Die Hard, and like my friend (Brian) reminded me of, Bad Dudes. The old school didn’t get much representation either which is kind of disheartening. No one said they loved playing Galaga, RoboTron, or Defender, and sad as it may sound, not one person mentioned Space Invaders. I guess it could have been the crowd i was asking, but still you would think someone would represent the old school.
My point is this: Most any gamer that was born in the late 70′s early 80′s can give you their favorite all time arcade game. I can guarantee that when you ask them about arcades in general, they will immediately get a picture of one in their head they used to go to on a regular basis. I can remember going with several friends to several different arcades in one night. We would hit one up, then make our way to another and another just because we got tired of the same games at one.
Arcades are a dying breed now. You’re hard pressed to find one if you don’t live in some population booming area or Japan. And based on what i understand, even in Japan they are slowly going away. Even recent games like Street Fighter IV and Tekken 6 can’t change that. There is hope though. Places like Jillian’s and Harry and David’s are trying to entice adult gamers back to the arcades. How do they do that? With beer, that’s how. Both establishments are giant arcades that have a bar located right in the middle. Drink your beer, play your games, remember all those good things from your childhood. It wasn’t at either of those, but at a place similar, where i beat Super Punch-Out, completely smashed.
I just hope that my child has a chance to enjoy the fun, the smells, and the sounds of arcades before they die off totally. I wouldn’t be involved in the things i am now if it wasn’t for arcades. It definitely made a big impact in my life, and i wouldn’t trade those memories in for all the skeeball tickets in the world.
Mike Tyson’s Punch Out (NES)
01082 days
by WiFi Pirate
in Random
After much deliberation I ran through about five different titles that i might want to review. Just as i thought i had the perfect title, i get sucker punched and a star pops outta my head. Mike Tyson’s Punch Out, that was the answer.
Back in the mid to late 80′s i owned just about every major release on the original NES. I would regularly play an assortment of titles when i had the chance, after school. There were however a select group of cartridges that always seemed to make their way back into the system. One of those being Punch Out.
Punch Out was one of the few titles that my entire family enjoyed playing. Granted there was no multi-player or co-op in that game, but we would take turns fighting as far as we could. If you got knocked out you had to pass the controller. To this day it still makes a child of the 80′s smile when ever it is brought up in conversation.
If i said there is a story involved in this game you would probably laugh, but there really is. It’s the story of and up and coming boxer by the moniker of “Little Mac”. He has to, quiet literally, fight his way to the top through 11 fighters to defeat the champ, Mike Tyson.
Little Mac didn’t have much in the way of moves, but he more than made up for it in drive and desire. Left, right, jab and body blow, pretty much were your only choices. Except for the Star Uppercut, that you could pull off if you attained a star from a well timed sucker punch.
Some fighters were easier to get the hang of than others. Glass Joe and Don Flamenco were pitiful excuses for boxers. However Bald Bull and Piston Honda still give me trouble to this day.
Making your way through different divisions earned you a little musical montage. Consisting of little mac training in his light pink track suit running behind your coach, Jerome “Doc” Louis. This also was the only time that you were able to get a password, should you need to restart for whatever reason.
This game was just a lot of fun no matter how good you were at it. Once you learned the timing of certain fighters you could breeze through the game in less than 30mins. Tyson on the other hand is a bitch, there i said it. In all the years that i have played this game i have beaten Tyson once… ONCE. Lightning quick speed and a one punch knock down leads to an easy TKO (thank you Mario voice in my head). Ugh! I can still hear the digital sound of Tyson laughing after he has just knocked you out.
I still play from time to time the version that is available for download on the Virtual Console, and it’s still fun. If you have never played this game, first of all, shame on you. Second you should pick it up from the VC, its only a couple bucks for some true old school fun.
Funny little side story: When i was visiting a friend (Bill) in South Carolina, i beat the arcade version, in an awesome bar…drunk! And i have two witnesses.
