Ok, here we go again with another video game review.

A few months back I downloaded Mega Man 9 for the Nintendo Wii. It was like $10 bucks to download and a few extra bucks for harder game settings and stuff. As soon as I heard this game was coming out I wanted to download it, and as soon as I downloaded it I couldn’t wait to start playing it. But one thing had me more hyped than anything else, this game went old-school and had 8-bit style graphics! I’ve always loved Mega Man games because they’re fun, they have some sweet music and they have pretty good replay value. And Mega Man 9 is no exception, it’s got all the above.

So, the game starts off with a familiar scene. It’s the year 20XX and all is well until…..robots start going crazy and attacking the city! That’s right, Dr. Wily is back to his old tricks again. This time he’s taken Dr. Light’s robots, manipulated them to do his evil bidding and he’s trying to blame it all on the innocent Dr. Light. (What a dick). Now civilization’s salvation rests in the hands of the legendary blue bomber, Mega Man! And he’s rarin’ and ready to go kick some evil-robot ass!

"I'm a total dick!"

Alright, first things first, let’s talk about the look and feel of the game. For Mega Man 9 the guys at Capcom decided to go retro and make the game look like it came out of the 80’s. Now I’ve heard different opinions, for and against this decision, but I gotta say that I liked it. Some people were like “Man, they’re just trying to make it look old too cash in on how popular old games are now” or “They should’ve just made it a side scroller with updated graphics, this looks dumb.” And to that I just shake my head in disapproval. (You should just be happy that another Mega Man game is around for you to play). I think they made the game 8-bit style as like a fan-service to fans of the old Mega Man games. And personally, it did give me the feeling that I was playing an NES game. They even have a “legacy” option that will make the screen flicker like the old games did.

...just like back in the day

It wasn’t just classic looks they were going for either, the difficulty was like days past as well. Some people claim this game is too hard but I must respectfully disagree. I’ll admit that it’s tuff when you first start. I myself died several times and it took me forever to beat Magma Man with just the mega buster. (I didn’t know/didn’t have the tornado weapon he’s weak against). But what game isn’t hard the first time you try it out? I can’t help but think about when I was young and playing Mega Man 2. I thought I’d never beat it, let alone get past that damn giant robot dragon, but I did. Now I can smoke that game no problem. It’s the same with Mega Man 9. You just gotta play and play and play. Remember, through trial & error and memorizing the patterns you can beat this game.

Remember this pain in the ass?

In this game our hero performs like he did in Mega Man 1 and 2. He runs, he jumps, he shoots, and that’s about it. Of course, when a robot boss is defeated you can use a new weapon based on their power. You can’t slide and you can’t use the charge shot. (Well, you can do those things but I’ll explain that later). But he does have his trusty robot dog Rush again with whom he can use the Rush coil and Rush jet. Your little buddies Eddie and Beat make a return appearance as well, but you have to buy them at the store. There’s a store you can access in between levels. You pay with screws that you pick up in the game to buy things like extra lives, energy containers, and other handy items.

There’s extra content you can download for the game. And since I wanted to play everything possible I downloaded it on the spot. There’s hero mode (a harder version of the game), superhero mode (an even harder version of the game), and proto mode where you play as Protoman (this version is quite hard, too). In Proto mode you can slide, use the charge shot and use Protoman’s shield for defense. But, being Protoman comes at a price. You can only shoot two bullets at a time rather than 3, you take twice the damage from a hit, get knocked back twice as far from a hit, and you can’t use the shop to buy stuff. (Damn, that’s brutal.)

There’s also a special stage you can play with another robot boss, Fake Man. (Hilarious). And the endless mode where you just fight and fight till you can’t fight no mo’. Plus, if you’re a perfectionist, they have some personal challenges that range from the reasonable (beat a boss using only the Mega Buster or defeat 100 enemies in the game) to the just plain ri-damn-diculous (beat the game without taking any damage at all, WTF!)

Let’s talk about the music. Holy shit the music was awesome! It fits the 8-bit style perfectly. Before I got the game I thought “I hope the music is at least decent” and it blew me away. Again, opinions vary, but I think this was some of the best Mega Man music since Mega Man 2 & 3. (I especially like Concrete Man’s and Galaxy Man’s music.) The developers probably knew that they had to step it up and make some good music and they totally did.

Once again CAPCOM worked with one of their more famous, if not their MOST famous, franchises and gave us a great game. So, as if it wasn’t already clear, I really liked this game. Yeah, it was hard but it’s supposed to be hard. They wanted to give you a game that was tough and I enjoyed the challenge. After I beat this game I actually played it a few more times because I enjoyed it so much. The music rocked, the visuals were nostalgic and you got it all for less than $20 with all the other added content. Excellent work CAPCOM, please keep it up.

Alright, this is my first post. Let’s get started with the review.

Recently I started and finished playing Resident Evil 4 for the PS2. I picked this game up a few years ago but I hadn’t played it until just recently because I kept getting sidetracked. Then the release of Resident Evil 5 got my ass in gear, cause it wouldn’t be much fun to play RE5 without knowing the story of RE4. The Resident Evil series is one of my favorite groups of games and RE4 did not disappoint, as I will now describe.

So, the game starts out and you are once again playing as Leon S. Kennedy (remember him from RE2). Leon is hired by some government high-ups to rescue the president’s daughter, Ashley, from some wacko cult in Europe. And, of course, just like in RE2, Leon gets more than he bargained for in this mission. He travels to a town where Ashley is suspected to be and discovers that all of the town’s people are crazy zombie-like abominations. (Notice I said the people are zombie-like and not zombies.) That’s right, the town hasn’t been infected by the T-virus or the G-virus but instead it’s been affected by an ancient parasite called “Las Plagas”. It’s a fight for your life as you battle an entire town of monsters!

“Just like old times in Raccoon City”

Now, to get it out of the way, here’s an overview of the whole game in a nutshell (*HUGE SPOILERS AHEAD!*): Leon runs all over the damn place collecting weapons and fighting crazy-ass monsters, finds Ashley and loses her and finds her and loses her and finds her ( I really can’t remember/don’t really care how many times this happens), meets an ally named Luis ( he dies), runs across opposition consisting of Saddler and his cronies, we see some blasts from the past in Jack Krauser and Ada Wong (more RE2 references!) and finally Leon destroys Saddler and saves Ashley. Ada escapes as well and with a sample of the parasite for……*drum roll*……Albert Wesker! Yeah, that’s right, Wesker makes an appearance in RE4. He is pretty much the main villain of the entire series after all. And with that out of the way we can focus on the finer details.

Resident Evil 4 is different in many ways from its predecessors. First off is the view of the game. RE4 takes the camera perspective of an “over the shoulder” view rather than looking down from above the character. This was a little tough to adjust to but you get the hang of it real quick. It has some nice benefits, too. You can see what’s coming ahead of you and you can aim your gun to a specific location on the enemy with the help of a laser sight (which is built in on every gun). I also can’t forget the button prompts; these usually happen in cut scenes and if you don’t press L1+R1 or X+Square fast enough your dead. The second difference is the enemies. As I stated before the enemies aren’t zombies but crazed parasite infected lunatics that speak Spanish (I didn’t mention the Spanish part before, but yeah, they speak Spanish). This might have some hardcore RE fans in a frenzy saying “WHAT!?! They’re not zombies!” but it doesn’t really change the game play too much. Another difference is the concept of collecting money to trade with The Merchant. Throughout the game you pick up money here and there and then when you find The Merchant you can buy guns and other nick-nacks from him. I found the Merchant’s voice hilarious and the fact that he always greats you as “Stranger”. (The name’s Leon motherfucker! LEON!!!). Also, there are no ink ribbons in this game. If you find a typewriter you can just save and that’s that. The ink ribbons can stay gone for all I care; I hated carrying around those annoying pieces of shit anyway.

Annoying pieces of shit

There are things that stayed that same, too. Leon starts the game with the standard knife and handgun. And as the game progresses you can obtain new and more powerful weapons. You can get handguns, shotguns, riffles, machine guns, magnums, rocket launchers, mine throwers, grenades, and even eggs. (Eggs restore your health but you can also chuck them at people, hilarious). And you can upgrade your weapons as well to make them more effective. Also, the healing herbs make an appearance again. There’s the green herb, the red herb and the yellow herb. The yellow herb is new and it increases your max health.

I liked the variety of enemies they had in this game. The infected town’s people, the wolf-dogs, giant insects, etc… (some more durable than others of course). And they weren’t impossible to kill or anything. Although, pretty early on in the game you encounter the chainsaw wielding bag head dude and he can be a pain in the ass. And somehow I feel like I’ve seen an enemy like this before…

There are also some enjoyable sub-boss fights with huge enemies. There are these giant monsters appropriately called “El Gigante” that you fight a few times and you also fight a giant mutated gator/croc while in a boat. And it seems some former enemies have taken a change for the better. The crows that normally peck you to death in other RE games will give you money/bullets if you shoot them down.

I can’t really find anything majorly wrong with this game. The only thing that can get annoying is Ashley. Having to protect her stupid-ass can get frustrating. Also, she’ll occasionally call you a pervert. (Is that anyway to treat your rescuer?). Not to mention her voice when she calls for help. “Leon! HEELLLPPP!”, “Help me Leon”, “HEEELLLPPP!”, “Where are you going?!?” (BITCH, I’M TRYIN’ TO SAVE YOUR ASS! SHUT THE FUCK UP!) But yeah, that’s really the only thing to complain about.

“Go ahead and take her.”

Also, there are some extras on this game. If you beat the game you get another outfit and additional weapons which is common in RE games. And in addition to the regular game you can play Assignment Ada and Separate Ways. I’m not going into them so just play the game and check them out yourself.

Ok, I hope I didn’t make this too long. I really liked Resident Evil 4. It had a decent story, it made some connections to the past Resident Evil games, the challenge wasn’t too hard or too easy, and it wasn’t agonizingly long or disappointingly short. The graphics weren’t too shabby either. I’ve heard the GameCube version looks better, but I thought the PS2 version was perfectly fine. If you’re a fan of Resident Evil games and you haven’t picked this one up yet, I would strongly suggest you get on it and play it. I expect high quality when I play a Resident Evil title and Capcom didn’t let me down. This game ruled.

-Super Joe

Well, I had some really ambitious reviews in the works, but those will have to wait. They’ll have to wait because I’m a lazy mutha fucka. That’s right. I said I’m a lazy mutha fucka.

You know who else is a lazy mutha fucka?

Sam Lee.

Only he’s not a lazy mutha fucka the way I’m a lazy mutha fucka, because on top of once being in a successful Cantonese hip hop band known as LMF, he’s also a terrific actor, who back in 1998 starred in a taut and comedic little Dawn of the Dead rip-off known as Bio-Zombie, which was sent to the states with much love from China’s then only Democratic hold-out, Hong Kong. Hong Kong incidentally is, I imagine, the only place in China where a shopping mall could be considered a realistic setting for a zombie movie. You know, because anywhere else in China, for political/economic reasons, it would be totally un-kosher to let zombies in a shopping mall. GO USA!!!

I love Sam Lee, and not just because his name coincidentally fuses the names of two of my ex girlfriends, making it sorta awkward for me to ever talk about him, but also because he’s smooth as goddamn honey drippin’ down a bee’s behind. And not just any bee. A fucking CRAZY BEE!!!

The first copy of this movie I ever owned was a bootleg of the laserdisc or maybe VCD. Either way, it was two sided and during the bootlegging process of the first side something went wrong, and both the Mandarin and the Cantonese language tracks played simultaneously. You can not possibly know a more excruciating pain than having to hear this. If you are an honest man and need to use that old chestnut of an excuse not to have sex (headache, duh) and don’t want to be fibbin’ ’bout it, yo, watch Bio-Zombie with both the Cantonese and Mandarin language tracks turned on at once. To continue with the metaphor, it’s like being rough-fucked in the ear continuously for forty-five minutes. Rough-fucked in the ear while crazy people scream at you. A confusing jumble of annoyingly shrill Chinese voices, like a chorus of drills in your skull will cause your brains to be so friggin sore by the end of the movie, you’ll have at least a month long excuse for celibacy. Perhaps your sex-life will dry up completely. I mean, when I was in high school and viewed this movie repeatedly I wasn’t getting any at all, and I think I’m totally allowed to blame this awesome movie for that. Right? Thank you, Bio-Zombie. Back then, all I really wanted was to watch this movie with a hot girl on my birthday. Didn’t happen. I was so sad and lonely. But I had fucking awesome hair, even if it kinda looked like a mullet from a certain angle. Then I turned into a zombie and my best friend had to shoot me.

Oh, shit, no. That’s what happens in Bio-Zombie. And I guess I totally ruined the movie for you now. But seriously, it doesn’t matter if you already know the ending. The movie is full of zombies in a mall, and where the fuck else are you gonna find that? And Sushi Boy! You can’t find Sushi Boy anywhere else.

Actually, I guess I did find one at LAX.

Anyway, where was I? After I got fed up with the VHS bootleg and when that newfangled internet thing started giving me the opportunity to steal movies via file-sharing software, I upgraded my copy yet again to an AVI version beautifully ripped from the DVD and compressed in stunning DIVX quality. I did have to do a bit of searching to find the subtitle file so that I could understand the (thank the Lord! single track of) Chinese language audio. I burned the thing to a nice 700mb Memorex CD-R and placed it affectionately in my CD library. Minor problem: The subtitle file was accidentally left out of the burning process, but that was alright. I just kept it on my computer for when I needed it. (The thing was like 65 Kbs). But it was worth that small amount of space to read such verbal gems as “So big the balls!”

Oh, but then my hard drive died and I lost the file.

My next attempt to upgrade my copy was about a year ago. A good friend of mine purchased the DVD. Score! I’m gonna copy that shit right onto a shiny new Memorex DVR! So I grab the box out of his bookshelf, bring it on home, pop that sucker open, and . . . Oh, shit the disc isn’t there. I call my friend up, and he’s at a loss. No pun intended.

Fast forward to today. I wanna write a review of this, the only movie that fills all three categories of being my favorite Hong Kong movie, my favorite Sam Lee movie, and my favorite movie featuring Sushi Boy. I still got that CD-R of the DIVX version. Problem is my computer is some kinda stupid piece of shit, and Windows won’t let me view thumbnails of, click on, or attempt to open any AVI files whatsoever. (If anybody has a fix for this, let me know.) So, as I write, I’m converting back to DVD the DIVX that was ripped from the original DVD. When it’s done, I can watch it, re-rip it, and then convert stills from the MPEG2 file to JPG files to pretty up this here little review.

Anyway, here is said review:

Some Chinese Mafioso type dudes are testing out some bio-chem war shit that turns people into zombies. They store it in a soft drink bottle. Which is totally an awesome idea, dude. Then shit happens, everybody dies, and some fucker runs away with the bottle. Two ne’er-do-well punks named Crazy Bee and Woody Invincible accidentally run the fucker down with their car and when he mumbles “soft drink” with his last ounce of strength, they think he wants to drink the shit and not warn them that it’s toxic zombie juice that will turn the entire world into a hell of the living dead Dawn of the Dead rip-off come to life. So they pour the swill down his gullet, he gurgles, dies, and then Woody and Bee do the logical thing: They lock him up in their trunk and head to work at their VCD store in the local shopping mall.

More shit happens, then zombies happen, then finally awesomeness happens. Really, this movie is fucking great. And you probably hear me say that about a lot of movies. And maybe most of them you don’t think are fucking great. But I swear you should believe me when it comes to this one. It’s the best, and I mean best, Hong Kong zombie movie you’ll ever see. The jokes are, well, at least as good as the ones I’ve been making in the course of this review, and what they lack in quality they make up for in quantity. Like a good piece of blogging douche-bloggery, the script of Bio-Zombie tries to force something stupid and interesting into every second in order to keep you paying attention to the movie and not reaching for that porn VCD. Cause even a bad this joke is better than no joke if it keeps you from whackin’ the monkey.

So anyway, I could write more about this movie. I really could. There’s a lot of memorable scenes, lines, and gags. But writing about all that would take a lot of work, and when you get right down to it, it’s like I said: I’m just an LMF, man. Lazy Mutha Fucka.

And so you’re totally SOL.

TTYL
– Jason Deadcat

Sam Lee image stolen from this place: http://mehitobel.com/licansen/
Other images stolen from I forget where.

Some news from videogameland: Sigourney Weaver will not reprise her roles for the upcoming video game adaptations of Ghostbusters and Aliens. 

Voice acting in games is usually something to be tolerated rather than enjoyed, but having Weaver’s likeness in these games would have added some authenticity, at least.  I’m still not sure why the game designers couldn’t just have her characters voiced by someone else, though.  It seems the days when Bill Paxton’s “Game over, man!” line could be inoffensively re-recorded by some random dude and shoved into the SNES Alien 3 game are long gone.  I blame lawyers and nerds.

Behold David Fincher's artistic vision.

I can’t say I blame Weaver for her decisions.  Starring in arguably the greatest horror-comedy and sci-fi horror films of all time and then seeing their franchises ruined by awful sequels and spinoffs (I’m looking at you, Alien Resurrection.) would make anyone squeamish.  Well, anyone except Lance Henriksen, but that’s a story for another post.

Finally, it seems the new Aliens games might not happen at all, since Sega has diverted funding to its upcoming Aliens vs. Predator game.  (Lance!  Quick!  Tell them you’re available!)  If Sega has any love for us in their black, black hearts, they’ll base this game on the old Dark Horse comics (like the arcade side-scroller from the 90s) and not the recent terrible AVP movies, but I’m not holding my breath.

Hay guys this game rules and you can kick a zombie in the crotch

Status of being kicked in the crotch, from left to right: negative, complete, in progress, pending.

Chances are good that, even if you spent an unhealthy amount of time playing video games as a child, you didn’t hear about Splatterhouse when it was originally released in North American arcades in 1991. While the Splatterhouse series is relatively well known and respected among gaming hyper-geeks today, mostly on the strength of its two Genesis sequels, the original installment never garnered much attention and was extremely scarce in arcades across the country. This is especially surprising because of its exceedingly high level of gore, which was almost guaranteed to put any game under tons of scrutiny from gamers and game haters alike, especially in the early 90s.

The extra-gory arcade version of Splatterhouse.

It’s possible that the arcade game was so rare because arcade owners actually found it too violent (remember, this was before Mortal Kombat’s spatters and spines helped to prove the equation blood + guts = $$$), and either never ordered it for their arcades or quickly sacked it after parental protests. Still, despite Splatterhouse’s obscurity on these shores, Namco’s U.S. branch apparently believed in the game enough to release a home version. Unfortunately, they released it on the most obscure, commercially unsuccessful home console of the age: the TurboGrafx-16.

Perhaps because only total game nerds and rich kids owned the TurboGrafx-16 (exciting Reader Interactivity portion of review: guess which one I qualified as!), Splatterhouse’s home release also came and went relatively unnoticed, despite the gore. It was toned down a bit from the arcade version, but it still retains, among other things, the ability to splat monsters against walls with 2x4s.

This is as fun as it looks.

The TG-16 version doesn’t have quite as many corpse-littered floors, blood, or recognizably human body parts as the arcade version (due as much to the limitations of the system as to censorship), but there’s still plenty of goop, vomit, and background artwork that looks just enough like internal organs to induce queasiness.

Left: vomiting zombies. Right: spring-loaded leeches, functioning as the game’s first boss.Something really cool eventually happens with that corpse in the picture on the right. Hint: it involves more leeches.

As you may have guessed from the screenshots, Splatterhouse includes several homages to popular horror films. According to the game’s storyline, Rick (the guy in the snazzy blue jumpsuit) and his girlfriend Jessica, two parapsychology majors at the local (and probably unaccredited) college, decide to visit a condemned mansion that once belonged to the famed parapsychologist, Dr. West, in order to fulfill the requirements of a school project. This Dr. West was rumored to have performed countless bizarre experiments on animals and humans, with chilling results.

West Mansion. Or, as it is affectionately known, the Splatterhouse.

Predictably, Rick and Jessica’s field trip goes horribly wrong. They’re attacked by monsters, Rick is knocked senseless, and later awakens to find that Jessica is missing. He resolves to find her. Thus begins the game.

If you’re reading this zine, you likely know much, much more about horror movies than I do, and probably already know that Dr. West is also the name of the doctor in the Re-Animator movies, who enjoyed conducting similar ungodly experiments.

Other references include an unusual boss in the form of a possessed room that hurls its contents (which unfortunately include a lot of sharp and heavy things like knives, a big painting, and a chandelier) at you piece by piece; this is reminiscent of…well, a lot of horror movies featuring evil or mischievous spirits, such as Poltergeist, Evil Dead, and countless others.

Finally, in a pretty obvious reference, the Stage 3 boss looks a lot like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface. This guy, though, manages to outdo ol’ Bubba by carrying around not one, but two perpetually running chainsaws. In fact, he doesn’t even have to carry them around, because they’re fused to his hands. (Wait, is that another Evil Dead reference?) He also looks a hell of a lot cooler than Leatherface did in his only video game appearance to date.

I’m sure there are more references packed into the game, but that should cover all of the most obvious ones.

What? You think I’m forgetting something?

Well, actually, no, I’m not. You see, that mask that Rick’s wearing isn’t a hockey mask. It’s actually the Terror Mask, an “ancient Aztec ritual mask” that Rick found attached to his face after he awoke, and it contains many supernatural and spooky powers. The resemblance to a certain horror movie icon is entirely coincidental.

Still don’t buy it? Yeah, I didn’t either. Apparently, neither did Namco’s localization team and/or lawyers: they recolored Rick’s mask red and added a few extra jagged lines in the North American version to reduce the risk of lawsuits. This is an example of a fairly common phenomenon in game localization, known as M. Bison syndrome.

A screenshot from Splatterhouse USA, known as “Doki Doki Vomit” in Japan.

Even though Splatterhouse is essentially a side-scrolling beat ‘em up in the vein of Final Fight (except with only a single plane of movement, more decaying monsters, and fewer characters named after rock n’ roll icons and legendary wrestlers), it’s aged better than most games of that ilk due to its unique setting, top-notch music, cool and well-rendered enemies, and…yeah, the gore doesn’t hurt. The difficulty level is nowhere near as high as I remember it seeming as a kid, although that phenomenon is not isolated to Splatterhouse; I’ve had a few similar experiences in replaying old games that have served to demonstrate just how uncoordinated I was back then. Rick moves a little sluggishly sometimes (particularly while jumping), but the controls are responsive overall, and still hold up better than those of many games that enjoyed significantly more popularity.

Punching zombies into perfectly symmetrical mounds of goo is an art. Alternate caption: Rick and an undead coyote assume their best threat displays as they fight over a fresh kill.

Splatterhouse can’t be considered very innovative in terms of gameplay, but the game’s creators did make some design decisions that demonstrated the desire to progress beyond the “walk right, punch things, repeat” mantra that defined most Final Fight clones. For example, although the game consists of seven mostly linear stages, Stages 4 and 5 include several opportunities to choose between branching paths. You’ll end up facing the same boss monster at the end, but there are at least three different ways to get to it, most with unique enemies that aren’t found anywhere else in the game.

Stage 4’s boss. This upside-down crucifix was, unsurprisingly, removed from the North American release and replaced with a much more boring seventh head.

MINOR SPOILER WARNING: In another notable decision, the ending for Splatterhouse is bittersweet at best, which was rare for games of the time. Most game developers had only recently graduated to giving the player something other than a plain congratulations screen—which they had finally perfected after several failed attempts—and didn’t often go far beyond a simple happily-ever-after resolution. Splatterhouse, though, gives you some foreshadowing about two-thirds of the way through the game that things might not turn out perfectly for Rick and Jessica.

<3

?

!

:-O

This scene scared the hell out of me as a kid. Much more than the game’s final boss, a 200-foot tall corpse who pops out of the ground and claws at Rick with his rotting limbs. Although that might sound frightening (and although the fight is accompanied by some truly righteous music), to me he always just looked like he was made out of a mountain of mozzarella.

Mmmmm…cheese.

Nintendo gave the TurboGrafx-16 version of Splatterhouse a second chance at recognition when they released it for the Wii’s Virtual Console last year. If you’re looking for a game that offers brainless, bloody fun with a great atmosphere and a few interesting quirks, I highly recommend giving it a try.

Oh yeah. That scary guy with the two chainsaws and a bag over his head? Guess what his official name is.

No, go on, guess.

All right, fine: His name is “Biggy Man.”

No, seriously.

*cough*

oh guys also you can kick a fetus in the head

lol take that jerry fall well

References:

Splatterhouse’s entry at Wikipedia – Assorted facts.
Splatterhouse page at KLOV.com – Arcade game screenshot, backstory and Terror Mask info.
West Mansion: The Splatterhouse Homepage – Exhaustive source for obscure trivia, little-known secrets, and everything else you could want to know about the Splatterhouse series.