Video Game Collecting

I finally captured video of the Popeye bottle glitch on the Nintendo NES.  Normally jumping down on the see-saw will kill you if you get hit by a bottle on the re-bound.  To avoid it, after you jump, press to the right and at the precise moment when the bottle should hit you press the punch button.  Popeye’s animation will not change but if you time it right you’ll get the points and not die.

So if you have not figured out that Rolling Thunder is the game made when Shinobi met Elevator Action then… well you know it now.

I've never played Rolling Thunder. I've seen it once in the arcade. Watching the demo it looks as though the story goes like this… you are a spy or secret agent (Shinobi) and you're on your way to rescue a woman. You can jump to levels high above and below you (Shinobi). And you can go into rooms (Elevator action) to pick up items like ammo.

The girl in the game looks hot as does Tengen's box art.

6:17 – 6:58 is the most relevant part of this video:

I purchased a couple games from pedrogames.com tonight.  My budget has been cramped recently so I had to be pretty selective.

The first game I bought was WWF: Steel Cage Challenge.  I’ve always had an interest in wrestling games and have posted about them before (http://www.salzmafia.com/labels/wrestling.php).  But two things occured that started to make me jones for this game.  The first is I finally got to watch “The Wrestler” and it was an incredibly cool movie.  I don’t particularly like movies with alot of action and no dialog, but this movie was perfect.  If you haven’t seen it yet, there is a popular scene in the movie where the main character “The Ram” returns home (to a trailer) from the hospital after recovering from a heart attack.  He now needs to take it easy and he’s bored.  Looking down below his TV he sees his Nintendo and invites a neighborhood kid over to play Wrestle Jam.

Wrestle Jam is a fictious game.  It doesn’t actually exist as a rom or cart that I know of and from what I read it was specifically programmed for the movie.  Here are a few screen shots:

We’ll find out in less than a week if WWF: Steel Cage Challenge is worth it or not.

The next purchase is going to remain a secret for now.  But I’ll give a hint.  If Elevator Action and Shinobi had a child together it would be this game.

Oh how I've missed Popeye on Nintendo. I promised myself last year to get the record and it just hasn't happened.

I was reading an interview with the creators of Donkey Kong and Popeye and they pointed out something that I have long forgotten… Popeye is Nintendo's Pacman. In Pacman you collect dots and in Popeye you collect hearts, notes, and letters. Pacman has tunnels but so does Popeye. Pacman has energizers but so does Popeye (spinach).

It's nice to see a game so radically different be in all actuality be the same…

As I lay here on the couch it's hard to imagine twenty years have passed since I first played Street Fighter 2010 on Nintendo. If anything, I can definitely feel it in my joints. On a cool morning my hands and wrists sound like popcorn no doubt caused from investing my youth in videogames.

Anyways in this game we find "Ken" who had no interest in exploring the frontier until his friend and partner (perhaps he turned homosexual) was found as a "pile of jelly" on the floor. It's been years since Ken was king of the street fighting circuit but "that's nothing that a few bionics can't handle".

This game has great graphics and beautiful sound. It almost makes up for the dumb plot and lousy controls. Each stage is a glorified bass battle. You shoot a short range weapon and can do more moves by pressing in certain directions and pressing b. You can jump climb and throw your controller in anger because killing the bosses are pretty difficult.

I 've never beatened the game because after four or five continues on the first planet shouldn't be necessary. It's too difficult to be fun. In later stages the screen has to auto-scroll (like an airship level from Super Mario Bros. 3) and if you die on the boss you start over having to scroll through the level again.

I'll re-emphasize that this game is beautiful including the advertisements for a strip club. But outside of that the game is a few hours worth of aggrevation.

Next up is Ghouls ‘N’ Ghosts.  The rain at the beginning of the second half of the first stage is pretty impressive.  First you experience wind with an occasional leaf flying through the air and trees shaking violently in the background.  Then you get a few random drops, and then you get the flicker of an intense shower pouring down on poor Arthur.  The random drops continue and it breaks up what would otherwise be boring rain.  Like Fatal Fury this rain works very well.