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Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight

Mon, 04 Mar 2019 15:47:16 +0000

Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight

I used to play Street Fighter games a lot, starting (like a lot of people, I'm guessing) with Street Fighter II and its bazillion sequels. I never really played the first Street Fighter game, so I had overlooked Street Fighter 2010 completely when it came out. By the time that I was knee-deep in the Street Fighter-verse, I rediscovered that this game existed, supposedly took place a bunch of years after Street Fighter, starred Ken, and had him getting cybernetically enhanced and punching sci-fi creatures to death with his fists.

Which, to a kid sounds pretty amazing.

But, I never actually saw a copy of the game in the wild, so I never had the chance to play it, and, like a lot of the games from that era, I didn't think about it again until last weekend when I picked up a copy from some guy at a flea market.

Finally, after all these years, I'd be able to see what this game was all about. And what I saw was... well, it was this.

The controls were bad. I had a hard time doing much of anything without getting hit or accidentally grabbing onto a ledge and then getting picked off. I had no idea what the powerups did, and I wasn't even sure what I was supposed to be doing at first.

This might be one of those times where I should probably seek out a manual and figure out what I'm supposed to be doing, because, while spending five straight minutes flailing about and losing a game can sometimes be fun, I think I'd like to try succeeding once, too. Just to see what it's like.

b Mon, 03/04/2019 - 09:47

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Ring King

Sun, 03 Mar 2019 02:39:31 +0000

Ring King

A long time ago, I got a copy of Ring King. I don't know if I rented it from somewhere or if I borrowed it or if it was mailed to me in an unmarked envelope or what happened. But, the thing is, I got a copy, and I spent a few days playing it.

The thing, though, is that, like just about every game that I had access to at the time, I played it without the manual. This isn't usually that big of a deal, since some huge percentage of NES games are easy enough to figure out if you've played enough of them (and I've played a lot of them). So I dove in and... it didn't go well. Probably because this thing has a weird stamina system and you have to train to raise stats, and blah blah blah. I didn't do so well at the time because I was a kid and I didn't have time to figure out that mess. I wanted to get right in and play it, which I did. Poorly.

After my time with the game ended and I sent it back to the store, or it returned to its home planet or whatever, I kind of forgot about it, except for the ridiculously brainworm that is the main music when you're trying to fight.

That is... until the last weekend when I went to a flea market and found a copy of Ring King at a booth selling all kinds of old video game junk. So I bought it, brought it home, and immediately had to test it to see if it worked. Spoiler alert: it did!

And I immediately failed to play this game again. The problem is that I still haven't read the manual for this thing, and I forgot pretty much all of the things that I figured out about it the first time around. I forgot what the buttons did, I forgot to dodge, I forgot to assign my points to my stats, and I accidentally pressed the 'slowmo' button on my NES Advantage so I skipped all that stuff at the beginning anyway.

Yes, I know that I could find a .pdf of the manual somewhere. And I know that there's a cheat code to make my character invincible (but that's a pretty boring way to play). And I also know that I can go to my local game shop and get a copy of the manual (probably, I don't have their inventory memorized... yet). And I know that I could go to eBay and buy one, and then the post office would bring it right to my house and I wouldn't even have to put on pants.

But for now, I'll still muddle through it, figuring out what does what, until I get bored or frustrated enough to seek out the manual or a FAQ or something. But where's the fun in that?

b Sat, 03/02/2019 - 20:39

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Championship Bowling

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 13:19:25 +0000

Championship Bowling

The next game from the big Flea Market purchase was Championship Bowling. I had never played this particular bowling game before. I hadn't even heard of it, somehow. But, I played a round of it anyway.

It turns out that this game is a competent, if pretty basic, bowling game. There's not really a whole lot I can say about it. The bowler was left-handed, which threw me off a little bit, so I guess that was something.

b Fri, 03/01/2019 - 07:19

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Bad News Baseball

Thu, 28 Feb 2019 14:04:12 +0000

Bad News Baseball

I stopped at a flea market the other day and picked up a bunch of NES games to help round out my collection a little bit. Once I got them home I had to try them out to make sure they worked. And, since a few of them were games that I had never played before, I had to try and figure out how they worked.

The first game I tried was Bad News Baseball. A game that features kids playing baseball somewhere where there are rabbits as umpires for some reason.

As a rule, I'm pretty bad at baseball games, and this game is no exception. However, I do eventually throw a strike so hard that the game gets called on account of system failure, so I have that going for me, at least.

b Thu, 02/28/2019 - 08:04

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Bionic Commando Gameplay

Sun, 24 Feb 2019 15:08:42 +0000

Bionic Commando Gameplay

Continuing my quest to upload every scrap of video I've ever captured to YouTube, I found some footage of me playing Bionic Commando (the game where you take control of a cybernetic super soldier who can't jump for some reason and guide him on a mission to rescue a different soldier who got captured at the end of a different game). I used this to demonstrate farming energy pellets back when I updated protipoftheday.com.

I used to be good enough at this game that I was able to finish it a time or two, which I still think was pretty impressive since I didn't have a manual and the only real tips and strategies that I could get were what I could get from tip books with no pictures.

I, for whatever reason, decided that I would play this game until I finished it. I went all in and did things that I didn't normally do when I played games like these. I made maps, I made a list of what radios worked in what areas, and I plugged away at it for weeks until I got to the ending, which, if you've never seen, is crazy-gory (you probably shouldn't click on that) for an NES game released in America in the 80's.

This is one of those games where the difficulty is brutal, but it never really seems unfair. Yeah, sure, relying on precision grappling is pretty rough, and not being able to jump is really weird, and having to earn continues and hit points seems like busywork, and you sometimes get a Game Over because you ran out of Continues and there's no in-game counter of them that I could find. But the game never really feels unfair.

b Sun, 02/24/2019 - 09:08

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T & C Surf Designs without the manual

Fri, 08 Feb 2019 16:37:41 +0000

T & C Surf Designs without the manual

One of the great things about collecting games for long-dead consoles is that I get to play a lot of games that I never had the chance to when they were new.

F'rinstance, I remember some of my friends (at the time) telling me how awesome this game, T & C Surf Designs was. I had initially discounted it because I hadn't seen it in any issues of Nintendo Power magazine, and the Internet wasn't a thing I had access to, so I didn't know anything about it. T & C Surf Designs sounded like some kind of art program. Once I found out that the full name of the game was (deep breath): T & C Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage... I still didn't really know what it was about.

I eventually got some Nintendo hint book or another that shed some light on it and found out that the game featured surfing and skateboarding, but by that time I never saw another copy of the game in the wild anywhere and I forgot all about it.

Until I found a copy at my local used media shop!

The downside to collecting and playing these old games is that the manuals are frequently long gone. It's not usually a problem if the controls are easy to figure out. Occasionally, though, the controls are a little bit nonobvious, and that's when you have problems.

It turns out that T & C Surf Designs is one of those games. I tried a few times to do something, anything at this game, and what you see above is the best attempt that I made.

I'm sure that a reasonable facsimile of the manual is available online, and I might try to find it one day. I might even read it!

b Fri, 02/08/2019 - 10:37

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Double Dragon - Conveyor Belt

Mon, 04 Feb 2019 21:10:24 +0000

Double Dragon - Conveyor Belt

I've been sorting through a lot of clips that I wasn't able to work in anywhere and posting some of the less awful ones. This one counts, right?

In this short clip, I demonstrate how to use the conveyor belt in the first Mission of Double Dragon to (semi) easily get rid of the first real boss of the game, Abobo.

Don't worry, though, he comes back. Like six more times.

b Mon, 02/04/2019 - 15:10

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Super Mario Bros. 2 Gameplay

Sun, 03 Feb 2019 21:39:43 +0000

Super Mario Bros. 2 Gameplay

I tried to show off my skills in Super Mario Bros. 2 a little while ago, but I ended up failing to make it to the end of the game. Or even most of the way through the game.

Rather than let the footage go to waste, I figured I'd take up some space on YouTube's servers.

b Sun, 02/03/2019 - 15:39

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Athletic World with no power pad

Sat, 02 Feb 2019 22:54:24 +0000

Athletic World with no power pad

While I was testing some games that I picked up from the used everything store, I decided to try out Athletic World. Unfortunately my Power Pad is broken, so I didn't get very far.

b Sat, 02/02/2019 - 16:54

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Castlevania II - Password music

Sat, 02 Feb 2019 14:11:00 +0000

Castlevania II - Password music

I failed pretty spectacularly at Castlevania II the other day, but at least the music was good. I let the system sit on the password screen for a little bit.

You could also put in the password I got and continue where I left off if you wanted. It might save you ten minutes or so.

b Sat, 02/02/2019 - 08:11

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