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Spoiler Alert! - Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition - Vs CPU

Thu, 24 May 2018 12:01:22 +0000

Spoiler Alert! - Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition - Vs CPU

Since yesterday's warm up went so well, I decided to pit my skill against two computer opponents. But not just any computer opponents. I used max difficulty opponents. Was this a mistake?

You bet it was!

I've watched a lot of Wheel of Fortune on television over the years, and I've played a lot of video game versions of it. I can't tell what is supposed to be 'junior' about this edition of the game. The puzzles don't seem to be any easier or different than what shows up on the real show what seems like all the time.

The cynic in me wants to think that the Powers That Be (well, the Powers That Were) slapped Junior Edition on the title screen and the box, added some puzzles cut from the original release, made no other changes, and then shoved this game out into the world to generate a few extra bucks.

But no company would do something like that, right?

b Thu, 05/24/2018 - 07:01

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Spoiler Alert! - Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition - Single Player

Wed, 23 May 2018 12:20:22 +0000

Spoiler Alert! - Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition - Single Player

Since I'm known in some circles (including my grandmother's kitchen) as a bit of a Wheel of Fortune aficionado, I figured I'd try my luck at Wheel of Fortune Junior Edition.

I warmed up by playing single player mode and... it didn't go as well as I hoped it might. It turns out that Wheel of Fortune is harder when someone else isn't calling the letters.

Also, I have no idea what made this 'Junior Edition'. The puzzles didn't seem any easier than they might have been for whatever the 'adult edition' might have been.

b Wed, 05/23/2018 - 07:20

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Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 6

Sat, 19 May 2018 12:17:22 +0000

Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 6

This is it! The conclusion of Deja Vu!

The end of the game consists of a lot of standing around in the sewer throwing trash down the drain and sometimes eating a handful of flour.

b Sat, 05/19/2018 - 07:17

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Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 5

Fri, 18 May 2018 12:09:34 +0000

Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 5

Part 5 of Spoiler Alert!'s playthrough of Deja Vu is live!

Things are starting to get interesting now! I cut the tension by taking all of the food out of a fully-stocked kitchen and putting it in my pockets for later.

b Fri, 05/18/2018 - 07:09

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Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 4

Thu, 17 May 2018 12:23:09 +0000

Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 4

Part 4 of Spoiler Alert! for Deja Vu is here!

In which I totally didn't consult a walkthrough to find a part where I missed something, and then went back to fix it.

Also, the video being 13:37 is coincidental.

b Thu, 05/17/2018 - 07:23

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Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 3

Wed, 16 May 2018 12:38:58 +0000

Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 3

Part 3 of my playthrough of Deja Vu for the NES.

The pieces are starting to fall into place! Also, I follow the unwritten rule of 'always grab everything possible' and loot a high-end penthouse.

b Wed, 05/16/2018 - 07:38

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Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 2

Tue, 15 May 2018 12:08:22 +0000

Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 2

The Spoiler Alert! playthrough of Deja Vu continues.

Watch! As I stumble around the sewers. Marvel! As I spend a while at the slot machines trying to win cab fare. Witness! Me forgetting that I need to put a key in a door to unlock it.

b Tue, 05/15/2018 - 07:08

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Deja Vu

Mon, 14 May 2018 17:31:09 +0000

Deja Vu

Since I'm kicking off Spoiler Alert! this week with a playthrough of Deja Vu, I wanted to get down a few thoughts about the game itself.

I never actually had a copy of the game when I was growing up, but I did rent it several times over the weekends when I would stay over at a friend's house. We made decent progress through the game, but we never quite got to the end of it. Spoiler alert: Spoiler Alert! will show you that I beat the game in around two hours or so, but that's because I'm still (mostly) familiar with the game now and how its puzzles work. If you're coming in cold and you don't know what to do, the game will probably take a lot longer, and you'll probably see a lot more of the death screens than I show off in the run I did.

But when I was an 11-year-old kid, I loved the game. I loved the descriptions of everything.

I loved losing myself in the adventure. We never finished the game during any of our sleepovers, and we tried everything we could think of to try and continue the game the next weekend. Things like saving the game into Slot 3 instead of Slot 1, but whoever rented it in the interim would invariably either save over our game anyway or somehow manage to wipe all of the saves (or there might have been a dodgy battery in the cartridge, who knows?). We also managed to get the game into an unwinnable state many times, and had to start over, but we'd leave the unwinnable state saved into one of the other slots in hope of confounding whoever would rent it next.

Eventually, though, the summer ended or we got bored, and we never did finish it. I rented it on my own one weekend that fall, and was able to make a lot more progress when I didn't have two other people backseat-detectiving me. I was elated, especially since by the time I finished up the game, it was nearing midnight, and I was pretty tired.

But I didn't want the next person to rent the game to have a free ride to the end of the game! That's almost like cheating! So I decided to break all the rules and do all the things that the warning sticker on the back of the cartridge told me not to do.

I removed the game from the console while the power was on. I pressed the power button on and off a bunch of times rapidly. I removed the game while it was saving (which was hard because it saves just about instantaneously). And... nothing.

Had I thought about it, I probably would have just started a new game in that save slot, but it was getting late and I had kid-with-no-sleep-brain, so I didn't think of that. Plus, that would have been less fun than trying to corrupt the saves on a cartridge that I was about to take back to the rental store.

b Mon, 05/14/2018 - 12:31

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Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 1

Mon, 14 May 2018 12:16:04 +0000

Spoiler Alert! - Deja Vu - Part 1

I played through Deja Vu for the NES and broke it down into six parts, the first of which is right here!

This is mostly from memory, so I do make some mistakes here and there (it's definitely not a speed run, or even a speed walk). And, yes, I know that my NES has some problems with the video signal. That's my own personal watermark, and not in any way an indicator that I'm too cheap to get another, less broken one.

b Mon, 05/14/2018 - 07:16

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