I did enjoy the idea of Luigi having his own game unfortunatley this was a way to sneak education under your nose. I gave this game a try to see how bad it was. Basicly its just a multiple choice test sheet that you roam. I think it even tried to teach kids to walk on the side walk since the only way to go up the street is to press up while standing on it and not on the road. Once you figure out where in the world you are you can bring Yoshi over to help you. If you get him ahead of time then you can run a little faster. I know this game is supposed to educate children about history and geography, but I can't help thinking that theres something inacurate.
I actually remember buying this game at the time it came out. My brothers and I pitched in our savings and got it while it was still new. Once we fired up our Genesis we were thrown off a bit, but since the title didn't really lie we didn't throw a fit over it. The game on the genesis wasn't so bad we even saw some characters from the SatAM cartoon series, but its portable counterpart was another story. I played the Game Gear version through the Gems Collection which saved me some trouble. It wasn't the game's graphics and controls that bothered me much since it was for a handheld. It was what happend when you die that annoyed me the most because the scoreboard takes its sweet time telling you unnessesary stats and all that crap. After dying a second time I just switched to a different game after that.
I remember the first game fondly and for a while I even remembered some of the phrases he said before the level started. The first game was good I recall playing to the point of making my eyes sore. The second game was bad I couldn't figure out much from it and the gliding had less air time. Finally Bubsy 3D was the worst I tried all I can to play the game but things about it just bothered me. The voice acting was awful and the voice of their choice was bad. The next thing that bugged me was how the game moved I originally thought that it was the scratches on the CD, but after seeing footage from the game it turns out that how it was programmed. This game was so awful that I played around with the password system...and I unlocked all the levels. Normaly I would get the "try again" message, but no after 3 trys I got all the levels. One thing that still bothers me is that before I played the game I remember seeing the 3DO version's box saying it won a Gold X award.
Its The Unholy Triforce! Thats right another game of epic proportions spawned three bad apples. If you ever wondered why Link never talked well now you see why (okay thats not true but work with me here). The first two games had animated cut-scenes that looked like it was done through MS paint. When I first saw screen shots of those scenes my first reaction was "hmm more crappy fan art", but when I read the article my reaction changed to "Holy crap this is from a real game!". The animation was done by russians and programming was done by Phillips who all did terribly at their jobs. Link looks bi curious and the animation is just...oh hell just look at it! They tried to put in some things that the other games didn't have such as the "duck walk" and the word "squaderlah". It was almost improved when Zelda's adventure came out, but it still wasn't up to snuff with what makes a Zelda game. Nintendo's reaction to this was "Oh god, what were we thinking!", the best way to describe this license is to compare it to a one night stand without protection.
I got my hopes up for an upcoming fighting game from Capcom but it was canceld, and in its place was a slapped together uninspired waste of time. I was disappointed that they gave up working on Capcom fighting all stars and just went with this. The problem with this is that it didn't have enough characters and it didn't really show any signs of evolution. The only redeeming quality it had was giving the chance for some people to play as characters from Red Earth and an original character entirely. I still can't get over the initial disappointment I felt when I found out Fighting All stars was canceled for this.
Valis X (no pictues but heres a link to an article)
Downfall
Sometime after the 16-bit machines had their run I played a relitiviley unknown series known as Valis. I had originally played only 3 and Syd which was an SD remake of 2. Years later I would play the first Valis game along with Valis 4 through emulation. Then I ran into an article that made me feel betrayed since it showed me that they did a remake of the series just one problem. It was a text book example of fan service gone too far. I don't know what they were smoking when they thought this up, but somehow the perverts won this one. Sure in the original games the girls were scantally clad, but was it really nessesary to remove all the clad and turn it into a Japanese porn steriotype? Think of it like this how would you feel if Nintendo decided to remake the entire Zelda series and Link's Master Sword was in his pants. Yeah thats right the idea sucks and all gameplay is replaced with clicking on what to do. I'd stress more on this, but the article will explain in better detail about this Ultimate Abomination. As I've said through my youtube account "VALIS IS DEAD!".
Well you've seen some of the bad, but theres a whole mess I didn't cover. Some games are showing signs of going down hill and others are just plain stale. Eventually we'll find more rotten eggs in our games but lets take the time to revisit what made the series good before it became a big pile of excriment. Those of you who are looking for major cheese will probably laugh at how terrible it is. Either that or send it in as a suggestion for an Angry Video Game Nerd review.
