Whistle Tips

Whistle Tips Chapter 7

I’m not putting it up to eight; it’ll blow my cock off. Perhaps one of the funniest lines in all of TV history. If you haven’t watched the IT crowd, you are missing some of the funniest TV ever made.

Ok I think… this will be my last NES oriented blog. Once I have cleaned out of my fuzzy NES memories maybe I can move on to the more concrete and truthfully more enjoyable SNES ones.

I fucking hate Ninja Gaiden. Yes I rented the game right when it came out, and yes I saw all the incredible cinematic cut scenes before NES gamers even knew what a cinematic was. It doesn’t matter; the game looks like shit and played only slightly better than it looked. Those fucking dogs were like land mines in that game and I just loved the spawn rate of “scroll the screen to the right only slightly and fuck there are all those assholes I just killed again”. For a ninja Ryu was pretty much in everyone’s fucking face the entire time. Gay.

I’ve been whipped over a video game before. Oh sure pretty much everyone has memories of being whipped because they wouldn’t stop playing a game. My mom whipped me for NOT playing a game. When I was somewhere between 7 and 18 I got a copy of Fester’s Quest for Christmas. You know what else came out around that time? Castlevania 2. Castlevania 2 I had rented about a dozen times at this point from H&H in Big Island and I absolutely loved that game. I suppose my mother took my pleads to own a copy of Castlevania 2 as some sort of reverse psychology, because instead I got that piece of shit Fester’s Quest. Maybe she thought it would be similar because Castlevania 2 was called Simon’s Quest. Maybe she thought I liked bald men. I have no clue except that even I could not feint happy surprise when I tore open would look like Castlevania 2 and found a copy of Fester’s Quest instead.

Holy shit this game was bad. Ok I’ve been known to get pretty anal about canon of a game series. For example, if you look in the instruction booklet for I believe Street Fighter II Turbo (not Super) it says plainly that Ryu prefers the dragon uppercut and that Ken prefers the fireball. So which canon to believe? The horribly translated Street Fighter 2 instruction booklet or the rest of the game series where all of Ryu’s alpha moves are fireball based and Ken is all about the shoryuu-reppa? Bullshit man that is a break in canon and I got a problem with that. Fester’s Quest takes what little canon the films had built up and throws it out the fucking window. Aliens come down and kidnap the entire Addams family and of course Fester is missed because he was chilling in a lawn chair drinking a damn screwdriver. How the hell did those aliens miss his gleaming batman signal-esque bald fucking head?! You could easily see that shit from space. Yet the rest of the Addams family has jet-black hair, which is not that easy to spot when you are flying around in a spaceship trying to find weirdoes to kidnap.

So I put Fester’s Quest in the NES, power it up and I’m thinking you know if I squint hard enough I can see Castlevania 2. Fester even has a whip in the game, because yeah he had a whip in the fucking movie. In addition to using a whip that you can build up to flame level (Simon’s got that shit too!) he has this sort of trumpet gun thing that fires out blasts of… various things. It sort of like Fester took the cannon from the cover of than Van Halen album, magically shrunk it down, and just fills it with whatever he finds lying on the ground. Cannon balls, goo spurts, you know common shit that you find on the sidewalk. In the “quest” Fester embarks on he is beset on all sides by green toads, blue toads, purple toads, green spheres, and strangely empty hallways. Hey there’s the main character from Goonies 2 wandering around in the same goddamn endless maze of first person hallways! No wait that’s not the kids from Goonies 2 that’s a blank fucking wall.

When blue and purple frogs have molested me and I’m feeling low on health, I can’t help but stop at the local Weenie Stand here in Lynchburg and pick up a dollar hot dog for some life replenishment. You know, just like Fester does. So when you blow up the frogs and such you get money and if you are lucky weapon power ups, but the majority of the time you weapon power DOWNS. That’s right the enemies, even in death , are determined to make your life a living hell. I got pretty far in this game on Christmas day, or at least I think I did because I’ve never beaten it.

I ask my mom, knowing full well what the answer was going to be, if we could go to H&H to rent Castlevania 2 instead. Now remember this is on Christmas day so not only do I have the balls to ask my mom to spend more money on me, the fucking store isn’t even open. That’s how badly I want to get away from this game. Even if it was to just drive out of the house for 6 minutes to find the store closed that was a good enough excuse to stop playing Fester’s Quest. My mom whooped me. She tore into me. On Christmas Day! She demanded that I play that game, enjoy that game, and beat that game before I ever got a new one. So I whimpered through fucking Fester’s Quest for about 2 weeks then lied and told my mom I beat it and could I PLEASE get a copy of Castlevania 2.

I never got my copy of Castlevania 2. Sure I got more NES games after Fester’s Quest but mom would never buy me Castlevania 2. The moment that game goes up on Virtual Console I am going to cry and fall to my knees in profound thanks to the powers above that finally, after all this fucking time, I can legitimately buy a copy of Castlevania 2. Maybe my mom knew I was lying and never beat Fester’s Quest. Maybe she should another game with the word Quest in the title was too much (this was up until I got a copy of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, but that’s for a future SNES blog).

I never got into Crystalis. Fellow staff member James loves that game and I completely agree with the flavor I have for video games I should be in love with Crystalis. I like Star Tropics though and that’s pretty close to Crystalis. Douglas my roommate was playing Faxanadu a few weeks ago and I remember that game fondly. Lots of killing one eyed hopping monsters for those 50 gold bags they would drop. Douglas is a damn master at that shit. Let’s see… I once stayed home sick for a solid week to play Mike Tyson’s Punch Out but only got sicker when I got to Mike Tyson on my third day of sickness because I think that game was made for the NES for the express reason of making little boys cry. I’d love to see a girl play that game she’d be a complete mess afterwards.

The Magic of Scheherazade was the SHIT. I have owned more physical copies of that game than I have Zelda 2. The music was so good, the combat fun (only pick the wizard character class!) and the time travel system was years ahead of Majora’s Mask. It had random battles WITHIN a Zelda esque action game. How could you go wrong. The company that made it was called Culture Brain. I have no clue where they came up with that name but I think it’s rocking.

Rambo sucked. Chip N Dales was good. Duck Tales was way too short for a purchase but I’m glad I rented it. Milon’s Secret Castle always reminded me of child molesters because it was about a little boy in his pjs blowing bubbles at some secret getaway. I can’t wait for Monster Party to get ported to something modern. Bionic Commando is getting remade for the 360 and PS3 and I couldn’t be more confused about the trailer. I realized Rush N Attack was a sound play of Russian Attack… like 4 years ago. Dragon Warrior was more fun that Final Fantasy because … well it just is. I hate Rad Racer but my sister Tracy was pretty good at it. And both Tetris and Dr. Mario can blow me.

Peace I’m out.

My roommate and I watched Flash Gordon the movie a few weeks ago. I was recommended to it by a friend who knew my love for off the beat goofy dialogue. She thought the movie was pretty dumb and in particular her least favorite line was “Bring out… the bore worms” sort of hissed out with way too much drama and overacting. As soon as I downloaded I mean legitimately rented the film and the opening starts off with “Klytus, what play thing do you have for me today?” and it is responded by “An obscure system in the S-K system your Majesty, it’s inhabitants call it Eaaaaaarth.” I emphasis the Eaaaarth part because in all honestly that is how the actor lets the word roll of his tongue. Eaaarth. Man that movie is fucking hilarious. It’s like one tripped out sequence after another basically glued together by the most emphatically delivered dialogue this side of a gay rendition of the series finality of Dynasty. The movie is nothing but long vowels and incredibly long transition sentences. I mean have you ever sat with a friend, bored, and said “Hey buddy… what play thing do you have for me today?” I think you would be liable for a beating in the real world. But the bad guy’s an emperor and emperors get away with that sort of crap.

My favorite line of all time from Star Wars isn’t Luke I am your father or even the defining sentence of Luke’s where he complains about not having enough time to go to Tashi station to get some sort of power converters. Wait while I’m on that, what exactly did he need power converters for, and why the fuck was he so excited to get them? What do you convert on Tatooine, like sand power to dirt power? Is that sort of like AC to DC or am I just making the whole thing too complicated. It converts whiny teenage angst into useful adult competence. I need a whole mess of those converters. I suppose Luke need multiple converters and not just one, because much like AC to DC you can burn those things out by pumping too much voltage through them. Once you had up all the bullshit he complains about in all three movies it’s a wonder Tatooine even has enough power converters for just Luke, not to mention all the other upset Rebellion teens.

Ok so my favorite line isn’t Luke being young dumb and full of… angst nor is it any of the most heavily quoted Darth Vader “Listen I can talk even though I breath through a sewer grate and you don’t give a shit because I’m James Earl Jones and you’ll eat it up” lines. It’s the Emperor when he is basically talking to himself during the end fight between Vader and Luke in Episode III, the Return of the Franchise. First of all, he rattles on for a good half an hour about friends and full operational battle stations. But he really pours it on in the middle of the lightsaber battle. The Emperor is so bad ass he ignores one of the most sacred rules of cinema: avoid speaking off screen. You can speak with your back to the camera, you can even speak off camera as long as it’s during a one on one dialogue scene. But as Luke is walking around the Emperor for no good reason, off camera goes “Good… gooooooood— blah blah”. I crack up every SINGLE time I hear this line. It’s one of those laughs that just rocks you to the core, stops everything around you, grabs your stomach and upends whatever is in it. I am serious when I say if I was Luke and I had been driven to the point of hate where I was about to kill my own father, I would have thrown my lightsaber down at the point and said “Listen man, I’m trying to be serious and kill my dad here but if you keep saying ignorant shit randomly when no one is even paying an ounce of fucking attention to you I’m going to have to come back in say… 10 mins after my dad tosses your cripple ass into the reactor and get back to the fight proper.”

So people in power, emperors in particular or even those that directly serve them such as the case in Flash Gordon gain two benefits over those of us without parapets of comfort: they can elongate their vowels to criminal lengths and they can talk off camera. So how do you get to be emperor? Classic movies and classic video games give us a series of examples on how to achieve such power. I’ll list them here, numbered, for the benefit of the website’s ah….. more dimwitted readers.

1. Produce an unknown number of clones of yourself, and make sure Samuel L Jackson doesn’t fuck up your plans meaning kill his ass real quick (Star Wars)
2. Wear a long straight Chinese beard (every Dynasty Warriors game ever made)
3. Name your cohort Klytus and put him in charge of play things (Flash Gordon)
4. He who controls the flow of spice controls being pompous enough to be named emperor (Dune)
5. Don’t be a woman.

What Flash Gordon really gave to me wasn’t heavy handed dialogue or even swirls of early 80’s acid flash back filmmaking, it was the music during the final battle between Flash and his troupe of flying beef cakes versus possibly the most inept chump guards of all time. Before it gets to the title song sung by Queen, the theme music to Rygar for the NES starts playing. Yes, I know you are wondering “But Kevin, I never played Rygar or even have a clue what the music sounds like.” Have you ever heard awesome? That’s the Rygar theme music, it sounds of awesome. So as soon as the Rygar theme starts up the movie is completely gone from my vision and I’m 9 years old playing Rygar in front of my family’s 19 inch tv trying to figure out why I’m not killing the crawfish worm things by jumping on them. I’m only paralyzing them. Now wait what the fuck I jump on walking mushrooms in Mario and they freaking die. Even the damn turtles go back into their shells.

But not Rygar. No. When you jump on a turtle or a crawfish worm thingy it just stops moving. So I’m watching the guy that kind of looks like Dolph Lundgren flying in a jet ski accompanied by the guy that kind of looks like King Leonidas but with wings and I got it! I know now why those stupid ass turtles and crawfish worms and everything else just freeze up when you jump on them in Rygar: they are completely scared shitless of a shirtless man wielding a shield like a yo-yo jumping on their head! You are walking down the street, probably going to the store to pick up some beer or maybe cash your check so you can pay rent and out of the blue a sweaty Greek type dude jumps from the bushes swinging a shield like he thinks it’s a sword and hops on your back. If there was a cop around you could scream for help but there isn’t a cop around. This is in ancient Greece and you’re a slow moving turtle or crawfish worm thingy and no one is around to hear you scream. So you lock up and pretend to ignore him hoping he’ll go away because people like him just do those sorts of things for attention. He does start to go away so after a few seconds once he gets off your back you start to move back along your merry way and boom he beans you in the head with his stupid shield yo-yo and suddenly you are dead and this asshole gets experience for the whole deal. I really had problems with Rygar as a kid, something about it just made me feel uneasy, like every time I played the game I felt like I was playing it during a feverish sick day. Those days when you were little and sick and everything sort of came at you in spurts.

Rygar was a pretty sweet game. I put it somewhat close or at the least in the same category as Zelda II. It’s just one of those games I’m still figuring out. When I first played it after renting it at H&H I thought it was a Rambo game at first. I’m sure if I had the internet at the time I would have imdbed Stallone’s ass and tried to find some movie called Rygar he had been in recently. I say they release Contra 4 and Rambo 4 on the same day, make Stallone emperor so he can stand up and legimately say “Adriiiiiiiiiiiiian!”

Ever get that feeling that you’ve lost something so precious and you are willing to go out and spend whatever money and time you have to replace that feeling? I did that last week, I went out and picked up the Brain Age 2 red and black Nintendo DS package for 150 bucks at Toys’R’Us. As I was walking out of the door, I had this crazy idea that my enamel navy DS was going to show up next to my car, key in hand, ripping the fuck out of the paint job and screaming and crying at me at the same time.

Well that’s silly of course because a DS doesn’t have hands or even the ocular system needed to cry, so I’m in the clear. But I still kind of feel like shit, playing my new lipstick lesbian Nintendo DS. It’s glittery red with a dark black matte finish, and it looks fucking sexy. I’ve gotten to hold it and a white DS lite at the same time and the make of the new DS is different. I’m hoping to see how it holds up to my constant physical and verbal abuse. My enamel navy did a good job, never once complained or called the police. I’ve the more attractive things are, the more upkeep they require and for all I know my new DS will be the same way.

I picked up Yoshi’s Island DS for it, one of those on the fence games I’ve been… huh… umm… on the fence about for months. Everyone has one of those games every so often, you see it in the store or the .iso online and you are like wow, I bet that game would be pretty enjoyable to play. But I’m sitting on this fence and it’s soooo comfortable the way it feels against my bare ass.

I really really like this game. When I compare the first part platformers that I have played and own for the DS, I have Super Princess Peach, New Super Mario Bros, and Yoshi’s Island. Yoshi’s Island is by far the best. Now I know I need to bring up some hardcore factual basis for that opinion. Super Princess Peach was way too easy when it came to the core platforming aspects of the game. New Super Mario Bros was too damn short. The individual levels just didn’t have the meat to them that I was hoping for.

Yoshi’s Island seems to be the perfect middle ground, you know the porridge that is just right. The bed that is just soft enough and the breasts are just large enough. The stages are very big as the game uses both screens stack on top of each other to simulate a huge vertical aspect which the game finds devious ways of using against you. Difficulty can not longer be weighed in how many lives you have in these days. For example, I have about 85 extra men in Yoshi’s Island.

Newer games are gauged in difficulty by how hard certain sections of the game are. You always hear about that tough spot on Gears of War insane mode or that motherfucking 2nd Virgil fight on Dante Must Die mode. Yoshi’s Island has those difficult spots. Those spots that make you scratch your head and say ok I can jump, float briefly and throw eggs… how in the fuck do I use those 3 things to get across this area?!

Just recently I beat through Metroid Prime 3 on the Wii without a single glance at a forum or faq. I am only on world 3 in Yoshi’s Island DS and I’ve had to use the faq once. I need to tell the guys at Retro that Yoshi’s Island is kicking my ass harder than Metroid. LOOL

Actually I did just start playing through Hyper difficulty in Metroid Prime 3 and I’m going to have to take back my comment… Retro that damn Berserker Lord needs to know his place.

Oh and I found someone else that owned an enamel navy DS. That cheating bitch!!!!

I miss my DS. I mean I REALLY miss my DS. A few weeks or months ago (it is hard to measure time in days when I had become used to measuring it in DS game releases) I was separated from my DS either by the cruel hand of fate, or my own stupidity. The jury is still out on which one is the culprit.

While helping a friend and his wife move from their apartment to their new home, my enamel navy DS along with nearly all of my most heavily played (aka most expensive, most fun, most foreign games) just up and disappeared. Early on, several theories seemed to hold some distant hope of recovery. Perhaps someone packed my DS case away in one of the many boxes laying around the house? Maybe it was left inside my car or left inside someone else’s vehicle? I actually had cleaned my car out that day and spent an hour rummaging through the trash can outside the apartment complex trying to convince myself I was so stupid as to throw away my DS.
So… it’s gone. What’s gone? The past several years of my life, that’s what. I lost the following things on that day:
1 Enamel Navy Blue DS (Japanese)

1 Cheap Best Buy DS Case 1 Mario Kart DS (over 200 hours, 1000 races)

1 Jump Ultimate Super Stars (over 100 hours, everything unlocked, 37 decks built)

1 Bleach DS 2 (over 50 hours, everything unlocked) 1 Phoenix Wright 2 (on the last case… consult early podcasts to find my love of this game)

1 Nintendo DS Web Browser (meh)

1 Ouendon 2 (just got to the last song on Normal difficulty)

1 Metroid Prime Hunters (everything unlocked… sensing a pattern?)

1 Hotel Dusk 1 Nintendo DS Rumble Pack

1 Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Nintendo DS stylus (cry!)

1 Yggdra Union GBA (man this game was hard) and for some reason, my most upsetting loss

1 Golden Sun 2 GBA (I have yet to get over losing this one)

Poof. Gone. No trace. Now I am left with a cup full of my other DS games, and no DS to play them on. I was so fucking close to beating Phoenix Wright 2… I was on the last case! I was finally going to be done with hopefully the most drawn out boring chapter of the series!
Man just typing this stuff out… really makes me realize how much money and time was in that little gay looking DS purse. I really have had a huge wind taken out of me as far as gaming goes. So far, I’ve managed to keep myself busy on the Wii. There has been a good chunk of virtual titles and real titles (Paper Mario, Super Metroid, Alien Syndrome, and the upcoming Metroid Prime 3) to keep me busy. Work has been so go go go go go that I haven’t really had much time to play DS outside of home anyway.
And what is their really to look forward to the rest of this year anyway? Oh yeah… Zelda Phantom Hourglass. Draglade. Dementium. Shit. Fuck. I know of one thing that keeps me somewhat from flipping out, and that is that there is no Castlevania DS game coming out this winter.
Oh wait, IGA announced there is one already in development alongside finishing up Castlevania Rondo of Blood for the PSP. You know, I had money put aside to pick up that PSP too. For Rondo of Blood. So now do I pick up another DS and start building back the games I lost for this elusive Castlevania DS game or do I get the PSP to get the few but great gems available for it?
Shit. Fuck.

Good thing Metroid and Smash and Galaxy and NiGHTs and all the other Wii stuff will keep me busy…

I miss you Enamel Navy.

Love
K

The first experience I had on my NES was Mario, and I actually wasn’t too into shooters at that time. Having come off what I consider to be a dark age of shooters (the Atari era… bring on the hate mail!) I wasn’t too thrilled to give them a chance on my new colorful NES.

It wasn’t until I played Gradius (I believe as a rental) on the NES that I became aware of what this brand new machine could do for shooters. Things were so much easier to see… THEY WERE IN FUCKING COLOR MAN. Sure the bullets still blended into the background every so often but that was to be expected. You’re suppose to kill the shit before it has a chance to fire back at you. Gradius was one of the first games I learned that very important and BASIC fact of video gaming: reduce the probability of your enemy firing on you and if at all possible, avoid the harder patterns. It was hard for me, at that early age of X to realize that. Gradius, and most shooters don’t actually have time limits like a counter that goes 300…299…298. The time limit is more subtle and is one of the big things that keeps most gamers away from the genre.

Enemies in shooters are kind of like women: full of bullets but for the most part predictable. You know, that when that line of alien fighters appears in the top right corner they are going to spray bullets at you within 2 seconds. Killing them before that time will result in less bullets to avoid, hence the need for quick action. A good shooter game, such as Gradius or Ikaruga teaches you a very primitive fact: pre-emptive murder is better than killing after the fact. The pilot in the Vic Viper is not bound by any sort of political missive or moral compass. He knows that if he holds his fire for any reason, like he has second thoughts (Oh man I can’t kill that alien ship maybe the pilot just became a daddy today) or some such bullshit, he’s going to have a busier screen to deal with than if he simply just blew the fucker off the screen.

So the NES was a pretty good console for shooters but in retrospect they haven’t aged too well. This is due to the fact that for nearly every series that existed during the NES, a better version of said game was created for either the SNES, Genesis, or Turbo-Grafx. Man there was some serious damn glut of shooters back them. I remember renting one or two every few weeks spending the night at my friend’s house and rarely renting the same one twice for an entire year. So many bullets… so little time.

What brought me back to shooters after such a glut was what I believed to be a fairly innocent purchase. I remember seeing a comic on Penny Arcade where a copy of Ikaruga, then an import only Dreamcast title, was purchased. Cool name… Ikaruga. Means Spotted Dove. Yeah, makes no sense. A Gamecube version was planned and I kept a very loose watch on it. I preordered it knowing, as most shooters go, the local Eb Games would have no copies on the shelf only those pre-ordered. 40 bucks for what boils down to a 22 minute game. A game that no one unless blessed by God himself could beat legitimately. And one of the best games I have ever purchased.

Much like the NES generation, I’ve made it a habit to pick through the chaff and go after what I consider to be the greats of the genre. I own a copy of Ikaruga, a copy of Radiant Silvergun for the Sega Saturn, and probably my personal favorite (it’s amazing how such things are cyclic with your early childhood) Gradius V.

I’ve played Gradius V so many times that I’ve literally dreamed up different plot schemes for the game. My favorite maintains that the pilot of the Vic Viper in this particular chapter is actually an intergalactic Fedex delivery man and he’s simply trying to get an express package to the end of the game. Little does he know that at the end of the game awaits an inescapable time loop that prevents him from making his delivery! But in true Japanese go get em fashion, he just keeps running through the same time loop, determined to get that signature on his little touch pad thingy.

I’ve completely forgotten where I was going with this blog, but that’s cool because much like the games I’ve been describing in it, there really is no point. With such simple yet classic stories, most shooters can be summed easily. I enjoy them because of that simplicity, because you are put in a situation that is 100% determined and mapped out by the developers. No user generated content, no online play with all it’s randomness of which asshole you are going to get paired with or against. They are experiences that are defined at the time the wax is printed and not changeable after the fact. When done well I go back to them like anyone else would go back to a good book or movie, something to do during a rainy day when nothing else seems to peak your interest.

My favorite shooters of all time for those curious enough to reach the end of a quite personal two part blog:

• Gradius
• R Type III
• Gyruss
• The shooter stages in Lunar Knights
• The Red Star
• Radiant Silvergun
• The shooter stages in Astro Boy GBA
• Ikaruga
• Gradius V
• Dondonpachi
• Mars Matrix
• Tiger Heli (ha that’s old school motherfuckers!)
• NOT the shooter stages in Gunstar Heroes (had to knock Treasure a little in this blog)
• R Type Final

Chapter 2 bitches. Hopefully I have a few returnees from the previous blog. Anyone play Zelda II yet? Get to it!!! I think this blog might be all over the place. I have to attempt to keep my mind focused while my roommate watches Babylon 5 in the background. More like Babel-lot-scifi-jargon 5.

I mentioned sci fi jargon because that’s kind of what I’ve decided to base my blog on this week: shooters. Since the beginning with Missile Command and Asteroids, shooters have been filled with some of the most fucking mind numbing stories out there. Even the ones without actual “stories” such as Asteroids makes no fucking sense. Ok… so who put me out here in this ship and why does this ship have the gravitational pull of a black hole? All these damn rocks are flying after me! I need to get the fuck out of this ship! Wait a damn alien?!

The thing I find funny about the ship in Asteroids is that I imagine the inside of it as the inside of every ship from that era of sci fi, the late 70s early 80s. Filled with buttons. I mean filled to the fucking hilt. Red buttons, black switch, purple levers, all blinking and glowing and whirring and chirping. Buttons along the front dash, buttons running all the way up over the ceiling even into the damn bathroom. And you know what? None of them do anything other than shoot. There is one small analog stick that jets your ship along the 8 cardinal directions, but nothing else in the ship does a damn thing other than fire that one fucking laser. The button that says eject, it fires. The button that says self destruct, fucking fires. The one that says hail, that your dude presses when he sees that alien like “Hey motherfucker help me out of this god forsaken ship!”… it fires too. I imagine Asteroids as a game in which you are inside the ship just flopping around inside like a fish, slamming into all those fire buttons just spitting your load all over the cosmos (that’s how I played it). Or… you could play it all stealthy and you are inside the ship hiding in the back pressing one of those fire buttons with your toe… pop pop. Asteroids was a dumb fucking game.

So shooters rapidly got more sophisticated over the years. There was the Defender game, which seemed to be filled with a lot of offense for a game named Defender. Maybe they should have called it Offender? But then it wouldn’t have gotten sold because people would have thought it was a game about child molesters. Xevious was apparently popular, but I didn’t have a NES when it came out, and by the time I got my NES there were much better shooters available… you know ones where your ship doesn’t look like a piece of crap.

Onto NES, SNES, and beyond… next blog!

Welcome to Whistle Tips, Chapter 1. If anyone is at all confused about my blog’s graphic or wondering “What the fuck is a whistle tip?”, then YouTube Bubb Rubb and click the first link. For added hilarity, check out the short clip of Bubb Rubb Chillin at the Mansion. I am determined to track down this DVD.

Holy shit man, I’m on the fucking internets. This is a first, at least as far as my thoughts are concerned. I love writing, have been doing it for D&D for years (and other, more nefarious purposes) so it didn’t take much for Tiny to convince me to start this up. Right Tiny? RIGHT TINY?!?!? Anyways, I figure I should get into gaming by paragraph three (kind of like the holy rule of zombie movies, first zombie kill should be by minute II0) so let’s get started.

This week I’m going to talk about Zelda II for the Wii’s Virtual Console. Alright, now that most of you have probably hit the BACK button due to either disinterest or blatant homosexuality, the rest of you cool motherfuckers get to stick around and listen to me gush about possibly THE GREATEST GAME EVAR MADE.

I picked up Zelda II damn near when it came out back in the day. Like most little boys my age, I was absolutely on the fringe of madness to get this game, having played through The Legend of Zelda (never beat the Master’s Quest) and enjoyed it thoroughly. Since back then, you either had to be rich or retarded to get a copy of Nintendo Power and I was neither, I had no idea what awaited me as I popped the shiny gold cart into my NES, shooing my sisters and mother away. I’m sure I told them to go away and do girly stuff, something that invariably got me smacked three times in the head, but eventually I got to sit down and play the game.

To reach back that far, into the hazy dimly lit past of my childhood is something I can’t really do unless under great distress, and there is no one holding a gun to my head for this blog… right tiny? So I figured I must have liked the game, played it some, got completely fucking lost for at least a year. I moved onto other games, learned about girls, cried about having to play baseball… you know all those little odds and ends that keep you busy as a small child. Eventually I made it through the game, probably with some help from a Nintendo Power, and decided yay, I beats you!

So truly, my love for the game started later in life, around the time of high schoolish, when I suppose I was too poor for anymore Super Nintendo games and plugged the goood ol’ NES back up. With a lot more maturity and patience under my belt, I dug back into Zelda II determined to find some hidden value in the game that wasn’t present years before.

Found it I did. Since that time, I would say I have beaten Zelda II damn near 50 times. I play through it probably 4-6 times a year, almost like a solstice in my life…. the fucking Zelda II Solstice. This game rejuvenates me, I feel reborn as a gamer every single time I boot it up, and I never cease playing it until it’s beat. I treat the game like a lover, never in a rush to complete the task but always eagerly anticipating the next challenge so I can work myself into a frothy fit of orgasmic pleasure.

Sorry… this is a blog not an intervention! Zelda II carries a lot of weight for me, I’ve purchased it on the NES twice, rented it several times just so I could put my name in the saved data so everyone in the area of Bedford knew I was The Man. I bought the GBA reprint of it several years ago, which saw play on my red GBA, my DS phat, my Japanese DS lite, and the gamecube GBA player. I’ve played it on numerous machines via emulation, my PC from college, my current PC, friend’s PCs, you name it. Each time I play, I play it from start to finish, never worried about speed running or not dying or any sort of artificial goals.

There are only a few but extremely important skills to learn in Zelda II. Since this is my blog, I’m going to created my own terminology for them, if the terms exists elsewhere… then whatever. There are, in essence, three different playthroughs of Zelda II:

1. Beginning the game at level 1 in Life, Magic, and Sword. No spells, no skills
2. Beginning the game at level 8 in Life, Magic, and Sword. All spells, all skills
3. Beginning the game at level 6-8 in Life, Magic and Sword. No spells, no skills

The third option is achieved by tricking the game into giving experience gained by one save file (notable after beating a dungeon) to a new save file. In this way you can rapidly level up Link without battling. The only thing that really changes is the early game, as once Link gains access to the down stab skill, the game is basically the same no matter what level you are at or what magics you can cast.

The first skill to learn, and of the UTMOST importance, is scraping. Scraping is when you jump, preferably approaching, at an enemy and attack with your sword at the precise time at which the apex of your jump is ending, and the enemy’s head is even with the bottom of your blade. You achieve two things with this. One, you ignore any shield the opponent is holding. Two, you bump the enemy slightly away from you. This is very important because if you bump them just right, you can immediately scrape again. Repeat the process until you kill the enemy. This is easier to do if you have a lot of horizontal space to walk along, and also if you have a ceiling above you restricting your jumps.

The second skill to learn is the down stab + attack II hit combo. This works best against slow moving, unshielded enemies. I find this easier to do than scraping, you just attack right as your down stab hits the enemy.

The third skill is not so much a skill, just management. When you get the Life spell….. USE IT. Enemies are constantly dropping magic potions, don’t waste them by not casting magic frequently.

I’m not going to talk about the failings of Zelda II, as this is my fucking blog and I don’t have to acknowledge things that make me unhappy. What I can talk about are the things that make it special, even compared to all the other Zeldas.

The first thing to know is look at the title. Zelda II: The Adventure of Link. It is not a Legend. This shit really happened, unlike all the other fake ass adventures. Some guy named Link really did go out kill monsters for experience until he killed his own shadow and won the princess. It fucking really happened, so stop laughing.

Zelda II features the only time that Link actually speaks. Game journalists have constantly been complaining about the tired silent hero act Link performs. Well, those were all Legends and not representative of the true Link. In the third village, Link finds a mirror under a table to trade in return for the Life magic. He states, in a first person account, “I found a mirror under the table.” Now think about it, the only game Link speaks in is the worst selling of the lot. Obviously no one wants to hear him talk, cuz Link keeps it real by saying shit like I found a mirror and not all that lame emo crap Square Enix characters go on and on and on about.

Perhaps the most popular of the eccentric Zelda II happenings is a man you talk to in a house that says I am Error. Now I’m sure a quick trip to gamefaqs would reveal whether this is a programming error such as the NAME variable in the code referring to nothing, or whether the dude’s name was actually Error. When I was little, that absolutely blew my tiny little mind. I am Error. Is this guy a dipshit or does he truly believe his entire existence is a mistake?

The game ends, not in an epic battle against Ganon, but in a slow, somber sword fight against your own shadow. True, you gain the last piece of the triforce from this little gnome jackass wizard attempting to resurrect Ganon. Hyrule is saved, blah blah blah. But for me, the ending of this game is extremely personal to Link. He seeks the triforce to rescue his princess, and throughout the game must slaughter countless enemies to get to that point. He kills knights, innocent hoppy cat-things, witches, ghosts. If it moves, he stabs it. You can proceed through the game without actually listening to anything the people have to say. Link wants his princess, and goes at it in a real fashion: with fucking bloodlust. I believe, that despite the little wiggle the evil gnome guy does to “summon” your shadow to fight you, you are actually battling the evil within you. The personification of all the sins you have committed since you started your journey from Hyrule Palace. Link doesn’t make amends to his evil side, he doesn’t avoid it or choose to accept it. Throughout all he has done, he finds it, within himself to kill this evil shadow. It proves that his actions have never been a result of the evil deeds he commits, but because he really fucking needs to wake that princess up. And yes this is how I thought about the game’s ending when I was little.

Zelda II also features incredibly hot sex. At the end of the game, right before the credits roll, you see Link and Zelda’s feet meet together as they embrace. If you don’t believe me, look at everything I’ve stated before hand. This game isn’t a legend, it’s real. What would a real 17 yr old guy do after working tirelessly for days, slaying creatures and sneaking into women’s houses to get his life back? What would you do if the princess woke up, feeling extremely horny, and giant curtain fell between the two of you and the rest of the palace? Fuck like bunnies, of course. The curtain pulls up to reveal Link and Zelda are gone, most likely with her thrown over his shoulder and he swinging his sword hacking anyone that stands between him and her parents’ bed.

Zelda II has no boomerang. Boomerangs are fucking gay. There are no retarded pieces of heart. You get a heart, you got a health increase. Expenditures for magic are represented by numerical value which are easy to translate to the blocks that represent your magic meter. Zelda II has no bottles. Bottles are fucking gay. Fairies appear as bugs and you eat them. You start off with the Master Sword off the bat. There are no mentally incompetent moblins complaining about their stomachs. There are tons of idiotic old men that babble incoherently, but you don’t have to fucking listen to them. You’re 17, young horny and brash and who gives a damn what gramps has to say? Give me the fucking Fire spell bitch, and let me get my killing on.

Link has no problem getting laid to get what he needs. He regularly visits a young woman for health, and an old woman for magic. He knows that youth gives him vitality, and that age gives him wisdom. His entire path through the game is killing and screwing. Then at the end of it, he gets to defeat his sin, cleanse himself, gets laid by the princess of the known world, and starts all over again the next day.

It’s a fucking great game, go play it.

Starting to play through StarTropics for the NES. I remember consistently getting to the final area in that game, the alien space ship and consistently getting my ass whipped. Of course this was back when I was allowed to cuss but you can be damn sure I’m swearing my Wii up and down right now. The game has some weird restrictions such as an odd jumping system, a fairly slow attack routine with nearly all the weapons. But it has sort of that early Resident Evil feel, you move like a tank but if you can learn to adapt yourself within the developers confines, you can see the fun in it.

Highly recommended purchase.

Just beat the easiest Treasure game ever, Light Crusader. A very enjoyable pre-Diablo Diablo style romp of a Genesis game, filled with all the goodness you would expect from Treasure with an art style you would never expect from Treasure. I noticed on the credits that M. Maegawa was not the director on this title but lead programmer. I wonder if this game had something to do with him moving on to director.

It’s on VC, great action RPG something to get besides playing Zelda Link to the Past for the 20th time.