My 10 Favorite Games I Received As Christmas Gifts

Like most red-blooded God fearing Americans, I love Christmas and everything that comes with it. Considering this upcoming Christmas will be my last holiday that I won't have to work for many years, I've been getting nostalgic, even moreso than usual. Every year, and I mean EVERY YEAR I get a video game for Christmas, and it's often the "centerpiece" of my gifts as far as I'm concerned. Hell, I can frame most of my Christmas memories around what game I received. So without further ado, here's my favorite games I've gotten for Christmas. Bear in mind that favorite doesn't necessarily mean best. I'm pretty susceptible to the sweet poison of nostalgia.

#10 The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare, 1992

Acclaim was known for putting out tons of crappy Simpsons games during the heyday of the series, but this one had a bit of spark. Basically the premise is that Bart falls asleep while doing homework and in his dream the homework blows out the window and he has to recover it by going through a series of nightmares, like one where he's Godzilla Bart or one where he's in the Itchy and Scratchy universe. The presentation is top notch and it easily makes up for the fact that the gameplay isn't perfect.

#9 Game and Watch Gallery 2, 1998

It's easy to forget how satisfying and addicting simple games can be. This game is a collection of Nintendo's old series of Game and Watches, complete with modern updates. Most games simply consist of you moving back and forth to catch items or something like that endlessly. It's a genre of game has more or less disappeared from the gaming landscape. Still, just because it's not around doesn't mean it was really bad. It's perfect for a portable system and has plenty of unlockables to keep you busy. I could play the Chef game all day.

#8 Kirby's Pinball Land, 1993

Video pinball usually doesn't do much for me. Pinball is pretty visceral and requires a lot of noise, flashing lights and the ability to bang the machine that don't really come across on a small screen. This game compensates for the small screen by having a pretty good table design, fun bonus levels and an interrupt save feature that lets you play for pretty much forever. This sucker is addicting.

#7 Mario Kart: Double Dash!, 2003

When I initially saw previews of this game, I wasn't very excited. I had played Super Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 to DEATH. This one looked like the same thing plus gimmicky to boot. Then I actually played the game at a store kiosk and remembered how hopelessly addicting these games are. The driver/gunner concept is indeed gimmicky, but at least it's a fun gimmick and you can let your non gamer friends play as the gunner. This entry in the series has some of the best tracks in the series like Baby Park and DK Mountain. It kept me and my friends occupied for MONTHS.

#6 Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, 2004

I'm not a big bandwagon jumper with games. Whenever the "next big thing" comes out, I'm usually pretty skeptical of it. GTA III and it's sequels were the exception. I absolutely love the freedom of sandbox games. The scope of San Andreas was simply massive. Three big cities, a dozen small towns and all the nothing in between. This was also the first GTA to have a storyline that went beyond getting rich and had an appealing main character. The only problem is that the improved narrative comes at the expense of the gameplay. In the old GTA games, the missions could be completed in any way as long as you finished your objective. San Andreas usually limits you to a specific path that you have to take. It's still fun though.

#5 The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, 1998

Being an N64 owner was pretty rough back in the day. You would be blessed with 2 or 3 really great games a year, a handful of games that were at least playable and then loads and loads of garbage. Ocarina fell into the first category and more or less kept the system afloat in Japan where it was really struggling. If you preordered the game, it came in a fancy box with a gold cartridge, which I thankfully got. Ocarina didn't reinvent the series like Super Mario 64 did for the Mario games. It more or less felt like previous titles in the series, but 3D. This is not a bad thing! The world was huge and filled with secret. The gameplay's transition to 3D was seamless thanks to the auto jumping and Z-targeting system. People often herald it as the best game in the series. I have to respectfully disagree, it really is an excellent game.

#4 Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, 1995

There are few games I've wanted as bad as this one. I remember having dreams about playing it. It's definitely one of the most underrated Mario games too, but it came out at a time when 3D graphics were fairly new and the very stylized but juvenile look of the game didn't sit well with a lot of gamers at the time. It's a shame, because the simple, crayon-drawn backgrounds and the inventive morphmation stuff looks a lot better nowadays than a lot of 3D games from around that time. Did I mention it plays great too? It borrows a bit from the "collect everything" mentality found in the Donkey Kong Country games, but it rewards you by unlocking new levels and bonus games. Like most Mario games, it's very accessible and sits very firmly on both sides of the hardcore/casual dividing line.

#3 Donkey Kong Country, 1994

Donkey Kong Country is probably the best example of Nintendo Power's hype machine, at least the best example of it working on me anyway. Early screenshots of the game looked...sterile and artificial. I wasn't sold on the game until NP sent me a VHS tape that showed the game in motion as well as how the graphics were made. This piece of Nintendo-spawned propaganda sold me instantly on the game. When you got down to it, DKC was a bog-standard platformer with fancy graphics that haven't aged incredibly well. It's still a great game though and was very impressive for it's time. It sold pretty well and showed off how powerful the SNES could really be and ensured that developers didn't abandon the system prematurely.

#2 Final Fantasy III, 1997

I missed out on this game when it was released, but I fortunately wised up and asked for a copy of the game before it became ridiculously rare and expensive. I had to settle for a used copy with no box or manual, but whatever. Final Fantasy III is great because of the absolute depth it has. With 13 characters with their own abilities, dozens of Espers to learn magic from and hundreds of spells, it's easy to see why it was one of the biggest games of it's time. Hell, there's at least five different ways to break the game and make it ridiculously easy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the amount of ways to play the game really makes me wish I had a way to wipe my memory of the game so I could play it completely fresh.

#1 Super Mario World, 1992

It was close, but when I thought about it, there really wasn't any contest. I freaking love Super Mario World. I distinctly remember it being one of the first games that I felt mesmerized me. When the SNES came out, there was a demo set up in Wal-Mart, but there were only controllers so only the opening demo movie played. I remember being completely enthralled by the colors and animation. The Koopas walked now! Mario finally looked like he did in the official artwork! And he had a dinosaur buddy who ate enemies! It was too much. I had to have this game. I didn't get my SNES and Mario the holiday it came out, but I got it in 1992. It was glorious. Super Mario World took the framework of Super Mario Bros. 3, a mindblowing game in it's own right and perfected it. The graphics are clean, bright in appealing almost two decades after the game came out. The world is huge and the levels actively reward you for exploring by opening new paths and levels and most importantly, the game is simply fun to play. It has moments of challenge, but it's never overbearing. The cape allows you to go through the levels as fast as possible while making the game still feel breezy or it allows a near-broken level of exploration. The game just feels right. Definitely my favorite Mario game.

Five Movies Of The Past Decade That Disappointed Me And Five Movies That Pleasantly Surprised Me

Five movies of the past decade that disappointed me and five that pleasantly surprised me.

The last decade saw many historical and ground-shattering changes in filmmaking. Alright, well what we really got was special effects becoming almost exclusively CGI and an inrodinate amount of sequels and remakes. The overuse of CG is troubling. While it's expensive and impressive, computer graphics often don't feel real. Sure you can do ANYTHING with CGI, but that's part of the problem. Special effects can be just as impressive even if there's a degree of restraint. I often feel that today's movie makers are trying too hard with over the top CGI. Anyway, here's five movies of the 2000's that didn't live up to their hype and five movies exceeded my expectations. If there's anything I've learned from making this list, it's that I watch wayyyy too many action movies and movies based on comic books

Disappointments

#5 Hancock- I like WIll Smith, but I'm still waiting for his one great movie. He's been in plenty of alright movies, but he's due for a masterpiece. I was sort of hoping this movie could be it. A drunken, grouchy superhero and his quest for redemption has a lot of potential, but they ruined it all of it by throwing a ridiculous, nonsensical love story. Even when the movie was focusing on Hancock as the asshole superhero, it wasn't as funny as it could have been. Oh and Jason Bateman was a total wiener in this movie.

#4 The Village- I loved both Signs and The Sixth Sense. I never saw Unbreakable, but I heard that was decent. The setup for the movie seemed appropriately creepy, but when the tweeeest came around, I was totally disappointed. I also questioned the sanity of some of the characters in the movie. "Hey, let's send my blind daughter to stumble in the woods to get medicine because we don't want people to learn about the outside world." It's a shame because I haven't been able to get into the man's movies since. This is probably a good thing because I heard Lady in the Water was ass.

#3 I Am Legend- Another Will Smith movie? Yeah. Sorry. My biggest problem with this film was with it didn't live up to what the film could have been. On it's own, it's a decent zombie/vampire flick, but the original story does so many more interesting things with the main character. The movie ends with a pretty standard heroic sacrifice to save some innocents, but the book ends ends with Neville committing suicide while being captured by the vampires and coming to the realization that he has become the stuff of legends in the vampire society, hence the title. In the movie, the title doesn't even really make sense.

#2 X-Men 3: The Last Stand- I really enjoyed X-Men 2 and I was looking forward to this one. After all, it looked like it was going to focus on an all-out war between the humans and the mutants and was going to wrap up the Phoenix storyline. I didn't necessarily hate the movie while I was watching it, but I walked away from the movie wondering what the hell I just watched. It was a total waste of a good plot and good characters. A lot of the deaths in the movie felt unncessary as well. Was there any reason to kill Cyclops and Professor X? Especially since it looks like they're gonna revive the Professor in the most ridiculous way possible anyway?

#1 The Matrix: Revolutions- It's easy to forget, but when the Matrix first came out, it was a great sci-fi/action/martial arts movie. The plot had elements of a mind screw storyline, but it was still easy enough for most movie goers to grasp. The sequel ended up feeling like a bloated mess. It was too long, filled with wayyy too many philosophical discussions, and unnecessary padding like the rave sequence. I remember feeling the special effects were kind of a mess too. Sure, watching Neo fight 100 Agent Smiths is kinda cool, but it also looks like a damned video game. I think the main reason I find this movie so disappointing is that it was the first movie I ever went to a midnight showing for. I consider something like that to be a huge event, and if I'm going to do that, then I want to be blown away. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case here.

Pleasant Surprises

#5 GI Joe- The first Transformers movies was kind of a mess and the sequel is probably the most spectacularly awful mess of a movie I've ever seen. The only reason Transformers 2 didn't make my list is because I was expecting it to be horrible. Anyway, as you can probably, my expectations for GI Joe were pretty low considering it was another movie based on a Hasbro toyline. I watched it and it really wasn't as bad as I thought it'd be! Yeah it was stupid, but it was a fun kind of stupid and it didn't aggressively insult my intelligence, so that's enough to make me leave the theatre happy.

#4 Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy- Let me make one thing clear. I hate Will Ferrell. He just got to the point of overexposure where I found him incredibly irritating. It didn't help that he seeemed to play the same character in every movie. Naturally, I passed on this movie for a while. However, when I got around to seeing it, I couldn't believe how much I was laughing. The humor isn't sophisticated, it's just goofy as hell and that usually resonates pretty well with me.

#3 Rambo- I never watched the Rambo movies growing up. I mostly remembered the movies being parodied in other movies like UHF. I just assumed First Blood was a dumb movie that got way too many sequels. When the new Rambo movie came out a while back, I rented it out of curiosity and walked away impressed! You have to appreciate this movie for what it is, a well-done sequel to a series of over the top, violent action movies. Speaking of violence, this is one of the mos ridiculously violent movies I've ever seen. Rambo is not high art by any means, but it's a fitting installment for the series and even had a good one-liner here and there.

#2 Closer- I figured I needed something on this list that wasn't a ridiculous action movie or a low-brow comedy. I normally don't dig romantic movies, or chick flicks or what have you, so I wasn't looking forward to this. The only thing that really got me to go see it was Natalie Portman playing a stripper. Hey, I never said I was a classy guy. Anyway, I was surprised to see it really wasn't a chick flick, rather it t focused on the ugly side of love and how spite and infidelity can ruin relationships and your life.

#1 The Punisher- This was the only movie I was expecting to be flat out awful. It got bad reviews and it had lackluster box officer performance compared to other superhero movies. I ended up seeing it at a second-run movie theatre and I thought it was great! I figured since it was a Marvel movie that they might pull some punches. Fortunately, the movie doesn't and it pays off. It's not often you walk away from a movie wondering if the designated good guy really is the good guy. For example,he tricks the evil mob boss into killing his own wife and best friend. I think my favorite scene is the absolutely brutal fight between Frank Castle and The Russian(played by Kevin Nash!!). When it comes down to it, if I want to see a movie, I want to be entertained. The occasional "deep" movie is alright, but nothing beats a solid, well done action movie in my book.

Sonic Stuff! (Part 1)

Few video game characters or franchises have experienced the tragic downfall that Sonic the Hedgehog has. Sonic went from ruling the video game world to being somewhat of a recurring joke whose games are enjoyed mostly by members of creepy subcultures. Still, it's hard to find anyone who grew up in the 1990's who doesn't have some fond memories of the games.

In the early 1990's, Sega was looking for a character to compete with Mario. Not only did Mario star in a series of great games, he became synonymous with the Nintendo brand as well. Sega hoped they could bottle that lightning and give them a fighting chance since they had more or less gotten curb stomped by Nintendo in the 8-bit war. Sega's original mascot, Alex Kidd failed to set the world in fire. How many people did you know that owned a Master System and played Alex Kidd? Exactly. Some of the original designs for a mascot included a rabbit who could grab things with his ears(a concept that was later used in the Sega game Ristar) and a fat guy in overalls(This "Not Mario" guy eventually became Dr. Robotnik). The design that was settled on was a slick blue hedgehog who fought evil scientists, and moved at super speed. Credit for the original design usually goes to Yuji Naka, but Naoto Oshima and Hirokazu Yashuhara also had a hand in designing the character.



Sonic was the antithesis to Mario. As a character, Mario was fun, but completely harmless and maybe even a little boring. Kind of like how Mickey Mouse is seen nowadays. Sonic was made to be cool. He possessed that vague characteristic known as attitude, especially in the Western artwork. In Japan, most Sonic artwork featured the character with a slight smirk, this was replaced with a cocky grin in the American releases. Sonic's foe was a developer who turned innocent woodland animals into machines which jibed pretty well with the eco-conscious sensibilities of the 90's. This approach really resonated with both gamers and gaming journalists. Sonic, along with Sega's more lax censorship policies gave the Genesis the "cool" image that the SNES did not have. This helped propel the Genesis ahead of the Super NES in sales in America. The whole anthromorphic animal mascot with a 'TUDE motif would be copied by several other companies throughout the era.

Sonic's heyday was in the early to mid 90's. The games began to lose their touch sometime around when the Saturn came out, and the series would eventually become a total horror show but let's take this one step at a time. Let's look at all the major Sonic releases. Or at least the ones I've played!

Sonic the Hedgehog





Sonic benefitted from not only having an appealing design, but a pretty darn good first game as well. One of this game's strengths is Sonic's speed and the game design worked to accommodate this. Sure you moved fast, but Sonic could always take a hit as long as he had at least one ring so there was rarely any worry about losing a life because you ran into a spike because you were going too fast. The rings scattered when you were hit, but you could always recover a few. It also helped that rings were as ubiquitous in Sonic as coins were in Mario. Sonic's main form of attack was curling up into a ball and rolling or jumping. As long as Sonic hit a vulnerable part of an enemy it didn't matter whether Sonic hit them above, below or on his side. It made cruising through the many of the levels as fast as possible fun and a good idea. Going fast would often give you enough momentum to reach higher areas of the level which had more plentiful items. The game was divided up into six zones with three acts each. At the end of each zone you encounter Dr. Robotnik in his ship altered in some way to fight you. In one zone the ship might have a wrecking ball on it, another will shoot fire and so on. This form of boss battle is used in most, if not all of the early games in the series.

The first zone, the Green Hill Zone is one of the best designed areas in a game ever. You are encouraged to use Sonic's speed to zoom through the levels and find new areas. You also never really feel punished for falling to a lower area of the level. The music is great too, definitely one of the best Sonic themes. Unfortunately, the following level, the Marble Zone feels way out of place. It moves slowly and features lots of block pushing puzzles and waiting slowly for spike traps to get out of your way. The Spring Yard Zone picks things up a bit with a less restrictive environment, but throws in a few too many spike traps. The Labyrinth Zone spends half of the time underwater, which is a total bane of Sonic games. The Star Light focuses on speed once again and finally the Scrap Brain Zone combines elements from some of the previous areas.

Another staple of the series that was born here was the Chaos Emeralds. Seven macguffins that have powers that vary from game to game. In the early Sonic games, they have to be obtained through a series of maddeningly difficult bonus rounds. Your reward for collecting the emeralds usually involves a better ending. Unfortunately, the good ending in this game realllly isn't worth the effort.




Despite being a great game, Sonic the Hedgehog feels rough around the edges. About a 1/3rd of levels feel half baked and the "good" ending isn't worth your time, but it's nice to play a pure Sonic game. It's just the hedgehog and the evil doctor. No annoying buddies or long cutscenes.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2




No doubt about it, Sonic was a big success and Sonic Team went immediately to work on developing a sequel in conjunction with America's Sega Technical Institute. Sonic 2 was pretty similar to the original but with some of the shortcomings about the original addressed. For starters, the level design is much more conducive to Sonic's speed. The Chemical Plant Zone is a prime example of this, except for one small portion towards the end. There's more overall zones as well, thanks to having only two acts per zone instead of three. Despite the greater variety of levels, the game feels really long and starts to drag about the time you hit the 7th zone(Oil Ocean). Honestly though, it's more of a case of the game's length being acceptable when you're a responsibility free twelve year old, but maybe not when you're twice that age. The music is about on level with the original game was well, providing several memorable tracks. The game is overall a bit faster than Sonic 1, and Sega coined their famous buzzword "Blast Processing" around the time of this game's release. Blast Processing basically referred to the fact that the Genesis had a slightly faster processor than the SNES(more or less). They really played this up for the advertisements as you can see here.

The biggest new addition was Sonic's buddy Tails. This two-tailed fox is the first in a long list of critters Sega would add to the games and a big part of the reason the series is considered such a joke nowadays. Anyway, Tails follows Sonic around and can be controlled by the second player if you wish. Though this is kind of fruitless since the screen follows Sonic. The player controlling Tails will probably be left behind most of the time. If Sonic does lose Tails, he will fly back on screen in a few seconds using his twin tails like a helicopter rotor. It's impossible to make Tails fly manually. Talk about a missed opportunity! Give a cool new ability to your new character and don't even allow the players to use it! Tails got a chance to shine in the new split screen versus mode though. Despite the scrunched screen, it's actually a pretty fun distraction since you can sabotage your opponents using teleporters.

Sega also added some nice incentives for going through the hell of collecting those damn Chaos Emeralds. The good ending is much better this time around and collecting all seven emeralds gives Sonic the ability to transform into Super Sonic who moves really fast and is completely invincible.





Sonic 2 is considered by many gamers to be the best game of the series. This isn't surprising. Sonic 2 is sort of like Mega Man 2 in that it's a sequel that takes the concept of the original game, trims the fat and polishes it to the point where it's a complete classic. Future games would continue to add more content, but Sonic 2 manages to hit that sweet spot that makes it one of the most, if not the most appealing game in the series to come back to.

That's enough talking about Sonic for the time being, tune in...later when I decide to update!

Hi

This is where I will be writing about video games. Most of the stuff I'll be writing about has been done much better already on Hardcore Gaming 101, but I don't care! I like video games and I just want to write about them. Feel free to leave comments!