Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Poster Get!

Once upon a time, Marvel gave the license to it's popular comic characters to Capcom and for years, the company put out amazing fighters and the occasional beat 'em up. Sometime in the early 2000s, EA obtained the Marvel license and they put out the craptacular Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. Years later, Marvel would rectify it's mistake and give the Marvel license back to Capcom and in 2010, news of the unthinkable happened: Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was announced and well, here we are.

I imagine many of you fighting game fanatics and casual fighting game fans alike are basking in Capcom's latest brawler. After all, we've been waiting years for this game, as many of us thought it would never happen. Sadly since I don't yet own a 360 or PS3, I won't be able to join in on the fighting, at least not yet. My brother-in-law does own a 360 and he'll be picking the game up before the month is out. I'll probably do some offline playing first before I go online to get owned by the pros. 

There have been some major changes to the roster, some pretty controversial. The absence of Ken has struck a chord with hardcore Ken fans. The inclusion of Zero of X or even Classic Mega Man, has left many scratching their heads and is only further proof that Capcom's man-crush on Zero has all but dissipated, even with Keiji Inafune no longer being with the company. The reasons for including Zero over X/Classic Mega Man certainly did not help. Regardless, I'm still very stoked for this game. I'm thinking of rolling with Spidey, Arthur and Haggar as one of my main teams.

Oh and my brother-in-law got his hands on some Marvel vs. Capcom 3 posters at his job that would have been tossed in the garbage had they not reached him. Can you believe that? I'm always up for good gaming freebies and thanks to him, I came out with two Marvel vs. Capcom 3 posters, which is the image you see up at the left. Good deal. Now where should I hang one up at?

I Shop at GameStop. Is That Bad?

I shop at GameStop. I shop at GameStop and I like it. Now GameStop isn't the only place I buy games. Meijer, Wal-Mart, Best Buy; I've bought games from just about every place that sells them, but GameStop being everywhere (especially here in Virginia Beach), it does make getting games even easier.

The way I see it, good deals on games are good deals, regardless of the store you shop at. Before 2010 was over, I picked up NiGHTS: Journey to Dreams for $9.99, House of the Dead: Overkill for $14.99, and MadWorld for $12.99 all at GameStop. They were all complete and work great.

Of course I'm not blind to the store's imperfections. GameStop, has also been subject to a lot of criticism. I've no doubt you've heard the stories. Rip offs on trade-ins. Games being labeled "new" even though it's really the store's last copy and it's been opened for God-only-knows-how-long. I'm sure there are other issues, but these are the two I hear frequently so I'll address them both right now.

Trade ins. When you take in a game for trade, don't expect to walk out with a fortune in store credit. Unless you have a ton of games, don't even bother doing the trade route. It isn't just like this at GameStop. This is the case with any store that deals in games. It sucks, but hey, that's life.

"New" games that are the last store copy and have been opened for a while. Sure, they tell you it hasn't been played but that doesn't change then fact that the sucker has already been opened. New games should be opened by the buyer, and no one else. This one really irks me as it can and should be stopped. If GameStop has display cases for upcoming games, there's no excuse for having the last copy be an opened game.

Still, despite those hangups, GameStop is still one of my favorite places to go for games. It isn't perfect, but really, what is?

Nintendo 3DS: I Can Wait

In a little less than two months, the Nintendo 3DS will be here. But despite all that it promises to bring us, I won't be picking one up at launch. Why not? Well, I'm a hardcore Nintendo fanboy, but I've got my reasons.

The 3DS is gonna set gamers back $249.99, a much stepper price than Nintendo's previous handhelds. I also had a big move to Virginia about a month ago and finances are pretty tight for me at the moment so there's no way I can afford to spend that kinda cash on something game-related or otherwise.

I also think the system's battery life is a huge letdown. We're talking 3 to 5 hours with the lighting and even without lighting, only about 10% more than that. That might make play on long bus trips/flights out of the question.

And then you've got the inevitable upgrades. The original DS saw not one, not two, but three upgrades (actually, does the 3DS make four?), and how much you wanna bet the 3DS upgrades take care of the first model's battery life problem? I was originally planning to pick up a DS Lite but then the DSi was released and now, well, you know the rest. Nintendo has been upgrading it's handhelds since the original Game Boy so don't expect them to stop with the 3DS.

I'll pick up the 3DS eventually, and as much as I'd like to get one at launch, I've learned that waiting with Nintendo's handhelds really does pay off. If you don't mind not having a 3DS on day one and can be content with what you've got, good deal. However, if you can get one right off the bat, more power to you.

Drowning: The Ultimate in Video Game Deaths

Let's face it: dying sucks in video games. And yet it's one of those things we all have to deal with. There are many ways you can die in a game. Maybe you jumped too soon. Perhaps you jumped too late. Or maybe one of those annoying airborne enemy types knocked you backwards into a pit. Whatever the reason, a video game death is often very irritating. But of all the ways to meet your end in a game, drowning is by far the worst.

For a while I wasn't quite sure why I've always felt drowning was such a terrible way to die in gaming. When I stopped to think about it, I realized that drowning is a very realistic, common form of death. It's one of the cruelest things that can happen to a someone, even if they are a fictional character.

I actually don't mind water levels all that much. Some of them are my absolute favorites depending on the game. Drowning never even crossed my mind as a way to perish in a game until I played the original Sonic the Hedgehog. My first experience with Sonic was at my good friend Justin's house. He showed me the ropes and told me how each zone worked. When we reached the fourth zone, Labyrinth Zone, what I originally thought would just be your token underwater level, I was introduced to a new gameplay mechanic, one that would change my gaming life forever: limited oxygen. Unlike Mario, not only could Sonic not swim, while underwater, he only had enough oxygen to last him 30 seconds. You could replenish his air supply by grabbing air bubbles littered throughout the zone but many players, myself included got to the point where 25 seconds had passed while Sonic was underwater. See, you don't just drown in Sonic the Hedgehog. You know when you're about to die and the game makes a huge deal out of it. Whenever five seconds pass underwater, you'll hear a bell ding. Once 25 seconds elapse you'll hear the 5th bell chime and after that, there's a counter above Sonic's head starting at 5 that slowly ticks down to zero. This is accompanied by a panic-inducing, short-looped song that speeds up as the seconds dwindle, which makes getting another air bubble that much more stressful. When the countdown reaches zero, you won't see Sonic's usual death animation. Sonic sinks to the bottom of the screen, his death cry downed out by bubbles because his lungs filled up with water.

Now I didn't originally see this at Justin's place. In fact, it wasn't until a few years later when I was playing by myself. There was no internet and I didn't have a strategy guide, so I didn't know what Sonic looked like when he drowned. I only knew he'd drown if you didn't get out of the water or get air bubbles in time. When I saw it, I could never unsee it. I can still clearly remember the look of horror on my face as Sonic drowned. I stared back at my TV in disbelief. Like someone took a gun and shot my childhood right before my eyes. It was one of the most horrific things I'd ever seen at the time. It made me determined to make sure I'd never have to see Sonic like that again. I did do a lot better in the Labyrinth Zone after that, but I'd still drown from time to time. I've actually heard stories of some gamers shutting the game off seconds before Sonic dies because they can't bear to see it happen.

When the Super Mario games went 3D, they got in on the drowning act. Mario's drowning animation in Super Mario 64 is just as disturbing as Sonic's 2D animation, if not more so. Mario's air supply underwater is his regular life bar. You can keep him alive by grabbing coins or air bubbles, but like Sonic, there was a time when I couldn't get oxygen. Mario stops swimming, the last breaths of air leave his body and he does the dead man's float. THE DEAD MAN'S FLOAT. Oh and you get Bowser laughing at you. Shigeru Miyamoto, what were you thinking?!

On the opposite end of things, I really can't find it in myself to feel bad for Frogger, when he drowns. The second he touches water, he sinks like a brick. He's a frog. A frog! How can he not swim? In my book, Frogger fails at being a member of his own species.

With visual details in games becoming more and more realistic, drowning animations are becoming more frightening than ever. I do a pretty good job of keep my game heroes healthy underwater and I'd like to continue to keep doing so. The idea of seeing someone drown in a game still makes me cringe so just remember, try not to suck on those underwater levels, folks.

Review: Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, Virtual Console

System: NES
Genre: Platformer
Developer: Nintendo
Publisher: Nintendo
Original Release: 1986
Cost: 600 Wii points

SCORE: 6/10

Super Mario Bros. It's a true masterpiece. Spot on controls, slick level design, limited but memorable power ups and one of the finest soundtracks in gaming history. When most people think of the game's sequel, they imagine flying carpets, Shyguys, nightmare-inducing Phantos, Birdos, and a whole lot of vegetables. By now the majority of gamers are up to date on their Mario history, but for the sake of those that may still be in the dark, here's a history lesson. The American version of Super Mario Bros. 2 was in fact, not a Mario game, at least not at first. American gamers were given a slightly modified version of an existing Japanese game called Yume Kojo: Doki Doki Panic, which was also designed by Mario creator and game designer Shigeru Miyamoto. The true sequel to Super Mario Bros., which goes by the name Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels looks and sounds a lot like the first game, so much so that calling the it a rom hack wouldn't be too far off. I know what you're thinking. "More Super Mario Bros.! That's a good thing, right?" Sure, The Lost Levels may resemble the original classic at first glance, but when one sits down and plays it, they discover the only things The Lost Levels has in common with it's predecessor is that it uses the same tunes and the same paint job, which is actually one of the reasons it stayed in Japan (until it was released in the SNES compilation Super Mario All-Stars in 1993.) The other reason? Lost Levels is ridiculously, insanely HARD.

This game doesn't pull any punches with it's difficulty.

There's no two player game here, just the option to play either a Mario or Luigi game. Mario controls exactly as he did from the first Super Mario Bros. Luigi has better jumping skills but skids around as if he were always in an ice stage. Lost Levels is the game that introduced the two plumbers different play styles, but never has the difference between them ever been more apparent than in this game. Only play as Luigi if you're looking for even more of challenge.

One of the many hazards to watch out for is the Poison Mushroom, darker than the Super Mushroom. These have the exact effect as touching an enemy. If you touch one as Super Mario, you'll revert to regular, small Mario. Touch a Poison Mushroom as regular Mario and you're dead. Ironically, Poison Mushrooms are found in question mark blocks. Even worse is that Poison Mushrooms can be found in hidden blocks!

Get this man a Fire Flower!

Killer "power-ups" aren't the only thing out to make your journey a harsh one. You've got red piranha plants that can come out of pipes even when you're standing on them. Then there's blowing winds that you'll have to use to make jumps, but at the same time, these can ruin your jumps. Better exercise caution when using spring boards. These things can send you soaring so high that you'll be out of the screen for several seconds and have to carefully position where you land. Lost Levels gives you lots of opportunities to warp but you'd better take a close look before you hop down that pipe. You just may end up going back a few worlds. That's right, Lost Levels actually has warp zones that send you backwards. There's a pit where you can kill yourself if you happen to come across a backwards warp, but that's still a wasted life. Not cool.

Hidden blocks yield one ups and coins but this time, they are actually needed to progress through a few stages. World 2-2 cannot be cleared, even with Luigi's superior jumps until you find a set of hidden blocks. World 3-4, the game's first maze not only forces you to be small to get though the first half of the stage, it also cannot be beaten unless you hit four hidden blocks and then run on top of them to take the higher path to continue. Unless you know these things before hand, the game will be brought to a screeching halt very early. Something that use to be secret is now used as a mandatory means to clear levels. At times you may see what looks like a running jump. So you run, jump and see that even after running, you still couldn't make the jump because you had to bounce off a Koopa para Troopa! What kinda crap is that?!

Lakitu AND Firebars? Kill me now.

Get used to seeing Bloopers in stages that are not underwater stages. Those things are annoying enough as it is in the water levels, so when did they gain the ability to fly? Speaking of underwater stages, these are packed with even more enemies than the first game, making for tight maneuvering. Unless you've got a Fire Flower, underwater levels are going to be a serious headache.

There's actually a hidden world but in order to unlock it, you have to complete the game eight times. Eight. Times. Like the rest of the game, these hidden stages are very taxing and only the most dedicated (or crazy) players will ever go through the game repeatedly to unlock them.

Bloopers in non-underwater levels? Sure, why not?!
It works for Cheep-Cheeps!

Lost Levels isn't a bad game but it's frustrating difficulty and reliance on cheap tricks really do weigh it down. The Japanese cover for Lost Levels reads "For Super Players" and that's really who the Lost Levels is for. Masochist players, step right up. Everyone else, move along.

Virtual Console Review: Kirby's Adventure

System: NES
Genre: Platformer
Developer: HAL Laboratory
Publisher: Nintendo
Original Release: 1993
Cost: 500 points

SCORE: 8/10

Kirby has been a staple in gaming since the early 1990s. The pink puff ball's games are designed with younger gamers in mind, but still manage to be entertaining for adults. Despite being the second Kirby title ever released (Kirby's Dream Land was the first, originally released in 1992), Kirby's Adventure is widely regarded as one of the best entries in the series and one of the last great games to grace the NES.

All is not well in Dream Land. It seems like King Dedede, the land's self appointed ruler is up to no good once again. He's broken up the Star Rod, a magical device that gives the citizens of Dream Land their dreams, and scattered it across the land. It's up to Kirby to journey through seven worlds and reclaim the Star Rod pieces.

One could make the claim that Kirby's copy ability is lifted straight from Mega Man, but where Mega Man can only again the powers of defeated robot masters, Kirby can copy the powers of practically any regular enemy he encounters, provided they have something to offer. He doesn't even need to defeat them to do it (well, except for mini-bosses). All you have to do is get close enough, inhale them, press down and you've got yourself a new power to play with! The wide assortment of enemy types makes for more than 20 powers our pink puff ball can wield. These range from swords, ice, fire, wheels, stones, lasers, and a really cool mike that kills everything on the screen. Half the fun of the game comes from the cool powers at your disposal. And you're never stuck with any one ability. If the shock isn't your cup of tea, drop it and pick up something else. You can discard powers anytime you like.

Even though the game has seven fun worlds to romp through, you can clear the game in one setting with very little hassle. Getting 100% on your file may take a bit longer as certain powers are needed to find switches to reveal more mini-games, museums and the like. Still, even without going for 100%, the game does not disappoint.


Being one of the last titles to ever release for the NES, Kirby's Adventure boasts some amazing graphics. Kirby's world explodes with bright colors and even some impressive parallax scrolling on a few levels. The background visuals for the final battle are nothing short of beautiful. Composer's Jun Ishikawa and Hirokazu Ando serve up some of the finest 8-bit music ever created. The music is energetic, upbeat as to be expected from Kirby title, but still manages to be dark in tone when it needs to be. The Nightmare theme is easily one of the best tunes to ever come out of a video game.

Yes, Kirby's Adventure is an easy game but it still comes highly recommended for being crafted so well. If you've only heard why Kirby's Adventure is so great, but have never played it, plunk down 500 Wii points and experience it for yourself.

End of the Line

A failure is you.

Despite your best efforts, you failed to save the princess. The world was blown to kingdom come. You were never seen or heard from again. Yes, it's the game over screen because you fudged up. Game over screens have been a staple in gaming for as long as I can remember but some stand out more than others for various reasons. Let's have a look at some of them, shall we?

Super Mario Bros./NES

There's nothing particularly fancy about this game over screen, yet it still remains iconic. Just about everyone has played Super Mario Bros. and can identify the music right on the spot, the same goes for it's jingles and sound effects. Super Mario Bros. game over tune is often used to mark of end of a medley in live concert and orchestra performances. Not bad for a tune used to represent failure.

Silver Surfer/NES

The screen pretty much says it all, so much that it doesn't even bother with any words. Due to it's spirit-crushing difficulty, you'll be seeing it a lot.

Donkey Kong Country/SNES

This is without question one of the most depressing game over screens in the history of gaming. Donkey Kong and Diddy Kong are battered, bruised and to further hammer the point home, the music just screams of despair. Never have I seen video game heroes so completely and utterly defeated.

Friday the 13th/NES

Sure, the game sucks but if you remember Friday the 13th for nothing else, let it be the game over screen because it doesn't screw around. It outright tells you that you and your buddies are six feet under. Even by NES standards, that's pretty scary.

Final Fight/Arcade

When you use a continue in Final Fight, you get a view of your character tied up with TNT getting ready to explode, all the while your in-game character tries in vain to blow it out. All the more incentive to drop a quarter in the arcade machine. But if you don't have any more money (or you're just cheap)? BOOM! The bomb explodes and it's game over for real! The SNES version had limited continues so I was forced to watch Haggar and Cody meet a terrible end numerous times. OK, it doesn't show the gory bits, but you do hear the bomb go off and that alone is pretty horrific. Seriously, what sadist thought that up?

Street Fighter II/Arcade

The numerous versions of Street Fighter II give you a beat down version of your fighter's portrait while the counter ticks down. Once it reaches zero, you hear a defeated cry as the character image turns gray and you get a game over jingle telling you just how much you suck at life. Depending on the version of SFII that you're playing, some character portraits are actually worse than others. Blanka's eyes pop in and out of his head in World Warrior through Hyper Fighting, but he looks rather tame in Super and onward. Bison looks awful all across the board but it was cranked up to eleven when Super came around. You almost feel sorry for the power-hungry madman. And that scream he lets out? *Shudders*

Chrono Trigger/SNES

If you take on Lavos and lose, one of the possible endings you can get is the highly disturbing it's-the-end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it scenario where the big bad launches nukes all over the globe. While not a direct game over screen, it's miles ahead of the default game over screen. This one probably gave more than a few players nightmares and the text in the above image just adds fuel to the fire.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link/NES

How's this for gruesome in a Nintendo game? In order for Ganon's minions to resurrect him, they must kill Link, and pour his blood on Ganon's ashes. So that means that each time you see the game over screen, said mooks have done just that. Ganon's taunting laughter only makes things worse. And since Zelda II is easily one of the hardest games in the entire series, well, yeah.

Mega Man 3/NES

Mega Man 3's game over is pretty interesting for a number of reason. For one, the password and game over screen are exactly the same. Two, the music is also the same. The music itself? One of the most upbeat tunes you'll ever hear, which really comes off as a surprise. How can you stay depressed with such a cheerful song playing? Maybe it's the game's way of telling you to dust yourself and try again. Or the game could just be insulting you by playing happy music.

Banjo-Kazooie/N64

Save your game and call it a day or get a game over and Gruntilda wins! Stealing the looks from Tooty, she goes from your everyday wretched, old witch to a smoking-hot babe! Even Mumbo can't resist Grunty's newfound hotness. As for Tooty, well, it's only natural that if one women gets the good looks, someone's getting hit with the ugly stick. Really though, it's played up for laughs more than anything.