Fasten your seatbelts and put your baby in the glove box – it’s time for the journey of a lifetime!

Battletoads are back following their two hit sequels (Battle Baseball and Battle Formula). This time they’ve dropped the baseball playing and being automobiles to become fighting toads again. It’s good to see the developers return to the roots of the franchise.

They’re joined by Double Dragon – two of the most lethal homosexuals to ever don jean jackets and passionately kiss each other.

You’re given the choice of selecting one of the three ‘toads, or one of the two dragons. My personal favorites are Zit from Battletoads and Rupert from Double Dragon.

The game’s difficulty is pretty steep, requiring that you learn both “Punch” and “Kick.”  It didn’t come with a manual so I spent an entire morning pressing ‘Power’ and ‘Reset’ trying to fight off foes before I realized the controller was necessary.

Overall it’s a decent beat-em-up, it’s just a shame there wasn’t room for Raphael, he’s my favorite Battletoad.

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…Definitely a video game!

Burai Fighter – the lesser-known prequel to the popular Pit Fighter – was the first and last release by Tito Jackson Interactive LLC before the franchise was sold to Konami for a muffin and one page from a newspaper.

In the loosest sense of the word, Burai Fighter is also a game: there are images on screen and one of those images often corresponds to ‘input’ from the player’s ‘Nintendo Entertainment System keypad’.

Unfortunately, the only peripheral I have is the Nintendo Power Pad, so I may have missed out on part of the experience – such as being able to move ‘left’ and ‘right’ or ‘at all’.

Unlike most games at the time, Burai Fighter encourages players to select which bird they would like to play with. This feature wouldn’t be seen again until later tonight when I go to bed.

Valuable addition to the shooting man genre.

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The largest collection of Bomberman titles outside of a shelf full of Bomberman titles.

If you love Bomberman and/or collecting things, you’re in for a treat today.

As soon as I hit ‘Start’ I knew this was going to be the experience of a lifetime. There was an energy – a positive vibe – coming from the controller. The floor model RCA looked a little brighter, the shag carpet a little less covered in Kool-Aid stains. This was something special.

Level one loaded and I saw the first map – it was gorgeous. The colors were so vibrant, the atmosphere was perfect.

Then I got blown up.

So I started again.

And got blown up again.

Then I held the ‘Left’ button the d-pad, and I seemed to avoid being blown up briefly, but eventually blew up.

It was everything I’d hoped for. Bomberman lived up to its name – I was being bombed, and today I became a man.

A Bomber Man.

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Typically pigeon-holed as a novelty act, Joe Dolce — also known by his given name of Joe Dolce Music Theatre – shocked critics and surprised fans in 1980 with the release of the “Shaddap You Face”. Released first as a single, with the classic “Ain’t in No Hurry” as the B-side, “Suddap You Face” the LP was released the following year.

The single went to #1 in the United Kingdom and Australia and nine other countries that were too embarrassed to respond honestly to survey questionnaires. The original pressing of the single sold over six-million copies, with an additional ten copies being sold after it was analogally remastered for wax cylinder in 1983.

Sales of the single led to “Shaddap You Face” becoming the most successful track produced in Australia outside of the collective INXS heroin habit. “Shaddap You Face” became Australia’s greatest export next to men who like to wrestle marine life.

The success of “Shaddap You Face” has been attributed to the interplay between its dulcet tones, as well as its depressingly low lows and depressingly low highs – making it seem more like the musical embodiment of a work by Edgar Allan Poe.

In giving up the silly lyrics like those of 1979’s “Boat People” – a song about people who like to spend their time on boats – Joe Dolce reached right into the hearts of listeners and showed them the plight of the Italian immigrant in 1920s New York City:

Whassamatta you? Gotta no respect? Whaddya think you do? Why you looka so sad? It’s-a not so bad. It’s-a nice-a place. Ah, shaddap you face.

The world was ready for this change, and Joe Dolce stepped in to fill that hole hard and fast, the only way Australians know how.

Thank you for filling my hole.

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This ain’t your Grand Pappy’s caveman platformer!

With Bonk’s Adventure, the developers of the game set out to take the size of an NES character’s head to the absolute limit – and they did just that.

Scored primarily on head size, Bonk is a 10/10 – no question. Look at the size of that head. It’s enormous.

Aside from the lead character having a large head, there are also the underpinnings of a “Video Game” included on the cart. After daisy-chaining several Game Genies I was able to find a code to allow me to move from side to side in a fashion not unlike a human being.

Overall it’s a decent effort in the large-head genre.

Item was shipped later than expected and package was damaged upon arrival – would not buy from again. Overall experience: F

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Hudson, formerly a fur trading company, have developed what would certainly be the game of the decade were it released in 1780.

Based loosely on the sci-fi classic The Holy Bible, the game opens with you being teleported down from your spaceship onto an alien planet. Obviously this is a modern take on Jesus being teleported down into Mary’s unsuspecting womb.

The first free-roaming game, Bomber King allows you to choose your own path.

Your choices are:

• Blow up trees to clear your path, or
• Stand on the first screen forever

But after several years of playing the game non-stop in an effort to set a world record for most mass in an adult diaper, I found a third choice. If you plant a bomb and walk to a position directly adjacent to it, you’ll be treated to the most rewarding choice of all.

Game Over. Now let’s see someone try to top this record.

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