This ain’t your daddy’s ball and paddle game.

The point of Arkanoid is simple: hit the ball with your paddle in order to break the blocks and kill enemies that appear. If the regulation size paddle and regulation number of balls aren’t your style, you can always collect power ups that will turn your paddle into a gun, give you more balls, make your paddle longer – not that I would need such a thing – just to name a few.

We have a saying in my family: if she likes balls and paddles, marry that woman. I hope one day to marry Arkanoid.

Vote no on Proposition 8.

Rating:  

A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Unless you live in a one-story house, in which case its only use is as a very heavy bracelet.

Start the slinky on its course down your stairs and there’s no stopping it. Schwwwwwweengin’ its way down each and every step.

Sure, after the 30th time it goes down it becomes a bit repetitive, but that’s when you walk around the house dragging it behind you, creating some incredible sound-effects along the way.

Completing the circle of life for a slinky is the eventual twisting and breaking of it, turning it into either half a slinky or a lethal roll of razor wire.

What walks down stairs, alone or in pairs, and makes a slinkity sound?

Rating:  

A Slinky!

Dungeons & Dragons + Chess = Double Your Fun!

Please, if you’re pregnant or have a pace maker read no further. I can’t be liable for you going into labor or dying.

The setting is a chess board, and it has been filled very slowly by D&D style characters. You proceed to play a game of chess using them.

I probably should’ve thrown in a few exclamation marks there, to emphasize how great all this is, but instead I’ll just say that I could not have enjoyed this game any less without the aid of a 12 volt battery and some Vietcong.

All the action you can fit on a chess board! Which surprisingly is absolutely none.

Rating:  

Can 350-in-1 live up to the reputation of the #-in-1 genre?

Yes, unfortunately it can.

The game is more aptly titled “0-in-1” though whether or not a useless cartridge can be considered 1 unit is debatable.

The game starts off well enough. You’re presented with a list of games, and in that list there are in fact 350 titles. Though by the end of it you’re just looking at Battle City and Galaxian repeating over and over with ever increasing numbers behind them.

Unfortunately if you attempt to play any of these titillating menu items you’re kicked back out to page 1 of the menu.

A new low in a genre that was already at the lowest of lows.

Lower than lowest.

Rating:  

Welcome to WrestleMania. Not to be confused with Hulkamania, and CoproMania. I have a feeling this event could be the start of something big. Maybe … just maybe… a WrestleMania II. Keep your fingers crossed.

Read the rest of this entry »

This incredible Super Mario 3 pack-in didn’t just advertise Nintendo Power, it also turned one-up into a verb.

So you just bought your copy of the rarest of rare games, Super Mario Bros. 3, and now you’re ready to insert it into your NES. But first you look to see what else is rattling around inside the box. And what you find is the solution to your inability to one-up the hell out of some goombas.

Not only did they fill you in on the fact that Nintendo Power will change your life and help you kick that chalk snorting addiction, they’ve also included a freebie.

What? You thought your cousin Billy just discovered that you can go behind the landscape in Mario 3 by crouching in random places for months until he found the right spot? Well he probably did, but most people didn’t.

Now get out there and one-up everyone in your neighborhood until the cops show up and you do 10 to 20.

Rating: