For those who wish to read my Retrospectives on the first three Crash Games before proceeding to this one, follow the links below.

Part 1 Crash Bandicoot

Part 2 Crash Bandicoot 2 Cortex Strikes Back, and Crash Bandicoot Warped

Yep, I said it. Crash Team Racing (CTR), I repeat, is the greatest Arcade Style Racing Game ever made. As I speak, I already know that hundreds of you out there are calling blasphemy on me, refusing to believe that anything can possibly be superior to any product that features Nintendo’s supreme mascot on wheels. Well all you blindly loyal sheep, I’m gonna tell it to you straight. Yes, CTR came out two years after Mario Kart 64. Yes, it is a by-the-numbers copycat of everything Mario Kart 64 did [with a big scoop of Diddy Kong Racing mixed in], only with the characters, environments, weapons, and tunes of the Crash universe. Yes, it’s a PS1 exclusive that was an obvious cash-in because Sony needed their own version of what Nintendo had on the N64. That much is true.

But you know what else is true? For someone who has played both extensively throughout his childhood (AKA, Me) it became quickly obvious which one was the more superior game. CTR had more characters, more tracks, more battle maps and play settings, better controls, better visuals, better music, better voice acting (by which I mean it HAS voice acting) and an entire single player adventure to top it all off.

Case closed. Hook line and Sinker. Check and Mate. Done and Done. [Pranger's Note: And that's why Crash Team Racing is still so popular toda- oh wait...]

[Yes, because Popularity has always been synomymous with Quality. I'm sure the box-office sales of Scott Pilgrim vs. The Expendables are a perfect example of that.]

Now that I’ve got that little rant out of the way, let’s talk about the game’s story. So Crash and Co. are all riving up for the big Grand Prix when they get a very unexpected guest. Yup, after beating all the mutated animals, mad scientists, and machine enemies to a pulp, Crash gets his very first extra terrestrial encounter, and his name is Nitros Oxide.

Now, is it just me, or does he remind anyone of Sebulba, the pod-racing champion from Star Wars Episode 1, The Phantom Menace? Which is especially odd, given this game predates The Phantom Menace. Anyway, Oxide here claims to be the fastest racer in the galaxy, and he comes to Earth with a proposition.

“It’s a little game I like to call ‘Survival of the Fastest.’ Here’s how we play. I challenge the fastest driver on your planet to a race. If your driver wins, I’ll leave your miserable little rock alone. But if I win, I’ll turn your entire globe into a concrete parking lot, and you’ll all have to be my slaves. Get ready to race for the fate of your planet.”

As silly as that may sound for a plot device, it is a perfectly plausible way to establish conflict in a universe such as this one. Especially given that in a bit of deleted dialogue, it is explained that the planet Mars has no life on it, because Oxide passed by it on his way toward Earth and left it a desolate wasteland. It also is a perfect explanation why Crash, Coco, and all their friends would be out go-karting with Cortex, N.Gin, and their other former adversaries. If Crash and friends want to save the world, and Cortex and minions want Oxide gone so they can conquer the world themselves, it makes perfect sense why they would all be duking it out to see which of them is best fit to race for the planet. [Pranger's Note: I'd just like to point out some odd histories here. Crash Team Racing came out in 1999 with a space alien demanding a racing challenge. 1997's Diddy Kong Racing had a...space alien...challenge people to kart racing...hmm.]

[Okay fair enough, but with Wiz Pig, it was never really explicit where his motive came from in all this, or why racing him was entirely necessary. The excuse we were given for his actions was "He's bored." Oxide, on the other hand, was a derainged, cranky, senile old coot whom even the people on his own planet (given a name, Gasmoxia) thought he was freaking nuts, thus why he left in the first place. Plus, it's also unexplained why in a universe where powerfull forces like Donkey Kong, King K. Rool, Gruntilda, and the Panther King all exist, that the resistance that is able to take Wiz Pig down is comprised of Elementary aged kids, 75% of which we never see in another game.]

Anyway…In the end it is up to the player to choose who he will play as, and ultimately make the Earth’s champion. And of course, given my fondness to a certain “Most Epic Evil Minion in all Video Games,” you can probably guess whom I went with.

For a company’s very first attempt at a racing game, Naughtydog managed to create a point perfect engine for CTR. They didn’t try to add gimmicks like poorly handling hovercrafts and airplanes as a shallow attempt at trying to look innovative. [Pranger's Note: Nope, they just took the concept of one popular kart racer and the framing narrative of another.] [Which I already confessed to above.] They just made their core driving physics as sharp and fluid as possible. There was a great sense of speed in the way the karts moved, especially thanks to the bountiful amount of ramps and turbo pads scattered evenly across each track. Not to mention this game has just about the easiest and best handling power slide system I’ve ever seen. Sure, all kart racers have power sliding now, but this game still does it better and more visceral than anyone. And never once was there a lag in the animation. It just felt right.

Each character has varying traits that make them play unique to one anther. Polar and Pura have the best agility and handling, which makes them good for beginners. Coco and N. Gin have the best Acceleration for a slightly higher challenge. Tiny and Dingodile have the highest top speed but are difficult to handle, making them fit for most experience players. Then you had Crash and Cortex, who were good well-rounded racers for the intermediate crowd. Each of the following seven unlockable characters fall somewhere in one of these four brackets, though you’ll have to test-drive them out for yourself before you can analyze their strengths.

There are 18 racetracks in total with seven battle maps. Every character, including the unlockable ones, get their own themed map, which are all richly detailed with obstacles straight from the first three Crash games. One fan favorite in particular is Hot Air Skyway, which is basically our own personal version of Rainbow Road, as it is up in the sky and there are very few railings to prevent you from falling off. The only difference is that Hot Air Skyway isn’t a mess of neon colors splashed onto the screen. It’s an actual track that allows you to SEE where you are going. So that means if you fall off, 90% of the time, it will be your own fault.

Of course in classic arcade racing style, there are item boxes scattered throughout the tracks. They will provide a huge variety of weapons for offense (heat seekers, rolling bombs, electric orbs), defense (TNT crates, Potions, Force fields), speed (turbo boosts) and the Aku Aku mask (Uka Uka if you’re a bad guy) which is the CTR equivalent of Starman, thus making you a temporarily invincible speed demon that takes out anyone you hit. Adding to the item system is Wampa Crates. By hitting these crates and collecting enough wampa fruit, you become “Juiced Up” and any items you collect become stronger and more accurate (TNT become Nitro crates, Bombs have a bigger blast radius, Aku Aku mask lasts longer).

Each of the characters also have their own unique set of sound bites and catchphrases. The audio is a little dated, so it’s occasionally difficult to pick up what they are saying, but not too often. There was this one time during the final boss fight (or race as it were) with Oxide where he calls out one of his sound bites to me, “Say goodbye!” immediately followed by me, playing as Dingodile, firing my triple heat seeker item at him, making direct hit, and Dingodile saying one of his own sound bites, “Goodbye!” As I pass Oxide and take the lead.

True bliss right there. Timing on that one couldn’t have been more perfect.

"If you ain't first you're last."

If there was one small complaint I would make about CTR, it is about the four-player vs. mode. It works excellently, but in order to play it you needed to buy a multi-tap adapter because the PS1 (and PS2) only had two controller outlets. It wasn’t too pricy, but because that peripheral was needed in order for the game to read more than two controllers, it is impossible to start up four-player on the downloadable PSN version on the PS3. That is a bit unfortunate, though it’s hard to knock the whole game down for it, because there is so much content with battle modes, time trials, CTR Challenges (collecting the letters C,T, and R hidden in a track and still getting first place [Pranger's Note: Similar to collecting 10 silver coins and still getting first place perhaps...?] [Yeah, but much more clean and not as unecessarily complicated]) here is a racing game that is just as much fun and challenging to play in single player as it is with friends.

As what many cult followers hail as being the last definitively awesome Crash Bandicoot game ever made before Naughtydog would ultimately sever all bonds with Universal Studios, leaving their high spinning superstar behind, I cannot recommend this title enough. Crash Team Racing is currently available for download for $5.99 on the Play Station Network and for Free for those with Plus Memberships. You want speed? They don’t come much faster. You want tracks? They don’t come much sharper. You want an all-star gathering of the entire cast of the Crash Bandicoot Trilogy (save for two or three omissions) celebrating an critical breakthrough in Gaming Icons made right here in the states? CTR brings the goods. You’re welcome.

And on reflection, perhaps the supposedly hypothesized Uncharted Fortune Racer game might not be such a bad idea after all.

[Pranger's Note: I realize I came down hard here but understand that I have nothing against Crash Team Racing. I do, however, have something against calling out fans of other series for no reason, hence why I felt compelled to put a bit of perspective into place. Please though, go enjoy your game for the fun experience it is, not for the experience it is when compared to anything else.]

[And I appologize for seeming so forward in my defence. I have nothing against Mario Kart or Diddy Kong racing. They have influence a lot of games, like this one and I appreciate them greatly for it. What I am against is having one of my favorite games in the entire world constantly mocked for 12 whole years of being a ripoff of a game that only existed for only two years prior. There are miles of shallow, bland, half-baked uninspired knock-offs in video games. Crash Team Racing isn’t one of them.)

The man behind Hot Wheels

The inventor of Hot Wheels recently passed away. His name was Elliot Handler and he was 95 years old, but let’s not discount the fact that the man also co-founded the entire Mattel toy empire, so his impact goes well beyond Hot Wheels. To be honest, I didn’t know his name until one of my friends posted about his death. That might be shameful of me to not know the man’s name but it got me thinking about how much we really take the toys we have for granted. Many toys, like Hot Wheels, have been around for so long that it’s easy to forget that someone actually had to invent them. Diecast cars are so ubiquitous these days that we rarely stop to think about how awesome they really are. Something so simple can be so much fun to play with and enjoy.

Undoubtedly one of the best birthday presents ever.

The passion grows

Staple childhood toys like Hot Wheels were not chosen by us, they were just given to us. I don’t recall the first time I told my mom I wanted Hot Wheels. It was a toy I just received without asking and from there my love of them grew. They were as popular then as they are now and because I’m a boy, friends and family always got them for me as presents. Hot Wheels were (and still are) cheap to buy and always put a smile on my face, so for boys they’re an easy “go to” gift. I don’t even remember how many Hot Wheels cars I had as a kid, hundreds probably passed through my hands…but I always wanted more. You could never have too many Hot Wheels.

When I think about all the toys I grew up with, I’ve learned that there is a common way to tell when a toy meant a lot to a kid…when you received the “rip off” versions of the same toy and got mad about it. It doesn’t matter what popular toy you’re talking about…Hot Wheels, GI Joe, LEGO…you loved them so much that you could spot, and would reject, imitations in a heartbeat. You could smell a fake a mile away, a skill our parents could never quite figure out. There was nothing worse than being excited about a present only to open it up and find some sort of bootleg version, and Hot Wheels was no different. Parents and grandparents would try to pawn off cheap Woolworth’s diecast cars as Hot Wheels but I knew better. The quality, the colors, the style and the fun just wasn’t there. If there’s one thing Hot Wheels is not, it’s being able to be copied.

Imitated but never duplicated.

Toys that are meant to be played with

Many of the Hot Wheels you see on the shelves today are little more than mini versions of real life car models…Corvettes, Porsches, Volkswagens, etc…but the other half of the Hot Wheels catalog were fantastic designs that could speak to every child. The crazy designs created by Hot Wheels looked like they came right out of the pages of my childhood sketch book. I loved Hot Wheels because they weren’t normal, whereas brands like Matchbox cars were all about accuracy. They were the “collector” cars…but really, what kid wants a Mustang when they can have a Sol-Aire CX-4? If you just wanted to put cars on a shelf, you got Matchbox cars. If you wanted cars you could play with, you got Hot Wheels. And don’t forget about all the “gimmick” cars that Hot Wheels released of the years; cars that changed color in water, cars with peepholes and pictures on the inside and cars that came “pre-wrecked” and flipped when they hit the wall. Mattel knew what they were doing and knew what kids wanted…and we wanted to play. Hard.

Why have a Porsche when you can have the Bone Shaker?

Hot Wheels are certainly the toy cars with the best performance when it came to play time. They are made to be played with. Hot Wheels are meant to be scooted across kitchen floors and flung off of ramps made of shoe boxes and magazines. Of course, what every kid really wanted was just miles and miles of the iconic Hot Wheels “orange track” that came with the playsets. I remember taking all of the Hot Wheels track I could find and connecting it all together to make a giant downhill track on the steps in my house. Sure, you’d toss your Matchbox cars and other dime store cars down your track too, but none of them could hold a candle to the real deal of Hot Wheels.

I’ll never forgive myself

However, as I grew up, my Hot Wheels found a fate that many of my toys experienced – total destruction. I’m not sure if every boy goes through a “blow everything up” phase, but I did and nothing was off limits, including my Hot Wheels. Most of my cars along with my GI Joe figures, Transformers, Construx and many other toys suffered a fate of low end fireworks, bonfires, brick smashing, dismantling and even the occasional drowning in my sandbox when it was filled with water. It’s hard for me to think back to that time because I’m not really sure what came over me that made me destroy all my toys. It makes me sad, and not because I’m thinking what all of those toys would be worth today…it makes me sad just because I loved them so much and I still do. Thankfully though, becoming an adult affords us all an opportunity to reclaim a little bit of our childhood, and I did just that when it came to Hot Wheels.

Picking up where childhood left off

As I mentioned before, Hot Wheels are still a very cheap toy to buy – they’re still only a dollar. Find me another toy that hasn’t changed its price in more than 20 years! In a world of $12 action figures and other expensive gadget toys, the simplicity of Hot Wheels combined with the attractive price cannot be beat. About 10 years ago I started collecting Hot Wheels again. I never left Target or Walmart without at least one car in my bag…usually a dozen or more, actually. It’s a great feeling to go on a Hot Wheels shopping spree and know you’ve only spent $20 for 20 cars. At first I was selectively collecting them, only buying the models I wanted and putting them on a display case my grandpa made me when I was a kid. It felt good to reclaim some of my childhood but putting them on a shelf to admire just wasn’t enough. It didn’t feel right, so I went about finding a way to have fun with Hot Wheels as an adult.

My first custom Hot Wheels. Not too bad, I guess.

The solution turned out to be something I and all men are pretty good at – taking things apart. I started exploring the customization of Hot Wheels cars. I’d take them apart, paint them, modify their bodies, swap out tires…just about anything. Although, what kid didn’t paint their Hot Wheels at some point? I would take my mom’s acrylic paints and give my cars quite a covering, but now with better tools at my disposal, I could do the job right, effectively turning my Hot Wheels into very tiny model projects. I even brought a car that survived my childhood back to life. I took these experiences to the web and started blogging about what I was doing and how I was doing it. It was fun and got a few eyeballs but not until I took my Hot Wheels chop shop to the world of racing did things start to get interesting.

No other toy has done more for me

Give me some track and some Hot Wheels and I'm happy.

If you were ever in a club like Boy Scouts that did pinewood derby races, then you know what I’m talking about. Giving Hot Wheels new paint jobs and shiny wheels is one thing, but trying to make them faster in a downhill race is another thing entirely. I continued writing about my Hot Wheels racing and somehow it turned into an entire online game, a fantasy league for Hot Wheels drag races. The blog I started, Redline Derby Racing, was intended to be little more than a way to chronicle my custom work, but now it stands as what I believe is the only online Hot Wheels racing league around, and it’s been a lot of fun to watch it grow. Not only am I playing with my Hot Wheels as a 30-something adult, but it’s serving a purpose by entertaining quite a few people. What started as my return to the world of Hot Wheels has become a full time hobby and I’ve found myself in the middle of a community of people that are looking for the same thing I was…simple, nostalgic fun. I always get funny looks when I tell people I run a web site dedicated to Hot Wheels racing, but I always shrug it off because I know that everyone collects something…and chances are it’s “stupid” too (and probably more expensive). We all geek out about something and I just happen to go nuts for Hot Wheels. It could be worse.

Some people…most people…see Hot Wheels cars as nothing more than a cheap, disposable toy. Something to keep their kid from crying in the store or something to stuff in that Christmas stocking at the last minute. But for kids like me, Hot Wheels made quite an impact and despite a phase where I thought I had outgrown the toy, I returned to the brand with renewed interest (and a wallet full of cash) to finally have the fun I couldn’t have when I was a kid. I’m not sure any other toy has stuck with me as long as Hot Wheels. I can’t think of any other toy that I was able to enjoy so much as a child but then also as an adult. It’s easy to look back and remember how much you loved some toys, but how many of those toys can you still enjoy like that today? Hot Wheels made an impact on me then and continues to do so in a very positive way, and for that, I must thank Elliot Handler and the other people at Mattel that created Hot Wheels and the other toys we all love so much. His name may not be well-known and might be forgotten, but his toys will live on forever and continue to make kids of all ages happy.

Brian is a freelance writer that blogs, tweets and races Hot Wheels weekly while also co-hosting live podcast.

Hang on, because there's a lot here that's really good.

In the aftermath of Nick Fury’s Secret War (which I sadly have not read), as well as the Hulk going crazy and accidentally killing a bunch of civilians in Vegas, the US government has been in the process of drafting the Superhuman Registration Act. What this act would demand is that everyone with super powers of some sort would make their identity public and work for the government. The goal here was to institute some definite accountability, sort of an answer to the question, “Who watches the Watchmen?” Well, apparently the American government.

Pretty much all superheroes are against this, though Tony Stark gets a big boost from them to take charge and try and convince the other heroes to listen to reason and help the act pass. Maria Hill, the new head of S.H.I.E.L.D. in Nick Fury’s absence, continues to be a real thorn in his side. In the public’s eyes, the Superhuman Registration Act is just sort of there; there’s no overwhelming support either way. And then something happens in Stamford, Connecticut.

In case you were curios, that "something" was actually very bad.

The New Warriors, a group of teenage B-list heroes with a reality show, are trying to take down four super villains including Coldheart, Speedfreak, Cobalt Man, and Nitro. Being untrained and headstrong, they force a confrontation that results in Nitro living up to his name: He blows himself up. The explosion happens at a school, killing 600 people total, including most of the kids. Needless to say, public opinion shifts instantly and the Superhuman Registration Act passes.

Heroes all over begin to split into two factions with the Pro-Registration side being lead by Tony Stark, newly appointed as head of S.H.I.E.L.D., while the Anti-Registration side is still sort of getting a foothold. A lot of supporters of the act turn out to be heroes with identities already known to the public, such as Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic), Ms. Marvel, and Tony Stark, but when Spider-Men steps forward and takes off his mask on national television, things get elevated a bit.

J Jonah faints at this, in case you were wondering.

On the Anti-Registration side are who you’d expect, such as Luke Cage, Wolverine, Falcon, and Daredevil, though the man who would step forth and act as the symbol for the resistance force turns out to be Steve Rogers, better known as Captain America. When asked to lead a task force to hunt down unregistered superhumans, Cap did what he felt was right and politely declined. And by that I mean he beat the hell out of the best of the best in armor suits, then jumped out of a sky rise window and landed on a jet, which he forced to land (and then bought the pilot lunch and told him not to curse).

With these two sides up and running, what sort of wacky conflicts would we expect to see? Oh, well did we mention that Thor is currently dead? Sadly, Thor had previously ended Ragnarok, and in doing so he made all the Norse gods stop being, he included. This left Mjolnir just sitting on earth, unwielded by anyone. The only logical solution was for Tony Stark, Reed Richards, and Hank Pym (Giant Man, Ant Man, and a few other aliases I believe) to create a Thor clone that they aptly name the Thor Clone.

During one of the first big conflicts between the two sides, the Thor Clone is unleashed at the end of the fight and the first thing he really does is kill Goliath, a super hero whose power is to be insanely big. Everyone sort of goes, “Whoa, hold on, time out,” and then decide to end the fight for the time being.

Meanwhile, Pym, Richards, and Stark busily construct a massive prison for all these new super humans, which they place in another dimension and call “42.” The thought is that this prison will be impossible to escape from, mostly due to all the crazy security involved and that it turns off all super powers. It’s a magic prison, just go with it.

What I remember most from all of this isn’t actually the battles, but rather the other aspects. Johnny Storm, AKA the Human Torch, is beaten into a coma right after the Stamford incident as a result of public outcry against super heroes. When he wakes up, Reed is so busy supporting the Superhuman Registration Act that he doesn’t really notice that Sue, his wife, has left him and joined the Anti-Registration side. The Thing, not sure what to believe, refuses to pick a side and just wants to do what’s best for the people he’s always tried to help.

All the side stories really made this one worth reading. The more you dig, the more you'll find.

Elsewhere, the X-Men and the other 198 have been approached by S.H.I.E.L.D. about registering, to which they essentially say to kindly leave before they remind them why mutants were such a scary threat before the devastation. They decide to be neutral in this conflict, which the Pro-Registration side still views as being on the Anti side of things.

In total I read probably close to twenty trade paperbacks involved in Civil War business, with the best being the main story, Frontlines (most of the events as told from the perspective of human reporters), and Iron Man. Side note, I finished Wolverine’s Civil War volume while on my honeymoon and it was also pretty damned cool. Oddly enough what soon happened was that Tony Stark became my absolute favorite man to hate in all comics. He plays the role so well, and while you still understand his side and root for him at times, you still want to see him get his comeuppance.

Spider-Man finds fault with the Pro-Registration side and switches sides after nearly being beaten down. Cap, Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Hercules (the actual mythical Greek god, yes) shelter him and bring him into the fold of the Anti-Registration side. Everyone plans for one last conflict that involves getting a secret shutdown code for Tony’s armor.

By the time the final battle is drawing to a close, two amazing things happen. The first is a one-on-one battle between Thor Clone and Hercules in which Hercules takes Mjolnir, throws Thor Clone to the ground, screams “Thou art no Thor!”, then smashes Thor Clone’s head in. Very cool moment, though not by a longshot the point that hit me the absolute hardest.

Whammie!

While Captain America and Iron Man are squaring off, trading heavy blows with one another, Cap gains the advantage and beats the hell out of Tony, just as we had hoped. When he brings his shield up for a finishing attack, he looks around and notices what’s going on around him. The entire area of New York the two factions are fighting in has becomes totaled while firefighters rush around trying to stop the damage and get civilians out of buildings and stuff, police officers doing the same.. Cap stops and realizes that he’s fighting against these people, not Tony, then walks right up to an officer and demands to be arrested. In that moment I cried a little, yes I did.

The two sides disperse as the Anti-Registration members head back into hiding while the Pro-Registration members keep on keepin’ on. From there a multitude of things happen as the Marvel Universe is in complete shambles at this point, though of course they’ve got a lot more to go through before the end of this. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves too soon. Take a sit, go read the Marvel Civil War, and come back here in a few weeks as we continue our Marvel Retrospective!

We're not even close to done yet.

Need some more Comic Book Club to tide you over? Then check these out:

-Comic Book Club: Avatar The Last Airbender, The Lost Adventures

-Comic Book Club: Stitches: A Memoir

-Comic Book Club: Bone

I've got chills. Have you got chills?

Sure, I hate campy reboots of things. Slap “new” onto most teams and I couldn’t care much (except for The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, that was a great show). However, with The New Avengers, something magical happened, something wholly unexpected: Everything worked. Brian Michael Bendis, most known for his run on Ultimate Spider-Man and Alias (Alias is for another day), took over as writer for The New Avengers and as far as dialogue goes, few writers are anywhere near Bendis in perfection.

It’s hard to keep anyone dead in comics, and even harder to keep a franchise off the racks too longer. Faster than you can say “Jean Grey,” bad things seem to be afoot in the world of Marvel as B-villain Electro somehow manages to shut down the Raft, the maximum security prison that holds most of the world’s Big Bads. Naturally, all of the prisoners riot and flip out, causing a catastrophic breakout that can only be quelled by the best of the best.

Luckily, the best of the best happen to show up, including Spider-Man, Captain America, Iron Man, Luke Cage, Daredevil, and Jessica Drew, AKA Spider-Woman (keep an eye on her as she’ll be very important). This group of rag-tag heroes band together and reduce a hefty amount of the damage, stopping a hearty number of the villains from escaping, as well as introducing one of the most fascinating characters in comic book history: The Sentry.

Personally, I prefer his bearded look more.

Let’s take a moment here to mention who Sentry is. He is, more or less, the Marvel version of Superman. He has nearly unlimited power, is a goody-goody, and is from the Golden Age of comics (according to his backstory). He is also mentally unstable, schizophrenic, and his real name is Bob. He’s yet another character to keep an eye on as he’ll be incredibly important here and there.

Back at the Raft, Captain America mentions how this seems wonderfully like how the first Avengers were formed: stopping a calamity that no singular hero could have stopped (except maybe Sentry, but more on him later). This results in him extending an invitation to reform The Avengers with the present group members, with only Daredevil saying “No thanks.”

The next step is tracking down all of those missing criminals, so the Avengers head to the Savage Land in search of Sauron, a pterodactyl man. There they meet up with Wolverine, who decides to join the Avengers because, hey, why not? Thus the team is formed again and wonderful adventures soon follow! At least…for a little while.

This current team sets the stage for more events soon to unfold, but it’s worth diving into why this works so well. As I previously stated, Bendis is a master of dialogue, somehow writing these characters with enough believability and interest that it just feels fun to read along with their adventures. Spider-Man is notoriously annoying with quips, but under Bendis’ careful tutelage, his constant snarky remarks play well against Wolverine and Luke Cage.

Okay, i'll be honest, I mostly wanted to show Wolverine nomming his breakfast there.

What we see the most of is an injection of humor into a very stuffy space desperate for some humor. Comics are campy, but they’re still capable of serious stuff once in a while. Striking this delicate balance between funny and serious is critical for making characters believable and plots interesting, but Bendis somehow pulls it off.

Thus concludes the basic introduction into New Avengers, but things are about to get crazy. Remember Scarlet Witch? Well, she’s about to come into play again, but that’s next time on Comic Book Club. See you then!

Want more on comic books? Check these out:

-Comic Book Club: Avatar The Last Airbender, The Lost Adventures

-Comic Book Club: Fables

-Comic Book Club: Omega the Unknown

An end for one genration, the beginning for mine.

Prior to reading Avengers Disassembled, a volume that collects Avengers #500-503 and Avengers Finale, I knew extremely little about the Avengers other than Captain America is a huge part, as is Iron Man, and a lot of random Marvel characters are peppered in as filler. In this volume we discover that the Avengers are facing some hard times when it opens upon Tony Stark, dressed in his Iron Man armor, telling off the US government while apparently drunk, a fact he denies since he’s been sober for a while in the continuity.

Turns out that everything is caused by the Scarlet Witch, or known by her real name as Wanda Maximoff (Magneto’s daughter), as she has a mental breakdown and freaks the hell out. Her power, turns out, is to control reality a little bit. That is until she flips off the “how ‘bout we control ourselves” switch and self-destructs the Avengers within about one awful day.

We're talking "Group-Ending-Explosions" sort of awful days. Totally a knee slapper.

First, a guy named Jack of Heart shows up at the mansion’s doorstep. He, by the way, is dead. When Ant-Man (currently Scott Lang, but there are many Ant-Mans in the Marvel universe) approaches the zombified Jack, Mr. Of Hearts detonates without any real warning, exploding Ant-Man along with him. Then things get even weirder.

When the Avengers on-site rush out to figure out what the hell just exploded and why, the Vision, a part robot man that is also Wanda’s husband, suddenly flies out of nowhere in a Quinjet, short-circuits, and unleashes a modest army of Ultron robots (Ultron was a super evil robot made by Hank Pym, more on him later). As everyone battles, She-Hulk loses her mind and becomes a berserker, resulting in her tearing the Vision in half (a very cool panel by the way). This leads to, what else, a huge fight with everyone against She-Hulk.

Knee slapper!

Think we’re done? Oh no, the Avengers are not disassembled just yet. Next, as all sorts of Marvel heroes from all over arrive at the mansion, a fleet of Kree warships shows up and further complicates things. This results in Hawkeye becoming dead as well. Those keeping track, the score of dead Avengers is now up to three, not including the fourth zombie Avenger that came back to blow up.

To sum up, this is where Wanda’s broken psyche will come into play. This mental breakdown is what caused everything to begin with, so Wanda is escorted away by Magneto so that he can try and help her. Why is she so crazy now? Because a few years back she lost her children, or rather, magical constructs she wasn’t aware she had just dreamed up. It’s all complicated and part of backstory that I haven’t read, so just believe me when I say it’s effed up and that now Wanda believes the Avengers are the ones who killed her children.

"Avengers... Go Your Seperate Ways!"

Doesn’t matter (okay, it does, as it’ll lead into two Comic Book Clubs from now), the plot remains that Tony Stark can’t rebuild the Avengers mansion again because his company is circling the drain and so the Avengers say official goodbyes and part ways, hence, “Avengers Disassembled.”

This is just the jumping ground for what comes next, but I’ll save that until next time. For now, go ahead and read Avengers: Disassembled and get ready for the whirlwind of Marvel continuity that’s about to be unleashed!

Want more Comic Book Club? Check these out:

-Comic Book Club: The Walking Dead

-Comic Book Club: Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld

-Comic Book Club: Jack of Fables

“Ugh… I cannot believe I let my friend goad me into watching a 400+ episode anime series. What does he expect me to do? Not have a life? At the very least, this will kill time before the new Avatar series comes out next year. Alright let’s get this over with.”

One month later…

“OH MY GOD!!! THIS IS THE GREATEST ANIME I’VE EVER SEEN IN MY LIFE!!!
Wait, I have a life?”

First thing you should all know about me is I have a mild case of Aspergers Syndrome, and one of my most potent symptoms is that I get extremely obsessive over certain hobbies of interest in my life. Case in point, when I get into something, I get reeeeeeally into it. I was like this with Avatar The Last Airbender for the last several years, and I’m like it with One Piece now. However, because the overarching plot of One Piece has evolved so much over the decade and a half that has culminated its existence, I have taken myself on a voyage back to the series’ origins to give our readers a little taste of what it has in store. And what better way to start than discussing the franchises’ central protagonist.

Monkey D. Luffy

Bold, brash, and a bottomless optimism that can only be matched by his stomach, Monkey D. Luffy is the hero of our story, and he is Awesome (No, he does not have a title card like Scott Pilgrim to tell you so, but like he needs one). He has both super human strength and the power to stretch like rubber, so he’s basically a combination of both Mr. and Mrs. Incredible, which in-and-of itself, is Awesome. Like many adventures before his own, it begins with a dream, and that dream is to become the greatest pirate in history. Stirred by the tales of his childhood hero “Red Haired” Shanks, Luffy vowed to become a pirate himself. That was before he accidentally ate the enchanted Devil Fruit of the Gum Gum tree, which gave him his rubber body at the cost of being unable to swim, a serious handicap to anyone aspiring to sail the seas. Undeterred, Luffy set out on his 17^th birthday to find a crew, head for the Grand Line, surpass even his idol, and find the legendary treasure left behind by the former Pirate King Gold Roger: The One Piece.

One thing a character like Luffy does so well is take popular tropes from anime protagonists of the past and become fully committed to them. He has got to be the least wishy-washy character I have ever seen. It bears repeating that Eiichiro Oda was indeed inspired by the work of Akira Toriyama, and the parallels between Goku and Luffy are quite relevant. Both characters express pure hearts, big appetites, empty headedness, and a drive fueled by their unrelenting desire to protect the people they love. Yet in Luffy’s case, his character almost seems like an over-exaggeration of each of Goku’s traits: The drive, the appetite, and the sheer stupidity, to the EXTREME!

Some people might think that would come off as obnoxious, but it’s actually surprisingly refreshing to see a main character so consistently over-the-top. He keeps the energy so high, and there is rarely a dull moment when he’s on screen, which is good when you consider just how long this series is.

If there was one thing that wasn’t completely awesome about Luffy, it’s his English voice from the Funimation dub. Colleen Clinkenbeard has the voice duties, whom you might have heard as the new voice of Gohan and Young Goku in Dragon Ball Z Kai. I actually think she does those parts really well, and there are a handful of female characters (Priscilla in Claymore and Minai in Shikabane Hime are two great examples) where she does an excellent job, plus if you watch anything long enough you’re bound to get use to it. And yet, her version of Luffy is lacking. It’s not even a matter of her not having enough energy in her performance or not being talented enough, she just doesn’t fit the part. She makes a high-spirited 17-year-old sound like a 12-year-old who’s been smoking since he was seven, except then we do get to see him when he’s seven in a flashback, and he still has that annoying gravely voice, so apparently he’s been smoking since he was three.

Anyway, in the spirit of most fighting series, a character is put in place as a foil to our hero who will rival him throughout the series progression. Normally, when you think “rival,” usually what comes to mind is the stoic hardcore archetype, like Seto Kiba, Vegeta, Prince Zuko, Sasuke, guys like them. What doesn’t come to mind is some pink-haired, four-eyed, 14-year-old [just a guess, I don’t know his age] cabin boy enslaved by the vicious pirate “Iron Club” Alvida. AKA, this guy:

Coby

Coby is the very first person Luffy befriends on his journey (in fact, he’s the first central character we’re introduced to even before Luffy shows up). He has no discernible talent for fighting, he’s shy, quite cowardly, and as Luffy puts it, kind of a worthless wimp. Despite this, Luffy does see Coby’s kind heart and strong ambition, so he takes it upon himself to clobber the Alvida Pirates, as well as the “Iron Club” herself, and help Colby escape so he can be free to follow his own dreams: to become a marine and fight for justice (that, and Luffy needs a temporary navigator to get him to the next island.)

And that, in a nutshell is the first episode: A boy aspiring to be a pirate beats up a bunch of other pirates to rescue another boy aspiring to be a marine, and somehow, it makes perfect sense. Already this show is making my previous perceptions of good and evil spin around like crazy, and that’s what’s so great about introducing Coby first. He foreshadows how non black and white this world really is and how Luffy’s journey to become King of the Pirates is going to pit him against people who aren’t, in any sense of the word, bad. It gets even more confusing when you consider Episodes 2 and 3 consist of him doing the exact opposite thing he just did: Rescue an outlaw from the Marines.

Roronoa Zoro

Roronoa Zoro, age 19, is the Wolverine of One Piece. By that I mean he is the show’s top badass, and EVERYONE knows it. Sure, Luffy is awesome, but his lighthearted goofy nature keeps him from eating, sleeping and breathing badassery the way Zoro does. He’s a santoryu, which means he fights with three swords. At the same time! A style unlike any swordsmen I have ever seen. Even just hearing about him, Luffy was intrigued. He and Coby rush to the Navy base to find him, and what is the first thing we see this badass doing?

Tied to a stake, daydreaming of his childhood when he repeatedly got his ass kicked by a girl. …Remember the X-Men animated series, when the first time we see Wolverine, he got KO’ed by freaking Jubilee? Yeah it’s kind of like that. But I swear, everything after that is badass. Speaking of badass, guess what badass voice actor plays him in the Funimation Dub. I’ll give you a hint: It’s one of Mr. Pranger’s favorites. [Pranger’s note: It’s Chris Sabat isn’t it?] [Pranger's REAL Note: Sabat? I hate that guy!] Bingo! [Pranger’s note: That’s it, I’m watching it in Japanese.]

Anyway, Zoro has become infamous for hunting down pirates across the East Blue but was imprisoned when he stood up the Marine Captain’s bratty son Helmeppo, who was using his status to bully the villagers. Instead of flipping out, Zoro decides to do his time and be free in a month.

Only one problem.

Helmeppo has no intention of letting Zoro live, and instead sets him up to be executed. Luffy’s still hell-bent on convincing Zoro to join his crew, and Coby knows this sentence is not justified, so both agree to help save him. In a brawl with the marines and their corrupt Captain, “Ax-Hand” Morgan (yes, a lot of characters have nicknames), Zoro realizes he has made himself an outlaw and therefore agrees to become a Pirate and join Luffy’s crew. Yet he makes it clear that if Luffy ever gets in the way of his own dream, he will not hesitate to cut him down. Luffy, rather than be threatened by this statement, is overjoyed that his first crewmember has an aspiration so great:

“The world’s greatest swordsmen? That’s great. The King of the Pirates needs that on his side. I expect nothing less.”

And so, Luffy gets himself a first mate and the two set sail in pursuit of their equally crazy dreams.

Only one more problem.

Neither one of them has any sense of direction. Yep, while both of them are spectacular fighters, they are also complete idiots, and with Coby staying behind to join the marines, they won’t have a navigator to guide them to the next island, let alone make it to the Grand Line. So while they’re just wandering the ocean for a while, perhaps this is a good time to further explore what drives these two.

Past and Promises

There are three unwritten rules that each and every member of Luffy’s pirate crew seems to comply with. Rule #1: You have to become Luffy’s friend. Rule #2: You have to specialize in a skill that Luffy does not have. And Rule #3: You have to have a completely, gut wrenching, tear-jerking, impractical, over-the-top, melodramatic back-story.

So Luffy’s story starts 10 years ago when he’s so desperate to prove to “Red Haired” Shanks and his crew that he is worthy of being a pirate that he goes to call out a group of mountain bandits who belittled his idol the other day. Luffy gets himself caught and the bandits’ leader throws him into the ocean. Unfortunately, the shores of Windmill Village are guarded by a vicious serpent (A Sea King as the show calls them). That, and because Luffy ate the Gum Gum Fruit, he can’t swim either. He’s as good as dead, until Shanks rushes to save Luffy’s life, losing his left arm in the process. (And because he’s not a Namekian, it’s not growing back. No, Automail does not exist in this universe either.) While Luffy is feeling unbearably guilty for crippling his hero, Shanks will later proclaim that he gave his arm as a gamble on the new generation of pirates. Before departing from Windmill one last time, Shanks gives Luffy his trademark straw hat, and makes him promise to return it to him the day he becomes a great pirate.

Well, that was indeed very touching. Way to set the bar Luffy.

Even at the age of nine, Roronoa Zoro, then only a two-sword stylist, was already a very formidable swordsmen who could even take on adults with his skills. And yet, his journey to the top hits a brick wall when he encounters one person he cannot beat: Kuina, his sensei’s daughter. After losing to her 2000 times in a row in kendo matches, Zoro challenges her to a duel with real swords. Yet again, he falls short. In a moment where Zoro’s pride is ready to shatter out of frustration, Kuina verbally kicks him is the teeth by saying that she should be the one that’s frustrated, and yes, this conversation is going exactly where you expect it. She gives him this sob story about how girls grow weaker than men when they grow up, and no matter how much she wants to be a master swordsmen, Zoro is eventually going to surpass her simply through the process of puberty. Needless to say, he doesn’t take that very well:

“What are you crying about!? You beat me! That’s not fair! Beating you is my dream! Someday, I’ll beat you because I worked hard, not because you got weaker! It’s got nothing to do with being a boy or a girl! I’m training every day to beat you! You’re making me look bad!”

Zoro inspires Kuina to make a pact with him: that one of the two of them will become the world’s best swordsmen, so that they could fight each other for the title. Kuina accepts, and they make it a promise.

And literally the next morning, Kuina trips down the stairs and dies.

That’s not even out of context, it was that sudden. She’s dead, and all because of a freak accident. There’s no way around it, Oda, THAT was harsh, and you wrote that when you were younger than me.

Zoro inherits Kuina’s sword (by his own request to her father), and he makes a vow to keep the promise for the both of them. Thus is the birth of his triple sword style.

Nami

Now that we are emotionally invested in our duo, time to meet the girl that’s going to get them where they need to go: Nami, 18-years-old, a woman who’s as clever and cunning as she is eye-candy. While this character is very well loved among fans and is often seen as one of the most fascinating leading ladies in anime, I can’t get over the fact that her first impression paints her as a culmination of every single feminine quality I despise: A selfish, manipulative, hypocritical, flip-on-a-dime, money obsessed thief who we later learn is prone to quadro-polar freakouts nearly every other episode at least (think Misty, but possessed by Satan). While it is true that we won’t fully understand Nami until her backstory is revealed in another 40-odd episodes (which is definitely worth the wait), for now, we just have to put up with her, because dispite all this she’s a brilliant Navigator and Luffy needs her on his side.

Too bad her first act of gratitude toward Luffy saving her ass from a pair of pirates is tying him up and turning him over to the very pirates she stole from claiming that the pirate is her boss and put her up to it so she could infiltrate the crew and steal a map to the Grand Line, all for herself. Yeah, I know. She is a horrible human being. Yet it gets even worse, as the pirates in question are captained by non other than Buggy the Clown, who runs a pirate crew that consists exclusively of carnies (and if you can think of a combination that sounds more frightening than pirates and carnies, I owe you a coke). While Buggy’s first mate Moji is a tamer with a pet lion [named Richie] as big as an elephant, and his second mate Cabaji is a lightning fast unicycle-riding swordsman, it is Buggy himself that turns out to be the most threatening. He is the second character we meet who has eaten one of the Devil Fruits. His power comes from the Chop Chop fruit, which allows him to split his body apart and send the separate pieces of himself flying in any direction.

In a swashbuckling battle of crazy hijinks, backstabbing, and a Devil Fruit showdown, Nami uses her skill with a rope to tie down Buggy’s body parts, making him an easy target. Luffy sends the clown blasting off, Team Rocket style, where I’m sure we will never see him again, wink wink. Nami realizes just how much she can use the muscle in her quest for the Grand Line’s treasures, so she agrees to join Luffy and Zoro as their navigator. The first story arc ends with the trio setting sail in their little fish boat to pursue their dreams. On the way, a bigger crew, bigger ship, bigger booty, and bigger heartbreaks, bigger fights and bigger victories all await their journey toward the Grand Line.

And thus ends the first eight episodes/21 chapters of One Piece. How does it hold up? Compared to the current, immensely tragic events of the most recent arcs, this is just a lot of fun. The pacing isn’t nearly as good as say Avatar or Gurren Lagann, but it’s a ton better than the first few episodes of DBZ and Naruto. The writing and dialogue is pretty clever when it wants to be, and does a great job at giving personality to everyone, even the minor characters that only show up for an episode or two. The art and animation looks a bit nostalgic, but that’s not bad. While the show doesn’t take itself too seriously, there are some very tender moments concerning Luffy and Zoro’s back-stories. The villains, while occasionally goofy, are out for blood and don’t pull punches. The first two in particular are perfect foreshadows of the two specific types of baddies our heroes will frequently run into. “Iron Club” Alvida: a vicious pirate, and “Ax Hand” Morgan: a corrupt marine. While both of those guys went down with what amounted to a single blow, Buggy was the first legitimate threat, and he was also the first enemy with Devil Fruit powers like Luffy. Expect more of those to crop up as we go along as well.

So if you like pirates, anime, intense action, or just plain good storytelling, come aboard and watch/read One Piece. From the words of the future King of the Pirates, “There are incredible adventures out there just waiting for us.”

If you already like One Piece, than maybe you’d enjoy one of these:

-Authentically Awesome Anime: Samurai 7

-Triple Feature: Pokemon The First Three Movies

-Authentically Awesome Anime: A Gurren Lagann Retrospective

Lets get ready to rumble

One of the first and most iconic wrestling toys is without a doubt the all-rubber Wrestling Superstars action figures. Released by LJN, these figures were surprisingly detailed and copied these larger-than-life athletes wonderfully, Macho Man included. However, since they were not jointed in any way, it was hard to play with these figures in the ways you saw them fight on television. You couldn’t exactly make Hulk Hogan do his trademark leg drop nor could Randy Savage drop the elbow from the top rope, but for all you couldn’t do with these figures, they were as tough as nails. You might not be able to put them in a figure four leg lock, but you could throw them against a brick wall over and over without worry. In a way, the toy’s toughness wonderfully mimicked that of the superstars they portrayed.

The first and the best wrestling toys.

Of course, as wrestling grew more and more popular, there were more and more toys. The action figures went through a lot of changes over the years but the WWF didn’t stop there. The other memorable toy from the golden age of wrestling is easily the Wrestling Buddies. Wrestling Buddies were basically just over-sized, stuffed toys that looked like your favorite wrestler, again, including Macho Man. The Wrestling Buddies didn’t do much but it didn’t matter because these plush toys put the power of muscle heads like the Ultimate Warrior in your hands. And like the old rubber action figures, the Wrestling Buddies were rough and tough, ready to be played with hard. How else could you practice the Sharpshooter and not get yelled at by mom?

The other wrestling toy that you couldn’t avoid back in the day was, surprisingly, not from the WWF or even the WCW. Instead they came from Japan and they were called M.U.S.C.L.E. men. These little pink wrestling figures always confused me because I wasn’t sure what you were supposed to do with them. They were too small to do anything and they didn’t bend or have any joints. You could try to collect them all, but the collecting craze spawned by Pokemon was still several years away, and why would any kid want a funny looking MUSCLE man when he could have King Kong Bundy in his back pocket? Nonetheless, without the popularity of professional wrestling on TV and on toy store shelves, MUSCLE men would have remained in Japan.

You just know that Hulk fears Macho Man

Wrestling then and now

Pro wrestling is one of the few things my generation can say we saw and helped grow from the start. We helped turn wrestling from a smoky gym sport into an international spectacle, and that being the case, it’s interesting to see the wrestling toys in the aisles today. Back then the WWF only needed to sell toys to kids like me. The funny thing is, they can still sell toys to me. Like many of the other franchises these days, there are wrestling toys targeted at young kids and toys targeted at us “old” wrestling fans. Next to the 6-inch action figures of today’s wrestling superstars like John Cena are “collectible” figures of wrestling’s greatest players, like the Iron Sheik and Roddy Piper.

These figures range in price from $10 to around $20 and while they’re beautifully sculpted and detailed, they just don’t seem offer much more than the old figures. Don’t get me wrong, the action figures on the pegs now look more like their real life counterparts than ever before, and even though these figures have articulation and can actually move, they still can’t “perform” many of their trademark wrestling moves. You would think after a period of 20+ years that we would have action figures that could actually be put in a Boston crab or camel clutch, but we don’t. I purchased a new Undertaker figure at Walmart and while I can see the tiny skull tattoos on his arms, I can barely bend his legs. He even has a hard time standing up straight. I know these figures can do a thousand more things than our old rubber figures, but I guess I would just expect them to do more by this point.

I think one of his tattoos says "Mom".

Our old school figures could be dragged behind the school bus for miles and come out relatively unscathed, but the figures today just don’t feel like they would be able to take much abuse…and what other type of action figure should take more abuse than a wrestler? Wrestlers are basically giant cartoon characters anyway, each of them capable of taking an inordinate amount of punishment, so it only makes sense that their miniature versions should do the same, but I’m not so sure they can. My Undertaker looks mean but I think inside you’ll find a brittle little man.

And if you thought the MUSCLE men were left back in the 1980s, you’d be wrong too. The actual MUSCLE men are now the things of yard sales and flea markets, but in their place you’ll find mini versions of today’s top WWE performers. Billed as WWE Rumblers, these 2-inch figures resemble the Marvel Superhero Squad toys in that they have large proportions with all-happy faces. But like the old MUSCLE men, I’m not sure what you can do with these little guys besides just collect them. At most the WWE Rumblers would be great desk toys at the office. They’re small enough to go unnoticed but still something to show off your wrestling fandom.

Old isn’t always better but it was more fun

It’s easy for me to say that the toys from my generation are better than today’s toys, but that would be a lie. Toys today can do a lot more than the toys of my day, and they look better too. Yet, when I put them side-by-side, the modern action figures just don’t carry the same spirit as the old toys. The old toys captured the fun and ridiculousness that was and is professional wrestling. The new toys just seem more interested in being collectible than useful in the hands of fans both young and old. But don’t let that stop you from buying a Paul Orndorff figure to show off at work.

Want more talk about toys then and now? Check these articles out:

-The Glory of G.I. Joes: A Retrospective

-Creating My Own Sagas: Dragonball Z Action Figures

-Spring-Loaded Serenade: Exploring Nerf

When you stop and think about it, the truth is that Mr. Potato Head is actually a dress-up doll, one that can be enjoyed equally by both boys and girls without the binaries of ‘this is what a girl should play with’ or ‘this is appropriate for boys’. The gender labeling of the toys themselves are even a curious misnomer.

Although Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head exist as separate models, Hasbro’s own product catalogue labels several accessory packs that would be stereotypically considered “female”, such as the Parts and Pieces Glamour Spud, the Mermaid Spud, and the Parts and Pieces Princess set, as being suitable for your Mr. Potato Head. Maybe Mr. Potato Head enjoys dress-up a little too much?

Mr. Potato Head’s feminine side. Shown are Glamour Spud and Parts and Pieces Princess Spud.

Jokes aside, the ungendered quality of today’s tater is actually a result of years of product evolution and changing safety regulations.

The original Mr. Potato Head kit actually was gendered, because the 1952 kit consisted of a plastic body with a huge spike for a neck that would be attached to the fruit. You would push a potato or apple or whathadyou onto the spike, creating the figure’s base, and then poke the eyes, nose, mouth and ears into the fruit to complete the toy. When Mrs. Potato Head’s kit came out in 1953 she actually had a different body mold, with a rounder figure, feminine shoes and a dress. They were the toy celebrity couple before Barbie and Ken, who didn’t reach the market until 1959 and 1961 respectively – Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head were even featured in LIFE magazine!

Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head, circa 1953 – note distinct gender molds for the bodies.

Naturally, as the years went on, a toy with a 3-inch spike on it became unkosher to give to little kids. In 1964 the equation was swapped around – both due to government regulations and possibly as a response to criticisms of ‘food wastage’ – a brown plastic ‘potato head’ was made by Hasbro. All the points of the pieces were rounded off, but the two distinct Mr. and Mrs. bodies retained slightly smaller pointy necks.

In the 1960’s, the first commercial tie-in packs appeared: Donald Duck, Bozo the Clown and a special Mr. Donut Head cross-promotion with Dunkin Donuts. Of course, the parts for each of these were all interchangeable. Primary accessories from the 60’s were Wild West, Masquerade, Circus, On The Farm, On the Railroad and On The Moon. Each came with a cardboard backdrop and a variety of strange pieces, some of which were repeated between sets. Some were intended for use with real vegetables rather than the plastic potato head, reflecting the crossover between versions.

From this era, the Picnic Pals are a quite obscure spinoff line, not well known today and difficult to locate.

Picnic Pals circa 1966.

In the 1970’s, the line began to diminish. The plastic potato head was darkened by several shades, and at this point the original body attachment disappeared entirely, replaced by just two simple plastic feet. Additionally the holes on the potato head became standardized to slots. Mrs. Potato Head disappeared from the line in 1973, no longer having a separate form of her own – she was only an add-on pack. She would not return as a separately labeled item until 1992.

Only a handful of kits – the Fire Chief, Sheriff and Lady packages – worked with the 70’s model potato. The strangest and rarest of all Mr. Potato Head accessory packs also hail from this era – the Fish, Bug and Bird sets. These sets include wobbly legs, wings, antennae and psychedelic-style beaks.

Literally the only available picture online of the Mr. Potato Fish, Bird and Bug sets.

The tater we know today took shape over the 80’s. The plastic body was retooled again, first to have attached arms and later detachable arms that could bend. A trap door backside was added to let kids store unused pieces inside the potato. It retained a slot for feet, and the slots on the body had been returned to peg-holes. The potato was now the entirety of the toy rather than one component. Kids were once more free to stick arms in ears and eyes in mouths. Finally, the signature pipe of the figure that had been a staple of the line since its beginning was swapped out for a pair of running shoes in support of the American Cancer Society’s “Great American Smoke Out”. (He also received a Presidential Sports Award in 1992!)

Accessory packs from the 80’s were somewhat thin on the ground except for the Bucket of Parts released in 1987 and the Super Silly Mr. Potato Head bucket in 1989 which featured muscle arms and crazy hair in extremely bright colors.

The release of Toy Story in the 90’s provided an explosion of attention for the tater. With Don Rickels providing the voice of the cynical spud in the box office smash, Pixar’s inclusion of the toy sent Mr. Potato Head skyrocketing in popularity, and a massive amount of new accessory kits and packs emerged. Some significant packs from this time were the Sheriff, Tool Belt, “Prima Spuderina” (ballerina), Pirate, Santa and “Cottontail” (rabbit, with a pull-on pink suit with ears!).

A clever variant of the figure from 1992 was the Soft Stuff Potato Head, which was a plush toy with Velcro-backed parts. Even more than the peg-version, these parts could be attached to literally any point of the soft body. Meanwhile, it’s possible that the re-release of Mrs. Potato Head as a separate character in 1992 was done in response to and preparation for the 1999 release of Toy Story 2, where the character was prominently featured.

As of 2011, there are over 100 separate team-specific versions of Mr. Potato Head, representing collegiate and pro teams. In this last decade the line has seen a tsunami of cross-merchandising- a real boom for collectors. There’ve been Star Wars spuds, Indiana Jones spuds, Transformers spuds, Spider-Man spuds, Elvis and KISS spuds… and in late 2011 there are plans to release Star Trek spuds too! Some special and cool new variants have emerged, like the “Silly Suitcases” for each model with over 40 mix and match accessories and body parts. There are even pets- the Spud Buds- a dog and cat.

Art from PPW Toys depicting planned Star Trek Mr. Potato Head licensed toys for late 2011.

Underneath all the ears, noses and funky plastic eyes, the Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head bodies are now the same simple plastic shape with slight color variations. There once was a meaningful difference between the two, but that’s no longer true. Kits that work for one also work for the other. Moms and dads concerned about gender stereotyping in their toys might like a Potato Head as an inoffensive alternative to the Barbie/Hot Wheels dichotomy. Boys and girls get exactly the same experience with the toy. The kits are ridiculously low priced- as low as $4 for some accessory packs and around $20 for a Silly Suitcase with full figure included. At these prices, and with a huge variety of dressing options to boot, everyone can and should have a spud of their very own!

Cassandra, when not writing about media and randomness at her blog, cassandrapoe.com, prefers her nongendered potatoes dressed with butter and garlic.

Want more on the classics? Check these articles out:

-The History of Rainbow Brite

-Drench With Power: A Super Soaker Retrospective

-Throw Your Hands Up and Your Hands Back: A PEZ Retrospective

A classic game with a “Marvelous” twist. Get it?!

Boy does this bring back the memories. The original Chutes and Ladders has got to be one of the first board games I’ve ever played. Now, as I look back on it, a good 18+ years older, it begs a question: What kind of impact could a simple game like this possibly have that keeps it going for so long with so little changed to the actual game? Is it deep like Monopoly? No. Just spin the spinner and move your token. Does it require the development of any mental skill like Blokus? No. As long as you can count, you’re set. Is it addictive or appeal to a wide audience like Tetris, Yahtzee, or Connect 4? No, it doesn’t really do that either. Yet despite all this, or even because of it, I believe that Chutes and Ladders is the absolute perfect game for young children in their developing years.

The original Chutes and Ladders, as I remember it, casts you in the role of one of four everyday neighborhood kids who are in a race with each other on a 10×10 square grid that counts from one to a hundred, and the first one to reach the 100 spot wins. Why are they racing? No idea. How far does each square represent? Who knows? But as the race begins, we soon learn that Chutes and Ladders becomes less about the destination and more about what happens in between. If a player lands their character on a space that depicts a child performing a good deed like a chore or a selfless act, their character gets to climb a ladder, skipping ahead up the board to where it displays a reward for such behavior. If, however, their character lands on a space representing a reckless or naughty act, they must slide down the chute back down the board as punishment.

That’s right kids. If you save a cat from a tree, not only will you have a new loving pet, you will move up 56 blocks, whatever that means.

One of the reasons I feel this is the perfect game for preschool-aged children is the same reason why an older demographic might find it empty and downright boring. It is a game that relies completely and utterly 100% on chance. Don’t get me wrong, there are dozens of games in which your odds of wining are strictly swayed by the roll of the dice, or the spin of a spinner, or the turn of a card, but even games like Monopoly, Life, or Sorry require some semblance of a strategy and have complex rules that require attention. With Chutes and Ladders, it is completely unnecessary. All you can do is spin the spinner and hope for the best. This makes it perfect for children because it means that while playing it, they have just as much a chance at winning the game as their older, smarter parents. As kids, they deserve to play something where everyone has an even chance of winning, no matter how much experience you may or may not have. It teaches them to play fair.

Speaking of teaching, I believe there is another valuable lesson to be learned with this game. MB Games was very careful in how they crafted this game. The four character tokens you play as in the game are the same kids represented on the board performing the good/bad deeds that cause them to go up and down the board. Yet it’s also very careful not to be biased, as it shows all of them doing both good and bad deeds evenly. What this is trying to show us is that everyone is capable of good and bad. Ideally, Chutes and Ladders wants to teach kids a moral: In a perfect society, everyone starts their life off at the same place. As you go through life, you will be rewarded for your nobility and punished for your recklessness. Yet no matter how good or bad you are, how far you really succeed in life will still require some faith and a lot of luck. Yeah, it’s a cheesy kids’ moral, but it’s a moral for kids nonetheless.

Another great thing about this game? It’s versatile. There are so many ways to design this game. You can find so many versions of this game now in all kinds of franchises that really benefit the moral up and down system. There is a Chutes and Ladders edition with Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, and even for Toy Story 3. The Marvel Super Hero Squad edition I saw in stores had eight playable Marvel heroes: Spider Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Silver Surfer, and…the Phoenix? (Seriously, that’s the female character they choose to use? Why not Storm? Or Rogue?) Anyway, the board cleverly depicted the heroes doing the good deeds up the ladder, while having the villain characters like Venom, Dr. Doom, and Magneto performing the evil deeds down the chutes. Oh and let’s not forget the infamous “Snakes and Ladders” knock off.

What? What is this? This isn’t fun.

Okay, now to be fair, “Snakes and Ladders” was actually the original title of the game when it was first manifested in Ancient India. Back then, it was a game Hindu practitioners showed children to teach them about their moral beliefs and to seek the “ladder to salvation” and avoid vices. Using snakes in that game made sense, as they each represented one of twelve sins of Hindu culture that would inevitably lead a man’s rebirth in a lower life form.

So technically, “Snakes and Ladders” taught kids in India almost the exact same lesson hundreds of years ago that “Chutes and Ladders” continues to subconsciously teach kids around the world today. The biggest difference really is that it takes the whole religious element out of the game and replaces it with common do’s and do-not’s all human beings can relate to.

And that is why I think that Chutes and Ladders is a wonderful part of American culture that deserves to be remembered. It’s the game every kid wants to play. Easy to learn, colorful, and fair.

Just remember kids. Whatever you do, don’t play Eels and Escalators with Spongebob. He gets way too into it.

Want to find more board games? Have a look at these:

-Because Sometimes Death Can Be Entertaining: A 13 Dead End Drive Retrospective

-Forget-Me-Nots: The TMNT Pizza Power Board Game

-Victory Never Tasted So Sweet: A Candy Land Retrospective

Anyway, let’s talk about Pictionary while we’re here. Sound good? Good.

Anyone feel like playing with me?

Pictionary’s history isn’t anything incredibly exciting. It was developed by Robert Angel and published by Seattle Games Inc in 1985. That’s pretty much the whole story there. But like so many other games, Pictionary doesn’t need an elaborate backstory or an origin story as convoluted as, oh, let’s say Tetris (another day). Pictionary is a simple concept and it comes from humble beginnings. So let’s get into the rules!

The rules are equally as simplistic as any other game you could play. Players break off into teams and go around the game board, landing on various squares color-coded to the categories of what they’ll be drawing: Yellow for Person/Place/Animal, Blue for Object, Orange for Action, Green for Difficult (difficult is a thing, apparently), and Red for All Play, an instance where, as you may have guessed, everyone plays. Some versions have a Purple square that lets you pick what you’d like to do, but I’m not talking about these fancy editions or anything; I just want to draw already!

Okay, so as you get your card, let’s say you landed on a Yellow space, you’ll have to attempt to draw the word in the yellow for your team. Let’s also just say that the word is “Crocodile.” You have approximately one minute to draw something that makes them guess the word is “crocodile” without using letters or numbers or speaking. So really, it’s like charades for artists. I seriously can’t make the game sound more elaborate than that. It’s just that simple.

So how to you plan strategies for such an event? Assuming your family loves you enough to actually play Pictionary with you, they’ll probably also know who among them can draw and who can’t. Stacking a team with only artists is a good way to win, but not a fun way to draw unless you add more rules like “No Drawing Faces” or “No Right-Angles.” Then we learn who the real artists in the family are!

Letting the DVD draw for you is cheating!

As I’d mentioned a while ago in How To Beat Your Friends In Board Games, a perfectly great strategy is to have a shorthand code for just about every instance. Let’s say you get the word “Dollhouse.” Perhaps you and your partner already know that if you draw just the roof part (^), it means “House,” and a simple stick figure with round hands means “Doll.” You can draw a dollhouse far faster and have your partner know exactly what you’re attempting to draw, pretty much every time. This way takes a lot of clever planning beforehand, plus it sort of breaks the fun of the game, but if you want to win every time, there’s your strategy.

And that’s essentially everything there is to say about Pictionary. You can find a version in just about every department store or online at all the usual places. Me, I’m still hoping to convince my family to play sometime. Maybe someday they’ll love me enough.

Want more on board games? Check these articles out:

-Think While you Have Fun!: Yahtzee

-Starving For Entertainment: Hungry Hungry Hippos

-Like Capture The Flag With Bombs: A Stratego Retrospective

Still as awesome as the day I got him.

Ninja Turtles were just a thing I knew and loved all throughout childhood. I worshipped the four ninja teens like they were rock icons and collected every single piece of merchandise I could come across. Naturally, birthday parties were an event I expected at least one new Ninja Turtle action figure to make an appearance, and while I can’t rightfully recollect the exact date I received my Mutating Mike, I can recall that he became invaluable within my life.

The reason behind this was his added range of motion over the standard “classic” Michelangelo figures. Classic Michelangelo could move his arms up and down, and his legs were connected to his body on pivot joints, but other than his head moving side-to-side and his wrists having twist joints, he couldn’t move in any elaborate fashion. That’s where Mutating Mike had the advantage: His shoulders were pivot joints and his feet could bend at the bottom of the shin, meaning he could pose like he was swimming, diving, leaping, kicking, or all sorts of other moves.

Oh look, he met a fellow mutant.

The way I played just demanded more from him in terms of range-of-motion. I had plotlines within my toys, but most of those plotlines eventually broke down into all-out brawls. Dragonball Z overtook the majority of the main characters, like a whole squadron of Buzz Lightyears invading the toy room, but Mutating Mike stayed the center of all the action, thanks in part to those extra ball joints at his shoulders and hips, as well as his flipping feet.

A few of my favorite plotlines included the Turtle Blimp dangling Mike from a rubber band, leaping off a giant cliffside (my bookshelf), and deciding to quit the hero business altogether until the very last second, ala Peter Parker in Spiderman 2.

I guess they were able to work out their differences well enough. Good for them.

I even had a Mutating Donatello from the same line, but he was relegated to the sidekick role alongside Mondo Gecko. Why? I was never quite sure. I had a plotline later on where Mike was prepping Don to take over as the main character should he die for one reason or another (an army of Majin Buus were a looming threat), but Don just couldn’t fill that hero role well enough, therefore Mike was brought back in to save the day.

He was the leader of all my toys and should they wander around my room when I’m away, I have no doubt Mutating Mike is the one up on the box with a loudspeaker in hand instructing the other toys what to do during the next move. Goku’s probably standing nearby trying to teach the other toys how to transform into a Super Saiyan, but Mike will just roll his eyes and remind Goku that he’s a toy. A Japanese toy, but a toy nonetheless.

Fitting in with the new generation may be a challenge though.

Want more Forget-Me-Nots? Check these out:

-Forget-Me-Nots: Tie Fighter

-Forget-Me-Nots: My Lone Ranger Action Figure

-Forget-Me-Nots: My Daredevil Action Figure

Cooler promotional art there never was.

In the early days of the Game Boy Advance, there was a lot of room to demonstrate why exactly an update to the holy handheld was required. Game Boy games were typically simple; even the RPG’s they yielded tended to be shallower then the SNES counterparts. The Game Boy Color gave us color (obviously), but beyond maybe the Pokemon games, there wasn’t much depth to handheld titles.

Camelot, a company previously known for making the Mario Golf and Mario Tennis titles, had a chance to try something extremely different than what they were known for. Instead of an arcade sports title, they made an RPG called Golden Sun, a game with enough flare to justify purchasing the GBA specifically to play it.

The main drive behind upgrading from the Game Boy Color to the Game Boy Advance was the processing power behind the colors and effects the system could generate, colors and effects the previous generation couldn’t possibly handle. What Golden Sun demonstrated within the very first minutes of the game was enough to say, “Yes, this is where handheld gaming is going.” And that’s even before the battle screens appeared.

Mm-mm, that's just tasty right there.

I was amazed when I first got into a battle and saw the level of detail in the characters, backgrounds, and even attacks. Golden Sun is gorgeous in presentation. You’d be hard-pressed not to say it’s stunning work laid out on a GBA screen. Not only does it show off how far superior it is to the GBC, it shows how it’s superior to even the SNES. Just watching the summons would push me over the edge of awesome. Go watch Judgment get called forth and tell me it isn’t one of the coolest attacks ever to make it into video games.

At the heart of every RPG is the story and Golden Sun certainly has one that got me curious. The game starts with Isaac and his best friend Garet running about in their village of Vale as a great tragedy occurs that forces Isaac to lose his father and his friend Jenna to lose her brother, Felix (wink wink). The story picks up three years later after Isaac and Garet have been training with the use of Psynergy, the energy force the game calls its magic system. They enter Sol Sanctum and get tricked into retrieving four elemental gem stars required to light the four elemental lighthouses of the world, an act that will supposedly destroy everything and be very, very bad. Supposedly. I think.

Sort of reminds you of Avatar...doesn't it?

While the story is somewhat slow and fairly basic at its core, there is a certain curious quality about it. I played the game to completion when I first purchased it, but as I remember correctly, I only completed two of the four lighthouses before the credits started rolling. Why? Because there is a sequel, The Lost Age, in which the story is resolved. I haven’t played that yet, much to my distress, but that will soon change as my wife recently found me a used copy for my birthday. My point is, Golden Sun as a stand-alone title leaves you begging for more, even though my first playthrough had me clocking over 40 hours. That’s a serious chunk of time for a GBA title.

Those that have played Golden Sun aren’t going to try and sell you on it based purely on the story, or even the graphics; they’ll try to sell you on the Djinn. Djinn are magical creatures you can collect throughout the game to the point that each of the four main characters can equip seven. The Djinn can be used in battle, each with its own special technique. The trade-off is that the Djinn provide stat-boosts for the characters, as well as abilities for the particular class the character happens to be. The more Djinn, the better the class, and the more varied the type of Djinn you have equipped, the more varied the class will be. When you use a Djinn, however, that stat boost and class change will be lost until it’s reequipped, done so by performing a Summon attack. Summon attacks require between one to four Djinn of the same type, allowing you to make use of the most devastating attacks in the game. Once summoned, the Djinn will then recharge and become reequipped to the various characters.

It’s this constant balancing of equipped and stand-by Djinn that make for a unique battle style in Golden Sun. While you may really, really want to use your Djinn and save up a few to unleash Judgment, you could be costing your character vital stats in the middle of the battle, or worse, forcing him to lose some of his key Psynergy such as Cure Well or Ragnarok. Even better, mixing around and playing with the Djinn combinations can become rather enjoyable since you can play it safe and dull (like I did) and use stack like-typed Djinn upon the characters with the same elemental type, or you can find grand combos that provide cooler attacks than ever before. Golden Sun provides a lot of room to experiment, room that players have seemed to enjoy.

No way! That totally IS Avatar!

My last little thing to mention regards naming the characters. I am a huge proponent of being allowed to name characters within video games whatever you’d like, permitting you to create your own narrative rather than just the one the game provides. It gives you the chance to forge a deeper connection to the story and the characters than you may otherwise have. Oddly enough, Golden Sun permits you to rename Isaac, but not the other characters…unless you know a cheat code. I happen to know said cheat code. I’ll leave you with the knowledge that if you’d like to rename the four playable characters, plus three others, enter Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, and then Select while you’re on the screen where you can name Isaac. If done correctly you’ll hear a slight “ping.” You’re welcome.

So there you have it, a true Game You Should Have Played. Dark Dawn, the third game in the series, just released at the beginning of this week, so you might as well spend some time catching up before you dive head first into a righteously excellent game. I’ll leave you to comment on whether you’re a Golden Sun fan or not, but please, no spoilers here! I’m the only one allowed to spoil things!

Want more Games You Should Have Played? Check these out:

-Homeward Bound: More Earthbound For The US

-Games You Should Have Played: Super Mario Bros 3

-Games You Should Have Played: Final Fantasy III SNES

Think Risk, except replace dice and chance with Tetris pieces and actual strategy.

Blokus falls in the ‘simple to learn yet challenging to master’ category of board games. You can easily figure out everything by watching one play through, but here’s the run down: Each player chooses a color and takes a set of 21 pieces made of all variations of 1-5 squares. Players take turns placing pieces on the 20×20 square grid, each starting from the corner of their color.

Each new piece you place must touch one of your other pieces, but only at the corners. Pieces of the same color cannot be in contact along the sides. However, there are no restrictions to how your pieces touch other colors.

Your goal is to cover as much of the board with your pieces as possible, while blocking your opponents from expanding their own territory. The game ends when all players are blocked from laying down any more of their pieces. The player with the most squares placed on the grid (or easier to tally, the player with the least number of squares left unplaced) wins.

These are all the shapes you have to work with. Rule of Thumb: Start with the 5-square pieces early.

The game plays with 2 to 4 players. With 2, both players take two colors each and alternate between them. Unfortunately games played one-on-one can very easily be turned into stalemates. With 3, each player takes one color and alternates every turn playing for the remaining color. This is sort of interesting, but, to be honest with ourselves, the only real way to play is when you have 4 solid players. Half the challenge and fun of this game is having to micromanage between offensive and defensive approaches to 3 opponents at the same time.

What’s also nice about Blokus is that no matter how good you may get at it, the game never seems unfair or crippling to newcomers. In fact, get too good and all three players will easily single you out as a threat and start gunning toward you first. While it is fun to make alliances and pick out threats, toward the end of the game, all deals will be off as everyone will be scrambling for whatever little space is left.

In college, the name of this game was eventually changed to “Blok-Gus.”

In my opinion, Blokus is the ideal party game, and I’m probably not alone in this, seeing the several awards it has won since it’s creation, including the National Competition Winner by Mensa, the High HQ Society. It is the perfect combination of being very easy to pick up and learn how to play, while also making the players think. It doesn’t suck time or become monotonous like Monopoly or Sorry, and has incredible replay value. It’s also the perfect gift for that special strategist in your life, or anyone for that matter. Find it at your local retail toy section, or check it out online at their official sight. www.blokus.com.

Want more good family games? Check these articles out for tips:

-“Ain’t” Is Not a Word: A Scrabble Guide For The Lazy

-Mario: A Retrospective Part 7 (On Mario Party)

-How To Beat Your Friends In Board Games

-I Am Scattegories And You Can Too: A Scattegories Retrospective

Remember this game? Well you should.

Spy Web is a game I’d best describe as Battleship meets Guess Who? in as much as you try to outsmart your opponent via clever placement of your pieces and determining through simple questions how they’ve placed their pieces. Confused yet? I’ll get into the details, just hold on.

Researching Spy Web was a bit of a tricky task since the first thing that pops up in Google for “Spy Web” is naturally anti-spyware software. Also, don’t do a Google image-search for Spy Web, unless you have your preferences set to filter inappropriate content, because you will get a few pages full of very, VERY adult images. Even Wikipedia, my go-to for research, doesn’t list Spy Web as a thing. Dang, is this game really that obscure?

So the premise of Spy Web pits two factions of spies against each other, one with names based off sea creatures such as “Beluga” and “Manta,” and the other with names based off birds such as “Buzzard” and “Osprey.” Each side has nine spies to place in a 3-by-3 board very similar to the way you place ships in Battleship, i.e. hidden from the other player. The first player to accurately determine the other player’s spy arrangement wins the round.

Also, I love the colors here. Doesn't it look spy-like?

The way this is determined is through asking three questions: “Who is [character name] pointing at/looking at/listening to?” You know this because every character tile is either pointing in some direction, looking in some direction, or listening in some direction, sometimes all three at once.

For example, you could ask “Who is Buzzard pointing at?” and you might get an answer like “Buzzard is pointing at Vulture.” You’d then have to use this knowledge to determine where to start placing your enemy’s character tiles. Oh, and in case you were curious, unlike real spy tactics, lying is totally uncalled for here, otherwise the game doesn’t work.

Snazzy characters. Why didn't Guess Who? have spy gadgets in it?

The concept is fairly simple, I admit, but something about it resonated with me as a kid. I became mildly obsessed with creating the perfect, “uncrackable” combination of spies by looking for formations that resulted in a spy not being looked at, pointed to, or listened to by any other characters, or better yet, making it so that no spies connected to any other spies on the board. It’s set up so you can’t really do this, but it ‘s fun to try.

Adding the spy theme to the game really sold me as a kid. It could easily be a sort of board game version of “telephone” whereas the nine characters are just kids set up on the grid, but that would have been sort of lame. Spies are cool, and unlike zombies, they haven’t overstayed their welcome. I highly recommend giving Spy Web a look, though good luck sifting through the other “Spy Webs” in Google. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Apparently spies really don’t like to be found.

Want more about board games? Check these out:

-Apples to Apples, Dust to Dust: An Apples to Apples Retrospective

-Game Cards Do Not Actually Talk: A Guess Who? Retrospective

-Just Don’t Panic: A Retrospective on Catch Phrase

Metroid (1986):

This is a classic game, so how can you go wrong?

To be completely honest, the first Metroid game, while enjoyable, is a game I’ve never beaten. I own it and played it a few times, but I couldn’t progress far enough in the game to the point of finishing Samus’ first adventure. Still, what I did play was very cool. At the time there just weren’t any other games like this one around. The concept of a side-scrolling platformer with action thrown in was one thing, but having a game built around exploration and character progression? That was something completely new. Add on a very good password system (Justin Bailey anyone?) and the surprise that Samus Aran a woman and you’ve got yourself a classic game.

Metroid II: Return of Samus (1991):

So simple, but so much fun.

It was odd for me but when I picked up Metroid II on the Game Boy I was expecting something of lesser quality than the first game. In yet another surprise, Metroid II has better graphics. It’s also stupidly difficult. Instead of progressing through the world like the previous game, looking for the next power-up to lead to the final boss, Metroid II tasked the player (and Samus I guess) with finding all Metroids and terminating them, eventually leading to a fight against one heck of a Metroid Queen. I was very proud of myself for finishing this one, but I’m not sure I could ever beat it again if I tried. I also, unfortunately, had to look up a map online just to figure out where to go. Seriously, how did gamers function back in the day? We must have just had more time I guess.

Super Metroid (1994):

Why do they insist on making these boss fights so hard?

Many gamers will have you believe that Super Metroid is the greatest game on the SNES. Many gamers have a very strong argument. Super Metroid takes everything that was great about the previous two games and kicks it up a notch, making for one hell of an SNES game. The graphics, music, and gameplay are all amazing, but the difficulty remains placed well above the abilities of normal gamers. Seriously, these games are hard. But Super Metroid pulls off the delicate balance of being difficult without feeling unfair, and even mixes in a great story with some light dramatic elements. It’s a good thing this game is on the Virtual Console if you can’t find the physical cartridge.

Metroid Prime (2002):

Man, that's an epic boss right there.

I had never played a Metroid game before hearing that Metroid Prime was announced. Despite that, when I learned that they were diverging from the classic 2D Metroid style into a 3D First Person Shooter, I instantly said, “No, this is stupid.” Then I got Metroid Prime for Christmas one year and popped it in my GameCube to see if it was any good. In a word: Yes. Metroid Prime is currently my third favorite game of all time, a game I’ve played through numerous times and still want to play through again. I even beat this one on the hardest difficulty setting with 100% completion. Metroid has always been about the feelings of isolation and aloneness as Samus wanders dead, empty worlds fighting off whatever she can with whatever she can, but in Metroid Prime that feeling gets heightened due to playing from Samus’ perspective. Couple this with a truly haunting soundtrack and it’s hard to do better. Whenever I hear the music play for Phendrana Drifts I still get shivers and a tear comes to my eye. Plus, the boss fight against Metroid Prime stands as one of the best I can recall. Just a perfect game all around.

Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (2004):

Light Suit? My favorite suit from the series.

I thought it was weird that I seemed to be the only individual excited about Metroid Prime 2. You want to guess why? Halo 2 was also coming out around the same time. Dang. I still picked up Metroid Prime 2 and blasted through it, loving it for what it was once more. This time, something new happened in a Metroid game: Interactions with people! It was really refreshing to see Samus speaking with someone, er, well, seeing them speak to her. The game was still packed with the isolated feeling, but it wasn’t so overpowering this time. A lot of gamers seamed to hate the Light World/Dark World thing going on in this game, but I didn’t mind it. This was yet another game I beat with 100% completion on the hardest difficulty, and yeah, it was certainly harder than the first Prime game. At this point, I was just eager to see how this trilogy would end.

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption (2007):

Adding extra characters in a Metroid game can be risky, but they pulled it off.

Gamers got in a stink when they found out Metroid Prime 3 wouldn’t have multiplayer. How stupid do you have to be to say you’re not buying a Metroid game due to a lack of multiplayer? “I won’t purchase this washing machine because it doesn’t play DVD’s.” Whatever, that didn’t effect me at all since, awesome, the controls only got better and the series only keep staying great. Prime 3 was even less about feeling isolated, and best of all, dialogue was granted full voice-over work. Excellent! Getting to point the Wiimote at the screen and shoot with precision was near perfect, and the difficulty remained fair but challenging. The worlds to explore were huge and filled with nooks and crannies everywhere, so my exploration itch was scratched. And wouldn’t you know it, they managed to give Samus some real character depth and growth without resorting to overly dramatic moments or even clichéd voice-overs. There’s at least one scene where Samus silently wrestles with the actions she’s been forced to take during the game, and I’ll admit, I got misty-eyed. My only frustration was that if you get the 100% completion, you see a cutscene that implies the series has more to do, but I know Retro Studios isn’t the one making them, so what am I to do?

Metroid Prime Pinball (2005):

Yup, that looks like pinball alright.

I wasn’t quite sure why Nintendo got bit by the pinball bug so often, but Metroid was turned into a pinball game for some strange reason. Metroid Prime Pinball was a retelling of the first Metroid Prime game via the pinball medium, because that made sense. Oh well, this is pinball, so the point isn’t to reinvent the wheel, just provide fantastic pinball, which was what happened here. It was just pinball with a Metroid flair, so I don’t have much, if anything, to say here. I enjoyed playing the game when I’d be standing in a Game Crazy dinking around on the demo systems, but that was as far as I went with this one. Still worth it if you love you some pinball.

Metroid Prime Hunters (2006):

Surprisingly, the DS works really well for FPS games.

I thought Metroid Prime Hunters was going to be a launch title for the Nintendo DS, but it wasn’t. It did, however, come with a Metroid Prime Hunters demo packed in, a demo that I played over and over again. I wasn’t sure what to think about it, but when the game actually came out, I was overall pleased. Gone was the majority of the Metroid feel, replaced by a pretty good multiplayer atmosphere. Samus was now competing against six other bounty hunters with unique powers and guns, allowing for entertaining multiplayer matches. The main problem the game suffered from was the control scheme. It is pretty much impossible to play this game without your pinky and ring fingers going numb. Your other hand is also going to be super tired from having to hold the DS by itself and pressing the shoulder button to fire. The game controls great, but it comes at a vast personal loss. Oh, and while the multiplayer is good, playing online against anyone will make you never want to play online again. I hate getting beaten that badly so often. How is that fun? Meh, I was just happy to have finished this title.

Metroid Fusion (2002):

The GBA was just built for Metroid, if you ask me.

Fusion was probably my first 2D Metroid game, if I remember correctly. It was very, very good, despite the usual difficulty that goes hand-in-hand with Metroid games. The controls were great, the music was great, the graphics were great, great great great. I have no idea how anyone can get the best ending though. In order to obtain the perfect ending, you have to beat the game with 100% completion in under two hours. That’s insane. I had a friend who borrowed the game from me and decided to attempt this. Over the course of a week, he replayed the game again and again in order to map the fastest route for getting everything. At the end of his epic week, he tore through the game with a 100% completion score in exactly two hours. He was furious. Why? Because you have to have 1:59 or less on your game file to get the perfect ending. His 2:00 only rewarded him with the second best ending. I don’t think he ever played a Metroid again, and I wouldn’t blame him.

Metroid Zero Mission (2004):

Okay, I take it back. The Zero Suit is my favorite suit.

Zero Mission is a remake of the original Metroid and holds a special place in my heart as the first game I beat in its entirety while on the clock at Game Crazy. Yes, Game Crazy paid me to stand around playing a Metroid game since there were no customers and I had done everything in the store, leaving me with tons of free time to play through Samus’ first adventure. Since this is a remake of the original game, I consider this beating all the Metroid games. Is that cheating? Well of course it is. Zero Mission added a bit more after the main story was resolved, sort of like an incentive to play the remake even if you’ve played the original. The differences between the two games are vast, and honestly I prefer this take much better, maybe because I was able to beat this one. No matter, you should play Zero Mission if you haven’t already because it is super fun.

And that concludes my experience with the Metroid series, save for Other M. I’m still on the fence about buying it, but I’ll be sure to let you know what the reviews are saying. In the meantime, why don’t you tell me about your time with the Metroid series. Are you a fan? Or could you just never get into it? Leave a comment and let your voice be heard. Or pull a Samus and don’t speak, whatever.

Want more retrospectives? Check these out:

-Mario: A Retrospective

-My Pokemon Team Over The Years

-Crash Bandicoot: A Retrospective

Blue Version:

I know some of your are going to argue that Red Version was better. I don't care; I know you're wrong.

As with most Pokemon fans, I started with the first generation, specifically Blue Version (I don’t care if you think Red Version’s better, I didn’t play that one so shove off). I played through the whole game a few times, but I came to prefer a few specific Pokemon over others. Naturally, my Jolteon was my favorite, having a Thunder attack that never missed, plus Pin Missile for Psychics-types and Double Kick for any Rock-type that tried to take Jolteon down.

No one should ever question my Jolteon. No one. He'll eat your family and not care.

Second to Jolteon was Mewtwo, entirely overpowered with Psychic and Recover, but come on, if you have a Psychic-type and didn’t teach it Psychic, you were playing the game wrong. In fact, I taught Psychic to pretty much every Pokemon that could learn it. My Gengar for instance had a nice variety of attacks, Psychic included, as well as Thunder and Giga Drain, a big overkill against Water-types but very useful in a pinch. Combo those crazy-powerful moves with Hypnosis and it was almost like cheating.

Also critical to my team was a beastly Rhydon that knew the all-important Ground-type move, Earthquake. There just wasn’t a better Ground-type move in my eyes. Besides knowing Horn Drill, a one-hit K.O. that somehow hit way more than it was statistically supposed to, I taught my Rhydon surf. Did you know Rhydon could learn Surf? Dang, if not then you’re REALLY playing the game wrong.

I didn’t know a lot of other players who favored Golduck, but he was one of my original favorites (he was in the top 15 of my original Best Of list). I gave him Surf, as required, as well as a few other attacks, but it was Confusion that gave him the best edge since most Grass-types were also Poison-types during the first generation.

And hey, why not? Can't go wrong with the ol' fire starter.

My last Pokemon was Charizard (check the Deviant Art yo!) with the classic Fire-type move Fire Blast. I also gave him Fly to deal with fighting types and Dig to combat the Rock-types whenever they came out. Overall, I stuck pretty much exclusively to this team, specifically when going through both Pokemon Stadium 1 & 2, and it worked out for me pretty well. It was rare that I’d have to use more than two Pokemon per battle, so I must have done something right.

Yellow Version:

Game Freaks: Smart move making Pikachu a Pokemon actually worth using.

By the time Yellow Version came out I was pretty well addicted to Pokemon, and when I learned that it actually adhered closer to the anime in terms of story and a few other things, I thought it was awesome. While my team didn’t initially seem all that interesting (my team was almost exactly Trainer Red’s team from Pokemon Gold/Silver), it was when I decided to take on the Poke Cup in Pokemon Stadium that I knew I’d need some serious strategy, so I planned accordingly. I’m extremely proud of this team, but it may look odd for a few reasons. However, it makes sense if you understand the restraints of the Poke Cup: Pokemon between levels 50-55 only and when you select three Pokemon for a particular match their combined levels cannot equal more than 155.

I was very addicted to the Pikachu the game provided me with, (as well as most recently with this Deviant Artist’s Pikachu) so I used him as the usual opener for most battles. He knew Thunder Wave and Thunderbolt, two good Electric-type moves for reliability. If I intended to go the distance in a fight, I paralyzed my opponent, then started spamming Double Team for stupid-high evasiveness. And if I needed one last good oomph, I used Mega Kick.

Charizard returned with moves identical to the ones previously described from my Blue Version party. And while he was effective, my real beast this time became a Nidoking that knew Earthquake, Toxic, and Ice Beam. Oh man, knowing an Ice-type attack comes in so handy when you least expect it, especially these generations. If you can take any advice from me, it’s to teach Ice-type moves whenever possible.

I used a Gyarados for my Water-type needs, though I also taught it Thunder in case I was fighting another Water-type. Oh, and Hyperbeam, just because Hyperbeam is such a cool attack. Totally ineffective if you use it at the wrong time, but man, when it finished a match, it was just sweet.

For a real change I threw in Dragonair. Why not Dragonite? Because Dragonite would have to be level 55 and I had to plan my team properly. It worked better to have most Pokemon at level 51 and 52 so that I could balance stats better. Having the rest of my party a few levels higher was much more beneficial than having one at the max level. Anyway, my Dragonite knew Thunderbolt, Blizzard, and Surf, making it a good all-around Pokemon for usefulness and raw power in most situations.

Okay, I'll admit, maybe I didn't hate Mew all that much.

But I still needed a suitable Psychic-type in my team, otherwise I’d get stomped way too easily. Therefore, Alakazam was brought in with Psychic and Dig, just in case it needed to escape for an attack round. To be honest though, the reason I had an Alakazam was because I learned my Mew couldn’t be used in the Poke Cup, even though I had trained it with Psychic, Rock Slide, Mega Punch, and Metronome in case I wanted a last-ditch attack. This team someone led me to victory in the Poke Cup, and since then I haven’t used nearly as much strategy in my teams.

Silver Version:

While Silver Version was my favorite, I didn’t have the energy required to think out elaborate strategies for teams and then go about training them properly. Things were just quickly becoming too much for me to handle. Still, I had a few staples of my party.

Staples like this beast right here.

My number one, Feraligatr, was my go-to guy for the majority of the game. The Elite Four were a real pain in my side until I came up with the genius idea to teach Feraligatr Ice Punch, thus making him an ultra dominator against Lance’s entire team of Dragons. And if Psychic-types appeared, a good old-fashioned Bite sent them packing. Feraligatr went through the Elite Four more than fifty times, helping to raise dozens of younger Pokemon to evolution.

And while Feraligatr was incredibly useful, sometimes I still needed a good Psychic-type to deal with wannabies. Lugia was good for that, knowing Psychic, Recover, and Surf, plus Aeroblast just because. Still, while Lugia was pretty useful against most types, against other Psychic-types the best option was my Tyranitar with Crunch, the Psychic-killer. He also knew Rock Slide, Earthquake, and Fire Punch to axe any poser getting too close.

The rest of my team was kind of hit-or-miss, getting used the majority of the game but not really standing out much. I used an Ampharos for a while that knew Thunder, Thunder Wave, Iron Tail, and Fire Punch, giving it pretty decent coverage against opponents, but no matter what I did, Ampharos never felt that powerful. I used a red Gyarados with no real spectacular moves, and a Donphan that knew Earthquake and Rollout. See? My Silver Version team is just unspectacular. I didn’t need anyone other than my Feraigatr, Lugia, and Tyranitar.

LeafGreen Version:

That's actually me in the background there, by the way. It was before the beard.

Are you wondering where my Sapphire Version team is? To be honest, I looked through the game to see whom I’d used and the results were painfully boring. I didn’t even put any time into catching and evolving the other Pokemon of the game. I simply just didn’t care.

LeafGreen is almost as bad. In fact, it might be worse because in looking at my team I can see that I haven’t even beaten the Elite Four yet. I also didn’t get a chance to trade any key Pokemon to evolve, so I have a Kadabra, a Haunter, and a Graveler rather than an Alakazam, a Gengar, and a Golem.

I didn’t even pick a starter I was happy with. My Squirtle became a Blastoise really quick, but I couldn’t make him very effective in any setting despite knowing Surf, Bite, and Dig. I don’t even have a sixth slot filled, currently in flux between one of the three Legendary Bird Pokemon of the game.

Maybe it was because he was a big stupid turtle with a canon on his back.

The only real standout here is my Persian, which I’ve mentioned before. I was absolutely determined to make this Pokemon work, so I taught it Dig, Bite, and Shock Wave. I don’t know why I expected that to be so cool, but that was as good as I could do, and it didn’t even provide me with a victory over the Elite Four. I promise you though, my fourth generation Pokemon are better.

Diamond Version:

I had the luck of having two close friends also huge on Pokemon at the time of Diamond and Pearl’s release. I picked up Diamond the same as my friend Trinh, whereas Thomas had Pearl. Along with this camaraderie came a significant drive to ACTUALLY play the game I bought. Just the other night I popped Diamond Version back into my DS and took on the Elite Four to train a few random Pokemon, and even though I had only beaten the Elite Four once before, this second time was no problem whatsoever.

I chose Piplup as my starter, deciding that a Water/Steel-type in a final evolution was a cool type to go with, even though I secretly wanted to have Chimchar (I just couldn’t get past the whole “It’s just Torchic but a monkey” thing). Now an Empoleon, it knows Blizzard (take that Dragons!), Drill Peck, Metal claw, and its all-powerful move Surf. I took town most of my opponents just by surfing them to death. Surf is the best Water-type move rather than Hydro Pump. Don’t believe me? Just use Surf enough and you’ll trust it over Hydro Pump.

This isn't me riding an Empoleon, but you get the picture.

I also found a ton of use out of my Staraptor, being another Pokemon I obtained almost at the very beginning of the game. While three of its four moves are Flying-type attacks, they all have a different use. I have Fly for most occasions, Aerial Ace for most others, and Brave Bird when I need to make sure my last attack finishes the battle. His fourth and final move is his best, though: Close Combat. A Fighting-type move for a Flying-type is so danged useful I don’t know why more people wouldn’t be singing its praise. All Steel, Rock, Normal, and Dark-types are screwed, especially since my Staraptor is holding a Fist Plate, making that close Combat even stronger.

Next up is a more traditional favorite, Gengar, back with some new moves. Still keeping Thunder, we add on Shadow Ball and Dark Pulse. Turns out Shadow Ball gets the most use of its four attacks, but Thunder does come in pretty handy. Also in the “classics” category is Golem, stacked with Earthquake, as all good Ground-types should be.

Luxray was a surprisingly great Electric-type, knowing Thunder Fang and Spark, but also learning Charge, enabling it to spend a turn powering up if I knew I wasn’t hitting my opponent that very second. Toss in Crunch and you’ve got yourself a real winner.

Holy crap! Shoop-da-whoop of Time!

And following all of these in my party as my “Reinforcement Pokemon” is Dialga with Metal Claw, Dragon Claw, Ancient Power, and the attack with the greatest name ever, Roar of Time. I don’t even care that it takes a turn to rest after wiping out my opponent; it is just too awesome.

So there you go, now you know my teams. I’m sure some of you have much better strategies than I do, so why don’t you tell me all about them in the comments. Be warned: If you outrage me enough I may unleash Roar of Time at you, and I promise you won’t like it.

Looking for more retrospectives? Check these out:

-Mario: A Retrospctive

-Zelda: A Retrospctive

-Smash Bros: A Retrospective

Doesn't that just make you want to start playing right now?

Released in 1994, “Tie Fighter” was the sequel to “Star Wars: X-Wing” and was the first Star Wars game that put you in the role of the Galactic Empire. They may have been bad, but the game was nothing short of awesome, and I submit it as the best flight simulator ever.

The game put you in the day-to-day life of a faceless TIE pilot, who goes through training and simulations before earning medals and promotions in actual space combat. Along the way, you are given secret objectives for your missions by a mysterious cloaked figure, and you work to thwart a plot against the Emperor.

The really well-done aspect of “TIE Fighter” was the 3D designs of space battles that consoles could not do at the time. Instead of side-scrolling, rail-shooting, or any other overt video game design, this old CD-ROM gem put you right in the middle of space, and you could move thousands of miles away from a fight, or crash right into a star destroyer. Dogfights were now tense, with both combatants working to get behind the other to vaporize him.

As far as variety in plot and gameplay, I was always a fan of the enemies. Instead of just shooting at Luke Skywalker and the other Rebels, the protagonist of “TIE Fighter” was preventing civil wars, acting as a customs agent for smuggling, and chasing down space pirates. It shined a new light on the villains: peace-keepers.

Now that's just snazzy right there.

Controlling this game was largely tedious without a decent joystick. The best combination was using the joystick for movement and firing, while using the keyboard for other systems. You could dial up the shield power, engine power, etc. and hit the eject or lightspeed buttons at any time on the keyboard. It felt like a real set of flight instruments.

The reason this game is a Forget-Me-Not for me is the fond memories I had of blasting Z-95 Headhunters until bedtime. There’s also a much darker story.

In the summer of 1996, my parents hosted a weekend barbecue to celebrate the local air show. My uncle, in a fit of euphoria over “TIE Fighter,” inadvertently messed up the computer is some strange way. He merged my game with my brother’s, and suddenly there were dozens of players with blue turbo-powered sneakers wandering through space. My spaceship was firing orange balls instead of green darts of energy. And John Williams music was replaced by a strange combination of his classical score and techno beats.

My dad corrected the error, and my game was mine again, but I never forgot about the terrifying images. I wish I could play that game, just one last time.

Because it was an MS-DOS based game, it is hard to find, and even more difficult to install on a modern computer. If anyone can find it in an easy way, I would be much obliged.

Looking for more forget-Me-Nots? Check these out:

-Forget-Me-Nots: Lone Ranger Action Figure

-Forget-Me-Nots: Pizza Power Board Game

-Remember the 1987 Ghostbusters Firehouse Playset

How about Star Wars? We’ve got more of that, too:

-The Force Unleashed II Preview

-Kyle’s Top 10 Most Unattainable Toys

-Your Guide to Star Wars Action Figures

The best ideas really are the simple ones. Look at that funky-fresh font, too!

In 1969, an inventor by the name of Reyn Guyer approached Parker Brothers with an indoor volleyball idea. They weren’t interested in the game at all, but the soft foam ball that it included was a revelation. After all, how many parents would buy an inexpensive indoor toy that was safe for kids and mantelpiece chotchkies? A whole bunch of parents would. About four million, by the end of its debut year. Later on in toy history, Hasbro acquired Nerf when they bought out Tonka. Since then, Super Soakers (the fabled water gun that Chris and I have been squealing over) have been designated as Nerf products. I guess Hasbro has decided that a gun (Blaster) is a gun (Blaster, darn it).

While the original ball was made from polyurethane, the trademark foam that characterizes the product line has since been changed to a polyester mix with a special compound, and topped off with a carbon dioxide release. Sounds very scientifical, but it all amounts to one big detail: the carbon dioxide release is what causes the holes in the foam, making it light and soft.

Coming to a cubicle near you. Or possibly a waste basket, just to make file-destruction fun.

In 1972, a big staple of Nerf was released in the form of NerfHoop. Offices around the world became filled with cardboard-box backboards, plastic hoops, and ninnies trying to make a three-pointer from the water-cooler. Of course, they were shooting with a Nerf foam basketball.

This baby really brought new meaning to "long bomb." And it whistles...why not!

But the most lucrative toys to bear the Nerf name always will be the Nerf Blasters. Handheld toy guns, rifles, and even bow-and-arrows were developed primarily in the eighties. Each one fired foam darts, and came in gloriously bright colors.

My first Nerf Blaster. It had a super-secret barrel built into the grip...that they advertised on the side of the gun.

In the last few years, the Blasters have become so much more sophisticated, with entire arsenals being developed for more tactical battles. The Nerf N-Strike set now includes various beauties that still attract me in the toy aisles today. The genius of this product line is in the amount of customization and tactical choices that kids (of all ages, which includes me) can make.

There are different ammo types, ranging from slim, aerodynamic darts to flashy glow-in-the-dark ones to scare a burglar. Many of the N-Strike blasters come with rails for attachments (scopes, flashlights, extra ammo, etc.) and optional barrel extensions. Also, the folks over at Hasbro have finally eliminated the one drawback to Nerf Blasters: reload time. Instead of painstakingly gathering every dart, and loading each one manually into a Blaster—or worse, trying to find them in your pockets during a fight—the N-Strike rifles come with a hop-up magazine system. And every clip is universal for the other guns.

If there are two N-Strike weapons that really stand out, it is the Maverick pistol, and the Longshot C-6 sniper rifle.

The Maverick was a must-own for the dorky guys I hung out with in high school, because it is a Nerf revolver. That’s right, Dirty Harry is carrying foam ammo, suckers. Imagine the idiotic splendor of Russian roulette with Nerf. Yep, I did it.

Revolvers never go out of style. There's something romantic about them, even if they shoot foam darts.

As for the Longshot, I got so excited when I finally got to mess around with one. It has a bipod. It has a scope. It has a slot for an extra ammo clip. It also has a detachable barrel that becomes a back-up pistol. Did I mention that it works off of a spring-loaded bolt action, like a real sniper rifle? Don’t get me wrong, the scope and bipod are kind of rubbish, and the pistol part is useless, but any kid would be the proud owner of the three-foot-long behemoth.

I like to keep this one with me...for close encounters.

Kyle’s Big Idea: So, I’ve been kicking around the idea of a big, playful firefight with my buddies. Since laser-tag makes me sweat like Marlon Brando, and paintball is always full of jerks with their own equipment, I thought my future Bachelor Party should include an epic Nerf battle. This will be complete with slow-motion dodges, Oscar-caliber death scenes, and a mandatory Mexican Stand-Off. My arsenal will be thus: a Maverick revolver, an off-brand repeater rifle (made under the Air Blasters product name), and the newest N-Strike sniper rifle, the Longstrike CS-6.

Bah! Who came up with this?! Give that man a 21-dart salute...or maybe a 210-dart salute with this monster.

Why? Because we can. Now I have to practice my catchphrases from “Hot Fuzz,” since I’ll have enough firepower to rival an entire English village. Sure, I’ll get pelted a lot while trying to put on my sunglasses in a cool way, but that’s what Nerf teaches us: how to cope with being hit by projectiles…and how to hit that sucker back. Positive play, eh?

Ooh, I'm getting antsy just thinking about Smash Bros. I should go play instead of writing this.

The idea of all my favorite Nintendo stars fighting each other in one big game was a concept I never imagined would become a reality. Even now I’m a little skeptical that it really exists, and furthermore, that it’s straight-up awesome. But somehow Super Smash Bros is a real thing and for that I couldn’t be happier. So to start a Monday off right, how about a Super Smash Bros Retrospective? That’s what I thought.

Super Smash Bros (1999):

How can you not be anything but excited when you see this box?

The essence of the first Super Smash Bros can easily be captured in the classic game commercial set to the Beatles song, So Happy Together. Mario, Yoshi, Pikachu, and Donkey Kong are holding hands as they skip through a field. Then without warning Mario sweeps Yoshi’s legs and they all start fighting. The commercial is perfect, and as a kid every time I saw it I knew I needed Smash Bros on my N64.

My first encounter with Smash Bros was once again from Nintendo Power with its usual hype train. All I needed to know was that Mario and Link would fight against Fox and Pikachu and I was addicted. I read the Nintendo Power articles over and over again, hungry for my Smash Bros. I even went out and preordered the game through Hollywood Video’s game kiosk, the precursor to Game Crazy (Lord rest their souls). Unfortunately, I was quoted a price that was awesome, ($35), but then waited and waited and waited and still, the game did not come in. I had to wait a whole week after it came out before my Hollywood Video got the game in. “Alright, that’ll be $50.” Uh-oh, he must have misspoke. Nope, the price was set and the first guy just screwed up. I went to Toys ‘R Us and got a copy with a coupon for $45. As soon as I got home it was time to try out my new favorite game ever.

It seems so simple now, doesn't it?

The very first character I tried out was Link in the arcade mode. The controls were entirely foreign to me, especially the jumping mechanic. I had to relearn all sorts of things for Super Smash Bros in order to just proceed through the game, but after a week or so I was starting to get the hang of things. I hadn’t played many fighting games before, but I could see why I definitely liked Smash Bros better: Battle length. Most fighting games had matches that usually lasted under a minute, maybe two if you were really pushed, but otherwise there was no such thing as an epic fight. With Smash Bros, you didn’t whittle down your opponent’s health but rather inflicted damage in order to make it easier to throw them further, leading to the ultimate goal of knocking them off the stage. I loved this concept, plus each character played differently, so I was almost never bored.

My friends and I would get together for four-player matches every few sleepovers, going nuts with the 12 characters and nine levels. We got our money’s worth for sure. And after we’d played for long enough, we’d just set four computer characters to fight each other as we did a running commentary, naming each character after someone we knew from school. It was simple fun and we thought nothing could be better. One of my best friends at the time, Derek, was also my arch nemesis, so whenever we played he was Fox and I was Pikachu. I let him borrow my game for a week and when I got it back I realized Fox’s character stats placed him at the top, showing that he’d spent all week killing Pikachu over and over. I wouldn’t stand for that, so naturally my next week was planned out for me. Life just couldn’t get any sweeter.

Super Smash Bros Melee (2001):

Best follow-up to anything in the history of ever.

When the GameCube was announced a whole bunch of excellent games were announced along with it. But for me there really was only one game: Super Smash Bros Melee. A new Smash Bros game on a better system? AWESOME! I started seeing commercials for it at movies theaters and on TV and soon I was psyched once more for a game I hadn’t even played yet. I didn’t need anything more than the knowledge that the original 12 characters were back, plus more, equaling 26 characters total (Sheik and Zelda counted as two characters). Also, 29 levels instead of nine? Double the items? More moves for everyone? Sold.

I preordered Melee as soon as possible, knowing that my GameCube’s purchase would be overly justified once Melee was mine. Sure enough, I brought the game home and went to town, though initially I was at a loss because I had to relearn the controls yet again. No matter, a week later and I was mastering the game more than I ever thought possible.

And mastering it properly never felt so sweet.

Melee added a lot more in terms of, well, everything. Everything got better. I was almost sad since I knew I could never go back to the original N64 version now that Melee had entered my life. I did pretty much everything I could as a single-player playing alone, honing my skills against opponents that I never played against because, sadly, so few other people seemed to own a GameCube. At this time everyone I knew had gotten into Halo, so I was left in the cold.

Until strange things began happening. At the end of my Freshman year of high school I was told about a Melee tournament happening at a festival our school did during the last week of classes. I practiced against a casual acquaintance to better my skills and I realized, “Wow, I’m actually really good at this game.” The tournament began and I did what anyone else would have done: I pretended I didn’t know how to play the game. My first opponent scoffed and killed me once, thinking the match was going to be super simple. Then I laughed and said, “Just kidding,” and proceeded to utterly destroy him. I was unstoppable, up until the final match against Jeremy Lynn, the deaf kid. His brother was hosting the tournament and the final match pitted me as Adult Link against Jeremy as Mr. Game & Watch, a character I’d never seen anyone use well. My usual tactic of trash talking and mental psyching didn’t work against Jeremy since, well…connect the dots for me. Regardless, after a grueling match I came out victorious, taking the only happiness the deaf kid had in his life (also, I beat him in chess later in the week, just because I’m an evil man). Oh don’t get me wrong, a month later he came over to my house and spent two hours demonstrating how I completely sucked at Melee compared to his unrelenting talent, but it didn’t count on the scoreboard. I was the official school champion.

For good measure, I made sure to kick fox's butt on principle alone.

I retired from Melee for a while until my Senior year when I met two of my closest friends ever, Trinh and Thomas. The three of us met in Japanese class but decided to start playing Melee as often as possible, creating a massive rivalry between we three. It turned out Trinh was unbeatable as Fox, and Thomas played a mean Marth, but in three-person matches I’d rule with Adult Link. Allow me to regale you with my greatest moment ever:

Trinh and I were in a heated battle for first-place, fighting at our usual favorite, Final Destination, he as Fox and I as Link. On a side note, it should be pointed out that in terms of character tiers, Fox and Marth were numbers one and two, whereas Link was near the bottom, and yet I still managed to go toe-to-toe with them, so eat it best friends of mine. Anyway, the match was coming to a close and it looked like Trinh was going to outdo me. He knocked me off the stage and as I fell I realized I’d never make it back. However, a Blast Barrel was rolling off the edge. Seeing my one chance I aimed toward it as it fell, hitting it right as it was about to exit the screen. The three of us assumed I had exploded, but it was actually the barrel blasting me straight up. I Spin Attacked to the corner, leapt at Fox, and sent him flying off to his own defeat since Trinh was so amazed he could hardly move. Single greatest game moment of my life, and there’s no way I could ever recreate it.

Super Smash Bros Brawl (2008):

That fire you see here represents the explosion of joy in my heart when I heard about Brawl.

Among the Wii titles I got excited for, the word “Brawl” came up a few times, letting me know that Melee would have a sequel and that it’d be bigger and supposedly better than the first two by a long shot. I watched the teaser trailers over and over and sunk into the pattern of religiously checking Smash Bros Dojo for nightly updates, drip-feeding me information about the new game. Who would be back? Who would be new? And what more could they really add? I was about to be blown away yet again.

The newest addition was the Final Smash, an ultimate move for each character useable whenever someone acquired the Smash Ball, an item of untold power! And I really mean that, too. Some Final Smashes, like Marth or Zelda’s were instant KO’s if they hit, whereas Mario, Sonic, Fox, and a mess of others had Final Smashes that owned multiple enemies way too effectively. Did is sway the balance of the game? Absolutely, but I was in love with it.

It also made you feel like a jackass if you got caught in a Final Smash, as it should.

To celebrate the eventual release of the game, of which all Smash Fans were forced to endure push back after push back of said release, I held one final going away party for Melee, a Last Chance Melee Smash, as I called it (because I’m oh so clever sometimes). A good long night of Melee was followed by a trek to my local Game Crazy store at midnight to get the new game and start playing that very night. The pilgrimage caused some annoyed gamers, but dang it, it was symbolic of my endless struggle waiting for this game.

It was no shock that the amount of content in Brawl was staggering. The unbelievable fan service Nintendo paid to diehards was worth every single unhappy moment I endured as a GameCube loyalist all those years ago. Just the soundtrack alone was phenomenal to behold. The first Smash Bros had maybe a dozen songs, total. Melee had closer to three-dozen. Brawl had over 300. GAH. Throw in 40 characters, yet more items, and user-generated stages and that’s a wrap: Best game on the Wii. The game even went out of its way to repair the problem of wave dashing that nearly broke Melee for me. I got good in Melee, but I could never be as good as the game-breaking moves that some players figured out. I’d watch those matches on YouTube and just think, “Wow, that looks so unfun to play.” Wave Dashing in Brawl, gone. Yeah, replaced by something else, but at least a progression was made.

Make Nintendo's best game ever: Mission Complete.

Brawl wasn’t without its faults though. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why Mewtwo was missing. He was a tough character to unlock in Melee and even tougher to master, but he’s totally absent in Brawl. Plus, while the local multiplayer is one of the best experiences of any game in recent years, the online component is awful beyond respite. You can just skip it, unfortunately.

Silly monkey. Now go find Mewtwo!

Now comes the real question: What happens next? Will Brawl be the end for Smash Bros games? As the creator of both the original and Brawl, Masahiro Sakurai, mentioned, his goal was to make the best damn game he could, as if it was definitely going to be the last of the series. That doesn’t rule out another game, especially not now that the 3DS is on its way out, but there’s nothing on the horizon to give Smash Fans hopes of the next big game with Geno, the return of Mewtwo, and every stage from every game in addition to all new stages. It’s asking for a lot, but they delivered last time, so why not here?

Like you didn't all want this, too.

And I’m spent. My love for Smash can only take me so far since, well, there are only three games to the retrospective. So tell me, are you a Smash Fan as well? Or do you hate the game? Can you destroy families with Zelda’s Shiny Kick like I can? Or do you have a different character you end lives with? Time to share your memories of Smash. Don’t make me Shiny Kick you in the face.

Want to read another retrospective? Take a look at these:

-Games You Should Have Played: The Donkey Kong Country Trilogy

-More To Catch: A Pokemon Toys Retrospective

-The Plastic Wars: A Retrospective on Army Men

Are you ready to hear some memories of the greatest story ever told? Too bad, 'cause here I go!

If there’s any series I love more than Mario, it’s the Legend of Zelda. I’ve been a fan for years now and I’m guaranteed to play each new title as it comes out, regardless of my preference for the art style or any other factors. I just have to play me some Zelda. Well, as predicted, Nintendo showed off the new Zelda title at E3 this year, the Skyward Sword, and I’m pretty excited. So much so that I decided to give my own little Zelda retrospective. So here it is, grab your magic bags and Master Swords and let’s take a trip to Hyrule.

The Legend of Zelda (1986):

It looks so simple these days, doesn't it?

The very first Legend of Zelda game for the NES was a game-changer in terms of how a video game should be played. The world map was huge for its time and the puzzles were complex. You were forced to think and try different solutions in order to advance. I, however, didn’t play this as a kid. I played this much, much later once I had the Zelda Collector’s Edition for the GameCube, and would you like to know my final death count? 187. That’s pathetic. I know I’m better than that, but even worse, there’s no way I can understand how anyone was able to beat this game prior to the internet having world maps and walkthroughs because some things you’re expected to know are stupidly difficult to solve. Still, the music was excellent and had a special power over me. Without realizing it I’d start singing along with actual lyrics whenever I played, but as soon as the game turned off I couldn’t remember the lyrics I’d been singing. It’s a secret to everybody.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987):

Honestly, I think this was better than the first game.

After the success of the first Zelda title, a sequel was insured, but Miyamoto did what he always seems to do and decided to change the formula completely. Now, instead of a top-down view, Link was placed in a side-scrolling action platformer. Fans were not happy with this one and many consider it the worst game of the series. I, conversely, loved it. This was another one that I first played when I got that awesome Collector’s Edition for the ‘Cube, but when I bought it for the NES I replayed it just because I loved it. Granted, the difficulty spikes near the end, asking players to go through some of the most unreasonable gameplay in any game, especially a Zelda title. I highly recommend this one, especially if you’re not a fan of most Zelda titles.

The Animated Series (1989):

No Link, I will not excuse you. Not now and not ever.

While not a game, The Super Mario Bros Super Show began running animated episodes of The Legend of Zelda every Friday. As expected, the show itself had very little in common with the actual games. For one, Link spoke, and all the time, mostly with horrendous dialogue. Also, he was right-handed, in stark contrast to a running theme in the game series that Link was always left-handed. I could conceivably get past these problems, if not for the main one: The animated series didn’t understand how a Triforce worked. The opening cinematic says that Zelda keeps the Triforce of Wisdom safe and that Ganon has the Triforce of Power. That’s fine, but then Zelda says “If Ganon gets both the Triforce of Wisdom and the Triforce of Power he’ll be unstoppable!” They do realize that a Triforce by nature has THREE pieces, right? What was just described was a Biforce. Utter failure. And every episode, of which there were thankfully only 13, Link said his catchphrase “Well excuuuuuse me princess.” Ugh, makes me shudder just remembering. I don’t even know why they bothered putting this on DVD, or for that reason, why I bothered to purchase it and then watch it in full. Shame on me I suppose.

A Link to the Past (1991):

And then Nintendo reminded everyone that they still knew how to make a damn good Zelda game.

Zelda fans were really itching to get a new game in the style of the first by the early 90’s. Those prayers were answered with gusto once the SNES rolled around and A Link to the Past appeared in the style of the first game. Every single ounce of this game was polished to near perfection. The story was elaborated and fleshed out a bit, Link was given an arsenal of unique weapons and tools to progress, and the game was HUGE. After collecting the three mystical gems I figured the game was pretty much over, but then it sent me to the Dark World and told me there were eight more dungeons to explore. Epic! Sadly, my first memory of this game comes from when I borrowed it from a friend but the cartridge’s battery was dying, so when I turned it on one day all games had been erased, of which he had one at 100% in end game. He didn’t forgive me for quite some time after that, as if it was my fault the game was old.

Link’s Awakening (1993):

I'll never forget Koholint Island, even if it isn't real.

The first Zelda game I ever played, Link’s Awakening is still one of my favorite games of all time, at least in the top 10. It was the first game I got with my Game Boy one year during my birthday, and I was completely clueless how to play a Zelda game. I managed to get to the Bottle Grotto, the second dungeon, but I couldn’t figure out how to proceed any further. I was stuck, and nothing could help me, so I gave up for a few years. Eventually I went back to the game a little older and little wiser, but I still couldn’t get past the second dungeon. And then I accidentally pushed a block and triggered a secret staircase. That block also triggered something in my brain and unlocked a portion known as the “Zelda Mindset” used for all Zelda games or Zelda-like games. Since then I’ve had no problem in a Zelda game save for a few anomalies.

On a side note, this game also gave me my #1 most hilarious Zelda moment where Link speaks with Marin, the girl who found him washed up on he beach, and asks her to come help him with something midway through the game. When she agrees, Link “gets” her just like any other item, causing him to hold her above his head and look up her dress. I couldn’t stop laughing when I saw it happen. Beyond that, I still cry when I hear the ending theme play.

Zelda CD-i (1993):

This is really an image from the game. Isn't that just sad?

These are not Zelda games. Nintendo has even stated that these are not Zelda games. But still, there are three games, The Wand of Gamelon, The Faces of Evil, and Zelda’s Adventure, that contain Link, Zelda, and Ganon. I have not played any of the three, but I’ve seen extensive gameplay footage of people who have, and there’s no reason to punish yourself. However, I’ve claimed to Other Chris that if he finds me a CD-i and one of the Zelda games for it, I promise to play it to completion no matter what. Thankfully he has not yet acquired the needed materials to torture me properly. So to be clear, you can skip these three because they do NOT count. So let’s move on to my favorite game of all time instead.

Ocarina of Time (1998):

And then Nintendo reminded everyone they still knew how to make a damn good Zelda game...again.

As I said, Ocarina of Time is my favorite game of all time. It was my first Games You Should Have Played article and reappeared over and over and over again in one form or another in my various writings. It’s bound to show up again at some point, all because it really is an excellent game.

The tricky thing is, before Ocarina of time there wasn’t really a question of Zelda continuity, at least not for me anyway. The Legend of Zelda went directly into The Adventure of Link, and A Link to the Past had that same Link shipwrecked in Link’s Awakening. But with Ocarina of Time we were hearing what sounded like a complete origin story to everything. We learned where the Triforce came from and how Ganondorf started down the path of evil, plus we saw the world for the first time with 3D graphics, making it all the more impressive and real. But it was clear that the story wasn’t yet over. Navi, while annoying, flew away at the end of the game in a sad moment that I couldn’t help feeling sick about. My real question was: Would Link ever find Navi again?

Majora’s Mask (2000):

How do you follow up the best-reviewed game ever? Like this.

That’s when Majora’s Mask came along. It was a direct sequel to Ocarina of Time, so a lot was expected from it. The premise mentioned that Link was searching for a lost friend, presumably Navi (who else would he be looking for?), and then he gets jumped by the Skull Kid and thrown into the alternate world of Termina where the moon is falling. When I first played Majora’s Mask I enjoyed it, but I was sad that Link wasn’t still an adult. Plus, putting the whole game on a constantly resetting timer was jarring, but eventually you get used to it. It was certainly harder than Ocarina of Time for all the right reasons, but what stood out to me most then and especially now was the story. Majora’s Mask had the best story of any Zelda game and I’d argue still does.

See, Majora’s Mask is incredibly dark. The whole game deals with death and passing on. From the very start you realize that this game’s tone is way darker than any previous Zelda title, but it only gets darker. The big indicator is the means for how Link acquires new masks. There are three main masks he changes between: The Deku Mask, the Goron Mask, and the Zora Mask. When Link places these masks on his face he transforms in a short cutscene that shows him in agony (you can’t deny it), and later you learn that the Goron Mask was made because Daruni, the Goron chief, has died and given his power to you. Next, you find a dying Zora washed up on the beach and ease his pain, allowing him to die and leave you the Zora Mask.

What seems to get missed is that the Deku Mask must also contain the spirit of someone who died. In the first few minutes you’re transformed into a Deku Scrub and while learning the basics of the controls, you stumble upon a short tree that Tatl remarks looks just like you. A bit later, the Deku Butler helps you because you remind him of his son whom he hasn’t seen in quite some time. If you haven’t pieced this together, the ending cutscene shows the Deku Butler on his hands and knees in front of the Deku tree you see at the beginning of the game. That’s beyond dark. That’s intensely macabre, and I applaud the Zelda series for being that mature in story without having to be mature in violence or sex. Unfortunately, this would set a precedence that would cause problems in the series within just a few short years.

Also, I liked Tingle. I thought he was hilarious. Screw everyone that disagrees.

I’ll end part 1 of the Zelda Retrospective here to let you stew over Majora’s Mask’s darker tones. It will be the last time the series manages to rise to a level above most other games, and while my favorite is still Ocarina of Time, I maintain that Majora’s Mask is the best game of the series. But don’t forget to come back tomorrow for the second half where I explain why a bunch of Zelda fans jumped ship, literally, and how some of them came back.

Want more Zelda? Check out these articles:

-Zelda: A Retrospective Part 2

-Let’s Think Deep: The Virtual Utopia

-The Top Ten Best Zelda Items