Why you sometimes have to guard against your own bias as a reviewer.

I like to buy games especially if I am getting a good deal, I will even try games that are not exactly my usual sort of thing if the price and the opportunity present themselves however sometimes this can lead to you getting a game which although not bad is simply not enjoyable to you as an individual.

The prime example would be that today I purchased F1 2015 for Xbox one from a pawn shop for £10. This is a heck of a deal a total bargain really when you look around and see how much it is typically selling for second hand for example game currently want £39.99 for a second hand copy (but only want to offer me £13 in exchange) really I should be over the moon and I was for a short time but upon playing the game it really want my cup of tea.

Sure I like racing games when it comes to current generation  (Xbox One and PS4 racing games I have played Forza 5, Forza Horrizon 2, Need for Speed Rivals, Drive Club, The Crew and Motorcycle club and while I cant say that F1 2015 is the worst of these games I have played it is the one I have enjoyed the least.

The graphics are good, the car handling is also good, its a little more realistic than I tend to like but I cant fault it. I just don't like the style of game. Now maybe I should have been a little more forward thinking as a lot of the things I am not keen on should have been obvious to me, I don't like the fact that the game tries to get you to practice before each track and then qualify and then race 15 laps and that is in short mode, my impatience caused me to skip the practice, half-arse the qualifying and then basically get bored 5 laps in to the game. Now I have met and have known people who would at this point call the game rubbish and if pushed to give it a rating give it something absolutely shocking but that wouldn't be fair.Sure games are supposed to be fun and if you don't find a game fun then your entitled to say that you don't like it, you can tell people that you didn't personally enjoy it, it is of course your property to sell or swap (providing you purchased a physical and not digital copy) but unless it is seriously broken and has no redeemable qualities I feel it would be wrong to slate it and give it a review which doesn't reflect its quality and instead scares people away from the game particularly people who might enjoy it.

I can confidently say that F1 2015 is a better programmed more complete game than either The Crew or Motorcycle club even if I enjoy them more in fact Motorcycle club is a far more painfully programmed mess a game in which if I was to make a tick box of everything right and wrong with it would have at least twice as many ticks in the wrong box as the right. I think that some people are not necessarily qualified to review some games and I think that I am not qualified to review F1 2015, its not my kind of game and its not intended for a person like me. If I was a professionally paid reviewer then I would of course do my best to review this game if it was part of my job, but even then I would try to see if there was someone else on the team who was more suited to the task at hand as it stands though as an independent blogger. As it stands I am going to take this game and swap it for something I think I will enjoy more, I don't regret the purchase as the price was so good I stand to profit from the situation, maybe that is one of the reasons I am going to sell it now, I am going to sell it while I can get the most from it.

We all have our biases our preferd types of entertainment and while I do feel that the spark we all contain, the thing inside us which makes us who we are can lead to deep, funny and personal reviews which are far more interesting than a review in which a person simply tries to break everything down in to a collection of numbers, a score for graphics, for sound, for playability, and length it can also lead to us having a bias against a certain type of game or a genre. I think as a reviewer it is part of your responsibility to know your own biases and to address them and maybe to not review something if you cant separate yourself from them or at the very least to make your biases known during the review.

OK well that's my thoughts on the matter, feel free to comment if you either agree or disagree with me but most of all keep on gaming.

Super Mario Maker Review

OK so this makes a bit of a change of pace me reviewing a brand new game, just before its official release in this case. It is unlikely to be the first review for Super Mario Maker that anyone reads as there have already been at least a good fifty reviews done by various official video game critics but still I thought I would like to try my own hand at it. Now its sort of important to say that this will be somewhat of a preliminary review. I have been informed by a friend that Super Mario Maker has been made in such a way that the tools unlock slowly over a period of time, I have read up on this and not only is it apparently true but supposedly you can cheat this by messing with the system clock. (Those who have been following all of the news announcements and watching the trailers as they have been released will probably have already caught wind of this as it has been shown in the official Super Mario Maker Overview trailer, I must have missed this one).

Even though I want to review this game I also want to enjoy it in as natural a way as possible without cheating the system. I want to try and enjoy it in the way Nintendo intended. To do this I will play within the rules and not mess with any settings or try to cheat my way to content it does not want to let me have yet. I will however make sure to make a post called Super Mario Maker revisited to follow up on my experiences. I will pin a score to the end of this review but I might even revisit that figure as I will be guessing on some things like how long I feel it will last me before I tire of creating levels etcetera.

Anyone who has been keeping up with my attempt to review 150 SNES games will have seen that I have already reviewed both Super Mario World and Super Mario All-stars and talked about them and their effect on my life and will know that I am a big fan of the Mario games in general. I have played pretty much every 2D Mario platformer there has been, so the chance to build my own and to download and play levels built by others is of course very exciting, however I am not excited enough to think that this concept is a totally new one.

There have of course been homebrew Mario games for years completely full of no officially designed some of these have turned up as roms online which could be downloaded and played on an emulator others have been put on to cartridge and sold as games often to the uniformed who don't know the proper names or titles of Mario's various adventures, some even on dodgy multi game carts. Beyond this there have been various tools to help you rip apart older Mario games and piece them back together in your own way, there are entire blogs, forums and groups devoted to the subject. Did you know for example that there is a full unofficial sequel to New Super Mario Bros on the Wii, which was built over 3 years by a team of Nintendo fans. It is called Newer Super Mario Bros and is playable on a homebrew-enabled Wii. I won’t provide links to anything like this as a quick google search will easily let you find this kind of thing.

As far as official products go there has never been anything like this featuring Mario before but there have been other platform games such as Little Big Planet which have toyed heavily with the idea of letting you create your own game worlds. Although I am happy to have Mario Maker sat here in front of me right now, even more so because it is before its official release I am still surprised that it has taken Nintendo so long to release an official level creation tool set like this, you would think that the moment someone had brought it to their attention that people were messing around making homebrew games based on altering Mario levels from existing titles they would have begun thinking how they could control it and profit from it. Reggie from Nintendo America praised Little Big Planet, so Nintendo on at least some level were fully aware of it even if they would like to try and claim they never noticed all the homebrew and dodgy cartridges. The release of Mario Maker does leave you wondering though if Nintendo will become more focused on clamping down on and people who host or produce unofficial games or level editing tools.

Ok so I am not mentioning homebrew games and tools and Little Big Planet as a way to attack Super Mario Maker just saying that I approached this title knowing these things existed, so I am not about to go overboard on praise for the fact that I can design my own levels like it’s a brand new revelation that no one has ever come up with before. Ok so as I undue the plastic and get ready to insert the game into my Wii U there is one thing I want to say. I might own a large set of Amiibo but I only own 3 which are open, a Smash Brothers Mario Amiibo, a Link Amiibo and a Mario Collection Yoshi Amiibo I have customised (painted to be a Pink Yoshi) these will be the only 3 Amiibo's I will be using in relation  to this title. Why? Well for one I don’t really wish to open the others at least at present and also because I feel I would like to best replicate the experience of the average user. Sure there are some people out there like me who might have a whole bunch of Amiibo's but I think most less diehard fans will simply have one or two of their most beloved characters.

Ok so as I have mentioned you start out with a limited tool set, but even now just looking at the one row of bits and pieces I have I feel confident that I can create something of worth, yeah I would like more things to mess around with but I guess I can see how this has that sort of Animal crossing come back and play every day vibe to it. Thank goodness I know that there is more or I would be seriously shaking my head right now. This is where the real selling point of the game comes in, the Wii U pad is perfect for this, it feels like it was made to drag and drop the level pieces, it’s so user friendly that I can’t come up with any complaints here.

OK so I just got my notification that the next set of tools will be available to me tomorrow. I could be a little pissed at this but I guess I can see what they are sort of getting at doing it in this way. Not only does it mean that users are unlikely to be overwhelmed by the limitless options on offer it also forces you to be a little creative and think about new and interesting ways of using the same old pieces. Most people wouldn't be able to sit and play this for hour after hour on an average day, but at the same time they could pop on for half an hour every other day and build something and take note of what new bits and pieces they have been awarded. Part of me likes the way they have handled this but then there is another part of me that wants to scream ''typical bloody Nintendo, telling me what I will enjoy when and how.''

One thing that I find an absolute crying shame is that Mario Maker only allows you to make single levels. If you had some huge desire to piece together your own Mario game by making level after level and then linking them together then I am afraid this game simply is not going to help you and if your desire to do that is strong enough then you are going to find yourself looking at ways to hack older game ROM files on your PC or using some 3rd party most likely legally grey creation tools again on your PC. This is a shame as I can’t really see why this couldn't have been somehow catered for.

So creating is only half the game in Super Mario Maker, there is also the playing aspect of it, but you can’t make whole games only individual worlds you might be saying, well when it comes to playing the levels Mario Maker has its own way around this. Essentially in the playing mode Mario Maker will download a bunch of custom levels and push them together giving you the challenge of completing the set. Now one important thing to realise is that in order for a level to be uploaded the person who had made it (or at least someone in there house holding the game pad) has to have completed it, so don't worry about being met with impossible levels, although you might find yourself coming face to face with a frustrating balls to the wall level that on first glance seems impossible. Once you have finished the level you will either move on to the next one, quit or leave a comment about the level before continuing. While I would much prefer to be able to download a bunch of levels created by one person and tied together as there idea of a continuing Mario story I have to admit this pick a mix style of gameplay can be fun. Ultimately though this side of the game is only as good or bad as the people who own the game, create levels and upload them. One minute you can be met with a level which is as dull as dish water and as easy to complete as holding down one button and the following moment you can be met with either a complex level full of wonderful ideas or a complete bastard which will have you pulling your hair out in utter frustration.

Rating this title is a little hard as how good it is kind of depends on how you approach it and what you were expecting to get out of it in the first place. So on the one hand you have this awesome level making creativity fun kit, but then on the other hand you don’t have a game maker. You can get people to experience your idea of an awesome level or your idea of a challenge but you can’t get them to experience your idea of the perfect Mario game. You can play awesome levels put together by people who have put so much effort in to every inch of a level that it is on par with the best levels made by professional designers but then the next moment you can be met with a level which seems to have been made by a sadist with no desire other than to cause the highest number of people possible to tear their own hair out and to cut their eyeballs out of there skull. The game is undeniably fun which scores it major brownie points but then it also disappoints. On balance I would give this game 8 out of 10. I will return to this review again in a few days and offer further comments and discuss how my opinion has changed if it has but this is where I stand right now at this point in time. My recommendations? Obviously you will have read this review if you have gotten to this point and you will know how this sounds to you, if it excites you then buy it, if you find yourself moaning and winging about what the title doesn't offer then either don’t buy it or wait and see if either you can pick up a deal or if any changes or updates are made in the future which make this product seem any sweeter to you.

SNES review 91: Cal Ripken Jr Baseball

Snes game review 91 If I was to say Sports based Video game to you what would you think about? Maybe Football/Soccer or Tennis would be the first to come to mind, or if your American maybe it would be what us Brits like to refer to as American Football. Lots of sports games have a long history in video gaming after all one of the first popular video games was basically a bat and ball simulation.

Today I am going to be talking about baseball. Baseball has had a long virtual history but it was around 1978, when people got there first real baseball video games. Atari came out with Home Run for the Atari 2600 and then on the Philips Videopac G7000 (AKA the Magnavox Odyssey 2) there was the game titled Baseball! Every console going would have some form of primitive baseball game with them slowly evolving title after title until more was included in them and they better represented the actual sport.

 I would argue the 16bit era was where things got really good. There was somewhere around the region of twenty different baseball games released in the USA with even more being released in Japan, we might have only got some of these but considering it was a sport not really played here we didn’t do too bad. A lot of people probably don’t realise how deeply connected Nintendo and the world of Baseball is, a little interesting piece of trivia here but when he died the former president of Nintendo Hiroshi Yamauchi left behind a 55 percent stake in the Seattle Mariners a stake which Nintendo still fully own to this day as far as I know.

 

 The game I am going to be reviewing today is Cal Ripken Jr. Baseball. It was both programed and published by Mindscape and released in 1982. For those unfamiliar with Mindscape they were a studio which got running in 1983 but died in 2011, originally they started out making a lot of educational software but branched out in to more entertainment based products as well. For me the real highlight of the company was creating Moonstone: A Hard Day’s Knight an action role-playing video game for the Amiga featuring lots of lovely blood and guts but I am not here to talk about that I am here to say ‘’Lets play Ball’’.

The game features two modes of play. First you have the exhibition mode which is basically where you just play one match for the fun of it either against the computer or against a human player, then there is the main bread and butter of the game the season mode, where you pick a team and then play twenty games against the computer. You are given a password after each game so that you don’t have to do the whole thing in one sitting. There are three different stadiums but they don’t really effect gameplay.

Each team has different players with different stats but in all honesty it doesn’t seem like the stats make that much difference to me, everyone seems to be pretty equal with no visual clues showing me some one is faster or a better catch, they all seem as good as you control them to be. Each player looks exactly the same except the uniform they wear for their team, I guess this is not that surprising given the age of the game and the technology available, after all a few generations or so back and everybody would have been represented by a few squares, or at best a stickman. Cal Ripken Jr. is the only character with the proper name of a real player. All of the characters have names with some of them being either an altered version of a real players name or somebody’s attempt at turning a pun in to a name. This doesn’t tend to bother me as I am a very casual fan of baseball, I will watch some if it comes on but I don’t know players names or really care if the names are real or fake in a video game but it is something to keep in mind if fake names are likely to put you off.

 The Controls are simple. When batting, the B button swings the bat, the A button bunts, and the Y button is used to control runners on base and when pitching the B button throws a pitch, the Y button is used to pick off runners, and the select button can change the position of the infielders and outfielders. The B button plus a direction throws the ball to the corresponding base so right for first base up for second base and so on. The game's graphics are a bit simplistic but can’t really be faulted I would say they are on par with what I would expect for the time of its release. Let’s face it there were two ways you could try and make the graphics on a sports game back then one was as realistic as you could manage and the other was to go for the cartoon fun style, this game picked the more realistic style and did the best it could with it, I am not sure at that time I would have gone down that route but they made it work the best they could. The sound is Ok, the sound effects themselves are all pretty good and there is even some nice speech thrown in at times but there is this sort of annoying repetitive tune playing but they must have known it wasn’t up to much as it is kept very low and in the background with all the other noises being much louder.

The computer plays very well and there are no difficult settings so if you’re not very good at the game you will find yourself getting hammered, In my first game for example the computer hit three home runs in the first inning and then went on to catch my best attempt at a home run with an ease, in fact more or less every time I would get excited thinking I had made a great hit the computer would manage to catch me out with ease which almost made me weep. I would think that you would need to throw some serious hours into this game in order to be able to beat the machine on a regular basis, even then I don’t see it being any walk in the park. Where I really enjoyed this game was in multiplayer. I and my daughter had a bash at it playing each other and it was really fun, which does make me think that if you could turn down the computers difficulty a bit so that it was a little less super human there would be a lot more fun here.

Ok so I can give Cal Ripkin Jr Baseball as semi recommendation. When played with a friend this game can be a great little blast of fun with each game lasting around the 30 minutes mark it makes it a nice slice of fun for a quick go here and there I am going to give this game a 6 out of 10 Mostly for its multiplayer but I do feel like I might need to return and reassess this score when I have played a few of the other Baseball games I own.

Ok so if you’re desperate to own this game how much are you looking at paying for it? Well I kept my eyes open and trawled through various sites and managed to get a Pal cart for around £3 with postage from the looks of things if you were desperate and wanted a cart now then you'd end up paying about £10, I would strongly advise you skulk and wait it out, and who knows I might review a better baseball game soon.

Why do we have only one real type of movie medium and yet a whole bunch of competing consoles?

The world of Video Games is very different to the world of films. Sure both of them contain lots and lots of different products for sale but the real difference is the platforms that these products are sold on.

In the world of films there was initially a fight between several types of media for dominance but eventually VHS became the dominant tape based medium for viewing films, then we progressed on to DVD's and now we are in the process of moving on to Blue Rays even if the transition seems to be a slow one. Sure there were some abandoned mediums along the way Beta Max, VCD's. Laser Discs, HD DVD's but it has mostly been a fight for dominance with the loser simply fading away a million films to watch but only one dominant medium on which to do it at anyone time, with maybe the last big medium just hanging around for those who cant afford the newest thing or are resistant to change.

Gaming has never been like this there has pretty much always been two or more competing platforms which have been at each others throats for there whole lifespan, usually with each of these being replaced by its successor with things carrying on much as they were before. Sure sometimes a competitor has bowed out and another has taken its place on the dance floor, Sega has gone 3rd party and stopped producing its own machines, and Microsoft has entered the market etcetera.

There have been attempts at approaching the idea of a single format for Video games with the most notable attempt being The 3DO Interactive Multiplayer or as it was better known the 3DO. The 3DO Company, founded in 1991 by Electronic Arts founder Trip Hawkins was created with the objective to create a next-generation, CD-based video game standard.

The idea was that people would be sold the license and specifications to manufacture there own version of the 3DO, so you would have a Panasonic 3DO, a Sony 3DO, a Samsung 3DO and etcetera. The 3DO company would make most of its profits via the royalty rate they would receive per game sold, apparently the royalty's paid were going to be much lower than those that you had to pay to sell a game on either Nintendo or Sega platforms.

Pretty much every electronics manufacturer was approached. However, Sony had already begun development on their own console, the PlayStation, and so they choose to peruse this angle rather than go down the 3DO route. With Manufacturers needing to make a profit on the machines where as Sega and Nintendo could happily sell there machines at a loss and recoup there expenses through game sales this led to the various types of 3DO being too expensive to adequately compete.

Will we ever have one platform? I really doubt it at least any-time remotely soon. For a start with have Nintendo who when you look at there last few consoles seem to like the idea of controlling there hardware. They like to shape it directly for the kind of experiences they want to offer, I also believe that both Microsoft and Sony prefer calling the shots on there hardware. The only way one platform works is if it is in every-bodies best interest and everyone agrees to it.

The closest thing we are likely to see to single platforms is the current system some companies have where by it is advantageous to try and have matching hardware. What do I mean by this? Well With Microsoft the creators of the Xbox brand also owning Windows which is on computers, as well as also now being on phones and tablets, they can provide strong incentives for you to try and keep to there brand. You can have a Windows laptop which will talk and share data with a windows phone both of which can talk to your Xbox One. The same can be seen with Apple Mac's talking to Apple phones, talking to Apple Tablets. Sony Has the PS4 which can interact with the Vita or beem itself to the Sony Vita TV or be controlled by your Sony Phone. 

At the moment there will be several companies trying there best to sell themselves to you but not just as the best game company but as the best overall lifestyle company capable of offering you home and portable gaming,both communication and work based devices. They would rather fight the war for each and every market sector by trying to show you a future whereby everything you own can come from them and can communicate for your ease and comfort and while this is happening the video game market will never settle on a standard. Personally I think this is a good thing as I like competition I think it is good for the consumer but I also find it neat when my laptop can talk/sync with my phone to my benefit.

How I became a horror writer.

I first started trying to write stories when I was in Junior school. I would sit there with small exercise books and I would try to think of something to write, in fact it was at this early age when I first tried to form a collective of writers. Me and my friends would all sit down and try to write stories nothing much every came of it but it was something which helped me to get through the days. 

I had my one and only brush with fan fiction at the age of around 15. I had read some of the what they now call expanded universe Star Wars books and enjoyed them. There was an exercise we were set by school where we had to try and write something within a world created by another so for some reason I gravitated towards Kyp Durren an apprentice of Luke Skywalkers and from there built up what I seem to remember was a reasonable sized tale. This was before I owned a computer though so it has been lost, maybe it will turn up in a draw or cupboard one day but in all honesty I am pretty sure it is long dead. I enjoyed writing it but I could instantly see a million problems in it, principally the fact that no matter how bad or good it was there was nothing much I would be able to do with it, I had wrote about a copyrighted character in a copyrighted universe. ( At this time I didn't really know how many places existed online for posting fan fiction if I had I wouldn't have been able to do anything about it as I did not yet have access to a PC).

I think a lot of my early attempts at writing were met by me simply holding a pencil and nothing happening because I had neither seen or experienced enough. I hadn't read enough books nor had I experienced enough things myself as a person. By the age of 16 I had seen more films than anyone I knew, I also hadn't done bad as far as reading went. There was a sudden obsession for Quentin Tarantino Reservoir Dogs and this led to a lot of my friends being interested in trying to replicate the film, I was known as the one with some writing talent and so I became the one to write the scripts. Looking back they were not my best work, they were incredibly plagiarised borrowing mostly from Dogs but with a sprinkling of various cop shows running from Miami vice to TJ hooker. These films were recorded on to these old half sized VHS video camera cassettes and are now also long lost. Most of them are in all honesty best lost but we did make one called ''The Evil that Men Do'' which although heavily influenced by the films and shows I had watched did feature some considering are age decent acting and impressive stunt work. It wasn't feature length it was about twenty minutes in length but it was something we were all very proud of. It was the high point of all of our work but instead of it being built upon we all ended up going our separate ways pulled away by jobs and higher education

So why has a lot of my writing been horror based? Well to answer that we need to start with another question and that is what do you get if you add the writing talents of Stephen King, the directing skills of George Romero and the special effects work of Tom Savini with just a pinch of Leslie Nielsen, Ted Danson and sprinkle of other actors? You get Creepshow a compendium of five short horror tales contained within a single full-length feature film.

Creepshow wasn't the first horror film I came across in fact by the time I saw Creepshow I had seen most of the old fashioned universal classics but this is one of the films I would recognise as the beginning of my real love for horror.I first came upon this film when I was about 12, the film had the right combination of tame scares and gross moments tempered with humour to help introduce me into the world of horror. This film was my gateway to the books of Stephen King, as soon as I had watched this I began looking at his books. and deciding which ones I would read first. This is somewhat amusing considering that the main inspiration for this film clearly comes from the original E.C. crime and horror comics of the 1950's. Creepshow was written by King as a tribute to these comic books which he has often spoke about as being one of the things that helped him become a horror writer. I would latter find myself enjoying both reprints of EC's horror comics as well as frequently watching the TV show Tales from the crypt and the old British film version of Tales from the crypt without at the time truly realising and appreciating the connection between all of these pieces of work.

There is a common theme which seems to run through most of the EC Comics stories, the stories in Tales from the Crypt (many of which were adapted from the comics themselves) and to some degree the tales in Creepshow and that is that they are in some way morality plays where by some twist will happen which will see someone get there comeuppance at the end of the story. I guess having spent my early years in a church of England school I was used to the morality play aspect, the whole idea of those who sin shall be punished. I didn't see much of this in real life, in real life people would seem to get away with being arseholes with seemingly nothing happening to them in return. These stories planted the seed in my mind which would go on to germinate in many of my own stories latter on. I might have first watched Creepshow at 12 but I certainly watched it more times than that, in fact to me it was a classic I would watch again and again.

Sure there were other books and films that interested me, I would go so far as to say that Lord of the Rings was my favourite book of all time but it wasn't a book I felt I could replicate the style of on any level. Tolkien created these thick worlds filled with all new languages and cultures, he seemed to juggle so many balls that I just couldn't grasp how a person could do this. I felt intimidated by them.  Yet I felt I could write stories with a horror twist stories which dealt with morals and with justice.This is how I became a horror writer. I began to play with stories in which a sense of justice existed where people got what they deserved. All that needed to happen from this point was for me to gain the courage to put my work out there and this courage came from two places it came from the kind words and support of my Mother and my Fiancée. I wrote my first proper piece that I was proud of while sat waiting for my Fiancée while she was in a university lecture. I showed it to both my Fiancée and my Mother and they told me it was good. Unfortunately not long after this my Mother went in to hospital and passed away. It was a huge blow to me as my Mum meant the world to me, but it made me decide that it was now or never, I had to self publish my story and get it out there and so I did.

I might not be famous but I know that people have read my work, I might have only made a little cash out of it but I can happily say that I am a writer and no matter what anyone says I gave it my best and I tried. I am still writing and still trying to make an impact and maybe I will or maybe I wont but I dont think that is what really matters, what matters is that whoever you are , whatever you love and wherever you are you chase your dreams as that's the only way to really be happy.

SNES game review 90: Aladdin, and a comparison against its megadrive/Genesis counterpart.

In the days of the SNES and Megadrive you would get cases where a game was released to both systems sometimes with very little difference maybe a tweak here or a tweak there to take advantage of the hardware but occasionally you would get two totally different games with the same name.

I know I only just talked about a Disney release but I couldn’t help myself but talk about this game. I guess in part it was because in doing so I would get the chance to talk a little bit about the Megadrive. Growing up I was one of very few kids who managed to have both a Megadrive and a SNES in a lot of cases people would make a decision between the two and would then live with that choice. Sometimes this would involve swearing that the other machine was utter garbage and that you wouldn’t want anything on that other 16bit piece of trash if somebody paid you to have it. Sometimes however it would just be a simple case of the persons parents didn't think that there child needed two different consoles and just were not willing to listen to the reasons why there kid had asked for a Megadrive one Christmas and then a SNES the next.

The rough split between the machines between my friends was an even fifty fifty split. I however considered myself the lucky one. One Christmas I got a Megadrive after having asked for it and then when the next Christmas drew near my mum sat me down and asked me what I wanted I told her if it wasn’t too much I would like a Super Nintendo. Sure my mother stopped me and asked me why, but she didn’t judge me or refuse to listen she sat there and listened to my explanation. I told her that although the systems were very similar and offered the same sort of power and experience they both had games which were exclusive to that system because of who made them and that unlike my friends who swore blind loyalty to one machine I wanted to be free to get the games I wanted for both machines even if it meant I got less overall.  It was this simple fact of owning both machines that ended up making me sort of the go to guy amongst my group of friends for video game recommendations and argument solving, if it wasn’t for this I don’t think I would be writing video game reviews now.

So when Aladdin was due out there was a choice to be made go for the Megadrive or Super Ninteno version. Usually if a game was multi-platform the easy decision would be to go for the SNES version as I doubt few people would argue with the fact that usually in these cases nine out of ten times the SNES would have slightly better graphics and much cleaner music. The games I enjoyed my megadrive for tended not to be multi-platform titles but were instead games which never saw the light of day on the super Nintendo such as Alien storm, cyborg Justice Road Rash etcetera. Here there was a kind of rare case of same name different game (It did happen from time to time Shadowrun being another example).

Ok so the Megadrive version was a Disney software, Virgin Games co-production and in fact when you look a little closer and read around a bit you’ll find that some of the names that worked on this game are people who would go on to form Shiny Entertainment (Including David Perry)  and bring us the hero known as Earthworm Jim, who was a real funky guy/worm. If you have played the MegaDrive Aladdin and Earth worm Jim games you will definitely see a connection in there style now it has been pointed out to you.

The main gameplay though is what you would expect from a 2D platformer, you jump and climb your way through levels and fight with either your sword or by throwing apples you have collected as a long range form of attack. It’s simple, but fun. This could get boring quiet quickly if not for the fact that the game is an absolute festival of colour with little in jokes hidden, the level design is also great. The game is well polished, the beauty of it is really in the little details here and there one example being if you put the pad down and leave Aladdin to it he will role and an apple along his arm and flipping it up much like he did at one point in the film. So that’s an obvious question for a game based on a movie how close does this game stay to its source material? Close enough would be my simple answer. It doesn’t follow the film action for action, it does however follow the basic plot but what it does do is flesh it out with extra bits which work well for the game. Aladdin might add levels that aren’t directly based on what happened in the movie but it’s easy to see why and in all honesty they are fun and don’t hurt the story, one such example being a level based on the insides of the lamp. I also can’t help but add that there are lots of great megadrive versions of various songs from the film and these really help set the mood, in fact I found myself humming some of them again and again, this left me wanting to watch the film again and in my opinion served as the perfect companion piece. If I was in the process of trying to review 150 megadrive games I would most likely give Aladdin a score of around 8 out of 10 but that’s not what I am doing here at all, I am talking about it in comparison to the Super Nintendo version. Back when these games were released the general opinion from experts who viewed things with as little bias as possible seemed to be that the Megadrive version was the superior one, but is this really true?

So the SNES version of Aladdin is also a 2d  platformer this game however was developed by Capcom and just like with the Megadrive version there was a particularly famous person involved in its creation in this case it is the games designer Shinji Mikami. Yes Resident Evil Shinji Mikami. Both of the games came out in 1993, in the same month in fact.

Aladdin on the SNES is a pretty traditional platformer as far as things go. You can run, duck, jump and once again you can throw apples but one thing this game is lacking is a sword, which seems to have lost it instant cool points when it comes to a lot of peoples opinions. In truth I don’t have an issue with the lack of a sword after all Aladdin really didn’t use one that much in the film did he, after all his introductory song in the movie was basically about being fast and avoiding things ‘’One jump ahead of the hitman’’ and all of that.  The apples you throw stun enemies and you can actually get rid of them in the old familiar platformer way, trying to push their head into their neck with your feet from a vertical position (Jumping on them).

The lack of a sword here and the characters the agility gives it a different feeling to its megadrive counterpart. As Aladdin you can bounce off certain objects and enemies in order to reach places you otherwise wouldn't get to. For me this game feels at its best when you keep up a quick tempo of going from jump to jump moving constantly forwards, it kind of makes you think of some of the scenes in Aladdin and in this way matches there pace.
The graphics are good but I don’t think the animation is equal to its megadrive counter part, but still it’s a nice bright good looking game. It is far too easy and to short though, you will have finished this game and seen all it has to show you while your megadrive playing counterpart is still ploughing there way through there version.

Even though the Snes version of Aladdin has its good points I just feel that the MegaDrive one is a better game, mostly because of the length and not the sword (who really thinks a game is better just for being able to stab people?). Thankfully though we don’t live in an either world where you have to choose one or the other. Fanboy logic is stupid at the end of the day all systems and all games have their strengths and weaknesses and if you limit yourself from sampling more things because they are on a certain machine or were made by a certain company then ultimately all you are going to do is hurt yourself. I give SNES Aladdin a happy 7 out of 10, it fails to get more mostly because it has a lack of lasting power, it however kicks the heck out of the other Disney games I have reviewed in the recent past Pinocchio and beauty and the beast.

If you want to sample this game then due to the license surrounding it you’re going to have to go for a Cart really, most of the ones I have seen for sale have gone for around £12 to £15 with boxed copies fetching a little more. A boxed copy of the MegaDrive version will set you back £10 to £15 roughly, in all honesty if you have both machines I would start there but if you can afford both or see both going cheap then you can’t really go wrong with either of them they are both darn fine games… On a side note this really makes me think once more that I wish Nintendo had adopted Sega style plastic games cases it would make the collectors life much easier.

WWE hit with more controversy and my opinions on both cases.

So its been a bit of a rocky time in the world of wrestling recently, we have had the whole Hulk Hogan erased from history due to racism situation, we have had the death of two legends Dusty Rhodes the American Dream, and Hot Rod Rowdy Roddy Piper and now two new pieces of news have been dropped on us.

The first which I am not going to go into much detail about is the fact that Zahra Schreiber, the girlfriend of WWE superstar Seth Rollins, has been fired from the organization because of pro-Nazi artwork she posted on her Instagram account back in 2012 including a My Little Pony with a Hitler Moustache and a Nazi style red arm band sporting a Swastika. Now I know once something is up online you have kind of shot it, as soon as her remarks and drawings were posted someone will have took screen captures and showed them to someone else and posted them to various forums after all this is how I was first shown what she had posted. A friend of mine sent me a link for a forum where her postings had been pasted and were being discussed. Now if anyone in the locker room had any racist skeletons in there closet you would think that when the WWE cut Hogan they would have at first panic'd and secondly would have gone in to damage control mode because if the WWE is willing to cut the immortal cash cow legend Hulk Hogan despite all of the events he has headlined all of the money his merchandise brings in then you can bet if your an NXT rookie or a mid carder then your butt will fly out of that company like there's a rocket up it.

At the end of the day and I dont mean this in a sexist way but Schreiber was basically just developmental talent, I think the more important part of this story is wether or not it has effected Seth Rollins standing in the company, after all he is currently holding on to championship gold. I do wonder if the WWE have had a little whisper in Seth Rollins ear, after all he was supporting her online as can be seen in some of the screen captures of what was said . Personally I would want to get him out of the limelight for awile and I would also want to make sure that he is well aware of the lines he has to walk within the company and to this end I would have Sting beat him at Night Of Champions and cleanly take the belt. Sting has not been allowed to really win anything or make any impact in the WWE yet to the point that its annoying people, so give the man some gold and a convincing win. Yes Sheamus has the money in the bank briefcase but I would argue for a much better angle than him simply cashing it that night, I have something new and and fresh. Have Sheamus come down to the ring straight away after the match have him have the briefcase in hand so everyone thinks he is going to use it and then have him talk to Sting, tell Sting that he respects him and that he doesn't want to win the belt by beating a tired man after theyve had another match he wants the chance to take on the new champion when he is at his best, he wants to face him with pride and honour and wants to trade the briefcase for a guaranteed match at a future agreed time.

Just like with Hogan this can be called a case of someone's past coming back to bite them in the ass and the same could be said about the next thing I am going to talk about as well. James Reiher Snuka (born James Wiley Smith) AKA Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka was arrested On September the 1st 2015, 32 years after the incident for which he was being arrested had happened. Now some will know who he is because they grew up with him, some will also not be too surprised by this arrest if they know about his history but for those less familiar I will explain a few things. Snuka rose to fame in the 1980s as a high-flying wrestler in what was then known as the WWF. he was involved in the main event of the original Wrestlmania being in the corner of Hulk Hogan and Mr T. He had a big career himself but he has also been involved in angels which have meant a lot to other characters development, Piper smashed a Coconut over his head for example and beating Snuka at WrestleMania VII was the beginning of The Undertaker's undefeated streak at WrestleManias.

On the night of 10 May 1983, paramedics responding to an emergency call from Snuka arrived at a hotel to find his girlfriend Nancy Argentino unresponsive. She was transported to Allentown's Sacred Heart Medical Centre, where she soon unfortunately died at the young age of 23 due to "undetermined craniocerebral injuries.",. When the coroner's report was released it stated that she had died of traumatic brain injuries which were consistent with a moving head striking a stationary object. The Autopsy also indicated that her body was coverd with more than two dozen cuts and bruises and indicated that these were possibly a sign of having an abusive partner. The Forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy, wrote at the time that the case should be investigated as a homicide until proven otherwise.

Snuka was arrested four months before her death for dragging Argentino by her hair down the hallway of a hotel. In that incident near Syracuse, it apparently took sheriff’s deputies and two dogs to get the wrestler under control. So it was not surprising that they instantly looked at him as prime suspect number 1 in fact Snuka was the only suspect involved in the subsequent investigation. Although charges were not pressed at the time against him the case was left officially open. On June 28, 2013,it was announced that the still-open case would be reviewed and on September the 1st, 2015, 32 years after the incident happened, Snuka was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

So what has the WWE had to say about the situation? Well here are two of there statement son the situation “WWE expresses its continued sympathy to the Argentino family for their loss,ultimately this legal matter will be decided by our judicial system.” At the moment has has been wiped from the WWE as can be seen in the second statement from the WWE “Jimmy Snuka’s non-wrestling ‘legends’ contract has been suspended, and we are currently removing his images from our media platforms pending the outcome of this case” . This is a hard area to discuss because from one point of view you could say that Snuka should have been removed from the company after the events he is now going to trial over, in fact it must have been horrible for her family to see the man they were certain caused there relatives death being pushed as a hero and cheered despite what he had done. Yet you can also argue that the man is innocent until proven guilty and that it would have been unfair to dismiss someone when it had not been proved that they had committed the crimes for which they were being accused.

At the time I was just a young wrestling loving boy I had no idea of what was happening outside of the ring, I only knew the characters who were being pushed by the company, to me Hulk Hogan was a hero and The Million Dollar man was one of the most evil men alive. I suppose you can say that my childhood outlook on all of this just proved what a great job everyone involved was doing of selling entertainment. Yet now things are far more complex than they were and sometimes it is just hard to know what to say. I guess all I can say is that my sympathies go out to the family of the young lady who passed all those years ago, this can not have been an easy situation for them and now all anyone can really do is sit back and let the legal system figure this one out.