Retro Game Purchases July 2017

Well another month over another Retro Purchases thread. I recently started a Instergram Profile to run alongside this blog so if your on there I am on there under the name kerr9000_blog, as I have taken photos for my blog of quite a few things I got this will mean this post might have a few more picturers of my purchases than I usually provide. So my purchases started on the 3rd of July when I brought a small lot of Japanese Super Famicom (SNES) carts for £39, in it there was Castlevenia 4, Joe and Mac, SimCity, Street Fighter 2 World Warrior, Final Fight, Super Mario World and Xandora no Daibōken. It just seemed a good little bundle  I mostly wanted it for Joe and Mac and to try out Xandora no Daibōken which was released here as Whirlo but is actually an absolute pain in the behind to get and often crazily expensive. It is also kind of intresting to see some of the regional diffrences in some of the games like the Blood dripping from the title screen in Castlevania 4 and to see Final Fight in its unsensored form (Nintendo changed the female thugs in to male thugs so you wernt beating up women in the game over here).

I also visted a charity shop where I managed to pick up a few cube games I got Luigi's mansion complete for the gamecube for £3 and spiderman complete for the gamecube for £2

On the 8th I recieved a game in the mail it was DJ boy complete for mega drive for £9 including postage.

On the 9th on my way home from work I nipped in to an independent game shop and picked up

Iron Sword Wizards and Warriors 2 for the NES it was a cart only copy for £5

On the 10th I visited a pawn shop I am really rather fond of, I have gotten quiet a few good bits and pieces there over the last few years and this time was no exception. I grabbed Super Mario World for the Snes pal cart only for £10, Legend for snes pal cart only for £10 and Batman Forever for the Snes pal cart only for £5, they actually wanted £10 for Batman Forever but I managed to talk them down by basically saying it was a rotten game which no one was likly to buy except a nutter collector like myself. The best bit was when I decided to look at there handheld games though, for a start I got Sonic Rivals complete for psp for £3, Taito Legends for psp missing the manual for £2 and Juiced for psp complete for £1. The real deal of the day and possibly the month though was when I got Pokemon Silver cart only for GBC £6 and Pokemon Crystal cart only for GBC £6.

On the 11th I got SD GUNDAM V SAKUSEN SHIDOU. Japanese snes cart for only £3, often with a lot of Japanese games they can be a language barrier issue but this looks like its sort of a cross between something like R-type and Cybernator with cute chibi Gundam based graphics.

 On the 18th I went to a pawn store which happens to be in the same place as one of my favourate coffee shops a coffee shop which has become a very special place for me and my girlfriend. On this visit as well as going for a very nice coffee with a wonderful lady I also picked up an absolute pile of games.I got Super Tennis for SNES boxed but with no manual for £5, Championship pool for the SNES complete for £3 and Amazing Tennis for the SNES complete for £4, not bad but they are sports games so a lot of people wouldnt be that over the moon about them. I also got my hands on some 8 bit games. I got Super tennis for master system complete for £1,Wizards and warriors for the NES cart only £3, Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt cart only £2, Dead angle for Master system complete for £2 and Evildead a fistfull of broomstick for PS2 complete for £1 which I was happy with but here come the real prizes of the day. I got Duck tales for the NES cart only for £6, it is one of my favourate NES games and one I have been desperate to own for a long time but the disney fun didnt end there I also got Deep duck trouble for the Master system complete for £5 which was an absolute corker of a price this game can go much higher than this particularly when complete. Finally I got Mighty morphing power rangers the movie boxed but no manual for megadrive for £10 which what can I say it is walk along beat em up which is one of my favourate video game genres it is also based of the Power Rangers which is a show I am very fond of and its also on one of my favourate consoles. There is also kind of a funny little story here one that makes me feel very lucky I have a wonderful girlfriend who lets me talk and talk about games, I showed her what I had brought on the way to the coffee shop and opend the cases ecetera and if it wasnt for doing this I wouldnt have noticed the cart was missing for Deep Duck Trouble and managed to run back and get it from the store.

On the 22nd I returned to the same store and got the following The Terminator complete for Master System for £3, Air Rescue complete for Master System for £2 Super Monaco GP complete for Mega Drive for £2, Turbo Racing for NES cart only for £3, and Double Dragon for NES cart only for £6. OK not quiet as good as the above but getting a cart of Double Dragon for the NES for £6 was pretty darn impressive, it sometimes goes for up to about £20 online just for a cart.

Then on the same day I was very lucky as my daughter called me from work and managed to get me BattleShip complete for CDI for £1.50 and International Tennis Open complete for CDI for £1.50 (yeah she is a brilliant daughter). I also had something come in the mail on this day and it was the single most expensive individual cart I purchased this month it was Final Fight 2 for Super Famicom (Japanese SNES) cart only for £15, I could talk about this at length but I think I cover a lot of why I wanted this game and why I was willing to pay so much in the review I just did on this blog.

On the 27th I dropped in a pawn store I enjoy visiting and managed to grab Sonice Advance for GBA cart only £3 and Tiny Toons Adventures 2 for the original GameBoy cart only for £2.

On the 28th I decided to take a look in some charity shops with my daughter and I didnt really grab much but I did get a few little bits and pieces. I got Operation Winback complete for PS2 for £1, The Scorpian King for Gamecube boxed but missing manual £1.50, a Playstation 2 memory card for 20pence and Who wants to be a millionare complete for ps1 for 50pence.

I ended my retro purchases on the very last day of July, the  31st by getting the following from an indy games store. I got Shaq Fu for Snes cart only for £3, Mario & Yoshi for Gameboy cart only for £2, Tomb Raider for ps1 disc and case no manual for £1, Final Fantasy 8 for ps1 just the discs for £5

and Alundra for ps1 just the disc for £5. I plan on making cases for the last two games, not perfect replicas that I will pass off as original but just something nice to keep them in. A lot of people speak very highly of Alundra and I have never actually owned a copy of it so I am pretty pleased to have it, sure it would have been nice to have it with a box and manual but I dont like to be picky especially not when I can get a bargain.

So I spent £204.20 this month on games which is quite frankly a shocking amount in my oppinion. I have to admit though that I did get a lot of things I have wanted for years. I sometimes believe it or not find it hard to buy things, I beat myself up for spending money on myself, I tell myself that I dont deserve it, but every time I tried to do that this month my girlfriend told me to stop being silly and reminded me of all the things I do for other people not to be overly mushy but shes just a little bit amazing. Then there is my daughter who supported me and pointed out things she thought id like and even looked for things for me at work. So when I stop and think about it the greatest thing this month is not any of the games I actually got my hands on, its knowing that I have a wonderful family who love and support me despite of all of my excentric hobbies and things I collect.

The death of where I used to rent Videos, how things have changed and ways to recapture some of what has been lost.

I have about a million ideas for blog posts running through my head at any given time, its a slight exaggeration but you get the picture. This is the kind of choice I used to have as a youngster when I went to my local video rental store a place called Cabin Video, now they were not the biggest place but they had every possible wall filled with video cases with different sections for different kinds of films and on top of this they had this sort of rack in the centre of the shop, one side of this rack was filled with VHS horror tape covers in thin plastic cases, you took these cases to the counter and for 50pence they would retrieve the tape from behind the counter and rent it you for the night, regardless of what time you rented it your 50p would let you keep it until 6pm the following night. This led to me spending a great many Saturdays arriving at the shop at opening and then renting a whole bunch of films and dedicating my day to watching them. It was a very strange process basically you would pick a pile of films with nothing to inform you of what the film would be like or about apart from the cover and the small blurb and screen shots on the back. Sometimes I would get lucky and every film I would grab would be a hoot other times they would all be rubbish but most of the time it would be a little bit of a case of getting half and half. A lot of the time there would be friends to watch the films with and popcorn to eat but even when I was alone it was still good fun and if I happened to find a great film when I was watching on my own well this just meant I would have to go to my friends the following Monday and tell them about this new film and just how great it was and then either they would rent it or the next time I had them coming around I would rent it again and show it to them.

So what has me thinking about this? Well although Cabin closed years and years ago it didn't fully shut down in fact it moved a further down the street it was on, gained a new name moved on to hiring DVD's and had a slight change of focus. Originally it had been a film rental business which sold a few bottles of beer and wine along side the movies and the popcorn in its new premises it took on more of a half DVD rental half liquor store sort of business model with the feeling being that the booze sales were really propping up the rental side of things and carrying the business. It was never the same place though, I never saw it in the same way or felt the same way about it, it was strange it was like a friend who you used to love like a brother but who now you feel like you hardly even know, yet you could sometimes see that slight glimmer in them that little bit of who or in this case what they used to be.

Well recently this closed its doors, its not surprising really with the video rental market having died out what with various online services such as Netflix and NowTV. I had expected it to simply just become a shop that sold alchol phasing out the rentals altogether but this didn't happen possibly because the local market is over saturated with places to buy booze or possibly because the place had been robbed either way even though it wasn't really the place I had fallen in love with but it was the last remaining part of it if that makes sense. My home town used to have two very good Video Rental places and its own little one screen cinema and now it has none of these.

I am often asked why I love films so much and its because when I was young it was one of the cheapest and most accessible forms of entertainment, for simple weekends there was the prospect of renting a few films and if I had more money then I might go with a group of friends and go to see a film in our little one screen cinema. I guess that it is at this point in time that I look a bit like one of those sad old farts who is moaning about how things were better in my day and I guess to a certain degree I am but then I can also recognise some of the advantages of what we have now. With Netflix and other such services you can for a small fee have access to lots of films, you don't have to leave your house and if you find out you have made a bad film choice when picking to watch something then it doesn't matter so much. One of the issues is though that you have so much choice at your finger tips, it also means that if a film doesn't instantly grab you then you might decide its bad and move on to another one, now this is an issue because some films are slow burners, they might not seem so great to start with but if you give them time then you will find that after some build up they really get good. If I had turned off every single VHS tape I rented and didn't instantly like within 5 minutes then I would have missed out on some of what have become my favourite films.

I have started playing a sort of new game with myself its a game I call the Cabin video You Tube game, and the truth is its a nice and easy game that anyone can play and if you had a childhood like mine then you might appreciate it. Now services like the aforementioned Netflix and NowTv are full of films but they also give quiet a bit of info on them as well and for this game you need to go in as blind as possible and that's why I like YouTube plus its free which helps. As you might have noticed YouTube is absolutely full of complete films, yes sometimes films get taken down but when they are old budget B movie type horror films which haven't tended to make there way on to BlueRay or in a lot of cases even DVD in most regions then they are pretty much ignored and stay on there forever and these are the types of film you need. So what do you do, well you use YouTubes search engine my personal favourite search being full horror movies 80's then you flick through your options, basically what your looking to do is pick a film simply from its title and thumb nail. Now you need to pick a film without resorting to looking it up online or on the Internet movie database or any other site and you need to force yourself to watch it, no giving in if it seems weird or rubbish inside 5 minutes. If you want to make a real party of this then grab the popcorn and invite your best friends around. Why do I call this a game? Well basically because you will either win or loose, sometimes doing this you are going to find a new film that you absolutely love other times your going to wonder why you just wasted several hours of your life, you might love the film because its brilliant or because its so bad its good but trust me the good times far outweigh the bad and even the bad ones are not really that bad if you have a good friend or two to enjoy it with.

The past is gone for good or bad and nothing we can do is going to bring it back but you can cherish what has gone before while trying to find new ways to mix the old and the new looking to the future while also keeping the nostalgia alive.

How I feel about the Smash Bros Melee player who assaulted a Gas station attendant being allowed to compete in Smash Tournaments

OK so I just want to say that I have not been in an official video game tournament since I was like 16 or something on those lines it was a Art of fighting 2 tournament in which the top 3 players got a prize and I came 4th so got nothing , I remember little else about it other than a friend of mine came 3rd and I played as King. I have attended various other game playing groups and fun events since but I haven't competed in anything that was more than just a bit of fun or something where the winner got a bag of sweets or something so I wouldn't consider myself a pro gamer or into the competition scene but I have hanged out at various ''geeky'' venues such as Sci Fi and comic conventions a lot of which now days I have attended with my 15 year old daughter. So why do I bringing this up basically because I want to talk about something in the esports world or to be precise something in the Super Smash Bros Melee community.

OK so recently, a top Melee player made his grand re-entry into the game’s competitive scene, basically he used to be considered a big deal, he played a lot with falco but he dropped out of the scene. Now during his absence he assaulted a Florida petrol station clerk. Apparently now this has the Smash Community arguing over if he deserves to be allowed to compete again. Now I don't want to even give the guys name as I don't think he deserves the attention so I will just call him Prick A for the rest of this post. OK so Prick A is arguing that he’s shed his violent past and now is concerned primarily with practising religion, refining his Falco strategy and gaining followers for his new Twitch channel. Personally I hate the idea of a vile prick who hurt people for his own gain gathering any kind of popularity gaming wise or social media wise but the Melee community is divided and hundreds of fans have debated Prick A's past, his actions, and whether he deserves a second or third chance to participate in Melee events and tournaments.

One side seem to think that basically talent and skill are all that are important and they feel that if Prick A wasn't allowed to participate then the smash community would miss out on witnessing his skill. Those against the idea of showing Prick A acceptance say that this obsession with skill is sidelining concerns for safety.

The Melee scene has historically been forgiving of players with violent histories. In 2012, a different prick Prick B was banned after placing another player in a choke-hold. Prick B also allegedly had a history of violent outbursts.yet fans of his play style demanded he be let back in and campaigned with hastags and the like and he was let back in and now he continues to compete in national tournaments, A third Prick, Prick C was banned from tournaments in one country for displaying “poor sportsmanship” and bullying new and disabled players. After a year, and a long apology, he was allowed back in. I know some people might say well you need to give people another chance but just stop and think about the person who was choked or one of the disabled people who had the piss taken out of them, think about them wanting to attend again and knowing the person who hurt them either physically or emotionally will be there and heck if there a good player they will be there with people chanting there name and slapping them on the back doesn't seem very good for the victims at all does it?

Now I also find it important to say that Prick A is not just someone who with one stupid decision decided to assault a petrol station employee nope Prick A actually has a lengthy rap sheet. His court records contain twelve entries reflecting a slew of alleged crimes committed between 2011 and 2016 that range from theft and battery to bogus small-fry infractions. In 2013, a court charged Layton with aggravated battery after his female housemate obtained a lacerated liver and fractured vertebrae in a fight. That charge was later dropped with Prick A claiming he did not do it In 2016, Prick A punched a gas station clerk in the face, which he admitted to, and according to the clerk he threatened to slit the clerk’s throat, which Prick A denies. Prick A took a four-year break from national Melee competition, admitting that he fell in with a bad crowd committed crimes and spent several nights in jail.
 

Prick A has completed 14 anger management and 14 substance abuse classes since the 2016 gas station incident and has shared proof of this on Twitter, where he also posted an apology which: “YES, I WAS a violent person. YES, I do have an exquisite criminal record. I am not denying any of those facts. I am sorry for the way that I was and the things I have done in my life. I am ashamed for a lot that has happened up till now. I did not mean to hurt anyone emotionally, or the people that I have hurt physically, although none of them are smashers.” Not so sorry that he wants to do much about it though hey? No he would sooner try to gain fame as a video game player and twitcher
 

There are a lot of Women claiming that Prick A has been confrontational or aggressive to them or to people they know and yes he will claim that they are not telling the truth but I think there are far to many accounts for there to not be a grain of truth there. He claims that he is not threatening with quotes such as the following “How can I be threatening when I’m laughing and having a good time with my friend 1 and my friend 2?” I cant help but raise the answer that plenty of people laugh or find amusement in bullying people threatening people and causing people harm.
 

You might wonder why I feel so strongly about this, well for a start I have a 15 year old daughter , yes she attends things with me but one day she will branch out on her own and she is a big lover of games and I wouldn't want her in an environment which supports and idolises or excuses guys like this because they can play well. On top of this if you have been reading my stuff for a long time then you will know that I was violently beaten with iron bars while at work and went through PTSD and have suffered for years over it, with this in mind you know whose opinion we should ask? We should ask the Gas Station attendant. I was assaulted 8 years ago and given half a chance I would kill the guys involved as it still effects my life till this day in all manner of ways. I don't care what courses this guy has been through I care about the attendant and where he is now and how his life has been affected, the potential courses of mental health treatment he has been through. In my opinion as someone who suffered a very serious assault I just think that its sick to see a Villain be treated as a hero.

NEWS RANT: Sperm count crisis and how more free time makes you happier.

Ok so every so often I like to take either a story or a few stories from the news and give my 2cents on them. Ok so the first bit of news I am going to get into is the fact that several sites announced that due to sperm counts dropping one day the human race could become extinct. Now obviously I think there is a fair degree of shouting and screaming going on here in order to try and make people rush to read the news so lets look at the facts here. Major studies have shown that Sperm counts have plummeted by nearly two-thirds since the 70s with experts blaming modern living for damaging male fertility.
Scientists claim that chemicals in plastics, pesticides, poor diet, smoking and obesity are all harming peoples sperm counts.

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem reviewed 185 studies involving 43,000 men.
There findings indicated that men in Europe, the US, Australia and New Zealand have seen their sperm concentration fall by 52 per cent in the past four decades. Apparently though men in South America, Asia and Africa have been unaffected.

''Eventually we may have a problem, and with reproduction in general, and it may be the extinction of the human species''Dr Hagai LevineHebrew University of Jerusalem

 Ok so am I worried at all about the future of mankind, well not really at least not as far as sperm counts and fertility issues go. We already have so many people having kids that they dont really want or need, the world is quiet frankly over populated and I think most of the issues we have are down to over population, if the population shrinks then it would only actually help the world to carry on and well less people less plastics and such will be needed, also I am a big fan of Jurrasic Park so I strongly believe the quote ''Life will find a way''.

The second piece of news I want to talk about is the fact that there was a study in to what makes you happier time or money. To put it simply this study showed that if you used money to free-up time rather than either buying junk with it or just hoarding it you could increase your happiness. In all honesty this didnt suprise me in the slightest, partly because I used to work like 70 hours a week at one point and have no time to myself at all and I was miserable and partly because I was always told a certain gem of advice when I was younger and thats''Be careful how much you work because the one thing you cant buy with the money you earn is more time'' Now it might sound like thats saying that working in general is a waste of time but I dont mean that at all nor did the people who said it to me what they were trying to tell me is that the pursuit of money is not everything and you shouldnt spend all of the time you have trying to get ahold of it at the expense of hobbies and loved ones and other things you can spend your time on.

So basically in the experiment that was done individuals reported greater happiness if they used £30 to save time. So how do you use money to save time well they did it by doing things like paying other people to do chores for them. Psychologists have basically argued that one of the major things which stresses people out is worrying over lack of time and that this leads to lower well-being and also contributes to anxiety and insomnia. It was apparently shown in the study that if you used the money to gain yourself free time it actually helped you a lot more than trying to use your money to buy things such as films or alchol. I could have gone in to this story in a lot more depth but as a person who has gone from a long hours career into a part time job in an effort to better manage my mental health I found this news very intresting and while I am not suprised to read the findings of this experiment I do hope that this makes some people stop and think about how they live there life and manage there own mental health.

So does anything tie these two stories togther? Well they are both about health be it physical or mental, I think both of them just go to show that we as people are not really doing very well when it comes to managing our own health, we concentrate to much on money work and industry and we forget the simple pleasures in life, if everyone just took a little bit more time out to stop and smell the roses I think things would be a little bit better for everyone overall.

Snes Review 126: Final Fight 2

A very long time ago when I did my 23rd SNES review I decided to review Final Fight saying that I needed to get the game out of the way and that the game was important for a lot of reasons and so now I find myself finally getting around to talking about its sequel Final Fight 2. One of the reasons it has taken me so long is because back when I started reviewing SNES games I didn't actually own Final Fight 2 and I swore when I started all of this that I wouldn't review any game which I did not have on cartridge as I wanted to play every single game on the original hardware and for a fair amount of time before I would review them. Well as I am talking about it now its not hard to guess that I have purchased Final Fight 2, I picked up a Japanese cartridge only copy, the truth is my original copy of Final Fight 2 I had as a youngster was Japanese and in fact every copy I have ever played or seen in real life has been a Japanese one, its just much easier and cheaper to pick this game up.

So with some of these reviews I like to tell the tale of how I originally got the game back when I was young, well I originally got a new complete Japanese version from my local games shop called Games World. I didn't spend much on it at all as basically the owner had purchased an entire crate full of them for some cut down price as a sort of delboy get rich quick scheme. I sold a few of them for him on a commission basis, I also purchased a few copies cheap and sold and traded them in to other game stores, this really led to my local area and the closest big towns shops and markets ending up being super saturated with Japanese copies of Final Fight 2 but my biggest regret was not actually holding on to a complete copy, I have no idea why I didn't I guess it just felt like they'd never run out. I cant complain though as all of the money I made from my dealings with Final Fight 2 funded my purchasing of other SNES games and megadrive games and if it wasn't for stuff like this I wouldn't have played as much as I did back then.

OK so back to the game at hand. Like Final Fight, Final Fight 2 is a side-scrolling beat-'em-up produced by Capcom. The first Final fight started life as an arcade game but unlike that Final Fight 2 was never in the arcades instead it was a Super Nintendo exclusive built from the ground up for the SNES instead of being made for the CPS-1 arcade system board like the original and then just ported. The SNES version suffered a lot due to people comparing it to its arcade big brother so this is obviously a problem the second one does not have right? The answer is kind of, kind of not, obviously people will compare Final Fight 2 to Final Fight both on the SNES and the arcade version but they will also compare it to the Sega Streets of Rage Series so unless I want to pretend I am in some kind of pocket universe I am going to at least touch on where Final Fight 2 stands in comparison to all of these.

The original Final Fight arcade machine was loved by pretty much every games player I knew, it was considered to be one of the best side scrolling beat em up's out there a pinnacle of gaming to hold other games up to for comparison. The SNES version was released and was kind of limited, there was only two selectable characters one from the arcade having been dropped, there was also a level stripped out of the game, and the game had no two player mode. So what about Final Fight 2, well its actually much closer to providing the sort of experience the Original Final Fight arcade game delivered than the original SNES Final Fight did. Final Fight 2 has a two player mode, it has a choice of 3 characters and has 6 stages so is essentially the same length as the Arcade Version of Final Fight.

OK so as far as the story of Final Fight 2 goes basically Mad Gear the gang from the first game have returned they have kidnapped Guy one of the heroes from the first games Fiancee and her father who is also his teacher but weirdly Guy is not even in the game, the only returning g playable character from the original Final Fight  is ass kicking mayor and former wrestler Mike Haggar. Two new player characters are introduced and they are called Carlos and Maki Genryusai. Maki is the sister of Guy's fiancee and kind of plays a little like him, she contacts Haggar for help and Carlos tags along because he says he owes Haggar one and also likes to kick butt. So it basically it becomes a globe trotting butt kicking war against the Mad Gear to try and rescue Maki's relatives.OK so a lot of people complain that Cody and Guy are not in the game and yes I have to admit I really like both of those characters with Cody especially being one of my favourite beat em up heroes of all time but I don't think there absence ruins either the story or the game, I find all of the characters present fun to play with and its also nice to see a female character.

As far as Gamplay goes well this game plays exactly like the first Final Fight you scroll from left to right and you punch people to death until you meet a boss who you then punch to death rinse and repeat. Each of the characters feels different  and you will soon find the one who suite you best and the game is really helped by having a two player mode this time around, in fact I would say that is the standout diffrence between this and the first game. As for the controls well you have a punch button and a jump button and then you can either press these together to perform your super move or assign it to a third button. Add to this that the game has good arcade style graphics, good sound effects and a pretty good soundtrack and you would think that this game is excellent right? Well Yes I love this game I am going to stop and throw down a score here, if you can remember I gave Final Fight an 8 so what am I going to give this game? Well you might be surprised to find that I am only giving it a 8.5, look its a darn fine game but it could be much better. If you want to buy it then your best bet if you can play imports then is to buy a loose Japanese cartridge which you should be able to get for around £15, if you really want a boxed copy then you occasionally see a boxed Japanese version for around £30.  It has to be noted that this game is available on the Nintendo virtual console for around the £7 mark so if you just want to play it and legally pay for it then that's your cheapest route. A pal cart on the few occasions I have seen them in various places have been around the £60 mark with boxed pal versions seldom coming up in listings and demanding pretty steep prices. I would think this one is only going to end up becoming rarer and rarer I wanted to pay less for my copy but I just finally figured I needed to jump on this before it became an even bigger more costly pain to get.

OK so earlier I said I was going to compare Final Fight 2 to the Streets of Rage series and so that's what I want to do here at the end. Now Streets of Rage the original one was sort of Sega's answer to the original Final Fight being on the SNES, Streets had much smaller less detailed sprites but it did have several things that Final Fight didn't 3 selectable characters and a two player mode being the main things. Streets of Rage might not have looked as good as Final Fight but you could play it with a friend which was a big deal. I would argue that Final Fight 2 actually knocks Streets of Rage out cold but I think it is a very different story if you compare Final Fight 2 to Streets of Rage 2. When you look at static screen shots Final Fight 2 has better graphics but Streets of Rage actually has more frames of animation, for example if you leave your character standing still you will see them breathing, yes its not something that's going to change the world but these kinds of touches do make Streets of Rage 2 look a lot better in action than it does in a photo. Add on to this the fact that although Final Fight 2 has a good soundtrack Streets of Rage 2 simply has one of the greatest 16bit soundtracks of all time, there are also 4 selectable characters in Streets of Rage 2 but the most important thing is how many moves there are in Streets of Rage 2. Final fight has 1 special move, your grapples and a basic strike/combo for each character compared to this Streets of Rage 2 has 2 special moves, grapples, a basic strike/combo, a charge move and a backwards attack for each of its characters. The thing that stops me giving Final Fight 2 more than 8.5 is because I think that although it was a great game and did deliver everything Final Fight was lacking in it didn't add enough to keep up with the best of the best in the world of beat em ups at that time.

Talia Jane who she is and why I think she is a hero.

So I want to talk about someone I have a great deal of respect for and its a name most people wont have heard of and thats Talia Jane. Now for those that dont know Talia Jane was a 25 year old who worked for Yelp/Eat24, now what got her known was the fact that she wrote an open letter to the CEO of the company she worked for at the time talking about the poor pay they recieved and some of the dire circumstances some of the people who worked there were in. She was fired almost imediatly but clearly the CEO ecetera realised that she was speaking the truth as the wages were soon increased. Now Talia Jane was slammed for her open letter with lots of people calling her a self intitled Millienial saying she wanted something for nothing, how is working a full time job and just wanting to make enough to not cry yourself to sleep because your so hungry wanting something for nothing? Lots of people will say oh they worked hard and there situation is much better so if Talia had just worked harder then she wouldnt have so much to worry about but anyone with half a brain knows this is bullshit. I am not going to go through her letter and every point she raised as it's still out there and it's easy enough to find but I will say that it definitely touched me.

I am someone who never quite made it despite trying really hard, I nearly made it as a Rugby player but I was hit by a hit and run driver and this ended my career, it really messsed up my leg I had titanium plating put in my leg and I can walk but it was the end of my chance at a sport based career. From here I hit university and tried to make myself more attractive to employers but I got a part time job at a pub. I started to work my way up the ranks and I invested a heavy amount of time and effort in to the job but due to being held hostage in a robbery and having my head smashed open with iron bars I developed PTSD and my epilepsy which I had been born with also took a turn for the worse, I essentially reached the point of Deputy Manager and was on the cusp of more but I simply could not hold myself togther anymore and had a breakdown. I clawed my way up from this and I managed to get a very high qualification in the childcare field but I was unable to secure a job with this because of other peoples prejudice, I would get interview after interview to end up in front of a potential boss who couldnt seem to get past the fact I am a man and would just keep saying but your a man. I dont list all of this to get sympathy in the slighest, I just want to show that sometimes you can try all that you want but circumstances, issues and other peoples problems can get in your way, unfortunatly its not always the person who tries the hardest or who puts the most in that gets the most out of life. I could recount the stories of many others I have known and met who have given it there all but fell short but those are there tales to tell or not tell.

We are constantly bombarded by a media which lets face it is paid for and ran by the rich and it promotes the idea that those who try hard will get, that the cream can not help but rise to the top and that anyone sinking in a first world society like the UK or USA is doing so because there simply not trying hard enough and that anyone who speaks up against this is simply a cry baby.

Well let me spell this out simply Talia Jane was and is not a cry baby, you know why? It's simple a cry baby is someone who is scared and she wasn't scared, read her open letter it wasn't all wish is me she wasn't just crying out about her problem about her situation, she was daring to stand up against what was wrong, to tell the truth and put her name on it. How many people spend there lives crying and bitching saying things need to change and never doing anything about it? I think it took real bravery to write the open letter she wrote and I salute her for it.

NES bad box art: Ironsword

OK so if you have been following my blog for any length of time then you will have most likly realised that I love looking at cover art, often comparing different art from different regions. In most cases it has been megadrive/Genesis cover art and usually I have been looking at which region provided the best art. Today is a little different as I am looking at a piece of NES box art, it's an Infamous piece of art. As I have obviously posted the above picture then you know I am talking about Ironsword. If you look at the case without having played the game you might wonder what the issue is, well to put it simply they put a famous model Fabio on the front cover dressed as a barbarian the main issue with this is the fact in the game you don't play as a Barbarian you play as a knight.

Here is the games title screen and the in game sprite basically matches this so that basically tells you that the people responsible for the case art had either never either tried the game or been in touch with the creators to get any information on what the game was like beyond its title. It was like someone just really wanted to be around Fabio while he was getting oily barbarian loin cloth photos done, usually he was on the front of romance books so who knows, but the cover certainly didn't fit the game and often when you do hear about the game it's for the infamous cover art as it's a shame as it's quite a cracking little title.

This is the sort of thing I would have made as a front cover for ironsword wizards & warriors 2 for the NES instead of the famous Fabio one, seeing as you play a knight in armour in the game I thought it would be more appropriate to have an armoured figure on the box art. Yeah the armour might not be exactly the same as the one in the game and be a little more realistic but it in my opinion certainly fits the theme more. Maybe if the game had gotten something a little more like this it would be remembered fondly on its own merit as apposed to for its quirky cover.