Space Fantasy Zone "Walk"through.

I FINALLY SCORED A WORKING COPY OF THIS GAME. Yay me. I was stoked about making a playthrough video, then found out someone beat me to it.

So, here's that:







I like how the guy doing the playthrough grabs the shopkeeper's boobs. Every. Single. Time.

What Is This, Where Did It Come From, And Where Do I Find More?

Well, I guess it's pretty obvious what this is - some sort of speedrun schematic for Super Mario Bros 3. But seriously, are there more of these out there? Who made this one? So many questions...

Old Thing/Favorite Thing: Let's Play Crystalis

Okay, it's not the funniest Let's Play (which would either be the legendary Oregon Trail, or personal favorite Princess Tomato In The Salad Kingdom). Maybe it's just because I love the game itself so much. Maybe it's because it has 23 chapters. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard about why Let's Play: Crystalis is my new favorite thing ever right at this moment.

Dragon's Lair - Original Arcade Ending.

Found a cool video of the ending of the Don Bluth-animated arcade game "Dragon's Lair".

Street Fighter 2010 No Death Run.

The same guy that conquered Dragon Spirit in my last article took to task Street Fighter 2010: The Final Fight, a game I'm still convinced was a cruel prank on the part of Capcom. This game was was that smelly mix of brutally hard and brutally stupid and crap that it never bothered me not getting past the first stage. I only provide the above run to sustain those of you that have not played it and may have been curious, before you wasted better-spent eBay money.

Dragon Spirit (TG-16) No-Hit Run.

Probably one of the hardest Turbografx shooters in existence, and this guy makes it through not only without dying, but without being hit. I mean seriously, you have to pilot along that fist-sized dragon through the game without getting hit. Crazy.

Advanced Set The Rope On Fire Walkthrough.

Ane advanced remake of the game You Have To Burn The Rope. Weirdness.

All Three Endings To Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest

The Most Intense, Emotionally Draining Boss Battle Evar.

The fight against last boss Giygas in "Earthbound". Not only is he just about the scariest thing ever seen in a Super Nintendo game, with music that sets the mood, but the battle with him is incredibly intense, with the characters calling out through prayer to all of their friends and eventually to the player him/herself to pray for them and their safety.

And the strange dialog Giygas spouts during the battle? It's a reference to a childhood trauma designer Shigesato Itoi experienced as a child, when he went into the wrong theater and saw an exploitation movie called "The Military Policeman And The Dismembered Beauty". The graphic rape scene in the movie horrified him, and the dialog Gigyas speaks is culled from the dialog of that scene.

People swear that as Giygas is dying, he turns into a fetus, which I almost see (keep an eye out around 7:38 in the second video). There's another rumor that there's a voice saying "Let Me Out". I don't really hear it, but keep an ear out at the transitions at 4:38 and 6:53. I think it's just our brains trying to find patterns in the strange sounds.

Well, anyway, that's awesome. Here's that same battle replicated in MUGEN.



And here's Giygas being confronted by Evil Homer.



And here's an excellent 3D rendering of Giygas's lair.

Funny 23-Minute Long Play Of Custom Super Mario Bros Level

"Super Mario: Frustration" is right! Apparently this was a video found on tuduo.com, and the commentary was added after the fact. But the truth is, it's pretty damn funny.

Rare Footage Of The Very First Ever 'Strider' Game

"Wait" you say, "that just looks like footage from a Japanese release of the Nintendo version of Strider! What's the big deal?"

Oh ye of little faith! You forget one thing:

There was no Japanese Famicom release of Strider!

This is a commercial for what would have been the Famicom release of 'Strider', which was never released because they decided on an arcade debut instead (the one we're all familiar with).

Here's a speedrun (like you didn't see THIS coming) of the Sega Genesis version, which stays true to the epic arcade anti-cyber-communist manifesto that is STRIDER.



Once the game exploded in popularity, easily becoming one of Capcom's most recognized franchises, the abandoned Famicom version (the ORIGINAL version of the game, mind you) was ported over to the NES...

And even with this guy instructing you how to skip half the game, you can easily tell that it is vastly different. Still an amazing game, and one of the best (uneasily wrestling the first Mega Man and Bionic Commander for the title) of the Captain Commando "Challenge Series" NES releases.

Long Have Been The Days I've Wanted To Mash A Morphoid...

...nearly two decades in fact. Sometime in spring of 1989, in the back of a Video Games and Strategy magazine, I saw a short review of "Bashi Bazook: Morphoid Masher" and the above picture. And ever since, I had never seen any more than the above picture. But holy crap, did that look like a super cool game. Unfortunately, it was never released in the U.S. So I've searched and searched, and pretty much been given scarce information, and as always, the above picture.

All that's changed fairly recently. A while back I found THIS article, and the loads of screenshots which got me back on the chase. Then, paydirt!

A full on Long Play of the entire game.








Don't have time for all that? Here's a 13 minute Speed Run! That's right, a Long Play AND a Speed Run in the same article! Hey, after 20 years of searching, I want to share the wealth!

The BEST Stage From Any Batman Game EVAR!

Actually, tho, this is a coveted and highly debated designation, considering the impossibly excellent Sunsoft NES "Batman" games.

This is stage 3-1 from the Sega Genesis game "Adventures Of Batman And Robin"... twenty minutes of straight holy-crap awesome. The whole fact that the stage is a (literal) "stage", with lights and gaffes and other theater crap crashing down on you is fun, blah blah blah and electrified gnomes or something...

But we know we're all waiting for what comes up at the 3:10 mark... I'll wait with ya, or you can move up the scrollbar to the MOST AWESOME MINI-BOSS fight that has ever existed.

Then, exploding bunnies. And giant mushrooms. And flame-spewing flowers. And more electrified gnomes than you can shake a stick at. And then, the game literally disentegrates into a full-on grand-mal seizure right before your eyes before the mini-boss appears.

And still, you're only half done.



Unfortunately, the second half is about half as inspired as the first half. Yes, I really did write that.

Anyway, a truly amazing and innovative boss makes his appearance at about 5:28. Catch up with me as you find appropriate.

One of the things that is kind of a shame about the prevalence of actual for-real 3-D graphics is that a boss stage like this cannot (or rather will not) be properly rendered ever again - this boss stage probably holds the position of being the last gasp of the "Space Harrier" engine... *sigh*

Let's see a more drawn out and dramatic playthrough of that boss-


There ya go. You can thank me later.

Awesomely Fast Speed-Run On Truly Awful Game

The title I made for this blog actually gives me a heaviness in my heart, cause to be honest I have a soft spot for this game. I really wanted to like this, the only game ever to let you play as the characters from the Dragonlance series of novels. Plus the game was converted to NES by FCI, who ported over a lot of truly classic American computer games (many of which also hold dear places in my heart).

And dammit, I really dig the music in this game. There, I said it.

But no, this game, in all forms, is a blight to the entire genre of side-scrolling RPG-based adventure games. Sad, cause with just a bit more work it could have been awesome. I feel bad for the crew at FCI, who must have been thinking "Do we really need to let the NES version suck as bad as the PC version? Well, the American crowd is really picky about canon, so best not mess with it."

A real shame.

Enough about me though, this guy just tears through it. I remember the first time playing this game myself involved me accidentally flinging half the party off a cliff, right off the bat.

You, sir, must have infinite patience to have conquered this travesty. You win at life, or at least these seven and a half minutes.

Amiga Longplay - Apidya

And when I say long-play... I mean LONG-PLAY. This video is about 45 minutes long.

It's a really great SHMUP, tho, with amazing music, gorgeous stages, and huge, mind-blowing bosses.

And the bonus stages are just nuts. The one at the 4 minute mark, where you are suddenly randomly capturing cherubs and avoiding demons, or at the 15 minute mark, where you traverse the guts of a fish, and then blast him once you come out the other end, and then at the 19 minute mark, where after blasting the giant maggots out of a dead rat you apparently decide to search through it's guts as well... wait, the boss of stage 3-2 is an inexplicable face at the bottom of a Pepsi can?

If you've never seen or heard of this game, I'd reccomend jumping straight to the middle of the video, where you fight the giant doll.

And then the music for the next stage, which could easily have been an Information Society B-Side.

Crazy, crazy game.

"Weird Dreams" for the Amiga 2000 - Full-Game Longplay Video

It is incredibly tragic that with all the technology that video game systems possess, there hasn't been more games with this much imagination involved. This game is truly gorgeous, and it is almost 20 years old!

Check out the stage that kicks in at the 5 minute mark! The music, the concept... There is nothing about it that is not just amazing.