CardinalXimenez

There´s already a UK magazine devoted to multiplatform retro games called Retro Gamer Magazine, http://www.retrogamer.net/, I´ve bought a couple of issues and they have some pretty good articles detailing the development of classic titles like Super Metroid and the birth (and sometimes death) of classic developers like Electronic Arts, since the magazine has been around for years now there´s clearly a market for it, I´m thinking of getting a subscription myself.

You yanks may know this game series as Contra, but in Europe, the games were considered too violent, so the main characters got replaced by robots, and the games were renamed to Probotector. The cover for the first game struck a chord with my love of Transformers-style mechas. I still remember the first time I viewed the cover for the Super NES sequel, it was a full page ad in a British Nintendo mag, and I´ve wanted ever since to have that cover as a poster, its a case of part nostalgia and part love of TF-style mechas. While looking for the Probotector covers, I also came across this old Contra ad, I couldn´t help but laugh at the 80esness of it, and wonder just when did videogame companies start using sex to promote their games? Another early example, and a lovely cover in itself, is this cover for the Commodore 64 version of the old platformer Athena, which has to be one of the first games to have had a female lead. When it comes to sheer "wow" factor, this NES cover never fails to thrill me: I can probably think of more covers, but these will do for now.

Looking over the search results for my daily eBay saved search of retro games made me swoon over seeing some of my favorite game covers, so I thought I´d share some of them with you, and ask you what are your favorite game covers of yesterday and today? For me, it´s a matter of art, or the mood of the cover, or its nostalgic value. Let´s start with a series of covers that are an inseparable part of my childhood and life as a gamer: As a child, part of the fascination with videogames was their promise of new and exciting worlds to explore, videogames were like a doorway into another dimension, and the cover for the first Super Mario Bros was the essence of that, with the image of Mario and cast in the Mushroom Kingdom. The next three SMB games also have some of my favorite covers, but for nostalgic reasons.

Or rather, her live action counterpart from MK3, Kerri Hoskins, does... www.gametrailers.com/side-mission/34037/mortal-kombat-model-kerri-branson-sonya-is-gearing-up-for-another-fight-this-time-in-politics Wonder if she´ll use her share in the victory over Shao Khan in her campaign video?

Oh, I know how you´re going to get yourself a Wii U... Well, except Sarah wouldn´t just leave the girl there.

I´d love to read that "making of SMB3" feature, is it available online anywhere?

If you´re curious about what LGBT representation in videogames has been like the past three decades, Gamingbus has an exhaustive series of articles covering the various decades. She misses a few though, she lists Hana and Rain from "Fear Effect" as hinted at, but I thought their banter, not to mention the manual saying Hana´s "desired by many, but belonging only to one" made it perfectly clear they were a couple, and I also know that one of the female characters in "Jericho" is a lesbian, but she doesn´t get mentioned in the articles mention of that game. Either way, here´re the links: The 80´es: http://www.gamingbus.com/2012/06/05/glbt-history-video-games-1980s/ The 90´es: http://www.gamingbus.com/2012/06/12/glbt-history-video-games-1990s/ The 2000s (part one): http://www.gamingbus.com/2012/06/19/glbt-history-in-video-games-2000s/ The 2000s (part two): http://www.gamingbus.com/2012/06/21/glbt-history-in-video-games-2000s-part-two/ The present day and beyond: http://www.gamingbus.com/2012/06/26/glbt-history-video-games-present-day/

...or what the original Star Wars movies could´ve been if "Revenge of the Sith" had ended slightly differently...

I´m a sucker for trailers that use liveaction footage of their main characters, if nothing else because it lets you see your favorite characters faithfully recreated in the flesh, something most movie adaptations fail to accomplish, and it doesn´t hurt if those characters featured are of the female variety.

After a massive outcry in response to Mass Effect 3s ending(s), Bioware has announced they´re looking into releasing new content in response to the protests, whether that means changing the ending or simply clarifying it is unknown, I´m hoping for a change myself, or at least an ending that acknowledges your romance with Liara, since it´s been an (optional) subplot for the entire trilogy. And could you make Ashley and Miranda romanceable for FemShep while you´re at it?

It´s only about six months ago that this was announced, but I only just found out about it, so for anyone else who didn´t know about it: http://www.giantbomb.com/news/replay-games-acquires-leisure-suit-larry-remakes-n-sequels-en-route/3731/ In short, Replay Games has acquired the LSL franchise, and is bringing back series creator Al Lowe and other members of the old Sierra Online crew, to work on a HD remake of the first Larry game, and possibly the rest of the original series, as well as making new Larry sequels in the future. This was great news for me, three things I miss are the point-and-click adventure games of yore (the Monkey Island re-release has been a pleasant nostalgia trip for me), the cartoony animated art style of the classic adventure games as opposed to the 3D graphics of modern adventure games, and of course the original Larry, and this HD remake seems to combine all three, if the image in the article is an actual screenshot at least.

I feel like adding some more titles to my NES and Super NES collections, anybody got some recommendations? Write a little about your suggested games, so I can make up my mind.

They fight hard and party harder.

As a side benefit to A, I assume you´d also serve as masseuse to the female autobots. As for me, considering my gear of heights, I´d have to go with a ground vehicle, so it´d be a car, preferably a sports car like a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, and I´d side with the Autobots, I have no desire to be a badguy. Alternately, I´d go for being a vibrator like in the Transhomers episode of Panty and Stocking with Garterbelt, and Vibrator is itself a Transformersesque name, and then I´d side with the Pantybots, who wouldn´t want to work for the hot nympho who (literally) screws with her soldiers?

...What would your alternate mode be? What would your name be? And which faction would you belong to?

Out of curiosity, I know Tomb Raider and Duke Nukem 3D are some of your absolute favorite games, so how come they´re not on this list when they´re both available on the PS1? Or did you count the PC versions?

Or the human characters with robots in the European version of Contra (and renaming it to Probotector).

Been watching E3 trailers. Tomb Raider, Super Mario 3D, Mass Effect 3, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Silent Hill: Downpour, Wii U, Tekken: Blood Vengeance, Resident Evil: Revelations, Resident Evil: Operation Raccoon City, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time 3D, Paper Mario 3D, Final Fantasy XIII-2, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD, and Soul Calibur V, it´s gonna be a couple of fun, but expensive years. The Hitman: Absolution trailer was good too, I just wish they´d left out the non-shower bits.

A combination of a "Friday the 13th" marathon and "Transformers The Movie" on TV has gotten me in the mood for some classic 80es music videos, I´ve watched a bunch so far, but I´m open for more, so post your suggestions here. These are the ones I´ve watched so far: Men at Work: Down Under Dire Straits: Money for Nothing www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTP2RUD_cL0&feature=share The Bangles: Walk like an Egyptian http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHngF_b3NuE There´s evidently a limit to how many links I can post, so I´m dividing my links into three per post. Here´re the next three: Starship: Nothing´s gonna stop us now Ray Parker Jr: Ghostbusters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QChe5huSyYY Billy Ocean: When the going gets tough http://www.mojvideo.com/video-billy-ocean-when-the-going-gets-tough-the-tough-get-going/a97b35c656dbbd6862c7 Genesis: Land of Confusion Miami Sound Machine: Dr. Beat Laid Back: Baker Man Paul Simon: You can call me Al Baltimora: Tarzan boy John Farnham: You´re the Voice http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxlE7yCSHAM I don´t know why, but each reply I posted to this thread has been included as part of the opening post instead of being posted separately.

I recently got the God of War Collection for the PS3, and after completing GoW II I discovered that my European copy is apparently censored compared to the US version, and in a way that makes no sense. Disregarding the weird "nudity is more harmful than violence" stance that censors have, the censorship in GoW II is even more baffling as the censorship isn´t consistent. The first instance of censorship is the woman in the bed during the nightmare sequence, in my copy of the game she´s got a sheet draped over her lower body, while in the uncensored version she´s naked, and apparently that´s bad, even though the game´s full of bare breasts to begin with. The other thing I´ve heard about being censored is the cage-burning, in my game the cage contains an undead soldier, but in the uncensored version it apparently is a real live human, I can´t see why that was changed, it´s a cruel scene, yes, but the game already contains other moments of killing human characters in bloody ways, like when you feed a still living human to a grinding wheel in order to jam it, so why was the burning scene altered? It annoys me that I only found out about the censorship after I had bought the game, I hate it when I buy a dvd or game only to find out I´ve gotten an inferior version.

...What would your Fatality move be like?

I recognize some of those ending screens, others I´m guessing at. 1) Final Fantasy VII? 5) Super Mario Bros 3 11) Tekken 2. If only they´d remake that ending with modern-day CGI, and reenacted with *both* Nina and Anna. 13) Street Fighter II? 14) Goldeneye? 15) Super Metroid 17) Resident Evil 2 27) Mortal Kombat II? 28) The Legend of Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link 29) Puzzle Fighter II 30) Punch-Out? 31) Super Mario Bros

Being touched emotionally by the Mass Effect 2 DLC "Overlord", and reading Sarahs blogpost about videogames not considered art, made me want to start a thread to share the videogame moments that got to us emotionally. This thread will include both current-gen and retro games, I just didn´t feel like starting two separate threads. To get back to "Overlord", the DLC has you investigating a research station experimenting with captured geths (a robotic lifeform that was the enemy in ME1), its AI has gone rogue and switched on the geths, and had them kill everyone in the station, and is threatening to upload itself to systems offplanet, the mission is clear: find out what went wrong, and shut down the AI. So you arrive at the station and are almost immediately greeted by video screens of the AIs virtual face screaming at you in an intelligible machine voice, and this continues as you go deeper into the station, finding one survivor: the head scientist in charge of the geth research. As you progress deeper you´re also witness to holographic flashbacks of the events at the space station, apparently the head scientist discovered that his autistic brother was able to understand the geth language and mimic it, making him the ideal go-between for an experimental uplink to the geth network. And that´s where things are turned upside down: the autistic brother didn´t really want to talk to the geth as his brother wanted him to, their communication was like noise in his head, and he pleaded for it to stop, but shouldered on for his brothers sake. But then the head scientist went and restrained his brother in a cybernetic chair, linked him to the geth network through cables to his head, and another two large tubes into his mouth, presumably to feed him, leaving him only able to move his eyes, and there the brother is incapacitated, the noise of the geth network filling his mind, and the scared brother screaming for it to stop, something the captured geth took as an order and began killing everybody on the station. So what happened was that the villain was the victim, the villain was the head scientist who had helped you up till that point with your descent into the station, and I was both repulsed, sympathetic and blown away with this twist. Another game that got to me was the old PS2 title "Oni", you´re helped during the first half of the game by your android partner, but about halfway through the game she is kidnapped, and you go on a rescue mission. After much fighting you reach her, only to discover that your own employers have set you up, and are using your android partner as a remote controlled bomb to get rid of you, but your android partner has managed to delay the ignition long enough for you to get out of the room, so you´re told to go and leave her to die, and once you´ve moved into the next room you hear the explosion from the room she was in, and knows she is dead. I often see scenes like that in movies without it affecting me, but in this game it got to me. Then there´s "Final Fantasy VIII", main character Squall spends the first two thirds of the game struggling with coming out of his shell and admit his feelings for Rinoa, then events lead to Rinoa drifting through space in a spacesuit, and Squall watching from his spaceship, he´s told she can´t be saved, but he finally breaks through his shell and goes out in space in another spacesuit to at least be able to be with Rinoa as she dies, and he with her. Luckily, they come across an abandoned spaceship and can use that to get back to terra firma, and as they sit around in the spaceship, they get to finally talk about their feelings for each other as the song "Eyes on me" plays, getting me all misty, but then the message comes that Rinoa is to be taken in and sealed away permanently when they arrive, as she has now become a witch, and therefore a threat to the entire world. Will they ever catch a break? Presumably, but I´ve still to manage to progress much further, I can never seem to defeat the witch boss holding Rinoa captive.

Super Metroid! I forgot to add that one.