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Captain N... the rest of it. *shrug*
Mar. 29th, 2025 03:33 amIt has been over two years, but I finally got around to (re)watching the rest of Captain N: The Game Master.
( Blah blah blah )
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"The Nerd celebrates 20 years of Angry Video Game Nerd in AVGN episode 215, with the series that started it all and this time he's going to decide what the greatest Castlevania game of all time is for good!"
It's an interesting video, but just to be clear, he's talking about what he thinks is "the greatest Castlevania game of all time" ...while not even mentioning any game post-Symphony of the Night at all, aside from Castlevania Chronicles (which was a remake of a much older game), and no game beyond the original Playstation era. So, take it with a grain of salt.
However, even with that said, even taking all the newer games into account, I personally find it difficult to argue with his pick of Castlevania 4 (aka Super Castlevania) for the SNES as being the best of all time. I love
(EDIT) Oh, and I was reminded by some of the comments under the video that the Castlevania: Nocturne series came out last year. I'd completely forgotten about that. Guess I need to get on that. (/EDIT)
"5 Awesome Overshadowed NES Games"
May. 26th, 2023 07:15 pm"When you think of the NES, you think of a lot of bad games thanks to The Nerd, but I wanted to take a little time to look at some of the really good ones today that people don't talk about and are worth playing!"
James is right. Aside from Duck Tales 2 (which I'd heard of, but haven't played myself), I hadn't heard of any of those games before. And they do look pretty interesting, at least for old-school NES games.
(The previous post.) (EDIT) Yeah... this is as far as I got before I just completely bailed. (/EDIT)
( Read more... )
Huh... I guess I'll just make this a double post and watch the next episode as well, since they're a two-parter. (Apparently the only one in the series, oddly enough.)
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
Huh... I guess I'll just make this a double post and watch the next episode as well, since they're a two-parter. (Apparently the only one in the series, oddly enough.)
( Read more... )
Captain N episode 1x02 - "How's Bayou?"
Feb. 11th, 2023 11:23 pm(The previous post. The next post.)
Just going to go right into it.
( Notes behind cut )
(Man, these posts are going to go to [even more] shit if those Youtube videos ever get taken down.)
Just going to go right into it.
( Notes behind cut )
(Man, these posts are going to go to [even more] shit if those Youtube videos ever get taken down.)
Doing a rewatch of all of Captain N now.
Feb. 10th, 2023 12:48 am(The next post in this episodic "review" "series.")
To follow up on that thing from before.
Or, at least, I just finished watching the first episode anyway. While doing so, I took notes. Which I will copy/paste here (just as I figured I would end up doing, as stated in the notes themselves). This might become a thing with the rest of the episodes, too. Or it might not. We'll see, I guess.
Slightly edited copy/pasted notes starts here:
( Behind cut )
To follow up on that thing from before.
Or, at least, I just finished watching the first episode anyway. While doing so, I took notes. Which I will copy/paste here (just as I figured I would end up doing, as stated in the notes themselves). This might become a thing with the rest of the episodes, too. Or it might not. We'll see, I guess.
Slightly edited copy/pasted notes starts here:
( Behind cut )
"Probably the two most popular Captain N: The Game Master episodes which feature Link and Zelda. Both episodes in one shot."
So, want to know what eleven year old me thought was the absolute coolest shit ever, at the time? *points up* (Until that gets copyright claimed, anyway.)
It was basically Link and Zelda from The Super Mario Bros. Super Show! (voiced by the same actors), except in Captain N: The Game Master. Ah... 1990.
Does it still hold up in 2023? Ehhhhhhhhh... kinda? Not really? Okay, maybe not as well as the Dungeons and Dragons cartoon did, but it was all right, I guess. Granted, these are the only two episodes of Captain N that I've seen in a very long time, in contrast to recently watching the entirety of the D&D cartoon. But then, these are what I consider to be the best two episodes of Captain N, so... *shrug*
Nitpicks:
- Someone's trying to revive Ganon? Gee, I wonder who could be behind this plot it's Mother Brain, Kevin, it's always Mother Brain. Speaking of Mother Brain... she seems excessively weird to me now in a way she did not when I was a kid. Partly because I've played a hell of a lot more Metroid games at this point, compared to the basically zero of them that I'd played back then. In Captain N, it's literally just Levi Stubbs doing his Audrey II voice and thatsthejoke.jpg I guess, but still... fucking strange. Eggplant Wizard and King Hippo were odd choices for main villains as well, in retrospect, but... eh... it was the 90s, I guess.
- I really didn't care much for Link being a jealous asshole in the first episode who had to learn the Power of Friendship™ from Captain N. That disappointed me even as a kid watching that episode for the first time. And, watching it now, Kevin seemed rather clueless as to why Link was acting like that. Part of it being Kevin (seemingly unintentionally) hotdogging and showing up Link on his own turf (which Link explicitly says later), and part of it being Zelda getting all touchy-feely-kissy with Kevin a time or two when Link was standing right there.
- There was no music at all from the Legend of Zelda games used in either of the episodes, or at least none that I recognized anyway. I just kept hearing different renditions of the (second, as opposed to the first) show main theme.
- That 80s (early 90s?) music though.
- It is with great sorrow that I must report that these episodes were, tragically, created after Gameboy was introduced as a character on the show and that he featured prominently in that first episode. Fortunately, Kevin brought Duke along in the second one instead and left Gameboy at home. As much as people hated Uni in the D&D cartoon, I didn't mind her that much, but, man oh man, Gameboy is weapons-grade shit. It's kind of funny, because both characters were voiced by otherwise beloved voice actor Frank Welker.
Speaking of Mega Man, it was probably for the best that neither he nor Kid Icarus had speaking roles in either of these two episodes.
On a tangential note, I also really appreciate that the video creator left in the Nintendo-themed commercials. Or, in the case of the last one, an Atari commercial for the Mario Bros. game for the Atari 5200. An odd choice, that. (And it was an early precursor to Luigi going around calling out for Mario, too.) As weird as that one was, though, it didn't hold a candle to that truly bizarre Legend of Zelda commercial, though. (That dude was the voice of the Cryptkeeper, by the way.)
"It's Christmas, but a bad Intellivision Amico investment has left Pat without money to buy struffoli -- what happened?! Pat details the Amico disaster, plus a bonus holiday NES game review!"
This is a "Pat the NES Punk" episode (as opposed to a CUPodcast[1] episode) about the colossal scam and failure that was the Intellivision Amico. It is not a funny episode. It's pretty close to the polar opposite of funny. That's not to say that it wasn't still morbidly entertaining, in its own way. That said, it was mostly just 30 minutes (well, more like 18 minutes, because around 5 minutes in, I bumped it up to 2x speed) of Pat saying "I told you so" and ineptly clowning all over the people[2] who supported the Amico and who, more specifically, criticized Pat for criticizing the Amico. Said clowning mostly just involved showing clips of them saying dumb things about how supposedly orgasmic the Amico was going to be, which is pretty much all Pat needed to do to show how clownshoes those guys are. His inane, insipid skits "responding to"/"interacting with" them were just superfluous, in my opinion.
And... ...also a review of the Snow Bros. NES game, I guess? He managed to squeeze that into the video as well. That part of the video was okay, at least. Except for the bits where he tried to tie it back into the Amico shit.
I mean, I get it. These assholes had been gunning for Pat for the past couple of years at least, so it probably felt cathartic for him to make this video, and in that sense I can appreciate it for what it is. I'm just saying it was also a very unfunny attempt at a "funny" video.
[1] - Which is ending, aside from occasional one-off things, as was recently announced and as I only just learned today. Given that my viewing of (Youtube clips of) it had been dropping off recently (mostly due to the fact that they seemed to be more and more using the podcast as a bludgeon against people who wronged them, rather than, you know, just generally shooting the shit about video games or whatever, which was the main reason I started watching it in the first place), this doesn't bother me as much as it would have, say, two or three years ago.
[2] - The only two of which I'd ever even heard of prior to this video were Stuttering Craig (of the now defunct ScrewAttack.com [the old URL for which just redirects to Rooster Teeth/Death Battle now], which I entirely stopped paying attention to after Handsome Tom left/was kicked out of ScrewAttack back in 2008) and Tommy Tallarico himself, who I've never much liked. Of the others who were lampooned in the above embedded video, I'm not able to name a single one of them now, 20 or so minutes after watching it. Well, no, I know one of them apparently was named "Nick," like one of the two main characters in the Snow Bros. game, but that's about it.
Right now, I can only think of one, off the top of my head. That being the Comic Bakery loader theme.
( Youtube embeds behind cut )
I'd guess that there are probably other games that have done this, but if there are, I can't think of them at the moment. Or I haven't heard of them. That's a possibility, too, I suppose. I feel like I've encountered something like this elsewhere, but... *shrug*
And I'm not talking about games that use commercial non-game music (e.g. Brutal Legend, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, or Doom [which is notorious for sort of having used unlicensed music], or any game that uses public domain classical music, etc.). I'm also not talking about games in a series using similar music (e.g. the Mario theme showing up in practically every Mario game, or the Zelda theme doing the same in Zelda games, etc.) or within the same company (e.g. [spoilers for a three decade old computer game] Leisure Suit Larry 3 using music from Police Quest, Space Quest, and King's Quest in it). I'm talking about (non-parody) games that explicitly cover/remix tracks that originally appeared in other, completely separate games by other people/companies, whether with permission or not.
(I feel like I've already made a post about this, at least the Comic Bakery stuff, but if I did, I apparently didn't use any of the obvious tags that I would've used on it, so I can't find it now.)
( Youtube embeds behind cut )
I'd guess that there are probably other games that have done this, but if there are, I can't think of them at the moment. Or I haven't heard of them. That's a possibility, too, I suppose. I feel like I've encountered something like this elsewhere, but... *shrug*
And I'm not talking about games that use commercial non-game music (e.g. Brutal Legend, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, or Doom [which is notorious for sort of having used unlicensed music], or any game that uses public domain classical music, etc.). I'm also not talking about games in a series using similar music (e.g. the Mario theme showing up in practically every Mario game, or the Zelda theme doing the same in Zelda games, etc.) or within the same company (e.g. [spoilers for a three decade old computer game] Leisure Suit Larry 3 using music from Police Quest, Space Quest, and King's Quest in it). I'm talking about (non-parody) games that explicitly cover/remix tracks that originally appeared in other, completely separate games by other people/companies, whether with permission or not.
(I feel like I've already made a post about this, at least the Comic Bakery stuff, but if I did, I apparently didn't use any of the obvious tags that I would've used on it, so I can't find it now.)
"Garfield - Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN)"
Dec. 23rd, 2022 12:55 am"This is episode 206 of the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN)! In this episode of AVGN, the Nerd talks about everyone's favorite Lasagna Eating Orange Cat, Garfield. From Atari to Sega Genesis, The Nerd will dig into a big pile of Cat Crap!"
"I didn't know Garfield had such deep lore..."
I thought for sure when he said this, especially on the heels of talking about all the crazy and dark Lyman fan theories stuff, that the Nerd was about to bring up the infamous and very weird 1989 story, "Garfield Alone," but... then he didn't.
However, this video is so much more than just Garfield. Well, no, mostly it's Garfield, but I knew when he showed that Game Boy game near the end, things were about to get weird. I used to own the US version of that game, which was, as the video points out, decidedly not a Garfield game. (Though, to be fair, it really wasn't much of a Ghostbusters game, either. ¬_¬) I didn't have the slightest clue about all that other weird shit, though, like how the Bugs Bunny games in the US were Mickey Mouse games in Japan, and the like.
Speaking of Bugs Bunny, it was nice to have Mike back again, even if this was probably just a one-off thing. Maybe not so nice to hear him, though... Nyeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeh... (I'll admit, I did chuckle a bit the longer it went on.)
As a kid, I was more of a Heathcliff guy, though even with that, I preferred the bits with Riff Raff and the Catillac Cats, rather than the actual Heathcliff stuff. The Heathcliff comics stuff... not so much. Also, this.
"TMNT Cowabunga Collection - New Info!"
Jul. 27th, 2022 11:35 pm"We spoke to the developer of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection at Comic Con. We discuss what we saw and the goodies planned to be included!"
Huh... I didn't know that about the third TMNT Game Boy game (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue), that it was basically a Metroidvania game. Makes me wish I'd gotten it as a kid, since I only owned and played the first two Game Boy games. And, yeah, Back from the Sewers wasn't nearly as good as Fall of the Foot Clan. The only good thing I can say about BftS over FotFC is that the second game used the actual Krang theme[1] when you fight him, unlike the first game which just used some generic boss music. As for the soundtracks over all... ... ...*shrug* I like them both. The second one's probably got more to it, though. I hope the third game's is as good. ...I mean, I guess I could just listen to it and see/hear.
And yeah, on the whole, the Cowabunga Collection sounds pretty awesome. I'm sure I'll get it eventually.
Ah, the days back when Konami didn't suck shit. I.e. back when they actually still fucking made real-ass video games.
[1] - For reference. (EDIT) I tried linking to the actual TV show version a few times, but the videos kept getting blocked/removed for whatever dumbshit reasons, so fuck it. *weary sigh* It's basically the same as the arcade game version, there, just a lot slower and more mellow. (/EDIT)
Tags:
"This is episode 202 of the Angry Video Game Nerd (AVGN) and The Nerd is talking Contra! After years of playing nothing but crappy games, The Nerd's dreams are fulfilled through a wish on a monkey's paw, allowing him to finally play something good. Contra for NES is one of those games that everyone has nostalgia for and the AVGN is no different, so he's taking us back to the past to relive a series near and dear to his heart. While focusing on the original Nintendo Entertainment System classic and it's sequel Super C, The Nerd also checks out Contra Arcade, Operation C, Contra III: The Alien Wars, Contra: Hard Corps, Contra: Legacy of War, C The Contra Adventure, and Contra 4. -- Contra is a run-and-gun shooter game originally developed and published by Konami for arcades in 1987, before coming to homes on the NES in 1988. Also known as Gryzor and Probotector in some regions."
I was never really all that into Contra. I mean, sure, I definitely played it, back in the days when my sister would take us (me and her daughter, my niece, who is only a few years younger than me) to Brewer's Movie Club every once in a while, and we'd rent a game or two for her NES. (I never owned a NES myself.) Never got very far back in those days, even with the Konami code. I've since beaten it, via PC emulators and save-states and all that, but that's not really the same, I guess. Also never owned or played the sequels on other systems (outside of maybe a few minutes on an emulator as, again, I just never really got into the series).
That said, I definitely acknowledge Contra as one of the formative games on the NES for many, alongside Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda and Metroid and Castlevania and Mega Man and the like.
"Top 25 NES Games Ranked!"
Apr. 22nd, 2022 04:37 pm"We discuss the top 25 NES games ranked, as compiled from journalist Seth Abramson. Do we agree with the list?"
I've got no real problems with the list, but then, same as last time, I haven't played a ton of NES games to be able to make such a list myself. I'd agree that either Super Mario Bros. 3 or The Legend of Zelda should be in the top spot, for sure, as that's kind of a no-brainer really.
I still just find it rather surreal to be thinking about Seth Abramson in a context of "video games" rather than a context of "exposing Donald Trump's bullshit six months to a year or more before anyone in the mainstream media even sniffs at it."
"WORST 8-bit and 16-bit Arcade Ports"
Dec. 19th, 2021 12:29 pm"What are the *worst* arcade ports to appear on 8- and 16-bit consoles?"
As much as I played the hell out of the NES port of the TMNT arcade game as a kid, yeah... no, it does not in any way, shape, or form hold up at all to the actual arcade game.
Aside from Mortal Kombat (which did indeed suck on SNES), I haven't really played a lot of the other ports they talk about (or the original games either, in some cases). I vaguely remember the arcade Ikari Warriors being cool, but the only experience I have of the NES version is the AVGN video about it.
"We combined 275 speedruns from speedrun.com/smb1 into one single video! Custom software, sophisticated image processing techniques, and tedious manual procedures."
"We discuss the 8-Bit Christmas movie trailer -- is it a nostalgia cash-in, or does it look good?"
I was completely unaware of the existence of this movie until I watched that CUPodcast clip. And now that I am aware of it... eh... it seems innocuous enough. I mean, it's definitely nostalgia bait, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, if the movie is still good (which remains to be seen, in this case). If I had access to HBO Max, I'd probably give it a watch. Since I don't have access (and don't have any interest in gaining access) to HBO Max, however, I don't know when or if I'd ever be able to watch it. *shrug* I have to admit, the "untraceable cash money" line in the trailer got a legit chuckle out of me, at least, but other than that... meh... as a whole, it's nothing I'd lose sleep over missing out on. And yeah, I can see how it looks like it's trying to be the current generation's A Christmas Story or whatever, but that doesn't really bother me or interest me, good or bad.
It's certainly not a movie that I'd have gone out of my way to go see in theaters, had it been released in theaters, but that's not saying much, since it has been probably half a decade or more since the last time I went to see any movie in a theater. I think it was, like, Big Hero 6 or something, and even that was only because my sister was taking her family to see it and asked me if I wanted to come along. At this point in time, the only movie that I'd be even remotely interested in maybe seeing in theaters is probably Ghostbusters: Afterlife, but even that is something I'd probably sleep on until I could watch it at home at some point in the nebulous future (even ignoring COVID-19 considerations or whatever).
Holy fucking shit. After all the decades I've been using Winamp, I had no fucking clue until now that you could simply change its output via the "Nullsoft Disk Writer" plugin to write to a file instead of playing to speaker as normal. At first, I only had .wav available for output, which still would have been okay, since I could have manually converted them to .mp3 with Audacity, but then I found that it was an ludicrously simple thing to install the proper LAME codec so that Winamp would output them as .mp3 files directly, instead of just .wav files. Apparently, it will do the same with .flac or whatever as well, if that's more your cup of tea these days and you have the proper codec and all. I'm more old school and prefer .mp3, myself.
Anyway, the upshot to all of this is that I can now simply load all those video game files (e.g. .spc files for SNES music) and convert them to mp3 soundtracks super easy now (and, as a result, listen to said soundtracks a lot more frequently than I have in the past). Granted, you need to already have the proper plugins and dll files and shit to let Winamp play those kind of things in the first place, but I've had that shit for years. I'd done some spc->mp3 conversions and such in the past, but it was always kind of like pulling teeth, as I'd had to jump through esoteric hoops to do it in a more manual, hands-on kind of way. No longer.
It took maybe 10-15 minutes (if even that much, since I wasn't really keeping a close eye on the time) for Winamp to convert the entire three and half hour long EarthBound .spc gamerip soundtrack into .mp3 files (189 files total, a lot of which are just sound effect shit that I'll probably delete... though I may find some use for some of those as alert noises on my new phone, maybe). That would have likely taken multiple hours if I'd done it the more manual way I used to do it. Fucking hell, I wish I'd known about this years ago. -_-;
Well then, in any case, I know what I'm probably going to be doing for the next day or so now.TomorrowLater today, though, as it's already well after 3:00am as I type this.
Anyway, the upshot to all of this is that I can now simply load all those video game files (e.g. .spc files for SNES music) and convert them to mp3 soundtracks super easy now (and, as a result, listen to said soundtracks a lot more frequently than I have in the past). Granted, you need to already have the proper plugins and dll files and shit to let Winamp play those kind of things in the first place, but I've had that shit for years. I'd done some spc->mp3 conversions and such in the past, but it was always kind of like pulling teeth, as I'd had to jump through esoteric hoops to do it in a more manual, hands-on kind of way. No longer.
It took maybe 10-15 minutes (if even that much, since I wasn't really keeping a close eye on the time) for Winamp to convert the entire three and half hour long EarthBound .spc gamerip soundtrack into .mp3 files (189 files total, a lot of which are just sound effect shit that I'll probably delete... though I may find some use for some of those as alert noises on my new phone, maybe). That would have likely taken multiple hours if I'd done it the more manual way I used to do it. Fucking hell, I wish I'd known about this years ago. -_-;
Well then, in any case, I know what I'm probably going to be doing for the next day or so now.
"The Legend of Zelda 35th Anniversary!"
Feb. 26th, 2021 04:11 pm"The Legend of Zelda turned 35! We discuss the historical importance of this legendary game!"
And... there we go. The last hold out on the shilling has finally stopped holding out. (If Pat and Ian have done this before, I don't recall seeing it, and I don't watch every podcast segment video they put out, so it wouldn't surprise me if they'd done it in the past.) Now, all but one Youtube content creator I watch has, at some point or another, shilled some vapid product that I don't care about. *weary sigh* (The exception being John Oliver, because he has HBO money and doesn't need to shill for random shit like that. Of course, HBO has the asinine annoyance of region-locking to make up for the lack of annoyance with the random shilling.)
Anyway, as to the actual video.
My first memories of The Legend of Zelda... it was either watching The Super Mario Brothers Super Show, because the Friday Zelda segments were, to me, always better than the Mario stuff (and, later, when Link and Zelda, with the same voices from the Mario show, appeared on Captain N: The Game Master, that fucking blew my mind)... or it was when I went to the home of one of my fellow Cub Scout troop members and played Zelda for like five minutes or so. Pretty much the only thing that I recall from that is that they told me to not use the bow and arrow, because it used a rupee every time you shot it.
I don't think I ever fully played through either The Legend of Zelda or Zelda II until... hell, probably a decade or more after I'd played Link's Awakening on Game Boy and A Link to the Past on SNES (in that order), and even that was via an emulator. I've never played more than maybe an hour or so of the NES Zelda games on the original hardware.
"We think The Legend of Zelda (1986) is the most influential game of it's time, if not of all time. On this episode of Cinemassare's Retail Reviews Mike, Ryan, and Kieran take a look at what made the first Zelda so groundbreaking. Zelda is an action-adventure video game developed and published by Nintendo and designed by Shigeru Miyamoto and Takashi Tezuka. Set in the fantasy land of Hyrule, the plot centers on an elf-like boy named Link, who aims to collect the eight fragments of the Triforce of Wisdom in order to rescue Princess Zelda from the antagonist, Ganon. During the course of the game, the player controls Link from a top-down perspective and navigates throughout the overworld and dungeons, collecting weapons, defeating enemies and uncovering secrets along the way."
I don't think they said anything here that was really wrong or controversial or whatever. I tried to think of any other game that might be more influential than The Legend of Zelda, and I honestly couldn't think of anything.
And yeah, I'm like that Kieran guy a lot of the time. As I've mentioned in other posts, I'll often start playing a huge game like, for example, Oblivion or Fallout New Vegas and get super far into them, maybe even right up to the point of almost finishing them, but then I'll stop playing, for whatever reason and sometimes even for no real reason, and just move on to something else. Like in Oblivion I did pretty much everything that it was possible to do in that game, except for doing the final few quests of the main storyline. Or like the one time I've played Fallout 2, I made it all the way to the start of the Enclave oil rig, and then never touched it again.
That said, however, I have finished every Zelda game that I've ever played, which is most of them. The only ones of the mainline series that I haven't played yet are the most recent ones, A Link Between Worlds and Breath of the Wild (or the new Link's Awakening remake). I don't really count those multiplayer things (Four Swords, Four Swords Adventures, Tri Force Heroes) as mainline games, and I'm definitely not talking about the spinoffs like Hyrule Warriors or the Tingle games or especially the CD-i shit or whatever else, regardless of however good or bad those may be on their own merits (or lack thereof, as the case may be).
