The Nerd was summoned by his audience to cover a game that is reportedly worse than Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Big Rigs, and Desert Bus. That game being Hong Kong 97, developed by Happy Soft (their one and only title). The game is incredibly rare. So rare that he couldn't get a hold of a cartridge, let alone a picture of what the game box art would look like. So he is forced to play the game on an emulator.
The Nerd picks on the game, talking about how desperate the developers were trying to contract other developers to work with, and retail stores to sell the game. He notices a lot of images that were stolen from different sources, such as Jackie Chan as seen in Wheels on Meals. He hangs up on the introduction screen, baffled yet giggling over how over the top ridiculous the concept was for better or worse. He was also surprised by the fact that it's a Super Famicom game that says fuck.
On the game itself, it is a shoot-em-up where you play as Chin who has to murder a bunch of soviet officers incoming, while dodging obstacles and collecting power-ups for points. All on one life. Forcing you to go through the introduction all over again before playing it. The Nerd is noticeably disturbed over the game over screen, which he is convinced features a real photo of a corpse. He is also annoyed by the constantly looping music track that never changes, as well as the random backgrounds.
With not much else to add, the Nerd mentions that Deng Xiaoping passed away in 1997, which convinced the Nerd that the game predicted the future. He also notes that a movie that happens to be titled Hong Kong 97, which had the tagline "99 years of British rule are about to come to an end... Hong Kong will never be the same", that did actually happen in the same here. He starts going through the many coincidences in how many of the events that occurred in 1997. As he comes full circle, he makes one final conclusion that the game is all about a cycle of life, and what keeps life going: Reproduction and food. Which becomes shit... "The game is fuckin' shit."
Briefly featured NES games: Moon Ranger, Kid Niki, Dudes with Attitude, Deathbots, and Mad Max. Other games include: Duckwing Duck and Duck Tales
The Nerd goes over a bunch of NES games as he tries to find one to review, but is ultimately unable to think of any of them to try. So he decides to do something new: Review a game on the Turbo Grafx 16 (aka the PC-Engine). He talks about how the system was made to compete with the NES, but was soon trampled by the Sega Genesis, and became the black sheep of the 16-bit era. While it was not as popular, and it lacked the same third party support that its competitors had, the Nerd finds this to be a good thing as that meant "less shitty games" and praised the library for having a lot of good games without any major stinkers. He believes to had found one stinker with Darkwing Duck, based on the cartoon of the same name.
With the game started, the Nerd is impressed by the stage select and the overall presentation, but soon finds himself annoyed with the first level with how it is designed, and how incredibly difficult it is to collect a certain item, and how he had to take damage to progress the level. He also doesn't like how there isn't much ammo to collect, and how annoying the boss fights are where the hit detection gets incredibly picky, and sometimes outright cheats by moving you towards an obstacle to take damage. The other method of attacking is jumping on enemies, which sometimes result in you taking damage, and sometimes it doesn't. He also finds the puzzles you are presented to be too difficult for its own good, owing to how a detailed background is behind the puzzle itself, making it confusing to tell which piece is part of the puzzle or part of the background. He also finds the controls to be delayed, even demonstrating it on screen.
His breaking point occurs in a platforming section where the platforms are moving up-down and left-right. He decides to take his time to make the jump proper, before a safe falls on the player character. The Nerd gives up on the game, and is convinced that part of the game is the developers saying "Fuck You" to the child audience. He wonders how the NES version of the game, along with Duck Tales, played so much better, and yet the Turbo Grafx 16 version of the game is so bad. He introduces the shit-scale (to visually demonstrate just how bad the game is), and compares it to the CD-i Zelda games in terms of how bad it is. While he doesn't consider it the worst game ever, he does consider it the worst game he's ever played on the Turbo Grafx 16 so far.
Also featured: Explosive Fighter Patton (FC)
The Nerd opens up with admiring the Sega Dreamcast and how great of a game console it was before Sega stopped making game consoles. He finds that the dreamcast did not have many bad games for it, but he was requested to review the odd-ball of the whole collection: Seaman. The Nerd starts off the review by noticing how the Sega Dreamcast menu requires you to set a clock, which seemed to annoy him. However, his annoyance quickly turn into surprise as he is greeted with the voice of the late Leonard Nimoy, who narrates the game and provides commentary at key portions, much to the Nerd's admiration. In fact, he dedicates the whole review to Leonard Nimoy. The Nerd starts the game off by storing the egg into the tank and being forced to wait. After a review of the back-story, the Nerd is soon greeted by the Seamen .
Through out the game, he has to help mature the Seamen by taking care of the tank, pump in the air, turn up the heat, harvest some food by maintaining the insect cage, keep the Seamen fed, and utilize the microphone attachment to socialize with the Seamen , answering their questions and all whenever they are in the mood. The game requires you to leave and come back every now and then, but The Nerd, having nothing better to do, goes in and out the game after five minutes at a time (much to Nimoy's concern). He decides to pass the time by playing a Famicom game called Explosive Fighter Patton (another request), but was caught by surprise by the Precision F-Strike the game contained (an official Famicom game no less), which managed to distract the Nerd for over a couple of days. Once he realized he forgot about Seaman, he came back to find them passed away from neglect, forcing the Nerd to start all over. He does attempt to exploit the games' internal clock by setting it forward a few hours so that he can progress faster on a single setting. As he discovers a lot of quirky moments, even getting immersed and emotional with his conversations with the Seamen , he does manage to play it to the end.
The Nerd does admit that he was being negative on the game, but he does say that the game is actually really good as a pet simulator game, and how it does an excellent job with its speech-recognition. Soon, the Seaman starts to talk to him, insisting that they exist due to the Nerd's perception of their sentience. As he starts to show his approval of them, the Seaman would utter the line "All hail Sega! Buy another Dreamcast", leading the Nerd to believe that the Seamen are actually looking to take over the world, replacing the identity of many of its inhabitants, and decides that he'll speed the game up forward in time to prevent them from doing so, reducing himself to bones in the process. A sentient Leonard Nimoy decides to set the clock all the way back to the Nerd's childhood, in which the Seaman ends up playing him.
It's mischief night as the Nerd opens the door to find a paper bag lit on fire and puts it out with his shoe. He would then reveal that it is actually The Crow for the Sega Saturn. He decides to talk about the first movie, but mentions that there are actually no games based on it. But the sequel: The Crow: City of Angels, was released prior to the game being made.
As the game starts, the Nerd takes an immediate disliking to the controls, where he disapproves of the tank-controls and how delayed and wonky combat is, with how his characters' fists and feet keep going through the enemies without actually making the mark. He also disapproves of the awkward camera angles and with how dark the game appears, sometimes making it hard to see, and the camera angles sometimes don't even change up. When he has to combat multiple enemies at once, he has a hard time due to the poor controls. It got to the point where he points out that the CG cut-scenes in the game demonstrate some good fighting, which served to tease him. The gun combat is also hard to control due to it being difficult to aim, although the enemies have no such problem, as the Nerd believes the game to be over once you face enemies with firearms.
After attempting to see more of the game with the password system, he soon gives up and decides to remove the game and mock it with a wide variety of insults hurled at it, before throwing it to the ground. As the video is about to conclude, Board James shows up on the monitor, demanding a Halloween special of his own, leading to 13 Dead End Drive.
The complete marathon on youtube
Featured cover art from the following games* : Pro Wrestling (SMS), Mega Man 1-3 (NES), Shatterhand (NES), Action Fighter (SMS), Shingen the Ruler (NES), Phalanx (SNES), Snow White and the 7 Clever Boys (PS2), Action in New York (NES), Rallo Gump (DOS), Ghost Lion (NES), Eliminator Boat Duel (NES), Street Hockey '95 (SNES), Irritating Stick (PS1), Crackout (NES), Cock'in (C64), Treasure Master (NES), Karnaaj Rally (GBA), Hell Fighter (NES), Scrapyard Dog (A7800), Rollerblade Racer (NES), Killer Kong (ZXS), Hammerin' Harry (NES), Super Duper Sumos (GBA), The Ultimate Stuntman (NES), and X-Man (A2600)
As an extra bonus for the holidays, the Nerd decides to count down the days to Christmas by discussing some bad cover art in video games (in addition to another holiday AVGN special) one day at a time. The Nerd does mention that to never judge a book by its cover, but with video games, especially at a time where the Internet was not as prominent or present, the cover alone has to try to sell the game. The results were the covers for games that may not had done that job well.
With Christmas here again, the Nerd comments about how the weather is getting really cold, which reminds him of an N64 game he had never played before: Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero. He briefly talks about the Mortal Kombat series and how much of an impact it had on the world, even briefly commenting on the different versions available. He also spoke highly of Mortal Kombat Trilogy, but never ever looked at Mythologies. So he decides to play it.
While he finds the game to be similar to the other Mortal Kombat games, he is quickly surprised by the side-scrolling style of the game play where it behaves more like an adventure game. He is annoyed by the RPG elements present, considering that he played other Mortal Kombat games in the past, and said that having Sub-Zeros special moves locked from the beginning is more of a tease. The combat itself feels awkward (despite being just like the previous Mortal Kombat games) due to how the player now has to press a button to change where Sub-Zero is facing, and it made the platforming elements stiff to perform. The Nerd also had a hard time navigating past death traps, and notes that there are an abundance of them.
The Nerd briefly talks about the Playstation 1 version of the game, noting that both games are similar, but the N64 has still images and text to advance the plot, while the Playstation 1 version featured full-motion video. The Nerd could only comment "just stick to Mortal Kombat: Annihilation."
He was unable to find enjoyment in the game due to the huge abundance of death traps, the stiff jumping, and the ridiculous enemies he had to face, one of which was able to stun-lock him into defeat. He then decides to shut the game off and perform a fatality on it.
