The post-movie season. This is where James had wrapped up the movie and had since been uploading his videos straight on youtube, and his own website: Cinemassacre.
Featured NES games: Total Recall, Last Action Hero, Conan, Commando (by Capcom, not based on the movie), and Predator.
After a long hiatus, the Nerd is back. So is Arnold Schwarzenegger, as the Nerd says, who is back getting his acting career back on track with the release of the Expendables 2. The Nerd decides to celebrate this moment by reviewing NES games based on movies that starred Schwarzenegger. While starting off optimistic as he reveals how excited he was when he first played Total Recall for the NES, only to devolve into rage when he caps it off with how the game ruined his whole weekend.
The game itself appears to be a simple platformer/beat-em-up title, with some weird stage design for the first stage (with fists coming out of holes that look more like glory holes), and the end of the stage being pretty confusing where you are supposed to beat the main character's wife before the villain shows up to gun you down. The Nerd does appreciate how the game tried its best to be as faithful to the movie as it possibly could, in spite of some scenes that obviously wouldn't be adapted. Aside from that and some other oddities, the Nerd isn't too impressed with this game. Before moving on, he briefly mentions the two Terminator games for NES, talking about how the first game had horrible controls while the other wasn't very good either.
The Nerd then moves on to Last Action Hero, but is immediately disappointed by how worse the graphics appear, even comparing it to Total Recall and even E.T.. Aside from that, it's a generic beat-em-up, minus the skill, as the Nerd resorts to button mashing and hoping he wins against the thugs. While there were plenty of levels, all of which are based on scenes from the movie, they don't have any variety or change in game design as all of them are just straight paths with different colors and backgrounds. He decided that the game should suck a dick.
With his hopes waning, the Nerd picks out Conan for NES, blurting out "how could this be bad?!" Then he turns the game on and finds the graphics to be bad, and the controls to be even worse. B is attack, while up on the d-pad is jump, and pressing down does a forward-jump. Not only does that tick him off, he finds the first level to be like a maze, and confusing to beat, requiring you to defeat a certain enemy to gain a weapon, which is the only weapon that will work against the boss in the level. What angers him further is how the later stages are more straight forward. He then concludes that the game may actually be based on the character, and not on the movie itself, and thus made the Nerd waste his time.
As he drowns himself with rolling rock, he talks about Commando for the NES briefly. While it is not based on the Schwarzenegger movie of the same name, he finds the game to be a lot more enjoyable and straight-forward.
Finally, the Nerd pulls out Predator. He feels that this is a mans game and that it can't possibly be bad. As soon as he starts it, he finds that Dutch Schaffer is (ironically) wearing pink. Already in a bad mood, the Nerd finds the numerous other problems that plague this game, such as the awful level design, the random assortment of enemies that would fit better in Metroid than Predator, the game design in general (such as using grenades to blow up blocks, which cannot be relied on most of the time, the weapon placement where sometimes it will try to force you to use your fists, and even the addition of a suicide function where pausing the game and pressing any other button will kill off your character), and even the disappointing battles against the Predators who are all simple to defeat and offer no challenge, with the exception of the end boss, which is a floating head of a Predator. The Nerd was caught off guard by "Big Mode" where the game becomes a side-scrolling shoot-em-up with Schaffer being three times the in-game size, which happens once every three stages. This is also unappealing to look at or play.
One major problem is that while the game does allow you to continue the level you got a game over on by selecting "continue" on the title screen, the cursor is placed on the "start" option first, meaning you have to be careful and make sure to go down by pressing select (close to the start button) before pressing start. The Nerd made this mistake once half way into the game. Realizing he had to start all over, he goes into drunken rage as he angrily goes through the entire game. He makes it to the final boss and manages to defeat it while in a fever-pitch. All that work and rage for a generic A Winner Is You ending.
As a Halloween special, the Nerd reveals that this game was requested at a convention that he held autograph signings at where everyone in line wanted him to review this game. He does clarify that this is actually a pretty good game, but it is also one of the hardest games ever made. Of special note, this was technically the first NES game he had ever played (next to the Super Mario Bros + Duck Hunt cartridge included with the system), and had admitted that he never once had beaten the game.
The Nerd does find the level design, the graphics, the music, all of it good, but he finds the game's difficulty to be insane, more so than Castlevania. One weapon that he finds and uses the most is the knife, feeling that it is the best weapon in the game due to its range, strength, and how many he is able to throw, while he ignores every other weapon. Once he gave the flames a chance, he finds it to be terrible and had to grind at one part of level 2 in order to get the knife back. He did find an axe too, but opted to avoid it. While the difficulty is quite high, he does appreciate the fact that checkpoints are present, and you can continue where you left off from these checkpoints, with the only penalty being that you lose all your points for the high score.
Most of his problems came from stage 6 of the game. One weapon he saw early in that stage is the shield, which he ignores. He goes through the stage like usual, although he has to fight a bunch of minibosses, plus a few devils along the way, which are the most annoying enemies in the game. Before he goes further, he then recalls something he heard, where the shield is required to complete this stage, otherwise he would had been sent back to stage 5. Whether or not that's true, he chose not to find out and decides to go back to the shield. That's when he focuses on the time limit, and how he has just enough to clear out most of the stage (none of the enemies respawn on your current life), return to get the shield (which is like the javelin except it has a shorter range, but it can block projectiles too) and attempted to finish the level, only to lose to the devil. So he decides to spend a good chunk of time to get the knife back and repeat the process. After two more attempts, he finally beats stage 6 and makes it to the final boss, who is Satan, and plays more like a 1-on-1 battle, similar to a certain other Capcom title.
The Nerd is victorious in the end, as he gleefully cheers about how he had finally beaten the first game he had ever played after all these years. However, the game then throws a curve ball, telling him, in "Blind Idiot" Translation quality, that this is "just an illusion devisied by satan" and to "go challenge dauntlessly." With the Nerd now twice as angry, he perseveres anyway, and despite reliving all those hardships, he does manage to beat the game again to get the true ending, which is yet another A Winner Is You text that is horribly mistranslated.
With the Nerd unable to think of any swears, he decides that he has to use his old tricks, and mock the game in the style of an RPG game, with references to TV Tropes to boot.
Featured Atari 2600 games: Football, Real Sports Football, Super Challenge Football, Super Football, Basketball, Home Run, Super Challenge Baseball, Real Sports Baseball, Ice Hockey, Real Sports Volley Ball, Boxing, Real Sports Boxing, Tennis, Real Sports Tennis, Grand Prix, Math Gran Prix, Karate, International Soccer, Pele's Soccer, Golf, and Miniature Golf.
The Nerd talks about how he has been playing video games of the fantastical nature, such as Legend of Zelda, but he has been requested to review sports games in the past. He admits that he knows nothing about sports, aside from racing and boxing. He has noticed how there are numerous baseball games, a bunch of basketball games (NBA Jam being one of note), and football games (not to be confused with the international football, or futbol or soccer), which the Madden series is especially noted. The Nerd expresses his annoyance with the abundance of Madden games, listing off 91'-2003 in rapid succession before going crazy over it. After calming down, he decides to go to the Atari 2600 where sports games were a lot more simpler, right down to the names.
He first starts off with Football, which he called it one of the worst games he ever played, with how the graphics are misrepresented and how bare-bones the gameplay was. He does clarify that football games had gotten better as he briefly demonstrates Real Sports Football and Super Challenge Football, and ends with him saying that Super Football is the best out of the four, and that is the one that should be played... or the latest Madden game.
With Basketball, he finds the game both simple, intuitive, and even hilarious with the graphics, although he finds it hard that picking the 2 player mode is actually the 1 player game and vice versa. He goes on about Home Run about how it's overly simple and not really like playing baseball. Super Challenge Baseball has somewhat better graphics, but lacks in the game play department. Super Challenge Baseball is about the same graphically, with questionable sound design but better game play. Ice Hockey is pretty simple, although the two players have to switch between two team mates in order to play it. Volleyball gets a pass for its intuitive gameplay and great graphics. Boxing is a rather weird game due to the overhead perspective, but is otherwise playable. Real Sports Boxing comes more closer, despite being more of a button masher, but its main innovation was having a character select. He finds Tennis to be decent, but Real Sports Tennis has improved graphics, and has another innovation of being allowed to input your name in the game. Grand Prix is simplistic and intuitive, but Math Grand Prix involves solving math equations to make your cars move. Karate is a broken fighting game that involves mashing the button to do attacks. International Soccer has a lengthy time limit which dissuades the Nerd from playing further, while Pele's Soccer doesn't look much better graphically, and its game play isn't very good. With Golf, the Nerd is more angered over how such a simple looking game is too complex to play due to the graphics. Miniature Golf is a similar game, only with using squares in place of the players.
After that, the Nerd did admit that while some sports games on the Atari 2600 were innovative, and some weren't very good, he did say that sports games had gotten better since and encouraged his audience who is impartial towards them to keep playing them. Then he makes the heart-warming argument that video game fans and sports fans are not so different in a way, saying that in a way, we're all nerds.
To note: This is the first time the Angry Video Game Nerd theme song made a comeback since the Dark Castle episode, and has remained in the series since, for the most part.
The Nerd descends from the stair case, behind the curtain that leads to his basement. He goes to his couch to talk about Ikari Warriors for the NES and goes on about how frustrating the game is. While the game is difficult, he does know a code that lets him continue anytime he loses all his lives: type in ABBA. He ends up doing this quite often. It does not help that the controls are not well designed, due to the arcade game relying on a rotary joystick to turn the character around to decide where to shoot. The slow movement also does not help much, and with the level going on for a while, the Nerd decides that he needs a second player. He then looks behind his couch as he finds the skeletal remains of the Guitar Guy and decides to revive him with the ABBA method. Once he reanimates, flesh, blood, clothes and everything, he initially refuses to help the Nerd, but does so under the condition that he plays the theme song, thus starting off the episode proper.
As the two play the game, the Guitar Guy also finds the difficulty of the game, and the length of the level to be quite annoying. After playing it for a while and reaching level 2, it is actually the same looking terrain. After a glitch that got him stuff to a rock, he decides to quit the game and just stick to guitar duty. The episode becomes more of a light music video where the Guitar Guy compliments his lyrics with the Nerd's critiques. By the time the Nerd reaches level 3, the overall design finally changes up, except for the music. However, the Nerd died during this level, and the ABBA code did not work, meaning he'd have to start over. Instead, he decides to utilize game genie only for the unlimited lives, and an in-game code that lets him select a level (which itself is a really long process). He does make it to the final boss, which is fairly simple to beat, but he has to dodge a lot of projectiles, and afterward, he'd have to bomb a certain spot on the floor (a fact that is not clued in by the game at all; the Guitar Guy had to look it up in a cheat book) in order to progress.
After clearing the last level, expressing disappointment that this is another short game made as difficult as possible, he does play through it, beat it, and expects a bad ending out of it. While he does get yet another A Winner Is You ending, he is astonished by how grammatically correct and sincere it is. The Nerd could only respond by telling the Guitar Guy to get back behind the couch.
Featured versions: Game boy, Sega Genesis, and NES
The Nerd goes into the Toxic Avenger film briefly, talking about how overly violent and grotesque it was, which somehow made the transition to a children's Saturday morning cartoon: The Toxic Crusaders, which then spawned into video games, which the Nerd said they all suck. He wonders out loud what would Lloyd Kaufman, who created the Toxic Avenger, think of it. Then he reveals that Lloyd Kaufman himself is sitting right next to him. The both of them collaborate on the review of the Game Boy version of Toxic Crusader. While not really a bad game itself, it is rather lengthy for a portable game and nothing of special note, although Kaufman does offer some colorful commentary and some (made-up) film trivia along the way. With the Sega Genesis version, it is a beat-em-up game with platforming elements that doesn't work well, and presents some irony that Toxie himself can be harmed by water, despite being all about cleaning up the environment. The NES game was what got the Nerd really mad. This one is also a beat-em-up with better presentation than the Genesis game (even the soundtrack is much better). However, they find it tough to go through the level in a relatively quick pace due to how Toxie isn't able to do a lot of damage, and how toxic waste now harms him. They do discover a much stronger attack, which can be achieved by hitting the select button. In the end, the Nerd gets too upset to play the game and passes it back to Kaufman, who goes into a rage himself over how bad it is. Kaufman even spat at the screen when he saw his own name on the game. As the Nerd ponders on what to do, Kaufman doesn't hesitate. He takes the cartridge and decides to take a dump all over it. The Nerd, who was so disgusted by this, ends up vomiting on the cartridge as well. A sight that is not for the faint of heart.
Featured hardware: Various Tiger handheld games, Double Dragon: the wrist game, Batman Returns: the wrist game, Game.Com, and the R-Zone Headgear
Featured Game.Com games: Lights Out, Mortal Kombat Trilogy, Duke Nukem, Batman Forever, Jurassic Park: The Lost World, and Resident Evil
Other featured games: Wall Street Kid (NES), Taxman (Apple 2), and Batman Forever (R-Zone)
The Nerd talks about his second episode of the whole series where he referenced Taxman, which what he actually meant was Wall Street Kid for the NES, which is a game about the stock market (which he doesn't like), but also mentioned that out of pure coincidence that there actually is a game called Taxman for the Apple 2 computer, which is just an exact copy of Pac-Man. However, the main thing he wanted to point out was that he talked about the Tiger Wrist games briefly in that video and decided to dedicate a whole episode to a slew of Tiger Electronic video games.
Throughout the video, he would go through the history of how the Game Boy was out, revolutionizing the portable gaming market, and yet the Tiger Handheld games managed to subsist due to being considerable cheaper, simple, and convenient to find in almost any store at the time. The Nerd did criticize how they would literally adapt anything into an electronic handheld device, any movie, tv show, and even existing video games (such as Mega Man 2, Castlevania 2, Sonic the Hedgehog, Resident Evil 2 and so on), and yet they tend to have unintuitive controls, such as sometimes putting movement on the right instead of the left side of different games, having a button that serves as moving forward alone, it's never consistent. It also does not help that the simplicity of it also meant how fragile it was, such as its cheaply made screen that may not work properly with age or light damage, or how the buttons can be damaged easily. The Nerd also finds it annoying as its low quality design makes it difficult to record due to how the screen reflects light back.
After going into an anger induced rant as to how the Tiger games were still alive with products like the Game Boy being around and after the failure of Sega and Konami making similar devices (not counting the Game Gear). After all of that, the Nerd decides to cover the wrist games. He does not say much about the Double Dragon wrist game at first, showing just how poor of an idea it is. Then he brought in the Batman wrist game, which he couldn't open without the help of the Bullshit Man, who rants about the plastic packaging that requires scissors to be used. The Nerd plays it for a little bit, then starts boasting about it before going further and further about how primitive this piece of technology is by mentioning all the other bits. With that said and done, the Nerd surprises the audience with a whole Tiger game console: the Game.Com (pronounced as the Game Com, minus the period for some reason).
The game console itself was pretty innovative for its time for having two cartridges inserted at the same time, having PDA features such as a calender and a note pad, having a touch-screen (although it is rather finicky and still in its primitive stages at the time due to the electrode dots being very noticeable), and allowed you to connect it to the internet via a modem to read your e-mails (text only). The latter of which the Nerd finds baffling considering it is not wireless, and it would be more convenient to just use a computer instead. He would go over the included game, Lights-Out, which is a simple puzzle game with no real problems. Most of the library consists of ports of other games, such as Mortal Kombat Trilogy which lacks some of its important characters and plays very bad on the console. Duke Nukem is nothing special, but the Nerd does appreciate the attempt at quality voice clips for the game. Batman Forever is a boring beat-em-up with a weird sound clip of Batman moaning whenever he takes a hit, though the Nerd interprets it as him taking a big dump. Jurassic Park: The Lost World is a boring driving game with enemies that attack from behind. Resident Evil 2 is an attempt at faithfully recreating the PS1 game, but the Nerd found himself stuck at the first section of the game with a zombie due to the controls not being very obvious. He does eventually figure out how to attack and kills the zombie.
Unsurprisingly, the Game.Com flopped, so Tiger tried again with the R-Zone, which the Nerd is convinced was their attempt at copying Nintendo's Virtual Boy, and says is not only even worse than that console, but the single worst video game console he's ever played thus far. Although he does praise it for having a head-strap, he criticizes it for its ridiculous design and how stupid it looks as a portable console. The games are not any more complex than the previous Tiger games he had played, as he concludes that the handheld is awful, and the game he was playing, Batman Forever, is just as bad. In the end, the Nerd hates the Tiger products, declaring that all of them suck.
The episode starts off with the advertisement for Cinemassacre's Monster Madness Sequel-a-thon 2, particularly for the Alien movie reviews at the time.
The episode starts off with the Nerd talking about the Alien and Aliens, and how the games inspired many NES games with its themes, such as Contra and Metroid. He was confused as to why there were no games based on the first two Alien films on NES. Alien 3 came out for NES around the time the third movie hit theaters. The Nerd ponders if the game really is appropriate for Halloween, and if it is scary enough. Then the episode takes a major tone and scenery shift the moment he lays eyes on the LJN logo. "Ok, now it just got fucking scary!"
The first problem the Nerd encountered was the controls being swapped, with B being jump and A being attack. He also notes that unlike the film that the game is based on, you have a lot of ammo, and there are a lot of aliens on-board, which begs the question why they didn't just adapt a game based on either of the first two films, particularly the second one, and deduced this game was only released to promote the film, with him calling the designers shameless for this*cough*monstermadness*cough*. The game is about rescuing all the prisoners before the time limit. The game also starts you off with three lives and no continues.
While the Nerd had his problem with level design and jumps of difficulty, as well as having a difficult time finding his way to each prisoner, he is able to beat the game, and finds the ending to deviate greatly from the film. He does admit that the game isn't really that bad, which means that this is the closest to an LJN game that he found thus far that is not too bad. The game is mediocre, as the film that the game is based on is also mediocre. The Nerd, still upset over the game, decides to mimic the ending from Alien 3.
Featured indie games: Angry Video Game (PC, by Eric Ruth), AVGN in Pixel Land Blast (PC, by Kevin Berryman), AVGN K.O. Boxing(PC/A2600, Devin Cook), AVGN Planet (PC, by Davidy), AVGN Game Over 1 & 2 (PC, by Lord Gavin Games), Angry Video Game Nerd (A2600, by Lod Mott), AVGN Vs. Dr. Wily (romhack of Megaman 2) (NES, ABO Hiccups), AVGN Monopoly (by Matthew Nielson), Texting of the Bread (iOS), AVGN Nerd Adventures (PC, by Freakzone Games)
The Nerd opens up with how he had become aware that during his career as an angry nerd, people had been making video games based off of him. He expresses his appreciation for this by wishing all the designers well and hoping that they will grow to have long, fulfilling careers in game design, and do a lot more than "a whole company of Laughing, Joking, Numbnuts ever did." He also mentions that the reason he took so long to get around to reviewing these games is because they just took that long to boot up on his Commodore 64.
Starting off with the Angry Video Game, which he provided some voice acting for, he finds the game to be simple, but frustrating due to him throwing beer at enemies that can arc over the target, as well as noting how ridiculous the concepts of the levels can be, such as him jumping on rooftops, and taking on a guitar shaped attack helicopter. He also finds the controls to be difficult to adjust to, where movement and actions are commonly assigned to the arrow keys and the Z and X keys, something that most of the games have as a control method, and finds it hard to use due to how he is used to playing video games (D-Pad on left, buttons on right). He ended up hating his method of attack, noting that he complained about it in Friday the 13th for NES, which had him realize that some of the design choices were all his fault.
The Nerd moves on to AVGN in Pixel Land Blast, which is a 2D shoot-em-up where the Nerd flies with an NES zapper and zaps away bad video games, even taking on bad video game hardware as bosses. He considers this game to be more like therapy, which has him calmed down enough to move onto another game. AVGN K.O. Boxing is similar to Punch-Out!!, except it is done in Atari 2600 style, featuring the Nerd and his guests and alternates as opponents. He finds the game to be really entertaining, especially since he gets to beat himself up. The Nerd then starts on AVGN Planet, which plays like a Metroidvania game that utilizes the WSAD and Mouse control scheme. He finds the game and its presentation very good, but finds the challenge to be lacking somewhat. He would then play Angry Video Game Nerd Game Over, a 2D platformer with beat-em-up elements and a 2D re-imagining of the AVGN introduction. However, he is unable to get far in the game due to it constantly crashing (he takes a moment to reveal that he's actually using a Windows PC which he had recently obtained), much to his disappointment. He does play the sequel, AVGN Game Over 2, and is happy to find that it supports a controller (particularly an X-Box 360 controller). He finds the game to be an upgrade, playing similar to Super Mario World, although it has loose ties to the AVGN character itself.
The Nerd then covers console games. One being an Atari 2600 game simply titled Angry Video Game Nerd, where the Nerd has to destroy bad games descending towards the three game consoles on the bottom (NES, Sega Genesis, and the Atari 2600), and even treats him with random catch phrases each time he misses a game. He finds the game to be very entertaining for how simple it is. The Nerd then cover AVGN Vs. Dr. Wily, which is a rom-hack of Mega Man 2 for the NES. Mega Man is recolored to represent the Nerd, and the levels got redesigned to be even harder.
The Nerd takes a moment as Board James hijacks the show for a moment to show off the Angry Video Game Nerd Monopoly board game, featuring many references and elements from the show, such as the famous catch phrases, video game references, such as how the Atari Jaguar CD looks like a toilet, complete with cards. The Nerd took a moment to ask Board James about how he is here when he should be in prison, even asking about his friends, which caused BJ to leave in anger, insisting he had nothing to do with their murder.
The Nerd then pulls out an old rotary phone so he could play Texting of the Bread (which is actually an iOS game), in which he happens to be a playable character where he has to text out words to defeat gingerbread zombies. Finally, the Nerd covers the Angry Video Game Nerd Adventures, which he personally endorsed and elected to review it to make sure they didn't mess it up. He found the presentation to be amazing, especially the soundtrack, appreciates the variety of playable characters (although he is confused by Mike, having never met him before), and the game play to be quite solid. His complaints start coming in when he notices just how difficult the game truly is, with the abundance of death blocks, the unfair level design, and especially Boo! Haunted House, where the whole level is dark. He especially takes notice to some of the problems of the game that were present because they were based on complaints he made on previous episodes, such as in Super Pitfall where he proposed an unfair beginner's trap. The final level sets him off in anger, but the intensity of the fight against the final boss makes it exhilarating for him.
In the end, he finds the game to be incredibly frustrating, with all the things he complained about in the past to be present in this game in one massive collaboration. He decides that he wants to destroy the game, but since it is a digital download, he is unable to do so. All he can do is anticlimactically uninstall the game from the computer. "Take that, game!"
Featured games: Skate or Die (NES), Bad Dudes (NES), Karate Champ (NES), Sonic the Hedgehog 1 & 2 (Gen), Sonic Blast (SGG), Sonic Labyrinth (SGG), Sonic R (Sat), Sonic Shuffle (DC), Shadow the Hedgehog (NGC), Where's Waldo (NES)
As it is Christmas time, the Nerd decides to open up a bunch of catalog books from Sears. He would talk about how nowadays, Christmas shopping could be done online, but back then, children had to use these books to circle what they wanted Santa to bring them. The Nerd would look over them, talk about how these books had everything at the time (guns, tobacco, lingerie, etc), as well as many video games and gaming accessories and hardware. The Nerd gives these books his high recommendation to find and look through them.
After gushing over them, the Nerd then gets to talk about how with some video games, there were not much to go by as far as deciding if the game will be good or not goes. He makes a point to mention that people would usually gravitate towards a game with some form of reputation, such as Skate or Die for the NES. The game is about five minigames, with a gauntlet of all five as an option, and the Nerd finds the controls to be difficult to get accustomed too, nor were they easy to adapt. He considers it "fucking shit. Shit that we held with passion".
He then talks about another NES game called Bad Dudes, which also had some popularity for its time, namely how he finds it odd that bad was synonymous with good (even quoting the infamous introduction line "are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?" He finds the game to be a dull beat em up, not helped by the face buttons being swapped (B and A are commonly known for action and jump for most games, but it is reversed here). "Sometimes, the word bad really meant it."
Finally, he would go into one game that he had a personal grudge with: Karate Champ, also on NES. While he notes that this is one of the earlier examples of 1-on-1 fighting, it is also one of the worst. The game has a very unintuitive control scheme, including the option to turn yourself around, which does not seem to serve a purpose aside from making it harder to play. There is also no variety in any way, as in the characters are the same, the moves are the same, and while the stage backgrounds do change, the planes don't really variate enough, nor is the depth perception consistent with the backgrounds. All and all, he considers this one of the worst games he has ever played.
After all that, he decides to surprise his audience by announcing that he is covering some games that were requested. The one request he got constantly were the bad Sonic the Hedgehog games. "...what bad Sonic games?"
The Nerd would briefly go into the first two Sonic the Hedgehog games for Sega Genesis, talking about how the games managed to get Nintendo fans to pay attention to it, boosted high speeds and thrills, with an amazing overall presentation for its time, with the top-notch platformer game play it has going for. So the bad Sonic games request left him baffled. He does admit that he did take a closer look and decided to look into some of these games his fans were referring too. One was Sonic Blast for Game Gear, which he didn't have much to say about, other than noting how much slower it is compared to the originals, and how it's "a poor man's Sonic the Hedgehog." The other was Sonic Labyrinth for the same system, and while he considers it better, he also finds it slow and confusing. However, he does excuse these games because they were made for a portable system, which he argues that being able to bring a game with you often meant compromising on its playability.
Once he got to Sonic R for Sega Saturn, he really starts finding the bad ones. He describes this one as Sega's take on Mario Kart, but really bad. He notices the numerous graphical glitches, as well as the poor controls and stage designs. He couldn't bring himself to fully play out the game. Then he got to Sonic Shuffle for the Sega Dreamcast, which he admires the system itself so much, but he couldn't do the same for the game. He describes it as "Sega's take on Mario Party, but it's not as good." Finally, he would talk about Shadow the Hedgehog for the Nintendo GameCube, which made him realize that a Sega game was on a Nintendo console. After getting over that, he finds Shadow the Hedgehog to be an ok game, but also finds it weird about all the changes that had happened to the franchise over the years, such as Shadow using a gun, Dr. Robotnik now being called Eggman, and Sega and Nintendo no longer being rivals, as he describes this feeling as "being awoken from a frozen sleep." He decides to return to reviewing NES games.
To cap off this part, he covers Where's Waldo for the NES. He talks about how the books themselves were really good, but the NES adaptation was anything but good. He is baffled by the pixelated mess that appears on the screen, with no helpful clues to finding Waldo, noting that even Waldo himself doesn't know where he is. He is annoyed by the constantly decreasing timer that will end the game when it reaches 0, and how Waldo seems to deliberately move away from his destinations as he moves to them, wasting valuable time. The Nerd doesn't find the game very difficult anyway, as he resorts to clicking randomly on the screen (the easier the game is, the wider the cursor box is, and the more time you start with; it doesn't matter otherwise). He does mention how there are three minigames present, such as finding Waldo in the dark, a maze game which seems more annoying than fun, and a slot machine where you have to match all three Waldos. The ending is the same regardless: Waldo lands on the moon, and the game can be completed in under six minutes.
As he finished up that review, and ranted about how short it is, the Nerd decides to conclude this part as he has to go find the games for it, while walking aimlessly in his room.
Featured games: A Boy and His Blob (NES), The Three Stooges (NES), Home Improvement (SNES), Pit Fighter (SNES), Bubsy 3D (PS1), and Spiderman: Maximum Carnage (SNES)
Part two opens up to the Nerd reviewing A Boy and His Blob for the NES. Despite being a request, he does state the game is actually good, but he does understand why some would think this game is not good. He talked about how the puzzles can sometimes be tricky to figure out, and some game play elements aren't that accessible, but if one is able to adapt and appreciate its sense of humor and slower pace, can come to appreciate the game as a whole.
The Nerd was not as warm in his welcoming when it came to the Three Stooges. Other than the short gag in the introduction, the Nerd finds the premise to be to depressing for the game, being that the Three Stooges decided to do minigames in order to raise money to rescue an orphanage from bankruptcy. While some minigames work fine, such as the stretcher race, the pie throwing game and the slapping game, the rest of them have questionable controls and are not very fun to play, being the trivia, eating the shell fish, and the Punch-Drunks games, which are plagued with annoying sound bits, awkward controls, unintuitive interfaces that serve to confuse the player more than it does aid them. He ended up hating the game in the end.
The Nerd would then move on to Home Improvement for the Super Nintendo. While he finds the concept to be ridiculous yet funny, he finds the game play to be a mess, with its broken gameplay elements, unfair level design, and being confused as to how to play through the game. He mentioned that he would had given the game a better chance, but it does not include an instruction booklet. Well, it actually does, but there is a sticker planted on the booklet that reads "Real men don't need instructions."
Pit Fighter for the Super Nintendo was next on the list. While the Nerd was impressed by the digitized graphics of the arcade original, the Super NES port did not translate this very well, resulting in a ugly color palette, and with a ridiculous level of difficulty the game presses onto the player, such as never regenerating health and having no continues. He also finds the controls to be busted, and calls this game the worst Super Nintendo game he has ever played. Even worse than Wizard of Oz.
The Nerd then answers the second most requested game he ever got: Bubsy 3D. He goes into the brief history of the brave yet failed attempt at a mascot character for Accolade, talking about the first game that were on many consoles, which managed to get a sequel on the SNES. Then came Bubsy 3D on the PS1, which has odd looking pixels. He notes that the game doesn't look finished due to the lack of creative design with many of the levels, and how the controls are tank-like, unlike Super Mario 64 which had a complete 3rd dimensional movement, and was released much earlier. The Nerd is convinced that the game itself was never really finished. This caused him to go into a rant about how he's been hoarding junk for all his life.
With all that said and done, the Nerd decides to conclude his list of requests by reviewing Spiderman: Maximum Carnage for the Super Nintendo, which he was told that it was good, but he had his doubts due to his experience with bad Spiderman games in the past (at least the ones he played). He starts to warm up to the game as he discovers that the comic-style cut-scenes looked really good, and how the gameplay is basic yet satisfying, with a variety of moves and how the levels change up somewhat. He is most impressed by the soundtrack, especially when he finds a track that sounds almost exactly like the Mob Rulez by Black Sabbeth. He is astound by how good the game turned out that he decides to look at the box further, only to discover that LJN made the game. Now even more astounded than ever, the Nerd starts to clamor and cheer over how LJN made a good game, before passing out over the discovery.
