GAMING: SUPER MARIO BROS 2

So back in the early 90's I had an NES system just like most kids did and spent many hours playing games like Double Dragon, Duck Hunt, Castlevania, and of course Super Mario Brothers. I had many other NES games such as A Nightmare on Elm Street, The Ninja Turtles game, Skate or Die but they were poor in quality and so unplayable that I was always unable to complete them.

Back in the day it wasn't like it is today, where if you get a video game thats crappy you can trade it in or send it back to Love Film for something else better on your list. Back then if you ended up with a shitty game you were pretty much lumbered with it. I always prided myself even as a youngster in my gaming abilities and made it my goal to complete every game I was faced with.

With things being pretty care free for me at the time completing Terminator 2 on the Game Boy was a major thing which caused much stress for me and made me feel somewhat of a failure as a young man. I used to lay awake at night thinking how will I be able to one day raise a family if I cant even get past the third stage of Castlevania?

However Super Mario was the shining jewel of NES playing career and was something that really lifted my spirits and brought me back from the jaws of 8-Bit defeat. Super Mario was the ultra playable but still challenging godfather of the side scrolling plat-former genre. Super Mario eased you in slowly and then from out of nowhere got real tough, but with enough practice and timing you could beat it and feel much better about your self.

I remember the first time I completed it was around June 1991 and it was a great moment in my life. When I found out there was a second Super Mario Bros game I was overjoyed and managed to borrow a copy off of my friend Scott.

Now I recently discovered the whole background story of what was up with Mario 2 and how the Lost Levels from Mario All Stars on the SNES was meant to be the Mario sequel but it never reached the western world etc. But I have always had my own theory on the subject which is far more enjoyable than the truth and like my lying leprechaun father once said "never let the truth get in the way of a good story" so here it is.

After Mario rescued the princess (and washed all of Bowsers semen out of her hair and frilly dress) he had somewhat of a dilemma.  During his quest he ended up with tons of mushrooms while searching the other castles looking for the Princess. So he, the Princess, his brother and the little fat toad bloke all had a sit down and decided to have a mushroom party. After scoffing lots of these mushrooms they ended up on a spaced out trip in which proper fucked them up. The only way they were going to make it out of this pickle with out being Nintendo's equivalent of the Manson family, would be to work together as a team and just ride it out.

Now that may sound absurd but it is pretty hard to argue when you compare this game to its predecessor. The last game had the pipes, under ground levels, under water levels, castles, and the ability to shoot flames at stuff. In this game you have to go round throwing vegetables at hooded midgets wearing hockey masks while being chased by a floating face! if that doesn't have LSD written all over it then I don't know what does.

At the end of each level you are faced with what can only be described as an uncircumcised penis wearing a giant nappy as a boss. After this you would pickup a crystal ball which would vanish into thin air and then you  had to walk into a giant eagles face on a wall to finish the level.

In the end you would have to defeat a giant frog to escape this horrendous ordeal and survive the biggest Magic Mushroom trip of your lives.

Ok so now that my silly story about the cast of the game being high on psychedelic drugs is out of the way I will go onto to give my real opinion and verdict on this game. Super Mario 2 is one of the most fun, awesome , and best games ever to be released on the NES. The fact you had 4 different characters to choose from which all had their advantages and disadvantages made for a much more interesting game. The fact the levels where mapped vertically as well as horizontally makes the game really stand out compared to the other games in the franchise.

The weird and warped out environment made the whole caper that little bit more fun also. Some levels you had to ride magic carpets, dig through sand while being pursued by baddies, and bomb your way out of underground dirt mines.

In 1993 all of the NES Mario games were pimped up to 16-Bit with updated graphics and Stereo sound on Super Mario All Stars. The Mario Lost Levels (which was meant to be Super Mario 2) is also included on the cartridge. Now in my opinion I am so glad that the trippy Super Mario 2 was the one that made it instead of the Lost Levels as the Lost Levels is just Super Mario Brothers with a few minor changes. Another cool thing about the trippy version of Mario 2 is the fact that Luigi plays more of a major role as he is somewhat more superior than Mario as he can jump higher and much further than Mario can.

I am pretty sure you can pick this game up along with the rest of the NES Mario collection on a Nintendo Wii disc (but don't quote me on that as I am not certain) so try and get a copy if possible.

So yeah in its fucked up little way Mario 2 is one of my favorite games of all time.

GAMING: Nightmare on Elm Street's Nightmare on Nintendo By Kristian Rodriguez

For a lot of people the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was the No.1 console from back in the day but for me however I prefer the Sega Genesis/Super Nintendo years. Reason being the games were better and you didnt want to kick the fuck out of your TV due to the games being covered in glitches and being harder than a truck load of Viagra. That being said owning an Atari 2600 was an even more painful experience! even having the thing passed down to me was traumatic enough and I cant imagine how heart breaking it must have been to receive shit games like that as main Christmas presents back in the 70s.
OK so its the late 1980's Nintendo are scoring big on sales, Freddy Krueger is slicing up the box office with sequel year after year and the public are still thirsty for more. So thirsty in fact the marketing team for Freddy Krueger has produced Freddy Dolls, Freddy comics, Freddy Christmas decorations, Freddy Halloween outfits, his own TV show seires called Freddy's Nightmares, Freddy water pistols, an awful Freddy board game, Freddy zippo lighters, Freddy Gloves and now a Freddy Nintendo game.Created by LJN (who have a bad reputation when it comes to NES games) Nightmare on Elm Street is a side scrolling platform game which makes next to no sense. Ok so lets look at the cartridge and box art


Looks promising so far eh... well never judge a game by its cover that's what i say when a cover like this


actually looks like this

Anyways back to the Freddy game and away from the Atari bashing. The story line of the game is to go round collecting Freddy's bones so you can destroy them and put the Elm Street villain to rest once and for all. So the storyline is taken from the 3rd installment of the franchise (and one of the best films in mine and many other peoples opinion) where the exact same has to be done to kill Freddy Krueger.
The game is a side scrolling adventure and you can have up to four players which is rare for a Nintendo game. The game has a bar at the top which is a sleep meter which decreases as you play the game. When the sleep meter runs out the enemies turn into even dumber forms then they already were and Freddy randomly appears and attacks you now and again.

Now as I just mentioned the enemies are just stupid...no let me re-phrase that the enemies are fucking retarded! They have nothing to do with the movies what so ever and range from, bats, snakes, falling rocks, spiders, Frankenstein's monster, ghosts, rats and of course the shitty designed levels which will make your blood boil. So you have to go from house to house and find all the bones and then you get to fight a level boss...
The first boss being a set of anal beads with a trademark Freddy glove attached (maybe they are using the gay undertones that the second movie is filled to the brim with?) that is annoying to beat. Luckily however you can pick up power ups which can give your "dream warrior" different powers and abilities such as turning them into a ninja, the ability to throw spears and gymnastics skills. I always find these handy when battling burned, claw wielding child killers so good call LJN!
The second boss is another set of anal beads with Freddy's head attached which from what I can gather fires tongues at you. Funny I don't recollect a scene in any of the movies where someone died from being eaten out multiple times by Freddy Krueger? Hell I probably would pay to see it as I was dumb enough to buy this fucking game in the first place and a ticket to see Terminator 3.
Actually looking back there was a scene in nightmare number 3 where he turns into some hot nurse bitch who fires tongues at some mute fucker and makes his bed turn into the fires from hell so my bad! The boss after this one is a glove that jumps around the screen without the restrictions of beaded sex toys.
Next up a level set in a scrap yard full of fucking Frankenstein's which is fucking retarded! This game is fucking so difficult by the way it takes the piss... and did I mention its retarded?
Then we come to the next boss which is some fucking winged bat cunt which has nothing to do with anything. The guys at LJN must have sacked the guy who likes using anal beads at this point and hired someone who thinks a flying Hells Angels logo would be awesome as a boss!
So looks like our next boss is a ghost or Freddy Krueger has joined the Ku Klux Klan in order to make everyone think he is even more of a cunt then he was before! Or maybe someones wanked all over him who the fuck knows...by this point I am losing the will to live.
Whats the point in making a video game about a movie franchise and then adding bosses and characters that have fuck all to do with it? Maybe in other LJN games they might have Freddy Kruegers running around. It would make about as much sense!
Next boss Freddy returns at long last...well parts of him. We've had the glove and we've had the licky licky head now lets have both! What next his fucking balls and one of his legs?
Okay so its the last level (thank god!) and its the school. You have have to get to the boiler room and fight against Freddy and this time its for real and there are no anal beads, flying death heads and KKK members to contend with. So after kicking his ass you throw the bones in the furnace and send Freddy back to hell. Now for the ending scene...which before I continue I must let you know that this game is so fucking hard its a joke and it took me from 1991 to 2003 to finally finish this game and here was my reward...
AFTER ALL THEM YEARS THAT WAS MY FUCKING REWARD!!!!! THAT SHITTY BIT OF TEXT! LJN apart from making some decent action figures and toys back then the day you people are a shower of cunts! For putting me and so many other kids through this I hope someone goes round and collects the bones of all involved....after of course they have been beaten to pulp with used anal beads from an aids victim!