My Favorite Sega Genesis/32X Games

I received the Sega Genesis (the Model 2 version seen in the first photo) for Christmas 1993. Up until that point, the only video game system I had ever owned was the Nintendo Entertainment System and I was eager to join the ongoing 16-bit video game console war that was taking place between Sega’s Genesis (which debuted in 1989) and Nintendo’s Super Nintendo Entertainment System (launched in 1990). I was torn between my loyalty to Nintendo and trying Sega, which marketed its Genesis as a hipper and edgier product.

I had a friend down the street who owned a Genesis, and he ultimately talked me into asking for that system from my parents for Christmas. I won’t say I regret making that choice, but there were many times that I was jealous of what the SNES was offering in terms of games and the fact that it was the more popular and better reviewed system. Still, I chose my side in the 16-bit console war and I had to stick with it until 1996 when I jumped back to Nintendo for their 64-bit Nintendo 64 console, which was the successor to SNES.

Thankfully, I had decided to ignore the launch of the CD-based 32-bit Sega Saturn, which hit shelves in 1995 as a direct competitor to Sony’s CD-based 32-bit PlayStation. The Saturn got crushed by both PS and N64 during that generation and was essentially a dead console in North America by 1996 although it wasn’t officially discontinued until 1998.

So what the heck is the 32X I mentioned in the title of this post? Launched in 1994, the 32X (much like the Sega CD) was an add-on peripheral for the Genesis that was meant to help give Sega an edge over the competition and extend the life of the Genesis. In addition, it was essentially a stop-gap measure while the Sega Saturn was still being developed. The 32X original retail price was $159.99 and my friend and I (the one that talked me into getting a Genesis) both bought one in 1995 at Toys R Us when it was marked down the $19.99! Yes, the 32X (again, much like the Sega CD) was a failure. Half-hearted cash grabs like the Sega CD (which I never owned) and the 32X were two big reasons why I chose not to stick with Sega for the Saturn.

Back to the Genesis, while it may have had the best specs or game catalog of its generation, it was still a fun system to play. With over 700 games released in North America alone, there were plenty of good games to play over and over again or rent for a weekend back in the day.

Here’s a list of my favorites in no particular order:

 MTV’s Beavis and Butt-Head
1994, Viacom New Media

Yes, there was a time when I was a huge fan of Beavis and Butt-Head. I spent many late nights during this time watching their stupid show on MTV. The game was fun, but kinda hard. I remember the button tapping stage where you are fishing out of the window seemed impossible until my friend and I realized that if we used my third-party Genesis controller that had a turbo button switch that would do the trick!

Captain America and The Avengers
1992, Data East

A fun side-scrolling beat ’em up that was a pretty good conversion of the arcade game.

Moral Kombat
1993, Acclaim

I’m not a huge fan of fighting games and I couldn’t tell you the last time I played one. My casual interest in them pretty much died when the Genesis did, but I couldn’t help but get caught up in the craze of Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter during those days. At least the Genesis version is considered to be the best home port of the game since Nintendo shied away from some of the over-the-top violence for their SNES version. Mortal Kombat II is a better game (improved graphics + more playable fighters), but the first MK probably got the most of my time of all MK games.

Ranking the Marvel Cinematic Universe

Well, we’re well into Phase III of the unlimited number of “phases” that Marvel’s cinematic universe will be having, and Marvel releases three or so movies every year, so obviously this list will need to be updated quite often, but let’s give it a go…

#15 – The Incredible Hulk (2008)

The second MCU movie to be released (it followed Iron Man). This movie is a big improvement over Ang Lee’s 2003 standalone Hulk snoozefest, but it’s nothing special on its own terms. Apparently, Edward Norton agreed as he decided not to reprise the role of Bruce Banner/Hulk for 2012’s Avengers. It would be interesting to see Marvel give it a go again with Mark Ruffalo, but we’re already getting elements of the popular “Planet Hulk” comic book story in the upcoming Thor: Ragnarok movie, so I don’t think Marvel has any plans for the Hulk to star in his own movie again anytime soon.

#14 – Iron Man 2 (2010)

It’s amazing to me how spot-on Marvel was with the release of the first Iron Man movie, but then could release this garbage. The movie was a financial success, making just a little less than the original, but man, is it terrible. I mean… Whiplash? That’s the best you could come up with as the villain? And he looked completely ridiculous and nothing like his comic book counterpart. This would easily be the worst Marvel movie of the bunch if not for the fact that The Incredible Hulk was so boring.

#13 – Thor (2011)

Very cheesy/squeaky clean/visually polished movie that really overdid it with the CGI. Sometimes, watching these “live-action” superhero movies is more like watching a CGI cartoon. Plus, to me, Thor just isn’t interesting as a standalone character.

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes [Series Review]

The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
Originally Aired: October 20, 2010 – May 5, 2013 on Disney XD

One of the most culturally significant and relevant shows of our time is not this one but that does not diminish the entertaining, good old-fashioned superhero stories that The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes gave us during its all-too-brief life.

Actually, I may be premature in announcing the show’s death. Even the show’s execs seems to be acting a bit vague as to whether the series has been cancelled or not. They won’t give a straight answer but seeing as how Disney XD’s new Avengers Assemble show started on May 26, 2013 (19 days after Season 2 of this show ended) and there’s been no word on new episodes of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, it’s safe to say the show has been “replaced”, if not “canceled”.

Why, I don’t know. The show seemed to satisfy grumpy old comic fans everywhere (including myself) by using solid animation, season-spanning story lines and taking inspiration from the recent Avengers movie plus Marvel comic book stories such as the “Secret Invasion” event and the “Breakout” arc from New Avengers. Many of the episode titles are even stolen from some well-known Marvel stories or events: “Operation Galactic Storm”, “Live Kree or Die”, “Acts of Vengeance”, “Ultron Unlimited”, etc.

In a way, this series reminds me of Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends. Totally different tone but there’s tons of fun cameos from various Marvel characters. Sometimes they are pointed out, sometimes they aren’t. Part of the fun is looking for background cameos.

Members came and went throughout the series. Or at least, some characters got much more face time than others. I actually like this because the writers didn’t have to shoehorn the entire team into every episode. They could focus on one, two, three or four members at a time, if they felt the need to do so. The Transformers and G.I. Joe cartoons from the ’80s would do this as well. It’s just too many characters to keep up with for every episode. So I like to pretend the missing team members are off on a mission of their own. :)

The core team of the show would be Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hawkeye, Black Panther and Wasp. Featured to a lesser extent are the Hulk (who was written off the show for a bit) and Ant-Man (who quit the team for a while and later reappeared in Season 2 as Yellowjacket). Ms. Marvel and The Vision join the team during Season 2 but even after joining the team, they are absent from many missions or play minor roles.

Nick Fury and Black Widow played large roles in Season 1 but Fury only had a few cameos in Season 2 while I think Black Widow only had one (non-speaking) cameo in Season 2.

In the episode “New Avengers”, Iron Fist, Luke Cage, The Thing, Wolverine and Spider-Man come together as a new team of Avengers to save the world from the Kang the Conqueror since the original team failed to do so. Spider-Man is granted reserve status as an Avenger but doesn’t appear in the series again until the final episode where virtually all the superheroes band together to stop Galactus from devouring earth. Earlier in the season, Spidey co-stars in an episode with Captain America to battle the Serpent Society.

While Marvel has usually had it all over DC in terms of popular, well-reviewed movies, DC has destroyed Marvel when it comes to animated series & movies. Marvel has had a few popular cartoons (such as Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends in the 1980s and the X-Men and Spider-Man shows from the 1990s), but none as well as a reviewed as some of the Batman and Justice League shows and DC’s direct-to-video animated movies. With Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, I think Marvel delivered their best animated show yet. It’s just a shame they decided to replace it with another show that’s more in tune with the cinematic Marvel Universe (and the reviews aren’t as good for the new show as they were for this one).

Both seasons of The Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes are currently available on Netflix and I’m sure there are/will be some DVD collections coming. It’s a show well-worth seeking out for fans of this type of stuff.

SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER REVIEWS of Iron Man 3 & Star Trek Into Darkness !! [SPOILERS]

Iron Man 3
2013, Walt Disney Studios

With Iron Man 3 being first Marvel movie since last year’s crazy successful The Avengers and the beginning of “Phase 2” of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, you could definitely say “the block was hot” with anticipation for Tony Stark’s latest adventure. Maybe you don’t use the term “the block was hot”, but I like to it toss it around every now and again. I keep it real.

As the title of this post says, there are spoilers. So I’m just going to come out and say that I did not care for how the Mandarin was portrayed in this movie. Look, I understand if you don’t want the Mandarin to be some Chinese guy with ten power rings like he is in the comics. I get it, but I felt a bit cheated that Ben Kingsley’s Mandarin was really a front and an act put together by the film’s real villain Aldrich Killian (portrayed by Guy Pearce). Technically, Killian was the “real” Mandarin but it’s still a bait-and-switch for comic book fans that knew that Kingsley’s Mandarin was based on the comic book Mandarin.

It’s the whole deal with Ra’s al Ghul from Batman Begins all over again: Ken Watanabe looked like Ra’s al Ghul according to the comics, but it was a white guy (Liam Neeson’s character was the “real” Ra’s al Ghul) pulling the strings all along. It’s a decent twist for one superhero movie, but not two. I wonder if anyone even bothered to remind them that something similar already happened in a DC Comics movie.

And I don’t even care that much about Mandarin, I just know he’s one of Iron Man’s biggest arch-rivals and it seems like they combined two villains into one when either Killian or Mandarin would’ve worked fine on their own.

That said, I was really happy with how this movie turned out. The first Iron Man movie was good but the second Iron Man movie was lame (seriously… WHIPLASH??) so I wasn’t sure what to expect. The portions with the kid were a bit too cutesy for me but I think, overall, this is the best Iron Man movie yet. It was great seeing all of the various Iron Man armors in action and I loved that they gave War Machine/Iron Patriot more time in this movie. I could totally see the next Iron Man movie becoming a buddy action movie with Iron Man & Iron Patriot getting equal time. Downey Jr. & Cheadle work well together.

Heck, if the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to be a juggernaut, they should think about giving Don Cheadle his own movie (though I’d prefer it if he went back to the War Machine name) during Phase 3. I mean, if Ant-Man is getting his own movie, I don’t see why James Rhodes can’t.

Star Trek Into Darkness
2013, Paramount Pictures

Okay, I’m a nerd & geek in someways (certainly not as much as my friend FlowerBoobs) but I’ve never been a huge fan of things sci-fi in nature. Hey, I love Star Wars but that’s always been more fantasy/adventure to me whereas Star Trek I’ve always seen as pure sci-fi. I’ve seen episodes from The Next Generation and even a few of that crews movies and I’ve always found it to be very boring. I even made an honest attempt to get into the ’60s show back when it used to air in the afternoons in my viewing area back in the early ’90s. I couldn’t get into it.

When it was announced that J.J. Abrams was rebooting/revamping/re-imagining/reheating/restarting/rewiring/whatever Star Trek, I could not have cared less. I had no interest in seeing it. Even after people told me it was good, I still didn’t care. It was STAR TREK. Star Trek has never been cool to me. It is its own little geek world that never appealed to me. But, it just so happens that I was convinced to watch 2009 Star Trek movie just last year and as it turns out it was decent. I mean, it didn’t send me into “OMG STAR TREKZ!!!!” mode but it was fine.

When Star Trek Into Darkness was announced, I figured I’d get around to watching it on DVD or Blu-ray and that’d be about it. As fate would have it, I found myself going to the theater to see it (in 3D no less!) during its second week.

I thought it was certainly a lot better than the previous movie. Even as someone who doesn’t know Star Trek very well, I still picked up on a number of references to the original series. But I think it is a bit odd to keep doing that (such as the reappearance of the other Spock). Let this universe stand on its own (as much as it can). And while I’ve never seen Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, this is pretty much J.J. Abrams’ take on that movie. Will they go looking for Spock in Part III?

Anyway, the movie was much much better than I ever thought it would be (even if I still can’t stand Chris Pine and found myself actually hoping Kirk had died). Even if you’re not a Trekkie, this is still a movie worth watching.

I now leave you with a photo of Alice Eve in her bra & panties from a scene in Star Trek Into Darkness.

You’re welcome.

Dark Avengers

Okay, so just when I was losing interest in Marvel, THEY PULL ME BACK IN! Actually, I’ve been out of the comics game entirely since April 2008 or so, but recently got back into them in preparation of my work at the Panels on Pages site.

While I usually don’t go for Marvel, and Bendis’ writing can be quite annoying at times, I’m really enjoying this book. It’s miles above his awful Mighty Avengers run and right up their with the best of his New Avengers.

I haven’t read Secret Invasion (yet) or most of the Dark Reign tie-ins, but this is definitely a must-read book. And to think, I originally had no intention of reading this…