Back in the good old days before the invention of the memory cards, we old timers were forced to lived with either crazy convoluted password systems or special batteries to save our cartridge based game data. The great thing about those batteries were their were a time save, passwords in in games like Mega Man 2 weren't that big of a deal but in games like Metroid or Legacy of the Wizard where their could be so many variations in how much items, powers and progress in the game that those passwords started approaching novella sizes, passwords became quite a headache. The game I am specifically referring to today is the Legend of Zelda, which I just bought from the used game store in my town for the old famicom. The battery save system is occasionally temperamental but not having to put miles of password digits into a game is something that never grows old. The other sider benefit is that when you buy a used game or rent a used game with a battery save in it you get to see the progress of the previous owners and either stand in awe, mock or abuse their progress in the game. I know that I would never have beat Super Mario RPG the legend of the seven star thingamajigs in one rental if not for the fact that some kind person had played through 3/4th of the game for me. Was it a low down dirty trick that would corrupt that persons experience of the game if they ever rented that copy again, especially because I saved over his old data? Yes, and I'd do it again, because fucking with people you don't know and without any chance of consequences is just plain old fun, especially when your 11.

In my recent play through on Zelda there were two names registered, Hideo and Zelda. While Zelda had had died a respectable 27 times (considering some people don't know the 2nd controller trick to save the game without dying and how tough that second quest can be) but Hideo... not quite as skillful. So although I have never met and will never meet Hideo I will forever know his crapitude at playing the Legend of Zelda, and will Lord it over his head till my final days (or at least until the day I forget.)

Epilogue: Naturally to make this a better post I had decided that I should take some pictures of the before mentioned suckatude of one Hideo. Apparently the Video Game Gods were not amused by numerous acts of Jack Assery in writing this post and thought it necessary to wipe my save off the face of the Earth. Karma is a mighty rough bitch but you got to live with the bad I guess. Oh well, sorry Zelda looks like I'm starting from where you left off. Also I love the fact that to erase a character you have to go to "KILL MODE" which makes it much harder to decide when to delete a character.
  

Before the Internet ran wild and free, before Gamefaqs, wikipedia or Giantbomb could generate the answer to any video game related problem you could have, the world sat cold in a fallow of knowledge. To get past the baddest of the bad bosses. To get past the most hellish of platforming puzzles, you had to actually *gulp* interact with other people, you know, like with actual words and conversation.

Growing up, my family would never pay the dough to use the nintendo hotline or game guides so I was stuck with only having my friends and family as a resource to solving my NES and SNES based conundrums. Like many a lad, I got my first NES in the Christmas of 1988. Unlike most of those boys though, the gift was not meant for me in the slightest. I had only just turned 3 years old when my family bought our NES for my older brother. They were certain in their fortitude that I was far too young to do anything productive on the game system, that at most it would be something that could emit flashing lights I would find somewhat interesting but was years away from comprehension. Needless to say, I straight up jacked that NES. Though I could barely put together a coherent sentence, in some strange twist of fate I was some sort of Rain Man-esk idiot-savant when it came to playing platformers and memorization based games. As a kid I hated to quit anything I started so I'd just keep on bashing my head into a Super Mario Bros. game or the like until I was better then my Dad, my brother and my friends at it.

As you might well know, the logical centers of the brain when you are between 3-5 years old aren't particularly developed. While my reaction time and pattern memorization skills were well developed, I couldn't really think my way out of a problem. Problem solving was more of a joust of wills, me simply repeating a level or a boss ad nauseam until I stumbled on an effective method, so trial and error with a distinct lack of trailing other then with solutions bungled upon by happenstance or blind dumb luck. When I was 5 one of my favorite games was Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! I drained hours and hours of my life I could have spent making friends or learning a useful skill to memorize the rhythm and patterns Mr. Sandman, King Hippo and all of the other vaguely offensive boxing challengers that obscured Little Mac's path to Mike Tyson. It was always a thrill when I figured out the secret to beating the 1st Don Flamenco fight and that you could knock Piston Honda down during his Piston Charge.

But the one boxer that would always rain on my boxing for me was Great Tiger. For some strange reason I simply could not get it through my adolescent skull that pressing down button allowed you to block a punch. The other reason for my ineptitude at knocking out Great Tiger was simply that his special spirit punch knock down technique absolutely terrified me. That bastard disappears like magic and only returns after a series of the crazy *beep* and *boop* sounds emanated from my TV box. All my previously learned skills would be crushed into shambles whenever I had to face him down.

My panacea for finally knocking down that big pussy cat was my Father. This was the last video game that my Dad would help me out with in my life. Punch-Out!, Super Mario Bros. and the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle game were the only games he had any experience with, until Wii bowling that is, but he was always my savior when I got to Great Tiger. I would call him in and he would quickly dispatch my turban wearing torturer, and I could continue on playing the game happily.

Oddly, I did not  beat that Great Tiger on my own until I had gotten past the likes of Super Macho Man and had lost a few fights to Mike Tyson himself. That bastard even came back to haunt me in college when I signed up for a game tournament that was going on on my campus. The challenge for this Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! Tournament was to see how far you could go without being knocked down. I went in confident, having seen Bald Bull's Bull Charge take down most of my competition. I had that charge memorized thrice over in my head so I sat down ready to put on an impressive showing. But, that damn Great Tiger managed to place my world on its head again. While blocking his spirit punches I was leaning soooooo far forward in my seat that my feet slipped a little bit, an infinitesimal distraction to make me stop pressing the down button for a millisecond. As soon as I heard that little punching *bloop* noise that Great Tiger makes whenever he lands a spirit punch I knew it was over. I could only look on feebly as he smacked me again and again until I hit the floor. I sadly handed the controller the the player and made my exit. As I walked away I thought "I guess I still need to call my Dad when ever I face that SOB Great Tiger."

How about you? Which games in your life made you cry out for the help of a friend or family member to get past
 

Ninja Gaiden was the game I really cut my gaming teeth on. In a very literal sense I'm afraid, in fact. The original Ninja Gaiden is the equivalent of a bully that routinely pulls down your pants in front of all of the girls during gym. Oh, you thought you knew how to play an action platformer after finishing Castlevania, but Castlevania doesn't really prepare you for the pain that is Rocket Pack ninja's zooming back and forth throwing shurikans at your face. Ninja Gaiden was that emasculating bully that I was able to conquer. The one I was able to eventually sock in the face after days and hours of abuse.

What made Ninja Gaiden so great was its tight controls. What made it so maddening was in spite having great controls the game found billions of ways to knock your hero into pit after pit. That cruelty was then multiplied a thousand fold by the final three bosses that the game threw at the player. While all of these bosses had patterns and sure fire strategies for quick and easy victories, such assurances fall on deaf ears when the stakes are so high. After spending hours, days trudging through these viper pits, a singular loss to one of these tripartite terrors jettisons poor Ryu back to the beginning of 6-1, forcing him to once again trudge knee deep in Bird/Rocket Ninja shurikan hell to get back to the threesome. And that is what made those fights so meaningful, so epic, so painfully memorable.

During each boss battle I was on the edge of my seat, the price of failure was high. Every step had to be taken gingerly, lest one be forced to endure Rocket Ninja/Bird Hades once more. The Masked Devil, Jaquio and the Demon were all interesting and tough battle, but the tenseness and sheer terror at having to face the gauntlet of level 6-2 made these battles special. I also enjoyed that the game was at least kind enough to acknowledge your previous accomplishments. If you defeated the first boss of the sequence you could skip ahead to the next boss on your next play through, as long as you didn't reset the game. It was tough, grueling and slightly cruel but with time you could come through somehow. This was my maddening boss battle that I love/hate, how about you?

Just watched the Wolverine movie. I have to say that I left the movie feeling pretty meh. I didn't really have any strong feelings for or against this prequel. I guess my biggest complaint is that it stayed in the middle in between being an actually good action comic book movie and being an awesomely clichéd Arnold-esk explosion spectacular. My favorite action movie of all time is "True Lies" which always knew that its premise was pure ridiculous so they just went with it and made it a crazy expodey comedy filled with some of the best contrived one liners ever to grace the silver screen. I was hoping that the Wolverine movie would turn more toward that once he blew up a helicopter by lighting a gasoline trail with his claws with the force of friction. Once he did that and said some smart-ass remark I started to get excited, but the movie decided to stay in that strange nexus between a well made thoughtful action flick and a Michael Bay or Arnold insanity fest. So average and boring.

Even Gambit being in the movie didn't really do anything for me, which is pretty bad since Gambit was my favorite character from the TV show. I mean I would suffer through numerous Jubilee heavy episodes just for a few seconds of Gambit awesomeness. Anyone who has ever watched the show knows that it takes quite a bit of fortitude to watch an entire Jubilee centric episode of the cartoon, thats how much of a Gambit fan I was back in the day. I always liked him more then Wolverine because while Wolverine was always a bad ass, he was also a team player. He was alway taking orders from that douchey prep-boy Cyclopes, sure he would grumble and say something smart allicky but he'd end up doing what Cyclopes wanted. Gambit on the other hand did what ever the fuck he wanted. He'd join a mission when ever he felt like it. The worlds in danger? Fuck that, I need to go hit on chicks, eat some gumbo and explode some people with a deck of cards. I think that is what the movie missed. It needed Gambit exploding more things, I mean that was his job in the cartoon, he'd show up and shit would explode for crazy kinetics that were contrived but awesome. In the movie Gambit can just accelerate the relative speed of objects, which is nice but where is the pizazz, where is the style? Seeing someone push somebody through a brick wall with a deck of cards is pretty cool, but wouldn't it be more better if Wolverine was exploding while flying through a brick wall? This movie missed its chance at being an amazingly bad movie, something that would be infinitely quotable and would be perfect to bust out at a birthday party in like ten years. Something dumb, but exciting with a whole bunch of awesome one liners that your waiting to hear. Eraser? Terrible movie, plot makes not sense, premise is pretty dumb but it is all kinds of crazy awesome because the director, producers and actors knew that it was a popcorn flick and that the crazier, explosion ridden and nonsensical they made the production the more entertaining it would be. I feel like with Wolverine and Gambit both being rebellious bad asses that if they had gone into the movie with the thought that it should be produced like a latter day Arnold film and that it would my favorite movie ever.

It's kind of sad because X-men is one of the two comic book movies that I give a damn about. As a kid X-men was my second string afternoon hero cartoon after Batman the Animated series. While the Dark Knight satiated my need for an honestly well made, brilliantly acted and produced Hollywood film, the Wolverine movie was unable to achieve the right type of foil to the brilliance of the Batman movie. I knew from the start that with Brian Singer that the movie couldn't possibly be "good" good. That ship clearly sailed after X-Men II was followed up by X-Men III. Sure, X-Men is one of the most complicated and best allegories in the comic book world for the darkness that exists in the human soul, of the challenges the world has with racism and dealing with minorities. But the Wolverine movie was the perfect chance for the producers to just say "fuck story, drama and angst, we don't have to weighed down by all the crap from the previous three movies so lets go absolutely crazy nuts with explosions and terrible/awesome one liners." The movie could have been the Predator of comic book movies but ended up being the Alien vs Predator of the X-Men series. That may be a harsh assessment but that is the closest Arnold series parallel that I can pull out of my ass right now.

To reiterate I don't hate the Wolverine movie, I was just disappointed that the movie seemed like it could have joined the pantheon of good/bad action movies that I could watch dozens of times in the future. The movie is just too smutzy, too stuck in its own pathos, too damn talky to be that kind of movie. Its a movie that trying hard to be smart and deep but at its core is just a dumb action movie that lives and dies by its crazy action and CG magic.

The Legend of Zelda for me has always represented the pinnacle in gaming boss battles. Each games bosses build on the experiences and weapons you gain from the playing of the game. Each one is bigger and badder then the last. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is my favorite game in the series, and every boss battle was well made and enjoyable, even if the makers seemed to be obsessed with making evil eye-ball creatures.

The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was a game that I had to rush through. I was playing a borrowed copy on a borrowed Wii. The game started out a bit too slow for my tastes, too much bumbling around digging up Twilight bugs. I wanted to finish this game, but it was plodding, I actually wasn't having all that much fun because of the time limit I had placed on myself. It took me a good 20 hours before I really felt like it was a great game, before I was having a lot of fun (about when I reached the Snowpeak Ruins) and the charm of the characters and the setting of the game started to sink in. If the game had ended there I would have been happy, but would have still considered Ocarina of Time a better experience. That is until I reached Argorok, the Twilit Dragon in the City of in Sky.

The arena for the boss battle was humongous. You had to use the dual hookshot at least 3-4 times before you were even high enough to take on the massive Dragon. My heart was beating like crazy and my eyes were beaming with anticipation as I hookshoted my way through the sky like fucking Spider Man, slinging from one platform to the next. The music for the battle was belting, epic in its tone and perfectly caught the tenor of the fight, as a thunder storm raged in the background and I was fighting a huge freaking Dragon thousands of feet in the air. Everything about that battle, the magnitude, the awesome use and reinvention of the Hookshot and the sheer variety made that game for me. After finally knocking that bastard out of the sky I was breathing hard and had a big small on my face. This game was better then OoT, that boss made it so for me.

The last ten hours of the Twilight Princess is one of the best games I have ever played. From Argorok on, every boss battle, every set piece was execellent and did an amazing job of referencing experiences I had earlier in the game and in the series. I'm hoping to make this a kind of a blog feature, just doing some talking time on the most intense boss battles in video games, that I have played. The theme for this one was game changer, the intensity of the battle made me look at the whole of the game differently. It made me love that game. What games have you played that was so intense, such a pleasant heart palpitating situation that it made you change your mind on a game.