A Tourist's Thoughts on the Mega Man X SNES Trilogy

I’m what some people would call a “tourist” when it comes to the Mega Man franchise.  I didn’t grow up with the blue bomber and I didn’t play any of the games until the Anniversary Collection on the Gamecube and even then I didn’t follow the franchise loyally.  Later I would go through almost the entire classic franchise again thanks to the Legacy Collections and Capcom Arcade Stadium 2.

My opinions on the classic games echo most other people’s: the sequels are all fairly fun, sometimes exceedingly difficult, action platformers with basic stories.  Everyone has a different favorite, but it’s generally agreed that the sequels are of a consistent quality.  The first game is stinky.

I don’t like to give my thoughts or a review on something if I can simply point to someone else’s opinion perfectly matching my own so I didn’t think it would be interesting to go over the classic Mega Man series.  The most controversial thing I can say is that the earlier games are frustrating without save states of some kind.  My personal favorite is 8, for the record, even with the godawful acting.

Classic Mega Man’s sequel series, Mega Man X, is a whole different ballgame.  The things people have said about the Mega Man X games are all over the place and after playing them over the course of this year I think my thoughts about that particular branch of the Mega Man franchise might be a little more interesting.  I have some takes that fans might consider “spicy.”

TV Edits of the Viewtiful Joe Anime: Episode 22

With the most heavily edited episode out of the way, we now move onto episode 22, titled Cleanliness is Next to Escape-liness in English, named after the line "Cleanliness is next to Godliness."  They had to come up with a title that has to do with the plot and this one doesn't consistently reference a particular movie.

This episode mostly centers around Silvia sneaking around Jadow's HQ after the Biankies carelessly let her go get a bottle of cleaner.  Meanwhile Joe fights the Jadow trio in less-focused-on battles.  Since it's in Jadow HQ it means there's going to be editing around Sprocket, but not as much as you'd expect.

TV Edits of the Viewtiful Joe Anime: Episode 21

I was holding off on this one because I already knew this was going to be one of the most, if not the most, edited episodes.  In this episode, Joe and Junior are on the run from Biankies and the returning Bianco Billy and Junior gets help from the old man that found Machine Six and his friend Gina.

 

The episode is a reference to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  There's a bit with Junior referencing the scene where Sundance says he can't swim and the English dub even references the characters directly.

The episode name, Bianco Billy Rides Again, is probably named after the McCloud episode titled Butch Cassidy Rides Again, which is about a bank being robbed by guys who look just like the famous outlaw himself.  A fitting reference, since Billy is the villain in this scenario.

 

The Game Scammer Days of Reckoning

Good used game sellers are an important part of gaming.  It’s thanks to places like Ebay, Gamestop, Half-Priced Books and smaller retail shops that we’re still able to buy games long out of production at generally reasonable prices.  Say what you want about Gamestop, because they deserve it, but there are several used games I couldn’t have gotten without them, one of which was a big contributor to my Namco vs. Midway series (sorry I haven’t gotten back to that, but I hit a snag with one of the games).  Without these decent sellers I would have never gotten games like Neogeo Battle Coliseum, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword or the King of Fighters Maximum Impact games.  These are the people that should be supported.

The evil twins of these sellers are the scammers.  Also commonly called scalpers, scammers do not care about selling games at a reasonable price.  They care solely about fleecing as much money as they can out of people who just want to play them.  These scammers attempt to force people to pay more than the original game’s initial retail price even though a used game is degraded and thus worth less than when it was new.  They treat games like they’re some kind of collectible rather than a mass-produced product that’s the same as any other copy of the game that was sold for 50 dollars at launch.

Yu-Gi-Oh Early Days Collection Review Part 5

 In 2004, the original Yu-Gi-Oh manga ended and America, being as late to the party as we possibly could, only then started getting it translated in 2005 while the anime was going into the filler arcs.  You would think the original series would be wrapping up with the story ending, but if you think that you clearly don’t know Shonen Jump.  The anime was such a money maker in America that 4Kids commissioned Studio Gallop to make a movie and the Capsule Monsters miniseries.  Even Japan wasn’t done with the manga because they made Yu-Gi-Oh R!  The original Yu-Gi-Oh was being kept around for at least a little while longer while the sequel to the anime, Yu-Gi-Oh GX, was starting to take off.

Recommended read.

That means more original-era games and the last game included in the Early Days Collection.