Posts by Brandon Daiker

Take a look at these two games here. Go ahead, check them out! We have Hogan's Alley there on the left, and Duck Hunt on the right. Can you see any differences between them? I mean sure, Hogan's Alley has this strangely happy-lookin' cop holding a standard issue blue hippie-beater, and Duck Hunt has the goddamned hunting dog there looking way cuter than he ever does in the actual game, they are different games yeah yeah.

I know the box says "nameplate" in huge letters printed overtop of what itself is a sort of nameplate. It even has some kinda holes in the corners to make it look more platey. I get it, this product is about the nameplate! But do you see up there in the upper right corner of the box, how it says "candy," which you can read because you are an expert at Japanese culture and language, and candy is a big part of it?

As I drag my zoom lens over poor Samus' Zero Suit-clad plasticine body I feel sorta like one of the dirty old men at Tokyo Game Show trying to snap upskirt shots of the cosplay girls. Only this girl doesn't have a skirt to get up the skirt of, exactly, and she's Samus. Samus! Perhaps traditionally the Most Clad video game superhero in history, and here she is with legs over nine feet long.

Probably all of you have played Kirby's Adventure for your Nintendo-brand Entertainment System, which means you've seen the cute introduction that plays the moment you power it on! First you draw a circle, then you dot the eyes. Add a great big smile, and presto, it's Kirby! Or, for our Japanese readers, まるかいて　おまめがふたつ　おむすびひとつ　あっというまに. (Draw a circle, two beans, and a rice ball. Just like that!) Yes, Kirby's Adventure makes it easy for anyone to draw Kirby.

If your childhood was anything like mine, you were rarely a stranger to a variety of bizarre schoolyard ramblings and rumors when it came to Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! I remember hearing that Mike Tyson was literally unbeatable, that some boxers could get knocked out of the ring completely if you used the star punch at the right time, and that pressing certain sequences of buttons could charge up your health even after you'd already used the select button trick between rounds.

As I desperately scramble to acquire as much Famicom stuff as is humanly possible before I eventually leave the land of sushi-go-rounds and AKB48, I sometimes come across something that is weird enough to defy satisfying explanation. One of my recent acquisitions in that department was this strange Super Star Force cartridge. Clocking in at double the height of a normal Famicom game, this thing also bears a lot of other weirdness that caused me to pick it up for the relatively low price the seller was asking.

Sometimes when I'm barely even thinking about it, I remember the way this factory smelled, sounded, one I worked at as a college student left to fiddle about on his own for the summer. It'll come when I'm just walking to the store, some driver that revs up his motor with an aggressive gas pedal stomp, that particular blend of car exhaust and rubber. Or maybe when I'm sitting next to a guy on the train, cooling himself with a handheld paper fan, and some of it blows my way, or I hear a worker jack-hammering a sidewalk into dust, these little sounds and smells, human rhythms.

If it is possible to be any kind of release day fanboy for a video game, I am surely one of them when it comes to the painfully named Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, a game with a title so absurd that it has forced me to reprogram my mind when typing the brutal "trhyth" string of letters that does not otherwise exist in any printed communications. So aboard the hype Phantom Train AHOHO I have been with this game that I not only ordered it but also went to minor pains to acquire the recently-released Final Fantasy 25th Anniversary playing card set, which is ass-rendingly amazing, like my ass is cleaved in two with a Cyan SwdTech, it's almost as good as my Dragon Quest cards!

What's the best way to get Brandon, who has every Final Fantasy series logo tattooed on his inner thighs, and who has played and become a virtuoso at nearly every rhythm or music game ever conceived by humanity, to give all his money to Square Enix? Put Final Fantasy and rhythm games together in a new game for his starving 3DS, base it on the most fantastic songs from the games, load it up with collectable crap, nostalgic series trappings and extra DLC songs, then make him wait six extra days to get it global international express shipped from Amazon.

When I carelessly tossed the package of Super Mario 3D Land Gummy into my life-partner's shopping basket the other day, I didn't even realize what it was. I saw Mario on the package, and like a mindless child I just grabbed it off the shelf and hucked it in there without thinking about anything except the fact that I saw Mario, and he is red, and he is my friend, and I like him.