412. TROUBLE SHOOTER
By now you probably know this thread is the place to be for the hottest takes. You’ve probably been dying to hear me weigh in on the great 16-bit console wars. You wanna know my opinion because it’s going to become your opinion, right? But now’s not the time. We’re still early in the list. I’m saving the Final Verdict for the very end. We gonna have a climax and it’s going to be very intense. Believe it.
But for now here’s how Vic Tokai, makers of Trouble Shooter, felt about the Super Nofriendo:
I like to think I’m a very calm, sweet person but we all know that deep inside my heart burns some real deal primal rage. Yet even I wouldn’t do something as merciless as this. How do these people sleep?
There’s a Mega Drive only sequel to Trouble Shooter that has some fine box art. I like to think someday I will be very rich and happy and able to buy a copy just so I can put it on a shelf and admire it. I’d probably never play it. Game probably stinks. Pretty sure Trouble Shooter kinda stinks too. Most 16-bit console action games are bores. Why am I gonna play watered down arcade games in 2018? I have MAME. I have an arcade cabinet. I have constant access to the Real Deal Holyfield 24-7. I have everything you could ever need to be happy. I’m blessed.
411. JADE EMPIRE
Isn’t Bioware a Canadian studio? Don’t they have laws against hate speech up there? Why isn’t everyone involved with this game in jail. Like even if Knights of the Old Republic: Far East Coast Edition wasn’t racist (it was, right? I remember it being pretty fuckin’ iffy) it had the absolute worst shoot 'em up minigame I’ve ever played. You either make a shooter right or not at all. That’s my opinion.
You know that John Waters quote about not fucking anyone who doesn’t own any books? Apply that same rule to anyone who has anything positive to say about Bioware games. They’re so fucking bad.
410. PHANTASY STAR

One time when I was a kid my older sister took me with her to the mall. While she was shopping for clothes I waited at Waldenbooks, checking out the comic books. You didn’t have to venture into a specialty shop to buy comics back then unless you wanted some shit like Elfquest or one of those books where old hippies drew themselves fucking and doing racisms on every page. If you wanted a comic you could just go to 7-11 or a newsstand or a book store. They were displayed in spinner racks and an issue cost like…75 cents? $1? They were always in horrible condition but no one cared cuz that shit was cheap disposable trash for kids, not overpriced collectibles for continuity obsessed losers.
I’m not saying things were better then. The were very bad. The newstand selection was nothing but superheroes (which are awful and I hope I live long enough to see a generation that doesn’t know Batman) and Archie (which was good, because Dan DeCarlo). But at least those books were pretty cheap.
So I was looking at these comics and there was this one Transformers issue I really wanted but I was too scared to ask for, even though I knew my sister definitely had way more than 75 cents in her change purse. I’d been reading comics since I was 3. They were very much my thing. But I also knew they were shameful and naughty. I’m not sure what planted that idea in my head. I don’t remember my family ever saying anything pro or con about comics. I do know I was somehow aware of Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent from a very early age, but not that early. I never read that book but I’m sure everything in it is wrong cuz there’s no way Batman’s turning anyone gay. No way Batman’s anywhere near that good.
Anyway I spent so long filled with anxiety and desire and pee that I ended up wetting my pants in a Waldenbooks. I was way too old to be wetting my pants. That was almost as shameful as wanting to read a comic about Starscream getting married to Soundwave or whatever the fuck happened in those shitty robot comics. And when my sister found out she was fucking cheesed off. At the time I thought she was overreacting – and maybe she was, my sister was and is a real deal b – but in retrospect yeah if I owned a car I probably wouldn’t want anyone who just pissed their shorts riding in it. Would probably buy out that entire spinner rack and make the kid ride home on a mountain of piss soaked comics. Maybe teach them a lesson. Maybe protect the upholstery of my very fancy, very lovely car. God, I can’t believe I’m not a dad. I’d probably be good at it. I’d at least hand out lots of punishments that would make me laugh a lot, which is more important than raising a healthy, functioning human being.
When we arrived home my sister just went off, shouting at my mother about how I ruined her day cuz I wet 'em like some kind of baby, but my mother was very kind and loving and said “I’m sorry you had a bad time. I have something that will make you feel better. There was this cartoon on TV I thought you would like so I taped it. I missed the beginning but maybe it will air again someday?” And she hit play on the VCR and she left me alone with a cartoon.
And this cartoon was Warriors of the Wind. Also known as Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Also known as…anime.
My mother’s custom edit of Warriors of the Wind began with Nausicaä flying around that forest with all the spores and she gets shot or some shit. And I think some dude comes along and tends to her wounds? Opens up her jacket and maybe touches a bloody boob? I think there may have been some moaning? Then it ended with Nausicaä hugging some giant cicadas and crying. It was fucking weird as hell and it seemed way, way raunchier anything I’d seen in an American cartoon. It made me feel very uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable than riding home in a 2 seat sportscar alongside both my sisters while soaked with piss. It made me think my mother was sending me some kind of message. Like this was her version of “the talk”. This was not the case, of course. My mom just saw some weird cartoon on HBO and decided to do some home piracy. But I can’t help but read too much into things. I can’t help but have a guilty conscience. I can’t help but think every other time I speak to my mother she’s finally trying to tell me what sex is. And I couldn’t help but think about this movie for fucking years. I never saw it in its entirety. I’m not sure I ever rewatched that tape. But the way that movie made me feel was burned into my soul and I don’t want it tainted by reality. I will probably never watch Nausicaä. I will hopefully never wet my pants again. Please pray for me.
Somewhere in between watching Nise Nausicaä and learning about Miyazaki I played Phantasy Star. This game had a major impact on me. It was so much better than Dragon Quest. It was so much prettier than any American cartoon. Those colors! That music! It was when I finally understood what anime actually was. It taught me that you can show blood and death in a video game and that would make you feel things. It taught me that if you dive deep enough into a dungeon you can buy a cake. It taught me that being a girl is pretty cool. It taught me that it was fun to make numbers go up, and that first person dungeon crawling is the best.
But then years later I found the english edition of Nausicaä at Barnes & Noble and realized that half the shit I found novel in RPGs was stolen from that book. Myau and chocobos and tough gal protagonist and fighting godbeasts and God knows what else. It’s all derivative bullshit and Japanese culture was no better than America’s. Thanks to Phantasy Star I accepted that games are pretty trashy, but comics…comics are the #1 art form. The best comics are worth wetting your pants over.
I’m sure games will be the #1 art form soon enough though. I’m making one, after all. And I only mess with the best.
I think Phantasy Star isn’t the best but it’s a good game provided you play the version on the PS2 Sega Ages compliation that lets you tweak the XP/Gold rewards to reduce the grind. It’s OK to cheat at RPGs, cuz they’re barely games. Also it helps if you draw a maps. It’s fun drawing maps. Give it a shot. Or download pre-drawn maps from some old angelfire site, I dunno, that works too.
409. POINIE’S POIN
I learned at a young age that Japan really isn’t any better than America but that didn’t mean I truly accepted it. I still spent years tracking down and consuming all sorts of dumb bullshit simply because it originated from Glorious Nippon. I gave everything a chance. I modded my PS2 as soon as I could and one of the first games I bought was Poinie’s Poin, because it was like $10, had a colorful box, and no one online knew anything about it. Extremely my thing.
Of course I played it for maybe 10 minutes and never touched it again. I think it’s some 3D platformer but you don’t really jump or do anything fun? But that music, holy shit. Watch that opening. It’s very good, with the kids singing in English and such. But it’s not as good as the old official website for the game, which had a very low bitrate 16 bar loop of that song playing whenever you visited it. And I visited it a lot. I would leave that tab open and just groove to that mysterious power for hours on end. I did this for years. It’s no longer online, sadly. And I never did archive it, even though I knew I should have. But it still lives on…in my heart.
408. BATTLE GAREGGA
Why you gonna play this instead of Armed Police Batrider, a game that has colors and visible bullets and a song titled “LET’S ASS KICK TOGETHER”. Why would you ever wanna be a plane or a dragon when you can be some chub on a flying carpet or a babe on a flying motorcycle. Why would you wanna kill yourself on purpose in any game? I got enough problems in real life okay I don’t wanna be blowing myself up to manage my rank. This game is too hard and complex for me but God bless all the weirdoes who love it. I’ll never be as patient or passionate as you are.
407. SOL-FEACE
So we all know that comics are #1, games not really there yet. This is a lesson I’ve tried to instill in everyone I’ve met, to varying degrees of success. For example I bought a Black Jack book for one of my nephews and it inspired him to go to medical school and save lives and shit. On the other hand…well, one time, as an adult, I took another nephew, who was a child, to Borders with me. I bought a bunch of manga, as adults are known to do, and I told my nephew I’d buy him a book of his choosing, because reading is fundamental and I like to instill solid fundamentals in youth cuz God knows I sure coulda used someone doing that for me growing up. Or now. It would be helpful now too.
We all know I’m, in some ways, a very giving man, right? But I’m also really big on entertaining myself. Very self indulgent over here. Also very vain. If I love you I maybe see you as an extension of myself (that’s healthy, right?) and if you like something iffy, yeah, that’s okay, I’ll forgive you, but if I’m gonna drop some money on you? It ain’t going to something shitty, that’s for sure. And if I let that kid pick his own book he woulda gone for some Wolverine or Deadpool or Evil Ernie garbage. So I used my powers of persuasion to convince this child – who saw me as a father figure of sorts, someone he could confide in and trust, someone who wouldn’t steer him wrong, not even as a laugh – I convinced this child to buy a volume of the comic book series ELFQUEST.
Elfquest is a comic book about elves. They have big eyes and tiny waists and high cheekbones. I think they ride wolves and fight trolls and have orgies. It was one of the big small press comic books in the early days of the direct market (comic book stores) and as a kid I always saw it advertised and written up but I never bought it, cuz it was Very Not For Kids, and not in the same way as all those Suggested For Mature Readers Batman books were. This book was by a lady, and the characters sometimes kissed instead of killing each other. That’s some taboo stuff.
But that day, in that Borders, it was 200x, not 19xx, and the kids of the 21st century…they’ve been online. They’ve seen some shit. They could probably handle some elves questing, right? And it would be really funny to make this wannabe macho kid read a book about big eared fantasy homos. I was also too shy to admit that I also wanted to read it myself. See how it measured up against other small press books like Hepcats and Omaha the Cat Dancer and Xenozoic Tales*. So I convinced this kid to pick Elfquest as his book. I steered that kid fucking wrong. When I dropped him off at home he’d left the book in the car, intentionally, and probably never read any kind of book again after that.
And holy shit, after reading me some Elfquest I couldn’t blame him, cuz this shit is for nerds. Elves are easily the worst of the fantasy races. They are ugly and bigoted and I don’t think they can grow beards. I could never be an elf! I’m too nice, and hairy, and have good taste in comics.
I think I tried to apologize to that kid about this more than once but I think he pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t blame him. We also don’t talk anymore. And who can blame me? Why would I ever want anyone in my life if they were dumb enough to get tricked into Elfquest, regardless of how old they were.
This entry could have been for JAK & DAXTER THE PRECURSOR LEGACY but I think that series was offensively ugly so I don’t want it on this list. Like I used to compare it to Elfquest but that was incredibly unfair to the Pinis. Elfquest is probably better than any Naughty Dog game. And you can’t spell SOL-FEACE without E-L-F I guess. So that’s why this entry about a kinda lame Sega CD shoot 'em up is about an old timey horned up elf comic.
*I haven’t read any of these but they’re all bad.