Video Game Review: New Super Mario Bros. Wii

Oh, how I long for the days of my youth, where I would lounge all day in the basement and just play video games that gave me a sense of accomplishment, and let me feel alive! Forget all of that fresh air-crap! I long for the Late-Eighties, where 8-bit pixelated characters in overalls jumped on mushroom looking things and turtles... Oh, how I long for the days of Mario.

Mario has never really left us, because the fine people at Nintendo come out with a new Mario game every year (Or sooner) and today, yet another Mario game came out, but within it, comes a very similar and familiar feeling. Yes, "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" has come out, and let me tell you, I feel like I am 12 years old again (Although if you ask my father, I am still about as mature as I was at 12).


Not much has changed for our favorite plumber, and his fantasy lifestyle. Princess gets kidnapped by Bowser (Yet, again) and Mario (as well as his Brother, Luigi and his friends, Yellow Toad and Blue Toad) are dispatched to obliterate his forces and restore peace and prosperity to the Mushroom Kingdom.

The gameplay is a lot like the Original NES Classic, but of course with 22 years of improved graphics. The game is everything that you would expect from an old classic. Even the Koopa Kids from the Classic: Super Mario 3 are in the game as bosses! The levels are laid out a lot like SM3, and there's a lot of familiarity to the game for anyone who's played the NES Mario games.


Power-ups have improved greatly. (I love the Helicopter suit) I also like the addition of the POW Block as a useful item in the game (Oh, Super Mario 2, how I miss you!) Yoshi's back, and even the classic "Dying Sound effect" is here for everyone to enjoy!

For the last 2 hours, I have been playing the game, and I love it! I enjoy it thoroughly. I like the graphics, I like the fact that you use the "Wii-mote" as a controller, and it even has "NES" feel to it. You can play with the nunchuk, but I prefer the controller feel to it.


I would have to say that out of a possible 10 Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, I give "New Super Mario Bros. Wii" a total of 9 and a Quarter Sandwiches. It's just about as fun of a Mario game you can get (With the Exception of "Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door" for the Gamecube.)









By Forch F. Fortier (Who reminds his brother, Joel (Who will never, ever read this) that level 4-2 of the Original "Super Mario Bros." will always be the "Keanu Reeves" level.)

Video Games that Inspire Smut

Video Games that inspired Porn. Its hard to say that sentance without chuckling at least a little. But yes, lo and behold, since the uprising of the geek and their attemps to claiming their inheritance (that being the earth ... duh), a wellspring of smut has spawned out from under a rock, much like some of the nerds themselves.

Now a lot of people will think I'm talking out of my ass, and in this instance I don't really blame you. But no, it is 100% truth, and I know 'cause I've seen it.

I'm not quite sure when this whole fad started, more than likely would have to be in the last ten years or so, but it has not only grown, its exploded. Now the following stuff may shock and horrify you semi-nerds or religious folks, but its my article and I'll be damned if I'm not posting it on account of you, mom.

I never paid much attention to what was going on in porn, as far as acting or talking or story arcs or subplots, but one day on a whim, thinking on how clever I was, I typed into google the phrase "World of Whorecraft" with a giggle. Well, sure as shit, it comes back, not only with pictures, but a full series of 10 initial episodes. All hardcore, all with acting thats actually a cut or two above regular porn acting:

Male Actor "Hello ma'am, your pizza/Plumber/TV repairman/Poolboy/Sex is here"
Female Actor ~Opens the door mostly or entirely naked "Oh, come right in, hope you know how to (insert cliched "sexy" thing here)" ~Followed by an attempted coy giggle~

These porn folk sincerely try to act and some of them have marginal talents aside from being able to fit entire arms in their nether regions. Now being that this is, I assume, a PG-13 site, there won't be any hardcore images in any of this (and believe me thats tough to do). And I said I'd never be able to find chick in green paint sexy again thanks to one sleeping with Shatner, but I'll be damned, this show proved me wrong.

After the initial success of the series however, Blizzard Entertainment stepped in and decided that they didn't want their "Family Friendly" name being bandied about in the same connotations as a porn production (though they are OK with attaching it to so many other god-awful bullshit themes) , so the producers decided to change the name to Whorelore. Same thing, new name, whatever.


So then there's Final Fuck X (obviously, Final Fantasy X when you see the box) which follows the adventures of 3 women, very close in name to the female protagonists from the aforementionned FF game. Again, porn to me is very rarely about story or substance, acting or costume, but in this case again, I must say, the amount of detail that went into this was astounding (as far as the appearance). Now because I don't speak Japanese and was far too lazy to find either a dubbed or subtitled version, I can assume the "story" followed the normal tone of the game if everyone were extremely horny and didn't care about saving the world, but the amount of silly looks on the actresses faces tells me that story was really secondary, they were simply trying to cash in on a very successful gaming franchise.

Then again, there are also movies (which may or may not be real in North America) which are parodied off of the Left 4 Dead, zombie bore-athon: One known as Left 4 Head and other Left 4 Bed. Due to the fact that these are obviously tied into the whole zombie thing, I refuse to watch them out of sheer desire to not start foaming at the mouth.

Other titles like "Face Invaders" or "Grand Theft Anal" simply are that ... titles that SOUND like video game titles. Though I must say I was intrigued by "Call of Booty."


Progressing right along the curve(s) here, something else was delivered into my waiting lap in regards to this whole subject. In what twisted world could one tie together Samus Aran, Link and Zelda, Princess Peach, Chun Li and even Rayne of the Bloodrayne series before Uwe killed it, with anything honestly sexual? Well a club in California, known as Bordello, have recently unveiled a lovely stage show, featuring a sextet (if you'll pardon the pun) of comely ladies walking out on to stage dressed up as the aforementioned gaming characters and proceeding to strip down to the nipple stickers and t-bars. Not only is this getting rave reviews, its also incredibly lucrative for the club that is putting it on. To add to this, the fellows who are in charge of the show have also taken the liberty with the background music from the original games, updating them to a nice little jazz or lounge style. Lovely. Who's up for a trip to Cali? Forch?


But I prattled on and have once again, single handedly destroyed the innocent wholesomeness of gaming from you forever, as if there were anything pure after Custer's Revenge.

So until next time, this is Major Martin saying, "Son/Daughter, I think its time for us to have a talk about the birds and the bees ... I know they aren't even remotely the same species, but man do they like to get it on"

Video Game Review: Lego Rock Band

The "Guitar Game" phenomenon continues, and I, for one could not be happier! Why, you ask? Because not only do I love to rock, but I ROCK! Well at least when it comes to guitar games (On medium, I am 5-button retarded!) I can't seem to get enough, so of course now that "Lego Rock Band" is out, I am swimming in a pool of Rock, once more!

Now, I am personally of the opinion that "Rock Band" is the superior game to "Guitar Hero" and I know that there are people who are going to disagree with me, but I am sorry, I think that the quality of music alone is enough to get me playing "Rock Band" before any other.


"Lego Rock Band" is exactly what it sounds like. The "Rock Band" you know and love, with the toy that kids of all ages love: "Lego". Like the Lego games before it, there's a broad appeal to it for persons of all ages. The games is not like any of the other Rock Band games before it, with the exception that you play as adorable little Lego People!

MTV Games has put a pretty-decent assortment of music to it, most of all the one reason I bought the game: "The Final Countdown" by Europe (10 points to the first person to tell me why I love this song so much!) but it's put a lot of songs that are not already in the Rock Band series, so at least while the gameplay isn't much different, at least the content is.


The Career mode is what I like best of all, because it's not the same "World Tour" styled like we last saw in Rock Band 2, it has similar elements, however each "Level" has a sort-of bonus stage, where you have to use the "Power of Rock" to help accomplish a task, like knocking down a building, or scaring the ghosts out of a haunted house! (Which the music fit perfectly for that task: Ghostbusters, by Ray Parker, Jr., the very song that defiled my very beloved "Huey Lewis and the News", but I still love the song anyway.)

I also like the fact that the notes on the screen look like little lego pieces, which adds to the game, however at first it was quite confusing.


The one real sore spot that I have toward the game, is that I have a ton of DLC-songs from Rock Band 2, which I would love to see be made available for Transfer to play on Lego Rock Band, however it doesn't even look like it is DLC-enabled (At least for the Wii, it may be different on PS3/XBox360), which did upset me because it would have been nice to play some of those songs in Lego-form.

I have not yet played the game all the way through (I just got it a couple of hours ago) but I have to admit that I enjoy it greatly, and look forward to more game play of it later on this evening, and I will be playing it non-stop until I (Of course) get Super Mario Bros Wii tomorrow (Which I will review at that time)

Out of a Possible 10 Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, "Lego Rock Band" gets a 7, only because of the DLC issue, if that were resolved, I would give it a much higher score.


By Forch F. Fortier (Who is wishing upon a star for "Huey Lewis and the News Rock Band", but can not figure out for the life of me why MTV Games can't get it done! I mean they're icons of the 1980's and they've had enough hits, right? Well, ok fine, not enough to warrant a full game, but at least put together an 80's rock collection with them in it, pretty please???)

The Sexiffication on gaming?

Now for the first load I'm talking about, there isn't a specific game, or even genre of gaming. There's just something that burns my ass a little bit ... the oversexualization in the gaming industry.

Lets get this out of the way right now, I'm not a conservative, I'm a firm believer in the games can be art club and I love naked women. That being said, there are certain parts of gaming that yes, can handle a little bit of smut in them. It accentuates the story, allows for development or something to that effect.

However, there are other game devs, who will put it in seemingly to see if they can get away with it, or because they think it'll sell. The latter enters such games as Tomb Raider, Heavenly Sword or X-blades, whereas the former is more closesly tied to the GTA series, BMX XXX, etc.

The Tomb Raider series is one that I'll hit particularily hard here, because what they'd done was take a barely functional platforming game in which they took out the "functional" part and replaced it with a "sexy" polygonal character named Lara Croft. Anyone who has played this series at all, can attest to the fact that its a heaping pile of shit and they only reason they did so at age 13 was to zoom the camera in on the main character's rack. Thats all it had going for it. End of discussion there, you've reached the pinnacle of your game developing careers there folks. Wait what's that? Oh you've made 8 more games and two movies involving the exact same bullshit. And they're going to sell 35 million copies worldwide to a group of teenagers with holes in their pockets, thus beginning the destructive oversexualization of the modern mind. Alot of women see Croft as a feminist icon, which as a start makes me chuckle. I know myself as an adolescent had many fantasies involving other feminist symbols like Donna Haraway or even Judith Butler. Bullshit. Core tried to pass it off this way so they didn't get gassed by those same nazi's. No harm, no foul. Can't fault folks for wanting to make money I suppose.

Now the Heavenly Sword/X-Blades grouping is a blatant combat rip off of the God of War series, you know the game of rampant destruction that brought quick time events back to the fore of gaming, Anyways, both characters, being female, are required by the majority of the gaming community to apparently be wearing as little as possible so as to display all the game dev's work on the tiny, perfect, glistening bodies. Thats it. Its again, all marketing. A large percentage of gamers who bought either of those games did so because of the prospect of nakedness or near nakedness.

Now the GTA series, and that being all of them since three, have featured something to do with nudity or sexuality. This is more of a slight surprise inside rather than an integral part of gameplay itself. Its not needed, though its caught some heat for it, and still doesn't take away from the fact that the games (except for 4) were all about the fun of stealing cars, shooting people, shooting people from stolen cars, seeing how many people you can squish while powersliding, how high of a roof can you jump off of while shooting rockets at your persuers with a five star wanted level without dying and etc. That game was about the fun, the 18 sided breasts weren't essential, just an annoying addition.
P.S. - I also appreciated the zoomed in thong, clearly unable to follow the real geometry instead blocking into 30 odd angles rather than a smooth cut. Next time you want to add something like that, for fuck sakes make it clean enough for me to actually consider it an ass worth playing a game for. Thanks

This subject can even touch on the God of War franchise. I recall my first time playing through after beating that bastard hydra and going down to the lower decks of the ship and lo an behold, two naked women sitting there giggling. After a moment of watching how far along computer graphics had come along in the last few years with breast jiggle physics, I decided to walk in for a closer look which instigated a quick time event where Kratos made a lunging grab and the screen changed to a vase on a stand that you apparently knock over by nailing the floosies hard enough, pushing buttons and rotating the analog stick. Novel, yes. Totally pointless, without a doubt.

And I think a brief mention should be made to the DoA "saga": there it was.

All of the above examples really do beg the question, "What is the point of it all?" Being a 25 year old male, ie the target gaming audience, its almost insulting to have games geared at me because of absurd violence and more importantly glistening flawless breasts/ass. Whatever happened to the simpler times of insert game, play until your eyes bled just for the sake of having fun, rather than be sidetracked by supple bodies rendered down to the last bead of sweat. And here's what I've come up with:
Being the target, most males around the 18-35 year mark are still relatively amused by nudity, to the point where after it being blatantly put into a game early on, it hooks them. A large percentage will spend the rest of the play time, hunting in every nook and cranny in an effort to find more of the boobage, thus being an extremely lazy way for devs to extend play time.

For those of you who kept reading beyond the first line of this tripe, you've earned a cookie and be sure to rub it in the faces
of those smarmy bitches that didn't.
The whole point of this article was still to say, I love naked women. I mean ... video games. And any nudity is just a shameful plug to draw said games out further.

So until next time,

Game Safely (tube socks and doors locked)

Major Trevor Martin