Author: Mr. NintendoTapes

Sometimes to do a nintendo tape review you have to go forward in order to go backward in order to go forward again. So today I will talk about a game I played for a few minutes in the 80s at my friends house but didn’t get a chance to really “dig into” until 1990.

Rock, Paper, And Scissors has been played for many thousands of years since cavemen invented it. But the only way they knew how to play was to use real rocks for the Rock part, and each others heads for Paper and Scissor parts. The game is still violent today, but for a small moment in time in the early 1990s I got to see what a world without violence attached to Rock, Papers, and Scissor would be like.

Read on to see why Alex Kidd is Very Special indeed…

In 1989 the Power Base Converter was released on Sega Genisis. You see, the genesis was designed to be backward compatable with The Master System tapes but the tapes were different sizes. So sega released the Base Converter to plug into your genesis so you could fit your master system tapes in there. When I traded my little black and white TV to Byron for his P.B,C. in 1990, I really got to sink my teeth into those tapes I had missed out on. (his parents made us trade back eventually saying i ripped him off but he is the one who asked ME.)

My favorites were Rocky, Double Dragons, and the game known as “Alex Kidd in The Miracale World.” and let me tell you, that name was not a accident. It is truly a miracle world. You see, the bosses in that game you fight with “rock paper and scissoers” and you do not have to attack them at all!! They say something like “I am scissor head lets play” then you dance with them for a second before choosing what hand sign to use against them and if you use a stronger one you win. If you win two out of three the boss disappears into a friendly cloud, no fighting or hurt feelings at all. But if you lose you die, though.

Also you could save up your money and buy a motorcycle which was awesome and you could go so fast but you would only own it for a few seconds because touching things wrong meant it disappeared so i would buy the motorcycle and feel extremely happy then lose it a few seconds later and feel the exact opposite emotion. It was the video game version of pretty much everything i tried to do in those days so it was fine.

The next year Ellis and me were walking to his house which was half a block from mine. We were going on AWANA church day trip to a kind of local cave system that is famous in our town but when i say “system” i really mean “one cave that is just kind of a awning made out of rock”. Like you couldnt “delve” into it just kind of walk about twenty feet back and still see the outside perfectly because the opening is so huge. So we were going to go on that trip because it was free and we were probably only going to have to pray at the beginning and when it was time to eat lunch. (i was right). they told us to wear shorts because we would also be playing softball in the field while we were there. I chose to wear those thin and satiny Umbro soccer shorts that were popular back then. they were loose fitting around the leg, I guess so you could run faster which was of interest to me. I always looked for things to make me better like pump up shoe or thin shorts. I felt really cool in them because popular kids wore them also. In the end the shorts were a curse too.

While we were walking he said “I have an idea” and heres’ the thing about when Ellis says “I have an idea”: the idea is going to suck for you and be awesome for him. He could roll around in dog crap and come out smelling like a million bucks with a big grin on his face and everyone thinking he was cool as hell and I would somehow have the crap smeared on me even though I stood way back and said “this isn’t a good idea”.

Well his idea was to take pepsi to drink on the bus with us except we would open the cans in his house and drink some first so he could pour some vodka in it from his dads’ liquor cabnet. I was never drunk before in my life and I was only 14 so I said no. Later, on the bus after we drank our vodka pepsi’s, i was drunk and struggling to act normal even though my vision was swimming and my head felt cloudy. I think I did OK because no one seemed to notice and even now in my 40s’ my friends say “I can never tell when you’re drunk” and I bet that is because the first time I ever used alcohol i had to act perfect. If Pastor Roy found out he would make me pray in front of people by myself.

The only thing anyone said was Pastor Roy who said “It smells like someone has been drinking on this bus” and now thinking back i bet he didn’t investigate further because he wanted to just ignore it and get the day over with so he could get back home on his day off.

Anyway me and Ellis sat together and his next “cool idea” to pass the time was to play Rock Paper Scisscors. I said ok thats fine. But there was a “Ellis Twist” to this game of course (the ellis twist was a special seasoning he would sprinkle on normal things in order to make them worse for you and more fun for him)

So we played Rock Paper Scissor except the winner got to lick his first and second fingers, then curl the other fingers and thumb down kind of like a peace sign but with the fingers closed, then grab your wrist with the other hand and slam those wet fingers down across your fore arm.

Then you played again. And again. and again. Sometimes I would win, and my hits were always weak because I hate to hit but by this time all the other kids in the back of the bus were watching us and having fun except for a girl named Crystal who just looked kind of sad. She was new to AWANA and I didn’t know her real well yet but she was nice to me. By the time Pastor Roy got wind of it and came back and told us to knock it off my arm was in pretty bad pain and was red all over and starting to bruise in the middle of my forearm. Ellis was fine and grinning of course.

We got to the cave and got off the bus and prayed, then we were given the chance to explore on our own with a partner because there were some easy hiking trails and a water fall so it was like a little adventure. I was a big indiana jones kid so that was neat to me. I figured I would pair up with Ellis but he went with this girl he liked and I just kind of stood there looking around until Crystal, the sad looking girl from the bus came over to me and asked if I wanted to go on a hike with her.

This was the first time a girl ever paid any (good kind) of attention to me since my girlfriend Beth in third grade so I immediately said yes. So we started walking up the trail that led up behind the waterfall. I was still tipsy from the vodka pepsi at this point and we started talking.

She said “why did you let that guy hit you so much” and i said i don’t know, he just always has these ideas to do things and since he’s my friend I go along it. I told her it isn’t a big deal its fine and it doesnt’ even hurt anymore. She said well, if he is your friend he wouldn’t do stuff like that.

Then we got to the top of the waterfall which was more like a big creek and not really a river. A little part of the path branched off and and went to this little outcropping of rock way above the pool of water at the bottom of the water fall. The path was wet and very steep, and there was nothing to stop you from falling off the outcropping if you were to slide on the mud. She said do you want to try going down there? I thought it would be cool to do that since she didn’t seem afraid of the idea and even though I was I could pretend I wasnt and maybe she would think i was cool too.

I told her I will go first, so I went down it real careful, holding on to these big thick roots that stuck up at the edges of the path until i made it down to the outcropping. Everyone at the bottom by the pool immediately saw me and Pastor Roy started yelling “Get off of there and back onto the path right now!” so I turned around and the mud was so slick going back up I slipped on it and slid back down to the outcropping and almost fell off of it and the 40 feet or so down to the pool. When I got up everyone started yelling “TAKE HER HAND!” at me and I turned around and saw Crystal was holding on to a skinny tree and leaning down the little path about halfway with her hand out. I took her hand and she pulled me back up. She asked if I was ok and I said yes. We didn’t talk anymore on that trip and we didn’t talk anymore at AWANA meetings.

Anyway after lunch we played softball and I was on third base because I had actually managed to hit the ball earlier and had to run around bases which was the first time I ever got to do that.

So when the next kid up to bat also hit it I had to run towards home and as I got closer they yelled SLIDE! at me so I slid but you are not suppose to slide in those thin satin umbro shorts because there is no weight to them and there is nothing to stop them from going all the way up your butt crack along with your regular white underwear so that everyone saw half of your bare butt and laughed for what seemed like an hour but was probably only thirty seconds and then multiple times during the rest of the day. There was nothing to do but pick my underwear and shorts from my butt while they watched and laughed.

Anyway they threw the ball in time and I was out. On the ride home Ellis wanted to play Rock Paper Scissors again and Pastor Roy either didn’t notice or didnt care this time. While we played I thought about how in Miracle World this wouldn’t happen. I never went on an AWANA trip again.

So this is why I give Alex Kidd in The Mericle World a 2/10

There are a lot of people who will love you and then stop loving you in this world. Donkey Kong was my first and the effect was so deep that when it happens now in my forties i still think of math problems and how even if i solve them it will cause my pink soul-self to hurt and make a bad noise. Today’s review is Donky Kong Jr. Math.

Donkey kong Jr. Math is a “game” your parents buy you when they are tired of getting notes sent home from your teacher telling them about how you are restless in class and can’t focus on your school work and the homework you turn in is a confusing mess that is only half done.

Your parents decide that the only thing to do is to use the things that you love like nintendo tapes and donkey kong to hurt you until your’e fixed. They hand you the Hill’s bag and you already know it is a nintendo tape because your hands are nintendo tape sensing experts by 1987 when youre’ ten years old but your brain is also by this age an expert at sensing traps because you know the only time you feel a brand new nintendo tape is christmas and birthdays and one pretty awesome easter in 1988. (awesome until you find out that easter game is deadly towers)

So when your dad hands you the tape wrapped in the shopping bag you are immediately happy but also suspicieous and guess what, you are right to be because when you open it it says donky kong jr. (good news) but beside that part it says “math” (bad news”).

You don’t know what it means right away but you can already feel the sense of dread in your gut like the time Ellis convinced you to steal the stack of news papers that get dropped off daily at 4 am to your friend bill who has a paper route and toss them down the hill under the pine trees.

As soon as you turn on the game you see words like “calculate” and another “calculate” and thanks to movies you are already good at cussing so you say mother fu*cker but quiet so your parents dont hear you.
Then the game makes you climb vines like in the good donkey kong jr. except instead of avoiding birds and dropping fruit on snapjaws you just go around and touch numbers and plus signs and divide signs until you make the number that dad donkey kong is holding on his sign at the top of the screen. The second worse part of the game (after math) is there is a pink color copy of you on the side of the screen and i never knew if that was girl donkey kong jr (in the old days pink version or bow in hair meant girl) or if it was your soul that was removed from your body.

So the girl donkey kong jr, or maybe soul self just stands there quiet while you do math problems and if you solve one then it starts doing the awful “you died” noise and animation from the regular good donkey kong jr. so your reward is making someone else or maybe your own soul feel pain. I never understood why it did that but i always felt like it was only natural for that awful feature to be a part of this torture game.

I only played it when mom and dad made me and would check on me to make sure i was still playing it. my brain would think about star trek next generation or river city ransom while my thumbs just made donkey kong jr move around and i dropped all pretence of attemping to actually complete the game. if you can’t get good at something it is best to just stop doing it and focus on dealing with the guilt at being different and worthless.

my grades never got better and i guess it was decided that if donky kong couldnt reach me no one could so i continued to hide my midterm deficiency reports in the little hollow part on the bottom of my nintendo and mostly spent my year dreading actual report card time. but at least the donky kong jr part of my failure was done and that was the best part.

After a few months everyone forgot about the failed donky kong jr math accelarated learning experiment and I was able to pass the tape off to some other unlucky kid whos parents were at the end of the math rope.

I used that twenty dollars to buy rygar which i beat and then traded for megaman 2 and those are two of the best tapes you can play.

So I give Donky Kong Jr. Math a 10/10

tommy isn’t sick he just has a big ball of tobaccho chew in his mouth. it is not a grandma lump like i thought when I was a kid. it was his hobby.

when i got genesis at home as a kid the last thing i wanted to play was a sports game. not when I had kick ass tapes like “the last battle” and “columns”. You know that your gensisis is already capable of powerhouse games not crap that i could play outside if i wanted to and could run without getting tired to fast. but my friend Byron got this one so we did a trade. I gave him the last battle tape for a week and he had this and columns and mickey mouse vs. castle of allusion. and there was no way he would give me that tape so i didn’t even ask. (i left his offer open ended…secretly hoping he would say “you can borrow micky” but instead he just handed me tommy lasorta baseball. so that was already a sad ending but anyway i played it.

i dont really understand rules of baseball and never learned them and i could never hit the ball. it was 1989 and even though i had a starting line up figure of bo Jackson later on (“bo knows” fever hit me really hard and i had a poster of him in football pads and holding a bat) i hated all sports including this dumb baseball tape.

When I got home from school i went to a meeting name “AWANA” it stood for something about god or jesus, it was like a church meeting for kids but not the one on sunday which i refused to go to. i went with my friend ellis because there was a girl from school who went there that he liked and he didn’t want to go alone. I wasn’t a religious kid or from a religious house at all so this stuff was pretty weird to me. when we were leaving that night we were talking to Pastor Roy (if you called him Roy he got irritated) about something I don’t remember what but at the end of the talk he went into the church office.

As we walked home Ellis said “i bet there is a lot of money in that office in the church” and i said maybe i dont know. Ellis said well they donate money all the time so I bet they keep it in there. I said OK. I knew what he as getting at. he was going to ask me to help him break into that church and steal money aka he was going to have me do it. But to my surprise he dropped it (for now, another story for that later) and suggested we go around and steal hood ornaments off cars. we met up with my friend Byron who also lived on the block and Ellis mentioned the hood ornaments to him and i was suprised but byron was into it. I just said im not doing that i am going HOME. So I did while they both yelled a bunch of crap at me, like i was a coward and a baby and a p***ssy. things like that.

The next day Byron’s mom called and asked if I knew where he was the day before. I lied and said no, he hung out with Ellis but I went home. Turns out while stealing a whole shoebox full of hood ornaments they stopped at one of our other friends house a few blocks away and told him what they were doing. Then that guys’ dads hood ornament went mysteriously missing. it did not take detective powers of the police to figure out who did it. So they were both grounded for weeks and had to do some kind of community service and their parents had to pay for the repairs of a bunch of cars. This was in the old days when most cars had a good ornament that stuck right up off the front of the car. they dont do that now mostly its just a sticker i think.

The next day at school they were bragging about how tough they were and that they got in trouble with the cops and they told everyone that i was a huge baby who wouldn’t go with them. people made fun of me for being a wimp and when I said hi to April who’s locker was next to mine that day she sprayed me in the face with hairspray. All I did was say hi.

This is why I give Tommy Lasorta Baseball a 7 out of 10.

Rise from the Grave, and do not trust bills brother patrick.

Today’s review is the tape name Alter Beast. I chose this tape to review because it has a line in it at the very begining. When God wakes you up from death to destroy enemies he says “rise from the grave” and he uses his magic to bring you back to life. Which is cool.

Well let me tell you in the summer that i got this game (1989), it was included if you bought sega gensis. I went to my buddy Bill’s house across the street and his brother was showing him how to do “huffing” and asked if i wanted to try. I said what is that. He said it is where you open the gas tank to his dad’s motor cycle then put your mouth over the hole and breathe it in!!!!! well i said Im not a moron!

But my friend Bill (always wanted to act cool and brave) said yes. So his brother said ok come here. Put your mouth over this gas hole and just breath it as deep as you can. So bill did that. And he started coughing and fell down backwards. when he fell he hit the back of his head on the concrete floor of their garage. then bill didn’t move. i started to cry (i was only 13 and that is a ok thing to cry about if your only 13) it doesn’t make me a baby. But his brother was already “huffed up” so he was just laughing but then their mom barb heard me crying and yelling that bill was dead. so she came down stairs and started going crazy screaming what happened. I ran home and told my mom and she just said what is huffing. I told her what it is and all she said was “why did he do that” and i told her how i think bill is dead now, the only friend I ever had who saw me beat Duck Tales in one day.

She said Bill wouldn’t die and to go get ready for dinner. The next day bill was at school alive and didnt even have a bandage on his head. And you know what he did well I will tell you. He told everyone I wouldn’t huff and I cried when he got “ripped up as hell” on it. I got made fun of for two weeks because of that. But guess what jokes on all the kids in school back then because bill would still come to my house and be my friend in secret and he would play my tapes, he only pretended to think i was an idiot coward in front of everyone in school. So in the end i was not the loser after all. Only everyone else.

This is why I give Altred Beast nintendo tape for sega geneses a 10/10