In part 2 of this holiday wish list themed episode the Nerd spends more time covering an assortment of video games he has been often requested to review — a “wish list” as it were of reviews.
We get right to the chase with this one, opening up with “A Boy and his Blob” for the NES. While a bit frustrating in some aspects of its design, the Nerd has generally good things to say about it, unlike the follow up – The Three Stooges, on NES.
This is one of those minigame based games, which is based on a few select episodes of the Three Stooges. It just doesn’t work – every game has has a gimmick, and none of them seem to work out quite well. With James being a fan of the Three Stooges it just makes things worse.
Changing gears, we move to the Super Nintendo and Home Improvement, another infamous game that, apparently, doesn’t even come with a proper instruction manual. That’s just great, given how apparently confusing the game is.
Next up is Pit Fighter, which looks like the bastard child of the Mortal Kombat craze of the early 90’s. Funny thing is it actually predates Mortal Kombat, and once the latter title was released Pit Fighter got relegated to the garbage pile – it’s a terrible fighter with nothing to redeem it.
Now we hit the biggest request – Bubsy 3D. Oh, Bubsy… I remember when this game was new. We hated it then, we hate it now, it will forever be hated. Bubsy wasn’t that popular of a character in the 90’s, designed as a mascot like Sonic and Mario, but he failed to hit the mark.
To put it simply, Bubsy 3D it does everything rong when it comes to 3D platformers. Period. Beyond that it’s overall design is annoying and, well… just look at it in the episode.
We end on Spider Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage, the only red Super Nintendo game you’ll see. It’s a solid title which James generally compliments, especially when it comes to the music which is, no joke, actual metal music rendered using the SNES sound chip. Awesome!
We end with what can only be described as a redemption moment – the Nerd discovers the game was published by LJN. Yep, they actually made a good game! Well, published it anyway, but given the track record this is still a surprise. This was one of those “full circle” moments, and was quite a joy to see when this episode was new.
Final Rating: 4.0/5
A solid conclusion to this pair of episodes. No time is wasted getting into the games and the subject matter chosen is pretty solid. Can’t add much commentary beyond what I’ve already said here.