1P Start

Ladies and Gents it pains me to say my farewells to 1PStart. I’ve been here only a short time, though I’ve been at Xbox 360 Rally (another 451 site) for just under a year. I will miss you guys, though you’re probably throwing a party, chanting “he’s leaving! Huzzah! Huzzah!”. If you do miss me, though, you can find me at my new home BingeGamer.net.

It’s been fun, and I hope to see y’all around.

P.S.: Qbix — E-mail me, dude. I’m still gonna get your GTA IV to ya.

Welcome to another Old-School Sunday. And your in for a real gem this week. The game I’m paying homage to is Gladiator by Taito.

Gladiator is simple to play, but difficult to master. You control your Gladiator as he moves through the levels. Pushing up/down moves the gladiator’s shield. Left/Right accelerates and decelerates your gladiator. There are three different attack buttons: High, Medium, and Low. As I stated earlier, the gameplay is simple, but during play, you are juggling between defending your opponents attacks and attacking the opponent on a constant basis.

There are two different modes players will experience during the course of the game: “obstacle” and “fight” modes. The obstacle mode pits the gladiator up against flying hazards such as bats, fireballs, and arrows in which he has to use his shield and sword to defense himself against the flying objects. In “fight” mode, the gladiator goes up against another gladiator in a 1-on-1 battle to the death. The way to defeat the enemy is to first attack an undefended area, which will knock off a piece of armor, then attacking that exposed area will defeat your opponent. But, this is also the way your gladiator can be defeated to, so make sure to protect any exposed areas.

Make sure to watch the video below in order to get a better understanding of how Gladiator plays. Enjoy and have a great Old-School Sunday!

Old-School Sundays, Gladiator, YouTube, videos

On Wednesday, I featured a Kid Niki flash video and I thought, what better game to feature in my Old-School Sundays article.

Here’s the synopsis of the story. Kid Niki, the Radical Ninja, is training at his Ninja school when all of a sudden, a bird is shot dead at his feet with a letter on it saying his girlfriend, Princess Margo, has been kidnapped by Stone Wizard.

The gameplay to this title was quite simple, it was a side-scrolling “sword spinning” action game which, at the end of each level, you were faced with a boss battle. My personal favorite boss was the level 1 boss, “Death Breath”. Basically, he was a character with a ginormous head with which he headbutted you if you got to close. His other attacks were a very high jump kick and also, his deadly breath, which stunned you immediately if you came into contact with it.

This game really wasn’t one of the deepest or one of the best, but the gameplay was just so simple and fun at the same time. Come back after the break for a video of the game in action.

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This is the first game in the Old-School Sundays series that’s an 8-bit game. And it sure was / is a great game. Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! came out in 1987 and is a sequel to the original Punch-Out!! arcade game that came out in 1984. The game featured a boxed named “Little Mac” who works his way up the professional boxing circuits, with the final match, dubbed the “The Dream Match” was against non other than Mike Tyson.

During your journey as Little Mac, you’ll fight against some memorable fighters such as Glass Joe (who’s got the worst record ever, 1-99), Don Flamingo (who obviously wears a toupee), and my favorite obvious weak spotted boxer, King Hippo!

The gameplay of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! was simple. Push left/right to dodge the on-coming attack, down to block, A button to punch with your right hand, B to punch with your left hand, and if you held Up while attacking, you’d throw a punch at the opponents face. If you connect with a punch at a certain time, you will receive a star, which in turn can be used by pressing the Start button and it will throw a devastating shot to the face.

I’ve got a couple of videos for you on this Old-School Sunday. One is a video of someone doing a speed run of Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!! in a little over 17 minutes, while the other..well, I’ll let you guys figure out where that’s from.

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Ahhh Q*Bert. One of those games that no one really thinks about anymore, but this game holds a special place in my heart. It’s one of the only games that really never was cloned, and each and everytime you played it, it was still fun.

Q*Bert was released to arcades in 1982. If you never played the game, the whole premise is to hop on cubes that are built in a pyramid playing field to change their color to the requested one. The first couple of levels ask for a single color change, but the longer you play, the trickier the game gets by requesting two color changes, and later on, the addition of the possibility of changing colors back if you hop on them again.

And if that wasn’t hard enough, the additional baddies really make things challenging. “Coily” the snake, “Ugg” and “Wrongway” the gremlins challenge your skill with every move they make on the playing field. The only defense against the baddies were to lure them to the sides of the field, to where the two spinning discs were. When Q*Bert would time it correctly, the baddie would then follow Q*Bert, but then be dropped to their immediate demise.

Old-School Sundays, Q*Bert

Howard & Nester was a comic that followed Nintendo fan-club president Howard Philips (who was actually an employee of Nintendo) and a know it all teen named Nester. Each comic was at the end of every Nintendo Power magazine since it’s first issue back in 1988, up until the 25th volume of Nintendo Power, then all traces of Howard & Nester comics vanished.

Well, for those of you who remembered reading Howard & Nester, I’ve got a special treat for you. All of the comics are online and ready for your viewing pleasure. Just follow the link and relive those childhood memories once again.

[Link: Howard & Nester Comics]

Nintendo Power, Old-School Sundays, Howard, Nester, comic

Yep, I went there. E.T. For those of you who joined late in the game and never played E.T., it was a HORRIFIC game that was a rushed job by Howard Scott Warshaw (developer) in hopes that it would be a cash cow since the movie was a huge hit in 1982. E.T. is known as the game that killed gaming. Atari spent $20-25 million for the rights, and the game did sell well (it actually ranks eighth best selling Atari game of all time), but it was still a huge disgrace to gaming.

To learn more about E.T., check out it’s entry on Wikipedia.

Enjoy this video of an E.T. speed run on your Old-School Sunday!

Old-School Sundays, E.T., YouTube

Congo Bongo was one of my favorite games growing up due to how challenging it was to maneuver through the levels to get to the end. Congo Bongo was made by Sega and released in 1983, it was their answer to “Donkey Kong” and was very very similar. In the game, you played a red-nosed safari hunter who tries catch an ape named “Bongo” for a very good reason. You see Bongo set fire to the hunter’s tent as a practical joke. Jesus man, who the hell would think that’s funny? Imagine your in the jungle minding your own business, next thing you know your tent is ablaze and off in the distance is this stupid ape dying of laughter while your suffering 3rd degree burns.

I found the Congo Bongo commercial on YouTube and what a commercial it is. For some reason, the commercial has canned laughter playing in the background. Don’t ask me why Sega made such a horrible commercial. Let’s just hope they don’t repeat history and make a Sonic commercial that has canned laughter added to it.

Enjoy Congo Bongo on your Old-School Sunday!

Old-School Sunday, Congo Bongo, YouTube

I got alot of emails praising the Captain N videos that I posted a couple of Old-School Sundays ago. So, here is the second episode in the Captain N series that introduces good old Bayou Billy.

Enjoy Captain N - The Game Master Episode 2: How’s Bayou on your Old-School Sunday!

Old-School Sundays, Captain N, YouTube

For those of you who had an Atari, Commodore, or Apple II then you will probably recall this little gem. Jumpman. Now Jumpman’s story wasn’t apparent when you played it, the only way you would know this was if you either read the manual that came with the game, or if you read it on Wikipedia.

Below I have embedded a video of someone playing the first level on Jumpman. For you youngins, you’ll probably think this is crap and wonder why I put this up. But for those of you who were gamers since way early on, you’ll enjoy the music, the sound effects, and you’ll still hate that stupid bullet that darts at you whenever it sees you.

Enjoy Jumpman on your Old-School Sunday!

Old-School Sundays, Jumpman

On this Old-School Sunday, I have a little treat for you guys. The first Captain N episode. For those of you who didn’t grow up playing games, Captain N was basically some guy who played Nintendo so much that he was “chosen” to enter the game world to help Zelda, Simon Belmont (from Castelvania), Mega Man, and Kid Icarus battle the evil Mother Brain and her henchmen King Hippo and some eggplant dude from Kid Icarus.

Enjoy these classic videos on your Old-School Sunday!

This is a true blast from the past. It’s the first ever Nintendo Commercial. One thing you should note is Rob. Rob was a useless piece of hardware. It was supposed to help you with games, but all it did was be a “play pal” for all of the only children out there. And another thing, the way the kid is holding the controller in this video really frightens me. Who has ever played video games like that? And the kid with the Zapper, why is he taking aim as if he’s taking a shot at JFK. Relax kid, it’s friggin Duck Hunt, it’s not that serious!

Enjoy the first ever nintendo commercial on your Old School Sunday

YouTube, Nintendo, Old School Sundays

This is a video of the very popular news show “Inside Edition” back in 1988. It’s a story on children playing video games who enter another world, full of danger, intrigue and magic. In other words, the world of the Super Mario Bros. And according to the news story, in 3 years Nintendo sold 11 million units at $100! That’s amazing!

Another interesting thing about the video is the question “Are Mario and Luigi’s last names Mario?” In this video, the representative says no, they’re just Mario and Luigi, but many die hard gamers know that Mario is their last name. So it is Mario Mario and Luigi Mario (I know, sounds dumb, but it’s true)

Enjoy this video on your Old-School Sunday.

I got a great idea from my brother the other night when I showed him my blog, he suggested that I have a day dedicated to old school gaming.  So here is that particular post.

As you can tell from the headline, it’s the game that launched the career of THE biggest video mascot, Mario (aka Jumpman).  Donkey Kong was the mistreated pet of Mario.  Donkey Kong one day escapes and kidnaps Mario’s girlfriend, Pauline (yes, that was her actual name in Donkey Kong!).  One very interesting fact of Donkey Kong was due to graphical limitations, Mario was forced to have a mustache (since a mouth was too hard to animate), a cap (hair could not be animated), and to make his arm movements more visible, the programmers put white gloves and colored overalls on Mario.

Well, that’s a short explanation of Donkey Kong.  To find out more, visit your local library or Wikipedia

Here is a short video I found of some guy actually trying to sell his Donkey Kong arcade…what has the world come to.

Nintendo, Donkey Kong, Mario