Batman (NES) Stage 1!

I've been hooked on old MMO games and I totally should not be spending so much time with them. They're just horrible horrible time sinks.  I'll go into depth with Ultima Online and Final Fantasy XI sometime when I have a clear head but just know I have a good reason I'm playing these versus other recent games such as World of Warcraft or Rift or Lord of the Rings Online or ....etc.

Today I've got THE GODDAMN BATMAN! I will admit that I've never even beaten one level of this game, but I have played level 1 many times! This music is the sole reason I picked it up and tried it out.  The stage 1 music just builds up so nicely with a nice drum intro, works into a catchy melody, starts to get intense as the song closes, and finishes up with great energy! It really added a great atmosphere for me as I feel like THE GODDAMN BATMAN punching flame thrower dudes, floor cleaning robots, and random dude that runs into you! And oh man the jumping controls are spot on with it's great wall jumps.  I'm completely reminded of how well Super Meat Boy did its wall jumps and Batman is definitely one of those games that has awesome wall jumping experience unlike SOME games *coughMetroidcough*.

Enjoy! Tell me if you enjoyed this song!

Amy's Wedding!

Today I went to attend Amy's Wedding!  She got married today at around 1:00pm PST!  Congratulations and I hope you and your husband will have many happy years together!  If you want to congratulate her, head on over to her blog and just wish her a happy future.  She'd really appreciate a sudden surge to her blog as well since she's relatively new! I don't want to post pictures until she approves, so just believe me! I was there, she's married, go congratulate her!

Earthquake and Banner update

I'm STUNNED at the low casualty numbers for Japan's 8.9 earthquake.  News sources say that their ultra strict building standards probably saved many lives.  Haiti's 7.0 quake killed (I think) 220,000 to put that in perspective and Japan will be predicted to have lost just over 1,000 with its' 8.9 earthquake.  Friggin' engineers and building policy writers definitely deserve from praise for preemptively saving a TON of people.  If you haven't heard of all this, I've been keeping tabs on Aljazeera livestream news  for updates and information.

Ninja Gaiden II music is ROCKING

The Ninja Gaiden series of games is pure evil.  The level designers of these games must have been masochists to design such sadistic set pieces.  Each enemy, platform, pitfall, and obstacle were precariously placed to ensure maximum frustration.  This was an era where you got your $50 money's worth from mastering a handful of ridiculously hard levels and Ninja Gaiden was the king of such level designs back in 1990.  If you were a souless robot, you could beat such a difficult game in about 15 minutes but of course it took normal humans many many more hours to master it.  Many controllers were probably broken by pure rage form this game but those than persevered through the game were treated to entire animated cutscenes and a involving plotline which was an amazing feat.  It was one of the first games to involve ANY story on the NES! Most NES games were as simple as "you are this guy, you want to kill this guy, GO!".  In Ninja Gaiden it was "You are Ryu Hayabusa, you want Ashtar dead, GO!" but with supporting characters, a love interest, sacrifices, and plot twists! Sure it's no novel, but it was a novel idea for a video game at the time.

The point is this was a difficult but rewarding game that featured a ROCKING soundtrack. The only problem with the music is that it rocks SO hard it messes up my playstyle.  If you want any possibility of beating this game you need patience, but it's so hard to stand around to survey situations with such bumping tunes!  I had a hard time picking a track from Ninja Gaiden II specifically...that is until I found out about The Nintendo Drummer's Youtube page.  He did an amazing job covering the drums that I felt no need to include the original NES version of the song as his drums take nothing away from the original song but add new life to it.  I encourage you to check out his youtube page. He's done 16 drum covers for NES games and I'll definitely bring him back into my blog again! Enjoy Ninja Gaiden 2's music taken from Act 2 Scene 2 covered by The Nintendo Drummer!

Anyway, how rocking is this shit?!