A Half-Assed Review: Jizz Wars

WARNING: I have two important things to say before this review.
1.) The game I'm about to review is called Jizz Wars. No, it's not a browser-based game on Facebook. It's a "pornographic" Sega Genesis Asteroids clone. If any of you are offended by 32-bit penises blasting jungle juice at other penises, approach with caution.
2.) This is my first "Half-Assed" review. A Half-Assed review is basically a shorter review than usual. In other words, the review is shorter because I stayed up all night watching Avatar instead of writing this article.
Thanks for listening and enjoy the experience that is "Half-Assed: Jizz Wars Review".

I've seen some pretty messed up video games in my life. Abadox had you flying a spaceship and shooting your way through a monster's innards. Custer's Revenge let you play as the infamous Gen. Custer, raping a tied-up Indian on a cactus. Beat 'Em and Eat 'Em consisted of the players (two women) looking up at a building, as a man who masturbated dropped semen into their mouths. How the hell do you top that? Meet Jizz Wars. A game where you play as a penis and shoot other penises with cum. Oh, yeah, and it plays exactly like Asteroids... except it sucks. This is supposedly a Genesis game, but the graphics look reminiscent of the NES. For some reason, a naked woman is floating around in the background of the game. I think this is because they needed something to make the game less homoerotic, but penises shooting penises with man-chowder can't be that gay! Yes, yes it is. In Jizz Wars, you fly around on the screen as a dong and try to blast away other dongs. The problem? The controls are awful. How do you fuck up the controls for an Asteroids clone? I have no damn clue. The A button kicks in your "thrusters" and the C button fires the jizz. Did I get to mention that you get to choose the color of your cock before you jump into the game? The color selection is abundant and plentiful: peach, grey, yellow, brown, peachy-brown, white, lime, pink, orange, and forest green. Look, if my cock is forest green then I've probably contracted Haitian Souring Penis Disease. There is literally no music in the game, and when you fire, there's only a little 'bleep' sound. I'd understand if this was a Game Boy cart or an Atari 2600 game, but this is Sega fucking Genesis! The system that brought us the Sonic the Hedgehog series! Also, I went online to research the game, and I could find nothing about it. MobyGames.com had no info on it. AllGame.com had nothing. Shit, GameFaqs.com didn't even have any information. And then I noticed on the title screen of the game, that a company named RJSoft released the game. Hmmmm.... interesting. I had never heard of this so called RJSoft. It turns out that RJSoft is a homebrew developer that were also behind the homebrew ROM AstroDuel. That explained the shitty music and NES graphics. Not to diss homebrew ROMS. It's just that this one happened to be a burning pile of dog shit. All in all, a terrible concept and terrible execution make this a terrible download. Jizz Wars gets a 1/10.

Sincerely,
Mr. Retro

P.S.,
The next article is going to be a massive 101 best movies of all time list. My good friend Robby014 will be guest-writing with me. You can find his blog at the following URL: http://robby014blog.blogspot.com/
You can also find the perfectly legal Jizz Wars ROM at: http://www.coolrom.com/roms/genesis/5543/Jizz_Wars.php

Family Matters: The Lean, Mean Urkel Machine Review

We all remember those terrible 80s and 90s Friday night sitcoms. Shows such as Boy Meets World, ALF, and Full House not only brought home the ratings, but sold a shitload of merchandise. From backpacks to bobbleheads, tons of people bought this crap. Thus, it came as no surprise that a junior novelization based on an episode of Family Matters was produced. This 80-page travesty was entitled "Family Matters: The Lean, Mean Urkel Machine" by Bonnie Worth. I hate myself, so I'll review it. I will be reviewing this "novel" on a scale from 1-10. 10 being Different Seasons by Stephen King and 1 being every novel ever written by Danielle Steele. Let's do this thang!

CHARACTERS: Carl Winslow: He is the man of the house. He lives with his wife Harriett, his daughter Laura, and his son Eddie. He is an African-American and lives in Chicago, working as a police officer (in lamen's terms, an asshole.) Oh, yeah, and he's overweight, which makes him a douchebag.

Harriett Winslow: She is Carl's wife and a stay-at-home mom. She's barely in the book, so we shan't talk of her any further.

Mother Winslow: Carl's senile mother. She's always feeding her son unhealthy shit, which contributes to his obesity. That's some bullshit!

Laura Winslow: Carl's daughter. She's fourteen years old and is kind of a bitch. She hates Steve Urkel. Speaking of...

Steve Urkel: The Winslow's next door neighbor. He has an attraction to Laura Winslow and is always making advances towards her, even though she regularly vocalizes her disinterest towards him. After going insane due to sexual frustration, Steve waits for the Winslows to leave for the day, breaks into their house, sneaks into Laura's room, and masturbates into her underwear drawer. No, wait... that was me. Steve is the stereotypical nerd. He has a crew-cut, wears his pants all the way up to his chest, wears suspenders, and has glasses. He also has annoying catchphrases, such as, "Did I do that?" and refers to Laura as his "lady love". Everyone in the Winslow house hates him, except for Mother Winslow.

STORY: This book has two stories (Like one wasn't enough.) The first story opens with the Winslows sitting around the kitchen table, talking about what an idiot Steve Urkel is. When Mother Winslow overhears this conversation, she sticks up for Steve, reminding her relatives about the time when Steve risked life-and-limb for Laura. Laura says she doesn't remember, so of course, Mother Winslow rehashes the damn story. Yes, the entire story is a freaking flashback. In this story, Steve asks Laura to the school dance. Of course, Laura turns him down. The next day at school, Steve is rooting around in his locker when he notices the school bully Willie harassing Laura. Trying to defend his "lady love", Steve walks over to Willie, trying as best he can to stick up to him. Here's an excerpt from the book: [Steve pulled off his mitten. "Sir, I will have you know that it is people such as yourself who put the 'ick' in pathetic. Not only have you harassed and insulted me, but you have sullied the reputation of my lady love..." Before Willie could figure out what all those big words meant, Steve slapped him clean across the face with his mitten. Willie was too amazed to do much of anything at first. Then he started to sputter. "He ... he hit me ... with his mitten!" he said to Waldo, and to anyone else who would listen. A crowd had gathered, hoping for a fight. Waldo nodded. "Be careful. He's got another one."] Wow. And I thought Mark Twain was the great American novelist. Willie tries to fight Steve, but the principal interferes. He suggests that if Steve and Willie want to finish the fight, they can do it at the gym infront of an audience on the weekend. They both agree to this, and go to their classes. After school, Carl decides to train Steve in the art of boxing, even though he hates him. Steve learns almost nothing. However, he does learn the "Urkel shuffle". Basically, he just dances around in the ring, trying to avoid getting punched in his smug, nerdy face. This acts as foreshadowing later in the story, but you probably knew that already. On the big day, all the Winslows show up for the match. So, in fact, does the entire school. Seats are filled with people all excited to see Urkel get a beatdown. And boy does he ever! Willie puts Urkel down four times in Round 1! Somehow, Urkel keeps getting back up. Just when it looks like Urkel is on his last life, Carl yells from the stands, "The Urkel Shuffle!". And shuffle Urkel does. And guess what? Willie still beats the shit out of him! However, a guy in the stands yells "If Urkel can take you, I can take you!". Before you know it, the entire audience wants to fight Willie, and Willie bolts for the door, leaving Urkel to win by forfit. Of course, Laura goes to the school dance with Steve. Didn't see that one coming... That concludes the most underwhelming story of all time. My big question is how could Laura not remember that happening? Why did she need Mother Winslow to refresh her memory? Wouldn't that be the most memorable thing ever? Either Laura has Alzheimer's or she's a complete fucking moron. Now let's dig into the second story. Carl Winslow comes home from work looking scared-shitless. When his wife asks him what's wrong, he replies that he had to chase a criminal on top of the Sears Tower, the tallest building in Chicago. It turns out that Carl has a fear of heights. The culprit gets away, and Carl ends up looking like a pussy. Enter Steve Urkel. Steve overhears Carl explaining the scene and puts in his two cents. He claims he can cure Carl somehow. Not believing Urkel, Carl calls bullshit and ignores Steve. Just when Carl starts to leave the room, his police chief knocks on the door. Carl's boss walks in and explains to him that if he can't get over his fear of heights, he can no longer work on the force. After the chief leaves, Urkel once again, asks Carl if he can help him. Carl gives in and the next day, they talk to a hot air balloon pilot. Carl is extremely nervous and doesn't want to do it, but Urkel insists and before they know, they're in the balloon. The pilot leaves to go check the fuel and of course, Steve screws everything up. He pulls the gas lever and sends the balloon floating into the great beyond. Carl, scared stupid, shuts his eyes and lays down, but Urkel tries to reassure Carl that everything will be all right. He tells Carl to look out over the edge of the balloon, and he does. Is he cured now? No. Now he's even more terrified! WOOSH! What do you know? A giant gust of wind knocks Urkel out of the balloon, and Carl assumes that Steve is sidewalk soup. But wait! Carl can hear Urkel's annoying, squeaky voice screaming for help! Carl looks over the side of the balloon and notices Steve hanging off the side. In a very cliche fashion, Carl forgets his fear of heights and saves Steve's scrawny ass. That's it? That's the end? Yes. Yes it is.

THE AUTHOR: Bonnie Worth. I had never heard of her prior to this retro outing, so I looked at her bibliography. She's written several children's books, including "Babe: Pigs and Robbers" based upon the hit movie Babe.(Interesting, are the 'pigs' she's referring to the actual pigs or police officers?) She's also written "Looking for Bigfoot" and the American literary classic, "Muppet Babies: I Can Go Potty". Nice.

OVERALL: Yes, I do realize that this book was aimed at children. Yes, I do realize that Family Matters was one of the biggest shows at the time of this book's publication, but why make a novel out of it? Family Matters wasn't the only sitcom guilty of this. Full House also converted some of their episodes into junior novel form. I haven't read any of those, and I don't plan to. Look, if you're going to make a novel based upon a hit television show, don't do Family Matters or Full House. Do a good one, like The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air or Quantum Leap. It wasn't just that the book was badly written (which it was.), but that the book was based on an already aired episode of the show. Hmmm.... Should I read the novel for 80 minutes or watch the episode for 22 minutes? Tough choice. I found that the novel was full of cliches and terrible one-liners. Also, was there really that much demand for a Family Matters novelization? God, television was pure shit in the 80s and 90s. The mind can only take so many episodes of Charles in Charge before it snaps in half. Do yourself a favor and go read some Stephen King or Clive Barker. Family Matters: The Lean, Mean Urkel Machine gets a 3/10.

Sincerely,

Mr. Retro

P.S.,

The next article will be a sexually explicit Sega Genesis game called Jizz Wars. The graphics are ugly and it's more hilarious then offensive. Regardless, you are forewarned.

Maximum Overdrive Review

Several motion pictures based upon the works of American novelist Stephen King have been produced. Films such as The Green Mile, Stand By Me, and The Shawshank Redemption not only entertained us, but captivated us, teaching us a little about life and alot about ourselves. Maximum Overdrive does none of these things. What it does do, however, is give us some cool and gory death scenes, cheesy '80s dialogue from the likes of Emilio Estevez and Pat Hingle, not to mention an electrifying soundtrack by "The Thunder From Down Under", AC/DC. Need I say more? Didn't think so. But I will, because if I didn't, this review would be a paragraph fucking long. The scoring system is the same as the game scoring system. I will be reviewing this movie on a scale from 1-10. 1 being Showgirls, 10 being Jurassic Park. May the reviewing commence!

STORY: Definitely not the highpoint of the movie. The synopsis is that an off-course meteor dubbed "Rhea-M" (obviously named after "Cheers" veteran actress Rhea Perlman.) is orbiting the Earth and shrouding the planet in a weird, green aura. This causes all of the machines on our majestic planet to become self-aware killing tools. Cut to the town of Wilmington, North Carolina, where a drawbridge carrying the morning commute (including a watermelon truck and the AC/DC tour bus.) decides to activate itself, causing a major pileup. Now let's move to the Dixie Boy truck stop, where a gas station attendant is filling up a semitruck. Noticing that the gas nozzle isn't working, he ingeniously points it at his face, getting sprayed in the eyes with gasoline, and goes nearly blind. Simultaneously, an anonymous black man is in the truck stop's arcade room, stereotypically stealing shit out of the vending machines. After stuffing his pockets with cookies, smokes, and quarters, he notices that one of the pinball machines is going haywire. Obviously offended by this, the man exclaims "Yo mama!" as an insult for no reason at all. The pinball machine proceeds by electrocuting the zany black guy. Yes, the black guy dies first. The Dixie Boy staff then discover the man's body, and not long after, they quickly realize that several semitrucks are driving around the truck stop allowing no one to leave, and no one to come to the rescue. Not exactly the kind of quality writing you'd find in a film like "Raging Bull", but, hey, what were you expecting?

ACTING: Incredibly cheesy. Let me give you a prime example. In the opening of the film, Stephen King shows up for his obligatory cameo appearance. He plays a man who walks up to an ATM machine. When he swipes his debit card, the screen displays the words "YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE". King's character then exclaims to his offscreen wife, "Sugarbuns! This machine just called me an asshole!". Wow, and that's just a sample of some of the powerhouse performances in this film. Enter Emilio Estevez as Billy, the truck stop's part-time cook and full-time hero. Actually, he's probably one of the better actors in the movie. His character isn't especially well-written and no different than any other generic action movie hero, but Estevez pulls it off in a way that is mildly believable. His performance isn't Oscar-worthy, but compared to the rest of the cast (*cough* Yeardley Smith *cough*) he looks like Marlon Brando. Of course, you can't have an action film without the love interest. Meet Laura Harrington as the completely unconvincing Brett. She's introduced about 20 minutes into the movie and has sexual intercourse with Emilio Estevez's character about 25 minutes into the movie. Nice. But don't forget Yeardley Smith (The Simpson's Lisa) as newlywed Connie, who gets stuck at the Dixie Boy with her newfound spouse Curt, played terribly by John Short. Connie is maybe the most annoying character in a movie of all time. Remember Dakota Fanning in Spielberg's War of the Worlds? Yeah, Connie's worse. Like, ridiculously so. She's the movie equivalent of Slippy from Star Fox. She consistently screams and cries, pissing off the entire audience in the process. Curt's not much better. After crawling through a sewer system, he exclaims "Gee! That was fun! Let's do that again!". Let's not, you over-optimistic prick. And then there's Hendershot. the a-hole truck stop owner who treats everyone like shit. Not only is he a douchebag, but he's also a weapons dealer, which he shows everyone when he blasts away an alien-controlled semitruck with a rocket launcher. Did I mention he's played by Pat Hingle? The same Pat Hingle who played Commissioner Gordon in Tim Burton's Batman. Saddly, Pat passed away early last year. Fortunately, he left a great legacy of films behind. Wait, he was in Muppets From Space?... Fuck him.

EFFECTS: For the most part, pretty decent. A few good explosions, a couple people get gory deaths thanks to the semitrucks, and in the best part of the movie, a young boy gets murdered by a runaway steamroller. Sweet.

MUSIC: Awesome. I may be biased (due to the fact that AC/DC is my favorite band of all time.), but AC/DC rocks the hell out of this movie. Fun fact: The soundtrack to this film is actually one of AC/DC's best-selling albums, Who Made Who. Songs such as "Hells Bells", "You Shook Me All Night Long", "Ride On", and, of course, "Who Made Who" make appearances and so do some original material from the band as well. A great soundtrack to an otherwise okay movie.

OVERALL: Not bad. I was expecting a better film, due to it being written and directed by Stephen King, but I think this movie was more of an homage to horror films of the 1950s. The acting was pretty bad, the story was unforgivable, but I think that if you leave your brain at the door, you'll get a kick out of it. The movie has some good gore effects, but it's definitely no Cannibal Holocaust, plus, the soundtrack is great. So, if your tired of Scorsese and Spielberg, have some fun at the movies with Stephen King. I think you'll be glad you did. Maximum Overdrive gets a 7 out of 10.

Sincerely,

Mr. Retro

P.S.,
Want to know what the next review is? Here's a hint: In the next review, Urkel comes full circle.

Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City Review

I was roaming around on retro video game message boards when I discovered a topic entitled "The Worst SNES Game Ever Made". Naturally, I read it. Most of the users posted completely obvious and unoriginal games, such as Home Improvement, Ballz 3D, and Bebe's Kids, then a user named "DingleBerry_Dragon" mentioned Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City. Naturally, I immediately downloaded the ROM. I opened my SNES emulator, loaded up the game, and all my expectations melted away when I noticed that it was published by Electronic Arts. Any similarities to another game that also includes a popular black basketball personality of the 90s? Yeah. But, I pressed the start button anyway, and was greeted by maybe the worst opening in a video game ever, which I will explain in detail during the Story section. I will again be reviewing this game on a scale from 1-10. 1 being Cliffhanger, 10 being Super Mario Bros. Let the dunking begin!

STORY: I am obligated to yet again compare this title to a certain game that rhymes with Shaq-Fu. Mike is at the court, ready to practice for the charity basketball game. You gotta give EA points for originality. But wait! The team isn't there! Then... BAM! A basketball with a note taped on it crashes through the skylight. Michael reads the note and finds out that a guy who calls himself Dr. Cranium says that if Mike really wants to save his teammates, he should come to the museum at midnight. Not scared easily, Michael goes to the museum and finds a secret door that
leads to an underground prison. A prison filled with basketball-headed scarecrows, strongmen, evil baseballs, robots orangutans, and sexy, naked, lesbian convicts. Okay, I made that part up. There is no ending whatsoever and the only reward you're given for beating the game are credits, with Michael Jordan dancing and dribbling in the background. Thanks for the fucking closure, EA.

CHARACTERS: Very few. Michael Jordan, of course. Dr. Max Cranium, the evil midget genius who unleashes his boss monsters on you. These bosses include: a weird monster made of basketballs, a floating head zombie thing that spits blue fire balls at you, and Uber-Jordan, a bizarro version of Michael that tries to kill you. Other characters include the teammates that Michael frees throughout the various levels in the game. They spout out cheesy 90s dialogue and have no real purpose in the game other than acting as hidden items. Shaq-Fu had better characters.

SOUND: Average. There is nothing original about the sound effects. You hear the balls you throw hit enemies and the environments with a dull popping sound. There is one awesome thing, though: when you pause the game, Michael exclaims, "TIME OUT!" in his deep, awesome voice.

MUSIC: Maybe the most uninspired music in a video game. Haunted house music plagues the entire game and is just as uninspired as the level design. Lame, with a capital 'gay'. After two hours of playing, I turned off the in-game music and cranked Disturbed.

CONTROLS: One of the few great things about this game. The controls are fluid and do what you want them to do. The platforming is usually precise and dependable. Slam-dunking is fucking awesome.

GAMEPLAY: Remember the terrible gameplay in Shaq-Fu? This is nothing like that. Not only are the controls great, but Chaos in the Windy City actually brings something new to the table as far as gameplay mechanics go. Remember the bricks in Super Mario Bros, and when you jumped up from under them, items came out? Yeah, this game has something like that, except instead of item bricks, there's item basketball hoops. Pressing the X button and left or right on the D-Pad causes M.J. to jump in the air and slam-dunk his basketball. Of course, an item comes out, usually a ball of some kind. It truly makes the player feel "like Mike." Another thing, this game has balls. The game's main source of useful items consist of balls. Balls are the weapons in the game, and there sure is a lot of variety. You never run out of the regular orange basketballs, but you can obtain flaming orange basketballs, magic yellow sparkly basketballs, bowling balls, green balls, red balls, and of course, blue balls. Yes, I can honestly say that Michael Jordan has blue balls. One real problem with the gameplay is that all you really do is collect different colored keys to get access to different areas of the level, i.e. Doom. It gets very monotonous after awhile. Also, the locales in the game are boring and completely uninspired. A haunted prison, a haunted house, a haunted laboratory. They try to switch things up in between worlds by letting you play a short minigame where you fight paparazzi on the top of a moving train. Yeah, I know. The game also has a world map similar to Super Mario Bros. 3/Super Mario World. On the whole though, the gameplay is pretty decent. Except for the health items. Gatorade and Wheaties!?! Unacceptable, EA.

GRAPHICS: Not great. For one, Mike's facial animations make him look like an ape. Not only that, but the backgrounds aren't really animated much. However, if you leave the controller alone for a while, he'll dribble his basketball. The enemies aren't animated that well either. Except for the bosses, the bosses look pretty cool. For instance, the basketball Frankenstein monster looks pretty badass as he throws his body parts at you. They also add a cool 3D look to the bosses. Pretty average otherwise, though.

OVERALL: It seems that EA came to their senses after the release of Shaq-Fu and gave us a game that was, at the least, playable. Sure, the story is terrible and the in-game advertising is absolutely shameless, but the decent gameplay and the fun slam-dunking gimmick make this game worth the admission price. Be warned though, this game does get old a little too fast. Most of the levels have too much key-searching and backtracking for it's own good. I've been comparing this game to Shaq-Fu alot, but in all honesty, they have not much in common as far as gameplay goes. This game is a cheesy good time if you're not expecting Super Mario World or fast-paced gameplay. I really could give you a better reccommendation, such as Donkey Kong Country, Yoshi's Island, or Sonic the Hedgehog 2, but they don't have the awesome oneliners and that cool slam-dunking mechanic, so I will leave you with a low-reccommendation. Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City gets a 6 out of 10.

P.S.,

I know I've done two games about African-American basketball players, and I wanted to review RapJam: Vol. 1 for SNES after this, and they're all corny/cheesy 90s games, but I think I'll save RapJam for Black History Month.
P.P.S., If the above comment offended you, I'm sorry, I was only kidding. I don't believe in Black History Month.

Sincerely,

Mr. Retro