Forums > Contributor Zone > RotW: Feb. 7-13, 2022 -- Who let Vacant back into these things?!?

Well, after a few weeks of late RotWs due to various random excuses pertaining to things like work or being injured, here I am to be the punctual and reliable guy who doesn't have any issues. Nope, none at all!

As usual, I watched movies. Because this was the week for Valentine's Day, I watched the 1981 original My Bloody Valentine, where a bunch of Valentine-loving 20-somethings got what they deserved for celebrating that day. Nope, no issues at all for me! I also watched Shivers, which was David Cronenberg's 1975 full-length movie debut as a director. It was really good. Twisted, a bit of very dark humor and full of Cronenberg stuff like body horror in a tale of an apartment high-rise under siege due to parasites infecting residents and turning them into sex maniacs determined to "spread the disease". If anything, that was the true Valentine's Day movie. One for the true romantic!

Due to playing the blah Rise of the Argonauts, I watched the far more entertaining Jason and the Argonauts from 1963. A lot of fun. Had the old-time Hollywood epic vibe, but for a Greek mythos tale. Maniac Cop 2 was much like the first one -- a lot of fun where you can turn your brain off. Also, Five Women for the Killer was a pretty good giallo. Loved the camera work and the typical Italian desire to keep you confused as hell, but the end was a bit anticlimactic.

Looks like a two-man battle between Joe and Dagoss this week. There would be a third, but said third review is mine, so it gets bumped to next week (HINT, HINT, DON'T FORGET!), which means Vacant gets a placement. Damn guy is making a comeback after being frozen out last year.


SECOND PLACE

Dagoss' New Super Mario Bros. (DS)

To start out with a minor issue: In your paragraph under the first set of pics, you have a sentence ending with "and players games around their games". Which doesn't exactly make sense. At least to me and I've read it a half-dozen or so times out of a worry that my brain was simply malfunctioning again because it does that from time to time. On a far brighter note, big props for quoting me. Makes me feel like an accomplished professional!

As for the review, It was a long and thought-provoking one that almost got the win. You two didn't make things easy on me this week, as I spent more time thinking about this week's submissions today than I have doing anything real world productive. You covered a wide range of topics concerning things like how this game was an enhanced version of a classic Mario game that added little features and set-pieces that older technology couldn't handle and how the new power-ups aren't particularly useful except for finding secret exits. But I think the review's biggest strength is simply your discussion of the game's nostalgic power and how it both served as an example of nostalgia for people like us and a gateway to 2D Mario for younger games who didn't grow up with a NES. It was an interesting take on this game that I found to be a neat "out of the norm" topic for review discussion. In other words: really good effort that was both informative and thought-provoking.


REVIEW OF THE WEEK (aka: Overdrive Place)

Joe's Golden Axe Warrior (Sega Master System)

This is a game I think I started once, but never got far into it for one reason or another. It was long enough ago that I don't remember why, which means I was probably in one of my spells where I was trying to play 20-some games at once and this was one of the ones that fell through the cracks because I couldn't remember where I'd been or where I was going. Reading this review gives me some amount of desire to give it another try. I dug the hook of mentioning how utterly poor some adventure games' hints were, but this one actually gives helpful info. You also do a good job with the Zelda comparisons with the discussion of how the dungeons might not be linear, but also aren't as complex as Zelda ones could be a highlight. The Metroid comparison also really worked, as did your discussion of the game's flaws. Probably the reason I said "some amount of desire to give it another try" instead of something more enthusiastic was the whole "rust" thing. Emulators created freeze stats because of ideas like that...


And that's that for this episode. Off to do stuff. Probably.

I'm not afraid to die because I am invincible
Viva la muerte, that's my goddamn principle

Thanks for the topic, Rob! And as for Vacant, here's hoping he is shut out for most or all of the rest of the year, as is his due!

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." - John F. Kennedy on reality

"What if everything you see is more than what you see--the person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? What if something appears that shouldn't? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think. Perhaps it really is a doorway, and if you choose to go inside, you'll find many unexpected things." - Shigeru Miyamoto on secret doors to another world2

Someone should totally register the name Vacant and start submitting reviews.

I can avoid death by not having a life.

That's my plan; let Vacant get some wins, then boom--now I'm in the running for site king!

Joe deserves the win based on the tag line alone. It's not as saucy as the "ore chasm" but just as good.

I saw that typo in my review, was going to fix it, and then forgot. Re-reading it just now I literally have no idea what it was supposed to say. Oh well. A lot of my reviews in the past year were reactions to reading someone else's review (this one, Phantom Hourglass, Dragon Quest IX, Dragon Quest Monsters, and a few others). Like, I read a review and though, "oh, is that so?" went and played the game.

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Thanks to all! :)

Jason