2D-X Presents: The top five 2D video game politicans
President’s Day Weekend is upon us, and every flag-waving, apple pie-eating American is either showing respect to our land’s greatest leaders, or laid up on the sofa downing Ben & Jerry’s while watching Jersey Shore.
Regardless of your weekend plans, we think it’s high time to reflect on some of the more interesting political figures that have played major roles in the video game universe. Ranging from ragtag fighters to bad ass street brawlers, this roundup – no, shrine - to the greatest leaders of men is one that can not be overlooked in this time of remembrance.
Fidel Castro (Guerrilla War, NES)
Originally released in arcades in 1987 as a coin-op, Guerrilla War followed the wacky adventures of two unnamed rebel commando bad asses as they raid an unnamed Caribbean Island in order to free it from the rule of an unnamed tyrannical dictator. During the adventure, legions of enemy soldiers taste your cold steel, while the act of rescuing hostages is the only indication that you indeed are the good guys.
But when the arcade hit was ported to the NES, the box art wasn’t the typical gung ho American propaganda piece. There weren’t shirtless, musclebound all-American heroes such as Contra’s Mad Dog and Scorpion. These guys had beards! And berets! One’s even wearing red! WTF is happening here?
Really, it was all about history. Unbeknown to gamers in the late ’80’s, Guerrilla War, SNK’s spiritual sequel to Ikari Warriors, was entitled Guevara in the land of the rising sun. Player 1 assumed the role of hipster fave Che Guevara. What’s interesting here is that Player 2 guides a young (and ruggedly handsome) Fidel Castro through stage after stage of jungle fighting as the pair stave off the Batista regime in Cuba in the late 1950s. So this President’s Day, fire up your NES and support the Communist movement, you capitalist swine.
Secret Shame Revealed II: I love China Warrior
Secret Shame Revealed is a recurring feature in which the 2D-X staff admits to loving truly awful games. This outing, Jeffrey L. Wilson fesses up to China Warrior.
When I was just a lad of 15 years, I had to make a major choice in the fall of 1989: would I beg my mother for a SEGA Genesis or a Turbo Grafx-16 to satiate my gaming lusts that holiday season? I plundered the pages of Electronic Gaming Monthly and Video Games & Computer Entertainment for months on end in order to get the nitty gritty on the two systems. The result? I decided to go TG-16.
At the time that made sense for two very important reasons. Firstly, SEGA was my sworn enemy. The company had dared to challenge Nintendo and its 8-bit NES with the SEGA Master System, which sparked many a schoolyard pissing match between the fanboy factions. Secondly, the game screenshots on the back of the TG-16’s Halloween-like orange and black box made the system feel like a true next-level machine. Big sprites! Colors! More on screen enemies!
After a year of Keith Courage in Alpha Zones, my mom surprised me with a copy of China Warrior. The game’s protagonist (a Bruce Lee clone with none of his badassedness) and human enemies filled half the screen. Half the screen. Super Mario, Ryu Hayabusa, Little Mac, and a host of other NES stars were downright liliputian in comparison and, in my adolescent mind, couldn’t touch the graphical might of the Turbo’s 16-bit power. The only problem? That game was utter, utter ass. But I still love it.
Digital Press: The 2D gamer’s dream store
Joe Santulli’s Digital Press and I have a long history. Years ago, before I became a professional journalist, I reviewed an early Guilty Gear game for the popular website/message board, which I eventually used as a writing sample to land a job at the now defunct gadget lad mag, Sync. Five years later, I still visit Digit Press the website, but I’d never set foot in the retail outlet – - until very recently. Chris Gampat and I took a day trip to the store to finally checkout the near-legendary store that is a retro gamer’s heaven.
The State Of 2D Video Games
I don’t think everything needs to be 3D, or that just because we’re seeing more 2D games now, that everything’s going to shift back to 2D. I think that what’s going on is that people are realizing the benefits of a 3D game, and at the same time, remembering what the benefits of 2D games were. When going to 2D, you need the courage to not be so attached to visual appearance of the games and to really pursue the gameplay experience. - Shigeru Miyamoto
2009, for many of us that still cling with warm hearts to gameplay styles of days past, was a banner year for 2D video games. In fact, it would be relatively safe to say that 2009 was the return of the 2D game. There wasn’t just a splattering of 2D titles in niche genres; it was an industry-wide renaissance.
Fighting games were represented with the marvelous Street Fighter IV, the beautifully spastic BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, and the criminally underrated King of Fighters XII. The masterful Shadow Complex held down the action realm. Dungeon Fighter Online magically blended a traditional beat ‘em up with MMO elements. Downtown Smash Dodgeball showed the power of 8-bit sports. Plants vs. Zombies proved to be one of the most accessible tower defense games ever crafted. Scribblenauts forged a new genre.
So how was it that 2D games, which were the primitive, outdated black sheep within the gamingverse since the rise of the Nintendo 64/PlayStation, have become the darlings of the industry? The answers are many. Read more
The Greatest 2D Sports Video Game Athletes: QB Eagles Edition
Let’s get it out of the way right now without any setup: QB Eagles is the single greatest sports video game athletes of all time. Unquestionably, there are some who will question the very validity of this final post in the series as this regulates the twin faces of outstanding sports video game athletes, Bo Jackson and Jeremy Roenick, to roles of second bests. It’s understandable; Bo carves up defenses and Roe owns on both sides of the puck. I propose, however, that once QB Eagles’ game is carefully analyzed, many will come to see that he is indeed the Gamebreaker of Gamebreakers.
QB Eagles, in all of his 8-bit glory, is the prototype for broken, scrambling quarterbacks who can kill you with the cannon or wheels; think Warren Moon with the legs of Barry Sanders.
The Greatest 2D Sports Video Game Athletes: Jeremy Roenick Edition
As stated in the early chapters of this little-series-that- could, Gamebreakers can fall into any one of three categories: Offensive, Defensive, and Showtimer. Until this point, only The Fat Guy and The San Francisco 49ers oozed enough pimp juice to glide into multiple categories.
However, its the dynamo on skates known as Jeremy Roenick who scores a Gamebreakers hat trick by being the lone sports video game athlete to shatter not one, not two, but three categories. I dare anyone to debate this. Anyone who’s played the 16-bit Electronic Arts hockey video games starting with NHLPA Hockey ‘93 knows that the guy is the real deal, the ultimate puppetmaster; every skater bows to the whims of Roenick who shapes contests as he sees fit.
The Greatest 2D Sports Video Game Athletes: Paste Edition
If you were to take Pete, Joe, Hank and the rest of the American Dreams‘ starting nine, toss them into a blender, and top it off with a scoop of Ted Williams, you’d have the most homerunniest hitting baseball player in gaming history. A man so potent that, much like Madonna or what’s her face from Black Eye Peas who’s too old to keep pretending that she 18, he’s known only by one name: Paste.
Sonic Hates Me (Or How I’ve Learned To Let Go Of The Hedgehog and Find Peace of Mind)
Pictured: Sonic running away from quality gameplay.
It’s easy to dismiss those that willingly invite and/or accept drama into their lives as weak-willed individuals who deserve whatever circumstances that they happen to put up with – - I used to think in the same manner. Granted, on a most basic, logical level, it’s true. In retrospect, all the girls on Ricki Lake who shouted “Ah luv heem, tho!” may not have deserved to be mentally or physically abused, but after a while you simply have to scream “STFU and fix the situation!” in order to cope with the same ol’ song and dance. However, as with many aspects of life, age and experience have ways of altering opinion; I now understand those ladies’ pain.
The splinter in my heart is Sonic, my highly attractive yet brutally abusive lover. He (and by direct extension, SEGA) have continually hurt me, when all I’ve wanted is for him to love me as he used to in those early, tender years. At a time when Sonic’s once again on the brain due to today’s announcement of Sonic Classic Collection for the Nintendo DS (which includes Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Sonic & Knuckles), I sincerely ask SEGA to either stop with the Sonic bullshit or I’m walking away. Forever.
The Greatest 2D Sports Video Game Athletes: Bo Jackson Edition
Unstoppable.
That’s the only word that can even remotely come close to describing “Tecmo Bo”, a sports video game athlete so dominant, so simultaneously loved and feared by 8-bit pigskinners worldwide, that his name has become forever entangled with the game – - both on the digital gridiron and in real life. Sports commentators often recycle the phrase “you can stop him, you can only hope to contain him” when referring to an elite athlete, but a “contained” Tecmo Bo will still break off 200 yards on you. In the first quarter.
The Greatest 2D Sports Video Game Athletes: Barry Sanders Edition
What is it about great running backs who end their careers prematurely that makes us fans worship them as gods who’ve walked the earth only to return to the heavens from whence they’d came? Players such as Jim Brown (who dropped out of NHL High to take up the noble causes of social activism, bad acting, and posing in Playgirl) and Bo Jackson (forced into retirement due to a hip injury) pretty much pioneered this phenomena, but let’s not forget the most prominent example of this: Barry Sanders.
Barry Sanders is one of the most enigmatic superstars in all of sports. At the height of his Hall of Fame career, within one season’s worth of rushing to break the NFL rushing record, Sanders’ walked away from the game seemingly on a whim. It was revealed years later that Sanders was frustrated by the Lions’ culture of losing and didn’t see a turn around coming. A shame really, as Sanders, left the door open for Emmitt “At Least 50% of My Rushing Yards Belong to My Offensive Line” Smith to snatch up the rushing record. Surely, had Barry continued, The Protected One would’ve been regulated to a distant number two.
Fortunately, the code-jockeys at Tecmo recognized Barry’s greatness and juiced him up real nice-like, because you aren’t considered a star athlete in Tecmo Super Bowl unless you can accumulate an entire real-world season’s worth of yards in one game.
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