Almost one year after his last playthrough, Harry Yack announces his untriumphant return to the longplay fraternity with Zelda: The Ancient Stone Tablets, a somewhat obscure spinoff of Link to the Past. All will be explained in the video, but this curiously overlooked addition to the Zelda series is probably best described as an 'enhanced' version of LTTP, heavily modified to fit the Satellaview specifications. For this reason, it isn't all that hard if you've played a Zelda game before, even though it does contain a selection of brand-new puzzles.
Strap yourself onto your favourite heavy thing, because this truly is a marathon, an uncut, full length longplay covering all four parts of the original broadcast. You might decide to watch it in 10-15 minute chunks, but I wanted all the chapters to be self-contained in an attempt to mimic the St. GIGA broadcasts. To this end, one part will be uploaded here each week, and each will attempt to discuss various aspects of the game as they crop up.
In this first part, we take our first steps in the game and explain the basic gameplay differences from the Super Nintendo's Link to the Past. We also demonstrate tremendous laziness in our various poorly-researched comments (corrected via subtitles). AST veterans, please feel free to point out any other inaccuracies and I'll stick up some annotations or something, but I assure you things get slightly better (read: chaotic) in this regard as I attempt to correct errors in later parts.
Grab the pretzels and nachos because it's that time of year again, the one weekend all Americans shove pillows up their shirts, wear colanders on their heads and pretend to be Joe Montana.
Apologies to actual American Football players, at New York or any other team, called 'Johnson'. And yup, I did indeed miss the opportunity to pit New York against New England but the footage was recorded before I even knew who was taking part in the 2012 Superbowl, or even that it was happening this weekend. In fact I decided to turn it into a Superbowl special last Thursday because, well, I'm a massive current events bandwagon-jumper like that.
Madden was one of the first games I played for the Mega Drive and holds a special place in my memory, even though I can't bring myself to sit and watch a whole game of (real life) American football. Admittedly, however, this is mostly because the majority of NFL matches take place at 3AM GMT, meaning I'd have to adjust my sleeping patterns to such an extent I'd be forced to take a pillow to work. Somehow I don't think my boss would put up with my snoring all the way through our Tuesday meeting. I mean, he'd probably tolerate me sitting there, face planted on the desk, drool pouring all over his freshly-printed copy of last week's accounts, but he draws the line at 10 minutes of snorting bull terrier impersonations.
When creating this 'review', I realised I was going to sound like a complete idiot to all you football-literate Yack watchers, but it's a risk I was willing to take. Having recently played the game again upon the suggestion of Lakepalmer (yes, he of Games I Am Aren't Playing), I found one or two things I never noticed all those years ago. I was interested to discover that our old friend Rob Hubbard is responsible the menu music, and what a superb soundscape he has created; I don't think the Hubster is capable of composing anything other than sonic gold. (Not to be confused with Gold Sonic.)
Other intriguing and humorous little programming titbits, which are addressed in the video, make this a noteworthy addition to the Abomination series (out on Blu Ray Christmas 2028). So, Mr Lakepalmer, you're the proud beneficiary of Harry Yack's first request video.
Enscribed proudly on the front of Sega's Mega Drive is the 'high definition graphics' logo, though we haven't been able to experience the system's true visual capabilities until now, some 20-odd years later, in an age where HD television is more widespread. Perhaps playing Madden '90 on my 38 inch Toshiba LCD HD screen has artificially inflated my opinion of the game's graphics, but they are more than adequately clear, crisp and colourful. I was impressed by the scrolling, which is smooth even when taking into account any slowdown caused during the game's conversion from NTSC (US) to PAL (Europe). Though we had to endure such problems this side of the Atlantic, we weren't to know any different; it was only recently that I discovered how much faster the game runs on the North American Sega Genesis. Just check out how quickly the game runs in this video:
I guess the ultimate testament to Madden's enjoyability is that I'm not a fan of American football. Or perhaps it's because of my lack of familiarity with the sport that I like this game: I'm not picking apart its knowledge of offsides and time outs because I know so little of the rules anyway. Maybe such innocence is the best way to approach any game to avoid getting wrapped up in the cynical nit-picking that characterises my own videos. Not that I will stop making them or anything, but it does make one stop and think.
The inhabitants of coloured crate land have a bit of a problem. It's those pesky ghost tanks, you see. They magically fall from the sky at an alarming rate to collapse pile after pile of painstakingly stacked pallets with brightly coloured beanbags. The inhabitants, who spent all day constructing them, are tired of their hard work being ruined by these supernatural deviants, and worse still, they are being driven to madness (and often blindness) by the tanks' incessant flicker. For the sake of their mental and physical health, you have been charged with the task of destroying these pests once and for all.
Requisitioning a tank (or is it a block of cheese on wheels?) from the local military history museum, you load up your Ghostbuster phantom destructor thingy and make your way through the streets and across the village green, trapping those ghouls in miniature balls along the way. Actually, I think that was stolen from Pokemon or something. But the fact remains, you must rid this town of each and every one of those phantom fools before the local health service is overrun.
Nah, I made that up. *This* is the actual story (as seen in the image to the right):
"The energy base is being attacked by 4 or 5 vicious phantom tanks. You, driving the only armored car in the base, is fighting back vigorously for ultimate victory.
"Taking the walls as defense both sides begin street battle. The phantom tanks are finally extinguished by your vigorous fires.
"On second round, you and the enemy are confronting each other at both sides of the river. There are two bridges across the river, you must destroy the phantom tanks the moment the move onto the bridge or block their attack by moving your armored car across the river.
"The decisive battle is taken on the prairie. The enemy, with their five tanks at the same time, are attacking the base vigorously. You have to fire quickly and accurately to destroy them."
I shouldn't have bothered writing my own made up story because the real one is much better. I do so love a good bit of Engrish!
No James Bond on telly this Christmas Day? Oh well, console yourself with this video, which I suppose you could term a Christmas Special. It is December, after all.
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Beer.
Apologies for any minor audio leakage. Just erm, pretend it isn't there.
Long, long ago, before even the Game Boy camera, there existed a thing known as VHS. People could copy programmes off the telly and share them with other people without being branded a pirate supporting terrorism, druggies and David Cameron.
Before long, the people who lived in the television decided to record themselves doing very silly things to try and make their friends and family think they were cool. Each year, these recordings were brought together in a Christmas tape, a combination of extreme profanity, poor acting and general tomfoolery. It truly was the precursor to user-generated internet television.
While snooping around the Retro Yakking communal kitchen for scraps of food, I stumbled across a tape marked 'donot play [sic]'. After reviewing its contents, I think you should see it. But remember this one thing: it's twenty minutes of dreadfully rehashed content that wasn't good enough for general release. And when you remember 'general release' means 'uploaded to YouTube', you get a better understanding of the level of quality were talking about here.
Includes general outtakes, some bloopers from Pokemon Green and a binned Spiderman TV Boy II review. Merry Christmas, ya bums!
Almost one year after his last playthrough, Harry Yack announces his untriumphant return to the longplay fraternity with Zelda: The Ancient Stone Tablets, a somewhat obscure spinoff of Link to the Past. All will be explained in the video, but this curiously overlooked addition to the Zelda series is probably best described as an 'enhanced' version of LTTP, heavily modified to fit the Satellaview specifications. For this reason, it isn't all that hard if you've played a Zelda game before, even though it does contain a selection of brand-new puzzles.
