Scizor, the Bug & Steel type Pokemon. Speaking from an old-skool point of view, when Gold & Silver came out for the GameBoy Color, it got fans really excited. It talked about alot of new features but the main ones were breeding to make Pokemon babies, and some of the older Pokemon from the 150 list were getting a second evolution. Scyther was one of those Pokemom, getting the evolution form of Scizor. Scizor is a very interesting Pokemon, but to understand why, we have to go back to Scyther. Scyther is a Bug & Flying type, and was actually a rare catch to find in the Red, Blue, and Yellow version. It's moves werent anything special. Just one of those Pokemon that was more eye-candy than anything else. Then along comes Scizor, and this is where things start to get more interesting for Scyther. First of all, Scyther's stats are huge in the attack and speed categories. Once it evolves into Scizor, the speed stat actually gets cut in half and the defense stat gets a boost, which is no suprise since Scizor replaces the flying type with the Steel type. Steel is the second Pokemon element type to ALWAYS increase the defense, and decrease the speed of the pokemon with that type (Rock type being the other elemental type). Now most people don't like to use Bug type pokemon because of their low HP stat. This is true, but with every Bug pokemon, they either have a high attack or high special attack, which can come in handy, granted you know the right moves to teach it. In Scizor's case, its the classic "know when to evolve your Pokemon" case, as both Scyther's and Scizor's moves differ when they level up. In other words, once you have one of Scyther's moves that you're looking for, THEN evolve it into Scizor.

Speaking of moves, this is the first thing we are going to talk about. WHEN is it a good time to evolve Scyther into Scizor. Well, thankfully the Diamond & Pearl games give both pokemon much more to work with, but its Pokemon Platinum that adds the exclamation point, so this is the game that we are going to use for Scyther and Scizor. Right off the bat, Scyther has a hidden move you can teach it with a heart scale at the Move Tutor's house... Vacuum Wave. Its a fighting type move that works the same way as Quick Attack... always getting the first attack no matter what (unless your opponent has the same move and is faster than you). This is the first move you should teach your Scyther. Then level it up untill it learns Wing Attack. As soon as you reach up to that point, THATS when you evolve it into Scizor. automatically it will want to learn Metal Claw, but dont teach it that. Instead, just like Scyther, it too has a hidden move you can teach it... Bullet Punch, which works the same way as Vacuum Wave except its a steel type move. From then on, reach it to lv 41 so it can learn X-Scissor, and now you have a complete Scizor. Now i know what your gonna ask... why should I teach Scizor low power moves like Vacuum Wave and Bullet Punch? The answer is simple, and can be described in one word... Technician. Technician is one of the abilities that both Scyther and Scizor have. The other ability is Swarm which ups bug moves when your hp is low, but I don't find it useful for Scizor. I'd rather have that ability for a Beedrill with the move Twinneedle (and lucky me,Swarm its the only ability Beedrill has, lol). But what technician does is raises a move with a power less than 60 by 50 percent. In other words, both Vacuum Wave and Bullet Punch would have a power of 60 instead of 40. it doesn't seem much when you first think about it, but in a tight situation, it could make or break the final decision on a battle. Now let's talk stats and natures. Scizor is one of those Pokemon you should focus more on offense rather than defense, as Scizor's added Steel type prevents it from any real danger, except for the obvious fire types. Everything else is either normal damage or not effective. So the perfect nature for Scizor would be MODEST, as it sacrifices some of its regular attack to boost up the special attack, which you are going to need for it's only special Vacuum Wave. And if you really wanna go the extra mile and spend days on your Nintendo DS, if the personality is "Highly curious", "Mischevious", "Thoroughly Cunning", "Often Lost In Thought" and/or "Very Finicky", then that would help as well, as they also boost special attack.

And that is my Pomemon Recommendation

Welcome to a new blog series called "CMG-UTOPIA's Pokemon Recommendations", where I talk about a Pokemon that I recommend other Pokemon trainers to use with some helpful strategies. This section is for intermediate and/or advanced trainers that know what EV's and natures are. For those of you that don't know (but can prolly already tell) I LOVE the Pokemon video games. The latest one I have right now is Pokemon Platinum for Nintendo DS. I have Pokemon Daimond as well but I already finished making my ultimate team for that game.

For my first Pokemon blog post, I choose Rhypherior. When I first saw that Rhydon got a new level 2 evolution form, I was amazed, specially at how cool it looks. For me, a Pokemon has to be appealing while maintaining some great moves in order for me to keep it, and Rhypherior is no exception. Before Rhypherior, there was only so much you could do with Rhydon, specially with it's weak stats with the exception of it's ATTACK stat. But I always found it funny that he actually can learn Surf, which is actually a good move to teach if you wanna have an "element of surprise" move at your disposal. After all, there aren't too many Ground and/or Rock type pokemon that can learn a Water type move like Surf. But in the latest games, Rhydon finally get's an advantage as far as learned moves, move tutor moves, and TM's are concerned, and with his new evolution form Rhypherior, things really start to look good for this Ground & Rock type Pokemon.

So what makes Rhypherior so special? Well for one thing, his attack stat is through the roof, and a majority of his moves are physical attacks, and not just rock and ground moves either. His defense stat is the second best, but then again, a high defense has always been a trademark for rock type pokemon. The only MAJOR downfall to this pokemon is it's special defense. This is where alot of trainers get scared when making the choice of using Rhypherior. One hit with a water type or grass type move and he is history. Nevermind the fact that majority of ground and rock type pokemon are slow to begin with. So how can you make it withstand something like that? Well it's quite simple really.

From what I can tell, most people like to use a Rhypherior with the Lonely, Brave, Adamant, and/or Naughty natures, which boosts the attack stat the most with each level up, making Rhypherio's attack even MORE threatening. This strategy is ok, but you're still taking a big gamble against pokemon that have moves that will One-Hit K.O. it (I.E. Surf, Giga Drain, ect..). Instead, here is my advice. You want a Rhypherior with a CALM nature. This sacrifices some of it's already huge attack stat for a boost of it's special defense stat. It works better to your advantage if Rhypherior's personality was also "Strong Willed", "Somewhat Vain", "Strongly Defiant", "Hates To Loose", and/or "Somewhat Stubborn", as they too give the Special Defense stat a better boost. Lastly, but not least, the "Solid Rock" ability will help out as well to prevent Rhypherior from getting all of the damage done by "Super Effective" moves. AFAIK you'll only recieve like 75% rather than the full 100% damage. Finding a Rhyhorn/Rhydon with ALL 3 of these necessities is like finding a Needle in a haystack. I was lucky enough to find a Rhyhorn with both the Calm nature AND Rock Head (which turns into Solid Rock after evolving into Rhypherior), which took me 3 days to find one. Unfortunately it's female rather than male, but at this point, gender doesnt matter to me. I can imagine how much longer i'd be at the same spot if I was stubborn enough to actually find a Rhyhorn with all 3 necessities. 2 Out of 3 is good enough for me, specially with my attention span, and the fact that Rhyhorn also can carry the "Lightningrod" ability as well made things even more difficult. Now you wanna talk about moves, thats your call. But if you wan't my advice on that as well, heres what you should teach it... two physicals, and two specials. First special is Surf, which would come in handy against any other rock & ground type pokemon such as Golem, AND also gives you an opportunity to train a water type with another water attack plus other moves (for example, im also using Octillery, giving it Waterfall rather than surf). Second Special is Earth Power. power of the move may be 10 less than Earthquake, but since it's a ground type move, the power increases by 1.5 because Rhypherior is a ground type as well. It will do some nice damage. The two physicals would be your choices between Hammer Arm, Megahorn, and/or Poison Jab. These are moves that Rhypherior learns by leveling up (with the exception of Poison Jab, where you have to use a heart scale to teach it that move), and do really great damage, and given that your attack stat won't be harmed by the Calm nature and Special Defense personality of Rhypherior, you'll have nothing to worry about. Overall, when it's all said and done, your Rhypherior's stats should be more or less equally balanced.

And that is my Pokemon Recommendation :)

What if i told you that there was a Super Mario Bros. game for the Sega Genesis, and a Sonic The Hedgehog game for the Super Nintendo. What if I said you could play Mario in Sonic's world, and Sonic in Mario's world. Would you stare in disbelief and shock? Or would you laugh uncontrollably, thinking that something like this wouldn't exist in a million years? Well believe it or not, these games DO exist. They are called "Pirated Games", which in short are pretty much the hacked games of the 1990's but unlike the rom hacks of today, these games were actually sold in stores. That's right... companies that no one ever heard of made games like these just to make a quick buck off of them. For this review, I will discuss 4 Pirated games. Two Mario and two Sonic games.

Game #1: Somari
Everyone knows that old saying "SEGA does what Ninten-dont". Well a company in Hong-Kong tried to counter that by making an 8bit Sonic game called Somari, which is nothing more than Mario in Sonic's world. Now you'd think that converting an 16bit game to 8bit would be difficult, but apparently these guys did a decent job at it, speciallly at the time of it's release... 1994. This was around the same time where Super Mario 3, and Sonic 2 were already released and guess what... Somari uses the Super Mario 3 Mario sprite and can use the Spin Dash attack not invented till Sonic 2. However, that doesn't mean this game is without any flaws. First of all, right off the bat, you'll notice that the music for Green Hill Zone is out of whack. With the exception of the beginning part, the melody lags behind the bass by like 1 beat... AND IT LOOPS FOREVER!!! Don't get me wrong, i love Green Hill Zone's theme music but this sounds like the song got cut up during the conversion process so the Hong Kong company tried to duct-tape the pieces back together. As for the graphics, their pretty much what you would expect for an 8bit game. However the level design looks absolutely like any of the stages from any of the sonic games (oh and no Srap Brain Zone either... wtf?) You know what I find odd though? The Sega Masters System was also an 8bit video game consol but the visuals and sometimes the audio was far superior from the NES. In fact, that's what Somari is... a Nintendo version of the Sega Masters System game Sonic The Hedgehog. Obviously SEGA had the better technology, which is one of the reasons why at the time i loved SEGA, but unfortunately since the Sega Masters System didnt have any popular games aside from the Sonic games, it died out. So yea, how does it play? Eeeeehhhhhhh.... not so good. For one thing, the guys that made this game decided to fill in each act with TWICE as many enemies as the original sonic games, so no matter what, you are always going to get hit by something, so attempting to collect every ring you can find is just a waste of time. And how could you even accomplish that? The controls for this game are crap. It feels "stuck"... like it takes a while before you reach full fast speed (not like in the sonic games where you gradually increase speed, in this game, you stay one slow speed, then SUDDENLY go really fast), and when you do, you can barely see anything comin from the right side of the screen, unless it's too late. So yea, 3 strikes from Hong-Kong. SEGA 1, Nintendo 0.

Game #2: Sonic Jam 6
So if Mario can be in Sonic's world, then why not Sonic in Mario's world? Thats exactly what Sonic Jam 6 is all about. A company in China decided to rip the graphics from the Super Mario Bros. game from Super Mario All Stars on Super Nintendo to port it onto the Sega Genesis, replacing Mario with Sonic. Graphic wise, its not a bad job. Sound wise, it sounds horrible. Let's just say when they did a copy & paste job, they LITERALLY copy and pasted everything, including the MIDI instruments from the Super Nintendo, which actually made the level songs sound worse on the Genesis than on the Super Nintendo. The controls are at times slippery, specially when jumping, you can loose control while changing directions very easily if your not careful. As for Sonic himself, instead of being small and then growing big once he gets a mushroom, these guys decided to make him red and then turn blue when he gets a mushroom. C is to jump, B is to run faster, and A is to shoot fireballs if you got the fire flower. His jumping in this game is 2x as higher than Mario's jump, making high platforms easily reachable at times. So yea if you can overlook the minor flaws, its an ok game.

Game #3: Super Mario World
No I'm not saying that the original Super Mario World for the SNES is an actual pirated game. Believe it or not, there is actually a version of this game for the SEGA Genesis, which is VASTLY different from it's SNES counterpart (aside from being a pirated game). For one thing, you can't jump on enemies, instead you have to pick up boxed to throw at them. Second, the blocks can not be smashed, in fact they act more like solid platforms than anything. Third, instead of coins, your collecting gems. Fourth, you cant go down pipes. And finally, there are no mushrooms, stars, or flowers as power ups. Instead, there are acorns, health boxes, and power fists that lets you shoot a fireball at enemies. Wait a minute though... throwing boxes at enemies, using acorns as power ups... oh snap, its a rip of Capcom's Chip & Dale rescue rangers from Nintendo! Well, not quite. See, the same Taiwan company that made this Mario game made another game before it called "Squirrel King" which is basically an unlicensed genesis version of the Chip & Dale games on Nintendo... and guess what... they decided to RIP THEIR OWN GAME BY TURNING IT INTO A MARIO GAME!! Wow... just... wow. My guess is that they were REALLY bored and had alot of free time on their hands, or they were fuckin retarded and couldn't come up with anything original. Anywho, does it play decent? Acutally, yea. Graphics are almost spot on from the SNES version, the music is MUCH better than Sonic Jam 6, using the Genesis' synthesizer rather then that crappy MIDI copy/paste job from the SNES, and the controls are easy to work with. The Mario levels are a mix between Super Mario Bros. 1 and Super Mario Bros. The Lost Levels. However, the same level 1 music plays for all the super mario levels, even the underground and castle levels. But this only lasts for 3 stages, as we then get to the Squirrel King stages with different music. IRONICALLY both Squirrel King and Super Mario World have the same Donkey Kong song in one of the stages. Weird but cool, lol. Give it a shot for yourself, its another Pirated game i recommend playing.

Game #4: Sonic The Hedgehog 4
Oh fuck, now we are in for some REAL shit. its unkown where this game came from, but it should have been left in the scrap heap. STH4 (A.K.A. Sonic The Hedgehog SNES) is a pirate hack of Speedy Gonzalez: Los Gatos Bandidos, a game released for the same console. But if anything, the game looks more like an unfinished hack job. If you've played the Speedy Gonzalez game, you would know that right off the bat that the first stage of STH4 is broken beyond belief.. well the background anyways. It's mostly red with a shadow of what looks like to be some trees in the distance. Anywho, the object of this game is to run around, rescuing marios as they are trapped in their cages. Each mario rescued counts as a check point. However, just like Super Mario World, touching enemies damage you, so instead you have to KICK them, which half the time the kicks dont make their mark, leaving you open for damage. Sonic's sprite is a mix of Sonic 2 and Sonic 3 from the sega Genesis. His power-ups in this game are... well just speed shoes. His normal running animation is his standard walking animation. And... thats it. Its hard to review more about this game when it locks up once you reach the middle of the 4th level. Incidentally Speedy Gonzalez has that same problem on my emulator in the Space level. Whether or not thats just a bad rom dump is a different story. But yea, Somari is bad, but it doesn't come anywhere close to this game. Stay away from it at all costs.

Hope you've enjoyed this little trip into the world of Pirated games. :-P

::Abadox::

I'm straying away from the Sega section for a lil bit to talk about one of the nintendo games i whored the shit out of when i was a kid... Abadox. For those of you that don't know about this game, its a space shooter game just like R-Type, Gradius, ect... except it's more on the cryptic side. Lemme explain... the setting takes place in space (of course), where this princess has been taken captured to this planet. Actually, its more like she was SWALLOWED by a planet... yes, the planet is alive, and if you haven't guessed already, the "aliens" our hero is facing against are the organs, viruses, cells, and whatever else of this planet being. So with the exception of the genitalia, you pretty much go through everything in the body.

I heard about the game on a TV commercial, and when i found out that the maker of this game was Milton Bradley, it definitely got my attention. A board game company making video games? To me that was something you don't see everyday. The cover was cool too... silver outside with the picture on the inside which was mostly red (my favorite color), showing a space dude zapping at what looks like a bloody snail monster. So, what the heck... went to my local Toys'R'Us when i was still in Flushing Queens, bought the game, stuck it in my "Nintendo Built-In TV" (I'm not kidding, I really had one of those, and if i could find a pic of it online, i'd prove it), and went to town on this game. About an hour later, I stopped playing it due to the frustration of constantly getting game over, and it wasn't because I sucked at it either, it was because my patience for being stuck on Stage 2 of the game was wearing thin. But playing it now, I've actually gotten good at it to the point where i can ALMOST finish the game without getting a game over (emphasis on ALMOST). This is what i mean... Each stage has two levels, and in each level, you fight a boss. The bosses in the first level are always moving around, but each boss is unique and moves in a different pattern. The bosses in the second level are always stationary (and at times, literally attached to the ceiling, walls, floor, ect...) but they shoot more projectiles than the first level bosses, which makes sense cause these would be the MAIN bosses of the game, while the first level bosses are just merely sub-bosses. But it's not just the second level bosses that are hard, half the time its the second level itself that's a pain in the ass to get through, and by that i mean obstacles and enemies at almost every direction.

Now about the power-ups, they come in different forms but are always carried by the same blue flying thing (i seriously have no idea what to call it), so you never know what your getting until you shoot at it. Theres your standard power-ups like [S], [B], and [P]. [S] is speed, [B] is barrier (which is nothing more than a crappy yellow marshmallow that floats in circles around you and absorbs projectiles untill it turns blue and dies... good thing about the [B] though is that you can have more than one floating around you. The maximum I got is 4 but you can actually get 5 if you are good at avoiding shit without the barriers touching anything), and [P] is a "protector" that gives you a cloak that glows, letting you know that your protected from either 1 or 2 shots. Unfortunately you can only collect 2 of these. Green glow = protected once, and Pink glow = protected twice. IT IS OF UTMOST IMPORTANCE that you get as many [P]'s and [B]'s as you possibly can, because guess what... one hit, and your dead... FROM ANYTHING. Even the friggen stage itself, meaning you cant even lean on walls without exploding. So unless you haven't done your re-search, or have never played a shooting game like this, you are going to be at the first two second levels of the first two stages for a long time, because you have to dodge between obstacles, projectiles, and even small narrow passages without touching anything. By the way, lemme go off topic for a minute and ask, why was there alot of Nintendo games with this exact problem? Silver Surfer, Contra, Super Pitfall, Transformers: Convoy no Nazo (can you tell I watch alot of AVGN, lol). They all had that "die with only one hit" program that annoyed the fuck out of everybody... well at least me anyways. I mean I think Contra was the only game that did it justice but as for the others... it just made the games "unplayable" in my opinion. Anywho, the weapon upgrades vary from a 3 way bubble shot, to a scattered shot, to a lazer, and even huge rings... for some reason, lol. The rings and lazer I've come to find are your best weapons of choice to use, the three way and scattered shots are found on the first stage but do make appearances in other later stages as well. Please to stay away from them. What's great about all the weapons though is that you can use a Missile upgrade on all of them. They come in [M] form. Grabbing one shoots missiles straight foward, but getting [M] the second time makes them follow a target to hit them. In other words, you can shoot your main weapon AND the missiles all with one button. This is VERY handy as you progress through the game.

The game consists of 6 stages all together, which may seem short at first but you'd be too busy avoiding shit and shooting things to even care about somethin like that. Stages 1, 3, and 5 are side views that follow a left to right path. Stages 2, 4, and 6 are overhead views that follow an up to down path. When you first play the game you'll notice the sound effects are familiar. Well if you've played "Special Cybernetic Attack Team", then you'll defenitely hear the same sounds in an instant. Even though Abadox came first and "S.C.A.T." was made by Natsume rather than Milton Bradley, sampling the same sound effects for different video games was a common thing. For those of you that have played Blaster Master, and Journey To Silus, you will know exactly what im talking about... specially since SunSoft made both those games. Anywho, stage 1 is straight foward, your still in space but exploring the outside of the body. Then you encounter what looks like a skeleton dog with a gun on its back. After you destroy it, you enter inside the mouth, avoiding the teeth and dripping saliva from the tongue till you encounter that slug thing on the cover of the box. Stage 2 is you moving around the circulatory system, which has parts of the muscle wall growing arms that try to grab you. After defeating some sort of one eyed worm, you enter more deep into the system, as you notice the wall starts to pulsate a little faster each time you go deeper, till you encounter a big eyeball with a mouth for eye lids. From stage 3 on, its anyone's guess as to what parts of the planet these areas represent, but this is where shit gets REALLY weird (as if things weren't weird enough). The sub-boss of stage 3 is another skeleton animal, only this time it's a hammer-head shark with its head intact, but the body is all skeleton. After you defeat that, you wind up more inside the body, fighting off what looks like white blood cells or antibodies. The boss is another eye with a mouth for eyelids only this time it's attached to an alien's stomach, and the alien itself is attached to the walls like the walls were forming a baby or somethin... yea thats the best way I can explain it. Stage 4 is just random. Your enemies are a ball of yarn that explodes, crab claws that sprout from the walls, a teddy bear inside a blue sphere that leaches onto you and slows you down if you dont shoot it first, and the sub-boss is a huge yellow spider with it's eye on its ass instead of it's head. The beginning of level 2 of stage 4 you immediately encounter the boss but since its SO LONG, you have to work it's way around it's body before you get to it's eyeball (noticing a pattern.... the eyes seem to be the weak points). I'm gonna go on a limb and say that stage 4 would be the digestive system of the planet, as the boss for stage 4 seems to be one loooooooooooong stomach with spikes protruding out of it. Stage 5 looks like something taken out of a scrapped idea for a megaman stage. The sub-boss for this stage are 3 aliens that almost look like you, and shoots the same weapon as you do while moving up and down... yea good luck with that. The boss for this stage is a giant robot that shoots a shitload of projectiles from his hands, PLUS a lazer from it's head. The last stage IS FUCKIN HARD!! Remember in Megaman 2 when trying to get to quickman's stage you had those fast instant death lazers shooting at you? Yea this stage sorta has them, not to mention while you have shit attacking you, so THIS is where your maneuvering skills are put to the test. The sub-boss is a bunch of balls with eyes. The final boss is this alien that has merged itself with some monster. The alien kinda reminds me of "Pyrom" from Darkstalkers. Anywho you rescue the princess who was conveniently trapped inside that one particular monster, so you'd think that would be the end of the game, right? Nope, it wants to fuck with us one more time by having our hero escape from the moster planet cause it's now about to explode, going through each stage he just went through at a really fast speed, avoiding obstacles, trying not to crash. Once you have successfully escape, THEN the game is over.

Over-all this game is challenging, but if thats what you are looking for, i'd recommend it. The game itself is not as gruesome as it sounds, just play it for yourself and you'll see what i mean. Good luck though, cause you will need it.

Damn it's been a while since I've been here, i didnt realize i didnt make a post for my 2009 albums... sooooooooooo here ya go, lol :D

Album 1: Perfection Is Over-Rated
Click Here To Download
Song List:
1. Arab Rock (Haunted Cave Of Wonders Remix)
2. Cloud Cruiser (Hurricane Mix)
3. Don't Stop The Music (Instrumental Square Mix)
4. Doomsday Computer
5. Futuristic Funk (The Tough Mission)
6. H.R.T. (Hard Robotic Trance)
7. Invisible Touch (Clear Blue Ocean Remix)
8. Mecha Ironworks (Metropolis Mix)
9. Meditation Mountain
10. NeoGeo Dream
11. Organ City (Hammy-Down House)
12. Organ City (Jungle Popper Jam)
13. Samba De Nokia
14. Stickers For Everyone (In Puyo Puyo Land)
15. Tropical Fish

Album 2: BMIIDX (The Make-Over) Tribute To TaQ
Click Here To Download
Song List:
1. DXY! (Cruisin' Sunset Remix)
2. Era (Journey Through Time Mix)
3. Holic (Suspects On The Run)
4. Indigo Vision (The Third Eye)
5. Symbolic (After The Storm Mix)

Album 3: Inner Beauty (It's What Matters The Most)
Click Here To Download
Song List:
1. Another Day In Paradise (CMG's Brighter Side)
2. Digital Race
3. Doomsday Computer (Free Of Viruses Mix)
4. ESC (Complicated Connections)
5. Headache (Xtreme Migraine Mix)
6. Hollywood BLVD (Nightlife)
7. Hyperlink (CMG's Deep Down Dance Mix)
8. Ice Capped Dance Hall
9. New Sunset (Artic Aurora Mix)
10. Once Were Subs, But Now...
11. Organ City (90's Slick Groove)
12. S.W.A.N. (Swan With Amazing Natation)
13. Switch (From Day To Night)
14. Train Station Trance (At Sunset Park)
15. Vectorman's Ocean Dance Party

Puyo Puyo & Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine.

I fuckin LOVE Puyo Puyo. It's my #1 favorite puzzle game ever (Tetris Attack being #2 on the list). And it's hard to explain why I love it so much, so you would have to play the game for yourself in order to understand it. Its VERY addicting as well. Basically you have to match 4 or more of the same colored Puyo's that drop down from the top of the screen... kinda like Dr. Mario, only with a twist. Let's just say that in Dr. Mario, you couldn't make L's or 7's or C's or even squares. But why am I talking about a simple puzzle game if there's not much to say about puzzle games in general?

Well, this game was made in Japan, and yes... just like Dynamite Headdy, the US gave it a new coat of paint, and jacked up the difficulty. Only this time they went all out EXTREME. This is what I mean... Puyo Puyo was first an arcade game that later got a home console port for BOTH the Sega Mega Drive and Super Famicom systems (which are the Japan versions of the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo). The Mega Drive version was a almost perfect replica of the arcade version. I say "almost" cause the character's voices werent added. However in the Super Famicom, they WERE added, plus a few more bonus features. Only thing the Super Famicom bombed at was the music department. Now lemme go off-topic here by saying that THIS factor is my only pet peeve with the Super Nintendo... the music. With the exception of the Mario games and even the Donkey Kong games (which not only were exclusive to Super Nintendo, but actually had good music on the Super Nintendo), every single game that had both a Genesis and Super Nintendo release had shitty music in the Super Nintendo version. Take Street Fighter II as another example. The Genesis version is damn near PERFECT, every stage song, every contact hit is exactly like the arcade. As for the Super Nintendo, well... let's just say the graphics might be a bit better, but the sound and music was less impressive to the ears.

Anywho, it wasn't long before the US picked up on this craze, but for SOME REASON, they decided to give the game a whole new identity not once, but TWICE. That's right, the Genesis and Super Nintendo versions are different Puyo Puyo games with different characters. The japan game used the characters from an old japan game called "Madou Monogatari", which ironically was made by the same guy that came up with Puyo Puyo. In the story of Puyo Puyo, there is a girl named Arle Nadja, who is accompanied by a dragon that looks like a bunny. His name is Carbuncle, and is said to be the master Puyo Puyo player. He can also shoot a powerful laser from his forehead, whether or not THAT is the reason why he is also the strongest and most powerful being in the Puyo Puyo world is beyond me. Also, Carbuncle (A.K.A. Car-Kun... yea idk) is pretty much the mascot for the Puyo Puyo series in japan. Car-Kun is always in danger though as a certain villain is trying to kidnap him to keep as his pet (or to harness his power, idk I always forget which one it is, it could be both), and his name (get ready for this) is Satan. I wish I was joking, but then again, this isn't the first time the Japanese use the devil's name in a video game. DragonballZ anyone? So yea, Satan is accompanied by a female martial artist named Rulue, who for someone that has a profession of kicking-ass she sure loves to get all dressed up. In Puyo Puyo 1 - 3 she's always wearing a white dress that looks more like what someone would wear many years ago in Greece (like what people wear at toga parties). She is in love with Satan and will do anything he tells her to do... wow. She has a servant names "Minotauros" who is literally a dude with a head of a Bull... with a scar on his eye. Only problem is that he acts like a pussywhipped sap most of the time. So yea, aside from all that, Arle encounters all other crazy characters, which i could go on explaining what they are all about, but I wont. Let's just say at stage 2 of Puyo Puyo, she encounters a fish with human arms and legs... yeeeeaaaaaa after that, it just gets more fucked up.

Onto the US versions... like I said, they both got turned into different games. The one on Super Nintendo became "Kirby's Avalanch" and as you can guess, it stars everyone's favorite pink marshmallow, Kirby. I wont be getting in-depth with the game for a few reasons. 1. I never owned a Super Nintendo, I only heard about the game and played it from a friend that had one (which was like 3 or 4 years ago... no joke). 2. I was never really into Kirby that much, in fact, i never even had the first game for the Nintendo, so me talking about Kirby is like a Mario fanatic talking about the Sonic series... majority of it is assumptions rather than facts. Although I will say that Lolo and Lala from "The Adventures Of LoLo" make a cameo appearance in Kirby's Avalanch. The other game for the Sega Genesis was called "Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine", which actually became more popular than i thought cause not once, but TWICE it made an appearance in a Sonic game collection series. Once on the Genesis in a collection that had Sonic 1, Sonic 2, and Dr. R's MBM all in one cartridge, and again in the more recent "Sonic Mega Collection" (both the GameCube and + version on PS2 & XBox). This is the only game that has the Sonic cast from "The Adventures Of Sonic The Hedgehog", which was one of the Sonic tv shows that aired in the mornings. The other one Being "Sonic The Hedgehog", which later got called Sonic SATAM for obvious reasons. The characters from THAT show can be found in Sonic Spinball (told you I'm a sonic fan ;) lol). Anywho, I know you're going "um i only recognize coconuts, scratch and grounder... where did the other robots make their appearance?". On the very first episode of course. All of them (with the exception of Spike... I can't find him anywhere in the first episode, OR in any of the other episodes), show themselves when Sonic raids the Bounty Hunter's convention, except for Dragonbreath which makes an appearance before that. The story in the game is that Dr. Robotnik is taking control of "Beanville" and he want's to make sure that no one gets in his way. Yes, the Puyo's are now called Beans in this game, and the garbage is called "Refugee Beans". However Car-Kun still makes an appearance in this game but he's called "Has Bean"... yea its a dumb pun, i know. But yea it's not just the names that got changed, everything else got changed as well. For example, when you select senario mode, it gives you a new game or continue option that you have to enter a password. The japan Puyo Puyo games, AND even the Kirby's Avalance game didnt have that. They allowed you to pick a "beginners" game which only had 3 stages, a normal game, which sent you directly to stage 1, and another normal game, which sent you to stage 4 with some bonus points to start off with. I guess they ran out of Sonic characters to use so they just got rid of the beginner game entirely. Another thing you'll notice is that there is no main character... thats right, if you thought Sonic was in the game, think again. It's just the robots giving you smack talk in the game before you go against them. Once again, the Japan Puyo Puyo and the Kirby game had a main character. Only explination I can come up with as to why Sega did this is cause they wanted to make it seem like the player was playing as sonic through a first person view, and if that's the case, then its dumb. Guarentee you if they put Sonic in the game and called it "Sonic The Hedgehog in Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine" or something like that, sales would have doubled, regardless if it wasa puzzle game or not. After all, everyone bought Sonic Spinball even though it was just another pinball game but with Sonic, so why couldnt they do the same with this game?

Theres other things about this game that I can talk about, like the music... which sounds better than the original Puyo Puyo game surprisingly (except for the annoying repetitive stages 1-8 song). Basically its the orignal Puyo Puyo songs but with different instruments, most noticeably, the drums. Although some songs actually got different arrangements, or are totally different songs all together. The graphics are impressive, which makes you wonder why the characters from the japan Puyo Puyo game don't look as good as the characters on this game. Basically the characters in Dr. R's MBM have shadows and highlights, making them a slight more realistic as if they were actually inside that lil box in the middle, rather than all cartoonish like Puyo Puyo. The options menu in this game doesn't have alot to offer either. No secret sound test mode like the japan Puyo Puyo game has, which is sad cause I think Sound Test is the best feature in options mode. It's sad that alot of the newer games don't have that feature. Then again, I dont recall having a Nintendo game that had that option either. Maybe it was strictly a Genesis/Super Nintendo thing, idk. And lastly, there's the difficulty. As you would have guessed, its jacked up a bit. I can clear through Puyo Puyo on my Genesis emulator with ease, even on the hardest difficulty, maybe loosing like once or twice. With Dr. R's MBM, I'm ALWAYS stuck facing the same robot over and over, even on normal difficult. And it's always a different robot too, more so after stage 4, thats when it starts to get hectic. For example. One day I kept loosing to Grounder, and then the next day, I'm continuously loosing to Sir Fuzzy Logic.

Anywho, that was the last time the US ever saw a Puyo Puyo game, until Puyo Pop Fever for the GameCube. Thankfully this was around the same time where the US decided to stop fuckin around with Japan games ad decided to release them to the US as is... except for HORRIBLE dubbed english voices. But as you can guess, Puyo Puyo became a phenomenon in Japan, spawning so many games and remakes of the classic games. The formula got better as well. In Puyo Puyo 2, you can rebound the garbage back to the other person if you get a combo while theirs garbage waiting to drop on you. In Puyo Puyo 3, a new "Sun" Puyo was added, making your garbage amount given to the opponent increase by like 1.5 if you cleared the Sun with the normal Puyo Puyos. And in Puyo Puyo 4, each character had their own attacks, whether it was clearing all puyos of a certain color, destroying a specific section of the board , or even protecting your field with a shield that prevented garbage from fallin. I'm personally not a fan of the GameCube Puyo Pop Fever game because they added the "3 or 4 puyos falling in your tray at once" instead of the traditional 2. That and now TWO areas are considered death points instead of the traditional one death area... kinda messes up my pattern I always use in Puyo Puyo.

Overall, I believe that Puyo Puyo would have had a more popular impact on the US if they decided to not change anything and keep releasing sequals like they did in Japan, but hey, at least it's better than nothing I suppose. Doesn't stop me from playing the Japanese games of course. Puyo Puyo 3 and 4 for the PS1 are my favorites. That and Puyo Puyo 2 remix for the SNES... that game has 4 player option. ALWAYS better when theres more people to play with :D

Dynamite Headdy

Treasure made some great memorable games such as Gunstar Heroes and McDonald's Treasure Land Adventure (thats right, i said it, lol), but if there is one game they made that drew my attention the most, its Dynamite Headdy. I never owned the game, but I've played it on the Sega Channel on more than one occasion (yep, I used to own a Sega Channel system at one point), and even though I didnt understand what the hell was going on, I was very entertained for the most part. Overall, it's a great game to play... if you're playing the better version of course. This is what I mean...

Dynamite Headdy was a game that was originally made in Japan, and for those of you that have actually played the game, its easy to see why. However, back then the US was still fickle about showing North American viewers "true" Japan games, so rather than try to make any sense out of them, the US would give it a new coat of paint, jack it up with steroids, and not explain anything at all about the characters or storyline... which they did exactly that in the US version of Dynamite Headdy. For example... in the Japan version, the characters actually have dialogue, mostly in the beginning of the boss battles. The US version took out ALL the dialogue (except for the first 3 helpers in the beginning of the second stage).

The story is that everyone lives in some puppet world and the King Dark Demon is taking everyone prison and turning the world into his little dark evil world and its Headdy's job to go defeat the king. Basic enough, unless you know who each character is and what they are all about, which the US version gives us nothing explaining them. If you've played the US version (which I'm sure most of you have) you'd only know that a yellow guy that looks like an Indian bird smashes shit with his head (sometimes to get different heads) to get to some evil king while some brown cat who always looks like he has permanent P.M.S. is chasing him and preventing him from doing so, and while all THAT is happening, everytime he defeats an enemy to take some key away, this pink female version of him takes them away from him so she can use it to kill this one robot that captures her anyway, and while all THAT is happening, this white dude with a big head and ears randomly pops out of nowhere and does all these random actions depending on where he's located. WHAT THE FUCK?!?! From our point of view it would be like the creators were on some kind of drugs when making this video game, but alas, with the power of the interwebs, the WHOLE explination is revealed.

Turns out that the brown cat is actually a bounty hunter who wants to become popular and in order to do that, he must take out Headdy so that everyone can focus on him... since the entire setting is puppets on a stage, the brown cat wants to become the #1 puppet. Speaking of which, this is another issue that this game has between US and Japan... cast of characters. First of all, the names are different from each other. Using the brown cat as an example, his name in the US is "Trouble Bruin", while in the Japan game, its "Maruyama". I guess they did this to make it sound less Japan-ish, but it doesn't help that they left the Japan name IN HIS THEME SONG TO THE US VERSION!!! Also what's the excuse for some of the other characters? Take the second boss (the wooden dancing thing), it's name in US is "Wooden Dresser" but in Japan it's "Jacqueline Dressy"... um ok, what was wrong with it's first name? Second issue with characters is color swap. I find this EXTREMELY pointless. It's most noticeable with Trouble Bruin. In the US he's brown and angry. In Japan, he's pink and cute......... HUH??? I guess they tried to make him the comic relief in the Japan game, which actually does work since he looks goofy and is always failing, but god forbid the US experiences any humor in a video game. By the way... have you noticed that if you listen to Trouble Bruin's entire theme song, the second half of the lyrics to his name is replaced with "Kuma"? And we all know that the name "Kuma" related to bears... Kumachin in Fighting Vipers/Fighters Megamix, and Kuma in the Tekken series. Thats just common knowledge. Well turns out Trouble Bruin has a "Kuma" body... so you mean he's really a bear? OK... SO WHY MAKE HIS HEAD A CAT?!?! Oh wait, i just got it... the US was trying to make him look more bear like with the brown color and angry expression. That would have worked fine if they would have EXPLAINED THAT TO US IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

Yea so aside from THAT jumble of mess, there's Heather (known as Fingy in Japan), and she's the female version of Headdy... except wearing a green jumpsuit with a cape. What's her story? Well it turns out that Headdy isn't the only one that wants to defeat King Dark Demon, but unlike Headdy, she's ahead of the game and knows the weakness of the guard(s) that protect Dark Demon's castle (theres a reason why the word "guard" is in plural, ill explain that later), which are related to the keys she collects from the "Key Masters" (which are what the bosses are called) after Headdy defeats them. Wow... what a bitch. Just let the guy do ALL the dirty work while you just sit and watch, then collect treasure afterwords. Anywho, the two team up later, but in the US version, they decide to wait till the very end to show us that Heather falls in love with Headdy. There is NO love story in the Japan version, Heather just flies away while Headdy get's stuck with a badge on his face. This badge in the Japan game is actually reffered to as "the pupper master", and took control of the King because I guess he wasn't convincing enough as a small circular yellow badge. This is also not explained in the US version.

The bosses themselves are a mix of weird, and boring. The boring part being their personality... they dont have any. The weird part being their design... I mean, what other game is there where you can shoot the shit out of a baby's head while it spits up electric bubbles? But of course, just like everything else in this game, the enemies (actually only two) differ from US and Japan. Example 1... theres a level in the US version called "Terminate Her Too" (yea I know I hate the pun as well) where in the middle of it you fight a huge robot with a castle on its head. In Japan, it was a "Alice-In-Wonderland" like doll. The US' excuse for making such a drastic change was because they didnt like the idea of "girls" or "women" doing acts of violence or getting harmed... RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT, THATS WHY STREET FIGHTER II HAD CHUN-LI AND CAMMY, HUH?? idk, its just stupid to me. Example 2... the "guard(s)" i mentioned earlier are ENTIRELY different from the US and Japan versions. In the US its just ONE robot that goes from regular, to evil. In the Japan version it's TWO robots... dressed as Kimono girls i might add. Yes, cause apparently explaining what a Kimono girl is to people in the United States is such a difficult task. However, these two had a "Dr. Jeckle & Mr. Hyde" thing goin on, which was cool, plus the evil counterpart looked convincingly crazier than the evil robot in the US version. The whole "split-personality' thing is done again with the second to final boss called "Twin Freaks", as whenever you flip the room upside down, he turns evil, but becomes good again when you turn right side up.

Bonus stage is cool, but can be frustrating at times. Basically you have to shoot a certain amount of basketballs into your net to get a hidden number that you HAVE to remember (or if your smart like me, write it down). The good news is that it's only 4 numbers, so you wont have to waste time on the bonus stage that much, and by collecting all the numbers, you can get to the secret ending. The bad news is that each time you get a number, the amount of bombs that shoot out of the cannon increase, so if you have like 3 numbers, you'll be waitin a while for a basketball to pop out. Speaking of numbers, the secret numbers for the secret ending are ALWAYS different, so if you thought you could just keep the sasme numbers you got last time, you are dead wrong. What's the secret ending? Well, you punch in the numbers on a keypad then enter an office room where these two thugs throw money at you (which HEAVULY damage you) while beating the shit out of the office owner. In Japan, this was a poke at the back then president of Sega in the Japan branch. In the US, its explained that this dude was responsible for turning that badge evil.

Last thing that HAS to be said is the difficulty... MY GOD IS THE US VERSION FUCKIN HARD!!! I dont know what it is about US video game companies boosting up their egos by jacking up the difficulty of a "remade for US" import game to make it more "challenging" but if anything, its rather annoying and kills the actual fun of the game. I mean c'mon... One-hit K.O. super hard mode as a cheat code?? Are you out of your minds?!?! I can't pass a stage without getting hit at LEAST once or twice, so unless I become a game god (which wont happen anytime soon), its damn near impossible. Trust me, you will notice a BIG difference in difficulty if you play the two versions one after the other. The Japan version is VERY much enjoyable, balancing out everything, being generous at times. For example, after you defeat a boss, they explode and shoot out "T's", which if you collect 10 in the Japan version, you get a continue. For the US it's DOUBLE that amount, so you have to collect almost ALL the T's that shoot out or else you have to start all over if you loose all your lives... ain't that a bitch?

So overall, Japan win's this round, and fortunate for me, i stumbled upon a Dynamite Headdy rom for the Genesis emulator that is the Japanese version with ENGLISH translations for the dialogue the characters speak. It is DEFINITELY worth the download, and since I'm SUCH a good sport, i'll share it with the rest of you :) http://www.mediafire.com/?0vmbjyunt2j I hope you enjoy this rom and hope you enjoyed this review :)

The Muppet Show... one of the many classic yet awesome "i'd still watch it even when i'm old and gray" shows I used to watch when I was a kid. It was part of my routine every weekday, and i remembered that it would always air between 6 and/or 7 when I used to live in Flushing Queens (if I remember correctly, it was on TNT at the time) when i was going to P.S. 107 from Kindergarden through 2nd grade. Jim Henson was a genius (may he rest in peace), and between that and Sesame Street, I was very entertained as a child. However, the truth is that The Muppet Show was aimed more for older viewers, and aside from the jokes that they would spew every so often, I never knew why that was until Episode 118.

Let's face it... everyone knew that half of the idea's from that show were being triggered by whatever drugs the makers of that show were taking at the time. Specially the ideas for the monster designs... U.G.L.WHY??? Most of them to me were tolerable, but one in particular had me so scared that it became my childhood nightmare for life. Most people know him as the Hugga Wugga monster... because thats all the fucker ever said. Anywho, I remember seeing this skit, frozen to my coutch going "wtf am i watching?", thinkin that this dude was gonna jump through the tv and eat me or somethin. And my imagination back then was VERY over-active, so you can imagine the hole that monster left in my brain to hide inside for all eternity, scaring me in my dreams almost every night. This was one of the reasons why I had to have my bed next to the wall, cause I thought it was gonna slither up behind me to attack me while i was asleep, but even the bed next to the wall wasn't enough cause I covered my entire self with the covers except a small portion of my face so that I could breath. Time passed and I saw a Fraggle Rock episode where Boober looses his hat to this monster that at the time i thought looked EXACTLY like the "Hugga Wugga" monster. So yea, that didnt help my situation any. This lasted till when I was in middle school. I figured I'd TRY to do something about it, so the only thing that came to mind was drawing him. Once i did that, I gave him a background story, and a name of my own (cause at the time I had NO idea what his name was and he only appeared ONCE ever in the muppet show), the fear of him deteriorated and he basically became a misunderstood character that everyone thinks is a bad guy but is really a good guy (which was used for Piccolo in DragonballZ and Knuckles when he made his debute in the Sonic series).

Recently I decided to over-come my fear and visit the wonderful world of "YouTube" to find this creature and see him face to face once again. Turns out, he's not as scary as i imagined him to be. The odd thing is that he's purple with a short blownose and has three leaves sticking out of the tip of his head. This whole time I thought he was an ORAGNE monster with a LONG blownose and had HORNS sticking out of his head... how the hell did i confuse myself on THOSE details?? Well, if anything i DID get the eyes right though... evil lookin with those long bushy "eyebrows and eyelids"... although I thought he had eyelids too but I guess they were too lazy to include those. They just made two holes on the side of his head to slide the eyes down to male it like he IS closing his eyes. Clever, but it has its flaws, specially if not covered properly. Also, and more obvious, he is not the monster from that Fraggle Rock Episode. Turns out, the other monster (which in Fraggle Rock is known as "Blustering Bellowpane Monster") is a recycled puppet used in a few other shows. I guess in a weird way, I mixed both the Hugga Wugga monster and this dude to create the "what would be love child" of them both... but still... where the fuck did the horns come from??? Oh well, guess that was my own touch, lol.

Now of course I have two new fears (both Japanese ghosts from "The Grudge" and "The Ring"), but who knows... maybe just like Hugga Wugga, it'll take like 20 somethin years to get over that fear too. Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut i dont think drawing would help this time, lol.

Heres a video of that Hugga Wugga skit from the muppet show

And heres the only video i COULD find of the monster from fraggle rock. Skip to about 3:50 and you'll see him
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWe4VEf 4wlo

Alright, I know you've been waitin for it, and now you get to read it. It's my hand picked 10 mini-rants in celebration of my 10th Rant Blog Post. It took me a while to figure out what I was gonna "nit-pick" at, but in the end, I think you'll agree with me with the choices I picked. They are in no certain order, just random things that piss me off. Ok so here we go...

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1. What ever happened to people saying goodbye on the phone anymore? I get goodbyes from a certain few but its like if someone makes a plan with someone else most of the time they end it with "k cool" and then they hang up. Same thing happens online too when I'm on AIM, MSN, and Yahoo... its like we are in the middle of a conversation and then "sign off". And not like that "i got kicked off" kinda signed off, its more like "oh the convo died a while ago, and im bored so im not gonna talk to you anymore" kind of sign off. Gee thanx, I feel so un-important.

2. And speaking of phones, why is it that the people with the stupidest ringers dont know how or when to turn their phones on vibrate whether their at work or at a movie theater? Like really... are you THAT fuckin lazy or stupid to not remember to keep your phone quiet in certain places? Or do you really like that kind of awkward attention?

3. If you are between the ages of 13 and 17, and like to constantly harass people by posting internet memes, or a link to something that you found that you think is the best thing ever... please, stay the FUCK away from me... far, FAR away. if you are over 18 and still do this shit... GET A FUCKING LIFE!! Seriously, your an adult now, you could be doing MUCH better things with your spare time than acting like you still belong in middle school/high school.

4. Speaking of the internet, TROLLS piss me off so fucking much. These are the kind of people you see all the time on forums, which is why I stopped hanging out on forums to begin with. They cause so much fuckin drama and make people's internet experience less enjoyable. Nevermind the fact that they "zero bomb" my song submissions on newgrounds... which REALLY pisses me off cause i put alot of work into my creations, if your gonna give it a low grade, at least give a reason as to why you did.

5. Anime fanatics... my god what annoying fucks these are. These are the kind of people that have no grasp on reality. They eat, sleep, breath, and shit anime all day and night, and are usually the type of people that spit out shit like "KAWAI!" or "DESU!". Please to stay away from me too. Your lucky screens are solid and not the kind that you can go through, otherwise id be shovin my fist through it multiple times to punch these annoying fucks in the face.

6. People taking movies out of context. It's happenin alot, like they think that every fuckin movie they see has some hidden message or meaning to it. And if you think I'm jokin, think back to when the "passion of christ" was released, and then you'll know EXACTLY what I'm talkin about. it was just an INTERPRETATION of the story of Jesus, not the ACTUAL story. Anywho, my mom did that same shit when we saw the movie "Up" (SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT). In the beginning when they were showing how the kids grew up, got married, living together, growing old together, forgettin bout their dream, then the wife dies, my mom bawed her eyes out. She was all like "see, life is too short, you cant wait so long to accomplish what you wanna do", and im just lookin at her with this pathetic look like "......... its just a fuckin movie mom, get over it".

7. Speakin of movies, MOVIES + VIDEO GAMES = VERY BAD IDEA!!! Is Hollywood THAT fuckin stupid that they haven't gotten the hint by now after all the other shitty VG movies they made? Super Mario Bros., Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat... they all SUCKED and at most times didnt relate to the video game at all. Their still doin that same shit too. The latest one they did was a Chun-Li movie, which fuckin blew balls cause that's not the Chun-Li i grew up with and loved, and if you were born in the late 80's and grew up playin street fighter on SNES or Genesis, you would agree with me too. And another thing, all these superhero characters and good guys being all conflicted and shit. "waaaaaaaaaaaah whats my purpose in life?" "waaaaaaaaaah how can i cope with this?". FUCKIN EMOS!! You see people? I told you the EMO problem was really bad cause half of the actors in them are just that. But I digress. If that wasn't bad enough their makin live action movies of ANIME now... that new Dragonball movie... TOTAL FUCKIN GARBAGE!!! HOW THE FUCK DID THEY RUIN PICCOLO?!?!! And don't get me started with the plot and storyline.

8. Ok THIS issue I HAVE to address, I dont care if it IS such a big secret or not, and this is gonna get sexually graphic, so if you dont wanna read this one, then dont. It saddens me that women have no idea what goes on down their with their own vaginas. Yes, this isnt a joke, and I know some of you guys are like "wtf are you talking about?", but let me explain. Remember one time in elementary school where they seperated the boys from the girls and both grouped watch a video about "the natural changes of our bodies"? Yea well while we learning about how much bigger and hairier we were gonna get, the girls were fuckin being brainwashed with scare tactics and lies. I swear I had one woman I used to be friends with tell me about this, and I have a porno explaining the same shit too. They told all the girls that they should be afraid of their body and privates, to not be concerned about what goes on down there, and that making a mess during sex is very bad... they HAVE to be lady-like and clean up. I only have three words for that... FUUUUUUUUUUCK THAT SHIT!!! Seriously, vaginas are nothing to be afraid of, in fact i LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE them (i have women that can voutch for that too, lol). Ladies, you SHOULD know what goes on down there... some of it might be complicated, but wouldn't you feel more relieved knowing how your vaginas work? And that whole bit about not being messy... thats bullshit. If guys can cum all over the fuckin place, I think women are allowed to do the same shit. Yes, I'm talkin bout "Female Ejaculation" (a.k.a. Squirting). That shit is fuckin hott... its the #1 thing that turns me on the most, and fuck you all that don't understand where I'm comin from. Plus it gives the women a better orgasm when they do it. I think it doesn't happen as often as it should because alot of guys out there are FUCKIN RETARDED!! It's not pee you morons!!! You know how guys cum out of the same hole they pee out of? Same shit for women, only instead of it being a creamy whte liquid, its a clear, odorless liquid, produced by a gland thats in the same area where the vaginal sponge is (also known as the G-Spot). Hence why the G-Spot is also known as the "Woman's Prostate". Trust me on this, I've done my homework and research on the matter.

9. Flakers, and their are a whole bunch of them on this shit island that I live in. These are the people that make plans with you but then do one of the following... A. cancel last minute. B. Show up half hour late (or longer). Or C. dont show up at all and then come up with this lame bullshit excuse as to why they didnt show up like they promised they would. I hate flakers so very very much. This is usually how you can tell if they are a fake person/friend or not.

10. Hypocrites. My god these people piss me off so much. These are people that are against something, they bitch about it, but then do the EXACT thing they are against and bitch about.... WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWHAT?!?!? Here's what I mean... lets say you know someone that tells you that they don't drink (whether they dont like the taste or whatever), only to find out that they went to a party one night after they told you that and got wasted playin a game of beer pong. THAT is a hypocrite. Basically you can spot one easily if they lie through their teeth about shit. it's like wtf ever happened to being honest with yourself anymore??

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So there you have it... the 10 hand picked mini-rants. This doesn't mean that my rant series is over. I still have the long waited "media" rant to talk about, so keep your eyes peeled for rant 11, and hope you have enjoyed these 10 rants of mine.

::Knuckles Chaotix::

First of all, I wanna go on the record and say that I like Knuckles alot more than I do Sonic. 1. He's red, and for those of you that know me, i LOVE the color red. ^_^ 2. He can break through breakable blocks and walls by simply walking towards them. This prooved that even though Sonic had the speed, Knuckles defenitely had the power, cause as you all know in Sonic 3 Angel Island Zone Act 1, there was that section before the sub-boss where you couldnt go down, you HAD to go up, because those boulders blocking the bottom path sonic couldn't break even as Super Sonic. 3. He can glide through the air and pick up speed while he's gliding. That is fucking amazing. Sure Tails can fly in the air but it's only for a short amount of time. At least with Knuckles, you can glide for as long as you want to untill you either decide to stop, or hit a wall. And speaking of walls, 4. He can climb walls. Fuck yea!! Sonic 3 & Knuckles had all sorts of little secrets that weren't accessable with Sonic or even Tails for that matter. Hell, Sonic 2 even had some secrets of it's own, more so in Chemical Plant Zone. Perfect stage to get to the top-most point of the screen to rack up on alot of 1ups. Not including the ones that you could normally pick up as sonic or tails, there are 3 in the first act, and 2 in the second act. Once you did that, you were defenitely set for the rest of the game. The only flaw that Knuckles had was the height of his jump... its basically half the height of Sonic's jump.

After the huge sucess of Sonic & Knuckles for the Genesis, Sega decided to make another sonic game for the genesis, but was later canceled. Today it is known as Sonic Crackers in the rom hacking/emulation world. This was debated as being the 4th sonic game made for the Sega Genesis, simply because even though Sonic & Knuckles was truely the 4th Sonic game for the Genesis, we later found out that it was just a "Sonic 3.5/Sonic 3 part 2" game. See, Sonic 3 and Sonic & Knuckles was supposed to be it's own individual game, but since it was too big for the cartridge/Genesis (i forget which one), it had to be split into two parts, hence why the Sonic & Knuckles cartridge used "Lock-On" technology. At the time it was a big thing, because that ment that you could play any game with Sonic & Knuckles. Well to be more specific, you could only play the "Blue Sphere" game (which was Sonic 3 & Knuckle's special stage zone). The plus side though was that each Genesis game had it's own Blue Sphere stage, so every stage was completely different, both layout and color wise. As for the Sonic games, aside from the obvious Sonic 3, if you locked on Sonic 2, you got to play Sonic 2 as Knuckles only, which made everyone very happy. So you would think that you could do the same thing if you locked on Sonic 1 right? Wrong. You get the Blue Sphere game again, only this time, unlike all the other non-Sonic games, which just had one special stage and that was it, Sonic 1 with Sonic & Knuckles had a whole series of special stages. Scoring for this one was funny though... lets say you played stage 1 and if you got all the spheres but didnt get a perfect (which is collecting all the rings), the next stage would be stage 2. But if you DID get a perfect, the next stage would be stage 11. In other words, for every perfect you get, you skip 10 stages... which is pretty cool , specially since you get a little animation of the "Cast Of Characters" at the end of each "Perfect Game".

Anywho, back to Sonic Crackers. This game was being developed around the same time that the Genesis started getting two new "add-ons" to increase its life span to continue to compete against it's competitor; The Super Nintendo. One add-on was the Sega CD (which sad to say, I never owned v_v), and it was the first Video Game console to use CDs. It had its own Sonic game "Sonic CD", which sorta broke away from the genesis story line but introduced a few new things, which I wont go into detail about. The second add-on was the "32X" (THIS one i DID own ^_^). It went back to cartridges which confused the hell out of alot of people... cause why go back to cartridges if they made the Sega CD? Anywho, just like the Sega CD, the 32X got it's own Sonic game... although Sonic wasn't a playable character in the game. Yep, I'm talkin bout Knuckles Chaotix, and it was the game that "Sonic Crackers" was supposed to be. Don't believe me? Well, let's look at the facts. For those of you keeping score at home, and have the Sonic Crackers and Knuckles Chaotix roms with you, you can play along with me. Sonic Crackers and Knuckles Chaotix both use the teamwork system via two rings keeping them together like a rubberband... thats 1. Sonic Crackers and Knuckles Chaotix both use the same music and songs... thats 2. And finally, both Sonic Crackers and Knuckles Chaotix use the "transition from day to night" setting for the stages... thats 3. Oh and if you wanna get more in-depth, if you use the stage select cheat code in Knuckles Chaotix, you'll notice one of the options is also "Character Select" and who is the first person in line? Mighty The Armadillo. Now in order to understand why Mighty is so important in this factor, we must first have to look at the character itself. It's pretty much a Sonic clone except its a red armadillo. Even Mighty's sprite is Sonic 1's Sprite retouched and recolored. TECHNICALLY, Mighty wasn't even supposed to be in Knuckles Chaotix, and it isn't the first time he's been in a "Sonic related" game before. In japan arcades, there was this other Sonic Game called "Sega Sonic The Hedgehog". The graphics were kick-ass and it's playing style was different from the other games (aside from the fact that you used a trackball instead of an actual joystick. It's hard to explain, but I did find a few videos explaining it and to give you an idea on what it was about. This is the whole game with Sonic and a little bit of the other character (Ray The Squirrel) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0Qr0kS XGEg and this one has Mighty The Armadillo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmQxDJ3 Q860 (please excuse the dude talking). On top of that, it's also been told that Mighty was actually the first idea Sega had for a character BEFORE they came up with Sonic, so in theory, Mighty is actually the OLDEST Sonic character in existance... some would say that Sonic is the actual clone instead of Mighty, but at this point, its pretty much personal opinion. So yea, there's some background info on Mighty. The next slot in the character select list in the stage cheat of Knuckles Chaotix is this line that reads "*********". This was Tail's spot in the beta rom Sonic Crackers, but if you select it, you get a freaky colored Knuckles that freezes the game as soon as it starts... I.E. unplayable. THEN comes knuckles and the crew. And speaking of Knuckles, he got a totally new sprite job, which to me came out really good.

Ok now about the game... NOT what you would expect for a Sonic game. For one thing, the "Team" thing is necessary in some cases, but for the most part, it's useless. Specially when EVERY character can either fly or clib walls... well, unless you actually count those wastes of spaces known as "Bomb & Heavy"... they cant climb or fly. Only reason why their in the game is cause apparently their Dr. Robotnik's robots that got rejected and now wan't to help the Chaotix crew to stop him. And if you have the selected as partners, you'll know why their wasted of spaces... SLOW AS FUCK. Specially Heavy... my god. And Bomb just blows up everytime he gets whacked around, and his explosion damages YOU too. So it makes you wonder who's side they are REALLY on. Anywho, you can stop your partner in his tracks by holding B and then using the D-Pad to move your pain character in the desired direction, stretching out the band, then once you release B, you'll be going fast. This is one reason why the rubber band thing is useless because you can just do a spin dash and you'd get their quicker. Seriously, by the time you charge your rubber band, you'd be at your destination already if you would have used the spin dash. The other reason is that your second character is most of the time getting in the way... specially when your in the air (which will happen alot in some stages). When you wanna go one direction, your partner will either prevent you from going there, or make you go the other way. Another flaw in the game... REPETITIVE STAGES! I'm not kidding, even though there are 5 worlds to choose from, all of them have 5 acts, and all acts are the SAME EXACT LAYOUT, except with more stuff added and the goal is located differently within the later acts. The enemies are the same as the ones from Sonic CD, but with newer ones added as well... which also raises a few eyebrows. Like maybe Sonic CD and Knuckles Chaotix's storyline follows one another and Sonic CD is truely the 4th Sonic game, making Knuckles Chaotix the 5th game. But then you look at the Game Gear games and then trying to figure out the TRUE chronological order of the Sonic series can be a real pain in the ass. After all, Metal Sonic from Sonic CD is also in Knuckles Chaotix as well. So if you really think about it, it was like after Sonic CD, Dr. Robotnik decided to leave Sonic alone and fuck with Knuckles some more. Idk, thinkin bout it too much makes my head hurt. Last thing to talk about is the special stages. First of all, instead of Chaos EMERALDS, your collecting Chaos RINGS... um what? Why rings? Its not like they ever came back in a future Sonic game, so why would you not use Emeralds? Plus there's only 6 Chaos Rings, and they don't change you into any super forms if you collect them all, in fact, the only person that get's any power from them is Metal Sonic, which transforms into this red huge ugly version of himself with more spikes. The only reason why I could see them using rings instead of emeralds is because since everyone is in Robotnik's Carnival Land, Robotnik MADE the Chaos rings which gives the island and himself more power, so Knuckles and the crew have to collect the rings to take away Robotnik's power, since in the end credits, if you don't collect all the rings, Super Metal Sonic destroys the whole word. And if that's the case, then I pretty much answered my own question. But aside from the rings, the special stage itself is 3D, like sonic 2 and 3 and CD, only it makes use of the whole "polygon" shapes and designs instead of "2d looking like 3d" effect.

So yea thats about it. For the most part, it's worth playing, specially if your a Knuckle's fan like myself. Unfortunately only way you can play this game is if you have an emulator or the actual 32X and game, cause it never made it on any of the other sonic collections they came out for the PS2, XBox, and GameCube. Not to mention that I dont think it's available to download for the Wii yet. Correct me on this if im wrong.