PixlBit

     Sid Meier's Ace Patrol came out for iOS in early May and I just found out about it. It's a weird coincidence since I was thinking about the old board game Fight in the Skies, a WWI air battle game, recently and was trying to think of any video game that would be close to it. Well, this Firaxis game is it.

    The first ad I found was Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi on PS1 from Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, No. 8, released April of 1998. This game was a two player fighter like Tekken or Mortal Kombat with Star Wars characters. It's apparently not a very good game. Still, the ad makes you want to play it. Who doesn't want to fight that jerk Boba Fett. He brings a gun to a light saber fight for Pete's sake.

    I've been experiencing a glut of biker gang related things in the last few weeks starting with my reading of Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels. Immediately after I started reading that book, Smartcelt posted his Wheels of Steel blog concerning GTA IV's Lost and the Damned DLC (http://www.pixlbit.com/blog/2529/wheels_of_steel). That got me thinking about Road Rash on the Playstation and how it would be great if there was a current gen version of it. Then what do I see on upcoming releases this week, but Ride to Hell: Retribution, a game all about sixties biker gangs coming June 26th. Here's the trailer:

     So I'm back again with more scans of video game ads from magazines or comics. These two are from Marvel Knights #8 (Feb. 2001) which I got because it featured Doctor Strange. That I got two video game ads was a pleasant bonus.

    Why go old school when you can go super old school! I mean, white-beard-growing Rip Van Winkle old school. Except this old man is a frickin’ martial arts ninja that’ll kick your sorry ass to Timbucktu like Gen Fu, Gouken and Shujinko combined! We’re talking 1966. “No way,” you say. “There weren’t any video games in 1966 KnightDriver!” Well, if you were an Electrical Engineering student at MIT with access to the PDP-1 supercomputer, you could play SpaceWar!.  Play it today at the Computer History Museum in Cali on an authentic PDP-1 or play it in emulation here: http://spacewar.oversigma.com/html5/.  It runs in a browser without any installation! Fantastic!

     I cancelled my preorder for Muramasa Rebirth and bought Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask for 3DS to play on my family trip to Ohio on Friday to see my niece graduate high school. It’s the perfect thing for being stuck in a car for seven plus hours. Also, it makes me look slightly more mature to my family than playing Shadow Wars, Etrian Odyessy, Fire Emblem or Luigi’s Mansion, all of which are gamer games. It’s like I’m saying, “Don’t mind me, I’m just a casual gamer like yourselves. No hard core gamer to worry about here.”

     I bailed on saving for a PSVita the other day and instead went and picked up Bioshock Infinite and God of War Ascention brand new at Gamestop for $40 each. Happily the saleswoman didn’t try to convince me to buy the used versions. In fact we got into a long, and genuine, conversation about games and comics, not the usual Gamestop BS where the salesperson chats you up and then tries to get you to preorder something. I’ll gut the pig that does that to me next time. Kidding! I’m a friendly guy. I like pigs too. When they’re bacon of course. Kidding! I hardly ever eat bacon.

        50 Hours into Enchanted Arms I had pretty much sailed through the game without too much trouble. Then came the Ice Castle and the final fight with the Ice Queen. I failed the first time, returned to the area just outside the main chamber, and quickly trained up a few choice Golems to execute a particular defensive plan I had combining the use of Healing, Power Up and Barrier spells in support of the brawlers Atsuma and Rygar. It took an hour or so of grinding to practice my strategy and all the TB (cash) I had to buy Mega Skill Gems to increase the Golem’s HP parameters so they would both be over 1000 HP. The result was success! I beat the Ice Queen and her alternate form. The Close achievement popped up and I breathed a sigh of relief.  

      Video games try to tell you about themselves through their ads. Sometimes they tell you about their attitude, or their humor, or their special subject matter. Each ad tells you what's most important about the game in order to spark your interest. Here are ads for Twisted Metal Black, Worms World Party, and Zone of the Enders I scanned recently from some old Spectre comics.