Sonic The Hedgehog Sticker Album

A look now at the Sonic sticker album from 1994, back when Sonic was the only game in town and everyone and their mother was playing Sonic 3. Nowadays in 2010 there is a new Sonic sticker collection for us to get excited about (or not) as it seems to offer less game screenshots and more coverage of all the friends Sonic has acquired over the years. I remember when the addition of Knuckles seemed like too much.

But it got me thinking, there has been so many Sonic games released in the last ten years that it would probably be far stranger for people to see a Sonic game that didn't include a million wacky characters. For all I know Sonic Riders could have sold more copies than both Dreamcast Sonic Adventure games put together.

Wooooah there Sonic! By the end of the year we should be able to download Sonic 4, it looks pretty good from the videos and screenshots. Plus it only has Sonic in it, so far anyways, but it remains to be seen if this is a game like the Sonic games of old or a game that just reminds you of what you liked about those games while brazenly taking your money and blinding you with speedy HD craziness.

 

Sorry, where was I? Ya, the sticker book, its wall to wall Sonic game screenshots, almost, there are also some Sonic the cartoon stickers in there with the odd foil sticker. Not forgetting the 4-page pull-out poster that came in the centre of the book. At the back there is a puzzle page, containing a wordsearch, a maze and some spot the difference pictures.

I never filled the whole album, there is nearly always one missing on every page. So frustrating! So has anyone got any spares? Maybe I will pick up that new Sonic album if I come across it after all.

Thats it for the videogame related albums for now. Next up, I make an impassioned plea for help to complete my Saved by the Bell sticker collection!

Street Fighter 2 / Super Street Fighter 2 Sticker Albums

Now a look at both Street Fighter Sticker Albums, first the original. This album has some great Oli Frey artwork all the way through, whether as the background or as some of the stickers. Frey did a lot of Street Fighter covers for various games magazines at the time too.

Like everyone else at the time I played the arcade version, then couldn't wait for the home conversions. Unfortunately the one button C64 tape version I got didn't quite match the arcade machine. I still played it to death though.

But later I got the Special Championship Edition for the Megadrive and played that to death! I would also go as far as to say that it's the better of the two.

Not long afterwards Capcom released Super Street Fighter 2 and Merlin were hot on their heels with the sticker book. This Super SF2 release introduced us to four new characters. Boring caricatures in my opinion, except for Cammy because she's only the second female in the game.

 

Gone was the Oli Frey artwork, replaced with pictures and screenshots from the game, interesting if you loved playing Street Fighter, ... but not that interesting.

It did have some Ryu artwork at the back showcasing various iterations of the game. No Commodore 64 version this time sadly. And no Super Street Fighter 4 stickers to collect after this years big release. What ever do the kids collect these days?

Mortal Kombat II Sticker Album

A quick look at the Mortal Kombat II sticker album this time, I didnt get too many stickers for it so only a few scans . I always preferred Street Fighter as my fighting game of choice back then, Mortal Kombat just never impressed me.

 Stickers were mostly screenshots with the odd hand drawn character foil sticker, so nothing too interesting then.

Each page has an action packed scene from the Mortal Kombat game (kind of) as a background. The art is fine but not as good as the Oliver Frey art you find in the Street Fighter 2 sticker album, which I will post up later.

I always picked Johnny Cage, then they went and killed him! Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 would be my favourite of the MegaDrive games and I haven't really played any after that. There must be a million characters in the MK universe now but no sign of a new sticker book.

Nintendo Sticker Album

Back in the day sticker collecting was hugely popular (is it still popular?). Here is a look at some pages from the Official Nintendo Sticker Album. It was released around the time of Super Mario Bros 3 and the release of the original Gameboy. This must have been one of the first videogame related sticker albums, as it predates all the other ones I had, Sonic, Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat 2 etc. but we will get to those later.


 
It acted as a guide to all the Mario and Zelda NES games along with some of the Gameboys early releases, it was usually stickers of screenshots of the game with some gameplay hints, some stickers were of the characters in the games, some drawn better than others!

This is the centre page, I only managed to get one foil sticker for it, how embarrassing! The next page was of various NES and Gameboy games you could buy right now, don't you just hate missing only one sticker on a page.

Golf on the Gameboy, has anyone got sticker No. 244? Super Mario Land, some pages had a map of the game to help you see screens that you had to play through.

The first Zelda, the maps were a great help, no more aimless wondering. I don't remember the old ladies being this creepy in the game though!

Zelda 2. Note the lack of best scores written in, I never had this game as a kid, it looked good in the sticker book though.

Can some one tell me is Mario drunk/in love/stoned or what?

After 20 years I've finally given up hope of completing the album, the local shop that I got my packets of stickers from probably wont be ordering them in again as it closed down about eight years ago.

Iron Man 2

This month’s big release and currently raking it in at the box office is Iron Man 2. Robert Downey Jr. once again plays billionaire industrialist playboy Tony Stark. He is joined once again by Gwyneth Paltrow and John Favreau. In the sequel Don Cheadle takes over the role of Iron Mans friend War Machine from Terrence Howard. Howard apparently had a falling out with Marvel after the first movie. Both fine actors and Cheadle does a good job as Tonys friend caught between the government and their friendship.
The main baddie of the movie is Ivan Vanko, a jilted Russian scientist who is out to ruin Tony Stark at any cost. He is played by Mickey Rourke, as a man of few words and even fewer resources until he is helped out by Tonys rival industrialist billionaire, Justin Hammer. Hammer is played brilliantly by Sam Rockwell. Every time he is on screen it’s a joy to watch.
Smaller roles are given to Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury trying to convince Tony to join the Avengers, Scarlett Johansson pops up as Nick Furys spy Natasha Romanoff. Tony Stark does have a soft spot for beautiful women.

If you liked the first movie then chances are you are going to love this second one, in my opinion the sequel is the better of the two. You get a great turn from Robert Downey Jr., could you really see anyone else playing Tony Stark? Rockwell is excellent as Justin Hammer and I hope he returns if there is to be another movie made, which there will be I’m sure. The story fleshes out this whole Avengers Initiative that Marvel is working toward while showing us more of Starks life, his relationship with his father, his alcoholism etc. It’s a much more rounded movie.
Two things did disappoint me with the film though, I had looked forward to seeing Tony Stark racing his Formula 1 car around the streets of Monaco but as soon as he sat in to race; Whiplash was tearing up the track! That’s a minor gripe, I know. Also the BIG end battle against Whiplash and all those Hammer drones was painfully short for my liking. They all looked impressive but it was missing a bit of mecha action in my mind. Not big enough complaints to turn you away from the movie though.

It’s written by Justin Theroux who also did Tropic Thunder, so there are lots of funny lines in there. Garry Shandling as Senator Stern trying to get Stark to hand over his Iron Man suit to the government has some gems. Along with Tonys usual quips and putdowns which are very clever, or maybe Downey Jr. is just so good at playing the prick we let him get away with it. Either way this is a great movie, definitely worth seeing and leaves a lot of scope for a third movie which hopefully won’t turn out like recent third movie comic book outings, X-Men, Spidey I’m looking at you!

Worlds of Power!

 Here is a quick look at some videogame related books. The Worlds of Power books were published at the height of NES popularity during 90-91 and were based upon the big selling games of the day. Here are the first three, I show these because these are the UK releases and the covers are different from the US books. The stories were based as closely to the in-game plot as the authors could manage. While Ninja Gaiden for instance had a complete story to work off of, with the Blaster Masters story they just made stuff up to fill the gaps.

At the end of some chapters you find a hint box that helps you with playing the game. It’s typed upside down so you would have to turn the book to read it. Hopefully most eager games players could crack that code and be privy to such gems as ‘To beat the Barbarian, throw small shuriken, then hit him with you sword’ from Ninja Gaiden. Invaluable. The books are also littered with sound effects from the games in the narrative such as, Yeeeeeeaaaackk, Dzzzzzit, Shcrrraaawwwwwk-clunk, Ffffoshhh etc.

 

The books were aimed at videogame hungry kids in an effort to get them to read. At the end of each book there is a recommended reading section from the books creator F.X. Nine (hint: ton sih laer eman) So after finishing Blaster master you might like to read The War of The Worlds or after you put down Metal Gear you might enjoy All Quiet on the Western Front. Then go and write into magazines and complain that not enough literary classics get turned into videogames I presume.
In the Metal Gear novel Solid Snake is named as one Justin Halley and  as a member of the Snake Men? He doesn’t shoot anyone and speaks very softly throughout the book and at the end he let CaTaffy escape, not that he’s happy about that mind.

The Encyclopedia of Game Machines was written by Winnie Forster and published by GamePlan in 2006; it is an excellent full colour soft back that covers hundreds of computers and games consoles from 1972 onwards. It is part of a trilogy of books being done by Forster. Games Machines, Game peripherals and finally just games themselves. This is the only one released in English at the moment, the second book, Joysticks, has been released in German only. This year a more up-to-date edition of this book is due to be released.

 

I show some random page scans (apologises, my scanner is not the best) just to give a taste of what this book is like. It is a very well put together list of exotic oddities and more common machines that we used to play games on. It has notes on how many games were released and what was the best or most interesting software for each. It has hundreds upon hundreds of pictures and screenshots from the Magnavox Odyssey right up to the PSP. At 224 pages long it is well worth a read.
This book is a definite must have, but looking around the net, to get it can be a chore, not many copies pop up on eBay, and Amazon list it at between $150-$300. If you do get the chance to pick one up then certainly do, or you could wait for the new edition to come out and try and see if you have better luck tracking down that one.

Nintendo World Cup

These days if you want to buy a football game you have two choices, Pro Evo or FIFA? Both good games, both improving every year, both sell bucket loads, and both, well, at this stage a little soulless and similar to each other. It wasn’t always like this. Many moons ago there were more types of football games than teams in the football league. You could even argue that there was ‘choice’ up to the days of the Dreamcast and PS2. But for now I want to talk about one of my favourite football games on the NES, one that doesn’t stick too closely to the rules of football at all! Nintendo World Cup.

Released in the year of Italia 90 but Nintendo decided to have only 13 countries enter their world cup, they also included some teams who didn’t quite make it to Italy that year, Mexico, France and Japan. When you picked your team you would usually choose W. Germany or Argentina as they played out the final that year. While the cool kids would play with the speedy Brazilians because they always played the best football, right? They got dumped out at the second round stage in Italy but would have the last laugh four years later.
13 Teams, that’s a bit odd? Indeed it is. The reason behind this lies in its Japanese roots. Technos Japan Corp, the developers, originally made the game starring Kunio, their main mascot; he starred in lots of games for them, some of which made it out of Japan, River City Ransom, Super Dodge Ball etc. Nintendo World Cup was set in Kunios’ high school and there were 13 high schools in the game and a story mode but that was all altered on a western release. These games used a similar style of character throughout and are very distinctive and popular. But enough of the boring history lesson, how does it play?

Looking at the box you would expect a normal football game but on playing a match that picture was as close as you were going to get! Only six players per team and no fouls whatsoever to speak of. It really was like no other football game before, most football games at the time took the tried and tested overhead view, where you only saw the players’ heads and occasionally feet. Games that took this side on view tended to have blocky players and run very slowly. Nintendo World Cup had bright colourful and distinctly different players on each team. It also moved at a quick pace, well some teams did.

When you popped the cartridge in you get your usual choice of tournament mode, 1 or 2 players or vs. match with up to four players, I wasn’t lucky enough to have a four score adaptor in those days unfortunately. But 2 player games kept us happy enough; this is a great two player game. There are no changing players during play so your player would have to be watched on the field map at the bottom of the screen and you had to ask your teammates to pass you the ball. If your friend in player two was a ball hog then it could be a long game, but without teamwork there was no chance of your team lifting that World Cup trophy. In Versus mode you get the choice of surface to play on, the normal grass pitch is there but you could also play on sand, hard concrete or even on a pitch made of ice! The music also deserves special mention as the pregame tunes are top notch stuff and you never feel like lowering the sound down like in other games I could mention.

So you have your friend helping you in player two, a team has been diplomatically decided upon, it’s time to win that cup. But before you set one foot out on the pitch you need to make some last minute tactical decisions. These decisions affect the way the other players on your team go about their business, you can only control one player remember. You need to answer four questions about them. Will they pass or try to dribble with the ball? Should the goalkeeper join in? Yes or No? Always a 'Hell No' from me. Will your teammates shoot? Yes, No or sometimes. Let’s just set that to 'No'. Finally set your defensive strategy, will they tackle or mark the opponent? With no free kicks, let’s set that to 'tackle' shall we. Right. First up, Cameroon.

The first few matches are relatively simple and you could with a bit of skill win by double figure scores. It does get harder though and to reach W. Germany and win the final will take some doing. You spend most of the game asking your teammates to give you the ball before they lose it. You can hammer the pass button only for them to call out ‘I Can’t’ repeatedly back at you as they run down the wing, just like football with your friends in the park, brilliantly infuriating. No other game at the time had this, or any since really. If you run a certain number of paces with the ball you could unleash a super shot with some players, different teams had slightly different powerful shots. If a defender got hit with one of these shots or got tackled repeatedly he would fall in a heap on the ground and not get up until the ball had gone out of play. What we tried while playing was to set up a cross from one player to the other, a quick tap of the A and B buttons, and an overhead volley or wicked banana shot would, hopefully, fly into the net. Against the better teams it was harder to score as their goalkeeper could save these types of shots. Plus don’t try and play football near his penalty box as he will just barge you off the ball, like today, goalkeepers get away with murder!

Today it’s still a fun multiplayer game to fire up and play. It seems to have more screen flicker than I remember as a kid, but it’s never so bad as to effect to game. As I’ve mentioned there has been nothing like it since, so it’s a weird one to judge really. While not the best or most accurate football game around it is still so much fun to play I rank it up there as one of my favourite multiplayer games. It also game out on the Gameboy. But without the fun of having all your friends with you playing and all the action trying to fit on the small black and white screen, it’s the poorer version by far, I never found myself playing it for too long.

Lastly I want to mention one of my biggest memories of this game. While at my cousins house one summer we played this game constantly. Taking turns to try and get as far as we could. I and my eldest cousin would take a go then my younger cousin and uncle would try the same. We were all of pretty equal standard playing the game so it was all fair. Until this one time my cousin and uncle somehow managed to lose 2-1 to Cameroon, it was almost unbelievable, we usually aim to try and score the most goals against them. The sight of their teams’ players trundling across the screen in defeat below the final score line was priceless. This led to constant reminders and weeks of verbal abuse. Cameroon for crying out loud! Brilliant.