I am going to treat voting as seasons, so we are in year 2.

For a description, click the image.

ATARI
Donkey Kong	Chopper Command	Alien	Amidar	Armor Ambush
NINTENDO
DuckTales	King’s Knight	NFL Football	P.O.W.: Prisoners of War	Sesame Street: ABC
GAME BOY
Pokémon Red & Blue	Missile Command	Mouse Trap Hotel	Mr. Do!	Nail ‘n Scale
SUPER NINTENDO
Secret of Mana	The Incredible Crash Dummies	The Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots!	The Super Aquatic Games Starring the Aquabats	The Wizard of Oz
GENESIS
Sonic the Hedgehog	Romance of the Three Kingdoms II	Golden Axe II	Tyrants: Fight Through Time	Krusty’s Super Fun House
PLAYSTATION
Resident Evil 2	Xenogears	X-Men vs. Street Fighter	Bushido Blade 2	Gundam: Battle Assault
NINTENDO 64
Super Smash Bros.	In-Fisherman Bass Hunter 64	Rugrats: Scavenger Hunt	Pokémon Snap	Starshot: Space Circus Fever

Voting ends Saturday, June 15 at 12:00 NOON Eastern.

All images are from gamefaqs.com unless otherwise noted.

	RE2 gets my tie-breaking vote.

New polls Monday!

The Idea

Games this old didn’t have a plot, they had an idea, goal, objective, or whatever you wanted to call it. The idea of this game is that you have to defeat several monsters that live underground before they kill you. You have an apparently magical harpoon/shovel/bicycle pump to do this with. Child Tom didn’t really need more of an explanation than that.

Adult Tom got to wondering why he was doing this. I mean, the monsters are perfectly happy in their little holes until you show up to kill them. Then, yeah, of course they are pissed off. Wouldn’t you be? I can chalk that up to cynicism that comes with age and not fault the game for it.

Visuals

Child Tom enjoyed the look of the game. He thought the monsters looked very cool when they were getting pumped full of air and finally exploding. Also enjoyable were the fire effects of the Fygar monsters after a few levels.

Adult Tom also enjoys the way this game looked. Having different colored dirt to represent different scoring levels was clever. The animation of blowing up the monsters or even squishing them was very well done.  Also, a tip of the cap for making up for the lack of monster types by just adding more and more monsters to the screen every stage until you just couldn’t progress any further.

Audio

Child Tom had no complaints in the sound department. There were appropriate effects for each action. It had as much of a soundtrack as any other Atari 2600 game. A solid job all around.

Adult Tom always appreciates arcade sound effects. The thing I can’t decide is if this game’s sound effects are too similar to Pac-Man for me. On one hand, it gave the game a very familiar feel to it. On the other, it robbed the game of just a little bit of originality. Just a little, though.

Gameplay

The way in which the gameplay worked was that each stage had a number of monsters underground. You had to dig your way underground and eliminate them by either stuffing a bicycle pump in their mouth and inflating it until they exploded, or getting them to chase you until you could set them up to have a rock crush them, Wile E Coyote style. Dropping two or more rocks in a level caused a fruit of some kind to appear in the middle of the level and you could grab it for extra points if you were quick enough.

The level could be completed by eliminating all monsters. The last monster in each level will try to flee off screen. There is no penalty if he escapes, but you will lose out on the points for killing him. While there are at least two monsters in play, however, they will try to kill you. The monsters can turn into a set of eyes and move around in the parts of the level you have yet to dig, meaning that they can get you anywhere they’d like.

Child Tom was pretty good at this. I could easily get through 20-30 stages. It was fun, and I enjoyed the challenge of it. As the game progresses, your timing becomes so essential to living or dying. This was always a good time, and I very much enjoyed challenging my family for high score supremacy.

Adult Tom sucks at this game. It is, I realize, no fault of the game, but it does make it hard for me to enjoy it when I know I have seven or so stages before I am done. Even that, though can not overshadow how much fun this game is to play. The good news is that even if you don’t have a 2600, Dig Dug can be found on the GameCube, PS2, Xbox, XBLA, iOS, and I am sure a ton of other platforms I am overlooking.

Child Tom Rating: 4.25/5

Adult Tom Rating: 4/5

I am going to treat voting as seasons, so we are in year 2.

For a description, click the image.

ATARI
Donkey Kong	CocoNuts	Cosmic Swarm	Cosmic Ark	Cosmic Creeps
NINTENDO
Dragon Warrior	Castlequest	DuckTales	Fester’s Quest	Hollywood Squares
GAME BOY
Pokémon Red & Blue	Mega Man II	Mega Man III	Megalit	Miner 2049er
SUPER NINTENDO
Secret of Mana	SimAnt	Sunset Riders	Super Caesars Palace	Super Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
GENESIS
Sonic the Hedgehog	Growl	Bulls vs. Lakers and the NBA Playoffs	Fighting Masters	Task Force Harrier EX
PLAYSTATION
Mega Man Legends	Tales of Destiny	Tomba!	Resident Evil 2	ReBoot
NINTENDO 64
Super Smash Bros.	Star Wars Episode I: Racer	World Driver Championship	Monster Truck Madness 64	Mario Golf

Voting ends Saturday, June 15 at 12:00 NOON Eastern.

All images are from gamefaqs.com unless otherwise noted.

	Secret of Mana gets my tie-breaking vote

New polls Monday!

I am going to treat voting as seasons, so we are in year 2.

For a description, click the image. 

ATARI
Donkey Kong	Deadly Duck	Dark Cavern	Commando Raid	Communist Mutants From Space
NINTENDO
Dragon Warrior	Adventures of Dino Riki	Air Fortress	Back to the Future	Bad Street Brawler
GAME BOY
Pokémon Red & Blue	Kirby’s Dream Land	Knight Quest	Lazlos’ Leap	Looney Tunes
SUPER NINTENDO
Super Mario World	NHL ’94	Pac-Attack	Paladin’s Quest	Secret of Mana
GENESIS
Sonic the Hedgehog	Caliber .50	PGA Tour Golf	Ys III: Wanderers From Ys	Exile
PLAYSTATION
Tomb Raider II	Broken Sword II: The Smoking Mirror	Gran Turismo	Klonoa: Door to Phantomile	Mega Man Legends
NINTENDO 64
Super Smash Bros.	Command & Conquer	Quake II	Superman	Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers

Voting ends Saturday, June 8 at 12:15 PM Eastern.

All images are from gamefaqs.com unless otherwise noted.

2 people will win a Steam copy of Hotline Miami
1 person will win a Steam copy of Awesomenauts

AND…

1 person will win an Xbox 360!

This is a Manga_Spawn refurbished system that comes with all cables, one wireless controller and a 20 gig HDD.  Our own Peisinoe has been using one of my refurbished systems for several months.  Winners of the 360 must be in the US (Yes Hawaii and Alaska are eligible to win).

To enter you must follow both @DojoRetro and @Manga_Spawn on Twitter and then send @Manga_Spawn and @DojoRetro a tweet with #AllMyXboxAreBelongToYou in it by midnight June 28, 2013.  A winner will be announced on June 29, 2013.

My tie-break vote: Sonic the Hedgehog

New polls Monday!

At one time, there was a craze called Micro Machines. They were like Hot Wheels or Matchbox cars but tiny. They were little four wheeled choking hazards that you could get for your children. Man, were they popular. They also had the best spokesman ever. He would speak extremely fast which I always enjoyed because I hate commercials and I have to respect a company that will get to the point and get the hell off of my TV.

One of the other arenas this craze spilled into was video games. There were Micro Machines games on many platforms, but the one I am interested in today is the NES version. When I was a kid, my dad and I would rent this game at least two or three times a month. Don’t ask me why we didn’t just buy it, I was a kid. I didn’t have any control over those decisions.

I adored this game as a kid. What about now?

Plot/Gameplay

Well, there isn’t really a plot to speak of here, so I will combine the plot and gameplay sections. You are piloting these tiny cars with apparently equally tiny racers across very clever and unique tracks like a breakfast table, a desk, and a pool table. Each track has appropriate hazards. For example, the breakfast table has sticky syrup on it that slows you down and the pool table presents a danger of falling into one of the pockets. If you ain’t first, you’re last. Shake n’ Bake. Actually, you just have to not be last, which gets tricky as you progress through the levels. There are many different racers to choose from, and you also get to pick your opponents, which is neat. The car control is very touchy, but you do eventually get used to it.

Child Tom remembers thoroughly enjoying racing through each level, overcoming each challenge, and sending competitor after competitor home in his quest for miniature glory. Additionally, Child Tom created his own backstories for the drivers. This wasn’t a gameplay feature, mind you, but the fact that it was compelling enough to make me want to do that speaks for itself.

Adult Tom fully agrees. The gameplay is great, it never gets boring and, most importantly, is an absolute blast, even these many years later. I was able to pick it up as if I had never left it. As far as the backstories go, I can’t remember any of them but funny enough, I did start making new ones. Ya know, for old time’s sake…

Visuals

Child Tom was dazzled by the look of the game. It was colorful, it had different cars, distinctive character designs, the tracks were very immersive because of their visual design. Adult Tom agrees with that but was a bit less dazzled. The top down car design robbed the player of car detail, which was not an uncommon move in NES racing games, but you were still shown a representation of your car at the beginning of each race that bore little resemblance to the finished product.

The tracks were the real dazzling part here. There was much going on outside of the portions of the track you couldn’t even drive to but you could see. I love that attention to detail. The animations of your car sliding off of a table and falling into nothingness gave a very realistic feel for the size of these cars versus the real world around them. The characters were a bit stereotypical looking for my liking, and it is never addressed how these seemingly normal sized individuals fit into the Micro Machines. I know it isn’t a huge deal, but it is a little thing like that that will always bug me.

Sound

Child Tom really doesn’t remember much at all about the sound. Adult Tom stepped in and did a little investigating. It turns out this is because the sound is quite forgettable. It has a good opening soundtrack but after that, meh. The car sounds are mediocre at best and the short music clips during level transitions are okay, but nothing spectacular. Not a whole lot to remember or dwell on here.

Overall

Overall, Child Tom will always fondly remember this game as one of his favorite racing games of all time. A great-looking, great-playing game that holds a lot of fond memories in his heart. Adult Tom is impressed with how well this game has aged. I think someone who had never played this could pick it up right now and have the time of his life playing it. It was fun, it was well designed, and it had an appropriate challenge level. While the actual toy line was killed off by Hasbro (you remember, the guys who wanted to kill off the Dinobots. GRRR.), this game remains a fine tribute to a toy craze that once swept the nation.

Child Tom Rating: 4.25/5
Adult Tom Rating: 3.75/5

I am going to treat voting as seasons, so we are in year 2.

For a description, click the image. 

ATARI
Donkey Kong	Dishaster	Crypts of Chaos	Dancing Plate	Demon Attack
NINTENDO
Dragon Warrior	Faxanadu	Flying Dragon: The Secret Scroll	Jordan vs. Bird: One on One	The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
GAME BOY
Pokémon Red & Blue	Jeep Jamboree: Off Road Adventure	Jordan vs. Bird: One on One	Joshua & the Battle of Jericho	Kingdom Crusade
SUPER NINTENDO
Super Mario World	Last Action Hero	Lock On	Madden NFL ’94	NBA Showdown
GENESIS
Sonic the Hedgehog	Dragon’s Fury	Wonder Boy in Monster World	NHL Hockey	F-22 Interceptor
PLAYSTATION
Tactic Ogre	NBA Live 98	Tomb Raider II	Armored Core: Project Phantasma	Auto Destruct
NINTENDO 64
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time	Fighting Force 64	NHL Blades of Steel ’99	Super Smash Bros.	Ken Griffey Jr.’s Slugfest

Voting ends Saturday, May 25 at 11:00 AM Eastern.

All images are from gamefaqs.com unless otherwise noted.