Top 10 Consoles Still Worth Buying

 While writing this article, we are now in the vortex of a gaming industry crash. This is not a drill and it is not entirely a bad thing. Yes, it does mean that games will probably continue to be garbage, and with the advent of total digital games in 2028, it is important that you get the games on disc and cartridge. The best thing to do is scour the internet and find which games are still fun to play for what system. Choosing the correct generation, you could hit a jackpot in games, and we're here to see that happens. If you were thinking about getting a new old system, now is the time! The games still exist in real form, and those are the ones you need to get so that you can game as freely as possible. 

Playstation 5

Yes, I know what I said, and there is a very good reason for it. Not only does the PS5 have a decent HD conversion, but you can play any PS4 game. That's a small opening library combined with a library that gestated over the course of over a decade. One great thing that comes of this is the collections that it possesses. It has the Bioshock series, Batman Arkham Series, Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster, and Kingdom Hearts, just to name a few. Playstation 5 can play a decent amount of physical games, and that should be taken advantage of. You don't need a PS+ subscription, nor do you need to buy a firsthand PS5. You could also wait until this console gets cheaper. It's bound to happen sooner or later.

Nintendo 64

If you haven't played GoldenEye 007, Star Fox 64 or Gauntlet 64, you need to seek out these games immediately, in any of their forms. The N64 gave the most visceral experience, though. It had a not-so-great controller, but it did have four ports with which to play three of your friends in a 2 on 2 or Free For All game. Quake is on this list of games, so that's always a plus, even though it's only 2 player Deathmatch. Either way, you've got Mario Kart 64, Mario 64, Duke Nukem 64 and Doom 64, and no, that is not even close to how many games they slapped the 64 label on. There really is no measure of how many games are still more than playable on this system. Blocky polygons abound, this system is still worth its weight in gold for Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time alone!  

Xbox 360

This system has a library that will keep you sated for a very, very long time. With such amazing games like Bioshock, the Saints Row series, Oblivion and Skyrim, this game was a Godsend of its time. Some of the best games for this system are extremely cheap to this day, and even if you ever.... for whatever reason, wanted to upgrade to the XBox ONE, it is backwards compatible to some degree. Gears of War is always a staple for this system, as well as the Halo series. No matter what genre you are looking for, the 360 will deliver on some level. The graphics really started to shine in this era, even if not every game had it. 

Super Nintendo

One of Nintendo's absolute highlights of a system, the Super Nintendo has such amazing gems as Pokemon Stadium, and the Super Gameboy which let's you play Gameboy games on it, like Pokemon Red, Blue, Gold and Silver. Super Nintendo came with upgrades from the Nintendo era, like Super Punchout, Trying to go through the great games, like Super Mario World, Super Mario All-Star, Donkey Kong Country and Legend of Zelda Link to the Past, would take all day. Super Metroid, Super Mario RPG and Final Fantasy VI, all of these things can bring you hours upon hours of fun. That's not even mentioning Super Metroid! 

Sega Dreamcast

There's no telling you just how underrated this system is. The games are usually super cheap and the graphics are out-of-this-world beautiful! Virtual On was beautifully ported to this system and there are games here that will go down in legend. Crazy Taxi and Soul Calibur 2 are a good start, but then you move on to Jet Set Radio (or Jet Grind Radio for America) and Marvel vs Capcom 2. House of the Dead 2 and so many other games can be hours upon hours of fun, especially if you're looking for a great RPG in Skies of Arcadia. This is a fantastic system, just be sure not to pirate too many games for it.

GameCube

While the games may be more expensive, Smash Brothers Melee and Metroid Prime are essential to gaming with the cube. This system was a gem of the mid-2000's and we were graced with a myriad of games that went up and down the spectrum of awesome! Resident Evil 4 premiered on the system, even though it was supposed to be exclusive, but then Star Fox Assault came out and that was a pretty awesome experience jumping off of the 64. Super Mario Sunshine is more according to taste. Some people were a little putoff by the water game mechanic but that's all subjective and worth at least an attempt. If you haven't noticed, this system has some of the peak games of its age. 

Sega Saturn

Ah, what can be said about my outspoken favorite system? This baby contains Virtua Cop 1 & 2, Virtua Fighter 1 & 2, The Panzer Dragoon series, Nights Into Dreams, D, X-men vs Street Fighter, and so many more, it's really hard to count. This is where 3D really hit the high gear and brought us experiences we'll never forget. Sonic R will always be on my list of favorites, even if it is a diamond in the very very rough. Do yourself a favor, get this system and pick up House of the Dead with a Light Gun. You'll be glad you did. 

Playstation 3

You'll notice that I am not mentioning the Playstation's first system on this list, and if you get the properly equipped PS3, you will be able to play them on that system. Not only does it have a ridiculous library of legendary cutting edge games for its time, but it can also play such classics as Twisted Metal or Crash Bandicoot. You even get a complimentary Bluray player, one of the best in the industry. Then you can prattle off such titles as the entire God of War series, Wolfenstein, Mortal Kombat 9, The Call of Duty series, Batman Arkham Series, Saints Row Series; this list can go on for miles! The Playstation 3 is especially valuable as a nice little media hub that didn't smash it in your face *cough*Xboxone*cough* but also had an innovation that should definitely be considered today. Despite a rocky launch, it aged like a fine wine. Katamari Forever. 

WiiU

The WiiU? Pee-yuuu! That system is stinky! No, no it is not. The WiiU is one of the most underrated systems on the market. There is a reason that the Switch is so popular, and that's because it leapt off of the WiiU's new style that didn't quite catch on. It still plays Wii games and has a fairly great library of its own, if anyone really cared to look at the titles. Super Mario Maker and Mario Kart 8 both hit this system like steam engines, and that's not even to mention the criminally underrated Nintendo Land. While Star Fox Zero may have been a bit of a zero, this system still debuted the brilliant Breath of the Wild. If anyone really gave this system a chance, they would see that it far exceeds the Wii in every respect, even with some games requiring the gamepad. The gamepad wasn't really the crutch that everyone made it out to be. Because of that thing, Call of Duty: Back Ops 2 multiplayer was awesome! Mario has an insane collection that can be played on this system, and you will not regret giving it a chance.

Playstation 2

The console that still has outsold every single one on this list, did so for a very good reason. The titles that came out for this and the Gamecube can be fairly interchangeable, but the Playstation has a much broader scope. With power such as this, they were able to make a DVD Player that also had games such as The Simpsons Hit and Run, Spider-man 2, Dragon Quest 8, Tony Hawk Underground 2, Silent Hill 1 & 2, Grand Theft Auto 3, Vice City and San Andreas. You couldn't believe this library unless you saw it for yourself, but it spanned a huge variety of much more graphically inclined games than people give it credit for. The PS2 and the Dreamcast were marvels of their time and the fact that we got two such amazing systems is a luxury we have officially taken for granted. 

Support your local retro gaming stores and make sure you trade in any systems or games that you are not playing or plan to play in the future. This is no time to just keep it all to ourselves, especially if you're spent for cash. Give it to a friend who wants to play it and give it a good home where it's not just collecting dust on a shelf. It's true, you can't play every system you have all the time, just remember that there is no shame in admitting "I'm not going to play this". Now that physical media is on the downgrade, we need to up the circulation. If there's a game you want to play and you need to find it, it's easier than ever now, and giving that game a good home to enter into local stores for more games in the pipes is a good thing. Remember, if we want to change things, we need to show what we want and stop just compromising with companies that do not have our best interest in mind. The choice is yours, and we hope you make it with a clear head. It always helps to make the decision after you've had some water. 

Batman or Spider-man?: Heroes at their Worst (Pt. 4)

 Well, since we judged our favorite superhero movies at their best, it's only fair that we go for their worst. While these movies had some fandom and others would argue that others are worse than these, this is going by a stark popular opinion and these are the two that gave me the worst time in the theaters. Though, there are some close competitors for the worst movies of our duo, we'll just go with these for now and call it good. By all means, if you have a better comparison, leave it in the comments. Also Activate Spider Bat Spoiler Warnings! BATSPIDER SPOILERS!

The Amazing Spider-man 2

It was an enormous task to decide which of these to put in this spot. Between this and Spider-man 3, it really came to petty devices to choose. Needless to say, this one wasted the most time for the audience. Not only does half of the movie's plots go nowhere, but it also gave us one of the worst performances by Jamie Foxx, a very talented actor. There is just so much to go over for this movie, so let's get this over with.

The problems just start immediately as you are watching. The pointless plotline of his father and mother's fate and what they were doing went absolutely nowhere. We see him look into his father's research, his notes, his briefcase with the technology and then it all goes off a cliff. There was so much precious screentime devoted to this horrible waste of human breath and it was interesting to see where it could have gone. Then it was just a conversation between ghost dad and Peter at the end that was cut from the movie. You know what?? Nevermind!

Then you have that age old problem with the villains, which is a TRAVESTY in this film. Both villains are boring and both villains only serve to piss off the audience by wasting more time. We may as well start with Foxx, since we've already mentioned him. He's the lesser of the two evils, but he is still quite evil. Electro comes to life, then hates Spider-man because he takes away his audience for 2 seconds. He loves him, then immediately hates him because the cameras go on him. Great writing, guys, way to put in that second grader logic. The rest of his story is no better, and the effects they used for his face were positively abysmal! The final fight scene was so poorly done that it's really hard to remember anything other than when he beat him in the tone of "Itsy Bitsy Spider". His obsessive Spider-man delusions at the beginning were hard enough to sit through, and they just hand us nothing better throughout the film's runtime.

The Green Goblin was even more horribly handled, as hard as that seems to believe if you haven't seen for yourself. The guy they got to play Harry Osborn was absolutely horrific in his role throughout the entire film. He cannot act to save his life, though that also may just be the directing. Either way, his performance was boring, monotone and absolute cringeworthy material by the time he got on the speeder thingy. His costume as the Green Goblin would have probably made it to more memes if he didn't look so utterly special. The way he came to the realization of Spider-man being Peter just made hands meet foreheads across the globe with how terribly it was executed. 

Then, of course, there's Gwen Stacy. Obviously, they handled their relationship fairly well. The breakup was unneeded drama, especially when it doesn't end up mattering in the end. Her obvious exit from the franchise was forecasted to an extent, but given their choice of Green Goblin, it just didn't work. Would we have liked her not to die? Yes, but if she had to, they could have at least gotten someone better for the villain role to do it. His reaction to her death was understandable, giving up the mask for a time. They handled his depression well and Garfield put on a great performance with her death scene. 

Beyond that, the Rhino with Paul Giamatti was a stupid way to handle his role. If they were going to waste all of their time with him as a human, they should have swapped and just given all of the time with him as the Rhino. There are just so many plotlines that go nowhere, like Spider-man's blood maybe having the cure for Osborne's disease or the Sinister Six garbage they set up but alas, there was no sequel. It really just all amounted to the audience getting nothing they wanted. 

It's also quite strange to note that they were planning to set up the Sinister Six, and yet they killed Electro in the end. He has been a key member in several iterations of the team and yet they kill him off before this series even gets a Sandman. The lizard was a good start, and Green Goblin plus Electro could have possibly gotten a good squad together, but they seemed to readily poke holes in their own plans. Just think of how they set up the Rhino. It's hard to believe anyone would get excited for such a team up, even with Giamatti returning to the role, which would be doubtful even if the series continued.

There were some good scenes in the movie. Some of the smaller scenes of Spider-man doing his thing were quite entertaining or when he was inventing new webshooters. The scenes between Peter and Gwen were very well handled when they were an actual couple. The fight and Gwen leaving to go overseas for college were just all filler upon filler to add more and more storylines that bog this movie down. Given what actually happens to Gwen, they spend entirely too much time with them fighting and worrying about each other and not enough time doing what was their strong suit: Being a couple. The two actors were dating at the time, so they knew how to bounce off of one another very readily. They even improvised lines very effectively. 

The fact that some snearing, ugly jerk comes and kills her is probably one of the worst things about this film. The problem was that their version of the Green Goblin was gangreneous and every moment he was on screen was absolute torture. How he took one single look at Gwen and figured out that Spider-man was Peter will go under file as one of the worst most contrived plotpoints since Spider-man 3's Harry Osborne had the butler revelation of who actually killed his father. Such lazy storytelling takes the audience out of the experience and this is no different. 

There came a time when the story just didn't know when it needed to ease off the throttle. When Green Goblin is starting to execute his plan, Electro is fighting Spider-man and Gwen is struggling to get the controls of a power plant, they decide to sprinkle a small plan crash plot like a garnish that ruins the food's texture. Why was this in the film? No, seriously, they had everything else going on, why did they need to add to the duration of an already over-stuffed movie? There is a rule: Every scene should do one, if not multiple things in a natural flow. This entire thing with the plane being unable to land does literally nothing.

Even the good things are bad in this movie. It is a slog to get through with all of the weight it is carrying with wasted time and plot devices. The performances are laughable and unable to carry this film, it just had too much footage cut from it when they thought they should keep in all of the content and maybe finish it later? Their decision didn't make any sense and we never got a third movie because Sony would have liked Andrew Garfield to attend big parties or something like that, it's all just a mess. Given how the first Amazing Spider-man started out, it would have been nice to see it go in a better direction. Is it worse than... another superhero dud, though?

Batman and Robin

There comes a time when studios and directors need to ask themselves how serious they are going to take a project. Sadly, Joel Schumacher has passed on since the making of this film and Planet Virtua bears him no ill will. We understand he was actually quite a lovely human being and he did direct Phone Booth, which was a very good movie. Batman and Robin, however, was not taken seriously in the slightest. Even with the dark versions of Batman being popular and the more serious elements of even the third movie, Schumacher was told to make it safe for kids. He took that to mean it should be a cartoon. He has since apologized through an audio commentary.

If you don't take this movie seriously, it can be fun to watch. Putting it next to Batman and Batman Returns, however, is another story. Hell, putting this up against Batman the Animated Series, which WAS a cartoon, still paints this in such a silly and clownish light. How they changed Bane from an actually intelligent criminal with venom powers just killed his character. Now he's just a Frankenstein's monster knockoff who has caveman talk. Everything is dumbed down like that. Even Uma Thurman didn't take this seriously and just had a lot of fun pumped into her performance. 

George Clooney, however, seemed to be rather miserable throughout the entire shoot. It seemed like he was wanting a more serious version of Batman, not this one where he ice skates and plays hockey with a bunch of thugs like Adam West Batman days. That's how the entire duration continues to play. Even when this movie is trying to be serious, it just gets serious enough to get to the next joke of a movie scene. Both Clooney and Arnold would go on to say that the movie did not help their careers in the slightest and many criticized them for making Batman into a parody. They have apologized, but they have also garnered a bit of an ironic cult following at the same time.

That leads us to Arnold as Mr. Freeze. If there was ever a more memed villain, it's hard to think of one. His ice puns are infamous from this role, and he just clowned it up for the fun of it. He had no problem putting on the polar bear house slippers and having a good dance to the Snow Miser song. His costume did look very impressive and apparently cost millions of dollars to both operate and keep Arnold in. Every single second he was on screen, they were burning through cash for this film, as it turned out to be one of the most expensive movies of the time. 

Nothing in this movie really makes a whole lot of sense at all. We don't see how Mr. Freeze's wife can breathe in her fish tank, we don't know how diamonds can power and charge machines meant to freeze things with ice lasers, and the forces that they are playing with in this movie could possibly destroy the Earth's atmosphere with ice lasers and sun heat beams from space. They just tossed logic out the window and said nonsense mumbo jumbo to make it sound good. They even made up a fictional sickness for both Mr. Freeze's wife and Alfred Pennyworth to be sick with just to tie their two plots together. 

Every side plot in this movie basically all boils down to "Team Work" and goes about it with a scattered sensibility. Robin keeps getting snubbed during missions because Batman does not trust that he is able to handle the danger. Thankfully, he doesn't milk the fact that he is an orphan and sad about his parents, in fact, he simply mentions that while he was with the Flying Graysons, it only worked because they were a team. While the theme is readily available without thought, the line does show character depth. Then there is them accepting that maybe Alfred's niece is skilled enough to take down criminals in a bat costume. This was a great idea with very poor execution. Making them into the Bat Family was a great idea, but it needed time to breathe, rather than be shoehorned in at the third act. Not to mention, let me accentuate my point when I say that Alicia Silverstone cannot seem to get out of her school girl persona until she gets into her Batgirl outfit and suddenly she is a blank plank of wood. Alicia is trying to be a badass when she's in the costume, but it makes her sound like she's about to fall asleep. They take the theme of "Team Work" entirely too seriously and run with it a few bridges too far. It's also prudent to note that Poison Ivy betrays Mr. Freeze because she is jealous of his wife. Bad guys have no "Team Work" and yadda yadda. 

There's another character that got very poor treatment, Batgirl. Oh yes, and Alicia Silverstone is absolutely horrible in the role. She has the look but she does not have the acting skills. She and Robin have a very terribly written dialogue of some sort of chemistry. It wasn't the good kind of chemistry but something was at least there. If the script were any better, it may have been passed off as a wacky comedy Batman, but as it stands, it will never be extended upon.

The relationship between Robin and Batgirl could have gone somewhere, but all it really did was pad out the runtime and give the late, great Coolio a brief cameo. Neither Silverstone nor Chris O'Donnell had the chemistry nor the script to pull this off effectively, so their flirting near the end was stilted and cringeworthy. In fact, even the scientists' acting was extremely amateur. When these elements are put together with a stupid giant laser plot, it really just falls off the rails. Yes, it was always a good plot for an Adam West Batman movie. With exploding sharks and other wondrous gimmicks like running around with a giant cartoon bomb, you can see where Schumacher got his inspiration.

The movie made money, but the reviews for it were so bad that Warner Brothers decided to pull the plug on the entire series. Many will argue that the Burton universe and the Schumacher universe were two separate things and you'll get no argument here. What it brought were the Nolan films and those were far better received, even though the third movie was... well that's a review for another time.

Which of these movies is worse? That's an excellent question. Should I give a point to the winner of the worst movie or the one that's not as bad? That's another very good question. So, we'll keep this rolling by going for a tie, giving them both a point, because no one truly wins in a conest of absolute horrific quality. Both of them have terrible movies, not to mention TV shows, but that's, once again, another article for another day. Rest in Peace, Joel Schumacher, Virtua Rest.

Uwe Boll - The Man that Scorned a Billion Fans

If we're talking about careers that never reached heights but still reached terrible lows, we would definitely be talking about someone like Steven Seagal. Well, we're not doing that right this second. Instead, in keeping with the video game genre of movies, we talk about a man who made so many video game movies, that he literally has an entire genre categorized for how terrible they are. It's no exaggeration to say that he has made the worst bunch of VG films ever assembled. 

Sadly, I have personally seen a great many of these films. At one point, they were just terrible movies I watched with friends, so there were more watched than I care to admit. The quality of these films was never a concept that this man took into consideration. The acting, dialogue, story beats, plot devices and endings have all been dumbed down to elementary school levels. Naming any of these movies in any sort of a list is guaranteed to have the "Worst" in the title. 

Uwe Boll is a German director who found out that he can use what money he had to purchase the film rights to a number of video game movies. At this point in time, they were seen as lesser film properties because the video game curse was in full swing during the early 2000's. This was when Boll rose to prominence. Alone in the Dark, House of the Dead, Far Cry, BloodRayne, and Poastal are known as some of the lowest points of Video Game Movie history. 

The problem was that he found out that, by exploiting a German tax law, he could make movies very cheap and then release them in theaters. They notoriously bombed at the box office, but thanks to the tax law, he would gain it all back with some profit. Using all of this money, he kept making more and more movies until the German government corrected it. Thanks to this, his funding was cut. Uwe Boll attempted to set up public funding, but the effort only brought around 4000 Spacebucks, making it a legit failure. Thanks to all of this, Uwe Boll has not made nearly as many movies in recent years and whatever he does make just comes and goes without any real notice. 

Still, it is worth analyzing these horrific failures a little closer. This entire filmography could fill the month of October, but I like to leave that more open for different horror properties. It's great fun to actually watch and make fun of these films, and reviewing them will unfortunately refresh them in my memory. So, this whole endeavor will most definitely be considered a double edged sword. How many of these films I review will depend on a lot of things, and I don't expect to review all of them. In the end, though, this will just be plain dumb fun. 

This is not bashing Uwe Boll as a person in general. No, he's not a very nice guy and he has actually challenged some of his critics to boxing matches, given he had some experience in the sport. He also went on video to attack everyone for not pledging any money to help him make another movie. Since then, he's made more movies but not nearly at the frequency he once did. Hopefully, we'll just flat out stop hearing from him. Until then, let's rip apart his films!! Virtua Revenge!

Virtua Star #3: Star Wars The Phantom Menace - How George Lucas Retconned a Universe

This is a polarizing topic, no matter how you look at it. Until The Last Jedi existed, this movie was the one that cut an entire fanbase in half. This is the movie that George Lucas used to start a witch hunt for any and every piece of lore in the Star Wars Extended Universe and stamp it out. This entire process would be repeated once again, but that is a story for another day. George Lucas has been seen as Star Wars's one and only creative entity that was involved in its formation. This is absolutely not true. 

The Phantom Menace is the first film in the prequel trilogy, and it is the beginning of his unhinged writing as if everything in the Skywalker Saga was linked together like some very strange quilt that keeps repeating the same patches over and over again. This whole "It's like poetry, it rhymes" mentality he used with this trilogy that meant he needed to bring back every element he could from the original trilogy. No one was there to tell him no, these things were all he could think of. He needed nostalgia bait from the original trilogy in order to give it that original cred that honestly ended up hacking the story up into pieces. This trilogy is made of plotholes more than it is a story. 

George Lucas didn't seem to notice that he disregarded the fans completely and destroyed an entire extended universe in the process. With all of this horrible writing going on with the prequels, even if they got somewhat better, there should have been some thought given to the stories that were written by more capable people. The story of Mara Jade marrying Luke Skywalker, the story of Grand Admiral Thrawn, Boba Fett's escape from the Sarlak Pit. All of these things could have been handled with some grace from the original creator and yet he decided to sweep it all aside. What we got as a result does not make up for what was lost in the process.

The problem was that it was aimed at a younger demographic, hince Jar Jar Binks and his childish demeanor. The fact that he is sidelined in later entries only goes to show that Lucas had no real plan to begin with, and he flat out announces that he wrote these scripts in a hurry. Somehow, Anakin Skywalker created C-3PO and had R2-D2 as a droid. Several times, the story proves that either Obi-Wan was flat out lying to Luke, or he was misremembering certain elements of his story. 

That's not even going into the fact that R2-D2 would still remember the entirety of these events. Even if he couldn't tell them directly to many people, 3PO could easily translate him and he can translate himself through any other computer. Including all of these elements really strips the bounds of many worldbuilding elements present in the original trilogy. So many things are done differently, but so many things are kept the same. Sometimes it works and sometimes it really doesn't. 

Episode 1 does one thing correctly, the lightsaber fighting. These are handled with some of the most amazing choreography ever put to screen and the ending fight scene between Qui Gon Jin, Obi-wan and Maul is harolded as one of the best scenes in general. That, however, is marred with scenes from both an entire other war, and a space battle similar to the Death Star and the Battle on Yavin, if they were piloted by mannequins. Sharing such enormous amounts of screentime between three entire climaxes happening at once was a death stroke for this film. 

With the Gungans and their continuously annoying presence along with some very stilted acting all around, it seems like George was doing it in a bit of a rush. The speed pod race was there to create toys and video games, and it did just that. It was a cute scene and had some good special effects, even beating some of the movies today. It's still undermined by the acting, though. Anakin's very young actor, Jake Lloyd, apparently wasn't given all that great of direction. With Jingle All the Way, he didn't do terribly on the acting front. It's fairly safe to assume that Lucas was not very good with kids. The final space battle was also marred with his very slow and awkward dialogue. 

Ewan McGregor and Liam Neeson are two saving graces for this film. They bring a quiet dignity that cannot be overlooked in the grand scheme of things. They took their roles very seriously and even brought about some of the cooler scenes with the lightsabers with or without their stunt doubles. It really was a shame that Neeson never returned for any of the other entries, as they were rather dumb for killing his character and Darth Maul. They obviously knew this was a mistake because they brought Maul back with a mechanical lower half. 

There were so many things mishandled with this film, it's a little dizzying. It can be looked back on with nostalgia as a less serious, more cartoony look at Star Wars. The prequels got better in some regards, but George never seemed to lose that edge of nostalgia bating both through Yoda and Emperor Palpatine. There were so many more in the series, but those are the two that they really ground out along with Anakin and Obi-wan. The villains became disposable and the storylines became more and more nonsensical. That means nonsensical both in terms of their own storylines and the continuity with the original trilogy. The sad part is, this is not even as bad as Star Wars got, not even by a long shot. However, we are here to celebrate Star Wars for its merits more than stomp on it for its faults, so let's be grateful for how... "good" the prequels turned out. Virtua Midichlorians. 

The Incredible Hulk - An Underrated SMASHING Gem

If there were ever a time that opinions clashed, it would be my personal review of The Incredible Hulk against seemingly everyone else. This movie had an all-star cast, the late great William Hurt, Liv Tyler, Edward Norton and Tim Roth from one of the greatest movies, Pulp Fiction. The Incredible Hulk was coming off the tail-end of the horrific realm of Hulk, an Ang Lee film starring Eric Bana and Nick Nolte. The film was a slog to get through, and it was wonderful to see that this film was not going to waste its time with an origin story that most of the public already knows. So, we get a Reader's Digest version in the opening credits and then find our hero hiding in Brazil. This was easy to match as a spiritual sequel to the Ang Lee film, and seeing the handling of the story, it was easy to see that this was going to be a much better experience. 

We get to see Bruce live among other people who do not understand very good English, so he has to learn Portuguese in one of the most dangerous parts of the world. The story gives us enough to see his new life and how he's adapting, also how he is going out of his way to hide his whereabouts. This goes awry, obviously, as General Ross locks onto his location and sends an entire special ops team to extract him. 

Within the first thirty minutes of the movie, we get a very nice tease of the Hulk as he succumbs to bullying from co-workers. This scene is chilling, and shows his power in stark detail as he throws giant machinery around. The Hulk scenes in this movie are awesome, I do not care what any detractor says. Seeing Bruce's eyes turn green is a rush, especially when he starts ripping apart military vehicles as they unload high caliber weapons at him. Then, of course, there was the final battle of The Hulk vs Abomination. 

Tim Roth plays a special ops soldier who survived his first encounter with the Hulk himself. Obviously, not all of them did. He becomes obsessed with finding the power that Bruce Banner possesses and Ross decides to give it to him. He starts becoming amazing as a fighter, but you also see his whithering form because of the toxic chemicals they put into him. He finds the other man who has the formula for becoming the Hulk, Dr. Samuel Sterns. Throughout the movie, we see him communicate with Banner in order to find a cure for turning into the Hulk. It goes about as well as any other time they try to find a way out of transforming into a giant beast. 

The actor they got for Sterns, Tim Blake Nelson, was an amazing choice for him. He was charmingly ignorant, optimistic and aspired to greater futures. This was a precursor to what would become The Leader, as Sterns gets some of the irradiated blood in a wound on his head. We immediately see his head expand, foreshadowing to his transformation down the line. Spoiler Alert: It didn't end up well, I'm sad to report.

Liv Tyler plays Betty Ross, General Thadeus Ross's daughter, and she does a very good job. She is a real character who tries so hard to help Banner throughout the entire movie. Their relationship is well handled, even if it's never followed up on after this movie in any meaningful way. Edward Norton and Liv Tyler have very good chemistry together in this film. They play off of one another very well and their scenes are very good to watch, even if they're passing exposition. 

The final fight is awesome, even better than the one in Iron Man. Hulk and Abomination bash the lights out of one another and it escalates into real strength-inducing rage! Whoever handled the CGI for the Hulk design and Abomination design had some serious talent behind them. Every time we see Norton turn into the Hulk, they blend the actor into the big green man very well without being overbearing. 

This film gets a bad reputation for various reasons, but it does what it set out to do. It brought the Hulk to cinemas with a good, coherent story. They even add the bit with Tony Stark and Ross at the end to give us a silently brilliant scene, hooking the Hulk in for the Avengers. That was all we had linking this to the MCU. They did not over crowd this movie with a bunch of Marvel tie-ins, they let it be its own movie with its own stakes. There's a lot to love about this film and it's actually a shame we didn't keep Edward Norton as Bruce Banner. Mark Ruffalo was alright at first but his awkward Banner acting became a little old and stale. The Professor Hulk persona didn't help but that's another review for another time. There's a lot to go through so let's wait and Virtua SMASH!!!!

Crash Storm #1 - As We Hit the Reset Button

Well, this is basically what we all saw coming a while ago, if the gaming industry didn't clean up their act. Elder Scrolls 6, GTA 6, Fallout 5.... Why does it feel like these are all either do-or-die hype machines and/or completely and utterly not going to happen? We've been fed footage through a drip machine, shown little to no content and now they're trying to charge us for Grand Theft Auto 6's game trailer as if it were really worth that level of dedication. By now, becoming dedicated to any game in the current system is a pipe dream. This is especially true when you will never truly own GTA 6 or any game afterward, if Sony had their way. 

That's the big problem with all of this. If a game is going under or doing poorly, you can count on their servers being shut down within a year or two. Even if a game is doing well, it seems that the devs and maintainers are being fired anyway. It's been theorized that they are already firing people before the game is even finished, only to let them know after they are done. With such a cutthroat system, what is the point of purchasing any game that they hold the keys to? They have already let us know, loud and clear, that we cannot own our own games, we can only license them. Anytime they want, they can be deleted from the system. It has already happened and like a bunch of morons, they threatened to do it again in just as many words. 

So, now they're telling us that Elder Scrolls 6 is already a vast and amazing game with an astounding story. By now, what does it matter? It's so clear that they cannot actually produce a better game than Skyrim. Posting how awesome ES6 is is not going to change anything. Bethesda hasn't even come up with a subtitle for it and no one really cares what it is at this point. Todd Howard already betrayed us with Fallout 76 and Fallout 4. No one even needs to mention Starfield. Only the most hopeful are expecting them to do any better than what they've already done. Yes, this sounds pessimistic, but what do you expect when they are butchering development studios and cutting people out before they've even had a chance to clear out their desks? 

Little to nothing has been said about any really concrete awesome games coming out from AAA studios in the near future. Fallout, Call of Duty, Battlefield, all of these gaming franchises have been dripped dry, hitting the skids and the game crash is basically going to make them all null and void. Whether you consider GTA 6 to be worth the hype or not, it really doesn't matter. That game is digital only and I can already guarantee that it's going to be at least 190 Gigabytes of storage. Part of me wonders if it will even fit onto some systems. Is there a way to break it into smaller bits, like different digital files or... again, who cares? 

At the end of the day, all we can do is hunker down with our PC's and gaming systems with physical discs and wait out this storm. If gaming companies aren't listening and only want to lie to your face, then what good are they? We've got indie projects in the works and the AAA studios are only showing more and more desperation as they pretend we're not smack dab in a gigantic reset of the system. With dev studios going belly up and CEOs selling their stocks at breakneck speeds, you be the judge. For now, though, the storm wages on and we can only hope that it will pass soon. Keep spinning those discs and blowing in the cartridges. This may be a long one.

Virtua Star #2 - I bought Star Wars the Original Trilogy on VHS

Even before Disney's purchase of Star Wars, the franchise wasn't exactly at a high point. It was clear that George Lucas's vision fell flat after he finished the Prequel Trilogy. While it did have its merits, it also had its tremendous downfall, as the prequels took too many liberties with contrivances to the plot and extreme ignorance from the good forces of the Jedi. Many will be quoted to say that the original trilogy was where Star Wars truly peaked and we have never seen and will never see such a meteoric rise in the franchise again. This is where creative forces truly shined. 

Many will argue whether the special editions were worth making and I will argue that they absolutely were. They brought an entire generation, myself included, into the Star Wars franchise, and I bought two Boba Fett toys among a vast array of other little tidbits. It can be seen as a cash grab, which it was, but it was also a way of George Lucas editing his original theatrical release. George did this so much, in fact, that he seems to have lost the original footage and fans have literally come out with a recreation of it. That's the level of fandom we're talking here.

While I did enjoy watching Star Wars in theaters as a small lad, I also came to find out that we had the VHS tapes in our collection already! I was ecstatic! They didn't have the shiny new special effects, but you'd better believe I binged the entire trilogy at home while also watching the special editions in theaters as they came out week by week. While I did fall in love with the SE, though, as I grew older, I came to find out that I had more of a soft spot for the VHS copies I had at home. Of couerse, at this point, those copies are long gone, so I had to find them through a convention. 

It's hard to explain just how important it is that Han Solo shot first. George tried to play up to him being a good guy, but it was that roguish attitude that the public fell in love with in the first place. The fact that he would blow away a bounty hunter to save his own neck is perfectly in line with his moral boundaries. Then came the scene that launched a thousand contraveries around the Star Wars fandom. Jabba the Hutt at the Millenium Falcon. People have lauded and loathed this scene. It's either a cinematic milestone or a very sore looking thumb against other, better special effects. Whatever your thoughts on it, I would have preferred they left it out entirely, rather than putting Jabba's face on a holo screen. The special edition's Jabba scene was rough and crude, but what they did to it afterward was flat out soulless. It's a complicated mess.  

That's the real problem here. George Lucas just got too handsy with his own property and in trying to perfect it, he ended up flawing an already perfect work of art. Art is not meant to be perfected in this way and constantly shoving in new dialogue and special effects only led to Star Wars becoming a convoluted pile of edits and random ADR. For some reason, they even doubled down on Darth Vader's "NOOOOOOOOOOO" as he does the same thing when he picks up the Emperor before throwing him. One of the biggest jokes and heavily memed moments in the Prequel Trilogy, yet they decide to shove it into the original trilogy. Seriously, I will never buy the blurays.

Is it really too much to ask to give Star Wars to a more respectful, creative thinker? Neither George Lucas or Kathleen Kennedy seemed to know what to do to really pump it for more money after its hayday came and went. After the Special Editions and the Prequels had their run, Star Wars began to wane. Lucas only seemed to know how to poke and prod the original work in order to get money out of it. Any other directions he tried to take the series was a bust. Then we all know how Disney sucked the soul out of Star Wars, but that's a series of articles all its own. Suffice it to say, getting the physical media where the movie was just tweaked slightly for video and sound quality is the way to enjoy it as it was originally intended. The Special Edition was okay enough to bring another generation into Star Wars and it certainly propped up the Prequel Trilogy for success in its run, but it's become much more of a novelty to enjoy it in its much more raw and pure form. Seek out the original trilogy VHS, toys, video games and anything else, it's the stuff that still ages like wine. It will be worth the effort. Stay with the Virtua Force.

Doomverse #30 - Quakecon 2026 - The 30th Anniversary and Return of the Creators!

Well, for the first time, I have attended Quakecon and it was a special one that has not seen the light of day for decades! John Carmack, John Romero, Tom Hall and Adrian Carmack all made appearances together and in separate conferences, but they had a long time to talk. I personally met John Carmack and Tom Hall, and was able to talk to them, especially Hall. The energy was so positive and the showcase on stage was astounding as we saw interviews and speed runs! I even saw That Trav Guy. There was a bit of a disappointing assembly of booths, though. There was some nice art on display and I got a few little trinkets to remember it by, but I was really hoping for more used games or DVD/Blurays or something along those lines. Still, though, the Doom aspect and the meeting of high class celebrities of the gaming world was what made this whole excursion more than worth it. 

The Doom lore on display with the retro looking room was so beautiful, it may as well have been a museum exhibit. We saw original drawings, history, original aspects of making doom through both art and lore. Inside the exhibit was a retro room of 90's quality with wooden paneling included. There was an SNES and even Jaguar playing Doom on the screens. The security guard allowed me a photo op, so long as I didn't hurt the controller and put it back where I found it and he was very nice about it. I was just happy to see the items from Nintendo Power to PC Gamer Magazines. 

Very shortly after this, I met John Carmack alone with a lady accompanying him. I greeted him and my brother was startled to see that it was, in fact, Mr. Carmack. I told him that we played the shareware version, but we had 6 Megs of Ram and needed 2 more to put into the computer before we could run the game. He laughed and said "There must have been some poor framerate." I nodded and admitted that it was pretty bad, but I still "killed the Bruiser Brothers either way." We got a picture with him and we loved meeting him. He was very down to Earth and loved to talk to us. We didn't geek out too hard and we didn't take up too much of his time. I was honored to meet such a genius in the gaming world. 

Soon after that, we hit the LAN party in the next room. There was a lot of nostalgic stuff going on, even one big screen on the wall that had Super Mario Brother Super Show playing. Then there was the trailer for the new Quake expansion! As we were walking through, I found an Eager Beaver Chainsaw, which was the model for Doom! Very soon after that, I met Tom Hall in the... hallway. Once again, my brother was taken aback by the appearance of yet another legend in the industry and original Id Software. I asked him a few questions and he answered them all, and then told me he wanted to go into the arena tournament to see the chainsaw but didn't know where it was and didn't want to look for it in the dark. I happily told him that I had seen it and would lead him to it. He saw it and signed it immediately. Later that day, the rest of the crew in attendance would sign it, Romero and the Carmacks. Tom Hall was a delight to talk to and so nice as to sign my two Doomguy pop vinyls, as one of Doomguy's creators. 

One of the biggest highlights of the convention was John Romero playing Doom The Dark Ages classic level. He played the Underhalls from Doom 2 and he began talking about his thoughts on Doom itself, along with some of the stuff he's doing right now. He loved talking about Sigil, telling us how he wanted it to be so hard that it pushes the player to new heights. John felt like if he didn't make it as difficult as it can be, he didn't do his job right. Then Romero talked about the Brand New First Person Shooter That He Is Currently Developing!!!!!!! Well, he didn't go into much detail, but it is definitely happening and we are HERE FOR IT!!!!!!! With the industry the way it is (the way they talked about it sugarcoated everything and did not even talk about the current Id Software layoffs) it is so refreshing to know that our old friends are still stepping up to bat for us.

According to Romero, it is a game that has been in development for sometime and was cancelled. However, he was able to pull elements from that game and save millions of dollars of resources in order to repurpose it for a new game. He is not sharing a whole lot of details about it, but he does say that it is a "Brand new experience like Elden Ring was a new experience." He says that it is a lot of fun to develop with his indie team and he has played through what they have developed so far with great confidence in its performance as a shooter. We really hope to hear more about it very soon. 

We watched playthroughs of Quake, Doom, current and classic, and everyone had a lot of fun when the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails showed up on the video screen. The masterful soundtrack of Quake and Ranger's voice actor, Trent Reznor is a legend in the music industry and the gaming industry. He is an outspoken fan of Id's work and he made this Quakecon feel like a real experience. Just being there among Doomsters and Quake Maniacs was fun all its own. We played Quake on the LAN computers, but we also played a title I wasn't expecting to. I've riffed on Quake Champions more than once in the past, mostly because it just wasn't especially intuitive to play and possessed shameless microtransactions. Well, playing it against two worthy opponents was a bit of an eye-opening experience and now there will be a very detailed review of it in the near future. 

It was an honor to have such experiences. We didn't get to meet John Romero or Adrian Carmack, but that can be done in the future, if it ever happens. My brother and I were just happy to reunite in an environment we loved and bonding through killing each other in some Death Matching! It was a great experience and we hope to hear about next year's QuakeCon. Time will tell if we go to 31, but being a part of 30 was just what the demon doctor ordered. Let's hope the whole of Id Software will lend a hand in helping the gaming community. Doomsters are of the most loyal fanbases and we're never going to give it up. Make sure to kill all of the demons you can and give them all nine inches of the nails!! Virtua Nails! 

Doomverse #29 - Doom Mods for Doom Fans

Doom mods have existed since very shortly after Doom was released. The first Doom mods were simple, but very quickly evolved into total modifications that remade the graphics and even changed the soundtrack and sound effects. There are many Doom mods that gained notoriety, but not all of them were because they were great mods. Sometimes, these mods took it to an uncomfortable direction, but that's not what we're here to talk about. We're going to be looking at some Doom mods that people should definitely try, if for nothing else than to experience them, even if the novelty runs a little dry after a little while. 

The fun part about these mods is, if you get the file on your computer and use it to play your own custom Doom maps, you can play mods with different skins and sound effects while even being able to create maps to play it with. This is not the Brutal Doom mods, we've already discussed those in a previous Doomverse. This is a more diversified list with a nostalgic bite. 

Batman Doom

This one was not especially well implimented, but it is still a fun little excursion to just say that you did it. The cityscape is stylized, it's cool to be able to take down criminals with batarangs and it's just an interesting Doom experience. After about thirty minutes, though, it just turns into a bit of a monotonous play. Sometimes, you get lost just by missing one single tiny detail that many would find challenging to notice. It's not a bad mod, but it just needed a little more coherence.

Simpsons Doom

Well, if you wanted to play as Homer taking down Moe and Ned Flanders along with collecting donuts, your ship has come in. This is one of the oldest popular Doom mods that hit a lot of computers along with the game itself.It's just fun to see which characters you see. The bee guy, Officer Quimby and several more familiar faces show up and it's a nice trip down memory lane of when the Simpsons wasn't a never-ending series that outstayed its welcome a decade earlier. There's really not much else to talk about with this. The sound clips from the Simpsons show do get a little old as they are on perpetual repeat as you play, and sometimes the colors they used for their mod become slightly offputting. Beyond that, it's just a different flavor to add if you're in the mood to play Doom.

Super Mario Doom

One of the best things about this mod is that they slipped Mario skins onto whatever they could, whether it be a leaf as armor or a very familiar type of door we've seen from many NES titles. The Mario characters are all on display, even showing Luigi where there should be a dead Space Marine, and Shy Guys are the new Imps. With the sound effects and bloodied face of Mario when he is close to death, this is just another flavored mod to add to Knee Deep in the Dead, or your own Doom maps. 

Blood Doom

This is a polarizing mod, as Blood has always been a favorite 90's FPS around these parts. The problem stems from some of the mechanics. The real problem was that there wasn't a whole lot of difference between the two games, not enough to really differentiate the two in a similar experience that meshed together. Doom mixed with Quake because the two series are different enough to have a fun crossover, but it's hard to make the same claim for Blood. Another problem was, the zombies didn't rise again like they used to. It looks like Doom didn't have a mechanic where dead characters could have a second wind. Other than that, it was fun to see Doom mix with Blood and mix their weapon sets together. You can use the chainsaw along with the dynamite from Blood, and it can be satisfying to chainsaw a cultist into the ground. 

Toon Doom

Just a random assortment of toons. That's basically what you get here. It's Doom if you want Beavis and Butthead as the two zombie soldier types and Mario as the Imp throwing fireballs at you. The problem here is that they didn't really go full hog with it. The cacodemons are just cacodemons, and this spills over to the cyberdemon as well. The cool thing about the Tower of Babel level was that, once you come out toward the level's boss, the first thing you see is Stewie Griffin running at you as a lost soul. The problem is, though, it's simply a cyberdemon you're facing. This is a fun little mod, but not an especially enriching experience with loads of content. It's more just a passing fancy with some nostalgic characters.

Doom 4 Vanilla (Doom 2)

One of the more surprising mods I came across. While it doesn't quite play into the theme of popular characters being put into Doom from another property, it is one of the better mods on the market. It not only puts in some of the better skins for monsters, blending classic Doom with the reboot, but it also brings in a good looking, and feeling weapon set. It's blended with Doom 2 and you can see the passion put into the project. It shows a lot of skill and changes the dynamics of Doom enough that it actually feels like a different game, but the same game as well.

If you're looking for a different experience with one single game, Doom has lasted this long because they made it with these modifications. They left it open and let people play it however they wanted to. It may have cost them some money initially but it proved to be what made it timeless and one of the big reasons people still play it today. We'll delve into more mods, and possibly get into the more contraversial ones along the way. We'll see how the blood flows. Virtua Rainbow Blood!