Before the days of the magic health recharge that is prevalent in most games today, players were forced to scrounge for life-giving items in their respective game worlds to make it to the next check-point or boss fight or inevitable Game Over screen.
Our favorites and yours below the jump!
Dave: Of course I’m going to have to go with Streets of Rage and the full-plated turkey dinners conveniently hiding underneath barrels and boxes.
It’s a tough job being a renegade bruiser patrolling the violent city streets, beating the living snot out of any punk that slowly walks around you before maybe landing a weak punch. But there’s nothing like a delicious home-cooked meal to get your spirits back up and ready to continue the smackdown.
I don’t know who had the foresight to stock these barrels with tasty, life-giving meals, but if I were Mr. X I would tell my henchmen to make it a priority to check every barrel beforehand for food or weapons.
Or maybe take it one step further and drop some arsenic in that turkey or apple, seeing as Axel, Blaze and the rest of the crew don’t think twice about devouring strange food that’s been lying in a tire for God knows how long.
Adam: This one’s easy, doubly so if we can default to our old standbys. For every Streets of Rage reference Dave can throw down, I can toss in River City Ransom for the NES.
As you fight your way through endless throngs of identical-looking gangs with hilarious names and emotes, your health (stamina) levels decreased. There are no pickups to be had on the battlefield; one must travel to adjacent cities to acquire sustenance funded by bouncing, beeping coinage acquired from your spoils of combat.
And here is where the game got nuts: you could buy anything. Newspapers, sauna visits, milkshakes, cowboy boots, breath mints, vitamins, sushi rolls–you name it, it’s in here somewhere. And the game never really explains why you should buy one item over the other, only that more expensive items would have greater effect on a mythical section of RPG-like statistics.
What? No, don't buy that!
It is the most insane and odd system for replenishing your health. Gamer tip: avoid the smile. It might be free, but IT’S A LIE.
By Dave Johnson
It made sense, but was still odd: Alien vs. Predator (1 and 2)- as the Alien, you could sneak up and bite heads off to replenish health completely or slash with your hands on the corpse for partial health.
My 1st pick is Metal Gear Solid 3 where Snake has to kill jungle animals & eat them to replenish his health. It may be normal for Snake to eat things that would make a billy goat puke, but it’s odd to me.
For my runner up, I’ll go with Final Fight and the full-plated turkey dinners conveniently hiding underneath barrels and boxes.
I don’t know who had the foresight to stock these barrels with tasty, life-giving meals, but if I were the leader of the Mad Gear Gang, I would tell my henchmen to make it a priority to check every barrel beforehand for food or weapons.
Or maybe take it one step further and drop some arsenic in that turkey or apple, seeing as Guy, Cody, & Haggar don’t think twice about devouring strange food that’s been lying in a tire for God knows how long.
(I think every time Dave mentions SOR in a Symposuim ad Nauseum, we should mention Final Fight in retaliation.)
Max > Haggar.
No way! I’ll take Haggar’s Reverse Sit Out Powerbomb over Max’s Atomic Knee Rape any day. Although, I’ll give you Blaze is 100x hotter than Cody’s girlfriend Jessica.
I’d pay good money for a Final Fight movie with Don Frye in the obvious role as Mike Haggar