Aww yeah.

Consider the light zapper. No, seriously, think about it. For many children, the most amazing part of the original Nintendo Entertainment System was the NES Zapper, a silver-gray (quickly replaced with hunting orange) handheld pistol that allowed us to hunt ducks in our living room. It made an entire generation of boys and girls want to murder a snickering dog. It even made a gigantic, satisfying CLANG noise when you pulled the trigger. It had springs. Springs meant quality.

We’re spoiled today by our Wii remotes and our Natal technology (or we will be soon). It was a gun that shot light! Or at least that was what we were lead to believe. So there weren’t many game developers that opted to design games for it, or for the Light Phaser for the Sega Master System (my personal gun of choice because they modeled it off an obscure Japanese anime). These were novelties at best–a clever use of cathode-ray technology that to this day I still can’t quite understand (magic, I assume).

PEW PEW PEW

Then, for a few years, nothing happened. Until Nintendo decided to up the ante, bazooka-style.

This device made no sense.

Enter the Super Scope. And this is really the point of this article, if there even is one (a conversation my editor and I will no doubt be having shortly). The Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) was replaced with the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). It is a better system, because it has the word “super” prominently attached. In this same manner of thinking, the Super Scope is better than the Zapper, because it has the word “super” in front of it. Also, it is six feet long. And you can kill a man with it. And it eats batteries. And you have to hold it like a five year-old holds a pool cue.

Is this how you use the Super Scope? NO ONE KNOWS

There was nothing super about the Super Scope. Why did Nintendo think the way to go was to develop a light gun so large, cumbersome and gigantic that it required a shoulder mount to wield? This is progress? You could use the old Zappers to rob banks. They were gun-shaped. They made excellent Halloween costume additions. The build quality was such that, even today, you still see them about, like elderly nerd trophies. The only thing you could do with the Super Scope is place it in the live-action Super Mario Bros. movie. Nobody wants a rocket-propelled grenade light zapper. It’s creepy.

As for Sega, their foray was a bit more sensible, but not by much. The Menacer had an admittedly cool name, but had even weaker third party developer support, and included a game called Ready, Aim Tomatoes!, distilling a fantastic Sega franchise (Toe Jam & Earl) down to its most base element–throwing tomatoes–thereby ruining it forever. You could detach the ugly and unnecessary shoulder stock and wield it like a proper pistol, but the gun had the shooting accuracy of a drunken wino.

This device made slightly more sense.

Seriously. Who looked at the Zapper and said, “Hey, I can do that, except I’ll make it six times as heavy, four times as long, make it shoulder-mounted and have it run on twenty-six batteries per day!” Darwin would be very irritated by this person and their design philosophies. Ironic then that the only place the Super Scope remains a viable peripheral is in the world of the Smash Bros., where the gun (if charged) can wallop some people. And amusingly, not even the characters in the game know exactly how to hold it.

Eh, close enough.

Do you have any fond memories of zapping things as a child? Share them. Come on. Please help me justify this article.

Before Halo Wars, there was Herzog Zwei, a proto-console-RTS that was far ahead of its time.  Sure it was extremely limited when compared to its current-day brethren, but what do you want?  For crying out loud you were a jet that could transform into a robot!  That’s gotta be worth something, right?

In the single-player campaign (there was a split-screen, versus option), you’re a huge red jet/robot operating out of a main base, tucked away in the corner of one the eight varied maps.  There are smaller bases that fan out in the level.  By sending in infantry you can take over the base and use it to generate and pick up units.  It’s standard-issue stuff, but it works, which isn’t bad for 1989.

The units include tanks, anti-air, boats, motorcycles, supply trucks, infantry and huge missile-firing turrets.  Each have a production cost, which is deducted from whatever you’ve got in the bank, which builds faster with the more bases you’ve captured. First player to blow up the opponent’s base wins.

And there you have it.

The learning curve isn’t steep and is actually pretty addictive once you get into your groove.  Plus, the AI is a total dick so it’s fun to mess around with him.  I used to totally decimate his outposts then surround his base with turrets and sit back and watch him endlessly get nuked and respawn and get nuked again.  On retrospect, I suppose I was a very lonely child.

@#$ you Blue Jet and the horse you rode in on!

While the opposing CPU was fun to torment, the friendly AI didn’t do much to help.  Those supply trucks were NOT interested in supplying my units, so I’d have to build intricate enclosures of missle batteries to keep them from riding off into a lake .  Also, the game predictably suffered from cataclysmic slowdown as the number of units increased.

Overall, this was an underappreciated, progressive and, most importantly, fun little gem that largely went unnoticed, save for the gratified few that managed to stumble into its prehistoric-RTS riches.

Vintage Verdict: Not Guilty!  Schnell!  Schnell!

Erich’s out sick this week, leaving Dave in charge of unruly crew Tim, Adam, and Steve, who join him for some good-natured Wii bashing before spoiling Braid, musing on the possible game-changing OnLive, and launching into an epic roundtable discussion of this week’s Symposium Ad Nauseum topic: Objectively Crappy Games That You Love. Titles discussed include Time Killers, Weaponlord, Shaq-Fu, Two Worlds, and Batman for the Commodore 64. Send any and all comments, complaints, and fanboy ravings to feedback@pixelverdict.com.

You can listen to the show with the player below, download it here, or subscribe through iTunes or by adding our feed to your podcatcher of choice.

Why is Shaq crying? He just got these for his birthday!

Much of my formative video game years were spent playing two genres: the side-scrolling beat’em up and the shooter. Both were popular in the 16-bit days, but have since largely vanished from the gaming consciousness, save for cameo appearances on PSN or XBLA or the DS.

I played many shooters on my Genesis, and forged my love through repeated run-throughs of the magnificent Thunder Force III. But my addiction took root with M.U.S.H.A., a quirky vertical-scrolling effort that featured all the characteristics of the genre: huge enemies, upgradeable weapons, and thousands of glowy balls of death on the screen. It was formula, but it was formula perfected.

M.U.S.H.A. stands for Metallic Uniframe Super Hybrid Armor and you play a girl who’s draped herself in the mechsuit and taken it upon herself to wage war against an unstoppable onslaught of foes. Granted, it’s not the most Shakespearean of narratives, but it gets the job done.

To aid you in your sprite-nuking holocaust are a series of weapons upgrades that cater to different player styles: go big and deadly with the fat green lasers, opt for defense with the circling blue bubble or toss out a crapload of tiny bombs with the red upgrade. In addition, you have two little sidekick lasers that you can program to shoot backwards, forwards, sideways, in an orbital pattern or you can free them up to fly out and attack anyone they wants (which, unfortuantely, leads to their prompt disintegration fairly quickly).

Where M.U.S.H.A. excels is in its hyper-fast, twitch gameplay. There are a lot of things going on at once and as is the case with the shooter genre, your reflexes and tiny yellow energy ball dodging skills will be critical to success. Stages are varied, ranging from volcanoes to plains to caves to a dope fight across a lightning-streaked sky to a bad-ass battle on the enemy’s base ship to the final smackdown in the guts of a space station.

Thankfully, the game isn’t soul-crushingly impossible. When you’re fully-powered you’re a force and can dismantle most foes with ease. The head boss is a pain, though. You’re trapped in a tiny compartment with a huge green ball bouncing around, where one collision equals an apologetic letter from the M.U.S.H.A. bureau to your parents.

The graphics are bright and colorful and vary greatly from stage to stage and the bosses are huge and interesting-looking. The music stands out as well. And apparently this is a rare, highly sought-after game that goes for like $60 on eBay. I think I got it for a buck or something at a yard sale.

Vintage Verdict: Not Guilty.  Mech yeah!