PixlBit

      Another week of comics and another batch of old video game ads scanned right from their pages. 1980's Marvel comics were always full of ads about all the things kids were into: sweets, toys, and games. Comics fans are a little older now, and there aren't any ads for cookies or candies or toys (other than action figures) in comics today, but what has always remained are the video game ads. These ads I got from The New Defenders, No. 125, released November of 1983.

     The comic Last of Us #3 came out today and I read it. Finally most of the major players of the game are present, the Infected and the Fireflies. Both the art and story are very good. The game still hasn't risen in my interest to more than a curiosity. I have the Last of Us demo that came with God of War Ascension that's still sitting shrink wrapped on my TV table. Maybe when I play that it'll move up to a must buy.

      My friend was home on Friday afternoon, so I went over with my 360 to play. I forgot my controller though and so played my 3DS instead.

 I broke 40,000 achievement points last weekend while playing CastleStorm, so I thought I'd recall some of my recent favorite achievements. 

     Sid Meier's Ace Patrol came out for iOS in early May and I just found out about it. It's a weird coincidence since I was thinking about the old board game Fight in the Skies, a WWI air battle game, recently and was trying to think of any video game that would be close to it. Well, this Firaxis game is it.

    The first ad I found was Star Wars: Masters of Teras Kasi on PS1 from Marvel Team-Up Vol. 1, No. 8, released April of 1998. This game was a two player fighter like Tekken or Mortal Kombat with Star Wars characters. It's apparently not a very good game. Still, the ad makes you want to play it. Who doesn't want to fight that jerk Boba Fett. He brings a gun to a light saber fight for Pete's sake.

    I've been experiencing a glut of biker gang related things in the last few weeks starting with my reading of Hunter S. Thompson's Hell's Angels. Immediately after I started reading that book, Smartcelt posted his Wheels of Steel blog concerning GTA IV's Lost and the Damned DLC (http://www.pixlbit.com/blog/2529/wheels_of_steel). That got me thinking about Road Rash on the Playstation and how it would be great if there was a current gen version of it. Then what do I see on upcoming releases this week, but Ride to Hell: Retribution, a game all about sixties biker gangs coming June 26th. Here's the trailer:

     So I'm back again with more scans of video game ads from magazines or comics. These two are from Marvel Knights #8 (Feb. 2001) which I got because it featured Doctor Strange. That I got two video game ads was a pleasant bonus.

    Why go old school when you can go super old school! I mean, white-beard-growing Rip Van Winkle old school. Except this old man is a frickin’ martial arts ninja that’ll kick your sorry ass to Timbucktu like Gen Fu, Gouken and Shujinko combined! We’re talking 1966. “No way,” you say. “There weren’t any video games in 1966 KnightDriver!” Well, if you were an Electrical Engineering student at MIT with access to the PDP-1 supercomputer, you could play SpaceWar!.  Play it today at the Computer History Museum in Cali on an authentic PDP-1 or play it in emulation here: http://spacewar.oversigma.com/html5/.  It runs in a browser without any installation! Fantastic!

     I cancelled my preorder for Muramasa Rebirth and bought Professor Layton and the Miracle Mask for 3DS to play on my family trip to Ohio on Friday to see my niece graduate high school. It’s the perfect thing for being stuck in a car for seven plus hours. Also, it makes me look slightly more mature to my family than playing Shadow Wars, Etrian Odyessy, Fire Emblem or Luigi’s Mansion, all of which are gamer games. It’s like I’m saying, “Don’t mind me, I’m just a casual gamer like yourselves. No hard core gamer to worry about here.”