Floating sky asteroids destroyed: 6
What can be said about Axelay? It's basically "Mode 7: The Game 2" (sequel to Pilotwings...). Even at my age, I was like WOW IMPRESSIVE GRAPHICS, then I got nauseous and had to sit with my head between my knees for 30 minutes.

Shooters (or "shmups") like this are very aggravating, and just take so many playthroughs to memorize that it is often not worth it. I especially hate the mechanic of enemies forming a circle around you, requiring you to quickly switch to yous shoots-in-circle mode to survive. Bleh

This is the last "A" game in my sea-warped box of SNES games. At first I felt so relieved - it's been a rough journey. But looking ahead, it looks like things are only going to get rougher. Batman games, Battletoads, Bass fishing games, and Bubsys litter my path forward. I thought this would get easier, but the view from here breaks my neck. Maybe I'll rethink my alphabetic policy...

Time played: fuggit

Faces broke: GRAHH

I hate fighting games. But I want to love them. My problem is that playing against any of my friends is impossible because they're WICKED good at fighting games. I only have a chance of surviving if we play a shitty fighting game (or Dead or Alive). And this is a shitty fighting game. But I can only play on my computer by myself only have one controller so had to play by myself. Feh!

Where'd Mom go!?!?

Time Played: 90 minutes

Bricks broke: all of 'em

Hot damn, Arkanoid - Doh It Again is the winner! I played this sucker for almost 2 hours on a bus ride from New York to Boston. I don't know if it was just the fact that I was stuck on a bus that ensnared my attention or the fact that Arkanoid - Doh It Again is just a rockin' version of a rockin' game. Hell if I know what makes this Arkanoid different from others. I do know it came out in 1997 for the SNES which is MAD late, yo! I think I already had thrown my N64 out by then (JK I still have it hooked up to the TV). The only thing that would make this better is playing it on a huge projected screen in a park at night time. Yeah. Arkanoid! Does insane things.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Ardy Lightfoot

Time played: 8 minutes

Expectations reversed: 1

I was really ready to hate this game, expecting something floaty and bad like Bubsy. Color me surprised when I found a charming, interesting platformer that borrowed elements from other games - not to be derivative, but to make a better game.

Ardy Lightfoot is this animal person who has this little floaty bubble creature that follows him around and he uses to attack enemies like Kirby. Ardy can run fast like Sonicwhen you push hard to the right. He can bounce on his tail like Scrooge McDuck in those rad Ducktales games.

The feel of the game was very high quality, with accurate controls and good sprite animation. I was surprised to even see a detailed overworld once I finished the first level. The game is presented as a film, with opening credits and "scenes". There is very little dialogue though, which is nice.

My only problem with the game is that after getting hit once, Ardy loses his little helper. This means that you cannot attack, and basically means that you'll be dying soon.

This is probably the first "hidden gem" I've found in the many Games-A-Day I've been playing. If I found this game with an old SNES in a house that I was renting on vacation, I would love to sit and play though all of it on a rainy afternoon.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Arcana

Time played: 4 minutes

Beasts slain: ARSFja;lsdkjfals;j

I only played this for four minutes so that I could get a picture that full encapsulated how boring this game is. Because... it's super boring. I really hate dungeon crawlers, especially unimaginative ones with slimes and 16-bit pain-graphics. I'm not going to dignify this game with a check of Wikipedia to see if anyone cares about it.

One good thing, the main character says "Take this!" when he hits an enemy. S'pretty funny.

Animaniacs

Time played: 3 minutes

Times laughed: 0

I think I remember renting and playing this game when I was an Animaniac maniac (ugh) back in the day. At the time I found it incomprehensible, and what do you know, it still is. Like the Aah! Real Monsters game I wrote about several weeks ago, this falls into that "multiple character cartoon platformer" genre that existed solely for crappy licensed games back on the SNES. You gotta use all the Warners (Yakko, Wakko, and Dot) to get around obstacles and shit. If one of them gets captured, you have to jump all the way to the top of the Warner Bros. water tower to rescue them. That alone is impossible and made me turn the game off.

I will hand it to this game that the sprites are well animated, and that each Warner reacts differently to NPC's and other events happening in the levels (for example, the boy Warners checking out that hot nurse).

I think I remember the Tiny Toons game being better, but I'm not sure. I'm certainly glad there was never a Freakazoid game because I still love that show.

CHEH!

Andre Agassi Tennis

Time played: 4 minutes

Balls hit: 5?

The problem with my approach to playing through all the SNES games I found is that I chose to go alphabetically in my play order. Alex and Brendan took an easier route in which they just pick at random or go for whatever looks good. Not me, if Andre Agassi Tennis is next on my list, I have to play it.

And play it I did! Nothing to say. It's a boring tennis game. The first tennis game I actually liked was Mario Tennis for the Virtual Boy - that was rad. The only good part about this game is that it had a "practice" mode that let me slap around some balls from a ball machine. I haven't seen this in many other tennis games, and it made the process of realizing how terrible the controls are relatively painless because there was no opponent or breaks in the action. Just pure suck.

Time Played: 1 minute

Cats killed: 0

Cats are forever given the bad rap in modern American media. Thankfully the internet's obsession with cats being cute has started to shine a positive light on our feline friends. The crappy SNES game adaptation of the crappy wild west mouse movie An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, however, is terribly biased against cats. Also it is just terrible. Another floaty movie-based SNES game. But check out this Game Over screen, it is legit terrifying:

You die now!

Be still my heart fart!

American Gladiators

Time played: 6 minutes

Events won: 0

More like, events understood: 0! This game makes no sense. On several occasions I found myself in the "goal" zone after dodging bullets to get there, but the clock still counting down. They wouldn't let me leave the game! I'm no American Gladiators expert - I know enough to think references to the colorful "cast" of gladiators is funny, but I don't know most of the actual events besides the padded-q-tip duel.

Fortunately the game let me zip right along through the contests, and fortunately the computer was dumb enough that often both of us lost the event.

I won't lie, I played this several days ago still in a haze of sickness so I can't remember most of what happened. But I took lots of pictures.

None of me are champions!

Boobs vs legs! Both muscley!

Aliens vs. Predator

Time played: 2 minutes

Skulls collected: too few

I recently watched Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem, a movie I had previously enjoyed, and came to my senses that that movie sucks. So that makes two shitty AvP movies. Looking back at the game side franchise, it's not doing so hot. Besides a pretty good PC game from 2001 and a bizarre Capcom arcade cabinet that twists the Aliens/Predator universe into something Japanese and strange. I haven't read the Dark Horse comics yet but I heard they're the best of the bunch.

What was I talking about? OH YEAH

Grokk the Predator punches like a bitch

This is a crappy AvP brawler from Activision. You play as a Predator and beat the shit out of fat-looking Aliens. I'm talking nerd chunky fat. This game plays terrible and is super stiff and awkward. It's also one of those games where you forget what button does what after a few seconds because there is a terrible delay from the keyboard controller to what's on screen. You press a button, see nothing happen, then press another because you're impatient, and the Predator shoots, but then you press the last button you pressed and it throws a knife at a wall. It's all terrible.

The only cool part is that you're supposed to pick up Alien skulls for your collection. BRAWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!