Hi, I'm Dranzerstorm
Welcome to the Video Game & Music Lounge
This world is dedicated to Video Games and Music as I'll be showcasing the following.
Video Game Reviews set to the same tones as Retro Retrospective's Anime Reviews
Music reviews of Anime Openings & Closings
Western Cartoon music
Vocaloid Classics.
We may even have some Top Tens
I hope this World entertains you.
Sega has always been known for Sonic the Hedgehog but how did the Blue Blur get his speed? Well lets go back to the 80s and look at two arcade classics, Space Harrier & Afterburner.
Sega are well known for being the great innovators of the Video Game industry, many of the things we take for granted these days such as motion controls, advanced weather physics and online gameplay were just some of the things that Sega brought into gaming but one of it's first major innovations was how to speed up gameplay so we dive back into 1985 and look at Space Harrier.
There's not much to talk about with Space Harrier, you play a man who can run and fly at absurd speeds and shoot out of a large laser cannon, taking down such enemies as Cyclops Mammoths, Chinese Dragons, Blatant ripoffs of Mobile Suits and Easter Island heads. Now that's out the way, what innovations did it bring to the table? Well here's a list.
1. One of the first 16-Bit Graphic Arcade Games
2. First to use an Arcade Cabinet that allows the player to sit down and also the first to use a force feedback feature that moves in time with the player.
3. One of the first to use a Boss Rush mode
4. One of the earliest examples of a third person shooter
5. Influenced the Star Fox franchise
6. First time use of the Flight Joystick
7. And finally most importantly it brought Sega's Super Scaler technology to the forefront of games.
To explain this feature Super Scaler allowed for pseudo-3D sprite-scaling at high frame rates, with this higher frame rate it was possible to have as many as 32,000 sprites fill a moving landscape along with over 32,000 colours displayed simultaneously. In fact the games' difficulty was made all the more harder when you're moving at super speed as you avoid enemies, shots and obstacles while also trying to take them out with your own shots, so I can probably add Bullet Hell innovation to the list as well.
Two years later Sega's Top Gun style Combat Flight Simulator would take what was developed by Space Harrier and turn it up a notch as the Arcade Cabinet now rotates both horizontal and vertical to give the player the feeling of piloting the F-14 Tomcat Jet, as an extra feature there were speakers behind the player at head level that utilized stereo sound to enhance the experience.
As for the game, it's exactly the same as Space Harrier only with Fighter Jets.
Both games are legendary arcade titles that even years later are still fun to play, and in 1991 when Sonic was being made, the same technology would be used to make Sonic run fast.
This is just one of Sega's great innovations.
Everyone knows a good cartoon theme song and believe me, when researching this, there are practically no worst lists out there for cartoon theme songs, they just seem to work but I disagree, I can think of ten that aren't so good, so we run down my top 10 worst cartoon theme songs. Only rules are obviously no Anime theme songs and I'd like to avoid movies as well.
Honorable Mentions
Care Bears the Movie: Because the singer is really not interested in singing the song but rules are rules and Movies can't be on the list.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Their Clones: Because none of their songs have a shred of dignity in them but are still entertaining none the less.
Any without a theme song: Are exempt from this list.
10. Horrid Henry
In the UK one of the most common cartoons is about a troublemaker named Henry, and his entire opening theme is basically a child sticking it's tongue out and chanting, not exactly stellar cartoon viewing from my Country but considering some of the entries I've posted in the vault so far this is fairly tame compared to them.
9. Butt Ugly Martians
Whatever they are spelling right at the start, it's clearly not a word or even an abbreviation, it's just bland and rubbish.
8. Jane and the Dragon
It sounded like the narrator wanted to sing but gave up the moment he mentioned the leads name. It comes to something when the Narrator thinks the theme song isn't worth singing and so called lead, Jane can't even sing properly.
7. Pound Puppies
Infernal barking combined with ugly close ups of some of the characters. At least it improved in later years but my god the original is bad.
6. Smurfs
The Smurfs theme song is what would happen if the Dwarves in Snow White forgot all the words to their work song.
5. Happy Tree Friends
Same problem as Smurfs only this one is more frequent as the episodes are really short and it only reinforces the show's content of killing innocent woodland creatures.
4. The Magic Roundabout
I guess I don't like Fair Ground Carousel music, too many bad dreams.
3. Jem and the Holograms
I'm aware that Jem had two theme songs but I'm going with the outrageous version with the poor sound and the interruption from the Misfits. The ironic thing is when the Misfits say their songs are better its actually the truth. The Misfits did sing better although it might be my twisted taste in music. Also a cartoon with a central theme of music shouldn't have a bad theme song.
2. Angela Anaconda
Oh god this dreary cartoon about freaky Newspaper cutouts is as bad as it sounds, it was bad enough that they ruined the Digimon Movie and also I don't think Angela really needs to remind everyone it's her show, that's the height of obnoxiousness.
1. The Smoggies
But the award for worst theme song goes to the Smoggies, the weird thing is that it started off okay introducing the main characters before a sudden switch to these mutant things called Suntots that look like someone spliced a troll doll with the cast of Jem and the Holograms, but by the end of the song they can't seem to decide who to sing about; cartoon's worst polluters or cartoon's most disturbing take on whatever Suntots are supposed to be. It's a "Save the Environment" type show and you're making us support the villains more. Such twisted logic.
Bonus: As a bonus I will throw any one of these cartoons on this list into the Cartoon Vault.
Welcome friends of TheOtaku!
To reiterate my comments in the main intro, we'll be covering music and video games.
As a starter pack video game related content will be moved here from Retro Retrospective and some will be rewritten.
Along with that we'll start doing music.
Now some notes about the music posts, some will have youtube videos, others won't, I will still try and provide the links whenever possible but as it is with Youtube it may not always keep a video going.
I hope this world works out and I hope all of you enjoy it.
Thanks
Dranzerstorm
