Heavy Metal is a comics anthology magazine that began life in France under the name Metal Hurlant. It gained notoriety due to its heavy emphasis on sex and violence. It was bought over to the U.S and renamed Heavy Metal in 1977, and was purchased and published by Kevin Eastman. Yes, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Kevin Eastman. The U.S version of the magazine featured several news articles that tied it into the Heavy Metal culture. The series spawned two feature films: 1981′s Heavy Metal, a set of story sequences done in different art styles (similar to The Animatrix) and 2000′s Heavy Metal 2000, a feature film featuring a character played by B-movie actress Julie Strain. The game also spawned 2 video games, F.A.K.K.2, a PC game sequel to Heavy metal 2000, and Heavy Metal:Geomatrix, a 2001 Dreamcast/Arcade game from Capcom. Although it uses a gameplay style similar to Spawn: In the Demon’s Hand, various gameplay issues and a lack of content cause the game to fall flat on its face. It doesn’t help matters that the game has very little to tie it in with the comics.
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Remember when before Final Fantasy 7 came out, the graphics in Playstation role playing games weren’t that much different from 16-bit role playing games? Thankfully early Playstation RPGs, like their 16-bit ancestors, made up gameplay and storywise for what they were lacking in graphics, so you were still able to enjoy titles like Suikoden and Arc The Lad I and II. Sadly, this was not the case with Beyond the Beyond. This game had a boring storyline which did nothing to move the genre forward, and it didn’t exactly help matters that the game’s graphics resembled a 1993 SNES RPG. Actually, scratch that. In 1993, the SNES had games like Lufia and Secret of Mana that made this game’s graphics look like pong. Not that that was hard to do,
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Your eyes do not deceive you. This is an actual Sonic game on the Super Nintendo. “But Sonic is a Sega game!” Yes I know. So how is this possible? Did Tengen get another Sega license? Did Sega know that they were going to fail as a console manufacturer and decided to test the waters as a third party developer years early? Is this the second coming of Color Dreams? Nope. This Super Nintendo game is a product of the wonderful world of foreign bootlegging! A Peruvian-based organization known as Twin Eagles Group hacked a Super Nintendo game called Speedy Gonzales: Los Gatos Bandidos, stripped out all the good stuff, and replaced the main character with Sonic. Basically, you run through each stage repeatedly freeing Mario from cages. While it’s fun for all of 3 minutes, the charm of having a Sonic game on the SNES wore off and players would realize how shitty this game was compared to the Sega titles. It wouldn’t be until Sonic Adventure 2 hit GameCube that gamers would get an actual Sonic game on a Nintendo system. As bad as this game was however, it was nowhere near as bad as the NES Sonic the Hedgehog.

This isn’t an actual game per se (although if you’re reading this Capcom, don’t let me stop you from making it), but rather it sums up one of the first North American attempts to make action figures based on Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. These figures made use of Gi-Joe molds. In fact, the original series of Street Fighter action figures were advertised as being part of Gi-Joe, with M. Bison and his Shadowloo grandmasters being part of Cobra.
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In a few days, the ball drops, and the book closes on 2011. No doubt, many of you are planning on having huge New Year’s Eve parties. And many of you will drink during these parties. And for a few of you, this will happen:

(Of course there is a good chance that neither Chris nor Liam Hemsworth will be involved)
2011 was a banner year for the fighting genre. With [Ultimate] Marvel vs Capcom 3, Mortal Kombat 9, Street Fighter IV Arcade Edition, King of Fighters XIII, and Dead of Alive Chronicles all hitting storeshelves this year, the genre has came back in full force. With Dead or Alive 5, Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Skull Girls, Soul Calibur 5, and Street Fighter X Tekken hitting next year, the genre is only moving forward. This sequel to last year’s Christmas beatdowns will take a look back at the best (or at least underrated) and the worst of the fighting genre’s golden era. So without further ado, lets get to the beatdowns!

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Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and we certainly have a lot to be thankful for, such as our friends, family, jobs, health, and fortune. We as gamers especially have cause to be thankful. With all the games being canceled throughout the years, we’ve had several classic games that have made to store shelves. On the flip side, we should also be thankful for all the crappy titles that were not released. This is a follow up to this past summer’s article about canceled games. As you read this list, be thankful for all those triple A titles you enjoyed that were released.
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Let it be said that one of my favorite games of the previous console generation was the original Manhunt. It was one of those games that people either loved or hated. While critics of the game decried its slow pace and repetitiveness, I enjoyed the tense stealth action gameplay, the 8mm-style atmosphere, and the lunatics that made up the game’s adversaries. So, when I heard that Rockstar was developing a Wii-based sequel that utilized the Wiimote for motion-controlled killing, I was ecstatic. Then the controversy came. You see, the game received an AO (Adults Only) rating from the ESRB, and both Sony and Nintendo would refuse to allow an AO-rated product to be released for their consoles (and just for good measure, Microsoft also would not allow an AO-rated product to be released on its console, although there were no plans to bring the game to Xbox 360). I was worried that I would never get to see Rockstar’s vision. Then miraculously, the game was green-lighted for release after some censoring. Sadly, to finally play the game after the controversy was akin to dying, going to heaven, and finding Jesus strung out on heroin. Yes, the game was that bad.
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At the end of last August, this countdown went up, and the gaming scene went crazy. Sure it wasn’t exactly Marvel vs Capcom, and granted, these companies have worked together before, particularly on the Dynasty Warriors vs Gundam franchise (which just saw its third title released this past summer), but this could potentially be huge. What could this signify? Could Taki and Mitsurugi be joining Samurai Warriors’ Yukimura Sanada and Magoichi Saika on the battlefield, killing thousands of enemies? Could Soulcalibur 5 be seeing Ryu Huyabusa stepping onto the stage of history? Could Dynasty Warriors 8 see Lu Bu weild the dreaded Soul Edge against the three kingdoms? Could DOATEC be sponsoring the next King of Iron Fist Tournament, allowing Hayate and Kasumi to do battle with the Mishima Zaibatsu? Could the Fatal Frame 2 sisters be teaming up with Rick and the Terror Mask to discover the secret of Splatterhouse? Could the secret agent duo from Rolling Thunder be teaming up with Rygar and his mighty diskarmor? Could Paul Pheonix and Marshall Law be hitting the field in Tecmo Bowl with Nina and Anna as cheerleaders? Could we be getting a sequel to Winback featuring Gituaroo Man? Could that douche from Winback join with that guy from Time Crisis to thwart the mother of all terrorist attacks? Could the ladies of Tekken and SoulCalibur be joining the DOA girls on the beach? It would be a week before gamers would find out.

Then a week passed.

And boy, was it a letdown….
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