Mario in Four-Color Land (Video Games & Computer Entertainment - January 1991)

As I wrote last year on this day, Its-a-Mario Day. Every March 10th is Mario Day, not because of the day marking a special occasion but because of the abbreviation of March being MAR and 10 looking similar to "IO." Last year I went with a few magazine reviews of Super Mario Bros. 2 and 3, and this year I've scanned an article titled "Mario in Four-Color Land." Although Mario is in the title, the story from Video Games & Computer Entertainment magazine is actually about all the Nintendo-themed comic books published by Valiant from 1990 to 1991.

[YouTube] Golden Axe

https://youtu.be/wMKr5c6VIOA

Released in late 1989 for the Sega Genesis, Golden Axe is a game I played over and over when I got it. It's rare that I try to be perfect at any game which is something I was attempting to do with Golden Axe when I was younger, though based on the scores I wrote in the manual, I never got through the game without dying a few times. Of course, I'm not as good at it anymore either, and in the video I'm using a gamepad rather than an arcade stick which is what I played with exclusively as a kid. The game itself isn't difficult but it's easy to make a mistake that will cost a life, whether it's falling off a ledge (rare) or getting cornered by multiple enemies, especially skeletons, that hack-and-slash the hero from the front and back at the same time. Also, being an arcade port, it's not a very long game and can be completed in 30 minutes or less. While Arcade is the primary mode, in the video I also play the much shorter Beginner mode and the Duel mode, where players can battle the computer in 12 rounds or challenge another player. 

Axe?

When the game ends it provides a score, strength rating, and letter grade. Based on what I wrote in the manual, my best score was 390.6 playing as Gilius Thunderhead and my highest strength rating was 118.3 as Ax Battler. I'm not sure how the scores are determined, though I believe the less magic you use to eliminate enemies, the higher your score will be. Since Gilius has the weakest magic and the strongest weapon with the best reach, it makes sense that players will get their highest scores playing as him. I'd noticed magic's impact on the score when I was recording the Beginner mode play through, as the less I used Tyris Flare's magic, the better my score. That stood out when I had what I thought to be a perfect run but ended up with a much lower score than my previous game in which I thought I played worse. In that perfect run I used the magic often simply because I wanted to show as many spells as I could for the video. Unfortunately, my Genesis started having issues as I finished up the recordings, otherwise I would have gone back through Arcade mode without using magic to see just how high I could score. This game was also a Sega CD pack-in title on the Sega Classics Arcade Collection disc and I own it but I can't test out the scoring there either. As I posted in 2019, my Sega CD also isn't functioning correctly and I don't know how to repair it.

Although the Sega Genesis version is what I'm playing in the video and I've never played the Sega Master System (SMS) version, I am including all the magazine coverage I could find on the game, which wasn't a lot, and there was a little bit more of it for the SMS release. From what I could gather, the primary difference is that the SMS version only supports one player and the only playable character is Ax Battler (referred to as Tarik by GamePro). For the Genesis' Golden Axe, I scanned a review from the December 1989 issue of Game Player's and part of a page from Electronic Gaming Monthly's 1991 Buyer's Guide that has review scores of a bunch of games, including Golden Axe for both the SMS and Genesis. The SMS coverage are scans from GamePro's March 1990 issue and the June/July 1990 issue of Sega Visions. 

Sega Genesis (EGM Scores include SMS)

Sega Master System

EA Sports Vol. 2, Issue 1

This is a 20-page magazine from EA Sports that I believe was distributed as an insert with an issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. I also own Vol. 1, Issue 1 which has lower quality paper and Michael Jordan on the cover, but I chose to scan this one instead because it is football-centric and this is Super Bowl weekend. Although John Madden is EA's primary football guy and this issue features some John Madden Football articles, the issue's cover is not of John Madden but of Bill Walsh, who endorsed EA's first college football video game. I am including every page of the magazine, including ads, though you can find the same ads in the Electronic Arts albums posted back in 2017. However, I provide slightly larger article pages than I previously did in the past, and I matched the ads to that size as well, so these are bigger than my other ad scans.

As I said, it's Super Bowl weekend and at this time of year I do often put together a video or blog post with a score prediction, which is really just a complete guess as I'm not an expert and I don't analyze anything. Last year I picked the wrong winner in a game that went into overtime. Two years ago I was a single point off from guessing the exact score between these same teams. Philadelphia makes its second Super Bowl appearance in the last three years and Kansas City returns for the fifth time in the last six years, and is going for a three-peat! I did pick against KC last year and maybe I should learn from my mistakes but I'm leaning toward the Eagles pulling out the win. Either way, I'm expecting a close, high-scoring game, and I'll go with the same score I guessed two years ago but with a different outcome: 38-34 Philadelphia.

Year 9: February Update

Vault 1541 is now in its 9th year and I'm trying to post here twice a month as the YouTube channel continues to dwindle. One of my goals last year was to finally put together a video for Golden Axe but I failed yet again, sorry! However, it's very close to being done now. I started playing it in December and although it's a short and easy game, it still took me a while to relearn it and adjust to playing with a gamepad rather than an arcade stick. I played a fair amount even though I only completed it a dozen times or less, I just kept hitting the reset button when I'd mess up. Not that a few mistakes would prevent a game completion, I just wanted to reach the highest ranking of A+++, and most of the time I was only receiving A++ grades. There will be a blog post to go with the video so you can read more about it in about two weeks. 

There has been some significant video game news since I last posted an update which was in October. Nintendo finally confirmed the Switch 2. It looks similar to the Switch and should be backwards compatible with most Switch games. More details are coming in an April 2nd Nintendo Direct. Microsoft is actually going to publish Forza Horizon 5 on the PlayStation 5 in the spring. This surprised me quite a bit. I understand publishing games from Activision and Bethesda on PlayStation but Forza has been a flagship Xbox franchise for 20 years. The Forza Horizon series is my favorite Xbox exclusive, or I should say former exclusive, and I expect it will do quite well on PlayStation. While Forza Motorsport is the main competitor to Sony's Gran Turismo, the Horizon series is much less serious when it comes to racing. The most comparable PlayStation game to Forza Horizon would be Ubisoft's multi-platform title The Crew Motorfest. There are rumors of Halo making the jump to PlayStation as well. Financially it's a good move, though one has to wonder if there will ever be another Xbox console, at least one that plays physical media, as Microsoft has been pushing other devices as Xbox, such at PC, smart TVs, and phones, that can stream Xbox games. 

A Care Bears video game hit Steam back in October and will release for Switch on February 13th. There are also plans to bring it to PlayStation and Xbox platforms. If you're interested in my magazine posts, you'd probably like to browse the Video Game History Foundation's digital library, which launched in early access recently and is free for all. In video game and toy news, LEGO will release a Game Boy set in October. A brief video was posted on social media by Nintendo, however, no images or price point has been announced. Something I completely missed last year was a collaboration between the Masters of the Universe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchises. There is a comic book from Dark Horse featuring the crossover, plus action figures from Mattel. There is also a deal between Hasbro and Super7 to revive the Micronauts toy line this year. 

One other note about Golden Axe is that the cartridge started acting funny last week and to make sure it wasn't the Genesis having issues, I put in Arnold Palmer Tournament Golf to test it. I'd not played that game in 30 years and certainly didn't remember much about the swing meter or what the maximum distances were for each club. I played the first hole which is a par five and the first shot was fine, second shot went into the rough, and the third shot dropped in the cup for an eagle! It's probably not too difficult to pull that off in this game but I was still pleased with myself, and here is a clip of it:

I did fail to stop the cursor before it hit the top of the meter a couple times, and then it just resets itself. If you're waiting to see the ball in motion, the game doesn't change the viewpoint until it hits the green, though you can see it moving on the overhead view along the left-hand side of the screen.

2/5/25 UPDATE: It turns out the Golden Axe cartridge is okay. Unfortunately, my Sega Genesis is the problem. I did some more testing and games freeze frequently. Zombies Ate My Neighbors even provided the message "Unexpected 68000 error!" so it's probably the processor which is a Motorola 68000.

Thanks for visiting,
Jonathan

Caught in a Web (Wizard #53 - January 1996)

This post isn't related to toys or video games but sometimes I do lean into comic book content a bit. I was looking for something on Spider-Man to tie into the new Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man animated series that debuts today on Disney+. Since I didn't have time to browse all of my video game magazines in search of Spidey game reviews, I turned to Wizard magazine in hopes of finding something related to the web-slinger's 1994 animated series. What I came across was an article covering the super hero's doomed James Cameron film, the then upcoming season three of the aforementioned 1990's cartoon, and brief discussions of past live-action shows in the U.S. and Japan. The article also mentions a Venom film in the works that never happened, at least not in the '90s. Although Spider-Man appears in a number of my blog posts, the only previous post dedicated to the web-head is for the Hot Wheels: Spider-Man's Web of Terror set. There is also a ToyFare article post that features Spider-Man but it's primarily about Toy Biz's marketing.

Paragon's Progress (Video Games & Computer Entertainment - October 1992)

This three-page article from Video Games & Computer Entertainment (VG&CE) features a visit to the office of Paragon Software a few months after it was acquired by MicroProse Software. Most of the discussion is about three games Paragon had in development. Mantis: XF5700 Experimental Space Fighter would release later that year as XF5700 Mantis Experimental Fighter under MicroProse's MicroPlay Software publishing label, as did Challenge of the Five Realms. However, MegaTraveller 3 was never released. Paragon only saw one more game published after Mantis and Five Realms, which was BloodNet in 1993.

Life Savers Sweet Story Book

Once upon a time... there was a land of sweet surprises!

Life Savers (or LifeSavers), "The Candy With The Hole," has been around for more than 100 years and is currently owned by Mars. The "Sweet Story Book" debuted in 1935 and continues to be a popular holiday stocking stuffer for many. While it still exists today, at some point "story book" became one word on the packaging that has also shrunk over time. Originally there were ten rolls of various flavors in each story book, then eight, and now six, all of which appear to be the Five Flavor packs. Unfortunately for Canadians, the product more than shrunk north of the border where Mars Canada canceled it last year. 

I can't say why I never opened my Life Savers Sweet Story Book: Volume MCMLXXXIX (1989) but I didn't and now you can enjoy photos of the complete package with sealed candies illuminated by Christmas tree lights. It even still has the price tag from Brooks Pharmacy where it was a steal at $1.49! Along with the Five Flavor rolls, the 1989 edition has two rolls each of Butter Rum, Wild Cherry, and Sunshine Fruits.