I forgot to bring attention to the weapons of Mega Man Unlimited in the update review. Hence, I shall be discussing them here.

GLUE SHOT

The Glue Shot is basically an improvement on the Concrete Shot from Mega Man 9. Shoot it, and if it hits an enemy that’s not invulnerable to it, it freezes it in place allowing for utter destruction to befall it.

NITRO BLAST

The Nitro Blast is a powerful multi-explosion attack that fires directly in front of Mega Man, continuing forward for only a short while. It’s strong. The only downside is it’s little ammo, you couldn’t continually fire this thing to save your life. It’s nice, but it’s not the best.

NAIL SHIELD

This is an interesting one. The Nail Shield is a shield weapon, go figure. Upon activation it forms four different nails that orbit and protect you. Unlike typical shield weapons* in the Mega Man Universe**, this one is fired differently, with all four nails being propelled forward with the power to hit enemies multiple times. It also pierces shields. The catch? It can only protect Mega Man for so long, for after it has taken enough hits, it vanishes. A good weapon, just not one I use very often.

TANK ARSENAL

Pffft. This is a joke compared to the other weapons. The Tank Arsenal fires three projectiles upon use. One goes down and hovers along the ground, one goes straight through the air, and one flies up through the air, then comes crashing down in an arc motion. The only one that is worth anything is the last one, as it explodes when it hits the ground, and even then the Nitro Blast is a better option. It’s a fine weapon on it’s own, but compared to the other weapons, this is the one I use the least.

RAINBOW BEAM

Now we’re getting to the good stuff, the Rainbow Beam fires in a straight line, and if you press the attack button again, it forms a giant circle that repeatedly damages anything that comes within it’s radius. It’s awesome. One of my favorite tactics is to set it up over a bottomless pit that has those enemies that jump out of them, and safely get by. Fun fact, it was originally going to be shaped like a cone, but it was impractical so they changed it.

COMET DASH

The Comet Dash is pretty much the dash/air dash from the X series. When used it not only shoots out projectiles, but Mega Man also propels forward a short distance, damaging anything he touches. It’s great for bypassing obstacles and I especially like using it right here in Occupied Wily Stage 2:

JET MISSILE

The fast weapon. The Jet Missile, such a great weapon. It’s incredibly fast, is more powerful than the Mega Buster, and when charged for just a second, will home in on the nearest enemy! Sure, when homing in it keeps moving forward, limiting its abilities in that regard, but it’s a small price to pay for such a great weapon.

YOKU ATTACK

The secret weapon. In video games, the secret weapon is the one you have to work to get, and is usually the best in the game. Yoku Attack is obtained via the elusive Yoku Man, a secret robot master. When fired, a shadow version of Mega Man chases down the nearest enemy, and kills it unless it has a shield. It also grabs items. Not too much ammo however, and if an enemy blocks it, Mega Man doesn’t get hurt but he recoils. Don’t use it in the air. It’s not too fast as well, so it can’t be used on the fly. This is a really nice weapon though.

WATER CANNON

The new weapon. Added in the latest update, the Water Cannon is obtained from Whirlpool Man. It is a automatic weapon, as in as long as you’re holding down the fire button, it will constantly spray water. It’s a short range hose, essentially. It’s great for doing constant damage to an enemy in order to quickly kill them.

YO-YO CUTTER

The best weapon. My favorite anyway. The Yo-yo Cutter is a combination of the Metal Blade from Mega Man 2 (which is the most broken weapon in a video game, hands down), the Shadow Blade from Mega Man 3, and the Plug Shot from Mega Man 9 (which is just a faster version of the Search Snake from Mega Man 3). You can fire it in eight directions, it comes back to you so you could potentially lure it into an enemy, and if it touches a wall or the ground it will run along it. Plenty of ammo, plenty of power, plenty of destruction.

All these awesome weapons, and not a single one damages HIM.

So a while back I did a review on Mega Man Unlimited (MMU), a fan game created by the likes of MegaPhilX. I stated that it was very solid, with all the features that make up a Mega Man game. With nine Robot Masters, solid music, and perfect controls, I rated MMU fairly high. However, a new update has come out. Does it hinder the game, or improve it? Let’s take a look at MMU version 1.2.1.

THE CHANGES

This new update adds a few things.

-Endless Attack mode
-Endless Boss Attack mode
-A new Robot Master, Whirlpool Man
-The Charge Shot

Endless Attack is a mode in which you try make it as far as you can in a infinite stage with just 1 life. All the screens are picked from as set from over 50. Endless Boss Attack is a mode where you fight all the bosses in an endless loop. Whirlpool man is special in the fact that he is NOT select-able on the stage select and must be picked from the special option in the menu alongside Endless Attack and Endless Boss Attack. The Charge Shot is the very same one from Mega Man 4 – Mega Man & Bass, but it feels more like Mega Man 6’s Mega Buster due to its size. The Charge Shot helps immensely. Smaller enemies are now mincemeat when hit with a fully charged blast, bosses no longer take as long, it just helps overall. This update also reverts Wily stage 1’s music to it’s original form.

THE ISSUES

This update has very few issues, but I have run into more than I did before the update. Sometimes my Buster stops working all together for a few seconds. I know it’s not my keyboard because I can charge up my shot but nothing comes out. In Wily Stage 2 I got stuck in a wall with Beat after being carried up from a pit by him. I ran into an issue in the same stage where I got stuck inside a spike! But this has happened before the update. I feel a simple patch will fix the issue.

THE VERDICT

Overall, this update is solid. It doesn’t fix what’s not broken and only improves on the game, minus the bugs I mentioned earlier. The Charge Shot should help anyone who couldn’t beat the game before and the extra modes add more replay-ability to the game.

If anyone is curious about a boss order, I recommend Nail Man first. The weaknesses?

Nail Man > Tank Man > Comet Woman > Jet Man > Yo-Yo Man > Glue Man (arguably the hardest) > Rainbow Man > Trinitro Man.

Mario Party, the destroyer of friendships and families alike. While it is a joy to play for the most part, there’s always those little moments where you want to throw your controller to the moon. These are the top ten frustrating moments in Mario Party. I have one rule: no moments from Mario Party 9 or Island Tour, unless these moments appear in other Mario Party games. I do this because frustrating moments are really common in these two games, as they stray from the normal formula.

# 10

Getting the Bowser Bomb. Thankfully, this item only appears in Mario Party 2. When you get the Bowser Bomb, you cannot get rid of it. At the end of the turn Bowser appears, rolls three dice blocks, and if he comes in contact with any of the players, he steals ALL their coins. So you could go from having 100 coins, to having nothing.

# 9

Rolling 1’s constantly. We have all had times where the Dice Block is your worst enemy. It’s even worse when this happens while using double or triple dice blocks.

# 8

Going in circles. When a board is designed badly, it can lead to you going absolutely nowhere the entire game. An example of a board like this would be Toad’s Midway Madness, and this can cause a game to drag.

# 7

Someone else finding a hidden block, and getting a rare item like a magic lamp. Hidden blocks are going to be a recurring theme on this list, so get used to it. Sometimes while running around a map, you might run into a hidden block. When this happens, everyone else immediately crosses their fingers and clenches up, hoping it’s only coins. After breaking the block everyone will sigh with relief, laugh madly (I’ll explain later), or scream their lungs out.

# 6

Bowser Pinball Machine Malfunction. In Mario Party DS, in the Bowser Pinball Machine board, there is a group of spaces, that will cause the victim to be put into the bumper that usually launches a ball at the start of a normal Pinball game. They will then be launched into the Bowser Zone, and will usually lose all their coins AND stars. However, once in a blue moon the Machine will malfunction and the player will instead be brought into the Star Zone, where it is possible to win THREE stars! It is so frustrating to be beaten by a CPU player set to easy because of this.

YOU DON’T DESERVE THAT!

# 5

Losing a pathetically easy minigame. This one is more the player’s fault, but it’s still frustrating.

# 4

Losing by almost nothing. This one is really frustrating when it pops up, especially if it’s because of Bonus Stars. Not much else to say here.

# 3

Someone else getting a star from a hidden block. This actually seems to be the most common result from a hidden block, but really this brings winning by doing absolutely nothing to a whole new level. In Mario Party DS, you can get three stars from a hidden block!

PEACH WINS BY DOING ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

# 2

Finding a hidden block…. and getting a Ztar. This only occurs in Mario Party DS, and when you get this everyone else laughs themselves unconscious as you LOSE a star!

That face will haunt me forever.

NUMBER ONE!!

Chance Time. In earlier Mario Party games, you could trigger an event called Chance Time. ANYTHING can happen here. You can give all your coins to someone else, all your stars, swap coins and stars, really is it any surprise they took this out?

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Hackers. No, I’m not talking about ROM hackers again, I’m talking real stinking hackers. This website was recently hacked so that it redirected everyone who visited to a porn site. This problem has been resolved and I’m sorry to anyone who had to experience the effects of this hack. Not much else to say, but I hope this never happens again.

Remember all those amazing effects on the Super Nintendo (SNES) that blew you away in the 90’s? Remember the first time you saw the wireframe effects in Mega Man X2, watched your car turn on a 3D plain in Super Mario Kart, or laid eyes on Star Fox? They weren’t just the SNES. They did it all with the help of some fancy technology. These pieces of hardware revolutionized the SNES and made it the great console it was. What was that hardware? Well, there’s some information, but some hardware is more well known than others.

Mode 7

First off we have Mode 7. Mode 7 was something that allowed the SNES to turn backgrounds, which could give off the impression that you were in a 3D environment. Some examples include the entirety of F-Zero and Super Mario Kart.

Example of Mode 7 from the game Super Mario Kart.

CX4 Chip

The CX4 chip was a chip produced by Capcom and was used in two games: Mega Man X2 and Mega Man X3. It allowed for three-dimensional wireframe graphics.

The CX4 chip in action in Mega Man X2.

Super FX

The most well known of all the chips, the Super FX Chip (code named Super Mario FX) was a chip that could allow the SNES to display fully 3D polygons. The SNES could display polygons on it’s own (as seen in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past), but it could not compare to the Super FX Chip. The most noticeable game to use this chip was Star Fox. Nintendo later released a Super FX 2 Chip that was used in a few games, and would have been used in Star Fox 2 had it not been cancelled.

The Super FX chip doing its thing in the game Star Fox.

Ah Asteroids, such a classic. Nothing but shooting asteroids while maneuvering your ship with those classic controls. Simple, but that was name of the game back then. Now you can use it to get revenge on any website you feel necessary.

Website Asteroids is a unique tool that allows you to destroy websites. This does not affect the website, but is purely visual and is perfectly safe. By dragging the program on to your bookmark bar, clicking on it will turn whatever site your on into shoot-em-up! Facebook apparently does not work.

How to play

Use the arrow keys to move, space to fire, and by holding B a red outline will surround what you can shoot. Press ESC to stop or go to another webpage. Your score is in the bottom right-hand corner. You cannot die.

Having issues?

Like I said Facebook does not work. Some sites, like Google for example, won’t work at first. If using Google Chrome a shield should appear next to the star in the address bar. Click “run unsafe script” and try again. It should work.

Download

Go to this site and drag the icon onto your Bookmark bar. Happy shooting!

http://www.websiteasteroids.com

In my last post I stated that most of Windows 8’s issues can be easily turned off. I’ll list some of them. What surprises me is the fact that people look at some of these issues, then claim that Windows 8 is terrible. Remember, that these are not really issues, they’re just annoyances that can EASILY be turned off. Thus they do not detract from the quality of Windows 8.

-When a certain mouse gesture is made, the screen will swap to another app

-Updates can occur suddenly (This has been a problem with previous versions of windows as well)

-Uh, I really can’t think of anything else!

People, the reason critics hate Windows 8 is that they don’t get enough time to adjust to it. It took me 1 day to adjust to Windows 8. Critics usually don’t have that long.

Upon releasing Windows 8, Microsoft received mixed results. Many people including critics dislike it because of it being incredibly hard to get used to. Too many changes, not familiar enough, these are all common complaints that make people think Windows 8 was a stupid idea.

I disagree.

Windows 8 is a change for the better. Most of the annoyances can be turned off, and It only takes about a day to get used to Windows 8. Windows 8 also tries to make many things more accessible by changing the functions of the F1-12 keys. F1 makes the help and support menu pop up. F2 and F3 adjust the brightness. F4 makes connecting to other screens a breeze. F5…. does…. *shrug*. F6 through F8 adjust the volume. And so on.

People say Windows 8 is really confusing.

What, would you rather have a certain someone back?

Oh gosh no.

CryptoLocker strikes! CL is a virus that encrypts your personal files, then holds them for ransom. The encrypted files can only be fixed by the hackers responsible for CL. In order to get your files back, you must pay a $300 dollar ransom within 3 days, or your files are gone forever. Unfortunately there is currently NO WAY to fix CL once you have it. Anti-virus software can prevent CL from striking (I recommend Avast!), but cannot remove it from an infected computer. Mac users, don’t think you’re safe! CL also affects Macs!

CL can come in the form of an E-mail. Think of it like the ILOVEYOU virus. Avoid suspicious E-mails at all costs!

Like I said, you cannot fix CL once you have it. However I DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT recommend paying the $300! ONLY pay it if:

-You have money to burn

-Those files are REALLY important

-You have no backup

-The files are really embarrassing

But hopefully we’ll find those hackers!