[Amiga CD32 startup jingle] "Commodore" - once the most popular name in the home computer industry. Throughout the '80s, it held its own against industry giants, and etched its place in video game history, with the VIC-20, Commodore 64, and Amiga line of computers. Though sadly, as time went on, the company went from competing with the likes of Apple and IBM... ...to just becoming "BM". After the video game crash of the '80s, companies emerged, like Nintendo and Sega, to pick up the pieces and resurrect the dying industry. Commodore would try to hang in there, but it ended up crumbling, like a week-old cat barf on a carpet. So what went wrong? How could a company that once ruled the home computer industry, be reduced to a small footnote in video game history? You wanna know the answer? The Amiga CD32. Yeah. This thing was the straw that broke the camel's back. The shit-caked baby-wipe that ruptured the septic tank. After declining sales in the late
'80s and early '90s, Commodore decided to take a stab at console production. The CD32 was released in Europe and Canada in September of '93, and slated to release in the US early the next year. But guess what? It never happened. Commodore wasn't allowed to release it in the US until they paid ten million dollars in back-owed patent royalties. On top of that, the system was discontinued only EIGHT months after being released, bankrupting the company. This console is such a joke, that it ruined one of the biggest computer companies of all time, in less than a year. Even if it did come out in the US, the original retail price for this monstrosity was $400! And that's in '93! Nowadays, with inflation, ballpark estimate that equals almost $700. You could buy two PlayStation 4s for that price! What were they thinking?! Who in their right mind would buy this, when you can get a Super Nintendo or Sega Genesis for less than half the price? And because I'm the Nerd, I'm gonna have to check out a stack of these games-- [scoffs] [laughs] Look at this--! You can't make this stuff up! But somebody did. Oh, and after this, ya gotta wash your hands because you can get pinkeye from touchin' all this fecal matter. [rattling of plastic and grunting] [sigh] Jesus Christ... Oh... and then you gotta... adapt
it-- ugh, its gonna a-adapt my swears... Fuckin' bloody... cunt... Bollocks... Wank! WANK! ARSE! BOLLOCKS! CUNT! FUCK!! [stammering] Wh-what is this... wait, the words are upside down... Oh wait, n-- no, no, the CONTROLLER'S upside down! Alright, well, let's try "Dangerous Streets". Now that is ass! [opens CD lid and puts the game in] [rattling] Where's the fuckin' power button? Ugh, on the back?! Come on... [turns on the console] [Amiga CD32 startup jingle, again] [impatient button mashing] What the fuck? It won't start. It won't start! Start. Start! [frantic button mashing] How do you start? Ugh, that's perfect, I have to hold the disc hatch down... just to get the game to spin. What, did I really expect this thing to work? I don't even wanna play this piece of fuck to begin with, let alone one-handed, holding the thing down to get it to function! There we go, the brand new CD32 add-on:
A paint can. It's like the hillbilly cousin of the 32X. So here we go, the first game on the garbage pile: "Dangerous Streets"! Press the "Fire" button... okay, well... which button is that? Is it the "312" button, or the curly arrow button, or the arrow pointing at the line button, or the square button? Have they ever seen the fuckin' alphabet?! They could've just called it "A", "B", "C", "D"! I'll just call it "green", "yellow", "red", "blue"; so if you guessed the fire button was the down arrow pointing at the line button, you win a prize! And... that prize is footage of the shittiest fighting game... ...ever made! Right off the bat, this is possibly the worst group of fighting game characters I've ever seen. Lookin' back at Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, each game had a group of memorable characters, like: "RYU!", Guile, Scorpion, Liu Kang! This game has futuristic Tommy Wiseau, Ass Cheek Lady, Spring Shoe Guy, Fat Guy with his pants undone, and a Native American guy takin' a shit! And there's this guy who was born in Pennsylvania... ...which just confuses the shit outta me. This game is a complete mess. The buttons seem to do random things. The green and yellow buttons are "Standing Punch" and "Ducking Punch". The blue ones sometimes makes you kick, jump, or... glow. I dunno what the hell's goin' on. What blows my mind is that the game came out in '94. By the time it was out, we already had: "Super Street Fighter 2: Turbo" and "Mortal Kombat II". I mean, for fuck's sake! That's the same year "Killer Instinct" came out! How, in the sweet name, of merciful shit,
could they fuck up a fighting game, this bad, by then? This is already one of the worst games I've ever played in my entire life, and it's the first thing I popped in on this system. I dunno what to do; I just mash buttons, but the sad thing, the in-game character looks just as confused as I. And not to mention, I keep winning. Also, this game is running on what is
essentially an early PC made into a gaming console. It even says "32bits" on the top of it. But it looks worse than most 16-bit games. Could you imagine spending 400 of your hard-earned dollars, plus another 20 or so for this game? So I'm up to the guy "from Pennsylvania", and he's the cheapest piece of shit ever. Apparently, there are special moves in the game, but good luck figuring them out! It takes a button combination just to kick! Oh, and when you lose, it's back to the beginning. No continues. I just don't get it! Do people actually SET OUT to make a game this bad? Did someone consciously decide they wanted to take everything that had been done RIGHT in video games, and empty their colonic contents all over it? The only thing I like about this game, is the horrible voice samples they use for the versus screen. They're hilarious! "Spiosa Capeli!" "Vesus!(?)" "Keo!" "Minae!(?)" "Tony!" "Luisa!" "Macalosh!" "Ombra!!!" Alright, on to the next game! Here we go, "Super Putty"! Or "Look out, it's... Putty"? If you don't press Start, the game sends you to an unskippable demo mode. Seriously! If you try to hit the Start button, it just pauses the demo! Why?! I hit the Start button because I wanted to "start" the game, not pause the demo! Why would you ever want to pause a demo?! If you waited this long, your punishment is
you have to watch this demo! It's actually faster to reset the game. "Too Bad!" [cartoon jingle] And the game, itself, is a drugged up fever dream. You play as a blue ball who walks around hitting mushrooms with its punching glove boner. And look up there! "Pliability"? Oh, of course, y'know like "Health", "Stamina", "Energy"... "Pliability". So, when you punch these things, for some reason, they turn into babies, and then you eat the babies. You EAT the babies?! Or absorb them, or whatever the Hell he's doin'! But if you don't, the babies explode! This game is fucked up! The sound in this game is atrocious. The sound of the babies crying, the sound when you get hurt, the jumping sound, the constant "boinging", I'm goin' fucking mad, I tell you! [baby cries as it explodes] "Too bad!" "Jussst missed it!" [mockingly laughs] Oooo... kaaay... well, enough of this. Next up, we got "Morph". It starts off with this horrifying cutscene. This weird kid shows up at this creepy old man's house and it looks kinda like Doc and Mharti, if they were crossbred with the Minions. So the kid stands on a teleporter, so they're doin' "The Fly" (1986) thing and the whole thing blows up, turning you into a ball that can shape-shift! Yeah... So the game's basically a Puzzle-Platformer; where you can transform into different kinds of balls that each have a different ability. Ya have to find a specific item in each level, and complete it without using too many transformations. So, it's kinda of a neat idea... ...maybe if it wasn't on the CD32! Next, we got "Naughty Ones"! It starts with this cutesy cutscene, set to the creepiest possible music... [unfitting creepy music] [followed by a large string] Then, at the menu, it has this upbeat
reggae tune. [strange upbeat music] The game's pretty much a basic Action-Platformer. Just find the key in each level and then head to the door. It's not too bad. It kinda has a "Bubble Bobble" feel to it with the graphics and the gameplay. However, one annoying thing, is it uses "Up" as the "Jump Button". Actually, of all the games I've talked about, so far, only one game DIDN'T use up as a jump button, and it was the FIGHTING game - the only one where jump should have been "Up"! So anyway, this one's okay and gets a pass. On to the next piece of technological torture: "Beavers". They're a hip band o' beavers! "BeaverMania hits the UK!!" But that pisses off the rabbits! So here we go! Here's another cute cutscene: a beaver comes home to his family. He just puts his... lunch box, or whatever it is, on the floor... ...picks it up... ...he puts it down, again... ...and... ...oh... This mean rabbit comes in and-- Ooohh... ...shit! I'm not seein' this, man! [You're definitely seein' this, Nerd.] *ohh, that's bad! * No...! ...That didn't happen! The fuck, dude?! Oh-ho, shit! Ooooooh! Boy, is that jarring! It's like these games can't figure out if they wanna be "cartoony and cute" or fucking horrifying! Oh-! Oh, what the Hell?! Oh, and look how fast the game starts! If you don't keep up, ya die; the edge of the
screen kills you. Shit flies at you from any which way, and pretty much anything you can touch can hurt you. You're supposedly able to do a spin attack, but it doesn't work at all. I can't even beat the first level! And if I didn't already make it clear: the purpose of the game is to rescue your wife, but I don't think this beaver's gettin' his wife back, because I can't put myself through any more of this torture. Well... that's it. If you're expecting me to make some kind of beaver joke, no, because this is high-class Internet content. Now, enough of this poop-fuck-shit-diarrhea-cunt fuck! Well, now that I got that out of my system, now it's time to move on to the real meat of
the CD32. Any fan of first-person shooters knows
about the Big Fucking Game of them all: "DOOM". But have you ever played "Gloom"? Not at all like Doom! No, this is a totally different thing! This is "Gloom"! When the game starts, it plays this weird happy ass music. Naughty Ones has scary ass music, but Gloom has happy ass music, and it plays before every single level! Also, is he gonna... kill those guys or are they his squad mates? They look like they're on the same team. Why not make them a different color if
they're an enemy? So, you play as this Space Marine type guy and kill other Space Marine guys. It looks horrible, and it's like the main character is severely near-sighted. You collect bouncing balls for guns, and baby bottles for health. What is this, like a spoof? Like "PO'ed"? Yeah, the game where you're shooting butts, but that was done ON PURPOSE as a parody. This one; it's just a fuckin' watered-down piece-of-shit Doom knock-off! This game's nice and gory though - every time you shoot someone they explode into a million pieces. Sadly, it's repetitive as all hell and every level looks the same. In the first one, you just run to the other side of the room and it's over! Imagine completing a whole level of Doom in ten seconds! Oh, but in the second level you have to hit the switch BEFORE you run to the door, ooohhhh! Now it's givin' Doom a run for its money! When you pause, you can change some of the graphics options. This makes the game run smoother, but it looks even more blurry. Also, you can rid of the ceiling and floor. I guess it's supposed to make the graphics
look better...? But it still looks like I ate broken glass and then shit it into my eyeballs. Am I must emphasize: this was a PC company. This game is giving me a headache to look at it, and I think my vision has actually gotten worse because of it. I'd sue for damages, but I'm pretty sure this company's gone out of business, long ago. The only thing left worth noting is the Violence Option. You have "Meaty" or "Messy". With "Meaty", they explode and disappear. With "Messy", the chunks stay on the ground. Also, it slows the game down after you kill too many people. So, yeah. Gloom is a cheap knock-off that doesn't even do a good job at BEING a knock-off. On to the next one. Ugh... this one's a double-disk. Woah. So much value. I should've just lit that money on fire and pissed on it. Okay, so we'll start with "Diggers". Oh, it's like Lemmings (1991), or somethin', I think... [A more bit similar to Dig Dug, actually.] You go to this guy, click some things, then make your guy dig. It'd be more fun to actually go outside and dig a hole than play this. Fuck it; on to "Oscar". Oh, God, no... "Flair" - the same company that made "Dangerous Streets". Oooohhh! Now THAT's a horrible character. Seems like everybody was tryna be the CD32's mascot, but being the mascot of CD32 is like being the mascot for a Porta Potty company. Actually, I take that back. It would be better to be a Porta Potty mascot than be featured on this cockamamy console! Okay, let's start. Take 69? Really? This is the first level; they could've put "Take 1", but no, they chose "69". On purpose! Oh, for the love of fuck! Up is jump again. I'm convinced they're playing a joke! So, here is! Oscar the... something. He's not quite Sonic, he's not quite Bubsy, he's just... "Oscar." The game controls worse than it looks. And I keep runnin' into shit because the backgrounds are such a hodgepodge of vomit-inducing mishmash. The enemies are practically invisible, and I can't even get a minute into the first level before getting a game over. The levels are all based on movie genres, like in "Gex" or "Spot Goes to Hollywood". The first room is sci-fi-themed; you fight robots and what looks like the dog, Xenomorph from "Alien 3". This one's horror-themed; there's dogs, chainsaws, and spooky ghosts. I can't make much progress, here. On top of the shitty controls, Oscar runs like he's on ice. This game isn't the worst I've played, so far, but that's not a compliment. It's like comparing solid shit logs to a diarrhea puddle. They both smell awful, they're both disgusting, but I guess I'd rather pick up a turd log and toss it out than have to sop up diarrhea with a paper towel. Next. "Bubba 'N' Stix"! A game by Core Design. Let's find out what's worse: this or "Angel of Darkness". Stix kinda looks like bizarro Shit Pickle. The artwork looks pretty cool, and the music is alright. So... maybe this will actually be... a hidden gem. Oh, please let it be good...! Oh, my God...! Oooh, my God! It's actually GOOD!!! [in a lower tone] Pretty good. The gameplay is kinda like a puzzle-platformer, where you have to use Stix to get pass obstacles: like using him [Stix] to pry this rock up or sticking him into the wall to use as a platform. This part, right here is pretty funny. Ya have to get close to these weird guys without interruptin' the conversation, and then throw Stix, the character, at them. The graphics are really nice, too. It's cartoony and colorful, but not like the rainbow vomit from Oscar. This is actually a good game. At least until I get to the second level, and I can't figure out what to do. And I don't have the time to figure it out, so... ...oh well. I guess we gotta move on. But I can give this one the Nerd stamp of "NOT Shit". But now, we're gettin' down to the shitty gritty! We have: "Surf Ninjas". "Motosurf!" Iggy: "Motosurf!" [♫ "Hit the Coast" ♫ by Tone Loc playing in the background] That's right; they made a "Surf Ninjas" tie-in for this thing. Nice word art on the title screen. Is this a game, or a fourth-grade book report? Oh, and it's by Flair, again. I'm guessin' they were the "LJN" of CD32. Well, now I know it's gonna suck. The first thing you have to do, is choose whether you wanna hear "Sound Effects", or "Music". Uhh... can I have both? The game barely resembles anything from the movie. And when my complaint, is that the game is not like "Surf Ninjas", then you KNOW, we're really in bad shape! Who are you supposed to be? This isn't even a character from the movie! Is it supposed to be Ernie Reyes Jr.? Or maybe it's Rob Schneider. It's not confirmed, but it's PROBABLY true that this was actually another game before they turned it into Surf Ninjas. Because that's what you wanna do; if you have a shitty game, might as well make it Surf Ninjas. They probably just had some generic beat 'em up on a hard drive and slapped the "Surf Ninjas" name on it, last minute. Kinda like "Doki Doki Panic", but it's "Dookie Dookie Panic"! Ugh, it's another shitty shit joke, but not as shitty as a shitty movie-based game, based off a shitty move, "Surf Ninjas"! Yeah, I know I talk about shit a lot, but I'm STARING at shit! If you are looking at shit, would you be talking about butterflies or somethin'? No! I'm looking at shit, we're talkin' shit! Okay, so I gotta calm myself down a little bit; the gameplay is monotonous. I walk around fighting ninjas who kick my ass most the time. Oh, and in most games, you die when the health bar goes down, right? Well, in this game, you die - whenever the game decides you're dead. Look at this! I have life left, but I'm fucking dead! Most of the time, your attacks don't even register, and when they do it takes forever, and a day, to kill the ninjas. Look at this! What is goin' on, here?! Oh- wait, what?! Did I just rip his heart out?! That doesn't happen in the movie! Does it? I gotta find out, I'm gonna make a quick call, here. [raises antenna] [telephone ringing] James: "This is Cinemassacre Video, where selection is the name of the game. This is James speaking, how may I help you?" AVGN: "Yeah, okay, I just wanna ask you a quick question?" James: "Sure thing! Go right ahead." AVGN: "Have you ever watched the movie: 'Surf Ninjas'?" James: (v/o) "Yeah... in fact... (on-screen) I just had a chat with a buncha friends all about that. Did you know that the costume designer was the same in Street Fighter: The Movie? That would explain all the blue camouflaged--" AVGN: (v/o) "Okay, okay! Look, look, look, look! (on-screen) "I just wanna ask a fucking question! In the movie, 'Surf Ninjas', does anybody rip someone's heart out?! Kano Style!" James: "Um... No, I don't think that happened in the movie." AVGN: [hangs up abruptly] "See? I knew it!" James: "Hello? Hello? [sighs and hangs up] Wow! What an asshole!" So, back to the shit. Oh, and guess that? What button, do you think, the jump button is? Take a guess. "Up". Again. But this time, they took it a step further. Jump HURTS you! Yes, I am NOT kidding! When you jump, you GET DAMAGED! What moron decided that it was a good idea to make jumping hurt, you in a NINJA GAME?! So, the whole point is to find items and bring them to the right places. Like here, you need to bring wax to the surfer who gives you change to give to the hobo, so you can get into his alley. The last guy in my way, is this dude with a truck who keeps asking you to bring him boxes. Oh, c'mon man! There's a box right near you! Are you so fucking lazy you can't
just walk over and get the box?! Oh, but that's only one of them, because there's several scattered all over the place, and you have to find them all. So after searching hours for the last one, I found that you need to get a key, and then go down to the hobo alley, and use it to open this door. But how was I supposed to know that? This level is filled with doors that you can't go in, so when I first passed it, I thought it was just part of the scenery! I had to replay this level EIGHT times. Checking every god damn door in town before I found it. And there it is, the last box. Wait... What...? Is that a pixelated naked lady? Okay, that made it worth it. Next game. Okay, now we have- [laughs] Kang Fu--! Ookaaaay! First off, we need to talk about this cover art. It's like a... shitty colored pencil sketch of a kangaroo with sunglasses. And they must've been pretty proud of it, because it's the title screen, too. And not to mention, at the bottom of the cover, they single out the letters: G-R-E-E-D. So, the company who made this game is called "GREED". On the back, it says this game shows the full "possibilities" of the CD32. Oh, boy, I can't wait! Okay... Is it gonna start? It takes forever to start up. I thought it was broken, because it stays on a black screen for almost two minutes. But that's just how the game is. [stammers] [then laughs] Wow...! [stammers] O-o-oh, gosh! You could say this is random. You got a spinning ball, scrolling pictures of kangaroos that keep glitching out, And then, another black screen, then a picture of a kangaroo, then another black screen, then the high score, then ANOTHER black screen, and then, another kangaroo picture. And then another black screen! I'm not kidding! This is the actual game! Oh, and it's really showin' off all the possibilities of the CD32. For real! It's showing exactly how shitty a game can be for this console. After eight and a half minutes, no exaggeration, I finally get to the start screen. And, uh... What? "Out of memory"? What does "Out of memory" mean? Lemme check the instructions. "Open door, turn on CD32. Insert CD but WAIT with closing door till the music has played." "Close door and game will boot automatically. Otherwise it will not boot due to a bug in the CD32 which will not free the memory as it should!" This is historical. Never... not once, have I ever had a game,
where the instructions tells you: "By the way, this game is really fucked up, so you're gonna have to jump through all kinds of crazy hoops to get it to work!" So now, I gotta move my paint can, open the door 'til the music has played, close the door, and pop on the paint can. This is not normal, but believe it or not, it actually works now. And after all that, all the loading screens and everything, it turns out to be... ...the worst game, of the ENTIRE stack. It is... Un. Godly. There is no style whatsoever. It is a complete mish-mash... of garbage! Every character looks like they came from a different shitty game! You fight weird cartoon chickens, dragon guys with axes, umbrellas, giant wasps, slinkies, and bouncing balls, all on a realistic digitized backdrop. Like, t-this is too much to take in, so I'm just gonna give you a minute, just to breathe. [deep breath] Okay... ...you ready for me to continue? I've no idea what to do here. I just jump around, shooting a FUCKING MACHINE GUN! Why is it called "Kang Fu", if he's not doin' kung fu? He-he's got a machine gun! Pssh, oh, gosh. Oh, I'd rather be playin' "Shaq Fu". I'd rather play "U2FU" and "Robin Williams Fu". I thought I knew what bad games were. I thought I was prepared... but I was wrong. Oh, my God. [breaks into laughter] T-that game over screen...! That is... I-I-I thought I've seen everything! But they... they use a REAL... a ph-photo... ...yo-you go from a cartoony... kangaroo... ...to a REAL picture, of a kangaroo skeleton in the fucking desert! There is nothing you could ever tell me, no proof you could present, that could
ever prove in my mind, that the developers were NOT psychopaths, huffing the gallon of paint sitting on my CD32 right now. This was given a retail release. People were able to buy this at a store! The fact that I bought it, now, is one thing, but what if you bought this when it was new? What if it was your only game? Did anyone actually grow up with this thing? Imagine the psychological effects! One more game: "Zool". Well, it's pretty much the same as the Atari Jaguar "Zool 2", which I already covered before. [See "Episode 65".] It's a basic Platformer-Action game. It's so average, it doesn't even matter. I don't have much else to say 'bout it, so let's just pretend I said nothing. In fact, let's just forget all about the Amiga CD32. Which is one of the worst consoles... I've ever played. It's the equivalent of hyena diarrhea, and you know what hyenas eat? The leftover scraps of dead animals that predators didn't want. So, imagine a hyena's... decaying intestinal tract, sprang liquefied death sauce out its shit chute, and there you have... ...the "Amiga CD32". Fuck this thing; watch it go! [bottles rattling] All right [signs]. Oh, that's right, I should have tossed this, shit too. Huh? "Warning: do not play Track 1 of this game CD on any audio CD player." Huh? Why not? I have to find out. [Ominous music] [loud drum beat]
Wow, this for me is the first time AVGN has felt like old-AVGN in a long while. Don't get me wrong I do like the new stuff but this one was just really special.
Oh my god, this episode was great!
I feel like I'm in Se7en.
What's on Track 1?
WHAT'S ON TRACK 1?!
WHAT'S ON THE TRACK WHAT'S ON THE TRACK???
Omg I genuinely want to know what happens when you play that one game in a CD player. I can’t find anything about it on Google.
Awesome! Was definitely not expecting an episode today.
ooh that cliffhanger! Wonder what the nerd is going to do next? FM Towns Marty? Casio Loopy? Amstrad GX4000? Pioneer LaserActive? Nintendo 64-DD? PSX? Nuon? Gizmondo? Casio PV-1000? Apple-Bandai Pippin? Action-Max? Viewmaster Interactive Vision? Super A-Can? Wonderswan? Neo-Geo Pocket Color? Turbografx? Vectrex? Epoch Cassette Vision? Atari 5200? Atari 7800? Atari-ST? Bandai Playdia? VTech Creativision? APF Imagination Machine? Bally Astrocade?
Why did they bypass the whole amazon prime Thing this time?
Seriously one of the best episodes ever.
Man, I'm so glad James is still active! Almost 15 years of quality entertainment from him :)