In a surprise twist, yet another of the Genesis line of sports games with a name slapped on manages to be very, very good, yet STILL not quite up to the level of the very, very GREAT World Series Baseball ’95 released that same year.

The first thing you’ll notice is the intro screen, which sported some terrific graphics at the time. I can go as far as to say this is probably the best-looking 16-bit baseball game I’ve ever played. Gameplay is kept fairly simple and PITCHING/DEFENSE ORIENTED (how bout that?), although pitching feels a little more overly complex (and harder to fool the opponent) than WSB, and bunting is a painstaking task of combining buttons and directions instead of simply designating it to one of the other two unused buttons.

Missing the MLB license, as should be familiar with many of these types of games, you are kept selecting locations instead of official teams, although it’s fairly easy to distinguish this time around. Also, although it still does an okay job, the stadiums don’t quite feel as "on location" as in WSB. You’ll find yourself playing in Wrigley Field at night far too often, and no self-respecting White Sox fan should have to go without some angle shot where Chinatown is in the background, and with the Revenge of Shinobi "Chinatown" theme playing.

PSYCHO TIP: Pick the AL Chicago team with Frank Thomas on it. You know, the guy the game is named after. As a bonus, you can even play as Ozzie Guillen! Definitely worth a bargain bin price. I give it one Ozzie Guillen Gay Kiss.

This game is over a year old now but I’m going to review it anyway. I just bought it off of Steam when it was on sale for $4.99 and I want my goddamn money back.

I’ll preface by saying that I love both the Alien and Predator franchises. Yeah, Predator 2 sucked and there hasn’t ever been a good Predator game that didn’t also have Aliens in it, but the first and third movies are good enough to make up for all of that.

Meanwhile, there has yet to be a bad Alien movie—and if you say "Resurrection" I’ll fucking hit you. It may be the weakest movie in the series but that’s just a testament to how good the first three are, and it’s still better than anything you like. Go watch The Nightmare Before Christmas and cry about how you’ll never find true love like in every goddamn Tim Burton movie.

Even the Alien vs. Predator movies were all right considering they were directed by Paul Anderson, the guy who is systematically butchering Resident Evil as though it raped his only daughter. But Aliens vs. Predator, released in 2010 as a reboot of the original game series, should have been aborted immediately after conception. Fuck the pro-lifers. This entire review is their fault.

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Anybody who knows me knows that when I refer to somebody as fat as Tommy Lasorda, I follow the old adage: "Nobody is that fat and not gay." However, in the case of Lasorda himself, such is not the case, because his fatness is eclipsed only by his I-talianness, and we all know it is physically impossible for somebody that I-talian to be gay. The fact that he is a hideous beast of a man (redundant in the case of I-talians) is beside the point.

This phenomenon has no effect on the game itself, however; that’s mostly because it’s just another Sega game circa 1989 that has a name slapped on it and shipped out. In this game’s case, it makes little difference either way, because it’s just a fun little baseball title with no team licenses of any sort, and bare bones, basic gameplay. You won’t find a lot of depth, focus on stats, or deep strategy here. It’s very easy to pick up and play, but the controls can get tricky once somebody hammers a line drive and the announcer calls out "SHORTSTOP!" and you’re supposed to react in that split second it goes to overhead mode and you realize it’s like you’re back in little league and a ball flies past you while you got distracted by that bee stuck in the grass with its wing damaged. But somehow, you picture Tommy Lasorda and his uncanny ability to hawk diet products despite looking every bit as fat and hideous (I-talian) as always, without any visible results, and you realize everything will be okay. Just picture yourself as a weak woman, and Tommy is hugging you in your hour of need, shortly before he throws a full can of beer at you, calls you a cunt and starts screaming racial slurs at the TV. I give it

No, this isn’t going to become another retro review site. I just don’t keep up with new releases, and when you’re writing about a game that’s three months old nobody finds it relevant or endearing. If I want to be hip with the kids I’ve gotta go way back to the far off year of 2006 for my review fodder. That’s the year Alien Shooter 2 was released and is also the year I vowed that, one day, I would take the game’s developer Sigma Team and make them my wife.

“Certainly you realize that there’s no legal way you can marry a corporate entity. Such tomfoolery will not be abided!”

Settle yourself, younglings, for I live in the great white nation of Canada Land, where a man can marry pretty much anything he wants—be it another man, a video game development studio or even a woman! Canadians may be known for our politeness, but that’s only so that we can take you back home and drill you six ways from Sunday (which, up here, is the coldest, darkest day of the week and can last up to eight months).

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It’s time to make like K-Fed and please Britney with your fingers!

Seriously though, this had potential. It really did. Had they waited until the Great Wii Craze of ’06-’08, not only could this have possibly done much better than it did, but it could have even helped Britney rise from the abyss.

This game did two things very wrong: first, this kind of "dancing to the beat" kind of game is meant for a Power Pad/Dance Pad setup, so using a D-Pad to control your moves to Britney’s awful music is as stupid as thinking you’ll become an expert sniper by playing Silent Scope with a D-Pad. Secondly, the horrid and soulless plastic CGI models of every generic player, including Britney’s model, are just about as inappropriate. With the technology today, this kind of game would do much better with a digitized look and scheme similar to Target: Terror or Deal or No Deal.

I guess it’s entirely possible the development team didn’t have their dicks outside of Britney’s bacteria-filled vagina long enough to do a thorough motion capture session, so I can understand that. You can only imagine the disappointment felt by her father, Randy Spears. I give it

If you want an example of why people who are in their late 20s to mid 30s enjoyed games in the ’80s and ’90s and hate most of them now, look no further than this.

Every single step of the way from the moment you turn the power on is filled with load times, mandatory tutorials, a vast majority of courses to unlock, horrible pop music soundtrack, and the namesake of a cablackichineseishasshole. Sitting down and playing for... what do they call it... fun?... is practically out of the question, and the only redeeming value the game has is its Create-a-Golfer (asshole) mode, where I made a 7’, 310-lb asshole jew complete with hooknose and overbite, who I aptly named BitchTits.

Thing is, I know that I have the mirror-image-opposite mindset of a golfer (asshole), so I’m guessing golfers (assholes) would love this game if they liked video games, which they don’t.

I give this gayme One Not Even Slightly Attractive Tiger Woods Mistress.

SNES loyalists rejoice!

I have a love/hate thing going with gayme forums, because the vast majority of them are full of biased "gamers" who, as people posting on a forum with a high-speed internet connection and functional computer, were likely well-to-do ’burb dwellers who supported the SNES exclusively in the 1990s and avoided sports games altogether, yet preach their one-dimensional taste in the latest and greatest as if it’s the gospel, and if they ever get the urge to do a "retro" review, will immediately give you a revisionist history lesson that flatly claims "Nintendo won the ’16-Bit Wars’" which is a lot like saying "I’m a fag" but with different wording.

One major detail they almost always miss as a result of a complete avoidance of the genre is how Sega trounced Nintendo in the sports game arena. Often the very best Nintendo could do with any given identical EA Sports game is match the Genesis version as best it could and hope nobody notices how many of those attempts are broken beyond repair.

Madden ’93 is, by default, among the very best sports games on the console, because it’s pretty much the exact same game as its Genesis counterpart, and even supports SNES audio! Therefore, you could make an argument that it might unbelievably manage to be SUPERIOR to the Sega version!

The game itself has absolutely nothing wrong with it, save for the lack of NFL team license, so if you’re going to get a sports game, you might as well defy the odds this once. To draw a more appropriate, Psycho Gorilla Games-esque comparison, it’s like if you were banging some girl who has an identical twin, and a few weeks in, you discover that the twin does anal. Fuck her and feign ignorance!