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• The Top 5 Web Browsers

  

  Written by bug 11 Comments
  Last Updated:: May 6, 2008

  The text your eyes are currently reading is being displayed to you via a digital medium commonly known as a Web Browser. Quite simply, a web browser is a piece of software that interfaces with an active internet connection to allow the user to display websites, transfer files and display media. Over the years web browsers have been upgraded, retooled and fancified to display websites faster, more securely, and with style. Here at Old-Wizard.com we’re obviously heavy users of the internet, often hogging bandwidth at our homes, friend’s houses and free wireless hot spots along the way. We have used several different types of web browsers and in the spirit of Old-Wizard, we decided it was time to post our top five web browsers list.

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• Top 5 Worst Video Game Related Websites of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 136 Comments
  Last Updated:: May 4, 2008

  Video game websites, like most theme focused sites (e.g. music websites), are a dime a dozen. Everywhere you go, you can find an opinion on video games with an equal amount of bitterness and approval. Some of these websites though, are clearly in the opinion market for other reasons. Some have seen the success of other websites and blatantly copied these originals. Some have even designed multiple websites with contradicting opinions in order to start fake console wars. Some of the most shameful acts from video game related websites have come from those sites who have cowered to public opinion and advertising money by only giving positive reviews to certain video games. One can see with their own eyes how a review went from a 5.0 to a 9.0 after one week, and how after that week, there was an advertisement for the game right next to the new rating. While we certainly don’t want to sound sanctimonious with our video game website ethics, we do realize that there are limits. For one, once a video game has been rated and reviewed, its over and done, even if we disagree with it later. That’s the beauty of writing in the present; we can look back and see how much we agreed or disagreed with our opinions from the past. This hope for a more pure writing and reviewing style has been guided by all these next websites who copy, change, and cower to other outside forces. The lack of any substantial writing from these websites is a signifier to their other motivations.

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• Top 5 Worst Star Wars Characters

  

  Written by Zeromage 44 Comments
  Last Updated:: May 2, 2008

  The Star Wars series was full of some of our favorite movie characters of all time. In the near future, we will be releasing our favorite characters of all time from the series, but for now our focus will be on the worst ones. During the original trilogy it was rare for George Lucas to ever make a mistake in production, storyline, and character development. But since then he certainly HAS made his mistakes, mostly in the newly released episodes 1-3 which had more things wrong with them than great about them. To start with, there were characters in these episodes who were not only forgettable, but stultifyingly annoying. That Lucas ever thought these next characters could pass for the greatness of Star Wars lore makes no sense for the diehard fan of the series. That episodes 1-3 would become forgotten because of Lucas’s interpolations in these movies was a fate that would become certain after one watched episode 3. The superfluous nature of these next characters will be recognizable signifiers of a movie series gone wrong. The diehard Star Wars fan though will always have the crass demeanor of Han Solo to bring back memories of all the characters from the old series that they had come to love. Just look at all the action figures collected from the original series compared to those collected from the new series to understand the different degrees of affectation that the characters in each had. With this in mind, the difference between the character development in both was obvious and will be addressed in this list.

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• Top 20 Worst Video Games of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 108 Comments
  Last Updated:: May 1, 2008

  What makes a worst video game of all time? Poor story lines, insane difficulty, controlling issues to the point of broken screens… all these contribute towards video games that you threw out your window in disgust of wasting 3 dollars in renting them. On this list we prudently considered what games made us break the most things, and made us ask ourselves “how the fuck was this game ever made?” There were some obvious immediate choices like “Shaq Fu” and “ET”, and there were also some more personal choices like “Fatal Fury” and “Elevator Action”. Old-Wizard brings you these top 20 worst games of all time in hopes that you never have to experience the inexorably abominable game play that we’ve had to experience in playing a game like “Three Stooges”, where what you thought would be 2 days of rented video game euphoria turned out to be hours of personal disgust, wondering how it was possible you could have rented a game so bad. However, if you are one of those people who like to play bad video games because they make you feel better about yourself and ebullient about your own small accomplishments in life, then these are the games to play. As an elementary programmer, you probably have a decent chance at creating a game better than “Muscle”, and this doesn’t feel too bad.
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• Top 10 Characters From Punch Out!

  

  Written by Zeromage 10 Comments
  Last Updated:: April 24, 2008

  Mike Tyson’s Punchout was one of the best games for the NES. It had great game play that was neither too complex nor too simple. The game’s duration was a perfect length, employing a simple password technology to start you off at the first fighter of a respective circuit. What really made Punchout so successful though, was all it’s well-designed and well-thought-out characters ranging from the drunk to the arrogant, to the flat out awfully skilled fighters. Each had their own charisma or lack there of. Each had their own mid-round parlance reflecting their own personalities that were guided by their various cultures. Super Punchout for the SNES would continue the tradition adding more color and graphic technology to all the fighters and even reinstating many of the fighters from Mike Tyson’s Punchout such as Bald Bull, Mr. Sandman, and the overly tan Super Macho Man. It was imperative for us at Old-Wizard to come up with the definitive “best of” list for the Punchout and Super Punchout characters combined. There were some fighters we left off that we wish we didn’t have to leave off like Mr. Sandman and 3 or 4 fighters from Super Punchout such as Nick Bruiser, Bob Charley, and Masked Muscle. But as with all lists, omissions are always necessary. Still, we are confident you will enjoy our picks, especially our number 1 pick.

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• Top 5 Worst Gaming Consoles of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 254 Comments
  Last Updated:: April 20, 2008

  The video game world has seen its fair share of poor systems that had no business being released in the first place. Some of these systems were created for getting something in time for a holiday. Others were carefully constructed, and failed for any number of reasons from poor games, to poor sound, to poor graphics, or to just plain bad ideas as we’ll see with the #5 entry specifically. Luckily, most of the video game world had always rebounded from its bad ideas, and created systems that were much more intuitive in the fun factor for the gamer. On this list then, we will highlight what we think are the worst systems of all time. As always, there will be those who disagree, especially with one of our entries. We expect a high amount of criticism and even some profanity from some of our choices, but we ask you to read the arguments and consider what is being said before flaming them to no end. We’re sure we’ll see a lot of your own “top 5 worst systems of all time” after this list. The systems that overlap between our lists may be cause for some agreement between us and the reader. But we’re pretty the sure the flames will be stronger. They always are.
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• Top 10 Gaming Consoles of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 114 Comments
  Last Updated:: April 19, 2008

  The home based video game system has been the greatest signifier for what a “nerd” is. What would a nerd be without home video game systems? From the next gen systems of today, to the video game systems of yesteryear which collect dust over time only to be undusted when the urge comes to replay Zelda 1 for Nintendo. The nerd who is usually considered to be socially inept because of his insistence in staying indoors playing video games all day doesn’t hit at the deeper reasons for the nerd’s disposition. The video game system for the nerd is a place to escape the banality of what consists of much of the real world, into dungeons with 8 horned dragons spewing fireballs at them. This phenomena is not because of social ineptness, but because of a want for a world with much more variety, and much more creativity. The nerd wants to go on epic adventures every day where the world is on the line and it is up to them and their friends to save it. As they are not offered this chance in the real world, they find their solace with the advent of the home gaming system revolution. These next systems are the best that the home video game platform has had to offer. Many memorable games have been titles for these systems, and this is the most important factor for us in choosing what the best video game systems have been.

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• Top 5 Girls From the Wonder Years

  

  Written by Zeromage 20 Comments
  Last Updated:: April 18, 2008

  The Wonder Years was full of amazing dialogues, and amazing actors. For the boys who watched these episodes in their young age though, all that really mattered were the girls in the show, the girls that Kevin would inevitably end up falling for. They represented all the different girls that they wanted to meet themselves growing up through their teenage years, from the girl next door, to the seemingly unattainable girl who digs you to your disbelief. All the swings of teenage romance were palpable in the Wonder Years, from a first kiss, to a first slap, to a first possibility of infidelity. It’s with this in mind that we rank the women of the Wonder Years, in hopes of bringing back the images of these women from a golden era who embodied the grace and class of a gender currently lost.

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• Top 10 Video Game Heroes of All Time

  

  Written by Zeromage 76 Comments
  Last Updated:: April 13, 2008

  Remember the first time you played Zelda 1 and realized that you wanted to be the green clad hero that was walking about the flat screen? Remember the first time you loved a game because you wanted to be the protagonist with all their abilities that you would never have in real life? Old-Wizard remembers all of these moments as we constantly reflect on what our favorite video games are, and in this case, who are favourite video game heroes are. If this list seems retro in its choices, its not without reason, as games within the newer market fail to focus on the personal qualities embodied by one figure trying to save the world. This sense of grandeur and intrepidness led to some of the most memorable characters in the video gamer’s life. Protagonists in novels that the video gamer would read at school would always pale in comparison to the 8-bit characters they always had full control over. The characters in a video game always had much more nobler tasks than modernity’s insistence for leveling out heroism to anyone who feels entitled to their pride. The heroes on our list were always on the most aggrandized of adventures battling only the most nefarious of antagonists. Nowhere was their repose when faced with doom on a universal level. To these dreams of large adventures and magnanimous characteristics we owe the protagonists on this list. The video game world would be nothing without them.

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• Top 10 Bands of the New Century

  

  Written by Zeromage 23 Comments
  Last Updated:: April 4, 2008

  The passing into the new century was a landmark event for the popular arts. Critical reviews of their past forms became common place in their information mediums. Pop music specifically saw itself in need of a transformation into minimalized modes of execution. This insistence combined with the diminution of the major label as that which defined quality, led to more open ideas of what quality was. The two-edged sword of this phenomena created some great bands in the new century, along with bands who equated this new found freedom for an “anything-goes” attitude. This lack for a formal understanding of quality could lead bands into new sonic frontiers while at the same time leading these bands into below-average songwriting. As expression for the sake of itself became the only grounds for quality, anything and everything was fair game in being recognized as good. There were bands though who superseded this flexibility of quality by recognizing the power of songwriting, purely in itself. These bands who were able to combine the sonic territories of the new century with the invariable aspects of good songwriting are given a rank in this list. These next bands have the signature of the new century written all over them, although still imbued with the sense of traditional songwriting that leads to memorable melodies. With these next bands in mind, we will see that the sonic flow of history need not forget it’s invariable characteristics from the past.

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