Old-Wizard.com - Part 21

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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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The whistles go…. whoo whoo!

Written by Zeromage 2 Comments
Last Updated:: May 3, 2008
Ask Old-Wizard: May 3rd, 2008

Written by Zeromage 2 Comments
Last Updated:: May 3, 2008

This week featured some pretty bizarre questions, especially the last one. But once again I’ve managed to answer them in typical Old-Wizard fashion. Keep sending in your inquiries and I’ll try to answer them as soon as possible. Remember send to send all of your questions to Oldwizard.com@gmail.com with the subject line “Ask Old-Wizard”.

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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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Ask Old-Wizard: April 30th, 2008

Written by Zeromage 2 Comments
Last Updated:: April 30, 2008

In this week’s edition of “Ask Old-Wizard” I answer a couple of questions from an outraged Sega fan (one of many), who was a little upset about our “Top 5 Worst Video Game Consoles of All Time” and several other random questions from some of our regular readers. Sorry I couldn’t answer all your questions this week, but I’m receiving so many every day, and I only have a limited amount of time to answer them. But I promise I’ll get to everyone’s eventually so keep sending them in and keep reading!

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This is an Actual News Story

Written by Zeromage 1 Comment
Last Updated:: April 27, 2008
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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Bo Jackson Tecmo Super Bowl Run

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