Highlander 5x07 - Haunted

 

It's time for the next disc of Highlander. This trio of episodes is particularly interesting for me because I don't think I've seen any of them before. I vaguely recall a disc being missing from my initial purchase of the series (once the DVD sets were a thing, I got S4 and S5 first, many years before I got the rest, as they were the main ones I saw growing up and had a desire to revisit).

I didn't worry about the missing disc too much, and acquired a new Season 5 later on along with the rest of the series that I didn't have. Fairly certain this was the missing disc given my total lack of memory of these three episodes, so there's a reasonably good chance that I've never seen this episode (or the next two) before. It's a unique opportunity to see something in this series for the first time and give impressions.

The next couple episodes are gonna be along very soon, as I continue this Lost Disc expedition. Might aim for Monday Night Highlander the next two weeks.

True Lies (Super NES, 1995)

Somehow, I did a post for this game twice. Once in February 2012, then again in April 2024, not realizing it had been covered already and wanting to do something for it. To my knowledge, that's the only time this has ever happened. My OCD is going a bit nuts having two posts for the same game, and the 2012 post is too good to just outright replace, so I'm going to merge the two. The 2012 post was written by crazy, off his rocker me, while the 2024 one was written by more straitlaced, professional me. So to keep it simple, the 2012 sections will be in italics and the 2024 sections will be in bold.

Also, the 2012 parts may be wildly offensive. I don't know. I'm not going to be one of those "it was a different time" people. It's there, like it if you like it, don't if you don't. Might end up being an interesting post for the "contrasting styles" reason. A good cop bad cop situation, or more accurately an insane man and his therapist.

True Lies: Now with 360 degrees of Firing Power!

Joe & Mac 2: Lost in the Tropics (Super NES, 1994)

There are many Joe & Mac ports for a variety of systems, but here we've got the only one worth playing (besides the first on SNES, of course). This is the main one I wanted as a kid, and is a bit more advanced/complicated than the first one (while being just as short). It's also really difficult, which is weird considering how easy the first one was.

Join me for the final installment of the hotly-demanded Joe & Mac "trilogy", starring Joe Dawson and Duncan Macleod (Highlander: Returning Soon!)

Considering this is the one I wanted, now that I've played both, I vastly prefer the first over this. It's still better than Congo's Caper. Why did you subject the world to Congo's Caper, TODD?? (Elder Scrolls: Returning Soon!)

Congo's Caper (Super NES, 1993)

 

More terrible box art heralds the game that was called "Joe & Mac 2" in Japan. It's available in the SNES section of Nintendo Switch Online, as are the two real games, so for once I wasn't forced to emulate these buy them on Ebay for hundreds of dollars and try to frame-capture from a real system with a GoPro. In any case, this bizarre game is brought to us by Data East, best known for......... Data East Pinball, I think?

...You know, I could have been playing Elder Scrolls Morrowind instead of this. I really like Elder Scrolls. That series made open world a thing to begin with, well before it was all the rage. Characters you can customize to an incredible extent. You can even create your own spells in those games. They're just nutso, and I can't imagine how happy I'd have been if I'd gotten into that series as a kid in the 90's. Alas that Daggerfall wasn't on console. The only thing I don't like about the series is the fanbase. I noticed that a lot of Youtubers who cover Bethesda games seem to have these bizarre one-sided angry conversations with Todd Howard in their videos. It's so off-putting.

Anyway, I had the Rocket Town theme stuck in my head the entire time I was playing this, and it fit the game perfectly. It's just seedy enough for this seedy game. Which brings me to... where's my Rocket Town DLC, Square? Pretty much everything else on my Top Fifteen Games I'd Like To See list has come true / been announced in the two months since then. But not that one! What gives, Square? And where's Elder Scrols VI, TODD? Todd Howard lied! He lied! I demand Morrowind Remastered, TODD. You made promises and you broke them, TODD! You're not my mother, TODD.

Joe & Mac (Super NES, 1991)

 

"Joe and Mac"? Is this a Highlander game? ....no, but Highlander is returning next week. Meanwhile, this terrible box art hides one of the more classic SNES action games. It's a bit of a knockoff of the Adventure Island series, with the difficulty turned way way way down, and it's a lot of fun to play. As a kid, this was one of those "Nintendo Power games" that I was intriged by thanks to that magazine and wanted to check out on a rental or something. Never got around to it because there were just too many other things to try; our cup really did runneth over in the 90's.

In any case, this is actually my first time playing this series (for more than a 5 minute tryout). This game had an NES predecessor that was basically the same game but half as long, and it had an arcade version, Genesis version, spinoffs, etc. However, the games everyone knows and remembers from this series are the two* SNES ones.

Wrestlemania: The Arcade Game (Sega 32X, 1995)

It's time to cover a classic fighting game with outlandish arcade-style action. Shawn looks so hip here. When I was a kid, I saw this game and went "Who are all those guys? Where are Hogan and Macho?" I saw the WWF New Generation as a bunch of midcarders, even when I wasn't watching wrestling yet. Even if I had been, the company itself did such a bad job passing any kind of torch from the old guard that most of the top New Generation guys WERE midcarders until they pulled themselves up by working against each other for several years.

Now I've got a much greater appreciation of this 1995 era of rasslin' and like it a lot, with Shawn Michaels being my favorite of the bunch. So now when I look at this game, I just go "where's Diesel?" ...because Diesel is strangely missing from this game, despite being the world champion for months when the game came out. They left Diesel out and included Doink? Was The Mountie not available?

Originally posted April 2020, now redone with a lot more New Generation knowledge