Stats time!
1/18 Artwork unlocked
Stats time!
1/18 Artwork unlocked

After all these years, I finally got the classic GBA Iron Man game! I’ve always wanted to get this since this would essentially complete my Marvel collection and side scrollers are a blast. That being said, the game is even shorter than I would have thought. I knew about the length about a day before I purchased it, but it was still surprising. The game is easily under an hour and you’ll beat it right away. There’s not a whole lot to do post game either, which makes for an interesting concept.
The plot is that one of Tony’s relatives has broken into Stark Industries and stolen all of his armors. Tony is a little puzzeled at how easy this all was, but he takes it in stride and breaks out one of his original armors. Will it be enough to take back his armors and take down the likes of Crimson Dynamo and the Blizzard? One thing’s for sure, this will not be easy!!
As I mentioned, the game is quite short. There are 8 levels plus two bosses. Each level can be beaten in a fairly short amount of time, but rushing through the game is discouraged to an extent. There are moments where you can cheese the levels by running and jumping a lot, but sometimes that will lead you to tun in a circle and just waste time. The enemies are surprisingly powerful as well. There are no power ups to be found in the game so your health bar is very small. A few good attacks are enough to knock you out so slow and steady is typically the key here. Do that and you should be fine.
The bosses are fairly simple. The final one is just tricky until you figure out his gimmick. Once you do, he becomes one of the easiest bosses of all time. Just hit him with the Uni beam, jump over him and do it again and again and again. He will not be able to do anything and you’ll have beaten the final boss. Blizzard was a little more tricky since his ice attacks are no joke, but as long as you stop his regeneration, you’ll be okay.
The gameplay is fairly similar to the Spider Man games, but you can keep on shooting indefinitely. It’ll remind you of Vectorman at some points. You can store up some energy by holding the B button or you can just keep on pressing it to shoot the little beams. Make sure to duck a lot since that will help you evade a lot of enemy fire. It won’t be enough to stop them all, but a lot of them at least. You’ll expend energy whenever you fire a blast so expect your energy to be at 0 most of the time.
You can double jump and then boost, which lets you cross a large distance in a very short amount of time. It’s handy and if you get two power ups, you can emit an energy wave that destroys everything on the screen. It’s handy, but you won’t get that power up until about halfway through the game. That’s still a good 20 minutes though so not bad.
I’d say that the graphics are pretty good. These are GBA graphics that survive the test of time. Iron Man’s design is quite good and most of the enemies look like fun Terminators. Everything is clear and you can easily follow the action. The cutscenes are essentially illustrations with a little movement so I’m guessing that this had more of a budget than you may have suspected at first. Unfortunately, that didn’t equal into a very large soundtrack. Typically, you can expect to hear the same tunes many times, although they are not bad by any means. They’re fairly inspiring and at the very least, work well with the gameplay. The sound effects can be a little loud at times, but that’s just how it goes.
Really, the game’s a blast, but it does bring up the age old issue of whether length is really a factor. This game’s an easy 7 no questions asked if it had a decent length, but only 8 levels and it being under an hour is a little iffy. I always have a section for replay value, but it’s basically empty in this game. You can get the 7 pieces of artwork if you want I suppose, but that’s literally it and at most it can buy you a few hours, but if you search each level carefully, it could be less. I got one of them, but the other ones are typically hidden in little nooks and crannies. Not really worth it for me, but sometimes I do have fun with this kind of thing. Even without any other game in the back burner though, I can’t picture myself going back for the art pieces.
Overall, Iron Man was fun, but it is one of the shortest games that I’ve ever played. There are a few titles that are shorter like Rudolph, but this game is scary short. I can’t imagine buying this at the full retail price when it first came out back in the day. I can only imagine that a lot of people were very disappointed with it. Considering that I got the game for a few dollars, it’s not all that bad. I actually get thrilled when a game is short since it helps with the backlog, but naturally, length does typically make a game better as long as the levels have a good amount of quality. Take classics like KH II, FF XIII, or even Sonic Adventure 2 Battle to an extent. I still recommend this game, but you may be better off getting the Iron Man PS3 game.
Overall 6/10

It’s time for a romance drama. As you may have expected, this was a fairly terrible movie. It tries very hard to be the next Cinderella, but somewhere along the road it lost sight of what was happening and devolved into a train wreck much like the Street Fighter V release. If only this film could have been as emotional as ET!
The characters and their names do not really matter in this film so let’s get right to the plot. There are these two sisters and their mother who used to have a fairly nice life. One day, their benefactor died and his full inheritance went to someone who was unrelated to them. The dying man told this guy to make sure that the ladies were well provided for, but his wife quickly convinced him to renege on his word. The guy agreed since deep down he does love money and the girls were quickly thrown into a life of hardship and passive aggressive dealings. If they had been tough enough to actually stand up for themselves in this civilized time, then maybe things could have been a little different.
Either way, this was the only part of the film where you could feel bad for the main heroines. It’s a plot that I never like to see, but at least the plight was very real. It’s sad to go from owning your own house to essentially being the maidservants there. The film lost me when the heroines left to live with a nice old couple though. Suddenly, their situation wasn’t half bad and the place was actually pleasant. They no longer needed to worry about their situation financially and the upbeat atmosphere of the mansion would do wonders for the cast…or would it? Unfortunately, not everyone is very grateful.
The heroines act as if the old couple are a nuisance (Aside from the youngest sister) and they apparently prefer the quietness of being servants than the loud rumblings of the current dinner situation. That’s where I lost my sympathy, how could they ever miss the old days when the situation is so good over here. Sure, the old couple gossips a lot and they’re always talking, but it certainly beats the alternatives. The problem is that the main characters are not likable. None of the characters are really likable although the old couple would be the best characters by default I suppose. It’s still not saying a whole lot.
This whole film revolves around the question, “Do you care if you’re simply the rebound guy?” None of the characters do and they’re personally satisfied with it, but would you be? Just think about it for a moment, the person that you like has repeatedly turned you down and been very rude to you your whole life since you’re just an annoyance to the person. An obstacle that should be gone. One day, the friend’s love interest reveals that he’s just been using her for the thrills and runs off so she says that she’ll go with you now. The main guy in the film basically says “Great, I’ll grab my stuff!” as they’re married the very next day. (Something like that) It felt rather odd, but also sad because it’s actually realistic.
People are so easy nowadays that they’re desperate for love. This scenario is actually not all that uncommon and just makes the characters look even worse. Essentially, the same thing happens with another pair, only they broke up like 3 times first and again, the girl was the second choice. The guy had made a promise to someone else that he would marry her about a decade earlier so when he remembered the promise, it was game over for the main character. The lady called it off though so the guy quickly went back to the main charcater, but he had already dumped her twice and ignored her several times at a party, pretending not to know her. He even sent her a letter saying that he had never loved her. Erm….is this what true romance is?
One of the characters admitted that classics like Romeo and Juliet had “pathetic endings” which I did have to agree with. I don’t use such strong words, but you have to admit that those romances are rather terrible and know nothing about true love. If you have fallen in love at first sight, then you know that it is fake love. The problem is that most people will never realize this so we’ll get films like this one.
No worries guys, this film’s still not getting a 0 or anything like that. I’m not even giving it a 1 since it’s not horrendous. It’s terrible and boring, but doesn’t cross the line into Sucker Punch territory. My main complaint with the film aside from the characters is the fact that it is very boring. The film drags on and on and the plot doesn’t make a lot of sense. As I explained, the characters should have been happy with the old couple, but for the sake of drama, they quickly revolted. That’s not cool. The romance was handled very poorly as well, but you probably saw that coming didn’t you? I have been bashing it for quite a few paragraphs at this point….
Who knows, maybe zombies would have spiced things up a bit. I can definitely say that the MVPs of this film were definitely the dogs that had been running around the place. They were neat and it makes me wish that they could have been around a little more to mock the main characters and their unwise choices. I also have to say that tripping in a grassy plain is quite lazy and does make it seem as if you’re a very weak character. We wouldn’t want people to get the right impression now would we?
Overall, This is a very boring film and one that you should not bother to watch. It doesn’t help that this is set in the olden times where everything looked dreary and dull. How I miss my modernized glass buildings and video games at every twist and turn. There’s no real language, which is one of the good things about having an old film, but with a large array of terrible characters at every turn, it doesn’t make a whole lot of difference. If you want to watch an emotional movie, check out Peanuts instead. At least that one has Snoopy and it’s said that he can hold an entire film all on his own. Now that’s what I call talent!
Overall 2/10







