Yep, it's the 25th Anniversary of Tomb Raider starring Lara Croft I have been thinkin' about this most of the year! Wow, I remember like it was last week when I fist saw her, I had such a huge crush on her. It was something never before that a 15 year Brandon had witness previously While there are many first babes in gaming such as Mario's Daisy & Princess Toadstool, Metroid's "cryptic" Samus Aran, Streets of Rage's Blaze, Zero Team's Spin, Mortal Kombat's Sonya Blade, Killer Instinct's Black Orchid, Resident Evil's Jill Valentine, Fatal Fury's Mai Shiranui and of course Street Fighter's Chun Li & Cammy White is considered to be the first of video game women but when you talk about a female character that is in her own game and has such a revolutionary 3D platform genre of the time there is no one else that could compare! to her! Tomb Raider just wasn't about a hot, big boobed total package babe that wielded 2 hand guns at the same time and jumped on anything she could that was a truly a bad @$$ (something that so lacks in this androgynous day & age IMO) but also about treasures, ancient history, dangerous animals, cryptids & monsters! Despite what many have said, I never considered her to be a female Indiana Jones. Sure, there maybe similarities here and there but most of everything is like that, people just decide to pick on things for what ever they can Don't get Me wrong, today's games & graphics are wonderful but I love the ones of the past too. Sometimes I just get tired of the new stuff just not games but figures, movies, wrestling, music etc. and it seems like everybody just forgets how it was then and like it doesn't matter anymore which it does to Me and in fact the way things are in life now, the past is way better than these pathetic times that we're in at the moment and games like the original Tomb Raider seemed special back in the day unlike todays offerings IMO. Also, Seems like they can't make today's Lara a combination of everything like she was before, I mean like the modern day Lara but the fact of the matter is she is nothing like the original Lara and even though I was at first bummed about the first reboot in the early 2000s, I began to realize that she was still a hot beauty that was truly a bas @$$ at the same time and I loved that one too and the games were arguably even better the first ones IMO. Today's generation has no clue how cool it was then in the 90s or even in the early 2000s and I'm very thankful I did experience it! Tomb Raider was truly the one that started the 3D action-adventure platformer trend that would spawn so many great games over the next couple of decades!

If you don't know the original Tomb Raider for whatever reason or if you wanna be refreshed on how it was then go HERE for her Wikipedia Page!

So with all of that being said, I present My special Tomb Raider 3-Pack that I got for the PC nearly 2 decades ago! It includes TR 1, 2 & 3 ALL in the 90s which was 96, 97 & 98 respectively. I love the separate entries with the instruction booklets, you can ssssoooo tell that this is way before today's frugal companies & digital debacle. This is one of the finest video game sets that I have in My entire collection!









Here it is all together



Sweet bonus




Here is some great vids of all 3 of the original trilogy of games





Well, that's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this. There will be more Lara Croft/Tomb Raider stuff in the near future from Me including figures...if your thinkin' about the classic vintage series by Playmates then no as I unfortunately do not have then but I hope to get them sometime down the road. More great video game stuff coming soon, until then I'll see you around

Yep, here is A brief entry of Duke Nuke 3D It came out in 1996 so that means its the 25th Anniversary of this great action packed and hilarious game! Duke is one of fave video game characters and this game is one of My most fave video games of all time! It was truly revolutionary at the time as it had more control like you could look up & down unlike most FPS before it like Doom! The graphic were superb. I loved the story of the aliens invading Earth yet making it somewhat like certain movies. I loved Duke's one liners, the sheer gritty yet funny dialog and the monsters. Of course the game was bold and when a 15 year old Brandon first played this I was so stoked and wowed at just not everything I just said but also because of the hot naughty women throughout the game. I still think they are really good at this very moment! Here is My original PC collection. I do have it on N64 but unlike the PC version, it was censored as it went a similar process like the first Mortal Kombat did on the SNES they felt it was more for adults/mature gamers in the 90s. Now in 2010 Duke finally made a comeback with Duke Nukem Forever but it was very criticized severely by critics & fans a-like and as predictable weren't happy with it but I sure was, I loved it as much as 3D but that's for another time to talk about

Now your unfamiliar with Duke Nukem 3D or need to be freshened up then go HERE for the info via the Wikipedia page!




WARNING: VIDEO GAME BABES AHEAD

Now here is sweet bonus, here is an example of the babes that is in the game and look, it's the Doom Guys, The Terminator, a Star Wars Stormtrooper and Indiana Jones




and oh boy, Lara Croft made a special uncredited cameo in the game, I remember this pic like it was yesterday over twenty-five years ago...can you believe it



Now here a special gameplay vid, now like I said earlier, its a great game but more for the adult back in the day but in this era I'm not sure



I hope you enjoyed this. That's it for now, like I said about Lara Croft, she would be back and she was but she ain't done yet and neither is Duke Nukem as he will also return in the near future too! Until then I'll see you around

Never got in to Tomb Raider. I remember renting one of them and I couldn't figure out how to get out of the first cavern or cave or something and just stopped playing it. Back then I played mostly sports and RPGs. I always thought buying the strategy guides to be cheating , but I'd peak at them in the bookstore, lol. Nowadays you can just google everything. Kids today, amirite?

Shame, TR was really fun back in the day. Oh I played action games and stuff, wrestling games & FSP especially never got into RPGs.

I loved looking at them guides for the pics too, sometimes back in the day it was the only to do it if your included game booklets didn't satisfy your wants. Yeah, the kids & this generation has it easy on multiple levels but really IMO that's not a good thing just not because the learning situation but also because of the experience of all of it back then as a whole. That there was and still is an extremely important factor or at least for Me.

So, to continue My ShowBiz Pizza Place talk from My recent entry in My Vintage Action Figure topic, it was special one to Me and I had mentioned Star Wars the Arcade Game by Atari, I thought of posting about it as well so here we go

First off, if you are unfamiliar with this classic game, please go to it's Wikipedia page for more info!

Gosh, as I had said previously in My ShowBiz Pizza showcase, I was so young in 1983/84 but I remember when My Grandparents & Mom took Me to ShowBiz Pizza Place (later to be Chuck E. Cheese), I played the heck out of the "actual & original" SW Arcade game cabinet! My Mom & Grandma got Me many of the SW POTF 1 action figures around this time (look for a special huge showcase of that series in the near future whenever I get to it in My Vintage Action Figure Topic), however I believe this arcade game was My first "true" liking to SW outside of the films & sci-fi in general and the rest is history

Even though it's heavily movie based, it is possible that one could enter it with the Expanded Universe/EU as one of the first major entries within it (the EU was so fun till the Disney takeover because most of it is legends now and NOT canon ).

Now, it was 25 years ago in 1996, My Grandma & Mom got Me a Sega Genesis 32X & Sega CD combo-system for Christmas (this is the 25th Anniversary of this grand event of Mine) and it was then and is still My favorite video game system of ever, of all-time! It was the real deal in...the...house

Here is an old ad for the combo system from back in the day, I remember seeing this in gaming mags like it was last week and it was such cool times and felt so much better than this era because it actually felt like you were getting something really, really special!



I had some major wants for the system like Knuckles Chaotix, Kolibri, Space Harrier, Cosmic Carnage, Doom, WWF Raw 32X & WWF Wrestlemania The Arcade Game but the one I wanted the most was Star Wars Arcade because I wanted to play it since those great times I had at ShowBiz Pizza Place around ten or so years prior I never had an actual Atari system so this was My new and last chance and I was not disappointed. I loved the box as Sega was always ahead of Nintendo because their boxes was actually storage cases I loved the design of the cartridges' too! Since the system is Sega & 32 bit, the graphics was way better from the original port with big time upgrades from Lucasarts. It was very fun to play and I bet I played it hundreds of times. So here is My Star Wars Arcade game in all of it's glory




Here is a commercial of the game from 1983



and here is gameplay from the great port that I have for the Sega Genesis 32X

This is a shortplay of it with the awesome Darth Vader animation!



This a longplay vid of it.



So I have played dozens of Star Wars games over the decades and while many may think this is way outdated by today's standards and of that maybe but I think of it this way like I think of action figures, just because it has a ton of POA doesn't mean its better...well IMO its the same difference with games, just because its from its from yesteryear, has less graphics & gameplay doesn't mean its not good. So many things from the past has so much meaning which IMO is the opposite for a lot of today's offerings. In fact, one thing that get's Me in this pathetic era is companies keep on making the same things that had been made before dozens of times and making them more and more expensive and making them seem better with bigger scales, more POA or better graphics & modes and people keep on submitting to this money hungry trend instead of thinking about how cool the past was and going back to when it was real and the fact of the matter is this Star Wars Arcade game has never been reissued/remastered via a Virtual Console for any system by any company nor has it been remade since that seems to be a real major trend these days (Resident Evil for an example). Come to think of it, the 32X was such a very underrated and misunderstood console that many of the games has been forgotten which is makes Me quite disappointed So with all of that being said, sure, there was a cool Multi-Player version on SW Battlefront back in 2015 that in ways was similar but that was DLC and try playing that again with nobody on the servers See, with all of this little effort they are putting into these games that are MP and close to 100GBs, they could put out this SW arcade game and today's generation could experience what a true classic really was/is IMO  

So I hope you have enjoyed this. I have more great Star Wars to showcase soon within this topic plus much, much more. Until next time I'll see you around

SW: Shadows of the Empire: Ah wow, arguably the greatest Expanded Universe story EVER and it's My favorite. It came out in 96, 25 years ago this year...gosh I cannot believe it was that long ago already. I remember the hype, promotional material, action figures from the POTF 2 series and the music. It was an event like no other before it and really there hasn't been one since. I remember going to Blockbuster music sampling the score (more on that later) and renting the game. IMO this was the first true return of SW since ROTJ and would be the precursor of the special editions of SW come in 97 and bringing about The Phantom Menace in 99. Shadows of the Empire was based on a novel by Lucas that took place in between TESB & ROTJ that spawned great action figures (I will showcase them in the future down the road), video games for the PC & N64 and as well as comics.

Here is the Wikipedia page for Shadows of the Empire!

For a long time, I have been disgusted with Star Wars since the Disney takeover and made so many great stories and much more NOT canon and made them into Legends. I have read and heard so many people complain on YT and review pages about how SW is dead and that Disney killed it yet people keep on buying the propaganda with their new series' and still the fans aren't satisfied with it. I must admit I had high hopes at first and when I played the first Battlefront on launch in 2015 for PS4 and when it was all said and done after the last of the DLC it had the nostalgia and classic looks, material and feel as it was in the 80s & 90s but this wouldn't last long as they would majorly & severely update it thus removing that feeling with today's generation's sayings, attitude that IMO doesn't mix with Star Wars as it ruins it not to mention Hollywood's trends that they must put into most if not all of the movies/TV shows in the last ten years or so which doesn't sit well with Me at all in My book and the thing is, Disney has done this with Marvel, Alien & Predator among other things they took over changing all of what true fans loved in the very beginning to the situation that has become such a hazard to put it mildly  Simple solution is this: either watch it, make exceptions and deal with it like I have over the course of a decade or just ignore it all (like I sometimes do) and go back in the past before the Disney regime and explore the expanded universe for the first time or continue where you left off of what you missed because most of the original SW stuff from the movies, games, comics & figures were so much better THEN IMO. In fact, those times were so much better then in the 90s & 2000s and anybody whom is like Me, from the 80s and experienced the classic SW and were treated to the fun EU and had a ball with it but didn't do everything they could then...well there isn't a better time to go back and return to those days then now because SW isn't gonna change for the better IMO anytime soon

Now unfortunately I never got the game new as I got it from Funcoland, it was a great video game store (no, not the Funko we know now) most games came used without the instruction booklets & boxes which back then was the only way to get games cheap if you really wanted them. I got many, many games from them. So yeah, is all I got is the cartridge for the N64

Here is their Wikipedia page!



I didn't get the PC version till sometime later in the 2000s off of the good'ole bay. It is nearly a completely different game arguably even better the N64 port.



My favorite aspect of it was THE MUSIC YES THE MUSIC! My Grandpa taught Me how to appreciate movie scores. I loved going to Blockbuster music (yep, a sub store of Blockbuster Video), it was a cool place where you could go and sample music via headphones (I miss thoses days, today's generation has no clue how fun it was then) and I sampled the score to SOTE many times! Great movie composer Joel McNeely was hired to write a musical score for this new tale that would make Star Wars return to full tenor for a book & video game! If you are unfamiliar with this, he put in many known SW themes plus HIS OWN stuff. The Battle of Gall and Beggar's Canyon Chase are tremendous but The Destruction of Xizor’s Palace is extremely epic and IMO one of the greatest cues ever written just not for SW but for ANYTHING! Because of Disney this has become legends and hardly ever talked about which IMO is so darn pathetic, it makes My sick  :(



Here is the VERY FIRST commercial EVER of SOTE promoting this major media event of it's time!



Here is a really cool poster of SOTE, I believe this just wasn't the first SOTE game poster ever, but also one of the first if not THE first ads promoting this awesome media project  



Here is some cool Nintendo stuff!



Here is the SOTE N64 commercial



As a sweet bonus, here is an awesome duo of Kenner's SOTE figures!




Here is the cue from the Score that I previously talked about by Joel McNeeley, this is one of the greatest musical cues EVER composed IMO. This is from the time when things were great. If you missed this over the decades then here is your chance to experience it now. There is more on YT but this is just an example of superb greatness. If this doesn't get you pumped then I can't help'ya If you love it then talk to Me about with your thoughts, I could talk about this all day, literally



That's all for now, I hope you have enjoyed this, more Star Wars coming up in the near future plus more great video game stuff coming soon, until then I'll see you around

I never played SOTE. I remember picking up the Darkhorsee Comic and not really being interested in it. There was just this period, similar to wrestling, where I wasn't interested in anything Star Wars from the late 80s until probably Revenge of the Sith. I think it was just the teenage me trying to distance himself from "childish" things. Funny thing is now, my biggest interests are wrestling and Star Wars, so I guess you can go home again, lol.

Cool videos.

Thanks PB. Oh I never stopped following SW and I loved ROTS! Well, sounds you like your getting into your second childhood which is totally OK and you couldn't be interested into two better things

Well, they always say if you get a kid in to wrestling you'll have a fan for life. Pretty sure that's why WWE has gone so kid friendly the last decade to replace the old farts like me eventually.

Old I doubt that, its just not WWE, it a lot more than just that IMO.