Nearly every gamer who’s been around for a while has their own wishlist of games they’d love to see get remade. A few of the most commonly mentioned games are Populous, Syndicate, Act Raiser, Dungeon Keeper, Strider, System Shock, X-Wing, and Rescue: The Embassy Mission. However, when new developers do happen to turn their attention to the more beloved older titles, they often achieve very mixed results. Such has been the case with some of my favorite titles from years past – Bionic Commando, ToeJam & Earl, Pitfall, Tecmo Bowl, and Military Madness.

Was it seeing this expanding list of lousy re-make attempts that inspired Jay Pavlina at Exploding Rabbit to take a different approach to revisiting and memorializing some of his favorite games from the past? I don’t know, but what he did manage to create, Super Mario Bros. Crossover, is brilliant. Often remakes are simply graphical upgrades of the original or get “reinvented” to the point where they resemble the original game in name only. Pavlina instead chose to give players the opportunity to play through the original Super Mario Bros. with several popular characters from other games. It’s sort of a big “what if” scenario that let you take on Bowser with the likes of Link (Zelda), Samus Aran (Metroid), Simon Belmont (Castlevania), Bill Rizer (Contra), and Mega Man. Each has their own unique weapons and controls so you can do more than just jump and spit fireballs this time through the Mushroom Kingdom.

It was this whole “Hey you got your chocolate in my peanut butter! Hey, you got your peanut butter in my chocolate!” idea that got us wondering: What other games would you like to go back and play with what different character (and their abilities and weapons)?  Let us know in the comments below!

Play Super Mario Bros. Crossover here.

Originally posted here, on our gaming sister site GameAlmighty.com.

Being an invested spectator during the handling of the Nintendo DSi XL / 3DS affair over the past couple weeks has been one of the most fascinating, and confounding, situations I have seen in the nearly 20 years I have been watching the industry.

Now it’s not the first time there has been a bad hardware launch, this isn’t our first exposure to an information leak, and we’ve certainly seen more demonstrations of bad Public Relations decisions. The SEGA Dreamcast, PSP Go pictures, and caged nude dancers are three of the first examples that come quickly to my mind, while readers will no doubt be able to come up with even better ones of their own.

But this perfect storm is quite unique. Days before the launch of another very optional $100+ incremental hardware upgrade, Nintendo hastily shoots out a short, detail-light press release announcing their next big handheld which will be 3D-capable!?!

What was the response?

I had been expecting to write an article myself on the NDSi XL once I had made my purchase, but here is an excerpt from an email I wrote to one of the Staff here, Mike Siciliano:

I ended up waiting on my purchase of the NDSi XL. It is just a lot of money and frankly I am pissed at the constant baby steps of hardware improvements and releases Nintendo makes and insulted they would have the gall (sp?) to announce another major piece of hardware (an entire new platform!) just days before the XL release at retail. I almost feel like writing an article about that. Will it play NDS games? If so, and it’s not to far off, I am not going to play their game this time and I’ll just be frustrated, increasingly angry, and try to wait it out. In this economy gamers and parents of gamers don’t have money to throw around but many of them do have an almost religious loyalty to Nintendo that could very easily be taken advantage of.  Sometimes I wonder if they are just doing what they do, or doing what they think they can do?

I try to remain as objective as possible professionally, but in this personal email my frustration isn’t very well hidden as I start thinking more and more about Nintendo operating as a company trying to make their money selling hardware. I called my local GameSpot and it seems 12 other pre-orders had been canceled and the initial numbers of pre-orders were already lower than they expected. This, of course, is not scientific, but it shouldn’t be ignored if you believe that the buying audience was already restricted to very loyal Nintendo-philes. (Oh, were you supposing large print-dependent senior citizens had always been waiting, wallet-in-hand, for a larger screen before joining Nintendo’s “Touch Generation”?)

So why did they do this? Who decides to upstage themselves and distract from the slow bleed-out of hardware upgrades already in progress? Whoever it was seems to have placed a much higher value on being “first”, rather than trying to contain the possible financial repercussions or message control.

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It’s that time of year again – a geek’s best chance to look cool on the cheap. ScotteVest is having its biggest sale of the year with 40% taken straight off the top of some of its coolest stuff. Just remember to enter in this special coupon code – 9SALE40 – when you reach checkout. But the sale is only on through Friday and on limited stock so it’s best to act quickly. Then once you do, you’ll still be able to hold on to all those gadgets that make our digital world possible, but walk around empty-handed and un-encumbered like your only care in the world is looking good. (At least that’s what we tell ourselves when we wear ours.)

You can find their special sale page with all the details here.

Unfortunately one of the movies I was most exited about last year came and went before I had a chance to see it in theaters. The film I missed tells the timeless tale of two cultures in conflict. One is comprised of a dark-skinned race of people who are misunderstood and are being exploited by another group who considers themselves superior. In an attempt to gain total control the second group hatches a plot that takes advantage of medical science and uses the enemy’s own bodies against themselves. They also lie to one of the males and trick him into working as their inside man in order to keep the peace and prevent larger-scale violence and destruction.

While it sounds like I may be describing Avatar, that’s actually the plot of a different movie we’ve mentioned more than a time or two here on InfoAddict. The smaller independent film I am referring to is called Black Dynamite and it had so limited a release for such a short span of time that I never could find it playing anywhere even close to a time I could make it.

Well Black Dynamite was finally released on DVD yesterday and I can say without reservation that it was worth the wait. I rented it from my local Blockbuster early and have watched it several times already. Not because I am trying to squeeze every penny I can out of the rental fee, but because their are new things I notice every watch-through and some parts keep getting funnier. To put it on the t on the same level as “This Is Spinal Tap” would be a little blasphemous, but it would be accurate to say that it succeeds well at delivering the same kind of layered, deadpan, seemingly unintentional comedy that really grows on you.

If I go to return it at Blockbuster today it will only be because I plan on stopping somewhere else on the way home to buy a copy of my own.