Did you know....

The Neogaf forums are teeming with interesting information. You find many rants and what I like to call gamer snobs in the forums but I came across an interesting one I found was worth sharing. I stumbled upon a thread that started off pretty boring but snowballed into a legendary thread. Showcasing many mind blowing facts that range from NES games to our current favorites, many minds were blown. Post #70 came and changed our lives forever....


We begin with Super Mario Bros on NES, which contained an interesting fact that many of us might haved missed the first time around. . . .the clouds were the same model as the bushes, just recolored.

Moving on. . . . judging from an in-game screen shot and a picture of the instruction manual, it seems Metroids first made their appearance in Kid Icarus back on the NES.

Mega Man 2 also held a small surprise. In an otherwise tiled background, the big dipper can be seen right before the door to Crash Man.

If you look around Donkey Kong's treehouse in DK64, you see a red girder from the original Donkey Kong, Cranky's phonograph from Donkey Kong Country, and a painting of a dolphin which was the code name given to the Gamecube.

Grand Theft Auto IV seems to have taken its font from an unlikely source.

Here is another way to look at the Half Life logo

Left 4 Dead's logo can literally be seen here in an x-ray during Chapter 2.

Taking a closer look at Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo's cover-art reveals Dhalsim hidden in E. Honda's hundred hand slap.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Arcade Game reveals that Michaelangelo was a comic book enthusiast, as the Watchman logo can be seen on the bottom of his board. The Watchmen graphic novel was actually released around the same time so this could explain the bridge.

Nintendo likes to throw winks from its first party titles throughout their games. In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of time, after meeting Princess Zelda for the first time as Child Link, a peek into a nearby window at different angles reveals three very interesting portraits decorating the wall of Hyrule Castle - say hello to Super Mario, Bowser and Luigi.

On a same note, in Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, taking a closer look at the masks might have helped us to see this connection. . . .

To the Left, we have the level "Silent Cartagropher"from Halo 1, and to the right, the last level in Halo 3 titled "Halo".

Pokemon and its many sequels all take place in actual Japanese provinces.

On the same note, World of Warcraft might have taken a page from pokemon's book. . .

And last but not least. Glados from Portal was seen as the enemy, the antagonist, who broke free from human clutches and went berserk in the facility. A closer look could reveal otherwise....

And there you have it, some great video game facts from the Neogaf boards. Definately worth a look as I left out many, many other tidbits. You can find the link to the forum here http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=232550

-Frank

Quickies Announcement

Here at Level Up we find ourselves out battling sea creatures and reigning down fire on the unworthy as we travel the lands on our mighty steeds. For this reason we have decided to bring you Level Up blog's first feature, Quickies. We shall send our news, tied to a falcon who will cross earth and bloody sky to bring you word of our travels and discoveries. Let us laugh in the face of time Muahahaha...Muahahahahahaaaaa....Muahahahaaahaaahaaaaaah

WCG Ultimate Gamer

WCG Ultimate Gamer's season finale just ended recently and I've been reserving my judgement till the end since I was on the fence about it. WCG Ultimate Gamer aired on the Sci Fi channel and ran 8 episodes complete with scenester drama, ridiculous challenges, and dare I say, some pretty hot gamer chicks?

Not all was lost. I actually enjoyed the show aside from the douchebaggery (more about that later). WCG had gamers running through real-life and game challenges at the same time to compete for the ultimate prize, $100,000, the ultimate Samsung package and a chance to be sent to China for the WCG International finals to compete on Team USA? I forget the details but it was probably because I had major product placement shoved down my throat ( again, more on that laters). WCG actually did a lot of things right for a gaming competiton. For one, they did a really good job of actually showing the gameplay between the matches and how they progressed as opposed to just showing "exciting game sequences" and intercutting them with the "gamer reactions". Biggest offender? MLG. The commentary to it wasn't so bad either, I didn't hate the hosts like I thought I would. I guess after seeing so much gaming on TV fail so bad, I expected to really hate the show and to be honest I didn't.

The show had its ups and downs for the group morality. I'm not completely sure if I needed the "drama" to keep me watching. What forced a lot of the gamers to hate or like eachother was the fact that the one who performed best had a choice to send whoever they wanted against the last place loser. So this made a lot of the them nervous, angry, and scared for the most part but overall I still didn't see a real reason to have a system like that in there, unless the producers wanted to push the drama in there to keep the ratings going?

Comin back to that douchebaggery. Trash/shit/smack talkers are annoying as hell and Zofag123, or Jamal, looks like he could use an asswhooping. The dude was making claims that were complete B.S. I actually question as to why a 30 year-old dumbf**k would constantly poke a fight with a 20 year-old about "whos got the skills" or however he tried to spin it. I found myself rooting for Swoozie and Prod1gy since there were tight. The only other downer was the constant ads. They plaayed in the Samsung arena, played bluetooth challenges on Samsung phones, won a Samsung phone to call home with, and played on Samsung TVs. I own one myself but the product placement was annoying after the 3rd episode. They stuck in commercials for the headsets they were using but I care less to even look up what brand it was.

Was it worth putting in the time to watch it? Sure. Would I reccomend it? Sure. The guys and girls on there are professional gamers in their respective fields and it was good to watch. It still doesnt have that "it" factor to really make us feel proud about playing games but its a start. Hopefully they can make some significant changes to the second season and make it passable, instead of just watchable.

Missed out on the season? You can catch all the episodes and extras at Hulu.com.