Finest Fights: WCW Cruiserweight Tag Team Match

Bringing you the best fight scenes available on YouTube, every Tuesday afternoon.

And now for something completely different. In lieu of an actual movie scene, this week we present to you a pretty groovy wrestling match:

Friday From the Archives: NBA Street (2002)

Every Friday (or thereabouts) we celebrate the heritage of Code Redd Net by posting a retro-review from our considerable back catalogue of embarrassingly naive, but nonetheless entertaining and heartfelt, movie and game reviews. Please pardon the prose; most of these articles were written in our immediately post-pubescent years. Hopefully you find them as enjoyable as we do.

I feel pretty comfortable leaving these reviews of NBA Street alone. ChickenMan first:

"I'll just start out with why hasn't there been a game like this? There's been NBA Jam with the 2-man experience. NBA Street is cool because there is no game like it. Especially with features like the game breaker, which with enough moves can occur, and which gives you points and robs your opponents. With winning games in "The Circuit" you unlock develop points and equipment for your created player, players for your team, and courts for "Hold the Court." With MJ, too. The first game he was in is "MJ vs. Larry Bird" for the NES [I got it on the Genesis, and it's way better. - T]. On Biggs' (a Street Legend) team there's a cool looking guy with a beanie. Go out and ball with NBA Street."

That beanie guy was cool. Anyway, here's my take on the game:

"Of all the games that stick to a theme, this game does it best. The announcer has all the right street-isms, and the players play on black tops, in NYC, and more. The Circut adds to the single player experiance, but the unlockables put this title over the top. Single-player is engaging enough, but the two-player mode is easily the most rewarding feature. You and your friends will taunt each other without caring (not to mention out of instinct) and many of the matches will come down to the wire. For all intents, this is one of the best multiplayer games I have ever played. Worth every cent."

And for a special surprise, here's a video of the beanie guy ChickenMan described. You should see him in the red sweater. He makes a couple nice passes to Biggs.

A James Bond Thanksgiving

Hopefully you're celebrating Thanksgiving like I am by watching the customary James Bond marathon on the SyFy network (or perhaps on some other network, depending upon your region or country). Unfortunately, they are presently playing one of my least favorite entries in the series, Diamonds Are Forever. Sean Connery seems very bored indeed; maybe he should take up writing so he can help out the inner-city youth. Thankfully, though, I'm lucky enough to own DVD copies of my favorite 007 films, and this is a perfect opportunity to talk about the Ultimate Edition box sets put out in 2006.

These box sets, and the DVDs within them, are not ordered chronologically but they are rather shrewedly haphazard, in the sense that most of the sets contain equal measures of the best Bonds, and a few stinkers thrown in as well. But for the James afficionado, your best bet is the wonderful Ultimate Edition Vol. 3. You get three absolute classics, From Russia With Love, GoldenEye (you may recall that Goldeneye won the Code Redd Net Award for Best Bond Film a few weeks ago), and On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and even the requisite Roger Moore sleeze-fests, Live and Let Die and For Your Eyes Only, aren't too bad.

Amazon has it for pretty decent bargain, so get on it.

Finest Fights: The One (2001)

Bringing you the best fight scenes available on YouTube, every Tuesday afternoon.

Jet Li vs. Jet Li? No wonder this "one" won the Code Redd Net Award for Best Jet Li Movie:



And just for fun, enjoy a bonus clip of the final boss battle in what we believe is the best martial arts game of all time, PS2's Rise to Honor:

Special Monday Edition From the Archives: TimeSplitters Future Perfect (2005)

Every Friday (or Monday, in this case) we celebrate the heritage of Code Redd Net by posting a retro-review from our considerable back catalogue of embarrassingly naive, but nonetheless entertaining and heartfelt, movie and game reviews. Please pardon the prose; most of these articles were written in our immediately post-pubescent years. Hopefully you find them as enjoyable as we do.

The following review is from ChickenMan, and for whatever reason I never did an actual review for Future Perfect. I consider this very strange indeed because it's one of my all-time favs, and I long ago mastered it, and the other 'Splitters as well, for that matter. A few days ago I made a custom map or two using the MapMaker feature and it amazes me that this game is still relevant to me, even though I completed it 100% roughly six years ago and I can never find any pals around town to play a few rounds of multiplayer. Of course, this all goes back to what I was talking about in regards to Creative Control; rather than giving us tedious busy work to do if we have a desire to be one of ChickenMan's Cursed Completionists, Future Perfect lets you make your own single- and multiplayer stages, and its replay value is therefore nearly infinite. And that's a quality game, kids. Not to mention the rest of the game is certainly one of the best shooters on PS2 or any other console (in my mind, it's only competition is from the other two games in the TimeSplitters series). My own review should be up within the week, but until then, enjoy ChickenMan's original critique:

"Don't let the name fool you. This game is better than it sounds. It still carries the classic TS feel and blazing speed. But this new one claims to have what TS2 didn't: 1) A good story (personally, I really didn't care) and 2) online capabilities. People wanted the latter so much that they tried connecting their PS2's to their computer with some other complicated procedures and actually did get online! But I ask myself, "What's the point of doing that if it's a definite probability that no one else is on?" The gameplay in TS: FP is very similar to the preludes except for a few things. There is a melee attack, which is pretty cool, but it takes the place of the alternate fire. Now to get to the alternate fire you press up on the D-Pad, which obviously takes longer, but that is one of the sacrifices you make. One of the changes, which I'm not so crazy about, is that they have reloading animations and if you change weapons without reloading you'll still have the same amount of ammunition. TS2 automatically had it reloaded when you came back to it. This makes the 2-barrel shotgun almost obsolete when taking on crews of zombies like ya'll did in the other two games with the same weapon. The grenades are now throwable instead of being an alternative fire, which benefits you because you can throw them when using any weapon. The vehicles in multiplayer are fun, yet I'm disappointed with them. I think the passenger should be able to do something. I also believe they should put the car with the mounted machine gun into mapmaker since they had it in the story mode, but not in arcade. The Story Mode itself is basically the same, which is good, except you're Cortez the whole time. If you've read our grills you'd know about a guy who didn't like changing characters, so lucky him. The Co-op is back with one change that I don't like. In the first two games only one player had to finish. In Future Perfect if one guy dies it's over. Of course there are the Arcade League and Challenge modes. But the big daddy is Online play. Up to eight players per match, you can play any mode on any map, including mapmaker, that you can offline, except Monkey Helper. One of my favorite things about online play is that you can take three of your buddies online with you, but you have to be on the same team in all team modes. I guess that's fair. It's bound to slow down and skip with some connections but it's fun. Be prepared to die, though. It happens quite a bit. The AI in Arcade will probably not prepare you adequately for the intensity of online opposition. But no amount of skill will keep you from failing online. It gets frustrating but it's TimeSplitters online. Overall, I prefer TimeSplitters 2 for offline play. But you should probably get TS: FP anyway, online or not."

Finest Fights: Enter the Dragon (1973)

Bringing you the best fight scenes available on YouTube, available every Tuesday afternoon.

My goodness, was he fast. This is pretty bad. Not bad meaning bad, mind you, but bad, bad meaning good.

Xbox 360 Review: Splinter Cell: Conviction (2010)

You know, I really like Splinter Cell. The fact that Conviction is exclusive to the Xbox 360 had a major influence on which next-gen platform I chose to buy. Beefs with Microsoft aside, I was not disappointed with the game. As you know, it was a serious break from previous entries in the series, with a much faster pace and being more action oriented. This will be a very good thing for some people, as the learning curves for the previous games could be quite large. For the SC veteran, I think he or she will welcome the change and see it as a refreshing take on the original tagline of Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: “Stealth Action Redefined.”

Unlike previous games, where gunfights were rare (in the first two games you would be forced into them occasionally, in the latter two it was possible to complete the entire games without firing a shot), they are now quite common. However, as they were once quite uncomfortable, the more action-inclined Conviction allows for quick guerilla attacks that would have been a poor option previously. But this is not without its serious trade-offs. One of the major appeals for me in Chaos Theory was the fact that after completing a mission you would be given a success rating that was heavily based on your stealth abilities. Being seen, setting off alarms, leaving bodies where they can be found, and even lethal attacks would lower the rating. Avoiding these things, as well as completing all objectives, would result in a 100% rating (which aids in the fulfillment of the Curse of Completionism). This emphasis on stealth was continued in Double Agent: there was an unlockable difficulty level that barred the use of guns. Being able to go through the whole game with just goggles, a knife, and the OCP (an EMP device that temporarily disabled lights instead of breaking them and something I wish Conviction included) was downright sexy.

In contrast, Conviction does not seem to have such clear distinctions of superior stealth ability. Many firefights are simply unavoidable and the lack of ability to specifically choose a non-lethal hand-to-hand attack was a drawback as killing indiscriminately sometimes makes one feel like an arbitrary sociopath instead of a precise ninja. Another shortcoming, at least in my book, was the limited vocabulary of Sam Fisher’s enemies, whose mouths are dirtier than any I’ve heard in a game. If you’ve played it, you know what I’m talking about: shoot out lights and you can get them to swear on command.

Fortunately, the superior features of the game dwarf those that may have been better about the old games. There is now a selection of weapons (though I am experiencing glitches obtaining some of them) instead of just the Five-seveN and FN 2000, alternative single player options besides the story mode, specific accomplishments (such as disabling 3 enemies with one flashbang), and other additions that make Conviction a more engaging and lasting experience. It also includes those certain subtle things that really seem to make a gaming experience more fun. Simple things like displaying your objectives on walls, having flashbacks project on those walls, or Sam commenting on how well you handled a group of bad guys. [Another Tom Clancy example would include the instance in Rainbow Six: Vegas how if you reload a gun that is not empty, it will have one more bullet than a clip has after reload, accounting for the bullet that is already loaded in the chamber. This is how real guns work, and a simple thing like that gives the experience a Clancy-esque attention to detail.] The legendary co-op returns, though I haven’t yet immersed myself enough to give a detailed evaluation (though it is promising). As you may know, I do not subscribe to Xbox Live and therefore cannot comment on the quality of the multiplayer. However, some have said that the online multiplayer has “made” the series of Splinter Cell. Obviously, I disagree.

I give Splinter Cell: Conviction one of my highest recommendations. The developers have kept the series fresh and have offered a compelling follow-up story to Double Agent. The gameplay will offer a challenge to anyone, and he or she will feel just plain B.A. in the experience. If you own a 360 and have not played Conviction, you are missing out.

PS2 Review: Spy Hunter 2 (2003)

The original Spy Hunter re-make (2001, and recent recipient of the Code Redd Net Award for Best Action Game) remains one of our favorite PS2 games to this day, and so you can probably imagine the level of anticipation we had for Spy Hunter 2 when it was announced. Now imagine our disappointment when the product finally arrived. SH2 is an absolutely startling example of taking an established, successful, you might even say nearly bulletproof, formula and stripping it of those elements that made it successful in the first place in favor of underdeveloped and incoherent new ideas. The smooth controls of the original are replaced with a sticky, unresponsive set, and even when you can get the Interceptor to behave properly, it feels like you're driving Mom's SUV rather than a souped-up-for-spies supercar. Furthermore, ammunition is no longer as plentiful as before, so you often find yourself using it sparingly rather than liberally, a strategy which is an odd fit in such an arcade-y universe. And the difficulty is totally uneven; while one level is strikingly easy, the next is maddeningly difficult, and the game bounces back and forth indiscriminately between these two extremes. SH2 also has a co-op feature, something which theoretically sounds fun, but is not satisfactorily executed at all. In this mode, the first player controls the vehicle and its primary and secondary weapons, while the second player can only manipulate a weak turret situated on top of the Interceptor, and this often leads your buddy with little or nothing to do. I will say, though, that SH2 has a decent variety of missions to complete, and the few boss fights are enjoyable and different. Overall, however, SH2 is a mediocre follow-up to a PS2 classic. It's a game which seems more impressed with getting the self-professed "hot piano chick," Vanessa Carlton, to pen a lame song for the soundtrack than taking the formula laid out by the original in any appreciably new directions.

An Ode to Code Redd Net

I was asked by Thrasher to write 300 words or so regarding my thoughts on our experience making this site, and now after reading his Concise History, I feel as though he has captured all the thoughts I did not in my Ode, more eloquently than I could have, and of the ideas mutually expressed, my own writing of them seems a faint echo in comparison. He has captured the idea that CRN is more than just another blog, that it is a major part of a 12+ year long friendship which I hold very dear. Without the Thrasher, my life would not be as great as it is today. This is not only an ode to Code Redd Net, but also to him.

I’m trying to remember, after all these years, where the original motivation came for creating Code Redd Net. Two 7^thgraders with the ambition of creating a respectable website that made up for the short-comings we saw with videogame media are what we were. Though we may have been overly ambitious in what we believed we could accomplish, CRN has evolved into something that offers readers perhaps a new perspective, or even one they already shared but couldn’t find elsewhere, in an entertaining and often humorous way. Though it started humbly as a Geocities PageBuilder website, and continues humbly as a Blogspot web log, I am very pleased with what it has become. Amidst a culture that deifies the next “new” thing and then moves on, Code Redd Net recognizes the classics, not romanticizing them (too much), but allowing them to have their properly earned place. And we are not content with simply giving our opinions about various entertainment media, as if they simply exist in a vacuum, but also the struggles, triumphs, and emotions of those who consume them.

As an army of two, we realize that there will be many who disagree with us or think of our efforts as just plain silly (if they hear of us at all). But that is not the point. The beauty of the Internet is not fully realized by one who has not contributed content to the phenomenon that is the World Wide Web. A major part of that beauty is that it is a bigger revolution than the printing press. Billions who otherwise would have no ability to communicate their thoughts regarding games featuring gun-toting duckmen or a chicken that practices wushu now have that ability on a grand scale. Now running ten years strong (though weak at some points), Code Redd Net is our contribution. I hope you have and continue to enjoy it.

A Concise History of Code Redd Net

It all began on November 8, 2001, or thereabouts. Originally known as Code Redd.net, what was to become the Code Redd Net of today started innocently in ChickenMan’s basement during one of our marathon Saturday afternoon/evening gaming sessions. I had some experience in writing reviews for GameFAQs (my output during this time consisted of this charming piece) and my own personal sites (which I started up and dropped at an alarming pace and which, thank goodness, have long since ceased to exist). I suggested we start up a Geocities page and play around with its Pagebuilder feature, which required absolutely no knowledge of that tedious thing called HTML. All we needed was a name. I believe we bandied about a few ideas first before we decided upon our unusual moniker. Now, the exact details are fuzzy in my mind, but I do know that we took our name from the new (at the time, anyway) flavor of Mountain Dew, Code Red. As far as I can remember, our only justification for choosing that name was that were simply liked the soda a whole lot and we were strapped for ideas. Of course, to protect ourselves from litigation and brand confusion, however unlikely that seems now, we added an extra “d” to Redd. And that was that. We took on the aliases of Thrasher and ChickenMan to protect our loved ones from harassment or embarrassment, I suppose. Geocities.com/codreddsite was up and running, and slowly.

Reviews, always our bread and butter, were split between games and movies, though far more emphasis was placed on games than movies. Our first two reviews, Spy Hunter for PS2 and Rush Hour 2, have remained perennial favorites through a kind of affective blinding. In other words, our tastes have certainly matured beyond them, but we cannot untangle our memories from these objects. They stay with us no matter how much cultural education/exposure we receive, and that, I suppose, is in the very machinations of nostalgia, that’s how the phenomenon of mass culture works. Naturally, our reviews tended to cover only those things which we were interested enough in to rent or buy, hence the general scarcity of negative reviews (far as I can remember, we only scorched a few products, such as Die Another Day, GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, Spy Hunter 2, and The Tuxedo). Our interaction with popular culture was limited to our tastes because we simply didn’t have the monies, connections, or inclinations to cover more items. I would argue, however, that this made our site more inclusive, more of an ultra-specific fan culture (which included our love for Jackie Chan, James Bond, Mr. T, Spider-Man, Sonic, and anything else we fond amusing or “cool”) which communicated with whatever audience we could muster by sheer enthusiasm, rather than by some notion of comprehensive “objectivity” espoused by the popular press. We had our tastes and we had to freedom to do as we pleased, and that was particularly pleasing to our younger selves.

Looking back now, though, for all of our inclusiveness, CRN was quite the ambitious undertaking for two doe-eyed middle-schoolers. We clearly tried to mimic the appearance of most game/movie review sites, and this was difficult because the Geocities Pagebuilder was a beast to handle back then. We also tried to provide many of the same services that they did – at one point, we had our Games and Movies pages (both of which were subdivided into Reviews and Previews), our Beats page, Staff pages, Opinions page, a News page, a Newsletter (and I have to wonder if we actually sent any newsletters out), a “Grillz” page (similar to Opinions, I suppose, but perhaps nastier in tone), Links, a Message Board, a Chat Room, and more. And not only that, we also branched out into “colonies” which aimed to exclusively cover Bond, Sonic, and Spider-Man topics. Our naïvely comprehensive approach strikes me as hilarious now, almost satirical. I wish we could say parody was our purpose, but we were earnestly trying to be a significant source of so-called “objective” commentary on media. Reading over our archives from those days, our earnestness is infectious rather than cloying.

When the original site was removed from Geocities following its closing in 2009, I nearly missed my chance to archive it. CRN was something which I had nearly forgotten about when I went to college. I made sure to let ChickenMan know about it, and we decided that a blog might be a nice way to continue on. College is a weird time for everyone. People change and move away, you make new friends and forget about others, and tastes/interests change immensely (fortunately, ChickenMan has stayed true to himself, though his insight has grown tremendously). No longer could ChickenMan and I spend our afternoons locked in a middle school keyboard lab (our “office” or “base of operations,” you might say) updating the site. Several states now separated us. Thankfully, the proliferation of digital technology made communication much easier and fluid across great distances, but it wasn’t until we had our respective degrees that we mobilized CRN once again.

Nostalgia does funny things to us, especially now, when our technology makes access to these fondly remembered products nearly instantaneous. You can download you memories now. It makes us fond for things which aren’t really “old,” or for things which didn’t interest us before (such as commercials and bad PS1 games). But if nostalgia has ever ringed true, CRN is as good an example as any other. And it moves beyond just remembering what once was; CRN has grown considerably, beyond a simple exercise in nostalgia. Our reviews have only gotten better, even though they share the same format (300 words or so of blocky, unorganized text, at my insistence), and we are far more prolific than ever before. We now review books as well, which, as ChickenMan has told me, seems like a strange fit in the CRN universe, and our extension into the social network has been nothing but a positive experience for us. We continue to grow our inclusive community.

When I look back at our old reviews, I often laugh at our prose, but not derisorily. I laugh joyfully at the words, or rather, between them. I can see the friendship which was the groundwork for CRN somewhere in the spaces. I hope this is visible to whatever readership we have or may have in the future. If it isn’t, and our readership is in fact nil, I know that this brand of nostalgia has served its purpose admirably.

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Movie

Finally, we conclude this afternoon with our selection for Best Movie. It's a sentimental pick, we admit. And the nominees are...

The Dark Knight (2008)
Rush Hour 2 (2001)
Fight Club (1999)
Transporter 2 (2005)
Casino Royale (2006)

And the winner is...

Rush Hour 2

Code Redd Net Awards: Best PS2 Game

PS2 is certainly our favorite console, so it is only fitting that our Best PS2 Game award closes out the gaming prizes for today. And the nominees are...

Rise to Honor (2004)
Freedom Fighters (2003)
TimeSplitters 2 (2002)
TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (2005)
Everything or Nothing (2004)

And the winner is...

TimeSplitters 2

Code Redd Net Awards: ChickenMan's Choice (Game)

In the category of ChickenMan's Choice (Game), the winner is...

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

Code Redd Net Awards: Thrasher's Choice (Game)

As before, our final two staff picks were chosen by their respective writer without a list of nominees.

In the category of Thrasher's Choice (Game), the winner is...

Freedom Fighters

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Jet Li Movie

Up next we have our award for Best Jet Li Movie. And the nominees are...

The One (2001)
Kiss of the Dragon (2001)
Unleashed (2005)
Cradle 2 the Grave (2003)
Hero (2002)

And the winner is...

The One

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Jackie Chan Movie

Our next award is for Best Jackie Chan Movie. And the nominees are...

Rush Hour 2 (2001)
Jackie Chan's Who Am I? (1998)
Jackie Chan's First Strike (1996)
Mr. Nice Guy (1997)
Shanghai Noon (2000)

And the winner is...

Jackie Chan's Who Am I?

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Sonic Game

Up next is our award for Best Sonic Game. And the nominees are...

Sonic the Hedgehog (1991)
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992)
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (1994)
Sonic Adventure (1999)
Sonic Adventure 2 (2001)

And the winner is...

Sonic the Hedgehog 2

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Multiplayer

As opposed to the previous award, the Best Multiplayer award is tailored for games which foreground competition between players rather than cooperation. And the nominees are...

TimeSplitters 2 (2002)
TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (2005)
Nightfire (2002)
Thrasher Presents: Skate and Destroy (1999)
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (2002)

And the winner is...

TimeSplitters 2

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Co-Op Multiplayer

The award for Best Co-Op Multiplayer is designed for those games which support teamwork between players in completing missions/levels together, whether through the main story or through a specific set of missions/levels set aside for co-op play. And the nominees are...

TimeSplitters 2 (2002)
TimeSplitters: Future Perfect (2005)
Everything or Nothing (2004)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005)
Rainbow Six: Lockdown (2005)

And the winner is...

Everything or Nothing

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Bond Movie

Our second Bond award is for Best Bond Movie. And the nominees are...

The World is Not Enough (1999)
Casino Royale (2006)
Goldfinger (1964)
From Russia With Love (1963)
GoldenEye (1995)

And the winner is...

GoldenEye

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Bond Game

In the category of James Bond, we have two awards to give out today. Up first, the award for Best Bond Game. And the nominees are...

Nightfire (2002)
Everything or Nothing (2004)
From Russia With Love (2005)
GoldenEye 007 (1997)
The World is Not Enough (2000)

And the winner is...

Everything or Nothing

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Action Game

Up next we have the award for Best Action Game. And the nominees are...

Spy Hunter (2001)
Winback: Covert Operations (2001)
Second Sight (2004)
Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory (2005)
Crazy Taxi (2001)

And the winner is...

Spy Hunter

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Sports Game

Our next award is for Best Sports Game. And the nominees are...

NBA Live 2004 (2003) NBA Street Vol. 2 (2003) Tiny Toons Adventures: ACME All-Stars (1994) NBA Jam T.E. (1995) NFL Blitz 2000 (1999)

And the winner is...

Tiny Toons Adventures: ACME All-Stars

Code Redd Net Awards: Finest Fight

Our next award is for Finest Fight. Nominees consist of our favorite fight scenes from the action cinema of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Jason Statham, and others. It is important to note that only the indicated fight scene is up for the award, and not the film itself. And the nominees are...

Ladder Fight from Jackie Chan's First Strike (1996):



Rooftop Fight (featuring Crazy Legs) from Jackie Chan's Who Am I? (1998):



Twins Fight from Kiss of the Dragon (2001):



James Bond/Red Grant throwdown from From Russia With Love (1963):



Garage Fight from Transporter 2 (2005):



And the winner is...

Rooftop Fight (featuring Crazy Legs) from Jackie Chan's Who Am I?

Code Redd Net Awards: Best N64 Game

Naturally, our next award is for Best N64 Game. And the nominees are...

GoldenEye 007 (1997)
WCW/NWO Revenge (1998)
Super Mario 64 (1996)
The World is Not Enough (2000)
Winback: Covert Operations (1999)

And the winner is...

The World is Not Enough

Code Redd Net Awards: Best PS1 Game

Our fourth award of the afternoon is for Best PS1 Game. And the nominees are...

Thrasher Presents: Skate and Destroy (1999)
Driver (1999)
NFL Blitz 2000 (1999)
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2 (2000)
Jet Moto (1996)

And the winner is...

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2

Code Redd Net Awards: ChickenMan's Choice (Movie)

In the category of ChickenMan's Choice (Movie), the winner is...

The Dark Knight (2008)

Code Redd Net Awards: Thrasher's Choice (Movie)

Our next two movie awards represent the personal picks of the Code Redd Net staff, and therefore no nominees were announced beforehand.

In the category of Thrasher's Choice (Movie), the winner is...

Casino Royale (2006)

Code Redd Net Awards: Best Sega Genesis Game

Welcome to the first-ever Code Redd Net Awards. We proudly present 19 prizes that commemorate our 10-year anniversary. Code Redd Net began on this date in 2001, and we can think of no better way to celebrate this day than to finally hold our own awards ceremony, something which was planned but delayed numerous times during our initial run on Geocities from 2001-2009.

All of the nominees and winners were mutually agreed upon by our expert staff, and only those games and movies which were released on or before October 26, 2009 (when our Geocities site went down for good) were eligible to win.

With that being said, our first award of the afternoon is for Best Sega Genesis Game. And the nominees are...

NBA Jam T.E. (1995)
Earthworm Jim (1994)
Tiny Toon Adventures: ACME All-Stars (1994)
Streets of Rage 2 (1992)
Vectorman 2 (1996)

And the winner is...

Tiny Toon Adventures: ACME All-Stars

Code Redd Net Pro Shop

Be the first kid on your block to rock our stylish t-shirts:

cafepress.com/codereddnetproshop

More items to come.

Bond 23, Skyfall

The title of the 23rd James Bond film has been announced:


Read more about it here.

Personally, I think it could be worse, and just about anything is better than "Die Another Day."

Awards and Nominees

Last week on our Facebook page we announced the awards to be handed out during the first-ever tenth anniversary ceremony on Tuesday, November 8. Today we present to you the nominees for those awards:

Best PS2 Game – TimeSplitters 2, TimeSplitters Future Perfect, Rise to Honor, Freedom Fighters, Everything or Nothing

Best N64 Game – The World is Not Enough, GoldenEye, WCW/NWO Revenge, Winback: Covert Operations, Super Mario 64

Best PS1 Game – Thrasher: Skate and Destroy, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2, Jet Moto, Driver, Madden ‘98

Best Genesis Game – Tiny Toons ACME All-Stars, NBA Jam TE, Streets of Rage 2, Vectorman 2, Earthworm Jim

Best Bond Movie – The World is Not Enough, Casino Royale, Goldfinger, From Russia With Love, GoldenEye

Best Sonic Game – Sonic, Sonic 2, Sonic 3, Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2

Best Bond Game – Nightfire, Everything or Nothing, From Russia With Love, GoldenEye, The World is Not Enough (N64)

Best Action Game – Spy Hunter, Winback: Covert Operations, Second Sight, Splinter Cell, Crazy Taxi

Best Sports Game – NBA Live 04, NFL Blitz, NBA JAM TE, Tiny Toons ACME All-Stars, NBA Street Vol. 2

Best Multiplayer – TimeSplitters 2, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Nightfire, Thrasher: Skate and Destroy, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

Best Co-Op Multiplayer – TimeSplitters 2, TimeSplitters: Future Perfect, Everything or Nothing, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, Rainbow Six Lockdown

Best Movie – Rush Hour 2, Dark Knight, Fight Club, Transporter 2, Casino Royale

Best Jackie Chan Movie – Rush Hour 2, Who Am I?, First Strike, Mr. Nice Guy, Shanghai Noon

Best Jet Li Movie – The One, Kiss of the Dragon, Unleashed, Cradle 2 the Grave, Hero

Finest Fight: Best Fight Scene – Who Am I?, First Strike, Unleashed, From Russia With Love, Transporter 2

Join us on November 8 to see the winners.

Friday From the Archives: Spy Hunter (2002)

Every Friday we celebrate the heritage of Code Redd Net by posting a retro-review from our considerable back catalogue of embarrassingly naive, but nonetheless entertaining and heartfelt, movie and game reviews. Please pardon the prose; most of these articles were written in our immediately post-pubescent years. Hopefully you find them as enjoyable as we do.

Now, if I'm not mistaken, our review Spy Hunter was our very first game review. And boy, does it show; but, as I've argued elsewhere, it's charmingly so. I believe we wrote this piece in middle school, and both ChickenMan and I agreed that it was the only suitable candidate to kick-off our games section. Today, of course, my review reads more like a satire of the often hyper-hyperbolic video game press than your usual critical undertaking (I sincerely wish I had that kind of awareness in 2001, but alas), while ChickenMan's prose at least has some life, some enthusiasm, and doesn't sound like a compilation of quotes taken from the back of the cover art (though I would like to see his quotes there at some point). As for the game itself, it holds up remarkably well today. It is way too short still, and the multiplayer options are spare stuff, but it as fluid and crisp as you could possibly hope for. Though the game is not too easy, neither is it frustrating, and that's a pretty difficult balance to maintain. Spy Hunter was the first game we ever gave a perfect score, and that reminds us that the very first Code Redd Net Awards is less than a week away, and Spy Hunter is in the running for the Best Action Game award. Join us on November 8 to celebrate the 10-year history of Code Redd Net.

"Spy Hunter is a great addition to any PS2 owner's library of games and it really shows off the machine's power. The missions mix the right variety of gameplay and none of the missions seem to get boring. One mission you are destroying enemy interceptor prototypes and another you are breaking out of a warehouse using a regular car. The storyline is also great and the beautiful next-gen graphics only contribute to the excellent controls which are intuitive but easy to master. I recommend this game to anyone looking for a great action game. This is one of the best games this year, so make sure to pick this up. And with the success of this game, there is a high chance of a sequel."

ChickenMan had this to say:

"Spy Hunter marks one of PS2's greatest games yet! Its gameplay style is not like many others.It seems like car games that don't have to do with racing make good games. One of the miscues of the game (if you use the analog like me) is that the lightest flick of the down button and your slowin', slowin', goin' backwards! And the other is the rather long load time, but it's all worth it, baby! Going through the missions your interceptor gets upgraded with more ammunition, better ammunition, new weapons and defenses. This game is the bomb! And defuse da bomb with EMP. Can you make vehicle combat games better?! No!! Maybe, but NO!! Chow baby, play some Spy Hunter!"

PS2 Review: Batman Vengeance (2001)

While the world at large is lost in Arkham City, I get left behind by the video game curve, as always. Someday I'll get around to playing that one, I'm sure, but until then I'll simply muse about the one quality Bat title for the PS2, Batman Vengeance. This directs me to one of the things which turns me off a bit about Arkham Asylum/City: I prefer my superheros to be in cartoon form. Any attempts to flip on the realist switch just rub me the wrong way. I think the inherently ridiculous qualities of the superhero genre lend themselves far better to the off-worlds of animation than to realistic motivation and mise-en-scene, hence my preference for Mask of the Phantasm (1993) over Batman Begins (2005), for instance. It's no coincidence, then, that I enjoy Vengeance as much as I do. Set in the rich cartoon universe of The New Batman Adventures TV show, Vengeance begins with the apparent death of the Joker, and subsequent levels/battles with the rogues' gallery unravel a complicated conspiracy against Batman. The third-person gameplay is solid, and the inclusion of a first-person view (for firing those signature Batarangs, grapple wires, and other gadgets) is a nice twist on the normal beat-'em-up formula. Unfortunately, driving the Bat-vehicles (on the ground and in the air) is tedious at best, and these excursions are mostly exercises in trial-and-error frustration, rather than a suitable relief from the more combat-heavy portions of the game. And Vengeance is a bit on the short side, with no really enticing reasons to play through it again. However, the story is generally well-paced and interesting, and the music/voice work are fantastic, featuring the cast of the aforementioned animated series reprising their roles. Bat-fans will love the chance afforded by this game to inhabit and interact with the wonderfully noir world of the show, and more general audiences will find a completely competent action game, that is, if they can forgive its lack of shiny next-gen graphics.

Mission 09, Leviathan

I bet the ninth mission of Rainbow Six: Lockdown on PS2 is among the hardest levels ever devised. After a six-year layoff, I finally picked this game up again and swiftly made my way through the first 8 missions until I hit that perpetual roadblock codenamed Leviathan. Now I remember why I practically gave up on this game; it is nigh-unbeatable.

Difficulty aside, I had forgotten how much fun Lockdown was. I understand that it is regarded with great scorn among hardcore Rainbow fanatics for its more action-y style, but it hits my tactical sweet-spot just fine. I find the other Rainbow titles (save for the N64 edition) to be somewhat tedious and difficult, and more often downright boring. They may be a truer simulation, sure, but they make for a pretty boring time, especially for those of us more accustomed to the kinetic-kitsch of TimeSplitters and 007 shooters. Lockdown is very much like a first-person Freedom Fighters, in that it incorporates highly tactical team maneuvers with more casual, and certainly more visceral, run-and-gun. And your teammates are usually intelligent in providing you with back-up; I say usually because they have an annoying tendency to jump around in your line of fire as they scramble to find cover. But they do a wonderful of checking corners for enemies before running out of cover, as well as facing open doorways (where ambushes usually take place) when you instruct them to hold.

Unfortunately, I think this game may have been forgotten by time (and certainly by me as well, hence this rediscovery), so I encourage you to take another look at it if you enjoy shooters dipped in equal parts squad-based simulation and arcade candy-coating. Amazon has it used for just $.17, so get on it.

Here's a sample of what I'm up against. I believe this is a video taken from the PC version of Lockdown, but it works nonetheless:

Finest Fights: Oldboy (2003)

Bringing you the best fight scenes available on YouTube, available every Tuesday afternoon.

This fight looks more like a 2D beat-'em-up for the Sega Genesis than anything else: